I heard Erwin McManus say once that the most spiritual thing we can do is to choose. I've been thinking about this these days: could choice be the most spiritual thing?
Maybe.
Or at least, it shouldn't surprise us if it were. Anyways, our culture seems to think there's something deeply important about choice. From the moment we're old enough to watch a commercial, we're told that when we have choice, we have power. Choice is freedom. Choice is the potential to define our selves.
And you can tell a lot about a person from the things they choose.
The Bible knows about the spirituality of choice, I think; and I think that's why it points out over and over again that God is a choosing God.
Because you can tell a lot about him from the things he chooses.
So4000 years ago or so, two twin babies were born to a guy named Isaac. And God chose the younger over the older, even though he was the youngest; even though he was second place, second choice. And when God’s people where in slavery in Egypt, and God wanted to bring them into freedom, he chose an exiled shepherd to call them out, even though Moses admitted he was a man of faltering lips. And when God’s people asked for a King, God chose David, even though David was the eighth son of his father, younger, weaker, less significant than all his brothers.
And when he brought Salvation to the world, he choose the things that we would have long since passed over: the lowly, the humble, the outcast.
He chose a humble Hebrew virgin who had nothing to offer but simple acceptance of her place in God’s plan, and an incredible story about a Divine Conception. And he chose a poor Hebrew carpenter who had nothing to offer but a handful of nightmares telling him to get up and do inexplicable things like marry an unwed mother and flee to Egypt for no apparent reason.
And he chose a baby—a shivering baby born into the darkness and stink of a lonely sheep pen— He chose a 1st Century homeless rabbi with a rag-tag band of followers: reformed prostitutes and delivered demoniacs and redirected zealots and failed fishermen— He chose a crucified Jew executed by the state as political revolutionary—
He chose this as his way of making peace between himself and his sin-blinded world.
If it's true that you can tell a lot about a person based on the things they choose, then what does it tell us about God that in Jesus Christ, he chose the things that the world rejects, that the powerful look down on, and the wise despise?
Because in Jesus Christ, he chose us, too. Ordinary, outsider, outcast, lowly, least, poor, insignificant, broken, failed, reformed, rag-tag though we were, he said: in Jesus Christ, I choose you.
And in Jesus Christ, he frees us to choose back.
He invites us to respond with the likes of Mary, who heard the Spirit choose her and answered: "I am the Lord’s servant—I am the servant of a God who chooses the humble—let it be to me according to your word.” And as we choose back like this, in response to his First Choice--we find ourselves following this Little Lord Jesus into a world where—like Gabriel promised Mary—nothing is impossible with God.
The Weight of Choice
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3 comments:
I'm not sure we should say the most spiritual thing we can do is choose. That doesn't sit well at all. The rest of your post sits fine, but not that part, which I gather you weren't sure of either.
Let me try to articulate it:
If it is all about God's choice, could it be revoked? Is it a choice true to His character, or is it capricious? Is it a choice we can know as good, and eternal, and grounded in the heart of God?
And if the most spiritual thing we can do is choose back, isn't that saying more about the power of our faith-ing than we want to say? It almost sounds like what Christianity so often gets accused of: That Jesus died but then was resurrected, not actually, but in the hearts of believers who, with Paul as their frontrunner, raised him in their hearts through faith. That faith could be said to be connected to Jesus, but it really comes down to it being a human faith of human choosing: All the transformative power is on the human side.
I don't think your post falls into those traps, but with the Erwin McManus bit of overplay I think these issues are residual.
I don't know if that made sense.
Thanks for this feedback Jon-- I appreciate your comments/cautions/critique. (And to be honest, I wasn't all that sure of this one when I posted it.)
I wonder, though, if you aren't reading both too much, and too little into what I've said.
Too little, in that you seem to be taking "choice" in the most limited, evangelical, Billy Graham, "make your choice for Jesus" sense of the word, which is not what I meant, nor, as I recall is it what McManus meant, either. I intended it to describe more broadly the life-lived-in-response-to-God's-grace-- the life lived "in step with the Spirit"--the life of entering by the narrow door and walking the narrow path.
This is, I think, a deeply spiritual way to be, and unless were fatalists, pantheists or hyper-Calvinists,this way of being does involve the choices we make (daily, mudanely, hourly), to step with the Spirit or not, to respond to his freeing grace or not, to walk one more time through one more narrow door or not. If this way of being involves us at all, it must involve our choices.
But I also think you've maybe read too much into what I'm saying, because (although the tag list includes "election"), in talking about God as a choosing God I am not trying to describe a systematic vision of predestination/reprobation (I am, after all, Methodist :). I meant it more simply to observe that God does choose-- the Bible's pretty clear on that-- and as a choosing God, he chose the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus as his means to save the world-- and when God chose to save the world like this, of all ways, he showed us something about his heart-- to make foolish the wisdom of the wise, to exalt the humble, and scandalize the powers and principalities of this world.
And maybe at the back of my mind I was thinking of Hans Boersma, who talks about election as a demonstrration of God's hospitality to the outsider, the powerless and the excluded.
And I guess I brought these two things together (a life of choosing predicated on God's choosing) because as I've glimpsed God's heart like this, and glimpse it more and more deeply (i.e. When I consider that he chose the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus as his means to save the world, and the weight of that choice bears down on me), it inspires in me (maybe old fashioned theology would say frees my will, not sure?), it inspires in me faithful, and more faithful choices to walk in step with his spirit.
Does that help? Or did I spring the trap? :)
No I don't disagree with the moves you are making there, nor did I find your post uninspiring or lacking in value. I just recoiled at the McManus line, and still do, although your way of putting it I have no problem with.
"The most spiritual thing we can do"
I think that's the problem. Says too much. No?
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