Note: Can I Say This at Church is produced for audio listening. If able, I strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which has inflection, emotion, sarcasm where applicable, and emphasis for points that may not come across well in written word. This transcript is generated using a combination of my ears, software, and the help of a friend and so it may contain errors. Please check the episode for clarity before quoting in print.

Back to the Audio!

Seth  2:54

Hello, everybody! Welcome back to another episode of the Can I Say This At Church Podcast. I am Seth, your host. Before we get started the obligatory ‘I need your help.’ So, as you hear this, if any of these shows speak to you in a way like, “Man, that was a good question,” or “Mmmmm, I don't agree with that,” either way, please share this on social media, tell your friends about it, tell your family about it. I would love to have as many people engaged in the show in a middle ground so that we can have honest discussions about conversations that we don't have at church. Thank you so much to those of you that support the show on Patreon and the iTunes reviews and everything else. All of that impacts the show more than you will ever know. Enough of that today. 

Today, I was able to speak to Austin Fisher, who is a pastor at Vista Community Church in Temple, Texas. He's an author, a minister, just overall genuinely great guy. The conversation was very fun to have. We talked about Calvinism. We talked about doubt and grief and loss. We talked about a lot of things. I think that you will enjoy it. I would encourage you, if you are of the Calvin mindset and you're listening to this, just keep an open mind. Know that I know where you are. I've been there. I'm no longer there, and that's okay. And it's also okay if you never leave from there. But I think the conversation and the topic of what Calvinism can and cannot help us with is an important one to have. Here we go.

Seth 4:55

Austin, thank you so much for being able to join the Can I Say This At Church podcast. I heard about you when I spoke with Brian Zahnd. He had advised me after the fact to go and watch a debate that you did with his. I heard you speak, and then I continued for hours upon hours upon hours to continue to watch you speak. I really wanted to talk with you, so I appreciate you being able to make time to come on to the show.

Austin  5:18  

Oh, it's a privilege to be on, man. Thanks for having me.

Seth Price  5:21  

What’s your story Austin? Before we get into a bit of the topics of Calvinism and doubt and faith and Jesus and everything else that we would talk about at a church, what is your story? How did you get to where you're at now? What has impacted you?

Austin  5:37  

The CliffsNotes version here. I didn't really grow up going to church. My dad had a pretty negative experience with church growing up. We went here and there; but for me, church was the sad, stuffy place where I went and learned that a sad, stiff, stuffy God was really disappointed in me. So that's all I thought about at church. I thought you only took your faith seriously if you didn't have any better options. I didn't want Jesus to come in and mess up what I had going on, because I kind of enjoyed what I had going on. So it took a guy who was a little bit older than me, who was a normal guy who loved life, but follow Jesus and did it well and took his faith seriously. //6:20 He was the kind of sinner that held his life together. // For me to go, “Oh, if you can follow Jesus, and it can look like that, then maybe I can follow Jesus.” I think we all need somebody who lives out faith in a way that could sync up with who we are, because a lot of times we think we have to become a different person to take our faith seriously. He was that for me.

I was probably in high school, kind of started sorting through things, went to college, not planning to be a pastor. I thought I'd be a lawyer; my parents that I was good arguing and so I might as well make some money. I went to school to do that, but started taking a few philosophy and theology classes, really enjoyed them. There was never a burning bush for me. You know, it was kind of one little step after the next in that direction. I still don't quite know how I ended up being a pastor. For me God's will is kind of a mix of something you're good at, something you enjoy, and something that can bless the world. Any place where those three things overlap is a good place to be. I've just moved in that direction over my life, and it ended up meaning I'm a pastor. That’s the really CliffsNotes version of how I became a pastor in my kind of journey of faith.

Seth  7:32  

Yeah, so how long have you been a pastor?

Austin  7:34  

So I've been at the church I’m at now for six and a half years, and I was a college pastor in a church outside Waco for about two and a half years before that. Eight or nine years probably.

Seth  7:46  

Being that I'm also from Texas, and I asked this same question to Sean Palmer, just because I like to laugh. When I left Texas, In-N-Out didn't exist, it was only in California. So you gotta go right now. Is it Whataburger or is it In-N-Out Burger?

