Since I grew up in the Baptist church, we never really discussed how God relates to us or God’s providence in general. Baptists generally just don’t discuss it. I’ve had many discussions with other Christians in the past, but never really took the time to exegetically research my position.

I spent the last 2 months reading 3 books in the following order: Why I am not a Calvinist by Jerry Walls and Joseph Dongell, The God Who Risks: A Theology of Divine Providence by John Sanders, and Why I am not an Arminian by Robert A. Peterson and Michael D. Williams. I prayed often while reading this material and you need your Bible handy to do constant research and verify the passages quoted.
I could write a huge lengthy blog post about all of this as it is very fresh on my mind – but I won’t. I will quickly outline what my findings were as follows:

CALVINISM

PROS:
1. Completely explains God’s foreknowledge and election because he preordained it.

2. Easily explains how God can know the future with certainty (prophecy)

3. Very consistent theology that has few logical holes (philosophically sound). I will admit that when I first undertook this project I expected to be able to attack it from a philosophical standpoint but my respect for the position has changed greatly.

CONS:
1. Predestination to hell seems unavoidable to me. I mean individual predestination to hell before the world was ever created, before Adam ever sinned. I’ve not seen a sound logical argument that explains it otherwise.

2. Must define “free will” in the compatibulist sense (this is a huge difference). HOWEVER - when I read Scripture sometimes I feel like this is exactly what I see in the unsaved.

3. Makes God the author of evil (I read lots of attempts to remove the blame for evil from God but they really seem like very weak arguments to me).

4. Makes passages that say God wants everyone to be saved seem disingenuous at best. How can God want everyone to be saved, yet make 100% certain that some people (by His sovereign choice) will not? Calvin argued that there must be 2 wills in God. I’m not on board.

5. Must label all passages of God changing His mind or experiencing sorrow, etc as God “talking baby talk” to us (or “lisping” to use Calvin’s term). I find this particular point distressing. If God sometimes “baby talks” to us and sometimes does not, how do we determine which is happening?

ARMINIANISM

PROS:
1. “Free will” defined in the libertarian sense (common use of the term)

2. God is not the author of evil

3. God truly would like everyone to choose Him but will not force them to do so.

CONS:
1. More difficult to determine how God can know the future with certainty. Simple foreknowledge has its issues (especially with answered prayer) as does Molinism. I did not realize this problem until I undertook this study.

2. Must explain terms regarding election and predestination as corporate not individual despite some passages seeming to be very individual (Pharoah).

3. Must accept doctrine of prevenient grace that is not necessarily provable by Scripture (but many verses can be used to support the idea of the position).

OPEN THEISM (Dynamic Omniscience)
PROS:
1. Ability to easily explain all the Bible texts of God changing His mind, feeling sorrowful, being disappointed, etc.

2. The only theology that truly explains how God can relate to us personally, can answer prayer, responds to us in real time, etc.

CONS:
1. Must accept the idea that God knows all things past and knows all things present but CANNOT know the future with certainty. This is explained by saying the future is not a “thing” to know – it hasn’t happened yet. If people genuinely have free will then knowing exactly what they will do is not possible – it’s like knowing what a square triangle looks like.

2. Difficult to explain prophecy if there is no future. This is explained by saying God will bring it about, but the method of bringing it about remains open. This does explain why prophecies are sometimes very vague.

So where did I end up? About where I started. No theology explains all the Bible passages perfectly harmoniously. God can create any universe He wants. Jesus was God and Jesus certainly limited his power and knowledge while He was here, so God can limit his sovereignty if He wants. Maybe the Baptists are right on this one…..

I’ve been reading The Method and Message of Jesus’ Teaching by Robert H. Stein this month and I’m about 1/3 of the way through. It is not the easiest book to read and it would be better suited for a classroom, not so much for reading on an airplane or lounging in your living room.

