Little Drummer Boy #2

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This is a very different version than Little Drummer Boy #1, but it's very beautiful.  Serene. 

Little Drummer Boy #2 by Lauren Daigle

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Calvinist Comments: A God of Love?

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I will be posting some interactions between Calvinists and non-Calvinists from the comment sections of various Soteriology 101 posts.  It's interesting and informative to see the actual things that Calvinists themselves say about the Gospel and God, and to see how non-Calvinists respond.  (I made minor edits for clarity.  And for those who are not aware of my position on this: I am a strong anti-Calvinist.  I believe Calvinism distorts the Gospel horribly.  We recently left our home church of almost 20 years because of the newish, dogmatic Calvinist pastor who came on board.  And I have been researching it deeply and writing against it ever since he started preaching.) This interaction is from "5 Reasons Why I Stayed Out of Calvinism" : A non-Calvinist, Graceadict, made this comment: "Calvinism creates a god that is NOT a god of love….” And Calvinist Jtleosala responds:  1. Then, your claim that God loves all humanity is a “...
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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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Calvinism's Heart-Breaking Destruction

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Wanna see some of the real-life destruction that Calvinism does to hearts, souls, and faith?   Here are some comments (warning: bad language ahead) from a Reddit post called  "Calvinism is disgusting" , showing how people - who don't realize that Calvinism is NOT biblical - have been hurt by Calvinism and have ended up rejecting God altogether instead of just rejecting Calvinism.  Sadly, it's because they don't know that there's a  big difference  between the God of the Bible and the god of Calvinism, between the Bible's hope-filled gospel and Calvinism's sick, hopeless, twisted half-gospel. The reddit post starts out with this comment (I added punctuation to make it easier to read):  "I had a discussion with a Calvinist last night and it's more gross than I thought.  After questioning him for over an hour, it basically boiled down to the dude admitting that god predestined innocent children to a life of suffering and then hell, and that same ...
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Giggle Translate #18: Yes, I am a Christian, but...

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Here's the original stuff I wrote on my blogs (and then I'll Giggle Translate it) : Yes, I am a rock-solid Christian, but sometimes I just want to do bad things.    I want to say bad words and watch bad movies and listen to bad music and drink bad things and be all mean and cranky toward annoying people. But what I usually end up doing is just watching my 80’s movies, listening to my 80’s music really loudly, drinking no more than an ounce-and-a-half of mildly-alcoholic hard cider (because I really don’t like alcohol ... honestly, I drink no more than one bottle of hard cider a year!), muttering bad words under my breath, and telling my husband all of the whip-smart, snarky things I wanted to tell others but didn’t think of till it was too late. And it’s a good thing that I don’t think of all the smart-mouthed things until it’s too late or else I might end up saying them out loud.    Because while I am a buttoned-up, walk-the-line, stoic, straight-arrow kind of...
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This One's For You! (A Christmas Sermon)

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Did you ever listen to a sermon where you felt as if God was saying "This one's for you"?  I've never looked up Willow Creek sermons before, but for some reason I decided to watch one yesterday.  And you know what?  This one was meant for me.  It really hit me in the heart.  Watch it; it's good.  In fact, I couldn't stop thinking about it all day and into the night.  (Skip to the 35-minute mark to start the sermon.) "Christmas at the movies: How the Grinch Stole Christmas (December 18, 2022)" (Willow Creek Huntley YouTube channel) Merry Christmas, Everyone! [FYI: I've written before about how I disagree with woman being head pastors.  And it seems that, at Willow, the head pastor is a man but there are several teaching pastors under him, including women.  To me, that's a gray area.  And I'm not sure yet what I think of it.  But  since it doesn't break my hardline, definitive "no woman head pastor" rule , I've decided to ...
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A Website Worth Visiting: Hoppers Crossing Christian Church

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I recently found a good website that has lots of information about the dangers and errors of Calvinism:  Hoppers Crossing Christian Church .  (Also try this link for blog post.) I decided to leave a comment for them, telling them a bit about my church's experience with Calvinism and thanking them for speaking against it.  It's always encouraging to find others who have come to the same conclusion about Calvinism that we did, simply by comparing it to what the Bible says.   And they replied with a long, well-written response which I think should be out there for people to read.  They gave me permission to post their response here.  And so here is our brief exchange on Calvinism.      My comment to them: Thank you for taking the time to research Calvinism so thoroughly and for being bold enough to speak against it.  I am currently trying to do the same thing ( https://mycrazyfaith.blogspot.com ).  I'm sure my story is ...
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A Few Good TobyMac Songs

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Get Back Up Again    (God allows U-Turns!  There's always hope, always forgiveness, always a new day.) Hold On (The pain won't last forever.  And His mercies are new every morning.)  Break Open The Sky (Amen, Come, Lord Jesus!)
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Spiritual Warfare: Be Strong in the Lord (Eph. 6:10)

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I remember one dream I had during those five months of demonic harassment  (s ee  this post )  that really stuck out to me.  (I actually think it was more of a vision than a dream).   I was “dreaming” that I was sleeping in bed just like I was actually lying there sleeping in real life, and there was a demon in the room, hovering about a foot over me in a cloud of black smoke as I slept.   (Honestly, it felt as if my spirit was watching my body sleep and could see the demon hovering over me.)   And in my dream, I could literally feel - through my whole body and deep down in my soul - this intense hatred radiating from the demon, as though he wanted to reach out and violently slash me to pieces.    I could tell that he was incredibly strong and could cause  fatal damage, but that he was prevented from doing so by an invisible force, a n invisible wall of protection around me.    But I had no doubt about his incredible ...
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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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