Choices

 Sorting through old papers is enlightening.  The older I get, the more it seems nothing ever changes.  Situations, clothing, music, and fads may change, but not human nature.  Each generation has to start anew.  Consequently, generation after generation, we humans keep asking the same questions and struggle with the same issues, how to discern good from evil,  just as our forefathers and mothers did – even those who lived thousands of years ago.   That’s one of the reasons why the Bible remains so relevant.  Questions such as What is the meaning of life?  Why do we suffer?  Why is there evil?  Is there a God?  If so, why is God so distant and seemingly unknowable?

In one of my old sermons, I observed that all we really need to know about good and evil is that good and evil relate to our daily choices.  While we may never understand the whys and wherefores of what we call God and Satan, we can understand that we are called to make choices every day,  choices that can enhance or detract from the overall welfare of ourselves and others.  For instance, we get to choose whether we hang on to resentments or practice gratitude and forgiveness.

One of the best choices I’ve made has been attending several different 12-step programs.  When our kids became addicted to drugs, I attended a Families Anonymous program, but later I joined a CoDA group and participated in that for years.  By being in the program, I‘ve come to understand that while I can’t change or control others, I can change myself by focusing on my own growth.  

There can be no good without evil or evil without good; they are part of a whole.  Without choice and free will, we become like every other animal, acting simply out of instinct.  But we have been created with both mind and soul, and the only way we can grow into all we are intended to be is to live the life we have with all of its ups and downs, ins and outs, choosing to practice love and gratitude, or hate and jealousy.  The only way we have any chance of overcoming evil is by embracing evil as an inherent part of ourselves, not seeing it as something separate, something outside of ourselves. We are each born with the capacity for doing good or ill.   By working on my program, I’ve become less judgmental of myself and others.  By learning how to embrace my own evil impulses without judging them, I’ve become freer to make more positive choices.  By accepting the reality of the evil that will always be part of me, its venom becomes less powerful because I can replace it with gratitude, love, and forgiveness. By accepting my innate capacity for violence and hate, my own brokenness,  it’s become almost second nature for me to accept the brokenness in others.   I am a pacifist, not because Jesus and Scripture tell us not to kill each other, but because I am all too familiar with the black rage and capacity for hate that lives within me.    

Much as I often wish God would intervene, I am profoundly grateful that the God of my understanding is one who forces me to grow up and assume responsibility for myself and the consequences of my choices and our actions.   The God of my understanding will not do for me what I must do for myself.  Thus, if we stand by and allow one party, gender, and race to take away the rights and freedoms of those who differ from them in any way, all of us will eventually suffer, and we will have only ourselves to blame. God cannot, nor will not make the world safe for us. We have to do that for ourselves.  But strange as it may seem, it’s God’s very refusal to protect us from ourselves that actually gives us the power and resources we need, powers we never knew we had.  This is precisely why the Apostle Paul tells us to be grateful in and for all things. Even January 6.  Even COVID-19.  Even Elon Musk.  Even all of Trump’s executive orders.  Even horrendous wars and terrorism, domestic and foreign. Even racism, sexism, and all the other demeaning isms.

Our choices matter, be they large or small. What we do on a daily basis makes a huge difference.  We are each a Job, confronted by the warring worlds of good and evil.  I find great hope (and fear) in the realization that the God of my understanding has granted us ordinary folk the responsibility of determining the course and outcome of our world. The Bible, The Koran, The 12 Step Program, Buddhism, etc. hold out the promise of healing and hope to us, but it comes as a two-edged sword.  God’s salvation, the Program’s concept of recovery, Buddhism’s  Spiritual Path, call it what you will, each carries within it the shining truth that you and I can influence what happens.  You and I can help reverse what is broken and missing in our world.  We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.  We are the ones who can make a difference, which both terrifies me and brings me great hope.