Austin  8:02  

Oh, Whataburger, easy man.

Seth  8:04

See that, we're gonna be fine. 

Austin 8:05

I’m a Texas boy through and through, down to my bones, I’m still a Texas boy. I still have not eaten In-N-Out Burger, I refuse to. It’s been here for a couple years and I won't do it.

Seth  8:15  

I'll be honest. So the last time I had In-N-Out Burger was in the year 2000. When I went home a few weeks ago, before Easter, I had one just because I felt like almost 20 years it was time to have one again. Only bought only bought the burger, though, but it's got to be a decade thing. So you are probably most well known for a book that you wrote about Calvinism and not being that anymore. Talk a bit about that. What was the genesis of that? Where did that book begin? What was that pivotal precipice that you fell off for that?

Austin  8:57  

Yeah, for the book, I didn't I set out to write a book. I was a college pastor in Waco. Most of my students were heavily influenced by people like, you know, Matt Chandler, Louie Giglio, John Piper, Mark Driscoll. That was kind of at the peak popularity for the kind of New Calvinist. So I had students come asked me questions about it all the time. And I thought, “Man, you know, I've kind of had this journey. I ought to just write some stuff down so I can give it to them,” and ended up kind of stumbling into the book.

My personal journey with Calvinism, man, it really started with a professor. My friend who kind of discipled me and helped me understand what it looked like to follow Jesus, he was also a Calvinist. I cut my teeth on reading everything John Piper had ever written. I've still read more John Piper than I have any other author in the world.

So that's what I grew up on and cut my teeth on, going to Passion and Louie Giglio and the whole thing. 

When I came to college, I ended up having a professor who was a brilliant guy. I knew he wasn’t a Calvinist. Because I'd been so insulated growing up around just Calvinist voices, I really thought that you could only be an intellectually serious Christian if you were also a Calvinist. I thought anybody else was soft or sentimental, or, you know, too humanistic, or whatever it was. He was the first person I encountered who was incredibly smart, well-read, educated, who wasn't a Calvinist. 

He started slowly kind of just pushing little buttons with me, basically asking me to connect some dots and just go, “Well, if you believe this, then you also have to believe that; and if you believe that, and then you also have to believe that.” When you get to the end, and the last domino falls, where does that leave you? What kind of God does that leave you with? Does that make the very ability to do theology incoherent? That was a long journey of two or three years, honestly, transitioning out of Calvinism. Because for me, Calvinism was Christianity, I felt like I was leaving my faith when I left Calvinism. That’s why it was so hard for me.

Seth  11:10  

Yeah, I can relate with that. When I left Texas from high school and came to Liberty over here in Virginia and then met a woman, got married, life starts. I thought that that was Christianity, like John Calvin just was…we've got Paul, we've got Peter, we got Calvin, you know, we got Athanasius, and Augustine. He’s just one of these names. You know, this is what it is. 

Austin 11:36

Church history goes from Jesus to Paul to Augustine to Calvin to Piper. 

Seth 11:41

Well, you can even you can even get the genealogy all the way to Calvin, I think if you try hard enough. You said something earlier - is there a difference between New Calvinism and Calvinism?

Austin  11:52  

Technically, yeah. Roger Olson's a friend and mentor of mine; he's better on the history of these things, he’s more precise with it. Let's say the New Calvinism, whatever you want to call it is, I think, basically a variation of Edwards’ and Calvin's Calvinism. They're all sorts of reformed folks. The New Calvinist, I think, are a form of a more extreme, high, federal Calvinism. A lot of Calvinists actually believe a lot of different things. I'm the co-lead pastor of a church with a guy who's a Calvinist, we can talk about that later. That's a very fun relationship. 

Seth 12:36

Oh my!

Austin 12:37 

I practice what I preach when it comes to unity in the midst of diversity. He wouldn't sign off on some stuff that a Piper would or a Driscoll would. What I messed with my other lead pastor about, though,is I think he's inconsistent. What I appreciate, even though I really disagree with like a Piper, a Driscoll, a Calvin, is they’re very consistent. If they think that their beliefs lead them in a direction, they will go all the way down the rabbit hole no matter how absurd it may make their belief seem. There’s a certain mental integrity to that and to the New Calvinism that I really can appreciate.

