In times of national tragedy like this, where 28 innocent human beings are shot dead in cold blood in the middle of the day, in the middle of an elementary school—a time where words cannot describe the horror and evil on display—we are tempted to turn to the Christian faith in an effort to assuage our fears, our sense of helplessness, and to offer hope and peace to those directly affected by such horror.
However, I think perhaps we must first ask ourselves, as good Christians, is this really a good idea?
I mean, in light of the marching hoards of reformed churches, with a heavy and heavy-handed emphasis on Calvinism, even to the point where traditionally non-Calvinist churches are accepting certain reformed doctrines specific to that faith as being utter, God-breathed TRUTH…yes, in light of this, we must ask ourselves again: Is this really a good idea? Does Christianity in fact have anything to offer those who have suffered? Or, have we reached a point where the secular society, even atheists perhaps, show rank common human decency and compassion beyond what any “Christian” can offer? I submit that, yes, this is indeed the case.
This is the case because Christianity, in embracing the reformed premises of total depravity, original sin, and election, biblical infallibility, and scores of other metaphysically and morally impossible and hypocritical doctrines, has become, in fact a cult of death.
What do I mean by this?
I mean that what Christianity means today is: if you are a human, you just aren’t worth anything. Indeed, your sin is your existence. God doesn’t like you. God only likes Himself, and since you are not Him, He hates your guts. Now, and forever. He laments your very existence. Any good in you is Himself, thus the only thing about you he can possibly love is Himself. If you are not elect, he doesn’t care if you are slaughtered, because, again, your existence is your sin. If you are elect, He still doesn’t like you, but if He shows you favor, know this: it is not you He favors, but Himself. You he hates, and so if you happen to be gunned down by a madman, rejoice in your suffering. For the pain is the plumb line of truth. For believer and non-believer alike, the more you suffer, the more you are doing the only “good” you can do. The more the pain, the more you realize the TRUTH of your existence. That you are an abomination, and your sin is that you are awake.
This, my friends, is Calvinism; this is the root of reformed theology. And this is why those who suffer need to run from Christians, not to them. It is sad, but we have no hope, no comfort to offer. Nothing. God hates them. What else is there to say?
You think I’m horrible, don’t you. You think I’m a heretic. You might not personally burn me a the stake for my apostasy; my vile wickedness; my rejection of God; my lack of faith and my lack of suspending my disbelief to proclaim that God can in fact both love and hate sinful, depraved, horrible, wicked humanity at the same time…no, you might not do it. You might even deign to pay lip service to the fact that it would be wrong to do such a thing. Vengeance is the Lord’s and all that, right, says your infallible bible. But, if it happened, if I was led to the bonfire, with my blog and my words burning at my feet like Michael Servitus under the “great reformer”, John Calvin, you wouldn’t care so much, would you? Deep down, you wouldn’t protest. I got what I deserve, so this must be God’s vengeance. For I told people to not turn to Jesus in a time of national tragedy. And for that, I deserve to die the heretic’s death.
I know. I know. It’s okay. If you are a Calvinist, it is in perfect keeping with your beliefs. But know this: whatever hate God has for me, he has for you. Whatever loathsome thing He finds in me, He finds in you. I could say even worse things, and I still it would be doctrinally consistent to declare that I may be the elect one and you may be the damned one.
Your righteous indignation at me amounts to nothing; it is all filthy rags. You must know this. You have no collateral against me to show to God. For according to your own doctrine, you are NO BETTER THAN the one who slaughtered 20 innocent children.
Yes, know this before you condemn me.
But you will condemn me anyway, because your doctrine is based on utter contradiction and inconsistency. You will condemn because you have no choice, because in your mind, your Calvinism only applies to others. You are one of the gnostic few…a divinely gifted one. You have the keys to the kingdom, and your condemnation of me, though you are a depraved worm, is proof that God has gifted you to condemn . Oh, the irony…the impossibility of this thinking. But that is you. It is how you can function from day to day. If you were consistent, you would not be a Calvinist. And if you ceased to function by impossible contradiction, you would collapse into a heap of useless bones; spontaneously combust inside your own doctrinal funhouse.
