How we've become free agents in making The Choice - our search for meaning and purpose. And the hidden dangers of perpetual free agency.

A FAITH GARDEN:

Free Agency

My Faith Garden was a wreck. The flowers of yesterday were gone. I was staring down at the suddenly infertile and barren soil. Back to basics. Just Dov and his dirt. But sometimes back to basics isn’t all bad. Yeah, it’s scary – but when you hit restart, your life experiences often allow you to attack a task with greater wisdom, and in a new way. At least that’s what I told myself, as I struggled to reconstruct a framework of meaning for the future.

Shining a light on something usually does two different things: it illuminates the object, but it also creates a shadow behind the object. I was troubled by a recent discovery -- the Certainty of Uncertainty – I couldn’t find certainty or proof in answering questions about life’s purpose. It felt like a seismic shock to my life’s framework of meaning. My prior commitment to a religious lifestyle was shaken. Pieces of a life previously filled with meaning and purpose collapsed around me. I wanted to crawl under something until the earthquake subsided. But even as I felt depressed by confusion, I also felt free in a new way. I analogize it to the classic Big City scenario we often see in the movies – when the sheltered, small-town person is exposed to the big city or the “real world.” It can be unsettling and shocking, but it is also a moment of possibilities, seemingly limitless possibilities. The dramatic tension, of course, is what direction will the character choose? The tension is in the choice.

The Certainty of Uncertainty shined a very bright spotlight on my limitations. And that shook me. But in its shadow, I found The Choice. My choice. A chance to figure things out for myself. Just like the movies, the tension is in the Choice. This Choice is each individual’s search for purpose and meaning. This Choice is how we answer the following questions: Why am I here? How should I live? What “ought” I to do in life? In that shadow of my breakdown, I suddenly felt a freedom to think about those questions. But now, I had to figure out how to answer them. As the dust cleared from my spiritual implosion, the intensity of this Choice grew within me.

Answering those questions remains our most personal treasure. It’s like an internal vault that only I can access, because it exists in my individual consciousness. Yes, people can certainly influence that Choice; but ultimately I choose my framework of meaning to live by. Even the most suppressive totalitarian regimes can’t touch it, if I’m strong enough. The power of the Communist Empire, years in solitary confinement and torture in the Gulag, couldn’t break the Choice of the Russian refuseniks. They were determined to live by their chosen framework of meaning… even if it meant death to do so. A regime dedicated to Apartheid could not break the Choice of Nelson Mandela. Many Jews refused to surrender their sense of human dignity and morality, even as they suffered the living hell of the Holocaust, demonstrating the resilience and independence of, the Choice.

Cynics love to suggest that we are merely products of our surroundings and childhood indoctrinations but they don’t get it… this Choice actually makes possible radical disobedience from the surrounding culture. I believe this is one of the reasons people continue to find inspiration in the Bible: those stories repeatedly highlight this sacred independence and free will. Abraham and his wife Sarah run away from the dominant culture and choose the idea of a single universal God and a new ethical code to live by. Before Moses becomes the Hebrew Lawgiver, he demonstrates the power of this personal Choice by rejecting the immorality of the Egyptian caste system (in which he was a prince), when he kills a slave-master beating a defenseless Jew. Again and again, the Bible highlights individuals who look deeply into themselves and make Choices that run counter to the conventional wisdom, and counter to the culture and peer pressures of the day. The tension is in the Choice.

The Certainty of Uncertainty led me to this personal Choice, but it also altered my understanding of the Choice. Until now, I had been fixated on finding certainty as the foundation for my framework of meaning. Now I began to understand why faith is an inescapable phenomenon in making The Choice. If I cannot prove, cannot know for certain, that I have a purpose here on earth, my answers to those questions of purpose and meaning simply must rely on a foundation of faith. So every framework of meaning, every Religion, must be based on faith… For example, I could choose to believe, I could have faith that I’m merely part of a species that randomly appeared and randomly evolved, without any outside creative push and without any higher purpose or direction. I cannot prove that. But I can reasonably believe it. In fairness, many people have come to those exact conclusions.

