Conscious choice-maker: the definition of what I am

Ray Caldwell reflects on the reality of human free will, responsibility and accountability. Despite the fall of our first parents human beings are still essentially defined by our capacity to decide freely to choose good or evil, love or sin, heaven or hell.

I.

"I am an invisible spirit who chooses, chooses, chooses, all my conscious existence". This is called free-will.

Free-will states that you can choose what you do or make in this lifetime. The materials are available on planet earth. What you create is up to you. It also states that you can choose your behaviour: pro-actions, actions and reactions or measured responses.

But there is more to free-will. It is the nature of time and existence, and time is the nature of free-will. They co-exist. Without time, there is no free-will. Free-will and time are mystically in union.

So there is a deeper mystery behind free-will. It's not just a case of "Jolly D, I think I'll buy a bicycle*" (*Insert whatever you want.) It's more profound. Where did three dimensions come from and why three dimensions? Where did time begin? Why and how?

Free-will allows existence to be fun and pleasurable. It is fun to be able to choose from all the things on offer in life.

Free will was God's gift to the human race.

Some people are quick to dismiss the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve account at the beginning of the Bible, in the book of Genesis. "You don't believe that nonsense", they might say. But whether it is a true or metaphorical account, it perfectly describes the nature of human consciousness and free-will.

It lays out, right from the start, the human condition: that the human spirit is conscious, aware and enjoys free-will. That gift of free-will comes with responsibility and accountability. Free-will cannot exist without these two others.

This is made perfectly clear in the Creation account at the start of the Bible. First God made man in his own image, which means that human beings are exactly like God except that God is perfect and man is not.

This is how God in his infinite wisdom created man. Man was made as it were, with one miniscule, almost infinitely tiny imperfection, or blemish, which meant that mankind could never attain perfection in himself. Only the slightest, tiniest blemish renders something imperfect. And there is a world of difference between that which is perfect: God, and that which is almost perfect, (imperfect): man.

This can be illustrated by using the two symbols of a perfect circle for God, and another circle for man but which has a break. Also existence in the garden before "the fall" can be symbolised with the perfect circle and the beginning of time after the fall as travelling around the broken circle. I really should add here, that Jesus Christ is the link that joins each end of the broken circle restoring perfection.

These illustrations are mystical and so they are difficult to explain. They make good sense to me.

II.

Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden 

by Pere Mates (1500-1558)

If we look at the sequence in the Garden of Eden, we see that God warned Adam and Eve not to lose their state of union with God and God's perfection. This is the deeper meaning. This required them not to know how God made everything, but to simply enjoy it. And it was all very privileged because man was placed at the top of Creation, which was a hierarchy with a natural order of living creatures below them.

We first see Responsibility appearing with free-will in The Garden of Eden, in that, after Adam and Eve had eaten the forbidden fruit, Adam did not want to be responsible, so he blamed Eve. Then Eve did not want to be responsible, so she blamed the serpent. But the situation was a collusion between the three of them, and their eyes had been opened to something that they could not now unknow.

Paradise was lost, perfection was shattered. As they partook and believed the lie (you will become the same as, or equal to God, knowing what God knows) they joined with the deception and carried out the deceptive scheme.

Consequently, God held them responsible for this and their condition was irreversible. Their eyes had been opened and the consequences after being held to account were truly dreadful.

However the judgement was only partial. It was not to be the final loss or end of God's creation which had consequently fallen away from its Creator.

It does not matter how much knowledge man would gain or add to his understanding. The fact is, it is literally impossible for that which God created imperfect to become perfect. This is clearly seen in the complete inability of man to comprehend God: unborn, eternal, who always was and always will be, and all God's infinite attributes.

This is all there in the Garden of Eden story. Adam and Eve were told not to eat from The Tree of Knowledge. Before they ate, a tree was just a tree, an orange was just an orange, an apple was just an apple and a banana was just a banana. A bird is just a bird and a lion is just a lion. Everything was to be enjoyed.

We understand that the garden was a secure place with an absence of fear or guilt. After man's eyes were opened, the world of nature would be "reduced to a commodity to be used in the pursuit of profit, knowledge or some other utilitarian purpose. The ancient forest becomes timber, the bird a research project, the mountain something to be mined or conquered". (I am borrowing from Eckhart Tolle here, from page 81 of his book Stillness Speaks.) Okay, that is just a mild description, the tip of the iceberg as it were: vivisection of animals, cruel mass farming, culling of herds…it gets worse.

The fact is that Adam and Eve did cast humanity into a state where their eyes were opened, with no way to return to innocence. They had chosen to access the knowledge with which God had created God's Creation.

