Seeking to Avoid Accountability

We have an ability to contemplate the future and a desire to affect it. The problem is that we want to exercise free will, but we do not want the responsibility that goes with it. People try to avoid responsibility in a number of ways.

One effort has been to set up a random universe in which the casual agents are time and chance. Atheistic evolutionism is an attempt to kick out the Owner of the universe. If we don’t have to answer to a personal Creator, there is no need to worry about responsibility for our sinful actions and thoughts.

Another effort in some psychiatric schools of thought is the idea that determinism plays an important role. For instance, “Freudian psychoanalysis turns out to be an archeological expedition back into the past in which a search is made for others on whom to pin the blame for the patients’ behavior. The fundamental idea is to find out how others have wronged him.” A person’s behavior is determined by factors beyond his control (God, religion, parents). But the Bible makes it clear that regardless of the past, no one can blame another for his own bad behavior.

The fatalism of astrology is another deterministic escape hatch. Enthusiasts of astrology desire the power to control their destiny in spite of the fatalism of the system. In a practical sense the fatalism is useful to the extent that it offers an escape from moral responsibility.

― Kenneth Boa (Author, Bible teacher, apologist)