TPW 100 Marty Sampson, Joshua Harris and Theology-less Christianity

Welcome to the Protestant Witness, this is Pastor Patrick Hines, here at Birtle Heights Presbyterian Church in Kingsport, Tennessee. And before we begin, I wanted to share a clip, a sound clip of my daughter, my 10 year old, who came up to me the other day, she's been reading Romans on her own, which is an absolute delight to me, just really excited that she is just doing that on her own.

She comes over to me in the kitchen, and reads the passage, and then shares some insights, and I said, honey, I want to record you saying this, so I said, so hang on, I'll back up and let's start over.

Hopefully this will be loud and clear so you can hear, let me turn the volume up a little.

Bit there.

This is my 10 year old, just, you know, reading Romans. Here's what she said.

Romans chapter 1, verse 27, likewise also the men, leaving the nature use of the women, the natural use of women, like of the women, burning in the luck just for another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receive to themselves the penalty and the error of which is due.

I think that that should be enough for the Presbyterian people to say that we can't, that we can't allow the other churches to say it's okay that men could marry men.

So, maybe I should invite her to the next Presbyterian meeting. Oh, we're not saying that they can be married yet, but do you get what she's saying though? I love that. I love when little kids, little kids understand things clearer than, you know, seminary graduates and professors and high profile, you know, big names in churches and things like that.

So anyway, I wanted to share that. Hopefully that came through clearly on the microphone here, but I guess we'll find out. I wanted to do a program today and talk about a couple of things here that have come up in recent days.

Marty Sampson, Hillsong, and the Need for Theology

Someone sent me a link. Yeah, here it is. About Marty Samson is the guy's name from Hillsong. And Hillsong Church, you know, I don't know a whole lot about it. I know it's that big church in New York City, I'm pretty sure it is, with that pastor.

His name is Carl Lenz. And I remember watching a video of Carl Lenz being interviewed by that great objective source of journalism called the Huffington Post. They interviewed him about, of course, guess what, the gay stuff and gay this and gay that.

And they asked Carl, you know, what do you think about homosexuality, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And his comment was, we have a stance on love and about everything else, we just have conversations.

In other words, I will not say that it's a sin because that's going to make me unpopular, unpopular. And of course, popularity is the most important, most important thing for the church to try to do these days instead of being faithful to the Word of God.

So anyway, so here's another person from that group, Hillsong, Marty Sampson. And let's see, I'm going to get these in the correct order here, let's see. Okay, so there was apparently something he put on Instagram, I guess.

I'm not on any social media accounts, and that's been a really good thing for me. So there was an article here on RelevantMagazine .com culture, forward slash culture, forward slash Hillsong songwriter Marty Sampson says he's losing his Christian faith.

Okay, so if this website will pull this up, I'd like to read through this and just make some comments along the way. Basically while the internet's trying to do this, what this shows us is the importance of theology.

It shows us the importance of churches teaching the doctrines of the Christian faith to people. Now, we have to recognize that if that's what our focus is, if our focus is on teaching the faith and teaching the doctrines of the faith and the pastoral care of our members and encouraging faithfulness in the home and faithfulness in marriage and faithfulness to biblical worship and not going down the pike of trends and trying to be cool and let's have, let's try to be popular, let's take off some of the rough edges, let's not address the issue of the LGBT revolution, let's not do this, let's not do that, let's not address gender roles and things like that.

We need to do all of that, because if you don't do that, you're not being faithful to God, number one, but number two, you're not really a church at all if you don't teach the doctrines of the faith, specifically and most centrally the gospel of Jesus Christ and equip people not only to understand that biblically and accurately and thoroughly, but also how to defend that truth, how to share it with others, how to answer objections and things like that.

Those are all really important things that the church has got to be doing, and if it's not doing that, then the church is just going to die, which is what's happening, it's what's happening in America, it's been happening for quite some time.

You have churches that they're determined to be cool, to be popular, instead of determined to be faithful, determined to be faithful to the truth and to biblical worship and things.

Like that.

I say that because the shallowness of the comments that are made by, for example, Joshua Harris, his comments about why he's leaving the faith, were very shallow, there was no substance, there really wasn't anything to even really respond to, and the same with.

This.

Losing Faith, Contradictions, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ

So listen, okay, there's a clarification article, I guess there was a lot of backlash, the original Instagram post apparently is gone, it looks like the link is broken or something. Okay, Hillsong songwriter Marty Samson says he's losing his Christian faith, and there's a picture of him holding a guitar with spotlights and a microphone, and he's got his eyes closed and worshiping.

