Calvinism, Arminianism, Predestination, and the fate of every human who has ever lived

This is it. I've been hoping to write this post for a while, wherein I finally weigh in on the centuries old friendly debate on Calvinism and Arminianism, two dominant schools of thought in Protestant theology. And remember, I have the spiritual gifts of knowledge and wisdom, so I'm right. (Joke) First I'll summarize both views in my own words and provide some evidence. (All citations from ESV) Then I'll proceed to tear both positions to shreds. (Especially Calvinism) Let's go.


Arminianism:

Though Calvinism is much better known, Arminianism actually came about first in 1610, and the "five points of Calvinism" were a response nine years later to the five articles of remonstrance. It presents a "two-handed" view to salvation--God calls us to believe, and we respond by believing. Both parts are necessary for our salvation, and the choice of whether to believe or not is up to our free will.

1. Conditional Election: God elected those who would believe for salvation before the beginning of the world. (John 3:36, John 3:16)
2. Unlimited Atonement: Jesus died once for all humankind, but His grace is only effective for those who believe. (Romans 6:10, from which we can conclude that Christ died once for all, but in conjunction with #1 only those who believe will be saved)
3. Total Depravity: We cannot be good without God. (Romans 3:23, John 15:5)
4. Resistible Grace: By our free will we can resist God's calling to salvation. (Acts 7:51)
5. Conditional Perseverance: If we turn to God and decide to follow Him, by His grace He will sanctify us and enable us to please Him. If we later consciously turn away and reject Him, it is possible that He turns away from us and we lose our salvation. (The remonstrants were not sure enough about that last part to assert it)

Calvinism:

As stated above, the five points of Calvinism came about nine years after the five articles of remonstrance. They were actually not written by John Calvin, who had been dead for over sixty years, but were based on his theological writings. While agreeing with the remonstrants on the total depravity of mankind, they presented a "one-handed" view of salvation where it is based entirely on God's action. Because of this central tenet, the Biblical term "predestination" Ephesians 1:5, Romans 8:29-30) is often used interchangeably with Calvinism. Unlike the five articles of remonstrance, they come in a handy acronym, TULIP.

Total Depravity: By nature, everyone is sinful and selfish and no one is inclined to love or believe on God. By ourselves, we are morally unable to choose God. (Again Romans 3:23, John 15:5)

Unconditional Election: God chooses some for salvation solely by His will and mercy, and not based on anything in our nature or our willingness to believe. Those He has not chosen receive the just penalty for their sins. (John 15:16, Romans 9:15-16, 22-23)

Limited Atonement: Christ's death only atoned for the sins of God's elect. (John 10:14-15 states that Jesus is the good shepherd and lays down His life for His sheep [the elect], 10:28 states that He will not lose any of His sheep, and Matthew 7:13-14 states that not everyone will receive eternal life; therefore He did not lay down His life for everyone)

Irresistible Grace: Whoever God purposes to save, will definitely be saved; i.e., God's calling through the Holy Spirit cannot be resisted. (John 6:37, 39-40, 44-45, 65)

Perseverance of the Saints: Everyone who comes to have true faith in Christ will continue in that saving faith until the end. (Again John 10:28, Romans 8:38-39, many, many more)

I should also cite Ephesians 2:1-10 as it is another foundational passage cited by Calvinists, and my pastor drew heavily from it when preaching on Hope's reformed (Calvinistic) theology. Also because I don't feel like I've thrown enough Bible at you yet.

My Response:

Before continuing, I should emphasize that while disagreeing with Calvinism, I have nothing but respect for dedicated Christians who adhere to it. Indeed most of the theologians and preachers I admire (John Piper, Mark Driscoll, Wayne Grudem, Tim Keller, John Owen, Jonathan Edwards, and Charles Spurgeon) and many of my personal friends are Calvinists, and it is the theology adhered to by my church, so I maintain no bitterness against Calvinism. I don't believe that it is heresy or a barrier to salvation, but a legititmate interpretation of scripture. In language my church has used, it is an "open-handed issue", or one that I don't need to hold onto as part of my faith. Part of the reason the Calvinism-Arminianism debate has so little impact on the church is that it has little practical impact on Christian life or the ministry of the church. There is no debate that you need to believe on Christ to attain salvation, or that those who forsake the faith are not saved. (Calvinists would argue that they never were, Arminians that they lost their salvation) With all that said, here is my position.

