Every time we say the Lord’s Prayer we say – with one of those mysterious optatives – “Thy will be done, in earth as it is in Heaven.” So that with each recital of the most famous Christian prayer, we brush up against one of faith’s most stubborn mysteries: the Will of God. We know that we ought to do God’s will; we know that our will ought to be aligned with God’s; but how do we know what God wills?
When we are dealing with our own choices, the subject is not terribly hard. God the Father may be silent to our clumsy ears, but we know that “he who has seen me has seen the Father” and so, when faced with a choice or a decision, we can ask ourselves some version of the question WWJD -- What Would Jesus Do? The answer to that is not always simple, as there are many situations in an average life that did not present themselves to Yeshua when He walked the earth, or that the chroniclers of the Gospels did not see fit to include in their accounts. But still, we can often have an idea of the way we might usefully follow.
Where it get much more difficult is when it comes to distinguishing God’s will in the life and the world around us. Yeshua was not clear on the topic. He points out that when the tower of Siloam fell and killed a number of bystanders, those who died were not greater sinners that others (Luke 13:4-5); but he does not say whether or not God willed the tower’s fall or the people’s death. He says that not a sparrow falls “without your Father” (Matthew 10:29) but the Greek áneu “without” does not decide whether it is without the Father’s knowledge or without His will. And in both cases, the point he is making is different.
Does God “will” all that occurs? There might be a case to be made to that effect: He is, after all, supposed to both all-knowing (omnisciens) and all-powerful (omnipotens); does it not follow that nothing occurs without His willing it? Thomas Aquinas, in the twelve articles on the Will of God in his Summa theologica, comes uncomfortably close to this position. And I say “uncomfortably” because when we consider such an explanation, we almost universally rebel. If (to take a recent happening in France) a madwoman tortures and murders a 12-year-old girl, did God will that? Does God will the suffering and death of the Ukrainian civilians in Boucha? Does God will the death of 600 people in a tsunami in Indonesia?
This very proper revolt on our part leads some people to dismiss any idea of God’s existence: if such a God existed, they say, He would be a monster. But for those of us whose faith, though put to a severe test by this, subsists, it does so perhaps because of a third attribute we ascribe to God: not only all-powerful and all-knowing but all-good. This raises two questions: 1) how, then, do the events I described relate to His will? and 2) how, in view of a world in which such things occur, should we align our wills to His?
I have previously written about the first question: the fact that His nature is love implies that He must of necessity allow us free will. Love’s very nature means that its reciprocity can never be forced or commanded. This, then, explains the occasional flourishing of human evil. He cannot command us to return His love: it is the only limit to omnipotence. The horrifying effects of natural phenomena, on the other hand, resist explanation. One can only assume that He, for reasons of His own, has decided not to micromanage His creation. (It is interesting that, even if we accept this, we still have an instinct for spontaneously giving thanks when we have a narrow escape.)
The second question is the real purpose of this post. It assumes that we do not, and cannot, know whether anything that happens to us does so with, or because of, God’s will; and that He is much more concerned with our reaction to the happening than with the event itself. The point Yeshua was making about the sparrow was not whether the Father intended it to fall or not, but that if it falls, it does not do so at random and anonymously. And you, he said, are worth a lot more than a sparrow: hence, he did not say but did not need to, at the moment of any occurrence that involves you, you are surrounded by your Father’s loving attention. And hence, we may conclude, it is at that moment that we may or may not do His will. Where His infinite care for us operates, but cannot command us because of love and free will, is in relation to our reaction to the, to any, event.
He does not will that we shall win four million dollars in a lottery; but He pays close attention to what we think, feel, and do when we have won it. He did not will that such-and-such a young woman should die of breast cancer; but He surrounded her with His loving spirit during the ordeal (whether or not she recognised that spirit’s origin) and He attends with love and hope to the reactions of her family and friends.
At no time is discerning and/or doing His will easy. The crusaders who in 1096 AD went into battle shouting “Deus lo volt! Deus lo volt!” (“God wills it!” in Romance Latin) were perhaps, to our modern minds, rash if not painfully misguided; but are we sure we would feel as strongly if that phrase accompanied a Ukrainian counterattack? A special degree of caution is perhaps needed when trying to discern God’s will for human beings in the plural and collective; it would appear wise to practice humility in discernment and limit ourselves, as much as possible, to individual matters.
Finally, we should not forget that Yeshua both taught and showed us the overwhelming and permanent need for prayer. Aligning our will to God’s can only be done after, and in, prayer. Perhaps this is a secondary meaning of the optative. We are not simply told “Do God’s will”; we are invited into a process that involves much more than our individual selves. “God’s will be done.” Amen.
