FREE WILL

Joe Dan, Ruth, and Babs

They were sitting in the hospital waiting room, waiting for Babs to deliver her baby. Her sister Ruth couldn't believe it would be the fourth child in as many years, but there it was. Ruth wasn't even sure why she should be there; what could go wrong after so damn much practice, anyway? Nonetheless, she was antsy because her sister always took so long and she started picking at her brother-in-law just to break the tedium.

“Do you believe in guilt?” Ruth asked.

“Yeah, sure,” Joe Dan answered. Ruth was always quibbling with him about his religion, so her question didn't surprise him.

“And I know you believe in sin, right?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“And therefore you believe in free will?”

“Uh—I guess so,” Joe Dan said unsurely. “What's all this leading to?”

“Well, if you believe in free will, Joe Dan, I just wonder why you always bring up this stuff about God 'letting' terrible things happen or 'making' good things happen.”

“But those things are true,” he whined. “God can do anything!”

“Yeah, right. And the first thing he did, even according to you, is to give man Free Will so that he—man—could by omission 'let' terrible things happen and by commission 'make' good things happen. Which suggests to me that seldom, if ever, does God himself mix in; he made the world to work a certain way and our job is to live in that metaphysical world, doing the things that are necessary. I don't think God mixes in. He just has opinions.”

“No, you've got it all wrong!” Joe Dan said nervously. “God decides everything!”

“No, I don't, and no, he doesn't!” Ruth grinned. “God may be the beginning and end of all things, but he’s not much a part of the middle. We're in the process alone. He doesn't sit around deciding whether to give you measles when you're 8 or urinary infections when you're 45. He may know when the least sparrow falls, but he's not the one shooting them out of the sky.”

“Well, I don't know,” Joe Dan said angrily, “but it seems to me that you can have free will, but still not necessarily get where you meant to go.”

“Now that's true,” Ruth said. “In fact, it's the first really practical thing I've heard you say in ages. No, free will doesn't solve every problem, it's just all we've got to work with to solve our problems. Most things are hazard.”

“Yeah, and that's the difference between you and me,” Joe Dan said petulantly. “You need the blessings of God, not a bunch of derned hazard theories!”

“Damn it, Joe Dan,” she snapped, “just when I thought you might have a thought in your head after all! You're the best example I know that free will can't save us from our own stupidity, whether we believe in God or not, sin or not, free will or not! Jesus, you're dense!”

“In God,” Joe Dan intoned, “is absolute redemption.”

“There is no absolute redemption,” Ruth sighed. “Especially not around here.”

“Yeah. Maybe. But in that situation, you just want to believe in hazard; I'd rather go ahead and believe in God.”

“Why?”

“Well, it covers all the options; if you're wrong, you're only wrong. But if you're right, you're Saved for all time!”

“I'll be damned, Joe Dan, you're a pragmatist, after all!” Ruth said.

“I am not!” he insisted, not entirely sure what he way denying.

“But, still, you make me puke! Talkin' to you is the worst fuckin' thing I've ever subjected myself to, I swear!”

“What do you do it for, then?” Joe Dan asked, his face red because of her obscene language, yet genuinely curious for once.

“Entertainment, I guess,” she muttered.

“I don't understand?” he said.

“Fuck, I don't, either,” Ruth giggled.

“I wish you wouldn't talk like that,” Joe Dan said with a hurt expression.

“Hell, you wish I wouldn't talk at all,” Ruth laughed. “Sometimes I wish you wouldn't, either and we could just both be brainless and happy.”

“I don’t get it.”

“No, and probably never will.”

rcs.
5th draft: 1/28/2006

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