- 14 Nov 2016 17:40
#14737133
Potemkin wrote:Precisely. The judgement of God is never arbitrary. In a sense, God merely notes a fact which is already the case - that by doing what he or she has done, the sinner has damned themselves. It's rather like the idea of excommunication - the heretic excommunicates themselves by their words or actions, and the Church merely retrospectively recognises and acknowledges that fact. That's the theory anyway.
That is true, God is not a power-hungry tyrant, merely an arbiter of natural and metaphysical law. A father or shepherd who attempts to guide his people to the light, but leaves them the free will to wander in the dark, much like the devil himself who was not content merely being the most beautiful of God's angels, but wanted to be his own God.
He understands that Death, when we have finished the part that was assigned to us, is the reward of Love. And he apprehends the truth that the greatest happiness ever granted to a man is the privilege of being happy in the hour of his death.