If none of us has been here yet, we may be at the start of our journey.
The more I learned, I realized the less I knew.
I've finally tossed out all the pretenious and religious words and gone back to the only thing that really matters:
Posted on 01/23/2022 4:38:14 AM PST by Kaslin
As reported by Josh Shepherd on the Roys Report, “Brady ‘Phanatik’ Goodwin, founding member of Grammy-nominated Christian hip-hop group, The Cross Movement, and in recent years an apologetics teacher, stated Monday in a video posted online that he has renounced his Christian faith.”
As he stated in his Facebook video, “I sent a letter to my church withdrawing my membership and saying that I am denouncing the Christian faith that I have believed, professed, proclaimed, and defended for the last 30 years of my life.”
In Goodwin’s video, which is delivered with candor and pain and graciousness, he explains how his doubts began to develop when studying at Lancaster Bible College, only to deepen in 2014 when he began studying at Westminster Theological Seminary.
As Shepherd writes, “Specifically, he said learning how scholars use preexisting ‘theological commitments’ to arrive at translation and interpretation of the biblical text raised questions for him.
“He compared Christian theology to a Rubik’s cube. ‘I began to look at the faith and say, ‘Man you could turn this Rubik’s cube any particular way and end up with a different understanding.’ And who can say that understanding is right or that understanding is wrong?’ asked Goodwin.”
Personally, I was unfamiliar with Goodwin and his work until reading this announcement. But since then, I’ve heard good things about him, and I have no reason not to take him at his word when he explains his reasons for leaving his faith, and it’s clear from his video that he is not gloating or mocking.
It’s also clear he doesn’t want to hurt the faith of others. And so, at least at this point in time, he is not aggressively attacking what he once believed.
Hopefully, this is not the last chapter in his faith journey, and he would not be the first leader to fall away and then, with God’s help and true repentance, turn back to the Lord.
But what about the points he makes in his video? What about the feeling that we can basically make the Bible say whatever we want it to say? Or that it’s our prior theological commitments that determine how we understand Scripture?
Put another way, is there no objective truth when it comes to God and the Bible? Does it come down to, “You have your truth and I have my truth, but there is no absolute truth?”
Speaking candidly, I know all too well what it is to struggle with the faith.
That’s because as a Jewish believer in Jesus, from my first moments in the faith, I was challenged over my beliefs. As my dad said to me shortly after my life was transformed in late 1971, “Michael, I’m glad you’re off drugs. But we’re Jews. We don’t believe this.”
That led to immediate, intensive interaction with learned rabbis (which has continued for 50 years) along with serious academic study, culminating with a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from New York University.
And in all my college and graduate studies, not one of my professors was a Bible-believing Christian. Some were even hostile to the faith, taking every opportunity to ridicule conservative Bible beliefs.
But the whole reason I earned the degrees that I did (all of which were in ancient languages) was so that I could read the original biblical text in its original cultural and linguistic context, not having to rely on other dictionaries or commentaries to understand what I was reading (although, to be sure, there can be great value in many of those dictionaries, commentaries, and other books).
Over the years, the more I studied and the more I wrestled with objections to my faith, the stronger my faith became. My mind was now in complete harmony with my heart, my intellect now matching my experience.
Others, sadly, have had different experiences and have ended up leaving the faith rather than growing in the faith. And Goodwin is careful to say, “Hey, don’t blame seminaries or put this on intellectualism, since others in my class were strengthened in their faith through their studies” (my paraphrase of his words).
But here’s the thing. Just because there are different opinions as to how to translate a biblical verse doesn’t mean that the original author was ambiguous in his writing, even if we debate the meaning today.
And just because Jewish translators of the Bible render certain key words one way and Christian translators render those same words another way doesn’t mean that one translation is not ultimately better than the other.
In the same way, just because Hindus conceive of the Godhead in a polytheistic way while Jews, Christians, and Muslims conceive of the Godhead in different monotheistic ways doesn’t mean that all these competing ideologies are equally true. God is who He is, regardless of what we think or believe.
Just look at our political views today. Or our views on moral and cultural and social issues.
The fact that we are deeply divided doesn’t mean that all sides are equally right. And the fact that our presuppositions color our worldview doesn’t mean that all presuppositions are equally valid (or invalid).
When it comes to the Bible, we do not read it in a vacuum, nor did it the authors of the Scripture write it in a vacuum.
To give one example, the disciples of Jesus knew that His interpretation of the Bible was true because they saw it with their own eyes. They heard Him say that He would be rejected and crucified. They heard Him say that He would rise from the dead. And they heard Him say, “It is all written in our Bible in advance!”
Then, after His crucifixion and resurrection, when He pointed back to the Hebrew Bible and said, “It’s all predicted here!” their eyes were opened. There it was, in black and white, written centuries in advance by the prophets. (See Luke 24:13-49.) That settled things, forever. Who could possibly convince them otherwise?
In my case, my life was undeniably transformed by Jesus the Messiah. And, over the last 50 years, I could point to countless examples of God’s reality in my life (and the lives of those I’m close with). In fact, I would have to shut off my mind to deny my faith. In the words of the bestselling book by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist.
But that doesn’t mean that I didn’t wrestle with intellectual arguments and questions of biblical interpretation. To the contrary, I wrestled deeply, and to this day, I’m engaging these questions and challenges.
Yet what I can say it this: My studies confirmed my beliefs. And should I have a question about which theological system is correct, my experience in God tells me which theology is right.
So, there is a beautiful, continuous loop, one in which the truth of Scripture is confirmed through experience, and as that truth is shared with others, they too experience God for themselves. And as we dig deeper in study, we find answers to our deepest questions.