Seth 13:15  

So you’re no longer reformed. What was the deal? What was the big domino for you that started to fall down? Break through that for those listening. The method behind that is a lot of the audience that listens to this show are people of a similar age, up to the younger baby boomers in a handful of 10 or 12 countries. Here, in all the churches and the youth and the Young Life movement and all this other stuff, there's a huge resurgence of Calvinism. Being that I'm not one anymore, it really aggravates me and I can't put to voice why. What was it for you, what was that one point? People talk about 5-point, 4-point, 3-point. What was it that that began that, “This can't hold water? And so if this can't, then this also, we have to evaluate this?”

Austin  14:09  

To kind of jump straight to it, the difficult thing for me and I think most people once they understand Calvinism; I've always said the more you understand Calvinism, the less sense it makes. It has inner coherence, it does, but where it leads, I think, is a pretty incoherent place at least morally and theologically. Double predestination, to cut straight to it, is, in my opinion, an essential piece of consistent Calvinism. I think most, again, of the best and brightest New Calvinist in the people who inspired the New Calvinist, RC Sproul, John Piper, Jonathan Edwards, John Calvin, going back further, they would all affirm that double predestination is inescapable.

Seth  14:54  

For those listening, what is that?

Austin  14:58  

Double predestination being the belief that it’s not just that the world fell somehow, that everybody then deserves to be damned, then God graciously elects some for salvation; it's that, however you want to explain it, and different people explain it differently, God desired the fall of humanity. God wanted humanity to fall into sin so God could then glorify Himself by saving them. After God has ordained the fall, however that works, God decides to elect some and pass over others; but when we say some get passed over it’s a very active thing, because again, God has desired that the overwhelming majority of humanity, if you listen to most Calvinist, will suffer eternal conscious torment forever, for His glory. Again, that God desired that, it was an important part of what God wanted to do to glorify Himself. 

Once you believe that about God and you go, “So God could create the overwhelming majority of humanity with the desire to damn them forever, for His glory,” you basically just come, in my opinion, to the heart of a moral of this where I don't know what it would mean to call a God who did something like that good or loving or just or basically any of the classical attributes that we would want to give to God, ascribe to God. I don't think they make sense anymore if God's capable of that. I don't think anyone would say, “Someone who was capable of murdering somebody in cold blood is also a good person.” And yet, we're supposed to say that God can do that and still be good because he's God, and we can't question it because he’s God. You’ve gotten yourself into trouble at that point.

Seth  16:43  

Yeah. Well, in this case, not only murdered them because He has to, but created them to murder them for His glory. So when I talk to people and I try to make that same point, I'm not very good at it. What are the scriptural counterpoints to that? Because I will begin getting pegged with just all of these different usually proof texted scripture on saying, “No, it says this, and it says this, and it says this. And Paul, my little canon inside the canon, definitely says this, and so it is what it is. Sorry, Seth, you just going to have to learn to live with it.”

Austin  17:20  

Yeah. Hey, I've been there. I've made that argument many times. So one of the things I actually talked about in my new book, I think it's helpful to think that scripture contains a theology like a single theology, but rather scripture contains theologies, multiple theologies, people trying to express ideas from different perspectives. When we go to the Bible thinking like, “Well, what does the Bible teach?” The Bible teaches a number of things on this, I think. That's where I always end up in a weird place where I want to stick up for Calvinism sometimes because I do think that is a Biblical option. I think you can absolutely read scripture and come away thinking it teaches something like Calvinism. You'd be a fool to argue that right? Obviously it does or we wouldn't have so many people who believe it. 

You interpret Romans 9-11 in a Calvinistic, double predestination fashion, that what Paul is doing there, talking about Jacob and Esau, can be extrapolated out to a doctrine about what God has done with all humanity. Jacob I’ve loved, Esau I’ve hated; I chose it before they've done anything. So that's the big proof text, but there are lots of them, there are tons of them. If If you want to go into it with that framework, you can absolutely walk away a happy and satisfied Calvinist from a Biblical perspective, and I'd never argue against that. I would just argue it is not the only Biblical perspective.

