Just How Hard Is It to Be Saved?
September 29, 2005
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Church Issues, Evangelism, Faith, Judgmentalism Feedback : 26 comments
About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them, and suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken. And immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone’s bonds were unfastened. When the jailer woke and saw that the prison doors were open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul cried with a loud voice, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” And the jailer called for lights and rushed in, and trembling with fear he fell down before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them out and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” And they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their wounds; and he was baptized at once, he and all his family. Then he brought them up into his house and set food before them. And he rejoiced along with his entire household that he had believed in God.
—Acts 16:25-34 ESV…if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.”
—Romans 10:9-11 ESVNo one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.
—John 6:44 ESVTherefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says “Jesus is accursed!” and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit.
—1 Corinthians 12:3 ESV
I like to follow trends in the Church and in the Christian blogosphere. One trend that is gaining power attempts to tell who’s in and who’s out by questioning if some people who think they’re saved really aren’t. 
Any consistent readers of Cerulean Sanctum will know that on more than one occasion I’ve quoted Leonard Ravenhill asking if only 2% of professed Christians are truly born again. So even here there’s been some of that same rhetoric.
John Piper has a new book out called God Is the Gospel and it’s stirring up controversy about this very topic of how one is saved. Over at Old Truth, there was a post about decisional regeneration that adds fuel to the fire.
The debates about who’s in and who’s out rage, but I have to wonder if we are making it too hard. Look at the four verses posted above, for instance.
In the case of the jailer, look how simple his conversion was. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you’ll be saved. Did the Lord draw him? Yes, in the middle of despair, the Holy Spirit was drawing him. Did Paul ask anything of him other than to believe? Not that’s listed here. Nor does Luke list anything different said by Paul than what the apostle himself outlines in the Romans passage above.
We can try to second-guess God on this, piling up other requirements, but isn’t that adding to the Gospel? If someone confesses with their mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord, why is there reason to believe that God has not drawn that person?
My confession is that I’m a Lordship salvation person. Have been for a long time. But that puts me in the company of others who make coming to Jesus a real trial.
Perhaps the problem here is one of theological systems.
The Calvinist position is hard to hold because persistence of the saints becomes a problem. What do you do with people who profess Christ then seemingly fall away. The out for Calvinists is saying that those people never really were drawn by God in the first place and therefore never made a true profession of faith. But do the Scriptures above, when taken together, paint that picture? It sure doesn’t seem so. It certainly appears that someone can be drawn of God, confess Christ with their lips and believe in their heart and still have the possibility there for falling away. Saying they were never a Christian in the first place seems like a lazy out.
Those against decisional regeneration are confronted with the fact that the jailer responded not because he was confronted with the full measure of the Gospel, but because he was in despair. He was ready to be saved without hearing a full Gospel presentation. He didn’t say to Paul, “I’m a sinner under full conviction of the Spirit as He’s brought me to the foot of the cross!” His rationale was that his boss was going to kill him OR he was astonished at the miracle earthquake that made it possible for the apostles to leave. I know plenty of people who became Christians at a remarkably low point in their lives or because they were confronted with a miracle. Is their salvation null and void? Can God not use situations to draw people? Do the passages above say that?
A Lordship salvation person, like me, struggles for a couple reasons. One is that I’m forced into an Arminian position, even though I don’t want to ascribe to it, simply because I have to struggle with the same issue as the Calvinists: what to do with people who fall away. The other is that the verses above do not say anything about the actual living out of the Lordship of Christ in one’s life. It’s assumed, obviously, but the question must be asked then if the process of Lordship begins at conversion and progresses, or is completely in place at conversion. The former makes salvation progressive while the latter makes it instantaneous. A quandary, obviously.
I could go into great deal about how all the other views on this struggle, but that doesn’t provide a solution to the original question: are we adding too many qualifiers to a person’s coming to Christ?
I would truly like to hear what other people think about this. Just how hard is it to be saved?
No tag for this post.
Thanks (and a Prayer Request….)
September 28, 2005
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Uncategorized Feedback : 5 comments
If you are reading this right now, would you take some time to pray for God’s blessing on my family and me? I would certainly appreciate it.
Thanks for stopping by and being a reader of Cerulean Sanctum. I pray that what you read here is a blessing that draws you closer to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Have a blessed day!
No tag for this post.
His Winnowing Fork Is in His Hand
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Uncategorized Feedback : 6 comments
I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.
—Matthew 3:11-12 ESV
Last week I was shopping for groceries in my local Kroger when I was overcome by a staggering feeling. Turning into an aisle with two rows of cooler cases, I felt like I was displaced from the rest of the crowd in the store, pulled away, destined to persecution at the hands of those around me. It was a sobering, yet eerie, sensation. When I finally took it to prayer, I was reminded of John the Baptist’s comment on the work of Christ, the Savior’s winnowing fork in hand, ready to thresh the nations.
