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13 Oct, 2025

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An Unexpected Email

An introduction to the teachings of Frank Viola.

Recently, I was surprised to receive an email from my former pastor. We hadn’t had any contact for many years. There was no personal greeting indicating that he had sent it specifically for me, (which for some strange reason, disappointed me). The subject line simply said, “Viola”. My former pastor’s first name coincidently is the same as mine, so to avoid any confusion, we’ll call him Pastor Dale.

This is his email in its entirety.

Why did Paul and the other apostles risk their lives and suffer untold horrors to bring the gospel to world?

The common evangelical answer is to save individuals from hell.

There’s no question that the gospel brings life to individual souls, eternal life both in the present age and in the age to come.

However, as I argued in From Eternity to Here, the mission of God goes far beyond the salvation of individual souls from eternal judgment.

God has an eternal purpose that reaches before humans fell, before they were ever in need of salvation.

God’s timeless purpose is to secure a body for the Son, a house for the Father, a bride for the Son, and a family for the Father. All through the Holy Spirit.

Put another way, the ageless purpose of God is to expand the fellowship and communion of the triune God.

This epic idea is wrapped up in the phrase the kingdom of God, which was the central message of Jesus Christ.

The kingdom of God is the joining together of heaven and earth just as it was in the beginning (and as it will be in the end). That God’s perfect will be done on heaven as it is in earth.

Paul and the other apostles sought to bring the gospel message to all who never heard it.

That gospel wasn’t just about salvation from eternal judgment. It was primarily about fulfilling God’s eternal purpose, which in a fallen world, begins (and not ends) with salvation.

The apostolic mission, therefore, was to establish kingdom communities throughout the Roman Empire which would express God’s eternal purpose.

Those kingdom communities – ekklesias, as the New Testament calls them – were a colony of heaven on earth. Through them, God was reclaiming the nation that had fallen under the grip of evil powers.

God’s intention, as it was in the beginning, was and is to recover the earth from the power of His enemy and establish His reign throughout the world, so that His good creation will reflect Him perfectly in the world and that God and humans may joined together in perfect union.

As one philosopher famously said, “He who has a why to live, can bear almost any how.” (Nietzsche said that, a man who I don’t often agree with, so calm down. The quote is fitting.)”

In future blogs we will more closely examine Frank Viola’s emotive ideas, but for now let me share with you my initial response to Pastor Dale.

Dear Pastor Dale,

I was surprised to see that I had received an email from you. It didn’t take long to realize that it was not a personal email to me, but that you had just cut and pasted someone else’s words as your message. I was disappointed, to say the least, but I was even more disappointed when I read what Frank Viola had to say.

I don’t know if you know yet, but several years ago I simply let go of Christianity. It was an awaking experience for me. So, I read the words of Viola with eyes wide open and, not surprisingly, found his ideas ridiculous (at best) and dangerous (at worst).

Here are a few examples.

I did some research on Viola and found this statement in some of his other writings.

Viola: “The kingdom of God knows no injustice, no racism, no inequality, and no cruelty. And the gospel of the kingdom produces a community of people who PUT ON DISPLAY what it looks like when God is in charge. This is one of the many things that the Insurgence has to offer this broken, lost, hostile world.”

I have come to know quite a few Atheists and must say that we also would like a world with no injustice, no racism, no inequality, and no cruelty. If Christians are the one who are going to usher in the Kingdom of God, shouldn’t they be the ones who already practice such qualities? But to be honest, that’s not what we see within Christian circles. There seems to be plenty of injustice, inequality, and cruelty among those who profess to be followers of Christ. Why is that?

When he says that the gospel of the kingdom produces a community of people who “PUT ON DISPLAY” (all in caps) what it looks like when God is in charge, it’s pretty scary. We only need to look at the Old Testament to find out what it looks like when God is in charge. Atheists have a different view of what it looks like when God is in charge. Atheist Richard Dawkins, in his book, The God Delusion, addresses just how appalling biblical ethics really are. He writes,

“The book of numbers tells how God incited Moses to attack the Midianites. His armies made short work of slaying all the men, and they burned all the Midianite cities, but they did not kill the women and children. This merciful restraint by his soldiers infuriated Moses, and he gave orders that all boy children should be killed, and all the women who were not virgins. ‘But all the women children, that have not known a man by laying with him, keep alive for yourselves’ Numbers 31:18.

Do the people who hold up the bible as an inspiration to moral rectitude have the slightest notion of what is actually written in it? What makes my jaw drop is that people today should base their lives on such an appalling role model as Yahweh – even worse, that they should bossily try to force the same evil monster (whether fact or fiction) on the rest of us.” (Dawkins)

So, why does the Bible tell us to repent because the Kingdom of God is at hand?

The christian answer is, “Because when the kingdom that we all pray to come “Thy Kingdom come” actually does come, it will first wipe out all evil and wrong doers from the face of the earth. So, to survive this we must start to go on the path of righteousness meaning we must abide with the standards of God that are stated in the bible.”

Is that what you believe? Is that what happens when God is in charge? Did you know that there are Christians out there who still advocate for the death penalty for homosexuals? Is that what we’ll get in Viola’s Kingdom of God? How can any moral person support such behavior?

In some of Viola’s other writings he says that “love” is not the real message of the gospel. From where I stand, “love” would do a lot to heal this broken, lost, hostile world. It’s really a pity that Christians aren’t the ones who actually show that kind of love. For a recent project, I evaluated the mission statements of Evangelical churches. I did a word search to see just how many times the word “love” actually appeared in Evangelical mission statements. I wrote a blog about this topic.  I wasn’t surprised to find that “love” was rarely mentioned, if at all. I also did this for South Fellowship (Pastor Dale’s former church) and found that the word “love” was mentioned only once. Try it for yourself. (On a side note, the congregation that took over the old church building, mentions “God’s love” eight times in their mission statement.) It’s what the world needs now.

Therefore, I have concluded that Viola’s Kingdom of God, has nothing to offer this broken, lost, hostile world. So, no thanks. I’ll pass on the ridiculous ideas of Frank Viola.

Sincerely, Dale Crum

 

From Where I Stand

Oct 13, 2025

Dale Crum

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14 Sep, 2025

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A Tale of Two Churches 2/2

Trinity Lutheran -vs- Bethany Lutheran

Will the real Lutheran Church please stand up.

“Almost every church claims to believe the Bible or practice Jesus’s ways. Our Lutheran Church boils down what God teaches… and everything Christians believe and do.”

“We are committed to working with people of other religions and worldviews toward mutual understanding and for the common good.”

In the previous blog we explored the mission statements of two Lutheran churches that are on opposite ends of the christian spectrum. Both churches call themselves Lutheran, but given their striking differences, I found myself asking, “Which one has actually based their church on the teachings of Martin Luther?”

In this blog we’ll compare both of their mission statements with the writings of Martin Luther himself. For me, the church that most closely aligns itself with the teachings of Martin Luther, shall be deemed a true Lutheran church. Let the games begin.

Excessive wordiness

Excessive wordiness was one of Luther’s special gifts. Here are several examples of just how verbose Luther tended to be. When Luther visited his parishes, he was very concerned with what he found to be a pitiable ignorance about Christian doctrine. He wrote this about what he found.

“The deplorable, miserable conditions which I recently observed when visiting the parishes… how pitiable, so help me God, were the things I saw: the common man, especially in the villages, knows practically nothing of Christian doctrine, and many of the pastors are almost entirely incompetent and unable to teach. (These) deplorable conditions have constrained and pressed me to put this catechism of Christian doctrine into this brief, plain, and simple form.”

Let’s see how brief, plain, and simple Luther’s catechism really is.

The first christian doctrine Luther addresses are The Ten Commandments, which contain a mere 127 words in total. Luther’s (brief) explanation exceeded 23,000 words. The First Commandment alone, which uses only eight words; “Thou shall have no other gods before me,” required a 3,000-word explanation.

Next, Luther tackled The Creed, which he calls “The Articles of Our Faith.” The entire Creed contains 120 words. Luther’s (brief) explanation of the Creed contains 4,545 words.

Luther’s attempt to simplify the 73-word Lord’s Prayer is an impressive show of verbosity. His (brief?) explanation contains a whopping 8,485 words. It took Luther 2,589 words to explain the first six words of the prayer, “Our Father which art in heaven.” How’s that for brief, plain, and simple?

In his 6,656-word commentary about the book of Romans, (which itself has just over 7,000 words) Luther explains that in order to understand what Paul meant in Romans his readers must first understand the meaning of seven important words. He writes,

“In the first place, we must acquaint ourselves with matters of language and understand what Paul means by these words: law, sin, grace, faith, righteousness, flesh, Spirit; otherwise, we shall derive no benefit from reading this epistle.”

In typical Luther fashion, he used 2,800 words to explain these seven words. That’s an average of 400 words to explain each one of the seven. Our first comparison, therefore, will be to see which mission statement contains the most words, making them more like Luther.

Bethany’s mission statement contains a mere 2150 words. It’s clear, brief and to the point. That is not in true Lutheran fashion. On the other hand, Trinity’s mission statement contains a whopping 8,500 words, not counting the links to other website where you could find even more information about what they believe. Trinity is hands down the clear winner on the point of wordiness as being more Luther-like.

Score: Trinity 1 / Bethany 0.

Lutheranism is the only true religion.

In the above-mentioned commentary of Romans, Luther warns his followers to beware of anyone who teaches contrary to his writings. He writes,

“Beware of all teachers who employ these (7) words (mentioned above) in a different sense, no matter who they are, even if they should happen to be Jerome, Augustine, Ambrose, Origen, and men like them or still higher than they.”

In this quote Luther references what can only be thought of as the Mt. Rushmore of early christian scholars and thinkers, who, in their times were considered the ultimate authority on all matters of theology. According to Luther, these great scholars were wrong, and (of course) he was right.

Trinity Lutheran

Trinity begins their mission statement with this paragraph.

“Almost every church claims to believe the Bible or practice Jesus’s ways. How can you tell the difference between what God teaches and what people have made up? Our Lutheran Church boils down what God teaches into a brief (5,100 words) form called the Small Catechism which summarizes everything Christians believe and do.”

And ends with this statement,

“Christianity is the only true religion you can rely on…”

For Trinity, other denominations are making up what God teaches but Luther’s Large and Small Catechism summarize “everything” christians believe and do. It seems clear that Trinity believes that Lutherans believe and do the right stuff, but all other forms of christianity practice a made-up religion and therefore are suspect.

Bethany:

On the other hand, Bethany is accepting of other religions. Their mission statement says this,

“In our multireligious world, the ELCA is committed to working with people of other religions and worldviews toward mutual understanding and for the common good.”

