Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:07 Welcome to that makes total sense. A podcast dedicated to exploring God's generosity and justice. I'm Alexis resetting the Christian, aiming to ask good questions and encouraging you to do the same. Every one of us is wired by God to live out generosity and justice, but the how sometimes alludes us that makes total sense is a way for us to get together. Posture ourselves as learners and challenge one another to practice generosity and justice in a tangible way. Every day. I am so thankful to be sitting across from Mary Jo sharp today. Hi, Mary Jo. Hi, how are you doing good. Although I have to admit, I thought that we were in the same time zone. I thought we were in the same city. I was thinking, wow, this will be fun. Maybe after COVID we can get a cup of coffee. No, we can not get a cup of coffee because even though I'm going to let Mary Jo introduce herself, but even though she does teach at Houston Baptist, she is on the other side of the country right now.
Speaker 0 00:01:10 So Mary Jo, tell us a little bit about, um, that teaching and where you are. Yeah, so I am an assistant professor of apologetics at Houston Baptist university. And I've been there for, this is my ninth year teaching. Wow. I helped to start the apologetics program at the university. And as of last year, my husband and I moved back to my hometown of Portland, Oregon to do a church revitalization. That is so exciting. And I, you know, talked about how I thought Mary Beth was a Houstonian, but I actually came across her first from her book called why I still believe, and I want to put the subtitle in here because I think that it is, it is just provocative, but not without cause. Right. So why I still believe a former atheists reckoning with the bad reputation Christians give a good God. Is that right?
Speaker 0 00:02:10 Yeah. Wait, so I want to talk about that. But first I was telling Mary Jo before we started recording, I really think that her, um, like social location is so interesting and important to her story. So she mentioned that you were in Portland, but then the bulk of this book takes place when you were living in Oklahoma and Texas, which is my stomping grounds. And so I just really thought, Oh my goodness. In some ways, this could be my story. So can you tell us about just the book as a whole, and then we'll get into some of the really interesting parts about your story? Yeah. So this book, by the way, with a book, I did not want to write, I can see that it gets personal.
Speaker 1 00:03:00 And, um, as an apologist, it was much happier for me to just argue arguments and let viewers or viewers readers, or even listeners do whatever they wanted to do with it. Uh, so it was a book I didn't want to write because it's to take you into the mind of the apologists. Like what, what prompted me to search out this field, where I'm trying to, uh, reason the faith and trying to figure out what I believe, what prompted me to do that. And a lot of that goes back to my experiences in the church. Um, having not grown up in church, uh, I have childhood atheism in my background and I grew up in a part of the country that is very post-Christian in its feel very, um, relativistic post-modern feeling. And so, um, I was saved in a Southern evangelical church, uh, in the Bible belt in Oklahoma.
Speaker 1 00:03:55 And, uh, the book is about me being slammed into that culture shift and a lot of the problems that I experienced as I perceived that people were trying to make me a Southern evangelical woman instead of a follower of Christ. And there was a lot of hypocrisy that I dealt with along the way. So if I were going to say like, what is this book really about? It's about me dealing with the problem of hypocrisy in the church and then why, why I've come around to saying, yeah, I still believe in God. I didn't walk away. And, uh, so that, that's like the, just what are we doing with this book? We're really trying to show like, why didn't I deconvert and go back to my childhood atheism.
Speaker 0 00:04:33 Right. Um, so first I feel like we should probably back up a step because I'm thinking about, um, there was a point in my life on a different point in my journey where I would say, okay, apologetics, apologetics. I'm almost there. I think I could put my finger on it. So can you define that field for us? Um, and what you do when you say you even helped start the apologetics program, tell us what that is in relationship to faith in Christianity. And then let's dive in a little bit more.
