God's Will vs Free Will: Epilogue

Part IV and Final Chapter of the Process of Prayer

I must say that I am a little relieved that this is the last in the series about God and Prayer.  I have learned that this has been more for me than anyone reading it.  It has gotten pretty personal and like the song from Anna Nalik called Breathe puts it:

 And I feel like I'm naked in front of the crowd
Cause these words are my diary, screaming out loud
And I know that you'll use them, however you want to

I wouldn't write it for everyone to see if I didn't have some kind of hope that at least one person can get something out of it.  I may never know.

At the end of my last post, I was kind of at a spiritual crossroads.  To refresh your memory, or catch up, you can find it here:  Part III of the Series

No one wanted to walk away from God more than I did.  My position was that I put God and His existence to the test and He failed miserably.  If I can take that and write Him off in "Ostrich Paradigm" fashion, I can still make the best of this life.

No more would I have to yield my life to a myth's idea of morality.  There was a freedom there that I could sniff out even through the heavy stench of grief.  I was on my last legs before; now the God-myth just took my legs out from me.  Well, this was going to be the last time!

However, something funny happened on the way to the Evolution lecture. God was still there. I can't really explain it.  It wasn't this cool, "I'm with you even in your sorrow" kind of presence.  It was just this ubiquity that I couldn't escape but wanted to quite badly. So now, not only could I not break away from the God myth, I had to face the reasons why God, Himself, didn't care enough to honor my prayers. I wasn't angry with Him, just hurt and confused. The account of that struggle is for another time, if ever. 

It took me weeks to allow myself to think about it very much.  Sure, I vented to a few people I thought might understand . . . I think I was wrong about that, by the way.  I finally just had to concede that I don't know why things happened the way they did, I just have to accept that it did and that either way, God isn't going anywhere.

In the light of all this, what is prayer all about, then?  It is how we commune with God.  I think it is that simple. 

It isn't about petition or a list for Santa, although there isn't anything necessarily wrong with that.  It isn't about flowery speech.  It isn't about showing others that you are well versed in God-speak. It IS about connecting, venting, having fellowship, and even having conversations with the ONE that created the Universe but still has time enough for you.  If you ask God for specific things, it may not turn out the way you want. Things have to satisfy His overall will.  Yes, I recognize that this looks like a cop out, but it is what it is no matter the appearance.

I do now believe that God answered my prayer. No, He didn't answer it the way I wanted Him to, of course. If I am to be honest, in a practical sense I was praying for immortality for my mother.  That wasn't going to happen no matter how much favor I might have had with Him. What He did do was give me more time with her than perhaps I would have had under normal circumstances.  He gave me additional weeks of stroking her hair, kissing her cheeks and telling her how much I loved her.  He even gave me a few "I love you's" from her to me. It still hurts too much to be grateful, however.

It is tough to make sense of this "God's will" thing and the intersection of His love for us and His desire to give us what we pray for. To understand God's will, it might be easier to first look at the story of us backwards.

". . . and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away." Revelation 21:4

At this point, we must allow ourselves to redefine the word "almighty".  God is not almighty in the sense most of us think He should be.  Blasphemy, yes?  That is okay; I also voted for Obama so I am used to being on the outs with my Christian brothers and sisters.  But to clarify, His essence is almighty but not necessarily His practice.  He is bound by His nature. God IS His nature (see: forms, Plato).  He is truth.  He is just.  He is righteous. He is love. In other words, to visit an old, well known logic puzzle: Can God make a stone so heavy that even He cannot lift it?  The answer is, of course, yes.  If God says that He can't lift it, then He can't.  He would be bound by His own word that he can't lift it.

One thing that God is bound by is his gift of free will to man.  You don't have to be a believer to see that the will of man has really messed things up on this planet.  So, you have man's free will vs God's will in our day to day lives but we know it all has to end up like the passage from Revelation that I listed above.

