I’m all for charitable Christian disagreement between Christians of different expressions or traditions within Christianity. But Holey Moley, I’m starting to think that Calvinism probably shouldn’t be classified and grouped under the Christian umbrella.
I’ve also often wondered if John Piper really isn’t a Calvinist at all, but just trolling them to make their religion look so frighteningly horrific.
Case in point:
No, God doesn’t kill your children as a punishment for a parent struggling with porn. I mean, I can’t believe this even needs rebutting, but yes, this is actually something Piper recently said on a podcast.
On a recent episode of Ask Pastor John, a distraught father wrote in and asked about his wife’s recent miscarriage and his struggle with looking at pornography. Here’s what the man asked:
“Pastor John, did God cause, or would God cause, my wife to miscarry our child because I have a struggle with lust and pornography? I have a lot of guilt right now, and I don’t know how to think about God’s discipline and punishment for my sin. I’m very confused, please help.”
Piper’s answer was lengthy, and ultimately was, “I don’t know if God killed your baby because you looked at porn.” But the mere fact that Piper doesn’t know if his god would do something like this should be enough to reject his entire belief system.
While Piper claimed to not know for sure, he laid out the case that killing a baby because you looked at porn would not be outside of God’s character, who he claimed routinely kills people we love as a punishment to ourselves:
“May that discipline come in the form of harm, even death, to others that we love, as well as ourselves? And the answer is yes, it may…I would certainly say in my own life — now hear this carefully — I would certainly say in my own life, the most painful and humbling disciplining from the Lord has regularly been though the pain and suffering and sometimes death of those I love, rather than through any blows against my own body.”
Got that? The most painful type of punishment god dishes out is when he kills people you love. Piper also cited the views of Jonathan Edwards, and claimed that god will often punish a disobedient church by killing their pastor.
I mean, seriously? What type of god are we talking about here? This might be the angry volcano god who needs a virgin thrown in, but none of this describes Jesus.
Piper ultimately tells the grieving father that he just needs to stop wondering if god killed his kid over porn:
“So, what our friend must do in this confusion — he says, “I am confused.” Okay, so I am saying, what he must do in his confusion is stop fretting about whether his pornography was the direct cause of his miscarriage. He should stop fretting about that. He will never know for sure the answer to that question, short of some direct revelation. Whether he knew it was or wasn’t, the lesson remains the same…”
Piper reminds me of something I’ve long believed: the Calvinist doctrine of God is far closer to Islam than Christianity. In a Christian doctrine of God, God is restrained in what he can do– for example, he cannot lie, he cannot deny himself, etc. However, Islamic theology, it is believed Allah can do “whatever he wills” which is the same position of Calvinism– God can do whatever God wants, and we have no right to question the morality of any of these actions.
But this isn’t the traditional position of Christianity, and this is where Calvinism steps outside of our tradition and becomes closer to other religions.
Piper’s answer, as he has done on other questions such as genocide of entire people groups, reveals a fundamental flaw in Calvinism: that an all-loving God perfectly revealed in the life and character of Jesus can be the author of acts that would be unspeakably evil if done by any other agent who possessed morality and a conscience.
So, since Piper screwed up the question so badly, let me take a shot:
Grieving father: “Did God kill my baby because I struggle with lust and porn?”
Answer: Hell no. How totally depraved would someone have to be to kill an innocent baby over that? I mean, c’mon. That would be sick.
51 Responses
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Reading your article helped me a lot, but I still had some doubts at the time, could I ask you for advice? Thanks.
Where the hell did you get the idea that god can’t lie?
Now, therefore, behold, the Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of these thy prophets, and the Lord hath spoken evil concerning thee. 1 Kings 22:23
Now therefore, behold, the Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of these thy prophets. 2 Chronicles 18:22
Ah, Lord GOD! surely thou hast greatly deceived this people. Jeremiah 4:10
O Lord, thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived. Jeremiah 20:7
And if a prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the Lord have deceived that prophet. Ezekiel 14:9
For this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie. 2 Thessalonians 2:11
There’s nothing like an anti-Piper post to get under the skin of a Calvinist, I think you wouldn’t get more anger and vitriol if you were to impugn Jesus H. Christ himself. The problem with Piper is that he’s too smart for his own good, but not as smart as he thinks. He needs to be filter every biblical text through his Calvinist framework, and the more absurd the conclusion, the more convinced he is of its veracity, because after all, we are fallen creatures and we can’t rely on our own common sense. So basically, he would rather believe something as absurd as God killing babies (for any reason) or sending tornadoes to punish people for gay marriage because he thinks the Bible requires him to believe these kinds of crazy things rather than ask whether they actually make any sense (using logic, reason, tradition and the literal words of Jesus as recorded in the NT). I mean you can’t even take the literal words of Jesus for face value in Calvinism, you have to translate it through their Calvinists matrix. There are absolutely hints of Islam in Calvinism, they hate admitting it, but “submission” to the absolute sovereignty of God (or your pastor, or your husband, both of whom are the next closest thing) feels a lot lot Islam and pretty much nothing like Christianity.
What a terrible article and even more so some of the pathetic commentary that followed it… Goodness gracious people read and study your bibles better…
This is not only an uncharitable read it is the read of one who is simply not fair at all with the historic arguments. You can certainly disagree but to act with the condescending arrogance and biblical ignorance is sad and quite unbecoming of one who claims to be an expert or perhaps a scholar.
….have you ever read the Bible??
This is exactly why I will tell anyone who listens…”the Torah is a toxic document, as is the Koran.”
Christianity went south when the idolatrous church fathers ixnayed Marcion of Sinope. The consciousness of the Calvinist is a product of the adulterous machination called Judeo-Christianity.
Yes, Jesus was born a Jew and lived a perfect Jewish life —but—He did not die a Jew. He was cast out! He knew Sinai was devilish! I’m not talking about the lovely folks who call themselves Jewish. I’m talking about Rabbinical Judaism and it’s evil angelic roots! …Better known as “spiritual wickedness in high places…” (Eph 6:12)
I know, I know, I’m a heretic. And I wear that badge proudly! If it wasn’t for the heretic, we’d all still be kissing Papa’s ring!!
Christianity needs to be cleansed!!
But that will never ever happen…
To add to to this, Calvinism also believes that God knew everyone that was going to be saved or lost from the foundation of the earth! So God let’s people be born that are doomed to hell! What about this: John 3:15-17 (KJV)
15 That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. The word whosoever in the Greek translates this way in the Strong’s Greek Concordance: Greek Strong’s Number: 3956
Greek Word: πᾶς
Transliteration: pas
Phonetic Pronunciation:pas
Root: including all the forms of declension
Cross Reference: TDNT – 5:886,795
Part of Speech: adj
Vine’s Words: All, Every, Everyone, Everything, Whole, Wholly, Wholesome
Usage Notes:
English Words used in KJV: 9 + 3 3 2 2
all 748
all things 170
every 117
all men 41
whosoever 31
everyone 28
whole 12
all manner of 11
every man 11
no +
every thing 7
any 7
whatsoever 6
whosoever +
always +
daily +
any thing 2
no +
not tr 7
miscellaneous translations 26
[Total Count: 1243]
including all the forms of declension; apparently a primary word; all, any, every, the whole :- all (manner of, means), alway (-s), any (one), × daily, + ever, every (one, way), as many as, + no (-thing), × thoroughly, whatsoever, whole, whosoever.
It is the program that God ordained from the foundation of the earth not individual peoples salvation! There is so much more in scripture to let us know that we have a choice to accept Christ or not. Yes, God does intervene at times into the human experience so He can bring about HIs divine plan but to say God might have had this man’s baby killed because he is struggling with porn? What about all the other things we struggle with? What about children born with diseases or birth defects? As Paul the apostle said: “We see through a glass darkly”. We don’t understand everything or even a small portion of God’s plan but He can and does sometimes, let us in on a few things and gives us what we need to know. We need to ask, seek and knock on the door but if we lived thousands of years we still would not know a speck of the knowledge that God has. We will understand it better by and by. Let us let love guide us and know that God’s love is the greatest thing we can own and the gift of Jesus Christ let’s us know the depth, width and height of the love of God!
I’m also assuming you’re completely outraged by abortion. Is that correct?
How do you read 2 Samuel 12:13-14?
