Is God dishonest ?

The atonement was made for the elect. If you believe in unlimited atonement, then you are a universalist. That said, you don't have to accept limited atonement and all of a sudden become a Calvinist. It is an understanding. Christ death is sufficient to save everyone, but it is efficient only for those who believe. That is, it is applied only to those who believe, who are the elect. (And we have no idea who they are, only God knows.)

Man goes to hell for rejecting the gospel I’ve never said otherwise. 

continued:

A PROBLEM FOR GOD’S CHARACTER AND
REPUTATION

Regardless of the above prima facie contradictions of double
predestination, Calvinists do defend this theology in various ways. I think I
have understood them correctly, but I still do not think these defenses hold
up.

Some Calvinists simply turn aside objections to double predestination
by saying: “It is not within the creature’s jurisdiction to call [God] into
question.”29 This is, of course, hardly a defense, but it is a response.
Strangely, nearly all Calvinists do nevertheless attempt to defend God’s
goodness, so one wonders how seriously to take this response to criticism.
Furthermore, it is not God whom critics of Calvinism are calling into
question. It is Calvinists’ beliefs about God that we are questioning! There
is a difference. The frequency with which one encounters this rejection of
criticism leads to the conclusion that at least some Calvinists have trouble
distinguishing between their own doctrine of God and God himself. Like
everyone else, Calvinists should be willing to at least consider the
possibility that there are serious deficiencies and flaws in their doctrinal
beliefs.

Many Calvinist theologians go beyond attempts to turn aside criticisms
with statements about “not questioning God.” Many do offer strategies for
defending God’s good character, God’s reputation, in the face of critical
questions from non-Calvinists. The main issue they address is simply this:
How can God be said to be good, loving, and just in the face of these
doctrines of high Calvinism? How is God good, loving, and just toward the
reprobate? How is God not arbitrary in his choosing some to save
unconditionally while leaving others to damnation? And a related critical
question is: How can the gospel call be given out as a well-meant offer to
all if some have already been chosen by God for damnation and thus have
no chance at all, whatsoever, of being accepted by God? (This last question
rises to an especially intense pitch in relation to the next point of TULIP —
limited atonement.)

Another way of asking the same set of questions is to pose passages of
Scripture to Calvinists and ask how they reconcile their belief in
reprobation-predestination with them? For example, John 3:16: “For God so
loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in
him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Note also the verses quoted
earlier: 1 Timothy 2:4; 2 Peter 3:9; and 1 John 4:8. How is God love if he
foreordains many people to hell for eternity when he could save them
because election to salvation is always completely unconditional and has
nothing to do with character or choices? How is it that God wants all people
to be saved if he determines some specific individuals to be damned? How
is it that God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezek. 18:32) if he
foreordains everything, including their reprobation and eternal punishment,
for his good pleasure? How is God good if he purposefully withheld from
Adam the grace he needed not to fall — knowing that Adam’s fall would
result in the horrors of sin and evil and innocent suffering of history?
First, some answers from John Calvin. Calvin had little interest in
defending God’s character; for him, whatever God does is right, and it is
wrong to question God regardless of how unjust his actions seem to be. He
frequently chided those who peer into God’s mysteries too deeply (e.g., by
seeking a cause or reason beyond simply that God willed something) or
who accuse God of acting unjustly (by which he seems also to mean those
who accuse his doctrine of God of ruining God’s reputation).30
However, Calvin did attempt to explain some Scriptures that might
seem to conflict with his arguments about God’s double predestination.
With regard to God’s reprobation of some in light of the “all” passages of
Scripture he wrote:

God is said to have ordained from eternity those whom he wills to
embrace in love, and those upon whom he wills to vent his wrath.
Yet he announces salvation to all men indiscriminately. I maintain
that these statements agree perfectly with each other. For by so
promising he merely means that his mercy is extended to all,
provided they seek after it and implore it. But only those whom he
has illumined do this. And he illumines those whom he has
predestined to salvation. These latter possess the sure and unbroken
truth of the promises, so that one cannot speak of any disagreement
between God’s eternal election and the testimony of his grace that he
offers to believers.31

This only seems to deepen the mystery. If this is intended to answer the
question of how these statements agree perfectly with each other, I don’t see
how it accomplishes that. As great a thinker and communicator as Calvin
was, I sometimes find his explanations obscure if not evasive.

