Pints With Aquinas - 216: What to Do if You Have Doubts About God? w/ Alisa Childers

Episode Date: July 28, 2020

Are you or someone you know struggling with doubt right now? In this episode I’m joined by Alisa Childers, blogger, author, and former member of ZOEgirl! Together we discuss: The “Deconstruction Movement” — What it is and how you can avoid it How Christian celebrity can dispose you to “deconstruction” Why the local church is key to maintaining your faith And a whole lot more…. SPONSORS EL Investments: https://www.elinvestments.net/pints  Exodus 90: https://exodus90.com/mattfradd/  Hallow: http://hallow.app/mattfradd  STRIVE: https://www.strive21.com/ GIVING Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mattfradd This show (and all the plans we have in store) wouldn't be possible without you. I can't thank those of you who support me enough. Seriously! Thanks for essentially being a co-producer coproducer of the show. LINKS Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/matt-fradd FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/ SOCIAL  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattfradd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd MY BOOKS  Does God Exist: https://www.amazon.com/Does-God-Exist-Socratic-Dialogue-ebook/dp/B081ZGYJW3/ref=sr_1_9?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586377974&sr=8-9 Marian Consecration With Aquinas: https://www.amazon.com/Marian-Consecration-Aquinas-Growing-Closer-ebook/dp/B083XRQMTF/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586379026&sr=8-4 The Porn Myth: https://www.ignatius.com/The-Porn-Myth-P1985.aspx CONTACT  Book me to speak: https://www.mattfradd.com/speakerrequestform  

G'day, g'day, g'day, and welcome to Pints with Aquinas. My name is Matt Fradd, and today I am joined around the bar table by Elisa Childers to discuss doubt. Are you going through a period of doubt in your Christian walk right now? Have you in the past? Do you know or love somebody who is struggling with doubt and you want to help them? This is the episode for you. Elisa Childers is a wife, mom, author, blogger, speaker, worship leader. She was a member of the award-winning group Zoe Girl. Do you remember that? If you're my age?

How old do you think I am? Go on, tell me below. Actually, funny story. I was at the gym the other day and someone said, how old are you? And I said, 35. And they said, 55. And I went, no, 35. And they said, I was going to say, you look good for 55. Point is, they would have believed me if I had have said 55. That doesn't make me feel good. That doesn't make me feel good. But then again, maybe I should just lie about my age and have everybody tell me how great I look. So I am 55 years old. Oh, point is, if you're around my age, not 55, 35,

you may have been familiar with Zoe Girl if you were in the Christian scene at the time. She is a popular speaker at apologetics conferences. She's published in a bunch of different things like the Christian Post, Crosswalk, the Gospel Coalition you can connect with Elisa online at Elisa Childers dot com. Elisa by the way is a Protestant. You'll notice that I talk with Protestants

on my show and I'm not sure why that should bother anybody This has happened on more than one occasion and it does, it bothers me that it bothers them somebody said recently and i'm not exaggerating to create a straw man the person said why would you talk to them if they're a protestant i don't know because they're a human bloody being and you can learn from them and we have a lot that we agree on how about that i just i'm so glad this guy is not in charge of the Catholic Church's efforts to evangelize. What do you reckon?

What should we do? Should we chat with them amicably? Talk about what we agree on? Focus on what we don't know? How about we ignore them? How will that help evangelize? What does that mean, ignore them? I just mean we just stop talking to them altogether.

Turn our head away from them should they walk past us. Don't even look in their general direction. And that way, they'll all want to become Catholic. Anyway, so it's sad that people think like that. Obviously, I'm a Catholic, and I think that Protestants should be Catholic. But, you know, we're called to love our brothers and sisters, aren't we? And there's much that we agree on, and I think we should focus on that while not denying the fact that there are significant differences between us. By the way, me and Cameron Bertuzzi from Capturing Christianity

just did our second debate on Sola Scriptura. So if you want to become a patron, patreon.com slash Matt Fradd, you'll get access to that full debate. It's only available to patrons. Okay, now before we get started, can I just tell you about this thing? Come on. Strive. Strive21.com is a 21-day detox from porn for men. So if you struggle with lust or porn in any way, and you are a man, and you want to stop struggling with lust and porn, you could go to strive21.com. Right now, we have over 19,000 men in the course. I don't mean we've had 19,000 men that have completed it. I mean, okay, I'm pretty sure. I have to double check. But I'm pretty sure that right now, we have 19,000 men in the course. Basically, every day for 21 days, you get around

a five-minute video from me. There is a challenge that I give you to perform. You get to engage with the other brothers in the group. And there are so many men there who are willing to support you and love you and help you. You can be as anonymous as you want in this, and it's also 100% free. So what are you waiting for? If you struggle with porn or lust in any way 100 free go to strive21.com that is strive21.com g'day how you going hi it is so lovely to chat with you i um Just last night I was like walking around the house playing Zoey girl songs and be like Cameron my wife I'm like Cameron you

remember this remember this song? So that was super fun. I have a feeling you do that all the time right you got your Zoey girl in your iPod. Well yeah it's funny it's like you know I come from a different space in that I'm Catholic and I'm not a woman who listens to I guess Zoey girl but I but I did from a different space in that I'm Catholic and I'm not a woman who listens to, I guess, Zoe Go. But I did recognize a couple of the songs. Oh, wow. Yeah. Very cool.

But for our lovely listeners and viewers, Elisa, please tell them, who are you? Well, my name is Elisa Childers. And I, gosh, who am I? You're asking existential questions. It's too hard. Just say beloved daughter and let's continue. Beloved daughter, I am. I love that you said that in your prayer as you prayed beforehand. Yeah, so I, you know, grew up in the Los Angeles area, was raised by, in a Christian home, in a Christian environment, very genuine Christian environment. In fact,

I'm especially reminded of that right now as I'm reading through. My dad just wrote his life story in a book. And so he was a hippie who found Jesus in the Jesus movement in the 70s at Calvary Chapel. And he has some insane stories. I just, things I'm learning about my dad as I read through this book are amazing. But yeah, really raised by very genuine Christians. It wasn't a legalistic environment or, you know, hypocritical. In fact, my parents regularly modeled repentance, you know, things and they had their struggles, but just kind of openly modeled walking with Christ through all that stuff for us, me and my sisters, three sisters. And so I grew up in the L.A. area. And then when I was about 21, I moved to New York City and I worked with an inner city

youth center in the projects in lower east side of Manhattan for about a year, year and a half, then moved back to L.A. for a year. Then I moved to Nashville to be in Zoe Girl. Did that for the better part of a decade. And in the process of that, got married and started having babies and pretty much been doing that ever since. And I'm sure we'll get into this, too. Went through a time of doubt and destruction of my faith. and instruction of my faith.

And as my faith reconstructed, the Lord saw fit to give me an apologetics ministry, which I never saw coming. So that's what I'm doing today. What's the meaning of your logo behind you? What is that? So I was working with my social media team to come up with a logo that would make sense because one of the things that I failed to do when I started an apologetics ministry was give it a name.

I just gave it my name, ElisaChilders.com. I didn't think that it would be shared widely enough to really need anything else. And so we didn't end up changing that. But what the logo represents is what I try to do is root what I believe in the earliest version of Christianity. And I can talk about this a bit if we talk about my doubt and reconstruction story. But essentially, when I went through a really dark time of doubt, I realized and I looked around and a lot of my friends were walking away from the faith because of maybe some caricatured version of Christianity that they'd grown up in. Some of the, you know, I mean, evangelicalism in the 80s and 90s had its weirdness and purity culture and some

of these things. And so they were walking away for some of those reasons. But when my faith was really challenged intellectually, just from everything from the resurrection to the existence of God, I made a decision that if I was going to walk away from it, I wanted to walk away from the real thing. And so I went back and studied early church fathers, studied pre-New Testament creedal material, tried to figure out what New Testament Christianity looked like, and then trace it through history from there. And so what the logo represents are, it's supposed to be like a tree, like roots. So that you see

down at the bottom are roots. And then essentially what I want to be is coming up, you know, later in history, of course, but up out of those initial Christianity that was like what Jude talks about, the faith once. Handed on once and for all. Yes. So that's what that represents. That's really cool. People might think it's a satanic thing. It's not.

