I sat down with a young lady not too long ago and had a conversation. This was a conversation about faith—her faith. Better put, this was a conversation about a faith that once was and is no more. She was a very interesting and bright lady—inquisitive, well-read, and very suspicious. She began by telling me that she had been a Christian, but had since left the faith. Christ was once a part of her confession. However, after a long voyage of not finding sufficient answers for her doubts, she came to the conclusion that she believes she has had no choice but to follow her own integrity and renounce Christ all together. That said, when I asked her to share with me what her particular problems were, she became very emotional. It was just as if I represented Christianity, and she was ready to take all of it out on me.
Ignorance. Pity. Shame. These are all word descriptions she associated with Christianity. However, through these superficial word descriptions, it was evident that the best root word to describe her feelings was “betrayal”. She had been betrayed by the Church, because they duped her into a belief not unlike that of the tooth fairy or Santa Claus. When she discovered this “betrayal,” no one could provide a valid answer or excuse. So she left. She is now an unbeliever—a soon-to-be evangelistic unbeliever no doubt. I discussed the issue with her for quite a while. However, she seemed to have come to the point in this process that she was no longer open to counsel, no matter what I said.
As many of you know, a part of my ministry is dealing with people who doubt their faith just like this young lady. I possess well over a dozen books containing a plethora of autobiographical sketches of people who once proclaimed to be Christians. Yet, these same individuals are now professing evangelistic atheism, agnosticism, or skepticism. They are “evangelistic” in that their avowed goal is to convert, or rather “unconvert”, others to their world view system of unbelief. I have received e-mails, phone calls, and personal visits from numerous people who have either already, or are on the verge of leaving the Christian faith. On a positive note, may I say that many of those individuals have been restored to a faith in Christ.
Leaving Christianity is one of the most serious issues facing the Church today. Right under our noses, an epidemic is confronting Christianity— the “disease” of unbelief spreading among our very own. The ironic fact is that there is a great assembly of people in our churches who are somewhere in the process of leaving. No, I am not talking about them leaving one denomination, only to join another Christian group. I am not talking about abandoning some institutionalized notion of Christianity. I am not even talking about the explicit renunciation of their expressed beliefs. I am talking about those who are leaving Christ. (And this is coming from a Calvinist who does not believe that those who are truly elect will ever leave).
Over 31 million Americans are saying “check please” to the church, and are off to find answers elsewhere. Jeff Schadt, coordinator of Youth Transition Network, says thousands of youth fall away from the church when transitioning from high school to college. He and other youth leaders estimate that 65 to 94 percent of high school students stop attending church after graduating. From my studies and experience I find that leaving the church is, on many occasions, the first visible step in one’s pilgrimage away from Christ.
There are so many complicated reasons why people “leave Christ” and I don’t propose to do justice to them here. However, I do want to discuss the observations I have made of the steps that people take in leaving Christianity.
Step One: Doubt
This is the case when a person begins to examine his or her faith more critically by asking questions, expressing concerns, and becoming transparent with their doubt. One normally finds this step coming from teenagers, or those in the process of transitioning from adolescence to their teen years. However, this step frequently applies to individuals included in demographics that reach much farther out than the teen years. This step of doubt is not wholesale, but expresses an inner longing to have questions answered and the intellect satisfied, at least to some degree. Normally, a person experiencing this step will seek out mentors in the faith, someone he respects who will listen to his “doubt.”
While there are several diverse reasons that are responsible for the initiation of this doubt, three primary causes stand out:
Maturation: Much of the time, the cause is purely reflective of one’s age progression, a phase in life we like to call “simple maturation.” As people grow older, they begin to ask more serious questions about their beliefs (and their parents’ beliefs as well). During this stage of life, intellectual maturation, or at least what we perceive to be such, becomes a stronger motivator in our life. We begin to grow in our critical thinking, and discernment skills grow stronger.
Intellectual challenges: Often, the doubt comes from intellectual challenges in the form of questions. “Is the Bible truly reliable?” “Does science demonstrate that there is no proof of God?” “Why do I even need to believe in God?”
Experiential challenges: These types of challenges come from God’s actions (or lack thereof) in our lives. This is exemplified through prayers that don’t get answered, the apparent silence of God in a person’s experience, or a tragedy from which the doubter or someone else was not rescued. These experiential challenges can be catalysts which ignite intellectual challenges.
Any one of these (or all three together) can fire the starting gun on the voyage away from Christianity.
