GOD SUBSTITUTES: COMPETING WITH GOD

We sense that true equality is the ideal, and we desperately attempt to achieve it through income equality, thinking that this will produce a true equality where love reigns supreme.

However, this noble goal has easily eluded our grasp. Communism has tried to achieve it by equalizing our material existence at a disastrous cost of 100,000,000 exterminated lives. But even after this prohibitive cost, love has remained a far-away ideal.

Perhaps the voluntary Israeli Kibbutz came closest. Clothing, food, work, children, and even sexual partners were equally shared. However, love was fleeting and the entire experiment proved unsustainable.

However, a real and sustainable love, equality, and brotherhood require more than an outward rearrangement of materials and circumstances. They require the hand of God. The Apostle Paul wrote that Our God is able to put us together in a way that achieves a true equality and love for one another:

• “The parts [members] of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.” (1 Corinthians 12:22-26)

While we are correct to think in terms of equality, true equality can only be achieved through substantive internal change achieved by the hand of God. To try to achieve this on our own is to force a rose bud to bloom by prying its pedals apart before its appointed time. It is the difference between rape and consensual love. It is the gift of God alone.