Author: Richard Graham
“Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service, you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His already. So that when we talk of a man doing anything for God or giving anything to God, I will tell you what it is really like. It is like a small child going to its father and saying, ‘Daddy, give me sixpence to buy you a birthday present.’” —C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity , from Book 4, Chapter 11: “The New Men.”
This is why God, Who has free will, created us in His image, in part, by giving us free will as well. The only way a person can show gratitude to God is by using his/her free will, to say ‘thank You’ to God, to obey God as to His instructions to us, and/or to obey God by discerning what He would like from us. We can only do these things by understanding God’s character, will, or image, and then obeying or giving to Him what He would like from us. In the new age, everything will be praise and gratitude to God.
This is why Chesterton once said that the first sin was ingratitude. Everything we feel, think, speak, and do is either ingratitude or gratitude.
Then, obviously, God has never created a person by determining from before the creation of the universe exactly what that person would feel, think, speak, or act in any way. God didn’t create robots. Without free will, we would be robots. God created human beings to be His children, partners, servants, and donkeys. PTL! —Richard Graham
