This entire “allowed” business rankles me in two ways: One, it has the sense of Creation being very much like God’s “train set.” Second, any argumentations or conjectures about what God wills, taken personally, are highly loaded and very dangerous.
First, it just doesn’t make sense to me that God would need to interfere with His creation on an ad hoc or even planned basis. Ad hoc implies imperfection in God’s ability to create something worthy of His Perfect Nature. Continuous maintainence, in the form of either “nudges” or continuing design adjustments, imply an aspect of entertainment or of God changing His Mind. This “ex machina” seeming interference also seems to contradict free will.
It also doesn’t answer the contention of some philosophies that the matter of change is God acting as, as distinct from on. All of the above seem to imply God acting in time, which would contradict the eternal (unchanging) Nature of God. This may not include the appearence of Jesus, which is another case for concern in the remarkably numerous terms in which it is understood.
Second, one need only look around to see that God is invoked as the power Who is on the side of a person, team, nation, or even a religion. That brings to attention the possibility that God is using some of His children to smite His other children who through ignorance or whatever don’t subscribe to the ways of the smiters. In any case, what good would that do? The smitten would attribute the smite to the smiters, not to God. In this way, historically few have been so dangerous as those who were convinced one way or another that God was on their side, even prompting and sanctifying their action. This is what cults and terrorist are made of. Such a stance as side taking also tends to support the nonsensical idea that God is divided against Himself.
This whole adversarial divison brought on by the antropomorphization of a god bent to political or other causes, especially to religious causes, has wreaked havoc in the world. And please, please, please, don’t come back with the statement “But mine IS right!” I see as many kinds of Catholicism out there in terms of practice as I do of the 35,000 denominations. And that doesn’t include the non-christainists, a few of whom to me seem sometimes saner the “we” are.
One of the very worst of these false attitudes about “allowing” is perfectly voiced by distracted. That exceptionally dangereous attitude is contained in the words “he gave man freedom to conquer the world,…” (emphasis mine.) This is the typical christianist missionary/industrialist adversarial attitude about our existance that has raped the resources of the Earth and destroyed or enslaved useful civilizations. It makes man(un)kind superior to, not a part of, the Earth scenario. It carries with it the very irrisponsible notion that at some point, Jesus acting in His capacity as “the cavalry,” will come and save us all-- of course those saved would be the good christians only of whichever of the 35,000 stripes and members folks are claiming to be the *only true *ones thereof.
I would also ask if it was not arrogance on the part of a poster to propose to know how their God works and allegedly thinks, or even to speculate to have an idea of what the options, if any in those terms, of Diety might be. Maybe you will carry your “not impressed” with you to your own manufactured theological place of infernal punishment.
I know that there is a book about the “Deliberate Dumbing Down of America,” but am sad, without claiming perfection for meyself, to see from evidence on here that that dumbing seems to have affected some Catholics as well. Maybe St. Augustine was right about pious people making themselves look foolish. That seems to be the case where one’s faith appears to be used as a tool to feel right, as distinct from a living way of *being *Love. I doubt that God, like a woman, might be bought by arguement or conversation in lieu of feeling, devotion and action.
Perhaps we are “allowed” to think that a loving God is infinite to the point of being inclusive of *all *His children. I shudder to think what families would be like if the antropomorphised God was an actual example of how to treat one’s children. Or maybe in the myriads of dysfunctional situations rampant today, we are doing just that?
