Last week, we mentioned evangelicals who don’t believe that atheists can possibly really not believe in Jesus. In one of our sources, we saw an evangelical claim that evangelicals can quiet their ‘inner atheist’ if they only ‘build our belief on [Jesus].’ But that’s not true. There’s no Jesus on which evangelicals can build belief. Worse, what they have instead as a central pillar of belief doesn’t actually work to quell serious doubts about Christianity’s claims.
Today, let’s explore what evangelicals think their central pillar of belief is, and then find out what it really is.
(From introduction: The Dr. Seuss poem!)
(This post appeared on Patreon on 12/5/2023. Its audio ‘cast lives there too! I am now very woozy and going to bed. <3 to everyone. I’ll write a quick post if I can’t get a post up on Thursday.)
Evangelicals’ supposed central pillar of belief is Jesus
In “A Puritan’s Guide to Quieting Our ‘Inner Atheist’ (archive),” Daniel K. Williams explored how Christians centuries ago quelled their ‘inner atheists.’ Williams expressed shock that a young college student had correctly concluded that the Gospels’ account of Jesus’ resurrection had to be fictional because they contained so many contradictory elements and discrepancies between them.
True, by the way. They do in fact contain far too many of both to be taken as accurate accountings of a historical event. But here’s Williams shocked, I say SHOCKED, to know that the student had “come to a much more extreme conclusion than his doubt warranted.” He writes of the realization:
Discrepancies in the gospel accounts are certainly troubling—but even if there were some conflicting accounts that could not be harmonized, would atheism be the only logical recourse?
And yet that’s often how these kinds of doubts work. Whenever some premise upon which we’ve relied is cut out from under us, we begin to worry that we can’t depend on that foundation—which can ultimately lead us to the conclusion that there is no good reason to believe.
This leads us through a carnival ride through the writings of various Puritans. Williams is, after all, a historian who specializes in the history of Christian apologetics. But his conclusion leads directly away from apologetics:
As Bradstreet herself wrote, echoing the words of the apostle Paul, “I know whom I have trusted, and whom I have believed, and that he is able to keep that I have committed to his charge.”
No matter what, Bradstreet knew she could trust Christ to hold onto her even amid her doubts.
“That hath stayed my heart,” she wrote, “and I can now say, Return, O my Soul, to thy Rest, upon this Rock christ [sic] Jesus will I build my faith; and if I perish, I perish. But I know all the Powers of Hell shall never prevail against it.”
In the end, what we know is Jesus—and if we build our belief upon him, we’ll have the foundation we need to quiet our “inner atheist.”
It’s a curious conclusion, considering Williams’ specialty and his embrace of apologetics. But it’s not an uncommon one at all in evangelicalism. Many Christians—not only evangelicals, of course—mistakenly believe that Jesus himself constitutes the central pillar of their belief in Christianity.
In the wild: Jesus as the central pillar of Christian belief
An evangelism site (archive) begins:
Other religions may have at their center a set of teachings and moral guidlines or spiritual practices. But the Christian faith is focused not mainly on practices or guidlines [sic], but on the person of Jesus Christ.
Focus on the Family has a similar claim (archive) at their website: “Jesus is at the center of the Christian faith.” At a church site (archive), we see a similar claim along with a really tedious Jesus juke (definition here; archive):
A father wanted to read a magazine but was being bothered by his little daughter, Kelly. Finally, he tore a sheet out of his magazine on which was printed the map of the World. Then tearing it into small pieces, he gave it to Kelly, and said, “Go into the other room and see if you can put this together.” He was sure that would keep her busy all afternoon! After only a few minutes, Kelly returned and handed him the map, correctly fitted together. The father was surprised and asked how she had finished so quickly. “Oh,” she said, on the other side of the paper is a picture of Jesus. When I got all of Jesus back where He belonged, then the World came together. [. . .]
So always remember to keep Jesus in the center of your life, and your World will come together as well!
Another evangelical, Corey Trevathan, makes an even more remarkable claim (archive):
When your life is centered on Jesus you can face whatever giants come your way.
On another site (archive), we see evangelical pastor Colin Smith assert:
Jesus is with me and he is for me. Christian faith is confidence in Jesus Christ. That’s why we want him to be at the center of everything we do in worship.
Elsewhere (archive), Hunter Greene tells us that Jesus actually wants to be at the dead center of all Christians’ lives:
I want to suggest to you that Jesus isn’t interested in being the top of your priority list (I know it sounds a bit heretical but keep reading). He isn’t worried about competing with the thousands of obligations and responsibilities we commit to. Jesus doesn’t want to be the top of your list. Rather, He wants to be the center of your life.
This reminds me of how Jesus actually explicitly and repeatedly ordered his followers to treat their relationships with other people as a priority over and above their religious obligations. But we’re getting there!
There’s a reason why all these Christians make this assertion about Jesus being the center of their lives and faith.
Without a Jesus, the central pillar collapses—unless…
If there’s no Jesus making Christianity work, then in theory that central pillar collapses. In that case, Christianity is left without a center.
