Why Are So Many People Deconstructing Their Faith?

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This week we're featuring our best shows of the year. We hope you had a Merry Christmas and that you'll experience the peace of Christ in the new year. Why are so many Christian kids leaving the faith? That's just one of the questions we'll be answering on today's edition of CORE Christianity. Well, hi, this is Bill Meyer, along with Pastor Adriel Sanchez, and this is the radio program where we answer your questions about the Bible and the Christian life every day. We would love to hear from you. You can call us right now with your question for the next 25 minutes or so. Here's the phone number. It's 833-THE-CORE.

That's 1-833-843-2673. As always, you can post your question on our Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter accounts. You can watch Adriel Live in the studio on YouTube and send us a message through the YouTube channel. And you can always email us your question at questionsatcorechristianity.com. Well, first up today, let's go to a voicemail from one of our listeners named Mariela. Hello. I hear people say that God creates sin, and I don't understand how God be good and creates sin at the same time. So, if you could please help me understand. Thank you.

Hey, Mariela. Thank you for that question. It sounds to me like maybe there's just a little bit of confusion there with regard to creating sin. We don't believe that God is the author of sin. God can't sin.

He can't be tempted by sin. God created a world in which sin was possible. He gave Adam and Eve free will. He gave them freedom of choice to obey Him, to obey His commandments, but they chose to disobey.

And as a result of their disobedience, Paul says in Romans chapter 5, sin entered the world and death through sin. And so God is not the author of sin. And so we can confess and truly believe that God is good as the creator of all things. And when He made everything, He made it good. The early chapters of Genesis make that absolutely clear. Everything that the Lord made was good, including man and woman. But He gave them freedom of choice, and it was through our sin that sin, evil, entered into the world. And so, hey, thank you for that question. Hope that clears it up for you. You're listening to Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. Let's go to Leo, who's calling in from Oklahoma.

Leo, what's your question for Adriel? I had a question concerning Old Testament versus New Testament on marriage and divorce. I know a young man who got married to a woman, they had twin boys, and they divorced shortly after the boys were born, and she remarried. And that marriage failed, and then she was looking at reconciling with her former husband. And I'm just wondering, how does the law on divorce differ from Old Testament to New Testament?

Yeah, a really interesting question. I mean, I think of what Jesus in the Gospels said in reference to divorce. You know, He says that there were these accommodations that were made, essentially, in the Old Testament because of the people's hardness of heart. But divorce really is something that grieves the Lord.

It's not something that we celebrate. Now, we do know that in the Bible, there are legitimate reasons for divorce. Adultery is one that Jesus gives. I also mention sometimes abandonment from 1 Corinthians 7.

But also in 1 Corinthians 7, you have an exhortation to reconcile where that's possible. And so I think in a situation like this, obviously, you know, marriage and divorce, those kinds of questions are really complex, because I don't know exactly, you know, every detail with regard to this couple's situation. But I would say, if there has been this other failed marriage, they're no longer together, that this couple can pursue reconciliation and be reconciled and truly be married before the Lord.

Was that your question? Is it okay for them to come back together, specifically, or were you thinking of something else? Pretty much, because in the Old Testament, you know, it was forbidden that the Hebrews and the Old Testament, if a man gave his wife a letter of divorce, she'd send her away, she'd get another man's wife, and then either he died or the divorced, he couldn't remarry. That's the way I understood it.

Yeah. But I know... Yeah, you do have that discussion there in the book of Deuteronomy. But I would say, so look, I'm not entirely sure why, initially, their marriage didn't work out, and it could be that it wasn't for good reasons. There was a split, and the wife got remarried. But nevertheless, I think it would still be permissible, okay, for them to come back together before the Lord, to be reconciled, like the Apostle Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians chapter 7.

And so, in that sense, I would say that that's not necessarily binding on the couple today, and that would be my counsel. Hey, thanks for that question. Thanks for calling me in, Leo. We appreciate you being a regular listener to CORE Christianity. Here's our phone number if you have a question about the Bible or the Christian life.

It's 833-THE-CORE, 833-THE-CORE, or 833-843-2673. Here's a voicemail we received from one of our listeners named Julie. I'm 55, and I have three grown children, and it seems like so many people in my age group now with adult children have a child who is an atheist, or decided they're gay, or transgender, or don't really believe that abortion is human. It's very heartbreaking, because many of us homeschooled our children.

We used the tools that we had in our box at that age. We tried to raise our children in the Lord. It just seems like this generation, I have nieces and nephews that are between 25 and 30, and they're going to church, but they believe that God didn't really create male and female. It's just very discouraging for me. It's very disheartening to have children that are adults, but no longer holding fast to the way that they were raised. So that's my question.

