Okay, so basically that entire list is false unless one redefined words like “humility”, “respect”, and “truth” I’m such a way as to deprive them of all meaning outside the narrow fundamentalist culture. The fourth contradicts the second and third, for starters, and number twelve ignores the historical fact that fundamentalism is itself a recent trend. And someone needs to remind Chailles that sometimes, people can genuinely understand something you care deeply about and just disagree with you.

Well said Jonny Scaramanga. Deb and Dee, thank you for this post.

In reading various posts on your blog, and today’s specifically, you really should become familiar with the blogs at ChurchandCulture.org, and the latest book by its author, “The Rise of the Nones: Understanding and Reaching the Religiously Unaffiliated.” Many shared sentiments.

Thank you for sharing honestly. Your story has reminded me of the need to be present, be engaged and really listen — without an agenda — to others’ spiritual views. One of the biggest turnoffs anywhere for anything is that you are really not being heard.

Thank you for the reminder!

“Fundamentalists” encapsulate many Christians including myself based on the 5 fundamentals of the faith. It many ways, it’s quite a broad tent – but the term has such a perjorative sense that there are many Christians I would classify as “fundamentalists,” who think that they aren’t.

THE FIVE BASIC DOCTRINES

1. The Trinity: God is one “What” and three “Whos” with each “Who” possessing all the attributes of Deity and personality.

2. The Person of Jesus Christ: Jesus is 100% God and 100% man for all eternity.

3. The Second Coming: Jesus Christ is coming bodily to earth to rule and judge.

4. Salvation: It is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.

5. The Scripture: It is entirely inerrant and sufficient for all Christian life.

Now I only owned 1 leisure suit (long since left the world of clothing,) and have never used hair-gel. I own exactly 1 suit ( 20 years old) and 1 tie. Unless there’s a funeral or a very special wedding, it never sees the light of day. I abandoned the KJV as my favored version back in the 70s. I refused to attend a church where the pastor has no deacons nor elders. Even in very strict churches, these days women wear pants and everybody goes to the movies. It appears a lot of fundamentalist think a little wine is ok. ( I like the free samples at Fresh Market.) The Independent Baptist fundamentalists are mostly Arminians in theology.

But if holding to the 5 basic doctrines/fundamentals of the faith defines one as a “fundamentalist,” then I am staunchly one.

As for Jonny, did he leave the faith because there are people, like me, who hold to a young Earth? Or did he leave the faith for a variety of conscious and unconscious reasons.
*
There’s got to be more reasons in play then the young Earth adherents because we are a really, really tiny percentage of the population. Are we even 1/2 a percent? I doubt it’s that high.
So Jonny now proclaims himself to be an atheist. Did he have a choice or was it forced upon him. Did the “fundamentalist” force him to abandon the faith or did he choose too? I’m thinking nobody held a gun to his head (metaphorically speaking.)
*
I hope he comes back; I see life as pretty desperate without Jesus Christ as your hope.

This is a great post, there are two things that need to be said. I firmly believe that the lines between evangelical and fundamentalist have been blurred in the last few years. John Piper in my book is a fundamentalist and he’s pushed his fundamentalism in churches and organizations that really were milder than they are today. Fundamentalism serves no purpose other than to hurt, destroy and kill. And I cringe when I see this fundamentalism play out in SGM, Acts 29, Mars Hill, and other sects. Secondly I also would suggest that many Christians are blind to fundamentalism because they see if so often, that it becomes second nature. When you are in fundamentalism I think many people don’t believe they are fundamentalists. It goes along with the territory which is why I think many are oblivious to it. Some things like the gender roles being forced today are easy to spot and see. This is why many Evangelical Free Churches have taken such a dark turn.

the reason i dont take potshots at fundamentalists—its not challenging enuf

As I’ve said before, the YECs drove me away from christianity. Not the YEC part because you are free to be as stupid as you want; but the part where they would repeat lie after lie about the science and the scientists. that was a deal breaker for me.

What do I believe now? Not sure, still working on it.

On the subject of not attacking fundamentalists, that reminds me of a quote by the late Sir Edward Heath, from when he was (Conservative) Prime Minister:

I never attack the Labour Party – they do it so well themselves.

The “are you the Judean Peoples’ Front?” scene is a good reminder that The Life of Brian is not just a satire on organised religion.

As a Christian for 50 years, with many years of ministry, I began my exit from the faith due the treatment I received from other Christians – primarily those who felt themselves so important that they could use others for their own elevation in work and ministry.

No, I am not bitter, or hurt, etc. I simply saw that the people who talk most about God and the Bible, are desperate to feel important, and they abuse people in the process. In the long run, those religious people are no better than the so-called heathen. (I’ve been back-stabbed far worse by Christians than I ever have been by non-believers.)

For me, there is no turning back. I’ve long since left the faith, and find it logically impossible to believe those stories again. I do wonder if I would have ever come to this place if it hadn’t been for self-righteous, egotistical, self-important, selfish Christians.

Hey, maybe you guys should do a series of posts on the Organic/House church movement. For me it seems that it’s this kind of elephant in the room, for mainline Christianity. Not many people are talking about it, but it seems to be growing. There’s a lot misconceptions about what it means to do church in this way, and I think it could be an interesting subject to explore. I can even help with an international point of view, but I would love to see your take on the american version of house church.

Patti wrote:

Maybe when or if he does and then can still explain his own experience as only scientific and biological impulses… IDK…even if they are just impulses I don’t see why that would prove away that a God might have created the biology to use as a means to communicate with me.

Saying that God may have created biology to use as a means to communicate, would be a religious statement but it would not get very far with someone using scientific reasoning because one must not reason teleologically in that manner in thinking scientifically. So if your brother rejects that, don’t worry.

But I am writing this because I have just read something really good on exactly this subject. I have a book of sermons (yes sermons) by C S Lewis and one of them is called “Transposition.” In it he deals with the fact that all humans have is our brains (neural pathways) and the only way our brains can respond to anything is the same way they already respond to material things. How then can one say that this or that is from God when in fact it uses the very same neural pathways in the very same manner, and the very same English language words which already have specific meanings and the very same emotions which we have already identified as meaning something else other than God. And furthermore, all we know is the world as we already know it, so how can God reveal anything, much less Himself, to us when we have no prior experience with which to understand it and all we have to work with is what we already know and that is material and limited to the same world which we already experience.

In other words, all our ways of understanding are already being utilized for something else, and where does that leave us in relation to the God thing? And then he goes on to explain how one might in fact say that one experiences God, or understands some of the things about God, anyhow, using illustrations to do so.

Lewis is sometimes slow reading, and sometimes one has to go back over what he says to be sure that it was understood, and he uses the language a little differently, but he is a gold mine on this issue.

On the back of the book a New York Times Book Review put it this way. ” C. S. Lewis is the ideal persuader for the half-convinced, for the good man who would like to be a Christian but finds his intellect getting in the way.”

@ Rob:

At one point in my life, the VietNam era actually, and while I was up to my elbows in human suffering and disasters, and while all the church could do was hold hands and sing kume-by-ya, I shook my fist in the face of God and informed Him that I totally did not care about “God is love” and that he would have to worry about His own emotions, but if He was not going to do anything about anything then I had no choice but to walk away and not look back. Basically “If You are not going to do anything about anything, then I will do what I can without You, but You stay away from me.”

I grieved the loss of faith, or whatever it was I ever thought I believed, but kume-by-ya was worthless and as far as I could tell God was helpless or disinterested but in any case I/we were in this alone and had best just get over it and move on. And i did this with lots of reasons and lots of observations and lots of fairly good arguments.

After a few years of that, and for what reason I know not, and why then and not before or never, He came and got me. There is no other way to say it. Amazing. Like the parable of the shepherd and the lost sheep. It took me a couple of years from there to work out some issues, but there it was. I have no description, no explanation, no intervening event, no nothing to explain it or even describe it The closest description would be like what the psych people call an ah-hah moment.

He does that sort of thing. Said He did and sure enough. I am not preaching at you, and I am not humming Just As I Am in the background, but with your history I thought you were somebody I could tell this story to. Thanks for listening. I am sorry you got hurt like that.

Eagle wrote:

I firmly believe that the lines between evangelical and fundamentalist have been blurred in the last few years

Absolutely agree. And don’t leave IX Marks off the list!

@Eagle – I look forward to hearing your story one day. I am also amazed that I’m not an athiest as well, although I NEVER thought I would even come close to that.
@Nancy – I don’t feel like I’m shaking my fist at God, but as I like to say, “He and I are having some serious conversation”, and until I get my answer or it’s somehow resolved, I’m not sure where my faith is at.

As far as the things people say about folks who leave the church, I have to say that people at CLC never said anything bad about me when I left there. I did go to another church, and friends could see that I was different because I could actually be myself, and at least one commented that they liked it.

But my former pastor from another church used some of the excuses that were listed in the beginning of the post. Especially , “Well, they weren’t really Christians to begin with.” When he and I were having our last conversation when he asked me to look around for other churches, I asked him, or rather yelled at him, “What are you going to say about ME when I leave?”

Dr. Fundystan, Proctologist wrote:

@ Seneca “j” Griggs.:
Just so we’re on the same page, Seneca, I’m not sure how many people would define “fundamentalist” as “someone who holds to the fundamentals of the faith” (I left off the number, because “the fundamentals” change depending on who you talk to – no joke, I knew two people who separated from each other because one thought that the virgin birth should be a fundamental, while the other one thought the virgin birth should be subsumed under the fundamental of “inerrancy”). I attended a couple of SBC seminaries, and they certainly didn’t interpret “fundamentalist” that way. I think probably the ideas of rigid adherence to received tradition rather than principles of character combined with seperationism is probably closer to what most people mean by “fundamentalist”.

Yeah, I don’t think people perceive “fundamentalists” as those who simply hold to the 5 fundamentals. I think there is actually a lot of freedom in minor doctrines for those who hold to the 5 fundamentals.

I have a hard time understanding what I hear as anger or resentment in the voices of those ‘driven out of the faith’. If you now believe all the faith stuff is a myth, you should be delighted to be out of it. You are an adult with the ability to seek God via the Bible or any other avenue. Do your research, make your decision but stop blaming others for your choice.

Also for those who are so ready to attach Christians that accept any list of doctrines. Is there anything that anyone can say they believe is true? Or is your view that in order to not drive people away, Christians need to say any and all beliefs are equally valid?

Just wondering. Actually the church I currently attend is a little wrack-a-doodle for my taste, but I stay there by my choice and if I leave it will be by my choice. I have just learned to go to a mental happy place when YEC and such come up.

dee wrote:

Seneca

Bye, bye.

Not only that, Seneca/Jimmy/whatever is a type specimen of the subject of Jonny’s posting and Dee’s commentary.

Eagle wrote:

Jonathan Edwards is not that great. He was a slaver holder and I think he should be more damned for owning slaves as a preacher than Thomas Jefferson did as a slave holder.

