Our society seems full of people who refuse to choose. We put it off; hoping someone else will take the responsibility of making the decision. Thus are we able to comply or complain. Keeping our options open is always the preferred path. Heaven forbid that anyone should hurt anybody else.
If the choice should come to a ethical issue, choosing what is right too often gives way to that which is easy. Choosing what is right often involves moral judgment, even if it be between the lesser of two evils. Doing what is right can bring criticism and condemnation from any and all who disagree with our idea of what right is. [… and where do we get our ideas of right and wrong, anyway?] We can be viewed as narrow-minded, intolerant, “conservative” (never liberal, by the way), dogmatic, and certainly as prejudicial. God forgive us for actually believing humanity has an innate moral consciousness that underlies our ethical sensitivities, religious beliefs, and public actions.
If you’ve lived long enough you well know that all choices have consequences, one way or another. Some choices are life threatening; most are not quite. Whatever choices we make, right, or easy, they add up to forge our path in life with all its blessings and/or curses. That’s just the way it is.
I end with a poem by Robert Frost (1874-1963), to remind us all of our intrinsic responsibility to choose wisely.
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost
Did I mention that not to choose is also a choice? Easier? Maybe. You cannot just sit there.
Have a nice journey,
Gary
Clueless Christianity 