Paul Maxwell Leaves Christianity

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to Conversations That Matter Podcast. My name is John Harris. I normally am not recording in my pickup truck, but I've been zipping around today doing a lot of errands and it's been busy and I thought, you know, it's better to get a podcast out there than not get one out there.

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So this is just the way it worked out. Hopefully it'll be short. We're going to talk a little bit today about an individual named

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Paul Maxwell. Many of you have probably not heard of him. Some of you probably have, who is apparently saying he's not a

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Christian. And normally I wouldn't talk about something like this, but because of what has happened in the last few days with him,

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I sense that there's a bigger topic behind all that. This is not something unique to Paul Maxwell.

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You can think through even some of the names of other Christians who have left the faith, who have been

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Christian leaders, Josh Harris being one of them. I know there's been a number of them over the last few years.

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They call them, there's even a term for it now, exvangelical. And I just want to have a little bit of a talk about that today because I think these things are also manifesting themselves, not just on that level, but also in our personal lives.

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You can probably think, as you're even listening to me, about people you know who you thought maybe even were strong in the faith or were very involved in your church, seemed to have somewhat of a passion, and now they're not even claiming to be

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Christians. And what do you do with that? So we're going to talk a little bit about that. And this won't be exhaustive or anything, but it is something that I think does need to be addressed, and probably more so as we move into the future.

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I think there's just going to be a lot more of this. So we're going to talk about that today. There's a lot of other things going on, though, in the news.

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Of course, Biden's gun executive orders were released, and they weren't quite as strict as some people thought they were, at least the first batch, they're not.

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But the rationale he used was that it's a public health emergency, gun violence.

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And I think you're going to start to see more progressives use this rationale for everything because they've realized that it works on most of the population.

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Whether it's a true public health emergency or not, if you say it is, you can control a massive amount of people.

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And so that's what's going on. Man, there's just a lot.

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I can't even think of everything right now. I wrote down like six things that were kind of going on simultaneously earlier today that I thought

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I could do a podcast on any number of these. I know Beth Moore was one of them. There's kind of a spat going on on Twitter because she opposed complementarianism by name.

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She said that she was against it. So there's just, there's a lot of fractures are popping up all over the place.

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And so we're going to talk about some of that probably in the next few days.

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But right now I want to focus on this Paul Maxwell thing. Many of you, if you have heard of Paul Maxwell, the reason is probably because of a video that he did a few years ago from Self Wire, which was his podcast.

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And I think this was 2018. It's called Evangelical Culture is Beta Culture. Evangelical Culture is

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Beta Culture. And this is where I had first heard about him. A young man, probably around my age, and interestingly grew up very near the area that I grew up.

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He grew up in Hyde Park, New York. And so I just thought that was fascinating. When I heard about him,

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I thought, I wonder if we ran in some of the same circles. And I don't know that we actually did.

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But anyway, he grew up there and went, I mean, he's got quite the resume.

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He went to Moody and then Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. And I think there's somewhere else in between.

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He might, I think he might've been at Westminster. So, and you look at even the people he worked for as a graduate assistant, there's some big evangelical names there.

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He's written a lot. He's done a lot. He's a smart guy, but he's also not just a smart guy. He's also kind of a fitness guru as well.

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And so he just got, he has a lot of stuff going on. But anyway, that first video that I saw of his,

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Evangelical Culture is Beta Culture. I didn't know anything about him and many of you who have probably seen it didn't, but it resonated in some ways.

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I mean, he talks about how evangelical publishers market to women.

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Their market share is like 80%, something like that. And that's part of the reason that they go for the kind of content.

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It's not as intellectual, very, very watered down. And he kind of contrasts that with people like Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan and some of these intellectual dark web figures who are into, a lot of them at least, into being masculine in the way they appear or at least not being, not looking like they at least hit the gym or do something physical at some point during their week.