I promise. I didn't think that. I don't think people thought that. Okay. Yeah. Awesome. Because I know that you were just telling me off air that your husband set up the studio during quarantine.

And I first heard of you because I'm friends with Cameron Bertuzzi from Captain Christianity, and I saw a video you did recently. And I just thought, like, in all honesty, you are very articulate and loving. And I'm just really excited to see what the Lord does with your ministry. I think it's going to explode. It's really cool. Well, thank you. And I was really excited to see what the Lord does with your ministry. I think it's going to explode. It's really cool. Well, thank you.

And I was really excited to come on your show because I study at Southern Evangelical Seminary, and they're Thomists. Oh, lovely. It's well known at SES. Where did Geisler teach? Yeah, that was Geisler founded it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's well known at SES if you don't know the answer to a question. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So it's well known at SCS, if you don't know the question, you know, the answer to a question. Growing up in church, it was like you put Jesus, but at SCS, if you don't know the answer, just put in Aquinas and you got a 50% chance. Oh my gosh, absolutely. I thought I had to point out the fact that I'm holding a ridiculously small cup. I just, I looked at myself in the camera,

I thought, gee, it's espresso. I'm pretty bloody tired. I have four young children. But yeah, yes, good day. I just want to tired. I have four young children. Yesterday, I just want to take a pause for just a moment to say thank you to our second sponsor, Halo. Not Halo, but Halo. H-A-L-O-W.

A Catholic meditation app to help you find peace and grow in your spiritual journey. If you're bad at praying and would like to be not bad at praying, you could give Halo a chance. Give it a chance, halo.com. Didn't even charge him extra for that one. But it is really great. It'll lead you through the rosary. It'll lead you through a bunch of Lectio Divinas,

examination of conscience at night. You plug your headphones in. You have like a lady or a man like guide you in these things. You can listen to Gregorian chant in the background or synth music if you're into it. It's really great. Now, you can get the free version by downloading it from iTunes right now. But if you want access to the entire thing, click the link below. Use the promo code MattFrad1Word and you'll get access to the entire thing for a month. And then you can decide yourself whether you want to continue with a free version or not. Check them out. Hello.com. Okay,.com okay awesome yeah no aquinas is great and actually this morning i looked up what he had to say about unbelief and one of the great things about aquinas is that he's

very nuanced you know he doesn't kind of often give black or white answers he's very good at making distinct distinctions and of course what he, like, unbelief is the greatest sin. Like, if I know that God is revealing something to me and I reject that, that is, I think he says, the greatest sin. But that's different to somebody who's asking questions or hasn't yet accepted the Christian faith. In fact, all of his articles in the Summa Theologiae begin, right, with him posing doubts to the point he wants to make. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. There's also this other bloke called cardinal he's a saint now saint uh john henry newman he said um something to the effect of 10 000 difficulties do not make a doubt which i thought was kind of cool okay so um it's

like a common phenomenon now hey that a lot of people are walking away from the faith and are having a sort of, as you call it, a deconstruction story. We absolutely have that in the Catholic world. But I think this language of deconstruction is more familiar in the evangelical world for whatever reason. Maybe because you have more prominent people and they're walking away and are discussing it. But what is that? Tell us how you've seen that happening. Well, it's interesting. I just had a conversation with

somebody about this, and it's interesting to me as somebody who has a history in the music business to see so much of it coming from the music business. We've had the worship leader from Hillsong and then John Steingart from Hawk Nelson, and I have no idea. I'm no expert on deconstruction, but it does seem like there's some sort of a connection there between the public platform type Christian and the deconstruction. And I'm sure that it's happening a lot, even among people who don't have public platforms. is what's especially rattling to the average Christian, possibly, because these are people you looked up to or that you thought were sort of exemplars of the faith. And then they're basically saying, hey, we don't we don't believe anymore. And so I know for me coming from the music business, there there were certain points that made me vulnerable to deconstruction. And I can only

speak for myself, but you know, essentially just the touring aspect, you're on a bus, you're sort of on this floating, not floating, but traveling fishbowl where you're isolated from the local church in many ways, at least we were because we were gone most Sundays. I lost touch with the local church after I started touring. I didn't really have any pastors that spoke into my life or that knew what was going on with me or were connected with me. And I think that combined with the strange schedule, you know, every time we'd go on the road, I would end up going to bed around 3 or 4, even 5 in the morning,

and then getting up at anywhere from noon to 2.30 for a soundtrack. And so you sort of have this flip-flopped schedule. And then I think it can harden you, too, because you meet every kind of, at least in the evangelical world, every kind of Christian. world, every kind of Christian from, I mean, I didn't know what the prosperity gospel was back then, but I look back and we played a couple of prosperity gospel churches, big, huge, rich churches, and played mega churches all the way down to really legalistic churches where we didn't know we weren't supposed to wear England trousers. You know, I won't say pants because I know that means something else. Sure. England. But, you know, they had this really firm conviction that Christian women shouldn't wear trousers. And there we showed up on Sunday morning to leave trousers, you know. Oh, man, that must have been fun. What was that like? Tell me what that was like. Was it like a

fundamentalist Baptist kind of church? It may have been. It was was very small i have no idea invited us but played there and then we got these just really harsh emails to our management after well people could you tell people were upset during the concert well it's but you know the other thing you're used to it feeling strange because different regions of the country were sure differently so there are there are places in the country where you just know they're not going to get very excited. It's just the way it is there. And they, they're more demure and other places are more, they get more expressive with their excitement. And so, but yeah, we used to get letters backstage. I mean, very, very consistently of people criticizing what we were wearing and that we

acted too seductively here or there so i can i totally get where you just be like man forget all that you know and so i think there were some points that that made me vulnerable it's if i just interject for a second it's also kind of it always gets weird when money's involved as well right like like and i speak about myself like i have a patreon account like i travel and speak and people pay me. And I wouldn't pay me that much to speak, but that's how much I'm asking. And it's been very, very, very, under the very rare occasion that I've said, I don't think the Lord wants me to take money.

Like, how many people do you know who've done that? We're like, you know what? I just, I'm praying about it. I just get the sense the Lord doesn't want me to take money for this gig. Right? Like, rather, it's like, it's the opposite. And you just, whenever money gets involved, it's and being from i'm from australia i don't know if you thought i was from england because you did mention england sorry don't be no no it's

fine it sounds very similar and also my my accent has like been diluted because i need people to understand me but yeah like i remember coming to america and just seeing like how christianity was a business you know and i'm not necessarily saying all the aspects of that are bad. But I remember just going to Walmart and seeing Christian T-shirts for sale and being like, weird. Just the culture was really different. And then just like selling these big, yeah, praise and worship CDs on the television. Like I was just like, oh, this feels a bit weird. I don't know what the solution is.

