A Rebuttal to C.S. Lewis

This is what C.S. Lewis had to say about the issue of "free" will:

Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong; I cannot. If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata-of creatures that worked like machines-would hardly be worth creating. -Mere Christianity, p. 48

First off, I love C.S. Lewis. His writings, particularly the Narnia series, have had a big impact on my faith growing up. So this is not intended to be a bash to him or to state that I am somehow theologically smarter than he was. I can agree with this quote on a basic level, but I feel it leaves out some pretty important factors in regards to our ability to choose or "reject" God. Ive already covered in a previous blog this issue of free will once before, but I would like to briefly rebuttal to Lewis's quote with three different points...

Point 1
If the only other choice that God gives humanity is suffering in an everlasting pit of unspeakable horror, than we are not really free to choose or love Him.

What would most Christians say to a husband, who openly threatens to burn his wife in gasoline if she ever leaves him? Could he then say that he has deep, true love for her?
NO! She would only stay with him out of fear...her well being depends on it! Thusly, it is insane and sadistic to say that God gives us choice under THAT particular premise.

Point 2
Mans will cannot truly be free if it is bound by Gods choices. Jesus tells us in John 6:44 that,
"No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him".
This implies that God has to do something first in our lives, in our hearts, before we can even think about accepting God and is the only way to have a relationship with Him. Then Paul tells us in Romans 8:7
"the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so."
If a mind tainted by sin cannot subject itself to God of its own "free" will, then we dont really have "free" will to begin with. So therefore the people that have not accepted God yet, are merely incapable of doing so until God makes the initiative to open their heart to Him.

Point 3
Lewis is right when he says that God didn't make us as "machines" that really only love God because they are not free to do otherwise. I think we are able to make choices that are against God's wishes, a.k.a. sin. Yet on that same note, I think we need to remember God's original design for us, before sin even stepped into the picture. God says in Genesis 1:26 ,
"Let us make man in our image, in our likeness"
To me this implies that we are first and foremost made not only LIKE God(on a much less scale of course) but FOR God. So though we are tarnished by sin...Christ must be the emery to clean our hearts back to its original luster. And once at that original perfected state, we as humans cannot help but love God for all that he is.

To say that God would make any human without the potential to reciprocate love, once God begins to unbind us from sin, would be very cruel. It would mean God literally made people that were incapable of loving him, and thus could only be sent to eternal torments in response to their pre-programed desire to hate God and never change. And this is where the mainstream view comes into conflict with its own moral crutch called "free will"

Therefore, I think of the "free" will to love God, as merely the inate desire we WILL have once God cleans us from our dispositions. God didnt make us as robots incapable of doing anything else, but our will is won to him slowly and beautifully as he cleans away the devils work from every single human being. God will not give up til everyone comes to that point of purity and acceptence of Him.

"Love never fails" and neither does God

(*Didn't make this picture today, but I really thought it fit well, haha)

The wonderful love of God is probably the most talked about and celebrated thing in Christian culture. We sing songs about it, we use it as the focal point of most sermons, we put it on t-shirts, and we talk about it while handing out food bags to the less fortunate. We seem very enthused with this fact that God loves us enough to forgive us our sins and take us to heaven (and rightly so). Most Christians believe that God is infinitely loving, and that His love is available to all to have, if they so "choose" to believe in Christ (John 3:16). Most Christians believe that God "is" love, as stated in 1 John 4:8. That God is the very definition of it and the ultimate example of what love should be for us humans.

But most Christians also believe (though talk about it substantially less), that God eventually just...gives up on us. That if we dont accept Jesus as Lord by the time we die, that God will release His grip on love and let us fall into an everlasting abyss of suffering. He spends our whole life trying to get us to accept His love, to demonstrate it through the lives of us Christians, but because of some strange "mystery of life"...most of humanity just doesn't want such perfect love. Even so, it never stops us from calling such a temporary love the "Good News" of the gospel...or as Id like to call it more appropriately, the "not so good news" gospel. We say many times in evangelizing,
God loves you unconditionally!
While at the back of our minds thinking,
Well, sort of...
Because the fact of the matter is, if the person you're evangelizing to doesn't accept Jesus before he dies, God will revoke all love and hope to that individual and leave them in Hell for all eternity (according to mainstream theology anyway).

And while most of us aren't bursting for joy about the darker side of the gospel, we accept it and kind of shove it to the closet of our minds. We casually cruise past it in the majority of our sermons, and focus on the more "happy" side of it... that WE Christians can be sure that God loves us, because we turned our hearts to Him and are following Him! And though I passively accepted this view of Gods love for many years, I eventually found it in bitter conflict with the very nature and character of God. And after many months of staring it square in the face, I eventually saw it completely contradictory to the very nature of love, as given to us by Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:4-13...

