Truth Unites - The Inconsistency in Rhett's Critique of Christianity

Episode Date: February 28, 2024

In this video Gavin Ortlund analyzes Rhett McLaughlin's Deconstruction of Christianity. See the original video here: https://youtu.be/q3fCWhRJpIY?si=AlrQ8zI0mmlTUioT Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

Face your fears, you say, I'll change, I'll follow the truth. For me, I got to the bottom of the barrel. And I came to the greatest joy and relief of my life that I think it is true. I think Jesus did rise from the dead. Over the last several years, there have been a number of deconstruction stories that have come out. It's a huge trend on YouTube. If you type, search for that. Rett and Link are very well known. I don't think I need to introduce them, but I'll put up a picture of Rett's video. This was a very poignant and interesting sharing of his experience. It has over 3 million views at this point. And then he shared more recently about this again, interacting with this book, surprised by doubt.

Full disclosure, I'm friends with the authors of this book, and I'm going to have them on my channel in a few days to talk about this more. But in anticipation of that, I wanted to share a few thoughts of my own. I believe that the Bible and Christianity is a belief system. that they are a product of people rather than a product of God. I'm not an atheist. Kind of went through a little bit of like a angry, you might call it an angry atheist phase, which is very common for people who are coming out of the faith.

But I never really got all the way to atheism. And the reason I don't call myself an atheist is because I'm personally compelled to believe that there's something else going on beyond what I can see and understand. I don't believe this because I have evidence for it. I believe it because I want to believe it. I believe it because I want it to be true. I kind of want to live in a world where there's some magic, right? That comment stood out to me, and I appreciate that, and I think a lot of people feel this way.

Even, I know a lot of people who are not religious, but they still look at a strict atheism, and it feels kind of disenchanted. And for me as a Christian, this is what I think of as the purpose of my YouTube channel. I use the word enchantment. I want people who are doubting and struggling to feel the enchantment of the gospel. That's what it feels like to know Jesus. It's enchanting. Or the word magic is a great word.

You know, think of the resurrection. In the Narnia books, C.S. Lewis talks about deeper magic from before the dawn of time as a category for what, for resurrection. If you really think about what's happening on Easter morning, like if you come to believe that's true, magic is a great, great word, just in the emotional impact. Now, obviously, Rett has a different conclusion about Christianity, so he's open, though, to something spiritual, and I find that approach much more reasonable, and much more kind of human than the kind of hardcore derisive atheism that you see out there a lot. But in this video, I'm going to share where I disagree with him. Before I get into that, let me just one other little comment stood out to me. I think that I was especially susceptible to the type of deconstruction and deconversion that I went through because of the particular type of Christianity that I

subscribed to, because of American evangelical Christianity. One of the reasons that Truth Unites exists is because I think evangelicalism is basically a good renewal movement in the church and yet also has some flaws and eccentricities, many of which set people up for intellectual doubts and intellectual struggles. I hear so many stories like this, And this is what I, one of the things I'm trying to do with my YouTube channel is try to reduce stumbling blocks wherever I can. This is why I talk about theological triage and I respond to Ken Ham or I'll talk about the local flood issue.

Ooh, the local flood. Even that, see, all that stuff to me is part of apologetics because I want people to understand that Christianity is much more capacious and much more robust than maybe their own experience or even the entire sociology of American evangelicalism, it's so much bigger. It's the biggest and most diverse religion in human history. And so that's, but Rett's conclusion is different. He's not just deconstructing part of American evangelical Christianity. He has come to reject Christianity as such.

In his video, he spends a lot of time talking about the golden calf story from the book of Exodus. And basically, he's using this as a kind of metaphor to say that the God of Christianity is like the golden calf in some way, while the true God is unknown and beyond. So what is the significance of this story? Well, this may not be what your pastor tells you. This may be what Pastor Rhett tells you. God. The people became impatient with Moses, right? Moses taken too long. So what do they do? They made their own God.

