I was raised in an exceptional Christian home. I was Bible-immersed as a very young child, went to Bible-based churches, attended a Christian school at my Bible-based church ... all very good stuff that has helped me in life. I remember, though, when I came across the doctrine of Election. You know the one. God chooses whom He will save. Well, I found that one difficult to swallow. But, literally over several years, I became convinced by Scripture and evident reason that it was unavoidable. Election was in the Bible whether I liked it or not. From Abel to Abraham, from Noah to Israel, from David to the 12 disciples and beyond, over and over God chose without regard to human deeds or will. Mind you, how Election works could be in question, but that it is true is not. It's interesting, in retrospect, thinking about the primary reason I resisted it so long. It wasn't because it was unclear in Scripture. It wasn't because competing voices had other equally compelling arguments. It was ... people. My thinking went something like this. How could a good, loving God choose to save some and not others? I mean, doesn't "good" and "loving" necessitate "save everyone"? Like good parents owe their children the best, doesn't our heavenly Father owe it to us? And, after all, isn't an eternity of damnation excessive in view of a temporal life of sin? I was, as it turned out, practicing the very thing that made God angry (Rom 1:25). I was serving the creature rather than the Creator.
It's a kind of a killing of God, if you think about it. I was trying to set God aside if He didn't correlate to my values. If He didn't meet my standards, He was really in trouble. I forgot that He was God. I was actually suggesting that if God didn't see humans as important as I did, He was wrong. I was asking the question upside down. Does Scripture say He chooses? Absolutely, without a doubt. Then don't shake my fist at Him for doing so; try to understand and realign my thinking. We know He has a great love for humans, but He certainly does not "feel warmly" for His creatures more than He loves Himself. That would be ... idolatry. So a just God must apply justice to a sinful race. Becaue He must be true to Himself. And, let's face it, attempted murder of God should be punishable by eternal death. If God is seriously concerned about His glory and we sin, falling short of that glory (Rom 3:23), it's not a minor problem. It's an eternal one.
We have a real hard time with this. We develop our own "good" ... even though Scripture says our hearts are deceived (Jer 17:9) and we're not good (Rom 3:12). Then we expect God to agree with us. If He doesn't, it's a problem. And most people are not willing to say, "The problem is with me." So we defend sinful Man against a Holy God and think we're doing a good thing. Silly humans.
6 comments:
It does seem that most rejections of Scripture come down to, I don't like what that says about humanity. The Bible says there are none good, no not one. But we live with and know lots of good people. Instead of adjusting our understanding of good, we reject Scripture.
My experience was pretty similar, although it doesn't sound like I was quire as resistant to election as you were.
Silly humans, indeed. We look at the world and our lives as somehow our doing and expect everything we encounter and experience--including God--to make sense to us from our perspective of “how things should be.” Yet, why do we think that God thinks and operates like we humans do, as if He were something of our making that must conform to our points of view? And, as you say, when we don’t like His ways, we reject Him (forgetting our place).
I bet there are many different reasons that we silly humans balk at Election; mine was different from yours, in fact. My initial resistance stemmed from the idea that we choose God (rather than He chooses us); we decide to make Jesus our Lord and Savior and become a born-again Christian. We opt to join His club, so to speak (and we can drop out later if we change our minds). Embracing religion in general and Christianity specifically is our personal decision (similar to choosing a college or career or selecting whom to marry). Then I could answer your question, “How could a good, loving God choose to save some and not others?” this way: I made the correct decision, while others did not, so all is fair--defining “Election to salvation” as God’s proper response to my choosing Him. That’s how I always viewed it as a young Christian--essentially, I was in charge of God. Understanding God’s sovereignty has come much later for me personally, and the “scales” have shifted from “I am big and God is small” to “I am small and God is big.”
Lorna, it does kind of all boil down to whether we see YHWH is the center of everything or see yourself as the center of everything.
Yes, it does, and humanistic influences have been very successful at causing us to get that all wrong!
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