The Choice Was Already Made

I never chose to call where I live an apartment.

I learned while in South Africa this summer that there are a whole lot of other people in the world who would call where I live a flat. To tell you the truth, I’ve never even considered calling it that. Not because it isn’t a flat or because I don’t think flat is a good name for it, I just never knew I had the option.

I guess I’m just bringing this up because I like to think I’m my own man. But it’s funny when you start realizing just how many choices have already been made for you. I mean, even down to the words you use.

Calling an apartment a flat, that’s just one example.

There’s even more in that first paragraph. I said I live in an apartment. If I grew up as an english speaker in South Africa I would have said, I stay there. I’m sure I could go on and on. What I’m saying is there are a lot of words I use that I think I personally chose on my own to use but I really didn’t choose to use at all, the choice was already made for me by the culture in which I grew up.

And you know what, where this starts getting significant is when you start considering the fact that words are not the only decision my culture has made for me.

I was listening to someone recently who said that one of the greatest fictions Americans believe is that they are primarily the product of their own independent choices. In other words, we like to tell ourselves that we are who we are because we made the decisions we made on our own.

But we didn’t. I’m not saying there isn’t such a thing as an independent choice, I haven’t thought enough about this subject to say that or not say that, but what I am saying is that there are so many things in our lives that we assume we chose on our own to say or do or be, that we really didn’t – that have already pretty much been chosen for us by the culture in which we live.

I think that’s important to understand. One of the reasons we are who we are is because of the people that we live around. If you look closely at our lives there are a whole lot of ways, and I’m talking even about stuff we’re not conscious about, that we have been profoundly affected by the people that we grew up around.

Which tells me – and this is just kind of common sense – that if I want to become someone different, one of the most important ways I can change is by placing myself in a community of people – developing deep relationships with people – who are in the process of becoming the kind of person I want to be.

More importantly I look to the Word of God and find out this idea isn’t just common sense. If you want a biblical defense/explanation I’d encourage you to check out Paul Tripp’s Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands.

My point here is that as Christians we’ve got to understand that. We’ve got to understand that we don’t simply need more information if we are going to change. We do need that, sure. But we need more than that. Many of the changes that have taken place in my life have come through learning a new truth. At the same time, most of the new truths that I have really learned have come through relationships.

And to get even more specific, as pastors we’ve got to understand this. Our people need information if they are going to change. But they also need more than that. If we are really in the business of life-transformation, we are not merely in the business of data-dumping. We are also in the business of building communities.