The Dishonest Church

[Geezer]

The Dishonest Church

by Luke Muehlhauser on December 13, 2009 in Christian Theology,Reviews

 

When Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus created a media storm, many Christian reviewers said that Ehrman’s motive was to shock Christians by revealing where our New Testament texts come from and how many variants there are.

But if Christians were ignorant of where their Bible comes from, that is the church‘s fault, not Ehrman’s. Every seminary-trained preacher and leader already knows that the Bible was cobbled together from dozens of sources, that the many of its authors are anonymous, that several books are known forgeries (Hebrews, 2 Peter, etc.), that its authors had many theological differences, and so on – but they almost never share this information with their lay audience.

 

The intentional dumbing down of the church for the sake of filling more pews will ultimately lead to defection from Christ. Ehrman is to be thanked for giving us a wake-up call.

Christian pastor Jack Good wrote an entire book on the topic: The Dishonest Church. Jack writes:

Christian churches… must bear much of the blame for the misunderstandings of religious faith that are rampant today… when [church professionals] complete their training and begin to lead local churches, these religious leaders hide their newfound breadth and revert to the patterns of their childhood… Thus narrow and immature ideas remain in place… a failure of crippling effects…¹

I know exactly what Jack is saying. I was brought up in an evangelical church, and after attending thousands of sermons, hundreds of bible studies, and several theology classes, I had never once heard the most basic facts about the Bible that are known to all Christian scholars. Once I learned these “secrets” (through my own study), I was so disillusioned with my church’s dishonesty that I was willing to put my entire worldview under examination. In the end, I decided I had no good reasons to believe God even existed. But I may never have examined my worldview so thoroughly if the church had told me the truth from the beginning.

[♦ Fuego ♦]

I never heard in church that the Jews don't have a belief in Hell or damnation. That would be a problem for many believers, particularly when Jesus preaches about it and the Jews don't respond (in the NT) with a resounding "What are you talking about, some Greek or Roman religion?"  The church also preaches that the gospels are eyewitness accounts, and therefore evidence. But they each read like stories and relate conversations between people that they could not have overheard, thus showing that they are not eyewitness accounts. They default to the claim that Jesus must have told them.

 

The church uses the claim of eyewitness testimony to support the idea that the miracles reported actually happened. But then they have to resort to miracles explaining the "eyewitness" accounts of things they could not have heard, thus making a circular argument. So much simpler to explain it as entirely made up.

[Joshpantera]

On 8/19/2017 at 5:50 PM, Fuego said:

I never heard in church that the Jews don't have a belief in Hell or damnation. That would be a problem for many believers, particularly when Jesus preaches about it and the Jews don't respond (in the NT) with a resounding "What are you talking about, some Greek or Roman religion?"  The church also preaches that the gospels are eyewitness accounts, and therefore evidence. But they each read like stories and relate conversations between people that they could not have overheard, thus showing that they are not eyewitness accounts. They default to the claim that Jesus must have told them.

 

The church uses the claim of eyewitness testimony to support the idea that the miracles reported actually happened. But then they have to resort to miracles explaining the "eyewitness" accounts of things they could not have heard, thus making a circular argument. So much simpler to explain it as entirely made up.

 

The SDA's are somewhat aware of that. That's why they invented the doctrine of soul sleep and claim that there's no hell, just the lake of burning sulfur episode at the end of Revelation. But the problem of non-eye witness gospel accounts is completely lost on them. 

[Bhim]

Geezer, I happened to go to a Reformed Baptist church where the pastors discussed the topic of textual criticism pretty heavily, and indeed embraced it as evidence of the Bible's authenticity. I also studied this independently, pretty early on in my life as a Christian. I was a strong Christian at the time that Dr. Ehrman became popular, and was genuinely surprised that his works caused anyone to waiver in their faith. From my perspective, he wasn't saying anything that I didn't already know. For better or worse, I can wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment that "the intentional dumbing down of the church for the sake of filling more pews will ultimately lead to defection from Christ." As a Christian I always felt that failure to teach about textual criticism would ultimately lead to weak Christians. I felt similarly about the church's embrace of foolish worship music with intellectually deficient lyrics.