You may have noticed that except for the last article of remonstrance, I provided passages supporting all the points. Both positions appear to be biblical, yet they disagree sharply on the precise nature of salvation. How can that be? As a believer in the inspiration and inerrancy of scripture, I view apparent contradictions in the Bible not as proof that Christianity is not logically coherent, but an indication that we've interpreted wrongly. Many plausible, yet false teachings come from misinterpreting one verse and ignoring others that contradict the misinterpretation. (i.e. Harold Camping using 1 Thessalonians 5:4 to say that we can know when Christ is returning, despite Matthew 24:36 explicitly saying otherwise) With that in mind, I'm going to reexamine some of the above cited passages.

(Un)Conditional Election

John 3:16 reads:

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

 And John 3:36:

Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.

Neither of these passages mention anything about God's choice, or the election of those who believe. Both simply make perfectly clear that belief in the Son is a condition to salvation (eternal life). Elsewhere (i.e. Ephesians 2:8) we read that it is the only condition. But the concept of God electing some for salvation is certainly biblical; quite a few passages refer to "God's elect". John 15:16 makes fairly clear that God's election of us is not based on our choosing Him, but His choosing us.

You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.

So Calvinism seems to win this one.

(Un)Limited Atonement

Romans 6:10 is quite clear that Christ's death was for everyone.

For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God.

As is Hebrews:

He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself. (7:27)

But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. (9:26b)

And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. (10:10)

Meanwhile the Calvinistic doctrine is based on an argument formed by combining the three verses listed above. But I saw its weakness even as I was reading it. John 10:14-15 reads (emphasis added):

I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.

"The" sheep. Not "my" sheep. I'm no Greek scholar, but later in verse 27 the word "ema" is used to refer to "my sheep". This word is missing from verse 15. The Calvinist argument goes that since Christ laid down His life for "His sheep", and He will not lose any of His sheep, and that some "sheep" (people) will be lost, Christ did not lay His life down for everyone. But he did not lay His life down for only His sheep! Without the possessive word, the translation of "the sheep" seems appropriate and it's a stretch to assume that He meant "my sheep". It also reads "the sheep" in the King James version of the Bible, which was new in 1619 and which they would likely have been using. Therefore, in light of the evidence given above that Christ died for everyone, it seems much better to interpret "the sheep" as referring to everyone. A point for Arminianism.

(Ir)Resistible Grace

In light of this, I think a two-handed view of salvation makes much more sense. Yes, God calls us to believe and enables us to have faith, but the choice of whether to accept that faith or reject it is ours. Though it is God's will that everyone be saved, this isn't always the case because for whatever reason He gives our free will a choice, corrupted though it may be.

All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out...And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”...No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day....And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.” (John 6:37, 49-40, 44-45, 65)

These are the verses cited earlier in support of irresistible grace. Yet it seems curiously absent. 37, 39-40, and 44 seem to be more on the topic of perseverance of the saints; more on that later. This is a difficult enough topic to deserve a future post. Verses 45 and 65 are more on the subject, but they simply affirm that God's enabling is essential for anyone to be saved--in our sinfulness, we cannot come to the Father on our own. And Acts 7:51 makes it clear that it is possible to resist the Holy Spirit.

So we arrive at my biggest issue with Calvinism. In emphasizing God's sovereignty and saving power, it seems to disregard the obvious matter of our free will. (I'm just going to assume we have it; if you have any doubt as to this, take some time to examine your own consciousness) Here I define "free will" as the ability to control our own thoughts, intentions, choices, and actions in any situation. Yes, God calls us to Himself and without this calling no one can see Him rightly, but it is also up to us to respond to this call and be saved. Perhaps God could make this choice for us somehow, but He doesn't. My guess is He gets the most glory and joy when His children freely choose Him; we're free agents, not automata.

