I got a facebook message that’s been on my mind today. It was from someone very close to me who is still part of the church of Christ — the sect of Christianity of which I was a member. As I’ve said before, my immediate family no longer associates with me or my wife because we left the church. But there’s something in their position that I find really interesting and puzzling.
When I left the church, I was very open about why I was leaving, and I was more than willing to talk to anyone who wanted to convince me I was wrong. I even wrote out my issues with the church, the Bible, and Christianity (almost 60 typed pages) so there could be no question about my reasons. But I was surprised at how many people declined to talk to me. You have to understand that these people think they are the only true version of Christianity. They believe that almost everyone else (even those in denominations who profess to be Christians) are Hell-bound. So to be that certain of their position, they should have some startlingly good reasons for their beliefs — reasons that they should be able to share with others. Not only that, but in Jesus’ Great Commission, Christians are told to spread the word. Shouldn’t they have been pursuing me for a discussion, instead of it being the other way around?
The message I received contained this line:
I’ve read some of the things you’ve written, and even gone to some of the websites you’ve linked in your blog, and I just don’t see enough evidence to ever make me feel comfortable with renouncing my faith.
Normally, that would be fine. I have many Christian friends, and I have no problem with any who feel that way. But when this comes from someone in the church of Christ, it shows that they’re missing the point. They take the position that they are so right, they can’t even associate with me anymore. This isn’t a “live and let live” position. This is saying, “I’m right and you’re wrong, but I’m not going to bother explaining why.” That completely blows my mind. I mean, let’s just roll through that real quick:
- They believe they are the one true example of Christianity in the world.
- They believe everyone else is going to Hell.
- They believe God has told them to teach the lost.
- They believe God does not show favoritism.
- They believe the Bible is the inerrantly inspired Word of God.
- Yet when they’re presented with evidence that questions their position, instead of finding an answer to those questions, they just say they’re not bothered by the issues.
How does that help anyone? They already believe. So if they’re right — if they really do hold ultimate truth — then their response should be to try to convince the skeptic, not just say that they’re not bothered by him.
I used to be in the church of Christ, and I believed (like they do) that baptism was a necessary step in the salvation process. When I studied with friends in denominations, if I had shown them a passage that seems to speak about the necessity of baptism and they had answered with “well, that just doesn’t bother me,” I would have been flabbergasted! It’s not really a question about what bothers you or not, it’s a question of what’s true. If the Bible really does teach that baptism is necessary, then the response of one who values the Bible should be, “I need to study this more closely!” Likewise, if someone claims that the Bible is inerrant and they’re shown evidence that calls that into question, the correct response is “I need to study this more closely!” To simply say “I’m not bothered by it” is a defeatist response that (to me) indicates they already have severe doubts about those issues but are too afraid to examine them.
I know they aren’t arrogant. But to me, it seems like arrogance to say that you know the mind of God to the point that you’re willing to sever relationships over it, yet you won’t try to explain why the other person is wrong.
Look, if God’s standards are really as strict as the CoC believes, then there should be some really solid evidence so that well-meaning people aren’t lost because of ignorance. But if they can’t answer the problems I’ve raised, then something’s not right with the CoC. Either Christianity is true, but many many more people fit into the “saved” category than they believed, or the whole thing is just as wrong as every other religion. It can only be one of those two options, if God is a decent fellow who wants everyone to be saved. So either the answers to my issues should be fairly evident, or their beliefs are wrong. It doesn’t really matter how much they’re bothered by it.
Finding Truth 
Unklee,
I don’t think that the writers of the gospels were either lying or telling the absolute truth. I have witnessed many times in my own life, and read of other instances, where people can create false memories, or misinterpret what they witnessed or experienced, and create (lack of a better word) scenarios that resolve what they saw or what they thought they saw. I am sure you have knowledge of the same. I don’t think that this is very outlandish, and I do think it is very likely for a time and place that leaned heavily toward the superstitious.
I don’t really know and would not dare claim that I did know what the writers of the gospels, or any of the other texts in the bible cannon, were trying to be dishonest or perfectly and completely accurate. Like you, I look at the evidence.