The best way I have ever been able to understand this concept is an example I heard from a teacher years ago.  He used the example of a chess master.  I can remember when Bobby Fisher or Boris Spassky would put on these chess exhibitions by playing hundreds of people at the same time.  Each contender would make a move and the master would make a counter move and then step to the next table, make that move, and then to then next one, the next one, etc., until he made it all the way around and was ready to make his second move against player number one and so on.  At the end of the day, the master always won every game.  Each player had the free will to move wherever he wanted each time.  However, at the end of it all the master satisfied his own will by incorporating the wills of all he played in the process.

God allows us to exercise our free will, but in the end, Revelation 21:4 will be satisfied. Like any good father, he does what he can to please us, but not to the point where He defeats what must be.  This process can be very painful for us as it has been for me and that has to be okay.

And after all that I've been through
Now I realize the truth
That I must go through the valley
To stand upon the mountain of God

--Mac Powell, Third Day - Mountain of God

Of course, this is how I understand this concept right now.  I can't pretend to understand God's true nature and how He really operates as a matter of undisputed fact.  I am just a frail human being that longs to understand things that are always going to be above my pay level.  For any definite wisdom that I have in understanding these things, I must borrow from another Greek philosopher, Socrates.  My wisdom rests on knowing that I really don't know anything.  However, most never make it that far.

Why Movies Make Us Cry

First things, first - I have confessions to make. Sure, I haven't been here for a while. Yes, I know because of that, I am talking to myself. Finally, this particular blog post is somewhat of a revisit. I addressed this before, but I got to thinking about it again. Living alone, sometimes all I have are movies and songs to make me cry. Maybe that's a good thing.

Those of you who have read much of my blog know that I am a spiritual kind of guy. I think most questions in life have a spiritual component. This one ESPECIALLY does. I could be wrong about it; I'm no expert (on anything, for that matter). Feel free to disagree without consequence. But here is the reason movies, songs, books, etc. make us cry, as far as I see it:

I think it is a matter of communication and a reset of the soul. Life is difficult. We witness the hardness of the world on a daily basis; we see our soldiers dying in Afghanistan, car crashes that kill mothers and their babies, etc. We just can't stop and feel for these things all the time at the moment it intrudes into our brains. We have become calloused for survival's sake. Oh sure, every now and then it stops us in our tracks and touches us if the tragedy is particularly powerful or we are having a vulnerable moment, but for the most part, we simply do not have time to stop and cry over every tragedy and/or touching news story.

Movies, music, books, etc. grab us when we are not as busy. We are relaxed and have our emotional guards down. Our minds and souls get real with us and reset our emotions. It reminds us that we are feeling, compassionate beings. Without this outlet, I believe that compassion would wane altogether and the world would spin violently out of control.

What about the non-tragedy tears - the "tears of joy" phenomenon? I believe it is the same principle, different stimuli. The most significant part of the soul is the part that connects with other souls. There is something that transcends known science here that deeply effects our well being. We need to care about others. We need to feel connected to others in life, love and loss, dreams reached or shattered. Our humanity depends on it.

I believe God made us this way for our own survival and to remind us that there is something bigger than our own life and circumstance. It is mind-blowing when considering that there is something "unreal" by physical life standards that has more power than our current physical life state. It is this type of illogical emotion that humbles us and forces us to admit there is something bigger going on inside. The fact that there is something bigger than life makes us admit the possibility that something will ALWAYS be bigger than life - even when life as we know it ceases for us.

Admittedly, we often find a connection with fiction to our own lives and dreams that can prompt emotion. It is the attention getter. However, it is still fiction and we have our own lives to deal with. Yet, here it is - the passion, the tears, and the connection to the One big Mystery that created us this illogical way.

Connecting to the Past

Life is funny. Sometimes it creates a window to your past. In this window you can see and be connected to a part of your life that you thought was long gone. You can visit the past, but you are just a voyeur. Your life is plainly on YOUR side of the wall.

Sometimes life creates a door to your past. You can actually walk through – be a moving and changing part of it. You can actually complete unfinished business and make not so happy page breaks, into a story with a happy ending.

However, sometimes life only creates a picture of your past that can only be hung on a very secure wall of the present. You can look at it, but you can’t effect it.

It takes wisdom to see what you are actually looking at. Wisdom comes with age, but visiting the past sometimes removes that age-given wisdom. Instead, it takes you back to a pre-wisdom place.

Life isn’t so funny after all.