Over the holidays I confessed to my father-in-law that I am starting to come to grips with the fact that the predestinationist doctrines I was taught in the church that I got saved in have actually hurt me dearly as a Christian. Between them and the struggles that I have experienced with life in Northern Virginia, I have come to realize that they have left me feeling weak and powerless in the face of the devil and my own sin. As I look at the fruit that they have born inside me, I realize that they are tainted and rotten.
Now I know that it is essentially a logical fallacy to condemn an idea based on how it makes you feel, but I think there is something a bit different here. This interpretation of the Gospel has not filled me with hope and joy, but fear, fatalism and weakness. For too long I have believed that God must sovereignly act on me to enable my heart to change, and all the while I have ignored the fact that there is no point in "working out my salvation" with the Lord if my own works weren't an intimate part of the salvation process.
One other thing that I have noticed is that the churches that do the most effective evangelism do not preach the doctrine of predestination. The Pentecostals are making massive inroads in China, and no one would confuse them for being a band of crypto-Calvinists. I have noticed that the Lord seems to put the most favor and grace upon the churches that have embraced both His sovereignty and our own free will and responsibility. For a while now, I've been coming closer to that point myself, as I have realized that some of the things that are used to support predestinationist positions can just as easily be used to say more accurately "God is in control, and God will do what God will do." Romans 9 is an excellent example of this. It speaks more of God's unaccountability to us, than to God picking and choosing favorites, which would be fitting for an absolute monarch.
As Christians, we are supposed to look at doctrines and judge them based on the work that they do in the hearts of men. That is an aspect of discernment. I have not noticed nearly as much of an effective witness that leads to others coming to Christ in predestinationist congregations as those that embrace both God's sovereignty and free will. I can only conclude from that that the doctrine has often served as a negative influence on the congregation. I've lost track of the number of people I've met or been told about who have turned their predestinationist views on election into a source of pride and arrogance, rather than humility and grace. It's like a divine country club.
So, I think it's fair to bring up my favorite example once more: Pharaoh. I see both God's sovereignty and free will at play here. It is doubtful that left to his own devices, Pharaoh would have ever been good to the Hebrews or have even come to know God and worship Him. This was part of how Pharaoh chose to be. What God did was stripped him of the freedom to choose a reasonable path, and to have to choose a path that would lead ultimately to his own destruction. By hardening his heart, God rendered the tyrant incapable of choosing a reasonable path, such as allowing the Jewish people to leave Egypt after witnessing the first few plagues.
I don't know how divine sovereignty and free will can be absolutely, flawlessly reconciled as God will one day reveal to us. What I do know is that we cannot be accountable to God without freedom to choose to cry out to God. Not in any sense that would put a true burden of guilt on the damned soul. For under the predestinationist model, the damned may cry out to God and say "how dare you claim to desire that none should perish, and then deny us any path that would lead to our salvation?" And how would God be able to respond to this? With a flippant, adolescent "I'm God, I make the rules?" I suspect that such a thing would cause another third of the angelic host to reconsider their loyalties and the integrity and wisdom of Lucifer's rebellion if God were so infantile in His standard of justice. No, I suspect that God does extend sufficient grace to allow everyone to cry out to Him for salvation at least once in their lives, so that no one may have even the slightest excuse that they are but a wild animal, doomed to their fate from the start because nothing else was within their potential.
Our lives are lived inside a vehicle built around the wheels of time and change, which the Lord sovereignly guides with His hand. We are free to control our lives for the most part as we look outside the window during the trip that the Lord is taking us on. Just because we are not the driver, doesn't mean that we aren't a passenger free to do as we please on our section of the bus.
I didn't wrestle with that one long. Why would Christ command us to spread the good news if we were predestined as to whether or not we were to be saved? Would that not show God as ruthless and capricious, not worthy of praise? No, the choice is ours, to ask forgiveness, to be saved, or to reject, and live without Him. A hateful God wouldn't offer His son as a blood sacrifice for OUR sins, and essentially say that He would have all choose Him. No, He is loving and righteous, and leaves the choice to us.
The explanation that I was given for this is that we are conduits for God's power in this world. God prefers to use us to save the elect, but He will save them anyway, even if He has to force them to consider the gospel through special revelation.
As a missionary kid, it never came up. ;-)
If you 'force' someone ionto doing something against their will, is that not a crime? That would make God a rapist, essentially. Just playing D.A. here, mind you.. ;-)
(I am not Calvinist so have a different take on what you were taught)
I think the Pharaoh issue is quite complex but would like to add a further concept to consider when digesting the hardening of Pharaoh in Exodus and Romans.
I think that Pharaoh opposed Yahweh anyway. Is it possible that Pharaoh recognised the strength of Yahweh and did not have the fortitude to resist him despite wanting to? In which case the hardening of Pharaoh had to do with emboldening him to resist which he wanted to do even though he was aware of his powerlessness to do so.
Consider an aggressor coming against you alone with a knife unaware that you are a leader of a large group who all come out of the bushes fully armed. The aggressor will submit because he is overpowered, though he would prefer in his heart to have defeated you, he just lacks the means. Hardening of the aggressors heart means he will continue to come against you with his knife even though it is futile. I wonder if this analogy is a little of what God hardening Pharaoh's heart is about.
Interesting suggestion. The issue that I've had with Pharaoh's hardened heart is that when your heart is hardened, God blocks off certain paths. At that point, Pharaoh could not "consider the cost" and have any chance of realizing that he was just wrecking his own life, ruining his people and ruining how history would remember him. Even if for evil reasons, Pharaoh couldn't have turned back at that point, at least based on the definition of a hardened heart I was taught.
Since God created us and knows the future, how can any view of God not be used to show Him as callous? Even with free will; why does that make God seem "good" to you? He gave us free will, but to all the people who will choose to not believe him: how is free will a good thing? Think about it: would you ever let someone you truly loved choose a decision that will destroy them? Now, with free will, we all have the potential to choose Hell over eternal life? How is that a good thing? I prefer predestination, but if you are truly to look at God objectively, there is no doctrine or view that truly makes God seem all about love and mercy if you truly consider that God not immediately saving us all from Hell in the first place could be considered cruel by human standards. Accepting someone's free will over saving them from utter destruction to me is not a form of love. If you had a child that chose to drown, but you could stop it and you know 100% there is no afterlife or good that comes out of the decision, would you still let your child drown? I couldn't do that. Either way, I believe God is in control and I have to remember, as hard as it may be, God is not bound by our human notions of fairness and good. I accept that and just am thankful I know Him through the sacrifice of His Son Jesus Christ.