Ultimately they do. Jesus calls out and says "follow me" and those who follow him do so by an act of their own free will (in accordance with the will of God). Those who do not follow him also do so in accordance with their own free will (and also in accordance with the the permissive and/or determinate will of God.)
The problem I see with some who profess to be Calvinists is that they portray God as some kind of automaton computer that came pre-programed to do whatever it ultimately does. They seem to deny that God put any thought into his own eternal plans or that he considered anything other than the plan that is in effect. They also tend to portray man in the same way, a sort of automaton that goes through life without any independent thought or action and that all a man does is directed by a pre-programmed set of instructions that cause man to automatically do whatever he does without exerting any control whatsoever over his own actions.
Now maybe that is not the picture of God and man that you wish to portray, and I suspect it is not the God that you believe in. Nevertheless a strict unwavering and unbending adherence to the doctrines of Calvinism will paint that picture of God in the minds of many.
By discounting entirely the idea that things are predestined and ordained in accordance with the infinite foreknowledge of God and insisting that God is fully in direct determined control of every single thing that ever happens and that man has no free will at all, you cannot escape the accusation that you have made man into nothing more than a Robot, pre-programmed to go through life doing the determined will of God, even when he is murdering children.
Surely God knows everything that is going to happen and when it occurs it is within the permissive or determined will of God. Why he saves one person and not the other is entirely up to God and we don't know why. But he has his reasons, and we can't say what they aren't any more than we can say what they are.
Excellant P-Marlowe ...”in accordance with the the permissive and/or determinate will of God.”
...and then there is ‘His divine will’, perhaps you might enlarge on the difference even more...good topic for conversation as could lead to the truth of the issue of “control”.
How does that relate to John 1:12-13? You never explained these verses.
That is precisely the picture of God in the scriptures. The magnificent God who chose a people and called them out of Egypt, who nurtured them and cared for them fighting for their needs when they cried out to Him and chastising them when they were rebellious to bring them back to His tender and loving arms. Wanting and desiring His children to rely solely on Him and allow Him to avenge us all the while we imitate His Son.
People have simply created a distorted God in their own image that does not mirror the true and powerful God of scripture. While it may be appealing to think that God loves everyone, people forget that it is a simple matter of scripture that He doesn't save everyone. In short, they've created a God who is false and is inconsistent with what we know of God through the scriptures.
So there is only one of two choices. A person can either accept the God as He is revealed through the scriptures or they can create their own illusion of who God is and just say, "Duh, I don't know." when they arrive at passages that clearly defines God. In my mind, and I mean this kindly, I can't see any difference between pretending that God is something that He's not or erecting a golden calf and saying this is your god.
Huh? You just told us why in this very post - you said it was because someone used their free will to choose God and follow Him, and another used their free will to refuse to follow Him. And supposedly this decision by man is what causes God to elect someone or not.
None of which is Scriptural. Romans 9:11