Thank you Bob. I agree, having to take the present and unwrap it seems like us doing too much.
This is one of the things I’m convinced we can’t fully know until we live with God. However, the way I try to handle it is by:
affirming that God sustains all (& never gives up on anyone) regardless of their opinion of Him
genuine love only comes out of free choices
any movement towards God has to be by His invitation and only with the help of the Holy Spirit (of course being an EU, I think he invites and helps everyone, although His timing is a mystery)
So God doesn’t force us to love, as that wouldn’t be real love, likewise we can’t take credit, as it’s only by invitation and with help we can do anything.
Hmmm… I don’t know if this really progresses the conversation anywhere
Is this really the case that to have genuine love it must come out of a free choice? This subject came up for Gene and I this week. Can’t there be genuine enough love with severely limited choice? How free does one have to be? For example, in order for Gene to genuinely love me does he really have to have all other choices available to him? Like, let’s say, for example, does he really need to test that he wouldn’t actually really prefer to be married to Charlize Theron and have that be a viable option that he turns down before he can genuinely decide he loves me? I really don’t want Charlize Theron walking in here any time soon. I might find out that Gene doesn’t really genuinely love me. I’m content with Gene’s lack of choice love. Don’t marriages work out better, they say, when they are arranged and there is little choice about the matter, that over time a love develops? Is it not genuine?
Similarly we’ve also contemplated how our children love us and we wouldn’t want to demand a genuine love by asking them to go test out other parents to see if they want to stick with loving us or switch us out for another, better set of parents. We don’t care if they are really choosing us or not. We just love that they are completely dependent on us and only know to love us. Is their love less genuine?
Well, maybe there are aspects about choosing to love God that are different than maritol love and love for our children, that I need to consider?
I’m not certain I’m making any sense here (esp. at this late hour), but maybe we put too much emphasis on the importance of choice, tho God seems to use it? It was an interesting conversation we had and I haven’t,much like other things, processed it all fully.
Come to think of it, real freedom is the lack of choice, enslavement to righteousness, when the option to sin isn’t one we’d even want to consider. Love thrives in enslavement to God, not freedom to choose the things of this world. Gene often likes to point out to the Mormon missionary the vs. in Rom. 11:32 that this life is not about us choosing, even if that’s an end result, but about God binding us over to disobedience so that he might have mercy on us all. Somehow God wants us to experience His mercy? Maybe genuine love is experienced, not in our freedom to choose (blindly, at that), but in being able to experience God’s mercy as a result of his continued love for us even while we were making wrong choices?
Maybe it is real love to force us down a path toward inevitably loving God? And not allow for us to irreparably harm ourself, choose blindly forever. He uses our choices or lack thereof to produce the kind of love that he is after?
Very good questions. I don’t think we are ever completely free, there’s sin, influences, personal baggage, etc. Furthermore, we rarely (if ever) have all the possible options available to us, much less know all the outcomes and consequences. However, having said all that, my hunch is that decisions and choices are still somehow relevant and meaningful, otherwise we would be no more interesting than puppets/robots.
No, but at some stage I assume he made a commitment/decision to love you rather than anyone else.
No, but lets say (going back in time), he had met you and Charlize simultaneously, and for some contrived reason had only an hour to talk to each of you before having to make a decision on who to marry. The decision he makes would be critical to the outcome.
I’m sure he would still choose you!
Arranged marriages usually occur within a culture or religious environment that hold/enforce commitment very highly. I don’t think if you attempted it in a secular western context, that there’d be much success. Conversely in societies where it does “work” I think it’s because of the commitment and conscious decisions (and that produces genuine love).
It’s more tricky they don’t have a choice of who their parents are. I’ve been told young children always love their parents, even when the parents don’t love them. Which almost seems like they are hardwired to do it?? However, Jesus is impressed by them, presumably by their acceptance & love?
Philosophically, I don’t know, their love is unconditional but they are totally dependent… they can choose later, as adults whether or not to continue the relationship.
I was amazed you were still awake at 1am, are you trying Sonia’s incredible sleep system?
I agree.
That’s hard to imagine, but it sounds awesome.
