In continuation my last post, I'd like to spend a bit more time thinking about the analogy for describing God's relationship to us, humankind. First, I'd like to say that for all benefits of systematic theology, & the are quite significant, nowhere has God ever stated that his ways are understandable to men, or claimed to specify the technical details of life, death, & spirituality that people split hairs on endlessly. It seems that 1) they are incomprehensible to our understanding & 2) what's important for us to know is far simpler to grasp. So on with the analogies!
I said that God allows us to choose him or reject him. The best example of this comes from Hosea. Hosea was the prophet whose wife was relentlessly unfaithful to him. Hosea married her, knowing that she was a prostitute and would have illegitimate children. Despite Gomer's rampant adultery & whoring, Hosea buys her out of slavery to redeem her. God shows that Hosea's life is an illustration of how God relates to his people.
Maybe Hosea's story is too extreme to relate to. Instead, just think that Gomer is no longer "in love" with Hosea. Notice that while he goes through incredible lengths to show his wife love, and though he has shown her more grace than she could ever pay back in her life, he still does not control her. He did not take her back by force, or abusively control her. He acted in self-sacrificial love. And Hosea, like God, says what should be the response to such incredible patience & sacrifice; complete faithfulness.
This is one of the most fleshed out, relatable analogies of God's relationship to mankind in Scripture. We know heartbreak & humiliation because we see it around us every day. The essential ingredient is the choice to obey or forsake Him. Either seek or ignore. God does not create puppets to humiliate him or reject him, he takes the risk that allows for a real reciprocal (if infinitely lopsided) relationship to occur. The twists and turns of this are, admittedly, messy. But it's the best foundation we've got.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
The Power & Pressure of Choice
There's a couple topics I've wanted to tackle in a post-an almost paralyzing decision between equally interesting choices. Then it occurred to me that both those topics were essentially related to choice; my first chance to relate theology & technology in a somewhat meaningful way.
First, some thoughts on choice in technology. As a life-long Apple fan, I appreciate most of their decisions about their products and the direction of their progress. For years I have heard their critics denounce the lack of choice offered their customers. There's no option to run their software on different (read: cheaper, commodity) hardware. There's no option for native iPhone apps that Apple does not approve. Users don't have the "choice" to run flash if they prefer to kill their battery. There are no choices of different iPhone models with keyboards. And on and on. Some see this as Orwellian control; a sign of dictatorship. Some honestly believe Steve Jobs wants to control the whole world. But I tend to take Jobs at his word when he says he does not care about being number 1, just making the best products. Everything in his career validates that statement. His pursuit of perfection has led to his highest highs & lowest lows. Apple offers an oft overlooked insight into human nature: people prefer choosing from fewer options. And while sometimes consumers have specialized needs that require specific consideration, non-experts prefer highly curated, well-designed experiences. It is indeed a bad thing when one company can force decisions on all customers, which was very nearly the case for Microsoft in the 90's, but Apple would prefer to be the smaller, upscale option that appeals to quality & genuine usefulness. Watch this video to see how Apple appeals to human emotion. It also invites you to choose the (from their perspective) best choice.
Now, where does choice come into theology? St. John says "God is love." Love cannot work consistently with control. If God created humans as perfectly happy & perfectly compliant drones, it could not be said to be love. Or if you could say that God makes us do exactly what he wants and that the act is still love, then at the very least you could not say that we love God. We would be a robotic shell, merely acting as we are programmed. As we know from human experience, love is risky. You can love someone and risk that they will not love you back, or even hurt you greatly whether they reciprocate or not. Sometimes the imperfections of love are more painful than blank indifference.
Therefore if God does not allow us the choice of whether to love him or not, it would be an act of power, not of love. In fact, this is where accountability for our sinful behavior makes sense as well. We accept innately that we should be responsible for our actions. If all our actions are scripted, it would be morally wrong for God to punish or judge someone for performing an action he caused the person to perform. This is also why universalism is so tempting; most of us are pretty sure that God is loving, and it seems that for people to be "lost" or to harm themselves isn't loving. The problem of evil, i.e. "why do bad things happen to good people?" in misleadingly simple terms, is a reaction to negative events and God's apparently permissive attitude toward our pain & suffering.
I believe that the answer to this is that God gives us choice. He does force us to love him, or to do as he likes. He winsomely compels us to him, he has paid the price for us in Christ, but he does not make us accept him or believe in him. The allows for the possibility of real love. But that also means that there can not be a universal safety net. He cannot freely allow us to reject him, then force us to be reconciled to him. The choice results in the possibility that we reject God. And life apart from God's presence is a very dark thing. He often lament that we cannot see or experience God well in this waking life. But so much of humanity and the world reflect God and his love. When we reject God, all of those things will also fade away. We all rebel in little ways, each one of us has sinned. But the essential thing is that we chose to do so. Or perhaps even more essentially, God hands us over the the consequences of our rebellion, and yet also lived and died to pay the price and conquer those consequences.