Calvin says more about this problem. First, he argues that “none
undeservedly perish.”32 That is why God is just in punishing the reprobate;
they deserve it. Why do they deserve it? Because of their “malice and
perverseness.”33 How does it come about that they continue in their malice
and perverseness rather than repent and believe like the elect? “That they
may come to their end, he [God] sometimes deprives them of the capacity
to hear his word; at other times he, rather, blinds and stuns them by the
preaching of it.”34 Why does God do this to the reprobate? “He who here
seeks a deeper cause than God’s secret and inscrutable plan will torment
himself to no purpose.”35 Is Calvin getting anywhere toward resolving the
problem? I don’t see how that is the case; he seems merely to be deepening
the dilemma of God’s goodness.

How does Calvin interpret 1 Timothy 2:3 – 4, the clearest revelation
that God desires the salvation of all men? “By this Paul surely means only
that God has not closed the way unto salvation to any order of men; rather,
he has so poured out his mercy that he would have none without it.” In
other words, all 1 Timothy 2:3 – 4 (and no doubt 2 Peter 3:9) means is that
God wants some people of every tribe and nation to be saved but not every
individual person. That hardly fits the language of 1 Timothy 2:4, however,
which specifically says “all men,” meaning “all people” — not all kinds of
people.

So why does God reprobate some and not elect all to salvation? In some
places Calvin leaves this in the realm of mystery, but in at least one instance
he speculates: “The reprobate are raised up to the end [purpose] that
through them God’s glory may be revealed.”36 Those who accuse God of
being unjust (or just accuse this doctrine of making God unjust!) are
dismissed by Calvin as “foolish men [who] contend with God.”37 He
impatiently declares that whatever God does is right and just simply
because God does it, and there is no explanation for what God does other
than “because he has willed it.”38 Nowhere does he even attempt to justify
God or reconcile his doctrine with God’s love. The only love of God he
mentions is God’s love for the elect.

Fortunately, many Calvinists have not been satisfied to leave the matter
there. As one progresses forward toward the modern age and into the
postmodern world of the early twenty-first century, one finds many
Calvinists increasingly interested in justifying the ways of God.
Jonathan Edwards wrote an entire essay on “The Justice of God in the
Damnation of Sinners.” In it he stuck rather close to Calvin’s approach,
although somewhat more emphatically and defensively (perhaps because of
the rising Enlightenment tendency to question God’s justice). Again, as
with Calvin, Edwards’ emphasis falls on God’s justice rather than his love,
which he hardly mentions. Here is what Edwards says to those who
question God’s justice in damning for eternity to hell those he foreordained
and even rendered certain to fall into sin and remain there:
When men are fallen, and become sinful, God by his sovereignty has
a right to determine about their redemption as he pleases. He has a
right to determine whether he will redeem any or not. He might, if
he had pleased, have left all to perish, or might have redeemed all.
Or, he may redeem some, and leave others; and if he doth so, he may
take whom he pleases, and leave whom he pleases.39

This hardly solves the problem of God’s justice, however, as the “men”
who are fallen, whom God has a right to dispose of as he wills, fell by
God’s foreordination and predestining power. Again, the question that
naturally arises and that Edwards doesn’t answer is this: What meaning do
“goodness,” “justice,” and “love” have in such a context? Like Calvin,
Edwards seems most interested in turning aside any and all questions about
God’s justice in reprobating and punishing people. The only answer he
offers is that whatever God does is right and above fault. He simply
assumes that his interpretation of what God does is the only reasonable one
in light of Scriptures such as Romans 9.

What did Boettner say about God’s goodness in light of his reprobation
of people? He first makes clear beyond any doubt that God’s sole purpose
in reprobation is his glory; without it God’s justice could not be sufficiently
displayed — and that is one of the purposes of creation and redemption.40
Of course, this raises the question of why it is just for God to punish the
reprobate, and Boettner simply avers that they sinned “voluntarily.”41 In
light of his explanations, cited and discussed in the previous chapter, it
seems an odd use of “voluntarily” since God has determined it. For him,
obviously, “voluntarily” does not mean they could do otherwise than they
do. Is that a natural meaning of “voluntary,” and does it answer or just raise
more questions about God’s justice? Boettner doesn’t seem to recognize this
problem, or he prefers to overlook it. And he doesn’t really deal with the
love of God except to say (oddly) that “God in his love saves as many of the
guilty race of men as He can get the consent of His whole nature to
save.”42 One can only respond with an astonished, “What?”

