Chapter 2:

My Many Struggles

 

 

 

On the 20^th of January 1999, I knelt by my bed and truly received Christ into my life.  Many believed I was saved already, but I had a said faith rather than a real faith.  During the subsequent months I would be given an insatiable appetite for God’s Word and also books about God’s Word.  In particular, during my first month in the Faith, a friend pointed me to a radio program called “Renewing Your Mind” which was hosted by Dr. R.C. Sproul.  This was probably one of the most important influences on my own personal growth with God and my understanding of His character and nature.

I knew that I had been called into the ministry and would say I was very Arminian in my theology.  I had chosen to follow in the footsteps of Wesley, having been raised in an atmosphere of the recognition of man’s free will and his ability to direct his own destiny.  At the time I had heard a few times of Calvinism but since everyone around me spoke so sourly of that particular theology, I didn’t give it a second look since I absolutely knew that God didn’t choose some for salvation and make the rest go to hell.

Gradually, I grew to understand that our only source of knowledge about God should be the Bible.  Anything that departs from the written Word, I realized, could be in error and therefore, untrustworthy.  Most Christians grasp this truth as well, or at least verbally acknowledge this truth.  However, most Christians allow traces of humanist theology and their own ideas about what God should be like to slip into their perception of God.  I have come to believe that this is the case with Arminianism and Semi-Pelagianism as well, but I will elaborate on that later.

 

Encounter with an Uncomfortable God

If I were to be truly honest with myself, my first struggle with the doctrines of grace came about through the theological wrestling of my best friend, Matt.  Matt had become a Christian a couple of years beforehand and we were both accountable to each other with regard to our thought life and our devotional steadfastness.

For nearly a year, he spoke to me of his struggles with the doctrines of predestination and whether Christians are elected by God or whether they elect themselves.  As a fresh Christian (less than six months), I cared very little for what this doctrine meant and I could not possibly fathom that it would have any bearing on the way we see God.  I did not think this doctrine was important, and therefore, I encouraged Matt in his struggles with this idea, listened to his thoughts on the issue, but cared very little one way or the other.  I was still very much wrapped up in apologetics and evidences for Christianity and was not ready to move onto a subject so deep as predestination and the sovereignty of God.  I didn’t really understand yet what “predestination” or “sovereignty” even meant.

Eventually, Matt announced to me that he had come to a decision on predestination.  He had become a Calvinist and was wholly excited about it.  He didn’t claim to be able to shoot down my questions or anything, but he did share some of his thoughts with me in a humble manner which I to this day highly respect and appreciate.  In the meantime, I continued to hold the view that is most common in the church today, that is, the Arminian idea of God electing everyone.  However, I never had a scriptural basis for believing it.  Mostly, it was just my own idea and it seemed logical that men decided for Christ from their own liberty.

Matt’s life started returning to a normal, albeit Calvinistic, life.  His walk with Christ in my eyes was one that I desired to emulate.  I don’t know if I’m there yet, but I know God has carried me a long ways from where I used to be.

One day as I and my friends Josh and Ryan were riding around, we were reading from the scriptures in Romans, chapter 9.  Paul’s writings in that section of scripture seemed so clear that it seemed there was no refusing the idea of predestination and even double predestination.  This section of scripture was to set in motion a series of studies on predestination that did not end for over a year.  (In fact, they have never really ended.)  I reacted to this verse almost violently.  My friend went into a time of depression, truly disturbed at the idea that God did not place man’s life in his own hands.  I rejected the idea of predestination immediately as blasphemy.  I felt it was blaming God for man’s unbelief.  I felt like I would have to change my entire view of God and alter the way I worshipped Him.  I felt I would be doing so out of compulsion rather than genuine love for God.  How could I worship a Giant puppeteer who directed every step of my life, deciding whether I perish in Hell of go on to Heaven against my will?  Didn’t the scriptures say that God tries to save as many people as He possibly can?