Many times on this blog I have commented that we are not ready. A passage that comes to mind so frequently is
For man does not know his time. Like fish that are taken in an evil net, and like birds that are caught in a snare, so the children of man are snared at an evil time, when it suddenly falls upon them.
—Ecclesiastes 9:12 ESV
Will the world soon be “caught in an unguarded moment?” Is an evil time coming more swiftly than we realize? I cannot say with prophetic certainty, but something is happening. I don’t want to blame this on two hurricanes, either. It’s more than that. It feels, to quote C.S. Lewis, as if “Aslan is on the move.”
I thought about all those people around me in the store. Chaff? I also felt like hard times were coming for us believers in Jesus, the wheat, and that we will have underestimated its ferocity when it arrives. I heard recently that Chinese Christians are praying for persecution for American Christians so that the sleeping American Church would finally get serious. Will that prayer soon come to pass?
Anyone else get this same impression recently?
No tag for this post.
The Myths of Homeschooling #4 (Conclusion)
September 27, 2005
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Best of Cerulean Sanctum, Cerulean Sanctum Series, Christianity in North America, Homeschooling, Judgmentalism Feedback : 28 comments
In concluding this series (which previously was found in three parts: 1, 2, and 3), I'd like to reference a reply I made in the comments section of my last post to explain my rationale for taking on these myths:
[H]omeschool is being used like a set of brass knuckles to the jaws of some parents out there. They are being crushed by guilt for not homeschooling or are being likened to being sinners or profligate parents for not homeschooling. Those folks know who they are and I hope they're reading this and seeing that homeschool is not the be all and end all of life. I also want those parents who are homeschooling their kids to know how to work the land or raise animals that they are not freaks for doing so.
I meet people like that and they are indeed hurting. They hurt even more because they are good Christian people many times and yet their own churches are labeling them because they either don't homeschool or they think some things are more important than understanding Plato's dancing shadows.
I see the moms with seven kids who are homeschooling them all. They get all the accolades anymore. Good for them. But what about the mom who can't homeschool because her ailing parents take up all her time? Then to have people berate her for it! That disgusts me! And I've seen that happen.
Homeschooling is being increasingly used as a ruler by which to measure people and judge their fitness as parents. If you don't see that, then count yourself lucky that you live in a place where people don't do that. I don't live in that place. Despite living all over the Midwest and California, I've never lived in a place where homeschooling wasn't used to judge people.
All I want is to tone down the rhetoric; it's hurting people. It's also forcing people into homeschooling who are not equipped or are overburdened already. If keeping up with the homeschooling Joneses is what it is coming down to, then we need to offer people more grace to pursue other options without feeling like the spawn of hell.
That's all that this series is about. Hopefully, the people who need to hear this are getting the message.
I've had a lot of arguments tossed at me during this series. Several comments, weblinks, and e-mails have said that what I've witnessed in my eighteen years of watching the homeschooling movement simply isn't true. 
Others have said that they've never seen some of the behaviors I've talked about.
My challenge to those folks is to look around, to step out of the hype for a few seconds and get to the root of many of the messages and behaviors espoused in the homeschooling movement. There are some scary things going on in homeschooling circles and we choose to ignore them at our own peril—and to the peril of the very people I referenced in my quoted comment above.
Listen to the fact that some women no longer introduce themselves as "a mom of four kids," but as "a homeschooling mom of four kids," as if the "homeschooling" tag must be added in order to ratchet up the standard of successful parenthood one more notch. There's something prideful and competitive about that. Notice, too, what happens when a group of homeschooling parents encounters parents who do not homeschool. Watch the social dynamic. Look at people's faces. Watch the reactions by the homeschoolers versus the non-homeschoolers. The societal pressure is obvious, especially in Christians.
This extends to the way the myths I've featured in this series are used to beat people down in a new kind of social class ranking. That stratification extends even to homeschoolers, as various teaching methodologies gain or lose traction. With the rise of classical education within homeschooling ranks, other methods have been relegated to lower positions as if there's a right and wrong way to present knowledge.
Some of this is a reaction against educational methodologies originally made popular in the public schools. With all things related to public school under massive scrutiny by homeschooling advocates, anything that smacks of public school is subject to scorn. John Holt's educational ideas that form the backbone of the "unschooling" movement were highly popular in public schools in the late 60s and early 70s and some homeschooling parents naturally look at them as suspect. Other homeschooling parents who were not exposed to Holt in public school practice are more willing to use his ideas. This, of course, will bring conflict to a massing of homeschooling groups where one methodology is preferred to another. Stick classicists with unschoolers and let them have at it—the results are sadly interesting, to say the least.
