Freedom to Choose Bible Teaching

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We begin with prayer
Sing the Word of God set to music (as a means to get it into our heads) and then we sit for a moment in silence here at the Church/Studio.

When we come back, a side subject I feel inclined to approach. We will return to our verse by verse of Acts 25 next week.

This will be shared again this afternoon in Meat.

Freedom to Choose
August 27th 2017
Milk

We speak a lot about why God created Man. We often say that He created us to have fellowship, or so we would worship or love Him.

I would suggest that these responses are not only missing the mark but by hitting the mark we will draw close to knowing, and therefore to understanding, God.

So, while worshipping and loving and having fellowship with God may be a result of His creating us, I suggest that being a Good God He created human beings in His image so that everyone of us could and would . . . freely choose how to live our lives. “So that all people would have the Godly right and responsibility to decide how they would exist, and live both here and now, and then hereafter.

Again, in direct opposition to teachings that there is no free will among men I submit for your consideration the idea that the highest driver behind God creating Man in His image was to give His creations freedom, something I suggest is not only the primary factor in our existence but the most noble principle or characteristic a loving God could bestow upon His creations.

It is this belief that causes me to utterly shutter at the notions of the Calvinistic God.

Additionally, and in my estimation, to say God created human beings to love Him is again to fall short of His highest and most noble aim.

To love Him (and others as a result of our love for Him) first requires choice, and for the choice to love God and others to be meaningful and real and genuine, the choice must be free of compulsion, force and manipulation.

In other words, genuine love for God cannot exist through compulsory measures or means.

(beat)

The same holds true when people say that God created us to worship Him.

Has that phrase ever troubled you? It troubles me. It sort of smacks of Him needing and or wanting the human race to sing His praises by design. Again, this may be the result of our freely choosing Him but freely choosing Him must come first, which would make the praising of Him from the unfettered heart all the more true.

(beat)

To say that the reason God created us was to give the creations made in His image the single most noble gift of freedom may be – and may continue to be – His highest ambition.

And in this light, we can see that truly loving, truly worshipping, and truly having faith in God could only be the result of those who truly choose to have and do such things toward His person – and therefore freedom is primary. And with this characteristic as a primary factor in the relationship between God and Man we might see it as primary in everything that exists in our relationship with Him.

In other words freedom to choose is primary in salvation, in sanctification, in being joint heirs with Christ, in dying to self, in living by the fruit of the Spirit, and in our earthly and eternal position to God Himself.

So where God is the giver of all good gifts to humankind, all of humankind are on a minute to minute basis freely choosing to receive or to reject them.

This never ends, leaving all people fully responsible before God here and now.

The second thing to consider is that no matter how much a person may seek to escape from this freedom to choose (because personal responsibility before God for our decisions is painful and discomforting) each and every one of us are condemned, in some sense, to be free.

Even if someone has their tongue and eyes gouged out, and are put in a dark cell, fettered and bound, they have the freedom to make choices on how to respond, how to think, how to believe and how to be – PAINFUL as this reality is.

As the existentialists have long-maintained, and as the biblical narrative illustrate, all human beings are condemned to be free.

We are free to believe or to not believe.
Then free to act or to not act.
Therefore we are all consummately free to love or to not love.

Amidst all the religious rhetoric to the contrary, all we have to do is look to the first Man, Adam and Eve, to clearly see this was, and remains, the primary ambition of God.

Lets look at Adam and Eve.

God created them – both – to be free.
The man Adam was never forced to obey or believe God or his wife and Eve was not forced or even commanded to obey God or her husband . . . in the beginning or anywhere thereafter.

There was NEVER force.

God created Man and instilled in him and her His commutable characteristics one of which is utter freedom to be and do and act.

It’s the only way that He can be considered a wholly good and truly loving God.

And along with these communicable attributes God gave Man conditions to his existence.

First God “gave” (emphasis mine) but first God “GAVE” man dominion over the animals on earth which He created. It says this in Genesis 1:26.

We do not have God telling Adam what having dominion over the animals looked like, just that man had dominion over them and that it was given to Him by God.

