A Calvinist's best defense of their worst doctrine
The following are parts of two sermons given by the Calvinist pastor at my ex-church, about Romans 9 and predestination.
[I'd post a link to them, but if you know which church I attended then you'll know which town I live in, and I'm not ready to reveal that. So you'll just have to trust me that this is what he said. And for those who already know me or attend my ex-church, these sermons are from June of 2016. You can look it up online if you want.]
This was a little over 3 years after this new pastor was hired and brought in Calvinism, stealthy at first, then much more bold. And by this point, I was done with him, really fed up and upset with his teaching, really alarmed. Sadly, though, we stayed there listening to this garbage for 3 more years before we resigned our membership. (But at least it gave me a lot of time to really hear and research what he was preaching.)
Notice that all these sermon sections contain are shaming, manipulation, deflection, bad definitions, gaslighting, strawmanning, bad analogies, misrepresenting non-Calvinists, turning it back on us if we oppose Calvinism, etc., - all in an effort to try to get us to accept his pseudo-answers about a theology that destroys God's character/truth and refuses to be challenged on it.
And all of these necessary tactics are the result of the Calvinist pastor's incorrect interpretation of Romans 9 (among other things). Calvinists misinterpret Romans 9, leading to terribly unbiblical conclusions... which causes us to have problems with what they teach... which causes them to have to find ways to bully us into agreement, shaming us for having trouble accepting "God's truth."
But if they just interpreted Romans 9 correctly, they wouldn't have the questions and problems and "mysteries" they do. And then they wouldn't have to resort to cult-like tactics to manipulate us into accepting it and to try to prevent us from questioning it. [See "The 9 Marks of a Calvinist Cult"]
Note: Calvinists, in general, are not necessarily intending to shame and manipulate and deceive. They truly believe this stuff and think they're being humble to accept it and strategically teach it. They intend well. But good intentions do not excuse bad theology that contradicts the plain teaching of the Bible or their cult-like attempts to get people to accept it without resistance.
So here we go [my comments are in italics and brackets... and at the end of this post, just for fun, I included a few more sections from other sermons he gave, showing you his other "worst doctrines" and why I was so disturbed and alarmed by his Calvinist theology.]...
Sermon 1 (on God's sovereignty):
“… God is sovereign over salvation… Some people say ‘Doesn’t God look through history, see who will choose Him, and then He elect them?’ I say, ‘That’s a nice theory but it’s backwards.’… Nobody seeks God. If God looked through history to wait and see who would choose Him, the answer would be ‘Nobody would choose Him. Nobody seeks.’
So why do some respond? It’s because God chose them and He summons them and awakens them to the gospel… [This is backwards. Calvinists say that believing is a result of being born again. But the Bible shows that being born again is the result of belief.]
And [His choice] had nothing to do with anything they did… Some of you are sitting here right this minute getting angry. Some of you have avoided this doctrine. Some of you are murmuring in your heart, ‘This just doesn’t seem fair. It doesn’t seem just.’ If you have ever found yourself in the ‘That’s not fair’ camp, be careful asking God for what’s fair in your life. Be careful saying ‘God, I want what’s coming to me!’ That’s a dangerous road to walk down. [This is shaming, deflection, and strawmanning. It shames Christians who oppose the "doctrine of predestination," who get upset about it. It deflects by demanding that we don't ask the tough questions about what this doctrine does to God's character, scaring us from digging deeper into why this doctrine seems wrong. And it's a strawman argument in that it accuses us of fighting God, of questioning His fairness within predestination - when what we're really doing is fighting the Calvinist doctrine of predestination itself and what it does to God's character and truth. When we push back against Calvinism, they accuse us of pushing back God. And another thing this pastor beautifully did - by warning "be careful of asking for what's fair" - is to subtly affirm Calvinism's other ideas of "we're so totally depraved that all of us deserve hell and so we should just shut up and be thankful God chose to elect anyone at all to salvation." Well done, Calvinist pastor! I'm sure all the humble Christians in the congregation hung their heads in shame, feeling terrible that they ever questioned God's "right" to predestine people to hell.]
… [Given our horrible sinfulness and rebellion against God], the question is not ‘Why doesn’t God choose everybody?’ The real question is ‘Why does God choose any of us?’ [Deflection. And the questions themselves are faulty because they're built on the Calvinist presupposition that God chooses who gets saved. Never answer Calvinist questions that are based on Calvinist concepts, dismantle them instead. And never let a Calvinist define the terms - and try not to adopt their terms - because that's putting yourself in their arena, giving them home-court advantage and control over the conversation, making it easier for you to get sucked into their theology and worldview. Never assume that you know what they mean by the words they use - that's how they trap you. Always insist - before any friendly "debate" with a Calvinist - that they clearly, fully explain what they mean by the words they use. Insist that they reveal what they're hiding or sugar-coating - because then you'll see how different it is from how we commonly define terms, and you'll be less likely to be sucked in.]