Thank you so much. Yeah, Julie, this is something we're observing all around us, isn't it? You know, a lot of people today talk about deconstructing their faith, and there are a number of really famous Christians, we might say, people who were kind of in the public eye through music or any number of other things, had a platform and have decided that they no longer want to follow Jesus, or that they're going to essentially deconstruct their faith altogether. I think what people mean by that is they're just calling into question and even rejecting many of the things they were brought up with. As you said, some of these people homeschooled, raised in families that attended church every Sunday, that kind of a thing, and it is a great tragedy.

I mean, it really is heartbreaking. I think about the warning that the Apostle Paul gave to Timothy in 1 Timothy 4, verse 1. He says, the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and the teaching of demons. There is this sort of apostasy that the Spirit of God prophesied, talked about, to the apostles, and I think that's part of what we're seeing is people departing from the faith, abandoning the faith, giving heed to the doctrines of demons, if you will, and some of that is just the broader sort of cultural ideologies that reject God. Some of the things that you had mentioned, a lot of this is just what we're hearing from the culture around us, and I think part of the issue is, a lot of young people are shaped more by media, social media, broader culture than they were by the gospel growing up.

There's a sociologist named Christian Smith, and he talks about this. Basically, the religion of a lot of the youth in the United States, he called it moralistic, therapeutic deism. It's moralistic. God wants us to do good things.

It's therapeutic. God wants me to be happy and healthy, sort of prosperity, gospel-ish, and it's deism. God is sort of out there.

He's watching over us. He wants us to be moral people. If we do good, good things will happen, but there's not a lot of gospel there. There have been, I think, many, many, many young people who have been brought up in this sort of moralistic religion that wasn't actually rooted in the Word of God and in the teachings of Jesus, in the gospel.

People are deconstructing, people are deconstructing that all over the place. It sort of makes sense why, because that kind of religion just simply doesn't work. It's not the religion of the apostles.

It's not the religion that Christ gave to his followers. But the other thing is, I know that there are people who really just strove to raise their children in the faith, in the Lord, taught them these things, took them to church, and still, later in life, their children aren't walking with the Lord like they would like. Part of it is just realizing the need for the Holy Spirit and prayer and saying, look, you can't save your kids. We have to embrace that reality and do everything that we ought to do as followers of Jesus to train our children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, while relying on the Holy Spirit, on God, to do what we can't do, to regenerate, to open the heart.

Really, it is a difficult thing. Christian Smith, he recently wrote a book talking about the way in which parents try to pass their faith onto kids. One thing is clear based on the research, and that is that parents, we are the number one influence in our children's lives in terms of passing the faith on. It isn't the church. It isn't their youth group.

It isn't even their sort of peer group. How we follow Jesus in our everyday life as parents is the number one thing that they're looking at. There's this real sobering warning there in one sense, but that can also be empowering, knowing that, hey, God has entrusted us with these children to love and to teach the Word of God and to really examine our own hearts in thinking through what does it look like for us as a family to live out the implications of the Christian faith that we hold to in terms of loving one another, in terms of loving our neighbors. I think all of that is really important. A very complex question, but I would recommend you check out some of the writings of Christian Smith.

He's got a number of articles discussing this in particular. Devote yourself to prayer, because at the end of the day, like the Scripture says, it is a work of the Holy Spirit. We know that the spirit of the Antichrist is also at work in the world today, deceiving people, blinding people, and so we need to focus on the gospel and on the grace of the Holy Spirit in the lives of our children. Unfortunately, so many Christian kids that go off to a secular college or university or even some Christian colleges, their faith is being deconstructed. So one of the things that I'm really encouraged about are these ministries that are teaching kids apologetics and Christian worldview before they go off to college to really prepare them. I'm thinking of where these kids can go for a program and really learn how to defend their faith, how to articulate their faith.

Yeah, you know, that is so important, Bill. I think the importance of apologetics is, I mean, it's becoming more and more evident. We don't just have to, you know, believe certain things, but it's important that we know why we believe them, and so we have a responsibility, brothers and sisters, as Christians and as parents in particular, to really instill these truths, the truths of God's word, in our own hearts and in the hearts of the children that the Lord entrusts to us and relying on the grace of God. I mean, that's the key, I think, and so I like to reference Monica and the story of Saint Augustine and how he was converted in his 30s and how it was just years and years of praying for her son until the Lord did this amazing work in his life, and so I just want to encourage you to keep praying for your children as you have conversations with them about the Lord. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez, and, you know, on this program we do receive a lot of calls from people who are wrestling with tough questions. Well, here at Core Christianity, our mission is to help answer those tough questions, but we can't do it without your support.

