But if being found by God just doesn’t work for you right now, if it’s just not something you are open to, then you may find what remains to you less appealing still. Your freedom and choices, it appears, may be more limited than you think. What remains to you is the constant drumbeat of scholarly research that informs us we are each bound in our own Procrustean bed, genetically-defined, fixed more-or-less, and further limited by the environments we were reared and live in.
That unwelcome, deterministic reality is an earnest finger poked in our chest, demanding to be heard, attesting repeatedly to the inherited and conditioned qualities that characterize what we do, what we think, who we are. A more euphemistic sentiment might allude to the limits and conditions on the freedom of man. A more direct and fatalistic disposition might charge that what the genes don’t dictate, the environment will. And if the genetic brand of determinism is incomprehensible or unacceptable to you, don’t expect to find more comfort in the world of conditioned behavior and beliefs. Or do you believe that the realities of family and cultural conditioning are not that powerful in shaping who you are?
So do not deceive yourself or be deceived. The power of our genetic endowment and the behavioral conditioning of our environment are great indeed. With compelling research in hand, science would reasonably advise you that your very personality and many of your personal traits and predilections are influenced significantly by your genes. So is your predisposition to pursue certain types of vocations or interests, or fall prey to certain illnesses or diseases. And the ubiquitous power of the environment, the impact of family and culture as explained by the learning and conditioning sciences, has long been well understood.
Of course, many are simply in denial. They would wish it all away, dismiss it as exaggerated in impact and import. But that’s a fool’s errand, whether born of intellectual ignorance, emotional defensiveness, or worse, a stiff-necked, misguided mission to carry water for various ideological, religious or social agendas. They greatly underestimate the near uncontrollable, deterministic power of genetic inheritance and cultural conditioning. But operating under a self-constructed illusion of freedom—denying, distorting or reshaping the truth—has never been the right answer, or even a workable answer. Then you are working with a lie, and have no chance at all.
You might well conclude, then, that the natural condition of man is an utter lack of freedom, the absence of real, voluntary personal choices—or, put another way, that any sense of freedom exists only in ignorance.
Moving Toward Freedom
If all this is just too emotionally confining and personally limiting, too threatening to your notion of freedom and identity, potential and possibilities—it should be. Oh, it’s not that this is all bad science, a cruel, controlling hoax, a lie. No, in large part it is too true. And the only real uncertainty is how large a part each factor plays in influencing the understanding of our alternatives and the making of our choices. But it isn’t as bleak as it sounds.
In a real sense, you can enjoy and exercise more real freedom. Your freedom is first in knowing what has made you who you are, the way you are—and how. It is also in knowing what has made others the way they are, who they are. You can learn more about real alternatives, and the potential effect on you of different places and people, different thinking and ways of doing things. Your freedom is in that knowledge. You can also read what different people are reading, listen for what they are saying, watch for what they are doing. You can learn what you need to know, and better understand.
You can, then, see yourself and others in a different, more interdependent way, a more understanding and sympathetic way. And to the extent you know the ways you and others are a product of your circumstances—family, culture, your time and place, the box you are in—you have a blueprint for personal change.
You do have real alternatives and choices to make. And you can have better-informed reasons to believe in and make your choices. If there is anything more to your notion of freedom than a hollow log, you can know that there are choices you can make, actions you can take, to access better opportunities to grow—or not.
And the scope of the alternatives you entertain and the particular choices you make also define your freedom, don’t they? A choice to refrain from expanding your experience, knowledge or ability is, in effect, a choice to limit your future choices—and therefore the future scope of your freedom. So it is also with choices to indulge foolish, anti-social or base desires and emotions. They can threaten life or health, result in imprisonment or legal limitations, or compromise your honor, trustworthiness, or self-esteem in ways that limit your future relationships and opportunities. These acts, too, limit your future choices and freedom.
So, even if you are not open to the freedom of the One who calls you, you may be ready to plan the first steps out of your box. You may be ready to believe you can choose better alternatives and expand your possibilities, that they are real and waiting for you—even calling you.
Move, literally. Change the physical place you are in and the people around you. Seek people and situations that will expect more of what you want to expect of yourself. They can notably change your actions, what you do, change your thinking, and to some extent, who you are. And the more you know about yourself—about those influencing factors—the more readily, competently you will make choices for effective change in your life. And yes, that honest knowledge will also have to acknowledge your limitations as well as your potential. That’s important, too. But, most often, there will be some better alternatives, some better choices.
Please make some choices that work for other people, too—people you probably don’t know or don’t know well. To one extent or another, you share with them some of the same space, even if not the same experiential boxes. Make some choices for tolerance or, better still, acceptance and civility. Or, go crazy: think about respect and caring and serving.
Make some choices for community and your best contribution to it. Consider more charitably the poor, the immigrant, the stranger, the prisoner. Consider again issues of access to education and health care, and stewardship of our environment. Be part of solutions, not problems; building up, not tearing down; caring, not neglecting or, worse still, hating. You can do this. But you need to embrace a new sense of responsibility, some knowledge of the alternatives and possibilities—your possibilities. And you have to make some choices.
First written: January - June 2005
© Gregory E. Hudson 2007