I don't even know why it's wrong or if it is but it definitely feels it so yeah i remember going to the christian booksellers uh big conference that they have once a year now this was i think it's smaller now but it was just this huge event that everybody in the music business and in the publishing business would come and they you know showcase their new books from their new CDs. So we went several years in a row. And I just remember somebody saying, just get ready for the showroom full of what they called Jesus junk, because it was the commercializing from the Jesus scripture, you know, breath mints to T-shirts and, you know, everything. And I remember thinking, T-shirts and everything. And I remember thinking, wow, like that it was very commercialized and in some ways I'm sure still is. And so even that can be, I think, be a point where people go, hey, you know, there's something about that, I think, rightly, that doesn't ring true to them or that or that they recognize the phoniness and some things or the the materialism or the commercialism and some of that. some things or the materialism or the commercialism and some of that. But yeah, the money thing is a huge deal, especially as somebody who is traveling in the music business. You have a lot of people

relying on you. We employed band members and there were marketing people and people from the record label that were dependent on us. And so all of that certainly comes into play. That's tough, right? Because you begin with the best of intentions. Absolutely. And then it's like, even now, like right when I submit a book to a publisher, I know that the question probably isn't like, is this the Lord's will? Like, is this something, now I understand that we can look at the practicalities and maybe discern for ourselves whether this is something that would bless people. But you get the sense that it's like, we could crank this one out. It just feels gross.

And again, I don't have a solution to it, and I don't even know why I think it's wrong, but it doesn't feel right. And did you find that in yourself, like as someone who is trying to be a faithful follower of Christ, did you get kind of caught up in this? And I'll just really briefly share my own experience, right? Like I know it's really easy for me to go give a talk, like 2,000, 3,000 teens or university students,

and people tell me like I've like changed their lives. And then I go home and I find myself irritated and agitated with the monotony of home life. And so instead of like making my bride and my children my primary vocation, I make it outside of the home because it feels successful out there. Whereas if I come home, it's really difficult to kind of gauge success when I have to constantly be patient with children who demand so many things of me. My wife, who's very aware of my own junk and isn't terribly –

I mean, she loves me and she's a beautiful woman, but not terribly impressed, hasn't given me a standing ovation once after any of the talks I've given to her. Yeah, it can be really tempting to start to take your identity in that person up on the stage and without even realizing it. And you can even like, you can make it look pious, you know, like, I'm just doing this for the Lord. Yeah, but like your family's struggling and I don't think this is for the Lord. Yeah. Did you experience that? Boy, I'm sure. Yeah. I mean, on different levels at different times, for sure. One advantage that I think I had that I look back on with such gratefulness is my dad was one of the founders of the Christian music industry. So back in the 70s, he found the Lord at the Calvary Chapel Jesus People movement. And his band, I mean,

arguably, I think a case could be made, it was the first Christian rock band to have any measure of success. They became a national band and sort of became on that ground level of the contemporary Christian music movement from the very beginning. But my dad actually left the industry after he, I think he had gone solo, had one solo album. And then he believed the Lord led him to walk away from all of that. And he was a model. So for my entire life, my dad never asked a fee. He actually would go to his concerts where he would tell people, I have CDs.

I suggest that you pay X amount. but if you don't have money, please, we'll give you one because we want you to have it. And so that was really modeled for me. And I actually saw the God intervene many times, where he would just go for a love offering, where, I mean, I remember times in my childhood when our house was getting ready to go in foreclosure. And then he would go do a concert and just the exact amount would come in to pay the mortgage. And so I watched my parents live by faith like that. And it was very important that my dad instilled that in us, that this is about ministry first. So when I went into the actual business, I had that mindset. So it was, I mean, I went in there like, I don't want to charge for CDs.

I don't want to charge for a concert. And they were kind of like, yeah, it doesn't work that way. And so, you know, I had to make compromises that I don't think were necessarily wrong, right? You've got to pay your band members. If you're going to do something bigger, on a bigger level for a certain purpose, you need money to do it.

And so, but I was never comfortable with it. I was even the autograph signing that we do. I remember arguing with road managers and things being like, I'm not saying I don't want to do this because I'm tired or because I don't want to work. But it just feels wrong to sit at a table while people line up to be filed past you like cattle while you sign you know one item per person wow yeah bye it just it felt so wrong to me the whole time i never made peace with that but you know that's not to say that i i didn't struggle of course i did i mean i think the fact the fact that you were wrestling with it is such a good sign i think yeah you know it doesn't end up people say you're struggling. It means you're on the right.

You might not be. You might be on a terrible path and you should actually make some courageous decisions. I'm talking about myself here. But you're thinking if you're wrestling. Yeah, you're wrestling. You do what you do. Yeah. Again, this is a very American thing.

And I'm not crapping on America. I live here. I love it. I'm honored to be here. But, you know, we don't have the same sort of fame culture in australia as y'all do here we grew up my wife's from texas which is why i say y'all that's my excuse um you know we grew up watching american television and so yeah yeah i see exactly what you mean like when i go give a talk at a big teen conference i have people coming up and like can you sign my shirt yeah i don't

really want to sign your sweaty gross shirt actually but that's it's hard eh it is hard and we weren't created to receive worship i've i've often i mean i'm a worship leader but i've always even struggled with that i like when i read the new testament have models of people you one bring a song a hymn a spiritual song but you don't but this whole idea of like the 20 minutes with the lights and the thing and and i've done all of this so i'm not saying that you know i know the answer because i don't and i've wrestled with this even as a worship but this whole idea of like we're gonna take 20 minutes and sing our songs and as in you know a lot of people have different idea about what it

is we're doing when we do that. And, you know, just wrestling through a lot of that too, but even how that's become such a business and such a, um, even in the, on the songwriting level there, there would, and that even as a songwriter, I always struggled with like how people could make an appointment at two o'clock in the afternoon to write a song about your deepest hearts, you know. Make it intimate. People like intimate. They'll pay for intimate. Be real. Be more real. Do that at 2 p.m. Like it might be 3 p.m. when that happens. I don't know. I mean, songs I wrote usually would happen like at a stoplight where I'd grab a napkin and really fast, you know, so I'm not one of those songwriters that wrote a song every day,

although I would admire people like that. So I think there's a lot of things, especially in American evangelicalism, that we have to wrestle through a little bit and don't just accept because it's what's done, but think it through more deeply. Like, is this something that should be done? And I'm not saying it's not,

but how do we balance cooperating with church leadership while not compromising something spiritually i think this is the difficulty in a time of doctrinal confusion intellectual confusion mass kind of confusion with the united states is that we really really would like someone to give us a strong answer we want the strong man to come in and say something strongly and then we say he's not beating around the bush but a lot of these things are just bloody difficult. Like I know, like in the Catholic space, like if you go to my divine, I go to divine liturgy, I'm an Eastern Catholic church. It's very, it's a lot of chant and incense and things like that. And so you'll have people in

some Catholic circles who will, you know, really speak disparagingly of Hillsong and things like that. And I think, again, it's to try and make things neat and tidy. But I want to say to them, but they're telling Jesus they love him. Like, what a beautiful thing to tell God who he is and to tell yourself who you are before him. There's so much that we can learn from that. And to just dismiss it all because you've had a bad experience or something doesn't seem right either. Yeah. Back in the day when my dad's first Christian rock band, the lyrics are so simple. I mean, these guys had known the Lord for two weeks when they even took some songs they'd written before that and worked with them and adjusted them to reflect their faith. And they're

not perfect yeah really from the heart amen i i was doing dishes the other day and listening to the really really old school hill song i was praising it was beautiful it was so refreshing so there for that it was almost refreshing to listen to something that's no longer cool these are the days of elijah yes yeah i was of Elijah. Yes. Yeah. I was raised in the more charismatic stream of Christianity. Me too. Me too. After my conversion. Sorry. And so I was into Hillsong before people really, you know, I was like early Hillsong. Yeah. Had my CD in 99, 2000. And yeah, that was like the soundtrack of my life back then. Hmm. Okay. So I'd love to know about how you were afraid that you were to use that language you've been using, deconstructing. How did that happen and what

was that like for you? Oh, goodness. Okay. So I mentioned being raised by a musician father who was, I remember asking him one time as a little girl, Dad, how do we know God exists if we don't see him? And Dad said to me, well, you feel him. And I was like, I do feel him. So like that answered every doubt I ever had until I was about 33 years old. Oh, that's beautiful. And it's true. I mean, I had supernatural experiences with God growing up.