It is okay for you to kill others and claim you do it out of righteousness because you have no standard of reason or truth. All you know is you react; and all of it is God’s will, by your doctrine of divine determinism. Your indignation at my words is not of you, because it is righteous, so it must be of God.
But how do you know? You don’t. You are spiritual and literally insane. And so you can do anything you want. Even to the point of becoming hypocritically indignant at people who point out that what you believe destroys life, and cannot save it.
You still doubt me. I know you do. These words of mine…shock value. Nothing more. I’m a smart-ass, capitalizing on death to make a point.
John Piper says this tragedy reminds us of how depraved our souls are. The translation of this is simple: God hates you as much as He hates the man who did this, because to Him, there is NO difference.
Within seconds of this tragedy hitting the news, I bet there were thousands of people (indeed, I read it myself on some blogs) declaring: Who can understand the mind of God? Who can explain why this was in His plan?
Folks, this is called “determinism”, and it is decidedly reformed. This is “God controls all things”.
The translation of this seemingly sympathetic statement is this: God wanted this to happen. He didn’t just allow it, HE did it. Nothing happens outside of His Will, you see, and so this was planned; pre-ordained. It could not have gone any other way. He wanted those beautiful innocent children to die at the hands of a madman; to remind us that we are all likewise horrible, and hated by God.
So, declaring this a lesson in total depravity and determinism means this to me: God hates your soul, and He will kill children to prove it.
In this way, Christianity is no different than the secular culture of our times, which says that individuals exist to be slaughtered. We see it in movies, in games, in our altruistic mindsets. Christianity confirms this, in its own way. Sure, people can be killed; for that is their greatest good…suffering, death, slavery, subjugation, servitude. But leave the killing and the autocracy where it belongs: in the hands of the neo-reformed mystic despots.
The problem is, of course that this is a total lie. God doesn’t hate you, or those children, whose innocent souls were so NOT depraved that John Piper, stuck in the stocks of his Calvinism, cannot even possibly begin to sympathize with their parents or offer anything in the way of hope or comfort. He is dead, by his own doctrinal definition.
So we will ignore Piper’s theology of death, after condemning it for the wickedness it is, and turn to what we know is really true of God.
God loves these children. He LOVES them. He grieves. These innocent children are in heaven. They are with God; and He is telling them now that this was NOT the plan He had for them. It was not His will. It was never His will. His will is life, not death. His will is for people to be, not to die.
He is happy they are with Him. He loves them, and they will dwell and sing and play and live with God forever and ever, in His fields of flowers, rolling with angels, protected by God, and are in such great comfort and bliss that you and I cannot even imagine. God is telling those children that He is moved to tears by such horror; that this is not what He wanted for them. He never intended this, and He longed to see them grow and live and love and be.
But He is happy they have come to Him. It’s early, but He is prepared. They are taken in and all is ready. Parents, people: God loves these children, and they are in bliss with Him now. This is a fact, and no one will harm your little ones ever again.
God and Christ love us all. God did not plan this. Prayer helps this. Prayer can prevent this in the future because there is power to move reality through prayer, based on our will and our right understanding of what is good. There is a relationship with Christ that is real; that is not determined, and that is rooted in love and life, and says that it is impossible for man to exist if it is God’s will that he should die.
And until this is the message of Christians, Christianity will continue to be a cult of death.
unreformingtheology 
“But know this: whatever hate God has for me, he has for you. Whatever loathsome thing He finds in me, He finds in you. I could say even worse things, and I still it would be doctrinally consistent to declare that I may be the elect one and you may be the damned one.
Your righteous indignation at me amounts to nothing; it is all filthy rags. You must know this. You have no collateral against me to show to God. For according to your own doctrine, you are NO BETTER THAN the one who slaughtered 20 innocent children”
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Bingo! Logical consistency, eh? I am going to start pointing this out.