*Wow.* I learned something today. It’s interesting when you look up Jonathan Edwards slave owner on Google, the first articles are items from the Gospel Coalition and fellow travelers trying to explain why you can still follow Edwards even though he was a slave owner. Of course, they co-opt Thabiti Anyabwile to put forward this point of view. The GC people have to know this is problematic. Yale, which Edwards led during his life, knows it’s problematic and points out that in colonial America, it was hard to escape the economic impact of slavery. Moreover, a portion of Yale’s endowment was derived from slave ownership. At least Yale is more honest, IMHO.

It should be noted that Edwards’ son, Jonathan Edwards Jr., was an abolitionist when he became an adult and wrote on the subject at a time when it was basically only Quakers and radicals who supported abolition. So he didn’t follow in daddy’s footsteps.

And apparently, Dee, fundamentalists “love Mark Driscoll’s theology.”

@ mirele FKA Southwestern Discomfort:

Do you see what $40,000 of grad school debt buys you? 🙂 Critical thinking skills and discernment. CJ Mahaney should try it some time! Due to his lack of education and views on it I think my family’s German Shorthaired Pointer has more education than CJ. :-p

@ dee:
They can’t handle shades of gray. Either Edwards was a brilliant preacher who God blessed (as proved by his success and fertility) or everything must be false. They can’t accept that he was a brilliant preacher, that sometimes even fatally flawed people enjoy lifelong good fortune with no ultimate comeuppance, and that a person can simultaneously do great things and horrific things. It doesn’t fit their childlike sense of justice.

@ burnrnorton:

Their thinking has few dimensions, sometimes only one, with two ends to it. And anything orthogonal to their thinking they cannot comprehend. Total package must be accepted or you are a heretic. It does not matter than millions of Christians in history and the present don’t buy their package.

I have begun to call myself a “follower of Jesus” in lieu of “Christian”. Too many who consider themselves elect seem to be too busy wit doctrine to follow the crucified Christ, instead substituting the teachings of men.

@ burnrnorton:
BTW, anyone who wants to know more about colonial and post colonial enslavement of Africans in the Americas might want to read Adam Hochschild’s “Bury the Chains”. It looks at the Anglo-American slave trade and abolition movements in particular, but the most powerful parts are the graphic portrayals of the atrocities committed against slaves throughout the Americas (the Carrie an sugar plantations were particularly hotrific). I knew the Gone With the Wind sepia toned nostalgia of genteel antebellum society was hogwash before but after . . . Anyone who’s read the book or slave narratives knows that it was SO MUCH WORSE than your worst imaginings.

Hester wrote:

Did he post something upthread that was deleted?

Up above by Seneca “j” Griggs I believe.

I’m a little agnostic, but my views about Christianity would align with the five fundamentals Seneca outlined about, and the YEC view still makes most sense to me.

I’d ask that folks maybe be a little more charitable about discussing YEC.

I mean, some of you are trying to be kind-hearted to atheists who say they left Jesus over YEC views, but I am tottering on the edge of, “do I stay or do I leave,” and I’m sympathetic to YEC. By bashing YEC to come across as accepting to anti-YEC atheists, you’re kind of pushing folks like me away at the same time.

I’m not stupid or a liar, either. Someone above categorized every last YEC as being stupid or lying liars. We’re really not all alike.

To tell my story yet again: I never really cared if other Christians were YEC or believed in something else, but I have been picked on and bashed for being YEC, by both Christians and Non Christians.

I had one Christian friend who believed in theistic evolution and that the world was millions of years old, who kept trying to convert me to his view on that stuff. I couldn’t figure out why. I was happy to agree to disagree.

Do Christians sometimes drive other Christians away from the faith or cause a huge faith crisis? Yes. That’s been one of my issues, among a few. But for me, it doesn’t have anything to do with YEC.

Dr. Fundystan, Proctologist wrote:

I think probably the ideas of rigid adherence to received tradition rather than principles of character combined with seperationism is probably closer to what most people mean by “fundamentalist”.

Would that include excessive legalism, especially over grey areas, matters of conscience, and nit picking (eg, length of a man’s hair, length of a woman’s skirt, is watching TV evil?) I think the excessive legalism in fundamentalism is probably one thing that drives people away.

As for Seneca’s 5 points. I think that’s the historic understanding, how fundamentalism got its start back in the 19th century?

Fundamentalism started out with some basics, such as the virgin birth being true, but decades later, it had morphed to stuff like “listening to secular rock is sin.” That’s how I learned it, anyhow.

I heard somewhere or read somewhere, and I can’t remember where, but one Christian guy (who was not a fundy) was talking with a Christian ex fundy, and Christian guy said something about, “Don’t fundamentalist churches teach from the book of Galatians?,” and the Ex said, “No. They pretend like it doesn’t exist.”

The point to their conversation being, (as Galatians gets into), you cannot do good works to get save or stay saved.

A lot of your fundamentalist churches apparently want the pew sitters to think they have to keep on earning salvation (by being good, avoiding sin) after coming to Christ. I can see how that is a recipe for burn out on the faith.

dee wrote:

There are waaaay too many “Christian” jerks out there.

My dad is a Christian. When I was a kid, and we were at the dinner table, he told my siblings, mother, and myself a story he found funny.

He was on his way to work that morning when he saw the car ahead of him had a bumper sticker that said, “Honk if you love Jesus Christ,” so my dad honked. The guy driving the car flipped my father off(*).

My dad found this very amusing. I guess in a way it is, but it’s also kind of sad. My dad got a kick out of that story, though, he repeated it every so often the next several years.
————
* for any non American readers who don’t understand, the guy in the car used a hand gesture that is considered very obscene and insulting in the United States.

It’s also known as “giving the middle finger,” “flipping the bird,” or “giving the one finger salute.” It’s a way of saying “F You.”

For what it’s worth, I grew up in fundamentalism (Assemblies of God) and I’m a fairly hardcore atheist now (and I’m also a fan of Wartburg Watch and the other blogs that try to bring some accountability). I actually had a fairly good life growing up in the church – but I’ve seen friends who were hurt significantly b/c they happened to be homosexual in that environment (though I never saw the harm until I’d already become an atheist). For me, the big problem was the fact that there was no really good reason to believe the claims of Christianity. This problem exists, IMHO, whether you’re talking about the liberal accepting version of Christianity, or the hardcore fundamentalist version of Christianity. It’s definitely easier to notice with hardcore fundamentalism – and it’s quite possibly true that if I’d grown up in liberal Christianity, I would never have noticed the problem with the claims that get made. It’s just more glaringly obvious when you church is saying that the earth is 7000 years old, than with the more commonplace notion that there’s a God that listens to our prayers, that condemns us to hell for being imperfect, but who sacrificed himself to himself (temporarily) so that we could get through the loophole and not be tortured for eternity, so that he could get praised without ceasing for an eternity. Strange how that second line of belief is so ingrained that people rarely question it.

I see people try to work their way around the horrible parts of the Bible – stuff that indicates that the God of the Bible is really a narcissistic bully, cruel and vicious and jealous and petty. They try and say stuff like, “Well, you’ve gotta look at the central message of Jesus.” – but there’ve been plenty of people throughout history that have said better stuff than Jesus. If you want moral guidelines, there are scads out there that are better. How about let’s go with the gospel of Harry Potter? Harry was at least unequivocally anti-slavery. The whole importance of Jesus is tied up with the link to the God of Israel – and that brings in your problem. The God of Israel is really a horrible individual. People talk about “Father God”, but just about any father I’ve ever met is actually a better father than that. If Jesus is linked up (triune and all that, right?) with this bronze-age blood God, then how does he all of a sudden get to be re-defined as a moral beacon? Furthermore, it’s not like Jesus had one central message. People tend to get a notion of the Jesus that they like in their heads, and stick with that, despite all actual evidence to the contrary.

K.D. wrote:

Have a friend and his wife who were literally run off a church staff because they were bringing “undesirables” into the church… He could not find another job afterwards in the Christian ministry. He is now in another profession he really enjoys.

This is only a hypothesis, as I don’t know anything about your friend beyond what you mentioned, KD, but I’m guessing that when he left “the Christian ministry” he found his true calling in Christ.

What is this blog’s response to the 5 points listed? Not the response to Seneca himself.

Kathryn wrote:

Also for those who are so ready to attach Christians that accept any list of doctrines. Is there anything that anyone can say they believe is true? Or is your view that in order to not drive people away, Christians need to say any and all beliefs are equally valid?

I can’t speak for other people but here is my problem with those who have the long doctrinal lists. And you are correct in identifying it as “all beliefs are equally valid” but you have missed the point in who it is who is saying that, at least in what I am trying to say about list making. What I see is that these people with the lists think that tertiary issues (to use what I believe is something Wade says) are equally valid with primary issues. Illustration: the ancient creedal statement “Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again” is a primary statement. There is no christianity without Christ. But “christians must avoid all alcohol, give up TV, not go to the prom, and believe that science proves YEC” are not primary issues. Jesus calls people to follow HIm; I fail to see that He calls people to fit into some particular subculture which seeks to define cultural stuff as equally valid with spiritual stuff.

But yes I do think that in order to not offend people, and in order to act like a half-way decent human being, the attitude of the list makers needs to be “I just don’t have any peace as a christian about wearing orange and purple striped underwear, but that does not mean that it is some rule to be pushed off on everybody, and if you think differently that is not going to damage our relationship in any way.”

@ NC Now:
This expresses my position well. Anyway you slice it, believing in a young earth means believing everything we know about just about everything, from history to physics, is wrong. Believing that God created the world recently with the appearance of great age is problematic, but ultimately more honest and less harmful than arguing that a correct understanding of just about everything would prove, scientifically, that the world is young.

@ burnrnorton:

Yep. That too.

To Richard: Part 1

Richard wrote:

I see people try to work their way around the horrible parts of the Bible – stuff that indicates that the God of the Bible is really a narcissistic bully, cruel and vicious and jealous and petty.

I hear you, Richard, and I take you seriously, but it is also that you sound like you have reacted to a lot of stuff before you actually researched it, and before you required of yourself that you challenge your own assumptions. You sound like a thinker, but perhaps a young one, or perhaps one who has not done his homework. If you are an atheist I can live with that, but if you sin against thinker-ing I about cannot live with that.

Have you, for example, challenged your own assumptions about the ancient Israelites? Have you considered that they may have been working with incomplete understanding of what was going on when they wrote down some of their understandings and explanations for what was happening? Or have you assumed that because they wrote it down that somehow that was the “real story” and they understood it thoroughly and so we must accept their understanding of things as complete truth? That assumption even in the face of the fact that Jesus kept saying things like “you have heard it said of old …but I say to you.” I mean do you actually think that unless the ancient Israelites were accurate about rolling dice before each day’s battle in order to determine the will of God for war that day, then somehow it is better to say that God is a bully than to say that the Israelites may have not understood all there was to understand about it all? You may come to that conclusion and still be a thinker, but you may not come to that conclusion before challenging the assumptions. Not if you commit yourself to thinker-ing.

Deebs…check your email. Today marks 1 year. 🙁

Andy wrote:

Sorry I didn’t get much farther than this thought: Jesus makes specific statements that none will be snatched out of His hand. If this is the case how can one person drive another away from the faith when it is God Himself that is keeping said person in the faith?

