Frank Viola – The Top 7 Reasons Why People Leave Christianity

Frank Viola published a new article on patheos on his opinion, after three decades of following Christ, of why Christians leave the faith for either atheism or another faith tradition.

He says all of friends who left Christianity left for one of these seven reasons. These are why they bailed out on the Lord.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/frankviola/whychristiansabandonthefaith/

For this post, I will include each of his seven reasons and write my thoughts on them and how they might look in the context of the bigger church.

1. The horrible, disgusting, nasty way that Christians treat one another in-person and online. I wrote about this in Warning: The World is Watching How We Christians Treat One Another and The Art of Being a Jerk Online. But it’s also one of the reasons why some Christians want nothing to do with following Jesus anymore. It’s because of the sub-human way that so many of His professing followers treat each other. Ways in which they themselves would never want to be treated, breaking the cardinal commandment of Jesus Himself — which fulfills the Law and the Prophets — in Matthew 7:12.

I am very suspicious as this being a reason for people leaving the church. While I certainly agree that the conversation between Christians on different sides of the spectrum on certain issues is not exactly civil, I am not sure that this trickles down to the local church in a meaningful way. This smacks a little too much of being in the bubble of elite Christianity, if the debates are what you are most focused on.

This is not to say that the local church does not have disagreements, sometimes even nasty ones, that cause splits within the local body. But I question whether that has a meaningful impact on leaving the faith and ultimately bailing out on the Lord. This is not to say that we, as a church and as believers, could go for some more civility in our conversations and disagreements, but this is also a strong part of human nature. People debate vigorously for the things that they believe, and I like to think that nothing is more important to an individual than their walk with the Lord. I also suspect that too often calls for civility are calls to agree with me, and on too many issues that isn’t going to happen.

History is littered with strong disagreements over faith issues, and too often it ended up not with hurt feelings but dead bodies, or perhaps excommunication if you were lucky. So in that sense there is at least some improvement.

2. The canned superficial answers they had been given to complicated questions. Example: An 18 year old is brought up in a Christian home. She is taught that God created the earth in seven literal days and that the earth is young. The 18-year old enters college and she hears this idea ripped to shreds. She is confused and finally concludes, “If that’s wrong, then I have to throw out everything I’ve been taught in the Bible. Maybe it’s all myth.” The fact is, this 18-year old has never been exposed to some of the best thinking on the subject. She’s never been exposed to the sophisticated answers to modernity, to empiricism, to the problem of evil in the world. Nor has she ever been taught that one can interpret Genesis a number of ways and none of them means doubting the authority, reliability, or inspiration of Scripture. The canned answers she received is all she knows and they are proving inadequate. Greg Boyd’s excellent book, Benefit of the Doubt, goes into some of this very well.

This is a nice continuation of my post from yesterday where I took a look at the introduction to Greg Boyd’s book. I look forward to reading more and seeing how he fleshes out this issue.

http://stevenuessle.blogspot.com/2014/06/benefit-of-doubt-introduction.html

I strongly agree with this point by Viola. I think that in general the church is doing a very poor job of preparing youth who grow up in the church to face significant challenges to their faith as they reach adulthood. This is seen through either the development of a poor foundation, or the preventing of youth from critically thinking about their faith and testing it against other ways of thinking. Both of these are dangerous.

I don’t want to do a sweeping generalization of the church and youth ministry, as many of them do a fantastic job, but complaints about depth is something that I hear quite often. Youth ministry is in trouble when it is about hanging out and having fun with minimal focus on Christ, or when it is about teaching specific dogma with no room to explore.

There are stats cited about how a large percentage of youth leave the faith (at least for a while) when they enter college. The common reason cited is that colleges are so liberal and hostile to faith. I don’t buy this. I think the main issue is that youth are not prepared with a strong foundation in their faith and they are easily swayed away, or they lose it when certain points of their faith are challenged for the first time. This is the issue. Colleges and free inquiry are not the enemy of faith, they are vital to make sure it can stand challenges it will surely face.

More will be said about this in the future.

