Things My Calvinist Pastor Said #6: God Has No Problem With These 'Truths,' But We Do
(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. They are almost exact quotes. All memes were created with imgflip.)
6. "The Bible teaches both God's sovereignty (he means "God causes all things, even sin") and God holding us accountable for our sins (that He Himself causes, according to them). And so we have to accept them both as true. It teaches both these truths with no tension. It's only we who have trouble accepting it and understanding it. But God has no problem with it."
Of course God doesn't have a problem with what He teaches. And of course the Bible absolutely holds everything it says in perfect balance, without any tension.
But it's not the Bible I have a problem with. It's the pastor's interpretation of the Bible that I have a problem with, the Calvinist ideas he calls "truths." (Setting them up as "biblical truths" makes it harder for anyone to disagree with him because he's made it clear they are "disagreeing with the Bible" if they do.)
And the reason I have a problem with his interpretation of the Bible is because Calvinists misunderstand God's sovereignty from the very beginning. And when you misunderstand a biblical truth from the beginning then it will indeed cause tension and problems with the rest of the Bible.
But it's not the Bible that has tension with what it teaches.
It's the Calvinist's interpretation of the Bible that screws it all up!
But it's much easier to understand when you understand it correctly: God has allowed mankind to choose between obeying or disobeying. And in His sovereignty, He can and does work our choices, whatever they may be, into His plans. But since He lets us decide to sin or not, He can hold us accountable for our choice to sin. And so He is just when He punishes us for our sins, because He didn't cause us to do them. We chose to do them all on our own.
(And not in the "fake" Calvinist way of "choosing," where we choose to do what God predetermined we would do and we couldn't have chosen anything else, but we're still responsible for our sins because we "chose" to sin. Fake choices. Fake freedom. Fake responsibility. So when Calvinists say they believe in "human responsibility," they are not talking about free-will, which is what they want you to think. "Human responsibility" doesn't mean that you can make your own choices but that you will still be held responsible for them, even though Calvi-god pre-planned and caused you to do what you do. Big difference!)
My ex-pastor has also said that God ordained that Adam and Eve would sin ... and He ordained the wickedness of the people in Jesus's day so that they would crucify Him ... and He ordained that a wicked nation would attack Israel but then He punishes the wicked nation for attacking Israel. And then the pastor acts like, "How can God ordain these evil things but not be held accountable for them? I don't know. But the Bible teaches that God is sovereign over all and that man is responsible for his sins. And so I just accept this, even if I can't understand it." (And he said this with an attitude of "Look how humble I am to accept such difficult, confusing teachings I don't fully understand. You should be this humble too!")
Now, if by "ordained" he meant that God knew it would happen and allowed it to happen and worked their choices into His plans, I could agree. And if by "sovereign" he meant that God sometimes causes things to happen and sometimes just allows things to happen but that He never causes the things He commands us not to do, then once again I could agree.
But Calvinists mean "God preplans, causes, and controls everything that people do, even their sins and rebellion and unbelief and breaking His commands, and they have no choice to do anything differently."
And so, no, I cannot agree at all. And I will fight this with all I've got ... because Calvinism makes God the source of, author of, and cause of all sin and evil (despite their insistence that they're not saying this), but then God punishes us for the things He makes us do. And this makes God untrustworthy, unjust, unloving, deceptive, a liar, evil, etc.
And this is NOT the God of the Bible!
No wonder Calvinists struggle with how God, in His "sovereignty," could preplan and cause people's sins but not be accountable for it, how He could sovereignly cause our sins but punish us for them.
Because it's not biblical truth!
It's Calvinist garbage!
But I was wanting to burst out of my seat, jump up, and start waving my hands, yelling, "I understand it! It's easy to understand when you understand it correctly, when you correctly understand how the Bible shows God exercising His sovereignty."
God's sovereignty is about being the highest power/authority there is. It's not about how He has to use His power/authority. But Calvinists are all about deciding that a sovereign God has to use His authority and power all the time to control everything (making God the cause of sin, even though they deny it) ... or else He can't be God.
Instead of letting God show them what kind of a God He is through the Bible, Calvinists decide for themselves how God has to be and act in order to be God and then they interpret the Bible through their own assumptions.
But biblically, our sovereign God has decided to not control everything, to give people real choices, to let us be the kind of people we want to be. And, in His sovereignty, He figures out how to work our choices into His plans, our obedience and disobedience. And this is all over the Bible, in example after example. And it fits with His holy, just, loving, trustworthy nature.
