One of the great philosophical,
ontological questions of humanity’s search for truth is the question of whether
or not we as human beings have what we call “free will”. Do we
make meaningful decisions that control how our lives progress, or are our lives
pre-destined to follow an already-laid-out path, and the ‘decisions’ which we
make are illusions dictated by that path?
The secondary argument, running in conjunction with
that one and at a subterranean level in comparison, boils down to Does
it really matter which way is true, as long as we believe we have
free will?
I’m not going to tease you by withholding my answer –
I’ll start this essay with my opinion, so you can start developing your own
counter-arguments while you read, okay?
There’s a third option.
That third option is … God. (I
know, I know. Given the title and topic of this blog, you’re not
particularly surprised.)
First,
we’ll review the very-abbreviated basics of both positions, so we can discuss
what I believe is the logical intermediate conclusion.
Advocates of the free will camp argue that humans have the
capacity for free will - the ability to choose their actions without being forced
to follow a certain course by either by the influence of others or by natural
laws. The notion of human free will is also an important premise for what
happens in human society - in particular, when it comes to our legal system.
Free will is necessary for the notion of personal responsibility. If people do
not have free will, then it is difficult to argue that they are personally and
morally responsible for their actions - and if that is the case, how
can they be punished for their misdeeds? For that matter, how can they be praised
for the good things they do, if those actions were also not freely chosen?
Meanwhile, those folks who believe that what we do is
pre-determined by factors outside of our own brain, outside of what “we”
think of as “me”. They argue that if the universe
itself is deterministic in nature, then human actions must also be
deterministic - thus, modern determinism tends to be an outgrowth of modern
science. If human actions simply follow the course of natural law, then it is
difficult to hold that those actions can be "freely" chosen. Those
who advocate determinism run into something of a contradiction, however, when
they try to argue their point with those who argue for free will. If it is true
that nothing is freely chosen, then those who believe in the existence of free
will do not do so by choice - so what is the point of trying to convince them
otherwise? Indeed, what is the point of trying to convince anyone of anything
if all events are determined? If you extend determinism to its logical
conclusion, you can do anything you want with a complete lack of guilt, as it
is simply “a by-product of your deterministic creation”. Until we see folks
just walking around randomly shooting people…wait – we do see that on
occasion, don’t we? In fact, I would argue that the sociopathic criminal
element would probably line up heavily on this side of the argument, when push
comes to shove.
John
Calvin, Christian reformer of the 1600’s and the founder of the Calvinist
branch of the Protestant movement, was a firm advocate of determinism, at least
in the sense that “some people are predestined to be saved and some are
predestined to be damned, and there is nothing anyone can possibly do about it.”
I’ve always had a hard time with that idea, but I’m not in a position to argue
or even discuss the topic with the Lord any time soon. An argument could
certainly be made that certain individuals in history were specifically used
by the Adversary to accomplish larger goals, precluding them from “finding God”
along the way. (Adolf Hitler comes to mind.) I confess to being told by my
wife, an intercessor for the Lord by virtue of her holy gifts, that a certain
person we had been praying for the salvation of was no longer worth
wasting our time over – God had talked to my wife and told her that she was NOT
part of the elect, and thus would NOT be saved regardless of our prayers. I
yield to someone better equipped in their Biblical studies to answer on this
topic.
Regardless,
that’s the free will / determinism debate in a nutshell. Notice, if you will,
that very much like the abortion and evolution debates, it’s been framed as an
either/or, so that it becomes a black and white issue, when of course like
those debates it’s actually Fifty Shades of… well, never mind. You know what I
mean.
So, let’s consider God for a moment. The Father is
all-powerful, all-knowing and all-seeing; omnipotent and omniscient. The
general consensus of theologians (and I have no reason to disagree) is that in
some manner we can’t comprehend (cf
Isaiah 55:8-9… “My thoughts are not your thoughts”), God the Father exists outside
of time and 3-dimensional space. My personal belief is that, as the various
string-theories suggest, there are other spatial directions available which we
humans cannot perceive. Stories such as “The Last Mimsy” visualize such possibilities
for us; string theory suggests as many as eleven dimensions exist, with most of
them “folded up” into virtual non-existence. Rather than being “far out in
space”, we know God to be close by: why can’t He be virtually next to
us, one step in the fourth-dimension direction? Why can’t heaven be very
close by – make up a figure: a hundred feet up? – in the fourth dimension,
so when the angels and the deceased saints are home, they’re so close to us
they can monitor the living from next door, so to speak?
But that’s irrelevant to this conversation. The part
that’s important is that time itself is a dimension, and there’s no
reason that the Lord Almighty is restricted to our linear path. I use much of
the same visualization as most theologians – the image of a Father God “outside
of time”, looking in on our timeline and “inserting Himself” wherever He
desires to.
We are “stuck” living life in forward gear, no option
for reverse, skip, pause, or fast forward. Meanwhile, God looks ‘down’ on us
from outside of the timeline, able to access humanity at any point (or,
I suppose, at ALL points simultaneously?). Prophecy is easy then, because
you’ve seen what happened. Just go watch the year 2015, and then go back
a hundred years and “predict” exactly what you just saw.
How does
this relate to the free will v. determinism debate?
