A Fundamental Choice

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." (C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce)

 

Over the past couple of months I've been pondering something.  Hopefully I can articulate it well enough to get across something helpful and not just state the bleedin' obvious!

It occurs to me that, in how we live our life, and particularly how we relate to spiritual questions, there is a fundamental choice at the start. We either: (1) seek to find out what God wants from us, or (2) we do whatever we want. Beyond this choice there are others along the way about how we live our lives, how we make decisions, life plans, morals, doing what is best, interactions with others, etc. But I think this first and fundamental choice sets the tone and direction for a whole bunch of decisions down the road.

Maybe that's plain and obvious to the reader but I think that often we don't think about this enough. It's really getting to the core motivation for your life. Do you want to live to please God, or to please yourself? If you don't consider this choice then I think there are many dangers. You can do the right things for the wrong reasons, or you can drift through life not thinking too deeply about anything at all. This doesn't mean you get it right or wrong. It doesn't make you better or worse in the final analysis, but it does set your mind and your will in a particular direction.

As you'd expect, the Bible has a lot to say about seeking God and the wisdom in doing so in order to plot a good path for your life, or the dangers of neglecting to seek God. I could share with you a whole pile of references, but I want to give just this one:

In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. (Judges 21:25)

Out of context this verse seems innocuous and maybe ambivalent about seeking God or not.  So what if everyone did what they thought was right? But this is the final verse in the book of Judges which lays out the story of how the young nation of Israel gradually turned away from seeking God and in the end "everyone did what was right in his own eyes." In other words, and in blunt terms, they turned their back on God and did whatever they wanted. After all they'd been through as a nation, and despite all the times God had helped them and restored them, their default was to fall back to just doing whatever they wanted, ignoring God and pleasing themselves.

It's not hard to see the parallels with modern Western ideas and attitudes. There seems to be an inexorable shift away from thinking about what is right or wrong in the eyes of God, and more and more consideration for individual preferences and proclivities or self-serving ideologies that ignore the needs of others. I'm writing this blog during an election year in the US, so I don't throw fuel on the fire by naming specifics. For sure I could easily pick a side and throw some stones at the other, but that would miss the point of what I'm trying to convey here.  Ultimately we need to get back to the question of whether we're seeking to please God or please ourselves (or our political party).

I just finished reading a very intriguing book by a fellow Brit called Peter Jones with the title "One or Two: Seeing a World of Difference." Some of his initial statements are quite bold such as stating that there are really only two religions, but he backs them with convincing arguments and astute observations from history and current trends. The backbone of his observations is based on Romans 1 where the apostle Paul says "For although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking and darkened in their foolish hearts." He then goes on to unpack why a whole bunch of current ideas and movements are antithetical to God and are essentially us turning away from Him to worship creation or worship ourselves who are part of creation. It's a very thought-provoking book and I recommend it highly. (If you prefer videos rather than books you can watch his lecture series here instead.)

So, making this personal, what are we to do? I think it boils down to our choice to either seek God or not.  We either try to figure out what He wants and pursue it, or we just do what we want and try to ignore Him.

What do you think?