Alana 5T ("You don't understand Calvinism!")

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

Point #5 still: 

T: "Sovereign, sovereign, sovereign, sovereign."  

When we tell Calvinists that their view of sovereignty makes God responsible for sin, evil, and unbelief and that it's unjust for God to punish people for doing what He caused them to do, they'll often cry "You don't understand Calvinism!"

And so if a Calvinist ever says that to you (or if someone asks you what Calvinism is), show them these two long quotes (#1 and #3) which sum up Calvinism into two big nutshells, giving a very clear picture of what Calvinism really teaches about God and His "sovereignty" (according to them)... and let Calvinists' own words testify against them.  (And I also share my somewhat tongue-in-cheek summation of Calvinism, nutshell #2, but it really is what they teach, even though it sounds like nonsense.)  

[I share so many quotes because it's critical in proving that they really do teach this stuff, that I'm not putting words in their mouths or misinterpreting them.  (If you don't need or want more proof, skip these quotes.)  So it's not that we non-Calvinists "don't understand Calvinism."  It's that Calvinists word everything deceptively, mis-define words, misunderstand biblical concepts and verses, and speak on multiple levels, switching between them as needed to manipulate, fool, or sway their audience.  It's how Calvinism survives and thrives and spreads.  

And once again, the average, garden-variety Calvinist isn't knowingly deceptive or deliberately trying to spread lies.  But they themselves have been manipulated into believing this stuff, convinced that they are being good, humble, God-honoring Christians to fight for it and to spread it.  And this just goes to show the spectacular level of demonic deception and power that's behind Calvinism, using God's Word against God and using a Christian's desire to be humble and God-honoring against them, to trick them into a false gospel and into doing Satan's dirty work for him.  Incredible!]

Nutshell #1:

Here's a very long quote from Calvinist Loraine Boettner (which also demonstrates their deception, showing what they really mean by what they say about God's sovereignty and man's "free-will" and responsibility).  

Loraine Boettner ("Common Objections to the Reformed Doctrine of Predestination"): "Strictly speaking we may say man has free will only in the sense that he is not under any outside compulsion which interferes with his freedom of choice or his just accountability.  [Translation: "He's 'free' to follow the desires he was created with, 'free' to be who Calvi-god predestined him to be.  And because he 'wanted' to do it, he can be held 'accountable' for it."]  

In his fallen state he only has what we may call 'the freedom of slavery.'  He is in bondage to sin and spontaneously follows Satan.  He does not have the ability or incentive to follow God.... That this was [Martin] Luther's doctrine cannot be denied.  In his book, 'The Bondage of the Will,' the main purpose of which was to prove that the will of man is by nature enslaved to evil only, and that because it is fond of that slavery it is said to be free, [See?  "As long as you desire to do evil, you are doing that evil 'freely,' even though Calvi-god caused you to have the desires to do evil and to have only the ability to follow those evil desires."😕  Only a Calvinist would call this "free."]

he declared: 'Whatever man does, he does necessarily, though not with any sensible compulsion ["even though he can't sense the compulsion, Calvi-god compels him to do whatever he does through the nature/desires he gave him"], and he can only do what God from eternity willed and foreknew he should [Calvi-god only "foreknows" what will happen because he first fore-planned/willed everything that will happen, and then he causes it.  But this is not a pure, accurate definition of "foreknows," which is merely "knowing beforehand," not planning beforehand or causing.]

... whatever man does, be it good or bad, he does with as much appetite and willingness as if his will was really free [notice the "as if" - because it reveals all!].  But, after all, the will of God is certain and unalterable, and it is the governess of ours.' [Quoted by Zanchius, p. 56.]  [Calvinists misunderstand "God's Will."  It's not about Him planning everything that happens or planning whatever we do, nor is it about everything that happens being "His Will."  It's about what He prefers to have happen, but we decide whether or not to obey it.  It would solve so many theological errors if Calvinists simply had a proper definition of "God's Will" and "sovereignty," among other things like "depravity" and "spiritual death" and "predestination" and "election," etc..] 

In another place he says [clearly denying true free-will, despite the fact that Calvinists often deceptively use that term], 'When it is granted and established, that Free-will, having once lost its liberty, is compulsively bound to the service of sin, and cannot will anything good; I from these words, can understand nothing else than that Free-will is an empty term, whose reality is lost.  And a lost liberty, according to my grammar, is no liberty at all.' [Bondage of the Will, p. 125.] 

