"But predestination!" (#10-11: shaming tactics, Feb. 2015)
In this series, I'm examining some things that Calvinists (especially my ex-pastor) say about predestination.
Here's the whole series on my other blog: the pastor's sermons ("When Calvinists say 'But predestination!'"), and my comments 1-4 (election) and 5-6 (Romans and sovereignty) and 7-9 (depravity, Book of Life, predestine) and 10-11 (shaming tactics, Feb. 2015) and 12-14 (dead, regeneration, born again) and 15 (total depravity, manipulation) and 16A (God's Will, babies) and 16B (sin, evil, suffering) and 17 (double-speak and the gospel).
Tenth:
Notice throughout these sermons (part 1) all the ways that Calvinists try to shame you into not questioning their interpretation of Scripture, making you feel like those who agree with them are good, humble, God-honoring, truth-affirming Christians, but those who disagree are bad, unhumble, man-centered, Bible-denying, God-fighting Christians.
Their sermons are full of this stuff - deflection, shaming, manipulation, making the bad sound good, gaslighting, non-answers that sound like answers, etc. And they have to resort to this because it's the only way to get good, godly, well-meaning Christians to buy into such contradictory ideas full of terrible implications. [See "The 9 Marks of a Calvinist Cult" for more.]
But it's all just efforts (even if they don't necessarily intend to do these things) to get you to stop asking the tough questions, stop challenging them, stop digging deeper into what they're really saying, and stop thinking about the natural end-results of their teachings (how it ultimately destroys God's character and Word), and to get you to just shut up and accept what they say because that's what "good Christians" do. And "good Christians" don't want their "sinful little selves" getting in the way, do they?
The August 2015 sermon on predestination from my ex-pastor was absolutely overflowing with it:
“... Once you begin to understand [how wicked we are], the question is not ‘Why aren’t more people elect? Why isn’t everyone going to heaven?’ What’s the real question? ‘Why is anybody elect? Why is anybody going to heaven.’" [Not only is this deflection and manipulation and shaming ("remember how wicked you are"), but it's also straw-manning - because non-Calvinists don't believe everyone should go to heaven. We believe that God gives everyone the chance, the offer, to go to heaven, but He leaves it up to us to accept it or reject it. On a different note, Calvinist pastors like him constantly make it seem like we should be very surprised - given our terrible, horrible, no good, very bad condition - that God would love anyone at all. According to Calvinists, we should be shocked in a God who loves, and wants to save, even one depraved sinner. But I have to ask: What kind of a God is that!?! What kind of a God must He be if it shocks us that He loves even one person? We'd be surprised to find out that a cannibalistic serial killer - who tortured, killed, and ate another person every week of his life - has a genuine, merciful, gracious, self-sacrificial love for even one other person. But why should we be shocked that the God of the Bible, who's character is fully demonstrated in our amazing Jesus, loves even one person? Why should we be shocked that a good, compassionate, loving, gracious, merciful God like Him loves and wants to save people, even sinful people? A Calvinist's shock at God's love says worse things about the kind of God they think He is than it does about the sinful people He loves. Leighton Flowers shares something similar in this video (start at the 25-minute-mark) about how, given how compassionate and loving and self-sacrificial Jesus is, we would be shocked to find that God wouldn't be gracious and loving and merciful to even one person: Calvinism and Apologetics DON'T MIX. Watch the whole video; he makes a lot of good, important points.)]
"Why do some sinners believe and some don’t?... This is going to make people in Western culture - where choice is supreme - it’s going to make us uneasy... God has mercy on whom He wants to have mercy, and He hardens whom He wants to harden. That’s a difficult verse in American culture." [As I said, it's manipulation and shaming - because it makes you feel ashamed if you don't like or agree with this "doctrine," like you're just being an unhumble American who refuses to submit to God and His truth because you worship yourself, choice, control, and autonomy. And it's gaslighting - because it makes you feel like because you're one of those Americans, you can't and shouldn't trust your own judgment about this, the red flags you're sensing about what they're teaching. And so if we can't trust our judgment, we'll just have to trust the theological giants of Calvinism, right?]
