Seek TRUTH - Choose LIFE
FREEDOM
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." -John 8:32
Abraham Lincoln – the 16th president of the Unites States of America.
“Freedom is not the right to do what we want, but what we must”.
Freedom is the ability to make conscious decisions and to have the power to carry them out without restraint. Physical freedom - from a health condition to act freely in good health. Civil freedom - to live outside the limits of a prison or physical confines. Social freedom - to express speech and behavior. Freedom to pursue a career of choice in any field of interest. Freedom to marry who you choose. Financial freedom from unmanageable financial burden. Freedom to vote for governing officials to rule the nation. Religious freedom to practice any faith without persecution. These are only some rights that lots of us take for granted in countries where they are unrestrained; they give us the opportunity for self-realization. We are social beings who have a natural desire to maximize our potential in life through free will. Free will has been a topic of debate throughout history and sometimes comes as a heated topic of discussion; even among some Christian groups.
Do we have free will or is everything predestined?
Is free will truth or an illusion from those in power? How can we know if we are free or not? Does free will enrich our life with meaning or does predestination remove make life meaningless? Some claim free will, some claim predestination, and some claim both work in harmony; while there are some others who simply do not care for such discussions who are just trying to enjoy life.
Naturalistic predestination claims that absolutely everything we can observe through science and even things we cannot yet observe is a result of causality. Even our mental state and behavior are a result of physical phenomenon; that free thought is an illusion and that we have convinced ourselves that we have a choice. This is pure naturalism.
Metaphysical predestination will cause us to believe that there is also a spiritual reality and a God who made everything, but that He already predetermined everything. All events we perceive as coincidences and choices is just our observation of God’s masterpiece; a play that will carry out all the scenes exactly the way He preordained. That even our choices through “free will” are an illusion we convince ourselves of. We are just puppets in His hands in a play and as God has preordained some to fail and others to succeed – our will does not matter, because it’s just an illusion. So, while we still have our sanity in place, let’s consider each possibility; IS IT TRUE?
“I think therefore I am”
René Descartes, 17th century philosopher.
Let’s suppose for a minute that naturalism is true. How can we begin to explain our thoughts and new ideas? Do these ideas have a source? How a purely material mind produces non-material thoughts. We collect and processed information from our surrounding reality, we create ideas in our mind that generate new ideas and we create new information, like this article for example. Without the existence of an immaterial mind – this cannot be possible. The human mind cannot be merely a reflection of the physical brain.
Ability to reason requires a mind that can freely think.
Metaphysical predestination as we may define it, involves a world that is a union of spiritual and physical reality where God is in sovereign control of all things. In this world view, absolutely everything we can think of was preordained by God from before there was time, including every letter of this sentence. Since we already established the shortcomings of a purely naturalistic worldview – we need to seriously consider the existence of another, metaphysical or spiritual reality. Since the discovery of the big bang theory in the scientific community, we learned that the universe as we know and understand it - must have had a beginning. Such a universe that had a beginning of space, time and matter must have been caused by a force outside of this reality. As we study science from largest to the smallest phenomena, from cosmology to biology to quantum entanglement; we see a consistent mystery and complexity in the way everything is ordered. The claim that an explosion from an infinitely small space with an infinite amount of energy within an infinitely small span of time can bring about such order and balance we observe in absolutely everything we study – is absolutely irrational. Not only irrational, but such a mentality cascades into ideals that destroy meaning of life as an excuse to commit horrible acts of violence. As we see these terrible events take place we wonder if there is a chance that god exists, in hope that He can help us in some way. God either exists or does not exist. Opposing and contradicting statements cannot both be true. Either there is one god or many gods; both statements cannot be true. Through this lens of reason, we can now examine if such a God fits into reason of metaphysical predestination – or not. Feel free to examine science in pursuit of truth and you will come to the same conclusions, but here is a brief overview.
In the beginning God created everything – including mankind. God created mankind in His image as man and woman He created them (Genesis 1:27). The Holy Bible states that God is sovereign over all His creation; He is a God of love, goodness, truth, mercy, justice, wisdom and peace. As sovereign God who created mankind made provisions in an event that something goes wrong. We know now that God has made provision for the salvation of all mankind before the foundations of the world. Now, why would a good and loving God do such a thing? God is outside space, time and matter and is never surprised by anything – hence He is God and is fully sovereign over all. And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; (Acts 17:26-27). We know now that mankind rebelled against God in the garden of Eden, and now we all inherited this sinful nature – as we are a continuation of the same life entities – Adam and Eve who first sinned. In Adam we all sinned (1-Corinthinans 15:22), we are his descendants, and have come short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). Now the ultimate question.
Either the good and Holy God predestined Adam to sin and cast his entire progeny into a fate of damnation, or the sovereign God gave mankind free will even though He foresaw their fall into sin.
