WHAT CAN YOU CHOOSE?

Can you imagine what your life would be like if you had no capacity to choose? There would be no joy, no purpose, no meaning, and no love. But what would it look like if everything anyone chose became a reality? What if your next-door neighbor chooses to put a large pile of trash in your other neighbor’s yard and “poof!” it happens? And then your other neighbor chooses to have your next-door neighbor not exist anymore and “poof!” they are gone? If you see this happening enough, your safest option is to choose for everyone else to not exist so they can’t do the same to you. Then you can choose to have a bunch of robots around you doing things for you. These robots won’t have the capacity to choose, so they can’t choose you out of existence. I know this is a completely ridiculous scenario, but it highlights an important point about choice. Choice doesn’t create anything. It only selects from what is already available. 

What are the limits of choice? Are there things that you have no choice for? Indeed, there are. You cannot choose what you are. You cannot choose where you came from. You cannot choose what components you are made of. You cannot choose how you function. You cannot choose what you need or don’t need. You cannot choose the laws by which you exist and operate. All of these are fixed, and you cannot change them by choice. 

So, what is choice? And how does it work? In exploring these questions, let me ask you some more questions. Do you make a choice before or after you are presented with information? You always make a choice after you are presented with information. Do you make a choice before or after you evaluate that information? You always make a choice after you evaluate the information. You are first presented with the information, then you must evaluate that information, and then you make a choice or decision based upon the evaluation of that information. Information  evaluation  choice.

You and I were created to function properly, and for us to function properly, each component must be in the correct place and in the correct order. Truth is information that puts things in their correct place and order so that they function. Error is information that puts things in the wrong place and order so that they dysfunction or don’t function. If we take and use all information that comes to us, then when we are presented with truth, we will take it, use it, and function by it—or when we are presented with error, we will take it, use it, and dysfunction by it—without any ability to do otherwise. Thankfully this is not the case. You and I were created with the ability to evaluate information to determine if it is true or not. And we were created to only take into ourselves and use what we believe to be the truth. 

When information is presented to us, we evaluate that information to determine if it is true or not. Only after we determine that the information is true do we take it into ourselves and operate by it. If we determine that the information is false, we do not take it into ourselves and operate by it. But what is needed for us to determine if the information is true or not? We need a standard that we can compare the information to and determine whether it fits or it doesn’t fit. What standard we use is vastly important. If we have a completely wrong standard, we will take the truth, believe it to be error and reject it, and we will take the error, believe it to be the truth and accept it. If we have a mixed standard, we will take some truth and reject it as error, and some error and accept it as truth. It is only when we have a perfect standard that we will take all truth, accept it as truth and operate by it, and take all error and reject it as error and not operate by it. 

What is the perfect standard? It is the law of God (love for God—which is taking everything you need from Him as your only Source, and love for your neighbor—which is freely giving to them what you took from God). When the law of God is the standard that we use to evaluate all information, then we will accept all truth as truth and live by it, and we will reject all error as error and not live by it. The result will be that everything inside of us functions correctly, because the truth produces proper function. Unfortunately, we were born with sinful nature which does not have the law of God as our standard. What is our standard?

Everyone develops a picture of how they believe things to be. This picture is made up of the information that came to them from the ones they trusted, including parents, siblings, family members, friends, teachers, church, media, etc. This picture is their worldview. New information is compared to the worldview to see if it fits the picture or not. If the new information contradicts the worldview, it is rejected. If we aren’t sure how the new information fits, it may go into the “let’s think about this later” pile. And if it fits with the worldview, it is accepted and added to the picture. 

Since this worldview came from people, and people are not perfect, the worldview is not perfect. It is a bad standard. How bad of a standard is it? It is completely backward, upside down, and wrong. This is because human nature is completely backward, upside down, and wrong. 

The Bible tells us, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?” Jeremiah 17:9. “The whole head is sick, And the whole heart faints.” Isaiah 1:5. “But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; we all fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.” Isaiah 64:6. “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” Isaiah 5:20. “you say, ‘I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing’—and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked.” Revelation 3:17. “I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.” Psalm 51:5. Since the fall of Adam and Eve, everyone has been born with sinful nature, and that sinful nature is completely backward, upside down, and wrong. It is a bad tree that cannot produce good fruit. It is a dirty spring that cannot produce clean water. 

But we think our worldview is a good standard, and we use it to evaluate all information, including the Bible. Because we develop our worldview before we learn to read, we always interpret the Bible and other written or spoken works by the standard of our worldview. And because worldview is wrong, our interpretation of the Bible is wrong. Hence, there are thousands of denominations, and contradictory beliefs based upon the same Bible. It isn’t a problem with the Bible. It is a problem with our worldview—the standard we use to interpret the Bible. 

