Post 89 - Stranger Things

I have a confession. I was a fan of "Stranger Things", the TV series which recently released Season 5, but I won't be watching the new episodes.

While the first couple of seasons were quite engaging--well-written, well-acted, suspenseful and intriguing--unfortunately "wokeism" infected the more recent seasons and, in my opinion, tarnished an otherwise masterful science fiction series.

Turns out, I wasn't the only Christian to enjoy "Stranger Things". Michael Heiser, a well-known Christian author and biblical scholar who passed away a few years ago, wrote a book in 2019 called The World Turned Upside Down: Finding the Gospel in Stranger Things.

Like Mr. Heiser, I also found inspiration from the series and in my book, God’s Elect: The Chosen Generation (which, BTW, is available at Amazon but cheaper at Barnes and Noble.  God's Elect: The Chosen Generation: by John Chipman, Paperback | Barnes & Noble®), I used the series to convey the evils of the doctrines proposed by Reformed theology/Calvinism. Below is a short excerpt.

Very Strange

In the popular Netflix series, Stranger Things, there exists a parallel world, an “upside down world.” The upside-down world is similar in its general form to the real world of color and life, light and warmth, but it is dark and murky, filled with dread and despair.

The upside-down world is ruled by a monstrous creature who enters the real world through a portal--a hole in the temporal fabric that separates the two worlds. The creature inhabits people, changing their genetic structure, making them part of a larger organism under the control of the monster. Of course, the monster is evil.

One of the solid rocks on which we stand in Christianity is that God cannot act contrary to his nature. God is love; he cannot do hate. God is light; he cannot do dark. God is just; he cannot do injustice. God is good; he cannot do evil.

I suppose that God did not have to be this way. He could have been anything he desired but he chose to be true and faithful, merciful and gracious, patient and loving. He chose to be a God we can depend on, a God we can trust. If anyone’s god is contrary to these qualities, we must reject him. He is not the God of the Bible. If anyone’s doctrine promotes a god who is contrary to these qualities, we must reject it. The doctrine is sub-Christian.

We can call a doctrine in which God predetermines eternal misery for the vast majority of his creation, “loving” ... but it’s not. We can claim that a doctrine in which God punishes people for the sins he determined for them to commit, “just” ... but it’s not. We can deny that it’s a contradiction to say that “every choice we make is free and every choice we make is determined." [i] We can even give it a fancy name like “compatibilism”, but it’s still a contradiction. And we can call a doctrine in which God is indistinguishable from the devil, a “doctrine of grace” ... but it’s not.

Nonsense

Nonsense is nonsense even when we talk it about God. If God could do nonsense, beneath our spiritual feet is not a rock at all, but unstable, shifting sand.

Can anyone really count on and trust a God who can do nonsense? What does this say about the nature of God? How dependable and trustworthy is the word of God if “grace” is really the opposite of grace, if “love” is really unloving, if God’s “justice” is unjust? What kind of creature are we worshipping if our God does not abide by the laws he created and by his own teachings? What do we really have in a god who can act capriciously, apart from his nature if not a god of mythology and whimsy?         

There is always the possibility, some argue, that we humans don’t really know what divine love is. Maybe we don’t quite “get” divine justice or divine mercy or divine goodness or divine righteousness. There is always the possibility, they say, that there is some “greater good” that God is working out and that, at least for now, we can’t understand these things.

The problem is that God tells us that we do know these things. We know them because God put the knowledge of these things in each of us. We know love and we know justice and we know goodness and we know righteousness. In fact, God requires them of us.

In reference to God’s command to obey his laws (including the command to be loving, just, good and righteous), Moses tells the people of God that his commandment for these things is not too hard for you, neither is it far off (Deuteronomy 30:11). Love, justice, goodness and righteousness are not only knowable for us, they are doable for us.

The Upside-Down God

After several years in the Reformed church, it seemed as if I had fallen through the mysterious portal of Calvinism into the “upside-down world” where nothing is as it seems, where contradictions abound, and human beings are just part of a larger organism under the complete control of an evil monster named “God.”

            This was the last straw for me. When the God who is revealed in the Bible becomes unrecognizable – or worse, a corruption and a horror – it was time to seek the truth.

Somewhere in the Scriptures was a doctrine of election and predestination that reveals the real God; merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, a God who loves his creation such that he gave his only Son so that all of the “whosoevers” in the world – you and me, the inmates in the jails, my own son - would have a chance at eternal life in fellowship with him.

[i] R.C. Sproul, quote taken from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcyttnC6cjg, Ligonier Ministries, What is Free Will? Chosen by God.

Final Thought

In "Stranger Things", evil is overcome again and again in completely unexpected ways, just as it is in our lives. God is always working behind the scenes to ensure the good of those who love Him.

Trust in the love, justice, goodness and righteousness of the true God.

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose (Rom 8:28 ESV).

As I post this blog, I realize that, although I've been speaking out against Calvinism for years, I have never really written anything for those who aren't familiar with Reformed theology or the Calvinistic doctrines. I'll tackle that in my next post.

Next Post: Calvinism--a Primer