For everyone, life is a continuum of choices from beginning to end in every situation we face, even as little children. If we were to count the decisions we make on a day-to-day basis, we would probably be shocked at the number of choices we make. Some choices are made for us, for example, a mother dressing her 3-year-old toddler may not give the child a choice about what pair of socks the child would wear that day. But for the most part we make choices only for ourselves. This is what it means to have free will. To say that God creates us with a free will is no great mystery at all. It is common sense. That is why people cherish freedom. The United States constitution was based on the ideal of freedom, although the way our government has become so desperately corrupted over the years, it feels much less free now.
Some people have better circumstances that others. Some people are born into rich families, some people are born into poor families. Some people are born in countries where freedom and self-autonomy are more highly valued. Some people are born into totalitarian countries that offer very little personal freedom at all. These circumstances have nothing to do with our individual choices. We can make positive, life-giving choices, or bad, destructive choices regardless of our circumstances. People in very bad circumstances, people born into poverty, people born in war ravaged countries, or simply bad families, people born to bad, abusive parents, can make good, live-giving choices. People born into very good circumstances, wealthy families that can provide all their wants and needs, people born in countries where freedom and self-autonomy are valued, people with loving and caring parents who purposefully teach them right from wrong, can make very bad, destructive choices. Contrary to popular belief, we are not merely victims of our circumstances, and of our past. We are victims of nothing but our own choices.
We can’t blame our circumstances. We can’t blame others. We all choose our own eternal destinies. We have no one to blame but ourselves. If we are going the wrong way, there is always the possibility of changing course (direction.) The Biblical word for this is repentance. We often think of repentance as sorrow and remorse for our actions. It most certainly is not. Sorrow and remorse for out actions can lead to repentance, but it is not in itself repentance. (The scripture states “GODLY sorrow LEADS to repentance”.) If I kick my dog every time he pees in the floor, then feel terrible for hurting “man’s best friend”, I have not repented until I stop kicking my dog. My actions must change, not just my feelings. Feeling remorse for bad actions and decisions accomplishes nothing without a change in behavior.
Anyone can change at any time. It is a choice. No one’s fate is sealed. The Calvinistic idea of some people being chosen or predestined for salvation, and some people being predestined for damnation is rubbish. This notion obliterates free will and self-determination. It turns mankind into puppets to serve God’s pleasure. God DOES choose specific people for specific tasks to accomplish His purposes, as he chose the Israelites to bring forth His moral law to mankind, and the lineage of Israel to bring forth the Messiah. It is up to the individuals to choose to obey or disobey God in bringing about His will. His will will be done regardless of whether we obey or not. We can choose to disobey and shipwreck our own lives, but God’s determined will will be accomplished one way or another. We can choose to obey and be part of the process, or we can disobey and be thrown onto the trash heap of history. Heaven or Hell are the end results of our cumulative choices. But our choices can change. Any choice we make at any point can continue or change the trajectory of our lives for good or evil. Nothing is predetermined in the sense that we are powerless to change it.
This is the whole point of Genesis 3. God created man and put him in the perfect environment. He wanted for nothing. Every need was met. His environment was perfectly suited to meet his every legitimate need. Nothing was lacking. In our current world, we can’t even begin to imagine such a life. It seems like most of our lives are a struggle in one way or another. But our story did not begin this way. God put man in an ideal situation. He even gave him a mate. He gave him free-will and only prohibited one thing, the eating of fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This represents self-will. In essence, by eating from that fruit, man is saying to God, “I will determine for myself what is right and wrong. I will determine my own law. I will determine my own moral code. We do not need You imposing Your law on us. We will do as we please.” We only need a cursory understanding of world history to see how pitifully this has played out in human history. Nations rise, nations fall, wars are fought endlessly, genocide destroys whole people groups. The list goes on and on.
Genesis 3 completely debunks the notion that we are products of our environment and/or upbringing. It debunks the notion that we are enslaved to cultural oppression and social injustice.
Consider the following:
- Adam and Eve had no parents, no ancestors, no dysfunctional family whatsoever, no bad parenting to blame, no nagging mother-in-law, no worrisome kids (yet!) NOTTA!
- They had no cultural influences to blame (except the snake), There was no one else, no nagging neighbors, no faulty education system, no crooked government, again NOTTA! The only voice they had ever heard, other than each other, and then the snake Satan used, was GOD who does not lie. I would have to assume that up until this point, they never lied to each other. Sin had not entered the picture yet, so there was no motivation for them to lie to each other.
- They lived in the perfect environment. No bad weather to complain about, no socio-economic stress, no fake-news media, no corruption through sin poisoned music and art.
