Healing your soul from Calvinism's damage

[updated April 2024]

For the 6 years that the new Calvinist pastor was at our church, subtly teaching his Calvinism, my soul was starving.  I'm not kidding; I could feel it starving.  Shriveling up dry.  It wasn't dying - because I have a very strong faith, and my faith is in God, not in some preacher - but it was starved for truth and encouragement and joy, etc.  (See "Why Is Calvinism So Dangerous?")

And it wasn't just because of what he was teaching, but it was also because of what he wasn't teaching.  He hardly talked about God's love for us, how God cares about us, how He helps us in the hard times, etc.  There was no real encouragement, compassion, grace, love, hope, etc.  At least not in my eyes.  

Instead, it was often lofty, academic knowledge for the head, hardly ever comfort for the heart.  (I think he was more "professor" than "shepherd," more "this is what I think and how I do things, and so should you" than "Let me come alongside you in this hard life and help you on your journey of faith."  But maybe that's just me.)  And it was often about how depraved we are, how much we don't deserve God's love, how much we deserve hell, how we should just ignore that God predestines people to hell and be thankful that He chose to save any of us wretched sinners (the lucky lottery winners!), and how God "ordains" every evil that happens and every tragedy we go through - including childhood abuse - for our good, for His glory, and to keep us humble.  

No wonder my heart was aching and my soul was starving!  

(See "Are we only here for God's glory?  What about God's love?" and "Is God only concerned about His glory and being famous?" and "Does God cause childhood abuse?" for more on this.)  

So Earth's crust is full of water, huh?

Did you see this article - "Earth's crust swallowed a sea's worth of water and locked it away beneath Pacific seafloor" - about how there is a massive deep reservoir of water hidden beneath the ocean floor by New Zealand and how the rocks there are abnormally wet, how they should contain much less water for being many "millions" of years old?

Do you know what this makes me think of?

"The fountains of the great deep" which burst open during the worldwide flood of Genesis 5:11: "In the six hundredth year of Noah's life... all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of heaven were opened."

And it makes me think that maybe the earth isn't really "millions" of years old like scientists keep insisting.

Also see "Maybe 'millions of years' is actually just 40 days!"  and "Starting the new school year with Creation vs. Evolution" and "Is Evolution True?" 

Just something to think about. 

Keep it simple

Just wanted to pass along this quick, wonderful testimony from someone who came out of a commune/cult (the 60's!): 

Why I Believe in a Biblical Worldview (A Testimony) by Rick Segoine. 

I loved it when he said "... along with all of the study and knowledge that comes with it, my dear and precious Jesus always reminded me along the way to never forsake the simple things. The simple faith of a child. The gratefulness for my salvation and what He did for me. My heart filled with His love..."

This resonated with me because after leaving our church (because of Calvinism - lofty, convoluted, contradictory, soul-deadening, love-destroying, faith-suffocating garbage), I have been longing to get back to the simple things.  

Simple truths.  Simple joys.  Simple relationship with God.  Simple Gospel.

"For God so loved the world that he sent his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life."  (John 3:16)

Cindy's Comment on Theistic Evolution vs. A Literal Genesis

 (Happy 4th, America!  I'm sorry for what's being done to you.)

There's a comment from someone named Cindy in the comment section of a post on theistic evolution vs. a literal Genesis.  (Actually, the post is really just a nasty attack on Ken Ham.)  Since the author of that blog stopped allowing comments on that post - it appears she didn't want any more opposing voices - I wanted to post the comment I like and agree with here, since I couldn't agree with it there.  

Is Evolution True?

You know, as I think about it, people who challenge the existence of God oftentimes use this as one of their arguments: "But how did God get here?  And how can you know He's real if we can't see Him?"  They act like if they can stump you with these questions then they have shown how irrational Christianity is.

Okay, sure, so we Christians ultimately have two "unanswerable" questions - questions we will never be able to answer to the satisfaction of an evolutionist.  (Of course, the answers are that He was always here and that His creation proves His existence because you can't have a creation without a Creator.  But people don't accept these answers because they just don't want to.)



But evolutionists have far more unanswerable questions than we do (and these are just a few):

More Creation Videos We Watched

 A couple good videos my kids and I just watched as part of our homeschooling day:

Did Dinosaurs Walk With Man - a 45-minute seminar from Genesis Apologetics

God of Wonders - an hour and a half "documentary" on the wonders of the God's creation

(Also see this other post of mine for more creation videos we watched: Starting the new school year with Creation vs Evolution.)

I know it sounds crazy but ...

A neighbor (a recent believer) and I were talking the other day about the rapture and the end times, prophecy and the book of Revelation, etc.  And I found myself saying "I know it sounds crazy.  It sounds crazy to talk about things like this, about prophecy and Jesus coming back and the tribulation and things like that."

We Christians know how it sounds when we talk about these things - like we should be wearing tin-foil hats, claiming that the government is reading our thoughts, that aliens have probed us, and that we've seen Bigfoot working as a cashier at the local convenience store.  I know that the Bible and its teachings - on how the world was created, on how it will end, on prophecy, angels, demons, the spiritual battle, on Jesus being God and coming to earth in a human body to die for our sins and then being raised again from the dead, etc. - I know all these things sound fanciful, fantastical (as my neighbor says), crazy.

But you know what I think?  You know what I told my neighbor?

I know it sounds crazy, but I think it's the most logical, most hopeful, of all the crazy options.  When you think about it, every option out there (and I've only listed a few) - every possible belief about how the world was created, how it will end, who God is, etc. - sounds crazy.

My Testimony

I’ve scattered bits of my story all over my blogs, but I’m gonna pull it all together here, about how I became a believer and some things I’ve gone through and how my faith has been affected.  (I’ll include links to posts where I explain things more fully.)

Starting the journey:  I became a believer when I was eleven years old.  (I am now getting close to 50.  I don't know how that happened.)  At a Christian camp, on one of the last nights, they gave an altar call.  I wanted to go up but was nervous about standing up in front of everyone.  But being more nervous about the window of opportunity closing, I felt myself stand up and walk to the front.  I knew exactly what I was doing, that I was making a commitment for life.  And I meant it.  I really meant it.  I knelt down, asked Jesus into my heart, and have never turned back.  It hasn’t been an easy, carefree journey (as you’ll see), but I haven’t turned back (though I did contemplate it and kinda briefly wished I could've, during one terrible summer). 

Starting the new school year with Creation vs. Evolution

If there's one thing I would go back and change if I could when homeschooling my older two children (grown and graduated now), it would be that I would have them watch more great educational videos online, instead of focusing mostly on textbooks.  

(And I would let them have more time to pursue something they were passionate about.  I'd rather have a kid who was passionate about something, anything - studying bugs, piano, building, classical literature, writing stories, etc. - than have a kid who did all the boring bookwork but never developed a passion in any one area.)   

Sometimes, for some people, watching things is more inspiring and memorable than reading about it.  It brings things to life more, helping you feel more and remember more.  My boys would have really enjoyed and benefitted from more educational videos.  There are so many interesting, good ones out there; what a shame we missed out on them.

So this year as I start school with my younger two, we are going to add some good videos, maybe starting our morning with them while the kids are still too groggy for reading.  And we are starting right from the beginning, with videos on creation.  God's Word and creationism has been under such attack in recent decades, and I want my boys to understand that science affirms - not contradicts - the Bible and a biblical worldview of creation.  I want to give them reasons now to believe it, before the world tears their faith down (which it attempts to do at every turn).