Reflection This Week
ON NOT SETTING LIMITS

Our greatest gift, and oftentimes our greatest gripe, is our free will. We human beings differ from every other creature because we are endowed with the ability to freely choose to do or not to do whatever it is we may desire to do. Yes, our “animal” instincts are often at work, saving us in those moments when we have neither the time to think nor perhaps even to freely choose how we will respond. Thus, there are times when reflecting back on what just happened, we are either thankful for those instincts or chagrined that we acted in the manner we did.

   Further, given human nature and given the fact that there are occasions when we must make a decision about how we will respond to a situation when we wish we did not have the freedom to choose. That way, if our action was later deemed to be wrong, we could blame someone else, namely the God who created us without the will to choose. But, of course, God did not do that and so we must take responsibility for all our actions, even those made on the spur of the moment.

   The truth is that were we to be given the choice between being devoid of free will or having to acknowledge our guilt for a foolish or sinful action, in the end we will gladly choose the latter over the former. Of course, we were and are not given that choice. That is not the way we were created. Thus, because of our free will no one and nothing can be held accountable for our actions, good or bad, than we ourselves.

   We know that, much as we might like to find a scapegoat for our sinfulness. Given that freedom and given our human nature, we simply have to live with the truth that we will freely do that which we should not and freely choose not to do that which we should. The saving grace is God’s grace and forgiveness. It allows us to pick ourselves up after our failures and go on knowing God will help us be stronger the next time, if we are willing to do our part.

   The real issue in this life, it seems to me, is not our sinfulness so much as it is our freely choosing to limit our love. To paraphrase something Charles Schwab once observed, when we put a limit on what we will do, we put a limit and what we can do. As we know, there is a difference between being unwilling to do something and being unable to do something. I have the will to play the piano but I am unable to do so because I simply do not have the God-given gifts needed to be able to do so. I have the ability to help someone in need but may I not have the will to do so.

   So it is for each and every one of us. While our abilities as individuals are limited since no one of us is God, our abilities as a world community are limitless. It is our will, both individual and collective, that puts limits on what we will do and not our ability to do whatever it is that needs to be done. More often than not, if not all the time, whenever we say that we cannot do something, what we are in fact saying is that we really do not have the will to do it: we do not want to.

   There is a vast difference between “I can’t” and “I won’t”, between “we can’t” and “we won’t.” Whenever we find ourselves saying “I can’t” or “we can’t”, perhaps we need to step back and ask if what we truly mean is “I won’t” or “we won’t”. Then we need to ask ourselves why we are unwilling to do that which we know we can do and which must be done. We may not like to ask or answer that question and our free will gives us the freedom not to, but we must. We must not, we must not limit ourselves to that which we are willing to do.  WJP