He refers to Free-will as 'a mere lie,' [id. p. 5.] and later adds, 'This, therefore, is also essentially necessary and wholesome for Christians to know: that God foreknows nothing by contingency, but that He foresees, purposes and does all things according to his immutable, eternal, and infallible will.  ["Calvi-god doesn't just foreknow what we will do, but he wills/foreplans/causes it."]  By this thunderbolt, Free-will is thrown prostrate, utterly dashed to pieces.... It follows unalterably, that all things which we do, although they may appear to us to be done mutably and contingently, and even may be done thus contingently by us, are yet, in reality, done necessarily and immutably, with respect to the will of God ["it merely appears to be our free-will decision, but Calvi-god willed it, predestined it"].  For the will of God is effective and cannot be hindered; because the very power of God is natural to Him, and His wisdom is such that He cannot be deceived.' [id. pp. 26, 27.]  

It is some times objected that unless man's will is completely free, God commands him to do what he cannot do.  [And this is a completely fair and accurate objection against Calvinism: That if Calvi-god predestines/causes that we disobey him and reject him, then he does indeed command us to do what we cannot do when he commands us to obey him and believe in him.  Duh!  It is "some times objected" because it's a true and fair objection that makes total sense and calls out Calvinism's contradictions and errors.  Duh, duh!]

... Man's self-imposed inability in the moral sphere does not free him from obligation.  [So he says here "self-imposed," as if we chose to be unable to do what Calvi-god commands... and yet he also said "he can only do what God from eternity willed" and that free-will is "a mere lie."  And so how can we "self-impose" anything in Calvinism?😕  It's all about the wording, about filling our heads with words that sound good and right and biblically-accurate, but that are completely mis-defined, misleading, or nonsensical!  But naive, trusting Christians eat it up, going "Oh, but he said 'self-imposed' and 'free-will' and 'voluntary', and so surely he must be teaching that man is truly responsible for sin and not God.  Surely, he must be biblical and accurate."  Deceptive nonsense and hogwash!]

 

... God so governs the inward feelings, external environment, habits, desires, motives, etc., of men that they freely do what He purposes.  [Methinks someone doesn't understand what "freely" really means - because to be fully "governed" by a Calvinist god who predetermines and controls everything we feel, think, and do so that we do only what he predestined us to do, with no ability to do anything else, is the exact opposite of "freely" doing anything.  When using the word "freely," Calvinists don't mean that we freely choose what we want to do among options we are able to choose.  They just mean that Calvi-god has built into our natures the desires he wants us to obey, that we must obey, and so because we "want" to do those things, we "freely" do them when we obey those desires.  It's like giving a love potion to Person A which creates in them the irresistible desire to love Person B.  And because that's the only desire A has - a desire they must follow - A now loves B.  Calvinists would say that A is following their desire, that A "freely" loves B.  Non-Calvinists would say "Hogwash!"]  

This operation its inscrutable, but none the less real; and the mere fact that in our present state of knowledge we are not able fully to explain how this influence is exerted without destroying the free agency of man, certainly does not prove that it cannot be so exerted.  [Translation: "Yes, this sounds like we're not really free at all, but trust me, we are.  We just can't understand it yet."  Calvinists always answer their unsolvable contradictions with "Well, we don't understand it, but we just have to accept it.  We can't understand or explain how God can ordain/cause/will sin and evil and unbelief but not be responsible for it, or how He can hold us responsible for what He predestined, or how our wills are really free even though we Calvinists teach that our wills are completely unfree, completely controlled by God.  But ignore the way it sounds, distrust your assessment of what we're teaching, and simply trust us anyway to tell you how to think.  And pay no attention to the red flags and alarm bells going off in your mind and spirit.  They're not real, fair, or accurate."  

