Questions about fate and free will sit at the heart of how we try to understand life. Whether we turn to science, philosophy, or spirituality, so many frameworks circle back to the same tension: how much of what happens is written in advance, and how much is shaped by our choices?

Many traditions wrestle with this. Astrology maps personality and destiny against the movements of the heavens. The Stoics spoke of logos – a rational order guiding events – yet urged us to cultivate inner freedom. Existentialists, by contrast, argued that meaning is forged moment by moment through our own decisions. Hinduism’s teachings on karma, Buddhism’s dependent origination, and the Christian sense of providence all approach the same puzzle from different angles.

Even the wave–particle paradox in Physics can be seen through this lens. The double-slit experiment that birthed the paradox showed that when a source of light is pointed at a screen, it sometimes lands as discrete particles, suggesting a straight-line path, and at other times behaves as a wave, forming an interference pattern when it passes through two slits. I’ll return to this contrast between the straight line and the wave later in the essay.

For now, let’s come back to the heart of the matter: the lived experience of fate and free will.

If you feel into the word “fate” and how it’s used, there’s often a defeated energy in it. When people say, “Oh, that was just fate,” they’re rarely celebrating. It’s usually said after something outside their control has stopped them. That’s the first clue: fate is often felt when an intense block arises on the path we thought we were freely choosing.

But what’s really happening is that we were moving along a path – itself built from layers of choice – when we suddenly hit something hard. From that place of exercising free will (agency), we exclaim, almost in surrender, “oh, that was fate!” and then pendulate to another path, making choice after choice after choice, only to be slammed again — back to the defeat of “fate” — and the loop continues.

What I’ve noticed in my own life is a kind of swiveling around a straight line; and the sharp turns of that swivel are the places where “fate” seems to force a course correction. If you learn to swivel closer to that straight line, the corrections don’t feel “shocking”. And if you find the straight line itself, there’s no need for correction at all. The choices you make out of your own free will then align onto a narrow path.

In Buddhist thought, this is the middle way – the narrow ridge with cliffs on either side. If you slide down either slope, fate will correct you, often with a jolt, throwing you back to the other side. That’s why the middle way is so prized.

In the Christian sense, this straight line is God’s will for your life. God, the Creator, designed both you and the path for your life. If you don’t follow it, you end up snaking around, and every sharp turn feels like fate forcing you back. “Fate” loses its heavy, defeated charge when you stay on that narrow path. Only there do you experience consistent victory.

This victory was shown perfectly through the blood shed by Jesus Christ. Even under the deepest temptations to veer away – being mocked, abused, tortured, crucified – he stayed on the straight path. It would have been easy, even justifiable, to fall into hatred or victimhood: to blame his apostles for cowardice, Judas for betrayal, the Jewish people for turning on him. But he held steady on that narrow ridge of compassion that was God’s will for His life.

That constancy is the perfect demonstration of unconditional love. He kept loving those who hurt him because he knew they didn’t know what they were doing: “Father, they know not what they do.” In these moments where people are being hateful and spiteful, they are not in control of the vehicle of their lives. Any act that harms ourselves or others is, in some sense, a moment of possession.

The Judeo-Christian frame of demonic possession

fits perfectly here. There are beings that can briefly ensnare you. It can look extreme, like someone shouting at the air on a street corner, or subtle, like snapping at a friend or uttering a spiteful remark about some abstract group. Those are moments when the Devil hooks your heart. That’s the nature of temptation: there’s a bait, it feels good, there’s a release of the pressure within that’s fighting the temptation — and then the hook drags you off the path.

I’ve felt that myself when speaking spitefully about “the woke Left,” or in the past when I was hooked onto pornography. That’s the bait: pleasure masking the hook that drags you off the path God designed – a path full of health, joy, and purpose, free from depression and anxiety.

My prayer today is that anyone reading this receives the courage freely offered by God to all who ask: the courage to steer clear of temptation and anything that nudges you off the simple, straight way he designed for your life.

I’ve felt this most clearly while singing worship with others, especially lines like, “Every inch of me praises you.” In those moments, my body releases tears — releases waters that cleanse me into bliss again, releases any demons, releases disease. I’ve felt the truth of that in every fiber of my being, tears washing away heaviness and filling me with bliss. Disease, demons, anxiety – all loosen when I tap into the truth that every atom of me praises God. The parts of me without a free-willed mind never veer from that truth. My mind, with its ability to imagine countless paths beyond the one God designed, can wander. But when it surrenders, I become whole.

Through tears, I release disease, temptation, anything that rattles me, and I land in joy. And what a time to be alive! What a time to be alive when this is so easily accessible: you can pull up a worship song on Spotify, sing along, and release whatever isn’t serving you.

That’s my prayer for anyone reading: may you release anything pulling you away from the straight path of God’s will, so you never again have to meet “fate” again.