When a Christian Rock Singer Stops Believing in God

you're not going to solve this problem on purely scriptural grounds it'll just keep as he says idly quite rightly it'll just keep generating problems so that's my general answer is kid what you need is theology read the smartest people in the Christian tradition all of whom were grounded in the Bible all of whom trust me saw every single issue that you're bringing up and then thought their way through to a resolution [Music] welcome back to the word on fire show I'm Brandon Vaught the host and the content director at word on fire joining us as he does for each one of our discussion episodes is Bishop Robert Barron the ship Baron good to see you hey Brandon always good to see you now today we're gonna be talking about a famous Christian rocker who has announced that he stopped believing in God but before we get there I want to talk about another famous musician who just released a brand-new album and that's your great hero Bob Dylan have you heard it what do you think about it tell us yeah I'm listening to it now so you know I kind of long for the days when I was a kid you go to the record store and you buy one of these big LPS with the album cover it's this we made the whole digital transference thing I'm a little bit lost but what I'm doing I'm just listening to it on my Spotify so with on my iPhone you know in my earplugs so I'm currently listening to it and when I listen to Bob Dylan's records I listen to the songs like several times and then try to get my own sense of the lyrics or maybe I'll look up if someone has transcribed the lyrics because Bob is a never been the easiest person to understand all the time you know and as he's gotten older it's a little more difficult but I like it a lot I like it musically it's you know he's been experimenting with a lot of different styles and he always goes back to kind of classic 12-bar blues is one of his favorite forms but he also loves this kind of country swing and then even even though he did all these Sinatra covers the last three albums so more like classical American pop style and exploring all that but then lyrically he's in a really interesting space it's as though he's kind of taking all of American history all of musical history classical references and he's kind of throwing them together in this great jumble of of his poetry and it's you know fascinating I think Bob Dylan is you you never come out of a song saying oh I got it uh-huh oh that's what it means real clear uh-huh now they're always elusive and elusive and strange and and it's something Scorsese who was a great friend about Dylan said about films he said you remember the plot of a movie what you remember our moments in the movie and I've always felt that's right you don't think of like Goodfellas or something in one of his movies what's the plot of it I guess I get kind of reconstructed but what you remember moments you know a scene a look a bit of dialogue well sing with Bob Dylan songs is it's like okay what's that song about well I can't always tell you but there gosh there were moments in it that are so kind of weird and interesting and and you know provocative so anyway I liked it a lot I'm currently listening to it maybe I'll write something about it when I really get a better handle on it so the new album is called rough and rowdy ways you can find it on Spotify iTunes you can go buy a CD I think if they still have CDs of it so check it out and it's filled with religion as he has from the beginning it's filled with religion all right well today we're gonna be talking about another Christian singer this is a man named John Stein guard I should probably say former Christian singer because after being the frontman for a Christian band mostly evangelicals I think named hawk Nelson John has recently revealed that he no longer believes in God his deconversion was a pretty big deal it was covered by the Today Show People magazine NPR numerous other outlets both mainstream and Christian he sort of came out about this on Instagram where he said after growing up in a Christian home and being a pastor's kid playing and singing in a Christian band and having the word Christian in front of most of the things in my life I am now finding that I no longer believe in God now in the rest of the Instagram post it's pretty long it's almost an essay length explanation he gives several reasons why he no longer believes and God and why I thought we should talk about them bishop is because most the reasons on his lips are on the lips of all the nuns the evangelized there's not really anything novel about these reasons they're extremely common so I thought we could talk through some of them so here's the first one he says that he initially believed in God because and I'm quoting a mere when you grow up in a community that holds a share belief and that shared belief is so incredibly central to everything you simply adopt it everyone I was close to believed in God accepted Jesus into their hearts prayed for signs and wonders and participated in church youth groups conferences and ministries so I did too he recalled so he's kind of gesturing that really the only reason I believed in guys cuz everyone else around me did is you find this being pretty common among young people today well yeah but it's also frustrating Brandon because name one person ever who didn't grow up in some kind of community that conditioned the way he thought and spoke and believed and acted that's called being human that any anyone