If God predestined Adam and all mankind to stumble into sin, thus causing all of them to be condemned to eternal damnation – then why bother creating such beings as humans, to irritate God through their sin and rebellion? Besides the point, He would not be a good God if He preordained all for eternal punishment if there was nothing any one person could have done to avoid such a horrible fate. Perhaps those who advocate that God made man sin imply that God is not good, and if He is not – then He wouldn’t have created us – yet here we are. What makes matters worse for the case devoid of free will and absolute predestination - is that the God manifested Himself in the flesh to die a horrible mortal death only to save some elect that He sought to be worthy of saving according to His sovereign will and plan. God does as He pleases (Psalm 115:3/Job 8:12) and we are all the same in His sight (Romans 2:11). If metaphysical predestination is true then we are only wasting our time thinking of such bizarre ideas when our life is slowly fading away. Did God deem us worthy to be His elect or did He decide to damn us in the worst eternal destiny? Maybe we got lucky and were elected while some of our loved ones were not.
In either case, free will cannot exist if only naturalistic predestination or metaphysical predestination is true. We are just puppets on strings of nature or puppets in God’s hands. We cannot be condemned for doing evil or rewarded for doing good. We had no choice but to do that which was predestined by God or physics, including reading this page. But what if we actually have free will?
Is everything in your life a direct result of your choices?
Do you dare to take credit for all the good things you have accomplished or been a part of, and take responsibility of all the evil you have done or have been a part of? If you had such an amazing or miserable childhood, was that of your volition? What time in history you were born in, your family, your gender at birth, your siblings, health, wealth, trauma, injuries, accidents, loss of family, death of loved ones, etc. If you would like to believe that this was all your choice then it would be reasonable to dismiss that kind of arrogance for madness and such things would demand accountability for causing others harm. No one can in good conscience reasonably claim that their successes and “luck” are all attributed to and is a result from their will alone. Accidents of “misfortune” are out of their control when they strongly willed against such “bad luck”. The coincidences and accidents that we experience in our life are orchestrated by God. Why do bad things happen to good people? This is God’s way to teach us valuable lessons and to refine our characters through discipline. Why do good things happen to bad people? This is God’s mercy for them and a call for them to seek Him in humility.
How can we reconcile predestination and free will?
God gave mankind a rational thought to be able to critically analyze such dilemmas. Not only that, but God has given us His divine word to teach us the truth on these matters and His Holy Spirit to guide us into understanding of His revelations. In the gospel of John we read the most famous gospel verse:
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life” – John 3:16.
But wait, God has predestined this plan of salvation from before the creation of the world and gave us a choice to make through faith?
This simply implies that predestination and free will MUST coexist and CAN work together to explain God’s will. God is sovereign, and in creating mankind in His image – He also gave us such freedom to make choices. God made mankind in His image not only to express a likeness of His divine attribute of sovereignty over all His creation, but other attributes as well. Love, anger, joy, sorrow, frustration, patience and offenses. If we cannot have free will then we cannot have all of these qualities either. God warned Adam about the forbidden tree in the garden of Eden. If Adam and Eve did not have free will, then God is unjust in casting them out of the garden.
God making provision for our salvation does not mean that His sovereignty causes us to do one thing or another through predestination; This means that because God is outside time – He foreknew what will happen from our use of free will and thus He has made provision for the salvation of all mankind through Jesus Christ.
Foreknowledge is NOT predestination and does NOT violate free will.
If you watched a movie and then decided to watch that same movie with your friend who has not seen it yet; your foreknowledge will not cause the movie to play differently for your friend just because you already know the outcome. Your foreknowledge of the film also does not affect how your friend reacts to one scene or another, they are unaware and will respond according to their will.
Now you are in a helicopter flying over a narrow maze of rivers, guiding your friend who is on a row boat. The river is very long, has many twists and turns, has dangerous spots to avoid and one best path. If you love and care about your friend, you will guide them through the safest path ad you will alert them of upcoming cliff, swamp, rocks or dangerous creatures. You friend can either choose to trust your word of guidance or try do everything on their own. If your friend ignores your warnings and gets into trouble you won’t be too surprised since you warned them not to go there for their own good. Has your foreknowledge of their hardship or success altered their free will? No. Has your foreknowledge predestined them for their success of failure? No. This is a very complex river with thousands of different paths that can be taken to fail, suffer shipwreck and even cause death. No matter how lost they get - you are only able to guide them back onto the right path to their final destination of life. If your friend trusts you then they will reach the end successfully, if not – the you are not liable for their demise, regardless of how much you loved them and begged them to listen. God does something very similar.
Philosophy is the love of wisdom that helps drive us to understand who we are and the world around us. This self-awareness within us enables us to perceive the world around us as we develop into mature adults. The more self-aware we are the more power we can attain through hard work. The more power we attain, the more we are accountable for in our decisions, as they can have a greater impact than those who have little or no power. Many of us may have heard that “with great power comes great responsibility” which actually comes from a parable “Sword of Damocles” from the 1st century before Christ (BC). This is not much different than...
