The doctrine of election is the doctrine stating that God has chosen who will and who will not become a believer. This is very commonly a hard concept for Christians to understand. How can God choose for people to sin and still blame them for it? That's not fair. Even though it is hard, this doctrine is very important, so that we don't start thinking that we did something of our own will to choose God or earn His favor. This quarter, I'm helping out in our church's first grade SS class. We are currently walking through "Jobs in the Old Testament" and how they relate to our Christian life. For example, last week, we were studying the soldier and comparing their armor to the Armor of God.
This week we studied the potter. Everyone got a container of PlayDoh, and made a bowl and some other stuff. Watching all the kids: one of the most interesting things was that most of them started by mashing the PlayDoh as hard as they could. Also, some of them made their bowls fancy with little handles on them, and some made them plainer looking. Some of the kids after a try at making a bowl didn't like the way it turned out, so they smashed it and started over.
After everyone was finished, the teacher asked them about what they had done and began drawing similarities between the way that God is the potter of our lives (Romans 9). She pointed out how many of the kids had smashed their PlayDoh and asked why. They said that before they could work with the PlayDoh, they needed to make it soft so that they could work with it more easily. That is a way that God commonly works in people's lives. God will use a hard time to work and soften a person, so that He can mold them.
The teacher also asked why all the bowls were different. The only answer anyone could come up with was, "Because that's the way I like it." And that is the right of the Potter: to make what He wants, how He wants it. He makes people all different, physically and spiritually and we have no grounds on which to question that. He is the Creator, we are the creation.
We went on to talk about how some kids had smashed their PlayDoh and started over when they didn't like the way it looked and several other things that they did. We discussed the fact that God can do anything He wants with us and He is always right in doing it. We read through Romans 9 and talked about Jacob and Esau. God loved Jacob and hated Esau. On human terms that's playing favorites and definitely not fair, but God is God and He is always right. Then we talked about the way that God chooses if a person will be rescued from sin or not. A few of the kids didn't know what to think about God not bringing everyone into Heaven with Him, but it's the truth.
As I said earlier, this is a tough topic. I thought it was really neat that it is being taught in our church when, in a lot of churches, it's just skipped over. But even more than just that this doctrine is being taught: it's being taught to the first graders! I praise the Lord for the work that he is doing in the hearts and lives of those little kids.
