Reflection This Week
MAKING CHOICES

Sound-byte theology, this desire to reduce complex theological dogma to short and simple statements, is nothing new. Somewhere in my storage bins there is a box of posters I collected back in the sixties with short, pithy statements that tries to convey a deeper spiritual reality. One poster shows an obviously poor child with the caption, “God made me. God doesn’t make junk.” That statement with that photo says it all but it only begins to convey the depth of what is being asserted.

   One of my favorites was a large yellowish poster with the philosophical opining of one Harvey Cox, who was then on the faculty of one of the Ivy League universities: “Not to decide is to decide,” Cox reminds us. If our choice is to not make a decision about something, we have made a choice to live with what is rather than what might be were we to decide to choose one or the other, whatever that one or the other may happen to be. We have chosen to live with the status quo.

   On the other hand, to make a decision is to eliminate all other options. Deciding not to purchase a new automobile means that the one I have will suffice for the time being. To decide to purchase this particular car with its options means that I have eliminated all other models with all their options. There are times when we choose not to decide because the options in front of us are so many that it is easier to live with what is than to make a decision and wonder if it was the correct one.

   Would that it were all that simple. Making choices, making decisions, as easy as that may sometimes seem to be – the seemingly no-brainer variety – may not ever be such. Every decision we make, every choice we opt for, even the ones to do nothing, each and every one has consequences, often, nay always, unforeseen consequences. Perhaps we truly understand that fact of life and perhaps that is why we are often reluctant to make a decision either that seems too easy on the one hand or one that is difficult but must be made on the other.

   The truth is that the decision to decide is always more difficult to make than the decision to pass for the time being. Yes, we can change our mind and finally make a decision or change our mind later after we discover we have made the wrong choice, but not always. Sometimes it is too late. In the meantime, however, no matter what we decide, we have to live with the choice we have made and we have to live with it and live in to it with the best of our ability.

   We cannot go into a marriage, for instance, with the up-front thought that if this doesn’t work out, we can always get out of it and try again. That is a sure and certain guarantee that one is both making the wrong decision and that disaster is impending. Making choices is often difficult because we want it all: we want the perfect spouse, the perfect house, the perfect job, the perfect children even as we are unable to define what we mean by “perfect”.

   When we make a decision, choose one over the other or over countless others, we have to believe we have made the very best choice for us at that moment in time and then live with that decision, not looking back, not second-guessing, not looking for a way out. That means that before we make a decision, we had better understand as best we can, what that decision will mean and the consequences for our lives – including and especially, in our decision to follow Jesus. Jesus demands that of us. We should demand no less from ourselves.

   That is sound-byte, poster theology, to be sure, but it is also the truth.   WJP