A Megachurch Pastor Leaves His Faith

why would a make a church pastor leave his faith and what can we learn from a deconversion story about how to better love people around us who are doubting their faith or who have D converted today we're going to look at a book from 2018 it's called goodbye Jesus and it's from a former mega church pastor by the name of Tim Sledge Scott this is going to be an interesting conversation this is a huge book it's over 400 Pages you and I read it all the way through I'm curious as we start when you approach a book that you know is written by somebody who has left the faith how does that shape the way you approach a book like this yeah this I found Sean the the whole story that Tim tells of his journey from you know being raised in a Christian home to sensing a call to the pastorate and then being very successful in the Southern Baptist Church in in my hometown where I grew up in Houston to just sort of gradually becoming more and more disillusioned and eventually giving up not only giving up his full-time pastorate right but also giving up his full-time faith I found it incredibly sad because the it was a perfect storm of factors I think that contributed to his ending up where he did which we'll get into more of that as the discussion goes along right where the way I approach this from the start is to say first of all how how can I empathize with this this person's story because there's there's much more to the story than somebody just losing their faith that's right and what are what are the factors that contributed to that was it an intellectual thing was it primarily uh the way he was treated by the church by fellow Believers or some combination of things so I approached this more you know what what can I learn from this uh and how can how can I how can I glean from this things that will help us prevent these kinds of things from taking place among people who are just starting out in the pastorate for example folks who have felt like they are called to Pastor uh you know not to mention you know our kids in the next generation of folks coming along following Jesus Sean how about you I mean you read a lot of stuff like this because you I mean you interact directly with a lot of these folks on your on your YouTube channel uh so your approach may be a little different than mine well I do approach it empathetically I don't pick up a book like this believe it or not and look for things to respond to apologetically and prove that it's wrong that's not actually my angle I want to hear somebody's story so I can better understand this person communicate with people who deconverted communicate with people who don't believe help those who are questioning so I approach it through that lens I also am not as threatened to pick up a book like this as I used to be I used to pick up books and feel like they're going to know something I don't know they're going to unsettle my faith what if there's something that I can't answer look I've been doing this long enough to know that there's certain predictable things that are going to appear now that's not just unique to atheist sleep in their faith if you pick a book from somebody coming to Christ you're going to find certain predictable patterns as well but it really doesn't unsettle me I pick it up with Intrigue and with empathy like you did as well yeah and I think here the apologetic emphasis is I think is more the Caboose on the train rather than the engine that drives it so for just for our listeners it's a really long book I don't expect I don't expect our listeners to Wade their way through it although I admit as I the more I got into this the more I sort of got hooked on the story you know I found it I found it very very interesting uh but just for our list for our viewers and our listeners on audio just Briefly summarize what's Pastor Tim's story here yeah he starts off on page one and says I read the Bible from cover to cover at age nine I was called to be a minister at 16. it eventually became a leader within my denomination I led churches wrote books which were best-selling and influenced thousands of people only discovered later in life that Faith no longer worked for me that's a summary and it's a heartbreaking book there's a lot of church abuse and division he describes very frankly to divorces that he goes through questions that he encountered uh rejection by people in the church and then eventually just described himself as a humanist and feeling much happier today seemingly than he did during this entire season yeah it sounds like if you know it has a lot in common with the Journey of Tony campolo's son who calls himself a humanist today although Bart did not start out with the same sort of pastoral background um now he he there are a number of things a number of times that the phrase exceptions to Faith occurs in italics and every I mean almost every time there's some event that's disillusioning to Tim or some sort of inconsistency that he sees where it's it's sort of what I would call is it's a what what's wrong with this picture moment right right he calls an exception to Faith he never really spells it out what he means so what do you think he's trying to get across base obviously he has is something that's very meaningful it was very influential in his journey yeah what do you think he means by that and what are some of those examples of those exceptions yeah this this is like a drum beat that goes through the book very quickly and he wrote in italics this is an exception of Faith you get the idea that these are going to all come to fruition at the end and since lead to the collapse of his faith come crashing down so some of these exceptions and there's dozens of them are things like a Bible teacher who sexually abuses a young