God did not plan/cause Adam and Eve to sin (He planned for their sin, but not that they would sin), but He did know that Adam and Eve would choose to sin, and so He had a plan from the beginning to redeem it, to work it out for good.
And He did not plan/cause the wicked people to be wicked so that they would crucify Jesus. He just let them be the wicked people they wanted to be and He worked it into His plans for our salvation.
And He didn't cause the wicked nation that attacked Israel to be a wicked, violent nation. He simply let them be the wicked, violent people they wanted to be, and then He used their self-chosen wickedness to punish Israel before He punished them for being the wicked people they chose to be. (This is not unlike the police using a criminal in an undercover sting to catch other criminals. The cops didn't cause the criminal to be a criminal; they just put his bad choices to good use first, before punishing him for being the criminal he chose to be.)
And this is why God is not held accountable for our sin and evilness. He didn't cause it; He just allowed it and worked it into His plans.
See! Easy to understand! But Calvinism complicates God's simple truths by twisting them, and then when they can't figure it all out, they have to go "Oh, well, I guess we'll never understand. These are God's mysteries that we can't figure out, and so we just have to accept it as true."
And in case you think I'm making up this "cause vs. allow" distinction, let's consider an example.
In 2 Samuel 24:1, we read "Again the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, 'Go and take a census of Israel and Judah."
The thing was, counting the troops was considered a sin in God's eyes and God was going to punish David for it, yet this verse makes it sound like God Himself caused David to sin, which would support Calvinism.
But it's not what it seems.
And 1 Chronicles 21:1 sheds more light on this situation (The Bible and God always make more sense when you dig deeper and learn more, instead of just running wild with one confusing verse. And in the end, Calvinism always comes out the loser.):
"Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel."
Okay, so who caused David to sin? God or Satan?
No one caused David to sin. David himself wanted to sin. Sin was in his heart. And God simply used Satan - allowed Satan to tempt David to sin - to get David to act out what was already in his heart, so that God could work it into His plans to punish Israel. But God did not cause David to have a sinful heart. He did not preplan or force David to sin. He just allowed Satan to present David with the opportunity to sin, which David willingly took. As God knew he would.
If David wanted to be obedient, he could have been, and God would have worked his obedience into His plans. But since God knew David would be disobedient, God found a way to work his disobedience into His plans. (Also see the example of King Ahab in this post: "Sovereignty and Free-Will Working Together.")
In Calvinism, God is the ultimate cause of sin. He preplans it, orchestrates it, causes it to happen, and we could not have made any other choice because God predestined what we would do. In Calvinism, if we sin it's because God predestined it and we had no ability to not sin. (And yet then Calvinists turn around and say, "Oh, but we're not saying that God is the author or cause of sin." Hogwash! They might not "say" it but they sure do mean it.)
Calvinists take one verse - Proverbs 21:1: "The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord; he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases." - and they say, "See, God controls all our choices." And then they interpret the rest of the Bible through their misconception and misunderstanding of that verse.
But we saw, in the example of King David, how God turns a king's heart - not by preplanning/controlling their thoughts, desires, and actions, but by allowing circumstances or Satan's actions to encourage them to make the choices they want to make (but they could have made other choices because their choices were up to them, not God). And since God knows the choice they will make, He knows how to work it into His plans.
However, if Calvinism is true about God predestining/causing/controlling everything that happens, then how did these verses get into the Bible:
1 Kings 20:42: "He said to the king, 'This is what the Lord says: 'You have set free a man I had determined should die.''" (So God determined something would happen, but then it didn't happen. How is this possible if God determines everything that happens and nothing different could have happened? Calvinists would say, "Well, God sometimes ordains that people disobey what He has ordained." And I am not kidding about this. They really do say this nonsensical garbage. And with a totally straight face.)
Hosea 8:4 (God's words): "They set up kings without my consent; they choose princes without my approval." (Calvinists would simply say, "Oh, well, God can ordain things He doesn't approve of, for His mysterious plans.")
Jeremiah 19:5 (God's own words): "They have built the high places to Baal to burn their sons in the fire as offerings to Baal - something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind." (It would be kinda difficult for God to predestine/cause something that He never thought of commanding, wouldn't it? And how would Calvinists answer this? I'm actually not sure. I never heard one try. Instead, they always switch topics or bring up a different verse that they think "proves" God "ordains/causes" all that happens.)
