Happily Ever After...

Yesterday I watched Ella Enchanted at our local theatre, and today I found myself thinking about the story in connection with Free Will.

In case you haven't seen the movie, it's a play on the Cinderella story, but with a notable twist--Cinderella is dominated by her stepmother and stepsisters not through her pure good-naturedness, but through a "Gift of Obedience" bestowed on her as a baby by a thoughtless fairy. As a consequence of this gift, she finds herself doing whatever anyone tells her--in fact, she is the perfect "obedient child", through no fault--or virtue--of her own.

And I thought that here was an example of what many people would consider the perfect gift to mankind--a built-in "goodness" gene. What wouldn't people give to be good without effort--even against their own inclinations? The question has been asked why God couldn't have made us similar to Ella--without the ability to disobey Him. After all, why is Free Will necessary?

If outward obedience were all it took to please God, the "goodness gene" would be the perfect solution. But I think of the verse in 1 Samuel that says: "Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart." God isn't concerned with the appearance of obedience--He wants the reality. What, after all, is the point of obedience in the first place? Why would we bother to obey someone we cared nothing about? The essence of obedience is LOVE. God doesn't want hard-wired obedience--He wants it to be a choice. The harder the choice, the more our obedience is worth. He wants us to follow Him because we want to--because we love Him.

Prince Charming, sensing something unnatural about Cinderella's automatous compliance, protests that he "doesn't want her to do anything she doesn't want to do". In a way, that's what God says to us. He doesn't want us to do what we don't want to either--He wants us to want to comply with His will out of love for Him--because, after all, He is our Happily-Ever-After!