Mar 28, 2011

Calvinism Makes You a Bad Person

A few moments ago, I saw this quote on my Facebook feed:

"Why do bad things happen to good people? That only happened once, and He volunteered." - R.C. Sproul

Job's comforters are still with us, I see.  Eliphaz couldn't have said it better himself: "Is it for your piety that he rebukes you and brings charges against you? Is not your wickedness great? Are not your sins endless?"

A wicked sinner who deserves her fate and much, much worse.
I know a girl named Stanislava. Seven years old or so. Born with spinal bifida and hydrocephaly--if she had been born in the West, the conditions would have been treatable either prenatally or at birth. As it is, she will be confined to a wheelchair for her entire life, which will probably be short due to complications including kidney malfunction resulting from her inability to stand. Also, due to cultural attitudes regarding sickness and handicaps, she will spend that entire life in an institution--she currently resides in a home for the mentally handicapped, where, though quite intelligent, she will never have opportunity to fully develop her mental capacity.

R.C. Sproul would have me believe that she deserves this--that she was a sufficiently wicked sinner while still in the womb that there is no injustice in her suffering.  Furthermore, he would have me believe that she deserves not only this, but to suffer the fires of Hell itself--to suffer in infinite conscious torment for all of eternity.

R.C. Sproul is a Very Bad Person.

What made him a bad person?  And what made a person I once considered a friend enough of a moral imbecile to be sufficiently impressed by this quote to post it to his Facebook page?

I would propose that the answer is Calvinism.  When you predicate your theology on Lovecraftian horror, then that will lead you into further horrors.  If you believe that God takes the souls of all mortals and arbitrarily casts some into everlasting torment while pulling others into eternal bliss, and if your smug assumption that you yourself will be in the latter category assuages any discomfiture that this notion might otherwise cause, then you have already developed the mental equipment necessary to shrug off this girl's story with a 'Meh, she deserved it.'

“I am angry with you," said the Lord to Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar, and R.C. Sproul, "because you have not spoken the truth about me."

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