Calvinism poisons everything

While the title might sound like hyperbole, I'm coming to realize that Calvinism poisons everything important in Christianity. Even worse, this poison has spread even to those who would not self-identify as Calvinists. As I go through points, I'll offer some Scriptural support to direct your mind. However, my point here is not to refute various elements of Calvinism, only to show its poisonous effects. I am planning to soon write an article that is more of a direct refutation.

As you read, please think about the consequences of this doctrine that I'll be pointing out. Examine whether you might have some of this poison in your theological system in some way, however subtle. Even if you are not a Calvinist, I would be surprised if you aren't in some way affected by their theology. For those who claim Calvinism, look at the consequences of this theology. If it damages or contradicts things that are so obviously true from Scripture, doesn't that imply that your system is wrong? I'll show exactly how in an article in the near future.

God – To know God is surely the most important thing for everyone. Yet, Calvinism presents a heavily distorted view of the creator. The Calvinist's deity is arbitrary. Some he saves from the fires of Hell. Others, he declines to save, but takes pleasure in watching them burn. Calvinists then have the audacity to claim that this deity “loves all”, is “full of mercy” and “is no respecter of persons”, things that are indeed true of God, but not the arbitrary God of Calvinism. Their concepts stand in clear contrast to the God of the Bible who constantly stretches out his hands toward rebels and who weeps over the lost, offering forgiveness if only they repent (Isaiah 65:2, Matt. 23:37). Of Calvin's arbitrary God, Dave Hunt asks in the title of his book on Calvinism, “What love is this?”. One could ask the same of the other qualities of God that Calvinism corrupts – that God is longsuffering and full of mercy, to name a few.

Salvation – If you look at the teachings of Calvinism in a way that is logically consistent, you must conclude that the salvation of an individual does not hinge on them exercising repentance to God and faith to the Lord Jesus Christ, but upon an eternal decree of God. In other words, if you are elect, God will cause you to repent and believe. If you are not elect, you have no chance to repent and believe the Gospel. This is a severe corruption of the requirements of salvation. To the Calvinist, Christ died only for the elect and salvation will come whether you intend to respond or not. Biblically, Christ died for the sins of the world and God calls every individual to respond, with no indication that something might unconditionally hinder such a response. (Ezek. 18:4-32, 1 Tim. 4:10, Matt. 7:7, Matt. 9:13, and many more) Logically then, the Calvinist believes that someone may simply wait around for God to save them. However, the Bible calls for the individual to actively repent and believe. This contrast is shown most clearly in the life of Charles Finney. In his evangelistic efforts, he preached to people in Calvinistic churches who were just waiting around for God to regenerate them. Finney's revival earned him the ire of Calvinist leaders who lied and misrepresented him during his life, and even worse after his death. Misunderstanding of salvation can lead to gospel preaching with an open-ended response, which leads to false conversion and hell. In contrast, Scripture strictly calls men to repentance and faith.

Grace - Simply defined, grace is unmerited favor. In the context of the Gospel, this means that Christ died for our sins even though we didn't deserve it. God extends to us an offer of love, forgiveness, adoption, reward, and eternal life to his enemies. This is a beautiful thing. However, Calvinists are uncomfortable with the idea that man can even accept this offer through repentance and faith. Therefore, grace is not so much an kind attribute of God, but more of a mystic force that God irresistably zaps you with. To a monergist, grace is not only unmerited favor, but also unwanted compulsion. This is because, in their mind, you couldn't possibly desire God, so he has to force you to love him with this mystic force they call grace. Obviously, this is a strange way to use the word 'grace', and an even stranger way to talk about God.

Sin / repsonsibility – According to the Calvinist, all things have been ordained by God. Every single thing that happens was planned by God. Even sin. The most evil of Calvinists will flat out admit that God authored sin in some way. What a terrifying accusation! Sin was not intended by God in any way, but was allowed and thoroughly dealt with in God's big plan. A lesser manifestation of this is those who say “oh well, everything is in God's hands” when something happens. Now, I want to be careful here because it is true that everything is in God's hands, in the sense that he is watching with interest and can intervene at any moment. The Christian can indeed take great comfort that God is watching over their life. However, this does not mean that everything is caused by God. When something happens it might have been caused by any number of free moral agents – God, demons, or ourselves. For example, if you get fat and have health problems, it's probably because you ate too much ice cream, not because the devil is after you, nor because God thought it would be good for you to have heart disease. However, we can be sure that whatever happens, God is paying attention and can intervene whenever he feels necessary, though He often lets us experience the consequences of our sin (and even things we didn't bring upon ourselves) so that we can learn a lesson. To rephrase it succinctly, God is in control, but that in no way negates or diminishes your responsibility in any circumstance, and your actions certainly have consequences. If you've ever thought “Oh well, God has it under control, I don't really need to try hard.” then your concept of responsibility has been poisoned by Calvinism.

