Free to Fall -- FPC sermon excerpt

Why was Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords shot in the head last month?

"Maybe it was fate.” That’s what her husband Mark Kelly said at the recent National Prayer Breakfast. He thinks that the tragedy may have happened for a reason, and he hopes that some good will come out of it.

But exactly what is fate? People talk about it, but are not always very clear about it. If you believe in fate, you believe that supernatural powers determine the events of the world. You accept that you have no real choices to make in life. You live according to your destiny, and then you die.

It’s no surprise that “fate” is the root of the words “fatalism” and “fatality.”

Next month, a movie about fate will be coming out. Called “The Adjustment Bureau,” it raises some fascinating questions about the limits of human freedom. “Life is a series of events,” says the movie trailer. “All happened according to plan …. Their plan.”

Whose plan, you might ask?

The Adjustment Bureau’s.

Matt Damon plays a candidate for the Senate from New York, who has a chance meeting with Emily Blunt, which sparks a romance. This is not what is supposed to happen in his life, however, and suddenly a group of mysterious men from The Adjustment Bureau step in to put him back on track. Damon rejects them, and he and Blunt begin to run for their lives.

“We are the people who make sure things happen according to plan,” says one of the members of The Adjustment Bureau. “We monitor the entire world.” These master manipulators show Damon a book with the plan for his life, and tell him that they are determined to use their considerable power to keep him on track.

“You can’t outrun your fate,” says another one to Damon.

Or can you?

The film raises questions of how much freedom we have, and whether or not there are unseen forces controlling and manipulating our lives.

Similar questions are raised by the second and third chapters of the Book of Genesis, in the story of the garden of Eden. “The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it,” says Genesis. “And the LORD God commanded the man, ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die’” (2:15-17).

One the one hand, God appears to be like a member of The Adjustment Bureau in his placing of the man in the garden. God is a supernatural force, exerting control over the first human being.

But on the other hand, God gives the man considerable freedom, saying that he may “freely eat of every tree of the garden” … except one. The man can make a range of choices about what he will eat within the lush and fruitful abundance of the garden. Only one tree is off limits: “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” That tree will lead to death for the man. But even though it is prohibited to him, he is given the power to choose it.

The man is free to fall.