DISCONNECT

Like any sort of ideology, I suppose, Calvinism's biggest problems are obvious from the outside but invisible from the inside. 

One of its biggest problems is the clear disconnect in the character of God which results if Calvinism is true. 

Calvinists claim a "high view" of God. They focus on his glory and power and sovereignty. 

And his anger and wrath.

His mind is made up about humanity (and has been from the beginning): everyone deserves eternal torment.

(Except for a handful of pre-chosen individuals who will be given grace and love, irresistibly - in order to show what a great and glorious God He is.)

This is the eponymous God of Jonathan Edwards' famous sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. 

Like Edwards, Calvinism itself envisions a God who holds each human soul over the pit of hell as a man would dangle a spider over a fire, only too happy to drop the disgusting creature to its destruction and be done with it. 

This, anyway, is how God the Father operates.

God the Son? Well, he's quite different. 

God the Son is meek and mild. He comes not to be served, but to serve and to lay down his life. And He weeps over Jerusalem's unwillingness to come to Him. And He feels pity for the people who appear to Him as sheep lacking a Shepherd to guide them. 

And this disconnect between the Father and Son is odd considering the Son was sent by the Father and only said what the Father told Him to say. 

And that He was called Emmanuel - God with us.

And that He was God's word made flesh.

And that He was and is the perfect representation of the Father.

And that He told the crowds, "If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father"?

So why the disconnect? Why does God look and act and speak so differently in the flesh than from the throne room of Heaven?

It's a mystery!