girl and then takes his own life like that's jarring the story of his father who was in many ways are related to my father's story through this whose father was a drunk but then has a radical conversion story but was not completely converted some of that behavior maintained so it's kind of like can Jesus really change a life they're examples of ways that non-christians treated him better than Christians did and these are all exceptions to his faith and you feel the weight of it as you go through the book you feel like over and over again there's these things that didn't fit in the theology that he believed then at page 53 he really captures it he said whenever I saw or experienced something anything I couldn't explain and that might be a cause for doubting my beliefs I filed it away like a legal brief containing evidence that needed to be disproved I placed in the back of my mind mental storage spots for exceptions to the rule of faith and this is something we'll get into but when you let doubt go on and on and on it is going to build and fester like a can answer and you see it take place in his story so what what what's the lesson then for you know for pastors for professors for parents in in helping people work through their doubts yeah that's a great question so I think one lesson is just more important than necessarily giving an answer for a doubt is giving space to express that doubt so our friend Cara Powell has done some great work at Fuller Theological Seminary at The Institute and she talks about in sticky faith that it's not just doubt that really hijacks Faith it's unexpressed doubt when you don't feel the freedom to raise questions and doubt certain things it builds up in wreck of Faith so more than anything in our families in our classrooms in our churches do we give people space to ask questions so he writes this on page 24 he says these were Rock Solid truths and questioned any one of them would be considered an act of rebellious arrogance about the Bible being true about the death of Jesus New Life In Christ the reality of Satan I thought oh man that is just a recipe for disaster when you say this is absolutely true don't ask questions and this is before the internet when people could get online and atheists Skeptics could ask good questions that's just a recipe to shipwreck somebody's Faith well and that happened too when he was young and when he's still impressionable still I think still being formed in his faith I think that's especially important for people to be able to give rise to their doubts to be able to express them and to know that the people who you trust in your life as mentors and sort of spiritual figures in your life aren't threatened by those doubts that's right because I mean I can't tell you how many parents they they this is this White Knuckle moment when their kids expressed doubts for the first time and one thing one thing I've learned and I had a very insightful friend who told me this he said you know for for many of us who came to Faith you know when you know in a previous generation you know our coming to Faith was the way we separated ourselves from our parents and formed our sort of our own individual unique identity and and those of us who who have tried our best to raise our kids in distinctly Christian homes don't our kids don't have that opportunity to separate from the parents and nurture their faith at the same time and so I I've looked what I learned from that is is you know I I don't I just tried really hard not to freak out when my kids expressed doubts and had questions uh and I realized that being raised in a Christian home they they had to do something different they had to push back against something different to establish their own separate identity separate from Mom and Dad and for us you know that was coming to Faith my folks they they didn't know what to do with my brother and sister and I when we came they thought we'd gone completely off the deep end and it and it was it was a very effective way as teenagers of separating ourselves becoming our own distinct person which is something we don't I I don't think we don't leave space for our kids to do that today or for our students to do that today I think as much as it was as that was true a generation or so ago I used to exponentially more and sometimes the Testament of our faith is just saying I believe but I have questions and it's okay and you see this sense in this book of like he's looking for certainty 100 I think that's another recipe for just setting yourself up with a standard way too high so I agree so he I think a big factor in his sort of deconstructing his own faith was the experience that he had in the primary church that he pastored he invest he invested so many years of life in fact I think he made a good case that he actually burned out several times yeah he said in the midst of that which he openly admits yeah but he was sort of summarily dismissed from that church as well how would you describe the pain that he experience against and the mistreatment that he experienced in his role as the senior pastor of this mega church and how that sort of shaped the trajectory of where he ended up so I I highlight a few passages I want to read because I want to make sure that our viewers don't miss how harrowing some of this story is and I think I think we should we should to be fair too yeah you know I suspect the church might have another side to this story absolutely and so we don't we don't want to minimize that but we only have access to one side here agreed and there's a very he names A lot of people you and I know that are rock stars in the Evangelical world I'm sure there's another side to this fair enough but we're just going to interact with as he describes his own story publicly