And it was a God that they could see, that they could understand, that they could relate to, it was tangible, it was defined, it was right there, it was a golden calf, the God of American evangelical Christianity. And when I grew up,

I took a closer look at that God, but what I would say, the caricature of God that I had been given, and I became convinced that it wasn't God. I became convinced that whatever God is, it must be bigger than the God that I'd place my faith in. It must be bigger than the golden calf that I was given. So he gives an alternative way to think about God that he puts forward with this book that he talks about from Anthony DeMello called Awareness. And this is the idea,

basically that God is the unknowable, God is ineffable, and he's beyond and so forth. Here's a quote from that book. The fact is that you're surrounded by God and you don't see God because you, quote, know God. Or you, quote, know about God. The final barrier to the vision of God is your God concept. You miss God because you think you know. That's the terrible thing about religion. So that was Rhett reading from the book. And then he uses this metaphor that comes up all throughout,

and it's the metaphor of using a telescope to look at the sun. And basically, he's wanting to distinguish the telescope itself from the object that it's seeing. Just imagine that there are multiple people who have telescopes pointed. at the sun to look at the sun. And then there's one guy who starts saying, hey, I think that the sun is in my telescope. You know, I think that my telescope is the thing. Like, it's the right telescope. You know, you're convinced that the thing that gives you your concept of God, in this case, your religion of choice is the thing that is ultimate, the thing that matters, versus whatever it's pointing to, right? And I think that that for me was what happened. I think in many ways it was

a complete preoccupation with the telescope itself and a defense of the telescope itself and being convinced that I had found the right telescope. And I'm learning more and more that my deconstruction was not necessarily a deconstruction of God. It was a deconstruction of my telescope. Okay, yeah. Basically, what Rhett seems to be saying is Christianity is the telescope. It's the lens through which we look at God. It's a human construct, a human effort to talk about God, but it's not the truth of God. And he says that very plainly several times throughout the video. So that's his perspective. And then from that view, he then interacts with the surprised by doubt. They say that when you reject an established religious structure and then you pick and choose

which spiritual ideas you want to subscribe to, you are making yourself the ultimate judge of truth. And this is not a reliable basis for a spiritual life. And I would say, I agree. I agree. You personally wanting something to be true or feeling that something is true doesn't. make it true. I would just go one step further and say, I don't think any religious structure, whether it's based on an existing system or one that you personally piece together, is reliable. It may be truly useful, it may be truly meaningful, it may be truly transformative, but I'm not

convinced that it is true in some defensible, factual sense. sense. So in other words, a religion followed by only me is probably not true, while a religion is followed by a lot of people may feel more true because a lot of people are following it, but it's probably also not true. Just because there's a lot of people using the telescope doesn't mean that it's the best or the most correct picture of the sun. Now immediately, my mind goes to the metaphor of the elephant with the blind men describing the elephant. I'll put up a cartoon of this. You've probably heard of this. Basically, these people are blind and they're trying to describe the elephant. One person says it's a spear because he's touching the tusk. One person

says it's a fan because he's touching the ear. One person says it's a snake because he's touching the trunk and so on and so forth. And this is supposed to be a perspective about religious diversity. Everybody sees part of the truth, but nobody has the whole picture. But what they're saying is true from their vantage point. And there's a couple of problems with this that are often pointed out. I mean, some of the, I'll state the main problem in a second. One of the interesting things you might ask is why aren't these blind men moving around more? Why don't they, you know, like collaborate a little bit, like just walk around, you know? Maybe that's a weakness inherent in the metaphor.

The other thing is you could say, well, what if the elephant can talk and says, hey, I'm an elephant. You know? So you could change the metaphor to a different metaphor to try to describe a different perspective. But here's the problem with the metaphor as it's told. inconsistency. This is the word of this video, my concern with RET, though first I'll start with this and then I'll build it just to explain how it applies to his telescope metaphor as well. Okay, the elephant metaphor is told from the vantage point of someone who can see,

someone who is not blind, someone who knows it's an elephant and is having, they have a superior perspective on it all. And so it's kind of condescending because it's coming across like saying those people are blind but I can see. In other words, it's claiming the very kind of transcultural

superior perspective that is disallowing to everybody else. It's a way of, functionally, it's a way of saying rules for thee, but not for me.

