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Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.
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This is Bleeding Daylight with your host, Rodney Olsen.
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Welcome to Bleeding Daylight.
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Thank you for listening.
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There are hundreds more inspirational episodes waiting for you at bleedingdaylight.net.
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Please find and follow Bleeding Daylight on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, and it'd be great to connect with you.
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What do you do when some of the things you've been taught about faith cause you to start doubting?
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Have you ever been told that you should believe without questioning?
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Is it okay to admit your doubts to others or even to God?
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Today's guest has travelled that journey.
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Today's guest is someone who's spent nearly 30 years wrestling with the big questions of faith and helping others do the same.
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Dr David Pendergrass is a pastor, biblical scholar and pastoral counsellor with a PhD in historical theology.
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But what is perhaps most striking is his honesty about doubt.
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He walked away from faith intellectually twice before finding his way to a belief that could hold both his heart and his mind.
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He's taught scripture, revitalised churches, counselled couples through hard seasons and written extensively on what it means to move from simply knowing truth to actually living it.
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David, welcome to Bleeding Daylight.
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Thank you so much.
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Really, my honour.
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Faith is never just about experience, but it's also not just about intellectual knowledge.
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I'm wondering if you can take me back to that profound experience you had of being called to ministry.
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Oh, very good question.
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Yeah, I became a Christian when I was around the age of six or seven, but I wanted to be an astronaut all my life.
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I was active in churches and I was 18 years old.
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At the time I was living in a place called Nashville, Tennessee, and I was coming home from a Bible study for a youth group, as I often did, in my mom's old car.
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And there was a cassette of a singer who was popular in the States back in the 80s and 90s called Wayne Watson.
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And he wrote a song predicated upon the Beatitudes, and the song was called Blessed Are.
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It's a fantastic song.
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And there was a line in that song, it was talking about hunger and thirst for righteousness, and he says, those who hunger and thirst, I'm going to paraphrase, but he says, satisfied by none but Christ, this idea that they were hungry, hungry.
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And there was a season in my life for probably six months or so, I'd done a workbook called Experiencing God by Henry Blackaby.
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It was really popular at the time.
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I had met him in person a couple of times.
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That verse and that song, I'd heard many times, but that night in particular, after that Bible study, just nailed it.
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I just had this incredible prayer, worship, praise time.
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I was telling God, that's it.
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It's like a hunger.
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I can't get enough of you.
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And I remember distinctly in that bumpy 30-minute drive home, by the time I parked, I was crying.
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I was tearing up.
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Had a thing back in the 1900s called cassettes.
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You got to push rewind.
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I'd rewind and push play, rewind and push play, because I thought that was it, and I was crying.
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And I just prayed and prayed and said, God, this is it.
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I'll do whatever you want.
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The rest of my life, I'll do whatever.
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And I had this profound sense as if God said, okay, that's what I want.
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It was something like, okay, there's a sense of affirmation.
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I stopped the music and I cried and I prayed, and it wasn't just affective.
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It wasn't just a good therapy session.
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It wasn't just a good song.
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I've had great songs in my life.
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It was not that.
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I went inside a little different person.
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And I told my mom about the next morning before I was a senior in high school.
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I grew up in Baptist, in Baptist world, that's called the cult of ministry.
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And I let it simmer for a while.
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I didn't tell someone immediately besides her.
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But over the next few days and then weeks, it just simply did not go away.
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I still love, love in a small, hell, astrophysics and science, all that space.
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But all of a sudden, my desires simply changed.
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And instead of thinking about trumpet scholarships and engineering and all this stuff, it was, no, it's going to be something in ministry.
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I chose it, but it chose me too.
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I mean, it's both and it seems to me.
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What that vocation would be, I didn't know.
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I had no angels speak to me.
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It was just simple.
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You have a new direction.
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At first I thought maybe youth ministry.
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And then maybe I thought it was going to be music ministry.
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I was a music major for a while.
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I started in singing a quartet.
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And then about my master's degree, I really felt called more to do scholarship.
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And I had professors who believed I could do it.
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That's a big deal when you don't feel like you can.
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And so I applied for PhD programs and then thought I was going to be a professor for a while and then ended up eventually in pastoral ministry as a real sweet spot in leadership.
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But that's more than you ask.
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But yeah, that was a very big deal for me.
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Still is.
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It's interesting that we can have an experience like that.
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And then as you say, you go on to do a lot of that book learning, learning about the faith.
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You're backing up experience with all that information, all that understanding of who God is.
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And yet you deal with doubt.
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Why do you think it is that we can have an experience of God in a very real way as you did?
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We can learn so much and say, yes, it all stacks up.
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And yet doubt starts to creep into our mind.
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Great question.
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And doubt hit me really hard.
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I grew up in a home where I would say good evangelical theology was taught.
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I didn't have a lot of biblical knowledge, so I could sound like a normal Billy Graham sermon, you might say, but I didn't know where to find it.
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I didn't know a lot of Bible trivia facts.
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In my undergraduate degree and then some of my master's, that's when I really started to learn biblical stuff.
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And so it raised an enormous amount of questions, particularly about some things I had been taught and some things not, some things just ignorance of.
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I didn't know that at all.
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But boy, that's troublesome.
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What do you mean there's textual variance?
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It raised a lot of questions.
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And it became kind of a snowball of intellectual inquiries of a lot of unanswered questions, a lot of things some people didn't tell me before.
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But in addition to that, I don't think it's really intellectual.
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I think there's also an emotional and spiritual component to this.
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And at the time it did feel like a kind of a spiritual warfare.
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I know the difference because today I'm always wanting to learn.
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I'm ignorant.
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I'm so ignorant.
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Ask my wife.
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I mean, so I'm not omniscient, even though all my degrees, I still love learning, but I don't feel scared.
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I don't feel dark.
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I don't feel lonely.
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I don't feel despair because I'm ignorant.
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But in that season I did.
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So it wasn't just knowledge.
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It was knowledge mixed with a sense of what if none of this is true and it probably isn't true.
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My wife is a perfect example of a disciple of Jesus for whom this never occurred.
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She never went to higher education.
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And even then she's still bright and knowledgeable, but she's never had this kind of crisis of faith.
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She has her own questions and doubts here and there.
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But I did.
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Boy, I did.
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And so for me, what I did was I had professors that I really respected, one or two in particular.
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I mean, I literally typed up questions of everything I could think of, and I would go to him, meet with him, and he'd say, now go read these books, go read these books.
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So I had a few live people to whom I could go that I trusted who wouldn't just say, just go pray about it.
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Secondly, of course, I had good authors.
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People like C.S. Lewis was very formative for me, very, very helpful.
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And to have people for whom Christianity both needed to make sense and feel right.
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For all my life, it had felt right, and it kind of made sense.
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Not everyone has to go through that or even does go through that, but boy, I did.
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And I'm glad I did.
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At the time, I was not glad at all.
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I went to my undergraduate for about a year, year and a half.
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I was dating my wife, who's a Christian.
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Then we got married.
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She's saying, I'm about to marry this guy.
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What if he leaves Christianity?
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It was a very tough time.
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And then I was good for about a year and a half.
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And then it happened about six months of my bachelor's degree again, but that was shorter.
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I just had this, for whatever reason, overarching virtue.
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I don't want to be duped.
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If this stuff is stupid, I don't want to believe it.
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There's a speaker here in California, I think it's Greg Coco.
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He says, believing in Santa Claus felt good and made me a good little boy.
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But it's gibberish.
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No one converts to Santaism late in life.
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Just because Christianity made me feel good, it made me a good little boy because I'm scared of being judged.
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That doesn't mean it's true at all.
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I remember that just really, I didn't hear that quote until many years later, but that's exactly what I was thinking back when I was 19, 20 years old.
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I thought, I want it to be true.
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That's all I've known.
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But if it's not, I don't, I've got to go.
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It was unflinching.
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And so I looked at all the world religions, the major things they taught, in addition to Christianity, of course, just even naturalism, atheism.
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I just went one by one by one, go these don't sound persuasive.
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And then I had enough questions answered.
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Eventually I wrote a book when I was teaching in high school.
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It changed my ministry perspective as well.
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Whenever I teach, preach virtually all the time, I always lean toward the skeptic.
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The person goes, are you sure?
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Or this sounds pretty stupid.
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Or I just have a profound empathy and compassion for those who are on the fence or they've got questions.
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I personally get really worked up when I hear people say, I had questions and my pastor said, you know, just pray about it.
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Or they don't ask those questions.
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I feel pretty defensive for such people.
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They don't need my help, but I do feel very protective for them.
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So I'm glad I went through it now because it influenced my teaching and preaching.
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And then eventually I wrote a book called A Skeptic Challenge to the Christian, where I give in about 200 pages, all the main reasons why I find Christianity to be the most persuasive of all the world religions.
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And why I think it's also not just the most persuasive compared to, but why I think it's true.
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I'm still a skeptical kind of person, no doubt about it, but I'm not a skeptic, of course.
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I made up my mind that it's true.
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We live in an age where when people come to doubt, oftentimes we're hearing this term of deconstruction.
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The things that they were taught when they were young, no longer satisfy.
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But it seems rather than do what you did and going through the process of finding out what actually is truth, they will walk away from faith.
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And this is not to diminish the experience they're having.
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Obviously there are real doubts.
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How can we avoid going through that?
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How can we actually go through that period of doubt and say, this is what I'm feeling.
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Where do I go now?
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Yeah, boy, another great question.
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I did a video on my YouTube channel, that exact question of my deconstruction, because I have a deep compassion for those who are going through it.
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And I say in the video spot five or six kind of major tips, but just to reiterate some of them now.
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One is, and this is difficult to do in evangelical cultures and my experience in the States, this is not uniform.
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It's not ubiquitous, but it is common for them not to feel safe to say what you just said, or I just said, like in public and public spaces, because it had to whisper.
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I don't know if I believe that's true and Noah's Ark or this or that.
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And so I think as much as possible for those are going to deconstruction, I encourage to say there are people who are safe for whom they are not anxious.
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They will not shame you or judge you if you have questions or doubts or you're uncertain.
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You might have to work harder to find them.
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And I deeply commiserate with that need to find.
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God was very gracious to me that I had some people who are also not scared, like the professors and so forth.
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So that was very helpful.
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If you can find someone.
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Secondly, I'd say if you can't find a human, there are books.
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Because it's emotional and spiritual as well, I also have now over 20 years experience in individual and couples counseling, that I have yet to meet a person or read from people deconstruction.
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And I've read it a lot from videos and books and whatever, who didn't have a deep emotional or spiritual thing, who eventually left.
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I don't know, maybe they were caught in some addiction and people said, let's not do that.
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And they felt judged, or maybe their spouse had an affair, or maybe their pastor molested them.
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There's some deep wound or woundedness.
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So as a therapist, as a Christian counselor, my first question for people who doubt has been through all my ministry is not ever, it's never been, what are your major questions?
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My first question always is, can you tell me for a second, what are you afraid might happen if this were true?
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Deep inside, what are you afraid of?
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After I built some rapport with them, because usually it's driven by some fear.
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And I've met people who say, I'm afraid if it's true, I have to go back to church and they're going to molest me again.
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Or I've got to be my parents, but they're very manipulative, or I've got to this, or I've got to choose between what science tells me or my particular church's teaching on Genesis or this or that, or Revelation or whatever it might be.
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If I choose, I'm going to lose all my friends and family, David.
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So I spend more time on the emotional, psychological, spiritual side.
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But then I still say, if they go, no, it's really just intellectual questions, well, then let's explore it.
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If that's a struggle to which you are going or have been on the fence about that, I would encourage you to say that there are people who can be supportive, even if they're in books.
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And secondly, of course, ask yourself, is there a type of emotional wound that you're trying to protect?
