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To carry around death (and ponder determinism)
In this week's issue of WORLD magazine, Andree Seu articulates well what I know so well but do not practice nearly so well – the habit of “always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies,” (2 Corinthians 4:10). In This body of death, she says,
Better is the embracing of fresh death served up every moment...It refuses all self-made refuges and self-anesthetizing...because it desires death’s lucidity. It asks, What would happen if this time I didn’t weave a cocoon of numbness around myself? Will I die? (An interesting inquiry.) [emphasis added]
She follows with six “ways to render a broken heart unprofitable”:
Tactic No. 1: sour grapes; tell yourself you haven’t lost much. Diminish the other in spurned petulance. The gain is temporary relief from the unbearable; the casualty is truth.
Tactic No 2: nurse hope when it is wiser to abandon hope. I choose to carry around death rather than ersatz life.
Tactic No 3: the acrid satisfaction of getting in the last word.
Tactic No 4: drugs, alcohol, and sleep. [or a myriad of other things – like blogging??]
Tactic No 5: fantasizing. “There is always something they prefer to...reality” ( C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce).
Tactic No. 6: stoicism. Not allowed (Ephesians 4:32), since we are to make the head hard and the heart soft – rather than the other way around. The hard head says: “I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame” (Isaiah 50:7). The soft heart refuses to build bulwarks against future relationship hurts.
...Constant communion with God avoids all...ways of flinching from sanctifying pain.
...Beware of trying to get from people what you can only get from God.
Well, I’m certainly deeply and painfully guilty of all of the above, though I do know better. It’s not that my head is too soft or my heart too hard. It’s that my head is too hard in the wrong areas, and my heart either too hard or too soft depending on the situation.
I can’t help but think about how all this might square with considerations of Providence. Just how provident is Providence, or, rather, in what ways is Providence provident? There’s the providence itself, and then there’s the recognition of providence. Perhaps the recognizing is itself provident. Is the practice of such recognition provident? Everything that is provident must stem from providence itself, yet is there not a providentially created part (human) in this as distinct from the ongoing divine-action (above and beyond the created) provision? (Some may argue that I'm using the wrong word/s (i.e., provident/ce), but I think it's apropos.)
You can say that God’s having given humans the ability to act (choose) is a result of divine action (both pre- and post-Fall), or you can say that, post-Fall, God influences humans' ability to act only insomuch as those actions are good and not evil, if indeed man is incapable of a good act on his own due to his fallen and corrupt nature. (Indeed, even man’s sinfulness is determined by God in that He is author of evil – Isaiah 45:7).
What I'm getting at is, if man has no ability to choose, apart from God, not to behave along the lines of the six tactics listed above, then why even point them (and their antitheses) out? Is consciousness-raising a work of the Holy Spirit -- consciously or unconsciously? Does one not “let the Spirit in” by realizing and then acting on the truth of a thing learned via presentation by the Holy Spirit? Or does the learning and acting only happen as directly directed by the Holy Spirit? Does one not have the option of refusing to learn –- of softening the mind and hardening the heart -- or can it not be resisted?
Did man lose the ability to choose to do good, when presented the option, after the Fall?
There are two different kinds of death-carrying that humans can do: that which results from the Fall, and that of Jesus’. Does a person have a choice as to which he/she will carry, apart from the Spirit doing the carrying for him/her? Can “communion with God” be chosen, or only so much as it is irresistibly given? Seu seems to indicate that she can, and does indeed, choose.
Wow!
Some deep questions, indeed. I don't think I can prove it, to the satisfaction of somebody who is convinced otherwise, but I believe that we do have the ability to choose to do good. John 3:16 seems to indicate that we can choose to believe. 1 John 1:9 does, too. If we can choose to believe, then we are on the way to doing good, because of a choice.
No sentient being can avoid choice. If I am aware of options and am free to act on any of those options, I have made a choice. Even if I decide that there is no point in making a choice, since I know that ultimately things beyond my conscious mind and control influence my choices---I have still just made a choice! I have chosen not to choose--and will experience the consequences of that choice. We cannot escape choosing--or experiencing the consequences of choices.
What I am saying is that the ability to choose was given to us when we were created and made in the image of God. We did not lose the ability to choose after the Fall---we simply had the factors that influence our choices change (i.e. we became sinners.) After the Fall, we lost our connection to God--we became planes, flying blind through fog, with faulty instruments. If we had no instruments at all we would be better off because at least then we'd know we were in serious trouble. As they say "It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you think you know that ain't so." As unsaved sinners, worse than blind, fumbling around with a false sense of reality, we have no way of doing anything other than continually 'missing the mark'. The presence of the Holy Spirit in the Believer begins to change that--through Christ our connection to God is restored and we are once again connected to Truth and Reality ( the instruments in our plane will begin reading true, again). A spiritually blind, unsaved person can, on occasion, choose good--(even a stopped clock is right twice a day!) Factors can come together that the lead the lost to choose the right path, once in a while---but occasionally choosing rightly doesn't solve the problem of his overall blindness.
Every human being must make choices--it is inescapable. Ultimately all those choices are influenced by factors beyond our control--but not beyond God's. Some make choices that lead to eternal death and others make choices that lead, by way of the Cross, to eternal life.
Thanks for a terrific post, Bonnie. I especially liked the tactics list. I, too, have considered and tried most, if not all, of these. For me, I think unconscious clinging to my desired version of 'reality', (which I guess would be Tactic #5) is the one of which I am most frequently guilty. My 'script' for life, my dreams, my expectations--those are my false gods and it is a great struggle to be rid of them.
