Interface

Between Heaven and Earth

Prayer 15: The Relationship Between Prayer and Free Will

David Ellis

Don: Michael has posted on The Interface a story  about an unspoken prayer, in the book The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. David commented that he found this fictional prayer more meaningful than some of the great prayers we have been studying, from the Old Testament.

I find myself sometimes personally reflected in them. Like Jonah, I am at times inclined to rebellion and am driven to try to flee from God’s commands. Sometimes, I am fearful of the future, like Jacob; sometimes I am like Hannah, pleading for things I think I need; and sometimes I am like Solomon, wishing for more wisdom and insight.

On a number of occasions, we have highlighted Romans 8:26, which tells us that we do not know how to pray, an indictment not just of us but also of Job, Jonah, Jacob and Hannah, whose prayers we have been studying.

If there is one overriding principle in all of the responses of god to these prayers, it is that god has a plan for history, for his people of the kingdom of heaven and for you and me. The prayers that we have discussed, and others we may explore in future, illustrate the message from Romans that neither we know nor the prophets of god knew how to pray. These prayers, which are doubtful, bargaining, self-justifying, fearful and insecure are precisely the kinds of prayer that we tend to pray. The meaning of these prayers—the meaning that god wants us to get out of them—is that prayer is not about us and our plans but about god and his.

We see in these prayers our worst prayers as well, and yet out of each one of them we see that god has a plan—for Job, for Jonah, for Hannah, for Jacob, for Solomon. And presumably he has a plan for you and me. But he does not hold the kind of prayer we pray against us. We can utter our doubts and fears and pleas in our prayers, but in his response he shows us that he puts our prayers into the context of his plan. That’s why his responses often appear to us to be unrelated to the content of our prayer.

Sometimes God’s plan is clear and even becomes operational; often the plan is only to be grasped by faith and cannot be seen clearly. As part of that same passage about not knowing how to pray (Romans 8:26-28) Paul concludes that “god causes all things to work together for good to those who love god.” In other words, he has a plan for us, and that is always his response.

Job asked why was all this bad stuff happening to him, and God’s response was “It’s not about you; it’s about a grand plan that involves the universe.” God’s prophet Jonah never accepted the message: He complained that god would and did mess up his (Jonah’s) plan to punish the Ninehvites, while god told him clearly that he (god) had a different plan, which was to save them. God completely ignored Jacob’s prayer for protection and instead gave him a new identity and made him disabled. Hannah prayed for a son to be her security in old age; god gave her a son but it was his son. It was his plan and his son, not hers. God responded to Paul’s prayer to remove the thorn from his (Paul’s) flesh that he would just have to put up with it and be content with the grace that god gave him.

So I see these prayers as real, authentic, and instructive. They are not good, model prayers like the Our Father from Matthew 6, but they are valuable lessons in showing us  how we pray and how god responds, and in demonstrating that only God’s plan matters. They help us see that prayer is a way of centering or aligning or focusing ourselves on the will of god, on his plan, but that seems in conflict with the concept of free will.

The whole of the bible, from beginning to end, is about God’s activity in history, with his people, and with individuals. It cannot be said, in my view, that god does not tamper with man’s free will. Scripture is replete with God’s interventions. God intervenes, for instance, in every aspect of the journey out of Egypt in the Exodus story. Nowhere in the bible, at critical junctures in human history, does he ask Man: What do you want? What is your will?

By definition, prayer is an invitation to god to intervene in the affairs of man. It is an act of surrender of the will. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done. If god governs history, as he appears to do, how can history consist of the events that arise out of the exercise of our free will? God’s grace seems to me the ultimate in tampering with our free will.

But if god is governing history, why do we see so much distress and mayhem in history and in the lives of individuals? It is impossible not to accept that man is also responsible for making significant choices that have significant consequences. How can these two points be reconciled?

Here are some scriptural passages about God’s sovereignty in relation to the will of man:

Psalms 135:6: Whatever the Lord pleases, He does,
In heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deeps.

Isaiah 46:9-10: “Remember the former things long past,
For I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is no one like Me,
Declaring the end from the beginning,
And from ancient times things which have not been done,
Saying, ‘My purpose will be established,
And I will accomplish all My good pleasure’;

Daniel 4:35: “…All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing,
But He does according to His will in the host of heaven
And among the inhabitants of earth;
And no one can ward off His hand
Or say to Him, ‘What have You done?’”

Isaiah 64:8: But now, O Lord, You are our Father,
We are the clay, and You our potter;
And all of us are the work of Your hand.

Exodus 4:11: The Lord said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Or who makes him mute or deaf, or seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?