At least Boettner, in contrast to Calvin and Edwards and some other
Calvinists, takes a shot at answering the question. But doesn’t it raise more
questions? Is God limited in some way? Why can’t he get the consent of his
“whole nature” to save everyone? The obvious implication, given
everything else Boettner says, is that God must damn some in order to
display his attribute of justice and thereby glorify himself. So God’s need to
glorify himself (and “need” is the right word, given Boettner’s language of
divine limitation in relation to the extent of salvation) overrides and
controls his love.

This is exactly what non-Calvinists worry about with regard to
Calvinism: that its deep, inner logic leads inexorably to exalting God’s
glory over and even against his love. Apparently, God can (or must) limit
his love, but he can’t limit his self-glorification. I would put it the other way
around and say that in light of Christ’s self-emptying (Phil. 2), God can
limit his glory (power, majesty, sovereignty) but not his love (because God
is love; see 1 John 4!).

Boettner argues that God is not arbitrary in his judgments, meaning that
his choice of whom to save is not a matter of tossing the dice.43 He says
that God “has his reasons” even if we cannot even guess what they are.44
Herein lies another problem. Like all Calvinists, Boettner states that God’s
choice of people to elect is absolutely unconditional; it has nothing to do
with anything God sees in the ones he elects.45 Just as reprobation is the
necessary flip side of election, so choosing to pass over some in choosing to
elect others must necessarily have nothing to do with anything especially
bad God sees in them. All are equally worthy of eternal punishment. Once
choosing on the basis of something particular about the ones chosen, either
for election or reprobation, is ruled out, what is left? I argue all that is left,
and this is a matter of sheer logic, is arbitrary choice — “eenie, meenie,
miney, mo.” There is no conceivable third alternative.

Imagine that you confront your child because you find his or her name
written in crayon on the bedroom wall. He or she denies doing it. You ask,
“Then who did it?” and the child says, “Someone else.” Then you respond,
“But wait, this is your room and your name is written on the wall and
nobody but you has been here since I last saw the wall and then your name
wasn’t written on it.” Your child says, “Okay, I didn’t do it, but neither did
someone else.” What will your response be? Might you believe that
explanation? Why not? Couldn’t there be a third possibility? Unless you
believe the house to be haunted or something, you probably won’t seriously
consider your child’s explanation. The graffiti writer has to be either the
child or someone else; there is no conceivable third possibility. So it is with
Boettner’s “explanation” (the same one used by most Calvinists) that God
doesn’t choose arbitrarily but also doesn’t choose based on anything special
about the persons he chooses. There is no third alternative. It has to be
arbitrary if it is absolutely unconditional.

Unlike Boettner and other Calvinists, Edwards seems to have accepted,
at least once, that God’s choice between the elect and nonelect is arbitrary.
This may come as a shock to many later Calvinists who object vehemently
to this accusation about the Calvinist God. In his famous (or infamous)
sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” Edwards appealed to
“God’s arbitrary will” to explain God’s treatment of the nonelect.46 This is
at least honest, bold, and consistent, but it raises serious issues for the
character and ways of God.

How does Boettner deal with the “all” passages of Scripture? With
regard to John 3:16 and similar verses, he says that “world” does not mean
every individual person. It means all kinds of people.47 Since so many
Calvinists give this explanation, I’ll save most of my critique of it for later
in this chapter when I summarize problems with Calvinist explanations of
God’s reprobation. For now, suffice it to say this interpretation of “world”
hardly works as it would require that numerous references to the whole
world as fallen would mean only that people of all kinds are fallen.
For example, John 1:10 says that the “world” (same Greek word as John
3:16) did not recognize the Word when he came. If “world” in John 3:16
means “all kinds of people,” then John 1:11 possibly means that only some
persons — of all kinds of people but not everyone — did not recognize
Jesus as the Son of God. No Calvinist interprets John 1:11 that way!
Boettner’s interpretation of John 3:16 seems forced. Although he does not
come right out and say, “God hates the nonelect and that is why he
reprobates them,” he more than implies it. So, I judge it fair and safe to say
that Boettner, like many Calvinists, does not think God is love as 1 John 4:8
says, or at least he falls into inconsistency in his handling of the matter. If
God’s very nature is love, then he loves everyone and not just some people
“of every kind.” (Of course, that assumes once again that “love” in God is
analogous to and not totally different from the best of love as we know it.
With Helm I assume that; otherwise the word means nothing.)