I thought that the God Matt had been thinking about would fit into my Nazarene/Wesleyan/Holiness perception of God.  I wanted Him to fit into my mold I had made for Him, and I certainly didn’t think the scriptures would have such clear words to say with regard to election (I certainly believed that the Bible was the inerrant word of God and knew that these passages weren’t just a mistake falling from the tip of Paul’s ink quill).  I thought God would be comfortable for me, just the way I saw Him.  He was escaping from my grasp and I was no longer able to comprehend His greatness (or fierceness, or tyranny as I was beginning to think).  He was flying farther and farther from my grasp!  Before, I could practically hold Him in my hand and say, “Look.  This is God.  I found Him and I accepted Him and if it weren’t for my great wisdom and smartness, He wouldn’t even be here with me right now.”  I thought God would let me stay that way, but alas.  God had thrown away my old ideas of Him just with one section of scripture.  This propelled me on to study the many other verses which I had previously let my eyes skip over uncomfortably when I came to them.  My little God was becoming great big and I could no longer grasp Him.  It was no longer me holding on to Him, but I was being carried away by Him, into an exploration of His greatness, a journey that I have yet to complete and very likely will continue on once I reach Heaven.  I have come to see that God is so great and so huge that when I am in Heaven, I will still spend eternity comprehending and meditating on the electing love and vast sovereignty of God, by which He upholds all things.

I went on, exploring the writings of Wesley, hoping his writings would show me the foolishness and unscripturality of Calvin’s doctrines of election.  This did not happen.  At first, I felt his arguments against Calvinism, particularly in his sermon “On Predestination,” were the same as mine.  We were very like-minded in our objections to the fairness of such doctrines.  Wesley cried, “This is not the God I know!  It wouldn’t be fair if it were this way!” and I agreed wholeheartedly.  But later, I began raising questions of my own with regard to Wesley’s ideas on subjects such as Christian Perfection and God’s sovereignty.  He seemed to like to speak of God’s sovereignty with regard to such small things as where in the blackness of space God chose to place the universe, but he almost seemed to elevate man as untouchable by God.  Eventually, I decided that many of Wesley’s teachings, particularly his teaching regarding sinless perfection were unscriptural and illogical.  Not only did Wesley never claim this perfection for himself, but neither did Paul who said in Romans 7:24, “Oh what a miserable man I am!  Who will rescue me from this body of death?”  He also says, “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.  For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out!” (Rom. 7:18).  In 1 John 1:8, the Apostle says, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”

This writing is not about Wesley, though, or my rejection of his unscriptural teachings on man’s potential through the Spirit towards sinlessness (call it “perfected love” or whatever you like).  I merely mention this as a development in my understanding of God and His Holy character.

I became very distrustful of preachers and theologians as a whole, and thus began to study the scriptures on my own.  Eventually I decided to listen to preachers and test them against what I had come to read about God in the Bible.  Many of the preachers I heard argued for an Arminian type of human choice, but one radio personality whom I became totally enraptured by was Dr. R.C. Sproul.  I had begun to listen to him even before considering Calvinism and had come to trust him very dearly as not only a very good Bible teacher, but as a trusted source of wisdom and Godly insight.  I noticed he emphasized God’s sovereignty to a very high degree but didn’t really understand Calvinism enough yet to realize that he was all this time speaking about what I had been warned against by my pastor friends, the dreaded doctrines of God’s sovereignty in human salvation!  Because of the teachings of Sproul (which I felt totally fit with the powerful God I read in scripture), it is no surprise to some (and a great shock to others) that I eventually came to a solid understanding of not only Calvinist theology but also the truth behind a statement that C.H. Spurgeon once made.  “Calvinism is nothing more than biblical theology!”

 

On a Personal Note

I have spent much time studying many theological subjects and writing on them in my own private time.  This writing, however, is by far the most difficult, emotional, and personal.  It is difficult because there is no higher subject than the Lord Almighty and His unsearchable will.  No subject is as heavy as God’s will occurring alongside of man’s will.

It is an emotional issue because the human heart in its sinfulness longs to break free not only from God Himself, but also the very idea that we are not the makers of our own salvation.  We have been heavily influenced by humanist ideology that says, Homo mensura or “Man is the measure.”  I believe I resisted the doctrines of grace for a long time out of a sinful desire to not render unto God the glory He truly deserved in my own conversion.