That's exactly right. You know, we also hear from people who want to share their faith with family members and friends, but fear that they won't have answers to the tough questions that they're asked. Our work gives people confidence in their faith and comforts with the truth of the gospel. We take your questions and respond with biblical answers every day on the radio, through our web articles and Bible studies. All of our efforts aim to help people dig deep into the scriptures, showing them how the gospel of Jesus Christ has the power to equip believers with confidence and wisdom as they live out their Christian faith before a watching world. So if you've benefited from Core Christianity, please consider giving a gift of twenty dollars or more now, and as a special thank you, we'll send you our new Bible study on the book of Philippians. What guides our life?

What motivates us? What does the Christian life look like in practice? As you hear on the show, that's what people have questions about, and we find so many of the answers to those questions in the book of Philippians. And that's exactly why we wrote this Bible study. It's really a great way to help you or somebody you know build confidence in understanding the Bible. And as Adriel mentioned, with a gift of twenty dollars or more to help support this ministry, we'll send you a copy of the brand new Philippians Bible study. To pick up your copy, just head over to corechristianity.com forward slash new study.

That's corechristianity.com forward slash new study. Well, let's go back to the phones. Evan from Kansas City is on the phone. Evan, what's your question for Pastor Adriel? Yeah, hi Pastor Sanchez.

This is a long time listener and I love your show. My question is on the Nicene Council and how the script, the Bible as we know it, the book of the Bible as we know it, has been canonized versus some of the Apocrypha books. Just questions about that.

I would love any resources you have available too. Oh great. So yeah, sometimes you'll say, well, were the books of the Bible determined by a particular church council? And the way I like to put it is, well, no, the books of the canon were received by the church.

So it wasn't like a group of people got together and said, hey, these are the inspired books, these ones aren't the inspired books, and they just sort of sealed the deal. No, the books that were truly inspired by the Holy Spirit were received by the universal church. They had this catholicity, we might say, so that early on, that word catholic just means universal, early on, churches received these books as those which were truly inspired by the Holy Spirit and they would copy them.

That's why we have so many New Testament manuscripts. There are typically a few criteria that are given in terms of, when we're thinking about the New Testament canon, what the church was thinking through. Apostolicity, that is, were these books written by an apostle or someone associated with the apostles?

Antiquity, were they ancient? I mean, was this stuff written much later, just sort of came on the scene later? Or is this associated again with the apostles from the very beginning? The catholicity piece, this isn't just a writing or a book or a letter that was received by some Christians in some places, but it was really received by the universal church. And then there's this coherence in terms of doctrine, in terms of theology. I mean, you read some of the other Gnostic gospels, for example, that were written much later, and you read the true gospels that we have in our canon of scripture, and it's very clear that they don't cohere.

We got two different things, very really different things there. Those are the sort of criteria that the early church was basing this off of. You did have something concrete there, but it wasn't the idea that the canon was decided in a council like the Council of Nicaea. Really, what the Council of Nicaea in 325 was focusing on was answering questions about the person of Jesus Christ. There was a heretic whose name was Arius who was teaching that there was a time when Jesus did not exist, that he was a created being. Yes, he was divine, but he wasn't equal with the Father.

Consubstantial is the technical word that's used sometimes of the same essence. And so that's really what the Nicene Creed initially in 325 was focusing on, was dealing with that heresy and addressing it on the basis of what the scriptures teach and also on the basis of what the fathers, if you will, the early Christians who came after the apostles, what they taught as well. And so it was rejecting that doctrine specifically that brought together the Council of Nicaea initially. In terms of resources on the canon of scripture, I know in the book Core Christianity, there is a section on the word of God and on inspiration.

I think another guy who you can look at is a gentleman named Michael Krueger, and he has a number of resources on the canon of scripture that I think you might find very helpful. Hey Evan, thanks so much for your question. Great question, and thanks for listening to Core Christianity.

By the way, we want to say thank you to a special group of people who make this program possible. They are called our inner Core. These are folks that make a monthly contribution to this ministry and allow us to be on the air on a regular basis. And when you join the inner Core, there are actually some very special resources that you receive, including a video devotional from Adriel that's sent out once a month and a copy of that book that Adriel mentioned, Core Christianity. If you want to find out more about joining the inner Core, just go to corechristianity.com. Well, let's go to Jim in St. Louis, Missouri.

