Divining Determinism
It was the “before time.” Spring 2019. My beloved grandfather was on the brink of death. My dad asked me to come down to the hospital. Upon my entry into the room where Papa lay, my dad calmly exited, leaving just two of us in the room. Where to begin? I had broached the subject of religion with him multiple times, but I never felt the quality nor quantity of my apologetic attempts were adequate. I had feared this moment, but admittedly there was also a tinge of relief. To my embarrassment, I was kind of glad that I would put it all out there, and not have to worry about how to approach Mel next time. This was it.
I started reading John 3. Unlike in previous tries, tears were flowing pretty quickly and voluminously, for both the reader and the listener. We both sensed this was it. After reading about how one can be born again into everlasting life, voice quivering, I implored him to believe in Christ. This is the most effort I have ever expended in sharing the gospel. My soul was in it.
Melvin Carll was a believer in word economy. When he said something, particularly regarding matters of religion, it stuck with me. At some point in the years running up to the aforementioned deathbed discourse, he simply said, “I want to believe.” But he just could not. He saw the lives of his son and daughter-in-law turn around when they eschewed nominal Catholicism in favor of committed faith in Jesus Christ. He saw how our family grew stronger as cancer repeatedly attacked my parents. He would watch and listen to sermons, including from his own son. He was so proud. For crying out loud, this agnostic married a woman who was on the verge of becoming a nun. (This writer exists because Mel got “nun” on his wedding night). And forgive my repetition, but this man said that he wanted to believe!
This unbelief was baffling to me at times, frustrating at others. Why was it that he just wouldn’t accept everlasting life? Over the years, I had gotten to thinking about our different backgrounds. He never knew his father, and from what I gather, his mother was neglectful at best. I was raised by two parents who profoundly loved each other, and became Christians during my childhood. Little Melvin slept in a converted chicken coop in the slums of Los Angeles. Yours truly frolicked in conservative middle class suburbia. His main spiritual role model was his older brother, an atheist. At age 7, my mom enrolled me in a week-long Vacation Bible School, where I became a Christian. Coming of age in the Great Depression and World War II, my grandfather had to scramble to get money, working manual labor jobs. I on the other hand had plenty of time to read the Bible and go to church (often more than once in a given week).
Now for a long time, I just reasoned that I was using my free will better than he. But I began to realize that I had a lot of spiritual privilege. The deck was stacked against him. I still found Calvinism to be looney and disturbing, but I had to admit that for whatever reason, it seemed like God was not giving everybody equal opportunity. It was unsettling. Why me? I did nothing more than he did to be born into my circumstances.
This unsettling feeling probably led me to what would end up being my big “a-ha” moment. Enough biography, let’s get into the theology, huh?! Ready? Here we go. Two ideas:
1) God knows everything.
2) God made everything.
Boom. It’s not a stretch to say that Christianity affirms these attributes. Even non-Christians would tell you that if there was a God, he would possess these traits. When I really considered the implications of these two statements, I inevitably fell into divine determinism. God made the universe as we know it, knowing full well how it would all unfold. He is the ultimate source of every aspect of who I am, from my eye color to my spirituality. I was not a co-creator with God. As he made that first strand of DNA in Adam, God knew exactly what it would mean for you and I. I am not a materialist. I do believe in a soul, the “ghost in the machine”. But God is the ultimate source of a soul too. God chose to make the universe in which I lived as a Christian and my grandfather did not.
It wasn’t long after this fleshing out of theology that I was tasked with teaching a young adult Bible study about Romans. Using iTunes U, I found a Reformed Bible teacher named Jack Crabtree. He had a series going through the book of Romans. Mr. Crabtree was so influential on me that I ended up buying his book (it takes a lot for this writer to determine to buy a book!), The Most Real Being. It is a dry, yet thorough defense of divine determinism. Listening to his talk on Romans 9, he gave me an analogy that still haunts me. He was teaching on Romans 9:22, where Paul puts forward the rhetorical question, “What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction?”
To help the audience understand what a vessel of destruction is, he likened it to a toilet. God makes spiritual toilets, designed to stink and be full of waste. A gold vase can be pretty, but it is glorious compared to a commode. So God creates souls that are dirty. And He can do whatever He wants with them. God reserves the right to create a toilet, and treat it like a toilet. Could this mean that unsaved people are basically toilets?
I was, and continue to be, so reluctant to speak like this aloud. It makes God sound sadistic, and me sound like His heartless henchman. I remember meeting with my esteemed podcast partner for the first time after he no longer identified as a Christian. He asked me point blank, “Do you think your friends are toilets?” Looking my friend square in the eye, I reluctantly confessed I believed this. It felt a bit cathartic, but more scary. What am I saying now? Who am I?
A Christian friend, after hearing out my new position, called it “dangerous.” I feel uncomfortable writing about it, let alone talking about it when I know pretty much every Christian will think I’m wrong and every non-Christian will find it repulsive. This is one of those things I don’t want to believe. I would like to be disproven. But to this point, nobody has broken me free from my conclusion.
I don’t know if my grandpa did place his faith in Christ at the last moment, and is now in Heaven. But I do believe that whatever became of Mel, God set it in motion from the start.