Why is Calvinism so dangerous? #3 (Free-will choices?)

[In this series, I'm breaking the long post "Why is Calvinism so dangerous?" into bite-sized pieces.]

3.

The Bible shows ... We are responsible for our choices, sins, and unbelief.  God calls us to make choices, real choices among real options (and lets us face the consequences of those choices).

But Calvinism says ... God ultimately preplans/controls everything we think and do, and we can only do - and have to do - the thing He predestined us to do.  He is the ultimate cause of all sin and unbelief, but we are still held accountable for it.

Deut. 28:1,15: "If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully follow all his commands I give you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations on earth.... However, if you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come upon you and overtake you."

1 Kings 2:3: "and observe what the Lord your God requires: Walk in his ways, and keep his decrees and commands, his laws and requirements, as written in the Law of Moses, so that you may prosper in all you do and wherever you go."

Titus 3:1: "remind the people to be subject to rules and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good."

John 7:17: "If anyone chooses to do God’s will …"

Joshua 24:15: "But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve ..."

So what do you think?  Does it sound like we make real choices among real options, or does it sound like God controls our choices and forces us to do the one thing He predestined?  If it's the latter, what do these verses mean then?  Do they matter?  What would any instruction from the Bible matter, if we can't make a choice about it anyway?  (The Bible really is a massive waste of paper if Calvinism is true.)

Okay now, a few verses with a little Calvinist rewrite:

Romans 11:20-23:  "... But they were broken off because of unbelief, caused by Calvi-god ... And if Calvi-god causes them to not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in ..."  

Matthew 23:37:  "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you because Calvi-god caused you to, how often I have longed to gather your children together even though I predestined you for hell, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing because Calvi-god caused you to be unwilling."  

2 Thessalonians 2:10:  "... They perish because they were predestined/forced by Calvi-god to refuse to love the truth and so be saved."  

Does Calvinism fit with the Bible?  Would God tell us over and over again to choose to believe and to choose to do the right thing if He made it impossible for us to make our own choices, if He gave us no other options but to choose the one thing He preplanned us to do?  Is that really a "choice," having only one door open to you that you're forced to walk through?  Does God command us not to sin but then preplan/cause us to sin and then punish us for sinning?  Does He command us to believe in Jesus but then preplan/cause us to not believe and then punish us for not believing?  Would He be a just, righteous, trustworthy God if He did?

If you're not a Calvinist, there are very easy answers to these that make sense: no, no, no, no, no, and no

But if you're a Calvinist, your answers would go more like this: "Calvinism is the gospel.  And we do make our own choices ... according to our natures.  But unregenerated man will always want to sin because that's the only desire their nature has, and so he will always 'choose' to sin.  But it's still a 'choice' even though that's all he could choose.  He 'chose' what he 'wanted' to do, even though God predestined it all.  And God can command we do one thing while ordaining that we do the opposite because He sometimes decrees that people break His decrees for His purposes and glory.  It's a mystery; we can't understand it because His ways are so far above ours.  And even though He ordains that the non-elect sin and reject Him, He stills commands them to do good, repent, and believe so that they are guilty of breaking His commands.  Then He can exercise His justice against them for breaking His commands.  We don't get to define what's just and what's not, only God can do that.  And so we just have to trust Him because this is what the Bible says.  Calvinism is the gospel, and to reject it is to reject the truth."  

   

Calvinists expect you to accept the absurd, illogical, unbiblical (evil!) idea that God preplans, orchestrates, controls, causes all sin, evil, and unbelief [but they won't say "causes," they hide it under "ordains," but find me one verse that clearly says "God ordains - preplans, causes - all sin, evil, and unbelief."  And verses on God using our self-chosen sins for His purposes don't count, nor do verses on God causing natural disasters because that's nowhere near the same as God causing us to commit sins He commanded us not to commit] but that He is not responsible for it [they refer to the Westminster Confession and say "God ordains sin but is not the author of sin" - as if that nonsense fixes it], and that man is still responsible for his sin and unbelief even though God "ordained" it [because, according to them, unregenerated people "freely choose" to sin and reject God because that's what their God-given unregenerated nature "wants" to do: sin and reject God.  But since they "wanted" to do it, they can "justly" be held accountable for it, as if it was a real choice].

It's all double-talk and nonsense.  If God preplanned sin, evil, and unbelief and ultimately causes it, giving us no ability or chance to choose otherwise, then He is most definitely responsible for it.  And there would be nothing just or righteous about punishing us for what He caused.  It's nonsense.  