Sovereignty - Obviously this is very much related to my comments above on sin and responsibility. It's worth specifically pointing out though, that Calvinists throw the word sovereign around like a comma, but they don't use it correctly most of the time. Look in any English dictionary, sovereignty is a word that describes position or authority. However, Calvinists use the word to describe what is better called 'total active control' – the idea that God is not merely in control of the world, but is actually controlling everything, and we are little more than puppets on his strings. In discussing this issue, it's critical to understand there's a big difference between “God is in control” and “God is actively controlling everything”. If God is actively controlling everything, then sin must have been part of His plan too. This would imply that God is the author of sin, a terrible accusation. However, if you properly understand sovereignty, it's easy to see that a king may be "in control" of his kingdom, but that doesn't mean that he approves of everything that happens.

Inherited sin nature – This error in particular is not localized to Calvinists, but has infected most non-calvinists as well. Historically, this doctrine seems to start with Augustine, who was the first the systematize it into what would become the catholic church (Irenaeus possibly tended in this direction, but he didn't take it as far as Augustine). When the reformers separated from the catholic church, they kept the doctrine of original sin, along with infant baptism and other false doctrines of Rome. Sin nature has remained a part of evangelical “orthodoxy” ever since, despite a complete lack of Biblical support (unless you count an ambiguous line from a poem, or are intent to misread Romans 5). Of course, Calvinists take the game to a whole new level by developing a systematic theology that revolves around the idea of not only sin nature, but total depravity/inability which affects salvation as described above. Though many non-calvinists rightly reject the T in TULIP, they hold to “total depravity light”, a poison which has persisted mainly due to tradition and given many a sinner a great excuse for his sin.

Evangelism – If you believe that God has already chosen who he will save and who he won't and there's nothing anyone can do about it, how could that not effect evangelism? At the very least, it takes away the motivation. Historically, some Calvinists have recognized this and have completely rejected the idea of preaching to the lost. Modern Calvinists usually have some sort of token “missions” program in their church. However, each one that I've seen is not about finding lost people and preaching the gospel, but it's about finding “less educated” Christians to convert to Calvinism. I dare say that, to these, Calvin is more important than Christ. For non-Calvinists, I still can't help but wonder if the coldness toward evangelism exhibited by nearly all churches is due to some remnant of this poisonous thought that “If God wants to save the heathen, he'll do it without us”.

How did you do? Have you found any remnants of poison in your system? If so, try to identify the source of the poison. Perhaps a popular preacher that you listen to? Piper, MacArthur, Baucham, Mohler, Sproul, Washer, Driscoll, and many more carry this poison to varying degrees. Maybe you already knew that and thought you were listening with discernment, but if you've realized that it's affecting you, it's probably best to take a break altogether. Instead, fill yourself with pure living water that comes from the Scripture. Set aside the books and commentaries for a while, and just feast on the Bible directly. This is a good rememy for any theology that ails you.

The sinner's prayer, four spiritual laws, Romans road, and other heretical gospels

Christianity in America is plagued with multitudes of religious lost – people who are convinced they are saved, but they bear no spiritual fruit. Their lack of fruit demonstrates that they are indeed still lost. (Matt. 3:10, Matt. 7:19). This is a bitter truth that every Christian in America needs to acknowledge before they will even have a chance to help those around them. Just as important, we must identify the root cause that is filling churches with many false converts. This root cause is easy to see: churches have silently replaced the Biblical gospel with watered-down, easy-on-the-ears, but heretical messages. This problem is maintained by an anti-biblical church structure that perfectly houses the religious lost that it creates. This is no coincidence. It's a well-planned system that could only come from the mind of Satan. I've talked a bit about church structure in previous posts. Now, I want to take some time to expose the heresies that are all too common and then discuss how to minister to others in this type of environment.

