One nation under God

How much does God get involved in the making of history? This question came to mind yesterday in our C.S. Lewis Society meeting while talking about war and what the gospel teaches us about it.

On one end of the theoretical spectrum, God controls everything that has happened, and we’re then like puppets on a string. All is predetermined, following some grand cosmic script that was drafted eons ago. There are no improvisations. It’s also impossible to forget your lines.

At the other end, God set the world in motion a long time ago, in accordance with natural laws, and he’s now sitting back and observing it all from afar without interfering — the clockmaker God.

And neither of these sits well with me. On the one hand, “men are free according to the flesh” (2 Nephi 2:27); on the other, there are plenty of accounts in the scriptures where God steps in to alter the natural course of events: the birth of Jesus, the Spirit inspiring Columbus (1 Nephi 13:12), etc. So it’s clearly something in between.

The particular thought that gave birth to all this yesterday was the Revolutionary War. Did it have to happen the way it did? I’ve often felt that way — that consequential and earth-shaking events were sketched out beforehand and set in concrete, and that’s just the way it had to have happened. It’s the same sort of feeling I have when I read the amazing stories in the scriptures — Moses had to part the Red Sea, and he was a character acting according to the script, and of course it was going to turn out that way. Nephi built a boat because that’s what the script said. But I don’t really like that idea, because it strips away some (most?) of our agency (puppets again). Nor does it allow me to liken the scriptures (or even other historical records) unto myself, for there is a seemingly uncrossable chasm between “them” — these apparently perfect examples who feel almost like storybook heroes — and little old me, who lives in the real world where things like that don’t really happen. I much prefer the idea (and I think it’s a true one) that it really is up to us, largely — that Moses and Nephi and George Washington and all the rest were like me, making choices on a day to day basis, sometimes discouraged, sometimes raised to greatness by something nobler than themselves. And their achievements seem to me more amazing and miraculous if they were teetering on the edge, so to speak, if the possibility of failure was breathing right up against their necks and a slight gust of wind could have pushed them off the cliff, and yet they made the right choice, they stood tall, they did not falter. That’s beautiful to me. If it all just “had to happen,” it’s robbed of some of its majesty and poetry. The risk of these things not happening, while dangerous, makes them worth more than diamonds in my estimation.

The ultimate example is Jesus Christ and the Atonement. Yes, he was perfect, but there’s two ways to look at that. The first is that he was incapable of choosing wrong, and thus made no wrong decisions. The second is that he certainly was capable of sin, just as much as any of us, and yet he chose the right unfailingly, never wavering. That is far nobler and grander than being perfect-by-default. When I think of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane or on the cross at Golgotha, I’ve always subconsciously thought of it as a scripted event (since the prophets obviously saw it hundreds of years before). But I like to think that there really was a chance, a definite risk, that Jesus could give in. Satan was no doubt there, hounding him and shrieking in his ears that he was no good and pointing out that the Father was silent and had apparently abandoned him. It would have been so easy to give up. We get a sense of that in his words to the Father: “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me.” The difficulty of his task, combined with the demoralizing battery of doubt which the devil pounded him with, undoubtedly pushed him to the very edge of his capabilities. If it were not so, then the whole thing wouldn’t have meant so much. But in descending below them all — which meant hanging by a thread above the jaws of hell — Christ’s sacrifice meant everything, to him and to us. That is why his atonement matters so much to me.

Returning to our original question, it’s clear that we have agency and are expected to use it, but it’s also evident that God does influence certain events. The question, then, is to what degree?

Perhaps it’s weighted more toward agency. God has certain things he needs accomplished, so he inspires people to do things that will help achieve that end. Imagine a game of chess, where God is the grandmaster and we’re the pieces. He is playing against Satan. By the rules of the game (which were set up by God), they can’t physically move the pieces except in rare occasions. No force allowed. Instead, they have to whisper (or shout) to their pawns and their knights, their queens and their kings, where to go. And each piece can decide whether it will obey. Often it does, but sometimes it doesn’t, and when that happens, God will use some other piece to pull off his strategy. He may also choose to try to get us to listen (by heating up the square beneath us till it hurts, for example), but in the end it’s our choice.