[If Calvi-god is not ashamed that he causes sin, why should the Calvinist be?  Why the need to polish up Calvi-god to make him sound better than he is if he gets glory for causing sin and evil and unbelief?  It doesn't make sense.]

The thing is, Calvinists start with a verse or two from Proverbs or Psalms, such as Proverbs 21:1: "The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord; he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases." - and they say, "See, God controls all our choices.  He controls everything."  And then they reinterpret the rest of the Bible to fit their misunderstanding and misapplication of a few verses that are principles and good advice, not hard-core promises or bottom-line theology.

However, if Calvinism is right about God predestining/causing/controlling everything that happens, then how did these verses get into the Bible (Calvinists ignore the theological implications of these kinds of verses, heavily favoring the more Calvinist-sounding ones): 

            

1 Kings 20:42: "He said to the king, 'This is what the Lord says: 'You have set free a man I had determined should die.''" [So God determined something would happen, but then it didn't happen.  How is this possible if God determines everything that happens and nothing different could have happened?  Calvinists would say, "Well, God sometimes decrees that people disobey His decrees."  And I am not kidding about this.  They really do say this, and with a totally straight face.  And they clearly haven't thought that one through!] 
            

Hosea 8:4 (God's words): "They set up kings without my consent; they choose princes without my approval."  [If God ordains/controls all that happens, how can anything happen without His approval?  Calvinists would simply say, "Oh, well, God can ordain things He doesn't approve of, for His mysterious plans."]
            

Jeremiah 19:5 (God's own words): "They have built the high places to Baal to burn their sons in the fire as offerings to Baal - something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind."  [It would be kinda difficult for God to predestine/cause something that He never thought of commanding, wouldn't it?  And how would Calvinists answer this?  I'm actually not sure.  I never heard one try.  Instead, they always switch topics or bring up a different verse that they think "proves" God "ordains/causes" all that happens.]

            

Ezekiel 13:22 (KJV): "Because with lies ye have made the heart of the righteous sad, whom I have not made sad ..."  And the CSB version puts it this way: "Because you have disheartened the righteous person with lies (when I intended no distress)..."  [In Calvinism, God would be the one who preplanned and ultimately caused people to lie to the righteous people.  He would have preplanned/intended to cause the righteous people to be disheartened, contradicting His claim that He never intended to do that.  And so either God lies or Calvinism lies.  Which one do you think it is?]
            

Isaiah 30:1: "Woe to the obstinate children," declares the Lord, "to those who carry out plans that are not mine..."  [If all plans are God's plans, how can anything happen that He didn't plan?  Calvinists might simply say, "Well, God has two different plans.  In one plan, He didn't want the people to do what they did.  But in the other plan, He caused the people to do what He didn't want them to do, for His glory and mysterious reasons.  And He's so far above us that we can't understand it.  He is the Potter and we are clay.  How can the clay talk back to the Potter or understand the Potter's ways?  Blah, blah, blah.  Gobble, gobble, gobble."]
            

Psalm 33:10: "The Lord foils the plans of the nations ..."  [If all plans are God's plans, and if we can only plan what God causes us to plan, then isn't God foiling His own plans here?] 
            

Acts 14:16: "In the past, he [God] let nations go their own way."  [Impossible ... if every way is God's preplanned way!]

            

Exodus 13:17: "When Pharoah let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country.  For God said 'If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt."  [I don't even need to tell you how this totally contradicts and disproves Calvinism, their idea that God preplans, causes, controls everything we think and do.  You can see it clearly for yourselves.  Calvinists can't, but you can.]

And why would God give "boundaries" to people, Satan, and nature (such as putting a boundary around the one forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden, and putting a limit on how far the sea can move in Job 38:11, and putting a hedge around Job and limits to how much Satan can do to him in Job 1) if God alone controls every single movement that everyone and everything makes?  Boundaries are only needed when there is freedom to move within those boundaries.

And if Calvinists are gonna turn a Proverb into literal, hard-core, bottom-line theology, why not turn these Proverbs into literal, hard-core, bottom-line theology too: 

"Whoever gives heed to instruction prospers" [16:20. So every person who heeds instructions will prosper as a result?  Even instructions on how to embezzle money, cheat on taxes, hide an affair, hide a body?  It doesn't specify what kind of instructions or prospering, so I guess we can apply it as a literal, hard-core, bottom-line promise for all situations.]  

"Kings detest wrongdoing" [16:12. So all kings who ever lived detested wrongdoing!?!  I think history would show otherwise.]

