Ruslan Is Right About Calvinists

Ruslan’s Claim That Calvinism Lacked Practical Discipleship

All right, all right, well, let's jump into it today. I hope you have had a good week so far. It's Thursday, we're almost to the end of it, and well, we'll do it all again next week, God willing. Anyway, yesterday I was on a podcast, or a video, or a YouTube channel.

Yeah, I was on a YouTube channel that was not my own. It's a guy who reached out to me, he's a Montana Viking, and he just reached 1 ,000 subscribers, and he said, hey, would you come on and celebrate 1 ,000 subscribers with me?

And I said, sure, and so we talked about a lot of things, and it was an interesting conversation. The first thing he wanted to talk about was Ruslan. So we talked about Ruslan for a bit, and at one point he told me about this conversation that Ruslan had had with Dr. Leighton Flowers, and Dr. Leighton Flowers is, he's the guy that pretends to used to have been a Calvinist, but now he's against Calvinism, and he's this authority on Calvinism, whatever.

I think he's, from what I understand, he's a bit of a Pelagian, right? Or at least a semi-Pelagian. I can't remember exactly, so if that's wrong, I'm sorry about that, but I seem to remember him saying something that was very, very Pelagian.

Anyway, so we talked about this Ruslan thing, and in the conversation he said Ruslan said that one of the things that kinda led him out of Calvinism, I guess Ruslan pretends to have been a Calvinist at one point as well, he says that one of the things that led him out of Calvinism was Financial Peace University.

And in the video, you could see my face, I'm very shocked, and I'm rubbing my eyes, like what are you talking, isn't that the Dave Ramsey thing, getting out of debt, all that kinda stuff? Which, by the way, I like Financial Peace University for the most part, the getting out of debt stuff is pretty good, the investing stuff, not good.

But, in any case, I was shocked as to how that could be. And so on the video, he kind of explained it to me, and we all had a good laugh about it. Anyway, so I decided to watch it, and I have to say, Ruslan, because I know you'll watch this, because you're pretty vain, I shouldn't have said that.

You do tend to watch content about you, about yourself, and that's fine, I mean, I can understand why someone might do that, I tend to not do that, but I have in the past. Anyway, Ruslan, I sympathize with you, man, because I think there's some truth to what you're saying here.

I don't think there's total truth, obviously, because I don't think you quite understand what you're talking about. It's very clear that you never were a Calvinist. You know, you can't be a Calvinist if you don't believe in limited atonement.

I know some guys try to do that, but it's not possible. The whole system falls or stands based on the five points of Calvinism, and if you believe one of them, you kind of have to believe all of them, unless you start pretending you believe some of them, but you kind of change the definitions and stuff like that, which is something that liberals often do.

So anyway, that's not what this is about. It's not really about Calvinism per se. It's about something else. So let's hear Ruslan out, and I want to make some commentary here, because I don't think he's necessarily wrong, well, at least 100 wrong about this.

Let's hear him out. With Calvinism. Oh, my problem with Calvinism. Sorry, I just got to put it in my ear here.

Here we go. And when we just go over all those, with the caveat of total depravity, how bad are we? Like, are we just fallen, or are we, the word Paul Washer uses, utterly depraved, which is like, come on.

It's like putting something extra on it. I don't like the utterly depraved. You hate God. Everybody hates God. That's their default state is they hate God, right? With the caveat of that, and the caveat of limited atonement, Jesus only died for the elect, the other three seem fairly reasonable, I think.

So he doesn't understand the other three.

That's the point. And we're not going to go into Calvinism. This is not about Calvinism, although it is sort of. You'll see in a minute, guys. So if you're here, and you're a Calvinist, or you're not a Calvinist, you're going to see where I'm going with this in just a moment.

But it's very clear that he doesn't understand the other three points of Calvinism. They're not reasonable if you're trying to deny the other two. So in any case, you can kind of see also, though, why he objected to me talking about things like friendship with the world as enmity with God, and things about like, if someone's lying about God, then they're, or if someone's wrong about God, then they're lying about God.

Like he doesn't like the, he doesn't like to think people are as bad as they are. Like he doesn't actually believe what it says in the scripture, the hearts of men were just wickedness continually, evil all the time.

He doesn't actually believe that. And so it doesn't, you know, Psalm 2, another one, one of my favorite verses, or Psalms, where it talks about how the, oh man, the nation's plot in vain against the Lord, against his anointed.

It's like, like they actually do hate God. They do. And they, and everything that they do betrays the fact that they hate God. And so he doesn't like that. He doesn't like thinking people are the way they are.

