WHEN THE SYSTEM DOESN’T MATCH THE LIFE

I am not condemning any brother. I am questioning a system. There is a difference. Faithful men can preach sincerely while standing inside theological frameworks that quietly contradict both the Bible and their own lived reality. And sometimes the clearest way to see a system’s weakness is not by attacking its logic, but by noticing what it produces.

There is a well-known strand of modern Calvinism that insists God determines everything—every action, every response, every outcome—down to the smallest detail. Human freedom is redefined, sometimes nearly erased. God alone acts; humanity merely responds as programmed.

And yet, many who preach this most strongly live lives marked by exceptional discipline, long-term planning, personal initiative, financial success, and institutional influence. That tension should give us pause.

Here is the question that will not go away:

If God sovereignly and irresistibly determines every outcome, why does the preacher’s personal wisdom, labor, strategy, and persistence matter so much in practice?

Scripture never pits God’s sovereignty against real human response. It holds them together. “Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve” (Joshua 24:15). “Why will you die…? Turn and live!” (Ezekiel 18:31-32). “How often I wanted to gather your children together…but you were not willing” (Matthew 23:37). These are not illusions. They are appeals—real, urgent, meaningful.

The irony is striking when someone fiercely denounces the prosperity gospel—and rightly rejects its manipulative promises—while living in visible prosperity produced by decades of effort, consistency, publishing, speaking, building, and branding.

Prosperity itself is not the problem. The Bible never condemns diligence bearing fruit (Proverbs 10:4). The problem arises when a theology denies meaningful human participation, yet a life quietly depends on it.

The New Testament presents a different picture. Paul says plainly, “I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10). That is not determinism. That is cooperation. Grace did not replace Paul’s effort—it empowered it. God worked with him, not instead of him.

Jesus Himself constantly treated people as genuinely responsible. He marveled at faith. He rebuked unbelief. He invited, warned, pleaded. None of that makes sense if outcomes are fixed and human response is only apparent. A system that explains away these tensions may feel tidy, but it flattens the relational heart of the gospel.

And this matters pastorally. A rigid deterministic theology can quietly produce spiritual passivity in ordinary believers—If God has already decided everything, why strive? Why repent urgently? Why plead with sinners? Yet the very leaders who preach it do not live passively. They plan, write, organize, lead, and build with remarkable intentionality. Their lives testify—whether they admit it or not—that choices matter.

The gospel is better than that. God is sovereign—absolutely. But He is not threatened by human response. Love that cannot be refused is not love; obedience with no alternative is not obedience. Scripture presents a God who rules without coercion, who invites without illusion, and who holds people accountable because their choices are real.

I am not attacking any man. I am questioning a system that asks believers to deny, theologically, what even its strongest advocates affirm by the way they live.

And perhaps that quiet contradiction is not hypocrisy—but evidence that the system itself cannot bear the full weight of biblical truth.

BDD