You’ve likely heard of those deceivers who lose their jobs or get kicked out of school, but still pretend that they’re working or taking classes. A recent family annihilator, Chandler Halderson, did both of these things (archive). He pretended to be a college student about to graduate and an employee of SpaceX. In reality, he was neither employed or a student. When his father began to catch on to the truth, Halderson murdered him and his mother.
But for a very long time, he had everyone around him convinced of these two lies. Dude even faked a concussion and a brain bleed to explain away the serious plot holes in his stories.
The center of Halderson’s life wasn’t schooling and a space-industry job. It was lying to avoid adult responsibilities so he could slack off, play video games, get his bills paid without having to earn money, and leech off of his parents. When that central pillar finally faced destruction, he resorted to murdering his own parents and hiding their bodies to keep it intact.
In the same way, I don’t think Christianity lacks a center. If it didn’t have one, then I doubt it would have lasted for almost two thousand years as an active religion.
Rather, I assert that its center is not what Christians believe that it is.
… It’s not what Christians think it is
Almost ten years ago, we talked about a similar concept in evangelicals’ conceptualization of marriage. They think that Jesus forms the central pillar in their marriages, but that’s not at all true. Similarly, Christians think that Jesus forms the central pillar in their entire faith, but it isn’t true either.
Rather, their practices and beliefs constitute that central pillar.
That’s it.
What Christians believe about Jesus—and how they act upon those beliefs through customs, rituals, and devotions—stands at the center of their faith.
So Jesus can be faker than the chocolate in those cheap Easter coins, and Christianity still stands perfectly fine as a religion.
That’s how that Puritan history dude can accept that apologetics super-sucks as a good reason to believe, but he still falls back on the way they express their beliefs and even belief in Jesus itself as their main reasons to stay Christian.
It’s incredibly circular, yes. But it doesn’t need to make sense to Christians. It just has to feel like it makes sense.
The muscle memory of belief and practice substitutes for a real Jesus
Rituals can be incredibly powerful reinforcements of belief. Even little rituals can do the trick, like repeating catchphrases or thought stoppers like the one in the movie God’s Not Dead (2014), “God is good all the time; all the time, God is good.”
But bigger rituals are much better. That’s where weekly church attendance and daily prayer, Bible study, evangelism, and other such devotions come into play. Taken together, they create a sort of muscle memory for belief. When a Christian begins to slack off with these rituals, their faith may start wavering.
If you’re familiar with Amway, then you have seen already how this works in the secular world of multi-level marketing (MLM) scams. Amway drones learn to perform a variety of important rituals to maintain their allegiance to the scam. The most important of these might be listening to tape-recorded messages from their leaders (archive). They listen to these messages every single day. They also read books by (and recommended by) their leaders and attend regular meetings and major pep rallies sponsored by those leaders. These rituals maintain the drones’ belief in the scam’s assertions and claims. It’s only when they stop performing them that their beliefs start collapsing.
Amway’s claims simply aren’t true. So whatever Amway MLM leaders claim is the center of their faith in Amway, the truth isn’t keeping that pillar together. Rather, it’s their devotions and beliefs that do it.
Taken together, repeating thought stoppers and practicing rituals builds a sort of muscle memory of faith.
When Jesus isn’t real, believers need to build muscle memory to maintain their faith in Christianity
Muscle memory is a well-known concept in training to use skills. Whether the skills involve martial arts, mastering a difficult video-game move, or playing an instrument, this kind of regular, intent practice helps our bodies learn to do it so well that we don’t even need to think about the motions needed. We just do it. Even years and years later, our bodies will be able to remember how to execute those physical motions.
This is how I opened my locker in high school. I had the same locker from 10th to 12th grade, and I didn’t even need to think about how to open it. On the last day of school, we had to write down our locker combinations on a form. And I completely forgot mine. I had no idea what it was. I’d always relied on my hands to know how to open it without me thinking about it. When I actually had to write it down, I was doomed. Eventually, the janitor had to come open the locker for me, and the teacher had to go reference a years-old list to figure out what the combination was.
But when Christians talk about the concept of muscle memory, they’re talking about building faith, not learning a physical skill. It’s truly hilarious to see them comparing the muscle memory of actual physical skills to them using rituals to strengthen their faith in a religious claim.
For example, here’s someone comparing the muscle memory of Tae Kwon Do training (archive) with learning to adhere to Christianity’s various behavioral rules:
Our classes are rote. They are repetitive. A majority of the class is spent practicing strikes and kicks without hitting our opponent. We learn how to control our bodies. [. . .]
Similarly, the life of a disciple includes daily repetition of basic practices. To be conformed to the image of Jesus, we are called to train ourselves to react in a new way. When we’d rather hold a grudge, Jesus says forgive. When we’d rather vent on social media, Jesus says talk directly.
I just can’t. It’s like the guy’s admitting that Jesus ain’t doing anything for anybody. Like he’s admitting that in the total absence of any gods inhabiting Christians and transforming them, Christians must concentrate hard on mastering the reflexes on their own.
