After endowing us with a living, intelligent soul, free will was the greatest gift of God.
Free will is the starting point of our personal freedom. But it also is a test. With it, we can attempt whatever we choose or dare.
It’s as if God loaded our personal bank accounts with infinite wealth, leaving us to decide what to do with it.
Sensing and knowing that fact deep within, we can become intoxicated with pride and driven by the desire for power – all leading to a destructive dead-end of self-worship.
Most of us spend our free will wrecklessly, frittering away what we were given with too little to show for it.
Others let themselves be cajoled out of their inheritance by the undue influence of others. Some waste it by doing nothing, by not using it. And most, unfortunately, get into deep spiritual debt as a result of wrongly using their freedom.
Fearfulness of our own power and selfishness with our spiritual wealth paralyzes and prevents us from giving a return back to God, the Divine Giver of all we have.
Consider the two sons in the parable of the prodigal son. One spent every penny he had until he was totally destitute, and the other spent nothing, neither doing good or increasing his original principle. At least the son who blew his inheritance learned something about the love of his father. The other son also learned a lesson, but it was a bitter one about his own selfishness and hypocrisy.
We are, each of us, both of these sons at different times in our lives. We have played both roles and know the pain and sting of each: the aching pain that stems from selfish over-indulgence and the piercing sting that results from the sudden realization we haven’t done enough with our lives.
The answer to this sticky situation is the reconciliation of these two sides of ourselves in the Father’s love. The Father cannot force, but only plead with us, and His greatest pain is losing any of His children. We, on our part, must make the difficult separation of our identities from either brother, tearing ourselves away from the pride and rebellion that keeps us on a destructive path – no matter what other “blameworthy” people in our lives choose or choose not to do. We must bring these flawed inner characters out of the darkness of our self-imposed dungeons into the light of God’s healing love.
It is not a matter of one brother falling on his sword and giving in to the other. It is a matter of surrendering to the goodness of God, leaving behind what we absolutely know does not work so we can get on with His work and our work.
It’s good to remember that what got Adam and Eve into trouble was taking matters into their own hands. Apart from God’s will, they decided what was right and wrong for themselves. They were doomed to fail and suffer, because they only saw a small part of the big picture. And what was to be revealed was to be revealed gratuitously according to their true welfare. Suffering would be the theme and active ingredient of their redemption and their reinstatement to grace, to full relationship with God.
So, while it is true that God has granted each of us a mind-bending gift in the form of free will, it also is true that we are presented with a most sobering test – one that will be repeated time and again within a single, limited lifetime, but that shall determine our eternal destiny.