of the free

“ Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise. But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now. Nevertheless what saith the scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman. So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free. ”

Freedom is the problem and freedom is the solution. Why, O why did God Almighty give His chiefest creatures such a dangerous gift, and why, O why did we use it the way we did?

Free will and the human soul have ever been a conspiratorial duet for the downfall of our greatest and highest aspirations. Like water seeking the lowest level, we might want to climb that soaring peak, but instead cascade down into the valley and collect in a fetid bog. Why are we free, when being controlled by a good and holy God would make us so much better than we are? Couldn't God stop us from doing the evil that we seem inevitably to do?

The most common argument put forth by any atheist or agnostic against the existence of God is this: If there were a good and holy God, why does He allow such evil and suffering in the world? The doubter goes on to name any numbers of real atrocities: the Nazi holocaust of the Jews, the various genocides by religious parties, the Inquisition (we Christians always get that one thrown back at us), and every other painful thought down to cancer, income taxes and the lack of universal health care. If there is a God, why does He permit such suffering and evil to go on? And having made this impassioned argument, the one who doubts God folds his arms and smugly shouts, “ Checkmate !” He feels that he has won and that there is no comeback.

This is difficult for us to answer with authentic concern and yet a clear Christian teaching. Why indeed does God allow such rampant evil to go on unrestrained? Can there be Anybody up there who is watching over us and caring for us, if such things go on?

Ask our agnostic about the purity of his own heart, whether in his own life the complete absence of sin has given him such a lofty peak from which to see and judge Almighty God? What is he really saying about God, in this calloused view of reality? Is he saying that there is no God ? Then what is he so incensed about? If there is no God, then there is no good or evil, no right or wrong, nothing really to be so upset about. Why not kill all the Jews, or the Gypsies, or the Christians in Sudan? Why not enslave other people, abuse women and children, live like pigs and achieve nothing worthy of mention? Certainly if there is no God to set any goal in our existence, if we are merely a fluke among the meaningless accidents of a mindless naturalistic universe, we trouble ourselves unnecessarily over a few dead or wounded or enslaved. Survival of the fittest goes for us as well.

Or is our atheist saying that God may be out there, but that He is cold and uncaring, that God is not really good but vicious, a brute, an immoral cosmic prankster who cares not one bit for any of us? Is such a God possible? There is such a god, but he is not the Eternal One, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The god so described is a fallen creature, vastly powerful, but utterly defeated at the Cross, our chiefest enemy. Our atheist has simply described Satan and put on him the name of God.

Perhaps the argument sets forth a God who has set all things running, made some rules of conduct, and now is powerless in the face of His creation to enact such goodness, to stop the evil He has unwittingly set into motion. If that is the argument, logic says we need not worship nor obey such a weak and disabled creator, for he (or she or it) is not almighty, nor all knowing—but has made a universe foolishly fraught with unintended flaws and too powerful forces of darkness. As this view may be attractive at the start, see how it eventually leaves room for another power, a greater power of evil that scoffs at and demeans God. We've gotten to the basis of Satanism itself. God may exist, but evil is more powerful: thus we will serve evil.

So, if the existence of evil is an argument against God, the arguments all must fall upon such difficulties when followed out. If there is no God, then there is no problem of evil at all, for everything is possible and there is no one competent to complain. If God is uncaring and mean-spirited, then Satan is actually this God. And if God is too weak to defeat evil, then Satan is a better god to serve and evil is actually the ultimate good. No one follows these lines of logic when complaining of evil and casting a baleful eye upward at the heavens. Most of the time, this specious argument is made simply to justify oneself in sin without guilt, for God is either non-existent, incompetent, or just as evil Himself. It is a self-serving argument that makes evil good and good evil, so that in the confusion I can get away with murder.

Now, if God does exist, and He is good, and all-powerful: how do we explain this world?

I think the Christian view of the world explains it quite well. God is perfect, all-powerful and loving, holy and good. He created us in His image, meaning we were given freedom to act independently and choose evil or good. He made us capable of goodness, but left the option there. And why?

The highest manner of obedience to God's stated will is to love Him with all our hearts, minds and souls. If we truly loved Him, we would obey His every command and we would love one another as much as we love our selves. And Christian would love Christian in the way Christ loved us, even unto the end, even unto death. We would take a bullet for any other Christian. That's the highest will of God. That's heaven.

Down here, it's hard to imagine loving that way. A gross failure to love has left the gap into which sin enters. Sin has many forms and permutations, but every form has in common the failure to love God, and love one another to seek the other's good. Why then didn't God create in us an unfailing love? The answer is the answer to all of it, and freedom once again is the problem and the solution. If I were not free to deny love, to abandon love, to reject love and sin instead, I would not be free to love , to embrace love, to choose to love God, to love you, or even to love myself. Love would cease to be possible, for love must be borne out of personal freedom and an ultimate choice toward God and goodness, a decision to love a beloved, a cause for which I will suffer even the loss of my life. Again it comes down to either-or: either there is freedom and love, with sin as a real possibility, or else there is no freedom nor love, and sin impossible as well. If we are not free to sin, there is no reason to create us, except as Barbie and Ken dolls in some great dollhouse of an infant deity. I reject that idea, and so did God.

God took the great risk of giving us, His highest creatures, a very dangerous gift of freedom. But what a glorious cause: to make creatures capable of choosing to love their Creator, love each other, and serve Him even when they cannot see Him or prove He exists. That truth is what galls the evil one: that we should love God without seeing Him, believe in His Son while we are 2,000 years removed from the events of His life, and live in the Holy Spirit believing to our souls health the promises of God and looking toward better country, an eternal reward for our faithful suffering through this life so we might eventually enjoy the next.

St. Paul wrote his great Epistle to the Galatians who were beginning to return to the legalisms of Pharisaic Judaism. He cites as metaphor the two sons of Abraham, the father of faith: Ishmael, born of Hagar, an Egyptian slave girl, and Isaac, born of Sarah his wife. Ishmael and Hagar became an embarrassing problem to Abraham when the mother taunted Sarah, and her older son began to claim superiority over his young half-brother. Abraham, sorrowfully, had to throw the slave and her son out of the camp, just as God will have to, unfortunately, throw out those who reject the blessings of freedom and love in favor of a legalistic argumentation and self-justification at that last day. In a wonderfully strange way, Paul compares Ishmael to the Israel that embraced the Mosaic Law instead of the freedom of the Savior, and Isaac to the followers of Christ who are now free from the scaffold of Law, free to love more perfectly the God of mercy, truth and love.

Are we free, then? Here is just one more great irony. It is like knowing our salvation is free of any cost to us, that it cannot be earned by us, and then ultimately finding out He is asking us to give our entire lives and all we have into His Hands. It is like the King of the Universe becoming a creature and submitting Himself to His creatures that they might kill Him in order to save them. It is like submitting to God's total and complete will and finding, for the first time, true freedom and freshness of being because in Him alone can we find the reason we exist and follow it in power and beauty and grace with passion. There is truly a God, and He is good, and we find our meaning in Him. Paul also wrote the Galatians: “…when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world: But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.” Galatians 4:3-7

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