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And I would address that first.
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And by analogy, I do the same thing with people grieving.
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Let's say I don't feel very close to God.
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My first question is not, what sin is in your life?
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I never ask that.
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I say, tell me for a second, what loss have you had in your life?
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Almost always a mom, a dad, a son from childhood or recently, and they're not grieved enough.
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And so if I grieve this, if I accept Christianity, I'm mad at God because my mom died or whomever.
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So I found oftentimes that's the case.
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In my own life, I don't remember having an emotional thing, but the spiritual thing was very real, intellectual and spiritual.
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My fear at the time was being duped.
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I had a big, strong fear of being seen or being and being seen as stupid.
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That mattered to me a lot.
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And I see it in my life not to be seen as a dummy, as like, you'll be a laughingstock.
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If a smart person meets you and you believe in the fairy tales, you'll be an idiot.
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So at the time that was important for that part of me, it's not anymore, but at the time it sure was.
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And if I had therapists that said that to me, it would have saved me some time, frankly, I would address that quicker than I did.
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If you are deconstructing, no, there are people who can commiserate with you.
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They're really, really good books by specialists.
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What I found is the people typically deconstruct and then they go read Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins or whatever and go, Oh, I read so-and-so.
225
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I'm all for books.
226
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I don't burn the books.
227
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My follow-up question is great.
228
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Did you read Richard Bauckham?
229
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Did you read Craig Keener?
230
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Did you read Richard Burge?
231
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Do you know who these people are?
232
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Do you know who Ben Whittington III is?
233
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Have you read N.T. Wright?
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That is, they don't know anybody in this field of New Testament scholarship, real genuine world-class historians, but they read a guy who's an evolutionist who knows nothing about Christianity and that's what persuaded them.
235
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I guess my response is if you're really interested in Christianity, if it's not just a ruse, rather you're like, I don't care about this stuff anyway.
236
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I want to go have sex with my girlfriend.
237
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I don't care about Christianity.
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That's your motivation.
239
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I met people like that.
240
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But if you're genuinely interested, go talk to actual biblical scholars.
241
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And then if they don't persuade you, and I mean talk quotation in books, if they don't persuade you, fine.
242
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But there's really, really good resources out there to help you have those intellectual questions answered.
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And from my perspective, I think they're very persuasive.
244
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You might not think so, but a lot of us do.
245
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You mentioned this fear of being duped, and even some of the things that you were taught as you were growing up just turned out to not be the case.
246
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And even for those who have questions, not feeling that they can ask those questions and go back to their church and ask, do you think there is perhaps those people in charge of those churches that are leading those churches don't actually have the answers themselves, and they don't want to be found out.
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They don't want to go through the rigor of dealing with their doubts.
248
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Amen.
249
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Hallelujah, yes.
250
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I agree.
251
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Yes.
252
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Respectfully, most pastors and leaders of the average-sized church, at least in America, most of them have received very little to no formal theological training.
253
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And even if they have a master's degree, they might have a master's in something, but they spend more time in administration, budgeting, and whatever.
254
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Even some people have demons.
255
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Very few people in the pulpit at all can read the original languages.
256
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They never learned Greek and Hebrew.
257
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They never learned exegesis.
258
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They've never, ever read Second Temple Jewish literature.
259
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They don't know what the TLC is.
260
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They don't know what the acronym stands for, though everybody in scholarship knows what that is.
261
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And so that's not their specialty.
262
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They might be fantastic with hospital visits.
263
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They might be very charismatic, might be great singers, might be good fundraisers.
264
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They might be phenomenal moms and dads.
265
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Absolutely.
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It just means it's not their training.
267
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So, absolutely, I concur.
268
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I've known, as peers, many, many, many pastors who did not have the training, so they don't know what to say when someone asks a question.
269
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If I may, from an insider, criticize that or constructive feedback that, and that is to say, I sure wish they did a better job of saying, I don't know, let's find out together.
270
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Because I think oftentimes emotionally their own anxiety comes up, their own fear comes up, as you suggest.
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I mean, so instead what they do is either shut it down to avoid it, or they shame the person for asking the question.
272
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And of course, not to mention, there's a whole bunch of pastors who don't believe it at all anymore, but that's the only gig they know, so they have a paycheck.
273
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And there's a whole website called Former Clergy Project or something.
274
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It's thousands of ex-clergy who said they had too many questions about it, and then they left the faith.
275
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So it's a real terrible phenomenon of people trying to lead others, and they themselves are simply not trained for the job.
276
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And evangelicalism that I think, particularly in Pentecostalism, Charismatic traditions, where there's been a historical and historic diminishing of formal education.
277
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I had the unicorn, I was in a PhD with a guy, he was from a one-miss Pentecostal background.
278
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You're a literate man, I know what that is, but he was such a good guy.
279
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He used to say, what are you doing here?
280
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He would laugh, he goes, he's a good old boy.
281
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He said, yeah, I know, I'm weird.
282
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Like, yeah, I mean, oh my goodness.
283
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So yeah, but in general, but my point of that is what happens in our church, at least in America, it breeds in a culture where charisma becomes authoritative, and the amount of people who attend become your metric of success, not how well they're able to read the biblical text.
284
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I joined the chorus of copious other people who went through biblical training to say, we're in dangerous waters.
285
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I mean, frankly, I'll be authentic.
286
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It's embarrassing to me how ignorant so many people are.
287
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It's not embarrassing to be ignorant.
288
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It's people in positions of authority trying to teach other people.
289
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I always think about James, right?
290
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He says, you should not want to be teachers.
291
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You'll be judged doubly.
292
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I take that very seriously.
293
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God can still use them.
294
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Of course, he can speak through donkeys.
295
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I hope he speaks through this donkey talking right now.
296
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I believe he does.
297
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I know he does.
298
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Absolutely.
299
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My only point is I still think we have the moral responsibility as church leaders and teachers to do as much rigorous training as we can possibly do with the resources we have.
300
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That's very different in the villages of India.
301
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I've got Indian pastors there who work in the mud.
302
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They don't have access.
303
00:18:53,350 --> 00:18:53,790
Of course not.
304
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I send them my resources for free.
305
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Of course.
306
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I'm not shaming people because they're ignorant or whatever.
307
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What's embarrassing to me is how that culture is bred and buttressed and supported.
308
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It's like a huge train that doesn't seem like it's going to derail.
309
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That's unfortunate.
310
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I suspect there are a lot of pastors who don't feel comfortable with the discussion of deconstruction because they themselves don't know what the answers are or are scared to bring it up themselves.
311
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I agree.
312
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Is part of the problem with doubt the additions that we've put onto the Christian faith that we have added so much over the years that if you are Christian, you vote in this particular way, you think in this particular way.
313
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When we see those extra bits and pieces that we've added onto faith start to crumble, we believe that that's our faith crumbling.
314
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When, as you say, when you go back to the scriptures, that's not there in the text.
315
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Completely.
316
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I genuinely completely concur.
317
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People say, well, I think I'm losing my faith.
318
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I was a faith in what?
319
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I'm not being silly.
320
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I'm not being sarcastic.
321
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I really mean the faith in what I'm listening.
322
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What are you losing faith?
323
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You know, God.
324
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OK, which God?
325
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I mean, talk to me about the God you think you're leaving.
326
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Talk to me about the Jesus you think you are now abandoning, because that's what you're doing.
327
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You're saying Jesus, does he not exist as an authoritative?
328
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If you had a quote-unquote religious experience, baptismal experience and so forth, if you had that and now you're not, are you saying you were delusional when that occurred?
329
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Or are you saying, no, I wasn't delusional.
330
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It really happened.
331
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It's really real.
332
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I'm just saying, no, I don't want to do it.
333
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Like, I'm divorcing a person who's real.
334
00:20:21,950 --> 00:20:22,810
OK, why?
335
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In my experience, those accretions, I'm really leaving a faith that is, in my heart and mind, manipulative, or I have to be a Calvinist, or I have to believe in a certain interpretation of Revelation, or I have to be a dispensationalist.
336
00:20:38,650 --> 00:20:42,570
So I often go back, very often, especially my YouTube comments.
337
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I had an email correspondence with a guy the other day about that.
338
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I go, you can disagree.
339
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He's talking about judges and Joshua and the warfare.
340
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I said, let's, for the sake of argument, say it's all fairy tale, that none of that happened.
341
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So what?
342
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You can still be a Christian.
343
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It might change your understanding of the authority of the text, or if you have a view of inerrancy, great, but that doesn't mean you're not a Christian.
344
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This all or nothingness that so many people and so many leaders make people believe, I think, causes great damage.
345
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Even for you to say these accretions, I concur with that, but that always assumes we're on the same page that some things are non-negotiable, some things are negotiable.
346
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Some things are essential, so I think those words aren't in the Greek, in the Testament, but I can argue, I think persuasively, the concepture is.
347
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When you read Acts, it never says you have to believe 50 things of an average statement of faith you see now in a church.
348
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They didn't require those kind of things.
349
00:21:32,090 --> 00:21:36,350
I think those things still matter, but when we talk about Christianity, let's go back to brass tacks.
350
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And in my works, I try my best in my own books and workbooks to go back to brass tacks to say, this seems to be at the core.
351
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Can we at least keep the bullseye?
352
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People might disagree with me that it's not the bullseye.
353
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That's fine, but I do know that I'm coming out of an almost out of training to say, I think I am presenting what Lewis would call mere Christianity.
354
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We don't have to throw the proverbial baby out the bathwater.
355
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Sometimes we're leaving a faith that wasn't real in the first place.
356
00:21:58,890 --> 00:22:01,730
Sometimes we're leaving something that was dysfunctional and bad.
357
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Those are good things.
358
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It just means they're so scared to go back.
359
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And I could tell so many pastoral stories of people who have come to my church, praised Jesus, and I didn't step church for 12 years, 25, I've been church for 30 years because of what happened to me, and finally kind of tipped their toe in the water, as it were, to come back.
360
00:22:19,230 --> 00:22:20,270
And I was like, I'm so proud of you.
361
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I can't imagine how much courage it took because there's enough faith, enough string to say, okay, let's try this and go without all the other stuff added to it.
362
00:22:28,790 --> 00:22:37,150
You mentioned that you try to help to resource those pastors in places like India who are working under very difficult circumstances.
363
00:22:37,530 --> 00:22:51,710
Is that part of the test that we can put on to the faith that we say we believe in, that this might preach well in Australia or Canada or the US, but will it preach in India?
364
00:22:52,270 --> 00:22:57,930
Is it the same belief that we're taking to other Asian countries or African countries?
365
00:22:57,930 --> 00:23:02,110
Is this something that is universal across the world?
366
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Will this work, or are we just attaching too much of our culture to what we say we believe?
367
00:23:08,850 --> 00:23:10,830
Yeah, so that litmus test I use all the time.
368
00:23:10,930 --> 00:23:17,230
It's a frightening, awesome, and terrible litmus test, but I think mandatory, that is when it comes to suffering.
369
00:23:17,830 --> 00:23:26,770
So everything I say in the background of mine, something about the cross, Mark 834, right, if you're going to follow me, deny your will to give a cross to follow me.
370
00:23:26,890 --> 00:23:37,110
Whatever comes out of my mouth, ever, on a video, in a sermon, a lesson, or my literature, if that's not true, I don't know, it's not cross-cultural.
371
00:23:37,410 --> 00:23:40,030
First, it's not true to Jesus, and two, it's not cross-cultural.
372
00:23:40,930 --> 00:23:51,430
And I just heard a guy who means well, I'm visiting a certain church recently, and he said on the stage, big bold on the font, going through Malachi, and God wants you to be prosperous.
373
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He wants you to be, I thought, I just, my first thought was what you just said.