You just said “hell no”…that must mean you don’t understand the meaning and severity of “hell”…or you don’t believe the orthodox view of hell…or you don’t care. Anyway, that’s besides the point.
My real question – how do you understand and interpret Acts 5, 1 Corinthians 5, and Hebrews 12?
The poor man’s baby died. The same man struggled with lust and watched porn. John Piper is an ignorant idiot caught up in irrational, superstitious and magical thinking. These are the facts and they are totally unrelated.
I read that post by Piper and actually thought it was pretty restrained by him. He’s previously advocated that God sent tornadoes to damage Lutheran churches and that God makes bridges fall and hurricanes destroy for punishing purposes. At least this time he was able to say “I don’t know.” Maybe it was because he was dealing with an actual person, instead of faceless people who perished, ostensibly by the hand of a punishing god.
It seems to me that he takes a very flat view of scripture that considers the OT equal to the NT. It’s quite a literal hermeneutic that takes the punishing and destructive stories of God at face value. So he uses a lot of OT examples to describe how he thinks God acts today. I think there are a lot better, more Christian ways of thinking about where God is in the midst of that man’s, and other people’s pain.
Piper believes in an abusive, angry God. Unfortunately, he won’t wake up until he comes face-to-face with God!
Whilst I disagree with Piper’s view, lets not forget that according to the apostle Peter, God struck down Ananias and his wife Sapphira because they dared to lie to Him over money collected for the early church members. Or do you think Peter was wrong?
To those who reject some of God’s dealings with people in Old Testament times, I would remind you of Jesus’ apparent high view of that OT as God-inspired Scripture. He also claimed to be the God of the Old Testament (‘before Abraham was born, I Am’).
If God is the author of life, can He not take it away in certain circumstances? I feel many of the arguments by Ben etc are a case of the creature telling the Creator what He can and cannot do.
I rather wish this poor guy had written to Dan Savage instead.
Here’s a link below to a deeper and more theological response to Piper … and a sample from the post to whet your appetite:
“God has graced humans with creativity and passion and a longing for justice. If our theology silences these impulses—as I believe a theology of divine control does—it needs to be rejected, because it is allowing not good but evil to flourish under the guise of “God’s plan.”
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/faithforward/2016/11/god-is-not-in-control/?ref_widget=gr_popular&ref_blog=grails&ref_post=progressive%20christian
Inerrancy of Scripture and the usual verbal plenary explanation that follows has a way of disguising the fact that the concept of God in the OT is very different from that presented by Christ and the disciples. If God inspired the whole Bible, and every word is, in some sense, His Words, then logically God routinely killed babies or Willed it so at the hands of His choosen people, for example during the Canaan conquest.
In the OT God is seen as causing both Good and Evil, one of the side effects of early monotheism emerging out of polytheism. (Isaiah 45:7, Amos 3:6, Lam 3:38). Calamity was seen as God’s judgement for sin and even in Jesus’ time sickness, disease, death of children was still being attributed to the sins of their parents. (John 9:2)
But the NT is very different. Jesus and the writers of the NT taught personal responsibility for sin and personal consequences for one’s own sins. In the OT God is more distant, more terrifying and constantly destroying Israel’s enemies, as well as large swaths of Israelites that displease Him in some fashion or another. That God would punish a parent for their sins by taking their child is OT 101. To the mind of the Israelite this must have made perfect sense.
Jesus presented a Kingdom of God were enemies were to be loved, where our neighbors did not look like us or think like us, yet they were to be loved. In the OT there was no sanctity of life, certainly not of one’s enemies or their wives and children. In the NT all life is sacred, even our enemies.
But John Piper seems to be missing this, mostly because he sees God as unchanged from the OT to the NT. While this may be true in an ontological sense, it is certainly not true theologically.
so, god controls everyting, right? when in matthew 2 didn’t herod have a bunch of babies killed to hide jesus? god controls even herod, doesn’t that count if he is an omni potent god couldn’t he have e found some other way? and one assumes a bunch of babies died in sodom and also in the great flood, noah was not ordered to collect all the babies first, or to even pick up any floaters? so, rather than a time out, god killed some babies.
