Bad Church Experiences: Legalism, Grace vs. Works, and Postmodernism, with Jon McCray

and they had a prophet guy come in there and he said um two if we left the church we would be cursed and so then me and my brother were like yeah we're gonna take our chances [Music] welcome to the alisa childers podcast i'm so thrilled to bring you my guest today john mcrae of the what do you meme youtube channel this is one of my favorite youtube channels that you definitely have to check out he talks about theological topics he does cultural commentary great apologetics critical thinking so check out the what do you meme youtube channel john i'm so glad to have you on with me today thanks for being here yeah no thanks for inviting me appreciate it well i want to introduce my my viewers who may not be familiar with you yet a little bit to uh to just give us a little picture of who you are and what you do i know that you're not just a youtube very successful youtuber but what else do you do and and tell us about your family and your life yeah um so yeah so my name is john and i started my youtube channel about i think it was actually three years ago in december and um prior to that i did a lot of debates with atheists online and so um eventually long story short i ended up starting a youtube channel and then started doing a lot of atheist responses and lately it's kind of more morphed into a lot of cultural type stuff so i want to kind of give like a thoughtful christian perspective to the things that are going on in culture so um yeah so that's kind of what i do um i have a wife and two kids and one on the way and so i'm a blessed man blessed and busy blessed and busy yeah so you um you did not grow up in the church which is is a very interesting part of your backstory because a lot of apologists you hear kind of a similar story they grew up in church their faith was challenged they discovered apologetics and and went into that but you didn't actually come from that world tell us a little bit about your backstory and then about maybe the first church experience that you had because i know that was that had a significant impact on you didn't it yeah absolutely so um yeah so i didn't grow up in like a church going home or anything like that my parents never even talked about like god or christianity um hardly ever like my mom would say stuff sometimes though she would say stuff like um you know kind of like pray for to get something you know i mean that sort of thing but it was very rare we never had any conversations about god or anything like that then when i was 15 my aunt introduced me to um to church for the first time and so i went to a church with her and it was such a bizarre experience for me in a lot of different ways because i walked in and i saw these people that seemed to be really united on something that was greater than themselves and that was really kind of appealing to me because i just haven't seen anything like that you know i mean you see some people unite over like sports or something like that but something like transcendent like that was really intriguing to me yeah so um i i kind of so i started going there and i went there for about a year and the longer i stayed there the longer i kind of had more negative experiences um there was a lot of rules that they had you know they would talk really bad about people who were outside of the church you know like everybody's like this devil you know and um they would talk about these immoral things that these people would do and it made me feel uncomfortable because i realized that like a lot of the immoral things that they would talk about from these like wicked outsiders were things that i was like secretly doing so it was like uncomfortable because i was like man i can't be perfect and they had so many rules and it seemed like it would just go the rules would just get more and more and more each week i came um to the youth group and stuff there'd be more rules what were the rules like that you're talking about because it sounds like kind of this extreme version of legalism give us an example of what you're talking about yeah i mean like one of the more absurd ones now looking back on it you know then i didn't think much of it because you know it's just kind of like you know so um but one of the more extreme ones is that like you know they were talking about how we shouldn't eat lucky charms because um about like lady look they used saying that like lady luck and then that's part of the cult and therefore if we eat lucky charms or taking yellow cold and stuff like that so that's like one of the more extreme ones um obviously you know the big no-no's you know don't drink smoke drugs party um don't date you know what i mean um you know so it's just like a lot of kind of more extreme type things um and some of the you know things that most christians have said but they added a lock on to that as well yeah wow so what caused you to to leave that church yeah so eventually like so i was kind of more agnostic and then i was like believing and then like as the church kind of went on i became a little bit more agnostic and now when i look back to the people that i know that used to go to that church most of them are like agnostic or non-believers or something like that now too but yeah so um me and my brother decided we're like yeah this is you know it's not for us you know what i mean and it was just kind of weird and it kept getting weirder and weirder with some of the stuff to me it was my perception it was weirder and weirder with some of the supernatural type stuff um and they had a prophet guy come in there and he said um two if we left the church we would be cursed and so then me and my brother were like yeah we're gonna take our chances and so so we ended up leaving the church wow so how did you get from there because that that seems like that that's an experience that would sour a lot of people to even going back to any kind of a church what was it in you that wanted to continue seeking or was there something in you that wanted to continue seeking how did you uh go from that place to finding a good church and and i don't know you i think you mentioned you maybe were more agnostic at that time so what led you to christ essentially yeah so essentially like i found myself kind of in this weird spot where i was like some days i was like there's got to be something greater out there and then other days i'd be like yeah there's nothing out there we're all alone in this vast empty universe you know uh so i would kind of escalate a lot and i'm not sure how many people relate to that but for me that was the case i would escalate a lot um and then eventually um i went to college and i was just starting at a community college and i wanted to um take a class on world religion um so that way i can just kind of think more about it because i always kind