Gaslighting!  And "it's a mystery but trust us anyway and simply accept it" is a very flimsy, wishy-washy, Swiss-cheese argument for such a terrible, heretical teaching that destroys God's character, Word, and trustworthiness and that slams the door of heaven on most people!  Ugh, my heart is breaking.😟😢]

... The actions of a creature are to a great extent predetermined when God stamps upon it a particular 'nature' at its creation.... An act is not free if determined from without; but it is free if rationally determined from within, and this is precisely what God's foreordination effects.  [See!  "Calvi-god gives you the nature he wants you to have, which causes you to 'want' to do - and to be only able to do - what he predestined you to do, even sin, evil, and rejecting him.  But because your internal nature (Calvi-god-given nature filled with Calvi-god-determined desires) compels you to do what you do, then Calvi-god doesn't have to physically move your arms and legs to sin because you'll do it on your own, following the desires of your nature which is within you... and so then we can call it 'free,' even though you had to do it by Calvi-god's decree and had no choice/ability to do anything else."  That's what this is saying.  Calvinism is so deceptive because they keep making it sound like we freely choose and freely determine things, but - in Calvinism, nothing is "determined from within [us]."  Our natures/desires are preprogrammed and implanted into us by Calvi-god... and we must obey those desires (desires we didn't pick and cannot resist or change).  This is not "determining" anything from within ourselves.  All we can do is simply follow the desires Calvi-god determined for us and implanted into us.  So even though Calvinists try to add more links to the chain to hide Calvi-god's fundamental and ultimate role in it all, it truly is "determined from without [from Calvi-god]," making our actions and decisions truly "not free" in Calvinism, in spite of how they try to hide or obscure or deny it.]  

The comprehensive decree provides that each man shall be a free agent, possessing a certain character, surrounded by a certain environment, subject to certain external influences, internally moved by certain affections, desires, habits, etc., and that in view of all these he shall freely and rationally make a choice.  [So Calvi-god foreordains/orchestrates/controls everything in us and around us to make us do what he predestined (and we have no ability to do anything else) - but Calvinists still call it a "freely and rationally made choice."😕😖]  That the choice will be one thing and not another, is certain; and God, who knows and controls the exact causes of each influence, knows what that choice will be, and in a real sense determines it.  

Zanchius expressed this idea very clearly when he declared that man was a free agent, and then added, 'Yet he acts, from the first to the last moment of his life, in absolute subserviency (though, perhaps he does not know it, nor design it) to the purposes and decrees of God concerning him; notwithstanding which, he is sensible of no compulsion, but acts freely and voluntarily, as if he were subject to no control, and absolutely lord of himself.'  [Notice again the "as if."  And also notice the "he is sensible of no compulsion," which really just means that even though man doesn't sense that he's being compelled by Calvi-god to do what he does, he really is being compelled.  Calvinists constantly start by declaring "we're free" - the worm on the hook - but then they launch into teachings which prove that they believe we are anything but free.  But we don't notice it because we first heard "free," which softens and obscures everything they say after that.  (We as a Church are so overly trusting, so naive, so non-Berean!]

And Luther says, 'Both good and evil men, though by their actions they fulfill the decrees and appointments of God, yet are not forcibly constrained to do anything, but act willingly.'  [Because Calvi-god caused them to be willing to do it.]

In accordance with this we believe that, without destroying or impairing the free agency of men, God can exercise over them a particular providence and work in them through His Holy Spirit so that they will come to Christ and persevere in His service.  We believe further that none have this will and desire except those whom God has previously made willing and desirous; and that He gives this will and desire to none but His own elect.  [See, Calvi-god predetermines our wills and the desires in them, and this causes us to do what we do, what he predetermined.  And he will only give the desire to believe to "the elect."  And so no one else is able to believe, and so no one else can believe.]  But while thus induced, the elect remain [free].  [Ha, nonsense!  Alice-in-Wonderland-type hogwash and nonsense!]

...The idea that the power of choice between good and evil is that which ennobles and dignifies the will is a misconception.  It does, indeed, raise man above the brute creation; but it is not the perfection of his will.  Says Mozley: 'The highest and the perfect state of the will is a state of necessity; and the power of choice, so far from being essential to a true and genuine will, is its weakness and defect. That can be a greater sign of an imperfect and immature state of the will than that, with good and evil before it, it should be in suspense which to do?' [The Augustinian Doctrine of Predestination, p. 73.]  [Translation: "Having the ability to make our own truly-free choices doesn't make it a true and genuine Will.  In fact, having the ability to make our own choices would mean we have an imperfect, immature, defective Will.  It can only be a true, genuine, perfect Will if we are compelled/forced, of necessity, to do what we do."  Now he's going even further than just denying free-will, the right to choose, but he's actually attacking the right to choose, saying that it would be an imperfection, weakness, defect.😕😖]  

