The Sunflower: Conforming the Will of Man to the Will of God
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The Sunflower: Conforming the Will of Man to the Will of God
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780884654605 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Holy Trinity Publications |
| Publication date: | 09/01/2018 |
| Edition description: | None |
| Pages: | 352 |
| Sales rank: | 891,670 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d) |
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CHAPTER 1
Discerning the Will of God and Conforming to It
I
The beginning of all wisdom, given to us by the most exalted Divine Wisdom, our Lord Jesus Christ, is our faithful fashioning of ourselves — in all actions and words — to the will of God. Our Saviour taught us this truth during His earthly life by word and deed and by preaching and parable. His own life was a model of the Christian life, the only life worthy of emulation.
In order to explain this need to conform our will to His, the Holy Fathers offer two fundamental truths:
1. Our success in the Christian life depends entirely on how well we submit our will to the will of God. The more complete our submission to the divine will, the more fruitful and successful our spiritual life will be. Everyone knows that a Christian's perfection is founded on love for God and fellow man. All the books of the Holy Scriptures are filled with proof of this: "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind'. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself'. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets" (Matthew 22:37–40). "And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love" (1 Corinthians 13:13). "But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection" (Colossians 3:14).
In a word, the fulfillment of God's Law depends entirely on our love for God and for every human being. Love must be the foundation of all our actions. This is the fashioning of the will of man to the will of God. Whatever God wants, I want as well. Whatever God does not want, I do not want either. There is nothing more powerful than such love! This is the opinion of Blessed Jerome and other wise Fathers.
2. Nothing (except sin) occurs without God's will. Chance (fortuna, ? t???) — whether good or evil — is not something real. It is merely the dreamy reverie of pagans, who imagine, in their ignorance, a certain divinity named Fortune, who has alleged power to bring happiness or misfortune in the lives of people or even entire nations. Blessed Augustine, mocking the ignorance of the pagans, asked them, "For what reason is your goddess Fortune sometimes good, sometimes evil? Maybe she stops being a goddess when she is angry, turning instead into a hateful demon?" Christian wisdom completely rejects such a divinity. Good and evil, life and death, poverty and wealth — all these depend exclusively on the Lord. This is obvious and is self-evident in the Holy Scriptures.
II
Everything in the world, even that which appears to be evil (except sin), occurs by the will of God. Theologians explain this in the following manner. The beginning of all evil is sin. Each sin consists of (1) a cause (causa, a?t?a) and (2) its necessary consequences, which God corrects by warnings, chastisements, and eventually death. The cause of sin is the self-will of a proud sinner; punishment for sin in general, being a bitter consequence of sin's cause, occurs by the will of God solely for sin's correction (chastisement) or elimination (death).
Thus, if we remove the cause of sin (self-will) from our understanding of sin, we will clearly see that not even one of its bitter or evil consequences occurs without God's permission. Both the bitterness of personal sin and natural disasters — hunger, drought, storms at sea, and other events that do not occur directly as a result of man's sin — all occur by the will of God. All human misfortunes and sorrows stem from God's will for the accomplishment of the righteous aims of divine providence; only sin is hateful to God (just as evil is hateful to good or lies are hateful to truth); however, God allows sin, lest He destroy humanity's free will. Therefore, this will of God that allows sin is also called divine economy or divine providence. Everything that we normally call evil (except sin, which is evil par excellence) occurs by the will of God.
This is a fundamental principle that must not be forgotten; for it is very wise, necessary, and pious to understand that every evil, sorrow, or misfortune is a salvific punishment sent by God for our improvement. However, it is not God who is the cause of the fault (i.e., our sin) that inexorably brings His just punishment in its wake. From this, we can make the following conclusion: Since everything in the world occurs by God's command and will, it is our duty to accept everything that God sends to us without complaint, thereby fully submitting to His will. By doing this, we will conform our will to His divine will, never ascribing anything in the world to blind chance, as did the ancient pagans. Darkened by polytheism, they ascribed human prosperity either to special divinities or to blind chance. Their misfortune they ascribed to the ignorance and evil intentions of other people. These ignorant reveries of the ancients are entirely inappropriate for Christians and should be rejected outright. It is inexcusable to think in this way: this or that happened because this or that person came to hate me, or harmed me with slander or aspersions; everything would have been different if this or that person was well disposed toward me or if this or that person had spoken on my behalf. Such complaints are useless, unwise, and unhelpful. On the contrary, it is much better to accept all misfortunes with the words "This is the Lord's will." As we have already mentioned, everything — good and evil — occurs by the will of God.
