The call of TULIP

I've been having a semi-crisis of faith recently. My church has been doing a series on doubt, which has really gotten me thinking. I've found it on the whole to be quite interesting, honest, and thought provoking. But I feel like there are fairly good answers to most of the difficult questions that have been raised. What keeps me up at night is the question of freewill and predestination. See, I'm starting to think God is a Calvinist, and I am very uncomfortable with that idea. It makes grace so much more amazing, and yet makes God seem fickle and preferential. This would all be so much simpler if St. Paul hadn't gone a written Romans. I'm going to over-simplify this because it's late and I don't even know if I fully understand the problem. I simply don't understand how a loving God could knowingly create condemned people. Maybe I'll just have to talk myself into open theism, an idea that, 2 years ago, I would have told you I would never even seriously consider. We change in ways we can never predict.

By the way, for those of you not familiar with the TULIP acronym, it is often used to summarize the beliefs of five-point Calvinists.
Total Depravity
Unconditional Election
Limited Atonement
Irresistible Grace
Perseverance of the Saints

I'm not even going to try to cover all of my struggles with TULIP here, because on the one hand it's absurd (for instance, what is the point of the Great Commission if there is Irresistible Grace), and yet incredibly logical and Biblical.

Here's to someone digging up Jesus' Systematic Theology somewhere near Bethlehem. In the meantime, I'll just keep slogging it out, even though it's unclear if I'm gaining ground, or losing it.