Why should I believe in a good God when Christians are so bad? w/ Mary Jo Sharp - Podcast Episode 98

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Welcome to the God Questions podcast. On today's episode, we have a distinguished guest,

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Mary Jo Sharp. She is the assistant professor of apologetics at Houston Baptist University, the director of Confident Christianity, and also the author of an excellent book,

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Why I Still Believe, A Former Atheist's Reckoning with the Bad Reputation Christians Give a

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Good God. So Mary Jo, welcome to the show today. Thank you so much for having me,

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Shay. Okay. So tell our listeners a little bit about your background and what led you to write and why

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I still believe Okay. So yeah, I didn't grow up Christian.

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I grew up generally without church or God in my life, but my family loved nature and the sciences and the arts.

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So I had a rich cultural upbringing, which I actually believe inspired my philosophical and theological curiosity.

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I wouldn't have known growing up that I was technically an atheist since I hadn't really encountered that word, but I did know that I lacked belief in God.

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And like I said, my family's love of the arts and the sciences and the outdoors, it really inspired in me some questions about the meaning and value of life.

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Specifically, I would experience great beauty in the world or my father loved shows on outer space.

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And so I would wonder at the vastness of the universe. And I had a high school music teacher who was a

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Christian and he was burdened to share his faith with me. So this was a person I greatly respected because I actually have an undergrad in music education myself.

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And my senior year of my high school, he gave me a

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Bible as a present, as a graduation gift. And he said, when you go off to college, you're going to have hard questions.

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I hope you'll turn to this. And he really hit me right when all of these questions about meaning and value were sort of starting to form in my mind.

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And so I did read that Bible and that helped me to come to terms with there's probably a

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God. And in fact, I started believing in God. But then I went off to college to get more specific teaching on what the

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Bible was teaching and who Jesus was. So I actually went off to college and started attending churches for the first time exploring faith rather than being a college student who went off and lost faith.

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And I eventually found a church where, through the invitation of a friend, I clearly understood the gospel presentation and a call for salvation.

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And I trusted in Jesus. Now, fast forward several years, many years, because why did

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I write the book? In part, it was because the expectation that I had coming into the church of what

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I would find there in the community of the church did not meet a sort of, I would say it was a naive expectation that I had that I thought, wow,

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I found these great people. They're going to be the best examples of everything I'm reading in the Bible. And they're going to have committed their lives to this endeavor of transforming themselves into Christlikeness.

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And, you know, to get down to the basis of why I wrote the book, it's because of the hypocrisy that I so normatively encountered in people who profess the word of God is true.

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So it's not a, you know, this person messed up. And they apologized. It's this unrepentant and lifestyle hypocrisy that wasn't demonstrably concerned with a transforming life in a recognizable way.

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And so, you know, this this was a disorienting enough experience. That's a, you know, that's a big umbrella statement as to all the little things that had happened, which

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I explained some of them in my book. But that was a disorienting enough experience to cause me emotional doubt because I've seen this very big disconnect between what the

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Bible is telling us was commanded and what we're supposed to be versus what was constantly my experience in the

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Christian church. And so that led to emotional doubt, which led to eventually to intellectual questioning.

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And so that book was born out of my experience in the church and out of my desire to bring the reader into my life rather than keep them at bay with just giving them arguments for the truth of Christianity.

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The book actually shows them how the arguments help bring me personally back around to faith in God.

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And hopefully it will help somebody else in their own journey. For sure. So just briefly,

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I don't want you to spoil everything that's in your book, but what are some of the reasons that both caused you to continue to believe and also what some of the arguments that you found, people who've had a similar life or church experiences you that have been really helpful to them as well?

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Yeah, so I'll focus a lot on that first part because I think the arguments that sort of influenced me and then the ones that help other people as well are they're sort of similar.

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That as I began to investigate the truth of Christianity, I started coming across many arguments

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I'd never heard of from the church. And I was actually really surprised that they were arguments for the

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Christian faith. So over the course of time, I began to see that these arguments built a really solid case and foundation for Christianity.

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They built this positive case that I didn't know is there. And I'm going to mention some of them.

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But one of the important things I saw was that the litmus test for the truth of Christianity couldn't be the behaviors of the

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Christians. So I had to look at like the propositional truth of Christianity. And that's these arguments sort of brought me back around to saying, wow, these do look like they're true.

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So some of the arguments that I encountered early on were the argument from moral law that in order to be sort of logically consistent in talking about good and evil,

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I need to know where I'm getting those concepts from. And for me, as I explore the atheist explanation that at the base of the universe, there's no such thing as good and evil, just pitiless indifference, chance, sort of a chaos view.

