I woke up a bit earlier than usual the other day. Why? I don’t know. But sitting there at the kitchen bench was Isabella, my 8-year-old daughter. Despite the darkness, the fatigue and the time (5:30 a.m.), we had the most wonderful conversation.
We had a deep, gentle, fun discussion about heaps of topics, from starting Year 3 to the way the trampoline bounces higher when it’s wet.
About 30 minutes into our convo, I asked Bella, “Do you know what predestination is?”
She said, “No, what is it?”
I replied, “Predestination is the idea that God knew you, Bella—who you would be and how you would respond to Jesus—before the Egyptians made the pyramids. In fact, God knew you before he made Adam and Eve, and before he made the world.”1
Bella looked straight at me with her dark brown eyes (or rather she was looking through me, as people do when they’re deep in thought). Bella was leaning against the fridge and there was the faint sound of a garbage truck in the distance. She smiled after her pondering and said, “Mmm, that makes me feel special, even though it happens to everyone.”
Thankfulness, joy and gratitude to God welled up in my soul. Jesus’ words sprang to mind from Matthew 21:16: “Out of the mouth of babes …”
Why does the 20-year-old accounting student and the 43-year-old merchant banker argue for hours against predestination while an 8-year-old gets it within seconds? I s’pose the answer is in Matthew 21:16: because God ordained it!
1 On reflection, I may have given a better explanation of predestination to Isabella, but in my defence, it was about 6:00 a.m.! My standard way of helping people to understand the beautiful doctrine is to ask this question of the Christian, “Did God choose you, or did you choose God?” The answer to the question is a “Yes”.
Hi Ben,
At a guess, the adults argue with you because they realise that the ‘hard’ edge of predestination is that not everyone is special to God, by which I mean that he doesn’t choose us for the same destiny (i.e. election and reprobation).
Thanks for the great article. Let us all have the faith of a child!
One way of speaking about predestination to children which can express that God didn’t just “foreknow” but also “choose” us, but which is not too “hard-edged”, is that God “set his love” on us, or “decided to love” us – “you in particular if you trust in Jesus!” – before the creation of the world.