In linguistics today I learned about the importance of perceived control to humans and how it effects second language acquisition. I sat there listening to the highly-educated doctoral professor before me, trying to line up what she was saying with my worldview. I struggled with phrases like, “the need for control,” coming from her lips, and “the illusion of control,” spring up from my mind. Some, she pointed out, feel it more acutely than others, and it can be a powerful motivation in learning a second language. We took a moment to take individual tests to see how we ourselves perceive our own self-determination. It was when she pointed out that even torture is literally based in denying a person their ability to control what happens to them that I had this thought.
The control I have over my life is a gift from God.
Walking into the class 20 minutes prior, I would have said that we as humans have minimal control if any over our lives and that control is just an illusion and self-determination is hardly a reality. But now I hold that a little more subjectively. Thus is how I would describe it as seen from my eyes.
Control is a gift from God. He has given us self-determination and will to choose and decide. But ultimately there exists, as if in the same vestige of a scientific law, a higher Will than my own. And of that Will, is the one with the power to make it happen. I would say, however, it is first to be thought of as Will then secondly the ability to make this Will happen (power, especially power to control).
This is a troubling thought, that someone else has not only the power to control another, but that perhaps this being has the right and authority to do so. If such is the case, our only hope then is that this being is good and his Will is good. An added bonus would be that he then desires to give to us good, selflessly and mercifully.
In fact, it shouldn’t be taken lightly God’s ability to control coupled with his goodness and his desire to pour out said goodness on his creation. Trusting in his power to execute goodness makes life bearable – and torture evitable – when we lose control of our circumstances. This loss of control is either always constant or right around the corner for us. I illustrate this in a question. How many other wills are there on this globe? In this country? In this city? In the community in which one resides? When anyone of these other wills-with-legs clashes against us it can be annoying at best. Consider then the good nature of the Higher Will, and herein lies my crescendo. It is God’s mercy that would teach us that our control is not absolute, and it his grace that would allow us to have any to begin with. Whether by his deliberate choice towards an outcome or passivity in his permissive will, he remains in control teaching us this truth, drawing trust and allegiance of those who would be willing submisients* to Him. While we desire our happiness more deeply than anyone else, He desires it still deeper with the wisdom and power to make it possible.
I am convinced that left to myself, I would fail to bring about my own good and joy. I am not wise. I do not know all truth, and of the truth I do know, I still choose to live contrary more often than I know or will admit.
*Those who would willfully submit to an authority.
For the Record: I found in the self-test from linguistics that I’m a free-willing-walking Calvinist; go figure.
