JANUARY 5, 2008



Okay, for some reason, many in YG think I talk about predestination all the time. If I remember correctly, I only talked about it once, and that was the ONE day I was not prepared (b/c of a last minute change by whoever the Sunday School teacher was), and the only thing I could think about was picking a controversial passage like Hebrews 6 to talk about predestination. Never mind that I love ecclesiology or patristics more than predestination. Nonetheless, in youth ministry, the tiniest mistakes become magnified, and being a last-minute substitute for JUNIOR HIGH sunday school became part of my church identity, somehow. Note to future Sunday School teachers: be prepared, and try not to miss any without arranging for substitutes ahead of time!



Here's my take on predestination. God knows everything, but He allows us to choose our destiny.



The question I want to dwell on is this: can a Christian reneg on his/her faith... and then come back again? There are two positions on this:



(1) NO-- if someone renegs on his/her faith, then he/she never really believed to begin with. Coming back again makes no sense.



(2) YES-- someone could be led astray by someone and eventually abandon the faith. Coming back, then, is possible.



Both are not doo-hickey talk. We all know of someone who was vibrant in their youth at church, whose love of God was undeniable... until they get to college. Why college? I don't know. There, for some reason, they get led astray and eventually... "Are they Christian still?"



Let's look at Hebrews 5:11-6:12 to get an idea.In that passage, there's a phrase "turning away". What "turning away" means can be one of two things:



(1) Total Rejection. The person totally renounces belief in God and desires to have nothing to do with Him anymore.



(2) Total Disobedience. The person abandons the straight and narrow and desires to have nothing to do with living and thinking in accordance to God's directives. If that person abandons the straight and narrow, to call him/her as someone still in the faith is somewhat of a stretch, since our actions are a direct implication of the faith. Example: the prodigal son.



So what exactly "turning away" means requires a knowledge of Greek, of which I know diddly of. Nonetheless, we can go on and answer the question: is it possible for a Christian to turn away from their faith? Two answers:



(1) It is POSSIBLE for a Christian to engage in total disobedience and return to the straight and narrow. It takes God's unbelievable grace and mercy to knock some sense into this person and bring him/her back to what's good in God's sight.



(2) It is IMPOSSIBLE for a Christian to engage in total rejection and return to the faith. The notion of this is irrational. I can even prove it by contradiction. We rightly assume that to take on the identity as a follower of Christ (i.e. Christian) is best and optimal. Now suppose it's not. If you abandoned the faith, then something else is better than Christ. This is contradictory. Therefore, following Christ is best and optimal. Furthermore, you can't just leave if that's true. Now if you totally reject Christ and come back to the faith, you're just making Christianity a commodity to be consumed hither and yon at will.



Thus, my take on whether a Christian can reject the faith is given. Note-- you have free will, and the responsibility to be disciplined is ours. It's hard, but the beautiful thing is that the Holy Spirit does most of the work! That's why free will is such a wondrous thing-- we see God at work. In the end, all the more glory to Him.