Dear People Whom God Loves,
GOD’S INTERACTION WITH THE WORLD III
Continuing with the framing of the discussion.
4) It will be helpful to change our image of God. Using the thinking of Plato, God was thought of as immobile perfection. God was and is everything in an eternal now. There could be no change in God. (Think of what this does to the value of prayer.) That is not the God of the Bible or the God revealed through Jesus in the Incarnation. The Incarnation reveals to us that God is self-emptying love. This is powerfully expressed in Paul’s letter to the Philippians.
Because God is Love, God freely chooses not to micro-manage everything but to allow the free will of humans and the free process of the rest of the universe.
This freedom allows spaces in the universe as well as the stable laws. (Notice again the interplay of stability and flexibility.) These spaces allow humans to act and influence the outcome of history. We are not puppets. These spaces also allow the universe to follow its own dynamics.
This is why the future is not precisely predictable. We can make educated guesses from the past and present. But we will always be surprised.
This is also why there is moral evil in the world from us humans and physical evil in the universe from non-human creation.
Finally, for this framing of the discussion. Belief in such a God is not provable by reason, but is compatible with present scientific knowledge of the universe and so is reasonable.
More next time.
Smile, God Loves You,
Father Clay
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