First, let me say I truly enjoy this conversation with you.
Let me use an analogy. Say I have twin sons, I send them both to MIT for an engineering degree. I pay for their schooling. I call them weekly. I provide all they need. One son studies hard. The other barely cracks a book and drinks and smokes pot daily. I know one son will get his degree, and one will fall short. Neither were predestined to succeed or fail. Both could have achieved, Both were given all the opportunity (grace) to succeed. Because I know one will fail does not mean he was predestined to fail. It was his choice, not mine.
That is the difference. Because God knows who will accept His grace does not mean it was His choice. He does predestine some. That is in Scripture, so I believe it, but don’t understand it. But believing that God predestines some to hell is not consistent with Scripture. We can choose to accept his freely given grace, or reject it.
We do not "earn" our salvation through good works (Eph. 2:8–9, Rom. 9:16), but our faith in Christ puts us in a special grace-filled relationship with God so that our obedience and love, combined with our faith, will be rewarded with eternal life (Rom. 2:7, Gal. 6:8–9).
Since no gift can be forced on the recipient—gifts always can be rejected—even after we become justified, we can throw away the gift of salvation. We throw it away through grave (mortal) sin (John 15:5–6, Rom. 11:22–23, 1 Cor. 15:1–2; ) Paul tells us, "The wages of sin is death" (Rom. 6:23).
Read Paul’s letters and see how often Paul warned Christians against sin. Paul would not have felt compelled to do so if our sins could not exclude us from heaven (see, for example, 1 Cor. 6:9–10, Gal. 5:19–21).
Paul told the Christians in Rome that God "will repay everyone according to his works: eternal life for those who seek glory, honor, and immortality through perseverance in good works, but wrath and fury to those who selfishly disobey the truth and obey wickedness" (Rom. 2:6–8).
Your analogy fails because.... You are not God.
The problem that you have, and it is a problem I struggled with for 30 years is that you can't call a God who exercises his divine sovereignty and who actively chooses whom he will save "evil" merely because he doesn't save those whom he does not save and then turn around and call a God who creates people whom he knows beforehand will never ever be saved and who are equally as damned as "good".
No matter how you slice it, God makes the decision on whom he will create and whom he will allow into his presence. You don't get that choice. The "choice" was foreordained before the foundation of the Earth.
You can claim that your position makes God better than the Reformed position, but no matter how you slice it, a man's salvation has been foreordained if not by God's own sovereign will, then by his infinite foreknowledge.
The Reformed position is that nobody knows why God picks one man for salvation and not another. I personally disagree with the Westminster Confession when they say that God's foreknowledge has nothing to do with it. I can't make that call. It is God's own sovereign will that determines the state of our salvation and his alone.
So the problem is that you seem to call a God who leaves our salvation in the hands of Fate a "Good" God, but the God who secures our salvation solely by his own divine and perfect choice and leaves nothing to chance an "evil" god.
I have come to peace with the Reformed position. Since I still have some concerns with the language of the Westminster Confession on the issue of foreknowledge and I am not comfortable with the idea of Limited Atonement as it is understood by most Calvinists, I suspect that I am not a Calvinist. But I am more than comfortable in the knowledge that those who are saved are saved because of a decision by God and not by a decision of their own. If they make that decision then it is because God changed their hearts. It is not a decision that a "natural" man would ever make. I think the scriptures make that perfectly clear.
Also, before you go off and accuse God of being "evil" because he passes over some people and gives his irresistible grace to others, I'd suggest you do a deep study into Romans chapters 8 and 9.
Now Paul may have been wrong, but if you believe that those chapters are inspired by God (as I do) then you can't help but come to the understanding that God does predestine the elect and he passes over everyone else.
It is a hard concept to come to peace with, but it is clearly set forth in scripture.
If you want, I will answer all your other points later. Such as your notion that a gift cannot be forced on someone. (Didn't God give you the gift of life? or how about the Gift of Faith? Once you have it, can you reject it? If so, then you never had it. Or whatever talents God bestowed upon you. You can refuse to use them but you still have them).
Maranatha
Your analogy fails because.... You are not God.
The problem that you have, and it is a problem I struggled with for 30 years is that you can't call a God who exercises his divine sovereignty and who actively chooses whom he will save "evil" merely because he doesn't save those whom he does not save and then turn around and call a God who creates people whom he knows beforehand will never ever be saved and who are equally as damned as "good".
No matter how you slice it, God makes the decision on whom he will create and whom he will allow into his presence. You don't get that choice. The "choice" was foreordained before the foundation of the Earth.
You can claim that your position makes God better than the Reformed position, but no matter how you slice it, a man's salvation has been foreordained if not by God's own sovereign will, then by his infinite foreknowledge.
The Reformed position is that nobody knows why God picks one man for salvation and not another. I personally disagree with the Westminster Confession when they say that God's foreknowledge has nothing to do with it. I can't make that call. It is God's own sovereign will that determines the state of our salvation and his alone.
So the problem is that you seem to call a God who leaves our salvation in the hands of Fate a "Good" God, but the God who secures our salvation solely by his own divine and perfect choice and leaves nothing to chance an "evil" god.
I have come to peace with the Reformed position. Since I still have some concerns with the language of the Westminster Confession on the issue of foreknowledge and I am not comfortable with the idea of Limited Atonement as it is understood by most Calvinists, I suspect that I am not a Calvinist. But I am more than comfortable in the knowledge that those who are saved are saved because of a decision by God and not by a decision of their own. If they make that decision then it is because God changed their hearts. It is not a decision that a "natural" man would ever make. I think the scriptures make that perfectly clear.
Also, before you go off and accuse God of being "evil" because he passes over some people and gives his irresistible grace to others, I'd suggest you do a deep study into Romans chapters 8 and 9.
Now Paul may have been wrong, but if you believe that those chapters are inspired by God (as I do) then you can't help but come to the understanding that God does predestine the elect and he passes over everyone else.
It is a hard concept to come to peace with, but it is clearly set forth in scripture.
If you want, I will answer all your other points later. Such as your notion that a gift cannot be forced on someone. (Didn't God give you the gift of life? or how about the Gift of Faith? Once you have it, can you reject it? If so, then you never had it. Or whatever talents God bestowed upon you. You can refuse to use them but you still have them).
Maranatha
Sorry about the double post. :-)