Reflections - 'God Will Provide'

‘God Will Provide’

Words that brought order to the world

Man’s rejection of God is never final, only ambivalent. Often confused too. God comes and goes in man’s life swinging on the pendulum of resolute independence from God and prayerful dependence dictated by situations and influences. 

A God experience generally seals it in favour of God. But then, there must be an openness to experience it. God does not impose. At times He even pleads, “"Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" (Acts 9:4)

When times are good (or for some even when bad), God does not exist. There is an earnestness in the belief that man is his own creation. The belief gives man a sense of power over himself and his future. He believes his reason and his will are all that is needed to make a success of his life.

What man possesses is of his effort. To share or not to share his possessions is an individual’s decision. He is not seeking any ‘brownie’ points from God for sharing his possession or fearing any value judgment for not sharing. There is no ambivalence on moral values itself. Who is to say what is right and wrong as long as no one is complaining and the offense is not prosecutable, even if immoral or unethical?

He may be born with infirmity or is infirmed in the course of his life. It is not of any consequence to man who does not believe in God. Rightly, so. What has God to do with it in any case? God does not exist. If there are remedies to correct the maladies, they will be applied. If there aren’t then there is nothing to be done but ‘simply grit your teeth and bear it’. There may be material objects or imagined ones that he venerates. For him the object or imagined entity serves a purpose and worth the veneration.

From dust he has come and to dust he will go. That is all there is to it. Between the coming and going he will kick up some dust to build and enjoy his possessions. When he is gone, he will bequeath it or hold on to it just in case he has some use for it in his afterlife.

Acknowledging God’s existence, does call for a certain probity in life. It would involve some examination of conscience. Best avoided if it impedes the goal, though. Human judgement works well enough. A man who sits on a hot stove will rise again. Every illegal, immoral, unethical act can be wished away. It only matters if caught, proven guilty, and if punished.  

This is ancient history, not modern history, though no arguing, the resemblance is certainly uncanny.

Even earlier to the Greeks and the wanton exploits and notoriety of their over 100 odd Gods; there was one for every human need, want and purpose: Zeus (Roman name, Jupiter, god of sky and weather); Hera (Juno, Goddess of Marriage); Poseidon (Neptune, Sea Earthquake Horses); Demeter (Ceres, Agriculture and Grain); Hestia (Vesta, Hearth and Home); Aphrodite (Venus, Love and Beauty); Hermes (Mercury, Messenger Trade and Thieves); Apollo (Apollo, Prophesy and Healing); Athena (Minerva, Wisdom War and Craft); Artemis (Diana, Hunting Animals and Children); Dionysus (Bacchus, Wine and Fertility); Heracles (Hercules, Apotheosized Hero Defender of Mount Olympus); Hades (Orcus, God of the Underworld) … by no means an exhaustive list.

In the midst of all of this mayhem and manic madness of infidelity, debauchery and cannibalism (the Greeks were great story tellers) came Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, the Prophets and the Abrahamic religions - Judaism and Islam. From Judaism emerged Christianity with Christ as the messiah, who the Jewish establishment rejected, but many Jews and Gentiles enthusiastically and penitently, embraced.

God through Abraham and his descendants brought some semblance of order to the Aristotelian world of the Greeks and yonder. Three paraphrased words that form the Abrahamic faith made the difference: ‘God Will Provide’

“…God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” “Here I am,” he answered. “Take your son,” God said, “your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. Offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you.” (Gen 22:1-2)

“Then Isaac said to his father Abraham, “My father!” “Here I am, my son,” he replied. “The fire and the wood are here,” said Isaac, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” Abraham answered, “God Himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two walked on together.

“When they arrived at the place God had designated, Abraham built the altar there and arranged the wood. He bound his son Isaac and placed him on the altar, atop the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son.

Just then, the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, “Abraham, Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied. “Do not lay a hand on the boy or do anything to him,” said the angel, “for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your only son from me.”