Adam was free to do as he freely desired among these creations.

Then after Man was given dominion over all the animals God created, God tells Adam in verse 29:

“Behold, I have (also) “given you” every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for food.”

Again, these are all gifts given to Man – dominion and plants to eat – but a total freedom of choice – as much a freedom to choice to obey or follow the instructions as there in his decision to obey the other instructions God gave them about the forbidden fruit.

We might suppose that Adam could have decided to eat a rabbit instead of a carrot in the same way that he decided to eat of the forbidden fruit.

Again, God gave instructions but Man was free to follow them or not.

The point is the freedom to act was present in all of these things we read about in the creation of Adam and Eve.

In chapter two of Genesis the story of God creating Man is told again (the scripture repeats the story adding in new elements. This style of recapitulation was a common practice in Hebrew writings).

But in this version only Adam has been created as God will create Eve a few verses later.

And when Adam was alone God said to Him:

Genesis 2:16 “And the LORD God commanded the man, (Adam) saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: 17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”

The Man Adam was certainly given commandments and directives (just like he was told that he had dominion over the animals and that God had given herbs and fruit for his food) but Adam was free to choose whether to obey these directives . . . or not.

There was no flaming sword preventing him to freely act in any way he chose at this point in the story.

To choose to follow God and his insights and directions would have shown and proven that Adam loved, worshipped and had faith and fellowship for and with God, but freedom of choice was present and the freedom to choose was primary – before desires for love, fellowship or worship could be fulfilled.

God did not pull any punches here.

He explained the fall-out from choosing to go against His advice, but the choice before the Man Adam was primary and readily apparent.

From this model, we can see that freedom to choose in His creations is paramount to God. To me, it – not loving Him, not worshipping Him, not believing in His Son is primary BUT FIRST . . . the internal and then external act of freely choosing to do one thing or another – that is the primary factor in all things related to God and Man.

And it continues to be.

After giving the Man Adam these instructions we read in the very next verse:

18 “And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.”

We then read that God brings all the animals to Adam and gives him the freedom to call them what he wants to call them.

He leaves it up to Him to name them. To me this illustrates that Adam had the ability to make decisions, to use his mind and creativity prior to the fall.

It also shows that Adam had an ability to choose based on the contents of his own mind prior to the fall.

In other words in this instance Adam could choose to call the elephants “elephant” and the tigers, “tiger” – or the reverse if He so desired. He was free to name them.

Prior to Adam being given life another being was free to act too – a heavenly being, an angel.

In the very presence of God this angel freely chose to go a direction that was in opposition to God and His will and ways.

We call him Satan.

The story of created Man is not much different.

Still with me?

So at this point in Genesis God takes the mans help meet from his side and Adam, again, is freely given the choice on what to name her (which is Eve because, he says, she is the mother of all living – meaning all human beings who would be given life through her).

Adam could have called her, Rebecca or Julie, but God gave Adam the freedom to think, reason, and the choice to give the first human woman a name.

There is a lot of freedom that God has given Adam thus far in the Garden story, isn’t there?

No input from God is implied here. Not even His inspiration is alluded to (although it could have been coursing through Adam’s veins).

We note that at this point Moses tells us that at this point both Adam and Eve were naked and that they were not ashamed.

From this insight we learn that knowledge (in this case, of good and evil) influences the reactions and responses human beings have and make and from this can see that our future freedoms to make choices are INFLUENCED by previous decisions and events.

In other words, we realize from this little example that that there are factors that may influence our freedoms to think and acts.

I would suggest that they don’t force us to think or act but to some degree or another they greatly influence our freedoms to do so.

This is key to our understanding of freedom because right here we learn that almost from the beginning the choices of Adam and Eve made begin to alter and effect other choices and decisions they will make later.

Put it this way:

God told Adam not to eat of the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil because in the day that He did he would surely die.

This was a warning and a promise from God to his creation Adam. Prior to eating the fruit Adam and now Eve were without shame when naked before God and each other.

