Imperishable Inheritance

I have been frus­trated with a few of my fel­low Chris­tians recently, and it has to do when doc­trine becomes “sheek.” I have seen a good num­ber of believ­ers recently come to embrace the Doc­trines of Grace (Calvin­ism), and they seem­ingly do it only because it’s seen as some to be ‘cool to be a Calvin­ist.’ It’s almost as if it is to be a fad much like Face­book or Sudoku. Calvin­ists tra­di­tion­ally have a rep­u­ta­tion of being very intel­li­gent and dili­gent in their Bib­li­cal stud­ies (not to say they’re aren’t smart peo­ple out­side of Calvin­ism and that all Calvin­ists really are intel­li­gent), and I feel like peo­ple pur­sue after the rep­u­ta­tion. Let’s go back in time to when I first came to the doc­trines mentioned.

I embraced Calvin­ism, actu­ally, before I was even a pro­fess­ing believer. I admit­ted intel­lec­tu­ally that if the Chris­t­ian Scrip­tures were true, then it does sup­port the doc­trines of reformed the­ol­ogy (much like the Qur’an sup­ports Mohammed as prophet sent by God). Well, things changed when I did being to pro­fess my belief in Christ. I then went into the noto­ri­ous “cage stage.”

“Within the Reformed world, a phrase which more of us should be aware of is ‘cage stage.’ When­ever some­one comes into new-found truth (and this often hap­pens with those first com­ing to embrace Reformed the­ol­ogy), the phrase refers to that period of time where the new (and usu­ally young) con­vert should be locked up in a cage. That period of time is usu­ally about two years. Of course, there are some piti­ful cases that should never be let out, and there are many more evan­gel­ly­fish who do not ever need to be locked up. But cage stagers, how­ever many of them there are, can do a lot of dam­age. Iron­i­cally, they do much to make the the­ol­ogy they pro­fess to love obnox­ious to out­siders. Paul did teach, unam­bigu­ously, the doc­trine of elec­tion. But he also told the Colos­sians, as the elect of God, to put on ten­der mer­cies.“
Dou­glas Wil­son, Hither and Yon

I didn’t under­stand that these doc­trines were meant to hum­ble me and not send me into a tirade. Through the help of God work­ing through my sum­mer project this past sum­mer, I was finally able to break free of the “cage stage.” Now, I see more Chris­tians, instead of going into a “cage stage,” learn just enough of the five points to say, “I’m a Calvin­ist.” In all hon­esty, it means noth­ing to them. Now, there are some believ­ers who I have seen of late gen­uinely wres­tle with the doc­trines and become con­vinced and thereby hum­bled, but unfor­tu­nately this is a minority.

When I was doing my Bible study we had a vis­i­tor who, when we were going over the mis­si­o­log­i­cal impli­ca­tions of Jonah, asked, “is this about elec­tion?” First of all, we couldn’t have been far­ther from focus­ing on elec­tion in the sense she was talk­ing about, and you got the sense that she said it just so oth­ers would think, “wow, she stud­ies elec­tion.” I’ve had other peo­ple rec­om­mend this shirt which says on the front: “Armini­an­ism: I chose this shirt” and on the back: “Calvin­ism: This shirt chose me.” What igno­rance. (What a bad under­stand­ing of the debate. Nei­ther side would debate a choice by both par­ties, but per­pet­u­at­ing stereo­types is always fun I guess.)

Jolly­blog­ger, a well known reformed blog­ger, reposted a list called: “Why It’s Cool to Be a Calvin­ist” with rea­sons like:

Dis­pen­sa­tion­al­ists are into prophecy con­fer­ences where they talk about Star-Trek escha­tol­ogy and the mark of the Beast. Calvin­ists have con­fer­ences on “life and cul­ture”, art, social jus­tice, and other high– brow things like that. After­wards, we go to the local pub and talk about phi­los­o­phy over a pint of Bass ale.

It is more socially accept­able to say, “I go to Grace Pres­by­ter­ian Church” than to say, “I go to Washed In The Blood Wor­ship Center”

Being a Calvin­ist or Armin­ian or what­ever isn’t about a trend as if it were rel­e­gated the world of pogs and Sea Mon­keys. Study­ing doc­trine is some­thing we do out of love for the Word and not say that we can feel high brow or more intel­li­gent than any­one else.