Responding to the Latest Christian Leader to Renounce His Faith by Michael L. Brown for Ask Dr Brown
As reported by Josh Shepherd on the Roys Report, “Brady ‘Phanatik’ Goodwin, founding member of Grammy-nominated Christian hip-hop group, The Cross Movement, and in recent years an apologetics teacher, stated Monday in a video posted online that he has renounced his Christian faith.”
As he stated in his Facebook video, “I sent a letter to my church withdrawing my membership and saying that I am denouncing the Christian faith that I have believed, professed, proclaimed, and defended for the last 30 years of my life.”
In Goodwin’s video, which is delivered with candor and pain and graciousness, he explains how his doubts began to develop when studying at Lancaster Bible College, only to deepen in 2014 when he began studying at Westminster Theological Seminary.
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As Shepherd writes, “Specifically, he said learning how scholars use preexisting ‘theological commitments’ to arrive at translation and interpretation of the biblical text raised questions for him.
“He compared Christian theology to a Rubik’s cube. ‘I began to look at the faith and say, ‘Man you could turn this Rubik’s cube any particular way and end up with a different understanding.’ And who can say that understanding is right or that understanding is wrong?’ asked Goodwin.”
Personally, I was unfamiliar with Goodwin and his work until reading this announcement. But since then, I’ve heard good things about him, and I have no reason not to take him at his word when he explains his reasons for leaving his faith, and it’s clear from his video that he is not gloating or mocking.
It’s also clear he doesn’t want to hurt the faith of others. And so, at least at this point in time, he is not aggressively attacking what he once believed.
Hopefully, this is not the last chapter in his faith journey, and he would not be the first leader to fall away and then, with God’s help and true repentance, turn back to the Lord.
But what about the points he makes in his video? What about the feeling that we can basically make the Bible say whatever we want it to say? Or that it’s our prior theological commitments that determine how we understand Scripture?
Put another way, is there no objective truth when it comes to God and the Bible? Does it come down to, “You have your truth and I have my truth, but there is no absolute truth?”
Speaking candidly, I know all too well what it is to struggle with the faith.
That’s because as a Jewish believer in Jesus, from my first moments in the faith, I was challenged over my beliefs. As my dad said to me shortly after my life was transformed in late 1971, “Michael, I’m glad you’re off drugs. But we’re Jews. We don’t believe this.”
That led to immediate, intensive interaction with learned rabbis (which has continued for 50 years) along with serious academic study, culminating with a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from New York University.
And in all my college and graduate studies, not one of my professors was a Bible-believing Christian. Some were even hostile to the faith, taking every opportunity to ridicule conservative Bible beliefs.
But the whole reason I earned the degrees that I did (all of which were in ancient languages) was so that I could read the original biblical text in its original cultural and linguistic context, not having to rely on other dictionaries or commentaries to understand what I was reading (although, to be sure, there can be great value in many of those dictionaries, commentaries, and other books).
