A Personal Journey

I'm not afraid to face questions about what I believe, even ones I didn't expect to face in a blog format. You just have to be aware that I make no claim to having all the answers or of having answers with which you will agree. That being said, I feel that Beth's question in the comments of the previous post deserves more than a little comment-sized answer.

The same anger that I sense directed at me in the question is similar to the anger that I directed at God two summers ago. In my grief, I found myself with many "whys". "Why did Dad die so suddenly? Why in this way? Why at this time? Why did we not have more chances to witness to him? Why did we not see our prayers answered? Why? Why..."

People try to be helpful and spiritual when they see that you are going through a trial like this. They remind you that God is in control. At that time in my life, I found it was like rubbing salt in the wound. You see, one thing that I realized rather quickly in this time of questioning was that I truly do believe that God is in control. That fact focused my anger directly on Him. Why could He not have followed my prayed-for plan for Dad's life, the one where he turned to God and changed, the one where he spent the last years of his life being a wonderful husband and father and grandfather, a beautiful testimony of God's grace? Where was the mercy of God?

These questions were the ones that sent me to the Word. I wanted to study the sovereignty of God because I wanted to know exactly what areas of life God takes credit for being in control of. To be very honest, I wanted to know how much I could blame Him.

So what did I find? What does God claim responsibility for or over? The answer was exactly what my first thoughts had been: nearly everything. He takes credit for the physical universe, from creation to holding it together to the weather to the creation of a specific human being in his mother's womb. The Lord God specifically takes responsibility for sending judgment in the forms of famine, war, and plague. He takes credit for changing the hearts of men as it furthers His cause. He literally says more than once that He holds the breath of creatures and men in His hand and gives or takes it at His will. I could go on and on with verse after verse of what I discovered about the control of God, but let me move on to two important things.

I found one thing that He does not take credit for and one thing for which He takes all of the credit. I never found God taking responsibility for sin. Perhaps this is obvious considering the magnificent and complete holiness of God, but it was a truth that resounded in my heart. In the story of God's dealings with man as told in the Bible, man bears full responsibility for the sin that he has chosen: mankind, every man, every woman, me. Tainted and contaminated with our own willfulness, we, and every other human being, lift our fists in God's face and go our own sinful ways. How does Romans 3 say it? "There is none righteous, no, not one. There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one." The Holy Spirit began to remind me of my own sinful heart. He gave me a good look at the filth and rebelliousness within me. As Romans 7 says, even "when I would do good, evil is present with me." Whether or not my dad turned to Christ in his last moments, he lived his life as a selfish rebel sinning against a holy God. The fact that I could not escape was that my heart is exactly the same as his was. Even as someone who has lived with the blessings of salvation for over 20 years, the wickedness of my heart appalls me. It was not enough to say that my life is different than his was because at some point I made a decision to turn to God. When I see the witness of both the Scriptures and of my own heart, I know that there is nothing in me that would choose God. My natural instinct was and is to run away from God and to sin at any cost. So now I was left with yet another "why". "Why me?" Why did I come to know Christ at a young age and my dad only in the last part of his life, if ever? Why did I come to Christ at all?

This is where I found the thing for which God takes all of the credit in the Scriptures: salvation. When my soul and Dad's soul stand side by side, there is no merit on my side at all. Thy are exactly the same in their complete wickedness and bent toward sinning. If there is any difference, it is all of grace: unmerited favor of God poured out upon a needy sinner. I could again call up verse after verse that extols this amazing fact. Salvation is of the Lord! From His death on the cross to the very faith that I have in my heart that enables me to repent from my sin and accept His salvation, it is all a gift of God.

It is very late (or early) as I write this out longhand in my bed. I hope to type this up before work tomorrow morning. Now I am full circle back to Beth's question: "Do I believe God chose Dad to go to hell, if indeed he died unsaved?" No. I believe that the Bible teaches that we all choose our sin and our condemnation to hell is justice from a righteous God. The responsibility for our sin is rightly our own.

And yet, I believe that it is through no merit of my own that I have come to salvation. I do believe that the Bible teaches that I was called and chosen to come to salvation. Without God's drawing me, I would never have come.

Do I completely understand how these truths intertwine or how they work together? No. But simply because I do not fully understand something does not mean that the Bible doesn't teach it that way and I should believe that it is true.

The finite mind longs to make the jump from the fact that if someone is chosen, someone else is perhaps "not-chosen". There is obviously an element of this in the Scriptures. Romans 9 deals with this concept. I don't understand all of that. What I do glean from Romans 9 is that God is the one in charge of this situation and that not understanding truth is better than messing with the truth so that it fits into my ideas of how it should be. I am now fully persuaded in the justice and in the mercy of God. I am able to leave the uncertainty of my dad's eternal condition in His hands for that is where it rests anyway. There is no one like our God. There is nothing to compare to Him. He is worthy of praise and honor. He is worthy of me trusting Him in this matter.