Mars Hill and Predestination

If you're not a Christian, I'd really rather you didn't read this entry. I'd rather you not because the predestination conversation is sort of like an old family argument in Christianity and while an old family argument may be relatively harmless to family members who understand all of the background and nuances, and that at the end of the day everyone is still loved, those outside the family may not have that same level of understanding and may think the family is actually fighting (which it has in the past, but will not be here). This can at best lead to confusion from the outside party and at worst to outright dismissal of the family and its members as argumentative, bickering, haters. Obviously I don't want anyone getting that impression of Christians for any reason, and certainly not from something I've written. That being said, read on if you like, but please take the discussion as just that and kindly remember that in my opinion this is an academic issue surrounding the theology of God and should in no way distract from what Jesus said and did, which is of course the real point of it all.


I recently listened to a sermon by Mark Driscoll, head pastor of Mars Hill church in Seattle. The sermon on predestination is actually part of a series they're currently doing called "Religion Saves and 9 Other Misconceptions". The series came out of an interesting idea. The idea came about from one of Paul's letters to the Corinthians. In the letter it's clear that what Paul is doing is answering a bunch of questions sent to him by the church in Corinth. Mars Hill decided to let people ask questions of it, and then everyone could vote on which ones they most wanted to hear answered, and Driscoll would teach on the top nine votes. The first was birth control, the second was on humor, and the third of the series (number seven) was predestination. As a side note, they also revisit the topic in the evening service, but allow people to send in text messages with questions. These questions are screened and then answered on the fly by Driscoll at the end of the service. I will say though that they apparently don't screen the hard questions because after the birth control sermon someone asked if aborting a pregnancy that was brought on by a rape was a sin. Driscoll answered it too. I was surprised and somewhat impressed.


I do have to say I've never actually heard anyone teach on predestination from a church pulpit. That type of talk is usually reserved for the classroom at a university or possibly some types of high schools. The fact that I've never heard anyone address this concept in church of course gives us some idea of the sensitivity of the material. Generally the topic is treated as politicians will treat the subject of abortion. They avoid it if at all possible, but if asked will provide their prepared answer and then do all they can to move to the next question. So, I was both glad and a little wary to see that someone had actually preached a sermon on the topic of predestination.

This post is not really a response to what Driscoll himself said, but rather the ideas he expressed. That is, other than the notion I have that perhaps this particular conversation is better had among Christians alone, my thoughts on this are more generally thoughts on the Calvinistic view of predestination, as that is basically what Driscoll was teaching. He happens to be a Calvinist when it comes to predestination, and so that is what he submitted as the proper way to understand the concept. I happen to disagree on a couple of points. Of course I'm not the first, so I'm just going to talk about what presents itself as clear to me and will try to remain brief.

Most fundamentally I disagree with the Calvinist view because it invalidates free will in an individual human. God clearly saw free will as being important when he gave Adam and Eve the choice to obey his command or not, which of course ultimately led to original sin, the downfall of mankind's relationship with God, death, humans who do evil, and of course eventually the Super Bowl in 2006, which was the greatest evil in history. I believe free will was so vastly important to God because love drives the universe. Without love none of it makes any sense at all. As Jack Johnson wrote, "Love is the answer,At least for most of the questions in my heart. Like why are we here? And where do we go?And how come it's so hard?" But, without an individual's free will remaining intact, how can anything like true love exist? In other words, if one has no choice but to love God, is that love? I would suggest that it is not. I would suggest that that would be closer to a slave than a son.


There is also a concept in the Calvinist view of predestination suggesting that mankind cannot choose God because of his or her depravity level. Before God, through Jesus redeems a person, that person is spiritually dead in their sin (Ephesians 2:1). Surely, their thinking goes, a dead person cannot make a decision, and so it must be that God reaches down with his strong arm of grace and raises some from their spiritual death. But, the logic continues, each person chooses to be spiritually dead, that is each of us chooses to sin. Now that everyone chooses sin is not up for debate. The Bible is pretty clear on that one. We all choose to do things that are opposite the nature of God (we hate, we lie, we are unjust, we are unmerciful, etc) and so become alienated to Him, as He (being a being of perfect goodness) cannot associate with that which is not also purely good. On this point there is little discussion. But, how is it that we as beings are able to "choose" in one direction, but not the other? If we can only choose evil, is that a choice, and if it's not a choice, can we be held accountable for it? If it is a choice and we are therefore accountable for it, mustn't we by definition have another option, and in this case mustn't that option be good? I would suggest there are a few places in the Bible that indicate we as humans have the ability to choose good over evil (Ecclesiastes 3:11, Joshua 24:15, Matt 11:28 to name just a few). In fact, at the beginning of Romans (a big predestination book) Paul spends a bit of time talking about how the godless and the wicked are going to get what's coming to them, but it didn't have to be like that. In the end however it is just because what may be known about God is "plain" and men are without excuse for their evil choices.