Seth  18:43  

If I'm being created to be damned, effectively, because I happen to live in the wrong country, most likely, how do we deal with the problem of sin and evil? What is salvation then? Or I guess, where do you stand on that?

Austin  18:59  

Like me answering for me or me answering for what a Calvinist would [say]?

Seth  19:03  

No, you answering for you. The Calvinist view that I grew up with is, you know, Christ paid the debt for me, which isn't much forgiveness, that's more of a contractual transaction. I do not hold to the penal substitution view. I don't know if you do or not, I can't remember. It's okay if you do. So what, then, is the purpose of Christ having to die for something… I'm saying this wrong. So I create an entire planet, and I decided to save 6% of them. The people that read it this way to say that they're the 6% to get saved; so to do that, I'm not going to make another arbitrary rule and just send Jesus to die for them but not the other 94%. So what is the whole purpose of Easter?

Austin  19:47  

From my perspective, I actually just talked about this at my church the other day, I think scripture really clearly teaches a few things. Romans 5:18 I think teaches that everybody has been justified. Colossians 1:19-20 really clearly teaches that all things have been reconciled to God through Christ. I John 2:2 teaches that Jesus has atoned for the sins of the whole world. Jesus says when He's lifted up, He will draw all people to Himself. I think it's pretty inescapable to say that Scripture teaches that all people are justified, all people have been atoned for, all people have been reconciled, and Jesus is going to draw all people to him. 

Now that said, I'm not a universalist, because I think reconciliation can be experienced in different ways by different people. I think God will love all people forever, but some people might just hate Him for it because their hearts have grown cold, crooked, calloused because they spent their whole lives embracing hatred, unforgiveness, you name it. I've been that sort of person. When it comes to the question of the unevangelized and what happens to them, that is well above my pay grade to answer questions like that. What I know is that God will be more merciful than we can ever imagine. When we see the way everything plays out, none of us will be disappointed, and I have complete confidence in that. 

No, I don't at all think that only people who hear the gospel, as we have defined it, in a few short steps and respond to it in this life, as we have defined it, will be saved. If there's anything Scripture teaches us about heaven, it's that it's a place full of surprises. I have no doubt that we’ll be surprised. There's this great little anecdote, someone asked Karl Barth at some point, at some lecture, “Dr. Barth, will I see my loved ones in heaven?” And Dr. Barth says, “Well, not just your loved ones.” I think that speaks to the fact that the kingdom of God will be full of surprises. I think God looks for excuses to let people in and not keep people out. I'm content to kind of leave it there.

Seth  22:15  

This leads me to free will in a Calvinist view. This is one of the reasons one of my relationships didn't work out at Liberty. I went home to meet her family, and I wasn't going to have that argument because I was wrestling with it partially then, wasn't as well formed. I just refused to have a lifetime of that until her father died, about arguing about Calvinism, which I think would have been inescapable. 

In the Calvinist view, the one thing I always asked him is, “What's the whole purpose? If I was already predestined to be saved, why am I even here? Why are we talking about this? Why even witness?” He’s like, “Well, because we're called to,” and I was like, “But you just said it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. I have no choice in this.” I hear that and, and what I'm hearing you say a bit is God's gonna find reasons through Jesus to let people in. I then hear that I can not accept that, so I have choice in this decision, correct?

Austin  23:08  

Absolutely.

Seth  23:10  

That is not the American scriptures that you normally hear preach. How does that work versus the gentleman that you preach with at your church? I have to think that when you preach something on Sunday, he won't agree with it? Because that matters. I mean, what happens through the atonement of Christ matters. How can, on one hand, we say the only these certain people are going to get in? And on the other hand, maybe next week, you say, “Yeah, but you’re choosing to get in there, and He's gonna let you in because you asked if you could come in and of course, He said, ‘Sure. Why not? Come on in.’”