But there is some truth to the idea of "irresistible grace". When we come to a true understanding of who God is, who we are, and the good news of the gospel, not to turn to Him and be saved is insane. Repentance is a choice we make when we realize we have no choice. It's my suspicion that virtually anyone who doesn't follow God does so because their view of Him is distorted, too small, or inaccurate.

The Alpha and the Omega


God is described as eternal (Deuteronomy 33:27), unchanging (Malachi 3:6), knowing all things (John 16:30), and "the Alpha and the Omega" (Revelation 22:13). He was there at the beginning of time (John 1:1, Genesis 1:1) and has a plan to unite all things in Himself (Ephesians 1:10). It first glance this seems incompatible with the fact that we have free will; aren't we all just puppets in God's master plan? But God is more than an omniscient puppetmaster. If He knows all things, then He knows how we will freely act, and has somehow incorporated our free actions into His plan! Throughout the Bible we see God working through people's free actions to further His redemptive work, consciously (the patriarchs, the apostles...) or unconsciously (King Nebuchadnezzar, Joseph's brothers in Genesis 50:20). God is even seen to incorporate evil (Judas' betrayal, the Babylonians in Habakkuk 1, the Pharaoh in Exodus) into His plan. How exactly this all works is extremely mysterious and beyond our capacity to know; in Isaiah 55:9 God proclaims "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." I like to think of it as the difference between our thoughts and a bug's thoughts, only multiplied infinityfold.

Now the challenge is to incorporate this concept (or what we can know of it, anyway) into our idea of salvation. Hearing about God predestining people for adoption through Christ conjures up images in my head of God going down a checklist of everyone who would ever live, pencil in hand, sealing peoples' fates, which I think gives the wrong idea. God encompasses time and has perfect knowledge of everything that will every happen. For Him there is no distinction between the making of the plan and its fulfillment. Our choosing Him, free as it is, is part of His plan and happens by His will, power, grace, and enabling as well as our free choice of Him. Perhaps God's will is on a higher level than ours, allowing it to enact His plan while leaving us free.


The idea of the "elect", those God saves, is certainly Biblical, appearing 11 times in the New Testament. That God sovereignly chooses some for salvation is undeniable. As I argued above, the Calvinistic view that this election is unmerited by anything we do or are seems more likely. So, you might ask (and I, until I was writing this, would have argued), if God sovereignly chooses some for salvation, why not choose everyone so everyone can be saved? True, 2 Peter 3:39 reads:

The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

So God doesn't want anyone to perish in their sins. And yet,

The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. (Romans 1:18)

Odd as it sounds, God has two apparently conflicting desires--showing off His love and mercy, and showing off His wrath and justice. But both of these advance His overall purpose of bringing glory to Himself, so there need be no conflict. The cross was God's masterstroke--through it He was perfectly loving in granting justification to anyone to repents and believes, and perfectly just in pouring out His wrath onto His own Son. Romans 9:22-24 clarifies:

What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory—even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?

So not only do God's wrath and mercy not need to conflict with each other, it seems like their contrast further enhances God's glory. Though He loves to see even one come to know Him, God is just and glorified by the exercising of His wrath. And at the same time, He shows off His love and mercy by postponing it so we have a chance to come to believe. As my pastor Steve says, "The miracle of the gospel is that there is a Genesis 4."

Once Saved, Always Saved?


Before wrapping up, I should touch on my position on the last point, the perseverance of the saints--the question of if it is possible to lose one's salvation. This is a tough question that I don't really like to think about. During my sophomore year at the U I went to a debate between Christian writer Dinesh D'Souza and pastor-turned-atheist Dan Barker. Quite frankly, the idea that someone so strong in the faith could turn against it frightened me.

The emphatic nature of the Calvinist position on this matter seems in response to the uncertainty of the Arminian one. As I mentioned above, the Calvinist view has abundant scriptural support. Indeed, the idea of somehow losing "eternal life" doesn't make much sense at all. But sin's power to deceive runs deep and allows us to live remarkable convincing counterfeits of Christianity. God, perhaps anticipating this, has given us a few verses that address knowing we are saved.