he says things like behind the scenes I saw repeated examples of how churches claiming theological Purity were subject to the same human failings and limitations as any other organization including incidents of sexual misconduct raging from inappropriate touching to extramarial marital and homosexual Affairs and when it happened in their own realm they typically guarded their image and kept it quiet and honestly you and I have talked about that on this podcast spiritual abuse when someone claims to be representing God speaking for God and then doesn't care about helping people who are hurting and the truth getting out that's damaging and he describes this spiritual abuse so he doesn't use that term just weighing on him over and over and over again I hear that a lot from Skeptics who have left their faith that's one piece he brings in another one I'll read it talks about hypocrisy is uh let me track this one down I mean this is just his honesty here he says when all the people that represent the church in your life suddenly no longer represent the things you were so absolutely sure that they did you are forced to question all your beliefs that that's the reality when the people failed him in that way another one I think I think actually his exceptions to Faith I think are are a lit they're just a running list of those hypocrisies that's essentially what it is and this one I mean I pause and I share this with my wife it it was hard to take but he describes going to another Pastor trying to reconcile at this point I believe in the story he had stepped down had been divorced had made some mistakes comes with pastor and tries from his perspective to reconcile and this pastor communicates to him that he is permanently broken that's heartbreaking that he's Beyond being fixed and I just thought what on Earth how could you communicate such a lack of Grace to somebody who's coming to you feeling broken hadn't left the faith yet and you just get the feeling he feels again he's telling his story this hypocrisy this hurt this failure just beat beat down and then it comes to fruition I'll just read one more because I don't want our our viewers to miss this but he describes he says I slipped away from my Christian family and they for the most part responded by acting as if I no longer existed your value to other Christians diminishes when you leave I mean that's quite quite the contrast to the parable of the Prodigal Son yes there's a definite contrast in in the lack of Grace that's there that that's that's fair last one I'll just read and make this point he says for me the straw that broke the camel's back was being able to find a place for Spiritual healing when I was most broken so he left the church that you talked about the mega church 1985 to 1995 in Houston that got up to 15 000 Members Plus then he said he finally had his own Pastor after leaving that church for the first time and then at 69 years old that Pastor shot and killed himself I mean just the Brokenness and the hurt and his experience is really the story behind this that if anything it should make the church say are we agents of Grace are we kindness we need to make some shifts well I think it turned out that the church turned out not to be even though the interesting irony in this is that one of the I think one of the really positive things that Tim did for this church was to make it a Haven for people who were broken and looking for Redemption all the emphasis he made on small groups on recovery all those things the church became what what I would call you know a mass unit I mean it's an equipping station but it's also a mass unit for the broken and he he citized several places throughout the book and it was it was verified by an outside consultant that they had two congregations that he was ministering to he called him congregation one in congregation two and the one Congress one was the traditionalists that's right who didn't want anything to do with all these broken people coming into the church and Tim I think had cast his lot with the people who were broken and I think he did something profoundly right in that and the the con the conflict between those two congregations and I think the inability of them to sort of see their their their challenges together and come on the same page I think it was a big factor in why he was in his views or summarily dismissed without without really sufficient reason in his View uh yeah I think so the one of the interesting debates that he talks about in here and you can see it's an Evangelical world is is all we need Jesus in the sense of pray read the Bible go to church for our deepest emotional hurt or do we need tools from psychology do we need tools from other disciplines and I tend to actually side with the way he depicted in here that the Bible says we need one another encourage one another pray for one another confess our sins to another carry one another's burdens though sometimes we make things too formulaic and simplistic in the church so theologica on that debate actually tended decide but you're right it divided his church and our I think theologically our view of General Revelation you know all truth is God's truth and common Grace you know that God God bestows his his his his common grade non-saving Grace right on everybody which means that we have something to learn from virtually everyone and you know the idea that we would just sort of rule out psychology or any or any other healing I mean he's talked about there's a lot of skepticism in his church about about mental health medications right and you know when some people they're just their brain chemistry just needs repair and it needs chemical repair those I think those kinds of things you know I think we we would say though it really fits theologically