"How we got here" is helpful especially for those of us not Open Theists (me and the rest of Christianity). What did you believe before you became an Open Theist? How did you jump the hurdles? How big were they at the time? How resistant or ready were you upon hearing about Open Theism?
My dad was a Southern Baptist pastor, before we all went to the mission field for a few years when I was a child. I moved away from the SBC as an adult, trying to figure out homeschooling our kids. We ended up in a Calvinistic Presbyterian church. I can't say I was ever totally on board, but it was an interesting study for several years, talking about things we rarely discussed in the SBC churches. Southern Baptists (and other non-Calvinistic Baptists) are Arminian in terms of the decision source and the scope of the atonement, but they are staunchly against the ability to lose one's salvation.
So, I was pretty firm that God knew all things past and future, without believing that God caused it all. But it didn't make sense to me when I thought through it. I remember counseling a friend about her imminent divorce that she wanted, when she asked if it would cause her to lose her salvation. I told her that God already knew everything she would ever do, and those sins were paid for at the cross already (but that she shouldn't go forward with the divorce).
I stumbled (when looking for refutations of TULIP) on a refutation of the L in TULIP by a guy that claimed that all of the other letters fall if the L falls. I didn't really agree with that, but I was curious about how he described God as not needing to know the future exhaustively to be God, nor to fit the Bible's description of God. It was a turning point in my thinking. Not a hurdle, but a welcome relief, since the Calvinism was clearly wrong (due to what it does to God's nature), and the Arminian position (including the Baptists) wasn't much better. I spent a lot of time researching Open Theism after that, including coming here to TOL and seeing if I could defend it (yes, I know...TOL is friendly to OT, but the other places I went didn't even want to discuss it). It's an easy doctrine to defend, where the others aren't, imo, at least in terms of what God knows or doesn't know and when.
What is funny, though, is that I don't really like Greg Boyd. I ran into his name a few times as referenced by others. The other big names, too, I read sparingly, at most. The view defends itself, once you let go of preconceived notions of God and let the Bible reveal Him. I wasn't too big on picking a label for myself ("Calvinist", "Arminian", "Baptist", etc.), but I jumped on the Open Theism label, even though the label might not be the most accurate--it was the most obvious position.
I've toyed with other traditional doctrines, like the Trinity, and found myself embracing them more fully with the study, but not so with Open Theism. I couldn't go back to the other options these last 10 years. (The one other traditional view I've toyed with and not gone back to is the definition of "death", which I've touched on in a few threads.)
