Living With Cancer and Evangelical Calvinism

As many of you know I was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer back in November of 2009; praise the Lord after some hard core chemo, surgery, and a lifestyle change (as far as diet etc.), I am now cancer free (to God be all the praise!!!). When I was diagnosed I was just coming around to the Evangelical Calvinist stuff. I was unaware that there was something like this in the history of Calvinism, at least in a way that fitted with my understanding of Scripture (like belief in universal atonement, but not salvation etc.). To be honest, though, Evangelical Calvinism is more of a moniker by which to identify a mood within the history of Calvinism; one, unfortunately that never really caught on en masse. And to be more honest, when I was diagnosed with cancer, labels and theology games meant absolutely nothing to me; at that point. All I wanted to do was read my Bible, really. That’s what was most important to me; both spiritually and theologically. The thing is, is that the conceptual matter that the mood the the language of Evangelical Calvinism captures served as a strong bulwark for me. The idea that God is ultimately triune and thus, love; the idea that because God is loving, he created, incarnated, and came for me and all humanity; the idea that through Christ’s vicarious humanity and mediatorship (priesthood), I had an advocate and Great High Priest seated at the right hand of the throne of the Father; the idea that he would never leave me or forsake me, guaranteeing that through his cruciform humanity with the scars in hand to still prove it; the idea that he not only was all of these other things, but most importantly, that in his humanity he vicariously suffered more than I could have ever suffered in the midst of my cancer (and treatment, which was the worst part, really). It is all of these kinds of concepts that held me steady in Christ, anchored in heaven with him; that brought me and my family through the darkest nights of the soul that I could ever imagine.

My point, I don’t see “Evangelical Calvinism” as a cliche; nor, though, do I see it as the end all or even what really matters (in “name”) in the presence of the Lord. Evangelical Calvinism captures a mood, and that mood is shaped by an ethos and a set of conceptual contours that are real, biblical, and evangelical; only because its trajectory starts with the idea that God is love demonstrated in Jesus Christ!

Just a little testimony.