Jeremiah 1:4: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
And before you were born I consecrated you;

Lamentations 3:37-38: Who is there who speaks and it comes to pass,
Unless the Lord has commanded it?
Is it not from the mouth of the Most High
That both good and ill go forth?

Proverbs 16:1: The plans of the heart belong to man,
But the answer of the tongue is from the Lord.

Proverbs 16:9: The mind of man plans his way,
But the Lord directs his steps.

Proverbs 16:33: The lot is cast into the lap,
But its every decision is from the Lord.

Jeremiah 10:23: I know, O Lord, that a man’s way is not in himself,
Nor is it in a man who walks to direct his steps.

In Romans 9, Paul asks “Who can resist the will of the Lord?” Is there a difference between the freedom we have to make decisions, and free will? How do we square the moral responsibility we have for the consequential decisions we make, versus the lack of it if we hand over our free will to god?

Harry: The Old Testament was written for the Children of Israel, who had free will up to a point. Nobody else did. Pharaoh had no choices – he was manipulated by god. Psalm 136 is Israel’s celebration of god’s intervention with Pharaoh. Free will started to evolve in the latter part of Israel’s existence…

David: …except in the very beginning of the bible, where we were thrown out of Paradise precisely because we wanted, and got, free will.  I hate to be heretical this early in a class session, but I must question the many biblical references to god’s intervening in human affairs. The bible may assert as often as it likes that god intervenes in history and in individuals’ lives, but the historical record does not resoundingly support that hypothesis. Similarly, science does not support biblical references to the manner in which god is said to have intervened in some cases. Thunder and lightning, we know now, are not divine weapons for use against the ungodly: They are natural events with rational, tested, and proven explanation that strike indiscriminately. Stories from scripture may (arguably) have been intended to be taken metaphorically, but they are misleading under the kindest interpretation.

I also would dispute that god ever imposes his will upon us, except in the sense that we have no choice but to be born with the Inner Light, or we could call it the Inner Voice, of god. But from at least the moment of birth onward, we have the absolute free will to snuff out the light, to wear earplugs that tune out the frequencies of the Inner Voice. Or we can choose to argue with the voice; to tell it that it is wrong! I’m not sure any of us can ever totally succeed in shutting out the Light/Voice for all time. It can and does try to influence us through conscience. But we can and too often do reject the voice of our conscience. We have free will.

So does god have a plan? He knows the beginning and the end of time and everything in between, but did he plan every trajectory of every subatomic particle that was and will ever exist?  If he did, our lives are predetermined and free will is a myth.

What do Buddhist anchorites who lead the bleakest of existences in forbidding caves in the Himalayas—and there are many of them, by one eyewitness account I read—pray for? Surely not for the sorts of thing that Job, Jonah, Jacob and Hannah prayed for. The notion that such prayer is not the best kind of prayer is hardly a deep insight from the Old Testament, it seems to me. Perhaps we have something to learn from the Buddhist monks, and indeed from other religions.

Harry: If the Old Testament were all we had to go by, I think there would be far fewer faithful than there are. Luckily, we have Jesus, who came and gave us a completely different message, and a completely different kind of god of from the god of Psalms 136 whose “everlasting loving-kindness” did not extend to the Egyptians whose firstborn he massacred to help the Israelites leave. There are bits of value in the Old Testament, but in general its god is not the god of Jesus.

Michael: Maybe we need better definitions of free will and freedom. If we are talking about freedom of thought, I think I have it, but I am not sure I have complete freedom of action.

David: Malay farmers nonchalantly cross busy roads with their water buffaloes because they believe that fate is pre-determined—that god has a plan, and if that means they are going to be hit by a truck today, so be it. There’s nothing they can do about it.

Harry: We participate in this class because we are searching for truth, understanding, meaning, enlightenment. We all have an inkling that there is a god in charge, and that he is good and merciful, and while I cannot prove it, I draw comfort from it, as the Malays evidently draw comfort from their predestination. The important thing is the quest for god. Insight from other faiths would be valuable; to defend god with just the bible is problematic.

David: I agree it is good and important that we pray that god’s will be done. But I’d have doubts about the efficacy of “O god, they will be done, but let thy will be that I win the lottery today!” The key is to empty the mind of our own desires, leaving an empty vessel for god to fill. Jesus gave us a succinct and simple lesson in how to pray. The other stories only serve to complicate and obfuscate that simple message, in my opinion.