Speaker 1 00:05:02 Yeah, thank you for asking that. That's um, so a Pala Ghia is a Greek word that we just rip out of the Greek and we use it in the English language. We say apology, and you can find it in first, Peter three 15 in which Peter is encouraging a group of persecuted Christians to always be prepared to make a defense, there's your word, apologetic or apology, um, to make a defense of the reason of their hope, but to do so with gentleness and respect. So to anyone who asks of them. So he's telling them to make this defense, that the reason of their hope, and that is the, you know, making the case for why do you believe in Jesus Christ as you know, died for our sins and risen from the dead. So that's where this field comes from now. The way we do it in modern times is that we make a case for belief in God. These are the reasons why I think God is real and why I believe in him. But we also in apologetics field of study, we're going to answer objections to belief in God. So as people say, you know, how can God be good when there's evil in the world? Things like that. So it also answers those objections.
Speaker 0 00:06:07 Yeah. So thank you for that. I just want to kind of make sure we're kind of on the same page when we're, um, when we're talking about this, because this is such a big part of your life now. Um, but take us back to when you were in Portland before, when it was your hometown, because I mentioned to you when, before we started recording that I grew up in Oklahoma. I grew up in the buckle of the Bible belt, as we used to say. And so the, I have to admit reading your story. The parts in Oklahoma rang ridiculously true for me, but the parts in Portland felt like a foreign world. Um, because when you even just now introducing yourself, this idea of childhood atheism, I have to say that struck me because in Bible belt America, I was trying to figure out how to word this.
Speaker 0 00:07:05 And I would say, acknowledgement of God is the norm in Bible belt America. I think maybe, maybe you would agree with that. But I would also specifically say growing up, because I didn't want to say Christianity is the Norman Bible belt America, because I think that gets sticky, honest to goodness I do. But I feel like acknowledgement of Jesus is the norm in Bible belt America. So whether people are church going or not, whether their culture reflects a true faith in God or not acknowledgement of Jesus and even Jesus as God in that central part of the country is very normal. Um, so taking myself out of that context and trying to put myself in a context where as a child that would not have been normal is very bizarre to me. You know, like where, where like singing, Jesus loves me in the car. Isn't like a normal thing. Um, so, and I'm in Texas. A lot of my listeners are in Texas and they may have a similar experience. So take us back to Portland and this, um, atheism that you grew up in.
Speaker 1 00:08:15 Yeah. Um, so my parents left the church. They were, they were raised in church they're Midwesterners and they moved out. They moved out to Portland because my dad was a brewmaster for Henry Winehart private reserves. So they were coming out in 1976 with a new label. And my dad was the one they wanted as assistant brewmaster. Wow. So that's how we, we are so Portland, why we were there. My dad was doing craft brewery right now. Yes, yes. Um, so we, um, my dad and mom had left the church when I was very young, um, when we got out to the Northwest. And so I don't, I don't have really any memories church. If you asked my brother and sister, they might have some, but what I did get instead, so they left the church. There's some hurt there. Um, my dad, I think there may have been some disbelief there, but instead what I, what I got in my life was that I had a father who was very interested in nature.
Speaker 1 00:09:13 He was very scientific minded, he's chemical engineer, and he loved Carl Sagan, who is a science popularizer, who's also atheist. And he was like reading everything, Carl Sagan. And we watched so much, um, so many of the science shows. And so my, and they were both, um, both my parents were both, um, artistic and loved music and the opera and museums. So like my childhood was rich in culture, but no Christian culture. Right. Uh, you might argue, well, it was influenced by a culture in America that was based in a Judeo-Christian ethic. And I would agree with that, but generally speaking, I wouldn't, I didn't have near what you're talking about. The Bible belt where people actually, you know, talked about Jesus, or at least recognize that the church was something that people did. It was part of their lives. And even if they didn't go, I just didn't have that. Um, I spent my weekends camping up and down the Pacific Northwest. I spent my Sunday nights watching whatever operas or PBS or nature shows happened to be on my mom sent me, she was a huge supporter of labor unions. She sent me to labor union camp as a teenager to learn how to mediate between corporations and workers.