If you’ve ever wondered ‘Why doesn’t God give mercy to all?’, it’s a very short line from ‘God should give mercy’ to ‘God owes mercy.’ If mercy is demanded, it’s not mercy anymore. What’s really being said is ‘God owes us mercy,’ and you know what that is? It’s an accusation against God’s goodness. That’s what that is. [Shaming. Strawman. The real issue isn't "Why doesn't God (in Calvinism) give mercy to all?" It's "Why does He lie and say He wants all to be saved while predestining most to hell?... Why does He command people to believe but then prevent them from believing?... Why does He command us not to sin but preplan/cause us to sin?... How could a good, holy, trustworthy God 'ordain' sin and evil, get glory for sin and evil, and then punish people for the sin and evil He 'ordained'?" Etc. Those are the real problems. No Bible-believing Christian believes that God should be forced to give mercy to all. But we do believe that what's taught about Him should line up with the good, loving, just, holy, trustworthy God we believe the Bible shows Him to be. (And contrary to Calvinism, we do believe that God does offer mercy to all despite the fact that we don't deserve it, that He's chosen to offer mercy to all sinners by offering salvation to all sinners. He just leaves it up to us to accept or reject it.)]
… If a wealthy person went into the inner city and said 'I’m gonna pick 25 young, poor people, and I’m gonna bless them with a full ride to any Ivy League university’… could we say he was being unfair to the people he didn’t give that gift to? The answer is: No. He has a right to bless whomever he wants to, and he’s good and grace-full for doing it. [Bad analogy - because this doesn't accurately reflect what happens in Calvinism. In Calvinism, God first created all the people to be in poverty, giving them no ability to get out of poverty themselves even though He commands them all to get out of poverty, and then He comes in and acts like He's "so gracious" to at least rescue a few from poverty... and then He blows up the city with a nuclear bomb to kill everyone that He didn't "choose" because He decided from the very beginning to hate them and to get glory by destroying them. Now, that's a more accurate Calvinist analogy! It's similar to the one they usually use, their "100 people on death row" analogy: "There's 100 people on death row for murder, and God graciously chooses to save 10 of them, but He lets the other 90 go to their punishment. Was He unjust to save some but not others? No. None of them deserves to be saved. They all deserve to be punished. So it's not unjust to rescue some but let others pay the penalty they deserve." This kind of analogy hooks many people because it seems to fit. But the glaring flaw is that, in Calvinism, those people are only on death row in the first place because God "ordained" their crimes. He preplanned/caused them to do what they did, gave them no option or ability to do anything differently, but then He punishes them for it, as if that's true justice. And then He rescues some, as if it's true grace. Hogwash!]
Predestination comes up in a number of books [in the Bible], and the question in our series has been not ‘what do I want the text to say’ but ‘what does it say’. [Over the years, this pastor constantly used the phrase "What does the text say? We always have to go right back to the text," making it seem like everything he said was biblical, right from Scripture and in line with Scripture. This causes people to put their guard down and turn off their red-flag radar, trusting that he's being true to the text. Because he said he was. But if you listened carefully and looked up the verses he used, you'd see that while he's saying "What does the text say," he's simultaneously sneaking in Calvinist interpretations and definitions, preconditioning you to hear Scripture in Calvinist ways, carefully selecting and skillfully cobbling together half-verses taken out of context to fit Calvinism, and making you feel like good humble Christians see it his way but bad unhumble Christians disagree. But because most of us Christians trust our seminary-educated pastors, we let our guard down, don't see what they're doing, and willingly eat whatever they spoon-feed us, assuming that if we have a problem with their preaching, then it must be that we are the problem, not them or their theology.]
… Every culture has blind-spots when it comes to the Bible, and one of ours is ‘choice’, and we superimpose it onto the text. And over the years, our filters go up and our prejudices become concrete – we get hardening of the categories – and pretty soon we can’t see what the text is saying anymore. [Gaslighting, making us doubt our abilities to understand and reason and think because of our "blind spots." And so, of course, we must go to the Calvinist pastor to help us understand and see things clearly. How do you think religious cults suck in so many people!]
And not only do we see it, but we resist it and get angry, instead of saying, ‘This is such a precious doctrine.’” [So if we get upset by what they teach, it's “proof” to them that we are resisting God’s truth. Manipulative-shaming. And it's effective because we can't win against or defend ourselves against something like this because our very attempts to defend ourselves will just "prove" to them how totally depraved we are and rebellious we are against "God's truth". According to Calvinism, there is no disagreeing with them, only acceptance and submission. Because disagreeing with them, is disagreeing with God.]
Sermon 2 (on election and Romans 9):
"Why is it that some believe and some don’t? This is not the first time Paul brought up the doctrine of election, sometimes called predestination. [Contrary to Calvinism, election and predestination - in the Bible - are two different things, and both are about what happens to people after they become believers, not about who believes and how they believe.]