of found it intriguing and then the uh the word religion class was full and so they're like well you can take a philosophy religion class and then so when i took the philosophy religion class i had no idea what philosophy was but that was the first time i actually came across like intellectual reasons to believe in god in the first place and then so from then on i mean i uh once i um came across the kalam cosmological argument i mean it just made sense to me and it's still my favorite argument to this day and i still think it's convincing and i debated it for years with atheists i've heard probably i think every objection to it you know but i still find it personally convincing yeah and so that was put me on the path of believing in god well that's interesting that you would bring up the kalam cosmological argument because even to this day when i kind of wake up and think are we all crazy you know like is this real is this right and true it's that one that really just brings like when i kind of go back through all of my beliefs i'm like the kind of the buck stops there and so just i know this really isn't kind of part of our discussion today but it might be helpful for some viewers who are like what are they talking about this like big words like give us just sort of an overview of what that argument is because like you this is one that i found really convincing early in my journey of kind of going through doubt um and and i just you know i was kind of backing up from okay i'm not even going to worry about christianity or jesus until i know if i can have good reasons that god himself exists and so this is an argument that is it's not going to get you to you know the truthfulness of christianity per se or you know the resurrection of jesus but it gives such a strong argument for the existence of not just any kind of god but you know personal being who uh is all-powerful and so so give us a little bit of an overview of what that is for people who may be scratching their heads going what is that yeah yeah no problem so the basic argument is in a nutshell it's just like everything that begins to exist has a cause and then the second part of the argument is the universe began to exist and by universe is defined there to mean all of time space and matter and arguments are made from philosophy and from modern science and that sort of thing and then so if everything that begins to exist has a cause and the universe has a cause then that cause would because it created all time space and matter it would have to be timeless spaceless and immaterial and so that's kind of like it in a nutshell um but yeah you get into deeper parts you know of course with the different premises and stuff but that's the basic kind of idea so often people when they hear that their first thought is okay well you're if if the universe had to have a cause well then god has to have a cause so who created god how would you answer just kind of that first objection i'm sure comes to a lot of people's minds yeah yeah there's a lot of different ways to answer that objection but the basic idea is that like god was never um so the the first premise says everything that begins to exist has a cause and god didn't begin to exist so therefore he wouldn't need a cause and that's not really backwards reasoning there's like different ways to kind of go about it but um one way to kind of think about it too is like you have to get to a place where whatever created the the universe would have to be timeless spaceless in the material so therefore that thing because it's timeless spaceless and immaterial then it didn't have a beginning and so then you can say that that is the first cause that makes sense yeah very good okay so that was that was a little fun kind of rabbit trail there on the cosmological argument so you came to the conclusion that was true and you're realizing okay god exists how did you get to christianity from from there yeah so um so after i became convinced that god existed you know this is when i became intellectually convinced because there was times when i would float in and out of it you know but to become concretely like intellectually convinced then i wanted to know if god was revealed in any of the other kind of religions today and so like i went on this journey where i was going to every church i could find you know and so i went to like you know the mormon church um the um um jehovah witness church i went to the church of scientology i went to all of these different churches and i would just go there and just keep asking people questions you know and so like it was weird i would just keep asking people like why do you believe that your religion is true and not other religions because that's core what i was trying to understand like why one religion and not the other and um so long story short um i would in advance let's go try to prepare um a little bit in advance to kind of get an idea of what they believed in stuff and i stumbled across the evidence for the resurrection and then that's when i started going down this kind of rabbit trail of like looking at all this evidence and stuff and trying to make it make sense um to explain it away you know outside of god and so it's like so if we have these core facts that historians typically agree on what's the best hypothesis that explains these facts uh without it being ad hoc or or something like that without trying to find a way for it to to um in other words just try not to find like a make up a reason in order to reject it um so anyways um by doing that i just couldn't think of anything else i genuinely couldn't and i spent a lot of time thinking about it too read a lot of different objections and i said none of this other stuff really makes sense it doesn't really explain these facts and so then that's when i became where i um came to a point where i intellectually started being convinced that christianity was true and then after that i started debating in order to kind of solidify kind of check my points and stuff to see like what i was missing and if i really believed it and that sort of thing so yeah very cool so then at some point you you decide christianity is true what was the moment for you when you were just like i'm all in i'm giving my life to christ was there a church involved with that or was that something that just happened on your own uh and then you know did you eventually find churches that were a little bit less kind of you know out there than that first church that you had found yeah um so that was for me it was more of like a journey as well too like during this time when i was doing a lot of the debates and stuff that's when this the belief for me really started to solidify and like everybody else too you have these points of doubt where you're just like you know like kind of how you said you're like is this really true are we just deceiving