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It didn't match with my human experience or with what I had learned about the nature of the universe.

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And it didn't logically make sense. So I conversely,

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I sort of saw that we're all making moral judgments every day on what is good, what is evil. We'll talk about right and wrong, just and unjust.

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So we're not living as though morality is subjective or relative to any given individual or group of people in any time frame.

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So I constantly was thinking on, well, what are we using as a basis or ground for this idea?

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And what made sense to me was that morality comes from a person who has morality, something with a will and intentionality, not from blind, pitiless forces, but it comes from a being like God who has personhood and therefore intentionality, will and morality.

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So that was one of them. I won't explain the other ones as much, but that was one. The evidence of the resurrection was another because I wasn't sure when

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I was questioning my faith why I thought Jesus rose from the dead. You know, do I have a testimony that's just beyond what

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I know in my heart? And was there any facts in human history? And then I found

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Gary Habermas's Minimal Facts and his other facts. So he has a book, I think it's called

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The Risen Jesus and Future Hope. And it lists a whole bunch of facts that people agree from our history, you know, like that Jesus died.

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So he's a real person in human history that he wrote that his tomb was empty. These are agreed upon facts.

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There were evidences around the resurrection that caused me to say, whoa, what best explains this?

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And ultimately, like I said, I'm not going to go into all the details, but ultimately I said, oh, I'm pretty sure that I think something happened there.

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Like that there's a man who rose from the dead and his name is Jesus. So those sorts of argument in combination with other arguments

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I was encountering, such as the Kalam cosmological argument, the fine tuning arguments, arguments from like, how do

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I know to trust my own rationality? Like, how do I know that I have, you know, epistemic access to external reality?

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How do I, so how do I know that what, when I do a lab experiment and I throw all these factors in there, that my brain is accurately reporting what

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I'm seeing, you know, there's so many things that were going on that brought me to this belief that, wow,

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I couldn't get around this basis of God for what it was that I believed.

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And so I kept hitting a roadblock to disbelief. And that's some of the reasons that for why, and those are like,

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I give you all the rational reasons, right? I didn't give any like sort of emotional experiential, but those are the sort of rational reasons, the propositional truths that brought me back around the same.

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Wow. There's probably a God. So I can tell just from talking to you that your, your brain is wired very similar to me is that apologetics really, really connects with me.

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I love studying it. I love talking about it. I love writing about it. I love apologetics in general, but arguments can only take us so far.

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So what are the, what is the importance of also having a relationship with those who are, we are trying to reach, not just trying to convince them that intellectually, but also allowing them to see that we love them, that we care for them.

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I mean, and how do you in a sense, balance those two in an attempt to reach someone? Yeah, I think it's really important because I've tried to, like my whole ministry has tried to been, been based on this idea of love and logic.

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And I always put love first, love and logic because it is a very important balance as explained by the apostle

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Paul in first Corinthians 13 about, you know, if you have all knowledge and if you can, you have faith that can move mountains, if you give your body up to be like burned, you know, it's, but you have not love then you're nothing.

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And to me, that's, that's sort of like, how are we engaging people?

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Are we just putting out propositional truths and say, Hey, this is true? Are we actually saying, because this is true, there is a way that I'm commanded and responsible to treat you.

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And so these aren't just propositional truths that I hold in my mind. So yeah, that's, that's something I'm interested in and I agree with.

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So there was a God. But these truths mean that there's a way that I'm supposed to care for you as a person.

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These truths mean that, you know, you are of ultimate value to God. And so I have to,

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I have to develop that in my own life as I share arguments, as I, you know, discuss with people what it is that I believe.

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So there's, you know, arguments can be unconvincing to people for various reasons because of, they don't hold the same presuppositions you do.

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They have a different background or culture. So there, there has to be that element of relationship. They have to trust you.

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They have to know that you actually care about them and you want what's best for them. And you're not just turning them into some kind of cliche

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Jesus project where your care for them only goes so far as your debate with them.

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You know, as I was sharing with different people today, who do you have on the podcast this week,

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Shay, and I mentioned you and the title of your book, The Why I Still Believe, but what really caught most people's attention was a former atheist reckoning with the bad reputation

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Christians give a good God. So in your personal experience, when you started attending church and discovered that all the hypocrisy, all the people who were not practicing what they preached, so to speak, what, how did you overcome that?

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And why in your experience is, why is it that way?

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Why are there so many people who are willing to claim the name of Christ, but then not submit themselves to Christ?

