For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
Galatians 5:1
Today, I'm thankful for The United Methodist Church's teaching on free will.
As Christians sought to understand the sovereignty of God or how God is in charge of the universe, there is the difficult question of how do we account for all of the awful things happening in the world today?
While our standard answer might be the free will given to people by God is the cause of much of it, we may need to understand what John Wesley meant by free will.
It was his understanding that humanity's free will was lost in the original sin of Adam and Eve rebelling in the Garden of Eden. This puts humanity in the state of original sin. One way I try to explain this is that we all are oriented naturally toward the self rather than toward God. This is true from infancy to old age.
Christian theologians from Wesley's time would say that people are unable to do anything toward their own salvation. Calvin stated that Christians were predestined by God to choose faith in Christ. This kept people from claiming to take part in their own salvation by saying something like, "Well, I did accept the grace Christ offered me." A Calvinist might respond, "Well, since God knows everything and is really in charge of everything, God decided before you were born that you would make that choice." This is an emphasis on God's sovereignty.
Wesley believed that God restores our free will through preceding or prevenient grace. This allows us through divine intervention to make a choice to respond to the grace we have received. But God is always the initiator of this salvation.
I've often explained it as a parent teaching a child to drive a car. There comes a time when the child drives the car alone and out of sight. We must trust that we have done the necessary work in training them. This is similar to God restoring free will to us through preceding grace. God is trusting us to make good choices!
As we think about the driving example, what happens to a child when the parent never lets them achieve this independence? They never become fully functioning adults.
The downside of free will and independence is that we must take responsibility for our own actions. No one forced us to choose poorly and we can't state that God pre-determined us to sin!
As we look toward Easter, we remember today that Jesus was in the tomb. Human beings placed him there out of their own free will.
How can we make sure that we utilize this gift with more responsibility? One way is to voluntarily place ourselves into accountability with one another. This is what it means to be the church. When we are in Christ together, we help each other to re-orient to God. May it be so!
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| The orientation toward the self (and the free will to choose) starts at an early age! |
Photo by clurross via Flickr.com. Used under the Creative Commons license.
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