I’m one who thinks Calvin propagated a dangerously misconceived understanding of God. It is noteworthy that he did’t work from the Bible to theology. He worked from what he saw as the logic of the apostles creed and then shoehorned in the Bible. More importantly, there are times when the God of Calvin, and for that matter Islam, seems attractive even as it is horrible. Because sometimes life is already so horrible and humans are so powerless that all that really matters is knowing that someone is in charge. Modern Western people have far more control over their own lives than anyone in Calvin’s time, or most people in the rest of the world. We’re happy to take on the burden of working out our own salvation. But that wasn’t and isn’t always the case. Sometimes living in and going to hell is okay as long as its part of a plan, not so much when its just bad luck. If we reject Calvin, we need some doctrine of divine providence to replace it, and one that doesn’t just depend on our good intentions.
Piper sits right up there with Mike Huckabee and Pat Robertson, who have made similar outrageous idiotic claims.
The zealots probably thought Jim Jones had it right. OMG, what a bunch of scary people.
I totally agree with you Dr. Corey. However, when I was talking about this to a friend, he brought up the story of David and Bathsheba and I did not know how to respond….as a matter of fact I’m not exactly sure how to respond with a lot of OT stories regarding this topic. Still something I wrestle with. While I think John Piper does have some valuable things to say, his hardcore Calvinism is rather repulsive
Benjamin:
Piper reminds me of something I’ve long believed: the Calvinist doctrine of God is far closer to Islam than Christianity. In a Christian doctrine of God, God is restrained in what he can do– for example, he cannot lie, he cannot deny himself, etc. However, Islamic theology, it is believed Allah can do “whatever he wills” which is the same position of Calvinism– God can do whatever God wants, and we have no right to question the morality of any of these actions.
But this isn’t the traditional position of Christianity, and this is where Calvinism steps outside of our tradition and becomes closer to other religions.
Piper’s answer, as he has done on other questions such as genocide of entire people groups, reveals a fundamental flaw in Calvinism: that an all-loving God perfectly revealed in the life and character of Jesus can be the author of acts that would be unspeakably evil if done by any other agent who possessed morality and a conscience.
Ronny to Benjamin:
Just thinking, about how God wiped out all of the people of Sodom. Was that the end of them? No, it wasn’t. For in Ezekiel chapter 16, God tells us that the sins of Jerusalem, were much worse than the sins of the people of Sodom. And then God goes on to tell us, that God is going to restore and bless Sodom, just as God is going to restore and bless Jerusalem. 🙂 That right there, is a huge difference between God and us human beings. That is, we can’t hurt and or kill someone and then raise them from the dead and bless them. But God can and God will and that, for all people. 🙂
Just know that preachers like Piper and MacArthur ae unheard of outside the US.
That’ s how irrelevant they are to biblical scholarship.
this is hilariously stupid. yeah i’m pretty sure no being would kill innocents over porn
Will God kill John Piper because USA elected Trump?
So can anyone give an instance outside of the Bible where God has killed someone?
Lol
How topical….
This was in today’s news in New Zealand
NZ ‘bishop’ Brian Tamaki says earthquake caused by sinners, homosexuals, murderers
WHAT caused the deadly earthquake that ripped up roads, toppled buildings, caused landslides and killed two people on New Zealand’s South Island last week?
Shifting tectonic plates? Nope.
At least, not according to a New Zealand preacher Brian Tamaki.
He reckons it was Mother Nature expressing her opinion about homosexuality. And it’s not the first time he’s come up with such a theory.
Remember the Christchurch earthquake in 2011 that killed almost 200 people? Again, it was the gays, Tamaki says.
“(The Book of) Leviticus says the earth convulses under the weight of certain human sin,” he told worshippers at his controversial Destiny Church on Sunday.
“It says it spews itself up after a while. That’s natural disasters, because nature was never created to carry the bondage of our iniquity.
http://www.news.com.au/world/pacific/nz-bishop-brian-tamaki-says-earthquake-caused-by-sinners-homosexuals-murderers/news-story/021a90571625130470ac908596946793
See what gay people do to your country…..
Psalm 115:3, Romans 8 and 9…
Well, yeah. Except that God DID take the life of a baby who was a consequence of David’s lust after Bathsheba and the subsequent murder of her husband.
