Choose Love

The other day I was taking an Uber to the airport and chatted with the driver along the way. When I mentioned my wife, she asked how long I have been married. I told that this year will mark our 43rd anniversary. She immediately asked how I had managed to stay married for so long.

I told her that every day I chose to love my wife more than I love anyone else.

"Love is a choice." I told her. "It is something you choose. It is not something that happens to you."

Hollywood loves to sell us on the fabulous lie that we fall into (and out of) love. 

While it is true that sexual attraction can happen to you, love cannot. Sexual attraction may involve hormones, pheromones, and other stimuli that bombard you, so in that regard attraction can happen to you. Unlike sexual attraction, love doesn't happen to you, it is something you choose.

And before we move off the topic of sexual attraction, while that can happen to you and catch you unawares, what you do about that attraction is entirely your choice. You can ignore it. Walk away from it. Or, you can indulge it. Regardless, after the initial unexpected jolt, what happens next depends entirely upon the choices you make. So, own it.

When we foolishly and erroneously talk of love as something we fall into or out of, we willfully ignore and excuse ourselves for the choices we make. 

Love is not something you fall into. You are walking down the street, not watching you step and accidently step into an uncovered hole at the bottom of which is a pile of love. Likewise you aren't walking down the street covered in love and fall into a hole and the love you felt for someone is suddenly thrown off, out of reach on the street above you where you walked a moment before.

Let's move off for a moment from the topic of the love that binds the lives of people together in a relationship that brings out the best in both of them. Let's talk about the broader situation where we need to choose to love.

Choosing to love is the hard choice that makes life much easier. Just as choosing to hate is the easy choice that makes life harder.

Today, we are living in a world that is being torn asunder with hatred and enmity. Too often our political and sometimes even our religious leaders teach us that those who don't agree with us are evil and hateful. They are bad people. 

This is taught in political rallies all the time. 

The people in the other party want to destroy you and your way of life. They must be stopped at any cost. Whatever you do to thwart them is good, and whatever they do is always bad. They are a threat to your very existence.

In his Sermon on the Mount Jesus of Nazareth taught that we should love those that hate us and pray for those who despitefully use us. Christ showed that God hates the sin and loves the sinner.

We can, and should, stand up for what we believe is right. However, we must not hate those who don't agree with us. In fact, we must choose to love them in spite of whatever "sin" they embrace and even in spite of however they may "despitefully use [us]."

When others actually harm you, or even appear to be supporting things that may harm you, it is easy to hate them. Unfortunately, when you choose to hate, you fill your life with hate.

Hate is the easy choice that makes your own life hard.

In contrast, when you choose to love, you make a hard choice which ends up making your life so much easier because when your life is filled with love, everything is easier to bear.

Just to be clear, I know that evil is real. I know that there absolute, cosmic standards which differentiate between right and wrong, good and evil. Yes, I believe that both Christ and Lucifer are real individuals, each with their own agendas and followers, both seen and unseen.

I also know that there will come a great day of reckoning where each of us in turn will stand before God and account for our actions, choices, deeds, words, and thoughts in this life. 

While I can see the actions of a person and typically judge correctly if they are good or evil, I can never have the knowledge needed to be able to say if that person is good or evil. That judgement is left wholly to God, because he sees the entire picture of each of us.

The great news is that each of is given the gift of choice. We have our own agency and freedom to choose. However, we don't have freedom from the consequences of our choices. Many of those consequences are as inevitable as the effects of gravity.

When we choose to hate, the consequence is that our thoughts and feelings in all aspects of our lives become tainted with the grit of bad feelings. Too often this results in the destruction of the loving relationships we have in our lives. Then, we end up alone, bitter, and hateful, i.e., full of hate.

When we choose to love, even when unlovely things happen or are done to us, our thoughts and feelings are lubricated with love. Bad things happen, but they don't destroy us. Others try to wound us with their words and deeds, but regardless of the harm they do us, we know that they are harming themselves even more and we feel sorrow for them. 

When we choose to respond with love to hate, it confuses people. It also deprives them of their opportunity to control us. If we only give love for love and harm for harm, then anyone can control us. They can lead us to destruction with words and deeds which appear to be kind and loving. They can drive is to do great evils by prodding us with anger and blatant harms.

I could go on, but I believe I have made my point. I hope you will ponder my points and add your own. 

Our ability to choose how we act, instead of reacting, is a singular quality that sets us apart from the brute animals. The only way we will quell the divisive and violent nature of our society (and our lives) is to choose love.

See Tom's political views on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/TomSheppardPoliticalViews/
Follow Tom on Twitter: @ThomasKSheppard

Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM).

The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein.

(c) Copyright 2020 A+ Results LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Your comments are welcome... Please observe some ground rules. No profanity, vulgarity, or personal attacks. Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks not only betray a lack of vocabulary and imagination, they also are the hallmarks of bigotry, and bigotry is the hallmark of someone who is fundamentally insecure in their views. Facts are always welcome.

If you believe Government is NOT the answer to all our problems, you will want to read
 Godvernment: Government as God

Man Didn't Make God

Recently I was relaxing and enjoying watching a relatively successful and very well-done science fiction series about people and true artificially intelligent robots.  One of the main characters asserted that man created Heaven and Hell, God and the Devil to keep everyone else in line.  Holding over their heads the notion that their disobedience could result in an eternal punishment.

