I spent a decade working with people the system forgot. Men sleeping in storage closets. Kids aging out of foster care with a plastic bag of possessions. Women with addictions deeper than their desire to escape them. People whom predestination had apparently decided against.
The doctrine of election, when filtered through a cheap theology, sounds something like this:
"God chose some people to go to heaven. He did not choose others to go to heaven. Those others are predestined to hell. It's not their fault, and it's not God's fault — it's just how the universe was ordered before time began."
It's called TULIP. An acronym that has somehow become the skeleton key to understanding God's character.
T = Total Depravity
U = Unconditional Election
L = Limited Atonement
I = Irresistible Grace
P = Perseverance of the Saints
Now, there's a reason smart people find TULIP compelling. The logical structure is airtight. The system is self-consistent. Point to a verse that seems to contradict it, and there's already a predetermined explanation ready to absorb the contradiction.
Systems like that are called "unfalsifiable." Nothing can prove them wrong because they've built in defenses against every objection.
They are also called "idolatry." When a system becomes more authoritative than reality, you've stopped worshipping God and started worshipping the system.
The Test
Here's how I test theology: does it produce love?
Not in theory. In practice.
If a theology is true, the people who hold it should be marked by the character of the God they claim to follow. Yeshua said the greatest commandments are to love God and love your neighbor as yourself. Everything in the Torah and the prophets hangs on these two commandments.
That's the measure.
So when I look at TULIP, I don't ask "is the logic internally consistent?" I ask: "Do the people who embrace this theology look like lovers of the God who said, 'lay down your life for your friends'?"
The answer is complicated.
The answer is: some do. Many don't.
And when they don't, I notice something: the theology provides intellectual permission for it.
The Problem With Unconditional Election
Let me be specific.
Unconditional election says: God chooses who goes to heaven and who doesn't, and this choice has nothing to do with anything they will do or not do. It's unconditional. Their behavior is irrelevant to their election.
The logical implication: if I'm elect, I can live however I want and still be elect. If I'm not elect, I can live however I want and still not be elect. So why should I care how I live?
Now, the Reformed answer is quick: "Perseverance of the Saints." If you're truly elect, you'll persevere in faith. So if you're living in sin, you weren't actually elect to begin with.
But notice what happened: we've just made "perseverance" the identifier of election. Not God's choice. Not His grace. Your behavior.
And that, friends, is the opposite of Unconditional Election. That's behavioral legalism wrapped in predestinarian language.
It's the worst of both worlds: grace that requires works, and works that can never be enough.
The Real Problem
The real problem is this: TULIP starts with Augustine's assumption of human radical depravity and builds a cage so tight that nobody can escape it except those God has already chosen.
It's a closed system. Deterministic. No real choice. No real freedom. And here's the devastating part: it means God is directly responsible for every sin ever committed, because He ordained it all from the beginning.
And the adherents of TULIP know this. They've thought about this. They have answers. "God is not the author of sin even though He ordained it." "Humans freely choose what God has already determined they will choose." "It's a mystery."
The first one is a logical contradiction. The second one uses the word "freely" while denying freedom. The third one is an admission that the system has finally hit something it can't rationalize.
Scripture never says any of this.
Scripture says: "Choose you this day whom you will serve." It says: "Come, all you who are thirsty." It says: "Whosoever will, let them come." It says: "How often I longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing."
Willing. Not willing. Choice. Real choice. Not the illusion of choice, but actual human agency operating within God's sovereignty in a way that Scripture never fully explains because it's a paradox, not a system.
TULIP tries to resolve the paradox by surrendering human choice. Scripture holds both: God is sovereign, and humans really choose.
Contact With Real People
I know a man named James. He was homeless. Addicted. Broken in a thousand ways that don't require a theological explanation to understand his desperation.
I met him in the cold. Asked him his story. Listened. Showed up again. And again. For years.
The TULIP answer to James's predicament was clear: "If God predestined James to salvation, he'll be saved. If God predestined James to damnation, there's nothing anyone can do about it. Either way, your efforts are irrelevant."
But here's the thing: James got clean. James came into faith in Yeshua. James is alive today because someone showed up to his life as if he had been chosen, as if he had infinite worth, as if God was wildly generous with His grace.
Not because some theological system said he was elect.
Because somebody acted as if he was elect. As if God wanted him. As if grace meant something.
The moment you meet someone whom society has written off, whom the system has forgotten, whom TULIP would classify as "probably not chosen because look, they're clearly not persevering in faith right now" — that moment, you understand that TULIP doesn't work in real life.
