10/02/2022 – Chapter Six – “God as Your Guru” // Group Discussion
Do we really believe what we say we believe is really real? I’m just asking for it involves unfathomable never ending joy. Who could even make up such a story!
Indeed:
“It’s Romans 8:28 again. Every single thing that happens in your life is directly and deliberately designed by God for one end: your own personal, individual, unique good, to perfect your unique self, to bring you to maximum joy.” (Pg 37) For this has been the eternal dance of the Triune God, a perfect agape love immersion, and we somehow have an invitation to join in that dance by His grace! (Theme presented by Tim Keller in his book: “Jesus the King”)
I pick it up on the top of pg 38:
“In that universe, divine providence is our IEP, our Individualized Education Plan. Nothing is accidental, Nothing is random. Nothing happens by chance. And nothing is ‘one size fits all’, but everything is designed for the individual. Our guru makes no mistakes. He is infallible!’ Even when His will permits evil things to happen to us, He does so because this is part of what we need. God makes even death work for our greater good in the end. Death, the dark doom that is the consequence of sin, is made into the door to Heavenly light. If He can do that with death, He can certainly do it with any and all of the smaller deaths that are sufferings and losses. They all work for the same end.” (Top – page #38)
Note the 3rd paragraph of pg. 40, C.S. Lewis logical observation from his “A Grief Observed”:
“But is it credible that such extreme ties of torture should be necessary for us? We’ll, take your choice. The tortures occur. If they are unnecessary, then there is no God or a bad one. For no even moderately good Being could possibly inflict or permit them if they weren’t.”
By putting His Son on the cross, God knows about suffering, voluntary no less! God doesn’t need us but he chose to save us. And the other side of the coin, he did not compromise with sin, for that would go against His Holy essence. Picking it up on pg. 41, “For instance, it is not possible for God to force us freely to choose good over evil. Forced freedom is a meaningless self-contradiction, and a meaningless self-contradiction does not magically become meaningful just because you say the words ‘God can’ before it. And what is true of ‘forced freedom’ — that it is literally meaningless because it is self-contradictory and therefore intrinsically impossible — may well be true of many things we wish God would do to us, such us making us saints without suffering.”
I am convinced that if we continue to praise God, even in the midst of our worst suffering, we have an angels cheering section behind us. I recall that Pope John Paul II was so sick in his last days that he had assistants propping him up so he could wave through the window. I thought: “Give it up for you will hear: ‘Well done my good and faithful servant’ shortly. “. But he was determined to lead by example. And who of us to say that it wasn’t his greatest moment as God’s messenger?
Soli Deo Gloria!