And yes, it is getting ridiculous out there. Here ya go from a YRR pastor:
http://sbcvoices.com/am-i-adam-lanza/#comments
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Thanks for that link, Lydia. Exactly. I already knew that this was what was going through their reformed minds. “How can we condemn this act; why, I thought about stealing a paper clip from work this morning…I am as depraved and wicked as he is.”
CJ Mahaney had a saying, it was my personal favorite because it illustrated so perfectly the lunacy and dysfunctional moral logic from which the theology proceeds:
“Mother Theresa has more in common with Adolph Hitler than with Jesus Christ.”
Now, on the some level, he isn’t wrong. There is a huge distinction between Creator and created. But that’s NOT what CJ means. No, this statement has one point, and it is to make a MORAL comparison. It is to say that Mother Theresa has more in common, MORALLY, with Adolph Hitler than with Jesus Christ.
Now, how can anyone who is not insane make this kind of proclamation. Easy, the kind of person who sees morality IN BEING. Mother Theresa’s sin lay precisely in the fact that she is NOT God. Thus, her sin is like yours and mind, and her sin is that she exists at all. What I mean to say is that neo-Cals blur all moral, metaphysical and physical lines, so that man can make no distinction between them whatsoever. The resulting theological slop is thus parsed into neat little piles, with a ton of semantic gymnastics and redefining of terms, of cohesive and metaphysically impossible black and white (what I mean is that the “black and white” deliniation is merely a very good illusion). One pile = God, the other = man. God is good. Man is evil. The IS is what links sin and goodness. Anything else about man is irrelevant because his very existence is his depravity and is why he can do no good. Why he is born condemned, and why he must be elect, and afterwards, compelled into sanctification. His entire existence is defined by an external power beyond himself. Sin nature or God, depending on his elect status. And this is due, again, to the fact that he exists at all.
This of course destroys morality completely, which is exactly what Calvinism is designed to do so that “good” and “bad” may be thus declared to be whatever the gnostic tyrants say it is. Once you are categorically convinced that you have no claim to yourself or your mind because you are depraved and wicked merely by being awake, you can be owned by anyone claiming special divine dispensation. And, really, who in the hell are you to argue. The only “good” you an remotely do, since your sin is that you are awake, is to go back to sleep.
This is what this is all about by declaring none of us any better than Adam Lanza. We exist, so did he, and that is why we are evil.
In addition, the idea of “any sin is equal sin” is also designed to destroy the concept of objective morality that man can know; that is, kill the idea of good and evil. Think about it, if one sin is as equally heinous as any other, then the converse of that should be true, no? If one sin can condemn to hell, even if it’s something like lying about your weight to your friend, then one act of good should be grounds for your utter vindication before the Lord, right? I mean, if we are being consistent, one act of good, even if it is telling your friend that she or he looks good that day, should be as equally righteous as Christ’s perfect morality.
So, why the double standard? Well, there is no double standard, really, because the idea of “one sin is equal to all sins” has nothing to do with convincing us that we need Christ. It is ALL about destroying the idea of morality altogether so that gnostics can CREATE it for us. All sin is equal because in reality, there is NO such thing as sin. You can do NO good because your very existence is what makes you wicked. There isn’t any chance for a double standard because you can NEVER do any good at all, because all you do is a function of your existence, and your existence is the root of your evil.
There is obviously nothing in the faith to support this abominable lie. If existence itself is sin then that makes the Creator the author of evil. The fact is that man’s existence is GOOD, and has always been GOOD and it is man’s very consciousness, his reason, that allows him to acknowledge good and evil and thus cultivate volition and action in full awareness of the moral code. This means that sin and good are, in fact, existing in degrees. And they must, because the degrees of sin and goodness are the observable plumb lines for progress and regress; to know and understand when we are drawing to and away from God. They allow God to be at the center of what we do, and how we know where we stand relative to our individual context, and recognize how God is working with us and how we are aware of what our relationship is with Him at any given moment and what we can expect and how we can grow. Once you destroy degrees, you destroy morality at its root.
And that is their goal. Morality becomes whatever THEY say it is.
This is no recipe for good. Because it is power they crave, not goodness.