A friend of mine who lives in Indianapolis, Indiana has his priorities figured out. We are co-editors for an online journal (www.g-gej.org), along with another friend of ours who lives in New York. I have felt at times at odds with my Indiana friend because he does not share my faith in Christ (come to think of it, the same could be said for my New York friend), but with regard to several other considerations I respect and admire him, and we work together well.

Charlie rides a Harley Davidson. It's one of those big ones, and he takes his wife with him on occasion when he goes out on the road, charging down mid-western roads past cornfields and such.

Recently, while we were discussing an approach to the next issue of the journal, he happened to mention that he was not "online" at the moment. He was writing from out of town. His wife had gone somewhere for the day, and so he sensed the time was right to grab his fishing pole, jump onto the Harley, and drive out to a special place.

He said, "I packed my fishing pole on my motorcycle, rode out in the middle of nowhere, hiked two miles to a river and just caught a three-pound, smallmouth bass. I am probably the only one in a half-mile radius and probably the only one typing on a laptop in a five-mile radius. Life is good, except my laptop is gonna smell like fish."

Here is a man who understands priorities. The dictionary defines a priority as something more important or that takes precedence. A priority comes before something of lesser importance. Naturally, this varies from one person to the next, from one day to the next, from one place or social context to the next, and that leads one to the issue of decision-making.

How do you decide what is most important for you? How do you make decisions at all?

In an article published in the Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, Darren Campbell, Tanya Neuert, Krista Friesen, and Nancy McKeen established that young people decide to approach strangers in a social setting based on what they see when they look into the facial expressions of these other people. It is the approachability they are looking for in the others' countenance, and that involves a number of attributions that include emotional cues and insider/outsider group evaluations. It is a priority that people feel someone else is approachable in deciding whether or not to initiate contact.

In an article by Wouter Kool, Joseph McGuire, Zev Rosen, and Matthew Botvinick in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Generally it was found that anticipated cognitive demand plays a significant role in behavioural decision making. That is, it has been known that people choose the course of action that will make the least physical demand on them, but these authors discovered that people decide in favour of whatever will cost them the least in terms of having to think or devote any kind of brainpower to a situation. Thus, it seems to be a priority among people to save energy and to choose in favour of whatever won't demand that one have to think too much.

I have known this for years. The brain is an efficient organ. Once it learns to do something in a particular way, according to a particular pattern, it will resort to that pattern every time, whether the novel situation at hand actually calls for it or not.

Thus, when we have to make a decision, the way we've done "it" before and the imagined receptivity of those around us influence our choice of what to do. Peer pressure and relative lassitude.

People want to be accepted, and they don't want to have to think about things too much. What a combination. It's a recipe for mediocrity. It's a path toward self-betrayal. How many children, when they are young and dream dreams, say to themselves, "When I grow up, I want to sell out, lay around, fail to succeed and do whatever I have to do so that others will glad-hand me?" I don't think that's what children are like; yet, that is how some people become. If the research is correct, perhaps that's kind of how a lot of people become.

Great things in this life don't come easy, and they require that one take the risk of being misunderstood or being unacceptable.

Contrary to what many think, living the Christian life is not a matter of conformity or mediocrity. You don't decide to do X, Y, or Z because you think it's going to be well received by others or because it's the easiest thing to do in a given situation. The call to follow Christ is a call to pick up a cross of sacrifice daily, one day at a time, and follow. When Jesus met the disciples on the beach after his resurrection, Peter pointed to John and asked Jesus if John was going to have the same experience in life that Jesus had just told Peter he would have. Jesus said, "What is that to you? You follow Me!"

I have found that while there are consistencies in the way God does things as He leads a disciple, the disciple will find that no two periods of life are exactly the same and each challenge seems to take one to the brink in its own unique way. No one gets a free ride, coasting the downhill slope singing, "Yippee; I've done this before".

Each challenge calls for decision-making that looks inward to one's own compass rather than outward to see what plays well for others. Each challenge takes a person to the very limits of emotional, physical, and intellectual endurance, and that stretching and testing of one's faith is what refines the person.

This poses a dilemma: if I want to grow, I have to endure such challenges, and the challenges have to be difficult and often painful. They must demand of me the existential authenticity of daring to be true to myself regardless of what others might think, while also pushing myself to keep walking in faith no matter how difficult that might become.

My priorities include doing just such a thing. I don't think I'm going to catch too many smallmouth bass that way, but perhaps the Lord will meet and talk with me a bit as I go.