Another God Journey podcast .. talks about ".. a new documentary (Amazon streaming available for $ or the trailer here) titled, Leaving My Father's Faith. It is a conversation between popular evangelical author and speaker Tony Campolo and his son, Bart, as the process Bart's loss of faith in Jesus after a lifetime of growing up in the faith (after 50 years) and working alongside his father as a colleague in the ministry. It is a compelling look at how these men put their relationship above their agreement about faith. But it invites some intriguing questions: How does someone so anchored in faith lose it, and how does Christianity as a religion contribute to that by disfiguring the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ?.."
Bart has now said that he believes that Jesus and eternity are not real .. only the here and now matter to him going forward. In fact, in retrospect, he chalks up any prior moments in ministry with his dad that he thought that he was in touch with God as crowd dynamics / crowd-think.
Kudos that Bart did not want to fake it anymore. Basically his disappointment in that so many prayers for him and others went unanswered. I guess getting God on our agenda is a dead-end street. God's ways are not our ways ..
This shows the failure of religion more than a failure of God IMHO. Tony himself calls the church a plausibility structure .. from a sociological angle, he sees church (building/structure/congregation) as the only way to preserve the Truth ... you need the structure and the participation .. otherwise the faith dries up. Yeah, IF what Jesus said about the vine and the branches .. it is He that is our fire!
I feel bad for Tony, who is now in his 80s and had his son that was part of his ministry, now dismissing it all. God, to Bart, did not love enough for Bart to continue following God. I feel bad for Bart because I think he was focusing on the "seen" vs. the "unseen" .. God's answer might be to allow someone to get to the end of their rope instead of Bart's expectations. But I digress.
Another win is that Tony and Bart are still in dialog .. just wondered why this was filmed and monetized as it seemed still pretty raw.
Walking away from religion does NOT mean having to walk away from God .. which Bart apparently has done.
God is knowable apart from the Scriptures .. His Love Letters help BUT are not essential to a real relationship with an Awesome Father. Yes, they give insights to God's character .. but His still small voice is precious .. and can be heard even of one is not reading the Bible.
Bart now struggles to create community without Jesus ... toward as a group .. to bless the world.
So it seems that the 35 million former Christians who gave up on religion and on God are a very real thing in our world. Hoping that as Bart nears 70 and 80 he comes to a point where he finds himself misguided like Saul in the New Testament .. that as a 50-something that is so sure of things that God can redeem this detour for Bart.
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