Presbyterian Governance & Theology

Thanks for being here.
Would somebody mind swinging that shot?
Okay, so a little bit of the sense of our scope here today.
Today is the last day that you’re stuck with me for a couple weeks.
So if you’re going to rejoice,
just do it later.
Clint will be with you and you’ll be covering some things with him which you will enjoy and it’ll be really good.
Maybe that’s the good news.
The bad news is you’re stuck with me for Presbyterian theology today.
So my condolences to you.
But we are going to try to make this as interesting and hopefully engaging.
I want to caveat this conversation with you all just to say we have zero expectation that anyone coming into the church cares about the specifics of Reformed theology.
If you do, that’s wonderful.
I would love to talk with you about that.
But we realize we come from a diverse set of church backgrounds.
We come with a diverse set of understandings of the faith.
And that’s all a blessing.
It’s all a gift.
In fact, part of the conversation is seeing the magnitude of the truth of Jesus Christ from all these differing angles of the Christian faith.
But there is some distinctives of the Reformed tradition that I think are helpful and may help you feel situated in the midst of some of the things that happen here at First Prez.
I think, you know, to be very sort of specific about that,
very concrete about that,
you know,
today’s sermon, today’s worship service is a very Reformed idea.
This idea that we are called,
that we’re elected, that we are sent.
These are distinctives of the Reformed family.
So you will hear that embedded inside the sermon.
And, you know, maybe that does or doesn’t interest you.
But I think it’s helpful to know when you’re in a place,
this is kind of the thing that that place defaults to,
or this is a particular sort of thing that matters.
So we begin with a distinction.
These two, we’re going to talk about the knowledge of self and the knowledge.
Why did I put the knowledge?
That is absolutely not what’s supposed to be there.
It’s supposed to be knowledge of self,
knowledge of God.
This is a distinction that is built into Calvin’s institutes.
And if you’ve not heard of them,
Calvin’s institutes are sort of his, his,
his summa, his top kind of creation.
It’s his theology sort of in the most concise systematic form.
And since Presbyterians are built upon the Calvinist tradition,
we look to Calvin for a lot of that theological sort of distinctiveness.
And he writes his top theological work,
his systematic theology, he bundles into two books,
knowledge of self,
knowledge of God.
So we’ll talk about both of those here for a little bit this morning.
And then we’ll talk a little bit about life together,
which if you are a theologically inclined person,
this might ring a bell.
I’m stealing this from Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
who’s a Lutheran.
So, you know, shoot me.
But we’ll get to that.
We’ll talk about that.
So knowledge of self,
what’s really interesting about the reform tradition is we have a lot to say that Calvin begins with knowledge of self.
And that surprises folks,
because when people think about a theology of self from a Calvinist perspective,
I don’t know if any of you have had engagement with this before.
If I asked you sort of what do reformed people think about people,
what would you say to that very broad question?
I mean, is there a distinction that you that you walk into the room with?
It’s not a trick question.
There’s no wrong answers.
Anything that comes to mind?
I don’t even think about it.
OK,
sort of the stereotype given to reform people is that we are all in on sin,
that you are broken,
broken, broken,
broken, that you are deep down sort of,
you know, just sin rot and horrible person bad,
bad, bad.
This is kind of the stereotype applied to reform folks.
And it largely comes from Calvin’s thinking.
And we’ll talk about how that works.
There’s this distinction that happens between self and God.
Calvin emphasizes the sovereignty of God.
We’re going to talk about that in a second.
And the sort of antidote of that,
that’s not the right word,
the antonym of that is the brokenness of humanity.
So you might have heard the term total depravity.
Anyone that ring a bell sort of a church word.
What we mean by that in the Calvinist tradition is that the human heart is so broken as to be irreparable by itself that there’s something deeply wrong with humanity.
If you want to make that very, very simple.
If you’ve ever had children,
you know exactly what I’m talking about.
Right.
You didn’t have to teach your children to steal cookies.
Right.
They didn’t have to watch TV to know how to push their siblings buttons.
Right.
Now, maybe there was some help along the way.
Maybe there was some amplification of that.
Right.
