After winning a contest, acing an exam, or receiving an expensive item, I thank God for the blessing, but recently I thought about it more deeply. If He wishes to answer our prayers will he subtly control events? Will he partially possess me or possess others to make certain choices that will lead to me winning a quiz bee? I’m bothered by the thought because it conflicts with the concept of free will. Does that mean our accomplishments are not done by us, that we did no hard work to do it, that we shouldn’t give ourselves any credit? Are we like puppets who can take joy in the blessings God gives us, but not acknowledge ourselves to be strong, perseverant people?
In the moral/spiritual sphere, where man has fallen from righteousness, grace, alone, can lift man back up, restoring his righteousness, i.e.
justifying him. And yet the Church teaches that man can
resist this grace; he can snub God’s desire for reconciliation, just as his ancestor Adam spurned God in the first place by disobeying His first commandment. That’s a very radical freedom-the freedom to oppose God’s will.
But man cannot be
whole-who he was intended to be-apart from God. We must elect to
commune with Him, to give up the freedom/autonomy that Adam pursued, for our own good after learning for ourselves the futility and, indeed, the death, which results when man is separated from God, apart from whom he can do nothing. We must freely choose to limit our freedom, in a sense, whereupon we find that we were actually enslaved without God, who simply desires us to be free to love, where all goodness and happiness is found; we must search and find the value of love, the “value of God”, so to speak, and exercise that knowledge by turning back to Him, as we
will to accept His help in doing so.
It’s a
synergistic effort, God
drawing us without force,
wanting our wills involved; that’s a major part of our becoming just.
