I don’t just sit around criticizing Calvinists – certainly not as a whole. I think most Calvinists are honest people who are not aware they are captive to a flawed ideology.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
(Now the leaders who have studied these things and still teach the flawed ideology – most often with incredible confidence – they are a different story. They are answerable to God.)<\/p>\n\n\n
Like I said, I don’t want to just criticize. I want to help.<\/p>\n\n\n
So I devote some thought to ways to cure Calvinists. To get them to “snap out of it”.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Some people say the cure is to encourage the Calvinist to keep reading. But that isn’t necessarily going to break the hold which presuppositions exercise over the human mind.<\/p>\n\n\n
Recently I have suggested that philosophical arguments may be helpful in jarring a Calvinist awake – if you can get a fair hearing.<\/p>\n\n\n
But it occurs to me that even better than thought experiments would be real-world experience.<\/p>\n\n\n
So I would like to create a mission agency that would recruit hardcore Calvinists – the ones always preaching how depraved and sinful humans are. Those who are quick to quote passages on how no one seeks God … no not one … and all of our acts of righteousness are like filthy rags in God’s sight. And how your sin disgusts God and you are always trying to steal his glory. And all of that business.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Then my agency would ship them off to a third world country for a few months. It wouldn’t really matter what kind of work they engage in, as long as they got to see extreme poverty up close.<\/p>\n\n\n
And once they have looked into the eyes of a 7 year old girl who cries herself to sleep most nights because her stomach is empty more often than full, whose hair is orange from malnourishment, who never steps foot in a school because her parents can’t afford food much less a school uniform, and who one night passes away after a short struggle with a treatable illness contracted through water contaminated with human feces because her parents can’t afford a doctor’s visit …\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
THEN we bring them back to the States and ask the Calvinist if they would still maintain that there is a 50\/50 chance (at best) that the little girl was one of the elect who was fated to escape conscious eternal torment in hell.<\/p>\n\n\n
But if she DID end up in hell, it’s only what she had coming to her.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
If the Calvinist could still maintain that belief, he would not only prove himself an ideological prisoner, he would be a monster.<\/p>\n\n\n
And, yes, I am saying that Calvinism is a first world problem.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I don’t just sit around criticizing Calvinists – certainly not as a whole. I think most Calvinists are honest people who are not aware they are captive to a flawed ideology.\u00a0 (Now the leaders who have studied these things and still teach the flawed ideology – most often with incredible confidence – they are a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9043","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=9043"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9043\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9044,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9043\/revisions\/9044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}