As Christians, we have faith that “God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28). As straightforward as this seems, the concept of good itself is more problematic than it ought to be: what is good in the first place, and what does Paul mean by good here?

The prosperity gospel as preached by such luminaries as Joel Osteen (above) and the aptly named Creflo Dollar is often criticized by orthodox Christianity for emphasizing the material as God’s means of blessing the faithful. It’s easy enough to renounce blatant Prosperitism as materialistic and fair-weather faith, but how often do the rest of us fall, more subtly, into the same trap?

I cannot count how many times I’ve heard prayers thanking God for placing us in a country where we are free to worship Him. It’s a favorite theme of Patriotic Evangelicalism. But what is this saying? Thank you, God, for a comfortable life where I don’t have to make a real stand for my faith? Jesus says in Luke 6:22, Blessed are you when men hate you, and ostracize you, and insult you, and scorn your name as evil, for the sake of the Son of Man. Is living in America really a blessing in this light? Why would we thank God for withholding the blessing of persecution?

There is none good but one, that is, God.
-Mark 10:18

Many times we read a verse like Romans 8:28 without an understanding of what “good” truly is. And without that understanding, we substitute our fleshly understanding of good. What is good then? Our pleasure. Our comfort. Circumstances. Materials. The eternal might be good too, but what use is that to me now? We thank God for indulging our misconceptions of our own interests, all the while consciously avoiding any sort of more painful but infinitely higher and more profitable blessing that may otherwise be bestowed.

The Bible leaves no room for duality here. The entire rest of Romans 8 sets up a dichotomy between the spirit and the flesh, and the valuation of the self and its comfort is unmistakably fleshly living. What good is suffering if comfort is our good? What good is mourning if a perpetual emotional high is our good? No, good is so much higher than that. Suffering does not bring about our comfort; it destroys it. Mourning does not bring about happiness; it is the very opposite thereof. But suffering and mourning bring about a much higher good than either of these things: drawing nearer to God.

This then is the promise of Romans 8:28: not that Christians will prosper, not even that we will be comfortable - It is not in any respect a material guarantee. Rather it is that for anyone who loves God, any and all circumstances can only serve to bring him closer to God. This, more than any thing or circumstance, is the ultimate blessing.

The phrase “The beauty of the Lord” is thrown around a lot in Christian circles, especially in song. It’s a wonderful thing to sing about, but what is the beauty of the Lord? How can it be appreciated when there is nothing of Him for us to see but His creation?

For a long time I had no idea what it meant to marvel at the beauty of the Lord. I had not even but the vaguest idea of what beauty really meant. In retrospect, my first glimpse was the testimony of a missionary who had been working with Campus Crusade at various universities. He recounted the story of a grad student he met one day, who told him though she was not a Christian, she knew “there must be a God, because math is so beautiful”.

Though I didn’t grasp the profundity of that statement at the time, I could appreciate what she was saying. Math is elegant, cohesive, and infinitely interconnected. Though it’s Simple enough to say 2×8=8×2 and know that fact, one could spend a lifetime on the mechanisms behind that truth. Concepts can be generalized to the point where we get things like imaginary numbers and the complex plane. I recall one day several years ago reading through Wikipedia and stumbling upon Roots of Unity, and almost being brought to tears because of the beauty of it. It’s easy enough to know that i to a power divisible by four gives you 1, but who knew that the same mechanism behind that was also behind -1 returning 1 when raised to even powers? Who knew that the cycle of i, -1, -i, 1 when counting up powers of i is actually circling around the complex plane? Who knew that these concepts could be extended and generalized geometrically so that you can figure out complex numbers that will return 1 raised to any power?

More recently, I have been astounded by the elegance of God in orchestrating all of Biblical history - even all of total history - to one singular object. All of the Old Testament points to Christ. All of the New Testament points to Christ. Christ points to the glory of God, and all of history points to the glory of God through Christ. Realizing this was the same feeling as first comprehending roots of unity - a supreme awe at the elegance of it all.

What then is beauty? What does the beauty of math have in common with the beauty of God? What does a beautiful woman have in common with a beautiful song?

Purpose. Unity of intent and reason for existence and action.

In a beautiful theory, everything that it describes is accounted for and subsumed under a single process or intent, and all variety is a manifestation thereof. Nothing is arbitrary. This is why physicists are after an “equation of everything”: right now, a multitude of (as far as we know) unrelated physical forces populate the theory. A plethora of arbitrary constants litter textbooks, and we have no idea why they are so (for example, the gravitational constant, the speed of light). Scientists as much as anyone else are searching for beauty - looking for the commonality among the forces, looking for reasons behind the constants - for example, the equations that subsumed electromagnetism and the weak force under the electroweak force were a major step forward in the beauty of mainstream physical theory. Likewise, much of the popularity of string theory is because of its beauty and elegance in tying so many disparate branches of science together (though it is well to keep in mind that though truth is beautiful, not all beauty is necessarily truth).

