Concerning Freedom

At the Y-Camp in 1999 and 2011 (when they were expecting Sam)

Around this time of year, I get really thankful. I also get really philosophical. It must be July 4th coming up that inspires me. I love this country and am so thankful for it. Also, we are 14 days away from my anniversary with Kate. Not our marriage, that’s in January. This is the anniversary of our meeting and then engagement on July 15.

Each year I’m thankful and philosophical. Was it fate or free will that brought us together? It’s a concerning question. One that has been debated by minds greater than mine. Are we fated to our existence or do we have free will and if it’s both, how much of each? Like 50/50, 60/40?

Today’s gospel is no help. When we read it in my New Testament class in seminary, there was a revolt. Many of the students hated this passage. Many in the class couldn’t accept Jesus not knowing something. Some said it was a mistranslation. It isn’t. Many said that of course he knew, it was a test to see if the woman would admit she touched him. The text doesn’t give his motivation. It does say that the woman’s actions caused Jesus to be “aware the power had gone forth from him” and turnabout in the crowd that was pressing in on him and ask, “Who touched me?” The disciples responded, “Who’s not touching you?!”

The woman admits it was her and he blesses her.

I tend to be on the fate side. All sorts of things had to line up for me to meet Kate. I went to the YMCA Camp my 8th grade and 9th grade summers. I volunteered one day after about two years away from the camp. I was working a lot and trying to earn a lot of money. If memory serves, this was my first day off in a long while. I could have chosen to play video games and hang out with friends. I didn’t. Instead I went to camp and there was Kate.

Kate had to decide what she was doing for her summer break from college. She could have stayed and worked at a day camp in her hometown, but instead worked out in the middle of nowhere.

Did either of us really decide anything or were we always supposed to find each other?

Growing up, I guess I used to be on the fate side of the argument. God is guiding our steps, like that footprint poem, guiding us along. God is almighty and knows everything so if Jesus and God are one, then of course this extends to Jesus. He’s got the whole world in his hands!

Lots of scientists have advocated this. Author and a behavioral biologist, Robert Sapolsky writes of baboons and men. Both are socially intelligent. Neither has free will. He sees humans as biological beings with culture. Biology and culture are deeply intertwined. To see them as opposites is pointless. All our actions are determined by our biology.[1]

He states that the decisions we make are a result of “prenatal environment, genes, and hormones, whether [our] parents were authoritative or egalitarian, whether [we] witnessed violence in childhood, when [we] had breakfast…”[2]

I used to find great comfort in this concept. It’s nice when dealing with things like a woman getting healed from suffering for 12 years. Or my meeting Kate and thinking that God meant for us to be together. Yet it becomes horrifying when you start thinking about bad things that happen to people. What kind of God would fate a woman to have hemorrhages for 12 years? Or allow the Holocaust of God’s own chosen people? Or allow families to be separated and children held in cages? What God would allow cancer?

Now it is summer… and that means summer blockbusters. One of my favorite movies of all time is Forrest Gump. And the great philosopher Forrest states at the end of the movie, “I don’t know if we each have a destiny, or if we’re all just floating around accidental-like on a breeze, but I, I think maybe it’s both. Maybe both is happening at the same time.”

We are determined to some extent by our biology, genetics, when we had breakfast, but we’re also free on how we choose to respond. We don’t get a choice in somethings in our life: who our parents are, where we’re born, what we get diagnosed with, which pet, family member or friend dies and how… we get no choice in those matters. But we do get a choice in how to respond to these situations.

More and more, I’m taking comfort in Jesus not knowing who touched him. It makes him more approachable. It gives me hope in my daily living when we don’t know who will walk through our church doors or how best to help them heal. More and more, I see how Jesus went against his own culture and made different choices.

Just before this story, he visits the other side of the lake where there are large pig farms and a man with demons roaming in the tombs. The man was chained in the cemetery but he would break free and roam about shouting with the shackles dragging behind him. Jesus speaks with the man who calls himself Legion and he casts the demons out and into some pigs which then drown themselves in the sea. The man is healed and in his right mind, and as thanks for this, the towns people ask Jesus to leave.

It is good to note that Legion is a Roman military term. And a legion of soldiers would need a lot of pigs to feed the army. And here are the Jewish townspeople keeping pigs for the occupying army. This would drive any sensible person crazy. Maybe that’s what happened to the man. He kept asking his community how could they do such a thing. How could they aide the enemy? How could they betray their own kosher laws and values to keep pigs?

Jesus could have done what everyone was doing and leave that man in the tombs. He could have just kept walking and not looked for that woman. Instead, he stopped. He did what no one else would do, what they would blame on fate and say “that’s just the way things are.” That answer is never good enough for Jesus. He stopped. He chose to listen to those folk and do his part to heal them.

It feels like we Americans are going against our own values these days. People on all side of the aisle are throwing up their hands and saying, “What can I do?” For one, you can vote. Another thing you can do is call your representatives. You can talk to others, especially those who don’t hold the same views you do and get beyond the talking points into another place. Or you can turn off the cable news channel and take a walk in the woods. You can choose to find hope in the world and make small steps of patience, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control for those are the fruits of the Spirit. Or you can choose to do nothing and call it fate, but it’s not fate. It’s your choice.

We could have chosen to remain under the thumb of British rule, but our country’s founders chose a different route. When the Articles of Confederacy failed, we could have thrown up our hands and said, “Well, that didn’t work.” And quit. But we didn’t. We could have chosen not to engage in the world wars, and left others to their own devices, we could have chosen to let those countries rebuild themselves in the aftermath, but we didn’t.

The Lindons at the barn where Luke and Kate met in 2015

We can choose our future. We all come from a history, but we’re not fated to stay in that history. We can make a new history. I had no choice that I come from a single parent family. According to the U.S. census bureau, 24 million children, 1 out of 3, live without their biological father in the home. Consequently, there is a father factor in nearly all social ills facing America today. Those raised without a father have a 4x greater risk of poverty, are 7x more likely to become pregnant as a teen, and twice as likely to drop out of high school.[3] And I’m here to say that it doesn’t have to be that way. We can choose a different future. I came from there, but I’m not fated to remain there. Each day, I make that choice to be the best husband and father I can be. Each day, I choose to be better than I was before.

Just like that woman… she chose to seek out Jesus. She chose to reach out and touch the hem of his garment. She made that choice and God noticed and blessed her.

Are you following her example? Are you reaching out toward Jesus and choosing a different narrative from whatever has got you hemorrhaging? Are you seeking healing and restoration for yourself and for your neighbor? Are you choosing to get off your couch and be part of the crowd pressing around Jesus, trying to follow him? Are you trying to break the chains that bind you to a place or history or event that is filled with death? Because we’re not fated to this.

No, I have faith that it doesn’t have to be this way. We can choose the beloved community of God. It’s a concerning freedom. It requires more than us going along to get along. It requires us to think and make choices. It requires work on our part to choose the kingdom of God each and every day. Choices that bring life and not death. May you choose love and life. May you choose the way of Christ who seeks to heal, who is looking for those who choose to reach out to him and touch the hem of his garment. Amen.

[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/one-among-many/201709/sapolsky-free-will

[2] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mbqwjx/you-have-no-free-will

[3] https://www.fatherhood.org/father-absence-statistic

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