About This Blog

I tend to forget things, and that's a major part - perhaps the major part - of why I blog. There are so many people out there saying things that make me think! And sometimes I'm reading what someone's written about a particular issue, and a thought sort of nibbles at a corner of my mind, and it seems somehow familiar, like I've pondered it before. Only I don't know when or why.
So, please forgive me if I bore you, or if I don't make sense. Mostly, this is going to be a place for me to keep record of my own ponderings. I'm rather opinionated, but not well studied AT ALL, I'm afraid - at least, not beyond the help of the public library, Sunday school classes and the church library, and the reading I do online. I'd love to learn Greek and Hebrew, but it's been very hard to do that on my own; I'm not relentlessly driven to it the way I am to teaching.

The title, Faith Means Letting Go, touches on both my general outlook toward spirituality in general and Christianity in paricular as well as a specific issue I'm struggling with at the moment. (That's a topic for another post, though.)

Several years ago, I was wrestling with the question of free will and determinism. I had just moved to a new town, and in meeting the pastor at the Methodist church there, I mentioned my uncertainty. I don't think he knew what he was in for when he invited me over for dinner and a Q&A session. In my defense, though, neither did I!

During the course of the discussion, I mentioned that I didn't see why determinists were so hung up on the duality of irresistible grace or "earning" your salvation with your own choice. Couldn't God give everybody just enough grace to get past the sin nature, enough for each person to make a viable choice without being forced?

Well, apparently that ties in to the not-exclusively Wesleyan idea of prevenient grace. Which is like one of the Big Important Doctrines of Methodism that makes it different from Lutheran or Baptist doctrine.

At first I was relieved. I'm not crazy! I'm not the only one who's tried to puzzle through this! Then I was kind of ... I don't know... validated, maybe? You know - Oo. Hey. I really AM a Methodist, and not just because I go to church there!

Then I was a little annoyed. I mean, here I'd been blindly hacking my way through a theological jungle, and somebody else had cut a path two yards to the west! Like... hundreds of YEARS ago! All that heavy thinking was kind of like running on a treadmill - it was probably good for me, but it didn't get me anywhere new.

Finally, though, I felt... lighter. All these really smart people had already thought through this stuff and they hadn't figured everything out either. I mean, it wasn't like I thought for a moment that somehow I would be the one to arrive at some secret insight that would make everything clear. But for the first time I was okay with not getting it. I didn't feel like I was lacking something. I felt...

I felt free!

I still like puzzling through ideas about God and how he works. But instead of the not-knowing being something that keeps me from God, it's more like a puzzle that I can share with God, one that he's already mastered. Heck, one that he MADE. I can see it now... I'm sitting on the floor, and he's watching from the armchair:

I can't get this stupid piece to FIT here!

I can see that. Have you checked any of the other pieces?

YES. ... Well ... like three of them...
(Pout.)
Can't you just DO IT FOR ME?

I could. Is that what you'd like?

... no.
I just want it to be EASY!

Mm. Just wait'll you get to the next one.

... !



Since that time, I've been much more at peace - at least spiritually speaking! I don't know that I can give an accurate defense for any particular theological issue - including whether or not I'm saved, even. But it doesn't bother me so much. God knows what he's doing, and for now, that's enough for me.