Is God like a man?
It was a simple five-word question in a Facebook comment. I think it may be the most important question we can ask ourselves.
The Facebook discussion was about Calvinism, and I had just made the assertion that we can equate love and holiness because Jesus summed up the law by saying love God and love man. So, I said, if you obey the law, you would be righteous and holy. And if the law is love, as Jesus said it is, then you must love to be holy. Therefore, that same rule applies to God himself. His love is his holiness. (I flesh out this idea more fully here.)
If He acts unlovingly, He acts unrighteously.
“Is God like a man?” my Calvinist friend John asked in reply.
He was asking if God plays by the same moral rules that humans do. Are good and evil the same for us as they are for God?
Is God like a man? Five tiny words and one single question with huge implications. The answer to that question may change the course of your life. It certainly has mine.
He was countering my love = righteousness assertion by implying that the law, as given by Jesus, was for us, not for God. John was saying that the creatures and the Creator don’t play by the same rules.
Calvinism Refuted on the Basis of Morality
At that moment, it became clear to me that whether or not good and evil are the same for God as they are for us is the deepest point at which Calvinists, Arminians, and other perspectives separate.
If we can come to a mutual understanding on this crucial question, I believe we can have better conversations and a clearer perception of the different perspectives represented in western Christianity.
I think I can put it succinctly here and then explain more fully below. Calvinists believe that God’s morality is based on whatever will bring Him glory. If it brings Him glory, then it is good. When God evaluates what action He will take, an action that brings Him glory may trump an action that is loving toward His creatures.
In my experience (after six years in Calvinism), not many Calvinists can clearly articulate this point. In most cases, a subtle shift has taken place somewhere along the way, the importance of which many do not perceive.
It is kind of like the analogy of boiling a frog. You don’t cook a frog by dropping it in a pot of boiling water. It will jump out. You boil it by putting it in a pot of lukewarm water and slowly turning the heat up.
That’s the way most Christians get into Calvinism. I hope to show you just how hot the water is going to get.
Most Calvinists, like myself, grew up Arminian. That’s the case for many famous Calvinists like John Piper, R. C. Sproul, and Jonathan Edwards. The Arminian says that God loves everyone equally and wants to save every person, but most do not choose to love God in return. This fits in fairly well with a human understanding of good and evil. In human morality, everyone gets a fair shot.
Letting Go of Good and Evil
Most people are drawn to Christianity with the message of “For God so loved the world…” So they become Christians based on this understanding that God loves his creatures — all of them. Then, somewhere along the way, they start to hear about predestination, and a struggle ensues.
Take the famous 18th-century Calvinist preacher Jonathan Edwards …
From my childhood up my mind had been full of objections against the doctrine of God’s sovereignty [predestination] . . . It used to appear like a horrible doctrine to me.
Or R. C. Sproul …
My struggle with predestination began early in my Christian life … I did not like it. I did not like it at all. I fought against it tooth and nail all the way through college.
Or George Mueller …
I had been much opposed to the doctrines of election …
So what is it about Calvinism that makes so many of even the most famous Calvinists struggle with it? Why do so many have problems with Calvinism? I think it is that when Calvinists shift the motivation of God’s actions from His others-centered love to His self-centered glory, they actually shift the good news from “God so loved the world…” to “God so loved himself…”
And that shift is hard to swallow. When you come to understand what Calvinists say that God does when He loves Himself, it actually turns good and evil on its head.
These people came to Christianity because they thought God is one way; then they were taught He is another.
The conversion to Calvinism is difficult, even painful, because it represents a relinquishing of our understanding of good and evil. And, I think this is a refutation of Calvinism.
The Divide Illustrated: William Carey and The Brahman
A good way to examine this fundamental moral divide is to see what happens when a Calvinist preacher attempts to convert the lost with the message that God’s glory is the ultimate good (rather than His love for creation).
In John Piper’s book The Pleasures of God, he tells the story of an exchange between Puritan missionary William Carey, who served in India in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and a Brahman:
In 1797, four years after he came to India, Carey tells us of being confronted by a Brahman. Carey had preached on Acts 14:16 and 17:30 and said that God formerly allowed all men everywhere to go their own way, but now he commands all men everywhere to repent.
The Brahman responded, “Indeed I think God ought to repent for not sending the gospel sooner to us.”
It is not an easy objection to answer. Carey’s answer is awesome, like the God he loved and served:
“To this I added, suppose a kingdom had been long overrun by the enemies of its true king, and he though possessed of sufficient power to conquer them, should yet suffer them to prevail, and establish themselves as much as they could desire, would not the valor and wisdom of that king be far more conspicuous in exterminating them than it would have been if he had opposed them at first, and prevented their entering the country?”
What has happened in this exchange?
The lost Brahman perceives that love should have been God’s motivation. He says that God, if He really loved the Brahman’s ancestors whom He created, should repent for not sending the help that those who are dependent on Him for spiritual life desperately needed.
The Brahman believes that others-centered love is the ultimate good.
Carey, seemingly oblivious to the argument the Brahman puts forth and the Brahman’s heart-wrenching thought that all those he has ever loved and laid to rest will burn in hell forever, replies that God has done precisely what brings Him the most glory—his “valor and wisdom” are made “more conspicuous in exterminating them.”
The Calvinist believes that God’s glory is the ultimate good and that His glory is often made manifest in ways that are not loving toward His creation.
Herein, we see the divide between Calvinism and other worldviews very clearly.
