11. Teach your children that if they only pray hard enough and have enough faith, God will necessarily talk to them. If He hasn't, that must mean they weren't praying hard enough or it wasn't real faith.
Your first list absolutely described to the letter the “Christian” high school I attended.
This message is incredibly important. I wrote my grad thesis as an argument for why and how we as churches should be teaching teenagers and young adults apologetics. As part of that research I surveyed about 100 pastors across the country. Most did not even respond which I kind of expected.
Of those who did respond a disturbing number said why would they do that as it would be preaching to the choir. Their answer presumed all who attended their services were Christians. I don’t know if that came from ignorance or arrogance, but it was shocking either way.
I had a similar experience. Years ago, I sent letters to dozens of pastors in the Austin area offering to come and talk to their congregations about how science supports the Bible. Not one of them responded. When I went to some of the churches to talk to the pastors in person, I was met with either indifference or fear. It was a real eye-opener. To be fair, I've had pastors reach out to me over the years because they're interested in this topic, but these are the relatively rare clergy who seem to realize what's going on.
> Years ago, I sent letters to dozens of pastors in the Austin area offering to come and talk to their congregations about how science supports the Bible. Not one of them responded. When I went to some of the churches to talk to the pastors in person, I was met with either indifference or fear.
The sad part is that given recent history, that was a perfectly understandable reaction of their part. During the 19th and 20th centuries there were many churches that attempted to reconcile science and Christianity especially the so-called "mainline" churches. The result has generally been the churches in question ceasing to be Christian, or even theistic.
There shouldn't have to be any attempt to reconcile them, as they are by nature compatible. Modern science is a direct product of Christianity. Could you give me some examples of mainline churches that drifted from their core principles because of science?
"Not making a family activity out of reading or discussing the Bible" and "living like a secular family Monday thru Saturday" is the story of my family when I was a kid. Thanks for addressing that Sarah.
"Many Christian parents and youth pastors, however, hesitate to teach apologetics or address challenging topics because they lack the confidence to do so."
True, but I think an even bigger problem, is that ever since the time of the Second Great Awakening (roughly 1780 to 1830), the dominant strain of Protestantism in America has operated under an assumption that anti-intellectualism is a virtue, that resentment of smart, educated people is not a vice, and churches can safely neglect the needs of intellectual people to focus on being LOUD and EMOTIONAL instead. As a result, these churches attract pastors and laity who often can't make a case against gay marriage that goes any deeper than "the Bible says so". People react to this situation in various ways. In my case, it led to me permanently ditching Protestantism.
Remind them that God will never give them more than they can handle. (Fun fact: this is actually in the Koran! But Paul says we won’t be TEMPTED without having an escape. That’s different.)
I think Paul is differentiating between suffering and temptations to sin. We will likely suffer more than we can handle, but we are not supposed to do that in isolation—we need to help each other in bearing burdens. But temptations are inducements to sin, and in that God provides an escape, especially knowing his Word. I think the big thing is knowing the difference.
We are told to trust that God will provide ways for us to avoid temptations. There's often a sense that temptations are too overwhelming and will continue to torment us forever. That's why people often give in. Paul's telling us that's not the case. I know recovering alcoholics and drug addicts who will testify to that.
Do you think alcoholism is a mere temptation/sin or a disease ?
Because i know people who suffered so much from a disease that they are not here anymore to testify anything. It was their suffering that made them end their life, not the disease directly.
I don't think alcoholism fits the definition of a disease. There's almost certainly a genetic predisposition to things like alcoholism in some people, but that's not the same thing as having a disease like ALS or cancer.
"Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis should be on that list. While not for children, its a good springboard for the parent who needs a logical, rational basis for the basics of Christianity.
Internet pornography helps a great deal. Nothing like traumatic nihilistic sex that boys emotionally despair of but can’t look away from to make you completely miserable
If you’ve got a smart inquisitive kid, encouraging them to study the Bible and Patristics in their original context and language is a dead reliable way to make an atheist, especially if you also expose them to apologetics. Guess how I know that one? ;-)
I grew up in the church, and in Christian academia, learned biblical Greek at a very young age, was fortunate enough to be surrounded by historians, theologians, and other scholars (all conservative, orthodox protestants with a love for the broader Christian tradition). I acquired a strong grounding in Patristics, church history, and Ancient near-eastern history.
