Get Back in your Cage!!

Get back in your cage!

When my Guinea pig escapes it's cage, I tend to panic... Idk what damage could be done by my other animals who would chase it around the house crashing into things, etc... And it legit scares me. When I find the little guy, without my wife finding out (sorry babe), I put him back into his cage and I scold him (because we all know that Guinea pigs speak English). The potential for damage is high with multiple animals chasing each other around.

Let's compare this to certain believers. As a new Christian, I was ecstatic. I was a young person, but I was social enough to know plenty of others who weren't believers. I went to them and told them about this awesome God who would love to have them (how arminian of me). This God wanted everyone, right?? So I told everyone! Well, some people didn't like my zeal.

Fast forward to college. In college I was introduced to the doctrines of grace. That's when I became a Calvinist. When my eyes were opened to these wonderful truths I was amazed by the consistency. But I was also amazed by the number of people who rejected these truths that were so plainly laid out in Scripture... So I decided to argue with people. I was missing one thing though... I was missing the understanding that the people who I was so mad at rejecting these truths were purposefully blinded to them by God. I was arguing with them for nothing.

This is the sad truth of today. We believe in the Sovereignty of God over all things, yet we get upset when someone disagrees. It may be Sovereignly decreed to be this way, but oh well, it still upsetting.
We can't get upset over other people not agreeing with us... This is called cage-stage-Calvinism, and it is deadly to any meaningful interaction with the synergist.

So what am I saying? I'm saying that if you are going to be hurtful, rude, or otherwise arrogant in your approach to people with these divine truths, then fine your cage and get back in it until you learn otherwise! We don't need you doing this!
There is a level of sternness you can have while exercising charity toward other people.
If this is you then you are not exercising the same charity Calvin wrote about in his Institutes:

"6. Moreover, that we may not weary in well-doing (as would otherwise forthwith and infallibly be the case), we must add the other quality in the Apostle's enumeration, "Charity suffiereth long, and is kind, is not easily provoked," (1 Cor. 13:4). The Lord enjoins us to do good to all without exception, though the greater part, if estimated by their own merit, are most unworthy of it. But Scripture subjoins a most excellent reason, when it tells us that we are not to look to what men in themselves deserve, but to attend to the image of God, which exists in all, and to which we owe all honour and love. But in those who are of the household of faith, the same rule is to be more carefully observed, inasmuch as that image is renewed and restored in them by the Spirit of Christ. Therefore, whoever be the man that is presented to you as needing your assistance, you have no ground for declining to give it to him. Say he is a stranger. The Lord has given him a mark which ought to be familiar to you: for which reason he forbids you to despise your own flesh (Gal. 6:10). Say he is mean and of no consideration. The Lord points him out as one whom he has distinguished by the lustre of his own image (Isaiah 58:7). Say that you are bound to him by no ties of duty. The Lord has substituted him as it were into his own place, that in him you may recognize the many great obligations under which the Lord has laid you to himself. Say that he is unworthy of your least exertion on his account; but the image of God, by which he is recommended to you, is worthy of yourself and all your exertions. But if he not only merits no good, but has provoked you by injury and mischief, still this is no good reason why you should not embrace him in love, and visit him with offices of love. He has deserved very differently from me, you will say. But what has the Lord deserved? Whatever injury he has done you, when he enjoins you to forgive him, he certainly means that it should be imputed to himself. In this way only we attain to what is not to say difficult but altogether against nature, to love those that hate us, render good for evil, and blessing for cursing, remembering that we are not to reflect on the wickedness of men, but look to the image of God in them, an image which, covering and obliterating their faults, should by its beauty and dignity allure us to love and embrace them." Institutes of the Christian Religion Book 3, Chapter 7, Section 6

So please get back into your cage!! Stop causing more harm than good! If you want to debate these doctrines, that's fine, but debate them with charity and grace.

Soli Deo Gloria!