And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life. (1 John 5:11-13)

You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. (Romans 8:9)

1 John tells us that if we have/believe in Christ, we have eternal life. By applying the contrapositive to the Romans verse, we conclude that anyone who has Christ has the Spirit, so eternal life is marked by the empowering and acting of the Holy Spirit. So to know if you truly have eternal life, you can look outward to whether your life is bearing the fruits of the Spirit (Galations 5:22-24) or inward to the acting and calling of the Spirit in your heart.

But as people like Dan Barker demonstrate, it might yet be possible to be mistaken about this. In that case, there is one way to know:

For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. (Hebrews 3:14)

But the one who endures to the end will be saved. (Matthew 24:13)

So our present condition in Christ is based on our future faith. Only with a God who transcends time! I hope this isn't discouraging or confusing to anyone, because I don't mean it to be. If you aren't sure you're saved, don't worry! 2 Timothy 2:13 assures us that God remains faithful to us no matter what, and the Hebrews and Matthew verses call us to persevere! As long as continue to believe, God is still with us and we have eternal life. And a healthy amount of doubt is what separates mature, fully alive Christians from dogmatists and legalists--we shouldn't put any faith in our own faith, but in God and His faithfulness.

Based on these verses, along with the earlier mentioned evidence that God preserves His own until the end, we can conclude that no one whom God has chosen for salvation can lose it. But whether we are saved is not for us, much less anyone else, to know for certain until we meet God face to face. Until then, we keep the faith and continue to seek after Him.

A quick aside on the so-called "unforgivable sin" mentioned by Jesus in Matthew 12:31-32 and Luke 12:10. Again, I could probably do another post on this issue, but the consensus among theologians that this sin, "blasphemy against the Spirit" constitutes a willful, settled rejection of God--not a sin you commit carelessly or ignorantly. The reasoning goes that only someone who understands the Spirit and His working in the world has enough understanding to seriously attribute His work to a demon as the pharisees did. In light of the discussion above, one can hypothesize that this sin cannot be committed by one of God's elect. (Similar to how no one speaking by the Spirit can say "Jesus be cursed", 1 Corinthians 12:3) At any rate, the fact that Jesus mentions this sin only once each in two gospels indicates that He doesn't want us to worry too much about it, and it is not a central part of His message.

Conclusion

My position on predestination is a combination of Calvinism and Arminianism. I believe that as part of His ongoing plan of redemption for the world, God chose some to enjoy His forgiveness and mercy, and others to suffer His just wrath for their sins. This choice was not based on anything in our nature, but is echoed in our choosing or not choosing Him. We freely believe because since the beginning God has freely predestined and called us to Himself. How our free will can operate under God's sovereign will is a mystery, but somehow it does. My personal version of the five points/articles can be remembered with the handy, oh-so-easy acronym TUURP. (i.e. the sound you make when food tries to go down both pipes at once)

Total Depravity: Without God we are slaves to sin and death in every area of our lives, and without His grace we can do nothing to please Him. (Romans 3:23, John 15:5)
Unconditional Election: Because God has chosen and called some for salvation (Ephesians 1:4), they come to faith and their sins are justified by the atonement of Christ. (John 3:36)
Universal Atonement: Christ died on the cross to pay the penalty for the sins of every (fallen) human who will ever live. (Romans 6:10) However, this free gift of forgiveness can be freely accepted or rejected and only saves those who believe in Him. (John 3:16, Matthew 7:13-14)
Resistible Grace: God actively works in peoples' lives in ways seen and unseen to allow them to glimpse His nature and believe in Him. (John 6:44, 2 Timothy 1:9) However, because of our free will, corrupted by the sinful nature, some willfully reject this work and so fail to see Him clearly and believe. (Acts 7:51)
Perseverance of the Elect: Those God has chosen and called to Himself will continue in faith and eternal life until the end. (John 10:28, Romans 8:38-39) However, we cannot know who is called and who is not until the end (Hebrews 3:34, Matthew 24:13), so this is not an excuse not to preach the gospel!

Application?


