In a scene in the 1996 film, Trainspotting, a heroin addict character named Renton (played by Ewan McGregor) begins and ends a much quoted (and reproduced as a poster) speech with the key words, “Choose life,” from verse 19 of this coming Sunday’s Old Testament text, Deuteronomy 30:15-20. Renton’s cynical, nihilistic tirade on the dreary particulars of ordinary life in the 90s was a riff on the fact that a 1980s anti-drug campaign used those two words as a slogan, suggesting that one choose life rather than drugs. He concludes, “I chose not to choose life: I chose something else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin?”
The Trainspotting character was disgusted with the emptiness of life endeavors such as job and family, consumer purchasing of washing machines and televisions, junk food and luggage, and the prospect of spending one’s last years as a senile embarrassment in a “home.” Any escape seemed better than such a pointless existence. So why not heroin?
With Renton’s deconstruction of the “Choose life,” slogan in mind, I turn to the Deuteronomy text in company with the Gospel reading from the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:21-37. And I realize that Moses and Jesus are both also aiming at a deconstruction and alternative to life as usual. For Moses, like Renton, the great fear is that the Israelites will enter the land of Canaan and become just like everyone around them. Moses does not want them to serve their gods and do the things the Canaanites do. The difference is that Moses realizes that not being like other people is just, in fact, to choose life, to love God and obey Him (verse 20).
In the Gospel, Jesus is more specific about how the choice for life looks different from the ordinary. Choose forgiveness and reconciliation rather than the ordinary course of anger. Choose faithfulness rather than the easy paths of adultery or divorce. Choose straightforward truth-telling rather than impressive formal oaths which offer the illusion of honesty. He goes on in the verses beyond Sunday’s text to call for choosing patience over retaliation, generosity over protection of property, and love for enemies as well as friends. It’s all about life quite out of the ordinary mold.
To “Choose life” in this biblical, divine way, then, is to constantly make quite deliberate and conscious choices to live differently from those around us. To “Choose life” is to affirm and engage in conduct which departs radically from the dead, hopeless and meaningless ways in which the world invites us to live.
Let’s rehabilitate, therefore, a great biblical challenge, choosing that which sets us apart and makes us different as Christians. Let us refuse to live hopelessly in world that has lost its hope. Let us live good lives in a world that has forgotten what “good” means. Let us choose the side of our Lord who offers us abundant life both now and forever.