Outside the Iron Gates: My Reckoning with Reformed Theology

How the past few years of suffering have opened my eyes to see the faults in my theology.

It was another day of tears in the shower to hide my heartache from my boys. Tears of grief over another petty legal issue, another beloved friend moving away, another Sunday of church homelessness, and a loss I couldn’t even utter. The tears were also rage—rage at this God who claimed good, loving sovereignty over my life yet allowed these things over and over again in my life. 

“I’m angry with God,” I told her over the phone. “Why would he do this?”

“Lara, how do you define sovereignty?” my friend asked me. 

I stumbled for words. “God’s control over every little detail of my life.”

She laughed. “That is not sovereignty.” She explained sovereignty in light of a king who is sovereign over his kingdom: he decides the rules and the consequences for breaking them, how his people should live and how the land will operate—but he does not control what his people choose to do or the events that befall them. “I believe God is so sovereign that he knows how the dominos will fall, and rather than need to change how and where each one will fall, he sets up the next to make sure it falls in a way that is for our good and his glory.” She told me how we live in a broken world where bad things will happen, but God knows how to work those bad things for good. 

We have spent hours together pouring over Bible verses seeking to understand them, many late nights while I sat on my cold bedroom floor before my Bible with bloodshot eyes. I brought her my passages that I believed could only scream Calvinism, and she removed the lenses from my eyes to show me how they actually disproved Calvinism and Reformed theology altogether. 

In those moments, as my theology crumbled, I repeated the words of Elizabeth Bennet: “Till this moment I never knew myself.”

In the well-loved romance Pride & Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet is forced to reckon with her faulty discernment. Believing she has seen all she needs of Mr. Darcy to weigh his character, she pegs him as a smug jerk unworthy of any benefit of the doubt. Every act, every word he speaks, is filtered through the lens she created for him after a few moments with him. It all becomes confirmed for her when she hears a vile tale about him from a man she barely knows named Mr. Wickham. 

Eventually she is forced to face her poor discernment skills as Mr. Darcy not only brings the truth to light about the twisted story she heard, but also shows himself to be a gentleman who can look out for the needs of others, even when it has no benefit to him. 

Elizabeth is utterly humbled. She is embarrassed to realize that what she once considered her greatest strength is actually her greatest weakness and nearly became her downfall if left unchecked. 

“How despicably have I acted!” she cried. “I, who have prided myself on my discernment!—I, who have valued myself on my abilities! Who have often disdained the generous candour of my sister, and gratified my vanity, in useless or blameable distrust.—How humiliating is this discovery!—Yet, how just a humiliation!—Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly.—Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned. Till this moment I never knew myself!”¹ 

This past year, I, like Elizabeth, have cried the same admission. How I, who had prided myself of my discernment, had never known myself. I saw my own folly as I considered my beloved theology I had held to for the past nine years—along with the scorn I had held for every other Christian outside of it. 

I became Reformed not to follow the trends but because it seemed safe. It began in my college dorm room as I grappled with cessationism versus continuationism, worked its way into my wedding vows as I promised to submit to my husband all the days of my life, and in my kitchen where I listened to sermons on Calvinism while prepping supper. 

Reformed theology always sold itself as holding God, the Bible, and the gospel higher than every other theological camp. “If you don’t believe in God’s sovereignty in salvation like we do, you have a low view of God.” “If you don’t believe in the order of salvation like we do, you have a low view of the gospel.” “If you don’t believe this doctrine, you have a low view of the authority of Scripture.” 

I loved God, and I loved his Word. Despite not having believing parents, I lived in my Bible. It was tattered and marked up even while I was in middle school. I spent hours writing out Bible verses by hand, imprinting them on my mind. I only missed Sunday school and church when bad weather and road conditions prevented me. I loved God and Scripture from a young age, so when I discovered Reformed theology and saw how its theological rigor seemed to compare with the rest of evangelicalism, I was sold. 

I lived and breathed Reformed theology. From that day on, I only read books, commentaries, and articles by Reformed authors. My closest friends were Reformed. Whenever I looked at the Bible, I could only see Calvinism, covenant theology, and complementarianism. This was my life for nearly a decade, and I looked upon the rest of the evangelical world just as my Reformed siblings did: with disdain for their lower forms of theology.

Then, one day, my husband screamed at me that I must submit to him. Babies died in my womb—I was told I must thank God for it. A publisher side-eyed my Wesleyan church. Abuse scandals abounded. Friends walked away. I became a single mom. 

