“Lyons’ story is not unique. Families and entire churches are discovering daily the theological risks of surfing the internet.”
This was too funny not to copy to my blog from the guys over at Tominthebox. Even if after reading this blog long enough, it’s painfully obvious which bias they write from, but I still get a good laugh almost every time I read their blog entries. It’s like a Christian version of “The Onion”.
And it’s a brilliant way to springboard into my opinion also.
I’ve made fun of ”hyper-sovereingty” on my blog before, which is the term I use for extreme Calvinism. I am not a Calvinist, but I don’t waste or spend my time studying or researching into it, because though the predestination/free will debate would be an interesting one to ponder, I really don’t find it has much bearing on my daily life and practices, and I am confused as to how people can divide themselves from each over it. I think when we get to heaven, many will be embarrassed that all their energy was spent on one side of this issue and not on winning souls to Jesus or reaching out to the poor, healing the sick or other practical things. That’s why you don’t really find topics on my blog that I feel are just lofty pie in the sky stuff to show off theology I hold to or to boast of my use of big words, but hopefully I write stuff that stirs you to do something with what I gave you.
What does Calvinism stir people to do with their knowledge? What does Arminianism stir people to do with their knowledge?
My point exactly.
And while I’m at it. How come everything has to have a category in the Body of Christ? How come if you’re not a Calvinist, you’re automatically an Arminian? I don’t like either system of thought, but it seems like people can’t handle if you’re not on the same side as them on an issue, and that you’re not allowed to find a middle ground because that’s a ”cop-out” stance from actually taking a side. Sad.
Recently, someone got really up in arms with me in a face-to-face discussion where he brought this subject up. While trying to persuade me about the logic behind the predestination opinion, I politely as I knew how told him it didn’t matter to me and I wasn’t interested in being sucked into a passionate debate about it–to which he had a conniption and told me he couldn’t fathom how this doesn’t matter to a believer, and that if I really loved Jesus, then I’d care about it! I told him it doesn’t and that “I guess I just don’t love Jesus then“–and as the next ten minutes of this conversation rolled on, I immediately started to get sad–not sad that I was losing an argument I didn’t think I could win. But sad that I was involved in an argument I didn’t think would do anyone any good no matter who could out-argue the other.
For what it’s worth, for those of you who can only accept things in black and white, and are in categories –”if you’re not this then you are that“–then if I had to take sides, then I’m definitely not a Calvinist, but that doesn’t mean I’ll write about and back up the Arminian side. It just means that out of two systems of theology that both have flaws in the logic, I find the Calvinism one to have more issues and in general, I find this mindset does inhibit the initiative (I don’t like the term “free will” because if I use it, people automatically think of other terms related to just our salvation, when I find it that by nature, it automatically encompasses more than that). Whether people want to admit it or not, how one views the way the sovereignty of God to be applied to life, does affect a lot of their other theologies. I find if I try encouraging someone to receive healing–and to take the initiative themselves to receive what He’s given, they usually can’t handle that idea. It usually is a result of the view of God from a filter that teaches he’s dolled out everything He ever will, and “whatever is wrong with you is your lot in life” or your ‘thorn in the flesh’.
Generally speaking, when people tell me they don’t think God wills for them to be well or made whole from a sickness, then I don’t need to ask many more questions or investigate to find out they generally have a mindset where everything that happens in life is God’s will, including the bad, and everything is predestined and so forth. It’s impossible for a theology like this not to affect one’s outlook in other matters of faith. Look at the gifts of the Holy Spirit–an ‘everything predestined before-hand’ view of things really inhibits people from realizing there are things don’t happen unless the believer step out and do it–like the fact that the enablements (gifts) of the Holy Spirit are for us to choose to operate in them AS He’s ordained us to. And tell some people they can earnestly covet the gifts they are passionate about blessing the Body with, and that sounds blasphemous and arrogant to them based on the filter they read the Bible texts through. Again, I’m making some generalizations that aren’t a rule all across the board, but just what I’ve seen and noticed, but then again, how many people think that “whatever gift of the Spirit God gave you is the one you’re “stuck with” and will never operate in any other ones. Simply not true.