… [Election] has nothing to do with anything [people have] said or done, which leads to our first question: If God elects based on nothing that those people have done, is that just? That’s the question.
Now let’s be honest. This is a doctrine that’s tough for us in the West. It makes a lot of us cringe. [He’s used the “Americans have a hard time submitting to authority and so they have a hard time with God's sovereignty” tactic many times. Manipulative-shaming!]… Romans 9 flies in the face of the cultural air we breathe. Every culture has blind-spots when it comes to Scripture because of the cultural setting [and] assumptions and presuppositions… In the West, any survey of cultural values will show ‘choice’ at the top of the spectrum… It’s who we are… And the challenge of the text is 'What does the text say?' And THEN we can ask 'Do I like it?'
… I have to believe it, even if I don’t like it… If you believe Jesus, which I do, and if you believe the New Testament is inspired and fully inerrant and that Jesus says what He means and means what He says, then you have to believe in it, even if you don’t like it. [Translation: "If you disagree with me, you disagree with God."] The first question is not 'Do I like a doctrine?' The first question is 'What does the text say?' [And yet Calvinists look right at what a text plainly says, what can be understood in a simple and commonsense way, and go 'Well, there's a deeper meaning underneath what it says. A hidden secondary level. Let's see what Grudem or Piper or Sproul or MacArthur says about how to understand it."]
… So the questions we’re going to address are 'Is God unjust?' and 'If God elects based on nothing the people have done, then how can He blame us on Judgment Day, since He’s the one who made the decision?' [Faulty question with built-in Calvinism. It presupposes that God chooses who get saved.]
… [In answer to ‘Is God unjust’:] Once you realize [how wretchedly, utterly depraved we are] the question is not 'Why doesn’t God elect everybody?' The question becomes 'Why does He elect anybody? Why does He have mercy on anybody?'… He is merciful. He is gracious [for electing anyone at all].
… Some Christians believe [that] God looks down through history and then He waits to see which sinners will choose Him and then He makes those the elect. [But] the Bible doesn’t teach that!
... And if He just waited to see which sinners would choose Him, no sinful human being - who is a slave to depravity, as we’re told - would choose God. Because we’re dead in sin… Dead sinners can’t pick people. Dead sinners don’t make choices. God elects from eternity past; He has mercy on some sinners and not others. [Interesting, because the Bible says "For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all." (Romans 11:32) Calvinists misunderstand depravity/"dead in sin." Also during this section of the sermon, he tries to make the case that we have to believe that Romans 9 is about Calvinist election/predestination of individuals because it's the only explanation for the ‘Is God unjust’ question implied in Romans 9:19. (Calvinists often tell us that we can't base our interpretation of Scripture on human reasoning. But what is he doing here? Basing his interpretation of Scripture on human reasoning.) He says that if it wasn’t about the election/predestination of individuals, then there’d be no reason for that question about God’s justice. But I say that we don't have to believe Romans 9 is about Calvinist predestination in order to make sense of it; we just have to have a proper interpretation of Romans 9, which Calvinists don't. Calvinists misunderstand Romans 9, and it leads to other questions, "mysteries," and contradictions that they must then try to solve. And they dig their hole deeper and deeper, and their systematic theology books get longer and longer.]
… The second question is ‘How can God blame sinners if He elects some and not others?’… That’s vexing… [No, it's not vexing. It's wrong. And it's a faulty question, built on the Calvinist presupposition that God elects people to salvation.]
D.A. Carson answers it by saying that there are two tracks that run through Scripture, and they are abundantly clear, and the Bible shows zero tension between them.
Track One is that God is absolutely sovereign, right down to when sparrows die and fall out of the trees. [Actually, if I'm not mistaken, the verse about sparrows is about God knowing when they die, not necessarily causing it.] He has decreed it. He has decreed the elect from the non-elect… He is sovereign over the lives and eternities of mankind and of the nations. God is sovereign and all-powerful. The Bible shows no backing off from that doctrine. [Right, but Calvinists misunderstand sovereign and "all-powerful". The Bible doesn't; Calvinists do. They believe that sovereign, all-powerful, and control are about how God must act if He is God. And if He doesn't rule the way they think He does - using His sovereign power to preplan/cause/control everything all the time - then He's not God. But what these words really have to do with are His position of authority, not about how He must behave in that position or about how He must use His power and control. This is a huge, fundamental flaw in Calvinism - deciding how God must act in order to be a sovereign God - which taints the rest of their views and how they read the Bible.]
And there’s this other track which is that human beings are fully accountable for their choices, even though we’re slaves to sin. We’re fully accountable and will give an account someday for our choices.
D.A. Carson says that the Bible shows no tension between the fact that God elects and that human beings are fully accountable… How do we handle that? I don’t know. I don’t know. [You'll understand much better if you have correct, biblical views of "God's sovereignty" and "human responsibility." If you can't understand it, it's probably because you've got Calvinist glasses on.] The Bible never attempts to solve this dilemma… it simply affirms the dilemma. [It's only a dilemma in Calvinism.]
