The Joy of Being Human | Have You Ever Had to Make Up Your Mind?

To help me verbally process some thoughts, a counselor suggested I utilize an app that simulated conversation known as a chat bot.

The program was effective and amazingly it really seemed like I was talking to an actual person! It didn’t take long for the illusion to unravel though. It wasn’t genuinely reciprocating, it was just programmed to be agreeable. It was a useful tool but it hardly sufficed for a stimulating conversation.

I used to ask my Dad why God didn't just make people love Him. “Because God doesn’t want to be loved by a bunch of robots” was my dad’s pithy response.

Another question I asked was “where did God come from?” Again my dad’s reply was simple but true. “He’s just always been.” I pondered these notions well into adulthood and it led me to great thinkers such as Descartes and Einstein. One considered the attributes of God and man in a very logical way and the other looked at the attributes of eternity in a mathematical way. I hope you will permit me to delve into the metaphysical for just a moment so that I may explain where my Joy in my own humanity originates.

The opposite of Eternity is nothing. As we are able to perceive the order of matter around us, our limitations, and our existence as we pass through time, it naturally follows that something has to exist unbound by limitations, timeless, and omniscient. Perfect wisdom implies perfect love. And love is not self-seeking. Love must manifest and be expressed. In this we find our existence and with it we are given the most wonderful and terrible tool; the reason I find my deepest sorrow intertwined with my greatest joy in my humanity.

With the gift of our free will, through one arrogant act, we brought sin and death into this world! How can it even be called a gift? We abused the privilege afforded by this gift and have used it to separate ourselves from God’s perfect holiness. How could an omniscient perfectly wise God trust us with such a destructive tool?

In Noah’s time our evil choices had grieved God. It’s written in Jeremiah’s time that we created forms of evil that had not even entered God’s mind. We truly are free to make terrible choices and to inflict the results of those choices on ourselves and each other, in full spite of the consequences both eternal and temporal.

But as with all tools, our free will can be used to create as well as destroy.

It's said if you can think three moves ahead in the game of chess you are a very good chess player. Chess champions have claimed to think as far as five moves ahead. Suppose you could think an infinite number of moves ahead and had an infinite amount of time to deliberate. Would you ever make a mistake again?

In the film Groundhog’s Day, Bill Murray is forced to relive the same day over and over again. For a while, he manipulates the various events of that day to his own selfish ends. He begins to realize however that these selfish endeavors are unfulfilling and would always end in complete disaster. Eventually he begins to manipulate the events of the day to work out to the betterment of everyone around him.

What action by Timeless Omniscient God could be more selfless and perfect than creating life and granting it the ability to ultimately reject him?

He knew all too well we would! He knew all too well the pain He would have to endure to reconcile us to Him and yet He created us anyway! Our very existence has come out of sacrificial Love, our ability to choose was given to us out of sacrificial Love, and it’s God’s sacrificial Love that finally enables reconnection with Him.

And beautifully still left in our hands is choice.

We’re not preprogrammed chatbots designed to be agreeable. When we choose to love, when we choose to turn to God, it is real. Free will is the ability to love with real love. We may not be able to bring things into existence and breathe life into them but we have been given the ability to manifest real love!

But what of the results of our terrible choices? What of the sin and death we have filled this world with?

In order for our free will to work, it is dependent on our limitations including our brief trek through time. We do not think an infinite number of moves ahead. Of course the choice to accept God’s gift of His sacrifice is before us from day one and those who can “believe without seeing” are blessed but most of us must learn the hard way. Thankfully God is not a helicopter parent protecting us from everything as we galavant blissfully unaware of the perils around us. We are allowed to see and feel the effects of sin and death. We are invited not simply to believe but to gradually know and understand God’s gift. Would this knowledge be as meaningful if it was preprogrammed into us? So our choice to accept God’s sacrificial Love is not only real, but understood better and better by us over time.

