Tim Sledge@Goodbye_JesusChristians assert Jesus was crucified, rose from the dead 3 days later, appeared to some of his followers over a 40-day period, then disappeared in the clouds.That was 2,000 years ago & Jesus hasn't been seen or heard from since.But he's coming back any day now. #HeIsNotRisen
I don't normally comment on Sledge. I only became aware of him when Jeff Lowder began retweeting him. Sledge is an apostate Baptist minister who's laboring to parlay his apostasy into a career. He repeats all the canned objections to Christianity.
Unfortunately for him, the market niche for apostates is very tight. Bart Ehrman is the star attraction. Other wannabes are fighting for crumbs.
What I'd point out is that there are many reported Christophanies throughout church history right up to the present. That includes a collection published by Oxford University Press:
In addition, the Muslim world is undergoing a quiet Christian revival due to reported dreams and visions of Jesus. This has been documented in books by Tom Doyle and David Garrison, among others.
My point is not to vouch for every reported Christophany. But there's lots of prima facie evidence that Jesus has been seen and heard in the intervening 2000 years. And we'd expect Christophanies to be underreported since it's not like there's a team of researchers in every generation going door-to-door to interview people.
FWIW I've read and enjoyed Sledge's deconversion book. He's a good writer and his book was a crisp and interesting read. He strikes me as sincere in deconverting, i.e. he deconverted because he realized he didn't really believe the stuff, or the full weight of what he perceived to be tough issues or problems collapsed his belief structure. There was great personal sin on his part as well (which he appears to be honest about), but it seems that the personal sin was at most a minor component, and the intellectual component was the major component. It doesn't appear that he's deconverting and attacking Christianity as some sort of expression of psychological baggage or revenge against meanie Christians or whatever.
ReplyDeleteAs far as his reasons for deconversion go, they're pretty standard stuff. What I've always found interesting is that these deconverts, from their rigid and I-dare-say brittle intellectual backgrounds fostered by their churches or universities, had far more formal academic and practical biblical training in their lives than I have. Yet they trot out the sort of objections that I was able to research and answer on my own decades ago in my 20s (pre-internet and baby-internet eras!). There appears to be little interaction with good conservative work. Sledge's reasoning is pretty yawn-inducing for me, nothing new, really. But how does a man who pastors for decades get to the stage where the standard liberal objections that go back to the deists and freethinkers in the 18th and 19th centuries are hiterto-unknown and new devastating arguments?
Again, Sledge's book is well-written, but I contend it isn't going to give even a somewhat-well-read layman any pause on those issues where he attacks classical Christianity. The objections are same ol' same ol' and you'll either have already considered the arguments and accepted or rebutted them in the past. It isn't fair to expect Sledge to carefully weigh conservative vs liberal arguments (since he's just telling a story here and not aiming to write an academic work), and he doesn't. But there is nothing here that you couldn't find online or at some skeptical site or in any of the other skeptical books I have. However, and this is a big thing, Sledge gets credit for not writing with an angry tone. He gives his life story and reasons for deconverting, and is pretty matter of fact about it. I can applaud this (the tone that is). I relate to his difficulties with fundagelical types and not-so-great experiences, and it makes me wonder how much the fundagelical quest for absolute certainty (instead of high probability or moral certainty) is like an acid that makes one's whole faith structure easily collapsible and dissolvable at even weak skeptical criticism.
Other than reading his book, I haven't looked at his other outputs (books or blogs or whatever) very much, so I'm not sure if his book is consistent in mellow tone with those
other outputs or not.
(On a devotional note, it makes me glad and fortunate to have received quality adult catechesis various decades ago, and more importantly to have had imparted to me general principles for thinking about the biblical texts that avoid the universal acid of skepticism while still allowing for a broad and generous intellectual life that falls within the bounds of orthodoxy. One of those "by the grace of God" sorts of things.)
> "but it seems that the personal sin was at most a minor component, and the intellectual component was the major component."
DeleteHmmm. That's how it appears in the message he's published to the world. But, having seen just how often personal immorality, especially sexual, figures in apostasy, I wouldn't take put much weight by how someone decides they want the official version to read.
Right. It would be hard to gain attention and respect from the atheist apologetic community if your deconversion narrative didn't heavily center on the intellectual deficiencies of the bronze age religion.