If I am aware of options and am free to act on any of those options, I have made a choice.
I meant to say "If I am aware of options and am free to act on any of those options, I have choice."
By free, I mean that, as far as I am consciously aware, there is nothing that prevents me from acting on either option. Obviously, we cannot be totally 'free' from the influencing factors that lead us to our decisions. But as long as we are consciously aware of more than one way of doing something and are not consciously aware of anything that prevents us from acting on any of those options--we are choosing.
It is not possible to be free from influences any more than it is possible to be free from reality.
ways of flinching from sanctifying pain.
The article is about sanctification. People who are not Christians can choose to do good things. Many do. But that is not a process of sanctification.
You seem to have mixed in thoughts on sanctification with your thoughts on salvation as I see it.
I don't see the orginal article as leading to your conclusions at all. I know people who stopped using drugs/alcohol to avoid pain. They chose to. They aren't Christians.
So what does this prove?
if man has no ability to choose, apart from God, not to behave along the lines of the six tactics listed above,
Well the article doesn't say man has no ability to not behave along the tactics listed apart from God. And reading the tactics I can think of non-Christians who choose not to behave in those ways.
Which doesn't make them any closer to being Christians. i.e. they don't get the last word, don't get drunk, and so on but are no nearer to spiritual regeneration. Some work out avoidance of the tactics forthemselves. Some through counselling.
Why would these tactics only be avoided by the work of the Holy Spirit? Anyone can learn not to indulge in these things. Why would avoiding these tactics make some-one anymore spiritually good than they were before? If that's the case anyone can be sanctified without Christ.
I think if irresistable grace is your target then it would be helpful to discuss it in the context of soteriolgy, since that is where it applies.
Thanks for your comments, Catez, you ask some good questions. Thanks for showing me where I need to clarify.
I am not attempting to compare Christians’ motivations for the choices they make with the motivations of non-Christians who may make what look to be similar choices, because they cannot be the same, as you have pointed out. An act itself (or lack of) is not the final indicator; what's going on in the heart that produced the act is. I am essentially asking how it can be that a person who cannot choose salvation can choose or refuse sanctification.
The Holy Spirit may certainly move a non-Christian to choose a certain behavior, because God is sovereign and accomplishes His purposes regardless of what men choose (a form of irresistible grace, if you will). A non-Christian may also choose a behavior that counters the tactics listed in the article but it will necessarily be a tactic itself. The evil heart cannot render true good; whatever good it renders will be a sort of manipulation.
No one can choose truly good, redemptive behavior, i.e., behavior that carries the death of Jesus, outside of the influence of the Holy Spirit. The Christian, thus influenced, who acts out of bearing Jesus' death is not using a tactic. The heart that carries the death of Jesus will necessarily accomplish a redemptive act.
I am essentially asking how it can be that a person who cannot choose salvation can choose or refuse sanctification.
The short answer to this question, Bonnie, is that a person, who does not choose salvation (for whatever reason) can't choose or refuse sanctification. Choosing involves picking among available options. Sanctification is not available to an unbeliever.
Conversely, sanctification is not really an option for the Believer, either. That would be like saying that if we are alive we can choose whether or not to breathe. If you are alive, you breathe. If you aren't breathing (at least for an extended period of time) you aren't alive. Breathing/Living are inseperable. If we are saved, we are being sanctified--regardless of whether we (or others) are aware of it. It is inseparable from salvation--in one sense, it is our salvation.
The unsaved can act righteously, at times. But they are spiritually dead--they don't 'breathe'. They are disconnected from God and are flying blind. They may end up flying the plane the right way for a moment, every now and then, but without a properly working instrument panel, they will eventually crash.
Continuing with this imperfect analogy --sanctification is the process whereby our instrumentation is rewired (renewing of our minds) and we learn how to fly.
What I'm getting at is, if man has no ability to choose, apart from God, not to behave along the lines of the six tactics listed above, then why even point them (and their antitheses) out? Is consciousness-raising a work of the Holy Spirit -- consciously or unconsciously? Does one not “let the Spirit in” by realizing and then acting on the truth of a thing learned via presentation by the Holy Spirit? Or does the learning and acting only happen as directly directed by the Holy Spirit? Does one not have the option of refusing to learn –- of softening the mind and hardening the heart -- or can it not be resisted?
Bonnie, I went back and reread these questions from your post (great questions, BTW). I think I see what you are getting at.
I think the answer to why we should actively seek to increase our awareness of our 'tactics' is that we can either actively work with the process of sanctification, be active participants, or simply remain passive recipients. Yes, consciousness raising is a work of the Holy Spirit. When the Holy Spirit begins to make us consciously aware of what we are doing (and why we are doing it)--and consciously aware of His work within us (sanctification), the process of sanctification is greatly enhanced.
Our choices are the means by which we take hold of salvation---and sanctification. And, like faith/believing, it happens as directed by the Holy Spirit. (We can't rewire our own instrument panels). But, yes, we can (and often do) resist the work of sanctification. We can choose to harden our hearts. However, if we do this, continually, the question has to be raised: Did we really sign on for this 'rewiring' process or not? We can quit breathing for a while and still be alive--but if we aren't breathing for an extended period of time the question has to be raised: Are we, or have we ever been, alive?
But, the Holy Spirit has ways of pushing past our resistance---to paraphrase Ruth Graham: He won't force us out of the room we are refusing to leave, but He can put a nest of hornets in the room with us and make the choice to leave a 'no brainer'. :-)