But the Certainty of Uncertainty is a funny thing because it cuts both ways: No one can prove the existence of a God-creator, but no one can disprove it either; it’s impossible to demonstrate God or some form of creator does not exist. We’ve got a faith stalemate. I think this is exactly what people mean when they describe a “humble faith.” Its humbling to face the Certainty of Uncertainty head on – to admit we cannot know. And yet we are compelled to find a framework of meaning to believe in. Compelled to find a faith. I felt humbled by the uncertainty, by my own limitations, but I did not feel boxed in. I suddenly saw opportunity. Faith, instead of proof, would be the best I could do to justify my framework of meaning. If the tension is in the Choice, only faith offered a path forward. From the bottom of my spiritual breakdown, I realized that the rules I would live by, my commitment to any framework of meaning, would be based on faith.

If every framework of meaning is actually based on faith in something, then even my basic understanding of the word “religion” had to dramatically change. Let me explain: certain phenomena are embedded in human nature, they are universal and apply across all cultures, geographic boundaries, and human history. What do we all share? First, human consciousness and the human soul; second, we’re hardwired to make the Choice – to adopt a framework of meaning for our lives; third, the inescapable Certainty of Uncertainty; and fourth, finding answers to that choice requires faith in something. Because these are universal ideas, we need to broaden how we define and think of Religion. Of course, Religion still includes Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and any other frameworks of meaning that people call traditional religions. But we need to think bigger. Let’s drop the God idea as a condition. You don’t need a god to call something a Religion. We need to think of “Religion” as any framework of meaning intended to provide answers to this Choice, answers to guide my life. In other words:

a Religion is any framework of meaning that can guide a group’s activities and decisions through life.

My point is that the search for a Religion is actually essential to each of us, and I mean every one of us, whether we believe in a traditional God or not. We are hardwired to adopt and join a Religion in the quest to answer this Choice. The rejection of revelation-based Religion is not the rejection of the phenomenon. It is not the elimination of the basic human need for a framework of meaning. Understood this way, Religion includes traditional Christianity or Islam, but it also includes more contemporary Religions, like socialism, communism and humanism. The bottom line is that Religion attempts to answer the questions of the Choice. If you live by a framework of meaning, you’ve discovered Religion. And if you’ve discovered Religion, you’ve found your faith.

However, even with universal elements to our human condition, any search for meaning must admit that incredible changes have occurred and are occurring with regard to revelation-based faiths. Many people today (especially young people) have a difficult time accepting and living by the dogma and rituals of traditional religions. And this has dramatically affected Religious mobility. Religious mobility has been increasing for decades now. My parents and grandparents were likely to find answers to The Choice from within their family or community. It was the norm for multiple generations to remain in the same community, both literally and in terms of Religion – passing along traditions and a shared framework of meaning. My generation of 50- and 40-year old’s, has shown greater Religious mobility than our parents did. But when we talk about the Religious mobility of the Millennial and Gen Z folks – well, welcome to the era of free agency. Just like we see in sports today, the old notions of team loyalty have evaporated and there is now an openness to changing teams – to switching Religions and experimenting with and adopting new ones. The result is today’s sharp drop off in transmission of Religion from my generation to the next.

