The Doting Grandfather

It would, no doubt, have been possible for God to remove by miracle the results of the first sin ever committed by a human being; but this would not have been much good unless He was prepared to remove the results of the second sin, and of the third, and so on forever. If the miracles ceased, then sooner or later we might have reached our present lamentable situation: if they did not, then a world thus interference, would have been a world in which nothing important ever depended on human choice, and in which choice itself would soon cease from the certainty that one of the apparent alternatives before you would lead to no results and was therefore not really an alternative. As we saw, the chess player’s freedom to play chess depends on the rigidity of the squares and the moves (PP 59).

I thought this was really interesting. I had never even thought about why God just didn’t fix it…erase and start over…give them a second chance here? But if God was giving them a choice to choose him or to choose evil, wouldn’t God stepping in and performing a miracle be like taking that choice away? It would be like God saying, “Oh, you messed up. Here, it’s ok. Let me fix this.” There would be no consequences, which would make God more like a doting grandfather than an all powerful, good God. It is important to remember that if God is good, by definition, then, he cannot stand evil. So why wouldn’t he fix the problem? Because God, being good, doesn’t want us to be robots. He could have not put the tree in the garden, therefore not giving the first humans the opportunity to sin. But because he is good he wouldn’t want to force people to do something. He would want them to choose to do good. It is a very thin line between God being good, God hating sin, and God loving people enough that he would allow his creation to sin. If God were to just keep erasing our faults, we could do whatever we want without worrying about consequences, and might actually reach that deplorable state sooner. At least in our own consciences. We could say, “Well, God will fix it, so it doesn’t matter what implication this might have. If it is good, then it is good and if it is bad then God will erase it and we will go on.” We would never learn. We would never grow. He gave us a choice so that we could make mistakes and grow. So that we could become more mature.