I remember the first time I was ever told there are no coincidences or accidents in life and that absolutely everything happens for a God-given reason.

I was in my late-20s, driving in my Toyota Tercel along the lakefront in Chicago with a girlfriend who was 12 years older than me. She was talking as someone who’d seriously studied the Bible for many years at a Bible church in upstate New York.

I remember using food in my argument against her assessment. I said something like, “So what you’re saying is if I pick Burger King over McDonald’s for lunch, God intended that all along?! If I eat too many onion rings and get a stomach ache and have diarrhea, God was behind it?!”

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I’m hearing there’s a big resurgence today in Calvinism, especially in the South. Calvinists are Christians who believe in a cruel God who sends some people to hell without giving them any choice in the matter.

Calvinists also believe God has this detailed, ideal life map written out for them that says where He wants them to be at every moment of every day. He reveals it to them through outward circumstances and inner impressions, impulses, promptings, hunches, etc.

Absolutely everything that happens becomes, “What’s God trying to teach me; tell me?”

As my pastor, Richard Jordan of Shorewood Bible Church in Rolling Meadows, Ill. (www.graceimpact.org) , explains in a study I have on tape, “Calvinists say the Scriptures not only teach that God predestinated certain individuals unto eternal life, but that all events both small and great come about as the result of God’s eternal decree. ‘The Lord God rules over heaven and earth with absolute control. Nothing comes to pass apart from His eternal purpose.’ ”

“Folks, that’s just about as blasphemous a thing as anybody could ever say about the God of heaven and the Creator of this universe because that is to say that every time you sin God caused it. To say that nothing comes to pass apart from His eternal decree is to say that He determined Satan would be Satan, and that you would be a sinner, and so on and so forth.

“And the responsibility for every sin, and every evil and every vile thing that ever occurred, is His because He controls every event that happens. Now just for me to say that is for me to tell you I didn’t define your God; I defined your Adversary, didn’t I?

“Folks, God Almighty is not the author of sin. He’s not the author of evil or anything wicked, calamitous, vile and mean. He’s a God of righteousness. The integrity of God is ruined.

“The sovereignty of God doesn’t mean that God can do anything. Titus 1:2 refers to the ‘God who cannot lie.’ God’s nature limits Him to do only what His nature will do and a righteous holy God can’t lie. That manifests who He is as compared to someone else.

“The sovereignty of God is talking about God’s free will. He never wants to lie. That’s the difference. He never wants to sin. Sin doesn’t come into His mind. He never thinks, ‘Hey, what you need to do is go over there and sin a little bit so my purpose can be.’ God’s mind doesn’t work that way.

One of the passages Calvinists love to read wrong is Isaiah 46: 9-10. It says, “Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me, Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure.”

Jordan explains, “That verse doesn’t say that everything that ever happened in the world God decided it ought to happen. The verse tells you God has a purpose that He’s going to do and what He’s determined to do; He’s going to do it. That’s all that verse says. ‘Try what you want, you can stop Him because He’s God.’ In verse 13, He’s talking about His purpose in the nation Israel there and what He’s saying is, He’s going to accomplish it.

In Job 42:2, Job gives the same message, acknowledging to the Lord, “I know that thou canst do every thing, and that no thought can be withholden from thee.”

Jordan says, “That isn’t saying, ‘God, I know you can go sin,’ it’s saying, ‘Lord, I understand that anything you purpose to do you can do it.’ You’re going to find that that’s what all these verses are talking about. In Psalm 115:3, what does He please to do? He pleases not to lie.

“Take Isaiah 14. There are all these references to the fact that what God has purposed to do in His eternal councils in the past, He’s going to do. None of them say that He determined everything that’s going to happen in the world, and nothing can happen except what He determined to happen. That is a theological figment of the imagination of human viewpoint.

A great verse to instantly shut down a Calvinist is Jeremiah 19:5. God says, “They have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings unto Baal, which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind.”

What God’s saying is, “I didn’t purpose for them to do this. They went out and committed idolatry and heinous things, but it never came into my mind for them to do any it.”

It’s painfully obvious from all of Scriptures that not everything that happens is something God caused to happen.

Instead, we’re told God knows what would have happened if what did happen didn’t happen. Just for God to know it’s going to happen doesn’t mean He causes it to happen.