I have not researched it this morning, but I thought that He said “nobody will snatch them out of.. ” rather than “none will be snatched.” In this case there is a lot of difference in meaning in those two verb tenses. Where did He say that nobody could/would turn and walk away, especially when He stood right there and watched some turn back from following Him when he first talked about eating His flesh and drinking His blood? And He specifically asked the remaining disciple whether they were going to leave Him also. Obviously He acknowledged that leaving was possible.

And look at the parable of the sower and the seed. Not everything that sprouts or even grows for a while necessarily thrives right on. Regardless of what one thinks is an explanation for what we call apostasy, the fact is that there are instances in scripture where some people followed Jesus for a while and then turned and walked away.

Daisy wrote:

To seriously consider leaving the faith is a painful process (for me personally). It so defined me for so long, I don’t know quite who I am without it, and if I reject it, I feel like I’m rejecting my mother (who I miss very much), and it feels like I’m losing my mom all over again, in a way, and like I’m being disloyal to her.

If your mother displayed the best virtues of Christianity and you yourself continue to interact with the world as she would have done, you can never lose her even if you leave religion. You carry her and all she was within you and by doing as she would have done, you honor her.

Lots of thoughts/responses and I will try to be concise and thorough, if not in order….

Is there a difference between leaving the faith(as the article’s title implies) and leaving A(emphasized) church??

Not that I am taking a position of, “they were never really Christians”, but I think this is an important distinction. In my years of ministry and growing up in a ministry family something I believe to be my observational experience is that many people are part of a church for personal/social reasons. And when those reasons “dry” up in the man made organization they belong to, they “leave the faith”.

For example; I knew a guy who was in ministry for a few years. His story was of a broken impoverished family with a father in prison for life. As a teenager it was a group of other teen Christians who were his friends, he got involved in church at that point. His whole faith/worldview was wrapped up in some great and caring younger guys. When he got a bit older(early 20’s) he was serving in a campus ministry where he had some significant personality clashes with some other young guys. In some ways they weren’t too kind with him,. but knowing him fairly well, he wasn’t either. After a year or so of some clashes with these guys he decided that Christianity was junk and he “became” an outspoken atheist who utilizes his facebook wall to mock others beliefs.

The way I perceive this whole event was that his religious experience was all about friendships, and not about Christ. When he had some bad experiences with other Christians, he decided he was done with it. Was he never really a Christian? Who knows? But what I do know is that looking to imperfect people instead of Christ is always a problem.

Not to shoehorn everyone’s experience of “leaving the faith” to fit this experience, but I nearly always see some sort of similar story when these conversations come up. Should the Church and Christians be a better picture of Christ? Of course! But I don’t think “bad Christians” equal forcing people out of Christ.

For instance, I have had a number of friends who have been left by their spouses. Just absolutely horrendous and heartbreaking sin centered experiences. If they then said, “love is a lie and no one should ever get married and I will never ever be with someone ever again” I would have a problem with that. Not that they don’t have a real legitimate heartache, but a bad experience with one person(or people in the case of a church) does not invalidate the truth of love and marriage as a whole.

Not to put myself on a pedestal of my super heroic faithfulness…..I enjoy your articles and insights into abusive narcissistic pastors because I have experienced that more than one time in my early ministry career. Textbook cases. Some of the stories were so ridiculous(hiding a piece of hay in the back corner of the stage to catch you not really cleaning and trying to use that as justification for firing……)that years later it causes me to laugh because I can barely believe I experienced it. Though at the time it was horrible. But as bad as some of those leaders and churches were, I never once even contemplated “leaving the faith”. Why? Because my faith wasn’t tied to people. People aren’t perfect and even the best will let us down at times. When we make people/organizations the basis of our belief system then our belief system will eventually crumble.

I think this is getting too long for one post…..

final thoughts….

As far as people who reject their earlier faith because of positions like YEC or some other issue, I think(and I know that sounds mean) that it is a weak excuse.

I think Nancy mentioned her challenge to someone about whether or not they are actually a “thinker”. To piggyback on that(I hope she doesn’t mind) I will simply address the YEC issue and contend that it is a pretty apt illustration of the other issues to some degree…

For those who have not read Hugh Ross’s “A Matter of Days” I highly encourage it. He biblically and scientifically contends for a multiple billion year old earth and special creation. He tears Ken Hamm a new one scientifically and biblically and leads a ministry that is seeing scores of atheistic scientists come to saving faith. For most of my life I just generally accepted with little thought the YEC position. Read his book and had my mind blown.

When people say, “I left the faith because of YEC” I an incredulous at best. Not that the Ken Hamm’s of the world are great evangelists for non-believers(they aren’t) but that position totally avoids interacting with what is becoming the majority view within the Church today. It’s like saying(imo) that I left the faith because of those crazy snake handlers down in Kentucky….Sure those crazy snake handlers are weird and it is a non-biblical practice….but to decide that faith is completely invalid because some people are pushing a ridiculous doctrine is lazy and dishonest…

Going back to my first post. Are we placing our hope and trust in Christ, or people? And if we claim to have once been Christians, but our Christianity was about people, what were we really at that point. And if what we end up rejecting is Christ as revealed in scripture(not the poor way people represent him) then what were we really joining when we did claim to be a Christian. The concept of saying I am a Christian UNTIL I know more about this Christ fella and the Bible, is odd for me to comprehend.

Not that you have to know everything there is to know about Jesus and the bible before you are really a Christian, but I have trouble reconciling the idea that I have a valid faith up until the point I actually read more of the bible. If reading the bible causes you to no longer like Jesus, then who/what did you like before you read it?

Adam Borsay wrote:

Oh one more thought…..

There is a quote that I believe originated from Tim Keller that has served me very well when interacting with those in the process of leaving the faith…

He tells a story about working with college students who were asking a lot of questions in which they were challenging thinks like creation vs evolution and indicating that they were on their way out the door. Instead of answering those specific questions he asked, “who are you sleeping with?” And it was almost universally across the board that they were indeed having sex, or, some other manner of sexual sin. To paraphrase(poorly) Keller contends that at the heart of what we often feel are legitimate questions is the desire to be justified in sin(and often sexual sin). So while the questions are not themselves invalid, the problem is the heart, not the mind.

To clarify I DO NOT ask this question like he does in the story he tells. But the thought process informs my approach…

@ Richard:
Hi Richard, thanks for stopping by and sharing. I was also raised fundamentalist, and relate quite a bit to your experience. For starters, I have most of a seminary degree from multiple seminaries (didn’t finish; don’t plan to), so I have what is probably a “higher than average” understanding of the original languages and manuscripts, history of interpretation, etc. I can’t answer everything you wrote, but there are two things I would like to engage you on. The first is the “bloodthirsty god of Israel” idea. There are plenty of people who teach this (not just “fundamentalists”), but it doesn’t comport with the New Testament writings. In fact, one of the central messages of Jesus was something like “You all got it wrong.” There are tons of really good books/dissertations/journal articles on this. In fact, Jesus went so far as to blatantly contradict the law. This is why it was called a “new” testament, and why the Christians were first and foremost opposed by the Hebrews. In fact, the Christian idea that God is precisely NOT how the Hebrews conceived of him was so strong that Marcion created a stream of Christianity that taught that the God of the OT was a totally different deity. His teaching was later condemned as heresy, but at one time it was a major sect, which demonstrates that it was perfectly plausible vis-a-vis early church conceptions of God. Jesus is recorded in the gospels as saying “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” – the gospel writers at least wanted their readers to understand that God was like Jesus.

The second point I’d like to engage is the idea of Jesus as ethical leader. For starters, I think the example you gave is not really serious. What I mean is that Harry Potter took a theoretical stance on evil, while Jesus was busy engaging people in a very real, and very evil setting. Even healing lepers was a violation of the law! He stood in solidarity with a woman condemned to die by stoning for committing adultery. These are the kinds of actions that have a real cost, and real consequences. And working ethics out in real life is so much more difficult than loudly trumpeting a theoretical ethical position. If we had more people like Jesus, maybe we would have less child slave trafficking. However, it is kind of a moot point simply because Christians didn’t – and don’t – follow Jesus because of his ethical teachings. We follow him because he rose from the dead. And even when I was in my period of questioning and rejecting my faith, I still realized something very important. If a man crucified rose from the dead, it changes everything.

Thanks for taking the time to share, and for listening (if this isn’t tl;dr). I hope you do well and have peace. If you are ever in my neck of the woods, let me know and we’ll grab a beer or bourbon or something.

Adam Borsay wrote:

To paraphrase(poorly) Keller contends that at the heart of what we often feel are legitimate questions is the desire to be justified in sin(and often sexual sin). So while the questions are not themselves invalid, the problem is the heart, not the mind.

Holy non sequitur and poisoning the well, Batman. Am I missing the third item in the logical fallacy trifecta?

burnrnorton wrote:

Holy non sequitur and poisoning the well, Batman. Am I missing the third item in the logical fallacy trifecta?

Perhaps I stated it poorly…the question isn’t whether or not evolution is true in and of itself, but is evolution true as an excuse to leave the faith. It is quite fine to say, “I am a faithful Christian who has some questions about evolution”, which is a wholly different question then, “I am rejecting the faith BECAUSE I am using my thoughts on evolution as an excuse”. That is what he is addressing, not the general question on evolution.

Melanie wrote:

What is this blog’s response to the 5 points listed? Not the response to Seneca himself.

It’s worth remembering that the term “fundamentalism” has acquired a ton of baggage it didn’t originally have. It originally grew in response to a culture in which it was fashionable openly to present one’s own opinion as being as valid as the opinions of Paul, Peter (and Jesus) and whoever else wrote the Bible. As a result, you could preach any old sh1te you wanted and still call yourself a Christian.

I can’t speak for the entire blog, of course, and I don’t think even Deebs would try to. My own answer to Melanie’s question is: I would not actually respond to the points one by one, but to them all as a whole. I think the reasons and motives behind them have a lot of merit and I respect them. But I also think that the list is a child of its time, and that continuing to camp around it would be a mistake.

There are fewer people, and churches, now who wish to believe in any old theology up to and including the non-existence of God. There is, however, a strong cabal of churches who want to reduce the church itself to a profit-making organisation and the Christian life to a set of doctrines lived in obedience to a CEO “pastor”. There is also a strong culture in which God is only interested in bringing people into church meetings and in which he is active only in the sermon. This is what my own list of fundamentals would challenge.

As a very rough description, then, I suppose:

 Jesus Christ of Nazareth walked this earth like we do, and he is not only God, but King, and a Christian follows him as King
 Righteousness and justice relate to how we treat people, not where we stand on concepts like abortion and homosexuality
 God feels, speaks and acts today: he could heal the sick, create jobs and even intervene in conflicts if his people would only co-operate with him
 The same Holy Spirit who inspired (and is greater than) the Bible lives in every believer
 And yes, there is a life after this one, in which we will see God himself face to face, and everything will make sense; and our final hope is in the resurrection of the dead.

I suppose you can tell a lot about someone by what his personal “five fundamentals” are!

nmgirl wrote:

Yeah I wondered about that too. The thought process seems to be that I accept evolution as a cornerstone of biology because I had sex outside of marriage? Or did I have sex because of evolution?

