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.

Christmas Reflections with Lucado, Charlie Brown, and the Grinch

     For much of this Christmas season, I haven't been myself. Most years, I love the baking, decorating, and wrapping. I start playing Christmas music after Halloween, and I plan presents with delight months in advance. But this year, it has seemed really hollow. Part of what has gotten me to this point is that life is hard. For whatever reason, Christmas can remind us of the things or the people we've lost, or the times we've felt unloved and rejected.  As I watch people put materialism and busy Christmas activities over love, family, and God, I find myself echoing Charlie Brown: "Isn't there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?"
     That's why, this season, there's really nothing more appropriate to talk about than the love of God. That's the most important thing about Christmas. We get swept away by the shopping and the wrapping, and the food, and I think we end up congratulating ourselves if we remember to stick Jesus somewhere at all in our celebration. And all those wrappings seem to be celebrating nothing real, because when we don't remember how loved we are, we really are celebrating a hollow Christmas.
     If we could step back from all this, we might be able to get some perspective, because I think that's what we need when we get bogged down by the humdrum of Christmas.
     Many of us would say that God becoming flesh and coming to earth, living a life, and dying, was a miraculous act of love. But if we step back even further from that, we are reminded that Jesus coming to earth was only a small, but crucial chapter - the climax, of of the story of God's love for us.
     First, God created. He created time, space...everything - just to put us in it. Then, when it was all prepared, God created us. And it's the way He created us that causes the need for God to come to earth. Granting humankind the ability to choose is a decision that I probably would not have the wisdom or guts to make. Lucado says, "What a dangerous liberty. How much safer it would have been to finish the story for each Adam. To script every option. It would have been simpler. It would have been safer. But it would not have been love. Love is only love if it is chosen."
     And God knew what we would do. When he decided to give us the ability to choose, He knew we would abuse that privilege, and He knew the consequences. Weirdly, Lamentations is one of my favorite books in the Bible. Here, God writes a long description of the results of sin, not as a condemnation, but as an outpouring of sorrow. He observes the slavery, disappointment, betrayal, restlessness, sorrow, loneliness, humiliation, crushed beauty, regret, shame, filth, recklessness, defilement, lack of strength, guilt, and hurt we feel as a result of sin. The things that happen don't even have to be a direct result of a wrong action - the fact that Adam sinned simply broke the world. It's fallen, and now, bad things happen. Israel cries out, "My groans are many and my heart is faint" (1:22), and bemoans that they find "no resting place" (1:3). The consequences of sin, well, they stink. A lot. Pain often makes you ask why God would let this happen. For me, I sometimes honestly wonder if the ability to choose is worth all this. Honestly, I think what triggered my Grinchiness was when the five-year-old girl across the street from me, whom I love, told me, "My daddy had to leave because he touched my vagina." How can you respond to such a thing? I've had a lot of hard stuff come my way in life, and stuff like this just makes me feel like love is a lie, or maybe that it's not worth it.
     But God is so wise, and He knew that a real relationship with him is the best thing that can happen to us. And when we feel like sin is overpowering love, that's a lie. God is love, and God is infinite, and love in its truest form, is infinite. To experience true love is to experience God. Anything that is not love is not God's, and that makes it finite. So when you see how big sin is, God's love is comparatively vaster than the ocean is to a pebble. The infinite will engulf the finite. A love like that is beyond description. Tasting it now, and fully experiencing it when we become uninhibited by the burdens of this world - it's wonderful, and because God loves us, He wants us to be able to experience that, like any good father would.
     But that's only half of God's love story. He wanted us to experience love despite its high cost. But He also always intended to shoulder the burden and pay that cost. And "that's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown," as Linus would say.
     Christ coming to earth is the down payment in redemptive history. When Jesus came to earth, He, again with the centrality of choice in mind, paid the ultimate price so that we could start to see restoration. When Jesus came to earth, he bound his infinity in an ugly, poor, finite human body to grow up, suffer, and bear separation from the Father, from perfection, and from heaven. Do you see the pain Christ undertook by choice for us? Max Lucado describes, "'Can anything make me stop loving you?' God asks. 'Watch me speak your language, sleep on your earth, and feel your hurts. Behold the maker of sight and sound as he sneezes, coughs, and blows his nose. You wonder if I understand how you feel? Look into the dancing eyes of the kid in Nazareth: That's God walking to school. Ponder the toddler at Mary's table; that's God spilling his milk. You wonder how long my love will last? Find your answer on a splintered cross, on a craggy hill. That's me you see up there, your maker, your God, nail-stabbed and bleeding. Covered in spit and sin-soaked...That's how much I love you."
     And God's not done. Clearly, sin and its effects are not wiped from the earth yet - rather, we can choose to allow God to start that work in our lives. As He removes sin from our lives and removes the consequence of our sin which is our condemnation, God allows us to become a part of His work of redemption. Part of Christmas is the hope it brings. God promises to extend the restoration Christians see today to the whole earth. Christmas celebrates the first coming, and we look forward to the final redemption at the end of this story of love and at the beginning of eternity. This time, He will erase all sin and all the pain that is the consequence of sin, for those who choose to be a part of this redemption. Revelation 21:4 says, "He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."

     Perhaps, my fellow Grinches might have the revelation that Christmas could have "came without ribbons!... came without tags!... came without packages, boxes, or bags!" But when we start to feel disillusioned and discouraged, we must remember that pain is not a reason to hate Christmas. Pain is the reason to love Christmas - it is the reason for Christmas. Remember God's love, and perhaps you can find joy in spreading that love this Christmas with the presents and wrappings in their proper places.