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They're also patriotic. They tend to be, I mean, I think he had four different characteristics for these intellectual dark web figures that made them appealing to young men and how

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Christian publishers just didn't have any of that. And anyway, not to go over all the points of that video, because that's not the point of this, but it paralleled a lot of the things that we're seeing, that we're dealing with now when it comes to, even

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I just mentioned just a minute ago with Beth Moore, complementarianism, patriarchy, and the debate over whether women, what can women do in leadership roles in the church and that kind of stuff.

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The social justice, the Me Too movements, all that stuff kind of came, well,

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I think the Me Too movement was kind of happening as he put this video out, but it seemed like he would have been the kind of guy,

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Paul Maxwell, to be against that kind of stuff. He was trying to kind of be like a man's man.

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And so it seemed, it felt like, at least initially, he was going to be on the more conservative side of those debates.

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And then his YouTube channel or his podcast kind of disappeared for a little while.

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I don't know what happened to it. I wasn't a subscriber. I remember I tried to listen to one episode and I just, it was just too esoteric and abstract for me, that particular episode.

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And that's not a criticism. It's fine if you want to listen to those things, but I was just kind of like, I got a limited amount of time.

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This isn't really what I wanted to put my time towards. But I never saw anything negative.

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I never, there was nothing on my radar at the time, at least, that I thought, you know, we've got to watch out for this guy or this guy, you know, is, you know,

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I don't know. I didn't know a lot about him, but I didn't think of him as someone who was in danger of leaving the faith or anything like that.

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And the reason I say that isn't really for my sake, but just to kind of relate to some of you, because some people have discussed this on Twitter.

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Someone even that I know messaged me about this and they seemed quite surprised. And I think they were more familiar with Paul Maxwell's work than I was.

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And they just thought, how could this happen? And that's kind of what I want to talk about a little bit today. So a few other things, just background to Paul Maxwell, without getting too extensive.

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If you go to his website, even now, he says that his calling, and it's an interesting term to use, his calling is to provide theological clarity for myself,

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I invite you into that journey with me. That's the first thing he says. And this is someone now who is saying that he is not a

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Christian. And why don't we just watch that. This is what happened yesterday, or the day before,

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I forget, but he put this out on his Instagram. It reminds me most that what

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I really miss is connection with people. And I think the internet has done a lot of damage to that.

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But what I've discovered is that I'm ready to connect again. And I'm kind of ready not to be angry anymore.

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I love you guys. And I love all the support and friendships I've built here.

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And I think it's important to say that I'm just not a

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Christian anymore. And it feels really good.

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And I'm really happy. I'm really happy.

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And I can't wait to discover what kind of connection I can have with all of you beautiful people as I try to figure out what's next.

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I love you guys. I'm in a really good spot. Probably the best spot of my life.

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I'm so full of joy for the first time. I love my life for the first time.

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And I love myself for the first time. And I hope

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I can share that with you. Now you watch something like that and your heart just breaks.

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You can see that he's saying that he's happy. He's saying that he's doing well. But he doesn't look like it necessarily.

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And again, I don't know him so maybe that is the way he expresses some of those things. But it just pulls at your heart strings to watch something like that.

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Someone who's in a beautiful location in nature and now just saying that it's such a relief not to be a

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Christian anymore. And you think of Josh Harris. Josh Harris said something similar to that on Instagram too.

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He had this photo of himself looking at this beautiful mountain. He was standing on the shore of a lake.

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And this whole thing about how he's not a Christian anymore and how basically good it is. And he has no ill will for anyone.

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But just like that's kind of where he's at. And I think he used the term deconstruct as well.

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He's deconstructing his faith or something. And Paul Maxwell here in a beautiful location.

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I don't know what that is. That need almost to find a beautiful spot to make these declarations.

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I guess it's something that makes you feel small.

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I think one of the things that attract us to nature or the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls or those places is we feel like we're part of something bigger than us.

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And I don't know if that's what it is. But anyway, that's where he decided to do this.

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And my first thought after I watched that was how many years.