Speaker 0 00:10:32 So when I say that, that's awesome. Very, very different, Justin,
Speaker 1 00:10:39 You know, if you had asked me, Mary Jo, are you saved? So like you were a Christian and you said, Mary Jo, are you saved? I would have said, honestly, say from what I wouldn't have known what you have even known that language. Right. So the only, the only Christianity that I really knew, um, where I had a few friends that were Christians, but in the Northwest, we just religions, very private and people just don't talk about it with, you know, openly, like, like I felt like they did in the South all the time. And then, um, the other thing I saw was what I said. I mean, Christianity was what I saw in the movies and on TV. And quite honestly, a lot of my Christianity came from horror.
Speaker 0 00:11:15 Oh, wow. You know, like the extra stuff. Yeah. For sure. Now, now it's making sense. Yeah. So I can put all of that in the book and you just have
Speaker 1 00:11:26 Choose what you wanna play, but there's, that's kind of the background is Christianity seemed to me to be something that people did when they needed it. It seemed to be family related or background related, but I didn't need it. I didn't know what it was for. Um, I had one boyfriend that dragged me off the church and I slept through all of the services. I mean, I was just, I had blood sugar problems I didn't know about, but, but, uh, so that's kind of my upbringing. I, you know, I learned to wonder at the universe, I learned to appreciate the arts and what humans could do through that. I learned that there was great beauty and good in the world, but I did not have a Christian foundation for that.
Speaker 0 00:12:03 Right. Okay. So this is like, I really want, we will come back to that because your, your chapter on beauty was like, it slayed me. I was, I was over, I was, I was completely done. So, but I don't want to jump too far ahead. So what prompted your move to Oklahoma? Because this is, I mean, I say this in the kindest way, family in Oklahoma. I love you so much, but it's like, this is not, it's kind of like Oklahoma, what, like, what's, what's there, right. For people who are, especially not in that part of the country, it's like, I don't even know, like, it's, there's not any big cities. There's not any, you know, like, so what prompted you to move there? And then I guess if you can wrap in your salvation experience and the culture shock, I'm assuming was present in favor. So, so what prompted that? And then what was it like when you got there?
Speaker 1 00:12:59 Yeah. Okay. So in high school, in my later years, I started to understand, sorry, my voice is breaking up a little bit. In my later years, I started to understand that, um, like I had questions about why I believed in, you know, things like good and evil and what was all this amazing music I was making? What was that for? Well, I had a high school band director who was a Christian who hadn't shared his faith with anybody and he was burdened for me. So he was praying a lot about me. And, um, you know, as a public school teacher in this part of the country, he was terrified of sharing his faith. He felt like he would lose his job. So he took a risk with me my senior year. And so when you go off to college, you're going to have hard questions.
Speaker 1 00:13:47 And he said, I hope you'll turn to this. And he gave me a Bible, uh, my senior year of high school as like a going away gift. Wow. So, um, apparently I haven't even forgotten this part. He reminded me that he prayed with me. Wow. And I did not, I didn't have like a favorable reaction. He actually thought I was going to turn them into the principal, but I wasn't, I wasn't mean, but anyways, so I, this man I really respected because I was going to go off to college to get a music education degree so that I could teach students to love music, the way he taught us to love music. And that was my plan. So, um, he gives me that Bible. He hits me at the time when I'm thinking and wondering, is this all there is in the world, you know, I live and die and that's it.
