Free Will Run Amok

Customarily, LifeWay – the publication agency of the Southern Baptist Convention – produces decent content in its materials produced for Bible study in Sunday school classes. But in a recent study one can find an example of what happens when the human-free-will/God’s-sovereignty tension tilts to heavily toward the side of human free will (Explore the Bible, March 22, “Follow the Lord’s Will,” Dr. Jere Phillips).

The lessons opens with a dialogue between “Mavis” and “John” about a drunk driver who crashed and killed two people. John concludes “I guess it was God’s will and their time to go.” Phillips suggests at this point that John’s assessment is not correct. Here is Phillips’ response to John and his introduction to the remainder of the lesson (which focuses on Isaiah 24:1 – 35:10):

Too often adults use the expression “God’s will” to suggest everything
that happens is exactly what God desired to happen. Such a view reduces
God’s will to fate. It overlooks God’s gift to humans of a free will as
well as the consequences of human choices. Because God gave humans the
responsibility to choose their actions, we can say that all consequences of bad
choices are God’s will only in the sense that He permitted them. That is
not the same, however, as saying God desired the bad choices or caused
them.

According to His Word, God wants the best for us. Therefore His
will is for us to recognize Him as Lord and to follow His guidance in our
everyday living.

This is a mass of confusion, to say the least.

Using Phillips’ own example of the drunk driver, it is difficult to determine – using Phillips’ “free will” paradigm – whose bad choices are responsible for the deaths of two pedestrians. Certainly the drunk driver’s choice is in issue, but what about the choices of the pedestrians? What “bad choices” did they make that resulted in their deaths? To be standing in that particular spot? To shop at that store? To leave at that time? To leave the house that morning? The answer is that NONE of them is “bad”. They did not abuse their “free will.” But in a “free will” universe, the victims of such an accident are left searching through an endless array of choices for the one that accounts for the “consequence” of their being mowed down by a drunk driver. They are forced to flounder about, desperately seeking to understand how they failed to recognize God as Lord, how they failed to follow his guidance and avoid death by automobile.

Rather than “God’s will” being reduced to “fate,” this idea that God is not involved in directing human choice and “free will,” and that everything that happens is a result of the ineluctable cause-and-effect chain of consequences springing from “choice,” is actually fatalism, and the worst form of it. For it removes the personal God – who has a plan for his creation, a plan for his people, even a plan for the wicked – and leaves only blind forces of cause and effect to explain what happens in the world.

Further, it is astounding that such a view of man’s “free will” is proposed in a study of the book of Isaiah, which contains some of the most unapologetic explanations in all of Scripture of God’s absolute sovereignty over creation, over men, and over our choices. The idea that “all consequences of bad choices are God’s will only in the sense that He permitted them” ignores the plain teaching of Scripture. It ignores the example of Joseph, who said that his brothers meant to sell him for evil, but that “God meant it for good.” It ignores God’s own teaching about Pharaoh, whom God both hardened and then punished for being hardened. It ignores the teaching that the men who crucified Jesus did it according to the “predetermined plan of God” but were also culpable for their sin.

In Phillips’ “free will” narrative, man becomes sovereign over his life. “According to His Word, God wants the best for us,” and this “best” can be thwarted, stymied and derailed by our poor choices. God did not want those pedestrians to die, but their poor choices trumped God’s desire. But Phillips’ very suggestion is both woefully insufficient comfort and contradictory: to avoid bad consequences (being run over by a truck), we should “recognize Him as Lord” – that is, if we allow God to be sovereign over our “everyday living,” all will be well.

It is much more emotionally and philosophically satisfying – not to mention truer to Scripture – to know that God is engaged, somehow, in everything I “choose” to do and that others “choose” to do to me. It is much more wonderful to know that God “works all things according to the counsel of His will” (Eph. 1:11) and works all things together for good (Rom. 8:28), even those things that cause me temporary suffering that I can neither control nor explain. It is much more comforting to know that I AM NOT THE LORD OF MY DESTINY, but that the God who made me, who called me, who sustains me, and who adopted me in Christ, IS.

Human responsibility for actions is true. But it is not Lord.

Baptist Distinctives and Presbyterian Wannabes

My Presbyterian pastor friend has quipped to me that Baptists make the best Presbyterians. This is possibly because of all the repressed Baptist interest in alcohol and cigars that blossoms in Presbyterian environs. He reminds me of an old joke that illustrates this:

Q: What do you call a Baptist in the liquor store?
A: Nothing, because he wouldn’t acknowledge that you saw him there, anyway.

And yes, it is possible to be an unapologetic Southern Baptist and have Presbyterian friends.

Much proverbial ink has been spilled regarding “Baptist distinctives,” “Baptist Identity,” “Landmarkism,” “Great Commission Resurgence,” and so forth. (I say “proverbial” because I haven’t touched a paper magazine or newspaper in ages, and the phrase “much digitally encoded data has been transmitted through human/digital interface devices” doesn’t quite have quite the same literary ring). It all seems to boil down to what makes Baptists Baptist, rather than Presbyterian, Methodist or travelling snake oil salesmen.

I noticed a good way to address this question when someone asked me why I was attending a Southern Baptist seminary. He was also planning to go to seminary, and was torn between some of the premier Reformed/Presbyterian schools and some of the Reformed-leaning SBC schools. He asked why I wouldn’t feel more at home theologically attending a Reformed/Presbyterian school. After thinking about it for a minute, I answered in a way that clarified and revealed my view on Baptist distinctive, from the perspective of a prospective pastor.