We'll start with the basics. Among other places, the gospel is defined in 1 Corinth. 15:1-4. The message is that Christ died for our sins and rose from the dead. Great news! So far so good – practically everyone gets that part right, even cults. Now, our response to the gospel message, or how we receive it, is by repenting of our sins and putting our faith in Christ (Mark 1:15, Acts 3:19, Acts 26:20). Adding or removing anything anything from the gospel makes it different, makes it 'another gospel', which is condemned in the strongest language (Gal. 1:6-8). This is how heresies are born. You take the gospel and add the keeping of the OT law, good works, baptism, etc. Or, in the case of fundamentalists and evangelicals, you add a sinner's prayer or remove repentance.

The Sinner's prayer is a heresy which promises that you can be saved by asking God for forgiveness or “asking Jesus into your heart”, typically by praying a modeled prayer. Let's be clear. You will not find these ideas anywhere in the Bible. Sinners are always called to repentance and faith. There's nothing wrong with expressing repentance toward God in prayer (Luke 18:13), but the error comes when people are assured that they are saved when and if they recite the prayer. In other words, this modern heresy promises salvation as a result of reciting a ritual prayer, not by repentance and faith in Christ. To make my point, let's look at an example developed and used by Billy Graham published on the Billy Graham Library's website (from the section 'prayer' at the bottom of the page):

Dear Lord Jesus, I know that I am a sinner, and I ask for Your forgiveness. I believe You died for my sins and rose from the dead. I turn from my sins and invite You to come into my heart and life. I want to trust and follow You as my Lord and Savior.

A few lines after this it goes on to mis-apply Romans 10:13 to suggest that anyone who prayed this prayer is now saved. It all sounds good, doesn't it? But faith and repentance are about actually trusting in Jesus and turning from your sin, not just saying that you will. To suggest that this prayer is sufficient for salvation is to accept lip service where Christ demands the substance.

The sinner's prayer can also be used without suggesting that it saves, but why would you? The prayer does nothing to help bring them to salvation, they need to repent. If the repenting sinner wants to pray, let him, but don't push it. Putting undue emphasis on a prayer can make the issues unclear, and you can make someone believe the prayer is important for their salvation even without explicitly saying so. This is especially true today. Maybe you don't tell the sinner a prayer will save him, but he has probably already heard that from several other pastors throughout his life. So, when you try to witness to that false convert and place the same emphasis on the prayer, he'll assume you're in the same boat. In short, using a sinner's prayer does nothing good, and is almost guaranteed to do some harm. So, if you really don't believe that a sinner's prayer saves, then stop doing it.

The "Romans Road" and "four spiritual laws" methods of sharing the gospel exemplify another type of heresy popular in conservative churches. The main problem of this heresy is that the gospel is proclaimed with little/no discussion of sin, and the need for the sinner to repent is either downplayed or neglected entirely. Yet, in the Bible, God makes it clear that repentance is absolutely necessary for salvation (Matt. 7:21, Mark 1:15, Luke 13:3, Acts 3:19, Acts 26:20). Let's look at some specific examples of this heresy.

The four spiritual laws can be found on the campus crusade website. In short, the four spiritual laws neglect the Biblical focus of sin/justice/hell/repentance/new birth and focus instead on “God has a wonderful plan for your life...you need Jesus so you can experience God's plan.” Sin is presented as a mere inconvenience that prevents the flow of blessings and is never properly defined. Repentance is almost completely neglected. Sure, there's a little cartoon at the end about Christ-directed vs. self-directed life, but their description of sin and repentance is so vague that it is practically useless to any sinner. Contrast this with the preaching of John the baptist, who called out specific sins and told men exactly what they needed to do (Luke 3:8-18). It wasn't just John, Jesus and the apostles did the same thing throughout the NT. So, instead of using the four spiritual laws, use God's laws (the 10 commandments are a great place to start) and show sinners their guilt, that they deserve judgement and hell, and that they need to repent and trust in the savior that died for them.

The Romans road is a very similar approach. Though older and more traditional, it's no better than the four spiritual laws. This approach relies on quoting several verses from Romans without their context. There are some variations, but let's look at the Sword of the Lord's website – a popular fundie resource. The shallow presentation of sin is similar to the four spiritual laws, but the Romans road is even worse because it mischaracterizes the nature of sin. At least the evangelicals talk about sin as a personal choice. In the Romans road, the fundies just talk about how you inherited Adam's sin nature. Too bad. How exactly are you supposed to repent of a sin nature? This description misleads sinners from gaining any concrete understanding of their personal, willful sins. The reality is that they must repent of their personal sins, not just the concept of sin, nor a supposed sin nature. Of course, they wouldn't know that anyway, because the Romans road doesn't even mention repentance at all. Therefore, the preacher robs the sinner of information they need to be saved. This road is just a spiritual dead end.

