Song Sparrow : How Do I Choose?

Song Sparrow

This is a Song Sparrow.  I know only because I recently had occasion to research these birds a bit.  What struck me in my book learning wasn’t so much what was there, but what was missing.  To read the account of this bird’s life, its palette of life activities essentially consists of eating, nesting/breeding, and migrating.  That’s it.  It is quite a limited agenda, and these various activities are instinctual and guided by the seasons.  One doesn’t think of birds making a choice along the lines of, “What shall I do today?”  Part of me looks at this minimalist list and appreciates by contrast all the richness and opportunity I have as a human.  And some very tiny part of me can’t help but envy - at times - how simple it must be to live a life without the complexity of choice.

At a surface level, choice as depicted in the Bible is unconflicted.  Biblical characters don’t wrestle with agonizing decisions in the way that makes Hamlet so compelling.  Adam and Eve simply eat the forbidden fruit.  Jonah initially flees to Tarshish instead of following God’s direction to Nineveh.  Even Moses struck the rock without weighing his instruction to speak to it.  Each decision had life-altering consequences.  Beyond “Disobeying God is bad,” though, there’s a deeper lesson here.  Perhaps we’re intended to learn something subtler, not merely to be obedient, but how to make our own decisions.  As creatures endowed with free will, the “how” of our decisions is arguably as important as the “what.”  

How do we reach our decisions?  Do we react instinctually or after considered judgment?  Surely the latter approach is what we’re taught to adopt.  But even with explicit instruction, we still sometimes make decisions premised on excessive curiosity, fear, or anger.  I recall youthful choices:  fast, certain, clear - and in retrospect, often suboptimal.  In my middle years, I choose more slowly, taking into account not just nuances and complexity, but also the humble consideration of “what if I’m wrong?”  This process orientation is more challenging than simply looking at outcomes; it is also far more powerful.  We aren’t Sparrows, with constrained options.  Thankfully we have Biblical wisdom to guide the “how” of our choices.