... Free-will tears the reins of government out of the hands of God, and robs Him of His power.  ["If we have free-will, then God's not God."  (So let me get this straight: The one thing an all-powerful, sovereign God can't do is give people free-will or maintain His power and control if people had free-will?😕  If this is true - if Calvi-god loses his sovereignty and power in the face of free-will - then maybe he's not as sovereign and powerful as Calvinists think.  In their efforts to make Calvi-god more powerful and sovereign than man, Calvinism actually makes man/free-will more sovereign and powerful than Calvi-god.  Ironic!)]  

It places the creatures beyond His absolute control and in some respects gives them veto power over His eternal will and purpose.  [No, Calvinism places creatures beyond the control of God, acting as if God couldn't still have control if we had free-will.  But non-Calvinism says that God is still God and still in control even if He gives people free-will and doesn't actively control everything.  This sentence from Boettner is a false dichotomy, the kind that Calvinists love so much, the kind that manipulates people into Calvinistm all the time: "Either God controls everything, or God controls nothing.  Either God is sovereign, or we are sovereign.  Either God controls us, or else we are completely outside His control/authority.  Either God preplans everything, or else He plans nothing or can't work out any of His plans."  Calvinists take the idea of man's free-will and God's sovereignty to ridiculous extremes, as if God couldn't still be in authority over mankind and creation if people had free-will, as if God would have no power at all if He didn't actively preplan, control, cause everything that happens, even all sins, evil, unbelief, disasters, tragedies, and suffering.  Calvinists have decided for themselves that sovereignty must mean that God preplans and controls all things... and that if He doesn't, then He's not God.  But non-Calvinism would say that God doesn't "control" all things, but that He is still "in control" over all things, that He still reigns over everything, even His free creatures, and that He has plans and can accomplish His plans whether we obey or disobey, incorporating whatever we freely choose to do.  He is powerful enough and wise enough to take whatever we throw at Him and work it together for good.  Whereas Calvi-god can only maintain control and accomplish his plans if he preplans, causes, and controls every factor ever.  Calvinists think they elevate God's power and authority, but they really shrink it - because they view Him as a God who cannot maintain power and authority or work His plans out if people made free choices, as if He's just not powerful enough or wise enough to reign over a world of free creatures.  If Calvi-god doesn't control it all, then he controls nothing.  If one speck of dust moved freely on its own without him controlling it or if one person made one decision he didn't preplan/cause, then he'd cease to be sovereign.  But a God who can be dethroned by one freely-roaming piece of dust or one free decision from one puny little man is no God at all!]

... The Scriptures teach that Divine sovereignty and human freedom co-operate in perfect harmony [but not when they're defined the Calvinist way]; that while God is the sovereign Ruler and primary cause, man is free within the limits of his nature [notice the caveat, the stipulation: "within his Calvi-god-given-and-determined nature"] and is the secondary cause; and that God so controls the thoughts and wills of men that they freely and willingly do what He has planned for them to do.  [And there it is!  That last part sums up Calvinism perfectly... and it's exactly what I've been trying to show this whole post!]

Nutshell #2

Here's my summation of Calvinism's teachings.  This is what they try so hard to protect, to promote, and to manipulate people into accepting without question, despite the fact that it's nonsensical, Alice-in-Wonderland-like gibberish:

"God predestines all evil, but He's not the author of evil.  God preplans/orchestrates/causes all evil, but He Himself is not evil or responsible for evil.  God's not happy when we sin, but He orchestrates/causes all sin for His pleasure and glory.  

Satan fights against God, but God ordained/causes Satan to fight against Him.  Satan wants people to sin and reject God and go to hell, but so does God (and God preplans, orchestrates, controls, causes everything Satan does)... but Satan is bad and can't be trusted, while God is good and can be trusted. 

You need to repent and believe in the gospel to be saved, but you can only repent and believe if you were already saved in eternity past and were born again before repenting, believing, or even hearing the gospel.  

