Because we live in a society that has perverted the protocol of the Creator’s intended order, we have generations of folks who know what marriage calls us to do but not who it calls us to be. Why? Because they don’t have to. We are creatures of comfort, not beasts of burden. We, as a people and as a population, do not seek to change until change is no longer an option, but a necessity for survival. The world has led us to believe that what we do and how it looks from the outside looking in matters more than who we are when no one but God is looking. God gave us free will. The world shows us free choice. That mismatch throws us into crisis. For that reason, we struggle with what to do and who to be with free will when free choice abounds.
In an episode of Drink Champs, DMX shared that God did not give us free choice; He gave us free will. These are different. Think about that.
We were gifted with free will. That is, humans have the ability to think, reason, and make their own decisions independent of what God wants for us or what fate might dictate as our destiny or of any prior event or circumstance. Free choice, on the other hand, is the ability to make decisions based on one’s own beliefs and desires. You might be sitting there scratching your head like, “how’s that different?” The difference lies in the intention. It’s the why, not the what, that matters. Free will means you can do what you think is right. If your heart is in the right place, God will honor your action—it’s tied to the idea that if you are a believer, God offers you agency to move how you need to in this world. Remember, God sees our heart. Free choice means that you did what you wanted to. Full stop. And we know all the world’s a stage.
In DMX’s elaboration on this point, he talks about two people who murdered someone. One person killed another because that person killed his dog. There was a provocation—a moral wrong that needed to be made right. Another person killed someone in the commission of a robbery. We already know two wrongs don’t make a right. While it might not be the best example out there, you get the point. And it makes sense. Plenty of us do the right thing for the wrong reason. Plenty also do the wrong thing for the right reason. Why else would we also be told that the road to hell is paved with good intentions? Good intentions aren’t always right. That’s why it’s so important to be sure that we’re sure that we’re walking closely with God so we know His heart and can allow ours to be molded accordingly. If we’re acting in accordance with the fruits of the Spirit, we’re less likely to just go by what we want, anyway. Acting in love, goodness, and self-control alone are more likely to produce action borne of necessity than desire.
Confusion abounds in this debate because we don’t know what we don’t know. Even many of us who grew up with the Word didn’t grow up in it. And, too, what we saw around us in believers and nonbelievers alike looked so similar that we couldn’t see the nuance, if there was even any to see. When I think about divorce, my own as well as those I’ve witnessed, it is through the lens of free will versus free choice.
If I am honest, I did not enter into my first marriage of free will. It was of free choice. I had a checklist—a timeline by which I measured my progress through adulthood. I was afraid of alone. That relationship was the closest thing to love I’d known at the time, so I wasn’t sure what it was supposed to look and feel like as a precursor to marriage. I hadn’t had many examples of marital love-in-bliss by which to compare it. So, when I got married, it wasn’t with the purest intentions or with God’s Word as a foundation. We met in church—that’s as far as God got into it. Besides that, I didn’t want to be homeless, I wanted to save money on my car insurance and phone bill, and getting married showed some semblance of progress into adulthood. As I look back, I realize that I entered into marriage for the legal benefits it afforded me. It was a business decision, which is crazy to me now. I didn’t see it that way at the time, though. I also didn’t realize how logically I approached many emotional situations at that time. I didn’t have an idea of what waiting on God might look like. And, if I’m honest, I didn’t have enough faith to find out.
When the topic of divorce came up before we officially said “I do,” we promised that we’d figure out a way to make it work. That was all I needed. That was enough to commit to forever. There was no mention of God or His will for us. There was no talk about what figuring it out entailed. Later, I learned that for him, figuring it out meant being roommates and “doing our own thing” if we had to just to save face and not admit defeat with a divorce. It didn’t mean fighting to save our marriage by learning to love better, purer, or more thoroughly. It didn’t mean meeting each other with humility and honesty to grow into a space of mutual respect and togetherness. Just as it had been when we entered into marriage, the idea the world had of our relationship meant more than God’s hand on and in it. Our intentions were wrong. When I moved into being more aligned with God’s gift of free will than my own free choice and my husband didn’t follow suit, God honored my decision to be released. I had done all I could. I prayed. I loved. I respected. I served. I submitted. In the end, I willed freedom. And at the end of the day, the day had to end, word to Glorilla.
bloom + flow 