at any time in history is going to grow up within a certain cultural framework of shared assumptions common language common practices you say oh I'm in a you know completely atheist household well that's a set of beliefs and practices and so on why is that somehow the default position you know the default position is that I'm not a believer no that's a that's a whole ideology that's a whole worldview and willy-nilly every single one of us grows up in one of these worlds I grew up as a Catholic and indeed we've developed parents who took me to mass and and brought me to Catholic school and so on well does that mean I'm I'm just destined for all time in a totally uncritical way to live that way no no at a certain point you begin to raise questions you seek answers you seek to understand more deeply you come to an assessment you say I wonder about this or I accept that and then eventually you appropriate and make your own in your own distinctive way the tradition that has shaped you you leave behind elements of it that you have come to say well maybe that's a little strange or that's not quite right but that's called being human I mean so to make the claim that well because I came of age in a Christian household it's only that I was just kind of brainwashed in condition from the time I was a kid we all were in a way you know but I would say to him now okay maybe you've come to that moment of critique that should leave lead to what paul ricoeur famously called the second naivete in other words we all begin with a kind of naivete like yeah we're kids and we just take it in but then you come to a critical moment and then you can appropriate it on your own terms in this second naivete it sounds to me like he's sort of poised in between those two places I would say don't don't give up keep going keep asking the questions and look for good answers we've talked a lot on this show about the current revival of apologetics and evangelization so many apologetic infer ensues and series and all that kind of stuff but a lot of the apologetics is aimed at adult readers maybe college readers I still think we haven't done a great job feeding apologetics to high school there's middle schoolers and younger and you see that here with his story that he's acknowledging the only reason I believed in God or went to church or followed Christ was because everyone else around me was doing it nobody gave him any good reasons that say well actually the reason you should become a Christian is because it's true not just cuz everyone else is doing it but yeah it I almost feel a sense of burden that like we've all failed not just him but other young people like him that as they're growing up we're just not giving them reasons to believe we don't print it to I don't want to sound judgmental here there's so much in the Evangelical Protestant tradition that I admire and I really do and I think they've they've taught us a lot as Catholics we can learn from their great evangelical enthusiasm their crystal centrism their their sense of the primacy of the Bible and all these good things but a danger and I see it all the time is the lack of a disciplined intellectual tradition that would allow them to engage these questions I this if you'd asked me 20 years ago I wouldn't have seen this but now I take it for granted when I come across especially really angry atheists my YouTube sites I'm no longer surprised although I was in the beginning how many our former fundamentalist Christians our former evangelical Protestants and once you engage them begin scratching the surface it'll come out some version of yeah I was fed all this you know as a kid I was fed all this nonsense and then I you know questioned it and see I would say great I'm glad you questioned it man I'm really glad it's probably when you were an adolescent perfectly normal you began to question the sad thing is there wasn't someone there who could provide from within the religious tradition really good answers but what happened to a lot of these people and I hope well I guess he is already very so he's no longer a believer is he followed the trajectory of those questions into unbelief when in a better world he would have followed them to someone who had a really good answer all right let's keep moving so John says though he grew up as a Christian at home he felt uncomfortable with certain aspects of the religion explaining that praying in public in particular and this is his words felt like some kind of weird performance art and quote emotional cries such as Holy Spirit come fill this place always felt clunky and awkward nah I'm guessing a lot of this is because of his role as like a worship leader or public musician and I'm assuming that's more prevalent in that world but then he says I figured I was overthinking all these things then this was the beginning of my doubt I began to develop the reflex to simply push it down and soldier on but this was the beginning what do you make of that this uncomfortability about prayer and spiritual verbage behind it is a good instinct which is the push toward sincerity what was probably bugging him was the suspicion anyway that people were doing things and they weren't really feeling it they were saying things they didn't entirely believe there was something maybe hyper emotional or an attempt to force the issue you know by using certain language or gesturing in certain ways and that produced in his mind the suspicion of insincerity okay I get that we don't like religious insincerity it's not a good