When Theology is Like a Drug

Last night, I lay awake thinking about Calvinism, Arminianism, and open theism until my brain hurt. I repented of that sin in the morning.

Sorry about the geeky joke, but I'm only half facetious. This past week I've often felt like Jesus has knocked on the door of my heart and I've replied: "Don't bother me! I'm thinking about theology." And I'm not thinking about it in a particularly constructive way--I'm trying to figure out how God does his job. How does he save us? Does he cause the suffering in this world? If he allows something evil to happen, is that really different from causing it to happen? And if not, is that where the open theists come in with their ideas that God doesn't know the future? Are there better explanations that are more scripturally accurate as well as viscerally satisfying?

STOP!!!!!

(Deep breath)

It reminds me of C.S. Lewis's insightful words: "Thoughts are but coins. Let me not trust instead of Thee, their thin-worn image of Thy head. From all my thoughts, even from thoughts of Thee, O Thou fair Silence, fall, and set me free." He is saying that theology--the study of God--is very different from God himself. I am to trust Christ, rather than my own theological views. Through faith, I can humbly receive him and let him fill my heart and mind. Amazingly, the Almighty wants fellowship with me, even if I don't understand everything.

I'm not saying that the study of theology is useless to our walk of faith. God calls us to love him with our minds as well as our hearts. And that means studying his word diligently. But when I get caught up in the abstract, I often lose sight of the essential. If the Arminians and Calvinists still don't see eye to eye after all these centuries, does God really require me to come up with an airtight explanation?

"The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love." (Galations 5:6) I hope I remember that while disagreeing with someone.

Markings, by Dag Hammerskjöld

"Never, 'for the sake of peace and quiet,' deny your own experience or convictions."

"It is easy to be nice, even to an enemy--from lack of character."

"To be, in faith, both humble and proud: that is, to live, to know that in God I am nothing, but that God is in me."

"Dare he, for whom circumstances make it possible to realize his true destiny, refuse it simply because he is not prepared to give up everything else?"

The Divine Challenge

My last post didn't really communicate what I wanted to say--the words just kind of took on a life of their own and I couldn't rein them in. I asked Rick about it and he said I combined too many ideas. He's right. (But at least the stock photo was adorable, don't you think?)

So I will take one small part of that last post and elaborate on it: our free will, and how God uses it to further his will. Free will truly is the great divine challenge. Without it, there would be no evil. But God saw fit to bestow on his creatures the dignity of choosing whether or not to serve him. He is not a laissez faire Father, however; he works in our souls and circumstances to unify our wills with his.

In my own life God has chiseled away at my stubborn pride without once violating my freedom to choose (but he still has a long way to go). If God was willing to undermine my freedom, he could have done so easily a long time ago and forgone this painstaking process. But he wants us to serve freely, by the power of his Spirit within us.

I see the interplay of my will and God's when he orchestrates divine appointments between me and another person. I usually sense that God is at work, even though I don't always understand the dynamic until afterwards. His Spirit takes the lead, and he works through me, but not in an absolute way. He leaves me the power to completely blow it, which does happen, especially if fear or pride overtakes me. And sometimes everything goes well until God says, "Okay, that's great--you can stop talking now." But I'm not ready to turn off the flow of words quite yet and clunk!--I say something that hits the wrong note. So I learn to listen to his Spirit more closely next time. 

But there is no question that my free will is very real and that God respects it. It is a costly gift. In fact, he died for it. He could have stopped Adam and Eve from eating that fruit. But instead, he went to Calvary to pay the cost of that mistake and redeem for himself a people who will serve him in freedom.

Wrestling with God

Jacob the patriarch didn't always seem like such a nice guy. He tricked his blind, possibly senile father who couldn't tell the difference between his son's hairy arm and one covered with the fur of an animal. I think I like Esau better. Just look how graciously he received his manipulative brother after all those years: "But Esau ran to meet Jacob and embraced him; he threw his arms around his neck and kissed him." (Genesis 32:4) And yet God said, "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated." (Romans 9:13) Why?

Romans 9 tells us that it was because Jacob was one of the elect and Esau was not. Quite simply, Jacob was chosen before he was even born. So the Calvinists are right. But in Genesis 32, we see Jacob using his free will to wrestle with God all night even when God told him to stop, and God blessed his persistence. So the Arminians are right. On the other hand, God established his sovereignty by touching the tendon of Jacob's thigh and giving him a limp. So the Calvinists are right. But God declared Jacob victorious by saying that he had struggled with God and man, and had overcome. So the Arminians are right.

