Things My Calvinist Pastor Said #8: Man is Oblivious To Sin, Lydia Wasn't a Believer
(This "Things My Calvinist Pastor Said" series is a breakdown of this much longer post: "We Left Our Church Because of Calvinism," which was written last year but updated July 2020. They are almost exact quotes. All memes were created with imgflip.)
8. "Man is oblivious to his sin.... People have tried over the years to make up for their sins in their own way, giving sacrifices to gods, following laws, etc..... God is not pleased with our attempts to make up for our sins on our own. "
Question: If "unregenerated" men (as Calvinists define it) are so oblivious to their sin, how on earth could unsaved people try to make up for their sins on their own, when they are supposedly completely unaware of their sins to begin with? (Calvinism is a self-defeating, contradictory theology!)
And Calvinism believes that God causes everything that happens ... for His glory and pleasure. So how can God be "not pleased" with the people's attempts to make up for their sins when He Himself is supposedly causing them to do it ... for His pleasure and glory?
How can God be not pleased with anything we do, when He supposedly causes it all for His pleasure and glory?
Such as 1 Corinthians 10:5, when God says He wasn't pleased with the Israelites' rebellion and so He scattered their bodies in the wilderness.
So God caused them to displease Him ... because it pleased Him? He caused them to rebel against Him, for His glory ... but then He is somehow displeased with their actions which He caused for His glory? How can He be displeased by the things He causes for His glory?
What kind of schizophrenic god is that!?! How can you trust a god like that!?!
I'll tell you who it's not: It's not the God of the Bible, that's for sure! Calvinism's god is NOT the God of the Bible, no matter how badly they want him to be. (That's why I call him "Calvi-god" instead of God, so no one confuses the two.)
One tactic Calvinists love to use is to say "We uphold the Scriptures above all!" (Or to use the word "biblical" about all their ideas.)
My pastor loved to say (all the time), "I am only teaching right from the Scriptures. We always have to go right to the Word. Always ask 'What does the text say?'"
(This always made me start singing "What does the fox say?" in my head.)
And this kind of reassurance lulls people into a false trust that a Calvinist preacher is truly preaching right from and only from the Word. We shut off our critical thinking and absorb what they're saying. After all, if they said it then it must be true, right? But then they proceed to add their Calvinist spin to everything they say.
They change "the world" to "only the elect." They change God's command to seek Him into "but we can't really seek Him unless He makes us do it." They reverse the order of "believe first then receive the Holy Spirit" to "you (the elect) can only believe after you receive the Holy Spirit." They say God doesn't love all people, Jesus didn't die for all people, and we can't do anything to be saved ... when they Bible consistently shows otherwise.
They constantly claim they are being true to the Scriptures ... while changing the meaning of words, adding hidden layers to verses, taking things out of context, etc. (And they use the word "biblical" all the time: "It's the 'biblical' doctrine of election ... the 'biblical' doctrine of grace ... predestination is a 'biblical' truth." The more someone has to stress that what they're teaching is biblical, the more you should consider and research for yourselves if it really is. Kinda like how the more someone has to stress how "trustworthy" or "honest or "humble" they are, the more you should question if it's true.)
But I agree with my pastor ... When a Calvinist tells you what a Bible verse teaches, go right to the text. (Or if they don't provide a verse but just give you a general "It's what the Bible teaches," demand to know the verses they are referencing. Don't let them teach you what they think the Bible teaches. Let God tell you what He actually says.)
Go right to the text to see what it says, what it doesn't say, what they added or are assuming, how they are twisting it or taking it out of context, etc. (It's amazing how easy it is to read the Bible through our own assumptions or misconceptions, and to not even realize we are doing it.)
Example: My pastor loves to use Lydia, from Acts 16:14, as an example of God opening someone's heart and causing them to believe.
Calvinists love this verse and use it all the time because they think it "proves" their idea that God has to regenerate the elect before they can believe, all because it says "God opened her heart." He'll say, "See, it says God opened her heart to believe."
But look at the text for yourself. It does not say that God opened her heart to believe. "To believe" is an assumption, added by Calvinists.
But what it does say is that she was already a worshipper of God.
It says, "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." That's it. Notice that it does not say "to believe." It does not say what the message was. It does not say that Paul's message was the gospel's message of salvation, as Calvinists assume it must be.
In the letter we sent to the elders, I pointed out that Lydia was 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."
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. But he's adding something that isn't there. It's basing what the Bible says on their own idea that a "totally depraved" person can't possibly seek God or believe in Him until God "opens their hearts," so therefore Lydia couldn't possibly be a true worshipper of God because God didn't open her heart yet.
Even though the Bible itself said she was a "worshipper of God."
So am I to assume then that God misspoke when He wrote the Bible. Do we need Calvinists to tell us what God really meant to say, as if God doesn't say what He means or mean what He says?