III
Many delude themselves when they think that only natural disasters (floods, earthquakes, failed harvests, sinkholes, rising prices, harmful atmospheric conditions, epidemics, sudden death) occur by the will of God, since for the most part such misfortunes have no immediate relation to sins. Such delusional people imagine that the unfortunate consequences of human malfeasance (angry words, mockery, fraud, forgery, theft, robbery, insults by word or action, physical harm inflicted on others) occur without God's permission or will. Only human anger and fallen human will, they say, cause such evil. Therefore, not only in ancient times but even today we often hear complaints such as these: "The lack of food and other necessities of life are a result not of God's will but of greed among the people." Such complaints are typical of people who do not know and do not fear God. Such complaints are unworthy of a Christian and should be cast out into utter darkness.
Here is an example. A man who desires to deprive his neighbor of all property creeps up to a house in secret, unnoticed by anyone. He places flammable materials under the house, lights them, and creeps away just as secretly. Soon the house is on fire; the flame grows; the fires leap on the wind to ignite nearby buildings. People rush from all over to help put out the fire and protect adjacent buildings from damage. The arsonist is among the people ostensibly helping to put out the fire, but he has a different intention. Taking advantage of the confusion, he steals various things from the houses, apparently to save them from the fire. When in reality/actuality, he keeps them for himself.
All these actions of the arsonist, though they are the direct cause of the destruction of the victim's house and property, are no different from any natural disaster (if we do not consider the evil intention of the arsonist, but look at the damage in and of itself). They are from God in the same way as lightning that strikes a man or burns down a house, or a tornado that carries away a farmer's collected hay. In a sense, the arsonist is merely another form of a natural disaster. He can neither enter the house, nor leave it, nor light the house on fire without God's permission.
However, the arsonist's will is evil, his intention sinful. The reason for this evil is not God, but the free will of the arsonist. This is his sin, even if God allowed him to accomplish his evil intention, for of course God could have prevented the arsonist if it were His will. The Lord did not stop the arsonist, but allowed the evil to happen, according to His righteous judgment. The reasons why God allows such things to happen will be more fully considered in subsequent sections.
IV
As for accidental physical injuries, they also have the same cause as deliberate physical injury inflicted by a criminal. Both are allowed by God, as we will see from the following example.
Let us imagine that someone injures his leg. He cannot walk properly; although he tries to walk, it is difficult for him. He has a natural desire to walk, but he cannot, not because he desired to inflict an injury on himself, but because this injury was an accident. However, the comparison between accidental injury and physical assault cannot be carried further than this. The essential difference between them is that the accidental injury occurs exclusively by God's permission, whereas a premeditated assault is not the work of God's will (for it is the creation of a perverted self-will, typical of a fallen reasoning creature, something that God merely allows, but does not will). God does not merely prohibit sinful action, but He also does not help us do what our fallen will demands, neither does He sanction our departure from the way of righteousness and His Law.
God is not the source of our moral fall — the Fall is the only true evil in the world — and by definition cannot be. "His eye is too pure to see evil, and You are not able to look upon affliction" (Habakkuk 1:13). "Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity" (Psalm 44:8). Therefore, it is undoubtedly true that all calamities that result from secondary causes — whether human or not — occur by the will of God. They are sent down by His mighty right hand, His foresight, and His providence.
Beloved reader, it is God Who directs His hand to your chastisement. God prompts the tongue of the one who ridicules or slanders you. God gave the devil authority to overthrow you. God Himself, by the world of Prophet Isaiah, confirms this, saying, "For I am the Lord God. There is no God besides Me, and you have not known Me ... I am He who prepared light and made darkness, who makes peace and creates troublesome things. I am the Lord God who does all these things" (Isaiah 45:5, 7). The Prophet Amos expresses it even more vividly: "If evil should be in a city, has not the Lord brought it?" (Amos 3:6). It is as if he were saying, "There is not a single calamity that can occur without God's will, even if the evil intention of men provides the inspiration, means, and strength to accomplish it."