Five actual thousand hours later…
Tons of Christians in the wild can be found describing the process of using “muscle memory” to build one’s faith. In fact, Gather Magazine (archive) even has a rough estimate about how many hours of rituals might be needed to really master proper Jesusing:
It has been said that one needs 10,000 hours of practice to truly develop a skill and be considered an expert in one’s field. Let’s say that we don’t need to be faith experts, but we want to be proficient at demonstrating our faith traditions and talking about the shape of our trust in God. Perhaps 5,000 hours is enough for that.
When’s the last time you needed five thousand hours to build muscle-memory faith about the Sun existing? Or that Paris is located in France? Or that the Theory of Evolution describes reality?
Another site, American Thinker (archive), makes the connection between a lack of muscle-memory faith and deconversion:
Rather than deferring to how our Christian worldview shapes our ideas on culture, they allow a degenerate and fluid culture to impart its ideas on our faith. They are not so versed in their faith that it withstood scrutiny from a flaccid culture. [. . .]
I am reminded that I shared the same training in the faith that carries me through today. In times of question or doubt, it is spiritual muscle memory that gets us through.
We find these concepts all over Christianity, but particularly in evangelicalism. There, Christian claims get more and more disconnected from reality the further right we travel along the spectrum of flavors. And there, we find evangelical leaders openly discussing ways of teaching the flocks (archive) to become more devoted and fervent through the building of this specific kind of faith. They openly praise Christian ritual observances (archive) as a way to maintain faith in the religion.
It’s only outside of that bubble that we begin to notice Christians openly criticizing (archive) the ‘center pillar = Jesus’ kind of teaching.
Muscle memory is only needed when people need to build beliefs that aren’t built on easily observed reality
Chances are, you don’t need to build muscle memory for beliefs that are true. People only need to do that for stuff that isn’t. Sometimes, that stuff really isn’t true at all.
At other times, it’s stuff that they fear might not be true.
Years ago, I read an essay by an overweight journalist who attended a Fat Acceptance rally for her news site. (The link is long lost to time, alas.) There, she learned that she needed to practice all kinds of affirmation rituals while standing naked in front of her mirror. Many of these centered around false claims about the health risks of obesity; others involved feel-good assertions about her beauty and desirability as an obese woman. These, she was told at the rally, would make her feel better about being obese. The speakers at the rally further told her that she didn’t need to lose weight, and in fact they advised that she shouldn’t even try to do that. Instead, she only needed to practice the devotions they taught her, thus building her belief in Fat Acceptance dogma.
Once she got home, she gave it the good college try, at least! But very quickly, she realized that she couldn’t make herself believe these affirmation points. She knew that her obesity adversely affected her life. Whether obesity made her beautiful or not, whether she accepted and felt good about her weight or not, she wanted to be the healthiest, best-est version of herself that she could be—precisely because she loved herself. And so self-love, for her, meant figuring out a way to shed that excess weight and keep it off.
(Also, she didn’t happen to agree that she needed to be beautiful and desirable to have self-respect and self-love. That’s kind of weird and misogynistically male-gaze-y. But who’s counting at this point?)
Maybe that’s why so many Christians seemed so scared of engaging with heretics and atheists when I was Christian myself. Back then, I didn’t fear anything that such people had to say. I thought my beliefs were 100% true in every way, so nothing they said could possibly harm my faith. If my beliefs weren’t true, then I wanted to have them shaken. And if they were true, then hearing these folks out wouldn’t shake them at all.
Boy oh boy, though, I was sure that I had nothing to fear.
But I did. Very much, I sure did.
When we strip away the muscle memory stuff, the central pillar collapses
Without those devotions, without those beliefs, Christianity’s central pillar collapses in on itself.
Without them, how would anyone even be able to tell they’re Christians at all?
Good people exist everywhere, in all religions and in no religion. Sheer goodness doesn’t mark a Christian at all. Nor does charity, lovingkindness, or generosity.
Without the markers of belief (like how someone dresses, or what jewelry they wear), or the rituals of devotion or speech, there’s no way to distinguish a Christian from anyone else.
That’s what I was saying a decade ago about Jesus being the center of a marriage. He’s not. He never was. Rather, their shared love is the center of their marriage. All that’s happening is that both marriage partners are in love and, at the same time, both participate actively in a particular fandom. If one stops participating, the marriage is still there. Their love is still its center.
Hopefully, anyway. If the center of their marriage really was shared participation in the fandom, then yes, that marriage is in trouble if one stops participating. I’ve been there, and so have all too many other ex-Christians. Back when I wrote that 2014 post, if someone deconverted then their spouse usually dumped them immediately. As more and more people deconverted, though, it seems like more marriages have survived. These suddenly-mixed-faith partners are realizing that the fandom wasn’t really the center of their marriage. Their love was.
But Christians don’t have the same luxury with their faith. Once they take away the customs and rituals that buttress their beliefs, they need to find something else that’ll hold them there.
There’s no Jesus that’ll do the job for them, after all!
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