Family, Friends, People in Purgatory and Ethiopia
There’s nothing better than that moment when your kid learns about free will in Religion Class. Now, I’ve been teaching my kids their whole lives about it, but there’s something about them hearing it in school that makes it click in a different way. For weeks, everything I say has been, and will be, “I don’t have to do anything…I have free will.” This could be anything from objecting to cleaning his room, to his response to me saying, “How can you not like the Ramones??? They are a rock icon!!!” Free will is a super important concept; and whether you’re in fourth grade or an adult, it’s one that is so overused as an excuse for bad behavior.
I’ve always loved that quote by Shakespeare (inspired by Socrates), “To thine own self be true.” It, unfortunately, offers that same pitfall as the free will argument. Being true to ourselves should bring us more in line with our true nature—to be more like God in whose image and likeness we are created. But for many, being true to your self gets mixed up with being true to your selfishness. People talk about “my truth” or “in my world” suggesting some unique experience separate from the rest of human experience that affords them some entitlement to say “to heck with everyone else, I’m going to do what makes me happy.” It is astounding to see people so convinced that they will actually find happiness by disregarding or flat out harming others. And, yet, it happens every day. There is some sort of a perception that my good is more valuable or more honorable than someone else’s good.
Free will is an invitation to do things that make us more authentically human and to give up the things that would distract us from living our potential. It’s not an excuse to be less than what we ought to be. Mary is such a wonderful model of how to use our free will. She risked everything for the salvation of the world in unparalleled humility. She used her free will to fly in the face of convention, but for a purpose that would bring healing and freedom to the world. Being true to herself meant allowing God to work through her, sacrificing so much for the help of others. It meant rejecting the world’s expectations of her, not saying “to heck with them,” but potentially giving up their respect in order to save them. When we seek to be true to ourselves we really need to pay careful attention to whose voice we are listening—the one that leads us to our true selves, or to our selfishness.