for us to have resources outside of the script the scripture is sufficient as an authority for us but the Bible never claims to be sufficient as a source of knowledge for us the Bible opens the door for other various sources of knowledge that we can draw from profitably for our spiritual lives and there's a difference I think between if if all middle health questions were were the result of someone's individual sin then you know you might have a point that repentance and prayer is all that's needed but most people's mental health issues come from being sinned against not their own personal sin and so sometimes people I mean he and then God bless him Tim was sinned against in a lot in a lot of things he described and sometimes that creates walls that are so thick and so strong that you know sometimes you know we need we need professional help to help you know dismantle those walls that have been built up because of pain that's been inflicted on us now he admits he's really careful to admit some of the things that he suffered from were self-inflicted yeah he does he's very very clear about some of the choices he made that were not great but I think a considerable amount of the pain that he felt was from being sinned against yeah and that's like that's in it I think in a little different category so what I mean he seems he seems really bothered by the fact that Faith doesn't work now I mean and he says that directly but he cites it over and over again from the experience of his father who never really got on top of his alcoholism uh to the way the way he was treated I mean there are all sorts of things that describe that but uh he says you know the driving reason for my rejection of Christian faith was simple they're not people who have been supernaturally changed and this new birth doesn't work okay what would you say to that what's some of the evidence that he cites for Christian faith not working and do you think he's held the standard is the bar too high for what he's described so I do think it's super interesting when he says the driving reason that gets my attention is that Christians are not people supernaturally changed and the new birth doesn't work clearly that's his experience and he's speaking from it whether in his life or in the lives of others around him so my first thought of course I wanted to defend because I'm a Christian I'm an apologist my first thought is like wow there's probably some truth that an awful lot of Christians are not living within the power of the Holy Spirit and really are no different than the world now whether they're really Christians not living in the power of the spirit or not Christians is a separate issue but before we point back we ought to look into the church and say all right let's get our house in order first because if our house is not in order it's not going to matter what we say to anybody else but I had a few thoughts as I read this number one it's interesting that Paul writes to the church in Corinth and points out some egregious evils that they're doing just as bad as the culture outside he's like stop suing each other stop the sexual immorality which probably included one guy with his stop stop bragging about incest in your midst yeah these kinds of claims and of course the sins he lists out first Corinthians chapter six that doesn't make Paul stop believing in the power of the spirit and that supernaturally lives can be changed changed he just recognizes there's such a Temptation for Christians to fall back and not live within that so I think there's a way like Paul to recognize the spirit is real and it changed people and Paul experienced that and see that an awful lot of Christians are not living differently second I would say it's interesting that I think Christianity does tend to invite people who are especially broken because you have to recognize look at the people Jesus hung out with well exactly who hung out with but wherever somebody's coming from to become a Christian is to recognize my Brokenness my need for God it's going to take a genuine level of humility and Brokenness to get there so it's supposed to be like a hospital for people no wonder you're going to find people who are sick and who are broken there that's not to explain it away but I think that helps me understand some of it third is my experience is just different than his experience I mean I've seen the radical transformation in my father and I won't walk through the ways he should be in jail or should be dead or dysfunctional the way God changed him just yesterday I was interviewing a psychic telling me stories of things she saw and she knew that could not have been explained by coincidence and God transforming her I just seen the power of God amidst a lot of the Brokenness that is there and so I come to a different conclusion than he does I think we want to resist the I think the popular apologetic response to this is say well don't look at the church look at Jesus as the model and I think to a point yes I want to I want to save my final assessment for Jesus but I don't I don't think we can ignore the kinds of hypocrisies that Pastor Tim is pointing out you know they seem I mean if assuming what he's describing is accurate uh that that goes a long way I think toward toward helping us see why he was so disillusioned and why he concluded that Christian faith didn't work now I think he was also raised in a predominantly legalistic rigid yes home where even the definition of faith working was for the most part following rules and check-in boxes yeah and that's you know nobody's transformed by either of those things I think that's right I see this with former worship leaders former pastors consistently a real fundamentalist rigid background is often a piece of it but keep in mind