God, Calvinism, Political Correctness and the Worship of the State

A denial of Calvinism leads to politically correct thought and the worship of the state as a god? This bold contention is defended ably by Doug Wilson's innocuously titled He Who Says A, Must Say B. Quote!

As soon as Calvinism is denied, divine predestination is denied. And when predestination is denied, it soon occurs to the ranking civil authorities that the role of "predestinator" is vacant. The job of running everyone's life (as God had previously been thought to do) is now vacant. And so the State applies for the job (and not surprisingly, hires itself). The choice is simple -- either God is acknowledged as the one who predestines, or man will attempt to become the one who predestines.

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What happens next is the tricky part. The State cannot actually deal with the evil, although they have promised to. And they cannot admit that they are not god, and that they shouldn't have promised to do what only God can do. So what they can do is command everybody to shut up and look the other way. Extreme cases of this are found in totalitarian regimes, where they feel like they would "lose face" if they admitted that they just had a major earthquake that killed 100,000 people. This kind of thing flummoxes us. What? Why would any government lose face over something like that? Because they have claimed to be god, and the people have accepted the claim. Therefore, they must confront the problem of evil. Why was there this earthquake? The logic is compelling, and answers are very hard to come by. Much easier to throw a newspaper editor in jail if he reports on the earthquake.

Read the whole thing here.