How do you sleep at night?

[Knight]

I recently heard a pastor on a local radio show saying some things from a very arminian perspective with regards to sharing the gospel and it got me to thinking...

If you are a good arminian and believe that it is man that chooses Christ and no one is predestined then how do you share the gospel? If you believe that what you say or do may convince them of the truth of the gospel or that you may actually turn them off from it with a mistake or a bad presentation then how do you sleep at night? After all, this is nothing short of eternity at stake!

If I thought that I had to convince someone of the gospel with a persuasive argument I'd be constantly worried and frustrated. Thank God for His soveriengty and grace that surpasses our megar abilities.

 

[kimlva]

Interesting! I have something to share from experience. I was Arminian for years. When I got married, 13 years ago, neither my husband nor I were saved. About a year or so later, after I had my first daughter, I started being interested in Christianity and started going to your typical arminian Baptist church. I was saved (or I think so, anyway), but for years, was afraid to share the gospel with my husband, because I was afraid I would offend him and push him away with it, rather than draw him to it. Truth be known, I didn't even know the true gospel, but you get the idea. I wouldn't dare to try to share anything with him from the Bible or from church, because I believed it all depended on me and how I did things. He did try going to church with us for awhile, but never liked it, nor had any interest whatsoever in the things of God.

To make a long story short, a couple years ago or so, my eyes were opened to grace when I decided that some of the stuff I was hearing in church was inconsistant, and just decided to read the Bible for what it says, without trying to explain anything away. Of course, once that happened, I was ravenous, and sought out all I could find on the doctrines of grace and Calvinism (which I did not even know what was until I was called one and looked it up). So, I started listening to a calvinist pastor on the internet that I "just happened" to have a link to on my computer that some guy from a message board had recommended about a year before. My husband started listening with me in the evenings. Well, when he heard the true gospel, and could then make sense out of the Bible, he was saved and now is a believer. Thank God for His sovereignty and His wise plans for us!!

 

[xapis]

Interesting perspective, Knight. Calvinists are so often scorned by Arminians with the tired old "if God has already decided, why do you even have to evangelize?" argument. This is definitely an angle I've thought of before but never really in the light you've put it under with the "how do you sleep at night?" question.

...and that's a great story, kimlva. When I look back at all the conversions I've seen of friends and family members, it's not hard to see that God's grace falls on us... it finds us... we really don't "seek it out" unless we've already been (evidently) drawn.

Blessings,
Lane

 

[arunma]

I recently heard a pastor on a local radio show saying some things from a very arminian perspective with regards to sharing the gospel and it got me to thinking...

If you are a good arminian and believe that it is man that chooses Christ and no one is predestined then how do you share the gospel? If you believe that what you say or do may convince them of the truth of the gospel or that you may actually turn them off from it with a mistake or a bad presentation then how do you sleep at night? After all, this is nothing short of eternity at stake!

If I thought that I had to convince someone of the gospel with a persuasive argument I'd be constantly worried and frustrated. Thank God for His soveriengty and grace that surpasses our megar abilities.

I've always had the same difficulty with Arminianism. If salvation is man's choice, then those of us who share the Gospel with others are essentially playing with their immortal souls. When I'm not talking about science, I am not at all a very persuasive individual. So if salvation were not entirely the work of God, I would probably never preach Christ to anyone, out of concern of driving them away from the Gospel.

 

[Knight]

Thanks for the responses...

I've thought about this for awhile. Ever since I heard a prominent pastor (who will remain nameless) talk about finding that one thing in any person's life that will convince them of the truth of the gospel and convert them to Christ.

For goodness sake, I think I'd go mad if I thought the eternal destiny of anyone was in my hands. I can't help but think of my children. They are my primary responsibility when it comes to teaching the gospel. To think that their eternal destiny was up to me would send me cowering in a corner...

 

[healthygirl88]

i don't know if i can answer this question or not because i'm not calvinist or reformed or anything, but i sleep fine at night. I do believe in free will and i know how to witness. I also believe people can be turned off of God if it's brought up wrong i've seen it happened and actually i've been turned off by some calvinists on how they presented their beliefs to me and how they treated me. If you believe in going out and sending missionaries to witness i don't understand the difference. you go out and tell people about God you have patience and you show them His love you plant a seed and pray. i don't understand how it's any harder for us to sleep than you. personally i would have more trouble sleeping if i believed in predestination because then i would see God as mean God who picks and chooses instead of a loving God who lets us make our own descisions and wants us all to be christians not just a chosen few, but that's just my opinion take what you want out of it. i just thought considering your talking about things outside your denomination it might be better answered by an outsider.

 

[GratiaCorpusChristi]

Wow. What I nice way to turn the Arminian 'how do you sleep at night?' question on its head. My applause.

 

[kimlva]

Is this the "Ask an Arminian" section?

 

[kimlva]

To actually answer the OP, I think the way most can sleep at night is that they are not consistant at all. They never follow their beliefs to their logical conclusion. I did, which is why it worried me incessantly that I would mess up in witnessing to my husband when I believed that way.

If, as they believe, we have complete free will, and it is up to us whether to accept Jesus or not, and that God is perfectly "fair" (their definition of fair), then He cannot give His grace to anyone who doesn't want it, and He cannot give more grace to someone just because we pray for that person. That would not be "fair." So therefore, the logical conclusion would be that our prayers actually do no good because God cannot infringe upon anybody's free will anyway. That leaves everything up to human "wisdom" and manipulation to get people to believe what we want. So, therefore, we must be very careful to figure out exactly what it takes to get someone to make that "decision," and not drive them the wrong direction.

 

[jer3119]

Another way to look at is in the word pictures the Scriptures use.

They say such people need to be "awakened", as in "awake sleeper, and Christ will give thee light".

