People commit suicide for different reasons. In some cases, revenge is the motive. A way of getting back at people by making them feel guilty.
People commit apostasy for different reasons. In some cases, apostasy is the theological (or atheistic) equivalent of revenge suicide. The apostate is a mad a God. Mad at Christians. Mad at the church. Disillusioned.
Apostasy is symbolic way of getting back at God. A real way of getting back at Christians and the church. Notice how much apostasy is often driven by anger.
BTW, I don't necessarily mean that as a putdown. In the pages of Scripture, you have psalmists and prophets who are mad at God, or disappointed.
But apostasy and revenge suicide are often psychologically equivalent. They just take different objects.
//A real way of getting back at Christians and the church. Notice how much apostasy is often driven by anger.//
ReplyDeleteMaybe the reason why the most vocal apostates are those who didn't seriously investigate the issues is because they're angry at those who they perceive as having tricked them into believing, and they feel ashamed and foolish for having fallen for it in the past. Whereas if they had seriously investigated the issues while a professing Christian, they wouldn't be so vocal because they would have only themselves to blame for being a believer for as long as they were one.
So, in some (many?) cases it's a way of saving face, because out of pride they don't want to admit that they were intellectually lazy regarding the claims of Christianity.
The ironic thing is that most of them remain exposed as intellectually lazy because their objections to Christianity remain so simplistic. In many cases if they were to perform "due diligence" now—at the present time—concerning the evidences and arguments for Christianity, they would likely be less hostile toward Christianity, or may even return to it. But pride and sin often override rationality so that people continue to engage in various forms of confirmation bias when it comes to surrounding themselves with apologetical material and in their use of their reason and imagination.
None of what I've said of course necessarily contradicts the doctrine of the Perseverance of the Saints. My comments are regarding the human and psychological side of apostasy. Not the spiritual and divinely metaphysical side of it. God ordains both ends and means, and that includes psychological motivations and intellectual considerations. God can use bad arguments to regenerate the elect, just as God can allow the non-elect to use poor and sinful reasoning to lead themselves astray.
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