On the confinements of free will.

[It's a bit of a rant... I don't quote any scripture, but if you go here and click on the audio for the session called "Does God have two wills?" which as of this writing was second to last on the page, then you can hear the abundance of scripture that brought about this post... Of course, all the thoughts are my own (not the church's or the pastor's) and I'm just a nobody learning about religion. :D]

I have no idea where in the Bible it says we have free will. Adam and Eve roamed freely and chose to not choose God. That's about the extent I see of free will so far: we can choose whether or not we let God into our lives.

But then I posted a question I heard in a sermon about how prayer is expecting God to impede other people's free will and after I'd posted that, I tried to figure out the answer on my own. The only thing I came up with was there is no free will.

Another question raised was sort of the opposite. If you do have free will and God can't affect it, then was giving humans free will giving the all-sovereign God something He could not be sovereign over? Did He give us a sort of power above His own?

How is that possible?

I emailed the Village Church for help in figuring it out. They can't very well bring it up and then leave us all wondering, right? They kindly and quickly replied, referring me to a study session posted online about that topic.

Maybe I understood it wrong, but my perception resulting from the session is that we do have free will, within the confines of God's plan. If we so blatantly step out of the path God intended for us, He'll intervene. He's got a greater picture of what is to happen and if we aim towards affecting that in a negative way, I don't doubt He'll redirect us.

Of course, we won't know it. We probably will think we either changed our mind or changed our path because of a fixed set of determining factors. We'll never really know in this lifetime how much was us and how much was God.

But are we puppets then?

Even in a Godless world, we're puppets. We go through life accumulating baggage and making rules for ourselves to the point where every decision we make is no longer spontaneous and free but weighted down by factors we've become mostly unaware of. For example, up until now, I've been choosing men who state very clearly really early on that they don't intend on ever letting themselves love me. Maybe it's a string of bad luck or bad choices, or maybe it's because my mom left when I was two and deep in my heart, that fact makes me fundamentally unlovable and I subconsciously choose people who are bound to prove me right. And so they have and after twenty-nine years around here, I still haven't found a man who makes me feel lovable. I might say that I choose these guys by free will. All of my actions and choices are decisions I've made, but in reality, the broken past that haunts my soul probably made those broken decisions for me.

So what is free will? And why is it so important anyway?

Is it something we've created to blame cancer and all the other bad things on? We have free will, and we're terrible sinners who have used that free will to warp the world in such a way that our DNA is affected and altered and grows tumors and badness within our bodies. Free will somehow puts the burden of all sufferings on us rather than on God. The problem with that idea is the contradictory idea that God allows us to suffer to bring us closer to Him. God will do whatever it takes for you to grow the strongest bond you are capable of with Him.

That was another point in the study session thingy- if Calvinism is true and God chooses who He will show Himself to, then why be missional? I love the way Matt Chandler explained it as God saying, "I'm going to move in this guy's life. Want to be a part of it?" And really, I applied that to all of it- the entire free will argument. If God's got a plan, maybe He has asked me to be a part of it. Maybe I'm free to play and enjoy and live in His world while He uses me to get stuff done.

But that idea brings up another. If we truly give ourselves to God and allow God to work in our lives and through us for His kingdom, then why are we so stuck on free will? In theory, giving your will to God will fulfill you far, far more than anything free will can accomplish for you.

Letting God move you, letting God use you, letting God be the puppeteer to your puppet may sound restricting and confining and controlling, but if the Bible is true at all, there is nothing we can strive for that will make us feel more satisfied, more valuable, more fulfilled and more free than living a life in worship of God.

God intervening in our free will also makes sense of the notion that He chooses whose heart He will change and who He will draw closer to him. Like me. I do believe that God chose me. I definitely wasn't looking for God before I started this journey. I had made it twenty-eight years without worrying about religion or my place in the universe. I was content knowing I didn't know the answers. I really was ok with that. And then all of a sudden, God popped into my life, affected me and then metaphorically beat me until I submitted. :D I didn't really choose it. I chose to pursue it with passion, but the seed had somehow already been heart suddenly. And I do mean suddenly. It wasn't something I'd built up to at all. It wasn't something my life was generally leading towards. It came out of nowhere.

Sometimes, the opposite happens. We see that in the Bible. Jesus knows Judas will betray Him. He knows Judas will hang himself and set himself up for hell. And nowhere in the Bible does it say He tried to change Judas' heart. Nowhere does he make it His life mission to save Judas. He didn't choose Judas. He probably doesn't choose a lot of people for a multitude of reasons.

That's not to say that if He chooses you, you become some sort of prophet. I'm just talking about salvation here. Some people, like me, are thrust into an environment where salvation is next to impossible to find, and yet, somehow, those people, like me, find it anyway. How does that happen? How can that happen without an intervention from God?

Either way, I'm here now. The idea of free will hasn't been fundamental to me, nor did I grow up in a church that enforced it into me until it became truth and that probably makes it easier for me to let it go entirely. I don't mind not having free will. If God uses me for whatever and in whichever way He pleases at the expense of my free will, so be it. I wouldn't be here at all if it wasn't for Him, and nothing I have or love would exist without Him. I wouldn't even be able to love without Him. So why stick a free will clause on everything? Why make Him owe me something? Has He not given me enough?