I found this post somewhat funny on account of the fact that John is actually a comedian, not a Calvinist. Like duh, those words aren’t even spelled the same! I was also thinking, thank God, because most Calvinists are like these really hostile bearded guys on the internet, all hyped up on red bull and testosterone. I want to send them all out to the garage to tend to their micro brews. Like, don’t even come back into the house until you’re fit for human companionship….
That said however, there is quite a bit of tulip tripping going on within me. I suspect I have always been a bit of a tulip tripper, it was predetermined long before I was born. Also, I really like saying things like, “tripping amid the tulips” because it tends to annoy all the Calvinists. They don’t be tripping, ever.
If you’re going to fall in love with a reformer however, I have to suggest Martin Luther. A little known bit of trivia about him, he wrote the most amazing love letters! Also, he actually calls his wife Lord! Now that will really tick off a Calvinist.
I actually met the Lord when I was 3 yrs old next to a compost pile wearing a pink checkered dress and picking on a scab on my leg. That day is still more real to me than yesterday was. I can’t even explain it properly but a close encounter with the Lord is simply, “more real” than what we presently call “reality.”
So, having such experiences as a child amid atheists is most inconvenient. It created a lot of questions like, “why me?” Why am I seeing something they cannot? It created a lot of emotional issues too like, why would the Lord save me, but not my family? I lost a brother. I watched my sister waste away. I was mad at God, I was mad about things like, if God is sovereign then why does he allow bad things to happen to the people I love?
I had questions like, if the people around me have freewill, then why don’t they just do the logical thing and choose common sense? Wait, do stupid people even have free will? How much freewill does someone with mental health issues and addictions even have? Can we even consent to a relationship with the Lord when we can’t even seem to consent to actually feeding ourselves?
How much of our relationship with the Lord is in our own hands and how much is in His? That’s a profoundly challenging question in a world where we kind of just shop for our preferred brand of faith. Are you a Christian because you are so smart you reasoned your way to the Lord and “chose” Him?
In that “choosing,” did you even think to ask Him if He was consenting to the relationship? That’s a scary thought by the way, but I mean it in the sense that we so seldom even consider that God might have some say in the matter, too. I’m not suggesting He would reject anyone who turned to Him, I am just saying we kind of completely ignore God’s authority, relieve Him of His own autonomy even.
So I spent nearly a half a century trying to rescue people, my parents, my siblings,my friends, trying to get faith into their hands. Like, if you only understood how good God was, you’d want Him too! I realize you can’t see Him, you seem really blind, but it’s okay, I’ll just describe Him to you. Then there was frustration over false teachings, like, if you only understood what the gospel is really saying! Finally I got to, it’s okay, I’ll just love you as you are. Surely my love will save you….
It did not. In the end I just got all beat up. I was a train wreck of co-dependancy, frustrated by people who seemed hell-bent on just destroying themselves. I couldn’t blame them, I couldn’t blame God, so I just blamed myself until I finally broke and just had it out with God.
I sometimes still quip, listen up people, I once marched right up to the Emperor Over the Sea Himself, and set Him straight. It is now quite unlikely I am going to be overly concerned about losing your favor.
So I was really blessed by some of the ideas to be found within Calvinism. Not everybody has these kinds of questions, these kind of emotional issues, but I certainly did and it was a great relief discover others had wrestled with these issues too.
I can’t quite be a Calvinist on account of the fact that I really don’t want to grow a beard and start brewing beer in the garage. But one doesn’t actually need to be a Calvinist in order to get a feel for some of these ideas. They are actually in the bible, Calvinism just elaborated on some of them in a way that can help people to understand.
Or not. I mean, take what you can use and spit out the bones.
2 Timothy 1:9 begins to touch on these issues around sovereignty, determination, and how we are called. “Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began…” And Romans 8:29, “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.”
Myself, I really like 1 Corinthians 2:7, “No, we speak of the mysterious and hidden wisdom of God, which He destined for our glory before time began.”
God had always told me, you really need to learn how to trust in the Divine mystery of it all. I am forever asking for the specs, every last one of them.
John says, “Calvinism makes God the puppet master. We dance on His strings.” Yes John, we kind of do. We dance on His strings. Rather then being mindless puppets however, we are actually much-loved children. I think of my own kids sometimes, they definitely had freewill and probably far too much freedom, but in spite of that they still, “danced on my strings.” If I hadn’t had that kind of authority over them, I could have just left them in the grocery store the first time they acted up. God didn’t save us because of our good choices and our obedience, or because we are very cute, He says, “while we were still sinners, Christ died for you.”
Grace is a mysterious thing indeed. It sometimes distresses people. The thing is, God can’t love you anymore…. or any less than He does right at this very moment. He is steadfast and unchanging, we are the ones who are trapped behind the glass darkly.