 

The existence of churches like mine, which did tell the truth to a greater extent than most, necessitates that we ex-Christians can't simply rely on the Bart Ehrmans of academia to debunk the myths of Christianity. Dr. Ehrman is capable of swaying Christians who were convinced to follow Jesus on the basis of vacuous evidence. Sadly, some Christians (like my former self) are persuaded by slightly more robust beliefs.

[Joshpantera]

1 hour ago, Bhim said:

The existence of churches like mine, which did tell the truth to a greater extent than most, necessitates that we ex-Christians can't simply rely on the Bart Ehrmans of academia to debunk the myths of Christianity. Dr. Ehrman is capable of swaying Christians who were convinced to follow Jesus on the basis of vacuous evidence. Sadly, some Christians (like my former self) are persuaded by slightly more robust beliefs.

 

Robust beliefs which consisted of? 

[readyforchange]

On ‎8‎/‎21‎/‎2017 at 10:02 PM, Bhim said:

Geezer, I happened to go to a Reformed Baptist church where the pastors discussed the topic of textual criticism pretty heavily, and indeed embraced it as evidence of the Bible's authenticity.

 

What were some of the reasons that the pastors felt textual criticism provided evidence of the Bible's authenticity?  Did they feel that the text was divinely inspired but written by flawed humans and thus more authentic, or that interpolations and additions/redactions/forgeries/errors in the text were also part of God's will for the Bible?

[Geezer]

On ‎8‎/‎21‎/‎2017 at 9:02 PM, Bhim said:

Geezer, I happened to go to a Reformed Baptist church where the pastors discussed the topic of textual criticism pretty heavily, and indeed embraced it as evidence of the Bible's authenticity. I also studied this independently, pretty early on in my life as a Christian. I was a strong Christian at the time that Dr. Ehrman became popular, and was genuinely surprised that his works caused anyone to waiver in their faith. From my perspective, he wasn't saying anything that I didn't already know. For better or worse, I can wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment that "the intentional dumbing down of the church for the sake of filling more pews will ultimately lead to defection from Christ." As a Christian I always felt that failure to teach about textual criticism would ultimately lead to weak Christians. I felt similarly about the church's embrace of foolish worship music with intellectually deficient lyrics.

 

The existence of churches like mine, which did tell the truth to a greater extent than most, necessitates that we ex-Christians can't simply rely on the Bart Ehrmans of academia to debunk the myths of Christianity. Dr. Ehrman is capable of swaying Christians who were convinced to follow Jesus on the basis of vacuous evidence. Sadly, some Christians (like my former self) are persuaded by slightly more robust beliefs.

 

I can't conceive of a way that textual criticism would authenticate the bible. It does precisely the opposite for me and most other people, but you are not the only one that has expressed the idea that being exposed to this approach to scripture at a young age makes for a stronger faith. I didn't have that experience so I can't relate.

 

I was Southern Baptist and Church of Christ. The c of c takes conservative fundamentalism to absurd extremes. They believe and vigorously teach that every word in the bible is literally true and put there supernaturally by God personally and the bible is historically accurate in every detail. They don't waver from this position. Therefore, my faith became dependent on a literally true and historically accurate bible. When I discovered it was neither of those things my faith evaporated.  My experience I think would be true for the majority of fundamentalists. I'm not nor have I ever been a liberal Christian so I don't know what they base their faith on.

 

What continues to puzzle me is liberal Christians who acknowledge that Jesus was just a man and did not rise from the grave, but are still Christians and worship the man Jesus as though he is a deity. Maybe that comes back to your statement about more robust beliefs. I confess I don't have a clue. What does that even mean? 

