Alana L: 5k ("sovereign," part 1)
This series is based on this 14-minute video from Alana L.: 5 Signs Your Loved One is Becoming a Calvinist
Hahaha, Alana nailed this one!
And as she said, "What many new Calvinists don't understand, and what they'll learn little by little by little - because if they were told this in the beginning they probably would catch on a little too quick and not follow the path [Bingo!!! She hit the bulls-eye!] - sovereign is not just a word that means 'supreme ruler' in Calvinism [as it should mean]... The sovereignty of God [in Calvinism] means that God has decreed all things - all things in eternity past that have ever happened and that will ever happen. All things that you do, think, feel. Everything! And everybody for that matter. All events, all sins, all evil - everything has been decreed. Not just permitted, not just allowed. Decreed! Caused! Brought to pass [by God]!"
You don't believe her?
John MacArthur ("Why does God allow so much suffering?", bolding added in all quotes): "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."
And click on my post "But Calvinists don't say God causes sin and evil!" to see many more quotes from Calvinists themselves which confirms it, such as these that I also quoted (more fully) in point #3H:
J.I. Packer (Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God): “[God] orders and controls all things, human actions among them.”
Edwin Palmer (The Five Points of Calvinism): “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... even sin… Although sin and unbelief are contrary to what God commands…” (😕)
Gordon H. Clark (Religion, Reason, and Revelation): “... this view certainly makes God the cause of sin. God is the sole ultimate cause of everything…”
My ex-pastor (June 26, 2022): "... Some of you have been horrifically abused and treated horribly by somebody...physically abused, verbally abused, emotionally abused, lied about, oppressed, taken advantage of, wrongly blamed... it was God who brought these circumstances into our lives in the first place...
... [Regarding evil and abuse, particularly the ones Joseph experienced:] It doesn't just say God used it for good. No! God arranged this for good... '[God] ordained the whole process.'... God is fully sovereign and in control, and He is good*"
My ex-pastor (September 13, 2020): "[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."
[*Just wondering, but where in Calvinism is the line between good and evil? When "good" looks and acts just like evil, can it still be "good"? How close does "good" have to get to evil before it stops being good and starts being evil? Or is any amount of evil okay for Calvi-god because Calvinists still call him a "good god" no matter what he does? So while it might be evil if someone else does it, it's always "good" when he does it, just because?
John Calvin (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 God can do the same evils Satan and wicked men do, but it's not sin for Him because He has a good nature with pure motives, but it is sin for us because we have a sin nature with bad motives. And so He is still righteous and good when He does them, but we're sinful and evil and get punished when we do those very same things."😕
A Calvinist on reddit (see this post) said this (paraphrased): "Sin is when we break God's laws. But since He didn't give Himself these laws - since He didn't tell Himself that He can't do those things - then it's not sin for Him to do them."
Jonathan Edwards said this in "Remarks on Important Theological Controversies, Chapter III": "... God has decreed every action of men, yea, every action that is sinful... he determines that there shall be such actions, and just so sinful as they are... God does not decree the actions that are sinful as sin, but decrees them as good... God decrees that they shall be sinful, for the sake of the good that he causes to arise from the sinfulness thereof; whereas man decrees them for the sake of the evil that is in them." (Translation: "God decreed all sin but since He does it for good reasons, it's not sin for Him; but since we do it for bad reasons, it is sin for us.")
William Boekestein (Ligonier Ministries) says in "Is God in Control of Everything?" that "Sovereignty is complicated, so it is important to understand the purpose behind God's governing of both good and evil. If God's providence seems blameworthy to us it is because we forget that God is executing His good plan..."
So... it's okay for Calvi-god to cause any evil he wants to because he has good things he's trying to accomplish. He can cause any evil he needs to, in order to work his good plans out. So in Calvinism, the ends justify the means, any means, all means, evil means!
(Sovereignty is only complicated when you misunderstand it, twisting it to try to teach that God preplans, ordains, decrees, causes, controls all evil, sin, and unbelief!)
John MacArthur (**see note farther below) would agree, saying that whatever God does - even if it seems evil or unjust to us - is okay because He is God and can do whatever He wants, and so anything He does is good and just, just because He does it (Doctrine of Election, part 1):
"... The pervasive notion of these skeptics and critics of this doctrine is that somehow election is unfair. Somehow it is unjust. But first of all, we want to make it very clear that God is not to be measured by our understanding of what is just... God has ways and thoughts that are to us incomprehensible, unresolvable, inscrutable... he is holy... he is infinitely and perfectly just... he is morally flawless and perfect... And so whatever he says is just is what justice is. [But the problem isn't what God says is just, but it's what Calvinists say is just. And that's very different!]
... And whatever it is that he wills is by definition just because he is just. [Which is how Calvinists can excuse any evil thing Calvi-god does.] It is just because he wills it. It is not because he sees that it is just that he wills it, it is that he wills it and then it becomes just. [And so, therefore, it's just for Calvi-god to will anything he wants to, even murder and abuse and unbelief. It's not that he does what's just, but it's that whatever he does is just, just because he does it.]