It’s getting too late at night for me to answer that, I’ll see on it
I agree, although I think he pushes us all the way to the open door, but we still need to step through
I heard a similar analogy used at my church recently–no doubt it’s a common one at this time of year! And I had the same feeling–that there’s something not quite right about the analogy…
I do think we participate in our salvation by choice. I don’t think the choice is ultimately “free”. There’s too many constraining factors–God has “appointed our times and places” so that we will seek Him, as Paul says in Acts.
Perhaps the point of disagreement is that we would not put a time limit on the “unwrapping”? I agree that the gift is given to all–as Christ died for all–but if we do not accept that salvation and begin choosing (at whatever level) to live in accordance with it we do not yet receive the benefits of it.
But perhaps we can’t even “open” it until it is handed to us? Until then, it is there waiting with each person’s name on it, until their turn comes–“each in his own order.”
The unwrapping has begun–but not everyone has had their turn yet?
Yes, I don’t mind the present-unwrapping analogy–so long as it isn’t presented as if in exclusion of other important details. It seems to be most popular among an Arminianistic mindset where God has stopped acting to save anyone long ago (they would say He is finished doing so–yet salvation isn’t actually finished!) Their emphasis is on God having done everything He can (which is true enough), not on God still doing everything He can. Though sometimes they remember that, too!–but since they believe God will eventually no longer do everything He can, there’s an understandable inclination to think in terms of Him being totally finished and never acting again even though people still need salvation.
In defense of the static ‘present unwrapping’ analogy (or parable), the Bible does feature some similarly static parabolic language about salvation where there seems no action on God’s part at all but (apparently) all the action comes from the sinner repenting. The narrow path and narrow gate; the Prodigal Son; forgive your brother (must I do so up to seven times? “I am not saying up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven!”) or God will not forgive you.
As an evangelical call, though, the present unwrapping concept is very incomplete. It’s incomplete even if we account for God making the present, wrapping it up, and giving it to us (even insistently giving it to us). The Christmas story (as Bob/TV said) isn’t about God wrapping Himself in swaddling clothes and laying in a manger waiting to be unwrapped and accepted. (And maybe rotting in the manger if someone doesn’t accept Him! )
It’s about the Great Shepherd going to the farthest extent to bring home to the manger the one lost sheep–voluntarily laying down His own life for the sheep, actively giving His own life even unto death to save them.
And not resting content with the ninety-nine sheep, even those who have never been lost!
If Jesus is wrapped up it’s only because we are blind and don’t see that he’s already jumped out of the package at us! Ok, now I’m picturing Jesus jumping out of a cake present like a stripper at a party. Can you imagine the stripper staying in the cake hoping for people to find him/her? How dumb would that be? Where has this conversation taken me? Ok, I’m really not into strippers, but I am into Jesus.
I think Sonia’s incredible sleep system is not working for me.
It would seem, like Calvinists suggest, that God unwraps the gift for us as he cleverly points the way to our acknowledgement of this wonderful gift, jumping in front of us as he pleases. God’s not just sitting in a corner somewhere, or manger, laying helplessly while he hopes we can manage to find or open Him. Oh, now this has me thinking that God might be more like a unibomber that sends us a package that explodes in our face! I’m starting to think this analogy thing is not good for me, gets me thinking all kinds of crazy things! Bob, what have you done?!
The star overhead is an interesting indicator that God guides us to Him by shining a bright light, even one as bright as the one that got in Paul’s face! In that case God conveniently dropped the package in the corner Paul had gotten himself into so that it was the only package he was looking at. It’s really wonderful to think that God is effectively doing all he can to jump out of the present, explode it in our faces, shine a bright light, etc…He’s the God we so desperately need! Such good news!!! We just really aren’t free until he reveals himself to us, making it inescapeable that we should choose Him. God is not finely wrapped, he’s explosive for our sake!!!
I like your thoughts here.
I enjoyed all of your comments, too, Jason!! The present unwrapping analogy is very incomplete. I think I’m just really convinced that in God’s grace he continues doing everything necessary to help us open the gift of himself since it’s in our best interest and fulfills his love and justice. There is so much to digest here and I feel like I’m only on the tip of the ice berg with understanding just how great God’s grace really is.
Wow Alex, you make some really good points! (I wasn’t sure there was any sense in it, but I’m thankful for the points that you make.)
I agree with you on this, as blind as some of our choices are.