Aesthetic beauty is a bit harder to pin down, because there are so many conflicting conceptions of beauty. What is the purpose of a painting? Of a song? In most cases, the beauty of a song or a painting is self-referential: it is a form of beauty, but only a shadow, because its purpose is itself. A certain melodic fragment is put in a song, and built upon - this is beauty in song. The repetition thereof is a form of pseudo-purpose - arbitrary melodies that never lead anywhere make for an incoherent song. Similarly in painting and other aesthetic arts, beauty comes from thematic coherence. Superimposing the subject of The Scream onto a pointallist painting, though both are arguably beautiful in their own right, does not make a beautiful product. Though they are both internally consistent, they are not consistent with each other.

This is the way that God is beautiful. We know that all Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness (2 Timothy 3:16). The scriptures have singularity of purpose - pointing to the glory of God through the work of Christ - and are at no point arbitrary. We see that all things work together for the good of those that love God (Romans 8:28), and that good is God. We know then that none of history - every event, down to the fly on the strawberry - is arbitrary. It is all oriented - the good, the bad, even the downright evil - by God towards good (Genesis 50:20) - the glory of God through the redemption of mankind. Though we mean our actions towards any number of evil things, God works it for good. God is, more than anything temporal, completely internally consistent and singularly oriented towards one goal. God is therefore the pinnacle of beauty - the beauty from which all other beauty derives itself.

To be continued. Coming soon: Taking comfort in a selfish God - How God’s beauty translates into our good.

The Dream of Solomon, by Luca Giordano

The concepts behind the recent article What Is Free Will? may seem pretty out there - they are very abstract at points, and it’s easy to question the value of plumbing to such depths. But the framework also has intensely practical benefits for the believer who is open to that way of thinking. Reading that article beforehand will be helpful before reading this one, as I’m going to chronicle the effects that that realization has brought about in my own life.

In 1 Kings 3, God appears to the new king Solomon in a dream, and tells him to ask whatever he wants. Knowing that he was quite unprepared for the throne he has just assumed, Solomon asks for wisdom to carry out his duties. As the story goes, God was pleased with his request, and gave him not only wisdom, but all kinds of earthly riches as well.

Since I first heard the story as a young child, one question I’ve repeatedly asked myself is, what would I have asked for in Solomon’s situation? My initial thoughts were that since I knew wisdom to be a good choice I would ask for that now, but I feared this was the only reason I would choose this. Had I not known the story, would I still ask for wisdom, or would I ask for a sweet car and a million bucks?

Growing up and getting better at looking at my own motives, I slowly came to the conclusion that whatever I asked for ought to be intrinsic and not external - basically the difference between a million dollars and a six figure income, except deeper: the former won’t do any long term good as it will eventually run out (we’ll ignore investments and the like). Somewhat tangential to the former question is the perennial “If you could have any superpower, what would it be?”. I decided that if I was asked Solomon’s question I would still probably ask for wisdom, knowing that’s a good choice, and I was also reasonably confident that, not knowing the story, I wouldn’t have asked straight out for a sweet car and a million bucks. But would I have asked for abilities or powers with which to achieve those things anyway? That question was still haunting.

Later still, I came to the conclusion that of all intrinsic abilities, knowledge - particularly omniscience - was the best of the lot. This was around the same time that I was thinking about self-interest frameworks of free will - I concluded that, had I infinite knowledge (and the capacity to make sense of it, of course), indecision would be eliminated and my will would be completely free to act in my own permanent best interests - that is, to set the highest good (God) as my goal and strive for that in the best manner possible without becoming encumbered by distractions since I would know enough to make value judgements on what is and is not important towards that goal. I decided that, both knowing the story and imagining I did not, I would now ask for knowledge and the capacity to make sense of it. This was the first time that knowledge of the story as it happened did not cause my hypothetical answer and my current decided answer to differ, but even this was not as far as it would go.

More recently, reading through things like C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce and thinking further into the issue of free will as simply the expression of one’s beliefs, values, and knowledge, I came to realize that the man with infinite heavenly and earthly knowledge would conclude that most of that knowledge was irrelevant. The previous idea of infinite knowledge freeing one from distractions contains the seeds of this revelation: thus, all the knowledge necessary for a truly free will consists of: 1) the meta-knowledge of what is important (good) and what is not, and 2) factual knowledge of these important things. This knowledge is God. Thus, given these conclusions, I’ve come to the conclusion that my answer would honestly be “I want to know You, Lord”.

