The Two Fates

     "That ye may be blameless and pure, the sons of God, without fault, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world [alt: as stars in the universe]." Philippians 2:15

     We are stars shed from the blood of the sun, the sparks of a greater flame that is infinite and glorious, sending us flying upward into the pitch black sky of night. We are in constant rebellion against the dark: we will not conform to its shades and secret sins. Like a new caretaker purchases a rotting old building and begins by replacing a bulb in a dark alleyway: the roaches flee and the caretaker begins his repairs. So we too, having been purchased by God through His blood and pain and having our old deformities set right, we shine in the dark places as our master sets to fix the whole.

     God did not call people to merely escape from Hell; He has called us to bear the fruits of His fire. Read Galatians 5:22-23. There are the fruits of the Spirit; there is the result of being one with the consuming fire. If you have not these things, then you are still a dead ember lying lifeless on the ash heap of the world. A fire is coming for you and your kind, but you will not survive it.

     Hence are our two fates: to burn or to burn. To be filled up by the fiery Spirit of God like an overfilled cup or to be drowned in an infinite ocean of His fiery wrath. To the burning Love or the burning Wrath you must flee. The choice is yours; the results are eternal.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2009

Terror and Beauty in Salvation Freely Offered

"Ho, everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money, come ye, buy and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price." Isaiah 55:1

"Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Matthew 11:28

The absolute 'freeness' of salvation can be the biggest single stumbling-block for most people. Every other religion in the world requires a human price-tag for salvation. Facets of 'Christianity' still hold to it (e.g. Roman Catholicism). True and traditional Christianity, however, understood only one requirement asked of men, and that is "Come," come and take what is being freely offered.

Man thought of salvation as some sort of unreachable gift, as though it was perched atop a mountain of thorns, and none could truly survive the quest to reach it. Christianity comes alone, however, and presents salvation like samplers at a dinner party, to which we have all be invited, and God is walking about with salvation on a silver platter asking each and every one, "Salvation, sir?" "Salvation, madam?" All the while, we stand about with the simple yet terrible choice: accept or reject; take salvation freely offered, or reject it and leave. Salvation's 'freeness' is equally beautiful and terrifying: as easily as we could accept it, we can just as easily reject it.

"Can it be true that

Salvation is paid in full

And there are no more

Hoops to jump through

Anymore...?"

-Jon Vowell

Legacy of Righteousness

"Hearken unto me, ye stubborn-minded, that are far from righteousness: I bring my righteousness near; it shall not be far off, and my salvation shall not tarry, and I will place salvation in Zion for Israel my glory." Isaiah 46:12, 13

We do not go and get God's righteousness; it comes to us. Our Sin keeps us from obtaining it, kept all of us from obtaining it. It is only because Christ came to us that we can obtain God's righteousness, and it is only when God shines the light of His glorious gospel on us that we are even in a position to receive His righteousness. Until the sunlight of His gospel falls on us, we are frozen in our cave of shadows. When it hits us, we can either receive the light or reject it for our shadows. It is our choice, but we have to make a choice. When the gospel hits you, there is no neutral ground.
Righteousness is neither something you are born with or obtain; it is something you receive. This grates against man's rebellious pride. Man cannot carve out his own legacy of righteousness; he can not say, "Look what I did to obtain it." He can only point to the legacy of another and say, "Look what He did so that I may receive it."

"What You have You give to me,
For I am poor and You are Rich.
I have nothing, and You give me Everything.
I am nothing without You..."
-Jon Vowell

Your Choice (and Not Your Choice)

"...I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, 'My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure....'" Isaiah 46:9b, 10

The will of God is set in stone, a foundational reality laid down before the foundations of the world. Contrary to what you may have heard, there is a plan, an over-arching scheme to all things, and nothing has or can prevent it: not a war in Heaven, not a Fall, not tribulations, not death or life, not angels or demons, not kings or kingdoms, nor the limitations of the physical world. It is an abiding reality that serves as a comfort to those who are with God (Romans 8:28), and a terror to those who are against Him (Isaiah 47:12-14).
"I have set before you life and death...therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live." (Deuteronomy 30:19) The great mystery of this whole thing is that God's immutable will is never forced upon us. We have the choice to reject it and go astray. Our rejecting it does not inhibit it or hinder it; it will merely roll right over you, and you will be crushed underneath it, if you choose so. We have no choice in whether or not God's will is fulfilled; it shall be fulfilled. The only choice we have is whether we are with Him or against Him when it is fulfilled.