what our friend Austin said on this show he has said he thinks hypocrisy is the biggest issue that turns people away from the faith and I think he's probably right now there were a couple of signif really significant issues that how that I think sort of got Tim started you know on a on a trajectory that ended up with him losing his faith you know I think for the sake of time we'll just focus on one of those which is his understanding of hell yeah how do you account for that and what would you say to Tim in response to that well this is a common question that comes up understandably I see it a lot in people who did convert and a lot of Skeptics with a different background now as an apologist I would say a couple things actually not even his apologist I don't like the idea of hell it bothers me I can't fully wrap my mind around it so I have a lot of empathy for somebody who looks at hell and it's like I just have a hard time believing this is legitimate I get that now there's things we could say apologetically to respond to it I think for example like C.S Lewis says God doesn't send people to Hell there's two kind of people in the end those who say thy will be done or you know you basically say to God either I'll follow your will or I'm living out my will and God says thy will be done which would be hell people choose it is his argument we talk about Cosmic Justice if there's no hell people like Hitler basically get away with what they did some some things cry out for hell yeah I mean that's an argument that could be made but to me ultimately when I when I talk on Hell one of the things I come back to is I say ultimately if Jesus believed in hell and we have his words recorded accurately that's good enough for me I mean if I was going to run a an NFL quarterback how to become an NFL quarterback Clinic nobody should show up I've got nothing on that but if Mahomes or Brady shows up they have the authority to speak on this and we should listen well who has the most authority to speak on judgment well it's the Virgin born sinless miracle-working resurrected Savior by the name of Jesus here's really where it gets down to he says this and this jumped out to me he said if we accept the teachings of the four gospels Jesus believed in hell and used it as a warning system hell was the ultimate fate for those who didn't believe in him in other words he's comfortable saying yeah the gospels report this Jesus believed it in a sense I know better than Jesus I don't like this therefore I'm not willing to say that that to me that highlighted a big difference well I go with my intuitions my sense of justice or what Jesus says and I get it but that's one of the biggest reasons I believe in hell is because like he said Jesus taught it and I think he has the authority and the moral Clarity to speak that into our lives now we're you know toward the end of the book you know we we get we get more toward the intellectual side of his leaving his faith and I think he's you know but I think what's interesting to me is that the the initial trajectory was not set by any particular intellectual issue except maybe the the one you just mentioned but that I think came later most of what came earlier I think is what set him on this trajectory some of the the hypocrisy the mistreatment the rigidity the legalism the no space for doubt I mean that's sort of a perfect storm but he I think he raises really a really interesting question uh that came to him after the days of 9 11. he said we often use the notion that the apostles were willing to die for their faith and why you know only a fool would die for something that they know is a lie but the 911 hijackers all died for their faith radical Muslim terrorists die for their faith almost every day around the world uh so they're not so there doesn't seem to be anything magical about somebody being willing to die for their faith so what would you say to his making that parallel between radical Muslims and the early church so first off you're right the vast majority of the apologetic issues come at the end of the book which means they're Downstream kind of the Caboose not primarily driving this for him uh on this issue that jumped out to me because I did my doctoral dissertation and have published on the apostles and that's that's why I asked I figured that well the claim that's often made by apologists and frankly years ago before I was as careful as I could be I probably made claims similar to this the apostles were willing to suffer and die for their belief that Jesus was risen none of them were counted therefore the resurrection happened Christianity is true that was kind of the argument so he's responding against this now that I've done this doctoral work about a decade ago I realized wait a minute that's not a very careful or accurate argument because a lot of people are willing to die for what they believe but here's the key difference those who died as terrorists on 9 11 are what 1300 1400 years removed from the time of Muhammad it's been passed on to someone else and passed on to them for centuries and centuries the apostles were the ones who lived and ministered with Jesus and who were there and said we've seen the Risen Jesus they're willing to suffer and die for that now that doesn't mean Christianity is true that's where I think we've made a bad argument but I think it shows they're not Liars they're not making this up to get themselves intentionally put In Harm's Way so this is just one piece of a larger argument for the resurrection that we've often overstated and misstated so part I look back to this I say I don't blame Tim for responding to that because that's how apologists probably myself included made a bad argument years ago and have needed to correct so we gotta make the right