Reaching these conclusions through the self-interest framework of free will is the first time I can honestly say that I have been, as Tozer puts it, desperate for the highest will of God. The percolation from knowledge to belief that God is the ultimate good and that most everything I would otherwise strive for is a distraction from that highest good started out in me (and continued for quite a while) as a meta-desire - that is, the desire to desire God - the state of knowing and believing you should desire to know God and it is in your best interests to do so, but not yet having that earnest desire. Though this is perhaps easier to have and is insufficient in itself, I’ve learned it was an important first step, as God is faithful and will not ignore the plea of His children (Matthew 7:7-11). Over time and since that final conclusion, this has translated into an honest desire to know God, the better to live my life for His glory and my own final good, and I pray that framework and knowledge would be used to work change in other lives as well.

The goal of this article is to apply the ideas behind What Is Free Will? to the theme of A Humble or a Haughty Spirit. Having read both of these will be helpful in reading this article, as I justify in those articles some of the assumptions that I will take for granted in this one.

Anyone familiar with Catholic theology will know of the Seven Deadly Sins. Most severe among these sins was pride, for the reason that it was the sin of Lucifer and the ultimate cause of all sin. Though it is easy enough to arrive at that conclusion by saying that pride caused Lucifer to bring a multitude of sins into the world, it is more direct than that. Pride in its sinful sense is often thought to be synonymous with arrogance - an undue love of self relative to others, but the sin of pride is much more extensive and pervasive - and much more serious - than we might think. More than elevating ourselves against other people, the sin is to elevate ourselves at all against God, by the belief that there is inherent good - of any sort - that we somehow merit.

This pride, the pride behind individualism and self-actualization and nearly every society in the history of the world, is the fundamental motivation for sin. The relationship is neatly summed up by the quote from Milton, “Better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven”. It is the motivation behind every act of selfishness, of rebellion against God, of any sin: the notion that the self is a good to be striven for. That though he is apart from God, he has himself and his pride, and that this tradeoff is not only good in its own right, it is preferable to the good of God Himself. This is the pride of Lucifer that not a single human being is exempt from.

The notion that one’s self is an inherent good is what constitutes sin nature. From the time we are born we inevitably think of the self as a good, and thus inevitably sin. Since the self is all we initially know, it is the foundation of all our subsequent knowledge, which is why all our righteousness apart from God is like filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6). It is only through the replacement of our foundational knowledge and belief, brought about by the Holy Spirit, that we can internalize the knowledge that it is indeed not better to reign in Hell, since without any inherent good in himself or his comrades the individual finds no pleasure in reigning over the damned.

But even a head knowledge is not sufficient belief, for truly internalized belief affects behavior. If any of us truly believed in the worthlessness of self and the ultimate good of God, we would never seek our own pleasure in any endeavor. I’ll be the first to admit that I have not achieved a perfect belief (or anything even resembling it), but I do pray that God would grant me the faith to believe that He is the ultimate good. This continued refinement and perfection of internalized belief, through the percolation of head knowledge into the subconscious where decisions are made, is the key to the Spirit’s continued sanctification of the believer. Indeed, this is why seeking the Truth about the nature of God is paramount to redemption and a changed life.

The question of free will is whether, and in what sense, rational agents exercise control over their actions and decisions.
-Wikipedia, Free Will

Rational agents, by definition, act based on what they know and believe in order to maximize their expected total enjoyment(/pleasure/utility/etc.). Though intuitively it would seem that not everyone is rational, the definitions of rational and utility are far more expansive than is usually assumed. For example, a thief judges the odds of him getting away times the payoff to be greater than the odds of getting caught times the penalty. This is usually not a conscious calculation, but a subconscious one (Scott Adams has called the subconscious nothing but an odds-calculating machine). And though it may seem utterly irrational to an outsider, it was, based on his (likely flawed) knowledge and belief, the best thing he could have done.

So what of free will? Could the thief have chosen not to steal? For this to happen, there would have to be more thrown into the mix. A moral person judges the moral costs in addition to the purely material costs, balancing the payoff with guilt or shame. The more trepidatious criminal just calculates the odds differently, or assigns a different value to the payoff relative to the likely punishment. This framework of rational choice is actually the fundamental underpinning of all economic study.

Quite simply, free will is not the ability to make random or arbitrary decisions. What would be the point of it then? Free will is the ability to act in your own long-term self interest, and so is a function of (and can be constrained by) two things:

1: Knowledge is fundamental to free will both in the long term and short term. Most stupid actions that people would assume are irrational are just a function of lack of knowledge. Let’s turn back to the thief again for an example: the thief decides to rob a convenience store. The owner has a gun, and shoots the thief in the chest, severely wounding him and sending him to jail. Why did the thief still rob the convenience store? He had no knowledge of the gun. Had he known the owner had a gun and was experienced in hunting, he would not have robbed the store. How many times has the lament “If only I had known” been uttered? Free will is a function of knowledge, and poor decisions are a function of imperfect knowledge.