"To whom much has been committed, of him they will ask the more."
- Luke 12:48
Some use their power for good and some for evil. Regardless of how we define good and evil we all understand both. No matter what your culture or language is - you somehow know what is right and what is wrong. We inherited this sense of conscious knowledge from our forefathers - the first humans. This knowledge constantly abides in us as a result of violating God's will. Violation of God's will is sin. Parents want what is best for the children they love. Parents will instruct them with the power of authority they hold and with the wisdom they attained through their life to ensure prosperity of their descendants.
But we do not only break the laws our forefathers put in place to restrain us from evil but we also break God’s laws that He ordained to protect our life.
As soon as we become self-aware we rebel against the parents that love us, and the more self-aware we become the more our ego grows into a rebellious mankind. This pride within us is the nature we inherited from the very first humans who rebelled against God. And so, from generation to generation we grow in our pride, selfishness and defiance of God. Even though we can convince ourselves that we are free we are bound to the greatest of sins - pride.
Pride perverts truth, rebels against authority, put down others to rise above them at their expense; and condemns us before God.
Sin is the root of all evil and brings forth death. Pride is the root of all sin and evil exists because we choose it. We choose sin because we inherited sinful nature. We inherited sinful nature because the first man and woman sinned against God.
Sin is a violation of God’s commandments to submit to His will. As we continually feed our ego, selfishness and pride - it only gets stronger. We are all temporal beings who came into existence and will be gone within a century. As hard as life may be for some people, the last thing they need is to have God be against them because of their pride and rebellion. Jesus said:
"Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin" - John 8:34
This bondage of the sinful nature we inherited will accompany us to our graves. "For I am not practicing what I want to do, but I do the very thing I hate." (Romans 7:14-15). We may even understand what good and evil is but our strong and powerful ego dictates our lives to our demise. Sin naturally lives within us and we are slaves to it. What is the result of this sin? “For the wages of sin is death;...” (Romans 6:23). This death is not instantaneous for all sins yet it is a certain outcome of our lives. We live in fear of death, bound by its certainty with no escape as we see our cemeteries get filled day by day. The guilt we carry in our minds and hearts does not bring us peace from offending loved ones and breaking laws.
"For God will bring every work into judgment, Including every secret thing, Whether good or evil." - Ecclesiastes 12:14
The anxiety of our “karma” may hinder our peace and freedom in the heart. Worst of all is the vanity of it all: our existence, our contribution to society, our pleasures and pains, fear and joy. Sooner or later our day of judgment will come and we will come before our God for condemnation. God is a good judge and He will ensure evil gets punished and good gets rewarded.
Every sin we commit is against God and He cannot simply forgive sins. God is just and He must punish all sins according to His law.
No man who would be willing to die for another man’s sins - let alone set him free from the bondage of future sins. God is eternal and cannot die for the sins of mankind to save them from sin. So to reconcile us, God in His wisdom has manifested Himself in mortal flesh - as Son of God and son of man. Jesus Christ is the only One who was born without sin. He was the only one capable of carrying the sins of all mankind while also having the ability to die as the atoning sacrifice. The sins of all time and of all people were placed upon Him and only He was able to carry such a burden.
But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” - Romans 5:8
The good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that God has provided a plan of salvation for all mankind. The sacrifice has atoned for the sin of all mankind at one time in one man - Jesus Christ. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.” (John 3:16-17). He died a torturous death on the cross and satisfied the justice of His condemnation for sin. And because He himself had no sin of his own, death had no power to contain Him - a holy and righteous God. He was raised from the dead, manifested Himself to many disciples, ascended to heaven and will soon return. He abides in the hearts of all who diligently seek Him. “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship Him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24). It is through Jesus Christ that we can be set free from our condemnation and certain death. Those who believe in His sacrifice have forgiveness of their sins, we have hope in eternal life and God’s Spirit guides us to live in freedom from sin. Because of Christ’s sacrifice our debt is paid for our transgressions against God. Jesus Christ calls all to trust in Him and believe in His atonement for our sins.
God is love, and without free will, love is coercion. For love to be true - it must be freely received and freely given.
God has predestined events to occur through His sovereignty so He can be glorified, but also gave us freedom to choose right from wrong. He predestined all to inherit eternal life and made a provision for the salvation of all mankind – yet not all will choose to accept His gift.
"Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed." - John 8:36
“Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” - 2-Corinthians 3:17
As we learn about our Savior Jesus Christ we will have a clearer understanding of His truth of who we are and our purpose. As we walk in freedom led by God’s grace in our regenerated life in Christ we will have a conscience free of guilt before God. And though we will stumble into sin we will be reminded through God’s word that we are free from condemnation, free from fear of death and from eternal damnation. "I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live;" (Deuteronomy 30:19) It all starts with a choice to humble yourself and accept the truth of forgiveness and eternal life. You are also free reject God through pride and defiance to satisfy your ego, the end of which path is death and eternal damnation. What will you choоse?