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lately I've been grappling with the concept of free will & god, as the god book I read a while ago says that god would never intervene in our lives to make us do something, even if we say we want it, because our souls came here to experience their own magnificence, which was not possible while they were in total unification with him.
which is all well & good, but since then I've had the question of "how does the lord help us then, if he can't make us do anything?"
two theories:
the "candy crush" theory:
basically aligning the pieces of our lives behind the scenes, such as through what we experience, in order for us to later develop our characters based upon it independently- lining things up in a way that leads to the resolution we needed (whether we specifically wanted it or not).
example: you don't mind your current car. but lately it's been a bit unreliable, & while you have the money to fix it, or even just buy a new one, it'd leave you scraping by for a while afterwards. there's also not many cars on the market, not any good ones anyway, so you decide just not to bother. until there's a storm, & a tree falls on top of your current car. luckily for you, your insurance company determines that it's totalled, & pays you out enough to buy another car. some other people's cars have also taken some external damage, & they decide it's not worth the trouble to fix, so they sell them. but while the outsides are ugly, the insides are fine. because you waited, & god got to align your circumstances, you ended up with a better car & deal than if you'd just "sucked it up" & bought one prior to the storm.
& the "camel to a waterhole" theory:
derived from the old adage(?) of "you can bring a camel to a waterhole, but you can't make it drink"- which in this context means "you can show a mind what it needs to see, but you can't make it look". I came up with this idea initially; as it satisfies both that the lord can help us (by showing us things) & that we can retain our free will in the process (we can choose to look or not to look). this way, the lord helps us by showing us the way, or what we need to do, however he does not will this possibility into existence.
example: one morning, for some reason, you keep seeing umbrellas everywhere- on your tv, on social media, around your house. you ignore this & leave the house as usual, thinking of it as just a coincidence. but there are no coincidences, & it begins to rain heavily as you set off to leave school. oh no!! you still have to walk home! if only you'd taken the constant umbrella-spotting as a sign earlier!
sidenote: if nothing can exist without god's permission, & he loves us no matter what, then what could possibly happen to us? my answer is thus; the torturing of our souls. god would not permit it to happen, & so it does not. humans are not able to torture souls, at least not in the sense of biblical hell, as even if they tried to create a hell on earth, our souls would be free when we die; so humans will never truly achieve the power of god. it is a very humbling thought. I am striving to be more humble. also, trying to think of things whose existence is impossible is a very good brain teaser.
goodnight friends ! ♡
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the new leaves
it's great that i read your post today, because it coincides with this specific scene in the wayward bus (john steinbeck):
in the 1940s, there is a bus owned by this man named juan, and his wife manages a diner. from the diner, juan drives people back and forth between the two major cities nearby, & while traveling with a group of people who are strange and difficult to manage, there is a large rainstorm. it's the type of storm that makes it impossible for an old bus to drive in the mud & gravel. and juan begins to think back on his wife, who is undesirable, and his job, and his life, and he thinks why have i stuck with this for so long? why can't i run away, to my home in mexico? and so he whispers to the figure of guadalupana on his necklace, "i'll get these people through this storm if you want me to. and if the bus breaks down or i am unable to finish this trip, then i will know that you have decided for me, that i can run away and leave this life behind."
and not very long after, the bus gets slowed in some mud and he intentionally spins the wheels to make the bus irreparably stuck. and so he cheated, 'just a little bit,' and took his own decision as the sign that he was waiting for.