In other words, taking this back to the Revolutionary War, perhaps it didn’t have to happen the way it did. Perhaps God left them to their own devices, knowing they would do the things necessary to bring about America. And certainly there were occasions where his hand was evident, gently motioning the way to go, but I can’t help but wonder if he tries to stay out of things as much as possible.

And then we must ask why. What is the purpose of our mortal existence? To gain bodies, yes, but more importantly, to prepare to become gods and goddesses in the hereafter. Gods choose for themselves — wisely, of course — and they aren’t puppets. And we have to learn to use that agency to the fullest, choosing righteousness and honor and virtue and courage and integrity and love over all the evils that surround us. The more God “interferes,” the less we learn to be agents in ourselves, and the more his purposes are foiled.

I don’t mean that we have no contact with him, nor that he never interacts with men. Quite the opposite. But I think that those interactions are things which we can choose to obey or ignore (and ignore at our peril). God doesn’t force us to do anything. That’s my point. It’s exhilarating, really — no one wants to be an automaton, after all. Instead we “should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of [our] own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness; for the power is in [us], wherein [we] are agents unto [ourselves]. And inasmuch as men do good they shall in nowise lose their reward.” (D&C 58:27-28)

“By small and simple things are great things brought to pass.” Agency empowers us little folk, and in doing so it is epic, grand, and glorious beyond comparison.

I tend to think of it in this way: events are fixed, people are changable. The great events of history are scripted to happen via someone. It’s simply your choice whether you become a part of it, or if someone else takes your place. This seems true on the grand scale: the Kingdom of the Lord will prevail, with or without any one individual on earth. The only question is which side you will be found on.

Similarly, I had the thought in Relief Society a while back that many people at the time of the restoration were being prepared to seek the truth. If Joseph Smith had made himself unworthy, were these others God’s back-up plan? Was there someone else who would have been the prophet of the restoration and simply messed it up?

There’s a great novel in there somewhere . . . kind of like OSC’s Pastwatch, only backwards.

That’s uncomfortable question to ask because both sides present situations we tend not to like. They even seem contradictary, being automatons or a God who doesn’t seem to be “in control” as much as we think. The short answer is I have no idea which way it works. The whole “knowing the end from the beginning” thing makes me a little uncomfortable because it seems to infer that my end is already known and “destined”, thus effectively removing my ability to do much about it.

But from my point of view, I have all power to affect my life and so I can look at myself as a completely independent agent. Maybe I am nothing more than a puppet on a string, but if that is the case then I as the puppet do not know and continue on in blissful ignorance.

One thing I’ve noticed about past heroes is that we have a tendency to deify them. I have little doubt that the account of Moses has been exaggerated in some fashions and it is well known that George Washington has been made to be more than he is, as has Columbus, on occasion. Hence my belief that in order to be seen as a hero, one of the classifications has to be that you are dead. This way truths can be embellished without the hindrance of the person actually being there. Thus I still try to see them as ordinary people in life, but “chance” brought their life into the center of attention in history.

As far as destiny goes, it’s one of the things I grudgingly put to the side of my mind to be answered at a later time. This isn’t to say I haven’t had a few ideas of how it might be. For example, God could be a hyper-dimensional being as would all resurrected beings be. They would have ample power to bend space-time to their needs (the conduit Joseph Smith describes makes sense in this theory). Time would also have entirely different contexts and would be something well beyond my ken.

Another possibility stemmed from the theory that there are an infinite number of universes making a multiverse wherein all possibilities that have been, are, and will be are played out in a parallel universe created for it. From this I wondered if instead God, having this “all-knowing” thing going for Him, knows the end from the beginning because when things were set into motion, He was capable of seeing all possibilities and all possible ends. Then as time goes on, certain outcomes become more favored.

These are, of course, just the musings of a mortal dabbling in things he doesn’t understand. In the end, I’m willing to put off an explanation until much later and just continue living day to day. It probably wouldn’t make much difference if I knew anyways.