In my understanding of Presbyterian polity and theology, two issues would keep me from preaching in one of their churches. First, I could not in good conscience baptize infants. I believe that Scripture plainly teaches that baptism is for those who have professed faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, which infants cannot do. Second, as a pastor in a Presbyterian church, I could not opt out of that practice. That is, Presbyterian polity is, well, Presbyterian, in the sense that a group of people outside the local church governs theological definition and practice. The local congregation could not decide to stop baptizing infants and remain a “Presbyterian” church.
On the contrary, even a Reformed/Calvinist pastor trained in Southern Baptist Convention schools might disagree with the predominant view on certain theological issues, but could find an SBC congregation compatible with his views. For instance, a pastor might believe that the altar call – other than following explicitly evangelistic sermons – was inappropriate. He might believe it inappropriate to admit members on a “vote” immediately following their request to join on a Sunday morning. He might believe that God is sovereign over all aspects of salvation, while believers remain responsible to proclaim the gospel (Calvinism). He might believe that the church should have both deacons and elders. He might believe that the church should practice the discipline of members. He might NOT believe in a pre-mil, mid-trib Rapture.

On all those points such a pastor would be marching to the beat of a drummer much different than and rarely heard in the majority of Baptist churches. But the SBC won’t dictate (at least thus far) that he cannot pastor ANY Southern Baptist church that wanted to call him. He might not be invited to all the premier SBC conferences, but he would still be able to shepherd a flock in accord with his calling as a minister of the gospel. This particular distinctive sometimes goes by other names, such as local church autonomy, and is manifested in the recent controversy surrounding the decision of the Georgia SBC church to call a woman as its pastor. (This incident provides an interesting example of how the concept of church discipline and accountability are not simply intra-congregational matters, but also apply in an inter-congregational setting – but that is another post).

So, under this “prospective pastor” analysis, the distinctive Baptist elements come to two: believer’s baptism and congregational authority. But these both presume and flow from something logically prior: the authority of Scripture. One’s standing on the subject of baptism (believers or infants) and the mode of baptism (immersion or sprinkling) should be dictated by what Scripture teaches. Similarly, one’s position regarding the local congregation’s authority should flow Scripture. So the functional authority of Scripture is a foundational distinctive for Baptists not similarly crucial to the faith and practice of other denominations. This leaves us with three Baptist distinctives: authority of Scripture, believer’s baptism, and congregational authority.

Some might include other things as distinctive, such as our position on the Lord’s Supper, missions, cooperation with other Baptists, and cultural engagement. But there doesn’t seem to be consensus even among Baptists about what is a proper “Baptist” position on these matters. Instead, if a church rejects the functional authority of Scripture, or rejects believer’s baptism by immersion, or rejects congregational authority in favor of some Episcopal or Presbyterian governmental form, it ceases to be Baptist.

Influenza, Gingko Biloba and Dropping Pounds

So last week one of the kids gets the stomach virus…all manner of vile things flying out of bodily orifices at blazing speed. She passed it to my wife, at blazing speed. I thought the dudes of the family were in the clear at this point, because we are usually the ones to kick off the sickness merry-go-round in our house.

Not so.

Around Tuesday I started feeling bad, then Wednesday could only manage a half day at work before coming home and crashing. Thursday I could not stand up without puking, Friday I could not stand up without…well, rushing to the toilet for disturbances at the other end of the digestive tract. I stayed in the bed almost 24 hours a day until Saturday

I noticed something about the flu, as I laid in bed marveling at how bad a human body could hurt.

I noticed what I did NOT think about. That is, the flu had my attention, and all other concerns seemed to fade away. For instance, I did NOT think about Barack Obama. Not even a little bit. I did NOT think about his opening stem cell research, or relaxing abortion restrictions, or socialistic stimulus bills, or earmarks, or how many of Obama’s administration candidates have had to withdraw because of ‘vetting’ problems.

Nor did I think about the blogosphere. I did NOT think about which Calvinist was being skewered, today. I did NOT contemplate how to make a statement on a comment string and actually have others address what I said, rather than what they wanted me to say so that they can stand proudly on their soap box and opine vociferously into the digital abyss about how evil Calvinists are. I did NOT wonder how all the other guys get such cool page designs.

I did NOT think about the stock market. Or Bernie Madoff. Or housing starts. I did not obsess about how long it could possibly take to sell our house, although I did briefly imagine that I overheard the following:

Agent: Notice the open floor plan, and how there is plenty of space
for every sick member of the family to lounge around, with his own
sick bucket close at hand.

Buyer: Where is the
laundry?

Agent: It’s upstairs, with the bedrooms, which makes
it very convenient to collect all of the lenins contaminated with vile
things flying out of orifices at blazing speed.
Buyer: Is this
the Master?

Agent: Yes, and notice how the great lighting lets you almost SEE the
flu virus circulating around the dad as he lays in bed, NOT thinking about
Barack Obama or the
economy.

Buyer: I’m sold! We’ll
pay full price…in cash!

The flu, it seems, is a great clarifier of mind, when it is not inducing hallucinations about selling houses in a buyers’ market. (It’s also an excellent crash diet – I’ve lost 10 to 15 pounds each time I’ve had it).

Oddly, while there was so much I did NOT think about, there were a couple of things that simply would not leave my head. Psalm 23 and Philippians 2:1-11, to be exact. For almost 48 hours straight of my bed-ridden stupor I mentally prepared sermons on these passages. Introductions, conclusions, main points, transitions, illustrations…you name it. I preached those sermons at least 10 times each to myself, my agent, and our cash buyer, as they discussed the relative merits of our home amongst themselves. They were some of the most interactive sermons I’ve ever preached.

Why don’t the sermon preparation experts talk about this?