Freedom and Love

The Intrinsic Relationship of Freedom and Love

So why would an unconditionally loving God allow human beings to cause suffering to one another? In a phrase, because love requires the freedom to be unloving, and “unlove” frequently causes suffering. In other words, without the capacity to cause suffering (through choices of unlove), human beings could not be truly loving, and this would defeat the purpose of an unconditionally loving God. Why does love require the freedom to choose unlove? If one does not have the freedom to choose unloving behaviors, then one’s loving behaviors are not really chosen – they are merely programmed (like impulses, desires, or instincts). Beings which have no real alternatives are not the true initiators of their actions; they are merely responding to stimuli in the only way they can. Thus, if one’s love is not chosen, one’s love is not one’s own. It originates from a cause other than one’s self.

This insight may be deepened by examining what would happen if God made us incapable of unloving behaviors. Let us suppose that I did not have the capacity to choose unloving behaviors. It would seem that the world would be a better place. After all, I would not have to worry about acting on a greedy impulse that could cause harm to another person; I would not have to worry about insulting my friend out of a sense of fear or pride; I wouldn’t even have to worry about any of the Ten Commandments or the seven deadly sins. I would be incapable of lying, stealing, coveting, egocentricity, arrogance, anger, jealousy, contempt, and all of the other attitudes or dispositions which could cause me to do harm to another human being.

There are a few problems with this “better world,” not the least of which is that my incapacity to act on these harmful dispositions and attitudes would reflect rather poorly on my intelligence and reflectivity – indeed, I would be, well, virtually lobotomized. (Lobotomies were a rather crude but effective means of eliminating overly aggressive impulses in the early days of psychiatry). Imagine, for a moment, that you were not capable of fearing another person’s superior talent – that you were incapable of being jealous or wanting more than you could ever really need. If you were truly incapable of these things, you would either be incapable of imagining them, or you would not have the self-consciousness to want to make those things your own. In either case, your intelligence (characterized by your powers of imagination and self-consciousness) would be manifestly inferior to what it currently is. Without these powers of imagination, you would not be able to create; you would not even be able to identify obstacles to a better life so that those obstacles could be overcome. The limits to your imagination would be the limits to your apprehension of a future; and the limits to your self-consciousness (your awareness of your self) would be the limits to your recognition of your future. You wouldn’t be able to see alternative possibilities in your future – making your apprehension of cause and effect merely a response to stimuli (desire for food → lunge at meat). Cause and effect would certainly not be set within the context of a possible future, but only the satiation of a sensorial appetite or instinct.

Thus, God is caught in a dilemma from the very beginning. If God refuses to create a being capable of unlove, He must also refuse to create a being with the powers of self-consciousness and imagination that would make unlove desirable; and if God refuses to make a being with such powers of self-consciousness and imagination, He would also have to refuse to make a being capable of foresight, self-determination, and creativity. God’s refusal to make an agent capable of unlove is also a refusal to make a self-conscious, creative being. He would be relegated to creating – well – cows and crustaceans.

This supposed self-limitation of God would be contrary to His unconditionally loving nature, for as was implied in UNIT J, it would be just like an unconditionally loving God to want to create “beloveds” with the capacity for love. Now, if God refused to create a creature with self-consciousness and powers of imagination capable of seeing a future beyond mere response to impulse or stimulus (because He wanted to make that creature incapable of unlove), then He could not create a creature capable of love – because love requires freedom of choice, and choice requires the ability to see options in one’s future which may run contrary to impulses and stimuli. Without self-consciousness (the vision of “self”) and the imagination to envision one’s self in opposed future scenarios, one could not be held accountable for anything one did. One would not have the power to choose loving or unloving conduct, because one could not envision one’s self as both doing and not doing such loving or unloving conduct. Choice requires seeing the alternatives. No choice, no accountability – but only response to impulse and stimulus; no accountability, no ownership of an action; no ownership of an action, no ownership of one’s love. Love, in this case, would be merely a response to impulse or stimulus; it would be merely an accident of one’s nature or programming. It would not be chosen. It would not be one’s own. Love which is not one’s own is not love at all. It is merely instinctual behaviors which wind up having positive or beneficial effects. Computers can be programmed to do very positive and beneficial actions (and programmed not to do negative actions), but we certainly would not say that those computers are loving.

In sum, if God were to create a creature incapable of unlove, He would also have to create a creature incapable of love, because the very powers of self-consciousness and imagination enabling one to envision one’s self in the future can lead equally to jealousy or magnanimity, egocentricity or altruism, arrogance or humility, greed or generosity, anger or kindness, hatred or love. To render a being incapable of jealousy is to render it incapable of magnanimity. To render it incapable of egocentricity is to render it incapable of altruism. Ultimately, to render a being incapable of hatred is to render it incapable of love.