In or Out. Again
Last night a dear friend’s husband passed away. I am also very good friends with my friend’s daughter….so we have the loss of a husband, father and grandfather.
The question that has been thrown around is about where this man stood with God. He never professed belief in Jesus, that I know of. He didn’t attend church. So….when death comes…the question remains. This seems a very poignant situation considering the session I attended at the Isn’t She Beautiful conference. Rob Bell addressed these very issues in a session entitled;
“A few thoughts on God, Jesus, salvation, judgment, heaven, hell, who’s in, who’s out, and the end of the world as we know it”
I tremble at the thought of answering these questions. Who’s in? Who’s out? I’m not God, so I refuse to pretend that I am. These are difficult questions to answer and my vision of God is clouded on this earth.
Now we see things imperfectly as in a poor mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God knows me now. 1 Cor 13:12
What I do know is that God is merciful. More merciful than we are. I take hope in the following story outlined in Mark 2:2-5.
The friends had the faith to bring the paralized man before Jesus. The man was unable to do it for himself. When Jesus saw the faith of the friends, he said “Son, your sins are forgiven”. Wow. How dare we start to declare who is “in” and who is “out”. In the book “Mere Christianity”, C.S. Lewis says,
The world does not consist of 100 percent Christians and 100 percent non-Christians. There are people who are slowly ceasing to be Christians but who still call themselves by that name…There are other people who are slowly becoming Christians though they do not yet call themselves so. There are people who do not accept the full Christian doctrine about Christ but who are so strongly attracted by Him that they are His in a much deeper sense than they themselves understand.
I choose to believe in grace. I choose to believe in God’s mercy. Grace trumps the hard and fast rules of theology every time.
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