I get the impression that you have consulted more external source than I have. I am realizing that I have much more study to do, and I also plan on reading through more of your own blog to try to understand your position better. When I was a believer, I felt that the bible (its 66 books) was its best commentary. Indeed, I guess I do tend to refer to the bible a single book, although I am quite aware that it is a collection. Most of the Christians I have known do indeed believe that God preserved the individual books and fated their canonization – so I may just be stuck in that habit, but I can understand that tendency. If god had a plan for us, and wanted us to know that plan, and would deal out either a reward or a punishment based upon our understanding or adherence to that plan, then it Is not a difficult conclusion to determine that god’s plan would be obvious, understandable and if not provable then highly cohesive with itself, with logic, and with known science and history. If a single book appears to be canonized by mistake, then it brings everything into question.
How can we determine which book is a good one? How can we know which points to find believable? It makes it harder when there are blatant issues present in several of its book, when even the gospels appear to contradict one another? To me, if I see one flaw, and much less a multitude of flaws, I have trouble ascribing that to a being that is supposedly Perfect and wants nothing more than to help us.
And again, I’m sure this discussion should involve equating god to the bible. God could exist, and the bible could still be an independent creation of man. I think the question we are focusing on is, “is the bible divinely inspired; if so, how do we know? To what degree is it inspired? And, to what degree should we considerate literal?
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Dear Nate and William,
My main purpose when commenting on blogs is to point out what I regard as errors of fact or failures to consider options. I am not so interested in arguing opinions after that, as I feel each person has to decide themselves. So having argued that the ‘battleground’ should not be inerrancy, but the historical Jesus, and seeing you both focus on this, I think I should ease off. But I will contest one matter which I believe is not quite according to how the historians see it.
“I don’t believe they were written by people who actually knew Jesus, but by Christian converts a generation or two removed from him. I think they were honestly relaying his history as they knew it, but I don’t view it as accurate enough to believe the fantastical elements.”
I think this is a reasonable view, but I think you don’t take sufficient account of the following:
* In an oral society, people (especially disciples of a Rabbi) were trained to remember things accurately. Thus the gospels are not as removed as you imply from the actual events. They are somewhat like a group of written memories edited into a compendium.
* There are some clear indications that they preserve the memories of eye-witnesses – the accurate geographical detail in John of things which were no longer in existence within decades of Jesus’ life, the clear Aramaisms, etc.
* The fact that there are several independent sources for the stories, much more than we have for most history, makes it harder to believe they are urban myths.
I could go on, but I won’t. I still find it surprising that the two of you could walk away from your previous faith without (if I understand you correctly) feeling any great loss of your ‘relationship’ with Jesus. I am not a very ‘touchy-feely’ christian, yet that would be an enormous emotional loss to me. So I feel something was missing before, and I can only hope and pray that your leaving the faith you once knew will pave the way eventually for a return to a more robust and (hopefully) truer version. It happens to some, perhaps many, people.
I will probably ease up on the ‘argument’ for a while, I think I have probably said enough, though I will continue to read and comment a little. Best wishes to both of you.
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“I still find it surprising that the two of you could walk away from your previous faith without (if I understand you correctly) feeling any great loss of your ‘relationship’ with Jesus.”
Speaking from my own experience, it was not a matter of losing my relationship with Jesus. It was more that I began to see the fallacies and inconsistencies within the Christian faith. The ‘supporting evidence’ offered by Christian leaders just didn’t have enough substance to overcome what I had discovered through my own research _outside_ church teachings.
For the past five years, I have been writing a book about what most Christians do not know about their faith. I hope to have it in eBook format (followed by hardcopy) within the next six weeks. I think some of Nate’s readers will find it fascinating — provided they can look beyond the teachings of the church. If Nate allows, I’ll post when it’s ready for purchase.
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Explains much to me. I am from the south and so I know the church of christ. I love the guy who sits right next to me at work who is coc. But, I don’t have the same view of the world or of Jesus as the coc. I know that his is his divine grace and mercy that pardons and is based only in His work in His life and death. None of me. Even the faith I have is a gift from Him. I do nothing to earn. I can only receive–receive in faith which He gave.
Glad they persevered with you as in your other comment. However, I’d wonder about the apologetic resource available to anyone in the coc because as you say–they are the only way so they can’t listen to anyone outside coc and still be orthodox.
My resources are wide ranging and span much more than my little group or denomination. That helps tremendeously.
I hope you are in a better place.
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G’day Nan, thanks for interacting.
