All is as it is supposed to be:
There is happiness now, be happy.
Why are you sad? Why do you worry?
Destiny does what it must for you.
The viziers' ways won't work for you,
Fate will decide what is best for you.
Life's wheel won't create another like you.
Your mother won't bear another like you.
God will never close a door on you,
Before opening a hundred better doors.— RUDAKI, “Destiny’s Door”
What do our faith traditions say about destiny? What do we believe about God’s role in opening and closing doors for us?
You know that, being an atheist, I can not comment on God's role in opening and/or closing doors.
ReplyDeleteAs God is by many considered to be the alpha and omega (the first and last) of things going on in this universe, for me, as an atheist, there is no alpha and no omega. In other words, speaking from my point of view (which need not necessarily be shared by other atheists) there is no definite destiny.
William James once wrote (in /Pragmatism/) that everything consists of finite experiences: "Nothing outside of the flux secures the issue of it. It can hope salvation only from its own intrinsic promises and potencies." This in turn, leads him to the 'doctrine of meliorism': with there being no ultimate goal or destiny in the universe, there is also no definite salvation. This could lead to pessimism ('salvation is impossible, don't even try') or pathological optimism ('salvation will come, you'll see, somehow...'). Meliorism, on the other hand: "treats salvation as neither inevitable nor impossible" but it will all depend on our own ideals and the actions we undertake to reach these ideals. Hence, he writes: "Every such ideal realized will be one moment in the world's salvation."
This is the 'moral rule', if you will, I keep in mind whenever I act. Is this way, I myself try to work towards a world of pure brotherhood (like I wrote in my previous entry), hoping that perhaps my actions will make a difference.
I know, destiny and salvation are probably not synonymous, but it's the best I could come up with at this point.
Good journey to you all!
It seems to me that doors are open and closed indirectly by God - God's relation to the world is one of sustenance, not control. Closeness with God (the experience of "grace") leads to awareness about our daily life and about the choices that we make all the time. Following James's ideas explained by Wim, we can say that a life lived to the full creates a history that very much looks like a destiny, because it is chosen and directed towards a particular future. That is why Thomas Aquinas said: "The highest manifestation of life consists in this: that a being governs its own actions. A thing which is always subject to the direction of another is somewhat of a dead thing."
ReplyDeleteThere is always the question of how we can reconcile God's omniscience with our free will. I don't think most believers face this kind of problem as they journey their way trough life - and ultimately it is irrelevant. The counter-reform, through Molinism, defended that we sometimes think of God's omniscience as limited by only one possibility as if the future is set in stone (some Protestants used to think like this). But a true concept of omniscience applied to God can only be maximum and so it entails the knowledge of many possibilities open to us. God knows not "the" future, but all possible futures. Therefore, in a very real way, it makes no difference to us. Spirituality makes us aware of the possibilities that are before us. We have to decide. We have to use our free will and Catholic thought stresses this. Being close to God is being knowledgable this way and being in tune and in love with the world and its potential. As St. Augustine puts it, rather beautifully: "This very moment I may, if I desire, become the friend of God."