06.06.09

A Little Ramblings and Comments on Portofino

Posted in Book Reviews, Church Issues and Bible Interpretations, God, Uncategorized at 10:06 am by Administrator

We’ve had kind of weird weather here in Los Angeles for the past few days.  Normally June is quite sunny, but the past few days it has been gloomy and even rained a bit.  A couple days ago it started to drizzel, and then yesterday morning I woke up to the sound of rain.  It was actually coming down pretty good, too, which was a surprise.  Waz up wit dat?  Fortunately, this morning was “almost” back to normal.  At least it wasn’t so gloomy in the morning.
Anyway, strange weather days like this tends to get me a bit off schedule.  Kind of like day light savings.  I keep thinking it’s still early in the morning, and then I find out that I’m late everywhere, ha!  Today I managed to get some errands done, then I finished reading Portofino by Frank Schaeffer.  I was knitting just a few moments ago, but since I’ve somehow been knitting like an idiot (you know, knit a few rounds, find out it’s not going right, rip it out, knit it up again, find out it’s still wrong, rip it out, knit it up again, decide I don’t like the pattern, rip it out again, find a new pattern, knit it up, realize I must have missed some stitches somewhere, rip it out again. . . aka knitting like an idiot. . .), I thought I would give it a rest and blog.

Speaking of knitting like an idiot, I somehow managed to read like an idiot, too.  I recently checked out Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.  I started reading the book, and thought, gee, this isn’t what I thought the story was going to be like.  Then I looked at the back of the book and read the review.  It mentioned “two” books.  I flipped the book over and looked at the front.  It read, Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer.  Then I realized that the book had “two” stories in it.  The first one was The Secret Sharer (although the cover had Heart of Darkness first), which I was reading.  Oye!  Well, I only had about four pages left to finish the story, so went ahead and finished it up.  So that’s what I call “reading like an idiot,” yikes!  Strange story. . . , but, okay, so now I’m ready to start reading Heart of Darkness. . . better be good. . .

Now, back to the book that I did mean to read and did finish, Portofino by Frank Schaeffer.  Ha!  Well, it was pretty entertaining.  The story turned out to be a coming of age story of a young boy growing up in a Reformed Christian family.  The story focuses on two of their annual 10-day family vacations at Portofino.  While I admit that I had to laugh out loud in “several” places in the book, I also have to concede that it was a bit disrespectful to his family and the Reformed Christian Church.   If Frank’s family was really like that in real life (I got the impression from Crazy for God that Portofino was in fact a very thinly veiled story of his actual family life), then I can understand why he might have some “attitude” problems.  I’d be scarred for life, too!

I do have some mixed feelings of the book because I hated to think that Francis Schaeffer was like that.  I don’t know how close he was in real life to the character, Ralph, but he was VERY moody and very easily angered.  His behavior was not at all anything like what I’ve been exposed to while growing up, so I would have been shocked to live in his family.  I also wonder how close Edith Schaeffer was to the character, Elsa.  While I can appreciate her ferver in witnessing to unbelievers, her aggressiveness and display of her faith was a bit much for me.  According to Frank’s book, Crazy for God, he expresses that his mother really did have very long prayers like 45 minutes to say grace before eating at each meal.  I can’t imagine having to do that before each meal even in public!  All the food would go cold at each meal and who knows how many flies would have already landed all over it, yikes!  That would be enough to drive me nuts, too.  The reasoning given in the story is that Elsa claimed that we should not be ashamed of God (i.e. if you deny me, I will deny you in front of the Father), and that we should not hide His light under a bushel.  Thus the long open prayers before everyone no matter where and attempts to “save” the lost even while on vacation.  I’ve gone out with some people who have prayed out loud in restaurants, and I admit that it has made me uncomfortable especially in light of the passage in the Bible, Matthew 6:6 which states that when we pray it should be in secret.

^“6But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.”

This did make me rethink what the Bible tells us about church conduct such as in 1 Corinthians 14:26.  It tells us that when we gather each one of us has a psalm, a teaching,  a revelation, etc., but it does not mention prayer.  I thought that interesting given that it’s common for all Christian churches to pray at each gathering before and after each meeting.  Makes me think maybe I should study this more.  Are we “always” to pray in secret?  Hmmm.
The book did have a lot of sarcasm regarding the “lost,” “pagan” Roman Catholics and other non-reformed Christians from Calvin’s perception of his reformed parents.  However, I think the most sarcasm pertaining to religion was actually directed towards the Calvinists.   Particularly the concept of the “elect.”   On page 217-219, Calvin is describing a tract his family handed out as part of their ministry by the Great News Publishers.  They wanted him to hand them out, but he didn’t want to.  Here’s his description:

The front of the tract had a picture of a man’s face on it.  He had his hand under his chin to show he was thinking.  There was a big question mark over his head and over that was written, “Which Way?  Life or Eternal Death?”  Behind the man was a door with a staircase leading from it with arrows by the staircase.  One arrow pointed up and was marked “Eternal Life’ and the other arrow pointed down and was marked “The Unbelievers’ Judgment.”

