CCM and deconstruction: Why are so many Christian music artists leaving the faith?

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] hey everybody welcome welcome we're so glad that you've joined us for this conversation tonight we're going to be talking about the phenomenon of deconstruction and what relation that might have to the contemporary christian music industry so at first i just want to make a few introductory comments about deconstruction so there's different ways to define deconstruction in different people define it in different ways but the way we're going to be taking a look at it tonight is from a sort of a broad level and what it looks like when it's kind of played out in the practical world and so how it looks is very often we've seen over the last year or two highly platformed christians many from the ccm industry begin to question their faith and they'll put a post on social media saying look i had these questions or this is something i've been thinking about and essentially by the end of it they have gone through a process where many of the beliefs that they grew up with and maybe never questioned critically um or intellectually are picked apart and often rejected now not everybody who goes through a process of deconstruction becomes an atheist or an agnostic some do and some come back to maybe a more progressive type of christianity in in rare cases some will reconstruct back to a more historically christian faith that has the historic christian gospel at its center but very often it's just more of a broader spirituality or agnosticism or atheism and so we've seen this phenomenon happen and so i'm so excited to introduce you to my guest today because all of us sort of have a unique insider perspective into the contemporary christian music industry and so as i bring everyone on what i'd like to start with is have everybody just share a little bit about your background maybe how you came to faith and what your relationship with contemporary christian music is and i'll just i'll start with me so my name is elisa childers and i grew up in a christian home i am the daughter of who many people refer to as one of the pioneers of the contemporary christian music industry my dad is chuck gerard and he was in a band called love song and so in the late 60s early 70s he was a hippie who was searching for god or searching for some sort of a transcendent reality and he was doing that through psychedelic drugs he was he explored through buddhism eastern mysticism the urantia book timothy leary all kinds of stuff he was trying to find if there was a god and he heard the very simple gospel at a little church called calvary chapel in southern california and he put his faith in christ and he surrendered his life to christ and then other members of his band started becoming christians and as they became christians they started singing about the uh the new faith that they had found they were singing their jesus songs now back then there was no contemporary christian music industry and so nobody thought that this could ever be a career nobody ever thought that you could make money doing this or become famous because there just really wasn't a category for it and so early in my dad's career the music executives came in and sort of capitalized on these jesus songs and turned the whole thing into a business and so i kind of bristle a little bit when people say he was a pioneer of ccm because really i think what he was one of the pioneers of was the idea that you could communicate the gospel and your faith through contemporary music like rock and roll and so growing up i grew up with a touring dad who was a contemporary christian music artist and so i saw kind of the good bad and the ugly with that i went into the business myself and was a part of the group zoe girl and we were together from around 99 until about 2007 and so that's my relationship to ccm but my relationship to deconstruction goes even a little deeper so after zoe girl came off the road my husband and i started attending a church in middle tennessee and after about eight months of attending there the pastor invited me to be a part of a of a inner circle type study and discussion group and i tell this whole story in my book another gospel and i have other videos on my channel that you can check out for the the deeper story but the long shot of it is is that uh the pastor deconstructed christianity in this class and as a result i went through my own process of deep deep doubt it was a dark night of the skull that of the soul that was indescribably painful indescribably terrifying destabilizing and disorienting and looking back on it now i can't really see that i deconstructed my faith but in my case it was really someone else who deconstructed me who deconstructed my faith and i cried out to god one night and i just said god if you're real if if the gospel is true then please send me a lifeboat because i felt like i was drowning in doubt and it was through intellectual study it was years of reconstruction and i came to the conclusion at the end of that that the core gospel that i was given as a child was true that the bible is god's word that jesus was physically resurrected from the dead that he died on the cross for my sins and that i would put my trust in him then i would be reconciled to a holy god and be able to live with god forever in his presence and under his rule and that is good news to me because i knew the whole time that i was a sinner and so that's my relationship to ccm and to the process of deconstruction but i'd like to introduce you to my next guest this is john cooper and corey cooper of the band skillet many people uh know their strong monster i gotta thank you guys because my kids discovered skillets music and i've now heard the song monster about 795 times this week and so i'm ready to take the show on the road with you guys so welcome tell us a little bit about each of you take a moment and tell us your bit of your story and your relationship to to the business excellent elisa and you know what you know why i'm glad we're doing this because neither me or corey had any idea that your dad was a love song no way yeah what's going on you've been holding back you've been holding back on me now but that's right we'll talk about that when this is done anyway it's great to be here so uh my name is john cooper this is my wife corey cooper she will tell about herself in a second but um let's say we play in a band called skillet i think at this point we're not just a rock band we are a veteran rock band that's what they say it's been we've been a band now for 550 years maybe 551 yeah anyway veteran rockers always hear people say it and i've always wanted to say it myself anyway so um i gave my life to christ when i was a kid my parents were christians my mom was a jesus fanatic and my mom taught me about the bible ever since i was a young i can't i can't remember a day where my mom wasn't reading the bible to me and and making me memorize scriptures and things and uh so i gave my life to christ when i was a kid and one of the things my mom used to always tell me we'll get into this later i'm sure and something else but my mom used to always say uh she called me johnny don't call me johnny though my name is john i want to make it clear but my mom can call me johnny but she would say johnny your life is not your own she always say your life is not your own you don't belong to you you belong to god and that always made sense to me i always believed that that i am his creation he is the creator he's the boss i might want to say and i always held on to that and god has been so good to me um and that i never had that that major falling away period that a lot of people do or that major backsliding time i god just always held me and the word of god has meant so much to me in my life and so we started skill it in 1996 and uh we've been playing and touring ever since then i'm passionate about music i'm passionate about the gospel i'm passionate about music being a a vehicle to sing about what you are passionate about you know sort of like what you said about your dad it's like uh i wasn't trying to write christian songs i'm writing songs from my heart and i want these songs to help other people through what they're going through and i want it to point towards this amazing god that we all know and so i think when i kind of started getting involved in the sort of things we're talking about tonight on this live stream when i started getting involved was a number of years ago maybe eight years ago when i began to notice that that a lot of us christians or supposedly christians we might be using the same words but but we're not talking about the same thing and i used to take it for granted that you know christians we would use words like saved sin redemption love i thought that we were using those words and we all kind of agreed on what what they meant and when i started realizing that we're not in agreement upon them that's when i started noticing the world really falling apart and so that's why i'm here tonight doing this live stream because i want to try to help people who are quite confused of what's going on because the gospel has held me the word of god has held me ever since i was a kid he has never ever let me down and i want other people to have that same thing you go yeah yeah my story is uh my parents um when i was born i'm the second oldest and when i was born my parents were like we want to raise her knowing god but we don't know him so we should probably do something about that and my dad had been raised catholic my mom had been raised lutheran but neither of them were really practicing anything and so they ended up becoming born again giving their lives to jesus and it was a radical transformation of their lives and so by the time i was five i had given my life to jesus i'm like hey if the god of the universe actually wants to know me then i'm in because that seems amazing to me and i want to live my life for something that's eternal you know i don't i don't really want temporal pleasures i want to invest myself in something that's going to make a difference for eternity in people's lives i want to have god be a part of my life and use me in in such a an amazing way that only he can to allow your life to impact many people and to see them freed and to see them full of peace and full of the life of god and to see them redeemed and at peace with god with the god of the universe and so for me that my whole life has been like i just want to live for him i don't always know how to do that so it's been like the process of sanctification in my life like oh wow there's more junk in there i don't love that and i want to deal with it according to the word like what does the word say i should be like what are the fruits of the spirit do i have these things in my life and if i don't i'm the one who's got gotta do something about it i gotta get myself right i gotta repent i gotta like fall in line with the word bad attitude you know i'm a very feel type person which you know usually you kind of like i wanna be real with how i feel and like show you my true feelings but sometimes they're not great so and you could hurt people that way i'm like oh i didn't really realize that that was a thing and so i want to be loving toward people even if i don't feel like it right now so that was kind of like revelation from me when i was younger um and then i was like you know i want i i don't know what god has for me if you don't care what it is i just want him to use me so if that means i'm cleaning toilets that's cool with me because i know he'll put me wherever i can be most effective for his kingdom um and then when i was 13 i felt like i'd speak to me um that i was going to do something in music didn't know what that was didn't know what that would look like but you know so i invested my time in in practice invested my time in studying theology studying his word because i thought you know what if you're going to be on a stage or in any position of influence i i just want him to be reflected i want his ways to be reflected i want people to know him and i want my junk to get out of the way for that i don't want to be teaching them you know proper things about who he is um and so then yeah jumped into the ccm world with skillet in 98 and you know we've always had a heart for um people who are not christians and people who are christians to see the bride