Okay, Marty Samson is a prolific worship music writer, writing and co-writing songs for Hillsong Worship, Hillsong United, Delirious, and Young and Free. Okay, and they've got some videos here, I guess, of some of his songs.

Originally from Sydney, he first started leading worship with Hillsong in the late 1990s, though it's been years since he has written music for them. However, this weekend, Samson took to Instagram to inform his followers that, quote, I'm genuinely losing my faith, end quote.

Now here's the post, here's what he actually posted on Instagram. Time for some real talk. I'm genuinely losing my faith, and it doesn't bother me. Like, what bothers me now is nothing. I am so happy now, so at peace with the world, it's crazy.

This is a soapbox moment, so here I go. How many preachers fall?

Many.

No one talks about it. Now, just breaking from the quotation here, every time a preacher falls, it's all over the news. Lots of preachers fall, and it's always advertised and announced to the whole world, constantly.

I don't know what color the sky is here in his world, but how many preachers fall?

Many.

No one talks about it. That's not true. Everybody talks about it. How many miracles happen? Not many. Apparently, this guy has never seen someone converted to Christ, never seen someone go from being a God-hater to a God-lover, someone who was once a willing servant and slave of sin to loving and desiring true righteousness.

That's the greatest miracle that you could ever see. That's greater than a paraplegic coming out of a wheelchair and walking. The changing of someone's heart is the greatest miracle of all. The new birth is the greatest miracle of all.

How many miracles happen? Not many. Maybe they don't see that very often at Hillsong. Maybe they don't see people going from being worldly to denying themselves and taking up the cross to fall to Christ.

Maybe they don't see much of that there. I certainly, just listening to Carl Lenz and other people talk, I can certainly understand why they wouldn't see that there, because you have to preach the gospel for that to.

Happen.

Okay, he continues. No one talks about it. Why is the Bible full of contradictions? No one talks about it. People make that kind of assertion a lot. The Bible is full of contradictions. Like what? Like what?

What contradictions? No one talks about it? Have you ever seen Gleason Archer's book? It's back there on my shelf. The Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, where he reconciles classic passages that people have tried to say are contradictory and shows that they actually aren't if you just look at them in their own context.

You know, I have some news for people. I know this may be really shocking, but when God gave us his word, his expectation, his expectation was that we would read the verses before and after things that are quoted.

Now you can proof text, well see, this is a contradiction to that. This contradicts that. But God's expectation is that you would read it in its context. Read the verses in front of and the verses after various statements so that you could, you know, understand it.

Okay, he goes on here. How can God be love, yet send four billion people to a place all cause they don't believe? You see why I talk about the importance of teaching theology to people? Why does God send four people, four billion people to a place, you know, hell, all cause, he spells cause, because as apostrophe C-O-Z, all cause they don't believe.

That's not why God sends people to hell. God sends people to hell because they are sinful and evil and they violate his laws all day, every day. So it's not because they don't believe. It's because they are guilty transgressors of his law.

Now I certainly, I've heard that kind of thing many times from people, you know, questioning their faith and I just can't understand how loving God could send so many people to hell just cause they never heard of Jesus.

You think that's not why he sends them there. God sends people to hell because of their sin, their willful sin against him. Because they commit adultery in actual fact and in their mind and in their heart.

They commit idolatry. They covet and on and on and on. They steal. They violate all of God's commandments every day. That's the only basis upon which God does send people to hell. It's not cause they don't believe.

He says here, no one talks about it. Well, maybe in his experience, nobody does. This is the problem. There's no theology here. This guy who's a songwriter, some kind of, in some kind of leadership position in a church who knows from just from the looks of this, really nothing.

He doesn't know anything about the Bible. Doesn't know anything about the text of scripture. Doesn't know anything about the faith really at all. These are basic, silly questions. All because they don't believe and no one talks about it.

Well, we talk about it here. People have asked me that before. How can God be so loving and send so many people to hell just because they've never heard of Jesus? That's not why he sends them to hell.

God sends people to hell because of their sin, because they're sinners, because that is what justice requires of them. He says, no one talks about it. Christians can be the most judgmental people on the planet.

They can also be some of the most beautiful and loving people, but it's not for me.

Okay.

