AUTONOMY

" 'Everything is permissible for me' - but not everything is beneficial. 'Everything is permissible for me' - but I will not be mastered by anything...Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price.  Therefore honour God with your body."  - 1 Corinthians 6:12, 19-20

My family recently returned to doing a weekly family devotion after taking a break for a long time.  Last week's devotion topic was about 'Letting Go' in terms of the parents letting go of their children.  My sister and I started to voice out our opinions on how our parents haven't really 'let us go' when we came upon the subject of autonomy.  Seeing as I'm almost twenty - I know, very scary thought - and my sister is almost twenty-three, it's only natural that we want some autonomy in our decision making.  I think every person going through this stage of life would feel this way.  Actually, any person at some point in time regardless of age will favour making their own decision rather than being told what to do.  As we were talking, my dad kept repeating this one phrase: "There are some things you can be wrong about, but there are some things which you can never be wrong about."  It's a bit more stronger in Chinese,  but basically it means that some mistakes are harmless, but other mistakes can ruin your entire life.

When I read this passage this morning, I immediately thought of our discussion from last week.  " 'Everything is permissible for me' - but not everything is beneficial."  We want to be able to make our own decisions when we grow up.  We want to know that we are capable of looking after ourselves by ourselves, and that the decisions we make are the rights ones.  But how do we know what is right and what is wrong?  In this world, everything is available - good or bad.  How do we know what the right decision is?

A lot of the time, people think that Christians are kept so tightly by rules in the Bible.  We can't do this, we can't do that, we're basically party poopers because the Bible won't allow us to have fun.  To be honest, I've felt that way too.  But what is fun?  Everyone's definition is bound to be different so why restrict people to your own definition of fun.  We have our own mind to determine if the 'fun' that other people present to us is beneficial to ourselves or not.  It's not God telling us what is right and wrong, it's the brain and mind which God gave us which determines what we do.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that autonomy is good, but only after a certain point.  We need to have enough experiences in life, where someone has cushioned our fall from mistakes, before we're ready to make the harder decisions.  We're never by ourselves because He is always watching over us, but in real life, we need to make the cushion ourselves when we mistakes.

FALLING OVER

So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall! No temptation has seized you except what is common to man.  And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.  But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it. - 1 Corinthians 10:12-13

"And God is faithful....stand up under it" is quoted a lot of times, especially when someone's talking about temptation and standing up against it.  But I think I like the focus of verse 12 more: "So if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall!" It doesn't just talk about giving in to temptation but it makes it clear that we should never consider ourselves above temptation.  I think there's a message of 'pride before fall' in there; there are times when I feel like I'm really okay with God and everything is going well in my spiritual life and don't think I need Him anymore, and then I will slip and continue falling until I get back to my rut.

It is comforting to know that God will never let us be tempted beyond what we can bear, but it's also important to know that Satan definitely wants us to be tempted and will do anything to make us fall.  The verses before verse 12 explain that those who give in to temptation constantly will be subject to bad consequences e.g. "we should not commit sexual immorality, as some of them did - and in one day twenty-three thousand of them died." (v. 8)

In the words of Alfred Pennyworth, aka Michael Caine from Batman Begins, "Why do we fall, sir? So that we might better learn to pick ourselves up." We need to remember that when we fall, we should try and get up as soon as possible, otherwise the slope becomes steeper and harder to climb up again.