This is a bit of a departure from what I intended for this blog and I'm not sure what it will come to, but here it is: read on and see what you think.
Will.
Quae est voluntas?
For those of you who don't speak Latin, that means "what is will?"
This is something that I've thought about recently in light of certain trite comments that people seem to keep making.
When something bad happens or when something that we don't understand occurs, we often hear the phrase "Oh, it's God's will" or "It must be His will." or "We'll find the Lord's will in this."
At the risk of sounding impertinent (although you are reading this, you don't have to): Can we really? Can we really find God's will as it appears to be understood in this statement in every situation that it occurs?
When we study the will of God, learn that there are two kinds. Why? Mostly because it's to help us make sense of the problem of evil - which, I might add, is more or less at the heart of this matter.
The two kinds are active and permissive will.
We see these kinds of will in action every day. I will to eat ice cream today or I will to pray today. I actively choose to do this and make myself perform the action. On the other hand, a parent may not intervene in the action of one of their children so that child may learn for himself what it means when the parent says "don't antagonize the dog."
Did the parent actively desire that the child get bitten by the dog? No. But, they allowed it for the sake of the child's learning.
The same works for God (albeit in a different manner, since He is, well... God). God wills us to be happy; God wills for the world to exist; He wills that you exist so that He can love you and you Him.
But here's where the tricky part comes in: He also wills that you have the ability to will for yourself. This means that because He wants your will to be free (although what that means is also a tricky distinction, we won't go there now). But He also allows everyone's will to be free.
The reason that you are able to sin? Because God wills it so.
Now that sounded wrong, didn't it?
God wills it in the sense that He permits you to sin because He loves you so much that He wants you to be able to freely choose to respond in love (that's what freedom is), but to do so, there must be an alternative.
So, He doesn't actively will you to sin, in fact, He doesn't want you to; it will harm you more than it does Him. But, He permits it out of His love and respect for you as a creation of His that He created with the ability to choose.
That's why bad things happen (at least, some of them): because God permits us to exercise our free will. It's more than I could do; but that is why He is God and I am not.
So, next time you are tempted to say that something bad is God's will, think about this: It this truly what the person you are saying it to needs to hear? Especially if they do not understand this nuance about God's (and our) will?
Does thinking that God willed a calamity to occur make it any better for us? Or will it lead us to think of God as a sadist rather than a loving Father?
If we make the distinction between active and passive wills, then I think we can avoid this issue. Say, instead that God permitted it to happen, or that we cannot understand the mind of the Lord.
Can we specifically say that God did or did not actively will a specific event to take place? No. We are finite beings and cannot comprehend the mind of infinite Being itself. But better to admit our lack of understanding before the Almighty than to lead others to despair.
Now, of course, I'm not blaming people because of their good intentions; people tend to say this out of compassion for others, but I don't think it's an accurate reflection of God at its heart and so we should be careful how we say it.
Do you agree? Or do you think there's another nuance that I missed? Let me know.
As always: Peace and long life \\//_