Real people need a God who says yes to them. Not a God who said yes or no a billion years ago and you just don't know which.
Real people need permission to believe they can change. Real people need to know that God wants them, not that God maybe wanted them, depending on some cosmic calculation you can never verify.
Real people need grace that is actually unconditional, not grace that is conditional on your ability to persevere well enough that we can retroactively verify you were elect.
What the Text Actually Says
The passages that TULIP leans on are real. Ephesians 1:5 says God predestined those He chose. Romans 9 talks about election. These verses exist.
But they exist in a much more nuanced context than TULIP admits.
Romans 8:29-30 (CJB) — "For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son..."
Foreknew. Not chose randomly. Foreknew. God's knowledge of how people would respond to His grace, and His predestination of those He foreknew to be conformed to Yeshua.
1 Peter 1:1-2 (CJB) — "To those living as aliens, scattered throughout...chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Yeshua the Messiah..."
Chosen according to foreknowledge. Not chosen in spite of how they would live. Chosen because God knew they would respond.
2 Timothy 2:10 (CJB) — "Therefore, I endure all things for the sake of the elect, so that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Yeshua the Messiah, with eternal glory."
Timothy endures all things for the sake of the elect. Why would he do that if the elect were already unconditionally chosen and would persevere no matter what? His faithfulness matters. His work matters. His love matters.
1 Corinthians 7:16 (CJB) — "For how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife? Or how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband?"
You might save your spouse. Your faithfulness, your love, your witness matters in their salvation. TULIP makes this verse incomprehensible.
Revelation 22:17 (CJB) — "The Spirit and the bride say, 'Come!' Let anyone who hears say, 'Come!' Let anyone who is thirsty come; and let anyone who wishes take the free gift of the water of life."
Anyone who wishes. Wishes. Real volition. Real choice.
What God Actually Values
The doctrine of predestination, when it slides into TULIP, fundamentally misunderstands what God values about you.
God doesn't value your election. He values your response.
He doesn't predestine you and then sit back. He calls you, pursues you, loves you, and waits for your yes.
And your yes matters. Not because it saves you — that's His work. But because it demonstrates that you actually love Him. That you actually choose Him. That the relationship is real.
A wife you predestined to marry is not a wife. She's a possession.
A child you predestined to love is not a child. He's a puppet.
A friend you predestined to be your friend is not a friend. It's a simulacrum of friendship.
God doesn't want a universe of predestined lovers. He wants actual lovers. Actually choosing. Actually responding. Actually saying yes.
The reason He doesn't force that choice is because love that is forced is not love. It's coercion.
The Radical Generosity of God
Here's what I actually believe, and what Scripture actually says:
God wants you. All of you. Whatever condition you're in. He's not waiting for you to clean up your act before He loves you. He's not waiting for you to be elect before He calls you. He calls you as you are, broken as you are, lost as you are.
And He means it. His grace is not bait-and-switch. His love is not conditional. His invitation is not a trap.
Yes, God is sovereign. Yes, He has purpose. Yes, He has knowledge. But He doesn't use that knowledge to predestine your damnation before you even exist. That's not sovereignty. That's sadism.
What God does is this: He makes a way. He calls persistently. He offers grace unconditionally. And He waits for your response. He respects your choice enough to actually make it consequential.
That's harder than TULIP. Because it means God's plan actually depends on people saying yes. And some people say no. And God grieves that. The Bible tells us so.
"How often I wanted to gather you, and you would not." That's not the voice of someone who predestined your refusal.
That's the voice of someone who offered you everything, who actually wanted you to say yes, who grieves that you won't.
TULIP rations grace. It makes grace stingy. It makes election exclusive. It makes God less generous than an unchosen human parent.
But the God I see in Scripture is wildly, recklessly, radically generous.
He says yes to everyone who calls. He loves enemies. He heals the sick whether they ask prettily or not. He feeds both the grateful and the ungrateful. He makes His sun rise on the evil and the good. He sends rain on the just and the unjust.
That is not the God of TULIP.
That's the God of grace that actually means something.
Selah.
What if your election is not abstract? What if God elected you not before time, but in time, every day you say yes to Him?
If God is actually generous, does that change how you live?
Do you know someone like James, someone the system wrote off? Do you believe more in TULIP's predestination or in the radical grace of showing up?
May HaShem's generous grace surprise you. Shalom v'shalvah.
Your brother in the Way,
Sergio
