Wednesday November 21, 2007
Pushing or pulling?
I started this column a year ago, after Heidi Schlosser was diagnosed with terminal cancer. I couldn\’t continue. I couldn\’t write about a God who would bring a young woman into the world just so that she could die of cancer in her twenties.
I find it equally hard to believe in a God who willed the extermination of six million Jews in Germany. Or the destruction of the world\’s oldest civilization in Iraq. Or the drowning of 200,000 people in the Indian Ocean.
But all those reactions depend on a presupposition that God, as Creator, works from the past. It treats God like a supernatural engineer who sets an infinitely complex machine in motion, knowing exactly how every tick will take place through all eternity.
The idea is called predestination. It\’s been around a long time. Protestant reformer John Calvin refined it into a doctrine of the church – especially the Presbyterian Church – in the early 1500s. Predestination, in Calvin\’s terms, meant that God decides in advance which individuals will get to heaven.
Double predestination means that God also decides in advance which ones will go to hell. Even before they\’ve done anything wrong.
So why bother being good, if God determined my destiny before I was created? Why make the effort?
The answer is – are you ready for this? – that God gives you free-will to determine your own fate. But God already knows what you\’ll choose.
Wow… some freedom!
Contested convictions
Don\’t assume this doctrine is universally believed in the Christian church. At least two great thinkers of the past, Pelagius and Abelard, insisted that each of us has individual responsibility. We shape our own fates, by what we think, say, and do.
They argued, in essence, that if God really gave us the freedom to make our own decisions, then God relinquished power to control the future. God has to wait and see what we choose to do, before knowing how the future might unfold.
Unfortunately, Pelagius and Abelard got outvoted by more influential theologians like Augustine and Acquinas.
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If you want to order my books, you can call 1-800-663-2775 in Canada, 1-800-328-0200 in the U.S., or order them on-line at the Wood Lake Books website.
For a lighter look at ethics, faith, and life, I recommend Ralph Milton\’s weekly e-newsletter Rumors. You can subscribe to it at the Wood Lake Books home page in Ralph Milton\’s Site, or by sending a note directly to ralphmilton@woodlake.com.
It\’s also worth pursuing Charlene Fairchild\’s United Online site. Another site worth visiting is David Keating\’s \”SeemslikeGod\” page.
In our scientific age, some factions of the Christian church expanded the idea of predestination into a belief that God must have pre-planned every leaf that falls in autumn, every rock that rolls down a hillside, every atom that vibrates…
And every cancer death…
I refuse to believe in that kind of God. I prefer to think of God calling us from the future, not pushing from the past.
Perhaps God is like a granny reaching with open arms towards a toddler. Or like sports fans, sending waves of energy to help a pole vaulter over the bar. Like me, whistling for my dog…
Granny doesn\’t cause the child to stumble. It\’s not the fans\’ fault if the vaulter misses. And I can\’t save my dog from burrs and brambles.
We lament when things go wrong; we rejoice when the one we encourage fulfills our hopes.
That kind of God, I can still believe in.
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Copyright © 2007 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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