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Making
things happen - with integrity. A weekly CyberMemo designed to keep you on task. Monday June 6, 2003 Volume V Number 23 |
FOCUS - Don't Mess with Free Will
When Bruce Nolan is given the reigns, empowered to switch roles with God Himself for awhile, he is given only two restrictions. First, he can tell no one. It’s a secret. People can’t handle that one, according to God, so keep it to yourself. One of God’s primary strategies is that His activity remain clandestine, most of the time. Second, Bruce is told that while he can do anything he wants, he may not mess with free will. That one is off limits.
Bruce agrees to the terms.
It’s a curious restriction, really. What if there were no free will? If God is God, couldn’t He make the world a much better place and take that one away? Wouldn’t it solve a whole lot of problems if He would simply eliminate the dumb things people do to mess up their lives (to borrow a phrase from Dr. Laura)? Ah, there’s the problem with the human race – choice.
Out of the ashes of Bruce’s ruined life, he cries out to the Almighty, blaming the Supernatural for his misfortune. He tells God in no uncertain terms how he ought to do his job; and then Bruce makes a startling claim – he (Bruce) could certainly do better (than God) if he had the chance. God hears Bruce’s prayer, and gives him a hands on lesson in the complexities of running the Universe. Bruce is granted his wish. Not quite knowing what he was asked for, he becomes God.
If any one of us could live out this fantasy (and who among us hasn’t considered the wonder of it at one time or another), wouldn’t revenge be one of the first items on our divine agenda? Think of the possibilities. I could show them a thing or two. Clean things up. Impose my newly acquired superiority, and restrict others from the bonehead behaviors that fill our world with such depravity? Such annoyances? Such corruption? Such degeneracy? Now that would be heavenly.
Not that Bruce really cares about the needs of the world. For him, taking on the mantle of the Almighty is like winning the lottery.
Up until now, his life has been a miserable failure. He is the quintessential modern man, obsessed with money and power and image, and his primary goal in life, more important than love or happiness or meaning or purpose, is to become a television news anchor in the local market of Buffalo, as in the New York home of Niagara Falls.
It’s clear that Bruce has been buffaloed all along. His fixation on career make him blind to the rest of the world, including the love of a woman named Grace, who embodies nearly every sense of the word her name implies. Her care for him goes way beyond his capacity to see, or receive. She is forgiving, patient, supportive and in tune. She is lovely, as lovely as the theologically loaded term grace itself. She even prays for him (he learns almost too late). Grace is a heavenly gift to Bruce; but to this wound up overachiever she is, however, only a slight distraction from his real passion - performing for the camera.
While covering a remote story on a rain soaked tour of the mighty Niagara Falls, Bruce learns, just as the cameras roll, that the coveted role of Anchor has been given to his nemesis, his arch rival, the wooden, sanctimonious, Dan Ratheresque Evan Baxter (certainly a kin to the Baxter of the old Mary Tyler Moore Show).
And that’s where he lost it. In a comedic rage, Bruce loses all sense of propriety. Sarcasm and venomous revenge spew out of his mouth and into the live microphone right there on camera and like a boat drifting helplessly over the edge of the Falls, his career is over.
Until God steps in.
* * * * * * * *
The debate over free will has been around for a long time. Sophomoric theologues are drawn to this one; but theologians don’t have a corner on the problem of free will. Philosophers and psychologists and sociologists and biologists argue it with just as much vigor. In fact, Time Magazine just this week has a lengthy cover story on the debate over Nature vs. Nurture in the mushrooming world of bio-genetics. Free will is at the heart of the debate.
In a world of scientists who lean toward the Nature end of the spectrum, Nurture is making some serious strides.
When Billy Graham came to town last month, his Mission stirred up the pot among Christians in our neighborhood. Many were enthusiastic about the opportunity to challenge a large number of people to reconsider their relationship to God, and take the deliberate step of going forward to stake a claim, to openly confess and embrace the work of Christ, be cleaned up and forgiven and make a new start. Some call it a new birth.
But there are some among us, who read the same Bible, and make their way to church on Sunday morning, usually somewhere between nine and eleven o’clock, who seriously question this business of making a public confession of faith. They are Christian determinists. To them, only a select few are predestined to faith. There is no choice in the matter. It is an arbitrary and mysterious plan already established by God himself before the foundation of time. This silly notion that mortal man has the capacity to influence or alter God’s agenda is the worst kind of presumption, they say. Accordingly. a true biblical theology accepts predestination as a hard but eternal truth. Free will, they go on, is a sorry illusion. Choice is an illusion. A dangerous illusion. In this view, we don’t choose to follow God. He chooses us. We can do no more than align ourselves with His predetermined plan.
Not many of these types showed up at Qualcomm Stadium last month to hear Billy Graham call the masses to a moment of decision. “Just as I am” just doesn’t fit. What’s the point?
It appears that geneticists have uncovered a fascinating dynamic in the unraveling of the complex DNA molecule, which has held scientists spellbound for several decades. Anyone who has watched the birth of a child from close range has pondered the question – how can the combination of the sperm and egg cells multiply and grow over nine short months into an enormously complex human being? Everyone counts the fingers and toes of a newborn – first thing. Why? It’s a source of amazement, the formation of those little hands and feet, the bone structure, the muscles developing, and we consider a ten count perfection. It’s a sign that the rest of it is there, too. The eyes. The ears. The nose. The brain. All magically ready to function. The senses of touch, smell, sound, sight and taste all in order. Even the most hardened skeptic is awe-struck in the presence of a newborn.