Now, given the nature and pervasiveness of these major errors, how can you minister to those around you? Realize that the number of religious lost is astounding, more than anyone would like to admit. From years of experience in preaching the gospel one-on-one, I estimate that less than 2% of Americans can give even passable responses to basic questions about the gospel, salvation, and the new birth – things that are necessary for salvation. If you don't believe me, approach some strangers or those lazy people at your church and ask them the following questions:

1) “Can you tell me how to get to heaven?” Probably the best response you'll get on this one is “believe in Jesus”. While not necessarily wrong, this answer is awfully incomplete. They should show some understanding of repentance in their answer to the rest of these questions. If not, they fail the test. Anyone who claims to have been saved for longer than a month certainly should be able to use the word “repent” without prompting.

2) “How is it that Jesus is able to save you?” they should have at least a basic understanding of substitutionary atonement – You are guilty of breaking God's law, but Jesus died in your place.

3) “What changed when you were saved?” Honestly, they should light up at this point. Every real Christian will have at least one story to tell that is very dear to them: loss of desire for formerly loved sins, a new hunger for the Bible, unexplained love for Christians, etc. They should be able to mention something like this which would demonstrate that they had a very real transition from darkness to light. If they have to think about it, you're looking at a lost religious person.

4) “So what are you doing for the Lord these days?” Maybe they're not making the best use of their time, but they should be doing something. Going to church, staying away from sin, reading the Bible, etc. doesn't count. That's no-brainer stuff that we do for ourselves. A person who does nothing for Christ is demonstrating that they do not really know Him (Matt. 3:10, Matt. 7:19-23, Matt. 25:23-30). Can someone recognize their sin and guilt, be saved from death and hell, then move on and not sacrifice and serve their Lord out of love? I don't buy it. There should be a desire to help and reach out to others that manifests itself somehow, ideally by sharing the gospel with others. Expect others to put up strong resistance to this one, as it cuts to the core of what is important.

As mentioned before, familiarity with the major errors that infect churches today is critical in order to minister to others. If you aren't willing to recognize the problems with a sinner's prayer or Romans road, you'll never ask the hard questions that are necessary to get through to the religious lost. This is not just theory. I seriously challenge you to ask the above questions to people around you. If they can't answer these simple questions about the gospel and the new birth, then it is evidence that they do not know Biblical repentance and faith. Treat them like a lost person until they prove otherwise. Specifically, share the Biblical gospel with them. Take away their hope in their superficial religious rituals, declare their need for repentance, and demand that they show the fruits of repentance. Be warned though, this simple Biblical practice will likely cause your friends and your church to turn away from you. But more importantly, you will have a chance to make a difference in their lives, and you will be following in the footsteps of Christ.

Unstoppable was a bad movie and evangelical philosophy is to blame

Update: Since I grilled this movie for failing to address why bad things happen, I wrote an article where I offer my take on it here.

        I'm writing this the day after I saw Kirk Cameron's Unstoppable and I'm still in shock at how bad the movie was. I'm mostly familiar with Kirk through way of the master and living waters. He and Ray Comfort put out some pretty top notch evangelism training material, so I had a lot of respect for the guy. I liked Fireproof quite a bit as well. So when I heard Kirk was putting together his own little movie project, it grabbed my attention. I knew little about the movie other than it was supposed to focus on the question 'why do bad things happen to good people?' If you haven't realized it already, this question is very much relevant to the gospel, so much so that it's actually hard to answer that question without preaching the gospel. Surely Kirk is going to knock this one out of the park...right? I wish.
        For the first half of the movie, I was laughing at how ridiculous everything was. Outside of Kirk telling a story of a friend for a few minutes there was very little content, and what was presented wasn't really in line with the topic. I didn't keep track of time, but I'd estimate about 30-45 minutes of the movie was spent telling the story of Genesis chapters 1-6 in a rock music video format. Kirk would read/talk about a little bit, then subject you to headache-inducing music alongside “I'm trying way too hard to be artistic” imagery.
        As the movie drags on, Kirk briefly skims what was supposed to be the topic of the movie. In short, his main message seems to be: yeah, bad stuff happens but God works it out for good. Of course that's true, but it's also woefully inadequate to anyone seriously asking this question. Kirk also failed to present the gospel in the movie. Sure, the facts were there – Jesus died for your sins and rose again – but that was about it. No call to repentance, not even a mention of salvation through faith. Unless I missed something, Kirk didn't make any effort in this movie to tell sinners what they should do so they can be born again. I know Kirk can do better. I've seen/heard him witnessing to people and he does a pretty good job. I think it's fair to say that in terms of answering big questions and reaching out to people with the gospel, the movie was a flop.
        So what does this have to do with evangelical philosophy? Everything. Somehow a guy who 5 years ago had a lot of zeal for the gospel just put out a movie on the 'big questions' which had a lot of flashy imagery, but said almost nothing. There's a bit of a mystery here, and while we don't have perfect knowledge, it's easy enough to put the pieces together and see how this happened. I suggest that two major problems caused the changes in Kirk as evidenced by this movie:

• A desire to mimic the culture. 

