There’s a tension between the idea that ‘God can do anything’ and ‘I have free will’. This tension tends to get caught up in arguments about whether or not God could have created a world that would not have allowed for the separation between Him and man.
And whether or not those arguments are valid or realistic isn’t important to me. I think the conversation between those things misses a point that I find hard to articulate.
When God is walking through the Garden with Adam and Eve, I can only imagine the questions they had. There must have been thousands of questions, and thousands of answers surrounding them.
What is outside the Garden? Are there more animals than we’ve seen? Tell me the story of creation again…
What is the Tree?
The question hangs in the air.
God turns to look at the Tree, the Tree that holds a fruit that changes men’s hearts, that opens their eyes to see things differently. The Tree that He’s told them not to eat from.
He tells them that it’s a Tree that gives knowledge, but what it gives isn’t the same as learning. That there are consequences to this knowledge, and that to eat of it would come with a higher cost than can be explained.
They turn from the Tree, and despite the questions and the looks that His people give the Tree, he makes no moats, He builds no fences, and the Tree is not removed. The Creator leaves the option of the Tree open. He knows that a choice will have to be made, and He gives Men a chance to choose.
If I believe that God is good, and that He has created us in such a way that we can have a good life, then He must have created life in the way that is best for us.
That His choice to give us free will, with all the potential for us to make the wrong choices, is the way that gives us the chance for the best possible life.
That this gift is one of the greatest gifts that we could have possibly been given. And we sit and argue over whether the gift could have been given to us differently, as if the One who knows all things and has a view of life that is above what we can imagine hasn’t thought of an option that we have. We’ve lost sight of how remarkable and profound the gift actually is, because we wish we hadn’t been given the option to fail.
God must have a reason for giving us the life and capabilities we have, and while we can take all the time we want to discuss options that aren’t, and ultimately will never be, available to us, maybe we should instead examine the gift as if the Gift Giver has already contemplated all the options that could have been, and chose the one that provides both Him and us the opportunity to have a relationship unlike any other.
So I am left with choices of my own. I hold the same position as Adam and Eve did — will I hear the voice of the One that made me and cling to what He says, or will I turn to make my own choice? The gift that we have been given, and by extension that we give to our children after us, must come with the recognition that it is grander than we can recognize. We have a choice with this as well, we can stand before it and argue about what God could have done differently, which is rooted in the assumption that we have considered something He has not. Or we can receive it as given, understanding that this is another gift from our Father that we cannot repay in any way and trust in the One who left the Tree standing.
There’s a search in a Garden now, and not for the first time.
A friend greets his teacher, hailing Him and giving him a kiss to show honor, and familiarity. The crowd behind him holds torches waiting for someone to act, this was the signal.
Jesus looks into Judas’s eyes, and greets him.