What's The Alternative To Calvinism?

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A friend asked me the other day what a good alternative to Calvinism is?

My response:  The Bible!

 The Bible doesn't need any other embellishments.  It doesn't need to be viewed through the lens of anyone's -ism.  Not Calvinism!  Not Arminianism!  Not any other -ism!  It makes sense on its own.  Its overall message can be read and understood by the average person.  By seekers.  By young people.  By anyone and everyone.  It's clear, consistent, and reliable.  

(If you read the Bible on its own, without Calvinists telling you how to understand it, you wouldn't find Calvinism.  Calvinism depends on Calvinist theologians to help "find" Calvinism in the Bible.  But you can't find what's not there, so all it ends up doing is twisting it all out of shape.)

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Though they have eyes, they will not see

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[I originally posted this on one of my other blogs , Oct. 2021] So   according to this article , it appears that scientists have found evidence of the type of biblical destruction that happened to Sodom.  They say they found a town that was destroyed by a blast of heat so hot that it pretty much melted everything.  They say that there's no earthly natural heat source that could do this, so they speculate that it must have been an asteroid that exploded over the town, melting everything.  Oh, and they speculate that the reason no one lived there afterward was that the asteroid impact might have brought over so much salt from the nearby Dead Sea that nothing could grow.  This, they say, must be what inspired people to make up the story of Sodom in the Bible. But I say that here's your "asteroid," scientists: "The Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah - from the Lord out of the heavens.  Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, incl...
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Alexa PenaVega on her heartbreaking loss

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On Godtube, I just watched this touching testimony from Alexa PenaVega (she's in my favorite Christian movies of all time, Do You Believe? , and one of my favorite TV shows, The Middle ).   I had no clue she had gone through such a tragic loss in her life (in 2024, I think) - the death of her newborn baby.  Heartbreaking! I haven't experienced the same kind of loss she did, but I totally appreciate that she's sharing her story, from a heart full of faith.  May God bless her and use her story to encourage others who've gone through loss, too. [One thing that caught my attention is that she quoted a verse - one verse - and it happened to be one (of about 5) that I had just written down shortly before I watched her video.  Out of all the verses in the Bible, I encounter the same one twice within a couple hours... coincidence?   I know that it's a verse I need... and maybe someone else out there needs it too:  "I will refresh the weary and satisfy th...
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We Left Our Church Because of Calvinism (Things My Calvinist Pastor Said)

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[A repost: Updated July 2020 with lots of new stuff, including memes.  (When do I ever write anything short?)  For the text-only version, no memes,  click here .   For the memes only,  click here .   For the links only,  click here .   I also broke this long post down into smaller posts for a "Things My Calvinist Pastor Said" series  (click on it for the links in the series).  All memes were created with  imgflip .] The inevitable has finally happened, the day we hoped would never come: The day we officially resigned from our church because of our pastor's dogmatic Calvinist preaching (May 20, 2019).   (From now on, I will try to call him our "ex-pastor."  And for the record, it was an Evangelical Free Church, which are being  taken over by Calvinism  all over the place.  So be wary and educated.) It's been a long road.  He came on board about 6 years ago, and began introducing hi...
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Some Problems With Predestination/Calvinism (And What I Think The Bible Really Says)

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(Part of the "Predestination vs. Free-Will" series) Calvinists (those who believe in predestination, that we don’t have a real choice about salvation) – say that we have to evangelize and pray because God told us to and because God knew that this is how the lost would be saved.   This is a pretty flimsy reason for evangelizing, given that (according to Calvinists) no one really has a choice about where their souls end up anyway.   (And actually, they'll say that we do get a choice, that we freely, willingly choose according to our nature.  But what they don't say is that God alone determines our nature, whether we get a new "saved" one or whether we have to keep the old "sinner" nature which can do nothing but sin and reject God.  This is still God determining whether we believe or not, whether we sin or not.  Don't buy into their double-talk.)              If evangelizing didn’t really make a difference, then doing it j...
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Broken

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(Another post from my other blog.  It fits nicely after the previous post, "Are Tragedies 'Gifts From God'?" )    It hurts to be broken. It’s being vulnerable, taking a risk with our hearts . . . sometimes winning, sometimes losing. It’s leaning on others and opening ourselves up to them, to trust, to hope - sometimes finding support and acceptance and help, being caught before we hit the ground, but sometimes being let down and battered, falling flat on our faces when others pull back and fail to catch us. Sometimes, it’s just a minor annoyance, a pain that we absorb with relative ease, realizing that we are better for it.  And sometimes, it’s more pain than we can bear, feeling like we’ll never be whole again, wanting to curl up in a ball in a dark, lonely corner and fall asleep forever. Being broken hurts! And it leaves us different, changed.  It leaves tear-stains on our cheeks.  Scars on our hearts.  Bruises on our souls.  A limp in our ...
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A Little Girl's Nonsensical Sign

