Recently saw the new reboot of RoboCop with my son. Underneath the very cool special effects I noticed that there was a powerful theme emerging. This theme was was also in the original RoboCop.

The ability to change your thinking. The power of choice!

If you haven’t seen the move yet or need a refresher, here is the basic story line:

“In RoboCop, the year is 2028 and multinational conglomerate OmniCorp is at the center of robot technology. Overseas, their drones have been used by the military for years – and it’s meant billions for OmniCorp’s bottom line. Now OmniCorp wants to bring their controversial technology to the home front, and they see a golden opportunity to do it. When Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman) – a loving husband, father and good cop doing his best to stem the tide of crime and corruption in Detroit – is critically injured in the line of duty, OmniCorp sees their chance for a part-man, part-robot police officer. OmniCorp envisions a RoboCop in every city and even more billions for their shareholders, but they never counted on one thing: there is still a man inside the machine pursuing justice.”ⁱ

The core theme of the original RoboCop was a story about officer Murphy rediscovering his identity through choices. In the new Robocop reboot, officer Murphy’s memory remained intact. The new theme focuses more more on his battle on choosing to overpower his programming, and overcome the changes which he has been forced to endure through choosing.

Here is an excerpt from my book Heartstone where I wrestle with the power to choose:

We soon discover that our journey in this world has so many competing demands distracting us from our true destination that we usually miss both the journey and the destination all together. Consumed with my empire building, I lost sight of what was important in life and sadly “arriving” became more important than “becoming.” Because I was so focused on what was next, I was never able to enjoy living in the moment. How much of the journey do we miss because we are so focused only on the destination? Our choices, our idols, and the stuff we covet have significant impact on us. What we fail to see is that God is more concerned with who we are becoming than with our empire building. Oddly enough, so are our wives and kids.

Power to choose; why does God allow this?

Have you ever given much thought to why God gave us the ability to make choices? Are you like me with a record breaking number of wrong choices? Have you ever thought about the impact of your choices when you barely escaped with your life on the back side of one of life’s storms? I wonder if God wrestled with the idea of giving us the freedom to make choices when He created us. He may have, but He created us out of love…to love Him…and love is a choice! So the power to choose was given to us.

Journeying through life with this power to choose I would listen to every voice available to me except the voice of Truth. My misguided seeking opened the door for the enemy to come in and wreak havoc in my life. There were many things competing to become the god of my life, but unfortunately I won and I became that god. Newton’s third law of motion profoundly states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. So when we ignore the truth of God’s word and choose to live life our own way, for ourselves, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The corruption of this world, our self-centeredness, and the enemy of our soul rob us of the truth, which slowly drags us to our place of bondage, far from the freedom we could have. There is that unmistakable pull of human nature that always wants to draw us back toward dysfunction.

Have you made a record number of bad choices, like me?

Did these choices take your focus off of your family and what’s really important?

With RoboCop, someone reprogrammed him. With us, we don’t listen to the Voice of Truth and allow the narrative of this world to reprogram our minds. God has given us the power to choose. To choose to break free of the programming of this world, from our self-centeredness and the lies of enemy of our soul rob. These narratives take us far from the freedom we could have.

Here are a couple of takeaways that we can all learn from RoboCop:

1) You can change your thinking: God gave us all the ability to make a choice. Even tough the doctor rewired RoboCop’s brain to eliminate the ability to make decisions on his own, we discover that he was was able to override this programming. To think again. To make choices again.

How often do we listen to all the wrong voices? How often do we get stuck in a rut because we think we can’t change our thinking?

We can change our thinking. We can change what we put into our brains. We can choose different actions. We can be different people.

Don’t get caught in the trap of thinking you can’t change your thinking. You can!

2) Family matters: What made RoboCop’s brain take control again? It was the love for his family.

The memories and love he had for them began to surface and was the reason he was able to regain control. I got caught up position, power and prosperity and forgot about the home front. The result of my choices were divorce, broken relationships and a tough path to walk.

Remember there are people waiting for you at home. Learn to leave the office and spend time with those who really matter.

Are you ready to change your thinking?

Are you ready to making better choices?

Are you ready to choose whats important? God, your family, your kids, [fill in the blank]?