God's Political Will - ?
Dubya: Representing More than You and Me
I’ve noticed references to George figuring that it’s God who put him in the Oval Office. This makes me wonder if he also figures that his dad’s presidency and his family’s powerful connections to the corporate world, not to mention Texas state government, were all just a coincidence. Of course, it could be said that the whole package was God’s will – but then what meaning are we to attach to the concept of “God’s will?” Anything that happens? Anything that happens that we like?
God’s Own “To Do” List
Take that familiar laundry list of political positions that their proponents often try to present as God’s will, including anti equal rights for gays and support of equal rights for stem cells and fertilized ova – because they’re really just like you and me, only without the central nervous system. Spare the lives of fertilized ova that are destroyed at fertility clinics anyway because the Bible says to (I’m still looking for that passage and I’m determined to find it); allow people with horrible degenerative conditions to suffer for decades and die rather than let medical research go forward that might save them.
The commandments were wonderful, but maybe the “God” who generates lists today would work better doing things by heart.
God in Contemporary Ventriloquism
If that laundry list is truly God’s will, it leaves many of us marveling over God’s talking points and positions. At least the idea that such a God might have decided to put George in the White House would finally begin to make some sense. But frankly, I think it’s obvious that our political positions are our own. And whenever I see another one of those ventriloquist acts where somebody uses the word God like a hand puppet, I quietly change the channel because I can always see the lips moving.
I thought Sheri Lewis and Lamb Chops were a lot better. However, I’ll admit that Dickey Cheney and Mumble Chops are the absolute best. Heck, Cheney even talks out the crooked side of his mouth when he’s not using the dummy!
I’ve noticed references to George figuring that it’s God who put him in the Oval Office. This makes me wonder if he also figures that his dad’s presidency and his family’s powerful connections to the corporate world, not to mention Texas state government, were all just a coincidence. Of course, it could be said that the whole package was God’s will – but then what meaning are we to attach to the concept of “God’s will?” Anything that happens? Anything that happens that we like?
God’s Own “To Do” List
Take that familiar laundry list of political positions that their proponents often try to present as God’s will, including anti equal rights for gays and support of equal rights for stem cells and fertilized ova – because they’re really just like you and me, only without the central nervous system. Spare the lives of fertilized ova that are destroyed at fertility clinics anyway because the Bible says to (I’m still looking for that passage and I’m determined to find it); allow people with horrible degenerative conditions to suffer for decades and die rather than let medical research go forward that might save them.
The commandments were wonderful, but maybe the “God” who generates lists today would work better doing things by heart.
God in Contemporary Ventriloquism
If that laundry list is truly God’s will, it leaves many of us marveling over God’s talking points and positions. At least the idea that such a God might have decided to put George in the White House would finally begin to make some sense. But frankly, I think it’s obvious that our political positions are our own. And whenever I see another one of those ventriloquist acts where somebody uses the word God like a hand puppet, I quietly change the channel because I can always see the lips moving.
I thought Sheri Lewis and Lamb Chops were a lot better. However, I’ll admit that Dickey Cheney and Mumble Chops are the absolute best. Heck, Cheney even talks out the crooked side of his mouth when he’s not using the dummy!
Posted by Paul at 5:34 PM Permalink
17 Comments:
whats god's will??
well one thing is certain,it is what we do....and well i can't see one person sitting up there and giving orders...and sending hitler and likes....
i believe that all of us are one...and we are all god...only a few realise and even lesser understand...it is for all th creatures....
Mitchell comments: "The point is not that we ask God to do "his" will - as if there were any possibility that God's will would not be done - but that we wholeheartedly assent to it."
I understand that Byron Katie among others helps people to "love what is" without diminishing our interest or ability to relieve suffering and help transform the world.
CARRIE W: Ugh... there may be something to that. After all, roughly half the country voted for him twice.
That said, the candidates put before us to choose from probably reflect the American subconscious a lot less than American corporate interests and campaign financing.
JEFF: Meister Eckhart was a Christian mystic and scholar whose words I usually find compelling, so I'm wondering about the larger context of the quote. I'm unfamiliar with Mitchell, but as framed by his words, I don't think I follow.
If everything that happens is God's will, this would include anything that any person thinks or does. Efforts to discern God's will would not only be needless, but impossible - whatever direction anyone wanted to go in, for whatever reasons or motives, would be following God's will.
There has to something that is not God's will to be contrasted with God's will, or the phrase "God's will" literally lacks definition.
On your last quote, loving what is as a whole doesn't preclude recognizing that parts of that whole are misaligned with its larger sphere of interest.
Happy New Year Paul!
Keshi.
If God is in control of the anti-Christ, then yes, it was His will that George Bush is in office.
DUST BUNNY, lol... I kind of thought the Anti Christ would have to be, well... smarter.
Seriously though, I think you do point to a theological problem - basically, is "everything that happens" the will of God, or just some things that happen, and how do you tell the difference?
Like most theological problems, this one becomes more of a problem the more God is seen as all-powerful in the sense of a kind of supreme magician - can do whatever (S)he wants, whenever (S)he wants - rabbits out of hats - anything. (There are other ways in which God can be conceived of as all powerful, or at least supremely powerful, that don't cause the logical contradictions when you look at the messy state of life as we know it.)