Or maybe the truth is a divine paradox that cannot be separated into two mutually exclusive doctrines. And if we take a dogmatic position on the issue, we miss out on the power of these apparently contradictory doctrines to balance each other out to move us forward on the journey of faith. Our job is not to sort it all out perfectly, but to respond to the Spirit's prompting in light of what God's living word teaches.

Quite apart from Jacob's election, there was something that distinguished him from his brother Esau: he was persistent. Jacob was a do-or-die kind of a man, whereas Esau's attitude was: "So what if I lose my birthright--I'm hungry!" Is that just a personality difference? No. Esau focused on the things of this world, while Jacob sought God's blessing persistently--he wrestled with God and overcame. Revelation 21:7 tells us that he who overcomes will inherit all these things. Revelation 3:5 says, "He who overcomes will thus be clothed in white garments; and I will not erase his name from the book of life." Revelation 3:12 says, "He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God." Finally, Revelation 3:21: "He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne."

What does it mean to overcome? 1 John 5:4 says, "Whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world--our faith." So we overcome through a living faith that advances God's kingdom in this world. That doesn't mean that this world is our ultimate destiny--God will make everything new--but God's power within us through faith brings more souls to him and fulfills his will in this world.

You might ask what that has to do with wrestling with God. If we want God's will, what's the point of wrestling with him in prayer? Wouldn't it happen anyway? Before sharing what I've learned in my own life I should confess that I relate more to Esau than to Jacob (I'm not much into stew, but if I was tempted with a bottle of coffee Frappucino I would have a major soul-searching struggle). Complacency and worldly-mindedness is a daily battle for me.

But God has brought major crises into my life that have forced me to come to him in prayer, most notably my daughter Ingrid's epilepsy and developmental delay that was diagnosed when she was five months old. As I've mentioned in previous posts, I prayed almost continuously for her during the three months she was in various hospitals with constant, uncontrollable seizures. I fully believe that my persistent prayers were God's will, but he didn't heal Ingrid. Instead, after I'd worked myself into a prayer-frenzy he taught me the true meaning of surrender. It has nothing to do with admitting defeat and everything to do with receiving him in all his fullness. It's about putting him first even if I don't get what I want.

This is important because Hebrews 12:1 defines faith as "the substance of things hoped for." Through faith, we have Christ and everything he accomplished on the cross. So God wasn't saying to me, "I'm not going to heal your daughter." He was saying, "You're going about it the wrong way, but now that I have your attention I will teach you something."

Over the years, God has been teaching me persistent surrender--wrestling to lay hold of God's will through faith, or by his power. The persistence keeps me praying, but the surrender puts God in the driver's seat of my life. This is a lesson I've had to learn again and again, because my natural inclination is either to be in control or complacent. Surrender and complacency are two very different things, because through surrender we open ourselves up to God, but complacency shuts him out.

And I don't believe that God's will necessarily happens by default. Jesus tells us to pray, "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." Why bother praying for God's will if it happens regardless? We know that God's will is done in heaven, and it will be done on the New Earth. But is it always done in this fallen world? Not according to the Lord's Prayer. It is through persistent faith that we lay hold of God's perfect will--the advancement of the kingdom of God on earth. God was pleased with Jacob's persistence. "From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it." (Matthew 11:12)

The more I persistently surrender, the more power God has in my life, and the more I can "work out [my] salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in [me], both to will and to work for His good pleasure." (Philippians 2:12) So the Arminians are right after all. Or is it the Calvinists?

The Secret of Life

What comes to mind when you look at this picture? Oh . . . it makes you want a glass of wine? Well, other than that. Are you impressed with the branch for bearing such wonderful grapes? Of course not. If anything, you're thinking that the vine must be healthy. The branch does nothing except stay connected to the vine, and the grapes come naturally. The secret of all fruit-production is very simple: the branch must stay connected to the tree, and if a fruit-bearing tree is healthy, there will be fruit. As long as there is life and health, there's also fruit. But if the branch decides to rebel and go off on its own, it will dry up and stop bearing fruit.