Desperately grasping to still find hope in Scripture despite how it seemed to have hurt me, my friend showed me how I had forced Reformed theology upon the Bible. As I looked around, I could only say, “Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind.” 

I, like Elizabeth, had to reckon also with my blindness to the faults of my own theological family: “When she came to that part of the letter, in which her family were mentioned in terms of such mortifying, yet merited reproach, her sense of shame was severe. The justice of the charge struck her too forcibly for denial.”² Elizabeth hadn’t noticed the embarrassing way her family had acted around Mr. Darcy and she originally charged him with being prideful for his disdain of them. Now she saw them for who they truly were. She admitted the rightness of his judgments.

I had to see the bad behaviour of my Reformed siblings, and how I had been complicit. I encouraged unhealthy complementarian marriages like the one that I ended up having to walk away from because of the abusive nature it took on. I purported a theology of the sovereignty of God that made God the author of evil, even though I claimed it didn’t. Even more, I scoffed at my evangelical brothers and sisters in Christ as if they had a lower view of God, Scripture, and the gospel than I did. I was prejudiced, just as Elizabeth, and I must bear that shame, along with the shame of defending the poor behaviour of those I once agreed with.

But also like Elizabeth, I am striving to see those I once judged in the right light now. Elizabeth ends up marrying Mr. Darcy as he repents of his pride and she finally sees him for the gentleman he is. As for me, I am seeking to find a new home among my evangelical siblings. 

Yet walking away from Reformed theology, I feel as if I’m walking out of a wealthy estate with all its care and safety nets and into a dense forest on my own. The vast world of biblical Christianity lays open before me. Where do I go? Who do I trust? Which direction do I choose? Because when you’re Reformed, you only consult Reformed resources to study the Bible. How can you possibly know the Bible without all those commentaries and study Bibles anymore? Who can I trust? My litmus test for theological accuracy was whether or not they were a card-carrying Calvinist. 

But the vast wideness before me is also freeing. As I fear the judgmental stares and whispers of the Reformed folk I’ve walked away from for choosing a “lesser” theology, I’m grateful that this estate is but a map dot when considered in the grandness of Christendom. 

Kristin Du Mez recently published a piece about the death of Jennifer Lyell, a survivor of sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention who was viciously attacked as the villain in her story. In this piece, Du Mez includes an email exchange she had with Jennifer:

“But remember: outside of what you are to them—something to be crushed for strategy and sport—there is a bigger world. The number of people who have followed your story and watched this latest attack unfold outside of SBC circles is very small. It probably feels like the whole world to you, because it’s your world. But you can step out of that world. It’s not my world. I move in and out as an observer. But when I’m outside that world, it’s obvious how small that world really is. Most people have no clue what goes on there, nor do they care. Keep in mind you can choose to leave, locking the door behind you. Others will fight for you, and can do so because of the strength of your words and witness, but in all likelihood your attackers will quickly move on to new targets. But you can just walk away. Trust me, you can. You’ve been at the heart of an incredibly toxic system, but there are other worlds to explore.”³

The vastness, the large world of faithful Christians before me, grants me the freedom to walk away and start again. I am not fleeing the same horrors as Jennifer Lyell did, and I do not pretend that I am. But these words from Du Mez comfort me as well when I fear starting over and the shameful glances I know I am getting from some in those circles I once treaded. That world felt so large to me because it’s all I knew, and everything outside of it was painted as dangerous. 

But it’s not so large, and there’s more out there to learn and explore. I can start again. Like Elizabeth Bennet, I can admit my prejudice, my folly. Yet as I do, my hope is that I will step into the goodness that lays ahead like she did. Because it’s there, beyond this tiny map dot I lived in for so long. The world outside that estate is grand and wide, though right now it feels like an overwhelming forest. I will keep pressing forward, seeking the light beaming between the trees, because of the love I know my Saviour has for me and the trustworthiness of his Word. Grace is not confined behind those iron gates.

1. Jane Austen, The Complete Novels of Jane Austen, ed. Quarto Publishing Group USA Inc. (New York, New York, United States of America: Chartwell Books, 2016), 305–306.

2. Austen, 306.

3. Kristin Du Mez, “Some things she could not survive: In memory of Jennifer Lyell,” Du Mez CONNECTIONS, June 8, 2025, accessed June 11, 2025, https://kristindumez.substack.com/p/some-things-she-could-not-survive.