The Stepford Wives is a fictional movie about a quaint suburb in a gated community, called Stepford, where life seems a little too good to be true. The women in the community happily go about their lives - cleaning, doing laundry, cooking gourmet meals, working hard, day and night, to be "trophy wives", while doing anything they can to please their husbands; whereas, the men of Stepford, sit around the clubhouse all day, laughing and carrying about like frat house buddies, as their wives do all the work and raise the kids. The problem with this arrangement is that the Stepford Wives are doing these things, not because they want to, but because they were programmed to. As it turns out, the Stepford men secretly discovered a way to replace their human wives with clones and ultimately transform them into robots to carry out their every command and desire. Towards the end of the movie, the truth is discovered and the Stepford world falls apart.
I mention this movie because it reminds me of the Calvinist view of God's creation. Let me explain. The Stepford Wives were programmed to love their husbands (they did not have a choice), and the reward for their programmed response was they got to live in the Stepford community with their masters. The wives simply became human droids responding the way they were programmed to. Calvinism states that man is "totally depraved" or incapable of responding to the Gospel because he is spiritually dead, and without the regenerating grace of the Holy Spirit, eternal life is impossible; thus, because man is incapable of responding to God, the result is death and eternal damnation.
"Because of the fall, man is unable of himself to believe the gospel. The sinner is dead, blind, and deaf to the things of God; his heart is deceitful and desperately corrupt. His will is not free, it is in bondage to his evil nature, therefore, he will not - indeed he cannot - choose good over evil in the spiritual realm. Consequently, it takes much more than the Spirit's assistance to bring a sinner to Christ - it takes regeneration by which the Spirit makes the sinner alive and gives him a new nature. David N. Steele and Curtis C. Thomas, The Five Points of Calvinism, 16.
According to Calvinism, A man must be born again so he can believe; thus, faith is a consequence or a result of regeneration; whereas, the Bible teaches, when man believes, he is born again (John 1:12,13); thus, faith is the precondition for regeneration. In sum, Calvinists have reversed the Biblical order of faith and regeneration.
Also, Calvinism teaches that God can either randomly or selectively save some men from their eternal wrath by simply giving some the regenerating grace they need to respond to the call of God. Under Calvinism, because all men are spiritually dead, it is impossible to have faith unless a man is regenerated or reprogrammed (regeneration precedes faith); thus, in the regeneration or "reprogramming process", God changes a man's heart and gives him a new disposition, or a new nature and plants into man a desire for the things of God. Once the transformation process is completed, man is enabled to have the faith he needs to believe and follow after God.
The problem with this belief is that man is not given the choice to freely love God; instead the nature of man has to be changed or programmed in order to respond to God, just as the Stepford Wives were programmed to love and please their husbands.
As pointed out above, this view is not Biblical, and it debases God and His creation to a system totally devoid of genuine love. If love is synthetic and is limited, as Calvinists claim it is, then how can we consider God to be truly loving and merciful? The Calvinist view just doesn't line up with the Bible regarding God's character; thus, the charges have been made that Calvinism represents God as tyrannical sovereign who is destitute of love and mercy. Except for the select few who are fortunate enough to arbitrarily be regenerated or "reprogrammed", the others, who are deprived of this arbitrary gift are subjected to the cruelty of a Being who creates some men in order to damn them, and even worse, who finds pleasure in doing this. I believe this view devalues or cheapens the price that Christ paid on the cross, and redefines and libels the true character of God, while stripping away any sense of human responsibility in the process.
I believe if the reader of this BLOG sincerely researches this information, and uses the Bible as the final authority, the world of Calvinism will fall apart just like it did in the Stepford Community.
Thank you for reading this.
In a new book titled: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships David Levy makes the arguement that as machines advance, our consideration for them will grow inevitably more tender. We've let machines trespass into nearly every corner of our lives, Levy points out. Robots are making our cars and our computer chips, they're fighting our wars, they're cleaning our floors and our rain gutters and our pools. So why can't we let them into our hearts? Today, you watch your Roomba scurrying around your filthy floor, digging its nose into your grime, and you hardly pause to consider its soul; the robot vacuum is a slave, and you are its master. According to Levy a person can order up a robot that shares your interests, that loves you, and that, in appearance and personality, would conform exactly to your interests. Also, Levy and others believe that humans will one day marry their robotic sweet hearts. Levy says "Almost everyone wants to love someone, but many people have no one," Levy writes. "If this natural human desire can be satisfied for everyone who is capable of loving, surely the world will be a much happier place.