thing now was everybody doing that in fact insincere my guess is no that many were authentically expressing their faith if he didn't feel it I st. fine don't do it you know I share a lot of John Henry Newman and other people like that a certain suspicion of what they call enthusiasm in religion which is a kind of hyper emotionalism or a hyper stress and emotionalism I would if you know if this kid came to me with in a Catholic context I'd say good let's start reading Aquinas let's start reading Chesterton let's start reading Newman let's start reading bonaventure let's start reading Agustin together that maybe you are given to a more intellectual approach to the faith maybe this hyper emotionalism is not your thing I'll give you a concrete example and I mind you please I have great respect for the Catholic Charismatic tradition I do I've known many people in it but when I was a 20 year old kid I'm in the seminary and I was sent for a summer to a parish and at the Paris is a wonderful guy great Chicago priest who was very involved in the charismatic renewal and he brought me to my first charismatic meeting and I was 20 years old and I'm taking it in and I just felt I not me yeah I I just I don't get this this is not what the way I do it and I never went back now again I don't say that judgmentally to those who do find a lot of spiritual richness in that tradition I knew it wasn't for me and it still isn't for me okay good I like the Catholic faith big old tent we never throw anything out you're into that that helps you in your spiritual life terrific it's not my thing it just won't be I remember one of my teachers at Mundelein I was telling that story some years later and he goes oh yeah you you're too much of a rationalist and he didn't mean that as a put-down he's about you're too much of a kind of a thinker and so you're not gonna respond to that but other people do fine fine they might read Chesterton and say all right I don't know what that guy is talking about and they find you know they find uplift somewhere else fine so I can in the case of this young man I'd say okay maybe that's not your thing that's not your style of doing it so there's a lot of other ways we can pursue the religious thing so John Stein guard continues the first part was kind of more experiential his experiences growing up and he didn't believe then he had these uncomfortable prayer experiences but now he moves into actual reasons why he's dropped Christianity and they sent her around to one's the problem of evil predictably and the other one has to do with various problems with the Bible so let's look at each one of those so first one the problem of evil and I should mention here that Matt Nelson the assistant director of the world on fire Institute did a great piece for the word on fire blog titled John Stein guard atheism and the scandal of evil where he focuses specifically on this one objection but here's how Stein guard puts it these are all his own words there were things that just didn't make sense to me if God is all loving and all-powerful why is there evil in the world can you not do anything about it does he choose not to is the evil in the world a result of his desire to give us free will okay then but what about famine and disease and floods and all the suffering that isn't caused by humans and our free will if God is loving why does he send people to hell so kind of a whole litany of objections all swirling around this problem of evil what do you say to someone like Stein guard who brought these to you I'd say good questions the smartest people in the tradition from the Bible on have raised those questions take a good hard look of the book of Job I say you want to see if the Bible itself wrestling with this problem you know the book of Job you could say is a critical moment within the biblical revelation because there's a kind of too easy proposal you find it like in the book of Deuteronomy you people be good and you follow God's law and you'll prosper you you deviate from God's law and and you won't wellhere's job who's described as he's this great guy he follows the law he loves God and yet every possible bad thing happens to him so within the Bible itself you've got people who are wondering about this problem look at the great tradition the smartest people from Irenaeus to agustin to Anselm to Thomas Aquinas to John Paul the second all wrestle with this problem it's it's the finally I would say only really serious objection to the claim that God exists okay so I'd say that I'd say I'm not gonna put down your question it's a it's an altogether valid question I've often said Thomas Aquinas in one of his objections to the claim that there is a God sums it up perfectly God is described as infinite good if if God is infinite good that would seem to eliminate all evil because if one of two contraries is infinite the other would be destroyed but there is evil therefore there's no God that's a neat little syllogism that Aquinas puts in the mouth of one of his objectors you know so the first move darn good question and I don't know any serious believer who doesn't at some point wrestle with it now and then two further moves one more philosophical the other biblical Thomas's answer God is so good and so wise that he can permit certain evils to bring out of them a greater good and then he gives several examples of that principle and I think everyone can at least grasp the principle right that certain Goods wouldn't exist without certain evils and now to anticipate one of