Speaker 1 00:14:30 And ultimately my life has no real significance that lasts beyond my relative experience in this world. Um, I wouldn't have framed it that well, but I was thinking these things. So he hit me at that time. And I started reading that Bible. Uh, so he has a friend at the university of Oregon who is the head of the band program. He used to come out and train us. Um, or like he would work with our high school band on our music that gentlemen moved to the university of Oklahoma. Wow. Create their music ed program, like not to create it, but to develop it further and make it more of a national, um, program that had arms across the United States. So he recruited me to go to the university of Oklahoma and I wanted to teach like him. I wanted to teach like my band director. So I followed him because he was no longer at the university of Oregon. And I get to Oklahoma. My first reaction is, Oh my gosh, where are the mountains and trees? Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:15:26 Okay. I'll stop you there because my husband and I, my husband's from Colorado. So I grew up in Southern Oklahoma, but we actually met at the university of Oklahoma. So I did my undergrad and my master's work there. And my husband did his masters and his PhD there. And so he came in, I was just telling my kids this story the other day. So I transferred to OU, even though I'd grown up in Oklahoma, I went to Texas for a couple of years. And so I transferred my junior year, which was my husband's first year of his master's. And he had grown up in Oklahoma. Um, he went to, did his undergrad at Colorado. I'm sorry. Did his undergrad in Colorado. And he is a geologist whose mantra about his job is a bad day in the field is better than a good day in the office. And so when he came to Oklahoma, he had the exact same reaction, which was where like, where's the nature. Where's the, where are the, where are the rocks? Where the mountains, where the yes. And so you're not alone. I didn't know any different. So I just thought there are mountains. He's like, no, no, our buckles in the Southeast. Like, I'm so sorry, but that doesn't count. So anyway, I just wanted to say, you're not alone. You're not alone, Oklahoma. Your first reaction is, Oh dear.
Speaker 1 00:16:42 Yeah. By the way, four, your has been, there are some really cool geological structures in the Arbuckle mountains.
Speaker 0 00:16:48 Yes. And he has studied some of those. And as you get a little further down, like close to Arkansas, he's he did some of his fields. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was like, but where are the mountains?
Speaker 1 00:16:59 That was my first, I mean, uh, the university itself has an endowment, I believe for its grounds. So it's really beautiful. It's beautiful. Yeah. You know, the West side of Oklahoma, you can see that the whole dust bowl, grapes of wrath going on there, how that happened. Yeah. Anyway, so yeah, I get out to Oklahoma and that was, I was very nervous cause we came out I 40, which it's a long path of nothingness, like desert. And I shouldn't say that there's people that live there and they're probably like, that's just not nice, but it's just so flat compared to growing very flat. Um, so I get there and um, yeah, the, you know, first of all, there are a lot of things I noticed. Um, one was that as I got more comfortable with going to church and talking a little bit, I started going to church on my own for the first time to say like, Hey, I, this Bible is starting to ring to me.
Speaker 1 00:17:50 Maybe I need to go check some more things out. Like it seemed like God exists. And I had kind of come around to that point. So I wanted to go check it out. I started checking out university, um, churches in the area. And I noticed that people in Oklahoma were a whole lot more comfortable about talking about Jesus in particular. And everybody seemed to be either at church, their dad was a preacher or they know somebody who was a preacher or something like that. I mean, it was just really different. I will also say for, um, just as part of the culture shock, I couldn't find all the mom and pop coffee shops that I was used to.
Speaker 1 00:18:29 Where are they? And Starbucks is not a mom and pop shop and it didn't Starbucks took a minute to get to Oklahoma. I'm just going to tell you it's, it's a hot minute because it was not there when I got there anyway. So, um, yeah, it was very much just, uh, it was sort of a, it was also a slower lifestyle than I was used to a little slower pace. The people talked more slowly and, and there's nothing wrong with that. My husband does that. Uh, in fact, they'll say like I talk too fast. It took me a while in speaking to, you know, calm myself down and not speak so quickly. But lots of things, just, just very different. Um, it felt a little time worked backwards from where I came. And even when I look at what my husband was wearing at the same time, like, I'll look at his 1990 photos and my 1990 photos.
