God's plan and that "one person"

A few weeks ago, a reader named "Elaine" came across one of my entries in my occasional series about knowing and doing the will of God. She said, in the comments:

Hey, I don't know you, I just stumbled across your site looking for things on God's will. I have to say, though I'm far from an expert on the subject, that I believe absolutely that God has a specific plan for the lives of all his people. A specific vocation, spouse, ministry, location, etc. I don't think that "messing up" one of those would throw off the whole human race either, that's kind of limiting God, isn't it? Just because you, (to use your example) don't marry Alice, when that's what God had for you, doesn't mean that Alice's life is now thrown off from God's will and she will now recieve only God's "second best." God is bigger than that, it may not make sense to a finite mind, but I believe if Alice is listening to the Lord and following with all her heart, your decisions and actions aren't going to thwart God's plans for her.

I think many christians spend their whole lives going off track from what God wanted them to do, I think we constantly fall down on the job of evangelising and serving this world, but in the end, God's will will be done, regardless of what we did or didn't do in our lives. And if one person is truly following and obeying there's no fear of them falling out of his will by theirs or anyone elses mess ups.

That's just a thought, a long one I guess, kind of interested to know what your response is.

My original plan was to move on to application later, including marriage. So rather than "scoop" myself (and present part of my overall argument out of order), I'll touch on this one thing now, and maybe repeat it later if the situation warrants it.

Let me start, by the way, with a little aside. I despise trite, pious catchphrases such as "You're limiting God," "God is beyond logic," or "God is much bigger than our finite minds." That may be true; but be that as it may, as often as not the person saying it isn't trying to express any thought about God. Quite the opposite: he's trying to avoid dealing with any categorical statements about God.¹

Suppose that it is true, as you say, that "God has a specific plan for the lives of all his people. A specific vocation, spouse, ministry, location, etc." If it is the case that God's "specific plan" is for me to marry my "specific spouse," Alice, then conversely it must be his plan for Alice to marry me, and for Betty not to marry me. So it only stands to reason that if I ignore Alice in favour of Betty, the following are also true:

• I am missing God's plan for my life.
• Betty is missing God's plan for her life.
• Betty and I have caused Alice to miss God's plan for her life.

The same would hold true for vocation. If you refuse the "specific vocation" God intended, then not only you, but your potential employer, the guy he hired in your place, the employer whose offer you did accept, and the guy he should have hired instead of you, are all hosed.

In his book Finding the Will of God in a Crazy, Mixed-Up World, Tim LaHaye admits as much (answering the question, "Is it possible for others to cause me to miss God's perfect will?"):

That's a tough one! I'm inclined to think so, particularly for a married person. Your spouse may resist God's call on your life. Usually, however, God will change the person's mind in time for you to conform to His will. . . .

On the other hand, I know of two great Bible teachers whose wives fought them in every phase of their spiritual occupation. . . . It's difficult to judge whether these women kept their godly husbands from doing more than God's acceptable will. That's for Him to reveal at the Judgment.²

Decisions, particularly big, important decisions that involve other people, aren't made in isolation. Their effects ripple outward and involve other people in ways we might not have anticipated or intended. I think that LaHaye glosses over this implication of his theology, because he hasn't really thought through the logic of it.

The only alternative I can see is that for some people, God simply has no plan. He doesn't intend, or even care, that Alice marries me or someone else. And I don't think that squares with any orthodox Christian's theology.

So I don't find the idea that God has reserved just one person (job, location, etc.) for each of us, to be theologically tenable. It's not biblical: it's romantic sentimentality. At the very least, when Paul talks (in 1 Cor. 7) about the reasons and benefits of singleness and marriage, don't you think he might have mentioned this important fact?

Naturally I don't believe God has no plans for our lives. As I have written before, God's providential care extends throughout all creation, from the placement of the galaxies to each person's private thoughts and everything in between. And so married or not, if someone asks me if I'm right where God wants me to be, I can honestly - and confidently - say "Yes, I'm exactly where he put me."

Footnotes

¹ Limited footnote: Indeed, little aggravates me more than being told I'm "limiting God," when as a Calvinist I am defending God's absolute freedom to do whatever he wants. It's evident these clichés just pour out of the mouth without first engaging the brain.