There was no reason whatsoever for them to choose wrongly, but they did. A very strange thing happened. A liar enters the picture. No matter how good your life is, a liar will always come along. I had a friend who needed a place to live temporarily. He had had a problem with drug abuse, but he had gone through drug rehabilitation, and the place where he could afford to move was low-income housing. He said he was afraid that there would be people there who either abused drugs or sold them. I told him it did not matter where he lived. He had to fight the battle. If he was predisposed to abuse drugs, it would not matter if he lived in a $5000 a month penthouse suite, Satan’s minions would find him and offer him drugs. A liar will always enter the picture.
As far as we know, up to this point Satan had never spoken to them. Granted, that is speculation on my part. The Scripture does not say one way or another. Perhaps Satan had spoken to them more subtly. Maybe that is why the woman did not think it strange that a creature was speaking to her. Maybe before the fall, humans could converse with animals. I do not know. I am just speculating. Satan speaks to the woman and contradicts what God said. She immediately chooses to believe the very first lie from Satan over the voice of God, who had never lied to them! WHY? It is absolutely staggering! To me, it makes absolutely no sense! Suppose you had a best friend whom you always trusted. You confide in them. They confide in you. They have always been a loyal friend you know you can trust. Then someone you have never met before comes along and calls them a liar and contradicts everything your best friend has ever told you. Why would anyone in their right mind choose to believe the liar? It was a deliberate act of free-will choice to believe the lie, and Adam shares in the guilt by just doing what his wife tells him, with no questions asked!
One thing we do not read about in Genesis 3 is repentance. Nothing is recorded for us about Adam or Eve begging for God’s mercy or seeking to change their actions. However, God does make His own promise of redemption and restoration. To the serpent He says this: And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.” This is the first promise of the coming Messiah, the One who would win the battle for mankind over the devil. The devil will continue to attack, but Messiah will win the ultimate battle for mankind over good and evil.
There are many other Scriptures that iterate we are all responsible for our own actions and choices, and the Scripture rules out the option for us to blame anyone else for our own free-will choices:
Romans 14:10-12: You, then, why do you judge your brother or sister? Or why do you treat them with contempt? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat. It is written: “As surely as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘every knee will bow before Me; every tongue will acknowledge God. So then, each of us will give an account of ourselves to God.
Ezekiel 18:28: The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.
Galatians 6:7-8: Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.
There are many other examples, but for the sake of brevity I will leave it at that. C.S. Lewis said, “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.’ All that are in hell choose it. Without that self-choice, there would be no hell.”
I believe that we have this wrong idea that hell is a place that God created to punish the wicked, the burning lake of fire where sinners go when they die. The Genesis account of creation informs us that everything God created was very good. He was pleased when He saw it and declared it good. Hell is not good, so obviously God did not create it. Hell is made by lost men and lost angels because they rebel against God. We create hell by our rebellious choices. Hell is the culmination of lost humanity, and the rebellious angels who followed Lucifer, rebelling against God. The burning lake of fire is the climax of this, total destruction of this evil world system. Men remain forever alive in this hell they created for themselves. All our life choices put us on the trajectory of glory or damnation. That destiny is not predetermined by God. He knows who will be saved and who will be lost, because He sees and knows all time. He is over time, He sees the beginning to the end, but that does not mean that He wills or determines it. This is a hard concept for humans to understand because, as humans, we live our lives within the constraints of space and time. God’s existence is not like this at all. He created the constraints of space and time, but He lives outside of it.
This life trajectory to hell can be changed at anytime in our lives by repentance (changing course), and turning to Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, the One who died and rose again to take our sin upon Himself and pay the price of our guilt. Redemption is offered to all, not those whom God has “pre-selected”. Most will not accept the offer. Jesus Himself said, “Many are called, few are chosen.” Human history is in the process of creating destruction and chaos. The end result will be hell. We are creating hell. It is not something God created.
We have touched on the idea of sowing and reaping in Galatians. Again, there are many other Scriptures that address the idea of sowing and reaping. I recommend you do a word study in your concordance when time permits. The chapter from Galatians goes on to say, “And let us not grow weary when doing good, for in due time we shall reap if we do not lose heart.” We must understand that this is the culmination of life. Often we do not immediately reap good if we sow good. It takes time. Sometimes things may seem to get worse for a while, especially for new Christians. Any new Christian must understand if they have spent all their life living for the Devil up to the time they repent and give their life to Jesus Christ, they become a target for the attacks of Satan. Leading new converts to believe otherwise would do them a great disservice. They should be taught what to expect, not mislead with the promise of immediate blessing and ease. Doing good and expecting immediate results is as foolish as investing in the stock market, and then immediately checking your account balance the next day, and deciding to bail out if there is a slight dip. This is not the way the stock market works, and it is not the way our spiritual life works. We are in it for the long haul, the long game as the saying goes. Just as a man and a woman invest in their marriage. They enter into the covenant of marriage “for better, or for worse, in riches, and in poverty, in sickness and in health.” They are in it for the long haul, not to bail out and get divorced the minute they run into some snags in their life.
