Recently I have been engaging heavily in the arena of ideas over at the wonderful and informative and necessary site, Wartburg Watch.  If you’ve not visited this cite, I highly recommend you do so.  The two self-described “Blog Queens” over there bravely and unabashedly tackle some of the biggest problems and controversies in Christendom today, not the least of which is the false doctrine and heresy of what some describe as “new Calvinism” (which I submit is really simply Calvinism, but instead of a robe or brown friar frock, its Khakis and button ups…or, for the more “hipster mega churches”, 40-plus-year old gnostic tyrants looking weird and creepy dressed up as 21 year old college boys (nothing says mid-life-crisis-as-an-attempt-at-upper-middle-class-mass-appeal like saggy eyes, grey hair (or receding hairline, or no hair, if you are Josh Harris) and tight jeans and a track jacket.  My former SGM despot-in-the-stead was probably late fifties and wore flip flops with blue jeans–gross–but at least not when he was demagoguing…er, I mean, “preaching”).

At any rate, that’s what’s been keeping me from posting for so long. And I wrote so much over at Wartburg that I decided that instead of writing a new entry for my site I would simply edit (for clarity and brevity…well, okay, it’s me, so probably not much brevity) and post a portion of what I wrote over there, over here.  After this I’ll return to my normal programming with the series on “A Double-Minded God”.  After that, I’ll eventually get around to addressing some hard core metaphysical issues that will be sure to raise some eyebrows.

But, fair warning, I have recently been treated to some Calvinist double-speak…er, essays, I mean…regarding what they call the “heresy” of Pelagianism.  I actually hadn’t heard of Pelagius and, seeings as he was condemned as a heretic by BOTH the Catholic Church in general and Augustine, the “philosopher king” gnostic, himself,  my interest was immediately piqued.  Apparently, the Calvinists have an affinity for calling Arminians “semi-Pelagian” as a means to denigrate Arminian theology.  Well, after reading up on Monk Pelagius I have concluded that I do in fact share in many of his doctrinal ideas, most notably the denial of Original Sin and Predestination.

Though I do not wish to label myself, because, really, I haven’t found anyone yet who shares my metaphysics–they are my own–I would describe myself as not semi-Pelagian, but rather semi-semi-Pelagian.  Why “semi-semi”?  Because that’s how much I really like this guy.  He was calling out the gnostic insanity almost two thousand years before any of us.

So, my point is that if you’ve been on the fence as to whether or not to label me a heretic for denying all five points of TULIP, the impossibility of God knowing the future and past, that women are every bit as qualified to be pastors as men, that I deny “biblical roles” as false doctrine which is nothing but oppression of women, that the Bible is not inerrant nor infallible and sometimes the guys who wrote it simply didn’t understand things…well, now’s the chance to run away with your conscience clear.  Officially, according to both the Catholic Church and just about every church which sprung into existence from the Protestant Reformation, I am, in fact, a heretic.

But keep this in mind:  any group which the CALVINISTS and the CATHOLICS (both of whom, by the way, are either guilty of or seriously suspected of fairly recently covering up multiple counts of child sexual abuse) declare heretical must, by utter logical necessity and default, be given a fair hearing.  I hereby request that my few loyal readers stay with me and hear me out.

But if you choose to hop, skip, and jump from this harmless little old heretic…well, I can’t promise to understand.

But, it’s a free country.  And I’m not a Calvinist tyrant, so you won’t need to assume I’ll be drawing up “church discipline” papers on you.  We’ll leave that for the real heretics, shall we?

Anyway…next up, the first post on various anti-Calvinist points made during the past week, by me, on Wartburg Watch.  Interestingly, I was engaged in debates with those who are, in fact, harshly critical of Calvinism.  But the problem even with non-Calvinists is that SO MANY still insist on holding to the root doctrines that force them to cede the debate to the neo-Reformers every time, almost without exception.

For example, as soon as you agree that Predestination and Free-Will are, in fact, “paradoxical”, and that you “really don’t understand it…and we were just not meant to know certain things”, you have lost the debate. For IF predestination is either not outright rejected as the incomplete understanding or faulty metaphysics of the writers of the Bible, or re-interpreted so that it is utterly consistent with free-will (and I believe that you can do the latter, but I honestly have no problem with the former…predestination, in the grand scheme of Christian doctrinal and theological and world-view application can have NO bearing on what we do or what we think or how we live or what we tell people because it simply confuses the issues, muddies the waters, and makes Christianity look like Eastern mysticism).

So, I found myself in the strange position of having both Calvinists and non-Calvinists riled up at me.  That?  Was kind of weird.  But, hey, irrational metaphysics and logically impossible explanations of “faith” are bad no matter who thinks them.  It doesn’t matter who prepares it, you can’t give a person a good meal from rotten meat, regardless of how good the intentions of the chef are.

Coming soon, in audio form, my first post from my discussions/arguments/tugs-of-wars/hate speech (just kidding) from this past week on Wartburg Watch.

“The same God who brings the storm to your life is the same One who will rebuke it.”

Said the quaint little old man.  Sounding rather like a shaman more than a pastor.  Well…no, not really.  He sounded rather like a neo-Reformed mystic, which is the way the church is sounding in general these days.  Christianity stripped of its Jewish philosophical foundations and pressed, mashed, hashed and crushed into the square hole of Greco-Roman gnosticism; with a little flavoring of the hyper-conservative political middle finger thrown in for good measure, to give it the illusion of solidarity with Libertarianism (or, rather, Enlightenment liberalism, which is what this Republic was founded upon).

In the end it is merely one thing really.  Destructive evil.  I have often said it and I will continue to say it:  The greatest strategic move of the Enemy was to remove the Jewish roots of Christianity and replace them with European paradoxical mythology-as-philosophy instead. This move has removed man from himself, made God a hypocrite, and Jesus irrelevant.  And at the same time, having found really cohesive and heavily bound damed-if-you-don’t form in Calvin’s Institutes (as well as a little help from the fear-mongering, authoritarianism, and stake-burning of his friends Luther, Knox, Edwards, the Puritans, and so on and so forth) it is so hard to see.

