We are often called on to "choose to believe." Ministers will preach evangelistic messages aimed at calling on unbelievers to "choose to believe" in Christ. The notion that we can "choose to believe" what we believe is prevalent -- I suspect because it's likely not evaluated. So ... let's evaluate it.
Let's say that you can choose what you will believe. So let's try an exercise right now. In Chinese lore, the dragon isn't the scary beast that it is in Western lore. The dragon is the most powerful, most wise beast there is. I think that's so cool. Imagine if you had a dragon as a pet, a friendly dragon. You wake up late one morning and realize that if you try to wade through traffic you'll be late for work so you jump out of bed, get dressed, hop on the back of your friendly dragon, and fly to work. Awesome! And who would dare burglarize a house with a dragon guarding it? Not gonna happen. So choose, right now, to believe in dragons. Go ahead. Make the conscious choice. Right now. So ... do you now believe in dragons?
"Oh, don't be silly," you say. "There's no evidence for the existence of dragons. We can't just believe things without a reason to believe them." (Kind of puts a crimp in the "faith apart from reason" argument, doesn't it? But I digress.) Okay, sure, let's not be ridiculous. Let's try something easier. For all of you who do not believe that aliens have or do visit the Earth, let's try this. There is evidence that there might be extraterrestrial beings who come into our sphere of detection, so to speak. I live, for instance in Phoenix. Now, of all the sightings of all the strange, unidentified objects, a very, very few remain unexplained. One of those very, very few occurred here in Phoenix. There are lots of folks who claim to have seen aliens, lots of folks who have seen unidentified objects in the sky, lots of folks who know that aliens have visited and are maybe even here. And there is that whole secret "Area 51" thing in Nevada. Really, there is a host of evidence here. You just choose not to accept it. So, accept it. Choose right now to believe that there really are aliens. Right now. Got it? You're all convinced now?
Of course not. The simple fact is that we cannot choose what we believe. We can choose what evidence we examine. We routinely choose to toss out evidence that, to us, is inconvenient, irrelevant, or unconvincing. We often close our eyes to other evidence or arguments. Everyone does it. Yes, even you. But none of us chooses to believe what we believe. The mechanism by which we accept one position over another is a mystery. You do not choose to believe.
Is it any wonder that Paul refers to faith as something given (Rom. 12:3)? Why, then, is it strange to most that the Bible suggests that faith is granted by God (Phil. 1:29) rather than drummed up by humans? Some of us raise this "specter" that faith is given, not supplied, a gift from God rather than an effort of Man, and it irritates a lot of believers. Why? If you can't choose to believe whatever you want to believe ... what makes you can choose to believe what God wants you to believe?
16 comments:
You're right, our beliefs' choose us, and it only seems like we choose them. Similar to salvation. God chooses us from before Creation, and yet we must choose. From our perspective, we have made a volitional choice to believe in Christ, but without God making us believe, we wouldn't.
I think you are spot on here. We cannot choose what we believe. We can only filter our methods of obtaining information regarding choices.
Is it choose to believe or choose to receive?
As Dagoods points out, your method filter/ methodology determines what gets through. But if everyone chose to receive God's gift of faith, what then?
Jim, reasonable question. I suppose that would depend on if you believed that God gives the gift of faith to everyone.
The way we taught the predestination in Romans last year was that God has a gift, but you need to open the box i.e. receive it. Thus the gift of faith is offered to everyone, but only so many choose to receive the gift. But the key is this: only so many chose [past tense] to receive it.
I think I'll throw another idea out there; time does not exist in ultimate reality. That's what the book I've been blogging is all about (the "13 Ways").
Yes, I suppose the idea that the gift of faith is offered to everyone would be the popular idea. It's popular because it sounds equitable. My difficulty is that I don't find it anywhere. I dofind that "All that the Father gives Me will come to Me" (John 6:37). It doesn't sound indeterminate at all. And while I would agree that God is outside of time, if God chooses who will be His based on who chooses Him, then our Election is based on our good choices, not His. If God chooses who will be His based on something in the chosen, then the chosen have something of which to be proud. That's a problem for me.
I understand that the idea that faith is offered to all is an equitable one. Can you point to any passage of Scripture that would suggest it is true?
Like I was telling my son yesterday.
If you want to improve after giving it your best, give The LORD thanks for everything you do.
Everytime you get a good grade thank him, no matter the effort you put in.
Because He is the only one that gives you your breath or heartbeat.
Why do we as believers forget that.
If we lead the nations to Christ with our gifts and speech we have nothing to boast of, for we would not even have life without Him.
We forget, that The LORD is LIFE..without The LORD..the enmey would wipe this planet out, believers and unbelievers alike.
