I’ve often heard the phrase worked into sermons and books as a defense of free will: “God is a gentleman. He won’t make you do something you don’t want to do.” But it has never rung true to me—beside the fact that it portrays God as a polite (and even milquetoast) suitor, not the passionate Bridegroom, dangerous Warrior and omnipotent King we find in Scripture.

I don’t want a gentleman God, one who knocks once and leaves when no one answers, who encounters a funeral procession and keeps on walking lest He disturb the family, who meets a rich man and meekly suggests he give away a mere 10 percent of his worldly goods. Do you see where I’m going with this?

If God is who He says He is, He possesses the right to supersede my will and impose His own on my life, and doing so is not an act of intrusion, but of infinite grace. This is why Scripture describes conversion in terms of an infant being born, a slave being freed, a dead person being raised—all examples in which no free will is involved.

How do these dynamics interact with human choice? I’m still figuring that out, but I wonder if the concept of free will expressed in Christian circles is merely a Western invention that avoids the sometimes uncomfortable aspects of God’s sovereignty and puts humans in the driver’s seat where they don’t belong.

I heard recently that a college acquaintance succumbed to cancer at 40, and I was reminded again of the blessing and the curse that is cancer.

It’s entirely possible that a cancerous cell is even now lurking somewhere in my body, having received its assignment of mutation from a twisted strand of DNA gone wrong somewhere between me and Adam.

I’m not wishing for it, but I’ve known others who made the transition from life to Life courtesy of a bullet, a windshield or a blocked artery. So, how could I curse God for giving me three months or three years to set my house in order and say goodbye, to drain every last good word from my soul—particularly those that become trapped on the tongue when the Grim Reaper is off attending to someone else’s business?

The thing worse than the physical suffering of the afflicted must be the grief of the long goodbye, the interminable boarding of the plane before it sets off for an exciting new destination, those left behind standing forlorn on the tarmac.

Remember him—before the silver cord is severed,
or the golden bowl is broken;
before the pitcher is shattered at the spring,
or the wheel broken at the well. – Ecclesiastes 12:6

“Everyone in a relationship wrestles at some point with an eternal question: can one person really satisfy every need?” So says Newsweek‘s Jessica Bennett in a recent article on polyamory.

I have to agree, and with the proponents of polyamory interviewed in the article, I concur that the practice is natural. It is as natural as sailors stranded on a lifeboat for weeks plunging their faces over the side to drink their fill of saltwater. Anyone seeking satisfaction in human relationships is seeking a truly noble thing. The logic is seemingly solid: If I can find pleasure in the companionship of one person, that pleasure would be multiplied by multiplying the number of people with whom I’m enjoying that pleasure. It’s a no-brainer.

The problem is that these seekers will always come up empty. They are carnivores at a salad bar. We were not created for each other. We were created for God, and we will only find satisfaction in the One for whom we were made.

“Thou hast made us for Thyself O God, and the heart of man is restless until it finds its rest in Thee.” – Augustine

I’d love to hear some of the Christian culture warriors respond to the trend of polyamory with this angle. I think it would throw the media a curveball.