Love and Human Choice

Whatever freedom we have always exists within a context of limitations on that freedom: limitations of intelligence, previous choices, virtue, resources, the influence or power of others, psychological makeup, genetics, personal history and history in general, health, attachments, commitments, loyalties, faith, economics, and more. Our choices are always conditioned, consciously or not, by some combination of these things. Taking all of this into account, to what degree can we still claim freedom in any choice? Who, besides George Bush, is "the decider?" What is it in us that finally decides a matter, the I that arbitrates between impulses and voices? Sometimes we make good choices, sometimes poor ones, most often neutral ones. But who, what, is the I that tips the scales?

The I that tips the scale, unless we defer decisions for others to make, or blindly submit to another's will (and even these are choices of a sort), is our individual consciousness, something we really don't know very much about. Must it be accepted as an axiom, as in DesCartes, the one thing we must not doubt if we expect to establish a coherent reality? Is consciousness only the net result of the processes of our brains, with no separate or independent "soulish" existence, as Dawkins, Dennett,  and Pinker, et al., would have it? Is human consciousness even capable of learning exactly what it is--an eye that can examine itself? Is it something like God's consciousness? If God is conscious, does he know why he is conscious, can he examine his own consciousness?

If we reduce all consciousness to the cellular and synaptic activities of the human brain alone, then consciousness does not exist apart from it, even for God. Certainly memories and self-identity reside in the brain, as does the I. Brain research has established this beyond doubt. Then where does God's I exist? Nowhere in time or space, certainly. Somewhere else? There is nowhere else. Is all of reality the brain of God? Sounds silly. Let's say that God is existence itself, and makes all contingent, material existence possible. Then he exists outside of space/time, if that means anything, and somehow within space/time as well. Of course, we're talking nonsense now, because the powers of language and reason are not powers that can be applied to the concept of God, save for the terms we must use if we want to discuss the issue at all, and all of these terms are inadequate at best, false at worst. This is the reason for apophatic theology: the via negativa. We can't say what God is, only what God isn't. But how can we claim the right to say what God isn't? It is still a claim about knowledge of God . . .

My chosen myth. As mentioned in a previous post, preceded by a poem, I believe that creation entailed a willful breaking of God, by himself. How else could God establish his own free will, except by acting freely and doing something absurd like pouring himself into an idea like creation, and all its inherent risks, by "breaking," sending shards of shattered Shekinah everywhere, especially into conscious human beings. This is, of course, a myth. But it is my favorite one. Our consciousness is a "piece" of God's consciousness, a piece of the Shekinah seeking reunion with itself and with God. Therefore when our brains cease to function, when our brain cells die, all of our experiences, feelings, and relationships might still exist, residing in "the cloud," to borrow from technology, and may, perhaps, be restored. Christian theology is fond of a Greek word, kenosis, referring to God's emptying of himself, humbling himsel via the incarnation, becoming a man: " Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ: Who, though in the form of God, did not cling to this: But emptied himself, and took the form of a servant, was born as a man: And as a man, he humbled himself, even yielding to death, death on a cross." (Phillippeans 2:5-8--my paraphrase)

This is also why I am, if anything, a universalist. Not that I believe Hitler, Mao, and myself are all necessarily heaven-bound, but that mankind, with all our contradictions, are being, have been, somehow redeemed, by this astounding brokenness and evolving repair of God. Perhaps we will even be restored to individual personhood after physical death, experience individuality even as a part of the whole, of God. This represents my desire to maintain faith against the materialist onslaught of science, for which we should have profound gratitude and respect--the science, not the materialist onslaught. It is science that has brought us closer to any kind of heaven that the earth has ever seen, though this is not to say faith has not been part of that mix, or that we don't still have a long road ahead. But then, science, philosophy, and faith are part of the whole, part of that striving for wholeness and reconciliation, part of the intuition we have that somehow things must and do make sense; yet they are broken, and that we must be a part of the healing. Equal to the advance of science and philosophy, more than equal really, will be how we advance in morality, how we choose to treat one another, our good deeds, our taking responsibility for repairing the world, our mitzvoth, that will bring this reparation about.

And in this, do we have free will? Are human choices free, or are they a blind, evolving part of the striving toward wholeness; or somehow both? However this works out in the end, I believe it will be the result of God's humility and love for creation, and our own work, that realizes it. That, of course, is a statement of faith, based on the myth I hope is a true myth. 

Of course, there may be nothing such as God at all, not even an impersonal, amoral "force;" just the energy that takes all the forms we observe, and somehow alone gave rise to consciousness, something I think very unlikely, save when I'm seeing images of "acts of God" like tsunamis, hurricanes, and earthquakes, or acts of man-- the Shoah, and countless other examples of human brutality and misery throughout history. Then, for God's sake, I am inclined to be an atheist. This is why I call myself a believing agnostic.