reason for discipline part deux

in reply to a comment made on an earlier post:

there are two parts to being Godlike: mastery over environment, and mastery over self.

the first speaks of an unstoppable force, while the second speaks of an immovable object. contradictory, but inspirational, for you only know your capabilities through your possessions by conquest, but you only know your strength in the giving up of that power, a release of the crutch you have every right to use. as in the case of all so-called paradoxes, the issue lies in the impossibility of one of the defining premises. in this case that i want to highlight, the supremity of God, only the immovable object exists.

i believe God can rape your soul, as you said, if he wanted to, but the reason why im not Jansenist is simply because i believe God is more defined by the second power. he specifically and repeatedly withholds exercise of the first power in deference to his own gift of free will to us. there are many instances in the bible where God is said to have hardened men's hearts or turned their minds, but i find it much more reasonable and convincing in all of these examples where God is undoubtedly the instigator and influencer rather than the author of the compliant and/or defiant decisions of man. it is through this understanding which i read all cases of God hardening or opening people's hearts.

in essence we are driving at the same point, except that i wanted to draw a much clearer picture of what the first power is--its pervasiveness in my own humanity as well as of that in the reader himself or herself, by extension also that of the many people in high places. it is born of the repeated exercise of free will coupled with a hunger and thirst for things well beyond our mortality. we are definitely in the position to bite more than we can chew.

while the first power is easy, the second is rare. hence the completion of a goal to Godliness must in the end always involve a renunciation of one's own power in deference to the free will of another. it is the ultimate gift, a sacrifice of one's own free will. in religion, the goal here is to make God the recipient, a return of the gift, like the returning of the prodigal son, who says no, i did not need this, but please, let me stay in your house instead.

THAT...is the reason for discipline.