We are Free

The world is, as we know it, fundamentally different from the way in which God conceives it.  God’s dream is to have it ordered differently.  This is why, though often overlooked in scripture, there is a call “to overthrow the existing order.”  This overthrow will not occur through armed insurrection, or the taking over of government offices, or by more guns, or the death of Isis, or by electing a new president or congress of either party, or by a larger military, or by the elimination or exclusion of those who are different in terms of culture, religion and race.

Canadian Rockies, Lake Louise

It is important to note also, that our present world and society has always been fundamentally different from God’s dream for it.  Therefore, to suggest that there was a time, when somehow or another, we were great or were more closely aligned with God’s dream is a blatant fallacy. 

Human beings (you and I) were created free—not good, or perfect, or programmed.  We alone among all other living creatures have the choice to respond or not to respond to God or God’s dream.  That dream (to keep things simple) was quite adequately expressed by Howard Thurman as “a friendly world of friendly folk beneath a friendly sky.”  God is vulnerable (can you imagine that?).  God is vulnerable because God made us free.  We can and do reject God, much to God’s sorrow.  It no doubt pains God deeply to be rejected, just as it pains us when we are rejected (that is being vulnerable).   Sometimes I think it is God’s tears that have filled the seas and oceans of this earth.

We are, in my opinion, most fully human when we recognize ourselves as creatures and respond to God.  We are most fully human when we use the gift of our freedom to do God’s will (if God is love, God wills us to love) and to align ourselves and our society with God’s dream.  So why not see the world as a friendly place, with friendly people, under a friendly sky, rather than continue to abuse our freedom by disparaging one another?  Hate, meanness, arrogance, and selfishness are anathema to God’s dream.