What’s the relationship between your freedom and your will? Most people talk about free will as if human will is free from influence, but our wills are captivated by all sorts of things on a daily basis. In order for something to influence us it has to affect our will i.e. it has to make us want to do it or at least be inclined to do it. Our will always has an object, when we talk about our will it’s always the will do to something (even if that something is to do nothing i.e. to rest). And so our wills are never free in every sense, for they must, by definition, orbit around one or more things.
Augustine said “What the heart desires, the will chooses and the mind justifies.” Implying that our wills are slaves to our heart's desires. Using these terms, those who advocate for free will may equate it with freedom of our hearts desire. Which sounds reasonable except for the fact that “the heart wants what the heart wants.” We’re never free from our hearts desire, if anything, we’re slaves to whatever captivates our hearts.
And so freedom isn’t the ability to control your will (it’s your will that controls you). Freedom is the ability to exercise your will, the ability to do whatever your will moves you to do. Freedom is not just having more options, because options that you will never choose are irrelevant. Freedom is the ability to go through the doors you want to go through, not just having access to more doors. This is fairly easily seen by reflecting at why people cry out for freedom. It’s always because they’re compelled to do something against their will, the door they want to go through is locked. An environmentalist is not going to feel oppressed when the government takes away peoples freedom to litter.
Freedom is further complicated by our changing situations. Usually, when you go through a door you come into a room with a different set of doors, previously open doors are now closed and new doors are open to you. If you want to be free to express yourself on a piano then you have to make yourself a slave to the study of piano lessons. Whichever you choose depends on your will, and turns what might otherwise be slavery into freedom. If you really want to be free to express yourself on a piano, you won’t see piano lessons as slavery. If you want to be free from piano lessons, you won’t see expressing yourself on a piano as freedom.
Which brings us to the question of truth. Postmodernism often sees truth claims as threats to peoples freedom. If I claim that guns a bad and people shouldn’t have guns, lots of people (especially in the U.S.) will see it as a threat to their freedom. If I say that marriage is between a man and a woman then the gay community and its supporters cry oppression. But the truth doesn’t limit our freedom, rather its lies that trap us and the truth that sets us free. If the captain of a ship knows where sandbanks and coral reefs are, then he’s free to steer the ship safely. If a competitor knows the rules of his competition than he’s free to compete in such a way as to win the prize.
And so truth claims about God are only restrictions to freedom if God doesn’t exist. If God’s character is a matter of opinion than proclaiming Christianity or Islam or even atheism is just as oppressive as demanding that everyone listen to your favourite type of music. But if God does exist then telling people the truth about him is like telling the captain of the ship the truth about the ocean, or telling an athlete the truth about their sport.
Jesus claims that anyone who sins is a slave to sin (John 8:34), and the rest of the bible claims that people are either slaves to sin or slaves to righteousness (Rom 6:16). We’re all free in that whichever we do is voluntary (sin is willful disobedience, righteousness is willful obedience) but we don’t have the power to do the contrary. If we’re saved by grace alone (Eph 2:8-9) then we don’t contribute, God alone frees us from sin and makes us slaves to righteousness. And if grace is effective then once we’re slaves to righteousness we can’t go back to our slavery to sin. It’s like we’re locked in one of two rooms, but we don’t want to leave the one we’re in, convinced that freedom is found in our room and slavery in the other (like freedom to express yourself on piano vs. freedom from piano lessons).
However, only the slaves to righteousness have seen both rooms. Becoming a Christian is kind of like the coming out of the matrix, you don’t what you’re coming out of until you’ve come out of it. While the devil has captured the will of mankind to sin, if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed (John 8:36).
