"But Calvinists don't say God causes sin and evil!"

 If you point out to Calvinists that Calvinism's view of sovereignty - that God fore-ordains and orchestrates everything that happens and we had no ability to do anything differently - makes God the cause (and truly the only voluntary cause) of all sin and evil, they'll probably respond with something like "That's not what we're saying.  You're putting words in our mouths.  And you don't understand Calvinism."  

When they do that, show them a few of these quotes - Calvinists' own words about their beliefs of God's sovereignty and how He preplans, will, ordains, orchestrates, directs (code words for "causes") everything that happens.  And then ask them if they still think you're really misunderstanding them.  (Bold emphasis added)

[And before reading the quotes, here's a great, satirical 4-minute video that I think everyone should see: Hitler and Calvinism.  Awesome!]

1. R.C. Sproul Jr. (Almighty Over All): “God wills all things that come to pass"

[Okay, I'm gonna start off by addressing this one, then I'll get to more quotes.  I think one huge way Calvinists go wrong is that they misunderstand "God's Will."  They assume that God's Will must always happen, that He always gets what He wants, and so therefore everything that happens is "His Will," what He wanted and planned and caused.

But they are wrong.  Biblically, when it comes to our lives and choices, God's Will isn't about preplanning/wanting/causing everything that happens.  (Yes, God has some overarching plans for mankind that He will work out one way or another, but He does this by incorporating our choices, not preplanning/causing them.  He causes all things to work together - not preplans/causes all things - to fulfill His overarching plans.)  

But according to Strong's Concordance/HELPS Word-studies, "God's Will" - especially in verses talking about what He wants for us and from us - is about His “desire/preferred Will; His 'best offer' to people which can be accepted or rejected; the result hoped for with the particular desire/wish.”  It's about what God desires for us and from us, not about a pre-set plan that must happen.  

God has desires/opinions about how He wants us to live, what He wants for us, and how He wants to bless us and use us in His plans.  But He does not force it.  He tells us what He wants and expects, but He lets us choose to obey or disobey.  He lets us decide if we are in His Will or not, if we fulfill His Will or not.  This explains how His Will doesn't always happen (such as His Will/desire that all people are saved, that we give thanks in all circumstances, that all orphans and widows are taken care of, etc.).  And so not everything that happens is "His Will" or what He wanted.  Many bad things happen because we resist/refuse/disobey His Will.  

Calvinism's misunderstanding of what "God's Will" means has led to massive errors in their theology, massive errors in their understanding of why things happen, how things get done, what God's role/responsibility is, what our role/responsibility is, who Jesus died for, and how we get to heaven.  (As you'll see in the following comments.)  

And it's done an enormous amount of damage to people's hearts and faith, especially when they're told by Calvinists that "It's God's Will" that they were mistreated, abused, cheated on, divorced, hurt by others, that they got cancer or a disease, that their children were injured or handicapped, that they lost their job or lost their home in a natural disaster, and other things like that.  

No!  While I agree that God can cause some "bad" things to happen for a reason (but never sin or evil - it's not sin for God to cause something like a storm, but it is sin for Him to cause people to break His commands), I think most bad things happen not because God wanted/willed/planned it, but because He has allows people to have the free-will to make decisions (even bad, hurtful ones) that affect things, and He has allows demons and angels to make decisions that affect things, and He allows natural processes to run their courses within boundaries (which means that sometimes nature goes wrong, cells go wrong, wind currents go wrong, etc.).  There are a bunch of factors that affect why things happen that have nothing to do with "God willed/planned/ordained/wanted/caused it."  

So it's not that God is controlling or causing it all, but it's that He gave us, demons/angels, and nature an awful lot of freedom to move and make decisions within boundaries.  And so things will go wrong sometimes, against His Will.  And the responsibility for things going wrong lies with us, Satan/demons, and the disruption of natural processes, not with God.  

But, of course, He is still over and above it all.  He is watching over it all, deciding what to allow or not allow, when to intervene and when to not, and how to work good out of it all, even things He didn't plan/want/will/cause.  

