This is gonna start off a bit morbid but I have lived longer than I expected.
All throughout middle and high school I really struggled to feel loved, good, or happy about myself. There was so much self hatred in me that it felt like it was only a matter of time until I took my life.
And with each passing year the weight just never seemed to lift. Year after year, time after time I was not sure how I would be able to make it another year not just alive, but as a Christian.
My faith was a burden. Following Jesus did not seem to help. And for probably the first half of my journey of following Jesus it seemed like a dead end, like a roller coaster that was fun to start but I knew eventually was gonna run off the tracks.
How could I go much longer?
Jefferson Bethke in his book ‘Its Not What You Think’ describes a similar feeling when he started to follow Jesus. He says:
Was there something wrong with me? Did God not love me? Did I mess up and not become “Christian” enough?
Because when I started following Jesus, things actually got harder. I had a long season of depression. Things in my life started to go poorly. Relationship’s broke. Addictions stayed. I knew I didn’t want to live for myself, or listen to the fleshly desires in me, but they still called me and lured me more. I felt I had no place in Christianity.
Much of our advertising of the Christian faith paints a picture of turning your life over to Jesus that remarkably paints over all the pain that comes with it. And when we paint over these rough edges, trying to hide the wounds that will need to be healed, scars that need to be addressed; then the people who buy into this false advertising are often left confused about what it is they actually signed up for.
I believe for some who have went on a path of deconstruction, they have went down this path because what they had advertised to them not only was not the reality they had to live with each and everyday as they tried to follow Jesus but they also realized it was not what Jesus was promoting either. They had been duped. But before we dive any more into why people walk away from the faith, I think it’s important for us to understand the final point of the five points of Calvinism.
The Doctrine of Perseverance
God’s grace is immutable. His sovereign purpose to save his elect from the foundation of the world is not frustrated by our weakness.
R.C. Sproul (What is Reformed Theology?)
Sproul in his book ‘What is Reformed Theology?” makes the point that just like with the rest of the five points of Calvinism, the doctrine of “perseverance” is not the best name for what this statement is really trying to hammer home.
When you think of perseverance, you likely think of someone running a race. You think of a person persevering, enduring the physical pain, the loss of breath, the potential cramps, and desire for rest; continuing their journey despite all the odds because of their goal to complete the race in its entirety. And this is where Paul’s imagery comes into play.
I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. (2 Timothy 4:7 ESV)
Paul uses this language here to paint a picture that for the Christian you are striving each and everyday to finish the work God has set before you. But like most Calvinist, Sproul gets a little uncomfortable with the language being so “us” centered. The idea of us finishing the race puts all the weight on us and this doctrine has actually less to do with us and more to do with God’s work in and through us.
You have likely, especially if you are a baptist, heard the belief called “eternal security”.
Eternal security is the belief that the believer once saved is always saved. They can never lose their salvation. Salvation is like a “seal” as Paul says in Ephesians that secures us until the time that the Father decides to break the seal and invite us into His glory.
Eternal security has more God centered language wrapped around it than what comes to our minds when we think of perseverance. The reason why is because in the doctrine eternal security what is described for us is that we are in God’s hands. Secure. Nothing we do or could do can knock us out of His hands.
All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” (John 6:37-40 ESV)
John makes it clear that the work the Godhead is doing, is a good work that will be complete. Nothing will be left undone. If you are God’s elect(from the Calvinist perspective) then you can be sure that the work God started within you, He will finish.
For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt. (Hebrews 6:4-6 ESV)
The doctrine of “perseverance of the saints” or as Sproul renames it the “preservation of the saints” is a doctrine that hopefully brings you a comfort, an ease of mind in your day to day as you wrestle with your faith.
God will never leave you. He is faithful to the end. And the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints communicates to us that not only is God securing you to the end, but he is preserving you to the end. Cultivating in you all the righteousness you will need to finish the race.
But this is where we must pause and wonder for a second.
What about our part in all of this?
What is salvation truly? What does it mean to be a Christian? Are we merely puppets depending on God to cause us to act?
I think the very simple definition to the second to that last question is that to be a Christian is to be a follower of Jesus. Note how I did not mention “turning your heart over to Jesus” or “surrendering your life over to Jesus.” I do not mention these common definitions you may hear in your typical evangelical church because Jesus does not use this language.
Following Jesus is what Jesus calls us too. Now the journey we then go on as we begin to follow Jesus has some descriptive language wrapped around it. Phrases like being “born again” are used, or being “adopted in” to the family of God. Another phrase used is describing us as being “washed” by the blood of Jesus. All of these are ways the New Testament writers use to in our minds describe what it is God is doing in our lives as we begin following Jesus. The challenge with all of this though is for much of our modern way of thinking about salvation and being a Christian all comes down to these phrases that describe some magical once in a lifetime experience that is just simply not what Jesus lived out with his followers or what the early church was inviting people into.
This is why for me, as I went through the years following Jesus, I found myself distancing myself from this type of language and instead started to embrace this language of being on a journey with Jesus. Now none of the disciples would be found saying that they are on a “journey with Jesus” but as you look at their lives, they were. They literally journeyed with him from town to town. They were experiencing Jesus all day everyday from the excitement in the mornings to the lulls in the afternoons. Being with Jesus as He lived his life was what it meant to follow Jesus.
What this came with though was that there was no magical miracle drug in being with Him.
If you were broken when you met Jesus, likelihood is that you were going to be broken after. To follow Jesus meant that you were signing up to walk with Jesus everyday and through walking with Him, allowing him to heal the different wounds in your life; both the ones you are painfully aware of and the ones that you did not even notice were there.
Salvation was the act of being delivered from one place to another. From Egypt to the promised land. It was a long journey.
This is where salvation in my mind gets complicated. I do not believe it is as black and white as we often try to make it seem.
So to the question: can we lose our salvation?
I have no idea.
Can we lose our deliverance or our being delivered? I don’t think so.
Can God walk away from us?
I do not believe He wants too. It seems to me God is faithful. He has a goal He is pursuing to the end and He has been willing to literally give his own life in pursuit of this goal: of enacting a new creation.
Can we walk away from God?
This is where I want to say yes. Because the Bible has clear warnings about the reality of walking away from your first love.
I see no need to warn us about walking away or becoming apostates; if there is no real danger. I fear to say that would seem like some type of emotional abuse. Can you imagine if I warned my daughter constantly about falling out of relationship with me, if there was no chance in hell that could happen? I’d be giving her something to worry about that’s. not even possible.
But this is where it gets tricky. Often times when we wrestle with this question we wrestle with whether God’s love will fail us. We question will God one day have enough with us and move on.
I belive the warnings are not about God walking away from us because the reality is, God is faithful and He always will be.
I believe the warnings are to us. We are not faithful. As the famous hymn says we are “prone to wander, Lord I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love.” The Bible warns us not about a God who has a limit with us, The Bible warns us about us forgetting our first love.
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