My Decision

I have always been a church kid, first attending even while I was in the womb, and now 18 years later 250 miles away from where I first went to church I still attend. Being a Christian has been more than just attendance box on a checklist for me, but it is a lifestyle required to be walked daily. I’ll even admit that I was an attendee of a Presbyterian Church until age six, which in fact does mean I got the baby baptism. Also while it doesn’t seem exactly like a kid would really be all that into the doctrine of a church by the age of six it still does make a impact on us even then, albeit more subconsciously than consciously. However, at age six my family decided to leave the Presbyterian Church and start attending the Baptist Church. Thus my beliefs shifted and became more firmly entrenched with the Baptist perspective as I would spend twelve years there being instructed in the Bible by Baptists. That time though was more of a time of just listening and accepting, however upon coming up to Tallahassee and getting involved in First Baptist Church Tallahassee and their college ministry; I’ve been challenged more so to reexamine what I have been taught and am currently being taught. Funmi, the man who leads our Wednesday night deep dives into the Bible, constantly tells us to dive into the word yourself, memorize it, understand it, and most importantly double check all of what you’re being taught and that it indeed lines up with Scripture. Not only one passage of Scripture but it is found throughout, that the entire context of that passage and the Bible as a whole support the message we are being taught. Not only does he tell us we should do this for the pastor, but for him also. That is something that I’ve taken a habit to doing, but honestly I mainly only started to do so because of my disagreeance with him on the doctrine of election. For I believed that God did make the first move in our relationship, sending Jesus down to Earth to take upon our iniquities that we might have a chance to be righteous in front of God. Furthermore that it was the Holy Spirit that convicted us of our sin, to which we responded in repentance towards God and faith in Jesus Christ. Yet, via the doctrine of election God made the first move choosing us before the foundation of the world, than sending His Son at the right time to take up the sins of elected, and that only the elected feel the conviction of the Holy Spirit. That the conviction is unable to be ignored, that God gifts us with faith, and it is only through God’s continual work in us that we manage to continue living for Him, because He is working through us, we are vessels for His work. I think the main reason I was against this was because I wanted to hold on to the idea of free will in humanity. So after much boring reading, researching, and talking with people I came to my current stance, that my priority should be on the important things and not fight a battle that’ll just serve to cause another rift in the church. One reason for this is that God is unfathomable for us, we have a finite mind yet He is infinite, how can we hope to know all of His ways, so I’m prepared to accept that both stances can in fact be true, while we may see them as black and white, they can't be together to God it can make perfect sense that they have to be together in order to work. Secondly, we are called to be a united church, and we cant be arguing among ourselves over things that don’t have an overarching affect. This brings me into the third point that while this could be taken as a major overarching problem, it isn’t in the case of Funmi and I, since we both still have the same beliefs when it comes to salvation and sanctification, the trinity, that scripture alone is authoritative, to sharing the gospel, reaching out to those in need, to loving others, and most importantly loving God. These are what I find important (not an exhaustive list) these are what I will fight over, these are things that are worth addressing people on as changing them changes the gospel, creating a counterfeit gospel, because even if one of these things is changed the whole message of the gospel is affected. That is something as a Christian we shouldn’t let stand, for who wouldn’t stop a little kid at tee-ball from swinging his bat when another kid was behind him, accidentally hitting the other kid? And if that would just result in a small bruise what more should we do when it comes to someones eternal life?