Alana L.: 4i (Why me?)

This series is based on this 14-minute video from Alana L.: 5 Signs Your Loved One is Becoming a Calvinist 

Point #4: 

I. Alana notes that Calvinists will often ask "What makes me so special?  Why did I choose God but my friend or neighbor did not?  Obviously that means God chose me.  Because why would I choose God, and not them?"

My note: Alana notes that this is to shape the mind to "irresistible grace," to make us more amenable to the idea that God draws some but not others, which is the only explanation in Calvinism for why some believe and some don't.  

I believe Calvinists have been brainwashed into thinking that if given a true free-will choice, everyone in the world would choose eternal life over eternal death.  No one would voluntarily choose hell.  They assume that if all people were really given the offer to be saved then all people would definitely accept it because no one would be stupid enough to turn it down.  (I've seen this time and time again in Calvinist arguments.)  

And so therefore, since most people are not going to heaven, then it must mean that they were not really given a true free-will choice, which must mean that we don't really have free-will, which means that God choses who believes and who doesn't and that He only really offers salvation to those He already chose to save.  Calvinist election!

To Calvinists, that is the only explanation for why some people believe and others don't.  (Can they find a verse to support this?  No!  It comes only from their own philosophical fantasies.) 

But what's the biblical answer for why people reject Jesus and the offer of eternal life?

Because they don't want it.  Because they want to follow their earthly desires.  Because they don't take the Bible seriously or believe it's God Word.  Because they don't think God is real.  Because they don't want to be under anyone else's thumb.  Because they think all paths lead to heaven or that they can get to heaven just by being good enough.  Etc. 

As we already read:

Zechariah 7:11-12: "But they refused to pay attention; stubbornly they turned their backs and stopped up their ears.  They made their hearts as hard as flint and would not listen to the law or to [the Lord]...."  

2 Kings 17:14-15: “But they would not listen and were as stiff-necked as their fathers, who did not trust in the Lord their God.  They rejected his decrees and the covenant he made with their fathers and the warnings he had given them.  They followed worthless idols and themselves became worthless…” 

John 5:40: “yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” 

Matthew 23:37: “...how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.”

Romans 1:18-2:5: “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness... For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened... Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind... But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath against yourself..." 

There are a multitude of reasons why people choose to reject Jesus, none of which has to do with "Because they were predestined to, because they had no choice, because salvation was never offered to them."  

People throughout history have thrown all of their philosophical ideas, presuppositions, assumptions of how God must act, bad definitions of words (like depravity and sovereignty), doubletalk/double meanings/double layers, "two types of this and two types of that," and misinterpreted/out-of-context verses into a great big pot, stirred it all up, sprinkled in a little pseudo-humility and a whole lot of other people's ideas, and - voila - out comes Calvinism. 

 

But in the end, it still doesn't make sense and is so full of contradictions and damage to Scripture and God's character that they always have to come back to "Yeah, well, who are you, O man, to talk back to God?  Don't question it.  You're not supposed to understand it anyway.  It's a mystery.  So just be a humble Christian and accept it."  

(Do you know how cults work?)

Calvinists simply cannot accept the simple idea that God gave people the ability to choose to believe in Jesus or to reject Jesus and that many will choose to reject Him because they don't want to be accountable to anyone other than themselves.  They want to be their own gods.  

As Alana said, "There's clearly a spiritual war out there, you guys, and the Deceiver has deceived the nations that a life ruled by your own will is to be preferred over a life led by the will of God, and many choose to be their own god."  

It's really just that simple.  

But I don't think Calvinists like "simple."  Anyone can understand simple - and Calvinists don't want to be just "anyone."  

Unlike us simple folk who read the Bible in a plain, commonsense way and who believe that anyone can understand it and find the truth in it, Calvinism appeals to those who want to be part of the lofty, high-and-mighty, spiritually-elite crowd.  (You've read about the Pharisees, right?)  

Calvinists like (and are impressed by) their massive, convoluted "systematic theology" books full of lofty, complex ideas - ideas which actually end up creating many contradictions that they spend many pages trying to solve before they simply resort to "It's a mystery that we can't understand anyway."

But Calvinism's "mysteries" are not true mysteries, things God didn't clearly reveal.  Calvinist "mysteries" happen because they twist, deny, or contradict what God did clearly say, and then they have to figure out how to make their twisted ideas fit with the rest of Scripture and to make it seem like they're not saying God is responsible for evil when that's exactly what their theology teaches.  But they can't make it work because their effort to solve one error/problem/contradiction creates a new one... and their systematic theology books keep getting longer and longer.

I believe Calvinism's big, complex, convoluted, "mysterious" theology makes people feel like they are on some upper-level, elite group of theological-thinkers, more intelligent and spiritual and humble than us simple folk who take the Bible at face-value.  And that's how they get you!

You know, I was just thinking the other day about the verse "knowledge puffs up."  And I totally think this is what happens when studying those big Calvinist theology books.  People spend months learning a lot of information through Calvinist books and sermons and videos, etc., and it makes them feel smarter, more spiritual, more "humble," so honored that God would see fit to open their eyes to "spiritual truth."  It puffs them up.  

But what they don't realize is that it's all air, all emptiness.  They confuse learning lots of information about God with growing closer to God, closer to truth.

Imagine you wanted to study world history - to get really good at it and to feel closer to the world because of it.  And so someone took you through an intensive study of some big, meaty, complicated, history books... of Middle-earth.  

You read The Book of Lost Tales and The Lays of Beleriand and others.  You devoured The Silmarillion and Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.  You wrestled with some of the difficult, disturbing aspects of it all.  You know all the history of Hobbits, Elves, Dwarves, the Ents, the Wizards, Sauron, Numenor, Gondolin, Valinor, etc.  Maybe you even learned to read Elvish.

You gained so much knowledge and feel so close to the people and events of history because of it... until you sit down to take an official test on real world history.  And it's only then that you realize that you've got nothing.  

Sadly, you were learning all the wrong things.  And as a consequence, you missed out on all the right things.  But you didn't realize it at the time because you were deceived by, enchanted by, how much knowledge you were gaining.

I think Calvinism is like that.  Calvinists think that all the knowledge they're gaining through those huge Calvinist theology books means that they're growing in the faith, in truth, closer to God ... until they wake up one day and realize that they've got nothing, that their faith is on life-support because it's been starving all that time for real truth and real hope, and yet they couldn't sense it because of all the noise created by all the bad information they were learning.

It's sad.

[The posts in this series will be added to the "Alana L." label as they get published.]