        This movie had it in spades. Edgy music, edgy imagery, edgy standards. There's nothing wrong with a good-looking modern movie with up to date cinematography, but do we have to also imitate Hollywood's content? Sure, those scences with Adam and Eve didn't show the worst possible angles, but let's just say that if I had a daughter, I would never let her play the role of Eve in this movie. How about that multi-minute fight scene between Cain and Abel that ended with a blood-spattered Cain standing over Abel's broken body? It's just an attempt to make the movie 'cool and relevant' to today's generation of carnal churchgoers.
        One might say, “but those things are in the Bible!” Yeah, and there are some things better left in text. There are certainly some 'gritty' things in the Bible, but they are never presented in a 'just for fun' way, but as a important part of the narrative or for emphasis. In contrast, the nakedness of Adam and Eve, and the fight between Cain and Abel had absolutely nothing to do with this movie. It had no narrative purpose, but merely an entertainment purpose. In other words, it was put in there just to try to be cool. Pointless sensuality and violence in a movie? Sounds like Hollywood to me. What a shame that such things are found in this film.

• A philosophy of “let's get everyone together” that emphasizes unity to the exclusion of much important doctrine. 

        This was another huge problem in the film and the live intro. Unity of the brethren is important, and something we should strive for, but we can only ever have unity with those obedient to Scripture and the gospel. Unity without truth can only be achieved by compromise and this movie was a perfect example. I would almost guarantee that Kirk's compromise in this movie was mainly with regard to calvinism. I don't know if Kirk is calvinist or not. I imagine that, much like Comfort, he isn't a calvinist, but is friendly toward that camp. Either way, you see this come out a bit in the intro where Kirk had one guest that said some very non-calvinistic things, and another who used the word sovereign in every other sentence. These little glimpses may not be convincing, but there's another big problem to take into consideration.
        When it comes to the question of why bad things happen to good people, calvinists and non-calvinists give very different answers. If Kirk goes on the movie and says what I'm certain he at least used to believe: “First off, there are no truly good people, but we all willfully sin each day. You chose to sin at some point in your life, chose to jump on the bandwagon with the sin-cursed world, now you reap the consequences for your choices. Death, sickness, and disease is the way of the world because of our choices.” Well, if Kirk said that, he'd get all kinds of flak from MacArthur, Piper, White, and all the other calvinists. He surely doesn't want to upset them, that would harm their 'unity'. Perhaps he should just put out a movie that gives the calvinist answer, “It pleases and glorifies God to destroy your young child with cancer, to kill your baby in the womb, etc. Be comforted, because God causes all these things to happen.” Well, that'd make the calvinists happy, but everyone else would be horrified.
        So, Kirk has his hands tied. No matter what answer he gives, many will be offended. Ah, but there's a third option. Make a music video, talk a little about mostly irrelevant things, then dodge the issue by simply saying, “Well, God works everything out for good.” I imagine this same concept causes Kirk to dodge the gospel application in this movie. Well, we can all agree on the facts of the gospel, but there's different opinions on how to apply it. According to the calvinist, don't worry too much about it. God chooses to save you or not and there's nothing you can do about it. If you're elect, God will fill you with irresistable grace and you're set. So, Kirk couldn't say, “Christ died for every man and offers you forgiveness if you'll repent of your sin.” Again, if you value unity above all things, you can't take a position, but must dodge the issue and in the process, neglect to preach the gospel.
        In conclusion, Christian unity is important and something worth striving for, but if you try to compromise truth for unity, you end up with neither. The road of compromise leads to a shallow, powerless religion which is toxic to real Christian living. As Christians, we must heed the Lord's admonitions to be separate from the world and theological error (Rom. 16:17, 1 John 2:15-17, James 4:4, Jude). To obey Scripture in these things is an unpopular stance to take, but a necessary one if you intend to make your like useful in the Lord's service.