Hi OWK! Then why didn't you ask the poster (that would be moi)? :^)
Q: Do I believe that God takes an active role in influencing the earthly affairs of men?
A: Yes, I do. To explain: The entire context in which men can choose anything is a "given" -- it is independent of human will (choice), having been created, organized, and sustained by God. God has made the world "the way it is, and not some other way." As C.S. Lewis put it, the world isn't something that's "true or false; it's just THERE." It operates according to laws that are divine at their source and thus do not change to accommodate human preference for a different sort of order.
We didn't make the world or its laws physical, moral or spiritual. God did. Thus, there is a "set" milieu in which human life is lived; we can't pick and choose among the laws of the world of which we approve, and just "flush" the rest. Nor can we simply "redefine" or "recreate" the existential milieu in some other way at will. Human nature itself is divinely constituted, just as are the natures of all beings that live. The laws pertaining to each is what makes the particular being what it is and not some other thing.
None of this so far is "optional" for man. This is just to say that human choice, while it is free, is not unlimited: Rational choices are limited by the given nature and laws of the living world within which the living man must act.
But I sense the question you really want answered is whether God influences man directly, as in "speaking" to men. Okay. Here goes:
Q: Does God speak to man?
A: Yes. God speaks to souls; and if a man is "listening," he will hear. Depending on a man's response to the divine appeal, God influences the affairs of men in this world.
More -- the soul is designed to resonate with its Creator. But if we are not open in our souls to the divine appeal, we will not hear it. The closure of the soul to God makes us deaf to the divine drawing to all that is Good for man and the world -- all truth, goodness, beauty, love, and justice in all created nature find their eternal Source in the Living God. If a man is "deaf" to God's truth, then how can we say that he has chosen something freely, truly? His freedom becomes illusory. Or to put it another way, what he thinks of as his freedom is merely license -- and a very temporary license at that.
It may seem paradoxical, but freedom is necessarily, inseparably joined to responsibility: One cannot exist without the other. God made us in love, for love; He wants us to return our love -- to Him. In the final analysis, I really think that human freedom ultimately boils down to the reply each individual soul makes to God: Yes, "I love You and, thus, I will honor Your Laws"; or No, "I don't need you, dude." The latter is what Satan said. And if we reply similarly, we will share Satan's fate in due course.
So call me a lunatic, OWK, if you think that's just. But you asked sincere questions; and I've tried to answer them sincerely -- straight from my heart and soul and mind. warm regards, bb.
We were speaking of human freedom. And I’ve been thinking about that some more. Toward the end of my last to you, I speculated that, ultimately, human freedom boils down to a Yea or a Nay (#24 above). That probably sounds pretty stark, maybe even bleak.
What I was trying to get at is beautifully illuminated in passages from C. S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce. I’d like to share a few insights, courtesy of a truly great English poet and seer. Here goes, with occasional commentary:
“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’”
IOW, the God who made man with reason and free will respects and takes very seriously what He made. If man chooses a route that leads away from God, God respects and honors the choice. In the end, the judgment of the Lord is merely man’s own self-judgment, self-imposed. So, man makes his own heaven or hell, in real-time. (And tends to have to live there in real-time.) Lewis continues:
“All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened….
“There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns away from Him. And the higher and the mightier it is in the natural order, the more demonic it will be if it rebels.”
Also: “Hell is a state of mind…. And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind – is, in the end, Hell. But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly. For all that can be shaken will be shaken and only the unshakeable remains.”
Speaking of what we can expect to remain after this nasty “shaking”: We cannot know that at the present juncture. We’re still conducting “strategic reconnaissance.” If I may hazard a guess in that regard, the battlefield on which our present war is to be conducted is almost entirely psychic – or more accurately, intellectual/spiritual. In the sense that we are primarily engaged in a battle of Mind (for Mind), unhampered by the necessity of defending physical assets or supply lines. A war unconfined to particular, targetable military assets or pieces of real estate, and definitely not constrained in the least by the U.N. Charter on Human Rights.
So, this “Yea or Nay” business seems to have global proportions these days, as President Bush made starkly clear. So, now, what kind of a pickle do we Americans find ourselves in?
On the one hand, America must stand for justice or betray her legacy. (Then the other guy wins.) On the other hand, we have to achieve unconditional victory -- against the “latest and greatest,” Islamist incarnation of Mob, Inc. -- which has global pretensions of grandeur. Not to mention global resources.
In the final analysis, it seems to me that the “global” problem of terrorism could be expeditiously solved if it were regarded as a problem of individual choice: Where do I stand on the acute problem of Good v. Evil as it is now being mortally contested in our common world of human experience? And what am I personally going to do about it?
I can’t answer that question for anybody but me.
It seems fitting to give C. S. Lewis the last word here: His dialogue in The Great Divorce, between the protagonist (Lewis himself I gather) and his Teacher, the Scots poet George MacDonald. (Dante chose Virgil as his guide; Lewis chose MacDonald as his). Believe it or not, I imagine Lewis’ insights have a direct bearing on profiitable ways to think about Osama bin Laden and the mortal threat he carries against America and the West. (JMHO):
CSL: “What some people say on Earth is that the final loss of one soul gives the lie to all the joy of those who are saved.”
GM: “Ye see it does not.”
CSL: “I feel in a way that it ought to.”
GM: “That sounds very merciful; but see what lurks behind it.”
CSL: “What?”
GM: “The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven…. Son, son, it must be one way or the other. Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer able to infect it: or else for ever and ever the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves. I know it has a grand sound to say ye’ll accept no salvation which leaves even one creature in the dark outside. But watch that sophistry or ye’ll make a Dog in a Manger the tyrant of the universe.”
CSL: “But dare one say – it is horrible to say – that Pity must ever die?
GM: “Ye must distinguish. The action of Pity will live for ever: but the passion of Pity will not. The passion of Pity, the Pity we merely suffer, the ache that draws men to concede what should not be conceded and to flatter when they should speak truth, the pity that has cheated…will die. It was used as a weapon by bad men against good ones: their weapon will be broken.”
CSL: “And what is the other kind – the action [of pity]?”
GM: “It’s a weapon on the other side. It leaps quicker than light from the highest place to the lowest to bring healing and joy, whatever the cost to itself. It changes darkness into light and evil into good. But it will not, at the cunning tears of Hell, impose on good the tyranny of evil. Every disease that submits to a cure shall be cured: but we will not call blue yellow to please those who insist in still having jaundice, nor make a midden [i.e., a town dump] of the world’s garden for the sake of someone who cannot abide the smell of roses.” Sounds about right to me. But it’s time to call it a day. Goodnight dear Freepers and God bless each and every one -- bb.