Calvinists and Arminians in a hole

I thought it would be interesting to share a little analogy I used to describe the different kinds of Christian soteriologies to my son. Let me tell you a story about a man in a hole in the ground. He's in the hole partly because he was born there (for his mother and father also lived in the hole, and in fact they were born there as well), but also partly because he enjoys it down there. Sure, it's inconvenient sometimes; and sometimes it's embarrassing. A person in a hole does not generally enjoy being seen by other people in that state, even other people who are in the hole themselves. It's true, there are some other people in the hole that the man is proud to be seen in the hole with: he even sometimes exaggerates the depth of his own hole to seem "bigger" or "cooler" in the eyes of the other people in the hole.

However, he knows deep inside that he was not made for that hole; that there's a loving Person right outside the hole, who wants him out of the hole to live alongside Him in the light. So, in his better moments - which are fleeting and only there in the first place because the Person outside gives them to him anyway - he wants to leave the hole. Not that he wants to yield his rights to the hole and follow the Person outside, or even to have his filth fully examined in the dreadful light of day: he has no desire to do that. It's simply that sometimes the inconveniences of being in the hole makes him wish to be outside it. How does the man in the hole understand how he might be saved? It all depends on his theology:

• The Pelagian says that the Person outside is just standing there, waiting for him to come out. It's up to him to claw his way up out of the hole using any means at his disposal (good works, morality, etc.) But, of course, the hole is far too deep for that, so again and again makes it a little way up the wall, but always falls back to the bottom again.
• The Semi-Pelagian says that the Person outside will reach down and grab him, but only after he crawls most of the way out of the hole himself. The Person outside wants to save him, but the problem is that His arms are just not long enough to reach down and grab him. So, he tries to claw his way up far enough so the Person outside can reach him, but unfortunately can't make it that far. He too falls back down into the hole.
  
• The Arminian says that the Person outside can in fact reach down and grab him and save him, but has too much respect for the man's desire to stay in the hole to do it. Therefore, He reaches down and holds His hands out, but doesn't grab him; He dangles His hands mere inches above the man's nose. But the man does not really want to accept help from the Person. Being lifted out of that hole would mean surrendering all his pride; and he simply - at his better moments - wants to be outside the hole. There's such a thing as getting more than you bargained for! So he does not grab onto the Person's hand.
  
  However, the Person sometimes inexplicably stops respecting the man's free will and change the circumstances of the man's life - alters the other people and things in the hole - so the man then wants to grab onto the Person's hand and be saved. The man's a little fuzzy on how changing the people around him is not violating their free wills; but he's thankful that the Person did it. Unfortunately, once he's on the surface, the Person still lets him have his unregenerated free will, so if he's not very careful, he'll decide the hole really was not that bad, and slip back down into it, necessitating that the whole process starts over again.
  
• The Calvinist believes that the Person can reach down and grab the man. However, the Person will not grab the man as long as the man still desires to be down there, as long as he still does not want to surrender his hole to the Person. But thankfully, since the Person outside the hole made the man, He knows the man's desires, and is able to change them. This should not be shocking: He generated the man and his desires in the first place, so why can't He re-generate them now? So, the Person reaches down, and changes the man's desires; once the Person does this, the man reaches up and grabs the hand of the Person reaching down for him. The man is pulled up, not with any merit of his own, not even that he made the Right Decision and chose to be saved; only thankful that the Person outside changed him from the inside out.
  
  The man is slightly troubled by one problem, however: the Person outside does not save everybody from their holes, when clearly He could. However, the man realizes two things. First, the Person is respecting their free wills and leaving them in their holes - because that is where they truly desire to be. Sure, they complain sometimes, but given the alternative (living a life with their desires for the hole surrendered to the Person) is even less desirable: the hole is the lesser of the two evils in their minds. Second, the man realizes that there may be some reason for the Person to leave people in their own holes that he may not grasp 100%. And he is not shocked by this. After all, down in the hole, the man knows that his thinking is futile and his foolish heart is darkened. The Person outside is not only much wiser, but His own thinking is not futile. Certainly part of the reason why the Person does not save everybody - though in one sense He certainly desires to do so - is that He wishes to demonstrate His justice as well as His mercy. But, beyond that, the Person obviously has other reasons that the man will not fully know until he is living in the ultimate light of day with the Person.
  
  The man simply accepts that, thankful that the Person has chosen to pull him from his hole.
  

You'll note that I did not say anything about what I've called semi-Calvinists or semi-Arminians, those who usually call themselves "moderate Calvinists" or "Calminians." This is because I am increasingly coming to believe that they do not actually exist. But that will take another article to explain.