I am not in anymore. I want genuine truth, not the, I just believe it kind of truth. See why doctrine and teaching the word of God matters. Is that what he was told? What's Christianity? Is it really what Soren Kierkegaard said?

It's just a blind leap of faith. You just got to close your eyes and jump. You just go for it. What we believe is based upon absolute incontrovertible fact. The fact of the incarnation, life, death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.

It's not, well, I just believe it. It's this is what happened in history. When the apostles went out and preached, they were not giving personal testimonies. We're telling you this because we just believe it.

They didn't do that. They went out and said, we are eyewitnesses of his majesty. We saw him. God raised him from the dead of which we are witnesses. We have seen this stuff. Peter says in second Peter, we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the coming and power of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we're eyewitnesses of his majesty.

Peter was there at the transfiguration when God the father spoke, this is my beloved son and whom I am well pleased.

Hear him.

They were eyewitnesses of facts of real history. They weren't saying they didn't go out and share their testimonies.

Well, we believe this.

I just kind of believe it. And you can have this experience too. That's not it at all. They went out and said, this is what God has done in history. Turn from sin and believe what happened. Believe what is true.

Trust in Jesus Christ alone for your salvation. That's amazing. Listen to that. This guy is a, is a songwriter and a worship leader in a church. I don't want, I am not in anymore. I want genuine truth.

Not the, I just believe it kind of truth. What is being taught? What is being taught in churches today about the Bible, about the truth? You know, Jay Gresham Machen's great book, Christianity and liberalism and re been rereading that again.

And it was what this guy is describing is liberalism. This is not Christianity that he's abandoning. This is liberalism.

He's leaving.

There's no substance to any of this. And Machen hammers the point again and again and again. We're not saying we just have neat religious experiences and we just kind of believe it and we've taken a blind leap.

We're saying this is based on a real event, the incarnation of the son of God and what he did in history. Real blood that was RH typable shed from a real human body on a real cross that happened. And here's the divinely given explanation of it in scripture.

This is what you, you must believe. This is what is true. This is what happened. Not the, I just believe it kind of truth. Listen to what he says here next. Science keeps piercing the truth of every religion.

Science keeps piercing the truth of every religion. What does that mean? Does he mean that? Well, if we embrace a naturalistic, materialistic, philosophical worldview, then yeah, we're not going to believe religious claims about miracles and things like that.

What could be more obvious? The issue is not science and what science is, is piercing. The issue of course would be what are the philosophical foundations of doing science? Why is it that science developed after the reformation with a vengeance by Christians?

It was Christians and the Christian doctrine of creation and providence. That's what led to the, to the formation of science. That's what led to the huge lunges forward. It wasn't atheism. It wasn't agnosticism.

It was the Christian doctrine of creation. Knowing that laws remain law-like over time because of the governing and providence of.

God.

God is the one who imposes uniformity and consistency on his creation. That's what makes man able to subdue the created order to study it and to make sense out of.

It.

Science keeps piercing the truth of every religion. Science is not possible without the preconditions that are provided only by Christian theism. Somehow I think that that's never been really talked about at Hillsong.

I bet you it probably hasn't. He goes on, lots of things help people change their lives, not just one version of God.

Man.

See, if you could have heard this guy's testimony before he decided he doesn't believe anything anymore, what would he have said? What was it he believed? Yeah, this, uh, this book, this Bible thing, it just kind of changed my life.

Just, uh, just turned, helped me turn over a new leaf. Got me going in a new direction. But what about everything that's taught in scripture? Ah, theologians, they all disagree. And who knows what it really means.

I mean, what, what would he have said? What was it he believed before? Who knows? It doesn't sound like much of anything. Lots of things help people change their lives, not just one version of God. Is that what the new gospel is?

Try this and it'll change your life. Instead of the law of God says you're a sinner under the wrath of God, repent and believe in Jesus and you will be justified and adopted into God's family and liberated from the power and tyranny of sin.

What is the gospel that's preached in these, in these groups? I don't know. It doesn't sound like it's, it really has much form or substance to it at all. Listen, he goes on to say, got so much more to say, but for me, I keeping, I keeping it.

Real.

I'm, he meant I'm keeping it real. Unfollow if you want. I've never been about living my life for others, but that's exactly what we're called as Christians to do is to live our lives for others. It was the Philippians to, um, do nothing from selfish ambition and conceit, but in love and lowliness of heart, consider others to be better than yourself.

We are to love God and our neighbor. We are to live for others, to lay our lives down for our friends. He says, I've never been about living my life for others. All I know is what's true to me right now.