Speaker 1 00:19:17 And I look a little more, um, you know, like the punk rock and stuff and the disaffected youth in Nirvana. And he looks a little more, um, 1980s, cool, like polo shirts with feathered hair. And I was like in the nineties, what's going on here, but he has to now he's from a teeny tiny town. He's from Frederick, Oklahoma. Okay. He's from a very small town and I'm from Portland. So I teased for anybody. I don't know that your listeners would know this, but green acres, if you know, the old are not quite the big city, Eva Gabor, I'm more of the disaffected Nirvana grunge got banned person nine at this tiny little town guy, you know, with a popped collar and feathered hair. And then I love it. Two worlds, clay. I don't know that I really explained the culture shock, but there you go. There's so much some of the more superficial
Speaker 0 00:20:17 Important, um, you know, as part of the reason I bring that up, I think that's important because, um, you know, like I said, I grew up where that was the culture is people just talked about Jesus. I didn't know that, you know, things, things just feel a certain way from, from where you're from. And you just think that that's normal. And when you go to the next place, then it is striking. Um, so when you started kind of going to church on your own, when did, I mean, I'm want to ask you specifically about your salvation experience, but when, when did it, like, when did even the, the language start to become more familiar to you? Because there is kind of, I mean, if we're talking about the, the aspect of Christianity that can be hypocritical, there is included in that I think this, this kind of accusation of like, Christianese right, where it's like, you're talking a different language and you alluded to that before. Like if someone asked you where you saved, would you even have known what that meant? So when did you start to become even more familiar with, I would say maybe Bible belt, Christian culture, but that, but the culture where you would be able to recognize, you know, just even the terms or, or just becoming familiar that this was something that people did they just talk about Jesus or they talk about church or their dad's a pastor and that's very, very common. Um, what about that, that led up to your salvation
Speaker 1 00:21:49 Experience? Yeah. That well, so I'm going to church on my own freshmen in college and I'm the anti statistic. I'm actually, I don't know if that's a real word, but, um, so I'm reading, I've been reading in the Bible a lot. So that's, that's where I'm starting to get the language of Christianity is from what I'm reading in the Bible. Um, I also met my backslidden Christian husband in my freshman year. And, uh, so he's really like, wow, this is so different when he met me, cause I was a spiky haired, no makeup wearing Portlander and he just, just was taken with me cause I wasn't Southern. So, um, he was the one that as we got together and as we became serious and became engaged in my book, even alludes to the fact that I had a baby went while I was still in college while we were still very young, um, she was the one that said, Oh, I need, I'm serious about this.
Speaker 1 00:22:47 I'm serious about being a family man. And I need to take her to church. Wow. So that was, that was sort of like solidifying that I was going to go to church. So I had been doing it on my own, but not real, formally, not real committed. And then my, when I met my husband and we got engaged and this all happened pretty fast, uh, he was the one that said, no, I need to take her to church. And that was, it was at that church, uh, that, which we were invited to by his ex-girlfriend awesome. She's great. But I just, I thought it was crazy. I gotta throw that in there. And um, they, yeah, that was where I actually heard somebody present the gospel and just a very clear, like, this is why you need a savior. And I have been studying on my own for a while.
Speaker 1 00:23:36 And so that had been ringing true to me, but I hadn't heard it put into a way that I could understand it. So, um, that pastor actually came out to our apartment. Talk to me, you know, about, he did like the evangelism explosion questions. So for anybody who is trained in that, he's, you know, if you died and I would you go to heaven and I was very logical and matter of fact, no, I would not. Um, if I were standing before God, I would say, yeah, you shouldn't let me into heaven because I haven't trusted your son from, you know, for my salvation. And he was like,
Speaker 0 00:24:05 <inaudible> textbook. I feel like I'm a good person. Right? Absolutely. Yeah. That was like, no, no,
Speaker 1 00:24:17 I see it in there is that I need to trust Jesus. And if I don't trust Jesus, then I don't have salvation in him. So like, that was the moment at which I became a believer. It wasn't very emotional. Um, my husband was emotional because he had realized how backslidden he'd become. And uh, so now he was convicted, but I was more like, yep, I'm ready to do this now.
Speaker 0 00:24:39 Nice. But don't you think that, that again, I just keep thinking about the culture because in Northwest Pacific Northwest culture and then Bible belt culture, it's like, what about that? You know, I mean, this is totally a question for your husband, but it's like, what about that is like, okay, I need to be a family man. And that equals in some way, raising my family in a church where you're going. I mean, I'm thinking I'm putting words in your mouth, but it's like, my parents were family people and we were raised going camping and listening to opera. And you know, it's like, there's not, you know, there, there is something about that cultural experience in, um, in the middle part of the country that says when, when you have a family, this is what you do. You go to church, even you, you alluded to it when you said you're the anti statistic of going to college and looking for faith.