Isaiah 30:1: "Woe to the obstinate children," declares the Lord, "to those who carry out plans that are not mine..." (Calvinists might simply say, "Well, God has two different plans. In one plan, He didn't want the people to do what they did. But in the other plan, He caused the people to do what He didn't want them to do ... for His glory and mysterious reasons. And He's so far above us that we can't understand it. He is the Potter and we are clay. How can the clay talk back to the Potter or understand the Potter's ways? Blah, blah, blah. Gobble, gobble, gobble." If you listen carefully, you'll see how - when it comes to the hard questions and their contradictions - they deflect and switch topics and verse-bomb you with verses taken out of context.)
Psalm 33:10: "The Lord foils the plans of the nations ..." (If all plans are God's plans, and if we can only plan what God causes us to plan, then isn't God foiling His own plans here? Oh but wait, I forgot ... Calvi-god can have two plans that contradict each other. He can ordain one thing but then ordain that people do the opposite of what he ordained. Yep, makes perfect sense!)
Acts 14:16: "In the past, he [God] let nations go their own way." (Impossible ... if every way is God's preplanned way!)
Of course God doesn't have a problem with what He teaches. And of course the Bible absolutely holds everything it says in perfect balance, without any tension.
But it's not the Bible I have a problem with. It's the pastor's interpretation of the Bible that I have a problem with, the Calvinist ideas he calls "truths." (Setting them up as "biblical truths" makes it harder for anyone to disagree with him because he's made it clear they are "disagreeing with the Bible" if they do.)
And the reason I have a problem with his interpretation of the Bible is because Calvinists misunderstand God's sovereignty from the very beginning. And when you misunderstand a biblical truth from the beginning then it will indeed cause tension and problems with the rest of the Bible.
But it's not the Bible that has tension with what it teaches.
It's the Calvinist's interpretation of the Bible that screws it all up!
But it's much easier to understand when you understand it correctly: God has allowed mankind to choose between obeying or disobeying. And in His sovereignty, He can and does work our choices, whatever they may be, into His plans. But since He lets us decide to sin or not, He can hold us accountable for our choice to sin. And so He is just when He punishes us for our sins, because He didn't cause us to do them. We chose to do them all on our own.
(And not in the "fake" Calvinist way of "choosing," where we choose to do what God predetermined we would do and we couldn't have chosen anything else, but we're still responsible for our sins because we "chose" to sin. Fake choices. Fake freedom. Fake responsibility. So when Calvinists say they believe in "human responsibility," they are not talking about free-will, which is what they want you to think. "Human responsibility" doesn't mean that you can make your own choices but that you will still be held responsible for them, even though Calvi-god pre-planned and caused you to do what you do. Big difference!)
My ex-pastor has also said that God ordained that Adam and Eve would sin ... and He ordained the wickedness of the people in Jesus's day so that they would crucify Him ... and He ordained that a wicked nation would attack Israel but then He punishes the wicked nation for attacking Israel. And then the pastor acts like, "How can God ordain these evil things but not be held accountable for them? I don't know. But the Bible teaches that God is sovereign over all and that man is responsible for his sins. And so I just accept this, even if I can't understand it." (And he said this with an attitude of "Look how humble I am to accept such difficult, confusing teachings I don't fully understand. You should be this humble too!")
Now, if by "ordained" he meant that God knew it would happen and allowed it to happen and worked their choices into His plans, I could agree. And if by "sovereign" he meant that God sometimes causes things to happen and sometimes just allows things to happen but that He never causes the things He commands us not to do, then once again I could agree.
But Calvinists mean "God preplans, causes, and controls everything that people do, even their sins and rebellion and unbelief and breaking His commands, and they have no choice to do anything differently."
And so, no, I cannot agree at all. And I will fight this with all I've got ... because Calvinism makes God the source of, author of, and cause of all sin and evil (despite their insistence that they're not saying this), but then God punishes us for the things He makes us do. And this makes God untrustworthy, unjust, unloving, deceptive, a liar, evil, etc.
And this is NOT the God of the Bible!
No wonder Calvinists struggle with how God, in His "sovereignty," could preplan and cause people's sins but not be accountable for it, how He could sovereignly cause our sins but punish us for them.
Because it's not biblical truth!
It's Calvinist garbage!
But I was wanting to burst out of my seat, jump up, and start waving my hands, yelling, "I understand it! It's easy to understand when you understand it correctly, when you correctly understand how the Bible shows God exercising His sovereignty."
God's sovereignty is about being the highest power/authority there is. It's not about how He has to use His power/authority. But Calvinists are all about deciding that a sovereign God has to use His authority and power all the time to control everything (making God the cause of sin, even though they deny it) ... or else He can't be God.
Instead of letting God show them what kind of a God He is through the Bible, Calvinists decide for themselves how God has to be and act in order to be God and then they interpret the Bible through their own assumptions.