You know, Jesus knew it was in man, but he doesn't like thinking that men are really like that. So you can see why he'd object to some of the things I had to say. But now listen for a second. Listen, hear him out, because clearly he wasn't a Calvinist.

Clearly he didn't understand Calvinism, but let's continue.

Gospel-Centered Discipleship Without Practical Content

But my issues with Calvinism is twofold. It's the culture of Calvinism. It's some of the conclusions of, outside of like, we just have biblical theology and everyone is wrong, or a heretic, which again, we'll get into that as well.

I'll give you a story.

My church, I'm a spirit. Listen up here, guys, because I don't think Ruslan is wrong about this, at least not 100%. I'm looking forward to giving him a little bit of props here because just hear him out, man.

Hear him out, trust me. Trust me, hear him out. Spiritual mud, theological mud, all over.

We've been all over the place. We started out as a young, I don't know, I guess you could call us like a seeker type of church. Then we swayed super charismatic with the tongues and the whole bit. And then for a season, our associate worship pastor became a Calvinist.

And it was like, he got saved all over again. And we went hardcore Calvinist where he, I mean, he literally redid Driscoll's doctrines, the doctrine book, and we

I have to stop for a second. Wait, can we just talk about this. For, going hardcore Calvinism is not equal to going through Mark Driscoll's doctrine book. That is not hardcore Calvinism. Let's just face that.

Anyway, let's continue. Went through like a 12 week series of all the essential doctrines, had to sign a blood covenant. It wasn't a blood covenant. Had to sign an agreement, a church covenant agreement.

And I remember sitting with him and I had this conversation, and I'm still friends with this guy. We're acquaintances. It's all good. But I remember being a newlywed. I was maybe 26, 27. Me and my wife were newlyweds.

We both come from poverty. We both come just from just, I'm an immigrant. Dad wasn't in my life. My wife's family's been in and out of jail. And we discovered financial literacy, biblical financial literacy.

And what Ed just was doing for our marriage, how we were getting out of debt, how we were saving money on a budget, the fact that it impacted our own marriage and how we were closer in our marriage, how it, I mean, everything, sex life, physical, everything was just getting on this really tactical side of handling our finances.

And I was sitting here talking to him and I said, hey, I love the theology and the doctrines of grace. And I think that stuff is great, but I think people need a course. Like, we should take people through this FPU course with Dave Ramsey.

I think it would be very helpful. It's not just theology and head knowledge. No, this is really pragmatic, practical stuff. Not to say pragmaticism is always right, but it's really practical stuff. And he looked across to me and he said, we just need to tell people to preach the gospel to themselves.

And I said, yeah, gospel, important, but they need to know how to get on a budget. They need to know how to manage their money. They need to know how to communicate. They need to know how to use their big boy and big girl words.

They need to know how to have discipline. They need to have a plan for their life. And his, and the response to everything was just preach the gospel. You're dealing with pornography, just preach the gospel.

You're addicted to pills, just preach the gospel. And everything was just preach the gospel. And literally like, look in the mirror and preach the gospel to yourself. And that was like the magic bullet to everything.

And I don't mean to make a caricature out of him and say all Calvinists believe this, but it does seem to slip into this. If we know the right things, then we will instantly do the right things and behave the correct way.

Where a lot of times you need that bridge. You need a teacher to come in and say, hey, yeah, our life is not our own. Jesus is on the throne. Our money's not our own. Therefore, let's show you what a budget is.

Therefore, let's explain why debt is dumb according to Proverbs. Therefore, let's help you walk through this process so that you could change your family tree so that you don't have to keep living in poverty and your kids don't have to live in poverty.

The Need for Biblical Instruction Beyond “Preach the Gospel”

All right, stop right there, Ruslan. We're not gonna listen anymore. I know that some of you guys can only take so much Ruslan. There's some other good stuff he says in this. Ruslan, I said Ruslan. I was gonna call you brother.

Ruslan, you're right. This is a problem. I agree with this. Now, here's where I wanna differ from him a little bit because I believe that there are some really good preachers out there and teachers out there that would respond to many things, preach the gospel to yourself and things like that.

But when you look at the content of what they're saying, it also talks about applying the words of God to every area of your life. But Ruslan is dead on that many people that were kind of part of Calvinism when it was like the cool kids club, it's no longer that anymore.

Now, it's the social justice is the cool kids club. But at one point, Calvinism was kind of like a hipster sort of thing to do. And it's still sort of that way. I mean, you could see a lot of Calvinists and wearing their hipster glasses and they post their pictures of their Bible and their coffee on the Instagram when they're doing their devotionals.

