Can't Cope with Calvinism

I have often flown into a minor rage when I have seen people who believe in a God based on their needs. The other day, I saw an ad for a book called "Badass Jesus & the Serious Athlete: A New Vision for the Christian Life." The ad for the book read: “For those who need a Jesus they can respect as a fighter, a ferocious personality, and a man of fire, For those who need a Jesus who had hell in his blood and the intensity to fight for those who needed the love of God in their lives, For those who yearn for a life of noble purpose… etc." Reading this made me pretty angry.

God is absolute. He does not change for anyone or anything, especially you or me. Perhaps you could make the case that Jesus was a fighter, man of fire or whatever (although saying that he had "hell in his blood" raises a cacophony of unintentional theological problems), but what if He wasn't? Is He still God? Yes. Do you still need to cling to Him as your savior? Of course. The idea that people refer to God as "my God" appalls me. "My God wouldn't do something like that!" people exclaim in horror when someone posits a troubling theological conclusion. How absurd. There is one God, and He does what He wants (within the limits of His character). He is nobody's God, and He certainly does not conform to your ideas of fairness.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have a confession to make.

I can't accept predestination. I just can't. I've worked through it over and over and over again, and it just doesn't sync up. As someone who abhors the thought of a personal God, I must explain why I think that the true God lets us make our own choices.

It all rests upon two things: justice, as seen from a human perspective, and personal responsibility.

I think it's obvious to every Christian that we are responsible for our own actions. I could fill an entire blog with just Bible references talking about how our actions are our fault. Look at the very first sin. Eve blames the serpent for her choice (and thus creates the very first instance of "the devil made me do it") and Adam blames the woman, and, by association, God. "You gave her to me!" he whiningly whispers, perhaps throwing in a quarter-hearted shake of his fist. God's response and punishment indicates that these sorts of arguments don't fly.

It's also obvious to (almost) every Christian that God is just. Even if we don't always sees the results, God does give everyone their just rewards ... well, everyone except Christians, and we can and should constantly thank Jesus for that. He repays good for good and evil for evil, even if it's in ways that we don't like or expect. He also gives the wicked what they deserve. See what I'm doing here? I recognize that God needs to mete out punishment on sinners, and I know that His mercy and love do not overshadow this fact. I get it. However, here's the important question: under a Calvinist model, who is really responsible for sin?

After all, if, in order to maintain His sovereignty, God needs to control everything directly, don't humans and everything else simply become will-less puppets? Imagine that you were playing chess. Even if the pawn could reason and think and be self-aware and hear and see, you would be the one moving the pawn. It wouldn't he his fault if he killed the bishop. It's your fault. Or, if God is causing you to move your hand, it's God's fault.

Sure, it lacks a bit as an analogy, but what God-related analogy doesn't lack in some way? God's direct intervention seems to absolve us from responsibility for our actions.

"But Ryan," you may say, "God's justice and His ways are not our own. We can have responsibility and still be controlled by God, and we don't understand His justice. Who are we to question the Potter?" I'm sorry, but you absolutely can't have it that way.

Why are you a Christian? Quite simply, because you decided that it was true. I don't mean this in a postmodern sense; there is obviously one truth, and we can't decide reality. All but one religion (or, if atheists are right, all religions) are wrong. But, when we are trying to discern which way is right, how do we pick? We look at the evidence of the religions and faiths, and we decide which one makes the most sense. I believe Christianity because I have had what I know to be true experiences with God, but most importantly I believe Christianity because it is right. My intelligence and rational observation squares with Christianity's claims of sin nature. It makes sense that nothing we can do can get us to heaven. It makes sense that the apostles would only die for their faith because they knew that they hadn't made it up. And so much more (if you aren't a Christian [or maybe even if you are], ask me about it sometime).

Anyway, the point of that is to say that, yes, while I do believe that God's ways are, in many ways, unfathomable, that doesn't mean that we can just put off all of our questions into "oh, we just can't understand God." If we do that, how are we any more right than any other religion. If the God of Christianity doesn't make sense on a human level, then maybe He's still God, but there's no way that we can know. It doesn't seem to square up with how He's portrayed in the Bible. We need to grapple with this fact: humanly, it makes absolutely no sense that we are responsible for actions that, for all intents and purposes, we didn't do.