Austin  23:43  

Well, I told you he’s an inconsistent Calvinist, didn't I? Calvinist have answers for stuff like that. You've heard them. I mean, the typical answer would be, obviously a technical term here but a compatibilistic definition of what free will is. That's kind of, I think, mainly from Edwards, but the idea is that we're free so long as we're doing what we want to. So God doesn't act directly on us to make us do things. It's that God through, you know, who knows how many factors, God determines what we will want. If God has determined what we will want, then God can lock things into a certain direction, but we're still free because we're doing what we want. To be free means you're doing what you want. That would be the standard Calvinist definition is, “Yeah, it has been determined, but you're still free, because you're free to do what you want. Yes, God has determined what you want. But, you know, you don't want to peek too far behind the curtain.” I mean, that’s the general idea there.

Seth  24:40  

Well, to just rebut that back, and I said this when I was at Liberty, you can say all that and put me on this Interstate and tell me I'm allowed to freely go on whichever one of these four lanes east through Dallas, but I felt like driving backwards and going west on the same road.

Austin  24:56  

Yeah. You asked specifically about at our church. At our church, people know where he stands and they know where I stand. If he preaches Roman 9, he preaches it like a Calvinist does; and if I preach it, I don't. I think we underestimate people's ability to live with that tension, to understand that these are two traditions that have been present in Christian thought for a really long time. Again, we have been called to a unity that, in my opinion, transcends those differences. How do we do it? Well, we get up there, and we just do it. And then we worship with each other, and then we pray with each other. And it's really not as complicated sometimes.

Seth  25:36  

Then, in your view, what form of salvation do you hold to or atonement theory? Is it penal substitution or is it something although altogether different? 

Austin  25:47  

Scot McKnight is a friend and someone I really respect. I think Scot makes a good argument that, in some sense, some form of substitution is inevitable, and we've probably thrown the baby out with the bathwater a little bit on penal substitution gone way to penal, which I agree with. I don't think there's like a pound of flesh that God has to take out of humanity in order to forgive humanity. I would tend to lean more Christus Victor but with certainly some substitution language. Christ died in our place for our sins according to the Scriptures, right. That's what Paul said. If Paul said it, that's good enough for me. The mechanics of how that works and how the math works is just not something I've ever found particularly interesting or helpful. So I tend to leave it there.

Seth  26:37  

I read a word the other day, and it was a few weeks before Easter, and since then, I've been digging into it. Are you familiar with a concept called theosis? I have to think that you are. I read Gregory MacDonald. He basically was saying that salvation is that when the power of Christ is received, and it's in us and we're changed, that we are becoming glory. He is changing us from something that we were into like Him, like into little ‘Gods.’ I don't quite know how I fit that into anything yet, but I wish that someone would have told me when I was younger that was an option. 

What do you find is the biggest thing lacking as people have these conversations now because, from what I can tell, they get heated. What is the biggest thing lacking when you have people with differing views? It has to be a or b, there’s no middle, there’s no gray. It’s extremely dualistic.

Austin  27:45  

When I wrote the book, there was pushback from some Calvinists. For the most part it was all really good stuff. The pushback I wasn't quite expecting was from the people who were like, “Hey, this is not an A or B thing. There's a C here. Let’s find the middle ground.” You know, again, I understand that God is infinitely beyond me, yada yada yada, but I don't know how you can rationally affirm there's a middle ground here. I don't think Molinism works. I think either God ordained the fall and has selected certain individuals to salvation and passed over others or God hasn't. I think either we have a free will that's not just compatible as free will or we don't. It's incoherent for me logically to affirm that there's a middle ground there. 

I don't think there's a middle ground, like as a position, but I do think that we do have to learn how to worship together, obviously. What’s missing on the Calvinist end? When I did the debate in Chicago, Brian [Zahnd] and I teamed up with a pastor named Daniel Montgomery and a professor named Timothy Jones, I think it was. One of the things they wrote about in their book was that there's a certain kind of mind that tends to be drawn to Calvinism. They actually quote Piper. The big idea is, as you know, it's just that a Calvinist can kind of be a jerk is the short of what they're trying to say as Calvinists, it's not my words, okay, just to be clear, their words. 

