How Celebrity Church Culture's Bad Ideas Become Famous

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Recently, musician Tiffany Arbuckle Lee announced in a social media post that she has deconstructed at least a part of her faith. Lee sold a half-million records as a Christian singer. In the video, she shared her doubts on the reliability of Scripture. In an earlier statement, she took an “affirming” stance on LGBT issues. Lee is the latest in a growing list of Christian celebrities to deconstruct aspects of their Christian faith, including Kevin Max of DC Talk, Derek Webb of Caedmon’s Call, and Joshua Harris of I Kissed Dating Goodbye. 

Lee’s doubts about the Bible could have been corrected in a decent Sunday morning youth group class. Questioning the reliability of the Bible, Lee said she never knew that Jesus and Paul never “hung out,” or that the Apostle was reporting events that had happened decades before he wrote. Of course, neither of these facts are a secret.  

While it’s possible that a very young Paul could have met Jesus, there’s no record of that in the Bible or Church history. What we do know is that Jesus met Paul on the Road to Damascus, not long after the Resurrection. And that Paul met with Peter and James, both of whom had spent years with Jesus. And that Paul was present with all the leaders of the Church at the Council of Jerusalem. In other words, even if the idea of God’s Spirit guiding Paul is dismissed as irrelevant, Paul was closely connected with people who knew Christ well. 

Lee also claimed that the Bible was written by “mostly white dudes.” However, the only books of the Bible written by a westerner are Luke and Acts, both written by the physician Luke. “White people” barely show up in Scripture and are often the villains. The Philistines of the Old Testament may have come from the Aegean Sea region and the Romans from Italy. The vast majority of the Bible’s authors and cultural context came from what is now known as the Middle East. 

Lee was also troubled that Moses did not witness what he wrote about in the Torah, which is only partly true. He is a primary character of the events described in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Only Genesis records events before his life, and it is remarkable how accurate his account is. As Kenneth Kitchen argued in his classic work On the Reliability of the Old Testament, the numerous details of the Bible’s description of ancient life point to a deep knowledge of the times. And, of course, if witnessing the actual events is a requirement of trust, we should dismiss every work of modern history and embrace the Gospels. That’s if we don’t accept the first premise that an all-powerful God who created everything wanted to give us a reliable historical record. 

Lee also questioned why other writings were not made part of the Bible, like the Gnostic book of Thomas. This is a topic often repeated by online skeptics and thoroughly refuted by apologists like Wes Huff, Gavin Ortlund, and The Colson Center’s “What Would You Say?” 

There’s a real danger in letting baby Christians grow up to be pop stars. Mimicking the wider culture of celebrity-ism, a select group of talented believers are put on a pedestal without checking if they know the basics and have the required character for fame and fortune. This is not an indictment of Christian celebrities as much as it is the way the Church disciples its people.

How many young people are sideswiped by the shallow claims of former Christian celebrities, college professors, and online skeptics parroting challenges to the Christian worldview that have been thoroughly addressed and answered for decades? It’s a shame when a Christian is convinced that some very answerable claim about the faith is unanswerable simply because they were never exposed to the questions or answers that are there. Not to mention, how many people go through decades of church life without knowing even the basics of the Bible?  

The call for the Church to go deeper has been clear for some time. I’m encouraged by the dozens of churches that offer Colson Fellows training as cohorts, and those that have gotten serious about challenging young people to ask hard questions about faith and the world. The truth is big enough for our questions.

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John Stonestreet is President of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, and radio host of BreakPoint, a daily national radio program providing thought-provoking commentaries on current events and life issues from a biblical worldview. John holds degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (IL) and Bryan College (TN), and is the co-author of Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview.

The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of CrosswalkHeadlines.

BreakPoint is a program of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. BreakPoint commentaries offer incisive content people can't find anywhere else; content that cuts through the fog of relativism and the news cycle with truth and compassion. Founded by Chuck Colson (1931 – 2012) in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today's news and trends. Today, you can get it in written and a variety of audio formats: on the web, the radio, or your favorite podcast app on the go.