² Tim LaHaye, Finding the Will of God in a Crazy, Mixed-Up World (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1989) 67-68.

Canada Day 2007

Once again, it's Canada Day, that day of the year when Canadians shed their normally reserved patriotism¹, scour their wardrobes for something red, and overtly celebrate all things hoserish. (Surprisingly I have not a single article of red clothing, so I settled for showing my love of my country by having a large Timmy's double-double and listening to Rush.)

Today is Canada's 140th birthday. Like most Canada Days in Ottawa, it looked all day like it was on the verge of dumping a foot of rain. Unlike most, it didn't.

I believe this is the first time I have been in Ottawa on Canada Day on a Sunday. The last time July started on Sunday was 2001, but I think I was out of town that weekend. So it has been a fairly low-key day for me: I attended church, spent a little while downtown to take in the sights, watched some TV, and wrote this blog.

But the day started with a bang. Wanting to avoid heavy downtown traffic, crowds, and overfull buses, I decided to attend church at our satellite campus. Unfortunately, I discovered too late that the only short route to my bus stop had become a crime scene - it was blocked off with police tape thanks to a triple homicide. So I had to go well out of my way to get around it: what should have been a 5-minute walk took more than 10. Naturally, I missed the bus. So I opted to brave downtown and go to a later service, since I could at least get to it on time.

Every Canada Day, I like to write up a brief sketch of a Canadian patriotic song. I've been through our national anthem, a song that almost became it, and a song from Nova Scotia, where my family comes from. This year I've decided to do something a little closer to home.

In 1967, the government of Ontario wanted a catchy jingle to promote the province at Expo '67's Ontario Pavilion. They commissioned Richard Morris and Dolores Claman the lyrics and the score, respectively². The outcome was "A Place to Stand, A Place to Grow":

Give us a place to stand and a place to grow
And call this land Ontario
A place to live for you and me
With hopes as high as the tallest tree

Give us a land of lakes and a land of snow
And we will build Ontario
A place to stand, a place to grow
Ontari-ari-ari-o!

While the "Ontari-ari-ari-o" chorus is decidedly corny, the song was surprisingly popular: as a 45 rpm record, it sold over 50,000 copies, and has been revived once or twice in recent years to promote Ontario tourism, which says something about its popularity. It has even been proposed as an official provincial anthem. Back in Grade 1, in the early 1970s, I was taught "A Place to Stand" in school. I'm sure, judging from the modified lyrics we learned, it was intended to teach a little bit of local geography as well as patriotism. The song is probably hard-wired into the mind of any Ontarian older than 35.

"A Place to Stand, A Place to Grow" was featured in the short film A Place to Stand, by Christopher Chapman. It is best known for its "multi-dynamic image technique" - a fancy word for multiple split screens all simultaneously showing different images. The film won the 1967 Oscar for Best Live Action (Short Subject). Steve McQueen was supposedly so fascinated with the technique that it was incorporated into his next film, The Thomas Crown Affair. Today the effect is an indispensible aspect of the style of 24. An excerpt from the film was used as a tourism commercial:

Previous Canada Days:

• 2004: O Canada
• 2005: The Maple Leaf Forever
• 2006: Farewell to Nova Scotia

Footnotes

¹ Overtime footnote: Apart from hockey playoff season, anyway.

² Double overtime footnote: Claman's biggest claim to fame came later: she penned the other official Canadian anthem, the theme to Hockey Night in Canada.

But then again . . .

Perhaps I spoke too soon.

Once again I made one of my regular forays this evening to parts distant under the auspices of OC Transpo. Between where I live and the nearest bus stop is a large condominium complex with some pretty nice terraced garden beds. As I sauntered past one of them, something squeaking caught my attention. When I turned to look, I nearly jumped out of my skin.

Bloaty has a family.

Seeing one dead skunk in an urban environment is unusual. Seeing a live skunk is a real rarity. But seeing two . . . ? Yep, there were Mrs. Bloaty and Bloaty Jr., rooting around in the perennials. (Given that I'm not an expert at sexing skunks, I'm assuming it was Mrs. Bloaty.)