But if you’ve ever been a parent or you’ve had grandkids, you know,
there’s something innate in the human heart that sees a thing and says,
I want that for myself or I want me to be the one at the center and not that thing.
And there’s something deeply ingrained in what it means to be human.
Calvin called that total depravity,
this idea that at our core,
there’s something that is broken and irreparable outside of divine action.
So what that means to make it very,
very simple is reformed people are not comfortable with the idea of you doing anything to save yourself.
If it looks like,
smells like, acts like you saving yourself,
we really have no place for that because if you could save yourself,
you wouldn’t be totally depraved.
Sin wouldn’t be the core problem.
It would just be something you kind of need to remodel and fix up a little bit.
Our theological perspective has always been that the problem with ourself is so deep that we need a God who is sovereign and all powerful,
who chooses to save us.
And if that’s the case,
then we’re saved by,
and here’s the word that you’ve been expecting if you’ve been thinking of any theology,
you’re saved by grace through faith.
And faith is the key word here because faith is not an action.
Faith is not you accomplishing salvation for yourself.
Faith is you,
a divine gift of God,
receiving God’s grace,
which is God’s gift to you.
Which is unbelievably freeing that we can,
if you’re interested, we can go into part two some other time about some of the downsides of this.
But the huge upside,
I think, for the reformed faith,
for the reformed perspective on God is that we have always held that the thing we’ve been given is gift.
And so therefore,
when people screw up,
we aren’t surprised by it.
When you sin,
we don’t think,
“Whoa,
can you believe that?” We say,
“Yeah.” I mean, doesn’t a fish swim,
right?
If you’re sinful,
don’t you do sinful things?
Yes.
Now,
that’s the beauty of the faith.
And you would look to someone like Paul in Romans who says,
“Just because you sin,
does that mean you sin all the more because grace will abound all the more?” No,
certainly not.
Just because you’re a sinner doesn’t mean you keep on sinning,
but it does mean you recognize what is the case so that therefore you can recognize the solution that has been brought.
So the thing I wanted to leave you with by total depravity was really to not emphasize total depravity because I think it’s actually one of those doctrines that’s somewhat misunderstood.
Presbyterian’s aren’t dour, gloomy,
depressed people all the time.
Just some of the time.
To whatever extent we minimize the human,
we seek to glorify God.
And I think sometimes we have,
at our best, we’ve admitted when we have over-emphasized the human to be complicated.
And at our best,
we’ve recognized that it’s ultimately God who gets the glory in that equation.
So depravity,
we’re broken, we’re sinful, we need a savior,
we can’t do it by ourselves,
we need God to do that,
we participate through faith by grace,
and that’s where the knowledge of self enters into our tradition.
Any questions about that?
Thoughts about that?
Pushback on that?
A place you’d be more interested in hearing more about?
Well, keep pressing forward.
Don’t shout me down.
Or do shout me down.
Let’s talk about knowledge of God.
So, if I ask you for what is the sovereignty of God,
what would you say?
Throw something at me.
Sovereignty of God, what does it mean for God to be sovereign?
I’ll even take what is sovereign a word describing,
because there’s a particular field that a sovereign would exist in.
I’m going to give you a hint.
Someone very notable died last year,
and there was a lot of pomp and circumstance.
The Queen.
The King and Queen are sovereigns.
They’re royal,
ruling people.
We don’t think of this because now the King of England is somewhat like a cultural relic.
They’re kind of a celebrity who does philanthropy.
But in the time of the Reformation,
kings and queens were sovereigns.
They were rulers.
They ruled by divine right.
Right? We struggle with the Americans.
We struggle with the other mind around this.
But the earliest Christians,
they understood sovereignty because the claim that Rome made was that Caesar is Lord.
You know, that in the time of the early church,
the Roman Caesars were claiming divine right,
meaning that they were gods.
That’s a prideful statement.
Can we all admit?
Right?
But they meant that they ruled by sovereign divine power.
And so in the Reformation,
this monarchal type idea still existed.
And one of the pushbacks that the reformers had to this idea was that at the end of the day,
it doesn’t matter whether you’re king or not.
Only one is sovereign.