Pre-determinism doesn’t erase our freewill, it simply declares that God is more determind-er than we are. And He is! CS Lewis once wrote, He is good, but Aslan is not a safe lion.
ColorStorm said:
I usually avoid topics like this online. There can be ten thousand comments, and minds never moved, people draw lines in the sand, slander,, accusations, and heck, this is without the atheists chiming in. haha. Then there is talking to believers who have next to zero understanding of God and His ways. Reminds me of that anti NRA punk Hogg. The kid knows nothing about his subject, yet rants on and on and sounds like a fool while armed guards protect his anti gun rants.
It’s an easy subject though, like most doctrines, IF the entire woof and woof is considered, and one scripture is not isolated against another. I wonder if John Calvin was a Calvinist? There is a door which reads ‘Whosoever will.’ WHOSOEVER. Upon entering, closing, and looking behind, the door now reads: ‘Chosen in Him before the foundation of the world.’ Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
It is a dereliction of duty to preach ‘election’ to the lost, even worse yet to try to ‘teach’ it to them. So as you can see msb, like you, I fear no scripture, as all is profitable, the thing is, WHERE is it profitable.
But my take agrees with the Lord in light of the whole I think; it’s not that the Jews COULD NOT believe in the days of old, but that that WOULD NOT. One doesn’t invite an in law to a dinner, then take away the dish when they are ready to bite. God is always the gracious host. And by the way, beards aside, I find the hyper Calvin types to be lacking in discernment, unable to fellowship because of pimples on the gnat kind of thing, and really immature in understanding the nature of God, and the distinct place of the church, and far too often, Israel is replaced and long forgotten. Not too smart.
Salvation is emphasized at the expense of equally important doctrines, but hey I give them credit, at least they believe in God.
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insanitybytes22 said:
Well said! I chuckled about the internet and all the woof woof. Throw in a few hyenas and we have ourselves a real mess.
Calvin was not a Calvinist. That always makes me laugh because it sounds so contrary, but he didn’t like the term either or where people were going with some of his ideas. I mentioned Martin Luther too and he really did write some wonderful love letters, but he also had some major hostility towards Jews. People are people, so a real mixed bag of great talent and major flaws.
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ColorStorm said:
I’m pretty sure if the apostles heard the conversations today they would say” what are you even talking about? Are you talking bout the same Lord?’
But to the atheist they may say, and fortunately we would all agree: You can’t be serious? You do not at least give God the courtesy of existing? And you have parents, or did you just fall off the bar stool and hit your head?
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insanitybytes22 said:
I suspect the Apostles had that very conversation in their day. There was already this sharp contrast between what the religious leaders of the time were saying and having the truth of Jesus right in front of them.
Atheist tend to seize the parts of our faith that help them to justify their non belief. The thing is, those parts must be a bit twisted, misunderstood, in order to be rejected. They also have a propensity to blame Christians for their non belief, so they become non believers because Calvinism, because Catholicism, because the Baptists ran out of food at the potluck. Whatever the complaint of the day is. The thing I am certain of, we are all without excuse and our faith is never supposed to simply rest in the hands of other Christians. Our faith is in Jesus Christ and since it is virtually impossible to find any flaws in His goodness, they must point to His followers.
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ColorStorm said:
Complaint of the day, like the ice cream flavor of the day eh. lol
People will always be fickle bout something. No evidence!! Uh hello? What, life’s not enough? Sheesh, some people’s kids.
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Mel Wild said:
I’m not a Calvinist. Of course, Calvin himself didn’t come with TULIP. That was developed afterward. I’m with John on the predestination thing. I personally don’t think it means God picks one and rejects the other. We were all predestined to become sons and daughters. Jesus died for the whole world (1 John 2:2). But I do agree that our life in Christ is one of responsiveness inside our fishbowl. We are saved by responding to His grace by faith. This is where I think the “hard of hearing” comes from. It’s a condition of the heart. And God knows who’s not listening and who is. This is why the Bible says, “Humble yourself.” But I do love Calvinists as people who are pursuing God and I count them my dear brothers and sisters. 🙂
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insanitybytes22 said:
“I personally don’t think it means God picks one and rejects the other.”
That’s a tricky one Mel,because it tends to create all these emotional issues and then we have people running about selling these misguided ideas about the elect. So our faith becomes like this exclusive country club and I guess your name just isn’t on the membership rolls because you aren’t wearing a tie or something. We people tend to have heart for the cast aside, for those we perceive as having been rejected. The very fact that we have that heart speaks to reflecting the values of our Creator, to having His Divine thumb print on us.