At this point, I am personally sick of theology, and I imagine you are as well. (Congratulations on reading this far, at any rate) In the style of my church's sermons, I'm going to try to leave you with a few ways to begin to apply this knowledge. As I said before, this debate should have little to no practical impact on how we live. There is no question that those who believe in Jesus Christ will be saved and have eternal life, and this is what we should strive for; this is what we are called to. The knowledge that God has predestined people for Himself doesn't immediately affect us, since we have no idea who He has predestined! And one of the wonders of the gospel is that we get to be active participants in His redemptive plan for the world. Make no mistake, God has no need for our help--He intends service to the Kingdom to be a joy. And so, in light of the supremacy of Christ, let us carry out the mission He left us with.

A few final questions:

1. How big is your view of God? Do you believe that He is firmly in control of all things?
2. Have you worked out what your "open-hand" and "closed-hand" beliefs are?
3. Do you seek after the Holy Spirit as the key to redeemed life and the seal of our eternal life?
4. Are you excited to be part of God's work in the world?

The "burden of proof" argument

A recurring theme I've seen in the whole evolution-creationism debate, and was reminded of yesterday in a sermon, is the whole "burden of proof" argument. Creationists and skeptics alike both use it, arguing that their position is a sensible starting point and the "burden of proof" lies on the other party to prove their point from there. The breaking point was the sermon. Hearing my pastor, whom I appreciate, greatly respect, and generally agree 100% with, use the argument in a sermon on God as creator. Aspiring Christian apologists: I hope this post helps inform your conversations with skeptic friends. This'll be just like the "analyze an argument" section on the GRE I took today! And remember, I have the spiritual gifts of knowledge and wisdom, so I'm right.

As I've argued in my "Belief and Assumptions" series a while back, every worldview requires that you make some assumptions to get there. Some are common--like the existence of objective reality--and others aren't--that the God of the Bible is who He says He is. Making these assumptions is a crucial part of having faith and is the biggest part of conversion to a different religion, a change in your thinking. Christians believe that we can remove obstacles to belief through apologetics and argue persuasively for God's existence, but ultimately only God can change peoples' hearts to see Him clearly enough to believe. Now look at the "burden of proof" argument: it says that some position, creationism or evolution, should be the starting place and the other must be argued. So it says that one position should be assumed. Well, that's the whole issue, isn't it? You're just restating the obvious--"I would like you to hold my views and assumptions"--in a different way! If you've really made the assumption that the God of the Bible is who He says He is and created everything, you aren't going to be trying to prove atheistic evolution anymore. No wonder this argument never seems to get anyone anywhere! It's a miniature version of the whole debate! It even requires the same kind of evidence--reasons that creationism is true become reasons it is sensible and the right starting point and such.

And, of course, the other problem with the argument is that is presupposes that not only can the other position be proven, but from a position that is fundamentally contradictory to it. If I seriously expect skeptics to be able to rise to the challenge of starting from Christianity and proving Darwinian evolution, I would have no choice but to believe it myself straightaway, because it would have to be rock solid! And of course, as I've asserted, worldviews can't be "proven" but require steps of faith of some kind to believe. We can try to lessen these steps, but we can't eliminate them, particularly in the case of Christianity, which believes in such an incredible (unbelievable) God. Holding your position or the opposing one to the standard of needing to be proven is futile.

Journal Lines

I enjoy trying to graph my life in any way I can think of. Maybe quantizing all the fuzziness and confusion of real life helps me to sort through it. Maybe I'm just a hopeless nerd. Two of the best charts I'm come up with are the size of my music library over time (maybe I'll share that another day) and the number of lines I've journaled every day for the last 3 years. It's a surprisingly good measure of how quickly God has been working in my life. If you know me, you might be able to figure out what some of the peaks/plateaus are. ...and yes, it has been a fairly exciting summer.

Hidden behind the abstraction barrier

In the complicated modern world, most people only have the capacity to be experts on one or two things. But there are some fields, like biology or English, that most people have at least an elementary grasp on., whether  because they are common to take in college, useful for everyday life, or the subject of great debate. Computer science is not one of these fields. Most people are content to have their computer remain a black box (or grey box, in Windows' case), using it for internet or applications and oblivious to what goes on beneath the surface. My major almost feels like a secret society sometimes; we talk about it freely among each other with great interest, but whenever I talk much about it with a non-initiate, their eyes kind of glaze over and they change the subject and/or run away. I've learned not to try. But not today. I'm going to try to explain the concept of an abstraction barrier to you all.

