Actively Choosing vs. Just Obeying

"In a sense, the religious person must have no real views of his own and it is presumptuous of him, in fact, to have any. In regard to sex-love affairs, relations, to business, to politics and to virtually everything else in his life, he must try to discover what his god and his clergy would like him to do; and he must primarily do their bidding." -Albert Ellis

This religion kept me as a Note Taker in life- here, read this, study this, learn this, this is what God is like, this is what you should be like, etc. Everything was Absolute; none of this "knowledge" was viewed as Subjective.

I don't want to be a Note Taker. I want- and have already begun- to be a Doer, a Creator, a Progressor; dynamic, alive, thinking, engaging, the agent of my life, the actor, the driver.

"Just put Jesus in the driver's seat of your life." A metaphor commonly used to describe to "unbelievers" what "submission to Christ" means. But is that really what God wants? To be the driver in our lives? I'm not so sure.

If He really intended that every choice should be His, why did he give us wisdom, common sense, prudence, intelligence, the capacity for logic, etc. etc.? Just so we can turn to Him at every juncture and say piously, "What do YOU want me to do?"
He's probably just looking at us, going, "Ummm, hello? Put your hands on the steering wheel and DRIVE for crying out loud!!"

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who endowed us with sense, reason and intellect had intended for us to forgo their use." -Gallileo

I think He meant for US to be the actors, the drivers of our lives. He has a different role. And then we will answer for how we conducted our lives; to what end did we exercise our free wills.