Because I Didn't Do Anything To Earn It: Why I Am Reformed Part 4

You never want to be the kid picked last for dodgeball.

Dodgeball is even less-forgiving than its schoolyard cousin, kickball.  At least in kickball, there are slow kids stuck in the outfield.  But poor, poor fat kids have no hope in dodgeball.  They're big targets, slow dodgers, and typically warm the bench.  Their only hope of salvation comes in what my elementary gym teacher called "execution-style" dodgeball.  In that version, you could bring a player back from the being out if you caught a ball thrown at you before it hit the ground (it also rendered the thrower out, outing the other team a player while your team gained one).  Best of all was the redemption you could gain if you threw the ball into the basketball hoop on the other side of the court (indoor only).  Then your whole team was resurrected!

I had my work cut out for me.  I was a slow, "husky", and uncoordinated kid (I say winsomely as a slow, chubby, and only sorta coordinated adult).  My skills were honed in a gauntlet; changing schools and churches meant establishing a new reputation.  Otherwise, I'd be picked last every time.  It meant a lot of trips to the sidelines, a lot of caution, a lot of observation, and a lot of jammed fingers when the ball wasn't squarely at my chest.  It meant enduring the shame of the last pick time and again.  But performance is what counts in sports.  Finally, I proved my worth in fifth grade when I executed a power-slide/ankle-shot combo that not only avoided a blue foam ball aimed at my head but also rendered Kiley Sutton out.  (I doubt very much that she remembers it over a decade later, but for me it was the moment when I became one with the execution dodgeball spirits.)

So imagine the scandal of a choice without any merit at all.  Something totally unearned, something beyond all attainment; a choosing in spite of rather than for what the chosen deserves.

When a dodgeball captain chooses a terrible player, he may do so for two reasons.  First, he may just be pitying the player.  He may do so out of guilt; he chooses his little cousin for the team because Mom insisted that he include the awful tyke.  He may also do so out of goodwill compassion.  Maybe he genuinely wants to include the wimpy kid and his heart is stirred to the angelic goal of inclusion at the expense of team performance.  Second, he may choose the fat kid to make his victory all the more impressive.  He knows that if he can win even with such a severe handicap, his team looks that much better.  Some blend of these two motives probably explained why that red-headed fifth-grader picked me in a church game back when I was six or seven.  I remember he told me to stick close, then he deflected shots intended for me with the ball he held.  My throws barely reached half the distance to my target.  Still, by including me and sticking up for me, he was my hero for the night.  And we did win when it was down to just the two of us based solely on his skill, not mine.

This is unconditional election, the "U" of the Calvinist TULIP.  It's basically a way of explaining how anyone so stuck in total depravity can be saved from what they justly deserve.  After all, there's no reason why you would ever pick the wimpy fat kid in dodgeball based on his skill.  If that sounds harsh, it's because you haven't played enough dodgeball.  You don't pick that kid because of what he can do, not if you want to win.  Yet God does exactly that!  For the same reason that a mighty fifth-grader would choose a merit-less first-grader, Paul says that God chooses to save the chief of sinners.  Just as it brought glory to the fifth-grader to choose the weak one, so too God chooses the weak to humble the strong and wise.  So the story of my first-grade dodgeball game is not the story of how I saved the day, but how the older boy saved the day.  The story of a Christian's salvation is not the story of the great things he has done, but the story of the great things God as done.  So, Paul says, Jesus saves people so that everyone will know the glory of God--his love, his power, his grace--and will boast in His saving work, not in their own.

I can already hear a few loud objections at this point (yes, even through the series of tubes that is the internet).  First, isn't it vainglorious to want to make a big deal of yourself?  Isn't God being a huge show-off?  Why does He need glory and glorification anyway?  Isn't He complete in Himself?  Well, consider this: Idolatry can be defined in the Bible as putting anything in the supreme place rightfully occupied by Yahweh.  So if you put anything above the Lord, be it your money, yourself, your partner, or Dionysus, you're an idolater.  There's a good chance that our fifth-grader in the second story was wanting to make a big deal of himself to show how great at dodgeball he was.  If that's the case (it's been so long, who can know?), it would be awfully vainglorious.  But consider this: is it vain for God to make much of Himself?  If He held anything above Himself, wouldn't that be idolatry?  If He is really as majestic and satisfying as He makes Himself out to be, would it be right to put anyone or anything above Himself?  Not even we can be a bigger deal than God.  He can't think of any one of us or even all our doomed race above or even equal with himself.  Then we'd be bigger gods than He is.  And you thought you had ego problems before...