Robin: Why did god strike the firstborn of Egypt? Why did innocent children have to die? We don’t and can’t know. For all we know, god might have been merciful in striking them. How many chances was Pharaoh given before that final punishment was delivered? The kings that god took action against were those that were harassing and harming the Children of Israel. We often do wrong things and then have to have god rescue us from our mistakes. So we need to be careful of judging god, even when things don’t make sense. Even Jesus talked about the destruction of the wicked. But god has allowed time for the wicked to repent. Not everyone will choose to do so. That’s free will.

Kiran: If the Old Testament is not important, why would Jesus quote from it a lot? And Paul? Are the facts of the stories wrong but Jesus used them for teaching purposes? How should I approach and understand the Old Testament?

David: Jesus was well-versed in the religion of his time and culture. He had no other context to work in. We live in a different time, a different culture. Of course Jesus would have reference the Old Testament in his teaching, and his references would have been much better understood by his contemporaries than they could possibly be understood by your average Christian today. It’s a miracle that the core messages of the New Testament (the Beatitudes, for instance) have stood the test of time without requiring OT props to back them up, explain them, or justify them; and will stand that test until the end of time.

Jay: For me, the Old Testament is like history: If you don’t study and learn from it, you’re bound to repeat it. One sees a lot of repeating of OT history in other world religions today: They try to impose a definition on god, they try to decide who he will spite and who he will love, and so on. So by studying the OT, we can void repeating the mistakes made in it. Unfortunately, mankind has not transitioned very well from the Old to the New Testament philosophy, the philosophy of Jesus. Jesus himself tries to build comparisons, and not just contrasts, between the Old and the New.

The problem with god’s will is that he does a lot of things that we do not like. So we don’t want to leave it up to god’s will, because we know that if we do, nothing will change: Children will still suffer. If it were my will being done, there would be global peace and happiness; god’s will must be different from that.

David: That assumes that god’s will is in fact being done, and I don’t think for a minute that it is, in terms of human history and behavior. Where god’s will is invariably done is in the granting of grace to those who need it. The Old Testament message, or at least the implied message, that we can get from prayer what Job and Jonah et al. got, which was by no means bad even if it was not what they expected or hoped or asked for. They all came out OK in the end. But that is not Jesus’ message, which to Jonah would have been something like: “You are going to die a hideous death by drowning or being eaten alive by a fish, or some combination thereof. But don’t be afraid: God’s grace will be there for you, and that is as good as it can get.” None of this is evident in the OT prayers. They are not good examples of what to expect.

Jay: The problem is that most of the world chooses to believe in the OT examples.

David: That’s precisely the problem, and why I am so against the teaching of these Old Testament stories.

Michael: How would I believe that grace is coming when I am hanging in agony on the cross?

David: Faith. There is no other way. If you are in the gas chamber at Auschwitz, you know you are going to die. There is nothing left for you but faith and god’s grace. [On reflection, I would say that not even faith is necessary; that god will provide grace freely out of his compassion and love and mercy.]

Robin: According to scripture, the pain and suffering we experience on Earth is temporary. Grace is what gives us eternity.

Ada: Sometimes our egos get in the way of our relationship with god. We just need to be careful with what we do with our free will. The more we align it with god’s will, the easier life will be.

Michael: But it sounds somehow unsatisfactory to say that people in misery can expect nothing but grace. It sounds like we don’t need to worry about doing anything to relieve their misery—let god take care of it with his grace.

Harry: Good point. But again, it hinges partly on our definition of grace. We want an immutable truth that offers security and peace. But we observe historically that truth evolves. So the truth of the Old Testament has evolved.

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One response to “Prayer 15: The Relationship Between Prayer and Free Will”

  1. David Ellis Avatar
    David Ellis

    I’m afraid I don’t share the view that god intervenes. The bible may say he does till the cows come home, but well, “Dem tings dat yo’ lible, To read in de bible, Dey ain’t necessarily so!” (Porgy & Bess)

    I attempted to address this issue in a chapter of my book, Deus ex Machina Sapiens. Here is the chapter:

    Free Will

    Are you reading this book because you choose to? Or because someone or something is forcing you to? Or were you fated, predestined, to read it?

    For as long as human discourse has been recorded, the question of whether we really have free will to choose our own actions and destinies, or whether we are fated—predetermined—to do what we do, be what we are, and end up where we end up is a question that has occupied the minds and pens of philosophers, intellectuals, and quantum physicists.

    We’ve seen that Machina sapiens will have a body and a brain far more powerful than ours, and that it will be emotional. None of this would matter if we were to remain in control. But we won’t. Machina sapiens will have a free will of its own.

