Sept. 23: Free will and God

In David Fincher's 1997 movie, The Game, billionaire Nicholas Van Orton sees his life unravel shortly after his 48th birthday. This is entirely because his estranged brother, Conrad, persuades him to visit a corporation that specializes in creating life-changing experiences, or games, for their clients. Van Orton visits the office, goes through a number of tests, fills out a lengthy questionnaire, and is then informed that he has been rejected,

But he hasn't been rejected. He finds a clown doll with a key in its mouth. The anchor on the evening news begins talking to him via the television set. He gets trapped in an elevator, thrown into the ocean in the back of a taxicab, has his mansion vandalized, and is left for dead in Mexico.

Watching the film, the intelligent viewer has to ask a number of questions. How does Mr. Van Orton (played my Michael Douglas) know that the key he found in the clown's mouth will get the elevator to work again? How does he know that the crank he found will open the window in the sinking taxicab? How does the corporation know when Van Orton will call the police, that he will try to track down the waitress who "accidentally" spilled drinks on him in a restaurant, that he will try to commit suicide by jumping off a building after accidentally shooting his brother (or even that he will get his hands on a working gun in the first place?)

The film shouldn't work. It should be implausible. But it does work. Why? Because the corporation is framed as being highly scientific, highly intelligent, genius in matters of psychology and sociology. The corporation has analyzed his questionnaire, probed his personal history, and determined that he will react in certain ways as to make his particular game work.

So even though Van Orton has free will, his choices - that he freely made - were already known by the corporation. Van Orton's psychology and his past experiences have betrayed him.

And so I think The Game has a Christian worldview. It is a good film for theology students because everyone of them must wrestle with the notion of God's omniscience vs. man's free will. 

Some say the two cannot co-exist (Calvinists) and some say they can (Arminians.) Both positions have problems. I rather like the illustration of God being the puppetmaster and man being the puppet and that the strings he uses are our free will.

I believe that if I hold a ball at shoulder height and I let go, the ball will fall to the floor. In fact, I'd go so far as to say I KNOW the ball will hit the floor. I think I'd be comfortable betting everything that I have that the ball would fall, that it wouldn't just float there in the ether.

But because I KNOW this, that doesn't make me the creator of gravity. I can know something will happen without being the cause of its happening.

I'm not sure if I believe that God causes everything. I believe He works all things toward His will, but I wonder if He really cares about a speck of dust that has gathered on one of the moons of Neptune.

Don Marquis once opined that to reconcile our free will with divine predestination, we must understand that we are free to choose whatever we want and that whatever we choose will be wrong.