(I know that believing He allowed bad things can be just as devastating to people as thinking He caused it.  But at least it means that He didn't plan or want the pain/tragedy/injustice for us and that He takes no pleasure in it.  At least it's because of the freedoms He gave us and nature, not because He wanted, planned, caused it.  At least it means people are responsible for their sins, and not God.  Because if God's responsible for sin and evil - if He causes people to commit the sins He told them not to commit and then He punishes them for it - He cannot be trusted.  And so to whom then could we go to for help or comfort when the tragedies hit us?  Calvinism's god is not a god to trust or love or feel truly loved by.  But the true God of the Bible who didn't want/plan/cause sin and evil, but who simply allows people to make their own bad decisions, can still be trusted.  He is not the cause of the sin or evil.  He did not want that sin or evil.  And so we can trust Him.  We can trust that He hurt with us, that He will bring something good out of it, and that He will dish out justice in the end against those who do evil and who sinned against us.  Because they chose to do it, against His Will.

This is just my two cents.  Keep it in mind as you read the following comments about Calvinism's view of who's truly responsible for all sin and evil.]

2. Ligonier Ministries ("How is God's sovereignty compatible with man's responsibility?"): "We have to understand that God is sovereign over all.  He orchestrates all things.  He foreordains all things that come to pass."

3. J.I. Packer ("Predestination: God has a purpose"): "Predestination is a word often used to signify God’s foreordaining of all the events of world history, past, present, and future."

4. John Calvin (Institutes, book 3, chapter 23): "... it is impossible to deny that God foreknew what the end of man was to be before he made him, and foreknew, because he so ordained by his decree."

5. Gordon H. Clark (Predestination): “[Some people] do not wish to extend God’s power over evil things, and particularly over moral evils… [But] the Bible therefore explicitly teaches that God creates sin.”

6. A.W. Pink in Doctrine of Election: "Man is a moral agent, acting according to the desires and dictates of his nature: he is at the same time a creature, fully controlled and determined by his Creator."  [In Calvinism, the desires of man's nature were determined by God, and man cannot change his nature but must act out those desires.  This is how Calvinists can deceptively say "Man 'chooses' what he 'wants' to do, man 'willingly' sins because he 'wants' to sin," even though Calvi-god predetermined, caused, orchestrated it all.]

7. John MacArthur ("Doctrine of Election, part 1"): "You’re guilty.  You’re culpable.  You did it.  You did it with your own will.  But God had predetermined it would be done.  It was set in his predetermined plan and foreknowledge.  That is to predetermine, to foreknow, is not simply to have information about what’s going to happen, but to predetermine it."

8. Edwin Palmer (The Five Points of Calvinism): “All things that happen in all the world at any time and in all history… come to pass because God ordained them.  Even sin– the fall of the devil from heaven, the fall of Adam, and every evil thought, word, and deed in all of history… Foreordination means God’s sovereign plan, whereby He decides all that is to happen in the entire universe… He decides and causes all things to happen that do happen... He has foreordained everything… even sin...”

9. John MacArthur (Divine Providence: The Supreme Comfort of a Sovereign God): "Well of course; [God] controls everything.  He’s in complete control of evil.  The devil is God’s devil; he’s totally controlled by God.  The world is controlled by God.  Every single movement, as R.C. said, of every molecule is controlled by God, and a whole lot of it is evil." 

And more John MacArthur (Doctrine of Election, part 1), along the same lines: "In Revelation 19 we are told the Lord God reigns... What does it mean?  It means he makes every decision that’s ever been made, essentially, about everything.... He is the decider and determiner of every person’s destiny, and the controller of every detail of every individual’s life."

10. From my ex-pastor's November 2019 sermon about Job (he started this sermon with a true-life story of a young father who died early of cancer): "God is in full control of His universe, including suffering and tragedy... God allows and appoints suffering for His own good reasons... God allows-slash-appoints tragic disasters.  These are really two sides of one coin.  Saying 'God allowed it' is too soft.  God clearly is orchestrating what is going on here [Job's tragedies]... and He ordains suffering for His own good reasons... God is running the universe, and He knows what He's doing, even if we're absolutely confused and grieving at the moment... God ultimately allowed and orchestrated these disasters... [and] in the end [Satan] will find out he did exactly as God sovereignly decreed, under God's sovereign decree."  [In Calvinism, God first preplanned it, and then He "allows" it.  That's not true "allows."]

