Anonymous Asks (400)

“What is apostasy?”

The word “apostasy” comes from the Greek ἀποστασία, transliterated apostasia. Very few English translations of the Bible use it much. Strong’s defines it as falling away or defection. It’s closely related to the word commonly translated “divorce” in the New Testament. One place we do find it is in 2 Thessalonians 2:3, where it refers to a major future event in which the “man of sin” is revealed to the world.

Anonymous Asks (372)

“Why do so many preacher’s kids apostatize?”

I feel as if this is one of those “When did you stop beating your wife?” questions. It assumes the veracity of its premise without any actual investigation. Do “so many” preacher’s kids really abandon their faith when they leave home? What does “many” mean relative to the total number of children born to full-time servants of Christ? If large numbers really did apostatize, how would we know? How many of them come back to the faith later?

Also, who’s keeping the stats: George Barna?

Anonymous Asks (236)

“How should Christians respond to someone who leaves the faith?”

The New Testament references several who turned away or would turn away from trusting Christ for one reason or another. Paul writes to Timothy concerning Demas, a fellow worker mentioned in Colossians and Philemon, that he “has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica”. Why? He was “in love with this present world”.

Mining the Minors: Hosea (12)

We can get into a chicken-and-egg sort of argument about whether choosing an idol instead of the one true God leads to immorality (which it does, because all other moral systems are necessarily inferior), or whether it’s the selfish pursuit of desire that leads inevitably to an idolatrous pathway that will permit it (which is also true, as Israel proved in the wilderness).

Let’s just say that however it may begin, immorality and idolatry have a tendency to create the spiritual equivalent of a perpetual motion machine. One feeds the other.

Too Hot to Handle: The Fat Lady Sings

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

Preparing to cut loose at
your church and mine.

David B. is a regular reader/commenter here. A few weeks back he (politely) asked Immanuel Can, “Why do you choose to fellowship in a church where you clearly disagree with how they operate?”

IC responded, “Maybe I’ll do a post on that …”

Tom: Maybe that time is now, IC, not least because I feel like it might be a useful topic for a number of our readers who have found themselves in similar positions.

As you suggested to David in your response, churches do not suddenly become heretical overnight. It’s my experience that almost anything can be smuggled into a local church provided it is done incrementally.

Too Hot to Handle: Worth Leaving Over

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

In principle, I’m not keen on leaving churches. It happens too often and too easily. But sometimes, there just isn’t any choice.

When Gretta Vosper became the pastor of a West Hill United Church in Toronto, Canada in 1997, she was not yet out of the closet about her atheism, a little bonus she didn’t disclose from the pulpit until 2001. Amazingly, quite a few congregants hung on until 2008 when Vosper did away with the Lord’s Prayer, at which point 2/3 of the flock made for the exits.

Tom: I’m not sure precisely where the line is, but I’d have difficulty faulting anyone who leaves a church with an atheist pastor, IC. From your experience, what are the ingredients that go into making for a “time to go” decision?

Recommend-a-blog (29)

Evangelicals are under attack. The bigger the denomination, the more resources and congregants they have, and the more formally they are constituted, the more enthusiastically the enemy is coming at them.

The Southern Baptist Convention (15 million members) is currently hardest hit, but that makes a certain sort of sense: they are the second-largest Christian denomination in the U.S., and the largest Protestant denomination. Get effective control of that behemoth and you’ve really accomplished something.

Kissing Jesus Goodbye

Joshua Harris, pastor and author of 1997’s moderately controversial I Kissed Dating Goodbye, on doing much the same thing to the man he once called Lord and Savior:

“I have undergone a massive shift in regard to my faith in Jesus. The popular phrase for this is ‘deconstruction,’ the biblical phrase is ‘falling away.’ By all the measurements that I have for defining a Christian, I am not a Christian. Many people tell me that there is a different way to practise faith and I want to remain open to this, but I’m not there now.”

Put bluntly, Mr. Harris has apostatized.

Too Hot to Handle: The Fat Lady Sings

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Too Hot to Handle: Worth Leaving Over

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Another Exercise in Subjectivity

I just read an extimony.

An extimony, I am reliably informed, is sort of an anti-testimony. It’s the story of how a person un-converted from Christianity, becoming an atheist, agnostic, freethinker or Pastafarian, depending on their particular circumstances and bent.

Short version: I was not overly impressed with the arguments of the gentleman who wrote this one.