Question from a reader: “Is free will free if we only GET to chose what we ought to do?”
This is our weekly post here at deposition of our faith. Thank you for joining us.
This is Week 14, and we are still answering a reader’s question.
(Although you can start from anywhere, we encourage you to read up on previous posts as well as some articles lead into the next one).
Scripture Reading: Deuteronomy 30:15
Question: Is free will free if we only GET to chose what we ought to do?
We don’t only get to choose what we ought to do. We get to do whatever we like. What we don’t get to do, however, is determine the outcome of our choices. Meaning, we can’t choose to drink poison and decide that it must taste and feel like a Sprite. (Although they say soft drinks are a form of poison too😂).
You can’t have it both ways; if not, they wouldn’t be called choices. There are trade-offs in any way you turn. If you want to get better at something, you need to spend hours honing that craft. Sometimes, you have to give your sweat, blood and tears for it. You don’t get to lazy around and still get to live that life. You cant have it both ways. Not even in this Kingdom of God.
“I must do the work of He that sent me, for night cometh when no man can work”. Not, “I am the son of God, so I can do whatever I like and still see the results I want to see”.
Let us come off the idea of a stern taskmaster God and realise what is happening.
Many fathers love their children and cannot bear to see them make the same mistakes they made. They may chasten, rebuke, correct, instruct their children, but it never came from a place of loathing. I said, “many fathers” because I know that not all fathers are this way!
This is the same thing with God. The love God has for us all is called unconditional love. The Bible says, “you haven’t chosen me, but I have chosen you”. God loved us and planned our rescue even before we fell in the garden. God didn’t just tell me in particular that he loved me. He said that he loved the world even before my forefathers’ forefathers were conceived.
So, why does God care what we do? Why is the Bible “90% instruction” (disclaimer: made up statistic!)? Why is Christianity so worked up when it comes to issues of the corresponding action when reciprocity doesn’t matter in unconditional love?
I can tell you this: just as your father who loves you doesn’t want to see you go through the wilderness to get to the promised land, so also, God does not want to see you fail at life.
Every instruction given to us in scripture is for our benefit. If we were robots, and we needed an oil change, it is for our good.
Imagine having a robot with free will that needs an oil change. The robot doesn’t get to ignore its need for an oil change and continue on with life performing optimally. If it chooses to avoid an oil change, then it will, unfortunately, continue to deteriorate. The deterioration doesn’t happen because you hate it, but because you designed it to have its old oil changed to perform optimally. (Just like we were intended to have constant fellowship with God from the beginning)
When you force your child to take bitter medicine, it is for his good. If your child wants to have a choice whether or not to take a bitter pill, he cannot also choose to magically obtain the same benefits that the medicine was supposed to give him if he avoids taking it.
Many parents tell their children not to get in trouble because they don’t want to be embarrassed by them. That’s not God. Before we were, he was and is. Our reputation does not change God. His reputation does not change him either. God is conforming us to the image of His Son. We are not able to conform him to anything.
So, when God instructs us, even in righteousness, it’s not about Him. Do you really think that God is angry because two primal creatures hid in a bush and lied? Do you believe that it is something that is an assault on his senses? God knew what Adam had done before He even asked them! God knows who we are, so why would he be embarrassed by our flaws?
The Bible tells us that God is angry with the wicked every day. Yet, many of them are in perfect health, walking the streets and minding their own wicked business!
Yet, the Bible tells us that many of these people shall suddenly be destroyed without remedy if they don’t repent.
Why?
God made this game. If I make a video game, I may well put the things I love inside it. I may create a virtual castle that increases your game health anytime you enter it, and I could fashion the castle after the likeness of my house and name it after my mother or a friend.
God made this game of life. He is good, and He is righteous, and He is just. So, He created a game that rewards the things that He wanted to see in his world. He is without sin. Why would he encourage sin? Understand that God has free will too. Yet, the Bible tells us that it is IMPOSSIBLE for God to lie. Meaning, God chooses to say the truth every single time! He is goodness. He is abundance. He is love. He cannot/will not encourage things that are opposite to his nature of goodness.
So, the system is rigged against you if you are a worker of iniquity. The system is rigged against you if you choose to go in the direction that the game maker did not ordain for good perfection. He doesn’t even have to plan bad things for those who go south. Bad things just come to them because the darkness breeds evil, and everyone who is not in the light is in the darkness. The people in the dark do what they like and not what is commanded, so what they see is what they get.
