The God who Manipulates

I do not have too many vivid memories of being directly manipulated by any one.  I worked as a college professor for three years in an institution where each professor had to meet with their students
individually for one hour per week.  Each professor (we were referred to as Educational Facilitators) was assigned 20 students with which we would have an hour of individualized instruction in the skills of comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Then we would meet twice a week in a small group of 8-10 students in a class called Colloquium in which we would focus on the affective
skills of listening, responding, valuing, and organizing.
Truly, much manipulation took place by both faculty and students. The faculty would do their best to convince the students that it was in their best interest to work on all these skills as a way of mastering
the subject content.  The students would do their best to convince the faculty to ease the burden of work while seeking the highest grade for their academic performance.

My dear daughter Jennica was a "master" manipulator.  As a pre-adolescent, whenever she wanted something from me, she would not respond to my denials of her request by the typical child-like and pre-teen manifestations of crying or having temper tantrums.  She would respond by gently accepting the denial of the requests, while at the same time knowing deep within, that I could not at heart deny her requests, especially since they were sound ones. She would just say "alright," while knowing that she had appealed to the fatherly side of me that could never deny what she requested, and finally ended up prevailing.  At the age of 35 she still steals my heart and she knows it.

My son Geoffrey in his pre-teen years spoke about the "empire of the feelings," knowing that in many, if not most instances, people operate more on the basis of their emotions than on the basis of intellect and reason.
My other daughter Jessica m.o. of manipulation is by appealing to logic and putting things into proper perspective so that people can see "the truth."  She, in many respects, in imitation of her father, will put things in logical sequence in order to make the point.

We tend to think of manipulation as something evil, because we associate it with deception and malice.  I  want to submit for the purpose of this communication that manipulation is in and of itself, nothing evil and
nothing to be afraid of.  There is a form of healthy manipulation.

One of the many definitions of  "manipulation" is to influence the situation to fit one's purposes."  It is in this context that I respectfully and reverently submit that God is a manipulator.   God, in ways that none of us fully understands, influences history and our personal situations to fit His/Her purposes.  God is the Master-Mind of the universe and works in mysterious and manipulative ways, His/Her wonders to perform.

Throughout biblical history we find that God works through the priests, prophets, kings, queens and other human leaders in order to carry out His/Her plan.  Finally, in these last days, God has spoken and worked through Jesus Christ to carry out His/Her plan of redemption for a broken and fragmented world.  We acknowledge that this plan is being effected by God's Holy Spirit through the agency of the Church (God's beloved community), as well as from time to time in His/Her sovereignty working through the agency of non-believers who willingly or unwillingly become instruments of God's active work in history.

I'm sure that each of us can be witnesses to the fact that in different ways and means, God has manipulated situations in our lives to fit His/Her purposes,  which of course are "good for the soul" in particular,
and good for the creation in general.  While I personally resist being manipulated by another (especially if it is for some opportunistic reason to my detriment), in the case of divine manipulation, I have to praise and thank God for manipulating me.  While I do not always fully or even partially understand God's ways and God's purposes, I am convinced that God knows all things, and that all things do, in fact work together for them that love God.  To the Grand Manipulator of the universe be all glory, honor, majesty, and power.

In the Name of the Creator, and of the Word, and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen!

Juan A. Ayala-Carmona