his other questions one of those Goods is freedom you show me how you create a finite conflictual world that also has freedom in it and where you don't find the abuse of freedom so if if God wants there to be freedom he has to allow for the possibility of the abuse of freedom one more step if that's the freewill defense and he alludes to that is there also as John Polkinghorne says a kind of free process defense namely that God wants a world that exists on its own terms not being manipulated in a puppeteering sort of manner but a world that has its own integrity its own causal integrity in that world to allow free process you allow for things to fall away and to come into conflict and you know now the earthquakes and floods and and etc under that rubric now what I'm doing is you will know Brandon is we're kind of gesturing toward an answer not giving an answer as though oh I got it now no problem but setting certain rational parameters for approaching it and I promise that's the philosophical than the more biblical I bring them back to job and say okay the Bible itself has your question what's the answer look at the longest speech given by God in the Bible and it's that speech that answer to job you know where were you when I laid the foundations of the world in other words why would you ever think that in your finite mind you could grasp the workings and purposes of an infinite mind that's controlling all of space and time so job doesn't give the answer oh I get it now oh I see precisely why I'm suffering no but it invites you to a new spiritual space where you surrender to the infinite wisdom of God which lies beyond your Ken you know now again have I solved the problem of suffering of course not but I've I've gesture toward an answer I've circumscribed the the space in which the answer might be found you know I'm saying and that's what our tradition is done with this you know famously problematic issue I guess what still bugs me Bishop is in both traditions the evangelical tradition that Stein guards coming out of and our Catholic tradition there have been so many books videos podcasts resources that are accessible like not even high level academic wrestling with this problem but stuff made for people like Stein guard that if only someone had gotten him something by Alvin planning or a William Lane Craig on the evangelical side or Aquinas or his popularizers on our side so many of these challenges or objections maybe not would have been totally convincingly answered but they at least wouldn't be as potent they wouldn't have led to him leaving the faith yeah and there's something branded and I gesture toward this very liberating when you say when you realize oh gosh really really smart people before me have asked this same question because people at times can feel like oh my gosh everyone around me believes and I've got this question and I'm the only one I'm the only one that is having this no man believe me lots and lots and lots of really smart Christians and biblical people have wrestled with this question and that in itself should give you a kind of comfort or a kind of maybe you can take a deep breath and say okay I look at this more you know honestly and not it is in a panic of disaffiliation like because I've got this problem that no one's ever had before I'm I'm through with the operation you know you've talked about this before I think it was in a previous Q&A where it might have been a parent asking what do I do about my child who comes to me with all these questions or challenges and objections and you said you just modeled it the first move is to acknowledge and affirm these are great questions art people have asked them and you're sort of cutting it off at the pass and making them much more receptive to hearing you yeah quite right okay we only got about 10 minutes left here and he's got a whole bunch of other objections so there's no way we're gonna be able to and adequately answer them all but all the rest of them swirled around the Bible I'm just gonna read their litany here and you pick what which ones you want to respond to so Stein guard explained that my whole life people always said you have to go back to what the Bible says I found however that consulting and discussing the Bible didn't answer my questions it only amplified them and then here come the specific objections why does God seem so pissed off and most of the Old Testament and then all of a sudden he's a loving father in the New Testament why does he say not kill but then instruct Israel to turn around and kill men women and children to take the promised land why does God let job's suffer horrible things just to win a bet with Satan why does he tell Abraham to kill his son more killing again and then basically says just kidding that was a test why does Jesus have to die for our sins more killing again if God can do anything can he forgive someone without them dying I mean my parents taught me to forgive people and nobody dies in that scenario suffice it to say that when I began to believe that the Bible was simp a book written by people as flawed and imperfect as I am that was when my belief in God truly began to unravel Wow what do you what do you where you begin with that you know I'd say this Brandon this is why Sola scriptura is a bad idea and I don't I guess I am being a little provocative when I say that and I understand there's nuanced ways that Protestants take that famous principle but from a Catholic perspective it's just like not a good idea to say just go back to