The One Where Dell Goes Back In Time and Burns All of John Calvin's Books

most students that undergo theological training at some point encounter a theology or a theologian that just grinds their gears. i thought i would be able to avoid it, being all open-minded and such. but alas that was not to be.

john calvin and i just did not get along. so i warn you, if you and j cal are close buds, you might wanna skip til the end.

to be honest i never knew much about mr. calvin and the train of thought that bears his name until i took history of christianity last year. we talked about him and his ideas in a historical context.

the one hump i couldn't get over was predestination. basically, predestination is the idea that god chose before time began who he would save. that being so, jesus death on the cross was for that select group of people. this is considered "limited atonement," where as "general atonement" is for any one that would accept christ. mind you, i'm being EXTREMELY basic in my definitions, and i understand that i'm doing that even to the point where i might be incorrect. but i'm sure that i'll be corrected if i am.

see, something like calvinism probably will NEVER fly at my school. it's an HBCU where liberation and equality are large focal points. telling someone that god might not have picked them for the number won't go over well, particularly when talking to representatives of minorities that have been trying to get in the number of various earthly societies for decades.

i thought and though and thought. i just didn't like it. the idea that god sorted all of this out beforehand didn't make sense to me, or my understanding of god's movement in the scriptures. i never thought, even as a little kid, that god controlled every single aspect of human behavior. we make choices, we deal with the consequences. if we make godly choices, we'll avoid A LOT of bad things, but even then you can't dodge all of them. still, god is there. god is good. we live during a period of existence where our actions affect the world around us for better or worse.

i didn't understand what place ministry had if this were true. are we honestly trying to reach a dying world if this is my viewpoint, or simply to scream loud enough so "the elect" would hear. bump everyone else, because god has decided to withhold himself from them.

but wait, doesn't that mean he created them with the intent to withhold himself from them? so does that make 1 timothy 2:4 means something else when it says that god wants "all people to be saved?"

as if christianity doesn't have enough exclusivity issues.

and what does this mean as a black man in america? since god wrote this script, from beginning to end, how can i continue being such a happy christian knowing that it was god's idea and intention for...

-11 million africans to be snatched from africa
-countless amounts of said africans die on the middle passage
-said africans to suffer through slavery, then jim crow, then civil rights, and still a subpar social status
-native americans to be wiped out

praise white, european invader god! doesn't this seem great!

-___-

i couldn't see myself preaching to my people, marginalized people, and telling them this. quite frankly, i didn't see what this dead german dude had to say that had anything positive for me or my community. i wanted to go back in time and tell him to get it together.

calvin: hello?

me: it's me, dell.

calvin: can i help you?

me: you sure can! you can stop writing! because one day john piper and mark driscoll will get twitter accounts and be annoying! i can nip this in the bud if i stop you.

calvin: but...i really believe this!

me: SO WHAT!! **dell burns all of the books**

this semester, my professor and i had a talk about it. she actually made me feel better about the whole thing. "verdell, think about his context. the church was filled with corruption. wars were everywhere. plagues abounded. it would make sense that calvin's ideas of predestination came out of this situation. it probably looked very hopeless. you can't separate a person's theology from their experience."

she was right. and i was able to let calvin off the hook. none of us, even jesus, create thoughts about god in a vacuum. they come from somewhere and are shaped by something. as much as i may have disagreed with him, there were real circumstances that led him to these ideas. if i were in his shoes, perhaps i would have come to the same conclusions.

there are people that would disagree with me and my ideas, too. and they would say that i'm simply a product of my environment as well. it reminded me to be careful and tread lightly, even in my theological disagreements with others.

still...when i see prominent calvinist preachers minister, i'm turned off. even when i share their viewpoints i find them unbearable to watch. to me, the display is arrogant and haughty, with an assumption that "if you disagree with us, then you disagree with GOD! BOOM! we're allllllllways correct! and you'll never be correct unless you agree with us!" *chest thump*

if i were not saved, trust they wouldn't be the reason i would turn to jesus. or does it even matter? because god's grace will get me whether i want it or not.

but wait, that would make god at best, forceful, and at worst...well, just really really bad.

but that isn't john calvin'sjesus. but that's a topic for a whole other day.

i personally think that god goes out of his way to protect our free will. it's the aspect that we have that makes us like him. the ability to choose. i mean, with all of my issues with how the genesis account is handled, it was god that decided to put two trees in the garden. to me, if everything was already decided, what's the point of the trees? what's the point of telling them not to eat the fruit? did god create adam and eve not just with the ability to sin, but with the intention of them sinning?

if so, then god is directly responsible for the cycle of sin and death.

it just gets messy for me. and i don't mind messy, but at some point it's too much of a mess to take to the bank. so many other things no longer make sense, or have to be explained away in ways that assault my understanding of Christ to totally accept john calvin's claims.

and i'm by no means saying that i understand it all...but what i do understand, i'm sticking to.