Spring in Iowa: went out for a run after work. Short sleeves & shorts, sweating like crazy. Having to make sure I dodge the piles of snow still up against the curbs.
Hi, I'm Chris.
Calvinism vs Arminianism: Anxiety Shifting
Falling from Grace: Part 3, High-Handed Sin:
Calvinism has never been immune from anxiety, given how you worry about if you are, indeed, one of the elect. Sure, when you see a fellow believer “fall away” you can console yourself and protect your dogma with “they weren’t one of the elect” in the first place. But your doctrine has become functionally and pastorally meaningless. Sure, Arminians might be anxious over losing their salvation, but Calvinists worry about if they are saved in the first place. Seems like six of one half-dozen of the other. All we’re doing in this debate is anxiety shifting.
I appreciate Richard Beck for saying this so clearly. My time in a very Calvinist evangelical church made it clear to me there was plenty of anxiety to go around.
More recent longform writing...
- ”You better hold on to something” - a few thoughts on Train Dreams
- Bullet Points for 3 weeks at a new job
- Thomas Talbott on the parallels between God's love for humans and a parent's love for a child
- Gospel or Grift?
- Barth: Christians as a living promise to the unbelieving world
- Asking the hard questions: not a crisis of faith, but rooted in faith
- My favorite cover of Radiohead's Fake Plastic Trees: The Normals
- When "Christian Parenting" leaves families without the skills for actual relationships
- [Link] Pushing an Anti-Trans Agenda is Telling On Yourself
- For Epiphany: Brian Zahnd's Meditation on the Magi