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Free will
Kat:
Hi Patmokgoko,
I am working on a transcript of an older Bible study (Aug.08) on free will that I just found and had forgot was there. Here is the first section of the Bible study, that I hope to have completely ready by tomorrow and it should help you a great deal.
FREE WILL
This really is an amazing concept. It’s been argued by theologians and philosophers for thousands of years, I mean going back further than the Christians faith; Plato, Aristotle
they all dealt with this thing of free will and so on.
Why do you think it is such a hard concept for people to understand? Why can’t they get it? [Comment: We make our own choices all day long.] Okay, so you think because it feels like we have free will? [Yes.] We don’t actually feel something hindering us, nobody actually twist our arm to make a decision, I mean we just kind of do it spontaneously. Therefore we think nothing caused it. We may even think something may of influenced it, you know, but something actually causes it. Nothing made you think what you thought and nothing made you do what you did. But of course it did.
We have to be careful about words, because words can make us very prejudice. We can say for example, someone is inspired to write a beautiful song. They were inspired, right? Or we could say somebody forced them to write a song, forced them. Well that’s not the same connotation is it. Being inspired and being forced. But the truth of the matter is they both cause the song to be written, didn’t they. Yeah. So they are both a cause.
So the word cause is not good or evil, I mean it’s just what it is. It can cause something happy, it can cause something sad. I mean the word ‘cause’ itself has no moral bias to it. So that’s true, people don’t feel like they are being coerced, therefore they think they have free will. But they don’t know what it is.
They don’t know what the word ‘free’ means, if you have ‘free’ choice. Free means there’s not some influence internally, externally or any other way, causing you - forcing you - making you to make the choice. See, that’s what free is. Free from causality, nothing causes you to do what you do. People think, ‘well yes that’s the way it is, I make all of my choices and decisions, I think what I think, I go where I want to go and nothing causes me, makes me or forces me to.’
Well maybe nothing forces you to, because then you would be more aware of it. But if something just influences you, then you are not so aware of it. Of course something influences everything you do and that’s the CAUSE.
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mercy, peace and love
Kat
daywalker:
--- Quote from: patmokgoko on April 01, 2011, 01:12:39 PM ---One question I failed to answer:- (If ) God is in total control, my life has been predestined, according to His foreknowledge,God is Sovereign,How can I sin VOLUNTARILY, how can i voluntarily go against the will/intentions of God?Since God can not make anyone sin but He fore knew that they would sin, how can we say thier steps/doings were not ordered of the Lord.Just how do I sin voluntarily and not freely? Please help, i am missing something.
--- End quote ---
It takes time (a lot of it) to fully digest this idea of no free will. Probably most of us will spend the rest of our lives pondering different aspects of it. Voluntarily and freely are not the same thing. Voluntarily essentially means "willingly"; i.e. no one needs to force a man to lust over a woman. We, men, naturally have a hard time taking our eyes off a pretty young girl in a mini skirt. No one forces us to look. God certainly doesn't force us to look. But, we don't do it "freely"; i.e. without cause. The pretty young girl and the mini skirt she is wearing are two obvious "causes" or "reasons". Another would be "testosterone". This, along with the weather effecting ( or causing ) us to decide what clothes to wear, are the two main examples I use as proof that man doesn't have free will.
We were "made subject to futility (failure)... not willingly" Romans 8. There's no getting around that. We cannot live perfect lives no matter how hard we try and how badly we desire to. Perhaps if we "did" have free will, we could live perfect lives. Yet, the fact that "all have sinned" is clear evidence that we don't have "free" will. God made us this way, and only God can change us and save (heal) us from our futile nature... And He will! That's the Good News.
Hope this helps.
G. Driggs:
I think you got some really good explainations Patmokgoko. Just to add something I never forgot and something that helped me understand a little better was where Ray used an analogy found here.
http://forums.bible-truths.com/index.php/topic,3709.0.html
“God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts…” God doesn’t have to make people sin, they volunteer, they’re sinning machines. I’ve said so many times mankind is SINNING MACHINES!
I think it was Hosea Ballou, Pastor of the Universalist Church and society of Rockberry, and a writer back in 1700s or some time ago. But I think it was Hosea Ballou who came up with the analogy and it’s a very fine analogy. He said God is Like the rays of the sun and Jesus is, like I mentioned yesterday, that Jesus is the Son of God. But not only the S-o-n, but the S-u-n of God, the brightness of the sun, you see. So we liken God to the rays of the sun, this bright radiant warmth that gives light and heat and causes things to grow and all these wonderful things from the rays of the sun.
But ironically in the evening, when the sun goes down it gets colder and towards morning it gets damp. There’s often times dew on the grass, wet, damp and cold. Aha, I think I have God figured out now. When the sun is up, it’s not damp, it’s not wet, it’s not cold, it’s not dark. When the sun goes down it’s cold, damp and dark. Therefore the sun is the cause of dampness, cold and darkness. How do you like that? Because when the sun’s up you don’t have those things, and when the sun goes down you have them. Therefore this darkness is caused by the sun. No, that’s wrong. That’s the way some people understand theology.
It’s when the sun is gone the automatic results is, it’s dark, cold and damp. The sun didn’t cause it. It’s when the sun comes up that the sun takes it away. It’s not when the sun goes down it causes it to come. It always been there, it’s the sun that takes it away, it’s not the sun causes it to come and that’s the way God is.
When God removes His beams of light from mankind they become cold and damp and dark. Is that hard to understand? It's automatic, God does not have to supernaturally make it dark on one side of the earth when the sun is on the other side. God doesn’t have to do that it’s automatic.
God doesn’t have to force anybody to sin, it’s automatic. Yes God brings about the circumstances, “Wherefore God gave them up…” (Rom. 1:26). Yes He did, He’s behind it. But He did it through the lusts of their own hearts. He didn’t force anybody to do anything.
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It's just automatic. A weak heart combined with the right circumstances ( or cause) is all it takes. Sometimes the cause can be someone might have been raised that way.
So it takes the power of God to make us stop sinning. The want to sin is already there. The circumstances are already there, which could be us living in this present wicked age. Sin begets more sin.
You asked if it was possible to not volunteer to do evil. Not without Jesus.
Jer 13:23 Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.
Rom 7:18 For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.
Volunteering to sin and the circumstances (whatever they may be) that do the causing are two different things. If we sin it's because we were tempted by our own lusts and weak hearts, all we needed was an excuse. The want to sin was/is always there until Jesus takes it out of us.
G.Driggs
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