Note: The reader should review the article “Building Character – As God Sees it – Self-Discipline – The Spiritual Solution” for best understanding of this article.
In the previous article, we stated that when the desire to not drink is stronger than the desire to drink, we will stay sober. That attitude needs to remain constant. Most of us in recovery would agree that our sobriety is “contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition.” Good spiritual condition keeps stoked the desire to not drink. There are a lot of factors that influence our spiritual condition, but in the final analysis, it is important to understand that it is always an act of our own will that makes our choices, and they are made under the influence of our own desires. To appreciate the validity of this statement, we need to appreciate some fundamental truths about our humanity; the most important being the ability of choice. There is a direct connection between our choices and the state of our spiritual condition.
God is both the Creator and Caretaker of humanity. Humans live in a physical environment but need spirituality. God is Spirit. He created us to have a will. This is the ability to make choices – the act of volition. He did this out of love. The nature that we have in us wants free choice. The nature that we have is flawed when compared to God’s nature. This causes us to make bad choices. Flaws make us susceptible to the sin principle and the development of error in our underlying beliefs. The result is our selfish choices and the consequences they bring. God knows this, but He will not violate our ability to choose. His solution, was to create in the human, a will and a spiritual ability, that, if operating, would help counteract both error in our beliefs and the sin principle. We call it spirituality. (excerpt from the book Eternal Sobriety, Chapter Three, The 12-Step Waltz).
So what does it mean to have a will? Do I really have choices? Was my will working when I was out drinking? Was I really under the bondage of alcohol? Wouldn’t that mean I had no will to not drink? If I did everything I could do to maintain good spiritual condition but drank again, should I blame my will, my spiritual condition, or something else? When I apply the third step in the A.A. 12 Step program, and turn my will and life over to the care of God, does that mean I give away my will? When I humbly ask God, in Step 7, to remove all my shortcomings, and they don’t get removed, does it have anything to do with my will? All of these are good questions that we can answer if we understand the way our “will” operates.
There are differing philosophies on the definition of the human will. On one side, the pure science side, there is the belief that absolute free will is an illusion. This is based upon experiments of brain activity that show that choices are pre-determined before our conscious thought actually becomes aware of a given decision. For most of us, it seems obvious when I make a decision, say, to go to an A.A. meeting, I feel that I could have chosen to do something else. Yet many philosophers say this instinct is wrong. According to their view, free will is a figment of our imagination. No one has it or ever will. Rather, they state our choices are either determined—necessary outcomes of the events that have happened in the past—or they are random.
Unfortunately, many of these same folks who follow this line of thought also promote the idea of removing punishment for bad moral behavior. Instead they place the blame on these pre-determined causes rather than upon one’s own conscious, moral responsibility for proper choices. The idea is that since our conscious awareness of making a given choice is after the choice has been made, we are not at fault. Rather it is the predetermined causes and processes reflected in unconscious brain activity that are to blame. However, science operates only on a physical evidence basis and does not consider the reality of a soul that has spiritual abilities. Science also fails to consider that we are designed by a supernatural Creator, to interact and live in a dualistic environment. Theologically, it means we are living in both a physical (natural) realm and a spiritual (supernatural) realm. The natural world includes the need to survive, to love and be loved, to feel significant, and to appreciate variety in our choices. We choose actions we think will achieve those needs. Essential to these needs is a feedback process, which is the reaping of consequences (good and bad) that we use to correct our course as needed.
So, when we consider the idea of our will, it is important to recognize that we do indeed have boundaries in our abilities to make choices. We have to fit into our environment, so learning how to make good choices is a lifetime process. Science is right that our choices at any given moment are based upon internal inclinations we have, that influence us. This would include memory, beliefs, mental status, emotions (derived from thoughts), knowledge (or lack of knowledge), physical status, prior experience, along with the stresses of the environment we are in at the time. We also need to remember that we are flawed by the condition of sin, which in itself, is a natural bend or inclination to choose self over others.
The fact that our brain works in the unconscious realm before the conscious awareness of the choice, does not alter the fact that it is still a human ability to initiate the process that culminates in that choice. Thoughts are going in and out of our subconscious all of the time. Decisions may begin their journey unconsciously, but it is in response to the need for a decision, based upon the awareness of our conscious reality, or for semi-automatic responses that need little thinking. Actually, it is good that it works this way. If I am sleeping and begin to feel pain in a joint, the decision to move the joint to ease the pain does not require me to wake up, think about the pain, and then decide to move my joint. Touching a hot stove is a good example. Another example is the development of fear. If we suddenly encounter a dangerous situation there are important responses that need to happen in our body, before we actually consciously realize it, such as the flow of adrenalin. That’s a good thing as we need to be ready to fight or flight.
From a spiritual standpoint, theology defines the faculty of the will as that power, or principle of our mind, by which it is capable of choosing. Therefore, an act of the will is the same as an act of choosing a given choice. All of our actions are as a result of choosing. The reality is that our choices always have some motive or reason, and are always conditioned by the inclinations we are subjected to at any given moment. So, the way we operate as humans is through a choice-making process, designed by God, to achieve His purpose. Achieving that purpose requires the growth of truth in the mind. God knows we need a system that derives an awareness of our ability to choose within moral boundaries. When the choice brings bad consequences, it becomes an incentive to modify our beliefs so our future choices will bring better results. Our laws have developed over time to reflect a number of exceptions to punishment, such as being a minor or having some real mental defect. For the most part our society holds us accountable for the behavior we have as a result of our choices.