374
00:23:55,030 --> 00:24:03,570
How could you conceivably say that to those in India right now, and those all in Africa, and other countries that are being slaughtered, beheaded, the churches, people being burned alive.
375
00:24:03,610 --> 00:24:09,850
There's a fantastic, fantastic, depressing book called Suffering by Craig Keener, every Christian should read.
376
00:24:09,930 --> 00:24:12,970
I should be required reading Suffering by Craig Keener.
377
00:24:13,590 --> 00:24:16,070
The litany of things through which Christians go.
378
00:24:16,410 --> 00:24:23,650
I don't think suffering is the sine qua non, the only mark a person must go through in order to be a Christian.
379
00:24:24,050 --> 00:24:29,310
I'm just saying, obviously, as you just said, but if it doesn't preach there, then I think your gospel's wrong.
380
00:24:30,070 --> 00:24:31,350
Now, why would I say such a thing?
381
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Because Jesus did.
382
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Jesus did.
383
00:24:33,770 --> 00:24:41,870
Picking up a cross and being willing to be put to shame and killed for him, to me, is an absolute essential or non-negotiable to the gospel.
384
00:24:42,130 --> 00:24:45,970
Any understanding of the teaching of Jesus outside of that is at the core.
385
00:24:46,090 --> 00:24:47,070
I mean, Jesus went to the cross.
386
00:24:47,470 --> 00:24:48,850
To me, it's a no-brainer.
387
00:24:49,530 --> 00:24:50,370
I agree.
388
00:24:50,790 --> 00:24:52,390
Our gospel shouldn't sound American.
389
00:24:53,190 --> 00:24:54,490
It shouldn't sound white.
390
00:24:54,590 --> 00:24:55,250
It shouldn't sound Australian.
391
00:24:55,430 --> 00:24:57,030
It just shouldn't.
392
00:24:58,070 --> 00:24:59,490
I get worked up about that.
393
00:24:59,630 --> 00:25:01,210
I'm taking a deep breath right now.
394
00:25:01,630 --> 00:25:02,370
I get worked up.
395
00:25:02,470 --> 00:25:02,770
I do.
396
00:25:02,930 --> 00:25:04,730
I just, it drives me bonkers.
397
00:25:04,950 --> 00:25:06,510
We're not trying to colonize people.
398
00:25:07,150 --> 00:25:09,290
We're trying to recruit people to be disciples of Jesus.
399
00:25:09,770 --> 00:25:15,630
If there's any type of culture it should sound like, it's first century Judaism, because that would be appropriate.
400
00:25:15,630 --> 00:25:31,230
When we look at things like, as you mentioned, this prosperity gospel, I remember hearing John Piper talking about why are we trying to dress up something that the world already wants, rather than the distinct differences that there are in Christianity.
401
00:25:31,450 --> 00:25:43,850
Do you think that we've tried to do that for too long, to just dress up and attract people in at any cost, rather than that intellectual rigor, that real understanding of what is at stake here?
402
00:25:43,850 --> 00:25:48,950
In America, particularly larger churches and evangelical churches, I'm most familiar with that.
403
00:25:49,030 --> 00:25:52,230
I've worked in Methodist and Disciples of Christ and Baptist and on and on.
404
00:25:52,310 --> 00:25:53,670
So I have about five denominations.
405
00:25:54,010 --> 00:25:57,030
I have some experience, but I don't know all the churches.
406
00:25:57,490 --> 00:25:59,190
I've struggled with that too, personally.
407
00:25:59,730 --> 00:26:00,690
The benefit of the doubt
408
00:26:01,170 --> 00:26:06,770
is to say the leaders who do that, I experience this often in churches when I visit,
409
00:26:07,170 --> 00:26:11,690
the benefit of the doubt is to say that the leaders who do that, that being, they'll
410
00:26:11,690 --> 00:26:15,970
say things like, God, they're kind of vague, God wants to bless you, he's for you, wants
411
00:26:15,970 --> 00:26:20,470
you to prosper, that kind of stuff, is that they're trying their best for Christianity
412
00:26:20,470 --> 00:26:22,470
to sound attractive, so they'll come and listen.
413
00:26:23,110 --> 00:26:26,930
They're going to go fishing, get the fish closer, and then we're going to let them leave them there.
414
00:26:27,370 --> 00:26:28,250
That benefit of the doubt.
415
00:26:28,470 --> 00:26:31,110
My response is, in my experience, that has never happened.
416
00:26:31,550 --> 00:26:35,330
They go fishing, they bring them closer, what they have now is another fish who thinks God wants you to prosper.
417
00:26:35,730 --> 00:26:40,210
It's not like they come close and then they say, now let's study good exegesis of Mark 8.
418
00:26:40,670 --> 00:26:44,050
They might say some of that, but in general, that's not from the pulpit all the time.
419
00:26:44,410 --> 00:26:51,390
The worst case scenario, which is one more I'm afraid of, one would be the leaders think this stuff is true, which would be just terribly dangerous and embarrassing.
420
00:26:52,350 --> 00:26:53,750
I don't know what God would think of all of us.
421
00:26:53,930 --> 00:26:56,790
But the other would be simply they're doing it, and they simply messed up.
422
00:26:56,890 --> 00:26:58,030
They're trying hard to be attractive.
423
00:26:58,770 --> 00:27:10,770
Jesus doesn't need my protection in the least bit, but I do feel a natural kind of defense for people I care about to be ripped out of context, whether it's my friend, my family, you.
424
00:27:10,950 --> 00:27:13,130
If someone said, Bob said blank, no, he didn't.
425
00:27:13,330 --> 00:27:14,970
I heard Rodney said, no, he didn't.
426
00:27:14,990 --> 00:27:15,650
I was there.
427
00:27:16,270 --> 00:27:17,350
And that's what it was Jesus.
428
00:27:17,510 --> 00:27:20,910
So when they say, what God really wants, or Jesus and I go, no, he didn't say that.
429
00:27:20,950 --> 00:27:21,950
Why would you say that?
430
00:27:22,390 --> 00:27:26,650
I heard Joel Osteen say on television years ago, he used to live in Houston, Texas for about 12 years.
431
00:27:26,730 --> 00:27:27,730
He was on TV all the time.
432
00:27:28,250 --> 00:27:30,830
He said, God wants everyone to own a home.
433
00:27:31,250 --> 00:27:32,850
Respect, that's one of the stupidest things I've ever heard.
434
00:27:32,950 --> 00:27:36,950
I immediately thought of the billions of people who can't afford a home or live in apartments or trailers.
435
00:27:37,230 --> 00:27:44,490
It's this kind of stuff that I think appeals to our sense of materialism and power and pleasure.
436
00:27:44,830 --> 00:27:46,030
I think it's disgusting.
437
00:27:46,150 --> 00:27:49,430
I think about Isaiah when he says, you worship me with your lips, but your hearts are far from me.
438
00:27:49,530 --> 00:27:50,370
Of course Jesus quotes that.
439
00:27:50,870 --> 00:27:56,830
I think we have a real responsibility to be as authentic and as accurate as we can to the teaching of Jesus.
440
00:27:57,790 --> 00:28:04,930
And that would mean the very thing we're afraid of doing, which is be willing to pick up a cross and die for him.
441
00:28:05,570 --> 00:28:13,630
And there's very, very, very little pushback for a human being to hear God's for you, he's for you, he's for you, he's for you, he wants to bless you, bless you, bless you.
442
00:28:13,790 --> 00:28:15,190
Who doesn't want to hear that all the time?
443
00:28:15,390 --> 00:28:16,830
I mean, everyone likes a good pep rally.
444
00:28:17,730 --> 00:28:20,630
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, when he calls you, he bids men come and die.
445
00:28:21,330 --> 00:28:26,070
Said everyone does to die for their faith opponents, but if it's self-denial for the kingdom of God, that doesn't preach well.
446
00:28:26,110 --> 00:28:27,530
That doesn't fill up the stadiums.
447
00:28:27,810 --> 00:28:28,790
But it's true.
448
00:28:28,930 --> 00:28:30,950
And so we've got to really come to grips with that.
449
00:28:31,050 --> 00:28:32,750
And I do go back to fussing at the leadership.
450
00:28:33,970 --> 00:28:46,390
It just seems to me we have a phenomenal responsibility to make sure we have to be willing to have a smaller church that might be embarrassing to us and not have the mega church because we've actually proclaimed the gospel well.
451
00:28:47,250 --> 00:28:50,010
We have to be willing to have to be our cross, if that so be it.
452
00:28:50,430 --> 00:28:51,850
I don't know anywhere around that.
453
00:28:52,630 --> 00:29:01,490
You've done the intellectual hard yards of looking into this idea of faith and even looking at other faiths.
454
00:29:01,570 --> 00:29:07,390
You are now convinced that faith in Christ is the true way.
455
00:29:08,110 --> 00:29:12,470
But are there still doubts that drive you back to say, I need to discover this?
456
00:29:12,530 --> 00:29:24,230
Not a wholesale, I don't know if I believe any of this, but are there still times that doubt will drive you back to scripture or back to learning to say, this is another area that I want to explore?
457
00:29:25,010 --> 00:29:29,190
Questions, yes, because I'm always, we would say like nerding out.
458
00:29:29,330 --> 00:29:30,490
I mean, it just goes on and on.
459
00:29:30,610 --> 00:29:31,730
I love learning.
460
00:29:31,870 --> 00:29:32,350
I love it.
461
00:29:32,450 --> 00:29:34,230
So in that sense, what does that mean?
462
00:29:34,270 --> 00:29:36,470
I wonder what this, how did the first century Jews think of this?
463
00:29:36,530 --> 00:29:39,770
I wonder what that word meant in the, okay, look up the Greek again, the Hebrew, whatever.
464
00:29:40,170 --> 00:29:46,750
So that all the time, as far as a kind of doubt that you might say kind of gnaws at me or I can't shake it.
465
00:29:47,130 --> 00:29:47,650
No, sir.
466
00:29:47,670 --> 00:29:49,170
That hasn't happened a long time.
467
00:29:49,950 --> 00:29:50,730
Hasn't a long time.
468
00:29:51,030 --> 00:30:02,410
I went through so many years after those seasons of doubt when I was writing my book and afterwards, I just read voraciously of numerous books that helped me.
469
00:30:02,450 --> 00:30:06,530
Well, try to practice what I preached earlier, which is when I had questions, I went and read scholars.
470
00:30:07,190 --> 00:30:11,170
And so I kept reading until all, and if I didn't like the answer, well, I don't find that persuasive.
471
00:30:11,390 --> 00:30:12,610
And I let out simmer and simmer.
472
00:30:13,130 --> 00:30:16,590
I did that for a long time, but now I feel much more like the sea is calm.
473
00:30:17,310 --> 00:30:18,310
So questions, sure.
474
00:30:18,950 --> 00:30:25,210
So nothing that nags me, there are things I wish God would do differently, but no doubt about that.
475
00:30:25,430 --> 00:30:27,710
But thankfully he doesn't ask my opinion on anything.
476
00:30:27,870 --> 00:30:30,370
Well, not anything, but so yeah, nothing right now.
477
00:30:30,550 --> 00:30:36,410
So now I, I used for a long time when I'd watch atheist videos and read atheist books, cause I didn't read just Christians.
478
00:30:36,510 --> 00:30:38,010
I wanted to read what atheists were saying.
479
00:30:38,030 --> 00:30:38,910
I want to watch what they're saying.
480
00:30:39,010 --> 00:30:44,170
I did it so much after a couple of years, I got to the place and I knew that I would hurt enough.
481
00:30:44,530 --> 00:30:47,510
When I heard all the same stuff over and over and over, it was all regurgitated.
482
00:30:47,890 --> 00:30:49,490
Now there's seasons of popularity.