⁴Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

⁸Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away[...]
¹³And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

If God is love(1 Jn 4:8), to the very definition and perfection of it...then how could God's ultimate attitude and affections towards humanity be any less, than the definition of love given here? If God is love, then we should be able to accurately replace every "love", and in place of it put "God"...and end up with an accurate statement about His character.

• God is patient, God is kind.
  
• God keeps no record of wrongs.
• God always perseveres.
• God never fails.
  

Yet the mainstream church insists that...

• God is only patient until you die, God is only kind if you obtain the right set of beliefs about Him.
  
• God is keeping a record of your wrongs and once you die you're going to suffer eternally for them.
  
• God will not always persevere, and eventually will give up on you.
• God will eventually fail to save humanity, and only end up with a small portion of it.

How can we dare think of God's amazing love this way? How can we tote around the idea that "true love is unconditional" yet believe God's love is extremely conditional on our ability to understand that love and our performance as humans? If God is love, how can we say it so disgustingly violates the very definition of love? I would say that to do God any justice, we cannot!!!!

Most Christians view God as a kind, well dressed man who passes by a restaurant everyday before going to work. In this restaurant is a beautiful waitress that he used to date in high school, but after some tough times, called off the relationship. Even so, he decided years later that he forgives her and still wants her as his wife someday. So once in awhile he may pop in the restaurant for some coffee and smiles at her from afar. Once in awhile he leaves notes for her telling her that he misses her and asking her out on a date, and every time she kindly declines. And after awhile of the same tired routine, the man finally gives up on the woman and without a goodbye...never again returns to the restaurant. And though frustrated that his love was never again returned, hes just happy that he has a lock of her hair to remember her by (as if it makes up for not having her in his life).

But this is saying that our perfect God who IS love, has a love for us that is just as petty and conditional as typical human love. This is saying that because our love ends at death, so must God's. This is saying that because we Christians can be satisfied with just us being saved, that God will also be satisfied. This is saying that God is really not much different than any other human with temporary goals, hopes and emotions. This is...quite frankly...stupid. Especially in light of the parable Jesus gives us in Luke 15:4-6

⁴"Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? ⁵And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders ⁶and goes home.

This parable has always been so heart-warming to me, especially now that I believe God not only wants to save all, but will do so. It speaks of a love that will not give up until each one of us are found and returned back to Him. That one sheep...one soul...is just as valuable to the Good Shepard as the other ninety-nine are. But yet, the mainstream insists that God will only rescue a few sheep from the clutches of sin...and will eventually stop looking for the majority. That God, in all His mercies and forgiveness and wisdom, and unsurprising, all abundant love...somehow didn't plan for our fallen state and will eventually leave us to it in eternal horror. How can we call that the unfailing, perfect example of love?

It breaks my heart so much that this is our majority view. That we cling so violently to such a doctrine, that most certainly does not line up with love as shown in the Bible. That in all our legalistic doctrines and traditional interpretations, we have unjustly put God's love on the same level of imperfection and failure as human love. So its no wonder that many people "reject" the gospel when we say that God's love sometimes fails indeed (in fact it does most of the time according to mainstream theology). But I believe God's love is so much greater than human love, so much more unending. God's love is so much more grand for every human soul than we can possibly ever grasp at...and yet the majority of humanity is blind, deaf and completely dumb to that fact. Do you think God is going to give up though? Do you think He will magically stop loving us just because we dont always get things right? Do you think He is surprised by any of our sins, even the one of unbelief? Do you think Jesus died only so that a few would be forgiven and reconciled to God? Do you really think He's going to let Satan overcome and win most souls in spite of Gods patient, and unfailing love for them?

I really don't think so. Call me a heretic for believing my God is that big, but it will not change the truth of God or the true gospel of Jesus. Nor will it change Gods heart towards humanity, even through judgment and its purposes. And I dont believe we can accurately preach to a "dying world" if we believe God's love and patience for them to be just as short as our human lives are.

I encourage you to read over these passages in your own time with God, and really ask yourself, Can God's love possibly be as amazing and unrelenting as the Bible says? Ask yourself,
If God is powerful enough and willing enough, can He also be loving enough to bring all to salvation in Him?
My prayer is that in time, you will see that yes...God's love is that amazing, and that unrelenting. And yes, God is that loving...to the fullness of every characteristic of love.

Praise God