Strangely enough, I listened to Andy Stanley’s podcast on Monday from his sermon he did on 1/31 called “Taking Responsibility for your Life: Embrace your responsibility”. Andy said that Jesus’ parables had one central point in each parable – the details of the parable are NOT important and many of them would never happen or might even not be possible. He then went through the parable of the talents and explained all Jesus was trying to say was that you need to leverage what you are given for God, regardless of the amount you are given. He said the fact that the lazy servant hid his talent (gold was Andy’s translation) in the ground is an example of this; no one would hide $300,000 worth of gold in the ground for safekeeping as there were much safer ways of taking care of that gold that were far easier.

This sermon coincided with exactly what I was reading about in the book. The earliest church fathers such as Origen, Augustine, and Tertullian all treated the parables as allegories. For example in the parable of the good Samaritan, the man is walking from Jerusalem to Jericho. Origen said that the man was Adam and that Jerusalem is paradise and Jericho is this world. Martin Luther said Origen’s interpretation was worth “less than dirt” but he had a similar allegorical translation of the same parable. Reading Andy Stanley’s message into this parable – the fact that he was going to Jerusalem to Jericho is irrelevant and he might as well have been going from Manhattan to Brooklyn.

So who’s right? Why did the earliest church fathers read so much into each parable and why does Andy Stanley (and Robert H. Stein for that matter) believe that there is usually only one main point to each parable and that the details might even be irrelevant?

It seems to me that pastors, bloggers, book writers, whoever – can make Jesus say whatever they want by either allegorizing everything about a parable or ignoring the details of the parable.

As for me, I’ve been trying to just lean on the Holy Spirit as I read the Bible personally. I’ve been begging Him to remove preconceived notions and just speak directly into my life and to clear my head of all the “noise” made by others (no matter how well meaning that particular “noise”). The result has been the blessing of a true peace as I read the Scripture – a peace that lets me know that God is huge and no amount of study will ever let me wrap my head around Him. Makes me wonder if my daughter has the right idea when she points at the sky and says “God is way way WAY up there!” and then runs through the yard without a care in the world….

Ok this is more of a prayer request than a blog post, but I think it will make a good topic as well. A friend of mine who is a total agnostic has confided in me that he has recently been paralyzed by the fear of death. Whenever he passes a cemetery or thinks about his own death, he is gripped by fear and doesn’t know why because it never happened to him before. He knows my beliefs and position regarding God (we’ve had many conversations before).

He and I are going out to eat on Thursday night to hang out but he specifically said he wanted to discuss this with me because he knows I do not share his same fear (at least not in the same way). Does anyone have any specific advice for counsel on this exact situation? Why would you say an agnostic fears death in this way? What Bible verses would you use in this situation (remember I’m not talking to a Christian)?

Matthew 16:19
“I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."

I don’t remember ever hearing this passage preached on in any sermon I ever attended. Was Jesus talking to Peter only? Was Jesus talking to everybody then and now? Some believe it was just the disciples themselves as they utilized this responsibility in Acts 15:

¹⁹"It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. ²⁰Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood. “

Here Peter decides (“It is my judgment”) that gentiles do not have to keep the law. He takes some of the behavior that would have been most egregious to Jews in that time and forbids it, but otherwise frees them from keeping the hundreds of other laws.

Then check out verses 28-29. Here’s how he makes his announcement to the Gentiles:

²⁸It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: ²⁹You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things. Farewell.

Seriously? “It seemed good”? What – he doesn’t know for sure?

I’ve thought, prayed and read about this for months now. We have to bind and loose as Christians – we don’t have a choice. The reason we don’t greet one another with a holy kiss is because we have loosed ourselves from that command. The reason Baptists generally don’t drink is because they have bound themselves to that. Even something as basic as “love your neighbor” requires lots of interpretation for our time in history (who is my neighbor? What does loving them look like? etc, etc). Most Christians accept the binding and loosing of their denomination or of their local preacher and like it or not - they are unconsciously agreeing to the yoke of whoever (a person or group of people – not God!) bound or loosed them. Once I truly grasped this concept, it scared me somewhat.