When I was in my mid 20s I got a deal to write a book for Zondervan on ethics for Christian artists, and the research required tying all these fields together so that I could really tease out the difference between "social convention" and "biblical ethics" when it came to artistic presentation and depiction of difficult/sensitive/taboo/divisive subjects.
By the time I wrote "the end" on the book, I realized that by integrating those disparate fields, I had learned too much--I now knew for certain (or as certainly as any historical knowledge is) that the gospel stories were not history, that the doctrines in the creeds could not be reasonably derived from the biblical text without contradiction, that if the Bible *were* to be trusted, Christianity could not be true-as-historically-believed.
I'm not talking about "moral objections" to the faith, or moral discomfort with its demands, or any of the normal crap you hear bandied about on the Internet. If you look at my notes and writings you'll find a lot of places where I defend Christianity from stupid attacks (like theodicy) because I'm a big believer in intellectual honesty.
Anyhow, when I realized I could no longer recite any of the foundational orthodox creeds (especially the Nicene creed, which is basically *the* creed of Christianity) without crossing my fingers or adding qualifiers, I withdrew from the book contract and left the church, which also wound up costing me my career, my friends, and my family.
Recovery from that was difficult, but it's been many decades and life is good. But there are certain things that you learn when you study the Bible in earnest that you can't un-learn, and those things are completely deadly to the Christian faith.
That's an astonishing personal story. It sounds similar my trajectory leaving atheism.
I'm learning to read Genesis in biblical Hebrew. I've read the works of Maimonides and Nachmanides. The more deeply I go, the more it all holds together for me. I'm very sorry to hear you had the opposite experience.
The difference would be the focus, I suspect. I wound up (though I backed into it) attempting to understand the world the tradition emerged from (in order to understand things that would have made sense to people of the time, but don't make sense to the modern mind). You're focusing more on the tradition itself. Both are fascinating and profitable ways to study, but the paths lead to different places.
I dunno. I'm also studying the ANE world in order to understand the context of the OT in particular, especially the more difficult passages, and I find things holding together better and better.
I wish you well on your journey, wherever it takes you. And if you do wander into waters that get theologically dangerous, I am happy to rec the best of the orthodox scholarship on the topic. I did not ultimately find their ultimate stances convincing, but you may—either way, there is much value in them.
Maybe. But if someone believes God alone is the eternal, transcendent, sovereign creator of all things and Jesus Christ is his only begotten Son who died for our sins, was resurrected, and ascended to heaven, that seems to qualify someone as Christian.
To be concrete, in the example I'm thinking about the "heretical sect" in question are the Mormons. Whether your description applies to them depends on who one asks.
"Focus on God’s perfect love and forgiveness, but not on sin and God’s perfect justice."
Idunno, this seems exactly like what Jesus did. Are you complaining that doing this makes kids turn away from Christianity, or just that it makes them turn away from church and Bible study? Because I've never met anyone who focused like a laser on God's perfect love and forgiveness who Jesus doesn't like, even the ones who don't believe in Jesus. But I know you don't get butts in the pews without the threat of sin.
Hi Jack (heh), thanks for the comment. Remember, my lists are based on what self-described former Christians have told me.
Here's the problem with focusing exclusively on love and forgiveness but not sin and perfect divine justice: What does Jesus' sacrifice and God's forgiveness mean unless there is something to sacrifice for and forgive? The gospels mean nothing unless they're in the context of God's perfect justice exacted on people who deserve it. It's amazing how many people don't understand this, even though it's the core of Christianity.
Jesus didn't focus exclusively on love and forgiveness. When I read through the gospels, I see Jesus telling people that sin is a form of sickness and they need to turn away from it. Several times. He may emphasize love (for God and others) and forgiveness (on God's terms), but He also emphasizes repentance. And Jesus Himself IS the justice that we all deserve. If Christians don't understand this, they don't understand what it is they profess to be a part of.