ourselves or you know what i mean what's going on but i honestly um genuinely at that time too like during this process i didn't care if christianity was true or false i just wanted to know what was true eventually you know what i mean so that was really where and a lot of like debating with the atheist and stuff online and taking my time to really research you know i mean all these different points and reading all these books and all these things is where it really started to kind of solidify for me more and more um it wasn't until i internalized the gospel message that that's where my life i feel like really began to change a lot more but that was a process as well of really battling through the scriptures you know trying to study and figure out like what this really says then understanding god's grace um internalizing that more and more is what really led to like a personal change for me yeah and i think that when i watch you know i spent quite a bit of time even this morning i love watching your videos and so just because i knew we were going to be talking today i i just watched a few of them this morning and one of the things that really strikes me about you is how eloquent you are at describing grace you are so gifted at helping people understand what grace is and i'd love um to have you maybe just just give a basic definition of grace and then i want to take that and kind of compare that with what i think uh a lot of maybe people that don't understand grace might think about it or they might re-characterize it or or think wrongly about it but but what is in just the most simplest terms what is what is grace which is really the core message of the gospel yeah absolutely um grace is it's an unmerited gift an unearned gift right so paul makes this distinction in romans three i think four through five um where he says like it's better for you not to work because um if you work or actually i'm sorry let's go to romans 11 6 instead so romans 11 6 where paul makes a distinction there where he says if it's by works it's no longer grace he says if it's grace it's a free gift it's paraphrasing here this grace is a free gift and therefore if you add works it's no longer grace the moment you have works so if i give you a gift and then you pay me for it you know that's not a gift that's a paycheck that's the point paul makes in romans in romans 4 4 or um 3-4 uh one of which but he's like yeah that's called a paycheck right so if you earn it it's a paycheck but we have this uh where jesus comes into our world right um god puts on human flesh comes into our world and dies in our place so that way we can be seen with the righteousness of christ rather than us being seen by our righteousness which is filthy rags according to the bible so we have this imputed righteousness is what the word is called we have this imputed righteousness on us where we're seeing as if we did everything right and then christ gives us that gift so that we can be seen as if we did everything right before the father so yeah so the basic idea of grace is just that it's an undeserved gift and that's drastically different than we see in any other religion and it's drastically different from what we see in even a lot of people giving messages that are marketed as christian you know i think that sometimes we hear people saying well if you do this god will do this if you um if you pray enough if you're good enough if you uh you know are pious enough and committed enough and obedient enough god will love you more or he will give you all these blessings you know if you if you really commit your life to christ he's going to bless you with a you know beautiful home and cars and things i mean this is kind of what the seeds of the prosperity gospel are and uh you talked in one of your videos about a term that i hear all the time in progressive christianity in particular and that's this reference to something called the transactional gospel now i've actually heard this phrase defined a couple of different ways uh one way they'll use it is to say uh kind of what you were responding to in the in the video commentary you did on the viral video of lisa gunger talking about their story of pastoring a mega church and everybody can find that on youtube it's easy to find uh that but she was basically saying that like her faith was really rattled when she saw a lot of suffering in the world or when her i think it was her cousin that wasn't healed after everybody had prayed so hard and i've heard story after story from people who ended up going into the progressive christian kind of mindset because they were told that you know god will answer all your prayers if you have enough faith or he will bless you with um healing and health and wealth if you do all these you know x y z whatever it may be and so she became disillusioned by that and so she says that's that's a transactional gospel and so i think in a there's something in her that reacted against that rightly you know she's like that can't be right but the sad thing is that often they'll throw the gospel out with it but i wonder if you and then the other well i'll say the other one so the other way that they'll refer to the transactional gospel is sort of a a mischaracterization of substitutionary atonement so they'll say you know so many christians think that all they have to do is just get their little get out of hell free card because jesus made this transaction and that's the transactional gospel so we can maybe talk about both of those in turn but comment if you would on that first version um because you did that so well in the video you made and we'll and we'll even in the podcast notes and everything linked to that video so people can watch that as well but um comment on that transactional gospel that lisa gunger was talking about in her video yeah um so and this is common too um just like you said it's kind of a common conception that a lot of christians may have for one way or for one reason or another but deep down most people i think because the world is constructed this way we think that we have to earn everything that we get right so um if you're going to get a diploma you have to work really hard you're going to get this job you earn it you know with these credentials that sort of thing um so this is kind of a common misunderstanding now on the one end of it it leads to um shame right just like it was in the lisa gunger situation where they felt like they were doing everything right and things were still going wrong in their lives and then so like what's the conclusion there that either i'm more messed up or god doesn't exist that's kind of the logical conclusion there if you believe that it is a transaction where it's all about um putting in so that way you can get back um but on the other end too it leads to um um i think ultimately would lead to selfishness as well because then