Let The Consequence Follow
Albert Einstein once said that “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” If nothing is a miracle, then either God does not have a hand in our lives, or it’s not miraculous that He does. If everything is a miracle, then God is pulling all the strings, leaving nothing to chance, or to human choice. Albert Einstein was wrong. God does have a hand in our lives, but not always. He gives us advice and promptings, but then He lets us choose what paths we’ll follow, and He allows us to experience the natural results of our choices, providing miracles for us only when necessary.
Some might argue that God has a direct hand in everything, and that everything we experience is either a blessing or punishment from God. I don’t think that’s the case. I believe that God has set up a natural world with plenty of options and consequences, and now lets us act as we choose, knowing that the natural results of our choices will often be blessing or punishment enough. Because He loves us and desires our happiness, he tells us which paths to take or avoid, but His commandments are not arbitrary rules which He blesses us for keeping or curses us for breaking. Rather, they are like signs that tell us about the world we live in.
Chapter four of the Gospel Principles manual gives the example of a sign that reads “Danger - Whirlpool. No swimming allowed here.” Of course, you’re free to disregard the sign and go swimming anyway, but if you do, you may get caught in the whirlpool the sign had warned you about. That’s a natural consequence of a reckless action, not the act of a vengeful deity, throwing you into a whirlpool for having had the audacity to disregard his sign. Similarly, there may be a sign that reads “Vista Point two miles ahead.” If you follow that trail, you’ll see a breath-takingly beautiful view. The view didn’t magically appear to you as a reward for having followed the sign. The vista point had always been there; all the sign did was tell you about it.
Similarly, the commandments lead people toward joy and away from misery, not because God gives joy to those who worship Him and misery to those who don’t, but because misery and joy lie at the ends of many roads, and God’s commandments tell us which roads lead where.
However, this is not to say that God never effects our lives at all. Most of the time, God allows nature to take its course, but every once in a while, He steps in and makes a few changes. The scriptures are full of examples of such cases, but these cases are more the exception than the rule. For every miraculous event, there are billions of events that aren’t miraculous. I do believe that miracles happen. I just don’t think they happen every day.
I’m sure God could, and sometimes does, stretch out His hand and use a bit of His power, but I think that most of the time, He simply doesn’t need to. The natural consequences of our moral choices do a lot of that work for Him. All He has to do is let us make our own choices and let the consequences follow.
1 comment:
I guess a lot depends on what "miracle" means. I think of miracle as wondrous creation or event not necessarily unusual. For instance, I think a seed growing into a tree is a miracle and sunrises and definitely, babies. Whereas it sounds like you think of miracles as something unusual, different and event changing. Which I agree they can be. Also,I do not think of miracles as breaking natural laws as much as applying laws we do not know or understand.
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