Alana L. 5R (No freedom needed)

This series is based on this 14-minute video from Alana L.: 5 Signs Your Loved One is Becoming a Calvinist  

I really didn't intend for there to be so many parts to #5 - and there's more after this one - but it just kept growing and growing as I reworked it.  There's just so much to talk about, expose, and correct when examining Calvinism's erroneous view of God's sovereignty.  And so let's dive right in again, shall we?  ♫"Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work we go..."♫

Point #5 still: 

R: "Sovereign, sovereign, sovereign, sovereign."  

[A continuation of the last post on "robots", with more quotes to show what I mean.]  

Not only do Calvinists believe that God - in His "sovereignty" - predetermines/orchestrates our sins but then punishes us for sinning, but they also believe (and this is downright crazy to me) that true human freedom is not even a necessary condition for accountability and responsibility.  They don't think that we need to have the real ability to make real free decisions among real options in order for God to hold us truly responsible for what we do.  But they think that we can be held accountable for sin simply because we had the desire to disobey God, because we did what we "wanted" to do - even though, in Calvinism, God determined we'd want to do it.  

Reformed commenter Tiny-Development3598 said this in a reddit post on Calvinist predestination: "Moral responsibility doesn’t require libertarian freedom—it requires that our actions flow from our own nature and desires... we sin because we want to sin—it flows from our corrupt nature.  God doesn’t force us to sin; we sin gladly."  [In Calvinism, we "sin gladly" because God created us with the desire to sin gladly, a desire we can't resist or change.]    

This Calvinist pastor asks this to a woman who challenged his Calvinist view on sovereignty and man's responsibility: “Why do you so strongly insist that ‘one must have a free choice in order to be morally responsible’?”  [Notice how he makes it seem like there's something wrong with her logic, making her seem unreasonable for "insisting" on something that makes total sense.  See my review of the book the woman wrote about Calvinism taking over her church.]

R.C. Sproul ("God and human freedom"): "We each act freely within God’s sovereign government, gloriously bringing about His good will through everything we think, say, and do.  Providence in no way violates human freedom, but directs it.  Human choices, evil and good, are part of God’s providence.... God does not compel people to act contrary to their own desires, but uses their free decisions to bring about His glorious will."  [Calvi-god doesn't have to "compel people to act contrary to their own desires" if he's the one who preprograms their desires in the first place, causing them to want to do what they do.  It's funny how Calvinists have convinced themselves that "God directs what we do" and "we act freely" really go together.  And it's sad that they think adding words like "glorious" make their terrible teachings sound all better.] 

R.C. Sproul ("God and Sin"): "What is the mysterious relationship between God’s sovereignty and sin?... While God controls and restrains human sinfulness...fallen men are responsible for their actions.  We are endowed with freedom to act according to our nature.  Because our nature is fallen, depraved, and sinful, apart from the grace of God we freely sin."  [See?  In Calvinism, freedom is not really free at all.]

From Truths To Die For, "If God ordained evil, why am I accountable?": "Nothing happens outside His sovereign decree... This includes even the evil actions of men and angels... This sovereignty operates on two distinct levels.  There’s God’s revealed will—what He commands and desires from His creatures morally.  Then there’s His secret, decretive will—what He has ordained to actually occur in history.  [So Calvinism's god is two-faced, duplicitous, and self-opposing/self-defeating, saying that he wants one thing to happen while simultaneously orchestrating the opposite thing to happen.  And Calvinists can't see a problem with this!?!😕😖]  

While God never approves of evil in His revealed will, He has, for wise and holy purposes, ordained that evil exist within His broader plan.  [Translation: "So He doesn't SAY that He approves of evil, but He still decrees it... for 'holy' purposes, of course.😕"]

... Yet Scripture equally affirms human moral responsibility.  We make real choices with real consequences.  When we sin, we sin because we want to—not because we’re forced to.  Our actions flow from our own desires, intentions, and decisions.  We’re never mere puppets, but moral agents who choose and act according to our own will.  This isn’t a contradiction.  [Yes, it is, if our "own will" is preloaded with desires we must carry out.]  Our choices can be both determined (in God’s eternal plan) and voluntary (flowing from our own desires).... God judges us based on our intentions, choices, and actions—not on His sovereign decree.  When we sin, we sin because we want to, not because God forces us.  We act according to our nature and desires."

In Calvinism, "human responsibility" simply means that even though God decreed/preplanned/orchestrated/caused/controlled all of our decisions, even sinful ones, He will hold us responsible for it.  In no way does "human responsibility" (in Calvinism) mean that we actually got a real choice about what we think and do (but I think this is what Calvinists want you to assume they're saying at first, so that you don't resist or reject their teachings right away).  

And Calvinists think it's perfectly okay, perfect justice, for Calvi-god to hold people responsible for the sins he secretly "decreed" - sins we couldn't help but doing - simply because we did what he said we shouldn't do (even though he made sure that we did it, that we had to do it)... and because it's what we "wanted" to do, because we acted "according to our desires/nature" (even though he made sure we had that particular nature with those particular desires - irresistible and unchangeable desires to do what he predestined, giving us no ability to do anything else).  