And it's like a club still to some degree, but to the biggest degree, it's moved on to social justice. But he's right. A lot of these guys were in this. And I gotta be honest with you, this is kind of like a John Piper thing, right?

This is kind of a John Piper thing where you're walking around and you're just kind of like, preach the gospel all day to myself and just thinking all day about how great God is. And you're not thinking about anything else.

And I'm thinking to myself, well, hold on a second. You know, like 90 of my day, I'm like at work, I'm with my wife, I'm with my children, I'm doing lots of other things. So I'm not gonna be writing a poem about how great Christ is during 90 of my day.

Now, if you wanna spend some time writing a poem about how great Christ is, great. That's wonderful because a lot of beautiful poetry, a lot of good songs, a lot of good works of art are about how beautiful Christ is.

But that's not all of life. You see, the Bible is valuable and it provides instructions to every area of your life. So yes, we need to understand the gospel and we need to apply it to ourselves and to our situations, but becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ, what does it say in the Bible?

It says, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So the gospel is central of that. You need to preach the gospel. So how will they hear unless you're preaching?

Okay, so we get that. And then you baptize them in the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. They're initiated into the church. And then what does it say? We can't forget the second half of that commission, teaching them to observe everything that I've commanded.

Jesus commanded a lot more things besides the message of repentance and faith. He did preach the message of repentance and faith. Then you get baptized, but there's a lot of other teachings as well. And in fact, Jesus' words are not only the ones that are in red letters, but Jesus is God.

Like we believe that, right? So the word of God is the word of Christ. And so there's things in the Proverbs. He mentioned the Proverbs, you know, the rich rules over the poor. The borrower is the slave of the lender.

Yeah, debt is dumb, especially consumer debt. Now, certain kinds of, you know, business capital and stuff like that. Okay, I can understand why you might go into some debt there, but consumer debt, you know, to buy a PlayStation or a car or something like that, you really need to consider that because you don't want to be the slave to Wells Fargo, right?

Wells Fargo is not a righteous corporation. You don't want to be their servant. So it's like, here's the thing, guys, he's right. I had a pastor like this where it was just like, I could look at the back of the Cracker Jack box and I'll find the gospel there.

And I'm like, okay, great, what good is that? Because I actually need to learn how to live my life. And you see, here's the trick of this too. This is the other thing about this. The fact that they didn't have any content, you know, so they had the gospel, they could understand the salvation of sinners.

A lot of these new hipster Calvinist types, you know, we're talking about Driscoll, Chandler, Platt, all of these guys, they had this gospel, right? And it was the right gospel. And they had, but they had no content about making disciples, teaching them to observe everything.

They didn't have that. And many of us, and this is not because I'm better. This is not because I'm smarter. God was very kind to me. And when I became a Christian, I found thick books. And I mean thick as far as the content, not like that they were literally thick, but like heavy stuff where it was like, I got gospel and it was gospel on every page.

But I got that practical stuff that he's talking about because I found people that took the moral commands of Jesus Christ and the law of God very, very seriously. And they could understand how the law of God applies to every area of a Christian's life.

And we need to learn how to apply it because there's a big book of law in the scriptures and we cannot just discard it because, oh yeah, that's the old Testament. That's the old covenant. It's like, okay, yeah, it is the old Testament, but we need to figure out how that applies because Jesus taught that.

And what did Jesus say? If we're gonna make disciples of all nations, what do we do? We teach them to observe everything that Christ commanded. Jesus taught the old Testament law, brothers. He taught the old Testament law.

He also completed the old Testament law. So we need to work that out in our minds, but we can't just simply say that's old Testament. I don't have to worry about it. And so I found a lot of those guys.

And so when I heard this gospel centered movement where there was no content with the discipleship, it was just preach the gospel. How do you disciple someone? Oh, you preach the gospel to them. Wait, but what about when they're already converted and we gotta teach them what Christ told us to do?

No, to preach the gospel to them. Find it in the back of a Cracker Jack box. I'm like, no, no, no, that's like a kindergartner where you ask a kindergartner something and the answer is Jesus. Yeah, the answer is Jesus, but what's the content?

What did Jesus teach? It's yes, Jesus, but he taught something about this, right? Jesus, but he said things about this. So we can't just pretend like we're all kindergartners and we're gonna preach perpetually.

And a lot of these new Calvinist, hipster, tipster, dipster type of guys, and I would be willing to bet, I don't know this man, I don't know who he's talking about, but this pastor that he's talking about, who was kind of, you know, used to be charismatic and then I was a secret sensitive and then I became a Calvinist.

He certainly seems like he was probably in that hipster, dipster variety of Calvinism. And so just preach the gospel to yourself. Just, yeah, but I still, yeah, but I'm still shooting myself up. Like, what do I do?

