I’ve always rejected the doctrine of Calvinism. Even before I knew what it truly was, I knew that I was against it. I just wasn’t a TULIP fan. A few years ago, I realized that I had never given the doctrine a fair shake. I knew many people who held to this idea of limited atonement and knew them to be sincere and committed Christians.
So, I committed to reading as much as I could from all perspectives. In the end, I rejected Calvinism yet again. God is sovereign, yes. But He is also a God of love.
What I’ve come to realize lately, however, is that I unwittingly adopted a form of Calvinism that held to a view that God HAD chosen certain people over others. In my view, I was one of those chosen. Some examples:
–One of my best friends in 10th grade was a Presbyterian. However, my friendship with him was always marred by my realization that he was bound for hell unless I intervened in a forceful way. The error that would ultimately damn my 15 year old buddy? Instrumental music. What motivated my daily badgering of him until, finally, he broke down in tears and our friendship came to a bitter end, was that I was better than he was. God had smiled on me with His infinite knowledge and had given ME the proper understanding of truth. I was the chosen one.
–Fast forward a few years to 1989 and I am a 21 year old idealist, recently emerged from a spiritually fallow period in my life. Billy Graham came to my home town for one of his crusades. At the time I was still working in the meat department at Kroger. One of my co-workers was a sweet woman who maintained her spiritual witness in the midst of a sometimes hostile environment. She was going to be one of the voices in the choir at the crusade. So, I went one night with a friend of mine to see what all the fuss was about. Graham preached a thundering message with a stirring altar call. Hundreds of people responded. My faith system told me, at the time, that every single person who went forward that night had done so for no reason. They were no closer to God than they had been before they got out of their bleacher seat. They might have wanted a relationship with Jesus but Jesus wasn’t there. I went home shaken with this belief. Could I really think that God was not moved by their limited understanding? My belief was that they needed someone like me to teach them the truth. For I was the chosen one, selected by God to have this gift of truth.
Over the last 16 years I have abandoned such a myopic view of God’s love for those in other denominations. But, sadly, I just exchanged it for an equally insidious view of God’s dispassionate relationship with others. That manifested itself in various forms:
–America was the hope for the proliferation of Christianity. God needed the United States if His message was going to persevere.
–The Republican Party was the mechanism for God’s redemption of America. By virtue of us being “right” on the important issues, God had chosen us to take America back. We were the elite of the elite, so to speak.
As a result, I believed God’s chosen must be protected at all costs. All of the Christian life was about “preserving” the values that I held dear. Therefore, I quantified everyone into either “us” or “them.” My enemies list was long: Democrats, liberals, immigrants, homosexuals, Muslims, abortionists, Catholics, minorities. And on and on.
I had developed my own form of Calvinism! Sure, we were all born depraved. But by virtue of God’s Sovereign (if not whimsical) election He had saved me by a grace that was evidenced in the fact that I was a white, middle-class, American raised in a conservative Christian home. And I must persevere amongst all the persecution that I must endure because of my special status as one of God’s favored.
And I wonder why my Christian witness has been compromised! Who wouldn’t respond to such moral superiority? Who wouldn’t want to know this God who has smiled so lavishly upon me?
But here is what I have realized: I have always, always, ALWAYS underestimated the love of God.
I have talked about the height, depth and width of His love while believing it is finite.
I have believed I was better than non-believers by virtue of my own moral luck.
But I’m not better than any one: Republicans, Democrats, liberals, immigrants, homosexuals, Muslims, abortionists, Catholics, minorities. And on and on.
But He is better. He is supreme. And His love is infinite, eternal and inescapable.
I repent of ever believing otherwise.
In the coming weeks, I will be talking more about the love of God and the implication for us.