Very, you know, many. I probably freak a lot of people out if I actually told all those stories. Me too. I'm with you. Yeah. So I knew that God was real. I knew I was a sinner that needed a savior. That was, and the gospel was beautiful to me.

And I think a lot of the reasons that it was so beautiful to me is because I had parents who modeled the beauty of the gospel for me. It wasn't just lip service. They weren't hypocrites. We were out serving the poor, working soup lines in missions, watching my mom hug on prostitutes. Beautiful. So when I was about 33, I was a new mom, and I'd come off the road with Zoe Girl, and I was invited to a church to be a part of a type of inner circle study and discussion group. Now, at that time, I was so excited about that because I had just spent almost a decade on the road. I hadn't experienced something really deep study. I studied on my own the Bible, but even that started to kind of taper off as the years went on and just got tired and all of that. And so I was really excited to sort of re-engage with the deep things of my faith. And so I went to this class, and I was not at all prepared for what it was actually going to end up being. So in one of the first classes, the pastor revealed to

the class that he was what he called a hopeful agnostic and um and you know of course i was like well i'm not going to judge that you know that sounds weird to me but i mean he's being honest and so i was i always had this battle going on in that class of feeling like i was judgmental so just just let them you know everybody say what they believe and and so through the course of the four months that I stayed in this class, it was like going to a secular college where they're trying to basically blow the Christian faith away. And, you know, we've heard stories from kids who meet a philosophy professor or some kind of maybe an evolutionary biology class, and it shakes their faith, and they walk away from their faith. It was very similar, only what happened was in the church, and so claims against the reliability of the Bible, questioning the resurrection and the

virgin birth. The class was sort of on the same page that the miraculous events in the Bible, they don't have to be true in order for us to learn something meaningful from them. And there were, we had, I mean, we had discussions on everything from prayer to evolution, to all kinds of different things. And we were always reading something that we would be discussing. And so while I was in the class, I, I would try to argue, you know, I would try, I'd go home and I, I mean, I had no clue I did. I hadn't heard any of these arguments before, but I will stuff and I'd be like, okay, I'm going to come back with that. And so I would try my best to refute essentially what the pastor was saying. Um, but I really started to get my own, my own faith became rattled. And so we, we ended up leaving that church and it was then it was when I was I was isolated, when we had just left our church

community, that all of those doubts that had been planted started to take root. And they grew and grew and grew. And already as a new mom, I think my daughter by that point might have been 10 months old, still a toddler. It's a difficult time where you can't get out very much. You're just kind of taking care of this baby. So I was isolated in that sense, but also in a spiritual sense. And there came a point when I hit rock bottom and just really, as all of these things I had cherished and believed my whole life, I was intellectually persuaded that they weren't true. And so I was in this cognitive dissonance because

all the, I didn't want to deconstruct. I wanted it to be true. And so I would sing hymns into just the darkness as I would rock my baby to sleep, uh, hope that it was not false, but I felt like I was singing into just a brick wall of darkness because in my mind, I'd been persuaded that it was not true. Like all of those feelings I had in worship services where I knew I had felt the presence of God, I'd been talked out of those things that that was just synapses in my brain firing in response to something I was, I felt emotionally connected to. And that's why I thought it was true because, you know, you can go to a YouTube concert YouTube thing and feel the same thing. And I was like, well, you know,

that's kind of true. I remember hearing a Beatles song for the first time at 12 years old, let it be. And it just it flattened me to the floor. I was just like, I mean, that was a very similar feeling. And so I became convinced intellectually, but spiritually, emotionally, I was still engaged. And so I begged God to send me a lifeboat because I felt like I was drowning. And that's when I discovered apologetics. He really answered my prayer through Robbie Zacharias' ministry. Oh, terrific. On radio one day.

And I just remember hearing the, it was Ravi answering questions on a university campus. And I was in my car saying, please say the name of this person. Please say his name so I can find out who this is. And they said that was Ravi Zacharias. And so I downloaded his app and I started listening to him every day. And it was through his ministry, essentially, that I found Southern Evangelical Seminary and other places to to help reconstruct and really answer these questions that I didn't know I was so naive I didn't know we had answers to this so I was just like guys like we got to get our stuff to disconnect the answers you know they just they

just pointed at the books at the library shelf and went, yeah, that's really not a new question. These since like the first and second century, but okay. What was your husband going through during this time? Well, he's a simple guy. Very – Cool. He's a simple guy, and I'm so thankful. He was such a rock through the whole thing because he never wavered. Now, he wasn't in the class with me.

the whole thing because he never wavered. Now he wasn't in the class with me. So essentially I would come home and be like, you won't believe what they said this week. And we would talk it through. And poor guy, I probably just like pulled out the fire hose and just, he's like, yeah, I think that, you know, for the three or four months I was in the class, you know, he, he would always listen and then I'd feel better. And I feel like I could go back in next week. And, but I always had this inner monologue going on. Like I'm the one who's judgmental. Maybe, you know, I always assumed I was wrong. You know, maybe I am just too legalistic or to this or that and just really confusing. And so at the, the last time I ever went to class was when the pastor said, let's invite the spouses for the next class. And so we went for the class and my husband was with me. And I think when he saw it for himself,

we, I just remember we got in the car and he said, we're done. You're done. Good man. We're done. We're not raising our daughter here. And I felt so thankful. I was just like, thank you, God, that he has just said that because I felt conflicted. I knew I wanted to leave, but there were Christians who were brand new Christians in the faith in that class. And so I kept wanting to stay for them. And, but when my husband sort of just said that it was like, them. And, but when my husband sort of just said that it was like, Yeah, that's awesome. Um, I, I, I'm sure you get this question a lot as you share this story. So forgive me if you've had to say this a thousand times already, but like, what the heck? Like, why, what is this pastor even doing? Is he like, when you say a hopeful agnostic,

is he bringing around himself people who he thinks can help him come back to faith in Christ? Or is he trying to evangelize you in some naturalistic Christianity? What was his intention? Well, I always try not to speak to motive. It's very good of you. But I, it was definitely, it wasn't, he wasn't trying to come back to the faith and it did have an evangelistic feel. And so the church itself, after several years, went on to identify itself as a progressive Christian community. So the whole church sort of went with him.

He, and so what he did was I wasn't the only class. He had a class on the evening I was going and then on a different evening and he had done it, a class before mine, uh class on the evening I was going and then on a different evening, and he had done a class before mine with the same material. So whatever his motive was, the result was lots of people in his church deconstructing in their faith and then becoming progressive Christians in their faith. And were they still at that church? Yeah, some people left. So there was a big split years later. So in class one time, I remember him saying he had a Bible study for the regular churchgoers. So the people he chose for these classes, he said, I remember him saying, we're peculiar people, very smart people that are silly about things. And so he kind of created this atmosphere like you're kind of the special ones.

And so we weren't allowed to talk about what people said in the class outside of the class. But he had this regular Bible study on, I think it was on Wednesday night, maybe after our class. And he would come back to our class the next week and say, well, you won't believe what I got away with. I slipped this in, maybe this naturalistic assumption about the Old Testament. Nobody batted an eye. And so then he would ask us, do you think I should do more of that? Should I reveal more about what I really believe to the broader church? And so several years later, it took about seven years to sort of, he did it very, very, he's a very smart man. He did it very methodically, where he took seven years to sort of deconstruct everyone's ideas about the Bible and about just the miraculous nature of the Bible.