There's a good postmodern statement if I ever heard one. It's true to me right now and Christianity just seems to me like another religion at this point. I could go on, but I won't love and forgive.

Absolutely.

Having jettisoned to the only foundation upon which love and forgiveness make any sense, I'm going to tell you to love and forgive. Be kind.

Absolutely.

Of course, what does kind mean and, uh, what, what is the standard by which you define what kind means? Be generous and do good to others.

Absolutely.

Some things are good no matter what you believe. I would point out that some things, um, are good to some people that might not be good to others depending on what their worldview is. So good and kind and generous and love and forgiveness.

These are terms that need a standard by which to define them. And I, I'm sorry, but now that you've jettisoned to the only standard that exists, God and his word, um, what do you mean by good? Some things are good no matter what you believe.

Okay.

And it says here, that's, that's the end of his, um, Instagram posts. Samson's post comes just a few days after famed Christian author Joshua Harris announced over Facebook that he doesn't currently consider himself a Christian.

Joshua Harris, Deconstruction, and Falling Away

Okay.

Now the Joshua Harris thing, um, I kiss dating goodbye. That was the book. It was a big fad and big, big, uh, evangelical kind of craze a long time ago. I got the book. It's over there on my bookshelf somewhere.

I think it's, uh, might be in that section there. Um, I didn't like it. I did not finish it. I read the first 30 pages or so and was like, I agreed. Dating culture is bad. Dating culture is just divorce practice.

It's not a good idea. Definitely fathers, families need to be more involved in this kind of stuff, but he didn't really offer a real solid, um, biblical foundation for the courtship model. Um, but certainly dad needs to be involved in that sort of thing.

And young men need to approach the fathers when they're old enough to be married, that.

Sort of thing.

So anyway, there are things that, that, that book, you know, answered, um, that, that are definitely problematic, but I didn't think that it was really well argued, at least the section that I read. So I just discarded it.

Um, I usually give, we'll give book a book 30 pages. Um, if you, if you haven't really taught me anything in 30 pages, I'm going to be done with it. So Joshua Harris, now I'd like to get back to the, to Marty Sampson here in just a moment, but Joshua Harris, uh, here's, here's a, uh, um, an article from relevant magazine.

I kiss dating goodbye author Joshua Harris. I am not a Christian author and former pastor. Joshua Harris took to Instagram this weekend to inform followers of some major changes to his personal life. On Friday, Harris announced that he no longer considers himself a Christian Harris shot to fame in the early two thousands with this controversial book.

I kiss dating goodbye. And it's followup boy meets girl. Say hello to courtship. He's also written about topics like theology in the church. In recent years, he has distanced himself from like his dating goodbye and announced that he has asked his publisher to discontinue it.

He wrote my public critique and written a documentary form. And the numerous media interviews I've done in the past two years are my attempt to both apologize and spread the word of the problems I see in it.

Days after announcing on Instagram that he and his wife were separating, he made another post explaining his new position on faith.

Here's what he said.

My heart is full of gratitude. I wish you could see all the messages people sent me after the announcement of my divorce. They are expressions of love, though they are saddened or even strongly disapprove of the decision.

I am learning that no group has the market cornered on grace. See it again? Relativism and postmodernism is destroying the church. It's just completely and totally overrunning it. And you know, there's a sense in which all of this, as sad as all this kind of thing is and all this apostasy and everything, it's just going to keep growing.

And what it's going to do is it's going to have a purifying effect on the church. As the pressure to conform to the LGBT revolution and to relativism and all this other stuff, as it grows, it's going to clean out the church.

And so we can really be thankful for that. I mean, it's actually a good thing that turncoats and traitors like this leave. And just actually, I have more respect for Marty Sampson and Joshua Harris than people that stay in the church.

But they actually don't believe anything. OK, he goes on here. No one has a market cornered on grace. Of course, that raises the question, what do you mean by grace? This week, I've received grace from Christians, atheists, evangelicals, ex-evangelicals, straight people, LGBTQ people, and everyone in between.

Of course, there have also been strong words of rebuke from religious people. Yeah, those religious people, pharisees. While not always pleasant, I know they are seeking to love me. There have also been spiteful, hateful comments that angered and hurt me.

The information that was left out of our announcement is that I have undergone a massive shift in regard to my faith in Jesus. The popular phrase for this is deconstruction. The biblical phrase is falling away.

