Jeff's Insight

Blog about Christianity and Culture

free will

Is Love a Domino Effect?

By Leave a Comment

The answer to this question is no. Many people reject the thoughtful actions of others. Therefore, many people reject the love of God. Jesus’s greatest act of love was dying on the cross. The act should inspire you to love. You have a choice how you respond to this gift of Him taking our sin. We are not naturally inclined to love others. Unfortunately, we are in opposition to God. Since we are naturally in opposition to love we should look to the one who encapsulates it.

Galatians 5:13-14 (NASB):

“For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but thru love serve one another. For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”

Anybody can receive a gift. You need to act of the gift that God has given to you thru the Son. I believe “the flesh” is our natural reaction. Jesus’s love for you should be a call to action. You are required by Him to “love your neighbor as yourself.” A good metaphor is winning the lottery. It is extremely easy to squander the money on purposeless desires. The money fades away as quickly as they got it. They spend the money on temporal things that give them pleasure in the moment. You are called to use the wealth God has given you for his purposes to be invested in love.

Romans 12:9-11 (NASB)

“Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love; give preference to one another in honor; not lagging behind in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord”

This verse is talking about how to love. If we inherently love others we wouldn’t need this verse. Well, we need it because we sin constantly. The key word in the passage is “diligence.” We need to be in constant pursuit of God’s truth. We fail to love each other when we are not diligent. God requires us to run the race of life to win. We need to get better at every avenue in our lives. Diligent to God is an act of love to our Creator. Does your boss at your place of business respect hard work or just enough to get by? This question is meant to be rhetorical. Showing diligence to the Lord and your neighbor is a great sign of your love for them.

Ephesians 5:1-2 (NASB):

“Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.”

If you don’t know how to love look to Jesus. He was diligent to death. There is a problem with complacency in our culture. The more we have the less we feel is required of us. It is quite the opposite. Are we Diligent? Do we serve our Flesh? Do we follow Christ’s example? If the answer is no, we are falling short. Instead of saying it is impossible we need to be inspired to do more. As you are reading this what can you do right now? If our goal is heaven, then our actions should match heaven.

Are People Inherently Evil or Inherently Good?

By 1 Comment

The dichotomy between the two ideas of if us as humans are inherently good and evil has been going on for millennia. Our culture debates these two ideas as well in Christian teaching. This is a polarizing topic because it is puts on display in political discourse. I will discuss the opposing viewpoints in detail and determine if there is a middle ground.

The first idea I’ll dissect is the idea that humans are inherently good. For this idea to work you must believe that human actions are a by product of their circumstances. Our sinful nature is not a product of our circumstances. It is explained in these verses:

Galatians 5:16-21 (NASB):

“But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law. Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

Sorry about the long passage but I felt like I needed to give you it for greater context. The flesh shows us that we are prone to sin. If the flesh leads to sin, then we cannot be inherently good. If we are inherently good, then we wouldn’t need the Spirit to guide us. We cannot overcome our sin and our fleshly desires without the guidance of God. Another verse to bring the point home:

James 4: 4 (NASB):

“You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”

I like the book of James cause this guy is right to the point. So, no interpretation needed after this.

As I laid out it looks like we are inherently evil because of our fleshly desires. The greater question is being we born evil or are we prone to evil?

Psalms 139:1 (NASB):

“I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it very well.”

Ephesians 2:10 (NASB):

“For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”

I believe we are prone to evil because of our fleshly desires. Those desires are engrained in us, but God didn’t create us for those purposes. We are not born evil but being human we are prone to it. Sounds very close to the same thing but has doctrinal ramifications if you believe you are born evil, unfortunately. Apart from God we are prone to evil. When we walk with him we are prone toward righteousness. If there was a sliding scale on the spectrum between whether we are inherently good or evil it would slide closer to evil. In a later post I will discuss how our culture tends to believe we are inherently good and the consequences of that belief.

Predestination and Free Will

By 2 Comments

Predestination vs. Free Will

Predestination and Free Will have been at odds with each other in the church. First I will talk about whether determinism is completely true, mostly true, or false. Does God have a plan for our lives? If so how much do we have a say in the plan? Is Calvinism a problem in the church?

 

Lets start out with the definition of determinism: A quick google search gave me this answer at the top of the search:

Determinism: “the doctrine that all events, including human action, are ultimately determined by causes external to the will. Some philosophers have taken determinism to imply that individual human beings have no free will and cannot be held morally responsible for their actions.”

Key ideas:

  • Hard Determinism
  • Indeterminism
  • Compatibilism
  • Libertarianism (Not the political term)

What I find very interesting is the last sentence with the google search definition gave me. If you are a Christian after this life we are judged based on the choices we have made. This basis is from the philosophy of Hard Determinism. This runs contrary to our accountability to our creator. If we are all a subject to our environment. Hard Determinism not only destroys our accountability to our creator but is logically flawed.

If determinism is true then lets look at Compatibilism, determinism with free will. If a small animal jumps in front of your car what do you do. A binary choice still can be argued as Hard Determinism. Because one’s own nature based on outside circumstances will create the choice for them. The binary choice is keep going or swerving in the left direction into traffic. A person who swerves has a high value of the animals life while a person who could potentially be hurt by oncoming traffic cares more about that then the animals life. You can in some sense say the way they are raised will cause them to make a specific decision. But that isn’t really the only choices. Realistically there is an infinite number of choices one can make in that circumstance.

Here is a list to humor you and me as well…lol: complete stop, swerve right, swerve far right, swerve far left, center the animal under your car between the tires, intentionally hit the animal, don’t pay attention to the road, slow down then swerve all the ways listed, speed up and swerve, slow down and hit the animal, slow down and speed up not paying attention, Car malfunction, oncoming traffic defensive driving, 0-55 differences in speeds…List can go on for this whole blog. This idea debunks hard determinism but not indeterminism which I will discuss when talking about Predestination in Christian thought at the end.

Lets move on to Free Will and if it is compatible with determinism. This idea for me is a hard topic. Does random things happen to you or are you a product of your circumstances. Me personally fall somewhere in-between Compatibalism and Libertarianism. That is from the idea of outside involvement in our lives that make things less deterministic. The best verse I will get into is Ephesians 6:12 (NASB). It states:

“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of the darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.”

When it comes to the physical world I see it in a determinist light. I see a cause creating an effect which in then turns into another cause. Our physical world relies on these ordered effects. Without an outside balance of cause and effects our physical world would not make sense. Our world goes into a perpetual state of entropy that if left unchanged by any outside force will die out as soon as the sun stops giving us the needed energy. When it comes to the spiritual world as described in the previous verse is that we are being tempted at a different rate as others. Satan attacks those who are living in the way of the Lord more then those who sit in complacency. So libertarian philosophy in the spiritual sense makes perfect sense.

Now we have the big battle within the church. Many pre-destination sympathizers may use the straw man of Hard Determinism to say that they believe in free will. While in reality Hard Indeterminist do not believe in Free Will all together.   They chose to follow him but God has already chosen us to follow him. When you say but then everything before it is held up for scrutiny. I hear this verse as a defense but taken out of context when explaining pre-destination:

Jeremiah 29:11: (NASB) “’For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.’” If you read this verse you are thinking, “wow we don’t have a requirement in place for that to happen” …Oh but wait. Jeremiah 29:12: (NASB)“’Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you.’” Oh, so he is talking about what will happen and a response to that. So, no predestination. I see many times in many churches they cherry pick verses in order to prop us their own biases without consuming the rest of the scripture around it.

So long story short. The winner is…Libertarianism. Have thoughts that I am wrong or right? Please comment so we can discuss.