Choosing Life: A Moment-by-Moment Choice

A dead thing can go with the stream,
but only a living thing can go against it.
GK Chesterton

There has been two times in my life when I knew I was going to die. I wrote about one of those incidents, Why I Go. The other time occurred on a Memorial weekend, driving down I-4 just east of Orlando. It was around one o’clock in the morning when I woke-up, realizing my car had left the road. I overcorrected, causing my car to bounce end over end down the Interstate. I was 18 years old and for months had been praying to die.

Everyone thought I was on top of the world. As a Baptist evangelist, I was experiencing the sort of success (by Southern Baptist standards) that most ministers only dreamed of. It was the hay-day of the Jesus Movement and “thousands were walking down the aisle” to give their lives to Jesus. I had huge crowds, popularity, money was pouring in … ah, the Spirit-filled life. Problem was, I had begun to feel that I should warn people about Christianity, not be an advertisement for it.

As I was experiencing it, there was more Bad News than Good. “Good News: You get to go to heaven. Bad News: You have to get the shit kicked out of you for 70 years before you can go!” One of my arguments with God was about all the “great and mighty deeds” attributed to Him in the Bible that, as I was taught, were either for those immature saints in the Old Testament, those people in the New Testament who didn’t have the Bible yet, or were for sometime around The Great Escape (Rapture). Evidently God was on a holiday, until the world went to hell in a hand-basket, so there wasn’t a whole lot He could do for the suffering people who were coming to me for answers.

Having no answers for the suffering, and in massive confusion regarding the nature of God, I became so depressed that I began praying to die. “If this is all there is to the Christian life, count me out and take me home. I am tired of life. However, if there is something more—if what I believe and see of the Christian life is not what You intended—show me.”

Cue car wreck: (Monte wakes up to the sound of gravel ricocheting underneath the car, overcorrects, hurtling car end over end.) I wake up and scream, “GAWWWD, I DIDN’T MEAN IT!” When the police arrived 3 hours later I asked them what took so long: “We were told you had to be dead and there were people we could save.” I kid you not! No problem here, as I had 3 hours to contemplate how much I really liked being alive.

No one is weary of life. No one. “O Lord, I can’t take all this life any more: please kill me … it is just too wonderful.” No, what we grow weary of is death.

The death created by our false images of God.

The death created by mindlessly accepting the dogmas of others.

The death that comes with seeking to be someone other than the person God created you to be.

The death created by crucifying your God-created senses (seeing, feeling, hearing, smelling, tasting) rather than learning to expand and manage them.

The death created by ripping your heart out of your chest, and becoming a Stoic.

The death created by ignoring the very real presence of the all-powerful Spirit of Christ in and around you. (Choosing Death is choosing to believe that, “The same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead … resided in the NT believers but is not my/our lot in life.”)

I chose life on I-4. And what a life it was … for about 3 years, when I began choosing death all over again. O, I didn’t see it that way at the time, of course, but that is exactly what I did.

I began choosing to ignore my heart and live out of my head.

I choose to ignore what God taught me and “humbly” accept the teachings of other more powerful and more educated people. (I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite. GK Chesterton.)

I choose to ignore my desires and dreams and lived for the desires and dreams/vision of others.

I choose to deny my feelings, intuitions and warning signals, fearing rejection and abandonment.

I. Chose. Death.

Choosing Life

Do you want to live life, or just pass through this world?

What Choosing Life is not:

Not the same as running from fears, as quite often the only way to get to “life” is to press through those fears. Jesus had to go through rejection, persecution, suffering, and death, before he experienced the resurrection, yes?

Not the same as “justifying my existence.” God created you: you don’t need any other “justification,” proving you are “worthy” of such a gift. You don’t earn gifts: you receive them, with a heart of gratitude.

Choosing Life is not accomplished by reacting to other people’s choices or paths. Choosing life is not done reactively but pro-actively. If I choose a path only because someone said, “Don’t go that way,” then THAT person made my choice for me: which means that I have yet to Choose Life.

The Way of Life is often blocked by Dead People. Like Jesus said: “Let the dead bury the dead.” Walking corpses constantly try to get you to postpone or to divert your quest. “That way is too painful, too lonely, too costly…No one else is traveling that path … that path is wrong … you have disqualified yourself for Life, Joy, Happiness, Contentment … my path is The Path for you.” This is why following your path is sometimes a lonely journey: your world was peopled with The Dead. However, once they all leave, you will find that Life-Seekers begin to re-people your world.

Choosing Life: You will know it is Your Path, as your spirit, soul and body resonate with a YES … or, sometimes, at least with a yes. Which doesn’t mean that, once you are on your path, you will always feel this way.

Choosing Life is choosing to remain aware and awake. Temptation to leave Your Path comes when sadness, despair or suffering strikes: “Let me go back to sleep!” Stay awake: more life is right around the next bend.

Choosing Life is Choosing Love: love for God, for others, and for self. As you consider the various paths before you, where do you see/hear/feel the most love? Yes, I said, “Feel.” Discovering and Choosing Life is something we do with the whole person, not just our heads.

Choosing Life is not a One Time Deal. All of us stumble and fall. We may find ourselves on a strange path and have to retrace our steps until we find our way again. The key to getting back up and finding our path is asking God’s forgiveness and choosing Life—again and again and again. By the way, refusing or resisting God’s forgiveness at this point leaves you stuck where you were when you fell. You can’t Choose Life if you insist on beating yourself up for your failings. Remember: the Good News is that Jesus took your beatings for you.

Choosing Life is not solely an intellectual exercise. In fact, I suggest that the “intellect” often gets in the way, as we are seeking to reason our way toward “rightness” (Being Right), rather than discovering life through leaps of faith guided by intuitions of the heart.

Or so I believe …

The last 5 years or so of my dad’s life were spent in physical agony, as his diabetes had taken a severe toll on his body. I once asked him if he ever thought of suicide, to which he replied with an emphatic, “No!”

“My responsibility is to do everything in my power to live: my death is in God’s hands, not mine.”

“To do everything in my power to live …”

Exactly.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2008