DeleteIt's also really bizarre to me how many apostates show no sympathies with Jesus or their former fellow travelers. Their current hostility doesn't seem to be in step with that of someone who sincerely believed and lived in light of Christianity for a long time. I think that, even if I stopped believing in Christianity, and if there were any standard of excellence, then Jesus would surely be one of humanity's greatest pillars--a picture of the heights of excellence that few, if any humans have every achieved. And Christians and Christianity, while wrong, wouldn't strike me as especially foolish as opposed to, say, village atheists on social media or things that Hume or Epictetus said.
Along these lines, maybe Rhett and Link are one of the few exceptions of apostates who haven't expressed attitudes that are wildly out of step with what I would expect of those who apostatized from a system that they adhered to for long time (though I haven't listened to a lot of their material).
With his Twitter handle @Goodbye_Jesus it's very hard to take him seriously. His feed is filled with juvenile and pedestrian objections and comments. Most of these deconversion types had very emotional conversion experiences; they have equally emotional and angry deconversion experiences.
DeleteI can't speculate as to what the real reasons are as compared to the "official version"; I can only go by what he wrote in his book since that is my only real exposure to him. And there, regardless of whatever he has said in other media, his book presentation of his deconversion seems pretty balanced.
DeleteDeconversion stories fascinate me. I wonder how much a brittle all-or-nothing view of scripture or too-heavy focus on "inerrancy" contributes to deconversions.
The irony about these dime a dozen apostates is that they have no idea they are fulfilling scripture: 1 Timothy 4:1-2.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete☍
ReplyDeletePraise God for His breakthroughs: Christophanies among the Muslims and others throughout history. Our Redeemer IS risen DOES live!
The apostle Paul was indeed to be pitied if his claim: to be thrown off his horse, struck blind, to have heard the audible voice of the Lord, and do a 180 in his earthly mission; was all an intentional fabrication. No. While possible, not probable.
To me it's telling when folks like Sledge, or whomever, not only depart from the faith, but take umbrage with it and go on to publicize their misgivings.
ReplyDeleteFor example as a child my parents taught me to "believe in Santa Claus". I had no reason to doubt their truthfulness, and the logistics of a fat elf sliding down chimneys to deliver presents to all the world's good boys and girls in a single night while being towed by eight tiny reindeer seemed utterly plausible to my child's mind.
And we didn't even have a chimney!
But after "leaving the faith" of Santa Claus I didn't dedicate my life to sharing my deconversion from Santa and go on a crusade to spread the truth.
Maybe a better analogy is that Sledge and others feel like they were sold a lemon. A false bill of goods. They were invested in it all the way, but discovered it was a Ponzi scheme, no one is ever really getting paid back, it's a house of cards, a smokescreen and a sham.
So out of public service and a desire for others not to be duped as they were they walk the streets wearing sandwich sign boards proclaiming, "The end is *not* near!"
Anyway, I guess other than feeling sorry for them I don't care much about those types of people. They are responsible for their decisions.
I think the standard reply would be that Santa-Claus-ism doesn't threaten their happiness or perception of personal freedom the way Christianity does. On that issue, they're right. SCism so far as I know makes no demands, doesn't meaningfully proscribe the bounds of human activity, or make the big claims on reality that Christianity does. And despite its wane and loss in the culture wars, Christianity is still a big visible target. On top of that, it is the black beast of our cultural elites. That is why I see deconverts from Christianity get so militant.
DeleteWhat gets my bp up is when deconverts adopt this heroic self-flattering pose that they are some courageous revolutionary speaking truth to power and "the man" when in fact their side is "the man". The oppression and suffering they endure consists of likes, praise by the culture at large, and book deals. It is like the Stalinist-types at secular universities who dominate things, have imposed speech codes, and can make peoples' lives miserable for simply holding non-woke views, yet at the same time they act like they're the oppressees. They're not the Chinese guy at Tiananmen Square standing in front of the tank; they're the tank!
Hence my second analogy.
DeleteI've since checked out Sledge's Twitter account. The small portion I've read has the same smarmy, smug, condescending tone that your typical village or internet freethinker has. Is this the same guy who wrote that book? He's been assimilated into the Borg hive-mind. Looking at the stuff he puts out there, unless he's strictly just putting out rah-rah red meat for his base, I see nothing that indicates he's to be taken seriously as a thinker.