Step Two: Discouragement
This follows doubt, as a person becomes frustrated because he is not finding the answers to his questions. The answers (or lack thereof) cause his discouragement. He becomes further discouraged because he has little or no hope that acceptable answers to his questions will ever be found. His church tells him that merely raising said questions is “unchristian.” A Sunday school teacher may offer an ambivalent response such as, “I don’t know. You just have to believe.” Another might simply say, “That’s a good question, I have never thought of that before. . .” and then proceed on their own way, their own leap-of-faith journey, totally oblivious, just as if the question had never been asked.
These experiences cause obvious and great discouragement in the life of the beginning doubter, who sees his questions and concerns as legitimate, and they deserve to be answered. “Are others scared of these questions? If so, why?” are the doubter’s thoughts.
Step Three: Disillusionment
It is at this step that disillusionment sets in the mind of the doubter. He becomes disillusioned with Christianity in general and proceeds to engage in more serious doubt. He feels genuinely betrayed by those he had trusted most when he first believed. He becomes skeptical not only of what is, in his mind, an unwarranted story about Christ and the Bible, but also of the very people who encouraged and influenced him to believe such an untrustworthy myth. He is further disillusioned that the faith which he had been persuaded to believe was so saturated with naivete that not even his most trusted mentors could (or would) answer basic, elementary questions about the Bible, history, or faith. In his thinking, a person’s “legitimate” intellect was discarded out of hand, supplanted by the church becoming an “illegitimate” contender for the minds of gullible believers. Once the mind of the “Disillusioned Doubter” has been lost, the turn has been made. He may still be emotionally rooting for his former faith, but this will soon pass as his “intellect” talks him out of his emotional conviction. What a very sad place this is for the doubting “leaver,” as he realizes for the first time that he is truly leaving Christ. It is at this point that he will likely go through an indefinite period of depression, despondency, and indecisiveness.
Step Four: Apathy
At this stage in his journey away from the Christian faith, the disillusioned “former Christian” becomes apathetic to finding answers, as he is convinced that the answers don’t exist. He is treading headlong down the path of skepticism, agnosticism, or all-out atheism, but he doesn’t have the courage to admit it to himself or others. An individual in this stage frequently lives as a “closet unbeliever.” He is convinced that it is not worth the risk to come clean about his departure from the faith. He desires an uneventful and peaceful existence in his state of unbelief, without creating any controversy. This may help him to cope with the depression that his loss of faith has brought about. If he isn’t honest with himself or others about it, he won’t have to deal with it. Surely, he may continue to hand out bulletins at church, sing in the choir, show up to socials, take a mission trip here and there, and even teach a Sunday School class, but he no longer believes. He is content, for now, to stay in the closet.
However, not everyone stays in the apathy stage.
Step Five: Departure
(This is where I met the young lady I introduced to you at the beginning of this post. In actuality, she was somewhere in between apathy and departure.) At this stage in the process, the fact that one has left the faith has become real to him, and he is ready and willing to announce the fact to the world. Because of his sense of betrayal, he feels as if it is his duty to become an “evangelist of unbelief.” His goal and mission now becomes to “unconvert” the converted.
This is the stage where many former Christians, such as Bart Erhman, reside. In my opinion, Dr. Erhman is full of zeal due to his sense of betrayal. Either he feels that he has to legitimize his departure by taking with him as many as he can, or he is truly attempting to help people quit living a lie out of true concern. Either way, his emotional commitment to Christianity is gone and reversed. He is now an evangelist of unbelief.
“I don’t really even care what you have to say to me,” she told me that day. “I just don’t believe anymore and there is nothing anyone can do about it.” As I thought about this young lady, one thing kept coming to mind: How was she a part of the church for so long without the church ever engaging her on these issues? You see, the issues she confronted were numerous, but foundational. She doubted the resurrection of Christ; the inspiration, inerrancy, canon of Scripture; and the historicity of the Christian faith in general. If the church had legitimized her questions during the doubting phase and truly engaged her on an intellectual front, I can’t help but think things might have been different. But once one reaches the apathy stage, that seems to be that point of no return.
Folks, we have a lot in our job description. But rooting people theologically by presenting the intellectual viability of the Evangelical faith must be at the top of the priority list and it must come early. While I understand this is not all there is to the Christian faith, it is an absolutely vital part of discipleship and foundational to everything else.