Speaker 0 00:25:30 One of the things that I grew up hearing and understanding was that a lot of people lost their faith when they went to college, but they kind of get it back once they get married and have kids, right? Like they, you know, because they just realize exactly what, what your husband had said that they would need to raise their kids and in church. So w when, I mean, I don't know, are you comfortable telling the story of how you open the book with you going ready to profess your faith at church and what happened? Because if we're talking about the hypocrisy, um, I mean, it's so hard. I don't want to go into this and I know you don't either with just like, let's just spill the beans. Let's just talk about this as if it's nothing, because it's, it's, it's not, but I think it's important for us to, for us to talk about that. So tell the story of when you, when you went to church ready and excited to share your profession of faith with the congregation and what happened that morning. Yeah. Yeah. No, I, I, I appreciate
Speaker 1 00:26:44 Your sensitivity to the fact that we're not just church batch bashing, that there is an end to this. Um, and, and as we talk, we may get to that point where you see that I was, I felt like I brought a lot of negativity with me into the church. Um, but that first day, so yes, I'm this Pacific Northwest Sterner. I'm a poor college student. I'm a young married, and I have a baby, uh, lots of stress, lots of worry about what people think of me. And, um, so back home, what do people think of me? Because here I am about to go into a Southern Baptist church and accept Jesus. And I didn't know if they'd think I was brainwashed by the Bible bell or what they would think. And then I didn't know what this new culture would think of me, this Southern evangelical culture, because here I am coming in as this young mother and still in college.
Speaker 1 00:27:29 So that first day I'm in, I'm an emotional mess. So I tend to be overcompensate. I'm an introvert, but when I'm nervous, I become this like overcompensating extrovert. And as I'm walking up to the sanctuary door with my husband, the pastor's wife is standing there, greeting people and she's smiling and I'm expecting something like, Hey, I heard you got saved. I'm so excited for you. That's a big commitment, you know, like, yay. And then as you approach her, her smile drops and she gives me the once-over. So for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, that's a Southern thing. And it's, it's just checking out my outfit. Um, and as we approach her the first words out of her mile for, Oh, honey, we need to find you better clothing. Right? That's the very first thing. I had two dresses in my closet by that point.
Speaker 1 00:28:27 And I chose, I, I passed it by my husband, so which one is appropriate for church. And, you know, he was like, you look great. This is awesome. And the first thing that I get after I become a new believer and I'm about to go walk the aisle, right? Cause that's what you do in evangelical churches. You walk up the middle of the church and you go to the pastor and profess your belief in God before they turn you around before everybody, and welcome you as a new believer. And I've been told I'm inappropriately dressed. So that's very confusing to a person who's looking for acceptance and is excited about their new found faith in God. Um, and it seems to be focused on the wrong thing. So, um, as a new believer, I didn't know how to process that. I didn't know how to put words to it. It was just a little bit confused, angry, and embarrassed. Uh, now that I'm older, I just know it was very wrong. It was very wrong to do that to a new believer in a different culture. Right.
Speaker 0 00:29:20 Right. I mean, I do feel like I don't want to minimize your overall experience, but one of the things that I really felt like I gleaned from your book, and I think it has to do with you not growing up in this church culture is that I don't want to say that my, how to phrase this. I don't want to say that you experienced less shame because I don't want to, I don't want to minimize the actions that they did that hurt because they were, those actions were not okay. But having grown up, similarly, at least in this culture, I felt like there was something in you that isn't in. A lot of people that grow up in that culture that, that immediately knew this was not okay. And I, and I kind of want to point that out because I feel like, and this isn't the fault of someone or whatever. Like I said, I want to be super sensitive, but also, so I'll talk about my personal experience and just say, when this is all, you know, it's, it's all, you know, and, and there's an, and, and you just kind of take that. Right. And so there was a little bit of that with Roger, right? Where, so tell us about your response kind of not versus necessarily, but in comparison to his response after that interaction with the pastor's wife that morning.
