SHOCK25-04 Crash and Burn Or?

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Crash & Burn...Or?
Bill Giovannetti
"O LORD, God of my salvation, I cry out to you by day. I come to you at night. Now hear my prayer; listen to my cry. For my life is full of troubles, and death draws near. I am as good as dead, like a strong man with no strength left. They have left me among the dead, and I lie like a corpse in a grave. I am forgotten, cut off from your care. You have thrown me into the lowest pit, into the darkest depths. Your anger weighs me down; with wave after wave you have engulfed me.... You have taken away my companions and loved ones. Darkness is my closest friend." (Psalms 88:1-7, 18)

One of the most powerful truths about the Christian faith is its realism. Christianity does not sell you anything. It does not promise anything it cannot deliver.

There is no promise of a pain-free life. There is no promise of joy every day. There is no Utopia. There is no promise of heaven on earth in our day. The Christian message understands life's pain, and does not promise an immediate fix.

We are given an uncompromising realism, in which living in this fallen world is hard, and in which the ways of God usually raise more questions than answers.

I say this because my title today is: Crash and Burn... Or?
 
I would like to talk with you today about the temptation to walk away from Christianity. To walk away from God, from Jesus, from prayer, from the Bible, from the church, and from the faith that has been an important part of your life, perhaps, for a very long time.

It's also a time when people walk away from family, marriage, and even their children.
 
My talk today is part four in a five part series, called Shock to the System.

For this series, we're using a concept from the business world called the Transition Curve.

It has five stages:
Uninformed Optimism
Informed Pessimism
Crisis of Meaning (the crossroads)
Crash & Burn
Informed Optimism
"O LORD, God of my salvation, I cry out to you by day. I come to you at night. Now hear my prayer; listen to my cry. For my life is full of troubles, and death draws near. I am as good as dead, like a strong man with no strength left. They have left me among the dead, and I lie like a corpse in a grave. I am forgotten, cut off from your care. You have thrown me into the lowest pit, into the darkest depths. Your anger weighs me down; with wave after wave you have engulfed me.... You have taken away my companions and loved ones. Darkness is my closest friend."
(Psalms 88:1-7, 18)

Crash & Burn...Or?

There is a new word in the religious vocabulary. It's really only a couple of years old. It is the word Deconversion.

The Dictionary of the APA (American Psychological Association) defines Deconversion very simply: Deconversion: "Loss of one's faith in a religion, as in a Catholic man of years who becomes an atheist or agnostic." (Dictionary of the APA)

The word wasn't even in the APA Dictionary till 2018. That tells you how new that term is.

That doesn't mean that deconversion didn't happen before then. It just means it wasn't talked about a lot.

Part of that has to do with social media. Social media has given a voice to those who deconvert that most of them wouldn't have otherwise.
 
Some famous deconverters include:

Josh Harris, a famous author turned pastor, who tweeted that he was no longer a Christian.

Marty Samson, a very public worship leader at the Hillsong megachurch.

Bart Campolo, son of well known pastor Tony Campolo, who went from being in Christian ministry to being a humanist chaplain.

I think it's pretty obvious that most people who de-convert are not famous. They just disappear.

As a pastor, I carry a profound ache in my heart whenever I think of friends who used to walk with the Lord, but no longer do. It literally hurts.

Christian apologist Anthony Costello—whose journey brought him from Catholic to atheist to biblical Christian—wrote something pretty powerful on the topic, and I'd like to quote him:

"Deconversions are not evidence against Christianity. For every one adult deconversion story we could easily find an adult conversion story (I just related my own at 34). Thus the question poses itself: does the fact that some leave Christianity as adults outweigh the fact that some find Christianity as adults, and, if so, why? The answer to this is obviously no, since all kinds and types of people deconvert, and all kinds and types of people convert. Thus, it would be fallacious to think that those who deconvert are being more honest, or genuine, or are more intelligent about their beliefs than those that convert. There seem to be genuine, adult conversions and genuine adult deconversions. Some of those may be more intellectually informed and some less, but to try and measure the truth of Christian claims by this criteria of conversion is a hopeless endeavor." [Christian Post, 10 September 2020]

In other words, you can't really make a case for Christianity because of conversions or against Christianity because of deconversions. You have to analyze truth claims by other criteria, a very thoughtful point.

As a pastor who's been around the block for several decades, I've seen a lot of this... I've had a lot of conversations. I have witnessed a lot of good bad and ugly in the church.

And I would like to think with you on what are reasons why people deconvert and on how we might evaluate those reasons in light of the life and teachings of Jesus.

I want to be loving. I want to be respectful. I want to say that many people who walk away from faith have very good reasons, from their perspective, so I respect that. Many don't, in my opinion, but at the end of the day, we are all free to choose.
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