But biblically, our sovereign God has decided to not control everything, to give people real choices, to let us be the kind of people we want to be. And, in His sovereignty, He figures out how to work our choices into His plans, our obedience and disobedience. And this is all over the Bible, in example after example. And it fits with His holy, just, loving, trustworthy nature.
God did not plan/cause Adam and Eve to sin (He planned for their sin, but not that they would sin), but He did know that Adam and Eve would choose to sin, and so He had a plan from the beginning to redeem it, to work it out for good.
And He did not plan/cause the wicked people to be wicked so that they would crucify Jesus. He just let them be the wicked people they wanted to be and He worked it into His plans for our salvation.
And He didn't cause the wicked nation that attacked Israel to be a wicked, violent nation. He simply let them be the wicked, violent people they wanted to be, and then He used their self-chosen wickedness to punish Israel before He punished them for being the wicked people they chose to be. (This is not unlike the police using a criminal in an undercover sting to catch other criminals. The cops didn't cause the criminal to be a criminal; they just put his bad choices to good use first, before punishing him for being the criminal he chose to be.)
And this is why God is not held accountable for our sin and evilness. He didn't cause it; He just allowed it and worked it into His plans.
See! Easy to understand! But Calvinism complicates God's simple truths by twisting them, and then when they can't figure it all out, they have to go "Oh, well, I guess we'll never understand. These are God's mysteries that we can't figure out, and so we just have to accept it as true."
And in case you think I'm making up this "cause vs. allow" distinction, let's consider an example.
In 2 Samuel 24:1, we read "Again the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, 'Go and take a census of Israel and Judah."
The thing was, counting the troops was considered a sin in God's eyes and God was going to punish David for it, yet this verse makes it sound like God Himself caused David to sin, which would support Calvinism.
But it's not what it seems.
And 1 Chronicles 21:1 sheds more light on this situation (The Bible and God always make more sense when you dig deeper and learn more, instead of just running wild with one confusing verse. And in the end, Calvinism always comes out the loser.):
"Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel."
Okay, so who caused David to sin? God or Satan?
No one caused David to sin. David himself wanted to sin. Sin was in his heart. And God simply used Satan - allowed Satan to tempt David to sin - to get David to act out what was already in his heart, so that God could work it into His plans to punish Israel. But God did not cause David to have a sinful heart. He did not preplan or force David to sin. He just allowed Satan to present David with the opportunity to sin, which David willingly took. As God knew he would.
If David wanted to be obedient, he could have been, and God would have worked his obedience into His plans. But since God knew David would be disobedient, God found a way to work his disobedience into His plans. (Also see the example of King Ahab in this post: "Sovereignty and Free-Will Working Together.")
In Calvinism, God is the ultimate cause of sin. He preplans it, orchestrates it, causes it to happen, and we could not have made any other choice because God predestined what we would do. In Calvinism, if we sin it's because God predestined it and we had no ability to not sin. (And yet then Calvinists turn around and say, "Oh, but we're not saying that God is the author or cause of sin." Hogwash! They might not "say" it but they sure do mean it.)
Calvinists take one verse - Proverbs 21:1: "The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord; he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases." - and they say, "See, God controls all our choices." And then they interpret the rest of the Bible through their misconception and misunderstanding of that verse.
But we saw, in the example of King David, how God turns a king's heart - not by preplanning/controlling their thoughts, desires, and actions, but by allowing circumstances or Satan's actions to encourage them to make the choices they want to make (but they could have made other choices because their choices were up to them, not God). And since God knows the choice they will make, He knows how to work it into His plans.
However, if Calvinism is true about God predestining/causing/controlling everything that happens, then how did these verses get into the Bible:
1 Kings 20:42: "He said to the king, 'This is what the Lord says: 'You have set free a man I had determined should die.''" (So God determined something would happen, but then it didn't happen. How is this possible if God determines everything that happens and nothing different could have happened? Calvinists would say, "Well, God sometimes ordains that people disobey what He has ordained." And I am not kidding about this. They really do say this nonsensical garbage. And with a totally straight face.)
Hosea 8:4 (God's words): "They set up kings without my consent; they choose princes without my approval." (Calvinists would simply say, "Oh, well, God can ordain things He doesn't approve of, for His mysterious plans.")
Jeremiah 19:5 (God's own words): "They have built the high places to Baal to burn their sons in the fire as offerings to Baal - something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind." (It would be kinda difficult for God to predestine/cause something that He never thought of commanding, wouldn't it? And how would Calvinists answer this? I'm actually not sure. I never heard one try. Instead, they always switch topics or bring up a different verse that they think "proves" God "ordains/causes" all that happens.)
