"Leaving Without You"

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After watching this, I can never quite hear U2's With or Without You the same way again.  

He does a pretty good Bono, I gotta say.

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Updated: Alana L. 5R (no freedom needed)

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Point #5 still (updated) :   R:  "Sovereign, sovereign, sovereign, sovereign."     [A continuation of the last post on  "robots" , with more quotes to show what I mean.]   Not only do Calvinists believe that God - in His "sovereignty" - predetermines/orchestrates our sins but then punishes us for sinning, but they also believe (and this is downright crazy to me) that true human freedom is  not even a necessary condition  for accountability and responsibility.  They  don't think that  we need to have the real ability to make real free decisions among real options in order for God to hold us truly responsible for what we do.   But they think that we can be held accountable for sin simply because we had  the desire to disobey God, because we did what we "wanted" to do - even though, in Calvinism, God determined we'd want to do it.    Reformed commenter  Tiny-Development3598  said this in a...
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Anti-Calvinism Links

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This is the last half of the post "What's The Best Way To Make People Agree With Your Calvinist Views."   But I put it here in its own post so that it's easier to find. These are some links to posts which are against Calvinism, the belief that the Bible teaches God has predetermined from the beginning of time who goes to heaven and who goes to hell.  It's no secret from my writing that I strongly disagree with this view.  I believe the Bible clearly teaches that God offers us all salvation, that Jesus's death paid for everyone's sins, and that we have to decide if we will accept Him or reject Him.  And here is some of what others have to say about Calvinism: (FYI, I haven't read everything in all of these yet and I don't necessarily agree with every point they make, but I needed to link to them before I lost them online.  And for the record, I came to my belief about what the Bible says by reading the Bible, not extra-biblical books or articles...
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#2: Embracing Hope, Jan. 2016 (repost)

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[Reposted from my other blog, from January 2016.  This comes shortly after the "Wrestling With God" post, the summer when I found myself utterly discouraged by life, by gardening.  When it seemed like one thing after the next just kept going wrong.  This was my call to hope again.   Update:   I mentioned in the last post that my mom is currently trying to drink herself to death.  I got a call last night that she was found unconscious at a friend's house after drinking since 10 a.m. that morning and taking a bunch of Librium.  They called me last night to tell me that she was in the hospital with a blood alcohol level of 375, unconscious, and not breathing on her own.  (A couple days ago, she went in with level of 400.)  They had to put tubes in her lungs to keep her alive.  It's the fourth time, they said, that the ambulance was called on her in about a week.  I tell ya, it seems almost supernatural that she hasn't died yet....
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A Crash Course in Calvinism (A Letter to Pastors)

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  We recently started attending a new church and are enjoying it enough.  But having come from a church that was hijacked by Calvinism, I am highly alert for any whiff of it in this one.  (It's kinda sad when words like "sovereign" and "grace" make you wince.)  We haven't really noticed any Calvinism in this one, but the pastors do quote from and praise Calvinist theologians.  Sure, they're good quotes, but it makes me nervous.  I doubt they know what Calvinism  really  teaches or how easily it traps people.  And so being someone who can't just ignore it, I decided to write them a letter, to make sure they realize what they're dabbling with.   (If I don't warn them, it's on me.  But if I do warn them and they ignore it, it's on them.)  And I figured I'd post that letter here, too, for anyone else who might want to know this stuff or who might want to copy it to share with their own pastors (or family or friends) who dabble...
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List of Calvinist Preachers, Authors, Theologians, Websites, etc.

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I  found a lot more names to add to my list of known Calvinists (found in my various  "How to Tell if a Church, Pastor, or Website is Calvinist"  posts).  But instead of adding this huge list to all those posts, I am going to put it here, and I'll just provide a link on those posts to this one.  [FYI: I added a note at the bottom of this post on May 5, 2021.] So here it is, a "master list" of known Calvinists to help you be careful and discerning about who you listen to and where you get your theology from.  There are plenty more Calvinists out there, but these are just the names that I ran across the most.   These are either definite, self-professed Calvinists or "most likely Calvinist," in my estimation.  (I haven't heard of most of them, but it's good to know their theology before I do.)   After finding these names in various places online, I looked up each person to see if they are Calvinist.  If they did not self-identify ...
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Giggle Translate #19: Green Juice and Turkey Dust

