Note: This article includes detailed discussion of child sexual abuse in the context of why God allows suffering in the world.
Now the TheoBros are using the gospel to spread indifference about the rape and murder of 10-year-old girls. This week’s example of Calvinist claptrap began when a user on X quoted the late R.C. Sproul saying, “The bottom-line assumption for anyone who believes in the God of providence is that ultimately there are no tragedies.”
“This is excruciatingly troubling to me,” the user commented.
So to the Calvinists
Pamela Butler
10 years old
Rollerblading
Kidnapped by Keith Nelson
Taken to a wooded area
Tortured for hours including electrocution
Raped
Strangled to death
Please tell me how this is NOT a tragedy.
Then along came R.C. Sproul Jr. in an attempt to do just that.
R.C. Sproul Jr.
Without offering a single word of empathy or lament, Sproul Jr. started in: “The closest the world has ever come to a tragedy is when a man, who had never sinned, was tortured to death. Do you believe God ordained that event?”
When the X poster asked how the Crucifixion of Jesus “remotely compares to the event I described,” Sproul Jr. added: “No, it does not remotely compare. Because in one instance a little girl received the judgment from God she had earned. In the other a perfect man received the judgment I earn. So you are OK with saying God ordained the torment of Jesus but not a sinner?”
From there, Sproul Jr. boasted of being “an orthodox theologian who affirms the doctrine of original sin,” attacked the original poster for using “an emotional appeal that denies what the Bible clearly teaches about our sin,” and demanded that the person “submit to what the Bible plainly teaches.”
He concluded, “If the girl is not a believer, she received justice from God.”
While Sproul Jr.’s words are horrifyingly shocking to anyone who has even a hint of human decency about them, they are indeed the logical outflow of the power- and violence-obsessed gospel prevalent among conservative evangelical Calvinists today. There’s a link between the pop-Calvinist’s obsession with power over women and their indifference to violence against women. And when we begin to probe, we’ll discover the connection in their gospel.
Remembering Pamela Butler
Since the TheoBros offer nothing more than indifference, it’s important that we honor the life of Pamela Butler by sharing her story.
Pamela Irene Butler
Pamela Irene Butler was born March 13, 1989, and grew up in Kansas City, Kan. In a 1999 piece published in the Kansas City Star, her family and friends told journalist Stacy Downs about their memories shopping for school supplies and enjoying church retreats.
“As the news spread, friends and relatives gathered to hug and cry on the front lawn of the family’s home in Kansas City, Kan.,” Downs wrote. “They shared memories of Pamela, who loved to play outdoors. They said she was a sweet girl, who often smiled and laughed.”
Pamela was a straight-A student who dreamed of attending a middle school for high academic achievers. But as her mother, Cherry West, spoke while sobbing, she lamented, “Her wish didn’t come true.”
Regarding the kidnapper, West said, “He not only took my little girl, he took my tomboy. She’s my baby.”
On the day of Pamela’s abduction, she was rollerblading in front of her home after buying cookies. The following details are extremely disturbing. Her 11-year-old sister Penny watched as a white pickup truck approached. Penny screamed as the man grabbed Pamela and drove away.
The kidnapper drove Pamela to a forest in Grain Valley, Mo., raped her, strangulated her with wire and left her body.
Pamela Butler’s sister Casey
Twenty years later, Pamela’s mother, Cherry West, was in shock again when she received word that one of her other daughters, who was 16 at the time of Pamela’s murder and also witnessed Pamela being kidnapped, also had been murdered. Pamela’s sister Casey Easton was shot in her car after getting off work.
“I can’t believe this has happened to me again,” West told Fox4News. “You kind of sit back and wonder what have you done in life for something like this to be done to you.”
“You kind of sit back and wonder what have you done in life for something like this to be done to you.”
Remembering when Pamela was kidnapped, West said Casey “was screaming down the street, and that’s where the neighbor on the next block come down and started chasing the truck and lost it, but he got the tag number for us.”
Sproul Jr.’s story
Before we examine why R.C. Sproul Jr. would react so strongly against calling this story a tragedy, let’s get a refresher on who he is.
R.C. Sproul
Of course, his dad was the infamous R.C. Sproul, the conservative evangelical Calvinist founder of Ligonier Ministries and professor at Reformed Theological Seminary.
Sproul Jr. tried following in his father’s footsteps, beginning work for Ligonier Ministries in 1989. But then in August 2015, he admitted to being on the Ashley Madison website that became infamous for its data breach that outed men who were committing adultery. Consequently, Ligonier suspended him. Then in November 2016, he was arrested for driving drunk with two of his kids in the car.
Despite all this, Sproul Jr. is the author of 12 books and has edited or contributed to many others. And in the wake of his disastrous personal life, he planted a new church in 2021 and launched Shepherd’s College in order to “train up men of godly character.” But there is no current online presence of the school.
Vertical and horizontal suffering
How do men like the Sprouls make sense of such violence against girls? One instinct they have is to try to make themselves sound more reasonable than they actually are. Sproul Sr. did this by distinguishing two different types of suffering.
“One instinct they have is to try to make themselves sound more reasonable than they actually are.”
“There are times when we suffer innocently at other people’s hands,” he said. “When that occurs, we are victims of injustice. But that injustice happens on a horizontal plane. No one ever suffers injustice on the vertical plane. That is, no one ever suffers unjustly in terms of his or her relationship with God. As long as we bear the guilt of sin, we cannot protest that God is unjust in allowing us to suffer.”
In other words, to the Sprouls, the rape and murder of a 10-year-old girl is unjust in the sense that it is caused by a violent man, and at the same time just in the sense that it is allowed by God. Responding to the little girl’s final screams by carefully enunciating this theological nuance is proper in their minds because what matters above all is God’s glory being demonstrated in God’s absolute power over everyone and everything below.
