Responsible Choices

Author Alexandra Stoddard wrote You Are Your Choices. If she is right, I can use the Enduring Principle of responsible choices as a touchstone to understand who I am. With this principle comes a variety of callings and desired responses (www.CofChrist.org/ourfaith/enduring-principles.asp):

God gives humans the ability to make choices about whom or what they will serve. Some people experience conditions that diminish their ability to make choices.

Sometimes I am a simplifier. I look for easy ways to deal with complex questions. When this works, I’m pleased. But when my simplifying doesn’t answer a question fully, it reflects the responsibility of my choices.

It seems some people, even if they recognize their ability to make choices, may have this simplifying disposition. And it may lessen the responsibility of their choices.

This is by no means a rant against simplicity. Both simplicity and complexity mark creation (“Up Front,” Herald, September 2009). Simple decisions are not always worse than complex ones.

However, it seems that when things become more complex our choices always rest between two responses: to rise to the new level of complexity by transforming ourselves, or to try to simplify things.

A legend says that when Alexander the Great could and no end to unbind the Gordian knot, he sliced it in half with his sword. This produced the needed ends and the so-called “Alexander solution.” How often, when challenged by a complex environment, do we choose the simple Alexander solution, instead of allowing ourselves to be transformed so we may respond adequately to growing complexities?

It seems all wars and armed conflicts show irresponsible, sinful choices, with people choosing simple solutions to complex problems. In Europe, we remember the simplifier, Adolph Hitler, and his “ultimate solution to the Jewish question.” In Ukraine, we remember another simplifier, Josef Stalin, who said, “No person, no problem.”

Human choices contribute to good or evil in our lives and in the world.

Many aspects of creation need redemption because of irresponsible and sinful human choices.

I live in the Donbass area of eastern Ukraine. Huge coal-processing slag heaps blight the Donbass cityscapes. The heaps make our cities look dull and depressing. They endanger public health and harm land, air, and water.

Those who began these methods three hundred years ago did not know other ways. But those who came later, during the Soviet and post-Soviet times, continued to pile the coal waste. And they knew it was harmful. They fully realized what these slag heaps would do to the environment.

Other technologies, more complex and more expensive, could have returned these wastes to the underground mines. But those responsible chose to keep using a simple method and left a heritage of contamination to their children and grandchildren.

Was that a responsible choice? These slag heaps in my city speak for themselves.

I suppose the top financial managers whose irresponsible choices triggered the world economic crisis did something similar. They did not respond to the complex challenges of the modern world economy. Rather, they chose simplified approaches that allowed them to hold firm to what worked well previously.

We are called to make responsible choices within the circumstances of our lives that contribute to the purposes of God.

When visiting the United States some time ago, I was present at a discussion about the economy. Someone said the top financial managers made irresponsible choices that created the economic crisis. An esteemed colleague replied that it would be better simply to say they sinned. He suggested that calling the actions “irresponsible choices” rather than “sin” was a “secular, postmodern invention….”

This challenged my vision. I wanted to say the phrase “irresponsible choices” was not an effort to replace the biblical term “sin.” It simply was trying to understand where the sinfulness lay so we might prevent such things in the future.

I also wanted to say that maybe the time had come not to be so frightened by what many call “postmodern.” Rather, it’s just one more lens, helping us see something about the world that we otherwise might miss.

Instead, I said nothing, though I had no doubts that in our church community the opinion of each always is welcomed and valued.

That probably was an irresponsible choice on my part be-cause it did not recognize the trust of those from the USA. They had invited me to come from another part of the world so they could hear what I believed, not what I thought might be expedient to say.

Some easily recognizable and trivial causes contributed to the irresponsibility of my choice. For example, I feared my English would fail me, and I felt reluctant to speak against the weighty opinion of my colleague. But behind these excuses, I recognize the true cause of my irresponsible choice: my wish to simplify things.

I’m not the only person to face that problem.

A young person from a congregation in my area resented another young person’s remark. The first young person chose to cut the Gordian knot without responding to what is prescribed in the scripture as a way for personal-conflict resolution (Matthew 18:15–17 NRSV). Instead, he made an irresponsible choice by raising a public scandal that eventually hurt his relationship with most of the congregation.

The other person, who made the offending remark, chose to bear his “…fruit worthy of repentance” (Matthew 3:8 NRSV).

Meanwhile, the offended young person did not reconcile. He just expressed appreciation to his supporters. After a time he recognized that other relationships still weren’t right. So at a meeting he acknowledged something might be wrong with his choices.

The congregation politely listened, almost without comment or emotion. Someone just said: “It seems you are near the right road.…” It was obvious the young person did not grasp why what he did was not enough to heal the damaged relationship. I hope a story about a lesson my father gave me many years ago might help.

My father never knew his mother, who died at his birth. His older sister—my aunt— raised him. Unlike him, she was a devout observer of Jewish religious rules. One time my aunt was in a hospital, and my father and I cleaned her home.

My father took a spoon and said: “Look! That is your aunt’s spoon for milk only…I easily could replace it by any of those for meat or fish, and she would never know. It would not have any consequences. But my conscience does not sanction it because I respect her faith, even if I do not share it.”

That was a great lesson for me. The responsibility of my father’s choice was not based on supposed consequences. Rather, it stemmed from his love, respect, and view of sacred relationships in creation.

I am my choices. If so, the consequences of my choices mirror who I am.

Does what is mirrored invite me to recognize only that I may not have made the best choice? Or does it also urge me to repent, confess, purify my heart, and transform myself into someone who can help redeem what was degraded or damaged?

That is just what my responsibility is about.

I pray the “responsible choices” principle will rest deeply in all of us, and we will allow it to shape our priorities and lives.

For Further Reflection and Discussion

1. The article on responsible choices cites author Alexandra Stoddard’s book, You Are Your Choices. How does that concept dovetail with Community of Christ’s belief on agency, or freedom of choice?
2. Does all sin arise from irresponsible choices?
3. How do we explain it when a person makes a responsible choice but still suffers pain and hardship? Why do we believe that our worth in God’s eyes is not reflected by things that happen to us?
4. The author talks about simple and complex decisions. How do these fit with our worship lives?
5. Just as slag heaps dominate the Donbass horizon in Ukraine, other ecological eyesores can be found in nearly every country. Think of a few in your own nation. How could people have prevented them?
6. Sometimes making the responsible choice is easy. Other times we find it very difficult. Cite some examples of each.
7. Making a responsible choice can be hard. Consider times and experiences when you have chosen to speak—or stay silent—about statements or action involving bigotry, poverty, and waste. What effect did your outspokenness, or silence, bring?
8. The responsible choice can be obvious in some situations. In others it is hard to see. How can discernment exercises help individuals and the World Church as they struggle with difficult issues?

—Greg Clark,
 Herald team