Power to Choose

In Romans 8, the author sets up the contrast between the "carnal" mind, set on the wisdom of this
world, and the "spiritual" mind, devoted to pleasing God. We can read:
6 For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.
7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be.
8 So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
9 But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His.

Day by day, moment by moment, we face choices - whether or not to follow the spiritual mindset that is found in the Word of God or to choose according to our own devices.  Many of our choices are conscious, many are subconscious, and I think that's a challenge for us - to retrain our minds to the extent that choices that are under the authority of and consistent with the Holy Spirit become "second nature" to us; i.e. we train our minds to think according to God's ways.

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There is a spiritual component to life, and God wants us to understand what it means to walk in tandem with the Spirit of God, to be filled and directed by Him. 1st Corinthians 2 says:
11 For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God.
12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.
13 These things we also speak, not in words which man's wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

Over at The Stream website, William Briggs has written a couple of articles surrounding the topic of free will.  He takes issue with a piece from the British website The Independent, which quotes the authors of a new study, Adam Bear and Paul Bloom, who say “that even our most seemingly ironclad beliefs about our own agency and conscious experience can be dead wrong.”

He says that the authors warn that “people can feel as if they make a choice before the time at which this choice is actually made.”  In Briggs' estimation, this means your brain really made the choice for you.  The authors say:

This proposal is rooted in research suggesting that people become conscious of an event a short time after it actually occurs; hence, their conscious experience of an event can be influenced by experiences that seem to follow that event in time, but have already been processed unconsciously.

This theory apparently comes from two experiments. In one, five white circles flashed on a screen, and 25 persons were asked to guess which of the five would turn red. After the circle changed color, people were asked if they guessed correctly or if they didn't have enough time. Brooks relates that the delay between when the white circles first appeared and one turned red was varied in specified increments between 0.05 and 1 second.  He writes:

When the delay between color changes was 0.05 seconds, 27% said they didn’t have enough time to choose, but as the time lengthened to 1 second, only about 1% said they didn’t have time. Of those who said they did have time, at 0.05 seconds 31% said they guessed the right circle; 23% claimed to be correct when the delay was 1 second.

He says that you'd expect the success rate to be about 20%.  Brooks thinks people could be lying about their success or rewarding themselves what they feel they deserve under these "unfair" circumstances, i.e., the time period given to make the choice.

The same pattern was found in the second experiment, which only offered two choices.

The authors conclude, “Our experiments suggest that people can have the subjective experience of having made a choice before their choice was actually made.”   The Independent story quotes the authors from a Scientific American piece, saying:

The idea of free will may have arisen because it is a useful thing to have, giving people a feeling of control over their lives and allowing for people to be punished for wrongdoing.

But that same feeling can go awry, the scientists wrote in the Scientific American magazine.

Free will - an illusion created by our brains?  That's the leadoff suggestion from the British article.

There are numerous thoughts that come to mind.  First of all, I am by no means an expert in the field of neurology, but I know that the brain is a wonderful piece of machinery.  God designed the human brain as the control center for functions of our minds and bodies.  But, the brain is more than a mere hub - there is an element of a soul, with mind, will, and emotions, and the brain enables us to process these elements.

We are also spirit-beings, and believers in Christ are made alive in our spirits by the Spirit of God.  So, what a researcher might conclude is a mindless choice made for us somewhere in the synapses of our brains may actually be directed by the presence of a greater intelligence, the mind of the Spirit, the mind of Christ.  Have you had the experience of make a choice, taking a certain action, and then seeing negative consequences of that choice - you think back and say to yourself, I really didn't feel this would turn out right?  In the spiritual realm, you could say that is a "check" in your spirit.  God will work to enable us to make conscious or even subconscious choices in accordance with His will.

Of course we have free will, but I do believe that as we grow in the Lord, our choices are controlled by the Spirit of God.  We have to acknowledge the sovereignty of God, as well.  We can also see the evidence of the control of the Lord in our lives.  Even though we are granted the power to choose, we also know that there are so many circumstances beyond our control, where God is working, and we don't comprehend it.  But, we can rejoice that He has taken such interest in our lives that He is working powerfully to bring glory to His name.