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Thanks for your prayers. Looks like my friend will be out of the hospital in a couple of days. He and his family will likely be traveling home to the States for a few months R&R.

Interestingly, part of what seems to have brought on his crash was open theism. Like I said, he moving at light speed to the Calvinisitic end of the spectrum while I've been passing him (at light speed! remember relativity!) traveling in the opposite direction. I've been challenging him on several issues that he seemed to have really taken to heart. I loaned him a few books a week before he broke down.

When we checked him into the hospital I asked his wife what he was up to. She said he'd been studying day and night the books I gave him, along with Daniel and Revelation, trying to "figure it all out."

The whole first week he was in the hospital he kept talking to me about parallel universes, time and God's relationship to time, God's exhautive control of the universe, and our freedom; that sort of stuff.

Bottom line seems to have been a) he was (is?) convinced the open view is heresy, but b) couldn't figure out how his best friend (me), somebody he KNEW was saved and loved God, had studied the OV for two years and ended up adopting it. He couldn't reconcile the two. This seems to have been behind his crash.

Thanks for praying!

Tom

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I can kind of relate to your friend. When my boyfriend first explained the open view to me, I responded with hostility that was simply irrational. The open view immediately struck me as brazen, irreverent, unbiblical, nonsensical, and dangerous. What about Psalm 139 ??? What about all the predictions of the future in the Bible ??? What about the fact that everyone who presumes to know something about theology knows that God is outside of time ??? (Those were my main arguments, and I was sure they had not occurred to him and that they devasted his view.) What about the fact that I’d been praying for the husband God had picked out for me ever since I was a little girl ??? (I didn’t mention that one.) I started praying for my boyfriend right away because I was really worried about him. My arguments weren’t making any difference so I sicked God on him.

It wasn’t just that I disagreed with it, it was that I had to defeat it. To his day I have no idea why I reacted with such irrational hostility to the open view. The most plausible explanation for it was simply my zeal for the truth about God—but that assumed that whoever believed the open view didn’t share this zeal—which made me react all the more against openness—it was a viscious circle. I see similar hostility in many open view critics.

Well, in my case, I read the book my boyfriend gave me (The Openness of God) and realized the authors were Christians who took the Bible seriously and who knew a thing or two about theology. As for me and my boyfriend, we ran off together and got married. It may not be a match predestined from before the foundation of the world, but it is a match that God has been very involved in from the beginning.

Although I didn’t react as deeply as your friend has, I can sort of understand how a person can become consumed by a crisis of faith. I pray that your friendship and ministry together will be restored and grow to be stronger than ever.

Blessings,
Electra

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“The star truly is high in the sky, is just as high in the sky although, reflected in the sea, it seems to lie far under the earth.” § Søren Kierkegaard

Edited by - Electra on 03/13/2002 07:53:46 AM