God is not on a power trip.
Why does God want us to obey Him? So He can prove He’s “in control?” That He’s “da Man?” Why then, is “the fulfillment of the law” LOVE? (Galatians 5:14)
The Law does not state “you shall wear green on odd Thursdays”. They are not pointless, endless laws to obey with no purpose. The law of God was obviously not established for the sole purpose of bending us to His will, although He very well could have made it that way. He is all-powerful, our Creator. He can do whatever He wants. If His only goal was to control us, then the Law would be random. But it isn’t. Even the laws and commands that made no sense at the time (washing hands before you eat? WHY?) make sense in the light of retrospection. NOW we know why it’s important to have clean hands before you eat, even if the scientific data to support that was another few thousand years in coming.
Look at God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Do we think God was doing a trial run for human sacrifice? Do you think Abraham had ANY idea why God would possibly want Abraham to kill the son God had so miraculously blessed him with in his old age? Why would God do such a thing? Abraham didn’t question God’s purposes, though. He just obeyed. In light of the New Testament, however (thousands of years later), we can get an inkling of what God was thinking with this command to His faithful servant. We realize, with a giant “AHA” moment, that God knew HE would give up HIS son as sacrifice for US, because He loves us so much. He wanted to know that some one of His creatures would sacrifice as much for Him. God did not caprciously order Abraham to do anything. There was a purpose. And that purpose was LOVE.
I feel like our time here on earth is essentially our infancy, to prepare us for the “adulthood” of a “new Heaven and a new Earth”, which we are gifted to partake of through our Savior’s sacrifice. Our lives here are but a training ground. God is our Father, and just as an earthly parent sets down “the rules”, so does He. Our rules as a parent aren’t random, though. They’re designed to mold our children into thinking, moral adults. As such, we allow our children to make mistakes, and suffer the natural consequences of those mistakes. Not that we don’t WANT them to obey us every time, and that we couldn’t MAKE them obey us every time. A good parent, though, knows when to back off and let the child experience for themselves the consequences of their own actions, in order to learn the lesson well. To prepare them for making the right choice the next time. To prepare them for being an adult. We don’t leave them alone. Even when they’re making a bad choice, we’re in the distance, watching, making sure they don’t fall too far to get seriously hurt. We’re saying to them “remember what I taught you!” We’re prompting them, guiding them. But ultimately, we let the child old enough to make a right decision the opportunity to MAKE that decision. “I taught you to wear a coat outside so you don’t get cold. Now that you’re 10 – if you don’t wear your coat, then…. Get cold!”
Why do we allow our children to make choices, even when they are BAD choices? Why do we give them FREE WILL? Because we love them, and we want them to love us, and we want them to learn to eventually become the people we want them to become. A parent who makes every last decision for a child ends up with an adult who is incapable and weak. Our God is no less of a parent to us.
I feel that there is a fear out there that if we say we have the ability to make a free choice in our response to God, that it means somehow that He is not in TOTAL CONTROL, and that it belittles His power. This is not true in the least. Man has the ability to make something that he totally controls - he has the intellect and power to make a robot. It obeys a man's every command. TRUE power and genius comes from creating something that can think and feel and reason for itself. Man hasn't even come CLOSE to the genius of the Father.
He allows us FREE WILL, not because He CAN’T control us, but He chooses not to – for Love’s sake.
