Sunday 3 March 2024

Sunday Faith Series: Can You Do Good And Defy God?

 

Here's an intriguing thought experiment that's in my book The Ecstasy of a New Morality. If someone does a morally good act that is not part of God's will because it interferes with God's plan, is the act still good? Imagine a wise sage who lived around the time of Jesus' crucifixion. One day he has an epiphany that puts him years ahead of his contemporaries - he realises that the Roman civilisation is pretty barbaric, and he thinks he can do things to make it better. The next day he's walking along and he sees Christ getting whipped and beaten, about to go on the cross. Being a kind, decent and morally advanced sage, he steps in and tries to save Jesus from any more pain. After giving an epoch-changing talk of the barbaric nature of nailing human beings to crucifixes, the Romans see sense and the process is discontinued, and Jesus is not crucified.

Now, by any normal standards of morality, what our sage did could only be construed as good. He helped a relatively backward civilisation advance their morality, and tried to promote tolerance, respect and kindness over the more reactionary tribal barbarism of the day. But in saving the bruised and battered Jesus from death on the cross, what he also did was interfere with God's grand plan for the salvation of humankind.

I doubt that God, being omnipotent, would let any compromises occur that would impede the plan over which He has perfect control, but it does engender a quite interesting observation about an act that can be good on a human level yet thoroughly prohibitive in terms of God's will and His plan. Such an observation seems to confirm an important distinction between our will and God's will in terms of how our apprehension of morality reflects the goodness from which it emanates - rather like how the scent of a woodland is smelled by our being immersed in the forest.


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