"Thy Will be Done":
There are a good assortment of insensate inane expressions which have achieved popular usage throughout history. They have in common a certain illusion of profound expression, a certain supposed finality about them which portrays these expressions as the final word. When common sense and human understanding fails, when our faith that God will intercede on our own, or on our groups' behalf, becomes a non reality, then often the final white flag comes up and "Thy Will be done" closes the book.
But what exactly does this phrase mean? Who is Thy? Is it my God or some other groups God? And for God's Will to be done, does it require a directive or ok from us? It sounds too much like the phrase, "OK, have it your way". Interestingly, the phrase is not always used as a mindless submission to fate, but sometimes "Thy Will be Done" is used to justify some sort of crusade---legal, cultural, or military----against those who think or act differently from us, or who have something we want. It is rare for any army to go into battle without imagined confidence that God is on their side and God's Will is being Done. How can the same phrase be used in such different ways? In one case we are frustrated that God is not listening or paying any attention to, or helping, our cause of the moment, and we admit our ignorance---we 'let' God have His way, admitting that we don't understand His way. Yet in other instances we are absolutely sure we understand through 'faith' God's way or will and we undertake an active role is carrying out God's will. Of course our group's perception of God's will often clashes with another group's perception of God's will and 'uh oh'----the laws, persecution, and killing fields commence---all in the name of doing God's will.
The perception of ethics is an innate attribute of the human species. But the understanding the 'Will of God' is not innate to any species. Claims that certain humans do understand the 'Will of God' has never been demonstrated throughout all of history. The holiest amongst us, and those of the past, have sometimes committed the most grievous of crimes, about every crime imaginable, and no human yet elevated to such stature has ever demonstrated the ability to be right on all the important issues of his/her day. Where does this purported knowledge, from religious leaders, of God's will come from? Is it by a human vote of some sort? Is it an inheritable knowledge? Is it by knowledge learned by gaining a degree in religion? If, after all these years of human existence, there is no clear indication of who these people are who know God's will, why do we persist in every group devising some sort of human mechanism to select such people? Shouldn't at some point this sort of silliness stop? Isn't God's Will the ultimate reality, not something we can perceive or manipulate via rituals and prayers and college degrees? Fish can swim, birds can fly, and humans have the ability to reason more so than other species. Every species works with what they have, and so too must humans. Some problems we can solve and should solve using our collective reasoning, while some problems are not yet accessible to human reasoning---but we do know that reason is the tool which God's evolutionary process has given humans to use. Our innate ethics, coupled with our collective ability to reason, are God's evolutionary gift for us to survive or perish in HIS evolutionary system. Other species don't have these tools. We ought to quit trying to humanize God or visualize God as some sort of manipulative and cruel taskmaster who needs our constant worship in the most absurd ways.
God's will, by definition of the word God, is being done. Humans may well be the first species with the innate ability to affect their own destiny. Given this point in evolutionary time, humans may or may not be able to protect our own destiny as a species, but that hardly contradicts the laws of evolution. The laws of evolution are God's will, God's creation, God's mechanism for progress over time. What is constant is God's Will and Time. All else is temporary---ephemerally transient. TIME doesn't go. WE go, TIME stays---I guess forever.
