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those two boys were even born, God loved Jacob and hated Esau. They hadn’t done anything good or bad to deserve it. They were still in their mother’s womb!” In the Bible, she told us, God is likened to a heavenly Potter, with humans as clay in His hands to mold as He pleases. Cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the Lord. Behold, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in mine hand. God had elected—chosen—the beloved Jacob for honor, to be welcomed into Heaven for an eternity of bliss. His twin brother, Esau, meanwhile, had been created to be condemned to Hellfire—all through no fault or cause of his own. For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works … As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.

But Jacob and Esau weren’t the only ones created with their fates predetermined, Mom continued. Indeed, these twins were the standing symbols of the two types of people living in the world: the elect, represented by Jacob, chosen by God for love, mercy, honor, glory; and the reprobate, represented by Esau, chosen by God for hatred, cruelty, wrath, destruction. Of all the people who had ever existed or ever would, only a precious few were God’s elect. Narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. The vast majority, both of the living and of the dead, were created for destruction. For wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat. My mother must have been through this story over and over ad nauseam through the years, but she spoke as if it were the first time, her tone filled with impossible awe—as if she still couldn’t believe the elegance of this scenario, as if the beauty of this divine truth could come only from the mind of God Himself.

I was puzzled. My mother seemed elated at something that sounded so dreadfully unfair: that God would create these two brothers to give mercy to one and cruelty to the other, when they had done nothing to deserve either. Of course, it wasn’t the undeserved kindness that disturbed me—it was the hatred. Why would God make Esau for evil, and then send Esau to Hell for being evil? Wasn’t God Himself responsible? It seemed wrong to condemn Esau for doing what God created him to do. When I piped up from the backseat to say so, Mom was only too pleased to go on. I had posed just the objection that the Apostle Paul addresses in his own account of the story: Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth [God] yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will? If we are what God created us to be, how could it be just for Him to punish us?

In modern parlance, Paul’s response to this question amounts to something like “Who the Hell are you, a wretched human being, to ask such a question?” That’s an answer I would have understood, but my mother quoted the apostle’s reply as given in the King James Version: Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Mom’s eyes met mine in the rearview mirror and I stared blankly. Searching for a way to help Bekah and me make sense of this conundrum, her eyes lit up as they fell to the dolls in our laps. “It would be like if those Barbies in your lap stood up and said, ‘Why did you dress me this way?!’” Mom would always laugh heartily when she described our reactions later: “Your eyes were as big as saucers, you two girls starin’ down at those Barbies like you were afraid they might actually get up and start talkin’ at you!” For decades, this would be my mother’s go-to illustration for those who dared question why God would design most of humanity for the express purpose of tormenting them in Hell for eternity. Our dolls demonstrated how patently ridiculous it was to presume to ask such a question.

Although I took my mother’s point about the Barbies’ insolence, a more pressing question had presented itself as she laughed at our bug-eyed response to her hypothetical:

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