Heaven on Earth

A world without pain. Ahh . . . how wonderful does that sound? What would you give in order to have a perfect, pain-free world? Your freedom?

Imagine for a moment, if you will, what the world would look like if there was no pain, and therefore no cause of pain - no sin. A perfect, unblemished world. Now imagine that the world is only this way because the inhabitants (us) have no free will; are controlled by a higher being and are simply doing what they are told.

Would you be willing to give up the right to make your own choices? According to Lewis, free choice and a world without pain do not walk hand-in-hand.

When we were talking about this in class, there was one thought that kept nagging at me and even now seems to be the only logical thing for me to blog about. Here's my question for you: If God were to control every aspect of our lives, if we lost our free will, would humankind still find it necessary to believe in Him? Would humankind still need Him?

Isn't our "choice" to follow God part of what makes our faith so sweet? Isn't it the knowledge that he doesn't need us and still loves us, isn't that what makes us want to be better people, to try and repay the debt that Jesus cancelled for us? If God were a puppeteer, in one essence we would need him, but we wouldn't really "need" him. Does that make sense? It's really hard to transfer from my brain to computer screen.

It's my belief that if we didn't have the "choice" to follow God, that we wouldn't want him. I think that we might even come to resent him over time, if this were the case. By giving us the choice of belief or no belief, God makes it so that when we do choose to follow Him, it is something that we want with our whole hearts.

Like it or not, it is those moments of pain, grief, (insert negative human emotion here), that we are drawn closer to God, that our faith is strengthened.

If you have made it through the above ramblings, congrats! Here is my point: A world without pain would be, in my opinion, a world without God. A world without reason to believe in a higher being because everything is being provided for us and we don't have to struggle is a world that I wouldn't want to live in. It is in pain and times of turmoil that we cry out to our God and find love. I would rather live in a fallen world and have a tested and steadfast faith than live in a perfect world and go through the motions of life with a timid, inexperienced faith.

Feel free to ask me anything about my post, as I'm not entirely sure it makes any sense to anyone except myself.