Creating a life of your own making

So my Mom left this book at my house during her last visit, 10-10-10 by Suzy Welch. Suzy Welch is a regular Oprah-related commentator, and in her words, her book is about "a new approach to making choices that will allow you to create a life of your own making..." (p.3). The decision-making tool Welch teaches involves framing a question about an action to take in one's life, and then visualizing the consequences of that action or inaction in 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years, and making one's decision based on the analysis of those potential consequences.

I think Welch's decision-making tool is a good one, and I will attempt to use it as we continue in our discernment process. But I have a problem with the language of "creating a life of your own making." This is one of those places where Christian faith smacks up against prevailing individualistic and consumerist cultural notions. I think the idea that a person can have "a life of one's own making" encourages a kind of self-idolatry and perpetuates the very crushing expectations from which Welch wants to help liberate us.

The thing is, our lives are never "of our own making." After all, not a one of us had a choice about being born. In fact, our lives result from a long line of choices that were made before any one of us ever came to be. The stories of scripture tell us that we exist only because God chose to create us, human beings, from the dust of the earth. We are creatures, first and foremost, and we do not create lives, neither our own, nor anyone else's. We are always the humble recipients of God's incredibly gracious gift of life.

And yet, I don't want to perpetuate any kind of fatalism, and I don't buy "double predestination" as it has been used and described by theologians in the past. We do have free will, and so we have agency in living out our lives. There are choices to be made. But the question is not, "How do I create a life of my own making?" so much as "How do I faithfully live into the life for which I have been created?"

In our world, there are SO many choices. More and more, it seems to me, this is a defining issue for the ministry of pastors and preachers in our time. We are free to use the gifts God has given us, but we must exercise wisdom and good judgment so that our choices form us more closely in the image of Christ.