CC25: How the Church Puts Free Will On a Very Short Leash
Not long ago, on Canada Day to be exact (July 1), I headed out from Toronto on the 401. It was early afternoon and the weather was good. For all intents and purposes, the trip should have been easy and stress-free. There were no construction sites (a miracle in itself), and there were no accident sites (thank goodness). The traffic should have flowed smoothly. But it didn’t. If someone had been watching from a helicopter, they would have seen an accordion pattern on the highway: traffic speeding up and spreading out, then suddenly squeezing together into compressed knots as large groups of drivers hit the brakes at the same time.
Now, I’m a person who enjoys driving. I like to feel the sudden kick of acceleration when I hit the gas. I like to go down country roads just to see where they go. I like a road that demands you pay attention to what you’re doing as you navigate tight curves and steep hills. So I find driving on the 401 kind of boring, to be honest. But I’m a careful driver, too, and I think it’s asinine to tailgate. So when traffic is heavy, I usually stay in the right-hand lane, and I keep my distance from the vehicle in front of me. This way, I have choices open to me in the event of an emergency or unexpected problem. I have choices open to me because I have time and space. I have time to see a problem, assess a problem, react to a problem, and hopefully get my car (along with me and my passengers!) safely out of harm’s way.
Many other drivers don’t share this opinion about driving on the 401. They inexplicably believe the laws of Newtonian physics don’t apply to them, which, of course, gives them an excuse to join the large pack of vehicles spaced a mere 3 car lengths apart in the left-hand passing lane.
(When I took driving lessons many moons ago, the rule of thumb for determining a safe distance between cars was one car length per 10 miles/hour of speed — in other words, six car lengths between you and the guy ahead of you if you were driving at 60 mph in dry weather. And this was the minimum recommendation!)
As reality would have it, the laws of inertia bow to no man.* This strikes home when the driver at the front of the left-hand string of traffic suddenly decides to hit his brakes. All the drivers following close behind him must hit their brakes, too. They have no other option, except, of course, to swerve onto the left-hand shoulder or smash into the neighbouring cars. A chain of red brake lights appears. This in turn causes the people in the right-hand to brake, and within moments everyone on this section of the 401 is travelling at a snail’s pace. There’s no external reason — such as a lane closure — for this slowdown. This kind of slowdown is entirely the result of the choices these drivers are making.
Although each of the drivers in the left-hand lane might like to blame somebody else for the slowdown, in fact each person who chose to travel at high speed with no safe buffer of time and space ahead of him is a co-creator of this mess. Each of these drivers has free will. Each one used his free will to make an initial choice (the choice to drive this way). No one forced these drivers to drive 3 car lengths apart. Each driver chose this action independently and autonomously of his neighbour (free will). Yet, in doing so, each driver independently and autonomously volunteered to give up — surrender, eliminate, erase — some of the choices open to him. Each person willingly decided to give up his time and space, the precious and irreducible time and space that would have preserved for him a wider range of options.
You could say — without exaggeration — that each driver used his free will to intentionally (if temporarily) relinquish his free will, and hand it over to the lead driver in the string. Why so? Because it’s the lead driver who sets the speed and who chooses the time when everybody else will have to brake in unison. Once you agree to join his string, his pack of drivers, you don’t get a say in these things.
The Church’s teachings on free will remind me a lot of these traffic strings on the 401. In the orthodox Western church, theologians like to remind their faithful flock that God gives each person free will at birth. This doctrine of free will prevents people from falling into a tar pit of fatalism and despair, because people still have a glimmer of hope with regard to their own free will. Although the doctrines of original sin and grace dictate that they don’t have a lot of free will, they know they still have the choice to pay attention and brake on time, and thereby prevent a major pile-up!
Of course, if they make a mistake, and misjudge the timing, and cause a major pile-up, they’ll accused by the Church of a massive failure of piety.
The Church, unfortunately, has long conspired to prevent Christians from learning about the existence of the right-hand lane — the spiritual lane where people can more fully exercise their free will, the spiritual lane where there’s no leader of the pack to restrict the traffic flow.** In fact, the orthodox Western Church is founded on the premise that you — poor, weak, sin-ridden creature that you are — need to be in the left land and want to be in the left lane because you’re rushing as piously as possible toward the future goal of salvation. You’re rushing anxiously with the rest of the flock, and you’re following as closely as possible to the guy in front of you so you won’t get lost. And you’re grateful to the leader at the front of the pack — oh, excuse me, I mean the flock — because he’s so wise and strong and so much better than you that you can place all your trust in him. You can trust him to know when to brake. And you’re grateful when he decides to brake, because then you yourself have a rare opportunity to apply your free will and choose to brake! And what better way could there be to prove your love for God!
The path to knowing God is neither straight nor paved nor predictable. Photo credit JAT 2014
What Jesus knew, and what Jesus taught, is that the road to God is neither straight nor level (Isaiah 40:3 notwithstanding). The right-hand spiritual path — the path the Church doesn’t want you to know about because it would lessen Church authority — curves and climbs and enters the most unexpectedly beautiful landscapes. Sometimes you can’t see a darned thing on the road because it’s so foggy and misty. Then you have to slow down and try to listen to God’s voice. And that’s okay, because sometimes God’s voice is very, very quiet, and very, very shy, and you’ll miss it unless you tell yourself it’s okay to listen to God’s shy voice in place of the loud voice of the guy who’s leading the long string of Church traffic.
You should be aware, though, that if you decide to pull into the right-hand lane you’ll be considered a heretic. Or a Concinnate Christian. Or a person who trusts God. Or a follower of Jesus’ message.
Free will is a pain in the ass, eh?
* My apologies for exclusively using the male gender in these paragraphs. My intent is not to point fingers at male drivers, but simply to avoid the awkward use of he/she and his/her phrasing in my sentences. Next time I’ll try to remember to use “she” as the gender in my example.
** In countries such as the United Kingdom, where the convention is to drive on the left and pass on the right, these references to “right-hand” and “left-hand” lanes would be reversed for the purposes of discussion. I’m not in any way endorsing the ancient and misguided view that lefties and left-handed things are somehow tainted or inferior to right-handed people or things.