I just think, for Calvinist to understand that, you know, there is a way to be a biblically and theologically responsible and smart Christian without being a Calvinist. And actually, you know, I know in our current climate in western Christianity, it has felt like Calvinism is kind of the majority position. You know, in the bigger scope of church history. Calvinism proper is really a remarkably minority position. I just think it would probably be good for our Calvinist friends to remember that they're a pretty small minority and it's fine and God bless them. Again, I will fight for their right to be what they want to be and how a seat at the table, but they are the minority. A little bit of humility would probably serve them well. On the other end, you know, just to realize that whatever, you're an open theist, Armenian, classical theism, to understand that not all Calvinists are just heartless moral cretins who don't love people and don't want to do missions. There's some really remarkable people and some of my best friends are Calvinist. It's not only possible, it's important to charitably do ministry and worship alongside people we disagree with because if the gospel can't do that, it's not credible.

Seth  30:36  

I'm currently reading a book for a later conversation in the year. He basically makes the metaphor that as you and I are different bodies of Christ and as the community comes together, and all the parts make the whole. He basically argues that, “No, so does Pentecostals, so does Calvinists, so does Armenians, that all of these different theologies, as you alluded to earlier, are coming together to make a whole. Fundamentalists have a seat at the table and do some things extremely well, and so do evangelicals, and so do XYZ, fill in the blank.” He is basically trying to say, “Stop yelling at each other.” There's some things they do very poorly, but you won't find anybody do a Samaritan's Purse or go help out a hurricane because that amount of structure and rigor allows that to happen. Its militaristic almost in the precision, but a different form of church that’s loosely based, you can't do that. You can raise a bunch of money and then send it nowhere.

Austin  31:41  

Yeah. Well, one of the things I've noticed is over the last couple of years, where some of the racial issues have really kind of come to the forefront in American culture, I have a funny relationship with The Gospel Coalition; I like to think they just don't know they love me yet. Theologically I disagree with them on a lot of things. But those folks have stuck up and been on the forefront of some of these racial conversations in a way that a lot of people who are not Calvinist have not been. They’ve been brave. They've been at the front, they've been taking shots for other people. And so man, I will work alongside people like that all day long. And when we see people we disagree with doing good work, we ought to really affirm it instead of begrudgingly [say], “Yeah, but they're still Calvinist, and so what does it matter?” You know what? We need to affirm the good and the faithful where we see it.

Seth  32:32  

Are you familiar with a different acronym (for those listening when I say acronym, that's because for predominantly Calvinists, there’s that TULIP acronym or DAISY or ROSES), I saw one the other day that Brad Jersak had shared entitled WHEAT. Have you ever heard of this acronym?

Austin  32:50  

Well, I follow Brad on Twitter, too. So I think I saw him post it, but I didn't look into it close enough.

Seth  32:55  

I think I like it. So basically it's that we're all Wounded and depraved creatures, but God's desire is not to punish us, it's to heal us. Then H is that we are all not merely individual humans, Humanity stands together as a whole, either fallen or broken or being redeemed as a whole. God has never needed to reconcile Himself to us in a penal substitutionary way, but that He will Exhaust every possibility to bring us to reconciliation. That His grace is Absolute, and that the power, that Transformation, is changing you into “theosis”, like a little ‘God.’ I think I like it. I don't actually know what the doctrinal theology is behind it. I just was curious if you're familiar with that acronym at all.

Austin  33:49  

I'm not but from what you just said, I like it too. I would assume that would be at home in a number of traditions. You could be an open theist and affirm that. You could be a classical theist and affirm that. You could be an Armenian and affirm that. So I think that's a pretty broad umbrella. Yeah.

Seth  34:06  

Well, it definitely is broad because I quoted no scripture in there to be fair. So I hear that and I recognize that everyone, if they're willing to be honest about their questions is going to go through a series of, “If I'm not Calvinist anymore then I'm not Christian. Or if I'm not Arminianist anymore, I'm not Christian. Or if I'm not Baptist anymore, I can't be Christian.” How should we, as a church, or how do you as a pastor, counsel people through that doubt and that grief and that experience of loss, because I find that, for many, religion is almost as important as family where it's like taking two tires off the car, you’re just stuck, you can't go forward or backwards, you just fall into despair. So how do you counsel people, how should people engage in that?

