Learning to Love a Sovereign
God:
By Adam C. Parker
Over the last several years of promoting the theology/philosophy of what is commonly known as Calvinism, I have come to two conclusions: The first conclusion is that people really have little problem, once it has been explained, with the intellectual side of Calvinism. The second conclusion is that some seem to have huge problems from an emotional level with accepting the truths of Sovereign Grace.
I recall when I was first exposed to Calvinistic theology. I was nineteen, I had been a Christian for about two years, and I was still developing my own personal understanding of God’s character. One program which always helped me learn tremendous amounts about God was R.C. Sproul’s program, Renewing Your Mind. I was listening one day, and Sproul said that God chooses who is saved, and that He does not choose everyone. Right away, I stopped taking him seriously and shut my ears. Of course, my offense at what he said drove me into studying that very subject for the next year or so.
Another event that always stands out in my mind occurred during the summer, just before going away to college. My friend was driving down the road, and I was riding in the backseat with my New Geneva Study Bible spread out before me. He asked me, “What do you think is the strongest Biblical passage that teaches predestination?” I thought about it for a moment, opened it to the Paul’s Letter to the Romans, and read him all of the ninth chapter. This was by no means all that I had to offer to him, but it was a prominent passage that I myself had struggled over. When we had reached our destination, my friend got out of the car and paced the parking lot at Wal-Mart. He was angry. He said, “If that’s the God of the Bible, I hate Him.” He kicked the tires on the car, and I can remember, he experienced what was perhaps a month of depression, which seemed to have been jump-started by exactly the issues I had also been struggling with. Fascinatingly enough, now, after over two-years of his own struggles with this issue, Josh is an adamant defender of the Biblical truths of Calvinism.
The scriptures tell us that if we call on the name of Christ, we will be saved. This salvation is by faith alone, but not by a faith that is alone. This is an absolute truth that cannot be changed or impeded by our feelings. Sometimes, when I am burdened with feelings of lust or beset with temptations, I feel like perhaps I’m not saved. This is the difficulty of the Christian life: knowing one thing and feeling another. I feel abandoned or lost, but this feeling could not be further from the truth. When I am surrounded by feelings contrary to the truth, it is my Christian duty to conform my feelings to the truth and if I can’t do that, to lean on the truth despite my feelings. This is a principle of the Christian life.
When someone understands the Biblical teachings on the sovereignty of God, particularly as Calvinists understand them, the reactions can be varied. It is my goal in the context of this writing to address the particular “hobgoblins” that can accompany this theology and to suggest how the reader can implement these things to strengthen their faith and love for this God who “chooses.”
It is a hard thing to conform your feelings to truth. Feeling is an immediate reaction to a given situation or the introduction of environmental stimuli. I feel upset if a man punches me. I feel angry if someone says something mean about my mother. I feel offended when someone tells me that they don’t like me. These are feelings. They change with whatever the situation is. They float about and are, as James says, “thrown about with every wind and wave” (James 1:6). Feelings are by nature, subjective. They cannot be explained through solid language, nor can they be concretely comprehended, but only conveyed through analogy and imagery. With each situation, in order to be understood, the analogy and imagery involved will have to change as the feelings change.
Truth, by definition is objective. It does not change. No matter the shape of the world or the conflicts which arise, truth never changes. In spite of the feelings one has, the truth transcends our emotional responses. There is a safety in truth. Truth is a solid rock, against which the waves of difficulty crash; yet the truth remains. It is our only hope when despair arises, because truth does not change. This is a comfort, in fact, our only comfort in times of emotional despair and difficulty. Truth.
If we as Christians are held captive by our feelings, we are imprisoned by whatever situation or even analysis of a situation, which we may produce. Feelings, though immediate, effective, and gratifying, tend to dominate our thought and even compel us to reject truth for its lack of effectiveness or inability to “move” us. If we find something to be emotionally unrewarding, that feeling does not determine the truth, the objective nature of that conveyed truth is what determines truth. In order to know, for example, theological truths, we must follow, as Luther said, “scripture and sound reason.”
I will begin with a few presuppositions before proceeding. One is that the reader is a prospective Calvinist who is being tormented by similar emotional hobgoblins, which Josh and I also experienced. The other presupposition, which I will begin with, is that the reader has been convinced of the truths of the Calvinistic arguments through sound reason and scriptural exegesis. If the reader is unconvinced by Calvinism’s arguments, perhaps they should read some of my other writings, because it is in those writings that I present the objective nature of Calvinist teachings. My purpose here is not such a presentation. Now that my presuppositions are presented, I will proceed into the main body of this analysis.
