In the movie Bruce Almighty, Jim Carrey’s character gets to be God for a week. He finds it isn’t that simple being God after all.
Anyway, imagine you can be God for a week. In this case, not any old week, but the ‘week’ starting just before God began creating the heavens and the earth. You’re starting with nothing there at the moment, but you have this great idea of making a beautiful creation, including a planet which we’ll call the earth. And, as the pinnacle of your creation on earth, you want to make a living creature – we’ll call it a human – who will have an altogether higher capacity than any of the other living creatures that you build into the order of this planet. Including the capacity to love and to be loved, and to participate in a loving family relationship with you too.
Now, you’re faced with a number of options. Are you going to build-in compulsory obedience? Pre-programme this human to do exactly what you want, and to be exactly like you would like them to be? Deals with a lot of problems, certainly. Cuts out any risks. And it would stop people blaming you, in years to come, for everything bad, because there wouldn’t be anything bad to complain about.
But … would there be anything genuinely good either?
Can a person do anything out of genuine love if they have no choice in the matter? Can a person really be said to love another person if they have no option?
If humans are to love one another – indeed, if they are ever to genuinely love me as God – then won’t they simply have to be free to choose other options? Real love must be genuine, and to be genuine, it surely has to have had a choice, a real alternative.
As God, I will not create evil. I hate the idea of evil and the practices of evil. But my creation either has to be filled with robots or I must allow for the possibility that evil may come about. That possibility is a by-product of the need for my human creation to have freedom of choice.
Love is always a risk, but it’s a risk worth taking. Without risk there is no freedom, and without freedom there is no true love.
The risks are high. And if it does go wrong, what would I do? Get rid of it all and start again? Problem with that is, why wouldn’t the same pattern repeat again, so long as that real freedom was still given?
No – I would want to take parental responsibility and do everything in my power to restore humanity, draw them away from their bad choices and back to me. But without in the process violating that principle of free-will that has been so important from the very beginning.
Actually, there would be something in my power to do.
But it comes at a high price.