11. John Calvin (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God): “... how foolish and frail [it is to suggest] that evils come to be, not by His will but by His permission... It is a quite frivolous refuge to say that God otiosely permits them, when Scripture shows Him not only willing, but the author of them... Again it is quite clear from the evidence of Scripture that God works in the hearts of men to incline their wills just as he will, whether to good for his mercy's sake, or to evil according to their merits... Of all the things which happen, the first cause is to be understood to be His will, because He so governs the natures created by Him, as to determine all the counsels and the actions of men to the end decreed by Him..."

12. John Calvin (Institutes of the Christian Religion, book 1, chapters 16-17): 

"everything done in the world is according to His decree"

... “the counsels and wills of men are so governed as to move exactly in the course which he has destined"

... "the devil, and the whole train of the ungodly, are, in all directions, held in by the hand of God as with a bridle, so that they can neither conceive any mischief, nor plan what they have conceived, nor how much soever they may have planned, move a single finger to perpetrate, unless in so far as [God] permits - nay, unless in so far as he commands"

... "...God claims for himself the right of governing the world... [his will is] the most perfect cause of all things..."  

13. Parsons, Ligonier Ministries ("How is God's sovereignty compatible with man's responsibility?"): "We have to understand that God is sovereign over all.  He orchestrates all things.  He foreordains all things that come to pass... God ordains the ends of all things as well as the means of those ends... He ordains our works, our deeds, what we do, what we say, what we believe, and the ends of those things... God is ultimately the One orchestrating all things.  He is permitting, but He is permitting 'not by a bare permission' as the Westminster Confession states... Does God sovereignly, in some mysterious way, permit us to sin (though not by a bare permission)?  Absolutely."  ["Not by bare permission" means that God doesn't just allow us to make truly free-will choices.  He doesn't merely foreknow and allow what we will choose.  But it's that He only "permits" us to do what He first decreed/ordained us to do.  This is why it's not "bare permission," mere permission, but "permission" of only that which He pre-planned and orchestrates.] 

14. Erwin Lutzer (this quote was found at Examining Calvinism): "Calvinists pointedly admit that God ordains evil... we can say that God permitted evil, as long as we understand that he thereby willed that the evil happen... In a word, what God permits, he ordains." (The Doctrines That Divide, pg. 210)

15. Tom Hicks (Founders Ministries, "The Nature of God's Eternal Decree"): "God knows the future because He decrees the future."

16. Wayne Grudem (Systematic Theology): "[Some people say] that if our choices are real, they cannot be caused by God... [But] It seems better to affirm that God causes all things that happen but that he does so in such a way that He somehow upholds our ability to make willing, responsible choices that have real and eternal results for which we are held accountable."  ["Willing, responsible choices" does not mean "free-will choices" or "voluntary choices between possible options".  It just means "choices we 'wanted' to make because God created us with a Will that could only desire to make those choices, and yet there will be real consequences and we will be punished for them, even though He predestined/caused us to do them.  As Grudem affirms, "Just as a rock is really hard because God has made it with the property of hardness, just as water is really wet because God has made it with the property of wetness, just as plants are really alive because God has made them with the property of life, so our choices are real choices with significant effects because God has made us in such a wonderful way that he has endowed us with the property of willing choice."  All this hogwash means is that just as the rock, water, and plants had no control over or choice about how they were created and which properties they had, we have no control over or choice about the "willing choices" we make.  They are not "free-will" choices; they're just the choices we "wanted" to make, were "willing" to make, because Calvi-god created us to be willing to make those choices - and only those choices - giving us no ability to change the desires of our wills.  In Calvinism, we don't control our Wills, but our Wills - our God-determined Wills - control us.]  

17. From my ex-pastor's April 22, 2018 sermon: "Nothing is operating outside of His sovereign decree.  That means that nothing happens in the universe, not even in the origin of sin and evil, without God not only allowing it but ordaining it."

18. From my ex-pastor's July 2023 sermon on Hosea: "[The minor prophets emphasize] God's sovereignty, His absolute reign and jurisdiction, His ordaining of all things that come to pass, for His glory, over the nations, over rulers, over world events, and over our lives, that God foreordains anything that comes to pass..."

19. Jeff Durbin, talking to a woman about evils like gang rape (see clips of it in this review: The Madness of Calvinism, and the full video here: Jeff Durbin Answering 'The Problem of Evil'.): “God actually has a morally sufficient reason for all the evil He plans… nothing happens in the universe apart from His will… He actually decrees all things."