Therefore, the choice to remain naked before God (and each other) was unencumbered by any external factors that would affect their behaviors (like shame).

However, we will later see that their choice to freely eat of the fruit (note that, to FREELY EAT of the fruit) would greatly influence and affect the innate liberty they originally possessed to be naked in each others (and God’s) presence.

However, even in the face of this shame, Adam and Eve could have freely made the choice to remain naked.

It would have been more difficult in the face of their newly discovered carnal knowledge and the shame it produced but they were free and the shame could never force them to hide from God, it could only influence the hiding.

From this we can see that some sort of choice is always present before all human beings while admitting that all choices are influenced and affected by countless factors that may affect or mitigate our free decisions.

Nevertheless, even in the face of countless influential factors, the greatest gift God has bestowed upon human beings is the power and ability to freely choose in spite of pressures, influences, and persuasions.

Perhaps some examples will aid our comprehension.

Suppose a man is brought into this world with direct criminal DNA from pops, a horrible family and parental environment from moms and pops, a propensity toward addiction (which he falls prey to and becomes addicted to meth as a teen) along with a very low attention span, intellect, and other learning deficits.

I mean this poor guy has had the deck stacked against him from birth.

The question remains, is he free to choose positive, life-enhancing acts over detrimental devastating ones.

If he was “incapable” of freely choosing then every single human being that has had similar difficult experiences would never rise above their life’s circumstances – and they would be destined for failure.

Destined.

But this is not always the case.

Not all fail to rise. Some of them, for sure, but not all.

And in the face of at least one exception over the course of human history we have to admit that external factors do not necessarily disable a person’s ability to freely choose something better.

Likewise and conversely, suppose we have someone born with pristine DNA – that of responsible, intelligent, parents who is then brought up around endless expressions of kindness, love and generosity.

Suppose all the advantages of life are afforded such a soul, including having a sound work ethic imposed upon them as a means to help them avoid being spoiled.

If such a background would always create a sound upright citizen – without exception – then we might be able to suggest that choice has nothing to do with the direction a person’s life takes.

But there are exceptions to such cases, cases where people born with all of the apparent benefits in life choose a more destructive and devious path.

Why?

Because the primary factor in all human beings life is the freedom to choose good or evil. Bottom line.

So while we are all influenced and swayed by our nature and our nurture, all human beings, even in this day and age, continually have the blessed gift of freedom.

The freedom to choose, to act, to believe and receive or to reject and go accordingly.

With God as judge all mitigating factors will be included in the assessment of our lives, but I suggest we make a giant error in thinking people do not have choices that they freely make.

Going back to the Garden of Eden story we then read in chapter 3:

Genesis 3:1 Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

Here Satan, an external force of temptation and sway to invoke poor or destructive choices, but incapable of forcing, approaches Eve with an initial open question:

“Did God say you shall not eat of ANY of the Garden Trees?”

In this, we see the tempter appealing to her reason and her freedom to think and choose through his cunning reason and ability to sway.

Again, though He, as an external factor, could sway her free decision, she was still free to choose. He did not jump in her and force her to act.

She allowed his cunning ways to influence her – but the choice was still hers. She replied to the serpent:

“We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: 3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, “Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.”

Now, Eve was not alive when God told Adam not to eat of the forbidden fruit and so the addition here that they would die if they even touched it came from some other source
.
We have some choices when it comes to where this addition information came from:

That God actually did say it to Adam but it’s just not recorded.
That God didn’t say it, but Adam made it up to keep Eve away from the fruit altogether – which would have been a deception. OR
God didn’t say it but Eve added it on her own when speaking to Satan – which would have also been a deception.

It seems like if touching it would have caused or even contributed to death God would have said this to Adam and it would have been included in the narrative. But it wasn’t so I suggest we eliminate the idea that God said it.

And because Adam was first on the scene and was the one who named the animals, and because Eve was taken out of him and created (out of more refined material and not directly from the clay of the earth as Adam was) I tend to think that Adam chose to teach Eve a myth, of his own accord, which he freely possessed and that myth was, “if you even touch the fruit you will surely die.”