And that one is God.
That God rules.
God overrules.
That God is the one who created.
So therefore,
you are always subservient to God.
And that may seem to us to be maybe a simple statement,
but it was revolutionary in its time.
It meant that at the end of the day,
there was no one in the hierarchy of importance that stood above God.
And so because they believe that God was sovereign,
that God ruled, that God was the only divine ruler,
then they began to think through,
what does it mean that God has chosen us?
That God has chosen us.
Because you might remember that if you were a subject of a monarchy,
if you were a subject of a king,
you were either born into it or you were militarily captured and brought into it.
Right? It wasn’t a thing done by your own free will.
Right? And so ultimately, they were thinking, if God is sovereign,
even over the monarchy,
how does God choose us?
And they came up with this word that they didn’t make it up,
but they emphasize this word called election,
that we’ve been elected by God.
God has chosen us.
God has chosen you.
And this is where,
and we’ve got to talk about this because even if you aren’t going to ask me,
this is probably the elephant in the room.
As anyone, did you learn?
Did you study double predestination at some time in your life?
Have you heard that term?
Have you?
A few have been afflicted by it, but not everyone?
Okay. So Calvin talked about this idea that God elects us.
God has chosen us.
He meant it as good news because you might remember the Catholic Church was actively hunting down people who believed in the Reformed faith.
People were dying for their faith.
And so Calvin said, you know,
in the midst of all of this turmoil,
the good news is God chose you.
So even if you have a moment of a lack of faith,
or even if you have a moment of difficulty,
God has picked you.
God has got your back.
God has you in his hands.
It was good news.
It was comforting news.
But the second generation Calvinist theologians did what I’ve already admitted to you were heavy people,
and sometimes it’s hard to live with.
Right? Second generation people picked up that theology and they start talking about,
well, if God elects some,
God elects you,
what about the other people?
If God is sovereign,
if God rules over everything,
if God is the one who’s in charge,
if God chooses some and elects some for eternal salvation,
what does that mean about everyone who wasn’t elect?
Calvin left that question relatively unanswered.
It wasn’t of interest to Calvin.
But the next generation of Calvinists,
the theologians that took that up,
talked about what they called double predestination,
in which they talked about those who have been elected for eternal hellfire and damnation would have been the language that they use.
God chose some,
God didn’t choose others,
and that both were active choices.
Has anyone heard this before?
Really?
All right.
I have shocking.
That’s great.
So then I just all troubled you for no reason.
I’ve heard it, but in a different context.
What context?
It’s been a while.
Okay.
Well, so the reason I share this with you is, number one,
this is an outside biblical context.
So if you read Paul,
several of his letters,
he talks about the election.
He talks about this idea that God chooses.
So it’s not as if there’s not any theology or scripture from which they’re drawing it from.
But these are systemic people.
They think in order.
They’re like engineers.
If one thing’s this,
then this thing’s this,
and then this thing’s this.
And they’re sort of carrying it out to its furthest extent.
And you can imagine that that idea has troubled theologians for a very long time.
The idea that God would choose some.
Our Methodist friends in the room,
those who’ve been in Methodist context,
would push back on that and say,
well, what about free will?
Doesn’t God give us free will?
Doesn’t God give us the ability to have some agency by God’s grace?
God is able to enable us to make real choices in our life?
And Calvin would have certainly said,
I think the second generation Calvinists would have struggled a little bit more.
You would say,
absolutely, you have free will and God is sovereign.
You get to choose and God gets to choose.
It’s a mystery.
That’s always a healthy point in faith.
If you can come to a place where you recognize,
yeah, there are sometimes things that don’t seem like they fit,
but they do fit.
Like when you were a child,
your parents gave you a consequence.
You didn’t think that was a good thing.
But years down the road, you realize,
oh, there was good in it.
Are you with me?
Sometimes things that are hard don’t make sense at first until you discover that there’s wisdom in leaving the mystery.
But realistically,
regardless of how you land on that,
you’re not going to be asked any questions about what you think about free will and God’s sovereignty.
So you’re good.
But the point I wanted to make here is there’s this beautiful relationship between God and self in our theology that I find really helpful.
