Choices

If you were kidnapped, and your kidnapper put you in a room where there was a tied up innocent person… and a tied up criminal… and a knife, and this kidnapper then told you to kill one of the two or he would come in there and kill you, what would you do?

You’d probably say that you’d kill the criminal. And you’d probably say that you didn’t have a choice. It was either kill someone innocent or kill someone who’s done bad things. Someone who’s own actions forfeited sympathy. You’d say that those were the options you were given and no matter how unideal they are, you’ve made the best and most reasonable choice possible. But you’d be wrong.

There was a third choice.

You could have chosen to let the killer come in and kill you.

You probably forgot about that choice. Or more likely you never even considered it. Because most times when people think of “choices” we think of the “best” choice and not the right choice. The right thing to do. The moral thing to do. Because most times when we think of what’s right we only think about things that are right for us. In our minds a choice can’t be right or moral if it results in our own suffering. But we’d be wrong again.

Right is right no matter how it affects you. Right is universal. Right takes all life into consideration, not just yours. Right includes the ancient past, immediate present and distant future in its calculations. Right is never wrong.

But there aren’t many people alive that can consistently tap into doing what’s right when what’s right might end in their own suffering. Most people are selfish that way. Which is funny because most people are Star Wars fans.

In Return of the Jedi Luke is faced with a choice: turn to the dark side or kill his own father. Or at least this is what everyone tells him his choices are. Because these are the choices that everyone else would make if they were in his shoes. But Luke is the chosen one because he knows there is a third choice. A right choice. And Luke’s choice is not to kill his father (which would be wrong) or turn to the dark side (which would be more wrong). He refuses to choose the lesser of two wrongs, which by the way is still wrong. He chooses right: his choice is to do neither.

And it almost kills him.

And he doesn’t care.

Luke doesn’t experience a little suffering and then decide, “Okay, well I tried. I’ll kill my father now. Being zapped sucks and killing my father is the only choice you’re giving me to get out of it.”

No. Luke stays the course. Simply because it’s right.

Now Luke’s choice actually winds up saving his father, but that’s beside the point. It is a movie after all. No one can expect real life to work that way. But the point is that Luke was one of those people who is tapped into what is right and he made the appropriate choice because of it, no matter what it was going to cost him… because right is about more than just you.

Now, most people are going to say, “that’s not realistic. Why should I suffer? Nobody would do that for me? I have a family. I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m just trying to survive. That’s nature. I’m just trying to work with what the situation gave me.”

But right doesn’t care.

Right is right whether you have the courage to follow it or not.

“Well, then I don’t want to be right. I’d rather be wrong.”

Okay. But understand that’s a choice.