I wasted some time this evening arguing with a Calvinist in the comment section of a YouTube video.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Upon seeing I was a non-Calvinist, he asked this:<\/p>\n\n\n
“I want to ask a genuine question, do you pray for the non believers? If you do, why? In your world view God can not violate the mighty will of man? This is a genuine question.”<\/p>\n\n\n
I have heard Calvinist say things like this – that indicate they believe their theological opponents hold that man’s free will is of such a nature that it cannot ever be overridden by God. I don’t know why they believe this.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
It would be a complete non sequitur to say, “Man has free will, therefore God is incapable of ever imposing His own will upon human beings.”\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
So I wrote back:<\/p>\n\n\n
Excellent question. I’m glad you asked it because maybe I can clear up a common misunderstanding. Just because we say that man has free will it does not follow that we believe God can never “violate” man’s free will. Why would it?\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n
I don’t know if you have children or not but I think of it in terms of a father with his children. The father is both free and “sovereign” while the kids have free will but are not sovereign.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n
The father is not micromanaging the kids’ every move. They have plenty of choice as to what they play and how they spend their time. The father can say, “It’s time to clean up” and the kids can even then decide to disobey. But the father is in charge and is the final authority. So when he says, “If you don’t clean up, there will be consequences”, the kids need to be prepared to suffer the consequences of their actions or inactions.<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n
Of course, the father is also at liberty to bring unexpected blessings into the lives of his children: “Hey, kids, we’re going to the amusement park tomorrow!”<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n
When I pray for non-believers, I pray that God will put people and events and ideas into the pathway of that person that will wake him or her up to God’s reality and goodness. God reaches people in a million different ways, so I don’t presume to dictate the means in my prayers as if I would be better equipped to reach that person than their Creator is.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n
What does the Calvinist pray for the non-believer? And why?<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I wasted some time this evening arguing with a Calvinist in the comment section of a YouTube video.\u00a0 Upon seeing I was a non-Calvinist, he asked this: “I want to ask a genuine question, do you pray for the non believers? If you do, why? In your world view God can not violate the mighty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,67,69,68,70],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-calvinism","category-free-will","category-non-believers","category-praying","category-sovereign"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4273"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4274,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4273\/revisions\/4274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}