A while ago I promised that I would write about my time in seminary. As some of you know I loved seminary. It was the best two years of my life. It was also the hardest part of my life. When God lead me to Portland I had no idea what I was in for. I did not expect for God to change my life so much. I remember moving up here and moving in with my sister and brother in law. ( People that I loved as family but didn’t really know as individuals.) I remember my first day of class. Christian Theology with Dr. Paul Metzger. That class was the tipping point for seminary. It changed me. It literally changed me. I remember the first thing we talked about. Our human nature to run from God. All we do is run from God. We never run towards him, if we do it is because he has turned us around. I was confused. I believed that I had realized how much I needed God and turned around, asked him to rescue me and he did. In my reality that is true. In my past that is how it happened, however the truth of the matter is that God chased after me until I was tired of running from him. It was only in my all my brokenness that God was able to pick me up. I surrendered to him because I couldn’t do anything else. I didn’t make a cognitive decision to turn to him, but a helpless one. The decision wasn’t mine, it was his because I had no other choices. It was his because I was nothing else. It was God.
I wrestled with this for a while. Doesn’t the fact that I turned to God make my choice to follow him that much greater. But I never did make a choice. God was after my heart all the time, it was just a matter of time and I think that is more powerful in the great scheme of things. This is grace. Not works. If I had made that choice to allow God to save me, it doesn’t become salvation but self-serving. There is nothing that I can do to save myself. Only God can save me and the sooner I realize this the more I am able to surrender to him the life that is already his. I am not giving him something that he doesn’t already have; he is merely taking back what was his to begin with. It’s a strange thing to think about, don’t you think? There is truly nothing I can do to save myself. We keep thinking that when we ask God into our hearts, we are saved. What I’ve learned over and over again through sermons, people, scripture is that we can’t do anything to save ourselves. We deserve hell, but since God loved us so much he sent his son so that we wouldn’t end up there. It isn’t this contract, not at all. It isn’t want people think it is. It’s a relationships. It is something beautiful and perfectly orchestrated by God. Yes He has given us the “choice” to enter into relationship but honestly God knows all. But as humans, in all the wonderful humanity that God created us to be, he wants to love him freely and willingly. You might say, “whoa whoa, how does that work? That doesn’t make any sense.” And why should it. It’s a mystery. Its one of the great mysteries of life. God created us to feel, to love, to laugh, to have emotion and to be in communion with him. The more I wrestle with this the more I surrender to God. He gave us minds and hearts. He didn’t just give us one or the other but both so that we can love and ponder his wonder. And the thing is, He wants to hear from us. He wants us to share with him in our struggles and pain. It might seem strange but it is true. But then you might ask, what about all the suffering in the world. And I say, What about it? We did that. We caused that. As Christians I wish we would stop preaching all this love and goodness. Don’t get me wrong I think those things are important but sometimes, just sometimes, we need to get down to the nitty gritty and say, I messed up. We messed up. We as Christians messed it up. We strive to live our own lives and think that we can make it on our own but we can’t. I wish that when people talked about apologetics, that they would realize the first thing about apologetics is to apologize. Christians aren’t immune or above suffering. Most of the suffering in the world is caused by so called “Christians”. Not all but some, but even if we didn’t cause it, why aren’t we there to stop it and save those who are suffering. All these things are bound up in our fallen human nature and that is why we can’t save ourselves. We can’t even save each other. We can’t even see each other in all our brokenness. It is only when we come face to face with God and we realize that he has been chasing us all the time. Honestly I keep going round and round but it may never make sense. This is a whole predestination, free will, and choice debate. The bottom line is I live for Christ. Yes he knows all but that shouldn’t stop me from being in relationship with Him. For me, he has invited me to be in relationship with him and he wants to know me in everything part that I am. As a mere child of His, I think that’s pretty stinking awesome. I honestly believe that if keep debating about predestination vs free will, we will miss the relationship God has intended for us. Not only does it keep me humble but also it reminds me of his greatness. It reminds me of my weakness and my need to lean on him for everything. That first day I knew that my faith, my life, my God would never be the same. Seminary destroyed me. It chewed me up and spat me back out. I loved every second of it. (knowing myself all to well, I’ll probably keep thinking through the theology of free will vs predestination but I won’t bore it with you now)
So I know this was suppose to be about seminary, but it clearly wasn’t. The next post will dive more into that.
