This is, despite all the debauchery, delusion, and silliness one has to wade through, a significant issue. The reason I am responding to this television show is because it encroaches upon a reality I live in, and such popular disinformation cannot but harm multitudes. It is an axiom that deception is a prime weapon in warfare. And there is a spiritual warfare really going on.
There is an Apocalypse, and we are in it now. But who rightly depicts it — at least in an understandable manner?
This is what Michael tells Dean, when Dean doubts the supposed plan "God" has in store,
"And you think you know better than my father?" Michael asks. "One unimportant little man? What makes you think you get to choose?" "Because I gotta believe that I can choose what I do with... my unimportant little life," Dean says. "You’re wrong," Michael says. "You know how I know? Think of a million random acts of chance, that let John and Mary be born. To meet. To fall in love, to have the two of you. Think of the million random choices that you make, and yet each and every one of them brings you closer to your destiny. Do you know why that is? Because it's not random. It's not chance. It's a plan that is playing itself out perfectly. Free will is an illusion, Dean. That's why you’re going to say yes . . . You can't fight City Hall."
This "yes" pertains to Dean having to give consent before Michael can possess him (the same true for Sam and Satan).
So the "artists" behind the show — the script-writers — have set up a straw man they're going to knock down: humans don't have free will, they're just puppets. I am reminded of something Dostoevsky said; Nicholas Berdyaev, in his little volume, Dostoevsky (Living Age Books – Meridian, 1968), shows how Dostoevsky also was greatly wrought upon over the matter of human freedom. In Letters from the Underground, Dostoevsky's hero says of a human being,
All he needs is an independent will, whatever it may cost him and wherever it may lead him…. In only one single case does man consciously and deliberately want something absurd, and that is the silliest thing of all, namely, to have the right to want the absurd and not be bound by the necessity of wanting only what is reasonable…. for at all events it will have safeguarded our dearest and most essential possession—our personality and individuality…. If you say that everything, chaos, darkness, anathema, can be reduced to mathematical formulae, that it is possible to anticipate all things and keep them under the sway of reason by means of an arithmetical calculation, then man will go insane on purpose so as to have no judgment and to behave as he likes. I believe this because it appears that man's whole business is to prove to himself that he is a man and not a cog-wheel. [Italics Berdyaev’s] (pages 52, 53)
It is a real and very important matter, this business of free will, and relatedly, what it is to be human! So I'd like to talk about it a little here. In relation to God — the true God — what is the status of our wills?
It is obvious we have free wills. I can choose what kind of computer I'll buy, what kind of hiking shoes I'll get, what I'll eat in my next meal. I have all manner of choices, and I am free to make them. Of course I can not choose what is beyond my ability, such as producing $1,000,000 by tomorrow, as that's beyond what I am able to get. Nor can I choose to grow two inches, or to become twenty years younger. You get my point. Where our ability to choose becomes limited — whatever the cause — our free will is bound and cannot attain its desire.
But in relation to God, which is how the plot of the story is going, is it true that "free will is an illusion"? Is it true, as this supposed angel says with regard to willing, "You can't fight City hall"? In other words, you can't exercise your will but are a puppet to the divine decree? This is what Dean is being told, and he is also being told what exactly this decree is: "You're going to say yes" and allow yourself to be possessed by this "angel". And you will be the vehicle for the power that will destroy the vessel of your brother, Sam, and the evil spirit, Satan, who is possessing him. Dean is just a puppet in the hands of "God" — or his unsavory henchmen "angels" — in a cosmic war where humans are expendable "unimportant little" creatures, no matter they love and suffer, they are but pawns in a bigger game. And this Dean will not have, nor will we if we value our humanity.
But what about the true God? Granted, this show does not depict Him or His angels or the demons with any semblance of truth. but what about the real spiritual world, what gives there?
It goes like this: there is a history of the human race, believed or not, that makes this issue clear. A quote from the ancient man of God, Augustine,
"It was by the evil use of his free will that man destroyed both it and himself."
In a nutshell, The destruction of the primal man and woman's partaking of the divine nature through siding with the (actual) devil against God led to an alienation so profound that he became a spiritual child of Satan, under his control and in bondage to a nature corrupted and limited by sin, unable any longer to approach God or in any way please Him. He was an utter alien to God, utterly hostile to Him, even as his new ontologic father the devil is. R. C. Sproul has well said,
"Man's will is free to follow his inclinations, but fallen man's inclinations are always and invariably away from God."
It is like a man in prison is free to choose within the confines of his lock-up, but cannot go outside it, unless a governor or president grant him a pardon.
God said through His apostle Paul,
"There is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that understands, there is none that seeks after God . . . there is none that does good, no, not one." (Letter to the Romans 3:10-12)
So man is no longer free to make choices with respect to the will of God. He just doesn't have it in him. However, those who hear God's words, realize the truth in them, and — having been quickened inwardly by the life and power in them — turn and ask Him for mercy and a new heart able to love and obey Him, these find a new spiritual birth and entrance into His presence. Now they are able and willing to freely choose. Such "new creatures" (as Paul calls them) do indeed have the ability to choose to disobey God, but the new heart God has given them increasingly desires — effectually desires — to please the One who has done such good to them.
But back to the story. You see it is more nuanced a matter than the evil fairy tale Supernatural spins. Were Dean not such a wanton womanizer, but rather a true son of the true God who saved his heart and body for a woman he committed his life to in marriage, and who kept the commandments of God, he would be able to say to a demon — or to the devil himself — "Be gone, in the name of Jesus Christ" and the devil would have to flee from the power of God's Spirit in those words.
There is so much jive nonsense in this program that it clouds up the mind and heart as regards the truth!
To inject some reality into the show: In his default condition, Dean's will is in bondage to his fallen and darkened nature. In this state he is a slave of Satan and cannot fight or resist him; his desires control him, and Satan can manipulate these. Likewise with Sam; if he were a "new creature", born of God, partaking of the Spirit of Christ to energize, illumine, and liberate his own spirit, the devil could have no power over him. Only in union with the Spirit and heart of Jesus Christ is there the power and wisdom to regain the free use of our wills, and to resist that which ordinarily would overpower us, be it demons, Satan, or our desires.
I hear from the grapevine there will be a sixth season of this show. I'm greatly disappointed — I thought it would be done with this year!
The misinformation put out by it is significant. The "horsemen" depicted, such as War and Famine, are silly cartoons of that which the real horsemen in Revelation chapter 6 symbolize.