"The plans of the diligent lead to profit" [21:5. All the time?  In every instance?  For all people?  Awesome!]  

"Better to live on a corner of the roof than share a house with a quarrelsome wife" [21:9. Even in the frozen lands of Siberia?  What if you're an Eskimo?  What if you live in a thatched-roofed house?  Or a teepee?  But the Bible said it, so you should do it.  After all, it's literal, hard-core, bottom-line theology!  But I wonder, how does this mesh with the other literal, hard-core, bottom-line theological truth of "He who finds a wife finds what is good and receives favor from the Lord," 18:22.  Hmm?  That's a head-scratcher.  And does this then mean that if you don't find a wife, you didn't get any favor from the Lord?  What would that say about the apostle Paul who didn't get married?]  

"No harm befalls the righteous" [12:21. Great, sign me up for this literal promise!  No harm of any kind, ever!]

"and put a knife to your throat if you are given to gluttony." [23:2. Well, the Bible says!]

"Punish [your child] with the rod and save his soul from death." [23:14. I guess salvation can come through Jesus ... or through beating your child with the rod.]

"Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it." [22:6. So I guess if any child does turn from the way their parents raised them, then God's Word would be proven false, right?  Good thing, though, that this is literal, hard-core, bottom-line theology, and so there is no way this could possibly happen.  The Bible says so!]

"To man belong the plans of the heart" [16:1. So if man owns the plans of his heart, doesn't that mean God doesn't?  And wouldn't that go against Calvinism's idea of God's "sovereignty," that God controls all things, even our thoughts?  And in fact, wouldn't this verse and Proverbs 21:1 ("The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord...") cancel each other out?]   

And wouldn't these cancel each other out too: "Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will be like him yourself" (26:4) and "Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes" (26:5)?  How do we apply both of these literal, hard-core, bottom-line theological truths at the same time?

I could go on, but you get the picture.  If you're gonna make Proverbs literal, hard-core, bottom-line theology (reinterpreting the rest of Scripture to fit), you can't just pick and choose which verses you want.  You've got to do it with all of Proverbs.  Either the book of Proverbs is literal, hard-core, bottom-line theology ... or it's not (making it something more like "wise sayings and principles to live by")?

And if a Calvinist does tries to convince you that Proverbs 21:1 ("The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord; he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases") is literal, hard-core, bottom-line theology, tell them that it says God directs the heart of the king, and no one else.  

But when you question Calvinists on all this, when you point out all their contradictions, holes, terrible inevitable conclusions, and the unbiblical-ness of it all, they accuse you of "not understanding Calvinism."  

But do you know what the problem is?

They have so many contradictory layers of their theology that what we say against one layer will always "misunderstand" a different layer.  Such as, if we point out that they believe God causes sin, they'll say "You don't understand Calvinism.  God doesn't author or cause sin.  We choose to sin, and so He is not responsible for it; we are."  But then if we say, "Oh, so you believe in free-will, that we make our own choices," they'll say "You don't understand Calvinism.  Man isn't free to do whatever he wants, but only what God ordained for him to do."  

It's not that we don't understand what they're really teaching.  It's that they don't - because they use all sorts of word tricks, mind games, songs-and-dances, smoke-and-mirrors to keep from having to see and admit the truth of what Calvinism really teaches.  They keep themselves busy and distracted - talking in circles, repeating Calvinist pat answers, referring to out-of-context verses, quoting Calvinist authors, and jumping back and forth between layers and layers of contradictory, nonsensical ideas - all so that they don't have to stop and see the terrible, inevitable, undeniable, end-conclusion of Calvinism: that Calvi-god is indeed the cause of all sin, evil, and unbelief but that he punishes us for it. 

[For more on how Calvinists cover up the word "causes," see "Calvinist Bad Logic #2: When a Calvinist says "ordains".  Just know that whatever word they use - ordains, decrees, foreknowledge, plans, wills/willed, omnipotence, omniscience, sovereignty, God "agrees" to it, "allows" it, "knew" it would happen, etc. - they always mean God causes everything that happens, even sin and evil.  They just won't admit they mean "causes," to us or themselves.  They have many ways to hide it.]  

  

FYI: One deceptive way that Calvinists try to get Calvi-god off the hook for causing sin is by saying "God doesn't 'give' the non-elect the unregenerated nature; He simply withholds the regenerated nature from them, and therefore they remain unrepentant sinners by default."  

So since Calvi-god didn't actively and directly give the non-elect their unregenerated nature or the sinful desires that he built into the unregenerated nature, he is not responsible for their sins; they are.