Second (and related), couldn't He just have done so out of love?  Maybe He was moved by compassion, not by glory.  Think back to the motives of our team captain.  Noble compassion can move the captain too.  That's very true.  But does that preclude glory?  Think as if you were really God (shouldn't be too hard, we all do so pretty often).  Imagine you were the most satisfying, beautiful, enthralling, intelligent, benevolent being in the universe... wisdom embodied even!  You know that finite creatures spin their wheels trying to satisfy themselves apart from you.  You're all they need; you know it, but they don't.  Wouldn't it be the most loving thing in the world to reveal yourself to them?  I remember planning to pay a visit to a girl I was (sorta) courting.  She called me to say that she was having an awful weekend.  Her heart was burdened with her dad's recent health scare.  She said she was wiped out from crying and felt like she looked awful.  Maybe this wasn't the smartest move, but I begged to see her anyway.  To me, it didn't matter if she looked like a million bucks or half-drowned.  I just wanted to spend time with her!  To her credit, she did the selfless thing and deigned to see me anyway.  We had a wonderful date after all and I was blessed to have seen her.  Her care for me led her to do something that some might read as selfish and condescending, but was really a sacrifice for her.  It was the sacrifice of her very presence when she didn't feel up to it.  That's not to say this is a perfect image of God's love and glory; this gal, divine as she is, isn't God.  Still, she let me enjoy her company and make much of her.  And I was thrilled to do so!  Even though things didn't ultimately work out, we both had a great time together.


Third, couldn't God choose us based on respecting our choice?  Back to dodgeball, wouldn't it be cruel for a captain to choose a kid who didn't want to play?  Wouldn't that be bullying?  We'll address this a bit more when we delve a little further into the TULIP, but I will briefly note something here.  One could consider the willingness to play as a merit in a player.  After all, the fact that some wimpy fat kid showed up at all indicates that he has some drive to do well.  A shrewd captain will recognize this; coaches and teachers will tell you that determination counts for far more than raw talent in the long run.  So in a lot of ways this is a weakness of the human analogy I've chosen.  For this to really fit, we would have to assume a terrible player who had absolutely no inclination to play.  Thomas Aquinas said that all our language for God was analogical; our imperfect and finite human words can't contain a perfect and infinite God.  But notice something important we've already seen: the willingness to play is a merit.  So, to make the analogy work, the choice to be saved is a merit!  If you desire good things--things of God that have eternal significance--then you have something worthwhile in yourself apart from grace and faith.  You merit some justification because you at least wanted to be good.  But the Bible says that we were dead in our transgressions and that apart from faith--which is itself a gift from God--it is impossible to please God.  We weren't chosen for salvation because we did any good...we didn't even desire good apart from God!


Keep in mind what I said last time I talked about this.  I don't want to start a fight.  I don't want to be mean and nasty.  I know I haven't addressed the finer points of Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Wesleyan, or Semi-Pelagian theological interpretations of election and reprobation in biblical soteriology.  If you even know what those words mean, you probably aren't my audience anyway.  And yes, it's incomplete.  This series isn't finished yet though (in spite of a lengthy hiatus), and no words I or anyone can use will ever fully capture an infinite and mysterious God.  Gotta try though, even if I haven't a shred of dodgeball merit.

Because It Was Never About Being Right: Why I Am Not That Calvinist

To survey Christianity in the 20th century is far beyond what I am capable of doing (without becoming really boring). However, I think from 1950 on you can broadly see two big movements. From about 1950 to 1980, you have big clashes within Evangelical Protestantism between conservatives and "moderates" (really, they were soft liberals, but I am tipping my hand am I not?). The fights were nasty, splitting whole denominations. Lingering effects of it are still seen in the Mainline and Evangelical denominations today. Anyway, the clash produced very vitriolic debates centering wholly on theology and almost none on methodology. That's really where we get our image of angry preachers in old, hymn-driven, dead, formalized orthodoxy.

Spawned from that was the "Seeker Sensitive Movement" (1970s-2000s), pioneered by guys like Bill Hybels, the Willow Creek Association, and Rick Warren. They figured that the thing that kept people out of church was all that angry theological rhetoric and dead formality. Thus, they dressed down their suits to polos and khakis, starting bringing donuts and coffee into the sanctuary, and let dust collect on the pipe organ and piano. If theology and theological terms (verbal plenary inspiration, propitiation, inerrancy, hypostatic union, penal substitutionary atonement) turned people off from church and turned the cranky contenders on, then let's just ditch it. Instead, offer positive and practical sermons: "Five Ways to Improve Your Marriage", "Six Steps to Successful Stewardship", "Three Purposes of Fulfilling Family Time". Christian principles are in, "Christianese" is out. And it worked... for a time.

