success or failure, which will you choose?

by: Sherwin Ragos

“When you pick up one end of the stick, you pick up the other.”

It has been a long issue whether or not man is predestined. Predestination denotes that we humans have no power over our destiny because it has been fixed in advance by someone powerful. That we can’t do any better when our destiny is glum. However, another idea is in direct contrast with predestination. Man is endowed with free will. As free moral agents, men have the power to choose even to what they should be in the future. God gave us the freedom to choose between good and evil. But he insists that we must choose what is good over evil. Apparently, this is reasonably sound and logical.

Humans are the only earthly creations that were given the freedom to exercise free will. They were not created as robots, programmed to do the things they are programmed to do. Freedom is far from absoluteness. God set rules or laws that should governed our actions. We are free like doves to spread our wings so to speak in the vast skies. The sky in itself, however, has a limit. Our freedom has limitations. This is for our own wellness. Natural laws are present to govern the very existence of man and other animate and inanimate things, even the earth’s foundation. The law of gravity, for instance, maintains the earth’s position in space that makes it inhabitable. No one can go against this natural law and keep living. God also set moral laws and principles to govern our actions. We may suffer if we deliberately disobey the standard of morality he has set. We may also go well if we closely follow his moral laws and principles.

When things go wrong, we tend to blame others. We blame God whom we believed predestined our lives beyond. We pick on the people around us as advocate of our failure. We have a list of make-believes that we are not behind our actions. And when things went insurmountable, we succumb because everything is definitely beyond our control. It is true that we have limitations. This is because we are imperfect beings. We deteriorate and die. Therefore, there are things that are not doable, unachievable.

We try to get away from the fact that we are the workers of our own destiny. We love better things yet we disown them. We want successes in everything we do yet we cease working on them. How we wish for wisdom yet we have failed to apply what we know. What and who we are in the present is not because of our conditions but because of the decisions we made in the past. We even try to disclaim that we are responsible for our actions and the outcomes they bring.

If that is so, where is free will, our freedom and power to choose? Along with freedom is responsibility. The word responsibility is “response ability.” We respond to things and events because we are able to do so, and we are responsible to the outcomes of our responses. Just like when we pick up one end of the stick, whether we like it or not, we pick up the other end. The misfortunes we are suffering are not a product of predestination. They are results of our actions and decisions in the past.

If we are the maker of our destiny, we can do better if we choose to. It’s in our very hands the power to unleash the bright possible future. Knowing this is good. We become braver amid arduous times when we almost lost our hope to go on. We become life-saver of our own lives, drawing away from nuisances that greatly tax us physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

The power to choose is present to every human being. It is innate, God-given. A gift that must be taken cared of. An inheritance that must be used and valued, and be passed on to our posterity. It’s a matter of choice.

As we struggle to utilize our potentials, others around us deliberately misuse their power to choose. Many find it difficult to cling to what is righteous and virtuous. They let their failures undermine their response-ability. The result of self-centeredness, egoistic, me-first attitude is corruption. There is no way out. They are to receive something in return from what they had invested. Just like when you “sow winds, you’ll reap tornadoes.”

The words of an Apostle who lived almost 2,000 years ago are being reechoed, “Do not be misled: God is not one to be mocked. For whatever a man is sowing, this he will also reap.” Keep on sowing what is righteous, lovable, chaste, and wholesome despite others attempt to influence us to follow their way of living. We are not the sorts who give in to malicious assault; but we are the sorts who painstakingly use our principled-freedom to choose.

Pick up one end of the [better] stick, you pick the other end. That very end is success.

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