And then he got up and announced one Sunday without consulting the board that they were going to be gay affirming. And so that split the church. And then, so a lot of people who weren't really aware of all that was going on in these classes were kind of like, it just kind of came out of left field for them. And they left, and then some stayed, and then there was another split between those people. So that church is now, I don't think it's in existence anymore. But there are branches that still are. Yeah, maybe oversimplifying it, maybe not, but this does happen when we put ourselves above the Word of God.

So we don't submit to what we find difficult to believe, but it's almost like we begin with a set of philosophical axioms from which we then try to explain away verses that don't fit into our worldview. Does that make sense? It's like, okay, God is all good, He's all-powerful, He exists, I start with that, Jesus saved me or something like that, and then from that I say, well, if God is all-powerful and all-loving, then hell can't exist, so we've got to get rid of hell, and love is love apparently, and so therefore sodomy must be virtuous. And it just unravels. It's despicable.

It's modernism. Yeah, yeah. And I think at the time, at least some of the people in the class were open about accepting the postmodern paradigm. There was a lot of relativism. I don't believe objective truth exists is something you'd hear in the class. And, and any type of agnosticism was always praised. If you said, you know, I don't know the answer to that. You said something like, well, I've really settled on X, Y, Z. If it disagreed with the more progressive ideal, um, they, they didn't like that they would mock the idea that the Bible is without error

in fact I remember the pastor saying our young people aren't even buying that anymore redefining what it means for the Bible to be inspired by God or to be his word lots of things can be God's word and yes God inspired it but he also inspired C.S. Lewis or Aquinas, you know, and so kind of demoting the Bible to the level of something that a pastor would say in a sermon being also the Word of God. So there was a lot of redefinition of words, and I see that still in the progressive movement. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

yeah yeah yeah we i don't know i don't know how interesting you find this but i mean obviously in the catholic church of course we have progressive it's weird to say progressive if you're if you're about to fall off a waterfall i guess you're progressing over it but it seems like in order to progress wisely you should start walking backwards but um yeah like we have that like we have members of our clergy like priests and and Catholic bishops and others who, but what's weird for us, right, is like the Catholic church, you know, like we know what, like, it's almost like, it's not just the scriptures. We also have what the church says the scriptures say. So it's almost like you have that living authority as well, which I think can make it, it makes it easier, I think, to point at somebody and say, yeah, like you are, you're a heretic.

Right. Whereas in Protestantism, and I'm not trying to get into a Protestant Catholic thing here, but just in Protestantism, it's like, I mean, text can be interpreted in so many ways. And so I know there's a lot of kind of, I mean, just like there are in-house disputes absolutely among Catholics. But I see that in Protestants as well where without like a final person who's doing the interpreting, everyone becomes their own interpreter. What do you think about that? Like, that's a massive problem. This is one of the reasons I could never be a Protestant,

is just like text is tone deaf. And, you know, if I was to write the sentence, I never said you stole my wallet, you might think you know what that means. But if I emphasize each word, like I never said you stole my wallet, but somebody else did. I never said you stole my wallet, but you stole whatever. I find that really hard. And I see that in Protestantism, this almost like, I don't know, I'm going to stop talking. And maybe you've picked up what I'm putting down very ineloquently and see what you have to say about that. No, I certainly understand where you're coming from. And I think it is more simple coming from

a Catholic perspective. I can certainly understand that. I think that what we all have to endeavor to do, whether we do it rightly or wrongly as Protestants, is to come to the text and let the text speak for itself. So we're going to look at who wrote it, who they wrote it to, just basic hermeneutical principles, tools that we've been given, that honestly we've been given to read any book. If I read Little House on the Prairie, that book has a genre. It has an author who wrote it for a certain purpose. And I'm not going to read Little House on the Prairie as law, because it's the story of her life. It's a biography. And so if I read a fiction book, I understand that I'm reading fiction. Or if I read

poetry, I understand I'm reading poetry. So I think that it is more complicated in the Protestant church, but we've been given tools. And it seems to me that when people abandon the tools that we've been given of basic hermeneutics, grammar even, then we can tend to want to twist it to say what we all want to say. And we all probably do that even to a certain extent. And that's where I'm always like, Lord, show me if I'm doing that. An interesting point on that would be that I grew up in a very egalitarian environment. So I grew up in a denomination that ordained female pastors, even female lead pastors. So in the denomination I grew up in, a woman could be the senior pastor of a church. There was no limit to what women could do in leadership. So it was completely normal for me to call women pastor such and such.

And it wasn't until I learned these tools, the tools of hermeneutics, that I was reading through going, gosh, I actually don't believe that anymore. I had no reason to not want to believe it. Obviously, I'm a woman. But I actually saw how that ended up playing out in certain situations and also came to the conclusions based on my interpretation of the text. And depending on people, trustworthy people who are translating the text and, you know, and all of that stuff. But came to the conclusion that I actually don't think women should be ordained as pastors. And so, you know, how that affects me is I have to put my money where my mouth is. And so if I'm asked to speak on a Sunday morning, I'll usually ask if it can be more of an interview or just sharing of my testimony, things like that. So I'm trying to

honor what I believe the text is saying. And of course, this is, you know, I'm not going to say that's a primary issue. I'm not going to divide with, you know, over that with anyone. But I guess it's just to say that I think the best thing that we can do as Protestants is come to the text, trying to understand what was being communicated to the original audience. I think Protestants rush to apply what they read before they understand what's being said. And I think that's the biggest hermeneutical mistakes that we make but you know that's funny is too because you you know there have been Pope's disagree with each other on things and you know there's no there's no perfect system for it I think you know bloody people get involved you know you're gonna do but but I mean some things are some things are black or

white you know so like so as a, like if I have a fellow Catholic who says hell does not exist or sodomy can be virtuous or women should not submit to their husbands, I can point to sacred scripture and how it has been interpreted for 2000 years and say like, no, like you're wrong. So you don't have to be Catholic, but you're being an unfaithful one. But as a Protestant, what do you do when you have a friend who denies the existence of hell and says, no, well, I go to the text and I do exactly what you're saying? Is this something where as a Protestant, I'm genuinely interested, do you go to them and say, you need to repent of this and be faithful to the word of God? Is that, like you personally, is that something you do? I would probably ask, because in the progressive paradigm,

in the progressive church, which is what I'm largely responding to, they're not going to be getting all of their theology from Scripture. So in the progressive church, there's a mechanism for you to be able to say, well, I disagree with Paul on that. Paul was a chauvinist. And so as they kind of de-supernaturalized the inspiration of Scripture, basically Paul becomes somebody who was communicating his best understanding of God at the time and the place that he lived. place that he lived. Even in the radical sects of progressive Christianity, where you might find, and I'm not saying all progressive Christians deny the deity of Jesus, but in the more maybe radical versions, there's this idea that Jesus wasn't really divine, but that he just sort of

tapped into this cosmic Christ thing, this Christ consciousness. And so there's not... So to answer your question, the first question I would ask them is, are you using Scripture to inform your view on hell? And if they say, well... That's such a difficult question to be honest about, I'm sure, for everyone. You know, like, yes, of course. Well, and if they say yes, of course, then I would say, then I would point them to the scriptures that are very clear about that issue. Another thing I think can be effective, especially

when talking to a progressive Christian, is that a lot of progressive Christians will say, well, I don't like Paul, but I'm okay with Jesus. So I'm like, okay, challenge accepted. Let's go, what did Jesus teach about hell? And so, you know, then, but also, even as a Protestant, I'll appeal to early, early church history. Oh, I'm so glad. That makes me happy when Protestants do that. Of course I will. I didn't growing up. Cameron Batuzzi needs to take a lesson from you. Him and I love each other, but we're debating constantly about where he needs to take into account what the early church taught. And he doesn't seem to be that interested. Now, as a Protestant, I wouldn't say the church fathers are authoritative.

