May 22, 2009
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What is NOT God's Will?
"...in the meantime i want you to write a list of those events past and present which might logically be termed NOT God's will. "
The above was a request by a respected mentor and friend in response to my previous post "Is it still God's Will?" To discover what something is, it is prudent to determine what it is not. A good approach, but as I worked through the list below I found it surprisingly difficult to decide. I decided to let free form thinking take control...not analyze my gut reaction too much and just see where my first reactive, automatic thoughts take me. So this list will be just the highlights, the teardrops in in the ocean.
Things I say are not God's will:
PAST:
1.The publication of The Secret and the spiritual exploitation it represents through its deceptions as to what constitutes true science.
2. The editorial liberties that have been taken with the Bible, to the point where "Thou Shalt Not Kill" is not actually the correct context, according to one who is more in the know than I, and that apparently the original spirit of the law here was "Thou Shall Not Murder", which of course excludes actions taken in self defense and war (depending of course on which side of the gun you are on).
3. The things I said to myself today when Kevin's wife e-mailed me a picture of the memorial bench that will be placed next to Kevin's grave.
4. The Crusades.
5. The failure of His chosen people to "finish the job" as it were in the book of Numbers.PRESENT
1. The use of Marriage as a foundation for a tax code, or worse.2. The prayer chain e-mails I get that perpetuate the belief that if 1 prayer is good 1,000 are better. As if getting God's attention is a numbers game.
3. My growing belief that God may have taken Kevin to Him in order to test Katherine and Kevin's twin brother Kendall to prep them for something even worse yet to come. I'm probably just paranoid.
4. Joel Olsteen. Sorry, but God is not a cuddly kitten and no, things are not going to be alright if you "just believe". In fact, Christ is pretty clear in the book of Mark that more likely is just the opposite. I believe the man's good intentions could do more harm than good in the long run to Christianity.
5. Giving in to contempt and becoming jaded, instead of trying to see if this situation might be a way to reach a greater understanding of faith.
Ok, that's the list. Perhaps the following thought could be tabled for now, but at some point I need to come back to it as it seems relevant to the question, "What is NOT God's Will?" The thought is this:
I believe the Bible is where God's nature is to be found, but still God did create all of this. Does that make it logical to conclude that by observing the universe around us we are, in some way, seeing into the mind of God? Could not then the sight of a baby seal getting beat to death against a sandy shore by a killer whale be construed as an unfiltered if not ominous communication? Not sure if the concepts that built this thought logically belong together. Just following my gut as promised.
Comments (7)
i am working working working... may take awhile... i have a general theme but need to make a few side trips and sometimes those confuse rather that clarify...
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vti think about something: to
think about something in a deep and serious or dreamy and abstracted way
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vti say something thoughtfully: to
say something in a thoughtful or questioning way
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vi gaze thoughtfully: to
gaze at somebody or something thoughtfully or abstractedly
Microsoft®
Encarta® 2006. © 1993-2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
1. What is it? 2. How do we know it?3.
Can we know it? 4.
Does it matter if we know it?5.
Could we do it if we knew it?6.
Would we do it if we knew it?? What is it?
All speculation on this is null and void. The clearest path I have found to the meaning of the term is in
the Lord’s prayer in which Jesus says:
“Thy Kingdom come..The will be done.”
This tells me that the Kingdom of God is coexistant with complete
obedience to His will. If you find the
Kingdom you will know what His will is. If you have trouble with that logic then try this: “Luk 17:21 No one will say,
'Look, here it is!' or, 'There it is!'; because the Kingdom of God is within you." Without working thru a great long logic analysis the
implication here is that we must look within ourselves for the Kingdom of God
where we will find the Will of God. How do we know it? There is only one way this makes sense to me. IF I believe in a personal God of both love
and justice AND I believe that that God was incarnated in the person of Jesus
Christ ..then the teachings of Christ will reveal the will of God for the
believers. AND when Christ tells the
disciples of his imminent death and resurrection He also says that He is going to
send the Holy Spirit to dwell in those who believe in Him. Therefore the only reliable resource I have
to determine the will of God is the guidance that I must seek and act upon in
my spiritual life and then I must move that over to my physical life style. Is this helpful when you lose a friend
because some doctor screwed up. Well
yes it is. For the Christian life style
is one of patience, forgiveness, unconditional love and most of all a sense
that a lot of what happens in your world makes no sense at all and there is
nothing you can do about it. Think the
antidepressant scripture: Mat 6:25
“Do not be anxious for your life, what you shall eat, or what you
shall drink; nor for your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than
food, and the body more than clothing?”