The thought process seems to be that CELEBRITY theologians and Christian sin-sniffers have dirty minds. (“SEX! SEX! SEX! SEX! SEX! SEX! SEX! SEX! SEX!”)

And there’s also the “HOW DARE THEY DO WHAT *I*’M FORBIDDEN TO!” factor.

@ Adam Borsay:
I didn’t leave faith because of evolution. I have made it very clear that I refuse to be associated with people who think lying is ok.

Dave A A wrote:

Would you say [the apostle John] falls more into the liberal, postmodern, or kum-ba-yah camp?

Yes, I probably would!

@ Nick Bulbeck:
I generally agree with 4 of Seneca’s 5 fundamentals, and agree with you that continuing to camp around them is a mistake. I can totally “go” for your 5.
An aside– you wrote, “and whoever else wrote the Bible”. My favorite to think of, out of all those, is Nebuchadnezzar!

Dave A A wrote:

My favorite to think of, out of all those, is Nebuchadnezzar!

Good one!

🙂

I think the real gospel of Jesus is being replaced by the gospel of the 503c (the agenda of religious professionals).

That is why I have chosen to be a “none”, at least for now.

@ Adam Borsay:

Wow, Adam. Go get a drink of water. No, I am kidding, most of what you said I just sat here and nodded pretty much. But I have some problem with this last thing about questions and sin. It is true that Jesus said that people do not come to the light because their deeds are evil. By light, He meant himself, not some doctrinal position, when you read the entire statement. No argument with the truth of that statement. But here is where it gets complicated in dealing with people. We are all sinners, hopefully not committed-to-continuing-in-sin sinners, but we do not all “leave the faith” whatever that actually means. I am thinking that there are also other (or many other) variables at work.

For instance, Nicodemus was clueless, had the sense to seek out answers, but Himself did not accuse Nicodemus of sin but rather of cluelessness–how is it you a ruler of israel do not know this? So I am reluctant to skip over the questions and race right to the idea of sin, because it just may be more complicated than that.

Let me also say that massive pain and suffering can be precipitating factors in feeling so isolated from God that one believes one has left the faith when in fact that may not be the case. To write that off as sin would be really awful. First deal with the pain and suffering, then re-evaluate what is going on, and only then face the problem of issues beyond the pain and suffering itself, if there are any.

Another thing that sticks in my mind is how Jesus was willing to answer questions from the guys. When they asked for the meaning of something He took pains to explain in detail and in clearly understood explanations. Sooooo, why would we not take the same approach, especially since we have no idea what is actually going on in somebody else’s soul? And in light of the evidence that Jesus, who did know what was going on in humans, did not accuse people of sin every time somebody asked him a question why we we do that? In my thinking, as long as somebody hangs around and asks questions and issues challenges these are not the dead or the intractably evil (omitting word destined for moderation) but rather these are some of the very folks Jesus took time to interact with. Thanks be to God, because otherwise he would not have taken time with me. As an illustration, what if, for instance Tolkien had said to Lewis, “I am tired of messing with you, man, go get the sin out of your life and then (maybe) come back and we will talk.” Did Lewis have sin in his life? Sure. Did that make his agonizing over questions just a pretense and a cover up? Apparently not.

But if some fundamentalists seem to think they know more about sin than they do about God, who am I to argue with them? (That was ugly, but I just could not pass it up.)

So often I see the authentic questioning of men and women dismissed by Christians as “they are just sinners who don’t want to know truth.” While at the same time I see the same Christians defending and excusing their Christian leaders and/or friends who are sinning greviously. Why does the Christian leader or friend get a pass (often called grace) and the unbeliever or questioning man/woman doesn’t? Does God treat the two differently? Should the Christian leader, who should know better, be given a pass and his hard heartedness ignored while the questioning unbeliever is treated as a waste of time and called hard hearted?

Sorry- my eyes are bad- in my late 40s. JONNYS post. (Not Jimmy’s). Thanks.

@ An Attorney: NOT!!!

Adam Borsay wrote:

As far as people who reject their earlier faith because of positions like YEC or some other issue, I think(and I know that sounds mean) that it is a weak excuse.

I’m sorry, but it’s absolutely not a weak excuse. It goes to the very heart of the problem with fundamentalism. If someone going to lie to me about something that is demonstrably false, and as far as I am concerned, YEC is demonstrably false, then why should I believe that same person when he tries to tell me he knows the way to eternal life? Moreover, when YEC is used as the dividing line between “being Christian” and “not being Christian” according to some people (see Ken Ham), then it is a serious problem and one that believers absolutely need to confront and deal with.

N.B. YEC postulates a view of the universe that does not match observation. I am not a geologist or a biologist, but I have a very good understanding of astronomy for a layperson with indifferent math skills. I can look up in the sky and see objects where the light took much, much longer than 7,000 years to get here. It’s a trick and a dodge to say something like, “Well God created that light on the way from the Andromeda Galaxy and it was just 7,000 years ago” or “The speed of light was much, much faster earlier.” We have no proof of either of those assertions; I might as well believe in Last Thursdayism (aka the Omphalos theory).

Adam Borsay wrote:

He tells a story about working with college students who were asking a lot of questions in which they were challenging thinks like creation vs evolution and indicating that they were on their way out the door. Instead of answering those specific questions he asked, “who are you sleeping with?” And it was almost universally across the board that they were indeed having sex, or, some other manner of sexual sin.

OH GOOD GRIEF. (Sorry to shout.) This infuriates the heck out of me. I’ve heard my ex-Mormon friends tell me that their families, their friends and their former church leaders all accuse them of *wanting to sin* or being in sin when they left the church. And the people I know who left, they left because what they were being taught in church didn’t match the facts, not because they wanted a cup of coffee or had decided to move in with their boyfriend. So, in short, I don’t believe Tim Keller for a moment when he says this. I think he’s just using the easy way out to avoid discussing difficult issues.

Daisy wrote:

I had one Christian friend who believed in theistic evolution and that the world was millions of years old, who kept trying to convert me to his view on that stuff. I couldn’t figure out why. I was happy to agree to disagree.

Believe it or not Daisy I too have now rejected the evolutionary paradigm (theistic or non-theistic). But since I also reject large swaths of classical Western theology (both Catholic & Protestant), I really don’t have a dog in the old fight betwixt the progressive & conservative wings of Christianity for origins. Suffice it to say you make a good point about the very human desire to convert others to our particular viewpoints.

Bridget wrote:

I see what you mean about the creeds. They can be seen as “adding to” the Bible. When we insist people believe them or they are not Christians, are we adding to the what Jesus says is needed to be one of his disciples? Personally, I think modern Christians add a lot to scripture, but I also see a lot of selective remembering and forgetting.

Well, you know, I think Paul was on to something when he wrote to the Corinthians: “For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” (1 Corinthians 2:2) And certainly some of the elaborate Trinitarian wordplay of the Nicene Creed (oh, I am not even going to touch the Athanasian creed with a ten-foot pole) goes to a doctrinal place that neither Jesus nor Paul went to or taught in what we have from them. But that’s my personal opinion; others may differ.

@ mirele fka Southwestern Discomfort:

In most cases, it seems they don’t want to discuss the difficult issues because they ‘might’ have to say they don’t know, or don’t understand completely — gasp!! Then they have to admit that they don’t know all things or that the bible, itself, isn’t clear on ‘all’ all things, and then the door is open to someone believing something in the bible differently than they do. Men have too much pride in what they know of scripture.

Believing in Jesus and his work is not equal to the scripture. The former is far better than the latter.

@ mirele fka Southwestern Discomfort:

You go girl !

@ mirele fka Southwestern Discomfort:

Do you reject every single person who believes or espouses something that YOU feel is demonstrably false? As a silly example, but pertinent, one of the DNA guys, Watson and Crick, I forget which one exactly, also believed some insane stuff about the origin of life. He wrote about aliens putting us here. Since I am convinced that this is a demonstrably false belief, do I therefore say, “I’m not going to trust this DNA gobblygook because he was a nutter!!””..?

Someone being wrong in one area, even if it is extreme, does not invalidate, automatically, other things they say. How in the world could we function in this world with that approach??

The problem with Ken Hamm(specifically) is that he wades into science with theology. Not that theology and science are necessarily incompatible. As I already said, he is arguing a theological world view and has basically stated that science that contradicts his world view is not to be trusted. While this seems crazy on the surface, mocking it does not address the heart of the problem, misapplied theology.

Interesting history of the creation vs evolution debate…The prominence of anti-evolution/YEC movement was established as knee jerk reaction to Darwin. Pre-Darwin there really was little concern or hyper focus on what “6” days meant. Most theologians read the Hebrew word for day in its full sense; potentially indicating everything from a 24 hour period to indeterminate periods of time we established beginning and ends(kind of like an “age”).

When the anti-Christian crowd latched onto the potential of evolution as an attack of Christianity the church reacted by deciding that it HAD to mean six 24 hour periods. Doctrine/theology developed as a knee jerk reaction is always going to be poorly thought out…..

Adam Borsay wrote:

To dissuade them from their position requires theological arguments, not scientific ones. Which in this case, I think Hugh Ross does a more than adequate job of attacking the theological framework of YEC.

I have oceans of admiration and respect for Dr. Ross. Can you post the links where he addresses his views on the theological framework for YEC?

@ nmgirl:

I don’t really know the answer to that. The reasons are probably as many as the individuals. Their faith seems to be placed in scripture and their knowledge of scripture (which is not always clear, contrary to what many claim) as opposed to being directed to Jesus Christ and him crucified. For me, believing in Jesus Christ is something based on experience and what is written.

I may be surprised about the age of the earth one day, but all I know is I wasn’t there when it happened so I can’t say for sure one way or the other. I won’t lie about it and I won’t deny material facts before my eyes either.

nmgirl wrote:

Why can’t they honestly say, “I don’t know”?

Now there’s a question.

Point 1 of 3: Not all the abusive, aggressive or otherwise scumbag people on earth are professing Christians. A lot of honest, struggling Christians who have never been paid to speak from a big platform feel under pressure to come up with answers they don’t really have, because they’ve been mocked by non-Christians (of whatever persuasion) precisely because they didn’t know something.

Point 2 of 3: Christians can fall into presumptuous simplistic answering, of course. Sometimes, the belief in the sufficiency of scribsher creates delusions of competence, whereby Christians snatch at a “biblical” answer in the belief that since the Biblescribshers™ have all the answers, and I’ve read a book that quotes the bible, then I know everything worth knowing on the subject.

@ Adam Borsay:

Per Keller’s example, the main person I know at the moment who is seriously questioning Christianity, is not doing it for the reasons Keller assumes. In fact she may be asexual. So I think that tactic is more than a little presumptuous of Keller, and I remember it bothered me when I first read it (which was before I knew the person I mentioned was questioning). In context he may not have been throwing it out there as a universal truth – i.e., if your kid is questioning Christianity, they MUST BE having sex – but that’s how many will read it and, unfortunately, implement it in real life.

And in case Dee or anyone else is interested, yes, it was YEC that started my friend down the questioning trajectory. Her mother recently asked her if I was a Christian after she found out I accept evolution and told one of her other daughters I have “bad views” on “some things.”

