Pizza Parlor Faith

My return to Jesus was a long and winding road, with many stops and starts and tangents. Soon after I graduated from high school, I was working in one of the three pizza places I have worked in to pay the bills. This was in Rogue River, OR, a very small town in southern Oregon. There had been a small revival among the high school students and recently graduated. Two very popular and very wild party guys had recently accepted Christ and were now zealously trying to live the Christian life. These two guys until recently had been the main suppliers of alcohol at the parties held regularly up in the rural canyons outside of town. Now they were supplying heavy doses of the Gospel to anyone who stood still long enough for them to grab. Soon, they had a small group of kids they had persuaded to become Christians.

Mark 4:13-20
“Then Jesus said to them, "Don't you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable? 14 The farmer sows the word. 15 Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them. 16 Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy. 17 But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. 18 Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; 19 but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful. 20 Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop-thirty, sixty or even a hundred times what was sown.” 

I do not know what happened to those two guys. When I left town as soon as possible after I graduated, they were still going – I think one or both were planning to go to Bible college, but I am not sure. But one of the kids they converted is the actual point for today. This kid, Kevin, was the epitome of verse 17 above. Kevin was so excited about his two-week old faith, and I remembered enough from childhood, that we would talk about God and the Bible and stuff all through our shifts at the pizza place. But after a while, I noticed the sparkle was gone from Kevin’s eyes and pretty soon he was old Kevin again. Even though I was not right with God at that point, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed at Kevin’s failure to thrive.

I do not think we live in a fatalistic world, like the Muslims. I perceive life as primarily a long series of choices, choices we have the ability to make. In fact, I think this is the only true freedom we have – everything else is borrowed. So why do kids like Kevin wither away, even when they seem to have genuine faith?

Theologians throughout the centuries have strived to answer this question. On the one hand, you have some that say Salvation is determined solely by God. It was explained to me that the world is like a burning building, and God is a fireman who only has time to rescue a certain number of people. He chooses which ones to rescue and the rest are left to perish. At the other extreme of this pendulum, you have people who say that salvation is completely up to us, that you better make sure you’re right with the Lord each and every minute or you might lose your salvation. I highly doubt either of these two perspectives are accurate. I know that God desires everyone to be saved, and He is not limited by human metaphors like a burning house. God can and will save whom He wants to save, even if we think otherwise. However, part of our salvation is in our hands, in that we must willingly submit to His authority in our lives. So Kevin, wherever you are, you are not doomed, you can come back to the peace and joy of God.......Kevin?    Kevin?