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.

Giving and receiving

A man I greatly respect once told me this. “Justice is when you get what you deserve; mercy is when you don’t get what you deserve and grace is when you are given what you don’t deserve”.

To understand where we are today, we must pay homage to where we came from. The benefits and social security state that we have today, including the NHS, emerged from a Victorian, philanthropic, ‘Christian’ value base. Genuinely well meaning men (as there were few women in places of power then) gave from their own wealth to support the poorest people in society from the worst that nature and industrialization could throw at them. This unofficial movement eventually emerged into law in the 1940’s through the Beverage report. This created a national health service, national insurance, benefits and pensions for all. They sought to impose a national minimum for all. Most people would agree, this sounds good, however, I would argue that we need a careful look at the values behind, and indeed a radical overhaul of, the system that so many now rely on.

William Beverage gave three guiding principles, one of which was this:

Policies of social security "must be achieved by co-operation between the State and the individual", with the state securing the service and contributions. The state "should not stifle incentive, opportunity, responsibility; in establishing a national minimum, it should leave room and encouragement for voluntary action by each individual to provide more than that minimum for himself and his family".

I write this piece out of an increasing frustration towards those who, either knowingly or through generations of ignorance, believe they have a ‘right’ to long term benefits and support from the state for their entire income. Also, a growing hatred of the system which has now evolved from the early days of the welfare state and not only encourages reliance on itself, but stifles, even opposes independence or indeed more importantly, interdependence.

I do believe in helping people. I passionately believe in showing love towards others around me by giving time, skills and material help to those that need it. The person I give to does not have the right to these, it is my prerogative to give, or not. That said, we have as a nation, decided, through our democratic system, that it is a good ideal and value to corporately look after those who have little or less. We have, though, gone way beyond the bounds of ‘Christian giving’ and charity that the system was founded on. We have now ventured into the realms of some sudo-humanist, pride-driven, individualist ideal. We provide for all, giving everyone the right to live unaffected by others around them in an individual bubble, expressing themselves as they wish, whilst their community / society goes on blindly supporting their lifestyle and bad choices with no influence.

In our quest towards individual human rights and the individual’s right to express themselves, we have forgotten that nobody has the right to grace. Nobody has the right to charity. We have removed the unpopular concept of ‘charity’ and its ugly reliance on other people so as not to hurt or embarrass those receiving the gift. We have sanitized the benefits system and removed all concept of benefits being the same money, earned, and then given up through tax and spending by those others living in our communities. I firmly believe that the stark difference between ‘pay day’ and pay day should be brought home to everyone in the community. This may be the only way we are able to shame (another deeply unpopular/unfashionable word these days) those who are able but choose not, into once again contributing to society.

I have no problem with my money going towards those who meaningfully contribute or try to re-engage with society. Indeed, I have been there myself. Similarly, those who in biblical times were referred to as ‘the widow and the orphan’, who genuinely have no other source of income or hope of one, to whom benefits are essential.

Must we have a system so open to abuse? One where people shout down phones and demand their right to benefits? One where people can spend their benefits on a Blackberry, fags, holidays and booze? I wholeheartedly support the capping of benefits to families and, indeed, would like to see it reduced even further. The equivalent wage is over £35,000 per year, where is the incentive to contribute there?

I do not believe that everyone has the state enforced legal ‘right’ to an income, certainly not by the criteria currently used. However, I also believe that no-one should go without. We need to re-engage as communities, to learn to support and to accept the support of others. We must relearn that we are all interconnected and it is the loss of this reliance that has led to so many of the social breakdowns that we see today. We also need to learn to be strong and reject those from our systems and communities who willfully refuse to contribute to the society that is supporting them. It is this interdependence that we need to re-establish, we need to re-learn how to give and share. We need to re-learn how to receive support. We need to re-learn how to acknowledge the cost to both sides. Just as strong, disciplined, Asset-driven parenting produces a future generation more likely to be socially successful, so we need to do the same with our benefits. Action, consequence and grace.

The Yoofs have gone mad! Or are our chickens just coming home to roost?

Listening or watching some of the images coming out of our major cities over the past couple of nights, you may be forgiven in thinking that the world has gone mad. The rioting sounds more akin to French famers or Middle Eastern teenagers than our green and pleasant land.

I love working with young people and young adults and I will not condon the personal choices made by all those involved in the recent disturbances. However, we too, all, have contributed to what has led to these riots.

For too long we have allowed our children to be known as youths. For too long we have allowed cynical marketing and government policies to define young people as a social group with its own culture. For too long we have tried to bundle all our young people through a narrow education system where the only ways are success or drop out. For too long we have marginalised young people from the work place and dispensed with jobs and roles that allow them to access the experience they need. For too long many parents have allowed their children to grow up without boundaries or discipline and allowed our young people to be brought up by themselves and professionals, like me, and the underlying victim mentality that that brings.. For too long we as a society have believed the hype about ‘young people’ and this is the inevitable result.

Young people are not capable of handling the freedom we have given them, without the boundaries and upbringing which allows them to make sensible decisions. They are a mirror shining back on us the experience and learning they have received.

What we are seeing now in London,  has no political cause. No great moto or movement behind it. It is a rabble seeking after the consumerism and go get it attitude that we have allowed to develop in our country. It is a mass eruption of frustration and disengagement that would not exist in a society that truly valued and understood equality. However, it is their choice and they must take responsibility for it. 

Seeking something unseen

I seek something I have yet to see,

How can I seek something I haven’t seen?

How can I yearn for something of which I have no knowledge?

An idea, yes; a principle I have seen I can, so, I must have seen this?

Some part of me, something in me, must have seen this place, this thing,

this fellowship for which I long.

I seek something I have yet to see,

How I long for it to leap out of my heart and into my head, that I might understand it.

To leap into life within me,

filling me from the front of my brain to the depth of my heart.

Yet, it does not, not yet, it stays as a feeling,

a definite, indescribable feeling, that I am called to seek.

I seek something I have yet to see,

My God, You have put a desire in me,

It is becoming stronger, almost conscious and almost tangible.

It becomes clearer, but I have yet to grasp it, yet I know it speaks of You.

Within this thing I long for is something of You, for it is powerful yet loving,

It is glorious and scary, but it is fulfilment.

In this thing I am yet to define, there is a call.

Maybe it’s message is in the searching,

Maybe I’ll know it’s fulfilment before its unburdening.

Maybe it’s the face of my Lord, His character, His presence?

Therefore, I must persevere; I must breakthrough so that God may share this thing.

What can I do? What do I mean ‘I must breakthrough’?

I must seek and want; I must push on, not with demand, but obedience.

With patient desire, longing, pleading for it.

For if this thing is of God, it will be good. It will be honourable,

and it is right that I should seek.

And, as I knock, He will answer, and as I seek, I shall find.

Most important of all, if it is His will, it shall come to pass!

Dear Lord, speed your word to me Lord, please, speed your word to me.

© N Scott 2006

Reading 'Love Wins' by Rob Bell. Interesting, certainly not a Universalist!

Will review soon.

Currently reading - Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola.

Brilliant!!