Adjusting Myself

Moral choices I’ve made over the years have consequences.

In my twenties, I was offered a job in business management. It would have kept me from going to church, and at the time, that was more important to me, so I turned that job down. Granted, that company eventually folded, but I would have been quickly hired somewhere else for a job that ignored Christian religion in the same way. I’ve turned down plenty of offers like that over the decades of my life. It meant a loss of economic opportunity for me, but I don’t regret it.

A few blocks from where I live now, the building that once housed Dick’s sporting goods stands empty because the rent surged dramatically when the owner refinanced the property. It happened all over town and lots of Dick’s stores closed at the same time. The former On the Border restaurant also stands empty. Steak-n-Shake is gone, and Panera took over their building because it was bigger than their former location. Where Panera used to be, The Big Biscuit restaurant moved in. For each of these, something changed in their situation to either prosper them or shut them down.

All of it affected me personally and I had no say in the matter. A bicycle I had bought at Dick’s was orphaned from its warranty, unless I was ready to take it twenty miles across town to their warehouse. On the Border shut down because the quality of the food declined dramatically over a couple of months, and people stopped eating there — my wife and I were part of that. Panera gained a bigger clientele when they moved, but they also changed their menu and we stopped eating there. Steak-n-Shake is sorely missed. The biscuit house is way too expensive.

And then I had to go on a low-sodium diet, and can’t eat out much at all. Yes, I could have ignored it and let my high blood pressure kill me slowly — or maybe not. Lots of people live with it. Still, I chose to fight back by dropping my salt intake far below what restaurants are willing to offer. We don’t eat out nearly as much as we used to. It’s not really the money, but we were already discouraged by the inflation and shifts in menu or food quality.

At the same time, the COVID debacle killed a bunch of restaurants. Many never reopened when the mandates ended. That was a limited economic collapse, and quite intentional on the part of our rulers. Locally, some retail stores closed and never came back. Some simply changed hands. I know that I’ve been forced to buy online far more than I really like. Some businesses benefit, while others start to die because of a hundred different pressures on human behavior. I’m just one of millions blown by the winds of fortune.

And yet, I insist that the Creator of the Universe is paying attention to the details of my existence. More, I claim that He communicates with me daily, hourly, even by the minute, on choices I make. Sometimes my choices blend right in with the rest of the world, because my convictions don’t require taking a different path. Even some of my moral choices appear to be part of a much bigger trend. But there are plenty of choices that require me to pull away completely from the masses.

On my bike rides, which include a lot of routes popular with cyclists, I have not seen more than three other folding bikes. None of them were even the same brand (Zizzo), much less the same model (Forte) or even the same color (green). Very few individual users have a dot-matrix printer; it’s almost entirely a commercial printer. If you count by aggregate server logs on the Net, very few individuals run Linux on laptops compared to the vast number that run Windows, and far fewer than Mac laptops. Yes, Android and Chrome OS are Linux, but tightly controlled by a central authority, not endlessly configurable like “real” Linux users.

Each of those choices were taken because of convictions about one thing or another. I avoid sodium, and thus most restaurants, because of convictions. I bought a new laptop because of convictions, and now run Linux (Kubuntu) on it by conviction. I bought a dot-matrix printer because of convictions. I bought a folding bike for the same, and declined high-paying jobs. I dropped out of the military when they begged me to stay. I kept applying to pastor churches when they uniformly turned me away. The end result is not the point.

I keep a stock of canned goods and a pile of paper and pencils when few people do either. No, I don’t see an imminent collapse of the Internet tomorrow. I bought when I did to obey my convictions, which included the certainty that I did not know when I would need them, but I could see them priced low to clear shelves at times. It’s a habit of mind. I’m not disappointed when no emergency comes to justify the habit. I keep doing that kind of thing because my convictions say so. I am obeying the single best source of awareness of God’s will for me. Sometimes it does pan out; sometimes I’ve needed that stuff and had no money to buy. It’s not magical and consistent across the board, but I’m seeking to be consistent internally regardless of the external circumstances.

I see a moral collapse that usually brings about some measure of economic, social and political shift. I see chaos rising, and I’m convinced it is here already. I see more chaos coming, but I’m pretty sure a lot of folks around me won’t see it as a major problem. At least, their actions portray a certain acceptance and adaptation that I can’t copy. I can’t keep making the moral compromises they make. Is it the end of the world? Hardly. That may come later when Earth’s magnetic poles shift dramatically and our planet’s magnetic field drops to the point that we see auroras almost every day in the tropics, while migratory animals get totally lost all over the world.

But the moral collapse is what holds my attention. That other stuff will come eventually, but the moral crisis is already here. It’s hard for me to imagine that God’s covenant people are going to ignore that moral crisis; they keep talking about it even now. I might disagree with them on what I need to do about it, but we all see it. Most of the world doesn’t see it, or at least, they don’t see it as the crisis we do.

Having a bicycle means I am ready to travel a bit without being tracked. Using BMX tires on that bicycle means I can go more places than with conventional road tires. Running Linux on my laptop does the same thing on my Internet surfing (less tracking and more opportunities). Running Linux also means not handing over my computer to an outside agency to control. A dot-matrix printer doesn’t leave microscopic ID tags on the printed product. Being ready to live without a cellphone prepares me for less tracking. Eating out less means there’s less tracking. Stocking up on stuff now means less tracking later when Central Digital Banking blossoms fully. And less tracking means less control, less meddling by humans in my moral choices. There’s a pattern to my behavior that I suspect most people do not see.

Or, more likely, they will misread it. But my God sees my heart and knows me better than I know myself. He’s the one with whom I must keep peace. And He’s the one who makes all of this work out for His glory, and to my benefit. His control is good, right and just. Everyone else’s control is harmful, wrong and evil. He decides what matters, and I do all I can to adjust myself to His wishes.