Enter: That sinking feeling you get when you see a junkie at a gas station, comprised of the knowledge that a day in your life might come when you choose that path. Being a junkie doesn't just happen to people--they choose it, and you have those same choices to make in your own life. You might be making them right now. And you think about God. God, what soul would think of free will as a great gift to mankind? Perhaps, a soul who has never been among them, faced these choices every day, and instead sent his son to die at their hands.
God begins to make no sense to you. The junkie is said to have "turned away from God", and they'll tell you that's why he's a junkie. Why? You start to dissect the logic, and discover that there is none, especially if you, like me, and like most people, do not have a clear grip on what God is. They'll tell you that you aren't supposed to understand. God is a nebulous, celestial entity who created life, and gave the glorious burden of free will to humans alone. Perhaps God is a feeling that you get when a path is set in front of you, clear-cut, and you have no choice but to keep walking on it, and a large portion of the world accepts you and praises you for it. The pure kind of love that comes with security, stability, and peace of mind, often found in infants.
Perhaps "turning away from God" is a feeling you get when you realize you can jump over the shrubs, scale the fence, get as far away from that path as you want to. Perhaps those "without god" know free will is not a gift, but a burden, because we have so many options. You could be a cabbie, rob a bank, breathe air atop Mount Fuji, or fall to your death. You realize you can do anything, and that there is no path.
Perhaps there is no God/Satan dialectic. Maybe it is the God/Free Will dialectic. The Set Path/Erratic Tumult.
Tonight, the sinking feeling will churn your stomach into a restless, fruitless sleep, because tomorrow your choices might land you begging in front of a gas station in five years. Of course you won't make those choices, you're better than that, but there's no way to be sure. All of a sudden, your path has sprung up sinister pot-holes, as if you could just misstep and plunge into a bad choice. You want to go to your parents' house, your childhood home, your alma mater, with an urgency that you haven't felt since infancy. You want to be coddled, to be told that you are a good person, and that you don't have it in you to end up like that.
But that thing that came alive when you saw the junkie, it whispers differently. You do have it in you, and you know it. Then you try very hard to dream, because at least dreams are outside of your control. You know you might feel better tomorrow, but at any point, maybe sitting at a desk or in the middle of a phone call, that sinking shadow in your gut could crawl up into your stomach and start convulsing again. You do have it in you, and you always will. God gave it to you like a treasure chest, because he thought you'd like to have a choice. Images of infected track marks and meth caves double-expose with cathedral paintings and crucifixes. The safety net is gone, and you think you might be at the bottom. But you aren't sure of anything anymore, except that you are human, and that this might be what freedom feels like.
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