You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World

by Alan Noble

There is a tangential debate about agency with practical implications: how does a belief in agency or determinism affect our actions? Each side frames the argument differently. From the right: “If we tell people that their fate is largely determined by forces out of their control, then we are inviting them to give up on life and blame their failures on the system.” And from the left: “If we tell people that they are largely responsible for their own fate, we are inviting failure and self-loathing, which will lead to them giving up on life when they blame all their failures on themselves.” This argument has less to do with how much agency we actually have and more to do with the power of belief. Some people will argue that even though we don’t control our own fate, we must tell ourselves that we do or we’ll become resigned.