Anyway…

You remember the story, right?  From Matthew.  The Disciples, a boat, a hearty storm, fear, and a pleading for a rescue.  An asking of the Son of Man, “Do you not care if we perish?”  And something tells me that they weren’t being facetious or rhetorical.  That was a real question, born out of real fear from a real storm that they knew and understood posed a real danger to their lives.  They saw the danger and they were afraid.  Cause and effect, nature and man doing what they do, according to their ability to act…according to their ability to exist, which means that they cannot in fact BE God, they must be themselves.  If they are themselves, then they act according to themselves, not according to God’s control, nor according to God’s predestination, nor His foreknowledge.  But wholly and utterly of themselves alone.  Because a Creation that is controlled by God is determined by God, and that makes Creation redundant.  For God cannot create a thing to do something He can do better Himself, which is everything, by definition, because He is everything that HE needs to be.  And thus if Creation exists it exists for itself, not FOR God, meaning that God created Creation in order that it DO and BE apart from God, not under his direct control, and it must have its own purpose, and its own ways of achieving that purpose, that involves a relationship with the Creator, but not a possession by Him.  Because if it was necessary that God control Creation, then Creation becomes merely an extension of God, which is redundant, and metaphysically contradictory, and this is impossible.

But, though they like to think they use reason and logic to argue their reformed points, they could not be further from the truth.  For contradiction can never be equated with “reason”; I don’t care how smart R.C. Sproul thinks he sounds.  When you argue that Creation must be possessed by God in order to exist, you are in fact basing your “logic” on metaphysical mutual exclusiveness.  God is God and Creation is Creation.  If one becomes the other in any way, then neither can exist according to reason.

Along with Sproul, the sweet little guest preacher (at my “non-Calvinist” church) didn’t understand this either.  And, well…I suppose that when you are as overly-certain as the neo-Reformed group is, your tend to check your reason at the bathroom sink in the morning, every morning.  You begin to confuse the theoretical and the abstract with concrete reality.  And, presto, you have reformed “logic”.

“The same God who brings the storm to your life is the same One who will rebuke it.”

That was the quote with which he started the sermon.  The story of the Jesus rebuking the storm on the water was his Scripture passage of choice.

Now, let’s stop being afraid to confront the madness and insanity and call this what it IS:  That statement makes no sense at all.  It is, by flagrant definition, circular and meaningless.  What it effectively says  is this:

God rebukes Himself.  God does a thing for the sole purpose of UNDOING it.  God creates misery in order to assuage the misery, in order to teach man to…what, exactly?  Well, really, that he is simply the vessel for both.  That man has the string which God pulls to illicit the proper “response” to His capricious ways.  That what man does or thinks is irrelevant outside of the appropriate response to the pain or pleasure, for God is the one who is in charge of both the evil and the good in man’s life, and God will do what He does regardless of man’s thoughts, desires, and yes, faith.  That man’s only role is to bring forth the appropriately mindless emotional response.  Man is to either submit to either pain or pleasure, depending on the circumstances the Lord sovereignly brings. And that to resist the proper response is, in fact, akin to resisting God, as the One who brings both GOOD and EVIL.  Man’s mind and will is irrelevant.  Submission to the whims of God is all that man can do, which makes man functionally non-existent.  The purpose of man then becomes to deny that he IS himself.  That he was purposefully created to not exist.   And this makes God, thus, the hypocritical worker of meaningless-ness.

Yes, that one little statement says all that.

Think I’m reaching?  Think I’m exaggerating?  Ah…I know.  I’m full of it.  What I just said makes no sense.  How did I get that from that?

You think you’ve got the answer, don’t you?

But I’ve already anticipated what you are thinking.  How did I do that?  Because I WAS you, Calvinist, for fifteen years.  I begin every post with what I know YOU will say. What YOU will declare not true about what I post is precisely how I organize my argument.  I’m not as obtuse as you assume, and that will always be your weakness when entering the arena of ideas.  You never prepare because you assume that your superficial arguments are, in fact, full of depth and readily apparent reason.  Which they are not.  Reason is merely wrapping.  What is underneath is decidedly insane.

You are saying that this is not true.  That God is bringing pain in order to teach faith in the midst of adversity.  That He will reel in the pain when your faith reaches the appropriately lofty realm of ether.  That you will be strengthened the  next time a painful circumstance arrives that is NOT God’s doing.  That God teaches you so that at that time, you’ll be prepared.

Prepared to do what?  Prepared to weather the storm that God may not relieve me of next time?  Prepared to concede that the storm which God did not bring is under no obligation to relent regardless of my faith?  Yes, that, really, and more as well.

That God is not in a position to answer prayers or faith in either case, because in the first instance it is God doing and God relieving and thus, by definition my faith can have nothing to do with it (for if God brought the storm He is under no obligation to relieve it except at his arbitrary good pleasure, in which case, my faith is irrelevant…for if rebuking his own perfect work is contradictory and irrational, how much more then is God rebuking His own perfect work as a function of MAN’S imperfect “faith”, which is even more subjective, if that were possible?). And in the second instance the pain is brought by blind nature who cannot by definition respond to man’s faith.

In both cases man’s faith, his mind, is irrelevant.  HE is irrelevant.

And then you might be tempted to say that God brings the storm so that next time, when it is not Him bringing the storm, you’ll have built up your faith to the point that He can intervene.

But think about what you are saying.  God can somehow intervene according to my faith, but if not for my faith He could not intervene.  And yet He can bring a storm of His own power and freely rebuke it in order to teach me faith.  By purposely ignoring my faith and rebuking Himself apart from me somehow is supposed to teach me that my faith will be efficacious for circumstances which have nothing to do with God.  That God will intervene on behalf of a faith that was never relevant to the equation that God used to teach me faith in the first place (remember God brought the storm, and God rebuked it…there is no mention of man’s faith having anything to do with it).  That irrelevant faith is supposed to magically become relevant when the circumstance is not of God; and if my faith is not “real”, then I will be left to the mercy of the circumstance because God cannot intervene. Why?  Because of my lack of faith.  Which I was supposed to learn from a situation where faith could not possibly matter at all.

