First day of school.
A teacher enters a classroom with 25 students seated in their desks. She smiles at them and sits down at her desk for a moment. Suddenly, she jumps up and walks quickly to the principal's office. She is joined by all of the other teachers in the school. Each of them has a similar issue. The computer printout of the class roll that our teacher holds has 10 names on it that are interspersed with 15 blackened spaces. 15 names have been blotted out. All of the teachers begin asking the obvious questions: How are we supposed to deal with the students without names? (Reply = They are not students) How are we supposed to keep them from misbehaving and causing problems for the "students"? (Reply = That is part of the classroom environment to which the students are pre-destined) How do we address the children without names? (Reply = Technically, they are not children but it really doesn't matter what you call them) How do we contact their parents??? (How should we know...there is no record of their names...)
Here is a picture of the doctrine of Reprobation that Calvin teaches his followers. According to Calvin, blotting happens "before the foundation of the world" and there is nothing that can be done about it. Never mind that the Bible clearly teaches that any blotting that is done will happen after the Lord has explored the facts about an individual (Calvin wants Reprobation to be a class action by God) and has given His divine judgment (de jure...) on what that person deserves (Deuteronomy 29:19-20). Reprobation happens in time or after time...not in advance. If you Calvinists want to quote chapter and verse of the Institutes to justify the stupidity of the system of reprobation, then you do so with Scripture and the character of God slapping your bigoted faces.
Imagine our scene above in the year 1966 and the blotted out names all correspond to 5th grade children in Alabama...and all the blotted ones are African-American. Suppose one of them knows that her name is Condoleezza Rice and she has learned the pain of her race in relation to the Constitution of the United States that proclaimed her as a 3/5 (three fifths) person (Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3). The 3/5 rule can be properly expressed in another way: for every five African-Americans counted, two of them are blotted out. Expendable. Worthless.
Now what do you Calvinists want to say about your reprobation system?
God has provided a place where all of us can unburden ourselves of the foolishness of our pride and superiority. No one has a special hall pass and an empty backpack; the burden of sin gets packed up in time for humans who are accountable for themselves. If God Himself (Jesus) will stoop low to get beneath our burden of sin so that He can become sin for us on the cross (2 Corinthians 5:21), then who are we that we should be anything other than on our knees in the presence of the cross.
Come to the cross.
A teacher enters a classroom with 25 students seated in their desks. She smiles at them and sits down at her desk for a moment. Suddenly, she jumps up and walks quickly to the principal's office. She is joined by all of the other teachers in the school. Each of them has a similar issue. The computer printout of the class roll that our teacher holds has 10 names on it that are interspersed with 15 blackened spaces. 15 names have been blotted out. All of the teachers begin asking the obvious questions: How are we supposed to deal with the students without names? (Reply = They are not students) How are we supposed to keep them from misbehaving and causing problems for the "students"? (Reply = That is part of the classroom environment to which the students are pre-destined) How do we address the children without names? (Reply = Technically, they are not children but it really doesn't matter what you call them) How do we contact their parents??? (How should we know...there is no record of their names...)
Here is a picture of the doctrine of Reprobation that Calvin teaches his followers. According to Calvin, blotting happens "before the foundation of the world" and there is nothing that can be done about it. Never mind that the Bible clearly teaches that any blotting that is done will happen after the Lord has explored the facts about an individual (Calvin wants Reprobation to be a class action by God) and has given His divine judgment (de jure...) on what that person deserves (Deuteronomy 29:19-20). Reprobation happens in time or after time...not in advance. If you Calvinists want to quote chapter and verse of the Institutes to justify the stupidity of the system of reprobation, then you do so with Scripture and the character of God slapping your bigoted faces.
Imagine our scene above in the year 1966 and the blotted out names all correspond to 5th grade children in Alabama...and all the blotted ones are African-American. Suppose one of them knows that her name is Condoleezza Rice and she has learned the pain of her race in relation to the Constitution of the United States that proclaimed her as a 3/5 (three fifths) person (Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3). The 3/5 rule can be properly expressed in another way: for every five African-Americans counted, two of them are blotted out. Expendable. Worthless.
Now what do you Calvinists want to say about your reprobation system?
God has provided a place where all of us can unburden ourselves of the foolishness of our pride and superiority. No one has a special hall pass and an empty backpack; the burden of sin gets packed up in time for humans who are accountable for themselves. If God Himself (Jesus) will stoop low to get beneath our burden of sin so that He can become sin for us on the cross (2 Corinthians 5:21), then who are we that we should be anything other than on our knees in the presence of the cross.
Come to the cross.
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