I’ve converted to Arminianism. In many ways it was destined to happen.
I just can’t stomach how so many Christians just accept life on default. We just go with the flow. Like a canoeist that is jostled to and fro on the rapids, bemoaning every bump, turn and dunking that the River throws at them. But sure that the River knows best and will take us where we need to go. Confidant that every trial, tribulation and consequence will make us better people and prove our faithfulness to the River.
Never mind that the River is leading to a huge waterfall. To death and destruction. Though visually stunning to others watching and bringing much glory to the power of the falls, need we take this plunge?
Of course by “River” I mean life and not God. Although many people lump these together. Whatever life throws at them must be from God because God is omnipotent and could do whatever He wants so this __________ (enter bad thing here) must be from Him.
This guilt by lazy association does unfathomable damage. We accept anything and everything as being from God. I just don’t think that is correct. While the Old Testament does ascribe many plagues, droughts and disasters to God’s providence the New Testament has a decidedly more proactive stance. Jesus went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed of the devil. This statement, mentioned numerous times in the gospels, should destroy the idea that everything comes from God. Illness, disease, physical handicap, demonic possession and oppression and even untimely death were not from God but from the devil. So Jesus was an Arminian too.
Paul admittedly was a closet Calvinist but I’m choosing not to talk about him in this article.
The more I read about the life of Jesus Christ, the early church, church history and the history of missionaries, the more I’m convinced that God has empowered (with His Spirit) and commissioned us (with His authority) to do His will.
And like any good leader, God isn’t going to step in immediately and do the job that He’s given us to do. So when we get dunked, twisted and slapped silly that isn’t God’s fault, it’s the fault of Christians who haven’t taken their authority and power to fix the problem. Maybe even our own fault. Maybe our sins have consequences. This connection is easy to see when it comes to the mistakes, choices and directions of others, but we don’t or won’t make the connection to our own life. It is far more palatable to ascribe the crap in life to a holy God. More on this later…
Now the relevance for my life today (also my 35th b-day) is that I don’t feel like I’m supposed to be continuing in my current job for much longer. While I love my current job (teaching) and am content to teach for another year I just don’t feel like I’m supposed to be.
Now God could just move me into the job He wants me in. And most Christians I know would just wait until He does. Or pray for months… This is another conundrum that I’ve banging my head against, the balance between prayer and action. I’m wired for action. I don’t like prayer, but I think this has more to do with the belief that prayer is pointless. Which it is if God is going to do what He’s going to do anyway. Prayer only has an outlet if “there is no fate, but the fate we make.”
So what am I supposed to do? Wait for God to act. Or find out what God wants and then make it happen? I could see spending time in prayer for the latter. In a way its like praying for your favorite team to win. Pointless. Or you could you pray that you would perform your best and help your team win. Purposeful. One is a spectator, the other a participant.
It is at this point that life interrupts. I just read all the article that I had written so far to my wife. She and I then get into a major discussion. She holds that life is tough, bad things happen and God is glorified by our response and trust in him. Which I don’t totally disagree with but I feel there is a better way that we’re missing.
We then go into a 15 minute spin cycle about sickness, cancer, death, martyrdom and televangelists. I think there was even a wicked witch thrown in there.
No birthday cake but I did get a nice sucker punch. Which as I lay on my bed bemoaning the cruelty of the river, reminded me of the whole point of this article. So I waited for God to do what He was going to do anyway, but remembering that I’m an Arminian I got up and here I am.
What do I do? Notice I didn’t write “how should I feel about this?” or “how will this bring God glory.”
I think, random thought alert, that when it comes to spiritual truths we deal with them in a completely different mind set then physical truths. I don’t think this is good.
When it comes to physical truths about illness, disease, death, cancer and even martyrdom we put our shoulder to the grindstone and ask some hard questions about who, what, when, where, why and how. But when it comes to spiritual truths we throw our hands up and say “God knows, we don’t, but we’ll praise Him anyway.”
That doesn’t cut it for me. I want to know why my prayers for Judith Vanderbeek weren’t answered. Why Linda Davison died of cancer. Why my wife has suffered with chronic illnesses of one type or another for 20 years?
I do want God to get glory. But is He so capricious that He wants the glory whilst we suffer, toil and die? I don’t think He is – and if He is then His son Jesus is guilty of major misrepresentation. I think He had and has a better plan that we are just missing somehow.
It is at this point in our “discussion” that things became heated because my wife is very sensitive about divine healing. “Why hasn’t she been healed?” The temptation is to write off divine healing and say that this is just how God wants it. To God be the Glory.
I don’t want to give God that kind of “glory” and I don’t think He wants it either.
Physical truth begins with the assumption that there are causes and effects. Once we find the causes we can avert, protect against or remedy the effects.
This is what the physician Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis and scientist Louis Pasteur strove for: the answer to why infections spread. As they discovered the cause they healed many that were oppressed of the devil. So did the Devil cause germs? Death? Contagions? Epidemics? I suspect that the answer isn’t a simple yes or no. More on this in another article.
I don’t know the answers. But I suspect that there are answers, and I am determined to find them. But we won’t find them until we start asking the questions and seeking to know the truth. Naively passing off the shit in life as gifts from God is a gross miscarriage of justice. Doesn’t God deserve more respect than to ascribe to Him the cancer, tumors, MS, CF, endometriosis, infant mortality, murder, etc… These are the works of him who seeks to “kill, steal and destroy.” But Jesus says that He has “come that you might have life and have it more abundantly.”
I don’t know the answers. But I know that the answers will bring God far more glory then passing off the devil’s monstrosities as God’s divine handiwork.
I think the answers may involve a paddle, an outboard motor and maybe even a parachute.
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