And further, I would argue of faith:  It is a faith that God can rebuke the storm…but you have only learned faith by watching God both bring and rebuke storms that HE is generating.  But how can one build faith for what is not being shown; what is not being made evident.  Your faith that God can rebuke storms that HE controls cannot be logically and rationally translated into faith that God can rebuke storms that He is NOT in control of.  It is, in fact, BLIND faith, that is, faith based on no evidence whatsoever.  Not only that, but based on no reason, no rational meaning.  How can a faith based on one thing be applicable to something entirely different and yet MEAN anything rational?  It cannot.  The only way you build faith in God being able to thwart the storms in your life is to see Him do it consistently knowing that the pain (storm) is NOT of God.  That nothing outside of God can subvert His will.  But if your faith is based purely on seeing God create something in order to rebuke it (call it evil, needing to be UNDONE), and you acknowledge that God is perfect, then not only will any faith you “learn” from such a scenario be false (that is, blind and arbitrary…for, again, what does your faith have to do with what God has already decided to do and does in spite of YOU and CREATION, by design) but it will be blasphemous as well.  For how is it possible to call faith righteous when it is based upon trusting that a perfect God will purposefully subvert His own  perfect will?  The very concept is nonsensical.

The only possible purpose to my faith then,  in this scenario, “The same God who brings the storm to you life is the same One who will rebuke it”,  is to understand that ALL that happens to me is of God and from God, and thus my faith, my thoughts, my self, my consciousness, my feelings, my will are all categorically beside the point.

Please…please, reader, I beg you to see this.  Please, please be someone who sees this, for I fear that I will find no one who can grasp this, whose thinking allows them access to the fact that there is no way around it.  Those who hold to these mutually exclusive ideas MUST believe them if they proclaim them and yet I have found only one or two that will apprehend it.  This kind of thinking is determinism, plain and simple.  It is the modus operandi of all of Calvinist theology.  The idea that YOU are beside yourself as a self-conscious soul.  That your very ability to be aware is WHY you are wicked and hated by God.  But more than that–for that is merely the moral point to Calvinism–is the fact that according to their metaphysics you cannot possibly exist at all.  You are forever bound to forces that are outside of you, either God or your “sin nature”.  That what you think is categorically irrelevant, for your thinking cannot ever equate to a will that is efficacious for bringing about anything at all.  That all that happens to you is in spite of you.  There is, in fact, NO YOU anywhere.  YOU are an illusion. Your very thoughts right this minute are determined actions that have already been pre-ordained for you, and which are inevitable and thus have existed always even before they existed at all; that there is no real cause because the event is categorically, singularly determined to BE what it is ALONE…for that is precisely what determinism is; a denial that any CAUSE is real.  Things are singularly determined already events, the only real cause can be whatever has ordained them; and really, not even God can be the cause, for DETERMINED means precisely that it MUST exist, and there is nothing and no one that can ever make it NOT exist.  Not even God’s own will can be called the cause of what is wholly, utterly determined.  If anything caused it, even God’s free will, then it is not determined, it is an effect, and thus, was never determined. A thing cannot both be inevitable and NOT inevitable at the same time.  If it was ever NOT inevitable, then it is NOT determined.  When we declare things determined by God then we must proceed to the logical conclusion of that statement and concede that God Himself is determined, and thus, like us, is not Himself either, but is at the mercy of what?  Of determinism.  God is not God.  Determinism is God, and determinism thus itself must then be determined…and on and on we go, a never ending, self-contradictory and eternally self-perpetuating equation that has no rational end in sight.  All reality being a black hole of determined events that cannot have really be determined by anything at all.  A black hole of universal nothingness…pointlessness.

Welcome to Reformed Theology, my friends.  Lawless, pointless, useless God and man and universe.  This is the soul-sucking “faith” that has so many otherwise rational people convinced that they are really “alive” in Christ, when their very doctrine demands that the only reason they have for existing is to roll over and play dead.

But, alas…this is hard to grasp.  And yet if we are consistent in our logic, then we must concede that things happen because other things freely act.  Free acts upon free acts is the very premise of Creation.  But very few people will concede that, for it is so very difficult after so many years of rejecting the blatant free will premises of the Old Testament.

At any rate, at best, it cannot matter even if your thoughts and acts were “free” even on some kind of micro, limited level; the idea that anything can be truly free is completely outside of reformed theology when you take the thinking to its logical conclusion.  Which is where Calvinists should start, but never do.  Because if they started at the conclusions, no one would ever listen to them. They would laugh them out of their loft ivory towers.  And the world is laughing, really.  The world is rejecting religion in droves and this theology is why.

Remember, the core weakness of Calvinism is that it makes everything an illusion.  They can NEVER be right because according to their own theology (and this is true, incidentally, of scientific determinists as well) they cannot KNOW anything.   

More to come, hopefully less fragmented.  But, we’ll see how I feel like rolling.

Peace.

Picking up where we left off in this series, we continue as follows.  A little melodramatic…perhaps a bit biting and sarcastic, this post.  But in order to get the full effect of just how aggrieved we should be at the disastrous panoply of doctrinal assumptions in neo-Reformed heresy, I wanted my tone to be suitably full of angst.  Thanks for bearing with, as always.

The neo-Reformed/Calvinist hoards are relentlessly on the march, the energy and rigid ideology and demagoguery of the Young, Restless, (Rich, if you are lucky enough to be a mega-church pastor), and Reformed (YRR) seem to know no limits.  They will not suffer their ideas to be challenged; they will not accept compromise (they firmly declare that the earth is really only 10,000 years old…if that gives you any indication of the kind of intellectual “objectivists” we are dealing with; really, it’s kind of a joke); they will not accept that you have any say over your own mind.  You belong to them, or you do not really exist as a human.  You are an animal, and you shall be treated like one.  You are a sheep (mutton on which they feed), or you are a wolf.  And the wolves will be wooed only so long.  Then, if they bay or bark one too many questions, they’ll be shot with extreme prejudice.  It’s okay.  The wolves obviously weren’t of the elect.  If they were, they would have sold their souls to their neo-Reformed God incarnate-in-the-stead.  The fact that they dared to hesitate to give their undying and unquestioning devotion to a mere man with less intellectual integrity than the average third grader is proof that God created them for destruction.

