"Scripture teaches us about God and ourselves. Sin reminds us of how far God brought us from. It gives us the humbling knowledge of how WHOLLY UNWORTHY of God's grace we are. It destroys the pride which says that we can do it in any respect on our own."
That doesn't cut it in your theology. Its meaningless. If the elect are predestined for santification from before all time, if they are so firmly in God's hand that there's no way out, why would any of the elect care about sin, unworthiness, etc? Conversely, why would the damned "give a damn"? They're toast, burned toast, anyway.
I understand that one would argue that election means that one will care about sin, unworthiness, pride or do good works, but absolutely none of that leads to election to the ranks of the sanctified. That's predestined from before all time. And since free will plays no part in any of this, there's no response to God's grace on the part of a person, then there is no conformance to God's rules which in any way stems from the study of scripture. And, as I have said, the damned can do anything they want, try anything they want, but they are doomed, so clearly there's nothing in the bible for them except true predictions of their own eternal torment because they didn't make the cut.
So again, what's the point of having the scriptures in your system?
We care because God cares. We love because He loved us first. We care about sin because we do not wish to displease Him but to please Him.
What you believe that our beliefs are is a gross distortion. We are not robots, but we did need His direct intervention or we would not have come. Nobody would.
With the belief system that you have laid out, I could come and say how could anyone call salvation unmerited? How could anyone boast only in God but not in themselves even MORE than God? And, if one ounce of our "righteousness" merited even the least bit of God's salvific favor, what kind of a brute beast is he for sending His own Son to die for us if we could "have the potential" of doing salvific works for ourselves.
Kolo. I see very little difference substantively with a lot of the teaching on this thread and the teaching of Islam. In both systems, in the the end, it is dependent upon man meriting, through good works, God's favor - and even in that dying breath, noone has assurance that God has saved them and that they are heading to heaven. Rather, they hope that their goodness was good enough.