@ Hester:

I agree that I wouldn’t personally go around blanket stating what Keller shared. But from my experience, very often we masquerade internal emotional struggles(sin, hurt, etc) with intellectual arguments.

I forget who said it, but I like the idea that apologetics won’t make someone a Christian, but apologetics will get to the persons heart that their questions are covering for.

My roommate in college is a perfect example of this. We went to the same highschool and were roommates for 2 years at college. He was a pretty typical cradle to grave atheist and I was a recently on fire Christian(walked away from faith in high school, came back sophomore year). We had a bunch of apologetics debates until late in the night. And I wiped the floor with him.

Not claiming that I should be up there against Dawkins, but as far as this particular friend was concerned, he wasn’t prepared to deal with the arguments I had studied and were able to present. It wasn’t a fair matchup in all honesty and I was a bit too over zealous in my arguing.

After our last long debate he sent me a long email. In it he admitted that he had no position to take anymore and that he accepted that what I had to say was arguably valid and defensible. BUT, he then went into a brief story about some heart achingly terrible life circumstances that he had experienced and BECAUSE of these he refused to even contemplate God. And if I ever mentioned God to him ever again he would never speak to me.

I had become so hyperfocused on proving the validity of Christianity and the biblical worldview in opposition to his evolutionist/scientific world view that I had glossed over that he was a real person who was struggling with heart issues, not mind issues. I had won an argument but lost a person.

I will never forget that and while I still enjoy and can utilize some apologetics, I am less concerned with arguing about creation vs evolution(and other such debates) and more concerned with knowing the persons heart and their hurt. I have never argued someone into faith, but I have seen people loved into faith.

So when people say, I am not a Christian because “YEC”, I am not trying to discount the scientific validity of that issue, I am just convinced that old or young, the age of the Earth isn’t what keeps someone from experiencing the Gospel.

Very powerful. I’m breathing a peaceful exhale. Thanks for writing this story out. This point needed to be made, and you did it better than I could have.

@ Adam Borsay:

Nick Bulbeck wrote:

Incidentally, the only opinion I have on Jerry Springer: the opera is that I hate opera. Jerry Springer may or may not be a good opera, for them as likes opera.

Only if Weird Al Yankovic is the composer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRcfDmkrhAI

If YEC is not such a big issue, then why are YEC people making such a big issue of it?

If YEC is a big issue for the proponents of YEC, then why would it not it be a big issue for those who do not believe YEC?

So, looking at it from either angle, how can it be said that it is not a big issue?

Granted, it is not a big issue for everybody, but that is a different question.

Personally, I believe people who say that it is a big issue for them. Why would I not?

StillWiggling wrote:

Just recently I read a book called “Why We Eat Our Own” by Michael Cheshire.

Reminds me of that one record album title during the height of Vietnam:
The United States of America Eats Its Young

@ Nancy:

I get it that people make it a big issue. Everyone has an issue that is the “big one” for them. But I think it always misses the mark.

A number of years ago we had a grumpy man at our church come in to the office to demand that we stop preaching about miracles because, “they are ridiculous and are clearly not true”. The pastor asked him, “Well do you believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ?” He responded, “Or course I do, I’m a Christian….”

I share that to illustrate is that we often allow ourselves to get wrapped up in these issues and forget the core issue that shapes our understanding of the others. If Jesus did indeed die and rise again, then the other miracles of the bible make sense. You can’t start with whether or not a donkey spoke to Balaam and THEN try to jump to the resurrection. It is the proverbial carriage in front of the horse. Talking donkeys don’t prove/disprove Jesus, but Jesus can prove(or at least, make more reasonable to accept) the donkey.

From where I am sitting, the issue is never “YEC”, but the Gospel. If people “leave” because of these other reasons I am convinced they either never accepted the Gospel, or, they have rejected the Gospel and the lower hanging fruit to criticize was “that” other issue.

Whatever is true about the origins of life don’t have a huge effect on my faith, because my faith is not in that, but in the cross. Not that I don’t think there is a correct answer, it just isn’t the most important thing to “argue” about.

I always preach that changing peoples behaviors and beliefs about certain issues isn’t really very eternally helpful. If I convinced someone to stop having pre-marital sex, donkeys can talk and evolution is not valid, but they still don’t know Christ, all I have done is created someone who agrees with me. But they are still without Christ. Even if and when there is a “right” answer on a theological issue, the right answer isn’t what saves you.

In response to Dee, I didn’t mean to imply I am always looking for the “sin” boogeyman when someone states they are questioning their faith, or, they have no faith. I mean, that our intellectual questions/issues are usually an outflow of a heart issue. We all consciously and subconsciously protect our inner selves. The natural way this occurs is by talking about issues of the intellect instead of issues of the heart. I don’t want to convince someone that I am right intellectually, I want them to know they are loved.

I don’t disagree that a hyperfocus on a secondary issue is damaging(such as YEC=Gospel). But I would still contend that if I have come to know the risen Christ an “evolving”(had to use that one) understanding of an issue doesn’t make me lose my faith because someone “misled” me on that particular issue.

That’s why I would always encourage pastors, churches, parents, to focus on Christ crucified and risen and avoid drawing absolute lines in the sand that the bible doesn’t draw. When I first read “A Matter of Days” I had always been a YEC guy and never really questioned it. As I read the book I didn’t say, “Oh my, this whole thing must be hogwash”. I realized that it was a much more thorough and helpful approach to understanding the bible and creation. When I believed YEC Christ was still Lord, and, finding out YEC was wrong did not change that reality since it was never(and shouldn’t be) synonymous.

Here’s one for you. I wish I’d thought of it myself, but actually it was my mate Mark from Inverness.

Jesus didn’t specifically say, no-one comes to God except by me. He said, no-one comes to the Father except by me.

There are many roads by which one might approach God, including (but not limited to) OT law, the law of the Koran, and even the New Testament law that fundamentalism has become in recent decades. And they’ll all give you a concept of God. But the only way to know God as Father is to see what God would be like if he were human.

As the writer of ickleezyasstease put it:

of the making of books, there is no end

Attempting to pin down the humanity of God into a set of fundamentals is a futile business. It will throw up ever more caveats and anomalies, and your list of secondary, tertiary and quaternary doctrines will become longer and longer, and become more and more important. Legalism is a dark path, and as a wise green chap once said:

Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny

@ mirele fka Southwestern Discomfort: I’m trying to recall if you come from a liturgical church background (or not)?

For me, the creeds stand and are vital, regardless of any political/rhetorical machinations that were going on at the time they were recorded (thinking especially of tne Nicene Creed here). As for the Athanasian Creed, I am very grateful that we have it just as it it… for one thing, it helps to counteract the whole notion that ESS has ever been a viable part of the church.

I wish I understood you take better – but if you don’t want to elaborate, no worries!

linda wrote:

I’m not YEC.
But sounds like some here are advocating to not allow the YEC’ers to preach what they believe?
Might need to be careful what we wish for. If we succeed in squelching them, who might squelch us?

I don’t think anyone here would advocate for a yec’er not to say or speak what they believe. I think the real issue comes in when a person states that you have to believe or be a YEC’er in order to be a Christian. Which is not ok. For all I care you can believe in geocentrism or that the earth is a triangle with floating eyeballs and still be a Christian. The real point is that God is the Creator, Man is sinful and we need Jesus. I think our main problem comes in when a person states “You must believe in superficial literalism” In order to be saved. It takes away a person’s ability to have a walk with God, and allows for people to have control as we are seeing come out in so many churches and ministries. It also fosters great rebellion. (I.E new wave atheism, neo-paganism etc…)

@ Adam Borsay:

I am enjoying our conversation here, Adam. I think you are sincere. That does not mean that I agree with everything you say, but I do think that you sincerely believe what you say, and that is important.

Let me tell a story from personal experience also. This is a true story. I do not make up or embellish or whatever. The reason I say that is not that the story is unbelievable, but rather that it is a bit too “appropriate” for this conversation, and isn’t that just a bit too handy. Nevertheless, it is a true story.

The time was Easter Sunday when I was four years old. Four years and three months to be exact. We had moved to the country and were living a semi-rural life. This is pertinent to the story. My parents wanted to play the easter bunny brings a basket thing, and while I knew it was just a game (after all there were chickens out in the hen yard but no colored eggs out there, and there were rabbits from time to time in the yard, minus arms to carry baskets) but they wanted to pretend anyhow so I played along. So easter sunday morning I dutifully came down the steps, opened the front door, and there was no easter basket there. I looked at my parents, and they looked at each other and I watched them look at each other (children do this) and I KNEW. Not only is there is no easter bunny, there is also no santa clause, and there is no Jesus. They have lied to me. They are laughing at me for believing any of it. This is what I KNEW. To this day I can feel the shame that washed over me for having believed them in the first place.

I do not know when I first believed in Jesus, but then and there was when I first doubted.

This was not because I harbored some sin in my life. No doubt children can sin, but this was due to being lied to, or so I thought. I was not trying to “leave the faith” for some nefarious purpose. I just thought I knew lies when I saw them, and I had been betrayed by people who should not have betrayed me, or so I felt.

Now listen, I had been betrayed in my eyes by Mom and Dad and Jesus. Those were the only supposed actual people in this scenario besides me. Well, that is childish thinking. Sure it is. But for people like we are discussing today, even adults, who do not believe in Jesus, and then they run into one of the “big issues” that somebody is trying to force them to believe but which the KNOW to be untrue, what kind of thinking do you think they will have? Will their faith in Jesus (which they do not have) carry them through the situation to even greater heights of faith (the same faith which they do not have) or will they label it all a sham, a hoax and a circus act and walk away? And walk away angry because the think they have been lied to. And sometimes they have been.

I am not saying that you would be one to try to force anybody to do anything, but there are those who do. If you have not run into such people, be glad. I have dealt with some of them, and even as a adult believer I have come away bruised and angry (and I am not thin skinned.)

So let me say again, I believe people in what they say. I make no conclusions about what they do not say. And lies, or even the perception of deceit, can have tragic results in people’s lives.

@ Adam Borsay:
Adam, I also agree with Nancy, Mirele, nm girl, and Bridget, adding this:

People certainly do keep away from our faith over things like YEC and for very good reasons. YEC presents a reading of the Bible that leaves out the rest of the world. In so doing, it baldly lies, as others have said. People are not stupid and they look at the world-as-it-is and see what Christianity has to say about it. When the loudest segment goes in for YEC, even to Ham&Nye and entertainment museums, the only accurate assessment is contempt. Evolutionary theory is a non-issue ‘out there’. That’s not because it is wrong&secular but because most educated types have long known what you read in Ross’ book (even if without the Biblical subtext).

And unfortunately, it is not only YEC. There are many variations of stupidity parading as doctrine in the US church. Why they also, like YEC, tend to be loudest among us is beyond my understanding.

As for those inside the church who leave because of YEC or whatever, yes, you are correct that it is because they haven’t been able to find the God who is there. You ask, “Are we placing our hope and trust in Christ, or people?” An excellent question.

