The Psychology of Calvinism

I'm still entrenched in Calvinistic thought, perhaps more now than last time. I'm in the desert at the moment. I'll say more about that shortly. I felt a lot of peace today as I considered the idea that we are all filthy and the fact that anything good happens is a shear act of the Divine (aka God). I found myself surprised at various moments today, such as when the department secretary covered the sign outside of my office door which had a professor's name who no longer uses the office since he moved elsewhere. I was also pleased to see students responding when they did. But I was still disheartened when they didn't respond. Yet that didn't seem to wear me down as much as it has in the past. I've also been thinking a lot about unconditional love, something I could sure use a lot more of. Or so it seems. At the moment I can't comprehend the possibility that a relationship with God could possibly be broken to the point that one had no salvation though one had begun the process of salvation. What a joyful thought that there is absolutely nothing I could do to end the relationship with God. Verses such as Romans 8 (Nothing can separate us from the love of God...) and the promised Holy Spirit which is to serve as a guarantee of the fulness of salvation. What good is a guarantee if God doesn't follow through with it? I recalled what my university and seminary professors said about Calvinism being a logical system and I wondered what might be wrong with that in contrast to those anti-Calvinist scholars who made statements against Calvinism based on preference ("I have never liked Calvinism" or "Since I believe in free will going to a Calvinistic school was never much of an option to me"). I'm still not sure about concepts that God chooses who to save and who not to save but total depravity makes a lot of sense to me. There was a battle that I began against Calvinism in varying degrees (i.e. from 3 points to 4 1/2 points) when I enrolled in a Bible school in the fall of 1996 and I feel like I've been in battle against Calvinism until now. It makes me wonder if my resistance to Calvinism robbed me of the joy I felt when I first started attending that school. And now I find myself wanting to surrender to the God whose perfection makes my greatest deed look like the most filthy of crimes. But to be honest, the thing that makes me resonate the most with Calvinism is that I feel the most wicked in my own heart. Hearing about the optimism of Grace from the Wesleyan perspective sounds ideal but overwhelming to me. I like the Aristotelian philosophy of perfection in terms of actualized potential rather than perfection in the absolute sense. And yet I feel like even in terms of purpose I fall short and that I might as well aim for absolute perfection for the result seems to be the same at the end of the day. When I think about my own inadequacies and connect it with Calvinism's total depravity, the thought "Well Duh" comes to mind. That is to say, no wonder I feel so dirty inside because I AM dirty inside! That was all good and well until tonight when I had a fight with my wife over something that seemed so trivial and yet now is such a big mountain that we can hardly talk at 12:12am. I thought I was managing myself very well in struggling to understand a normal Korean conversation between my wife and some students. Of course she knew I was frustrated with myself and wanted to know how she could help me the next time. The way I saw it, I was the one whose works were as filthy rags who had made the mistake or that I had sinned. But she wasn't satisfied with that and as she kept asking me I got more and more frustrated along with her and I once again proved my wickedness by fighting fire with fire. I even tried praying to God to confess my unknown sin at which point she left the apartment for a few hours and just returned. I guess I'll try to resolve the conflict and pray that the Sovereign Lord might somehow intervene in spite of myself.

Me? A Calvinist?

I could have posted something when I had a hard day last week. It was one of those realities where I'm not perfect and even though sometimes people need to accept me as a flawed human being, I would like to overcome those flaws so that people wouldn't have to cater to my flaws. In that case, it wasn't about my current flaws but about my past flaws that created issues of distrust. The following day, I beat myself up over the feelings I had about myself not being perfect. While all those thoughts were coming about what a flawed human being I am, thoughts of Calvinism also came to mind. You probably know me well enough to know that I try to be as Wesleyan as possible and as little Calvinism as possible. I started to wonder last Monday if that was just because I didn't want to face the fact that I am flawed. I was thinking especially of the first point of TULIP which states that all human beings are totally depraved. That thought seemed more in line to me in that moment than the idea that there is something good in human beings, especially in this one. I further thought about my long battle against Calvinism that started when I went to Bible school. I saw a video-lectured recording of Dr. William Abraham in which he stated that he thought Calvinism came from the pits of Hell and further stated his allegiance to Wesleyanism, a perfect fit for a Methodist. That statement made me wonder how many times we choose what to believe based on what interests us the most. I know that Dr. Abraham is a million times smarter than me, and so I proffer this blog not as an attempt to outsmart a theological genius but rather to suggest a point of view to myself that I might like to be more open-minded to. As I reflect on the many conversations I've heard on this subject, I recall hearing a lot of non-Calvinists reject Calvinistic thought (which I want to remind the reader is not necessarily equivalent with John Calvin's thought) based on their own presuppositions or that they just didn't like Calvinism and I have heard more Calvinists argue on Biblical grounds that the system is true. I suppose both could be misrepresentations in one way or another, for there must surely be Wesleyans on a more Biblical front and Calvinists on a more philosophical one. When I was a student at a Nazarene university I found this dilemma could only be resolved on philosophical rather than Biblical grounds. Now I am looking at it from more of a psychological perspective than a philosophical one. I want to close this blog by sharing some good news about myself and my beliefs. I have found myself being much more skeptical about Christian thought since I have gotten married. I now see the truth in my friend Brad's counsel that whether or not our spouse shares the same faith we do has a lot to do with what we actually believe ourselves. I trust this is a good thing, whether I am resting in a second naivate or simply resting in what seems to be the most solid truth as far as we can tell as human beings. I suppose where I am at in that regard is still up for debate. But I am also hopeful that being more resolved in this regard of faith will also give me even more freedom to wrestle with the hard questions without being the double-minded person that the Epistle of James talks about.