Does God always get what he wants?

Departing from my stroll down soteriological street for a moment, I want to have a look at a contemporary Canadian music artist who recently performed in Vancouver BC, Ron Sexsmith.

Sexsmith wrote a song entitled "God Loves Everyone" that has almost become the theme song of neXus. Apparently his inspiration for the lyrics was the horrific murder of a gay Univ. of Wyoming student in 1998 named Matthew Shepard.

"The crime itself was horrible enough," says Sexsmith, "but I remember reading about the trial, where there were these folks standing outside with signs saying, 'God hates fags' or "Burn in hell fags.' I couldn't believe that people could actually have those kinds of thoughts. That's where the song started for me. From there, I got in to just trying to write a song about unconditional love, I guess."

Here are the lyrics. If you would like to hear it sung, YouTube has it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7Bs7Do8yAI.

God loves everyone
Like a mother loves her son
No strings at all
Unconditional
Never one to judge
Would never hold a grudge
'Bout what's been done
God loves everyone

There are no gates in heaven
Everyone gets in
Queer or straight
Souls of every faith
Hell is in our minds
Hell is in this life
But when it's gone
God takes everyone

Its love is like a womb
It's like the air from room to room
It surrounds us all
The living and the dead
May we never lose the thread
That bound us all

The killer in his cell
The atheist as well
The pure of heart
And the wild at heart
Are all worthy of its grace
It's written in the face
Of everyone
God loves everyone

There's no need to be saved
No need to be afraid
Cause when it's done
God takes everyone

God loves everyone


The words are true to the extent that that nothing is beyond the reach of God: not evil, not hardship, not death. As the lovely old George Beverly Shea hymn puts it:

The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell.
It goes beyond the highest star
And reaches to the lowest hell.

My difficulty with Sexsmith's song, which is the same problem I have with universalism, is that it suffers from the identical fundamental flaw as Calvinism/Lutheranism; i.e., it fails to account sufficiently for the doctrine of human choice, or free will.

If we were to accept the position that the Kingdom of God, rather than Hell, is the default position for all of humankind (the idea that I have been exploring in earlier posts), we still have to decide if one can opt out of the Kingdom as an exercise of free will. [Whether opting out means one is doomed to a literal Hell or to something else is not the main point here.]

Or to put it another way, while God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance, does God always get what he wants? I invite your comments.