Church as a Place for Doubt

As I was cleaning up my new apartment, I listened to an episode of the Unbelievable podcast hosted by Justin Brierley. In this one, he mediated a conversation between Sean McDowell (son of famed apologist Josh McDowell) and a guy named Jon Steingard, who was the lead singer/guitarist for a Christian rock band named Hawk Nelson and had recently renounced his faith on Instagram. Steingard joins other semi-famous Christians over the last year or so to publicly apostasize such as Marty Sampson and Joshua Harris.

I honestly had never heard of Steingard or Hawk Nelson before (sorry, I’m not well-versed in the Christian music world), but I found his story interesting. I appreciated his openness and politeness, and it made for the kind of good conversation that seems so rare these days. There is much that could be discussed related to his story, but what I want to focus on is an interesting byproduct of his Christian rock star lifestyle: Once he started touring with the band, he didn’t really have a church for about a decade, often having to perform on Sundays and bouncing around from church to church based on wherever he happened to be. It certainly sounded like it wasn’t very conducive to his spiritual growth and the addressing of his doubts, and he even admitted that he felt scared to talk openly about his doubts because his livelihood depended on his status as a Christian rock star.

There’s a lot of teaching about how church community is important for growth, accountability, intimacy, emotional and financial support, and so forth. And all of those things are true and good. There may need to be more emphasis on this too: Community can serve as a place where doubts and questions are addressed and people’s faiths are ultimately strengthened. It should be an environment where theology and learning are done with others. I’m not interested here in debating whether or not someone can actually lose their faith; regardless of what your position on that is, I think we need to be reminded that community should be a place where honest doubts, both intellectual and emotional, can be expressed and ultimately dealt with in a loving manner.

Sports World Hypocrisy Part II: The Woke Go Silent or Feeble on Anti-Semitism

I’ve been busy with studying and preparing for a wedding so I haven’t been keeping up closely with too many current events, but this issue was made known to me and was so ludicrous that I had to take a few moments to jot some thoughts down.

Last year, I wrote about the hypocrisy of the NBA regarding China and Hong Kong given their prior chest-puffing on social issues. The NBA in general, particularly individuals like Lebron, Gregg Popovich, and Steve Kerr, propped themselves up as great and informed social commentators. All of them cowed in the face of China’s threats and the potential loss of huge amounts of money for themselves and the NBA, and it was a stark reminder that these athletes or coaches weren’t at the forefront of justice as much as they claimed.

Well, that hypocrisy just got topped in a staggering manner: Desean Jackson, a receiver for the Philadelphia Eagles, tried to quote Hitler (though it’s not a real quote from Hitler) regarding the Jews in a since deleted tweet. It was a screenshot of a book that said this:

Because the white Jews knows that the Negroes are the real Children of Israel and to keep Americas secret the Jews will blackmail America. They will extort America, their plan for world domination won’t work if the Negroes know who they were. The white citizens of America will be terrified to know that all this time they’ve been mistreating and discriminating and lynching the Children of Israel.

Again, the quote isn’t really from Hitler, but Desean (I’m going to use his first name because someone else important to this issue shares his last name) thought it was. The screenshot closed by stating, “Hitler was right.” Just a suggestion for the reader: You normally don’t want to close any alleged quote from Hitler with “Hitler was right” unless it’s Hitler saying something trivially true like the grass is green or the sky is blue, and you certainly don’t want to say that about anything Hitler may have said about the Jews. That might be bad for your intellectual and moral reputation. Desean followed that up with a series of quotes from known anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan.