{"id":7832,"date":"2019-04-04T10:39:48","date_gmt":"2019-04-04T17:39:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=7832"},"modified":"2019-04-04T10:39:50","modified_gmt":"2019-04-04T17:39:50","slug":"choice-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2019\/04\/04\/choice-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Choice"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We\ncannot control the behavior of other people. \nOne of the things we briefly touched in last week\u2019s A Mirror Darkly<\/em> webcast was the question of free will and how that\nrelates to God\u2019s omniscience. In the movie Bruce\nAlmighty<\/em>, which is obviously fiction, God, as played by Morgan Freeman\ntells Bruce (played by Jim Carrey) that the one thing you can\u2019t do is make\nsomeone love you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And\nyet love\u2014for God and others\u2014is the core of the Bible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But\nGod has, at the very least, chosen to limit himself.  I\u2019ve pointed out before a shocking truth that\nis very clear from the Garden of Eden event between the serpent, Eve and Adam:\nGod would rather we be free than that we be good.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s\nshocking for human beings because\u2014thanks to that event in the garden\u2014we are\nlocked into a binary point of view regarding everything in life: is it good, or\nis it bad?  By our nature, thanks to the\nchoice Adam and Eve made, we are constantly concerned with judging right and\nwrong.  We can\u2019t help it.  That\u2019s why we are so obsessed with passing\nendless laws. Our very nature has become legalistic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

God\ndidn\u2019t warn us against eating from a tree of the knowledge of just evil, but of\nboth good and evil.  We weren\u2019t supposed\nto think about such matters or even know about them; we were instead simply to\nlove one another and God.  If everyone\nfocused on bringing happiness to others, on loving others, then we\u2019d always\nhave everything we ever wanted, always be satisfied, always feel complete.  We would be in paradise.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But\nit didn\u2019t go down that way.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead,\nwe ate from the cursed tree of the knowledge of good and evil and so we judge\neverything.  We were never intended to\nbecome the legalistic obsessives that we have turned into.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless,\nGod thought that letting us making a poor choice was better than us being\ndenied the possibility of making a choice at all.  All of human history, all the horrors that it\nhas produced: the existence of death, murder, rape, slavery, war, suffering,\ndisease, starvation\u2014every bad and awful thing you can think of\u2014God thought it\nwas worth it for the sake of freedom. \nFreedom trumps everything, even the life of Jesus, his son, who had to\ndie to fix the mess we made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nphilosopher Gottfried Leibniz argued that given a God that is both powerful as\nwell as good\u2014very good\u2014he would necessarily design a world that would be the\nbest it possibly could be, given the existence of this thing called freedom,\nthe ability of human beings to make choices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And\nwe know that God made a good choice himself, in giving us choice. All you have\nto do is ask yourself: would you rather be free, or live in a totalitarian\ndictatorship?  Is the US preferable to\nNorth Korea?  The old Soviet Union?  The Nazi Reich?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ask\nyour teenager if she wants you to micromanage her life.  Can you make your children behave now?  How about when they grow up?  Can you determine all their choices for them?\nWhat music to listen to, what television to watch, which friends to have?  Would they like that?  Would you really want to be in charge of\ntheir lives for the rest of your lives?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\nGod in the Dock: Essays on Theology and\nEthics<\/em>, C.S. Lewis wrote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOf all tyrannies, a\ntyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most\noppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under\nomnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron\u2019s cruelty may sometimes sleep,\nhis cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our\nown good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their\nown conscience.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those\nwho would limit freedom always argue that it is for the greater good: to\nprotect us and to ensure our happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And\nwe know better.  We know it won\u2019t work\nout like that.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nmovie The Giver<\/em>, which came out in\n2014 (and is based on a novel of the same name by Lois Lowry), presents a\nseemingly perfect community without war, pain, or suffering.  But it\u2019s not as wonderful as it seems, and a\nyoung boy, chosen to learn from an elderly man about the pain and pleasure of\nthe \u201creal\u201d world winds up rebelling against this \u201cparadise.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later,\nas the boy\u2019s friend and love interest is about to be euthanized in order to\nprevent the contagion of freedom spreading, the Chief Elder, played by Meryl\nStreep has a conversation with the Giver, played by Jeff Bridges:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Giver: With love\ncomes faith, with it comes hope. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chief Elder: Love is just\npassion that can turn. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Giver: We can do\nbetter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chief Elder: It turns\ninto contempt and murder. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Giver: We could\nchoose better. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chief Elder: People are\nweak. People are selfish. When people have the freedom to choose, they choose\nwrong. Every single time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

God\nknows that we choose wrong. Every single time. \nBut he\u2019d rather that, and the world we now inhabit\u2014than that we should\nbe something other than free.<\/p>\n

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We cannot control the behavior of other people.  One of the things we briefly touched in last week\u2019s A Mirror Darkly webcast was the question of free will and how that relates to God\u2019s omniscience. In the movie Bruce Almighty, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7832"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7832"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7833,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7832\/revisions\/7833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}