Faith and Free Will
From a subjective perspective, we each act as if we have free will. This is how it’s supposed to be. We are to chase our dreams as free agents.
Eventually, in pursuit of the good life, reality checks you and you reach a failure point (I’m not speaking of a failure point you can persist through but rather utter failure). There are two options at this point. The first is to give up your dream and drastically compromise on how you define the good life, but you get to keep your belief you’re a free agent. The overwhelming majority of people go down this path, even those who claim determinism — they continue to subjectively act out free agency.
The second option is to not compromise on your dream life. The only way to do this is by transcending the idea of free agency and entering into relationship with the one who has promised anything you desire in his name. The Son of Man. In this relationship, which becomes a unification, his will becomes your will. When you are unable to do his will, even though you want to, that is because the enemy is doing his will through you. In either direction, you’re no longer a free agent acting through free will.
In this understanding, the determining factor for your belief in free agency is whether or not you are willing to compromise on your desire for attaining heaven (the good life) in this world. In the story of the kingdom, we are promised a new heaven in this world. So when reality checks you, (Christian) faith demands that you give up the idea of free will, not for Darwinistic determinism, but for servitude / slavery between two masters.
The idea of free will is to no longer be considered an ultimate truth in the Christian story. It is a truth, but it’s a lower truth which needs to be transcended.
3 Replies
There is free will until it is transcended for destiny.
However, what does freedom entail? What happens when you are free (cut off) from the vine of life?
free will and faith are separate entities... and never the twain shall meet.
Determinism and persistence are still character building attributes, so in this light they are progressive and perceived in the timeline as a form of “retroactive preparation” for the joys of the future (wealth, health, etc). So you could say that one goes through these different forms of pain, grief, etc. because they have to in order to truly enjoy the gifts that are waiting for them.
However, just because you may have the ability to take this path (it is a path) and see this for yourself doesn’t mean that free will is non existent and that you are being controlled in some capacity.
It just means that you have made a conscious decision to pursue something, and while the desired outcome is to win, you still have the free will to say “no, I’m going to try something else” and live a life a relative normalcy
If you truly love something, at some point you’re going to make the decision to pursue it, regardless of if things were they way they are, or not.
