I’ve been thinking further on the whole questions of Christians and Jews.
For the disciples, for Paul, and for most early Christians, there was a real confusion about two things:
One, why did the majority of Jews not hear the story of Jesus and immediately believe. After all, they had the Bible. They had known God for thousands of years. They knew that the messiah was coming. Why did they not recognize him when he came?
And two, how come all these people, these non-Jewish Gentiles who had never known the God of the Jews before, how come they were all converting? Why is it that the people who should know, do not; and those who should not know, do? Why is it backwards? After all, if you could stand before all this and guess, you probably would have guessed that the Jews would have been the easy converts. It’s the Gentile pagans, with their many gods and strange myths who should have been the ones who did not get it. What happened? What went wrong?
Not a little bit of the letters of Paul and the other apostles are dedicated to just this problem.
And here is the thing. This is not an ancient problem either. We are still scratching our heads about why those who should know, do not, and those who shouldn’t do. How is it that so many people born and raised in the church drift away, but so many who were never in a church except for a baptism, wedding or funeral, become great and powerful spiritual leaders. This is still a great mystery of our Christian life.
I wish that I could say there is some great insight about this that comes out the scriptures and traditions of mother Church, but there just isn’t. Not really. Whenever the great theologians and spiritual writers speak about this, they say too much. They end up producing ideas and theories which are neither biblical nor comforting. The doctrine of predestination came out of one attempt to explain this very phenomenon of believers and non-believers.
Truthfully, the Bible itself just lets this paradox stand. It chooses not to explain, not really. It gives a lot of half ideas, but never anything that is offered as some sort of absolute dogma for all times.
Sometimes the Bible will imply that believing is all the choice of the individual. You choose to believe or you choose not to believe. Andrew, Peter, John and James were all fishing one day. And Jesus walked up to them and said, “Follow me.” They dropped their nets and they followed. They could have done otherwise, but they did not. They chose to follow Jesus.
Methodists have always liked this, since we are a tradition based on the idea of personal choice and the freedom of the Christian before God.
But, as our Calvinist brethren will sometimes point out, there are other times when the Bible suggests that people not believing has something to do with God. There are more than a few times when the Bible says God hardened this person’s heart or that person’s heart. And there are plenty of passages that say something like “all who were appointed for eternal life believed”. It implies that everyone who believed did so because of God, not because of themselves.
Personally, I like to stick with Jesus on this whole matter. Jesus ends many of his parables with one simple line: “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” He is borrowing a passage which comes from the prophet Ezekiel, who recounts that God saying to him: “Son of man, you are living among a rebellious people. They have eyes to see but do not see and ears to hear but do not hear, for they are a rebellious people.”
There are some people who just hear it and get it and understand it. And, there are just some people who do not.
I have a good friend who is an atheist. When I ask her why she is an atheist she politely says that there is no malice in it. She does not hate God. She does not think religious people are crazy. She does not hate the Church. She does not think that religion is a drug or that we are delusional. She does not think that Christians have done more or less harm in the world than anyone else, that we are more or less hypocritical than the next person on the street. The way she describes it, when she looks up to the sky at night, she just sees stars. That’s it. Nothing more. She has no sense of that there is something more out there. All she can see and hear is that this is all there is. Like anyone else, she has ears to hear and eyes to see, but that is all she sees and hears. And I contrast that with myself. I cannot remember a time when I did not hear, see, and feel in my gut that there was something else. When I look up at the night sky, with the swirling of galaxies and stars and quasars and all of it – I also see the hand of God. And try as I might, I cannot look at the night sky any other way.
For whatever reason, however it happens or happened, I am one of those people that Jesus speaks about when he says if you have ears, then hear. And she is not.
Time for a disclaimer: the Bible does not say that those who do nor hear God’s call are the same as those who are going to Hell. So, don’t inform all your atheist friends that they will never hear God and they’re all gonna fry like a well done wiener at a Fourth of July roast.