But rather than load all the blame onto them, as you do, you should seriously reconsider Deb’s/Dee’s position. People who’ve never experienced good-enough intimate relationships (and there are as many inside the church as outside) will be most deeply yearning for what Christ offers, and also most ignorant of what it means to be in relationship with Him. They are least equipped to sift through crap that is blended with Christianity, and most in need of mature believers to show them, through relationship and experience and teaching, what is/ isn’t healthy and what kind of God we worship.

So where you put all the blame onto these hurting people, a greater part of the blame is on those who are presuming maturity and leadership but do not do their jobs. Perhaps they do not themselves yet understand the meaning of a genuine relationship with the God Who is Love, in which case, they need to be released to do that work for themselves. Or perhaps they are working in an area where their gifts don’t lie, in which case, they should be placed where their actual gifts can thrive and then this gaping hole in the faith community can be properly filled.

Adam, you cannot preach truly effective sermons without understanding these fundamental issues in humanity.

@ Patrice:

That is one of the best statements I have heard on this issue. Maybe you might want to keep a copy of that and re-post it from time to time in the future. It bears repeating.

@ linda:
I would like to comment to you, based on the last I wrote to Adam which is in moderation as this will also be for certain words lol.

I have no problem with people being YEC, if they wish. But it is an ignorant and dumb position. I have believed stupid things in my life, and still am hugely ignorant/dumb about such fundamentals as how to-be-in a healthy intimate-relationship. So when I write these words, I don’t mean that as a “Wow, I am much better than them over there, so shush up.” I am simply trying to be accurate.

YEC sees the earth’s origins/past either as an astonishing series of continual miracles, or as if God played a gigantic trick on us, setting it all up “as if it is ancient” but actually only a few thousand years old. Neither works at all, and the latter is self-evidently against the character of God (unless we redefine Him as Loki).

But let’s take the miracles-R-everywhere idea. The Bible spends a great deal of time on law. There are many principles built into creation, stable ongoing principles that, although they change in application, stay consistent in reality. And the Bible spends quite a bit of time on these things. In fact, it’s writers went so far as to say that God Himself is seen inside His creation, so that humans have no excuse. Further, the laws of God are written on all humans’ hearts. Thus the Bible itself demonstrates that the world was built on stable contours.

And it is because of this stability that scientists have been able to build theories, working from generation to generation to build/refine them, or change them, as the case may be.

So, to insist in the face of this, that creation and the earth’s past emerged via wild and wonderful flashes-and-dashes of miracles, well, it’s just dumb. Christians can believe it if they want to, of course, but it is not at all thoughtful.

But the greatest damage of such beliefs is that those who don’t know God see His believers hyping such as YEC, and don’t bother to look further.

So IMO, to call the YEC ideology of my fellow Christians, who already know God, stupid and wrong, is a mere impoliteness compared to how YEC acts as a stumbling block for those who might otherwise look closer at the wonderful God of All we are privileged to know.

@ Adam Borsay:
Fair enough, Adam. I think perhaps you need to think more carefully about, that’s all, digging your knowledge deeper with empathy until you come out the other end, entertaining what anyone brings to the table as openly as you are doing to the Tatooines, w00t

Yes, people do not become convinced of a relationship with God via reason. But they will not even be attracted to Him when His loudest proponents insist on various packages of intellectual foolishness. We are a unity of mind/soul/body (or however we want to parse ourselves). We come best to our God with our whole selves but God will use whatever aspect seems most open to draw us to Him, to a relationship.

I want so very much for us all to get out of the way of His wonderful work.

@ dee & Adam Borsay:

Suppose I could give you ones from my life that would point to YEC being jammed down some poor kids throat so that when he finally learns the truth, he questions everything else. I know a number of kids like that, having seen them in the family of friends. And, sadly, I have seen parents refuse to consider allowing their kids to believe anything else because YEC is gospel.

This is exactly what happened to my friend. Once the arguments for evolution first made sense to her, she started to question everything else in the Bible. And as I said above, now that her mother knows I accept evolution, she’s questioning my Christianity – even though I go to church every week, am an employee of my church, work/volunteer in many other churches, run an explicitly Christian blog, and am involved in explicitly Christian ministries/blogs through the internet. Her mother knows that I do most of those things. And yet, evolution. So she wonders if I am “really” Christian.

And Adam, I think this may be the crux of what several people here are trying to communicate. It’s clear from your comments that you always had a healthy separation between YEC and the Gospel. That’s great, and it’s absolutely necessary. But a lot of the people Dee and I are talking about, were raised to think of them as one and the same thing…and I’m not exaggerating even a little bit. In fact Ken Ham and others explicitly teach that an old earth destroys the Gospel because it requires a rethinking of how death came into the world (basically). So people who are considering rejecting Christianity because of YEC, truly may not be able to distinguish YEC from the Gospel, because they were taught that they are a package deal and don’t know that there’s any other way to think about them.

Ham and company also explicitly teach that if Genesis 1-3 is not literally true, then we would be justified in wholesale rejecting the rest of the Bible. No considerations of genre, archaeology, extrabiblical sources, anything like that. Just, metaphorical Genesis = all of Scripture is bullhonkey. You see now why people raised like my friend, immediately question the whole rest of the Bible once YEC falls apart. They’re doing exactly what they were trained to do.

Since there has been a hurling of correction on you Adam, (though a great group of intelligent people) I just have to say that honestly, when I read your thoughts, I took away what you just clarified and I didn’t at all think you were blaming the person who questions. I think we all really bring a load of our own experience and touch points to any comment, and rapid fire doesn’t allow for deep thought and perspective sometimes.

I will add that I’m truly lucky that the person who I peppered with questions as I dipped a toe towards the bible (something I had long thought was for morons and sheltered people) was a taxi driver who I saw every day. And he was so humble, and calm and if he didn’t know, he said so but asked back to me some questions for thought. So I dig your idea of being open with people in a setting you described coming up.

I didn’t have the exact experience of many here of being in a ridgid fundamental church- but make no mistake, every person has fires of truth and deception from all kinds of sources.
We all have a spiritual path- and there are all sorts of things in and out of church walls that might make us crave a real union with God. I rejected the whole nonsense at 19 after years of Catholic church growing up. Did they lie to me? Maybe some did. Maybe some really deeply believe in what they taught me. But my path was my own- there is no other soul like me. (Or any of us). So through trials I went… Story another time. It’s a beautiful story. But certainly not without intense suffering.

Overall, the jist of this whole post is about Christians being partly to blame for others leaving the faith. I can truly see all sides, but your earlier comment about whether we are devoted to God or to people and a church and the implications of that difference really resonated with me.

I may not have made any friends just now but I’m pretty invisible on here anyway and hope my thoughts added some light for someone. 🙂

@ Adam Borsay:

dee wrote:

This is not some excuse to go on sinning on their part. They truly believe that one cannot become a Christian if being a Christian means believing that the universe is 6-10,000 years old. I know a number of scientists who have been told that they had to believe that to be a Christian. This is a sin on the part of the church.

Yes! Christians are so peculiar about sin. They do not understand that when they misuse/reject knowledge, they are sinning. They do not understand that when they lack enough empathy to understand why their neighbor does what he/she does, they are sinning. Etc.

They sin just as much as those who don’t believe, but they do not accept that. And that is also a sin. 😛

Adam Borsay wrote:

It’s like saying(imo) that I left the faith because of those crazy snake handlers down in Kentucky….Sure those crazy snake handlers are weird and it is a non-biblical practice….but to decide that faith is completely invalid because some people are pushing a ridiculous doctrine is lazy and dishonest.

It would certainly be silly for you or me to reject Christianity because of snake handlers, agreed, because our own experiences have been so different. But what if we had grown up in an isolated rural community in a snake handling church? I think that if I had grown up believing that if there is a god, then he requires me to prove my faith by handling poisoning snakes and then if he finds that there is some degree of uncertainty in me, then he will punish me by having me die in excruciating agony from a bite….. Well, I don’t think I would believe in a god at all.

My heart goes out to young people who grow up in cults, legalistic churches, and churches which call science unBiblical and I do think their leaders are to blame for driving people away. I think I have posted before about visiting a church in my own denomination where there was a whiteboard in a Sunday School room with a lesson where all the sciences were put in a red circle with a line through it and that was juxtaposed against a Bible. (I never heard anything like that in my own church!). That church I am told wondered where all their young adults had gone after college.

I am not concerned with what the responsibility of people who leave the faith is, that is not under my control. I am concerned with my own responsibility and I hope I never taught anything to my middle schoolers in Sunday School that contributed in any way to any one leaving the Church. I think that is the approach we have to take as mature Christians and not put all the blame on those leaving.

Daisy wrote:

I heard somewhere or read somewhere, and I can’t remember where, but one Christian guy (who was not a fundy) was talking with a Christian ex fundy, and Christian guy said something about, “Don’t fundamentalist churches teach from the book of Galatians?,” and the Ex said, “No. They pretend like it doesn’t exist.”

A fair proportion of the fundies I know spend a lot of time & energy saying that the book of Galatians is intended to criticize Catholics, and ONLY Catholics. (The “whore of Babylon”, & ” the poor papists” get dragged in a lot).

Love this. Said so well.

@ dee:

Hmmm…..

I think that the point of this post is found in the title: “Why Some Christians Should Share the Blame for Those Leaving the Faith.” (Emphasis mine)

I don’t think anyone has suggested that the Christians in question should take all the blame. But I have read in some of the comments the idea the the one leaving should atke all the blame. It seems to me this is part of the attitude that drives people away. I know it is suggestive of the types of attitudes I got from abusers growing up. I.e., it was never their fault if I got hurt, even if they were the one who physically abused me. So….I firmly believe that legalistic Christians with rigid demands that secondary doctrine or dogma must be believed to you are not a real Christian are absolutely to blame (in part) for those who leave the faith.

In my own experience, it was the consistent – insistent – portrayal of God as an angry father who would punish you to hell if you stepped out of line that almost derailed my faith. I still struggle with that image of him that was ingrained in me growing up and re-enforced by the parental and authority figures in my life doing exactly that (well, not literal hell, but…). Because here’s the thing….if God is really like that (and here’s the really hard one for me) if he was behind the abuse I suffered in order to do ….. will, I’ve never really got a clear answer on why he would want to do that to anyone. But if he was behind it (and I have been told,vehemently, that he was), then I am not okay with that.

Okay – here is something recorded as Jesus’ words that illustrates my perspective on these Christians….

“Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe to the world because of offenses! For offenses must come, but woe to that man by whom the offense comes!” –Matthew 18:6 & 7 NKJV

numo wrote:

I’m trying to recall if you come from a liturgical church background (or not)?

For me, the creeds stand and are vital, regardless of any political/rhetorical machinations that were going on at the time they were recorded (thinking especially of tne Nicene Creed here). As for the Athanasian Creed, I am very grateful that we have it just as it it… for one thing, it helps to counteract the whole notion that ESS has ever been a viable part of the church.

I wish I understood you take better – but if you don’t want to elaborate, no worries!

Not liturgical. I learned the Nicene Creed at university in an Early Christian History class (part of the final was to go through and briefly explain certain phraseology). However, your point about ESS and the creeds is very well taken and I will think about it.

  __

“Unraveling The Pain And Pointing The Way To Genuine Authentic Hope, Perhaps?”

hmmm…

Everyone has experienced pain. Yep.  Some, lots of it (sadface) Yet, not everyone knows how to handle it or free oneself from it’s possible long-term effects. 

huh?