of christ you know rise up as as the pure powerful bride that she is like pouring your life out to serve others to call out jesus in them so that was always part of the mission of skillet in the ccm world and then of course you know outside of it just to show people that god is real that his power is real and effective for their lives it's beautiful well i want to let anybody watching know that if you have questions for us we're going to take some questions throughout this live stream if you have a question it would really help us if you put the word question in all caps in the chat box that way we'll be able to overlook all of the chit chat and get right to the to the questions that are being asked and so we'd love to to maybe if we can help with something uh that that you're wondering about as it relates to deconstruction and the ccm industry we'd love to just maybe give some insight as best we can none of us are experts at you know any of this stuff uh we're we're not experts in deconstruction we're not philosophers but like you we're concerned we see what's happening and i think because of our relationship with ccm and having worked inside of that there might be some some connections that we might be able to make to help people understand what's going on and so i'm excited for us to continue with the discussion tonight and hopefully accomplish that goal but without further ado i want to introduce you to my next guest this is jeremy camp and his wife adrian camp i'm so glad that you guys have joined us today and for those of you i mean a lot of people know jeremy camp they know your music but some people may not be aware that uh adrian camp was in a band called benjamin gate i actually met you a.d before i met jeremy because we were recording in the same studio and i just remember thinking who is this girl and this amazing rock and roll voice and so that was my first memory of you as i just loved your rock voice so welcome i'm so glad you guys are here to join us for this discussion tell us about uh each of you take a moment tell us about your your testimony coming to faith and your relationship with ccm thanks elisa hey you want to go first you want to go no go good um basically you know first of all john i mean i i think the beard oil is what's kept you so young you've been doing this for a long long time i was like a little kid when i first started listening to you so anyway yeah but you know i was actually raised in a christian home as well and one of the things i loved about my family is that they really instilled a love for god's word for me and i think it was one of the things that i carried on and i still carry on to this day understanding that a love for god's word and his truth uh who he is in his word and but i had my i love the word that you used um earlier i had my kind of time where the world became seductive to me and i started straying away even though i feel like that you know i think i knew the lore growing up i had you know the ask the lord tomorrow when i was five but not until i was 16 years old i had straight away and like that word seduction from the world came into play i was drawn in started thinking that these things were going to make me happy or fulfill something in my life or i was going to experiment and say this is going to be something i'm going to enjoy for a while it left me miserable and left me empty and i remember being in a youth camp i went to youth camp in california and my my whole goal for going was just to hang out and as i got there one of the first i think the second night we were there the first time i got started doing some my heart i remember god is speaking to me very clearly and saying jeremy i love you so much you're on the edge of a cliff about ready to jump off and i want to use you but you need to run as far away from the cliff as possible and what was what drew me back to jesus and me straying away thinking that the world was going to lead me to something good was his kindness saying i love you i i am protecting you from going any further it's like i was on the edge the precipice of this kind of dark place i was about to jump into and he rescued me and that's what he does for all of us that when when we're about ready to stray and get into a place where it's just dark god's going no trust me i my life is so much more fulfilling than the world has to offer and so at that point i remember submitting my life to jesus saying i want to serve you with all of my heart and god literally started opening up doors for me i went out to bible college and was just a beautiful time i mean god really started stripping away a lot of things in my heart while i was there i realized that man he still still does but i realized some things that he was trying to some deep things that i had allowed the world to kind of get into my heart and so out of bible college god did a beautiful thing in my heart i was ready to serve the lord and i'll make a long story short i'm going to share a little bit later my testimony um even further about but i went through a hard time watching my wife suffer through cancer and songs were birthed out of that so i wrote a song called walk by faith on our honeymoon i still believe after she went to be with the lord she went to be a jesus and it was a very rough time for me and you know you you only hear the story of me writing these songs of of god's faithfulness and god's goodness but didn't hear the wrestle the major wrestle that i had and so going through that wrestle which i'll talk about a little bit later in a sense really questioning my faith god revealed himself in such a beautiful way and from that more songs started pouring into my heart and i basically signed a record contract and that was about 20 years ago and i've been doing this for 20 years and my whole heart and my whole desire has been to share that going through this world we're going to face suffering i mean john 15 says it he says you know or john 16 33 says i say these things to you you'll have peace in this world you will face trials of many kinds so he's already telling us that guys are going to face trial it's not going to be always an easy road he goes but take heart i've overcome the world and so for me i've taken that and to share that hey guys sometimes there's difficulties there's a part of suffering where paul says i'm going to share in christ's sufferings so that's the part of that's almost like one of his prayers paul's prayer to share in christ's sufferings but what happened from that is to say but here's who god is here's what he provides here's the beauty of who jesus is where else are you going to turn and so my whole heart has been sharing god's goodness in the midst of hardship and in the midst of pain so i was born and raised in south africa and i was born into a christian family and all my life just i remember i mean the youngest memory i have is really loving jesus and i was always the little kid that i was raised in a charismatic church and and oftentimes it's like the call to full-time ministry probably happens every six months where and i was born with a kid running up ahead going me me me like i want to be in full-time ministry and i didn't even really know what that meant but i'm just kind of indicative i've i love jesus i i loved serving him i had a really close walk with the lord and i also loved music absolutely loved music when i was 17 i joined a rock band called the benjamin gate and right before my 18th birthday so really young we got signed to a record label and it was an american label and they said um we will sign you but you have to move to america to um you know to tour and all of that stuff so of course for us the south africans we were like absolutely america is the dream and i remember before we left our church leaders pulled us aside and said hey be careful we've heard that um the christian music industry and just that kind of industry in general is um can kind of cheer you up and spit you out a little bit and so they gave us this warning and i remember thinking okay i need to be careful and all that stuff but i just i don't know that i thought a whole lot more of that um at that point you know we were all still fully in church and going to church on a regular basis i didn't think anything we were still in full community but i came over to america with lots of big dreams and started touring like crazy we were in a van and trailer for um two and a half years and played non-stop just really really really roughing it i was a lot of times the only girl on the road so very lonely but um my introduction into christian music industry and enduring is um i saw a lot of well let me let me back up and say this in south africa there isn't a christian music industry you literally play whatever there is so we played clubs and bars even though i was under age nobody knew that but um i'd be playing on stage and then have to get back as soon as i could you know but um so when i came to america i was really i had high hopes for the christian music industry and unfortunately i saw a massive amount of hypocrisy and so many people that would be getting up on stage declaring the gospel and talking about how you should read your bible and do all of these things and then i would witness just um such immorality backstage and slowly but surely it really began to chip away at my faith and for about two and a half years i really went through a stage of struggling and i'm just questioning a lot i i remember when i met jeremy i told him even though god had really started to do a work in in my heart and i just told jeremy i don't want to read my bible because i've seen the lives of people who do and i love jesus but i don't like that and so i'm kind of out on that whole sort of like religious thing i love jesus i could take jesus all day long but um but what i had seen disturbed me and i think hurt me so deeply that it really caused such a sense of disillusionment and um but the one day god spoke so clearly to my heart and just said i was really for those years i think i experienced what it was like to be in the driver's seat of my own life i made the decisions that i wanted to make i did whatever i wanted to do and i was really on the cusp of some pretty dangerous relationships and um just really i think just felt such a tremendous amount of guilt and shame and um just i guess the taste of what it was like to be my own boss in a sense and i remember god just pulling me aside in my own heart and just said this is not what i have for you and i went into my room and i got on my knees and i just said god i know that you see everything and i know that i can't pretend and so i'm not even going to pretend that i have a heart for you that i have a heart for scripture that i have a heart for everything anything at all but i need you to do work in my heart and so i'm willing and i'm available and god met me so powerfully and just literally radically changed my life and it was right around that time that i met jeremy and i was still incredibly skeptical um of a lot of of what i had seen but when i heard his story and i realized just the power of you don't stare death in the face and watch your wife suffer and die and come easily to the place of standing in front of everybody and declaring i still believe like that's don't make that stuff up and it was so authentic to me that i thought okay that's real i can get behind that and so that birthed jeremy and my friendship and um my band we stuck around for a little bit longer after that and then eventually we split up and i have since then in the last well 18 years i guess just been a little bit more of a support role i still sing from time to time still somewhat involved in the music industry but yeah that's kind of she's awesome that's me in a nutshell i love it and you know jeremy you mentioned your story of your your wife dying of cancer and i knew that that had happened but i didn't know uh that just the depth of the story until very recently and i was just really stunned by the arc of that story because you know in the context of deconstruction when you listen to deconstruction stories um many of them have some sort of um a life event of suffering like similar to what you went through where they began to question god's goodness and i think you know all of us have been there where things have happened and we've questioned god's goodness and even trauma and uh you know a couple years ago we lost my nephew uh to a drug overdose