Two Operating Systems, Thoughts on Free Will, and Some Housekeeping
Hello and happy December!
December came in fast and with a vengeance. I don’t know about y’all, but I wasn’t emotionally prepared for winter weather to kick off immediately after Thanksgiving, and my SAD is already trying to assert itself. I’m warding it off with as much daylight, fresh air and movement as I can stand to get, and immersing myself in Christmas music.
You may have noticed that my podcast is late this week. I spent Monday and Tuesday researching, outlining and scripting, and then I recorded it yesterday with every intention of having it cleaned up and posted by the afternoon.
But as I went to save it, the file failed to export and then spontaneously deleted itself. Cue sad trumpet.
I planned to redo it this morning, but I ran into another hitch — it’s much colder today than I had anticipated. Living in an RV with a single space heater, it’s too cold to shut myself up in our little bedroom, unless you want to see me all bundled up and talking through chattering teeth.
So, new plan! This week, I’ll write and send out this here blog post that I was planning for next week, and I’ll save the podcast for the run of warmer days we’re supposed to get next week.
I was planning to do two podcast episodes this month — one this week and another two weeks from now — and then take a hiatus in January (and possibly also February, depending on the weather) to pray and plan and just take a break to work on other things. I was kind of on the fence about said hiatus, but today’s weather is driving home for me that doing a podcast during the cold months in our current setup probably isn’t really feasible, so that’s definitely going to happen. I kind of hate to stop while I’ve got momentum, but I feel like this Gnosticism series is winding down and this is a good place to stop and spend time seeking where the Lord wants me to go next.
Anyway, now I’m debating whether to do two episodes this month, or one long super episode to get us up through the Reformation. Or do that and break it into two parts. I guess we’ll see. This is probably more than y’all care to know, but I’ve got such wonderful supporters and cheerleaders here, and I don’t want to leave y’all guessing as to what’s going on.
So for now, I’m thinking the plan is to wind down the podcast for the season with one or two more episodes, and then take January completely off from both the podcast and the publication. Hopefully, I’ll be able to start writing here again in February, even if I don’t fire the podcast back up until spring.
Now with the housekeeping out of the way, let’s get to the main topic!
Original Sin, Free Will and Two Operating Systems
Something that has come up in my research for the podcast is the ancient debate around free will and original sin — debates that are still going strong to this day. Original sin is ostensibly an Augustinian doctrine, which states that we inherited the sin of Adam, along with the guilt for that first sin, and there may be some gnostic influence on Augustine’s understanding of this, or at least how he applied it, leading into his belief in man’s total depravity and total inability to come to faith without the enablement of the Holy Spirit (that’s the T in the Calvinist TULIP theological system). His biggest opponent in this was a man named Pelagius, who believed and taught that we didn’t inherit Adam’s guilt and that we’ve all been given free will to decide whether or not to choose and obey God.
Now, Pelagius was accused then of and is remembered for going to the extreme in saying that our free will can enable us to live perfectly sinful lives, thereby negating the need for grace or for the cross.
I’m still looking into all of this, but it seems that Pelagius’s teaching may have been distorted and there may have been some political shenanigans behind his being denounced as a heretic. At any rate, if you’ve ever gotten into or watched a debate with a Calvinist, they’re quick to accuse anyone who asserts that we have free will of being Pelagian, or at least semi-Pelagian, in their views.
If you’re reading scripture without a Calvinistic lens, then it’s pretty clear that we have free will, AND we have a sin nature that we obtained at the fall.
Anyway, all of this is just a little historic background to provide some context for the rest of my post. I’ve been not just researching what the old-timers believed and debated, but also studying what the Bible says on these matters, and trying to wrap my head around these theological concepts. What has come to me is an analogy that has really helped my understanding, and I want to share it for anyone else who needs help parsing this apparent paradox. I’m not the first to come up with this analogy, but for products of the computer age such as ourselves, it just makes so much sense.
Basically, we humans are super-advanced, sentient, biological and organic computer systems. When the first two of our kind were created, they were given perfect operating systems that were plugged directly into God. But then when they ate from the Tree of Knowledge, they received a download that their operating systems weren’t designed to handle, and they also became infected with a malware virus, which is the incessant inner temptation toward sin. The operating system became irreparably corrupted, and now every time they make a copy — i.e., a new human — that corrupted operating system and malware virus get passed down.
That OS is our default, and it’s dialed into the World system.
But when we come to faith in Christ, we are immediately given a brand new, uncorrupted OS that runs on the power of the Holy Spirit and is dialed into the Kingdom.
The problem is that this new OS doesn’t replace our original, corrupted, default OS. Instead, it runs alongside it.
This is a contemporary analogy of what Paul is talking about in the first half of Romans 8, when he says we have to take our minds off of carnal things and set them on things of the Spirit.
I used to work for a web design company, and I did all my work on a Mac. In order to see how websites looked on Microsoft Internet Explorer (remember that?), I had to run a Windows installation on my Mac machine alongside the Mac OS. When I needed to test my code in IE, I would have to manually switch over to Windows first.
In the same way, as believers, we have to manually switch over to that new, Holy Spirit OS. And if we’re not diligent to make sure we keep running on HSOS, we switch back to the default — our corrupted flesh. We have to make a free will choice, constantly, every day, often multiple times a day, to choose which OS we’re going to run on or respond from.
And not only that, but we also have to manually upload the operating instructions and programming (that would be God’s word). It doesn’t get downloaded automatically.
Thankfully, when we are taken up on Resurrection Day to meet the Lord in the air, we’ll be given brand new bodies that are totally free of that corrupt old malware-infected OS. But until then, there’s always going to be the temptation to default back to it.
So that’s my analogy, which is really helping me make sense of things. Hopefully it will help someone who reads this, as well.
We can’t escape the need for grace.
But that’s not the only thought on this whole debate that I wanted to share. The other is this: Let’s say that Pelagius was right (if the accusations about his teaching are indeed true) — that it is possible for someone, through sheer will-power alone, to never commit sin; to always choose to do the right thing and make the ethical and moral choice, throughout their whole lives. Does this negate grace, or the need for Jesus to have died on the cross?
I realized that it doesn’t. Because here’s the thing that so many unbelievers who think they can “good person” their way into heaven don’t understand: the standard isn’t moral perfection or refraining from committing sins. The standard is perfect holiness and righteousness that only God Himself can attain and exemplify.
This hypothetical morally perfect person still has to overcome fleshly thoughts and desires to choose to do right. God is righteous. This person would have to choose not to sin. God is sinless by nature. This person would have to choose to live holy and set apart. God is completely and perfectly holy — it’s part of His being.
There has only ever been one perfectly sinless human, and that man was perfect because He was, and is, also God. That’s why Jesus came — because no matter how capable any of us may be of willing ourselves to do good, we can never be good.
Or as Romans 3:10 says, “There is none righteous, no, not one.”
Jesus didn’t just live a sinless life. He embodied the righteousness of God, something no amount of free will and willpower could ever help us achieve.
And that’s why He was the only one worthy to pay the debt for our inherent lack of righteousness and wipe our slate clean. And it’s why there won’t be anyone in the future eternal Kingdom who “good personed” or “free willed” their way in with good works, virtuous living and a positive attitude. The new heavens and the new earth will be populated with people who knew they could never live up to God’s perfect nature and instead put their faith in Jesus and what He accomplished on the cross.
And those are my thoughts. Lord willing, I’ll be sending out a podcast next week. And in case I’m not able to write here anymore this month, I’ll take this moment to wish you in advance a happy Christmas and a blessed New Year!
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