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Some of you are old enough to remember a popular TV game show called "Truth or Consequences." A contestant was asked to answer a nonsense riddle. If the contestant failed to answer the riddle (few ever could) before Beulah the Buzzer sounded, he or she had to pay the consequences. This usually meant performing some silly stunt for which the contestant was amply rewarded. Perhaps what made this game so popular was that despite its name there really were no bad "consequences." True, you might lose the game, but you couldn't end up in any worse shape than when you started. Basically, contestants simply got the chance to win big prizes. Neither truth nor consequences entered into the game at all. This is the problem with our Hollywood mentality. We want life to be free of consequences and so our game shows, our movies, our TV shows keep projecting an image of the ideal life, a life where there are few consequences for our behavior. We want to act the way we want to act with nobody telling us how to act with little or no consequences to our actions. A principal of a small middle school had a problem with a few of the older girls starting to use lipstick. When applying it in the bathroom they would then press their lips to the mirror and leave lip prints. Before it got out of hand he thought of a way to stop it. He gathered all the girls together that wore lipstick and told them he wanted to meet with them in the ladies room at 2 pm. They gathered at 2 pm and found the principal and the school custodian waiting for them. The principal explained that it was becoming a problem for the custodian to clean the mirror every night. He said he felt the girls did not fully understand just how much of a problem it was and he wanted them to witness just how hard it was to clean. The custodian then demonstrated. He took a long brush on a handle out of a box. He then dipped the brush in the nearest toilet, moved to the mirror and proceeded to remove the lipstick. That was the last day the girls pressed their lips on the mirror. Consequences. We are facing an age where the choices we make are likely to have major consequences for our lives. The fact is that our freedom of choice is no longer a choice. We now live in a choice-culture, where choice is not an option. Choice is a value and virtue in and of itself. It doesn’t matter what we do. We want to have choices, and lots of them. We lived in Soldotna before K-Mart and Fred Meyer came to town. I loved the fact that we did not having many choices. If I wanted a hammer there was one store that had hammers. But then the big box stores came to town and then I had to take the time to comparison shop before making my choice. Gone were the days of few choices, but I didn’t complain about the cheaper prices at the big box stores! People expect, and even seem to need choices. We stay away from places and people that don't give us choices. How long would any restaurant last that only offered one food on its menu? Fast food companies are branching into pizza and pasta and health food. Likewise the age of singular big movie theaters is gone. We expect the choices offered by the cineplex, which pack as many as 12 movies into one location. Paul wrote to the Corinthian Christians and used a construction metaphor. "Each builder must choose with care how to build on (the foundation)." (v. 10) Perhaps we could look at all the choices we make every day as bricks we are using to build our lives. We live in a complex world, a world made complex, in part, by the fact that we have so many choices. Life is not like a Star Wars movie where good and evil are so easily identified. Sometimes we make a choice, thinking we are laying a good brick on the foundation of our lives, when in reality it is a shoddy brick, a brick that will crumble under the weight of other choices. At that point we need the honesty and the courage to admit our unwise decision and ask God to help us with a reconstruction! Bad bricks have a way of affecting the bricks surrounding them. As we lay more and more courses of bricks, we have to accept responsibilities associated with them. Yes, we are free to lay our own bricks, to make our own choices. But we are not free to choose our own consequences. (REPEAT) Maybe a cracked brick laid on the foundation of our lives won’t affect the integrity of the entire building. But eventually if enough shoddy bricks are laid, the building will come crashing down. The story is told of a contractor who was bidding on a job. In the office of his prospective client, alone, he noticed under a jar on the desk a copy of his competitor’s bid, but he couldn’t see the numbers because it was partially covered by the jar. Yielding to temptation, he lifted the jar to sneak a peek and his face became ashen as hundreds of tiny BB’s came spilling out from the bottomless jar and running all over the desk and onto the floor. He thought this brick would not have any immediate negative consequences, but he discovered otherwise. Consequences come with choices. Certain choices come with specific consequences attached. Some consequences are obvious. If you spend all day in the sun at the beach without sunscreen, the consequences