How does one receive genuine authentic hope freeing oneself from pain and disillusionment?

What?

“If pain is not confronted, it can rob life’s joy. That is ‘never’ God’s desire. Pain that has been processed, is nourishment to the soul.  How many of us need help, ” in how to process the hurt. We get bogged down in the suffering, and life becomes un-productive.” – Gary Chapman

How many times must you ask yourself, “When is my life not gonna suck?”

Maybe this (currently free) book can help:

“When Will My Life Not Suck?” by Ramon Presson

http://www.dccebooks.com/products/when-will-my-life-not-suck

Sometimes a friend needs to be reminded of God’s love…(tear) His eyes are upon da widdle sparrow,

ATB

Sopy
___
Inspirational relief: Clint Brown- “If Not For Grace”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wL05MOi26Qg

Past Pain & Eternal Joy: singer/songwriter, Steven Curtis Chapman – “Shares About His Family Tragedy”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqYQLrRlVAI

—

@ mirele FKA Southwestern Discomfort:
If I recall correctly, Hoban not only took his wife down with him, but left his employees holding big tax bills. Class act, that guy.

   __

Tears over Wartburg Watch’s  Sky’s?

hmmm…

Jackie wrote:

And as I’ve been only in the last 6ish months reading online so much regarding different theologies- my head was spinning. Seriously! (Still does). At first I thought- I’m over my skies even commenting on any of this – it seemed that people had so much knowledge, and they do- but then I realize I have something to add.

*

Jackie,

hey there!

Brovo !

Many of us, if  da truth be known, are over our heads daily, yet, thanks to the love of our God,  the fellowship of kind hearted readers & commenters like yourself, we muddle through…

-snicker-

I am glad you found your ‘voice’, and believe in yourself enough to share it!

Wartburg Watch’s skys R’ that way  IMHO with all of us,

Blessings!

Sopy
__
Eric Clapton – “Tears in Heaven”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmLQes4tmtM

John Mayer – “Crossroads” LIVE In Toronto
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKltSZN48zE

;~)

—

@Nick – LOVE your statement about Jesus being the way to the Father, and the difference between that and the way to God.

Adam Borsay wrote:

instead, he answered their questions in such a way that the road blocks that they perceived being in the way of having faith could be removed. And then they could do the real heart work of knowing Christ.

Let me see if I understand. Somebody engaged the cognitive portion of some people’s brains in such a way that they could resolve their issues with whatever issues they had, and then they could do something non-cognitive to enable them to know Christ. At which point, they could then join the chorus of those who have issues with other (Christian) issues on a cognitive level, while all the time believing that cognition keeps people from Christ.

Steve Scott wrote:

I think the problem with this was that although these were long standing beliefs of historic Christianity, the intense focus on these fundamentals led people to believe that the faith could be REDUCED to a set of fundamentals. This leads me to my personal definition of “fundamentalism.”
Fundamentalism: the reduction of the entire Christian faith to a core set of fundamentals.

You’ve expressed it really well there, Steve – wish I’d thought of that! *

It’s a truism that if I take up a position specifically in order to correct someone else’s imbalance, I can only end up just as unbalanced myself.

* This is because I’m vain, covetous and selfishly ambitious, and overall am thoroughly up myself.

Adam Borsay wrote:

Regardless of the widespread acceptance of YEC it does not justify jettisoning faith because some people are wrong about an issue.

But it does justify jettisoning that a particular sub-culture within the faith if the “some people” make their erroneous belief a cornerstone of their understanding of the faith; if they have built a whole portion of their house on sand, and insist that others do so also. There are other subcultures of the faith with which to align oneself.

@ Nick Bulbeck: Inerrancy results in Nebuchadnezzar writing part of the OT, as does a donkey.

Adam Borsay wrote:

Adam Borsay wrote:
Oh one more thought…..
There is a quote that I believe originated from Tim Keller that has served me very well when interacting with those in the process of leaving the faith…
He tells a story about working with college students who were asking a lot of questions in which they were challenging thinks like creation vs evolution and indicating that they were on their way out the door. Instead of answering those specific questions he asked, “who are you sleeping with?” And it was almost universally across the board that they were indeed having sex, or, some other manner of sexual sin. To paraphrase(poorly) Keller contends that at the heart of what we often feel are legitimate questions is the desire to be justified in sin(and often sexual sin). So while the questions are not themselves invalid, the problem is the heart, not the mind.
To clarify I DO NOT ask this question like he does in the story he tells. But the thought process informs my approach…

I can’t even. Keller’s story (if he told it) sounds like a convenient “preacher story”- “this one time, a perfect circumstance proved what I am telling you, no dates or names though, just trust me it was awesome.”

Also, if that “informs your thought processes,” it keeps you from respecting people’s confidences and makes it way to easy to dismiss them. Which is the point of this kind of thinking. “Anyone who questions our interpretation/authority hust has a problem with morality/God/submission to authority etc.

Plus, you may come across as a tool.

Adam Borsay wrote:

Oh one more thought…..
There is a quote that I believe originated from Tim Keller that has served me very well when interacting with those in the process of leaving the faith…
He tells a story about working with college students who were asking a lot of questions in which they were challenging thinks like creation vs evolution and indicating that they were on their way out the door. Instead of answering those specific questions he asked, “who are you sleeping with?” And it was almost universally across the board that they were indeed having sex, or, some other manner of sexual sin. To paraphrase(poorly) Keller
contends that at the heart of what we often feel are legitimate questions is the desire to be justified in sin(and often sexual sin). So while the questions are not themselves invalid, the problem is the heart, not the mind.

I really don’t want to upset you again Dee by reposting this, but I just gotta be extremely vulnerable here on this subject to answer some fundie points brought up.
On one note, I believe one thing that led my brother to atheism by YEC was not necessarily the actual YEC teachings from fundies but the condescending tone of people like my father against my brother’s questionings long before he attended college and he had never even learned the theory of evolution because we were not allowed to. Now, maybe he at a very young age was ‘active’ with himself as so many very very young people are and not just boys, which brings me to a vulnerable point here which will answer another commenter who is refuting that Christians can cause people to turn away from the faith.
The activity I am referring to was never mentioned as far as I remember in my home so it was never even said that it was a sin. My fundie baptist school psychology teacher who was also the counselor and the principle’s wife had the duty of talking to us 14 year old freshman group of girls about the birds and the bees just before our supposedly first courting experience which was the Valentine banquet. She told us that women do not have sex drives and since men do then that means that we should never be alone with them because if something happens it would be all our fault because they can’t say no when alone with a girl. She actually used the term ‘ladies of the night’ to describe the only kind of women who liked sex. Oh wow, was I in trouble because as I sat there in my seat realizing that I indeed had a drive so now I determined that I was lost because her way of thinking made me label myself as either a whore or a lesbian, a lesbian because I thought that was a man trapped in a women’s body, don’t get me wrong, I liked boys not girls, but my whole life of the fundies fighting me on wanting girls sports and other typically boy interests like trucks and outdoor stuff suddenly made sense. Then, by the time I had my date with the senior boy and then had more dates eventually I was alone with him and it was bad, very very bad and a long story from there. By the time I was 17 I told my dad that I wanted nothing to do with this god he raised me to believe in.
So my point? Even IF you think that there is ANY merit to the Tim Keller notion that the college students current state of affairs was why they didn’t believe, o man, why do I even try. Even Jesus got frustrated and said that some religious leaders work pretty hard to make believers but only make non-believers.
If I put human emotion to the Holy Spirit I picture Him saying something like this to us..”ugh! I’ve been drawing that person to Me, they were SO close, and now you just gone and opened your big mouth and said something really stupid and now I’ve got to start ALL over again!” For me it took another 13 years.

Oh, now I’m a we bit embarrassed. I see others were commenting while I was writing and you said exactly what I was trying to say but used personal stories.

Adam Borsey and Mother:

“Also, if that “informs your thought processes,” it keeps you from respecting people’s confidences and makes it way to easy to dismiss them. Which is the point of this kind of thinking. “Anyone who questions our interpretation/authority must has a problem with morality/God/submission to authority etc”

I have seen this at work and it is more disturbing in a charismatic setting when it is combined with people thinking they have prophetic gifts and think that just because a thought pops into their head it must be correct.

I was listening to a talk by a minister who got excited at the end of what he had to say and very emotionally said he thought ‘gays and Muslims can say what they like but Christians cannot’ (his words – referring to how Christians now have to be more careful what they say in generally). I was discussing this with my wife at end of the service saying I didn’t think this was a generally true comparison, and in particular gay people may still not be able to be upfront concerning their homosexuality (I didn’t have time to get started on people of the Muslim faith in our community).

A leader joined the conversation and heard what I was saying. He looked at me a ‘in a spiritual way’ and asked me whether I had a problem with homosexuality.

It is quite a good way of attacking anybody who dares to disagree with what is being said because it places them on the defensive, irrespective of whether they are correct.

It is likely in this case the leader was being genuine and had deluded himself that he was being spiritual, when in fact he was potentially being abusive because of the unthoughtful timing of his question.

I pointed this all out the minister who did actually say he had said the wrong thing, but didn’t seem to pick up on the inappropriateness of the leader. It was the last time I have visited that church, but not for this particular reason.

It also made me think that impressionable people could be badly chewed up in such a situation because of the growing disconnect between what they perceive as being correct and the moral obligation placed on them to see their viewpoint stemming from ‘sin.’

I agree, however, with the idea that our sinful nature can warp the way we see the world, which in a way is central to Christian theology. But this idea can become a weapon used by authority to silence criticism and so easily becomes a perversion of the Gospel.

I am just fine with Mr. Muff Potter sticking to a tentative YEC stance, a man who appears to be, if as presented, the best sort of person. 🙂

I don’t mind calling some ideas stupid, perhaps because I am well aware that I hold some myself.

I think it would be a good thing to take our ideas less seriously so that we then can give ourselves more respect. w00t

@ Muff Potter:
Comment to you, Muff, but in moderation. Check back.

Deb, Dee or guy behind curtain, I made the mistake of naming myself differently. Would you restore to my usual first? Apologies!

Thanks so much for your kind words. Fellowship is the heart of it all and the purpose. It (faith, spirit, growing) goes dead in our hands without it. Happy Friday all.

@ Sopwith:

dee wrote:

Charles wrote:
A leader joined the conversation and heard what I was saying. He looked at me a ‘in a spiritual way’ and asked me whether I had a problem with homosexuality.
i know that “spiritual way” look and it means you are about to be “gospelized.”

It’s also a passive-aggressive blame shift worthy of a master manipulator.

Notice he passively accuses the dissident of the Worst Possible Taboo/Sin, forcing him into immediate defensive mode while retaining Total Plausible Deniability. And provides a cover (“in a Spiritual way”) for claiming Discernment of the Spirit, direct from God, AKA “Spectral Evidence”, cue the Woo-Woo.

And the immediate defensive mode can also be spun Spiritually(TM) as “Satan Hath Hardened Your Heart(TM)”. Win-Win for the ManaGawd.

