Everyone wants the freedom to choose In America, we are blessed to have freedom of choice. That is what is drilled into our heads daily; "you have the right to this, you have a right to that, you have a right to choose!" We can choose who we vote for; the kind of car we drive, where we live, what we eat, who we will marry. We can choose what kind of education we want; we can choose to be a doctor or a pauper, a leader or a follower. When it comes to religious matters, we can choose this god or that god, or The God. We can choose to have faith, or be an atheist. We can choose to follow one religious system or the other. It is all up to us. Some of us take these choices, of 'choosing', more serious than others, but even [that] is a choice.

Many people, in their lust for freedom, believe that freedom means 'without consequences'. That is probably the best definition of 'lust'. Lust is a strong desire for something you do not have, and that emotion only allows you to see the desire, and hides the consequences of that desire. Some people will argue that this definition of lust is too confining, and that lust can produce positive results, which seems true initially, however, in order to reap the positive results, you, by definition, lose your freedom because positive results can only be born out of following moral, religious, or governmental guidelines. Total freedom can never yield positive results because anything that is 'free' to one individual, costs someone else something. So complete freedom is always self-gratifying which appears pleasant for a time, but always leads to bondage, either to the object of the lust, or to some third party. For example, lust for drugs, which can appear to the person desiring the drug to be able to solve a problem, always leads to bondage of the drug, and also to governmental powers because of illegality, and also to bondage of rejection in social circles, and finally the bondage of health problems that can develop.

Enter the Post-Modern Man The post-modern man is a very unique thinker. By definition, the post-modern person is one who believes that he is enlightened, and that because of his enlightenment, is better able to define freedom and avoid the consequences. This person believes that he is able to redefine truth in order to meet his own needs or desires (lusts). He believes that if he can either temporarily or permanently redefine truth and that he will no longer have to answer to, or be accountable to others, either socially, morally, religiously, or governmentally.

While divorce has been in existence since the marriage contract was created, the concept has taken on new dimensions in this post-modern era. While we have already stated that the enlightened man believes that truth can be redefined, the concept of divorce has been expanded into other areas of legal contracts. Remember that we are talking about 'freedoms', and the concept of divorce no longer means a "legal process of solving extreme irreconcilable problems", but has now become sociably acceptable means of not only changing partners legally, but also includes abdication of any other legal contract and other rules of accountability. As an example, couples who are in the process of divorce, might voice concern over how it will affect other family members, but if they allow the process of separation to complete, either one or both, in reality says by default, that their personal needs or freedom to choose is more important than the hurtful consequences to the family and ultimately to society.

America, since the turn of this century, has gone through some fairly drastic ethical and moral changes, which have brought this nation to its knees, and yet, few recognize what is responsible for the financial mess that this nation is in. I am talking about the financial problems of both the Country and the family. The borrowing public was advised by the government to go into debt for big-ticket items such as cars and housing. Financial underwriting procedures were rewritten and the old laws of financial stability were dismissed, setting lending institutions and the borrowing public ‘free’ to go into debt. Low Doc and No Doc loan products were created along with 100% financing. There was little regard for the ability to repay the loan. This was true for both the commercial and private sectors. Housing prices soured because of the demand – but few saw the consequences rushing in to upset the lust for ‘more’. When the economy started to decline, people that were heavily in debt and very little equity, because of 100% loans, needed a way out. The banks started to scream to the government about the coming housing crash, and the number of overly leveraged loans. The government then set up a bailout program that would cover the banks loans, which meant that the banks would not suffer the consequences of making bad loans and the public tax payer would bear that cost. Once the banks were covered for their bad mortgages, the borrowers could then walk away from their mortgage contracts without any pressure to be responsible for their obligations.

It was an amazing transition to watch how quickly this mass divorced themselves from financial contracts, and how quickly society accepted this as a norm. This whole process was setup during the Clinton and Bush Presidential years, and emboldened when Obama publicly declared that America was no longer a ‘Christian Nation’. So people started to look at their financial contracts much like they look at the marriage contract, and say “I don’t like this financial marriage, I want to be set free”, so they simply walk away from that obligation and they go and get married to a different, and they ‘hope’ a better financial partner without so much as word of protest from the government, lenders or the public in general.