Speaker 1 00:30:51 Yeah. His, so my response is, uh, like I got hit like a ton of bricks. I was not expecting that his response is, Oh, okay. We'll take care of it. Thank you. So like, he just wanted to placate it and move, move along. And we, I mean, when I was writing the book, I asked him, I was like, did you really say that? He's like, yeah, that's really what I said, like, okay, I'll take care of it. And I said, wow. So he just went, okay, whatever, this is the way things are in the church. Um, I immediately felt a sense of this is not right. And that's based on me reading through the new Testament and continuing my own education on my own and versus what I was seeing when I first came into a church.
Speaker 0 00:31:35 Right. So it just, it that's what was another thing that was so awesome to me about your book. And so striking was that you immediately recognized the end congruence. You immediately recognized it, but that didn't come from a specific other Christian upbringing that came from you just said, reading the new Testament.
Speaker 1 00:31:54 Yeah. There's no, like there's no condemnation in Christ. Right. Paul and, uh, you know, and the first thing I get is condemnation and judgment.
Speaker 0 00:32:03 Can you unpack that just a little bit more? Like, can you, can you just sit, sit, sit there for a minute?
Speaker 1 00:32:09 Yeah. Well, that's one of the things that was very attractive to me about Christianity. It was, um, was the teachings of Paul was Jesus's teachings. You know, about how the world's going to know that we are his followers by the great love that we have for one another. And you got Jesus praying in the garden of gifts, femini, that we would be one so that the world would know he's God's son. Like this is so important in Christianity that God himself praying in the garden, God incarnate is saying, please let them be one so that they will testify to the world that I am the son of God, right? That's no, that's nothing to sneeze at. It's not something to pass by lightly or to say, well, that's not how I was raised. Right. This is something that's really important. And to me, it was, it was vital.
Speaker 1 00:33:00 I expected to find people in the church who were committed to that lifestyle, but they might fail in it, but that they would recognize their failure and be repentant and be the kind of people who are constantly striving for unity, constantly striving for that love of one another. But they were the ones that would be patient slow to anger, um, that they would really feel convicted if they were gossips or slanderers. And that they would be the kind of people that come to each other and say, I can't live like this. Like, I, I can't live like this and say that I followed Jesus and over and over, it wasn't just in the beginning. It was just constant. As we got into ministry, it got hyphened. Right. I would see so many times of pastors or church leaders or church members who, um, for them self-preservation of, you know, their position or their power or whatever it was, was so much more important than the teachings of the apostles or of Jesus himself.
Speaker 1 00:33:57 And, you know, I was like, wow, what that did to me. And I'll sort of wrap it up here, what that did to me over the first decade. Actually it was before the first decade of my Christianity was I started to think these people don't really believe this. They are not conforming their lives to it. Uh, they are doubling down in their vices. These are patterns of behaviors. This is a social club. Um, it is not, I was not seeing in my own experience now. I'm not talking to the whole of Chris and Dan or everyone's experience. But in my experience, I was not seeing that this was real to them and that they took it so seriously as to conform their lives to it.
Speaker 0 00:34:38 I just, I am just like, so I'm just like a namerd with, with that, because, um, it just, it's, it's this Ephesians three prayer, like every day, like God, route me and ground me in your love. Right. And it's just like, I feel like I can see those roots in your life where instead of just saying, well, I guess this is the way it is. It was like, no, like there was a, there was a deep recognition that following Jesus did not jive with what you were experiencing, um, in this culture of Christianity that you were experiencing. And I think it's just, I just, I just think it's really amazing that you pursued that, but I don't want to make it sound so easy because, because it's not like, Oh, that was it. She knew it was, it was wrong and different. And now you're an apologetics professor and that's great. I mean, that'd be tidy and a 22 minute sitcom, but, um, tell us a little bit about, and tell us as much as you want to about this process of yours, where you, I don't know, could you feel yourself on the path to deconversion? Could you feel yourself going there and what, what was that tension like? And what were some of the things you were doing to kind of pursue that tension in that fight?