Alex, in the event Charlize Theron ever does show up, I plan on reminding Gene of this!
You don’t have to convince me the decision would have been critical to the outcome! If he’d met Charlize Theron we wouldn’t be married.
My mom is insistent that she doesn’t have to love God to obey him. I’ve wondered about this.Maybe she is right? She says as she just consciously decides to choose to obey it produces the love.
This made me think that we are hardwired to love God, if even on the surface it might not appear that way. Reminds me of the song that there is a God shaped hole in all of us.
I think what I’m realizing is that we can play up too much our abilities - supposed freedom that I’m not sure we have until we know Christ, rather than put the focus on the all out important factor of what God is doing/has done for us. (This grace really rocks my world!) Choices, tho not entirely free, do seem to play a role in how we experience things. And we’d be puppets with them. I might rather, honestly, be a puppet than lost forever without God. I know I’d rather my kids just unconditionally love me, know no other option, than to be irreparably hurt. Thankfully, God is somehow able to work with our choices to effectively draw us to Him.
It’s hard to deny that there is an outcome of walking through the door that God is after. After Paul saw that light was he really going to be able to resist? Maybe so and suffer more consequences, bright lights? If God has pushed us to the door it’s also with the intent of making sure we make it inside. It will hardly be some wonderful choice we’ve made, independent of his help.
Which of us gets a gift get we decide never to open? The only reason I can see that we might not open a gift is if we didn’t know we had one. And isn’t it true that many don’t know the gift that is in Jesus? Wouldn’t it behoove God, then, not to just send the gift, but also to make sure it gets to us, such that we understand what we’ve got and can, therefore, receive it?
Alex,
the point is that I lack the ability to go back into time. And if I never meet Charlize does that mean I can never truly love Amy?
Also
Again, if children have to wait to become adults to choose to love then is the love of a child for his/her parents less valid?
I love the motion picture A.I. as it illustrates our relation to God (I recommend it). Similarly, I had a dog named Bobo as a child. I loved that dog and I hardly think that he made any deep philisophical cognitive choices to love me. He just did and I’m good with that.
My children do not need to be parented by some other dad in order for me to know they love me. I accept the unfair circumstances and realize that they are like robots who are programmed and trained to love me - I’m good with that - I’m programmed to love them and it’s wonderful.
Firstly I hope you don’t mind being used as the illustration In answer to your question, I **don’t **think you need all the options in order to make a valid decision or to love truly.
My initial reaction is no, I think children’s love is valid However, to me that’s “problematic” to my theory that there needs to be some sort of choice involved in genuine love
Me too
Hmmm… another good point, which is also problematic to theory
Amy nor I believe that robots are the result of people who don’t make free choices, as most libertarians try to conclude to. So we agree that choices are a vital part of life but they’re not the core of appropriating love. God has blessed us with an ability to love and receive love and that is central to the relationship issue - at least that’s how I see it.
I must hasten to add that there are at least 2 huge flaws in the way I’ve presented this idea.
First, there is the risk of concluding that the whole God does-it-all-I-do-nothing scenario might render me completely passive. Like a cork bobbing on a lake or something; utterly determined. That of course is not the case…
Often our pastor has spoken about not the faith that saves but the faith that gets to work. Faith as symptom of what is happening in our hearts. Faith is action. That sort of thing. Faith is not the cause, but the effect of God already busy saving. That kind of idea.
Second, if I say (as I have) that in Jesus is the complete unveiling (unwrapping) of the gift of God that might imply that there is nothing more to learn about God. And of course I really really don’t believe that for one second! I believe we will stand enthralled for eternity at the depths and majesty of God. Ravi Zacharias calls God the perpetual novelty; there will always be something new to learn about God.
Some have perhaps noticed that I am currently obsessed with this question of how much our “choice” is what saves us. I wrote about it in a slightly different way over on Discussion affirmative in a post titled “God’s covenant faithfulness must mean UR!”
There I attempt to sustain the notion that God’s covenant is not a reciprocal arrangement whereby I do my part (the bible is full of evidence that we don’t, and can’t consistently “do” our part at all!) and that releases God to do His part. Rather, God’s covenant is a promise that no matter what we do, He will be a faithful God and Savior. So that’s the reality – like the reality of the rising Sun. It simply is. One does not “chose” to deny or ignore the rising Sun; to do so would be absurd and insane and utterly self-defeating. Well isn’t sin also utterly absurd and insane and self-defeating?
