Friday, April 18, 2014

Election is wrong, because I'm God

I haven't written for awhile because I haven't felt compelled to. But upon seeing this article that urge to kill rose up within me and the spirit within me said, write.
This is the blog of a young man who wrestled with the question "why does God keep creating people and then not keep predestinating them to heaven?" and lost. (I'll just tell you now he decides the answer is that God can't be sovereign.) So have a read of his blog, then when you come back we can get started. Done? Good.


First: Notice Unconditional Election can't be true because... feelings.

This has been my experience when talking with my family or my Church of Christ brothers or sisters: upon hearing the a difficult bit of Scriptures that challenges their beliefs the hearer immediately fires back with "I don't believe that, because... I don't like that." Of course they use a different phrase, most often it's something to the effect of "free will" or some such flim-flamery, but what they are really saying is that they don't want to accept it. Now to be fair I did the same thing once upon a time, but when you think about it, the notion that you don't have to listen to the Scripture because you don't agree with it is absolutely unacceptable. And right out of the gate this guy goes off the rails in making that mistake. 
"I certainly am no theologian, and have no ability or desire to interact with Mr. Piper’s ideas point by point. What I can tell you is that the picture of God painted by his brush strokes is, in my experience, damaging to Christians and dishonoring to God. I’ll leave the Biblical critique to those more qualified than myself, but these are some of the implications of this unconditional election that I find not only personally troubling, but incompatible with God as revealed in Jesus through Scripture."
In other words, I don't believe what the Scriptures teach because I don't like it.
If you ever get in a discussion with someone and you bring a clear teaching of Scripture to the table and they try to rebut it not with another piece of Scripture but with their feelings, know that they are surely on the losing side.



Second: The Redefinition of the terms

The Unconditional aspect of Unconditional Election doesn't mean there is no valid reason for doing it, it refers to our worthless state. That is, there was no good in us, or value in us, nothing that God would be drawn to that would cause Him to sacrifice His Son. We deserve hell, and we didn't get it. Why? Because we're special? No. Election wasn't something we earned, it was because God freely decided that electing some men was what He wanted. But what does Micah say?  
"I can see no way to understand this other than as purely arbitrary." 
In other words, unconditional election is a process by which God randomly, and arbitrarily, selected to save some men. The problem here is that he sets up a straw man and knocks it down. If someone ever needs to redefine the terms to win the argument, you know they don't have a leg to stand on.


Thirdly: The refusal to be rebuked by Scripture

I'll skip the part where he complains that the God of Calvinism is a cruel tyrant for letting some men go to hell. Because were I to answer that it would feel like punching a baby in the face to point out the Arminian God is no less evil. I'll just skip ahead to the key point. It's not that he's ignorant, it's that he's willfully ignorant. His basic argument is that God is unjust to predestine some and not others. Look what Romans says in response: 

What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! For he says to Moses,
“I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”
It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. For Scripture says to Pharaoh: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.”Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.
One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’”Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?
This section of Scriptures is exactly the answer to the whole blog post. God has every right to choose some to bring all the way home and some to entreat while they make up their own mind. But Micah rejects this notion, and instead pulls a Roger Olson, declaring that if election unto salvation is true then God is unrighteous. If God doesn't tell us the reason He elected a man then God is a criminal of the worst kind who has no right to do anything. Unless God tell me what He's doing, and when, and why, and let me make the final call, He is evil. 
That's not Christianity. That's not even Paganism. Micah is sitting in the judgement seat over God giving him permission or forbidding Him as it strikes his sense of justice. But where did he get this sense of justice? Or what gave him the right to God's judgment seat? It's ludicrous. God is in heaven, He does as He pleases in the heavens above, and the earth beneath, and no one can restrain His hand or asks 'what are you doing?'

The one thing I find most helpful when approaching the topic of election is humility. And nothing helps humility more than a solid knowledge of my depravity, but in this case, I'd just settle for an admission from this guy that "I'm not God." The rest would take care of itself.
. What I c
eBut how can I enjoy my salvation, knowing that it’s just the luck of the draw? That I won a divine lottery to keep me out of hell, but that most won’t? How is salvation good if it’s unmerited, arbitrary, random, and most are predestined to destruction? - See more at: http://redemptionpictures.com/2013/05/23/believing/#sthash.5cBM89JM.dpuf
“Why does God keep creating people and then not predestining them to salvation?” - See more at: http://redemptionpictures.com/2013/05/23/believing/#sthash.5cBM89JM.dpuf
“Why does God keep creating people and then not predestining them to salvation?” - See more at: http://redemptionpictures.com/2013/05/23/believing/#sthash.5cBM89JM.dpuf
“Why does God keep creating people and then not predestining them to salvation?” - See more at: http://redemptionpictures.com/2013/05/23/believing/#sthash.5cBM89JM.dpuf
“Why does God keep creating people and then not predestining them to salvation?” - See more at: http://redemptionpictures.com/2013/05/23/believing/#sthash.5cBM89JM.dpuf
“Why does God keep creating people and then not predestining them to salvation?” - See more at: http://redemptionpictures.com/2013/05/23/believing/#sthash.5cBM89JM.dpuf
“Why does God keep creating people and then not predestining them to salvation?” - See more at: http://redemptionpictures.com/2013/05/23/believing/#sthash.5cBM89JM.dpuf
“Why does God keep creating people and then not predestining them to salvation?” - See more at: http://redemptionpictures.com/2013/05/23/believing/#sthash.5cBM89JM.dpuf

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Good blog and response.

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