Who chooses who? Chicken, egg, and a door…

Sometimes you get “those” theological questions… whew. Also, many of those questions do not necessarily come from people who grew up in a church, on the contrary. So you have to adapt your language / imagery to the person asking the question. Otherwise, you will quickly end up with a lot of confusion. They will quickly say “yes, I understand what you are saying”, until you ask some checking questions (do they really understand?) and then it turns out that they did not understand it after all. (cultural issue, part of the “game”.)

The question I received today was the following:

Did God choose me, or do I choose God?

OK…. what would your answer be if someone asked you that on the street today? We started, as usual, with what the Bible says, (not what we think) and the first Bible verse was this one:

For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.

Romans 8:29

That verse is clear. (Jeremiah 1:5, Galatians 1:15, Ephesians 1:4 and many more verses say the same thing by the way) Even before you were born, God has already chosen you in all His grace. How do you explain that in normal words to someone who doesn’t come in/out of a church?

Hey! Wait a minute… let’s dive into that a little further…

My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”

John 10:27-30

One moment, let me mark some words to make the interaction clear, here comes that verse again, what do the sheep do:

My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”

John 10:27-30

What does the shepherd do:

My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”

John 10:27-30

Do you notice anything? Look how much the sheep do and how much the shepherd does. The sheep (in relation to the shepherd) don’t do much. But what they do is crucial: listen.

So there is a trade-off. The shepherd calls, saves, gives them food (and more) and the sheep listen. And once the shepherd has chosen who will join His flock, the shepherd will never let go of the sheep. Wow!

Yes, it remains a difficult subject, so I tried to explain it as follows:

You may feel around the walls until you find a door, but you have no idea where you’re going. But then suddenly you are healed of your blindness, and you see a door illuminated with the most glorious light that exists.

You also now see the other doors and other people standing in front of them, weighing their options… They choose based on personal preferences or what other people have told them about the doors. Some think that all doors are the same and choose randomly. Most of them don’t even look at the lighted door. It’s like they can’t see it?!

But you see that lighted, glorious door! And somehow you KNOW that this is one that leads to life. The moment you were healed, you saw it and you knew it. So you open the door, enter and receive eternal life.

Did you choose the door? Yes and no….

Who chose to heal you from that blindness so that you could see the light? And where did the knowledge that the door was good come from anyway?

And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.

2 Corinthians 4:3-7

That God chose you to heal you is a tremendous treasure! This allowed you to see The Light and see the right door through which you can go through. What a treasure… something to be deeply grateful for today… why are you so special to God that He has given you that insight? Wow…

And we reflected on that in this conversation. And the person who asked the question, took that step and walked through that door of most glorious light into eternity. God chooses, God gave light, and this person passed through the narrow gate into eternity.

It was a beautiful day.