But deceptively, Calvinists will leave out the gray-parentheses parts when talking about it, saying simply that we are guilty for doing what God told us not to do and for wanting to do it, making it sound like it was truly our own free decision to do those things.  But the gray-parentheses parts - the stuff they hide - make all the difference! 

Certain-Public3234 (reddit post "Why am I at fault for the broken, sinful nature that I am born with?") said "It’s not that we are simply inherit a sinful condition- we partake in and thoroughly enjoy that sinful condition... You make decisions based upon what you want.  The Bible teaches that we have moral responsibility... but our wills are in bondage to sin, so we always choose sin.  We choose to sin, we love sin (in our natural spiritually dead position).  So we are all without excuse, as we have all freely chosen to sin."

Imagine Calvi-god telling us to choose a door to walk through - a door we must walk through - but there's only one door to pick, one option to choose: Sin.  That's Calvinism's idea of "choice."😕  

And because Calvi-god made sure that our Wills/nature contained the desire to pick that door (a desire we didn't pick, can't change, and can't resist), then we will/must pick that door and walk through it... because it's the only thing we "want" to do.  In fact, it's the only thing we could want to do.  That's Calvinism's idea of humans "freely/willingly/voluntarily" doing it.😕😕

And now imagine that Calvi-god commands us to not walk through that door, to not sin ... but we do it anyway, because he predestined us to "want" to sin and he created us with only the ability/desire/option to sin... and then he punishes us because we did what he told us not to do and because we "wanted" to do it.  We "voluntarily" "chose" to do it - even though that's all we could choose, by his design.  That's Calvinism's idea of "justice," of us being "responsible" for our sins and "deserving" whatever punishment we get, even if it's hell (for the unbelief he decreed).😕😕😕 

But does any of this sound truly "free" and "voluntary" and "real choices" to you, as most of us (everyone but Calvinists) define "free" and "voluntary" and "real choices"?  

Ridiculous!

And can't you see how two-faced, untrustworthy, and unjust this makes God!?!  

Because Calvinists can't.

J.I. Packer (Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God): “[God] orders and controls all things, human actions among them…He [also] holds every man responsible for the choices he makes and the courses of action he pursues… Man is a responsible moral agent, though he is also divinely controlled... To our finite minds, of course, the thing is inexplicable.”  [It’s inexplicable because Calvinism is wrong, contradicting the Bible's plain, commonsense teaching.  Examples: Acts 14:16: "In the past, [God] let nations go their own way."  And Joshua 24:15: “But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve…"]

Here's Wayne Grudem (Election and Reprobation in Systematic Theology) trying to explain that our choices are "real voluntary choices," even though they're not (in Calvinism).  This is in response to the non-Calvinist's objection that if God predestines what happens, then we don’t have a real choice: 

“In response to this, we must affirm that the doctrine of election is fully able to accommodate the idea that we have a voluntary choice and we make willing decisions in accepting or rejecting Christ.  Our choices are voluntary because they are what we want to do and what we decide to do.  [See?  In Calvinism, "voluntary/willing" doesn't mean that we freely picked among options, without being compelled to.  It just means that we wanted/decided to do it, even though Calvi-god predestined/caused us to want to do.]  

This does not mean that our choices are absolutely free, because…God can work sovereignly through our desires so that he guarantees that our choices come about as he has ordained, but this can still be understood as a real choice because God has created us and he ordains that such a choice is real.  [Translation: "God sovereignly decides what you desire to do, and you must follow those desires, even sinful ones.  But because we Calvinists say that God still calls it's a 'real' choice, then you have to believe it's a real choice, even though it's not."]  

In short, we can say that God causes us to choose Christ voluntarily.

See how Calvinists call it a "real choice" even when it's not.  

Calvinism is all about the language!  It thrives and spreads by creating false dichotomies/bad analogies, taking Bible verses out of context (reinterpreting them Calvinisticly or giving them secret secondary Calvinist layers), and by hijacking commonly-used words, secretly changing their meanings (making it all sound good and biblical), and then feeding it back to unsuspecting, overly-trusting people who naively believe that everyone is defining/interpreting things the same way.    

[Note: The very definition of "choice" is an act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities.  But in Calvinism, we have no other possibility than to "choose" what God predestined us to choose, what our God-given desires make us to choose.  This is not a "real choice," no matter how much Calvinists call it that.]

For those in my ex-church: My ex-pastor echoed all this (but I bet most people missed it or ignored the huge implications of it) in his June 1, 2025 sermon when he talked about God's sovereignty over all things, even sin and evil.

First, he manipulated people into believing that they need to affirm his Calvinist ideas of sovereignty (that God predestines/causes/controls all sin and evil, that He decides who believes and who doesn't and yet He holds people responsible for it), even if they can't understand it and don't like the way it sounds.