I'm not sure what you mean by "the threat of sin." I don't think it's a secret that people mess up all the time, that they do things that are varying degrees of immoral. If a preacher is telling someone that he's sinning, it's the truth. A church that fails to contextualize God's love and forgiveness with this truth isn't a church but some kind of seminar or social club. That's one reason there's so much attrition in the increasingly soft mainline churches.
"God's perfect justice exacted on people who deserve it"
This is hardly the only possible reason sacrifice is required, and honestly, I think this might be one of the biggest mistakes in the history of theology. Sacrifice isn't required because God demands it, sacrifice is required by the very nature of the reality that existed before God created anything, the chaotic earth and wind-swept waters.
And I've known lots of people for whom this error of theology has been a real stumbling block to understanding God's love for us, because "creation and love take effort and sacrifice" is a pretty obvious aspect of reality to any adult who thinks about it for a minute, but "God demands sacrifice and you should be thankful that he paid your tab for you" just makes God sound like a jerk who set us up to fail before taking credit for bailing us out.
The only reason anyone feels they have to justify the notion that "there is something to sacrifice for and forgive" is because they're trying to project Greco-Roman notions of perfect omnipotence on the story, so they need to explain why God created the need for sacrifice and repentance. But God _didn't_ create the need for sacrifice and repentance, that was there all along. That this need is baked into reality was obvious to the Biblical authors, and it's obvious to just about anyone who isn't trying to reconcile it with a faulty philosophical premise. The Good News is that Jesus paid the price for us; it really takes the shine off that news if Jesus composed the price list in the first place.
"That's one reason there's so much attrition in the increasingly soft mainline churches."
Editing to add that I don't think you're wrong about that. The best research I've read on the subject suggests that churches need to demand sacrifice in order to gain followers, otherwise what is cheaply joined is cheaply abandoned. The thing is, this has nothing to do with Christianity and is more just the dynamics of human association. And in the meantime, I don't think "get people to attend church" is on Jesus' agenda at all, except to the extent that it facilitates what's actually on the divine agenda. But yeah, that's pretty much what I meant by "you don't get butts in the pews without the threat of sin."
"Sacrifice isn't required because God demands it, sacrifice is required by the very nature of the reality that existed before God created anything, the chaotic earth and wind-swept waters."
What was the nature of reality that existed before God created anything?
"The Good News is that Jesus paid the price for us"
I have a feeling there's a subtlety here I'm missing. How does this differ from what I said?
"The best research I've read on the subject suggests that churches need to demand sacrifice"
I've never heard this from any church. What sort of sacrifice do churches demand?
"What was the nature of reality that existed before God created anything?"
The earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.
Your translation may vary.
"'The Good News is that Jesus paid the price for us' I have a feeling there's a subtlety here I'm missing. How does this differ from what I said?"
That part doesn't. We agree on that part.
"What sort of sacrifice do churches demand?"
Sacrifice in the sense of cost or investment, not necessarily of physical resources even--time, attention and submission to authority all count. Giving of oneself.
The truth is that there are no gods, as discussed the only way to keep religion going is to indoctrinate the very young before they develop the ability of critical thought.
That's exactly why I was an atheist. I was raised that way by atheist parents in a secular country. I knew zip about religion. As soon as I was out on my own, thinking for myself, I realized atheism was a dead end in every way.
I’m a son of a pastor, a graduate of seminary, an agnostic who loves the teachings of Jesus, and sees very little Jesus-following in today’s American Evangelical church culture. I didn’t leave the church because I wanted to sin, I left because the teachings of Christ and the beliefs and behaviors of the church didn’t align. I would never join a church again, but it would be nice to have normal conversations about Jesus with others who claim to be Christians. Most church-goers are so uneducated and misinformed about their own scripture and beliefs. They are also overly political and have adopted a cruelty policy when it comes to voting. The more cruelty the better! I find the fruits of the spirit are more evident in atheist communities than in the church. My advice is to engage with people in good faith about their own journey, without judgement. Show love and compassion for others not because you’re commanded to do so, but because you want to and it’s good for everyone. Maybe then people will come together in unity of spirit. :-)
3. And 4. Are why I’m not Baptist. I live in a Baptist majority area, and I concluded that the Baptist Jesus would turn into a puff of smoke if you asked a tough question.
