....faith and life....life and faces

Man's greatness and misery

God and free man

Our affection and respect for each other often stop as soon as  the other says NO where we say YES. We want too quickly to remodel the other person according to our norms. With God, things are  different. He takes us seriously as we are. He lets us keep our freedom and our will , even if we say NO to Him. God gave man his free will  as a gift. And for this reason, He respects it more than anyone. He does not amend His decisions like an annoyed or disappointed human person.

 We will again and again interpret God's respect for the freedom of His creatures as God's weakness. "God is good, He is love itself and won't take it that seriously if we misbehave. We will all get to heaven!" Love cannot defend itself against such misunderstandings and wrong interpretations, not even divine love.

God's love for us cannot be extinguished,  even if we take advantage of it  by doing evil. But does this mean that our actions have no consequences? God is faithful, but He is also just. He takes our free decisions seriously, including saying NO to His love. For this reason in particular, consequences  apply to man. It is not God who turns away when we sin. It is the other way around:  people who sin turn away from God. And God does not stop them. He lets them go. He does not impose Himself if people want to go their own way. In this case, the NO to God remains for time and eternity. But if man recognizes that his decision was wrong, he may change it, "return to God" as the Bible puts it. God waits for this to happen.

He does not want good to be done under  pressure  and force; it is supposed  to be man's own deed. Our dignity lies in this freedom. We bear the weight, the responsibility for our free action. We not only reap the fruits of our good deeds, but are also responsible for misusing our freedom to do evil.

Humanity in sin and guilt

Nobody likes to be called to account for his actions. We would prefer not to be responsible to God or to other people. We would like to be "totally free". The good that God wants often seems to be diametrically opposed to what we really want to do. We quickly decide "freely" against the will of God. This NO to the will of God, the main source of evil in this world, is called "sin" in the Bible.

We have to recognize the word "sin" in its entire awful reality; otherwise everything that follows will remain incomprehensible. There is really only a single sin: rejection of God's love. For this reason the Old Testament also calls it "faithlessness", breach of the covenant with God. With this, people proclaim that they are self-sufficient, that they do not need God. Egoism destroys the longing for God.
 

Man's greatness and misery

Psalm 8, 4

In each one of us, God sees a spark of His own being and He loves us even when we turn away from Him. "But God shows His love for us in that while we were yet sinners.." (Romans 5,8)The wonderful way in which the Bible describes the essence of man cannot be surpassed. We human beings have all the reasons to consider ourselves fortunate, as does the psalmist in the Old Testament:

"What is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You care for him? Yet You have made him little less than God, You crown him with glory and honor. You have given him domination over the works of Your hands, You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the path of the sea. ... O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth!"

Man's freedom - gift and risk

There are times where we are able to embrace "God and the world". We feel healthy, loved and happy. It is nice to be on earth. For all this the believer thanks God, his creator. The preceding psalm of praise may also have come into being during happy times. Man is gifted with the ability to see only the good things around him at times. If he also always had to look at life's negative sides, he would never be able to really take delight in the world and himself. But periods of suffering and sorrow, anger and disappointment, come back just the same.

On August 4, 1941, Maximilian Kolbe, a Franciscan priest, was put to death in  the  Auschwitz  concentration camp. Originally, a Polish father of a family was supposed to die. Kolbe offered to take his place and the camp administration  agreed.  The  father of the family  returned home.

Was this act not Father Kolbe's own, free decision?  Everybody  knows that He did not have to do it. Even if he felt urged to take this action by Jesus Christ's message of love, the fact remains that he did it voluntarily. The love of Christ enabled him to become free for his fellow man, who needed his action. Freedom and responsibility belong together. Responsibility does not suspend freedom, it marks off its limits.

Freedom  that is misunderstood or misused can lead to total dependency. We are free to get  addicted  to  alcohol and many become dependent on it. But we also can become addicted to other human beings and ideologies. Or, misusing our freedom, we may become egoists and tyrants who do not care for anybody else. Faithfulness and love are betrayed and disappointed. The great gift of freedom presents, at the same time, risk and danger for man.
 

Man's greatness and misery

God's YES to man

In Jesus Christ, God has come to us human beings. God, who cannot be seen and comprehended, appeared in this world as a human being, lived and acted as a man and spoke from man to man. He came into a sick world to bring salvation and  initiate the final perfection of humankind and the world. 

But if we look around  this world, we are disappointed. There is so much wrong and very little can be detected of the closeness between God and man. Has nothing been improved by God's coming into this world? Or has man thrown away the advantage he gained through Jesus? Where is the divinity within people and the world? There is a rupture that can drive one to despair, when we look at man and this world.

How can  God  be the creator of such a defective world, the Father of such imperfect children?  Could  He not have done better? Why did God create a world that needed redemption through Jesus Christ?  Where is the omnipotent, just and merciful God? How can one believe that God loves man?

According to the Holy Scriptures "everything that God had made was very good" (Genesis 1,31)! This "very good" refers especially to the creation of man. Man's dignity, greatness and destiny lie in his creation through God.
 

Man ... image of God

"Then God said: Let us make man in our image, after our likeness" (Genesis 1,26). God created man, gave him His blessings and put him in charge of the rest of His creation.

The image of God, the likeness of God: as the moon receives the light from the sun and reflects it, so man receives life from God and is allowed to pass it on. Man's will is destined for co-determination in God's creation, to plan, invent and create, but also to improve, complete and preserve according to the best of his ability.

As an image of God, man is also part of the mystery of God.  The breath of divinity, of eternity, is within him (see Gen 2, 7). This is why, scientifically, he cannot be defined fully. This gives the ultimate justification for the saying: "The dignity of man is inviolable". "God keeps man as the apple of His eye, like an eagle that stirs up its nest, that flutters over its young. (Dtn 32,10...)