This is definitely not a concept Luther would have embraced. In fact, his philosophy was nearly the exact opposite. He wrote,

“But those who refuse to learn (i.e. don’t believe as we believe) are to be told that they are denying Christ and do not belong to Him. They are not to be admitted to the Sacrament, accepted as sponsors at Baptism, or allowed to exercise Christian liberty in any way. They should instead be simply directed back to the pope and his functionaries, yes, even to Satan himself. Moreover, their parents and superiors should refuse them food and drink, telling them that the prince is of a mind to expel such rude persons from his realm, and so on.”

Dissenters should be ostracized and refused food and drink? Now that’s more like Luther. Trinity wins another round.

Score: Trinity 2 / Bethany 0.

God’s Love

Bethany mentions God’s love 16 times, saying that God’s Love is limitless, unconditional, never ending, and for everyone.

Trinity only mentions Love twice. “The Bible has two big commands that God gives us: to love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love our neighbors as ourselves.”  It’s really no surprise that God’s love for humanity is not mentioned in Trinity’s mission statement. The only reason love got mentioned at all, is because it’s part of the great commandment, and Luther loved commandments and thus, so do Lutherans.

In Luther’s Large and Small Catechisms, he instructs his followers to love (and fear) God, to love God’s laws and commandments, to love their parents, to love their spouse and to love their enemies. However, there is no mention of God’s love for humanity anywhere in Luther’s writings (at least that I could find). That makes Trinty’s lack of love more Luther-like.

Score: Trinity 3 / Bethany 0.

The Jews & their Lies.

Martin Luther’s anti-Judaic writings

At the beginning of his career, Martin Luther was sympathetic to the Jews, probably because, like him, they were resistance to the Catholic Church. However, when he expected them to convert to his purified version of Christianity and they did not, he turned violently against them. In a vitriol essay entitled “The Jews and their lies” Luther wrote,

“Therefore, the blind Jews are truly stupid fools. Now just behold these miserable, blind, and senseless people … their blindness and arrogance are as solid as an iron mountain.”

“Therefore, be on your guard against the Jews, knowing that wherever they have their synagogues, nothing is found but a den of devils in which sheer self-glory, conceit, lies, blasphemy, and defaming of God and men are practiced most maliciously and veheming (sic) his eyes on them.”

“Moreover, they are nothing but thieves and robbers who daily eat no morsel and wear no thread of clothing which they have not stolen and pilfered from us by means of their accursed usury.”

“(We) should toss out these lazy rogues by the seat of their pants… and then eject them forever from this country.”

Bethany:

“The ELCA has repudiated Martin Luther’s anti-Judaic writings and is committed to Jewish relations and combating anti-Semitism.”

Trinity:

No mention of Luther’s anti-Judaic writings.

For Bethany to disassociated themselves from the teaching of their honored patriarch is a bold move. It is absolutely the right thing to do but cannot be considered the Lutheran thing to do. Trinity’s silence on the matter, while not being PC, can be considered as more like Luther.

Score: Trinity 4 / Bethany 0.

So, Trinity Lutheran wins the contest. They are without a doubt, more Lutheran than Bethany. Yet, I’m not saying that it’s necessarily a good thing. Lutheranism as practiced by Trinity Lutheran definitely has its flaws and personally, I would not choose to attend a church like that. On the other hand, I would be more inclined to visit Bethany Lutheran, because I like their acceptance of others.

They write,

“(We) are continually working toward reconciliation and to share our fundamental belief that God’s love and grace are limitless and for everyone.‍ At Bethany Lutheran Church we value people of diverse race, sexual identity, ethnicity, and political affiliation.”

Definitely not Lutheran-like, but maybe Christ-like. But how would I know?

I’ll end this blog with a quote from renown historian Will Durant.

“He (Luther) freed his followers from an infallible pope but subjected them to an infallible book; and it has been easier to change the popes than the book. He retained the most cruel and incredible dogmas of medieval religion, while allowing almost all its beauty to be stamped out in its legends and its art, and bequeathed to Germany a Christianity no truer than the old one, yet far less joyous and comforting. He became almost as intolerant as the Inquisition.” 

Endnote:

I have included this because it would be almost unbelievable to some people that Luther actually said these inflammatory statements. But he did, and here are his 7 steps to deal with the “lying Jews”.

  • First, set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians.
  • Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed.
  • Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them.
  • Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb.
  • Fifth, I advise that safe-conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews. For they have no business in the countryside.
  • Sixth, I advise that usury be prohibited to them, and that all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them and put aside for safekeeping.
  • Seventh, I commend putting a flail, an ax, a hoe, a spade, a distaff, or a spindle into the hands of young, strong Jews and Jewesses and letting them earn their bread in the sweat of their brow, as was imposed on the children of Adam.

 

 

From Where I Stand

Sept. 14, 2025

Dale Crum

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1 Sep, 2025

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A Tale of Two Churches

Trinity Lutheran and Bethany Lutheran

His Law always accuses us and cannot save us since we’re sinners. Trinity

We believe all people are created in God’s image and loved by God. Bethany

In January of 2025, I wrote a blog about Trinity Lutheran Church in Denver, CO. Trinity calls themselves a confessional church, meaning their mission statement clearly states what they believe. “At Trinity what you see is what you get.” I have no problem with that. I’d rather that a church be upfront about their beliefs than see them luring people in under false pretense. My problem, however, is that I just don’t like their brand of christianity (i.e. Lutheranism). We’ll explore that topic in a future blog.

I assumed that all Lutheran churches were the same, and then I discovered Bethany Lutheran, (also in Denver). Aside from the fact that Bethany is also a “what you see is what you get” kind of church, it was hard to believe that they both call themselves Lutheran. Trinity’s mission statement is clear that there are certain kinds of people, (including other christians) who are not welcome at their church. Bethany’s website, on the other hand, clearly states that everyone one is welcome, saying,

“Bethany Lutheran Church values people of diverse race, sexual identity, ethnicity, and political affiliation.”

That one difference really surprised me, so I took a deeper dive into these two Lutheran Churches and found out that they have very little in common. Here’s a snapshot of their differences.

Love

Trinity: “The Bible has two big commands that God gives us: to love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Everything else boils down to those.”

Notice that these two mentions of Love are commands. Christians are commanded to Love God and love their neighbors. There is no mention of God’s love for mankind anywhere in Trinity’s mission statement.

Bethany:

  1. As Christians, we believe all people are created in God’s image and loved by God.
  2. God’s love for humanity.
  3. We are led by the Holy Spirit to love and work for justice and peace.
  4. Serving everyone, suffering everything for the love and praise of God.
  5. To love and serve neighbors.
  6. God in Christ loves us.
  7. God’s love for us.
  8. God’s unconditional love.
  9. In response to that love, we are set free to live gratefully and lovingly.
  10. God’s never-ending love
  11. God’s love
  12. Frees us to love others.
  13. God’s unconditional love for us.
  14. God’s love is unfathomable.
  15. God’s infinite love.
  16. God’s love
  17. God’s love for us is limitless and persistent.
  18. Cannot separate us from the love of God.
  19. Compelling message to love & care for one another
  20. Do justice and love mercy

Sin

Trinity: By “sin” we mean every word, thought, and deed against God’s Law.

  1. The law cannot save sinners.
  2. God’s holy law always accuses sinners.
  3. There is no hope for sinful men except in Jesus Christ.
  4. Only the gospel can save us from the punishment of sin in Hell.
  5. This gospel is to save sinners from death and Hell.
  6. His Law always accuses us since we’re sinners.
  7. Can be boiled down to sin and death.
  8. The first sin of our parents Adam and Eve has passed on to us a defect called original sin.
  9. Along the way to death, we commit sins.
  10. Those sins… lead us to death.
  11. Death is not natural except for sinners.
  12. If sin could be taken away from us, then we could be saved from death.
  13. The law curbs sin so that it doesn’t destroy everything.
  14. The Law shows us our sin.
  15. God saves us from our sin and death.
  16. Made an atonement for our sins.
  17. Salvation from sin, shame, and death.

Bethany: What is sin?

  1. Jesus took upon himself the sin.
  2. We live in the tension of still being sinful.
  3. Sin is a complicated thing to talk about because it comes in many forms.
  4. Sins can be individual as well as communal.
  5. Sin is separation from God.
  6. It’s difficult to admit our sins.
  7. God promises to forgive our sin.
  8. When we confess our sins, we are assured of God’s forgiveness.

Grace

Trinity: (one reference)

  1. Our salvation is all grace – a free gift.

Bethany:

  1. God’s grace is a gift.
  2. We have confidence in God’s grace.
  3. God has shown such grace.
  4. Saved by God’s grace and God’s grace alone.
  5. We receive the gift of grace by faith alone.
  6. The gift of grace expresses God’s unconditional love.
  7. God’s grace is limitless and for everyone.‍
  8. We respond to that grace by serving and loving our neighbor.
  9. Grace is a gift from God’s infinite love.
  10. We experience God’s grace in times of need.

Welcome

Trinity: No mention of welcome.

Bethany: “Welcome is what our church strives for. We recognize that there are groups and communities of people who have been hurt by experiences with church. They have been made to feel that they cannot be their God-given selves in church settings. Our fundamental belief is that God’s love and grace are limitless and for everyone.‍ Bethany Lutheran Church values people of diverse race, sexual identity, ethnicity, and political affiliation. We invite you to worship and encounter a God who loves us.”

Will the real Lutheran Church please stand up.

What’s obvious from this snapshot of these two churches is that even though they both call themselves Lutheran, they are on opposite ends of the christian spectrum. Bethany, clearly a progressive church, focuses more on Love and specifically God’s Love. On the other hand, Trinity, being more evangelical, emphasizes the importance of sin and death and never once mentions God’s Love.

If I were a church goer, (which I am not) I would choose to attend Bethany. Their multiple references to God’s love and their stance on acceptance of everyone would be very appealing to me. It’s still perplexing to me why anyone would choose a church that fails to mention God’s love in their mission statement. But that’s not the real issue here, is it?

Both these churches call themselves Lutheran, but given their striking differences, I found myself asking, “Which one is actually following the teachings of Martin Luther? Which one of them is faithfully following the creeds and beliefs that Luther established in his writings?”

For me, the church that most closely aligns itself with the teachings of Martin Luther, would be the true Lutheran church. In the next blog we’ll compare the mission statement of both Trinity and Bethany to see how they match up with writings of Martin Luther himself.

Will the real Lutheran Church please stand up.

 

From Where I Stand

Sept. 1, 2025

Dale Crum

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25 Aug, 2025

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Surrendering Your Mind

It’s always a bad idea!

“We aren’t surrendering our minds to other people, as in cults, but to the one true God.”

“It has only been since leaving the Assembly that the fog of deception and the fear have lifted, and we have begun to see what we were involved in and how emotionally and spiritually damaging it has been.”