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I mean Paul Maxwell had been in all these evangelical institutions. Got saved.

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What he says at least is when he was 16 and I think in young life he was a high schooler. And since that time going to an evangelical free church and then being immersed in evangelical institutions.

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If you're not a Christian and you are immersed in evangelical or Christian institutions all the time and that's your job.

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You go to church too. So much of your life is taken up in that. That can be a big burden in some ways because you have to behave like a

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Christian but you're not one. And I could imagine it being a very big relief if you finally say, you know what,

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I'm not going to fake this anymore. I'm not going to try to attain these rules. I'm not going to struggle.

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I'm going to let it all go. And I'm just going to be me. And who I really am isn't this.

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And you would feel like a burden would be coming off your shoulders. Now that's deceptive because actually what's happening is you're in danger.

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You're in very big danger of the burden of your sin is still upon you.

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It never left. But the thing is having the burden of your sin and then on top of it, adding to it the burden of trying to live out this

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Christian morality is a greater burden in some ways. I mean it's better just to, you know,

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Jesus says his burden is light. His yoke is easy. It's better just to get rid of that burden of sin, to let

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Jesus take that. So you don't have that and then your goal is to please him because of what he's done.

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That's the best scenario. That's the least amount of stress. That's the lightest burden there is.

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But if you keep your burden of sin, if you haven't actually been converted and you're trying to outwardly conform to this standard, then that's a hard thing to do.

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And I do think that that is the reason that many, even children who grow up in the church, when they leave, they'll say that they're more happy than they've ever been.

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They're more fulfilled now. Well, why would they say that? You know, is it really so great in the world? I mean it's a ruthless world out there.

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People are selfish. They use you. Not to say that things like that can't happen in the church, especially with false converts.

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But, you know, the world is a dog -eat -dog world. But the reason

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I think that that happens is because people are playing a game. And when they play a game for that long, whether they know it or not, and they feel the freedom to finally stop playing the game, and they can breathe, and they can be themselves, and they think that they're maybe more at peace with themselves, that they don't have to feel like they're a problem anymore because they can't conform to God's law or the church's legalistic rules or something like that.

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But ultimately, it's inevitable to have rules. You're going to have them one way or the other.

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So it's either God's rules or it's man's rules of some variation. So it's a deceptive freedom.

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It's not a real freedom. But I do think that's what accounts for that. So a little more about Paul Maxwell here, though, because, you know, whenever this happens, you start to think back.

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I remember when it happened with Josh Harris. You start to think, or Rhett and Link. That was another one I remember I was thinking of.

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You start to wonder, were they playing this game?

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I mean, 1 John says they left us because they were never of us, right? So if they weren't Christians, were they just playing this game the entire time?

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And were there clues that we missed? Could we have prevented ourselves from being surprised?

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Could we have the damage that this causes after you are a Christian leader? Now, Paul Maxwell wasn't highly platformed, but he did have somewhat of a platform.

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I'm going to show you a little bit of that with his dissertation, who endorsed it and stuff. But could we have averted that?

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Could we have identified that? And sometimes the answer might be yes. Sometimes the answer is no. You can't.

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And it goes back to the parable of the soils. It goes back to the fact that there are wheat and tares.

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You're not always going to be able to find those things. But if you're discerning, sometimes those things will pop out a little bit.

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I think with Josh Harris, if you look at his books, they're very formulaic. And I think one of the articles, if I remember correctly, that was written at that time about that situation from a friend of Josh Harris's said that, basically.

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Like, Josh, your faith was always formulas. It was always law. Where was the grace? And so there are things like that that you can sometimes go back and look at.

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With Paul Maxwell, he had a lot of his online articles. Now, not all of them.

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He had all sorts of different things. But he does write a lot about singleness and dating and sex and gender and these kinds of issues, which is fine.

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I'm not saying I don't know what that exactly means. But I do think he's a single man, as far as I know.

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And his dissertation was on abuse. And I don't know if this is true or not.