And he (like many Calvinist theologians/pastors) said that just like we affirm other biblical things we don't understand, such as the Trinity and the virgin birth, so also we must affirm what he's saying about God's sovereignty in predestining/controlling/orchestrating sin and evil, even if we don't understand it or like it.  

As if those things are anywhere near on the same level or reflect on God's character the same way!

And then he goes on to subtly teach that God controls our Wills (while, at the same time, he's trying to convince us that we can really be fairly, justly held responsible for our choice to sin) when he quotes from John Piper's "masterful, magnum opus, fantastic book" called Providence: "The providence of God is universal.  It encompasses all human willing and doing..."

Did you catch that?  "God's providence encompasses all human willing and doing."  I bet most people missed what he's really saying in his sermon: that God's providence/sovereignty determines and controls our Wills/desires... and then our Wills/desires control us, causing us to do what He predestined... and then He punishes us for it, even though He predetermined/caused it... but it's okay because He's "sovereign."  

And I bet most don't understand the significance of what he's teaching, what it says about God's character and why we should be very bothered by it - because most simply accept what he's saying and shrug off any confusion or discomfort over it because they don't want to seem unhumble, spiritually-stupid, or like they're disagreeing with God.

But in case he wasn't clear enough about his view of God's "sovereignty" and control of our decisions/actions (FYI: the dates are what's listed on Vimeo, the day they uploaded the video, not necessarily the day he preached the sermon):

From his Sept. 2016 sermon: “Do we really believe our theology, that God is sovereign, that He controls every detail of the universe, that He knows the good from the bad, that He has ordained it in our lives.… He’s sovereign and in control of every detail of the universe, including our destinies.”

March 2014: “God is on the throne!  Random evil doesn’t just happen to people... God is in control of each aspect of every detail... the sovereignty of God [is] His absolute control of every atom of the universe... We’ve had people betray, lie, steal, vilify, slander, and do unspeakable things to us.  Some of us have undergone horrific abuse at the hands of parents or aunts or uncles or brothers.  God is sovereign over those who seek to harm us... That means, friends, that there is no such thing as random evil or random acts of tragedy... John Flavel in The Mystery of God’s Providence says '… In all the sad and afflictive providences that befall you, eye God as the author.  Set before you the sovereignty of God…'  Amen!?!”  [No!  Not Amen!  Not with the way Calvinists define sovereignty.] 

December 8, 2024: "[The early church believers] knew [God] was in control... even when they saw evil leaders doing evil things... They knew He was in control of even over the choices of evil leaders.  He was guiding them to do His Will."  

[Can you see why we left that church!?!]

And his adult Calvinist son also decided to get in on the action with a sermon he preached in February 2019 (ugh, nepotism!): "God is in control... The whole testimony of Scripture is that human sin, angelic sin, disease, disaster, tragedy, plague, suffering, elation and celebration are all under the control of God, all ordained by God, and all accomplished by the sovereign Lord."  

[And here's something else our pastor's son preached that day that's worth noting: "If God has chosen you for salvation, He will make you holy... God purposes for you to be holy, and He will make you holy.  And if you defy Him, the furnace of affliction will not be pleasant.  He may hide His face from you or rob you of your joy.  He may oppress you with an illness or torment you with a bodily injury.  He may destroy your career or put you in dire financial straits.  He may afflict your spouse with a disease or snatch life from your children.  GOD...WILL...MAKE...YOU...HOLY!"  

😕 There's so much wrong here, so much contradiction of their own theology.  

#1 If we defy Calvi-god, it's because he sovereignly decreed/caused us to defy him, for his glory.  

#2 So Calvi-god predestines/causes who believes, but he can't predestine/control our level of holiness?  He has to find ways to manipulate/maneuver us into being more holy, as if he has no "sovereign control" over it or "sovereign decree" about it?  

#3 One of the possible ways of manipulating you to be more holy is to kill your kids!?!  But what if Calvi-god's ways of trying to manipulate you into holiness just make you worse or make you turn from him altogether?  Wouldn't that mean he failed, that he decreed that you would get less holy instead of more holy?

#4 So he might kill your kids to make you Calv-elect people holy.  But what if your kids are elect?  What about his plans to make them holy?  Or are they here merely so that he can kill them for your holiness?  Isn't this a very self-centered view, as if it's all about you?  (And yet Calvinists think they're so humble and so God-focused, as if it's all about God... when apparently, according to this Calvinist, it's all about them and their holiness, as if everything centers around them, as if everyone else is here to make them more holy.😕)

#5 Sidenote: It's amusing - and disturbing - that throughout this part of the sermon, he was virtually shouting and carefully punctuating every word for dramatic effect.  I think he fancied himself an 1800's hellfire-and-brimstone preacher.  Daddy taught him well and must be so proud of him!]

"Sovereign": A Calvinist's way of saying that God preplans/causes all sin, evil, and unbelief - and that our "freedom" is not really free at all - but that it's okay because "He's God," making us feel like opposing them is opposing God, causing us to shut up and "humbly" fall in line with everyone else.  

A tried-and-true cult tactic. 

 

[The posts in this series will be added to the "Alana L." label as they get published.]