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Open Theism Discussion Board > Public Forums > Questions about Christianity > (No Subject)
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Susan MN
Registered Member
Date Joined Nov 2003
Total Posts : 2
| Posted 11/28/2003 2:19 PM (GMT -6) |   | Hello!
My name is Susan, I attend Greg's church and am just recently found this forum. I have been lurking for a few weeks.
I also just recently started to understand the Open Theism View, and have tenatively embraced it because the predetermined view has had a profound negative impact on my life to date.
I was sharing this new perspective with my mother recently, she is not a born-again Believer. She grew up in the Catholic Church and attended Catholic Schools through high school. She doesn't talk about spiritual matters, for the most part. I do recall her saying to me once when I was teenager and had said that I didn't believe in God that I needed to "think about what would happen after you die."
The one thing she ALWAYS said to us was "God helps those who help themselves." I came to hate this phrase because while growing up I quite simply never measured up to her, or anyone else's expectations. I was diagnosed with ADD as and adult, and can now see how that negatively affected me while growing up.
After becoming a born-again Believer the Pastor who led me to Christ, a Baptist of the Reformed/Calvinist tradition, became vivid when I told him what my mom had always told us "God helps those who help themselves." He stated adamently "those words are NOT in the Bible!!"
I tend to bring up the topic of Christ with my mom, especially when I have a testimony to share. I feel she is extremely bitter towards God because her marriage ended in infidility on my dad's part and divorce. She has always led a "good life", my dad is to this day the only man she has ever been with and they have been divorced for nearly 15 years. My mom stopped attending church years ago. I think she feels she will still go to heaven because she is basically, in her own book, "a good person".
So I present this topic to you to help me in my desire to lead my mother to salvation and a personal relationship with Christ.
In the past few weeks the open theism teaching has had a dramatic positive effect in my life. I have shared this with my mom. At the same time my sister, a non-believer, is going through a painful break-up with her fiancee of four years and my mom is worried that my sister will go back to him, which would not be good since their relationship was unhealthy.
My sister is attending counseling twice a week and seems to have a good grasp on her former fiancee's destructive character traits. Of course I am praying that my sister will accept Christ as her savior, but I also think she is dealing with the emotional pain of this lost relationship fairly well - she has afterall sought, out and is attending, counseling. I tried to reassure my mother that my sister was taking healthy steps towards overcoming this loss and that we couldn't ask much more of her right now, nor should we burden her with worry and nagging (however well intended). Since my mom went to some Al-Anon (family of alcoholic) meetings for a short time at the time of her divorce I said to her, "Let Go & Let God."
My mom's response surprised me: She said "Well, 'God helps those who help themselves.' You used to say that isn't in the Bible, but I guess your new Pastor (Greg Boyd) has told you it is."
"Hummm..." I thought to myself. "Does the open theism view really say 'God Helps Those Who Help Themselves'?"
She may have a point. But I am struggling to articulate how this fits in with what has been the cornerstone of my faith and hope for the future since I gave my life to Christ at the age of 21. The verse I always look to for comfort is (paraphrased here) "All things work together for the good of those who love the Lord."
Also, I am new to this whole open theism view, yet for very personal reasons I see it as logical. In just the past few weeks I have overcome a HUGE personal emotional/spiritual barrier as the result of this teaching.
God helps those who ask him for his help, who submit to him, who love him. What about those who are still running from him, those who have not put Christ in the driver's seat of their lives? God certainly is chasing them down! This I believe.
Still... is it entirely Biblical to say "because my sister is seeking secular psychological counseling, the Lord is going to help her since she is 'helping herself'?"
Then again... before I became a Christian I was searching for answers and read many secular self-help books. Scott Peck's book "The Road Less Traveled" was instrumental in leading me to Christ. So was the "higher power" concept taught at ACOA (Adult Children of Alcoholics) and Al-Anon meetings. I was working on my problems, became interested in spiritual matters, was invited to a Baptist church that met in the park in inner-city Atlanta, and from there was attracted to the peace and calm of Believers, and this caused me to consider the Bible to be the Truth. A few months later I told the Lord I gave up living life my way, because I was failing, and committed to live my life his way from that point forward.
In the Christian tradition I have been a part of ever since then I was taught that I shouldn't take credit for anything in my life. Everything I have I have through God's grace and God's grace alone. I guess this is Calvinist thinking... but I have been taught, and have believed, that I am nothing but a dirty, rotten sinner and any redeeming quality I may exhibit in my life is not by my doing but by God's grace and God's grace alone.
Or, as DL Moody put it when he saw a drunk walking down the street, "There, but by the grace of God, go I."
This is a rather jumbled, rambling post, and I apologize for that. However, jumbled and rambling is about the only way I can articulate the questions running through my head at the moment.
Who out there can help me to straight out my thoughts and formulate a Biblical answer for my mother?
