The fifth smart way to think about God is that GOD HAS A PLAN. It is smart to believe that God has a plan and that plan includes Him as well as you. Even God must play by God’s rules. He can’t break them like Don Godleone (hopefully you remember him).

One of those rules is that God made man special. He made him a creator, gave him free will, making him responsibility for his decisions and actions. God can’t just decide to swoop down and make our lives perfect. That would be an insult against us as humans – against our nature. It would violate the very free will He gave us.

God’s plan must have respect for the creators He created. He must allow man his rope, even if man hangs himself so that there can be a relationship between him and God. God can’t just give us choice and then take it away. He’d would break His Word if He did and violate His own Spirit, too. And what kind of God would that be? He’d be someone you couldn’t trust! Any plan God has is meaningless unless we can trust Him.

And what is God’s plan? He wants everything in the universe to return to the Origin – to Him. That doesn’t mean He wants to destroy it, disassemble every atom and start afresh in some apocalyptic nightmare. It means He wants it to return to the Origin of the   origins. To Spirit. To God.

God wants us to become so acutely aware of our divine origin that we act it. He wants us to become divine creators in our own right – to live in accordance with the laws He created with Creation.

God can help somewhat. He can inspire revelations like those received through Jesus but He cannot force us to be moral. He cannot make choices for us. He cannot, and will not, interfere with our free will or freeze our hands to prevent us from creating evil. He cannot free our souls from the divisions within us.

God has no intention of creating a world filled with evil. He’s not the Marquis de God. But clearly, by creating us, our God left room for evil – the evil which our freedom can create.

That’s why God’s plan requires our cooperation. It’s not enough for us to blindly trust Him, like Little Mary Sunshine. God has to trust us too.

All creation is free to act in its own way. God cannot stop a volcano from erupting or a hurricane from forming. These events are just a part of nature which was created to change as we do.

Theosis, the foundation of Eastern Spirituality, is a process wherein we cooperate with God in growing and changing, becoming ever more like our brother Jesus in the way that we think and live.