483
00:30:49,510 --> 00:30:52,490
Like right now, it's really popular to say, what about animal suffering?
484
00:30:52,510 --> 00:30:53,210
Things like that.
485
00:30:53,230 --> 00:30:54,790
And I might go, Oh, what would I say about that?
486
00:30:54,790 --> 00:30:56,570
And I formulate my ideas and move on with life.
487
00:30:57,050 --> 00:31:00,830
But once I got to the place where I kind of heard it all, then I felt settled.
488
00:31:00,990 --> 00:31:03,890
But for me, that was rigorous, took a long time.
489
00:31:04,170 --> 00:31:05,570
I, like I said, my wife doesn't go through that.
490
00:31:05,650 --> 00:31:07,570
She doesn't go through an atheist rabbit hole on YouTube.
491
00:31:07,950 --> 00:31:11,450
She couldn't care less, but I do cause I don't want to be in a dupe book.
492
00:31:11,550 --> 00:31:13,410
So yeah, nothing right now I can think of.
493
00:31:14,190 --> 00:31:26,270
I think that distinction between you and your wife is encouraging for us, because I'm sure that there's some people listening at the moment who say, I've never actually gone through that kind of doubt before.
494
00:31:26,850 --> 00:31:30,870
And then others who say, Hey, I'm deep in the middle of doubt.
495
00:31:30,970 --> 00:31:35,950
So it tells us that, Hey, for different people, we will go through different seasons.
496
00:31:36,370 --> 00:31:52,050
But for someone who is going through doubt at the moment, starting to go through that, and maybe they haven't felt that they've been allowed to question before, what's the starting point for them to start to head towards discovering for themselves the truth?
497
00:31:52,150 --> 00:32:03,230
We're not saying you must believe Christianity and therefore this is the way to go, but to actually intellectually, honestly look at the facts before them.
498
00:32:03,710 --> 00:32:10,870
I would first say to you, if I know anything about God, He's okay with you questioning and doubting.
499
00:32:11,750 --> 00:32:16,550
If I know anything about Him, and maybe I'm delusional myself and crazy, that's absolutely a possibility.
500
00:32:17,250 --> 00:32:24,010
But the God I meet through the Old Testament, even through Jesus of Nazareth, loves you so much that He is not scared of your questions.
501
00:32:24,150 --> 00:32:25,630
He's not mad at your questions.
502
00:32:26,270 --> 00:32:29,350
He's not judging you because you doubt Him at all.
503
00:32:29,610 --> 00:32:39,190
That may be very difficult for that person to grasp if they had a father or a mother who was distant or always mad at them, and it'd be very difficult.
504
00:32:39,350 --> 00:32:40,690
You might need some good counseling there.
505
00:32:41,350 --> 00:32:45,190
But if what I just said resonates with you, like, no, okay, that helps me hear that, well then great.
506
00:32:45,370 --> 00:32:56,450
But if it doesn't, if you hear that and go, Nope, I know He's not listening, I strongly encourage you to talk to a Christian counselor to figure out why it is that it's so difficult for you to believe that on an emotional level.
507
00:32:57,030 --> 00:33:01,510
On an intellectual level, I would say is, the first step really is to acknowledge it.
508
00:33:02,010 --> 00:33:03,230
Genuinely admit it.
509
00:33:03,510 --> 00:33:07,570
Try your best to simply be as authentic and a piece of paper, a dear friend.
510
00:33:08,130 --> 00:33:12,110
I would say God Almighty, if you still believe in Him, to say, I'm struggling with this.
511
00:33:12,290 --> 00:33:13,450
I doubt blank.
512
00:33:13,970 --> 00:33:16,730
I don't understand blank, and I'm really upset about it.
513
00:33:16,810 --> 00:33:21,210
Just simply labeling it takes a lot of power away and the anxiety with it.
514
00:33:21,530 --> 00:33:25,950
So then the next step is get real specific about what your doubt is as much as possible.
515
00:33:26,690 --> 00:33:27,370
What is it?
516
00:33:27,770 --> 00:33:28,610
Is it a question?
517
00:33:29,110 --> 00:33:29,910
Is it an issue?
518
00:33:30,070 --> 00:33:30,530
Write it down.
519
00:33:30,970 --> 00:33:31,630
I mean, I've done that.
520
00:33:31,710 --> 00:33:32,410
I had a list of them.
521
00:33:32,790 --> 00:33:33,810
I had a list of them.
522
00:33:33,870 --> 00:33:37,610
So I don't like that God, quote, sends people to hell.
523
00:33:37,750 --> 00:33:39,210
That's a typical way Christians say that.
524
00:33:39,290 --> 00:33:40,890
I don't think, use that vocabulary, but okay.
525
00:33:41,270 --> 00:33:41,870
Sends people to hell.
526
00:33:41,930 --> 00:33:44,050
Okay, what about that do you not like?
527
00:33:44,830 --> 00:33:45,470
It's not fair.
528
00:33:45,610 --> 00:33:46,250
What's not fair?
529
00:33:46,750 --> 00:33:48,110
What about people who've never heard about Jesus?
530
00:33:48,370 --> 00:33:50,630
Oh, okay, that's called the fate of the angel evangelized.
531
00:33:50,750 --> 00:33:52,490
There's got to be 500 books on the topic.
532
00:33:52,490 --> 00:33:53,110
What do you want to read?
533
00:33:53,210 --> 00:33:54,010
What do you want to start first?
534
00:33:54,490 --> 00:33:59,150
That chain of figuring out what labeling it and then figuring out what the issue is, that's how you know you're doing research.
535
00:33:59,850 --> 00:34:01,990
And research is not a Google search.
536
00:34:02,650 --> 00:34:03,970
You might need to have the books.
537
00:34:04,030 --> 00:34:11,210
You might have to go talk to someone, do a little homework or a pastor or something or email people like Rodney and say, hey, who should I read?
538
00:34:11,310 --> 00:34:11,830
Or a library.
539
00:34:11,989 --> 00:34:12,630
That's fair enough.
540
00:34:13,230 --> 00:34:15,909
But labeling it and finding out the question, then go pursue it.
541
00:34:16,570 --> 00:34:18,330
And if you give yourself time, that's what it is.
542
00:34:18,370 --> 00:34:19,070
One after the other.
543
00:34:19,190 --> 00:34:19,969
Well, what about so-and-so?
544
00:34:20,190 --> 00:34:20,510
Wonderful.
545
00:34:21,050 --> 00:34:22,050
Let's go talk about that.
546
00:34:22,090 --> 00:34:23,949
Let's read until we find that satisfying.
547
00:34:24,250 --> 00:34:28,630
And if not, the whole shebang you're done and none of us persuasive.
548
00:34:28,810 --> 00:34:31,870
My question is going to be, if I were talking, I would say is who did you read?
549
00:34:32,350 --> 00:34:37,449
But secondly, I would say, okay, well, I mean, that's, you're the judge and jury, but that's exactly what I would do.
550
00:34:37,530 --> 00:34:39,409
I would have been a nutshell.
551
00:34:39,550 --> 00:34:40,710
Those are three things I would do.
552
00:34:41,370 --> 00:34:47,090
There are resources on your website, including links to the book you mentioned and others that you've written.
553
00:34:47,790 --> 00:34:52,429
Those links are in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net so that people can find you there.
554
00:34:52,670 --> 00:34:57,150
I'd love to be able to talk for hours on end because there's so much there to discover.
555
00:34:57,650 --> 00:35:10,010
But I just want to say, David, thank you so much for the honesty that you've taken to go on the journey that you have to overcome those doubts, but also the way that you're helping others to do that.
556
00:35:10,490 --> 00:35:14,370
And thank you especially for spending time with me today on Bleeding Daylight.
557
00:35:14,370 --> 00:35:15,310
Thank you.
558
00:35:15,370 --> 00:35:17,010
Seriously, this is a great, great interview.
559
00:35:17,150 --> 00:35:18,190
Thank you so much for your time.
560
00:35:18,290 --> 00:35:20,250
And I will pray for you and your audience.
561
00:35:20,770 --> 00:35:21,550
Thank you so much.
562
00:35:23,510 --> 00:35:25,830
Thank you for listening to Bleeding Daylight.
563
00:35:26,370 --> 00:35:30,690
Please help us to shine more light into the darkness by sharing this episode with others.
564
00:35:31,230 --> 00:35:35,510
For further details and more episodes, please visit bleedingdaylight.net.
00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:13,160
Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.
2
00:00:14,060 --> 00:00:17,840
This is Bleeding Daylight with your host, Rodney Olsen.
3
00:00:20,180 --> 00:00:22,060
Welcome to Bleeding Daylight.
4
00:00:22,280 --> 00:00:23,140
Thank you for listening.
5
00:00:24,340 --> 00:00:30,560
There are hundreds more inspirational episodes waiting for you at bleedingdaylight.net.
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00:00:31,720 --> 00:00:40,380
Please find and follow Bleeding Daylight on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, and it'd be great to connect with you.
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00:00:42,600 --> 00:00:48,880
What do you do when some of the things you've been taught about faith cause you to start doubting?
8
00:00:49,600 --> 00:00:53,620
Have you ever been told that you should believe without questioning?
9
00:00:54,300 --> 00:00:58,180
Is it okay to admit your doubts to others or even to God?
10
00:00:59,040 --> 00:01:01,420
Today's guest has travelled that journey.
11
00:01:09,610 --> 00:01:17,130
Today's guest is someone who's spent nearly 30 years wrestling with the big questions of faith and helping others do the same.
12
00:01:17,730 --> 00:01:25,130
Dr David Pendergrass is a pastor, biblical scholar and pastoral counsellor with a PhD in historical theology.
13
00:01:25,290 --> 00:01:28,830
But what is perhaps most striking is his honesty about doubt.
14
00:01:29,190 --> 00:01:36,170
He walked away from faith intellectually twice before finding his way to a belief that could hold both his heart and his mind.
15
00:01:36,750 --> 00:01:47,550
He's taught scripture, revitalised churches, counselled couples through hard seasons and written extensively on what it means to move from simply knowing truth to actually living it.
16
00:01:47,650 --> 00:01:49,370
David, welcome to Bleeding Daylight.
17
00:01:49,650 --> 00:01:50,490
Thank you so much.
18
00:01:50,910 --> 00:01:51,690
Really, my honour.
19
00:01:52,630 --> 00:01:58,590
Faith is never just about experience, but it's also not just about intellectual knowledge.
20
00:01:59,030 --> 00:02:04,270
I'm wondering if you can take me back to that profound experience you had of being called to ministry.
21
00:02:05,070 --> 00:02:06,050
Oh, very good question.
22
00:02:06,430 --> 00:02:10,710
Yeah, I became a Christian when I was around the age of six or seven, but I wanted to be an astronaut all my life.
23
00:02:11,130 --> 00:02:13,910
I was active in churches and I was 18 years old.
24
00:02:14,090 --> 00:02:21,670
At the time I was living in a place called Nashville, Tennessee, and I was coming home from a Bible study for a youth group, as I often did, in my mom's old car.
25
00:02:22,550 --> 00:02:29,470
And there was a cassette of a singer who was popular in the States back in the 80s and 90s called Wayne Watson.
26
00:02:30,110 --> 00:02:34,390
And he wrote a song predicated upon the Beatitudes, and the song was called Blessed Are.
27
00:02:34,550 --> 00:02:35,430
It's a fantastic song.
28
00:02:35,850 --> 00:02:46,030
And there was a line in that song, it was talking about hunger and thirst for righteousness, and he says, those who hunger and thirst, I'm going to paraphrase, but he says, satisfied by none but Christ, this idea that they were hungry, hungry.