To whatever extent we’ve talked about the brokenness of humanity,
we’ve talked about the greatness of God.
To whatever extent we talked about God’s willingness to graciously give us free will,
we’ve also said that God is in control of your life.
And if you make a mistake,
God is able to make it right.
So there’s this beautiful relationship between your faith and the God who loves you,
the God who created you,
the God who allows you to participate in the world in real meaningful ways.
It’s kind of a beautiful relationship between self and God.
And so I wanted to a little bit just share the nitty gritty of what it means to be sort of systemically reformed or to be in our system Presbyterian,
as I didn’t share that last time.
So our our way of conceiving of humanity affects the way that we live our life together.
We start with this idea that we’re broken.
So we built a system of governing ourselves that assumed brokenness.
We thought to ourselves,
if one person gets the wheel of the car,
they’re going to drive us off the cliff because we expect people to be human.
So what we did is we built a system of checks and balances.
So at the top is a thing called the General Assembly,
which you would recognize as like United States Congress elected representatives.
And then underneath that we have what’s called a synod,
which is another group of individuals who are check and balance to the people elected to the Congress.
And then beneath that we have this thing called a presbytery,
which is another group of elected people,
which represent a small locale.
So we are it was called prospect Hill presbytery.
This churches that is a gathering of now I think 33 Presbyterian churches in northwest Iowa reaches all the way down to Sioux City,
the Carol area, Denison area.
It stops like Fort Dodges and another Presbyterian gathering.
So it’s that’s the northwest sort of region.
So those folks are elected and they make decisions for our region.
And then beneath them is the session of first Presbyterian church,
which in our congregation is 12 men and women.
And they are elected to be the governing body for this congregation.
So it goes session,
presbytery,
synod,
General Assembly.
Sorry that I had to afflict you with all of that.
But the whole point of that system is assuming that there needs to be checks and balances.
So if one thing gets out of whack,
if our session, for instance,
decide that Clint and I both needed Lamborghinis,
it’s not an idea.
But if they went crazy and did something like that,
there would be a system up the line that would be able to correct that,
right?
The congregations not responsible for fixing every problem,
because we assume that we should be checks and balances to one another.
I say that jokingly,
you know, the very real reality is when the pastor starts having an affair or starts laundering money,
which I wish I would say doesn’t happen in the real world.
But it does.
It does happen in the real world.
And so we have systems built with the idea that when pastors act like humans,
that we have systems to check that.
That makes sense.
So we built a system that does that.
But it’s somewhat an interesting or unique system of presbytery and pastors are funny creatures,
not just because we’re pastors and pastors are funny creatures,
but we’re kind of uniquely funny creatures,
because in some ways,
presbytery and pastors look at some other mainline pastors with a little bit of,
well, Clint would disagree with me vehemently,
but with a little bit of jealousy.
Tell you what I mean.
Some pastors have a some traditions specifically,
I think Lutheran or like Episcopal would fit this.
The pastor has a very priestly kind of role that the way that helps me is you can tell a lot about what a church tradition thinks of their pastors of where they stand in relation to the communion table.
Just want to,
in the future, pay attention to this.
Where does the pastor stand?
Do they stand between the congregation and the table or do they stand behind the table?
You think, why does that matter?
Think about it.
Who is between the gift of Jesus?
Is it the pastor or is Jesus giving the gift to the people directly?
In our tradition, the pastor stands behind the table because we believe that the pastor is not between Jesus and his people.
At the end of the day,
it’s Jesus and his church, right?
But there are other traditions where you’ll see the pastor will be between the congregation and the table.
Sometimes,
even like Missouri Synod Lutheran,
the pastor will actually turn their back to the congregation facing the table.
Even more emphasizing the pastor stands in between the people and God.
Interesting tidbit.
Anyways,
so the reason why Presbyterian pastors at our worst can be a little cranky is because we have really very little place for that idea of priesthood.
When a pastor is elected in a congregation,
they are not a holy person.
They are not holier than now.
They are quite frankly,
in my experience, often not wiser than now.
