Blessed assurance does not mean perfect assurance

I read a sad but intriguing interview the other day from Christianity Today. David Bazan, former front man for the band Pedro the Lion, discusses his loss of faith with the Drew Dyck, author of Why Young Adults are leaving the faith, and how to bring them back.

It is hard to hear stories like this, particularly because one of my former youth posted this article on his facebook. I fear an autobiographical motivation. While difficult to read, I think we have to be aware that people really do walk away from the faith. Sometimes they come back, and sometimes they don't.

The question then remains, what about believers now? Will we still be believers then? How do you know that you will not walk away from the faith? Can you be 100% assured? I mean, surely someone told this guy at some point in his walk, that he could have 100% assurance of the blessings of heaven (this dude could still come back to believe-so I'm merely using his current state of disbelief for didactic purposes). 

I think this is a legitimate question to ask, and one that needs to be asked, provided it is not asked in irrational frantic fear (I've been there).

My seminary professor-actually by far my least favorite seminary professor-had a great take on assurance. While perfect assurance seems impossible because we just don't know the future, we can still have real assurance. He gave the example of the possibility of his wife running off with one of his seminary students. Was it possible that something as crazy as that-on her end as well as ours-could happen? In theory, yes. But he was sure enough that it wouldn't, and had no fear of such an incident.

So while we can't have perfect assurance, we can still have blessed assurance. In the next post, I'll argue why I think its better we have the latter.