(r)E(f)LECTION
Many remember it vividly, lunch the first day of high school, the groups of students merging into one as they begin their final years of schooling. Former competitors now teammates, strangers now friends, the social hierarchy of these former middle-schoolers now in conflict as they question who can sit with who as both groups enter the lunchroom. Who’s in? Who’s out? Then as now, we desire to know. For better or worse, there seems to be some thing in us that puts people into groups. Seen as innocent in our adolescense, as we grow older this tendency to determine who is in or out has caused divisions in relationships and families and can be seen as the cause of wars and genocide.
This is only a glimpse as to why the topic of election is such a sensitive subject because of our ‘natural’ bent to separate and divide, forgive and condemn. A question some might place on election, or identifying God’s people, would be framing it by asking: ‘Does God get what God wants?’[1]But in reality the question that is being asked is, do I get what I want? Or better, do those who are different than me, or those that have harmed or wronged me get theirs? God loves me, but can or does He love them? Without transparency with our own longings, our differing cultural and social lens, and ourselves the discussion around election becomes more about ourselves than about God. Even our interpretation of Scripture is all the more compromised, especially if we hold to the belief that within it we find ultimate truth. It is with this hesitance that I proceed as John Calvin rightly stated in exploring this topic:
Let them remember that they are penetrating in the recesses of the divine wisdom, where those who rush forwardly securely and confidently, instead of satisfying their curiosity, will enter into a inextricable labyrinth.[2]
We easily could claim one of the three major perspectives on the topic of election: Calvinist, Arminian, or Universalist. Articulating one over the other points to a truer, loving, and gracious God yet if it were only this simple questions would not still remain while we look at Scripture, from the Hebrew scriptures, to the words of Christ, to His later followers. Tremendous clarity can be seen in the words we read and also the same amount of tension as the maze around this topic exposes itself, this ‘exclusivity on the other side of inclusivity’[3].
Calvin writes: ‘Those secrets of God’s will, which he has seen fit to manifest, are revealed in his word—revealed in so far as he knew would be conductive to our interest and welfare’[4] going further to then warn us ‘For it will show us that the moment we go beyond the bounds of the Word we are off course, in darkness , and must stumble, go astray, and fall’[5]. So we dive tentatively we dive into the Sacred Word, clinging to it and in turn God to reveal Himself to us.
We encounter passages from Christ and in the Gospels where He speaks of great openness, seeking and desiring all yet there is tension. As in Matthew when we read Jesus saying ‘All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father’ – echoing the statements elsewhere of a God that offers is love to all.[6]Jesus continues ‘and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him’ - there is the exclusivity, in some manner and way Jesus chooses to reveal Himself to the world. Of course, the passage does not stop there, after this exclusivity Jesus closes it by saying ‘Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’[7] Through Christ, the formula as to who He chooses occurs should be held as a divine ministry - that through God becoming man, in His life, death, resurrection and ascension His calling on all has been placed; that through Him the law has been fulfilled and ‘it is finished’[8]. Our posture then should be one of reverence, for as Calvin rightly stated ‘God has always been at liberty to bestow his grace on whom he would’, not where we might prefer or like but where He pleases through His infinite love and wisdom.
Often we turn to the academics for clarity and perspective on the complex and dividing, neglecting the artist and poet but maybe our modern psalmist put forth the posture God might desire us to hold when they say:
But grey is not a compromise - it is the bridge between two sides.
I would even argue that it is the color that most represents God's eyes.[9]
Because in the end, God does get what God wants.
[1]Rob Bell, Love Wins (New York: HarperOne, 2011), 97.
[2]Hans J. Hillerbrand, The Protestant Reformation (New York: Harper Perennial, 2009), 216.
[3]Bell, Love Wins, 154-155.
[4]Hillerbrand, The Protestant Reformation, 216.
[5]Hillerbrand, The Protestant Reformation, 217
[6]Matthew 9:35-38, 25: 31-46; Luke 9:49-50, 14:12-25; John 3:16
[7]Matthew 11:27-28
[8]John 19:30
[9]Ryan O’Neal, 101010 by Sleeping at Last. November, 2010.