Well, they're definitely infallible. Right. Did you say not infallible, right? They're definitely, yes. To be clear, they are not infallible. Church fathers, of course, taught error and believed error. But if you've got the majority of... For example, Ulrich Zwingli is the first prominent Christian to deny baptismal regeneration in the 16th century,

like in his workday baptismo. I think it's 16th century, 16th or 17th. 16th, I think, yes. It's like, that's kind of weird. That's kind of weird that for 1,500 years, the church got it wrong think. Yes. It's like, that's kind of weird. That's kind of weird that for like 1500 years, the church got it wrong on this thing. You know, it's possible. But yeah, so anyway, so you would point to church history. I would. Well, I'd point not just to broader church history, but the way I like to approach it is the earlier, the better. And this is like- Amen, sister.

Any historical sources, you'd go to the earliest and most reliable sources. So, you know, when I'm looking at something that we have to know what Christianity means, even as Protestants and Catholics, we have to have a definition of what that is. And so going back in history, I'm going to certainly refer, I love reading the church fathers. I read them very consistently, actually. And in fact, I was just reading two nights ago, I was reading Origen. Oh, that's so lovely. Yeah. Yeah. You know, his reputation of Celsus. And so I will go back. But I think that as now, it's been years since I did do a deep dive on Catholicism as a part of my reconstruction to

see like, okay, am I supposed to be Catholic?, what I saw happen in history, and I know that you won't agree with this, and I'm not prepared to debate it because I don't remember all the facts very well right now, but just what I observed and what I remember observing is that the church sort of had this steady stream going, and then it did start to sort of add things, you know, and then going up to the Protestant, of course, I mean, the Reformation as a Protestant, I'm actually thinking they made the right corrections, you know. But yeah, I will go back to early—in fact, I refer back to pre-New Testament creedal material. I refer to the rule of faith that was pretty dominant in the second century

as part of my definition of what Christianity is. I want to congratulate you for doing this, for responding to the progressive. There's got to be another word for progressive. We've got to find another word. You're right. You can progress toward falling off a cliff. Progress to hell. It's really regressive.

But thank you so much for doing that. It's so lovely to have a woman do that as well you know because um it's funny i had i announced on youtube today i'm like i'm so excited to be like interviewing elisa and they said well do you know that she supports um progressive christianity i'm like oh idiot like you literally just youtubed it and found like one thing and just assumed I shouldn't call him an idiot. But yeah, thank you for doing that. Tell us how, yeah, gosh, there's so many places I want to take this, how this is just eroding people's faith, right? Like once you start doing away with the supernatural, you're left with a sort of a humanistic faith, a naturalistic Jesus. And that's not worth getting up on Sunday morning for, surely. Not for me. Sorry. How did you come back to Christ then? It was Ravi Zacharias.

You said you were listening, and that's awesome. And then you found his app, you said. Yeah, I found his app. And I don't know if I would word it, come back to Christ, because in my deconstruction, I never stepped over the atheist line. Yes. I never fully lost my faith, but I definitely, it was a cognitive dissonance type thing where my mind believed one thing and my heart believed another. And so the process went something like I heard that Ravi radio show, downloaded his app. I began to listen to him every day. And as I listened to him, I found other ministries that I started to listen to. Now I had a small, I was actually pregnant with my second child during this process. And so I was after, and after he was born, oh my gosh, so busy. So I've got a toddler and a new baby. So I didn't have time to sit down

and read too much. So I listened all the time. I listened to Bible teaching. Growing up in the stream that I grew up in, I realize now the Bible was interpreted very sort of subjectively in a lot of ways. I don't want to bash that tradition because I got so much good out of it, and I've got wonderful friends, Christian friends who are still in that tradition, who love Jesus, would give their lives for him today. So I'm not bashing that, but I'd never really been taught good hermeneutics. I started listening to some Bible teaching. I was attracted to Calvinism because of its sort of no-nonsense. Yes. But ultimately didn't become a Calvinist, but I love Calvinists, and I've got many wonderful

Calvinists I listen to and respect. But there was just a lot going on, like, oh my gosh, I've got this Calvinism, I've got Catholicism to look at. I've got all these different things to look at. And so I think that probably, I've said this at the SES National Conference when I spoke there last year, the sort of captain of my boat was Norm Geisler. And I don't know why,

but I just resonated with almost everything I heard that man say. I had a lot of, God love him and God rest him. I had a lot of love for him, even though he had strong disagreements with the Catholic Church. But so he should, given that he was a Protestant. And I think that just shows his sort of intellectual honesty. But he seemed like such a beautiful man. Yeah, I never got to meet him in person. But yeah, just his writings, I started devouring all the books.

Once I got out of the phase where I actually could sit down and read a little bit, but I would listen to lectures, I would listen to audiobooks, and I mean, it did not matter what it was, because I was so deconstructed, I guess, from science to theology to everything. I didn't matter what it was. If somebody had a lecture on genetic entropy, I'd listen to it. I just didn't care because I needed to know everything. And so I basically, I think through Norm Geisler, went through the sort of classical case,

starting with the existence of truth, existence of God, different moral argument, cosmological, all of that. And so it was very early on that I was so persuaded by the cosmological argument. That was like a slam dunk for me. And then, of course, the moral argument, even hearing Peter Kreef talk about the argument from desire as a musician, that's really related. I was very convinced that God existed. And then it was building upon that. I got really deep into the Bible, into textual criticism and into historical reliability, because one of the biggest sources of the doubt that I went through had to do with the Bible. Because up until that point, if anyone would have said to me, I mean, like I mentioned, we did a lot of homeless work, we did street evangelism growing up. So I would

meet atheists who would say, you know, God doesn't exist. It's just a fairy tale. And I would just hand them my gospel tract and be like, Oh, they just don't know yet. You know, God hasn't opened their eyes. And so I was never, I was never swayed by any of that. But when I began to study all of this stuff and really meaning, you know, now that I was coming from a place of doubt and all of these arguments had gone so deep inside, it was that kind of that classical case. But a lot of time spent on the Bible, I would have just said to that atheist, well, the Bible says, I just don't believe the Bible yet. and just don't believe the Bible yet. But pastor was effectively able to knock the legs out from under the Bible for me. My whole worldview crashed. It's entirely built on the Bible. I, I absolutely believe the Bible was divinely inspired. It was God's word. It was authoritative for my life. I would not have been able to tell you why I believe those things, except that it just worked for me. And so that was a huge part of the journey was I even took like Michael, I not took it,

but I Michael Kruger put one of his textual criticism classes online from RTS. And I listened to every word, even the parts where they're talking in Greek. And I'm like, I don't even care. I'm just I got to listen to this. And so I once I was satisfied that the bible was reliable and that it was the word of god then um everything else sort of fell into place and a lot of it had to do with evidence for the resurrection and and that sort of thing but um yeah it was just a lot of study honestly it was just years uh years of study um what do you say to people now who are like, you know what, I just, I don't buy it.