Last year, I might have occasionally seen a rabbit hopping around in the shrubbery. This summer it's not unusual to see two of them in the same night. They even chase each other around and get into fights. I've started calling the condo property "Australia." Next summer they are going to be hip-deep in bunnies and the high-rises are all going to sink into the giant network of rabbit holes. But now the skunks are moving in too; it's becoming a regular zoo.

It was bad enough coming across one dead skunk. I definitely don't want to cross paths with a family of freaked-out, live skunks.

Sigh.

The Great Roadkill Hostage Situation ends peacefully

So last night I was unfortunately compelled to take another trip up to the bus stop. Knowing that Bloaty the Roadkill Skunk (thank you Carla!) was lying by the side of the road destroying all that is good and healthy and wholesome about breathable air, I began making mental plans to find an alternate route downtown.

Happily, it appears that the city people donned their bright yellow PVC hazmat suits and carted Bloaty away. So hooray for that.

Interestingly, Bloaty's penultimate resting place is now marked by a small patch of dead grass. I knew skunks were noxious, but that strikes me as downright Lovecraftean.

I think I've discovered the worst smell in the world

As I was walking to the bus stop last night, I spotted a curious piece of roadkill. It looked like an enormous black squirrel that had been hit on the road, knocked flat on its back, and become quite bloated as it decomposed.  If that thing gets punctured, I thought to myself, this neighbourhood will be unlivable.

How mistaken I was.

When I walked past on my way to church this morning, I noticed that - for some reason I cannot adequately explain - someone actually approached this carcass and turned it over. It's not an obese squirrel; it's a skunk.

At 10 this morning, the dead skunk smell was noticeable from half a block away, and I could already feel my stomach starting to turn. When I came back in the early afternoon, it was still there and flies were starting to gather.  I breathed through my mouth the rest of the way home. If someone from the city doesn't dispose of Pepe le Pew by tomorrow, you won't be able to walk up the street without a gas mask.

That is all. I'm just testing out a new blogging client. Substantial posting should resume shortly.

Reclaiming History - holy moly!

A few days ago, Fred Butler posted a favourable impression of prosecuting attorney Vincent Bugliosi (best known as the prosecutor of Charles Manson and the author of the bestselling true-crime book Helter Skelter, based on the Manson murders), with respect to his newest book, Reclaiming History, about the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

At the time I had already placed a request for the book at the public library. It arrived (by surprise) yesterday, so I went to pick it up.

My first impression: This book is heavy. Anvil heavy. Family Bible heavy. New York City phone book heavy. I was reading it on the bus, and now my arms ache just from holding it up. It's oversized and still comes in at over 1500 pages - and if that isn't enough reading for you, it includes a CD-ROM just for the endnotes. When it gets published in paperback, I think they might have to do it in two or three volumes, because I don't think perfect binding is even physically capable of containing that many pages.

Anyway, I'm about 100 pages in, maybe a little more, and I'm quite enjoying it. Bugliosi makes no secret of his contempt for JFK conspiracy theories, and this new book purports to debunk them. A few years ago I was willing to entertain the possibility that JFK's death was not all it seemed. But then I read Gerald Posner's book Case Closed. No more. I'm fully convinced that John F. Kennedy died a meaningless death at the hand of Communist and general failure Lee Harvey Oswald. Interestingly, I've skimmed a few sections of Bugliosi's book, and it looks like he really doesn't like Posner, even though they reach the same conclusions.

I've never tackled 1500 pages before in three weeks. It'll be interesting to see if I can finish Bugliosi off before I have to hand the book off to the next borrower. I'd hate to have to read such fascinating subject matter in shifts.

Slow news day

Apparently nothing important happened yesterday. A bawling rich girl went to jail, and the news media jumped the shark.

Jay Leno summed it up nicely (and since NBC really doesn't like their clips being posted, enjoy it while you can:

In other news, shuttle Atlantis had a perfect launch last evening, the first one I had watched in ages. It still gives me a thrill to see one of those machines lift off. But does anyone else's heart still stop for a moment when ground control reports "go at throttle up"?

7 random facts

I bin tagged!