“The road to recovery has not been easy.”

In the previous blog we explored the thought process of a christian blogger named Scott who says that a Christian’s life can be transformed, by “surrendering their mind to the rock-solid foundation of God’s true word.” Then and only then will they begin to think like Jesus.

Obviously, as a secularist, I have some concerns with Scott’s premise of surrendering your mind to God, or for that matter, to anything. Here’s how Scott justifies his reasoning.

“It’s a risky thing to surrender your mind to God and his word. The world will tell you that it is intellectual suicide. You might think that “surrendering your mind to God’s word sounds like brainwashing – the way people get sucked into cults. It’s not. Because we aren’t surrendering our minds to other people, as in cults, but to the one true God.” (prepared to answer.org)

That paragraph really raised some red flags for me. The interesting thing about his statement is that Scott seems to believe that christians are “surrendering their minds to the one true God”, which implies that everyone has a direct connection to the one true God. Perhaps that’s what christians want to believe, but that’s not how churches actually function.

Lay christians aren’t surrendering their minds directly to “the one true God”. The average christian looks to a spiritual leader for direction. It’s hard to imagine a church where everyone has a direct connection to the one true God. Wouldn’t that be rather chaotic? The churches I’ve attended don’t function like that.

Church hierarchy functions more like an extension cord. Church members plug themselves into pastors, preachers, and other religious leaders who (they believe) are actually plugged directly into God. Scott says that it’s not like a cult, but it’s precisely what happens in cults. When people surrender their minds to charismatic religious leaders, it can get pretty ugly.

Christians are often compared with sheep, and therefore, in need of a shepherd. You can’t have sheep from the herd wondering off in any direction according to their whim. They must be guided and controlled.

Scott: “We aren’t surrendering our minds to other people, as in cults, but to the one true God.”

Despite what Scott says, this is NOT how churches really work.

There are people in authority who claim to have a direct connection to the one true god, and that person tells their followers what God demands from them. It is simply a lie to tell lay christians that they are surrendering their minds “to the one true God”. If they are part of a congregation, they are surrendering their minds to other people, and are plugging their mind into someone else, who they believe is plugged into God. Therefore, the question becomes, “is that person who says he/she is plugged into God, actually plugged into God?” A great deal of spiritual abuse happens when someone claims to know what God wants.

While researching his book Recovering from Churches that Abuse, Ronald Enroth interviewed many “survivors of cults” who shared with him stories about their painful experiences in religious cults. One such survivor, who Enroth calls Eric, said this about why he stayed in the cult for over 20 years.

“When I left the Assembly, I was very confused. I felt numb. I felt as if I had made a very big mistake. For twenty years I had set aside my concerns because I felt that Brother George’s teaching was truly God’s message from the Throne and therefore my concerns were, no doubt, of the flesh or of the enemy.”

Notice that when cult members have doubts about what they are experiencing in the cult they are indoctrinated to blame 1) their own personal weakness or 2) the Devil. The true abusive nature of the cult is never questioned. That is a prime example of surrendering your mind and letting someone else tell you what to think. “There’s nothing wrong with the church. It’s the members who are flawed.”

Eric continues,

“After all, if you are being given ‘God’s message’ from ‘God’s servant’ who has ’God’s anointing’ for ‘God’s Work’ concerning ‘God’s testimony,’ how can you really question it?”

This is exactly when you should question it. There are enough red flags in that one paragraph alone to warrant many questions. For example: What exactly is God’s message? What makes someone God’s special servant? How do you know that person has a special anointing by God? What exactly does that mean? What is God’s work? (It’s certainly not Matthew 25.) What exactly is God’s testimony? Eric continues,

“It has only been since leaving the Assembly that the fog of deception and the fear have lifted, and we have begun to see what we were involved in and how emotionally and spiritually damaging it has been. The road to recovery has not been easy.”

If Eric had actually asked the right questions about what they were involved in early on in the process, they might have avoided the years of emotional pain and trauma. But of course, that would not have been possible. Questioning church leaders is seen as betrayal and is severely punished. Eric was not up to the task.

Eric continues,

“The most important thing in my recovery has been the need to get the proper balance between the heart and the head. In the Christian life, the mind is not something to be subjected to the heart.”

What exactly does it mean that “the mind is not something to be subjected to the heart?” I spent years in evangelical circles, and I never heard that phrase. My Christianese is a bit rusty, so, I asked the AI gods what that phrase meant. According to Google “this statement suggests that reason should be the primary guide in our decisions and actions, rather than being swayed or controlled by emotions.” If that’s what the Eric is saying, it’s not just a christian thing, it’s a universal idea that predates christianity. Perhaps, I didn’t get that right. As I’ve already mentioned, I’m no longer fluent in Christianese.

Eric: “It is false to say you cannot know or understand the Word of God unless you have the proper inner attitude, or unless you surrender and submit, and that only when you get to that place will God break through and show you the way.”

Eric is contradicting what “prepared to answer” says in his blogs about thinking like Jesus, and I quote,

“If you want your life to be transformed, then you must be willing to surrender your mind to the rock-solid foundation of God’s true word. When you do, God will begin to renew your mind so that you will begin to think like Jesus.”

Eric, who spent years in a cult, knows that this is false thinking. I know this is false thinking. So, why doesn’t Scott know?

Another cult survivor who Enroth calls Tracy also experienced ambivalence about spiritual matters.

“I have had to deal with much emptiness since I left. I didn’t know how to hear God’s voice. I never had to, because I always asked somebody else.”

She had surrendered her mind to “somebody else”. After leaving the cult, Tracy has finally learned how to think for herself. She says,

“I felt guilty about leaving. The crisis point was the third year after we left. I didn’t know if there was a God, or, if there was one, why he had permitted these things to happen to us.”

As a secularist I believe it’s false thinking to blame God for “permitting these things to happen”. She fell victim to a cult because she surrendered her mind to someone else. Plain and simple!

She continues,

“I got angry frequently. Now I have figured out what I believe, and I don’t want anyone to tell me what to do or believe. I don’t want to go to church anymore, and that makes me feel guilty”

I would say to Tracy, “Don’t feel guilty about not wanting to go to church anymore. It’s doesn’t matter much what church you go to, there will always be someone who wants to tell you what to do and what to believe. It’s the nature of christianity. You have been granted grace, don’t run back into the fire.

Another survivor whom Enroth calls Peter also still struggles with spiritual confusion after leaving a religious cult. He says,

“What I am looking for in a church is a place where I can be intellectually honest. I want to ask the tough questions.”

I applaud his new desire to tackle tough questions, but good luck with that. No christian church, I know of, is comfortable when people start asking questions and especially “tough” ones. Intellectual honesty is not really valued in christian churches. If this is what Peter is looking for, he will be gravely disappointed.

He continues,

“I have questions that were never resolved when I was a young Christian. I have to find out what I believe, not what others have told me to believe. I’m not going to roll over and play dead ever again.”

Once again, good luck with that.

From where I stand:

I would say to Peter, “Asking tough questions is a great start. It’s been said that “spiritual growth is the process of replacing lies with the truth.” Do that! Ask as many questions as you need to get to the truth. Once you’ve actually committed to intellectual honesty and decided to follow reason, evidence and truth wherever they might lead, there is a good chance they will lead you away from your cherished beliefs and away from evangelical christianity. That’s okay. Don’t fear secularists like me. What you have been taught about “the world” and non-believers is based on lies. Letting go of the false teachings of christianity can be a slow and sometimes gut-wrenching process.

It might take years… but it’s worth it.

 

 

 

From Where I Stand

Aug. 25, 2025

Dale Crum

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17 Aug, 2025

Blog

True Thinking?

How do we know it’s true?

“All true thinking starts with what God says.”

“Spiritual growth is the process of replacing lies with truth.”

In the two previous blogs we were exploring the writings of a christian blogger named Scott, on a website called “prepared to answer”. His topic for a three-part series was “how to think like Jesus”. Both part one and part two contain statements that can only be regarded as questionable theology. Not that I really care about theology, but if you’re going to use it, it’s important to get it right. Scott does not.  I was hoping his third installment entitled “Start Thinking Like Jesus – Today!” would prove to be more productive, and less deceptive. However, as we shall see, it’s just more of the same, and starts with this statement.

“All true thinking starts with what God says.”

Now there’s a statement that needs analyzing. Unfortunately, many, if not most, christians lack the ability, and the awareness to do just that. Fortunately, some of us have learned to ask questions and to think for ourselves. So, let’s examine Scott’s opening sentence piece by piece.

All true thinking…

What exactly is “true thinking”? The google gods defined it as thinking that is honest, authentic and, of course, true.

That said, we know that there are different categories of truth.  But what Scott is proposing, however, is that there is a form of truth which is only available to christians. Which begs the question, (at least for me) how true is christian thinking?

I’ve spent the past three years attempting to answer that question. What I have concluded is that believing something (like the inerrancy of the bible) doesn’t necessarily make it true. Lots of people believe in lots of things that aren’t true, such as the legendary Sasquatch (Bigfoot), and that the world is flat despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

So, we ask the question again.

How true is christian thinking?

Just like believing in Bigfoot or a flat earth, not everything christians believe is true. Consider the following statements which are taken directly from various church mission statements. As you read these, ask yourself, “Do they reflect ‘true thinking’?

  • We believe in the full historicity of the biblical record of primeval history.
  • We believe that God created the heavens and the earth (from nothing) in six historical days.
  • We believe the creation account is factual, historical, and is the foundation of our understanding of the created universe, God’s power, and his glory.
  • We believe in the literal existence of Adam and Eve as the progenitors of all people, the literal fall in the Garden of Eden and resultant divine curse on creation.
  • We believe in the worldwide flood that destroyed the earth, animal life, and the human race, except for Noah and those he took in the ark with him.
  • We believe in the origin of the nations and languages at the tower of Babel.
  • We believe there is a real personal devil of great malevolence and power.

One might wonder how christians could actually believe these legendary stories. The mission statement of Veritas International University tells us why.

“Denial of the biblical teaching on creation, undermines many essential doctrines of the Christian Faith.”

It’s really pretty simple, all of christianity is based on these fundamental falsehoods. If christians were allowed to question Genesis, then the entire bible would come into question. And if that happens, as the saying goes, “the walls would come tumblin’ down”. So, if christians want to believe in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, they must first believe in the legends of Genesis. Is that true thinking?

…starts (defined)

To begin, commence, initiate, inaugurate, take the first step in a course, process, or operation. According to Scott all true thinking has the same origin which is…

…with what God says.

What exactly is Scott saying here? I guess we have three options.

