This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. Subscribe here.
“Can you give me a reason why I shouldn’t just give up on religion altogether?”
Before the young man finished his question, I already knew the basics of what he was going to say because I hear it all the time.
This man wasn’t doubting the truth of the creeds or the inspiration of the Bible. He wasn’t wanting to go to a strip club or snort some cocaine. He desperately wanted a reason to stand firm because he loves Jesus and wants to follow him.
He’s shaken, though, by some of the things he’s seen—some cruelty, some nihilism, some hypocrisy—in the name of Christ, by the very people who taught him the gospel.
I don’t handle all of these questions the same way. An Ivan Karamazov who concludes that the presence of suffering and evil disproves a good God needs a different conversation from someone who believes physics explains all the mysteries of the universe. But neither of these were the situation here.
Instead, I was talking to someone who is a convinced Christian but is discouraged and demoralized by some awful and stupid stuff that he’s seen. If that’s you—or someone you love—here are some things I think you should consider.
First, the sense of being rattled is completely normal and understandable. The church is meant to be a signpost to the truth, goodness, and beauty of the kingdom. It is supposed to be an indivisible body to the head that is Jesus Christ. Jesus said, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35, ESV throughout). He prayed, speaking of the church, “They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth” (17:16–17).
Someone who has had neglectful or abusive parents has every reason to grieve not having what every child should receive as a matter of course: parents who love, protect, and guide them. When that grieving person talks about this, who but the most twisted would say, “Lots of people have bad parents, and a lot of people had worse—move on”? The first step to “moving on” is, in fact, realizing that this is not the way things were supposed to be.
There’s a way of saying, “The church has always had hypocrites” (which is true, of course) in a way that waves away the genuine expectation of the pursuit of holiness by the church. It can be kind of like hearing a serial killer shrug as he says, “We’re all sinners: Who among us doesn’t have a skeleton or two under the floorboards?” God forbid.
That said, in a conversation like this, I’m not speaking to “the church.” I’m only speaking to this Christian, who is wondering if he’s crazy or stupid to still follow Jesus after all that he’s seen. And—with everything in me—I do not believe that he is.
C. S. Lewis famously warned about “chronological snobbery,” the sense that previous eras were unenlightened and backward and that we have progressed beyond it. I think there might be something analogous to that with what we might call “chronological despondency.”
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Imagine how hard it must have been to believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the time when Jeroboam was setting up altars to golden calves at Bethel and Dan (1 Kings 12:25–33). How difficult must it have been to believe the apostle’s letter telling you that the word of the cross is the power of God to salvation, when all you have seen is a Corinthian church where people are sleeping with their stepmothers (1 Cor. 5), fighting for a place in line at the Lord’s Supper (ch. 11), and arguing over whether someone ought to speak in tongues (chs. 12–14).
If you were a Christian in first-century Laodicea, you would not have livestreamed services from Philadelphia, and probably would not have even traveled more than a mile or two from where you lived. All you would have seen of the church is what the ascended Christ himself said made him want to vomit (Rev. 3:16). Consider how hard it must have been to be a genuine, convinced Christian when that name was used by the corrupt Borgia crime family or by the murderous Inquisitors.
Now, imagine you are speaking a word of counsel—not to those villainous structures and rulers and clergy—but to one Christian, in one of these time periods, whose heart is “strangely warmed” by the Scriptures, despite all he or she has seen. Would you advise that person to surrender Christianity to those who are using it just because that person happens to be born in a time of awful corruption and deadness?
Now suppose you are living in just such a time of disobedience and lifelessness. What then? If you are convinced, as I am, that Jesus of Nazareth is who he said he was, the son of the living God, why would you allow anyone to take that away from you just because you live in AD 2025 North America rather than AD 125 Antioch or, say, 2065 Malaysia?
The periodic crisis of church structures does not throw into question what Jesus told us but actually confirms it. Jesus told his disciples that the most stable religious fact they could imagine—the temple—would be torn down (Matt. 24:1–2). He said that “the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel” would stand in the holy place (v. 15), that is, the very place of God’s own authority and mercy. Jesus said to his disciples, and then through them to us, “See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place” (v. 6), and “See, I have told you beforehand” (v. 25).
Jesus explicitly said that he was telling this to the disciples beforehand because they would have two seemingly opposite temptations: Some would be tempted to fall for the counterfeits (v. 26) and others would be tempted to lose heart (vv. 6–8). His words are meant for us too. You and I are probably, at least in this case, more in the second area of danger than the first.
The fundamental question is not whether the church as a whole, especially in America, is in dire condition. It is. The question is whether the tomb is empty. If it is, then we can trust that Jesus can overcome even the horrific misuse of his name by those who are confused or plunderous.
A lot has been revealed over the past several years, and it has shown the awful fruit of some of the theology and “worldview” notions that many of us held. Seeing where those things lead should call us to re-examination, tossing aside that which does not conform to the Scriptures and to the Way of Christ Jesus.
In the early 20th century, young Karl Barth was a typical European liberal Protestant who revered those who had taught him his theology. At the outbreak of World War I, however, Barth was horrified to see the names of his own professors on a petition supporting the German nationalism of the Kaiser, deeming it a culture war for Christian civilization against barbarism.
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Barth wrote, “An entire world of theological exegesis, ethics, dogmatics, and preaching, which up to that point I had accepted as basically credible, was thereby shaken to the foundations.” This started a process of his asking how the theology of Friedrich Schleiermacher and others could lead to embracing such horror. That question would become even more pronounced when Barth saw almost the entirety of the German church Nazify.
This is not to say that where Barth ended up was necessarily the right place, but it is to say that the shaking of Barth at this point was clearly right. Whatever one thinks of where he ended up, where he went—back to the sources of the Book of Romans and the rest of the Bible—was the right response to a “Christianity” that had proven itself incredible.
What a shame it would be if he and Bonhoeffer and the rest of the tiny minority of dissenters from the German Christian atrocity had simply let the German Christians have the copyright to a gospel they had hollowed out and replaced with what Barth rightly named the “blood mysticism” of the Nazis.
If we wave away the misuse of the name of Christ as “just the way it is,” we are sinning against God and the generations before and after us. If we refuse to ask what ideologies and theologies give birth to cruelty and authoritarianism and antinomianism and legalism, we likewise shirk what we’re called to do.
But for those of us who are convinced that the women at the tomb weren’t lying—that the disciples went to their deaths refusing to recant what they had testified about the one who “presented himself alive to them” (Acts 1:3)—why would we walk away from that? Why would we walk away from Jesus?
Yes, you are situated in a difficult time, a time of testing and tumult for the church. Maybe you would have preferred to live in some other time. But you’re here now, with the same ascended Christ, the same unpredictable Spirit, the same forgiving Father, and the same cloud of witnesses as every other generation.
Paul wrote to Timothy that “evil people and imposters will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived” (2 Tim. 3:13). He told the younger pastor to fight all of that, to conserve the gospel in the face of those who would empty it out.
Paul went on to say, “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (vv. 14–15).
It’s important to know that you’re not crazy when you see what ought to shock every reborn conscience, what ought to break every regenerate heart.
But as for you, your anchor holds behind the veil. Weep, yes, grieve; be angered, work for reform. But don’t get cynical. Don’t get demoralized. Don’t give up.
The gospel is real. The stories are true. Christ is risen, and Jesus saves. That’s reason enough to keep standing.
Russell Moore is the editor in chief at Christianity Today and leads its Public Theology Project.
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