Thank goodness my Dad was a lapsed Catholic and we ended up returning to church. Apologetics were always on offer and at the Parish I went to a tough question was never ignored or trivialized.
"Make Christian life seem as onerous and joyless as possible to your children."
I see this a lot from self-identified traditional Catholics. Lots of fear, lots of judgment of others. Anything happy or joyful must be weak at best, or sinful, or maybe satan is hiding right around the corner.
The kids leave bitterly when they realize their parents aren't all that much better than everyone else. Or they stay, scared and unable to form relationships with anyone else who might be less trad than they are.
Imagine needing a 3-step apologetics program just to convince your kids that the creator of 2 trillion galaxies personally hates their taste in music and wants them to feel guilty about masturbation. Wild.
Maybe the problem isn’t that kids lack arguments. Maybe it’s that they see through the arguments and are tired of the performance. Tired of adults who preach cosmic certainty but can’t tolerate questions without labeling them “attacks.” Tired of love that’s conditional on belief, obedience, and a subscription to your Substack.
Here’s a radical thought: what if the divine isn’t scared of curiosity? What if the kids leaving aren’t broken—they’re just not buying the cosmic guilt trip anymore?
Turns out the fastest way to turn children into atheists isn’t to ignore apologetics. It’s to confuse conformity with faith and then panic when they choose freedom instead.
Blessed be the ones who walked away not because they lost faith, but because they refused to pretend.
11. Teach your children that if they only pray hard enough and have enough faith, God will necessarily talk to them. If He hasn't, that must mean they weren't praying hard enough or it wasn't real faith.
Oh, man. Yes.
Your first list absolutely described to the letter the “Christian” high school I attended.
This message is incredibly important. I wrote my grad thesis as an argument for why and how we as churches should be teaching teenagers and young adults apologetics. As part of that research I surveyed about 100 pastors across the country. Most did not even respond which I kind of expected.
Of those who did respond a disturbing number said why would they do that as it would be preaching to the choir. Their answer presumed all who attended their services were Christians. I don’t know if that came from ignorance or arrogance, but it was shocking either way.
I had a similar experience. Years ago, I sent letters to dozens of pastors in the Austin area offering to come and talk to their congregations about how science supports the Bible. Not one of them responded. When I went to some of the churches to talk to the pastors in person, I was met with either indifference or fear. It was a real eye-opener. To be fair, I've had pastors reach out to me over the years because they're interested in this topic, but these are the relatively rare clergy who seem to realize what's going on.
> Years ago, I sent letters to dozens of pastors in the Austin area offering to come and talk to their congregations about how science supports the Bible. Not one of them responded. When I went to some of the churches to talk to the pastors in person, I was met with either indifference or fear.
The sad part is that given recent history, that was a perfectly understandable reaction of their part. During the 19th and 20th centuries there were many churches that attempted to reconcile science and Christianity especially the so-called "mainline" churches. The result has generally been the churches in question ceasing to be Christian, or even theistic.
There shouldn't have to be any attempt to reconcile them, as they are by nature compatible. Modern science is a direct product of Christianity. Could you give me some examples of mainline churches that drifted from their core principles because of science?
> Could you give me some examples of mainline churches that drifted from their core principles because of science?
The ones that embraced theological modernism, i.e., all of them.
What is the evidence that this was because of science?
"Not making a family activity out of reading or discussing the Bible" and "living like a secular family Monday thru Saturday" is the story of my family when I was a kid. Thanks for addressing that Sarah.
"Many Christian parents and youth pastors, however, hesitate to teach apologetics or address challenging topics because they lack the confidence to do so."
True, but I think an even bigger problem, is that ever since the time of the Second Great Awakening (roughly 1780 to 1830), the dominant strain of Protestantism in America has operated under an assumption that anti-intellectualism is a virtue, that resentment of smart, educated people is not a vice, and churches can safely neglect the needs of intellectual people to focus on being LOUD and EMOTIONAL instead. As a result, these churches attract pastors and laity who often can't make a case against gay marriage that goes any deeper than "the Bible says so". People react to this situation in various ways. In my case, it led to me permanently ditching Protestantism.
I gotta admit, this is something Catholics and Orthodox Christians have been better at.
