Christopher is a good, gracious man—and intelligent besides—but he gave up the plot two days ago when he facetiously wrote on my comment page:

"So I believe what I believe, and you believe what you believe, and others believe what they believe, because God is making us believe it. You have a podcast because God is making you do it, making you try to convince people who disagree with you, but you can’t convince other people to agree with you because God is making them disagree with you. And if they want to agree with you, it will only be because God molds them that way in a particular moment."

Then he added directly after:

"What a meaningless life. Not for God, but for us. He gets to play with the characters, and we get to suffer."

There you go. I mean, there it is, the entire "I am Sovereign/Free Will" mindset in all its sickness. They fail to understand that life exists to glorify God, not them.

The closet humanist resents that God "gets to play with the characters," that is, that God is the Potter and they are the clay, making them mere recipients of God's sovereignty. (THEY want to "play with the characters." THEY want to be absolute Directors on the stage of life.) They think a God Who operates the universe in accord with the counsel of His own will (Ephesians 1:11), and Who is doing "according to His will with the army of the heavens and with those abiding on the earth" (Daniel 4:35) would necessarily be a petty, punishing god who would take the controls of his world only to make His creatures suffer.

("How dare the One Who made me assume to know what's best for me.")

To Christopher, a world in which "all those abiding on the earth are reckoned as naught" (Daniel 4:35) would be a meaningless one. In other words, a world failing to put the likes of him—Christopher Alsruhe—in charge of something, anything, is a senseless, cold world that just can't spot talent—or at least give talent a chance. For only a world that has lost its senses would NOT give Christopher at least SOME degree of sovereignty. I mean, doesn't he deserve an opportunity to show the universe what he can do when God leaves him completely and totally alone? I mean, how else could he be rewarded or blamed?

(Indeed, the doctrine of Free Will requires that God leave His creatures completely and totally alone. A Free Will must, by necessity, be a will operating apart from any and all influence; God cannot influence a free will; Satan cannot influence a free will; the weather cannot influence a free will; NOTHING can influence it. Otherwise, how can a will be said to be free?)

Christopher has illustrated for us the great crime of humanity: "Knowing God, not as God do they glorify or thank Him" (Romans 1:21).

Christopher knows God, he just doesn't glorify Him AS God; he doesn't know that God is ACTUALLY God, that is, that He is the Supreme Subjector of All, as described in Romans 11:36, "For out of Him, and through Him, and for Him is all."

The audacity of such a Deity Who would actually be this and do this offends Christopher, who projects upon this Deity his own characteristics should he—Christopher—be put in charge of the world: Christopher would lord it over you and you would suffer.

God is not like this. But Christopher doesn't know that. And neither does most of humanity apart from a mega-dose of the spirit of God causing a person to believe obvious but rather startling Scripture verses such as Romans 11:36, 1 John 3:20, and all of Romans 9. Thus, instead of believing plainly-stated Scripture, those who know God but do not glorify or thank Him as God, choose human reasoning as their source of information. The apostle Paul saw this coming, writing in Romans 1:22—

"But vain were they made in their reasonings, and darkened is their unintelligent heart. Alleging themselves to be wise, they are made stupid" (Romans 1:21-22).

Oops. Human reasoning is not such a good teacher.

"Life has no meaning unless I'm in charge of some of it."

"Any deity insisting on running the show would have to be petty and punishing."

Ugh. I think we found the dirty bottom of Human Free Will.