“There cannot be a single maverick molecule outside the scope of his power and authority, lest that single molecule become the grain of sand that brings the machine of justice to a grinding halt,” the elder Sproul explained. “Therefore, the perfect judge must have perfect power. He must be all-powerful, or omnipotent.”
‘Meaningful rape’
Lest we think this intellectualized indifference toward the rape and murder of 10-year-old girls is a unique manifestation of the internal rot of the Sprouls, it’s actually one of the skeletons in the closet of the conservative evangelical Calvinist world that has come to dominate much of the conservative Reformed Baptist and Pentecostal worlds today.
In a debate on The Bible Answer Man, the Calvinist apologist James White was asked, “When a child is raped, is God responsible? And did he decree that rape?”
White answered, “If he didn’t, then that rape is an element of meaningless evil that has no purpose.” And when pressed further, he doubled down, asserting, “Yes. Because if not, then it’s meaningless and purposeless.”
Jeff Durbin
While talking with a woman about people who have been gang raped, Jeff Durbin said, “God actually has a morally sufficient reason for all the evil he plans. … He actually decrees all things.”
In Suffering and the Sovereignty of God, which was edited by John Piper, Mark Talbot argued: “It isn’t just that God manages to turn the evil aspects of our world to good for those that love him; it is rather that he himself brings about these evil aspects. … This includes God’s having even brought about the Nazi’s brutality at Birkenau and Auschwitz as well as the terrible killings of Dennis Nadar and even the sexual abuse of a young child.”
Vincent Cheung wrote: “Scripture teaches that God’s will determines everything. Nothing exists or happens without God, not merely permitting, but actively willing it to exist or happen.”
John Piper tried to make sense of it by saying: “God disapproves of some of what he ordains to happen. That is, he forbids some of the things he brings about.”
In other words, Sproul Jr.’s indifference toward rape and murder isn’t simply the rantings of a drunk driver who goes on websites designed to facilitate adultery. It’s part of what mainstream conservative evangelical Calvinist leaders across the board celebrate today as good news.
Submitting to your rape
For the sick, evil, violent men leading conservative evangelical Calvinism today, the biblical response to child rape and murder goes beyond indifference to a demand that those being raped and murdered submit to their theology. Why? Because as the men I quoted earlier shared, they believe God ordains and brings about child rape and murder for God’s own self-glory.
“They believe God ordains and brings about child rape and murder for God’s own self-glory.”
As slavery apologist John MacArthur put it, “God wills evil to exist. … The reason God ordained evil is for his glory.”
In the world of the TheoBros, reality is a hierarchy of authority and submission for the purpose of glorifying the highest power. And thus, God’s presence manifest in the world is at the top of the empire causing violent suffering on those below, all for the stroking of God’s own ego.
Their total depravity is displayed by their hard-hearted attempt to reduce the rape and murder of children into analytical theology debates. Rather than entering into anger and lament, they enter into indifference and demands for submission. And it’s not enough for them to demand online observers submit to their theology. They go so far as to demand those being raped and murdered must submit to their theology.
John Piper commanded survivors of sexual assault to see “God’s sovereignty … at the moment of causality.” Then he projected the dynamics of assault onto the survivors by threatening if they don’t submit to the idea of God causing their assault, then “You will now be left with no God to help you deal with this. … You have just shoved him off … and in your pain you shoved him so far to the edge of the universe that for the rest of your life you are crying out to a God to do miracles yet you have pushed him away … . And so you try to say there is no sense in which the sovereign God willed that, you will lose God for the rest of your life.”
Celebrating a gospel revealed by rape
Perhaps the most disgusting filth coming out of the dark hearts of these men came from R.C. Sproul Sr. himself. For Sproul, the good news of the gospel wasn’t “to bring good news to the poor … to proclaim the release of the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
That’s what Jesus said, but it’s not what Sproul believed. For Sproul, the gospel is most clearly seen in rape.
“You will resist it as hard as you can. But God will overcome your resistance. When God chooses to save somebody, in his sovereignty, he saves them,” Sproul said. Then he added, “Edwards called it ‘the holy rape of the soul.’ Some people are violently offended by that language. I think it’s the most graphic and descriptive term I can think of, of how I was redeemed.”
The fact that any of these men have a single book published when they’re pedaling this complete bullshit theology tells you everything you need to know about the sick and twisted condition of white evangelicalism today. There should be such an outcry nationwide against these men and their theology that their churches would demand their jobs and close their doors, donating all their money and assets to the care of those they have abused.
If there is anyone who deserves a millstone around their neck, it is these men and their pathetic little pretend god. And until these men are silent in the churches, the women and children in white evangelicalism never will be safe and never will fully heal.
As the Society of Evangelical Arminians said, Calvinists “are willing to defend a hermeneutic that sanctifies the rape of a 2-year-old in order to, allegedly, bring glory to God for his so-called sovereignty (as defined by Calvinists). Now, you may think that is a harsh statement, and that I have breached sanity in writing those words. No, my friends, this is the harsh reality of Calvinism and the Calvinist God. God is not on trial here: the Calvinist God is on trial. He is found wanting, unjust and responsible for decreeing and bringing into reality the most abominable acts known among mortals and devils.”
Rick Pidcock
Rick Pidcock is a 2004 graduate of Bob Jones University, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Bible. He’s a freelance writer based in South Carolina and a former Clemons Fellow with BNG. He completed a Master of Arts degree in worship from Northern Seminary. He is a stay-at-home father of five children and produces music under the artist name Provoke Wonder. Follow his blog at www.rickpidcock.com.
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