And if we insist that predestination is not fair…then Paul’s answer is…'But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? Should that which is formed say to the One who formed it, ‘Why did you make me this way?’ Doesn’t the Potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?’ [Shaming. Manipulation. Gaslighting: "You, tiny human, can't understand. So don't bother thinking about it too much." And once again, see here for what Romans 9 is really about. And notice that this specific verse is talking about the roles/jobs God gives people, how He uses them in His plans, not about whether they are saved or damned.]
… Sometimes we get confused and think that if I can’t understand a doctrine intellectually then I'm not going to affirm it... And so, about election, even if we can’t grasp it or fully understand it…it is taught, and we can affirm it.
… There’s a difference between affirming and fully understanding. And I’ve found that to be helpful. [He also brought up not being able to understand the Trinity and not being able to understand how Jesus can be both God and man. But neither of those “mysteries” affects people’s salvation or calls into question the character of God, as the Calvinist view of predestination/election does. And this is why we should – why we need to - challenge their view of election and push back against it, instead of being manipulated into accepting it. Their “mysteries" about this are created by their own bad theology. They are not true mysteries from the Bible. True mysteries are when God chooses not to reveal something to us. But Calvinist “mysteries” are created when they screw up things that God did clearly reveal, reinterpreting it to try to make it fit their presuppositions, assumptions, and philosophical naval-gazing and ruminations. They create the "mysteries" that they have to then try to solve. (Why do you think their systematic theology books are so huge?) And when they run out of answers and get painted into a corner, they always pull out "Who are you to talk back to God?" As if disagreeing with them is disagreeing with God.]
… So why does God blame us if He elects some but not others? Paul’s answer is 'Who are you to talk back to God?' [But if Calvi-god controls all we do, even what we believe and think and say, then isn't he just talking back to himself then?]
… About God’s decision to have mercy on some but not on others, some people say 'That makes God look bad'… I call that 'get God off the hook' theology. But every time we try to get God off the hook, He puts Himself back on the hook and says, 'No, don’t soften it down. This IS who I am.'
… The answer, going back to our question 'So how can God blame us?' is: That’s an accusation, and we don’t have any right to accuse God. God has the right to elect some – which puts His mercy on display, the elect get God’s mercy. And when He hardens someone, His justice is on display. And we don’t have any right to accuse God. [God Himself clearly tells us how He Himself chose to demonstrate His justice: “God presented [Jesus] as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished- he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.” (Romans 3:25-26, emphasis added). God Himself tells us that He sent Jesus to take our punishment in order to demonstrate His justice, to satisfy His wrath... and yet Calvinists would have us believe that God created people to be non-elect so that He could punish them in hell to show off His justice and wrath. So who's wrong and who's right? Who are you going to side with? (If we end up in hell, it's by our choice to reject God's offer of salvation, not because God predestined anyone to go there.)]
… [But then people ask] 'Doesn’t God want all people to be saved (1 Timothy 2:4)?'
1 Timothy shows us the missionary, loving, merciful heart of God. But obviously, not everyone will be saved.… The question is 'How does that fit with predestination and election?'… The answer is that God does not decree everything He desires… I have to go with: God’s ways are not my ways. He doesn’t always decree what He desires… Sometimes God decrees what He hates to accomplish what He loves… God has deeper reasons at times for decreeing opposite His desires… God is much more complex than us, infinitely complex. [If Calvinists can use "God has reasons we can't understand" to get us to accept their terrible idea that God reprobates people to hell - that God can say one thing ("I want all people to be saved") but mean another ("I really want most people in hell") - then what terrible things can't they get us to accept with "God has reasons we can't understand"?]
… Election doesn’t keep people out of heaven. Election makes sure there will be people in heaven. [Yes, at the cost of other people!] Because otherwise the darkness and depravity of the human heart would nullify any coming to faith. [Only when you define depravity as "inability."]
… Any time this [Calvinist predestination/election] is preached, people react in one of three ways: they get angry about it, they avoid it, or they accept it. [Clearly, disagreeing with it is not an option, not allowed.]
… And accepting it doesn’t mean full comprehension. It just means saying 'Ok, it says what it says. He is God; I’m not. I don’t get it, but it’s there, and I’m not gonna fight it anymore.' [Sounds humble, doesn't it? One of Satan's best tactics to get people to buy into bad theology!]… It’s about surrender and affirming any tough teaching in the Bible, even if I don’t [like] it or understand it, accepting it because I believe God has spoken clearly. He didn’t stutter in the Bible.
And yes, there are things that are going to drive me nuts and irritate me and give me a headache… but the question is 'Do you believe the Bible is the Word of God?'” [Translation: "If you disagree with me, you disagree with God!"]