Here is the most amazing part of this story. There is seemingly no remorse from those who walk away from their contractual obligations. In the past, a person, or commercial entity that got into financial trouble went through the courts and bankruptcy proceedings, to first of all try to be financially responsible, and if the loan was then determined to be in default, the person declared bankruptcy. But this was only after it was found that all avenues for repayment had been exhausted. Today there is no pressure. Just stop making payments and walk away.

We have arrived at the ultimate in ‘Freedom to Choose”. This is what carnal man wants. No repercussions for actions taken. No thought about the long term consequences. Little or no thought about ‘who’ will pay for my actions, little or no accountability. This is the ultimate dream for the New Age post-modernist. We expect this kind of thinking from the world, the carnal personality, but the disappointment is that many people in the church who are ‘professing’ to be Christians and are supposed to be both examples and light in this darkened world, have taken on the image of the world, and are running to take advantage of these new found freedoms, all of which are dealt with directly, and severely, in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapters 5 to 7. In this Sermon, delivered by Jesus Christ, the Son of God, we are called to repentance, responsibility, and stewardship, and to ‘put-off’, or die to the desires of the flesh, Christ-like characteristics that are contrary to the world. Fortunately we have a merciful Savior who is willing to forgive [if] we turn from the ways of this world. But here we are once again at a crossroads of choice. Many today ‘choose’ to think of Jesus Christ as only a prophet, a mere man, whose religious philosophy is not relevant to our modern society.

So we can see how convoluted this expression of ‘freedom’ can get. The lust for freedom tells us that ‘rules’ are bad, and that momentary self-satisfaction is important. But in reality, true freedom comes from adhering to a set of laws that govern us morally and ethically as we travel the road of life.
Up to this point we have talked about choices that affect the short term of this life, but…

Because the government and science is adamant in its quest to disprove the existence of a Creator, they force the doctrine of evolution onto society starting at the earliest age that parents will relinquish their children into the daily melting pots of secular education. They do not teach evolution as a choice, but as science, and they are very intolerant of teaching that supports creation. If you will allow me to bring this secular view into perspective without a long dialogue, they teach that [nothing] exploded, and from that explosion, all of the complexities of amino acids and proteins, cell structure, plant food, oxygen and the thousands of other necessary requirements for life, came together, all by chance, and in the required order, to produce life. In addition, out of that explosion [of nothing], time was created because the evolutionary process required for billions of years. Space was created so that whatever [nothing] was, could grow so that billions of universes and solar systems could exist within the infinity that did not exist. I have, to a certain extent, read the white papers from scientific foundations that in their long explanations of trying to prove the theory of evolution, even they admit that their ‘facts’ of evolution drum up more questions than they can prove in their thesis. While this whole concept of evolution can go off in many directions and theories, the reader must keep in mind that evolution ‘must’ start from nothing because if it started from ‘something’, then the whole process starts over on the question of ‘Where did that ‘something’ come from?” If you read anything about any of the various sciences that are involved with the theory of evolution, you quickly learn that the goal of all of science is to find the origins of life while at the same time presenting the illusion that the unproven theories of evolution are fact.

If I can take this just one step farther, let’s suppose [just for a minute] that evolution is correct science. In this evolutionary process, the rules of order that took place during the billions of years that brought us to where we live today, we have to recognize that evolution, which again started from nothing, and therefore had no intelligence, decided that from nothing, it needed all of the necessary requirements for life, but in addition it would also need to create the means for propagation and longevity. It would do this by developing a process for plant life to multiply, which, by the way is very complex, and in addition, many different methods for animal life to replenish its self. In animals, it had to explode two, out of nothing, that had the ability to propagate. I don’t know what terms were used for this before there was language, or the ability to develop communicational skills, but today we call these two creatures male and female. Now isn’t it interesting that ‘nothing’ without intelligence, would create a male and a female, both of the same animal class in order to continue the species. To evolution, the necessary parts to propagation and continuance, was a family structure made up of a male and a female. Yet, today in our post-modern ‘enlightened’ state of re-defining truth, we are taught that if we want to teach the makeup of the family structure as being male and female, a mother and a father, that you are intolerant and are in violation of human rights. No other species of life ‘chooses’ this philosophy except the post-modern so-called intelligent ones.