when it comes to salvation and all these things you're doing these things so that way you can be saved you know um it's not you're not doing them necessarily or i guess fully because um you're trying to help other people necessarily or you're trying to just please god you know instead you're doing it because you want to save your own butt right and so um in the end the it looks like it's moral but in the end it actually becomes immoral because you're you're being trained for selfishness now um in christianity if you believe that what um that you're saved because of what christ did and he gives this to you as a gift that you accept then you're already accepted so now you can start doing the the good things and the right things for the right reasons you know what i mean because you want to honor god and you want to love others and you know all of those type of reasons and so it takes away that kind of selfish nature where you're just trying to earn salvation because that's not you know if you have salvation already then you're the cup is clean from the inside as jesus would say so um that's what i think is the problem there now on the other end to go to your second question um is this does this mean that this is just a license to be lazy or licensed to sin and i think that progressives probably um rightly um complain i would assume at christians who you know say okay i'm saved i don't have to do anything in the world now you know what i mean um that's the right complaint because if we now our life after we're saved is about loving our neighbors and honoring god right and so we don't honor god or love our neighbors when we're just like being lazy and not trying to like do something you know what i mean in the world you know that sort of thing but the misconception is thinking that that merits salvation which i think that the gospel clearly states you don't merit salvation by being moral or trying to be moral you know or doing these things in the world yeah yeah and i think that this is something that i've seen that a misunderstanding of grace is at the root of so many false teachings and false gospels because it can take on different forms it can take on different language but at the core it's this it's this misunderstanding of grace and often what we see in the progressive church sadly is they leave one form of sort of that moralism for another they they might rightly recognize hey i can't earn my salvation i can't ever be good enough and but then you know of course in the progressive church the gospel almost becomes like um this like social justice warriors and and things like that and so it almost becomes moralism on the other side of things which is kind of sad because often they're trading one for the other um but you know often i see also this sort of charge about this transactional type of gospel in reference to jesus dying on the cross like to them it's like a cheap it's a cheap way to go about looking at atonement it's like oh oh jesus died on the cross all you have to do is put your trust in him and you're saved and like and kind of like what you were hinting at the results of even the other kind of transactional gospel it ends up with well you just can do whatever you want well that can't be right and and so i think it's interesting to note that in the gospel in the core of the gospel with this atonement that jesus achieved on the cross there is a transaction there it's his life for mine um it's not only a transaction though it's like if we think about so many other things in our lives even a marriage relationship um you know there are transactions that happen but it's not just a transaction and so there's so much more there's love and there's relationship and there's care and growth and all of these things and so uh i i think that that that's an interesting way it's interesting that that word keeps coming up transactional and i think it both of those seem to be rooted in a misunderstanding of grace and i love an analogy you gave in one of your videos i wonder if you can share it with us when you talk about an atheist who stands before god final judgment he's died and he's kind of complaining because and i may be getting this wrong but he's complaining because um he says well i never had a chance to read the bible and so you're going to hold me accountable to the morals that are in the bible and and i love the way you kind of describe god's response in this metaphor i wonder if you could share it with us yeah yeah no problem um so that kind of idea for that metaphor i believe comes from like romans one and two particularly um maybe some of three but um anyways like the idea there is like the atheist that dies or just whoever it is dies um and then they're like you know what god well this isn't fair that i'm going to be judged based off of the 10 commandments them in the book that i didn't even read or that i didn't believe in well on earth and then god says to him well okay i won't judge you based off of the standards that you're gonna believe in when you're on earth i'll just judge you by your standards and so god pulls out this like tape recorder and then plays back all of the times where you said that um people shouldn't do anything all the things you got morally outraged about in life you know you say oh you shouldn't judge other people or you shouldn't tell other people what to think or any of the things that you say to people over and over right um so any of those things that you say god took a list and then he's just like okay i hold you accountable to these things now how do you think you did you know and the truth is like if we're pretty like introspective and reflective we'll realize that like we're always failing even on our own standards you know what i mean and so like the way the way i think about it is like kind of like how paul makes arguments in romans 1 and 2 where he's like um these people who believe that they're they want to be judged by the law okay you'll be judged by the law but you're going to fail you know and then he goes to these different scenarios and no matter how you dice it you're going to fail on these things because you can't even live up to your own standards and so the point of that is to show people that like um there's a problem and if you don't believe there's a problem then you don't need to be saved right um you know but if you see that there's a problem that even according to your own standards you'll be condemned by then you'll start realizing that like you need something other than yourself in order to um you know to not be condemned by those standards yeah that's it was such a helpful metaphor as i was listening to that i was like man that's so well put because it even it's like it takes away all the ammunition to say you know well i didn't know or i i never heard or something along those lines um so you've done some research into