There are many, many folks in this congregation whose spiritual wisdom is astonishingly beyond certainly myself,
but pretty much every other Presbyterian pastor.
The idea that somehow you can like embody what it means to be holy in a person is not a reformed idea.
For us,
you are called to be a servant and we give lots of names to it.
It changes all the time.
When I went to seminary,
the current thing that we called pastors was a teaching elder and the spirit behind that was your job is to teach the people to do their ministry.
Your job is to equip them to be ministers wherever they go.
That’s a nice idea.
We’ve now changed.
I don’t know what we call ourselves now,
but whatever.
It’s great.
The point I want to make here is,
I think that’s a wonderful distinctive of the Presbyterian family,
is at our best,
pastors recognize that they are called to serve as Jesus served.
There’s a little bit less temptation,
hopefully,
to think that there’s a holier than now thing happening.
I could talk to you a little bit about Presbyterian stuff.
I’ll be happy that we’ll leave a little bit of extra time for questions if some of you have read some things online and you want to talk about what the Presbyterians think about this or why’d I read this troubling thing.
We can talk about that.
But largely, I think what you need to understand is our denomination really doesn’t have a whole set of doctrinal theology that gets handed down the ranks.
There was a day,
kind of early 20th century,
where if you were going to be a pastor,
you would expect about an hour of grueling sort of interrogation in front of the Presbyterian.
This idea,
theologically, do you believe this?
Do you believe this?
Do you believe this?
And if you answered no to any of those things,
you could expect to be hung out to dry for quite a while.
And today,
that reality has shifted.
And this is recorded,
so Clint, if you disagree,
you can come and talk to me about it.
But realistically, that doesn’t happen.
Doctrinally, we are far more open to a broader perspective.
And some of that is, I think,
because of the times.
But if I’m going to be more blunt,
some of that is because we don’t have the luxury of debating the jot and tittle of the law.
Realistically,
we actually have,
in our own Presbyterian,
I think five or six open churches right now,
and there’s zero prospect of them having a pastor.
So in the midst of that reality, stuff changes.
And that’s not for good or for ill.
I’m not suggesting that’s qualitative,
but it’s to say we live in a different time.
So our denomination has done some things.
I’ll give you an example that you might have heard about, unlikely.
But about seven,
eight years ago,
we divested from a company called Motorola.
I’m sure you’ve heard of Motorola,
but Motorola,
this got a lot of news because the news headline was “Presbyterians Divest from Motorola.” Everyone’s like,
why would you do that?
And the reason was because Motorola makes a two-way radio system that was being used in the midst of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
And the Presbyterian Church has a policy,
it’s not a new policy,
this is decades-old policy,
that our investment arm won’t invest in any company that profits from any form of military conflict.
So when they found out that Motorola was making money off of this thing,
it wasn’t really a statement about Israel-Palestine,
it was a statement about there’s military stuff happening and we don’t want our money going towards it.
Does that make sense?
But the news headline was “Presbyterians Hate Israel,” which,
you know,
if you were kind of biased,
I suppose I could see how you get there.
So we have some of those things,
we have the things where Presbyterians do kind of land on a thing,
where are we going to pull our money,
where are we not?
People of differing perspectives could disagree on that,
but that was a thing that they decided to do,
the General Assembly decided to do,
and they had the power to do that.
So that’s one example.
In recent history, I’m sure you’re aware,
Presbyterians, like other denominations, have had debate about human sexuality and,
you know, we began that conversation about marriage.
Can gay people be married?
Then that conversation was about clergy,
can that happen within the clergy?
And then that conversation has sort of trickled on down the resolution to that being,
and different denominations have handled this differently,
but in the Presbyterian system,
that it has essentially boiled down to you all figure it out.
They essentially said to the churches,
“We’re going to tell you that we’re not going to tell you what you have to do,” and so here we sit.
And you can imagine the difficulty that that causes in congregations as people try to process that conversation.
And you can imagine that that rises and falls very much on leadership,
it falls on our ability to talk to each other and deal with difficult things.
So that’s probably the most recent conversation in the church.
We forget things,
like we forget that there are some denominations today that still won’t ordain women.
