Study – Grow – Know

It’s Merely an Illusion of Free Will…

July 28, 2011 at 3:34 PM Leave a comment

It’s Only the Illusion of Free Will

In the movie, The Adjustment Bureau, Terrance Stamp’s character – the Hammer among his comrades – says those words to Matt Damon’s character.  It’s one of the things that the movie got correct, among a pile of things it did not get correct.

The Adjustment Bureau is an action-thriller movie starring Damon as David Norris, would-be Congressman and eventual president of the United States.  He is sidetracked by a woman who becomes the love of his life, played by Emily Blunt.

Once these two meet – which was incidentally set up by members of the Adjustment Bureau – things are set in motion to then keep the two apart.  This is by order of the Chairman of the Adjustment Bureau.  What then ensues is a
game of cat and mouse with Norris trying to do what the Bureau wants, but
inwardly opposed to it.

At one point in the movie, when the case is transferred upstairs to higher powers – named Terrance Stamp – Stamp tells Norris that human beings do not have free will, but merely the illusion of it.  This is a very important piece of dialogue because it holds true within the ranks of Christian belief as well.

People like to think they have free will; absolute free will to choose their
directions in life.  This is patently false.  Only four individuals (not
counting the angels that fell by following Lucifer in rebellion) have actually
had absolute free will and we learn tremendously from them.

Lucifer had it.  Prior to his eventual fall from grace, Lucifer was the brightest of morning stars.  You can read about him in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28.  He was doing very well until the day he decided that he was not only gorgeous, but exceedingly intelligent.  That would not have been so bad, except that this caused him to think that he was at least as intelligent as God, his Creator.  The result of this was actually proof that he was not even 1/100^th as intelligent as God as his ignominious fall told the entire universe.

Paul speaks of the elect angels to Timothy (in 1 Timothy 5:21).  It can be
understood that these particular angels included all angels that remained loyal
to God.  In them, there was no chance of failure because they had been pre-appointed by God not to fail…ever.

Next, we see Adam and Eve.  These two human beings both had absolute free will.  They were able to choose their own direction and they did just that.  For some time, they enjoyed a pristine existence in the Garden of Eden.  The
Bible does not tell us for how long these two enjoyed that life, but it was
likely short-lived.  Lucifer’s term of existence prior to falling may have been far longer, but again, we do not know.

At any rate, when put the test, both Adam and Eve chose to go against God and
did.  So we see that in both cases – first, Lucifer, and then with Adam and Eve – free will prompted the individuals to rebel.

It would seem then that free will does not choose for God, or at least comes to a point of no longer wanting to choose for God.  Absolute free will seems to
begin to cause the individual to chafe under the burden of doing what Another
wants, in this case, God.

Once Adam and Eve fell, unlike Satan, they passed this tendency toward failure onto all their progeny, of which you and I are included.  The moment Adam and Eve fell through disobedience, their nature changed.  Once free of the sin nature, it now took up residence within them, forever marring absolute free will so that an imperfect free will from that time onward existed.

That imperfect or stilted free will is what we now exist with, until we are set free from it in the next life.  By the way, that freedom will only come to those who know Him in this life.

But what about Jesus?  He was born of a human mother, wasn’t He?  Yes, He was, but it seems clear enough from Scripture that when God the Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary, either He kept her sin nature from touching Jesus or the sin nature is passed on by the male to the unborn child.  In either case, Mary had a sin nature like all of us a do, so the point is moot.

It is clear from Philippians 2 and Colossians 1 that Jesus was born in perfection.  In essence then, Jesus – fully God and once born, fully Man – had an absolute free will, not the one that was the result of sinning.

As the God-Man, Jesus lived a life of absolute perfection, never once using His
free will to rebel or sin against God the Father.  It was because of this holiness – always remaining separated to the Father and His will – Jesus was found to be worthy to become the atonement for our sinfulness.

People do not get this at all.  They believe that human beings enjoy an absolute free will, but that is clearly not the case.  What we enjoy is life that God was
gracious enough to give us.  Do we honestly believe that we would have more power than God?  In effect, this is what it would mean to have absolute free will, as far as most people are concerned.  If this was the case, God would then be in the position of waiting for us to respond to something, instead of bringing about events and situations that caused us to do the things that fulfill His will, whether we think so or not.

This is where the members of the Adjustment Bureau got it correct.  Human beings do not have absolute free will, but merely the illusion of it.  We can
decide on the type of toothpaste we want to use or whether we want to brush our teeth at all, but anything that touches the Lord’s purposes are for Him to
decide and He has already mapped those things out for us and for this world.  Even a cursory reading of the Bible bears this truth out quite clearly…and angers many because of it.

Who does God think He is anyway?!  Doesn’t He know that we should have the right to choose?

What God knows is what is best and He also knows what we messed up big time and because of that, He has mapped things out wonderfully well.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that though Adam and Eve sinned as did Lucifer before them, God not only knew, but allowed it because of the purposes that He – at the time – kept close to His chest.

Those purposes are the highest purposes and it is those purposes which have guided every decision He has ever made.  With people, we think in terms of our lives and most of the time, we only consider what is immediate.  God sees the entire picture from start to finish and everything in between all the way to the end.

