There is a scene in William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice that haunts anyone who witnesses it—in the novel or the film. Sophie, a Polish Catholic imprisoned at Auschwitz, is confronted by a Nazi officer and forced into an unspeakable decision: to choose which one of her two children will live, and which will be sent to die. If she refuses to choose, both will be killed.
Sophie pleads, begs, protests—how could a mother choose between her children? But the soldier insists. In that moment, under that cruelty, Sophie makes the choice. It is a moment of unimaginable anguish, a moral nightmare, a devastation with no redemption.
And in this moment, there is no right answer. No good outcome. No action that leads to wholeness. Only survival stained with permanent grief.
It is here, in the face of such unbearable ambiguity, that theology must speak—not to explain or justify, but to accompany and bear witness. For those who walk in faith, the question arises: Where is God in such a moment?
If you are shaped by open and relational theology in its process version, you may be tempted to think that every moment contains an “ideal possibility” for responding to the situation at hand, derived from God. This ideal possibility is thought to be “ideal” because it is loving, wise, and responsive to the full context. It is what God—the loving heart of the universe—desires for us. It is, as it were, God’s will.
But Sophie’s choice forces us to question this assumption—or at least to reframe the notion of “ideal” so that it includes knowing that there is no relevant ideal.
Sometimes, the most faithful response to a situation is to recognize that there is no unambiguous best, no healing answer, no salvific action that can redeem the moment from tragedy. In such circumstances, the “ideal possibility” is not a morally superior option hidden among many, waiting to be discovered like a buried treasure. It is instead the mature acknowledgment that ambiguity reigns—and that even God, the all-loving presence, shares in that ambiguity.
This is not a denial of divine guidance but a deepening of it. The divine lure in such moments is not toward clarity but toward compassionate presence. Not toward perfection, but toward courage. It is the grace to act—however brokenly—when the light does not shine on any one path.
In process theology, God is not an all-controlling puppeteer, orchestrating events for some distant good. God is relational, deeply invested in the unfolding of the world moment by moment, offering fresh possibilities not in abstraction but within the tangled, tragic realities of life as it is. And when life offers no clear possibility for beauty, truth, or love to flourish, God does not retreat. God remains: as fellow sufferer, as silent companion, as the ache that feels every tear.
We are invited, then, to imagine divine love not as the provider of perfect answers but as the one who shares in the burden of choosing when no choice is or feels holy. To follow this God is not simply to walk the road of certainty, but also the path of shared vulnerability. The God of love, in such moments, becomes not an answer-giver but a co-struggler, whose own will is shaped by the weight of the moment, just as ours is.
This is the deeper meaning of “God’s will”—not a divine command inscribed in metaphysical stone, but a hope offered in trembling solidarity: that we will keep loving, keep choosing, keep walking, even after the tragedy and in the fog.
Choosing Amid Incompatible Goods
Not all impossible choices take place under the shadow of atrocity. Some occur in the everyday fabric of ordinary life—in the slow unfolding of time, in the quiet drama of family, career, identity, and love. These choices, too, can be agonizing, not because they involve evil, but because they involve incompatible goods. Choosing one path means leaving another behind—not out of rejection, but out of necessity.
Terrence Malick’s film The Tree of Life explores this inner terrain with exquisite sensitivity. At the heart of the story is a boy named Jack, growing up in 1950s Texas, caught between the contrasting influences of his parents. His mother represents the way of grace—gentleness, forgiveness, beauty, and surrender. His father embodies the way of nature—discipline, ambition, control, and survival. Each offers something true and essential. Each represents a mode of being that Jack will carry within him all his life.
As the film unfolds, it becomes clear that Jack cannot fully embody both. He must choose, not between good and evil, but between goods that do not easily coexist. The tenderness of grace and the toughness of nature each have a claim on his soul. His coming of age is not about eliminating one in favor of the other, but about navigating their tension—crafting a life that can hold both without being split apart.
This, too, is a kind of Sophie’s choice—not tragic, not coerced, but deeply human. A decision made not in horror, but in ambiguity. A decision made not because there is a best, but because life must move forward, and movement requires choosing.
Becoming Through Our Choosing
We may look back on our lives and see the paths not taken. We may wonder what would have happened if we had chosen differently. But process theology invites us to release the burden of having chosen wrongly in situations where no wrong existed—only a divergence of goods, a necessity of becoming.
God does not ask perfection from us. God asks for responsiveness. For care. For participation in the unfolding of life, even when that life cannot hold all that we long for.
Jack, in The Tree of Life, grows into a man still haunted by his inner divisions. But his journey suggests a deeper peace—not in resolving the tension, but in honoring it. And perhaps that is what God invites us to do as well: to honor the ambiguity, to live with integrity amid conflicting goods, and to trust that the God of love holds all our decisions in mercy. And when, as in Sophie's Choice, we must choose between evils, we are invited to recognize, not that God wills the evils but that, no matter what happens, God is, in the words of Whitehead, "a fellow sufferer who understands."
