This is in response to @MarkD, @Randy and @Jay313. All of whom have asked me to clarify what I meant by saying on another post that I had returned to faith but I haven’t returned to the same place I left.
This is long. And rambling at times. And I’m sure it’s pretty boring. But, it’s my story of the past few years. If you have any questions after reading this, please let me know and I’ll attempt to answer them.
My parents became believers when I was six years old. They experienced a radical change in their lives, going from hard-partying hippies of the late 1960s and early 1970s to the other end of the spectrum: church-attending, never miss a revival, preach to everyone (quite literally) you meet regardless of circumstances - even if it means holding up the queue line at the grocery store - and most important mantra of them all “train up your children in the way they should go …”
Being raised in a fundamentalist Christian home, I was expected to believe as my parents did, that the creation account in Genesis was a blow-by-blow narrative of EXACTLY how everything was created. I was expected to believe that the entire earth was flooded 15 cubits higher than Mt. Everest and that donkeys spoke, axe heads floated, and when Jesus died, the saints came out of their tombs and walked around town yet raised zero suspicion amongst contemporary historians of the day. I was expected to believe that every single word written in the Bible was absolutely true as if it were recorded by a narrator on videotape as it happened.
In 1977 I actually met Duane T. Gish, who put the idea that dinosaurs roamed the earth alongside man into my 11-year-old head by using behemoth and leviathan stories in Job. He showed me pictures from a stream bed in Texas of human footprints inside the larger footprints of a dinosaur and I was hooked into believing that particular narrative. He showed me pictures in Australia of petrified trees standing up through supposedly millions of years worth of geological layers of rock and asked: “did the lower layers stay mushy for hundreds of millions of years or does it make sense that this happened in a global flood?”
My parents enrolled me in highly fundamentalist schools from 2nd grade through 5th grade then, due to financial difficulties, I was enrolled in a public school for 6th and 7th grade. My parents intervened in the school’s teaching of evolution and fought tooth-and-nail with the administration and teachers. They also fought against the school teaching me about Greek mythology. I was forced to sit in the hallway outside the classroom so that I wouldn’t be exposed to these abhorrent teachings that “denied the Word of God.” I suppose that exposure to the stories of Zeus and his merry band of misfit gods would’ve made me a believer in the Grecian Pantheon?
I was enrolled in a Christian school again in the 8th grade and eventually graduated. Bible classes were the typical fundamentalist style with an “everything is literal except what we decide isn’t” slant. I spent the next 30+ years or so attending the most conservative of churches, primarily of the Presbyterian Church in America variety, and would argue with evolutionists offline and online using Answers in Genesis data (maybe I should call it propaganda). Other Christians would actually contact me for advice on arguing with an evolutionist.
Thirty-four years after I began attending that school, I enrolled my son there (mostly due to the academic rigor - they have an astounding reputation for producing college-bound kids with scholarships). Irony of ironies, the school now teaches kids that there are multiple interpretations of Genesis and even use some BioLogos’ YouTube videos in the Bible classroom. It was from my 16-year-old son that I first learned of BioLogos.
At that time (2015), I was experiencing a lot of doubt anyway concerning my faith and the truthfulness of the Bible. My business was struggling and I remember hearing a pastor say that God wants you to test him in regards to giving. “Test me now in this,” says the Lord of hosts, “if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows.” – Malachi 3:10 so I gave the church 10% of everything I earned only to watch my four largest accounts dump me. In my mind, God failed the test. My business failed, almost causing me to lose my home to foreclosure. It was a very dark time in my life. I felt that God, if he even existed, either abandoned me or didn’t care. I couldn’t take care of my family and it had a devastating effect on my faith in God.
I had watched several of the BioLogos videos in secret since my wife insists that she didn’t “evolve from a monkey” and there would never be an end to that discussion. But once you watch a video, the YouTube algorithm recommends other videos that are similar and also recommends videos that others have watched. The videos that popped up in my recommended category included several atheist YouTube channels and I began watching them out of curiosity more than anything else. One, in particular, was by NonStampCollector and in it, his Microsoft Paint characters played a gameshow where Bible contradictions were highlighted. I looked up every reference to verify his claims and yep, there they were right there on the pages of my own Bible.