And this is the best defense – really a non-defense – that Calvinists can come up with for their most terrible doctrine, one that destroys God's character, flips truth on its head, strangles people's faith, and slams the door of heaven on most people. This is how religious cults operate: manipulation, shaming, gaslighting, making you feel like a bad Christian who’s fighting God and resisting His truth if you disagree with them or question them, etc.
And yet, they make it sound so humble, don’t they? Preying on the goodness and humility of most Christians who just want to honor God and submit to His truth.
Shameful. Sinister. Satanic.
[Not the people, but the theology.]
And for the record, once again, I do not believe most Calvinist pastors are trying to be deceptive or manipulative or sinister... or satanic. The really do believe this stuff and think that it’s humble and God-honoring to live it and teach it. They are trying to live their faith as best they can, for God's glory. They just don't realize that, in their desire and effort to learn more and deeper truth, they've been educated into lies, convinced that it's truth.
True believers can fall into false gospels, something Paul warns and condemns the church of Galatia about when he writes: "I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel - which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ." (Gal. 1:6-7, see my post "Warped Enough?")
This is what makes Calvinism so dangerous. It sounds so close to truth that many are educated into thinking it is truth, and then when they preach it, they really believe it. That's why it's so easy for us to get sucked in and believe it too.
You know, I think a simple, country pastor who never went to seminary would probably be able to see and understand the simple gospel much better than the seminary-trained pastors today who've been educated into twisted truths.
Yes, education is good and important, but sometimes education - and their desire to learn more than the next guy, to climb to the top of the intellectual heap of spiritual-elites - causes people to more easily read into Scripture, finding "mysteries" that aren't really there, convincing themselves that they discovered/understand things that the common people can't. This puts them on a pedestal - theological geniuses, spiritual giants.
And then, of course, we uneducated, "biblically-illiterate," common people need to go to them for answers because we can't read Scripture on our own or understand "truth" without their help, without their grand, extensive knowledge guiding us and telling us what to think.
It's the same kind of trap the Pharisees fell into: pride, the desire to learn more and more so that they could be at the top of the heap, so that people would come to them for the answers.
Calvinists think they're believing/teaching truth (and they've got a seminary degree from Calvinist schools to "prove" it) and that they're being humble and God-honoring to do so. And this is what makes Calvinism so dangerous, so deceptive, so effective. It would be much easier to fight it if they were deliberately teaching lies and knew it.
It's easier to oppose blatantly anti-Christian theologies (or atheism) than to oppose ones that look so close to the truth that it's hard to tell them apart or to know where the one goes wrong (apart from a lot of time, effort, listening, and studying to discern what they're really saying and what their errors are).
That's why, I think, the Church needs to put more energy into being discerning about - and rooting out and standing against - the subtly-deceptive, looks-so-accurate-but-isn't theologies, like Calvinism, than it does the obvious, anti-Christian ones.
Deception is harder to battle than lies. Lies are saying things that are clearly, provably false. Deception is using truth to lead people to false ideas and conclusions, or twisting truth in such subtle ways that we can't readily recognize it, making it appear to be true. Subtle deception is much more effective than bold, outright lies. (Why do you think Satan uses deception so often!)
It's kinda like how banks need to spend more time discerning the difference between real money and made-to-look-real money than it does discerning between real money and Monopoly money. One is much more of a threat than the other.
It's the subtle, small, deceptive twists - not the obvious errors and lies - that really get us, that more easily get entrenched into our minds and into the Church at a much deeper and more long-term level, making them much more destructive and much harder to recognize, be alarmed about, combat, root out, and defeat.
In conclusion (but the extra sermon sections are after this):
Calvinism's slow, gentle, subtle, deflective, manipulative, shaming, "Don't question God, but be a smart, good, humble Christian like me by just accepting it" tactics work. It's how it takes over churches and good, humble, well-meaning Christians with little resistance. (After all, we all want to be smart, good, humble Christians, don't we?)
And to illustrate it, here's part of my story, from my post "Watching Stealth Calvinism in Action":
During this time when our Calvinist pastor was manipulating the congregation into agreeing with him (or at least into not openly disagreeing with him)... and constantly dripping Calvinism into his sermons... and constantly quoting from Calvinist theologians (in one sermon, my husband noticed that the pastor used not one Bible verse but many Calvinist quotes)... and building his kingdom with his weekly sermon-based groups... he was also leading small-group studies of Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology with the elders and other key people. Brainwashing key people into Calvinism in small batches, up close and personal.
And it worked. There was a friend at church (who worked there in various roles) whose his wife told me that he leaned more free-will than Calvinist. And so when we heard that he started taking Systematic Theology classes with the pastor, we decided to warn him about it, in case he didn't realize what he was getting into.
My husband sent an email warning him that Wayne Grudem was a Calvinist and that the pastor was immersing the church in Calvinism, encouraging him to be cautious and to research it for himself, and recommending some videos from Beyond the Fundamentals and Soteriology 101. My husband reminded him that we didn't leave the church for superficial reasons but because we really believe Calvinism is unbiblical. The strongest warning we could give.