And so anyway, Ruslan, he's right about this, guys. And here's the trick. Sorry, I got sidetracked. A lot of these guys that were like this, where it's just preach the gospel to yourself, they've now realized that they have to have content in the discipling people, teaching them to observe everything Christ commanded, but they still wanna reject the law of God.

And so what have a lot of these hipster, dipster Calvinists have done? They've become social justice warriors. They've become social justice Pharisees. They've now replaced the law of God, which is what they should be teaching.

They should have been teaching it from the beginning with a different law and saying it's gospel imperatives. It's gospel centered. It's a gospel issue to give black people money from the government because they were oppressed or it's a gospel issue.

And if you don't agree with that, you're not preaching the gospel now. So now see what they've done. They've recognized there's a hole there. In fact, I remember speaking to this one, kind of C-lister evangelical celebrity where he was exasperated at me.

He said, so at first you said we don't, we were antinomian and now you're complaining that we have a law. I'm like, yes, because you've replaced the real law with a fake law. You've replaced God's law with the law of Christian Dumas or CNN or, you know, Ibram Kendi X, whatever, however you pronounce his name.

Like that's a problem too. Like you can't be a Pharisee about it. And so I gotta be honest with you. Like this is not, and actually I gotta give Ruth on another piece of credit here because he starts, this is a little bit of click baity, my issue with Calvinism.

It's really not an issue with Calvinism. It's really an issue with reformed hipster tipster culture because this was a cultural thing. Because the thing is I was lucky. And my journey into becoming a Christian, actually when I lived in New York, I was just a rampant pagan, right?

But I also had become a libertarian as well. And I started discovering this one website, lewrockwell .com. I think Lew Rockwell's a Roman Catholic, but I don't know if he's that religious. But anyway, there was one columnist on lewrockwell .com named Gary North.

And I used to love Gary North's columns. They were so practical and he broke things down in a way that I could understand it. And he talked about macroeconomics, microeconomics. So it was like not only practical in my life, but also practical to the world stage as well.

And I loved it. And when I became a Christian, I was, I remember what, I don't remember what I was doing, but I was reading some works and I saw someone mentioned the name Gary North. And I was like, what?

And I looked it up and it turns out Gary North was this like hardcore Presbyterian, you know, super like legitimate Christian, not just one that says he's a Christian to get brownie points, like an actual Christian.

I'm like, wow. And so I instantly discovered this kind of, you know, we're gonna actually disciple people, teaching them everything Christ commanded, how it applies to their practical lives. Gary North, by the way, has a free get out of debt kind of program.

That's pretty old, but it's still applicable. And it's way better than Ramsey's in my opinion. The content is better and the investing advice is also better than Dave Ramsey. But take nothing away from James Ramsey.

He's a little bit of a boomer, but if you're trying to get out of debt, his system for getting out of debt is good. It's definitely good. But here's the thing though. I gotta give Rusan credit here. He's right about this.

The hipster dipster Calvinism out there was it could get you saved, but then it's like, okay, now what? And it's like, when you ask the question, now what? It was essentially worthless. It was essentially worthless.

And now they've realized that. And now that's why they've all become social justice warriors now, because they had no law. They knew they needed to replace it with something. You can't just have this big hole in your theology where there is no law, there is no real discipleship besides Jesus is the answer to everything, but we're not gonna tell you how.

That's nonsense. They realized they had this hole, so they filled it with social justice advocacy. And it's just corrupting so many people. So many people have been corrupted by this hipster dipster Calvinism.

I'm gonna put a lot of the blame at the feet of John Piper for this, where your head's in the clouds and you're not actually, I won't even defend my wife from an intruder because I'm just so spiritual.

Like, no, you're not. You're not spiritual at all. You're actually abdicating your responsibility if you're not gonna defend your wife. I mean, it's just that simple. I can't think of a better example than that stupid article of what I'm talking about here.

I won't defend my wife from an intruder with a gun because I'm too spiritual for that. You're not spiritually fooling yourself. Anyway, Ruslan, I'm gonna give you mad props, man. Listen, you never were a Calvinist.

That much is clear. And this is not the problem of Calvinism because Calvinism is robust. Calvinism, especially Calvinism that takes the law of God seriously, like the way Calvin did, it's robust. It applies to every era of your life.

It gives you practical content because we don't discard the Old Testament. But I'll tell you what, this reformed culture here, back when I was growing up in the faith, it was poisonous in this way. And now they've all become social justice warriors.

So I guess congratulations. Anyway, I hope you found this video helpful. God bless.