16 November 2022
Do you understand the basic philosophical assumptions of the gospel message?
God made us. He made us for something we don't currently have. What we do have is a prison; we live under a curse. This world is a lie. The human capabilities to understand it from within sense and reason -- part of the prison itself -- is broken, and results in an even bigger lie. The only true answer must come from outside of us, from the God who made us. His revelation is that answer.
We assume the truth of revelation. The whole question is above us; we serve the God who made us or we serve someone else. By no means could we justify our choice, simply because those who made any other choice are fully incapable of understanding our choice. The only possible way to understand is to make the right choice in the first place.
Since no one can choose the right answer, it waits on God to choose it for us. We have no moral agency on this question. Either He touches us, or we remain damned. There is no possible way to explain this to the satisfaction of any human reasoning. The flesh cannot hear. Humans will never understand this until they are transformed into something non-human. That's part of the definition of human: mortal and accursed. Only God can break us out of that.
The demand of human capabilities cannot be met. There is no point in trying to explain, even if words could exist to declare it. And it is for sure no such words exist. There is only the declaration of what God has revealed. The whole process is in His hands. The only part we play is the declaration of things that only His Elect can receive. We have no way of knowing who is Elect, so we must presume that everyone is potentially Elect.
Sure, we should do what we can through divine love to break down the barriers of the flesh, but there is no possible appeal to reason. Words are the least part of this effort. Rather, our appeal is to a heart that may or may not be awakened by God, an appeal that is mostly a matter of how we live and act, not what we say.
So while we cannot decide who is and isn't Elect, we can decide when damnation speaks through whatever voice. We do not answer damnation, because the whole point is that damnation is not seeking an answer, but seeking to confuse and destroy truth. Don't engage damnation's voice; it's a trap.
If someone needs a reason to come to Christ, then they cannot come. Instead of answering damnation, we turn it around and speak to the heart. If that heart can hear, the Lord can deliver. It's worth it to keep trying. But when someone claims to want a reasonable answer, we cannot address that. Instead, we address the question that comes prior to it. Don't enter the conversation, as it were, but speak to the heart hidden by the conversation.
The vast majority of the time, we need not answer in words at all. We simply assert what God has called us to do; we assert our convictions. We will not cooperate with the system of lies.
Someone I once knew watched his mother die. He was aware of my faith; he didn't dispute whether he was a "sinner" by my definition. Rather, he assumed that his mother, whom he insisted was a very good person, didn't deserve to die. So, he asked me why my God would allow her to die in such difficult health problems. He was quite angry, of course.
My answer was that death was not a punishment; life is the punishment. That is, life in this world is punitive. Leaving this world is a potential release from prison. Accepting your human fate is part of the path to peace with God, along with presumptions of an incomprehensibly beautiful eternity. She had lived through her opportunity to find peace with God; her time was up. All the rest of it -- the implied but unspoken question about her suffering -- was just part of the Curse of being mortal humans.
Thus, I told him he was missing the point. Of course, his reason didn't accept that answer. That was not the point; it wasn't why I offered to discuss his accusation against my God. There was no answer to that. Rather, the whole issue was whether his heart was ready to hear revelation. Did this moment of crisis open him to the truth? That's all that mattered. Otherwise, there was nothing at all I could do for him.
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