"But in America – where ‘Have it your way’ is our national slogan and 'choice' always comes out on top of every survey of national values - freedom of choice is the air we breathe. We’re blind to how much it seeps in and is part of us." [And of course, if we're blinded, we can't trust our own ability to think and reason and read the Bible accurately (gaslighting). And so who should we go to for help in understanding the Bible? That's right: our Calvinist pastors and theologians! Just like they want. (So somehow they can understand everything correctly, but the average Christian can't!?! Suspicious. Cult-like. Gnostic.) And it puts Calvinists in a "can't lose" position to teach that those who disagree with them are blinded by prideful desires for control/choice/autonomy - because if we deny it or try to defend ourselves against it, they can just say "See, just like I said: You're blinded by pride and fighting for control, and you don't even realize it." It's one way for controlling, gaslighting, authoritarian narcissists to gain power over us, using our attempts to defend ourselves against us, as support for their position and as proof of their accusations against us.]
"You read a verse like this, and it absolutely almost has a visceral reaction... Honestly, a lot of our visceral reaction to this stuff are emotional reactions, based of family and friends who aren’t saved." [Gaslighting, making us feel like we can't trust our reasoning abilities because our emotions cloud our judgment, trying to convince us that if we disagree with him, the problem is us, not his theology.]
"But on the contrary, election does not make God look bad; it makes God look good." [Gaslighting: "God predestining people to hell is not bad, even though it seems that way to you. If you think it makes Him look bad, your perception is wrong. Trust me."]
"God is infinitely complex, and if God doesn’t give you a headache at times, you’re worshipping the wrong God. If you think you’ve got Him all figured out, you’re worshipping a God of your own imagination." [Translation: "So even though it sounds terrible and makes God look bad, don’t think about it, worry about it, or try to figure it out. Your headaches and confusion about what I'm teaching are good signs that what I'm teaching is truth. The more confused you are, the more true my teachings are. And if you try to examine it too closely or to make sense of it, it's a sign that you're automatically wrong and creating your own truth about God. So just accept what I tell you, like a good, humble, little Christian." How very cult-like! And if this is all it takes to get us to accept a theology that's got such terrible implications and that destroys God's character, there's no limit to what they can manipulate us into believing!]
"Election is designed not for theological debate. It is designed to drive God’s people to their knees in humble thanksgiving and praise to their Maker." ["Don't debate it. Only bad Christians debate it. Just praise God for it."]
"So why does God still blame us if He elects some and not others? The answer from Paul is ‘Who are you, a human being, to talk back to God?’" [It always comes back to this when Calvinists are painted into a corner or run out of acceptable answers. But not only is this deflection, shaming, and manipulation, but it's also an incorrect application of an out-of-context verse. As I pointed out earlier, what Paul is really saying here is "Who are you, Jews, to question God's right to punish you for your resistance to the gospel and to question His right - since you rejected it and didn't want it - to give the gospel and salvation to the Gentiles who do want it?" That's what's being said here. It has nothing to do with God predestining who goes to heaven or hell, or with shutting down any who oppose Calvinist predestination. See this for what Romans 9 is really about.]
"You know what the problem is with the question ‘Why does God blame us if no one can resist His will’? The problem is that embedded in that question is an accusation that somehow God isn’t good because He elects some and not others." [Major manipulative-shaming of anyone who questions Calvinist predestination.]
"There are 3 typical responses whenever the doctrine of predestination is preached: Anger/agitation... avoidance... [or] acceptance." [No disagreement allowed, as also evidenced by when this church removed my comment from the church blog where I disagreed with the pastor's interpretation of predestination. (And later after I called the pastor out for backpedaling after his "babies go to hell" sermon, they stopped allowing comments altogether.)]
"When we see God in His glory in election and predestination, it’s actually a God-entrenched theology that exalts who God is and makes God the center of the universe and not us." [Translation: "If you disagree with my view of predestination, you're hurting God's glory and worshipping man and making yourself the center of the universe. Only those who believe in Calvinist predestination are giving God the glory due Him."]
All of this should make us angry. Really angry. Righteously angry. And notice that nowhere in all this did he give any true, clear, unequivocal biblical support for the Calvinist idea of predestination. It's all just deflection, shaming, gaslighting, and manipulative non-answers, etc. And if that's the best Calvinists can do to defend their worst teachings, then they've got a serious problem! (See "A Calvinist's best defense of their worst doctrine" for more.)
[Also in this sermon, he said "And so therefore election is based on nothing we do."