and it was so sudden and it was just it was traumatic and there were such dark moments of like man is this even real is is everything i've believed my whole life just something i've believed to make me feel better and and and there's these questions that can happen i think we see this reflected in scripture as well in the psalms and in lamentations we we see people bringing their complaints to god bringing their deepest groans of sorrow and one of the things that really stood out to me jeremy about your story is that melissa you had all really prayed for her to be healed you believed she was going to be healed and she had cancer if i understand the story correctly all throughout her body in all of her major organs and the prognosis was very grim and god healed her she was she was healed and when you got married she was 100 cancer-free it was a miracle everybody was celebrating and then shortly after your honeymoon the cancer comes back and she was gone not long after that now i and i have to read this from her website because i pulled this off her website today because i was so encouraged by it um the announcement on the website says um at the age of 21 melissa camp went to be with jesus she joyfully worshiped and praised the lord throughout her sickness until her last words and um i know that it was shortly after that jeremy that you wrote the song i still believe and my question for you is when you when you think about that's not just a normal trial like you have not only the the suffering that you would go through from losing a spouse that you love but you have almost this moment where you think god has healed i mean god healed her it's this miracle and then it's back and it doesn't end up the way you had prayed for and the way you had hoped i mean if there is a deconstruction story or a deconversion story i should say in the making it would be that one so my question to you is why do you think you wrote this song i still believe instead of posting on social media i don't believe anymore yeah first of all you know what i want to say to those who are watching as well and i know that you guys all feel the same way our heart behind this what we're doing is that very thing that people so that are so hurt are running to things that are hurting them even more and i think that our harsh desire is to to say christ is the answer to everything we need and we're not here to bash anybody we're not here to come down on anybody we're here to say jesus is the only way and the jesus of of the bible and who he is and his love and so i just wanted to like just throw that in there real quick because that's going through what i went through my heart's desire so much is due to and i know that christ when you know he says jesus wept there's a point where he wept seeing the pain of mary and martha and and you know people sometimes say that was the unbelief for the people and whatever you want to say his emotions of the emotions were there he had compassion and so you know for me you know i think going through this whole thing there was so many different dynamics and so many different layers to it because you know melissa was she loved jesus with all of her heart i mean when the when it says that she worshipped him till her final breath i mean you guys at least says she would and you know we talked about this before she'd lay there with no strength whatsoever and we i'd be singing some worship songs because she wanted to sing worship and had no strength that would just raise her hand as high as she could because she wanted to to do an act of surrender she didn't need to it wasn't like that she felt like if i don't do this i'm not actually showing my surrender or my love for jesus that was what she wanted to do she he said i don't care if i'm going through this suffering i'm going to glorify jesus and so that was her and so for me we went through this whole thing of went through cancer and she was going through chemotherapy and we went and got tested or at one point the doctors pulled us aside and said hey it's we got to take the uterus out which meant that we weren't going to have kids and so that was devastating because we both you know love kids wanted to have kids and so we were just praying and really i mean on our knees just we had people praying from all over just please god we we don't want to enter into marriage with that thought that we're not going to have kids and so make a long story short you know we i told the doctor i said listen if you go in there and she doesn't have the cancer because god healed her i mean i was so blunt i said you won't remove the uterus right and he said you know no of course not so they went to the surgery and they found nothing legitimately found nothing and it was literally it was a miracle and something we had prayed for and so of course in that thought i'm going oh my word this is it she's healed we can move on we can share of the miracle of what he did and this is just a rejoicing in her heart and so we ended up getting married and on her honeymoon she noticed some complications in her stomach and basically went back to the doctors again after her honeymoon and they said the cancer's returned it's it's all over and she has weeks and months to live and so i remember at first my my thought was okay no there's no way that she's gonna die because god already did a miracle so he's not gonna do a miracle and give us that much hope and then all sudden she's gonna die what kind of i thought this what kind of sick god would do that that was my thought just reality and so of course you know about three months three and a half months later um i had to watch her take her last breath and i remember the wrestle i mean at first here we were there and i will say this as she took her last breath i remember being in a fetal position just just curled up i couldn't believe what was happening because i actually really did not believe she was going to die i mean had the the most faith will say if you just have faith i remember just yeah i have faith and i didn't believe i was like there's no way she's going to die so i couldn't believe it i'm sitting there and i remember god just speaking to my heart and there was worship music playing in the background and he said i want you to stand up and worship me and it was the most and they didn't show this in the movie but i hear i am in a fetal position curled up and going and god says he said worship me and i said no it was like stand up and worship me i was like no and it was like i'm like peter and these three times third time worshipped me and i was like okay remember i stood up and i started raising up my hands and everybody in that whole room started raising up their hands and i can tell you this if i wouldn't have done that i would have missed out on the holy spirit and the presence of god in that room so tangible and i mean that from the bot it was so tangible and so thick and i remember that that was a moment of going okay god okay and then all sudden rage started happening and i remember just going that that's because i remember her brother saying why would god do that why would he heal her and then she would die and we both kind of had this kind of back and forth like that god would never do that and so we almost got angry just saying god are you real because you wouldn't do that like a real god wouldn't do that or god is that the god that you are that you would do that and so we started i started questioning my faith questioning who god really was and i remember it was just that wrestle for so long and i i got almost to the point where i realized i had a point to make it was like i either go this way or this way either run to the world which is the actual cause of the pain cause of the hurt cause of all that stuff and run to that where i'm gonna end up in a world of hurt even more or i had the choice to go you know what where else john you said it in our prayer where else are we going to go when jesus is talking to the disciples and they're like you got to eat them on my flesh and drinking my blood they're like whoa that's too much he goes all right and they left and peter goes or jesus goes peter what about you what are you going to do he's like jesus where else we're going to go you have the very words of eternal life and so for me i was like where am i where else am i going to go like what was i going to do and i ran to the feet of jesus i mean it was a wrestle because i was like i don't know if i want to do this even if i do believe do i want to serve that god and i sat at the feet of jesus and he so lovingly so patiently his beauty and his majesty and his love and his kindness and his faithfulness was just so prevalent in my life that i stand before people today saying the only reason why i got through this is because of jesus that's it there's no other thing that got me through it and that's why i'm here today and that's honestly what we're saying why why do we still believe that's why because i went through a tragedy and jesus was everything that i needed and he was there for me every step of the way amen a.d you said something a bit earlier about the the music industry kind of chews you up and spits you out and i can i can attest to this because you know i was only in the industry for about seven or eight years my husband who by the way i forgot to mention is here and he's the button pusher behind the scenes so he's involved in this conversation too um but he's pushing all the buttons and making all the tech stuff happen um but you know he was in the industry for in the christian industry for about 30 years so so there's you know between the two of us we have such an inside view of it like like you as well um but i couldn't it was just too hard for me i i um to say that it kind of chews you up and spits you out is not an overstatement it really did that to me and and i want to say that with grace for the people who are in it because there are so many wonderful jesus loving gospel-centered people in the contemporary music industry oh my gosh people i'm still friends with people that i met um that that love jesus and want to serve him so this isn't just like let's throw ccm under the bus thing but the way that it's kind of set up um you know you you that you're on a bus you're kind of in this floating fishbowl where you're insulated from a lot of other people and even when you know when you do you arrive at a venue and you go in it's like everybody's looking at you every all the attention is on you and we weren't created for that we as human beings we weren't created to receive that kind of admiration and then you're put on a stage and it's even you know that times ten um and you can become really jaded i found my heart becoming kind of hardened and cynical because you know you get back on the bus and it's like you know you vent all the things that happened that day and it can kind of become like this this really cynical space that you start to live in and i think that's what uh some of those things is what made me vulnerable to the the deconstruction sort of process that ended up happening to me um because you know i had the best of intentions when i moved to nashville when i got on my first tour bus i had my strongest concordance like that thick with me on my first tour bus and i was like you know studying my bible every day and man the depression started to hit your rhythms are all off because you're sleeping weird hours and working weird hours and i know that for me that's what made me really vulnerable and also just sort of you get you get to see every different type and stream of christianity you encounter every denomination every sort of attitude in christians you know around so it can make you very cynical and very jaded and um this would be a good opportunity for us to maybe answer one of these questions from the live stream this is from paul murray and anybody who wants to answer this can but i think this is a really good question do you think there's something in the creative temperament that makes one more open to the ideas that lead to deconstruction or maybe i'll even add like a deconversion type situation gosh in some ways i think that that's a great question and i don't know that it's necessarily temperament because when i think about the people that are on the road there are so many different types of personalities i mean you're talking about administrative people to like when i think about our crew guys to the people on the stage