Miraculous Intervention

Could God Eliminate Human Evil through Continuous Miraculous Intervention?

There can be little doubt that God does intervene in our lives through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in little and great conspiracies of providence, and even in outright miracles. But these occasions are rare – very rare – because they truly represent interruptions in the free action of human beings.

In this scenario, God becomes the giant behavior conditioner in the sky. He so frequently lowers the boom on anticipated evil that He conditions most people (out of fear or desperation) to avoid evil. Unfortunately those people did not choose to avoid it, but rather reacted to the continuous negative stimulus of attempting it. In the end, God would only have succeeded in creating people who treat their boss with respect even though they utterly hate him; or treat their coworkers with respect out of fear of the dreaded boss. Whatever this is, it is not love. If God wants us to choose love, He has to allow us the real possibility of unlove, a real possibility which is not cloaked in fear, hindrance, and retribution.

The problem with God eradicating only some really terrible people is that human ingenuity will discover it, and when it is discovered, the process of conditioning (on the basis of fear) will begin. People of common sense will not approach the line even though they desire it; and the ones who would approach the line wouldn’t have a chance. They’d be dead or rendered incapacitated before they knew what happened to them. God must avoid this kind of behavioral conditioning in all its forms; for it interferes with our freedom for unlove in all its forms, which ultimately interferes with our freedom to love in all its forms.

God so loves the world, and God so wants us to love one another, that He will respect our freedom, and restrain Himself from interfering with that freedom, even in the most egregious situations and with the most egregiously offensive people. The price of love is not only the capacity for unlove, but the real possibility of unlove.