In conclusion, I want to make a few points.
Homeschooling is not for everyone. We need to be more accepting of those families who choose not to homeschool. In 99% of cases, they are not helmed by bad parents. In fact, those parents may be doing their children a favor by acknowledging their own weaknesses in teaching. One of the backbone beliefs of the homeschooling movement is that parents know their own kids best. Then why do some homeschool advocates lambaste parents who believe their children would thrive in a non-homeschooled environment? I have a lot of respect for parents who acknowledge their own insufficiencies to meet their child's educational needs. Most parents out there WILL start struggling with teaching once a child gets beyond a seventh grade education. We resist thinking that the world has changed, but a lot of knowledge has been added or has filtered down to lower grade levels since we were in school. Do we persist in homeschooling beyond a certain level for the right reasons, or do we capitulate to peer pressure and pride? Just asking.
No one educational method reigns. Frankly, I believe that anyone homeschooling to a lone methodology (e.g. - classical, unschooling, behavioral, etc.) is robbing their kids of a broad-based education. That goes for private and public schools, too. There is no magic bullet. Teaching kids to think for themselves is great, but that's not what the business world wants, quite honestly. Which world do we teach to then? That same idea extends to other realms. How we accommodate what is valued in our society today is still important. Creating a "superkid" who lacks the ability to conform what he's learned into the greater society is asking for another Todd Marinovich-type burnout. Tunnel vision here is dangerous, and there are plenty of homeschoolers who have narrowed their teaching to such a laser-like focus that I wonder how their kids will cope when their entire education winds up being the square peg in society's round hole.
Don't despise the basics. In our rush to turn our kids into quantum physicists who will unite both the particle and wave models of the universe, we may well be creating children who can't feed themselves. With globalization opening up American workers to foreign competition, our children will not be able to compete on an equal playing field if money is solely the bottom line. It would be wise of us to acknowledge this truth and prepare our children for a very different work future than the one we faced at the same age. Engineers in the US are finding that they can't convince their kids to go into engineering and this is a shock to them; perhaps the kids are smarter than they are given credit, considering that many of them would rather work for less pay than face the perpetual layoff cycle they saw their parents go through. In light of this, I firmly believe that instructing our children in a locally-needed trade may be the best work prep we can offer our kids. If we subsequently add into this mix an understanding of the land, animal husbandry, and small farm techniques, we can ensure them a better future than the one that is already upon us. Remember, THAT was a biblical education in the days of Jesus. While it is true that we need the educational superstars to continue to build the next-generation medical devices and such, increasingly those superstars are not going to be Americans. Honestly, Americans may not be able to afford to send their kids to college with the rate tuition is increasing, so other avenues must be explored. We need to prepare our kids differently for a different future.
God is a God of grace. If we firmly believe that He is in control, then we will entrust the care of the children He's given us—children that are not ours, but His—to Him and Him alone. How that plays out in your children's educations is something God alone can deliver. And that may NOT include homeschooling. We should not limit God on how He can work in our children's educations. Nor should we enforce our will on other parents. God deals with all of us in different ways. We should not judge people on whether they homeschool or not, especially if we are not vehicles of grace to accept their decision or help them move into a homeschooling model if the toughness of living is making it hard for them to do so. We've made homeschooling a millstone around the necks of parents and children alike, and the Lord is not in the millstone necklace business.
Education is not the path to salvation. Ironically, it is the very secular humanists that Christians vigorously oppose who truly believe that premise. However, as much as Christians say that is not them, George Barna recently showed otherwise. In one of his published studies, Barna showed that Evangelical parents were more interested that their kids got a good education than that their kids followed Christ. Folks, that's a devilishly misplaced priority! Homeschooling, like anything else, can become an idol. God would much prefer a non-scholar with a heart that burns for Him than a Nobel-winning scientist who claims He does not exist. That's where our focus should be, raising kids for Christ, no matter where they go to school.
Thanks for reading through this series. I hope the gang now preparing the tar and feathers will graciously reconsider.
Tags: Best of Cerulean Sanctum, Cerulean Sanctum Series, Christianity in North America, Homeschooling, Judgmentalism
The Apocalypse Now Upon Us!
September 26, 2005
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Uncategorized Feedback : 9 comments
Plenty of Christian sites out there have been asking if the apocalypse is imminent. They point to the devastation on the Gulf Coast, pullouts in Israel, troubles in Iraq, continued flakiness in North Korea, and on and on.
I was not a believer in any of this until yesterday.
Why do I now believe the end is nigh?
Simple. The Cincinnati Bengals are 3-0.
No tag for this post.
Posts
Comments
