In the last two weeks my news feed has been lit up with headlines about two prominent men in the Christian faith, renouncing their beliefs and turning their backs on Christianity. This was not private information that was found out and reported to the world…instead these men made it a point to announce their decisions publicly. While I’m sure this is not the first time such proclamations have been made, these two are certainly getting a lot of press because of their positions and standing in the church and the Christian culture.
As I’ve been thinking about these confessions or as one of these men put it, “real talk”. I can’t help but wonder, what’s the point in telling the world you lost your faith in God, because of the questions about Him and the Christian faith, that you either couldn’t find an answer for or couldn’t accept? Does the “new truth” you now follow, somehow qualify you to be more legitimate in your influence upon others than you were before?
It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that anyone who has been a leader in the Christian faith for 10…20….30 years, and then walk away in disbelief; somehow think that at that point, they’ve cleaned their hands of God and faith and are now simply going to move on to their next truth.
Do you really think the truth of God can be so easily forfeited and forgotten from your life?
I’m not so sure.
I mean, after one of these men spent time to write out how Christianity has very few answers to people’s questions in this life…especially the difficult ones…he writes at the end of his announcement to “love and forgive and to be kind and generous and good to other people absolutely”. Are these not principles from the Bible that Jesus taught over and over again? Of course they are! So if someone is choosing to step away from God and their belief in Him and all He stands for…why give instruction that clearly comes from the Word He created and that these men most surely learned from? What’s the point?
At the end of the day, we (as Christians) have to start living our belief through the truth of God’s wisdom and nothing more. We live in a culture fueled by emotion and how one feels on any particular day. God has called us to a higher standard of living. One that is not so sporadic and dependent on human temperament. By following God’s truth and wisdom in obedience, we can be assured that we’ll experience enough in our lives to know that God is real and that He is faithful.
Those believers that choose to step out of the faith will find that their left with just as many questions as they had before if not more. I think the concept being lost in Christianity today is that we believe by FAITH. We don’t believe by sight, or touch, or feel, or our emotions, or having all the answers. The truth is, even if our belief was confirmed by all these senses, we would still find a way to be dissatisfied because of our sinful and rebellious nature.
We live and believe by faith, and any believer who thinks they can live their life like they never believed in the first place is mistaken. Trust me, no matter how far you run, you’ll always end up at God’s feet at some point. It’s not a matter of “if” this will happen…but when.
“Once people have seen the light, gotten a taste of heaven and been part of the work of the Holy Spirit, once they’ve personally experienced the sheer goodness of God’s Word and the powers breaking in on us—if then they turn their backs on it, washing their hands of the whole thing, well, they can’t start over as if nothing happened. That’s impossible.”
