Many discussions about freedom try to push you to an extreme position: you are either completely determined and in denial about this, or radically free to determine what you will do and who you will become. [WARNING: minor plot-spoilers coming up]
The film The Adjustment Bureau, based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, has a nice take on this. The visible, historical world – our ordinary reality – is watched over by members of the Adjustment Bureau. Their job is to make sure that the Plan unfolds as it should – a Plan for human civilisation as a whole, and for each individual. But instead of pulling every string, like Ed Harris sitting in his control room in The Truman Show, they let things take their own course, and step in every now and then to make minor ‘adjustments’, carefully planned interventions that nudge our lives in one direction or another, without causing too many ‘ripples’ that might cause us to think we are in hands of a higher power. We experience these adjustments as accidents or chance events, but they are the workings of an invisible fate giving shape to our lives. The plot turns on a wonderful scene when one member of the Bureau misses his cue, and someone doesn’t spill a cup of coffee as they are meant to, so that the Plan unravels.
The film illustrates a simple truth: that the whole course of our lives depends on chance events and unplanned encounters. It takes up these themes from those wonderful films Wings of Desire and Run Lola Run. We think we are, to a certain extent, in control of our lives; yet we are not in control of the insignificant happenings that have most significance for our lives. Is it Fate? Providence? Chance?
It’s a light-hearted thriller-cum-comedy-romance, beautifully executed, with one or two weighty ideas from Dick. It has the feel of a Magritte painting come to life. If you like sci-fi, Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, or casual musings about human freedom, you’ll enjoy it. And if you like all four, as I do, you’ll have a ball.
Its simple Its God x
This sounds like a great film, well worth watching. More to the point, Fr Stephen, it sounds like it throws up a huge number of theological and philosophical questions which could give you enough material to keep the blog going on a daily basis for hundreds of years!
I had a giggle when I opened this post….Friday deja vu! – Freedom and determinism!
So what is the middle ground?
If I come at this in an entirely experiential and right brain way…. I feel wholly free and yet a prisoner of the desire to become who I truly am, both as I am and in relationship to God. To this end I have always prayed that I will fulfill God’s highest will for me. I have given Him permission, as it were, to nudge me back on course and close doors when I am off track and vice versa.
So if our greatest freedom is the freedom to become who we truly are, are we not also free to choose the speed at which we become who we truly are? – the ‘yes’ and the ‘no’ of each moment. To become who we truly are is to travel towards manifesting our dignity and power as a child of God; to become a Saint. This becoming in turn impacts on the becoming of others.
I feel that there is a tendency to think of eternity in terms of whether we make heaven or don’t. Whereas I can see no logical reason why our choices in this life should not impact on our experience of eternity, given that we are such relational creatures. St Pio’s experience of eternity must surely be different from the experience that he would have had had he declined God, and those he served, a significant proportion of the time.
As regards chance events… we can’t see radio waves and yet they clearly travel great distances and are able to bring us, live, a magnificent concert that is taking place on the other side of the Atlantic. Similarly we can’t see our brain waves; our thoughts, our focuses, our prayers. And yet surely they have a much greater stretch, impact and reality than science has yet understood? If one adds into the mix, God’s own thoughts, it surely is not surprising the way Providence seems to operate. Perhaps it is more the case that we can be ‘surprised’ by the answers to the questions that we weren’t fully conscious that we had asked.
So I think we are wholly free, but that the environment of that freedom is essentially whether we choose or decline God. And that we are further free to choose the speed at which we choose or decline God. And as I’ve said before, I don’t feel that the circumstances in which we are operating are what is key. God, being just, weights the significance of things according to the advantages/disadvantages that we are born into/surrounded by. Those who are acknowledged to be Saints by the Church are only those whose witness has come to public attention or whose way of sanctity needs to be more widely known.
Fate? So where we have truly glimpsed our very deepest desires and aspirations, we shouldn’t be too surprised to find events seemingly mysteriously conspiring towards the manifestation in reality of what we have glimpsed.
I don’t know if I have made sense here or am correct….but the film looks fun! Thanks for the tip-off, I look forward to seeing it.
“God, being just, weights the significance of things according to the advantages/disadvantages that we are born into/surrounded by.”
Hope for us all then x
p.s Anna your thoughts on waves and eternity were great, just what I needed to hear. I wonder if by mind waves, you will know which surfer I am 0-:O)