I suspect that I view God as less absolute than most people do.  Because I believe in an embodied God, I do not feel that He can literally be everywhere and everywhen.  And because I have a robust belief in free will, I do not feel that God can have absolute foreknowledge.  All this leads to a somewhat non-absolute view of God.

I am in the midst of possibly the most stressful time in my life, and I am worrying myself silly.  I feel some sort of moral obligation to worry.  I believe my worry accomplishes something.  If nothing else. it makes me more responsible in fulfilling my duties.

I am reading William James’ Pragmatism, and one of his points is that believing in an absolute God allows one to take a ‘moral holiday’.  What he means by this, is that if God is in complete control of everything, then everything is God’s responsibility.  If we come across some difficult circumstance, we don’t need to take some moral stand on the issue.  We can shrug it off and leave it in God’s hands.

It strikes me, that if I had a more absolute view of God, I would likely worry less.  I could let go of my sense of moral obligation to worry about my responsibilities and just leave them to God.  Additionally, I do not feel that this needs to be an all-or-nothing dichotomy.  I can just believe that God is nearly absolute, or even functionally absolute – and just expect Him to bless me like crazy whenever the need arises.  This could help me be happy and nearly stress free in spite of what is going on in my world.  This seems like just the type of pragmatic approach that James was suggesting.