The same thing happens (although not quite as much) with election. Even if God allows us to screw up, if he doesn't make a way for people to come to Him, he's essentially condemning large swaths of humanity to Hell. In a way, yes, it's their fault (much more so than with pure predestination), but this is where God's love and mercy does enter into the picture. It is my estimation that God cannot "so love the world" if He puts them into the world, "lets" them live a life which so often becomes "nasty, brutish and short" and then sends them to a place so horrifyingly awful that the occupants will wish that they had never lived. It's essentially the same thing as giving a small child a lollipop before beating her to death. The lollipop in no way makes up for the end of the encounter.

Giving God control over humanity's actions makes Him seem arbitrary to humanity, and it also seems to absolve us of responsibility. Another troubling aspect of this, one that is still a hard one for Calvinists to explain away, is that it seems to make God responsible for sin. Sin is something that is directly against God's will. If something is against God's will, how is it that He does these things and then puts the responsibilities upon those who have been forced to do these acts?

And yet, I find repugnant the idea that it is very hard for me to believe in a God who controls the world through predestination (although, if God is controlling my actions, am I not believing what He wants me to believe?). I need to believe in the God, not a God. Thus, I posit that perhaps a different view of God's sovereignty is the right one. I believe that God can do anything, but He doesn't choose to do everything. He has an enormous amount of respect for free will, even if the people who He's watching don't do what He wants them to do. He is definitely at work within the world, but He lets us make mistakes and still extends mercy to us anyway.

Do we have a loving God, or what?

Why no wine?

I took communion today.

Funny, isn't it? This blog could go so many places from here. I could talk about how it was my umpteenth time and how hard it can be to keep the sacred from becoming the sedentary. I could talk about transubstantiation v. consubstantiation. I could talk about how often we should take communion, how important communion is, or any manner of other things. But I'm not going to. There was something else that I thought about after church was over.

We used grape juice.

This isn't a particularly surprising revelation by itself. I've never personally been to a church service in which they did not use grape juice for communion. However, I really started to wonder why that is.

I highly doubt that it's because of health concerns. I'm 99.99% sure that there are absolutely no ill effects to be had from imbibing in a teaspoon or less of wine. No one will get drunk. No one will suffer liver failure. It couldn't be that.

I also doubt that it's because of cost. Granted, wine is more expensive with grape juice, and why use wine when it's all symbolic anyway, right? Well, sure, but why not use water? The Mormons do it that way. Water has to be cheaper than grape juice. That can't be the reason either.

It isn't illegal for minors to have a tiny sip of wine for communion. I sincerely hope that the reason isn't because not everyone likes wine. I mean, not everyone likes grape juice or bread either, and it's not as if this ceremony is one of comfort. We are remembering the death of our Savior, not snacking on some delicious tide-me-overs.

What I'm left with, in my mind, anyway, is a question of image. It's almost as if a bunch of church people got together and said, "Hey, we like to act (but usually not say) that alcohol in any form is always wrong. But we still have to hold to communion and be traditional and all that too. [snapping of fingers] I've got it! Let's feel good about ourselves by not drinking any actual wine during communion, just stuff that looks like wine!"

Now, before I go on, let me say that I in no way believe that that is how most of Christianity views the issue. I've certainly never thought, "Gee, I sure am glad I'm not drinking alcohol when I take communion! If there was one thing wrong with Jesus, it was that he wasn't a teetotaler." And I find it doubtful that the originators of this tradition thought that exact phrase either. Nevertheless, it does seem to me to be an unfortunate combination of the Church's sight-unseen rejection of alcohol and a desire to still appear a certain way.

At least the Mormons are consistent. They firmly believe that all alcohol usage is wrong, so they just use water instead. Protestants, however, are not content to simply ignore several passages of Scripture that clearly show that there is nothing wrong with drinking a bit of alcohol in moderation. No, they prefer to ignore Scripture and act like they don't.

Again, I'm probably extrapolating, but if you really believe that wine doesn't belong in church, shouldn't the color of the wine substitute be immaterial?

This probably isn't that big of a deal. I'm still taking communion "in remembrance of Him." But I wonder what would happen if I suggested a switch to lemonade.