Answers
As the years have passed a certain maturity of these seemingly mutually exclusive verses has settled. Here is the pattern that has gelled. In Eden, Adam and Eve were truly free to decide to obey or disobey. They were not blinded by a sin nature1. When they chose for disobedience, they became locked in to their sin nature, and from that point until now every human being has been under the curse of desperate wickedness. God in his grace takes each person back to Garden of Eden moments where he removes the blindness and offers that Adam and Eve choice again. This togetherness of God’s grace and our choosing is the best I can do with the cadre of verses which can hit the worried-thinking-type person.
Who do I trust?
There are devious threads in all of this. For me to worry about not having my own option to choose implies that I am a better bet than God. All around us, there are those who say things like, “If you want it done right do it yourself.” Then that is extrapolated back to God. I do not think we naturally trust God. Some of us may, others of us are skeptical. I am an easy doubter. Only through the study of scripture, prayer and seeing how God unfolds good things do those walls of skepticism come down. The bottom line is that people, me, do not easily accept that God loves and have to learn that. Those type people feel that trusting God for the heaven or hell destination is a risky venture.
Truth be told, though, it is entirely the reverse of that. I have learned this, but it is very, very slow going.
Darkness part 2: The bad outweighs the good.
God may have said the creation was good, but my eye more easily sees another, darker thing. The suffering of our world from humans, to the elephants killed for their ivory tusks, our oceans and beyond, now that is easily seen. Or, if you want a contemporary example, consider this. A few days ago I turned west onto Walton Way, got in the right lane and headed toward Eve street. “What’s that up there in the road?” This being October in Augusta the falling oak leaves sometimes seem to walk across the street as the wind moves them. That unusual thing was moving but staying in one place. It was a half-dead, twitching squirrel. I had passed over it without hitting it, but five-hundred feet up the road I thought, “I should have driven over it and put it out of its misery. You can still turn around and go finish it off.” I didn’t, but I was sad; palpably sad.
Those things sprout darker sneers in my mind. Do you know what those are? I hardly dare type them, but I clearly experience them. “This place was not worth it.” Or, “God made a mistake.” “Maybe, God made the creation and pronounced it good but in foreseeing and allowing it to run off the rails?! He must be complicit in this evil.”
These rat-like sneers are not evils I sit around and dream up. They are evoked in my mind by the reading of these kinds of verses and assimilating them into the larger package of spiritual reality.
Now from the emotional part to the answering attempt.
There is a thing which I do not easily see, but God did. Recall verse 4 and step around “chose us” to the next prepositional phrase “in him.” See, God foreknew not only the decision that man would make but also the solution he would most-personally provide. “In him” meant crucifixion, a split in the God-head, suffering at the level of deity.
Ultimate suffering was the price he was willing to pay for creating beings who could tell him to get lost. The pain is not one-sided. God has not been merrily eating grapes while humanity suffered at the hands of our own and the Devil’s deeds. No, grapes and a marriage supper are for later. Rest for the restless thinkers, the life-is-an-unpleasant-challenge crew, comes later.
So, God counted the cost and found it worth paying.
In the Alaskan Courage series of novels, Dani Pettrey tells us of a young woman named Kayden McKenna. She holds relationships at some distance because of the pain she experienced at her mom’s death. For Kayden, the loss of that most intimate mother-daughter relationship changed her. It gave her an unwillingness for next big relationship: marriage. Let us compare Kayden’s situation and God’s. Kayden became a relationship rejector because of loss. God, foreseeing loss, still created relationship.
My reaction to suffering in the world is to declare humanity a colossal mistake because of the suffering. God, despite foreseeing ultimate personal suffering did it anyway, and Paul wrapped up verse 5 by saying it was according to God’s purpose.
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