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... it was God who brought these circumstances into our lives in the first place..."
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 he's 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."😕
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 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.]
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.]
