“Choice - Revisited”
by bryan woods
Many times through the years people have asked me;
“How can a loving God allow the evil to prosper”?, or…
“How can a loving God allow little children to die of disease or by harm of wicked persons”?, or…
“If there is a God, how is it he allows all of the bad things in this world to happen”? and…
“If there really is a God and he’s so perfect and good, why would he have created us to be the way we are…with built in capacity for anger and evil. Why would he have wanted us to be selfish,
arrogant, prideful and all. Why wouldn’t he have made us without all of these terrible traits”?
The gift of choice is probably the greatest gift mankind has ever received.
The Lord gave mankind the privilege of choice. His desire was to have fellowship and a true loving relationship with His creation. He wanted us to love Him like children love their parents and He wanted to
love us as a Father would love His children.
He could easily have created mankind to bow down to him and serve him and be perfect little creations, but He desired his children to love Him.
The love He desired had to be real and true, which required that we give it freely and willingly.
One of my wife’s favorite movies is Armageddon. Most people are familiar with the movie, but for those that are not; it’s a movie about a giant asteroid heading on a direct path toward earth. A path that will
insure total destruction of all life on earth.
A group of Oil Drillers are selected to fly to the asteroid on the space shuttle with a group of astronaut’s to drill a hole in the asteroid and detonate a nuclear bomb, inn hope of breaking up the asteroid and
directing it’s remains away from the earth.
The star of the movie is Harry, whose daughter is in love with AJ, one of Harry’s rough-neck employees, whom Harry is always angry with.
Near the end of the movie, after all efforts to destroy the asteroid have failed, all of the men on the shuttle draw straws to see who will stay on the asteroid and manually detonate the bomb. This is mankind’
s only hope for survival.
Unfortunately AJ draws the short straw, and in a display of great sacrifice, Harry disables AJ’s space suit and forcefully takes AJ’s place, telling AJ that he always thought of him as the son he never had and
tells him to take care of his daughter.
AJ drew the short straw, but Harry chose to take his place. Harry’s sacrifice was by choice and not by force or manipulation. God desires us to make our choices because of our love for Him, not because we
are forced or manipulated.
We had to choose to love Him, and this opened up a whole can of worms for mankind, because to allowing mankind a choice, was only possible if they were allowed a choice in all things.
The bad news was; we tend to not make very good choices.
The good news is; he knew that we would make bad decisions and has always provided us help.
So let’s take a look at just a few of the “bad Choices” from our biblical history.
Adam and Eve both chose to disobey God in the garden.
Moses disobeyed the Lord and was not allowed to cross over into the promise land.
Samson chose the break the disobey God’s rules and requirements of the Nazarene and eventually died due to his disobeying.
Saul chose to offer sacrifice knowing that it was the role of Samuel and lost his kingdom and eventually died.
David chose to commit adultery and murder and lost his son and was not allowed to build the temple.
The people of Juda and Israel chose to follow other God’s and be corrupt and lost their lands and forced their people into captivity.
All of these people were considered good persons whom the Lord used mightily for his glory, but each made some pretty bad choices. And there were serious repercussions for their actions. There will
always be repercussions for our actions which is why we should make our choices carefully.
I chose to make all of the decisions throughout my life that I made. I had other options, I simply chose to do the things that I did.
Mankind goes throughout life based on the choices they make.
The infant baby doesn’t choose to be born to an abusive parent.
The child doesn’t choose to have Muscular Dystrophy.
A wife doesn’t choose to be beaten by her husband and the elderly doesn’t choose to be alone or swindled of everything they own.
So how can we explain to a no-believer why God allows suffering due to our being given choice?
When mankind was given Choice, it set in motion, actions and reactions that move like ripples in a pond.
Actions and Reactions;
1. Let’s say that early in time, a man named Dan takes the life of another man named Sam. The reason Dan slays Sam is unknown to any other person. However, Sam has a son named Ben, and Ben
sees the death of his father Sam and swears vengeance against Dan, and many years later, Ben takes the life of Dan who killed his father. Now Dan also has sons who find out who that Ben killed their
father and they in turn swear vengeance against the Ben and they attack and kill many of Bens family. Who in turn kill many of the sons of Dan and their families…and this continues for generations.
We’ve seen this happen throughout history for millennium.
2. Take the Crusades for example. A group of people tried to force their views on another group of people who believed differently. They slaughtered, tortured and pillaged others unjustly in the name
of Christ. Centuries later we have terrorists with hearts of pure evil who kill innocent people because of the action of other hundred of years ago. They now, try to force their beliefs on the rest of the world.
These are just a couple of examples how the actions or choices of others caused reactions throughout history. People doing unjustifiable acts as reactions to others actions.
But then how do we explain why other bad things happen that were not reactions to actions of others?
General Occurances;
In John 9:3 Jesus answered, "It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.” Sometime things happen simply that He may be glorified…sometimes
things happen in our lives that we just cant reason or understand.
The infant may suffer due to choices that the parents make in their lifetime. Maybe the parents did nothing at all.
A persons health may be genetic and have nothing to do with physical, chemical or mental abuse.
If certain things just happen, without reason…that seem evil…that are evil. Why does God allow them to happen?
Remember what we talked about earlier?
” When mankind was given Choice, it set in motion, actions and reactions that move like ripples in a pond.”
The action was sin, and the reaction was that evil was allowed into the earth.
God could not fully give us Choice and then come in whenever he saw fit and correct the things that we consistently choose to mess up. If he did, we would not have true choice.
We would simply be puppets reacting to the pulling of God’s strings, and that would defeat the purpose of His creation.
Mans first bad choice was to disobey Him in the garden. Forget the fruit issue. God gave Adam and Eve a command and they disobeyed it. That was their choice. And the repercussion was that sin was that
Evil entered into the world.
From that day on mankind would come in to the world with a nature for sin, and that ripple continued to move across the pond of time through to this very day.
The ripple will only stop when the Lord establishes his kingdom on earth.
Many of us here on earth suffer and some of us pitifully, but some day…when we’re with Him, all of our questions will be answered, and we shall be complete…once and for all.
While the gift of Jesus Christ for mankind’s salvation is the greatest gift ever bestowed on mankind, I thank God that he allowed me to have a “Choice” to love Him, for that tells me just how much that he
already loved me!
Bryan Woods
01/25/09
(Originally Created on 09/04/06)
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