Before I became a pastor, I had a short stint at being a mechanical engineer. As part of my training I took Physics. Maybe you never had Physics. One thing that I remember from Physics is that sometimes our observation point matters. This is especially true when we try to observe things on a quantum level or how we would experience things as we approached the speed of light. An observation point can matter in spiritual things as well. There is our vantage point and God’s vantage point and they may not be the same. In fact, sometimes it is actually impossible for us to even imagine God’s vantage point and we may have to just learn what we can and let the rest go. Logic runs up against its limit.
This is true in a seemingly simple question of how I became and remain a Christian. From a human vantage point it seems obvious that I was raised to be one. My parents and my church enculturated me to believe the tenants of Christianity and, being a firstborn, I haven’t had the desire to reject this worldview.
Even my vantage point is different than this. Firstborn or not, I am quite willing to resist enculturation. From my vantage point, I was given a worldview and much more in my childhood, but it really started to get traction in my teen years. At that time, I started reading the Bible and praying on my own. God interacted with me and both taught and transformed me from what I would have become on my own. I understood that I had eternal life because of Jesus. I understood that I had an interactive relationship with the Living God. I understood that I was a disciple of Jesus with a God-given purpose. There was a lot of cognitive growth with respect to myself and God at that point.
God’s vantage point is different and more comprehensive. To get even I idea of how God’s sees my development, lets look a Romans 8:
28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. 29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.
Romans 8:28-30 (ESV)
There is some church-speak in there, so let’s go through it. The first word is “foreknew”. I have to admit that I probably don’t understand God’s relationship with time. I am firmly attached to time. I experience things in sequence. God sees the whole scope of time at once. My logic tells me that if that is so, then God causes all things to happen as they do. And that is incorrect. The course of time is not fatalistically planned. Most things are conditional. Somehow God can see the choices that will be made. I cannot relate, my experience is too limiting. So, before anything happened God knew who He would be able to break through to.
Humans are such damaged creatures that we cannot accept the things of God.
14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
1 Corinthians 2:15 (ESV)
We can make up fictitious stories and doctrines about God, but we naturally reject the real thing. The only hope we have is if the Holy Spirit can “break through” (my words). Break through what exactly? The Bible does not exactly say. We can infer that it is a part of what the Bible calls “sinful human nature”. We can say sinful nature comes to us genetically all the way from Adam and Eve. What did their misadventure do to us? Besides alter our genetics, does it cause some type of brain-damage? Who knows? God knows He can circumvent this problem in some of us and connect us to Jesus so that Jesus’ obedient life and foresakeness on the cross applies to us. God saw that He could do that with me.
Before I even existed, God then made a plan which “predestined” me. Will the plan of God necessarily work. From my vantage point the answer is “no”. From God’s vantage point the answer is “yes”. It is not like God doesn’t try for other people or desire other people. He certainly does. We should, too. He just already knows how it will work out. Confused? Me too.
The plan then got traction when I actually arrived. God “called” me. For me, God placed me in a home where I would be baptized into Christ’s death. I was functionally saved at that point. It didn’t need my cognitive awareness to work, because salvation isn’t cognitive. Understanding it was a desired later outcome. Other people take other routes to the same outcome. From our vantage point we can say that we are saved because of somebody’s witness or the action of our parents. We can say that we were saved at baptism or even at our giving witness to our faith. All these things are important to our being connected to Jesus and remaining so, but ultimately I am saved because of Jesus. From God’s vantage point it was all Him. Being “saved” is to be made “just” before God. We are “justified”.
One thing remains in the process: glorified. Already God is changing me and using me for good. That is glorified in a way. There is a greater fulfillment of this to come. I will die and get rid of the sin damaged body I am in. I will receive a heavenly body that is fit for Heaven obviously. That is a big step in the glorification process. Someday, I will return with Jesus and experience the resurrection of my earthly body which is fit for the New Earth and this completes being “glorified”. It is the order of events as I will experience them. God sees it as already complete I hope.
So why am I a Christian? Jesus.
Giving Christ 