Blessings to all,
Susan
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Alan Rhoda
Registered Member
Date Joined May 2002
Total Posts : 680
| Posted 11/28/2003 3:18 PM (GMT -6) | | Susan,
Thanks for sharing. I pray that you continue to grow in the grace and the knowledge of God, that you will become an effective ambassador for Christ to your family, and that they will come to know and enjoy the riches of God's grace in Jesus.
With respect to your question, a couple points need to be made:
1. The Bible does teach that God's blessings are often contingent on what we do, and in that sense it teaches that God helps those who help themselves. James says, "you have not because you ask not" and that the prayer of a righteous man is effective. Matthew says that the one who asks will receive and the one who seeks will find. In the OT, God's covenantal blessing were generally contingent upon Israel's faithful obedience to God's commands.
2. The Bible also teaches that God helps those who cannot help themselves. In fact, if this were not so, then no one could be saved. For no one can come to God unless the Father draws him (John 6). Also, the Bible says that God sends rain on the just and the unjust. In other words, some of God's blessings are unconditional, and he bestows them on people just because he loves them.
So one needs to strike a balance here. God does help those who help themselves, but he also helps those who cannot help themselves, and sometimes even people who can help themselves and won't. What the Bible does not teach, and what people to use the phrase "God helps those who help themselves" often mean, is that "God helps ONLY those who help themselves". That is not Biblical teaching.
Hope that helps,
Alan | | Back to Top | | |
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Matthew Timothy Short
Huh?
Date Joined Apr 2002
Total Posts : 635
| Posted 11/30/2003 2:48 AM (GMT -6) | | Hey!
God does for me what is humanly impossible (i.e. being born of His Spirit, etc.) and sets before me commands (demand-ments), of which I am obligated through duty to perform. That is to say, God never asks anyone to do anything, which He does not also enable or empower said person to do or to be.
Jhn 11:39-41 Jesus said, Take ye away the stone . . . Then they took away the stone [from the place] where the dead was laid.
Jhn 11:44 . . . Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go.
Both of these requests to fulfil; are humanly possible . . .
Jhn 12:9 Much people of the Jews therefore knew that he was there: and they came not for Jesus' sake only, but that they might see Lazarus also, whom he had raised from the dead.
Raising anyone from the dead, is humanly impossible . . .
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honorman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1137
| Posted 11/30/2003 7:15 PM (GMT -6) | | Susan, from where I stand, God has always required me to do things before he works in me. I have never gotten a job unless I looked for one, a house unless I searched for one, I have not grown in my faith unless I study and pray to him. Plus, Tim's quoting of out-of-the-everyday experience simply, to me, is not the everyday experience of the average Christian. Yes, God can do those things. Does he all the time? No. God requires that we make decisions and work out OUR salvation in fear and trembling. If we do not act, God will not act within us. Plus, Tim, your verses are not about growth or living our life out...the ones you quote are about people who have no choice in the matter. Not revelant at all.
Finally, I applaud you for your study. I urge you to read BOTH those who are open theists and those who are not. Study. Read the relevant scripture. As for Geisler, am a big admirer, but I wouldn't count on his arguments on open theism. For me, Bruce Ware's book is much better. Geisler's arguments are only assertions and nothing more. He is not the one you want to read when looking for a case to make against open theism. His "Battle For God," is a poorly written, simply bad book. Not what I have come to expect from him. "Chosen But Free," while I disagree that it makes a good case for God's sovereighty (Sim, what sovereighty are you talking about? Open theism makes a case that holds both God's soverighty and man's free will together...you must be talking about a Calvinist soveignty, which is not the only one out there...you need to be more specific when speaking about such things) and man's free will (I think his argument was simply an assertion and when an assertion is not backed by logic it is just a statement, nothing more), it is an excellant book otherwise. | | Back to Top | | |
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Laplace
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 138
| Posted 12/2/2003 1:29 PM (GMT -6) | | Susan,
Deuteronomy 30:19-20
"This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. "
And then we have the book of Job.
Answering the question then as Alan so astutely has, the answer is "Yes" God does help those who help themselves, and "Yes" He helps those who do not help themselves.
The root problem is we are looking for a consistent implication that will occur under the same exact circumstances, and Biblically it does not fit that way. One sin seems to get different punishments at times, and mercy is given at whom the Sovereign One chooses to.
DL Moody though hit it on the head. The key here is the attitude of humility. He knew that he was nothing in comparison to God's glory. And he knew that God loved him because He said He did. And so he knows that everything that is given to him is given by God. We ought not to "expect" things to happen for us when we do things. We can only ask and hope and do what we know is right. It may bring us good, or it may bring us evil. But we have to trust that all things work for the good. In time, all injustices will be made just, and everything done will be accounted for. Only those transgressions which are covered by Christ's blood will not be given total impartiality.
"I say we blast the meatbag, Master" -HK-47, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic | | Back to Top | | |
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