Many years ago I followed a guy who was a Christian bookstore owner who also sought to go further into ministry, particularly in terms of consulting and writing. I never contacted him directly, but in my mind I wished him well. I knew that was a hard road to travel, but I could relate somewhat to the desire.

That all was many, many years ago. Somehow a couple of days ago I saw his name on Substack and decided to look in on him. I was surprised to find that around 10 years ago he stopped identifying himself as Christian. He now identifies himself as agnostic. Reading about some of his reasons, I could relate to some extent. He came from a denomination that tends to be quite confident in itself and encourages a certain judginess. While my denomination was different, it did have these two traits in common with his. He also was really turned off by North American Christians’ focus on (and justification of) numerous political positions that appear to be far from the heart of Christ. Yes, that bothers me as well. I did not lose my faith because of these, but I do have quite a lot of sympathy for those struggles. For me, I believe it has increased my trust in Christ but with a much greater distrust of Christians.

Coming to faith or leaving faith (actually, any major faith) is challenging. It is supposed to be challenging. I know revivalist preachers like to make becoming a Christian like “such a little thing you need to…” or “all you gotta do is…” to become a follower of Jesus. But rejecting your past worldview and autonomy to submit to Christ is hard and is supposed to be hard. Attempts to make it appear easy are part of why the Church today is such a mess. Leaving faith is also difficult. I am not going to go into the theological implications of “losing one’s faith.” I am more interested in it as a phenomenon and some of the causes. Likewise, I also don’t want to look at it in a judgmental way. I am more interested in understanding it.

These are a few personal reflections on losing one’s faith.

1. Some lose their faith due to feeling they must reject some aspect(s) of their theology. There are a couple of people I follow on YouTube. One is a former Jehovah’s Witness. The other is a former Mormon. It seemed like a lot of their reasons for leaving were theological. Of course “theological” is very broad and probably should be parsed out more, but I won’t at this time. One of the two ultimately embraced a more traditional form of Christianity. The other embraced atheism. I can see how either could happen. With exclusivist groups, one is supposed to accept the whole package of the theology as true and believe that everyone else is wrong. If one starts to believe that at least some aspects of the theology are wrong, one may seek out groups that don’t have those aspects of theology. On the other hand, one might move from ‘one right and all others wrong’ to ‘all are wrong.’ I don’t really think this is the most common reason for losing one’s faith.
2. Struggling with the nuanced difference between interpretation of Scripture and Scripture itself. This is related to the previous one but is worth considering as a separate thing. I was raised in a fundamentalist, separatist tradition in Christianity. My dad believed that “fundamentalist” meant that one adhered to the “fundamentals” of the Christian faith but recognized flexibility and intellectual freedom in other areas. However, many fundamentalists tend to say, or at least practice, that just about every theological statement is fundamental. You must agree with them on how old the earth is, how to interpret the book of Revelation, whether a woman can pastor a church, and what the exact nature of hell is. It is often couched as “If you reject this doctrine, you are rejecting the Bible.” I feel like many people rejected their faith because they were not led to understand that disagreeing regarding an interpretation of the Bible is different from rejecting the Bible. In my mind there is something a bit evil with that. I was taught to accept the authority of the Bible, but if in practice, I am told to accept the authority of a particular interpretation of the Bible, someone has usurped authority, correct?
3. Some lose their faith because of the lives of “bad” adherents of their faith. The Substack guy I mentioned earlier became very disenchanted by judgy, hypocritical, power-hungry Christians. Now, a friend of mine had shared a statement to the effect that, “If you struggle with your faith due to Christians, then your faith is based on Christians, not on Christ.” While this seems pretty self-evident, I don’t think this is really true. Suppose I said, “I used to support Senator Smith, but then I heard him being interviewed on TV, and now I feel that I can no longer trust or support him.” Suppose then that someone protested, “Well, then your basis for support was not actually Senator Smith, but the tv.” Would that make sense? No. I have no direct access to Senator Smith, my access to him is mediated through the tv. Our access to Christ is largely mediated through the Church. If the Church makes Christ look bad, people of strong faith may not be able to see Christ as He actually is. Titus 2:10 speaks of how we can “adorn” the Gospel, making it look attractive. That suggests that we can make it unappealing… ugly… as well. But even if it is fair to judge negatively people being turned off to Christ through other people, I feel the judgement is still misplaced. Jesus placed the blame of those who cause others to stumble on the one who caused the stumble, not the one who stumbled.
4. Related to the above, one might experience positive relationships with those outside of the faith. Megan Phelps-Roper was a member of Westboro Baptist Church, a pretty toxic church (look it up if you are keen to know more). The church was very judgmental and frankly hateful. She went to college and found many people of different forms of belief and unbelief and saw them as warm and accepting. Her being attracted to their perspectives led her to reject her own church (probably a good thing), and ultimately Christianity (something I would not see as so good).

There are other reasons. Yes… sin/temptation can be a reason. Another one is the one from I John 2:19 (“They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.”) They left because they were never really one of us. Either can be true, or at least be an aspect of the case.

However, there is one main reason I don’t assume the reasons in the last paragraph. It does not lead to self-reflection. Those last two are preferred by many because it places the blame on the person who leaves. The church is blameless. Nothing can be learned from the situation.

However, maybe there are things we can learn from those who leave.

• If people in the world around us appear more loving than we appear, is there a problem that needs to be addressed?
• If our theological tradition seems more important than Christ, what is the real basis for our faith?
• If our primary use of the Sermon on the Mount is to explain why it is not really applicable to us in our present setting, are we embracing the exact perspective that Jesus was challenging the people so long ago?
• If our interpretation of Scripture is given equal authority (in practice, higher authority) to Scripture, does something need to change?
• If the categories of people we express love to keep getting fewer and smaller, is a reevaluation in order?