“Speaking from my own experience, it was not a matter of losing my relationship with Jesus. It was more that I began to see the fallacies and inconsistencies within the Christian faith. “
I probably didn’t explain myself well because I was trying to be brief. Let’s take an analogy. Suppose I was in love and engaged to be married, then found out that my fiancee was having an affair. I might well decide to end the relationship because of the fact of the affair, but I would still grieve because I had loved that person.
I think it would be similar with the christian faith. If the evidence pointed to Jesus not being historically true, I might choose to give up faith, but I would still grieve because that relationship was important to me. But when I read what Nate and William say, I don’t see any evidence of that grief that I would expect. They seem to have had their difficulties, but not any sense of loss of that relationship.
I can only conclude that they had no such relationship, or it wasn’t very personal or very real – i.e. their belief never got beyond intellectual acceptance. This is no disrespect for them, just an observation. (My belief is more intellectual than personal, but the personal is still there and still important to me.)
Best wishes.
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Unklee,
That’s a good question / point. Let me ask you this, if you knew a man who one day found out that his wife of many years had cheated on him and he didn’t show the expected amount of grief or heartache, would you assume that he had never been married?
I wonder how a man would act who had never met his wife; a man who had been told that he was married to a woman who never contacted him, herself. He only received letters that were written by other people, who claimed to be writing on her behalf. No pictures to look at. I wonder how that man would act, if learned on day that there never was a woman that he was married to. I don’t guess I know, but, boy, that sounds crazy.
I did have a feeling of betrayal, but not by Jesus (because he hadn’t really done anything to me), but I felt taken in by the entire machine. It left me feeling foolish for having believed it at all. And this falling away didn’t happen instantaneously. I desperately held on for as long as I could, frantically searching for a resolution, looking for some way to have it all work out again – but gradually, as I learned more, and saw more and finally took a step back to try and look at everything with even eyes, everything felt like it became clear.
You a reaching me some time after my struggle with all of this, and I have seen no point in laying out the emotional aspects of it all, when emotion can cloud sound judgment.
William
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William,
I hope you don’t think I am trying to say that you, or Nate, were not ‘true christians’, and thereby minimise your deconversions. I don’t know if I can define what a ‘true christian’ is, and I certainly don’t have any magical powers to make such a judgment. I am merely trying to understand and question.
“if you knew a man who one day found out that his wife of many years had cheated on him and he didn’t show the expected amount of grief or heartache, would you assume that he had never been married?”
I have learnt not to expect any particular reaction from myself or other people. But if I was discussing his marriage and observed his lack of emotion, I would surely wonder ….
“I wonder how a man would act who had never met his wife”
The hiddenness of God is an argument against his existence, but we are not arguing that here. You were a believer despite God’s hiddenness, but you seem not to have had much of a relationship with him. My faith is about 90% based on reason, and I often jokingly call myself a ‘spiritual cripple’, but nevertheless I feel I do have a relationship with God. So it seems your faith was different to mine in some way. I’m just trying to understand that apparent fact.
“I felt taken in by the entire machine”
I think this is a key point. I agree that religion and church can be very ‘machine-like’, self-serving and counter-productive. The difference is that I have long since seen through that, and therefore I’m not taken in by it. I feel sorry that you were affected in that way. For whatever reasons therefore, you gave up faith in both the church and Jesus, whereas I gave up faith in the church but still trust Jesus.
I’m sorry if it is in any way painful for you to go over these things, but I do think we can better understand how different our respective reactions and beliefs have been. Thanks.
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Hi everyone — sorry I’ve been away from comments the last few days. I always appreciate everyone’s contribution. And Nan, yes, please let us know when your book is ready! 🙂
unklee,
I think you raise an excellent question. I was never a “touchy-feely” Christian. I believed that while our emotions played an important part, if Christianity were true it would need to be intellectually and logically defensible. Much of that came from my stance on biblical inerrancy — something you and I differ on. But I know you are a logical individual, and I think you probably understand what I’m trying to say about the veracity of the Christian message.
As I’ve said, once I realized the Bible was not inerrant, I had trouble finding a way to believe that Christianity could still be true. This was a horrible time for me. Even though I didn’t believe that God literally held the world in place, losing my faith in Christianity made me wonder why we didn’t just hurtle off into space. Or why some gigantic meteor hadn’t pulverized us yet. Or any number of horrible things. I felt very, very small.