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He is someone who wants to find answers. He's a very smart individual. But oftentimes, people who go into fields where they want to learn about psychology, let's say, at least in my experience this has been the case,

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I think someone said it differently than me. I'll say what this person said, and they'll say what I think. But someone had told me once, he said,

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If you go into psychology, you're a head case. And I thought, well, I don't know if that's true. But in my own experience,

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I have noticed a lot of people who are in psychology majors or they want to work in those fields, oftentimes, and this isn't across the board, so don't get offended if that's where you're at.

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But oftentimes, those kinds of people are going into those fields to deal with their own issues.

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They want to figure themselves out. And that's often a motivator. So I don't know if that's

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Paul Maxwell, if he wants to write on these subjects, study these subjects because maybe he has trauma, maybe he's been abused, perhaps he's struggling with identity issues.

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I don't know. It's a possibility. And that is pure speculation on my part.

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But the reason I bring it up is because that can be an indicator that someone's struggling with those things.

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And if you know someone in your personal life and they're drawn to getting deep into the issues of the soul and maybe they're studying psychology and they want to really be experts on trauma, that's a big thing now.

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A lot of people want to just really be trauma experts and get into trauma psychology and stuff.

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It could be because they're struggling with something. And I think that's a time for you, especially if you're someone who's more stable, who's hopefully spiritual and you have a relationship with this person, that may be something you want to explore a little bit.

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Maybe it could be a little bit of a cry for help whether they know it or not. So I just throw that out there as something that I've picked up over the years and it seems to have held true in some ways.

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But his dissertation is on... Let's see if I can find the title.

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I don't know if I wrote it down here. I don't think I did. I think it's something like The Trauma of Orthodoxy or something like that.

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The Trauma of... I can't remember the title exactly. I'm going to put it up there though.

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You'll see it on the screen here. But anyway, I couldn't download it because it's so expensive and I wasn't going to pay the money to look at this thing.

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But here's some of the endorsements of this. Here's Winston T.

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Smith. Paul Maxwell's work speaks powerfully to the fact that theology is always historically, culturally, and personally situated.

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What does that sound like to you? I mean, there's some truth in it.

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I mean, yes, because all those things have to be applied to a situation. But I found that to be an interesting statement.

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Does that mean that Paul Maxwell is coming from a more postmodern direction? The deeper

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I started to look into this, and again, my research is limited, but the more I started to find out that yes, it does look like there...

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He sounds actually like someone who was a member of the Emergent Church almost. Anyways, Calvin's answer to the questions of his day, as compelling as they were, are not necessarily helpful to others, particularly the traumatized, at least when stated in maximalist abstract terms.

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But Maxwell offers more than a critique. He suggests theological pathways to resilient faith. Theologians, scholars,

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Christian therapists, and pastors will find this work penetrating and helpful, especially those who hope to minister to sufferers.

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I find that interesting, that this is...

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Calvin had the truth, but it was good in his day, but not good as much today, and not good for people who are,

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I guess, trauma victims. Here's another one. This is Anthony Bradley. Some of you recognize that name,

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Anthony Bradley, because he's definitely on the social justice side of the evangelical divide.

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He's a theologian in residence at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, at one of the campuses.

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He says this. Oh, and the King's College, by the way. He is a theology professor there.

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He says, Paul Maxwell has written a theological masterpiece. This book represents the best of theology as a cross -disciplinary science.

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Contemporary American Reformed Evangelicalism is, more often than not, a painfully traumatic experience, especially for minorities and women.

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This insightful book provides a pathway for healing, hope, and restoration for souls wounded by the culture of conservative

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Calvinism. The Trauma of Doctrine, that's the name of it. There we go. The Trauma of Doctrine is a brilliant model for the intersection of theology and psychology, and provides religious leaders a proper understanding and methodological framework to aid the church for decades to come.