Option one:

Christians believe that the bible is the word of God. So, is Scott stating that “everything” in the bible is God-breathed? Does that mean that every word between “In the beginning” and “The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all. Amen.” (in Revelations) is what God says and must be considered as the start of “true thinking”? This is what fundamentalists believe and defend in the face of strong evidence to the contrary. It that true thinking?

Option two:

The expression “Thus saith the Lord” appears 415 times in the Old Testament. Could he possibly mean that each of those 415 times is, what God says? If that’s the case, we would have to tell Pharaoh to “Let my people go!” Would that be the start of true thinking?

Option three:

In part one of his series Scott makes this comment. “All that’s required (to live like Jesus) is listening to and trusting what God plainly tells you.” So, the question is, how does God “tell” his followers anything? Does God verbally speak directly to them? Since Scott doesn’t back most of his statements with scripture, is he getting his revelations directly from God? Are those revelations true thinking and can they be trusted? Let’s put Scott to the test.

From Bad to Worse

He writes,

“And if we think about it, (All true thinking starts with what God says) makes perfect sense because any alternative just sounds, well…ridiculous. Just think about it. Try saying the following sentence out loud and replace ‘God’ with something else:”

  • “All true thinking starts with what God says.”
  •  “All true thinking starts with what _____________ says.”

“Does anything else sound right to you? Can you imagine anyone inserting their name into the blank, claiming that they are the source of all truth? You’d think they were out of their minds! But that’s exactly what we’re saying every single day when we don’t submit all thinking to God’s word.”

This is a prime example of how faulty Scott’s reasoning really is. He’s making the wrong comparison and as a result has come to the wrong conclusion. In order to be valid, the word “says” needs to be removed from both statements. For the comparison to have any integrity, it should read something like this.

  • All true thinking starts with God.
  •  All true thinking starts with _____________.

In order to fill in that blank, perhaps we should do exactly what Scott has suggested.

“Try saying the following sentence out loud and replace “God” with something else:”

Okay, let’s do that.

All true thinking starts with “something else”.

Okay, that works! Now, let’s see what that something else might be.

All true thinking starts with ____________.

How about with… reasoning, or investigation, or wisdom, or facts, as in “all true thinking starts with verifiable facts”? (Unless of course, you are Kellyanne Conway.)

From where I stand, Scott’s claim that christians are somehow privy to “all true thinking” is ironically an untrue statement, which by definition, is the opposite of true thinking. Therefore, it’s highly unlikely that Scott, or any of his readers, for that matter, can actually arrive at “true thinking” when their starting point is an untrue statement?

Perhaps we should look at the other side of the coin. As a secularist I would say that…

True thinking does not start with a belief in gods. Period!

Yet, Scott continues,

“Being a Christian isn’t a matter of thinking vs. not-thinking. It’s a matter of where our thinking starts from. Ultimately, there are only two places where thinking can start: either believing truth begins with God or truth begins with us. Either God’s truth is true, or mine is. These are our only two options.”

We’ll come back to that thought in a minute. For now, let’s look at more of Scott’s (questionably) true thinking.

Scott: “Learning to think like Jesus, then, begins with trusting that God is the starting point for all true knowledge. That’s why Solomon in his wisdom declared, ‘The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.’”

Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines. How’s that for wisdom? Is that an example of true thinking? By the way, I’m almost there in my quest for wisdom; I only have 699 wives and 300 concubines to go to. I’d better get busy.

Scott: “As the Son of God, Jesus was the most brilliant man to ever live. When he walked the earth, he never took a blind leap of faith in anything. Nor does he ask us to. Rather, he based every thought, and therefore every action, on what he knew to be true, namely ‘every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’”

Wow, that paragraph is quite the collection of outlandish falsehoods.  So, as a skeptic, I have to ask, “Are those four sentences God’s truths or Scott’s truths? Remember, according to Scott those are the only two options. “Either God’s truth is true, or mine is.” So, which is it?  Let’s take a look.

If Jesus really was the most brilliant man to ever live, how would we know? Could we tell how brilliant he was through his writings? Brilliant people all throughout history have shared their brilliance with humanity through their writings. Take for example the writings of Aristotle, Plato, Thomas Aquinas, Marcus Aurelius, Maimonides, Martin Luther and the 13th century major Jewish thinker, Levi Ben Gerson.

So, why not Jesus?

The truth is that we know nothing about Jesus’ brilliance from his own writings. In fact, what we do know about the historical Jesus was given to us many decades after his death by people who never actually met him. Would believing that Jesus was the most brilliant man to ever live be considered “true thinking”? Scott seems to think so, but I certainly don’t.

Let’s look at the rest of that paragraph. Is anything in it verifiable? Can Scott prove that Jesus never took a blind leap of faith or that he based every thought, and action, on whatever proceeded from the mouth of God? Does God even have a mouth?

“If you want your life to be transformed, then you must be willing to surrender your mind to the rock-solid foundation of God’s true word. When you do, God will begin to renew your mind so that you will begin to think like Jesus.” (1)

So, there you have it. After three blogs, Scott has finally come to the point of what it means to “think like Jesus”, and here’s the secret. “You must surrender your mind.” Period.

It doesn’t matter what you surrender your mind to; it’s still a bad idea.  Let’s see how he defends this folly.

  • “It’s a risky thing to surrender your mind to God.”

Yes, it is.

  • “The world will tell you that it is intellectual suicide.”

Because it is.

  • You might think that “surrendering your mind to God’s word sounds like brainwashing…

Anytime you surrender your mind to someone or something else, they are controlling your thoughts; not you. That, by definition, is the beginning of brainwashing.

  •  …the way people get sucked into cults.

When people stop thinking for themselves that is exactly how they get sucked into cults. (2)

  • We are surrendering our minds to the one true God.

And that makes it okay? It does not as we shall see in future blogs.

Coming next:

“From Where I Stand” will explore spiritually abusive churches. We’ll look at why people are drawn to such churches and why it’s so difficult to leave.

End Notes

  1. “It is false to say you cannot know or understand the Word of God unless you have the proper inner attitude, or unless you surrender and submit, and that only when you get to that place will God break through and show you the way. Instead, the gospel is clear and easy to understand. It is not a puzzle that we have to put together.” Recovering From Churches That Abuse, by Ronald Enroth.
  2. The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse, by David Johnson and Jeff Van Vonderen.

 

From Where I Stand

Aug. 17, 2025

Dale Crum

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1 Aug, 2025

Blog

The Roots are Bad

Learning to think like Jesus, means retraining your mind to think true thoughts about God.

“Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to My voice.” Jesus

“What is truth?” Pilate

As we’ve seen in previous blogs, it’s problematic for Christians to declare that their ultimate aim in life is to become like Jesus. What makes this even more problematic is that nobody seems to agree about what exactly that means.

One christians blogger we’ve discovered says that becoming like Jesus means living like the historic Jesus of the four gospels. Last week we explored the writings of a christian blogger named Scott, who neglected to make any mention to the historic Jesus and based his whole “Wanna Be Like Jesus” blog on one verse from Romans. This week we’ll explore the second part of Scott’s blog entitled “How Do I Start Thinking Like Jesus?”

A Little Background

I just finished reading a book entitled “Deceived” about a “devious polygamous cult” in Ogden Utah. In the past year I’ve watched several Hulu series, one called Under the Banner of Heaven, and the other called “Escaping Polygamy”. It didn’t surprise me that, yet another polygamous cult had sprung up in Utah. What makes Utah such a fertile environment for destructive polygamous cults? It occurred to me that perhaps the roots of Mormonism are what causes these polygamous cults to keep springing up like weeds.

Although modern day LDS faithful have tried very hard to sanitize and whitewash the history of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, both were polygamists. Joseph Smith, who is still revered as The True Prophet, is believed to have had 49 wives, some of them while they were still married to their legal husband. Brigham Young, who has a university named after him, had 56 wives. The fact is, that modern day LDS faithful still revere Smith and Young as godly prophets. As a result, it’s not all that surprising when polygamous cults spring up like bind weed in Utah. The roots of Mormonism are bad. I repeated that phrase to myself all morning. The roots are bad… the roots are bad.

However, this is not a blog about Mormonism. Enough has already been written about the LDS and FLDS communities. This is a blog about mainstream christianity and how its roots might also be bad.

I sat down to work on this week’s blog with the “roots are bad” thought in my head. In our previous blog we were exploring the writings of a christian blogger named Scott on a website called “prepared to answer.org”. As I started reading part 2 of his blog about becoming like Jesus, I read these words.

“I have a chronic dandelion problem in my yard. I pull them up, I spray them and run them over with the lawn mower again and again and again, and yet they keep coming back. But that’s for one very simple reason: I haven’t pulled up the roots.  It’s the same problem with our old sinful life. We can try “weeding out” the thoughts, desires, and actions that appear on the surface in our day-to-day living, but if we don’t get at the root, those same patterns of sin will reappear over and over again.”

Roots? This seems more than coincidental. This could get interesting.

Scott continues,

“Getting at the root   So where do we look for that root of sin that needs to be torn up? We find it in Romans 1:18-32. Right in the middle of his brilliant analysis of mankind’s sinful estate, Paul traces the root of sin to a decisive moment where humanity embraced an exchange of ideas:”

(For the record: I’m not so enamored with Paul’s “brilliant analysis” of mankind. But that’s a topic for another blog.)

The “root of sin” that Scott is just about to reference is the infamous “original sin” of Adam and Eve. According to christian dogma, all humans have bad roots. It’s inescapable. We’ve inherited our sinful nature from the first two humans. Simply being born comes with the curse of Adam and Eve’s sin. Every church mission statement I have ever read, mentions original sin in its list of beliefs.  Let’s see if Scott has anything new to add to this topic. Remember, his blog is supposed to be about learning to “think like Jesus”. Let’s see how he makes that jump from original sin to thinking like Jesus.

Scott continues,

“They exchanged the truth about God for [the] lie and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen”. (Romans 1:25)

“Paul is talking about all of us, but he specifically has in mind that moment in the garden of Eden where the first man and woman embraced Satan’s lie that eating the fruit would make them “like God”.

First off, who are “they”? Even by reading the verses surrounding verse 25, it is not quite clear who “they” are. Paul never specifically says, but in verse 18 he mentions some unspecified “ungodly and unrighteous men”. Scott, however, confidently concludes that “they” is referring to Adam and Eve. In addition, he says that Paul was specifically referring to that moment in the mythical garden of Eden when Adam and Eve supposedly ate the fruit of knowledge. A careful reading of Romans 1:25 (which Scott obviously didn’t do) reveals that there is no mention (not even a hint) of the Garden of Eden, nor of Adam and Eve. How Scott got from some unspecified ungodly men to a “specific” reference about Adam and Eve is anyone’s guess and speaks more to Scott’s creativity than his biblical scholarship.