There’s a difference in degree of sin here, to human eyes – but to God, sin is all just plain sin, right?
So while I agree that it’s probable that you’re right, because we live in an age of grace (the New Covenant), I’d say the key takeaway for this man is, not to find out whether or not this happened, but to *find a way to STOP DOING the thing making him feel so guilty!* Duh.
As one who’s been there, I can affirm that addiction is brutally hard to beat, but it can and must be done. Or else the guy *may* lose his marriage, and that WOULD be a consequence of his infidelity to his wife via pornography.
Question for the group: In Chapter 32 of Exodus, we see Moses high atop Mt. Sinai receiving the Ten Commandments, when he returns to find the Israelites worshiping the golden calf. Furious with them, Moses grinds the idol down to powder and forces them to drink it. But then Moses does something that I don’t remember ever hearing in Sunday school. Moses draws a line in the dirt and commands the people to cross the line (to his side) if they are with him (Moses) and God. The Levites stepped across to join him. Then Moses says, “THUS SAITH THE LORD, each of you draw the sword, go back and forth,through the camp, each man killing his brother and friend and neighbor”. 3,000 of them (Israelites who would not join them) were slaughtered on that day. CHRISTIANS: How do you serve a God who would command his followers to slaughter their own brothers and friends and families? For not joining them? These were Israelites, commanded by the “God of love” to kill other Israelites. Not to abandon them. Not to leave them for dead. To pick up a sword and gruesomely slaughter them. Can anyone explain this one to me? Btw. . . just verses before this we see God commanding them (the same people) NOT to kill. Interesting to anyone else?
1) for all the smugness this article displays, the most revealing line is this: “the Calvinist doctrine of God is far closer to Islam than Christianity.”
a) So, basically, now I can vilify & dismiss an entire segment of the body of Christ… regardless of how biblically based their claims are; I’ll dismiss them simply because I don’t like what they’re saying.
b) Note well: I’m almost positive there’s a whole lot more Scripture in virtually anything Piper writes than virtually anything you’ve written (case in point: your above article versus the Piper one you cite). That fact alone doesn’t *guarantee* proper exegesis, but it should certainly humble any Christian to reconsider with whom you are actually arguing: John Piper… or the Word of God?
2) Considering how broken our world is after the Fall & the many, many things the Bible says about the breadth & comprehensive effects of sin, why not be thankful Piper landed charitably on “I don’t know”? Sin is certainly that bad (think: the cross), yet God’s grace is that good. “I don’t know” seems much, much more faithful than “Hell, no!” – especially when you read a passage like 2 Sam.12:13-14, in which David’s child dies apparently directly due to David’s sin.
If the objection is: such a God is “totally depraved”! Do you have a God who can contradict you on things that matter, or one who never does? If your God never disagrees with you… who is the real ‘god’ in that relationship? At the very least, we’re not talking about the biblical God.
3) “God doesn’t kill babies because you sin…” If that sounds preposterous because of their ‘innocence’ (as you imply), what do you do with the cross & only truly innocent human being in history? After all, that’s the epicenter of the Christian faith. Seems like a lot that you dismiss out of hand in this article is really rather biblically integral.
Calvin was rather aspergish pre Newtonian hyper reductive attempting to not be at the same time. Like do we really pay attention to a crackpot theololician (politician/theologian) that’s been dead 500 years that’s definably christian?
Great article! Listen, your question “What god are we talking ab here?” Is a good one, because, as you say (and I would agree) this sure doesn’t sound like Jesus, does it? But it would be foolish for us to, completely, dismiss the first half of the book. We CAN NOT forget or ignore where Jesus came from (this is where we start getting closer to Piper’s view of God). The God of the OT, a god who killed Pharaoh’s child due to his sin (along with ALL firstborn boys in the entirety of Egypt) [Exodus 12] In [2 Sam. 12] God kills David and Bathsheba’s child as a result of their sin. Don’t get me wrong, I am not defending Piper, I think he’s confused, but where do you get the idea that God would never do such a thing?
Thanks for saying this. Piper’s response certainly seems off in this instance.
