Calvinism on babies and young children
[This is taken from my post "As evil as it gets: Calvinism on babies and the unreached." I'm breaking that longer post up into shorter pieces, to focus on one topic per post. I left the same lettering from the original post. I'll intersperse this series with the Alana L series.]
Calvinist views of babies and young children:
n. Paul Washer (from the sermon "Not Ashamed of the Gospel")": "I submit to you that if that 18-month-old baby had the strength of an 18-year old man, he would slaughter you there where you stand, father, rip the watch off your arm and walk across your bloody body and out the door without feeling an ounce of remorse."
o. R.C. Sproul (from Idol Killer's video Evil and Depraved - the Reformed View of Children): "Calvin was once talking about babies and said that babies are as depraved as rats. And I said that's the one time I really really oppose the teaching of John Calvin...because that's terribly insulting to the rat." (Is Calvinism like some sort of contest to see who can believe the worst things and be the biggest heretic and jerk? I mean, seriously. You might also like Idol Killer's "God's Fault - Who is Responsible for Evil?")
p. John MacArthur (from The Distinctive Qualities of the True Christian, Part 1): "Nowhere, or at no point, is a man's depravity more manifest than in the procreative act... How do we know man is a sinner at the base of his character? How do we know man is a sinner at the root of his existence? The answer: by what he creates. Whatever comes from the loins of man is wicked because man is wicked. So I say to you that nowhere then in the anatomy of man or in the activity of man is depravity more manifest than in the procreative act... because it is at precisely that point which he demonstrates the depth of his sinfulness because he produces a sinner."
q. From my ex-pastor's January 2016 sermon on the wrath of God: "Truth-suppression begins very early in life. Children have no interest in truth…zero. Babies, toddlers, cute little kids, my cute grandkids, they have no interest in the truth. What is a child’s primary interest in life? ME! [As it should be at that age - because they're babies!] It’s the All-Great Universe of ME! They don’t want to know the truth [because they can’t even understand the concept of truth yet!]. Frankly, I think if they were big enough, sometimes they would vaporize us. If you look at the rage in a child, toddler, baby that is screaming because you’re imposing truth on them… Why am I born such a good truth-suppressor? Because I’m born sinful. Not just a little bit, we are born incredibly depraved to our core… desperately wicked. We are slaves to sin… We are born rebellious, and we don’t want authority over us… the heart is desperately wicked… deceitful above all things… We can’t handle the truth and so we suppress it.”
Oh, those awful, horrible babies! Nasty little evil things!
r. From my ex-pastor's March 2017 sermon about why there's suffering and evil in the world (referring to Hannibal Lector in Silence of the Lambs): "The secular assumption is that ‘normal’ people – whatever that means – don’t do things like that. They’re not cannibals and sadistic killers. Something went wrong with him. That’s a secular assumption… [because] from birth we’re born corrupt and evil. And so it’s a secular assumption to think that something has to happen to make us really evil. Any of us are capable of that kind of horrific evil. Hannibal Lector answers [the question 'What made you like this?'] very biblically...‘Nothing happened to me. I just am. I’m evil.' That’s the biblical worldview.
Let me go a little further. This is why infants, children, and toddlers disobey by nature. ["Because they are corrupt and evil, obviously on par with cannibals and sadistic killers."] I have 2 [young grandchildren] living in my house… They are a delight. They are sinful. I am watching my older one – 2½ years old – and he is really pushing the envelope these days. He’s a precious little guy but, my goodness, his heart is already twisted and dark… This is why children, infants, toddlers, and kids need discipline. It’s why they need spankings. It’s why they need boundaries. And it’s why we need to enforce these things."
[So we can beat the total depravity right out of them? Spanking them will somehow make them elect or change their hearts? Nothing can affect what Calvi-god "ordained" for them, and nothing can change them before he does... and so spanking unregenerated children is really just spanking incapacitated people who are incapable of changing on their own anyway. May as well beat a wheelchair-bound person with a bat while yelling, “Stand up already!"]
Our pastor even wrote a blog post about how God "commands" spanking, and that it has to hurt. The whole "spare the rod, spoil the child" thing. (And if I'm not mistaken, he spanks his grandkids too. So those kids get it not just from mom and dad, but also from the grandparents. Sad.)
I, however, sent in a comment about how I believe God commands disciplining our children, not necessarily spanking them. I believe the "rod" is a tool of correction, guidance, authority, not necessarily something to hit them with. (And I told them that they picked an awful picture for the blog post, that the picture of the young, scared, sad child huddled on the ground is disturbing because it looks like he's hiding a dark secret of abuse.)
But the church never printed my comment. Just like how they removed my comment from his blog where I disagreed with his view of predestination, and how they are currently blocking comments on their other social media pages from a friend who also disagrees with them. And they eventually stopped allowing comments on their blog altogether, because I kept calling them out.
Authoritarian Calvinist pastors do not like to be opposed, especially when they're trying to be stealthy about their Calvinist infiltration and brainwashing of the church. And so if you disagree with an authoritarian Calvinist pastor, you could find yourself being silenced, blocked, belittled, attacked, expelled from the church, shunned, and/or demonized, all in the name of "protecting the gospel and protecting the church from heresy and division, of course." And they might even demand to know the names of everyone you talked to so that they can call those people and re-brainwash them, or they (especially 9 Marks churches) might put you under "church disciple" and/or try to control which church you go to after you leave theirs. It's really sick and cult-like.
s. Voddie Baucham would agree with our pastor (from this sermon about total depravity): “People who don’t believe in original sin don’t have children. … That’s a viper in a diaper. The angry cry happens early. The demanding cry happens early. The stiffening up of the body, that happens early. … One of the reasons God makes them so small is so that they won’t kill you. And one of the reasons he makes them so cute is so that you won’t kill them.”
And his solution (from another sermon) is: “God says your children desperately, desperately need to be spanked. [Give me the Bible chapter and verse!] Amen, hallelujah, praise the Lord, and spank your kids. Okay? They desperately need to be spanked. And they need to be spanked often. They do. I meet people all the time, and they’re like ‘Yeah, you know, I can think of maybe four or five times I ever had to spank Junior.’ Really? That’s unfortunate. Because unless you raised Jesus the Second, there were days when Junior needed to be spanked five times before breakfast… You need to have an all-day session where you just wear them out.” [So I guess repeated beatings can affect the outcome, Calvi-god's "sovereign" plan for them, huh!?! Interesting.]
[Enjoy this video from Idol Killer on Voddie's "viper in a diaper" sermon: "Your Children are Evil".]
