Definitely don't like that pastors manipulative move.
But as someone who has committed all the bad Adventist sins and at one time claimed to be leaning towards a deistic view of God, those who had the greatest impact on me then and have had the greatest impact on me since are folk that showed me unconditional love and then loved me enough to tell me very directly when I was and am wrong. Outside pressure has caused me to take pause many times in my life and evaluate the path I was on or headed towards. Even if in the moment I may be and may have been put off, a little or a lot.
I'm a great sinner. I might have been much worse without those honest confrontations!
Though your opening illustration I don't think is a good fit for any personality as it is manipulative. I don't think honest direct pressure is bad for all personalities. Some like mine need it.
Thanks for sharing, Chad! We have obviously talked a bit about this before and I appreciate your perspective. Some of it, I do believe, is probably personality-driven, but I obviously think that one point you made in the beginning is key: those who've had the greatest impact on you have shown you "unconditional love." If that's not in place, everything after that is irrelevant at best and damaging at worst.
I can think of one or two people in my lifetime who accepted me where I was at that time, who made me feel safe and accepted, who were instrumental in my desire to have a relationship with Jesus. I praise God for them. I, too, try to be that same kind of person...always a work in progress. :)
Thanks for these thoughts, Ralph. I see what you mean, though I don't exist in a university-setting full-time these days to know how accurate that is. At the same time, I'm not sure that setting is amenable in general to fostering anything beyond pseudo-community, at least in the classroom. So I don't fault universities necessarily if they don't get beyond pseudo-community.
Thanks again for your further thoughts, Ralph! I am not at all an expert on the university context, so I don't have much else to add to those questions. But I appreciate your feedback.
Regarding your second question on conversion: you raise good points and ask good questions. I certainly have significant concerns about the traditional understanding of "conversion," and don't at all think it's as simple as much modern evangelicalism thinks it is. Will there be the "sheep and the goats" in the end? Will some be "lost" and others "saved"? The answer, I believe, is "yes" to both questions, though I wouldn't define all that necessarily in some Reformed/evangelical soteriological scheme. I also believe in a sort of "soteriological inclusiveness" where many who seemingly aren't on the inside really are, and vice-versa. As Lesslie Newbigin says, when it comes to salvation in the Bible, the emphasis is on "surprise." We will be surprised by those who don't make it and surprised by those who do.
For me, I understand the whole conversion idea to some degree in light of the 12 Steps of AA. Are people willing to acknowledge Step 1 and embrace Step 2 (in their own way)? If so, whether they have all the theology down correctly, and what that exactly all looks like, is partly immaterial.
Of course, the bigger question for me - which I hope to return to in a future post - is what do we even mean by "salvation" and what do we understand God is trying to accomplish with this whole project? I don't believe it's simply trying to get the legal paperwork taken care of so sinners have the legal right to some day go to heaven (which is basically how the Reformed explain it).
Thanks for your further thoughts! A lot to chew on and think about. I think it's important to recognize, lest I get tempted to a sort of, in CS Lewis's words, "chronological snobbery," that all of our explanations for God, and our understanding of "salvation" (however we want to translate that word), are approximations and analogies. So I don't know that our present understanding has "replaced," say, the Reformed view of salvation. Both the Reformed view, as well as ours today, are different models, neither of which are completely wrong, nor neither of which are completely right. "We know in part" and "see in a glass darkly." There may be people for whom the Reformed model is exactly what they need to hear; there are others for whom what some have labeled the "healing" model is more relevant and comforting. As we see in incarnation, God meets us where we are and expresses Himself to us in ways that make sense to us. This is not to deny "objective" truth or that there isn't a sense in which we do "graduate" into more accurate explanations about God (e.g., it would be hard to say that it is both true that God torments people in hell forever and yet annihilates them after a finite period of burning). But I just want to be careful that I don't ever assume I've arrived at a place where I've nailed down the ontological reality of God.
So I guess what I'm saying is, I like the idea of salvation as "making whole" myself, but I still think there is a place for the Reformed/forensic understanding of it all as well.
Definitely don't like that pastors manipulative move.