to the people behind the scenes to management to booking i mean it is so intertwined with so many different kinds of personalities and what i've experienced is is that there's a verge a version of deconstruction or questioning or disillusion disillusionment in all kinds of personalities i think it really is a lot of the setup that i mean you're taking like you said at least these young kids i mean you guys i was on stage at 18 years old i i didn't i didn't i was raised in the church but i didn't have a strong biblical foundation at all i loved jesus but i was very much defined by church culture and so when i started to see the things in church culture that was so disappointing to me um it brought so much just disillusionment because i didn't know what else to believe then because that was my experience and so i think it's very much and i mean you guys the rest of you can add to it but i think it's very much um pulling people out of of fellowship and accountability and then putting people on stage so you're you're making money all of a sudden well some people not everybody we certainly didn't some people you're you're being adored by people so then it instantly sits in this loneliness of like well who really knows me i mean there's so many sort of dynamics and you know yeah chime in you guys i think what that also breeds when you know you become elevated on a platform as well for one you said elisa about how we're not created for glory we're not created for worship and and you know it becomes the thing where in a sense you're glorified and and what happens it messes you up it just really does because that's we're not we can't handle it does that make sense and so it's like god's the one we have to shift that we don't shift it that way it's like we're being penetrated with bullets you know what i mean we can't handle it it's not us ours to handle and i think what happens is you know and i've seen this when someone's elevated there's a lot of people around them including leaders that don't really want to say anything because they might have something to gain by it does that make sense by this person's platform or the status of knowing this person or just whatever it may be that there a lot of people don't want to say anything because they're like well yeah i mean i want to keep my buddy and you know and i kind of like knowing so and so and we're in the day of an age right now even more so i think it's even more dangerous of very much social media and look who i know look who i hang out with and i think that there's another reason why the accountability gets shot is because no one wants to say anything because you could benefit them in some way or they can get benefited in some way so that's that's a little tidbit but john go ahead no i think that's really good jeremy i agree with that i mean i i think i would like to add to that um to the question at hand as well agree with all that though i think that's really really good um i i probably would say this in my view a great musician should be playing music from the depth of their feelings it should be something that you feel so emotionally raw about is what you're singing the best guitar players in the world christian non-christian atheist jimi hendrix crying over his guitar setting his guitar on fire a great musician should be reaching into the depths and expressing it on an instrument and i think that that that leads to the question because a lot of deconstruction is feeling oriented it's that my feelings are kind of moving me in a certain way i do think there may be something to the person who asked the question it does that make you a little bit more susceptible to those kind of things because if you're an artist you probably are very feelings driven but i want to add one more thing to that because there's also a reason there's also a reason in the old testament that you know say the prophet is going to give the word of the lord but he's like okay wait wait a minute where are the musicians at where are the musicians at bring the musicians into play so i can bring the word of the lord there's a reason that when saul king saul is being tormented by demons he asked for a musician to come and play so that the spirit of god could soothe him and and bring peace music is powerful and i agree with what you guys say and i think that a lot of times people want to be around the power you know they want to be around the power and how they're going to speak these days worship leaders carry a lot more power than any pastor worship leaders carry a lot of times the juice who is going to speak out against that and so i do think that musicians tend to already be a little bit arrogant i think we all tend to be a little bit self-focused and then if you're not being out working that amongst the body of christ with the various gifts that god gives right god gives gifts to all of us so that we work together but if you're the one not really working with someone else it is a very dangerous thing but i think there's a pretty astute question that was asked yeah that's good well here's here's another one that i think is is a really good question this is from dr jonathan mc uh leichi and i can understand why he's asking this question because if some of these deconstruction and deconversion stories the reason i'm kind of separating deconstruction from deconversion is because not every deconstruction ends up in a deconversion but many do i mean that's the trajectory is it it either ends up in a deconversion or um a type of faith that doesn't reflect a historic christian faith um and so uh jonathan is uh honestly one of the smartest people i have ever encountered and so if you have an intellectual question about christianity uh he's your guy so and so his question is this do you have advice for how to counsel someone who experiences emotional doubt that doesn't have a clear rational or intellectual expression and i think that that is a really good question because there seems to be in a lot of the the stories that i've listened to and i see for for me just um and i don't mean to overstate my deconstruction i never fully lost my faith um but i was it was just i was literally like that guy that came to jesus and said i believe help my unbelief it was like both at the same time i believed and i didn't believe and it was just it was like i was being torn in half um and mine was purely intellectual and i really upon a lot of reflection i think it was purely intellectual because all i had a pretty good experience growing up in the church i had for the most part i mean there's always going to be some stinkers in there but i for the most part had good pastors uh the christians that i knew were people who loved god they believed the bible was god's word but that played itself out in active service to others i grew up working the soup lines at the fred jordan mission in la watching my mom hug prostitutes put coats on homeless guys and my dad leading worship at the mission and that was just a normal weekend for us you know i was perfectly comfortable around homeless people i thought that's just what all christians did you know i didn't realize that maybe that was a little unusual but uh that would and we would do street evangelism uh you know when you when you're like 13 years old and you're doing street evangelism on hollywood boulevard on halloween you're gonna meet people from different world views i talked with satanists and uh you know wiccans and agnostics and all kinds of people as a kid but it was easy to to brush off the claims they would make about christianity because i thought oh they just don't have the holy spirit yet like they just don't know and so i could blow it off but when it was in a church where a pastor that i had really come to trust was bringing some of these intellectual claims it just messed me up i mean it was like is everything i believe a lie i was kind of intellectually convinced it wasn't true so for me the journey was finding the intellectual answers um because i didn't necessarily have to work through um you know layers of church abuse or the hypocrisy that you witnessed 80 or you know because church abuse is spiritual abuse is such a big issue right now there's so many scandals coming to light and i've said this before i praise god god shine your light like people if people are being abused i praise god that's coming out because he needs to shine his light so that there's repentance and there the abusers are dealt with and the victims are are cared for and advocated for um but i think that sometimes like if you listen to a lot of deconstruction stories there's so much tied in there there's emotional doubt there's intellectual doubt and sometimes and in many cases an intellectual question will be asked an intellectual answer will be given but it doesn't satisfy because the doubt really isn't intellectual in the first place and so i think jonathan's question is really good you have advice for how to counsel someone who experiences emotional doubt that doesn't have a rational or intellectual expression does anyone have any thoughts on that i think i'll jump in oh sorry the layman's the non-intellectual answer um i'm a deep feeler so i i've had to learn how to navigate through you know i understand people who deal with depression and all that sort of thing and i understand how to navigate through like your perspective right now isn't necessarily reality but it feels so real um and i think any not to be crest but any woman once a month understands not to trust their feelings like seriously you know so like i don't the bible says you know the heart is deceitful above all things so though feeling is great if your feelings are ruling your decisions if your feelings become your truth you're just going to be like on a stormy sea all the time and so there has to be something else that's absolute in truth that defines what is reality for you the fact matter is when you make that that truth the absolute truth of the word your reality your feelings will eventually fall in line but it might take a little while and god can work work through you and in you to make those feelings fall in line to what his reality is and give you revelation of what their reality is you know i think that's great yeah and and this is a huge generalization and so i'm saying i know it's a generalization at the top um but some of the people that i know that have struggled with with deconstruction and maybe even i would call apostate actually yeah a lot of people it's not just their spiritual life that has fallen apart it it has been in their practical life they have they have cheated on their spouse and you know their their kid fell into drug abuse and ended up getting going to juvie or something a lot of times it seems to me that a lot of these things are tied together and and sometimes i just want to say i know you might not feel that right now but aren't there other things in your life as corey just say aren't there other things that you also don't trust you know like can anybody that's been married for 20 years relate to having a day when you don't really enjoy being around your jerky husband that's treating you really bad because he's stressed out that's okay who has two thumbs and is annoying this guy i'm with you yeah can you can you not relate to waking up one day just being like i would rather not be with my kids today they're a lot of work it's exhausting and that's not reality talking that's just that's just you having a bad day that's you thinking something that is not reality and so i i would just kind of encourage people hey if you're going to live your life based on your feelings each day it is going to be a rocky road you're just going to be a miserable person so i don't know it's good minecraft if i can ask that as well i think one thing that i in a lot of the the deconstruction stories i actually what's interesting is a lot of the the issues that people have you know felt or or or had i agree with but i want to say to you don't throw the baby out with the bath water that just because you have questions or you feel uncomfortable with certain church culture that you've seen or you feel uncomfortable with the way that you're seeing certain christians live their lives let me just tell you so do i like i have a serious problem with the way that certain churches do certain things and i don't want to i'm not here to bash the church i love the body of christ but there's certain things that are