20. Theodore Zachariades (as seen in this clip from Soteriology 101): "God works all things after the counsel of His will, even keeping those kings who want to commit adultery from committing so... and when He wants to, He orders those to commit adultery when HE WANTS TO!"

21. Gordon H. Clark (Religion, Reason, and Revelation): “I wish very frankly and pointedly to assert that if a man gets drunk and shoots his family, it was the will of God that he should do it… Let it be unequivocally said that this view certainly makes God the cause of sin. God is the sole ultimate cause of everything…”

22. James White, in answer to the question: “When a child is raped, is God responsible and did He decree that rape?”, says "... Yes, [He decreed it] because if not, then it's meaningless and purposeless..."     

23. Vincent Cheung (The Problem of Evil): "Scripture teaches that God's will determines everything.  Nothing exists or happens without God, not merely permitting, but actively willing it to exist or happen … God controls not only natural events, but he also controls all human affairs and decisions… God controls everything that is and everything that happens.  There is not one thing that happens that he has not actively decreed – not even a single thought in the mind of man.  Since this is true, it follows that God has decreed the existence of evil, he has not merely permitted it, as if anything can originate and happen apart from his will and power."

24. John Calvin said this in Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God: "... God may be free of guilt in doing the very thing that He condemns in Satan and the reprobate and which is to be condemned by men... For what man wickedly perpetrates, incited by ambition or avarice or lust or some other depraved motive, since God does it by His hand with a righteous though perhaps hidden purpose - this cannot be equated with the term sin.  Sin in man is made by perfidy, cruelty, pride, intemperance, envy, blind love of self, any kind of depraved lust.  Nothing like this is to be found in God." [Translation: "Our motives and natures determine if it's sin or not.  And so what's sin for man and Satan is not sin for God because He doesn't have our sin nature and because the evils He ordains flow from His good character and pure motives, which makes it okay for Him, but not for us."  What kind of bull-dung is this!?!  I mean, seriously!?!]

25. From a Soteriology 101 post called "Frustrated by the state of the world?", non-Calvinist Fromoverhere asked: "But in Calvinism, yesterday's abortion was what God wanted or it would not have happened.  Simple question to you Calvinists: Were yesterday's abortions in your city what God wanted?"

The Calvinist Filemon responded with “The answer is Yes... Now using the negative logic, I ask you, ‘If God hadn’t wanted this abortion to happen, do you think it would ever have happened?’  And as evil as it is, the abortion was no more evil than the death of Jesus, which was the worst sin ever committed on earth.  And I ask you, ‘Who did plan this death and who controlled everything and everybody to fulfil His plan?’"  [Hmm, sounds to me like he's admitting God causes sin.  And notice that he calls what Calvinism's god wanted "evil," and so what does that say about Calvinism's god?  And for the record, God can work our self-made decisions into His plans without preplanning/causing/controlling our decisions.  Only in Calvinism does He have to control our decisions in order to make His plans work out.]

Rhutchin (another Calvinist) affirms Filemon: “Even Fromoverhere knows that God is always present at every abortion and has the power to stop any abortion at any time.  It is God’s choice to have the abortion continue, and because God chooses for the abortion to continue, we say that the abortion was God’s will.  Calvinists say that God made this decision before He created the world so that it was part of His decree to create.”  [A false inference Calvinists make: that because God didn't stop an evil, it means He wanted it and planned it.  It's bad theology built on their bad presuppositions and incorrect definitions of things like sovereignty, God's Will, etc.]

26. From my ex-pastor's August 2022 sermon on suffering and God's love: "[Atheists] argue that the sheer amount of suffering, brutality, carnage, violence, and misery on our planet rule out a loving God... [But] what is the Bible's perspective on God and suffering?... God is all-wise, all-knowing, and all-powerful, and He doesn't owe us any explanations... [God's] providence means He's all-powerful, all-wise, and He governs all things... But providence is more than God just having advanced knowledge... God's providence means His sovereign, wise leading and active directing of all things for His glory, and of all events, everything, the good, the bad, and the ugly." 