What’s more, the phrase from verse 25, “they… worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator” absolutely could not have been referring to the mythical Adam and Eve. So how, and more importantly, why, did Scott make that jump? Obviously, he knew where he wanted his blog to go, so he simply made the verse say what he wanted it to say, whether it did or not. Unfortunately, this kind of deceptive misrepresentation of scripture is not uncommon among christian writers.

For the sake of argument, if Paul actually was referring to Adam and Eve in verse 25, then he still must have had them in mind in verse 26-27 as well, where (if you follow Scott’s reasoning) he “specifically” claims that Eve “exchanged” Adam for Adamah, and Adam began his infamous relationship with Steve.

Second, how is it even remotely possible that Scott knows what Paul “specifically” had in mind when he wrote his letter to the christian church in Roman? (A church, by the way, which he neither founded, nor even visited.) Let me guess, the Holy Spirit (a major player in Scott’s blogs) told Scott what Paul was thinking in the mid-first century.

It’s obvious that Scott, is creating a false narrative when he says that Paul was talking about “all of us” and that he specifically had the garden of Eden in mind.

What is Truth?

Later in his blog Scott writes that “ultimately all true knowledge has God as its starting point”. So, if his goal as a christian teacher is to impart “true knowledge”, why does his blog contain so many blatant and disingenuous misrepresentations? Where’s the truth in that? Perhaps, his theological roots are bad.

Scott continues,

“By eating it (the forbidden fruit), Adam and Eve demonstrated their desire and willingness to replace God’s Law (i.e. the Creator’s rule over his creation) with their own law (i.e. the creation’s rule of itself). Paul’s logic could not be clearer. Once the lie took root, humanity became incapable of knowing or desiring or doing the will of God precisely because we had willfully abandoned the starting point for every true thought.”

According to Scott, it’s not the system that has bad roots, it’s the entire human race, which has rejected the “will of God” to rule over them. Nothing is wrong with christianity (of course), it’s the decedents of Adam and Eve who claimed the right to control their own destiny. As a result, the entire human race has become incapable of knowing “every true thought”. Oh my! One might suppose that someone as enlightened as Scott would have a solution to this dire human dilemma, and indeed he does.

The Solution

“Something changes, however, when a person places their faith in Jesus Christ. God through his Holy Spirit enlightens their darkened mind so that they can see the truth about God in Christ. To put it simply… sinners are made to see the truth about “the lie” and the lie about “the truth”. In short, they’re made able to know the truth about God and “the truth sets them free”.

There you have it. Once someone joins the Jesus Club, the Holy Spirit will “enlighten” them so they can finally see the truth, which will then set them free. Let’s take a deeper dive into that thought.

The Truth About the Lie

One thing about Scott’s reasoning gives me cause for concern. Once someone joins the Jesus club and they receive the Holy Spirit, why doesn’t the Holy Spirit “enlighten their darkened minds” and open their eyes to see the “truth about the lie” of original sin”? It’s perplexing.

The Lie: (All of these come directly from church mission statements.) Adam and Eve sinned, and their sin then spread like a virus to all humans and consequently the entire human race experienced spiritual death. Therefore, every human is born with a sinful and depraved nature and are separated from God. Mankind is sinful, lost and deserves eternal punishment in the Lake of Fire.

The truth: The story about the original sin of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden is completely fictitious, made up, and never actually happened. (Which, by the way, is also true of almost everything written in the book of Genesis.) Sin does not “spread like a virus” from generation to generation and just being born does not automatically produce a depraved nature. What a silly and dangerous lie to teach children. (See end note 1)

The Lie About the Truth

The Lie: (From the Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy) Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it states about God’s acts in (a literal six day) creation or about the events of world history (such the Flood and the Tower of Babel.) The authority of Scripture is inescapably impaired if divine inerrancy is in any way limited or disregarded, and such lapses bring serious loss to both the individual and the Church.

The Truth: The inconvenient truth is that the Bible is neither inerrant, infallible, nor “verbally” God-given. Christians, who believe and defend that particular lie do so because questioning inerrancy can have serious social consequences to “both the individual and the church.” Believing the lie of inerrancy has more to do with group affiliation and acceptance than it does with the Holy Spirit. (See end note 2)

From where I stand

When I joined the Jesus club in my late teens, I was taught to accept these (and many other lies). It was required. Since I had a strong desired to be a good christian and accepted by my christian circle, I believed what I was told to believe. I didn’t know any better. What I personally discovered, years later, after letting go of christianity, is that the concept of original sin is a cruel deception. When I realized that truth, I was truly set free.

Now, back to Scott. Remember that his blog is supposed to be about living like Jesus. After a 660-word intro reminding his readers about our “sinful roots”, Scott abruptly, and clumsily segues to his original topic. His next sentence after “the truth sets them free” is this.

“Learning to think like Jesus, then, means willingly cooperating with the Holy Spirit to retrain your mind to think true thoughts about God, …(which) is not as easy as it sounds. That’s why Prepared to Answer exists: to teach you how to think like Jesus by presenting the truth about God revealed in the Bible clearly and in a way that makes sense.”

Looks like we are going to have to read part three of Scott’s series to actually find out how to “think like Jesus”. One could only hope that in the finale to his series he will finally be able to present the truth and not more misrepresentations, and that it will make more sense than the first two.

From where I stand, it’s clear that Scott’s theological roots are bad, resulting in a certain degree of deceptive proof-texting. (See end note 3). The die is cast, and I have little doubt it will change in part three. We shall see!

Coming next: Part 3 of Scott’s blog on how to Think Like Jesus.

Endnotes:

  1. Think about it. How could we possibly know what took place in the Garden of Eden? How do we know that there even was a Garden of Eden? If you unquestionably take for granted that the story of Adam and Eve is historically accurate, (like I did for years) then you have based your religion on stories that are simply meant to be moral lessons and metaphors. Confronting this idea (that there was no historical Adam and Eve) was the beginning point of renown atheist Dan Barker’s journey from evangelical preacher to atheism. That can happen when you seek the real truth.
  2. Don’t take my word for it. If you’re questioning what you’re being told by your religious leaders, do your homework. A good place to start is with renown New Testament scholar Dr. Bart Ehrman. Pick one of his books and read it.
  3. Proof texting. It is the practice of using isolated passages from a text, often the Bible, to support a specific point or argument without considering the original context or broader meaning of the text. It involves taking a verse or quote out of its original context and using it to support a predetermined conclusion, potentially distorting the original intent of the text. Over the three years I have been reading and critiquing christian writers, I have concluded that proof-texting is the rule rather than the exception.

 

From Where I Stand

Aug. 1, 2025

Dale Crum

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20 Jul, 2025

Blog

Becoming like Jesus?

What does it mean to think like Jesus thinks?

“Jesus wants to make us like himself before he takes us to heaven. What God cares about most is that whatever you do, you do in a Christlike manner.” Pastor Rick Warren

“We fail to live like Jesus because we haven’t learned to think the way he thinks.”

“Some people say they love Jesus, but their Jesus is not the Jesus of the Bible. He is an imaginary Jesus that they invented in their own minds” (and for their own purpose.) Abounding Joy

What does it all mean?

It’s problematic enough that Christians modernize the historical Jesus, (see previous blog) but it gets even worse when christian dogma declares that the ultimate goal of any christian is to become like Jesus. What makes this even more problematic is that nobody seems to agree exactly what that means.

One christians blogger I discovered says that becoming like Jesus means living like the historic Jesus, as found in the four gospels. Taken literally, this blogger says that christians should strive to be unmarried celibate peasants, who are anti-family, hang out with criminals and sinners, and make religious people angry. (Like that’s ever going to be spoken from the pulpit.) Hey, wait a minute, I haven’t spoken to some of my family members for years, I hang out with sinners and none of my religious friends from my “church days” still speak to me. Does that make me more like Jesus?

Other christian websites teach that “becoming like Jesus” has nothing to do with the historic Jesus of the Gospels. (Not quite sure how that’s even possible.) How can a person instruct others “to be more like Jesus”, without once referencing anything Jesus said or did in his lifetime? As improbable as that might seem, I’ve discovered multiple christian websites that do exactly that.

One such website is called “prepared to answer.org”. Its author, a guy named Scott, says his mission is “to teach a new generation of Christians to think like Jesus.” However, he never references the Gospels as his guide for what it means to think like Jesus. In fact, his entire argument comes from only two verses, (one from Romans 12 and the other from Isaiah.) There is not one single specific reference to the historical Jesus. So, how can Scott instruct his readers to think like Jesus if he completely ignores any reference to a historical Jesus? Let’s find out.

His three-part, 2,700-word blog does not attempt to answer the question of WHAT it means to be like Jesus, but rather he addresses HOW to become like Jesus. Which begs the question, if you don’t know WHAT you’re striving for, HOW will you know if you’ve actually accomplished that goal.

The first part of his three-part series is entitled, How to Live Like Jesus. Scott starts by asking a question.

“Do you want to live like Jesus?

What christian would say NO to that question? He then explains the HOW of living like Jesus.

Scott: “And the key (to being like Jesus) isn’t with some hidden formula, secret knowledge, or mystical experience only available to the “truly spiritual”.  All that’s required is…

Wait for it!

Wait for it!

Wait for it.

 …listening to and trusting what God plainly tells you.”

This is where other evangelical websites would tell us that the way to know what God “plainly tells us”, can be found in his infallible and inerrant Bible, but that’s not what Scott does. Scott doesn’t go into detail about HOW to know what God plainly tells you and he fails to back up his statement with scripture. This is where Scott’s blog starts to really go off the rails and becomes a bit concerning. Anyone who has studied the anatomy of cults knows that this is how cults begin. Somebody claims that God has plainly told them something. It usually becomes clear that their revelation from God is plainly telling them to do exactly what they want to do anyway. But Scott’s not done yet.

The HOW of living like Jesus

“Even Jesus didn’t live like Jesus just by (sic) just trying really hard. Rather, he lived in perfect obedience to God because his mind was perfectly aligned with the mind and will of the Father. If that was true for Jesus, then it must be true for us.”

There you have it, the key to living like Jesus is to perfectly align your mind with the mind of the God of the entire universe. How likely is that, really?

Jesus didn’t have to try really hard to live like Jesus. Brilliant, Scott, just brilliant! I was curious what level of theological education it would take for Scott claim that Jesus didn’t have to try hard to live like Jesus, so I scoured the “Prepared to Answer” website to find Scott’s bio and credentials but could not find anything. A statement like that makes me wonder if he has any theological training and even more, any common sense.

What I did find, however, was their statement of purpose, which says,

“Prepared to Answer was established in response to the alarming rate of attrition among younger Christians who are departing from their faith commitments to Jesus Christ due in large part to our culture’s successful creation of a false dichotomy between ‘secular’ and ‘sacred’ spheres of life.”