Thus God, desiring to punish King David for his sins of adultery with Bathsheba and Uriah's murder, allowed Absalom's incestuous union with his stepmother. God said, through the Prophet Nathan, "Behold, I will raise up adversity against you from your own house, and I will take your wives before your eyes, and give them to your neighbor [Absalom] and he shall lie with your wives in the sunlight. For you did it secretly, but I will do this before all Israel in the sunlight" (2 Kingdoms 12:11–12).
Blessed Augustine expressed the same thought beautifully, saying, "Thus God corrects the righteous through the unrighteous." At the same time, God's justice often uses unrighteous kings and evil princes as instruments to teach the righteous patience and to punish the evil for their crimes and transgressions. We see many such examples in ancient times, when God revealed His will through the evil-intentioned strivings and actions of unrighteous people, with the purpose of accomplishing His righteous judgments over those who are guilty before Him. As a loving father punishes his children with a switch for misbehaving — but later, seeing their improvement, caresses them and throws the switch into the fire — God punishes people who pervert their morality through fallen acts and falseness. Here is an example.
God, through the Prophet Isaiah, threatened the depraved nation of Israel with destruction and the utter desolation of Palestine by the Assyrians, saying,
Woe to the Assyrians! The rod of My anger and wrath are in their hands. I will send My wrath against a lawless nation; and I will order My people to seize spoils and plunder, to trample down their cities, and turn them into dust. However, he does not think in the same way, nor does he consider the same thing in his soul; but his heart will change, so as to utterly destroy many nations. (Isaiah 10:5–7)
Here God clearly shows that the Assyrians perform His will, though they do not know it. God calls them the instruments of wrath and the rod of His anger against the lawlessness of the Israelites. Therefore, He ascribes the punishment to Himself: "I send them," God says, "to take spoils from Israel and to humble those who do not submit to Me, those who raise themselves up in their own estimation. They have rejected their faith in the One God, and they have preferred the pagan idols with their mad and cruel rites and sacrifices."
As for the King of Assyria, his own thoughts (while fulfilling the will of God) are quite different. He is sure that he is doing all this according to his own will, and he will not listen to reason, but will rush forward to kill and annihilate the nations, but in the end his actions serve the will of God. However, when the war against Assyria has the needed effect and inspires the repentance of Israel, then woe to that rod, woe to the Assyrian, for all of them, like a useless switch, will be thrown into the fire. We must assess in the same light all righteous chastisement allowed by God for our sins.
The Roman Emperor Titus, while walking around the walls during the siege of Jerusalem, saw pits full of dead and mutilated bodies. He sighed heavily and, raising his hands and eyes to heaven, said, "Merciful God! This is not my doing!"
V
Some people might ask, "If it is true that all calamities come by the will of God, then is it not pointless to oppose it?" Is it not wrong to take medicines for sickness? Why should we raise armies against an invading force? Why do we not willingly give him the keys to our fortresses, why do we not eagerly welcome him into our homeland for our own destruction? Why do we not emulate the Blessed Lupus of Troyes, who welcomed Attila the Hun with the following words: "I greet you Attila, scourge of God!"?
In answer, the Apostle Paul says, "[Do] not think [of such things] more highly than [you] ought to think, but think soberly" (Romans 12:3). In other words, do not reason drawing upon the categories of the fallen world, but rather with humble understanding being always cognizant of the higher order of divine providence. In this spirit of sobriety, let us try to resolve these seeming contradictions. It is obvious that wars and other such calamities occur with the will of God. However, this does not mean that we must not arm ourselves against enemies or not take medicine to heal our illnesses, considering such things to be contrary to the will of God. Scholastic theologians distinguish two types of divine will — voluntas signi, or the will of God according to His sign, and voluntas benepaciti, or the will of God according to His good pleasure. The first is not important for our discussion; we have already spoken enough of it. However, while voluntas benepaciti continues in this world, we cannot fully know in advance God's intention for us; we will only fully understand it afterward.
