All I need is . . . God's will.

I recently read the book "Is God to Blame?" by Gregory A. Boyd.  It was a very thorough attempt to get past the "pat" answers that many Christians give for the existence of evil.  I did not agree with all of it, but highly recommend it as a challenging study.  It certainly made me think through my beliefs on God and the reason for the existence of evil.  As a bi-product of this discussion, I found myself contemplating issues concerning God's sovereignty and human free will.

Boyd's basic conclusion is that evil exists because of human free will.  This has been my thought as well.  This statement allows me to separate God's creative purpose (all that he makes is good, including free will; I do not believe that God is the author of evil) with the results I see (the existence of evil is a result of poor choices by humanity, not the design of God).  Yet, someone may still argue that God should have known this and done something to avoid it.  The answers at this point may vary, but Boyd concludes that free will is so radical and irreversibly marked into this world that not even God can undo it.  In essence, God is subject to human free will, and we all (including God) must live with the consequences.  With this line of thinking, the cross of Jesus comes into focus, not as God divine plan from creation, but as the only lovingly divine response to the mess that our free will has made of creation.

Now, as I absorbed this thought, I wanted to turn on it and tear into it.  It did not seem biblical to me (and still does not), although Boyd gives a valiant, if not misguided, effort to show biblical examples for his conclusions.  And yet, he had taken the "free choice" ideal to its logical conclusion.  If free choice is real, and it is free from divine "sovereignty," then Boyd gives us a logical end to this thought process.

After I finished the book, I felt this gnawing emptiness inside of me.  On the one hand, I don't think that God made us to be robots who simply function under the heavy hand of sovereignty.  Yet, the idea that we are completely and utterly responsible for all of our choices and their outcomes in the world left me feeling woefully small and ill-equipped.  That is seemingly too great a burden for me--I mean, are we supposed to feel like we can handle our whole world?

It was in this moment that I found the place where I need to be--somewhere between total divine sovereignty and radical human free will.  In that moment of brokenness I found myself saying to God, "Even if you give me free will to do anything I want, I realize that the best decisions that I can make will be based on your plans.  So, I choose to live based on your plans.  Show me your will, and let me follow it.  Please."  Sovereignty and choice faded into one at that moment.  How can you choose better than to do what God would do?  Or, radical sovereignty requires radical obedience.  Either way, this seems to me to be the heart of the matter.

Does it matter how I got there?  (Did God predestine me to that conclusion?  Or did I seize the moment and choose it?  Don't suppose I will truly ever know--and right now I don't really care.)  Probably not.  Just matters that I stay.

Let the one liners fly.

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Bonhoeffer: Costly Grace (a repost)

Bonhoeffer: Costly Grace

Hey, here's a novel idea. Posting once a month. Yeah, well, probably not a good idea if one wants to holds the attention of others. Oh well . . . .

After reading Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship, Chapter 1: Costly Grace, I was forced to come to re-examine my understanding of discipleship.

Because Bonhoeffer has a Lutheran, and thus sacramental, mindset, he is a bit of a anomaly to me. When he defines cheap grace, he states, “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.” (46)

When I first see this statement, I am thinking "Isn't that the way I've always seen discipleship?"

Then I realize that Bonhoeffer himself is railing against Lutherans who see salvation as sacramental and lost in Lutheran tradition. However, I am moved because Baptist have their own set of traditions and legalism. We don't define it as sacramental, but having worship without an offering time in a traditional baptist church. Someone will let you know that you screwed up worship. I admire churches who have gotten past the legalism of tradition in that sense.

However, his last line really hits me. Grace without discipleship and the cross is cheap grace. I want to shout Amen! But I stop because grace is grace without my effort. Bonhoeffer is attempting to describe the heart of the disciple. I am trying to clarify my motivation. I do not act as a disciple in order to prove the nature of grace. I act as a disciple because the grace is so overwhelming. In fact, my acts as a disciple prove that I understand the nature of God's grace. I think this is the heart of Bonhoeffer's point. He is not calling on Christians to make grace valuable. Grace stands on its own. He is instead calling on Christians to live their lives as if the grace they have received is precious and costly.

In other words "Grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus."

One of Bonhoeffer's greatest criticisms of Radicals and Baptists is that they preferred the contentment to the world rather than promoting works of discipleship. He felt that Baptist preferred to live in cheap grace rather than promote obedience to the law, which might annul grace and saving faith. In other words, accept salvation by faith, and then live however you want without rigorous discipline and spiritual boundaries. Again, I think Bonhoeffer defines these boundaries in terms of his Lutheran background, and probably in light of Luther's own love for monasticism. However, his criticism is not lost on me. And I think he is correct in this: that many Baptist will err on the side of grace and faith, costing them spiritual discipline and lulling themselves into spiritual mediocrity.

In the end, Bonhoeffer senses that cheap grace hardens our hearts to following Christ and to disobedience. We have been seduced to a mediocre level of the world, quenching the joy of discipleship because we chose the way to go. After all, our salvation is already accomplished by the grace of God.

Thus, if I want to get away from mediocre Christianity, I need to accept a call to more discipline in obeying Christ, which will involve submission to the way of the Savior.

As a Baptist, I cling to salvation by grace. Yet, I find myself hearing the call to take up my cross as well, not for my salvation, but because I understand the salvation that has been given to me.