I’m sure there are a variety of reasons for this incredible growth in free agency, but I think a primary reason is that Millennials and Gen Z kids absorbed the Certainty of Uncertainty in a different way than prior generations. It was in their baby milk, or morning cereal, so to speak. It may not be a coincidence that this change in attitude coincided with the first generation to grow up so intimately with the internet. The assumed truths of yesterday don’t hold the same sway today; the certainty of uncertainty seems to have punctured that balloon when you look at the generational changes. This sense of free agency and uncertainty is often called Post-Modernism. Free agency severs the roots of continuity and tradition from one generation to the next, which I could probably argue is both frightening and unstable in many ways and exciting and progressive in others. In my newfound freedom, as a free agent looking around, I quickly realized that there are real dangers and risks to this phenomenon. Let’s continue the sports analogy with a question: what happens when a free agent goes unsigned and never finds a new team? Getting stuck in perpetual free agency would cause incredible anxiety, and probably lead to depression. To a sense of purposelessness, of floating – of watching the clock tick away on your ability to play the game. That’s exactly how I felt. Without any Religion to guide and inspire me, I felt down and depressed. I realized that my greatest risk in this journey was demolition… without reconstruction. Because we are hardwired for a framework of meaning, the results of this incomplete journey, of this extended free agency, won’t be pretty. Could this be partially or even primarily responsible for the remarkable setbacks we’ve witnessed over the past few decades: children ten times more likely to require psychiatric help than their parents; unprecedented rise in drug and alcohol-related deaths, especially from opioid addictions; the explosion of one parent households; skyrocketing suicide rates? This expanding freedom of choice comes with incredible risk. If I don’t find a replacement Religion, have I destroyed the basic human resiliency necessary for confronting life’s difficult realities? Even science is beginning to understand the effects of spirituality and Religion on human nature, and I recommend the remarkable book The Spiritual Child by Dr. Lisa Miller for further exploration.

There is a reason this free agency lasts so long. And that is distraction. When we most need to make that Choice, to search for and adopt a new framework of meaning, a new Religion, we instead fill the void with activities that absorb our time but supply no meaning. The most obvious fillers are the worlds of technology and entertainment. They provide the most intense and holistic distractions in human history: on-demand, 24-7 engagement that is fed by a sophisticated manipulation of our voracious consumer appetite. But technology itself is value-neutral, or one could say “meaningless.” It’s a means, not an end in itself. It tells us nothing of how we should live or how we should act. Similarly, materialism and capitalism each provides an unsatisfying off-ramp that fills time and energy. I’m no socialist – I believe that economic well-being is critical to self-preservation, self-esteem and overall opportunity; but like technology, capitalism provides no guidance for living a meaningful life or even allocating the resources gained from a strong economy. Materialism as an end in itself is a dead end. I didn’t need the movie Wall Street to tell me that. And while we’re at it, let’s include science in this list – science can create remarkable inventions and deliver ever-deeper understanding of the reality around us, but it cannot provide a framework of meaning. That is obvious from the drastic need for medical and scientific ethics; with our greater scientific powers and understanding, we still need to ask: just because we can do something, should we do it? Science studies and describes reality; but it does not provide answers to that Choice or paint a picture of how the world ought to be. For that, we still need Religion.

Similarly, politics has surged of late as another deficient substitute for a framework of meaning. Yes, legislation can dictate meaning into laws; protest is essential when laws or society conflict with our framework of meaning. But power may be the antithesis of Religion and the worship of power may be the quickest shortcut to destroying community and culture. Voting, lobbying, legislating, and protesting are all, like science, valuable tools that require an underlying goal – a vision of what “ought” to be. This is clear since those tools apply equally to the extreme Right as well as extreme Left ideologies. They are value-neutral and beg the question: what are your values? What is the framework of meaning being pursued? What is your Religion? What science, capitalism, politics, technology, and entertainment have in common is that none of these phenomena provides answers to The Choice. They fail to satisfy our need for meaning. When these technical or mechanical tools are treated like Religions, they leave us unsatisfied and adrift.

That is exactly why I felt so anxious with my newfound freedom. For the first time in my life, I stood in the promising shadow of The Choice, but I knew that without a personal framework of meaning this sense of drifting and depression would not end. My encounter with the Certainty of Uncertainty created opportunities: opening a door to seek out a fulfilling framework of meaning; helping me realize that a faith in God was still possible. The hard part was that much work still needed to be done.

My next stop? Finding a Religion that would guide and inspire me.