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What a gift to the Christian tradition. He's writing this about someone who, after literally within less than a year of releasing this, is saying he's not a

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Christian. Sums up with that. Kevin J.

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Van Hooser, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. This was his mentor for the dissertation.

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Pastors and theologians need to read Paul Maxwell's book, for the ranks of the traumatized are growing, and all too often, neither the church or our theology provide a hospitable place for understanding their experience.

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He takes the road less traveled towards spiritual recovery, retrieving properly reformed resources to deal with a problem generated by reformed theology itself.

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As I say, Maxwell has written a reflection like no other on the awful sovereign grace of God.

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A problem created by reformed theology itself, he says. This is from Goodreads, I guess someone who read the book,

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Trauma of Doctrine. He says that Paul Maxwell argues three theses.

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Number one, a Christian can lose his faith as a result of traumatic experience. Think about Paul Maxwell, he just lost his faith.

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That's what he says, he says he's not a Christian anymore. Reformed theology, number two, can make faith more psychologically difficult to retain.

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Number three, the loss of such faith does not guarantee the loss of soteric benefits. It sounds like what that's saying,

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I don't really know, but that someone can still be saved maybe because the circumstances under which they left the faith are traumatic or something.

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So they go into a state where they're not responsible for their lack of faith or something.

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Their disbelief, I don't, that's what it sounds like. But this is someone who's written for desiring

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God, the Gospel Coalition, Paul Maxwell. He says, and this is on his website, he says that he describes himself as an anxious evangelical and his primary energy is spent wrestling with the

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God who fights for my life in sin, suffering, and sanctification. Life is difficult and God gets that and has a lot about it and has talked a lot about it and has blessed me with the opportunity to think a lot about that both personally and professionally.

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Sounds like a lot of questions, a lot of wrestling, anxiety, uncertainty, and he's on this search.

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There was an article he wrote that I also picked up and I skimmed and the conclusion of it, he talks about trauma in this article, it's pretty recent.

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He says, it's hard to imagine feeling more abandoned, isolated, and worthless than a boy who believes in God but also believes that God betrayed him.

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He's quoting from someone else there. These are his words. Indeed, survivors of CSA, which

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I'm trying to remember, that's trauma I think of some kind, who are suspicious of power and suspicious even of God himself have a long journey ahead of them.

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It has been our goal in this discussion to see how Reformed Theology may give explanatory power to some theories about the devastating effects of CSA as well as envision ways that Reformed Theology can be admonished in its pastoral care for CSA survivors.

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May God have mercy on all abused. And may he give a special grace to all who provide pastoral care.

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And he has a section in here where he goes through all the ways in which Reformed Theology does not, basically is a barrier to people who are suffering trauma because it emphasizes human sinfulness.

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It does not emphasize human agency. It insists on submission to a local church government.

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It tends to require a joyful disposition toward God. And it often insists, because of the sovereignty of God over all circumstances, on attributing positive meaning to all events.

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And, you know, here's the thing about this. Many of these things that he's talking about, these are true.

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And whether, see, the way he's looking at it is what effects do these supposedly have on human beings?

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He integrates a lot of psychology. What effects do these things have? But if they're true, if these doctrines are true, then that's not actually as relevant.

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And I realize that's outside the scope probably of his dissertation. He's probably looking at, if he's approaching it in a more psychological way, he's probably looking at this as just not necessarily what's true, but what, you know, what are the effects, what are the outcomes of believing these things?

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What impact do they have? But for a Christian, if these are biblical doctrines, if these are true things, then it's not like, you know, these true things can be problems for individuals.

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If that's the case, if you have a problem with truth, the problem is you. It's not the truth. The truth, the true situation can make it harder, you know.

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I'm trying to think of an analogy right now. I'm having a hard time. But, you know, if you were, you know, in the woods, right?

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And, you know, the belief that there's a bear or something, you know, there could be the bear that eats you, can cause all kinds of problems, can just really make you fearful when you're hiking.