Austin  35:00  

That's a great question. I like to think of it in terms of deconstruction and reconstruction. What a lot of us go through when we walk away from any sort of theology or faith that was at the center of our lives, be it Calvinism or something else, a denominational affiliation, you name it, it’s like losing your home, and you just feel homeless. You know what you don't believe, but you don't know what you do believe. A lot of times, you don't feel like you have the space to put it all back together again. It’s a painful [thing], I mean, depression is really the best way to explain it. You get lost and you feel depressed. 

I always take people to the book of Job. You know, Job is someone who, almost more than any other place in the Bible, you see someone doing theology in real time. Job has this picture of God, who God is. He goes through some things that caused him to question that. Other voices come into the conversation in the form of his three or four friends who keep trying to tell him, you know, “It's so obvious what God is doing here and you just need to believe what you've always believed. Praise God. Don't doubt. Get over it, and move on with your life.” 

Job can't do it. Job can't walk away. Job says some terrible things to God, outrageous, blasphemous things. And yet, at the end of Job, God says that Job's friends, who told Job to praise God, don't doubt, and get over it, that they spoke wrongly of God and that God's anger is kindled against them. And then God says that Job, who said all these absurd things about God, has spoken rightly and tells Job, “You better go offer a sacrifice for your friends, so they don't get what's coming.” I think that's just a beautiful way to process what it looks like to faithfully handle your doubts. So what I think it is, is when you’ve got doubts, you bring them to God. If you don't believe in God, you tell God you don't believe in God. You keep the conversation with God going even when you don't have anything nice to say, even when maybe you don't believe there's a God. 

Somewhere in the midst of that struggle, Job for example never got answers, God never told him, “Hey, Ii made this stupid bet with Satan and you’ve lost everything as a result of it.” God never tells him that. God says, “Job, you’re little. Creation is more complex than you could ever imagine.” But Job walks away having encountered the living God. That is the point of it all. When you’ve got doubts, they are an opportunity to encounter the Living God if you’ll lean into Him instead of away from him. That’s been my story and that’s what we teach people here at my church. They’re an opportunity, not an obstacle for faith.

Seth  37:47  

I wholeheartedly agree. My pastor has said many times that unasked questions are entirely more dangerous than just badly answered ones. 

Austin  37:58  

The people who leave faith are not people who have doubts. It's people who have doubts and think they are not allowed to have them. Those are the people who leave faith. I've so rarely seen someone who was honest about their doubts leave faith. It's usually someone who had them, bottle them up because they didn't think they were allowed to, their doubts ate them up from the inside, and they eventually imploded.

Seth  38:18  

Do you think you can do those doubts and stay in your same church or stay in your same lane? Is it fine for someone listening to go, “I don't know that I even want to go to church anymore”? They're obviously relieving themselves of the fellowship.

Austin 38:34  

Yeah. 

Seth  38:36  

I guess my question is, and something I struggled with, as I threw everything apart, and I basically took the the building that I made out of these Legos that was my house, and my faith, and my hope, and wrecked it all and began to rebuild it, I found myself questioning whether or not I was allowed to put bricks back where I wanted to put them, whether or not I was interpreting that right. Whether or not the people that I was reading or listening to were good people to read and listen to. So how do you measure that?

Austin  39:04  

I really like to emphasize a fidelity and a faithfulness to a particular church and not just leaving when it gets tough. I think it was Eugene Peterson, somewhere, someone had asked him how to choose what church to go to, and he said, “The smallest and the closest.” That's how you should choose what church you go to.

Seth 39:25

Be able to walk to it.

Austin 39:26

I think I would add a few amendments to Eugene's advice there. I do think it's important to not just leave when it gets tough; however, I think it's important to be at a church where doubts are given room to breathe, and you know, where the book of Job is a real part of the canon and Jesus hanging on the cross saying, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” That even Jesus knows what it's like to feel forsaken by God. You gotta be at a church that allows you to process those things honestly. If you're not, I think it's fair to start thinking about whether or not you should go somewhere. But I do think it's important that you find somewhere, because the worst thing that you can do is wall yourself away from Christian faith and think that you're going to just huddle up and sort through all these massive existential problems on your own, then once you do, you'll come back to church. That's just not the way faith works. Faith, at its bottom, is communal; if you cut yourself off from the wisdom of the church, good luck sorting through the problem of evil. It’s a foolish thing to do. I understand that people need breaks, I really do. But as soon as possible, I think it's important to be grounded in a community where you can honestly ask and sort through some of those doubts. 

