Losing Salvation?

1. What can you do to lose your salvation? (keep in mind these are hypothetical questions as far as I'm concerned as I don't believe one can 'lose' salvation)

If a Christian can lose their salvation, I imagine it is through some act, mental or physical, that transmutes one from salvation back into damnation. Nobody believes God capriciously revokes salvation to obedient and believing Christians. Usually it is a Christian who has stopped believing or in more severe theologies a Christian who has sinned too much. This begs deeper questions:

What are we saved from? If we are saved from the penalty of our sins through faith in Jesus Christ it would seem a bit odd that such sins would then be the means of revoking our salvation. Perhaps we are only forgiven of past sins until salvation, but after we enter that relationship we become bound to sin only a certain number of times before that forgiveness turns into wrath again. It would ask again, what is it we are saved from in such a scheme? Salvation is not salvation if we've got to pay it off once we've leased it from God by obedience.

As for the Christian who has stopped believing we also ask some questions on top of this. What did they believe, and with what do they believe? We surely don't want to think every act of belief is what the Bible calls faith that justifies. If someone assents to the existence of God and Christ and then suspends that assent at some point later in life, surely we would question not their final salvation only, but their initial salvation. Was the first state of faith the Biblical definition we see in Scripture that"God will work good for a person no matter what and save them ultimately in the day of judgment by the redemption in Christ." Now what if a person were to hold that doctrine and then leave it in the sense of "God surely could work good for a person, but I don't think he is working good for me." The misfire in faith is not about the Giver but about the receiver in this sense. Damnable low self-esteem? Or is God better to this person even than their own self-receptiveness could imagine? We are in gray space here, but I'll wager an idea just for the sheer fun of it.
Justifying faith is imperfect. Were it required that it be perfect, none would be saved. Even weak faith saves. Even a mustard seed of it throws the mountain gurgling into the sea. Because faith is not the savior, the Object of faith is what saves. So if the faith is in God, even a temporary lapse of faith would not be the justifying agent in the equation. I could be wrong, and we could debates texts and passages, but I'm thinking out loud right now.

So what can you do to lose your salvation? Fail to receive it initially is all I can see. Can a person outsin grace? Can a person believe too weakly in God that He is able to save? We know they can believe amiss, but too timidly? I don't know that I'd go there from here. A new scheme of justification would have to be adapted to for me to connect the dots that way. And I'm not moving there as of now.

Reowful

myn reowful corridges looke upon and pardon myn Lorde

Can you lose your salvation?

If as a Christian, one can lose their salvation, it begs a few questions:
1) What can you do to lose it?
2) What can you do to regain it (if you can)?
3) How can you be sure not to lose it?
4) How hard is it to lose your salvation?
5) What is God's attitude towards those who lose their salvation?

It's a New Year

Got to get over the old one. I didn't like 2011. It was really great. It just wasn't well done. Too much was performed on the fly rather than the usual ponderous, well-planned pace I like.

Resolutions (quickly):
Health (diet, exercise, stress level) improved
Cleaner (less mess, well-dressed, organized)
Less internet, better internet (less news, more writing, less mindless reading)
More study (less reading, more study)

We are Meaning

If I try to prove what I mean, I mean it before I prove it. Something proceeds first that ration and reason must try to connect to. Proof merely follows meaning. Meaning, naked intent, is the first and prime movement of the mind to formulate its ideas into coherence with what perceptions there are. The perceptions hit, the ideas are just reflexes of the mind, and the meaning (intention, cause-and-effect, formulation) is the active soulish part of the human mind.

It's clear we are not animals. To an animal, if the forest speaks, one must quickly run to avoid harm. To a human, if the forest speaks, we tilt our head to understand. It is automatic. It is not in the world outside of us, it is the world built inside of us. Meaning is humanity - the imagio deo that must create raw precept from outside itself into its own image (or a reasonable facsimile). Nothing exists for us as raw data, it always fits into a larger framed hypothesis. We are meaning.

VII. Where the Compass Spins

There are times when through confusion, temptation, or weakness, the mind cannot with any sureness detect the reasonable truth of God. It may be moral, as when temptation befuddles the mind and makes the body want one thing though the Spirit does not want that thing. Under the stress of immediate temptation, the mind cannot get traction to think through the problem without the emotions holding an infinite sway against its inner discourse. One should try thinking oneself out of a fit of anger, not from irritation, but from actual moral wrong committed by another against oneself. Does the operation of the mind in this moment suffice to cool the desire for local justice in the body? The mind knows information that should stop the anger (forgive others as God in Christ has forgiven you). But the wheels spin when the mind tries to climb that hill, and it gets no traction over the passions. Does greed ever stop gnawing at a person when they realize the rich are the most miserable people on the planet? The mind knows money does not equal happiness. But there is an affectional pull towards material wealth as an emotional answer even if it is not a logical answer to ultimate happiness. In another case, sometimes the logical proofs of God's existence are clear to the rational center of one's brain, but circumstances, despair, and incongruousness in perceived justice or fairness make one doubtful or scared that there is no god.
Why does the compass spin during this instance? Why does the feeble mind give up his ghost so easily when the emotions begin to tug at his hem? What would allow us to restore a sense of direction to the mind during temptation? What would allow us to feel where God is, when we can't feel God within? The compass spins for a reason, one cannot tell North when the arrow is always stuck in one direction. By having a spinning compass we gain malleability in our lives, but we also gain mutability. There are times we decipher the pulls and tugs of forces outside of us for the true way, yet we end up east or west of our mark. Yet the compass does not always spin amiss. By wandering, sometimes we find the lost path. And even on the wrong path, the compass eventually turns back northward.

VI. The Fury

Sin is always a liar first. It was in the beginning when it whispered, "Did God really say...?" It has to be a liar. Sin cannot look reasonable at first glance.

"Eat the fruit and die？ Do I really want that?"

"Of course you do, you won't die, in fact you'll be god."

"I'd like that very much...perhaps I do like apples."

And so the first defense, the unreasonableness of sin, is disarmed by a lie. Seems so cold, inglorious, and passionless. Why give into the deathlike embrace of foolishness, unless she has made herself seem reasonable? Sometimes, however, the reasonable appeal of sin is not needed. There are times that the fury besets you.

There are times sin asks One to make bread from stones. This is reasonable, a hungry man must eat. Why not make some bread? Then there are times sin asks God himself to bow to the enemy and worship a lie. Sin is not even pretending to be reasonable at this time. Sin has become the fury. The vile, serpent-like, slithering vomitous appeal of self unto self: give me my due in this matter whatever the consequences!

The fury makes Samson nap like a baby on Delilah's lap. The fury makes David a murderer and adulterer. It sends kings to burn incense in place of priests. It covets vineyards unto murder. It belches lies and false statements against God's servants. And it doesn't even pretend to be reasonable, it just is desireful. Under the fury, I act in no other way except in that way which attains the goal I want. Self becomes god under this movement of the soul, and no other coronation than that desire which self wants becomes the glory of the universe. Great things contract into shriveled prunes of value, and the small moldy crumbs of addiction become sumptuous morsels that we must scrape up and gum on in a vile attempt to feast. God help us against the fury.