This brings us to a whole new level in this debate on ‘Choice’. Remember that we are still pretending that evolution is a correct theory. Its seems then that the evolutionists have broken the foundation of evolution, because they ‘choose’ now to say that the family is no longer a mother and father, but it also can be two, or more fathers, or two or more mothers. And freedom of choice demands that they have that right, and yes, we were created with the ability to choose, so they do have that right. But here that very freedom of choice by those who lust for that freedom, have broken the cardinal rule of that freedom which says that freedom to choose belongs to all people. Once that freedom is taken away from anyone, then there is no more freedom. The problem today is that those who want complete freedom to choose also want to remove that same freedom from those that disagree with them. As we think for just a few minutes on the concept of evolution, we find very quickly that if evolution were possible, that as we look at the complexities it produced, that ‘it’ (evolution) had to develop rules of order in a very small fraction of a second. Please try to follow this because it can hurt the thinking process of the normal mind. Let’s go back to the beginning when science says that ‘nothing exploded’. From that instant that nothing exploded, (keep in mind that all explosions create chaos), that the void of nothing saw the chaos that was going to take place. So in the process of nothing becoming something to explode, and the split second before the explosion could become chaos, ‘it’ had to produce all of the ingredients which would produce life as we talked about earlier, including the order of the solar systems, and on, and on. OK, enough of this nonsense, I need an aspirin.

Just on more thought about this theory of evolution. If the theory of evolution is correct, then we have a very big, and depressing problem. Evolution gives us no hope, no purpose. Because we came from nothing, then we are in essence the same level as plant life. We sprout up for a while, then whither to nothing and are forgotten. There would then truly be no reason for life. Abortion would be OK, euthanasia would be acceptable. We would all have the same value as a weed in the yard, OH wait! The evolutionists have declared that only the human species can be terminated. Hmmm. I think that we now know what is behind the epidemic of depression and struggle between peoples and nations today. Everything about the environmental movement of global warming and earth day is designed to show the worthlessness of man, and that the population must be reduced. Evolution, as described by the post-modernist, gives us no purpose with the exception of grabbing all you can to satisfy self today, and once this life ends, that is all there is. Creation, which is a total opposite of evolution, says that there was a design and purpose for life, and for those who choose to believe in the Creator will then have hope and purpose in this life. I will bring more on this in just a few minutes. But first…

As we have very briefly shown, freedom to choose can very quickly turn into dark matter when one starts to believe that his choice should reign supreme to the elimination of choice for others. We see this in the choices of sexual behavior, the political right and left, evolution versus creation, socialism versus capitalism. In my mind, the greatest breach of this freedom of choice is in the religious arena. For example, a millennium ago, we had the aberration of the Crusades that tried to conquer the world on the errant belief that Christianity should be forced upon all people. Today we can watch this same dark evil in the drumbeat of Islam terrorizing the whole world, declaring openly that they will eradicate all peoples from the face of the earth, including themselves, if they do not convert to one specific sect of Islam, and as long as there is more than one sect of Islam, or two people with differing beliefs, there will be war and death.

This matter of choice is arguably the most basic instinct and power of the human mind and will. All decisions, all of our actions, habits and routines are based upon choices that we have made from the moment of birth to the end of life. It is true that much of how we live is based on our culture, family, religion and education. However, those four influences, as strong and as important as they are in each individual life, they are only variables in each life span because each of those four are further influenced by lust, greed, power, events and circumstances which are always at a cross-road of our life. The gift of choice that each person possess is taken for granted by most of us because it is such a natural and intrinsic and intimate part of our thinking and decision making process, that we can just forget that it is a tool to be used. Evolution on the other hand, does not allow for the struggle between right and wrong, morality and immorality, good and evil. Evolution cannot dictate a choice beyond what seems to be a natural flow of events or circumstances. Water always flows downhill. The second law of Thermodynamics says that everything will assimilate into its surroundings. In other words, a cup of hot water will cool to its surrounding room temperature. A rock cannot become gold. A lump of coal cannot become a diamond on its own. And contrary to the teachings of many religions, man cannot become a deity. So we tend to leave the choice process to our lust, desires or circumstances that are trying to influence us at the moment. There was a Western song titled “How can it be so wrong when it feels so right?” which gives us a clue on how easy it is to allow our circumstances to dictate our choices.