If this were truly the case, then reprobation would also be based on nothing we do, which means that the non-elect are punished for nothing they did. But Calvinists want it both ways: to say that the elect are chosen for nothing they did, while the non-elect are punished for what they "chose" to do. But they can't have it both ways. If they're going to say that the non-elect's damnation is based on their sins and rejection of Jesus, on what they chose, then they must also say, conversely, that the elect's salvation is based on their repentance and acceptance of Jesus, on what they chose. Or if they're going to say that the elect did nothing to end up in heaven, then they must also say that the non-elect did nothing to end up in hell. These are two sides of the same coin, and they rise or fall together.
And "So remember that everything God does is for His glory. Everything."
This would mean that, for his glory, Calvi-god commands us to not commit evil sins and commands us to believe in him... and yet, for his glory, he preplans/causes us to sin, do evil, and reject him... and then, for his glory, he causes people to fight against the evils and sins he predestined people to do for his glory (child abuse, abortion, spousal abuse, drug addictions, etc.)!?!
All for his glory!
How is that not duplicitous? Schizophrenic? How is that not a divided, two-faced god who works against himself?
And here's what the Bible says about such people:
James 1:8: "A double-minded man [is] unstable in all he does."
Matthew 12:25: "Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand."
And 1 Cor. 14:33 (KJV) says that "God is not the author of confusion."
And yet this is the Calvinist god. How could you ever trust a god like Calvi-god to mean what he says and say what he means? Can you not see what Calvinism does to God's character? Can you not see who is behind a theology that destroys God's character and Word like this?]
Eleventh:
A. He said: "Now your question might be this: 'Why doesn't God draw everybody? And why doesn't He save everybody and open the eyes of every sinner and have mercy on them all?'... He does not. He does not.
And as I said, that's interesting, because John 12:32 says “But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.”
And Romans 11:32 says "For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all."
And John 16:8 says "When [the Holy Spirit] comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment."
God draws all people. He convicts all people. He puts the knowledge of eternity, of Him, in the hearts of all people: "[God] has also set eternity in the hearts of men" (Ecc. 3:11). And He puts enough of Himself in nature that He expects all people to see Him: "since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” (Romans 1:19-20).
And why? "God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us." (Acts 17:27)
Because "...'As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live...'" (Ezekiel 33:11)
And "... He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance." (2 Peter 3:9)
And "This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth." (1 Timothy 2:3-4).
How much clearer could God have been? God gives us every opportunity to know He's real, to seek Him, to find Him. Because He wants us to. All of us. But He gives us the option of ignoring/resisting Him. And many do.
B. The pastor also brought up Lydia to support his idea of election, that God only pursues and regenerates some people. Calvinists believe the verse about Lydia is about God causing Lydia to believe, proving that Calvinist election/predestination/TULIP is true.
But is this what the verse actually says?
Acts 16:14: "One of those listening was a woman named Lydia ... who was a worshipper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul's message."
Notice that nowhere in this verse does it say that God opened her heart to believe. "To believe" is an assumption, added by Calvinists. All it says is that God opened her heart to respond to "Paul's message," but it does not specify what the message was or say that it was the gospel's message of salvation, as Calvinists assume it must be.
In the letter we sent to our elders (before we left the church), I pointed out that Lydia was already a "worshipper of God," already a believer, and so the pastor couldn't use it to prove that God opened her heart to believe. She already believed before her heart was opened by God. But then when the pastor would preach on it after that, he would add something like "Yes, it says she was a worshipper of God, but she was not saved yet. She was not a true believer until God opened her heart."
But where does it say this in the text? Nowhere. He didn't even have a verse to back him up. He just proclaimed it like it was truth.
[He did the same thing with Pharaoh after I pointed out that Pharaoh hardened his own heart first... and then God hardened it, as punishment, making Pharoah's choice permanent. After that, he'd preach something like "Yeah, it says Pharaoh hardened his heart in the first several plagues, but it was really God who hardened it first." No verse to back him up, just his proclamation.]
But he's adding something that isn't there, reinterpreting the Bible to fit Calvinism's idea that a "totally depraved" person can't possibly seek God or believe in Him until God "opens their hearts," and so therefore Lydia couldn't possibly be a true believer of God because God didn't open her heart yet.
Even though the Bible itself said she was a "worshipper of God." (It would be kinda hard to worship something you don't believe in, wouldn't it?)
[Along similar lines, this pastor also recently preached that the people in John 2:23-25 who "saw the miraculous signs [Jesus] was doing and believed in his name" were not true believers. He said that since "Jesus would not entrust himself to them," it proves that they were superficial believers who were not really saved. He said this in a sermon about election, to support Calvinist predestination. So even though a Bible verse says someone believed in Jesus or worshipped God, if this pastor needs to support his Calvinism, he'll simply decide that those people aren't really saved, that they're fake believers, even if there is nothing biblical to back it up other than his own interpretation based on Calvinist presuppositions.]