Thus I just love this quote from amy:
“Come to think of it, real freedom is the lack of choice, enslavement to righteousness, when the option to sin isn’t one we’d even want to consider. Love thrives in enslavement to God, not freedom to choose the things of this world.”
Yet another way this dynamic is spoken of in scripture is that of the reality that Jesus comes to free the captives. What sort of person who, when the prison doors have been busted down would not follow Jesus right on out of there? For anyone who preferred prison to freedom must be severely delusional it seems. Yet somehow Jesus dispels those delusions as part of the freeing process. And HOW that works is what puzzles me!!
Bob,
This is a question I’ve been pondering a lot. Here’s what I currently think, and I’ve been “feeling” this for awhile but I haven’t been able to express it well, so I hope this makes sense!
It is not our response at all that saves us.
At the same time: If we do not respond, we are not saved.
We respond to God because we are saved. Salvation means being brought into right relationship with God. To know God is eternal life–salvation.
If we are not in right relationship with God, we cannot be called “saved” but salvation is sure because God has acted (and continues to act) towards humanity for this purpose. He has stated it as his goal–the “purpose of the ages” Paul calls it. But this salvation is not yet accomplished in all.
So we love because He first loved us. When we “meet” that love, then we love Him. When he puts in us a new heart, then we respond in faith and begin “working out our salvation” in concert with His Spirit which works in us, creating us in His image. “For we are His workmanship.”
We do not respond in order to “become” saved–we respond because He** has** saved us. Our response–our faith–is the evidence of His working in us and us working together with Him in the same Spirit.
It is God who must take away our “heart of stone” and give us a heart of flesh. It is He that must cleanse us and create in us a new heart and spirit. We cannot make ourselves new.
Sonia, we do not respond to be saved,but respond because we are saved? That is an interesting way to look at it. The response is after the saving work. In this way our response could not earn us salvation because the saving, God’s work in our heart, is what led to the response, not our will or effort. I like it, I like it! How wonderful to be able to give God the credit for the work he has done in us. Gene’s really convinced that we cannot break our pride. God must do it. It’s when he’s done this that we can humble ourselves before God.
I suppose there are some then, tho, that will feel like if we don’t respond it’s God’s fault, that we are communicating God hasn’t done enough to save us. In a sense, I guess, because God is able to effectively draw us to Him by breaking us down we are dependent on Him for this. As rebellious as we can be in our enslaved will we need a God faithful to a covenant that does not require we get things right. In my mind, this is the beauty of God and what attracts me to Him!
Bob, I first found your quote helpful and it is the exact thought that Sonia expounded on.
About this…
I didn’t think of this on my own. My dad was recently sharing a situtation about a guy that said he had the freedom to rob a bank. Another guy said he’d never want to rob a bank. Which one has more freedom? The one who thinks it’s a viable choice to rob or the one that thinks it’s no choice at all? It’s really occured to me that freedom is not what we’ve made it out to be. It’s like we’ve rejoiced in the fact that we can damn ourselves, instead of the salvation that God ensures. Freedom is to be in Christ, until that we are captive.
I found this statement in a blog (can’t remember his name) that I read recently…
“God created human beings for obedience, not for libertarian freedom. You will not find modern freedom in the Bible; you will find, instead, statements like that of Paul, who speaks of believers as “slaves of righteousness.” Abstract libertarian freedom is basically the “freedom” of sin; and that is no freedom at all. The only true freedom is that found in obedience to God.”
Great observations Sonia; I’m pretty much right there with you. Of course we must chose some basis on which to act. Life really does present us with forks in the road. One can not take both the left and the right prong simultaneously.
And amy too: this is how one hymn writer sums this up…
“Make me a captive Lord, and THEN I shall be free!” Isn’t it astonishing really that a choice not only against (ultimately) ourselves but against God and His universe should be labeled “free”! For what most label “free” is in fact bondage to the illusion that we are self sustaining autonomous beings instead of made in the image of God!
