Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Causal Christianity

I've been pondering the relationship between cause and effect planning with the "call" of God. What is the relationship between human logic and the transcendent interjection of God? I'll admit at the outset that this is not something I dwell often on. I did a paper on it once at Bible college. But like Dr. Who's TARDIS, the deeper I explored, the more my head hurt. I think its important to look at because I'm sure we have met all kinds of people who strongly identify and publicly espouse one of the following views - and as such, it has coloured how they see themselves and God, their responsibilities, and the way they look at the world.

Here are some of the ideas I have heard:

God calls despite our plans: I heard someone define the difference between the call of God and their own planning in terms of God often speaking to them about what they do not naturally want to do. ie. we supernaturally sense a direction only when it is foreign to our logic.

God calls and they become our plans: that God speak to them through their passions, ie. He wants them to do what they love doing. Without over simplifying it, this would be the direction to which John Eldredge would lean.

God is in the planning: That God works through who we are - so as long as we live 'in tune' and sensitive to the spiritual, our plans are automatically God's call to us.

God appears to correct our plans: God allows us freedom to plan as we will, but will interject in history, disrupt our plans, when we stray off track.

God's call is cause and effect: That God has diffused his call into logic. ie. Cause/Effect is his call, determinism. This effectively declares that God has no call in the traditional sense.

Is it a question of all of the above?
Does God tailor the approach according to the individual? (Spoken like a true westerner!)
Is there even a definable way in which the transcendent relates with the immanent?

1 Comments:

Blogger Tom said...

i thought he used a cell phone...

6:04 PM  

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