Why would you get slammed? I'm very sweet and friendly!
I also enjoy an honest discussion in which people keep an open mind, will consider all sides of an issue, and aren't dogmatic about something that it's impossible to prove (such as
all babies go to heaven).
I do reject the entire Calvinist idea of predestination; not only is the very thought that God would create people with the express intention of sending them to hell abhorrent, but I believe I can refute it with one verse from Scripture:
"Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire,
prepared for the devil and his angels." (Matt 25:41) It was never God's intention for people to go to hell; they go there by their own choice because they reject Him. God is perfect and doesn't make mistakes; I'm sure He wouldn't "forget" to have those whom He used to give us His Word to include, "...as well as those who refuse the gift of salvation."
(For the record, I'm not an Armenian either - I take an entirely Biblical stance rather than accept the doctrines of men that, IMHO, complicate something that was always intended to be very simple so that anyone could understand it.)
Now, granted, in our limited human minds there's a lot that we can't understand; for example, how can Jesus be 100% God
and 100% man? Nothing can be 200% - yet, He is.
I've been thinking about this issue a lot, and here's what I think. (NOTE: This is only "theoryology,' not theology.)
We know that love not freely given by a human isn't real love at all, right? Sure, God could have created man to love Him unconditionally, as the animals do...but, like animals, if man didn't have free will they wouldn't be any more than pets, and not creatures made in God's image with whom He could fellowship. So, that begs the question: Why did God even bother to create the people He knew would choose to reject Him?
(As an aside, the fact the He doesn't just "erase" them so that they would cease to exist after death seems to strongly suggest that life, once created, cannot be eradicated - it goes on forever. But...that's a whole other topic.)
Anyway, perhaps when God created humans He put into them a sort of (for want of a better word) "wild card," in that He wouldn't know if they would accept Him until
after they were created. In that case, since He's outside the human realm of time, He can see the end of history from the beginning and thus would know which persons would accept Jesus' sacrifice and which would reject it. (Incidentally, the Jews believe that when God created the world, at the same time He created every soul that would ever live.) So, "predestination" wouldn't be as the Calvinists describe it, but rather merely His foreknowing of how each person would choose.
Following that line of thought, if the "wild card" wasn't activated until
after the creation of a soul, God wouldn't know until then who would love Him and who would reject Him, but He
would know even from the womb...in which case Psalm 58:3 makes a whole lot more sense: after all, an omnibenevolent God wouldn't create people who were intended to be wicked just so they could be damned forever.
Again, let me emphasize, this is only "theoryology." We won't know the truth of how it all comes down until we get to heaven, but of one thing we can be assured: "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" (Gen. 18:25)