Choose Life

Throughout our written texts, both Hebrew and Christian, we find a God who tells us to “choose life.”  However, it seems that people don’t know what that means, or how to go about it.  People can end up with futile and pointless lives, that are in fact “life less.” 

Every day we are faced with the choice to choose life.  God sends many gifts into creation for the sake of life.  It turns out that these gifts can be used for good, or for evil; for life or for death; to create heaven or to create hell on earth.  The gift of freedom makes it possible for people to corrupt anything, no matter how strong its basic goodness.  We know this as one of those deep truths: there is that place within each one of us of ultimate freedom, that even God will not violate, even though allowing that freedom allows for the failure of God’s plan for creation.  There is something within us that is delicately balanced and can be easily tipped one way or the other. 

Sadly we don’t always recognize which way to go.  We think something is a good choice, but it turns out wrong; we intend goodness but discover that we have taken another wrong turn.  We can blindly follow others and let them take us where we would not go, if we were paying attention. What is even more frustrating is that we can know the right path, know the way to life, and we go toward death anyway.  The way toward death seems easier somehow.  We need inner strength, power and courage to stay true to the narrow path of light and life. 

Strength, power and courage are such wonderful gifts, given to us for the sake of life, but these gifts are so easily corrupted to serve death.  I think most of us are familiar with the Star Wars movies.  What I loved about these movies was the way they illustrated so clearly how the same “Force” could be on the side of life, or on the side of death and evil.  The story of Darth Vader is quite illuminating.  He doesn’t begin his life as an evil personality, fighting for the “dark side.”  He is a man who loved others and wanted to do what was right, but he wouldn’t listen to his mentors, and was tempted to the “dark side.”  He becomes the mere tool of an even darker personality who gains power over him, and by using him, and others like him, seeks power over the whole universe.

The human solution to the problem of evil is to fight back, and conquer it, using force against force; violence against violence, until people become the very thing they fight.  And so people have created a cycle of violence that seems impossible to stop.  Thinking to choose life, people find themselves choosing an ever increasing cycle of death and destruction.

There is a prevalent myth that the good guys win because God is on their side.  However, too often the good guys lose in real life.  Innocent people are abused, tortured, enslaved, and killed.  Whole nations are conquered and the people enslaved, and nearly wiped out.  If the Holocaust teaches us anything it teaches us that the good guys can and do lose.  The question that arises out of the Holocaust is this one:  where was God?  Why didn’t God come to the rescue?  This is also the ongoing question of children who are being abused, of women who are being stoned or beaten, of refugees fleeing for their lives, of victims of war, of all who suffer and die at the hands of others.   

Where is God?  Why didn’t God come to the rescue?  Can these horrible things be God’s will?  The answer is this:  God is in us, and we are the ones God chooses to do the work of salvation.  We are the ones who are to run to the rescue when horrible things happen.  If we fail to act, then God’s plans for salvation fail, too.  God’s will that all should have life, and life abundantly fails because we fail to do the work God gives us.  Why didn’t God come to the rescue?  Because we didn’t come to the rescue. 

Here and there throughout our history there have been people who understood and grasped the truth, whether or not they knew God.  The experience of the Holocaust is also an experience of people who, even at great risk to themselves, stepped forward to save others.  But most people shut their eyes, plugged their ears, sat on their hands, and looked away.  Or they may have prayed and then waited for God to send some superhero to the rescue, not even considering that they might have a part to play. 

In order for great evil to exist in our world it is enough for good people to just do nothing; to look the other way. 

Sometimes I think God is crazy.  God has chosen to bring the good news to the poor through us, and to rescue those who are abused, oppressed, and suffering — through us.  God calls us to choose life, not just for ourselves but for all of creation.   I am amazed that God would have this kind of faith in us, when we can be so faithless to God.