But as someone who has committed all the bad Adventist sins and at one time claimed to be leaning towards a deistic view of God, those who had the greatest impact on me then and have had the greatest impact on me since are folk that showed me unconditional love and then loved me enough to tell me very directly when I was and am wrong. Outside pressure has caused me to take pause many times in my life and evaluate the path I was on or headed towards. Even if in the moment I may be and may have been put off, a little or a lot.
I'm a great sinner. I might have been much worse without those honest confrontations!
Though your opening illustration I don't think is a good fit for any personality as it is manipulative. I don't think honest direct pressure is bad for all personalities. Some like mine need it.
Thanks for sharing, Chad! We have obviously talked a bit about this before and I appreciate your perspective. Some of it, I do believe, is probably personality-driven, but I obviously think that one point you made in the beginning is key: those who've had the greatest impact on you have shown you "unconditional love." If that's not in place, everything after that is irrelevant at best and damaging at worst.
You might offer Uriah Smith's insight????
Amen.
I can think of one or two people in my lifetime who accepted me where I was at that time, who made me feel safe and accepted, who were instrumental in my desire to have a relationship with Jesus. I praise God for them. I, too, try to be that same kind of person...always a work in progress. :)
God bless.
Thanks, Linda! I know I'm very much a work in progress as well. But having a person or two in our lives like that is such a gift and rare blessing.
Thanks for these thoughts, Ralph. I see what you mean, though I don't exist in a university-setting full-time these days to know how accurate that is. At the same time, I'm not sure that setting is amenable in general to fostering anything beyond pseudo-community, at least in the classroom. So I don't fault universities necessarily if they don't get beyond pseudo-community.
Thanks again for your further thoughts, Ralph! I am not at all an expert on the university context, so I don't have much else to add to those questions. But I appreciate your feedback.
Regarding your second question on conversion: you raise good points and ask good questions. I certainly have significant concerns about the traditional understanding of "conversion," and don't at all think it's as simple as much modern evangelicalism thinks it is. Will there be the "sheep and the goats" in the end? Will some be "lost" and others "saved"? The answer, I believe, is "yes" to both questions, though I wouldn't define all that necessarily in some Reformed/evangelical soteriological scheme. I also believe in a sort of "soteriological inclusiveness" where many who seemingly aren't on the inside really are, and vice-versa. As Lesslie Newbigin says, when it comes to salvation in the Bible, the emphasis is on "surprise." We will be surprised by those who don't make it and surprised by those who do.
For me, I understand the whole conversion idea to some degree in light of the 12 Steps of AA. Are people willing to acknowledge Step 1 and embrace Step 2 (in their own way)? If so, whether they have all the theology down correctly, and what that exactly all looks like, is partly immaterial.
Of course, the bigger question for me - which I hope to return to in a future post - is what do we even mean by "salvation" and what do we understand God is trying to accomplish with this whole project? I don't believe it's simply trying to get the legal paperwork taken care of so sinners have the legal right to some day go to heaven (which is basically how the Reformed explain it).
Thanks for your further thoughts! A lot to chew on and think about. I think it's important to recognize, lest I get tempted to a sort of, in CS Lewis's words, "chronological snobbery," that all of our explanations for God, and our understanding of "salvation" (however we want to translate that word), are approximations and analogies. So I don't know that our present understanding has "replaced," say, the Reformed view of salvation. Both the Reformed view, as well as ours today, are different models, neither of which are completely wrong, nor neither of which are completely right. "We know in part" and "see in a glass darkly." There may be people for whom the Reformed model is exactly what they need to hear; there are others for whom what some have labeled the "healing" model is more relevant and comforting. As we see in incarnation, God meets us where we are and expresses Himself to us in ways that make sense to us. This is not to deny "objective" truth or that there isn't a sense in which we do "graduate" into more accurate explanations about God (e.g., it would be hard to say that it is both true that God torments people in hell forever and yet annihilates them after a finite period of burning). But I just want to be careful that I don't ever assume I've arrived at a place where I've nailed down the ontological reality of God.
So I guess what I'm saying is, I like the idea of salvation as "making whole" myself, but I still think there is a place for the Reformed/forensic understanding of it all as well.