Rick,
What's your definition of freedom? I think that makes all the difference.
"Freedom" has two component ideas, in my book. There is our subjective perception of our own liberty, and there's an objective description of what "limits" are fixed about the available options. Any honest discussion of the freedom or bondage of the will must touch on both these points, affirming and denying varying degrees of both. This does not exhaust the discussion, but it gets it farther and more completely than most dilettantish opining on the topic.
At some point in the discussion, so far as it is Christian theology, one needs to affirm that 1) God is totally sovereign, and has a fixed decree, 2) that includes the "free actions" of men. In other words,, preferably at the outset, we commit ourselves to two propositions that can seem too far apart, and too contradictory to both be true, namely that God is all-sovereign, and that men make free (uncoerced) and responsible choices. I might not be able to get my head all the way around that, but God is bigger and wiser than I.
If a human author of a book can create a world on paper in which his characters act freely (in some sense) and responsibly; and if a director of the stage or screen can take that a step further, and create a world in which actors follow a script, while nonetheless bringing to their parts a kind of undeniable freedom and uniqueness; how much more can God do with this world he made, where men are neither coerced, nor do they feel the least like a puppet (unless they so fixate on their supposed foreknowledge of God's unknowable decree)--and yet they fulfill his designs to the letter.
I don't have to recreate in miniature the macrocosm of God's mind in my microcosmic mind in order to accept this truth--I simply have to receive its revelation, and submit to it.
No unregenerate man wills to do good, in any ultimately meaningful sense, because he does not obey to the glory of God. Personal satisfaction, even for the doing of some earthly "good," is unsatisfactory. According to Prv.21:4, the plowing of the wicked is sin (NKJ). Being in bondage to sin, he isn't "free" to please God; all the while, he lives with no other sense of his limitation, other than his own frustrations at his inward lack of willpower or selfrestraint or abundance of cowardice or foolish impetuosity. Those internal constraints are of his own manufacture. It is as rational for him to blame God for his wrongdoing, as it is for him to praise God for getting 100% on his last test--that is to say, irrational. In his current state, his mind is hostile to God. And the H.S (via Paul) doesn't cut him any slack, Rom.9:19-20.
But the newly renovated man (in spirit) has new vistas of possibility opened to him. He's "freer" than he was before--he can actually please God (in Christ), although he also continues to displease God through his actions that are done according to the flesh (in Adam). But the fact that he can please God at all is a product of regeneration; its a possibility that was not available before.
The question of God's specific decree (such as whether you will wear solid socks tomorrow, or argyle) in any particular, is not where we live our lives. Only a person looking for a cop-out refuses to make the decision as to what pair of socks he's going to wear. And (of course) he's not evaded the decree then either, because no choice is still a choice (and a free choice) and yet not even that attempt at evasion fell outside the decree of God. Our freedom to choose the socks, and countless other decisions of greater (or lesser) import, is as real as we feel it to be, and often more real (as when we feel constraints that aren't actually present).
But there are many non-believers who are totally committed to the principle of naturalistic determinism. In that philosophy, no one is responsible for anything, because every so called "choice" is limited to ONE, by the totality of the accumulated influences of the past. The universe is nothing but a series of physical collisions, mapped out by the laws of physics and chemistry and mathematical necessity, set in motion by the original big-bang condition-set. Even chaos-theory (under this umbrella) is an illusion of happenstance. "Freedom" is an extremely local phenomenon (if it isn't pure wish-fulfillment).
Christians can't buy into that. Because we do not believe in Ultimate impersonalism. Rather, in Ultimate Personalism. God is the Ultimate free-agent. He is unconditioned, but he isn't random either, because his will is fundamental to his nature. He fixes his own qualities. He's reliable, ultimately, because his will has Absolute Value. We accept his Personal Providence, then, as the Original Condition; and his Word of creation in preference to the meaningless big-bang. Our choices are meaningful because they've been ordained by Ultimate Meaning. When a man chooses good over evil, he's acting out the imago dei in the best way a creature can so do (given the addition of the sin-condition).
Finally, I recommend studying ch.9 of the WCF (of Free Will), and acquainting yourself with both the Scripture proofs, and the technical terminology employed. But really, I don't think it's that hard a topic. We are under no necessity to feel "bound" by God's decree. It exists, we believe it does, and God is never "caught off guard," (didn't see THAT coming!) by some man's last-second change in plans. We know we exercise our wills; it is sophistry to say otherwise. But we do so within whatever limits our nature imposes. Men do "what they please," but what they please is not unlimited.