the Bible because as he correctly it points out here the Bible on its own is going to generate questions and conflicts and puzzlement right because as he says well I sound like God is love but yet he does this and he says don't kill but then he's orders that and what look at the history of theology go back to the Middle Ages when someone like Thomas Aquinas was brought on as a Maji stare a master of theology his first responsibility was to preach right it's a fraidy-cat or he's a preacher well if you're pretty contour you've got to be a Bible commentator because you preach on the Bible correct well now here's the here's the moment if you're a Bible commentator you will naturally confront what the medieval is called cuestiones dispute at a disputed questions and I just raised some of them he just raised some of them those are classic question--is dispute at a what come what comes out of questions dispute at a theology theology is the rational attempt to try to understand the revelation given in the Bible or if you want to change it to resolve the disputed questions that naturally arise from biblical interpretation when you bracket theology and the answer is always the same go back to the Bible go back to the Bible that's not going to solve the problem and he's witnessing to that see I would say to him I'll say services bluntly and comically I'd say become a Catholic because you're not going to solve this problem on pure early scriptural grounds it'll just keep as he says idly quite rightly it'll just keep generating problems so that's my general answer is kid what you need is theology read the smartest people in the Christian tradition all of whom were grounded in the Bible all of whom trust me saw every single issue that you're bringing up and then thought their way through to a resolution I'll give you one example from the very early church from the second into the third century origin of Alexandria who knew the Bible as well as any theologian in our tradition knew the Bible as well as any evangelical a preacher today Origen saw this problem he saw when the Bible seems to culminate in the revelation of of the nonviolent Jesus dying on the cross right but yet in the Old Testament we have all these commands of God to put the ban on the Amalekites and so on and so forth what in origin do now this is not after Darwin not after the Scopes Monkey Trial this is in the 3rd century Origen said we should read those texts as spiritual allegories because we should read the whole Bible in light of the culmination of the Bible which is Jesus the crucified lamb standing as those slain he's the interpretive key so now we read them so Israelites against the Egyptians against the Babylonians against the Amalekites and so on and so forth what are those but spiritual allegories of the struggle of what is right and good and spiritual in me against what is sinful and I must indeed put the ban on what sinful and dysfunctional in me because if I play around with it I battle it but you know to a limited degree I let some of it survive what's gonna happen it'll overwhelm me put the ban on it so Origen early early on in the Christian tradition provided a spiritual hermeneutic to deal with a lot of those texts that are bothering our friend here so much now I just give that as one example of how I feel Oh Jen so not mind you knew the scripture as well as anyone in the whole tradition but did not subscribe to a Sola scriptura view but rather theology eyes about the scripture and and everybody set the tone for a lot of the theology of Christianity so I would say to him I mean move into a Catholic interpretive framework and and you'll find I could look at each one of his objections now but you'll find some of the smartest people in the tradition who provided answers for those questions if listeners want a good contemporary book on a lot of these questions our friend Trent Horne he's an apologist at Catholic Answers he is a whole book called hard sayings which go through a lot of these dark passages hard sayings of the Bible so I'd highly recommend that bishop let's close with John Stein guards closing words in his big confession here's what he says I'm open to an idea that God is there I'd prefer it if he was I suspect if he is there he is very different than what I was taught but until then I feel like the best thing I can do is be honest stepping away from belief in God has felt like a loss in some ways but it's felt like freedom and many others I'm not sure how much this will rock the boat I don't know if this will surprise anyone but it doesn't matter what matters is that I finally worked up the courage to tell my story to share my deepest truth and that feels like freedom to ship what do you say to that fine what he's found freedom from is a childish faith he's been liberated from a from the first naivete he's been liberated from what he received uncritically as a child and he's reached a level of intellectual attainment where he's asked the right questions that have led him past a naive childish faith good that is a real liberation but but I would say follow that other instinct you have that but I I feel I've lost something too and I wish God were there good follow that instinct because that will lead you to the second naivete but what you got to do you got to go now through the crucible of theology you have to you've honestly asked the questions terrific but don't stop there don't stop in a kind of easy adolescent skepticism rather follow those questions to people that have some