God would continue to respect mankind's free-will, knowing that ultimately, mankind would destroy itself on account of the mark of imperfection in which it was created. Error would find its way into humankind’s best attempts to govern itself and the created world. Adam and Eve's eyes were opened. Their fellowship with the divine and perfect God was severed and broken.

III.

The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise 

by Benjamin West (1738 - 1820)

Have you ever experienced or got to know something after which you truly say that you could never be the same again? When Adam and Eve realised that they were naked they became conscious of the material realm, the three dimensional physical realm and they could not unknow it.

Adam and Eve fell, or were cast out into a sensory, apparently solid, material existence. However, this physical realm is illusionary. Nothing is actually solid. It is, in fact, infinite, and a manifestation of energy. And that which is infinite is incomprehensible to man. The incomprehensible infinite is the nature of God.

The point is, that right here on this Planet Earth, you have free-will to do pretty much what you want (or can get away with), as you make your choices in exercising your free-will. But we are responsible for our choices because we make them consciously. We fully realise when we are choosing, say, harmful, hurtful or destructive actions and we are fully aware when we refuse to participate in cruel and violent atrocities. Fully aware simply means "conscious of". This conscious awareness in our choice—making makes us responsible for our choices and the consequences.

Accounting comes when you want "to enter into life" as Jesus described in Matthew's Sermon on the Mount (and everybody wants life). Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and other serial murderers and perpetrators of crimes against humanity also wanted life. Further, those who defile the souls of others leading them into deeper and deeper corruption — they also want life. We can assume that our souls are examined when we are out of our body and want to enter into eternal life. This is being held to account.

Accounting is where and when you are made to face your lifetime and the choices that you made. You simply cannot undo them when you leave your physical body. You cannot hide from yourself or separate yourself from what you chose which caused whatever during your lifetime. Deep within our psyche, our memories remain.

If a hypnotist can take you back to times, places and experiences you had forgotten, can't God?

For the perpetrators of the forced death of the millions who were gassed, burned alive or shot in the Nazi death-camps, accounting came swiftly.

The commanders of these camps exercised their free-will using guns and gas, but within only a few years they were held to account. Their free-will which they exercised was taken away from them. Many were executed. They were made to face their choices. Accountability came sooner rather than later.

But the most frightening accounting of all is the "out of body" accounting where and when your soul-spirit rests in peace - or - in terrible, unspeakable torment, as your soul is exposed to God. The fact is, that the state of hell, the existence of hell is within the realm of possibilities. It is also very logical.

The fundamental truth to be understood is that our soul-spirit can never die. Even if we desperately want to extinguish it we simply cannot. We can only kill our body. This is a proven scientific truth and reality. The good side of this is that heaven is equally plausible.

Another fundamental reality is that the human soul is capable of sustaining pain way in excess of that which most people experience in this lifetime and, conversely, is capable of sustaining ecstasy. Make no mistake, this ultimate pain exists in reality and is fully possible and is an attribute of the human spiritual conscious awareness. As is ecstasy.

IV.

God creating the water and earth, graphic collage from engraving of the Nazarene School,  

published in The Holy Bible, St.Vojtech Publishing, Trnava, Slovakia, 1937.

I am writing this for my children who don't yet know or understand the Creation story, and also for those who believe that the Creation story of Adam and Eve in the Bible is nonsense.

When it comes down to the troubling reality of dinosaurs and the fearful cruelty in the natural world, we can only assume that this knowledge belongs to God and that the process of creation belongs to God and is possibly part of the knowledge which we were not meant to know. We cannot now know all the answers to these difficulties and they may be completely irrelevant, anyway.

Currently, in this lifetime, we understand that we live in "a fallen consciousness" where pain, fear, guilt and death are all very real. It is perhaps like we all have to temporally pass through hell (in death ) in order to achieve heaven. Fear, guilt and death have to be dealt with.

Indeed, the apostle Paul said " Now we know in part but then (in the future) we shall know in full". The psalmist said "yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death" (Psalm 23).

I offer this brief discussion knowing that my understanding is imperfect; I do not know everything and why should I? - God alone knows. However, what I have written is my account of how I understand my own existence and the many troubling issues we face during our lifetime.

"I am an abstract invisible spirit with free-will, conscious in time and of time. I imagine or preconceive situations which I either choose to do or not to do. I make the decisions: the decisions that I make define me. I am conscious of my choices and therefore responsible and accountable. Free-will exists or lasts from my birth to my death."

The final word, much overlooked in this present age, comes from the Westminster Catechism:

What is the chief purpose of man?

The chief purpose of man is to enjoy God and glorify Him forever.

The Westminster Shorter Catechism. 

Click on the picture for a PDF of the whole book.