29
00:02:46,670 --> 00:02:53,390
And there was a season in my life for probably six months or so, I'd done a workbook called Experiencing God by Henry Blackaby.
30
00:02:53,470 --> 00:02:54,510
It was really popular at the time.
31
00:02:54,590 --> 00:02:55,950
I had met him in person a couple of times.
32
00:02:56,430 --> 00:03:01,730
That verse and that song, I'd heard many times, but that night in particular, after that Bible study, just nailed it.
33
00:03:01,750 --> 00:03:04,630
I just had this incredible prayer, worship, praise time.
34
00:03:04,750 --> 00:03:05,790
I was telling God, that's it.
35
00:03:05,830 --> 00:03:06,690
It's like a hunger.
36
00:03:06,830 --> 00:03:07,850
I can't get enough of you.
37
00:03:08,410 --> 00:03:13,910
And I remember distinctly in that bumpy 30-minute drive home, by the time I parked, I was crying.
38
00:03:13,950 --> 00:03:14,450
I was tearing up.
39
00:03:14,490 --> 00:03:16,670
Had a thing back in the 1900s called cassettes.
40
00:03:16,670 --> 00:03:17,750
You got to push rewind.
41
00:03:18,290 --> 00:03:21,730
I'd rewind and push play, rewind and push play, because I thought that was it, and I was crying.
42
00:03:22,070 --> 00:03:24,050
And I just prayed and prayed and said, God, this is it.
43
00:03:24,430 --> 00:03:25,390
I'll do whatever you want.
44
00:03:25,690 --> 00:03:26,870
The rest of my life, I'll do whatever.
45
00:03:27,070 --> 00:03:32,770
And I had this profound sense as if God said, okay, that's what I want.
46
00:03:32,830 --> 00:03:35,750
It was something like, okay, there's a sense of affirmation.
47
00:03:36,350 --> 00:03:40,810
I stopped the music and I cried and I prayed, and it wasn't just affective.
48
00:03:40,850 --> 00:03:42,250
It wasn't just a good therapy session.
49
00:03:42,330 --> 00:03:43,250
It wasn't just a good song.
50
00:03:43,310 --> 00:03:44,490
I've had great songs in my life.
51
00:03:44,570 --> 00:03:45,370
It was not that.
52
00:03:45,570 --> 00:03:47,130
I went inside a little different person.
53
00:03:47,710 --> 00:03:51,130
And I told my mom about the next morning before I was a senior in high school.
54
00:03:51,490 --> 00:03:54,810
I grew up in Baptist, in Baptist world, that's called the cult of ministry.
55
00:03:55,230 --> 00:03:56,490
And I let it simmer for a while.
56
00:03:56,550 --> 00:03:57,990
I didn't tell someone immediately besides her.
57
00:03:58,590 --> 00:04:01,910
But over the next few days and then weeks, it just simply did not go away.
58
00:04:02,070 --> 00:04:08,210
I still love, love in a small, hell, astrophysics and science, all that space.
59
00:04:08,250 --> 00:04:11,130
But all of a sudden, my desires simply changed.
60
00:04:11,630 --> 00:04:16,649
And instead of thinking about trumpet scholarships and engineering and all this stuff, it was, no, it's going to be something in ministry.
61
00:04:17,250 --> 00:04:18,970
I chose it, but it chose me too.
62
00:04:19,110 --> 00:04:20,829
I mean, it's both and it seems to me.
63
00:04:21,350 --> 00:04:23,130
What that vocation would be, I didn't know.
64
00:04:23,650 --> 00:04:24,970
I had no angels speak to me.
65
00:04:25,370 --> 00:04:25,990
It was just simple.
66
00:04:26,170 --> 00:04:28,030
You have a new direction.
67
00:04:28,550 --> 00:04:29,990
At first I thought maybe youth ministry.
68
00:04:30,510 --> 00:04:32,030
And then maybe I thought it was going to be music ministry.
69
00:04:32,110 --> 00:04:33,410
I was a music major for a while.
70
00:04:33,550 --> 00:04:34,870
I started in singing a quartet.
71
00:04:35,290 --> 00:04:39,150
And then about my master's degree, I really felt called more to do scholarship.
72
00:04:39,650 --> 00:04:41,650
And I had professors who believed I could do it.
73
00:04:42,230 --> 00:04:43,830
That's a big deal when you don't feel like you can.
74
00:04:43,950 --> 00:04:51,590
And so I applied for PhD programs and then thought I was going to be a professor for a while and then ended up eventually in pastoral ministry as a real sweet spot in leadership.
75
00:04:51,810 --> 00:04:52,530
But that's more than you ask.
76
00:04:52,610 --> 00:04:53,970
But yeah, that was a very big deal for me.
77
00:04:54,550 --> 00:04:55,050
Still is.
78
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It's interesting that we can have an experience like that.
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And then as you say, you go on to do a lot of that book learning, learning about the faith.
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You're backing up experience with all that information, all that understanding of who God is.
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And yet you deal with doubt.
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Why do you think it is that we can have an experience of God in a very real way as you did?
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We can learn so much and say, yes, it all stacks up.
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And yet doubt starts to creep into our mind.
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Great question.
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And doubt hit me really hard.
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I grew up in a home where I would say good evangelical theology was taught.
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I didn't have a lot of biblical knowledge, so I could sound like a normal Billy Graham sermon, you might say, but I didn't know where to find it.
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I didn't know a lot of Bible trivia facts.
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In my undergraduate degree and then some of my master's, that's when I really started to learn biblical stuff.
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And so it raised an enormous amount of questions, particularly about some things I had been taught and some things not, some things just ignorance of.
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I didn't know that at all.
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But boy, that's troublesome.
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What do you mean there's textual variance?
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It raised a lot of questions.
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And it became kind of a snowball of intellectual inquiries of a lot of unanswered questions, a lot of things some people didn't tell me before.
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But in addition to that, I don't think it's really intellectual.
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I think there's also an emotional and spiritual component to this.
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And at the time it did feel like a kind of a spiritual warfare.
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I know the difference because today I'm always wanting to learn.
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I'm ignorant.
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I'm so ignorant.
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Ask my wife.
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I mean, so I'm not omniscient, even though all my degrees, I still love learning, but I don't feel scared.
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I don't feel dark.
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I don't feel lonely.
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I don't feel despair because I'm ignorant.
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But in that season I did.
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So it wasn't just knowledge.
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It was knowledge mixed with a sense of what if none of this is true and it probably isn't true.
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My wife is a perfect example of a disciple of Jesus for whom this never occurred.
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She never went to higher education.
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And even then she's still bright and knowledgeable, but she's never had this kind of crisis of faith.
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She has her own questions and doubts here and there.
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But I did.
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Boy, I did.
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And so for me, what I did was I had professors that I really respected, one or two in particular.
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I mean, I literally typed up questions of everything I could think of, and I would go to him, meet with him, and he'd say, now go read these books, go read these books.
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So I had a few live people to whom I could go that I trusted who wouldn't just say, just go pray about it.
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Secondly, of course, I had good authors.
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People like C.S. Lewis was very formative for me, very, very helpful.
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And to have people for whom Christianity both needed to make sense and feel right.
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For all my life, it had felt right, and it kind of made sense.
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Not everyone has to go through that or even does go through that, but boy, I did.
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And I'm glad I did.
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At the time, I was not glad at all.
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I went to my undergraduate for about a year, year and a half.
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I was dating my wife, who's a Christian.
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Then we got married.
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She's saying, I'm about to marry this guy.
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What if he leaves Christianity?
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It was a very tough time.
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And then I was good for about a year and a half.
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And then it happened about six months of my bachelor's degree again, but that was shorter.
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I just had this, for whatever reason, overarching virtue.
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I don't want to be duped.
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If this stuff is stupid, I don't want to believe it.
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There's a speaker here in California, I think it's Greg Coco.
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He says, believing in Santa Claus felt good and made me a good little boy.
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But it's gibberish.
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No one converts to Santaism late in life.
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Just because Christianity made me feel good, it made me a good little boy because I'm scared of being judged.
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That doesn't mean it's true at all.
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I remember that just really, I didn't hear that quote until many years later, but that's exactly what I was thinking back when I was 19, 20 years old.
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I thought, I want it to be true.
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That's all I've known.
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But if it's not, I don't, I've got to go.
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It was unflinching.
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And so I looked at all the world religions, the major things they taught, in addition to Christianity, of course, just even naturalism, atheism.
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I just went one by one by one, go these don't sound persuasive.
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And then I had enough questions answered.
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Eventually I wrote a book when I was teaching in high school.
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It changed my ministry perspective as well.
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Whenever I teach, preach virtually all the time, I always lean toward the skeptic.
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The person goes, are you sure?
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Or this sounds pretty stupid.
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Or I just have a profound empathy and compassion for those who are on the fence or they've got questions.
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I personally get really worked up when I hear people say, I had questions and my pastor said, you know, just pray about it.
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Or they don't ask those questions.
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I feel pretty defensive for such people.
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They don't need my help, but I do feel very protective for them.
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So I'm glad I went through it now because it influenced my teaching and preaching.
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And then eventually I wrote a book called A Skeptic Challenge to the Christian, where I give in about 200 pages, all the main reasons why I find Christianity to be the most persuasive of all the world religions.
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And why I think it's also not just the most persuasive compared to, but why I think it's true.
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I'm still a skeptical kind of person, no doubt about it, but I'm not a skeptic, of course.
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I made up my mind that it's true.
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We live in an age where when people come to doubt, oftentimes we're hearing this term of deconstruction.
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The things that they were taught when they were young, no longer satisfy.
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But it seems rather than do what you did and going through the process of finding out what actually is truth, they will walk away from faith.
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And this is not to diminish the experience they're having.
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Obviously there are real doubts.
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How can we avoid going through that?
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How can we actually go through that period of doubt and say, this is what I'm feeling.
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Where do I go now?
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Yeah, boy, another great question.
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I did a video on my YouTube channel, that exact question of my deconstruction, because I have a deep compassion for those who are going through it.
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And I say in the video spot five or six kind of major tips, but just to reiterate some of them now.
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One is, and this is difficult to do in evangelical cultures and my experience in the States, this is not uniform.
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It's not ubiquitous, but it is common for them not to feel safe to say what you just said, or I just said, like in public and public spaces, because it had to whisper.
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I don't know if I believe that's true and Noah's Ark or this or that.
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And so I think as much as possible for those are going to deconstruction, I encourage to say there are people who are safe for whom they are not anxious.
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They will not shame you or judge you if you have questions or doubts or you're uncertain.
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You might have to work harder to find them.
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And I deeply commiserate with that need to find.
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God was very gracious to me that I had some people who are also not scared, like the professors and so forth.
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So that was very helpful.
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If you can find someone.
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Secondly, I'd say if you can't find a human, there are books.
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Because it's emotional and spiritual as well, I also have now over 20 years experience in individual and couples counseling, that I have yet to meet a person or read from people deconstruction.
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And I've read it a lot from videos and books and whatever, who didn't have a deep emotional or spiritual thing, who eventually left.
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I don't know, maybe they were caught in some addiction and people said, let's not do that.
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And they felt judged, or maybe their spouse had an affair, or maybe their pastor molested them.
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There's some deep wound or woundedness.
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So as a therapist, as a Christian counselor, my first question for people who doubt has been through all my ministry is not ever, it's never been, what are your major questions?
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My first question always is, can you tell me for a second, what are you afraid might happen if this were true?
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Deep inside, what are you afraid of?
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After I built some rapport with them, because usually it's driven by some fear.
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And I've met people who say, I'm afraid if it's true, I have to go back to church and they're going to molest me again.
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Or I've got to be my parents, but they're very manipulative, or I've got to this, or I've got to choose between what science tells me or my particular church's teaching on Genesis or this or that, or Revelation or whatever it might be.