What identity and nature you have determines what standard you use to evaluate information with. If you are a child of God, you will take God’s law as your standard, evaluate all information by that standard, and correctly accept truth and reject error, and make choices based upon the truth. Information  correct identity/nature  right evaluation/standard  right choice. If you, the creature, believe you are god, then you will take yourself (your worldview) as your standard, evaluate all information by that standard, accept error and reject the truth, and make choices based upon error. Information  wrong identity/nature  wrong evaluation/standard  wrong choice. As you can see, your nature or identity determines what choices you make. 

Sinful nature is motivated by selfishness and pride, and has access to deceit, abuse, addictions, manipulation, coercion, force, threats, sin, infidelity, distrust, gossip, theft, coveting, harshness, indifference, self-pity, impatience, cruelty, hypocrisy, etc. When you have sinful nature, you can choose amongst these options. You can choose to do things that appear to be good, but you can only do them for selfish reasons. Hence, all of your “righteousnesses are like filthy rags.” Isaiah 64:6. But when you are under pressure, when things surprise you or don’t go the way you want them to, when you are treated unjustly, etc., you cannot help but obviously respond in harmony with your sinful nature. You will evaluate everything according to your wrong standard, come to wrong conclusions and make wrong choices. Your choices are determined by your nature. 

Unfallen nature is motivated by unselfishness and humility, and has access to honesty, compassion, self-control, freedom, goodness, courage, peace, righteousness, humility, faithfulness, trust, honor, respect, contentment, gentleness, caring, sympathy, patience, kindness, genuineness, etc. When you have unfallen nature, you can choose amongst these options. You can do things that are truly good, and you can do them for unselfish reasons. When you are put under pressure, when things surprise you, don’t go well around you, you are treated unjustly, etc., you will respond in harmony with your loving, unfallen nature, just like Jesus did. You will evaluate everything according to the right standard, come to correct conclusions, and make right choices. Your choices are determined by your nature. 

Let us look at it another way. Imagine with me a prison with prisoners in it. Every prisoner in this prison was born in the prison and has a life sentence without hope of parole. Do the prisoners have choices? Yes, they do. Their choices are restricted, but they have choices. But where do they have choices? They only have choices inside the prison. They have no choices outside the prison. As a prisoner, you only have choices inside your prison, not outside of it. A free person has choices outside the prison. A prisoner does not. 

Now, imagine that this is a prison, not of murder, but of hatred. This is a prison, not of rape, but of lust. This is a prison, not of theft, but of greed. This is a prison, not of forgery, but of dishonesty. This is a prison, not of actions, but of motivations. This is a prison, not of criminals who committed crime with their body, but of sinners who committed sin with their mind. This is a prison, not of walls and razor wire, but of sinful nature and its slavery to sin. To set a prisoner free from this prison, you must set their mind free from the very nature of a prisoner, so that when they step foot outside the prison, the nature of the prisoner has been replaced with the nature of a free person. The sinful nature has been replaced with the unfallen nature. Now, they can live as a free person in a free society with the freedom to make free choices outside of the prison, and never again threaten that free society with the mindset of a prisoner. A prisoner in this prison can never “choose” their way out of their prison. They can never “try” their way out of their prison. They can never “good behavior” their way out of their prison. They can never “force” their way out of their prison. There is nothing that they can do with their own capacities to get themselves out of their prison, for it is their very nature that holds them in slavery to sin—in slavery to selfish motivations—in that prison. In our sinful nature we can never do the right thing for the right reason. Our “good” choices are always tainted by wrong (selfish) motives, and our real nature reveals itself when we are tested and tried. It is an impossible situation with apparently no solution. But where man could find no way out, God created a way. 

As a prisoner in a prison with a life sentence, you cannot get out of prison by simply choosing to get out of prison. You can never be free by any effort of your own. You can only go free if someone intervenes on your behalf. We are prisoners of sinful nature, and we have no way to get out of our prison on our own. The only way we can be free is if someone intervenes on our behalf. But before we look at the specifics of that intervention, we need to look a little closer at the different capacities of the mind, and how they work together to make a decision. 

Everything in creation operates according to the fundamental law of nature, the Law of Life, which is taking to give. Even your mind operates according to this law. Your mind cannot produce any information itself. It can only bring in (take) the information, use it, and then do something with that information (give). As we were made to govern ourselves, we were created so that the information we need cannot be forced into us. Only we can reach out for it and bring it into ourselves. But how do we reach out for it and bring it into ourselves? It is by faith. 