"Destined for either fire or fire.
May Your presence be the only burning
That I know..."
-Jon Vowell

Christian Nihilism, and Some Wrestlings

"Who hath wrought and done it, calling the generations from the beginning? I the Lord, the first and the last; I am He...
"Thou, Israel, art my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham my friend...I have chosen thee..." Isaiah 41:4, 8-9

Before I begin, I would like to apologize to my brothers and sisters who hold Calvinistic views of predestination (or anything else). I am not trying to be biting are mean, but merely state what I believe on the subject. I in no way seek to dishonor John Calvin or what he has done in Protestantism specifically and Christianity as a whole. I do not in any way wish to cause any alienation between my fellow Christians and I. I just want you to know where I stand and take it as you will.
The place Calvinism (generally speaking) gives to God's sovereignty, though quite pious, is actually quite despairing in the end. We are no longer awed or enraptured; we are terrified and confounded. We feel immutable destiny closing in around us, and freedom is lost in a darkened swirl of faceless tyranny,. Our lives mean nothing anymore: eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die as God says so. There is no motive or point to action or initiative anymore; we are mere puppets on a string, and even our defiance of the puppetry is merely more puppetry. Life means nothing now; we may as well be machines to be programmed, animals to be controlled, but not persons to be known. Do not be surprised if this all sounds like Nietchize. Calvinism and Calvinistic ideas on God's sovereignty end, at the end of the day, in Christian Nihilism.
The fact is that Calvinistic and Hyper-Calvinistic ideas about predestination and election are, in reality, too simple. Instead of trying to cover all the facts in regards to understanding the relationship between God's sovereignty and man's freewill, they take an easy road: "What is the relationship between sovereignty and freewill? Why, there is no relationship between the two! There is merely sovereignty, and that's it! Freewill is an illusion (Nietchize anyone?)! That should solve all the debates." Such "pick-and-choose" logic hardy solves any debate, but instead creates new ones (ex: What purpose is Christ? Is John 3:16 a lie? What about Ezekiel 33:11?) and gives atheist enough firepower to level the whole of Christendom (the absence of freewill means that God is a egocentric sadist as He mercilessly and arbitrarily destroys and exalts, damns and saves His creation, as He wills, for no other reason than for more glory to Himself). My friends, the relationship, the dance (if you will) between sovereignty and freewill needs to be wrestled with, not dismissed. What follows is my own personal (and incomplete) wrestlings with two choices of God: of Israel, and of the Church. Take them for what they are, as you will.
Why did God choose Israel? In truth, no one knows why God picked them (i.e., those specific people) other than He wanted to. Why does an author make one character the hero and another the villain, one more vital to the plot and another not? Because: he is trying to tell a story. The same is true with God. He is trying to tell us a story, and that story is not about His glory, per se, i.e., God's story is not Him saying, "Look at Me!" His story is about redemption, i.e., God's story is Him saying, "Look at Me, and be saved." There is a difference between a story's end and its content. The end is His glory; the content is redemption. Jesus was God's glory (as I John says), but Him coming to earth was not about God's glory; He was about redemption (which is to and for God's glory). The same is true with Israel. Why did God choose them? We do not know. Why did God choose anybody at all? To serve as His witnesses (Isaiah 43:7-10; 44:1-2, 8), to testify of His truth, to be a light to the nations, to let all know that there is only one God and in Him alone is salvation (Isaiah 43:11). God does not choose us because of us, but because He has a story to tell (see Daniel 2:27-30).
Why did God chose us for salvation? For the same reason He chose Israel: He has a story to tell. He did not, however, predestine us as the elect. He predestined Christ as the Elect, and all who are of Him are the elect, are "accepted in the beloved," the beloved who is Christ (Romans 8:29; Galatians 3: 16, 26-29; Ephesians 1:3-14). Christ is the Elect, and neither is there salvation in any other whereby men might be saved. In order to be elect, you must choose to be of the Elect; in order to be "accepted," you must choose to be "in the beloved." Thus is the paradox, thus is the dance of sovereignty and free will. God chose Christ; we cannot change that immutable fact. We can either get with it or not, as we choose. The will of God is unchanging, His sovereignty immutable; but our attendance in it is not required. We can be swept up in it or run over by it, as we will.

"To You or to nothing,
We have the choice.
Condemned to be free,
We have no right not to choose..."
-Jon Vowell

The Inescapable Choice

"O Lord, by [your works] men live, and in all these things is the life of my spirit: so wilt thou recover me, and make me to live." Isaiah 38:16

It is true that our destinies are in our own hands, but there are only two destinies to pick from: into the will of God, or out of it. We may end up in endless possible places: as a missionary, a millionaire, a lower or upper middle class citizen, a happy person with a good life, a horrendous monster, and so on, endless possibilities layered with endless variables, as far as the imagination can stretch and as deep as it can dig. For all the possibilities, however, they all have as their basis one of two choices: with God's will, or without it. Either your life is a living amalgamation of surrenders to the will of God, or you have consistently rejected it and consequently have been consistently left behind by it. Those are the only two ways to go. They both branch out into endless possible paths, but all those endless paths began at one of those two choices, and they take you one step closer to either Heaven or Hell.
Humanity cannot escape that choice, and that is most surely aggravating. I think most people want neither to accept nor reject God's will, but simply for God to leave them alone. Unfortunately, that wishes is granted in Hell, for Hell is God leaving you alone for all eternity. "By Him men live, and in Him is the life of my spirit." Outside of God, there is no life, love, joy, peace, hope, or anything that is "good and green" in this world. As Lewis put it, "God cannot give man happiness outside of Himself," not because He is cruel or selfish, but because "these is no such thing." Life is found in Him alone. No matter what our excuses, any middle ground we invent, even the most logical and noble, leads away to Hell if it does not have God in its equation. We choose either God or not-God, and not-God is Hell. We can choose to reject Him in the end, but we cannot escape the consequence of our choice.

"Life and Light of men,
All other ground is sinking sand..."
-Jon Vowell