My parents' generation lived in the last days of the Judeo-Christian mindset. As Tim Keller put it, they have the ghosts of Christian ideas haunting their memories. They think like Christians without really meaning to. Tell them they need to pray that prayer and accept Jesus as Savior and they hear you loud and clear. They know what that means (more or less). Just don't turn them off with the fire of a divisive topic. The Bible, after all, is mostly about love they say. Emphasize that.

The Seeker Sensitive Movement of our parents has spawned two very distinct responses among us Millennials, starting in the 1990s and persisting into the present. The first to generate buzz was the Emergent Church (1990s-present). They took the seeker-hungry impulse of the Seeker Sensitive Movement to another level that their parents wouldn't. The parents saw theological language as keeping people out of church; the sons saw the theology itself as odious. So they figured, "Why not do to our beliefs what we did with our methods?" If organs can go, let's take out the divine child abuse of God's wrath with it. Protestantism has lost its authoritative place in American culture; maybe it deserved to be lost. Look at how bloody and vengeful traditional Christian theology has been. Scrap it then; let's save souls from the injustices of today. Rethink the very foundation, damn the exclusive beliefs, and maybe we can finally remake a Christianity that the modern world can respect again.

The other answer was the Reformed Resurgence (1990s-present). They grew up in Seeker Sensitive churches and found the doctrine shallow and wanting. They disliked the dead orthodoxy of their grandparents and could find no depth to it either. So they dug a bit further back, into the deep reservoirs of the Reformation. There they found the purpose behind the why of what we do and believe. There they rediscovered the language of the atonement; Jesus did not die on the Cross so that you could live your best life now. He died on the Cross as a propitiation for your sins. "Propitiation" means that God the Father puts His wrath on His Son and turns the wrath that was on you into favor. God's love for you is not merely the warm sentiment of a gentle father who smiles a lot; it is first and foremost the beaten and bloodied God the Son who took on finite human flesh and bled His way unto the Hill of Calvary and died an ignominious, criminal's death. All this was so that you might believe on Him and be saved from God's justice. Only a robust, deeply theological Gospel with lots of definitions and hard language could fully explain our faith to a generation of Millenials who have been born without the ghosts of the Christian worldview haunting them.

So what's all that got to do with anything?

All of us know or have known a cruel Calvinist. This guy (almost always twentysomething male) reads Desiring God or What is Reformed Theology? and decides that every other theological position denigrates the glory of God. Thus, everything is a fight. He has more evangelistic fervor for defending John Calvin than he does for Jesus Christ. He gets a reputation for being a jerk, a repute which totally figures because he is a jerk. He can express the soteriological nuances between Martin Luther and Theodore Beza, but he can't understand why women won't date him. He gets like that because he's a little drunk on deep truth and is angrily wondering why he was so long deprived by his parents' church. His solution to the wrong-minded, "KISS" (Keep It Simple, Stupid) church he is at is to sin against his brothers and sister to spite them. It's like the trendy piercing you got in college that your parents hated, except if you then responded to their hatred with increasingly gaudy and offensive studs until your skin got infected and no one would befriend you.

As I have gone through the "Why I Am Reformed" series, I know some readers have the cruel Calvinist in mind. It is tempting to apologize for that guy and condemn the bad name he has brought on Calvin. But as C.S. Lewis wrote in "The Dangers of National Repentance", it can be easy to say you're sorry for stuff that you never really did. It is really a form of criticism concealed under false humility; "I am sorry for all those guys who aren't as good as me at all." So I won't apologize for cruel Calvinists for two reasons: 1) I'm not one and they owe me an apology too 2) I am not John Calvin's PR rep anyway.

Let me offer something of real substance instead. I apologize to any who may have read my writing as vitriolic or who may have found me argumentative in real life. I don't want to start fires where Scripture is silent. If a wildfire is sparked because of something God said, then may His holy fire consume. But if it was me playing with matches, then I repent of being a jackass. I believe in a Reformed understanding of salvation because I think it is most biblical. I also know that there are no verses that match the Westminster Confession of Faith word-for-word; there's wiggle room on this issue and many of my most beloved Christian brethren are Arminians. Moreover, I confess and continually repent for being unfaithful to even clearer Biblical teaching than this. I have fallen prey to greed, lust, worry, covetousness, selfishness, and pride and battled them with less passion than I have advocated for secondary or even tertiary issues of interpretation. Sin is sin; simply being human doesn't make it less wicked.

I am Reformed because I believe only supernatural work of the Holy Spirit can bring me to a recognition of my own sin. Conviction and repentance are raw, soul-shattering, gracious supernatural gifts that I don't deserve.