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Yeah, this is such a big question, right? This is like when you read Paul's writings in the New Testament, this is sort of his question too.

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How are you claiming Christ? And then you're not submitting yourself to becoming

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Christ -like. And, you know, there's a lot of different reasons I think that's going on. So I'm not going to touch on all of them.

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I'm sure listeners can, you know, they'll think of others. Some of the things is that we tend in the church to treat the truths of Christianity as just propositional truths that you either accept or you don't.

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And that seems to convey that if you have right belief orthodoxy, then in a sense, you're good to go.

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But that's not how you see Paul addressing these things. And we mentioned one instance when

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I was talking about 1 Corinthians 13, that he says, you know, all of these things about having all knowledge. But if you're not transferring that over into love, that you're nothing is what he says.

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So I think there's needs in the church. What I was seeing is a lack of attention to not just having orthodoxy and perhaps not just having orthopraxy.

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So doing the right things, but actually having an orthopathy, having the right attitude towards truth, towards other people, towards how

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God sees people. And I saw I think what I encountered in the church was a lot of Christians who had orthodoxy void of orthopraxy and or void of orthopathy.

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So and that what that looks like is self -righteousness and pride and self -centeredness and not really looking out for other people.

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So, you know, there's sort of like what I think, how, why is this in the church?

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How does it, you know, what is it doing in the church? Well, it's kind of, or how did it get there? Sorry. How did this get into the church?

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Well, I think there's sort of a lack of a discipleship that is intentional to attend to each of these areas.

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And, you know, many, many Christians don't know what they believe or why they believe it. And I think that they have a sort of a dismissive attitude towards the life of the mind.

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And when I encountered that, I saw it as hypocrisy because I saw Proverbs, you know, 18 was teaching me to, you know, that I was supposed to listen to people and truly try to understand them.

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And that I was supposed to, you know, the first one who comes along, his case seems right, but until another comes along and questions him. So I keep seeing these instances in the

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Bible of really having a good solid life of the mind and listening and caring for people. So there's this rich intellectual tradition in the church that I wasn't seeing.

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And I think we need to be very careful about paying attention to that, but also to marry that with the orthopathy, you know, making sure people don't just have knowledge, but that it is changing who they are.

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It's transforming them into Christ likeness and being intentional as churches to teach that and to help people practice that.

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And that's sort of one of the reasons why I think it's in the church. Like, why is there this divorce? Why am I seeing so much hypocrisy?

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I think you get a lot of truth proclamation without sort of education in these other areas.

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So you asked another question, which was like, why is the church still, is it still worth it? Or I think that was one in that group of questions.

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Is that right? That was actually my next question I was leaning towards is that why is

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Christianity still worth it? Because you are not the first person to discover hypocrisy in the church and you won't be the last.

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So if someone who's actually struggling with this issue, they're encountering hypocrisy in the church, why should they consider, continue pursuing

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Christ? Yeah, it's a really good question. And there's an author that framed it much better than me.

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I use him in my book. His name is Daniel Taylor, and he talks about, you know, seeing the potential.

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He says the supernatural potential of Christians laboring to establish the kingdom of God together.

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It's so great that that potential is so great that when you experience the reality of the typical church, he says it's both depressing and comic by comparison.

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So he's saying that to say, this is why the church is like as an institution is so easily ridiculed because it's so far off at times from what you're reading in the scriptures.

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But here's what I want to point out. And here's where it's like, what is the church still worth it? He says, what is amazing, however, is not that the church suffers from every kind of failing common to human beings, but that simultaneously it's still the primary instrument of God's work on earth.

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So one of the reasons I continue to be a part of church and church community is that I believe like Taylor here, you know,

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God was willing to die for us. So I can't get give up on the community that he wouldn't give up on.

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And further, I understand God is a trinity. And so the model for community is based in this essential

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Christian doctrine. So I know I need community because God's the model. So church is not,

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I haven't given up on the church for various reasons. I know I need community. I know I need accountability.

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And the church provides that as well. And I know I need to be loved. And the church, even though you're going to get hurt, love is one of those things that's worth it to be loved and to love, to be loved and to love.

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So that's one reason. God is not worth giving up on because he's the great mystery at the base of our universe that gave us life, truth, and love among other things.

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And so I feel like to give up on God now, it's not appropriate because I barely scratched the surface of my relationship with him.

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I've come to realize that there's just so much more I don't actually know about him. There's so much left to be explored.

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And then Christianity, why don't I give up on Christianity? Because it's the philosophical framework that makes the most sense of the world that I experience in every way.

