Itsara

This is a post about free will. I was reading a novel in which one of the characters joked that she prays the night before a presidential election. “For all the good it does,” she huffs. “God is a Republican from Texas.” It made me think: would God rig an election?

Assuming God had a candidate in mind, what would he do? Would he coerce people to vote a certain way, overriding their free will? I know some folks believe God can and does make people do whatever he wants, but it doesn’t make sense to me. If he could do that, why doesn’t he do it more often?

Maybe he would ask people to vote a certain way. But how many people do you think there are in the US that are receptive to God’s voice? That is, people who listen to God and spend time in prayer and fasting to learn his will? I don’t think many, and even fewer who would not only hear the voice but be willing to obey it no matter what he asked of them. Would it be enough to swing an election?

What if God just Spoke, so that whoever he wanted to have hear him would hear him for sure? Like the way he spoke to Moses in the desert, or the way he spoke over Jesus on the mountain. There was no doubt in the listeners’ minds that it was God. Surely *that* would get an election to go his way.

But God doesn’t do that. Maybe it wouldn’t do any good; we are surprisingly good at rationalizing reality so that we only see and hear what we want to. Or maybe it’s just one more way in which free will could be overrode.

Imagine a woman so beautiful that just to see her would cause any man to fall in love, just to hear her voice would make men swoon. Maybe God is like that woman, but he doesn’t want us to love him because we have to, so he hides his face. He doesn’t want us to obey because we have to, so he doesn’t speak, or he speaks in only whispers.

I don’t know if that’s the way it is, but it’s something to think about. The Bible tells us that at the end “every” knee will bow. I think because the very sight of him is enough to demand worship, even in those who want nothing to do with Him.

But that’s at the end. In the meantime, God is desperate for those who will love him without seeing him, those who will be faithful even when they can’t feel God, those who will obey because it’s right and for no other reason.

This isn’t really about elections, of course, but how God’s will gets done at all. In Heaven, it just gets done. On Earth, it gets done when we choose to do it.