Because I Was Evil: Why I Am Reformed Part 3

When I was a teenager, I learned what it was to be powerless.

To make a long story short, my father was diagnosed with a terminal illness and died just over three years after the doctor's message. In that time, he deteriorated slowly until finally his lungs could no longer function. That meant that I spent the better part of my early adolescence being an in-home hospice nurse. It involved the sort of inglorious and undignified necessities in which no boy ever expects to aid. I slowly came to a realization I was too timid to speak. No matter how much I toiled, no matter how many hours I slept, no matter how many horrible humiliations I endured, and even no matter how much guilt I heaped upon myself--all was in vain because he would still die. I wasn't powerful enough to save him.

My next exposure to Reformed theology came after he died. I was under the sway of a couple of teachers and friends who were wrestling their way through thee tenets of Calvinism. I was honestly rather uncomfortable with it. I had never met anyone who very seriously entertained predestination at all. I knew where I was and what I believed, firmly entrenched in the Baptist Arminian position. Still, as they persisted on their journeys I was learning about Reformed theology and the simple five-points to which it has been reduced: the TULIP.

The "T" of the TULIP stands for Total Depravity. I was initially uncomfortable with this. Total Depravity is a doctrine which essentially states that man is totally depraved--wicked throughout in his natural condition. My first impressions were not accurate though; I wish that someone would develop some other acronym that didn't use it. I thought it meant that all unsaved people (and all saved ones before receiving Jesus) were as nasty and wretched as Adolf Hitler or Josef Stalin.

This is not a fair picture and I have come to a better understanding of what John Calvin meant since then. "Total Depravity" would better understood as "thorough sinfulness" or "powerlessly enslaved to sin". It's not that unsaved people are incapable of friendliness, kindness, or even civic good, but that they are incapable of doing any good warranting salvation.

There was nothing in me worth saving. Every wicked and evil thought and deed in my heart doomed me justly to Hell. For as much conversation as there has been recently about whether or not Hell is real and literal, it seems that most people are thinking about the fate of other people. Few think about how they themselves deserve hell. I know that I am not Hitler, but I have wronged God greatly. I was powerless in my sin, addicted to evil, and enthralled with darkness. I was God's enemy and stood justly under His wrath. It's not because I don't have enough self-confidence or because I am a guilt-ridden person. It's because I spit in the face of God--the ultimate victim for He has never done anyone wrong yet has been wronged by everyone.

An uncharitable reader may think that I have reached the conclusion of Reformed theology based upon a jarring experience in my past. This is a risk I must take in order to have fidelity and heartfelt connection with my readers. But to that uncharitable reader--one who would credit my conclusion to my psychological experiences and nothing more--I must point to an example from history. A psychological approach would say that the Jewish historians ought not be taken seriously because they have great reasons to exaggerate the horrors of Nazism. Yet no group has done a better, honest job of documenting and archiving the Holocaust than the Jews. No one with credibility can suggest that the Jews have distorted the facts in doing so. On the contrary, they have done the best job because of their experiences. In that same spirit, I argue that my experiences have made me more sensitive to the nuances of human depravity.

God saves me from my filth and unites me to Himself. I don't have to save myself or save others. I can't anyway. Only God can save the world, save my father, and save me. We are totally depraved because we are incapable and fallen. We're stuck and only the Savior can save.

Because I Wasn't Always: Why I Am Reformed Part 2

My first experience with Lutheran/Calvinist soteriology (beliefs about salvation) came when I was fifteen. I was on a mission trip to New Orleans to work on a week-long project at the Baptist seminary there. (This was before the hurricane.) I was getting awfully bored on the drive so I picked up an issue of Breakaway, a Focus on the Family magazine for teen boys. They were going through a series where they compared and contrasted different Christian denominations. There they laid out in a very simple diagram the five points of Calvinism and Arminianism. This first taste of Reformed theology was not particularly positive.

Upon comparing the two charts, I found that I agreed with four out of five Arminian points. I believed that people could do good apart from Christ. After all, wasn't it good when people who didn't know Jesus fought for justice and freedom? I believed that only those who made the conscious, adult, free choice to follow Jesus were truly saved. I believed that Jesus died on the cross for all people, but that not all choose to follow Him. He couldn't force them to follow Him or else it wouldn't be willing. Thus, those who went to Hell went because they wanted to be there. I believed God would never force someone to go to Heaven who didn't wholeheartedly want to.