God created us with free will. In the Garden,
our ancestors were very specifically given a choice to make, and that
choice was whether to trust what He had told them, or believe the
“chatter” which the Adversary would throw at them. He could very easily have
required us to be worshipful of Him, but in His Mercy, He allowed us the choice
to sin. He allowed us the choice to follow the serpent rather than the
Lord. Would it have been easier
to make us “automotons”, with no free will, who simply obeyed and
worshiped Him? Probably.
But
would it have been worthwhile? I wouldn’t think so.
Imagine
– a world of ‘zombies’ whose only purpose was to adore you. There are plenty of
films and books out there where some all-powerful man (it’s always a guy, isn’t it?) hypnotizes or mind-controls a
gorgeous woman he lusts for to fall madly in love with him. What invariably
happens? He thinks it’s wonderful for a few minutes, and then he realizes
that because it’s ‘fake’, it’s meaningless. Depending on the bent of the
scriptwriter or author, the guy probably starts trying to win her heart legitimately,
so that she will love him of her own free will.
And that’s exactly what the Lord wants.
Not your adoration because you’re required
to adore Him:
Your love of your own free will.
So
God set up legitimate options for you – most prominently, He allowed Lucifer to
fall from grace and take the role of Adversary (what? You never believed that happened
against the Lord’s will, did you? Nary a leaf falls in the forest but
that He doesn’t hear it hit the ground; something of that significance didn’t
just “happen”, either.). The Adversary – aka Satan – is “Prince of
the World”, which implies that he has basically free reign over the planet,
free to create whatever temptations he can to give God’s People desirable
alternatives to His Love.
So, we have free will.
HOWEVER,
that free will has led us somewhere already. The future has already been determined…
By us.
Let
me elaborate. Look at it from God’s perspective: He doesn’t sit through the
thousands of years waiting for the results of our decisions – He can
step outside of time and go to the end of the story and see how it comes
out, right? So, from His perspective, our free will decisions have
already been made when He looks at the future. The future has already
been determined by those decisions, which we had free will in making.
So, to summarize – Our free will has
created a timeline in which, by making decisions along the way, we have
dictated the outcome at the “end of the road”.
Whether you consider your own life the end of the road, or Armageddon,
or the actual End of Time Itself, is immaterial. That moment of time has
been fixed.
In that sense, our universe IS
deterministic. The outcome has already been decided, and God can tell you what
decision you’re going to make in ANY situation…because you’ve ALREADY made it,
from His persepective.
(Now, if you want to go down the rabbit
hole with me, what if you now say, Okay, God, I’m going to change the
decision I made!... Which one does He see? The first one or the second? Well, my
first question is how do you know you’re picking something different?
What decision do you think He sees? Secondly, whenever you’re done trying to
“juke” God out, He’s simply going to look at the end result – again, from
outside the time continuum, so it doesn’t matter how long you take – and know
the course of history. So you have free will, yes. But once you exercise
it, it’s set in stone.
Okay… so what if we discover how to go
back in time? Then we can change the future, can’t we? Yes… to what it’s
going to be anyway! Again, remember – God sees the END PRODUCT. That “end
product” appears when all of our monkeying around is done. Play with the past
all you want – it won’t have any effect on what God sees, and whatever
adjustments you make will simply be the way it happened. You’re not “tricking
God” – you’re playing right into His plans.)
The conclusion – to US, we live in a
free will universe. To GOD, we live in a universe in which all the decisions
have already been made. So, when He wants to adjust a situation to benefit one
of His elect, to build character, to punish the wicked, to save a lost soul –
He can do it knowing what the outcome is going to be, and how that person or
situation was affected.
My
opinion, for what it’s worth, is that He makes fewer adjustments like that than
we generally think He does. Being the proponent of free will that He is, I
think He charts out the big plan for each of us, provides signs and answers
when we doubt or struggle, and generally trusts the system – His System – will
run beautifully on its own, even with the Adversary and several billion humans
infesting it.
Trust Him. He sees what the
end result will be for you – AND we know from Romans 8:28 that ALL things work
together for the good of those who love Him.
Therefore, God will make sure that whatever trials you go through, you will
come out the way He wants you to come out, which if we knew EVERYTHING, if we
knew all that He knows, is how we would want it to come out, too!
Parents,
have you had to tell your child “no” when it really upset them? You knew
that they shouldn’t have that sharp object, but dangit, they really WANT it,
Daddy! If you could somehow explain to a three-year old everything you
knew, they would agree with you, wouldn’t they?
The
same thing happens when we pray. If somehow, we knew everything He knew, we
would be praying for the thing he was going to provide to us anyway. But we
don’t – so we think He’s not listening to us, and we complain. Like a
three-year old who really WANTS that sharp thing, we really want what we
want.
Don’t
forget, however, that the Lord Himself knows what an unanswered prayer feels
like.
Think
back to the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus went alone, while the apostles slept,
and prayed to God the Father, with a fervor so strong that he was sweating
blood, that the Father should take the cup of poison away from Him, that there
be some other way to save humanity
besides going through what He knew lay in front of Him.
And
God the Father refused to answer.
Christ
is God. And yet Christ knows what it feels like to have God not answer a
fervent prayer. As the author of Hebrews reminds us (in chapter 4, verse 15):
“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize
with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are,
yet without sin.”
And He knows we have the right to choose
what we do. He had the right to choose – but of course, He chose to
follow His Father’s plan for Him.
We can only pray that we have the insight to do the same.
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