I do not wish to not preface this post with someone else’s quote because this was born out of my own imagination relatively void of input: rather the musings of a wondering mind, hopefully guided by scripture.
I have come to the belief that free will, good and evil forces, and all that it implies are not fantasies but rather the purest reality possible if good is chosen. Good, being reality, and evil, being the fake reality and consequently a simulation of free will, are the only two options possible when faced with the “fork in the road.” When there are two options to choose between and lead in different directions, I think it is undeniable and unsubstitutional that any choice is possible besides doing that of the will of the Christian Father, and that of the opposing force, the persuasive Evil that masquerades as a replica of the freedom God gave us, which when viewed from outside the self proves to be in actuality not a choice at all. Where God is freedom to choose, Evil, or the Devil, or Satan, or Lucifer (synonymous for all intents and purposes: the fallen Angel who tempted man into the original sin) convinces us through our monoperspective that we indeed do freely choose to do his will when we choose him over God but in actuality are forced into his option, his path at the fork in the road, through learned example.
Although it is very hard to conceptualize in the post-modern era frame of reference for viewing reality, a contradiction that disproves postmodernism to me in itself (but a side tangent that would merit a post all to its own), a reality in which we do not have a choice as to what we choose, this is ultimately the implication of choosing evil, or non-God actions. Try to visualize it as such: in the center of a sheet of paper is an individual human being: you, or me, or anyone person. There are two objects that the subject has free will to choose: God, or the Devil. Because the original object, God, is what created the subject, he is the origin of free will in its pure sense.
Now, some may be saying that given this choice, it is God who created evil as a result then if he created everything. I disagree. I believe he created Angels, who with the power of free will, one chose self worship using that free will over worship of God. Therefore, God did not create evil, Satan did. And he didn’t create it, so to say, because only the creator can create a created. So Evil is not so much a thing as it is a choice, an option, that is real in as much as the void between my eyes and this computer screen is a reality. To think of it another way, consider sound. It is an “object” we base reality off of, yet it is a perceptual experience that we can’t really classify in our 3d construct of reality. It has no length, width, or height; it has no substance; it doesn’t taste or smell like anything; yet we get meaning from it, sometimes even meaning from things that correlate to the “reality” or hard-facts of what that sound conveys (consider listening to a symphony and classifying it as happy or sad sounding). God creates Angels with free will, one Angel chooses the free will to worship himself, while knowing what God is instead of worshipping God. This is the great mystery to me: if the angel knows what omnibenevolence and all goodness and joy looks like, why did he choose the sin of pride and worship himself? But that is not the question at hand, refer back to the paragraph previous to this current one.
So there is the subject of the human entity being discussed. He has been given free will in the pure sense by the creator. He can choose this free will to choose the creator, or he can use this free will to choose the antithesis of the creator, the Devil, who seeks self worship. The outcome of free will is worship, it’s just a matter of what you are worshipping. You are either worshipping the creator, or the pride of a created object who chose self pride over glorifying God. Consider free will the means by which the subject chooses to worship. God, giving pure free will gives the subject the option of using that free will to choose him, or using that free will to choose the self serving wishes of the Devil. After the first choice we are faced with subsequent choices which is where we have to consider the implications of the previous choice(s).
Consider the relation of the subject to the two objects as a give and take or giving/receiving relationship. In the first instance, we can choose to use the free will given to us by God to choose him, who in turn, in the subsequent choice or fork in the road, again gives us the free will to choose him or to choose the non-him. The opposite action would be to choose the Devil, the non God, the prideful, selfworshiping fallen angel whose sole intent is to turn our actions away from God. So when we give our free will to Satan, we in turn receive what we believe to be “pure free will” the type that God gave us originally before we made that first choice to choose Satan. We will refer to the free will God gives us, the pure form, as Free will 1, and the fake free will, or illusionary free will that is actually predetermined action by Satan, as free will 2.