I felt like I’d been lied to my entire life about the inerrancy of Scripture. The errors were right there in front of me and either I was too stupid to see them or had simply glossed blindly over them. What really infuriated me was thinking that preachers, my parents, and my Bible teachers in school had also either simply missed these little nuggets of information or had intentionally left them out of their teachings. I found The Skeptic’s Annotated Bible and downloaded it on my Kindle. I would use it when my wife and I went to church. I changed the wallpapers on my phone and tablet to reflect the bibviz.com graphical representation of all the contradictions in the Bible.
Over the course of two or three years, I voraciously consumed all this information and decided that the Bible was just a book of fairy tales dreamt up by some Bedouin wanderers to explain things they didn’t understand and it morphed over the centuries to where it is now … kinda like almost every other religion. I watched The Fundamental Falsehoods of Creationism by Aron Ra. I watched his fascinating series on The Flood. I watched ALL of NonStampCollector’s videos, watched 43Alley, DarkMatter2525, CosmicSkeptic, Genetically Modified Skeptic with Drew McCoy, and The Thinking Atheist with Seth Andrews. I became a fan of Richard Carrier, read one of his books, and read Dawkins, Hitchins, and Sam Harris. I began to realize that most Christians had never really investigated the Bible’s claims and that their faith (and mine) was about as deep as a puddle of water. Due to my upbringing, I still had a hard time calling myself an atheist but I knew it wasn’t going to be long before I had to reveal my beliefs.
My parents, who are only 18 years older than me and in great health, went to Ken Ham’s Ark Park in Kentucky. “We need to go to support Ken Ham because he is defending the Bible against secularists,” they told me. I was disgusted (still am but for different reasons now).
They came back with thinking they’d been educated and since they still hold to their “preach to everyone everywhere no matter what the circumstances” mantra, they began verbally downloading their newfound knowledge to my wife and family (as well as anyone else they came into contact with). One evening my wife said, “We should go to the Ark Park so that our faith is strengthened.” A switch flipped inside me. “No, I will never go to that.” She asked why and I unloaded the truck … a very full truck … of what I thought about Christianity and the Bible. Let’s just say my opinions were not positive.
To say she was devastated is like calling the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs a small piece of gravel.
The most interesting thing was her first and primary question wasn’t WHY or HOW … but WHEN? That one still baffles me. No request for more info, proof texts, or anything. She searched to find a reason why I no longer believed, blaming it on everything from me feeling sorry for myself to accusing me of having an affair to saying I was having a mid-life crisis.
We would argue night after night about the veracity of the Bible’s claims, and always ending with her sobbing that she never signed up to be married to an atheist. I feel terrible for the way I made her feel. My parents had witnessed to her 35 years ago and as a result, she had become a Christian and she reminded me of that. She was horrified that I had even had questions about my faith. I’ve since learned that it’s easy for some people to believe, but others of us, need more than just being told.
Eventually, she moved out.
My oldest daughter encouraged her to divorce me, my youngest daughter encouraged me to visit with our pastor at church, and my son kinda thought the same way I did. I felt like our family was disintegrating.
My wife said the only way she’d move back was if I met with our pastor, got into counseling with her, and deleted the books written by atheists from my Kindle. I’ve done all three, mostly because I deeply love her and didn’t want to get divorced.
I decided to take my youngest daughter’s advice and meet with my pastor and quite frankly, I laid it all out on the table with him. He was incredibly understanding and told me that he also has periods of doubt, serious, leave-the-faith kind of doubts. But he seeks answers from other believers rather than from atheists and those doubts are always eventually allayed. He told me, however, that “97% of your questions can be answered or accounted for in some way, but you’ll never be able to get to 100% – faith has to come into play at some point because ‘without faith, it is impossible to please God.’” I told him I was okay with 97%.
He encouraged me to read Francis Schaeffer’s book The God Who Is There. I did, although it is very difficult to grasp his concepts because he is constantly coming up with new words and new definitions. It. Is. A. Tough. Read. But I can say that Francis Schaeffer got me thinking differently and on a different level. That man is deep.
I continued to meet with my pastor and he was very transparent, honest, and open about his own struggles with belief. He and I appear to be cut from the same cloth personality-wise and I never knew that about him (the church has thousands of members). One day, while in church no less, I found a website by Berend de Boer who had addressed many of the Skeptic’s Annotated Bible’s claims. It was a game-changer for me and caused me to realize that I’d done the same thing with atheism that I’d done with Christianity for all those years: blindly accept what was told to me or what I read or what I watched.
