Death and Doctrine, Part 7: Choice and Fleeces

There is a German proverb I like to tell my advisees as they select classes, minors, and majors:

"He who has choice, has torment."

Ah, the existential terrors of making choices!

The reason choices are terror-filled is because we are finite creatures. We only get one crack at life. We don't get the luxury of Bill Murray's Groundhog Day, forever getting a chance to get it "right." No, we live life just once. And this makes choice difficult. Will I choose correctly? Or will I make a mistake and forever muck up my life?

Many people lack the courage to make the choices and suffer the mistakes. Thus, they retreat into infantile patterns of dependency, allowing significant or powerful others to make their choices for them. Or, they stick their head in the sand, waiting for fate to choose. Because if you wait, put off, or procrastinate long enough SOMETHING will happen. And many people prefer this kind of neurotic waiting game, letting the chips fall where they may, over the terrors of making an authentic choice.

Why do we prefer this neurotic choice-avoidance? Because choice implies responsibility. If you choose it, you take the blame. But if Bill or fate made the choice then you can blame Bill or fate.

But in truth you did made a choice. You chose not to choose. You turned your back on your existential freedom and handed your life over to someone else, someone you can blame. You played it safe, but the cost is passivity, inauthenticity, and dependency.

Christians often show this dependency by allowing God to make their choices. Rather than making hard choices, to step out in freedom, to risk the mistake, we pray for signs and "open doors" from God. We lay out the fleece: "God, if you want me to take this new job send me a sign."

Christians often talk about God "opening doors" for them, where God clearly marks and facilitates a choice. But I routinely ask, "How do you know it was God and not the Devil who opened that door? I'm very sure the Devil would have made the choice look like God was behind it."

Now this is a very troubling response on my part. I'm supposed to just nod and allow the person to reap the existential comfort of allowing someone else--God, in this case--to make their choices for them. If I bring up the God-or-the-Devil issue I've just plunged them back into the existential crisis: How do I KNOW I'm making the right choice?

The truth is, you don't know. Choice is risky. And we only get one crack at life. It sucks, I know. So courage is the only legitimate response. Do you have it? And will you take responsibility for the outcomes?

In short, the problem I have with fleeces is that they are using God as a kind of magic. Using God to peer into and divine the future. God as Magic 8 Ball.

It is not that I think God doesn't give signs. He clearly does. My concern here is with a kind of magical thinking that can develop in Christian populations. My diagnosis here is that this kind of approach to God and prayer is deeply motivated by the need for existential comfort, the allures of choice-avoidance.

So here's my take. To be a people of deep, hard won character we have to make choices without signs and support from God. Further, I think God demands this of us, just as we demand it from our children. At some point in moral development we stop making choices for the child and begin to ask, "What do you think you should do?" Forcing the child to make the choice and accept the consequences. Of course, the child resists this. As we do as adults. But to rescue the child from this anxiety is to do a disservice to the moral development of the child. And I ask, would not God be doing the same thing for us? If God gives out signs on a regular basis, constantly rescuing people from hard choices, would God not be turning Christians into dependent, needy, and passive persons?

And if that is so, how can you change the world with a group like that?