So then what was Paul's message, if it wasn't the gospel? What did God open her heart about?
I believe it's about the importance of believers getting baptized - because that's the very next thing she does.
And where in the Bible is there support for what I think?
Well, just a few chapters over, actually. What happened to Lydia is probably similar to what happened in Acts 19 when Paul met believers who did not yet have the Holy Spirit because they hadn't been baptized in the name of the Lord but only in John the Baptist's "baptism of repentance." Paul convinced them to be baptized in the name of the Lord to receive the Holy Spirit. (Note: Acts is a transitional time-period as the church was forming, when the Holy Spirit was given to the people "in stages," before it was the standard that He entered each believer at the moment of belief.)
Now pay attention here because this is important: Calvinists say we can't believe until we get the Holy Spirit who regenerates the hearts of the elect to make them believe. This is what the T (Total Depravity/Inability) and the U (Unconditional Election) and the I (Irresistible Grace) of Calvinism's TULIP are based on. This is essential for their theology - that man is so dead and totally depraved inside that we can't possibly seek, want, or believe in Jesus unless and until the Holy Spirit draws the elect with irresistible grace, regenerating their hearts and causing them to believe. All of this has to happen before believing, for Calvinism to be true.
But the Bible itself says these men were believers, but they hadn't yet received the Holy Spirit.
Now how did they do that? How did "totally depraved, unregenerated" people become believers before getting the Holy Spirit?
Do you know how?
Because Calvinism is wrong!
(Though I bet my ex-pastor would simply say that these men were not true believers yet, even though the Bible says they were believers, like he did with Lydia and the believers Jesus would not entrust Himself to.)
We do not get the Holy Spirit to cause us to believe. We believe first, and then we get the Holy Spirit. (More on this later.)
Lydia and these believers-before-receiving-the-Holy-Spirit destroy Calvinism!
And do you know the best part of all this?
The pastor's response itself (saying Lydia was not a believer yet) actually contradicts and defeats Calvinism, when you consider what Calvinists believe.
Because if she was a God-worshipper but not a believer yet - if she was, as Calvinists call all unregenerated people, "totally depraved, desperately wicked, rebellious sinners who can't do good or seek God" - then she was worshipping God before she was regenerated, before God supposedly opened her heart to believe. She was still in her "totally depraved" state, yet she was worshipping God. The highest "good" we can do.
This totally destroys the T (total depravity/inability) in Calvinism's TULIP which says that men are so depraved that they cannot do any good, or understand spiritual things, or want/seek God, unless God regenerates them first. (And if you destroy the T, you destroy it all. See "Is Calvinism's TULIP biblical?")
This verse is a gift to anti-Calvinists because, either way, it effectively destroys Calvinism's TULIP. Either she was a true believer before her heart was "opened" (meaning that her heart "being opened" wasn't about believing) or she was a worshipper of God before she was "regenerated" (meaning that Calvinism's "total depravity/inability" is wrong). Either way, Calvinism falls.
Lydia supports what I believe the Bible teaches: The God guides those who have soft hearts towards Him, helping us know the next steps to take on our journey with Him. Lydia believed in Him, was sensitive to Him and receptive to Him, and wanted to draw closer to Him - and so God "opened her heart" to realize that the next step she needed to take as a believer was to be baptized.
God follows our lead, responding to how we respond to Him. He lets us decide first what to think about Him (He has not predestined our decisions for us), letting us decide if we want to seek/believe/obey Him or if we want to ignore/reject/disobey Him... and then He guides us accordingly. If we want Him, He guides us closer to Him, to truth. But if we don't, He lets us stay hardened against Him and hands us over to our choices. He lets us decide, and then He leads us accordingly. This is what I believe the Bible teaches.
2 Chronicles 15:2: "... The Lord is with you when you are with him. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will forsake you."
James 4:8: "Come near to God and he will come near to you..."
C. He said "The doctrine of election was not designed to cause controversy. It was designed to cause thanksgiving and to cause praise in God's people."
And yet many Calvinists tell stories about how they had to be dragged kicking and screaming into accepting this "doctrine," that they cried in torment over it for a long time before finally submitting to it (after immersing themselves in Calvinist writings for many months, of course, educating themselves into it).