real answers and I think you'll find you'll come back to the faith of your childhood and that's okay but now in a much more mature and sophisticated way so I would say yes to both instincts yes - yes it's a free it's a freedom it's a real liberation good we should leave our childish faith behind but don't forget the legitimate lure of the faith that really is calling you to a deeper appropriation of it and then I'd say I'd recommend the resources of the Catholic tradition will help you in this regard more than what you'll find in the evangelical tradition [Music] well it's time now for our question from one of our listeners today we have one from John in San Antonio Texas and he wants to ask a bishop for some advice on explaining a difficult theological concept to a nun or an unaffiliated person here's this question hello this is John San Antonio how would you explain to a nun or to someone who doesn't know much about the Catholic faith how would you explain to them the Magisterium and its role in the church thank you yeah my used magista earlier with thomas aquinas right my gsturm is like a master or a teacher so the Magisterium is the kind of teaching authority of the church you know I would say to your friend who asked that question first I asked him does he play baseball and if he does then he knows the indispensable role played by an umpire even though we kind of boo the umpires when they come on the field that's the old tradition I don't they still do that but when I was a kid and you're with your game and the umpires came out you know we don't like the umpire but any one that series about baseball like some Pires because without an umpire the game will devolve very quickly into chaos right because there's gonna be close calls that was a ball no it was a strike he's safe no he was out and if you're not an umpire to adjudicate that talk to anyone that's ever coached little kids right it'll devolve within a minute into bickering and the game is gonna be over thank God for umpires because umpires are a living voice on the field who apply the rules and principles of baseball to the particular situation and make a call so the first thing an umpire has to know are the structuring elements of baseball right how do you play baseball what is baseball what are the limits to it I always find this interesting when I was a kid I watched a lot of baseball on the umpires would gather before as the game was beginning and they would discuss the ground rules in a particular stadium you know because stadiums are all bit different and you know that like Wrigley Field where I watch baseball had a basket that went around the the fence and if the ball went in the basket it was a hole you know so the umpire has to know the general rules of baseball he's got to know the particulars of this of this stadium and then his job is when there's a close call to decide he's safe he's out that was a home run well people bicker with him yeah they do all the time the kick dirt on him ok but at the end of the day everyone knows man the umpires got the final word med steering's like that so the church has a structure it's not a it's not a freewheeling debating society it has a structure we hold to certain things the Creed and their doctrines and we have certain practices that are essential to our life are there conflicts and arguments yeah like all the time like every minute read church history read present-day church affairs we fight all the time right well when that happens who decides well at the local level you may be the parish priest would have to intervene but let's say they still keep fighting well then the local bishop probably has to intervene let's say they still keep fighting well then maybe a Metropolitan Bishop has to pronounce something they still keep fighting well at the end of the day it has to go to the Pope and to the formal teaching authority of the church in Rome which makes a call yeah that's right that's wrong without that the church would devolve like a bad baseball game into endless bickering so I would say that to your friend that the Magisterium plays an umpire ring role which is essential to the ongoing flow of the church's life it's it's like a game in a way like we're playing the Christian game all the time without an umpire it'll devolve into chaos well great question John and before we leave here I'd like to encourage John and everyone watching and listening to join the word on fire Institute I think we're up to around 14 15,000 people from all over the world who are part of this exciting new platform but it's a place where you can take courses in theology evangelization philosophy culture and much more there's a bunch of courses you have access to all of Bishop Barron's films and study programs and then I mentioned last time we were together that we just released the newest edition of our evangelization and culture journal this beautiful full-color smart journal with all sorts of great articles that goes out to every single member of the Institute so if any of that sounds appealing check it out at word on fire dot Institute and join us today well thanks so much for watching and listening we'll see you guys next time on the word on fire show [Music] thanks so much for watching if you enjoyed this video I encourage you to share it and be sure to subscribe to my youtube channel [Music]

Channel: Bishop Robert Barron

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Length: 35min 45sec (2145 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 20 2020