Then, the thing I don’t like about the Arminian position, is how those who don’t hold to it, use a lot of straw-man arguments to try defeating it. It really looks like they don’t have any Scriptures to back themselves up like the Calvinists do. But at least one thing Arminians get right, is that there’s initiative on our part for things in the cooperation with God to accomplish his will on the earth. The things the Calvinist gets right, is the fact God is in control already no matter what. If you and I both climbed a mountain from different sides, we’re both going to reach the top, but make some different but valid discoveries along the way, that don’t invalidate the other climber’s discoveries. I’ve said before that I view Calvinism/Arminianism like two sides to the same coin, and that I accept the whole coin, and realizes there’s mysteries to the Sovereignty of God and the free choice of man.
I know some reading will think I’m oversimplifying and taking middle ground or a cop-out position, but I don’t feel I do on this matter. If you were to take a scale and put “0″ in the middle and each side of the scale went up to the number “10″ representing how extreme in Calvinism one got into, and the other side of the scale going up to 10 representing how extreme into Arminianism one got into, then I’d be only a 1 or 2 on the side of the center towards Arminian in my thinking–only because it seems in the Body of Christ there isn’t much choice or option between anything except those two stances and I have no idea what other way I can phrase my thoughts.
I remember being in a group of singles one night, and they were arguing over if God has made soul-mates for us or or if we choose a mate or if there’s several to pick from in our lives and we ultimately select just one. I got bored fast with that conversation, because it seems so obvious to me that I will choose who I’d like to spend my life with, and that it will happen to be who God has chosen for me. People can’t get their minds around how both work together. But the paradox works fine and doesn’t hurt my brain thinking about it. Same with the predestination/free-will debate: they’re the opposite sides of the same coin, and I feel I accept and believe the whole coin!
Ten years ago, I had a Student Life Application Bible, which was published by the people who make the New Living Translation. It was my first Bible that I bought (with my paper-route earnings at the time!) and I also purchased it the first time I ever visited Emmaus Family Books in Peterborough, where I’d go on to spend thousands of my dollars in the years to come buying CDs and books and Bibles that would bless and edify my walk with God and others in the years to come. Anyway, in that Bible they had whole pages devoted to topics, and one of them was on our free will and God’s sovereignty, and all those years ago I learned something from reading it that I was satisfied with ever since, and that helped make this issue make sense to me and so I parrot it whenever this topic comes up:
God is sovereign. Correct.
We have free will, and choose to do things. Correct.
Nobody on either side of the debate can rule out those two facts of life.
However, God’s ways are not our ways. God cannot be understood with our human intellect alone, but for the most part, that’s how we try figuring Him out on these issues–whether we admit it or not. But what happens, is that He is so sovereign, and so in control of everything–in ways that we can’t grasp–that He can give us free will and choices and STILL be in control and sovereign over what we’ve wound up choosing to do! Romans 8 says that God makes everything work together for the good of those who love Him. Do you really think that means “before the foundation of the world” or in conjunction with the decisions we’ll make?
Seems simple enough of an explanation to me, and I’ve given it less thought than many others have who argue and read books and ponder this stuff for years and years of their Christian life, and have nothing to show for it except having a lot of knowledge. I know saying that will empower those of you overemphasizing how God is still in control, but I choose to believe that (that was a joke).
Go DO something with the knowledge you have. If you believe God ordains peoples’ salvation before you’ve ever talked to them, that doesn’t give you any right to not share the Gospel and just “let it all work out in God’s time”. If you believe it’s all up to people to decide, then go share the Gospel with everything that will listen to you so they at least have the chance to hear the Gospel. Just do something practical instead of thinking when you stand before the throne of God He’s going to compliment you on having correct theology and say “Well believed my good and faithful servant”
That’s my two cents worth.
