It’s My Choice

“So here’s what I want you to do, God help­ing you: Take your every­day, ordi­nary life—your sleep­ing, eat­ing, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offer­ing. Embrac­ing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your cul­ture that you fit into it with­out even think­ing. Instead, fix your atten­tion on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Read­ily rec­og­nize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the cul­ture around you, always drag­ging you down to its level of imma­tu­rity, God brings the best out of you, devel­ops well-formed matu­rity in you.”

Romans 12:1

In what ways have you “con­formed to this world” in your own life? Then, share the story of how God worked through you to “renew your mind” in that situation.

Many Chris­tians talk about “con­form­ing to the world” as a way of describ­ing behav­ior that they con­sider wrong­ful or sin­ful. They con­trast such behav­ior with the prin­ci­ples for daily liv­ing they believe are con­tained in the Bible. Con­clud­ing that on a spe­cific occa­sion or in a par­tic­u­lar cir­cum­stance they have in some way fallen short of God’s expec­ta­tions for them, they state that they have “con­formed to the world” and seek for­give­ness. In that sense, “the world” is equated with con­cepts of evil, mal­ice, falling prey to temp­ta­tion and, ulti­mately, not deserv­ing God’s bound­less and uncon­di­tional love.

That mind­set has never res­onated with me and I have never used that ter­mi­nol­ogy either to con­cep­tu­al­ize or ana­lyze my failures.

Rather, I focus upon the choices I make.  Some of my choices prove to be more suc­cess­ful than oth­ers.  We have been given free will and it is more pro­duc­tive for me pre­fer to empha­size that fact because, in doing so, one idea remains at the fore­front for me: I am account­able for my own behav­ior and actions.  I am respon­si­ble for the choices I make. I am the one who must accept and live with the con­se­quences of my choices.

The con­cept of “choice” is at the fore­front of Amer­i­cans’ thoughts these days as we are bom­barded with infor­ma­tion about the upcom­ing elec­tion.  As vot­ers, we must choose the can­di­dates we will sup­port and for whom we will cast our votes.  We must study the issues, eval­u­ate the can­di­dates’ strengths and weak­nesses, as we define those char­ac­ter­is­tics, attempt to sep­a­rate the facts from the hyper­bole, and make a rea­soned choice about which can­di­dates and propo­si­tions to endorse (pub­licly or within the con­fines of our own heart and mind).

After we cast our votes, we — the Amer­i­can peo­ple — must be account­able in the days ahead for the con­se­quences of the choices we make.  We can­not blame any­one else.

It is easy to get caught up in the polit­i­cal frenzy, allow­ing the “cul­ture around us” to “drag[ us] down to its level of imma­tu­rity,” espe­cially in this age of twenty-four hour news and the pro­lif­er­a­tion of end­less amounts of infor­ma­tion — much of it duplica­tive minu­tiae — via the Inter­net.  On Octo­ber 8, 2008, Michelle Obama appeared onThe Daily Show with Jon Stew­art.  She opined that, dur­ing the twenty month cam­paign for the Pres­i­dency, every detail of the Obama family’s lives has been vet­ted.  The focus upon the two poten­tial First Ladies has been intense — arguably more intense than dur­ing past cam­paigns.  She believes that is due in part to the fact that there is so much time to be filled up by the media that “we become part of the filler.  The con­ver­sa­tions con­tinue. Okay, now we know what the can­di­dates are like … let’s take a look at their wives and their houses … “  She finds the scrutiny fair, though, believ­ing that Amer­i­cans must have a “com­fort level” with the can­di­dates’ spouse, as well as with the can­di­date for office.

With so much data bom­bard­ing us on a con­tin­ual basis, we have to be cau­tious vot­ers, able to sep­a­rate the fluff from the sub­stance, the non­sense from the crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion needed to make an intel­li­gent, informed, well-founded choice when we enter the vot­ing booth.

For many of us, our faith and beliefs inform our polit­i­cal choices. Many peo­ple do not look beyond the val­ues they believe a par­tic­u­lar can­di­date holds dear to the sub­stan­tive issues he/she will be asked to deal with, instead count­ing upon those val­ues to guide him/her and inform his/her choices and deci­sions once he/she assumes office.  Oth­ers argue that val­ues are not as impor­tant as intel­lec­tual prowess, believ­ing that the abil­ity to ana­lyze, orga­nize, and nego­ti­ate chal­lenges are most crit­i­cal to effec­tive leadership.

I sus­pect that most people’s ana­lyt­i­cal approach can best be described as land­ing some­where in the mid­dle of that decision-making continuüm.

For many believ­ers, the dan­ger lies in becom­ing “so well-adjusted to your cul­ture that you fit into it with­out even think­ing.” Reli­gious lead­ers and orga­ni­za­tions are offer­ing advice and coun­sel to vot­ers, with some going so far as to print bal­lot guide­lines that their fol­low­ers can take into the vot­ing booth with them to assure that they vote in accor­dance with their lead­ers’ rec­om­men­da­tions and endorse­ments. Chris­tians some­times auto­mat­i­cally adopt the can­di­dates and posi­tions backed by their par­tic­u­lar denom­i­na­tion or con­gre­ga­tion with­out stop­ping to con­sider for them­selves why they should cast their votes in that fash­ion. In my opin­ion, votes cast in that man­ner are votes squandered.

On the con­trary, it’s my choice to make.  It’s my vote I will be cast­ing on Novem­ber 4, 2008.  It’s my “every­day, ordi­nary life” that will be impacted by the deci­sions made and poli­cies enacted by the next lead­ers who take office on a national, state, and local level.

Before cast­ing my vote, I must study the can­di­dates’ posi­tions on the issues, take into account the val­ues they espouse, and dis­cern what the Divine Spirit is say­ing to me about the choices before me.  I am called upon by the Divine Cre­ator to remain strong, inde­pen­dent, and use the intel­lect given me to resist being dragged down by the cul­ture of mud-slinging, name-calling, mis­in­for­ma­tion, refusal to answer ques­tions posed dur­ing a debate directly, and over­all “spin” employed by the cam­paigns, refus­ing to sink to the level of imma­tu­rity that char­ac­ter­izes the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal process.  Instead, I must search for the best and most impor­tant qual­i­ties pos­sessed by the var­i­ous can­di­dates and weigh the impor­tant, long-ranging impact each will have on res­o­lu­tion of the key issues.  I must endeavor to vote with a “well-formed maturity.”

There have been times when I have regret­ted the votes I cast, the prime exam­ple being that I actu­ally voted for George W. Bush. Not once. Twice. As I write this today, I am extremely embar­rassed to admit that.  At the time, I felt that I had stud­ied the issues, eval­u­ated the can­di­dates’ strengths and weak­nesses, and made a fully informed, sup­port­able deci­sion when I stepped into the vot­ing booth in both 2000 and 2004.

How­ever, it is appar­ent that I, along with many other Amer­i­cans, failed to make a wise choice.  I was not pre­scient, of course, so I could not pre­dict what Pres­i­dent Bush would ulti­mately do to this coun­try and its cit­i­zens.  I believed him to be a man of faith and was admit­tedly influ­enced by his procla­ma­tions of belief.  But the Pres­i­dency of George W. Bush has been an abject fail­ure on vir­tu­ally every front.  The Divine Spirit has renewed my mind and con­formed my thoughts over the past eight years, allow­ing me to see just how wrong I was to have voted for him.

I pray that  eight years from now I don’t feel the same way about the man­ner in which I plan to cast my votes this com­ing Novem­ber 4, 2008.

Tech­no­rati Tags: Inter­net Café Chat