In the climactic scene of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Harrison Ford’s adventuring archeologist enters the secluded chamber that has long been home to the Holy Grail – the cup from which Jesus purportedly drank at the Last Supper. He has already faced and passed a trio of life-threatening tests. Suddenly his rival rushes into the room behind him. Who will get to the Grail first?
One barrier still stands in their way. The room is full of cups. The old knight who guards the Grail indicates that they must discern which is the cup of Christ. To drink from the wrong cup brings death. To drink from the Grail brings life. They must make a choice. In one of the great cinematic understatements of all time, the old knight counsels, “Choose wisely.”
What is God’s call in 2009? Choose wisely. There are consequences connected with our choices. From cover to cover the Bible talks about two paths. One is wise. The other is foolish. The first path brings life, while the second path leads to death.
Moses lays out those starkly contrasting options in one of the most celebrated texts of the Old Testament. Just as the people of Israel are preparing to enter the Promised Land, he counsels them to choose wisely: “This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life” (Deuteronomy 30:19-20).
Americans are so used to multiple choices concerning everything from dinner entrees to job opportunities to potential marriage partners that we overlook what a privilege it is – and a dangerous privilege at that – to be able to choose anything at all.
Dr. Tony Evans reminds us that choice exists because freedom exists. Freedom exists because love exists. Love exists because God exists. Why does God give us the freedom to choose, even to choose wrongly, instead of overruling our missteps and mistakes? The answer is that God genuinely loves us. Real love is never coercive or manipulative. It is always persuasive. One of the non-negotiables associated with the character of a loving God is that people made in his image possess the freedom to make meaningful choices.
But because meaningful choices have meaningful consequences, there is no getting around the fact that we must choose wisely.
Western culture of the 21st century takes a cafeteria approach to reality. An endless number of options are assumed to be valid for responding to any situation. You have your truth, and I have mine. There’s no need to fear if our respective “truths” turn out to be diametrically opposed. In the past, religions came under fire if they failed to make a case for eternal Truth. Today religions are being battered if they assert that anything is objectively true at all.
The Bible breathes an entirely different atmosphere. God presents only two options. “I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction” (Deuteronomy 30:15). There’s no gray area here. There’s no spiritual Twilight Zone. We can choose to be blessed or to be cursed.
Are we missing something here? Who in their right mind would choose to be cursed?
At this point we need to understand what the Bible means by blessing. A blessing does not come down to getting stuff from God. It is not a stack of gifts from here to the ceiling. When the Bible speaks of receiving the blessing of a gift from God, the gift turns out to be God himself. As Tony Evans puts it, “A blessing is the capacity to enjoy the goodness of God and the will of God for your life.” Being blessed, in fact, may include the absence of happy circumstances and material things of any kind.
So what is this curse that figures so prominently in Scripture? Being cursed is the inability to experience or to enjoy God’s presence. We may have roomfuls of stuff but staggeringly empty hearts. Hope and meaning elude us. Living under a curse is not a matter of being unlucky. It is the simple consequence of refusing to live in the light of God’s truth and God’s goodness.
But I don’t want to be cursed. I refuse to accept this as my life’s condition. From a biblical standpoint, that is not an option. Our choices are twofold: God or self, life or death. This is simply the way that God created the universe. As C.S. Lewis put it, “When you go against the grain of reality, you are likely to get splinters.” Choices have consequences. Refusing the condition of being blessed by God means embracing the un-blessed condition of walking apart from God.
Then I just won’t make a choice. But the bare fact of being alive means we all are compelled to choose. Significantly, no one can do this for us. We cannot hitchhike on somebody else’s faith, or ride the crest of what our family members or favorite teachers have chosen to do.
The door to a brand new year has swung open. What will you choose? God says, “I set before you today life and death, prosperity and disaster.”
Choose wisely. Choose life.
