Dear Friends,
It seems to me, the gift of free will, is both a blessing and a curse for us. It is self evident… we are given free will, and that free will comes from God. Our free will is the font of our virtuous desire for liberty and our iniquitous wish to control others. It is through free will that we created the World we live in, and our free will is the source of all that is good and bad. This is an important concept to understand if we want to create a better World for our children to live in. If we get it wrong however, the World we create, will be devoid of free will and may take centuries or millenia to recapture.
Many argue that God should make everything good. That it is his duty to fix all the problems in the World, like poverty, disease, famine and tyranny. But they don’t go all the way with their logic. If God were to fix even one of these things it would make God a tyrant. Look at out original state. God made Mankind free of law, compulsion and ethos. We have imposed them on ourselves. As Carneades said, “mankind imposed a set of laws and moors on itself out of necessity. Because people, being like animals, each seeking his or her own good, make true justice impossible. For a man to be truly just he must do damage to his own self interest…”
God also gave us, avarice, jealousy and ego. These are what makes us so willing to impose our wants and desires on others. These are the reasons all evil is in the World. All sin comes from these emotions. Stealing from avarice, lying from jealousy and from ego comes cruelty. To counter these negative inclinations, God also gave us, compassion, a sense of justice and love. These emotions create all that is good in the World… but can be twisted to serve evil.
To remove poverty God would also have to remove free will. Free will is the source of poverty, in not only the modern World, but the ancient one as well. For God to remove disease, would also require the destruction of free will, since most all disease is due to our own actions. IE. uncleanliness, engaging in dangerous activities, thoughtless commingling and venturing out when we are sick. To remove tyranny from the planet, would certainly eliminate free will, for it is free will that brings a tyrant to power. We seek leisure, safety and control over others lives and property, it is these desires that are why tyranny exists in the World.
Yet God allows evil of our own making to exist in the World. Why? Because to eliminate them would eliminate free will. Therefore, it is clearly true that God considers free will, more important than out comfort and safety. God must hold free will, as one of the highest goods… if not the highest good. Since free will is a profound source of wickedness in the World and God allows it.
It is free will that provides the driving force in our lives… to live in liberty. We all, no matter our culture, ethos, race or upbringing, want to live in freedom. Our culture may impel us to disallow others to be free, but we all want freedom in our own lives… it is others we argue, that should be subjugated. This duality of concept, that creates a friction in our societies, renders no man truly free.
Any system of government, religion or ethos, that allows men and women free will, is human hearted and in line with God’s will. As I have shown, if God believes that free will is the highest good then any system that uses pain of death to compel people to do, believe or think in a certain way, is antithetical to God’s will. Such a system will not be blessed no matter how powerful or wealthy. Power and wealth being merely human metrics of good. They fall far short of the role God has for us and our individual salvation. However, even by these secular measures of good, a system that allows free will, is blessed.
If we look at the most prosperous society in the history on Mankind, we see that it is Western culture. Western culture, buttressed by the Christian doctrine, that has expressly given homage to free will. Slavery as a system, was condemned and finally outlawed in the West, due to our father’s and mother’s moral outrage, at the taking of another’s free will by force. No other society in the history of Mankind has done this. It was Western society that eliminated the dread diseases from our midst. Western love of free will that produced the concept of a constitution, as a contract between the rulers and the ruled, limiting the power of the Elite, for the first time ever. The Free market and competition, which are a reflection of free will, have created incredible wealth, a prosperity that is so pervasive, it was unimaginable only a few centuries ago. All the good that has flowed from this recognition, of the role of free will in the lives of people, are blessings from God on the World. Yet, even the Western civilizations have fallen short of our own ideals, due to our egos, avarice and jealousy. No one is immune to the congenital nature of Man.
Today, the paradigm of human hearted religion, that has served us so well for so long, is being overturned by people that despise God, and the free will of others. We are increasingly being subjected to ever more intrusive regulation imposed by unelected bureaucrats. The Constitution that protected our liberty, so well for so long, is being rewritten to control us, instead of the Elite, as it was intended. The Constitution is called a “Living Breathing Document” which really says the Constitution means whatever the hell the Elite claim it does. Moral equivalency is all the rage in our academic circles. We are told it is “compassionate” to render our fellow human beings dependent on the government for food, clothing and housing. We are becoming subjects of an all powerful State. In short, our gift from God… free will, is being exchanged for empty trinkets and glittering lies. This is a bargain with the devil… because, since God gave us free will, it is the role of Lucifer to take it away.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
