freewill, choice and The Giver
Ok, don’t judge. I’m writing this on my iPad, so here’s what I’m calling a stream-of-consciousness blog post of my thoughts after reading The Giver, specifically on the topic of free-will. I’ll preface with a clarification before I start – the difference between free-will and choice: bring introduced to all of the options. In The Giver, the community had choices – especially more at a younger age, while they are still figuring out their passions – but the did not have free-will. Many choices were taken away from them (by taking away their memories of other options). This reminded me of who we are – as humans in general, and as believers in the Lord.
We actually are made and trusted with complete free-will, even though God is still completely sovereign. Because none of our choices are taken away from us, even as believers, we still have the ability to sin. We make wrong choices sometimes (thank the Lord, for He is sovereign and continues to work out these things for our good and his glory), but making those choices – although sinful, wrong, and betraying the One whom we love – still empower us to see that we actually have free-will. We have the ability to choose, and the choice between every possible option created. As his children, he leads, teaches, and guides us to make the right choices, as any perfectly loving Father would, but because we are undeniably human (and gifted with true free-will), we inevitably will sometimes choose wrong. We sin. But because our Father knows our condition, as humans, as his sons that he chose to bless with free-will, he created a way to still save us. To still reconcile us to himself through all of it. Because he must punish wrongdoing (for he is a holy, perfect, blameless God) he chose to put all of the punishment not on us, the ones who rightly deserve it, but on his Son, Jesus, the Messiah – the one whom he promised to send from the first breath of free-will. And because we trust that Jesus took this blame and punishment for us, instead of us, in our place, He declares that we are trusting what we should be trusting (Himself – who is perfect and not ourselves, who are not yet) and we are how He’s created us to be once again, because of Jesus. We can come into the presence of this holy, just, loving God not because of our free-will, but despite it. The ironic thing is, we exercise our free-will not only to make the right decisions, but the wrong ones too. So, I would argue that real, true, unrestricted freedom can only be accomplished through Jesus Christ and the blessing of free-will. Our ability to choose wrongly, shown by our successes as well as our failures, demonstrates, ultimately, our ability to really choose.