ReplyDeleteJust as "robot love" prompts a raft of questions about the very nature of love and the dilemmas we'll face in accepting this view of love, we also have to ask ourselves the same questions about Calvinism.
Calvinism leaves no room for human response. Like the wives of Stepford, the chosen, or the elect, are transformed into robots or "regenerated Christians" that do not have a choice in the matter. Once transformed, the person will have to do what he was programmed to do (i.e. love God, do good works, etc.). "We cannot study the Bible without being brought face to face with personal responsibility...when the voice of God speaks, we are free to obey or disobey. If there is anything the Bible shows it is that God does hold man responsible for his actions. God's 'thou salt' is spoken to free persons, not puppets" (Kenneth Foreman)
ReplyDeleteIf man is incapable of responding to the God (Total Depravity), and God does not choose this person to be saved, or give him the regenerating grace, or "program" needed to respond (Irristable Grace), then how can this person be held accountable for something that is beyond his control? This would be like telling a man to fly like a bird. If man was able, he very well might be willing. One thing is for certain, his alleged unwillingness can not be blamed on the reason he doesn't do so. Nor can he be held accountable for failing to fly as long as flying is impossible for him. Yet Calvinism is guilty of both absurdity and injustice by declaring man to be incapable of repentance and faith, then condemning him for failing to believe and repent. According to the Bible, and according to Christ Himself, man's problem is not inability. Men fail to come to Christ not because they cannot, but because they will not (John 5:40).
ReplyDelete· According to Calvinism, God Finds pleasure in the destruction of man-kind. The immoral, deliberate withholding of salvation is attributed to God under the excuse that it is God's good pleasure to do so? Would someone who stood by and watched a person drown whom he could have saved be exonerated if he explained that it was his "good pleasure " to do so? Biblically, there is no question that God has the right to save whom He will, but we are repeatedly told through out the Bible that God is love and that He is merciful to all. How could the God that is described in the Bible withhold His love and mercy to all who need it - much less takes pleasure in withholding this precious gift. Ezekiel 18:32 says "For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign Lord. Repent and live!" and Ezekiel 33:11a says "as surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their evil ways and live!. Also, John 3:17 says "For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him" Calvinists misrepresent the depth of God's love and mercy, and are guilty of preaching a different Gospel when they claim this view. Consider the following Calvinism quotes on this subject:
ReplyDelete1. "Scripture clearly proves...that God by his eternal and immutable counsel determined once for all those whom it was His pleasure one day to admit to salvation, and those whom, on the other- hand, it was His pleasure to doom to destruction". Calvin, op. cit., III:xxi,7
2. Those, therefore, whom God passes by He reprobates (one who is predestined to damnation) and that for no other cause but because He is pleased to excuse them from the inheritance that he predestines to His children...". Calvin, op. cit., III:xxiii,1
3. "But if all whom the Lord predestines to death are naturally liable to sentence of death, of what injustice, pray, do they complain...because by His eternal providence they were before their death doomed to perpetual destruction ...what will they be able to mutter against this defense? Calvin, op. cit., III:xxiii,3
4. "The Great God...whose pleasure it is to inflict punishment on fools and transgressors, though He is not pleased to bestow His Spirit upon them...Of this no other cause can be adduced than reprobation which is hidden in the secret counsel of God." Calvin, op. cit., III:xxiii,4
5. "Now since the arrangement of all things is in the Hand of God...He arranges...that individuals are born, who are doomed from the womb to certain death, and are to glorify Him by their destruction..." Calvin, op. cit., III:xxiii,6
6. "God according to the good pleasure of His will, without any regard to merit, elects those whom He chooses for sons, while He rejects and reprobates others...it is right to show by punishing that He is a Just judge..." Calvin, op. cit., III:xxiii,10-11
7. "God has chosen some to be saved.... The choice was unconditional.... The choice was made entirely within God, out of His own good pleasure. The selection of some for eternal life was made on the basis of unrevealed factors known to God alone." Jay Adams, Counseling and the Five Points of Calvinism, (Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co. 1981), 11.
8. "The reason that some sinners are saved and others lost must be in God. It is according to God's purpose, His eternal decree, that some sinners are rescued and others are left in their sins. The foundation of this divine decree is simply the good pleasure or will of God". W.R. Godfrey, "Predestination," New Dictionary of Theology (Downers Grove, IL, Inter-Varsity Press, 1988), 528