Geneticists have uncovered the instructions in the DNA. This molecule contains a hardware and software package, complete with a time-table, to develop fully functioning organisms. In the microscopic chain of cells there exists a self-starting, self-sustaining, self-perpetuating program for the development of everything from a beating heart to a breathing lung to a seeing eye to the color of hair.
Scientist are learning to manipulate these instructions. This is a new debate in itself. Some imagine a day when parents design their own children. At some levels, that day is already here. Have you noticed how automobiles have become more and more alike? It’s because they are all designed by computer modeling and preferences expressed in focus groups. Imagine a day when all parents design their own children – we will be a society of clones – all of them the brightest, top performers in the class. Scary thought.
Hardcore geneticists tend to be determinists. They believe that your unique DNA program determines the outcome of your life in just about every way imaginable. You may think you’ve chosen your career, but the genetic program you inherited really did it for you. Your life is predestined by a stunning web of combinations of genetic engineering inherent in the collective structure that emerged out of your particular gene pool. You’re stuck.
Now these scientific determinists have encountered a problem in their theory.
While the blueprint of any given gene is fixed, there is a new variable. Scientists now know that the call to action for each instruction is governed by a “promoter.” This promoter isn’t bound by the instruction. In fact, the promoter responds to environmental factors. The timing has a profound effect, which means the environment has a profound effect. So characteristics develop, not simply as the result of a pre-programmed set of fixed instructions, but also as the result of surroundings. Promoters, and enhancers, are the variables. Physical characteristics and behavioral tendencies are all affected.
So even genes have a mind of their own.
There is a mysterious capacity, even in cells, to choose. Choosing sets a course. Outcomes depend on choice. There are significant consequences, apart from pre-programming.
* * * * * *
When God (Morgan Freeman) told Bruce Nolan (Jim Carrey) that free will is off limits in the fantasy film Bruce Almighty, I believe the writers hit on something profoundly biblical. Solving the riddle, reconciling the Sovereignty of God with the Free Will of Humans is, admittedly, a challenge worthy of the best of philosophical minds. While determinists like to think they have figured it out, I can not agree with their conclusion.
Choice is not an illusion. It is an integral part of God’s created order.
God didn’t build choice into the equation as a diversionary tactic. (“Let ‘em think they are choosing, it’ll make ‘em feel better.”) Nor does it somehow limit God’s sovereignty Choosing is fundamental to everything else.
Take love, for example.
In a compelling scene, Grace (Jennifer Anniston) and Bruce are seated in Buffalo’s finest restaurant. Grace’s intuition told her that tonight, after a long wait, Bruce would propose marriage and ask for her hand. He brought her to this place, he said, sparing no expense, because he wanted to talk. In the scene, her smile is radiant, he is full of anticipation, his eyes lit, she expects her greatest wish to be fulfilled. “OK, I can’t hold it in any longer,” he says. “Here goes.” And her eyes glisten, she can’t believe the love of her life, more than a little self absorbed, is finally ready for commitment. He drops to a knee, she squeals with delight.
“I got the job,” his eyes all aglow.
Her smile disappears, free falling into a quagmire of disappointment. He doesn’t even see it. “It’s true. You are now in the company of the Nightly News Anchor of Buffalo’s highest rated station!” he joyously proclaims as though it matters to Grace.
“I’m so pleased for you,” she says choking back her tears.
And Grace knows. You can’t force someone into loving you.
It doesn’t work that way. Never has. Never will.
Love is a choice. It’s a mysterious matter of the heart. And the will.
* * * * * * *
It’s Monday morning. You are a leader.
The debate over free will and predestination have little to do with today’s workload, or does it? Sometimes you wonder – how did I get here? Am I the victim of forces beyond my control?
The new hit movie is drawing big crowds. People are hungry for spiritual insights, even when they come from a comedian. Bruce Almighty is the most recent offering in a genre that has a proven success record (Morgan Freeman is nearly as high a favorite to be type cast as the Almighty as George Burns). And Bruce, while the film stays pretty commercial, pretty generic, won’t offend many. You can be a member of one of many religious orders and still connect. But there is a powerful truth in the movie. God doesn’t mess with free will. You have the power to choose. And your choices matter. There are consequences to your choices.
The determinists, both the scientific and the theological kinds, have taken the easy way out. They’ve abdicated a critical human responsibility. It’s my opinion that most of them simply like the security of thinking they’ve solved a profound riddle. I don’t believe they have.
You are not a victim. You are not paralyzed, destined mindlessly to fulfill someone else’s plan. You are empowered to choose change. To choose commitment. To choose an action plan.
Not even God is interested in a forced, obligatory relationship with robots. I don’t want that sort of "love" either - from my children or my wife. And they don’t want it from me.
Real love comes from the heart. It’s a gift.
A real future comes from a succession of good choices.
How about this Monday morning? Today, exercise your free will.
With boldness. With conviction. With passion.
Posted in Valley Center, CA
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2003
Special Thanks to my good friend David Belcher, owner of Rhino Media Group and creator of WisdomGram
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