And if they can't weasel out of what the Bible says in any other way, they simply deny it altogether with "Oh, yeah, it says that, but it's not what it seems." My pastor also does this for God hardening Pharaoh's heart too.
The Bible says that for the first several plagues in Egypt Pharaoh hardened his own heart, and then God hardened his heart, making Pharaoh's choice permanent. But our pastor said something like, "Yeah, the Bible says Pharaoh hardened his own heart ... but God really did it first, even though it says Pharaoh hardened his own heart first."
And yet it's sad how many in the congregation never notice or stop to really think about what he's saying.
But 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 my pastor calls all unregenerated people, "totally depraved, desperately wicked, rebellious sinners who can't do good or seek God" - then she was doing good things and worshipping God before she was regenerated, before God "opened her heart to believe." She was still in her "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 fallen, so wicked, so depraved that they cannot do, think, or want anything good, nor can they want or seek God, until and unless they were elected and God regenerates them first.
But this unregenerated unbeliever was worshipping God all on her own, before God "opened her heart."
Not so "totally depraved" now, are we!?!
This tears down the T in TULIP, effectively proving that there is no Total Depravity ... which means we are not so fallen that we can't think about God unless He makes us do it ... which means that we can think about and want and seek God on our own ... which means regeneration isn't necessary first ... which means there are no elect people that God has to irresistibly call to Him and to regenerate ... which means Jesus didn't die just for the elect but He died for all people.
This verse is a gift to anti-Calvinists because it effectively destroys Calvinism's TULIP.
[But a Calvinist might reply, as I've seen one say, "Well, of course, un-regenerated people can seek God. They do it all the time. But they seek God as they want Him to be, not as He is."
Oh, so first they say "totally depravity" means you cannot seek God at all. But then, because they know people will protest that idea, they change it to "Oh, well, yes, they seek God. But they don't really seek HIM, just what they think is Him."
Once again, where is this in the Bible? Show me the verse. This is simply a Calvinist attempt to cover all their bases. And once again, it's basing the Bible on their own views.]
And on the flip side, if Calvinists admit that she really was a believer, then God didn't open her heart to believe through Paul's message. Because she believed before her heart was "opened." And this means they can't use this as a proof-text that God opens our hearts (of the elect only) to believe.
So then what was Paul's message? What did God open her heart about?
I believe it's about the importance of believers getting baptized, because that's the next thing she does.
And where in the Bible is there support for what I think?
Well, just a few chapters over. 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. I wonder if this delayed giving of the Spirit in the beginning was a way of ensuring that the new Christians didn't get the Spirit before the apostles and disciples could guide them in truth and discipleship, which could have led the new, untaught believers to run around in emotional and spiritual confusion. In Acts, the church was still in the process of forming a solid foundation.)
Now pay attention here because this is important: Calvinists say we can't believe until we get the Holy Spirit, until He regenerates the hearts of the elect to make them believe. This is what the T (Total Depravity) and the U (Unconditional Election) and the I (Irresistible Grace) of Calvinism's TULIP is 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! (Unless Calvinism only became true after the book of Acts.)
We do not get the Holy Spirit to cause us to believe. The Holy Spirit does not regenerate us (well, the elect only) before we believe, in order to make it possible to believe.
We get the Holy Spirit after we choose to believe, in response to our belief. He comes into the hearts of those who have chosen to believe in Jesus, and He regenerates our hearts to help us grow to understand God's Word, to be obedient, to convict us of sin, and to grow to be more like Christ. (He convicts the world of its sins, too, and calls all men to believe, but most people ignore or reject it.)
In the face of so many Bible passages, Calvinism is wrong!
(But they would rather make up alternative meanings for Bible verses/examples than to throw out their Calvinism and start reading the Bible the correct way. Calvinists always read the Bible with "How does this fit with Calvinism?" And many of them have invested far too much of their life and energy and pride and reputation into being a Calvinist to turn back now. But I tell you, the deeper you study the Bible, the more wrong Calvinism gets. And the deeper you study Calvinism, the more wicked you realize it is.)
Lydia (and these believing-before-receiving-the-Holy-Spirit disciples) destroys Calvinism! But they won't - can't - see it. Many of them are in too deep. And so they just keep using it over and over again, telling people it proves Calvinism, saying something like this (basing it all on their Calvinism), "Yeah, it says she worshipped God but she couldn't be a believer yet because she didn't have the Holy Spirit yet because God didn't open her heart yet."
And no one questions it because, after all, they said they are only preaching "right from the Scriptures."
