It’s no secret that Christianity is dying in Western countries. There are a number of factors contributing to this trend, but maybe the biggest is the fact that mainstream Christianity is asking the world to believe two doctrines that together compose the most diabolical picture of God imaginableāpredestination and eternal torment.
Think this through. Predestination, as generally taught, says God decides each person’s eternal destinyāsaved or lost. Then, ālostā is defined as spending eternity in the flames of hell. The logical conclusion? God creates some people for the purpose of torturing them forever. They have no choice, because God chose their fate. āItās all part of His sovereign plan, for His inscrutable glory,ā we’re told. āWho are you to question God?ā
Many rational people simply cannot believe in a God like this. Nor can I. Yet I do believe in God. To unbelievers, I’d say something like this: You know that God you don’t believe in? Well, I don’t believe in him either.
āI can never join Calvin in addressing his godā¦.”
In 1823, Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to John Adams, expressing his unbelief:
āI can never join Calvin in addressing his god. He was indeed an atheist, which I can never be; or rather his religion was Daemonism. If ever man worshipped a false god, he did. The being described in his five points, is not the god you and I acknowledge and adore, the Creator and benevolent governor of the world; but a daemon or malignant spirit. It would be more pardonable to believe in no god at all, than to blaspheme him by the atrocious attributes of Calvin. āThe value of deism, in its last and American ambit, was that it prevented confessional religion from driving human beings into atheism as its only alternative.āā (Michael Buckley, At the Origins of Modern Atheism, quoting a letter in 1823 by Thomas Jefferson to John Adams).
Jefferson saw the god of Calvinism as demonic, but at the same time he believed the true God must be better than that.
What if we proclaimed to the world a picture of God that looks like this:
āFor God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be savedā (John 3:16-17).
Ty Gibson
Ty is a speaker/director of Light Bearers. A passionate communicator with a message that opens minds and moves hearts, Ty teaches on a variety of topics, emphasizing Godās unfailing love as the central theme of the Bible. Ty and his wife Sue have three adult children and two grandsons.
