Compassionate Calvin

(Excerpted from my The Nexus: The True Nature of Nature, which compares and contrasts Darwin's view of nature with that of Calvin): 

https://www.amazon.com/NEXUS-True-Nature-ebook/dp/B006WHGINI/ref=la_B006NTVAWY_1_13?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1500685189&sr=1-13&refinements=p_82%3AB006NTVAWY

John Calvin (1509-64) systematized the Christian Religion at the time when the Church that had become very deformed under the papacy and Roman Catholicism, was being reformed. Reformed Christianity, to which I adhere, began at the time of the great Reformation – a time of getting back to what the Bible really teaches.

Perhaps you have been inoculated against Reformed Christianity and the Christian worldview. Perhaps some portion of misinformation propagated by anti-Christians such as Michel Onfray or Richard Dawkins has so gotten stuck in your craw that it causes you to spit whenever you hear Calvin’s name mentioned! A small sample of the teeth gnashing and vitriol spewing that the name of Calvin causes in some can be found in the following caricature of Calvin 

and some of his Biblical understandings, as painted by the Darwinist and ‘journalist’ Christopher Hitchens,

"According to the really extreme religious totalitarians, such as John Calvin, who borrowed his awful doctrine from Augustine, an infinity of punishment can be awaiting you even before you are born. Long ago it was written which souls would be chosen or ‘elected’ when the time came to divide the sheep from the goats. No appeal against this primordial sentence is possible, and no good works or profession of faith can save one who has not been fortunate enough to be picked. Calvin’s Geneva was a prototypical totalitarian state, and Calvin himself a sadist and torturer and killer, who burned Servetus (one of the great thinkers and questioners of the day) while the man was still alive. The lesser wretchedness induced in Calvin’s followers, compelled [them] to waste their lives worrying if they had been ‘elected’ or not…"

              Hitchens goes on to state that he has had some crazy people phone him ‘with hoarse voices condemning me to death or hell or both’ … And of ‘the eternal blackening of my name by religious frauds and liars.’ Crazy people are crazy whatever their worldview, but, in the interest of truth, sanity, and the un-blackening of the name of John Calvin, Francis Nigel Lee sets the record straight,

"Servetus had blasphemously described the most blessed Trinity as a three-headed dog and a monster from hell! Yet even at a time when the Catholic Inquisition was seeking to slay Servetus and every Protestant city in Europe had expelled him or condemned him, Calvin corresponded with him and sent him a copy of his Institutes. For Calvin sought to win Servetus to Christ!

"Knowing full well that Calvin favoured the punishment of exile for heretics and the death penalty for blasphemers, the wretched Servetus arrogantly made his way to Geneva planning to overthrow Calvin and de-christianize the city. Put on trial by the civil magistrates of Geneva (and not by Calvin who was neither a judge nor a citizen of that city) Servetus was found guilty of blasphemy and sedition and sentenced to death by burning. Calvin unsuccessfully tried to get Servetus to recant his errors. When Servetus would not recant, Calvin pleaded for a milder form of punishment. And later still, Calvin also pleaded with Servetus in his death cell to get right with God and accept the Divine Christ as his Lord and Master!

                "Rarely in the annals of history has so much evangelical concern ever been shown to such a monstrous miscreant, as Calvin showed to Michael Servetus, enemy of Christ and Christianity and of public law and order! Even during that highly intolerant age, the gentle Calvin tenderly yet firmly presented Christ and His salvation to the very man who had sought to destroy him!" 

TEENAGERS

Teenagers

Should parents brace themselves and expect trouble when their children become teenagers? Well, first off it shocks me to hear parents say that they are trying to raise their children without outwardly influencing them, so that they can ‘decide for themselves’ which religion or what they want to believe when they are older! However, the Bible makes it plain that Christian parents are to ‘Train up the child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it’ Proverbs 22:6. To paraphrase in broad terms: ‘Catechise the child on which way you want them to go, and when he starts to sprout a beard or when she begins to menstruate, he or she will continue to obey what you have taught them.’ Thus, Christian parents ought not to expect that little Johnny or Jenny will automatically ‘go off the rails’ at puberty or beyond!

But what are teenagers faced with in the ‘real world’? Promiscuity and pregnancy, drug and alcohol-dependency, bawdy-songs? or, as they say, ‘sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll!’? Teens ought not to be left to experiment and make up their own minds about these things. For obviously this simply is asking for trouble. Sex is not evil. Neither are drugs. The same way that not all rock ‘n’ roll consists of bawdy songs! Rather than an outright condemnation of ‘sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll’, the Bible simply sets the parameters. Parents are to train up their children in these areas, i.e., warn them of the dangers of the illicit use and abuse of sex and drugs (and drink), and how a lot of modern pop-music accompanies and encourages and even glorifies an ungodly life-style.

If the old adage is true that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, then teenagers must be impressionable! If older people get ‘set in their ways’, then we must point our children in the way they should go during their formative years. Teenagers apparently love to leave the church in droves. How should we retain our youth? Introduce rock ‘n’ roll sounding bands? ‘The Scriptural formula for keeping teenagers in Church is to catechize them as infants.’ Richard Bacon.

Presbyterians have been making good use of the Westminster Shorter Catechism for well over three hundred years to train up their children in the way they should go. In a series of 107 questions and answers it simply teaches what the Bible has to say about each question raised. E.g., Westminster Shorter Catechism 9: ‘Quest. What is the work of creation? Ans. The work of creation is, God’s making all things out of nothing, by the word of His power, in the space of six days, and all very good.’ I chose this example to illustrate something of the problem teenagers face today. Did God create everything out of nothing? Did He simply command things into being? Did He do it over the space of six days? And was everything ‘very good’ in the beginning? The untrained and unequipped, i.e., the un-catechised teenager, will have all their bones broken in pieces and will be eaten alive if he or she falls into the lion’s den of non-Christian education! But Daniel said, ‘Praise be to the name of God forever and ever; wisdom and power are His… He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning. He reveals deep and hidden things… You have given me wisdom and power.’ Daniel 2:20-23.

           Teenagers need to know how to negotiate life’s journey. Therefore, let us teach them how to glorify God and enjoy Him forever