Isaiah 30:1: "Woe to the obstinate children," declares the Lord, "to those who carry out plans that are not mine..." (Calvinists might simply say, "Well, God has two different plans. In one plan, He didn't want the people to do what they did. But in the other plan, He caused the people to do what He didn't want them to do ... for His glory and mysterious reasons. And He's so far above us that we can't understand it. He is the Potter and we are clay. How can the clay talk back to the Potter or understand the Potter's ways? Blah, blah, blah. Gobble, gobble, gobble." If you listen carefully, you'll see how - when it comes to the hard questions and their contradictions - they deflect and switch topics and verse-bomb you with verses taken out of context.)
Psalm 33:10: "The Lord foils the plans of the nations ..." (If all plans are God's plans, and if we can only plan what God causes us to plan, then isn't God foiling His own plans here? Oh but wait, I forgot ... Calvi-god can have two plans that contradict each other. He can ordain one thing but then ordain that people do the opposite of what he ordained. Yep, makes perfect sense!)
Acts 14:16: "In the past, he [God] let nations go their own way." (Impossible ... if every way is God's preplanned way!)
Ezekiel 13:22 (KJV): "Because with lies ye have made the heart of the righteous sad, whom I have not made sad ..." And the CSB version puts it this way: "Because you have disheartened the righteous person with lies (when I intended no distress)..." (In Calvinism, God would be the one who preplanned and ultimately caused people to lie to the righteous people. He would have preplanned/intended to cause the righteous people to be disheartened, contradicting His claim that He never intended to do that. And so either God lies or Calvinism lies. Which one do you think it is?)
Look at all the nonsense they weave - the theological twisting they do - to make the Bible fit with their wrong theology, instead of simply correcting their wrong theology to fit the plain, simple, consistent, easily-understood message of the Bible!
You know what? If Calvinism is going to take one verse (Proverbs 21:1) from a poetic "wise sayings" book of the Bible and make it an absolute, iron-clad Gospel Truth, filtering the rest of the Bible through it, then it needs to do that with all the verses in that book, such as Proverbs 22:4, 6: "Humility and fear of the Lord bring wealth and honor and life" and "Train a child up in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it."
They cannot pick and choose which verses are "iron-clad" and which aren't. But would they say that either of these verses always comes true, that it's always the way it is? Are all humble people wealthy and long-lived? Do all children raised in the Lord remain in the Lord, never straying?
I didn't think so. And so why would they do that with Proverbs 21:1?
Answer: Because Calvinists think it supports their theology, that it "seals the deal." And they use that verse to trick unsuspecting Christians into agreeing with them. [And if they want to turn a Proverb into iron-clad theology, they must remember that it specifies that the "king's" heart is in the Lord's hands, not anyone else's.]
Exodus 13:17: "When Pharoah let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country. For God said 'If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt." (I don't even need to tell you how this totally contradicts and disproves Calvinism, their idea that God preplans, causes, controls everything we think and do. You can see it clearly for yourselves. Calvinists can't, but you can.)
And why would God give "boundaries" to people, Satan, and nature (such as putting a boundary around the one forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden, and putting a limit on how far the sea can move in Job 38:11, and putting a hedge around Job and limits to how much Satan can do to him in Job 1) if God alone controls every single movement that everyone and everything makes? Boundaries are only needed when there is freedom to move within those boundaries.Look at all the nonsense they weave - the theological twisting they do - to make the Bible fit with their wrong theology, instead of simply correcting their wrong theology to fit the plain, simple, consistent, easily-understood message of the Bible!
(I love this kid!)
They cannot pick and choose which verses are "iron-clad" and which aren't. But would they say that either of these verses always comes true, that it's always the way it is? Are all humble people wealthy and long-lived? Do all children raised in the Lord remain in the Lord, never straying?
I didn't think so. And so why would they do that with Proverbs 21:1?
Answer: Because Calvinists think it supports their theology, that it "seals the deal." And they use that verse to trick unsuspecting Christians into agreeing with them. [And if they want to turn a Proverb into iron-clad theology, they must remember that it specifies that the "king's" heart is in the Lord's hands, not anyone else's.]
But instead of misunderstanding one poetic verse and then filtering the rest of the Bible through it, I would rather seek to understand the clear message of the Bible as a whole and God's character as He reveals Himself to be and then try to understand that verse (and any other confusing ones) in light of it.
But that's just me.
But that's just me.