Everyone will go through the doubt phase. Everyone should ask questions about their faith. If you have not asked the “How do you know?” questions about the message of the Gospel, this is not “a good thing.” We should be challenged to think through these questions early in our faith walk. (Taking my own advice, I am reading this to my 14-year-old daughter right now. Why? She needs to hear it.) The Church needs to rethink its educational programs. Expositional preaching, while very important, is not enough. Did you hear me? Expositional preaching is not enough. It is not the correct venue for the discipleship that is vital for us to prevent and overcome this epidemic. We should not fool ourselves into thinking that it does.
The church has been on an intellectual diet for the last century and we are suffering from theological atrophy. What else do you expect when we have replaced theological discipleship, instead prioritizing entertainment, numbers, and fast-food Christianity that can produce nothing more than a veneer of faith seasoned for departure?
The solution: We must reform our educational programs in the church. We must lay theological foundations through critical thinking. We must understand that the “Great Commission” is to make disciples, not simply converts. And most importantly, we must pray that God will grant a revival of the mind and the spirit, knowing that without the power of the Holy Spirit, no amount of intellectual persuasion can change an antagonistic heart.
Absent these solutions, the epidemic of leaving Christ will only worsen. We will (if we don’t already) have more evangelists of unbelief than we do the Gospel.
355 replies to "Leaving (Christ)ianity"
Guys,
Michael’s theological word of the day is dualism.
“Early philosophical system which sees the universe in terms of two antithetical forces which are continually at odds. These two forces are responsible for the origin of the world. Often the dualist worldview produced a metaphysical separation between the spiritual and physical, with the spiritual being good and physical being evil. Christianity has rejected all forms of a dualism yet its assumptions often find their way into the church.”
I think that may seem true to some folks who are genuinely confused when they do hear the very passionate arguments on both sides of things like YEC/OEC, Calvinism/Armianism, and perhaps they wonder if we’re being double minded. I don’t know, I have always wondered about that myself. So I think that perhaps we need to be better grounded in all our churches in promoting the essentials, along with better Bible training and personal discipleship before we expose them to other things.
Having someone accept Christ after an altar call and then leaving them up to their own devices has always seemed to me like winning tickets to the Super Bowl and then being left in the parking lot.
Just my 2 1/2 cents.
All this group is going to tell you is that she wasn’t a christian in the first place and now all she wants to do is convince christians that they shouldn’t believe in the christian god. The people who respond on this blog have their theology all ready decided and are not willing to every enter into someone elses doubts.Author: Olive
Comment:
It sounds like the young lady had the realisation that beliefs are not facts. She wanted to make sure what she believed to be true, was actually true.
But when she came to investigate this by asking questions and doing research, the results of her investigation clearly established that her beliefs were not true. She would have been foolhardy indeed to continue to dedicate her life to something which she had established to be untrue.
The bible says prayers will be answered (“ask and it shall be given unto you”), and yet all prayers are not answered.
The bible claims to be the perfect word of god and yet contains hundreds of contradictions.
There is no physical evidence of a man called Jesus,and no contemporary record of the existence of such a man.
God is invisible, inaudible, we can’t touch, smell or taste him, or indeed detect him in any way.
Everything is just as though there isn’t and never was such a thing as a god. Just as though the word ‘god’ and the entity it describes were both a concept constructed by man..
We just post comments from Robert continually but not others?
Author: Olive
Comment:
It sounds like the young lady had the realisation that beliefs are not facts. She wanted to make sure what she believed to be true, was actually true.
But when she came to investigate this by asking questions and doing research, the results of her investigation clearly established that her beliefs were not true. She would have been foolhardy indeed to continue to dedicate her life to something which she had established to be untrue.
The bible says prayers will be answered (“ask and it shall be given unto you”), and yet all prayers are not answered.
The bible claims to be the perfect word of god and yet contains hundreds of contradictions.
There is no physical evidence of a man called Jesus,and no contemporary record of the existence of such a man.
God is invisible, inaudible, we can’t touch, smell or taste him, or indeed detect him in any way.
Everything is just as though there isn’t and never was such a thing as a god. Just as though the word ‘god’ and the entity it describes were both a concept constructed by man..
@Greg: Btw, “mbaker” is a dear female and woman of God! One of the reasons for my quote about women are from Venus and men from Mars! A friendly quote I might add! 😉
And of course Robert, its full of great theology hey!
I like the title, but I did not read the book!