If their doctrinal insanity has yet to breach the four walls of your own church, count yourself lucky. Well…at least count yourself lucky for now.  Unless they can be met and defeated by men and women who are not too terrified or cowed by hundreds of years of impossibly contradictory metaphysical assumptions that have surreptitiously invaded their own theology and undercut it at the root, making their life’s work but so much chaff before the winds of the conceded reformed premises…yes, unless people who will not accept that metaphysical (and, by extension, doctrinal) contradiction can defeat metaphysical contradiction—that this is by definition a zero sum game, the winner being the one with the ostensibly bigger God, and this is always the Calvinists—then the hoards of the neo-Reformed darkness will eventually find their way to you.  In your cozy, unaffected little innocent church, with you innocent elders and sweet old folks singing The Old Rugged Cross you will hear uttered, from the musty and worn pulpit, likely from a gentle and pleasant-looking “guest pastor”, a logical and theological impossibility, an affront to both God and man and the Bible.  But it will be said in such a way and couched in such terms that unless prepared with rank reason and pure trust in your ability to THINK and trust in your own senses, it will pass into your metaphysical presuppositions and into your doctrine without so much as a question or a raised hand.  Soon, with spiritual throats cut, starting with your church’s leadership (who naturally want to stay “hip” with the latest doctrinal “truth”) you will no longer be alive to offer any alternative or fight to such egregious spiritual mysticism.  You’ll nod and shrug and give your money and property away and concede your hard earned reputation and life and love to your gnostic spiritual authority, safe and sound in the knowledge that ALL, no matter how evil it is or terrible the outcomes, is God’s will in the end.

The neo-Reformed eyes fall on your doomed soul and they pronounce in your hearing words which feign humility and sensibility and comfort and worship.  Trust me…for a loooong time you will swear that I’m full of it; I’m exaggerating, or outright lying and slandering.  The love-bombing is so powerful in neo-Reformed circles that it takes a suit of armor and a gouging out of one’s eyes and ears to not get sucked into its seductive false warmth.  You will SWEAR that I must be the instrument of the devil, impugning such sensible and obviously Godly doctrine.  Of COURSE, God is in control of us.  Of COURSE we are too depraved to ever seek Him.  Of COURSE all praise is to be for God for any good we do, because of COURSE it can’t possibly be us doing it.  It must be God doing FOR us. Because He loves us so much.

I know.  I know.  I scarcely believe that I’ve come so far to see the truth.

All of it is lies.  It doesn’t matter what you believe or think.  After a while, look around.  See that pain has now become the plumb line for TRUTH.  See how people force themselves into smothering little roles and lives, terrified to take a step out into the real world, dead in love, no care for the lost, evangelism the purview of a narrow band of “fringe members”.

Open your eyes and let yourself see, and I won’t have to prove anything to you.  You’ll do all the work for me.  Look in the mirror.  Ask yourself who you really serve.  Your own interests or those of the “church” in ALL you do?  Have your interests (personal, occupational, familial) become subservient ultimately to their interests?  Do you recoil to believe that YOU can even have your own interests?  Does saying the words “my own interests matter” in your mind fill you with dread of condemnation and God’s bitter ire?

If it does, then you are following false teaching.  You don’t HAVE to think or believe that way.  You can disagree with me, but know this:  you are miserable because you CHOOSE to be.  You CAN choose not to be.  You are following pagan mysticism; it has little to do with the philosophy that gave us Christ.  If you want to taste true freedom in Him, you need to stop enslaving yourself to gnostic liars who only want you for what you can feed them.

But anyway….

Yes, their words are sweet like frosting, with about as much nutritional value.  Words that mask the truth of what is really a theology harboring a deep disdain for God and man and the rest of Creation.  A theology which is only superficially organized, coherent and consistent, but, when submitted to true rational and even biblical scrutiny (that is, biblical scrutiny that is not based on proof-texting), is adrift on a raging and evil sea of confusion; a spiritual nightmare of incongruent and unsettling thoughts.  Thoughts and ideas that you can’t really see, can’t really put your finger on.  A fantasy land or hall of smoke and mirrors where nothing is as it seems or as it is spoken.  And when “practically” applied, brings only pain, misery, exasperation, cold love, often anger and agitation and abuse,  and a loss of control over one’s own mind and life…for it cannot save you.  Its sole purpose is to bleed you, consume your possessions and then kill you inside.  It is axiomatic that the same doctrine that tells you that YOU don’t exist cannot possibly save you.  But they will lie and tell you it can.

You will notice after a while that there are no longer opposites in the doctrinal equations.  No longer GOOD and EVIL, GOD or MAN, SALVATION or DAMNATION.  For it is boiled down to one thing and one thing only.  GOD.  If you are not GOD, you aren’t you, because it “all about God” (lie…it’s all about God AND man; the Bible exists because man exists, thus, it cannot be “all about God”, by definition).  The best you are is despised; fit for death.  All is One; and all that is not part of the One is unconscious, evil…to be exploited, used, chastised and blamed for things that it can never–according to the reformation’s VERY OWN teachings– possibly be culpable for, because it has no mind of its own.  And who is part of the “One” is determined solely by the Gnostic overlords, the neo-Reformed pastors.  Yes, they who hold the Keys to the Kingdom; which simply means that they get to say who is saved and who isn’t.  It has nothing to do with YOU.  EVER.  But the dark secret is that it has nothing really to do with God, either.   Yes, the dark secret is that not even GOD can exist in the twisted maze called reformed hermeneutics.

But none of this matters, for you are unable to see it through the poetic and melodramatic, teary-eyed sermons that are sweet across your brain like the deadly goodies baked by the witch in the Gingerbread House in the woods.  You sit there and nod.  Yes!  Finally!  You declare in your mind.  Someone who GETS the SEVERITY of SIN.

