Our Choices Matter, Our Motives Even More!

Though it is abundantly clear that life itself--taken as a whole--is not under our control, we each have been endowed by our Creator with the sovereign right to respond to it as we see fit. No one can take that sovereign right from us. Nor can we take it from others.

This power we all have to choose for ourselves is awesome. It can also be scary, as when we see in others how easily what is chosen is self-serving, little more than the building of fences around themselves to declare their independence and defend their space.

Surely when God endowed each of us with this gift he had more in mind. What matters to him is the whole of life, not just ours but everyone's--indeed, the life of creation itself. Though he honors anyone's choice not to pay attention to him, for example, and seek our neighbor's good, ample warnings abound in Scripture of the deadening affect of such choices, not least on those who make them.

In today's economic, political, and religious climate, the greatest challenge for us as Christians may well be to keep assessing not only what we choose but what lies behind the choices we are making. We cannot command what others choose to think and do. But what we ourselves think and do does matter. And in the long run our motives for choosing may well matter even more to God--not to mention those we are seeking to influence.