Goodbye to all of this
Greg,
Interesting you should mention Detroit . I lived there in 1966, at 134 W. Columbia Ave, in one of the little brownstones right outside of downtown Detroit, and worked in the David Stott building., and then at J. L. Hudson’s department store. Are they still there? Some of my folks at that time lived at Five Mile Road. I loved the polish sausages and perogies in Hamtramack. Still drool for them. My biggest memory of Detroit was the bums that I would have to step over that were laying against the building in the morning. And of course the better ones were of Bell isle and the Motown sound, and the Supremes that we used to go out there to see on weekends. Although many of my memories of living in Detroit are happy ones, despite its bad publicity. I have no memory of any good churches like what you are talking about.
However, i am glad your church has such a comprehensive program now. That is good.
However, most churches i know of both where you are and where I am now do not have anything like that. I think that is why a lot of people who are asked to accept Christ, and do then are left without any kind of proper counseling except for a sermon on Sunday, and I do think that is a great lack, and perhaps a big reason why many are leaving the faith because they don’t have a proper anchor to begin with, so they never progress or even fully understand what Christianity in the fullness of Christ is really all about because they are not educated about it.
@Fr. Robert,
I know we don’t always agree but thanks so much for your kind words.
Love how the people on this blog have empathy for doubters. Did any of you read Michaels blog on doubt and showing empathy for the doubter or all you worry about is whether or not your a Calvinist ar an armanistbreally that is all the gos,pel means to you.
Cerbaz,
Please don’t give up on Christianity because of us, and just because we are such poor representatives of it.
Don’t mind us, if we have turned you off, but please just think of your own eternal security. I am praying for you, and am hoping you know that, flawed though I am too.
God bless you.
Olive, #186: “There is no physical evidence of a man called Jesus,and no contemporary record of the existence of such a man.”
CMP, Fr. Robert, Greg (Tiribulus), et al, how would you folks respond to this statement? I seriously would like to know.
Thanks.
I wonder how the Apostles, Luther, Calvin, Rick Warren, Daniel Wallace, Mohler, the Pope, John Piper, Charles Spurgeon, Van Til, William Lane Craig, Paul Copan, Chuck Swindoll, John MacArthur, Billy Graham, et al, would respond to that question, along with a response to their answer by “Olive.”
I have seen, at times, winsome and truthful answers trampled and dismissed rather rudely by folks made in the image of God.
For me, the topic of the canon became the fulcrum point that felled my faith. Any study of the pre-Nicene church is going to leave the common student with little to do but fall back on tradition or reject the whole thing as make believe.
#38, I will let our blog-host take this one, since I am a “Presuppositional” guy, and believe the historical evidence, of both Text & history itself! (Note the Apostolic Community, Peter, James & John, and later Saul/Paul). And say just this, but we have more historical evidence for Jesus the Nazarene, than Plato. I think there are only one to three full manuscripts for Plato from himself? I wonder how many “mythicists” deny Plato’s existence?
Unbelief is a hard taskmaster!
@jesse: If you really care? there is a new book on the Canon, called: Canon Revisited, Establishing The Origins And Authority of the New Testament Books, by Michael Kruger (2012, Crossway). Yes, I have it and have read it! Both John Frame and Mike Horton have written in support of this fine book!
PS..Also jesse, for a very good book, really a classic that includes the church before Nicaea, see J.N.D. Kelly’s: Early Christian Doctrines, (1958 first edition, but it has been revised also). One of a kind, by a historical scholar, and a conservative Anglican theolog, died in the late 70’s.
*Another good book to read is Eusebius’s: The History of the Church – The History Of the Church From Christ To Constantine. Eusebius (AD c. 260-339) was a Greek Christian writer, often called the ‘Father of Ecclesiastical History’. See the Penhguin Classics edition, introduction to the Revised Edition, by Andrew Louth!
@ Fr. Robert, of course I am interested in the topic of Apostolic history; and, have read the Ecc. Histories. Still, the earliest attestation to the canon as a list of books [Muratorian Fragment, c. 200AD] convinced me that the canon as we know it has deep problems. I would have liked it had the five volumes of Papias been preserved, but history is indifferernt to my needs or biases.
By the way, I attended an Anglican college in the OAC. Are you the Rector of a parish? What communion?