Pretty soon you are in the pot with Hansel and Gretel.  Boiling, with no way out because its all “God’s will”.  God is in control, right.  He has a plan.  Whatever happens, happens.  You’ll boil alive in the stew of neo-Reformed assumptions before you’ll ever dare take a step out of the water.  For these people really GET SIN, and you now understand that YOU are THAT SIN.  And so, better to let “God’s will” kill you and and torture everyone else around you than dare to believe that you are capable in your own mind and of your own volition of calling evil, evil.  Morality is relative, you see, when God is in control of everything.  When it’s all according to God’s plan, then GOOD and EVIL are merely different words for the exact same thing.  When “but for the grace of God go I” is your doctrine, you pretty much concede that you can’t say a damn thing.

Oh, they get sin alright.  Be happy if this is your bag.  You will never hear the end of it.  You can’t move beyond the cross.  You can’t DO anything.  That’s the point.  You can’t do anything because you don’t really exist.  YOU are irrelevant.  So, if you love hearing about your sin (as you lick the boots of the pastor and quiver in your jeans when he deigns to smile upon you …oh, thank GOD you finally have a God you can truly worship; and he looks so nice in his button down shirt and khakis and hip loafers; so royal, and yet so humble, up there behind the Plexiglass), the neo-Reformation is the right place for you, my friend.

You are blind with terror; but you pretend that this terror is proof of your acceptance.  You tell yourself that the abject terror at being sure of absolutely nothing about yourself or God is really the “peace that passes all understanding”.

You are compelled onward.  Unable to stop, but also unable—blitzed out of your mind on spiritual soma and repetitive, superficial, banal worship music, and full blown blubbering histrionics on stage—to see, to hear, to understand.  The drum line of gnostic overlords and their Vaudeville act has you in its talons.  You go to them for your each and every move, following along in the traveling show, and then your next move, too.  And the one after that, and so on and so on.

And then the cycle of terror and confusion, masquerading as “sound doctrine”, begins again for another poor soul. And so on and so on.

Like the two towers of Mordor and Isengard, the philosophy gives the illusion of impenetrability.  And it is from within these fortresses that the armies march…armies of Greek- influenced, pagan Gnosticism wearing a shield with a Christian symbol on it.  These are the mobs of relentless, rigid determinism…bereft of any culpability for their pre-ordained and divinely foreknown actions, they march from the towers ready to shed the blood of those who both have no say in their total depravity, and yet are somehow completely culpable for it.  They say they want you to join them; no…they demand it.  And the sick irony is that even if you do—even if you accept Christ– there is still the SAME chance you might be cast into eternal damnation as before you ever capitulated.  The only practical reason to join them is so that you can pay the salaries of Sauron and Saruman.  Believe me, the leadership—many of them—understand this.

You see, no one can know if they are truly elect or not until they stand before God and He pronounces His arbitrary and subjective judgment upon them.  If election is true, then it is, indeed, utterly and divinely subjective…God cannot have an objective, rational criteria of who gets saved and who does not if there is nothing that can be regarded in the human being him or herself whatsoever.  All humans are EQUALLY wicked; thus, any selection of some by God over others must be categorically random. 

In other words, and to put it bluntly, if you ask God why He made some men for heaven and some for hell, His only honest answer can be:  “I don’t know”.  Does that surprise you?  Come across as somewhat insulting to His omnipotence…even blasphemous?

Sorry…perhaps, but the fact is that this IS the case if you hold to the doctrine of election.  IF you say it is blasphemous to declare God cannot know why He predestines some over others, THEN I suggest you take the log out of your own eye.

God’s answer being  “I don’t know” has nothing to do with blasphemy, but has everything to do with the fact that He can’t know.  If He knew, then He would have to have a standard by which to select.  If He has a standard, then men must be judged by it.  Which  means that some men must have the ability in themselves alone to either meet the standard or not.  If God cannot help but meet the standard, by definition, and man cannot help but NOT meet the standard, then by definition there is no real standard at all.

Let me explain.

Some will argue that God has a standard for morality, for good versus evil, and that standard is Himself.  In a bit I will explain why the idea of “God as the moral standard” cannot possibly be an argument for election, but first let’s just point out the obvious flaw in idea:  If God is the standard, then what we are really saying is that there is simply God.  God is the standard, the standard is God.  Standard = God.  So “standard” is redundant.  There is only God, period.  So, you have God on the one hand, and man on the other.  Thus, all morality, and thus meaning, is simply this: God versus Not God .

Now,  folks, that’s not really a standard.  That is simply the nature of being.  There can be no such thing as “God Himself is the standard by which NOT God is judged to be “good”.  That makes no sense at all.  Again, God being God and man being NOT God is merely the perfunctory, observable fact of being.  For example,  it is ridiculous to declare that the standard by which we judge red a proper color is by green.  You have green, and you have red.  The declaration of that obvious fact cannot be said to be a “standard of color TRUTH”, that is, “green is the standard by which all other colors are judged to be colors”; the NOT greens are not colors because they are, well…not green.  This is the same as saying man cannot be morally good because He is not God.

No, they aren’t colors…they are totally depraved of color, and can never be color, because the only way another color can truly be a color is if it is green.  Green has to elect red to greenness in order for it to be a “saved color”, because, by definition, red cannot ever make itself green.  So then, if green is the standard of color, and only green is a color, then the only way other colors can be a real color is to become green.  And the only way that can possibly happen is if green decides to impart its greenness to another color.

But how does green decide which color to “save”?  NONE of the other colors are green and so none of them possess ANYTHING by which green can make a choice that is not utterly arbitrary, subjective, irrational, random because greenness alone is the standard, remember?  In addition, if every other color but green is ultimately irrelevant, and only green, itself is relevant, and perfect, and possess the innate ability to be “saved”, then why would green bother creating any other colors?  To even contemplate other colors would be impossible for “perfect” green. Green, being perfect already, should haven no relevant reason to contemplate making another green.

