Letters

There is a particular kind of struggle that tends to surface early in the Christian life, and it is one of the better struggles a person can have. It goes something like this: you come to faith, or you come to a deeper awareness of God's holiness, and suddenly the things you used to do without a second thought now feel suspect. You sit down to play a video game or watch a movie or go fishing, and a voice in the back of your mind says, "Should I be reading my Bible right now?

The case of Judas Iscariot raises one of the most pointed questions in all of theology. Jesus chose twelve disciples. He called them, taught them, sent them out, and shared His ministry with them for three years. And one of them was a traitor from the beginning. If Jesus is God, and God does not make mistakes, then what does the inclusion of Judas tell us about election, about saving faith, and about the nature of Christ's purposes?

The word predestination tends to produce one of two reactions. Either it sounds like cold theology, the kind of thing people argue about in seminaries but never bring to the dinner table, or it sounds troubling, as though God were playing a cosmic game with loaded dice. Most people who have heard the word land somewhere in the second category. They have a vague impression that predestination means God created a world full of people He intended to condemn, and the whole thing strikes them as fundamentally unfair. That reaction is understandable. It is also, I think, built on a misunderstanding of what the Bible actually teaches and why it teaches it.