apologist – Protestia

Christian Apologist Tyler Vela, the host of the Freed Thinker Podcast, has announced his ‘deconversion’ from Christianity after becoming disillusioned with God following a painful divorce where he did not feel the comfort of God, resulting in his loss of faith.

The announcement comes the same week that Cameron Bertuzzi, host of the YouTube channel ‘Capturing Christianity’ declared his apostasy in leaving the Christian faith for the corrupt clutches of the Roman Catholic Church.

Vela, who recently graduated from Reformed Theological Seminary with a Master’s in Biblical Studies, specialized in debating atheists and defending Calvinism and the Doctrines of Grace, frequently appearing as a guest on many apologetic channels and pages. He explains:

For the past two years, I’ve been on somewhat of a roller coaster with God and faith and religion. And that trajectory while having some up swings, has been generally downward and away from any religious faith or commitment..

At this time no longer feel comfortable identifying as a Christian, at least not in the intrinsic, evangelical or religious sense. ‘Philosophical theists’, sure, possibly even ‘theistic humanist of the Renaissance variety’, even a ‘theologically conservative reformed philosophical theist’ at that as confounding as that may sound to many who are in the know and reformed or even just systematic theology.

..I fought for a long time against the growing tide of doubts and reservations and honestly, apathy and discontent, but found at the end of the day, that the more I fought, the more acute they became. Like an existential Chinese finger trap for which the more I struggled to free myself from, the worse it became.

Vela says that the news does not come on account of “unrepentant sin or addiction” or because he became disenfranchised by the Calvinism he was known to profess and defend, but rather because he stopped believing after God was silent after his divorce.

I’m definitely not an atheist. No, I don’t hate the Bible. I don’t think religion poisons everything or any of that nonsense. I lost my faith, not my brain, I still find Christianity and the Bible to be beautiful, meaningful to the human experience and in some significant sense true. But I just cannot remain tethered to the mast and pretend that I can, want to, or will order my life by the narrow precepts, though, its general equity is admirable

Vela pushes back on the idea that he’s only saying these things because he’s in a bad place:

However, many seem to think that I’m in a bad place now, that somehow this is a ‘right now’ decision because they think that I’m currently struggling. They want to pray for me and hope I find peace in this struggle and turmoil ‘right now’. That’s just an inaccurate. I’m actually in a really good and healthy place, probably the most peaceful, healthy and holistically happy place I’ve been.

I’ll make my feeble attempt to explain below, but my deconversion is happening, almost because my faith was of no value or help during the crisis I went through (his divorce). And so as I’ve healed and grown, I found it to be something that did not fit me anymore, something that was not authentic to myself. Like when you’ve lost weight and are more healthy, but then none of your clothes fit right anymore and are actually uncomfortable to wear.

As far as specifics, Vela reveals that God never helped him or heal him through his divorce, and because of this, he came to view his faith as a toxic relationship, where he loved God, but was never loved back or shown any affection or care.

My divorce wasn’t the cause or even the reason for my deconversion- it was more like a catalyst, not the cause. I didn’t lose my faith because I got divorced. Like, ‘God, if You’re real, I wouldn’t be divorced’. Now that would be shallow and honestly a silly reason. I mention my divorce because it’s an event that made me rip off a bunch of bandaids and come out of hiding. To confront a lot of very sinful and shameful aspects about myself in my life. My divorce forced me to confront myself and how I handled abuse and infidelity and how being a victim of circumstance had changed me into someone I didn’t recognize and I was ashamed of being.

What was weird, however, was that the more I healed and became more confident and at peace with who I am, I also noticed that the ministerial promises of the Bible seemed further and further from reality for me. That tension bothered me. A very strong cognitive dissonance set in. I begged and cried and asked God to get to make me more like Jesus, to love him more, to know him more to have the Spirit convict me, etc. But the more I did that, the less faith I had, because it started to feel that those are things that I shouldn’t have to beg God for. like a child shouldn’t have to beg their parents for love or care. They should not have to beg for a loaf of bread instead of a rock of fish instead of a poisonous serpent. My faith was diminished.

For those who seem to think that I’m letting feelings drive actions, ask yourself, What do you mean, as a Christian, when you say that God is your comfort? Is God your comfort? If you’re in fact, not comforted? Is it too emotional to desire to be like Christ?

He continues:

…It seemed to me that if God did not want me near him, or did not see fit to comfort me, why should I keep fighting for it? I had a painful tension between how strong my head believed the theology and what I thought the Bible affirmed, and how much, or rather how vanishingly little faith I had left, if any at all.
…I get the nobility of striving against sin and the devil and fighting for the kingdom and all that and never giving up. But should I have to fight for a relationship with God, especially if the promises are true that he is to be our comforter, our rock, our place of great shelter, the lover of our souls?

...I find myself almost saying back to God in his own words, if my child was saying that they didn’t even know if I loved him, and was begging to know me and to be near me. I wouldn’t hesitate to comfort him in ways that he felt comforted. If me being fallen and broken and sinful, as a father know that, how much more should you my heavenly Father. And yet that comfort never came.

…At some point, it almost felt like the toxic relationships we hear about where someone’s always demanding love and devotion, but never returns the favour. Says they love you, but doesn’t actually show you that you can have any value to them. But that’s just it. Right? I would expect on the Christian message…. something.

Surely something from my heavenly father who’s supposed to infinitely love and care for and protect and uphold his children, surely God would know what would at least be noticeable to me, right? Enough to keep me from walking out. I wasn’t expecting grand miracles or healing. I wasn’t praying for stuff or things for prosperity, or even for favourable circumstances. I just wanted him just like He promised. And God could have, just like I would for my sons, but crickets. For years, crickets.

Frequently viewed as evangelicalism’s foremost Christian apologist, William Lane Craig’s name is most often associated with his ministry organization Reasonable Faith, the name of his most famous book and also weekly podcast.

A proponent of ‘mere Christianity theology,’ the professional philosopher gained prominence by pummeling atheists in the name of a ‘bare theism,’ seeking to have them acknowledge that, with the use of a well-executed presentation of Kalam cosmological argument, the preponderance of the evidence is that there is a First Cause in the universe.

While Craig is a member of and a Sunday School teacher at a Southern Baptist Church, he is Wesleyan in his soteriology. He is also a Molinist and social Trinitarian who has proposed a controversial Neo-Apollonarian Christology. Although Craig rejects Open Theism, he has stated (in the course of explaining Transworld Depravity) that God “has to play with the cards He’s dealt.”

In a new essay for First Things, Craig explains that Genesis 1-11 are all myths and ‘mytho-history’ that didn’t happen and are not to be taken literally, but it’s only in Genesis 12 with the story of Abraham that things become real and historical.

As far as how Craig does explain the references to Adam by Jesus and Paul, he uses the language of ‘true-in-story:

A statement is true-in-a-story if it is found in or implied by that story. So if I say, for example, that Gilgamesh slew the Bull of Heaven, my statement, though true-in-the-Epic of Gilgamesh, is false.

In the same way, references to Adam are true-in-a-story. They are true in the sense that Genesis records them as happening, but are similarly actually false. Craig asserts, “we can see how naive it is to argue that merely because some New Testament author refers to a literary figure, whether found in the Old Testament or outside it, that figure is asserted to be a historical person.”

Despite believing the stories in Genesis 1-11 never happened, Craig does not discount the idea that there was a ‘progenitor of the entire human race’ – some sort of ‘first couple’ which he ultimately surmises is a pre-homosapien caveman that lived nearly a million years ago.