Choice is the essential ingredient to true love. For the Christian, God has done all the work; carried us the entire way so we cannot claim we did anything to earn salvation, yet he cannot choose for us. And we, likewise, cannot choose for others out of our good intentions to love God. They may be confident that we are mistaken. They may have experiences that make God a very confusing & conflicting topic. But we cannot convince them through pressure or persuasion. We must choose to do as God does, and lovingly accept them as they are, in their imperfections, and winsomely compel them to the strength & beauty of the truth. Among a thousand false choices, I believe everything ultimately comes down to rejecting the true God, or on his terms accepting him.
This anonymousMonk endeavor, bridging the gap between technology & theology, is very messy. But I think there's something to it.
First, some thoughts on choice in technology. As a life-long Apple fan, I appreciate most of their decisions about their products and the direction of their progress. For years I have heard their critics denounce the lack of choice offered their customers. There's no option to run their software on different (read: cheaper, commodity) hardware. There's no option for native iPhone apps that Apple does not approve. Users don't have the "choice" to run flash if they prefer to kill their battery. There are no choices of different iPhone models with keyboards. And on and on. Some see this as Orwellian control; a sign of dictatorship. Some honestly believe Steve Jobs wants to control the whole world. But I tend to take Jobs at his word when he says he does not care about being number 1, just making the best products. Everything in his career validates that statement. His pursuit of perfection has led to his highest highs & lowest lows. Apple offers an oft overlooked insight into human nature: people prefer choosing from fewer options. And while sometimes consumers have specialized needs that require specific consideration, non-experts prefer highly curated, well-designed experiences. It is indeed a bad thing when one company can force decisions on all customers, which was very nearly the case for Microsoft in the 90's, but Apple would prefer to be the smaller, upscale option that appeals to quality & genuine usefulness. Watch this video to see how Apple appeals to human emotion. It also invites you to choose the (from their perspective) best choice.
Now, where does choice come into theology? St. John says "God is love." Love cannot work consistently with control. If God created humans as perfectly happy & perfectly compliant drones, it could not be said to be love. Or if you could say that God makes us do exactly what he wants and that the act is still love, then at the very least you could not say that we love God. We would be a robotic shell, merely acting as we are programmed. As we know from human experience, love is risky. You can love someone and risk that they will not love you back, or even hurt you greatly whether they reciprocate or not. Sometimes the imperfections of love are more painful than blank indifference.
Therefore if God does not allow us the choice of whether to love him or not, it would be an act of power, not of love. In fact, this is where accountability for our sinful behavior makes sense as well. We accept innately that we should be responsible for our actions. If all our actions are scripted, it would be morally wrong for God to punish or judge someone for performing an action he caused the person to perform. This is also why universalism is so tempting; most of us are pretty sure that God is loving, and it seems that for people to be "lost" or to harm themselves isn't loving. The problem of evil, i.e. "why do bad things happen to good people?" in misleadingly simple terms, is a reaction to negative events and God's apparently permissive attitude toward our pain & suffering.
I believe that the answer to this is that God gives us choice. He does force us to love him, or to do as he likes. He winsomely compels us to him, he has paid the price for us in Christ, but he does not make us accept him or believe in him. The allows for the possibility of real love. But that also means that there can not be a universal safety net. He cannot freely allow us to reject him, then force us to be reconciled to him. The choice results in the possibility that we reject God. And life apart from God's presence is a very dark thing. He often lament that we cannot see or experience God well in this waking life. But so much of humanity and the world reflect God and his love. When we reject God, all of those things will also fade away. We all rebel in little ways, each one of us has sinned. But the essential thing is that we chose to do so. Or perhaps even more essentially, God hands us over the the consequences of our rebellion, and yet also lived and died to pay the price and conquer those consequences.
Choice is the essential ingredient to true love. For the Christian, God has done all the work; carried us the entire way so we cannot claim we did anything to earn salvation, yet he cannot choose for us. And we, likewise, cannot choose for others out of our good intentions to love God. They may be confident that we are mistaken. They may have experiences that make God a very confusing & conflicting topic. But we cannot convince them through pressure or persuasion. We must choose to do as God does, and lovingly accept them as they are, in their imperfections, and winsomely compel them to the strength & beauty of the truth. Among a thousand false choices, I believe everything ultimately comes down to rejecting the true God, or on his terms accepting him.
This anonymousMonk endeavor, bridging the gap between technology & theology, is very messy. But I think there's something to it.
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