The Will to Choose

Wednesday, April 12, 2023

But if you refuse to serve the Lord, then choose today whom you will serve. Would you prefer the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates?  Or will it be the gods of the Amorites in whose land you now live?  But as for me and my family, we will serve the Lord.”  Joshua 24:15

Albert Einstein gave an interview in 1929 in which he shared some of his personal philosophy, including a human being’s will:

"I am a determinist.  As such, I do not believe in free will.  The Jews believe in free will.  They believe that man shapes his own life.  I reject that doctrine philosophically.  In that respect I am not a Jew… I believe with Schopenhauer:  We can do what we wish, but we can only wish what we must.  Practically, I am, nevertheless, compelled to act is if freedom of the will existed.  If I wish to live in a civilized community, I must act as if man is a responsible being.  I claim credit for nothing.  Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control.  It is determined for the insect as well as for the star.  Human being, vegetables or cosmic dust, we all dance to an invisible tune, intoned in the distance by a mysterious player.”[1]

I am certainly no match for the likes of Albert Einstein; I have trouble enough keeping up with my grandchildren.  On the other hand, being an individual, I strongly believe I possess the choice to agree (or not) with his philosophy.

Einstein’s deterministic view of human free will borders closely on a religiously hyper-Calvinistic version of irresistable grace, where God has pre-ordained who will be saved, and we have no choice in that matter…or anything else.  On this point I have to take issue, as I believe Scripture already does:

For the Lord is the Spirit, and wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.  2 Corinthians 3:17

Einstein was born a Jew, yet held the full expression of that heritage at arm’s length, choosing a rather sad and hollow deterministic view of life’s meaning and purpose.  Yet, as Christians belive, the image of God, stamped upon his soul, cannot utterly deny the mysterious player of the invisible tune to which he gives place in that interview.  It’s my belief that crack in Einstein’s systematic theology of an imposed will by the hidden tune-player (God) demonstrates something of a humility to admit he doesn’t know everything.

If, as Scripture indicates[2], there is a beginning and an ending which God has pre-determined, and, behind the scenes is orchestrating, there is certainly room for human free will to exist.  What Scripture tells us is God’s sovereign will is determinative…the beginning of things created in 6 days, and the ending of things a re-creation of Paradise.  That does leave the meantime, the middle of things, in which we live, move, and have our being.  If we are to hold Scripture objectively, without prejudice, God gives us this moment to “determine” by our volitional choice where we will be when the cosmic dust settles.

For You Today 

The bottom line is the coming judgment of God.  If all were set-in-stone, determined without room for choice, where would be the grace of God?

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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There are about 2,500 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper explore some of these:   Following the Truth  and  Listening Carefully  

Title Image:  Pixabay.com   Images without citation are in public domain.

Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©  

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[1] In an article Albert Einstein by Lotte Jacobi

[2] In Revelation 22:13 Jesus says: I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.”