We're free, but we're not free.  We choose, but we don't choose.  When we sin, it's because God decreed that we disobey His decrees.  God predestines all our sins and unbelief, but then He commands that we obey and believe, and then He orchestrates our sins and prevents people from believing, and then He punishes us for doing what He predestined because we "deserve" it, because we disobeyed Him... and all of this is okay because He's "sovereign."

God ordains sin for His glory, but He also ordains that we fight against/resist sin for His glory.  God is equally pleased by and glorified by belief and unbelief, by good and evil, by obedience and disobedience, but we should still prefer that people believe, do good, and obey, for some reason, even though God's glory should be our top/only priority because that's all He cares about.  

You must fully submit to God's sovereign control, but God sovereignly controls whether you submit or not.  We need to pray for God's Will to get done and seek to do God's Will - even though God's Will is the only thing that ever happens, and so it's God's Will whenever someone doesn't pray or do His Will.  Prayer affects things, but everything's been predestined and can't change.  God predestines who will believe, but we still need to evangelize.  

What looks like evil/injustice to us (predestining people to sin and reject Him but holding them responsible for it) is really good/justice in God's eyes because He sees things differently than we do - and yet even though we can't recognize or tell the difference between true justice and injustice, between true good and evil, we must administer "justice" and seek to do "good," like the Bible tells us to.[😕]  

God says one thing but means another, and so we can't take the Bible at face-value because there's a hidden, deeper layer to all the things God says, and so we need to spend months with Calvinist books and teachers to learn what God really meant to say, underneath the surface.  

Yes, Calvinism is full of contradictions that appear to destroy God's character and Jesus's sacrificial death, but it's a 'mystery' that 'humble' Christians simply accept anyway, no matter how bad it sounds... and God is still good and so we can trust Him, even when He sounds terrible and untrustworthy.  Besides, God is sovereign and can do whatever He wants, and so who are you, O man, to talk back to Him?  

Etc.  Etc.  Etc." 

[And yet Calvinists can't understand why we "can't understand" Calvinism, why we have such a problem with it!  

But how in the world can we understand it when they can't even understand it!?!  And why in the world would we get our theological teaching from those who claim that it's all a great big "mystery" that they can't make sense of anyway!?!  

J.I. Packer (Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God): “Man is a responsible moral agent, though he is also divinely controlled... To our finite minds, of course, the thing is inexplicable.”

Mayhue ("Election and Predestination: The Sovereignty of God in Salvation"): "... how do you reconcile [that God predestined but man is responsible]?... the Bible doesn't tell us this."

John MacArthur ("Is the Doctrine of Election Biblical?"): "Election does not exclude human responsibility or the necessity of each person to respond to the gospel by faith... Admittedly the two concepts don't seem to go together.  However, both are true separately, and we must accept them both by faith.  You may not understand it, but rest assured—it's fully reconciled in the mind of God." 

Ligonier Ministries ("Vessels of destruction"): "How can God be just and yet punish some people if their wickedness and condemnation is foreordained?... As the Creator, God has the right to do with His creation as He pleases [translation: "So shut up and don't challenge us on this"].  God is just and His glory is manifested in punishing those whom He has ordained to do evil ["because we say so"]... Though it remains mysterious as to how God ordains all things and yet is not responsible for evil, we must affirm both truths." [It's only a mystery in Calvinism, when you severely misunderstand God's sovereignty and everything else.]

So, as I said, Calvinists admit that they can't understand or make sense of the most basic truths of the Bible and God's character, that the Bible doesn't explain some of their worst "doctrines"... and yet we're supposed to trust them to correctly understand God and the Bible and to accurately teach us its truths!?!  Truths that Calvinists admit they can't understand or figure out anyway!?!

And yet we naive, overly-trusting, too-busy-to-search-Scripture-for-ourselves-and-to-compare-what-we're-being-taught-against-what-Scripture-plainly-says Christians go "Oh, that's okay, teach us anyways to read the Bible the way you do.  We trust you and your superior spiritual insight and intellect.  We want to be just like you, humbly accepting the terrible things we can't understand or make sense of."  