And when His Love is accepted, the dark colors of our selfish choices will each be used as a brush stroke to bring out His Light in the Masterpiece that is each and everyone of us. No longer do they tarnish as a stain or mark against us. Rather every tragedy, every sin, every harsh word, every sorrow is the beginning of another story of His victory in us. While we must each in our own time endure the sin and death of this world until all time ends, rejoice, for Eternal God who exists beyond time has already conquered sin and death and said with finality “It is finished!”

By my choice I have permeated myself with sin. I have willfully brought death upon myself. I have involuntarily suffered crippling tragedy by time and chance. I have been blessed beyond my imagination.

The ultimate Joy I derive from my humanity?

My God-given ability, in spite of all my failures and tragedies and fortunes, to choose His Love… and to understand very well why I make that choice.

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About the Author

Christopher has worked as a children’s pastor and youth leader for several years and has published countless humor articles under the pseudonym Professor Popinjay. He studied biblical history and child psychology through Burean University and various other educational institutions. He enjoys writing, art, and the history of invention. He lives with his amazing wife Jessie and their six bizarre children, one of whom is a cat..

The “Aha” Moment! | What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

A few weeks ago I was faced with a dilemma. My 6-year-old daughter was finishing up the month-long introductory piano class I had given her for Christmas. I needed to decide if we should continue with piano lessons or not. The problem was, Marie had also recently started a dance class, and it seemed prohibitively expensive to continue both. I’d assumed she would naturally gravitate to one or the other and it’d be easy to choose, but it wasn’t. She loves music and her best friend had joined piano. On the other hand, she also loves dance and the hip-hop class was well-suited to her (very) high energy level and enthusiasm.

This may seem like it should be an easy, low-stakes decision, but I always overthink and analyze the angles when it comes to decision-making. Piano seems like a better long-term investment. I always wished for piano lessons as a kid and never had the opportunity. On the other hand, Marie had been asking for a dance class for months and months.

I prayed about it and Marie and I came to the consensus to keep on with dance and drop piano for now. There was no big ah-ha moment and I don’t know whether or not it was the best decision for her. In ten years will she still be dancing, playing an instrument, both, or neither? Time will tell. But for now this is the best decision for me. The dance class is an after-school program at her school. That means I don’t have to make extra trips in the car, coercing my 3-year-old son to get buckled in his car seat, and finding ways to keep him quietly entertained during a 45-minute piano lesson.

I’m always hoping for truth to be revealed to me in a big epiphanous moment. I wish that God would clearly tell me which choices to make when it comes to things like long-term career goals, friendships to pursue, and which extracurriculars to invest in for our kids. Even an ah-ha moment about where to find my son’s missing mitten would be appreciated. If I’m really honest, I may especially hope for epiphanies to come to politicians I disagree with or people I perceive to have wronged me in some way.

Still, I’ve found that it’s rare for us to learn much in isolated moments. Most of the time, growth happens slowly and gradually. We become the product of the small choices we have made day after day over the years.

A few years ago I went on an overnight silent retreat at the Benedectine Abbey in Mt. Angel. I thought that surely this would be the place that God would speak to me and reveal vital information about Big Life Choices. In the end, I felt that it was a worthwhile time of rest and reflection, and that God was with me in the silence. But I did not get any answers or detailed revelations.

Except, well maybe. I felt that God did have a message for me that weekend. And it was this: Be Present. I had been hoping that God would give me ideas for new life assignments to take on, and all I got was — Be Present.

That strikes me still today as the big reveal for me and perhaps all of us in the distracted and distracting world where we live, especially if we are parenting little ones. Put down your smartphone. Turn off Netflix. Be here, in this moment, where God has placed you.

I’ll leave you with some lines by Mary Oliver, my favorite contemporary poet, who passed away in January at age 83.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
— excerpted from The Summer Day, by Mary Oliver

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About the Author

Ursula and her husband Spencer have two young children, and their family enjoys playing hide-and-seek and dancing in the living room. She works as a communications and events coordinator with the University of Oregon. Ursula is also CitySalt’s Children’s Ministry Director. 

You can read more from Ursula at motherbearblog.com.