Originating
Reading again yesterday in Willard's Renovation of the Heart, I came across a passage that hit me hard the first time I read it a couple of years ago, and it brought me up short again yesterday. I present it here with a couple of thoughts:
"Volition, or choice, is the exercise of will, the capacity of the person to originate things and events that would not otherwise be or occur. By "originate" here we mean to include two of the things most prized in human life: freedom and creativity. These are really two aspects of the same thing when properly understood, which is power to do what is good--or evil.
The power in question belongs to individuals alone. Nothing makes them originate the good (or evil) they do. It is possible for them not to do it. Or to do it. Although a free action has many conditions, those conditions do not an action make. If it is our act, there must be added to those conditions the inner and always unforced "yes" or "no" by which the person responds to the situation. This response is our unique contribution to reality. It is ours, it is us, as nothing else is.
To use the verb "originate" in this way has tremendous force. The day in front of us is truly unmade as of yet. We will originate all kinds of action today, action that will change things for good or ill, mostly in imperceptible increments. But this idea of freely originating actions connects many of the threads of the Christian story, from the God who grants us partnership in the making of worlds, to the importance of each and every person in that making, to the great place human creativity has in the unfolding of the every day.
The reason Willard encourages me is that no matter what I have done or left undone, the mercies of God are new every morning, and today is another day of originating, making truly new moments wherein the kingdom can come, even if I did not bear strong witness yesterday. The suble lie "It's no use" gets thrust back into its hell-hole, and the possible good becomes just that...possible.
...you will be free indeed.
7:32:44 AM
