OUR CHOICE

I had a call on Tuesday night from one of my former teenagers from my group here in Defiance. He put me on speaker phone so that a friend he was talking to could ask me a questiont hat the two of them were trying to figure out. Here's the question, "If heaven is perfect, then how did Satan get kicked out for messing up?" It caught me off guard a little at first because I had never been asked that question before, but gave this answer. A perfect heaven does not mean that we are without choices, instead it may mean that we do have choices. This is just like it is on earth, the perfection that we are called to has a direct corralation to the choices that we make. If the freedom we have to make choices were to be removed from us then we would not be able to love perfectly. Computers can't love, Robots can't love and neither can people who can't choose not to.

It's definitely a difficult position that God put himself into. He created a people who have the choice to love him or not and many times we choose not to. He seems to have set himself up for disappointment. On the other hand though, he set himself up to receive love since many people choose that option as well. I think that the payoff is great for him. I can relate to that. At times in my life there has been people who have chosen not to like me, let alone love me yet that was/is outweighed so much by those who have chosen to love me. I am extremely greatful that we have a God that allows us to choose him and choose to love him. It's often those things in life that I didn't choose that I tend to have the hardest time living with.