NowTHINK!AboutIt

Avoiding Hackneyed...Making Sense

Has The Great Commission Been Supplanted By Politics

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Religion teaches us what is decent. Politics allows us to choose for ourselves.

Religion encourages us to believe
Politics encourages us to respect the beliefs of others.
Religious beliefs divide us into groups.
Politics unite us around shared interests.

For most of history, churches and church groups were very diverse and, therefore, divided from one another. That division had a positive effect. It kept churches from uniting and dominating society.

With consensus around a few ideas, however, that has changed. Churches have become politically rather than spiritually driven. Instead of trying to save souls – the thing they were commissioned to do – they’re trying to police souls and clean the world up.

What I’ve just described feels good to the faithful. It has the ring of rationality to it. What can be wrong with standing for the right? Anything other than opposing wrong seems too much like cowardice but regardless how courageous it may seem, that approach is not a replacement plan for the Great Commission and it won’t work. The world is not going to change for the better because we treat it with a dose of Lysol. Things won’t get better and God won’t be pleased.

Politics vs Religion

Politics and religion are both important but for two very different reasons. Neither can replace the other but there is friction between the two. They didn’t get along in the past and they don’t get along now for very obvious and acceptable reasons.

The capstone of politics, the one thing that makes it work, compromise, is the one thing churches have a long history of not tolerating. The one thing churches have done repeatedly, divide and go their separate ways (remember the Pilgrims), is the one thing governments can’t do.

But it’s not a stalemate. The idea isn’t for the two institutions to blend or mirror one another or vie. Each has an important job to do. Each needs to respect and allow the free function of the other.

Churches, however, are not comfortable with that idea. The Great Commission is the answer to their angst but it’s apparently not enough to keep them from interfering. [Read more…] about Has The Great Commission Been Supplanted By Politics

People Really Do Want To Work

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The difference between a job and a chain gang is remuneration.

A Living Wage
Is A Strong Motivation To Work Hard

My Dad drummed a strong work ethic into us from an early age.

Work!

Work hard!

Show up early and stay a little late.

Engage! Don’t stand around waiting for someone else to do the job.

Don’t wait to be told what to do. Find what needs to be done and do it.

People who don’t work, he complained, are lazy and they’re also the ones who inevitably get into trouble.

That’s a brief summary of his ideas and they’re generally good ones to live by. Bottom line? Work is a good thing and the Bible agrees but not only was he too job/boss centric, his droning made it seem more like a Chain Gang than an opportunity. [Read more…] about People Really Do Want To Work

Biblical Predestination Not Focused On Individuals Or Minutia

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What is the point of loving someone in this life if they are condemned to hell without recourse in the next?

Plans And Goals Are Predestinated
Not People
Part 3 of 3

Part 1 – Calvinism Has No Connection To Election Or Predestination

Part 2 – Biblical Election Has Many Applications

Predestination is definitely a biblical concept but we must be very careful how we apply it because, without very clear definitions and applications, it can mean anything.

Calvinists have taken it to mean God selected certain individuals in eternity past, before creation, and predetermined that they would be saved. That’s the upside. The downside is everyone else is condemned to hell without recourse.

What is amazing about this idea is the fact that the preselected ones can’t avoid it, they can’t aid it, and anyone not selected has no choice in the matter either. It’s all predestined, or so they would have us think.

The Calvinist version of Predestination literally cuts the heart and soul out of motivation. Some won’t try to believe because maybe they weren’t selected. Some won’t do more to evangelize because maybe the target audience wasn’t elected.

Who will be saved and who will not be saved is absolutely settled completely and entirely by God’s choice before creation.

Of course, these false ideas about Predestination don’t stand alone. They are aided and abetted by Calvinistic teachings on Election. When these two concepts start swirling, the effect is catalytic. People get caught in the resulting vortex and just give up.

Once Election is understood correctly, however, which was the point of my last post, it opens the door to a very different viewpoint on Predestination.

Predestination Doesn’t Kill Hope

The biggest problem with Calvinistic ideas about Predestination is they leave absolutely no wiggle room for variable outcomes and give no hope. That’s a problem. Hope is everything. We endure momentary difficulties because we have hope. We fight for survival because we have hope. Take hope away, which is what Calvinism does, and people tend to harden, not against God but against people.

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Once you start picking individuals to favor with eternal bliss leaving the rest to suffer eternal torment, you lose traction. Why bother trying. All the important questions are settled and there is nothing anyone can do to change it.

Predestination Doesn’t Encourage Questionable Motives

A good question to ask is why does any Calvinist obey the commands of Scripture, like preach the Gospel to every creature and love your neighbor.

This may not be true in every case but one reason a preselected person would love their neighbor (which we are commanded to do, even the ones who are easy to hate), who also may not be selected, is to rub it in.

I’m one of the chosen and I’m so much better than you.

You may think I’m exaggerating, but visit a few churches where Calvinism reigns and tell me the atmosphere isn’t laced with a sense of superiority. If you’re not sure where to find such churches, just look for the words Reformed or Covenant in the name. That’s usually a dead giveaway, although you find all kinds of churches laced with Calvinism’s ideas these days.

There’s a good reason for this phenomenon. When you’re beliefs run contrary to your actions, it makes you look at least confused, maybe stupid. You have to do something to shore up apparent sophistication. If you’re not BEING the part, you have to try and LOOK the part. [Read more…] about Biblical Predestination Not Focused On Individuals Or Minutia

Biblical Election Has Many Applications

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If you don't do the hard work of becoming the person you need to be, you won't be able to do the thing you're called to do.

