God Sends Evil
WHY CALVINISTS ARE ANARCHISTS
Calvinists teach a doctrine of "predestination"
which holds that God not only picks people out for heaven ("election"), but
premeditatedly creates others for hell ("reprobation").
The Bible says comparatively little about heaven and hell, so
talk about so-and-so's eternal destiny is an easy abstraction. The Bible says much
more about the oppression of the weak by the politically powerful, and it is here —
in the sphere of human history — where "Calvinism" is seen to reflect the
teaching of the Scriptures.
It is especially the prophets who speak of certain powerful
people as having been created to carry out evil acts in history, in defiance of God's
revealed Law for all human conduct.. One thing that so frequently landed the
prophets in prison was their unhesitating readiness to
- challenge the unquestioned moral legitimacy of the State
- identify evil empires as "reprobate"
- name their agents as rebellious creatures of God
which unwittingly serve God's foreordained purposes,
even as they carry out their violent agenda of oppression,
extortion, and murder,
which are met with God's unreserved and well-deserved
condemnation.
Evil is not autonomous, said the prophets. It is under the complete control of
God. And evil does not triumph in the long run. This is bad news in an
election year.
Predestination is thus "good news" for those who hunger
for peace and thirst for justice, because it means that those who hunger for war and
profit from injustice are not ultimately in control. The pervasive teaching of Jesus
and the prophets is that God sends evil against evil, so that justice can be established.
As often as the four Gospels record Jesus' promises of blessing for the sheep of
His Kingdom, they record His threats of cursing for the goats of Empire. Jesus
summed up this concept of predestination in history: "All they that take up the
sword shall perish with the sword" (Matthew 26:52). Even if destruction comes
at the hands of a sword wielded by violent marauders of a despotic empire, Jesus and the
prophets still see it as "the Sword of the Lord" (Isaiah 34:6; Jeremiah 12:12;
47:6).
As human beings obligated to obey God's Law, we are rebellious
fools if we abandon the way of love and adopt Satan's political temptation (Luke 4:5-7),
"electing" other human "representatives" and "calling" them
to use the sword, either in San Quentin or Iraq. But God's ways are higher than ours
(Isaiah 55:9). God can create "the State" and use it to accomplish Divine
Ends. God can bring an Assyria into existence so that Jesus' Word concerning the
sword can be fulfilled.
Thus God "ordains" the State (Romans 13:1), and empires
"serve" (from Gk., deaconeo, "to minister") God's purposes (13:4).
Shall we then "sign up" with "God's minister"? Isaiah
answers, "Woe to the Assyrian" (10:5). Those who wield the sword are
cosmic losers.
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