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And therefore, that's a problem. We shouldn't have those thoughts about, you know, whether, well, if you hear something right now, it just started raining.

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I mean, it's still in my truck, but it's raining. Hopefully you can still hear me. Yeah, if there's a bear though, you're going to, there should be a caution that you should have.

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You should adjust the way that you're going to walk in the woods, maybe what you carry with yourself. And there are solutions to this.

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There's things you can do. Carry a gun with you, right? Don't go into certain places. Know what to do with a bear, right?

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And then you don't have to be, you know, shivering in your boots, you know, because you're so afraid of what might happen.

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And so it's not, the bear's not necessarily the problem there, with the fear that you have. The problem is that there's other beliefs that you're not taking into account.

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There's other solutions and things that you don't know about. So the solution wouldn't be to, you know, try to downplay those doctrines or say those doctrines are the problem in some way, right?

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So I just thought there were some interesting clues, perhaps, even in his dissertation that showed a man who's struggling, who has doubts, who's extremely intelligent, but just has maybe a personally hard time with trauma that he himself has experienced.

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And he's looking for answers and he's in the best theological institutions that evangelicalism has to offer.

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And the whole time it's, the answers aren't acceptable to him.

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He's getting to the end of his rope. That's what it seems like. That's what this dissertation seems like it could be. Well, the reason

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I say that to you is because I listened to a podcast that he gave last year and he's still talking, he still says he's an evangelical in this podcast, but there were some interesting things he said in the podcast that caught my attention.

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One is he wanted to study secular psychology really bad because he wanted to know the truth.

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So he really felt like the truth was there in secular psychology. And he thought that trauma, he says, was driving everything, politically speaking, in our country.

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Trauma, and he's talking about the social justice movement. That's what he's talking about in the Me Too movement. And so he does think that his dissertation has relevance to that.

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So this is a man that initially I thought, you know, more on the conservative side of, you know, kind of like a more of a masculine approach to things.

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And it turns out over time, it seems like, he's more winding up on the other side of this, possibly.

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He said that, let's see, I made a few notes of this.

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He said that what motivates him is he wants to have answers.

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He wants to know God, and that's a good thing, but there are some things we're not going to have answers for. And he seemed discontent with mystery, although at the same time he says he knows there are mysteries, and there should be mystery, but then he seems discontent with it.

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He thinks that Calvinists have a problem with the problem of evil. He thinks that Calvinism can be damaging.

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He thinks, it's kind of interesting, he talked about like this, that we appeal to a standard of good when we say

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God's good, and almost like that's outside of God. It's something that we, God has a concept of good.

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We have a concept of good. Those things have to match, and it's, it seemed like he was suggesting that there's this concept of good outside of God, which we know

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God is good. God is the definition of good. It flows from his character. So anyway,

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I thought it was, he didn't really unpack his belief on that, but I started to hear things that almost sounded borderline heretical, and I just wasn't sure where he was going in this particular podcast, but he said that there were, this is where it gets interesting.

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He wondered whether there were other ways to dispense grace through Christ outside of the way that Christians conceive of that being done, through repentance and faith in Christ.

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So like, is there a culture that did not receive Christ, doesn't know about Christ, but is there a way that they can also obtain grace?

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Which he calls that, and he uses this term quite a bit, coloring outside the lines theologically.

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So these are real questions he's having, and you can tell he's struggling. He's struggling with them.

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He compares someone who has trauma to someone who has Alzheimer's, that there's not really a moral responsibility there.

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At least there's a diminished moral responsibility, and I think that's, that gets to the crux of it.

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That's why someone, if they're going through trauma or some kind of trial, they may think that it's acceptable that they're like a child or like someone who has

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Alzheimer's or someone who doesn't have the intellectual faculties to assent to the things that Christians believe, like the divinity of Christ, et cetera, but maybe they could still be

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Christians. And he puts trauma victims in this category, that trauma could be a reason for someone not to have that level of responsibility.