Something I do appreciate about some Calvinists, they can take our faith outside of this never ending “punishment and fear paradigm.” We people can have this simplistic mindset, God punishes the wicked. So when “bad” things happen to us, it’s either what we deserved them or they happened to us outside of God’s will. When we can lean more towards a predetermined mindset, something like being blind becomes a gift from God, a condition designed to bring Him glory. Also, whatever future challenges life brings us, He is already there, working all things for our good.
Something that used to really baffle me, in the world we suffer for sin not of our choosing. Like, I didn’t do, so why would God punish me? The problem with “God punishes the wicked” is that God is not this huge punisher and in Christ we are not wicked. So the paradigm its self all wrong. In the West especially, we tend to have far too much of a mindset that tries to control God, “I do good and He rewards me.” In the real world however, you do good and you’re likely to find yourself positioned more like Job was.
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The Isaiah 53:5 Project said:
I used to believe as you do Mel, until I realized “I don’t think” is no way to interpret theology. It really isn’t about me or what I think but what is written in God’s Word that matters.
The most common objection to the doctrine of predestination is that it is unfair. Why would God choose certain individuals and not others? The important thing to remember is that no one deserves to be saved. We have all sinned (Romans 3:23), and are all worthy of eternal punishment (Romans 6:23). As a result, God would be perfectly just in allowing all of us to spend eternity in hell. However, God chooses to save some of us. He is not being unfair to those who are not chosen, because they are receiving what they deserve. God’s choosing to be gracious to some is not unfair to the others. No one deserves anything from God; therefore, no one can object if he does not receive anything from God. An illustration would be a man randomly handing out money to five people in a crowd of twenty. Would the fifteen people who did not receive money be upset? Probably so. Do they have a right to be upset? No, they do not. Why? Because the man did not owe anyone money. He simply decided to be gracious to some.
Anyway, I am a Calvinist and proud to admit that. However, Calvinism really has nothing to do with Calvin and everything to do with how Calvin saw God.
All that being said, I’m definitely not the kind of Calvinist IB describes. Not hyped up on testosterone and never even drank a Red Bull.
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Mel Wild said:
I’ve heard that defense many times before and it has not been satisfactory to me or to skeptics. But, that said, I have no doubt of Calvinist’s love for Christ, I consider them my brothers and sisters, and there are many important things we can agree on. And I can certainly learn from different perspectives than mine because I certainly don’t have it all figured out. 🙂
btw, I drank a Red Bull once. It’s pretty disgusting. LOL!
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The Isaiah 53:5 Project said:
I consider Armenians brothers and sisters like you do Calvinists and have heard, read many defenses of their POV. Maybe it’s something we were not meant to figure out.
I imagine Red Bull being disgusting so I’ve never bothered with it. Anyway, coffee is the only energy drink I need.
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Mel Wild said:
Amen to coffee! 🙂
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John Branyan said:
“…a man randomly handing out money to five people in a crowd of twenty. Would the fifteen people who did not receive money be upset? Probably so. Do they have a right to be upset? No, they do not.”
Spoken like one of the people who got free money.
I think your illustration is a bit too simple. What do you think of this one:
A man randomly building robots. He gives them self-awareness. He gives them minds to reason. He gives them emotions. He sets eternity in their hearts. He becomes a robot himself to teach show them how much he loves them. He tells them they can live with him forever if they have faith. “Where do we get this faith?” they ask. “I have to give it to you,” he replies.
He gives faith to some of the robots but not others. When the faithless robots complain, the elected robots say, “Hey! This was the way He planned it before he even made you!”
Hows that work?
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The Isaiah 53:5 Project said:
Great comment. Actually your version is almost the same as mine except that you stated the maker randomly created robots when there is nothing at all random about why God created humans. Also, you seem to be comparing humans to robots who have no control over their thoughts or free will and it doesn’t work that way.
If God is choosing who is saved, doesn’t that undermine our free will to choose and believe in Christ? The Bible says that we have the choice—all who believe in Jesus Christ will be saved (John 3:16; Romans 10:9-10). The Bible never describes God rejecting anyone who believes in Him or turning away anyone who is seeking Him (Deuteronomy 4:29). Somehow, in the mystery of God, predestination works hand-in-hand with a person being drawn by God (John 6:44) and believing unto salvation (Romans 1:16). God predestines who will be saved, and we must choose Christ in order to be saved. Both facts are equally true.
Even if it did work as you described, though, who are we to argue?
Finally, I have wrestled with this for years until I arrived where I am today so I totally understand why Calvinism is offputting to so many. Also, as I told Mel, Armenians are just as much Christians as Calvinists so the debate should really not be a stumbling block for anyone.
