Everything is about choice. Everything I do demands that I make a choice. I had a fascinating revelation on my bike ride home this evening. I was riding along and had this sudden thought that my faith in God essentially boils down to choice. I have the free will to choose what to believe. I can, at a whim, choose not to. Or I can choose to. It is up to me.
And yet, God designed this world around bringing me to this exact point, just as I am. An atom in the wrong place at the point of creation of this universe, and the Earth may not have even existed. Any number of minor events could have gone differently, and I would not be here right now, in my house with my family, sitting at my computer typing this message. Three months ago, I might have made a different choice, resulting in me typing something completely different. And yet God created this universe in his design, arranging the creation of the universe in such a way that I would make the choices that I have.
So I was riding home having this fascinating thought about faith being a choice. I was struck by the way recent events have urged me towards where I am today. Fifteen or so years ago, I took a stand against faith. All of it could be explained away, and God was not a necessary component to life. I lived a lie, attending church, pretending. Did anybody notice? I doubt it. Three months ago, an event prompted me to choose to make a particular confession to my wife. Upon making this confession, I discovered that my lack of faith was not so much because God did not exist, but was because I had deliberately pushed him away. I had chosen to accept guilt rather than God. Since then, I have never so powerfully felt the presence of God. My faith revived from nothing, less than nothing (if such a thing were possible).
Two weeks ago, one of my friends took a deliberate stand _against_ their faith. Since that moment, I’ve felt compelled to research and increase my understanding of God. These became things that I NEEDED to do. I also discovered that a number of friends have been struggling in exactly the same ways that I had been for the last fifteen years. Logic. Reasoning. Argument. God could be argued away.
Two days ago, my leg was hurting me such that I could barely walk, such that I feared I had severely damaged something during my last run. That night, I prayed my sincere first prayer in fifteen years. I prayed for faith, I prayed for relief for my leg, and I prayed for knowledge. In the morning, the pain was gone – replaced by a slight tightness, a dull memory of the previous night’s pain. While not necessarily a significant event by itself, it is significant to me given my recent experiences.
Tonight, as I was riding home, I had this revelation about choice. I questioned whether or not my CHOOSING to accept God’s love was WORTH the pain and suffering that other people had to go through to get me here – for I have to admit that the only reason I am here typing this now is that others went through hardship, others turned away from God, and still others had to live with my lies. Without any of these things, I wouldn’t have been here, now, doing what I’m doing.
I received an answer to my question in the form of a memory. Several months ago, a counsellor looked at me and told me, straight up, that my greatest fear is that of not being worth anything, of being seen to be inferior. They told me that I need not fear, because God created me and that gives me significance. At the time, that was but a minor thing to me. When viewed in conjunction with my question, I received my answer – I am worth EVERYTHING to God. God planned my creation even as he set in motion the creation of this universe. God knows everything I would ever choose to do given any situation and any set of circumstances… and he chose to create THIS world, this world where I was riding home in the dark asking a simple question. I have significance and worth beyond what I can personally generate. And I can choose to love him for that.
Tonight, I can say that I am a Christian. I can no longer deny that God exists. I can no longer deny that God loves me. I spoke these words out loud. I made a decision to love God and accept his love for me. And the most remarkable part to me – not even two seconds after I finished speaking those words, it started raining, pelting down. Yes, I got thoroughly soaked. Apart from that, I was struck by the KNOWLEDGE that the God had created the world in such a way that I would be riding home tonight (after leaving slightly late due to replying to a theological discussion with the friend mentioned above), asking a particular question, receiving a relevant answer, making my declaration, and having the skies open up on me at the exact moment I finished that declaration… and I cried.
Sure, call it all a coincidence. I know some people will. Yet I will choose to believe. Nothing can compare to my personal experience. No logic or reasoning can account for a personal revelation of God. It can be explained away as being a delusion of my mind, my mind’s attempt to draw meaning from a sequence of coincidences.
And yet, I have a choice.