“God Does Not Have the Right to Violate my Free Will.”
I am sympathetic to such an objection, but once again, such an objection is rooted in our human assumption that we are untouchable, that we are sovereign over God. Oh, we would never say it that way, but that is exactly, in our humanity, what we believe. God cannot influence me in an effective way, because if He did that, He would be violating me. We should object to someone saying, by caricature that God “violates” people when He changes their hearts. Here is why:
If a woman is raped or touched in a way that makes her uncomfortable, the person who does that is violating her. Why is he violating her? Because he is doing something when he does not have the right to touch her. Her body is her own and it is no one else’s to have. In the same way, a policeman is violating my rights when he searches my home without a warrant. Why? Because he does not have the right to search my personal property. It is mine and not his!
When we speak of God changing the will or giving us a new heart, the same objection is raised. God would be violating me to change me, because He doesn’t have the right to do that. How presumptuous we are as human beings to think that God, our Creator, does not have the right to us, that He should not be able to change our hearts because it would be a violation. We apply the same meaning to this situation as we do to the rape victim and the subject of the illegal search, but we are mistaken. Why? Because in those instances, the violator indeed, has no rights of search or of dominion. But this is not so with God, for as Paul says, “it is in Him that we live and breathe and have our being” (Acts 17:28). Our very existence is because of Him. He is higher than us. We are the creatures and He is the creator. He has every right to “violate” us, by reason of the creature – Creator relationship. If we ever think that we as creatures are violated when God changes the heart or guides the hand, we have forgotten not only who we are, but also who God is. We are not worshipping God in such instances, but a god of our own making, a god in our own image.
I will also touch very briefly on the last part of the objection with reference to the idea that changing a heart or moving the hand is a violation of “Free Will.” The truth is that Free Will is nothing more than being able to do exactly what we want. Someone can trifle with this definition if they like, but if they do so, they will be trying to make the phrase mean more than it does. Free Will, if we break apart the phrase means nothing more than being free to do whatever our will wants to do. If someone wants to define free will as being able to do a good thing or a bad thing, to be able to choose any option, my objection is not that this is not possible, but that their object is more than free will. Such an objection is actually with reference to liberty. Liberty is the ability to change your inclination, so that you are free to cause yourself to choose to perform a good action or to choose an evil action. In this paper, I am talking about Free Will and not Liberty. If the reader is curious about my arguments against Liberty, I recommend that they read my analysis of Jonathan Edwards’ Freedom of the Will. Otherwise, let us dispense with such notions that God is violating our free will. Our will is free, no matter where our decisions originate from, because we are never prevented from following the decisions we make.
Thus, even if God caused me to love crocheting, it would not be against my will, because I would want to crochet. The Armenian objection to the freedom of the will falls through because they think that every decision we make has to originate within ourselves, that our decisions must be self-caused, or else they are not genuine decisions. Let me end this objection with this thought: No matter what I do, what I think, how I pray, who I love, the life I save, or the sermon I preach, it is no violation of my will to say that God was the cause of my actions; in fact, I am quite thankful that it is so, for it gives my actions meaning.
There are many different responses we should have to such a statement, but these responses must be addressed step-by-step. The first thing is to remind the reader that if you are praying for your lost friends to be saved, yet you do not espouse a Calvinistic perspective on salvation, not only are your prayers meaningless, they are inconsistent with your own beliefs. If you believe that God is always doing His best to draw everyone, yet in the final analysis it is their decision apart from divine coercion that saves them, then your prayers are not only hopeless, they are useless, because your God cannot do what you are praying for. He cannot change Aunt Susie’s heart, because He has been trying to change her heart for a long time, and His power and ability to change her has been found lacking. The God you believe in cannot do it, because He apparently has too much respect for her to “violate” her will.
I want to also, before taking a positive position, address another peculiarity in believing in the Armenian way of thinking on this matter. With regard to the “it doesn’t matter” portion of the object above objection, every party, whether Armenian or Calvinist, believes that God knows what will happen. While the Armenian says that by the Calvinist schema, it doesn’t matter, because it’s going to happen, the Calvinist is perfectly justified in raising the exact same objection before the Armenian. Why? Because if God knows exactly what will happen, then it will happen exactly as God knows it will happen. Thus, everything that happens, no matter what the theology, happens necessarily, and “we can’t change it.” When a person is offered something as simple as a piece of candy, should we argue that his taking the candy doesn’t matter, even though God knows what will happen and it will never possibly happen any other way? Of course not! Thus, the “it doesn’t matter” argument rests as much on the Armenian’s shoulders as it does on the Calvinist’s shoulders.