By all the measurements that I have for defining a Christian, I am not a Christian. Many people tell me that there is a different way to practice faith, and I want to remain open to this, but I'm not there now.

Let's just be real. I'll just break from the quotation here. The only way to define what a Christian is, is what the Bible says. It's only to look at what the Bible says. It's not that, well, there's all sorts of ways you can define what a Christian is.

Well, he says, by all the measurements I have for defining a Christian, I'm not a Christian. Well, what are all these measurements? What is a Christian? A Christian is someone who has been born again by the Spirit of God, is a justified, redeemed person, sin has been dethroned in their life, and God will preserve them and continue that work until the day of Christ Jesus.

There's no such thing as an ex-Christian. I've taught on this many times. There are apostates who fall away from their profession of faith, but they're not former Christians. He may not really even be saying that he's an ex-Christian or not, I'm not really sure, but he says, Martin Luther said that the entire life of believers should be repentance.

That's true. There's beauty in that sentiment, regardless of your view of God.

Hmm.

Well, repentance only makes sense in the context of what the Bible teaches about repentance and what Metanoia refers to, which is the turning away from sin, grieving over and hating your sin, and turning more and more unto God to live unto righteousness.

He says, I have lived in repentance for the past several years, repenting of my self-righteousness, my fear-based approach to life, the teaching of my books, my views of women in the church, and my approach to parenting, to name a few.

But, and I kept wondering when this was coming, but I specifically want to add to this list now to the LGBTQ community. I want to say that I'm sorry for the views that I taught on my books and as a pastor regarding sexuality.

So evidently, he was someone who used to say that sodomy and other disgusting, vile, unnatural, dangerous things that people do was sinful, but he doesn't say that now. I regret standing against marriage equality.

By the way, nobody believes in marriage equality. He doesn't either. Until you say that anyone, any, two entities can get married, you don't believe in marriage.

Equality.

So, I'm really tired of hearing this marriage equality talk. Until you say that a father can marry his own son, you don't believe in marriage equality.

Sorry.

I regret standing against marriage equality for not affirming you and your place in the church and for any ways that my writing and speaking contributed to a culture of exclusion.

And bigotry.

There it is.

There it is.

I've been warning the congregation that I pastor here for years now. You are going to be called a bigot. Just be ready for it. Be ready for it. People will revile you and hate you and exclude you for the sake of righteousness and truth.

And it's coming. It's coming. And as more and more people get on the bandwagon here, as more and more people knuckle in and they want to be considered cool and I'm an ally to this cause and everything else, you're going to see more and more people joining the list of apostates.

He says, I hope you can forgive me. To my Christian friends, I am grateful for your prayers. Don't take it personally if I don't immediately return calls. I can't join in your mourning. I don't view this moment negatively.

I feel very much alive and awake and surprisingly hopeful. I believe with my sister, Julian, that all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well. Okay, so there you have another individual who has turned away from the faith and as sad as it is, I'm glad that he did.

I'm glad that Joshua Harris had the integrity to just say, I don't believe it anymore. And to just turn away from it, to repudiate it, obviously disagree strongly with what he said about the LGBT stuff and everything.

That's not surprising in the least and you're going to see more and more and more of that. We're going to find out. We're going to find out who real Christians are and who the counterfeits are and who the fake Christians are.

And there's lots of them in the church today because of the really shallow preaching and teaching that goes on constantly in churches all over this country. Okay, now back to Marty Samson here. He posted an article here clarifying he hasn't renounced faith, but it's on incredibly shaky ground.

Marty Sampson, Doubts, and the Limits of "Sound Pentecostal Doctrine"

So I wanted to see what this says here. Marty Samson, the worship music writer who recently revealed he is genuinely losing his faith, clarified that he hasn't renounced his Christianity, that while he hasn't renounced his Christianity, it's nevertheless on incredibly shaky ground.

Samson, known for penning lyrics for Hillsong Worship, Hillsong United, Delirious and Young and Free, responded through Facebook comments to a Christian post op-ed titled Reaching Out to a Hillsong Leader Who is Renouncing His Faith.

In it, columnist Michael Brown says he prays Samson would have the integrity of heart to seek the truth earnestly, with humility and passion, and that all others with questions will put those questions on the table.

After emphasizing he truly wants answers to his questions, Samson admitted he's struggling with many parts of the belief system that seems so incoherent with common human morality. There again, what is being taught?