@jessie: Of course the Muratorian Canon, the oldest extant list of the NT books, compiled in Latin before 200 in Rome, discovered by Ludovico Muratori, an Italian scholar (1672-1750), must be seen in the sense of “apostolic men” and church at the time. Again too, we can note later the work of NT Scripture quotation and compellation in Eusebius History of the Church. Again see Kruger’s book, which has several references to the Muratorian fragment/Canon in his work.
I am btw an Irish Brit (born and raised in Dublin), I was a cradle but practicing Roman Catholic until my mid to late 20’s. My first degree was even from a Catholic College in philosophy (BA). I hold now the D. Phil., and Th.D., I lived and taught in Israel in the late 90’s. And that was a real providence! I am now (since about 93-4), a “Biblical” Zionist, and I am Historic Pre-Mill. Yes, I am somewhat an eclectic Reformed guy. 😉 At present I am living in the US with my wife, who has some health issues, one of the reasons we are here. I am semi-retired, and now do some hospital chaplain work. I am a non-stipendiary priest, for several years now. I am a conservative both theologically and politically, and yes a Evangelical and Reformed. (I have been an Anglo-Catholic in my long past, and even still somewhat friendly with the general history of the EO). See my wee blog. 🙂
Yes, Amen @Greg! The Holy Scripture will always be God’s word and will, even if we cannot figure it all out! (Lk. 16: 31)…But thank God for His Irresistible, Effectual Grace in His chosen/elect people, not “our” work but His, but we are submissive therein.
Loss of faith in what? I think that’s the crux of the issue – and the disillusionment stage (as outlined in the article) is where it becomes obvious that one’s faith was not truly placed in Christ. Superficially, there may be all sorts of reasons – mostly excuses – for why one disavows Christianity, but in the end it can’t but be that one’s faith is not truly in the Master. The Blessedness of the Unoffended is a message this generation needs to hear. Offenses must come. For those who really trust in Christ, the inevitable response to tragedy, trial and tribulation will be “To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”. But to those who are unable (or unwilling?) to renounce faith in anything but Christ, a root of bitterness can easily spring up and defile not only them, but those around them.
The bottom line – if they leave, they were not truly (or fully) Christ’s to begin with.
By way of (a poor) analogy, if you are told that you must stand on a table to ensure that you will survive the rising waters that are flooding the house you are in and you, at the same time, are holding on to a firmly bolted metal rail on the wall to help balance yourself, at some point you are going to have to let go of the rail or find yourself wet (and possibly eventually drowning). Meanwhile, the table is rising with the waters to the roof (where, supposedly, you can be pulled to safety – but the analogy is already breaking down). The point is, faith in Christ is all or nothing AND if it is masked (at all) by (any) faith in anything else, the crisis (and it is often internal and unseen) will force the individual to choose where their faith lies (I use “choose” in the loosest sense as I don’t see it as a choice in the sense it is often portrayed).
I have to admit I question the sincerity of those who doubt the evidences for the divine origin of the Bible. There are a plethora of evidence to support the divine origin of the Bible if one cares to look. As a presuppositional-evidentialist I straddle both camps. There are plenty of well known figures from past to current that supports the evidential views because they started out trying to disprove the Bible, Simon Greenleaf, CS Lewis, Lee Stroebel. And it isn’t for lack of scholarship if one cares to look, Dan Wallace, Darrell Bock, Craig Evans, Michael Licona, Michael Kruger, there is even a conference coming up Skeptics and the Savior
There is a lot of truth in what James Spiegel said in the title of his book The Making of an Atheist: How Immorality Leads to Unbelief. The truth is that it’s not that there isn’t evidence for God but sinners who don’t want to live accountable to God. We hear a lot of ranting about Christianity, but do they apply the same critical eye to the alternatives? What is the alternative to God?
In an atheistic framework there is no difference in the death of a human being from a monkey, snake, catfish or a virus. We are nothing more than a subgroup of catarrhines made of nothing more than the meaningless collection of star dust.
Absent of a transcendent personal God, any talk about suffering and evil is just nonsense. A staunch atheist like Jean Paul Sartre is right to consider moral rules as slavery to a bad construct. In the last sentence of his book Being and Nothingness, Sartre writes “all human activities are equivalent”, and “it amounts to the same thing whether one gets drunk alone or is a leader of nations.”
cont…
cont. from #49
And the famed Bertrand Russell who is greater than most atheists “man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins – all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand.”
If you think that is rational and want to put your faith in a life without the God of the Bible then good luck to you.