Again, do not miss the vital flaw in this kind of reasoning. Though Calvinists like Piper and Carey would have you believe it so, God is NOT like a king who suffers abuse at the hands of his equals in a very important way. He is the CREATOR of those He “exterminates” to show how much “valor and wisdom” He has. This extermination, of course, isn’t a cessation of being. It is a suspension of consciousness in misery for all eternity. So that God can receive “glory.”
He calls them forth out of nothingness for just such a purpose.
When you shift the ground of goodness from others-centered love to self-centered glory in this way, you have flipped good and evil upside down. You are now living in the dark side of Stranger Things. I took a journey to that dark side. It was hell.
Sure, to a Calvinist, some of the acts of God are beautiful. He gives His life for those He loves. But what about the rest of the people He called into being out of nothingness? Is that love?
Antony Flew asked himself those questions.
The Sad Case of Antony Flew
Antony Flew should be the poster child for creationists. But he isn’t.
Flew was one of the most renowned and outspoken proponents of atheism during the later part of the 20th century. An Oxford professor, Flew wrote or contributed to over 40 books, many of which argued against the existence of God. He was the Richard Dawkins of the previous generation.
But in 2004, Flew changed his mind due to philosophical and scientific considerations.
One of the most famous atheists in the world was now a deist.
“The most impressive arguments for God’s existence are those that are supported by recent scientific discoveries, and … the argument to Intelligent Design is enormously stronger than it was when I first met it.”
Antony Flew
What was the specific evidence which helped change Flew’s mind? DNA. He saw no convincing argument for the development of DNA from a naturalist perspective.
Flew went on to co-write a book detailing his conversion to deism (think Thomas Jefferson) titled There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind.
But, astonishingly, the chances are good that you’ve never heard of Antony Flew.
Why is that?
I believe it’s because of the things Flew had to say about Christianity after his conversion to deism. Here’s a sample:
I’m thinking of a God very different from the God of the Christian and far and away from the God of Islam because both are depicted as omnipotent Oriental despots, cosmic Saddam Husseins.
Stings a little, doesn’t it?
When I first heard Flew’s statement, I was still in the Calvinist camp. And, as much as I wanted to deny it, I really didn’t have a good argument against it. The God I believed in was, indeed, an Oriental despot. He loved His own and hated the rest; the rest whom He gave life to, remember. Calvinists could carve up the words love and hate as much as they liked to try to make this better, but that’s exactly where the ideas led.
During my transition period in 2014, I asked my Calvinist pastor for his perspective on Flew’s statement. His reply was essentially that “God is God, and He can do what He wants,” which proved Flew’s point. That’s the way a despot would justify his actions.
“I can do whatever I want.”
Flew looked past the “God is a God of love, but He’s also a God of justice” statement that most Christians (Calvinist and Arminian) throw out when they start talking about God’s character. What do His actions indicate about His character?
Whether you look at His motives from the Calvinist or Arminian perspective (I’m not in either camp), He sets the wheels of creation in motion knowing that the non-end will be misery for most of His creation— an unbelievably selfish and cruel decision. Calvinists take it a step further and say that God gets “glory” from this. Some, John Piper included, even say that He gets great pleasure from it.
Horrific. These are the actions of a cosmic Saddam Hussein.
So, most of the world has never heard of Antony Flew’s conversion to a belief in God. Atheists want to sweep his conversion under the rug for obvious reasons. And the majority of western evangelical Christians don’t want people to hear how much Flew loathed the character of their God because they really don’t have a good answer for him.
So Flew, who died in 2010, fades away unnoticed, another example of the dark side of Calvinism.
But there is a good Christian answer for Flew. It just isn’t the Arminian or Calvinist version.
Made in His Image?
I think a fair question to ask related to the questions “Is God like a man?” and “Does God play by the same moral rules as men?” is “What does God mean when He says He will make men in His image?”
Does that simply mean that God has 10 fingers, two kneecaps, a spleen, a nose, …?
Or does it mean that we are made like Him in the more important part: the soul? I believe a clear refutation of Calvinism is that because we are made in His image, good and evil are the same for us as they are for God — not opposites. When a Calvinist says that God does things which, if a man did them would be considered the most despicable acts imaginable, we can assert that the Calvinist is wrong based on the fact that we are made in God’s likeness.
If Calvinism were true, I would beg God NOT to make me more like Him. I do not want to elevate my own pleasures above the good of those who are dependent on me. “For the sake of my own children, please don’t make me like you, God!”
His Ways Are Not Our Ways
When confronted with the arguments I have just made, the Calvinist might say: “God says His ways are not our ways in Isaiah 55.”
8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. 9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
And I reply, “You’re right! Thank God, you’re right!”
Look at the statement which comes right before that beautiful declaration:
7 Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.
God’s ways are different than man’s in that men hold grudges and are unforgiving. But the LORD has mercy and freely pardons!
That is how His ways are different than our ways — wicked and evil (low) vs. mercy and pardon (high).
All of Isaiah 55 is a wonderful expression of the unmerited blessings of God on wicked men. Thank God His ways are higher than our ways. And, in the new testament we find that God wants commands us to be like Him in this way.
This sentiment is echoed in Jesus’ words in the sermon on the mount. Jesus tells us what God is like in Matthew 5 and that we must be like Him in this very way. (He has to go out of His way to tell us this because our ways are not His ways.)
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
God’s unwavering, perfect, higher way is love towards all. If we would be His children, we must be like Him in this way.
Notice that Jesus says we’re playing by the same moral rules that His Father does. His perfection is our perfection.
Given these statements about God’s nature, I believe Calvinism is wrong because the Calvinist God is an ugly and faulty projection of the sinful, self-centered souls of men onto the lovely (literally) character of God.