We figured that out of everyone there, the one who already believed more in free-will would be the one most likely to heed our warnings, to recognize the errors of what the pastor was teaching. Maybe this friend would be someone we could "pass the baton" to.
And the friend sent back a reply, thanking us for sharing our thoughts with him and admitting that he was a little apprehensive about starting a Wayne Grudem class because he knows it's reformed, and his training/understanding didn't fully support the 5 points of TULIP.
"However," he says, "truth is truth because God is truth, and we must not fear truth." [I knew right then that he was a goner.] He went on to quote a few verses about the truth making us free and about not quenching the Spirit. And he said that if these classes moved him to affirm Calvinism, then he praises God for it, admitting that he knows he still has growing and learning to do. He said that opening himself up to something uncomfortable makes him rejoice. It makes him thankful that "God has chosen to allow my flawed and finite mind to wrestle with and gain more understanding of His perfect and infinite ways." [I assumed this was the pastor's words coming right out of his mouth.]
My husband wondered if he should reply with something like "But what if it's not God's truth? What if you're being taught lies?"
I just shook my head and said, "He's gone. There's no point. He won't be able to hear it, not when he thinks he's learning 'truth' and humbly submitting to it."
Intimate, small-group brainwashing sessions between a strong pastor and key people in the church work.
And Calvinists know it works, as seen in this 9Marks article - in point #3 about how a Calvinist pastor should relate to the "gatekeepers" (key people in the church) when trying to reform it, and in point #5 about how the pastor should meet personally with prospective new members to "make sure they understand the gospel." (The Reformed gospel, of course.)
And it's also in this 9Marks article, which says "All the actual work of reform happened before the [business] meeting—in conversations. That’s how church reform works. You change people’s minds and shape people’s views in private–over coffee, a good book, and a Bible... So try to figure out to some degree who the church’s opinion leaders are, who are the people most likely to spread enthusiasm for reform among other members, and who would really cause a congregational sigh of relief if it turned out that they agreed with the reform. Then meet with those people, over and over and over. Be a friend to them, care for them, and at the right time, start asking questions and teaching about the nature of a Christian church. In time, you may find that you have more allies in reform than you thought—or, perhaps even better, you may find that you’ve created some.... Reforming a church is a long process that requires a whole lot of conversations, a whole lot of persuasion... Once you’ve been recognized as a leader in your church, the next step is to work on discipling other men who could also be recognized as leaders, and who, eventually, could join you in forming a majority of the leadership that wants to press for reform." [Notice that in their eyes, we're not really fellow believers but merely brains for them to mold.]
Now, of course, reaching out to people individually and building relationships with them would be good advice if you were trying to make godly changes... but not when it's Calvinists trying to take over a non-Calvinist church. In this case, it's cult-like tactics to brainwash people into an unbiblical theology. And that's much different.
And here's a question: If what they're teaching is truly clear, biblical truth, why do they have to go to such great lengths, using such strategic efforts, to sell it?
[Side note: NEVER trust when a Calvinist pastor says that they think Calvinism is a second-level, non-central issue, that it's something they can put on the backburner in order to focus on "primary/more important issues." Calvinism IS their central issue, and it taints every other view they hold. And they only call it a "secondary, non-central issue" to gain your trust and to get you to put your guard down, buying them time to spread Calvinism under your nose, entrenching the church deeper into Calvinism in subtle, sly, nearly-imperceptible ways. One sermon at a time. One person at a time. One drop of poison at a time. And it works.]
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A few more bonus sermons from my Calvinist pastor (I also snuck these in late to the "Calvinist Hogwash #1 (God and Sin)" post:
1. From Sept. 2016: “To be alive is often to be on a brand-new journey, for good or bad, difficult or not. The question is ‘Do we really believe our theology, that God is sovereign, that He controls every detail of the universe, that He knows the good from the bad, that He has ordained it in our lives.'… God is all-powerful. He knows exactly what He is doing. He’s sovereign and in control of every detail of the universe, including our destinies.”
2. From Feb. 2014: “There is nothing He cannot forgive, be it child abuse, murder, rape, adultery, cheating, defying, betrayal… [and later he says:] The book of Numbers is all about who God is… A God who ordains everything that comes to pass for His own glory. A God who is not watching history; He’s making history. A God who doesn’t sit back and just look. He’s a God who ordains everything that comes to pass to line up with His plan for His glory.” [A god who "ordains everything for his own glory" is a god who ordained all the "child abuse, murder, rape, adultery, cheating, defying, betrayal" because it's glorifying to him. And that's a god we should be terrified of, not worship.]
3. And if that's not enough, from a March 2014 sermon about finding hope in hard times: “God is on the throne! Random evil doesn’t just happen to people. Random loss doesn’t just occur in our lives. God is in control of each aspect of every detail, right down to our salvation, right down to our health, and jobs, and employment, and our spouse and our children and our livelihood.