You should pray for your friends to be saved more than you ever did before, if you accept the truths of Calvinism, because you can now pray, “Please Lord, change Todd’s heart, because I love him and want him to come to Heaven with me. I know that you would be just in allowing him to perish, yet I also know that you have been merciful to me, and You can be merciful to whom you will. Please Lord, I know I cannot change Your eternal decrees, but hear my prayer, Lord, because I know that You have heard this prayer long before you even created the world.”
Our prayers need not be so theological in nature as the preceding one, but I gave this as an example to show that our prayers are heard by God from all eternity, and though we cannot change the mind of God, He hears our prayers, and because of His eternal nature, hears them billions of years before they even leave our lips.
Why are you praying for your lost friends to be saved? Because it matters, and because such prayers are heard by the God who justifies.
“God’s Sovereignty Makes Me Feel Like a Pawn.” AKA: “It
Doesn’t Matter What I Do Because it’s All Predestined.”
Such was the statement of a colleague of mine during a discussion. Indeed, the sovereignty of God and His reign over every event and action in the world militates against our modern understandings of science and philosophy. We think of ourselves as autonomous and free from God. In fact, I enjoy labeling modern Christianity “Interactive Deism.” I come by this spurious definition quite honestly however, because Deism is the idea that God has created the world, established the natural laws, and now sits back and watches what happens, with little or no concern for what actually happens. I once asked an Armenian friend if he thought of God as creating the world, establishing the natural laws, and only interacting when He thought he needed to, and my friend said that yes, this is how he thought of God and His providence.
As modern people, we think that the only way for our existence to be meaningful is if we are free, if we are autonomous and not under the foot of God, as it were. Such modern notions are the root of questions like the one I am compelled to answer. We believe that we are one of but a litany and that God indeed does favor some, but it is because of what they have done (exercise faith) that He favors them. The root of many of these emotional responses are found in our basic philosophy about who we are, and who God is. We think that if God should sovereignly change our desires, then we become nothing more than tools in the hands of God, that we are just being used for some type of cosmic chess game, where we are the pawns, and the pastors are the rooks and the president is a bishop.
Such a belief is a caricature of the truth, yet in a sense we cannot help it, for we still in the back of our minds think of God as being quite human, yet very powerful. We haven’t gotten it through our heads that God is not only great big, He is everywhere, He “does whatever He pleases,” He hates sin, He is non-physical, He is immutable, and He has compassion on whom He wills. We think of God one term at a time, and though we acknowledge His sovereignty in words, when we get to the doctrines of salvation, we lay down the idea of sovereignty so we can start studying soteriology (the doctrines of salvation). No! All doctrines of God must be viewed in light of one-another, in a systematic way. God is not a man, He is the divine anchor of all reality, around which everything revolves and obsesses. To use a modern phrase, He is the center of the universe. He is separate from everything, yet He is in everything and everything is in Him. This is not pantheism; this is the Biblical teaching on God’s providence and omnipresence.
“If God can control everything, including me, it makes me feel like a pawn.” I will bypass the temptation to engage in theological double-talk and get right to the point in answer to this objection. Let’s just suppose that every action you perform is, in fact, planned, decided beforehand, and caused by God, either directly (positively) or indirectly (negatively). Does this strip your actions of meaning? Does this determination of your decisions render them null and void? Do you really think that just because God has decreed everything that ever has happened or ever will happen, that it does not matter if you save that dying child? If so, you do not realize that God’s planning everything that happens before it happens makes our actions more meaningful than we could ever imagine! It means that our lives are on a course that God has set! What is more exciting than that?
Consider the word “meaningful”: my dictionary uses the words “purposeful, significant” as synonyms for “meaningful.” For an action to be meaningful in the English sense, our actions should have a purpose or significance to them. My friends, there is nothing more meaningful to my actions than to know that they are driven by a purpose, that there is a sense, an organization, a plan behind my every action. It means that even my sitting and reading a book all afternoon long, as I plan to do later today, is a purposeful and significant thing!
Applying this idea to the doctrines of election, we may cry aloud, “Thank you, God, because I am not a pawn, but your creature, but if I am a pawn, I thank You, because You have given purpose and direction to my existence!” No longer am I just one of a multitude, but I know that God cares for my own actions just as He cares for the actions of President Bush or Russian President Putin. Whether I am reading a book and Bush is talking politics with the Prime Minister of Britain, I am just as important to God as the most important person is to me. This is a personal and deeply comforting thing, to know that though we may be pawns, we are created for the glory of God as tools to display the glory of God to whomever He wills. We must learn to put truth before subjective feelings.