DeleteChrist Derangement Syndrome has been shown to be a degenerative cognitive disorder.
DeleteEric Vestrup--
DeleteI remember reading the deconversion testimony of Dan Barker (founder of Freedom from Religion) many years ago and being impressed with his genuineness and reasonableness. I then heard him speak a few years later, and he had become incredibly smug and smarmy. Like a totally different person!
He came from an anti-intellectual Pentacostal background. I believe fundamentalist cynicism of seeing all truth as God's truth and their reliance on simplistic (and often faulty) biblical hermeneutics can pave the way to apostasy.
Perhaps, but they come from all stripes. Erhman comes to mind. It's probably too broad a brush to paint one tradition as mostly culpable or susceptible.
DeleteJudas wasn't a Pentecostal.
Coram--
DeleteIt was not my intention to diss on Charismatics, but on those conservative Christians of whatever stripe who tend toward anti-intellectualism. Bart Ehrman, who was "born again" as a teenager before going off to Moody Bible and Wheaton, describes himself during those early years as a fundamentalist. His own brand of anti-intellectualism, whatever it was, did not hold up under the academic rigors of Princeton.
I'm sure one's upbringing and the intellectual rigor, or lack thereof, in relation to one's faith tradition can play a determining role in apostasy.
DeleteIt's just that apostates emerge from every tradition. Ehrman wasn't a Pentecostal either.
Plus I don't put much stock in whatever blame shifting techniques apostates deploy as cover for their apostasy. Pretending to have become intellectually enlightened and freed from a fundy, anti-intellectual religious upbringing is about as impressive a claim as the adult film actress claiming she was sexually repressed by her strict religious upbringing.
Bring a harlot either physically or intellectually is a bad choice, and it's poor form to claim one "grew into it" as one became more enlightened and was "freed" from a stifling, unfulfilling upbringing.
Apostates should at least own their decision honestly and stop blame shifting - they love themselves, their sin, and the world more than they love Jesus Christ. It's an easy calculation.
Coram--
DeleteI see what you're saying, and I think there's something to it. I myself was raised by a fundamentalist father and ended up getting a graduate degree in Religion at a thoroughly secular university without it shipwrecking my faith.
I think some people decide to "follow the truth" wherever it leads without realizing that the various options they weigh are attached to equally various worldviews. Most often, it is their conversion to a new worldview which leads them astray, not newly discovered data not matching up with earlier understandings.
I think that's correct. Worldviews are funny like that, everyone is operating from within one, yet it's sort of like being born with "glasses". People often don't seem to realize they're looking at the world through a certain lens, they sort of just assume everyone is seeing the same things in the same ways as they do.
DeleteIt's very helpful to realize this and help others realize it from a Christian apologetic standpoint. A really good and readable book on this subject for the average Christian is "Always Ready: Directions for Defending the Faith" by Dr. Greg Bahnsen.
He really breaks down the unbelieving and believing worldviews and demonstrates very practically how many, if not most, unbelievers are secretly and illicitly "borrowing from" or "camping out in" the believer's worldview, and he explains the power of exposing this reality to the unbeliever because among other things it exposes the irrationality and intellectual inconsistency of unbelieving thought.
Basically they have no answer, no apologetic, for their irrational, inconsistent unbelieving worldview.
"fundamentalist cynicism of seeing all truth as God's truth"
ReplyDeleteI think that being able to see all truth as God's truth is a key ingredient of having a robust response to difficulties.
Reading some more of Sledge's Twitter, he must simply be playing to his crowd, because he seemingly can render Christianity absurd with pithy banter and < 280 characters. This is not the Sledge who wrote the book, but a sloganeer or propagandist.
The low-level skeptics act don't seem to realize that when they point out difficult issues within Christianity, they also need to show that (i) their position avoids the same difficulties and (ii) the removal of Christianity doesn't affect negatively other principles they hold dear, (iii) the removal of Christianity doesn't create new different problems for them. (Likewise for Christians as well.) This is rarely done. It is a mistake to think that Christianity is this ediface mounted on a core reality, and atheism/skepticism/humanism is simply considering the core reality without the ediface. Everything it seems is affected by theism/atheism. I'm not sure your village atheist gets this.