What is the end, you might ask?  Very clearly, all of it leads to God’s highest ordained purpose.  That purpose is to showcase to the entire universe His love, His faithfulness, His perfection, and ultimately, His deity.

You can cry, stamp your feet, pound your fists, and even curse the heavens.  You will change nothing.  God has decreed the beginning from the end.  Just take a few moments to read Genesis 20, the book of Job, Ezekiel 36:37, Jeremiah 23, Ephesians 1:11, many of the Psalms and essentially throughout His Word.

I have had more than one person ask me how God can send anyone to hell.  They become angry that a supposedly loving God would have such an end for those who reject His salvation.  Why can’t He simply annihilate those
individuals instead of making them suffer for all of eternity?

I have heard people question God about this or that and quite frankly, I have
done it myself, to my shame.  God is God.  He is the one who set the stars in
the heavens.  He placed the earth and the planets on their path.  He sends the rain on the just and the unjust.  He designs how the earth rotates and causes the seasons.

There is no one like God and yet we, in our puny, finite, infinitesimal attitudes
believe that we know better than God!  Is that not the sin of Lucifer?  Is it not
what caused the downfall of Adam and Eve and therefore the entire human race?  We know nothing and the more we think we know, the less we come to accept.

The Adjustment Bureau ended predictably enough.  Norris, along with his girlfriend, raced to the top of the tower where the Chairman of the Adjustment Bureau’s office was and though Norris was kept from seeing the Chairman, he actually got his wish.  The Chairman was willing to rewrite “the plan.”  In fact, the Chairman, or Chairwoman, however you choose to conceive this highest authority, also learned from Norris that maybe some things are worth fighting for and because of that, is willing to change the plan when deemed necessary.

The God of the Bible knows all things.  I would worship no less a Being.  He knows the beginning from the end and all transactions in the middle.  He has designed the way this universe works and He has designed everything to conclude with His purposes.  It will be so and He will not deviate from His plan because some puny, finite human being believes that if he works hard enough, he can convince God otherwise.

There are situations in the Bible where it appears as though God changes His mind.  This is notably the case with Moses when God said that He was going to destroy the entire nation of Israel and use Moses to start all over.  You can read about that in Exodus 32.  God certainly seemed as though He was ready to – in His wrath – rid the earth of the people who then made up the nation of Israel, so that He could create another nation through Moses.

Moses’ response was to intercede for Israel and God seemed to acquiesce to Moses’ request.  The truth of the matter is what we see in this example is Moses acting as High Priest.  In fact, it is a perfect picture of Jesus interceding on our behalf based on His own work on Calvary’s cross.

God the Father, filled with wrath because of our sins, threatens to obliterate
us.  He literally has no choice because He cannot have sin in His presence.  God the Son steps into what was to be our place and pleads our case.  Does God relent?  No, because this was the plan all along.

Did God know how Moses would react to God’s threat to eradicate the people?  Of course, but Moses did not know, that is until he actually reacted to God.  God allowed this so that Moses would be able to react as he did.  Moses may have doubted his reaction unless he was actually placed in the position to react.  Once he reacted, he never doubted what his response would be for the
people he represented.

This is Jesus and how He reacts toward us.  He goes to the Father and defends us based on our relationship with Him.  The Father, who poured out His wrath on Jesus on the cross, sees those with whom Jesus has relationship with and because of that, the Father’s wrath is turned aside simply because for those who trust in Jesus, their sin has been paid and we are no longer accountable.

The Adjustment Bureau is similar to The Matrix in that both speak of waking up to the fact that we can and should live our lives as we see fit because we have free will.  While David Norris was originally told that he only had the illusion of free will, he was able to prove Terrance Stamp’s character wrong.

It’s fantasy.  We cannot prove God wrong.  You have two choices.  You can embrace God in Jesus and His will, or you can live your life as if His will does not matter and has no effect on the way you live.

In doing the latter, you will find out in the end that what you thought was
absolute free will was nothing like it.  In doing the former, you will learn over the remainder of your life and into eternity that true free will is the God-given desire to serve Him at every turn.  The creature who tries to separate himself from the Creator is literally killing himself because that creature is working to separate himself from God, who created him.

The creature, whose eyes open to the truth about God and the reality of the cross, begins to understand that free will – such as it is – is the avenue that will always turn from God to SELF.

Free will – in the guise of SELF – has done nothing but brought misery, hostility, and death to the human race and all things on this planet.  There is nothing that does not die in this realm.

The other day, my brother-in-law had to put down his cat.  The only other choice was to bring it home and watch it die, which would have been unnecessary and inhumane.  Whenever some animal or human being dies, I
am reminded that we did this to ourselves.  In Adam and Eve, absolute free will was brought to bear on a perfect Creation and the choice was made to go against the perfection that God had created.  The result has been absolutely
devastating and it continues today through those who refuse to see things God’s way.

Fortunately, may God be praised, His will reigns supreme though many refuse to recognize it that way.  God’s will is and will be accomplished, whether we like it or not.  All I can say to that is AMEN!

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