... And this is the bone that people always choke on in the doctrine of election. And Paul anticipated it [and] gives an amazing response, 'Who are you, O man, who answers back to God?' Shut your mouth. That doesn’t clarify anything. Who do you think you are? Are you accusing God of unjust punishment of sinners? Are you accusing God of unjust condemnation? Are you accusing God of evil? [No, I'm accusing Calvinists of being dead wrong, of destroying God's character and Word, of calling evil "good" and good "evil"!] You better close your mouth before you say anything else.... Don’t you dare question God. God’s the potter, you’re the clay. The clay is so far beneath the potter. It is inanimate dirt. It has no right to even entertain the idea of speaking to the potter."
So there you have it! "Shut up, you ignorant, rebellious human. We can say that everything Calvi-god does is right, good, and just, even if it seems evil and unjust and unfair... and you can't disagree with us because then you'll be fighting God."
As commenter "Pumpkinpie666" said in the reddit post "Calvinism is disgusting": "The Calvinist answer to every question about injustice is 'f*ck you, he's god.' It's just 'might makes right'. It's a pretty convenient theology for its adherents when you think about it. They don't have to defend any absurdities or injustices dealt out by God in that paradigm because by definition he's God, so he's right and you can go f*ck yourself."
Yep, Calvinism in a vulgar nutshell, except they word it like "Who are you, O man, to talk back to God?"]
And finally, Mark Talbot/John Piper (from Suffering and the Sovereignty of God, pages 42-44, 70-77): "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'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... he ordains all of our free sinful choices ["Free" that's not truly free is not really free. Duh!]... 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.
... 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..."
See! This is exactly what Calvinism's definition of sovereignty entails.
So do you still think they're not really teaching what they're really teaching?
Are you still going to believe them when they deceptively claim "We don't say God causes sin and evil"?
Well...
Side thought: Can you even imagine the eternal penalties and consequences for spreading those kinds of beliefs about God if you're wrong? I mean, that's some of the worst of the worst things you could accuse God of, a total assassination of His good, righteous, holy, trustworthy character, not to mention the damage it does to people's hearts, faith, and eternities.
As this comment says, also from "Calvinism is disgusting": "As an ex-Christian who used to be a Calvinist, what alarmed me is that all the fears about satan applied to god... [Calvinists] ascribed so many characteristics to god that could be applied to satan that made them seem indistinguishable."
A horrifying insight, but keen and well-said! No wonder there are so many atheists out there wanting nothing to do with God or Christianity.
[**Note: Contrary to MacArthur, Calvin, and all the Calvinists who say that whatever Calvi-god does - even sin and evil - is just and good just because he causes it, C.S. Lewis (love him!) says this in The Problem of Pain, chapter 6:
"It has sometimes been asked whether God commands certain things because they are right, or whether certain things are right because God commands them... I emphatically embrace the first alternative. The second might lead to the abominable conclusion...that charity is good only because God arbitrarily commanded it - that He might equally well have commanded us to hate Him and one another and that hatred would then have been right. I believe, on the contrary, that 'they err who think that of the will of God to do this or that there is no reason besides His will.' God's will is determined by His wisdom which always perceives, and His goodness which always embraces, the intrinsically good. But when we have said that God commands things only because they are good, we must add that one of the things intrinsically good is that rational creatures should freely surrender themselves to their Creator in obedience. The content of our obedience - the thing we are commanded to do - will always be something intrinsically good, something we ought to do even if (by an impossible supposition) God had not commanded it."
Lewis is not a Calvinist. And he even often emphatically opposes Calvinism, such as when he says above that God commands what's intrinsically good, not - as Calvinists say - that whatever He commands (even sin and evil) is good just because He commands it. And he also notes that freedom to choose to surrender to God is an intrinsically good thing, too - an affirmation of free-will.
And contrary to Calvinists who try to excuse their idea that it's okay for God to cause sin and evil by saying that God and humans view things differently and so we can't really tell the difference between good and evil - that what's evil in our eyes might actually be good in God's eyes, even if He commands against it in His Word - Lewis (love him, love him, love him!) says this in chapter 2: "if God's moral judgment differs from ours so that our 'black' may be His 'white,' we can mean nothing by calling Him good; for to say 'God is good,' while asserting that His goodness is wholly other than ours, is really only to say 'God is we know not what'. And an utterly unknown quality in God cannot give us moral grounds for loving or obeying Him. If He is not (in our sense) 'good' we shall obey, if at all, only through fear - and should be equally ready to obey an omnipotent Fiend. The doctrine of Total Depravity - when the consequence is drawn that, since we are totally depraved, our idea of good is simply nothing - may thus turn Christianity into a form of devil-worship."
Amen and amen!
If there is no real, clear dividing line between true good and true evil - if (as Calvinism claims) good can be evil and evil can be good, and whatever God does becomes good even if it's evil - then we cannot call anything good or evil, and we cannot even call God Himself good.
