Predestination

Such was the announced topic of the sermon this morning. The pastor didn't do a particularly good job of sticking to the subject, though, which I appreciated. As my friend M said later, if I was particularly keen on learning the theology behind predestination it would have been a very disappointing sermon, but since he and I are both pretty well settled on it (and we even agree!) we both enjoyed it. At least the pastor includes a lot of scripture. I generally don't even bother turning to the passages he quotes because I can't flip that fast, despite my AWANA training. I just write down the passages and the basic ideas he highlighted in each of them and then go back through at my own speed later. That way I can think and pray about it.

One thing that has always amused me is the way that even self-proclaimed atheists seem to suddenly believe in predestination when they fall in love (and Christians do so even more). "It's meant to be. He/She is the one I have been waiting for..." I'm sorry, but if you don't believe in God then it can not be "meant" to be. Who could have meant it? And why should you believe that there is "one" to wait for? Pick any one you like, but don't resort to justifying it with theology you don't believe.

Or do we really believe it after all? When I was in Europe I was amazed at the popularity of horoscopes. The same people who mock Christians for their silly beliefs align their lives according to a generic platitude in the daily newspaper. I heard that France picked the players for their World Cup soccer team based partially on which month they were born (and look how well it worked!) Rather than believing in a well-defined but invisible God, they choose to believe in an intangible, unintelligible, and ill-defined collection of superstitions. Why? I think it is because God has placed in us a need to believe in order. We need to believe that there is Someone bigger than us controlling the world, because we see that we are doing a lousy job of it and probably always will. We have moments of optimism when we think that we have everything under control, but when we really need to be sure we instinctively start looking for super(above and beyond)-natural input.

So anyway, that's 2 cents out of my dollar on predestination. Oh, and I'm not a Calvinist-which makes the last 50 cents of that theology really fun!