A Reformation of Choice

"Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice—and the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be man—by choice; he has to hold his life as a value—by choice: he has to learn to sustain it—by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues—by choice." -- excerpted from John Galt's speech in Atlas Shrugged

A Christian must be a Christian by choice. I have only now realized this fact. Be careful in reading these words and thinking that you know what I'm writing.

A Christian does not become a Christian by choice. It is not his decision making that produces conversion, a change in acknowledged beliefs and allegiances, it is merely one of the first signs of it. But a Christian must be a Christian by choice. It cannot be sustained by habit. Neither can it be sustained by fear of hell, of social shunning, of parental disapproval, of God knows what.

A Christian must be a Christian because he values his existence as a Christian, as someone who holds his allegiance to the God described in his Scriptures, as someone who understands and chooses to obey, as someone who understands what set of values he is acquiring.

I didn't understand this before now. As far back as I can remember, people have always called me "smart," "precocious," "intelligent," and a million other empty flattering phrases. But I never felt that they were accurate. It was a self-esteem issue, yes, but I believe there was more. It was an issue of the conscious ownership of my own mind.

Only in the last 2 years have I begun reclaiming my mind from the world. Before then I was only a curator of facts to which anyone with any illusion of competence or confidence could deposit their thoughts. But reader, do you know what you call a system with no standards? It is a sewer. And we should greet a sewer-like mind with the same convulsed face of disgust that we use for an open manhole cover. My mind was such a thing.

But now, I have acquired a powerful talisman to ward off the world and to protect value, the word 'No.' No, I think that is a stupid idea. No, I do not understand what you are saying. No, I will not for the sake of being polite, acquiesce to your irrational claims.

And most importantly: No, I will not keep quiet on questions I've long held to myself. I've shuttled all my concerns and worries to the basement of my mind. No one else would understand. No one else even thinks in the same categories that I do! I have to protect them from my own thoughts!

What was I wishing for? What was I waiting for? Was I hoping that someone more intelligent than me, someone whose reason was trustworthy could come along, wave their magic wand and banish these thoughts from my mind? What an infinitely depraved desire! It's the equivalent of wishing to win a mental-spiritual lottery! If I have incurred these debts with my extravagant thinking then why should I expect any way to pay them off except through my effort and my exercise of rationality? I despise compulsive lottery-players and gamblers as one of the lowest forms of existence. I have damned myself by my own values.

No gallant knight is going to gallop in on a white horse to save my mind. But that's OK. I am no damsel in distress.

This is MY mind. This is MY life. I must choose. What will my values be? What life will those values produce? I can hear the cries of some of my friends already.

"But man is so limited! He can only reason so much! God is bigger than man! You can't put God in a box! Stanley, you just have to stop thinking and believe!"

Then what is my alternative? It is my reason or it is the judgment of another, and how do I know what that person may have in his mind? I know what I have in my own.

There is a good reason I stopped listening to Christian music by and large. I will not go wherever someone tells me. I will not do whatever someone tells me. I will not speak another person's words in place of my own. I began, instinctively at first, consciously later, to realize that so much of what I saw in Christianity was a negation of identity. Not me, but God.

This is the exact disaster of thought that I escaped from in Buddhism. My ideological reason for leaving Buddhism was the fact that I wanted to live and exist, as Stanley, not as Brahman. As Atman approached Brahman, I would wake up from the illusion and realize that we were never separate entities at all. I began to sense a similar strain in Christianity, that my existence was evil and that it should be exterminated by God's grandeur.

The sloppy reader will think that I have thrown in the towel. I have not. Absence of proof is not proof of an absence. I do not have the answers, but what I do have is questions. These, I think, are worthwhile questions. They need to be answered.

What kind of integrity would I have if I did not endeavor to answer them. What kind of integrity would I have if I threw away God's gift of rationality and thought and instead plugged my ears and screamed "SATAN YOU'RE NOT GOING TO GET ME I BELIEVE IN GOD NYAHNYAHNYAH." If that is what it takes to continue in faith, I will not continue in faith. If what it takes to continue in faith is a moving set of songs in a dimly lit church, a preacher's fervent pleas to the congregation to come back to the Father who loves so much as the Spirit moves through the piano subtly playing in the background (it's hilarious how when this is done at church, it is the movement of the Spirit, the very Hand of God, and when it's done on a TV show, it's only emotional manipulation)... if that is what I need to continue in faith, then I will drop everything and not continue.

I value my mind. This is the battleground. I must choose. I must value. I.

My existence is an inarguable premise and I will not surrender it.