Can we know it? Yes by the reasoning in the paragraph above. Ah but “can” must assume that we have the
ability to be perfect. Remember these
helpful words. Mat 5:48
“Therefore be perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.
“ It is beginning to look more
difficult then we want it to be. But
we can at least try to know it. Maybe
we can get close. Here is the next
catch.. We
can only know it ( and then only imperfectly) for ourselves!!! It is simply not possible for us
to know the Will of God for any other person.
All sermons, messages, counseling, advice, group therapy, etc are bogus with respect to their
capability to tell me what the Will of God is for me. So you cannot have the least hint
of what the Will of God was for Kevin Wood.
You do know that Kevin knows. Does it matter if we know it?
Clearly it does…. (Mar 3:35) “For
whoever does the will of God, the same is My brother and My sister and My
mother.”It is worse than we might have suspected. Not only are we to attempt to know it but we
are commanded to DO it!! One of
the greatest burdens of the Christian
faith is the numerous specific commands that Jesus said we must obey but that
almost everyone realizes very quickly are next to impossible to do. See the next question… Could
we do it if we knew it? Well you
know this answer as well as I do. It
is a clear and resounding “NO”! Nuns and monks and ascetics of all manner of forms have been
attempting this for generations. So far
no one is claiming success. .. and what would we think if they said they
did. Oh yeah sure…
The next question is helpful. Would
we do it if we knew it?? this is
the action question… for once we have thought about what we should do ….and
that thought has taken place in the environment of scriptural guidance and a
sincere desire to serve Gods purposes then you may have some confidence that
you are doing Gods will. NOTE: YOU…Your Action.. God’s Will for YOU.. Nothing in any of these will lead you to
determine God’s Will for any other person no matter who close they may be to
you. So as
the “Church Lady” says “Wasn’t that special.” Go
back now and reread those things that you feel are NOT God’s Will. Write below each one why you think that they
are not God’s Will……. Oh yes… for YOU.
Because there is no way that you can ever have any degree of certainty
about God’s will for any other person, group, church, government, social group,
cult , etc etc.. While you are working
on that I am going to copy your “not Gods Will” list and respond to each one
individually.. the I want to tackle the
last paragraph in that document? Do
you ever go to the Visalia Rawhide Baseball games.???
forget this.... go to your email... apparently my word processor does not like Xanga's word processor..
@rfloydlewis - Very good perspective. You have given me some very simple things to consider, and I find the approach you have taken here very helpful. It is possible that just forcing me to ask these questions, the answer to my struggle is closer than I had hoped.
how about the question about Visalia baseball games. ??? //// sneaky are i not
@rfloydlewis - Oh, sorry about that. Didn't mean to ignore it. No, I don't frequent the local ball parks, but could certainly be convinced to make an exception.
this is the last in the God's Will dialogue and it actually deals more with the nature of God or in correct semantics for theology one would refer to the attributes of God. There are many but the one most often brought into a dialogue are all knowing [omniscient] ;all powerful [omnipotent or omnificent] and everywhere in creation [ omnipresent ] ... so God knows everything without the limits of past present or future and can alter events that occur in His creation. Let us start with the easy one.. God is everywhere at every moment in time. That attribute removes any debate on whether God knew that John would shoot Mary, that Frank would accept Jesus next Sunday, or that Bob would someday write this essay to Mike. While time is part of our life it has no relationship to God at all. Every moment is now for God. Did God know about John and Mary..? of course it happened NOW... Frank accepts Jesus ...NOW.. etc ..The second greatest sacrifice Jesus made for us is the shedding of the attribute of omnipresence. He came to us in time... no wonder He could not tell us when he is coming back or when the world would end... He had the same limits a fortune teller would have but without the desire to make something up that we would believe. This creates a problem for someone trying to understand why a young father would die because of a medical error. If you believed that God works in time then when did he decide to "kill" or "allow the death" of Kevin and did he then put a disease into Kevin and then put a dumb gene into the Doctor so that God's will was done in Kevin's life? Or are all of these events simply the consequence of life in creation and we can only make it "God's Will" in the sense that all creation is responsive to His will from the first moment of time to the last moment of time. This is an aside and needs another whole essay but i declare that all of the "laws" of Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Genetics, et al are simple God's Will governing the existance of the universe... Do not mistake this for the "watchmaker god" concept. It is not the same. God not only brought all of these laws into existance but He may at any moment decide to turn them Off.. A rational conclusion for me and i would have it be yours as well is that we believe in God, that we acknowledge his presence in every moment of our life...not to make us "safe" or "happy" but to make us witnesses to Him and servants to His creation. Finally i ask you to go back and read the essay i sent to you on the 29th of May "6 questions and answers about God's Will.