worth deconstructing from but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater just because you feel a certain way about something that they are valid truths and there's a valid concrete place that you can come back to um that you can look from an intellectual point and then allow your feelings to sort of follow you know well it's like you know jesus never said follow my disciples said follow me i think a lot of times we look at you know the disciples or or those that are serving jesus and they're like well if that's who jesus is she's like actually that's fine no that's not who i am you know and so they they throw it out because they're like well that's who chris what christianity is but when you look at god's word and the truth of god's word it's so beautiful the heart of christ who who specifically talks about repentance a lot and talks about sin but like very much shows his compassion like when what i love is the story that i use all the time and we all know it but i love it is the adulterous woman who was caught in the act of adultery they pull her out get ready to stone her and then jesus was like all right all y'all that have not sinned go ahead cast a stone and they're like uh yeah never mind and they all walked away you know and jesus this is she wasn't necessarily repenting at that point he literally said hey go and sin no more and so jesus addressed sin and i think what happens is all of a sudden we get to this spot where you know we're afraid to talk about sin or mistakes and you know i think that this is kind of going off subject but it triggered something in my mind hopefully this is not like going way off subject but it triggers something with me um about saying that jesus you know said follow me and i'm disciples you know for me i i i look at this whole deconstruction thing and like how i was raised i was raised a little more legalistic and i was raised a little bit more you know it would not be faith or a workspace faith but the feeling was if you didn't do all the right things then god's a little bit upset with you and angry with you and so i was kind of not not there's just a little bit more on that direction i'm not calling my family i'm just saying just kind of it just was that feeling and so instead of going you know what i'm going to start over and over correct and go over here even though i started over here i'm going to just pick up the things that not are not i mean i'm going to stay on god's word because i want to have a plumb line of truth that we were talking about you got to have a truth because we're all talking about we go by emotion so much here's the truth of who god is and his word and i'll just pick off the things that aren't true you know who god who is god really and you know who is does he get angry with us we don't read our bible one day no none at all we're missing out on the fullness of of who god is and spending time with jesus and seeing in his and his beauty and his majesty he's not angry with us and i think that those type things you can start to like deconstruct but don't over correct and all of a sudden get to a place where you're going where where are you there's absolute truth that we have to stand on and that's god's word all right that's totally uh no that's really good and i this leads us into a question that i think is really important because you're talking about deconstructing the the untrue things or the the things that are wrong you know but but holding fast to what is good which that's biblical bible says test every spirit hold fast what is good and so david has a question here and this is a good opportunity to maybe clear this up he says i'm so confused do you see deconstruction as something bad or not and i'd really love to give my perspective on that because i mentioned at the beginning that there are lots of different definitions of deconstruction and so if you follow the deconstruction movement um it's of course deconstruction is going to be seen as something very positive this is something everybody should do and i think that in many cases the whole concept of deconstruction is sort of built upon what john was talking about a few minutes ago this idea of live your truth you know live by your feelings and it's uh not to oversimplify it but essentially that's what moral relativism is is what you think is good and true becomes good and true for you and what somebody else believes is good and true becomes good and true for them and so i think that so much of the deconstruction movement especially if you trace it back to the first sort of iterations of deconstruction that arose out of the post-modernism that started to come out of the philosophy world in the 60s sort of centered around the sexual revolution and some of that this this whole idea of live your truth we're in what people are calling a post-truth culture now this is very complicated and difficult for christians because the christian faith depends upon absolute truth um if it didn't depend on absolute truth we wouldn't even be having this discussion it wouldn't matter like do what works for you i don't care like if you want to like leave christianity that's fine that would be no different from choosing to be a meat-eater or a vegetarian but christianity is based on objective truth if we look at first corinthians 15 paul said the apostle paul said if christ has not been raised your faith is in vain and you're still in your sins and so he's essentially saying if if the resurrection of jesus christ was not an actual event in real history then christianity as an entire belief system is false and that really goes against what the origin story essentially of every other philosophy uh spiritual worldview and religion you know essentially you have somebody who might be sitting under a tree and get some revelation and they drum up a bunch of followers based on a certain teaching or philosophy christianity is totally different than than that type of of a religious system christianity is it stands or falls based on the resurrection of jesus so absolute truth really matters now i'll swing that back into the context of deconstruction in the 60s when postmodernism was first coming about questioning the rationalism uh and some of the the enlightenment modernist ideas christianity by the time it kind of fizzled out for a while then came back but we're at a time now where people generally don't believe in absolute truth and so you can see why if you don't believe that truth is absolute then it would be a good thing to deconstruct whatever construct of truth you were given from your christian parents it would actually be the responsible thing to do that um and so i like to compare deconstruction with doubt because i think that doubt is if you're an honest doubter if you're like okay do i really believe what my parents taught me that's good we should all do that we should all say is this true does this line up with reality um and then get rid of the things that are untrue or don't reflect reality as christians um and you know in apologetics we build a case for for this starting with truth but if we as christians believe that the bible is god's word which by the way if you're a jesus follower he referred to the old testament scriptures over and over and over again as god's word he never referred to the old testament scriptures as something some guys wrote that were just trying to figure god out in the times and places they lived like he referred to that as god's very word and so it's very clear that was his view and so if we believe like jesus that scripture is the word of god then that's our standard for absolute truth certainly there are things the bible doesn't talk about the bible doesn't talk about e equals m c squared or certain things like that so there there's truth outside the bible but as far as everything god wanted us to know about life is in the scriptures we can depend on that and so when we anchor our feet in the word of god and in living in reality um doubt is great because we can test that does this doubt line up with reality does it line up with what god has revealed in his word but deconstruction just for the sake of deconstructing because you think absolute truth doesn't exist anyway so it's your responsibility to deconstruct that and then live your truth i'd say that's not something that is a positive thing for christians to do now in in a case like mine where it was sort of like a an unwanted deconstruction you know i i'm thankful that god led me through the journey he did his faithfulness is just i look back on all of that and i just i can't belie he knew from the beginning what was going to happen and he walked me through that and i'm so thankful to him for his faithfulness but um so i think that deconstruction generally speaking in that context is not a good thing um david i think that uh christians don't you don't have to go through some kind of a relativistic journey to find your truth because jesus is the truth and he instructs us to depend on god's word and so that that's my view on it and i so i think that um you know some people will go through some deconstruction some healthy deconstruction that's not based on relativism like jeremy was talking about where you might deconstruct faulty positions unbiblical ideas like do that all day long but like 80 said you know i just hope you won't throw the baby out with the bathwater because the gospel is beautiful and it's the cure for all of that so i don't know if anybody has to need to add amen yeah i'd love to say something i think that's great i think tying it into the world view is very important because deconstructing is one of those words that if you've studied the worldview when you hear the word you you know what people are talking about and i would like to kind of maybe you know this thing we're doing tonight was called um why we still believe and i would i wouldn't mind tying that into why i still believe and i would say it ties into this i gave my life to christ as a kid as i said right earlier and god's shown me so much even as a young person how when i've read his word and i have seen that word be true i've seen that over and over and i experienced his peace when i gave my life to christ i experienced um that conviction of sin when i bullied somebody at school that feeling in my heart that you just did something that is actually not in your nature any longer something that i know that i have to repent for i've seen the bible become be true so much in my life you know my mom passed away when i was 15 years old from cancer and my mom used to say john if i die you cannot be mad at god because god is always good and she would also quote um which is romans 28 uh we know that all things work together for the good of those who love christ according to his purpose so she would quote that to me well after my mom passed away i used to to say that scripture uh i know that god is good i would say but i would say the scripture all things work together for the good of those who love christ according to his purpose i was in my room one night when i was 15 after my mom had died and i was not doing good i was angry i wanted to hurt somebody i was mad i felt like god wasn't listening to me and in my room one night as i was praying i i basically asked god this is going to sound cheesy to some people i was basically like i know that you're my lord i know that you're my savior but would it be okay if i knew you as a friend and i just had this sense in my head all right these words pop into my head yes but not just a friend also a dad and it was then that all of a sudden i remembered the scriptures that already told me that right jesus is a friend of sinners um jesus says to his disciples no greater love does anybody know this no than this than a man who lays his life down for his friends but i also know that god is also my father i'm an adopted son of god hello that's almost too good to be true so the scriptures were coming back to me and when i think about why i still believe it's because when i read the book of proverbs and the proverb says if you do this then this will happen and then you see it play out in your life right and there are positive things that can happen and there are negative things that can happen when you read the book of ecclesiastes and and you're reading solomon say all this stuff was just chasing after the wind it's it's more nothing than nothingness it's meaningless jeremy said earlier when you were talking about