Oh the dark limbo of obscure psychical subjectivism. It often leads to profound lust, and outright idolatry! Simply without God we are lost, to ourselves and real being-ontology!
Exactly. And let’s not forget it is atheistic reductionism that tells us that there is no soul no mind, we are nothing more than a blob of protoplasm encased in an exoskeleton. Our actions are nothing more than the result of some interactions between some biochemical reactions which we cannot control and fatalistic. You can’t blame a primate for going on a killing spree because of a donut he ate that morning which triggered a biochemical chain reaction that caused him/her to kill. I didn’t just made up these ideas this is the kind of reductionism that is espoused by atheists like Richard Dawkins and BF Skinner.
Ugh, on B.F. Skinner! I have to read him a bit in my college days, aye he made it across the pond!
“When Milton’s Satan falls from heaven, he ends in hell. And what does he say to reassure himself? ‘Here, at least, we shall be free.’ And that, I think, is the fate of the old-fashioned liberal. He’s going to be free, but he’s going to find himself in hell.”
—B. F. Skinner, from William F. Buckley Jr, On the Firing Line, p. 87.
Michael,
Thanks for sharing this. Much needed and appreciated.
Back in the mid 70s I too began questioning the claims of the Christian faith. I had been schooled by ultra-fundamentalist and later began being taught by agnostic professors. I went to many of my pastor friends whom I considered more knowledgeable than myself for answers to questions raised by some of my unbelieving professors. I was surprised that they were not equipped to deal with the questions that troubled me. Unfortunately too many pastors are no more prepared to answer a skeptic than the average layman.
I departed from radical fundamentalism to agnostic liberalism for almost 4 years. It was a horrible experience, for it was a constant battle between my heart and mind. Only by the grace of God did I eventually see the truth. I learned a lot through that experience. I may not be able to help every skeptic that comes my way, but I never want them to have the same experience with me like I had with the few pastor friends I had back then.
Danny Crowder says: the truth.
Greg (Tiribulus) says Which is?
answer: Jesus
Start with John 1
Bear baiting is rarely helpful.
@Greg: Amen indeed 2 Cor. 11: 4!!! This section of Pauline revelation is very clear, the enemy is spirit and spiritual (“receive another spirit”), and simply seeks to undermine “the simplicity that is Christ”!
Robert,
If you took the time to look at the context of my comments instead of speculating about what I may, or may not, have had in mind, and what my background might be you might be able to contribute something helpful. Your speculative comment has nothing to do with the topic, but is typical of academics. Looks like one of your hot buttons got tweaked. If you want a doctrine without Jesus, it won’t be Biblical.
Greg asked which truth. I said Jesus. Jesus said “I am the way, the truth and the life……..” Check it out; He really did say that. If you want to fantasize about some other Jesus that is your prerogative. However; ultimately, all truth, physical and spiritual, is bound up in Jesus. Not only did He create all things; but He holds all things together. The spiritual laws are part of His truth; the physical laws, whether they pertain to things we can see or things we cannot see, are also part of His truth. Why is this so? Simply because it pleased the Father to make it so. Perhaps you have some other truth.
Greg is right about starting in Genesis 1 to get the most comprehensive picture of Jesus, but then you have also got to throw in Romans 1 to get the mandate for studying the visible universe to learn more about the invisible things of God, such as how the duality principle of light adds perspective on the nature of the Trinity and the significance of light being the first entity specifically mentioned as created on Day 1. However, for a concise description of Jesus’ nature and person in the Godhead, I still think John 1 is a reasonable place for someone to start who wants to know about Jesus.
@George: It seems one of your “buttons” really got tweaked! I was responding from the Text itself in 2 Cor. 11: 4, I mean there’s an exegesis here, and only then an application. The Text really speaks for itself! As Greg has said! The “other Jesus” has “another spirit”, and this is measured by the doctrine of Christ Himself, which is always “sincere” and has pure “devotion” to Christ by faith, but also Christ’s “incarnation” is always central. As we see in 1 John 4: 1-3. Today’s age of so-called “tolerance”, often does not like much judgment and spiritual discernment!
Good grief! It seems to me after following this thread it has gotten into a big theological debate, instead of really addressing the issue instead of the real heart of the OP. I feel sorry for Cerbaz, and I can truly say I empathize with her, because after reading these comments they make me feel I was like I was a bad person instead, and didn’t deserve salvation in the first place.
