Life is the Sum of All Our Choices

This Thanksgiving was really lovely - we hosted my mother and stepfather and in lieu of a traditional turkey, served king crab legs - yum. The only thing better was having five days off to do nothing...except read. Earlier this year I was barely making time to read my Bible but luckily sometime in October things started to click, and since then I have been engaged daily with God - either through reading the Bible, studying the Bible (see last post to understand the difference), journaling, reading Christian living texts, or simply tuning into 620 AM for Adrien Rogers' sermons during my afternoon commute. The five days during this Thanksgiving, however, were extremely fruitful - I had oodles of time to devour my Bible, and have almost completed the New Testament. I also purchased and completed Lee Strobel's A Case for Faith. All of this reading, and even more mental processing has led me to a few very important conclusions about the journey I've begun -

1. Faith is a CHOICE: The following quote stopped me in my tracks while reading A Case for Faith:

     "Consequently, at its core, faith is a decision of the will that we keep on making, but we're given that     

     option by God's grace. We're empowered to keep making it by His spirit."

I know that for a long time I believed myself to be a Christian based on how I was raised, or what my parents thought or what I thought at any particular moment, but the truth remains that we make a choice daily to have faith. It's an active process - we don't sit idly and wait for it. Rather we grab it by the horns and continue on the journey. What I like more about this implication (and you can purchase the book if you'd like to read it further) is that this is God's way of respecting us - he has offered us something incredibly amazing, but we can choose. We choose to accept Jesus Christ, or we choose to deny him. It is that simple.

2. The choice is DIFFICULT:  Choosing a life with God isn't passive. It requires a lifelong commitment which manifests itself in everyday actions - not only hearing the word, but doing the word. This might sum up why my Life Application Bible once seemed so daunting - we're expected to apply the Scripture to our lives and live accordingly! It would be so much easier if I could just proclaim, "I believe in God!" and be done - but we are called to do more. We are called to hear the word and live it - action is what is important. "For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified" (Rom. 2:13). To be more specific, Romans 12: 9-21 mentions the following: "Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer." And continues: "Bless those who persecute you; bless them and do not curse them. [...] Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all." I don't know about you, but these are difficult tasks for me - and therefore without quoting innumerable other passages from Scripture, you begin to see just how active this choice is - luckily we can prayerfully ask God to guide and support us in our journey, and thankfully he forgives our missteps.

3. Doubt is NORMAL:  I was relieved to read the following from A Case for Faith and even wrote it down to use as a bookmark in my Bible:

"Those who believe they believe in God but without passion in the heart, without anguish of the mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, and even at times without despair, believe only in the idea of God, and not in God himself."

- Madeleine L'Engle

Reading this truly was comforting- I hear about so many people who believe that reason and faith cannot walk together - I believe they can. I can research, read, question, deliberate, process, pray, write and come to my own conclusions. After all, we're never promised answers to all of our questions, but we are given a fair amount of information on which to base our choice - I have been comforted by far too many Scripture passages to quote, from Titus to John to Paul's letters. I am reminded daily that this process is not one of silent submission, but an intellectual and emotional journey - and God has given us the mind and heart to engage it fully. He has designed us to engage in the discovery of His glory - while I still don't fully understand it, I do have a renewed respect for our Creator and his brilliant design.

I have a quote on my desk organizer, written on a fuscia Post-It from Albert Camus: "Life is the sum of all our choices." Unbeknownst to me until recently, Camus was an aetheist. I found this quote in my planner pages and loved its honesty - I actually use it a lot with my clients in hopes that they will see that their choices formed their action or their lack of action, and therefore created their current circumstances. It quite beautifully sums up our experiences - we make choices that impact every other aspect of our lives. Camus was right: our choice now determines our lives in the present and in the future. We can choose to accept Jesus, or to simply deny him. Both will have consequences - reap the benefits of all that God has promised, or live in complete separation from him. How ironic that an aetheist would succinctly sum up the whole point of God - "Here are your options. Choose wisely."