Before I get started, I want to give a shout out to my good
friend Jeff Cox for suggesting this week’s topic!
Many of you reading this post live in the United States, a
country which claims to be “the land of the free.” We take great pride in our
freedom. But are we really free? For that matter, is anyone really free? This
week, I’ll be taking a brief look into this question.[1]
A Personal Case Study
In the spring of tenth grade, my math teacher, Mr. Leeper,
invited me to attend an engineering awareness day at the University of Dayton.
I didn’t have the slightest clue what engineers did, but I decided to attend in
order to find out. Shortly into the morning presentations, I had made up my
mind that after graduating from high school, I was going to pursue a degree in
civil engineering.
A year later when I began thinking about college, the
recruiters at universities across the nation hyped up a career in engineering
by presenting complex graphs showing that there were many more engineering jobs
available than engineers to fill them. If I wasn’t already convinced that
engineering was for me, I was now. I was certain I had found easy street where
I could get any job I wanted and get paid the big bucks to do it.
But then 2008 happened. In October of 2008, the stock market
began to plummet and eventually bottomed out in March of 2009, leaving America
in its greatest financial recession since the Great Depression. Over the course
of the next fourteen months, I sent my résumé to more companies than I can
count and thankfully got a chance to interview at three companies. Three days
after graduation, I was fortunate enough to receive my one and only job offer
from Turner Construction Company as a Field Engineer working on the new medical
center at The Ohio State University.
Am I Really Free?
Receiving a job offer in the summer of 2010 was a huge feat,
let alone receiving it from one of the largest construction companies in the
nation. So of course when they offered me the job, I freely made the choice to
accept it. As a matter of fact, I accepted it with great excitement!
It may seem like I was free to make that choice, but was I
really free? Would I have accepted a job at Turner if I'd also been
offered a job at Corna Kokosing Construction, a company where I interned during
college? Would I have accepted a job at Turner if I’d have also been offered a
job at Marathon Petroleum where Amy works? Would I have accepted a job at
Turner if I'd also been offered a job by every other engineering employer
in the world? I don’t know the answer to these questions because I wasn’t given
every potential option. If I’d been given every available option, I may
have ended up choosing to work for Bolliger & Mabillard as a roller coaster
engineer! But as it turned out, I only had one engineering option: Turner
Construction.
Although I was able to freely make the choice to work for
Turner after they gave me a job offer, I wasn’t free to make the choice to work
anywhere I wanted. In other words, I was far from experiencing 100 percent freedom.
As I have evaluated other situations in my life, I realize
that the same phenomenon has taken place. Although I generally have the freedom
to choose from a few options, I don’t have the freedom to choose from the full
range of potential options. Therefore, although it appears I have a lot of freedom, when I survey the larger picture, I realize that my freedom is very
limited.
Are You Really Free?
Now that I’ve evaluated my level of freedom, I’d encourage
you to do some personal introspection on your level of freedom. Think about
some of the choices you’ve made in your life. Did you have the freedom to make
whatever choice you wanted or were you only free to make a choice based on a
small number of options? For example, were you able to evaluate every single
potential apartment or house in the world before you decided which one to rent
or buy? If you have a job, were you able to evaluate every single potential job
before you decided to take that one? If you’re married, were you able to
evaluate every single person in the entire world before you decided which one
to marry? If your answer to any of these questions is “No,” then you’re not completely
free; you may have been free to choose between a few options, but you weren’t
free to choose between every potential option.
Based on this definition of freedom, there isn’t a single
person in this entire world who is free. No one, not even the most powerful
person in the world, is free to have whatever he wants whenever he wants it.
Certainly money and power can give a person more freedom, but no one has enough
money or power to gain absolute freedom.
Is God Free?
Some of you reading this article believe in the existence of
a supreme being, sometimes known as God, and therefore may be interested in a
brief discussion on whether God is completely free to do whatever he wants or
whether his freedom is also limited.
The Bible, which I believe to be the Word of God, makes the
following claims:
Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases. – Psalm 115:3
My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose. – Isaiah 46:10
If God has made both of these claims–that he will accomplish
his purpose and that he does all that he pleases–then we can arrive at one
of two conclusions: (1) he’s all talk, or (2) he actually can and will live up
to what he says. When I read the rest of the Bible, I see God coming through on
every single one of his promises, leading me to draw the conclusion that he
must actually do "all that he pleases" and must "accomplish all [his] purpose."
Therefore, God must be able to choose from an unlimited number of options
meaning that he is completely free.
No one and nothing can stand in the way of God doing
whatever he decides to do. This is great news for anyone who worships him above everyone and everything else!
[1]
Much of my thought process of this topic was inspired by R. C. Sproul, “If God
Is Sovereign, How Can Man Be Free?”, Ligonier Ministries, July 24, 2013,
accessed July 31, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iokVMSaLhvU.
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