And I have, my basic disagreement with RET is, I think the same worry comes up with the telescope metaphor. Because it seems to be assuming the very kind

of transcultural superior perspective on religions that is disallowing for them. However, Rhett anticipates that response. But the idea that I have to contain it and explain it, the idea that that thing, whatever it is, is constrained to an idea, to a book, to a religious philosophy, to an ideology, seems pretty preposterous. And the last thing I'll say is, because it's a common criticism, whenever I speak in this way,

what I am told is that I am just proposing a new philosophy, that I am making a new truth claim, that I'm doing something that's no different. Another way to say that is you might say that I am building a new house. I do not believe that is what's happening. I am saying, I'm not building a new house on purpose. And to tell me that my not building a house is building a house,

that I'm not building a house. That's the thing I'm taking issue with. I'm not making a, you know, a truth claim that I think applies to you and everyone else. I am saying that about such things I don't think we can make truth claims. And if you want to get into semantics and say that that's a truth claim in and of itself, I think you're missing the point that I'm making. I'm saying I'm not building a house.

Don't think we should build houses, at least right now. That's not a house. So that was just at the very end of the video there. But I would just, here's where we get to the nub of the disagreement and I'll give my pushback. I don't think this is just semantics and I don't think this is missing his point. I think this is just an unintentional inconsistency here because Rhett is advancing a very specific religious claim. He's affirming a particular doctrine about the unknowability of God.

That's a very specific idea. That is then being set over and against alternatives which are being labeled preposterous. That's his term. So he is making a truth claim that applies to others. He's doing that. If you tell Christians your religion is humanly constructed rather than divinely revealed, that's a truth claim. Or if you say, you know, if you say that Buddhism isn't true or you say that ancient Aztec polytheism isn't true, you could be right or wrong, but you're making a truth claim and applying that to others. And so, and then you're the alternative view that you're advocating for, whether you call it open spirituality or you say God is the unknowable or however you describe that, that's also a truth claim.

That truth claim has its own history. It has its own boundaries and it even has its own specific ethics, as we'll see. It may not be cast as that, but that's what it is in effect. In other words, it's like saying you guys are looking at the telescope, but I'm not looking at the telescope. I see through the telescope. Or, in other words, saying, I see the elephant. Or if you use the house metaphor, you know, Rhett at one point claims he's not living in a house. And if that means he's not a member of a particular religion, fair enough.

But if it just means having a perspective about religion that imposes truth claims upon others, then I would say that is its own kind of house from which the other houses are being called preposterous. and that is a truth claim. I think one way you see that is the specific set of ethics that RET advances. Just like when I did when I was inside the house, I wanted to live a life characterized by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, i.e. the fruits of the spirit or the fruit of the spirit. And I found not only did I know a lot of people outside of the house that wanted to live like that, I wanted to live like that, and I could also continue to live that kind of life and pursue those kinds of things outside of the house.

So these are the fruits of the spirit from Galatians 5. I have no doubt that Rhett can and does seek those things. But not every religion believes in the fruits of the spirit. You know, if you're, if you're, if you live in pre-Christian, Scandinavian territories, the Viking religions of that time didn't value patience and kindness and sort. forth and the other fruits of the spirit in the way the modern West does. If you live on some island outside of Denmark in the year 800, you're probably religious, but you probably don't care at all about the fruits of the spirit. Those aren't a value.

So then if we come along afterwards and say, well, that's bad, that kind of religious belief that downplays the fruits of the spirit is bad. And the religious belief that values those things is good. We're saying, in effect, my telescope works. I can see truly through the telescope. You know, we're making a claim. We're claiming I can adjudicate between this religious idea versus that one. This comes up again at the very end of the interview.

So Pastor Redder, you're going to close it with an invitation? Yeah. I would like everyone to bow their heads and close their eyes and to not come into my house. Because I don't have one. Okay. Let's just keep walking around, guys. Let's just keep walking around and be there for each other. see somebody in need, help them out, make healthy choices, love people.