Faith is the capacity of your mind that reaches out for the spiritual information you need and brings it into yourself. But, before you can bring information into yourself by faith, you must first bind yourself to the source of that information by trust. So, what determines what source you bind to? It isn’t your will, your reason, your heart, your intellect, your conscience, or your imagination. It is your identity. 

When I mention your identity, I don’t mean what answer you would put on a test if you were asked the question, “Who are you?” Your identity is what drives your self-government. It determines how you relate to God, whether you take from Him as your source or not. It is how you view yourself in relation to God and others, and it drives how you relate to them. You can consciously answer on a test, “I am a child of God,” and at the same time live and respond in a way that is in harmony with the false identity that I am a god.

If your identity is that you are a child of God, you will automatically bind yourself to God as your source, and then by faith you will take into yourself the information that comes from Him. You will have His standard of evaluation (His law) as your standard, and your conscience, reason, intellect, imagination, and heart will evaluate all things correctly according to that law. As a result, your will then takes the conclusion of that evaluation process and decides what good you are going to do or evil you are going to avoid, and it puts (gives) that decision into the body, which will then act according to the decision. 

As you can see, your will, or choice, is at the end of the channel. It takes the information that has already been evaluated and puts it into action. If you have the correct identity, you have the correct source and the correct standard; therefore you will make the correct decisions. You are free to choose and do the good, but you are not free to choose and do the evil. 

If your identity is that you are a god, you will automatically cut yourself off from God as your source. In turn, you will bind yourself to Satan and others as your source. Then by faith you will take into yourself the information that comes from Satan and others. As a god, you will make yourself the reference point, and you will take your own worldview (which is built upon Satan’s perspective) as your standard. Now, you will use your worldview as the standard for your conscience, reason, intellect, imagination, and heart. Your will then takes the conclusion of that wrong evaluation process and decides what evil you are going to do and good you are going to avoid (all while thinking that you are doing good and avoiding evil). The will then puts (gives) that decision into the body, which will then act according to the wrong decision. 

If you have the wrong identity, you have the wrong source and the wrong standard; therefore you will make the wrong decisions. You are free to choose and do the evil (which at times looks good on the outside but is always tainted by wrong motives), but you are not free to choose and do the good with the right motive. 

If your identity is wrong, is there any way for you to choose yourself back to a correct identity? No! Your function doesn’t allow it. What your will can choose is predetermined by your identity—your nature. If your identity is correct (if you have the unfallen nature) you are free to choose and do the good. If your identity is wrong (if you have a sinful nature) you can never choose and do the good, because you are a slave (a prisoner) to sin. With the correct identity/nature, you have access to choices outside the prison. With the wrong identity/nature, you only have access to choices inside the prison. So, how do we get out of the prison? 

The only way for a prisoner in prison with a life sentence to be set free, is for someone with sufficient authority to offer them a pardon. Imagine you are sitting in your prison cell, and a letter from the president is sent to the prison warden. The warden reads the letter, then gives it to an officer to bring to you in your prison cell. When you receive the pardon and realize what is being offered to you, you now have a choice. You cannot choose to get out of prison by any of the ways you had tried before. But you can accept the pardon. If you accept the pardon, that very moment you begin to enjoy the privileges of a free person. If you reject the pardon, you remain a prisoner.

Why would anyone reject the pardon? If you grew up in the prison, then everyone you know and everything you know is inside that prison. It is familiar. It is “normal.” It is comfortable in a way, though it is not good inside the prison. You may have heard of freedom outside, but you have never seen it. You have never experienced it. You don’t really know what it is like. There is so much uncertainty in the thought of being free. Yes, you have always desired to be free, but now you start to think about what you have to leave behind. There are many reasons why someone might not accept the pardon. 

But let’s say you accept the pardon. Where are you? You are still in the prison. But are you in the prison as a prisoner, or as a free person? You are in prison as a free person—like the chaplain who may minister in the prison. As a free person, you have the right to go out. As a prisoner, you don’t. 

The officer then tells you, “Come, follow me. We are going to the left.” If you sit there and tell him, “I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying right here in my cell.” Are you going to go free? No! If you burst past him and run to the right, are you going to go free? No! If you burst past him and run to the left, like he asked, and run up to the door and bang on it and yell, “Get me out of here now!” Are you going to go free? No! If you tackle the officer, grab his gun, put it to his head, and tell him, “Get me out of here now!” Are you going to go free? No! What is the only way you are going free? It is by following the instructions of the officer, not just part of the way, but all the way out of the prison. 

