"Life is a journey that we are all making... Or maybe being taken on... But perhaps the older we become the more we are being taken and the less we actually making..."
-Choice
Anonymous said...
hmmmm
Bex said...
I conker
Mom said...
Maybe when we get old we are just living out the journey of our making from ones youth. The other choice would mean I'd have to believe in fate.
Anthony said...
or that we are shaped by our choices and eventually we become them..?
Ashley said...
I guess this brings up the question of whether we can actually do the making. Maybe life is just a serious of choices of how to respond?
Brooks said...
Much to my chagrin, It seems the choices I make (or am led to make) have consequences. These consequences seem to compound over the years to form a broad road that narrows upon the horizon.
With the Quote in mind my question follows: This increase of frequency with which we surrender to our previous choices, is it caused merely by age? or are we in fact not surrendering at all, but rather continually affirming our previous decisions however distantly made by daily choosing to continue a little further down the path, each step drawing us one closer to our end; Each consequently weighing on us with the strangely comfortable baggage of predictability or releasing us into the discomfort of freedom experienced through following God into the unknown.
Anthony said...
CS Lewis is quoted as saying we become our choices. So choice by choice, consequence by consequence we eventually become less distinct from the decisions we make. The further along down a road we go, the harder it is to turn around as perhaps something like momentum gradually takes hold.
Denying oneself is not easy. Following God into the unknown is not easy. Loving in the face of hate is hard.
Living selfishly is easy. Selfcenteredness comes naturally. Giving back what you've been given, good or bad, natural.
Consistently choosing the latter, choice by choice, day by day, brings about a slow but sure change that is not easily reversed. The tainted human instinct becomes stronger and more engrained. Until you are dangerously close to not simply being a selfish, selfcentered person, but rather simply selfish and selfcentered, and not as much of a person.
Consistently choosing the former, choice by choice, day by day, brings about a slow but sure change that is not easily reversed. While perhaps I am not old enough to speak so far down the road, but looking at what Lewis said, eventually the latter loses its place as primal instinct. Instead love, patience, faith, kindness, take their place and you become more human than ever.
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Choice re-examined
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5 comments:
amen to that
Anth are you suggesting we posses the ability to eventually shed our primal instinct through the power of self-discipline?
I'd sure like to shed my primal instinct to misspell!
Excellent, its like a dialogue!!
My first response is no, we cannot shed our primal instinct through self-discipline. Period.
But it must play a certain part, a small part, next to God the Spirit who really is the only means of permanent change. Without the Spirit there will be no change, self discipline or not. Where there is no self-discipline though, I don't think the Spirit has much room or reason to bring about change. I guess we are touching on this thing called santification...
Some things are harder to break than others. Some take longer. Some changes seem more permanent than others often.
To briefly look at an analogy that eventually breaks down...
One can whip oneself into great physical shape. It takes time and self-discipline. But after a while you begin arriving to the state of "great health and fitness". There is never a point where you have completely arrived (in this life) as there is always room to grow. Now at any point you can choose to go back to being fat and unhealthy but the longer you stay in shape and live healthily, the harder it would be to go back. It becomes ingrained in you to live well and your body loses its desires (somewhat) for junk food and lazy living, and longs for the vitamins and excerise that is has come to love. (Now this analogy breaks down because our bodies eventually break down and die.) It's a thought anyways.
I will shortly post my man buechner's response to santification...
So Brooks, please point out any flaws in this argument if you see them but even moreso, tell me your thoughts on Romans 7 as well as 8 and explain Paul's complex monologue!!
First off, great quote by this buechner sport (who is apparently now your "man")
What a beautiful picture. Actually a rather romantic picture to be honest.
2 things from the quote. "God does most of it" and "the end of the process, Paul says, is eternal life" ok, 3 things, "it is only when we discover that God really loves us in all our unloveliness that we ourselves start to become godlike"
So I guess what we've both been trying to get at anth is that "Love" is the center of it all, His Love as the beginning of our love, His constant pursuit the catalyst of our discipline.
And as for Romans 7&8 I plead the 5th. If only to say that I love the end of 8, how incredible that nothing can separate us from the love that is in Christ Jesus
by the way thanks for the book. I was just thinking today I needed a good one. this will certainly do
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