Election vs Free Will

Do you like arguing about theology?  Oh, wait, I forgot you are a 21st century western civilization Christian.  You LOOOOVVVVEEEE to argue about theology....and doctrine....and church practices.....and pretty much everything else.

What gets people more heated than anything?  Election vs Free Will debates.  AKA, Calvinism vs Arminianism.

For those who have been lucky enough to have avoided knowing too much about this SUPER ESSENTIAL argument.  Let me briefly sum up the two positions.  But with the qualifier that I am in no way intending what I am about to write to in anyway be a completely exhaustive(or perhaps even fair) summation of either position.

Arminianism/Free Will:

Every person has to make the choice for Jesus.  No choice is also considered a "no" for Jesus choice.  No one is bound for evil, or, bound for good.  We are free will moral agents responsible before God for the choices we make.

If I was a competent blogger I would list a number of bible verses here that support this position.....

Calvinism/Election:

God Himself "elects"(chooses) who is to be saved and who is not to be saved.  This places a high value on God's absolute sovereignty and is hyper focused on our utter sinfulness and inability to do anything to "earn" salvation.  If you are God's elect, you WILL be saved BECAUSE of HIS work, if you are not, you will NOT be saved.

Ditto on the competent blogger post...blah blah blah, bible verses.


Where we Go Wrong

Are you able to know whether or not you are elect?  Probably not.  You know what is inarguable?  Jesus Christ came as fully God and fully man to die in the place of sinful man and to rise again and that through him(regardless of your view on elect/free will) and only him we can be saved.

The mechanism by which this actually works is a bit challenging to work out.  Not that lofty and challenging theological introspection is without value.  But here is the problem, the bible is pretty liberal at mentioning both.  It mentions constantly our responsibility to claim with our lips the Jesus is Lord, AND, it talks about God's elect. 

But, regardless of the actual details of the mechanism, both positions are clear.  It is only through Jesus that it happens. 

How did Jesus deal with the issue of election?

Let's take a look at an interesting exchange in Matthew 15

²¹ Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. ²² A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.”
²³ Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.”
²⁴ He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”
²⁵ The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said.
²⁶ He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”
²⁷ “Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”
²⁸ Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.


Jesus appears to be a bit of a jerk here.  This woman is making quite a scene begging for help, yet he ignores her.  When pressed to respond to her he replies, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel"

Did you catch that?  Jesus had a specific, pre-ordained, ministry goal....shades of Election perhaps??

But this non-elect woman does not stop.  She comes right up to him, kneels before him and calls him Lord.  And Jesus heals her daughter just as if she had been one of the "Elect". 

Jesus was there for a specific people.  God had elected to send him there for them.  But when a non-elect person, by faith, comes to Christ crying "Lord Lord" Jesus commends her for her faith and in no small way shows great love and mercy to her.  In a way, her position transforms from non-elect to elect. 

I cannot deny that the bible speaks with clarity about God's elect.  Yet, here is a beautiful picture of our Savior reaching across that divide to one who was not elected. 

In practice and theology I lean much closer to Reformed and Calvinist theology.  But this is how I personally read scripture regarding this issue.  I do not believe that Election is a mutually exclusive position.  Meaning, ONLY those who are elect will be saved.  Scripture, as I read it, shows that the Elect WILL be saved, but when, by faith and calling upon the name of the Risen Savior, the non-elect come to the feet of Jesus, they will also be saved.

So how do we take this bit of theology and apply it to our lives.  Well, you don't know if you are elect, and neither do I.  But what I do know is that I have a responsibility to respond to the call of the Cross.  And the message of the Gospel is a responsibility that all followers of Christ are called to share. 

When we get lost in debating the nuances of the mechanisms by which God does what He does, we avoid the personal responsibility that we do have.  So let us cut down the rhetoric and start proclaiming that the Cross of Christ is the only hope for ALL men!

What is Pro-Choice Choosing?

