The Will of a Person

You've heard it said, "Where there's a will, there's a way." I've been thinking a lot about choices lately.

In his book entitled Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell does a masterful job in presenting several case studies that illuminate multifaceted and often unique paths to success, including both controllable and uncontrollable variables. (It is an intriguing and very interesting book that I highly recommend.) Indirectly, one aspect of his discussion on the controllable variables on the pathway to success is the impact of the choices people make. Some of the most successful people, for instance, in addition to some peculiar circumstances in which they found themselves, made choices to perfect their craft to the tune of 10,000 hours of practice before their opportunity for fame was presented.

Concurrently, I'm reading another book called, A Deadly Misunderstanding: A Congressman's Quest to Bridge the Muslim-Christian Divide, written by former congressman, Mark Siljander. In his personal account of some of the diplomatic affairs in which he invested himself, the author clearly made a choice to act counter-culturally (biblically) by investing his time and energy into forging positive relationships, even friendships, with international leaders who are considered to be Muslim, anti-American terrorists. He made an intentional choice to [imperfectly] emulate the perfection of Jesus:

"You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect."
Matthew 5:43-48
(see also Luke 23:34)

In agreement with Jesus' words above, Andrew Marin pleads with those of us who call ourselves Christians to do the same with people vastly different than ourselves, specifically those who are Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, or Transgender (GLBT). I have yet to read Marin's book entitled, Love is an Orientation: Elevating the Conversation with the Gay Community, but Kattie is reading it and giving me brief synoposes of the content.

I have, no doubt, learned a lot about choices over the years. Of course, I have much more to learn, based merely on my lack of experience, but I have learned some already. Through my own experience, especially in my journey with Jesus, I have contemplated the theology behind choice. But the relationship between the will of man and the will of God in salvation is not so much what I'm thinking about now. What I've been mulling in my mind over and over again is the impact that a person's choices has on him/herself and the people around him/her. I don't think it's possible for me to completely comprehend the severity of those choices, from the most important to the most routine.

Once again, Gladwell illustrates this well in the case of Chris Langan, a modern-day genius whose IQ is supposedly 30% higher than that of Albert Einstein. Due to a dysfunctional upbringing that included a mother estranged from her family with four children from four different fathers, a father who left the house before Chris was born, and a step-father (the one who stuck around for a while when Chris was growing up) who was an abusive alcoholic that would go on drinking sprees and disappear, Chris made choices in his life that made him seem lost in the world, despite his brilliant intellect. Through little fault of his own, the ripple effect of choices affected a genius in extreme ways: he never earned a college degree, in spite of being more intelligent than all of his professors, and now he's a horse rancher in rural Missouri, living a simple life while working on an intellectual masterpiece that will never get published. Gladwell doesn't focus his sociological study so much on choice as he does on circumstance, but I'm proposing that the circumstance is bred from choice. Where did the choice that began the chain reaction begin? Was it with Chris's mother, choosing unsuitable men, or was it even before that with her parents or an influential person in her life? If Chris grew up in a stable, two-parent, wealthy, suburban family whose decisions were rational and healthy, would he then have become one of the most famous brilliant men in history? Perhaps. Where does the impact of choice begin? Where does it end?

Life is full of choices for each one of us. Subsets of life are full of choices: education, politics, healthcare, lifestyle, entertainment, religion, morality, etc. So how do we know what to choose?

Moses puts it like this:

"See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them."
Deuteronomy 30:15-20

I wonder, could this one choice perhaps be the beginning apex of impact for all other choices for each one of us? The end limit? Or somewhere in between? I urge myself, and my friends reading this to make choices that consider others, even if they seem to only involve self. Especially when communicating with one another, the way we choose to speak to or speak about others is critical. The tongue has the power of life and death. The choices we make now, regardless of how important or insignificant we perceive them to be, will certainly impact others at some point, whether we like it or not, whether we know it or not, whether we see it or not. And the actions that follow may perhaps make an even more significant impact, but we'll save that for another snowy day.