Introspection: Chosen

I share these thoughts, hoping they are of help to someone else.

Chosen

Scripture:

God destined us to be His adopted children through Jesus Christ because of His love. This was according to His goodwill and plan and to honor His glorious grace that He has given to us freely through the Son whom He loves.

Ephesians 1:5-6 (CEB)

Not because of who I am
But because of what You've done
Not because of what I've done
But because of who You are

From "Who Am I?" by Casting Crowns

From kindergarten through high school, I exclusively attended private Christian schools, meaning that, from ages 4 through 18, the Bible was a major part of my curriculum. For a brief time during my senior year in high school, a student teacher from a local evangelical university taught my Bible class. At the end of one class period, he revealed that he believed in the idea of limited atonement. This stirred up a bit of controversy among my classmates.

Limited atonement is the idea that God has already decided which people will be saved and which people will not be saved. This means that there is a certain group of people, the "elect," who will be unable to resist God's grace, and will therefore spend eternity with God in Heaven. Everyone else is basically hopeless. They will never come to repentance; they will never accept God's forgiving grace; and they will ultimately spend eternity apart from God in hell.¹ This idea leaves little room for free will, as God has already made the choice for each of us.

After that class period, I told some of my classmates that I didn't believe this idea because I knew that it was my choice: I could accept Christ as my Savior and seek to follow God's will for my life, or I could reject Christ and do all the destructive things that I wanted to do. One of my classmates said that, even if God only chose to save some of humanity, God was still being merciful because we all deserve hell.

It's easy to say something like that when you are certain that you are one of the chosen. What about all the people whom God didn't choose? What about all the people who were put on this earth only to perish and face everlasting anguish? What about all the people who literally don't have a prayer?

I don't follow this line of thinking, but the idea still troubles me. What if the people who believe this way are right? What if I am one of the unchosen, the uninvited, the unforgiven? What if I am only fooling myself by thinking I have a relationship with God? What if my faith and my beliefs are all for naught? What if there is nothing awaiting me at the end of my life but a lake of fire? How would I accept my fate? I would probably do a lot of pointless begging. Part of me thinks that I would spend eternity indignant toward God for so cruelly rejecting me.

There are some people who take this viewpoint to a horrible extreme. There is one "church" in particular whose members believe that they are the only people chosen by God. They believe that God hates all other people and is just itching to send every last one of them to hell. I recently said that if they are right about God, then I want to spend eternity in hell. Who would want to spend eternity with a God like that?

When I ponder such ideas and speak out against them, I can hear venom in my own words. Why would I speak such vitriol against God if I don't believe such negative things about Him? When I dwell on these things too much, I can even sense anger and distrust toward God lurking within me. Why would I have these negative feelings about a God who as been so loving and patient with me?

Have you ever kept someone at arm's-length because of your experiences with other people in the past?

I have always thought of myself to be more of an outsider than part of the "in" crowd. I am more familiar with rejection than with "chosenness." I was never one of the popular kids. In elementary school, I was never chosen first for kickball teams at recess. In my junior year of high school, I was not elected class president. I ended up going to both of my junior-senior banquets² by myself. In my senior year of college I was turned down for a job at my Alma Mater. Don't get me started about my love life. I was chosen for a few honor societies, but that was only because I had good grades.

If God is the type who picks and chooses who He wants to be saved, why should I expect Him to be any different from the other people who rejected me over the years? Last week, I realized that perhaps I was projecting onto God my feelings of rejection from the past.

The truth is that God is the last person with whom I should be angry. The more I look at my life, the more I see God at work in it, drawing me closer to Him. The more I look back, the more I can see that God has always been there preparing the way for me. I know that God is blessing my efforts to serve Him. God is not going to reject me or give up on me: God has chosen me! When God reminded me last week, the only way I could describe my feelings at the time was humbled - struck down from my high horse.

Do I think that this makes me special? Yes! But I also believe that each and every one of us is special to God. We live in an immeasurably vast universe that may have existed for billions of years. In the grand scheme of things, each of us is but a particle that exists for an instant in time. Still, God knows how many hairs are on our heads, every thought we have ever thought, and every feeling we have ever felt. We are that important to God.³

Two of the most famous Bible verses are found in the Gospel of John:
For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him won’t perish but will have eternal life. God didn’t send His Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.⁴

God poured out His grace on all of humanity by sending His Son Christ Jesus into the world. Jesus lived, not as a part of the "in" crowd, but among the outsiders. He showed us how to love each other, and He taught a message of justice, mercy, and love. In dying on a cross, Christ paid the penalty for all of humanity's wrongdoings, and, in His resurrection, He brought us hope for eternity. Christ came into this world so that we "may have life, and have it abundantly,"⁵ not just in the next life, but in this life.

St. Peter, after ministering to a man who would normally be his enemy, said the following:
I really am learning that God doesn’t show partiality to one group of people over another. Rather, in every nation, whoever worships Him and does what is right is acceptable to Him. This is the message of peace He sent to the Israelites by proclaiming the good news through Jesus Christ: He is Lord of all!⁶
God's grace is for all people, not just a select few. St. Paul, in one of his letters, wrote that God "wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth."⁷

In another letter, Paul wrote that grace is "the gift of God - not the result of works."⁸ We don't have to prove ourselves worthy of God's love. God's love makes us worthy. God wants to be part of each of our lives, and He wants all of us to be a part of His family.

It is my hope that you, the reader, realize that God has chosen you. Will you choose God back?


Notes:
1 - Wikipedia: "Limited Atonement"
2 - A junior-senior banquet is what a fundamentalist Christian school has instead of a prom.
3 - See Psalm 139
4 - John 3:16-17 (CEB)
5 - John 10:10 (NRSV)
6 - Acts 10:34-36 (CEB)
7 - 1 Timothy 2:4 (CEB)
8 - Ephesians 2:8-9 (NRSV)


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