In fact the only thing the Calvinists seemed to get right was the issue of eternal security or perseverance of the saints. Classical Arminian theology teaches that people can lose their salvation through habitual sin or choosing to leave Christ. I have quite frankly always been convicted that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. I don't need to look very far to find justification for that conviction. The notion that Jesus' sacrifice does not cover over sin once and for all is so offensive to me that I don't know that I can actually hold a conversation at once civil and serious on that point. "Jesus saves you, but your good behavior keeps your ticket to Heaven valid!" Revolting.

So I was what I called a "Baptist Arminian". I said "Baptist" versus "Classical" because I had never met a Baptist who denied eternal security. This was an opinion that I not only found to be very self-consistent and easy, I also found it to be the majority opinion of adults I knew. Most folks my age were not particularly conversant on the subject. Thus, I found a lot of grown-ups who affirmed my conclusion. In fact, I found none to dispute it.

At the root of it all, I thought that a love wasn't love unless you were free to choose it. A free choice is one which is based wholly on free will. Therefore, God can't force people into anything; they have to freely choose. We're not robots, after all. How could a loving God overwhelm our freedom?

Some of these opinions I would hold, some I would shed, but most I would simply modify when I switched teams a few years later...

Why I Am Reformed Part 1

One of the goals of Artery Bloggage is to show how theology permeates everything we do and how we live. It isn't just a heady thing to be done with a wall of Bible commentaries four feet tall around your laptop in the library. How you view God determines just about everything else of who you are and what you do. That goal in mind, I want to preface by saying that the issue of predestination/free will is one of the most controversial in history. It's been even hotter lately with the so-called "Reformed Resurgence" or "New Calvinism", a movement with which I don't mind associating. Far better exegetical and academic explanations have given by others than I could ever give; my favorite is Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology. I think Wayne Grudem may be some kind of wizard, since this book often answers questions you have as you read almost as soon as your brain can ask them. Anything I would argue about being Reformed would be a plagiarism of him.

Instead, I want to tell the story of how I came from one very strong view of the Bible and salvation to another. I am not seeking to persuade anybody so much as tell a story that deeply connects a view of God with life experiences. I wouldn't even call Calvinism and Arminianism opposites because of how much the two perspectives share in common. Both are solidly Protestant, believe in a perfect God and His inerrant word, teach the absolute sovereignty of God and the personal responsibility of every man, and glorify God through personal evangelism and caring for the poor and oppressed. I think the reason this debate gets so virulent is ironically because it is one within the family between two groups with a lot of resemblance. I am but one in very big family. So read on and see how a debate which has raged for thousands of years impacts the life of one regular guy even today.

In January 1995, I was sitting in the office of Doctor Edwin Jenkins, pastor of Hilldale Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. I was here because I was curious about baptism, what it was and why we did it. Baptism takes a particular form in a Baptist church. Baptists only baptize by immersion, meaning children or adults are fully dunked into the water (infants need not apply). At almost-seven-years-old, I wondered why Dr. Jenkins periodically dipped people into a pool in front of the whole church. My curiosity had gotten me here.

The silence was now getting awkward. Our conversation up until this point had been very easy and free-flowing. Dr. Jenkins had talked to me about how we believed in Jesus and how He died on the cross. This was all stuff I'd covered in Sunday School and believed. But now he held in his hand a plastic glove which was printed with the plan of salvation. He said it was a gift for me and asked what I had to do.

Hence the awkward silence; I didn't really know how to answer. After all, he said the glove was mine. Why didn't he give it to me? He just sat there from behind his desk holding it in his hand. He said it was mine. What did he want me to do? He said it was mine. I almost wondered if maybe I had given him the wrong answer somehow. He said it was mine. He reiterated the question, scrutinizing me to see if I understood all that he'd said. But he said it was mine! What could possibly end this? Pressure! Pressure!

Finally, I timidly reached out and took it from him.

"Yes, that's right. You have to accept it," he said.

I was pretty miffed about the whole scenario, though I dared not show it to a grown-up (and the pastor no less). After all, he had said it was mine. The glove had been declared mine by the authority of the giver. That made it mine whether or not I did the right thing and snatched it from his hand. The thing belonged to me by his word. Withholding it from me just so that I would snatch it from him didn't seem quite fair. However, I forgot about my irritated feelings pretty soon as kids do often and adults do rarely.

The thoughts and feelings from that day crawled into hibernation in some deep cavern of the mind. They wouldn't awaken for more than a decade when some very strong passions and tough challenges reignited them. I would return to that desk and the burning tension and the prayer I prayed in 1995 in ten years' time. While I never suspected it in that decade, an unsettled dissatisfaction with the situation lurked. It was no fault of Doctor Jenkins or the example he used, but from the theological perspective underlying the encounter. It was my first experience with soteriology--the theology or teaching of salvation--but it would not be my last.