27. Mark Talbot/John Piper (from Suffering and the Sovereignty of God, page 42-44, 70-77): "God brings about all things in accordance with his will.  It isn’t just that God manages to turn the evil aspects of our world to good for those that love him; it is rather that he himself brings about these evil aspects… This includes God’s having even brought about the Nazi’s brutality at Birkenau and Auschwitz as well as the terrible killings of Dennis Nadar and even the sexual abuse of a young child... God speaks and then brings his word to pass; he purposes and then does what he has planned.  Nothing that exists falls outside of God's ordaining will.  Nothing, including no evil person or thing or event or deed.  God's foreordination is the ultimate reason why everything comes about, including the existence of all evil persons and things and the occurrence of any evil acts or events.  And so it is not inappropriate to take God to be the creator, the sender, the permitter, and sometimes even the instigator of evil.

... In summary, this means that we should affirm the age-old Christian doctrine of God’s complete providence over all.  God has sovereignly ordained, from before the world began, everything that happens in our world... It should be beyond all doubt that no one suffers anything at anyone else’s hand without God having ordained that suffering.  

During his first hour or so in Birkenau, Elie Wiesel saw the notorious Joseph Mengele...casually directing [people] either to his left, so that they went immediately to the gas chambers, or to his right to the forced-labor camp.  In seeing Mengele, Wiesel was seeing a very evil man whom, nevertheless, God was actively sustaining and governing, nanosecond by nanosecond, through his evil existence.  And we can be sure that, from before time began, God had ordained that at that place those moments would be filled with just those persons, doing and suffering exactly as they did... that he actually brought the whole situation about, guiding and governing and carrying it by his all-powerful and ever-effectual word to where it would accomplish exactly what he wanted it to do.  

[Footnote: Mengele was a medical doctor who was nicknamed 'The Angel of Death.'  He carried out unspeakable experiments on some of his prisoners, including injecting chemicals into childrens’ eyes in an attempt to change their eye color from brown to the preferred Aryan blue.  He would visit the children, acting kindly and bringing them candy and clothing in order to keep them calm and happy, and then transport them in what looked like a Red Cross truck or in his personal vehicle to his laboratory beside the crematoria where he would perform his horrible experiments and then burn their bodies.  He specialized in experiments involving identical twins.  He was intrigued to see if he could make them differ genetically by, among other horrors, performing sex-change operations on one of them or removing one twin’s limbs or organs in macabre surgical procedures that were performed without the use of anesthesia and that had no scientific basis or value.]  

... Even though he ordains all of our free sinful choices, those sinful choices still 'count' and we are held responsible for them.... In ordaining the evil works of others, he himself does no wrong, 'upright and just is he.'... We can be sure, as Scripture confirms, that God has made everything for its purpose, even evil persons like Joseph Mengele or Dennis Rader.  We can be sure that God has made our lives’ most evil moments as well as their best.... 

... I myself find it very difficult to understand how [God can ordain evil for our good] with some of the worst things that human beings do, like sexually abusing young children or raping or torturing someone mercilessly.  And, of course, something much less horrible than these sorts of things can happen to us and still leave us wondering how God could be ordaining it for our good.  I have seen marriages break apart after thirty-five years and felt to some degree the grief and utter discombobulation of the abandoned spouse.  I have watched tragedies unfold that seem to remove all chance for any more earthly happiness.... Many of us have tasted such grief....Yet these griefs have been God’s gifts.... [And in the end, when we see Jesus face-to-face] we will see that God has indeed done all that he pleased and has done it all perfectly, both for his glory and our good..."

28. From my ex-pastor's August 2015 sermon about God "ordaining" suffering: "[Some people] say that evil and suffering are the result of [free-will choices]... [But] God is in full control of every detail of the universe, including the suffering, evil, and tragedy in our lives.  [When Calvinists say "God is in control of everything," they mean "God controls everything," which is very different.]

... [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.'

... 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, or trials or difficulties or illness or disease or betrayal?... 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 answer why" is another way of saying "God might tell you why He deliberately did it to you."]

... 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.'... 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.'"  [Brilliant manipulative-shaming!  So first he tells people that God preplanned and caused them to be abused or cheated on, and then he shames them for being upset about it, accusing them of sinning against God.]  

