Revisit

This post is in response to Blondeatheart‘s comment on a post from 2004. Amongst other things, readers were allowed to ask me three questions. Comments (and questions) from back then were lost in the move to WordPress, but Bren will remember this as when he asked me to sum up the Israel-Palestinian conflict in 100 words or less. I had only saved the post after answering Bren’s questions, and then lost another several hundred words when my computer crashed. I never got back to finishing the post.

So, to the most recent questions, Blondeatheart asked me:

1. How did you become Christian?
2. Are you Australian?American? From Papua-New Guinea?
3. Do you think we have free will?

And now, continue to read my answers, or don’t.

1. It’s hard for me to say exactly when I became a Christian. I’m not sure. I made a personal decision when I was 9 years old to be baptised, which is not insignificant. During high school I started to drift away from the ‘church’ and went off on my own journey until 2002. That’s when I made a concrete decision to come back to following Jesus… But you asked how, not when. I grew up in a Christian family, so always had that teaching in the back of my mind, of what the truth was. Even in the years I avoided that truth, I always knew what it was, and that I needed it. Because I wasn’t someone who came from no knowledge of Jesus to sudden revelation – the ‘conversion experience’ – this answer may not be as exciting as you may have hoped. It was exciting for me, however, in October 2002 when I came to a crossroad where I felt it was the time I must either embrace the belief that Jesus was the son of God, or turn my back on that completely and do my own thing. For me the choice was clear. It was a powerful, emotional week. Since then there have been emotional highs and lows – as should naturally be expected, being a Christian is by no means one euphoric ‘high’ day after another – but there is the base understanding that, no matter what, God loves me. When I don’t understand why, Jesus proves that.
2. I am Australian, American, and from Papua New Guinea… My parents are both Australian, born and bred. I was born in the United States, so have US citizenship thanks to that, but also have Australian citizenship since my parents are. I spent somewhere around seven or eight years living in Papua New Guinea, where my parents were missionaries – and for a long time called that home. Of those three, I am more Australian than anything else.
3. Yes, I think we have free will. If we didn’t have free will that would assume that someone/something else was controlling us. If that entity was God or let’s say a more nebulous good, we would have no choice but to do good things. If that entity was, on the other hand, evil, we would have no choice but to do bad things. But this is not the case. I firmly believe both God and evil – the devil – exist, and yet I can still choose to do either good or bad things. So yes, I think we have free will. This answer may be a little simplistic, but I’d rather not go into ‘predestination’ and how that does or does not affect free will.

I’ve tried not to be too wordy in these answers, nor too glib. It’s easy to start trying to expound in great detail, only to realise you’re being boorishly high-brow in the words you use, and at that same time uselessly inane in content – much like this sentence. If you think I have been, call me on it. I’ll see what I can do about that. But since it was almost a month ago when the questions were asked, I’ll post this now, finally!