Perils of Freedom - Part Four "Free Will"

This is the fourth of five parts in an exploration of subjects related to my second novel. I am trying to get at the heart of something deep. I am not sure I've even gotten close yet. I'm trying to avoid falling into the trap of writing pop psychology. I want deep analysis, not surface clutter. I think, though, that the closest most humans will ever be to truly deep wisdom are very shallow concepts. When I read some of the major thoughts of world renowned philosophers I can just hear them thinking, "How come this sounds so deep in my head but looks so innocuous on paper?" You can even boil down the Bible's great wisdom to, "Be nice to each other." But then, perhaps, its supposed to be that simple. We just make it hard. But I digress...

There are two universal truths in the Universe. God loves us. We were created with Free Will. These are absolutes, independent of each other. No matter how much free will we have, God will still love us. No matter how much God loves us, we have free will. We can't change either. We can't get rid of either.

But what is Free Will? Does Free Will mean we can do whatever we want? Does it mean we can do whatever we want without consequences? Does Free Will lead to more chaos or to more order? Does it make you more right or more wrong? Where does Free Will lie on the path? Is it a gift? Is it a trap? Is it the path itself?

When we are created with Free Will, depending on which philisophical bent you follow, we come into this world a blank slate. We are taught right and wrong. We are taught good and bad. We are taught chaos and order. But at that moment of birth, we are neither right nor wrong, good nor bad, chaotic nor orderly. We are somewhere in between, neutral, balanced. Our decisions, then, tip us in one direction or another - with the ripples we make in the mill pond growing with each passing year.

With every decision we make, naturally, we work towards some inner idea of perfection - using it to guide our decision making process. Nobody's actions are entirely left to chance. People make decisions based upon some sort of criteria that, presumably, moves them closer to their idea of right, good, and orderly. Sometimes we end up doing things we know are wrong, in order to get us closer to those goals. When we get in trouble for these decisions, inevitably, our first response is to assess blame to some outside source - whether it be a person, or a stupid law, or a unforgiving God. We made the decision, but the hope is that someone else will take the punishment for us. When we make the right decision, very few people look to share the reward.

For some reason, I am finding the idea of Free Will very hard to accept. On the one hand, it tells me that I am free to do whatever I want, but I know that to be a lie. There are laws and thoughts and pressures that exist that force me to make a decision sometimes contrary to the one I'd like to make (Is it so bad to want to watch football on Sunday morning? ;) We'd like to say that God made us go to church, but the truth is, God didn't do a darn thing. You made the decision. You were given the free will to make that decision and that is the decision you made. You, and only you, get to live with the consequences of that action. And your consequences could include consequences to others. By you not going to church, you missed the life saving lessons and were then unable to pass them on to your children... for instance. On the other hand, you going to church and being saved, does not mean that your children are saved as a result. They have to make their own decisions and face their own consequences. In the end, Free Will isolates us from one another and, yet, forces us to deal with one another - because while we are free to do whatever we want, we also have to agree with others in order to get certain things done that we can not do ourselves. Each decision then, must lead us away from our natural inclination to be a free individual and to always get our way and towards an unnatural inclination to put the group first, but must also lead away from an unnatural inclination to always let the group get its way, and towards a natural inclination to remember our own needs. Equilibrium must be maintained - neither good nor bad, neither order nor chaos, neither right nor wrong.

That's too much to wrap my head around right now. Tomorrow, I'll try and wrap this up with Part Five - Being A Slave.