Whose choice is it?

I have been pondering over this thought for a long time now, that there is a God who created us and He has given us the freedom of choice. And again the Bible says God has a plan for your life. Now how does this work? I was talking to a friend of mine recently, discussing this very thought. He said, if God had given man the freedom to choose then why does He have a plan for your life? Doesn’t that mean that God is taking away the freedom of choice from man? Why did God then give us the freedom to choose when He already has a plan for everyone’s life. That rang a bell in my head.

Me being a believer of this fact till today was now stuck with the very basis of God’s creation of rational human beings who have the freedom to choose, choose between right and wrong, this career or that, marry this guy or that. Why would God do such a thing in the first place? Does that mean we are merely puppets in the hands of God? He puts us in the office one day and next we are lying in the grave dead due to a fatal accident. Is all this His doing? Why did He gave us a mind then to think and rationalize, if this is what He intended to do? These are a whole lot of questions I guess many people hit their head on when it comes to believing in the God who created us.

Well, it turns out that its not so. We are not mere puppets created by God for his amusement.

God surely has a plan for each and every one of us. But like He says He has given us the freedom to choose the way we want to live it because He created us with a mind to think and rationalize everything. We being humans are imperfect and can take wrong decisions, choose the wrong the way, want easy life, with shortcuts for every single thing. It takes a lot of effort for we as humans to choose what is good and right always. The bad and wrong many times, most of the times seems more attracting and therefore we end up choosing that. Another reason why we give in to our demands is that we want something and we want it now, that immediate gratification. We don’t see the larger picture and settle for the for we get for now. We forget the consequences of this gratification and those many opportunities we just cut down because of our one decision. Well, there are people who get use to doing what they want even bearing the consequences and still being happy with what “nothing” they have gained till now. Let me tell you, such people are actually living in an illusion, an illusion of being happy and satisfied where as they actually aren’t. And this comes to an end one way or the other. That’s when they have to start all over again with their life.

Now I’m not saying that human beings can’t live happily on their own. They sure can. There are many people in this world who are happy, that works for them what they are doing. But it doesn’t work that way for every single human being on this earth.

Yeah so, coming back to God’s plan, God gives you an alternative, you choose your way and make a mess of your life(which we all do somewhere in our lives) or let God guide you in your life. Now here it doesn’t mean that He wants you sit and pray, meditate and fast all your life. It doesn’t mean that you can’t have fun in your life. Jesus never sat and prayed the whole time when he was on this Earth. He did many other things and yet He was happy. Again, the definition of happiness is not boozing and dancing all night, earning so much money that you cant stop counting, neither is it when you have nothing but a mug, sitting on the roadside and begging for money. Happiness is inside your heart. Sitting in your room alone doing nothing, but from inside you’re satisfied. Even while sitting in your office doing loads of work, their is this peace inside of you that no one can take away. That’s what happiness is.

Again we have the choice, what we want to choose? The God’s way, who knows the bigger picture or my plan which is short sited and can fail at any moment.

I was reading a book written by Catherine Marshell called Beyond Ourselves. In this book she addressed this dilemma of human choice and God’s plan for our lives. She says

By giving humans freedom of will, the Creator has chosen to limit His own power. He risked  the daring experiment of giving us the freedom to make good or bad decisions, to live decent or evil lives, because God does not want the forced obedience of slaves. Instead He covets the voluntary love and obedience of sons who love Him for Himself.