The incredible beauty of choice!

What a beautiful thing choice is! Isn't it? I was just thinking about two things recently; morality police in Iran, and the love that my wife shows me. One is totally volitional and the other forced and coerced!

If the sole way I felt loved by my wife was for her to make me my favorite meal that she makes, and I stood behind her and like a puppeteer forced her hands to make the meal I wanted. "Stir my little puppet stiiirrr!" It was not what she desired to make, but what I wanted her to make, so I forced her. She did not make it out of love, she had no choice. I forced her to make it, and so it was not love, not even remotely. This is where the beauty of choice comes in and makes everything worth it! Somewhere in the heart, in the deep mechanical caverns where things like epistemology and morality is digested, comes a sweet fragrance. A fragrance that sweetens most outcomes of the persons choice, a fragrance as unique as every person. Every cross-roads we encounter, every problem we must process, and every hurt we must mend, is followed by a choice, whether for the best or for the worse. That depth of mystery from which a choice boils up, is unique to each person, and is one of the core dimensions that make up our personality.

It is to our complete awe that it is God who gave us this! He is the one who at great risk to himself, gave us the freedom of choice. He very well could have made us robots, and just recognize him and love him for who He is. But a robot cannot do that, they cannot behold Glory, and so actuate a process of beholding Him, realizing His worth, and choosing to love Him. It was at great risk to himself that God gave us this freedom, with the risk that our eyes that were made to behold Him, would become distracted or self-centered eyes, and not behold Him, and so not realize Him, and would not be able to choose Him.

It is my guess that maybe, aside from sending Christ to die on the cross, the hardest moment for God would have been when he breathed the freedom to choose into our being. As infinite as He is, and able as he is to in one moment (for he is outside time) to consider eternity future, and see those would not choose Him. In His sovereign wisdom, he allowed some the ability to truly express their love and worship to Him, thus magnifying God and His glory, while also cutting off the only chance some humans would have had in escaping hell (but that's totally a "what if..." question, He knew before the creation of the world whom He would choose, and to be honest I'm not entirely comfortable with what was said in the last paragraph, just thinking really in this last bit...care to comment?)

It is a beautiful thing to be able to choose! Choose well!