Respecting Choices

     In a world where you can take a pill for weight loss instead of exercising, and taking back your words are as easy as pressing "edit" on your status, we don't seem to have any proper sense of consequence anymore. We are entitled to do what we want when we want, and any repercussions are an unfair infringement of our rights. We get to choose, and nothing should stand in our ways. Well, this post addresses this mentality. When we value our right to choose so much that we feel exempt from consequence, we actually disrespect the value of choice by cheating others of their right to choose.

     When we don't accept the responsibility for our actions, the other option main is lying or cheating your way out. When we feel entitled to freedom from a repercussion, we justify lying. We try to cheat the system. And we are very entitled. We always find a greater cause to bind the secrets. We decide our reputation is too important for the outcome of a poor choice, which is loss of respect. We decide that the security of a relationship is too important to end, so we lie if we cheat. Instead of deciding to make a good choice, we just decide not to say anything, because we don't want to take the consequence. 

     For example, a boy has severe depression and starts skipping class because he can't bring himself to go. Ok. Then, the teacher tracks him down and asks where he was, and the boy feels that he shouldn't get in trouble for his depression, so he feels entitled to lie.
     How about another scenario?  If a person tells me some life-threatening secret, the consequence is that I am going to take action. It's unfair of them to try to tell me I can't get help, because it puts me in a position which gives me the responsibility without the means to do what is right.

     One more example would be a spouse who hides an affair so the marriage is not ruined. They might justify in their mind that their silence is a reflection of their value of their marriage, but the truth is, at this point, it is not up to them to decide. They should have thought of the value of the marriage at the time their decisions were made. Now, it is not their prerogative to control how things turn out. This control is stolen. This is what I grieve - stolen control which takes empowerment from the victim and empowers the one who has made a poor choice. 

    Ephesians 5:8-14 says, "For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible - and everything that is illuminated becomes a light. This is why it is said, 'Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.'" When you try to hide the truth to prevent a response, it affects everyone. Renee Yohe, for whom TWLOHA was founded, famously asserts, "Secrets make you sick," and it's true. Have you ever found that your job was to cover, to keep the secret, and to act as support for someone else's secret? It cheated and exhausted me. I quietly and desperately extinguished into nothing. I should have been allowed to blaze, but instead, I was smothered in the silence of secrecy. I could not shatter the veneer of perfection which was displayed over the truth. Is this the place to which we have come, Christians? I thought Christianity was for the broken, but then why do we feel the need to cover our tracks, like our imperfection is a secret?

      It isn't just secrets and lies which I bemoan. Actually, what I'm advocating here is not simply embracing consequences, but rather, respecting each person's right to choose. Eschewing consequences puts your right to choose over the rights of another to choose a reaction. I have a right to choose if I am going to leave you for your unfaithfulness. I have the right to speak if I think it is the right thing. You know what rape is? It's taking something that isn't yours - the choice of another to have sex with you. It's stealing the right to that choice.You can't tell someone you're extremely dying and then pressure them through anger not to act differently. It puts your own desire for a reality above the needs of another to react. You cannot treat a friend like trash and then manipulate their friendship back through your neediness or power in the relationship, rather than apologizing and making it right. You must accept consequences because you cannot steal the choice of another through that kind of manipulation. Have you ever known a guy to constantly pressure a girl into a relationship after repeatedly being turned down? He sulks when upon constantly being rebuffed and is enraged when the girl goes out with others. This controlling attitude suffocates the girl. Pursuing a girl is not sweet when it seeks to win her will, rather than her heart. You simply cannot pressure someone out of their choice. 

         Bottom line: Stop trying to calculate your actions to manipulate results. You don't get to decide the outcome - that's not for you to control. You can't determine people's responses. You can't pressure or manipulate someone into reacting in a way that is convenient for you. Everyone is counting up how to stack their cards so they can get away with something. What if everybody just put their cards on the table? When people try to avoid consequences, they are stealing a reality which is not theirs. This manipulation is hurting us - you think you're helping yourself, but you are not. When people try to manipulate a situation to get their way, they are stealing a reality that is not theirs.

     Finally, I'd like to address this mysterious right to choice. Is it really so sacred? Why does it matter so much? This is very important - God made us lovers. God made us so that we could love. And people who can love must be people who can choose, because you cannot love by force - that is the horrifying endeavor of rape. Is rape love? Not even close. Forced love is not love at all. Choice is important to God because of love. Oh, but it would have been so much easier to deny us choice and to forget love. Giving us choice made it messy. It made it hard. Through choice, we sin, and because of this, we have broken the world. We constantly hurt each other. In my first post, I addressed how choice brought pain into the world. Do you know how much pain hurts? Do you know? Do you know how horrible, how awful, the deepest of depths can be? Then you know the price of choice. Choice is highly valued by God, and it came at the very highest price - separation from God and every pain the world has ever felt. God "put the down payment" on that price for those who chose to be a part of that redemption - He became sin. He bore all the pain and separation through death. And God will continue to redeem as He extends His kingdom. Choice is important to God - it would have been so much less messy without it. To take away that choice is to violate the one thing which has cost us the most dearly. It disrespects the pain we have felt and the price which has been paid to reverse the effects of sin. God made us choosers - don't let anything threaten that.

*Many, when they hear the phrase, "right to choose," will think of the "pro-choice" abortion movement, which is not what I intend to address here. However, I know some people will be thinking that sometimes, people do not have the right to choose - we don't have the right to choose to murder someone, for instance. My high school teacher, Mr. Frederiks, once said, "You can't have a right to do a wrong," because this violates the rights of another, i.e., the right to live. There are reasonable boundaries, which is actually the point of this post, and not at all in conflict with it. We don't violate a person's right to respond to our misjudgment, just as we do not violate a person's right to freedom.