Thanks Danny,
I have heard from someone that this has gotten back off track and is becoming rather discouraging for people to read. Granted it is only one person who said it and they have a personality for such observations, but if this is true, please keep things civil. While there are very few who read comments and only a select handful who read them this far, that handful is often those who are in need of the most help.
If there are any who are attempting to solve this issue by saying these people were never saved to begin with, this theological conclusion needs to be rethought from a pastoral perspective. It is kinda like saying “we will all be sanctified in the end, so who care about what we do to get there.” While its true we will all eventually be sanctified, out work here in that process matter and somehow contributes to such. And while it may be true that some of these people were never saved to begin with, 1) we don’t know if any individual fits this category and 2) this does not change our responsibility to care deeply for them and to do all we can to strengthen their faith.
Thank you, Michael. i just pray that this person who contacted and influenced you be blessed. And Cerbaz and any other doubters as well. The last thing we need to be doing is turning folks off to Christianity.
Michael… You little ripper mate. That comment you made was fair dinkum and one of the best I read here yet.
Greg,
You have so been one of the folks that have so turned me off, (and I am a strong Christian), despite your saying in an earlier comment that no one in your church would believe that of you. Perhaps they don’t see the side of you that has been displayed on this blog, and this isn’t the only thread I have seen this on. As a died in the wool Calvinist, which you have porported to be, where is YOUR irresistable grace? Can’t say I’ve seen it so far. Lots of good theology from you, but the real grace, of the Lord, no. Think again how you are coming across to doubters.
Jumping in once more to thank mbaker. We all need a conscience to wake us up now and then –me included.
Just one thing more: though it was a while back, the facile dismissal of a suicide as unquestionably hell-bound hurts many of us who have known these poor souls. A minister whom I’ve found way more Christlike in attitude than many opened my eyes to the plight of the suicide: people only kill themselves when death is preferable to their pain and despair. Suicide is wrong, of course; but most suicides are mentally distraught, and not nearly as responsible or self-controlled as we imagine them to be. God knows their hearts; we don’t. Dismissing them to hell only hurts their already wounded loved ones, who never can be completely comforted. Again, responding to an early post in this thread, but it’s all part of not looking at each other with God’s eyes, but our own proud judgmental ones.
Frist, I have always thought of this blog as mainly, a quote
“Theological” one, but of course biblical theology must always be done in a pastoral manner. I don’t see anything I have said here as non-pastoral, though as I have noted I have some rough edges as an old conservative Irish Brit., etc. But in fact I have always taken 1 Tim. 4:6-16 pretty literal and to heart! No doubt as one over 60 (64 this year), I come from a different generation as a so-called baby-boomer. But, I will never apologize for the Word of God! My point about the Parable of the Sower, has only been lightly touched, and by a few, and I did not take the time and room to try to give any outright exegesis. But this is really a main issue about people who confess Christ, then for whatever reason turn away. We must always let the tensions and Word of God speak for itself! Truth is always GOD’s, and to my mind has a presuppositional reality. Surely any evidential reality follows from out of this authority itself. But as I said also, Theology, i.e. the study of the doctrine of God, can be a messy affair oftentimes, especially in this fallen world, of which we ourselves are still even as Christians part of. One must have tough skin to be a faithful pastor and teacher in this age of postmodernity! And the historical Church has simply never been as in the trenches as it is now! Just one look at the Roman Catholic communion itself these days, will quite reveal this reality! Not to mention the “emergent” mess in the so-called evangelical churches. And in this, the Church itself is always really visible and invisible! The ‘Wheat & Tares’, etc. “The Lord [alone] knows those who are His”. (2 Tim. 2:19)
And btw, I will surely stand with our brother “Greg” here for the most part. He too might have some rough-edges, be he seems to have a good handle on the Reformed or Calvinist Gospel! Indeed the real Good News of Christ is always “Sovereignly” God’s to speak and express to His own creation and “kosmos” – the world as created, ordered, and arranged! (John 3: 16) Note this is quite the opposite of what man has called “chaos”, which God never created!
Amen #26 & Amen $27
Rock On for the Lord!
Hi Greg,
Been out of touch for a while getting the cattle ready for a big storm that is supposed to hit tonight. I get where you were coming from in your comments about Jesus. I guess that I don’t consider anyone Jesus, but the One who created the universe. I ran into a lot of academics who liked nothing better than to go off into debates about topics with really no other purpose than to get a reaction out of someone. I’m glad that is not what you were about.