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So rationally, emotionally, empirically, it's the one that makes sense of the human experience to me and makes sense of things like why we say humans have ultimate value, dignity, purpose, and where we base a lot of our beliefs in human rights and those sorts of ideas.

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So I don't think that we should give up on any of those things. And I haven't because of these kinds of reasons.

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Yeah. I think the most powerful reminder, at least to me, is that God is more offended by hypocrisy in the church than we ever could be.

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I mean, he hates sin. He's too holy to look upon sin without wanting to judge it and so forth.

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And yet God has not given up on the church. The church is still, as you said, God's primary plan for this current era.

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It's Christ's bride. We are so valuable to him. If he doesn't give up on it, how could we?

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And then also the concept of trying to get things to go from your head to your heart.

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And for me, being someone who I'm very deliberative and analytical, I tend to overthink things.

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It's really easy for me to be satisfied with knowing something in my head without allowing it to make the journey to impact my heart in terms of how

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I live, how I treat others, et cetera. So I get that, but your book was a powerful reminder to me to not be satisfied with knowing things intellectually, but also allowing them to transform how

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I live and especially how I treat others. And in conclusion, my last question for you, one thing

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I really appreciate about your book is that you encourage people to be honest with their struggles and talking to other people, admit that, no,

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I really, really struggled with this church, whether it was hypocrisy or so forth. And you encourage people to share their stories of what they've been through and why they still believe.

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Why do you think that's so important? Yeah, I think for sharing the stories, it's so important because I'll speak out of my own experience, but then

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I've heard this over and over, is that you feel very alone when you have the doubts and the skeptical thoughts about this group that you've identified with.

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And you feel left out. You feel sort of isolated and lonely when you're the one that's asking these hard questions.

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And you can tend to think that nobody else has them. And so it's important to hear from other people that they have struggled through the same questions.

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And it's important to be able to explore, well, where have they come to? And how are they framing it?

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Because I've said things in my way, in the way that makes sense to me, and in the way that things impact me.

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And I've shared with people, wow, these arguments were really important for my journey. But that's not everybody.

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Some people will relate to it. Some people say, yeah, not so much. So the more stories that we have from other people, the more different perspectives we have, because they have different backgrounds and different things impact them.

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So I think that's important, because it helps people who feel isolated in their journey understand that they aren't alone in this, that there are a lot of people that struggle, and that that's common.

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Doubt is common. So yeah, I think that's one of the most important parts of sharing your journey, is to help those people who feel sort of isolated to say, no, this is more common.

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And you even find people throughout the Bible that doubted. Even when they had a supernatural experience with an angel, they still had disbelief.

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So in some way, they doubted what was going on. So I think that's one of the main importance of it.

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Just really, importance is not a word. That's one of the main reasons.

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I think that's one of the main reasons why I would say you need to share, is that it's for that community aspect.

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It's for that, getting rid of that feeling of isolation. It's for helping people understand this process of, you know, knowing what they believe and why they believe it.

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And it's from different points of view so that they can relate, maybe not to mine, but to somebody else's. Yeah.

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So excellent. I love that explanation. And just encouraging people to be real, to admit their struggles so that they're not the only one.

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Like diverse, no temptation to seize you, except what is common to man. I think that applies to a lot of things. No mental struggle, no emotional struggle that you're dealing with.

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You're not the first person in human history, or especially not in Christendom, to deal with these things and being open and honest with other people to know that we can bear these burdens together.

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We can encourage one another, but to do that requires openness. And so I really appreciated how you expressed that in your book.

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So, and again, we'll include links to where you can learn more about Mary Jo Sharp and the ministry that God's given to her.

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And her book on Why I Still Believe, where you can acquire that book. So Mary, just briefly, sorry,

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Mary Jo, who is this book for? If someone's like listening to this, who is the person you think would be most benefited by reading on Why I Still Believe?

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Oh yeah. I wrote this book really for people. Mainly my target was the person who thinks that they are, they believe they're a

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Christian and that they're really having struggles with the things that they see in the Christian faith, in the

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Christian faith community. And so my target was specifically for people of the faith community who are struggling with the culture of Christianity, specifically the culture and the church culture.

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So that's who I would say, that's my target. I have had other people, some non -believers and some people who are considering Christianity that found the book very helpful as well, because I'm specifically not trying to tell you what to think, but to invite you into the sort of educational journey.

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So that's who I would say it's for. Awesome. Well, again, Mary Jo, thank you for being on the show today.

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And again, we'll include links where you can learn more about her and Confident Christianity.

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Excellent resources. So Mary Jo, thank you again. Thank you for having me on, Shea. And this has been the

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