It comes to this: Spider-Man, unmasked, facing Sandman atop a half-finished skyscraper. Both are weary. Both are beaten up. Does either of them have the strength or will to fight it out once more?
Sandman apparently has had enough. Instead of attacking, he says, “I didn’t want this … but I had no choice.”
Spidey looks him up and down. Should he spin a web around the Sandman? After all, he is a wanted criminal. Or should he renew the battle, strive to finish the dirtbag who killed his uncle Ben? He will be a hero either way.
Spider-Man chooses a third way. He responds, “We always have a choice.”
It is a lesson that has taken him the entire movie to learn.
Peter had to choose whether he would pursue his own interests and fulfill his own desires, or learn to put Mary Jane, whom he wanted as his wife, ahead of himself.
He had to choose between confronting Eddie Brock privately about the fake photograph Eddie used to get the job Peter wanted, or to publicly humiliate Eddie in order to get the job himself.
Peter had to choose between the red/blue suit or the black suit.
We always have a choice.
Once Spidey had chosen the black suit—which felt really good and gave him extra strength and more power—the power to choose became much harder. It seemed that the black suit was making all of the choices for him.
He chose to become “cool Peter Parker,” dressing hip and becoming arrogant. There really wasn’t even a time he made a conscious decision to become that way. Wearing the black suit just made the slide into this “new” Peter all the easier.
We always have a choice.
What is left unsaid, but is plainly seen, is this: Our choices always have consequences. And those consequences affect those close to us as well.
Peter’s choice to take Gwen Stacy to the club where Mary Jane was working backfired. Not only did he end up looking like a total jerk—to both Gwen and Mary Jane—he hit the woman he really loved and knocked her to the ground. His choice to get even with his best friend Harry left Harry with scars over half of his face, and even more determination to kill Spider-Man. And his choice to humiliate Eddie Brock ended with Brock taking on the form of Venom, kidnapping and almost killing Mary Jane. That battle cost Harry and Eddie their lives.
Our decisions have consequences that reach far beyond us.
Flint Marko had a choice the night he killed Uncle Ben. He could have not gone out with the intent to steal. He could have done as Uncle Ben suggested—just put down the gun and go home. Even after the fatal shot, he could have stayed to care for Ben and turned himself over to the police. But he made none of these choices. And the consequences set in motion by his decision had far-reaching effects. A family lost a husband and uncle to death. Another family lost a husband and father to prison. And after escaping from prison, Marko—through a freak accident—lost his humanness and became a collection of sand molecules.
So when Flint tells Spider-Man, “I had no choice,” he is not looking through the lens of reality. He made choices, and now he—and many others—are living out the consequences.
You have choices in front of you today. What shirt to wear. What to eat for lunch. How to spend that fiver in your pocket. How to respond to the person who is spreading untrue gossip about you. Whether to cheat on that test, even though you know you probably won’t get caught. Whether to react in anger when someone asks you to do something that is inconvenient for you at the moment. Each of these decisions you make will affect many other areas of your life—and the lives of others around you.
You always have a choice.
The key is making a good one. There is no magic formula, no one-two-three to always doing the right thing. It is a daily exercise in giving up control of your life—your choices—to God. We wish this surrender could be a one-time thing and then we would never have to deal with it again. In reality, however, we enter into this battle every day.
Even the man who has been called the wisest person to ever live had to choose who would call the shots in his life: himself or God. King Solomon wrote these words many years ago, and they still hold true for us today:
Trust God from the bottom of your heart; don’t try to figure everything out on your own. Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go; He’s the one who will keep you on track (Proverbs 3:5-6, THE MESSAGE).
That is the key to making good choices: Trust God. He knows how things will turn out even before they begin. He can be counted on to help us make decisions whose consequences are good for everyone.
We always have a choice. True words.
What’s the best choice we can make? To trust God.
Always.