One of the pervasive images with which we humans clothe God is that of a god that controls each and every moment and movement – a god who usurps the possibility of any freedom on our part. Like a puppeteer, this god toys with us, individually and as a species, throughout our lifetimes and our history, pulling the strings and making us move, dance, stumble, fall – literally jerking us around. No will of our own. This god is intimately, intricately and invasively involved in everything – a divine busybody, a divine bully who hoards the universal remote control that animates all things.
From the perspective of the divinization of human knowledge, this tyrannical god is ridiculous, yet comes in handy. It is a caricature very easily dismissed. Yet it meshes well with the perspective that we are the helpless pawns of a myriad of visible and invisible, purely natural and completely explainable forces. There is no need for a divine being, all is explainable through science – to the free and mature human being of today.
People of faith try to navigate the choppy waters of the narrows between the extremes of, we are totally free and we are completely controlled by forces beyond us. It is true that our freedom is very limited. And it is also true that we are able to say yes and no, to choose, to some degree, how we will live. People who love recognize the element of freedom that makes love possible. Without freedom, love, the free gift of one’s self, is meaningless. It couldn’t exist. Love cannot be programmed or even predicted.
God is Love, as Scriptures tells us. God wants us to be free from all that limits or impedes what is possible for us. God desires that we are free to choose to love, and to know that we are loved – no strings attached.