Everyone knows that in real life fairy-tales and politics don’t mix… recent events in the UK notwithstanding. But they should.

To understand why, we need to start a bit further back – with anthropology. Reformed theology regards the Bible’s teaching on anthropology as being reducible to the following idea: since the Fall of humankind into sin, the power of “contrary choice” (the ability to choose between ethically righteous and ethically sinful options) has been taken away and replaced with “alternative choice” (the ability to choose among various sinful ethical options).

This reality is made manifest through our politics. Whereas in the time of kings and princes the ‘myth’ of contrary choice was at least alive in people’s conceptual framework (ie. the understanding that leaders would model themselves on a legendary, ‘good’ prince – the one from the fairy-tales), the collapse of a theistic value system and the advance of secularism has gradually brought in a new kind of politician for whom principles are a commodity, pragmatism is an absolute value and personality is king.

The myth of being able to choose an ‘ideal leader’ who at least attempts to rule with justice and equity based on iron-clad principles has thus long since been replaced by the reality of ‘the best of a bad lot’ or ‘the one who will do the least damage’; alternative choice is well and truly the status quo. We inherently distrust our politicians and the broken promises and innumerable scandals tell us, “rightly so”.

The election and tenure of Barack Obama is a case in point; with his arrival on the scene, people momentarily allowed themselves to dream again… Now, so many are disappointed or angry. The irony, of course, is that Obama never posited himself as an ideal person or leader. In fact, at times it even felt like he was presenting himself as the best of a bad lot (and therein lies his genius). Neither did he manipulate anyone emotionally with his vague promise of ‘change’ – it was more that people allowed themselves to vest this promise with expectations that Obama himself had never given it.

All this tells us is that our choices today in politics are limited. They are limited to a range of sinful men who will invariably disappoint and frustrate us. What we have in politics, then, is what Reformed theology calls the “alternative choice” system. We have long since stopped buying into the myth of “contrary choice” as a potential reality in our lives. We certainly have the power to choose… but this power only reveals our complete lack of viable choices.

Stepping back a wee bit, we eventually discover that this “alternative choice” system works at every level: political, ethical, spiritual, even romantic. And it is an unerring principle that every choice we make based on the alternative choice system will end up disappointing us in some way…

This is what makes the declaration of Jesus in John 15:16 such wonderful news. In the context of our own inability to choose anything worth choosing – of producing through our choices anything that has lasting value, Jesus says to his disciples:

“You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide”

In the absence of contrary choice; in a situation where we are unable to choose the ‘good’ option that has lasting value, what is the solution? There is only one: for the ‘good’ to choose us.

Jesus tells his disciples that despite their inability to choose him – the only good one, the true ideal principle who turned myth into fact – he has come for them and he has chosen them to belong to him. And he has not done this based on their own worthiness (ie. based on their own ‘fruit’, for they have none; they can only bring forth bad fruit)… yet by their union with him, they will begin to bear good fruit – fruit that “abides”.

If you feel that everything you have worked for in your life will turn (or is already turning) into dust in your hands, then you have understood that your whole life has been operating according to the “alternative choice” system; your choices have only and can only lead to bad fruit that rots and breaks down. Only then can the call of Christ to “follow him” be recognised as the only hope for bearing good fruit that lasts – for those he calls are those he chooses… and those he chooses are those who receive the ability to bear this fruit.

In other words, following Jesus is the only thing that will change your dispositional complex; it is the only thing that will introduce the “contrary choice” system into your life… but not because you have first chosen him (for you could not) – rather, because he first chose you and offered his life to put to death your old dispositional complex and rose to new life to inaugurate you into the new dispositional complex of his kingdom. Those who live under his rule, based on his resurrection life, then, are those who truly have the power to choose between good and evil.

So much of life is about assessing our options. On the most important of these decisions, the Bible makes it pretty clear: Christ or wasting away forever. Just know that your choice of him is not out of your own genius but because he has chosen you and expressed his call to you in the gospel. Answer this call and go and bear fruit.