What about 1 Timothy 2:4 that says God wants “all people” to be
saved? Boettner explains: “Verses such as 1 Timothy 2:4, it seems, are best
understood not to refer to men individually but as teaching the general truth
that God is benevolent and that He does not delight in the sufferings and
death of His creatures.”48 One can only ask how that is a possible
interpretation of that verse? Also, how can God not delight in what he has
himself foreordained and rendered certain for his glory? Doesn’t he delight
in being glorified? This is a Calvinist conundrum, to be sure. But Boettner
adds this: “It is true that some verses taken in themselves do seem to imply
the Arminian position [i.e., that God really desires the salvation of everyone
and makes it possible]. This, however, would reduce the Bible to a mass of
contradictions.”49 One could just as easily turn that around and substitute
“the Calvinist position” for “the Arminian position” and it would be truer.
Sproul wrestles admirably but ultimately unsuccessfully with the
problem of God’s goodness, love, and justice in the face of his reprobation
of many human persons whom he could save. First, he admits that God
foreordained sin, and I’m sure I have quoted him enough times to make
clear that he also believes God rendered it certain.50 Yet, he argues, God is
not responsible for sin; we are.

51 God is just to condemn the reprobate
because they hate him and are wicked: “Is there any reason that a righteous
God ought to be loving toward a creature who hates him and rebels
constantly against his divine authority and holiness?”52 One can only
respond . . . yes. Because it is his nature to love! (1 John 4:8). Also,
Romans 5:8 – 10 says that God loved sinners while they were still sinners
and gave up Christ for them! Sproul verges on depicting God as not having
a loving nature; he more than implies that God loves some and hates others
when all have hated him and rebelled against his authority and holiness.53
That brings us back to the issue of arbitrariness.

Sproul faces the issue of God’s seeming arbitrariness and lack of
fairness (and I would add apparent lovelessness) in double predestination:
“The nasty problem for the Calvinist [is] . . . if God can and does choose to
insure the salvation of some, why then does he not insure the salvation of
all?”54 Indeed, why not? Here is Sproul’s answer:

The only answer I can give to this question is that I don’t know. I
have no idea why God saves some but not all. I don’t doubt for a
moment that God has the power to save all, but I know that he does
not choose to save all. I don’t know why. . . . One thing I do know. If
it pleases God to save some and not all, there is nothing wrong with
that. God is not under obligation to save anybody. If he chooses to
save some, that in no way obligates him to save the rest.55
Sproul then objects to non-Calvinists raising this as an issue of fairness
and says God does not have to answer to our standards of fairness.56 Fair
enough. But fairness isn’t the main issue. The main issue, which Sproul
skirts, is love. If God could save everybody because election to salvation is
unconditional and if God is by nature love, why doesn’t he? The only
answers Sproul can offer are (1) he doesn’t love everybody, and (2) God
can do whatever he wants to do because he isn’t obligated to do anything
for anyone. These answers demean God and impugn his goodness and do
damage to his reputation, which is based on his morally perfect character.
What does Sproul say about 1 Timothy 2:4? Nothing. I have not been
able to find any explanation of that important passage in Sproul’s writings,
but he has written so much I may not have found it. However, in Chosen by
God he does ask about 2 Peter 3:9, which says much the same but perhaps
not as forcefully. Insofar as God does not want “anyone to perish, but
everyone to come to repentance,” Sproul says “anyone” means “the
elect.”57 That doesn’t work in light of 1 Timothy 2:4, however, which
clearly refers to every person without exception. (Is that why Sproul passes
over that passage without comment?)

Sproul takes another route as well. He suggests that the Bible speaks
“more than one way” about God’s will.58 First, he says, there is God’s
“sovereign, efficacious will.” This is what other Calvinists have called
God’s “decretive will.” Then there is God’s “preceptive will” (his
commands). Finally, there is “God’s disposition — what is pleasing to
him.”59 So, according to this interpretation of 2 Peter 3:9 (and by extension
1 Tim. 2:4), it is saying that God wishes all could be saved even though he
doesn’t intend to save everyone.