Mom had once read this tract to us at family prayers.  It was about a man who had been raised in a godly home but who had never made a personal profession of faith in Jesus.  When he grew up he had strayed far from the Lord and was filling up his empty life with the pleasures of the world:  drinking, dancing, smoking, and even worse things the tract called “The fleeting pleasure of the flesh.”  Then he had a serious accident.  After the accident a godly nurse told him he should trust Jesus for his recovery, physical and spiritual.  Then the story sort of split into two parts.  Like two answers you could choose between to solve a problem on a test.  In one the man got bitter because of his accident and turned his face away from the godly nurse who was sharing a Scripture with him about “He whom the Lord loveth He chastiseth.”  The man finally got well without the Lord’s help even though Jesus was standing knocking at his unregenerate vile heart.  A year later he was drunk and he stepped in front of a freight train. He had had his chance with the godly nurse but it was too late now and he went weeping before the Awesome Judgment Seat of the Lord in a state of Original Sin and Total Depravity.  He was judged to be a goat–a Vessel of Wrath–predestined to damnation, not an Elect sheep, and got sent to the Left Hand of the Lord, where there was gnashing of teeth.  He wished he had listened to the godly nurse and invited Jesus into his heart when he had had the chance.  His last thought in the tract before he went into the Lake of Fire was “If only. . . ” saying or thinking to himself in the Lake of Fire even though he had plenty of time to say a lot because he was there for all eternity.

But in the other story, the man chose the right way and listened to the godly nurse and the”Good News was like refreshing waters on a parched land’ to him.  He prayed the Sinner’s Prayer right there in his hospital bed and got better and gave his life to the Lord, gave up his career as a nightclub singer and started to work in a mission for alcoholics.  And the desire for alcohol, tobacco, singing worldly songs and swearing left him entirely, “for he was filled with something far, far better!”  He didn’t get hit by anything so you didn’t get to see what happened when he stood before the Lord but it was pretty clear he was an Elect sheep and would get to go in at the Right Hand and hear the blessed words, “Well done my good and faithful servant.  Come into the joy of the Lord,” or something like that.

But I figured he still had problems because of the fact that if he wasn’t one of the Elect, “predestined before the foundation of the world” to be saved from Utter Total Depravity, then he might live his whole life like he should, maybe even marry the godly nurse and go to be missionaries with her in Liberia and hold Negro babies while she vaccinated them against polio, but it still might not work out.  The Lord might say, “I never knew you,” and the man would say, “But I invited you into my heart,” and the Lord would say, “Maybe, but I never came in, see.  You are a goat.  Once a goat, always a goat.  You were never one of the Elect.”  Then the man would get mad and say, “What the hell are you talking about!  Nurse Jane here never said anything about this!”  Then the Lord would say, “Too bad she didn’t study Calvin’s Institutes more, then she would have known.”  And the man would shout, “Known what?!”  Then the Lord would say, “About Reformed theology, that’s what, pal!”

Then in my head the story got weird because I imagined the Lord saying, “But you’ll be able to study all about it now,” and the man said, “Where?”  And the Lord said, “In the Lake of Fire of course.”  And the man said real sarcastically, “How’s that?”  And the Lord said, “Because Calvin’s there too.”  Then the man said, “I thought he was a great and godly man and explained everything about God and all to everybody so we could be real Christians instead of Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholics or Baptists!”  The the Lord said, “Yeah, but he’s not one of the Elect, his mind was unregenerated, he is the original Vessel of Wrath.”

“Calvin,” Mom said, “what are you daydreaming about, darling?”

“Calvin and Jesus.”

Then Mom and Dad exchanged pleased looks like they had just won a prize.  And I could see that Dad thought my correction had been timely and was helping me a lot.

The illustration Frank gives above regarding a “problem” with Calvin’s theology is valid.  I think the concept of the “pre-ordained elect” is contrary to 1 John 5:13:

These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.

According to John, we can “know” that we have eternal life.  It appears that we don’t have to “wait” until after we die to find out whether we have endured or not or are one of the elect as Calvin’s theology suggests.  The idea of the elect also goes against “free-will.”  If we are all chosen before hand, then we don’t really “choose” to believe in God or follow Him.  If we don’t choose, then where is our free will?  Phil 2:10-11 states, “That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”  The Bible tells us in John 3:16 that those who believes in Jesus will be saved.  If Phil 2:10-11 says that “every tongue should confess the Jesus is Lord,”  doesn’t that mean that everyone will then eventually believe and be saved, not just a certain number of elect?

I know that there are quite a few arguments for Calvinism such as Christ died for “many,” not all.  But saying that Christ died for many doesn’t necessarily mean that he didn’t die for all.  I mean if we are talking about all people, then that IS many.  And then I can imagine that some might say that every tongue “should” confess might mean that we should confess, but some don’t, and thus not everyone will be saved.  That does make sense, but when I looked it up in the Greek, interestingly there was no “should” in the Greek.  Hmmm.  And that should could mean both should or another tense of shall.

Well, anyway, I do find the arguments interesting, so try to keep up with it when I can.  Course it seems to go on and on. . .  Personally, I lean more towards the perspective Zane Hodges seemed to have.  That is, anyone who believed what Christ said in John 11:25 obtains eternal life:

²⁵Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:

Hodges claimed that it was as simple as that.  In one message he gave he made me laugh because he spoke of a conversation he had with a guy who had asked him, “What if a person believes in Christ that He can give eternal life, BUT he doesn’t want to believe?”   Hodges replied, “Too late.”  Ha ha ha!  I loved that.  I’m sure many will claim that to be “easy believism.”  But you know what?  Christ told us in Matthew 11:28 that His burden was light:

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light

It seems to me that men tend to want to make things burdensome and heavy.  But that doesn’t seem to be Christ’s way.

Marlakins

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