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THE GOD-GIVEN INVIOLABLE RIGHT TO CHOOSE THE WRONG
MEADOWVILLE, Pictou County, Nova Scotia, November 11, 2021 – There’s a general expectation of Christians that they should do everything they can to help people. Much of this expectation comes from Christians themselves and takes the form of charity work, volunteerism, and counseling.
But is this scriptural?
God didn’t stop Adam and Eve from falling prey to the serpent in the garden. He warned them not to eat from the tree of good and evil, and promised them that if they did, they would die, but otherwise he let them be. He respected their free-will right to choose, even if they chose self-condemnation.
Jesus also didn’t interfere with people’s free will choices. Most famously, he permitted Judas Iscariot to make the choice to betray him, a choice that would end in Judas’s eternal damnation. Jesus didn’t try to stop him; he let Judas make his own choice and suffer the consequences of it.
Unfortunately, many Christians don’t follow Biblical precedent when it comes to respecting other people’s free will. Instead, they try to force people to choose what they want them to choose. I am as guilty of this as anyone else, wanting people to choose God because I know from personal experience the rewards that come from choosing God. But even God doesn’t force people to choose him. He gives us free will, tells us right and wrong – even writes it on our hearts – lets us know the rewards for choosing right or wrong, and then lets us be. He lets us make our own choices, even if those choices lead to our death.
We need to back away from forcing people to do what we believe is in their best interest. We need to respect EVERYONE’S God-given right to free will choice, no matter how difficult it may be. Wanting to protect people from themselves is not a godly impulse, even though it’s been dressed up as such. It’s not virtuous; it’s controlling, and bordering on tyrannical.
Parents, obviously, need to guide their children until the children are old enough to know right from wrong and make their own choices. The parents can then continue to remind the children of the rewards of right and wrong choices, but at some point, even parents have to back away and let their children mess up, if that’s what they choose.
This is not an easy lesson. If God didn’t stop Adam and Eve from choosing death, and Jesus didn’t stop Judas Iscariot from the same, then who are we to force our opinions on those who not only don’t share them, but also don’t want to hear about them?
Our individual free will is the only thing we own free and clear. Everything else is on loan from God. Each of us will stand alone before God on Judgement Day and will have to account for what we did with our free will (in much the same way as the people in the parable who were given talents had to account for how many more they made from the original one), and that account will form the basis of our judgement. We dare not interfere with other people’s free will, any more than they dare interfere with ours. If God doesn’t interfere with people’s free will and Jesus doesn’t either, then neither should we. Our concern, each of us, should be for our own free will only. Let others, of their own volition, choose Heaven or the lake of fire; warn them, remind them, but don’t force their hand, even if you believe you’re “saving” them from themselves.
As God has told us many times in scripture, starting with Adam and Eve:
“I set before you life and death: Choose life.”
SYNAGOGUE OF SATAN 2.0
GREENVILLE STATION, Nova Scotia, October 13, 2021 – Back when Jesus was doing his ministry work nearly 2000 years ago, there were many of his people who knew how corrupt the religious powers-that-be were. They were not stupid, these people. They were, however, unprincipled, in the sense that they would go along with the ptb’s edicts in order to get what the ptb were offering them. Or better said, they went along with the edicts in order to avoid what the ptb could do to them if they didn’t go along with them.
In other words, they went along to get along.
Scripture mentions these people as being afraid to openly acknowledge or follow Jesus because they knew if they did, they’d be kicked out of the synagogue. Being kicked out of the synagogue was essentially being kicked out of society. You became a social outcast, and you could no longer work or shop or even openly show your face.
(Sound familiar?)
Not much has changed in the nearly 2000 years since Jesus walked the earth. Today, many people who can see through the obvious lies being blasted at them by politicians, “experts” and the media, have chosen to suspend their disbelief in the same way that people who secretly knew Jesus was speaking God’s Truth chose instead to remain in the synagogue, to remain in good standing with the ptb, and so to be able to continue to access all facets of society.
I was appalled at how many alleged Christians have chosen this course, this unprincipled course of knowing something is suspect but going along with it anyway because going along with it is easier than questioning or defying it. I talked to God about this, and he showed me something that I hadn’t considered: that most people are cowards. I don’t say that in a mean-spirited way, but as a Truth from God. They’re cowards in the sense that they’re constantly afraid. They don’t know God (although many of them call themselves Christians), and not knowing God, they don’t have access to his strength. They’re relying on their own strength, which is poor at best, and so feel they have to lean on each other and on society in general if they’re to get through whatever hardship they’re encountering. Otherwise, they’re too afraid to go on.
Like lies, fear that makes you do something that you know is wrong comes from the devil. God can also strike fear in your heart, but the fear that God strikes in you is holy fear of not doing what’s right. It’s the exact opposite of the unholy pall of fear that now hangs over the world and that has its source in evil.
Just as the people in Jesus’ day were being sifted to see whether they wanted what God was offering or what the world was offering (that is, whether the fear in them was a fear of God or a fear of the devil, and whether that fear made them worship God or the devil), the same sifting is going on now. The obvious lies, half-truths and contradictions constantly being spun and presented as “science” are so blatantly suspect that no-one in their right mind can actually believe them. Even so, the majority has agreed to believe, if in exchange for their consent they can continue to remain in the synagogue.
Jesus was an outsider, even though he was the son of God and the Messiah. The ptb and society treated him as an outsider, and then they hounded him as an outcast and criminal, and then they killed him. Most of his early followers suffered the same treatment.
God has given us all free will, so we all have the ability to choose. We may not like the consequences that some choices bring, but that doesn’t negate the fact that we have free will. We have the option of being like the cowards who choose to remain in the synagogue of Satan (that is, to choose lies), or we have the option to follow Jesus (that is, to choose Truth).
What you choose to do with your free will is up to you, but I would heartily recommend choosing Truth. For me, there is no other option.
HOW TO TELL THE FUTURE (INSTRUCTIONS INSIDE!)
DARTMOUTH, Nova Scotia, November 2, 2016 – You have to write what people want to know.
What is it that people want to know?
That this is all worth something, that it’s leading somewhere good. (more…)
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 