The Teacher had set out to do what I thought might be the impossible. He’d declared his intention to provide His Students – a Friday night group of Worshippers – with an overview of the Biblical story of Job. All 42 chapters filled with extremely difficult experiences and even more complex issues. But so he did. An overview of one of the most difficult life stories in the Bible in one evening.
Did he do this well? I won’t presume to say. One thing I will say is that, while he was teaching, I was struck with a thought. Not a new thought. A thought I’d heard and read others thinking. It was prompted by an obvious observation this Teacher made. As he described Satan’s appearance before God he said, “There was another will roaming the earth.” Another will present in our world? Why of course! Free will has always been a factor in the world God’s created. The Biblical description of humanity’s beginnings includes God’s declaration of His creature’s option to disobey. “Don’t” He said. If you do “you will most assuredly die.” The very first humans had a choice. Free will was introduced.
Not exactly. A free will already existed and showed up, soon after humanity’s choice was introduced, to bait the couple into choosing contrary to God’s will. Free will, then, has been present in the cosmos since before human’s existed, perhaps before the earth itself was formed. God has created a universe in which some of what He’s created has the innate capacity to disregard Him; even disobey and rebel against Him.
How wise was that?
Among the many things we’re told about God is that He is “love.” I believe, with many others, that not only is His creation of creatures with free will wise. It is a natural expression of His love. Love, in its true form, allows for choice. In fact it requires choice. If someone chooses to care for you, free of any coercion or enticement, as a free act of their will you immediately understand what I mean. And the very instant you discover their choice was based on something other than their unconditional esteem for you alone you’ll know they don’t love you.
Of course you’ll also know that your heart’s been severely bruised in the process. The free will that makes love what it is also causes suffering. How many hearts have been “broken” because of the loss of what seemed to be love? I got a very brief e-note from a new Friend several years ago in which he lamented a failed “love.” I wrote back, “It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” He never replied and I haven’t heard from him since. He must have thought, “What kind of Friend would be so insensitive as to suggest that this pain I’m going through could have any benefit?” I, on the other hand, thought I’d done a most loving thing. I’d attempted to lift him out of his funk and allow the light of truth to warm and soothe his broken heart. As a matter of fact, at the right time, the “wounds of a Friend,” are the gift of true Friendship.
This brings up another aspect of the loving wisdom of God in creating free will. While it’s a necessary aspect of love, it inevitably leads to suffering. The free choice originally given to humans lead, almost directly, to disobedience and in turning away from God, that day, these creatures set in motion a collapse of colossal proportions so vast that the tsunami effect is devastating things to this very day. Suffering has come of free will. How awful is that? Can this messed up, wrong choice wracked world be considered in any way a good thing?
That depends. If love requires free will and yet free will has lead to devastating decisions then we’ve got to ask whether or not the good we call love trumps the evil we call suffering. Is it “better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?”
The best person to ask that question is Jesus of Nazareth. He claimed to be one and the same person as the Creator God. He further claimed that He had become a man because it was His and His Father’s – God’s – idea; an act of love. He stated it simply enough. “God loves humanity,” He said. “God loves His human creatures so much that He gave His only Son to them to rescue them from the suffering and death their rebellious choices had gotten them into.” So, according to Jesus Himself, He is God’s loving entrance into humanity’s messed up world. He’s here to love us. And so He does. But, in the end He loses. He has “loved and lost.” Or so it seems. Unlike His predecessors, the first humans, He, innocent and perfect as they were, when faced with tests of His free will, chose to do what God the Father had asked Him to do. All the way to a Garden of Prayer where He struggled with the Father’s determination that He suffer infinitely. Ultimately He agreed to “drink the cup” of unparalleled suffering to the last drop. He never wavered in that decision. With that He died the most unjust, cruel death a man would ever suffer. Human, his pain was everything human suffering ever was or ever would be. Divine it was infinitely more than any one person’s suffering could ever be for it was the suffering of all of us. And, no matter how often we condemn God for “all” the suffering in the world, pain is always an individual, personal, private matter, except in this and this instance alone.
What came of it? Love trumped evil! Death, the worst of all sufferings, came to an end in that moment. Humanity was given a second chance. A second original Son of Man – a new Adam – went all the way to the ultimate test of free will. He endured infinite pain to the point of death. He endured the heart breaking reality of losing the one and only perfect lover, our God and Heavenly Father. “Why,” He cried in that dreadful moment, “have you abandoned me here?” Yet He never broke. He loved His Father, and His beloved creatures, without a trace of infidelity, to the very end. With that He died. With that He introduced immortality to His free creatures. With that love did, really, trump evil.
It is of more than passing interest that the first person Jesus is recorded to have spoken to on Easter – Resurrection – Sunday was a devastated mourner by His tomb named Mary. It’s quite possible that she was the one whose great love for Him actually moved her to pour a flask of exceptionally expensive perfume over Him not long before He died; a woman He said, “loved much.” Contrary to spurious claims to the contrary the love He spoke of was not a lustful thing but rather a matter of mutual esteem that was, in no way, self serving. It was, as all true loves are, a most liberating respect for the free will of the beloved and a passionate determination to empower, without controlling, them.
From that day to this the sacrificial love of Jesus of Nazareth has been gently drawing humankind to Him and to their own experience of being loved and loving. They’re discovering that nothing alleviates suffering, liberates the sufferer more completely, or provides greater comfort than perfect, unconditional love …
Ask Jesus, I suggested four paragraphs ago.
Ask now, “Is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?” “Yes,” He replies. Why? “Joy,” He replies. Is free will a good idea? “Yes,” He replies. Why? “It has been my will to do what my Father wills and I will always live in His love. That’s Joy!”
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