From Where I Stand

After reading Scott’s blog, I’d have to say that the alarming rate of attrition of young christians who are departing from the faith is not so much due to “our culture” creating a false dichotomy. It seems more likely that this mass exodus from christianity is due in large part to the kind of nonsense that christian leaders like Scott ask their readers to accept. Just look at some of the other nonsense ideas he proposes.

  • “I think the reason many Christians aren’t living transformed lives is because they’re pursuing God’s heart while ignoring His mind.”
  • “We fail to live like Jesus because we haven’t learned to think the way he thinks.” (present tense)
  • You see, living like Jesus means approving of what God approves of; wanting what God wants; and calling good what God calls good, acceptable what he calls acceptable, and perfect what he calls perfect.
  • But we can do none of those things until we learn to think like Jesus.

Maybe younger christians are ignorant enough, and gullible enough to swallow Scott’s sticky sweet pablum. The ironic part of Scott’s blog is that he is asking his readers to engage their minds in order to live like Jesus and expand their relationship with their God, while at the same time he provides nothing more than overused christian clichés, lacking any substance or original thought. Scott ends his blog by encouraging his readers “to accept God’s call to consciously, intentionally, diligently, and faithfully retrain themselves to think like Jesus.”

From where I stand, it’s clear that rather than trying to think like Jesus, Scott’s readers would be much better off if they simply learned how to think for themselves. Unfortunately, most christians feel more comfortable when someone else is telling them what to think. Until they learn to question what they are being asked to believe, christian websites like “prepare to answer.org” will continue to crank out overused christian clichés (as we shall see in future blogs). And the saddest part is that no one really benefits from these kinds christian clichés and in the end, no one will be better off for it.

End note: It would appear that the only verse Scott quotes to support his point (Romans 12:2) is a double-edged sword. The verse says, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” David Johnson and Jeff Van Vonderen in their book about spiritual abuse, note that the verse can also apply to performance-based churches that require their members to conform to the rules and regulations of the church, leading to a form of spiritual abuse. Once again, members of performance-based churches would be better off learning to think for themselves.

 

 

From Where I Stand

July 20, 2025

Dale Crum

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22 Jun, 2025

Blog

Becoming like Jesus

What exactly does that mean?

Jesus was an unmarried peasant who didn’t put his family first.

Most of his friends were criminals or engaging in sinful lifestyles.

He spent most of his time with drunks, gluttons, fornicators, and thieves.

Nearly everything Jesus said and did, made religious people mad. 

(Theology in the Raw)

Once in a while, (but not very often) I’ll come across a christian website that actually makes some sense. While doing research for a series of blogs about what christians mean when they say they want to be more like Jesus, I discovered one such site. It’s called Theology in the Raw. In a 2020 blog titled “What Does it Mean to Become More Like Jesus?” the site’s author, Chris Sprinkle writes this,

“I’m one of those guys who has an extra sensitive Christian cliché antenna. Some call it a BS meter.

Hemingway called it a “crap detector”.

“It picks up on all kinds of chatter through the church airwaves and demands a concrete explanation. So, when I hear Christians say they want to ‘become more like Jesus,’ my meter goes nuts.”

On this point Sprinkle and I agree.

He rightly asks, “What does it mean to “become more like Jesus? What does it look like?”

This is exactly what I have been searching for while researching this topic. What exactly do christians envision when they strive to become “more Christlike”? And how will they know when or if they’ve actually achieved it? Even though Sprinkle’s writings show more logic than most of the christian blogs I’ve read, it’s obvious that he is a christian and he still says thing that cause my crap detector to go off.

Ground rules:

Given the amount of time (decades) that transpired between when Jesus lived and when the gospels were written, I don’t believe they accurately report everything Jesus said and did in his lifetime. However, most christians do believe. Anything that is written by modern day christians, about the life of Jesus must come exclusively from the four gospels. This will be our measuring stick of validity of what Sprinkle and other christians write about becoming more like Jesus. With that criterion in mind, let’s see how Sprinkle’s comments stack up.

Hate your family:

“My suspicion, though, is that if we look closely at Jesus without our modern moralistic filter, fewer people would want to become more like Jesus. Jesus was an unmarried peasant who didn’t put his family first.”

The Gospels do teach that Jesus was anti-family. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus was quoted as saying “For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household. Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers, and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple.”

Wow! Let that one sink in.

So, is this what it means to become more like Jesus? Are real disciples of Jesus required to disown their own family? That would be quite shocking and rather cult-like for most christians. Perhaps this is why Sprinkle’s says that “fewer people would want to become more like Jesus.”

Hang out with criminals.

Sprinkle: Most of his friends were criminals or engaging in sinful lifestyles.

Criminals? Really? This made my crap detector go off. To say that most of Jesus’ friends were criminals is not supported in the Gospels. It is reported in Matthew that he dined with Tax Collectors. One christian website says this about why tax collectors were so universally hated. “Tax collectors in the Bible were Jews who were working for the hated Romans. These individuals were seen as turncoats, traitors to their own countrymen. Rather than fighting the Roman oppressors, the publicans were helping them—and enriching themselves at the expense of their fellow Jews.”

Does that make them criminals? Is Sprinkle really saying that in order to be more like Jesus, christians should have more friends that are criminals who have sinful lifestyles? Try saying that from the pulpit.

Avoid religious people.

Sprinkle: “Jesus had hardly any friends who would be considered religious.”

I like where he’s going with this statement. He obviously understands that many christians believe that in order to be more like Jesus they must spend more time in the company of other religious people. Some (maybe all) of my former church friends have defriended me because I no longer believe as they do. I suspect that most of them have very few, (if any) non-christian or apostate friends. The gospels do teach that Jesus was at odds with the religious leaders of his day. “Alas, alas, for you Lawyers and Pharisees, hypocrites that you are…” Without a doubt the thought of hanging out with non-religious people would certainly take most christians way out of their comfort zone and would prove to be quite upsetting.

But it’s his next statement that sets off my crap detector.

Sprinkle: Jesus spent most of his time with drunks, gluttons, fornicators, and thieves.

Wait, what? Jesus spent most of his time with drunks, gluttons, fornicators, and thieves? Beside Jesus occasionally hanging out with tax collectors this statement by Sprinkle cannot be verified from the Gospels. It’s actually a quite comical thing to say. One can almost imagine that in the sermon on the mount Jesus was heard to say, “Blessed are the drunks, gluttons, fornicators, and thieves, for they shall be called friends of Jesus.” I seriously doubt the validity of Sprinkle’s statement.

Sprinkle: “He was so close to “sinners” that the religious leaders thought he was one.”

This statement can be verified in the Gospels. In Mark it’s recorded that “when the scribes and the Pharisees saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, they said to his disciples, ‘Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?’” However, his next statement also set off my crap detector.

Strive to make religious people angry.

Sprinkle: “Nearly everything Jesus said and did, made religious people mad.”

I see where Sprinkle is going with this, but can he really say that he knows everything Jesus supposedly said and did? Of course not. The gospels indeed tell us that he was at odds with the religious leaders of his day, but we certainly don’t know “everything” Jesus said and did. This statement by Sprinkle can also be disqualified.

Give all your wealth to the poor.

Sprinkle: “One of Jesus’s favorite topics had to do with money. And this got people really riled up.”

It’s recorded in Luke that Jesus told his disciples that anyone who did not renounce all that he has cannot be his disciple. He also told a wealthy wannabe follower to “sell all that he had and distribute it to the poor”, and only then could he have treasure in heaven and become worthy to follow him. Easy thing for Jesus to say. As far are we know, he had no wealth to distribute to the poor. Any modern day christian who actually did such a thing would be considered a socialist, something the religious right openly detests.

Sprinkle: “In Matthew 25, one of the most terrifying passages in the Bible, Jesus describes judgment day in detail and His criterion for who’s in and who’s out has to do with whether you and I have served the poor and needy in this life. Part of what it means to become more like (the biblical) Jesus is becoming excessively generous with our material wealth and having the scent of poverty on our hands and feet.”

This is something that I have said quite often in my blogs. Evangelical christian soldiers like James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Dr. Elizabeth Youmans on their pious crusades to vanquish the evil liberals in the world, fail to ever mention the ramifications of Matthew 25.

Love your neighbor.

Sprinkle: “Jesus also talked a lot about love. Take a quick look at the early Church and you’ll see that enemy-love would become the hallmark of Christianity long after Jesus’s resurrection. When people thought of Christians, they recognized them as the people who, like Jesus, love their enemies.“

Sprinkle’s suggestion that the reader “take a look at the early church”, violates our earlier stated criterion. Remember, any reference about becoming like Jesus has to come exclusively from the Gospels. Not only what he said, but also what he did. The writer of Matthew did indeed report that Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, taught his followers to love their enemies. ““You have heard it said, you shall love your neighbors and hate your enemy. For if you love only those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax gathers, and the gentiles do the same?”

Let’s look more closely to the first part of that. “You have heard it said, you shall love your neighbors and hate your enemy”. In the margin of my bible this verse in Matthew refers to a verse in Leviticus 19 which says, “You shall not hate your fellow-countryman in your heart. You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall; love your neighbor as yourself.”

It’s obvious that their “neighbor” was also Jewish. I am unaware of any Jewish law in the Old Testament commanding Jews to love gentiles. Not sure Jesus ever taught that either.

So, Jesus reportedly said, “love your enemy”, but is this an instance of “Do what I say, and not what I do?” What we really need to ask is, “Did Jesus have any enemies?” The answer to that question is an unequivocal YES. The religious leaders of his day, the Lawyers and Pharisees, were those with whom Jesus had his most significant opposition. So, how did Jesus act toward his enemies? Concerning the Lawyers and Pharisees, we know how he reacted. In the words from the musical Godspell Jesus says to them, “You snakes, you viper brood, you cannot escape being devil’s food”. (Matthew 18)

Sprinkle: Jesus’s hard-hitting, enemy-loving, harlot-embracing, wild-eyed way of life is captured in his famed call to come die with him. “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me”. As Deitrich Bonhoeffer used to say, “When Jesus calls a man, he bids him to come and die.”

And with this final statement, Sprinkle gives us his coup de grâce. If you want to be like Jesus, you should prepare do die, (preferably at age 33). Now it becomes clear why he believes that fewer christians “would want to become more like Jesus”. By striving to be like the historical, first-century, Jewish Jesus, rather than an imaginary 21st century American Jesus, christians would be forced to face the reality of what it really means to become more like Jesus… and wisely choose not to.

Summary:

How to become more like Jesus according to Theology in the Raw.