This is how Jesus illustrates the life of vibrant, fruit-bearing faith in John 15. "Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me." (John 15:4) What is fruit? "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control." (Galations 5:22) Those qualities don't come to us because we try really hard to produce them; they grow into our character when we abide in Christ.

This is a very simple principle that none of us need a doctor of divinity to understand: Just as the life of the vine flows through to the branches, so the abundant life of Christ flows through to us when we abide in him. This is the apex, the simple Truth that silences bickering theologians, the wisdom that God has hidden from the wise and intelligent and revealed to infants.

What does it look like to abide in Christ? If you read no other Christian book this year (or this decade for that matter), I would recommend The Practice of the Presence of God, by Brother Lawrence, an uneducated French lay brother who lived in the 1600s. The book, quite simply, demonstrates what it means to walk with God in faith and obedience. Brother Lawrence tried always to abide in God's presence like a branch on the vine.

My version is sixty-two pages with a lot of white space, and in that small volume Brother Lawrence demonstrates true repentance and spiritual rebirth, the relationship between faith and works, justification and sanctification by faith, and eternal security based on faith, not presumption. But he is no theologian, and he doesn't use any of those words. His words are simple and direct, and he allows us a clear view into his soul, including his struggles.

Brother Lawrence never actually sat down and wrote the book. It is a compilation of letters written by him and notes taken by someone else during conversations with him. Important people came from everywhere to meet this humble, uniquely Spirit-filled monk and learn his secret. Over the years, he has been loved by Protestants and Catholics, Arminians and Calvinists alike, because he focused on the Treasure itself, not just words describing it. He dispensed with form and sought the substance. In short, he lived a true John 15 life of faith.

Why did Jesus come? In his own words: "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly." (John 10:10) John 15 demonstrates how we may receive it.

The Power to Receive

Rick usually takes out the garbage. But one Wednesday back in the diaper days he was out of town, so I had to manage the overstuffed, unwieldy dumpster out to the curb, and I was having trouble keeping it steady on its two wheels. I glanced up and saw one of our neighbors coming toward me. How nice! Someone to help, right? Well, all I could think was, Must manage this thing on my own! and the threat of having to admit defeat gave me superhuman strength to keep the dumpster upright and moving. By the time he arrived I was almost at the curb, so I was able to just smile and say, "I've got it, but thank you so much for offering!"

If somebody asked me, "Are you opposed to chivalry, Anette?" I would reply, "No, of course not!" But some deep part of me has a hard time accepting help. It's not a rational thing, so if you tell me I'm wrong to feel that way, I won't argue. Sometimes it's because I don't want to impose. Most of the time it's my pride.

If the things of this world were all that mattered, that wouldn't be such a big deal. Self-sufficiency is a good thing from a sociological perspective. But pride is a spiritual barrier. Why? Because faith is all about receiving, and without faith we have nothing of eternal value.

I mentioned in "The Substance of Things Hoped For" that faith is our measure of an objective reality, namely Christ and his work on the cross. Christ is real whether we believe in him or not, but if we believe, he becomes real to us. And to the extent we have faith, we share in his victory on the cross.

Faith is not a virtue. It's not something we do for God. It is our power to receive what God wants to give us in Christ. So if we're proud and want to do everything ourselves, we have a problem. We can't please God with our own goodness. Without faith it is impossible to please him, but when we come to him in humility, he will give himself and his goodness to us. The more we can empty ourselves of Self, the more of God we can contain.

Sometimes it's good to practice letting others help us, because it creates in us that all-important power to receive. So maybe the next time the grocery store bagger asks me if I would like service out to the car, I should say "yes" for once.

My Cocaine Habit

The other night my eleven-year-old son Stein read several of my blog posts. I was really proud of him for his interest in theology and his thoughtful questions. But afterwards I heard him whispering to Rick: "Did Mom really used to have a cocaine habit?"

I suddenly remembered that in my discussion of sin and suffering in "The Curse," I wrote: "Let's say my cocaine habit caused Ingrid's disabilities." I told Stein that I never used cocaine--that was a hypothetical example. "Well," he said, "you should have said it differently then, because some readers might have stopped reading your blog after that."

So to all you readers who were offended: COME BACK!!! I DIDN'T EVEN USE TYLENOL DURING MY PREGNANCIES!! AND I'VE BEEN OFF METH FOR YEARS! ;) (Hopefully they heard me across the blogosphere.)

Thank goodness for test readers!