Redemption

Throughout chapter four of Plantinga’s book I found numerous passages that  were dealing with things going on in my life so I thought I’d write about those.  The passage that stood out to me the most at the time of reading was the part the talked about liberty. It says that “ Everybody wants liberty. The problem is that everybody wants it on his own terms. However, salvation doesn’t work that way. God doesn’t save people (from slavery, from addiction, from sin and shame) and then cut them loose to do what they want, because without the guidance of God “doing what we want” is a recipe for falling right back into slavery.  Most of the time, in my younger life id think of God more like the genie in a bottle, he was there to grand me wishes and keep me out of trouble. This thought came out of an almost forced profession of faith by my parents in high school, followed by being nagging into serving our church. This combined with the fact that I had few friends at our church turned me off to the whole experience. So instead I would do whatever I wanted. In short I did what rebellious teens do, I drank ,smokes, lied, manipulated people and just ended up really depressed(big surprise). I’d like to say  that I grew up in college but I never really learned the term fun in moderation. Till I almost got kicked out of Calvin my freshman year. Even through I’m doing better now I look back and I can see all the things that held me in bondage. This makes my rediscovered belief in God even more amazing because he still lets me come back to him even though I spent years trying to find my own liberty.

Another passage that grabbed my attention when I was reading the chapter through a second time was the idea that we must put on grown-ups clothes not because we are better than others are ,but because it is the only way we can be better than we currently are( and more grownup like). A few weeks ago I was at the dentist and what I saw there reminded me of this. While I was getting my teeth cleaned I happened to look up at the wall and saw a picture. The picture showed my dentist behind a patient and his young son  with scrubs,gloves,face mask,and drills sitting on the patient’s chest ready to do work just like his father. I just thought of this as a more comical version of the putting on the grownup clothes in order to be more like the father. But my example also includes the son trying to do the same work as the father in addition to dressing like him.