Presbyterians have been ordaining women for the last 50 years,
so I feel pretty proud of that.
I mean,
you know,
sometimes we get it right,
and that’s good.
We celebrate that when that’s the case,
but sometimes we also struggle in the midst of it.
So, yeah, I’m curious.
We’ve done a lot,
we’ve talked theology, talked a little bit about structure as much as I’m going to burden you with.
But what things have you heard about Presbyterian?
What questions might you have?
You’re not going to scare me.
Trust me, it’s not the first time I’ve been asked the question.
So, if there’s something that you’ve been wondering…
Yeah?
In this theology,
what is the concept or the response to the existence of evil in church and the community and the world?
What is the theology behind it?
I’m just curious.
Yeah.
So,
God is sovereign, but God didn’t make evil.
Evil is the absence of good,
not the actual power of something that is contrary to God.
From a Reformed perspective,
it’s not as if God and Satan are locked in a duel and anybody’s wondering who’s going to win.
Presbyterians are really not flummoxed by that idea of like somehow Satan’s going to get the upper hand.
Our perspective has always been God’s going to win.
That God is sovereign.
God’s providential power is beyond what we can imagine.
What we would look at in terms of sin is in the absence of God’s working, when human brokenness,
because God was willing and able to give us real agency in the world,
because of that essentially willingness for God to let us be,
that we have by our own brokenness created a system in which evil flourishes.
Whatever place in our life,
whatever place in our societies and systems and structures and governments,
wherever we have allowed that brokenness to rule the day,
evil is at odds with God.
And so then we would turn to that idea of the kingdom of heaven,
that Jesus announced that God’s kingdom is going to win,
that ultimately there will be a day when all crying ceases,
when all pain and suffering is gone.
This is revelation,
right?
That at the end,
all will be made right.
So there’s no question of who’s going to win the day,
but there is a question about our part and our role in mitigating our brokenness rubbing off on each other.
Does that make sense?
So evil is a real thing,
but it’s not cosmically or theologically a threat to God.
But you gotta know that in the Reformed tradition,
there’s been a long history,
I told you about John,
Jonathan Edwards and his whole sinners in the angry hands of God.
There is this very,
very strong tradition of the wrath of God,
which we don’t talk a lot about today,
somewhat for cultural reasons,
somewhat because I don’t know that we would struggle to understand what was meant.
But what they meant was evil in the hands of God.
What’s the…
There’s some element.
There’s some element you can hold.
Shoot,
hate when I have an illustration that doesn’t come to me.
It’s like almost like dry ice,
but it’s not that because it would burn your skin.
But there’s a thing that you can put in your hand and you can hold that sort of sloshes around a little bit like aluminum.
But then when you drop it and it hits the ground, it vaporizes.
Trust me, this exists.
I don’t know what it’s called.
I’ve heard of it.
The name is like there.
But that’s the image,
that in the human hand,
evil is a real thing.
But once it touches God,
it doesn’t stand up to who God is.
Does that answer your question?
Does it come differently?
How does it strike you?
I’m curious what’s behind it.
Well, you just,
you know, our lives are just littered with it.
I mean, turn on the TV.
I mean,
you just ask.
Not that it doesn’t exist within me,
I know.
And I think back to, you know,
when I go back to the divorce hall of Billy Graham,
when he got in the conversation with the serpent,
you know,
Billy Graham would say the problem was he carried on the conversation too long.
And the longer the conversation went on,
the easier it was to fall into evil.
And that’s where it all led to.
You know, you just hate seeing that.
I mean, this cardiologist was just stabbed to death.
I mean,
I mean, if you heard that in the news,
or the guy hit him on the bike.
Anybody hear this?
You know, and then instead of going out to help him,
once he stabs him to death,
it’s like, where does this come from?
I don’t know.
But we’re inundated with it.
It doesn’t matter, you know, where you’re at.
And so it’s a reality.
And it’s a truth that I think it’s spiritual pilgrims like me.
I need a daily dose of,
okay, how am I going to fight this every day?
So I stand the right page.
Right.
I do think that maybe a helpful word towards that end.
Is anyone else?
Sorry.
I’m just curious.
