Musings on the Daily Lectionary

In today's reading from Acts, the "rejection" of the gospel by some Jews spurs Paul to carry the good news to the Gentiles, "and as many as had been destined for eternal life became believers." This isn't one of the primary texts for formulating a doctrine of predestination, but it certainly is compatible with such a doctrine. People became believers, not because the figured things out, not because it made sense to them, but because they had been "destined for eternal life."

Personally, I am glad that the Bible doesn't develop this idea at great length, a reticence that might have served my own denomination's theologians well at times. Presbyterians didn't come up with predestination. Calvin borrowed it from Augustine and we share the doctrine with Roman Catholics, Lutherans, and others. But we emphasized it more and became known for it. We've backed away from it some in more recent years. It's still on the books, but we don't talk about it a lot. After all, it seems so... un-American.

We Americans are big on notions of merit, of people getting what they deserve, of people getting ahead on effort and not status. What business does God have destining anyone for good or bad?

Someone once noted that no one would be inclined to embrace a doctrine of predestination without believing she was one of the chosen ones. But be that as it may, I wonder why it is that so many of us are more comfortable leaving things in human hands rather than simply trusting God. Most all Protestants want to talk about God's unmerited grace, about being "saved" as a gift and not by our own merit. So why does the idea of predestination bother us so? (It's important to distinguish between predestination and determinism. Predestination - formally known as the Doctrine of Election - is not about every event in one's life being preset. It is concerned almost exclusively with salvation.)

Part of being human is not knowing everything. Faith seeks understanding, but faith also knows that God is incomprehensible to humans in many ways. "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says Yahweh. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." (Isaiah 55:8-9) So while I will seek to understand God and live as God calls me to live, I'm pretty comfortable leaving ultimate questions of judgment, of who's in and who's out, up to God. After all, the God we meet in Jesus is not only just, but loving, caring, merciful, and forgiving.

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