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And that is something new, and that seems to be what

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I read for you earlier about the book and the synopsis being his thesis, that you can have these qualities, soteric qualities that are still there, but at the same time be this victim of trauma who's kind of left the faith.

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That seems to be where his mind was going, and it's interesting that all these bigwig evangelicals, including

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Anthony Bradley, think this is such a great thing. He says that, and this is where it gets super emergent church.

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He talks about evangelicals needing, or they should go on a hero's journey outside the church perhaps, that there's something good about that.

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And you know he's probably talking about himself when he says this, leaving the church, going outside the church to find the truth.

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That the New Testament is not enough, because you need creeds and these kinds of things, but direct, it seems like a direct attack on the sufficiency of scripture.

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He's going to psychology, finding psychology to be helpful, truthful, going outside the institution of the church to go on a hero's journey, coloring outside the lines theologically, and he advises people to leave their community, their faith community, if it doesn't let you, if it doesn't let you heal from your trauma.

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I mean that's giving just a blank check to some people, who honestly need to probably just, what they need the most is to be mature adults in a community and learn to get along with people, and this is their excuse, well you're not letting me heal from my trauma or something.

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That we need psychology, he talks about that. Christians, pastors need psychology. That he says, and this is the most emergent sounding thing he said, that Christians need to be able to reclaim the phrase my truth, and to stop pursuing resolution, because it gets in the way of truth.

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So the resolution to something, you don't want to find that, even though you know he's after it, that's what he's looking for, but it gets in the way of truth.

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And at the end of this podcast, he says, I'm an evangelical because they pray for me. That's what it comes down to, he doesn't say it's because I believe their doctrine, it's not because that's who

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I am, it's because they pray for me, it's because of something that happened, a benefit that he accrues from this.

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And so despite all the intellectual things he says, very smart individual, despite all the work he's done in Christian institutions,

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Gospel Coalition, Desiring God, being the graduate assistant for many bigwig evangelicals,

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Paul Maxwell, somewhere along the way, and perhaps it was this way the whole time, sounds like he was looking for a truth that would suit him, a truth that he, that, the kind of truth that he wanted, that would fit his own, in his mind, what made sense to him, and what, what comported to what he wanted to be true.

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And he, when he talks about going on a hero's journey, that's what he's done. He's, sounds like he's gone outside the church on his own hero's journey.

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That he's not measuring things by the standard of revelation, he's measuring them by psychology, by these other things.

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And in the end, there's a postmodern undercurrent in there somewhere. That, you know, it's not, really finding the resolution isn't the important thing, it's being on this journey, it's, you don't want that to get in the way of truth.

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Well what is truth then? At that point, well, anyway, I've waxed long about him, and look,

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I don't know him personally. I'm worried for someone like that, I think of passages like Hebrews chapter 6,

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I think of, I think it's Hebrews 11 as well, and what, 2

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Peter, I think it's chapter 2, all the passages that talk about, or maybe it's chapter 4, but all the passages that talk about apostasy, people leaving the faith, sometimes they're not being, you know, there's not an opportunity, sometimes if you've been, you've gotten so close, you've known the truth, you've lived around it, and then to reject it, it's a very scary place to be.

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So here's what I'm asking you to do, pray for Paul Maxwell. His video just hit me. When I saw it, it just hit me.

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And I'm thinking of people I know that are in that position, who, they looked at the church for what it would do for them, they had maybe their own suffering, but they become selfish in that, often times, the people

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I'm thinking of, and the church doesn't live up to what they think it should be doing for them, it doesn't meet the needs they think they have, and they basically separate themselves from God's wisdom and revelation, and the guidance of wisdom from elders in a church, to then go out on their own, and try to find truth themselves.

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And no matter what Paul Maxwell is saying right now about he's so happy, and a burden is lifted, and these kinds of things, that is a lonely place to be.

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That is a lonely place to be. Living with that level of uncertainty, and the thing is,

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Romans 1 says we know. We know who God is. We know enough about him to know his moral character, to look around us and know that there's this designer out there, and he's put, he's set eternity in our hearts.