But why would God "ordain" that His "elect" be in torment over a supposedly beautiful, God-glorifying, praise-inducing "doctrine" for so long after He "regenerated" them?
If a "doctrine" like that is so hard to accept, so confusing, so contradictory, so terrifying that Calvinists fiercely resist it at first, so incredibly upsetting that they sob over it, and so unclear that they must spend months reading Calvinist literature to be convinced of it... then it's because it's wrong!
And their resistance to it at first was the Holy Spirit's way of telling them "Don't go there! It's unbiblical!"
But they didn't listen to the warnings of the Spirit or heed the red flags, and they chose instead to plunge headlong into Calvinist theology, accepting the help of Calvinists to teach them how to read the Bible in a Calvinist way. (Because Calvinists made them think it's the intelligent, humble and God-honoring thing to do!)
And, consequently, they grew more and more hardened in their beliefs and become unable to see the plain, simple truths of Scripture anymore. It's tragic. (And it's even more tragic that they took the Church, the gospel, and many other people down with them.)
D. "The Bible's teaching on our human condition especially outside of Christ [is that we are] hopelessly blinded and in slavery to sin unless God graciously opens human sinful eyes and summons them to Himself as Lord... That's the gospel: That there is a God who seeks hardened sinners, pursues them, turns them around, drags them to Himself, blesses them, pardons them, and justifies them."
Likewise, here's something he said in a more recent sermon: "Tim Keller [Calvinist!] says this: 'If someone is saved, it is wholly God's doing. It is not a matter of God saving you partly and you partly saving yourself. No! God saves us. We do not and cannot save ourselves. That is the gospel.' And that is the message of Jonah: Only God elects. Only God sovereignly draws. Only God sovereignly convicts us of sin. Only God sovereignly opens blinded eyes."
Firstly: Non-Calvinists aren't saying we saved ourselves. We're saying we willingly accepted the sacrifice Jesus made to save us. "Willing accepting what Jesus did to save us" is not "saving ourselves," except in Calvinism.
And secondly: Oh my goodness, no! The gospel is not that God preplans/chooses whom to save, that He causes them (and only them) to believe and be saved, and that we have no influence or choice over whether or not we are saved - which is what Keller and my ex-pastor (and all Calvinists) are saying. (See "A Tale of Two Gospels" for more on this. If they can find even one verse that defines the gospel this way, I'll believe them.)
The gospel is not the Calvinist TULIP.
Biblically, the gospel is (my succinct paraphrase) "Jesus died for our sins and rose again so that we could believe in Him and be saved."
That is the gospel!
1 Cor. 15:3-4: "For what I received I passed onto you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day, according to the Scriptures,"
John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."
Do you see anywhere in there the idea that God picks who to save, drags them to Him, and causes them to believe, and that no one else can believe?
I didn't think so.
How about in these:
John 1:29: “… ‘Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the whole world.”
1 Timothy 2:3-6: "This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, who gave himself as a ransom for all men..."
Titus 2:11: "For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men."
Romans 5:18: "Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men."
Romans 3:23-24: "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Jesus Christ."
Romans 11:32: "For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all."
Ezekiel 33:11: "Say to them, 'As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live..."
2 Peter 3:9: "... He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance."
1 Timothy 4:10: "... that we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, and especially of those who believe."
Acts 2:38: "Peter replied, 'Repent and be baptized every one of you ...'"
Romans 10:9: "That if you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved."
John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."
Romans 10:13: "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."
Nope, not in those either.
The gospel is not just good news for Calvinism's elected people; it's good news for all. It's the promise that Jesus died for all sins of all people and so anyone can be saved if they believe in Him.
And this is far different than the gospel according to Calvinism: "Jesus died for some of you - the elect - and if you're elect then you're predestined to heaven and God will make believe. But the rest of you are non-elect - hopelessly lost, created for hell, predestined to reject Jesus for God's glory - and there's nothing you can do about it because Jesus didn't die for you anyway."
If someone can't even get the simple gospel right, then they have no business being a pastor.
Like Paul said, "of first importance." If someone cannot understand the "first important" message, then they should be disqualified from teaching God's Word.
[Calvinists acts like Calvinism is the minor, secondary issue - and so we shouldn't debate or divide over it - but this is a total deception (lie!) meant to silence the opposition while they covertly spread their Calvinism. Spurgeon got it right: To Calvinists, Calvinism IS the gospel. So do you really think they would ever consider it a minor, secondary issue not worth spreading or fighting for?]
