4 ms·
All 5 points are just different facets of the belief in predestination - that we are ultimately incapable of changing our moral standing, our fate, that only Go
by plorg 4y ago
All 5 points are just different facets of the belief in predestination - that we are ultimately incapable of changing our moral standing, our fate, that only God can do that for us. In practice it means that there are an elect few who are capable of good (and in my educational experience, are tasked with "building the kingdom of God", aka running things) and everyone else deserves what is coming to them even if they could incidentally do good by the accident of common grace. There really isn't any incentive to not treat everyone not in your church as garbage and deserving of punishment. The only difference is now there isn't, for any one believer, a good reason to even try to listen to the pleas and arguments of someone outside your belief structure, because you're both under total depravity, but you feel, and are assured by those who believe the same as you, that you have God's blessing and are incapable of losing it.
Obviously not everyone believes all of it to the same extent, and they may have a softer padding between these beliefs and how they act within the real world, but based on my experience (30+ years of living in small Calvinist communities) most people who take the title Calvinist, and even most who rather take the label Reformed (because Calvinism has earned its bad name) do believe this to a fair extent.
- anigbrowl 4y agomy experience (30+ years of living in small Calvinist communities Disappointing to see your unusually extensive first-hand experience downvoted to the bottom of this sub-thread.