We agree on so much!
With the OSAS'ers, I mean.
Very well said.
Fran, this is why I find their antagonism so unexpected.
Some of my theology in terms of election and choice is very OSAS.
I realise how little choice we have lost in sin. I think it is impossible to be free
unless God embraces us and cleans us, and gives us eyes to see.
But then once we can see we have a choice, because that is the power of
the Kingdom. And with such choice comes the opportunity to fail. To deny this
is to make us robots, captured in the love and Kingdom, which is to deny the
very principles by which God in the trinity operates. Jesus chose to come to die
because it was the Fathers will, but He could have chosen not do, but love drove
Him on.
It is this openness which is also the power of love. In the light you see why love must
chose a path, and the light shows there is no other way. Once darkness closes in, it
gives the illusion that there is a choice, as if death and emptiness is a choice against
life, love and eternity. And that for me is the paradox. There is no fear in love and
the cross, because the deeper you go the more inevitable it all is.
If some nut job wants to kill me because I love Jesus, becoming like the nut job is not
going to save my life, it will just make it 100% worse. It is far better to die and be with
the Lord and eternity than carry on in this crazy conflicted place of lostness and emptiness.