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Self-Determination in the Bible
August 27, 2011

Self-Determination is a trending concept in working with children with disabilities as they transition from high school to life after high school. The thought is if these teenagers are active participants in planning for their adult life, they are more likely to buy-in to what is needed to graduate from high school so that the foundation of all future success is laid. Many do not consider that self-determination is a concept that is the basis of the Bible. Some believe that God chooses our fate for us. And while I can agree that God chooses the time when he begins to work with us, and can agree that God intimately knows what is best for us individually so that we may have happiness, I cannot agree that God forces us to follow any pathway in life. In our life and from the very beginning of the existence of mankind has been choice, and with choice is self-determination. My favorite verse to show this follows the blessing and cursing chapter in the Book of Deuteronomy.

Deuteronomy 30:19
I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:

We are told to choose life over death. Life is the result of choosing to do good and death is the result of choosing to do evil. Notice this prior verse from the same chapter.

Deuteronomy 30:15
See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil;

Doing good and doing evil are antecedents that lead to the results of life and death. Doing good does include making choices that extend us beyond obedience to God, and James touched on this in his Epistle.

James 1:27
Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.

Even James knew that although doing good included making choices that extended us beyond obedience to God, he knew that obedience to God was required and referenced this by showing the need to be unspotted from the world. James knew that extending one's choices beyond obedience to God would fulfill the law of God in a manner that would honor the life given by Jesus for our sins.

Matthew 5:17
Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.

Going back to the Book of Deuteronomy, the verses show that choosing life involves choosing to be obedient to God.

Deuteronomy 30:15-20
See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil; In that I command thee this day to love the LORD thy God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commandments and his statutes and his judgments, that thou mayest live and multiply: and the LORD thy God shall bless thee in the land whither thou goest to possess it. But if thine heart turn away, so that thou wilt not hear, but shalt be drawn away, and worship other gods, and serve them; I denounce unto you this day, that ye shall surely perish, and that ye shall not prolong your days upon the land, whither thou passest over Jordan to go to possess it. I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live: That thou mayest love the LORD thy God, that thou mayest obey his voice, and that thou mayest cleave unto him: for he is thy life, and the length of thy days: that thou mayest dwell in the land which the LORD sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.

Self-determination has been with us since the Garden of Eden and within this Garden were two trees, the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. When Adam and Eve choose to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they set mankind on a pathway of self-determination.

Genesis 2:8-9
And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

God does want us to choose life and it appears that instead of a world filled with a need for self-determination, that God was willing to establish a world where doing good would have been automatic, where all would be fulfilling the law of God by living lives where all choices extended beyond obedience to God, so that the needs of those without natural supports were met. And in our present age, we can see this parallel possibility at best through a smoky mirror with anticipation of a better world to come through the establishment of the Kingdom of God.

All verses are from the King James Version.
This site provided by Tom Laign. To all who may believe differently, I also extend peace and love.
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