How would you respond to this statement:
“We don’t choose Christ, He chose us.”
The only background I’ll provide is that it was a statement made in a Lutheran Bible Study during a discussion about infant baptism and the girl attending the study is attempting to provide a refutation because she feels the statement is incorrect but she doesn’t know why. I already told her what I think but I’m curious to know how you guys would respond.
I happened to go to a Catholic spiritual director today. Her advice is that I need to change my attitude to God. I’m afraid my attitude is negative at the moment, so this needs to be taken into account. And the reason it’s negative is the amount of humiliation and negativity I’ve copped.
Enough on that. However I’ve often stated that the night my father died, he appeared in my room. He started with an apology, we argued and conversed, and at the end he gave this terrifying scream, and then disappeared.
However, during the proceedings at one stage he blurted out, “I always was doomed! I didn’t really have any choice!” I argued back (even though I was an atheist at the time) and said, “That can’t be right!” He replied, “Oh, it’s right all right. You can see that from here.”
But later in the same conversation he admitted, “I was WILLING!” (to act the way he did, with a
deliberate policy of destroying my confidence for 20 years, and wrecking the family God had given him).
So I have a bit of a struggle with it, but the fact remains that he was, as he said, willing. However this is one of the contributing factors to my negative image of God at the moment. Not the only one, I hasten to add.
Complicating this is the issue of the spiritual war between the two main protagonists, God and the devil. If the outcome is already known ie. God invariably gets His people, and the devil invariably gets his people, then why bother fighting?. They may as well call it quits, split the difference, and go their separate ways.
Hence there is still a struggle for men’s minds. On the other hand there are Biblical precedents for predestination (for some anyway). Pharaoh’s heart, in the end, was
hardened by God, leading to the disasters that befell the Egyptians. Revelation talks about “all those who are to go into captivity will go into captivity.” Were Ananias and Sapphira chosen as an object lesson to the early church (were they the only ones who weren’t the full quid, or did Peter use them as an example to others who might have done or were thinking of doing something similar? Did Judas really have any choice, as “the one who must be lost”? Christ told Pilate He had authority over Him only because it had been given to him from above, which implies Pilate was just doing God’s will in a strange way, but he didn’t realise it due to his own brutal egotism and power.
I don’t think it’s an easy one to answer. I struggle with it to some extent. I suppose the contribution of someone above that the gate has “Whosoever Will” is on one side, and “I chose you” on the other is as good as any.
The gates of Hell could be imagined to have the very same inscription.
As for infant Baptism, one would think that if parents were truly Christian, one thing they would want to do was to ensure their children were baptised, and then bring them up in Christian homes, so that they would be more likely to “choose” Christ.
