THE WILL OF GOD

THE WILL OF GOD

 “The will of God”: we use that term almost offhandedly, even rather blithely at times, even as we have not the foggiest notion of what we are talking about. Yet when something happens that we cannot understand, that makes no sense whatsoever to us – or to anyone else for that matter – whether good or bad, whether to someone else or to us, we conclude that it is the result of the will of God. This may or may not be true, but how else to explain it?

Taken to the ultimate, if everything is the result of God’s will, both good and bad, especially bad, the very, very bad, then we have no will, no free will. We are simply automatically doing what God has programmed us to do since our inception. What is worse, if this were true, then the obvious conclusion is that we are not and would not be held responsible for anything we do. It would all be the result of the direct will of the God who created us.

We certainly do not believe this to be the case even though at those times when we have done something very wrong and sinful, we wish it were it so. If it were so, we would be off the hook as far as guilt and responsibility are concerned. In all truth we also certainly do not want that to be the way it is. We do not know that to be the way it is. Because we do not in any way know God’s ways. We simply believe it is not God’s way to have created us God’s robots. We believe God gives us free will and because of that, we are held responsible for our actions.

And yet, and yet: even though we understand we must take responsibility for our actions, both good and bad, what about those other events that defy explanation, any explanation, other than they must be the result of the will of God? Actions like hurricanes (Harvey) that devastate, epidemics that wipe out thousands, stillborn babies, paralyzing illnesses: how do we explain these events other than that they are the will of God?

The truth is, try as we might, we do not understand and we cannot explain why, to put it simply, that bad things happen to good and innocent people. Sometimes we cannot even explain why we do bad things to good and otherwise innocent people. It is the problem of evil all over again. Whenever something bad happens that cannot be explained by the free will of human beings, because of our sinfulness, the only one we can blame is God. And sometimes we do especially when that bad has happened to us or to someone we love dearly. We have to blame someone, don’t we?

As people of faith we do not like blaming God for the evil in this world. We do not want to blame it on the devil either because the devil doesn’t commit any sin. We do. We certainly would like to blame much of the evil we do on someone or something else, but we cannot. We simply do not understand God’s ways. Even more, sometimes we do not even understand our ways.

We do not have all the answers. “The will of God”: it often causes more problems than it resolves.