Agreed. There are also so many pastors engaging in sinful lifestyles, many who are narcissists fed by all the attention and sometimes fame and power of leading that it is completing confusing and discrediting the faith…i.e., the deeper or real commitment to faith and loss of self is waning. “We must decrease, Jesus must increase” mentality is rare in church leadership and people, believers and unbelievers, see this…..and are disgusted, confused and just turn away…lazy or discontented without enough energy to fight for the faith or the truth, especially if those leading don’t have it to offer.

Thanks Mike and commenters who with for a safe space to talk within the church. The danger is …who is leading that conversation. If the wrong leader leads or has an ego to be so unique and different.. so leads people further from the truth, it could be worse. this a very tough subject and time to live in spiritually…but Jesus said it would get this way until only a remnant is left. The good news is He is the Truth as is His Word and to hunker down studying it will help anyone. If we pray and ask God to show us the Truth, He promises He will. He also promised the gates of hell will not win this battle. Thank God for you as I often confront these issues speaking with people, but you are an eloquent speaker of truth on these issues. Stay true, brother.

I digress. I’ve had my moments where I wondered if I should logically identify as Atheist, but I truly don’t find that “leap” convincing, though…I, like Bart, have changed opinion on hell, the Bible, homosexuality, God. Part of the problem is that I’ve been royally burned by Conservatives who are proud and scared to truthfully admit their doubts and sins, really. Yet, I am fully turned off by Progressives who one-dimensionally pigeonhole Jesus into Socialism. I can understand why Christians voted for Trump, and did not. Both sides are often rather narrow-minded extremists, to be frank.

And my closer Christian friends are too scared to relate with me in my Journey. They’d rather hide in fake “miracles” and superstitions while interacting with their own idea of “God” that is not too well thought out. They let teachers and preachers do their thinking for them, and of course, don’t admit to it. Net result: It can be rough striving for intellectual dishonesty when “Christians” choose to lie. I thought lying was a sin. Alas, we all have our lists of what sins are bad, and which are ok. Further digression.

If there is any way to connect with like-minded individuals here, it would be a “godsend”. 😉

As people of the Book, we recite the Psalms of lament and cries of ‘why God why’. We retell stories of patriarchs and prophets who spent time in caves, wadis, wildernesses, pits and prison cells. We retell stories of people of God wrestling with God and his ways. If Scripture gives space to the struggles of great people, then there’s a place for us to give space to the struggles of the great people in our midst.

A critical verse for me, in re-claiming faith, was Isaiah 42:3. It was grasping that when I felt like a fragile bruised reed and a smoldering wick, God didn’t despise me but gave me hope by promising to faithfully bring forth justice. God doesn’t “come in after the battle and bayonet the wounded”. The journey to being ‘twice-born’ is often slow and will not necessarily happen in isolation from others. Maybe, as faith communities, we need to discover a discipline of imitating God by gently binding each other’s wounds and patiently fanning faith back to a full flame.

What is really needed is a doctrine of creation where Jesus Christ is really its Lord. He is free to inhabit worldviews and even utilize them, but not be subject to them. By their very nature, our understanding of cosmological structures, from subatomic particles to the far expanses of space, is all provisional. God is free to use our provisionality to serve the heavenly purposes of Jesus Christ (just read Genesis 1–a Babylonian worldview is utilized, exhausted, and then discarded once it has served God’s purposes in narrating the creation).

As someone once said, “The options are Karl Barth or Bart Ehrman (or I guest Bart Campolo has the right name as well)–if the thinking evangelical does not read or comprehend the former then he or she will most certainly become the latter.”

I get concerned a bit when we allow the behaviors of other Christians to define and form how we display the love and heart of Jesus to the world around us. If someone is a white supremacist, and calls himself or herself a Christian, I do not fold or give up, but work all the harder for the people I interact with to see Jesus’ heart in everything I do. If someone is ethically and morally irresponsible and calls himself or herself a Christian, I work all the harder to have people understand that the image of God is imprinted on each and every living soul and I choose to honor that.

I guess I just don’t get giving up on Jesus. I will say, that I grapple long and hard with my faith and test it often. I am a cynical misfit who is not afraid to bring my doubts before the Almighty Creator. And I do agree with you, Mike, that untested faith is weak and wonky. On the contrary, a faith that is honest and pure should have times of serious contemplation, doubt and questioning. So, maybe it IS laziness that causes folks to say, “no thanks to Christianity,” but I believe that laziness is brought about partly by certain cultural norms like consumerism and individualism that so permeate the Western world.

…I may very well be wrong!