The abstraction barrier is the reason why programmers like myself are able to work in nice, symbolic programming languages rather than manually flipping ones and zeroes. It is essentially a gap in knowledge that hides the complexity of some subsystem from the rest of the program. At the most basic level, this might be, for instance, an algorithm I write to sort a list. Once I have it working, I don't have to worry what sorting algorithm I used or what exactly happens every time I use it (unless I'm optimizing), I can just sort the list. I could go back and switch to use a completely different algorithm, and as long as it didn't take drastically longer to work, no one using my sort method would even need to know I'd done anything. I was in a class last week at my Seagate job and was struck by how much bit acrobatics a hard drive goes through to "open a file"--a single command in Python. Unless I'm a Seagate engineer, I don't need to worry about this at all.

Once I internalized the idea of abstraction barriers in programming, I started to see them everywhere. For instance, the internet itself--a mind-boggling amount of infrastructure goes to make it easy for you to connect to a Wi-fi hotspot and check your Facebook. And don't forget how your web browser makes sense of all those bits flying at you--to the computer, a video, a list of E-mails, and this blog all look the same. Outside of technology, the organization of a company is set up to make it easy for others to acquire, say, paper, without worrying about how it's produced, transported, or any of the other challenges that go into orchestrating these things. People can even be abstraction barriers, of a sort. As I was writing a help page for my program today, I realized an obvious feature it was missing and added it. This turned out to be painfully slow, though, and I spent over an hour figuring out why and improving it so my program wouldn't hang for half a minute. I could write another entire post on some of the tricks I used. When I committed my work, though, I mentioned none of this--I just "allowed recursive searching from the default directory."

Abstraction barriers are convenient slipcovers we put over a world that is far too complex to grasp in its entirety. They allow programs to work cleanly, without getting in each others' business, all below the surface of what you're doing on a computer. And now you know something about computer science.

Hello from Milwaukee! (2011 edition)

This weekend has been amazing. I'm back in Milwaukee visiting the Summer in the City project and my second family there! I don't know how to describe how joyful it's been to be back in this city with old and new friends. Last summer I got to have deeper fellowship than I ever have before and after being reunited we picked up again like we'd never left. I took Friday off from work, so instead of driving out to Seagate I got dropped off at the Amtrak station and boarded a train for Milwaukee. Let me tell you, I am never flying again because the train is a hundred times better. The train station was tiny, with no long waits or security checkpoints. I just showed up, got my ticket, and boarded. The car had tons of legroom and outlets so I got a lot of programming on the game done.

Once I got to Milwaukee, Bryan and Meg (a St. Thomas student I've seen at a lot of conferences) and and picked me up. I've been really reliant on the people on the project for transportation and a place to stay, and I wanted to emphasize that for any of them you are reading this. Thank you so much, all of you; God has given me a blessed weekend through you. Anyway, soon we arrived back at City on a Hill. It was pretty unreal being back there; we'd stopped outside on the way to drop my sister off at college, but I hadn't been inside it since our tearful farewell last August. I was ecstatic to finally be back! Bryan's ministry team had gotten done at Liberty and Truth fairly early, which was how they'd been able to come pick me up so promptly. They were crazy organized and were planning their VBS for the next few weeks, and I got to sit in on their meeting. I love vocational ministry and it was so great to see them getting really into it.

Pretty soon other people were coming back, and soon I saw Erin and Dave! We had dinner at Taco Bell, where I got to see Ariel, Anna Z (a fellow junior at the U of M in Campus Crusade with me), and most of the rest of the students on summer project this year. There are 17 this year; six men (the same as last summer) and eleven women. It turned out they were switching up the schedule this weekend, so a park outreach was happening that night. I went along and helped make gospel bracelets with kids in Tiefenthaler Park. I was expecting to have to round kids up and ask if they wanted bracelets and be kind of creepy, but that only happened the first time. After that we pretty much got mobbed by kids; some wanted bracelets (or five of them), others wanted necklaces. Even after a year I remembered what all the beads meant and got pretty good at explaining it to them; the girls I was working with seemed to know when to throw in some helpful questions or slow me down if I was going through the message too fast. It reminded me of the sermons I'd heard on the different parts of the body of Christ working together. The fact that I was able to jump right back into outreach after so long just went to show that I did it not on my own ability, but by God's enabling.

