Mere Christianity

I’m going to start this by sharing that one of my own shortcomings is that I can’t wrap my head around the concept of Predestination versus Free-Will.  If you’ve never worried about that before, perhaps this won’t make much sense. But give it a try… I don’t want to share my shortcomings and problems with you.

“So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” They answered him, “We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?” Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you. I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.’” - John 8:31-38 ESV

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” - Ephesians 1:3-10

If you’ve continued reading, I assume you either are still wrestling with the seemingly paradox of Predestination versus Free-Will or you’ve overcome it.  I’m almost to the latter situation.

Let me explain.  The first couple of decades that the seeming paradox entered my thinking, it caused me a significant stumbling block.  How could God be sovereign and all-knowing of who is going to do what and when if individual people had free will to choose? Why does God tell us to pray for people when he already knows what is going to happen to them?  The list goes on and on.

One of the first times, I wrestled with this seemingly paradox, a good friend snapped me out of it by asking me if it mattered to what I believed.  In other words, did I believe God is God and Jesus came to save me no matter whether I had free will or not?  I had to admit that I believed with all my being that Jesus came to die to save me and that wasn’t going to change…the first hurdle.

One of the more recent times I wrestled with this involved the reason for praying.  I questioned the purpose of praying if the outcome was already known (I still wrestle with this one a little).  I remember driving to KC and talking to a man who has the same name as a star fish on Sponge Bob SquarePants, and I got the reply “because God told you to” (pray for others).  I couldn’t argue with that response either.

Recently, I’ve been thinking that God must be outside of the conditions of time somehow.  I didn’t really know how to formulate this until I read this in my daily devotion:

“…But suppose God is outside and above the Timeline.  In that case, what we call ‘tomorrow’ is visible to Him in just the same way as what we call ‘today’.  All the days are ‘now’ for Him…”

This is an excerpt from “A Year with C.S. Lewis” for January 17th and today’s selection was taken from his book “Mere Christianity.”  I read this book, and have fond memories of it, almost 30 years ago but I don’t remember this section of the book.

There are two obvious conclusions that I’ve come to.  The first is that I’m not able to fully understand everything about God and his creation.  That’s okay because I have faith in Him.  The second is that the Holy Spirit helps you to understand things when God has made you ready to understand them.  30 years ago, I likely wasn’t ready to think through this conflict and God sent me a friend to understand that it didn’t matter to my faith in Him.  Hopefully, today, my faith walk has matured enough that God is letting me understand things that I need to serve him.

I guess I need to dig up my old copy of Mere Christianity soon.