Romans 8: 28-30
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

The verse at the centre of the predestination debate. Do humans really have no free will? Does God determine everything? And if He does, then are some people assigned to hell? As I ponder these questions, I think we are asking the wrong ones. Whence derives this assumption that predestination and free will are polarised? What is predestination in the first place? Maybe it's God working for the good of those who have been called; maybe it's God determining the ultimately good outcome of the "called" ones, whether going through good times or whether suffering persecution to further his kingdom. In which case it isn't talking directly about free will. "If God is for us, who can be against us?" is the following verse. So Paul is definitely still talking about living the victorious Christian life in a broken world, not about who gets to heaven and who does not.

And it also struck me that vs 29 has God's foreknowledge preceding his predestination--"those God foreknew he also predestined." The paradox of free will and predestination arises, in fact, from our inability to distinguish between the power to choose and the power to determine an outcome. Nobody has the power to make a coin come down heads just because they choose to side with heads. You can still choose a side, though--that's my current stand (non-Calvinistic, in rough terms, I think. Never really got into the theology of the debate). But God does have the power to determine that whatever happens, it happens for good, according to His purposes. And so in the world He decided to send Jesus to die on the cross, because he already knew the outcome behind the ignominy would be the glory of the risen Saviour and his Church. He knew beforehand the condition of our hearts and I believe God is big enough (omnipotent enough--but I don't really like the word...sounds a bit clinical sometimes) to actually know who will accept Him and who will not. So if he chooses to harden hearts and use some vessels for ignoble purposes, etc (Romans 9:16-18) it really is, as Paul says, none of our business, since our minds are too limited to comprehend his understanding, which sees all time in a heartbeat--and really, cause and effect are not things he's limited by (in physics terms, just because God made the arrow of time point one way, it doesn't mean his knowledge is limited by its direction). As created beings we simply are not in a position to judge people's heart and say, oh this person deserves to have better in life, and this person doesn't. I like the way Gandalf puts it to Frodo, who thinks Gollum ought to have been killed: "Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement."

Well, whether we are Calvinist, non-Calvinist, or whatever fine distinction we want to make over the millionth part of a hair, it remains that we should not make distinctions between people in terms of judgment because we can't. Our responsibility is to spread the gospel, not decide who lives or dies, who is predestined or not, who deserves better or worse. I leave it in God's hands, because I trust he understand justice more than we do.