Prophet of Zod | The Question of What Happens to People Who Never Heard of Jesus & How it Poisons Christian Attitudes @ProphetofZod | Uploaded September 2021 | Updated October 2024, 20 hours ago.
Perhaps the most difficult - arguably impossible - question faced by Christian apologetics is "What happens to people who never heard about Jesus?" This question puts the religion in a pinch between 1) salvation doctrines that are not only clearly part of Christianity but of vital importance to believers and in fact define most of the religion and establish its exclusivity, and 2) the horrifying implications of these doctrines. In this video, I'll discuss the nature of this problem and how apologists work around it - including my personal history and the role it played in my doubts going back to childhood - while using a presentation by Mike Winger as a case study in the kinds of vagaries apologists use to dance around this issue.
NOTE ABOUT APOLOGETICS AND ITS ROLE IN MY JOURNEY: I'm guessing many Christians will see this video and take my attempt to surrender to the Christian experience as an indication that I didn't fully explore my faith and was ignorant of the arguments for Christianity. That would be a comforting way for them to dismiss my story, but it's not accurate. I was VERY heavily invested in the intellectual side of Christianity. In fact I became fairly well known on my college campus and my local Campus Crusade chapter as having an unusually keen apologetic mind. Christian professors would invite me to coffee to bounce ideas off me, and Campus Crusade staff would look to me to write editorials standing up for the faith. At one point, as we were sitting to dinner at a Crusade leadership event, I happened to be surrounded by staff members - and when one of them said they were going to test my faith, the campus director laughed and said his money was on me. I only say this to make it clear that I wasn't some slacker who just ignored my doubts. This part of my story came after being EXTREMELY rigorous at pursuing the intellectual/apologetic side of Christianity. Burying my doubts was not done out of ignorance of apologetics. It was done as a result of the absolute poverty and even absurdity of the case they tried to make And only after doing my due diligence and finding the case lacking did I turn to rigorous Christian service and a "relationship with God" with the thought that my pursuit of apologetics was not the point of my faith and that I had gone about it wrong. The point is I did my best to try EVERY angle to find faith, and it all failed. This may not be the case for you, but it was for me, and that's my honest story. Doubt my sincerity if you'd like, but to do so would be to shore up your faith at the expense of understanding people who had experiences that are different from yours or that - you might later discover - are just further down a path you're already on.
Mike Winger's video - youtube.com/watch?v=geMXJX3Q6sE
Winger's "Full Teaching" - youtu.be/IiyxpE5UBz4
STUFF ABOUT ME AND WHERE TO FIND ME
My Patreon: patreon.com/prophetofzod
My Facebook: facebook.com/Prophet-of-Zod
My Twitter: twitter.com/Prophet_of_Zod
My Email: poz@prophetofzod.com
My mailing address:
PO Box 773024
Eagle River, AK 99577
Website: prophetofzod.com (Still under construction, but you can find a little merch and an incomplete set of links to my back library)
Perhaps the most difficult - arguably impossible - question faced by Christian apologetics is "What happens to people who never heard about Jesus?" This question puts the religion in a pinch between 1) salvation doctrines that are not only clearly part of Christianity but of vital importance to believers and in fact define most of the religion and establish its exclusivity, and 2) the horrifying implications of these doctrines. In this video, I'll discuss the nature of this problem and how apologists work around it - including my personal history and the role it played in my doubts going back to childhood - while using a presentation by Mike Winger as a case study in the kinds of vagaries apologists use to dance around this issue.
NOTE ABOUT APOLOGETICS AND ITS ROLE IN MY JOURNEY: I'm guessing many Christians will see this video and take my attempt to surrender to the Christian experience as an indication that I didn't fully explore my faith and was ignorant of the arguments for Christianity. That would be a comforting way for them to dismiss my story, but it's not accurate. I was VERY heavily invested in the intellectual side of Christianity. In fact I became fairly well known on my college campus and my local Campus Crusade chapter as having an unusually keen apologetic mind. Christian professors would invite me to coffee to bounce ideas off me, and Campus Crusade staff would look to me to write editorials standing up for the faith. At one point, as we were sitting to dinner at a Crusade leadership event, I happened to be surrounded by staff members - and when one of them said they were going to test my faith, the campus director laughed and said his money was on me. I only say this to make it clear that I wasn't some slacker who just ignored my doubts. This part of my story came after being EXTREMELY rigorous at pursuing the intellectual/apologetic side of Christianity. Burying my doubts was not done out of ignorance of apologetics. It was done as a result of the absolute poverty and even absurdity of the case they tried to make And only after doing my due diligence and finding the case lacking did I turn to rigorous Christian service and a "relationship with God" with the thought that my pursuit of apologetics was not the point of my faith and that I had gone about it wrong. The point is I did my best to try EVERY angle to find faith, and it all failed. This may not be the case for you, but it was for me, and that's my honest story. Doubt my sincerity if you'd like, but to do so would be to shore up your faith at the expense of understanding people who had experiences that are different from yours or that - you might later discover - are just further down a path you're already on.
Mike Winger's video - youtube.com/watch?v=geMXJX3Q6sE
Winger's "Full Teaching" - youtu.be/IiyxpE5UBz4
STUFF ABOUT ME AND WHERE TO FIND ME
My Patreon: patreon.com/prophetofzod
My Facebook: facebook.com/Prophet-of-Zod
My Twitter: twitter.com/Prophet_of_Zod
My Email: poz@prophetofzod.com
My mailing address:
PO Box 773024
Eagle River, AK 99577
Website: prophetofzod.com (Still under construction, but you can find a little merch and an incomplete set of links to my back library)