  • Become an unmarried wandering peasant.
  • Be anti-family.
  • Hang out with criminals.
  • Spend most of your time with drunks, gluttons, fornicators, and thieves.
  • Avoid hanging out with religious people.
  • Strive to make religious people angry.
  • Sell all your possessions and give all you have to the poor.
  • Become excessively generous with your material wealth. (Although Jesus had no material wealth to share.)
  • Have the scent of poverty on your hands and feet. (Whatever that means.)
  • Love your enemies. (Did Jesus?)
  • Abstain from lust and adultery.
  • Practice celibacy.
  • Never get married.
  • Never gaze at a woman.
  • Get ready to die.

Coming next:

We’ll examine several christian websites, each giving us “10 ways to be more like Jesus”. Funny thing is, we end up with over 80 ways to be more like Jesus. We’ll put all 80 ways to the same “crap detector” criteria that we applied to Sprinkle. I’d be willing to bet that even his christian cliché antenna would be going nuts, because mine sure was.

 

 

From Where I Stand

June 22, 2025

Dale Crum

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13 May, 2025

Blog

An Imaginary Jesus

Will the real Jesus please stand up?

“Some people say they love Jesus, but their Jesus is not the Jesus of the Bible. He is an imaginary Jesus that they invented in their own minds. Their imaginary Jesus may not condemn sin the way the real Jesus condemns sin.” Abounding Joy

Jesus was inescapably and ineluctably a Jew living in first-century Palestine… and when we try to make him into a twenty-first-century American we distort everything he was and everything he stood for. He was not like us, and if we make him like us, we transform the historical Jesus into a creature that we have invented for ourselves and for our own purposes.”   Dr. Bart Ehrman

 The former quote comes from a blogger named Steve on a christian website called Abounding Joy. I have multiple issues with Steve’s quote. First, it seems quite arrogant for him to believe that he is privy to the “real” Jesus, while anyone who doesn’t see things his way, has an imaginary Jesus. And second, his use of the verb “condemns” is in the present tense. It should read, “Their imaginary Jesus may not condemn sin the way the historical Jesus condemned sin during his three-year ministry.” Steve’s quote comes from a blog entitled Prepare to be Bullied. In his blog he prepares his readers for the inevitable persecution they will face if they speak up about what his Jesus would condemn in today’s society. Fortunately for us, Steve tells us exactly what his Jesus would condemn, which, as we will see, is not what the historical Jesus condemned.

The Gospel according to Steve

Here is a list of some the things Steve’s Jesus condemns.

  • Alternative gender identity
  • Any sexual activity other than between a man and his wife.
  • Abortion and euthanasia.
  • Freedom (not quite sure what he meant by this.)
  • The Black Lives Matter Movement. (I am not making this up.) (1)

Steve claims that his Jesus is the Jesus of the bible, but it would appear that he has done exactly what Dr. Ehrman warned against. He has turned the historical Jesus of the gospels into a 21st century evangelical who conveniently opposes the same current social issues that Steve does. I would challenge Steve to produce evidence from the Gospels where the “1st century Jesus of the bible” addressed any of the issues he says Jesus condemns. Where does Jesus condemn gender identity? Or homosexuality? Or race relations? Or Freedom? Of course, in his blog Steve fails to provide any such documentation. I’ve read the Gospels many times and have yet to discover where the historical Jesus addressed any of Steve’s issues. Perhaps Steve’s bible has the following verses that my imaginary bible does not.

  • Blessed are the heterosexuals for they shall inherit the earth.
  • Blessed are monogamists for only they shall be satisfied.
  • Love only those who are like you, and you will be called sons of your Father.
  • Judge others who are not like you. Be not concerned that others will judge you, for only you know the real Jesus.

It’s problematic!

Plan A

Discerning what the 1st century Jesus did or did not actually say is quite problematic, because we know very little about the “historical Jesus.” The best way for us to know anything for certain about the real Jesus, would be for us to read his writings from his own pen. As you probably already know, the historical Jesus did not write anything which could be pass on to his followers.

Plan B

Lacking Jesus’s own writings, the next best thing would be for us to gather information from those who knew him and spent time with him during his three active years of teaching. Unfortunately, we don’t have that either. None of the accounts we have of the life of Jesus were written by actual eyewitness. In addition, what was written about Jesus (including what he supposedly said) was not written until decades after his death.

Plan C

The earliest writings we have about Jesus come from the apostle Paul, who admittedly never met Jesus in person, although he supposedly had a vision. Paul’s writings about Jesus failed to mention numerous details of what might be thought of as the real Jesus. In addition, the four canonized gospels were written between three and six decades later by people who also had never met Jesus and were simply piecing together bits and pieces of Jesus’s life from oral history.

The Jesus of the Bible?

Granted, there are many people who consider the entire narrative of Jesus as imaginary. This blog is not about proving or disproving that Jesus actually existed. (2) Steve has claimed that he represents the Jesus of the bible. So, for the sake of this argument, let’s assume here that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are our best historical records of what Jesus might have said publicly. By adhering strictly to the Gospels, and what the Gospel writers tell us about what Jesus actually condemned, perhaps we will be able to see if Steve’s Jesus is the Jesus of the bible.

What did Jesus condemn?

A christian website called “ibelieve” addressed this very issue.

“During his ministry Jesus called out some sins more than others. Here are 10 sins Jesus spoke about more fervently in the Gospels.”

Selfishness

  • “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20)

Pride

  • “. . .For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”  (Matthew 23)

Unbelief

  • “A wicked and adulterous generation looks for a sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah.” (Matthew 16)

Hypocrisy

  • “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are.” (Matthew 23)

Greed

  • “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” (Matthew 6). “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again, I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 19)

Unforgiveness

  • “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. (Matthew 6)

Hatred

  • “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.” (Matthew 5)

Disobedience

  • “If you love me, keep my commands.” (John 14)
  • “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22)

Judging Others

  • “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.  “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” (Matthew 7)

Impurity

  • “What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them. Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. For out of the heart come evil thoughts and deeds. These are what defile a person; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile them.” (Matthew 15)

From where I stand.

It’s important to note here that according to ibelieve  Jesus’s condemnation was aimed primarily at the religious leaders of his time. The Pharisees, Sadducees, and scribes held positions of significant religious authority and were the ones with whom Jesus had his greatest conflict. Also, the Sanhedrin, (the Jewish ruling council), opposed Jesus, often plotting against him and contributing to his eventual arrest and trial.

This truth has significant ramification for 21st century evangelicals, who have become the religious leaders of our time and thus subject to the condemnation of the historical Jesus. Although Steve claims to speak for the Jesus of the Bible, he clearly does not! His ideas of what Jesus condemned are quite different than those offered by ibelieve. 

Dr. Ehrman in his book Did Jesus Exist? quite eloquently speaks about this attempt by 21st century evangelicals to modernize the historical Jesus to fit their social agenda.  He writes,

“(Jesus) had nothing to do with going to church on Sunday. He knew nothing of social security, food stamps, welfare, American exceptionalism, unemployment numbers, or immigration. He had no views on tax reform, health care (apart from wanting to heal leprosy), or the welfare state. So far as we know, he expressed no opinion on the ethical issues that plague us today: abortion and reproductive rights, gay marriage, euthanasia, or bombing Iraq. His world was not ours; his concerns were not ours, and—most striking of all—his beliefs were not ours.”

With that in mind, let’s change Steve’s quote to make it more accurate.

Steve says he loves Jesus, but as we have discovered, his Jesus is not the Jesus of the Bible. His is an imaginary 21st century Jesus that Steve has invented in his own mind and for his own purposes.

 

End note:

(1) Some readers might doubt that a christian would actually make such a statement, so here is the actual quote from Steve’s blog. I commented on this in a previous blog.

So, what’s the problem with “Black Lives Matter?”

  • It’s a non-Christian movement that uses words like “racism,” “poor,” “oppression,” etc. to teach values that are strongly opposed by God.

(2) Dr. Bart Ehrman in his book, Did Jesus Exist? argues that there is convincing evidence that Jesus did indeed exist. Dr. Ehrman bases his conclusion on existing evidence rather than blind faith. It’s a compelling read that earned him the vitriolic ire of Mythicists. You might want to read it for yourself.

Coming next:

It’s problematic enough that Christians try to modernize the historical Jesus, but it gets even worse when christian dogma declares that the ultimate goal of any christian is to become like Jesus. We’ll dive into that quagmire to see exactly what christians believe it means to become like Jesus. Do they strive to become like Steve’s imaginary 21st century Jesus, or is their aim to become like the 1st century Jewish Jesus? It’s murky… at best.

 

From Where I Stand

May 13, 2025

Dale Crum

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27 Apr, 2025

Blog

Critical Theory vs Christianity

Persecuted Persons of Privilege – The Saga Continues

To disagree with me is an attack on who I am.

Each of us must take personal responsibility for our own sins.

 

Continued from the previous blog.

As a quick review, I have several issues with the author (Steve) of website named Abounding Joy and his concerns with Critical Theory and BLM.

  1. Steve transfers the discussion of Critical Theory from the social sciences arena (where it belongs) to the spiritual or supernatural realm (where it does not). That might be okay during bible studies he might attend, but by comparing Christianity with Critical Theory he has completely nullified any meaningful and reliable comparison between the two.
  2. Being supernatural by nature, his “christian views” are based on unverifiable beliefs that must be taken entirely on faith. On the other hand, most his made-up critical theory views have a historical basis and are verifiable. So, unlike the christian POV which are unchangeable, Critical Theory tenets can be acted on and changed.
  3. Steve is not exactly playing fair. Just as he did with secular humanism, Steve more times than not, completely misrepresents what Critical Theory stands for.
  4. He plays the Persecuted Persons of Privilege card. Notice how many times he says that Critical Theory calls him the oppressor and wants to overthrow him.
  5. He is mistakenly painting christianity as noble and without blame.

Steve’s blog continues…

How would Christians answer these questions and how would critical theorists answer them?

How can I tell if I’m a racist?

  • Christian view: Do I love people regardless of skin color, culture, background, etc.? Am I partial on the basis of superficial differences like skin color?

(Two true statements, but this is not how evangelicals have historically viewed racism. Antebellum Pastor James H. Thornwell in 1861 wrote, “(W)e are profoundly persuaded that the African race in the midst of us can never be elevated in the scale of being. As long as that race, in its comparative degradation, coexists, side by side, with the white, bondage is its normal condition.” For a century and a half after emancipation, “skin color” was not considered just a “superficial difference”. Jim Crow laws were passed based solely on “colored” skin. This evangelical stance on racism wouldn’t change until the 1990s. More about that later.)

  • Critical theory view: If you are a member of the oppressing group, you are a racist by definition, regardless of your behavior.

(As we mentioned before, Steve is a white, evangelical, heterosexual, male living in The South. I wish we knew more about his “behavior” during the civil rights movement. That would tell us a lot about him.)

