Craig is a podrishioner from Scotland who shared his “confessions of an unwitting Calvinist.” We hope you’ll be encouraged by his story of deconstructing and reconstructing his faith!
My arrival as a Woodland Hills podrishioner came through a somewhat circuitous route during the 2020 Covid lockdown. I’ll get to that in a moment. First, I should probably let you know who I am.
My name is Craig, and I have attended various Baptist churches in Scotland since I was born in 1971. My parents were members of a Baptist church near Edinburgh (that’s Edin-bur-uh. NOT Edin-borrow and DEFINITELY NOT Edin-burg! 😁)
I became a Christian at age 5 and was baptised at age 16.
Up until 2012, my Christian life was fairly uneventful. I was an active member of the Baptist church in my hometown of Cupar in Fife, but with hindsight, I was often just going through the motions and working on the basis that I’d given my life to Christ so I was probably going to be okay in the end.
Then, in December 2012, my friend Angela died from ovarian cancer.
She was 31.
Angela was a beautiful Christian with a gentle spirit and so much potential. Her death simply didn’t make sense. I was furious at God for allowing her to die and was within a whisker of chucking it all in. Ultimately, I couldn’t dishonour her memory by walking away from my faith, so I stuck with it. I hadn’t come across the term “deconstruction” at that time, but that’s kind of what happened. The Jenga tower of my faith had collapsed. But the “reconstruction” was more of a haphazard affair held together with Scotch Tape.
My faith limped on like that until 2020.
Through the “Can I Say This At Church?” podcast, I was introduced to the concept of open theism** in an interview with Tom Oord. I’d never heard of open theism before, so I did some googling and up popped one Dr Gregory Boyd!
This was what my Scotch-taped, Jenga-tower-faith was looking for. I am not aware of being explicitly taught Calvinism. With hindsight, though, “Calvinism-lite” was the dominant theism in the churches I had attended. I was also exposed at a conference sometime around 2005 to the teaching of a prominent, staunch Calvinist. His claim that God “causes” diseases such as cancer was probably at the root of my most significant issues with God when Angela died.
Like I say, I was an unwitting Calvinist!
Through reading work by Greg, Tom, and others, open theism made so much more sense and fit my experiences. I am much more comfortable believing in a God that can’t heal as opposed to a God who won’t heal or chooses not to heal. I’m so much more comfortable believing in a God who has granted us free will and is grieved by the evil that exists than a God who permits, or worse, actually causes that evil. I’m only a few years into this new journey, but Woodland Hills in general and specifically the work of Greg and Dan Kent have been very influential. I think I’ve grown more in my faith in the past four years than in the previous 40!
What I especially like and appreciate about the teaching is that Woodland is not frightened to take its time over a sermon series. I’ve been in churches where attenders have complained about a three-week series!!!
Back in 2021, I moved from the church in my hometown to another one in Fife. I’m an active member there and also on the leadership team. I’m pleased to be a podrishioner at Woodland, but I still enjoy the physical community at my local church. When I became a member there, the verse I was given was Matthew 22:37, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”
Because of my local involvement (to say nothing of the time difference) I’m usually a week or two behind the Woodland services, but I’m especially excited when the teaching starts with, “You’re going to need your thinking caps for this one…”
Thanks, Craig, for bringing “all of your mind” to your faith, and for sharing your story with us! If you have your own story to share please contact us here.
**You can find a brief summary of open theism here. The gist is the belief that humans have free will and God hasn’t pre-determined the future, so it’s “open” and full of possibilities. At Woodland we consider this to be an opinion about God and the world, not a doctrine of our faith.
