I've often wondered why choice doesn't seem to be as big of a focus in teaching as it seems like it should be. Choices have power. My parents used to tell me that I was free to make choices, but not free to choose the consequences. Choices determine the course of lives. Shouldn't a class on making choices be taught in school? Or be focused on more in religions? You can find lots of scriptures about God choosing, but very few about others choosing, and fewer still about how to choose.
Yet, we can choose. We are free to make our own choices. Hopefully we learn from them, but that too is a choice. We make thousands of choices daily. You'd think someone would teach us how to make good choices, or how to predict the consequences of our choices, or why actively choosing is important rather than letting the world act upon you. People occasionally talk about being "proactive" which essentially means making choices to act for yourself rather than waiting to be compelled to act, but even that is rarely taught though highly prized.
So, I figure it's high time someone taught us how to act. I'll think about it and research it then post my findings. In the mean time, I'll post one of the few scriptures I did find that seems to teach this:
26 And the Messiah cometh in the fulness of time, that he may redeem the children of men from the fall. And because that they are redeemed from the fall they have become free forever, knowing good from evil; to act for themselves and not to be acted upon, save it be by the punishment of the law at the great and last day, according to the commandments which God hath given.
I'll give a quick analysis then my conclusions of what this teaches about how to make choices. This seems to say that redemption from the Fall of Adam brings freedom, while eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (the Fall of Adam) brought the crucial knowledge needed for people to make choices. This combination of freedom and knowledge is what allows us to make choices, to act for ourselves rather than being controlled, the only exception being something to do with Judgment Day. (Perhaps that is why there is evil in the world despite God being good.) I'll think more about that later.
So in order to make good choices, we need freedom to do so and knowledge to be fully aware of what we are choosing. That makes sense. But how do we apply this to make good choices? What do you think?