Choice

Thinking about the role choice plays in our lives. The more you follow the paths it takes in your thinking, the more you realise how important it is.

Choice is the difference between democracy and dictatorship; employment and slavery; sex and rape; sacrifice and theft; faith and religion; freedom and oppression; hope and hopelessness; forgiveness and bitterness; relationship and not.

There is always choice. Even when we are not in a place, or empowered, to change all our circumstances, we can still choose to begin to change the things we can and, for now, accept that which we can’t. We can choose to change the way we think about our circumstances, or at least, choose to think about the way we think about our circumstances. We can choose to seek others advice and then choose whether to take it. We can choose to expose ourselves to new experiences not knowing how they will change us.

True relationship and community are individuals mutually making the choice to sacrifice or modify their own choices for the benefit of those they are committed to. If forced into this sacrifice, its not relationship or community.

It is when we can’t see or don’t know what to do with our choices that we can become depressed and frustrated. It is then that we should choose to seek others for advice or perspective.

I believe that God is pro-choice, He invented it. He created us independent and laidened with choices. If He didn’t, that means no relationship, no faith, no freedom, no forgiveness and no hope. All these things are rooted in choice.

Many of the questions and challenges about God are rooted in the freedom of choice He gave us. Why is there war? – Someone’s choices: Why doesn’t God step in and stop suffering and bad things happening? – It takes away choice: Why doesn’t God make people love Him? - That’s not love: Why is there evil in the world? – Well, strangely, that is what gives us the choice.

Jesus lived by choice. He chose to submit His choices to what God wanted, that’s relationship. God didn’t make Jesus do anything; Jesus chose to be in community and relationship with God. We can do the same.

Why are people who choose to be in relationship with God described as free? – Because God believes in choice and provides the best options for those choices - If you choose to take them.