A nice article below on addressing those who have “lost their faith.” Although speaking of a number of different religions, and a number of different Christian traditions, it primarily focuses on Evangelical Christians who have ultimately come to the conclusion that Christianity is false (along with other religions), and there is no God.

Now I know that there are many Evangelicals who, as they read this, are already getting ready to jump in on some matter of eternal security, and say that if they lost their faith, then they must never have had faith in the beginning (‘You can’t lose a faith that you never had’). A few might go the other way and suggest that if they really were saved by faith, then this APPARENT lack of faith is just a phase that will eventually work itself out. Some from a  different theological camp (those who reject perseverance of the saints’) would take this situation as support for their beliefs. These are unuseful perspectives.

The situation of religious people losing their religion is a genuine human condition, and trying to tie it into the theology of the ultimate fate of man, while important for theologians, is avoiding addressing the phenomenon honestly. People matter more than theological arguments.

One thing I like about the article is that, although it was written by one who is an apologist (Paul Chamberlain is director of the Institute of Christian Apologetics at Trinity Western University), the recommended method he gives for constructive engagement with those who have lost their faith is NOT to argue with them. He gives several tips.  I will here include #2.

Second, somewhere in our discussion it’s helpful to ask the most basic question of all, namely what exactly were they rejecting when they walked away? Then we must encourage them to share their stories fully while we restrain our natural impulses to interrupt and correct. Spoiler alert – this will not necessarily be easy listening. Their responses may be personal, emotional or intellectual, but there is nothing to be gained by avoiding the issues. Our number one task at this point is to listen.

One reason why we as Christians struggle with people losing their faith is not theological, but personal. We feel that that the person is rejecting us And sometimes we are right. Often, but not always, the person has not so much been turned off to Christ, but have been turned off to Christians or Christianity as it is practiced. (I think pretty much all of us have been turned off to Christianity as it is lived out and practiced by some Christians. Even if we did not reject Christianity as a whole, we all can share this common experience, I believe.) We need to focus on being better followers of Christ than being better Christians, and being a bit less thin-skinned.

Sometimes, they have not been turned off to the Christian faith, but to interpretations of that faith that are taught as if rejecting such interpretations is tantamount to rejecting God.  Taking another excerpt from the article:

Fifth, those who preach to our congregations week by week must consistently draw a distinction between the infallible text from which they preach and their own interpretation of it. Theologian J. I. Packer once told his students that while he believed in an infallible text, he in no way believed in an infallible human interpretation. We need to encourage those who hear our preaching to examine and question our teachings just as the Berean Christians in Acts 17 were commended for doing with the Apostle Paul.

Of course, there are many reasons for losing faith… a number are given in the article based on interviews with those who have gone through this experience.

You can read the entire article at the link below:

Why People Stop Believing:  And what we can do about it

By Paul Chamberlain