by Lester Nixon

Created on: July 13, 2008

We make bad choices in life for several reasons. The main two reasons I feel and have observed from life are these:

*Not knowing who we are, according to God.
*Keeping hold of teen aged mentality instead of growing up.
If you observe how teenagers try so hard to fit in, imagine what this appears like in human adult behavior and you are certainly half way to understanding. This creates a clique, group, etc., of people who we deem to be acceptable friends, and seems a cool way to be; though this really what life is all about. Should we be other people's friends just because we are judged differently by others for doing so? I think not.

When people enter adulthood, often this behavior and lifestyle makes us make bad choices, not living to please God but living to please ourselves and others before God, even when if we were adult enough to admit it, we probably don't need those friends in the first place, and it is likely that they will never be there for us when we need them. At a certain age, we assume ourselves to be mature, although age is just a number, and plenty of grown up people, married, single, working or not never find themselves spiritually and I am not talking of retarded people here, but those who make bad choices and stay with the child mentality for all of their lives. Perhaps this would explain why so many men seek out the wrong choices and never learn true happiness.

What God wants us to recognize is that we are all different and it is this that makes us all individual and special? It doesn't matter who we mix with and anyone that judges us by the friends we keep is not fit to judge but should take a look at who they are, mix with who they want to, and let God be the judge, rather than themselves. When you step away from judgment of others, you begin to see that the individual is much more important and that race, class, religion does not make a person better or worse, or different and more or less worthy than others.

God wants us to celebrate being us, to appreciate what we are and to fulfill our lives as people, not taking the lead from others but from our understanding of God and our relationship with him, which is much more adult than the child mentality that says those friends who are really of little long lasting value in our lives are so important as to give up our own beliefs, our own identity, and our own way of living. Pressured by society, we make bad choices because we think that short term gain is worth the risk, though at the time of making those choices we need to look further and get a deeper understanding of what we are worth, taking a step back from what society says, and learning to get to know ourselves well enough to trust that we walk side by side with God and are adult enough to make the right decisions.

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