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If I choose, I'm going to lose all my friends and family, David.
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So I spend more time on the emotional, psychological, spiritual side.
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But then I still say, if they go, no, it's really just intellectual questions, well, then let's explore it.
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If that's a struggle to which you are going or have been on the fence about that, I would encourage you to say that there are people who can be supportive, even if they're in books.
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And secondly, of course, ask yourself, is there a type of emotional wound that you're trying to protect?
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And I would address that first.
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And by analogy, I do the same thing with people grieving.
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Let's say I don't feel very close to God.
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My first question is not, what sin is in your life?
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I never ask that.
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I say, tell me for a second, what loss have you had in your life?
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Almost always a mom, a dad, a son from childhood or recently, and they're not grieved enough.
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And so if I grieve this, if I accept Christianity, I'm mad at God because my mom died or whomever.
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So I found oftentimes that's the case.
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In my own life, I don't remember having an emotional thing, but the spiritual thing was very real, intellectual and spiritual.
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My fear at the time was being duped.
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I had a big, strong fear of being seen or being and being seen as stupid.
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That mattered to me a lot.
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And I see it in my life not to be seen as a dummy, as like, you'll be a laughingstock.
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If a smart person meets you and you believe in the fairy tales, you'll be an idiot.
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So at the time that was important for that part of me, it's not anymore, but at the time it sure was.
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And if I had therapists that said that to me, it would have saved me some time, frankly, I would address that quicker than I did.
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If you are deconstructing, no, there are people who can commiserate with you.
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They're really, really good books by specialists.
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What I found is the people typically deconstruct and then they go read Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins or whatever and go, Oh, I read so-and-so.
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I'm all for books.
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I don't burn the books.
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My follow-up question is great.
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Did you read Richard Bauckham?
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Did you read Craig Keener?
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Did you read Richard Burge?
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Do you know who these people are?
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Do you know who Ben Whittington III is?
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Have you read N.T. Wright?
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That is, they don't know anybody in this field of New Testament scholarship, real genuine world-class historians, but they read a guy who's an evolutionist who knows nothing about Christianity and that's what persuaded them.
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I guess my response is if you're really interested in Christianity, if it's not just a ruse, rather you're like, I don't care about this stuff anyway.
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I want to go have sex with my girlfriend.
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I don't care about Christianity.
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That's your motivation.
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I met people like that.
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But if you're genuinely interested, go talk to actual biblical scholars.
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And then if they don't persuade you, and I mean talk quotation in books, if they don't persuade you, fine.
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But there's really, really good resources out there to help you have those intellectual questions answered.
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And from my perspective, I think they're very persuasive.
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You might not think so, but a lot of us do.
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You mentioned this fear of being duped, and even some of the things that you were taught as you were growing up just turned out to not be the case.
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And even for those who have questions, not feeling that they can ask those questions and go back to their church and ask, do you think there is perhaps those people in charge of those churches that are leading those churches don't actually have the answers themselves, and they don't want to be found out.
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They don't want to go through the rigor of dealing with their doubts.
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Amen.
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Hallelujah, yes.
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I agree.
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Yes.
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Respectfully, most pastors and leaders of the average-sized church, at least in America, most of them have received very little to no formal theological training.
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And even if they have a master's degree, they might have a master's in something, but they spend more time in administration, budgeting, and whatever.
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Even some people have demons.
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Very few people in the pulpit at all can read the original languages.
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They never learned Greek and Hebrew.
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They never learned exegesis.
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They've never, ever read Second Temple Jewish literature.
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They don't know what the TLC is.
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They don't know what the acronym stands for, though everybody in scholarship knows what that is.
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And so that's not their specialty.
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They might be fantastic with hospital visits.
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They might be very charismatic, might be great singers, might be good fundraisers.
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They might be phenomenal moms and dads.
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Absolutely.
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It just means it's not their training.
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So, absolutely, I concur.
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I've known, as peers, many, many, many pastors who did not have the training, so they don't know what to say when someone asks a question.
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If I may, from an insider, criticize that or constructive feedback that, and that is to say, I sure wish they did a better job of saying, I don't know, let's find out together.
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Because I think oftentimes emotionally their own anxiety comes up, their own fear comes up, as you suggest.
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I mean, so instead what they do is either shut it down to avoid it, or they shame the person for asking the question.
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And of course, not to mention, there's a whole bunch of pastors who don't believe it at all anymore, but that's the only gig they know, so they have a paycheck.
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And there's a whole website called Former Clergy Project or something.
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It's thousands of ex-clergy who said they had too many questions about it, and then they left the faith.
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So it's a real terrible phenomenon of people trying to lead others, and they themselves are simply not trained for the job.
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And evangelicalism that I think, particularly in Pentecostalism, Charismatic traditions, where there's been a historical and historic diminishing of formal education.
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I had the unicorn, I was in a PhD with a guy, he was from a one-miss Pentecostal background.
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You're a literate man, I know what that is, but he was such a good guy.
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He used to say, what are you doing here?
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He would laugh, he goes, he's a good old boy.
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He said, yeah, I know, I'm weird.
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Like, yeah, I mean, oh my goodness.
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So yeah, but in general, but my point of that is what happens in our church, at least in America, it breeds in a culture where charisma becomes authoritative, and the amount of people who attend become your metric of success, not how well they're able to read the biblical text.
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I joined the chorus of copious other people who went through biblical training to say, we're in dangerous waters.
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I mean, frankly, I'll be authentic.
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It's embarrassing to me how ignorant so many people are.
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It's not embarrassing to be ignorant.
288
00:18:19,930 --> 00:18:22,970
It's people in positions of authority trying to teach other people.
289
00:18:23,070 --> 00:18:24,190
I always think about James, right?
290
00:18:24,210 --> 00:18:25,610
He says, you should not want to be teachers.
291
00:18:26,030 --> 00:18:26,850
You'll be judged doubly.
292
00:18:26,930 --> 00:18:28,090
I take that very seriously.
293
00:18:28,490 --> 00:18:29,350
God can still use them.
294
00:18:29,430 --> 00:18:30,870
Of course, he can speak through donkeys.
295
00:18:31,010 --> 00:18:32,810
I hope he speaks through this donkey talking right now.
296
00:18:33,010 --> 00:18:34,430
I believe he does.
297
00:18:34,550 --> 00:18:35,430
I know he does.
298
00:18:35,990 --> 00:18:36,350
Absolutely.
299
00:18:36,710 --> 00:18:45,850
My only point is I still think we have the moral responsibility as church leaders and teachers to do as much rigorous training as we can possibly do with the resources we have.
300
00:18:46,090 --> 00:18:49,110
That's very different in the villages of India.
301
00:18:49,370 --> 00:18:51,850
I've got Indian pastors there who work in the mud.
302
00:18:52,290 --> 00:18:53,230
They don't have access.
303
00:18:53,350 --> 00:18:53,790
Of course not.
304
00:18:53,830 --> 00:18:55,450
I send them my resources for free.
305
00:18:55,570 --> 00:18:56,110
Of course.
306
00:18:56,490 --> 00:18:58,670
I'm not shaming people because they're ignorant or whatever.
307
00:18:59,150 --> 00:19:03,990
What's embarrassing to me is how that culture is bred and buttressed and supported.
308
00:19:04,310 --> 00:19:06,730
It's like a huge train that doesn't seem like it's going to derail.
309
00:19:07,430 --> 00:19:08,130
That's unfortunate.
310
00:19:08,890 --> 00:19:17,030
I suspect there are a lot of pastors who don't feel comfortable with the discussion of deconstruction because they themselves don't know what the answers are or are scared to bring it up themselves.
311
00:19:17,210 --> 00:19:17,470
I agree.
312
00:19:17,610 --> 00:19:32,570
Is part of the problem with doubt the additions that we've put onto the Christian faith that we have added so much over the years that if you are Christian, you vote in this particular way, you think in this particular way.
313
00:19:32,650 --> 00:19:40,090
When we see those extra bits and pieces that we've added onto faith start to crumble, we believe that that's our faith crumbling.
314
00:19:40,290 --> 00:19:44,710
When, as you say, when you go back to the scriptures, that's not there in the text.
315
00:19:45,410 --> 00:19:45,730
Completely.
316
00:19:45,910 --> 00:19:47,210
I genuinely completely concur.
317
00:19:47,490 --> 00:19:49,150
People say, well, I think I'm losing my faith.
318
00:19:49,230 --> 00:19:50,150
I was a faith in what?
319
00:19:50,410 --> 00:19:51,290
I'm not being silly.
320
00:19:51,330 --> 00:19:52,190
I'm not being sarcastic.
321
00:19:52,370 --> 00:19:54,450
I really mean the faith in what I'm listening.
322
00:19:54,590 --> 00:19:55,290
What are you losing faith?
323
00:19:55,370 --> 00:19:55,790
You know, God.
324
00:19:55,890 --> 00:19:56,570
OK, which God?
325
00:19:56,650 --> 00:19:58,470
I mean, talk to me about the God you think you're leaving.
326
00:19:59,570 --> 00:20:02,890
Talk to me about the Jesus you think you are now abandoning, because that's what you're doing.
327
00:20:02,950 --> 00:20:06,910
You're saying Jesus, does he not exist as an authoritative?
328
00:20:07,270 --> 00:20:14,970
If you had a quote-unquote religious experience, baptismal experience and so forth, if you had that and now you're not, are you saying you were delusional when that occurred?
329
00:20:15,630 --> 00:20:16,890
Or are you saying, no, I wasn't delusional.
330
00:20:16,990 --> 00:20:17,490
It really happened.
331
00:20:17,550 --> 00:20:17,970
It's really real.
332
00:20:18,030 --> 00:20:19,270
I'm just saying, no, I don't want to do it.
333
00:20:19,290 --> 00:20:20,990
Like, I'm divorcing a person who's real.
334
00:20:21,950 --> 00:20:22,810
OK, why?
335
00:20:23,050 --> 00:20:37,570
In my experience, those accretions, I'm really leaving a faith that is, in my heart and mind, manipulative, or I have to be a Calvinist, or I have to believe in a certain interpretation of Revelation, or I have to be a dispensationalist.
336
00:20:38,650 --> 00:20:42,570
So I often go back, very often, especially my YouTube comments.
337
00:20:42,770 --> 00:20:44,630
I had an email correspondence with a guy the other day about that.
338
00:20:44,710 --> 00:20:46,230
I go, you can disagree.
339
00:20:46,350 --> 00:20:48,930
He's talking about judges and Joshua and the warfare.
340
00:20:49,150 --> 00:20:53,970
I said, let's, for the sake of argument, say it's all fairy tale, that none of that happened.
341
00:20:54,290 --> 00:20:54,750
So what?
342
00:20:55,050 --> 00:20:55,950
You can still be a Christian.
343
00:20:56,630 --> 00:21:01,390
It might change your understanding of the authority of the text, or if you have a view of inerrancy, great, but that doesn't mean you're not a Christian.
344
00:21:01,710 --> 00:21:09,090
This all or nothingness that so many people and so many leaders make people believe, I think, causes great damage.
345
00:21:09,510 --> 00:21:15,790
Even for you to say these accretions, I concur with that, but that always assumes we're on the same page that some things are non-negotiable, some things are negotiable.
346
00:21:16,630 --> 00:21:23,630
Some things are essential, so I think those words aren't in the Greek, in the Testament, but I can argue, I think persuasively, the concepture is.
347
00:21:24,050 --> 00:21:29,790
When you read Acts, it never says you have to believe 50 things of an average statement of faith you see now in a church.
348
00:21:30,350 --> 00:21:31,910
They didn't require those kind of things.
349
00:21:32,090 --> 00:21:36,350
I think those things still matter, but when we talk about Christianity, let's go back to brass tacks.
