Default

So this may be hard to communicate what I'm actually thinking, but I must try anyways.

Something that has kind of been on my mind/bothering me is:
As Christians, what is our default?

For instance:
Be rich or middle class and minister to that group of people or be poor and minister to that group of people?

Take birth control or don't?

Live in a nice safe neighborhood or not (aka. inner city, the country, etc)?

Send kids to public school or home school?

Vote republican or not (aka. democratic, third party, not vote, etc)?

Stay in America or go?

Make money or just don't?

Buy stuff from the grocery store or make my own food, clothing, etc?

Have all my own babies or adopt?

Go to college or not?

I'm not saying what is the right choice in ANY of these. In fact, I think all of these options can be the right choice at any given time.

My question is about our default.

There are certain options we choose automatically as our "default" and THEN we stop, question, pray, and say, should we be doing something different?
And I wonder if our default options look a whole lot more like our society's defaults rather than Jesus' teachings.
I wonder if we can make our defaults look more like a culture of Jesus followers, and THEN we stop, question, pray about if we should do something more like our society.

I guess just some examples I see.... (which could be debated if they actually should be defaults. but i guess its how i see it as of now)....

Birth control:
Obviously, I've come to no affirmative conclusion on this given that I am no where near making that decision. My thought: Why does it seem to be default that Christian couples just take the pill? Why isn't the thought process more like, 'we're getting married knowing that we are to fill the earth. That children are gift from God. And we trust Him to give us that gift whenever--even if we think we're not ready. We trust Him more than our own plans. He knows us better than we know ourselves so lets let him decide the timing....Okay maybe we have extreme circumstances, so we can't have babies right now and God has made that clear, but we're not going to take something that could possibly abort a baby and/or can mess up my body....Okay we have extreme circumstances, and we've really prayed about it. And we've done a lot of research and we think it works for us to take the pill...."
I'm not saying that 'taking the pill' means your not trusting God. Please don't hear me say that. But I just wonder why our default seems to be just to take it. Why isn't our default trusting God more and His ways in family, in children, and just in our own personal relationship with him? I guess I just don't think we should be so quick to do things that "everyone else" just does.

Home schooling:
Why is our default just to sent our kids away to a not-so-good public school system that raises our kids instead of training up our children in the ways of Jesus ourselves? How do we think that parents will be able to influence their kids more than the world if the world gets to spend waaay more time with them than the parents?
Again, not saying home schooling is for everyone. But I think our default should be for parents to raise and teach their children as much as possible and then if its just not gonna work for the parents to do that, through lots of praying and thinking, then of course it's good for whatever else to happen.

Adopting:
Okay its just straight up a command from God to take care of the orphans. I don't know how much more "default"ish you can get from that. Sure, have you own children. But please follow God's very simple command to take care of the orphans. Not saying everyone is suppose to adopt, but i am saying WAY more Christians should be doing so than they are now. Adopting should be a default, unless God makes it very clear that you shouldn't--through LOTS of prayer and community counsel.

How we consume:
I probably could go off on this one way too long. So I'll just say: we put no thought into what we buy, where it came from, what soul made it, how they were treated, how much they were paid, what it took to get that item here, how they item will affect our life, what that item portrays us as. I think the way Christians buy things and the food they eat should look way different than the rest of society. And that is far from true right now it seems. Maybe our default should be to just consume unless we know where all our stuff is coming from. Crazy. I know.

Where we live:
Default--live like Jesus did (with very little, with the poor, with the outcasts, with the sinners).
Should I default be to live in a nice, safe neighborhood with people who are just like us? Or should our default be to live with the poor or with the outcasts? Like we should just automatically do that? And then, through lots of prayer and community counsel, if God makes it clear to us to live somewhere else and minister to another group, THEN we go there. I want that to be default for my kids. I don't want them to think their default is to live in a perfect, safe, surburbia ministering to upper-middle class white folks. I would totally be okay if that's what God calls them to. Really, I would, I promise. But I don't want that to be their default.



I would like to clarify more for fear of offending, but I fear I've gone too long.
I hope this makes some sense.