Choices

 

Can we talk about choices for a minute please.  I hate choices.  I hate giving my children choices.  Why can't I just tell them what would be best for them?  I'm their mother.  Isn't that my job?  I mean my kids are both still under five, so any important choice my husband and I make for them.  But, choice is hard.  Watching my children make the wrong choices hurts my heart.  

Picture this, my four and a half year old, very (did I say very, I mean extremely) independent stubborn daughter is given a choice.  I tell her, "You can either turn the TV off when I tell you to and you can watch it again tomorrow, or you can choose to fuss about it and you won't watch anything tomorrow.  Choose wisely."  

Sometimes she makes the choice to get up, without arguing, and turn it off.  Other times she thinks she can make a different choice and that the consequences I told her about won't happen.  That's what I hope sometimes.  I think I can keep making poor choices and still get the better consequences.  But, it doesn't work like that.  I wish I could make every choice for her with my life experience and help her avoid the hurt I know she will have.  But, I can't.  And, neither can God.

Here's where it gets tricky in my mind.  I wonder why God allows bad things to happen.  That's a question I feel that most Christians have asked at some point or another.  Here's the kicker.  Bad things happen because we live in a broken world that is broken because of sin.  Sin was a choice that God gave us, sort of.  He gave us the choice between following him or not because he wanted us to knowingly choose him.  There can be no real love if there is no choice.  But, God knew humans wouldn't choose him to begin with.  So, he already had a contingency plan in place -- Jesus.  

So the score doesn't look good when you examine what is stacked against us as we make choices every day.  The devil is rooting for us to make the wrong choices.  Our flesh is rooting for us to satisfy it.  Our minds are tired of trying to decipher the options and make the best choices.  There's a little thing called decision fatigue.  It's this principle that as you go through your day, the more decisions you make the harder it becomes to make the next one.  So, the more you can put your brain on autopilot and have some choices already made the less stress your brain will be under.  This is a real psychological thing.  Look it up sometime.  How do we, as Christians, put our decisions on autopilot?  

We take our flesh out of the game as much as possible.  

Great Jamie, thanks for that...how? 

Hold your horses I'm getting there.  I was pausing for effect.

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Know the Bible.  

“Your word is a lamp to guide my feet and a light for my path.”  Psalm 119:105

When we get decision fatigue and we don’t know what to do, the more scripture that is engraved on our hearts and stored in our minds the easier each decision will be.  When you know who you are, then your decisions fall into line with your character.  

I’ve recently taken up writing fiction stories.  Sometimes I have a plot in mind and I know what’s going to happen.  Other times, I have a person, a character in mind and I let their decisions carry the plot of the story.  I can do that because I know who they are.  

The same goes for us.  If we know who we are, children of God, then our decisions become much less complicated.  The path before us gets some light on it.  Then we can see where our next step is.  My daddy used to say, “Let’s put a little light on the subject,” when he would walk into a dim room and then turn on the lights.  He would then proceed to say, “Let there be light!”  He was funny, or at least he thought he was.  

But, the point is a valid one.  When we put some light on the subject at hand, we can see where we are headed.  The light we need is Jesus.  The truth about him and the character of God is written out in the Bible for us to use as a light on our life.  That includes all the choices.  

I would have been easy for God to just make us without choice.  We would have lived in Eden forever.  We would have walked with God in the garden.  We would have talked about the trees and the animals.  We would have rested by the cool water in the shade of the tree of life.  But, I don’t think we would have had a deep relationship with God in that reality.  I believe that the choice to follow or not, our freewill, is what deepens our communion with God.  It’s what allows love to grow.  God sees that we desire him over the pleasures of the flesh, the draw of escaping into our favorite sins.  And, he chose us too.  

Choice makes things complicated sometimes.  But, it also makes us uniquely human and loved by God the creator.  Being steeped in the light of the Word of God will illuminate the right choices as we make our way down the road of life.