Sproul says it makes God sad to punish the wicked.60 He uses an
analogy of a judge who must sentence his beloved son to prison. He has to
do it, but it hurts him. The analogy, of course, breaks down entirely. The
judge in the illustration did not foreordain and render certain his son’s
crime. If he had, he would be wrong to sentence him to prison! Also, the
judge in the analogy is obligated to sentence his son to prison; according to
Sproul, God is not obligated to save anyone and could save everyone.
Finally, what if Sproul’s judge sentenced his own son to prison but freed
another young man who committed the same crime? Wouldn’t everyone
question the judge’s love for his son?

Let’s change the analogy a bit. Suppose a judge sat on his bench and
wept as he sentenced his son to prison for armed robbery. Then it came to
light that he used behavioral conditioning to make his son believe armed
robbery is good and right and drove him to the bank to rob it. Then it also
came to light that the judge granted clemency to another young man who
also robbed a bank in exactly the same manner as his son. Who would think
that judge was good? And yet that is a better analogy to Sproul’s double
predestination than his!

What about the problem of God’s seeming arbitrariness in election and
reprobation? Sproul says, “God doesn’t do anything without a reason. He is
not capricious or whimsical.”61 But what reason might he have for
choosing John for salvation and Bob for damnation? He makes abundantly
clear that election and reprobation are absolutely unconditional. So, his
final word on the issue is that God chooses “according to the good will of
his pleasure. . . . God predestines us according to what pleases him. . . .
What pleases God is goodness. . . . Though the reason for choosing us does
not lie in us but in the sovereign divine pleasure, we may rest assured that
the sovereign divine pleasure is a good pleasure.”62 Once again, I can only
respond with a stunned or bemused, “Huh?”

Back to the analogy I offered above in response to Boettner’s claim that
God’s choice is not arbitrary but also not based on anything about the
people he chooses. Sproul’s appeal to God’s “good pleasure” says nothing
about how God chooses. After ruling out anything God sees in or about the
people he chooses (e.g., a free response to the gospel enabled by his grace)
and also ruling out arbitrary choice, what’s left? Nothing conceivable. To
say “God’s good pleasure” is, then, to say (as Edwards did at least once)
“arbitrary choice.”

John Piper tackles the problem of God’s love in relation to his choice of
some to suffer in the flames of hell for eternity for his glory with great vigor
and imagination. First, how does he deal with the “all” passages of the New
Testament and Ezekiel 18:23 — which he calls “the Arminian pillar
texts?”63 He appeals to two wills of God: “God decrees one state of affairs
while also willing and teaching that a different state of affairs should come
to pass.”64 In other words, God wills that some perish and at the same time
wills that none perish. “As a hearty believer in unconditional, individual
election I rejoice to affirm that God does not delight in the perishing of the
impenitent, and that he has compassion on all people. My aim is to show
that this is not double talk.”65

So how does he show that it is not double talk? Piper writes about God’s
“complex feelings and motives.”66 On the one hand, God loves his glory
above all else: “God elects, predestines, and secures for one great ultimate
purpose — that the glory of his grace might be praised forever and with
white-hot affection.”67 But in spite of the fact that God gets glory from
election and reprobation (he agrees with those who argue they are
inseparable as two sides of a coin), he also loves the nonelect and has
genuine compassion on them. He claims that God has “universal love for all
creatures” that is not the love he has for the elect. So this is his explanation
of John 3:16 and 1 John 4:8. “There is a general love of God that he
bestows on all his creatures.”68 But in spite of loving all people in some
way, God only loves some people in the best way. His love for the nonelect
appears in the temporal blessings he gives them. (I cannot resist saying
again that Piper’s view here amounts to saying that God provides the
nonelect with a little bit of heaven to go to hell in!)
What about God’s love and compassion for the nonelect? Piper avers
that God has “a true compassion, which is yet restrained, in the case of the
nonelect, by consistent and holy reasons, from taking the form of a volition
to regenerate.”69 Moreover, “I affirm that God loves the world with a deep
compassion that desires their salvation; yet I also affirm that he has chosen
from before the foundation of the world whom he will save from sin.
Election is the good news that salvation is not only a sincere offer made to
all, but a sure effect in the life of the elect.”70
To illustrate and defend his idea of these two wills in God Piper tells the
story of George Washington and a certain Major Andre who had committed
some treasonous acts during the Revolutionary War.
71 As the story goes,
Washington sentenced Major Andre to death even though he had the power
to pardon him. The future president and commander-in-chief of the
Continental Army had great compassion on Major Andre as he signed his
death warrant, which was judged necessary to uphold duty and policy. Piper
compares this with God’s complex feelings and emotions as he condemns
the reprobate.