Again, to be clear, I do not sit in judgment of “Phanatik.” To the contrary, my heart goes out to him.
But I will say this to everyone struggling with his or her faith. G. K. Chesterton once wrote, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”
And for many, that is the key. The Scriptures say repeatedly that God rewards those who diligently seek Him, who search for Him and His truth more than a miner searches for gold and silver (see, e.g., Deuteronomy 4:29; Jeremiah 29:13; Proverbs 3:13-18; Luke 18:1-8; Hebrews 11:6). We are to seek Him with heart and mind, spirit and intellect.
Yet the fact is that very few of us really seek God and His truth this earnestly – by which I do not mean simply studying but rather literally seeking Him in prayer and fasting day and night until we encounter Him. I mean crying out to Him for reality and truth and encounter as if our very life depended on it.
If we will do that, refusing to quit or give up until a breakthrough comes, He will reveal Himself and He will confirm the truth of His Word. He cannot deny Himself.
Lemme guess....he’s about to “come out” as “gay”.
Just because you are from a fag state, you believe he must want to be a fag also?
Usually. Also people who converted without being convinced that they are sinners. I find those people usually end up creating God in their own image and then get upset because Scripture opposes their belief.
Church leaders who say “Hell isn’t real because the God I know wouldn’t do that” almost always leave the faith and claim they never knew Him. IOW they were lying.
Apostate.......
.....the Bible warns against folks like him
Period!
As soon as he said this person was a “Christian leader,” he fell off the cliff into the mud pit of nonsense.
Not a bad guess. From what I’ve seen, when people like this suddenly renounce their alleged faith (“alleged” because I’m not sure they ever really had it in the first place), it’s often because either a) they have a pet sin that they wish to indulge without feeling guilty, or b) they have tired of being at odds with today’s sick, twisted culture and want to be accepted by the world. Of course, it could also be a) AND b).
What is required is to read the bible as an ancient non-clerical Jew heard the bible and how they experienced the bible.
The bible was made theirs so they would commit to it, it adopt as their own story.
As their own story, the original poetry of the Aramaic was like music to the soul, asking the hearer to enter the story as their own, to enter into the story as one with, more than one hearing, more as one experiencing it, and in that vein to be inspired by it, to obtain the inspiration the Holy Spirit had imprinted in the words.
The bible is to be joined, to be experienced, and in the experience to partake in the original inspiration that has been given to it.
Getting caught up in text translations can get the vexed soul distracted from the inspiration.
The best translations in different languages have hopefully tapped the inspiration, more so than mere literal translation, and conveyed that inspiration in the right manner for that language.
So he was turned off by the interpretation de jour offered in the Protestant world. Not surprising. If that is all I had to work with I would become a non Christian too. Thousands of conflicting interpretations can’t all be correct.
I too, could question ‘my faith’, but I am in the category of those who were much like the ‘blind man who said’. I once was blind and now I see. For some of us, conversion was transcendental, life changing, like going from a worm to a butterfly. We CAN’T ever deny this. And that has made all the difference, it was not some gymnastic mental game in my brain, but something that made you shake, cry, and fall to your knees. And now I go around singing.
I love the authors self-description paraphrase of the book “ I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist”.
Sadly in today’s world, unproveable scientific theories have replaced the age old questions ‘by whom, how and why were we made’ ... that have sought to find creation without God.
The creation of life, the world, and the universe are perhaps the greatest testament to a Creator ...or God.
If none of us has been here yet, we may be at the start of our journey.
The more I learned, I realized the less I knew.
I've finally tossed out all the pretenious and religious words and gone back to the only thing that really matters:
Or, perhaps direct answers to direct questions give the best results...
John 6:25-40
25 When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?”
26 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. 27 Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.”
28 Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?”
29 Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
30 So they asked him, “What sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? 31 Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’[c]”
32 Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. 33 For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
34 “Sir,” they said, “always give us this bread.”
35 Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. 36 But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. 37 All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. 38 For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. 40 For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.”
I actually like looking at the different translations and dare I say it, the Hebrew and Greek as well. Chew the meat, spit out the bones.
Christians as a whole believe in the essentials of the faith. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. Jesus is the Messiah. The gate keeper of our faith. The sacraments - baptism, holy matrimony, communion, prayer, ordination.
The non essentials are where Christian churches primarily divide. Sprinkle rather than dunk, Is there a hell, are communion elements the real presence or merely a symbol. That sort of thing.
Walking away from your faith, I mean just walking away and denouncing the existence of God is pretty extreme. Even if one had no theological understanding at all, nature/creation testifies to God's creative hand. Just the inch of the tip of one's finger, your DNA, patterns in your eye testifies to a creator.
No person on earth has it theologically 100% correct. Even God's word acknowledges our failings.
It is an issue that all of our Sunday Schools teach a very simple understanding of the Bible. It creates a real vulnerability that atheists know how to exploit. It is not hard to demonstrate that simplistic view is wrong, and thus to sow the seeds of doubt on everything else the church has taught.
“It is an issue that all of our Sunday Schools teach a very simple understanding of the Bible. It creates a real vulnerability that atheists know how to exploit. It is not hard to demonstrate that simplistic view is wrong, and thus to sow the seeds of doubt on everything else the church has taught.”
******
I agree, but I’d say that at the end of the complex education you are left with a mystery, which is by design, and the faith of a child and a simple point of view is the way to go.
So true! If only Christ had founded a church in which His earliest disciples would pass on His teachings and the correct interpretations, a Church protected by the Holy Spirit against teaching error, a Church which would endure through the millenia....
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.