argument and do it well yeah and I think it's you know nobody presumes that the 911 hijackers died for something that they knew was a lie so the church I mean they you know they they died believing firmly that they were seeking the truth so I think that you know we need to be careful that we we get the premise right that's right before any we draw any conclusions on that uh there's a couple other things that he points out apologetically toward the end that seemed to be or or I maybe became a significant stumbling blocks for him one is the discrepancies in the gospels and he cites several examples of this um you know for example Jesus prior to his arrest you know in the synoptics is troubled but in John is not in the you know a lot of the a lot of the sayings of Jesus contain discrepancies uh you know he citized several of those but I mean they're not unusual apologetic issues and I think he's he's taking a lot of his cues from a couple of particular sources that we've had conversations with sure from Bart Airman for example sure who you know if I were going to resolve apologetic issues that's that's probably not the first place I would go but uh anyway be that as it may how would you help him have worked through the discrepancies in the gospel maybe in a different way than Airmen did by just sort of out and out saying that they're you know they're just different they're different accounts they're contradictory and they they just show that the gospels can't be trusted so he goes to the book and he says there's kind of four key areas that he found discrepancies the resurrection account and others he starts with his account this is the first one where he says this picture of Jesus in the synoptics when he's praying and he's in the garden is very different than in John and the synoptics he's praying and he's suffering God take this cup from me and yet in the Gospel of John you don't see that he seems confident within his deity and he says are we even talking about the same account well I guess I'd say a few things on the surface yeah there's a tension there of course there is but there's a couple different ways to read this number one if that tension is there clearly they're at least minimally independent testimony to the same kind of event that historically counts for something they also give us a fuller picture so you could look at that and say well they contradict their scrapses or he could say oh we have different accounts like in a car crash they're going to give us a fuller picture but there seems to be this sense of like either Jesus is confident in his deity or Jesus is suffering in his Humanity it's kind of How It's appeared and I think even though you and I are not God men obviously in the same way I live with the same kind of tension I know this example is not the same but I think about times where I've been like most stressed in high school when I would play basketball I took it so seriously I would get a stomach ache sometimes I would bring Pepto-Bismol before the game I get so amped I know like I just in some sense like if I told my mom she'd be like and she talked to fam she like Sean is so nervous he's so worried you know Etc but if I told my team it's like I'd March out there I didn't show any of this I look confident now both of those are true because we're complex I think you know to the nth degree I think this can be true with Jesus so really it's how we look at the text are we going to read it charitably are we going to look for discrepancies and really to overturn a contradiction all you have to give is a possible way that they can be reconciled because the contradiction you know with your background philosophy is when you affirm and you deny the same truth in the same way at the same time well if you give a possible way to reconciled there's no contradiction so he lists more in the book that we won't go into but I think there's very plausible ways to make sense of these and but by the way even if discrepancies were there it wouldn't prove that Jesus didn't rise from the grave you and I would have to rethink what we mean by the Bible being inspired and inerrant but it wouldn't overturn Christianity to me even though I think there's good responses to these yeah and I think you know maybe maybe the Red Letter Bible has been a little bit misleading for us because the gospels don't claim to give us the exact words of Jesus as though the disciples held out you know smartphones to record and then transcribed it they they purport to give us faithful renderings of what Jesus said and so it would not be surprising that we have somewhat different accounts of the same events yeah this and some emphasize different details than others but even in the words of Jesus they can differ because the gospels don't purport to be you know you know an audio recording of it and you know the quotation marks to signify exact quotes for for the most part didn't exist in the ancient world that just wasn't a part of the tradition of of the writing of History so I think to to make sure that we have the right expectations of the Gospel accounts and that's not to say that they're not inspired or inerrant sure but it's just I think we we can't put 20th 21st century standards of accuracy onto writers who wrote in the first century agreed I think that's well said um all right any any areas where um in particular we haven't mentioned that you might push back on some of the conclusions that Tim has drawn um yeah let me let me draw out a couple here that I think was was interesting there's this question that he asks uh on page 391 he says wouldn't it have saved a lot of trouble to start with a heaven plan and skip the Garden of Eden the cross and generations of human suffering caused by sin and I have to admit when I read that it