Can We Use the Songs of Apostates or Heretics?

edit: Sampson has clarified that he hasn’t “renounced” his faith but that it is on “incredibly shaky ground.”  Still, he also said that in his view right now, Christianity is “just another religion,” which kind of sounds like he has abandoned the faith.  In any case, here is the link to that interview.

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I guess ’tis the season for public apostasy of semi-famous Christians.  A couple of weeks ago, Joshua Harris publicly renounced his faith, which I addressed in the last two posts.  Just recently, Marty Sampson, who has written several popular Christian praise songs while he was part of Hillsong Church, wrote on Instagram that he was leaving Christianity as well.  He said he felt nothing but freedom and peace, and he listed out the myriad of reasons why he came to reject Christianity as true.

I won’t go through each of his reasons; suffice it to say, I largely agree with Dr. Michael Brown that it is a bit frustrating that Sampson claimed that “no one” in the church was talking about his questions when there are volumes of resources out there on Christian apologetics.  It seems that Sampson couldn’t be bothered to read a book, yet ironically, he was asserting some rather strong intellectual claims about how science continues to poke holes in religion.  Granted, I am not saying that reading one or two books would have saved a faith that may not have ever been there in the first place, depending upon your theology of apostasy; if someone really does not want to believe and wants to ignore Scripture, then no amount of argument is likely going to help.  Still, at the least, he wouldn’t have sounded so ignorant if he displayed at least a superficial familiarity with how Christians have answered these questions throughout the centuries.  This episode sure doesn’t help Hillsong’s culture’s reputation for being high on emotion but rather low on theological depth.

In Defense of Aspects of “Christian Purity Culture”

In my last post, I gave a brief analysis of Joshua Harris’ apostasy, and given the big influence of his book I Kissed Dating Goodbye (that he did repudiate later) on a generation of Christians, it led to a lot of criticism of what many call “Christian purity culture,” which I will call CPC for short.  It is not always clear what one means by CPC, but it is a term I’ve heard bandied about over the years, usually derogatorily.   I myself have criticized stuff I have heard from the book in the past and even poked a little fun of it in my last post.  Still, a lot of what I’m seeing now is overreaction against legitimate Christian sexual ethics and wise advice that, while not scriptural commands, nonetheless remain wise and prudent for many Christians.  In short, CPC is not all bad, and it takes a wise person to not throw out the baby with the bathwater just because Harris made mistakes or because someone got their feelings hurt.