It doesn't seem that complicated. So there are three things that came out there. Help those in need, make healthy choices, love people. Now, these are very broad, very ambiguous, what is meant by that? Like, what does healthy choices mean? As soon as you start to get detailed about that, there's going to be a lot of differences that immediately emerge, but even as broad as they're stated, those generic values have a particular religious history. Not everybody agrees with them. You know, philanthropy was not a part of our

animal ancestry. Hominens living 300,000 years ago, didn't practice philanthropy. In ancient Babylon, there were not a lot of charitable organizations. You look at human history, you say, oh, I think what happens is in the modern West, we tend to assume certain values, and it's like you climb up a ladder, and then you kick the ladder away and forget about the ladder. But these values about loving each other, helping each other, and so forth, they have some commonalities, but they have blossomed and flourished in a particular way, especially when you aggregate those down to apply to the individual level so much like we do in the modern West. that so basically that's a way of saying my telescope works i can adjudicate that my values today in the

modern west are right and the ancient babylonians were wrong and their religious ideas now i get the sense ret would probably agree with that maybe but his video gives the impression that his former christian beliefs were making a truth claim that his open spirituality isn't making you know that's what he's saying at points like i don't really live in a house but i think if he was consistent he would acknowledge that both Christianity and open spirituality, or whatever else you call that, are claiming to have the right telescope. Everybody does that. That's okay to do. And then we just have to argue about, well, who's right and who's wrong. And my conviction is that Christianity really is simply true. I, with all of my heart, understand and sympathize with Red's story and how he's

working through things. I've had the same moments where you face your fears. You say, I'll change, I'll follow the truth. For me, I got to the bottom of the barrel. And I came to the greatest joy and relief of my life that I think it is true. I think Jesus did rise from the dead. And there's these unbelievable testimonies like the fine-tuning argument, you know? Like the fine-tuning argument is so strong. It's like fine-tuning argument is like a wild animal hunting you down. It's like, how do you escape that argument? It's so good. And you look at other things, I know where we'll probably disagree most would be like historical evidences about the life of Christ. But the point is we could have that disagreement about who's right and who's wrong, but both sides are making their truth

claim and imposing upon the other. And it's not, it doesn't feel fair when it's not acknowledged like that. Okay. The reason I'm addressing this is because I think a lot of people are influenced by Rhett and Link and are wondering should I follow in their footsteps. And I want to encourage people to remain within Christianity. Christianity is a big enough house for you to live in while you work through particular doubts, objections, questions, and so forth. To use the metaphor of this wonderful book, leave the attic, but don't jump out the window. Just go downstairs. There's plenty of space for you to live and flourish. Okay, final comment, let's not psychoanalyze people. I think what happens is when people leave Christianity, we can feel we attack them.

We hurt them on the way out. We can feel hurt. We can feel betrayed or we can feel threatened. And so we lash out, we judge their motives. Also found that, you know, the people who were still on the inside of the house thought a lot less of me for being on the outside. They told me all the real reasons that I left the house. Even though while I was in the house and as I was leaving the house and after I left the house,

I told them why I left the house, and it was because I had problems with the house. No, no, no. We cannot accept that the problem is you. You never really were a member of this house, by the way. You never really belonged in this house. You never really believed the things that we believe. So let's not do that. The thing to do is bring your arguments, you know, disagree.

You know, and if you have hurts from the way someone has left, you can talk about that. I'm going to try to minimize or silence anybody. We want to not attack people and judge their motives. Just bring your arguments and give your counter perspective. So I'll delete any comments that do that to Rhett or link. Let's be kind. Anything about the motive. In fact, I'm going to say that for my channel just in general.

Let's just never attack each other's motives. That's just never helpful. Rhett, if you ever watch this and want to talk directly, I would love to do that. I'd be so honored to do that for the other viewers of my channel. I'll have an interview with Josh and Jack coming out in a couple days. It'll come out this coming Monday, March 4th. So thanks for watching, everybody. Hope this was helpful.

And let me know what you think. Leave a comment and tell me what you think.