I grieved for that part of my life. It was a grief that encompassed every facet of Christianity — God, Jesus, Heaven, family members that have already passed on. I also grieved for the biblical heroes I’d always loved: Joseph, Ehud, David, Josiah, Paul, Timothy, etc. I really didn’t know how to feel about any of it.
But I also became a little angry. I tried not to, because I realized that it wasn’t the Bible’s fault that false religions (as I believe them to be) have engulfed the world because of what it says. It’s really just a repository of culture, history, and mythology. It’s actually a tremendous treasure, culturally speaking. But I also felt burned by it. As you’ve seen, I was brought up in a very conservative, fundamentalist version of Christianity. It was just hard to come away from that without a little bitterness.
So, that’s a very long-winded way of saying that my former beliefs were very important and dear to me. Losing them was the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through. But because I always believed the intellectual portion was more important than the emotional, and because there’s still a little bitterness there, that probably helps form the impression you’ve received about a lack of emotional connection to Christianity. Of course, there’s also the fact that I didn’t blog about any of this when it was going on, but began writing about a year after I started losing my faith.
Sorry for the long comment, but I hope that helps explain things a little better.
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Thanks Nate, I’m sympathetic to the difficulties you’ve experienced, and it helps to understand them a little better. My observation on what you say is that your pain was about loss of a worldview and loss of some culture, but not loss of a relationship. I still find that a little surprising, but you can only report what happened. Thanks and best wishes.
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I’m visiting after reading “The way we treat deserters” by Unklee. As a committed follower of the Christian FAITH who has been outside the walls of ‘traditional’ Christianity for some 40 years I have a lot of empathy with all of the views being expressed, maybe especially by Dad.
I’m in the UK and was for some 20 years a member of a Sabbath keeping church that were absolutely convinced that they were the one and only true church – although most of us recognised that there were genuinely committed Christians in other churches who were deceived to one extent or another.
Try and imagine the situation when the leadership of the church in 1995 announced that much of their theology was misguided! This was a very traumatic experience. We were part of a family of 14 related by marriage that was torn apart. My daughter and her husband were youth leaders. His parents went one way; we went another. No wonder my children are atheists!
It was in June that Bob, an internet acquaintance wrote a lengthy article entitled, “What I actually believe”. When my closest friend (who subsequently died suddenly of a heart attack) saw it he suggested, “it’s almost as if Bob has crawled into your heart and communicated the essence of your faith”.
Bob uses the name, “The Unconventional Pastor”. I have since rewritten the introduction to my own blog and entitled it, “An Unconventional Believer”.
I’d be interested in what thoughts any of you might have.
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There has been so many goog comments posted on this blog, I wish I had time to respond to them all. I will take the time to say that I’ve especially enjoyed unklee’s posts and his world view.
The CoC is a funny animal, theologically I believe they get more right than they get wrong; however where they error, boy do they do so with gusto. I’ll always be thankful for my short time spent in the CoC, it really solidified my personal faith and spiritual relationship with Christ. My faith was challenged and my scriptural knowledge really encouraged to grow past the level of complacency most denominattions tend to have. However, they cruelity they treat others within their own denomination, let alone ‘lost souls’ outside of the CoC with is sickening for those claiming to be Christ followers.
Nathan you are a good man, a honorable man. One who grew up in a faith system that focused on rules and regulations more than a relationship with a living breathing God. I believe this is the reason you have gone down the spiritual path you have. I hope to be able to one day convince you that the god of the Bible does exist, and that He died to have a real relationship with you. I know at this point that seems about as likely as Auburn winning the National championship this year 😉 but that is what faith is about after all. I’ve also came to the point to where I am ‘ok’ if that doesn’t happen. We have to live our own lives and make our own choices, like I said before, you’re a good man and I value our friendship.
Thank you for continuing to be ‘out there’ discussing the hard topics and living out your faith. You faith just happens to be that of ‘no faith’. In the end it is our own selves that we must be true to and while others may not like it, you are doing just that.
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Matt — great to hear from you! I’m glad that you feel that your time in the CoC was helpful in some way. I felt bad about that whole thing, but it helps to know you got some benefit from it.
Peter — thanks for your comment! I’ll check out your blog when I have some time. Take care…
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