The necessity of choice

Choice is essential. It is a ¹vital part of what gives us innate value and why we have it. Our worth and dignity are tied to our freedom to choose i.e. free choice is an essential part of our significance. Without it, we are like programmed robots who do not pursue God freely.

However, choosing disobedience (i.e. rebellious independence) with its negative consequences shows the critical importance of choosing God over attempts at being our own god. Though we are free to choose, we are ²not free from the consequences of our choice. It is through painful consequences, we hopefully learn to willingly and delightfully choose God's way - as we were designed to - over our own way i.e. the way of independence from God...the way of Adam. 

Both our free choice and our choosing the right direction are vital, i.e. we can choose whatever we wish, but that doesn't change that the consequences of our choices are according to our design. To act contrary to how God designed us is to suffer loss and bring harm to ourselves i.e. to lose God, and all that comes with knowing Him. 

Our freely choosing the right direction is God’s aim. He wants us to choose freely, but also correctly. He doesn't want us to choose to live contrary to our design, but neither does he desire us to be automatons. He lets us choose freely, even if it leads to our own destruction. But He also desires we choose correctly as well as freely. 

It is truly our choice whether we pursue God or not but our dignity and the ³greatness and strength of ¹our value – our innate worth - make this a ³difficult and ongoing process. 

After we accept his offer of restoration from our rebellion, we still must be weaned from being our own god and persuaded to freely pursue the only true God. To keep our dignity intact, God does not force or program us to choose him. It is only in freely choosing God we can truly and fully experience God's glory to the greatest extent possible, as well as our own, i.e., to experience all He intended and designed us to be. 

This process is not difficult for God but for us. Choosing to be our own god is so ³deeply and subtly bound up in our heart of rebellious distrust (unbelief), we are slow to relinquish our independence and freely submit to God in total dependence/trust - as we are designed to - even after we've been reconciled by His grace. We are slow to believe someone is wiser than us and trust He cares more about us and is better able to provide what's best for us than we can - especially when things - circumstances - look like the opposite is true.

Our challenge is we are free but also dependent at the same time - far more dependent than we are usually willing to recognize or admit. And this is the heart of our sin… refusal to admit our dependence on God for all things - even our very existence and breath itself. 

If we are brutally honest with ourselves we believe to be truly free we must be independent of God and if we are to be dependent we can no longer be free. God however knows our greatest joy - and his greatest glory in and through us - comes when we freely and delightfully (willingly) choose dependence on God and not on ourselves. Not to minimize us, but just the opposite... so we will fully be and experience all he created us to be and freely recognize God for who He truly is - the source of life, love, and all things. The irony is, when we do, we experience our greatest purpose and meaning - i.e. we are maximized - if you will - when we are most humble/ dependent; when we act according to who we are, dependent image-bearers of Almighty God. To say it as the bible does, to live we must die. 

So on the one hand we must completely have free choice to be and ¹live as the true image-bearers of God we were designed to be. Yet our will must be totally submitted to our Creator ³in order to fully display that image and experience who we are to the maximum of our design, God's greatest honor, and our greatest joy. 

Our submission to God must be done both freely and fully to experience God to the greatest extent possible and properly honor Him according to His true worth. We are created to glorify God and enjoy Him forever at the same time. Though these may be distinct and appear in opposition,  neither happens without the other, because of how God made us.

The following links are a further discussion on related matters...

We are created for glory

Does God value us?

For a further discussion on choice, click here.

Why freedom of choice is important click here

How sovereign is God? Click here. 

Giving and receiving glory

Do we have a "free" will or are we heavily influenced? Click here

The value of paradox and truths in tension click here.

The question of fairness click here.

The necessity of mercy click here.

Is the election and wrath of God unreasonable? click here.

The practical importance of God's electing grace click here

How we are free to choose yet bound, click here. 

________________________________________Footnotes:

¹The more aligned we are with God's will and design, the more we experience our truest significance and greatest joy. 

Also the more we freely choose God, the more we honor him. 

For these reasons God will not violate our choice. This is so we might gain the most out of our participation in the community of Father, Son, and Spirit i.e. our experiencing God to the maximum of the potential God created us for without our being God ourself.

²We do not live in a random world. The universe and everything in it operates by design. If we go contrary to that design we are not aligned with reality. This causes harm to others as well as ourselves.

³The level of pain and suffering we inflict upon each other is the greatest evidence that we cannot function properly as designed without being united to our Creator.

⁴Our ability to choose is at the heart of who we are and an essential part of our innate value. If we choose wrongly, the necessity and importance of having choice does not go away, but is misdirected. The challenge is our being redirected to choose correctly again.

The primary reason for this challenge is choice is so essential to our makeup, the pull of our misdirection (rebellion) is equally as strong in the wrong direction as it is in the right direction (submission). The strength of our rebellion is equally as powerful as the joy of our willful submission. To have the ability to enjoy God as great, our ability to refuse God must be equally as great.  

⁵To fully appreciate what we have, the possibility of not having it must also exist. The *absence of good makes the presence of good all the sweeter.

*or the possibility of its absence