29. From my ex-pastor's 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... directly reflects what [you] really believe about God deep down inside... 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... 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.  ["Using" evil people is one thing, but controlling evil people is another, and that's exactly what Calvinism teaches.]... God is orchestrating events and He's still sovereign over the process... 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."  [Translation: "So your tragedies - even childhood abuse - were deliberately orchestrated by God on purpose, for His glory, for your good, and to humble you, so that you can become the person God wants you to be."  Hogwash!]

30. From my ex-pastor's September 13, 2020 sermon on God being in control:"[The doctrine of God's providence] is a huge source of comfort to the people of God because it is a regular reminder that whatever's going on in our lives, even if it's painful, it is being directed by an all-knowing, good and loving and wise heavenly Father, who does everything for His children out of His love.

["Good" - as in "He's a good God" - loses all meaning when it looks and acts just like evil.]

... [But] God will punish those who do the evil to us.  God will punish them.  The Bible serves us notice that no matter what God's Will might be for the decisions and choices of others and how those choices impact our lives [Translation: "no matter what God preplanned, orchestrates, directs, causes others to do to you..."], that in the end, all human beings are accountable for their moral choices and what they do to other people... In other words, there are times when God will seem to will things in one direction...but then it 'appears' God wills something in the exact opposite direction simultaneously.  Here we come to something that theologians throughout history call 'the two wills of God' [unbiblical!]...meaning that when God wills something on one level, He will appear to will its opposite on another level at the same exact time.  [And yet Calvinists trust a dishonest, double-minded, self-opposing god like this!?!]... Do you find it strangely comforting that God's ways are mysterious?"

31. And let's see what Calvinist John Piper's "brilliant" advice is about how we should respond to the evil things that God "ordains" (from this article): "How can we hate what is evil if God has ordained it to happen?  You hate what God wills to happen if he wills that you hate what he wills to happen.  God might will something precisely so that you would hate it... We must be careful not to oversimplify things to where we can't hate something and be thankful for it at the same time.  You can hate something and consider it evil and yet still see it as an expression of God's will."  

32. And some more garbage from John Piper ("What is the will of God and how do we know it?"): "... God is sovereign over all things and yet disapproves of many things.  Which means that God disapproves of some of what he ordains to happen.  That is, he forbids some of the things he brings about.  And he commands some of the things he hinders.  [And yet Calvinists trust a god like that!?!]  Or to put it most paradoxically: God wills some events in one sense that he does not will in another sense.... That’s the first meaning of the will of God: It is God’s sovereign control of all things.  We will call this his 'sovereign will' or his 'will of decree.'  It cannot be broken.  It always comes to pass. ... For example, if you were badly abused as a child, and someone asks you, 'Do you think that was the will of God?' you now have a way to make some biblical sense out of this, and give an answer that doesn’t contradict the Bible.  You may say, 'No it was not God’s will; because he commands that humans not be abusive, but love each other.  The abuse broke his commandment and therefore moved his heart with anger and grief.  But, in another sense, yes, it was God’s will (his sovereign will), because there are a hundred ways he could have stopped it.  But for reasons I don’t yet fully understand, he didn’t.'... But in fact we should not approve of sin or do it, even though it is part of God’s sovereign will."

33. Ligonier Ministries ("Vessels of destruction"): "As Christians in the Reformed tradition, we affirm the biblical view of providence that affirms the world is governed by God’s sovereign ordination... The length of our lives, the color of our hair, your reading of this magazine, and everything else that ever happens was decreed by God."

34. R.C. Sproul in "Discerning God's will: The three wills of God: "[In Calvinism/reformed theology] Whatever God 'permits' He sovereignly and efficaciously wills to permit... He will only permit me to do my worst if my worst coincides with His perfect providential plan."

35. Wayne Grudem (Systematic Theology, pg. 331): "... we confess that we do not understand how it is that God can ordain that we carry out evil deeds and yet hold us accountable for them and not be blamed himself.... Scripture does not tell us."  [They can't understand it because their theology is garbage!]

36. J.I. Packer (Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God): “[God] orders and controls all things, human actions among them…He [also] holds every man responsible for the choices he makes and the courses of action he pursues… Man is a responsible moral agent, though he is also divinely controlled... To our finite minds, of course, the thing is inexplicable.”

37. John Piper ("Has God Predetermined Every Tiny Detail in the Universe, Including Sin?"): “Has God predetermined every tiny detail in the universe, such as dust particles in the air and all of our besetting sins? Yes… Yes, every horrible thing and every sinful thing is ultimately governed by God… He controls everything, and he does it for his glory and our good.”