your uh the deception of the world or or the enticement of sin or whatever you were talking about jeremy earlier in your testimony ecclesiastes says that too right says that all the rivers flow into the sea and they keep flowing and flowing and flowing but the sea is never full and that solomon's saying you can keep drinking that well from alcohol or from popularity or from whatever vice you want you keep drinking it you are never going to be full it is going to leave you empty and i guess why i still believe it's because i keep seeing the truth of the word of god become so real and you have to be faced with this question this book that's thousands of years old is going to have so much truth in it then why is it going to be full of lies why is it then going to be really really true about these things but not really true about other things and who is the arbiter of that who's going to decide one day about which parts of that are no longer going to be true and and that's what i think is so deceptive about so much of the movement we see is that just think about this and i'm not trying to be rude to anybody but i'm just going to say it as clearly and nicely as i can it is this have you noticed that all of the inconvenient truths of the bible that people who deconstruct say i don't believe those things anymore have you noticed that they are the very same trends of the world so basically it's not any different it's whatever the world says is fashionable or cool or acceptable so you don't get cancelled and you don't lose friends and you don't lose your job or whatever it is and you can have peace with the world that's all the stuff that they're saying is acceptable now i haven't met one deconstructed christian that says you know i believe some of the bible but i don't believe that jesus really cared about poor people right you don't read that they're not picking those things out they're picking the things out that just imitate the world and now what you're saying is is that the world knows what virtue is when they are not truly born again and that's that's an impossibility for for what we believe in the gospel so i want to encourage people watching if you're struggling if you're on the fence you don't know what it is i think at least elisa nailed it it's about a world view it's about the fact that there is going to be a truth and do you think that you are the arbiter of truth or do you think that there is a god who defines what is right and wrong and moral and immoral it's either going to be you or it's going to be god that's the decision that that there is to make it's good and i just take such comfort all the time when i watch how culture changes so quickly i mean just in the last five years it's changed so much 20 years it's changed so much but god doesn't change and his word that so his word we can stand on that has stood the test of of 2 000 years plus of people standing on it and we have so many testimonies throughout church history of faithful christians standing on god's word to their death and it's like do you want that or do you want what might actually get you canceled in two weeks you know like you have to yes that's right yes you think you're safe think again yeah you got two weeks till what you believe today is out of style and then you know you got to figure it out it's man what an exhausting way to live at least that's that's what i think um this is a good question uh what is the spiritual requirement for someone to get signed into ccm is there any type of accountability we just we just talked about this to today on our drive she took me from the airport and uh i there isn't and i think that's one of the problems is that there's an assumption because you sing a song about jesus that your heart is there and of course let me just say this we all know isaiah 29 and then jesus actually repeats it in matthew 15 when he says the people they praise me with their lips but their hearts are far from me so there can be an appearance of yeah they must know the lord they must be fine but their hearts are far from him or you don't know actually what they believe and so i think that i don't know how to remedy that um i i could tell you some thoughts uh but that's not really a question but no there's not a spiritual requirement and so what happens is you put people on a platform once again that are put into position where they have an authority almost on who jesus is or how to walk a christian life that may not even have a clue what they really believe and so that actually starts coming out later so i believe some of these people that are coming out later saying that i don't know if i believe in god or whoever may be um didn't really have a true encounter with jesus and that's the key like we've talked about this and i've heard you elisa talk about a lot it's for me i had an encounter with the lord like i made him lord of my life he was he was my lord and i i said god i'm going to serve you i'm going to worship you there's an encounter with him so we don't know necessarily with a lot of these people and this is not to come down on don't sit there and judge every christian artist that you see that's i'm going to encourage you that because there's a lot of amazing people you know what i mean but i think that's one of the things that that i have seen that we've seen and i know john corey can attest and you as well alisa that there's not can i just so my thought is is a lot like i know for for my band we started out with such good intentions we wanted to be authentic we actually loved god we wanted to go out we wanted people to encounter truth what we thought you know we wanted people to encounter jesus we wanted people to be to be comforted we were definitely i mean we were a rock band so we were the french kids we had a heart for the french kids um but it's almost like that parable of the soil that when you throw the seeds out and the cares of life come up and choke everything out i think that was my experience we started out loving jesus we started out with good intentions and there wasn't there wasn't people coming alongside us to disciple us i mean i'm telling you guys in years and years we were on the road non-stop not once did i ever have a single person check in with me to how i was doing spiritually and we were in a position of of like pastors and leaders and so there's a lot of similarity even within the church it's like how accountable are we are we just being put into these positions of you know our society is that give me give me give me feed me what i want entertain me and it's like we're being entertained to death in a sense entertain is included you know so um i agree with jeremy said i think there are some people that maybe haven't encountered but then i think there are some that started out with good intentions yeah and unfortunately it's almost like the set up for exhaustion and and um elisa you said it i mean i saw my heart it was funny because i recognized how jaded people were in the beginning and i ended up being exactly the same i got so hot and so jaded even though in the beginning it was the very thing that broke my heart you know i think that's important to say aydie i i agree i know that we both have talked about this and that there are well as jeremy said or is maybe both of you said elisa too there are some awesome people in the christian music industry people that really love god and love jesus and that's really wonderful and but i do agree with you edie i do think there are a lot of people who who did have good motives and good intentions i kind of view it like this like i know that when i'm in my routine you know maybe i i do good in my routine like i i work out you know i eat a little bit better i don't work out as hard as jeremy does you might notice people but you know um but when i get out of my routine i really don't do so good and i don't know what i would be a lie what i would be like if i was away from my family for months and even when i was home i had no church most everyone in the christian music industry doesn't even belong to a church which i find uh sad and and baffling to be honest but don't even have a church home don't have pastors and elders and brothers and sisters and small groups and all the wonderful things that the body of christ should be and so i don't know what i would be like if i just left my wife and i left for months and i came home i had no nobody to talk to nobody encouraged me i have a feeling that i would probably i'm just being honest with you i probably would stop reading the word of god and i would begin being influenced by other things that frankly made me feel good in the moment they didn't satisfy me but they made me feel good in the moment and i would probably get so stinking off course we have to create a culture in christian music about what it means to belong to the body of christ and to belong to a local i remember i was on tour with a christian band we'll say who back in 1998 and i remember talking to him and this is the words he said i'm not trying to defend anybody i won't cuss but he just said i asked him what church he went to and he said he's like i don't go to church church sucks that's what he said church sucks i was like church sucks it's the body of christ we talk and he's like i gave up on the church a long time ago and and i just thought you're not gonna make it very long you are not going to make it very long because the church is full of people just like you we are all so messed up and we need each other and i just really believe that we got to create a culture where christian musicians begin to understand what church life is all about yeah it's a very sorry go ahead and go it's just an unnatural it's an unnatural way for a christian to thrive you can't we're called to be living stones built together right and we're interdependent on one another right so as annoying as somebody in my church might be and i might be to them that's the sharpening of the holy spirit in my character and their character me actually learning to lay down my life for someone and serve them and love them so you're missing out on what's going to actually cause you to be more like jesus and grow so it's unnatural on that level and also um the paradigm of it is bit i mean it's business like people make money doing this right and people are given influence and power and where you have money and power there's going to be corruption and if you don't have accountability where people are like hey like jeremy was saying earlier you know some people around a bunch of fame like a famous person might know what they're doing but just not sakes you're going to get fired or whatever all of those dynamics play into this and people do come in with good intentions but if you don't have safeguards in place for yourself like you know we have a local church you guys have a local church we have leaders in our lives that we have said if we start getting off you make a call and we are off the road because my my salvation and my soul are way more important to me than me being somebody thinking i'm cool i just don't care you know what i mean like ultimately like we're talking about ecclesiastes like i don't want to stand before the lord and everything that i've done burn and me of live for things that are just so dumb like i i don't want to live for futile things like i want to be standing before him and him be pleased with my life and the son of god came as a servant he laid down everything and he is our leader he is the one we worship and if he you know right before he goes to the cross is washing people's feet are about to like ditch him and betray him and stuff like that is what we're called to do so the whole paradigm of this is set up for people to serve me and worship me i don't want that and so i'm going to put whatever safeguards in place so that i don't i don't want to become the devil i mean he's the one who was the guy who fell because he wanted to take the glory of god for himself and music is all in her time with that i'm like this is like big red flags for people who are called to this you have to feel called to this and you have to set safeguards in place real quick i want to add to that because you said yeah amen exactly i think we just need to drop the mic understand this whole thing um that you said you said something so key because you know i want to add on to the fact that like there are people that artists that will maybe go to church and they actually are