I wrote an article for the Christian Post which looks at the Bible being part of someone's leaving faith and deconstruction process. There are many factors that lead to someone leaving faith. But the Bible is often part of it.
The article is here
I will interact with any comments or questions, and if anyone disagrees would love to hear your insight.
It's also on Christian Post Facebook and I reposted on my Facebook.
Update: We had the discussion - more coming in 2022! ------- The past several Thursday nights we have been having discussion on Zoom about the various contents of "How (Not) To Read the Bible" - and we had a discussion onthe topic of world religions and the claims of Christianity. A friend of mine who isn't a Christian once said Christianity feels like it is a "My God can beat up your God" against other world faiths. Understandably so, as there are very direct claims that are made that Jesus is the one way of salvation and the path to God.
If you would like to join us on a Zoom chat for discussion on difficult Bible topics, the next one is:
Thursday, December 2 at 6 PM Pacific Time. We will be discussing the topic of violence in the Bible. It is chapters 16-18 of "How (Not) To Read the Bible"
If you want to leave comments about this topic and I will be checking daily to interact, go to the:
I wish more and more church leaders were like John Dickson.
He is someone who is wicked smart and has his Masters degree in Theology and a PhD. But what I find the most refreshing is that he never forgets what it is like looking into the church and "Christianity" from the outside.
We had a chat on his really great podcast "Undeceptions" that is for both non-Christians and Christians you can listen to here.
He is from Australia and we have some things in common as we both were in bands (he is a singer and I am a drummer) but we also had an elderly person who was our main influence in becoming a Christian. I got to meet the woman who was that for him when I spoke in Australia at an event once. But John is passionate about seeing the local church train people in theology - not just for head knowledge or to use to fight battles with other Christians. But learning theology to be able to share about Jesus in intelligent, kind, winsome ways with those who aren't Christian and asking questions.
In this podcast John makes a challenge to read at least 100 pages of the Bible in 2021. So we talked about what happens when you do read it and see talking snakes, slavery, a lot of violence and even unicorns. He also included a little bit of my drumming in the podcast from when I was in a band way back with my brother and my buddy Mark Frauenfelder from Boing Boing.