One of the most difficult subjects for us to address is death.  Regardless of your religious convictions, the finality of deaths final stamp of conclusion on an individuals journey on the finite mortal coil, it is always difficult to say goodbye.  A foundational philosophical and religious principle for life(and most governance) is the protection of life.  The most egregious crime that you can commit in civilized society is the taking of another's life against their will.

What is obfuscated in the constant rhetoric and argumentative back and forth in the abortion debates is the question of whether or not we are taking another's life "against their will".  Before you ignore that central question let me challenge you to honestly answer the question, "What is the moral, ethical and legal justification for extinguishing a human beings life without its consent?"  

This is the first question that we have to answer.  If the answer is there is never a point where it is justifiable to take another's life, then we have to move on to question two.  Hopefully you are still tracking at this point.....The second question is, "what is life?" 

Neither of these questions are adequately addressed in the context of this debate.  The tired refrain is couched in language about "choice" and "rights" that never delves into the more essential question of what is life, and is murder ever acceptable. 

Let me respond to the inevitable response to my appearing to be flippant about "choice" and "rights".  As already stated, civilized society recognizes murder as an unacceptable immoral act.  Second to murder, an intrinsic reality of a healthy society is to protect those who are weaker from having their rights trampled on by those who are more powerful.  Regardless of the reasoning and the arguments that could be made for the stronger abusing the smaller, justice demands the protection of the oppressed. 

I would hope that no one reading this would want to live in a society where a majority vote could decide what you are and aren't allowed to do and have.  We appropriately look back with shame on the era of slavery and Jim Crow laws.  The self-evident truths that all men are created equal demanded that regardless of one groups opinion, they couldn't willfully take away the rights of others.

When we breeze right past the questions of life and murder and jump right into a debate about rights and choices we are doing a great disservice to the weighty importance of the answers to these questions.

So, what is "life" anyways?  When Roe vs Wade passed, part of the ruling was based on the fact that they did not have an answer of when life began.  Sadly, instead of exploring that question more thoroughly, they lifted the ban and never revisited that essential question. 

In the ensuing decades what we now know about fetal development is light years ahead of where they were at that point.  A heartbeat is measurable by the 6th week.  By the 9th week from gestation all the brain functions necessary to sense and respond to pain are active.  Premature, and viable, births are happening at earlier and earlier stages.  Children born around the 20th week from gestation are surviving.  Albeit, it is a low rate of survivability, it is still happening. 

The inspiration for this post came from an article that my wife posted today about a woman who was about 20 weeks pregnant with twins and was offered money and adoption to not go through with an abortion.  She did it anyways.

This is heart breaking.  From a strictly scientific point of view, that is right at the point of viability.  Regardless of how you feel about abortion in general, two babies, who given just a few more days could have been delivered and given to a loving family who would have raised and cared for those children for the rest of their lives. 

Here is what I am convinced pro-choice is choosing.  It is choosing to define the value of an individuals life on the feelings of another about that life. 

This is a frightening path that we have started on.

If you want to argue about age of viability and super early abortions, that is one thing.  But the pro-choice movement does not only argue for those things.  It is defending the "right" to "choose" to devalue another viable human life simply based on the current location of that life. 

When we accept the premise that a medically viable life does not have a right to life based on someone else's "choice" than we have entered into frightening moral and philosophical territory.  As a society trumps individual values for the opinion of the majority, or the strong(mother) over the weak(unborn child) we have willingly accepted a mindset that creates the framework through which it becomes possible to justify even more immoral decisions.

Once we have accepted that some lives are expendable regardless of what medical science says about the viability of that life, we no longer have the moral "brakes" to stop with at the next stop on the path. 

While my religious convictions convince me of the intrinsic value of all life regardless of developmental stage, I am not arguing for that here.  From a strictly scientific point of view, either life has the right to live unmolested by others, or it does not.  There is no middle ground. 

So how do you define life?  Is all life worthy of defending and protecting, or, just some of it? 

21 week old live birth