I stumbled upon an essay today and as I was reading it, I was struck with how apropos it is to several threads here that have had active discussion recently. I also found it very inspirational.
The essay is entitled "The Lovely Dragon of Choice: The Freedom Not to Be Free" and it was written by Dr. Anthony Esolen, a college professor of classic literature. It's quite long, but well worth the read. Here's a link to the full essay:
The Lovely Dragon of Choice: The Freedom Not to Be Free
In a very broad summation of the topic of the essay, it mainly has to do with man's desire for control over his own choices in his life and his destiny which tend to limit his freedom to follow God.
Here are a few excerpts that I thought might stimulate some discussion:
"Modern man is afraid of the quest, and is not particularly fond of hunger and cliffs, either. He will not see that the very point of an adventure is that you cannot plan it. And to be in quest of the Holy Grail—that is, the mystery of Christ made manifest in our world under the humble appearances of bread and wine—is to be prepared for the appearance, sudden and awful, even on a bare rock and when one’s stomach knots with hunger of the ineffable God."
"I am not merely saying that there is a freedom higher and more blissful than the freedom to choose how one spends one’s money or where one buys a house or whom one marries. I assert that even regarding questions of money or dwelling or spouse or any earthly thing, there is a freedom that slays the freedom to choose. Call it the wisdom of tossing the choice away. Call it the hope not in choosing but in being chosen."
"Clever choosers do not fare well in Scripture. Genesis is a veritable epic of human misery caused by planners within the family: Rebekah and Jacob, Laban, Simeon and Levi at Shechem, all the brothers of Joseph together. Onan is the pettiest among them, Lot the most paradigmatic.
Abraham gives Lot, a man of middling goodness and middling courage, his choice of where to take his herds. It had been better for Lot had he seen that he owed everything to Abraham, had he thus rebuked his grumbling servants, and had he followed the old man whatever the inconvenience; for Lot chose Sodom (Gen. 13:7–11). Lot chose Sodom, and even as he leaves the condemned city, he has the nerve to ask the angel to give him yet another choice of dwelling, not a dangerous mountain but the little nearby town of Zoar (19:17–23).
By stark contrast, Abraham’s life was one of being chosen. What sane old man would choose to leave his clan among the Chaldees and trek a thousand miles across the wasteland to find—what? A mere earnest of a promise, a land that he himself would not possess, and descendants only one of whom he would ever see. And on that gray dawn at the foot of Moriah, as he dismissed his servants and began to climb the mountain with his son, Abraham must have slain the choice of his heart long before he raised the knife to slay Isaac."
"Scripture is full of the self-ensnaring choosers and plotters and determiners of the future...It is also full of wise fools to whom it is granted to see what no one else sees, and who choose to yield all choice up to what God promises,
even when that appears foolish and impossible"
"...salvation lies in God’s choice and is a gift of his grace alone...
But it is also, I think, because some people have
chosen never to be chosen. They have hooded themselves, have plugged up their ears. They are too busy, in the godlike disposing of their means and of their lives, to be put at God’s disposal. Many would cry out, 'Lord, Lord, we chose you!' What they did not do, what they thought it beneath their dignity to do, was
let the Lord choose them."
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