Contemplation on Divine Will
The idea of divine will has allured us as long as we have had the consciousness to perceive it. Though perception and truth are often at odds. If perception and truth aligned there would be no misunderstanding. Subsequently, intrigue would be no more. If to perceive was to know truth we’d no longer need to seek it, search for it, crave it. This unknowable aspect of our own existence, and the ideas in which we’ve encased it for preservation, are the very proofs of a divine will’s existence. Whether or not it only exists as these ideas or in an observable, if not tangible, form is my aim of exploration for this essay.
First, lets explore divinity. I’d like to challenge just about everything we claim to ‘know’ about God and reframe it to one of many perceptions we humans have had and will find of an existence beyond our ability to currently comprehend. I find it foolish to deny the possibility of something (again, perceptually) greater than us intervening in our affairs; whether that be individually, as a species, or anywhere in between. It is equally foolish in my sense to rely on such intervention to always have one’s own best interest in mind and/or be of unconditional benevolence. As with all things, there is certainly nuance to the existence of divinity we know not of—assuming our perception of divinity is aligned with some truth. The most general perception of divinity (in the west) is that of an all-powerful, omnipotent, and sentient Creator of all things with special interest in humans living lives of light and love. But a question has always confounded me with this perception. Why?
The most tangible perception of divinity is nature. Indeed it is hard not to feel at the mercy of a higher power when fully immersed and away from the works of humanity. Nature is the sliver of divinity we were given to experience. I quite enjoy “nature” as the word often used to describe a soul’s predisposition or unique attunement of free will. Free will, nature, life all share a divine essence. Which, it seems to me, alludes to a greater rationale for our unique bestowment of the power of choice; a quality of our creator inherited by us… but to what end? For what purpose?
Perhaps it is to act as stewards for their creations, or as foot soldiers to fight against the all-consuming void; life’s opposite. Maybe there is no rationale for free will. Though, given this engine of purposeful parts we call the universe, I find this view unlikely and pessimistic. Despite the common phrase, a will, even divine, does not guarantee its way. A will is only as powerful as the forces the mind behind it can muster in its support. A will is subject to all of the inexhaustible external variables one might think of. In short, I see it as unlikely that there is no interference, no misinterpretation, no resistance affecting such a a will. Theology of nearly any sort makes this plain: there are agents known to be working against the divine will of creation.
As of late (for some months now, after reading Jeremy Campbell’s Grammatical Man), I have seen entropy in itself as the chief of such agents; a perfectly ‘natural’ force of the universe that inches everything towards the void over time. Degradation is taken for granted as a law of existence, so too should its opposite be perceived. While the universe, as far as we are aware, is of finite stuff, what can be made from that stuff is as close to infinite as we might comprehend. To discredit any agent of creation is to deny one’s own existence, which is lunacy. Whether this agent of creation has its own will for what is created is another matter entirely and, in the opinion of this lowly human, unknowable.