Someone's listening right now and they're struggling with a time of doubt in their life. You know, what's a book you'd recommend? What's some advice you might give them? Well, I suppose it would depend on the type of person. You know, if it's a Christian who is experiencing some doubts and they just need some support for what they believe, if they just need, as a Christian, to say, gosh, I'm kind of maybe doubting the resurrection a little bit, but, you know, what are some answers I can give? Then, you know, I would recommend books like I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist,

which actually needs to be updated. There needs to be some information in there updated. But for the most part, walking you through that classical case. Yeah, it's really good. You know, and then Cold Case Christianity by J. Warner Wallace. If it's somebody who's more philosophically sophisticated, who's, I guess it would just depend on what person you're coming from. If it's somebody who might be doubting the physical resurrection, and they're more of an intellectual, I'd refer them to N.T. Wright's The Resurrection of the Son of God. How much of it do you think is the fact that we've got so much information

at our disposal right now? You know, when I grew up, internet didn't exist. So the only kind of views I had heard were people from my town. The internet comes in. But you can kind of get this false sense that there's a million competing credible views because everybody's speaking really loudly and has big platforms. But that's not true. Like, just because everybody's speaking really loudly and has big platforms but that's not true like just because there's lots of people speaking um it doesn't mean that their view wasn't debunked you know i mean you talked about epistemological relativism which is something augustine refutes in his writings in the 400s you know um the idea that if it's objectively true you know if there's no objective truth is that you know that's something augustine kind of dealt with

um but i think that's a big part of it as well. You look around and it's not like maybe you grew up in a small country town where everybody knew was a Christian. Now you're in the town of the internet and everybody has these conflicting opinions. It can be quite overwhelming. I think that's a huge part of it. Because I've even talked to my parents. My mom said to me once, I'm so sorry that we didn't prepare you for some of these questions. But I said, Mom, who would have predicted the Internet? Who would have predicted that guys like Bart Ehrman would write lay level books trying to persuade you to believe the Bible can't be trusted? And then, you know,

that gets into the mainstream. And then the proliferation of those ideas on the internet and social media platforms, it almost doesn't matter what's been debunked because there's going to be somebody that's really good at using their words that's going to convince you that that hasn't happened. And so, yeah, I think, in fact, I interviewed a guy recently for my podcast

about he'd gone through deconstruction and then deconstruction. Yeah, I'd seen that. And he said said my parents weren't prepared for a generation of kids that had access to the internet yeah i think that that's that's definitely i mean this is this is how we get some of those really out there conspiracy theories because you can make enough connections that for the average person that seems to make sense and it's just yeah it's like the Tower of Babel all over again.

Golly, that's a good way to put it. I think about myself. Actually, my literary agent's the first guy who said that, so I can't take credit, but I agree. Yeah. Yeah, beautiful. And then I think, and then it's the courage to follow Christ, huh? And to be obedient to Him. And then the other thing I think which is worth mentioning for those who are struggling with doubt, now this can sound like an absolute cop-out if you're an atheist, but if Christianity is true, then we have an enemy of our souls who hates us intensely and wants to drag us to hell. And so this idea that Christianity is about sitting in an armchair and contemplating a syllogism and making a decision one way or the other. It's like, no, we are fighting against invisible agents who hate us

and who are making war against us. And we can't, yeah, we can't not bring that into the picture. Yeah, there's a lot of those. If Christianity were true, then of course we would be preaching the exclusivity of Christ. Of course we would be, you know, and I think that's some of the pushback, especially from the progressive camp is saying, well, you know, the whole idea that the only way to God is through Jesus is largely rejected in that camp because, I mean, I think it's because they're embracing the pluralism of the culture, you know, but yeah, if Christianity is true, of course I'm going to, it's like the famous video that I think Penn Jillette made as an

atheist saying, if you're really a Christian, of course you have to evangelize me because if that's true, then you're going to want to push me out of the way of getting hit by the bus, you know? Yeah. There's a lot of those that, um, that people don't think about enough. Yeah. It's, it's, it's very true that if Christianity is true, then there are a lot of things that are going to be radically counterculture, even ideas about demons and angels and things that are going to go against what the, the, the culture believes at the time. Yeah. I mean, a lot of it is like a naturalism, you know, that kind of like leads us to dispel with things that we consider embarrassing, you know, like the healing of the

demoniac and that sort of stuff in scripture. I think a lot of it has to do with sins of the flesh and by the flesh in this sense, I'm talking about the sexual sins. It is interesting that in scriptures, it seems like idolatry and like fornication are so often, you know, together, you know, you think of the golden calf. This is your God who brought you out of Egypt, and they all just had an orgy. It is interesting, I think, as we demand this sort of sexual liberation. I think that's a huge part of it as well. Christianity, often they don't even bring up the importance of Scripture or Christian doctrines, except that it's the sexual morality thing that really bothers them.

I think that that's, in my book, I document several reasons that I've encountered from progressive Christians as reasons they walked away from, say, the evangelical church. walked away from, say, the evangelical church. And interesting, I'm trying to think if I've come across any prior Catholics that are now progressive Christians. I mean, I know there's some progressive Catholics that still... I think what happens is a lot of Catholics, if they want Christianity without the teaching on sexuality, is they will either drift into a sort of liberal Protestant camp

and then reject Christ entirely. Yeah. It's usually something like that. Yeah, yeah. So it's like that's one of the main reasons that you see. In fact, if you really listen carefully to a lot of the deconstruction stories that we're seeing in our news feeds, if you really listen carefully, there's always this, there's sexual morality. And it's an assumption that's made from the get go. It's, it's not like, well, I, you know, I, I read the Bible, and I actually think that the way we've understood sexuality

isn't the way the Bible actually said, you don't really hear that. What you hear is, I believe that the women in church and gay people are being oppressed. And that tends to be what's at the bottom of it, is that they believe that the church is teaching on women and the church is teaching on sexuality is oppressive. And that assumption is made from the get-go, and then everything kind of builds on top of that. Now, that's not true with everybody. with that. Now, that's not true with everybody, but that is, I think, in my experience of reading progressive Christians, that's a huge, huge sort of, you know, springboard into more error, is just to say, well, this can't be right, so I'm going to just start from there. Yeah, now this is a really interesting thing. I think it's really important that we Christians who live in a secular age continue to call ugly things by ugly names.

All right. So here's several ugly things. Abortion, fornication, sodomy, adultery, self-abuse. But what we've done with these things is we've given them new sorts of names to make them more appealing, easy to talk about, so as to take the shame away from that very shameful thing. feeling, easy to talk about, so as to take the shame away from that very shameful thing. So abortion, we call choice. Fornication, we call hooking up. Sodomy, we call love. Adultery, we call cheating. Like cheating, like it's a game. No, this is adultery. We used to call masturbation self-abuse. I want to bring that back. I think it's really important that we keep the language. Anyway. That's interesting.

Don't you think? That's an interesting thing. I'm just thinking about this now, but I think that is a really... I haven't thought about that. We play with the language, hooking up, like went to bed together. And of course,

and again here, like we want to be careful here, right? Because we want to speak strongly, but we want to speak with nuance, right? That the love and the mercy that Christ has for that beautiful woman who had an abortion, right? And he loves her and he died for her and he opened heaven under her feet, right? So if you're watching today and you've had an abortion, like God doesn't just love you, he likes you and he wants you and he died to save you.

Same thing with fornication and sodomy, the whole thing. But I guess it's difficult though because you want to sort of emphasize in the opposite direction of what the culture, which is evangelizing us every day is doing. Yeah. That's an interesting point. I have to think more deeply about that because the impetus to actually soften the words in the first place is what's the most interesting part of that, I think. Yeah. Like even like termination, like we call abortion, we terminated pregnancy. And we didn't terminate a child either. We terminated pregnancy. That is really fascinating.

Yeah, I think human sexuality is really tied into this. Okay, good. All right. Lovely. Okay, I want to know more about, as we wrap up, I want to know more about you, your mission, your podcast, your book for our followers who would love to learn more. Well, yeah. So all of those things, podcast, blog, book,

all of those things I never dreamed I would ever be doing right now. So I'm really like, I still, when people call me an apologist, I sort of bristle like, I'm not an apologist. I'm a flaky artist, you know? Love it. I sort of bristle a little bit because I don't actually feel like I've earned that title. But I, yeah, so this is something I never saw coming.

