Excerpt from Courage and Calling by Gordon Smith

...Two assumptions: that all people are responsible for the choices they make, and that these choices are meaningful and significant. they make a difference. Without God, such a thought leads only to despair- as it has for many twentieth-century existentialists. But with God and with faith in God, we are rather empowered by this knowledge. We make our choices in response to God, and we make our choices knowing that God is Lord of the universe and that our choices therefore carry significance and meaning.

Our only hope for a genuine and full response to our current life circumstances is a theology of the Christian life that takes our complete humanity seriously; we must have an intentional theology of human actions and human responsibility. I cannot help but wonder if it is a great fear of Pelagianism- the doctrine that human beings are capable of obedience to God through their own strength and will power- that undercuts our capacity to embrace human responsibility. We must affirm the priority of divine action and grace, but we need to do so in a way that calls us to God's grace and enables us to respond fully to it. As Gary Badcock aptly puts it, "A theology of response does not need to be Pelagian; it need only be a theology in which the reality of the human is taken seriously."

To take the human seriously is to recognize the power and destructive reality of sin, and thus the existence of what Paul calls the "old self," which is corrupted and deluded (Eph 4:22). But it is also to embrace the new self, which has been "created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness" (Eph 4:24). We are called to deny the old self and to live in congruence with the new self, which finds its origin in God's creative act. This is the true self, created to respond to God, the self that is given generously in service, and the self that is found in community.

... move from self-absorption and become selves that are centered in God and true to our own identity and call.