If you play video games like free roam games, notice this:
You are free to go wherever you like. But because, in the game, there is a goal, a mission of sorts, you cant choose to keep ignoring the instructions and still end up finishing the mission. You cant keep trying to open doors that you haven’t obtained the key for in the video game. This doesn’t mean they limited your movement. It just means you’ve chosen to play the game your way, and so you’ve forfeited the medals/prizes or whatever that they ordained for the people who played the game their way.
That’s how it is sometimes here:
The arrow is pointing North, and you want to go south by all means. The problem is, He only prepared good things for those who go North.
That doesn’t mean people don’t choose to go South. The thing we don’t seem to realise is that the devil is the cunning one. The devil treats his best followers like trash. The devil treats his most diligent adherents like scum! Why? He has no good for you. Every good and perfect gift comes from above. So, everything that the devil deals in is deceitful. Temporal pleasures, greed, wealth, power…everything he gives you makes your health worse even when it makes you feel good. God wants us to drink engine oil to stay healthy as robots, but the devil wants to give us Vodka because it warms up the engines properly!
What happens if you fuel your generator with Vodka? Nothing good, I’ll assure you!
Many people think this impedes freedom and “free will” because God ultimately only gives candy to those who wore white to the party.
“Hence,” people say, “He is cajoling me to wear white by saying I won’t get candy If I don’t”.
However, that thinking is is flawed. If God is only faithful in goodness, then he is not faithful at all. If God is only a righteous God to the saved, then he is not righteous at all.
God will sell a shovel for $50 to the one who wants to tend a farm
And sell the same shovel for $50 to the one who wants himself to harm.
The sun shines upon both rich and poor, good and bad. As believers, one of our greatest strengths is our perspective because we go through the same things that the world goes through, yet we have a different experience!
I don’t know where we got this idea from, but we are convinced that just because one allows you to do whatever you want means that person cannot prefer a particular behaviour. However, that is not true.
I don’t have to reward you if you don’t do things on my terms! I don’t even have to go out of my way to destroy you; it only means that you have to commit to the choice you made.
In today’s world, people want to choose their path and choose the outcome simultaneously.
People want to stand up for the truth and have everybody give them a medal. People want to say the right things and have everybody clap for them when they do. People want to eat the wrong food and have their organs clap for them too!
Jesus Himself told us that the world would hate us because we loved him. He said that. Yet, most Christians today are even fortunate; we are not living in regions of the world where we still suffer the intense persecution that the early church suffered.
Understand that people in the early church were not just forfeiting their friendships and their club memberships every time they witnessed Christ. They were losing their lives too! They were getting stoned to death, crucified, burnt at stake.
“For thy sake, we are killed all the day long”.
People in this world want to eat their cake and have it. They want to be given a medal every time they tell the truth, speak out for themselves, or do the right thing.
But let’s put that aside for now. Here is another thing that we see from scripture:
Even though God lets us do whatever we like, God never hid that not all our options are good. He said, “Behold I have set before thee life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life that ye may live”.
He not only gave us freedom, but he also gave us a hint of what He’d like us to choose! And the best thing is, He knows what is good for you because He made you.
If you’ve ever had a dog, then you’ve probably heard that stuff like chocolate is not good for it and could make it sick. However, a dog will eat it regardless because it doesn’t know what’s good for it. (Frankly, I think even if it knew, it’d still eat it!)
The difference between dogs and us is that we are given the freedom to do what we like and the responsibility to do what is right. Also, we can receive instruction to do what is right.
He that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption. You can’t sow to the flesh and reap eternal life. You have power over choices, not power over the outcome of your choice. You can’t choose sin and then become holy. You can’t work out righteousness and then be made unrighteous.
Complaining about the negatives of freedom is complaining that molten lava burned your organs when you drank it!
Not everything is poison, and not everything is edible either. But you cannot continue to do what poisons your soul and think that it should automatically become edifying just because you chose to do it.
And the thing about our nature as human beings is, we are wired to drift towards the things that destroy us. You don’t need a plan to fail. You don’t need a regimen to get lazy. You need a regimen to stay disciplined! Isn’t that funny?
But God never created us to be reactive. He created us to steer our lives because that is what He did at the beginning! He made light when he met darkness.
He could easily have said, since there was nothing in existence, then it meant nothing was supposed to be in existence. But even God Himself, who designed us in his image, didn’t stay with the default. He changed the situation to his image.
So, we have the freedom to choose without any “buts”. However, we should be responsible and take ownership of our life’s choices: good and evil.
