We all make choices. Which coffee to drink, which car to buy, which school to go to, which person to marry. I went for a long time thinking that the Eternal had already made all of those choices for my life and being a Christian meant I had to find exactly which of those choices the Eternal had made for me and follow them. When I was in college, I was in a fraternity for people going into church related vocations. We had a young member who, every time we asked him to go eat some pizza (or coffee, or McDonalds), he would say “let me pray about that.” By the time he was done, we were gone. We were not being mean, it was just that we didn’t think God cared about what pizza we were going to eat.
It turns out that I should have paid attention to what was going on and learned from it. It is very difficult to live by the idea that it is all planned out, since the implication is that if you are not doing exactly what God has in mind for you, you are living in sin. I tried, I promise I did, for so very many years. And then I became a contemplative, a mystic and discovered that the Eternal was something very different.
It turns out, the Eternal gave me something called free will. Imagine living without condemnation and without fear. I have learned that I do get to choose, what path my life takes, who I walk that path with, and so much more. The promise of the Eternal is that no matter what path I choose, I will not be alone. Turns out the promises of Psalm 23 are quite sure, “for Thou art with me”…….I don’t have to go it alone. The ideas above are called theological determinism or Calvanism. I understand why people prefer the strict thinking, strong rules give comfort to life and we don’t have to think, just do. It fits with Descartes’ “I think therefore I am.”
But the Eternal predates Descartes and belonging to the Eternal means, “I am therefore I think.” Can you see the difference? We are in the image of the Eternal, so we are part of the great I Am. We get to choose. Now, we should choose wisely of course and make choices based on what is in line with our love relationship with the Eternal. But they are our choices. A minister friend quotes an old saying that God can strike a straight line with a crooked stick. I like that, being the mess that I am, because it means that I do not have to worry about eating pizza.
We all make choices, every moment of every day. I do not believe each of those are foreordained. I do believe if we are tuned into our love affair with the Eternal, we begin to take on the mind of the Eternal and we begin to see the patterns of where those choices have led us and can lead us. If we are in a loving relationship with the Eternal, then we live without fear. We watch straight lines being struck with us “crooked sticks”. That is freedom in Christ. That is free will that leads us to the new Garden of Eden.
TMM