deconstruction and um i i'm kind of swinging around to get to you made this really popular post about progressive christianity and um but i want to start by talking about you did some research into deconstruction what were some insights you gleaned from from doing some of that research yeah um so there's a couple things but one of the main things that jumped out at me as i was reading the reasons why people deconverted was the fact that so many people deconverted behind these assumptions that weren't even biblical in the first place they're kind of just like these things that they've heard in church or that are assumed in culture or something like that but they weren't biblical assumptions um so like um the you know one of the main assumptions is kind of what we touched on earlier is where people believe that if i do these good things then god is going to bless me you know what i mean and so my life is going to be good if i convert to christianity then life is going to be good and to be fair i mean i know that came a lot from some people who do evangelism and missionary type stuff you know sometimes they'll say that where you want your life to be great you know come to christianity but it's kind of weird because when i read the bible i i didn't have those same assumptions because i was like man the people who went to um converted to christianity and stuff and the people who follow christ and um you know anybody probably that you can think of in the bible for the most part had a pretty rough time you know what i mean even the greatest man that ever lived obviously jesus god in the flesh um he um he had he suffered in this world too you know what i mean and so like my assumption wasn't there but i realized that most people it seemed like had some sort of assumption that um you know their life is going to be great just because they're saved and we're just not promised that i don't think because jesus even said in this life you will have these trials and tribulations so where to expect the opposite so that was one of the big ones because in one way or another people would always be saying that in their stories like you know um why you know i i converted and then these bad things still happened in my life you know so that was one of the big ones um yeah there's a lot more but you know if you want to go into those well it's interesting yeah i would like to hear a little more about it because just in my experience of listening to different deconstruction stories and listening to podcasts where people are either in the process of deconstruction or fully deconstructed and now i've noticed even in just the last maybe month uh there are several platforms that are actually offering to help you deconstruct like like come we'll help you deconstruct we'll guide you through your deconstruction process and so this is a huge thing right now and culture is a huge thing for people who have had experiences with the church that were negative in some way like you mentioned uh they didn't get what they thought they were gonna get from it and in my book i lay out a few of those reasons one of those is that that problem of trying to reconcile the bad things they see in the world with us saying that god is good uh other reasons would be kind of what you described in your church background that first church you went to where hyper legalism where they were adding things to scripture you know you mentioned that uh you were told lucky charms was somehow did not demonic because there was occultic symbols in it or something along those lines and i know people and i've mentioned this on the podcast before because there's a couple people in my life who were told even as children if you wear shorts you know you're not going to go to heaven or if you're if the rapture happens and you're in a bowling alley or a movie theater you're not going to happen i know people weren't even allowed to go inside of a movie theater because it was demonic inside of there or something along those lines and so i think that there are reasons like that of course people go through abusive situations there's all kinds of reasons but it but the the sort of common thread is that it seems to be just this negative experience they had in church and so so in your research you've found the one that's sort of not getting what you were promised or maybe even questioning the moral character of god because he seems to say this is going to happen if you do this and then it didn't happen what were some other things you found in your research yeah no that that was all good too and this is why i think it kind of ties back the doctrine as well too because when people don't have a clear idea of why we're saved this is why grace is so important we don't know why we're saved then it's like everything else becomes like up for grabs so like people will add in these works and stuff like this and whatever kind of works they think that don't condemn them you know what i mean that they feel like they can say other people are wrong for these people are going to hell because they uh whatever you know vote this way or because they um dress this way or yeah i mean you know you've heard it all and the reason why is because as soon as we have works into the gospel then the gospel instantly gets confusing and then everybody has this different set and everybody's just competing against like well these works you know what i mean well my works and then they're just arguing about where to place them and then what kind of works and how many that sort of thing too so um so anyways i think that like in these experiences like this too a lot of people are um hurt from the experience they had because they felt like they were let down you know what i mean because like they had these expectations that things are going to be this way and then they feel they how the system is made when it is that transaction thing then it makes them feel bad when things go wrong and they feel like you know they're the problem because things are going wrong in life and so it kind of solidifies that kind of um hurt and then the people who are there to try to help them and fix them typically aren't the church right because the church has the assumption you know this happened in the lisa gender situation where the church had the same assumption they're like what are you guys doing while you guys keep getting these bad things happen in your life so they can't go to the people in church so the only people who understand they feel like the people who understand are going to be the people who are outside the church usually the atheist agnostics or um you know or the people who just want to help them deconvert for or deconstruct for whatever reason so and it seems like um you know in progressive christianity it's it's really it's people who there's something inside them that wants to hang on to jesus you know it's like they've