But does this analogy work any better than Sproul’s analogy of the
judge sentencing his son? The answer is no, it does not. First, if Piper is
right, if Washington were truly comparable to God, he would have designed
and governed Major Andre’s crime and seen to it that he committed it. Who
would consider Washington good for sentencing Major Andre to death if
that were the case — no matter how “necessary” it was to uphold duty and
policy?

Second, if Major Andre were truly comparable to the reprobate in
Piper’s theology, he would not have been able to do otherwise than commit
his crime. Piper denies libertarian free will. Who would consider Major
Andre deserving of death if he were controlled by someone else?
(Remember that, even though Piper believes people always act according to
their strongest motives — Edwards’ view of “free will” — his God is also
the all-determining reality and thus must be the ultimate cause of creatures’
controlling motives.)

Third, the analogy implies a limitation of God — something surely
Piper does not want to admit given his powerful elevation of God’s
supremacy in all things. Washington was obligated to sentence Major Andre
to death; he felt duty bound to do it and he was accountable to others, such
as the Continental Congress, his fellow officers and soldiers, and the
citizens of the colonies. To whom is God accountable? If he feels such great
compassion for the reprobate, why doesn’t he just pardon them? He could,
unless he is limited and controlled by something over which he has no
power. After all, remember, in Calvinism God’s election to salvation is
absolutely unconditional. Back to the problem of Edwards’ implicit
dependency of God on the world!

Finally, the analogy breaks down because to be a valid analogy,
Washington would have to have already pardoned at least one other person
who committed exactly the same crime as Major Andre. After all, according
to Piper, that’s what God does — pardons (elects to salvation
unconditionally) a lot of people who are no better than the ones he
reprobates. Who would consider Washington “compassionate” in that case?
Wouldn’t he be considered arbitrary and capricious and suspected of just
wanting to show his severity?72

What about the problem of the gospel call and invitation if God has
already chosen some to be damned? Many of the Calvinist authors surveyed
here do not directly address the problem: How can the gospel call be given
out as a well-meant offer to all (which most Calvinists affirm) if some have
already been chosen by God for damnation and have no chance at all of
being accepted by God? Piper answers the question briefly in “Are There
Two Wills in God?” He says, “Unconditional election [and by extension, of
course, reprobation] . . . does not nullify sincere offers of salvation to
everyone who is lost among all the peoples of the world.”73 Of course, this
is just an assertion; it falls short of an explanation.
This is a huge problem for anyone who believes it is appropriate for a
preacher of the gospel to make an offer of salvation to everyone within his
hearing. Yet, most evangelical Calvinists do believe that is legitimate even
though the preacher knows there are probably many present who cannot
respond and for whom the invitation is impossible to accept because God
has closed the door on the possibility of their coming to faith and Christ did
not die for them!

I never did like misunderstanding. The same is true in Calvinism. Man goes to hell for rejecting the gospel. It is no different. One has to step back to God, the Creator of all, and see that He chose to save some from that fate. If you keep it at the level of man, you are going to come up with a God you treat as a man. This is an issue I have with those who are anti-Calvinist, that is blatantly so. (I don't consider myself a calvinist, just calvinistic. Blatantly anti-calvinist means that you find nothing in common with the beliefs Calvinists hold.) God can do as He pleases. Consider what God told Miriam and Aaron when they attempted to usurp Moses' position. What was on reason that God was angry with Aaron and Miriam? They showed no fear of God in questioning and facing Moses. They knew God had chosen Moses, yet they showed not a shred of fear in attempting to usurp Moses' position. And what did God do? He left Miriam leprous, after explaining to them that it doesn't matter what they want, God is God, and He does as He wills. Men should fear when they approach God, or speak of anything that brings God into question. (Such as "Is God dishonest". Is there any reason why God shouldn't see such a question any differently then He saw Miriam and Aaron who questioned Moses position for marrying a Cushite woman? They felt justified in questioning Moses because he didn't take an Israelite for a wife, but a foreigner. God told them that they should still approach with fear. 

I did. At this time I am working 12 hour night shifts, so I don't have the time to head over yet. (Tomorrow I do). I can only do so much, so I have to pick and choose.