I suggest that the formulation "It is / is not the will of God" can only have meaning in a defined context, such as consolation or justification.
"It is [not] the will of God that I suffer this calamity without seeking revenge."
" It is [not] the will of God that I pick up a bag of money that I find in the street, and keep it."
These make sense, though there is no way to validate the particular utterances.
If the will of God has a more general definition, was it the will of God that Adam and Eve tasted the forbidden fruit? Depending on the answer, God is responsible for man's "fallen state", or man is.
Meister Eckhart Eckhart is talking about a state of consciousness, not logic.
His challenge is to perceive something and assent to it. To see an event as a calamity is quite different from seeing the same event as part of God's will.
Indeed, God's will in his sense doesn't require either God or the concept of will.
By the way, the same God's will operate through the oppressed as well as the oppressor...the proletariat as well the elected elite. It is difficult to conceive, but the unity of the thread is the ultimate ideal for the process of knowing.
Just curious - what ARE those refernces? I've never heard them.
-- Big Mo
Maybe I can allude to it this way: without a sense of close connection to something more than my personal existence, I’d be dead – gone insane or killed myself years ago. I don’t want to turn this into a “guy with a horrific disease” blog, but I happen have a horrific disease. Under severe adversity that doesn’t end (into my fifteenth year), and which prevents engagement in practically all enjoyable activities, I can’t help but see that the strength that keeps me going surpasses my personal psychological resources. I’m confident that all of us have this strength, although happily we don’t all have to draw on it so much and for so long.
And yes – unless you’re able to find some basis for distinguishing what’s God’s will from what’s not, you end up with that theological quandary of God being responsible for “man’s fallen state," or human evil. The usual answer for this is that God had to allow us to freely choose between good and evil or we’d be zombies, but the zombie theory doesn’t add up; I’ve posted on this in the past.
Of course you can introduce the power of Satan at this point, but then you’re back to square one. So is God all powerful or not?
AVGW: I was really hoping for more of a focus on ventriloquist puppets in this thread. We have a long tradition in this country: Charlie McCarthy, Danny O’Day, Farfel, Charlie Horse, Lamb Chops, and now G. Dubya, the most realistic of them all. Well, in some ways.
Returning to seriousness, you, Vishesh, and Vincent are implying, to my mind, the same thing: a concept of God and God’s will which is different from that of a highly externalized or objectified God-Entity. This wouldn’t carry the same problems of logic.
BIG MO: I’ve heard at least two or three direct references to it in the media; I’d be surprised if Dubya’s conviction that God put him in office isn’t found in a book about him I noticed on Amazon but didn’t read, called, not surprisingly, “Man of Faith;” and if anybody has ever done a study, I bet Bush inserts more God-talk into his sound bites and speeches than any president to date, or is at least, say, among the top three - implying, at the very least, that he is a most Christian president.
You'll recall that back along one of his handlers even had to tap him on the shoulder to gently let him know that continuing to refer to the war in Iraq as a “Crusade” probably wouldn't be for the best.
I wish you all the best in the new year!
Perhaps this is exactly how God works. He gave us life, He gave us rules, and then He gave us free will to make the choices on our own.
I don't know if I believe that God had anything to do with 9-11, or if He created diseases, or if He helped Bush get into office. We are products of our own choices, our own environments...when a large corporation chooses to dump toxic chemicals into a waterway that will end up as drinking water and most likely wreak all sorts of havoc on a human body, that is not God's will. That's the CEO of the corporation "playing God" and making irresponsible, thoughtless decisions. When Bush allows his cronies to get away with these actions, they are, in a sense, getting away with murder. And he allows it. He can talk the talk with the best of them, but actions speak louder than words. Not very Christian in my book.
DUST-BUNNY: I agree – looking at the world around us, it just doesn’t look like God’s a micromanager.
Free choice is complicated – I’ve done some posts in the past on that.
I feel the same. Saying words like “God” and “faith” a lot don’t necessarily mean a person’s truly religious or spiritual. There’s even a verse in the NT about that – something like “Not everyone who says ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Why not: It is god's will that humans behave with peace and fairness to each other, and it is evil to not act in concert with his will?
I just finished watching the film Kingdom of Heaven
(for about the 10th time) about the absurdity and hypocrisy of the Crusades. It was a fantastic metaphor for Ridley Scott to dramatize the present Culture Clash.
The modern crusades have slicker campaign but the issues have not changed. Those self aggrandizing morons who SAY that they are representing the Almighty look ridiculous compared to the humble who are quietly DOING good deeds without any fanfare.
(Disclaimer: for illustrative purposes only. Please do not try any of this at home.)
This theodicy (purported explanation of good and evil) is not only false but ancient - I'd say primitive or childish. It's spoken against in the Old Testament, so for a long time it's been viewed as wrong headed by anyone willing to look at it critically.
HOMOESCAPEONS: Among my favorite NT verses is the one that goes something like "Not all those who say 'Lord, Lord' will enter the kingdom of heaven." Seems like a lot of my favorite verses aren't quoted so often.
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