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I pulled out something I wrote about a Thanksgiving many years ago and ran it through many different languages with Google Translate just to see what happened.  And then I did the same languages again but in reverse.  Enjoy! The Original Version: Wait!  I just thought of another shining moment.  One year, 6 a.m. Thanksgiving morning, I dropped a twenty-pound slippery bird and the overnight brine it was soaking in all over the kitchen floor.  The bird never hit the floor.  Honestly, it really didn't.  (But in the name of all honesty, I probably would have served it anyway if it did.  After I rinsed it well, of course.)  But the kitchen table and floor were covered in raw turkey juice.  So gross! Nothing creeps me out more than raw poultry juice.  When I make chicken, I'm often heard yelling, "AHHH, RAW CHICKEN JUICE" if so much as one drop splashes on me.  And now here I was, spending all morning on my hands and knees cleaning t...
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It Is Written ...

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Do you ever feel like Satan is beating you down ... with negative thoughts, temptations, trials, struggles, fears? Do you know that there is a weapon available to help you fight against him and his schemes? It is the Word of God! The Sword of the Spirit! But I just learned something about this  Sword of the Spirit  from Tony Evans.  According to the concordance, the actual meaning of the "Word of God" in this verse ( Ephesians 6:17 ) doesn't have to do with the whole Bible, the written Word of God.  It's about the spoken word, about speaking the Word of God, about using Scripture out-loud to battle the lies of the enemy. The power of this weapon is in speaking it, not just knowing about it or reading it or having a Bible on your shelf.  It's vocalizing specific verses about your particular struggle or temptation or fear or whatever ... to defeat the enemy and make him flee. Jesus did this when Satan was trying to tempt Him in the wilderness.  ...
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#1 Wrestling With God, 2015 (repost)

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[ I wrote this post in August of 2015.  But I am reposting it because I need to read it again.  I guess I need to read it again because life sometimes feels like one big "wrestling with God" match.  Wrestling with faith.  With life.   As I look back on these past several years, I am kinda amazed at how things turn out.  Or ... how they don't, I should say.  How real and raw and messy life can be sometimes.  These next numbered posts are taken from over these last few years, showing the progression of life, of the unexpected, of the "wrestling with God, faith, and life" moments.  This one goes up to August 2015, how beaten up I've felt over the years up till then.  And then comes the post about the hope I had that 2016 would be better.  And then comes 2016 - the worst summer of my life.  A life-changer for me.  And then, well, I'm not sure yet what I am putting after that.  But I'm reposting these because it's fasci...
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"Things My Calvinist Pastor Said" Conclusion: Our Resignation From Our Church

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(This "Things My Calvinist Pastor Said" series is a breakdown on this much longer post:  "We Left Our Church Because of Calvinism,"  which was written last year but updated July 2020.  All memes were created with  imgflip .) Conclusion: Anyway, it's finally final.  We sent our resignation letter in yesterday, simply stating that "due to strong doctrinal disagreements with the head pastor, we are resigning from our membership here."   We've been at that church for almost 20 years.  We've found some good friends there, raised our kids together, loved inviting people to visit our church with us, been part of some great programs, etc.  It's really been a great church.  One of the best and most biblical in the area.   And then this pastor came in with his Calvinism.  And after several years of being angry with his  manipulative tactics  and his  twisted-Gospel  which  turns God into an illog...
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Do Calvinists Really Believe God Causes Sin? Let Them Speak For Themselves!

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"You don't understand Calvinism" is the rebuttal we hear from Calvinists when we say that their theology makes God the cause of evil (and that He punishes us for doing the evil He caused us to do). I think there are a few possibilities for why this is so: 1.   Those Calvinists don't really understand their own theology because they haven't bothered to carry out their views to their logical conclusions.  (Which I think is most Calvinists.  I think most Calvinists think Calvinism is simply believing in God's sovereignty.  And they want to honor God, to humble themselves before Him, to acknowledge His sovereignty over all.  They are trying to do the right thing.  But they don't realize that Calvinism's view of sovereignty is a twisted, wicked version of it, very contrary to the Bible's presentation of God's sovereignty.  And if they bothered to really think about what their version of "sovereignty" does to God's character and the...
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