Let me nudge my ideas further by suggesting that when I say the gift of Jesus is an announcement more than an invitation (and I’m speaking from the luxury of knowing the rest of the story of the gift of this Baby; His life, death, and resurrection!) the gift is in a very important way an announcement of our identity (we are His children; made in His image ==> therefore inherently part of “the family”) and from this follows easily the fact of our worth. So, to continue the analogies, one does not “chose” to be part of the family, he already is part of the family. That is a reality he can not change. He cannot “chose” his way out of it. Now I understand that it is very common in Christianity to speak of these matters in terms of our UNworthiness and “UN-deservedness”. I suggest the gift of Jesus dashes these notions to bits. A rational God would not bother with us if we had no worth; BUT that worth is product OF His love.
I really like to think of the “fall” in terms of confusion on our part as to our true identity and worth. When Adam and Eve fell for the idea that God was withholding something from them and that they, in themselves, contained the capacity to be “god” (by that I mean capable of containing, in themselves, an entire system of meaning and ethics and sustenance; ie the closed system of materialism) they had little clue how far they had strayed from reality. (In my mind, by the way, this dynamic “works” with either a literal Adam and Eve or a metaphoric Adam and Eve) God’s task then was to bring them back to awareness of reality. And it’s a journey of an awful lot of steps; (some of them ugly and seemingly out of place. eg see the OT.)
But an absolutely vital step is the revelation of God, and reality as it really is, and that occurred through Jesus. In this way Jesus is, and will continue to be, the eternal reference point I believe. It is why I’m not as concerned as I used to be about the timing of this whole thing. All God has to “do” at this point is get folks to see things as they truly are. And one day, Paul seems to assert, EVERY knee will bow and every tongue will confess this reality and respond accordingly. That is, like the prodigal son. He will come home.
Now this whole dynamic seems utterly central to we believers in Universalism it seems to me. For the Big questions were solved by this gift of Jesus and all the rest is really just (albeit a very dramatic) a clean-up effort. The entire History of God and His universe took a dramatic turn at the entrance of Jesus into the picture; it’s only the details that remain. And I place things like the judgement in that category of “details”.
We all can imagine movies and novels where a conqueror bellows out “resistance is futile!!” – but in essence that’s exactly what God is dealing with now. Resistance, in the face of Jesus, the Christ, really is futile. Futile because resistance is ultimately absurd. Resist the very source of life? That’s absurd and utterly delusional.
And my just tossing up my arms in “defeat” and letting myself be who I was created to be (part of the family of God) cannot be what actually makes it so. Giving up the delusion then isn’t what saves me; it is just a necessary element to allowing myself to return to reality.
Total Victory, I really enjoy reading your thoughts! I enjoyed your ideas on the fall. Also, it’s encouraging to think that Jesus comes declaring our worth. So much of the time Christian thought is spent on declaring how we aren’t worth anything, but God’s love tells us we are. And, of course, many Christians wouldn’t agree that all of humanity is a child of God, but I have no trouble believing that because we are worth something to Him that we are valuabe in his sight and he cares for every last lost one of us.
Bob,
I like what you say about our worth. It reminds me of this: Luk 12:6-7 Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows.
Christ has gone to great lengths to assure us that we are loved.
As you say, if we weren’t valuable to God, why would He bother with us? But our value is not something we create in ourselves–it is simply that God cares for us.
Ultimately, that is why we can be confident in our hope that all will be saved.
To that I’d say: God judges the man’s heart. I’m not really satisfied with how I expressed what I was trying to say. I wrote it in response to the possibility that we can take some kind of credit for our salvation, but looking from another angle–the one you expressed above, my response would be somewhat different. I strongly believe that we have to actively will and choose, and that we are called to do so. But with humility because it is not of ourselves. We do not make ourselves, but through obedience we participate in God’s creating of us. As James puts it, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you…”
Perhaps George MacDonald expresses well what I mean in this quote:
“He gives us the will wherewith to will, and the power to use it, and the help needed to supplement the power: … but we ourselves must will the truth and for that the Lord is waiting … The work is His, but we must take our willing share. When the blossom breaks forth in us, the more it is ours the more it is His.”
I might find out that Gene doesn’t really genuinely love me. 
I’m content with Gene’s lack of choice love. 
)
Can you imagine the stripper staying in the cake hoping for people to find him/her? How dumb would that be? Where has this conversation taken me? Ok, I’m really not into strippers, but I am into Jesus. 
