The View from Where I Stand

     This week we delve deeper into the question recently asked: “Who is writing the script of my life?” For years, people have explored the ins and outs of this question, resulting in a variety of different thoughts. It seems to me that in order to answer this question, we must ask ourselves another question: “How would we know if events are determined or if we freely choose them?” Years of conversation and debate have spawned three broad classic categories that include determinism, free will, and compatibilism. Reading up on these various schools of thought have made me think outside of the box and better understand how to define what I believe is the most sensible position. For the sake of this post, I will discuss what I claim to be true, in addition to expressing both the strengths and weaknesses of the position I currently take.

    Upon reading one of this week’s assigned articles, of which gave an overview of the traditional ways people have talked about free will and determinism, I found myself leaning towards one particular viewpoint called compatibilism. While determinism is the belief that all of our choices are determined before they are made and free will is the power to freely make choices in spite of various influences, I tend to believe that life functions out of a hybrid of the two.

    As a woman of faith, I am a firm believer that God has prepared the paths before us, while also giving us freedom of choice. In other words, it all comes down to how you approach the relationships and situations God presents in your life. Depending on our attitude and thought processing, we can alter our perception to see situations through a Godlier lens, making it our decision of whether or not to trust in Him. Even if we choose to go against God’s will—which at some point in our lives, we are inevitably destined to do due to the fall of mankind—we can trust that God will not give up on us or love us any less for our mistakes because of the fact that He has sent His son, Jesus Christ, to redeem us from all of ours sins. This belief is one that I have increasingly developed during my years of college having faced difficult circumstances and seasons of life. It seems to me that both the good and seemingly bad are presented before us to help us strengthen and grow into the people God has called us to be. At the end of the day, we have choices to make—some of which are better than others—but we are to strive for goodness always, while recognizing that we are not defined by our past failures and mistakes.

    That being said, compatibilism, like all things, has its strengths and weaknesses. Many will try to argue that determinism and free will cannot co-exist, while others will see it as a copout, but I beg to differ. The position of compatibilism does not limit itself to one way of thought, making open-mindedness one of its strengths. It “recognizes the power of those forces that can determine our lives but is also recognizes that we have the power to make free choices about our lives” (Simpler, 8). Furthermore, notable weaknesses of this stance include that it is impossible to agree on how much freedom is “too much,” and it also fails to answer the question, “Given any situation is it possible that I could have chosen to act differently than I did?” (dhaydock.org). Regardless of these issues, I still consider compatibilism to be the most sensible and well-rounded position until somehow proven otherwise.