The Deadly Doctrine of Predestination and Biblical Innerancy

I haven’t touched on this for a while. I am sure our buddy HaKohen will have a lot to say if he is still around. I have let the whole Calvin/Arminian thing kind of take a back burner for a while. That is until today. My wife is attending a Baptist College and her Professor is a Calvinist. She was going to use the Bible to “prove him wrong” and we are having a hard time coming up with proof texts to disprove the idea that God controls our every move and predestined some of us for hell. We cannot seem to find any good proof texts and therefore her faith is shaken.

 

I believe that that concept goes against everything the Bible teaches and everything I know from my personal walk with God. I don’t think a God that draws names out of a hat and says this one goes to heaven and this one goes to hell is any God I would want to serve and is certainly NOT the God I see when I read the words of Christ.

 

I am not all that outraged. I am at peace with my own faith but I cannot give any good advice to combat this. My take is either the obscure verses about predestination are misunderstood, mistranslated or simply WRONG. I have come to the conclusion that I can live a Christian life and know Jesus Christ without believing that every word in the Bible is literally correct. (major HERESY here). If anything that has opened the door to greater faith. I remember once when I was 14 (a year after I became a Christian). I was in tears because the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of John have quite different accounts of Jesus arrest. I had to reconcile each word or not have any faith. Well they are accounts written 2000 years ago by different people and I am surprised they are as similar as they are now.

 

Being able to believe you we cant proof text it or be affirmed by others. That is true faith. Believing the literal words of the Bible and doing what people tell you to. That’s not faith. That’s blind allegiance.

 

I am sure many good sincere Christians would read this and pray that I “come back to the Lord”. I got news for them. I don’t need to. I never left. I am closer to my God than ever before.

 

Some would say if you doubt the Bible you are on a slippery slope. Well now that I don’t have to jump through hoops to justify things that make no sense, I am on solid ground.

I believe the Bible was written by people. Its there perception of God. Much of it is true but it is tainted by the culture of its day and by thousands of years of tampering.

 

How do I know what I believe? I don’t need a book to tell me. I just know what I know that I know.

 

Now I am getting out there. Anybody know wtf I am talking about.