I'm at home. And by that, I actually mean my parents' home, but it seems that I still refer to it as my home despite not living here for thirteen years. I know I'm home for several reasons beyond the more obvious ones (like looking around me and seeing my parents' house). For instance, there's a bottomless pot of homemade apple spice tea sitting on the stove. Mom's been making it at Christmas time for nearly my whole life and I've never had anything like it anywhere else. I think mom and I are the only ones that drink it, which might be why the pot seems to be bottomless, but it still means I'm home. My dad is sleeping in the chair on the other side of the room. Sometime in the decade since I've left he's given up the charade of "watching tv" and doesn't bother holding the remote or even turning on the television. And there's a pile of theology books sitting on the coffee table.
I always pick up one of those books soon after arriving and start reading, trying to get a gauge on what's interesting my dad at the moment. This year it was a small book on Calvinism. I skimmed the first few chapters and then quit after two more. It was the same old calvinistic arguments that I don't really follow and which sound cold and heartless. The calvinistic god, as far as I can tell, is a tyrant. And at the end of time, there is a fiery lake that forever stands as a monument to his selfish tyranny.
I am aware that I just made a lot of readers angry just now. It was unfair, really, to what calvinist really believe. Personally, I hate it when I read stuff like that myself. Calvinists don't really believe that about God, just the reverse actually. When they read of his ultimate sovereignty, his control over all creation, his mysterious reasons for judging the lost, his equally mysterious decision to choose some of us for salvation, they kneel down in worship. But I can't. The god they paint doesn't seem like the kind of god I *want* to worship. And I'm a firm believer in the idea that God *wants* my worship.
Opposed to these theological ideas is Armenianism. I don't like their view of God either. They give all the responsibility of salvation to us--it is our responsibility to choose to accept God's gift. But here's the problem. God doesn't seem to be trying very hard to win over those lost souls. And there's lots of people who've never even heard of the offer. So, in the Armenian view of the universe, Hell stands as a monument to God's failure. Of his inability to win over man's heart. And I'm also a firm believer that Love never fails.
So that's where I've been the last few days. Wandering in the no-man's-land between two opposing theological viewpoints, wondering how to resolve them. I've been here before. Last christmas, I believe. And as I study and ponder and pray, I find myself challenging things I wonder if I have any right to challenge. It's a weird feeling to discover that you don't actually agree with the weight of history--at least the part of history you're familiar with. Here's the thing though. God is God, no matter what we say about him. And everything we say about him is going to be lacking somehow. We can't even summarize each other with bullet points, why would we think we could do it about God? But that's the point of knowing someone. You never really actually know them, you just know more than you did yesterday.
So for now I'm looking forward to tomorrow. Maybe then I'll know more about who God *is* rather than who he *isn't*.
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