When is a choice not a choice?

In talking to a good friend of mine last night, who was raised in a similar environment to me, we reached the (fairly obvious) conclusion that you can't make a choice unless you have two paths open before you.

To put it more specifically: if you parents subscribe to a particular religion, such as Christianity, and raise you as a Christian, with the expectation that you will "become" a Christian at some point (hopefully early on) in your life, without really giving you another option, then can you really be a Christian? Because in those circumstances, "becoming" a Christian is not a real choice - it's more of an inevitability. And yet most Christians would agree that choice is something that God grants to humans.

It seems to me a paradox - if you are raised by Christian parents to be Christian, can you truly be a Christian? I would genuinely like to hear an argument against this conclusion, if there is one.

Labels: religion