But if green would like to create red, it can only do that IF it is understood that red is never going to be defined by green, and that is the point of creating red.  Red is created to be red.  Period.  Red is a color like green is a color.  Green defines what color is, and then creates red to be another color.  Green is color, and color is good.  Green creates red, and red, because it is a color, is fundamentally good.  The right way and wrong way to apply red’s “color” (i.e. truth) to life is what defines the moral code.  Green always applies itself properly.  Red may not…red may try act blue.  Blue is bad, says green.  In order to stay true to why I created you, you must avoid the temptation to be blue.  Green is never blue, because it is impossible that green, being the standard of TRUTH can ever be or do what it is not.  It is the I AM of colors.  But red may be tempted to be blue, and that is bad.  Thus, the moral standard is “stay away from blue”.  In this case, blue is the objective standard by which both green and red measure morality.

What we are saying if we declare that God IS the moral standard, and it is by the moral standard that anyone is saved, and only God can be God, then it is impossible that one can choose Christ.  Because a decision to choose Christ is based on the free recognition of Him being GOOD contrasted with the EVIL we see and likewise recognize in the world.  And if we recognize Good and Evil, we concede that there is in fact an objective standard by which God AND man are both defined.  This objective standard may be a function of man’s Creation, and may indeed be declared and created by God, but the point is that if man can choose Christ He must do it by an external moral standard of GOOD and EVIL that He can freely recognize, and that must be relevant and observable within his existential reality.

And the standard of GOOD cannot be simply God, because if that is the sole moral standard, then man cannot choose God because HE can never, ever do anything that can be considered GOOD simply because He is NOT God.  In other words, morality is not about what man is or is not able to do–whether you ascribe to “inability to do good” (Calvinism) or “ability to do good” “Arminianism”–but about who man is.  Since the choice between accepting Christ or not accepting Him is purely a function of man‘s existence, or rather, with respect to WHO man IS, the choice itself, regardless of who ultimately makes it, God or man, is evil.  The choice is a function of MAN’S existence, not God’s, and thus the choice is inherently evil.  Even if God makes it FOR man (elects him), because it is made on behalf of MAN.  And man, not being God, is wholly EVIL, and thus all that is ascribed solely to be a function of him, for him, like salvation, must also be evil.  Salvation is for man, and man is categorically and irrevocably, inherently, originally, pervasively evil.  The logical conclusion of this doctrine is that salvation itself must be a function of evil.  Even if it is from God, it is strictly for the perpetuation of the evil created thing.  The only way for election to not be evil then, is if man is removed of the equation.  Thus, we are back to election being God saving Himself.  This is a metaphysical impossibility.  

Even simpler:  election is a created thing.  Since it is not God, it is evil.  Period.  Because ONLY God is GOOD.

In addition, man would never choose Christ because it would be impossible for him to see why he would need God, because there is nothing objectively recognized by which God is declared GOOD and you are declared EVIL.  By what standard can you judge God GOOD?  You cannot.  God says to you, “You must be good to be saved.”  And you say, “Okay, what is good?”  And He says.  Good IS Me.  Which means:  You must be God to be saved.  And you say, “Okay.  Why?”  And He says, “Because only God can be saved.”

Now…how on earth is that not contradiction?

To say that you need Christ for salvation from sin supposes you can actually do wrong.  But if the standard is merely God/NOT God, then morality is a state of being; there is nothing inherently “wrong” about doing or thinking or acting this way or that way.  A man hugging his wife is just as evil as a man murdering babies with a machine gun.  God being a liar or a hypocrite is just as good as God giving the Israelites manna from heaven.  Even worse than this is this fact:  If man’s moral failing is simply that he isn’t God, then God must be the Creator of evil.

The neo-Reformed declare that God Himself is the moral standard.  But God doesn’t need salvation, so what is the point of man?  Nothing.  He is redundant.  He is pointless.   If in order for red to be a true color it must become green, then there was never any point to red in the first place.  It’s very existence is an act of pure hypocrisy and irrelevance.

True “morality” as in what constitutes a “color” explicitly demands a standard beyond “green”…beyond “God” which can be pointed to as the objective plumb which divides them.  In this case, the standard is objective morality:  good and evil; right and wrong; wisdom and foolishness.  As a Christian, I’m not saying that obeying this objective moral standard is ultimately what saves you (true salvation means that what defines you is YOU, like what defines God ultimately is GOD; man defines himself, and that is GOOD, just like God defines Himself and that is GOOD…this is what Christ does for us; and that’s why the moral law is no longer used to judge man).  However, what I am saying is that an objective standard of morality, separate from the innate being of God or man does in fact exist, and it is by this that a person can freely choose to do RIGHT and to do WRONG, and that a function of that choice is to accept or reject Christ, freely, and that just judgment can be rendered by God thus because there is an objective standard by which man can freely, knowingly CHOOSE Christ because He is GOOD.

It is this standard that Calvinists deny.  And by denying it, they deny morality.  They are, by definition, morally relative.

What I mean by their moral relativism is simply a reworking of what I’ve already explained.  If God has a standard that no man can meet, by design, then the standard is irrelevant.  Which means that God’s design of man is not only arbitrary but it is also pointless.  The only way there can be a reason is if there is something of one man that sets him apart from another.  But according to the doctrine of “original sin” this is impossible.  Since judgment is purely a function of morality, and all humans are equally morally depraved, then nothing can set one man apart from another. But if all men are created equally depraved, then God’s criteria can be effectively nothing.  Because man was not created with ANY standard in mind except:  Man is not God.

But all have to choose Christ, right?  Even the elect people.

NO!  I have said this before and I will say it again.  The Cross does not make the doctrine of election possible; the doctrine of election makes the cross pointless.  Since there is no true and objective standard of morality then there is no real choice because choice presupposes that there is a difference between one “road” or the other (to borrow from Robert Frost).  But with no morality standard to define man’s existence then whether one chooses Christ or does not choose Christ makes no difference whatsoever.  Christ Himself becomes utterly irrelevant in the equation, meaning, whether you have Christ or do not have Christ, “choose” Him or do not “choose” Him, He has functionally nothing to do with your salvation.  The entire New Testament (and Old, for that matter) is completely irrelevant to human beings .  If there is no standard there can be no choice because there is nothing really GOOD or EVIL, which means Christ, again, is useless.  The Fall isn’t evil, because there is no such thing.  There is only NOT God.  The Fall is evil why?  Because they lied.  But why is lying wrong?  Because it is NOT God, or because it violates a standard of trust, and trust is thus based on an objective idea of right and wrong.  Of course, the latter.

