The Other Christianity

I've argued on a range of doctrines for a few years in this blog. I've argued that God is sovereign, that He is absolutely sovereign, that nothing happens without His knowledge and plan. I've argued that God is omniscient and, as such, nothing happens without His knowledge and plan. I've argued that God is the First Cause, that He even initiates calamity and plans for evil which remains evil but that He uses for His good purposes. I've argued that the god of this world has blinded unbelievers, and that Natural Man is dead in sin, hostile to God, unable to respond rightly to God's call for salvation. As such, regeneration must precede faith. There is a Search function on this blog and you can look any of this up that you wish to find it. Or just click on some of the categories like Providence, Reformed Theology, or Sovereignty and Suffering. It's not secret. And, of course, I've recently argued that the one who is born of God is incapable of making an ongoing practice of sin without guilt, remorse, or repentance.

All of this is biblically clear to me and I don't even know how to go elsewhere. You'd think that wouldn't be true because I came from elsewhere, but now that I'm here, anywhere else is just plain irrational to me. Why? Well, let me describe the "other Christianity", my perception of what Christianity would look like if the stuff I wrote in the first paragraph were not true. You can see for yourself how pleasant I might find such a Christianity.

Assuming God is "sovereign" in the sense that so many mean it where God's "sovereignty" is sovereignly surrendered to Man's "Free Will", we would live in a terrifying world. God would be constantly mopping up after our mistakes and working at making all things work together for good. In fact, that would be, practically speaking, impossible. The only "good" then would be "Well, you made it to heaven" and so much of life would be "Yeah, that hurt a lot; too bad." That would be life without comfort. And it would make Man the god of this world. In reality, I supposed, the "sovereign God" who surrendered His sovereignty to Man's Free Will might remain "God", but in practical terms Man would be god and Christians would just have to deal with it.

There are those who assure us that God is not omniscient -- more accurately, that He cannot know the free will choices of human beings before they are made -- and, therefore, we're on our own. Oh, He's getting better. I mean, He's been following human choices for thousands of years and He's pretty good at anticipating, but some folks like Hitler or Stalin or, who knows, Obama(?) sneak through and make choices He didn't anticipate and you are all on your own while He tries to clean up the mess.

There are those who assure us that God never plans for unpleasant things or for sin. This, of course, is the natural conclusion of either the incomplete Sovereign or the lack of omniscience, but some are sure He's both sovereign and omniscient, but this stuff just happens. Evil, then, becomes the winner. God knew it was coming. He didn't plan it. He could stop it. But apparently the Ultimate Good is Man's Free Will. So either God is unable to stop these things because of His commitment to the Ultimate Good or He is unwilling to stop it for that reason. He could have produced a world without sin and it's His will that all are saved, but it's just not gonna happen. This is commonly held Christian viewpoint, and it terrifies me to think of a Sovereign God who is held hostage by Man's Free Will.

Perhaps the most common perspective is the "We choose Christ" perspective. It's the "God did 99.9% and you have to do the 0.1%" notion. How to reconcile all that the Bible says about Natural Man -- the unregenerate human -- with this idea is far beyond my capacity to fathom. Mostly dead in sin, pretty much hostile to God, inclined largely to evil, practically blinded, almost completely unable to understand, I don't find these descriptions in the Bible. So I'm stuck with trying to figure out how to align all of the absolutes listed in Scripture with the certainty that we have every ability to choose Christ all on our own as long as He does the wooing, the calling, the encouraging. It makes, in my mind, for a Christianity of supermen who overcame quite literally impossible handicaps of death, hostility, natural inclination, blindness, and all to come to the right choice after all.

And what about the "cannot make a practice of sin" concept? What if I'm wrong? Well, if I'm wrong, I know of no one who is born of God. If it actually means that we stop sinning as Wesley suggested and all we have to worry about are "mistakes", I suppose it would be an easy thought. However, I know of no Christian near or far, past or present, by reputation or by personal knowledge, who only commits "mistakes", whose only sins are "sins of ignorance". Not one. And that is the scariest Christianity of all -- the empty set.