"I Will Choose Free Will"

Anyone who knows me knows that the progressive rock band Rush is my favorite band of all time. They just narrowly edged out Iron Maiden. I am a die hard metal head and Rush is easily classified as the progenitors of what later became progressive metal. Their influence runs deep in many rock genres. It is my opinion that besides their extraordinary musicality that makes their three piece band sound like they exceed five members, and besides their intricacy and technical abilities, it was their late drummer and lyricist -- Neil Peart -- that gave them their edge.

One of Rush's more radio friendly hits was a song called "Freewill," which contains the following Peartian lyrics:

There are those who think that life
Has nothing left to chance
With a host of holy horrors
To direct our aimless dance

A planet of playthings
We dance on the strings
Of powers we cannot perceive
“The stars aren’t aligned –
Or the gods are malign”
Blame is better to give than receive

You can choose a ready guide
In some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide
You still have made a choice
You can choose from phantom fears
And kindness that can kill
I will choose a path that’s clear
I will choose free will.

There are those who think that
They were dealt a losing hand
The cards were stacked against them
They weren’t born in Lotus-Land.

All pre-ordained
A prisoner in chains
A victim of venomous fate
Kicked in the face
You can’t pray for a place
In Heaven’s unearthly estate

Each of us
A cell of awareness
Imperfect and incomplete
Genetic blends
With uncertain ends
On a fortune hunt
That’s far too fleet…

___________

When people think of free will, it's likely that concepts of complete autonomy or free agency come to mind. I can choose to take the red pill or the blue pill in the Matrix. I can choose to "Just Do It," as Nike implores, or I can choose to sit on my duff and eat Cheetos while watching a workout video. I can choose logical contradictions and my own truth. I can choose, as Peart penned, "not to decide," and it's entirely my choice. Sounds solid, especially in a Western context that predicates itself on Enlightenment concepts of liberty. But does this square with a biblical notion of free will? 

Calvinists would suggest that free will is limited by predestination, which ultimately rests on God's sovereignty, making our choices merely foreknown as God has already destined some people to heaven and others to hell. In this scenario, choice is only experiential and not efficacious, being largely an illusion within temporal creation. I posit that in reality, choice is in-between Rush's conception and Calvinism. It is neither open-ended, nor is it totally pre-determined. 

Let's look at two verses quickly. 

1. Exodus 8:32 (ESV):  But Pharaoh hardened his heart this time also, and did not let the people go.

2. Exodus 9:12 (ESV): But the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he did not listen to them, as     the LORD had spoken to Moses.

These two verses center around Pharaoh's responses to God and Moses amidst the plagues and the choice of letting the Hebrews go free. On one hand, Pharaoh seems to choose freely and on the other, it seems like God made him double-down. That would mean that God made Pharaoh do something -- a retraction of his free will. And to what end? Ultimately, additional plagues culminating in the death of Egypt's first born sons, including Pharaoh's. Was God making Pharaoh sin against the Hebrews just to torture Egypt further? If so, what kind of God is this? 

We see later in Exodus that Pharaoh, after the loss of his son, did let the Hebrews go. We might conclude that God interjected control of Pharaoh's heart to reach a climax that would ensure the people went free. Yet, if God had to harden Pharaoh's heart, wouldn't this mean that Pharaoh -- who had previously hardened his own heart -- could have been on the edge of freeing the Hebrews earlier? That would mean that God was being cruel for no real reason but to make a point. Surely, there was a point to be made, but I believe that this tells us something about how free will works in the economy of God.

Ultimately, even though the Hebrews were released, Pharaoh pursued them militantly. This suggests that he never truly repented after momentarily releasing the Hebrews from captivity. I propose that God hardening Pharaoh's heart was less about making Pharaoh do anything, but rather allowing Pharaoh to stew in his own vileness and vitriol. Pharaoh had already hardened his heart and then God allowed this disposition to fester to effect. What this tells me is that free will functions teleologically.

With regard to humanity, we were created good according to Genesis 1. Then people had a succession of falls from the Garden to Cain and Abel to the flood to Babel. Humanity derailed its disposition in God's holiness and took on the function of sin. Teleos is the means to an end or man's designed function. Within our divinely created order, our teleos or function following form was to participate in creation with God. In a fallen state of sin, being a sickness in our design, we disordered things to aggrandize ourselves apart from God. We have changed our teleos. Ontologically, being our intrinsic nature, we were meant to bear the image and likeness of God, but we have marred this. We still reflect the image, but we taint it and our likeness is more like the demons. It is the exercise (function) of our likeness (form) that determines our paths. 

From a temporal perspective, our teleological expression of God's likeness, now diseased by the sickness of sin, without medicine (salvation) is destined to get sicker. Here, predestination is simply a natural progression according to the exercise of form -- either a holy form or a sick form. So, for Pharaoh, he made a choice to not take his medicine in Exodus 8:32. The plagues were meant not as punishments, but as 1) challenges to pagan deities, and 2) acts of justice, which is less punitive and more re-alignment. This realignment is healing of our likeness to fulfill our imagery of God. Pharaoh chose to stay sick -- an act of free will, but then in Exodus 9:12, God hardened Pharaoh's heart. This was God -- our physician -- declaring Pharaoh too disease-ridden to heal enough in the moment to let the people go. Here God predestined Pharaoh to wallow in his depravity and illness. Predestination was and is not an assignment to ill-health or death, but God allowing the teleological path to take its [fallen] natural course. In short, what happened was that the plagues just pissed Pharaoh off more in his resentment and disdain that he doubled-down, and so God allowed it, capitalizing on it for effect. It was not God making Pharaoh do anything, but God letting the sickness of sin continue to take its course in a tension between absolute free will and the corrupted teleological path (predestined if not corrected). 

So how does free will and predestination work for us?

We too have caught the bug of self and sin. Our existing teleos is to feed the sickness. God allows us to choose. If we choose to remain sick, then God has hardened our hearts. He has not made us do anything, but has allowed us to keep the path of sickness and death. Predestination in this light is about choice, but our choices are really binary. Even then, our choices are only made with regard to our teleos. We can only choose what we are pre-disposed to. As Paul notes in Romans 7:15-20, we do what we don't want to do and don't do what we want. Our dispositions demand a change of teleos, which can only come from God -- our salve and medicine. It's no wonder that Jesus the messiah or anointed one is designated as such. To be anointed is to be covered by oil or chrism, which is like a medicinal lotion. When our form and function truly correlate or is healed, our choices will become holy and divinely empowered. This means that ultimately, we must choose as our first choice something we are utterly without power to choose -- our yielding and complete surrender to God. This cannot happen unless our dispositionally fallen flesh is able to return to a grace-filled teleos and be healed. We are too weak to open our medicine bottle. We need strength to repent. We need a boost of energy. We need our flesh to find union with God-enough to repent and heal our teleos.

In steps Christ in the incarnation. God becoming flesh has baptized the created order with his energies to find synergy with toward a more complete healing. Hence Jesus' words, "Behold, I make all things new," (Rev. 21:5). We have free will, but that free will is limited by our spiritual health and state. We can only exercise it appropriately with God's help, which his gave through his Son. Because Jesus became dispositionally human, he has empower human flesh to partner with God is healing and unity. Jesus made the choice. We simply need to stop making our own choices, because to make no choice [of our own fallen nature] is to make a choice -- a choice of God interjecting where we could not. 

Let God not harden your heart to your own choosing, but yield instead to his choice to love and save humanity unto himself, through himself, incarnated and bridging the gap between the spirit and matter. Choose Christ.