they're in church they go to church they they step in they're like well i go to church but what you said is putting safeguards it's you you tell people we've told people that hey if if we're off base please speak into my life you have to allow that to be a part of your life too so you can even just go to church and still not really have that true accountability and true accountability and the safeguards are set up when you like you said cory and john that you're like please tell us we've had the same thing we've had friends i was telling one day how they're asking how we were doing and basically i was like well i'm struggling with this feeling towards her and he looked at me and said it's a pastor of a church he goes you need to go see a counselor right now and i was like okay so he sent so he literally he sent adrian and me a text and said adrian if he doesn't get on this by next week then i'm gonna call him and i was like okay okay so i saw a counselor i mean those type things are the people you need in your life so i just want to add to that it's good here's a question uh for someone who grew up in church but deconstructed for a few years what advice do you have to get back on the right path to be on fire again i've been trying for years and it's been hard i i think you know one of the most important things is is vulnerability and honesty and and even talking about i mean this in a sense ties in perfectly with what we've been talking about because i think accountability you you need to be honest with somebody about how you're feeling what you're thinking because you guys they are answers for these things like i'll be honest when i hear some of these deconstruction stories i have so much pain in my heart because i just feel like had you been given the space the safe space to to hash out some of these doubts and questions i just don't know that people would be there and so find people in your life that you can like talk through some of these things because we're the what i was going to say early on is the heart of the gospel is relational you know primarily with god and us first and then with each other and so it isn't that we're supposed to be an island figuring out all of the stuff alone and so i know i'm sure alisa and you guys could just chime in as well but it's like the god created us for community and so find community in hashing out some of these things because even the the doubts that we might have somebody else might see it from a completely different perspective and where something feels so monumental to you and someone will go well have you thought about it from this perspective and all of a sudden it's like the light bulbs go on because god works differently you know with maybe he might show jeremy something and then show me something so i just think community is really really important that's good and i'll add to that too because um in the question it says how can i get back on the right path and be on fire again my advice to tear the veil gaming so i don't know your first name or i'd say your first name but it's tear the bell gaming um don't make being on fire the goal uh because there's gonna be moments and in times in your christian life when you feel on fire and there's gonna be times when you feel a nothing and it feels like blip nothing at all and that's why we don't go on those roller coasters of our emotions and the highs and the lows and all of this so my advice to you to add everything i want a second what 80 said but also getting on the right path is also going to involve really building and constructing your world view from a biblical place you know read read the bible really build what you believe around the bible read the bible read some good apologetics books some maybe some systematic theology really understand what you believe and why you believe those things and that way when the emotional highs come that's great you know i love worship i'm a feeler too so i get in worship and i'm the the you know blubbering crying person sometimes but then there's some sundays when i go into church and it's like nope got nothing and it's such a peace in my heart to know that i don't have to rely on how i feel because christianity is true whether i feel it or not christianity is true whether i believe it or not whether i feel it and so um the reason this is so important i think for building a solid foundation both intellectually and spiritually is because when those hard times come i mentioned earlier that we lost my nephew a couple years ago to a drug overdose and it was so shocking and so traumatic just being in a movie theater one minute and one hour later i'm in a hospital just looking at the body of this boy that i have loved his whole life at 21 years old and it's it's the end for him and it was just amazingly destabilizing and disorienting and dark and um but it was in those moments that i had a choice to make i could stand on what i know is true or i could go with my feelings but my feelings were dark my feelings were not good but the minute i cried out to jesus and i said look i i'm in this because i know that it's true whether i feel it or not then in waves just the mercy of god the peace of god it seems like a paradox to even say it but even in that horrific type of situation that was so hard for my whole family especially my sister who lost her only son the faithfulness and goodness of god was never more evident to me than in that time now i can't explain why someone else could go through something like that and and walk away from god and i'm not here to judge their story but for me i think you know this whole thing is why we want to testify why we still believe i still believe because a i know that it's true i know that jesus died on the cross for my sins i know that he was resurrected from the dead physically as a real event in history proving everything he said about himself to be true that's the significance of the resurrection wasn't just like disconnected from everything he said it was like he's claiming to be god he's claiming all these things about himself and then he dies he gets killed like what on earth happens but he he raises from the dead and that's the sign that proves his message true what he said about himself is true and and so it was in those in that moment of that just utter darkness indescribable darkness in that hospital room where i had to stand on what i know what i knew and so i think that just to answer your question don't make being on fire the goal make believing trusting walking in discipleship walking in faithfulness to jesus continuing like jeremy mentioned earlier to turn to jesus in repentance that is something we have so lost in our post-modern culture is just the it's not like you said jeremy it's not just a one-time thing uh we should be repenting every day we should be living in repentance lord i love the way uh theologian uh charles ryrie referred to it as light it's like god gives you light and when you respond to that light he gives you more light and first john talks about walking in the light which is the perfect solution it's the perfect middle ground between trying to be sinless and just doing whatever you want you walk in the light you let god expose all of the things in your life and you turn to him in repentance with what he shows you and he'll show you more and we'll all he'll be showing us more until the day we die because we all got stuff that we'll be repenting for until we die but that's the beauty of it is that he offers us that and then we're cleansed we're forgiven there's we don't have to carry our shame we don't have to carry the guilt from our sins because jesus took that upon himself and so i didn't mean to start preaching but just build build a good foundation would be my advice you know real quick that was it was perfect i wanna um add real quick as you were saying you know we're all talking about i've already shared a little bit why i still believe but i want to kind of continue because i think sometimes people can say well that's great you shared you know one experience of god showing up in your life and it's a continual thing and i want to share this very quickly as quick as possible why i still believe still why i still still believe it is because about you know three and a half years ago i went through a major major panic attack breakdown didn't know what was going on never experienced it before in my life uh couldn't breathe it was i was socially i couldn't get out of bed for you know about a week and this went on for a couple weeks straight i'm talking about i couldn't even function and i didn't know what was going on i was like just going i don't know what's going on she's praying for me i'm listening to worship music i'm trying to something and i finally was crying out to jesus i was weeping constantly i mean as a as a grown man we've been on your wife's lap just constantly i was like i'm still i'm a weak man you know and she's like no this is this is good like you know keep keep going keep you know crying out to jesus and so finally i just said god what is it and he said you aren't trusting me with your family with your um finances with your future always i wasn't trusting him at all and i had bitterness towards some you know special people in my life and so what i did was he was right there i said god i'm sorry i repented and that repentance god just lifted that weight of depression anxiety all those things he from my repentance so it wasn't like i was you know i when i found this you know these mistakes i was making and guys like see i told you why would you trust me it was more like there just trust me and that weight came off and i can say that i still believe because god was the only thing that got me through that when i said when i cried out to him with all from the guttural places of my heart he was the one that that rescued me out of that major pit yeah it's good adi camp why do you still believe i think for me you know i so i grew up in the charismatic church it's a lot more emotional right so the emotional side for me jesus was always real and even when i went through a season of doubt it the emotional side for me was like solid totally fine but i years ago went through a season of really reading and researching and i love that you brought that up again of just finding solid reading material and coming back to the truth of god's word because it wasn't until i completely just sat and like read scripture over and over and over and then started to study honestly other religions other just the defense for the gospel that it really turned from something from where i knew in my heart that jesus was real but then i could know in my mind as well that he was as well and for me honestly there is absolutely nothing besides jesus and christianity that makes sense and even though i don't fully know all the answers i don't i don't know the you know there are some really difficult things and i don't always know the answers but i'm just telling you i'm so convinced of the reality of the holy spirit in my life on every single daily basis and i love that scripture and i know we mentioned it early on that it is so so so true for me that i just feel like jesus is everything that i have that when when when they come to him just go where else shall we go you are the one that had the words of eternal life and that for me is where i can land it's just going where else should we go to govern my own life to choose my own truth like that for me sounds miserable it is a weight that i do not want to carry i'm quite happy to just go jesus you're in the driving seat of my life where else can i go but you so that is why john why do you still believe i gotta amen that aiding i gotta a minute i gotta a minute man oh man the last thing that i need is me telling you what eternal truth would be on my own feelings oh my gosh nobody wants to be around that oh yeah uh i mean i just i can't aim in that enough i love that you know i i i'll tie this uh tie this into an answer for the last question if that's alright lisa you see how i do that i'm a lead singer so i can take these really complex things and i can anyway um i want to tie it into something about that last question uh somebody said how can i you know how can i get back right with the lord or whatever that question was man i cannot read the bible uh anymore without just feeling the overwhelming presence of god now i'm not saying it was always like that but i started doing something