Sophie pleads, begs, protests—how could a mother choose between her children? But the soldier insists. In that moment, under that cruelty, Sophie makes the choice. It is a moment of unimaginable anguish, a moral nightmare, a devastation with no redemption.
And in this moment, there is no right answer. No good outcome. No action that leads to wholeness. Only survival stained with permanent grief.
It is here, in the face of such unbearable ambiguity, that theology must speak—not to explain or justify, but to accompany and bear witness. For those who walk in faith, the question arises: Where is God in such a moment?
If you are shaped by open and relational theology in its process version, you may be tempted to think that every moment contains an “ideal possibility” for responding to the situation at hand, derived from God. This ideal possibility is thought to be “ideal” because it is loving, wise, and responsive to the full context. It is what God—the loving heart of the universe—desires for us. It is, as it were, God’s will.
But Sophie’s choice forces us to question this assumption—or at least to reframe the notion of “ideal” so that it includes knowing that there is no relevant ideal.
Sometimes, the most faithful response to a situation is to recognize that there is no unambiguous best, no healing answer, no salvific action that can redeem the moment from tragedy. In such circumstances, the “ideal possibility” is not a morally superior option hidden among many, waiting to be discovered like a buried treasure. It is instead the mature acknowledgment that ambiguity reigns—and that even God, the all-loving presence, shares in that ambiguity.
This is not a denial of divine guidance but a deepening of it. The divine lure in such moments is not toward clarity but toward compassionate presence. Not toward perfection, but toward courage. It is the grace to act—however brokenly—when the light does not shine on any one path.
In process theology, God is not an all-controlling puppeteer, orchestrating events for some distant good. God is relational, deeply invested in the unfolding of the world moment by moment, offering fresh possibilities not in abstraction but within the tangled, tragic realities of life as it is. And when life offers no clear possibility for beauty, truth, or love to flourish, God does not retreat. God remains: as fellow sufferer, as silent companion, as the ache that feels every tear.
We are invited, then, to imagine divine love not as the provider of perfect answers but as the one who shares in the burden of choosing when no choice is or feels holy. To follow this God is not simply to walk the road of certainty, but also the path of shared vulnerability. The God of love, in such moments, becomes not an answer-giver but a co-struggler, whose own will is shaped by the weight of the moment, just as ours is.
This is the deeper meaning of “God’s will”—not a divine command inscribed in metaphysical stone, but a hope offered in trembling solidarity: that we will keep loving, keep choosing, keep walking, even after the tragedy and in the fog.
Choosing Amid Incompatible Goods
Not all impossible choices take place under the shadow of atrocity. Some occur in the everyday fabric of ordinary life—in the slow unfolding of time, in the quiet drama of family, career, identity, and love. These choices, too, can be agonizing, not because they involve evil, but because they involve incompatible goods. Choosing one path means leaving another behind—not out of rejection, but out of necessity.
Terrence Malick’s film The Tree of Life explores this inner terrain with exquisite sensitivity. At the heart of the story is a boy named Jack, growing up in 1950s Texas, caught between the contrasting influences of his parents. His mother represents the way of grace—gentleness, forgiveness, beauty, and surrender. His father embodies the way of nature—discipline, ambition, control, and survival. Each offers something true and essential. Each represents a mode of being that Jack will carry within him all his life.
As the film unfolds, it becomes clear that Jack cannot fully embody both. He must choose, not between good and evil, but between goods that do not easily coexist. The tenderness of grace and the toughness of nature each have a claim on his soul. His coming of age is not about eliminating one in favor of the other, but about navigating their tension—crafting a life that can hold both without being split apart.
This, too, is a kind of Sophie’s choice—not tragic, not coerced, but deeply human. A decision made not in horror, but in ambiguity. A decision made not because there is a best, but because life must move forward, and movement requires choosing.
Becoming Through Our Choosing
We may look back on our lives and see the paths not taken. We may wonder what would have happened if we had chosen differently. But process theology invites us to release the burden of having chosen wrongly in situations where no wrong existed—only a divergence of goods, a necessity of becoming.
God does not ask perfection from us. God asks for responsiveness. For care. For participation in the unfolding of life, even when that life cannot hold all that we long for.
Jack, in The Tree of Life, grows into a man still haunted by his inner divisions. But his journey suggests a deeper peace—not in resolving the tension, but in honoring it. And perhaps that is what God invites us to do as well: to honor the ambiguity, to live with integrity amid conflicting goods, and to trust that the God of love holds all our decisions in mercy. And when, as in Sophie's Choice, we must choose between evils, we are invited to recognize, not that God wills the evils but that, no matter what happens, God is, in the words of Whitehead, "a fellow sufferer who understands."
