Does Choice Control the Outcome?

I had several hours last Friday morning with nothing to do but read. What a treat! So I started reading Religion and American Culture by George Marsden, which was languishing in my to-be-read stack. The main reason I read history is to try to understand why we think the way we do today, and this book did not disappoint.

The following quote is from chapter 3 - Protestant and Progressive America: 1860-1917:

The standard view, still taught in both college economic texts and in popular literature after the Civil War, was built upon the premise that God created the world with a system of rewards and punishments. People who worked were rewarded, while lazy or profligate people suffered from poverty. The right to own private property was considered a sacred right, since it was essential to the operation of the reward system. It was important also not to interfere with the natural mechanism, as in strikes or government interference. Charity was an important duty toward the truly needy, such as the disabled, widows, and orphans, who could not help themselves. But to artificially aid the able-bodied was simply to destroy individual initiative.The logic of the system made it seem God-ordained... The key to success and social welfare, then, was in this view for individuals to work hard and help themselves. Conversion to Christianity could be an important first step toward such discipline. In any case, the ethic was a gospel of work.¹

This issue of choice controlling destiny has been on my mind in trying to get a handle on the connection between individualism and social concerns among Christians. Marsden's quote immediately sent me back to Divided by Faith:

The concept of equal opportunity derives from and maintains accountable freewill individualism. Much of conservative Protestant theological thought views humans as free actors who are personally responsible for and in control of their own destinies. It takes but a limited extension of the freewill individualist perspective to arrive at equal opportunity. Further freewill individualism requires a belief in equal opportunity or the world would be grossly unfair and God unjust.

Equally Created + Equal Opportunity + X = Unequal Outcomes²

As part of their analysis, Emerson and Smith interviewed white, professing Christians to solve for X. They discovered, as would be expected, that one's presuppositions had a direct impact on the choices for X. Interestingly, they were also met with "responses of irritation" regarding the question of equality and Black Americans. Why was the question offensive?³

At first glance, the question about why racial inequality exists is not a religious question. Yet, because of the close historical and present-day connection between faith and the American way of life, at least for white conservative Protestants, it is a religious question. Racial inequality challenges their world understanding, and it challenges their faith in God and America... If only blacks would "catch the vision," change their habits, stop trying to shift blame, and apply themselves responsibly, in short, act more Christian, as they define it - racial inequality would be but a memory.⁴

So this leads me to ask even more questions:

Is it true that individual initiative conquers all? Was Ben Franklin right in that "God helps those who help themselves."? But does this jive with the Bible? What about Job?

Is America a true meritocracy where reward is based solely on ability? Or do prejudice and discrimination still operate today? As a good Calvinist, I may be quick to acknowledge mankind's individual sinfulness, but those sins are responsible for creating unjust systems and attitudes. How long does it take for those systems to be dismantled and wrongs from the past made right in the present? Attitudes also have the unfortunate quality of far outliving those who first conceived them.

Does the belief in choice controlling the outcome one of the reasons Christians are uniform in defending the unborn but have varying degrees of concern for pro-all-of-life issues? To be clear, I am NOT arguing against being pro-life. Abortion is murder. The unborn are truly needy and cannot help themselves. But are those outside the womb able to better themselves and their circumstances by the power of freewill individualism across the board? At least that is the assumption that was taught in the past and has been passed down via the cultural air we breathe. But is this true? Does everyone's lot in life ultimately come down to whether they made the right choices and worked hard enough? But even more importantly, how does this assumption impact my compassion? Is my compassion inversely proportional to my expectations that someone can pull himself up by his own bootstraps?  

I am NOT arguing against practicing discernment. There are people who take advantage of the good will and concern of others for their own ends. But I am arguing against cynicism and hardening our hearts toward those who have been wounded, are hurting, and in need within the household of faith and those outside its doors. Because who among us has never made a bad decision? Who has applied one's self without fault? As Christians, shouldn't we be keenly aware that we deserve nothing and received nothing but for the grace and mercy of God?

Again these questions aren't aimed at others. I ask them of myself.

(The following tweet was timely. I was encouraged that I am not alone in considering this issue.)

Excellent insight from @dukekwondc!! pic.twitter.com/3L9eD4ThPf

— Hannah Joy (@hannahjoy1234) May 6, 2017

1. Religion and American Culture, George M. Marsden, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1990, pg. 109. (emphasis mine)
2. Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America, Michael Emerson and Christian Smith, Oxford University Press, 2003, pg. 98. (emphasis mine)
3. Ibid. pg. 102.
4. Ibid. pp. 102-103.