"Good" loses all meaning when it looks and acts just like evil or when it's used as an excuse for evil. The words "good and evil" become meaningless when they can mean the same as their opposites.
Calvinism erases the line between good and evil, which essentially erases the line between God and Satan, lowering God to Satan's level and, consequently, elevating Satan to God's level. (And who do you think benefits from this? I'll give you a hint: 😈)
(Why in the world do Calvinists keep quoting Lewis!?!)]
Bad foundations and cult-like tactics
A Calvinist's misunderstanding of "sovereignty" (and "omnipotence," which is part of it) is the foundation of their bad theology (along with their misunderstandings of total depravity, spiritual death, predestination, election, regeneration, faith, Jesus's sacrificial death, and most other things.)
But "sovereignty" is the best tool Calvinists have to manipulate people into Calvinism: "Is God sovereign, or are you? Does God have all the power, or do you? Does God control everything, or do you? If God doesn't control everything, then God controls nothing. Etc."
Because no good Christian would deny that God is sovereign, omnipotent, and in control.
And so Calvinists use "God is sovereign" (and "omnipotent" and "in control") to maneuver everyone into Calvinism, convincing us that if we agree with them that "God is sovereign" then we must also agree with the way they view sovereignty, and that if we disagree with them or oppose their ideas about God then we are disagreeing with God Himself and with the Bible, that we are opposing His sovereignty and elevating man above God and stealing His glory and denying His Truth and claiming we're stronger than Him and saying we saved ourselves, etc.
(Do you know how religious cults work?)
And since we don't want to be a "bad Christian" like that, we - in our ignorance, naivete, and desire to be humble - trust them and let them tell us what to think... never questioning their definitions of terms, their interpretation of verses, or the presuppositions they bring to the text... and always rationalizing, explaining away, or totally ignoring any red flags we get about the ways their theology hurts God's good, righteous character and blurs the line between good and evil, between God and Satan.
(And who do you think benefits from that?)
But if we began to heed some of those red flags we're sensing and to research for ourselves what they're teaching and to compare it all against a plain, commonsense reading of the Bible, then we'd eventually learn that there's a massive problem with the lenses Calvinists wear, the way they view things... including sovereignty.
And if someone starts from a bad foundation of unbiblical ideas, misinterpreted verses, incorrect definitions, and misunderstandings of God's character and how He operates, then everything they build on top of it will be bad too, with one error bleeding into and creating the next error.
And the thing is: We know deep down that something's very wrong with Calvinism, which is why we automatically resist it at first, why it sounds horrifying, why we say "No, that can't be true! That doesn't sound like God or what the Bible says!"
And this is why Calvinism - in order to thrive and spread - must employ the tools of shaming, manipulation, gaslighting, and cherry-picking verses, out-of-context and reinterpreted Calvinisticly. It's why it takes months of studying the Bible alongside Calvinist books with Calvinist teachers to get us to finally "see" Calvinism in the Bible and to accept it. Because it doesn't come naturally or easily.
Doesn't that seem a little suspicious? A little alarming?
From my post "9 Marks of a Calvinist Cult #9 (authoritarian narcissists)": The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association's article "How do cults differ from Christianity?" lists these things as characteristics of a cult (my paraphrase): "Cults reject the basic beliefs of the Chistian faith. They act like they alone have the truth and that we must come to them to get it. They have their own writings which they add to the Bible or replace the Bible with. They have a strong leader who demands obedience and claims to speak for God."
If you've ever been in a Calvinist church with a strong Calvinist pastor who constantly quotes Calvinist theologians and refers people to Calvinist theology books... who insists that elders and higher-up people go through Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology with him... who insists that everyone in the church joins "sermon-based" study groups that have a built-in Calvinist-bias... who teaches that disagreeing with him is disagreeing with the Bible and dishonoring God... who deletes comments that oppose him... who teaches that the only possible responses people can have to his teachings on predestination and God's sovereignty are to "ignore it, get angry about it, or accept it" (no disagreement allowed, apparently)... who always uses "But who are you, O man, to talk back to God?" to get people to shut up and accept terrible-sounding or contradictory things... and who asks long-term members/employees who disagree with him to leave ... then you're probably saying "Yep, I've seen it!"
Of course, Calvinists don't exactly reject the basic beliefs of the Bible, per se. They just redefine them, qualify them, take them out of context, or add other layers to them until they become something completely different - which is much more tricksy, subtle, insidious, and effective than outright rejecting the Bible.
Note: They don't do this on purpose, with bad intentions. It's just that they themselves have been brainwashed into thinking that it's really what the Bible teaches and that they're being good, faithful Christians to spread it. It's sad. But the fact that they themselves believe it so much is what makes it easier to manipulate others into believing it too. (It would be so much less convincing if they knew they were spreading lies and errors.)
[The posts in this series will be added to the "Alana L." label as they get published.]