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HAT said:
Here’s another favorite: “… just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.” (Ephesians 1:4)
Also, btw, card-carrying Calvinists are not required to believe in double predestination. Just sayin’. Calvinists are allowed, indeed some (like Heinrich Bullinger, in the Second Helvetic Confession, Chapter X) would say required, “to have a good hope for all.” Amen to that.
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insanitybytes22 said:
“….to have a good hope for all.”
Amen! To me it always comes down to a trust issue. Why would I distrust that God is good and that He knows what He is doing? Well, if I want everyone to be saved, God is so much bigger. He loves His people even more than I do, so I can trust Him to get it right.
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The Isaiah 53:5 Project said:
Can I be a proper Calvinist if I’ve never even tried Red Bull?
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insanitybytes22 said:
Ha! I don’t know! The really dreadful thing about red bull is that it now comes as a flavor. I have no idea what the attraction there is, but if you ever want the flavor of degreaser in your koolaid or something, we can do that. 🙂
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SLIMJIM said:
ISB22,
I thought Red Bull does have a flavor…it’s flavor is that of cough medicince. Yuck…
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John Branyan said:
I’ve said many times, God can do whatever He wants to do. I’m not gonna question the guy who thought up gravity. He’s got a lot more on the ball than I do.
That being said, when the scripture says “choose”, “repent”, “obey”, “trust”, “preach”, and gives me a list of 10 commandments…I can’t help thinking these are my responsibilities. Otherwise, the Bible is just God’s ‘To-Do’ list. It doesn’t do any good to tell a totally depraved ‘Me’ to obey. And the regenerated ‘Me’ will cannot disobey.
And then we’ve got all those angry atheists whom God saw fit to leave at the grocery store…
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insanitybytes22 said:
“And then we’ve got all those angry atheists whom God saw fit to leave at the grocery store…”
Right? And the sticky wicket there is that it is totally up to God who will be saved and who will not. We ourselves cannot save them,no matter how brilliant our arguments are. We also don’t know who will come back around eventually,a few years down the road. The point being it is not in our hands. The Apostle Paul is out murdering Christians one day and the next day he is quite flabbergasted, blind, and suddenly flipping a 180.
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MJThompson said:
Certainly as “the worlds were framed by the word of God” (Heb. 11:3), we dance on His strings. But God also reveals Himself as a loving FATHER.
I took my firstborn toddler on a walk. We came to a busy intersection. When the signal turned green, I firmly grabbed her little hand and guided her across the boulevard. I sensed the Holy Spirit revealing the ‘Father-Heart’ of God to me. He never leaves things to our mere ability to trust Him. He ‘pulls the strings ‘to show our lives are perpetually sustained by His ability to hold unto us, NOT the other way around.
We draw our every breath from He who breathes life into us. THAT is Grace, not confined to extreme Calvinism.
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insanitybytes22 said:
Loved this, MJ. We think we’re the ones holding onto His hand, but in truth He’s actually holding our hand.
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SLIMJIM said:
Full disclosure: I think I was a Calvinist before it was “cool.” I actually never thought it would have ever had a hipster connotation. And no I don’t have a beard, don’t drink red bull and don’t feel I need to compensate with trying to do manly man things to prove my manhood. Never needed to wear “Calvin is my homeboy” T Shirt or pretended to sound intellectual over craft beer spilling over my beard.
I think I’m a Calvinist rather reluctantly. Your post resonated a lot to me. I would witness to all people, and saw the total depravity of sin; I would blame myself and I can’t just blame God. I still find I can’t domesticate God’s grace. I know I’m truly a sinner; I live with myself; but why did he save me? I’m thankful He did, but also know left in own sinfulness I’m no different than any unbeliever in my unrighteousness.
Many Calvinists love Romans 9; I do too. Many hear “Romans 9” and think of the argument of God’s sovereignty in Salvation. I truly think it is taught in the text. Yet I also think many Calvinist can miss the beginning of ROmans 9 where Paul the Calvinist is also a broken-hearted evangelist who is in anguish to see people get saved.
Calvinism has brought about a lot of humility in my life and I never understood the cage stage rabid Calvinists…
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insanitybytes22 said:
What a sweet comment, Slim! I too am a rather reluctant Calvinist, or at least there are elements of Calvinism within that just fit so well with what I have observed and seen around me, that I cling to them. I’m so glad you mentioned the humility. I actually stumbled right into Paul’s words at a time when I was just filled with anguish about all the broken people around me, “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people…” It was as if Paul had written those words just for me, for such a time as this.
It was at that point that I began to understand that Christ died for me deliberately, willingly, sacrificially. He didn’t have to, but He did. There is nothing we can do but receive it… with empty hands and a broken heart. That dawning awareness set me free and led me so much closer to Christ.
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SLIMJIM said:
Word!
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