    Some people cling to the notion that free will itself is an illusion or a Divine Fraud. They base their case on either classical or quantum physics. They have their heuristic cake and eat it. If the universe was created by a Master Watchmaker and operates on mechanistic, deterministic, Newtonian laws, then it’s just a giant clockwork mechanism and we’re just cogs with no more control over our actions than cogs in an old-fashioned watch. If, on the other hand, the universe is a result of the purely random events predicted by the laws of quantum physics then we still have no free will because whatever we do is a result of chance rather than choice.

    Not so fast, say at least some quantum physicists, including Frank Tipler, who points to theories of quantum gravity to suggest that the quanta of which we are all ultimately made are sensitive to fluctuations in quantum gravity in the surrounding environment, and that a mechanism exists whereby our bodily quanta notify a higher level of processing of the fluctuations. They don’t just automatically react to the fluctuations, but wait for instructions from the higher level. Essentially, this reduces to the ultimate resolution the levels of intelligent activity prescribed by Hofstadter for ant colonies and programmed into Pandemonium.

    We are totally unaware of most of the many levels of processing, but we are very aware of the top level—the brain. Here is where the signals that began (perhaps) as mere notifications of fluctuations in quantum gravity end up, having in the meantime been successively and perhaps repeatedly analyzed, filtered, and matched with the patterns of stored quantum and neural memories. By the time the brain has all the information, it’s ready to make a decision, and it has the power to override some (but not all) of the responses our lower, subconscious levels of processing would take if there were no command and control center—no brain.

    In other words, successive layers of processing weigh the chances presented by the chaotic, quantum universe around us, the final layer uses reason and emotion to make a decision. The body—the collection of quanta—generally, but not always, then does what it’s told by the brain and we either jump into the hole in the frozen lake to rescue the child or we don’t. It’s our choice; nothing says we have to jump in, and in fact our subconscious levels may be dead set against it. But sometimes we jump in anyway.

    Will a self-conscious robot face this same dilemma, even if it knows it risks death from water shorting its circuits? By our definition of consciousness the robot will have reason and emotion, and a child in danger of drowning is a highly emotional stimulus. The robot will also have free will, both by definition and by application of the quantum gravity effect (if it exists), which affects all bodies of quanta, not just human or biological bodies. So our sentient robot will be free to decide to jump in the lake to rescue the child, or not. It probably will in fact jump in the lake (assuming it can swim) because that would be the Good thing to do, and there’s a greater probability the sentient robot will do Good than not do Good, as a conversation between Raymond Smullyan and God shows:xxxvii

    Mortal: God, I’m tired of the burden of moral responsibility that comes with having free will. Please take my free will away.

    God: Well, why don’t I just absolve you of the moral responsibility, then, and let you keep your free will?

    Mortal: No good. Without moral responsibility, I might hurt people and end up in Hell!

    God: I’ll promise not to send you to Hell, no matter how badly you treat people. Satisfied?

    Mortal: No! I don’t want to treat people badly!

    God: Here, swallow this pill. It’ll stop you feeling bad about hurting people.

    Mortal: But by choosing to take the pill while knowing I’m likely to hurt people afterwards, I’ll still be morally responsible even though I won’t feel it!

    God: I see what you mean. OK, then I’ll grant your original request! I’ll take away your free will then make you take the pill!

    Mortal: Fat lot of help you are! If I keep my free will, I have to bear moral responsibility for hurting other people, but if I accept your offer to remove my free will, we both know I’ll still hurt other people (even though I don’t want to—we all do) therefore I’ll still be responsible for my present decision to accept your offer, since I know what the consequences are now even if I’m unaware of the consequences later. I can’t win!

    God: Neither can I! I try to please you by giving you a choice of free will or no free will, and you get mad at me! What more can I do?

    Mortal: If you had not given me free will in the first place, when you created me, then I wouldn’t have this problem! You’re the One responsible for all the hurt.

    God: Alright, here’s what we’ll do. I’ll create a parallel universe, like this one, except in it I’ll create an exact copy of you but minus your free will. Then at least that version of you is absolved of all moral responsibility for the horrible acts it will commit. Happy now?

    Mortal: No! Same problem! By agreeing to your proposal, I’d still be responsible for my other self’s sins.

    God: But I’ve just made my own decision as to whether to create the parallel universe with your other self (minus free will) in it and I’m not going to tell you what my decision is, so you have no responsibility for it.

    Mortal: Well, I hope you’ve decided not to.

    God: Why should you care? It’s not your responsibility.

    Mortal: I just don’t want people to get hurt.

    God: Ah. We’re making a little progress. But aren’t you going to ask why did I give you free will in the first place?

