God’s will vs My will
Can Incarnation help us to understand better?
An interesting point of divergence as we talk to a spiritual person can be the question of God’s will. Yes, I believe in God, and how should I understand the relation between God’s will and my will; are they in conflict?
Is this image a good understanding for God’s will? God’s will and My will are at two sides of the line. At the left corner, it is 100% God’s will, and at the right side it is 100% my will. At different points along the line, it varies. As we may from left to right, percentage of God’s will decreases and percentage of my will increases.
Jesus says at the garden of Gethsemane, “Not my will, but thy will be done”. Yes, Jesus denied his will and followed father’s will. So this analysis should be right. All Christians are invited to make this spiritual journey, moving from right to left, growing in the percentage of God’s will in our lives.
How do I find myself not so comfortable with this image? The first question to ask is, if God give us our free will, is it only to submit it to God’s will and forget fully my will? Or is there another way where following God’s will is also an action according to my will? Secondly Jesus invites us to be friends and not servants; or the freedom is an essential gift given to all human beings in creations. And thirdly, even though Jesus uttered those beautiful lines in the garden of Gethsemane, I find it difficult to say that Jesus went to the passion only to fulfil God’s will. It was surely God’s will, but also completely his decision. He had his own questions and struggles, but he made his own the father’s will (Father’s will is not that son should die, but that consequences of preaching the Kingdom has to be faced by the Son, just like any other person). The making of his own was Jesus’ decision in full freedom.
The theology of incarnation can help us to understand the dialectic between God’s will and my will. In incarnation, the son of God became a human being. Jesus was fully human and fully divine. Or to put in a technical theological language, one person (Jesus Christ) and two natures (human & divine). Interestingly it is not 50–50, or 25–75 or 80–20 or anything like that.
Beyond the logic of mathematical addition, it is 100–100. Fully human and fully divine. I can’t remember exactly, but one of my professors used to apply this theological understanding to the question of determinism vs free will, and I wish to do the same here to the question above. The different aspects of the incarnation needn’t be limited to that act, but the echoes can be seen in other aspects too.
So is there a possibility of 100% God’s will and 100% my will? May be this is a perfection, and I may not fully reach there? But can I atleast reach like 99% God’s will (it is difficult to know god’s will with full certitude) and 80% my will (I have grown only to that level of freedom with regard to this situation). The benefit of this is that I am in tune with God’s will, but it is also my will. I chose it in freedom.
Freedom is a God given gift to the creation and I use that freedom to make this choice. Even after knowing that God’s will is something in a certain case, I might take a certain time to grow in that freedom that I can make that choice also as my own.
In Christian life, the only thing that allows us to align ourselves in freedom (or align our will) with God’s will is love. Or ensuring that love is the linking factor between my will and God’s will is the best way (atleast I hope so) to live life as a free person in Christ.