After we got back to COAH, Kiera, Kriesten, and Emily Sear showed up and we had a big reunion in the student lounge! We were all deliriously happy to see each other again. While many of the current SP students went to hang out at another park, we went to good old Leon's for some custard. We stopped at COAH briefly before I went to Tim and Andrea Urban's house, where I would be staying the next three nights. I was exhausted from all the excitement (especially my face, from smiling so much) and pretty much went straight to bed.

Saturday was epic. Everyone from the 2010 project went to a great place called Ruby G's for breakfast. Heidi drove to Milwaukee to meet us for the day! We had a good long time of catching up on each other's lives. It sounds really repetitive, but I was so happy to see them all again. My Milwaukee friends really are my second family and having their picture next to my work computer only made me miss them more. Saturday was the day of the weekly social event. The men were apparently shooting guns, but it was mostly for people on the project so I just ung out with the returners all day. I'd never really had a day in high school when we all just drove around and adventured, but I was missing out. We went to the Reservoir (the hill where we prayed over the city during our last week), a park near Bradford Beach, and the pier, just talking about all that had happened since last summer. We stopped at Open Pantry for snacks, where we ran into Sherman, one of the men the other ministry team worked with at Liberty and Truth last summer! I'm probably forgetting at least one place we went to; it was just a blur of excitement.

For dinner Kiera, Heidi and I went to good old Buffalo Wild Wings; I felt kind of bad as I knew there was probably a better place, but no one could think of anything so we just went there. I ordered a cider there and didn't get carded, which was pretty shocking as I'm still only 21. We waited for the men's and women's groups to finish up at COAH and went back to the Riverwalk, where the men had done our impromptu women's appreciation event last year. The whole day was just a tour of all our favorite places from Milwaukee and it was probably the high point of summer so far.

Back at the Urbans' house it hit me that I only had one full day left with everyone. I thought about the promise of the Resurrection and the eternal life we'll have in God, when there will be no more farewells or pain or loneliness. Every single day we'll experience more fellowship and love than I did that day or anytime on summer project. This really helped for reasons I understood better this morning. I got up early and had more time to read my Bible and think before church. I realized how much of the things I struggled with and mistakes I made were a result of my God-given need for love and community that will never be satisfied in this lifetime. On summer project last year I had better and closer relationships than I had before or since and I was afraid of leaving all that behind. But if it really is a need, I have to trust that God will provide for me. Part of how He wants to do this is through each other; I realized how many times I'd prayed for God to love on people through me and forgotten that it could work the other way, too.

Church this morning was at Liberty and Truth, where we'd been a few times last year. I forgot how differet (and yet amazing) African-American churches were. A few women came up to give the call to worship, and I felt like they could have just kept proclaiming God's greatness and love all day. Heaven will probably be a perfect fit for them. The sermon was on overcoming unforgiveness, and after it was over pastor Darryl Seay called people up to let go of anyone they hadn't forgiven. About 20 people came up and he made sure they all had time and support to work through what was eating at them. God often seems to work on me in church in a completely different way than He seems to be working in general, and today was like that. Besides praying for the people standing up front working through old hurts and grudges, I prayed to entrust my needs to God's care and proclaiming that He had all the love I'll ever need.

The service lasted until 12:45 or so and it was lunchtime. After that came the usual Sunday afternoon lull I'm still in, so I've had time to write this. I never imagined I'd be writing another Summer Project post, but here it is! Once again, pray for the students here, the ministry God has put them in, and the city He loves so much.

