For many years I relied on the argument that while God knew what our actions and choices are, were, and will be, that knowledge did not interfere with His gift to us of our free will. We were absolutely free to make our own choices and He, not being bound by the constraints of time as we understand it, knew our choices ‘a priori’. I still am comfortable with this view and I see it as a facinating possibility of our comprehension of quantum physics (that opens up a whole new line of discussion).
However, I remember a conversation with a wise old Jesuit concerning our relationship to God and how we should approach Him. The good Father asked me to recall how Our Lord taught us to pray. He said to address God as OUR FATHER. Then he asked me what language did Our Lord use when speaking to the people of his time on Earth. Aramaic, I answered. Right, and what word in Aramaic was used? ABBA. Now, he smiled, ABBA is actually the familiar diminuitive form of the word for father and is best translated as ‘daddy’.
We are taught to approach God as loving children to our loving Father.
I gave some thought to this and in addition to realizing the wonderful implications of actually being the loved child of a loving Father I saw something else that applied to the discussion at hand. If we take for granted that God does exist and that He is as our Lord and Saviour taught us, then it naturally follows that as a loving Father He could not arbitrarilly condenm untold millions of His beloved children to eternal damnation because they simply were not part of the ‘elect’ and were lost no matter what they did or how they lived. Such action would be contrary to the Nature of God Who we were taught to love by Our Lord Himself, being one Person of this Triune God.
To my knowledge, the only ‘god’ in history who fits this description was Molloch who demanded child sacrifice.
Therefore, it is not too much of a stretch to conclude that calvinists and their ilk actually worship the pagan ‘god’ Molloch. It seems to be a strong argument that we should pray for them to turn away from this false belief and return to the worship of our loving Father, our Daddy who gives us His unconditional love.
One more thought on this subject, our late Holy Father John Paul II said in a widely quoted address regarding what should we think about what happens after we die struck me as providing blazing insight into something that if we think it through to its conclusion should be seen obvious. The Holy Father said, “Because our Holy Mother the Church tells us so we must believe that there is a hell. We are not, however, required to believe that there is anyone in it!”
