Tough
Choices
Dr. Philip G. Ney
© 1996
As God made the world, we cannot avoid making tough choices.
God created us with limitations living in a difficult environment
so that we would; 1) love Him by choice, 2) become wiser, more
mature people, 3) have meaningful fellowship with Him. He
knows that we become mature by making hard decisions. He
did provide a guidance system which is more than adequate if we
know how to use it.
There is a hierarchy of principles that people may use to guide
them in making tough choices. God wants us to use the highest
order principles first because then we are using the freedom and
intelligence He gave us to become mature. To use lower order
principles only means that the person is slow to mature to become
the person God intended them to be. They miss out on the
sweet fellowship of Christ.
The guidance system involves the following principles, in descending
order of importance:
1)Love the Lord thy God will all thy heart, mind and strength.
If we love God, we really would not need any other principle to
guide us. We would know Him and His mind so well that we
could make wise choices every time.
2)To love thy neighbour as thyself. Love means meeting
needs, and needs are scientifically definable. Scripture
states that in these two laws all the commandments and prophetic
writings are completed. If we love the Lord, our neighbour
and ourselves we will know what to do. We know we
are doing wrong if it is not meeting the needs of our neighbour
and if it is not respecting, praising and thanking God.
3)Divine principles. Scriptures are complete with a whole
set of principles which if followed would result in wise decisions.
These include; love mercy, do justice, seek truth, feed the hungry,
judge not so you are not judged, make marriages, have children,
and properly cultivate the earth.
4)The ten commandments. These are specific dos and don'ts
which cover most situations, but also create their own difficult
choices.
5)Direction by God's Holy Spirit to individuals. If one
listens to God speaking one can be taught what to do in specific
situations. However, God doesn't often speak directly to
people, but rather waits for them to follow His principles because
then they are making their own decisions.
6)Collective Christian wisdom. This is found in; a) the
writings of Christians. Poems, hymns and plays which, if
carefully and properly perused, offer considerable understanding
of God and His ways. b) tradition. Traditional ways
of worship are well worn interpretations of Scripture and, if
understood, are of value. In themselves they create many
divisions because the traditions of one branch of the church are
so opposed to another.
7)Pastoral direction and advice. It is good if a pastor/counsellor
knows a believer and by intimate knowledge can help them make
wise choices. That is difficult because too often the pastors
are not much wiser then the sheep.
God wants us to stick with the high order of principles because
it will teach us to know him better. He allows us to regress
to lower order guidance, but He is not particularly pleased, especially
when his children wait to do anything until they are told specifically
what to do. Parents stop opening and closing doors for their
children when they are about three. After that parents become
impatient and tend to tell the children to not only open and close
their own doors, but to pick the door they wish to go in and out
of.
The high order principles God lays down in some respects are
reflected in other laws that govern the universe. Physicists
are now edging closer to one unifying law that will at least describe,
if not explain, the behaviour of all matter and energy.
God's principles are of a similar nature and coincide with the
laws of physics.
God knows the decisions we make are hard choices. We choose
between good and evil, not between right and wrong.
Because of the limitations of ourselves and the world in which
we live, we cannot avoid hurting someone with even our best choices.
If Christ was healing in one place, he wasn't in another place
where suffering was just as great. He made it clear that
the poor we would always have with us. We will never be
able to eradicate the problems that plague humanity no matter
how we try. God only can recreate the world.
God knows the limitations of living in a dying world and how
those limitations have an impact upon us. We have a knowledge
of good and evil because that is what earliest man chose.
Now it is not possible to know one without the other. It
is not possible to discover a new good that does not produce some
new wrong. There are no perfect human laws, no matter how
idealistic the legislators.
God knows the limitations of our strength and faith, but He wants
us to keep trying so our faith will grow. God makes allowances
for our humanity. He created us and understands our biology.
He knows our biological instincts and makes allowances for them:
1)Hunger. David broke the law and the tradition of the
Israelites by eating the Holy Bread of the Presents because he
was hungry. Jesus' disciples harvested grain on the Sabbath.
Although in both instances they were breaking the law, Jesus knew
that hunger is an important drive. When we are hungry it
is more important to eat than obey a religious law. This
implies the principle of life is higher than strict adherence
to a commandment.
2)Sex. Sex is the strongest drive and invariably gets people
into all kinds of problems. God allowed divorce when; a)
marriage is not consummated, that is, when they are not getting
any sex. b) adultery occurs, when a man becomes married to someone
else's wife. God allowed a man to have more than one wife,
if he could keep them both satisfied. Abraham, David, Isaiah
and other major friends of God all had more than one wife.
c) Paul writes about the permission to marry to contain one's
passions, namely one's sex drive.
3)The need to survive. God understands our difficulties
in contending in a world with thorns and thistles. Therefore
He permitted people to pull a donkey out of the ditch on the Sabbath,
even though it was against the law to work then.
One of the toughest decisions that any woman must make is what
to do with her unexpected or unwanted pregnancy. Generally
she is confronted with three possible choices: abortion,
adoption, or raising the child on her own. All three are
sometimes very unpalatable. Unfortunately, as in many other
instances, people are forced into making very difficult decisions
only because they are not aware of the full range of options.
There are many other possibilities, including: the woman and her
child being fostered by a family; or spending time in a carefully
run home for a number of women in the same situation where they
can raise their children under the guidance of kindly people and
at the same time continue to pursue their education or career
until they have found themselves a suitable supportive mate.
Most people are forced into making decisions limited by their
awareness of their own sub-conscious mind which often drives them
into choices that are repeats of previous tragedies. The
Bible continually encourages people to gain insight with greater
awareness of why and how they think. People can make wise
choices, especially those based on the higher principles.
We will never be free of having to make tough decisions, but
God expects it to be that way. After all, as Paul points
out, we will be expected to judge the angels in Heaven.
How could you become a wise judge without first having learned
to make difficult judgements?