I began to realize that atheism’s claims and it’s proponent’s beliefs were about as deeply investigated as most Christian’s beliefs … that is, not very much. I began reading and listening to John Walton and NT Wright and many others, including BioLogos, and began to realize that my fundamentalism had caused me to see the world as black and white, either/or, and use a (false) dichotomy to explain my beliefs. I’ve railed against false dichotomies in many other areas, particularly professional, and yet here I was, a victim of my own thinking. NT Wright, in particular, attributes many of Bart Ehrman’s mistaken thinking to his fundamentalist upbringing where everything was a dichotomy.
I’ve come to believe that Christian fundamentalists have many “gods” they elevate and then use to judge the purity of other’s Christianity (no true Scotsman fallacy perhaps?):
- Scriptural inerrancy - the false belief that there are no errors AT ALL in the Bible. There are scribal errors in copying, textual errors by the fallible men who wrote the Scriptures, and most certainly, there are translation errors. Inerrancy is a solution in search of a problem and I’ve come to believe that claiming that the Bible has no errors, when any person can easily point them out, sets up fundamentalists for failure and embarrassment in front of their atheist counterparts. I believe the Bible is reliable, but I cannot get back on board with inerrant.
- Genesis as “history” - fundamentalists seem to hold on to the belief that Genesis was a blow-by-blow account of how even when everything - science, literary understanding of the era, textual critiques - all point to Genesis being more why/what than how.
- Noah’s global flood - I don’t even want to get started on this one. I’ll be here all day.
When I said “Yeah I’m thinking I’m back” (hat tip to John Wick) what I meant was I’m no longer the staunch fundamentalist and I’ve traveled from Christian fundamentalist to atheist and back to just Christian. I’m much more fluid in what I believe (up to a point). I’ve found myself asking epistemological questions much more often and trying to examine what the Biblical author was trying to say to his audience and how his words would’ve been interpreted in light of the circumstances of that era. Further, I’m not beholding to any set of beliefs not spelled out in Scripture and even then, I’m willing to consider why someone would believe differently and look at, and seriously consider, the reasons why. I used to be a Five Point Calvinist, now, I’m not that sure and I’ve actually begun studying why other Christians believe differently. I’m not sure anyone, anywhere, has all the answers or knows everything. As such, why would I be able to determine who is or isn’t in the flock? Why should I be dogmatic? Why should anyone?
in John 13:35 (NLT) Jesus said: “Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.” Based on how many fundamentalists and evangelicals act when they encounter someone who claims to be a Christian yet believes differently than they, I’m not seeing a lot of love. So … what does that mean?
The Ask NT Wright Anything, the Unbelievable? podcast and BioLogos’ Language of God podcast have been highly instrumental in my return to the faith. What is so refreshing is the level of respect for people who don’t share their beliefs. There is a graciousness in their interactions that I believe is how we are supposed to live amongst people who do not share our beliefs. I’ve learned more in the last six months than I did in 12 years of Christian school and then 30 years sitting in a Church pew and Sunday School. And I stand by my assertion that most Christians and most atheist’s/agnostic’s beliefs are about as deep as a puddle of water in the Namib.
I’m astounded - daily - at how the doctrines of men have crept into the Church. I’m astounded at how Christians have taken the idea of “free love” from the 1970s and have transformed it into an “unconditional love” doctrine that is preached from the pulpit. I’m astounded at the incongruities between Scripture and some of the contemporary songs sung in Churches today. I’m continually asking myself, “What verse did they read to come up with THAT?” I dare say that the early Church fathers and the Apostles wouldn’t recognize many of the Church’s teachings today any more than the men who wrote the US Constitution would recognize the monstrous US Federal government. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.
I’ve come to value the Apostle’s Creed and the Nicene Creed because they boil the Gospel down to the essentials. It’s all about Jesus and the character and nature of God. Eighty to ninety-five percent of everything else is just fluff, dogma, and the doctrine of man.
I fully believe I am a Christian. But I struggle. A lot.
Note: I have made several edits to this post to correct grammatical errors and make it easier to read.
For how many years did you hide your paradigm shift from her? She certainly will have trust issues in this regard for a while. Fruit, however, in your life, is undeniable. That’s the beauty of a Living God and a Living and Active Word. Thank you, again, for sharing your encouraging words.