they've had this bad experience but there's a reason even i was really kind of touched reading lisa's book and and hearing her journey going all the way to where she i think she declared atheism for a day but she's there's something in her that is is still like i want to know jesus i know there's more and so i actually you know i pray for people because i think that there's something in them that knows that god is real they know that jesus is the way they've a lot of times redefined jesus uh to to look a lot like themselves which is you know i think we all have the tendency to do that but um but yeah and this kind of brings it back around to the prosperity gospel because i i've known people who you know maybe got sick and they prayed and believed with all their heart that they were going to be healed and they were told this this means you don't have enough faith this mean and so it's always on you it's more work more work to be done and i think that that is such a set up for people to end up deconstructing into humanism atheism agnosticism or some version of progressive christianity and which is why your story is so intriguing because you you had you know i think that on the spectrum of unusual and kind of negative church experiences everybody everybody's had a bad church experience you know if you've grown up in church you've had a stinker pastor somewhere you've had a bad you know something but yours kind of it's it's like in the uniquely like lucky charms being a sin is is kind of on the far end of the spectrum of kind of a negative experience so it seems like you had the perfect setup to kind of just leave that and go that's all junk i'm not even into this jesus or christian thing why do you think that wasn't the case for you well it kind of was the case like after we left that church like both of us kind of went more agnostic and my my brother he's still agnostic um probably leaning yeah some actually i don't know he's probably leaning more away from atheism now but anyways um that's that's what happens typically in these sorts of churches so what happened for me was like i i really was on this kind of true circum journey our truth-seeking journey to um but eventually like that's why it was um kind of like you know i want to say it's like a miracle that i got in the philosophy of religion classes because this actually helped me know that like i can know this you know what i mean um and so like being able to say like okay now i can know this is true one way or another because i didn't care wherever the chips fell i just wanted them to fall somewhere you know what i mean like saying that okay now i feel you know i i can come to this kind of uh settlement in my mind um felt really good you know because it um i'm a skeptic too so like i relate to like obviously a lot of the atheist stuff because of the experiences and the skepticism um but um yeah being skeptical and stuff like that i it took a lot of skepticism but i still believe that like you know this just makes the most sense but um so start it there but yeah eventually too it's like um when i did come across the um the progressive christianity type stuff what i came to think about was like i don't want to accept something because it makes me feel good right you know what i mean because i see people doing this all the time and that's what helped is i saw people doing this all the time and um particularly i want to say in like a post-modern culture which i think that we're in a culture that's more um most people the way that they come to know what's true and what's not true is based off of how they feel or their personal experiences right and so when that's the case uh when it's like especially if it's somebody's personal experience like um i'm all for you know you can have personal experiences that sort of thing but i don't know if it was god i don't know if it was you i don't know if it was the devil i don't know what the origin of your experience was per se so you have to have something additional to be able to say like it does this correspond with um external reality not just in my mind but the rest of reality as well um because i think when jesus was convincing people and stuff too these miracles weren't just in people's internal subconscious you know there was miracles that were external that other people could see and stuff as well too and the resurrection you can verify as well too you know it's verifiable so um but anyways i think from that i realized that like um at least from what i understand about christianity and the progressive christians i've talked to and that sort of thing is that they have a lot of views that tend to coincide with the uh post-modern aspect of things so like even facing everything off of love that's great you know but love is not a feeling biblically you know what i mean and so like we have this agape love where it's a commitment rather than a feeling and so that drastically changes things because a lot of times when i hear them say love they're talking about inclusiveness and stuff like this um be um you know like accepting everybody and stuff because of love but in reality it's like this conception of love that is so post-modernized that it doesn't really represent the biblical account of love now don't get me wrong like uh loving people you know or making people feel good is is a good thing a lot of times so sometimes it's not a good thing you know in cases where a child you know my child would be happy if i let them eat you know uh ice cream for every meal you know whatever all day long they would be so happy yeah exactly exactly you know so you'd feel very good for a little while at least but that's the thing is we want to do what's best for the person that's what um uh what loving really intel's is doing what's best for this person and that's not just in the short run it's for the long run as well so um anyway so yeah when it comes to the progressive christianity um i think that there's a lot of these kind of assumptions that like we come to know things based off of how we feel we can choose to and by the way i know i'm speaking broadly here because i know there's people who disagree with them progressive christianity but um they'll say like yeah we can um you know i don't like what paul said about this so therefore you know it can't be inspired you know that's like the exact wrong way to come to your conclusions about god right because if god can't contradict you if your god's not big enough to contradict you and what you think then you have a god that's too small and a god that's not really a god at all it's really you you know um it's not god it's just you and your version of what you're creating um what you want god to be like yeah and it sounds to me even hearing you talk it's it's like it sounds like for you and you can correct me if i'm wrong on this but it sounds like you weren't