God may want us all to be in his flock but He isn’t a puppeteer and He doesn’t want us to be puppets. This is the gift of freewill, the freedom to make choices, the freedom that we always abuse.

I once talked to an old guy on the street. He was an acquaintance. With my incapacity to sugarcoat his situation, making it sound a little less brutal, I could say his life is broke. “I am very unfortunate! God, made fun of my life,” he said. If I were too harsh to be too frank with him at the moment, I would have told him “you are so wrong, sir!” I could do that. I just chose not to. It would be unhealthy for both of us. And I simply couldn’t bear the guilt of making him feel worse.

His wife and children left him. The temptation, according to him, is so strong that he couldn’t be faithful to his wife. He had my sympathy but inside my mind, I was rationalizing things over the principles that I believe in. Temptation, no matter how strong has no power over us. It is us, who decided to give in to it. The reason temptation appears very strong, is its ecstatic effect on us. And it is simply hard to say no on things that we fancy or things that make us feel immensely pleased even just for a moment. Ice cream for me is very irresistible. It is so strong that once I start eating a scoop of ice cream from the fridge, I sometimes end up eating almost half a gallon. It happens not because the ice cream possesses some kind of power to control over me, but because I chose to give in to the pleasure of eating ice cream. Even the biggest form of temptation, like sex and infidelity, come in somewhat similar packaging.

Life as a whole is governed by the different choices we make. Everything we do, even the moment we wake up, we are faced with decision-making situations. Some things may appear like routine works that don’t need much thinking, but whether we are aware of it or not, everything is subjected to making a particular choice. Should I pray or not? Should I fix my bed or postpone it or let someone do it? Should I brush my teeth first before peeing or the other way around? Should I take a bath or not? Should I wear this or that? Should I eat this or that? Whatever we do, it is part of the decision we make. No one can stop anyone from doing anything because that is everyone’s freewill. Knowing that everything is a choice, why can’t we simply choose the right ones?