Freedom and Choice

What freedoms we have compared, let’s say, to a garden snail! You go out into your garden or landscape and find living things there. What agenda does such a creature have for his or her day? What is on Mr. Snail’s to-do list? Well, snails don’t have lists, they have no agenda: it is all determined, shall we say, by instinct. A word like “agenda” applies to rational creatures; it presupposes reason and situational conditions that allow for choices among options. A human team with a common purpose could reason together, “We can do A, B, or C: which do we see as having the most favorable outcome?” People make observations, recall past experiences, and anticipate results.

Migratory birds migrate. Sea turtles find the right beach, salmon nearly knock themselves out getting to the spawning pools. That works for them as species internally driven and determined, at a cellular level or in their genes, to continue. It is people that have complex choices among vast possibilities. It is a burden or is it a blessing? Use your reason and choose.

When Saul of Tarsus—you know, the man that came to call himself Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles—were traveling about the Mediterranean world, he was spreading a perspective of the cosmos, and humanity’s place in it relative to the man, Jesus of Nazareth. Paul chooses the perspective that Jesus is the divinely anointed Son of God. He spreads a message that putting trust in Jesus changes everything for a person. Jesus had been raised from the dead, and that resurrection-reality and power are extended to people who come to faith in him. The inclusion in this grace means sin and death are neutralized for them. People believing in and relying upon Jesus Christ do die, to be sure, but are themselves raised, living forever in fellowship with Christ. As Paul wrote, “And God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power.” (1 Corinthians 6:14)

Alas, there are implications. The letters Paul wrote to Christian groups in the first century expound upon the implications of believing in Jesus. People are free to make choices, as we have said, as an accident of their rational will. What Paul writes to the early Christians stems from the questions or problems these groups had. As you progress in your faith, you come to realize it costs nothing to become a Christian but costs everything to be a disciple. Becoming a Christian is a matter of choice to trust in the free favor or grace of God. Once faith is invested, the question is in play: “Given that I am a Christian what must I then do with this, that, and the other matter.” Paul wrote, “All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are beneficial. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything. (1 Corinthians 6:12)

Paul expresses this thought, as we shall see in our Epistle passage this Sunday, to urge care and caution among Christians making decisions about their own sexual activity. He insisted these are critical decisions, and they affect everything. There is nothing casual about what we decide to do with our bodies.  He challenges the young church asking, “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.” (1 Corinthians 6:15, 19-20)

We are chosen by Christ. He has called you, saying, “Come, follow me.” We have the option of receiving God’s grace, beginning a relationship with Jesus. Choosing to follow begins a day-by-day life of making subsequent choices. A snail in the garden is not living by making choices; the snail is basically eating and breeding by instinct. You, on the other hand, are a rational creature with freedoms as extensive as the freedoms that are afforded to you. The onus of responsibility for choosing wisely is on you.

In our discipleship, some would use the word stewardship, which is everything we do with all we have after we come to believe. It involves our attitudes, conversations, and actions. It involves our bodies, our property, and the earth we inhabit. It involves our treatment of others, our treatment of ourselves, and our relation to God. It is far more complicated than munching on a leaf in the yard. The complexity of being human and being Christian comes with the territory of being a free creature with a mind, emotions, the capacity to abstract, and to use language. It is hard. It can be a blessing. Using the tools of the animal we call homo sapiens, using the tools of a person in relationship with Christ, it is a blessing to cooperate with the grace of the Holy Spirit. Choose well.