Denny Wayman

Denny Wayman

Denny Wayman, D.Min., is a member of the Study Commission on Doctrine and the moderator of Free Methodist Conversations. He served 40 years as the lead pastor of the Free Methodist Church of Santa Barbara and 10 years on the superintendent team (eight years as lead superintendent) of the Free Methodist Church in Southern California. He is the author of “Healthy Biblical Communities” and the discipleship trilogy “Discipleship Ecosystem,” “Toxic Discipleship” and “Rootbound.” He is married to Cheryl, a licensed marriage and family therapist.

By Denny Wayman

When we are young, we are amazed at the death-defying acts of daredevils. But as we get older, we realize that such behavior is not only foolish but often represents a death wish. The universal drive to survive has become hijacked and in its place is an inverted desire to die.

It isn’t expressed that way of course. In fact, if we were to ask such persons what they are experiencing, they would probably say something like: “I’m never more alive than when I am defying death!”

In a similar way, the inversion of a person, community or nation so that life itself is defied is an inversion of the recommended choice God presents to all of us. God confirms this choice when He says, “This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him” (Deuteronomy 30:19–20).

As a gift of God, life is a blessing. Lived within a love relationship with our Lord, we not only hear His voice but experience a vitality that has no greater description than living. From inanimate to animate, from bones to flesh, from stone idols to the living God, life expresses the inexpressible difference that occurs when life is chosen with all of its infinite and eternal possibilities.

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“… all such death choices can only be described as a mental, moral and spiritual illness.”

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Thus it is confusing when a person or community chooses death. From the killing of a person in the womb or on the battlefield or on the streets or in the hospital, all such death choices can only be described as a mental, moral and spiritual illness. Yet this warring madness against life is the most dangerous of all human proclivities. Illustrating an inversion to our created calling, life-defying behaviors, customs and solutions pervade our world.

Deadly Deception

Where does this come from? It would be incomplete to say that it originated in the garden when the first humans defied God’s instruction and ate of the one tree promising death. But it can certainly be traced back to this one moral mutation.

Where life was affirmed everywhere in the great variety of the nutrients of the garden, for the humans then and now to defy such abundance of life, is incomprehensible. It makes no sense, then and now. The mind has somehow become a prisoner of a lie that such a life-defying decision will create the greatest life. By its very definition, such an illogical path can surely not be chosen. But the serpentine deception that we will not surely die continues to hold sway, and, in this inverted world, it is touted as the preferred way.

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“What life itself was meant to give has been negated in a way that not only impairs our lives but ends them.”

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Thinking that if we kill the fetus, the soldier, the neighbor and the sick then we will have a better life is not only historically, psychologically, demographically, economically, and patriotically untrue, but these superficial effects don’t even begin to tell the story of our destruction. When a mother kills a child, a nation its young men, a neighborhood its neighbor, and children their parent, the damage to the soul can only be described as ending all life. What life itself was meant to give has been negated in a way that not only impairs our lives but ends them: physically and spiritually, individually and familially, city and nation.

The Choice Before Us

To defy life itself is to defy God, and perhaps that is the rest of the story. Perhaps to defy life as God’s greatest attribute and gift, making relationship and love possible, is a transgression only illustrating the foundational defiance that permeates all of us. For reasons that were not clear in Adam and Eve but have become undeniably clear in their progeny, our defiance of life and the God who created it can only be changed when we choose life in all the various opportunities we have.

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“If to defy life is to defy God, then to choose life is to choose God.”

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We often hear that it is political to choose life. How this can be is beyond any sensible understanding. If to defy life is to defy God, then to choose life is to choose God. It is at its core a spiritual decision that has relational and social implications. It is inextricably bound up in the very definition of what it means to be alive.

Just as God’s people were confronted with the choice almost 3,500 years ago, we are once more being confronted by God. Our choices will impact not only the next 3,500 years but every year between now and then. We must take our cue from God who put the choice before us of life and death. He went on to give us the answer: Choose life.

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Denny Wayman

Denny Wayman

Denny Wayman, D.Min., is a member of the Study Commission on Doctrine and the moderator of Free Methodist Conversations. He served 40 years as the lead pastor of the Free Methodist Church of Santa Barbara and 10 years on the superintendent team (eight years as lead superintendent) of the Free Methodist Church in Southern California. He is the author of “Healthy Biblical Communities” and the discipleship trilogy “Discipleship Ecosystem,” “Toxic Discipleship” and “Rootbound.” He is married to Cheryl, a licensed marriage and family therapist.