Remind them that God will never give them more than they can handle. (Fun fact: this is actually in the Koran! But Paul says we won’t be TEMPTED without having an escape. That’s different.)
What do you think that means (we won’t be TEMPTED without having an escape) ?
Paul says that God will always provide a way out of whatever temptations we face.
I think Paul is differentiating between suffering and temptations to sin. We will likely suffer more than we can handle, but we are not supposed to do that in isolation—we need to help each other in bearing burdens. But temptations are inducements to sin, and in that God provides an escape, especially knowing his Word. I think the big thing is knowing the difference.
So it's the way out of sin trough the sacrifice of jesus I suppose. I think I understand.
Thank you for saying "we will likely suffer more than we can handle" .
Yes, there's a difference.
We are told to trust that God will provide ways for us to avoid temptations. There's often a sense that temptations are too overwhelming and will continue to torment us forever. That's why people often give in. Paul's telling us that's not the case. I know recovering alcoholics and drug addicts who will testify to that.
Do you think alcoholism is a mere temptation/sin or a disease ?
Because i know people who suffered so much from a disease that they are not here anymore to testify anything. It was their suffering that made them end their life, not the disease directly.
I don't think alcoholism fits the definition of a disease. There's almost certainly a genetic predisposition to things like alcoholism in some people, but that's not the same thing as having a disease like ALS or cancer.
"Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis should be on that list. While not for children, its a good springboard for the parent who needs a logical, rational basis for the basics of Christianity.
Agreed!
Internet pornography helps a great deal. Nothing like traumatic nihilistic sex that boys emotionally despair of but can’t look away from to make you completely miserable
For sure. It's a huge problem.
Keep up the good work!
Yes! Many readers/followers from Brazil (Saudações, Enezio!)
Darcy (X = Ler_pra_crer)
I love that. I need to visit Brazil someday.
If you’ve got a smart inquisitive kid, encouraging them to study the Bible and Patristics in their original context and language is a dead reliable way to make an atheist, especially if you also expose them to apologetics. Guess how I know that one? ;-)
There's a story here... what happened?
I grew up in the church, and in Christian academia, learned biblical Greek at a very young age, was fortunate enough to be surrounded by historians, theologians, and other scholars (all conservative, orthodox protestants with a love for the broader Christian tradition). I acquired a strong grounding in Patristics, church history, and Ancient near-eastern history.
When I was in my mid 20s I got a deal to write a book for Zondervan on ethics for Christian artists, and the research required tying all these fields together so that I could really tease out the difference between "social convention" and "biblical ethics" when it came to artistic presentation and depiction of difficult/sensitive/taboo/divisive subjects.
By the time I wrote "the end" on the book, I realized that by integrating those disparate fields, I had learned too much--I now knew for certain (or as certainly as any historical knowledge is) that the gospel stories were not history, that the doctrines in the creeds could not be reasonably derived from the biblical text without contradiction, that if the Bible *were* to be trusted, Christianity could not be true-as-historically-believed.
I'm not talking about "moral objections" to the faith, or moral discomfort with its demands, or any of the normal crap you hear bandied about on the Internet. If you look at my notes and writings you'll find a lot of places where I defend Christianity from stupid attacks (like theodicy) because I'm a big believer in intellectual honesty.
Anyhow, when I realized I could no longer recite any of the foundational orthodox creeds (especially the Nicene creed, which is basically *the* creed of Christianity) without crossing my fingers or adding qualifiers, I withdrew from the book contract and left the church, which also wound up costing me my career, my friends, and my family.
Recovery from that was difficult, but it's been many decades and life is good. But there are certain things that you learn when you study the Bible in earnest that you can't un-learn, and those things are completely deadly to the Christian faith.
That's an astonishing personal story. It sounds similar my trajectory leaving atheism.
I'm learning to read Genesis in biblical Hebrew. I've read the works of Maimonides and Nachmanides. The more deeply I go, the more it all holds together for me. I'm very sorry to hear you had the opposite experience.
The difference would be the focus, I suspect. I wound up (though I backed into it) attempting to understand the world the tradition emerged from (in order to understand things that would have made sense to people of the time, but don't make sense to the modern mind). You're focusing more on the tradition itself. Both are fascinating and profitable ways to study, but the paths lead to different places.