So, the idea that free will is only an illusion, which is based upon pure physics that all conscious choice is always pre-determined by processes not under our control, is not a healthy way of looking at our ability to make choices. If this was the way that society in practice accommodated it, we would be in deep trouble. It would allow us to blame our alcoholic behavior on something outside ourselves, like Flip Wilson who said “The devil made me do it.” This of course is humorous, but in reality there is a tendency to make this claim, and it is often a major stumbling block to our own growth. There seems to be a tendency to always blame our bad behavior on something or someone outside ourselves. We are all guilty of this to some degree and we bring it into recovery.
Not only are we able to choose according to our strongest inclinations, but, in a very real sense, we must choose according to our strongest inclination in order to be free. This is what freedom really is: to be able to choose what we want, rather than what somebody else wants for us. We also recognize that we are creatures who have multitudes of conflicting desires. We are complicated and are often torn in more than one direction, and the intensity with which we want things changes often. If we desired only to do God’s will, we would never sin. Unfortunately, we still desire to please ourselves, to gratify our own passions, and to do what we want to do, rather than what we think God’s will might be. If our desire to do God’s will is greater than our desire to please ourselves at this point, we will choose to do it God’s way. However, whenever our desire to please our self exceeds our desire to please God, our own wills are not fully in line with God’s will.
In a real sense, we are slaves to our own freedom. Our own desires are to be free. We are volitional in nature, and to be volitional means that we choose according to our will. We make choices according to what seems best or most pleasing to us, at the moment of decision. We make choices all of the time. When I turn my will and life over to the care of God in Alcoholics Anonymous, it does not mean I stop choosing. What it means is that the chief aim of my life should change from serving self to building desire to learn and do God’s Will and to practice, to the best of my ability, to choose and act the way God would want me to. I need to remember that the way character defects become removed is by my own will choosing to not act on the defects, but to act upon the spiritual principles defined in our program. Our character changes by a process of subtraction of defects by the addition of good character attributes acquired through the actions of practicing them. In other words, practice these principles in all of our affairs.
Christians have a process called sanctification. It is important we understand how we function as sinners, since we have conflicting desires in our soul. We want to grow in grace, we want to please God, we want to be obedient to the commands of Christ, and yet we still have desires for self-fulfillment that are sinful. We are told in the New Testament to feed the new man and starve the old man. Put the old man to death and seek the renewal of the new man, the strengthening of the inward man. The level of our desire to obey Christ has to increase, and the level of our desire for the things of this world has to diminish. Because we are always going to follow our strongest inclinations or desires, the only way to grow in grace is to feed and strengthen our positive desires for God, and to starve our negative desires.
There are several things we can do to strengthen our desire to do God’s Will. One major thing is to spend time in the Bible. Paul the Apostle says, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Rom. 12:2). When we read and hear the Word of God explained by Bible teachers, we begin to understand that certain behavioral patterns, that are acceptable in the culture in which we live, are totally unacceptable to God. When we sin, we need to know that we are sinning. It is easy to trivialize our behavior as part of the norms of society. The world is becoming more and more corrupt. We might think our behavior is not a big deal, but when we come under the scrutiny of the Word of God, we see that our actions are indeed very important to God. The Bible gives us a deeper understanding of right and wrong. When we spend time in the truth of God, and meditate on it, and pray, something happens to the inward man. Our mind gets changed. We start to think differently, and we approach decisions in a different way, all because our minds are renewed with the truth of God. The truth does indeed set us free. It sets us free from the error in our beliefs that influence our choices.
This is how we grow, and accomplish doing God’s will and participating in the process of removing our defects of character. We may not make the choice that God would want us to, but when we learn to own our individual behavior (take responsibility for), we can become better with our future choices. Science may try to tell us we have no free will, and that is true only for the moment of decision. In other words, all of the internal conflicts, intentions, and desires all work at making a decision at any given moment. Having the freedom of choice means that we can modify our internals such that we do make the better choices in the next round. The wrong interpterion is to believe that our will is free, as if it were indifferent to good or evil, with no inclination to go to the left or the right. My friends, it is going to simply do what our strongest desire wants to do.
There are four major elements that are important for growth in our character. First, we must have knowledge about good character (behavior). Second, we need to know where we fall short. Third, we need to have a desire to not fall short. And fourth, we need to practice behaving in the proper way until it forms a stronger inner desire to act the right way. This is how the 12 Step recovery process actually works. Our sharing of solid spiritual principles, the inventory process, and consequences of our bad behavior, helps create desire to change, and to practice these spiritual principles in all of our affairs. A.A. is a good practical process for growth, but wisdom tells us we need more. We need the Word of God in our hearts to overcome the appetites, desires, and inclinations that drive our choices throughout our entire life.
When we decide to drink, it is our desire to drink that overpowers the desire to not drink. The stronger desire made the choice that brought the alcohol to our lips. That desire was fed by numerous reasons and motivations and inclinations that supported that choice. Then over time the consequences set in, the pain became harsh, and the desire to not drink was born. When the consequences stimulated the desire to not drink to be greater than the desire to drink, we made a choice to get help. It’s your choice to walk in the principles of A.A. and to seek after the things of God. It is only God that can deliver fulfillment of the four fundamental needs we have. Once again these are the need to survive, the need to love and be loved, the need for significance, and the need for variety (which stimulates choice). I would hope that you see it that way, as I do.
No, the will is not neutral. We have conflicting desire at play all of the time within us. It is indeed often a struggle. The next article will deal with that struggle, which for the Christian is normal.