Truth in Tension
MacDonald is perhaps the most balanced teacher I have ever read. He presents a clear and bold statement of the singular motivation of God as Love through using the images of the refiner’s and consuming fire. His sermon, The Consuming Fire, places this fire of love in a beautiful tension.
“The truth is that God is Love, all love, and nothing other than love!”
“Was not God ready to do to them even what they feared? Though with another motive and a different purpose from any which they were capable of imagining? He is against sin: in so far as, and while, sin and we are one! He then is against this selfish-self. Against our selfish desires, aims, and hopes; so that, He can be always and altogether for us!” (Paraphrase)
Balance
Balance is not a mixture. It is not some compromise between two seemingly opposing truths. Balance is always opposed to dualistic thinking, the black-white, either-or, you have to choose mentalities. It is about putting these truths in tension.
An excellent example of this is the Biblical concepts of the sovereignty of God and the will of man. These being both true, God knows the end from the beginning. He has also given us free will with the self-limiting of that same sovereign power. God knows and plans, and we freely choose, and the two meet somewhere in between. Neither is diluted by the other!
C.S. Lewis expresses this tension in a simple illustration:
“’I’m not going to go and make you tidy the schoolroom every night. You’ve got to learn to keep it tidy on your own.’ Then she goes up one night and finds the Teddy bear and the ink and the French Grammar all lying in the grate. That is against her will. She would prefer the children to be tidy. But on the other hand, it is her will which has left the children free to be untidy. The same thing arises in any regiment, or trade union, or school. You make a thing voluntary and then half the people do not do it. That is not what you willed, but your will has made it possible.
It is the same in the universe. God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go either wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong; I cannot. If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata-of creatures that worked like machines-would hardly be worth creating.” (CS Lewis – Mere Christianity, page 52)
NOTE: Lewis, by the way, called MacDonald, “his master.” “I dare not say that he is never in error; but… I know hardly any other writer who seems to be closer… to the Spirit of Christ Himself… I have never concealed the fact that I regarded him as my master, indeed I fancy I have never written a book in which I did not quote from him.”
Avoid all Extremes
Ecclesiastes 7:16-18 NIV
“Do not be over righteous, neither be overwise— why destroy yourself?
Do not be overwicked, and do not be a fool—why die before your time?
It is good to grasp the one and not let go of the other. Whoever fears God will avoid all extremes.”
Those who know me will attest to the fact that extremes have expressed my life. I call it the Ditch Theory. For example, when you find yourself doing too much, you dive across the road and do too little. The only time you see the road is when you are flying over it!
MacDonald believed in neither the limited elect nor the everyone of universalism; he avoided determinism altogether. He believed in a Loving Father who would take an eternity to pursue His children until they returned Home!
In The Musician’s Quest, the main character, Robert Falconer, is the closest to an autobiographical sketch of MacDonald’s childhood in relationship to his grandmother and his response to the religious culture of his day.
“But now began to appear in Robert the first signs of a practical outcome of such truths as his grandmother had taught him. She had taught him to look up – that there was a God. He would put it to the test. Not that he doubted it yet; he only doubted whether there was a hearing God. But was not that worst? For it is of far more consequence what kind of a God than whether a God or not. . .
The first night he knelt and cried, “O Father in heaven, hear me, and let your face shine upon me.” But like a flash of burning fire the words shot from the door of his heart, “I don’t care about him loving me if he doesn’t love everybody,” and he could not pray another word that night, although he knelt for an hour of agony in the freezing dark.
Loyal to what he had been taught, he struggled hard to reduce his rebellious will to what he supposed to be the will of God. It was all in vain. Ever a voice within him cast up questions he had been taught it was wicked to ask. He could not help feeling he would be a traitor to his face if he accepted a love, even from God, given him as an exception from his own kind. He did not care to have such a love. It was not what his heart yearned for. It was not love. He could not love such a love. Yet he strove against these feelings within himself – fighting for the religion of his grandmother against the love which his heart longed for.” (pg 128-129)
“Looking back to the time when it seemed that he cried and was not heard, he saw that God had been hearing, had been answering all the time, had been making him capable of receiving the gift for which he prayed.” (pg 185)
Fire of Love
Thank God that He has both time and eternity to bring His ditch dwelling children Home!