What's being taught? What's being taught in churches? Apparently, almost nothing. Apparently, almost nothing. He says, if most of humankind had a choice, will we not rid the world of the scourge of cancer or sickness and disease?

He says, wouldn't we rid the world of the scourge of cancer or sickness and disease? Why doesn't God do such a thing? You think, well, he's going to. And for the rest of eternity, there will be no cancer or disease or sickness.

What did Marty Samson, what was he ever taught about eschatology, about the eternal state, about the curse bearing work of Jesus and how when Jesus came into the world, you get a foretaste of the healing and the bearing of our diseases and sicknesses that Christ did and how one day they will be gone from the entire created cosmos for eternity.

If most of humankind had a choice, would we not rid the world of the scourge of cancer? Yeah, yeah. And God's going to. He says, of course, there is an answer to this question, but the majority of typical Christians life is not spent considering these things.

See here again, I'm wondering, who are these people hanging out with that never think about or talk about anything like this? He says, questions such as these remain in the too hard basket. So no one ever talked about this kind of stuff in the circles that Marty Samson was in at Hillsong.

What that tells me is that they didn't talk about theology, the doctrine of God, God's decrees, what the Bible teaches, so many passages about suffering and the way that God uses suffering in the lives of of unbelievers and believers.

And there's a distinction. The suffering that God decrees to take place in the lives of unbelievers, its purpose is very different from suffering that's brought into the life of believers. But these are actually fairly basic Christian teachings and truths.

And he's like, well, these are in the too hard basket, not in the circles that I have walked in for 20 years. Of course, I've been taught about theology and about the Bible and expositional preaching and walking through the text.

Well, not so much of the church I came from. I didn't get expositional preaching there at all. But but in general, the people that I've listened to over the years have been expositional in their approach to the word of God and have answered these kinds of questions head on.

He says the artist who has been with the worship team at Hillsong since he was 16 clarified, he wouldn't say he has renounced his faith, but would say it's on an incredibly shaky ground. I have to continue to analyze the arguments of prominent Christian apologists and biblical scholars, and I'm open minded enough to consider the arguments of atheist debaters and debaters from other religions.

Don't you think that maybe that should have been done before he became a worship leader in the church? Maybe. He says, if the truth is true, it will remain so, regardless of my understanding of it. If I search it out, surely it will become even more clearly seen as the truth that it is.

Examining a diamond more closer, more, more closer reveals the quality of the diamond. As I am still breathing, I am still learning. That's right. But to search out the truth, you need to search the Bible.

You need to search out the word of God. That's the only source of truth that we have. This article continues, despite his long history with Hillsong Church, Samson emphasized his thoughts are his own and do not represent any church, adding, if anything at all I have ever received from Hillsong is is support and the opportunity to follow my own mind.

And they have always taught what I perceive to be sound Pentecostal doctrine. Well, I'm not sure I would use that phrase sound Pentecostal doctrine. I'm not sure those things really go together. But but anyway, you cannot have well-educated opinions without educating yourself.

Well, he concluded, this is a window into my thought process at the present time. Samson made headlines this week after announcing in a single deleted post on Instagram, I'm genuinely losing my faith and it doesn't bother me like what bothers me now is nothing.

I am so happy now. So at peace with the world, it's crazy. Why is the Bible full of contradictions? Well, we've already been through some of this stuff here. OK, so let's see. OK, here I've done that for the last forty seven years.

Don't be afraid to ask yourself honest questions and to follow the truth where it leads. Brown, Michael Brown said to him. OK, so don't be afraid to ask yourself honest questions and follow the truth where it leads.

Just don't do it superficially. Be sure to seek God first and foremost. And let's pray for Marty's repentance, restoration and more. Responding to a comment on whether he is really seeking answers or is just making excuses, Samson said, I really do want answers.

I don't want judgment. If it comes, however, who am I to judge? OK, so, all right, there's a little bit more, I guess that's basically the end of the end of the article. That's not overly consistent with what he says, said before.

He said, I'm losing my faith and it doesn't bother me. But now it's no, no, no, I really, I really do want answers. And I'm listening to atheists and Christian apologists. I'd love to know who the Christian apologists are that he's that he's reading or listening to.

But I emailed myself these articles and I put in the subject line the death of cool of cool, cool Christianity and good riddance. The kind of seeker friendly pop, the Bible's useful kind of approach, very little theology, if any, very little contact with the biblical text or serious study of theology that is just bound to produce stories like this.