Another great passage to throw at a Calvinist is I Samuel 23: 10-13, in which David asks God what he should do. It reads, “Then said David, O LORD God of Israel, thy servant hath certainly heard that Saul seeketh to come to Keilah, to destroy the city for my sake. Will the men of Keilah deliver me up into his hand? Will Saul come down, as thy servant hath heard? O LORD God of Israel, I beseech thee, tell thy servant. And the LORD said, He will come down. Then said David, Will the men of Keilah deliver me and my men into the hand of Saul? And the LORD said, They will deliver thee up. Then David and his men, which were about six hundred, arose and departed out of Keilah, and went whithersoever they could go. And it was told Saul that David was escaped from Keilah; and he forbare to go forth.”

Jordan explains, “Now if God answered, ‘He’s going to come down and they’re going to deliver you up,’ did David then go over and sit down on a stump and moan, ‘Oh, well, it’s all over now. God said they’re going to come down and deliver me up’?

“What David asked was, ‘If I stay here is he coming down?’ and the Lord said, ‘Yes, he’s coming down,’ so David figured out, ‘I know what I better do; I better get out of town!’ Neither David nor the Lord thought because God told David He was going to come down that it was fixed where it couldn’t happen any other way.”

Undoubtedly, the attraction to Calvinism has to do with Christians wanting to believe God’s treating them special.

“It sounds important to have God leading here and there and doing this and that,” figures Jordan. “But just in the ordinary details of your life you don’t look for this big dot that says you’re right in the center of God’s will. You see, we hunt for the dot in the big things—who we’re going to marry, our jobs, our career, our ministry. But did you go over to the sock drawer today and say, ‘Now, oh God, before the foundation of the world, I pray you’d reveal to me which is of these socks I should put on this morning’?

“All that stuff is based on the assumption that there’s this secret plan and secret will for your life. By the way, if there’s a secret plan for your life—this perfect secret life map—you can’t know about it because it’s a secret! And if you can’t ascertain it in advance, then it can’t really have any part in the decision-making process to determine what you ought to do. I mean, it doesn’t even make any logical sense!

“But more importantly, we know from the Apostle Paul there are no secrets left. That ought to encourage you—glory to God! If what God says in His Word is true, there aren’t any secrets. Ephesians 1:9 says, ‘Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in him.’

“Did God make the secret known or didn’t He? Did He make the secret of His will known? Well, then if He made the secret of His will known, is there a secret of His will that’s not known?

As II Tim. 3:16 says, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteous.”

Jordan reasons, “Is there anything that isn’t revealed in the written Word of God that you need to know about so you can go do the will of God? Didn’t you just read that the Scriptures are written for doctrine, reproof, correction, instruction in righteousness? Isn’t that understanding—knowing what to do in the will of God?

“Are there any instructions in righteousness that you need that aren’t written down in the Word of God so that you can be perfect—‘throughly, completely, totally equipped for every good work’? Well, look, if God’s got a secret life plan out here for you, wouldn’t you think it’d be helpful to know it in order to be equipped for every good work? How you gonna do good works unless you know what the plan is?

“The verse says that in the Book everything you need to know has been revealed so you can do everything God has for you to do. There aren’t any secrets. It says in I Corinthians 2: 9-10, ‘But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.’

“Look at verse 10. The first word is ‘but,’ meaning, ‘But things aren’t that way anymore. God hath revealed them unto us by His spirit which searcheth.’

“You know where God speaks to you? The voice of God is heard by your spirit through the words of that Book. And, my friend, there’s no secret will of God running out here for you. There’s no dot in the center. Rather, God Almighty has a sovereign will and plan which is revealed in the pages of His Word.

“As Ephesians 1:8 says, ‘Wherein he hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence.’ It’s through wisdom and prudence—that’s just wise decision-making—based on sound doctrine working through our renewed mind that’s motivated by grace.

“The objective of God today is not for you to find the decision that God has already made for you to do. God’s objective in your life today is for you to make wise decisions based on the sound doctrine; based on the revealed Word of God and will of God working through your renewed mind, motivated by His grace and applying that truth to life.

“We’ve already got everything God’s going to tell us about a situation. There are not going to be any more hunches, circumstantial clues and nudges for you to decipher. You don’t need them.”