Morality

Listening to sermons at work at around 15 times the rate I normally hear them has given me a good sense of some of the recurring themes at Hope. (Also just how repetitive Pastor Steve's jokes are, and how amazing it is that they're still funny) One of the biggest things I've noticed is just how much they dislike "religion", or as he sometimes refers to it, "churchianity". (Which I've already blogged about) One of Steve's sayings is "If you hate organized religion, you'll love Hope Community Church!" During a bike ride today I thought about how both dangerous extremes for Christians, legalism (or "religion", as some call it now) and license, have important deviations in their view of morality (that is, a system of "oughts" and "ought-nots" that govern your actions). Legalism effectively equates morality with God, and turns Christianity into a pattern of good behavior--confusing an effect of faith with the whole thing. License takes the forgiveness of Christ and runs away with it, leaving behind morality altogether and basically saying "Jesus took away my sins, now I can do whatever I want."

Then I started wondering about how peoples' natural consciences could agree on the morality of some things (that murder is wrong) but not others (like homosexuality).

Note: 12-day writing break here...


Hm, okay, let's try and salvage this train wreck. Now that I've thought about it more, I'm starting to wonder if the idea of a "conscience" is really just culturally trained and imprinted values, which vary widely across time and space. Of course the values acquired by a southern Conservative Christian and a Seattle hipster will be different. And I think it was in a C.S. Lewis book that I read that a newly converted Anglo-Saxon, hailing from a culture that valued duty and honor, would have easily accepted the Biblical teachings on sin and justice and struggled with the concept of grace, while in today's culture it's just the opposite. Behind cultural values is our innate drive for self-preservation, which when universalized leads to most of the values that nearly everyone shares today. I'm not trying to "explain away" or undermine our morals, just offer a theory on where many of them some from.

Christian morality, of course, comes not from culture or within us, but from the Word of God and the example of Christ. But I don't think it's as clear-cut and rigid as fundamentalists like to paint it. Yes, the Bible has plenty of teaching on what a renewed life in Christ should look like (not how we gain this life--effects, not causes)--the commandments of Jesus and fruits of the Spirit are good places to start. But they hardly provide a comprehensive picture of how Christians should act at all times; this would make us little more than automata, and why would God give us free will if we had as much freedom as a single-threaded computer program? (I notice pastors never use computer analogies in sermons) Paul commands us to "work out your salvation with fear and trembling"--clearly he doesn't mean that we have some part in earning our actual salvation; he makes that clear in Ephesians 2. Rather I think he means that it's our responsibility to, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to manifest in ourselves the new life God purchased for us. How this new life shines through will look different for everyone in the particulars--it's up to us and our relationship with God, not clear-cut rules. I've been listening through Hope Community Church's series on 1 Corinthians, which contained a whole section on our freedom and how we should seek to use or even sacrifice it for the glory of God. Ultimately, it's up to us.

And, of course, trying to get non-Christians to uphold Christian morals, even universal ones in the Bible, is not only futile, but counterproductive. It's basically forcing them to be legalists. We are transformed from the inside out, not the outside in, and trying to go it backwards can interfere with God's process of sanctification. If you have a non-Christian friend who does something, you know is wrong, they don't need you to tell them they're sinning, or to cut it out, or read such and such book. They need Jesus. You can't transform anyone. He can.

This train of thought has also helped me in thinking about some political issues. I used to stick with the popular saying, "You can't legislate morality." But this is false, as every law upholds some kind of morality, imposes some kind of "ought-ness" on the people living under it. My stance on turning Biblical commands into legislation should be clear enough from the previous paragraph. I wish more Christian politicians would realize this and help associate the name of Christ instead with integrity, compassion, and leadership.

Astronomicon

Apologies for the silence lately. Partly this has been because I'm working full-time at Seagate this summer (I'd tell you more, but it's all confidential) and partly because I'm developing a game this summer!

Yeah, this is my game: Astronomicon. (I still can't believe that name wasn't taken) It's a retro-style space shooter; for those of you who have fond memories of playing Phoenix on your TI graphing calculator, you'll love this. It's getting to be pretty playable, with most of the basic engine and a sweet HUD implemented as the screenshots show.

I'm hoping to have the programming part all done by the end of summer, at which point the game can be designed with config files. It's already pretty fun blowing enemies up with guided missiles and such and I can't wait to see what will become of the functionality I'm putting into it.

Updates on the game, including the latest source code and a wiki, can be found on the Google Code page. Stay posted!