It is a deeply personal issue for me.  Most of my family and friends are Wesleyan Arminian in their theology.  I have faced much pressure from them to not delve too deeply into the matters of election.  I have been warned that Calvinism is a bad theology because it takes away human choice (a gross misrepresentation and caricature of Reformed thought).  Several of my friends and even my own father in law are or at one time were ministers in a Wesleyan congregation.  I currently attend a Wesleyan college full of Arminian students who (quite frankly) don’t care about election or many other heavy matters of God.  There is much pressure on me to simply accept an Arminian perspective of God and think nothing more of it.  One person I had a conversation with said I should just believe the Bible and forget about details like predestination.  Which was pretty much his way of saying “Just be an Arminian.”  Many popular evangelical ministers who I listen to quite often preach against this form of predestination.  Jimmy Swaagart violently denounced predestination as a demonic teaching.

I can no longer go on ignoring the truths that I have seen so boldly stated in scripture.  For too long I have uncomfortably skipped by such passages as:

 

For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.  In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will.

–Ephesians 1:4-5-

 

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions-it is by grace you have been saved.

–Eph. 2:4-5-

 

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God-not by works, so that no one can boast.  For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Eph. 2:8-10-

 

He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us.  On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us.

–2 Cor. 1:10-

 

There is no one righteous, not even one; There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.  All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.  Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.  The poison of vipers is on their lips.  Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.  Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know.  There is no fear of God before their eyes.

–Romans 3:10-18-

 

For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among man brothers.  And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

-Romans 8:29-30-

 

What shall we say?  Is God unjust?  Not at all!  For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”  It does not therefore, depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.

-Romans 9:14-16

 

Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?  What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath-prepared for destruction?  What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory-even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles?

-Romans 9:21-24-

 

These are not the only Biblical passages, which I have had to ignore for so long.  I have struggled to find out answers from Godly Arminians whom I deeply love and respect, but none have answered my queries to my satisfaction.

To tell you the truth, I would much rather be an Arminian.  This is evidenced by my resistance to Calvinism for so long and my efforts to find reasonable answers to my questions.  There is something in the human spirit which longs for freedom and autonomy and Arminianism totally fits in my comfort zone, a place where I feel at ease.  It is as though my nature were geared more towards the Arminian perspective.  But we know that we are sinners conceived in sin and there is no one good, not one.  The human spirit fights God’s sovereignty because it longs to be free but it is our duty as Christians to resist our natures and see ourselves as the scriptures teach: totally depraved and lost without God.

 My purpose in writing this is to communicate to friends, family members, and anyone else who cares, who view my conversion to Calvinism as a mere triviality, as just another period of theological wandering.  Many of them may be angered or confused by my decision.  Many will wonder why this issue is even important in the first place.  I hope to answer all queries and confusion that may ensue.

I have two hopes in this book.  My first genuine hope is that through reading these writings, it will be made abundantly clear that I consider these doctrines to be the absolute truth, fully in accord with scripture and sound logic.  As one who is called into the ministry, I am required to preach what I believe, and so is anyone else who is called to minister to the body of Christ.

My second hope is that God in all of his grace, mercy, power, and love will be glorified.  It would be an awesome thing to have my readers say, “Wow.  I never knew that one could conceive of so great and loving a God, that He would elect and actually save lost and rebellious sinners.  What an awesome God!”  God’s glory should always be our motivation.  I admit that I also have my human reasons for writing this, but I pray that God is nonetheless glorified even through my own infirmities, shortcomings, and motivations.

The one person whom I was really writing this book for was my father who died from leukemia several weeks after I began writing this book.  He loved God’s Word very much and because of His passion for God, we fought constantly over this issue.  He very much defended the freedom of man’s will against the views I was growing to know and love.  I finally resolved to spell out in clear letters 1) What I was coming to understand about God’s sovereignty, and 2) That such views of God’s sovereignty did no violence to the scriptures, but instead was urged along by them.  Although he has gone on most certainly to be with his Lord, it is my greatest hope that he will be honored by a constant reliance on my part to the Word of our Lord.  Dad, truly, this was intended for you to read and I hope you will be proud of it, even if you aren’t convinced by it.  I can’t wait till I see you again so that we can speak with the Lord face to face about even this very issue.  We will, after all, have eternity to do so.

 

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