Election Is For Service Not Salvation
Part 2 of 3

Part 1 – Calvinism Has No Connection To Election Or Predestination

Part 3 – Biblical Predestination Not Focused On Individuals Or Minutia

Part 1 of this series focused on the many fallacies of Calvinism and there are many. Too many to enumerate in one post.

Calvinism raises so many questions that if you took each to its logical end, you would end up with a book, maybe a set, not just a post.

The previous post was intended to whet the appetite and set the stage for further investigation. The fallacies don’t explain Election or Predestination so the job isn’t done yet but they do reveal the questionable nature of Calvinism and that opens the door to a different approach.

So, what about Election.

Preliminary Thoughts

First, a few preliminary thoughts.

More than any other word, Election has become the anchor for Calvinistic thought. Everything Calvinists teach about any subject in the Bible is tethered to the idea that God selected some for salvation and deselected everyone else.

Calvinists don’t like it when their ideas are framed in those terms and they’ve produced a litany of sophisticated-sounding prose to suggest that isn’t true but when you boil it all down, if any person is not saved and doesn’t get saved before they die, they were deselected.

As we go along, it will become clear why that is the logical inference of Calvinist teachings.

There are several key passages that need to be explained but before we get into those, a few foundational observations are needed first.

Election Is Too Common To Be Special

First of all, a word about the word Elecction.

The word Election is just one word. It isn’t a unique word. It wasn’t specially coined in the Old Testament or New Testament to carry a strange, weird, or unusual meaning.

The word was never intended to become a theological Shibboleth. It’s not even particularly spiritual.

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The New Testament writers haven’t said enough in context to impregnate it sufficiently with the idea that God did something before we were born to divide humanity into two groups: the ins and the outs.

The word simply means chosen and it can apply to all kinds of things. Making choices (elections), is very common.

We choose what we wear and eat each day, what we watch on TV, what we read, think, and more.

We choose how punctual we are, how we act under pressure, who we marry, spend time with, vote for, and so on.

People choose careers, places to live, and methods for managing money.

But the choices we make are always qualified or should be. Careless people make random, unqualified choices and suffer badly as a result. Words like thoughtless, irresponsible, negligent, and imprudent describe the random-choice approach to life.

And that is exactly what Calvinists are suggesting about God.

Election Presents Opportunities

Sometimes we make good choices. Sometimes we make bad choices. The good news is after we make bad choices, we can still choose to learn from the experience. Sometimes we do. Sometimes we don’t.

Choices shape our lives they don’t define us. [Read more…] about Biblical Election Has Many Applications

Calvinism Has No Connection To Election Or Predestination

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God has the power to do whatever He wants, but would He want to do what Calvinists suggest?

Calvinism’s Many Fallacies
Part 1 Of 3

Part 2 – Biblical Election Has Many Applications

Part 3 – Biblical Predestination Not Focused On Individuals Or Minuia

When any person says they don’t believe in Calvinism, the first question they’re confronted with is:

What about Election and Predestination? Both are in the Bible.

It’s true. Election and Predestination are both mentioned in the Bible. What is not in the Bible is Calvinism.

It is also true that while Predestination is a biblical concept, Election does not constitute a subdivision of soteriology. It’s a word. It’s used many times in the Bible to refer to people who’ve been saved but it also refers to some who haven’t been saved and it never represents unqualified selections. I’ll explain more in the next post and as we go along but for now, the word alone carries no special meaning.

The reason people ask about Predestination and Election is they’ve been led to believe that these ideas are somehow connected to Calvinism. Not so! The terms Calvinism and Election are not synonyms and cannot be used interchangeably, although that is the assumption at the ground level.

Calvinism is nothing more than an interpretation imposed on the biblical text. The belief that these separate ideas are intertwined is where the conversation needs to begin. We need to disentangle the mess and one way to start is to disclose the endless number of fallacies implied by Calvinistic thinking.

Calvinism (including all the concepts reflected in the acronym TULIP) is a manmade system that is not biblical, was never biblically based, and those who promote it in this life will be embarrassed for it in the next. They’ll definitely have a lot to apologize for.

Calvinism’s illogical ideas turn grace into cruelty, diminish the potential effect of the Cross, insult the intelligence of humans created in the image of God, and mask one of the most important truths of the New Testament.

Jesus died for everyone, every person, every individual. He left no one out. He loves the entire world and wants all people to come to repentance.

First Steps

I’m taking a good old-fashioned farmer’s approach in this discussion.

To replace Calvinistic confusion with clarity, like the farmer, you must first clear the ground. Planting the good seeds of truth in uncultivated soil is wasteful. We need to break up the ground and remove the foreign matter first.

The initial set of talking points must focus NOT on Calvinism but on the illogical implications of Calvinism. You can’t begin to discuss Election and Predestination with a clear head till you reveal and dispel the fallacies of Calvinistic thinking.

There are many questions to ask and answer before you settle into the privileged armchair of Calvinism.

  • What is being said?
  • What are the implications?
  • How does it apply?
  • Where does it take us?

To be clear, this is not a study of weeds. I’m not going to discuss the ideas promoted by Calvinists any more than necessary. I’ll start by giving the general definition of Calvinism so we have a base to work from but that’s it.

The point of this series of posts is to look at two things: the implications of Calvinistic teachings and what Election and Predestination actually mean.

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I am fully aware that that is a tall order but it isn’t near as ambitious as trying to build a generally accepted version of Calvinism. Many have already tried to do that and failed.

This and the two following posts are long but even with the length, it’s just a beginning. Hopefully, it will encourage the curious, provoke the naysayers, but most of all, stimulate additional thought. [Read more…] about Calvinism Has No Connection To Election Or Predestination