The choices that we make matter. The things we do, do something in us. The choices we make determine the person we are becoming. The New Testament uses agrarian language to illustrate this point.
Don’t be deceived: God is not mocked. For whatever a person sows he will also reap, because the one who sows to his flesh will reap destruction from the flesh, but the one who sows to the Spirit will reap eternal life from the Spirit.
Galatians 6:7-8
In his book The Heart of Man, Dr. Erich Fromm speaks on an exploration of evil and the human condition.
The longer we continue to make the wrong decisions, the more our heart hardens; the more often we make the right decision, the more our heart softens-or better perhaps, becomes alive…
Dr. Erich Fromm, The Heart of Man
The daily choices that may seem insignificant eventually shape and mold our characters into stones or enable them to flourish.
Take, for instance, an affair. In all of my years as a pastor, I’ve never encountered somebody who woke up in a happy, healthy marriage one morning and had an affair the same night. In each case, the affair began with a thousand previous choices rather than with the act of adultery. The decision to forego date night, to postpone couples counseling, to be flirtatious with a coworker, and let a specific type of film into the entertainment queue. The issue itself was the product of a thousand decisions taken over a long period of time, all of which came to a head and brought destruction to the surface of a life from the substrata.
However, the reciprocal is also true. The daily decision to rejoice, to cultivate a way of seeing our lives in God’s good world through gratitude, celebration, and unhurried delight rather than through the lens of our phones, news apps, or flesh, will form us into joyful, thankful people who deeply enjoy life with God and others over time. What begins as a willful act soon becomes our inner nature. What starts as a decision evolves into a character.
In the beginning, we have a choice, but we have our character in the end.