Choices

1 Samuel 10:17-24

Being Election Day, there are choices to be made. We have to choose who will represent us in our government from local politics all the way to national bodies. We also choose what direction we should take on issues of taxation, infrastructure projects, and other programs that need our attention. Those choices carry weight. Those choices will pile into a consensus that will determine the direction we will go as a people for a while to come. That scares some of us, but it is also a window into the life of faith that can be extremely useful.

The Bible tells many stories of elections. It was how Saul and David came to be kings over Israel, although the only one casting a deciding vote was God. It was also how those kings chose what action to take as they dealt with Israel’s enemies and problems. They would cast lots and decide based on how the dice rolled. In Christ’s community, an election chose Judas’ successor and the establishment of the office of Deacon in the community. Elections also determined doctrine, as seen in the example of the first theological council held in Jerusalem to determine if the Christ community would be essentially Jewish or broaden to include Gentiles, becoming something altogether new in the presence of God (cf. Galatians and a chunk of Acts). 

The point is that human decision making plays a tremendous role in the revealing and working of God’s will for God’s community. Our choices are real. Our freedom is actual. In God’s grace, God grants us responsibility, volition, and opportunity to be real and actual persons in God’s presence. 

Now, theologians from St. Paul to St. Augustine to John Calvin to Karl Barth argue that our freedom is tainted and corrupted by sin, which in their understanding skews our ability to choose freely. We will act in blind self-interest and self-centeredness when given choices, ignoring completely any communal responsibility or mutuality. That means our choices are predetermined by the strong question of “What do I get out of this?”

It is hard to argue against them. Even a cursory glance at this most recent political season proves them right. Our system is broken. As we listen to the current round of advertising it is not at all difficult to deduce that most folks running for office will say most anything to ensure that they will be in power. You get the sense that what they actually believe is so far sublimated in their message as to be completely irrelevant. All that matters is that their own aggrandizement increase. All that matters is their own position and power. You and I are only useful as we keep them in their vaunted positions. What we need or want is completely irrelevant. 

That is a long way from either Saul or David. They cast the sacred lots—Urim and Thummim—and followed without question what those lots determined. That was the will of God revealed! That was the only way to go. Their faith completely emptied their own thoughts of self or self-aggrandizement (something that in other areas never got sacrificed as they sought to get what they wanted as they wanted it). God was sovereign. God’s will was irrefutable. So, they followed.

Now, in our context such thinking raises hackles. It reeks of unthinking fundamentalism that makes us itch (sometimes literally). I would argue that there is a middle way. 

What does that middle way look like?

Apply the standard of the love revealed in Christ to our decisions and choices.

As we read the Gospels, we discover that Christ did not seek to eliminate free choice or free will from faith praxis. Rather, he invited us as we make the inevitable, necessary, and essential choices and decisions in life to run those decisions through the filter of self-emptying, other-centered love. 

A tremendous case in point comes in the case of the Woman Caught in Adultery (cf. Jn. 8:1-12). Note that Jesus does not forbid the mob from making a choice, even the choice to carry through their murderous intent, rather, he simply casts that decision in the arena of God’s compassion—whoever is completely free of the need for God may throw the first rock. He stops the mob in their tracks by making them weigh their choices. They have to consider all the consequences of their actions. They have to consider the great patience, forbearance, and wisdom of God in dealing with them as they seek to deal with someone else. 

Many would argue that that is the very definition of wisdom.

It is the middle way. It is not unthinking—quite the contrary! It is a call to think deeply and to fully understand what is needed in a given context to ensure that the most people—if not all the people—will benefit in a way that deepens the comprehension of the eternal presence of God’s providence and grace. Nor is it a call to libertinism or even libertarianism. It sets limits on what we can consider right and proper as it sets limits on the focus on self. It calls us to consider that what is good for each of us is most often, in the presence of God, that which is good for all of us. It strikes a balance between ourselves and the world around us. It strikes a balance between our freedom to be who we are and our obligation to be obedient to the God who made us.

So, we face an election. We can participate as fully active persons. We can freely choose to cast whatever vote we want. But we do so in the context and through the prism of faith, seeking to be a follower of Christ and his love as we do so.

All shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.