Deism and Beauty Queens

I don’t define God’s Will as an event that affects us as individuals such as your example. If you try to fit God to a “good” or “bad” logical argument I think you are missing God altogether.

Perhaps one of the first problems you will undoubtedly reach is the theodicy dilemma, a theological debate over good and evil, or even simple suffering. If God controls everything directly does God “make” bad things happen or “allow” bad things to happen? If God is “all good” how could either be the case?

As Christian Deists we observe the world around us and see that suffering does indeed exist, and without shortage. If you expect God to “make” things better, or reach down and “solve” your problems you will find great frustration and possibly despair.

My theory of God’s will isn’t that a child being run over by a bus is part of a master plan. Nor that God chose to allow it specifically. That event It is the result of millions of individual decisions that led that child and that bus to meet on that unfortunate space. Which of those decisions should have been changed? The time the bus driver woke up? The parents decision to have a child? The bus drivers parents decision to have a child? The development of the internal combustion engine?. If I told you that you have two options, 1. Stay in a windowless room by yourself and live forever, or be a part of humanity, experience the world, with the assurance that it will end in 100 years or less, which would you choose? What better gift could you ask for? Is 1000 years alone worth 1 day truly alive? Life is a dangerous gamble, made so by the freedom we all enjoy, but could it be worthwhile any other way?

The ability to make decisions is perhaps our greatest gift, but with it comes the capacity to chose “bad” as well as “good”. Unfortunately it seems as though evil is the price of doing business.

As humans we have the ability to participate in our destiny in an amazing way. We have the ability to not only change our own but those of the people around us and beyond.

Look at Jesus, one mans life has changed the course of humanity in some ways good, some bad, but the world has changed regardless.

By choosing to value each other, to value your existence and the existence of others by showing compassion in every way possible is God’s Will. By having the ability to harm, the capacity for selfishness, and choosing to do neither, is to me, God’s Will.

Comparatively, my vision of Christian Deism includes a paradigm shift in thinking about “religion”. Perhaps the first conceptual transformation occurs when you begin to see the pieces of wisdom that are scattered through multiple belief systems and you are able to separate them from the mythological concepts and traditions. The same basic moral underpinning exists, culture and tenets of the time dictate so much of a religions evolution that most of the important concepts are cast aside to squabble of details that are only distractions from the greater point, the “Will of God”.

I think only once you realize that God’s Will is present in all things can you begin to sort out what that will is. It is a bit like finding beauty in all flowers, not just roses. Keeping an open mind is perhaps the most important trait.

I think the transition to Christian Deism is one of enlightenment, a journey of introspection, not everyone is ready, not everyone is able. Great portions of humanity would rather not ask difficult questions and be confronted with their own empowerment, for some it is much easier to be told the sky is blue than discover the principles that make it appear so. Unfortunately power, and greed often influence the person telling you what color the sky is.