CHAPTER FIVE
FREE WILL

       We have seen, then, that it is the misuse of our free will which has caused all the trouble in the world. It turned Lucifer into Satan, the 'harmless' painter of Austria into the Tyrant of Europe. Yet without a will of our own we cease to be capable of all that we know as humanity. The problem therefore that lay before the Almighty was how to secure that a free will should always will lovingly, even though it was possible for it to do the opposite. In other words, how to bring a free will to a voluntary fixation of purpose, so that it would never turn to evil. Evil does not exist as a separate entity; it was not created by God, but is simply the result of an attitude of our own mind. When the mind changes that attitude to one of love, evil disappears. Selfishness is, and always was, a permanent possibility of the mind, but need never have been an actuality of history at all. It is impossible to avoid temptation, not even desirable, for it is by continuous rejection of its lies that the will achieves final and unchangeable hatred of evil, and love of good.

       Every argument of logic is against sin; it is obviously better to have everyone as one's friend rather than one's enemy! It is madness to provoke an Almighty God by shaking one's puny fist at Him, when one might have Him for a loving Father and Helper! There is indeed something within one, which tells the sinner to hide his sin. Only the hardened criminal boasts of it. The first sin is always concealed if possible, or excused. God has not created us so

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that it is sin which brings happiness. To take an extreme illustration, it is not the underworld which is the happy world! Sin may give momentary satisfaction, but in the end so hardens the heart that it becomes incapable of happiness and peace of mind.

       In this matter of sin, therefore, God has made it plain that He has to deal with a flock of silly sheep, who follow one another over the same precipice, and come to the same awful end. Everyone who leaves God becomes a fool, walking in the ignorance of darkness, and not realising the end of his steps. Adam had no idea that his 'one little sin' would in a few hundreds of years lead to a world of universal violence. The man who gathered sticks on the Sabbath day in the wilderness did not foresee a Jerusalem which would have its weekly rest undermined by hordes of Tyrian traders (Nehemiah 13:15-22). The selfishness of one always wakens the latent selfishness of others, till the struggle for life is universal and hard. The so-called Christian countries of Europe did not realise that their forsaking of the ways of Jesus would bring upon them the dread of the hydrogen bomb and an unimaginable future.

       Because we all go astray like fools it has not been enough for God to put into the world a Book which speaks as to wise men. That Book too often lies unopened, despised, derided, contradicted. We are shown in the parable of the Prodigal Son, God's second arrow, shot into the ears of fools, the arrow of hard experience. If God has allowed the sad ages of history to pursue their unhappy course, it is not because He is unmindful of earth's sorrows. Nay, in all our afflictions He is afflicted. It is because it was only the disillusionment of life in the far country, which brought the fool to his senses, and so back to his father. God has treated this earth as a prodigal son, that the miseries of a sinful life

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might drive it to its knees in repentance and faith.

       There is, however, a third arrow which may succeed when both the others have failed. At Calvary God has shown to mankind the depths of His love. Love will often succeed where truth and commonsense fail, and God's last effort has been to draw with the cords of a man, and that man His own Son, of whom His enemies said during His lifetime 'Behold, the world is gone after Him'. There is nothing so strong as the fixation of an eternal love. Many a man has been changed by the love of a woman; the love of God is yet more powerful and lasting.

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