Calvinism is alive and doing well
Calvinism relies on the notion that a deity has predetermined all. Sin itself is the deity’s creation. To that end the deity decided which of us are elect and which are damned. Makes it seems like sin is kind of a concession for losing out on eternity.
Therein is the root of modern Evangelicalism. If you don’t come around to that way of thinking, well then you’re not one of the elected.
Being an elect plays right into the whole prosperity gospel. If you’re rich and privileged it was the deity’s doing, none of your own. If you’re poor and downtrodden you can thank the deity.
From the right we keep hearing the politics of “me”, my guns, my tax dollar, the infringement of my rights and on and on.
The left, at least the progressive branch, uses the pronoun “we”. This stands juxtaposed to the pronoun me on the right. On the left everyone matters. On the right only the elect matter.
Look no further than the Reaganomics. The idea here is that if you coddle the rich there will be orts from their table for all. Maybe better expressed this way, “I got mine, you get yours, and screw you if you’re poor”. The deity made it so. Smacks of Calvinism to its very core.
This stuff sells and sells well. Who among us wouldn’t want to be tapped by the deity as valuable rather than damned.
P.T. Barnum pretty well summed it up in his bon mot about what is born everyday.
Calvinism is alive and well in America. It sells so well.
The nation’s Supreme Court is stacked with Calvinistic ideology. The deity made it so. Money shall get as money wants. The deity made it so.
It is all pre-ordained. No additional comment necessary on Citizens United. Scalia, Alito and the other three had no choice, it was their notion of the deity that made them do it. They only need go with the Calvinistic flow.
If you’re one of the elect and let’s say you get pulled over speeding just tell the officer it was preordained. There wasn’t a damned thing you could do about. Give the officer heaven as your address. Send the ticket there.
So if you’re not one of the elect go ahead and sin a little. It’s the only consolation prize you’re gonna’ get. And after all, the deity determined you’d do it anyway.
And if you made it this far here’s a little rational bubble gum for your mind from John Steinbeck. Let’s call it the progressives’ antidote to Calvinism.
“There ain’t no sin and there ain’t no virtue. There’s just stuff people do.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
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