I dunno. I'm also studying the ANE world in order to understand the context of the OT in particular, especially the more difficult passages, and I find things holding together better and better.
I wish you well on your journey, wherever it takes you. And if you do wander into waters that get theologically dangerous, I am happy to rec the best of the orthodox scholarship on the topic. I did not ultimately find their ultimate stances convincing, but you may—either way, there is much value in them.
12. Focus your apologetics on why a different sect is wrong or heretical.
Yeah, this is one I really don't get. If someone agrees on the core tenets, then they're my brother or sister in Christ.
The problem is that various people have different ideas about what the "core tenets" are.
Maybe. But if someone believes God alone is the eternal, transcendent, sovereign creator of all things and Jesus Christ is his only begotten Son who died for our sins, was resurrected, and ascended to heaven, that seems to qualify someone as Christian.
To be concrete, in the example I'm thinking about the "heretical sect" in question are the Mormons. Whether your description applies to them depends on who one asks.
As much as I like most of the LDS folks I meet, I wouldn't consider them Christian.
"Focus on God’s perfect love and forgiveness, but not on sin and God’s perfect justice."
Idunno, this seems exactly like what Jesus did. Are you complaining that doing this makes kids turn away from Christianity, or just that it makes them turn away from church and Bible study? Because I've never met anyone who focused like a laser on God's perfect love and forgiveness who Jesus doesn't like, even the ones who don't believe in Jesus. But I know you don't get butts in the pews without the threat of sin.
Hi Jack (heh), thanks for the comment. Remember, my lists are based on what self-described former Christians have told me.
Here's the problem with focusing exclusively on love and forgiveness but not sin and perfect divine justice: What does Jesus' sacrifice and God's forgiveness mean unless there is something to sacrifice for and forgive? The gospels mean nothing unless they're in the context of God's perfect justice exacted on people who deserve it. It's amazing how many people don't understand this, even though it's the core of Christianity.
Jesus didn't focus exclusively on love and forgiveness. When I read through the gospels, I see Jesus telling people that sin is a form of sickness and they need to turn away from it. Several times. He may emphasize love (for God and others) and forgiveness (on God's terms), but He also emphasizes repentance. And Jesus Himself IS the justice that we all deserve. If Christians don't understand this, they don't understand what it is they profess to be a part of.
I'm not sure what you mean by "the threat of sin." I don't think it's a secret that people mess up all the time, that they do things that are varying degrees of immoral. If a preacher is telling someone that he's sinning, it's the truth. A church that fails to contextualize God's love and forgiveness with this truth isn't a church but some kind of seminar or social club. That's one reason there's so much attrition in the increasingly soft mainline churches.
"God's perfect justice exacted on people who deserve it"
This is hardly the only possible reason sacrifice is required, and honestly, I think this might be one of the biggest mistakes in the history of theology. Sacrifice isn't required because God demands it, sacrifice is required by the very nature of the reality that existed before God created anything, the chaotic earth and wind-swept waters.
And I've known lots of people for whom this error of theology has been a real stumbling block to understanding God's love for us, because "creation and love take effort and sacrifice" is a pretty obvious aspect of reality to any adult who thinks about it for a minute, but "God demands sacrifice and you should be thankful that he paid your tab for you" just makes God sound like a jerk who set us up to fail before taking credit for bailing us out.
The only reason anyone feels they have to justify the notion that "there is something to sacrifice for and forgive" is because they're trying to project Greco-Roman notions of perfect omnipotence on the story, so they need to explain why God created the need for sacrifice and repentance. But God _didn't_ create the need for sacrifice and repentance, that was there all along. That this need is baked into reality was obvious to the Biblical authors, and it's obvious to just about anyone who isn't trying to reconcile it with a faulty philosophical premise. The Good News is that Jesus paid the price for us; it really takes the shine off that news if Jesus composed the price list in the first place.
I've got a longer version of this argument at https://jackditch.substack.com/p/god-almighty-as-far-as-it-goes but that's the gist of it.
"That's one reason there's so much attrition in the increasingly soft mainline churches."