So far we have discussed the evolutionary process that wants to determine our choices. A more familiar title would be to “Just letting nature takes its course.” There is a second dynamic to this evolutionary process of choice however, and that is choice that is pre-meditated. The first are un-premeditated choices that say “what will be, will be”. With pre-meditated choice, the individual will desire something, and then create a plan to accomplish his goal, and this can be used for both good and evil. I think that you get the flow of what I am trying to say. I do not want to explain the psychology behind choice, but to show how important choice is in our everyday lives. Not only our everyday lives but for our eternal life also.

Or one is made for you! To put it another way, “A person cannot refuse to make a choice.” When a person declines to choose one option, then by default one of the other options automatically becomes the choice. Many at this point might choose to go no further because I have violated the first rule of the post-modernist. That rule is that he wants truth to be what “he” chooses to be truth, without any threat of accountability or consequence. Yet, all of our discussion so far says that the choices we make are either within the rule of governmental, religion or social laws, or those choices are breaking those laws. If you choose to keep the evolutionary thought, then that is all there is, life is truly meaningless. However, if you choose to believe in the concept of a Creator, someone that has the ability to purposefully create all that exists, and that that Creator has a plan and purpose for you specifically, then we will start making choices from a whole new perspective on discovering what those plans and purposes are for each one of us. Now life gets exciting. The Creator that is talked about in the Bible says that He has a plan for each person, and that it is for our good, and not for harm. [Jer. 29:11-13 NASB] He wants each person to be fulfilled and satisfied in this life. The big problem with man’s laws is that they only have the power to protect and guide us in this life only until death. God’s laws, on the other hand are designed not only for our good in this life but are de-signed to prepare us for an eternity of life in a place where there is no evil, a place we call heaven.

That is the choice. The evolutionary thought of “What will be, will be” will always eventually lead to chaos and lack of purpose in a person’s life. Evolutionary choices are, by default, there to only satisfy our lust and greed which are always short term desires that can never be completely satisfied. Greed, lust and the pride of life are never satisfied, there is always the next desire. In order to break this downward spiral that leads to death, we must make purposeful choices. Eternal choices, on the other hand, are designed to satisfy both short-term, immediate desires, and also let us focus on long-term goals that will bless us with immediate fulfillment and hope. So let’s say for a moment that you want that kind of fulfillment in your life. How do you find it? Where do you go next? Who can you trust to give you the needed instructions to keep you on the right path?

May I suggest the Creator Himself? What a concept. Go to the One who has the answers, the One who has a plan for our life. But you might ask, “If He is the Creator, Why didn’t He just create us to be robots and automatically have eternal life?” The answer is simple. God created man for an intimate fellowship. But He wants a real fellowship with us. He chose us by creating us. He now wants us to ‘choose’ Him. True love comes from choice, not demand. But why don’t we have that fellowship? Because of the topic we are discussing, CHOICE, we choose self. We demand our own way, we want to say to God “I can do it myself.” The problem we have is that sin (the infatuation with self) has separated us from the Creator, and we need to be able to get back into that fellowship.

In order to make ‘purposeful’ choices we must have both guidelines and goals which give us purpose. We have illustrated that the purpose of man is to only satisfy self while we are alive, without regard for eternity. If we think about eternal goals, then we need some input from someone who has been there (in eternity) so that we know where we are going and what we are looking forward to. We need proper instruction on ‘how’ to prepare for that eternal life. We also need to know that eternity does exist, and that it exists only in two outcomes. Eternal Life, or, eternal death. And here we are once again at the crossroad of choice, and this choice is not avoidable. Eternal life is a reward for correct choices. Eternal death is the result of either bad choices, or, the erroneous belief that there is no eternity. So who has been there, what does eternity look like and where do we get the instructions?

