It truly is marvelous to consider how far American culture has gotten in just the past 20 or 30 years! When I deconverted, I had to figure everything out for myself. As far as I knew, I was literally the only ex-Christian in the whole wide world. And let me tell you: life felt pretty damned lonely.
Sometimes when I look back at my days as a Christian, I’m thunderstruck by how absolutely exhausting it was in every single way. For a religion promising peace, rest, a light yoke, and vaguely-defined joy to its followers, Christianity brought precious little of any of it to any of us. Not long ago, I ran across a Southern Baptist Bible study about sin that really reminded me of that exhaustion.
Well, it’s finally happened. I’ve finally found an evangelical who thinks that the Book of Revelation is supposed to be a Christian self-help guide to conflict resolution. I thought I’d seen it all with shoehorned misinterpretations, but apparently not! And his listicle displays the worst, most misinformed, most studiously gaslighting elements of evangelicalism as a whole.
If Tim Keller actually had the ability to listen to people, he’d never need to ask this kind of disingenuous question.
Authoritarian Christian leaders really do not like dissenters, do they? Today, let’s check out why.
It’s the unforgivable sin. The worst thing a Christian can possibly do. Jesus himself declares in two gospels that if someone commits it, he’ll never forgive them, ever. And yet Christians have never known exactly what it is or how to tell if they’ve done it.
A few days ago, we started talking about a 2008 book, Where Have All the Good Men Gone by A.J. Kiesling (who is one of those women). We’re discussing it to get some ideas of why single, middle-aged evangelical women just can’t find husbands within their faith community. And it turns out that one major hindrance for them is their own fixation on a particular love narrative — a cherished fantasy that interferes with the reality of their situation. Today, let me show you the false love narrative that holds these single evangelical women back — and how far they’re willing to go to hang onto it.
With their grandiose language, spiritual warriors certainly sound impressive. Ah, but if you lift the hood of this Jesus-built hot rod, you’ll find nothing more under it than a pokey little jalopy engine. Today, Lord Snow Presides over the utter banality that spiritual warriors mask with over-the-top Christianese.
Yesterday, we watched American Gospel: Christ Alone. In this 2018 documentary, Christians bicker and argue about exactly what ‘the gospel’ even means. The documentary makers decide ultimately that it means not prosperity gospel. Today, let me show you this documentary — and we’ll see how well they make their case.
I recently ran across this gobsmackingly self-deluded blog post from fundagelical group The Gospel Coalition (TGC) about why they think Christians don’t read their Bibles enough. It gave me such a fit of the giggles! After I recovered, I thought maybe I’d help them out a little by showing them why they really shouldn’t trust Christian surveys–and what the problem likely actually involves.