Choice

I guess when it comes to issues of predestination vs free-will, I am probably best described as a Neo-Calvinist (thanks to Chris for pointing this out).  This means that I am pretty big on predestination, occasionally bordering on fatalism (which can be deadly--haha, get it?! Fatal, deadly...okay, I thought it was funny).  I believe that everything, every action, reaction, motion, spirit, thought, emotion, particle, and variable in the entire universe is accounted for in God's plan for the universe.  Though we have free-will and may exercise it against God, He ultimately has foreseen and accounted for this as well--and would not have allowed us to do it unless somehow God could further his plan through it.

Lately, though I've been wondering if my understanding of this is too limiting.  Essentially, my previous understanding comes down to this: God has a plan for everything, we get to choose what we do, but ultimately He knows how to pull the strings on our character in such a way that He can get us to do whatever He wants.  Sounds like Puppet Planet.  I still think it's true, that God knows us so intimately that He can essentially control our decisions and reduce our free-will to a figure of speech.  However, I no longer believe that He actually exercises that power (God has a lot of powers that, for some gracious reason all His own, He chooses not to exercise--Matthew 26:33).  I admit I am at a loss for how to understand it all.  I am convinced of this much, though: that love requires free-will.  I cannot prove it, but I suspect that the reason God made a forbidden fruit in the midst of the creation He deemed "very good" is so that man would have a truly free choice.  He knew that man's love and trust would only be meaningful if man was equally capable of doubting and rejecting Him. That's a new thought for me: that God created and delighted over a world balanced, as it were, on the edge of a knife--a world where Heavenly paradise and Hellish torment were both equally possible, a world where, at any moment, man was capable of making the one choice that would usher in all the hurt, death, sin, and ruin that we have experienced since the Fall.

That is profound, but what I need to understand is more than that.  I need to realize that this is still the way God likes it.  God did not create me as puppet, and He did not redeem me to be one either.  He doesn't love puppets 'cause they can't love Him.  Where this becomes difficult to accept is in the area of personal holiness. There are several persistent sins, one in particular, that I am always frustrated with.  I realize that what's at fault is my own sinful choices, made by my free-will, so I have more than once wished that God would just strip me of my free-will in these areas.  Then, I would never sin like that again, I'd tell myself.  And, gee, won't it be great when I get to Heaven and won't be capable of sinning at all!  You may laugh.  In fact, you probably should: it is a healthy response to foolishness.  Needless to say, God never took my free-will and never will!  I realized that He wouldn't, so I made my aim the next best thing: the elusive one-time instant fix.  My prayer, it seems, was Lord, if it has to be my choice not to sin, then at least make it an once-for-all kind of choice.  Otherwise, it's only a matter of time before I screw up.  It's like J.R.R. Tolkien's one ring: if Isildur had just thrown the evil ring into the lava 500 years ago, Frodo wouldn't have to deal with it whispering the Black Speech of Mordor in his pocket.  I wanted to find a way to throw my own capacity for evil into some Mount Doom so I wouldn't have to worry about it whispering in my pocket all the time.  I tried several ways, and was considering yet more but was continually frustrated that they didn't work.  No matter how I tried to "cure" myself or be "cured," I never developed immunity to the disease.  This has been one of the major themes of my spiritual life thus far, I am ashamed to admit.

This week's study pointed out the folly of the one-time-fix for personal holiness.  In it, Jay Adams says, "You may have sought and tried to obtain instant godliness.  There is no such thing...We want somebody to give us three easy steps to godliness, and we'll take them next Friday and be godly.  The trouble is, godliness doesn't come that way."  The trouble is, love is a choice.  It's not just a once-for-all kind of choice, but a consistent choice which must be repeated minute by minute: a discipline.  If it were anything else, it would be meaningless.

This isn't what I wanted to learn from God this week (I wanted to learn an instant cure), but it is what I needed to learn.  I still believe in predestination and fate (as a self-proclaimed "romantic," I don't think it can be love if there's not some element of fate, haha!), but I now begin to understand that love is also a decision.  More, it is a discipline.  Discipline is hard.  In practicing discipline, I will fail more times than I'd like to think about.  In failing, I will commit more evil and hurt God and people more than I could bear if I could see it now. But this is necessary, for if I were not capable of failing, I would not be capable of truly succeeding.  If I were not capable of doing evil and causing pain, I would not be capable of doing righteously and bringing joy.  It is not a safe adventure He invites me into, but it is all the more worthwhile for its dangers.