Freer Than We Think

Parashat Re’eh, Deuteronomy 11:26-16:17

Dave Nichol, Ruach Israel, Needham, MA

“See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse—the blessing, if you listen to the mitzvot of Adonai your God that I am commanding you today, but the curse, if you do not listen to the mitzvot of Adonai your God, but turn from the way I am commanding you today, to go after other gods you have not known.” (Deut 11:26-28 TLV)

So our parasha begins, with Moses speaking to the people of Israel in the plains across the Jordan river, offering us what is clearly a choice. Note the opening word, Re’eh, “See.” We are not to offhandedly choose one way or another by default, but are to really see this choice, to deeply encounter it . . . even if we may not have previously recognized it as a choice.

The concept of free will has taken a beating in recent years. An article in The Atlantic announces, for example, that “there’s no such thing as free will,” based on a growing body of research in neuroscience and evolutionary biology. This reflects a growing trend—in both the hard sciences and philosophy—of skepticism in our ability to freely choose, well, anything (of course, there is lively debate on this issue, which I won’t get into here). On the other hand, by opening this speech with the command to see, Moses seems to be teaching us the opposite message: we often have more freedom than we think, choices that we don’t even realize are choices.

As the Atlantic article argues, some choices may be predetermined by our subconscious or by habituation—which clothes to wear, which route to take to work, and what overpriced coffee to order at Starbucks. But then there are others we may not recognize: when we choose to interpret someone else’s actions charitably or with cynicism, or choose frustration over forbearance when faced with a whining child. But these are choices as well, even if we don’t usually see them as such. 

Put another way, breaking into that bag of chips, reacting in anger when someone cuts us off in traffic, or jumping to conclusions about another person based on a first impression, are all choices, but only if we are aware of the choice and put in the work to claw back the freedom to make them.

Danny Silk, in his insightful book, Keep Your Love On! Connection, Communication & Boundaries, sees exercising this freedom as an essential ingredient in relationships:

If you want to preserve relationships, then you must learn to respond instead of react to fear and pain. Responding does not come naturally. You can react without thinking, but you cannot respond without training your mind to think, your will to choose, and your body to obey. It is precisely this training that brings the best qualities in human beings—like courage, empathy, reason, compassion, justice, and generosity—to the surface. The ability to exercise these qualities and respond gives you other options besides disconnection in the face of relational pain.

If you have spent time around children (or perhaps have been one yourself), you have probably heard logic along the lines of, “He did this to me, so I had to respond this way.” Actually, you’ve probably heard adults doing this (and, dare I say, done it yourself): rationalizing a response by appealing to the circumstances or actions of someone else. Silk doesn’t let us get off that easily:

Powerful people are not slaves to their instincts. Powerful people can respond with love in the face of pain and fear. This “response-ability” is essential to building healthy relationships.

It is exactly the freedom to not respond in a predetermined way that makes us human. The ability to say, “Wow, that hurt. I’m angry. I feel a deep need to respond in kind, but I choose not to,” is the moral achievement par excellence in Judaism: overcoming the yetzer hara (evil inclination) and mastering the nefesh habehamit (animal soul). Yeshua exemplifies this, in that his ultimate act was to respond to hatred, violence, and injustice with lovingkindness and self-sacrifice. In exercising freedom to respond with generosity one could say he was the ultimate human. This explains why the besorah narratives never present Yeshua’s actions as predetermined, but show him having a choice (in the desert, in the garden) and choosing rightly.

It is commonly said that our emotions are outside our control, and to an extent that’s true. But if we dig into them a little deeper, we may find that our reactions are often rooted in deeply-ingrained beliefs that are either untrue or only partially true. This is why our reactions sometimes feel necessary in the moment, and silly a few hours later. Similarly, we are pretty good at giving ourselves (or our friends) the benefit of the doubt. Someone who cuts us off in traffic is a jerk or a bad driver; if we do it ourselves, it’s simply because we had to get over. Sorry! 

The truth is that we make decisions almost every minute of the day, and most of them are about how to perceive, rather than what to do. Even how we see and interpret the world has an element of choice in it. As one of my favorite bumper stickers says, “Don’t believe everything you think!” Our tradition is quite aware, as the social sciences continue to confirm, that humans are anything but purely rational beings. 

But, rather than being a downer, this message is deeply empowering. Moses teaches us that as we enter the land we have this power of choice within us. We are not mere puppets of our genetics, environment, or culture. Far from it! With a little work, even our previous choices can be repudiated and rectified through teshuva.

The challenge for us is one of awareness: to hold off before reacting, and to see the forces inside us that lead us to interpret something one way versus another. Thus may we be free to choose the blessing set before us.