Has it ever bothered you that you
didn't have a choice? Have you ever not liked the choices laid out
before you? I'm sure you have, just as I have, just as we all have.
Life presents us with choice that we frequently would rather exchange
for others but that we have no real control over. We believe that
Humans have free will but we often stumble along the road and crash
headlong into situations where we really have no choice at all.
Personally, I take this as evidence that the question of free will is
actually quite more complicated or at least different than we have
come to believe.
The question is an old one: does man
have free will? This is an important philosophical question. From
our perspective, if man lacks free will than his choices are not
really his own and thus the blame of any negative consequences
resulting from those actions should not be placed upon man.
Essentially we want to reserve the right of free will for everyone
but we desperately want to be free of the implications, at least the
negative ones. This is why determinism is so tempting. If we can
ferret out a way for man to be essentially programmed than none of
his actions can be blamed up on the man himself, only on his nature.
From what I see man, in point of fact,
does not have free will. Many secular scientists would agree with me
on that but not for the same reasons. It is becoming a popular
belief that since man is nothing more than a “meat machine” by
humanist standards, since there is no supernatural, since there is
only what we can see-hear-taste and touch, then there is no other
option than for man to be nothing more than an elaborately programmed
robot of flesh. Evolution leaves no room for the transcendent and so
man must be firmly rooted in random chance and chemical reactions,
there is no room for sentience. Biblicaly speaking though, there is
transcendence, there is the supernatural, there is more than what we
see. As far as I can see man does not have free will -however- he
does have free choice.
These two concepts are similar to be
sure but there is start difference. To have free will is to have the
power of decision over both action and result, cause and consequence.
To have free choice is to be free, without push or pressure, to
choose from a set of available options. In the garden God did not
set Adam and Eve down on the grass to roam free and wild. In the
perfection that was initial creation God gave perfect people rules.
Now why would He give rules and laws to perfect people? Really that
is a complex question that would take a long time to answer but for
the purpose of this post it was in part to facilitate man's need for
free choice. In that time God gave man one simple choice, obey or
disobey. Don't eat the fruit! That was man's first and only
necessary and conscious choice that had any significance. That
choice is what ultimately doomed us all.
You see Adam and Eve new the rules,
they new what God said but they had the power to choose against that
prescription. Because of that choice they came to know evil and
their innocence was lost. God had no choice but to punish them
because it is in His nature to oppose sin. We see here the plain
difference between free will and free choice. They were free to
choose to disobey but they had no say in the consequences that would
follow.
We find ourselves in a similar
situation now. All of creation, all of our reality comes down
ultimately to one simple choice: obey or disobey, repent or be
punished. God has given us a way out of sin in the sacrifice of His
Son. We must choose now to follow God or remain in rebellion. The
choice is ours but we must then deal with result. We have freedom to
choose but it is God's will that matters in the end.
"Truly,
these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men
everywhere to repent, "because He has appointed a day on which
He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has
ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from
the dead."
(Acts
17:30-31)
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