In His kingdom, God’s kingship and authority are rooted in Love. As such he never forces or coerces, he never dominates, oppresses or insists on his own way, he never uses threat, blackmail or fear to make people do what he says. Instead, he invites his subjects to receive his Love and to respond to it. By choosing to do things God’s way, by obeying and submitting God’s way, by choosing to live also rooted in Love, God’s people willingly put themselves under his kingship. Living in mutual love firmly establishes God’s kingship over his people, as well as allowing his people to live in complete freedom and security.
Satan’s rule is characterised by the opposite. He is a dictator who insists on his own way and uses deception, blackmail and fear to ensure it is done. Living under a dictatorship is oppressive. Whilst individuals may refuse to comply, the fact still remains that they are living under a dictatorial regime. Satan has crowned himself “Prince of this World” and the tragedy is that man legally elected him. As long as he succeeds in persuading man to keep choosing to turn away from God, as long as he succeeds in persuading man to keep agreeing with him, as long as he can persuade man to live according to his ways rather than God’s way of Love, he, Satan, will remain in power. As it was man who allowed him to take up his rule and it is man who keeps him there, it is only man who can oust him from his place and strip him of his authority. (This is really key).
When man first turned away from God, everything changed. The matrix of how things were changed: no longer is man able to enjoy the tangible presence of God. No longer does man have real power and dominion over the whole of creation. Man has to labour and toil to provide for himself, tending to choose to trust in his work and in what he sees than trusting in God’s provision. No longer is it God’s purpose for man that gives his life meaning. Trying to find significance and purpose, identity and self-worth in a world view now clouded by Satan’s lies are issues that have haunted humanity throughout history.
Underpinning it all is death. The Bibles is very clear: the natural consequence of turning away from God, the source of Life, is indeed death. Death and life cannot co-exist. The more man empowers Satan by turning away from God and the more man chooses out of his own volition to live turned away from God, the more death encroaches.
This is the matrix we live in. This is the way things are in our world. We are well familiar with it. And yet, remaining somewhere deep within humanity is the inkling that this is not how it should be. Each of us, if we look deep enough inside all the layers of our being, has a hope, however small, of a different kind of world - a world of peace and of justice, a world with no pain and no suffering, a world where Love reigns.
Why did God not intervene at the beginning of time and prevent the matrix changing? Why did he not step in and preserve our world, our existence, the way he had created it? Why did he not just barge in, oust the ‘dictator’, rescue man from death and make it all like it was before?
Precisely because he is Love! Because out of Love he has to allow the genuine consequences of genuine choices to unfold.
Man continues to have a choice, though the choices are more limited. Man could turn to God once more. Throughout history, many people do and enjoy a foretaste of life within God’s circle of Love. Their lives are characterised by a meaningful relationship with God.
Significantly, humanity on the whole continues to choose to turn away from God. Eating of the fruit had given man understanding of life apart from God and at the dawn of time man consciously chose to live apart from God. But throughout history, man continues to listen to Satan and his lies about God, and about ourselves. Man continues to act according to Satan's ways and thus man continues to empower Satan. Satan’s patterns become increasingly entrenched in man’s hearts, taking root, flourishing, and defining man’s actions. Jealousy, greed, selfishness become strongholds in the human heart and give birth to a lust for power, to domination over others and to a deep-rooted desire to be better than anyone else.
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