There’s been a lot of concerned faces walking by the window recently.
If anybody starts waving,
let me know.
Okay. I think a helpful voice there would be that,
and I think that this is largely Christian and not reformed,
but, you know, we could have a conversation about it.
Christians have generally not believed in the idea of fighting evil with evil.
We’ve never, we’ve not really thought about the solution to the problem of evil being one in which we somehow needed to outplay the hand.
Our solution has always been Jesus.
So the horrible things that surround us in the world,
and I think that technology has had a way of amplifying that.
You know,
a hundred years ago,
you only knew what happened in Los Angeles,
California, if it was really bad.
I mean, it would have to be really bad to make the headline because there’s only so much space.
Right.
But today,
you could get access to every bad thing that happened in the last hour.
I mean, it’s an astonishing level of access to information.
Right. And I think what we’re tempted as humans to do is think,
if I know more of what’s happening,
I’ll be better off.
And I think a Christian response to that is not ignorance,
but it is an emphasis upon Jesus.
In other words, let me just put it very bluntly.
This is where I stand personally.
So I’m not pointing this.
This isn’t the big theological idea.
But I’m very convicted if I spent more time reading secular news in a day than I spent engaging with the God of all creation in some way,
scripture or prayer or thought.
If I don’t balance those things,
I begin to feel like the train starts to wobble.
And I don’t know how we could live in a world in which this this person,
this it sounds to be innocent person,
lost their life.
The evil of that,
how we can live trusting a God if that is the part of the track that we always live on,
because then we can we’re consumed by the evil and not the one who we believe will ultimately be victorious over it.
And I’m not advocating
ignorance.
I’m not saying that you don’t engage with the world and realize the reality of sin.
We have to reckon with that.
But to do that without faith seems to me to put us in a precarious position.
Just some thoughts.
We got time for one more thought reflection question.
I have a little trouble getting my head around the fact that Presbyterians believe that God chooses certain people and then doesn’t choose certain people.
I have a hard time.
No, I came.
I come from a Catholic and Methodist background.
Right. Well, let me I’m going to throw this in your direction and see this may or may not be helpful.
But the book of Romans,
Middle Park, chapters 11 through 13,
Paul is talking about the Israelites and he is lamenting the fact that he is a Jew and that Jesus was a Jew.
And he came to be good news for the Jews.
And none of the Jewish people seem to be accepting Jesus.
And Paul is troubled by it.
And this is an amazing theological statement that he makes in the book of Romans.
And it shapes my entire way of thinking of this topic.
He says God has elected the Jews so that they may share the gospel with the Gentiles who will ultimately make the Jews jealous of the salvation given to the Gentiles.
And so therefore the Jews will receive salvation and all will be given the gospel.
This is the key term.
I think that Paul was arguing that God elects some always for the sake of all.
In other words, God has elected you to know the good news.
Not everyone, I think you know this,
not everyone sees the good news of the gospel like you do.
Some have been told it and they can’t see it.
And I think the point is you have been gifted to see the gospel so that you can go share it with them.
You’ve been elected,
which is actually not a perk,
it’s a calling.
That you were made a servant like Jesus was made a servant.
So election is not the glorification.
Election is to calling.
Election is to service.
Election is to be like Jesus was.
It’s not really that you’ve been elected to go to heaven and you’ve been elected to go to hell.
It’s more you’ve been elected to share now with everyone else is kind of what you’re saying,
Mike.
That is what I’m saying.
There are wise and very learned people who would disagree with what I’m saying.
So take that with a grain of salt.
But as I reflect upon election and you look at the biblical model,
Jesus was elected to hang in a cross for you.
But John three sixteen,
Jesus was elected for all that anyone who believes.
Right.
And and that’s that’s where I find the power of that that idea of election and not.
There are there are people wiser and more intelligent than me who should go study that the double predestination stuff.
I don’t have the ability to process all that.
Yeah, we need to go.
But but realistically, when it comes to living lives of faith,
the good news is you’ve been called by God.
Now, the question is what what service have you been given because of it?
It’s not the elected winner.
It’s not bad.
It’s you’ve been elected to make more sense.