was a little jarring from a former pastor because I feel like a pastor should have an answer to that the question assumes that God just could create Us in lasting relationship in heaven with him and skip over this step to get there I'm not sure that's possible given that God is making human beings with choice and that choice is are we going to go our own way or are we going to Humble ourselves before a Creator and choose to be with that Creator I think that choice of obedience and humility which results in the Holy Spirit coming inside of us making us a new creation you get to heaven and you're completely transformed from the inside external temptation is gone we've chosen to be there that's what it takes for human beings to be in an infinite real in relationship with an infinite God so I think that kind of question coming from a pastor I kind of pause I was like there were a few times in this where I just saw how important good theology is and a few things he said I thought well where is that theology coming from I don't think that's from scripture now it comes from his tradition it comes from what he was taught I get that but having good theology understanding the heart of the Christian story is really really important yeah I think the notion that our Salvation is actually for the life of the world not not just for for our own personal fire insurance I think is a really important concept that that was missed in this and I think I think probably was missed in the way he was raised uh spiritually I think I think it probably was so that was one thing jumped out but I get to the very end and he's got like these last chapters and about five pages before this he rejects maybe 20 Pages before he rejects the existence of the Soul and thus life after death and he's right if there's no soul that seems to conquestion life after death but then he has this list of certain things that he values in life and I don't see how these fit consistently within humanism so he says I choose to live a value-driven life I thought well that's interesting if you get rid of the Soul there is no choice it's chemicals in motion it's physical processes it's laws of nature and there are no moral properties well and then it says value Driven Life where the more properties come from and he says I want to help make the world a better place that assumes that there's design and purpose and a standard by which a better life looks uh he says my new sense of purpose and meaning even it says the searching for deepest truths well without God truth has an instrumental value but with God I think it has intrinsic value so finally we get to the end I'm happy for him that he's moved Beyond a lot of the pain and the hurt that he has that's a positive thing but they're still left over all these things it feels like he's borrowing from his worldview in the past that are not at home in a non-theistic humanist worldview yeah that's a really good Insight I think you know our friend ask Guinness has called has called this a cut Cut Flower life where you're trying to have trying to have blossoms that bloom but with but being cut off from the roots that actually give them life it's okay one last question yep biggest takeaways from this biggest takeaway number one I think Christians we need to lead with huge empathy towards people if we launch into apologetic responses dismiss people who've left their faith they're not going to feel a heard loved and healed and that sets a lot of people on the trajectory I mean they're not they're not gonna they're not going to be argued back into their faith they're yeah exactly especially when it's Downstream so apologetics is important obviously but we've got to have a lot of empathy with people we've got to deal with doubt better in ways we've talked about not set up standards of certainty and also before we look in the outside and try to fix our culture I think we ought to look in the mirror and ask ourselves am I living a life reflected of the power of the holy spirit in my own life and I think if the church really did that a lot of the other stuff would take care of itself you know the big takeaway for me is that you know you you treat people with the value that they deserve by virtue of being made in the image of God because I think I think a lot of people in Tim's life forgot that he was also an intrinsically highly valued person made in the image of God in spite of in spite of his you know of the mistakes he made in spite of his sin in spite of his journey he never stopped being a loved individual maybe made in the image of God Amen and I think if if the folks who had been in his life I you know who knows right who knows what would have changed it for sure but that's really what's that's what stood out to me the most and it just that's why I think the story is so sad it's heartbreaking it really is and and you think gosh surely we can do better well hey Amen to that thanks for joining us on the think biblically podcast make sure you hit subscribe and our thanks to Tim for writing a provocative book and giving us the chance to talk about these timely issues we'll see you next time [Music]

Channel: Sean McDowell

Views: 856,179

Keywords: evangelical, skeptic, Christian, former, deconstruct, deconvert, megachurch pastors, megachurch pastor, mega church pastor, mega church preacher, megachurch commentary, megachurch documentary, megachurches, megachurch exposed, megachurch video, off the kirb ministries sin, false megachurch, megachurch, falsee megachurch, mega-church, off the kirb ministries joe kirby, christian megachurch, going to a megachurch, christian, deceived, off the kirb joe kirby, Exvangelical, Former pastor

Id: GbfIupCq73s

Length: 44min 38sec (2678 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 18 2023