I find that I’m still
reading and thinking about Calvinist issues this week. The more I study the
more amazed I am – some day I’ll have to figure out what it is that draws
people to such a thorny part of the garden. Meanwhile let’s …
Tip-toe Through the Tulip
 |
| Not tulips either... |
Aren’t acronyms marvelous? Why,
the modern world could barely function without reducing every phrase or title
to a list of pronounceable initials: SCOTUS and POTUS and PETA and PI.
Acronyms allow us to say so much in such a narrow bandwidth that they’ve become
indispensible. But they aren’t new. The five points of Calvinism were
formalized c1619 as TULIP – a nifty way to remember some fairly outrageous
doctrines, most of which began as nuggets of truth which eventually morphed
into the misshapen thoughts that permeate a great deal of modern day Christian
theology.
The T stands for Total Depravity, i.e. Original Sin. Only
the most liberal Christian churches deny the essence of this concept. Eve
disobeyed God, ate from the forbidden tree, lured her husband into the same
behavior and together they lost their innocence. That loss still manifests
itself today in man’s imperfection, in his inability to do anything pure and
holy, in his state of “coming short of the glory of God,” (Romans 3:23).
The only problem with the
Calvinist take on this is that the idea has swallowed us whole to the point
where we can’t even accept God’s grace without His intervention. Calvinism has
allowed Original Sin to destroy free will, putting a nasty knot in the yarn of
salvation – how are we to explain the observable fact that some people follow
the Lord in spite of their depravity? If we’re born screwed, then in what do we place our hope? No
wonder the non-believing world hates Christianity and its God – it has left
them hopeless; they can’t choose Him even if they want to. Yikes.
