December 22, 2015

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.” John 3:16 – 21

“G-d created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go either wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong; I cannot. If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did G-d give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata—of creatures that worked like machines—would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which G-d designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily United to Him and to each other in…..love.” (C. S. Lewis [1898 – 1963], Mere Christianity, “For All The Saints”, volume III, p. 102)

Free will. What a topic. Predestination is the concept that all events of history, past, present and future, have been decided or are known (by God, fate, or some other force), including human actions. This is a power that is contrary to free will. True free will would mean that nothing, no person, event or other factor would help to determine a decision or course of action. Does a person have free will? Does a person live in a place, world, community, or family where their decisions have no outside influence? Some people would claim that they have complete free will – while others would point to karma, fate, or influence of some kind affecting every decision.

There was a study completed a few years ago that seemed to point to the fact that true free will may not actually be “a thing”. Here was the study. They strapped electrodes to the brains of subjects, and asked them to make random selections of objects – to choose between one object or another. They were to clear their minds, and when directed, make a choice, spontaneously. What the study showed is this: though the subject making the choice seemed to do it free of any outside stimuli, something in the brain fired a few microseconds before the choice was made. It suggests that there may be nothing called “complete free will”.

In this country, we claim a lot of freedoms, and few of them are freedoms that happen on a molecular level. One of the freedoms we hold dear is the freedom of the will, or in other words, I hold that if my conscience is bound, I should not be forced to do certain things.

“God isn’t about making good things happen to you, or bad things happen to you. He’s all about you making choices–exercising the gift of free will. God wants you to have good things and a good life, but He won’t gift wrap them for you. You have to choose the actions that lead you to that life.”
― Jim Butcher

To exercise your power and freedom to choose, you have to make choices. G-d has freely chosen you, because G-d created you. You then have the choice to live into the blessings you have, or to let others squelch them. “It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1)

Pastor Dave