SBCVoices and the Calvinist/Arminian Debate

My blog is linked to SBC Voices. I love that site. My blog gets a lot of hits from there and I appre­ci­ate it.

I also must let you know that there is a ter­ri­ble wal­low­ing of opin­ion between Calvin­ist vs. Armin­ian voices over there. It’s kind of noisy. When I was in sem­i­nary at the flag­ship school of the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion, that stuff really meant a lot to me. I was a T-​Shirt wear­ing, dyed in the wool Calvinist.

But I wasn’t when I got there. I had a friend talk me into it. His ideas and per­sua­sions were on point. So were my professors.

Since then, I’ve com­mit­ted adul­tery and fallen from min­istry. I’ve had the time to read mes­sage board after mes­sage board of angry Calvin­ists and Armini­ans. Peo­ple telling me why I or some­one else was wrong. Oh my, it gets really weird. After my fall from min­istry, I just don’t care about which theologian’s side I’m on any­more. (I can hear you: Yes, but if we don’t have the­ol­ogy, we won’t know what we believe! I’m not talk­ing about doing away with the­ol­ogy, I’m talk­ing about thump­ing our chests in the online world over who our the­o­log­i­cal heroes are and why we’re right.)

I remem­ber in my days as a hard core Calvin­ist, I went to stay with my brother in law who was a so-​so Armin­ian. He had a tote bag that had on the side, “Whoso­ever will may come.” It ticked me off. Because I was con­vinced who­ever designed it and had under­lined the word “whoso­ever” was anti-​Calvin. I wanted to secretly take it away and burn it.

Now, I know, that’s just plain Scrip­ture. Whoso­ever will may come. I’m still a sov­er­eign­tist. I can’t explain to you why I com­mit­ted adul­tery except I’m a sin­ner. I can’t explain why David com­mit­ted adul­tery. He was a sin­ner. We call Jesus the Son of David. That’s crazy.

The worst thing we can do is keep argu­ing in front of peo­ple about why we think we’re right. The best thing we can do is go hold high the supremacy of God in the uni­verse and His sav­ing power. Hide behind your inter­net anonymity if you want and argue the Canons of Dort. If it makes you happy, go for it. But if you haven’t stood in the mid­dle of the mall and asked some­one about their sal­va­tion, your the­ol­ogy is bleak.

I’ve fallen a long way. A long way. And a lot of peo­ple hate me for it. But I can do one thing right. I can cast aside my ultra-​superior-​arrogant love for a the­o­log­i­cal sys­tem and begin to focus on Christ and those He came to save. I can real­ize that there are mil­lions out there who he would iden­tify with who would look noth­ing like me and go tell them about the good news. I can love those who have fallen, those who are dif­fer­ent, those who need help and those who are gen­er­ally ignored by the church.

Every ten min­utes I spend writ­ing or read­ing on a Calvinistic/​non-​Calvinistic mes­sage board is ten min­utes I could have told some­one about the life chang­ing expe­ri­ence Christ could give them. (By the way, the blog posts are usu­ally great, it’s delv­ing into the board posts that makes you want to put your waders on.) It has noth­ing to do with Jacob Arminius or John Calvin. It has every­thing to do with Jesus Christ.

So, I pro­pose leav­ing the argu­ments to sweat and cigar smoke filled rooms where peo­ple can argue all day with­out the pass­ing, imma­ture believer can drop by and not quite under­stand what is going on. Either that or we may have to get Henry Kissinger involved. Worse, we may all have to go out and wit­ness together. That is if we can keep from wit­ness­ing to each other…