Could you respond to this:
...I have had a bit of discussion with you, but some of my posts earlier on was not tackled by you. For instance, I said that believing God has chosen us to be saved can also be a source of boasting because it can make some of us think we are "special" in God's sight simply because we are the "elect". This, you never addressed.
The thing is, Terene, the Bible is what says we are chosen and predestined, in several places. Romans 8, 2 Thess 2:13, Acts 13:48, Eph 1:4-11, 1 Corinthians.
So if you hate the doctrine so much, then your problem isn't really with any system of theology, it's with the Bible itself. The first step is coming to terms with those passages. Then after that, you can tackle the implications. You seem to be operating backwards from this model. You raise questions based on the implications without ever actually admitting that the Bible is what talks about these things.
Secondly, in many of these same places, such as the Eph 1:4-11 passage, and in Romans 9 in particular, we learn that election is
UNconditional. Hence the U in TULIP. Unconditional election means that God's choice of you
had nothing to do with any good qualities or attributes in you. His choice to save you was based on His own will, his own purpose, his own grace. There were
no conditions that you as a person fulfilled in order to attract God's eye towards choosing and saving you. No conditions, hence "unconditional"
Since nothing in me is what caused God to save me, there's no possible way I can boast for "being special", because the exact opposite is true. I'm not special, I deserve hell the way hitler does. "Special" would mean somehow I deserved more grace or less hell than someone else, but the Bible doesn't allow for such a thing.
Further, in 1 Cor we learn that God chose the weak, foolish, and the base. He didn't choose the strong, wise, or the special. So here again the BIble refutes your assertion that the chosen ones are special. In 1 Cor we learn that God chooses the non-special. then Paul tells us he did it this way on purpose to remove room for us to boast.
This is a huge elephant in the room for your theology, Terene, because you believe that your smarter choice is what resulted in God's choice of you. You believe God foresaw that you were smart enough to choose Christ (when another wasn't), and so God chose you based this knowledge. That means it is your theology/soteriology that has sinners with room to boast because their own actions or attributes is what caused God to choose them. This is the Arminian doctrine called "Conditional election"
So you see, the very thing you believe is what you are arguing against, Terene, yet you fail to see it.
I do believe God chooses and brings things to pass, the matter of dispute is not whether God chooses or brings things to pass, but HOW and WHY He chooses and brings things to pass. The Calvinism viewpoint makes it seem that God chooses and brings EVERY SINGLE THING (be it good or evil) to pass solely based on His desires and will. But here is the problem:
God can never desire or will for something evil to happen. I repeat, God never desires or wills evil things to happen in His universe. Saying that He does is accusing Him of being responsible for the evil things in this world, because God is responsible for His willful actions and desires as well, since He is the Ruler of the Universe. If God has a will for evil things to come to pass (which Calvinism asserts), then surely God is at least partly responsible for the evil in this world and He wouldn't be a judge anymore since He Himself is responsible for things He judges. Delving into the logic behind Calvinism exposes easily the contradictions that it poses against the Nature of God and His Word. God's will is always to do good, and always to bring GOOD things to pass. He has no will or part in the evil in this world, He allows evil to happen, but that has nothing to do with Him wanting the evil to happen. This is the true and holy nature of God. Willing and allowing things to happen are two TOTALLY different things - Willing is deeply connected to an innate desire, but allowing does not mean desiring. I believe you are confusing the two here, Skala. If my will is to bring a stealing incident to pass, then I am already considered responsible for the stealing because my will approve of stealing. Are you now going to say God is responsible for all the evil in this world because it is His will to bring them to pass? Does God approve of the evil in this world through His will? God forbid!
This entire section is based on your own reasoning, opinion and has no scriptural foundation. Here are some examples of God bringing to pass wicked things:
Act 4:27 for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel,
Act 4:28 to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.
Here we clearly see that the murder of Christ was God's predestined plan. You would have me believe that God simply "allowed" Christ to be murdered, but that would make our entire religion foolish. It would mean Christ's death on my behalf was not ordained/planned by God, but was simply an accident. Christ was plan B, not Plan A, according to this reasoning. It means my salvation is simply a byproduct of what God "passively allowed".
So right off teh bat your assertions are meaningless. Christ's murder at the hands of wicked men was predestined by God. So while you assert and claim that God does not on any level desire evil to happen, here is the best example that yes, he does. He desired that the only innocent man to walk this earth be murdered. You heard it:
God desired murder to happen. Murder is a sin. God desired that sin happen.
What else can be concluded from this bible passage?
A second example (there are hundreds, believe me), is when God sends Assyria against Israel to murder and plunder their goods:
Isa 10:5 Ah, Assyria, the rod of my anger; the staff in their hands is my fury!
Isa 10:6 Against a godless nation
I send him, and against the people of my wrath I command him,
to take spoil and seize plunder, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.
Think about the implications of this. People were minding their own business, and they got attacked. They got murdered. Their guts were spilling out. It was horrific. Husbands watched as wives were murdered right before their eyes, and probably raped. Little kids were brutally killed. They were murdered, then their goods were stolen.
Yet the whole thing was God's doing. He is the one that sent Assyria to attack. He was behind the entire thing. Don't you dare sit there and tell me that God wasn't involved. He says it himself, he takes credit for it. He is the one that was behind this.
And again:
Jos 11:20
For it was the LORD's doing to harden their hearts that they should come against Israel in battle, in order that they should be devoted to destruction and should receive no mercy but be destroyed, just as the LORD commanded Moses.
Here yet again , it is a sin to kill people, yet God caused men to come against other men in battle for the purpose of killing them and destroying them. Don't you dare tell me that God doesn't ordain evil to happen.
He ordains evil, but he does it for his own righteous purposes. Don't get me wrong, God doesn't sin, but he can ordain sin for a good reason. God is not sinning by ordaining that sin happen.
And again:
1Ki 22:23 Now therefore behold,
the LORD has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; the LORD has declared disaster for you."
Lying is a sin, yet here it is commissioned/ordained/purposed by God.
Over and over the Bible tells us that God is absolutely sovereign, especially over sin and evil. You would have us believe that God is completely helpless and just wringing his hands that this evil force exist in his universe, and God is doing everything he can to stop it, but it cannot be controlled, and worse, God has no purpose for it, it just exists arbitrarily, without God's decree.
What comfort can Christians have from this? For we learn that all things happen for the good of the saints. How can this promise be true if God has nothing to do with the "all things that happen", seeing that the "all things' includes sin and evil?
Don't you sit there Terene and tell me that God doesn't desire or ordain sin or evil any level. Because the Bible tells me he does, and my own salvation DEPENDS on it. He ordained Christ's murder, to save me. All things work together for my ultimate good (Romans 8). Do they work together on accident? Or is God in control of every single thing that happens on this earth? By asserting the things you are asserting you are making God powerless in this universe, and you are making my salvation a byproduct and not God's plan, and you are making God's promise to me meaningless because all things work together for my good.
You are emotionally driven, rather than scripturally driven. You have as et of "facts" in your mind and every single Bible verse you quote here is employed only to prove your facts true. You don't consider the other Bible verses and draw conclusions from them. If they contradict your assertions, you claim they are being used wrongly and you just move on. You never stop to explain how or why.