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We know that there's certain things that are right, and that are wrong, and that we're guilty, and we know we're in need of salvation.

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Doesn't mean we have the answers for everything. We're never going to have the answers for everything. That's an ant trying to do astrophysics.

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But, sometimes the simple truths are forgotten. Sometimes those simple truths, you can be the most intelligent person in the world, but Christianity has some very simple truths at the core level, and whether or not you're dealing with trauma, you can still understand those truths, and there is no excuse, just because you have trauma in your life, it's not an excuse to leave

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Christianity, leave the church, all those kinds of things. It's actually a reason to be more involved in the church, more involved in Christianity, and clinging to it even more.

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So, I have no silver bullet for dealing with this. I do know people who, I know personally who have gone through this, some of them raging against God, others don't come across externally quite as aggressive, but certainly they are, shall we say, very dismissive of anything

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Christian related. They sort of take all their hurt from past things, past problems, and they blame

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Christianity for it in some way, usually improperly, because ultimately the root of all this is there's an anger at God.

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God, I don't like the way you made things. I don't like the fact that you haven't given me the answers for all these things. God, I don't like the fact that there's evil in the world.

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I'm holding you responsible for it. That's ultimately what all of this comes down to, and that's a dangerous thing.

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That is a sinful thing, but it's a dangerous thing because God is truly loving, and God is the only hope there is.

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Without him, then you're wandering aimlessly, and your alternatives are no better than what you think you're leaving.

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So, I felt like I needed to say that. I wanted to get that out there, and I don't know if that helps anyone.

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I want to leave it kind of on an up note if possible. The encouragement here is that Christ's mercy does save individuals, even individuals that are struggling with doubts.

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It's not wrong to struggle with doubts at all, but it is wrong to then selfishly blame, to start lashing out, blaming people, blaming

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God for the circumstances in your own life, and it is wrong to...

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Basically, I mean, this is a joke. This is curse God and die, right? It's wrong to just surrender in the midst of suffering.

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It's selfish. I mean, that's what suicide ultimately is. There's a selfishness behind that, of not wanting to feel pain or feel suffering, and thinking you're owed something.

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I mean, no wonder someone like that would have a problem with Reformed Theology. But it's not

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Reformed Theology that's even the issue here. It's just what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches we don't deserve anything, but Jesus was so good, so gracious, and so loving that He came to glorify

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His Father, but yes, to love us, to give His life, to undergo the ultimate trauma, the ultimate suffering.

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Beyond anything you're going through, Jesus underwent something far worse on behalf of sinners, people who hated

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Him, and He drew them to Himself, and He's making them into a trophy of the grace of God, and that's what we all are.

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We're works in progress. There is no perfection on this side of heaven. It doesn't exist. You're not going to find it, and if you look for it in the church, you're going to be disappointed.

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You have to look for it in Christ, and in a heavenly realm. Social justice is not going to produce the utopia here on the earth.

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You could bash all the institutions and people you think are responsible for all the problems. It's not going to make you any happier.

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So, I think I've said enough. I need to probably get going on my drive, but anyway,

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I hope that was helpful for you all. God bless, and I want to make one final announcement to someone who's undergone what might be considered to some trauma, right?

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Juan Riesco, if you've seen the movie Paint the Wall Black on YouTube, he is coming to Liberty University, and I'm putting the link in the info section.

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He's speaking on the 17th, and I would love it if you could come out and meet Juan Riesco.

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He's got the joy of the Lord. He has incurred a lot of pain and a lot of, if you want to call it trauma, from the social justice movement and the way that they crashed his business and wrecked it, but the love of the

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Lord is there, and he's got the gospel. So, I just encourage you, if you know people at Liberty University or in Lynchburg, Virginia, send them the link.

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It's in the info section, and have them come out. So, God bless, and I hope that was helpful. Bye now.