And so goes faith, all is from Him and all is for Him.
Hmmm,
This one comes to mind,
John 3:16"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.
I think there is a danger in thinking too long and too hard about predestination, as it is a language game where time is likely not a constant.
Here's the way I look at it. God chooses those who chose Him. Even though I didn't commit my life to Christ until 2001, He chose me before the foundation of the world because I chose Him in 2001. But again we can get our brains all atwitter trying to figure it all out.
Stan, One follow-up point. I dug up an archived post of mine on this subject and one of the comments stuck out. Chris said, "We sin when we make choices contrary to what God has predestined for us." The full post is here.
I'm familiar with the passage, but I don't see anything that hints at "God offers faith to everyone."
The idea that God chooses those who chose Him is extremely popular. My problem is that it gives the chosen a reason to boast. It explains how the chosen get chosen ... we make the right choice.
Here's the question that has always bugged me. You're standing in heaven talking about how marvelous God was to us in life with a couple of angels. One of them says, "Hey, you were there and we weren't, so you can answer this question. On the day that you received Christ, a couple of guys came to your door and told you the Gospel. You received it. They went next door and told your neighbor the very same Gospel. He didn't. What made you different from your neighbor?"
I cannot answer that in a way that doesn't make me look better -- commendable. I chose correctly. I was wiser, more spiritual, better in tune. If it is anything in me, it seems to me that Paul was off the mark slightly when he said, "lest any man should boast" because if it is anything in me, I have that much room to boast. Indeed, I cannot correlate "He chose me because I chose Him" with
"who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" (John 1:13) or "it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy" (Rom. 9:16). Both seem to clearly say that it's not a matter of my choice.
You nailed it with this post.
I have had this same conversation with DW and I totally agree. You cannot choose to believe something - you either believe it or you don't.
You can choose to accept an argument, and by virute of the argument being persuasive, you may come to believe. In the same way, if you believe something to be the case, you cannot choose not to believe it so!
What made you different from your neighbor?
OK, I was the other neighbor for many years. Why didn't I accept Christ earlier? Dunno, stupid, I guess.
So? The idea of being chosen is that we have a heart of thanksgiving. There's no qualification why we were chosen because we deserve none of it anyway. I think that is what Paul is saying in 9:16.
Also 1 Corinthians 1:28-31
28He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, 29so that no one may boast before him. 30It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. 31Therefore, as it is written: "Let him who boasts boast in the Lord."
And give thanks with every breath. Take care.
If there is not choice involved, why does Paul speak of becoming all things to all men so that he might "win some." It sounds like he is trying to nudge them into choosing Christ by putting himself into the parameters of their social situation (a Jew to the Jews, Gentile to the Gentiles) and thus influence them to choose Christ. Thus he "wins" them, according to his terminology. Sounds counter to Calvinist terminology where the person who ends up believing already "won" the cosmic lottery long ago. Here rather than them having won, Paul seeks to win them, obviously by influencing them to make a choice.
Why, if you've already made up your mind that Paul is bunk, would you make an argument based on Paul's writings?
There is a choice involved -- whether to place my faith in Christ and follow Him or not. Further, there is a "win" in some sense. It's what we refer to as "means". The Scripture is clear that faith is a gift and it is clear that we must exercise faith. It is clear that Natural Man lacks the ability to comprehend spiritual things and it is clear that we use arguments, evidence, and preaching to explain spiritual things. It's called "means". The end is to follow Christ. God chooses to use "means" -- the tools of reason and the Word offered by humans -- as His method of arriving at that end.
But, if you're quite confident that humans choose what they believe, choose to believe in unicorns for me, okay? No, no, better yet, choose to believe in something useful. Choose to believe in Christ. No, let's make it simpler. Choose to believe that not all people who profess faith in Christ are idiots.
"There is a choice involved -- whether to place my faith in Christ and follow Him or not."
Yet your whole argument is that there is no choice, that you cannot choose to put your faith in him.
So, you have chosen to believe that you cannot choose to have faith and yet that you must choose to have faith.
Is that not altogether the same as choosing to believe both that unicorns do exist and yet that they don't exist at the same time?
My argument was that we do not choose what to believe. My argument is that we do not choose to have faith. We do choose where we place that faith. We cannot choose to believe, but, having belief, we choose in what we place our confidence. (Biblical "faith" is not mere mental assent.) Someone who says "I believe in God" is not the same as someone who places their confidence in God.
In other words, you are misunderstanding my point in the post versus the comment. We do not choose what we believe. We do choose what we do with that belief.
Or are you arguing that we do indeed choose what we believe?
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