are visible to all...sunburn. As a young adult I remember aiming a sun lamp at my face one day while I rested. I fell asleep for 3 hours and discovered the painful consequence of my choice... a face that looked like a dried-up tomato! However, choosing to expose yourself to the sun every day may result in something less noticeable but far more dangerous...skin cancer. Some consequences are not always immediate. Those who unknowingly choose to have sex with an HIV-infected partner may discover a tragic consequence of their choice. But other more innocent choices may still reap similar results. Our choice to drive large gas-powered vehicles result in layers of smog and dependence on huge supplies of foreign oil. When we choose convenience over conservation there are consequences that may not be realized in our lifetime, but will be by our children and grandchildren. The shock waves from this choice explosion have rippled deep into our individual souls as well as across our society. In his article, "Tyranny of Choice," Steven Waldman has drawn up a kind of checklist of the personal consequences suffered by people by the choice wildfire. Waldman claims that "choice erodes commitment." He points out that the pressure to upgrade, to always be the most current can help explain everything from the guy who has to buy a new car every other year with the fancy gadgets to staggering divorce rates and employer-employee disloyalty. Ironically, the demand for greater freedom of choice has resulted in less time to make all those choices. And so less free time goes with all these new so called freedoms. Dr. John Robinson, of the University of Maryland, studied the "time diaries" of busy people from 1965, 1975, and 1985. His findings not only confirm our own suspicions that we are busier than we used to be, but he suggests just what it is that is eating up all our days and nights. He writes, "Much of our free time is absorbed by the process of deciding what to do with it." In another study it is estimated that in our lifetimes we spend 9% of our time just trying to decide what products we want to buy! That’s over 2 hours every day just researching consumer products! An even more depressing consequence of all this free choice is the revelation that our number of bad choices goes up in proportion. Waldman points out, "The more choices there are, the more wrong choices there are...and the higher the odds that I'll make a mistake." Given more and more choices, we become less and less concerned with making good decisions. To make a truly informed decision would take so much time and effort researching all the options that we just give up. There are over 600 different models of cars from which to choose. It has come to the point where it's too much work to read "Consumer Reports." We don’t have cable TV at our house. When I am in a motel with cable TV I cannot handle it! I have no power to let my remote stay on one channel. No, I have to surf to check out all the other choices! I love it and I hate it! The point about choice-overload is that we are obsessed with making the "right choices" about small things while shutting down on the important decisions and big issues of life. As the Church of Jesus Christ are we spending our energy on decisions about what color carpet will go in the nursery, or who should watch the kids while the adults play softball, or what to do with the parsonage, while ignoring the biggest commitment in our lives...our commitment to Christ? Fred Spencer had been a soldier in WW II when he was able to escape into the Singapore jungle where he spent 9 months before his rescue. He had heard two stories about the jungle. One was that the jungle was a horrible place filled with snakes, insects, and wild animals. The other story was that the jungle was a lush, tropical paradise with plenty of fresh water and edible fruit. The truth that Spencer discovered during his nine months was that the jungle is neutral. It was neither pre-set to destroy him, nor was it structured to support him. He learned that his survival depended on the amount of effort he put forth to survive. Spencer was able to make of his environment what he chose to make. Life is often a jungle for us, isn't it? Perhaps the jungle can teach us something. Maybe we need to realize that life, no matter what the circumstances, is neutral. It does not have the power to destroy us. We choose to destroy ourselves. It does not have the power to give us joy. We choose to follow Christ in whose life we find our joy. Our commitment to Christ is a commitment to life, to love, and to hope. Someone has defined stress as "what happens when your gut says 'no', and your mouth says, 'Of course, I'd be glad to.' God’s desire for us is not stress, at least not the negative kind. God wants us to be whole, not broken. Yes, we have made some poor choices, some sinful choices. The good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that remodeling is always a choice! The good news is that home makeovers are possible! The good news is that when we choose Christ there is no consequence we must endure without the grace of God. |
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05.23.04 - The Power of Choice (1 Corinthians 3:5-11)