No wonder there are so many atheists out there!  What do you expect when people are taught that this is what God's really like!?!

38. Jonathan Edwards ("Remarks on Important Theological Controversies, Chapter III"): "It cannot be any injustice in God to determine who is certainly to sin, and so certainly to be damned... God has decreed every action of men, yea, every action that is sinful, and every circumstance of those actions... It can be made evident by reason, that nothing can come to pass, but what it is the will and pleasure of God should come to pass... It is a contradiction to say, he wills it, and yet does not choose it..."  [If you read this work of Edwards, you'll see it's a bunch of philosophical ramblings, one bad idea leading to another.  And yet Calvinists claim that Calvinism is all right from the Bible and that they don't use philosophy or "human logic" to determine truth.  (Hahaha, good joke!)]  

39. From my ex-pastor's March 2014 sermon about finding hope in hard times: “God is on the throne!  Random evil doesn’t just happen to people... God is in control of each aspect of every detail... 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 means, friends, that there is no such thing as random evil or random acts of tragedy.... 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!?!”  [No!  Not Amen!  Not with the way Calvinists define sovereignty.]

40. John MacArthur again, in "Why does God allow so much suffering?": "He's absolutely in charge of everything.  Everything.  He controls everything... He is governing history in every minute detail.  There's not one molecule in the universe that's out of line with His purposes.... So, while liberal theology and assorted other so-called evangelicals [hear the insult, discrediting those who don't see it his way] feel desperately the need to rescue God from [being the cause of evil and suffering], God is quite content to make it clear that He is, in fact, unhesitatingly sovereign over everything that exists, without a hint of reluctance.  He's not asking to be rescued from bad press that's fallen upon Him because He's been blamed for all the bad things that are in the world... He's content to leave the responsibility for evil's existence and even its action, with Himself... God wills evil to exist.... Again, and again, God takes full responsibility for the existence of evil unfolding in this world.... The reason God ordained evil is for His glory.  We praise Him because of what He has done to overcome evil."  [Uhh, so we praise Him for "overcoming" the evil that He Himself planned and caused (isn't that a little schizophrenic, duplicitous, and self-defeating?), the evil He preplanned us to do, but then commanded us not to do, but then causes us to do, and then punishes us for!?!]

... You either believe in the God who is in complete control of evil, or you believe evil is in control of God, and He's reacting to it the best He can.  [First of all, he means that God controls evil, not just is "in control" of evil, which is very different.  And second of all, it's a false dichotomy to say that God must control evil or else evil would control Him, as if those are the only two possible options.] 

41. From my ex-pastor's December 8, 2024 sermon about evil leaders: "[The early church believers] knew [God] was in control... even when they saw evil leaders doing evil things... They knew He was in control of even over the choices of evil leaders.  He was guiding them to do His Will.... you might wonder 'How can these people be guilty when it says right here that all the evil things they did, it was God's plan.'  [Martin] Luther says 'God is good and cannot do evil, but He uses evil men who cannot escape the impulse and movement of His power.  [And yet Calvinists cry "But we don't say people are robots controlled by God!"  Hogwash!]  And yet when they do the very evil they're planning after being moved by God, it's they're fault, not His.'"  [But biblically, God didn't plan to make them be evil or do evil.  He just foreknew they would be evil people who wanted to do evil things, and so He planned to put it to good use, incorporating their self-chosen evil into His plans.]

42. And finally, from my ex-pastor's June 2022 sermon about Joseph and forgiveness: "Today we are going to be talking about one of the hardest things a human being can be called on to do, and that is to forgive someone who's abused them.  Some of you have been horrifically abused and treated horribly by somebody.  All of us have been betrayed at some point in our life, intentionally targeted, treated unjustly, someone has been cruel to us.  And the question is 'How do you forgive them?'... And here's the key: My choice at that point - how I choose to respond to someone who has abused me - shows what I really think about God... All of our bitterness is ultimately traceable to resentment of God.  Why?  Because it was God who brought these circumstances into our lives in the first place, painful as they may be... And if I'm going to say 'I will not forgive this person. I'm going to hold it over their head,' then what I'm saying is 'No matter what You decided, Lord, no matter how You arranged this, You're the one that's guilty.  And I am bitter and resentful towards God.'... God is fully sovereign and in control, and He is good," [Calvinists have a very weird definition of "good"!]

