Consuming Goodness: CHOICES

December 17, 2024By Heidi Callender

A life is built one choice at a time.

We make hundreds of choices without giving most of them much thought.

What we eat. What we watch. What we say. Who gets our time. What we do when we're angry. What we keep replaying in our minds. What we walk away from. What we forgive. What we pursue.

One choice may feel small.

But choices become habits, and habits have a way of becoming a life.

You Choose

The Hebrew verb often translated “choose" (bachar), carries the idea of selecting or choosing. Scripture repeatedly treats our choices as meaningful. Free choice.

That doesn't mean every good choice produces an immediately good outcome. Life is not a vending machine where we insert righteousness and receive an easy day.

It means we can decide what kind of things we will keep feeding.

I Had to Choose Differently

There was a period of my life when I was angry. I carried hurt. I drank too much. I ate too much. I fed thoughts and relationships that were not producing anything good in me.

I cannot blame every part of that season on somebody else.

Eventually I had choices to make.

I could keep rehearsing the past, or I could begin building what came next. I could keep feeding anger, or I could make room for forgiveness. I could keep consuming things that left me emptier, or I could start looking for goodness.

I asked God to forgive me. I worked on forgiving other people. I worked on forgiving myself.

None of it happened in one dramatic moment.

It happened through choices.

Choose Love

Jesus summarized the law in love of God and love of neighbor, and Galatians 5:14 repeats the command to “love your neighbor as yourself.”

Love is not the same thing as approving everything, avoiding boundaries or pretending hurt didn't happen.

1 Corinthians 13 describes love as patient and kind, not boastful or self-seeking, not keeping a record of wrongs, and enduring in hope. That is a much more demanding definition of love than simply feeling affectionate. Then, Philippians 4:8 told me to think on good things and focus my mind on goodness.

This gives us something practical to choose.

Choose Peace

Philippians 4:7 describes the peace of God as surpassing understanding and commands us to guard our hearts and minds.

I love that because peace does not require pretending life is peaceful.

Sometimes the circumstances remain messy.

Prayer, trust and faith do not guarantee that every problem disappears. But they can change what we carry into the problem.

1 Peter 5:7 tells us to cast our anxieties on God because He cares for us.

Sometimes choosing peace begins there: admitting that we cannot control everything.

Choose Life

In Deuteronomy 30:19, Moses puts the choice starkly before Israel: life and death, blessing and curse - “choose life.”

I don't read that as a promise that every faithful person gets an easy, long or trouble-free earthly life.

I read it as an invitation to orient a life toward God.

Life is more than status, money, accomplishments or whatever title appears after your name.

It is a gift.

And I don't want to spend mine endlessly chasing things that cannot love me back.

What's Good?

Consuming Goodness was never supposed to mean pretending I am good and everybody who disagrees with me is bad.

That would rather defeat the point. 😆

Romans 3 reminds us that none of us gets to claim moral perfection.

For me, goodness is a direction: seeking God, examining what my choices are producing, changing course when I need to, loving people with God's love flowing though me, and becoming more intentional about what I allow to consume me.