Pam…..I sure love your heart. You and your words of wisdom are always welcome here.

We sure can’t figure it out for everybody else either. Everyone has to have their own process. For me, faith IS a process, one that continues for a lifetime and is not made up of set facts that can be taught to another by rhote.

As far as Calvinism goes, I’ve found that many are so superstious about their belief in hell that it is impossible to even get them to examine it. That is sad for Christ died so that we could let go of superstition by having a living relationship with God rather than trying to appease Him with ritual and sacrifice.

But something happened. I personally think they did just what the article spoke of; they thought they had finally figured it out. The sad part is that somehow they came to the threshold of infinite grace and a personal relationship with God and stopped at the point where belief was still mandatory. John Calvin, for instance, being so indoctrinated that belief was the key couldn’t quite shed the doctrine of eternal torment. So when it came to reconciling the atonement and grace with hell he invented a doctrine that in some ways was more ungraceful than many of the doctrines he found his way out of. His was the doctrine that said God created most of his humanity specifically for the purpose of his wrath and sending them to hell. What’s worse is that He attested that hell was somehow the way a perfect and loving God shows his perfection and love!

I think the stumbling blok is pride. I can truly understand how these kinds of doctrines came about, but what we cannot afford to do is become so prideful in our discoveries and knowledge of our Savior that we do not allow our minds to be changed in a way that allows us to grow. The truth is the truth; no matter what is thrown at it truth will always stand.

So how do we apply this? How do we not become like our forerunners in the great reformations of the past? I think its grace through humility, being able to deliver the gospel with meekness and having the ability to let someone be dead set against it. The ultimate “let’s agree to disagree.”

What’s my point in all of this; I feel we are in the midst of a reform. This wonderful gospel of peace and grace is finding its way out of the dark ages and dark minds of the past. It is starting to free people from the bondage that Christ came to free us from; it is setting people free to live and love. But let’s not stop it with the attitude that we have figured it out. Some times I stop and think what would have happened 2 years ago, when I found out that hell was not real, if I had just walked away with the attitude that I had it figured out. I know I would have missed out on the last 2 years of discovery. This last 2 years have been awesome, but I have had to take the attitude that I don’t have it figured out and I have had to be OK with people telling me that I am dead wrong.

It is going to get better! I think the truth is far better than we ever imagined. Who knows what awaits us on the other side, who knows what is possible if we open our minds to every possibility that God is far greater even than what we have already figured out.

In Christ,
PJ

Our elders also have a great deal to teach us and my grandmother always told me that we can’t know the validity of our ideas until they have been tested against the ideas of another. When we sound like know-it-alls we truly are just older children testing what we have learned so far. It helps me to remember that about myself and others. It removes personal offense—though some will still become personally offended by my thoughts, my so far aquired knowlege, my hope is that God will still use them to teach what He desires the other person to know or grow to be.

Truly good teachers are not sages with all the answers but people who enjoy and embrace the ever-going process of learning.