Did you know that the eye is not the final determiner of what you see? As complex as the eye is, with its cornea, lens, pupil, iris, macula, retina and vitreous humor (not an exhaustive inventory), the final regulator of what you see is your brain. In fact, the left side of the brain captures your right-side field of vision and the right side of the brain captures your left-side field of vision. And yet, with all this complexity and wonder, there is yet another arbiter even more sophisticated and determined than the brain. This determining mechanism is called the will.
Let’s say you’re a 40 year old man, married to an attractive professional woman, with three children in late elementary grades. You live in a middle-class gated community in your four bedroom Dutch Colonial home on the 9th fairway from where you commute 30 minutes each way to a respectable office job, and supervise six junior executives, an office assistant, and a pretty young intern anxious to make good. The intern seems to violate your sense of personal space, brushes against you at the coffee urn, refers to your self-conscious irks about your paunch and thinning pate as “mature” attributes, and would like to devote some extracurricular time with you to cultivate a leadership style she much admires in you. Every image your eyes see, every signal your brain interprets as the neurotransmitters perform their designated chemical functions, and every message your mind receives tells you that what you’re contemplating is putting at risk your marriage, your home, your reputation, and your children’s esteem . . . yet you choose jeopardy. The eyes were functional . . . the brain did its job . . . what happened?
There was an angel. He was described by God as “the model of perfection” (Ezekiel 28:12) but somehow made a determination to commit rebellion because holding the highest post in creation was somehow insufficient. Notwithstanding his own beauty, intelligence, position and gifts (unsurpassed), he determined to strike out at his own benefactor in revolt. We know it wasn’t design or destiny, impulse or improvisation, mistake or malfunction. The record of his determined decision is recorded in Isaiah 14:13-14; “I will,” “I will,” “I will,” “I will,” “I will.” Not to be confused with “I want,” or “I wonder.” Five times he exercised dominion over his decision process, against all the data to which his surroundings testified.
Mankind, like Lucifer, is equipped with this apparatus of self-determination wherein we are capable of ignoring every signal in the flow of one direction and choose the opposite. Now, it’s not an easy path to live out Mazlow’s hierarchy of needs (Survival, Safety & Security, Belonging, Esteem, Full Potential) if one chooses rebellion as a life script. So, we (humans) have discovered that, like wearing sun glasses to mitigate the harshness of light, or like wearing corrective lenses to compensate for what we actually see (due to faulty optical parts), we can wear an adapter (called “world view”) to help us make decisions that seem to “not be so contrary.” For example, in order to justify and excuse the behavior of a chief executive who committed adultery, lied, violated his oath of office and betrayed his national constituency in an “in-your-face” fashion and without remorse, I can wear my cynical “everybody-does-it” hedonist world view prism apparatus and be very at ease with my decision. This is why those who take what’s not theirs, commit violence and murder, abuse and mistreat children, cheat on their tax responsibilities, or bear false witness without regret or shame can do so with a clear conscience. Therefore, “I will” endeavor to “seek first His kingdom and His righteousness” (Matthew 6:33) in order to navigate through this vale of tears, and when I stumble “I will” avoid the corrective lenses designed to assuage my shame and instead seek forgiveness and accept restoration. (1 John 1:9)
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