Russell Moore on "When Someone You Admire Abandons the Faith"

Moore’s article is excellent. Here are a few highlights. You can read the entire article here.

"I have to remind myself to be compassionate. In almost every case like this I’ve seen, the person is usually going through an enormous amount of pain. In some cases, that pain is a personal crisis that led them to a ‘dark night of the soul,’ from which he or she can’t seem to find the way back. In some of the cases I’ve seen it’s someone who was shredded by religious people or institutions. Maybe it’s someone who has seen, as many of us have, those who can expound on theology at length but seem to be filled with hatred or rivalry or envy or those things the Bible calls “the works of the flesh.” Sometimes I’ve seen situations where people are devastated by the hiddenness of God in some pain or suffering they or someone they love is enduring and they don’t know how to cope.”

“The cliché ‘There but for the grace of God go I’ can sometimes mean the modern Christian equivalent of ‘Thank you Lord that I am not like this publican’ (Lk. 18:9-14). But the wording is literally true. If you find yourself reassuring yourself by recounting your strengths, compared to someone who is leaving the church, you’re not understanding the very mystery by which God keeps you—not by your power but by your weakness. These stories ought to prompt us to cry out, ‘Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it; prone to leave the God I love; Here’s my heart, Lord, take and seal it, seal it for thy court’s above.’”

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