In fact, I, several years ago, 2016 was when I had really become settled in my faith. My reconstruction, I would say, was complete in 2016. Not complete that I'm not open-minded to changing my mind, of course. I mean, if I become convinced that something I believe today is false, I'm not open-minded to changing my mind, of course. I mean, if I become convinced that something I believe today is false, I'm going to follow truth. And so I'm totally open to changing my positions on things. But as far as just becoming settled in my own faith that this was true, the Bible's reliable, Jesus is who he said he was, I'm a sinner saved by grace, that whole thing, that was 2016. And so I had studied so

much and read so many books and done so much work over those years between say 2011 and 2016 that I saw that Frank Turek from Cross-Examined was going to have a training. In fact, that's where I met Cameron was at that training course. That was a couple of years later, but the first one I went to was in 2016. And for anyone who's not familiar, it's basically a three day training where Frank and Jay Warner Wallace and a bunch of other guys, they're not teaching you apologetics, but they're teaching you how to present apologetics. And so you give a talk and they critique you and all that. So I thought, well, maybe I need to go to that before I put this aside, because I was going to

put it aside and just do something else. I was still interested in doing music. And so, but I thought, no, just just go to that and just see what happens. And so I went to that in 2016. And both Frank and Jay Werner Wallace were my personal instructors, you get a couple of people that spend time with you personally in critiquing you. And so those were the two that I got. And both of them strongly encouraged me to start pursuing this as a ministry. And, you know, of course, at the time, my kids were smaller and I said, well, I can't travel. And so Frank looked at me and he said, then you need to start a blog. And I went and I didn't even think I could write at that time. I just I know I liked songwriting, but I didn't know I could write.

And so I thought, okay, well, if Frank Turk tells you to start a blog, you start a blog. It's just what you do. And so I went home a month later, I wrote my first blog post. I think it was something really basic, like is faith blind, you know, some kind of basic apologetics thing. And so I just started writing blog posts and, you know, with not much traction. But I remember being at an apologetics conference and Amy Hall from Stand to Reason said, you need to be more like give more of your own opinion when you write blog posts. I was writing really just safe apologetic, basic apologetics articles. So I went home and I wrote a post called Five Signs Your Church Might Be Heading Toward Progressive Christianity. Now, this was before I had done some serious research. So at this point, I was more talking from my experience. I hadn't gone in other than the books we had to read for the class. I hadn't dug deep yet. close to 300,000 views in the first few weeks of putting it up. And I'd never seen numbers like that before. And so I thought, okay, well, this is something people are wanting to know more about. And so that's when I decided to really dive in, start reading all the progressive books, listening to their podcasts, which was a sacrifice for me. I don't want to spend my time going back

to all of those feelings. And, you know, so it's actually a real sacrifice for me because I have emotions connected to that stuff. Like I know a couple that can read a Rob Bell book and just be like, I disagree because of this, this and this. But I'm feeling a lot of those emotions. So it's very it's very difficult for me to do that to this day. But I dug in and then I had another post that actually kind of went viral. And then publishers started calling and agents and I thought well if I'm ever going to write a book now is the time I had spent two years researching pretty deeply and so I wrote a book I don't know how I mean I'm going to I'm going to go to your website right now and as as we talk I'm going to show everybody your website

and stuff so yeah you can show them the website the book's not on there yet it comes in over but there is a pre-release available on Amazon it's called Another Gospel a Lifelong Christian Seeks Truth in Response to Progressive Christianity and it's my story essentially it's my story with a lot of apologetics weaved throughout but it's my story of doubt of deconstruction I go into a lot more detail than I have before about just specific situations that happened and how I was feeling. And so, yeah, I have an advanced copy of the book, and I'm looking at it going, I put all those words in there. I don't know if it's any good. I'm sure it's beautiful.

Yeah, I feel like a lot of people deconstruct. You know how people talk about the cumulative case for theism. I feel like there's a cumulative case for atheism that's based on a bunch of bad arguments. Oh, wow. See, there's a book in there. Well, you can take it. I'm sick of writing. But it's like they kind of mount up against you.

And so if you were to say to somebody, why are you leaving Christianity? They don't give you a compelling reason. They say things like, well, like it's just an emotional response. It's a perfectly psychological phenomena that you seek to weave into the tapestry of your weird theology. And you're like, uh-huh, this sounds good, but give me an argument. And often I've found, personally, I'm not saying, obviously, very intelligent atheists, very intelligent Christians who leave the faith and have arguments for leaving the faith, which I would disagree with. But I think when most people start to slide into apostasy through the progressive corridor, the arguments aren't even there. It's just like this feeling that comes upon them that's actually, oh, here's another idea.

Sorry, can you tell I'm not a terribly good interviewer? I've just got a thousand thoughts at once. What do you think of this? You know, when you go to the optometrist and they spin that thing around until things make sense? Yeah. I think for people who deconstruct, they had a version of the gospel that made reality coherent. And then they began to encounter things in their life like suffering or betrayal or abuse or, you know, same-sex attraction or something. And all of a sudden, it became difficult to look through the lens of the gospel and make sense of reality. And then what happens is people begin to insert other things onto the gospel to try to make sense of their reality, be that feminism or Black Lives Matter or whatever, and to sort of compensate. But then after a while, it's like, I'm not making sense of the reality

through this lens anymore. And so in order to make sense of it, another lens has to be brought in. That's great. That resonates with me. Yeah, it does with me too. In my own experience, right? At the times where I look i look around i'm like am i just full of crap like is this just one big bullcrap story and maybe they're right and maybe i'm wrong and you wrestle with that um yeah but but see again like a question isn't a doubt a question is a question yeah yeah and i like the point you brought in early about and you know about august i love augustine yeah about Augustine a bunch. He's so great.

Confessions was one of the key just explanations for me because I was kind of scared to go back in history. I didn't grow up learning a lot about church history, about early fathers or anything, and I was like, oh my gosh, what am I going to find if I go back and what I read is completely different than these guys. And I just remember when I read Confessions, I felt like this is

something, if I was talented enough to find words to write like you know not not there's obviously things i'm going to disagree with him at the end of the day but his love for christ yeah dedication to prayer and to just his all of his theology in that book is done via prayer it's all addressed to god good yeah anyway yeah it was just no it's true and then you read like you read the scholastics like thomas aquinas and i i often joke that aquinas sometimes reads like a board game instruction manual you know it's very specific there's no words that are wasted he gets the friggin point and at first somebody had to say like here's how to read the summa you have to do it like this i was like oh now oh, now that makes sense. Okay. Yes. Yes. But then when you read Aquinas, I mean, Augustine, he's just beautiful.

His language is beautiful. And he sees the gospel as legitimately good news, you know, liberating. All right. This has been a bloody pleasure. I'm so glad you exist. And I'm glad that you're doing what you're doing. God bless your husband for creating that lovely studio. All the best with everything.

Well, I'm glad you exist, too. Thank you. Thank you. too thank you so gracious it's been really fun and then you have to send me links so i can put them all i can put them all below okay i'll do it i'll do it okay thank you very much for watching that episode i hope you liked it i hope you'll share it i hope you'll click subscribe below to support this channel there's another way you can support this channel though if you, and that's by going to patreon.com slash Matt Fradd. There is a whole team of us, about six of us, six or seven doing work, constantly cranking out videos soon on the Pints with Aquinas Español channel. We're doing online courses for our patrons. We've got one coming up on the confessions.

We're doing these monthly debates with Cameron Bertuzzi. I'll send you a beer Stein like the one I was drinking out of signed copies of my book, stickers what else do I need to give you, come on so anyway, so if you appreciate the work that we're doing here at Pines with Aquinas and you want to be part of this, if you want the full experience if you just want to help us out, go to patreon.com slash Matt Fradd

you can give as little as a dollar a month and it really does help us, so cheers big ears, as we say in Australia. That's true, we do say that in Australia. Cheers, big ears. And then you reply, same goes, big nose. And then they say something that's too offensive to say on this channel.