Then Abraham looked up and saw behind him a ram in a thicket, caught by its horns. So he went and took the ram and offered it as a burnt offering in place of his son. And Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. So to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided.” (Gen 22:7-14)

This testament of faith forms the lot of the believers in the Abrahamic religions. The dependence on God. To keep His commandments.

God provided the Law or Teaching (The Torah – the first five books - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy), the Prophets exhortations and prophesies (Nevi’im) and the inspired Writings (Ketuvim), which forms the Hebrew Bible; the Old Testament with some variation in books included in each.  

And, to operate with a conscience.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (para 1795-1802) provides interesting insights into what makes for a caring, nurturing human being when compared to the marauding savages of the past, the God-less people whose values and morality we touched on earlier.

“Conscience is man's most secret core, and his sanctuary; there he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths

“Conscience is a judgment of reason by which the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act

“For the man who has committed evil, the verdict of his conscience remains a pledge of conversion and of hope

“A well-formed conscience is upright and truthful; it formulates its judgments according to reason, in conformity with the true good willed by the wisdom of the Creator; everyone must avail himself of the means to form his conscience.

“Faced with a moral choice, conscience can make either a right judgment in accordance with reason and the divine law or, on the contrary, an erroneous judgment that departs from them.

“A human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience.

Conscience can remain in ignorance or make erroneous judgments; such ignorance and errors are not always free of guilt.

“The Word of God is a light for our path; we must assimilate it in faith and prayer and put it into practice; this is how moral conscience is formed.”

With the progress made by science, man feels he is as good as God, if not God. A sentiment shared by Stephen William Hawking, (8 Jan 1942 – 14 March 2018), a renowned theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author of ‘Brief History of Time’ who believes God served a purpose at a point in time, but not anymore.

Yet, with technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Facial and Speech Recognition, Autonomous Vehicles – which all offer great comfort to man – is also robbing man of his livelihood – and surreptitiously his freedom too.

We know that under dictatorial regimes – whose designs are almost always diabolic – spurred on by Satanic influences – as in the time of Hitler’s holocaust, these technologies can serve lethal purposes. History also tells us such diabolic designs are always defeated by the power of God. By Christ who conquered death and has vanquished the evil one. The Godly human spirit always triumphs.

For God does not deprive or punish; He provides. He seeks harmony as at the time of creation. We know this from the creation narration of Gen 1-3 and the interpretation of the Catholic Church in its Catechism of what happened (para 374-379):

“The first man was not only created good, but was also established in friendship with his Creator and in harmony with himself and with the creation around him, in a state that would be surpassed only by the glory of the new creation in Christ.

“The Church, interpreting the symbolism of biblical language in an authentic way, in the light of the New Testament and Tradition, teaches that our first parents, Adam and Eve, were constituted in an original "state of holiness and justice". This grace of original holiness was "to share in …divine life.

“By the radiance of this grace all dimensions of man's life were confirmed. As long as he remained in the divine intimacy, man would not have to suffer or die. The inner harmony of the human person, the harmony between man and woman, and finally the harmony between the first couple and all creation, comprised the state called "original justice".

“The "mastery" over the world that God offered man from the beginning was realized above all within man himself: mastery of self. The first man was unimpaired and ordered in his whole being because he was free from the triple concupiscence that subjugates him to the pleasures of the senses, covetousness for earthly goods, and self-assertion, contrary to the dictates of reason.

“The sign of man's familiarity with God is that God places him in the garden. There he lives "to till it and keep it". Work is not yet a burden, but rather the collaboration of man and woman with God in perfecting the visible creation.

“This entire harmony of original justice, foreseen for man in God's plan, will be lost by the sin of our first parents.

It should be our daily prayer that more men turn to God that we may once again live the ‘Garden of Eden’ experience that God had visualized for us.

(The male pronoun and ‘man’ and ‘men’ has been used in the article out of convenience and does not preclude the gentler, fairer, kinder and certainly more prayerful gender).