help a brotha out

My brother is working on his senior essay for St. Johns College. It is supposed to be a 20-40 page paper and he is writting on the kingdom of God (an easy topic ;-) ) Anyway, he posted a question that I think is very good:

God rules the kingdom of heaven, and that is his realm. But he made everything, He rules everything, and so his realm extends to everything, even where his will is not obeyed. There is a paradox here, for we truly have free will, and yet our will cannot go against God’s will. Paradoxes are hard to think about, the mind constantly slides down and takes sides on the issue because of the non-contradiction principle. I guess the only way I can think of holding on to this thought is that God’s Will is that which cannot be contravened, and extends to his entire realm, but within his realm he created things which are able to make free choices. These choices are not subject to the Will of God, but can never cause an event to occur which God does not Will. That really just spreads the paradox out with the intent that you forget the first part by the time you read the second.

I  responded:

The paradox is that God would want what's best for us, but allows us to do what is worst for us. But that is this crazy thing called love. It must have the potential to fail for it to suceed so strongly.

When we pray, "may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven" we are praying that God's kingdom will come on earth. It was and is here in the person of Jesus Christ, and we bring it when we align our wills with God's.

If you have any thoughts or suggestions, please go share them