And I say "WHAT!?!"  

Oh, but that's not all.  

To further distance Calvi-god from being the cause of sin, they'll also use the idea that there are two causes of sin: God is the ultimate cause, but we are the secondary cause.  (They also go by other names, such as proximate/primary cause and remote cause.)  They'll say that as the ultimate cause, God "ordains" everything, even our sins, but as the secondary cause, we "willingly" carry out that sin - much like how a robot "willingly" carries out the actions that the programmer tells it to do or how a puppet "willingly" does what the puppet-master makes it do.  ("But you don't understand Calvinism," cries the Calvinist. "We don't say people are just robots or puppets."  Maybe not, but their theology does.)  But because we carried out the actions, it somehow makes us responsible for our sins, and not Calvi-god, even though Calvi-god programmed it all to happen that way and we couldn't do anything differently.  

Calvinism is full of layers and layers of deception and convoluted nonsense, all in an effort to cover up the fact that Calvi-god alone is the cause of sin, evil, and unbelief.  It is God-dishonoring, Gospel-destroying, pig-sloppy hogwash!  (Get used to this word.  When you hear "Calvinism" from now on, I want you to instantly think "hogwash"!)

[Additional note: An important thing to be aware of is that Calvinists will say one thing in one place but the opposite thing in another place.  So never trust a quote from a Calvinist author or theologian - because there will be another quote you didn't hear yet where they said the exact opposite.  Or they will add a bunch of qualifiers to what they first said, and it will change the meaning completely.  (It's like I say: It's what they hide that makes all the difference!)

Here are a couple examples from John Calvin himself:

In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 1, Chapter 2, Section 1, he says:  "For, until men feel that they owe everything to God ... they will never submit to him in voluntary obedience ..."

This makes it sound like men have the free-will to choose to obey or disobey God.

But how is "voluntary obedience" possible when, according to Calvin, ...

"... everything done in the world is according to His decree..."  (Book 1, Chapter 16, section 6) and ...

"... 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 ..."  (Book 1, Chapter 17, section 11) and ...

"The counsels and wills of men are so governed as to move exactly in the course which he has destined" (Book 1, Chapter 16, section 8)?

Additionally, in Book, 2, Chapter 2, section 8, he scolds people for believing in free-will and says that they should not believe in it, saying, "If any one, then, chooses to make use of this term [free-will] ... but I am unwilling to use it myself; and others if they will take my advice, will do well to abstain from it."  

Never mind the fact that Calvin just said he is "unwilling" to use the term "free-will" - that he wills himself to not believe in free-will (ha ha ha, what a joke!) - but this contradicts what he said about us obeying God voluntarily (of our own free-will choice).  (And, just wondering, but how can he reason with people to not believe in free-will when he believes that God makes all of our choices for us?  Talk about nonsense!)

Another example:  In Book 1, Chapter 17, Section 5, Calvin says this about wicked people:  "I deny that they serve the will of God."  He says that we CANNOT say that "he who has been carried away by a wicked mind are performing service on the order of God" because the evil person is "only following his own malignant desires," not acting in obedience.

And yet ... just a couple sections later, as we see above ... he says that all the ungodly are held in the hand of God so tightly that they cannot even conceive a thought unless God commands it.  And a chapter earlier, he said that everything happens according to God's decree (according to how God planned it to happen), that God controls our wills in order to move us in exactly the course He predestined us to go in.

But now ... in this section ... he dares to say that wicked men are acting on their own, outside of God's control, that God doesn't cause them to do the wicked things they do!?!

And a chapter later, in Chapter 18, section 2, Calvin says, "The sum of the whole is this, - since the will of God is said to be the cause of all things, all the counsels and actions of men must be held to be governed by his providence; so that he not only exerts his power in the elect, who are guided by the Holy Spirit, but also forces the reprobate to do him service."

So ... he denies that wicked men serve the will of God, saying that they are "not performing service on the order of God" ... but then he goes and says that "the reprobate do him service"!?!

Confused, inconsistent theologian, table of one!

Which is it, Calvin!?!  Make up your mind!!!

Is Calvi-god in control of evil or not?  Does he control everything or not?  Do the reprobate do him service or not?  Do we have free-will or not?

Do not trust what a Calvinist says in one place ... because they will say the opposite somewhere else.  And it's almost always to hide the fact that Calvi-god is the cause of evil.  For more on this, see "Do Calvinists Really Believe God Causes Sin?  Let Them Speak For Themselves!"]