So, it appears that they are spiritually asleep, and dreaming they are safe when they are not. So the question is really not how can they sleep, for they can do nothing else, until they are awakened.

I like kimlva's explanation about inconsistency of thought, of not carrying through their believes to their logical conclusion, which explains how the word picture of the scripture actually works out in people's life. It is much like a fleshly dream where things don't make sense, they sort of skip around, and the scene changes for no apparent reason.

For years it bothered me, sort of, that things didn't make sense. And part of it was due of course to my own fallen nature (first cause), but I was also in a church that taught that one couldn't really understand the scriptures themselves and thus needed a pastor to explain what they meant (protestant priest craft), so this would always be my explanation for what was explained away and didn't make sense.

But then, like kimlva, the Lord led me to forget what "they" said the Bible meant, and to start reading it myself trying to ignore what I had been taught. Right away things made sense, but I still doubted that I understood them correctly until I found godly teachers who had lived out the things they believed, and I found that they explained things in a way that "echoed" what the Spirit was saying in my heart.

Men like Bunyan come to mind, for I could see that he had nothing to gain and everything to loose, humanly speaking, for taking the path he did. And also that God honored his writings in a way that he did no other man's mans in all the history of the church, especially in Pilgrims Progress. Since there are no accidents, this seemed to me to be something that God did for a reason. I read many others and gleaned something from all of them, but as I had come to the scriptures late, am a slow reader, and was much confused by human teaching (for those who have ever remodeled a house instead of starting from scratch with a new one it is easy to see how "building right" from scratch in the new house is much easier because you don't have so much junk and rotten wood, and unplumb walls and unsquare corners, to tear down and get out of the way before you build it right); so... I felt I must read what seemed to me to be the "best of the best".

As I read P. Progress over and over, each time I could see the deep deep wisdom there and how it answered so many of the really deep and puzzeling questions that I wondered about what true Christianity "looks like".

Finally, even as I wrote this it came to mind that it is not only unbelievers and Arminians who are subject to spiritual sleep, but Bunyan wrote of this danger both early and late in "Christians" journey to the Celestial city. He feel asleep on the "hill difficulty" and paid a heavy price. And then again, when spiritually mature and near the end of their journey, the "shepherds" warned Christian and Hopeful of the "enchanted ground" where they were much in danger of spiritual sleep.

In Christ's love,
jer3119

 

[Adammi]

If I thought that I had to convince someone of the gospel with a persuasive argument I'd be constantly worried and frustrated. Thank God for His soveriengty and grace that surpasses our megar abilities.

Amen.

 

[cubanito]

As a Calvarminian, I sleep extra nice. The Augustinian (Calvinist) perspective informs me it is all up to God, and the Arminian that God ultimately gives everyone exactly what they want.

As an agnostic, I had decided that if there were a God, It would be beyond my ability to fully comprehend. Thus such doctrines as the Trinity, or Sovereignty, never raised a problem for me. Rather it were the many other understandable and logical gods of the various religions and philosophies that I found suspiciously shallow.

Reading the Bible I met the kind of complex "wrinkled" texture that reality has. That stubborness to be fully accounted for, not altogether irrational, but just on the other edge of logic. While that in itself did not convince me to become a Christian, it definitely impressed me. The Christian God is still the only one I can not fully understand. To me it has always seemed highly irrational to presupose God is subject to rules of logic that are nowhere mentioned in Scripture, and which do not serve to fully account for nature.

So yes, following any one perspective to it's "logical conclusion" will lead one to a stark dilemma: a capricious God or an impotent God. However, where praytell IN SCRIPTURE (not in the Renaissance musings of Erasmus or Calvin) does it say that God is bound by our particular brand of "logic?"

I know there are many who disagree with this, but I truly believe that human reason is an idol among us Presbys. God is God, and His very manner of thinking is not our manner of thinking. What rules He applies to Himself are not dictated by some human philosophical system of reason, no matter how useful or pretty. If that means a God who will almost, but never quite, fit into a systematics, so be it.

In God "Justice and Mercy kiss," and "ALL things are possible with God." So we have a real choice, and our prayers (or lack of them) a real effect. Yet it is also true all is His choice, and none ours.

So in one sense, I guess I am a super-duper Calvinist. I not only affirm God's Sovereignty of action, but God's Sovereignty of thought. He says we have a choice. He says we do not. Both are then true, and so "logic" does not bind nor explain Him. I am utterly dependent, more so than the typical Calvinist that thinks He can box God with a cute acronym. He is the Lily of the field, not the TULIP of the well-manicured human garden.

Yet I do not regret the loss of my mind. I had already lost that during theoretical math, Einsteinian relativity (where considerations of perspective force paradoxically true conclusions), and whatever shred of reason I had left Quantum Mechanics had long ago made a mockery of. So if the quaint system of logic can't even cope with the natural, how do we suppose it can chain God?

Reason is a good, heathy staple. It tastes better with a dash of mystery. Does not the Scriptures read to you this way? A solidly reasonable (if miraculous) historical account with an occasional zinger of a Nephilim that dosen't quite fit?

Of course, to have as the main course the spice of mystery, with a dash of reason is not healthy at all, as trying to eat an ounce of steak among a pound of spices. For the most part the Scriptures are very reasonable, logical fare. But on occasion Scripture gives us something, like the Trinity, especially that part where God cries out in quote of the Psalmist "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" that is just beyond our comprehension.

And so I sleep quite soundly. Knowing what I do, and fail to do, really does matter; but that God has it all worked out on His end as well. I get my cake and eat it too.

How Satan must twist in anger at how unfair God is. It's like playing chess with a grandmaster. Even though you may know all the rules, you are mated by the third move, and don't even know it.

JR