Wanted to mention I’ve only been back to going to church less than a year, after almost 10 yrs away. Not from a truly bad experience, but just from not feeling a real connection. I almost hate to mention this, but if there’s any place to, this is it.

10 yrs ago, I had a devastating loss – unspeakable pain… My younger brother took his life. I couldn’t even try in a comment to summarize the grief so I won’t. Enough to say I could have torn off my own skin in those first days. My husband in an effort to comfort me in the only way that possibly could, called the pastor at our church at the time. No one called back for three days. In that first 24 hrs I rec’d 12 phone messages from people in my AA program (I just outted myself). I couldn’t talk, but just hearing the voices of care without any grand answers helped in those hours.

I didn’t hold any grudge against church, it just kind of solidified where I fit- and how the seemingly smallest loving gestures are a lifeline at times. I’ve been in recovery for 18 yrs (since I was 29). And I realize more and more how blessed I’ve been to have fellowship there. (I can only imagine how unsettling the very loose, broad spirituality that is allowed in AA is for strict Christians, and I even understand it.) It’s purpose is different (recovery) but I’m truly amazed at how parallel it is with Christian principles

Wow- sorry!! Went off on a tangent. It was healing to write. Thanks. I wondered why I kept returning to this blog!

@ Patrice:

In other news, Lesley and I have just finished a bottle of fizzy white (which means I drank most of it). Therefore, as a precautionary measure, I will refrain from posting until tomorrow.

hic

@ Jackie:
I appreciate your posting. I’m very sorry for you loss.

Things have happened to me and people outside of the church usually helped more.

@ Jackie:

Sorry to hear about your loss. I can well imagine that the mere passage of time doesn’t make that kind of thing even slightly easier.

I’m running off on a bit of a tangent from your comment, but I think your experience shows how rare, and priceless, the gift of encouragement (as per Romans 12) is. The gift of encouragement is, to my mind, too often catastrophically cheapened by phrases like “we can all encourage”.

No, we can’t.

Not one in a hundred Christians has the God-given ability to approach someone in your position, and communicate something to you that turns your mourning into dancing. That would be a fantastic gift to have… Perhaps this does link back to the title of the thread. Perhaps too many of us Christians have pretended to ourselves that we have something we don’t.

@ Nick Bulbeck:

… well, on reflection, that’s slightly unfair. The two people who helped most when I was at the tail-end of 7 years of unemployment (or stacking shelves on the minimum wage) were in the congregation, but were not in good favour with the leadership!

Jackie wrote:

It was healing to write.

Thanks for sharing, Jackie.

@ Jackie:

Jackie you should pick up Philip Yancey’s “What Good is God?” One chapter in there is about an AA meeting in Chicago. Yancey talks about how alcoholics can find more grace in AA than in Christianity. It might resonate with you.

@ Nick:

It’s a funny thing, but I’d never thought of it in quite those terms until I read this comment of yours, Hester. I mean specifically that I’d never thought of quite how vast a difference there is between those two.

I have to think about it because of the friend I mentioned upthread.

NB just read Steve’s list of the fundamentals, and agreed with that too!

I do view some doctrines as non-negotiable, but not in the sense that one can reduce mystery to a few statements, but rather that these are the defining lines beyond which belief ceases to be Christian in a logical sense. And perhaps unsurprisingly, most are to do with the person of Jesus.

One of the best books I have read on the subject, for what it’s worth, is J I Packer’s “Fundamentalism and the Word of God”, which assesses the whole phenomenon of ‘fundamentalism’, its history and rivalling approaches to the Scriptures.

Sorry if I’m wandering off topic or missing stuff, it’s late over here!

Nick Bulbeck wrote:

I think your experience shows how rare, and priceless, the gift of encouragement (as per Romans 12) is. The gift of encouragement is, to my mind, too often catastrophically cheapened by phrases like “we can all encourage”.
No, we can’t.
Not one in a hundred Christians has the God-given ability to approach someone in your position, and communicate something to you that turns your mourning into dancing. That would be a fantastic gift to have… Perhaps this does link back to the title of the thread. Perhaps too many of us Christians have pretended to ourselves that we have something we don’t.

This comment blows me away. All I hear is humility. Yes, perhaps in too much ambition, God is left out completely – and we are cheap imitations when we try to be all things. (Or define all things, or answer all things). It takes humility to just be with someone rather than to be God to them.

I’m not sure how you know this-about time not healing this one. It’s true. But this gorgeous phrase-mourning into dancing- that happens too.

The people on here have blown me away. I mean made me wanna stay. Or something. You guys gotta church I can join? JK.

@ Muff Potter:
Wow. Awesome.

Kolya wrote:

NB just read Steve’s list of the fundamentals, and agreed with that too!

Those are my initials – use yer own!

Though I, too, agreed with Steve’s list of the fundamentals.

  __

Over Da Top: “The Earth & It’s ‘Spin’?”

hmmm…

  Belief in how old da earth is, or how God brought about the creation of the universe, is not pre-request for salvation, nor faith in Jesus. 

huh?

  The prerequest for salvation, – is believing in Jesus. See, God sent His Son into the world to save the people of the earth from their sins and their separation from God Almighty. (He cared that much…)

What?

  As it so happened, the people killed Jesus, God’s Son, yet God raised Him up from the dead. Believing this brings salvation and eternal life to those that do believe.

(no fancy ‘theology’ is required)

Interested?

ATB

Sopy
___
Comic relief: “Dogs barking to VW Darth Vader dog commercial…”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4_ImUtS4uw
Wayback Machine: ” The Bark Side” – The Original 2012 Volkswagen Game Day Commercial
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhkUR6ACaqY

;~)

—

Jesus put the offer for personal, bodily resurrection to eternal life with Him (where He is) out on the table.

Across the spectrum of human history, thought, philosophies, religions, disciplines, endeavors, cultures, kingdoms, socities, tribal rituals, belief systems, academics, etc., such an offer is rarely, if ever, found.

Spending a bit of time and effort to check out/validate/debunk Jesus’ claims makes sense to me. Given my healthy dose of self-interest, the prospect of eternal life rates as a priority to me.

Personally, I find Jesus to be true. Happily, He is who He says He is. He did what He said God the Father sent Him to do.

I’m not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ which is the power for eternal life to all who believe.

To Daisy, and any others to whom this applies ~~

My deepest condolences on the passing of your mother. I weep with you. The more we love a person, the more we miss her. The loss remains throughout the years; the empty place is never filled by anyone else.

From what you’ve said, God richly blessed you with an exceptional mother. A mother who sincerely lives her love for and faith in the Lord, imo, is like a rare, irreplaceable jewel. I’m so glad for the gift she was to you and to all who knew her.

I empathize with you on Mother’s Day. I pray the blessing of your mother will touch your day with love, in the midst of lingering sorrow.

(Grief is the strangest, untamed, wildest experience, unique to each heart and surfacing wherever and whenever.)

We were shocked several years ago when doctors suddenly told us my mother had two weeks to live. And, indeed, despite many prayers, she departed after two weeks.

I miss my mom. I am happy for her being present with the Lord. (My faith-based hope in this truth comforts me so much). Honestly, I don’t think she’d want to re-enter this world, given a choice, Her absence is still an emptiness in my life, though, and will be until I see her again.

“Each heart knows its own sorrow.” The Lord of all comfort and grace knows each one’s heart.

@ Ardiak:
Thank you for these thoughts on Mother’s Day.

Hester wrote:

@ Steve Scott:

Is it just inspiration of the Bible, or inspiration and inerrancy? Because those positions often make for very different ways of thinking about the Bible. Also one of those two camps spends a lot of time denouncing the other (and I’m sure you know which camp I’m referring to).

Hester, the doctrine of inerrancy came out of the doctrine of inspiration…an additional fundamental. (Therefore, women shouldn’t wear pants; therefore we can eliminate country music songs about tight jeans) I purposely left inerrancy out because I wanted to mention the real, real fundamentals.

Interestingly, if you do some reading on Machen, you will find that although he is championed as a defender of the fundamentals against liberalism, he disliked the idea of fundamentalism because he feared that what would happen would be the exact thing we are discussing today.

@ Steve Scott:
@ An Attorney:

I’m convinced that this is largely what Paul meant when he said that righteousness could not be achieved by law. It’s not just that following the Mosaic Law of animal sacrifice can’t make us righteous, but that no conceivable law could either. Such a law would eventually have to be infinitely long and infinitely detailed, like a kind of monstrous cosmo-theological Mandelbrot set.

I know very little about John Machen (whom I assume to be the Machen whereof you spake, Steve), but I suspect he thought something similar. Though, obviously, without the reference to the then-undiscovered Mandelbrot set.

The journey from inspiration to inerrancy/infallibility (and the controversy over exactly what is the difference between inerrant and infallible), and thence to sufficiency, is to my mind a journey into death.

@ Nick Bulbeck:
@ Bridget:
Amen to both of you!!!

@ Nick Bulbeck:

Inspired scribsher, Nick.

@ Nick Bulbeck:
Just had to say- I love anyone’s efforts at getting those thoughts out! Can’t imagine much else that’s more worthwhile.

People also are replacing Jesus with the “church,” and the “church” has come to mean the leadership and their families.

The leaders talking about themselves has come to equal talking about Christ??

BORING!!! (As well as fruitless and a waste of time.)

“You know well as I do that certain ‘Bible-believers’ will find a way to dismiss you if they don’t like what you have to say. They will denounce you as not a True Christian™. They will say you are rebellion, deceived by the devil, harming the body of Christ. They will brush you off as easily as they do me.”

Yes. They call you rebellious no matter what you say or do. They tell the church members to have nothign to do with you or yours, not to talk to you on the phone, not to answer your email, not to let you into their homes, not to let their kids play with your kids. They literally run away at the sight of you. They accuse you of things you never ever would even have thought someone could think about you. They downright lie. They share private information while telling you not to talk about it. They impugn your character and characterize you as out of your mind. Just for good measure, even people who are not in your church will hear that you’ve totally lost it. People you don’t even know will have heard your name and think they know all about you.

The fallout from their treatment is devastating at every level. The struggle and the hurt is tremendously real.

Still, do I believe them, or do I believe Jesus? Jesus is not them. Just because they said so, doesn’t mean God agreed with them.

Contrary to prevalent thinking, the church is not Jesus. (In fact, leaving many a modern church is actually a healthy decision. Finding people like those who post at this and similar sites is even better. Their experiences counteract any lingering doubts that what I, personally, experienced was just standard operating procedures for controlling abusers. Not my fault in the least.)

Even the worst they can do cannot separate me from Christ’s love.

Jesus never minimized the terrible damage effected by sin. In fact, He spoke much about the barriers and challenges to belief that the disciples would face. He said people would do all kinds of evil in his name. (Who can think of a worse evil than violence and abuse against the innocents, the children whom Jesus loves) Sorting out the truth from the lies is a lifelong calling.

To know and live the truth that Jesus loves me is the best way I can defeat those abusers and their lifes. The best way to counter act the destroyers is to not be destroyed, but to be LOVED.

That’s me. That’s not you. God is just as there for you, though. He sure didn’t die more for me than He did for you. I pray that as you honestly sift through the lies, the truth you find leads you to His love.