If God makes the choice for man because man is NOT God, and if the whole criteria for whether one is morally worthy to be “elect” or “not elect” is whether someone is God or is not God, then there is no real choice for God to make, either.  How can God choose between Himself and not Himself as the functional criteria for the choice of who is elect and who is not?

He has cornered Himself into an unworkable position, which ultimately makes Him a hypocrite as soon as He makes a “choice”.  His choice is either Himself or not Himself, meaning, He must decide to whom of this collection of “not Gods” does He impute Himself, which means possess…because YOU cannot be saved; only God can be saved because God is the plumb line for GOOD, remember?  But then what God is saying is that in order for man to be saved he must be God.  Once you become God to be saved, God is merely saving Himself. You are destroyed, in favor of God, so that God can be saved.

What a minute.  What?

God does not need saving because He is God, by definition.  So who is Christ dying for?  Christ is dying for God, which makes God a hypocrite because the Christ cannot die for the sins of the same person to who is the plumb line for the moral TRUTH in the first place.

So, in summary, the whole point of Calvinist theology is that there IS no criteria for salvation, and that gives ecclesiastical authority the right to do anything to you and demand anything from you without the slightest risk of ever having to answer for their tyranny.  THEY are God, and YOU are not, is the point of this.  Anything they do is GOOD simply because they are the ones doing it.  And the reverse is true for you.

Thus, the only good you can do is deny yourself and submit to them.  This is the heart of the gnostic apostasy, which is why it was so vehemently denounced by many early Christians and Christian scholars (to little avail, apparently).  Your Calvinist Pastors-in-the-stead have been given God’s essence, for some gnostic, unknowable, irrational, arbitrary reason, for the sole functional purpose of ruling you.  As far as you are concerned, they are God incarnate.  The authority they have to “teach and preach” is the same authority to declare TRUTH as God Himself.  They would even describe their sermons as the very Word of God.  I have heard this with my own ears.  I am not surprised, though.  It is consistent with their heresy.  A logical conclusion

And so,  I submit that ultimately “election” is simply propaganda which the Calvinist leadership uses to deceive you into giving them your unwavering devotion and the divine right to all you possess without them actually having to work for it.  They really don’t want to have to use the force they have been divinely permitted.  Building the bonfires and unwinding the rope is so much administrative work, you know…it’s much easier if you just give it over without all the fuss.  And pastors are all about ease.  It’s a nice gig, I’m sure, being God.

So, if they can get you to believe that you are “special”, that is “elect”, or saved, well, then they can pretend that they are somehow “covering you”, or “shepherding” you…or doing something to earn their salary and your life and property…well, that’s called “preaching and teaching”.  But, in reality, it makes no difference to them whether you are saved or not, or what you think of Christ or whether you think of Him at all.  For all people, saved or not, merely exist to satisfy the neo-Calvinist pastor’s divine right to a happy and comfortable life.  To be honest, they really don’t know if you are saved or not, and again, they don’t particularly care.  They care about preaching and teaching.  What happens after that, shrug…not their prob.  Let God sort it out.

Salvation is really irrelevant anyway; Christ is meaningless, which is why they aren’t usually big on evangelism in these neo-Cal churches.  They know this, incidentally. They understand that telling people about Christ is perfunctory at best, and since it is hard to do anything perfunctory with “joy”, per John Piper (if it isn’t joyful, it’s sin), then they don’t really bother with it. The wouldn’t want to sin by having to evangelize without being really spiritually committed to it (as if sin has anything to do with anything).  So…as long as you let them rule you have fulfilled you obligation for living.  Thus, you Calvinist, IF you are saved, well then…you can be sure that it has very little to do with your Pastor in the stead knowing or caring about it.  By definition, a Calvinist pastor can only exist to serve himself.  To serve God means to serve he who truly possesses the divine gnosis, and of course they are the only ones who have that.  For all others, well…it’s really a toss-up.  God will sort them out at the day of judgment.

The sole reason for “shepherding” is utterly nothing.  Shepherding the masses who are elect or un-elect is pointless.  Incidentally, this is realized, I submit, within three minutes of a neo-Calvinist pastor beginning his tenure at a church.  So then, how do they defend drawing a salary?  Of what relevance are they at all?  They can’t really defend or define their jobs and purpose rationally, on any doctrinal level (indeed, the very doctrine they preach screams that they are superfluous).  And so they spend all their time trying to figure out how to look just relevant enough that no one raises an eyebrow.  Keep ‘em at the Cross.  Keep their heads down in shame.  Keep ‘em guessing as to whether they really know Christ.  What are your motives, depraved sinner?  Just think about that, and the log in your own eye.

It’s hard to ask questions when you are “contemplating the gospel” all the fricken time.

You are either elect or not.  And, as I described above, if that is the case, then ultimately Christ has nothing to do with salvation or you or God because He is irrelevant.  A cosmic act of divine nonsense.  Of torment and brutality for ostentatious display only.  If the criteria for salvation is to be God, and the sum of your immorality is that you exist at all, and all men are not God, then God must become an elect man before that man is saved.  If that is true, then Christ is…well, nothing.

Prologue (Part I)

I know the feeling.

Like you, I get a sense that it is everywhere.  That the shadow is spreading like the cloud over Mordor.  Someone call Frodo!  Call Gandalf!  Have them go for you to the next Neo-Cal Sunday Morning Pep Rally of False Humility and Moral Relativism.  I submit that having a fictional character journey off to the sharp-toothed hordes, rolling in the seas of metaphysical profanity, is better than subjecting yourself to them…subjecting yourself willfully and voluntarily (for now) to the abuse.  But putting a make-believe proxy’s fate, instead of your own …instead of your own spiritual health, faith, and sanity on the edge of Mount Doom is the better option.  Let them do it.  After all, they are used to casting armies who terrorize and eat men’s souls into heaving pits of lava.  You and me are not.  We need to stay away.