Let us try to explain this using the example of physical illness. No matter what the direct natural cause of the illness, there is no doubt that the sickness occurs by the will of God. However, the sick man has no idea how long God intends the sickness to continue, and so it is not contrary to God's will to use whatever means necessary to heal the sickness. If, after various medicines, he remains ill, then he can be sure that it is God's will that he patiently endure a prolonged and serious illness.
Let every sick person humbly consider his disease in such a light. Let him remember that is it pleasing to God to keep him in his bed of sickness. Still, the sick man does not know whether or not it is God's good intention for this particular sickness to be fatal; therefore, he can seek any means of healing or relief or consolation without it being considered sinful. To prove the blamelessness of seeking medical help: if God does not will to restore the sick man to health, He can easily prevent any medicines from being effective.
Enemies and wars should be considered in a similar light. God allowed enemies to conquer Israel many times in order to prevent that nation's disorderly conduct and forgetfulness of their God. As long as the Israelites accepted God's hand in these invasions, they fought their invaders off. However, when Jeremiah told them that it was God's will for them to submit to Nebuchadnezzar, they refused, and were sorely punished for it. Similarly, if a fire cannot be put out — despite all the efforts of the firemen — then it is obvious that God has judged that this house must burn, but not arbitrarily. Rather, God allows such calamities to test the patience of His friends and to punish His enemies. All other misfortunes and misadventures can be judged likewise.
(Continues…)
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Table of Contents
Editor's Preface ix
Part I 1
1 Discerning the Will of God and Conforming to It 3
2 Why Does God Allow Evil? 13
3 How to Recognize God's Will in His Inscrutable Judgments 21
4 How to Determine God's Will in All Events and Actions 31
5 How God's Will Is Revealed in Jesus Christ, and How We Can Conform Ourselves to It 43
Part II 51
6 On Completely Committing One's Life, Will, and Works to the Will of God 53
7 How Can Human Will Become Pleasing and Worthy of Union with God's Will? 57
8 How Human Will Can Conform to Divine Will in Various Everyday Circumstances 71
9 On the Meaning and Significance of the Prayer "Thy Will Be Done on Earth as It Is in Heaven," and with What Spiritual Disposition One Must Utter These Words 85
10 Which Signs Indicate That Our Will Agrees with God's Will? 95
Part III 113
1 The Peace of Soul That Comes from Following God's Will 115
12 Is It Possible to Avoid Sorrow Entirely? 125
13 Fashioning One's Will to God's is a Pleasing Sacrifice to God 135
14 Human Perfection Is Contingent on the Coordination between One's Desires and Actions and God's Will as Revealed in the Law or in One's Own Life 145
15 Conforming the Human Will with the Will of God Is the Greatest Good in Life 149
16 The Agreement of the Human Will with the Divine Is Truly Heaven on Earth, the Only Genuine Blessedness in Life 157
Part IV 165
17 What Prevents Us from Living According to God's Will 167
18 The Dangers of Irrational, Unrestrained, and Deeply Rooted Self-Will 177
19 How Our Will Can Become Obedient to the Will of God in All Things, Even in That Which We Do Not Desire 189
20 An Instructive Example for People Who Refuse to Follow God's Direction 197
21 Factors That Incline Us to Disobey God 203
22 We Must Be Ready to Reject Ourselves and Submit Our Will to God Both during Times of Trouble and in the Hour of Our Death 209
Part V 219
23 The Agreement between Human and Divine Will Cannot Occur without Complete Trust in God 221
24 The Essence of Trust in God 229
25 By What Means We Can Confirm within Ourselves a Firm Trust in God, Especially in Times of Trouble? 235
26 How the Saints Trusted God 245
27 The Many and Diverse Gifts That God Gives to Those Who Trust in Him 251
28 Trust in God Weakens and Dies without Acknowledgment of His Providence 257
29 How Greatly God Provides for All Our Needs in Life 267
30 God's Providence for the Righteous 275
31 God's Providence for Friends and Enemies 283
32 Concerning Widespread Doubt or Weak Faith in God 291
33 Knowledge of God's Providence Leads to Greater Trust in God and This Trust Gives Birth to Agreement with God and His Holy Will 307
Appendix: A Short Biography of the author of The Sunflower, St John Maximovich, Archbishop of Chernigov and Metropolitan of Tobolsk 315
Notes 319
Subject Index 325
Scripture Index 335