I Have Decided

Growing up in a Baptist Church in the heart of the "Bible Belt", it was impressed on me over and over again the need to "give my heart to Jesus", to "make a decision for Christ".  And so I was baptised when I was 7, and again when I was 14, and I needed it again after that but I had given up by that point.  The case was made as pleadingly as ever case was made, over and over again.  I was to understand that Jesus was standing outside my heart, knocking on its door, anxious to come in and change my life, and that everything hung on me making the decision to open the door to Him.  I thought that I had done that when I was seven, but by the time I had lived with myself for 14 years there could be no doubt that I was no Christian.  I had certainly tried, but it was clear that I had failed.  To listen to all of my teachers talk, becoming a Christian was the easiest thing in the world, but I couldn't seem to do it.  Just say the magic words and become a new person.  Well I had said them over and over again, and sometimes I was pretty sure I had been sincere.  This is the story of my childhood, trying and failing to become a Christian.

I began to feel that everytime I invited Christ into my heart, I slammed the door in His face.  I knew that I wanted Him to come in pretty bad, but it slowly dawned on me that I wanted much more for Him to stay away from me.  I was a battleground between light and dark, but it was becoming clear that the light in me was largely imaginary, little more than moonshine, and the darkness was sickeningly real.  I understood that the part of me that hated and feared God was stronger than the part of me that accepted him.  And I knew, whether because of experience or by some intuition, that it would always be that way.

I saw very clearly that I only had one hope, but I had no idea if it was true or just a product of my sickened imagination.  That hope was, and is, simply that Christ was willing to do more than stand outside and knock.  I began to dream of a God who would come and shatter the world I had built, a God who would not be stymied by my veto.  And I know that some won't like the way I worded that, but the doctrine of "making a decision for Christ" is exactly the doctrine that we have the veto over God, that our word, "I refuse", is the last word.  My hope, however, is in a God who will not knock on the door of my heart, but beat it down with a battering ram.  I know now that if Christ is ever going to be a Saviour it must be built on His being a Conqueror.

I have been told that this teaching is demeaning to Christ, that it teaches that Christ is no gentleman but stoops to the level of the lowest of men in His quest to save us.  All I can say is that Christ has done more humiliating things for us.  He has sunk to the deepest depths because that is where we live.

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you 

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; 

That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend 

Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. 

I, like an usurp'd town to another due, 

Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end; 

Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, 

But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue. 

Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain, 

But am betroth'd unto your enemy; 

Divorce me, untie or break that knot again, 

Take me to you, imprison me, for I, 

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, 

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.  John Donne Holy Sonnet 14

As Donne expressed so eloquently, our only freedom is in Christ enslaving us, our only purity is in Him taking us by force.(for those who don't know "ravish" is an archaic word for rape)  Our only hope for righteousness is that He has, truly and in fact, become sin for us.  Rather than insisting on His right to us as our Creator, on inspiring us with His beauty(which we cannot perceive in Him, esteeming Him as one stricken, afflicted by God according to Isaiah), on reasoning with us, a desperate act is needed to save desperate sinners.  Our salvation depends on only one simple truth, that Christ has the strength and the will to save us.

So He called them to Himself and said to them in parables: “How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself, and is divided, he cannot stand, but has an end. No one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man. And then he will plunder his house. Mark 3

You and I CANNOT make a decision for Christ, can't let Him into our heart, can't give Him our lives because they are already the property of Satan.  I have decided to follow Satan, but, thanks be to God, I don't have the last word.  Christ's saves me, by vetoing my suicidal will.  We are all possessed.  We are the goods in Satan's house.  But there is one stronger than him.  He conquers the world, the flesh, and the Devil by the sword of His mouth, and then He takes us, useless, mindless, hopeless thralls of the Devil, as His prize, the spoils of victory.

Glorious Day