… God is sovereign over history… Arthur Pink wrote a book called The Sovereignty of God, and he said that the sovereignty of God – His absolute control of every atom of the universe - is designed to inspire hope… Random evil doesn’t just occur. God is sovereign over history.
… God is sovereign over our losses… No matter what God has taken away from us, God is sovereign over loss. Why is this such a big deal? You see, too often we want to do what I call 'get God off the hook' theology. We want to get God off the hook, saying 'God didn’t do this.' I remember a pastor after 9-11 who got up the next week and banged on his pulpit and said 'Look it, 9-11, planes going into buildings - God didn’t do this!!!'
We want to get God off the hook, and every time we try to, God puts Himself back on the hook in the Bible and says, 'Yes, I did!' [Do you hear what he's saying? That God deliberately caused 9-11. Not allowed, but caused. Because sovereignty, in Calvinism, is about God preplanning, causing, controlling, orchestrating everything that happens, every action in the universe, including sin and evil.]
… God is sovereign over those who seek to harm us. Who of us hasn’t been harmed by somebody?... We’ve had people betray, lie, steal, vilify, slander, and do unspeakable things to us. Some of us have undergone horrific abuse at the hands of parents or aunts or uncles or brothers. God is sovereign over those who seek to harm us.
That could not be said more clearly than [in the Bible] where it describes Antiochus Epiphanes and what a wretched, evil, brutal man he is… and the point of the text is that it was God who brought him to the world stage… [And like in Joseph’s life] it was God who ordained [all the bad that happened to him]. [And so likewise, "It was God who brought your abuser to you, who ordained the horrific abuse they did to you." Filthy hogwash! (... taking a deep breath now, calming myself down...)]
God is sovereign over those who seek to do us harm. That means, friends, that there is no such thing as random evil or random acts of tragedy.” [So it's supposed to be more comforting that God preplans and causes evil than that He allows it to happen, allows men to make terrible decisions He doesn't want!?! It’s one thing for God to not want evil but to allow it anyway and to then use people’s self-chosen evil for His purposes, to work it into good. But it's a totally different thing for Calvinism's god to preplan, want, cause, orchestrate, control, and be glorified by evil – evil he commands us not to do but then causes us to do, giving us no chance or ability to do anything differently – and then he punishes us for doing what he caused us to do, what we had no control or choice about. This is very different than allowing people to make their own choices - choices God didn't want nor plan nor cause - and then working our choices into His plans. One of those Gods can be trusted, the other god can't. One of those Gods is truly good, the other god is evil disguised as good.]
“By the way, I think that those who get this best are the English Puritans… they understood about God using evil people in our lives [once again, "using" is one thing, "causing" is another]… that God does it for a reason, for example, to bring us to faith in Christ, or to refine us, or to help us become holy, or to strip us of pride, or to be able to comfort others who’ve gone through similar circumstances… John Flavel in The Mystery of God’s Providence says '… In all the sad and afflictive providences that befall you, eye God as the author. Set before you the sovereignty of God…' Amen!?!”
4. Want another one? From an October 2019 sermon on forgiveness: "How you handle and respond to mistreatment - when someone has hurt you, wounded you, lied about you, betrayed you, abused you - or me - how I respond directly reflects what I really believe about God deep down inside.
The ability to forgive...requires a proper understanding of who God is and His providence in our lives - it's critical - and of God's authority in your life. Look it, for anyone to say -and we've all said it or thought it - for any of us to say that we're not going to forgive, what we're really saying is this: 'God, You had NO RIGHT to bring that into my life.'
... The Bible teaches that God sometimes strategically uses sinful people in our lives to refine us and humble us, to do His good work in our lives. [It's one thing for God to allow evil He doesn't want - allowing it because He gave us the free-will to make choices - and then to use it for good in our lives. But it's a completely different thing in Calvinism for God to preplan, cause, control, orchestrate all the evil, sinful things - things He commands us not to do but causes us to do and then will punish us for doing even though we had no ability to do otherwise. This is what Calvinists really mean when they say God "uses" (or "allows" or "brings") wickedness in our lives.]
It's not a very appealing teaching, necessarily. And it's not very common to read it or hear it in the American evangelical world. You almost get the sense that if anything is unpleasant your life - whether disease or illness or betrayal or a turn of career or health or whatever - listen to the evangelical talk and what you'll typically hear is 'Satan's out to get me. The Evil One's been working overtime to get me.' Maybe. But Satan only exists under God's authority. [In Calvinism, God is not just "in authority" over Satan, but He controls Satan's will and causes Satan's actions.]
... One of the things the Puritans got really, really well was God's providence, God's sovereignty, God's authority... They understood that God sovereignly chooses to use evil people and sinful people in our lives as believers, if we know Christ, ON PURPOSE to humble us and teach us dependence on Him. Not every evil person that comes against you is automatically completely of Satan. God is orchestrating events and He's still sovereign over the process. [In Calvinism, "sovereign" means that God preplans, controls, and causes all things, even sin and evil. And it's one thing for God to cause natural "evils" like storms, illnesses, famines, etc., but it's a completely different thing in Calvinism for God to cause moral evils He commands us not to do. Natural evils and moral evils are not in the same category.]
