Pick a flower, cucumber, berries—um, maybe leave these small, tart cranberries on the viburnum for the birds. A pick in basketball or football—even a pick six. The picks we’ll examine today are more fundamental choices, major decisions in the spiritual realm.

Pick: God’s choices

Let’s start with God’s pick examples. Stories throughout the Old Testament show God choosing people for His purposes. Leaders such as Moses and David, prophets, even pagans. 

Sometimes it’s hard to understand God’s choices. Take the story of Esau and Jacob, as told by Paul in his letter to the Romans, chapter 9. And not only this, but there was Rebekah also, when she had conceived twins by one man, our father Isaac; for though the twins were not yet born and had not done anything good or bad, so that God’s purpose according to His choice would stand, not because of works but because of Him who calls,  Romans 9:10-11 NASB 1995

Was God unjust in choosing Jacob and not Esau to receive His covenant promises before the twin boys were even born? Paul goes on to remind us that God shows mercy and compassion on whomever He so chooses. The right to decide who receives benefits from God is a choice left to exactly one being: God. He is under no obligation, whatsoever, to rely on other criteria or some “higher” standard to make such a choice. He is the highest standard; and we humans are under obligation to Him.

Pick and choose

Instead of relying on God’s standard, we often pick and choose or cherry-pick. Even if we do consult scripture, we tend to pick passages that please us and disregard difficult ones, creating a distorted view of God and ourselves. Cherry-picking undermines the Biblical authority of God’s word in favor of our selfish desires, which compromise understanding of scripture and our relationship with God. Soon, cultural norms dictate our beliefs and worship.

In his 2019 book Seculosity: How Career, Parenting, Technology, Food, Politics, and Romance Became Our New Religion and What to Do about it, Episcopal priest and Mockingbird Ministries cofounder David Zahl writes: “…most talk of worship tends to frame it as a conscious pursuit, suggesting that life is simply a matter of finding the right thing to worship and doing so… we fail to recognize that what we’re actually worshipping when we obsess over food or money or politics is not the thing in itself but how that thing makes us feel… Our religion is that which we rely on not just for meaning or hope but enoughness.” 

We think if we reach our self-defined “enoughness” benchmark—if we do enough or get enough—we will be enough. But here’s the catch: “no matter how close we get or how much we achieve, we never quite arrive at enough.” That’s the state in which a pick and choose life lands us, essentially, in lament and non-belief. Now, let’s examine the alternative.

Pick belief

Josef Pieper in Faith Hope Love: “No one who believes must believe… he might choose to non-believe.” Alternatively, those who pick belief have two kinds of certainty: a firm assent excluding all doubt and regarded as ultimate; and a firm assent founded on the evident-ness of the matter. Yet, “…no believer, of course, can possess certainty—for belief means: to accept as true and real a matter that is not in itself obvious… Even those of firm belief live in the curious coexistence of uncertainty.”

Thus, we believers must pick belief, love and forgiveness again and again and again. And ask God to guide us to His purpose.

Rabbi Moshe Averick in The Confused World of Modern Atheism: “I would suggest that it is the responsibility of each individual to invest the time, effort, and energy necessary to discover the truth about the meaning, purpose, and direction of his or her own existence. Otherwise, we are all faced with three equally lamentable alternatives: (1) heedlessly following the path that our society has conditioned us to travel, (2) manufacturing our own comforting illusion, or (3) making ourselves ‘comfortably numb’ and playing out our lives as aimless, rudderless pieces of driftwood following the path of least resistance.” 

To avoid such lamentable alternatives, I urge us—as we go through our days, picking flowers, cucumbers, and berries—to think about the most fundamental pick in life: faith.

Linkup with Five Minute Friday