Unfortunately, like I said, it’s getting harder and harder to do that.  For even in the so-called “non-Calvinist” churches– who’ve split from the…er, doctrinally consistent Fraternities of Bald-Headed Despots—we hear the rumblings, if not outright declarations of doctrinal madness these days.  Insatiable.  Inexorable.  Relentless with its soothing words, its gentle coddling tones–“It is your desssstiny.”  “Together we can rule the galaxy as father and son.” “All this can be yours if you fall down and worship me.”–and its seductive false-promises.  Be in the club, they say.  Don’t be like them, out there, where God doesn’t care.  Where the damned prove themselves rejected every time they smile like the cognitively handicapped and find something in the mirror to be proud of.  No.  They are the lost.  Pity them in their libertarian and enlightenment lives.  Their equality of thinking.  Their hope in the good of man.  Their belief that they can understand what words mean.  The idea that they can apprehend the truths of cause and effect.  Their lack of chains.

But we, the hordes say…we are elect; are the ones with TRUTH, and with truth, as always, comes a lot of perks if you play your cards right.  If a college drop-out and ex-drug addict can live in a house like THAT,  well…shoot, it certainly pays to submit yourself the “local church”.  Who says you can’t get rich being some bald guy’s slave?

So…yeah, too bad. It is everywhere.  It’s even in my church.  Not as much.  Not as ostentatious.  Not as obvious, pervasive, in-your-face…perhaps it is purely subconscious at this point.  But its there, and in this post I will prove it.  There is a particular sermon I have in mind…he was a guest speaker.  But it’s not just that speaker.  The leaven of Calvinism and neo-Reformed Gnosticism makes moldy the parts of so many sermons…not only this one.  This one it was just more obvious.  It was purely a matter of natural selection.  This sermon stood out as the strongest example.

They aren’t bad people, but…alas, they never are, are they?  Of course, there are many who have no problem joining for dinner those who burn books.

No, we aren’t bad people.  And that’s the thing.  We don’t have to be.  We just have to submit.  And people who submit aren’t bad.  People who nod approval; keep the log out of their own eye; don’t ask questions; don’t rock the boat; don’t question the inconsistent premises or the inevitable human collateral damage really aren’t bad.  They are useful, but not bad.  And anyway, by the doctrine, “bad” ceases to have any relevant meaning.  Bad is merely existing. And they know that since they are elect, they can never be faulted for standing on the sidelines and nodding, regardless of whether it is bad or good.  Bad or good mean nothing, by definition.  If they did, they understand that they could never have been elect.

But who can blame people for finding the philosophy so sweet, even in our own “non-Calvinist” churches?  I mean, it sounds so good.  Soooo good that even the best of us can’t resist.  Their Calvinist tongues are so slippery and alluring you’d wonder if Jesus Christ, Himself might start to question His own worth.  At the very least, He might concede that He only does good because He is God and cannot help it.  That’s a metaphysical win for the Calvinists, and really, it’s pretty tough to argue.  I could see Jesus saying, “Yeah…you’re probably right about that, Mr. Piper”.   Except that its patently false, and can easily be disproved if you shine the light in the right place.  Yes it is true that He cannot help but do good, but then again, He can do anything He wants.  When He does good in the sense that it is compared to evil (according to the moral law), He does it because He wants to and He chooses to.  In short, the same way we want to and choose to.

So…okay, we want to try, but how do we compete with this “God is Good, man is Not” premise that seems so convincing ?  “Even man’s good is depravity and sin compared to God’s good” (never mind that, morally speaking, when it comes to “doing things” there is absolutely no difference, but…hey, consistency is for the un-elect).  And their philosophy, for being so comprehensive, and so loquaciously defended is also so simple, isn’t it?   It’s so plain and obvious.  You don’t even think to try to get at the heart of the doctrine because it is so apparent that the heart is on its sleeve.  Only a fool wouldn’t accept such simple truths.  Four hundred years of the smartest white men in beards and robes, with bad teeth and bathing once a month and dreaming their geocentric dreams can’t be wrong.

Calvinism is seductive.  It is alluring.  Of coooourse…it’s ALLLLL God.  Who are we?  All we do is siiiiiiinnnnnnnn…arrrrg…I hate ME!   And  the more we realize how awful we are, the more God will bless us, though we won’t deserve it, and will be too depraved to do any good with it, and won’t recognize the blessing anyway, because real blessings are horrible, horrible trials and tragedies …and the blessings if they are pleasant, will just make us prideful (unless you are a pastor…then you are specially given to handle the fun blessings, which is why so many have no problem making such a large salary).  And so we’ll hate them and reject them, thus whether he blesses us or curses us, we grovel in our misery and self-loathing all the more, feeling good about our humility, because in reality the blessings and curses are exactly the same thing, as we shall see in the upcoming post.

You see, according to the Calvinists, until we realize that feeling good is “pride”, we cannot really grow spiritually.  Pain is the plumb line for truth; this is the basic ontological truth of the neo-Reformed.  The more we realize we aren’t relevant, and that our sin is our very existence, the closer to God’s “love” we are.  And the closer we get to God, the less we are supposed to really feel.  And so, though pain is the plumb line for truth, feeling nothing is the gnosis.  It is the enlightenment.  The proof that you have arrived at the zenith of spiritual enlightenment–that you are ready to “stand in the stead” –is that you lack any human feeling at all.  Dying to yourself means ALL of yourself, and that includes your ability to empathize.  You kill your love so that God’s love can replace it.  You grow cold and stoic and hard and you ignore suffering and pain because it does not exist to you any longer.  You are not you.  You are not human, and neither is anyone else.  The only difference is that they don’t yet know it and you do. 

Reach this level of the metaphysical caste system, and you are ready to stand behind the podium of your local neo-Reformed church and become a Good Shepherd. You are finally God, and your inability to love proves it.  You nod in approval as the bruising mounts and the sheep bow and cringe under the anvils of your gaze and the tormented crying intensifies to a holy din around you and the world condemns you in your sociopathy, and you raise your hands to the heavens–oh Calvinist pastor in-the-Stead!–and then you know that you are blissfully being persecuted for your righteousness!

And then you quickly ask forgiveness for being happy about your power.

And then you hear God say, “That’s okay.  For in you, I am well pleased.”