Entitlement Mentality

Why are most Arminians so offended when they hear that Calvinists believe that God chooses who will be saved? I remember, in my pre-Calvinist days, being pretty shocked the first time I heard that God chooses who he wants to save, and the rest are just out of luck. If man isn't free to decide if he wants to go to Heaven or Hell, then that makes God responsible for deciding who gets to go to Heaven, and that just isn't fair!

Norman Geisler, in his book Chosen, but Free¹, gives a parable that goes something like this:

–A farmer posts a "No Swimming" sign next to the pond on his property. As he's tending to his fields one day, he notices that three young boys have disobeyed the sign's directions. Subsequently, they all begin to drown. The farmer decides to rescue one of the boys, but he decides to make no effort to rescue the other two poor, innocent boys.–

Now, of course you are supposed to conclude that the farmer (i.e. God) is culpable for the deaths of the two boys. Sure, they disobeyed the farmer's instructions, but he still should have saved all of those boys if he were able to. If he could have saved them all, but didn't, then that is terribly unfair. But, if he could only save some of them (e.g. those that were willing to be saved), then we can find him innocent (though impotent!) of the deaths of those who drowned despite his best efforts.

James White tells a different story in his book The Potter's Freedom². It goes something like this:

–A king rules over a large castle. He has a big family and many servants. He goes away on a journey, and while he is gone the servants revolt. They rape his wife and kill his children. The throw a grand banquet and somehow things get out of hand. The castle catches fire and begins to burn down on top of them. As the castle burns, the king returns and sees the chaos. He yells to the people inside who are dying, telling them how they can escape from the blaze. When they hear him, they yell back. They tell him that they hate him, and that they will NEVER do ANYTHING he tells them to do! Finally, in his great mercy, the king enters the burning castle and rescues some of the rebellious servants from their peril. He takes them to his new castle and adopts them as his own sons and daughters. The rebels-turned-children finally come to see how merciful he had been to them.–

Where Geisler (and most Arminians) gets it wrong is that he starts with innocent little boys. That's not how the Bible describes us. We are rebellious, violent God-haters who would prefer to die than to submit to his authority. We are not *entitled* to salvation, and God is not obligated in any way to save anybody. If God chose to save none of us, not a single one, that would have been fair. If God chooses to save some, but not others, he is still being fair and merciful, not cruel or unjust. If a warden chooses to pardon a certain prisoner, could you then say that he is guilty for keeping the rest of the inmates there? Of course not. They are there because they are being punished for the crimes they commited. The warden's decision to pardon one prisoner does not make him unjust. It makes him merciful.

I think a lot of Arminians would find Calvinism much easier to swallow if the had an accurate view of man's depravity. We don't deserve anything but punishment, and God is not unfair in providing us with the just consequences of our sin. I think they would also think less highly of their own Arminianism if the realized what they are saying about God, namely his "inability" to save those who would refuse him.