that i want to tell you about because maybe it'll help you i started reading the bible wait for it out loud it sounds like it's going to be amazing i'm telling you you read you have to read a lot you can read one chapter you read proverbs or psalms out loud and you tell me that the truth of the word of god doesn't begin to penetrate your heart and that's not just my experience the bible said in the book of hebrews we know hebrews 4 12 says the word of god is living and active that means when i am reading the bible that means that god's spirit is doing a work in my heart he's doing whatever work he wants to do but he is digging into my heart and he is splitting my heart open and he is discerning the thoughts and intentions of what's inside of me that's what the bible says and so i want to encourage that that that person that asked that maybe try reading the bible out loud and the reason i say that is because i just want to i just really want to say this i feel like i need to say it sometimes people want to get to the place where they feel like they're right with god and then they start reading the bible don't do that flip it around start reading the bible and let god do his work and see that taste and see that the lord is good you will see that he is good it will bring you to an incredible place because the word of god is living and active that's why i believe the word of god is so evidently true to me even when there are things that i go wow that's kind of weird that's inconvenient for living in 2021 that's inconvenient for my business or for this or this or this but what i find is is when i get myself in line with his word all of a sudden i flourish and i go oh i see that actually is a whole lot better to me it's almost like when you're when you're 18 and you go to college and you're like now i can eat whatever i want to and i'm going to be super happy eating donuts all day long and you think you're happy eating those donuts until you go home and and like my granddad said to me doesn't look like you've been skipping any meals son that's not always fun you might think it's gonna make you happy but it's actually not going to there's actually a better way and that's why i believe the word of god is so evidently true to me and he keeps proving himself true true true true his name is faithful and true it says in the book of revelation so booyah come on now amen i know jeremy knows because he has a song the living word of god i'm going to stand on the truth of the living word of god love it so good corey cooper why do you still believe well mine will be similar to everybody else's in that you know where else can i go um and really that comes to me more in my hard times than in my good times um the fact matter is there is room for people to doubt there is room to be real and i think sometimes we we can lose that in a certain church culture but to learn to be real with the lord like the psalmists do lamentations as you said earlier elisa and every single time he's been faithful to me every single day every time he's unfaithful to me you can try to push him you can try to push him away and you just can't because he just gets in there and he knows you better than you know yourself and so for me it's it's not just experiential it's like it's played out every time in the reality of my life the truth of his word has never once failed me and though you can experience hard times he is always there in the midst of us he didn't promise us a life that was just going to be amazing in fact pretty much the opposite if you read the bible read through the saints abraham abraham's promise like to be the father of many nations and he's had really just two kids i mean and he's wandering in a desert like how how do their lives play out when they're holding on to promises that they are championed for their faith right so we believe in a god who is beyond our circumstances who isn't living just for us and to make us happy but he he lives to change us into his image and and whatever you do as you delight in the law of the lord you meditate on a day and night whatever you do does prosper it just might not be in the way that you want to be that's right and i've just he's just been faithful every step of the way faithful to his word i could and he's my best friend i could just never i could never walk away i just tasted too much to walk away so good so good well as man as we we've been talking an hour and a half so oh i could keep going i know as we come to a close does anyone have any closing thoughts to share just as we that we leave our viewers with tonight i've always got something to say and oh i'm sorry i told you every time i step on 80. we should have had a button for you guys to push like you can push the button first and then talk [Music] because we're all lead singers it's true i i was gonna say i think oh my gosh i lost my train of thought hold on john you go i'm so sorry eddie why don't you just tell her just tell everybody out there to lay it down lay it down and lay it down the benjamin gates still one of my favorite she's still one of my favorite front women of all time if you have not heard the benjamin gate you need to go check it out for real awesome music still stands anyway yes for real that's right um i will i will end with one thing that i've said on on a podcast with elisa i said it on my podcast earlier today in preparation for this for anybody who hasn't heard me say it i just want to encourage christians who are feeling afraid who are feeling like if if if these really smart pastors can deconstruct or if these really great singers or people that love god so much if it can happen to them then where do i stand and you're they're rightly they're rightly shaken thank you honey they're rightly shaken i want to encourage you no this does not happen have to happen to you and if you stand on the word of god it will not happen to you because jesus christ is the same yesterday today and forever you can take it all the way to the bank he will not fail you and his word will not fail you the grass withers the flowers fade but the word of god stands forever so if you stand on the word it then it won't happen to you all right so i want to encourage you not to be afraid but to stand on the word of god be encouraged god is at work read the word of god he will do an incredible work in your life amen i'll just finish with one thing and it's really actually piggies back perfectly with what john said and alisa you mentioned it as well in in your own experience was just not being afraid to come to the lord when scripture says that the guy who came to the lord said lord i believe but help my unbelief and i just think i mean exactly what john's saying like god is gonna meet you in those places that scripture is tried and true and the holy spirit is tried and true and he loves you so don't think for a second that you're less than because you're struggling or you're less than because you have doubts but come fully well that we have a generous god that gave everything for you that he loves you with obviously every fiber in his being to give you life there's no ways he's going to reject you one of my favorite scriptures is in james where it says that god will give liberally wisdom to anyone without finding fault and that means you don't have to have it all together you don't have to be cleaned you don't have to be you know all perfect and cookie-cutter just come to god and he will liberally give you these these answers to your questions and these wisdoms without finding faults so amen good stuff anybody else got a little closing thought for us no i think what did you say corey i've tasted too much to walk away absolutely let's make a meme cory cooper rocking out yeah too much oh such good stuff well i just want to thank all of you for being here tonight to have this discussion i i i know we've all been kind of talking on email threads just praying and um i just truly truly hope that everybody watching that you will sense the love we have for i mean because you know some of these deconstruction stories are from our friends these are people that um we either knew or we really loved um as our friends and love as our friends i shouldn't say past tense we love as our friends and so um everything that we've said is is for them too we love you if you're watching this we love you we want you to know the love of christ we want you to know the love of jesus that you can plant your feet in that is going to be an anchor to you it anchors you to the ground you will not be shaken and you know and that's the thing is like life comes and it shakes us but if you're planted then then you're gonna be okay and everyone here has been through things that that have shaken us like deaths and trials and intellectual uh just deconstructions and the lord has just been so faithful and that's why we still believe it's his faithfulness it's like in lamentations you know this is this is a book that is is such a rich book in the old testament lamentations where it's you know probably jeremiah writing about the fall of jerusalem and just his pouring out his grief and yet he says great is your faithfulness and god throughout the ages has proven to be faithful and true and so the book of jude says have mercy on those who doubt and so um you know our hope is that churches we can become better safer places for people to process some of those doubts and questions because there really are answers for for the intellectual doubts but as uh jonathan mentioned in his question you know there's emotional doubt there's different types of doubt where some of these questions are coming from a lot of people have had traumatic experiences in churches or spiritual abuse and so we just hope that this has been encouraging to you we hope that um you will have tasted and seen just a little bit of the beauty of the gospel and why we still believe with that said um i want to leave you all with a little preview of the podcast that is coming out on my channel next week i interviewed a young lady she's not well known she's not a uh you know platformed person at all but i met her at a conference and i within five minutes of talking with her i said i'd really like you to come on my podcast and share your story so this is just a quick two-minute trailer for the podcast that'll be coming out next week for all of you who are watching i want to thank all my guests and i want to thank all of you who are watching today we love you we're praying for you and we hope that you have tasted and seen and as we close out tonight just check out this trailer and check back with us next week and watch the whole story from jack moreno [Music] i was so enticed by the idea that there were these beings that were outside of this reality and that i could have a relationship with them in some sense ultimately i didn't i didn't want christ because i didn't want to obey the bible but just all in the guise of no this is good and you're just being free and you're freeing yourself from the doctrine that's so oppressive of christianity you need to be your true self and find yourself i knew that there was power behind the occult i had felt it i'd had physical manifestations of it ended up being led to this occult order after years of this i was initiated through this ritual into this order and i would it was very dark but i was so excited because i believed that i needed to go into the darkness to shine the light of knowledge in it in order to gain power i was spending hours a day doing rituals and meditations and spells and i was supposed to be transmuting into this higher person into this more transcended more evolved person and yet i was just wicked and i knew it the lord throughout my life was really just so gracious to put people in my life who who kept planting seeds that i i couldn't shake and he just said you know jesus is the way the truth and the life no one comes to the father except through him and you will go to hell like if you die in your sins and i was shaking but something in me i knew i knew it was true and then i read that satan masquerades himself as an angel of light which was shocking to me because i had been telling myself this can't be bad if it feels this good and i collapsed to my knees and it felt like my soul was being sucked out into just complete absolute darkness and i heard myself scream jesus christ save me [Music] you

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Published: Mon Jul 26 2021