Jim, what's your question for Adriel? My question is, I go to Calvary Chapel, Winfield, and I just, usually you guys are right on with Calvary Chapel, you know what I mean? But then the other day, I just heard you say you don't believe in the rapture. I was just trying to get the pros and cons where you're getting your info and where I've been taught all these years that there is a rapture.

Could you please give me some light on that? Hey, brother. Yeah, I mean, I appreciate your question. Yeah, I don't believe in the rapture as it's sometimes, you know, articulated by churches today. Really, the way I understand it, and I think this is right in line with the teaching of the Bible, and at the end of the day, Jim, that's what we want to focus on is the teaching of scriptures, that the saints are gathered together after a time of great tribulation. You see this in Matthew chapter 24, so it's not that they're gathered together before the tribulation, but after a time of great tribulation, which I actually think is descriptive of the church age, if you will, this period right now between the ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ and his second coming, which we're looking forward to, which we're waiting for. It seems to me that you don't have in the teaching of the New Testament two comings of Jesus, that is one at the rapture, as again it's sometimes called, and then another one at the second coming.

I think there's some confusion there. Usually what you have when we're talking about the coming of the Lord are being gathered together to him, all of that being described in the context of the last day, the final judgment, the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Places like 2 Thessalonians chapter 1 verses 7 through 10 talk about the judgment of the wicked and the glorification of the saints happening at the same time. That's going to happen at the second coming, which we're looking forward to. I don't think that there's a separate coming of Jesus to rapture the church, if you will. I appreciate the fact that you want to dig into this, and again at the end of the day I would just say let's focus, let's reason together with the teachings of the Bible.

I think when we do that, I would say that this position not only is it the historical position of the majority of Christians throughout church history, but it just makes more sense to me when we look at the key texts in 1 and 2 Thessalonians or in Matthew chapter 24. Appreciate your question, and please do feel free to follow up if you want some of the time. Thank you. Thanks, Jim.

This is Core Christianity. Let's go to Bethany in Orlando, Florida. Bethany, what's your question for Adriel? Oh, good afternoon.

Yeah, I really enjoy listening to your show, and this is my question. I wanted to know because I feel like I pray a lot when I'm in the shower, based mostly, and so I wanted to know if it's sinful or wrong to pray while naked. Hmm. Is it sinful to pray in the shower or sinful to pray while naked? No, I don't believe that it is, Bethany. Look, I think it is actually a really good question when we're thinking about the posture that we have while we're praying. Typically, in the New Testament and just throughout the Bible, standing is the primary posture of prayer.

You also see kneeling. We don't often think about postures of prayer today. I think we just have this hyper-spiritualized view of prayer that doesn't involve the body at all, so we think, oh, the body is just unhelpful.

It's not a part of prayer. Prayer is something that you do when you're sitting down. That's, I think, the primary posture of prayer in most people's minds, sitting down or laying down on your bed, that kind of thing. Usually, in scripture, it's standing or kneeling. The idea of standing was being attentive. Oftentimes, even raising the hands is this picture of surrender before the Lord. It's this picture of willingness, openness to receive from God. Posture is important.

It's not insignificant. At the same time, I think we should pray always and without ceasing, as the apostle Paul told the Thessalonian church. I think it's fine. I don't think that it's sinful or wrong for you to pray in the shower, I think, so long as we're coming before the Lord in faith and trusting in Him through His Son, Jesus Christ. That's the key thing. There are sinful ways of praying. Jesus talks about this in Matthew 6. He gives a couple of warnings when He teaches disciples to pray. He says, look, don't pray like the scribes and the Pharisees, the religious leaders who love to make a show. There's a hypocritical way of praying where we're using prayer to try to prove to others that we're holy, we're pious, we're righteous. Jesus says, that kind of prayer is sinful. That's the kind of prayer we want to avoid. He also says, don't pray like the Gentiles, that is the pagan nations who just repeat the same thing over and over, almost as if it was this magical incantation. I think that God is going to hear them because of their many words.

They're just spamming God, if you will. It's not prayer from the heart. It's just the repetition of words sort of treating prayer like this magic talisman.

Well, we avoid that as well. We pray to the Father in the Son, Jesus Christ, and through the grace of the Holy Spirit. You can come to the Father, come to the throne of grace at all times because of what Jesus Christ has done for you, whether you're walking in the park or in the shower or driving in your car. That's one of the beautiful things about the New Covenant, brothers and sisters. We have direct access to the true and the living God through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on our behalf. Pray at all times, take advantage of that wonderful access that you have before the Lord. of God's Word together.