If you’re still not convinced, then join me on a small thought experiment: Imagine you’re suddenly omniscient. You can see the future, and even see what will happen as the result of any decision. How would you act? You would, of course, act in such a way as to make your life more enjoyable. You could calculate your way up the corporate ladder and become rich and famous, or if you’re altruistic, you could maximize your enjoyment by making the world a better place. Either way, you would act in such a way as to get the most of what you value most. You wouldn’t - you couldn’t - do anything else.

2: Beliefs and Preferences. Preferences are fundamental to short term behavior: if I choose strawberry ice cream over vanilla with no compulsion either way, it means I prefer strawberry to vanilla at that point, for whatever reason. But preferences are just a type of belief: preferring strawberry to vanilla means that I believe that I will get more enjoyment from strawberry ice cream than vanilla ice cream. Material preferences (such as strawberry vs. vanilla) are usually refined over the course of a lifetime to the point that they are rarely wrong, in that you are usually correct that you will derive more pleasure from strawberry than vanilla.

But preferences encompass more than tastes, and beliefs encompass still more than that. Many poor decisions made with complete foreknowledge of the consequences are just a result of preferring short term pleasure over long term pleasure, which can come with an unpleasant wait. These long term preferences are more often wrong than tastes (The deathbed lament “I wish I’d have spent more time with my family”). Thus regrets are the result of wrong (or at least changed) preferences.

Belief, however, is ultimately the most important to the overarching trend of one’s behavior. Morality, for example: many people believe that they will be rewarded after death for good behavior, thus they act in ways that would appear counter to their self interest. Many believe that such behavior is simply good for society, and act generally morally because they value self-respect. Many don’t believe in an afterlife and value their own pleasure over other peoples’ and over society at large; thus we get “immoral” (in the traditional sense of the word) people.

This is the reason that much of the world considers religion and faith as synonymous. Most religions believe in an afterlife - more specifically, Heaven and Hell. Most also include requirements for escaping Hell and going to Heaven (or at least attaining the best afterlife). It is of course in our best interest to assure for ourselves the best afterlife - even a minute improvement magnified by eternity outweighs even the most enjoyable of lifestyles. One must have faith in the religion in order to believe in these requirements. Thus true believers are thus much rarer than one might imagine. True belief in God and in the severity of choices affecting ones’ afterlife would require nothing less than a full life commitment.

So why don’t we see this? Most religion is built on a series of external incentives. In the Muslim world, you are often ostracized for converting out. Many televangelists promise a healthy and wealthy lifestyle after converting in. Even more than that, there are often social benefits for appearing devout (but not too devout), namely peer respect and involvement with a close-knit group of people.

Hence, because choice springs directly from belief and lifestyle is the aggregate of choice, we can see that the nominal believer is not a believer at all. Their motivation is not belief in God or the divine of any sort: the lack of assumption of the costs of religion to one’s lifestyle shows the fact that their goal is to reap the social benefits (self-deception on this point is, I would guess, much more common than consciously and deliberately impersonating the religious). To narrow the discussion to within the Christian circle, Romans 10 speaks specifically to the point that choice is directly influenced by knowledge and belief. Salvation comes by faith (belief), faith comes by hearing (knowledge), and hearing from the Word of God. Furthermore according to James, faith without works is dead, for true faith means we believe that works are the evidence of the Holy Spirit and that the Holy Spirit is the evidence of salvation. And what is more important to the true believer than securing and assuring his own salvation?

So what exactly is salvation, and what does it do to free will? Belief is always informed by knowledge. Our faith comes by hearing that the Word of God is the way to salvation, and a belief that this is true, imparted by God Himself. This is the point at which we receive the Holy Spirit (This means depravity is a result of imperfect knowledge and belief, in that we cannot act to please God (which is in our ultimate self-interest) without proper knowledge and belief).

A cursory reading of Romans 8, a discussion on living by the spirit vs. the flesh, might lead one to believe that the Spirit removes our free will and substitutes it with God’s. This is not the case at all. Our will is not free to begin with, due to a lack of knowledge and/or belief. We cannot act in our own long-term self-interest, that is, get to Heaven and escape Hell, without knowledge of how to do so and the belief that that knowledge is correct and reliable. Thus when we are imparted the Holy Spirit, He teaches us our self-interest primarily through knowledge of the Scriptures, gives us the faith to believe it, and changes our preferences accordingly (no longer does short-term sinful pleasure outweigh the consequences thereof). The knowledge and true belief imparted over time by the Holy Spirit that eternal rewards outweigh short-term sinful pleasures will, without fail as God Himself, produce a Christian with a freer will.