Yeah, it was a while ago that Julie tagged me with this blog meme:

Each player starts with 7 random facts/habits about themselves. People who are tagged need to write on their own blog about their seven things, as well as these rules. You need to choose 7 people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them that they have been tagged and to read your blog!

I hope no one thinks I'm being a bad sport by not tagging seven people of my own, but it has been nearly a month. So here are my 7 random facts, which I am pretty sure I have never reavealed to anyone before, so consider it a world premiere.

1. I prefer my video games 8-bit. Battlezone is still the best game ever made, bar none.
2. I was a diehard Trekkie by the time I was 11 or 12, but without having ever seen a complete episode of Star Trek, or even most of them before 1 was 20. This was thanks to the short story adaptations by James Blish. The real thing didn't quite match up to my imagination.
3. I have borrowed Larry Niven's A World Out of Time from the library four times, the latter three without realizing I had already read it once. Even so I still don't remember what it's about.
4. I have been known on occasion to take a swig of Louisiana Hot Sauce from the bottle, though usually just to prove a point. Usually.
5. My three biggest food weaknesses: Sour cream and onion potato chips, szegedi or gyulai sausage, and chicken wings.
6. By my estimate I have listened to She's So Unusual by Cyndi Lauper at least 600 times, assuming at least twice a month and a lot more when the album was still current. "Time After Time" has been my favourite song since it reached #1 in 1984.
7. When I first moved to Ottawa I bought a bicycle. I rode it home from downtown to Kanata, an approximate distance of 22 km. It was my first time on a bicycle in 4 years. I don't recommend it.

So there you go. Laugh. Enjoy.

And the Stanley Cup goes to . . . Disney

OK, I admit I'm hardly a hockey fan. It's something fun to watch with friends, or to go see live (if you can get - and afford - decent seats), but it's hardly something I usually go out of my way to watch. Especially with never-ending reruns of CSI that I haven't seen yet on every channel.

But there's something about it being the home team that makes even diehard hockey haters into temporary home-team cheerleaders. And I'm not a hater, just indifferent. Still, I felt pretty much the same way when I was living in Waterloo and the Jays cleaned up the World Series in 1992-93 (and then the 1994 baseball strike pretty much cooled my interest in baseball). Getting on the home-team bandwagon was the thing to do.

Oh well. That passed. Now that the Sens have lost the Stanley Cup to the Anaheim Ducks, a team named after, of all things, a Disney kids' movie, I can get off the bandwagon and back to my ordinary boring life. Also, the Sens won't be pre-empting Smallville anymore, at least until the fall.

I blew up the clinic real good

There is an informal group of anti-abortion advocates - really domestic terrorists - who have become disaffected with what they think is a lackluster response to the scourge of abortion by the mainstream pro-life movement. Calling themselves the Army of God, they consider themselves at war with the forces of evil, specifically the abortion industry. Infamous anti-abortion activists such as Paul Hill and clinic bomber Eric Rudolph have claimed to be members.

Movie Review

Soldiers in the Army of God

Directed by Marc Levin and Daphne Pinkerson

HBO, 2000

71 minutes

Soldiers in the Army of God is a 2000 HBO documentary directed by Marc Levin and Daphne Pinkerson, based on a February 1999 Esquire article titled "Neal Horsley and the Future of the Armed Abortion Conflict"¹, by co-producer Daniel Voll. Like many of the documentaries I've viewed recently, this one is shot cinema verité-style: rather than editorializing, the creators just point the camera and let their subjects speak for themselves.

Neal Horsley is the webmaster of the radical anti-abortion Web site christiangallery.com. He and Jonathan O'Toole, a young radical anti-abortionist, also formerly maintained the Nuremberg Files, a Web page listing the names and addresses of abortionists and abortion-clinic employees. Any who were killed or maimed by anti-abortion violence were struck off the list.² Horsley is additionally the founder of the Creator's Rights Party, an extremist political party advocating, amongst other things, Southern secession. En route to the White Rose Banquet - an annual gathering of the most radical of anti-abortionists - O'Toole remarks that if God told him to kill for the cause, he would kill.