Something about the tone of this whole series has bothered me from the start and just reminded me of university debates that seemed to be an end in themselves. Consider that this all started with a story about a lady who felt betrayed. I have not felt much love thoughout for the lady or those like her who are surely hurting or they would not react so emotionally.
One of my favourite verses is Matthew 9:13, “But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” The NASB translates mercy as compassion. I have not sensed much compassion for those who are lost. Even when they are antagonistic, we have a duty to love them. The has been a lot of passion about the fine points of Calvinism and Arminianism . My bottom line on that is, “Big Deal”. The lost person does not care about the fine points of the debate about whether they were really saved to begin with. They do care whether or not someone really loves them.
Hope you see where I am coming from.
George
I hesitate to comment further on this thread because it seems to have descended to attack on personalities rather than substance. But I just have to clear up a few points. First I assume you meant “I have felt much love…” and not “I have not felt much love…”. Second, since the Calvinists have been bashed as unloving and uncompassionate for those who left the faith. I just want to set the record straight that it wasn’t the Calvinists who brought the issue up but Jason in #17 p.1 who first brought it up. You asked a question about betrayal and a couple of other people made some comments and then Fr R gave his Scriptural understanding of where the leavers essential state came from while expressing sadness for the loss. No one expressed any malice or insensitivity toward those who have left. But here is where I have issue with those who are criticizing other Christians about their behavior and I will only speak for myself and not anyone else. It seems that as a Calvinist or even as a Christian in general if I don’t trip over and over compensate to these people who have left the faith and acquiesce that they are fully justified for leaving and God/Christianity is at fault. I get the impression that while they are hurling vain accusation of immorality at God, I am suppose to just say I understand, I love you. It is because of this kind of ignorance they left. If this kind of coddling is effective, Doug Wilson would have won over Christopher Hitchens from their tour together. There is a wide range of positions between coddling them like some here have done and figuratively hitting them over their head. Be caring, sympathetic, compassionate and above all truthful. to be cont…
cont. from #30
As a matter of fact the only reason why a Christian would even engage with an atheist or those who left Christianity is because they care about that person’s eternal soul. Third you pointed out Mt 9.13, without getting into your exegesis of that verse let me offer Mt 7.6 (Matthew 7:6) “Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.” Let’s face it if we don’t refute the errors of their darkened mind we are doing them and God a disservice. And by all means do it with gentleness and respect. Finally, you asked the basis of her betrayal. Did you get the answer? I don’t think so. Just because someone thinks they’ve been betrayed doesn’t mean they actually have been betrayed. The whole notion of being duped is illogical. Just analyzing it from a logical point of view without assuming whose worldview is true, it is possible that by leaving Christianity she is actually being duped into atheism. Logically speaking there does not need to have deception involved but rather two groups of people concluding to an opposing worldview. Just because an atheist accuse me of duplicity it doesn’t mean that it is true. Learn from Hitchens, he is the master of antagonism and guilt tripping.
At this point in time, I’m thinking of Job’s friends, and God’s response to them.
Christians who see friends and family apostasize experience suffering. In some ways they might feel like their suffering is akin to Job’s.
I still think the best response is speaking the truth in love, as scripture admonishes us to do. And if we can’t love them or have compassion upon them, at least we can still speak kindly. That’s just common courtesy no matter what side we are on.
Teleologist is right that the reason we engage with them is because we do care about their eternal security, and sharing the truths of the gospel, even the hard ones, in anger is not the way to do it, IMO.
@ Greg,
Thanks for your offer, but I am happily married woman and don’t believe it would be appropriate to have personal e-mail conversations with a man I don’t even know.
Often “Job’s Friends” are those within in the so-called House of God. Sadly that “house” has become for too many “Ichabod”, the glory has departed!
Fr. Robert,
And don’t you think that the reason for it has more to do with us, and our opinions, rather than those of God? I wonder sometimes if we just shouldn’t shut up with all our opinions and books etc; and just start preaching the straight word of God again and see what happens.
Don’t get me wrong, I agree with reading about good theology and church history, but sometimes i think we place more emphasis on that type of thing in the church nowadays than the Bible itself.
Greg,
I am not going to respond to you any more. I feel like Carrie did with you on the other thread that you think you are so right that no one has a fair chance with you, and so you don’t have an audience with me any more either. So please do me a favor and don’t address me again. Thanks and God bless.