Blog 4

The last few conversations in class have sparked me to think further about God's will and how differently it is interpreted by people. I tend to agree that if you are truly seeking to serve God and strive for God's kingdom, that you will, for the most part, do God's will. However, it is interesting to examine the kinds of things that people do with the belief that it is God's will, some of which many of us would doubt actually were God's will. I am thinking specifically of suicide bombers and other martyrs for their religion--those who commit these acts do so because they believe they are serving God, and they may have the utmost intent in doing so. How do we draw the line as to what is and is not, and how can we determine whether what someone else does is following the will of God or not? Obviously, this is a very dramatic example, but if one carried out this logic to its extreme, it would be one that would require examination. Can people be confused about what God's will is, even if they are trying with the deepest of sincerity to uphold or fulfill it?
I am reminded of the story of the last book in the series by C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia. The last book is entitled The Last Battle, and it centers around a battle based, for the most part, on great misunderstanding. The Narnian people, whose God is Aslan, fight against the Kalorman people, whose God is Tash. These Gods are supposedly very different--Aslan a fair and kind God, and Tash an angry and harsh God. At the end of the book, the world of Narnia is defeated, or comes to an end, and the book follows its heroines as they "ascend" into "Narnian Heaven." A surprising twist comes when they encounter a Kalorman soldier who served the God Tash. This soldier tells the story of his meeting with Aslan upon "entering heaven." He explains that all his life, he served the God Tash with all his heart, and wanted nothing more than to meet Him and prove his dedication and faith. He served him, not out of selfishness, but out of faith and the desire to do Tash's will. He was, of course, very confused when he encountered Aslan instead of Tash in heaven. Aslan explained to him that in serving Tash in such a way, he was actually serving Aslan--just as those who served Aslan with malintent or selfish motives were in reality serving Tash.
While this is a much abbreviated version of the story, I just wanted to think about the implications that C.S. Lewis makes in this book. It ties in to the idea of God's will and relates it, I think, to religions even outside of Christianity. This is the sort of thought process that, as we discussed in class, makes my head hurt, and I don't know where to even begin in writing down the ideas that spawn from thinking about God's will and who follows it, and who might follow it that we don't expect, and in what different forms it is manifested. However, I wanted to at least express this food for thought and in doing so further encourage my headache.