Saturday, May 13, 2006

Free Will In Heaven?

I'm trying out a new windows (not web based) GUI tool that allows the creation of blog posts. Here is the blurb from the FAQ:

The w.bloggar is an application that acts as an interface between the user and one or more blog(s); in other words, it is a Post and Template editor, with several features and resources that the browser based blog editors do not offer.Because w.bloggar runs over the Windows GUI, it allows the user to edit posts without being connected to the Internet. Posts can be saved locally; and anytime the user wants to publish a new text, one click on the w.bloggar icon in the system tray brings up the editor, and one more click will post it to the weblog.Another great advantage of w.bloggar is that it is compatible with most of the weblog systems available, allowing an advanced user to have only one interface to several accounts hosted on several different sites, using different publishing systems.

So hopefully this post will make it to the blog server, I will say that this is a much better editor than the web based blogger editor so far !

You wrote:

... why God allowed badness to enter his creation. This, I'm sure, gets the question of free will ...

You are making the connection that evil (or the lack of good - I wish I could remember the word for those words that describe the lack of something, like "cold" is just a lack of "heat" (or movement) - this group of words is described by another word I just can't find it right now) is related to our free will. This leads me to ask the following two questions to ya:

  1. Is there any evil (or lack of good) in Heaven?
  2. Is there any free will in Heaven? On the part of the worshippers there I mean.

My point here is that if Heaven is an environment where we have free will BUT no evil (lack of good) happens, then evil (lack of good) is not necessarily caused by our free will.

I was thinking about this whilst washing up dishes this evening (I don't have an excuse for a dishwasher). I was thinking about all of the bad things that happen in the world and wondering how God could still let the perpetrators of them into Heaven. Then it dawned on me that if the perps repent - really repent - if they realized that they did a bad thing and then were so sorry for it, then those perps would have made a choice, a hard choice, but a choice nontheless.

It seems to me that this world, this Earth, this Universe, this place that has evil (lack of good) and free will is set up for us to make a choice. If we make the right choice then we go to Heaven, if we fail to make the right choice then we don't. It's screaming out to me, "test, test, test".

"Love thy neigbour as yourself" is very much along the lines of The Golden Rule "treat others as you wish to be treated". I'm all for it. Many of us though follow the path of "I'll treat this person as I think they want to be treated" or "I'll treat this person in this way or that because I am smarter or better than they are". I've been guilty of it of course, when I feel that way I now hopefully recognize it enough to take a hold of myself and stop. I rarely bite now when people are deliberately obtuse - or even try to provoke me - because I know they are letting themselves down, in just the same way as I let myself down when I am like that back.

Note: I've noticed that the more you don't bite the more some people try to get you to bite. It's quite funny (as in "ha ha" :-)

Yes I agree about actresses who fail to grow old gracefully, men seem to get away with it better somehow. Sean Connery was still pulling them in at 60+ for instance. And isn't Harrison Ford signed up to do another Raiders (4) of the Lost Ark?

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