FYI: Calvinists will come up with all sorts of rambling answers to try to cover for their theological nonsense. Don't buy it! It's hogwash! Debating an educated Calvinist is like trying to wrestle a greased pig. You'll never be able to get a grip on them because they're constantly shifting and squirming and doing anything they can to wriggle free. But if they have to try that hard to spin their nonsense into "truth," it's because it's not truth. Always go back to the text to see what it really says. And the Bible's message is easy to understand. So much easier than Calvinists make it. And it makes sense. So much more sense than Calvinism.
Question: If "unregenerated" men (as Calvinists define it) are so oblivious to their sin, how on earth could unsaved people try to make up for their sins on their own, when they are supposedly completely unaware of their sins to begin with? (Calvinism is a self-defeating, contradictory theology!)
And Calvinism believes that God causes everything that happens ... for His glory and pleasure. So how can God be "not pleased" with the people's attempts to make up for their sins when He Himself is supposedly causing them to do it ... for His pleasure and glory?
How can God be not pleased with anything we do, when He supposedly causes it all for His pleasure and glory?
Such as 1 Corinthians 10:5, when God says He wasn't pleased with the Israelites' rebellion and so He scattered their bodies in the wilderness.
So God caused them to displease Him ... because it pleased Him? He caused them to rebel against Him, for His glory ... but then He is somehow displeased with their actions which He caused for His glory? How can He be displeased by the things He causes for His glory?
What kind of schizophrenic god is that!?! How can you trust a god like that!?!
I'll tell you who it's not: It's not the God of the Bible, that's for sure! Calvinism's god is NOT the God of the Bible, no matter how badly they want him to be. (That's why I call him "Calvi-god" instead of God, so no one confuses the two.)
One tactic Calvinists love to use is to say "We uphold the Scriptures above all!" (Or to use the word "biblical" about all their ideas.)
My pastor loved to say (all the time), "I am only teaching right from the Scriptures. We always have to go right to the Word. Always ask 'What does the text say?'"
(This always made me start singing "What does the fox say?" in my head.)
And this kind of reassurance lulls people into a false trust that a Calvinist preacher is truly preaching right from and only from the Word. We shut off our critical thinking and absorb what they're saying. After all, if they said it then it must be true, right? But then they proceed to add their Calvinist spin to everything they say.
They change "the world" to "only the elect." They change God's command to seek Him into "but we can't really seek Him unless He makes us do it." They reverse the order of "believe first then receive the Holy Spirit" to "you (the elect) can only believe after you receive the Holy Spirit." They say God doesn't love all people, Jesus didn't die for all people, and we can't do anything to be saved ... when they Bible consistently shows otherwise.
They constantly claim they are being true to the Scriptures ... while changing the meaning of words, adding hidden layers to verses, taking things out of context, etc. (And they use the word "biblical" all the time: "It's the 'biblical' doctrine of election ... the 'biblical' doctrine of grace ... predestination is a 'biblical' truth." The more someone has to stress that what they're teaching is biblical, the more you should consider and research for yourselves if it really is. Kinda like how the more someone has to stress how "trustworthy" or "honest or "humble" they are, the more you should question if it's true.)
But I agree with my pastor ... When a Calvinist tells you what a Bible verse teaches, go right to the text. (Or if they don't provide a verse but just give you a general "It's what the Bible teaches," demand to know the verses they are referencing. Don't let them teach you what they think the Bible teaches. Let God tell you what He actually says.)
Go right to the text to see what it says, what it doesn't say, what they added or are assuming, how they are twisting it or taking it out of context, etc. (It's amazing how easy it is to read the Bible through our own assumptions or misconceptions, and to not even realize we are doing it.)
Example: My pastor loves to use Lydia, from Acts 16:14, as an example of God opening someone's heart and causing them to believe.
Calvinists love this verse and use it all the time because they think it "proves" their idea that God has to regenerate the elect before they can believe, all because it says "God opened her heart." He'll say, "See, it says God opened her heart to believe."
But look at the text for yourself. It does not say that God opened her heart to believe. "To believe" is an assumption, added by Calvinists.
But what it does say is that she was already a worshipper of God.
It says, "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." That's it. Notice that it does not say "to believe." It does not say what the message was. It does not say that Paul's message was the gospel's message of salvation, as Calvinists assume it must be.
In the letter we sent to the elders, I pointed out that Lydia was 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."
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. But he's adding something that isn't there. It's basing what the Bible says on their own idea that a "totally depraved" person can't possibly seek God or believe in Him until God "opens their hearts," so therefore Lydia couldn't possibly be a true worshipper of God because God didn't open her heart yet.
Even though the Bible itself said she was a "worshipper of God."
So am I to assume then that God misspoke when He wrote the Bible. Do we need Calvinists to tell us what God really meant to say, as if God doesn't say what He means or mean what He says?
And if they can't weasel out of what the Bible says in any other way, they simply deny it altogether with "Oh, yeah, it says that, but it's not what it seems." My pastor also does this for God hardening Pharaoh's heart too.