Seth  40:47  

Yeah, I agree. I want to end with something that isn’t in any form or way of confrontational. As we close, what would be something that, if someone's listening to that you'd like to say, here is what you can do to bring something to your faith that is generative, that is fulfilling? That if you walk away and you're questioning Calvinism, if you're not questioning Calvinism, or if that's even the reason that you clicked on the link to listen, here's the one thing that you should take home, take to heart, pray on it? What would that be?

Austin  41:16  

So I didn't mention this in my journey away from Calvinism, so here's the advice, you know, that I gave to myself. That happened to me, and I knew I had to walk away from Calvinism, and I worried that I was walking away from faith period. I didn't know what to do, I didn't know where to start, and I didn't know where to lay what brick or even what sort of foundation I had. You just kind of go back to the basics. For me it was Jesus is God, so let's look at Jesus and see what we learn about God from looking at Jesus. Jesus is the best thing Christianity has going, man. Jesus is beautiful, and Jesus literally transformed the world without lifting a finger because of the moral beauty of His life. If you focus on Jesus, I think you come to the point. 

I'm at the place where, even if Christianity was false and I knew it, I would still rather be wrong about Jesus than right about anything else. That's the settledness of conviction that provides you the stability that you need to know that you're never going to know for sure, you know. We don't have the luxury of not deciding. Not to decide is to decide, you know, a little Kierkegaard there. You have to choose. We're all committed. Given the fact that you can never be sure but you have to commit, what are you going to do? I would say, choose Jesus because Jesus is beautiful. Even if Jesus wasn't, the church is so beautiful that you won't mind it any less.

Seth  42:49  

Amen. Amen to that. I missed it, and it’s my fault. I did not see on your author page that you have another book coming. So what is this new book?

Austin  42:59  

Yeah. It's called Faith in the Shadows. It's a book about my journey through skepticism and doubt as a pastor. I know I'm not allowed to doubt, I'm a pastor, but I do. The book is kind of about my journey with doubt, exploring the nature of doubt and faith, and how they relate to each other. We look at a few specific issues, the problem of evil, science, hell, fundamentalism, materialism, and you know, whether or not faith is worth and really makes sense in the end. That's what the book is about, it comes out on September 11 of this year. 

Seth  43:39  

Fantastic. Well, I'm going to add that to the list, because that is effectively where we were ending this conversation. So if you're willing, I'd love to talk to you about that at a later date. But I'd rather read the book first. So, Austin, thank you for your time and for your honesty. I appreciate it very much.

Austin  43:58  

Absolutely. It was a pleasure to get to talk to you a little bit. Thanks for doing the podcast.

Seth  44:19  

So really, really when you when you think about things, and you think about doubt, and grief, and I think about my upbringing, I appreciate honest pastors. There are many of them that are willing to let you doubt. I have the privilege that I currently worship with one that will allow that to happen without fear of being told that I can't be a Christian. 

If you are struggling with doubt, if you are sitting with things and then you're wondering why you feel like you need to question or you’re wondering if the foundation that you have is even worth reevaluating, if you should just burn it all to the ground, I will say Austin has a new book coming out later this fall. It is titled Faith in the Shadows, and that is what it deals with. It deals with grief and with doubt and the process of working through that. I would encourage you to pre order that and to read that, and I think that could be helpful. I know that I plan to do the same. 

The beautiful music that you heard the day is from artists Landry Cantrell, you can find his music at https://www.landrycantrell.com/. You'll find links to that in the show notes. And you'll find the songs that were featured today on the Can I Say This At Church playlist. Thank you for listening. Thank you so, so much to the Patreon supporters. Follow the show on Facebook and on Twitter. You could find it on facebook.com/CanISayThisAtChurch, on Twitter at https://twitter.com/CISTACPodcast. Talk to you next week. Be blessed.