Bob Lokey lives in Alabama, where he has erected a giant, graphic anti-abortion billboard on his property. A trucker, he drives his rig to Washington D.C. to attend White Rose - as Lokey describes it, the "hardest core" of the pro-life movement. Though, he hastens to add, they are not hardcore enough for his liking. At the banquet he remarks to another attendee that he came hauling a load of ammonium nitrate; while he was sure it was purely for agricultural use, he expresses hope that there is an outside chance it might be used for something "non-agricultural." (Timothy McVeigh had an effective "non-agricultural" use for fertilizer.) And when Lokey starts talking to Neal Horsley about how he circumcised himself with a pocketknife, the weirdness factor shoots off the scale.

The centrepiece of Soldiers in the Army of God is a prison interview with convicted murderer Paul Hill, then biding his time on death row for the shooting of abortionist John Britton and a clinic escort in Pensacola in 1994. The documenters had already shown Hill, via the magic of home video, screaming "GOD! HATES! MURDERERS!" at the clinic. Now, awaiting execution, with a friendly grin on his face and no visible trace of remorse, he explains to the filmmakers how God told him to buy a gun and become a murderer. The irony of his situation must have escaped him.

Bad theology often begets worse theology. But for the Army of God, it also begets worse action. I don't even want to know what motivated Bob Lokey's self-circumcision; clearly he needs to read Paul's letter to the Galatians more closely. But nearly every major player in this documentary states, at some point, that if he felt God wanted him to kill for the sake of the unborn, he would kill. I've spoken at length elsewhere about why subjective feelings are a completely useless means of knowing God's will. God has made known how he feels about murder: what is so hard to understand about "Thou shalt not kill"? But a Paul Hill has a feeling that God wants him to blow away an abortionist, and that trumps all other considerations, including what God has actually revealed. The very assertion shuts down all arguments to the contrary. Bad theology begets bad consequences.⁴

Romans 13 reads:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. . . . for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. (Rom. 13:1,3-4)

God has given the sword to the civil government: that is, they are his ordained instruments of justice, authorized, if necessary, to kill lawbreakers. Notably, Paul does not say this power is granted to the Church or to individual Christians. Outside of individuals in civil or military service, or churches exercising discipline on its members, Christians are simply not given the authority to administer justice, execute wrongdoers, or wage war. Violent vigilantism, in short, is anti-Christian. This conduct is not even (as the cliché puts it) taking the law into one's own hands; it is lawlessness. I get no pleasure in seeing a professing Christian like Paul Hill executed, but he has received the due penalty for his act.

I've avoided, as much as possible, using the term pro-life to refer to members of the Army of God. They may be anti-abortion, but they are not pro-life. Their kind of activity is actually inconsistent with the pro-life philosophy: it is wrong to take the life of a human person without justification. Pro-lifers may disagree over the appropriateness of capital punishment, but no consistent pro-lifer can support private citizens deliberately destroying life or property.

There's no question where the filmmakers stand: the documentary concludes with a memorial service for Dr. David Gunn, another Pensacola abortionist shot to death in 1993. Ironically, however, in the end it's the hardcore anti-abortionists that have put forward a halfway cogent rationale for their position, however repugnant it is. By contrast, Gunn's supporters gather in a Unitarian church to sing touchy-feely protest hymns. The choice between toxic radicalism and vapid emotionalism is hardly useful.

Postscript (June 7): Looks like the Rev. Donald Spitz, webmaster of armyofgod.com, saw my review and linked to it. Looks like he was a little too enthusiastic, though: I guess he must have read it afterward, because there's nothing there now (but see the post slug for the evidence). D'oh!

Footnotes

¹ Daniel Voll, "Neal Horsley and the Future of the Armed Abortion Conflict," Esquire, February 1999, 110-16, 118-19. The article is included on the DVD release.

² 404'd footnote: The Nuremberg Files were shut down by court order in 2002, although mirrors still exist internationally.

³ Dying in vein footnote: Hill was executed by lethal injection in 2003.

⁴ The sheep are scared footnote: And speaking of aberrant conduct, it's also worth noting that both Horsley and Lokey have served time; Horsley for drug dealing, Lokey for first-degree murder. Additionally, Horsley has admitted on more than one occasion that he engaged in bestiality as a youth, arguing that this is normal behaviour for rural Georgia. No, really.