 

[Geezer]

On ‎8‎/‎21‎/‎2017 at 9:02 PM, Bhim said:

Geezer, I happened to go to a Reformed Baptist church where the pastors discussed the topic of textual criticism pretty heavily, and indeed embraced it as evidence of the Bible's authenticity. I also studied this independently, pretty early on in my life as a Christian. I was a strong Christian at the time that Dr. Ehrman became popular, and was genuinely surprised that his works caused anyone to waiver in their faith. From my perspective, he wasn't saying anything that I didn't already know. For better or worse, I can wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment that "the intentional dumbing down of the church for the sake of filling more pews will ultimately lead to defection from Christ." As a Christian I always felt that failure to teach about textual criticism would ultimately lead to weak Christians. I felt similarly about the church's embrace of foolish worship music with intellectually deficient lyrics.

 

The existence of churches like mine, which did tell the truth to a greater extent than most, necessitates that we ex-Christians can't simply rely on the Bart Ehrmans of academia to debunk the myths of Christianity. Dr. Ehrman is capable of swaying Christians who were convinced to follow Jesus on the basis of vacuous evidence. Sadly, some Christians (like my former self) are persuaded by slightly more robust beliefs.

 

 

I'm not trying to be a smart ass, but you aren't a Christian now so what happened to those robust beliefs?

[Bhim]

21 hours ago, Geezer said:

 

 

I'm not trying to be a smart ass, but you aren't a Christian now so what happened to those robust beliefs?

 

No offense taken. Slightly robust beliefs aren't insurmountable, they're just more resilient to criticism than simplistic faith.

 

To address your earlier point, I think all of us who were fundamentalists rooted our beliefs in the historicity and literal truth of the Bible. But terms like "historical" and "literal" don't mean precisely the same thing to all versions of fundamentalism. Take, for example, the Roman centurion who said "surely this man was the Son of God" when Jesus died. If you believe that the centurion had thoughts to that effect in the moment rather than verbally saying these words, do you deny the historicity of the Bible? N.T. Wright, who is reasonably within the realm of evangelical orthodoxy, believes precisely this.

 

More broadly, consider that the four gospels give parallel accounts of various events, in which quotations by certain characters don't match verbatim. If you are taught from an early age to believe that quotations in the Bible were uttered verbatim by their speakers, and then compare the four gospels to each other at a later point in your life, you will be surprised to find your professed belief betrayed by the Bible itself, and it will likely diminish your faith in Jesus. If, however, you are taught that the Bible isn't a dictation, and that it has been redacted by various individuals within the lifetimes of the apostles, but that it is "literally true" with regards to the intent of the authors, then a comparison of the gospels will not reveal any surprises to you.

 

That's essentially my point here. When you lose faith in Jesus due to a revelation that your professed belief is betrayed by reasonable evidence, it is often because what people teach you about the Bible doesn't align with what the Bible itself says. It's the act of being surprised that often hinders a person's ability to believe. When churches teach things about the Bible that are mostly true, then Christians are less susceptible to surprise. Don't get me wrong, I'm no apologist for Biblical veracity. I'm just saying that the whole of the Bible isn't self-evidently false; the problems with it require a degree of nuanced thought. Certain things like the creation account or Paul's claim to apostleship are patently absurd. But convincing someone that the Sermon on the Mount contains a few bad ideas takes more than a five minute conversation. My rejection of Jesus had little to do with evidence of Biblical inaccuracies, and even after deconverting I had to think for many months about why I really rejected the Bible. I appreciate what Bart Ehrman is doing, but pointing out that the Alexandrian Manuscripts and the Majority Text have some discrepancies isn't among my reasons for not believing the Bible.

[Geezer]

Okay, thanks for the clarification. I agree with your conclusion that a strict bible literalists will likely be more shaken by a historical interpretation of scripture than someone brought up in mainstream Christianity and certainly more so than someone brought up in a decidedly liberal version of Christianity. I also agree that that alone will not always be sufficient for a believer to lose their faith. It may be the catalyst, however, that leads a believer to investigate their beliefs more deeply.