Cheryl Schatz

Gillian, You said: With the Calvinist, it’s like someone defaming a friend of mine, and I just lash out! I do understand this and I can feel the same. But perhaps I want to try to see it through God’s eyes, for He knows their hearts. They genuinely believe that they have found the truth on the issue of the Sovereignty of God and they feel that nonCalvinists are defaming the Sovereign God of the universe. And God….He is patiently waiting to give His truth to those who want truth more than they want to be right…and those who want to please Him more than they want to be in the favoured class. Paul even said that he would give up his salvation for his brethren if he could. This is the heart of Jesus, a heart of surrender and sacrifice. We come close to the heart of God when we too can love those who are following a false system, and we are willing to give up our own right to be right, so that we can let them off the hook sometimes so they can have their dignity. No one likes to have truth thrown at them as if it is a weapon and a badge of honor. I want to continually check my heart so that I can have at least a small amount of God’s patience who does not smoke any of us who have wrong notions of who He is. If He was not patient with me, I think I would have been smoked a long time ago, save for His amazing patience and grace. Sometimes I truly think that God allows disagreements on doctrine so that some of us can learn patience and sacrificial love and others can learn to set aside their pride and learn humility, and that all of us will desire the unity of the body in both spirit and truth. There has to be a balance and the valley of trouble and sorrow is the best place to learn the fruit of the Spirit. I think I am rambling now myself! What I am trying to say is that if there is an area where I might be wrong, I want God’s truth as much as I want God’s truth to be given to those who have been deceived by error. I want to love truth and embrace it without setting aside dignity and respect for my brother or sister in the Lord. And if they are not my brother or sister in the Lord yet, I want to model Jesus for them in a very small way that I am able. I am a peace maker at heart and I want to see the Church end our time on this earth fulfilling Jesus’ prayer that we may be one even as He is one with the Father. Our unity is so important and if we will practice love in everything we do and remember that our enemy is not our brother or sister in Christ, but spiritual enemies in the heavens, we will be one step closer to seeing Jesus’ prayer fulfilled in our lifetime. I do not believe that it is an impossibility. What is impossible with man is possible with God. So while I contend earnestly for the truth of the inspired Scriptures, I want to contend with patience and love for those who have been fed something that is not truth, just as I sincerely wish that someone would do for me if I was in error. I want to fulfill the law of love as far as I am capable and with God’s enabling me to be obedient. As far as the question you wrote about how a Calvinist would know that God loves them…there are many Calvinists who have felt doubt at times, troubling doubt, whether they are of the elect or not. Calvin taught that God has allowed some of the reprobate to receive enough of the spirit to be convinced they are believers when they are not and this is all the more to judge them. So they know that there will be false believers and many have been plagued with doubt at one time or another because of this doctrine. So what do we do? We preach the true gospel of God’s love for all and that Jesus loved Judas so much that He was even a friend to Judas and died for him. If Jesus’ love was that great toward someone who was an enemy, how much more can we be sure of His love for us? He will not deceive us. He truly wants us all to be saved and to come to know Him.