Will and Grace

At first glance, this sign appears to be a simple and funny play on words related to the recent heat spell. But it is actually using those words as metaphor for the tension between the concepts of free will and grace. According to the Merriam-Webster Abridged, Grace is defined as "unmerited divine assistance given humans for their regeneration or sanctification".

It works like this: an all-knowing, all-powerful and infallible God creates mankind, but makes them imperfect through the concept of "free will". Then, by dangling the carrot of eternal happiness he requires them to control their free will in order to strive for moral perfection. Knowing they would fall short, he then provides "Grace" to allow them an opportunity to get the carrot anyway.

Sounds logical (if not a little whacked) until you start actually thinking about it. See you can't think about it without poking into a few hopelessly knotted tangles like Jesus Christ and Predestination. According to Predestination, this grace-giving God knows who will get the carrot (i.e. the "Elect") and who will not get the carrot (i.e. the "Reprobates"). Which begs a few obvious questions:

- why is Grace given to get the carrot and given to not get the carrot?
- if Grace is given and the Elect are known, then why sacrifice Jesus Christ?
- why answer the prayers of the "doomed" reprobates?
- why bother bringing the reprobates into the world in the first place?
- if He intervenes to help me upgrade to first class, doesn't that mean I'm Elect?

Catholicism: Predestination is God's decree of the happiness of the Elect. God's infallible foreknowledge (and thus predestination also) includes free will. God's foreknowledge cannot force upon man unavoidable coercion, for the simple reason that foreknowledge is nothing more than the eternal vision of what happens in the future. God foresees the free activity of a man precisely as that individual is willing to shape it - predestination is not predetermination of the human will.

In other words, moral decisions based on your free will determine whether you get the carrot, and God knows what decisions you will make. But let's keep going...

Election is a consequence of God's foreknowledge. By definition, the Elect are those whom God infallibly foresees will be saved (Rom 8:28-30). By this definition, it is impossible for the Elect to be lost, precisely because God foreknows who will not be lost. But since election depends on God's infallible foreknowledge, we simply have no way of knowing whether or not we are in that category -- God knows with certainty His Elect, but we do not. The Elect are predestined in the sense that God knows them, and enables them by grace, to be saved.


So let's see if we have this straight. God knows already if you're saved (Rom 8:28-30). He knew it when you were born. He knew it BEFORE you were born. So why does God bring us here when he knows we won't get the carrot, unless it is for the sheer amusement of watching us try to raise kids or take tours of the Spy Museum? If you're beginning to feel like the control group in some sort of cosmic experiment, you're not alone. It may be that your entire purpose on earth is to highlight (through your failure) the success of the carrot-holding elect.

Can you imagine working your whole life (or even one day) toward some fuzzy promise to "get paid" in the end if you do a "good job"? There's no one around to provide a clear definition of "good job", and so you have no way of knowing where you stand at any given point. Heck, you don't even know what the "pay" is! Maybe the Muslims have it right after all - hew as closely as possible to a strictly literal interpretation of ancient holy texts, and you've given it your best shot. And you know exactly what you get in the end. Sure, you have to live your whole life in the Dark Ages, but you'll get 72 virgins while the rest of the world strives for some lousy carrot.

According to most religious doctrines, homosexuality is like an express lane for Hell - forget HIV, gays are all going to Hell HOV. The Apostle Paul mentions homosexuality as a sin which keeps man from the Kingdom of God (1 Cor 6:9-10). Remember that 90's show Will and Grace? The name succinctly sums up the tension between free will and grace, which cannot be more aptly demonstrated than in a show about a heterosexual-turned-homosexual man. Was Will exercising his God-given ability to choose, while Grace's role (ever optimistic, if not somewhat unwitting) was to "save" him? Was the show demonstrating that the concepts of grace and free will are inextricably linked, such that grace and salvation will always be available to us, in spite of the temptations of free will? Or was the show simply a vehicle to get Megan Mullaly's boobs into our living rooms? (Thank you Lord)

We can't seem to make sense of it all. Through prayer, we seek guidance and assistance from God to "show us the way" - to make the right moral decisions. And yet, He already knows what decisions we will make, and through that knowledge He knows whether we're destined for Hell or Eternity. In fact, His intervention would be the undoing of predetermination, which would make Him... fallible. We ask Him for help in all kinds of issues - help with our finances, help with our relationships, help getting five minutes alone with Megan Mullaly - and yet for all we know our name isn't even on the VIP list. So what's the point again? Some faiths believe that since the Elect are predetermined, Christ died only for the elect. Doh! Can you imagine? They were already good to go! Dammit!




As it turns out, this church sign had nothing whatsoever to do with any of these concepts. See, we told you this AC thing was going to catch on!