journal-God’s will
. Yesterday at our Lewis group I brought up again, though without using the ‘steering wheel’ analogy, the way different Christian’s view doing God’s will. It seems very important at NWBC to view it as something to find out every part of every day through various evidences or guessing or having a peace about things or whatever. And then there is the Augustinian: “Love God, and do what you will”. As Kierkegaard says, that first part changes everything because then the individual is bound to God and to the ethical
and so to love himself as his neighbor, which should take escape hatches away if one becomes serious. For probably the first time I didn’t feel the need to be ornery or sarcastic. I would suppose it might have something to do with the different ways that people view what it is to live through the grace of God, or what the nature of grace is. Does God give us the freedom to live as grownups, letting us live as we will and should (or not), or are we to be tied to His apron strings, as it were, constantly seeking affirmation as if doing His will is often a mystery. Does one follow one’s heart? Isn’t it ok to say and think that sometimes? Must we always have the thought that man’s heart is desperately wicked and full of deceit? Can one follow one’s nose? “God’s Word is a lamp before our feet.” That means we have a guide and can’t see very far ahead. So perhaps we ought to be cautious. But isn’t it still our journey? It makes sense to say that freedom is the freedom to do God’s will, or to do the good, to live as we ought, perhaps? But then don’t we live in the freedom to make our own choices? And isn’t that really OK? Isn’t that why all human beings are given consciences? Or is the Grand Inquisitor right–we can’t live in freedom and need caretakers who deceive but love us, who will take care of us if we give them the power? I am not saying that those who take seriously the steer wheel analogy want to take people’s freedom away, rather just the opposite according to their theology, but it seems like a disguised form of legalism. I wonder if that makes sense? So freedom isn’t just another word for nothing left to lose, it is just another way to put ourselves in harness (where His yoke is easy upon us and His burden is light) and that is good. So we may come to Him, and have the Peace which passes understanding. but still not get a direct line to God. Is God the Taskmaster, “Come on mule!.” Sometimes we may feel that way in spite of our theology. We have a welter of metaphors. I will do your will, Lord. Now I just have to figure it out, hour by hour, day by day, month by month. Or is there nothing to figure out? I have heard that also. Clean the chains and follow your nose! And pray and meditate and go to church and love your neighbor as yourself and learn what it means to love God. If that turns out to be the same as giving up the steering wheel, well, OK, I still don’t understand it, but does it matter in the end? It all must be bound up in the “personal relationship” idea. They really mean it, and they want it to be direct and always at hand and yet also a matter of faith at the same time. Or else they have dry times. I have neither the dry times nor whatever the former is. This is a mystery to me. And they are cordial enough and tolerant and brotherly enough (all having to do with loving another person) to put up with my contrariness, which seems not to bother them in the least.
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November 4, 2011 at 1:27 pm
*as something to find out every part of every day through various evidences or guessing or having a peace about things or whatever.*
Is this God’s will as revealed through scripture or God’s will as revealed by some other means?
November 7, 2011 at 7:11 pm
I would suppose it would be God’s will as revealed through scripture and/or God’s will as revealed by some other means. What one is looking for, I think, is some sort of assurance, though based in faith, that one is doing what one ought because it is what God wants one to be doing. It could be the small, still voice of conscience. (Should I pick up that hitchhiker?) It could be favorable or unfavorable circumstances. On the other hand, does God want us to be more stubborn and work against circumstances–because it is God’s will. One very important part of this way of. looking at the life of faith is that one has to distinguish between what God wants and what I want. Jim and Eliabeth Eliott both wanted to get married but they had to find out if that was what God wanted, It is as if one needed outward assurance, through faith, that I am not doing what I want to do, but rather what the Father wants, as Jesus did in Gesthemane, when He did not do what He wanted, but rather what the Father wanted, to give up His life in fact. So part of what it means to give our life up to Christ is to give up our will. Here is something C.S. Lewis wrote about a bit: as I lie in bed in the morning after first waking up, I think of what my day will be llike. And I should propose and desire not to be my very much too often slothful and rebellious self and do more work and enjoy what is given me to do rather than do as little as I can get away with and complain about even that little. Should I, can I, try to do more than just hang in there, virtuous though that may oftimes be?
What I want to protest against is the idea that what I want to do is necessarily wrong or inferior—”I kept trying to do what I wanted and kept failing, or it was not the highest good—-but then I gave my life over to Christ. I did things in His timing, not mine.
Should I major in French Renaissance or become an engineer? Should I go to Gila Bend or Yuma to raise a family? Or Tuluksak? Whatever I decide, I have to make sure it is not what I want to do, no matter how much I may love Tuluksak, but something that God wants for my life also. He may want that I do something I do not, nor have ever wanted to do, such as live in Carmel or Taos. Maybe it was a mistake to ever have lived in Flagstaff because I loved it so for those ten years I lived there. “Not my will, but Thine be done” and so often
November 30, 2011 at 1:35 am
*So part of what it means to give our life up to Christ is to give up our will*
This is an issue I struggled with greatly in my twenties, but like many things, it simply turns out that there is a very unhealthy way of interpreting this, that a grain of maturity and good sense would have stopped in its tracks. That bit of maturity taught me that I don’t have to “become just like other Christians”.
I like what St. Francis de Sales teaches about the issue: “Let us be who we are, and be that well, so as to honor the Master Worker, whose handiwork we are.”
December 9, 2011 at 3:04 am
Actually that wasn’t Judy saying that up there. She wouldn’t be so verbose for one thing. But that is how I work philosophical things out. At least I give examples. Examples are better than slogans. I like the St. Frances de Sales quote. Of course to confused people, confused about who they are (who am I? was the refrain of the 70′s) it’s not a lot of help. St. Augustine said: love God and do what you will. One thing a philosopher teacher of ours (The Great Wood) said was that, and he insisted upon this, we don’t have to figure any thing out. Just our lives is all!! But he was right: it was as if we had to remember to be good people, to do what we ought, to be responsible, for Heaven’s sake, and do things such as consider our lives an adventure.Speaking again of how to use religious language, Wittgenstein said that using it correctly was like walking a tightrope: possible but difficult. Doesn’t that also imply that reading the Bible requires practice and probably help? I’ve found that some passages are massaged to fit into the common sense understanding of the pastor, who also removes the mystery and great confounding paradoxical, in your face, plain meaning of the passage, meanings sometimes which ought not to be explained away.