A common objection to Christianity is the fear that God will somehow remove our free will and turn us into slaves or automatons if we yield ourselves to His authority.
We moderns place a big premium on freedom and self-determination. Like Frank Sinatra’s song, “My Way,” most people choose to do it their own way and have no idea what they are missing.
Although God never intended for us to become preprogrammed “yes men,” He also never intended that we live our lives independently of Him. He created us each to reach our full potential within an intimate and interactive bond of trust that begins on earth and extends into eternity.
Our only active part is to seek Him:
“He makes the creatures; the creatures don’t make Him. Starting from scratch, He made the entire human race and made the earth hospitable, with plenty of time and space for living so we could seek after God, and not just grope around in the dark but actually find Him. He doesn’t play hide-and-seek with us. He’s not remote; He’s near. We live and move in Him, can’t get away from Him!”1
Had God denied us of the free choice to choose for or against Him, He would have also eliminated the possibility of real love to exist between us.
Love at its heart involves choice, free of intimidation or coercion. If you hold a gun to someone’s head, you may be able to get them to say that they love you, but as soon as the threat is gone, so are they.
So how does it work? God has His will, we have ours — that is, completely respecting our free will but at the same time accomplishing His sovereign control over the universe.
An article in The Wall Street Journal provides a perfect illustration of the way God works with us. The great jazz pianist Herbie Hancock commented on the genius of his jazz mentor, Miles Davis:
“Mr. Hancock recounted one extraordinary moment in Stockholm in 1967, during a performance by the quintet. ‘This night was magical,’ he remembered. ‘We were communicating almost telepathically’ … and then I played the wrong chord. It was so, so wrong. In an instant, time stood still and I felt totally shattered.
“Miles took a breath. And then he played this phrase that made my chord right. It didn’t seem possible. I still don’t know how he did it. But Miles hadn’t heard it as a wrong chord — he took it as an unexpected chord. He didn’t judge what I played … he turned poison into medicine.”2
Now for just a moment, suppose you were to think of your life as that of a musician who is given an opportunity to play professionally in the greatest orchestra ever assembled, led by a world-renowned conductor. Up to that point you were only able to play your music at home, on street corners, in small family gatherings or at an occasional wedding.
So rather than settle for performing your music in obscurity for the rest of your life, you accept the offer to join the great orchestra.
After a few rehearsals, it’s time for your first concert. The night of the concert, the hall is full, the atmosphere is magic, and you take your place in the string section. But, to your utter surprise, there is no music score on the stand in front of you — nor on anyone else’s.
The conductor arrives to great fanfare and takes his place at the rostrum. You are petrified. How are you going to know what to play? The conductor quietly addresses the orchestra, telling everyone to just watch him and play accordingly.
The hall quiets down, and the conductor taps the rostrum. He raises his baton, and all the members of the orchestra start playing their individual instruments with only the conductor’s baton to guide them. The resulting music is rapturous, accompanied by ethereal lighting that fills the air and changes with the music, filling the hall with a fluctuating heavenly glow.
Yet, at your level, that of an individual musician, among your many good notes, you find yourself making plenty of “mistakes,” hitting wrong notes every time you lose focus and stop following the conductor’s baton, even for a moment.
But somehow, inexplicably, the conductor takes your supposedly wrong discordant notes and incorporates them into the music flowing through his baton to all the members of the orchestra.
Your “mistakes” are never noticed — the conductor simply uses them to make even more beautiful melodies that would never have been created apart from your presence in the orchestra. The same thing is happening with all other orchestra members.
The music is continuously adapting, evolving, and changing to the delight and amazement of the audience. You are contributing to the most beautiful music ever heard — all transformed by the genius of the conductor. This is improvisational music on steroids!
We are reminded of a verse in scripture that those who belong to God are drawn up into a similar transformational ecosystem, where everything related to their lives is given eternal meaning and purpose:
“Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.
“God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love Him along the same lines as the life of His Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity He restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in Him. After God made that decision of what His children should be like, He followed it up by calling people by name. After He called them by name, He set them on a solid basis with himself. And then, after getting them established, He stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing what He had begun.”3
— D.C. Collier is a Bible teacher, discipleship mentor and writer focused on Christian apologetics. A mechanical engineer and Internet entrepreneur, he is the author of My Origin, My Destiny, a book focused on Christianity’s basic “value proposition.” Click here for more information. Click here for previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.
1. Acts 17:25-28 MSG
2. “The Genius of Miles.” The Wall Street Journal. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 June 2015.
3. Romans 8:26-30 MSG