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I saw a picture online of a little girl holding up a sign.   She had a great big smile on her face, yet she was clearly too young to understand what the sign meant.   But the sign said something about how religion says that people are broken, imperfect, sinful, etc., and how science (a world without God) says that people are intelligent, beautiful, capable of great things, etc.   And then it asks us to decide which one is more harmful, obviously implying that religion is negative and damaging, while science is positive and affirming. This sign that the little girl was holding bothered me.   Because it’s nonsense.   Because it doesn’t give an accurate picture of Christianity.   And so, in response, I want to make my own list, which I think more accurately represents Christianity and science. Of course, there are some damaging religions out there and there have been bad representatives of Christianity throughout the course of history.   And those bad...
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How to Tell if a Church, Pastor, or Website is Calvinist (extended version)

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(For the simplified version, click here .   And feel free to copy  this and share it with others, to help them learn to identify Calvinism when they see it.  Just make sure to share the link to this post so that they can find the original one if they want it.  Thank you.   New :  For the super-short version,   click here .   And FYI:  I found a couple times when the Calvinist author of an article I linked to changed the article after I linked to it.  So if an article doesn't seem to match what I said about it, it may be because they altered it. ) We just left our church of almost 20 years because of the dogmatic Calvinist pastor who recently came on board.   Unfortunately, our church was one of the best around, with some of the most biblical teaching.  WAS!  And so now we are struggling with where to go next.   (I just heard that, apparently, the elders were aware of how dogmatic he was before they ...
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Hardest Spiritual Lesson #6: Accepting God's Timing

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Learning to be okay with God’s Time and God’s Way A.k.a.: Learning to Trust (Somewhat of a continuation of #5: Just do your job ) 1 Peter 5:6-7 :   “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.    Cast all your anxieties on him because he cares for you.” In due time!    Such a scary thought for us.    Such a hard thing to accept and to wait for.    How hard it is to humbly submit our lives to the Lord’s timing and way.    But if we want to have the kind of life He wants for us, then we have to learn to humble ourselves before Him and to wait for Him to lift us up - in His time and in His way. But we're too anxious for that, aren't we?  Too hasty?  Too self-focused?  We  want what we want when we want it.   W e have our own ideas of how and when things should happen.   We  have dreams we want to fulfill, plans we want to succeed, goals we want to a...
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#6: When You Don't Feel Like You're Enough, August 2017 (repost)

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[Reposted from August 5, 2017.  I had my panic attack the summer of 2016.  I remember it took me about six months to not feel absolute panic every morning, to be able to wake up without feeling terror at the thought that I had to face another day, another chance for something bad to happen.  And it took me even longer to be able to really smile again, to feel a little lightness in my spirit, to be able to breathe again.  I mean, of course, I smiled before that.  I acted like I was okay.  But I didn't feel like smiling or being happy for the longest time.  I was just too afraid of life - too discouraged by life - to be able to smile.  This post was written as I was still working towards being "normal," as I worked on protecting my faith after the previous summer.  The way I see it, my life has been marked by that panic attack.  It's now "BPA" (Before Panic Attack) or "APA" (After Panic Attack).  That summer was just such a life- and...
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"The Last Goodbye" - A song for us Hobbits

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(a post from my other blog , from March 28, 2022) There's a song at the end of  The Battle of the Five Armies  (from the Hobbit trilogy) that's become one of my favorite songs.  I feel this song, especially the line about "Many places I have been, many sorrows I have seen..."  That's kinda been my last several years: many sorrows I have seen.   Many trials.  Many heartbreaks.  (Everyone who lives long enough will have many of these.) Most recently, I had the awful experience of being on the witness stand for three hours, giving testimony against my mom.  And after nearly a week of trial, she was found guilty of ... well, of something really bad.  (She insists she didn't do it, but we think otherwise.  It's not exactly like the prosecution says, but close enough.)  And now she will spend her life in prison.   Many sorrows I have seen. I don't know if I'll ever see her again.  The last memory I have of her cou...
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