God Isn't Fixing This


The New York Daily News was trying to send a snarky statement of rebuke to the messages of comfort sent by both Republicans and Democrats as an initial response to the worst attack by Islamic Terrorists on American soil since 9-11.  The Daily News seems to envision (and therefore limit) God to the role of “Great Magician.”  They think that God, if He exists, should wave some celestial wand and instantly eradicate all the evil that man has created in this world. 

            What a limited, miserable, frightening existence these non-believers want for all of us.  They want us to see ourselves as the hapless flotsam in the sea of some God’s vicissitudes and, in despair, give Him up for secular pragmatism.

            Humans are sentient beings.  Sometime along the evolutionary path we became aware that there was a force—power—entity—that was bigger and stronger than we were.  It may have started just as a need to understand disease, thunder, the seasons, but as those understandings grew, so did the dimensions of the power that controlled them.  Farther along that path from animal/human to human/animal we started to comprehend the soul.  Through all of this, we were and are active agents in the relationship between God and man. 

            If all good was done only by God, if all bad was allowed only by God, we would never be in charge of any aspect of our lives.  We would have no need to believe because belief would be irrelevant.  God would make every choice for us, including the choice to believe or not.  God would be in charge not just of our ecclesiastical selves, but our temporal selves as well.  We would be no different than the Eloi in H. G. Wells book The Time Machine, mindless sheep following the path of least resistance. 

            But that isn’t the case at all. 

            We are allowed to make choices.  We are allowed to show ourselves at our best or worst.  When we make good choices we are rewarded and that makes us confident.  When we make bad choices we face consequences and that makes us cautious.  We show in our temporal decisions what we truly do believe.  ISIS believes in cruelty.  Christians believe in love.  I have no idea what the Daily News believes in.

            My concept of God comes from Aristotle’s unmoved mover; a perfection of goodness and love that draws man to Him simply through His eternal, omniscient presence.  God becomes a moral authority through nothing more or less than His being.  People who have such a moral authority in their lives reflect it in their choices.  They try to fix things according to that moral authority.  They are empowered to do so; they are neither marionettes nor helpless. 

            We not only get to act, we do so according to a purposeful understanding of our actions, their consequences and their place in a larger scheme of human existence.  Modern Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, moderate Muslims and other religious groups see themselves as temporal agents in an ecclesiastical panorama.  But they all operate under an external moral authority that is humbling in its requirements.

            What provides the moral authority for the Daily News?  How desperate it must be to think that a species that creates ISIS is the best we can do, the best we can hope for, all we can look forward to. 

            God isn’t fixing this?  This terrorism?  This hate?  This war?  He is if the people on this planet acknowledge evil, love goodness and are fearless in pursuing right while subduing wrong.  

            We must keep the faith for it is under attack. 

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