When we look at life today, we see wars and rumors of wars, famines, greed, corruption, murder and lies and a life filled with struggle. However, when you read the first two chapters of the Bible, along with the last two chapters in the Bible, we find that all of these problems were non-existent. When God created the universe that we know today, He created life in a perfect environment, and He created man to fellowship with Him forever. In those four chapters we get a very short, but expansive glimpse at what perfect peace looks like. So what happened? If you continue to read chapter three of the first book of the Creation (Genesis), you will find that the first man, Adam, broke the only instruction that God placed upon him, and that single instruction was to not eat the fruit of a certain tree because of the dire consequences. The arch enemy of both God and man, satan , who is a fallen angel, came and deceived Adam and Eve into believing that God’s instructions could be taken lightly, and that they had the freedom to choose, or make their own decisions. As you continue to read the Book of Genesis, you find that that one sin, or, act of disobedience, corrupted the whole bloodline of all people born of Adam and Eve with death and separation from God the Creator. And we clearly see the corruption and sinfulness and Godlessness that exists in the world today. As a matter of fact, the Bible goes on to tell us that that one act of disobedience corrupted all of creation. Now my first question after reading this was, “How could one act of sin affect all of creation?” Let me try to illustrate how one sin can have such far reaching consequences.

I like cookie dough. My wife makes the best cookie dough. She mixes oatmeal, raisins, chocolate chips and the other ingredients required to make the perfect cookie. Then she allows me to have a couple of spoons full prior to baking. What a treat. In a sense, my wife ‘created’ the perfect bowl of cookie dough, but only because she followed the instructions of mixing the right ingredients together. Now let’s say that some evil person slipped in uninvited and poured a cup of tasteless and odorless acid into the mix. The mix would still look good on the surface, but we all know how corrosive and destructive acid can be to that perfect creation of cookie dough. God, in the beginning, created the perfect mix of all that we know that is creation. No sin, no sickness, no sorrow. And along came the uninvited destroyer and introduced the acid of disobedience into creation, and without an antidote to the corrosive action of the sin of disobedience, we have no hope but death and eternal separation from God.

So where do we get this antidote? Throughout this instruction book the Bible, the Author, God, has declared that we can once again experience this perfect peace if we would only follow His instructions and be cleansed from the corrosive corruption of sin. “But”, you ask, “Where is the antidote?” To be able to answer this question, we need to regress to the cookie dough for just a minute. If you were to ingest a spoonful of that cookie dough, the acid would first start corrupting the inside, the stomach, the inner organs, and eventually start manifesting its self on the outside. We would start seeing abnormalities in behavior. We all have a vivid imagination to see this so I won’t go any farther here except to say that that is an exact picture of how sin works in our life, and also an exact picture of how this acid of sin must be removed from our life. Sin has corrupted the heart and soul of men, and we need an antidote that will change the heart and soul of men. It is no easy fix, however. It is much more than a shot in the arm. It is much more than a song and a prayer that is often taught today. It is becoming a whole new creation from the inside out, but, it is not hard, if we follow the instruction book. The antidote to fix this problem was expensive. The cost of this antidote was so great that no man could pay the cost, it took God to give His all so that we could be set free from the bondage and corruption of sin.

In the Book of John, chapter three, we find that God so loved His creation, man, that He sent His only Son to become a man, a man without any sin or corruption in him, to die and shed His blood which is the only antidote that can cleanse us from the inside out. That if we would recognize our sinful ways and see our need for a Savior, and believe on Him (Jesus Christ), that we would not perish in our sins, but that He would give us eternal Life . And even more than that, that as we confess our sins and learn to be obedient to His instructions, that He would be faithful and just to forgive us of all of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness . Now that is what I want to talk to you about, a new eternal life in Christ Jesus, a life of meaning and rewards. And if you will follow with me in the articles that will follow, we will explore this wonderful renewed relationship with God as we talk about def♦i♦ni♦tions for the Christian Life.