Choice and Choosing Life

The bible is full of threads and I want to talk about one of those today.

The bible is made up of 66 books written by 40 authors over thousands of years.  Most of them didn’t even know each other, particularly in the Old Testament.  Yet, there is evidence of an integrated wholeness to the bible that cannot be denied.  There is more than just a thematic sameness to each of the books, there are parts that are connected to each other like a thread connecting parts of a garment.

One of these threads is what I call Choice and Choosing Life.

At the end of the 40 (38 really) year wandering in the wilderness, Moses sat and wrote out the books of the law.  He also composed a few sermons that are found in the book of Deuteronomy.  We will pick up this thread of choice and choosing life in chapter 30, verse 15 of Deuteronomy.

Look, today I have set before you life and what is good, along with death and what is evil. (Deut. 30:15)

You can hear his plea, God’s plea in this short statement.  Moses has just explained the law and how it isn’t complex or hard to understand.  God isn’t forcing anyone’s hand.  He wants you to choose Him just as He has chosen you.  It is still your decision, however.

This idea of choice is throughout the bible.  Right from the beginning, God gave a simple law to Adam not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  What that fruit is doesn’t matter.  Whether the fruit had some magical powers (which I suspect it did not) doesn’t matter.  What mattered was that God gave Adam a choice to follow Him or not.  Any well-adjusted adult has had to learn that all choices come with consequences.  Good or bad.

God laid out the laws not because he is a mean God and likes to deprive people of things.  He wants what is best for you.  Much like a father will lay out laws for their children, because they want what is best for their children.

I said this was a thread found throughout the bible, and indeed it is.  By the time we get to the end of the life of Moses’ protégé, he also offers choice.

If you think it’s the wrong thing for you to serve the LORD, then choose for yourselves today whom you will serve—the gods whom your ancestors served on the other side of the Euphrates River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose territories you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD. (Joshua 24:15)

See, there is choice.  Already the people were beginning to falter and look away from God even though he had accomplished all that he promised he would do.  God doesn’t want slaves and blind followers; he wants to be chosen, like a lover wants to be chosen.

Atheists like to argue that God is mean and vindictive.  First of all, you can’t be an atheist and complain about anything that God does, you don’t believe in him anyway.  Second, what is the basis upon which they make their claim of absolute morality if not from that which God gave to us in the first place.  No, God is not out to kill people for the sake of killing people.  Opponents like to discuss the story of Joshua and taking of the land from the Canaanites (the explanation for that is given at the beginning of Joshua, by the way) but they skip over the part of Ezekiel where it is written:

“I don’t take delight in the death of the wicked, do I?” asks the Lord GOD. “Shouldn’t I rather delight when he turns from his wicked ways and lives? (Ezekiel 18:23)

I don’t take pleasure in the death of anyone who dies,” declares the LORD. “So repent, so you may live!” (Ezekiel 18:32)

God is a god of love, but he is also a god of justice.  If you love your son, you also discipline him because you love him and want what is best for him.  If you just let your child do whatever they wish, they will harm themselves and those around them.  Over and over, the stories in the bible where people are harmed as a result of disobedience, even then, God gives them warnings (see the prophets) and is extremely patient.  Even before the flood, the long life of Methuselah was a testament to God’s patience.  It was said that the flood would not begin until Methuselah died.  His name means “his death shall bring”.  He takes no pleasure in the death of his enemies but would rather they turn away from their wickedness.  He doesn’t want anyone to go to hell but he does leave that choice to you.

This thread does not only exist in the Old Testament.  It continues into the New.  Proverbs is presented as a tale of two women.  One is wisdom, the other folly.  Proverbs 8 has Wisdom telling us two important things.  22-23 tells us that wisdom was even before the beginning of creation.  35-36 again pleads with the reader to choose wisdom and choose life.

In John’s rendering of the gospel (the one that speaks of the divinity of the Christ), he begins with:

In the beginning, the Word existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. He existed in the beginning with God. (John 1:1-2)

By the time you get to verse 14 it is clear that “he” that is the word is none other than Jesus. 1 Corinthians 1:24 tells us that Jesus IS wisdom, the same wisdom spoken of in Proverbs 8.  All through His teaching, Jesus asks us to choose.  He asks us to choose him over the world.  He embodied all the aspects of God; and warned of what was to come, having compassion on those around him and finally dying to pay the price for our sins, past, present and future.

He rose again, according to what was promised in scripture.  Defeating death and again asking us to choose him — to choose life.

I am the way, the truth, and the life. (John 14:6)


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