He had the freedom to do this and without disobeying God (for God gave no commandment against mythmaking) he did it.

This was the nature of Man. And it seems to have risen up even before Man disobeyed God!

Perhaps once Satan got the forbidden fruit into Eve’s curious hands, she, in her mind was convinced that the sin had already occurred and ate the fruit without a care.

Deceptions affect choices too.

In any case after her response Satan begins to confront her thinking, and the very promises and the words of God, and he says to the woman:

4 “Ye shall not surely die:”

This was a flat out lie, spoken from the father of lies, who Jesus said “was a liar from the beginning.”

But listen, Eve had the freedom to choose to believe him or to trust God and/or her husband.

But Satan continues his sales job, saying:

5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

There is so much in this verse. First, Satan speaks for God here, saying, “For God doth know that in the day you eat thereof then shall your eyes be opened.”

And again, Eve has to decide if the directives of her husband and God are superior to those of the subtle serpent.
And to freely act accordingly.

The choice was there to be made. We note that God allowed Eve to choose here. He did not intervene with angels or himself on her behalf. He did not stop her from eating the fruit.

She had the freedom to choose. As everyone of us continue to have.

Many people say that she was not equipped to choose well because she was not aware (did not have the knowledge of Good and Evil).

And this brings us to an extremely important point in our discussion.

Where Eve did NOT have a knowledge of Good and Evil she did have the information clearly in her possession.

Information that she either heard from God herself or was told God had said from Adam.

But she had the information – one source the truth and another source a lie.

She FREELY chose to follow the lie over the truth and the source that gave it to her.

This is the bottom line to it all.

Eve freely chose to embrace one source of information over another – we will see why in the next verse.

I would suggest that from an extremely simplified view God merely wanted Eve and Adam (and the rest of His creations) to choose Him and His ways over all other influences.

And those who are His . . . do.
Those who are not . . . don’t.

Why do those who are His choose Him? Because they love, trust and seek to worship Him.

Why do those who don’t choose Him over all the other options?
Because they love, trust and seek to worship other things.

And in this all human beings are responsible before God – from Adam and Eve to this very day.

That this is the basis for His creating humans in His image – to allow all the opportunity (even at times the exhausting opportunity) to freely choose Him over “all the other choices” this world has to offer.

These choices are not a single event, like eating the forbidden fruit or NOT. They are a constant throughout the life of every one of us.

What was it that moved Eve to chose the fruit over God?

Satan, of course provided her with some convincing but we read in verse 6 that after Satan did his convincing (with alternative information to God’s) that

6 When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

Notice that what Eve saw or observed in the promise of the forbidden fruit was seen BEFORE she ate of it.

In other words, Eve, BEFORE EATING THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT “saw” or understood that the fruit was –

“good for food.”
That it was “pleasant to the eyes.”
And that “eating it” would make one wise.

She did NOT have to eat the fruit first to realize these things! Have you ever thought about this?

It proves that Adam and Eve were very knowledable and intelligent, and seeing the facts about the fruit was NOT a matter of good or evil – she was able to observe, however, what was beneficial to her – something completely abstracted from the goodness or evilness of the fruit itself.

In other words, we know that it was NOT morally good to eat of the fruit. But she had no knowledge of moral good or evil.
She hadn’t eaten the fruit yet.

But she was still capable to see and understand that the fruit had value to her person – to herself – BEFORE taking one bite.

And this lets us in on what motivates all of us to choose alternatives to God and His ways – the self – specifically, the things that feed our lusts and pride.

This is what Eve (and Adam thereafter) chose when they ate the fruit – themselves – their lusts and their pride over God and His will and ways.

And they did it will full knowledge of the FACTS though they lacked knowledge of the moral ramifications of their choices.

Both Adam and Eve could have refused to ignore all the surrounding facts about the fruit – the goodness of it for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and that eating it would make them wise – and freely chosen to follow God and the facts He delivered to them.

And Adam could have refused to eat the fruit even though Eve ate of it first – but He chose the lust of His flesh to guide his decision too.