350
00:21:37,010 --> 00:21:42,610
And in my works, I try my best in my own books and workbooks to go back to brass tacks to say, this seems to be at the core.
351
00:21:42,690 --> 00:21:43,890
Can we at least keep the bullseye?
352
00:21:44,350 --> 00:21:46,770
People might disagree with me that it's not the bullseye.
353
00:21:46,810 --> 00:21:53,230
That's fine, but I do know that I'm coming out of an almost out of training to say, I think I am presenting what Lewis would call mere Christianity.
354
00:21:53,850 --> 00:21:56,150
We don't have to throw the proverbial baby out the bathwater.
355
00:21:56,810 --> 00:21:58,890
Sometimes we're leaving a faith that wasn't real in the first place.
356
00:21:58,890 --> 00:22:01,730
Sometimes we're leaving something that was dysfunctional and bad.
357
00:22:01,810 --> 00:22:02,770
Those are good things.
358
00:22:03,050 --> 00:22:05,050
It just means they're so scared to go back.
359
00:22:05,650 --> 00:22:19,150
And I could tell so many pastoral stories of people who have come to my church, praised Jesus, and I didn't step church for 12 years, 25, I've been church for 30 years because of what happened to me, and finally kind of tipped their toe in the water, as it were, to come back.
360
00:22:19,230 --> 00:22:20,270
And I was like, I'm so proud of you.
361
00:22:20,290 --> 00:22:28,310
I can't imagine how much courage it took because there's enough faith, enough string to say, okay, let's try this and go without all the other stuff added to it.
362
00:22:28,790 --> 00:22:37,150
You mentioned that you try to help to resource those pastors in places like India who are working under very difficult circumstances.
363
00:22:37,530 --> 00:22:51,710
Is that part of the test that we can put on to the faith that we say we believe in, that this might preach well in Australia or Canada or the US, but will it preach in India?
364
00:22:52,270 --> 00:22:57,930
Is it the same belief that we're taking to other Asian countries or African countries?
365
00:22:57,930 --> 00:23:02,110
Is this something that is universal across the world?
366
00:23:02,390 --> 00:23:08,230
Will this work, or are we just attaching too much of our culture to what we say we believe?
367
00:23:08,850 --> 00:23:10,830
Yeah, so that litmus test I use all the time.
368
00:23:10,930 --> 00:23:17,230
It's a frightening, awesome, and terrible litmus test, but I think mandatory, that is when it comes to suffering.
369
00:23:17,830 --> 00:23:26,770
So everything I say in the background of mine, something about the cross, Mark 834, right, if you're going to follow me, deny your will to give a cross to follow me.
370
00:23:26,890 --> 00:23:37,110
Whatever comes out of my mouth, ever, on a video, in a sermon, a lesson, or my literature, if that's not true, I don't know, it's not cross-cultural.
371
00:23:37,410 --> 00:23:40,030
First, it's not true to Jesus, and two, it's not cross-cultural.
372
00:23:40,930 --> 00:23:51,430
And I just heard a guy who means well, I'm visiting a certain church recently, and he said on the stage, big bold on the font, going through Malachi, and God wants you to be prosperous.
373
00:23:51,590 --> 00:23:54,870
He wants you to be, I thought, I just, my first thought was what you just said.
374
00:23:55,030 --> 00:24:03,570
How could you conceivably say that to those in India right now, and those all in Africa, and other countries that are being slaughtered, beheaded, the churches, people being burned alive.
375
00:24:03,610 --> 00:24:09,850
There's a fantastic, fantastic, depressing book called Suffering by Craig Keener, every Christian should read.
376
00:24:09,930 --> 00:24:12,970
I should be required reading Suffering by Craig Keener.
377
00:24:13,590 --> 00:24:16,070
The litany of things through which Christians go.
378
00:24:16,410 --> 00:24:23,650
I don't think suffering is the sine qua non, the only mark a person must go through in order to be a Christian.
379
00:24:24,050 --> 00:24:29,310
I'm just saying, obviously, as you just said, but if it doesn't preach there, then I think your gospel's wrong.
380
00:24:30,070 --> 00:24:31,350
Now, why would I say such a thing?
381
00:24:31,650 --> 00:24:32,470
Because Jesus did.
382
00:24:33,010 --> 00:24:33,670
Jesus did.
383
00:24:33,770 --> 00:24:41,870
Picking up a cross and being willing to be put to shame and killed for him, to me, is an absolute essential or non-negotiable to the gospel.
384
00:24:42,130 --> 00:24:45,970
Any understanding of the teaching of Jesus outside of that is at the core.
385
00:24:46,090 --> 00:24:47,070
I mean, Jesus went to the cross.
386
00:24:47,470 --> 00:24:48,850
To me, it's a no-brainer.
387
00:24:49,530 --> 00:24:50,370
I agree.
388
00:24:50,790 --> 00:24:52,390
Our gospel shouldn't sound American.
389
00:24:53,190 --> 00:24:54,490
It shouldn't sound white.
390
00:24:54,590 --> 00:24:55,250
It shouldn't sound Australian.
391
00:24:55,430 --> 00:24:57,030
It just shouldn't.
392
00:24:58,070 --> 00:24:59,490
I get worked up about that.
393
00:24:59,630 --> 00:25:01,210
I'm taking a deep breath right now.
394
00:25:01,630 --> 00:25:02,370
I get worked up.
395
00:25:02,470 --> 00:25:02,770
I do.
396
00:25:02,930 --> 00:25:04,730
I just, it drives me bonkers.
397
00:25:04,950 --> 00:25:06,510
We're not trying to colonize people.
398
00:25:07,150 --> 00:25:09,290
We're trying to recruit people to be disciples of Jesus.
399
00:25:09,770 --> 00:25:15,630
If there's any type of culture it should sound like, it's first century Judaism, because that would be appropriate.
400
00:25:15,630 --> 00:25:31,230
When we look at things like, as you mentioned, this prosperity gospel, I remember hearing John Piper talking about why are we trying to dress up something that the world already wants, rather than the distinct differences that there are in Christianity.
401
00:25:31,450 --> 00:25:43,850
Do you think that we've tried to do that for too long, to just dress up and attract people in at any cost, rather than that intellectual rigor, that real understanding of what is at stake here?
402
00:25:43,850 --> 00:25:48,950
In America, particularly larger churches and evangelical churches, I'm most familiar with that.
403
00:25:49,030 --> 00:25:52,230
I've worked in Methodist and Disciples of Christ and Baptist and on and on.
404
00:25:52,310 --> 00:25:53,670
So I have about five denominations.
405
00:25:54,010 --> 00:25:57,030
I have some experience, but I don't know all the churches.
406
00:25:57,490 --> 00:25:59,190
I've struggled with that too, personally.
407
00:25:59,730 --> 00:26:00,690
The benefit of the doubt
408
00:26:01,170 --> 00:26:06,770
is to say the leaders who do that, I experience this often in churches when I visit,
409
00:26:07,170 --> 00:26:11,690
the benefit of the doubt is to say that the leaders who do that, that being, they'll
410
00:26:11,690 --> 00:26:15,970
say things like, God, they're kind of vague, God wants to bless you, he's for you, wants
411
00:26:15,970 --> 00:26:20,470
you to prosper, that kind of stuff, is that they're trying their best for Christianity
412
00:26:20,470 --> 00:26:22,470
to sound attractive, so they'll come and listen.
413
00:26:23,110 --> 00:26:26,930
They're going to go fishing, get the fish closer, and then we're going to let them leave them there.
414
00:26:27,370 --> 00:26:28,250
That benefit of the doubt.
415
00:26:28,470 --> 00:26:31,110
My response is, in my experience, that has never happened.
416
00:26:31,550 --> 00:26:35,330
They go fishing, they bring them closer, what they have now is another fish who thinks God wants you to prosper.
417
00:26:35,730 --> 00:26:40,210
It's not like they come close and then they say, now let's study good exegesis of Mark 8.
418
00:26:40,670 --> 00:26:44,050
They might say some of that, but in general, that's not from the pulpit all the time.
419
00:26:44,410 --> 00:26:51,390
The worst case scenario, which is one more I'm afraid of, one would be the leaders think this stuff is true, which would be just terribly dangerous and embarrassing.
420
00:26:52,350 --> 00:26:53,750
I don't know what God would think of all of us.
421
00:26:53,930 --> 00:26:56,790
But the other would be simply they're doing it, and they simply messed up.
422
00:26:56,890 --> 00:26:58,030
They're trying hard to be attractive.
423
00:26:58,770 --> 00:27:10,770
Jesus doesn't need my protection in the least bit, but I do feel a natural kind of defense for people I care about to be ripped out of context, whether it's my friend, my family, you.
424
00:27:10,950 --> 00:27:13,130
If someone said, Bob said blank, no, he didn't.
425
00:27:13,330 --> 00:27:14,970
I heard Rodney said, no, he didn't.
426
00:27:14,990 --> 00:27:15,650
I was there.
427
00:27:16,270 --> 00:27:17,350
And that's what it was Jesus.
428
00:27:17,510 --> 00:27:20,910
So when they say, what God really wants, or Jesus and I go, no, he didn't say that.
429
00:27:20,950 --> 00:27:21,950
Why would you say that?
430
00:27:22,390 --> 00:27:26,650
I heard Joel Osteen say on television years ago, he used to live in Houston, Texas for about 12 years.
431
00:27:26,730 --> 00:27:27,730
He was on TV all the time.
432
00:27:28,250 --> 00:27:30,830
He said, God wants everyone to own a home.
433
00:27:31,250 --> 00:27:32,850
Respect, that's one of the stupidest things I've ever heard.
434
00:27:32,950 --> 00:27:36,950
I immediately thought of the billions of people who can't afford a home or live in apartments or trailers.
435
00:27:37,230 --> 00:27:44,490
It's this kind of stuff that I think appeals to our sense of materialism and power and pleasure.
436
00:27:44,830 --> 00:27:46,030
I think it's disgusting.
437
00:27:46,150 --> 00:27:49,430
I think about Isaiah when he says, you worship me with your lips, but your hearts are far from me.
438
00:27:49,530 --> 00:27:50,370
Of course Jesus quotes that.
439
00:27:50,870 --> 00:27:56,830
I think we have a real responsibility to be as authentic and as accurate as we can to the teaching of Jesus.
440
00:27:57,790 --> 00:28:04,930
And that would mean the very thing we're afraid of doing, which is be willing to pick up a cross and die for him.
441
00:28:05,570 --> 00:28:13,630
And there's very, very, very little pushback for a human being to hear God's for you, he's for you, he's for you, he's for you, he wants to bless you, bless you, bless you.
442
00:28:13,790 --> 00:28:15,190
Who doesn't want to hear that all the time?
443
00:28:15,390 --> 00:28:16,830
I mean, everyone likes a good pep rally.
444
00:28:17,730 --> 00:28:20,630
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, when he calls you, he bids men come and die.
445
00:28:21,330 --> 00:28:26,070
Said everyone does to die for their faith opponents, but if it's self-denial for the kingdom of God, that doesn't preach well.
446
00:28:26,110 --> 00:28:27,530
That doesn't fill up the stadiums.
447
00:28:27,810 --> 00:28:28,790
But it's true.
448
00:28:28,930 --> 00:28:30,950
And so we've got to really come to grips with that.
449
00:28:31,050 --> 00:28:32,750
And I do go back to fussing at the leadership.
450
00:28:33,970 --> 00:28:46,390
It just seems to me we have a phenomenal responsibility to make sure we have to be willing to have a smaller church that might be embarrassing to us and not have the mega church because we've actually proclaimed the gospel well.
451
00:28:47,250 --> 00:28:50,010
We have to be willing to have to be our cross, if that so be it.
