- “What do you have to say?” he said looking at me with stern, dark eyes. I lifted my head and tried to hold his gaze but soon dropped my head again and just shrugged. I could hear him get up from the table and come closer to me. Sitting on the edge of it so close I could smell his cologne, he whispered, “I know your secret.” With that he shuffled away and I heard the door slam.
Now in my third hour of questioning, I was suspected of being involved in a robbery of a liquor store not far from where I lived. As the detective left I lifted my head enough to see that the room was now empty, but I was sure that I was being watched through the two-way glass to my right. I wondered how much longer could they keep me. There was no evidence.
Earlier in the week I had been drinking at my neighbor’s house and had heard plans being made for the robbery. In fact, I had been asked if I wanted to ‘get a piece of the action’ but turned them down. Now I had a decision to make. Was I going to roll over on my friends or keep my mouth shut and wait it out.
As I was thinking, the detective returned and I could see that he had another cop with him. I knew this guy from a bar I used to hang around. I was pretty sure it was time for good cop/bad cop and I was right. The new guy, who I knew as Ted, drew up a chair next to me and began to talk as if we were best friends, “John, we know you’re not involved and just want whatever information you have…then you will be free to go, just give us a few names.” I stared blankly at him and shook my head. Bad cop was next, “You can and will be charged with withholding information. That brings some hard time with it…. It is your choice.” My choice, I thought. How was I going to choose?
Do we really have choices in this life or are we just pawns in a game, our lives predestined like I have heard even some Christian denominations espouse? I found myself confronted with this question many times in my life before and even after I accepted Jesus as my Savior. Do we really have free will?
So, as I struggled with this at an earlier time in my life, I read all kinds of books but none of them made any sense until I read the Word of God for myself. When I did I saw from the very beginning in the Garden of Eden that man and woman had a choice. They had this perfect world and with hundreds and thousands of good things to choose from and just one bad thing God warns them about, “…You may eat fruit from any tree in the garden. But you must not eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, if you do you will certainly die.” (Genesis 2: 16b -17) Some would and do ask why was there a need for this tree to be there? Why not just have a perfect world where no choices need to be made? The only answer is, that would mean God created not humans but robots. From the beginning, we were given free will and a choice to make.
The Bible is full of people making wrong choices, from Eve choosing to believe Satan’s lie to Peter’s denials. The common thread in all those stories is that even when we do make choices that should doom us God has a plan to save us and they all culminate in Jesus. And in the ultimate choice, faith.
One of the great free will statements in the Bible comes from one of my favorite books, Joshua. It is about the Israelites right after Moses dies. They come into the land of their inheritance, later known as Israel. There they fight for the land and with God’s power conquer many nations. At the end of the book Joshua, who had been their leader after Moses gives them a choice, “And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods of your fathers served in the region beyond the river or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But for me and my house, we will serve the LORD. (Joshua 24: 15) Joshua gives them choices and states he has already made his choice, faith, and trust in the one true God. You and I have that same choice today. We can serve the gods of this modern world or choose the one who already died to save us all.
In that room years ago I had a choice to make. At that time, I had no faith, no moral compass to guide me, I did not know Jesus. Questioned, threatened, and cursed at for hours I held on to the idea of honor among thieves. I was released the next morning. Later I learned that when my friends had been caught, that they tried to implicate me and I felt my choices once again had failed me. These days I still choose the wrong way especially when I do not trust those choices to Him who knows the beginning from the end. May we all like Joshua be able to say, “….But for me and my house, we choose to serve the LORD,” That is my prayer today.
Blessings John
9/11/17