Chosen

Here’s a thought I’m just going to throw out there and come back to later. What does it mean to be chosen?

I think this has become a “loaded” question with the introduction of calvinist/reformed theology and certainly before that as well. In a world where you are emerging from the one church – one world system of the medieval catholic church into the Reformation, where you can’t just count your neighbor as a “christian” anymore, you start to wonder just how you can tell who is part of the “elect”.

This was a question of life or death importance at that time, actually. If you were not following Jesus in a particularly prescribed manner, there could be severe consequences. Again, I’m just throwing this out here and don’t have the time or space or energy to be as detailed as I would like on this subject. Suffice it to say, it became very important to know who was whom.

This changed the nature of the question, though. Being “chosen” meant you were something that someone else was not. It became a way of deciphering who was in and who was out. So, when you heard someone say, “I am chosen.” or, “We are chosen.” the implication was “I/We am/are chosen, and you are not.” Certainly “outsiders” hear it this way, but I think we hear it that way ourselves. “I am chosen, so I need to start discerning who’s in and who’s out of my club.” It also carries this religious pride with the notion of being chosen, as in we are the prime choices and others are not.

There’s a Newbigin quote I have to dig up from somewhere, but I would like us to start thinking of being chosen as “being chosen to do something for God.” Your life has been given meaning and just like Abraham, God is calling you to do soemthing with your life.

You have a mission, you’ve been chosen to do that mission. Go do it, and don’t worry about who else is “chosen,” God’s taking care of that. Chosen does not mean “I’m better,” it means “I’ve to a job to do.”

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