“But, I………………..”, Jack’s voice trailed off with a heavy sigh, “I, had………….I had no choice”.

Well we’ve all thought what Jack is thinking from time to time, haven’t we? Thinking it, however, doesn’t make it so. We always have a choice. During my many years as an educator, I always made it a point to stress to students that they/we always have a choice, or choices. Now choices have consequences, and we may not like the consequences, but we always have a choice. Always. The consequences of some choices may be relatively or completely insignificant. For example, the only consequence of which cartoon show that I choose to watch after school may be that I got to watch Tom and Jerry, but I missed Bugs Bunny. No big deal right. It’s not that kind of a choice that is causing our character Jack his agony. Not at all. The choices that are a problem for us all are the ones that threaten to make us compromise our values. Values, you remember, are those things that we believe are right or wrong 100% of that time. You’re with me, right? Kind of like, you’ve inherited the family business, it’s been a rough year, but you think you can avoid bankruptcy by cheating just a bit on taxes. That’s a justifiable compromise, isn’t it? Or how about, the love of your life has been kidnapped, and the kidnapper has threatened to kill them unless you cooperate. All you have to do to save your love is assassinate the Governor of your state. Sorry, Governor, right? Well, no, not right. Values. You do have a choice. You always have a choice. You may not like the results of the choice, but you always have a choice.

Over the course of my career, I had the pleasure of working with fine educators, both in the classroom and on athletic fields and courts. One of them, Scott Van Hoose, always asked students after they had made a particularly bad choice, why they had made that choice. Inevitably, they would respond, ” I don’t know”. To which Coach Van Hoose would fire back, “Well if you don’t know, then who does?”. Coach just wanted them to learn to think about their decisions. To weigh outcomes before acting. To be able to have a reason why. We may not like the consequences, but we always have a choice.

The founding fathers of the United States of America realized that having the freedom to make choices, so as to reap the benefits, or to suffer punishment for those choices was important. That’s why our government is set up the way that it is. We all need to recognize these unique freedoms, and fight to preserve them.

Like me, many of the framers of the Constitution believed in a Creator of all that we know to exist. They believed that this Creator was the God of the Bible, and that this God was the original Grantor of Freedom. The New International Version of the Bible tells us in Genesis Chapter 2 verses 15 through 17, “The Lord god took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and to take care of it. And the Lord God commanded the man, ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the Garden; but you must not eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die'”. God, you see, gave Adam, the first man, freedom of choice from the very beginning. To refuse to eat from the Tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil, or to eat. To make a choice. A few chapters later in Genesis we learn of the choices of Cain and Able, then Noah, Abram, and on and on throughout the Old Testament and into the New Testament. In this great work we learn of the freedoms God granted man. The two greatest freedoms gifted mankind by the Creator, involve simply believing. Believing that God is who He says He is, and secondly, that Jesus is who He said He is.

The choice is yours. What do you believe?