satisfied with basically believing that truth is subjective that it's it's relative because i it's like as i study the movement of progressive christianity and you know not just to harp on that but just look at different world views the way people see the world it seems like there's a lot of different specific world views but they're really at at the core bottom of it is like two in fact i think there was this video i watched with peter bogosian and uh james lindsay and a pastor where they were talking about like reality tunnels you know it's like we're not even in the same reality tunnel sometimes because you have this on one side of things people saying like i think is is what you're saying is that you knew that there was truth you knew that something could be known there was something out there that was true about reality that you could know enough about to at least let the chips fall somewhere and and you wanted to know what that was uh whether you like wanted to believe it or not so you have like that side of things and then there's the side of things i think where uh people just sort of accept relativism as the default position and that's what i see a lot in movements like this is they'll even these new kind of platforms i've seen in the last month or two where people are saying hey they're operating under the presupposition that relativism is true whatever's true for you is true i'll i'll guide you through this journey to deconstruct from this construct of truth you were giving and you can create basically i think what they're saying is you can kind of create your own reality because they're not going to challenge you on truth claims that you make so they're going to guide you through but the fundamental assumption underneath that is that truth is not objective that you can create that your own reality tunnel and um and that i think that's a dangerous viewpoint to have and uh so so for people listening give us you know i know you talk a lot about truth on your youtube channel talk about the differences between subjective truth you know what we might call relativism and then the opposite view which is uh objective truth where we believe that there there is something about reality that is true or false like if you believe the false thing you're actually wrong which of course in post-modernism makes you hateful and bigoted and all that's why i think we keep going around in circles but i wonder if you'd comment on that a little bit yeah yeah so um subjective truth basically means that it's dependent on human psychology right so it depends on so like if i like um chocolate or vanilla you know that it's true if i like vanilla more than chocolate or chocolate more than vanilla whatever whatever it's true for me that that's the case but that doesn't mean that it's true for everyone else and so um they so basically the idea is more psychological rather than external right and so if it's objective truth what that means is that is independent of human psychology is still true so this water bottle exists whether you can see it or not it's still on my desk right now right and so that's what something objective is now when it comes to what you said i think you made a good point because um what i find and i i try to dig up this in videos a lot too um but what i find is that these assumptions these these kind of so um the postmodern assumptions where cultures at right now are just assumed they're axiomatic which means they they're not even argued for they're just assumed right and so because the assumption is that um truth um is you know the assumption for most people today is that truth is actually just purely psychological you know then it follows naturally where you can come to all of these different conclusions um you know even though you've seen politics and everything else you can come to all these different conclusions uh because how people feel determines what's true then if that's the case then nobody's gonna even challenge that because they don't even stop to even think like is that assumption true because it's so accepted you know it's like asking a fish what water's like you know it's so sick that like no questioning it and so what we see today is a lot of things that are being built off of these assumptions and um people don't even have the tools or the ability or even the question uh even start to question if these assumptions are true and so because some of the assumptions are things like um you have to look inside to see who you really are you know um how you feel inside determines who you really are and you shouldn't let anybody tell you how to live your life um you know because in the end you need to look out for yourself and you know not let anybody tell you different you know and don't let anybody try to change you and i mean all of these sorts of things there's so many of them too but all of these things are just assumed and then so that's why it's it's easy for progressive christianity to take off in a post-modern culture because it wouldn't take off in a culture that's not postmodern it just wouldn't because those assumptions aren't shared there and so i think that's what is a big issue is when we base the gospel off of these cultural assumptions um then we've actually kind of missed the main it's easy for us in in other words to miss the main core message of the gospel because all of these definitions have changed and all these assumptions are there so i think that um by the way there's a book called misreading the scripture through modern eyes i think it was that kind of goes through some of these western assumptions that we have too so i think that can help some people who are watching as well too but that's what i want to say is what's going on and why progressive christianity is just assumed to kind of work with with some um with some people so what do you think is i want to you know it's a big question i want to say what do you think is the solution when you're when you're talking with somebody who may not even realize that they've assumed this world view of relativism they they're not really operating in the reality tunnel of objective truth and of course you know it's easy to see how you can create a god in your own image when you're doing that you can you can slap the label jesus on whatever kind of behavior you would do or what judgment you would make or uh thing that you would teach you can put the jesus label on that because that jesus becomes sort of this catch-all phrase for everything that you have decided is good and true for you um what do you think is the best way to go about trying to open people's eyes to some of this because i think like when we're both when you and i we could disagree on something i'm sure there's lots we disagree on but we both are operating from the assumption that truth truth means something that truth is telling it what you say if you're