In The Screwtape Letters, chapter 24, the demon Screwtape advises his nephew - a junior demon in charge of corrupting a Christian man - to make the man feel like he is part of a special, elite version of Christians, unlike others and better than others (my wording).  Screwtape says that some Christian theories can be helpful in doing this (and I have to think he had Calvinism in mind when he wrote this):

"What you want is to keep a sly self-congratulation mixing with all his thoughts and never allow him to raise the question 'What, precisely, am I congratulating myself about?'  The idea of belonging to an inner ring, of being in a secret, is very sweet to him.  Play on that nerve... Some theories which he may meet in modern Christian circles may here prove helpful: theories, I mean, that place the hope of society in some inner ring of 'clerks,' some trained minority of theocrats... the great thing is to make Christianity a mystery religion in which he feels himself one of the initiates."  

Hmm, a "mystery" religion?  Just like Calvinists are always telling us about Calvinism, making us feel like they've discovered some sort of hidden, deeper spiritual wisdom and that we must come to them to get it... and that we must accept it even though we can't understand it and even though it sounds terrible and makes God seem like a monster.  

Because, apparently, the average person can't find it in the Bible themselves, not without months of studying Calvinist writings along with the Bible.

They want us to feel like if we become a Calvinist, we've joined some kind of upper, elite crowd of spiritual thinkers - the ultra-God-glorifying who are "so humble" to accept the "hard truths," terrible-sounding things that alarm them but that they "humbly" accept anyway.

And C.S. Lewis says this is a trap.  (And I say it's little different than cults and the Pharisees, and how they trapped people and led them astray.)

Nutshell #3

Yes, I've shared this before, many times, but it really is Calvinism - their view of God's sovereignty - in a corrupt, horribly-disfigured nutshell:

Mark Talbot/John Piper (editor) (from Suffering and the Sovereignty of God): "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.

... In summary, this means that we should affirm the age-old Christian doctrine of God’s complete providence over all.  God has sovereignly ordained, from before the world began, everything that happens in our world... It should be beyond all doubt that no one suffers anything at anyone else’s hand without God having ordained that suffering.  

During his first hour or so in Birkenau, Elie Wiesel saw the notorious Joseph Mengele...casually directing [people] either to his left, so that they went immediately to the gas chambers, or to his right to the forced-labor camp.  In seeing Mengele, Wiesel was seeing a very evil man whom, nevertheless, God was actively sustaining and governing, nanosecond by nanosecond, through his evil existence.  And we can be sure that, from before time began, God had ordained that at that place those moments would be filled with just those persons, doing and suffering exactly as they did... that he actually brought the whole situation about, guiding and governing and carrying it by his all-powerful and ever-effectual word to where it would accomplish exactly what he wanted it to do.  

[Footnote: Mengele was a medical doctor who was nicknamed 'The Angel of Death.'  He carried out unspeakable experiments on some of his prisoners, including injecting chemicals into children's eyes in an attempt to change their eye color from brown to the preferred Aryan blue.  He would visit the children, acting kindly and bringing them candy and clothing in order to keep them calm and happy, and then transport them in what looked like a Red Cross truck or in his personal vehicle to his laboratory beside the crematoria where he would perform his horrible experiments and then burn their bodies.  He specialized in experiments involving identical twins.  He was intrigued to see if he could make them differ genetically by, among other horrors, performing sex-change operations on one of them or removing one twin’s limbs or organs in macabre surgical procedures that were performed without the use of anesthesia and that had no scientific basis or value.]  

... Even though he ordains all of our free sinful choices ["Free" that's not free is not free.  Duh!], those sinful choices still 'count' and we are held responsible for them.... In ordaining the evil works of others, he himself does no wrong, 'upright and just is he.'... We can be sure, as Scripture confirms, that God has made everything for its purpose, even evil persons like Joseph Mengele or Dennis Rader.  We can be sure that God has made our lives’ most evil moments as well as their best.... 

... 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.

And, of course, something much less horrible than these sorts of things can happen to us and still leave us wondering how God could be ordaining it for our good.  I have seen marriages break apart after thirty-five years and felt to some degree the grief and utter discombobulation of the abandoned spouse.  I have watched tragedies unfold that seem to remove all chance for any more earthly happiness.... Many of us have tasted such grief....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..."

[For some great videos on this, see Soteriology 101's videos "'You don't understand Calvinism' - the easiest way to avoid arguments" and "You don't understand Calvinism: The accusation of misrepresentation" and "Calvinists who don't know Calvinism."  And this one from Idol Killer: "Why you don't understand Calvinism - Considering the Reformation".]

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