... Biblical forgiveness is an affirmation that God is good and that He has A RIGHT to use ANYBODY in our lives for His purpose, His glory, and for our good... Sometimes He will use evil, sinful people to get us where He wants to get us."
5. And just in case he wasn't clear enough, from an August 2015 sermon about God "ordaining" suffering: "God is all powerful and He doesn't owe us explanations... [Some people] say that evil and suffering are the result of [free-will choices]... [But] the most famous American theologian in our history, Jonathan Edwards, spent a lot of time thinking about suffering and God's sovereignty and came up with two inescapable conclusions that are worth thinking on, enumerating on, and chewing on again and again. As you think about the tragedies that have struck your life and shaken your world, Jonathan Edwards said that, #1, we have to conclude that God is in full control of every detail of the universe, including the suffering, evil, and tragedy in our lives. God is in full control of everything that happens to us. And #2, God is good and that whatever He does, He does for His own glory and for the advancement of His name among the nations...
The Puritans remind us that we don't need to get God off the hook when it comes to evil and suffering... [We] rush to get God off the hook for human suffering [by saying things like] 'Well, this is not what He really intended; this is not really Plan A.'... And every time we do that, God puts Himself back on the hook and says, 'I am in charge, thank you, and I will run the universe as I see fit, and I don't owe you an explanation.' [He totally contradicts this in a March 2017 sermon when - explaining why the world is full of suffering and evil - he says, "This is NOT PLAN A. This is not the way it was set up. This is the result of human sin and rebellion."]
... Are you trusting God in the midst of your past, present, and future in whatever He has ordained and appointed for you as far as suffering, tragedy, abuse [he totally faltered and paused after saying "abuse", as though he realized how people would respond to him saying that God preplans and causes abuse, terrible moral sins, and then he rushed to bury it by listing these next ones really quickly] or trials or difficulties or illness or disease or betrayal? [Betrayal would be another moral sin. You know, it's one thing for God to cause natural disasters or illnesses because He didn't make laws against these things. But it would be something totally different if He caused moral evils that He commands us not to do. If you listen closely, Calvinists will almost always start by teaching that a sovereign, all-powerful God "ordains" natural disasters and illness (as this pastor did earlier in his sermon) - and then once they prove it from the Bible and get you to accept it, they subtly slip in moral evils later, as if since He causes the one He must also cause the other, as if they are the same kind of "evil." But they are not! Don't fall for this Calvinist bait-and-switch.]
... Or are you murmuring against Him?... You may get an answer someday about why you were abused or why you lost a child or why a spouse walked away. [You may get an answer...!?! Do you understand what this is saying? That God deliberately preplanned, orchestrated, and caused the abuse, young deaths, and divorce, betrayal, adultery in your life, for a reason. It would be one thing for God to allow these things to happen because of free-will, but this pastor already threw out the idea of free-will and instead teaches that "#1, we have to conclude that God is in full control of every detail of the universe, including the suffering, evil, and tragedy in our lives. God is in full control of everything that happens to us. And #2, God is good and that whatever He does, He does for His own glory and for the advancement of His name among the nations." And now he includes abuse, young death, and divorce among the things God controls/causes for His glory and name. Do you realize how twisted and unbiblical this is!?! How destructive it is to God's character and truth!?!]
But, friends, answers at the end of the day don't provide a whole lot of comfort. What provides comfort are promises from God's Word. [Let's see, this god says he wants one thing when he really wants another... he preplans and causes moral evils that he commands us not to do and then he will punish us for doing what we had no control over, no choice about... he causes people to be unbelievers but still "commands" them to repent, but then he punishes them for being the unbelievers he caused them to be...he is just as glorified by evil as he is good... yep, totally trustworthy! We can totally trust the promises that come from a god like this! (Hogwash!)]
... Do you perhaps need to repent of your murmuring and the chip on your shoulder against God, and surrender today and say 'Lord, I don't understand the way You run the universe, and I don't necessarily like it, but You're God and You're good.' It'll make all the difference in your path to healing. All the difference." [So first tell people that God caused them to be abused or cheated on, and then shame them for being upset about it, accusing them of sinning against God. Yep, nothing like some good old, cult-like, religious manipulative-shaming to shut us up! (No wonder there are so many atheists out there!) Besides, if Calvi-god preplans, causes, and controls all moral evils, then what does "good" really mean? "Good" loses all meaning when it looks and acts just like evil.]
... Some of our hearts this morning are breaking. Find refuge and hope in a good and holy God who says 'I have all things under My control. Everything that's going on in your life, or has gone on in your life, or will, I know about and have ordained for you. And you can find comfort and hope and trust Me.'"
Matthew 7:6: "Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces."
