Theology from the ground up

Christianity would be a lot more fun if it weren't for two aspects of our faith that at times make it almost unbearable. The first of these is the reality of evil and suffering. The second is the doctrine of free will, or human choice. The two tend to come as a package deal.

I can't be bothered to give you the usual theological explanations for these two phenomena. I find that they satisfy me cognitively, but leave me cold in the affective domain. I draw my own conclusions on the basis of human experience rather than from systematic theology books.

Although my late, sainted father-in-law never said these words to my knowledge, they certainly suited his view of human existence: "Life is hard, then you die." While not entirely lacking joy, happiness, or contentment in his life, he still plowed through the years with a sobriety, a wariness, and the conviction that "we are not of this world", which in the main he found baffling and off-putting.

In some ways, I don't blame him. Not only is human existence one of constant compromise as one tries to live in this world of shifting and relative principles, values, and goals, but one has to hold to absolutist notions of the goodness, power, and love of God while trying to explain why bad things happen to good people. I nearly lost my faith when six aviation students, some of them my students at Trinity Western University, encountered very bad weather and flew into the side of a mountain. One of them was a former police officer with a lovely wife and a young family who left his profession to attend a Christian university.

People of faith have gone various directions with this. The Calvinists remove the problem of free will by holding to predestination of the saved and the damned. The universalists try to remove the problem of suffering by maintaining that every human being, no matter how evil, will eventually be reconciled to God and to the humanity that they have brutalized for a life-time. Mr. Hitler, meet Rev. Bonhoeffer and Rabbi Cohen. Shake hands and hugs all round.

Ron Sexsmith's song (see my post of April 26/11) falls into this latter category:

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

Here's my problem. God appears to take our life on earth very seriously. I often wonder why he does. It's such a short time as compared to the eternity that is to follow. It's so full of pain, hopelessness, and despair for so many of the world's inhabitants. Yet he sees it as so important that not only does he permit horrid things to happen, but more often than not he does not interfere with what goes on, no matter how opposed these events are to what he says is his will. The controversial book The Shack by William Young wrestles with this reality.

Through all this garbage Christians are to be faithful, joyful, optimistic, and self-disciplined, even when the world appears to be going to Hell in a hand-basket.

God's plan made a hopeful beginning
But man spoiled his chances by sinning.
We trust that the story
Will end in God's glory,
But at present the other side's winning.

The only conclusion that I can come to about this is that God places an incredibly high value on free will. Nothing else can explain it.

[Well, that's not strictly true. God not really being all-loving, all-powerful, or everywhere present would also explain it, but then we're on to a very different topic.]

If human choice, and the consequences that flow from it, are that important to God, why would he, in the final analysis, cast it aside either by predestination (no real choice), or universalism (no real consequences).

Thus I am looking for middle ground that makes better sense of God's revelation than the tradition of certain knowledge, which I have been exploring in earlier posts. neXus is on that road with me. Taking God's revelation to its logical conclusion, what is the eternal fate of his creation?