Both of them, thoughout the entire process of the temptation were free, at any and every time, before, during and after, to choose differently.

I mean even after eating the fruit they were free to continue to choose and act without compulsion.

And they could have taken responsibility for their choices instead of blaming each other (or Satan).

They also had the choice to stand naked in each other’s presence in spite of their shame. And they could have refused to hide from God but instead could have decided to stand naked before Him, broken and ashamed for their free choices.

But in their case, which is a type for all of us, the first couple – called Adam and Eve – freely choose a succession of acts that were based not on wanting to choose God and His ways but were based on freely choosing their own.

And this is story every human being lives today. In and through our free choices we all illustrate what we love most –

ourselves, the fruit of this world, Satan, religious pretense, the blame game or God.

Our love and allegiances can only be seen as genuine in the constant light of our relentless freedoms to choose and hence the freedom to choose is the primary and paramount factor in Man and his relationship to God.

God has chosen to be the giver in this symbiotic, two-laned relationship. He loved us so much He gave us His Only human Son and He has elected Man to be a free receiver of His life and shed blood.

Yes, there are blinding counterfeits, and misleading interlopers who promise liberty but only bind the human soul but the those who freely seek will find.

And those who do not are in fact responsible before God for the choice and the ultimate sin which is idolatry.

Of choosing to freely consume the forbidden fruit of this world, false gods, money, materialism, and even (or perhaps especially) religion over God and all He openly offers.

It is the choices that prove who we truly love, worship and with whom we have genuine fellowship.

So while love (of God) is the first commandment, even love cannot be forced or mandated and must come from the freewill choice of all human beings.

Those who do not love or care about Him will freely evidence this in their consistent free rejections of Him.

Finally, when Adam and Eve freely chose to serve themselves and were discovered for having so done, the next thing they freely chose to do was implement religion into the picture by making themselves aprons of fig leaves to hide behind – instead of facing the direct open shameful consequences of their initial decisions.

This was another choice and one most people choose to make as an intermediary between them and God rather than having an honest open relationship with Him.

There is little difference between the free will choice of this world over God and the freewill choice of religion between God and Man.

But again, all of us are constantly free to choose standing shamefully and naked before Him or to make aprons of fig leaves and suppose we are okay.

Since freedom is paramount to all things of God, we must conclude with some observations.

In the face of this innate human freedom few will choose God over the things of this world.
Those who do would be the few that find (and truly love) Him.
Without freedom to fully choose, the first and greatest command to love God with our all cannot be known or had.
Not even love (or the command to love) can be mandated or forced. In fact, genuine love for God ESPECIALLY cannot be forced – it must come from the free will choices of all men.
When anything attempts to introduce or insert itself between the freedom all people have to choose God freely we must see such things for what they are – evil substitutes.
This is especially true of religions that, like Satan, step in and speak for God as a means to usurp the freedom all people have to decide if and when they want actually love God of their own volition.
In this we must conclude that even before the two great commandments, to love God and others, even before having faith, even before God himself or His only begotten Son, and before any of the elements of Christianity can be appreciated or implemented, the primary principle which must forever be held in the highest esteem among men is the freedom for people to choose whatever people want to freely choose.
We can teach, we can inform, we can share and advice and warn others of the facts, but anytime someone, or something, attempts to manipulate, force, or coerce others to think, or act, or believe in a specified manner, God’s primary ambition to allow all men the right to freely pursue or reject Him is lost, and so will be lost the ability for all men to freely love . . . or not.

Upon these principles we have the essential tenets of Subjective Christianity.

As God did in the garden of Eden, instructions are offered and insights given. We seek facts and information and knowledge and we work together toward greater and greater spiritual insights.

But all people are free to decide for themselves what they choose to accept and what they choose to reject in terms of doctrine, beliefs and practice.

In striving to honor such limitless freedoms among all men, love, the greatest commandment, is able to individually thrive, and all people are left standing before God personally responsible for what they freely decided to accept or reject.

Questions or comments?

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