What is oppression?

  • Christian view: Oppression occurs when people with power and money take advantage of others who are powerless to stop them.

(Historically a true statement. But why does Steve consider this an exclusively christian view?)

  • Critical theory view: Oppression occurs automatically and unconsciously whenever two groups of people interact, simply by the fact that one is part of an oppressing group.

What should Christians do who have personally experienced the pain of racism?

(Does he mean “non-white” christians who have personally experienced the pain of racism?)

  • Christian view: Reject critical theory. Accept God’s Word. Expose the sin of racism. (How?) Find Christians of various races who will support you and pray for you. Confess that all of us have sinned.

(You cannot confess someone else’s sin. It’s not clear if Steve is confessing his past sins of racism.)

  • Critical theory view: Work harder to overthrow the oppressors. (Which Steve seems to feel includes him.)

Is it OK to advance my goals by using violence?

  • Christian view: The Bible allows for some violence in self-defense or to defend others.

(The violence we read about in Numbers 31 is not exactly in self-defense. The violence described in the conquest of the Holy Land is more like genocide. See my past blog.)

  • Critical theory view: Violence against people who disagree with me is justified if it helps overthrow the oppressor group.

(Violence is also used by the oppressor group to keep the oppressed group in line. Remember those concerned citizens who “defended” their white christian nation by wearing hoods and terrorizing black communities?)

Is it possible for systemic racism to exist?

  • Christian view: Examples would be slavery, Jim Crow laws, abortion, Nazi Germany.

(It’s important to note that historically white evangelicals supported slavery and Jim Crow laws until recently. Not exactly sure how abortion proves systemic racism, but he certainly snuck that in to his argument, didn’t he? Nazi Germany?)

  • Critical theory view: It is constant. It is inevitable when two groups interact.

(By the way, contrary to what Steve believes, systemic racism did not disappear with the civil rights movement.)

Whom should I resist?

  • Christian view: Satan and his demons. (unverifiable)
  • Critical theory view: People who have power

(So, according to Steve, it’s better to resist an evil supernatural entity that we can’t see or even prove actually exists, than to focus on real evil people, with real power who are misusing their power to abuse those with less or no social power. The CRT view should read, “Resist people who are abusing their power and doing harm to marginalized groups.”)

How should I react to those who disagree with me?

  • Christian view: Love them. Stay humble.  Graciously try to help them see truth about Jesus.

(Why does Steve consider this an exclusively christian view? I just had to chuckle about the phrase “graciously try to help them see truth about Jesus.” What he’s implying is that christians are the passive, loving and humble ones who are being persecuted. Leave off the ‘about Jesus’ part and that also is a true statement. It should read, “Graciously try to help white christians see the truth that they have inadvertently supported and promoted racism for centuries.”)

  • Critical theory view: Reject them. To disagree with me is an attack on who I am. (PPPC)

(Notice what Steve did there. He is trying to turn the tables. This statement, “Reject them, because to disagree with me is an attack on who I am,” is actually something that christians might say when someone, like me, questions their belief in the existence of God or the validity of their bible. To disagree with christianity is considered an attack, perpetrated by “Satan and his demons”, on christians everywhere. Try telling an evangelical that the bible is not the inerrant, infallible word of God and see what happens.)

What happens when so-called “oppressors” are successfully overthrown?

  • Christian view: Authoritarian dictatorship. A few seize power in the name of the people.

(This is indeed a typical Marxist view. It’s curious that Steve writes this when historically it has been the Christian Right that has been trying to seize power and make America an authoritarian dictatorship based on theocracy.)

  • Critical theory view: Supposedly, freedom and liberation. In truth, people who worked for the revolution are disillusioned as a new repressive elite emerges to claim power “on behalf of the people.”

(Steve is not exactly playing fair here when says what the critical theory view is. He interjects his own made-up evaluation of their views. To be more accurate to what Marx would say it should read something more like this.)

  • Critical theory view: Freedom and liberation. The system would no longer favor a small group of people over the majority. Society could finally find a solution to this inequality. Workers would take control of their own labor and have access to a fair share of the profits of their work.

(However, the pressing question of current social critics of Marxism is whether a utopian society without inequity could actually exist.)

What should I think of identity politics?

(Let’s start by defining “identity politics”, as politics based on a particular identity, such as ethnicity, race, nationality, religion, denomination, gender, sexual orientation, social background, caste, age, disability, intelligence, and social class.)

  • Christian view: It’s bad because instead of seeing individuals as created in the image of God and equal at the foot of the cross, (unverifiable) it sees them as members of either oppressed or oppressive groups. It tends to create divisions among us instead of uniting us as one people.

(True statement, but why does Steve consider this an exclusively christian view? It should also be noted that christianity also creates divisions among us. Christians don’t want to be “united as one people” with non-believers like me or even with other christians who might hold different, more progressive beliefs.)

  • Critical theory view: It is good because it clearly separates the oppressed from their oppressors.

(Now this one has a glaring hypocrisy imbedded deeply in it. Look how he is painting christians as the ones who are accepting of everyone and for that they are being persecuted.)

Who is responsible for my personal behavior?

  • Christian view: I am

(True statement. Why is this considered an exclusively christian view?)

  • Critical theory view: The oppressor class (PPPC)

(He’s trying to paint Critical Theorists, i.e. BLM, as not taking responsibility for their own actions.)

What is racism?

  • Christian view: The sin of showing partiality on the basis of skin color, cultural identity, etc.

(I have been reading a book by Pulitzer Prize winning author Frances Fitzgerald, entitled The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America. According to Fitzgerald, this idea that racism is a sin is a rather new tenant for white evangelicalism. See end note 1.)

  • Critical theory view: What all white people are guilty of because of their part in the fact that white people as a group are oppressors. People of minority groups cannot be racist.

(Boy, does Steve play the PPP card here. Steve is mistakenly implying that “all white people” are guilty of oppression simply because they are white, and not based on their beliefs and actions. In addition, where did he come up with the idea that people of minority groups cannot be racist?)

What is the place of reason and logic and investigation?

  • Christian view: God is a God of truth. (unverifiable) He created us (unverifiable) with the ability to reason and investigate to discover Him and Truth.

(What if our ability to reason and investigate leads us to a different conclusion about God?)

  • Critical theory view: Reason, logic, and investigation are tools of the oppressing group, and are not useful or permitted. To disagree with the oppressed group, for whatever reason, is to oppress them.

(This is also true of christians. To disagree with christians is to oppress them, as Steve has so clearly shown us.)

Is it possible for someone in the oppressed group to be suffering the consequences of his or her own irresponsible behavior?

  • Christian view: Yes. Each of us must take personal responsibility for our own sins, regardless of our circumstances. (Change the word “sin” to “wrongdoings” and it is a true statement.)
  • Critical theory view: No. Actions of the oppressive group cause the legitimate reaction of the oppressed, including violence and theft.

(Wait, what? Theft? Where did that come from? Is he actually saying that oppressed groups never take responsibility for their own actions, blame everything on the oppressor, and then resort to stealing? That seems like a rather raciest thing to say.)

Why is critical theory so appealing to Christians?

  • Christian view: CRT uses words that appeal to Christians. Even though words are redefined, Christians recognize the problem of genuine racism, the problem of genuine oppression, the problem of the misuse of power, the problem of the poor, the problem of bigotry, the problem of guilt.

(Unlike Steve’s implacable belief that he is without blame, many (white) christians have come to recognize their contributions to the problems of genuine racism, genuine oppression, the misuse of power, the plight of the poor, and the reality of bigotry. and the problem of guilt.” As we can clearly see, Steve is not one of them.)

  • Critical theory view: Christians who accept critical theory are simply finally recognizing the guilt that comes automatically as a result of being part of oppressing groups.

In conclusion:

This is where Steve abruptly ends his blog. You’ll notice that he never actually acknowledges that as a white evangelical heterosexual male from the South, he might be enjoying the benefits of social privilege not available to other christians of a different skin color. Over and over again he plays the Persecuted Person of Privilege card.

The consummate display of his innocent victim complex comes in another blog he published in 2020 entitled, Prepare to Be Bullied, where he writes that christians will be treated badly and bullied. According to Steve, he and his evangelical brethren will be called: bigots, hypocrites, homophobic, sexists, racists, and intolerant (probably because they are) but Steve says the reason for this persecution is because christians have chosen to speak “the truth” about what the bible teaches. Their opponents, however, reject God’s (and Steve’s) authority and defiantly choose to live their own lives.

End notes

The following two statements were written by Antebellum Baptist pastors about the condition of Africans in the southern community. My question is, would these statements be something that might cause modern Southern Baptists to feel at least a twinge of guilt.

“I have placed before my reader what is in the Bible, to prove that slavery has the sanction of God, and is not sinful.” Thornton Stringfellow, 1841.

“Should, however, a time arrive, when the Africans in our country might be found qualified to enjoy freedom; and, when they might obtain it in a manner consistent with the interest and peace of the (white?) community at large, the Convention would be happy in seeing them free.” Richard Furman, Southern Baptist Leader, 1822.

It would appear that in the 1990s, blacks finally “qualified to enjoy freedom”. According to Fitzgearld, facing declining membership, “the Southern Baptist Convention, made efforts to recruit non-Anglo members and churches. The initiative began with a dramatic resolution on the SBC’s 150th anniversary in 1995 apologizing for slavery, on which the denomination had been founded. It regretted the SBC’s failure to support the civil rights movement a century later and the fact that many congregations had intentionally, or unintentionally, excluded African Americans. The resolution denounced racism as a “deplorable sin” and quoted the Bible to the effect that every life is sacred and of equal and immeasurable worth, and that every human is made in God’s image.” Fitzgerald, p. 614. (1)

From Where I Stand

This is a dramatic and hysterical turnabout. When slavery was profitable for slave owners and put money in their pockets, it was sanctioned by God. But 150 years later, with the SBC membership dwindling and donations declining, it became clear that being racist kept money out of their pockets and suddenly, racism became a “deplorable sin”. Their apology for slavery, which was motivated more by finances than guilt, came a century and a half too late. In addition, their failure to support the civil rights movement in the 1960s, was three decades too late. They had over 150 years to do the right thing for the right reasons, but they did not. It took declining membership and dwindling donations to force them to do the right thing, but for the wrong reasons. It’s also important to note that Steve came out in opposition to racism only after it cost him nothing to do so. There is no honor in this.

  1. Frances Fitzgerald, The Evangelicals, The Struggle to Shape America, 2017.
  2. Gregory A. Boyd, The Myth of a Christian Nation, 2005.
  3. For more about how Antebellum Pastors used the bible to justify slavery see my previous blog.

 

From Where I Stand

Apr. 27, 2025

Dale Crum

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