Calvinists love to sing the praises of God's love and grace. They wax poetic about it - about how it's so huge, undeserved, unconditional, humbling, generous, and amazing!
His love and grace for the elect only, that is.
But do you want a picture of what the love and grace of Calvi-god is really like? (Calvinism's god is not the same as the God of the Bible, that's why I gave him his own name.)
Imagine that Calvi-god is a man who owns a stadium.
And he invites (drags) 1000 people to come live in his stadium, providing all they need to live there.
But as all the people are resting in their seats or eating the food he provides or mingling with others, he begins running around with a huge machete and starts hacking up random men, women, and children.
950 of them.
And the whole time he's hacking them to pieces, he's saying, "I want to save you. I want you to live. I care about you."
But the worst part was that he didn't have to kill them. He could have spared them. He had more than enough resources to save them all. But he invited them into the stadium precisely so that he could destroy them. It was his plan from the beginning.
Just because.
And when he's done hacking 950 random people to pieces, standing in the midst of all their bloody body-parts, he turns to the other 50 and says, "I'm not going to destroy you because I love you. I chose to save 50 random people before I ever even invited you in, and it just so happens to be you. In fact, I chose to destroy those other 950 people so that you could see how much I love you by comparison, how gracious I am to you when I didn't have to be. I could have chosen to hack you to pieces too, but I didn't. Isn't my love and grace amazing!!! Aren't I just great!!! And because I chose to save you, you WILL love me. You WILL worship me. You WILL trust me. You will think I am the greatest thing there ever was and that hacking those people up was my sovereign right, that's it's actually for my glory and that I can do anything I want for my glory. In fact, I will do whatever I want - even causing you to be abused by other people, even causing you to do things I don't want you to do but then punishing you for it, even pretending to give those 950 people the chance to be saved when I really invited them in just so I can kill them - and you WILL call me good. Now praise me for how loving and gracious I am!"
Yes, this is Calvinism's god!
This is what his grace and love look like!
(Remember this the next time you hear a Calvinist go on and on about how amazing God is.)
And so I ask again ...
How great is his love and grace, really?
[And once again, Calvi-god is NOT the God of the Bible. So do not confuse the two. It will be detrimental to your faith and your trust in God.
Calvi-god is not truly loving and gracious, not when he behaves the way he does. He is a deceiver, a liar, filled with more hate than love, more evil than good. He is Satan in disguise.
But the God of the Bible is truly loving and gracious to all, dying for all sins of all time so that all people have the opportunity to be saved, so that all can have the gift of eternal life. If we will accept it! (See "Starting Your Own Relationship With Jesus Christ" for more on this.)
And here are three of my all-time favorite songs about how truly amazing God really is, how incredible Jesus' sacrifice for all of us was, how no one is beyond His saving grace and love, no one is hopeless:
Sweetly Broken and Oh, What Love and I AM.
He hung there on the cross, bleeding and dying, for you and me. For all of us. Paying the penalty that we owe for our sins. Will you accept His payment, His death, on your behalf so that you can live eternally ... or will you choose to pay the penalty yourself?]
