What if God was One of Us?
I've been contemplating the gift of choice lately. I'm a religious person, and in my particular faith, agency is a huge principle--it's probably the single most important principle.
Without the ability to choose, without the knowledge of right and wrong, what is the purpose of our journey here? If we didn't have the opportunity to make a good decision and reap the benefits, or make a bad one and live with the consequences, life would be little more than a series of events that had absolutely no meaning whatsoever.
I've recently read some novels that moved me about choice and accountability, and the idea of things being forced upon us. Even when we think we're making a decision of our own free will, are we really? Are we just players in someone's bigger game, entities to be acted upon, just to see how we might react? I think some people have this notion of God. I met a guy once who spun me a theory that God was like a clockmaker--someone who set all these parts into motion, but then sat back on a lofty throne somewhere, watching the gears shifting and the parts breaking. He believed God (or whatever power controls the universe) never intervened, but just let it all happen. As though this is just some sort of delicious experiment with no probable outcome.
As a Christian, I have a very different viewpoint of that notion -- the idea that we're all on our own, and it sucks to be us as hardship and tragedy strike. It's interesting because I was watching a television show recently where the whole idea of God was being discussed, and certain characters represented the various differing opinions in the world. One character doubted God's existence because of the bad things that had happened to a loved one. This particular viewpoint really resonated with me--or perhaps polarized me into getting these thoughts down that have been stirring in my head for a while now. I found myself saying aloud: isn't it interesting that a cacophony of voices call for freedom, for the ability to do whatever they want, whenever they want with no judgment, retribution, or consequence, while another (or perhaps the same) voice calls for a charge against whatever power rules the universe for allowing people to act so abhorrently?
God is evil because he expects us to behave a certain way, and God is evil because he lets people do whatever the hell they want.
You can't have it both ways, world. If I'm given the opportunity to choose between right and wrong, and I choose right, that doesn't give me the ability/right/privilege to take away someone else's opportunity, even if they choose wrong, over and over and over again.
When God gave us the freedom to choose, he didn't give us the ability to pick the consequences, either good or bad, of those choices. It's a Catch-22, a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. If there is a hot stove in front of you it burns you just the same, whether you are a child who doesn't understand the concept of hot! danger! do NOT touch! or an adult who knows full well that placing your hand there is going to leave a mark.
God can take away all our pain and never let anything bad happen to us, or he can let everyone everywhere have the same freedoms and everyone benefits or suffers because of it. I suppose it's a mixed nuts bag for most people. We're all impacted by other people's choices all the time. Think of the six million Jews as well as all the handicapped, Italian, or otherwise undesirables that Hitler managed to have killed off between 1938 and 1945.
Think of those who survived. Think of those who forgave. Think of those whose choice was to keep living even though they had been through something unconscionable. They weren't the first nor will they be the last group of people to suffer atrocities. The cry of that's not fair! echoes through time, doesn't it?
For me, one of the greatest comforts that comes from believing in a higher power and trusting that he has full control of the situation, even though my finite mind cannot comprehend everything, is the aspect of justice. God will have mercy on those who deserve it, and he will have justice. Every choice has a consequence, good or bad. A reckoning will happen, of that I have no doubt.