Question for the group: How accurate is it to equate Piper’s view on this matter with Calvinism in general? I’m not a Calvinist (or at least don’t think I am), so I’m not asking this question in defense of any theology, just wondering about the relationship between Piper’s view and Calvinism. I realize Piper might describe himself as a Calvinist, but that doesn’t mean anything he says is “Calvinism.” Thoughts?
Well, isn’t that ‘kind of’ the reason that Bathsheba miscarried Davids and Her child?….Serious question. 🙁
And furthermore, how is this supposed to be of any help to the guy who asked?
“Did God miscarry my baby because I struggle with lust and porn?”
“Who knows? Maybe. Anyway, hope that helps with your porn addiction.”
Nothing like crippling shame to help someone shake a coping strategy.
Other than the other significant problems with the idea, how is God punishing you by making your loved ones suffer effective if there’s no way to know that’s why He’s doing it?
I mean, the whole thing makes no sense. “God may be punishing you by causing your wife to miscarry, but you can’t fret about it. There’s no way to know.” Well, if there’s no way to know, that’s a moronic punishment. That’s almost even worse than the Caligula/God represented in the argument, but at least a being who punishes you by hurting your loved ones is intelligible, horrific as that may be. What Piper is postulating is a God who would punish you by hurting your loved ones – and you would never know if that’s what He was doing or why.
Which would suggest a God who is not only into horrific punishments, He’s not even interested in your repentance. He just wants to get back at you, whether you are able to understand or respond to it or not.
That’s not Calvinism. That’s, like, Stockholm Syndrome.
Conjecture was the authority that without; Jesus Christ would have lived a normal life of natural consequences.
God is clear and consistent throughout the Bible with Their interventions that differ from the resulting consequences of action reaction.
John Piper and most directing their interpretation of the Bible in place of an actual relationship with God, devoid of any need for conjecture, paint God as a cruel task master, nearly a cruel animal trainer.
John 2:15-19
What was the temple destroyed and raised again in three days?
God in reality would have His own Son die on the cross, for His crucifier’s destructive spirit, leaving no room for the Spirit of truth (sin) rather than take their sons. King David was told, according to David’s law, that a son for a son “would” be imposed against David for his murder. There never was conjecture possible for what would the grief of a son for a son have served David or his people that would spawn Christ?
Jesus in His zeal could have whipped everyone of us into obedience, maybe with the aid of four legions of angels, beginning with the money changers. Jesus submitted in the obedience of love for His heavenly Father and toward His carnal species to die for their sins.
An addiction to pornography is not a carnal or spiritual sin but a symptom of carnal inadequacy. It can be healed but not by a whip only by empathy and compassion found in love for those struggling. All of God loves all us in Their image as potential children of God in Them not to remain a separate image of Them.
This, in my zeal, is a call not to ever place the will of God into any form of theoretical conjecture. Go to God directly by asking, seeking and knocking from Them in ALL humility giving no authority to Man.
Children of God are not taught by the whip but by the reciprocal will to love. This father knew that love, in spirit, to hurt so for the loss of his child before he even got to know him in carnal body. Our heavenly Father hurts for that lost child, the mother and the father without cause only love. Our heavenly Father lost One of His own prematurely with cause, us and our self centered conjecture.
Book of Job sure makes it sound like Piper’s closer to the truth than Corey on this one.
The god of Calvinism is not the God of the bible. Of this, I am convinced.
Piper clearly missed the memo where God got on Israel’s case for sacrificing their children to Molech. It didn’t even occur to God to ask them to do this.
Sigh….such bad theology on Piper’s part. The worst part is how damaging it is to this guilt-ridden husband and the overall Christian witness to the world.
Wanted to edit since a dear friend that has gone through the pain of miscarriage pointed out to me the pain this also causes the wife. Mothers already have a tendency to blame themselves for the miscarriage, and need a husband to stand with them and tell them that that is a lie. Instead, he’s now not only unable to provide that support, but he is also likely adding to her guilt. What damage did Piper do to this marriage?!
Considering God does or doesn’t do whatever man decides he wants to say God is responsible for, it is entirely likely god does kill babies because their father looks at porn. It certainly makes as much sense to me as god giving a healthy baby to parents who are devout christians and who do good deeds. Or God diverting a rainstorm so I can have a beautiful outdoor wedding because we all prayed he would. Etc., etc., etc.