The Bible simply says that when it comes to belief, some have vision and hearing, others do not. Final judgment is a whole other thing. The best example of that is Matthew 25 where Jesus tells some people at the end of time they will go to heaven because when He was hungry and they gave him something to eat, when He was thirsty and they gave him something to drink, when He was a stranger and they invited him in, when He needed clothes and they clothed him, and so forth. And they are surprised because they never saw Him when they did any of that. Jesus tells them, “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” But the reason He had to tell them was because they were blind to His presence all along. They did not have eyes to see and ears to hear.
Like my atheist friend, they looked at the poor, hungry, thirsty, naked, stranger and saw just that – a poor, hungry, thirsty, naked, stranger. Nothing more. They did not see Jesus Himself. But that does not mean they are going to hell. In fact, the opposite is very much the case.
For whatever inexplicable reason, some people have eyes to see and others do not. Maybe the Calvinists are right and this is God’s doing. Maybe we Methodists are right and this is all a choice. I don’t know.
I do know this: I never chose to believe in God. I just did and do. I am the lamest Christian in the world. I have no amazing conversion story. I have no miraculous turn about in my life. I have no moment when all was dark and suddenly I walked into a clearing and beheld light as if for the first time. . . I have always beheld the light of God as if for the first time.
And lots of Christians I know are the same way. Even many who have had born-again experiences. Many report that at the moment of their conversion they knew that, in a sense, they has always believed, always known God was there, always had a heart for the Lord, but they had never known it until that time – that there conversion was less a change of heart and more a moment of enlightenment and awakening when they realized what was what, what they had in a sense always believed.
So, maybe the Calvinists are half right, but I also know this:
There have been times in my life when I have seen a trailed for a movie and thought, “I’d really like to see that movie. It looks great.” But then I never do. There are many who stand outside the doors of the Church and fellowship of Jesus Christ and think to themselves, “I should really go there. I think that would be great. That would meaningful. I’ll bet being a part of that would really change things.” But then they don’t.
So, maybe the Methodists are half right too.
But either way, the Bible puts it plain: Some hear, others don’t. Some receive, and other reject. And that is the way of it.
Some can say: “Holy God! You are a God for me, even me! You gave your Son Jesus for me. You let you own child die, and horribly at that, for me, a nobody, a nothing. Me! I would never have done that for you. But it did not stop you from doing that for me! Lord, I am yours from here on out. Blessed me your name forever.”
Others stand at the side and say, “What a bunch of malarkey! Who needs that! What we’ve got it is good and true. Who ever heard of such a thing? What silliness? What unsophisticated drivel! What hypocrites! What a shame to be one of them. Glad I am where I’m at.”
Some hear, and other can’t catch the tune.
If you are bothering to read this blog, it is probable because you are one of those people who can hear. Maybe not well. I can’t claim to have perfect pitch when it comes to the Word of God, either. But you are one of those people who – for whatever reason – has vision. I hope you wake up every morning and thank God for that. You are blessed. We are blessed for that.
And if you do not have that vision, I ask you to pray for it and perhaps it will come. Or ask for the experience of others or myself, and perhaps through our seeing you too will see.
The one thing Jesus leaves out in His parables is the one thing that goes without saying: if you are seer or a hearer, there is nothing like it. If you see and hear, it is like being blind but having perfect vision, like being deaf but hearing everything. It is an awareness of what happens beyond the veil of the visible world, of the reality that is behind reality, that is more real than reality itself.
I’d go on, but frankly, words are too poor and small. If you have eyes to see and ears to hear, you know what I am talking about anyway. And if you don’t, you can’t know until the scales have dropped and you have looked into the depths and see God staring back at you.
Receive! Hear! See!
Tags: Salvation, Heaven, Hell, Holy Spirit by Administrator
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Rev. Jerry Fallwell collapsed at his Liberty University office today and died. He was 73.
