But you aren't.
The "what does it matter" question is about salvation. You don't think whether you get it right will make you elect do you? Or that not getting it right will make you a reprobate? You are already elect aren't you?
You don't think any of this here matters regarding salvation, do you? It can't possibly change who is born elect and who isn't, can it? It cannot possibly have any effect on this whatsoever. Nothing you or i or anyone else do or can do has any effect at all.
Not in Calvinism. It's all a done deal.
So, again, what is the point of you arguing with me about what a verse of Holy Scripture means?
“You don’t think any of this here matters regarding salvation, do you? It can’t possibly change who is born elect and who isn’t, can it? It cannot possibly have any effect on this whatsoever. Nothing you or i or anyone else do or can do has any effect at all.”
Of course it cannot change the secret counsel of God. But on the other hand, no one is being damned because they tried to believe and God still refused them. Look here, for instance, I’ve given you the opportunity to prove me wrong using the scripture. I’ve asked you to explain, using whatever means available, a simple verse. You haven’t, and you won’t. Who is to blame for this? You, of course. Just because the Holy Spirit decides to pass someone by (not necessarily speaking of you), and He decided to do so before the foundation of the world, doesn’t mean that you have lost your will. If you could believe without the working of the Holy Spirit, that certainly would be wonderful! Though, it’s impossible, seeing as how humanity is utterly subject to sin. The scripture is clear that unless it is given to you, you cannot believe. Unless the Holy Spirit gives it to you, you cannot believe.
1Co_12:3 Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed: and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost.
Furthermore, man is all gone astray, they do not seek after God (see Romans 3). Though God certainly uses your sinning nature for His own purposes (speaking generally and not of you specifically), and arranges, through His providential power, to fit you for destruction, as He did Judas, you know that every time the truth is preached they are given a chance to believe, and yet, as the scripture teaches, they refuse to.
So then, God knowing this, foreseeing it, and ordaining your fate and purpose, albeit it is a dreadful one, is God unjust? If God, knowing that you are evil, and choosing to create you, knowing full well your nature, and deciding to make you a “vessel of wrath,” will you rail at God for doing what He wants with what belongs to Him? And if God foreseeing you as a sinner who would, if left alone, go straight to hell, decides to actively change the will and nature of the individual, is God unjust for not having this mercy on all?
You punted on those two verses, so let’s try another one.
Rom 9:16 So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.
Can you tell me what THIS verse means? Or, maybe, this one:
Rom 9:18 Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.
Pick one, you only have to pick one. And let it be longer than a single random sentence, but a strong and detailed response, on what any of these verses mean.