The Power of Choice

Not to decide is to decide. And every day, every choice we make makes us who we will be tomorrow.

Actor Don Johnson once told an interviewer two reasons his life had spiraled downward. “I not only made bad choices, I chose bad friends.”

There is truth in his words. But our choices reach beyond the friends we keep and the ones we don’t. All that we experience contributes to who we are—for good or otherwise.

Good friends—those who love as we are with no agenda to change us—hope that nevertheless we will change. And until we do, they love us.

Such friends are committed to us even when we are not committed to ourselves. They not only forgive our transgressions, our mistakes, our flaws and faults and failures, but they are considerate enough to forget what we often cannot. Likewise, they hold in trust whatever secrets of ours they know and refuse to breech our confident confessions, even when it might profit them.

Such friends tell us the truth about ourselves, as my good friend Cecil Murphey says, “no matter how beautiful it may be.” These friends by their own vulnerability beckon us to become more transparent. When possible, they construct advice that will build us up; they are never such as the critics who seek only our demolition.

Above all else good friends are consistent. They neither abandon us in bad times nor abuse us in good times. Their love for us is like God’s love—unrelated in any way to our performance. They love us regardless and that love remains constant even when our character waivers.

So it is that we have the power to choose. And for that reason we should remember that such power is the greatest of all. We cannot abdicate our authority for if we do so, we forfeit our birthright. In that process we deny who we are or at the very least we forget that we are the sum of our choices, not our experiences.

For not only what we do not do but what we do make us who we are. But what others decide should never become part of our equation. Never are we victims of the choices others make. Their choices may limit ours, but the right to choose is unalienable. No law can deprive us of it. No sovereign can deny us the power God has granted.

Even he will not dispute our free will. Yet that is contained within his sovereignty. He allows us the freedom to choose, but will at every turn, every time, in every place, and every situation do all that is within his power to persuade us that his choice, his will, is best for our lives.

That is why he calls us to make a choice. Not between right and wrong, for such choices are momentary, regarding one thought or action or habit only at the moment of temptation. No, instead God asks us to choose between death and life—and pleads that we will desire only the latter. Because he has no craving to punish us. His will is that we would have life and that in surplus.


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