Confused Calvinists?

     As a life long Presbyterian I have lived with the constant question of whether or not I believe in Predestination.  After a few tries it became a bit easier to deal with as there became a few standard points to be made.

     1. Predestination is not fatalism. They may be connected but Predestination deals only with where a person will spend eternity.  Your final destination has been predetermined, if you believe in Predestination. The decision of where you will spend eternity is in God's hands.  God is in charge and he makes the final decision.  Fatalism is that every action you make in this life is God determined. Frequently they do go together.
         An example of the other side is Gardner Taylor's words "It is beyond misunderstanding. It is that the choice for God is surely in your hands. Not his. If your destination is to be heaven here and hereafter, it is in your hands and mine. If heaven is to be your home, it is in your hands, and mine, and not God's"

     2. There are a variety of shapes to Predestination.  There is the best known by Calvin called double predestination.  God decided at the beginning who would go to Heaven and who would go to Hell. Those who go to Heaven go on God's gracious gift and those who go to Hell go as their just deserves.
There is the universalist predestination which says that God has decided that in the end everybody gets saved. God so loved the world, and by golly ultimately all the world will be saved. Rob Bell has recently voiced this view.  There is a version that says the God has predestined to save all the humans who ..............   (fill in the blank). Accept Christ, love their neighbor, feed the poor, knows that if their is a heaven they will only be allowed in by  God's goodness. (Some want an answer that includes those who are not Christian.)  There have been lots of different answers to the blank.

     3. Almost every Christian who is asked acknowledges the first principle of Predestination. God is the Boss. God is sovereign. God is in charge.  God is almighty. God is the one who controls history. God is the one who will bring history to an end when God wants it to end.  It is upon this fundamental that Calvin began and at every point of decision, God gets the vote. Do we decided where we go by our will or does God decide.  Ha, who is the boss. God decides.  If we want something and God does not want us to have it, who decides?  Calvin just stuck with his logic at every "Y" in the road and it was always God. So God decided who goes to heaven or hell.

    4. But most people balk at the final point of the equation. They argue then why did Jesus come, why did we get given instructions, why did we get created if we have no part in anything.  Whosoever will does not mean everybody will. So there is a rebellion of the mind at the claims human decisions do not matter in this dialogue with God.

     5. As G.K. Chesterton would love it this is one of those amazing paradoxes where most Christians I have met want to hold both of these principles: God is Sovereign.  Humans have free will. How to hold those together is the trick.