Editing to add that I don't think you're wrong about that. The best research I've read on the subject suggests that churches need to demand sacrifice in order to gain followers, otherwise what is cheaply joined is cheaply abandoned. The thing is, this has nothing to do with Christianity and is more just the dynamics of human association. And in the meantime, I don't think "get people to attend church" is on Jesus' agenda at all, except to the extent that it facilitates what's actually on the divine agenda. But yeah, that's pretty much what I meant by "you don't get butts in the pews without the threat of sin."
"Sacrifice isn't required because God demands it, sacrifice is required by the very nature of the reality that existed before God created anything, the chaotic earth and wind-swept waters."
What was the nature of reality that existed before God created anything?
"The Good News is that Jesus paid the price for us"
I have a feeling there's a subtlety here I'm missing. How does this differ from what I said?
"The best research I've read on the subject suggests that churches need to demand sacrifice"
I've never heard this from any church. What sort of sacrifice do churches demand?
"What was the nature of reality that existed before God created anything?"
The earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.
Your translation may vary.
"'The Good News is that Jesus paid the price for us' I have a feeling there's a subtlety here I'm missing. How does this differ from what I said?"
That part doesn't. We agree on that part.
"What sort of sacrifice do churches demand?"
Sacrifice in the sense of cost or investment, not necessarily of physical resources even--time, attention and submission to authority all count. Giving of oneself.
The truth is that there are no gods, as discussed the only way to keep religion going is to indoctrinate the very young before they develop the ability of critical thought.
That's exactly why I was an atheist. I was raised that way by atheist parents in a secular country. I knew zip about religion. As soon as I was out on my own, thinking for myself, I realized atheism was a dead end in every way.
I’m a son of a pastor, a graduate of seminary, an agnostic who loves the teachings of Jesus, and sees very little Jesus-following in today’s American Evangelical church culture. I didn’t leave the church because I wanted to sin, I left because the teachings of Christ and the beliefs and behaviors of the church didn’t align. I would never join a church again, but it would be nice to have normal conversations about Jesus with others who claim to be Christians. Most church-goers are so uneducated and misinformed about their own scripture and beliefs. They are also overly political and have adopted a cruelty policy when it comes to voting. The more cruelty the better! I find the fruits of the spirit are more evident in atheist communities than in the church. My advice is to engage with people in good faith about their own journey, without judgement. Show love and compassion for others not because you’re commanded to do so, but because you want to and it’s good for everyone. Maybe then people will come together in unity of spirit. :-)
> I didn’t leave the church because I wanted to sin, I left because the teachings of Christ and the beliefs and behaviors of the church didn’t align.
"Specifically the church kept cruelly telling people not to sin."
3. And 4. Are why I’m not Baptist. I live in a Baptist majority area, and I concluded that the Baptist Jesus would turn into a puff of smoke if you asked a tough question.
Thank goodness my Dad was a lapsed Catholic and we ended up returning to church. Apologetics were always on offer and at the Parish I went to a tough question was never ignored or trivialized.
"Make Christian life seem as onerous and joyless as possible to your children."
I see this a lot from self-identified traditional Catholics. Lots of fear, lots of judgment of others. Anything happy or joyful must be weak at best, or sinful, or maybe satan is hiding right around the corner.
The kids leave bitterly when they realize their parents aren't all that much better than everyone else. Or they stay, scared and unable to form relationships with anyone else who might be less trad than they are.
Imagine needing a 3-step apologetics program just to convince your kids that the creator of 2 trillion galaxies personally hates their taste in music and wants them to feel guilty about masturbation. Wild.
Maybe the problem isn’t that kids lack arguments. Maybe it’s that they see through the arguments and are tired of the performance. Tired of adults who preach cosmic certainty but can’t tolerate questions without labeling them “attacks.” Tired of love that’s conditional on belief, obedience, and a subscription to your Substack.
Here’s a radical thought: what if the divine isn’t scared of curiosity? What if the kids leaving aren’t broken—they’re just not buying the cosmic guilt trip anymore?
Turns out the fastest way to turn children into atheists isn’t to ignore apologetics. It’s to confuse conformity with faith and then panic when they choose freedom instead.
Blessed be the ones who walked away not because they lost faith, but because they refused to pretend.
I’m agnostic and was never really a Christian, but I appreciate the premise of this article and will give it a like