People say foolish things like, “Well I tried Christianity and it didn’t work. Things in my life got worse, so I gave up.” There was a slogan that used to appear on T-shirts, bumper stickers, etc., years ago that simply said “Try God.” Sounds like an advertisement for a product. God does not call us to “try” Him for a little while and see if He works out for us. He calls us to OBEY Him and His commandments. He calls us to walk, all our lives in the knowledge of the saving Gospel and share it with a dying world. Jesus said, “Any man who seeks to save his life, (making this life work for our benefit so this life can better and easier) will lose it, and any man who loses his life for the sake of the Gospel (living life for God and serving HIS purposes) will gain it.” This life we live right now in this mortal flesh does not belong to us. It belongs to God, the giver of life, and He can take it away. It is not up to us. He does whatever He wills with what is His. He made it and He can destroy it.
We do not talk this way, (“I tried God and it didn’t work”) about other things that are important to us in life. We don’t “try” parenting and just give up if our kids are disobedient and difficult. We don’t “try” marriage and just go straight to divorce court when money gets tight or disagreements arise. We learn to work things out. We don’t invest all our energy, time and money into a business, and just give up and quit if the first year’s profits aren’t out the roof. All that is foolishness. Why do we speak about the most important thing, the salvation of our eternal souls in such a foolish and flippant manner? I will never advise anyone to “try God or Christianity” for a little while and see how it goes. “Take ‘er out for a spin and see whatcha think!”
Our choices are based on our beliefs. There is no way around that. I take issue with Christians, or people of other faiths being referred to as “believers”. We refer to people of faith as “believers” and atheists as “nonbelievers”. The truth is there is no such thing as a “nonbeliever”. Everyone believes something. It is impossible not to. I like the way Ray Comfort (a well-known street evangelist and founder of Living Waters ministry) corners people on the street by asking them if they believe in God. Most people he encounters give him an emphatic “NO”. Then the same people usually say something like, “I believe in evolution” when he asks them why they do not believe in God. Then he states it back to them, “So you “believe” in evolution?” They have chosen to believe in something they can’t explain or prove, the same accusation they bring against Christians. What you choose to believe is the foundation for how you interpret life.
Everyone, at some point in their life, encounters a basic set of internal questions we all wrestle with: Where do I come from? Where do we come from? Who am I? Why do I even exist at all? What is the meaning of life? How did the world and the cosmos we live in come from? What do I believe to be true? Why do I believe what I believe? (That one is difficult for a lot of people to answer.) Why is there so much pain and suffering in the world? Why do I struggle to do what I believe to be right? Where is my life going? Where is humanity going? What gives me hope and peace? Life needs to have meaning. That yearning seems to be built into us, and we can’t seem to get away from it. Even though life may seem meaningless and purposeless at times, I do not believe people desire that.
If you ask most people on the street what they want out of life, people will say things like “I want to have a family, or a good job, or material prosperity and not have to worry about money, things like that, or I just want to have fun and adventure.” Some people think that having as many sexual experiences as they can is what will make them happy. Some people think the perfect house that meets all their desires will make them happy. The list goes on and on. The ironic thing is that most of the time if people get these things, unless there is some fundamental basic core of beliefs about the meaning of life, obtaining these things may bring them temporary distraction and pleasure, but it never truly satisfies the deep yearning of the soul.
The reason that this is, is because at the core of our being, we are a soul, not simply a biological body that lives and dies like an animal. Souls are eternal. We yearn for eternity. We yearn for our lives to have some lasting impact or meaning. Listen to these words from the writer of Ecclesiastes:
“What do workers gain from their toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God.”
It is good for us to learn to enjoy, not simply endure, our work. No matter what your job is, do it to the glory of God. This brings God pleasure.
When God created the first man and formed him from the earth, He breathed into him the breath of life, and man became a living soul. Genesis 2:7: Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being (soul in some translations).
Since we were formed from the breath of God, a soul is eternal. We have the breath of God in us as a living soul. The breath of God is eternal. Consequently, our souls are eternal. We were made in the image and likeness of God, but when Adam and Eve chose to disobey God, the image of God within them was marred, and they passed that distortion to all their offspring (every living soul.) That means we are born with a bend to disobey God and sin. But that can be changed. When you repent of your sins and confess Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and obey God’s commandments, God breaths His breath back into you again, and you are reborn. Nothing changes in your physical appearance on the outside. No one can see a difference physically. The Scripture says, “If any man is in Christ Jesus, he is a new creation.” God recreates us from the inside out and restores His image in us. That is what it means to be “born again.”
Each choice me make either puts us closer to God, and His eternal Kingdom, the restored Creation, or closer to hell, an eternity, cast away from the presence of God, the source of everything good, right, pure and holy. You are the one that makes that choice. With each wrong choice, you are one step closer.
What is your choice? You are in control of that. If you choose to reject God, you have no one to blame but yourself.
Danny's Stump 