When we receive the free will 1 from God and are standing the precipice of the fork in the road, I’ve already discussed what happens when we choose to give back that pure free will type 1 to God, we get more in return. But when we choose to give free will 1 to Satan, we get free will 2 in return. It’s similar to a learned behavior. We see the “benefits” of choosing Satan, either knowingly choosing him or blindly choosing him, which is an increase in our pride, which is synonymous with self pleasure. Thus through this false type of positive reinforcement, Satan convinces us that when we choose through free will type 1 to glorify him, we get free will 1 in return when in reality it is free will 2: we perceive it as self glorification via pride when in reality we are glorifying Satan whose sole wish is to take glory away from God and focus it on him. Pride is the method. We think we are doing what makes us happy, but it is a lie because what we are doing is making Satan happy. Ultimate, pure, happiness is by definition self sacrifice to glorify God. Behavior, or the choice we choose to make with that free will 1 given to us, becomes more predictable based on how we choose to exercise it. That is why we become like the idols we choose to worship.
It may seem like this would result in an exponentially growing net gain for evil. Where we are given free will 1 for choosing God, we receive free will 2, which is predetermined action for choosing Satan. So the more we choose Satan, the more the pathways for choosing God become shut off. God leads to a God/Satan Choice, Satan leads to a Satan choice which subsequently can only lead to more Satan-minded choices. Good and evil behavior become a learned habit, with Evil being more highly favored the more it is chosen.
IMPLICATIONS:
I feel like we’ve discussed the nature of what Evil is (worship of the Devil disguised as pride or selfworship/glorification) but not what God is. God, according to doctrine, is good. He is omnibenevolent, so all good. He is also Love, according to the New Testament. So since God=good and God=love, love must equal good. Good=God=Love. Choosing Evil is like clipping the wires that can lead to good, leaving only wires that can complete the circuit of evil. Eventually, it would appear as if Evil would replace Good completely.
When good is fully consumed by free will 2, we become completely controlled and lack all free will. We become devoid of love. But this is not possible because God is love. God created his creation to bring him glory (again from the Bible). This means he is willing to do what it takes to make love the option again. When free will 1 is chosen for evil, God needs to intercede in order that free will 1 doesn’t become completely overwhelmed by our growing desire for free will 2. How can this be done?
This would require a sort of reversal of action. This is impossible to us, you cannot undo what has been done. So the alternative is defeating evil. How can God do this? God cannot choose evil, he knows what the ultimate good is, being self aware, and thus cannot choose something other than that being fully aware of what good is. Why would ultimate knowledge of Good choose something that is not good? Thus It would need to place itself in a human’s shoes to understand how to defeat evil. God would need to become fully man while maintaining his fully God nature. 100% God and 100% man. That way, the subject stays the same as outlined before: He has the option to choose Good or Evil. But, he is fully aware of what Good looks like, what God is, because he is God. He can be tempted to choose free will 2 but chooses free will 1 out of knowledge of who he truly is (God). This is how evil choices are cleared away when chosen and man can be reconciled with God given his impure nature. God, in the form of man, was destroyed by death, the wages of evil or free will 2. His flesh was given up to evil, his body died on the Cross. What remains then is purely God. Thus flesh died and God remained. The pureness that appeared to succumb to Evil triumphed over it because in love, which is the opposite of pride, used evil’s pride to free the flesh. Evil cannot ultimately triumph over Good because good is a thing, while evil is not. Good in it’s purest form, which is equal to pure God, which is equal to pure love, is the complete willingness to suffer complete evil (or utter lack of pure-God) so that conscious, freewill 1 us can continue to have free will 1, and not the imaginary, prideful kind of free will 2. When the truth becomes clear to us of this pure love, we can only see pure love as an option, which means choosing free will 1 for the gift of free will 1. But, because we are of flesh, we cannot directly perceive the boundless love of God. There are limitations to our consciousness. What we perceive as complete is in reality a fraction of complete. But we are told God is within us because God the Spirit enters us at baptism. So, when the flesh dies, the spirit is free to experience complete love and thus choose it for eternity. That’s why hell is a personal choice. It is a subsequent outcome of consistently choosing evil or pride. The opposite of pride, Jesus, self sacrifice for those who choose free will 2 willingly, is what can liberate one from free will 2. The limitations of perception imposed by flesh make us limited in our ability to perceive God, in the same way we are limited in perceiving sound. But, when flesh’s limitations are laid aside, we are left with the sum of the actions of the soul and ultimately our free will predestined us to our outcome of our actions on this earthly arena.
mbarbetta1 