Now that I’m aware, who am I going to trust with my binding and loosing? Lots of prayer revealed something to me……I can’t trust me. I would eventually bind up what I don’t like and loose what I do like. So I think it’s crucial to discuss issues with Christian friends that know me well and give honest judgments about my life and whether I’m binding or loosing correctly. Confessing your sins one to another makes a HUGE difference here! The next level would be my local church and what they bind and loose, and then broader than that would be denominations or authors of books, etc.

Don’t really feel comfortable with this? Good – that makes 2 of us.

Ok…I admit, I don’t really feel like working the rest of this afternoon and I don’t feel like coming up with an interesting discussion topic right now……so…….
Does anyone have any idea what the heck this guy is doing at this ATM?

Luke 17:20-21
Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, "The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God is within you."

So I read a book a few months ago called This Beautiful Mess by Rick McKinley. He described that Jesus is the KING of the kingdom (see above verse for clue as to where the kingdom might be). The problem is – we don’t want a freakin’ king. Seriously. What part of loving your enemies, feeding the poor or helping an orphan is confusing? So we create rules and standards to keep us from having to do them, usually in the name of not being unequally yoked, or in keeping yourself separate from the world. I know I’m guilty of it (and convicted). I do it in the name of “safety”. What a cop out. It’s because I don’t truly trust him with this verse:

Matt 6:33
But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

We think we need a little more defense of our doctrine and a little more time to clean up our messes. Then we’re confused as to why things don’t get better.

Matt 13:44-46
"The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.
"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.

The kingdom is already here – it’s not “somewhere beyond the blue”. It is marching forward with or without our consent, it exists in the dirt of our everyday lives and it’s worth selling everything you have to find.

Rick tells the story in his book of how he started on this journey. He said he and just a few people met in a borrowed basement and prayed honest prayers like this:

“God, I’m not sure I love you”
“God, I don’t love my neighbor. I don’t even like him”
“God, I don’t know if I really care about orphans or others that are suffering”

They weren’t trying to fake anything, just asking God if He would change their hearts because they didn’t give a crap about kingdom stuff. They wanted to care – but were honest enough to admit that they did not.

These are the Christians I never meet. Real people not pretending they’re something they’re not. If you know who they are, please give them my contact information.

By the way…the prayers worked.

I finished reading The Marketing of Evil by David Kupelian this last week and it brought to light how we in this country have been duped into accepting evil as normal. He made some great points about how society has demonized heterosexual marriage and the roles of each partner in a marriage, and how alternative lifestyles (such as homosexuality) are marketed as cool and hip. It gets much worse than this though and his description of what actually happens during an abortion just about made me sick. It was very difficult to even finish that section; he compared it to Nazi Germany and he’s probably right, we just don’t realize it yet (just as the German public didn’t realize what exactly was happening). I didn’t agree with all parts of the book though as he started complaining that the world’s music was being brought into the church and that our youth leaders should stop dressing like the youth of today, etc. This attitude is typical of your standard “Bob Jones” professor who doesn’t want the world to change and likes his organ music and favorite pew.

All of this got me wondering though….

1. Why should nonbelievers follow the moral rules that the Bible espouses? If you don’t believe in Jesus, why shouldn’t you try to get every ounce of pleasure you can out of this life? Why not embrace whatever you feel is right for yourself right now?
2. Is it our job to pass legislation to prohibit sins from being committed by unbelievers? Even if we have the voting power to pass laws in our favor, should we do so?
3. Do we have more sin in our culture than in other parts of the world currently? What about in Jesus’ time?
4. Are Christians called to fight culture?

What exactly is our role in society? We are called to be salt – not the main course. Is it because of fear that God will judge us like Sodom and Gomorrah if we don’t change society’s behavior? Maybe it’s because we don’t want to address our own sins like pride, hatred, selfishness, anger, dissention, envying, and strife and we’d rather take the speck out of someone else’s eye.