Many of you know I'm very interested in "conversion", how people make that decision to change core religious belief. Apparently a Christian music singer (I've never heard of) has left the faith, which isn't terribly interesting as that happens sometimes. What's surprising is his lengthy and thoughtful public announcement.

Jonathan Steingard of the Christian rock band Hawk Nelson

[I couldn't figure out how to link directly to the Instagram post, but it's embedded at that link]

@fredsbend well, Can you just drop by now and again? I'll miss you if you just leave. :(

@fredsbend the term for this used to be "crisis in faith" or "crisis of faith" though it takes a lot of different forms

Oh, look, you still do drop by. Yay! \0/

@fredsbend I just wish he offered more details on WHY, because otherwise this left for liberal media capitalizing on this for their own agenda.

@fredsbend In my own extended family some reasons for no longer believing in the Christian God includes 1) death of a 2 yr old son (cannot forgive God for doing this), 2) don't have feeling of closeness to God/Jesus, 3) influenced by new age thinking and reincarnation, 4) Christian doctrines are too "ossified" and no longer relevant, 5) lack of understanding of the true gospel (so they reacted against straw men)

@KorvinStarmast For a while at least.

@GratefulDisciple I thought it was very specific, though maybe not detailed, but I understand the concern. I don't trust CNN at all anymore.

@GratefulDisciple Number 4 is an interesting complaint. Is that like "unchanging dogma"? For nearly every dogma there's an opposite and in-betweens. Just go to a different church if that's your complaint.

It's a bit of a strawman of it's own.

@fredsbend Sorry, you are right. I didn't realize I needed to "click right" multiple times to read the many pages that follow that 1st page. I'm not familiar with Instagram. Will post my response after reading it.

@fredsbend In my family member's case, I attributed it to ignorance and some measure of arrogance of not studying how dogma framed in fundamentalist's use of scripture (which even today's evangelicals move away from) does NOT mean the underlying reality is no longer relevant. Christians from all stripes now deploy sophisticated philosophy and literary methods to elucidate the doctrine (post Vatican II theologies is prime example of this). So ossification is more outdated expression of doctrine.

@fredsbend I have OCR'd the images and cleaned up the 2133 word post into 3 page PDF so it's easier to read.

@GratefulDisciple Nice.

People are weird. He makes this long thoughtful essay on his personal experience, then posts it on Instagram. Is he completely unaware of the numerous places more suited for that, like medium or reddit?

@fredsbend I commend him for being honest with himself, especially since in the worship sector you can damage others if you're not genuine. I'm just afraid the liberal media uses his confession to make the case that 1) Being Christian is a sociologically powered induction into a culture; 2) A lot of Christian leaders are hypocrite showing the bankruptcy of the underlying "engine of the faith" (i.e. Holy Spirit is a charade)

or at best they are either 2A) self deluded (i.e. substituting certain feelings / reasons as idols instead of manifestation of the true God) so giving credence to some philosophers like William James or 2B) see practicing Christianity as a matter of duty, not enjoyment

The intellectual portion of his decision, though, can be remedied, and I regret he hasn't talked to the right people. He mentioned 8 issues, all of them could have been resolved intellectually: 1) Classic theodicy; 2) unfairness of eternal punishment of hell; 3) misunderstanding of the Binding of Isaac; 4) misunderstanding of the point of the book of Job; 5) portraying the atonement as "domestic abuse" as though that's the only angle that atonement can be understood;

6) misunderstanding of the nature of Biblical inspiration (blame the insufficient fundamentalist's theory of inerrancy for this); 7) bad exegesis on 1 Tim makes him reject the book; 8) bad understanding of text criticism (falsely equating manuscript to Word of God)

@GratefulDisciple The media hasn't needed his help to spin that story for decades.

@GratefulDisciple Using your numbers, I have no satisfactory answer for 1, 4 (assuming Job is historical), 5, and a little of 6.

His revelations have been my own, almost word for word.

For 4, my answer is simply that it cannot be historical. The holy and righteous Almighty making a cavalier wager with Satan, which results in numerous deaths and much suffering? It's almost pagan.

But 1, I've read no satisfying answer to the problem of evil. Only items like indifference or inability answer it, but they diminish the love and power of the Christian God.

5, it's a valid question, tying into theodicy. Why did Jesus have to die? Couldn't God just forgive, as we are commanded to forgive? My forgiveness gives no satisfaction or compensation. My forgiveness surrenders that right for retribution. God's forgiveness just shifts blame?

For 6, it's truly a slippery slope. Once it's not literal word, it slowly closes the gap to eventually all you're left with is an old book that had a few good things to say.

Every exercise in justifying the holiness of some passage is eventually dismissed as not worthwhile at best and dishonest at worst. If fallible men could slip in their faults, how can I know or trust any of it as divine?

In 6 was his progression to lost faith. You can almost envision "well passage A is bunk, but passage B is still holy". Then a year later, "I can even understand B as bunk, but still have faith through passage C". Then finally "even C is suspect, so what is my religion?"

Coupled with no "feeling of closeness to God/Jesus", one concludes the religion has no substance.

@fredsbend I missed 3 issues, so let's add 9) misunderstanding God's command to annihilate the current occupants of Canaan; 10) EITHER artificially limiting the range of human experience of God, thus claiming absence of "feeling of closeness to God/Jesus" OR (another way of putting it) the fallacy of identifying certain kinds of feeling / certain kinds of experience to be the genuine spiritual experience; 11) falsely equating the true experience of faith to certain feelings

@fredsbend I'm going to respond with my own personal way of handling the issues so I can speak genuinely, not theoretically. If I were to rank the issues, if you're willing to accept the presuppositions of the Christian tradition that I trust, #6 is easiest to deal with which ties into the historicity portion of #4 (the proper interpretation of Job as God's unwillingness to be dragged into the court of theodicy). Let's call it problem A (hermeneutics).

@fredsbend Then #5 is the next easiest, let's call it problem B (atonement). Next easier is feeling of closeness (#10 and #11), let's call it problem C (response). The hardest is #1, problem D (theodicy). By tackling this in order, we can clear away some issues in C and D.

@fredsbend In Jonathan's narrative you characterize Problem A as a slippery slope, but I see it as a foundational problem that manifests itself in B, C, and D. Because this has to do with the presuppositions we bring into reading the Bible which in Jonathan's case is unnecessary literalness + overreliance on original manuscript as though the authenticity of God's revelation through Scripture is only possible with pristine wording and "scientific" description of historical events!