Choices and partitions

‘You have a choice’ those were magical words we all heard when we were young. We could choose a career, a spouse, even the house where we lived with our spouses. Now the magic has quite gone – stolen by a generation of parents with child-managements skills, who have turned choice into law: like this; ‘You have a choice eat your broccoli and get desert, or leave your broccoli and get no desert.” The magic word, ‘choice’, now fills me with gloom; dinner without desert – what kind of a meal is that?

Abram’s nephew had a choice, and he was no longer a young man, he had been with Abram ever since Abram left Ur and stayed in Haran. Now Lot was rich, and his uncle was even richer. The men taking care of their herds of animals had begun to quarrel over available space to graze animals and pitch tents.

“You have a choice said Abram to Lot” but this was no child-management law this was the word of opportunity. "We need to separate to prevent quarrelling between me and you, and between our herders." So it had got to that had it? Lot had begun to quarrel with Abram, and Abram had begun to search for a peaceful solution! Was separation the only peace they could devise? Lot continued to need Abram, and perhaps childless Abram was going to miss his only male relative. I live in an era when angry congregations separate from their home congregations and go their own way, I wish it wasn’t so: both sides need each other in ways that will only become apparent long after the separation.

“You go in one direction and I’ll go in the other,” said Abram to his nephew. Lot chose to go in the direction of the valley, leaving for Abram the tops and sides of the hills and mountains.

When this story of Abram and Lot is read in discussion groups, people are quick to denounce the selfishness of Lot, but too embarrassed to talk about Abram because he looks like the looser. The more straightforward speakers in a group, would say that Abram came out of the negotiation looking like a fool – I like that kind of honest speech because it opens the door for questions: was Abram foolish; or too hasty with a half-thought-out solution; did he love Lot so much that he willingly gave him the best; or was his confidence in God’s provision so great that it made him generous?

I sold real estate for two years after I retired from being a pastor. (I needed a change from too many funerals and too few baptisms.) Another retired minister joined the staff of the franchise where I worked. His name will have to be Herbert because I can’t give you his real name, but this story is true. “Business and Christianity don’t mix.” he said. “Christianity is about getting right with God and going to heaven; business is about making as much money as you can for your client: you can’t do both things at the same time.” When I returned home and reported this conversation to David he said, “Ask him if that applies to carpenters?” At the time I had no quick reply and had already discovered that Herbert didn’t converse, he just pronounced. Herbert had erected a wall between what he believed and what he did. It’s an old heresy that says, my soul will go to heaven, therefore it belongs to God but my brain belongs to my body, and will die, therefore I can do what I choose.

Most of what I did as a pastor was help people break down that mental wall that separates religious thought from daily life actions. Individuals become new people when they break down the partition they have made in their minds, and allow faith in God to infiltrate every day choices until the whole is one great lake of love of God in body and soul heart and mind,