God is the One with authority that can offer you the pardon. The pardon was infinitely expensive to secure, for it required the infinite, eternal sacrifice of Christ. The gift of salvation—freedom from the presence, penalty, and power of sin—is offered to each of us as a free (but very expensive) gift. We don’t deserve it. We can’t earn it. We can’t do anything to equal the gift throughout all eternity. We can simply accept it. Why? Because we need it, and He wants it for us. 

How is the choice for good restored to us when it was lost “forever” because of the fall? It is partly explained in the enmity that God put between Satan and mankind in Genesis 3:15. It is advocated by Joshua when he calls Israel to “Choose you this day whom ye will serve.” Joshua 24:15. And it is expanded upon in the book, Steps to Christ, page 47, “You cannot change your heart, you cannot of yourself give to God its affections; but you can choose to serve Him. You can give Him your will; He will then work in you to will and to do according to His good pleasure. Thus your whole nature will be brought under the control of the Spirit of Christ; your affections will be centered upon Him, your thoughts will be in harmony with Him.” 

As you can see in the diagrams above, the will is at the exit of the channel. You can never fix what is coming out of the channel by trying to fix the exit of the channel. You can only fix what is coming out of the channel by fixing what comes into the channel. The exit of the mind is where we have the will/choice. The entrance is where we have faith. It is by faith that we take into ourselves what we need. How can one with their will captive to that fallen nature, automatically making choices in harmony with that fallen nature, ever bring anything else inside of themselves? It is only by faith.

God supernaturally gives to fallen mankind a capacity of faith, which we may call a “choice.” It is not a choice according to the normal way we function, but a capacity provided for us outside of our normal way of functioning. It is a function of God’s grace, intervening in our seemingly impossible situation. And it must address the entrance of the channel, not just the exit. It must affect what comes into the channel (the mind). This God-given capacity gives us the ability to take God as our source, to accept our identity as a child of God, and to begin to function as a free person. 

This supernatural “choice” allows us to access the sinless nature of Christ by faith, and to take that nature as our very own. Jesus always knew who He was—the Son of God. He had the correct identity, governed Himself according to that identity, was always bound to the Father by trust, always took from the Father what He needed by faith, evaluated all information according to the correct standard—the Law of God, and made choices in harmony with the law. He always did good and never did evil. By this supernatural intervention, you and I have access to that nature. By faith, we can now operate by Christ’s nature. 

As a prisoner to our sinful nature, we only have access to captive choices inside the prison. But by faith, accepting the gift that has been freely offered, we now have access to Christ’s nature and His free choices outside of prison. Now, with His nature and His free choices, we can follow the prison officer’s instructions as he leads us out of the prison. And as long as we keep following the officer’s instructions, by faith in the nature of Christ, we will come to complete freedom. And even if we die in the process, we will die as a free person, not a prisoner. And in the resurrection, we will have a free person’s reward—Christ’s reward. This is good news!

Before I accepted the pardon—the grace of God given to me to set me free from sin—I had no choice but the captive choices of the sinful nature. After I accept the pardon, I now have access to free choices through Christ. But the old nature isn’t completely dead. In fact, very little of it has died. Now comes a battle—a battle of natures. Am I going to live by the old nature? Or am I going to live by the nature of Christ? And how do I know if I am living by the one vs. the other? 

There are things that we can “see” in ourselves, and things that we cannot see. We cannot “see” the taking. We can only see the giving. We cannot see the entrance of information and the evaluation of it. We can only see the choices or decisions that are made as a result of that evaluation process. We cannot see the function of our heart (part of the mind). We can only see the effect of its function. We cannot see when we are taking God as our source by faith or when we are taking others as our source by faith. We can only see when we give (in thoughts, words, and actions). The taking is the cause, and the giving is the effect. It is the effect that reveals to us what the cause was. If we are taking from God, then the effect will be a life that resembles Christ, with self-sacrificing love as our motivation. If we are taking from others, then the effect will be a life that resembles others, with selfishness as our motivation. 

Now that we have accepted the pardon and are in the process of going free from the prison, what happens? We fall. We fail. We mess things up. We have temper tantrums along the way. We fall into self-sufficiency or despair. We get cocky or crushed. The old nature manifests itself. You see, we are not set free from the prison all at once. It is a process—a process that must reveal to us, by our wrong giving (wrong thoughts, words, and actions), where we are still a prisoner. Then, when we see (by our failures) that we are still a prisoner in that area, we can, by that supernatural capacity that is still freely offered to us, choose God as our source, by faith accept the nature of Christ in this area, and make free choices through Christ’s nature to get back up and continue following the prison guard out of the prison. This process, repeated over and over again, will finally result in us living constantly by faith in the nature of Christ and no longer by the nature of a prisoner. “A just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again.” Proverbs 24:16.