|
2010
Soap Box Archives
Personal Decisions Why did God put the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden, and why in the world did He let Satan be there? Wouldn’t it have been easier just to leave the tree and the devil out of things? Yes it would have been if God had wanted a race of robots and automatons who had no will of their own, who just lounged around the Garden of Eden and never have had a choice about anything they ever did. But the reality is that the tree was there and God had forbidden them to eat the fruit from it, but the point was they had a choice to make, and because they listened to Satan rather than God they made the wrong one and mankind has been suffering for it every since. Now please don’t think that I’m trying to interpret the mind of God. That is impossible for me or anybody else. As His word says, “His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts”. But I feel that the reason God allowed Adam and Eve a choice of obeying or not obeying is that without choice, perfect love could not exist. Just imagine that you had no choice in which you married, who you associated with, where you lived or worked. You would never know anything but what was forced on you and what would you know about truly loving someone, if you had no choice in anything. God wants our love and our obedience, but gave us free will to make choices in our lives, to live our lives doing good or doing bad, in essence, serving God or serving the devil and He gives us a conscience to tell us which we are doing. And when we go against our conscience he has provided a way of getting forgiveness through the shed blood of His son Jesus Christ. Yes God gave us free will and our lives are full of choices and decisions and we each have to assume the responsibility of the results of our choices, even when we make bad ones and get a result we don’t like very much. I realize that there are things in our lives that are out of our control. We can’t stop a hurricane or make it rain or force the end of a war between two foreign governments. But we can make the day-to-day decisions, the ones that makes us the person we are. Like, whether or not to tell a lie, to say a hateful word to somebody, to take the wrong side of an argument just because it’s the popular thing to do. Whether to have an abortion, whether to correct our children when they’re wrong and to praise them when they’re right, whether to change jobs or heed the subtle call of opportunity or sit back and let it pass by. To give a day’s work for a day’s pay or to do just enough to get by and complain bitterly when your industrious co-worker gets the promotion. Whether to do drugs or to shoulder the responsibility of a child you helped to bring into the world and whether to stand alone if you have to or to give in and go along with the crowd. We are the sum total of the decisions we make in life and everybody makes some bad ones from time to time and there’s no one to blame but ourselves. One of the major problems in this nation and this world these days is that people refuse to accept the responsibility for their own decisions and the actions the decisions cause. Greedy, vote-hungry politicians try to convince minorities that there’s nothing they can do about the deplorable situation they find themselves in because they’ve been shortchanged by society. I know that environment and circumstances have a lot to do with what happens in people’s lives, but the bottom line is that until an individual makes a personal decision to do something about it things are never going to change and the chances are they will continue to blame their problems on somebody else. Adam and Eve should be a lesson to all of us. God gave them a choice to make the right decision and live in a paradise. There was only one tree in the whole garden they couldn’t eat from but instead of listening to their Creator, they listened to the father of lies and ate the fruit. The worst decision ever made by mankind. We have decisions to make every day and it is our responsibility to make the right ones and if we don’t, to live with the ramifications. If you want to see who’s responsible for the decisions you make go look in the mirror. What do you think? Pray for our troops, and for our country. God Bless America Charlie Daniels |