When I first started coming here a few months ago, I was impressed by your courage. I was impressed that you spoke the truth about things that concerned me. My study of the Bible over the years has opened my eyes to the vacuousness and inanity within the contemporary evangelical church. Your articles were a breath of fresh air – someone with the testicular fortitude to say what needed to be said.

But now I feel weird. I feel as though the Michael Spencer I enjoyed reading is not the person I imagined he was. Granted, you are not perfect but neither is anyone here. You are still struggling with your faith – I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I suppose my error was that I felt that my adherence to Calvinism was as a result of my study of the Bible. Now you are telling me that my belief system is just another part of the problem. That the poor folk living in Kentucky who don’t know the Gospel are somehow worse off because of my adherence to Calvinism. I didn’t realise it before, but now I am a legalist – responsible for your Father’s depression and rejection from the church. I am apparently part of a wider conspiracy to enforce my views on others and prevent Christians from independent thought (such as reading NT Wright).

Worse… I didn’t realise my error of loving theology. I always thought that theology was the study of God that arose from God’s inspired word and was always eminently practical and always important. Now I have been told that this is not the case at all. Now I have been told that the study of God is not practical and is certainly not important.

I always felt as though Calvinism and its resurgence would be good for the church. Given the total lack of gospel preaching by Joel Osteen and the heretical rantings of Word-faith preachers, preaching the gospel and believing it to be the power of God for the Salvation of all who believe seemed to be the right thing to do. Preach the word, in season and out of season. Apparently, though, that is incorrect. Why? Because Calvinism just seems to be another meaningless word and division in the church.

So, I’ll stop preaching the word. I’ll stop preaching the Gospel. I am, unlike you, completely happy and well adjusted. My parents were perfect and did not suffer at all during their lives. The people of Newcastle, Australia – most of whom are poorly educated unbelievers and have heard no Christian message worth a damn – will just have to wait until Hell.

Moreover, I’ll just have to stop visiting those conservative Calvinist think tank websites and stop reading their articles. You know, the ones that lament Biblical ignorance and expose false gospels – well they’re all theological and not suited to the good people of Kentucky or Newcastle.

Maybe I’ll even change my political colours and stop voting for left-wing parties. Since we Calvinists are all the same politically I suppose everyone else here who are Calvinists (and therefore supporters of left-wing parties) will probably do the same.

Yes – I will change. When someone willingly and lovingly exposes a wrong belief in my life, then God will convict me. I will always change my mind when I am proved wrong.

This is one of my most confessional pieces. It doesn’t have a thing to do with your Calvinism or your love of theology. It has to do with MY journey.

The problem I am having with so many Calvinists is they aren’t letting me have that journey. If I say I am reformed, I can’t like Wright, fellowship with Catholics or question inerrancy. It’s EXACTLY what Kurt says on the BHT’s newest t-shirt: “5 Points, 0 Questions.”

To say that I am questioning YOUR journey and what God is doing in YOUR life is crazy.

I am trying to supply some of the information to help reformed friends (or republican friends or fundamentalist friends) understand that Life isn’t an outline and God brings us to himself by roads he chooses, not by maps we write.

I am not in any way making a comment on your view of the Gospel. Your ministry or your experience with theology. I too have had seasons of blessing in reformed theology. This just isn’t one of them.

Acquiring knowledge of Christ is far different then trusting Him. When we accept and understand that all knowledge will fall far short of what we need in this world of woes, when the outstretched hand is all we really have, it will not be Calvin, or Luther or Spurgen or John Paul that will take our hand and lead us through the valley of the shadow of death, but it will be God Himself that will lead us and not forsake us.

I would never give up or replace my thirty years of reformed education, for God used it to save my sanity and build my faith through a reasonable understanding of what is true but when it all comes down to it I have to trust not the sum of my knowledge but the One who is greater than all knowledge.

Trust based on knowledge alone isn’t easy because most times our knowledge won’t be able raise the dead or cure the lame or save our loved ones from the pain and suffering caused by nature, their own hand or at the hand of others. Sin and ruin are greater than knowledge. The fruit of knowledge isn’t faith. The fruit of God’s Love is a delicate thread of hope called faith. From his POV it is not a thread but an indestructible chain but for us, mostly a thread.

T Bone say’s “wild things must run free”. Lewis say’s “He’s not a tame Lion”. Holding on to His hand will hardly be comfortable. We must therefore care for and encourage one another realizing that our care, our compassion, our willingness to suffer alongside one another may be the best we have to give. Our care for one another will require us to go to places that our knowledge will prove to be an insufficient guide and companion. Our only hope then is in the One holding on to our hand and leading us through the darkness.