In the End

In a conversation this week, I remembered something one of my college profs said to me. I was really trying to understand what was an alien concept to me, as I came from a thoroughly Methodist background. In the History of Christian Thought, we were discussing John Calvin’s understanding of predestination as being double, meaning that some are predestined to be saved and some are predestined to be damned. I later learned that John Wesley was as aghast as I was at the thought that some would be predestined to be damned. Wesley believed that God desired all to be saved, to live into a full relationship with God.

Anyway, back to my prof, David Bailey Harned. I was not just trying to understand this academically, but personally. I asked Mr. Harned* what his personal understanding of predestination was. He said, releasing his pipe from his mouth, “In the end, God’s will will be done.” Obviously, this nugget of wisdom has remained with me for many years. I too hold to this. In the end, ‘God’s will will be done.’ For me, this does not mean that God’s grace is irresistible—though I cannot imagine how anyone would truly want to resist such a deep love.

In this week’s conversation, I tried to describe my understanding. First of all, end does not mean a chronological stopping point. It is the end or purpose to which all life points. The end that is calling us is Love. As we have been propelled from the beginning by this Love, and are to be living witnesses of and to this Love now, so we are being called towards the overwhelming Love that seeks to encompass all. This Love is the One whose wholeness is best seen as living, flowing trinity of never-ceasing community. By whatever name we finite humans use, this Love is all in all.

While this may sound abstract, I assure you that in my life this is the ground of my being. It is why I am who I am (even with my faults), and why I do what I do (even so imperfectly). 

*No professor at the University of Virginia was called Dr. unless they were a medical doctor or a doctor of education.

Ephesians 1:22-23

And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.