speaking the truth what you say corresponds with reality and i could be wrong about that on a certain point you could be wrong on that on a certain point but i feel like the conversation's easier to have because we both sort of agree on that fundamental principle that somebody can actually be wrong in this conversation so how do we how do we sort of open people's eyes to maybe an assumption they've made about the nature of truth that might be actually not truth no yeah that's a great question um so one thing that doesn't work is just to tell them objective truth matters right because that just doesn't work it's not convincing because from their perspective um how they come to know what's true or not comes from how they feel inside or their experiences that sort of thing right or how um even if they can relate to how other people feel then they can say something true you know but if they can't really tell those other people feel then and it uh i don't want to get too deep down that way but anyways so to answer your question i think that the best way to to deal with it is that you have to show them the inconsistency within things that are very important to them so take two things um you so kind of take the things that are important to um them on an emotional level which they have every um desire to want to maintain and then you want to show them how those are incompatible or leads to undesirable conclusions because only then um in this sort of like existential crisis that they'll have internally only then will they begin to listen to you and i found this in life over and over because you can try to reason with people in these ways where you have this like i'm following the laws of logic here you know and all these sorts of things but they're operating off of an entirely different set of assumptions so you have to work within those assumptions um first before you can start moving them over to a different set of assumptions so um like when i didn't mention this earlier but like for me um kind of going through a lot of stuff one of the main um reasons to that helped me not um accept this kind of um post-modernized christianity um or progressive christianity was because um i realized that i didn't like the fact that all of these other people were saying the same sorts of things and i didn't like their conclusions that they derived from it you know so like for example if a muslim says that hey i had um you know so um based off of my experiences you know i should become a terrorist right you're like i don't like that conclusion but if i have the same set of rules then it's not fair for me to say hey you can't do that but i can you know it's not fair so that was kind of the thing is like i didn't want to accept a lot of the stuff that people were saying too and that's what kind of pushed me to start looking at things more objectively too um because then it's like that's kind of that motivation and i think that's the case with a lot of people so i think what you want to do is you want to listen to where they're coming from you don't want to just shut it down right away of course because these things are obviously true to them it's going to take time for you to try to unpack this so work within that because this is what i see paul doing and jesus doing over and over in the bible they work with where people already are and then they'll show them how that doesn't lead to a favorable outcome for them and so that's like sermon on the mouth right yeah you guys think you're good because you haven't cheated on your wife well have you looked at a woman with lust okay you committed adultery in your heart you still broke the law you know and so like he's taking what's important to them and then showing them how it doesn't work in their favor and so that's what i try to do a lot of on my channel as well that's good stuff and people can learn more by going to the what do you mean uh youtube channel so many great videos uh john has posted uh just he's a prolific youtube content creator so there's tons of videos on there we're gonna continue this conversation in the patreon only subscriber portion so if you don't know what that is you can go to patreon.com alisa childers you can look at the different tiers if you select tier 2 you're going to get early access to my full-length podcasts if you select tier i believe it's tier three you get to be a part of a private facebook group where you get to ask the questions that i ask our guests for our bonus content course tier four will give you that bonus content tier 5 will give you all of those things i already mentioned but you're also going to get an autographed copy of my new book another gospel plus a couple other goodies throughout the year so definitely check out patreon.com elisa childers if you haven't already john as we close out this final portion of uh finals of this segment here uh so for for people who might be watching how would you encourage them in their faith particularly young people i'm thinking who who have so many of these preconceived ideas about church and some of them might even be true they might have had a bad church experience what would be your advice uh for them today yeah no i'd say that um you most likely like we said earlier most likely probably got some sort of negative experiences with people or with the church uh christians and that sort of thing but i want to encourage you that the truth of christianity actually shows that we should expect that because christianity says that we're all sinners we're all have this selfish nature where we want to elevate ourselves which is why we look down on other people for things that they do but we don't look down on ourselves for the things that we do you know we have this natural tendency to want to do that and so that doesn't say anything about the truth of christianity instead i think it just confirms um the the truth of christianity where people are sinners and we're all hypocrites and messed up in these different ways and that's why we need a savior so i think that understanding that problem first is what helps you to find the right solution to that problem so hope that helps that's good stuff well i want to thank my guest john mcrae for joining us on the podcast today you can go to his youtube channel what do you meme it's awesome check it out if you are watching this on youtube please subscribe and click the bell icon to get notified every time we release a new video if you're listening on spotify or itunes it really helps us out if you leave us a great review it helps get the message into the hands of more people and we're so thankful for you and we will see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Alisa Childers

Views: 73,797

Rating: 4.9358816 out of 5

Keywords: apologetics

Id: i4--Yey7LjU

Length: 50min 35sec (3035 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 11 2021