The Thoughts of Ryan-C

Reformed, Book Reading, Apple Loving, Beverage Snob, 23 Year-Old Husband, In Need of Grace.

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Our Desires and The Will

This week in my Ancient Philosophy course, like most good philosophers, we ended up talking about the Will and Desires. A student brought up a good point regarding how our will is the slave to our desires and thus to believe in the truest form of a free will is the believe that we are truly free to fulfill the desires of our hearts. Little did he know, this is an entirely Edwardsian view of the will, which I would whole heartedly agree with. My friend, Eric, kindly pointed out the similarity between both views and really got my interest rekindled in Edwards’ works.

Eric was kind enough to find an article for me that explains the basic thesis behind this view and I figured it would be something good to share. The article was written by Tullian Tchividjian in 2001 and can be found HERE.

For more information on Jonathan Edwards and his view of the Freedom of the Will, check out his book, which just happens to bear the same title HERE.

For some reason I haven’t read the Freedom of the Will yet, but it just made it to the top of my ‘to read’ queue.

A Big View of God Pt. 3: God and Our Identity

As humans, we constantly look for approval and hope in other people. It’s part of our humanity. As our hearts desire community and relationships we look for specific things from those whom we are in community with. But what happens when we have a big view of people and a small view of God? First, we can lose our true identity as God see us. Second, we put our hope in fallible people that will eventually let us down. Third, humans are finite, which ultimately sets us up for failure.

Here’s a quick example… Who was your childhood hero? Are they still your Hero? If not, why?

Presidents have affairs, movie stars have drug addictions, musicians commit suicide, and sadly Justin Timberlake is singing to 400 million other people, not just me. Our heros and idols (even our friends and family) let us down. We can’t allow them to determine our identity because if we do, our identity will ultimately be falsified. So we must invert our big view of people and transfer it into a big view of God. This is how we truly discover who we are and our place in this world. We need to see ourselves as God sees us and this can only be done by having a big view of who God is.

The first is to recognize that you are not a good person (p.s. neither am I).

“If we think we are usually good, then God becomes irrelevant.”

-Edward Welch, When People are Big and God is Small

Jonathan Edwards also had similar thoughts. In his resolutions he writes, “Resolved, to act…as if nobody had been so vile as I, and as if I had committed the same sins…as others; and to let the knowledge of their failings promote nothing but shame in myself, and prove only an occasion of my confessing my own sins to God.”

While Edwards might speak in lofty terms, he is speaking a great truth that really urges himself (and us) to 1) not think of ourselves as better than those around us and 2) to allow other peoples shortcomings to cause us to reflect on our own. Because if we view ourselves as good, we leave no room for God (quote above). We must constantly be finding our own faults for our own growth as well as a growth in a reliance that exists outside of ourselves.

Once we recognize that we aren’t good people, we can then look to God for our identity and our hope. In light of who he is, we can see that ultimately he is in control, not us; he sustains our lives, not us; he is the one who saves us, not us. By expanding our view of God and lessening our view of people, we can find our identity in a source that is infinite and true rather than a source that is fallible and finite.

How do you view yourself in light of what your view of God is? Post your thoughts!

Scripture to Meditate on:

Ephesians 1:3-8

2 Corinthians 5:17-21