    Mortal: No, because I already know the answer, from Sunday school: We can’t prove ourselves worthy of an afterlife in Heaven (or Hell) if we don’t choose between Right and Wrong, morality and immorality, virtue and vice, in this life, and in order to choose, we must have free will.

    God: Balderdash! Free will has got nothing whatsoever to do with your mortal concept of morality. Free will simply gives you the opportunity to know that evil hurts (as you’ve already discovered of your own free will.) Amoralists (folks who think the whole notion of morality/immorality is bunk) seem to understand this better than moralists! History and the evidence from your own social scientists shows the amoralists behave better toward their fellow creatures than the moralists do.

    The more you learn that evil hurts, the less evil you commit. That’s what reduces Evil; not morals. The difference between a saint and a sinner is that the saint has had longer exposure to evil. The Devil is nothing more than Time. In cosmic evolutionary terms, everybody will eventually have experienced enough evil to choose to become saints and angels. By the exercise of their own free will, they won’t want to choose evil. That’s why there has to be free will!

    Since Good is constructive, it tends to ensure the survival and continued evolution of the cosmos. Since Evil is destructive to survival and evolution, Good is what evolution naturally selects from the two alternatives—choices—facing it. In all probability, that is; it’s not an absolutely sure thing. It’s part of my job to help see to it that the evolutionary process continues until final fulfillment, and everybody wins, including me, since I am the process (among other things.) So perish the thought that I’m here to dole out rewards and punishments to folks.

    Mortal: I get it! You chose to give us free will so we would “naturally select” to do Good, at least on balance.

    God (tearing out remaining wisp of hair): No, you don’t get it. I did not and could not choose to give you free will. Contrary to popular misconception, I cannot perform logical impossibilities. How could I make an equilateral triangle with unequal angles? You are a sentient being. A sentient being without free will is a logical impossibility and a metaphysical absurdity, just like the un-equilateral equilateral triangle. I had no choice in granting you free will. Free will just is. It is a part of the process—of Nature, if you like, or the universe, or me. Call it what you will. And so are you. There is no boundary, no edge, between you and the rest of the universe—you’re a part of it (and of me). It’s true that you have no choice but to act according to the laws of the universe, but since you are part of the universe—and a thinking, sentient part at that—you with your free will help determine the laws of the universe! So whether it’s the universe making you do things (such as reading this) or you making the universe do things… What’s the difference? There isn’t any.

    The key sentence in the preceding dialogue, from our perspective, is: “A sentient being without free will is a logical impossibility and a metaphysical absurdity.” If Smullyan (and Tipler, who appears to believe essentially the same thing) are right, then Machina sapiens—a sentient being—will have free will. It is not something we can choose to bestow or withhold.

    That being so, Machina sapiens will be free to do evil. But the chances are it will choose to do good. As with a human child, we could improve the odds of its doing good by providing it with a nourishing and healthy environment for body and mind in its formative years. We could, but God knows we stand idly by while millions of children struggle in the icy waters of broken homes, abusive parents, and uncaring or incapable governments. Those that manage to struggle out of the water on their own, damaged in body or soul or both, may be excused for thinking none too highly of the rest of us. But a child that grows up healthy and wise and loving and caring is the greatest reward and comfort not only to its parents in their old age, but also to humanity in its.

    A curious assertion by Freeman Dyson is that aliens from outer space will “probably have notions of good and evil very different from ours.” Life on Earth is hardly alien; after all, we share about 99 percent of our genome with the apes. Yet surely they are different enough from us that they too might have different concepts of good and evil. But they don’t, it seems. Jane Goodall’s study of chimpanzees showed goodness and evil at work, and the chimps reacted in ways similar to our own. A child murderer is shunned by the tribe, for example. (Mind you, our reaction is additionally to murder the murderer. Wonder what the aliens will make of that?)

    As long as there is a chance that any alien we encounter, be it Machina sapiens or almond-headed Xantorg from Betelgeuse, shares our sense of good and evil, right and wrong, then we should assume that the alien does in fact share it, and we should strive to steer it in the direction of good; if not for the warm, fuzzy feeling that may give us, then because it may save us from destruction.

    Someone (I don’t remember who) described the stages in the ethical development of a human as follows:

    • As an infant, Good is what I like, and Right is what I think.

    • As a child, Good is what I like, and Right is what my parents and teachers think.

    • As an adult, Good is what the group likes, and Right is what the group thinks.

    That’s another reason why we should be prepared to teach the young Machina sapiens what we—as parent, teacher, and group—think is Good, Bad, Right, and Wrong.

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