452
00:28:50,430 --> 00:28:51,850
I don't know anywhere around that.
453
00:28:52,630 --> 00:29:01,490
You've done the intellectual hard yards of looking into this idea of faith and even looking at other faiths.
454
00:29:01,570 --> 00:29:07,390
You are now convinced that faith in Christ is the true way.
455
00:29:08,110 --> 00:29:12,470
But are there still doubts that drive you back to say, I need to discover this?
456
00:29:12,530 --> 00:29:24,230
Not a wholesale, I don't know if I believe any of this, but are there still times that doubt will drive you back to scripture or back to learning to say, this is another area that I want to explore?
457
00:29:25,010 --> 00:29:29,190
Questions, yes, because I'm always, we would say like nerding out.
458
00:29:29,330 --> 00:29:30,490
I mean, it just goes on and on.
459
00:29:30,610 --> 00:29:31,730
I love learning.
460
00:29:31,870 --> 00:29:32,350
I love it.
461
00:29:32,450 --> 00:29:34,230
So in that sense, what does that mean?
462
00:29:34,270 --> 00:29:36,470
I wonder what this, how did the first century Jews think of this?
463
00:29:36,530 --> 00:29:39,770
I wonder what that word meant in the, okay, look up the Greek again, the Hebrew, whatever.
464
00:29:40,170 --> 00:29:46,750
So that all the time, as far as a kind of doubt that you might say kind of gnaws at me or I can't shake it.
465
00:29:47,130 --> 00:29:47,650
No, sir.
466
00:29:47,670 --> 00:29:49,170
That hasn't happened a long time.
467
00:29:49,950 --> 00:29:50,730
Hasn't a long time.
468
00:29:51,030 --> 00:30:02,410
I went through so many years after those seasons of doubt when I was writing my book and afterwards, I just read voraciously of numerous books that helped me.
469
00:30:02,450 --> 00:30:06,530
Well, try to practice what I preached earlier, which is when I had questions, I went and read scholars.
470
00:30:07,190 --> 00:30:11,170
And so I kept reading until all, and if I didn't like the answer, well, I don't find that persuasive.
471
00:30:11,390 --> 00:30:12,610
And I let out simmer and simmer.
472
00:30:13,130 --> 00:30:16,590
I did that for a long time, but now I feel much more like the sea is calm.
473
00:30:17,310 --> 00:30:18,310
So questions, sure.
474
00:30:18,950 --> 00:30:25,210
So nothing that nags me, there are things I wish God would do differently, but no doubt about that.
475
00:30:25,430 --> 00:30:27,710
But thankfully he doesn't ask my opinion on anything.
476
00:30:27,870 --> 00:30:30,370
Well, not anything, but so yeah, nothing right now.
477
00:30:30,550 --> 00:30:36,410
So now I, I used for a long time when I'd watch atheist videos and read atheist books, cause I didn't read just Christians.
478
00:30:36,510 --> 00:30:38,010
I wanted to read what atheists were saying.
479
00:30:38,030 --> 00:30:38,910
I want to watch what they're saying.
480
00:30:39,010 --> 00:30:44,170
I did it so much after a couple of years, I got to the place and I knew that I would hurt enough.
481
00:30:44,530 --> 00:30:47,510
When I heard all the same stuff over and over and over, it was all regurgitated.
482
00:30:47,890 --> 00:30:49,490
Now there's seasons of popularity.
483
00:30:49,510 --> 00:30:52,490
Like right now, it's really popular to say, what about animal suffering?
484
00:30:52,510 --> 00:30:53,210
Things like that.
485
00:30:53,230 --> 00:30:54,790
And I might go, Oh, what would I say about that?
486
00:30:54,790 --> 00:30:56,570
And I formulate my ideas and move on with life.
487
00:30:57,050 --> 00:31:00,830
But once I got to the place where I kind of heard it all, then I felt settled.
488
00:31:00,990 --> 00:31:03,890
But for me, that was rigorous, took a long time.
489
00:31:04,170 --> 00:31:05,570
I, like I said, my wife doesn't go through that.
490
00:31:05,650 --> 00:31:07,570
She doesn't go through an atheist rabbit hole on YouTube.
491
00:31:07,950 --> 00:31:11,450
She couldn't care less, but I do cause I don't want to be in a dupe book.
492
00:31:11,550 --> 00:31:13,410
So yeah, nothing right now I can think of.
493
00:31:14,190 --> 00:31:26,270
I think that distinction between you and your wife is encouraging for us, because I'm sure that there's some people listening at the moment who say, I've never actually gone through that kind of doubt before.
494
00:31:26,850 --> 00:31:30,870
And then others who say, Hey, I'm deep in the middle of doubt.
495
00:31:30,970 --> 00:31:35,950
So it tells us that, Hey, for different people, we will go through different seasons.
496
00:31:36,370 --> 00:31:52,050
But for someone who is going through doubt at the moment, starting to go through that, and maybe they haven't felt that they've been allowed to question before, what's the starting point for them to start to head towards discovering for themselves the truth?
497
00:31:52,150 --> 00:32:03,230
We're not saying you must believe Christianity and therefore this is the way to go, but to actually intellectually, honestly look at the facts before them.
498
00:32:03,710 --> 00:32:10,870
I would first say to you, if I know anything about God, He's okay with you questioning and doubting.
499
00:32:11,750 --> 00:32:16,550
If I know anything about Him, and maybe I'm delusional myself and crazy, that's absolutely a possibility.
500
00:32:17,250 --> 00:32:24,010
But the God I meet through the Old Testament, even through Jesus of Nazareth, loves you so much that He is not scared of your questions.
501
00:32:24,150 --> 00:32:25,630
He's not mad at your questions.
502
00:32:26,270 --> 00:32:29,350
He's not judging you because you doubt Him at all.
503
00:32:29,610 --> 00:32:39,190
That may be very difficult for that person to grasp if they had a father or a mother who was distant or always mad at them, and it'd be very difficult.
504
00:32:39,350 --> 00:32:40,690
You might need some good counseling there.
505
00:32:41,350 --> 00:32:45,190
But if what I just said resonates with you, like, no, okay, that helps me hear that, well then great.
506
00:32:45,370 --> 00:32:56,450
But if it doesn't, if you hear that and go, Nope, I know He's not listening, I strongly encourage you to talk to a Christian counselor to figure out why it is that it's so difficult for you to believe that on an emotional level.
507
00:32:57,030 --> 00:33:01,510
On an intellectual level, I would say is, the first step really is to acknowledge it.
508
00:33:02,010 --> 00:33:03,230
Genuinely admit it.
509
00:33:03,510 --> 00:33:07,570
Try your best to simply be as authentic and a piece of paper, a dear friend.
510
00:33:08,130 --> 00:33:12,110
I would say God Almighty, if you still believe in Him, to say, I'm struggling with this.
511
00:33:12,290 --> 00:33:13,450
I doubt blank.
512
00:33:13,970 --> 00:33:16,730
I don't understand blank, and I'm really upset about it.
513
00:33:16,810 --> 00:33:21,210
Just simply labeling it takes a lot of power away and the anxiety with it.
514
00:33:21,530 --> 00:33:25,950
So then the next step is get real specific about what your doubt is as much as possible.
515
00:33:26,690 --> 00:33:27,370
What is it?
516
00:33:27,770 --> 00:33:28,610
Is it a question?
517
00:33:29,110 --> 00:33:29,910
Is it an issue?
518
00:33:30,070 --> 00:33:30,530
Write it down.
519
00:33:30,970 --> 00:33:31,630
I mean, I've done that.
520
00:33:31,710 --> 00:33:32,410
I had a list of them.
521
00:33:32,790 --> 00:33:33,810
I had a list of them.
522
00:33:33,870 --> 00:33:37,610
So I don't like that God, quote, sends people to hell.
523
00:33:37,750 --> 00:33:39,210
That's a typical way Christians say that.
524
00:33:39,290 --> 00:33:40,890
I don't think, use that vocabulary, but okay.
525
00:33:41,270 --> 00:33:41,870
Sends people to hell.
526
00:33:41,930 --> 00:33:44,050
Okay, what about that do you not like?
527
00:33:44,830 --> 00:33:45,470
It's not fair.
528
00:33:45,610 --> 00:33:46,250
What's not fair?
529
00:33:46,750 --> 00:33:48,110
What about people who've never heard about Jesus?
530
00:33:48,370 --> 00:33:50,630
Oh, okay, that's called the fate of the angel evangelized.
531
00:33:50,750 --> 00:33:52,490
There's got to be 500 books on the topic.
532
00:33:52,490 --> 00:33:53,110
What do you want to read?
533
00:33:53,210 --> 00:33:54,010
What do you want to start first?
534
00:33:54,490 --> 00:33:59,150
That chain of figuring out what labeling it and then figuring out what the issue is, that's how you know you're doing research.
535
00:33:59,850 --> 00:34:01,990
And research is not a Google search.
536
00:34:02,650 --> 00:34:03,970
You might need to have the books.
537
00:34:04,030 --> 00:34:11,210
You might have to go talk to someone, do a little homework or a pastor or something or email people like Rodney and say, hey, who should I read?
538
00:34:11,310 --> 00:34:11,830
Or a library.
539
00:34:11,989 --> 00:34:12,630
That's fair enough.
540
00:34:13,230 --> 00:34:15,909
But labeling it and finding out the question, then go pursue it.
541
00:34:16,570 --> 00:34:18,330
And if you give yourself time, that's what it is.
542
00:34:18,370 --> 00:34:19,070
One after the other.
543
00:34:19,190 --> 00:34:19,969
Well, what about so-and-so?
544
00:34:20,190 --> 00:34:20,510
Wonderful.
545
00:34:21,050 --> 00:34:22,050
Let's go talk about that.
546
00:34:22,090 --> 00:34:23,949
Let's read until we find that satisfying.
547
00:34:24,250 --> 00:34:28,630
And if not, the whole shebang you're done and none of us persuasive.
548
00:34:28,810 --> 00:34:31,870
My question is going to be, if I were talking, I would say is who did you read?
549
00:34:32,350 --> 00:34:37,449
But secondly, I would say, okay, well, I mean, that's, you're the judge and jury, but that's exactly what I would do.
550
00:34:37,530 --> 00:34:39,409
I would have been a nutshell.
551
00:34:39,550 --> 00:34:40,710
Those are three things I would do.
552
00:34:41,370 --> 00:34:47,090
There are resources on your website, including links to the book you mentioned and others that you've written.
553
00:34:47,790 --> 00:34:52,429
Those links are in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net so that people can find you there.
554
00:34:52,670 --> 00:34:57,150
I'd love to be able to talk for hours on end because there's so much there to discover.
555
00:34:57,650 --> 00:35:10,010
But I just want to say, David, thank you so much for the honesty that you've taken to go on the journey that you have to overcome those doubts, but also the way that you're helping others to do that.
556
00:35:10,490 --> 00:35:14,370
And thank you especially for spending time with me today on Bleeding Daylight.
557
00:35:14,370 --> 00:35:15,310
Thank you.
558
00:35:15,370 --> 00:35:17,010
Seriously, this is a great, great interview.
559
00:35:17,150 --> 00:35:18,190
Thank you so much for your time.
560
00:35:18,290 --> 00:35:20,250
And I will pray for you and your audience.
561
00:35:20,770 --> 00:35:21,550
Thank you so much.
562
00:35:23,510 --> 00:35:25,830
Thank you for listening to Bleeding Daylight.
563
00:35:26,370 --> 00:35:30,690
Please help us to shine more light into the darkness by sharing this episode with others.
564
00:35:31,230 --> 00:35:35,510
For further details and more episodes, please visit bleedingdaylight.net.