I mean, seriously, what's there to misunderstand here!?!

In Calvinism, God "ordained, foreordained, predetermined, determines, orchestrates, directs, controls, creates, wills, wants, instigates, arranges, plans, carries out" all sin and evil. 

All of these other words are to say "God is the author and causer of sin and evil" without actually having to say "God is the author and causer of sin and evil."

Imagine a man saying "Well, I routinely pick up a baseball bat and whack my wife in the head with it until she passes out all black-and-blue."  But when you say, "Oh, so you abuse your wife," he replies "No, I never said I abuse her.  You're putting words in my mouth." 

So yes, Calvinists are telling the truth: They usually don't say that God causes sin and evil.  The more honest ones do, but most are smart enough to not come right out and say it because they know it will alarm people and invite resistance and pushback.  And so they teach it in other less-obvious, less-alarming ways, using every other word they can think of, hoping that we'll believe that they're not teaching what they really are.  

As the Calvinist's beloved Westminster Confession of Faith says: "God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin."  

But merely claiming that your theology doesn't make God the author/causer of sin doesn't mean your theology really doesn't make God the author/causer of sin, any more than a man claiming he's not abusing his wife while hitting her with a baseball bat means he's really not abusing his wife.  It's hogwash!  Deceptive hogwash.  (And it's lawyer tricks, which is right up John Calvin's alley.)  

Sadly, most Christians in the church don't know to be alarmed by or on alert for (or how to identify) the Calvinism that's seeping into their church, often deceptively and strategically, through stealth Calvinist pastors who say one thing but mean another.  

And because it takes too much time and effort for us to double-check what our pastors are teaching us... and because they sound so educated and confident and forceful... and because they went to seminary and visited Israel and can understand Greek and have giant theology books on their shelves... and because they call themselves "biblical" and claim to have a "high view of Scripture" and "a God-centered theology" and to be preaching "right from the Bible"... and because we're unaware of their bad definitions and twisted use of Scripture and their secondary layers underneath the surface layers... and because we don't want to be a "biblically-ignorant, unhumble, God-dishonoring, glory-stealing, divisive troublemaker" like those "bad Christians" who disagree with their Calvinist pastors... we just nod our heads and say "Sounds good" and go along with it.  (Which is exactly what they want.)

Calvinist pastors and theologians must think we're idiots, easily-manipulated idiots who will easily accept whatever contradictions they come up with and their claims of "But we're not saying that!  You don't understand!"  (However, seeing as how effectively Calvinism has taken over many good, well-meaning Christians and churches... hmm, I wonder😏.) 

In fact, I think the deceptive tactics of Calvinism are so strong and effective that Calvinists have even tricked themselves into thinking that they're not teaching what they really are.  So they're not necessarily trying to be deceptive for deception's sake.  They truly believe it because they've handed their sense-making skills over to a persuasive Calvinist and allowed themselves to be spoon-fed garbage.

And now they're spoon-feeding it to others - shaming other trusting Christians into ignoring our red flags and alarm bells, gaslighting us into distrusting our judgment and our ability to understand the Bible, manipulating us into reading the Bible through Calvinist lenses, tricking us into thinking that Calvinism's contradictions are really just "mysteries we can't understand on this side of eternity anyways, so don't question it or try to understand it," and bullying us into being silent and falling in line with everyone else by convincing us that "good, God-honoring, humble Christians don't pushback against what they're being taught but simply accept it, even if they can't understand it and think it sounds bad."  

And many of us have fallen for it and swallowed Calvinism's deceptive, disgusting, destructive theology hook, line, and sinker, without pushback, which is why it's taken over so many churches.  

(Do you understand how cults work?  See my "9 Marks of a Calvinist Cult."

I mean, seriously, Calvinists!  Do you not wonder how you got to the point where you can - with a straight face - affirm that God foreordains, predetermines, plans, orchestrates, decrees, directs, wills, causes all sin, evil, abuse, suffering, etc.?  Does that not alarm you just a little bit and make you wonder if you're missing something or got something severely wrong?  Think seriously about this because someday you'll have to stand before God and defend those views and what you taught others about Him.)