The Power of Choice

It is a well known fact, at least in the scientific community, that one person's choices have the potential to affect the entire world. Theories like "The Butterfly Effect" prove that a single choice can have drastic consequences for more than just the person making the choice.

This idea of how powerful choices can be was made beautifully clear in the series of Harry Potter books and movies. In both versions of the story, Harry, a young boy orphaned in a single moment because of the actions of a madman, grows up to be the savior of the wizarding world. His defeat of Lord Voldemort sealed the fate of countless numbers of witches and wizards as well as muggles (non-magic folk) and other non-human creatures.

But when you delve further into the story, you begin to see that the villainous Lord Voldemort and the angelic Harry were two sides of the same coin.

Both Harry and Voldemort were orphaned at a young age, they were raised by uncaring individuals, they discovered they had magical abilities after having no idea why they did strange things, and they started their wizarding education with the promise of great talent.

Here is where their paths diverged. Voldemort had no real friends or family, only followers. But Harry immediately made friends as soon as he was accepted into Hogwarts. His friends and their families became his family more than anyone had ever been since he was one-year-old.

Voldemort's desire was to gain power and fame while Harry's only desire was for love and anonymity.

The choices that Harry and Voldemort made in order to achieve their desire is what distinguished them from each other. Harry became the hope of the wizarding world while Voldemort became its nightmare because of those choices.

This isn't just a movie trope, though. The choices we make in real life really do have the potential to determine life or death, for ourselves and the people who walk in and out of our lives.

My own personal example of this is just as poignant as the Harry Potter example. When I was in high school, I spent all my free time at church, had Bible study in the courtyard at lunch, and carried my Bible with me while walking around the school.

Some people didn't like my behavior. Whether they thought it was just a show or they didn't agree with my beliefs didn't matter, they just didn't like me. One girl in particular had an extreme dislike for me and my friends that were in the Bible study and also carried their Bibles with them in school.

I knew why this girl hated us, it was because she was an atheist. She went so far as to write an article about us in our local paper, detailing our actions and the supposed hypocrisy of them.

I couldn't speak for my friends' motives, but I knew that mine were innocent, so it nettled me to be accused of being insincere. But I truly believed, and still do, in the golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I lived that motto then and I still do today.

So instead of getting in her face or fighting with her about her incorrect ideas, I was just more nice to her than I had been. Not that I wasn't nice before the article came out, but I began to make a point of treating her kindly and talking to her as much as I could. I chose to represent Jesus to her rather than to let my irritation at her actions affect my reaction.

By the end of senior year, she and I had developed, if not exactly a friendship, a mutual respect for one another. She eventually apologized for the article and told me that she now knew that I was not a hypocrite.

On prom night, we both went to a friend's house afterwards and she sat beside me and laid her head on my shoulder. At the time, I felt triumphant, not because I had bested her, but because I had proven myself to her and gained a supporter where once there was an enemy.

Years later, once the internet and social media was really talking off, I looked her up to see how life was treating her. I was pleasantly surprised to see that not only was she doing well, but she had become a Christian somewhere along the way. Most of her posts were about God and the Bible. I was floored. This girl who had been so anti-God had become someone who loved him with all her heart.

I don't believe that I made her that way, God did that, but he let me have a hand in it all the same. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 3:6-8, "I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor."

In other words, the choices we make are like seeds that we are scattering across the ground. We may or may not be the one who waters the seed and reaps the harvest from it, but we are responsible for a part of its growth. If we plant a cactus, we can't expect to grow a flower from that seed. Neither can we plant hatred and expect love to grow from it. What we choose to plant determines what the plant will become.

I'm sure that if I hadn't planted the seed of kindness and the love of Jesus in my friend that she would eventually have had someone else plant it there, but it may have been a much more difficult growing process than it ended up being. It's also possible that instead of her proving to be rich soil, wrong choices on my part would have made her like sand that you can plant as much as you want in, but nothing will ever grow.

I didn't water the seed that I planted in her nor did I reap that harvest, but in due time God sent other people to have that role in her growth. The choices I made in my senior year of high school made that possible. That's not to say that I'm wonderful and a shining example of Jesus, I fall short of God's glory every single day, but I give him the chance to use me when he sees fit to do so.

That's what I mean when I say that our choices are a matter of life and death; whether it be actual or spiritual life or death, the choice is in our hands. So make the choice to sow life because even if you don't see the harvest, there will be one in due time and you will be responsible for what grows there.