This atheist's article of faith is what Karl Marx alluded to when he said that religion is the opiate of the masses.

While it is true that throughout history many people have cynically used religion as a tool to bolster their power over others, the fundamental notion that man invented God is a theory without a single shred of evidence to support it it actually flies in the face of countless evidences which contradict this prideful and hopeless premise.

The fact that those who reject God reject the evidences and witnesses of God does not obliterate those witnesses, rather it shows the lack of rationality of those who reject those witnesses.

Those who say that no one has returned from death to tell us what is on the other side are liars or ignorant of the facts.  I am not talking here about ghosts and phantasms.  I am speaking of the fact that Jesus of Nazareth was publicly put to death and three days later ate food and conversed with people who had seen him die and laid his body in the grave.

But that is not the only person to pass the portal of death and return.  The New Testament (Matthew 27:52, 53) notes that after the resurrection of Jesus:

 "And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many."

Note the word "many" which is repeated.  Many arose from the dead and appeared to many people.  So, aside from those who witnessed the resurrection of Jesus many others witnessed the resurrection of many who they knew to have died.

Further, the appearance of Jesus was not limited to just one instance or a few people.  He appeared many times after his crucifixion and at one point (1 Corinthians 15:6) appeared to more than 500 people in one meeting.

In The Book of Mormon (3 Nephi 11) the resurrected Jesus appears, shortly after his death and resurrection, to people gathered in the Americas.  Upwards of 2,000 people were present.

In more recent times we have several people who have testified that they have had dealings with people who were long dead and appeared as resurrected beings.  These include John the Baptist, Peter, James and John the Apostles of Jesus, Moroni, a prophet among God's people in ancient America, Moses, Elias, Elijah, and others.  At the apex of these appearances we have the resurrected Jesus having appeared more than once since 1820.

No rational person could not consider the testimony of so many first-hand witnesses and dismiss them based solely on the power of their own prejudices. 

Further, those who purport, against the evidence, that the concept of God evolved over time, the records show that God revealed himself to Adam, our first father, and again to Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and others.  When they saw God they understood, because He told them, that He is our parent. They could see Him and discern that He and we are of the same species, so we are created in His image.

God put Man on this Earth and did not leave him ignorant of our relationship to Him or His expectations of us.  It is Man who has attempted to reinvent God to be something more of their liking.  Finally coming to the point of a devolution of thought which purports that we created God in our own image and for wholly our own purposes.  Which is to say, there is no god, only Man.

I will concede that good and evil exist independent of God and Satan.  By God's command and design every human being (Man) is an agent unto ourselves and able to choose and act.  Sometimes we choose to do good, sometimes evil. Sometimes we know what we are doing and other times the good or evil that comes from our choices is unintended.

God and Satan each tempt us.  God tempts us to choose to do good.  Satan tempts us to choose to do evil.  When we do either, it is our choice, not the will of God or Satan forcing us to act one way or another.  So, the evil in the world which so many ascribe to the acts of religionists are not the evil acts of God, nor are they the evil acts of Satan.  They are the evil acts of people who followed inclinations of their own.  Inclinations which we are free to indulge in a world where we live with a significant degree of uncertainty regarding the existence of God and Satan, Heaven, and Hell.

It may seem like the safest course is to try to choose the middle ground between these two extremes.  Many who reject God and Satan and religion in general think they are choosing a middle way.  They end up choosing themselves.  They worship themselves and others like them. They put people as their deities and worship at the temples of human government and human institutions.  

Unfortunately, rejecting God is not a middle ground.  Putting yourself, or another human, in the place of God is not a middle ground.  It is opposing God.  It has the net effect of tempting people to reject God.  In this rejection, the temptations of Satan are heeded.  

Satan doesn't need us to worship him to achieve his ends.  He only needs us to reject God.

Notice, I didn't say Satan wins.  Satan doesn't win in any scenario.  He lost when he opposed God before Adam ever walked this Earth.  He and his followers were cast out and lost their opportunities to grow more like God.  They lost the opportunity to fulfill their genetic potential as children of God.

Because of that loss Satan and his hosts are bitter.  They know that they cannot win.  What they want is for you and I to make the same choices they did and cast aside our divine potential.  

God will win.  Those who follow God will win because of His victory and their faith.  

Satan will lose.  Those who reject God will lose, whether or not they embrace Satan.  Inasmuch as they think they are smarter than God they become like Satan and embrace his destiny.

See Tom's political views on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/TomSheppardPoliticalViews/
Follow Tom on Twitter: @ThomasKSheppard

Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM).

The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein.

(c) Copyright 2020 A+ Results LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Your comments are welcome... Please observe some ground rules. No profanity, vulgarity, or personal attacks. Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks not only betray a lack of vocabulary and imagination, they also are the hallmarks of bigotry, and bigotry is the hallmark of someone who is fundamentally insecure in their views. Facts are always welcome.

If you believe Government is NOT the answer to all our problems, you will want to read
 Godvernment: Government as God