I sense you are a warm-hearted Christian who would shy away from giving the Calvinist construct the pride of place given it by some of your fellows, so don't take offense.
Here's how Calvinism is vicious. Christ spent His earthly ministry inviting all He encountered (in an undifferentiating way -- so far as we can tell from the Gospel accounts) and castigating ONLY those who refused. Moreover, He singled out on several occasions a apecial status for 'little ones' -- innocent children. I take those as contextual truths.
Now along comes the construct and it neatly consigns the vast majority humanity to Hell (from the foundation of the world) without any opportunity to choose and including large numbers of children and even infants who never heard the Gospel.
Now, that, my friend, is a viciousness inconsistent with Christ and inconsistent with His express teaching. Were it otherwise, He would have threatened with a worse-than-millstone future those who hindered "only those of all these little ones who are predestined from the foundation of the world to be saved." And, BTW, such a statement would be deprived of meaning in any event since (if the Calvinist construct were true) there would be nothing His hearers could do to "hinder" the little children anyway.
The Calvinist construct is, in short, just that; a nifty little theological construct overlaid over the Gospel in an effort to answer a few questions we don't need to answer. But in doing so it turns the Gospel of Christ into something we cannot recognize -- a prideful, vicious, exclusive little club -- and the Saviour of Mankind into a befuddled prophet making pronouncements to all which He knows don't apply beyond a few.
You will pardon me, but I will take the Christ of the Gospels and the New Testament, not the Christ of the Calvinist construct. God bless.
Now, that, my friend, is a viciousness inconsistent with Christ and inconsistent with His express teaching. Were it otherwise, He would have threatened with a worse-than-millstone future those who hindered "only those of all these little ones who are predestined from the foundation of the world to be saved." And, BTW, such a statement would be deprived of meaning in any event since (if the Calvinist construct were true) there would be nothing His hearers could do to "hinder" the little children anyway.
The Calvinist construct is, in short, just that; a nifty little theological construct overlaid over the Gospel in an effort to answer a few questions we don't need to answer. But in doing so it turns the Gospel of Christ into something we cannot recognize -- a prideful, vicious, exclusive little club -- and the Saviour of Mankind into a befuddled prophet making pronouncements to all which He knows don't apply beyond a few.
That would be true, if Jesus had produced for us the list of the Elect. Because he didn't, anyone who claims God's Election as cause for rolling over others is breaking God's command to not take his name in vain in the worst way. That was the point of my first post.
As for consigning people to Hell, a consistent point of the Gospel is that we deserve it.
You continue to view the Calvinist conception of the Elect as people who think of their Election as the result of something inherently superior about them, and who then proceed to turn their backs on God because they realize they need not do anything. Again, this flows from a perversion of Calvinism, not Calvinism itself, which outlines "how," not "whom."
Christ of the Gospel and the New Testament has taken me, in spite of myself, and I cannot help but the best servant I'm capable of being.