Choice: America’s Ultimate Secret Weapon and its Biggest Sin

Some years ago I was asked about what I thought the meaning of life was and along that vain, I penned an article and a book calling it “The True Meaning of Life”.  The idea behind my definition of the true meaning of life was based on perception.  How you see things will determine where you stand.  If you see greed as good then you will defend it.  If you perceive that there is good in everybody then you will look for it. If you perceive that there is a heaven and a hell then you will stand firm on those grounds.  In the search for the true meaning of life, we tend to try and ascertain it for the sole purpose of understanding why people do some of the things that they do.

We want to try and understand why people commit crimes and we have come to accept that there are sometimes outside forces that cause them to do so.  We have come to accept environmental, societal, physical and even mental excuses.  Once we find out which ones made them choose crime, we then begin to believe that we can fix this problem.  We first started with the old adage found within the Bible of “an eye for an eye” and in those days go by, if you were caught stealing, your hand was chopped off.  The thought was that if the punishment was much worse than the crime, people would stop committing the crime for fear of that punishment.  We can easily see that this experiment failed.

We want to try and understand why people abuse drugs and alcohol and we have come to accept that it is mostly attributed to environmental factors.  If you are raised in a family or community where drugs are rampant, you have a much better chance of becoming consumed.  Once we find this out, we then lean toward providing counseling or medical assistance to combating this problem.  It began with incarceration but now also includes institutional aid. This experiment is still being played out with very mixed results.  Depending on your perception will determine on which side of this issue you fall.

We want to try and understand why people sin and cause those who are a little shaky in their faith to possibly forsake God all together and choose to worship other things like money, power, influence or graven images.  Again the Bible was the source of how we first began to deal with these people and we called them “heathens”, “savages” or “hell-bound”.  We saw them as leapers and diseased, individuals to keep our distance from and ignore as often as possible.  This seemed to work for us in the beginning but soon we stopped to consider how those we once shunned could be an advantage.  The advantage of using them to enrich ourselves far outweighed the risk of getting infected and thus the belief that purchasing your salvation was born.  This is no longer an experiment; it has become a common practice.

Now come the ultimate secret weapon that Satan and all those willing to follow him have been hiding from view for so long.  The key to why we do what we do when we do it.  The long awaited answer to that final question of the true meaning to why we act as we do.  The reason, choice.  Choice is that weapon because escaping responsibility for your actions is not possible with it.  You want to know why people commit crimes, consider it is because they choose to as their primary driving force.  They choose to walk into any place or up to anyone and commit whatever crime that occurred.  Many say but they were driven by it from revenge, to support their families or to survive.  All these may be decent reasons, depending on your perception, but consider that none of these reasons could ever be possible without choice. No one closed their eyes one minutes only to open them the next and found themselves standing there with a weapon in their hands.  No one had an out of body experience and lost all control of themselves during that time.

Same can be said for abusing drugs, alcohol or our complete engrossment of sinning.  Maybe it’s the cause of so many bad things happening to you and you feel no relief unless you down a few six packs or a couple of bottles.  Maybe it takes a few dime bags to make you feel no pain and more loved or maybe it’s seeing the look on someone’s face when you purposely mistreat them, ignore them, abuse them or use them.  If you perceive the world as “out to get you” do you not see it as right to get them first?  If you perceive that you have been wronged, do you not owe it to yourself and those around you to get revenge?  Whether any or all of these apply, consider this one fact, in all of these scenarios, choice must be present.

Regardless of how any of us wish to play this game, choice is the only game in town.  Trying to understand why some people do what they do is a good thing because you may be able to fix the issue but failing to account for choice allows everyone to escape responsibility for their actions and all they really have to prove to you is “the devil made me do it”.