Before closing, I wish to acknowledge that though the practical or pastoral application of a doctrine does not determine the truthfulness of that doctrine, it is difficult to deny that every common believer, when they assent to believing something about God, wants to know what this particular doctrine means for them in their own spiritual walk. In light of this, I want to state some benefits that I have found from believing in the five points of Calvinism and also the particularly strong emphasis on God’s sovereignty which is involved in such a view:
1.
I owe everything to God for my salvation
This is because even my act of faith, which ushered me into eternal life is “not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, so that no one may boast.” Because my salvation did not come about because I was better at exercising faith than someone else, I know that there is nothing which makes me any different from other damned sinners except for the free grace of God. This grace is free because God can bestow it whenever He wants. That is to say, “God has free will.”
2.
I look for the lessons of God everywhere.
Since all of my circumstances and encounters are ordered and planned, and because Christ saves me, I know that God’s ultimate end in my life is my spiritual growth towards Him – and finally, His own glorification. This means that I look for an order in everything. Where one person may see coincidence, I see another opportunity which God has brought about for me to be enriched even more, every day.
3.
I am confident that God can answer my prayer.
No matter the nature of God’s answering, we can be confident that if we pray for something, we know that God can and if He wills, will do it. If we pray for someone’s salvation, we may pray, confident in the God who is sovereign over even the most obstinate will.
4.
I know that I am God’s forever.
Because Christ will never lose any which have been given to him, I know that I am always in the hand of Christ, and Christ is always in God, and so I am forever in God, and I need not fear a future time when I may simply decide not to follow God again, and follow a life of sin. But if that should happen, I know that God will draw me back to himself, because like the little lost sheep, Christ the good shepherd knows his sheep, and they know him, and if lost, he will retrieve them. I am Christ’s sheep, and at that, his sheep, forever in his fold, no longer living in fear of future torment.
5.
I respect the right of God.
I am subservient to God, and I know that He has absolute authority over me to do as He wills. I understand that God has the right to dispose of me, to destroy me, to love me, to draw me, to do anything that He so desires. Note, He has the right to do all of these things and would be justified in bringing about my death, both spiritual and physical. We know that God will never go against His own word, and so I rest confident in His promises. When He says He will save, we need never fear that He will not save.
6.
I live a God-centered life rather than a man-centered
life.
God’s goal in all of creation is not the creation itself, but Himself. Ephesians says God created everything "to the praise of the glory of his grace" (Ephesians 1:6, 12, 14). What a wonderful thing to know that creation is not there so that God can have company or friends (for God is self-sufficient and fully satisfied in Himself). This compels me to true worship and causes me to reject the idea that God is here to be my servant. "From him and through him and to him are all things. To him the glory forever" (Romans 11:36). Worship becomes an end in itself.
7.
I live knowing that God’s goal in creation and my goal
should be the same.
As I said above, God’s goal in creation is His own glory (which Edwards so beautifully proves in The End for Which God Created the World). This means that when I enjoy God, He is glorified; and thus, my own happiness (in the true, Biblical sense) and God’s goal in creation are one and the same. Our duty in life is “to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” This is a theological statement, and it is also a personal (pastoral) reality for all of us.
I certainly hope the reader can see that believing the truth about God does not mean compromising spiritually pleasing truths about God, but instead that believing the truth about God is a greatly pleasing thing which has numerous spiritual benefits.
The most difficult thing – once coming to terms with the truths of Calvinism – for most people, is dealing with those nagging questions which issue forth from our curious hearts. Such questions are not wrong, they are even productive towards understanding God more completely. It is a hard thing to know that something is true and yet want to believe that it is true.
What is more horrifying than the truth that all Christians hold, that many of our friends, relatives, co-workers, classmates, and mere acquaintances, will someday be tormented in Hell forever? Isn’t such a thought even more uncomfortable and difficult to swallow than all of the problems I have here addressed? We don’t find it so difficult to accept this truth anymore because we are so used to hearing it. But this is surely a horrible and terrifying thing to consider. You see, the Christian faith is full of uncomfortable truths that we must accept, despite our feelings, despite our inclinations. Indeed, as I said before, truth transcends our feelings.
It is this marriage of truth and feeling which is a true spiritual discipline. It requires, as my friend Ben likes to say, “submission.” This word characterizes the life of the Calvinist, a person who is submitted to God is a person who has no problem with knowing that God’s ultimate end is His own glory and not our own.