The Bible says that for the first several plagues in Egypt Pharaoh hardened his own heart, and then God hardened his heart, making Pharaoh's choice permanent. But our pastor said something like, "Yeah, the Bible says Pharaoh hardened his own heart ... but God really did it first, even though it says Pharaoh hardened his own heart first."
And yet it's sad how many in the congregation never notice or stop to really think about what he's saying.
But 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.
This totally destroys the T (total depravity/inability) in Calvinism's TULIP, which says that men are so fallen, so wicked, so depraved that they cannot do, think, or want anything good, nor can they want or seek God, until and unless they were elected and God regenerates them first.
But this unregenerated unbeliever was worshipping God all on her own, before God "opened her heart."
Not so "totally depraved" now, are we!?!
This tears down the T in TULIP, effectively proving that there is no Total Depravity ... which means we are not so fallen that we can't think about God unless He makes us do it ... which means that we can think about and want and seek God on our own ... which means regeneration isn't necessary first ... which means there are no elect people that God has to irresistibly call to Him and to regenerate ... which means Jesus didn't die just for the elect but He died for all people.
This verse is a gift to anti-Calvinists because it effectively destroys Calvinism's TULIP.
[But a Calvinist might reply, as I've seen one say, "Well, of course, un-regenerated people can seek God. They do it all the time. But they seek God as they want Him to be, not as He is."
Oh, so first they say "totally depravity" means you cannot seek God at all. But then, because they know people will protest that idea, they change it to "Oh, well, yes, they seek God. But they don't really seek HIM, just what they think is Him."
Once again, where is this in the Bible? Show me the verse. This is simply a Calvinist attempt to cover all their bases. And once again, it's basing the Bible on their own views.]
And on the flip side, if Calvinists admit that she really was a believer, then God didn't open her heart to believe through Paul's message. Because she believed before her heart was "opened." And this means they can't use this as a proof-text that God opens our hearts (of the elect only) to believe.
So then what was Paul's message? What did God open her heart about?
I believe it's about the importance of believers getting baptized, because that's the next thing she does.
And where in the Bible is there support for what I think?
Well, just a few chapters over. 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. I wonder if this delayed giving of the Spirit in the beginning was a way of ensuring that the new Christians didn't get the Spirit before the apostles and disciples could guide them in truth and discipleship, which could have led the new, untaught believers to run around in emotional and spiritual confusion. In Acts, the church was still in the process of forming a solid foundation.)
Now pay attention here because this is important: Calvinists say we can't believe until we get the Holy Spirit, until He regenerates the hearts of the elect to make them believe. This is what the T (Total Depravity) and the U (Unconditional Election) and the I (Irresistible Grace) of Calvinism's TULIP is 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! (Unless Calvinism only became true after the book of Acts.)
We do not get the Holy Spirit to cause us to believe. The Holy Spirit does not regenerate us (well, the elect only) before we believe, in order to make it possible to believe.
We get the Holy Spirit after we choose to believe, in response to our belief. He comes into the hearts of those who have chosen to believe in Jesus, and He regenerates our hearts to help us grow to understand God's Word, to be obedient, to convict us of sin, and to grow to be more like Christ. (He convicts the world of its sins, too, and calls all men to believe, but most people ignore or reject it.)
In the face of so many Bible passages, Calvinism is wrong!
(But they would rather make up alternative meanings for Bible verses/examples than to throw out their Calvinism and start reading the Bible the correct way. Calvinists always read the Bible with "How does this fit with Calvinism?" And many of them have invested far too much of their life and energy and pride and reputation into being a Calvinist to turn back now. But I tell you, the deeper you study the Bible, the more wrong Calvinism gets. And the deeper you study Calvinism, the more wicked you realize it is.)
Lydia (and these believing-before-receiving-the-Holy-Spirit disciples) destroys Calvinism! But they won't - can't - see it. Many of them are in too deep. And so they just keep using it over and over again, telling people it proves Calvinism, saying something like this (basing it all on their Calvinism), "Yeah, it says she worshipped God but she couldn't be a believer yet because she didn't have the Holy Spirit yet because God didn't open her heart yet."
And no one questions it because, after all, they said they are only preaching "right from the Scriptures."
FYI: Calvinists will come up with all sorts of rambling answers to try to cover for their theological nonsense. Don't buy it! It's hogwash! Debating an educated Calvinist is like trying to wrestle a greased pig. You'll never be able to get a grip on them because they're constantly shifting and squirming and doing anything they can to wriggle free. But if they have to try that hard to spin their nonsense into "truth," it's because it's not truth. Always go back to the text to see what it really says. And the Bible's message is easy to understand. So much easier than Calvinists make it. And it makes sense. So much more sense than Calvinism.