3. They met a God who didn’t meet their expectations. It could be a tragedy they experienced. It could be a painful event. It could be something dark and horrible that they’ve prayed to be saved from for years and God doesn’t seem to care. It could be a “promise” in Scripture that they stood on in faith, but never saw materialize. I’ve talked at length about this problem and the solution for it in God’s Favorite Place on Earth. Thankfully, that book has helped scores of people who have read it. But unfortunately, I can’t make people who would benefit from reading a book to actually read it. One of the frustrations of being an author. (Countless contemporary Christians will only read a book if a movie is made for it or if it appears on Fox News, The Today Show, or is heavily promoted by a mega-church pastor.) Anyways, this is a BIG reason why many abandon the Jesus ship.

His personal loathing aside, I think this is a huge issue. I don’t have a great answer for this, as faith in God is hard and it doesn’t always go in the manner that is expected. Two possible solutions to this:

First, it is critical to teach a robust faith. It is vital to move past an easy faith with easy answer. Aspects of this can touch on the prosperity gospel, that belief if God will lead to good things (beyond just money). When good things fail to materialize that can lead to a crisis of faith and perhaps abandonment. A robust reading of scripture cannot lead to this. Cherry picking scripture can.

The second issue is a loose, weak and distant church community. When people within the church are faced with problems it is vital that the rest of the community rallies around them. The failure to do so can lead to crisis in faith. This is especially true for older congregants, as I touched on here:

http://stevenuessle.blogspot.com/2014/06/allocating-church-resources-for-older.html

4. The stupidity and ignorance of so many Christians. Regrettably, many Christians believe whatever they read or hear. Those who are wiser and smarter don’t want to be associated with that lot. So they start thinking, “If Jesus was the Savior of the world, why are so many of His followers so stupid?” . . . “If Jesus is the head of the church, why is His church so dysfunctional and so toxic in so many cases?” So they start questioning the claims of the Lord Himself.

Meh. This seems unnecessarily harsh. I would hope that the members of any organization, church or otherwise, would realize that there will be a wide range of intelligence levels among the members. If someone is truly leaving for this reason, I would take a look at their heart instead of blaming everyone else.

5. Failure to live up to the gospel of legalism. I’ve watched Christians leave the Lord because they were taught a gospel of legalism — namely, that God will be upset with them if they don’t live a perfect life. Despite how hard they tried, they kept failing to keep the standard in various areas of their lives. They prayed, fasted, and sought victory over the problem with no results. Eventually, they got so weary that they concluded that it’s just not worth it to follow the Lord, so they left Him. 

I will certainly agree with this. I wrote a post on this about the bad trade that Christians can make:

http://stevenuessle.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-bad-trade-of-christianity.html

It can be devastating for individuals to fall into this cycle. If the church is teaching a high standard that no honest person can live up to without teaching the freedom that comes with Christ, people will eventually crack. There is a worthwhile debate to be had between law and grace, but it must be had in the context of the freedom and life that comes through the resurrection of Christ.

Of all the reasons that people leave the church, this is the one that causes the most long-term damage.

6. They loved the world more than Christ. Jesus wasn’t enough in their eyes to satisfy their heart’s desires — or what  they thought were their real desires. They loved “the pleasures of sin” more than the pleasures of God. Paul said of Demas, a Christian worker who had abandoned him, that “he loved this present world.”

I certainly agree with this. For many people the church just doesn’t do anything for them. They see no reason to accept the message of Christ. That is of course their decision and there isn’t much the church can and should do about this. The responsibility of the church is to be a community that teaches the Gospel. This message should not be watered down or altered merely to get as many people as possible into the doors. That trade is especially dangerous and ultimately counterproductive. My next post will focus on this idea a little more.

The other thought I have that is related to this is that for many people the core of the Gospel just doesn’t do anything for them. They see themselves as living pretty good lives, treat people well, etc. so they don’t see their own depravity and the need for life that comes from resurrection of Christ. The best the church can do is continue preaching the Gospel the best they can and trust in the Lord.

7. The cares of this life choked the (spiritual) life out of them. In His famous “parable of the sower,” Jesus talked about the seed of God’s word being choked to death because of the cares of this life. The daily grind of day-to-day life with all of its twists, turns, and problems can be a perpetual distraction to the spiritual person. So much so that it can easily choke the life out of them. The spiritual life, that is.

Yes, and in many ways this is similar to last point. Again, the solution is to teach Christ. Christ says that His yoke is easy and His burden is light (Mt. 11:30). I can see how the cares of life can overwhelm, the hope is that church can provide relief, and a truth that transcends these concerns.