There, I have said it. I have been writing from this frame of mind ever since I started this blog but have been hesitant to label myself. The open theist label, that is. The reason for this is mainly that I hate labels. They never really justify anyone’s beliefs totally. I constantly hear people refer to themselves as three point Calvinists or four point Calvinists. What does this really mean? If you are a Calvinist, then you are, right? And most Arminians really do not even know who they are or what it means.
” by Greg Boyd. But the discussion has to go deeper than just do I or anyone else have free will, even in this viewpoint. I keep being bombarded with the question about Peter’s free will and whether God allowed, foresaw or actually made Peter deny Christ. I believe I have answered this but I do realize that just maybe it was too spread out among the posts and comments to ascertain.Big Fish
I don’t like animals in my house. Pets are just not something I care for at all. It was not always like this though. For a period of about five years, starting about twenty years ago, I experimented with all kinds of pets. Like almost everything I do, I went way overboard. At one time I ended up with a dog, two cats, a rabbit, two snakes, two iguanas, five turtles, a newt, four geckos, and two aquariums. Oh yeah, my wife and I also had six kids.
I was out of my mind. I admit to the insanity that I was going through at that time in my life.
The aquariums were the most fun and the remembrance of setting up these miniature landscapes is what led me to write this. The turtles, snakes, iguanas and fish allowed me to be creative in building and establishing the habitats that I designed. It wasn’t as much about the animals as it was those mini creations that I found fascinating.
I learned something about fish, especially goldfish. The aquariums led to outdoor creations called water gardens. I have built four of those over the years. We lived without an abundance of financial resources, as you might imagine, so I looked for ways to do things on the cheap. I found that I could go to Wal-Mart and buy “feeder” goldfish for about a dime in those days. So I would pick up about twenty and put them in one of my little ten gallon worlds and see what happened. These goldfish were not very hardy since they were only bred as food, but some would surprise me and live a while. But they never got very big.
When I constructed my first water garden I did the same thing. I stocked it with about forty of those little fish. It was early spring. By the end of that summer, one of the goldfish that had started out about an inch and a half long had grown to at least eight inches. The kids and I called it Moby Dick. Moby froze that winter and I looked in sadness sometimes at him locked in a block of ice. But the next spring, when he thawed, that fish was still alive and grew another couple of inches before it just disappeared. Probably eaten by a bird, I guessed.
Jesus implied that we are like fish when He called the disciples to follow Him and become fishers of men. The thing that has gone through my mind as I have pondered this brings me to another conclusion about our growth as the church, the people of God. As our focus has become so inward instead of outward we are becoming like those goldfish that are locked in an aquarium.
The reason Moby grew so big was because of his surroundings. When you put fish, especially goldfish in a small environment they stay small. By putting them in a larger one like my water garden they are free to grow like they are meant to. As Christ followers, we are to be fishers of men also. We are to go out into the great big world and grow large as we are fed by the Spirit of God and our mission. But a lot of us are locked into our own aquariums, our church buildings, our programs, our ministries to those in the aquarium with us, and we have stunted our growth.
Let’s get out into the wild, deep waters of the world and become really big fish. We might become big enough to be used by God to even swallow up reluctant men of God and erring prophets like Jonah. And like that first freeze showed me concerning Moby, nothing can stop us.
And one more thing; let’s pray that our leaders become more than just aquarium keepers.
Love you all
Tags: aquariums, Christ, christ followers, Church, Creation, fun, geckos, God, goldfish, insanity, little fish, mission, spirit, wal mart, water garden, world
There has recently been a lot of discussion generated by my questions about the creation account. It has been fascinating and frustrating at the same time. Some find these things to be an unnecessary discussion and some see it as part of the mission. Personally, I just like to read the evidence that others have for their views. I don’t believe any of my main readers are experts in some of these things and I know I am not.
Some believe He created evil and sin for example, so that we can experience good and His mercy. Some believe He had to create time because He does not experience duration or sequence because He is infinite, but because we are finite we had to have time created to experience the same. Some of these concepts are definitely brain twisters and the most vocal of the believers in these things end most of the discussions with the argument of God being so far beyond, above, mysterious, and such that we should not attempt to even ponder them. Logic seems to have no place for determining what God is like.
This statement was made in one of the comments the other day here. There were a few other statements made about literal interpretations of Genesis. As far as creation is concerned, there are at least four different views about its historicity and probably more. Some view the creation account in Genesis as informing us about God’s literal six-twenty four hour day’s creation, a real Garden of Eden and a man and a woman named Adam and Eve. Another group of people see it as literal in the sense of the garden and Adam and Eve but that the days are not literal twenty four hour days and instead might be representing ages or eras. Another group does not believe much of any of this is literal at all and just points to God as creator and how He intended the relationship with His creation to be and that somewhere we failed. And finally, some view Genesis as well as a lot of the bible as myth and really has no bearing on anything much.