Speaker 1 00:36:08 Yeah. This was a, this is a really hard question, because even today I'm still working through all of the psychology of it. What was going on back then and, you know, there's, there's feelings of being like, I didn't even include this in the book. I'm sure I was feeling trapped that, you know, I was in the South and I was never getting back to where I was from. I'm sure that was part of it too. And I didn't even include that in the writings, but I know that, um, this was really tough for me because I felt that I call it like, bam, I felt bad puzzled. And I use that a lot with people. I'm like, Oh, so when, sometimes I read deconversion stories, I'm like, Oh, they've got the bamboozlement going on. Like, that's their argument. They feel like they got into something and that they were trapped, um, either from childhood, uh, because they trusted in their parents and other authorities.
Speaker 1 00:37:00 And then they get out of the, you know, they start getting the rational thought and their early pre-teen years. And, and then they start going, wait a minute. These people don't really believe this stuff cause they're not acting like it. And they get that bamboozlement feeling too. And I think that was part of it. So there's the, um, you know, I'm going to culture. I don't fit in there's this, wait a minute. Um, I don't see these people really living it out. So maybe I made a mistake, um, because I actually like my atheist and agnostic friends from the Portland area. They're like nicer people in general. So, um, that was going on. There was also, um, I, my husband, by the point that I'm saying, Hmm, I wonder if this is really true because I'm not seeing it lived out in, in, in, in my own life too.
Speaker 1 00:37:46 Like I'm not taking it full full-on, it's not my whole, life's not conforming to Christ or anything like that. So I'm trying to figure out this mess and I'm, at this time, my husband's a minister and I'm thinking to myself, you know, I just can't come out and say, Hey, I'm not sure if this is real, because he would have to give up his job. So I also have a mess of desire going on. There's um, I don't know if I want it to be true anymore because I don't like it. I don't like the people in it. I don't like the community and I'm very much hurt over and over. So there's that desire? I don't know that I was aware that, uh, the desire in me was growing to like, hope that it wasn't true so that I could walk away. And I think that's a tough one for people who are dealing with that bam feeling.
Speaker 1 00:38:35 Bamboozlement I think you can slip into desiring it to not be true, whether like, not even considering that it might still be true, even if everybody around you is a hypocrite. Um, but that feeling was growing in me that, um, maybe, uh, you know, maybe I could just walk away if I could prove that it was wrong. If I could prove that this is just, um, false, if it's all false, then maybe I could walk away from it. So I started looking for, well, why, why do I say, I believe in God? Well, how do I know that these things are true? Why do I see Jesus Rose from the dead? And I had, I realized I had no answers to that. No answers and nothing that would separate the out from any other religious belief, for sure. Um, so like for a Mormon, you know, to say, I only had like a test American say, well, I know in my heart, you know, or, um, just nothing that would separate why I chose this versus anything else.
Speaker 1 00:39:34 So that, that really started me on the path towards, I gotta find the answers. And for some reason I put it in the book, a little memoir of when my daughter was born and I walked, you know, when she was born, I walked out into this. Uh, I was going to take her home from the hospital and I walk out into this cloud of smoke, cigarette smoke. And I think, Ooh, this is so disgusting. And I look over to see where it's coming from and it's doctors and nurses. And I said, Oh man, what a bunch of hypocrites these guys like, they absolutely would tell me, don't smoke, it'll kill you. They have professed that with their whole careers about saving people's lives. And yet they're out here killing themselves with smoking. And then that memory sort of like is what I relate my journey to, which is a Oh right.
Speaker 1 00:40:22 People can profess something as true and absolutely believe it instill, choose to live in rebellion to it. And that's what I was seeing over and over again in the church. Now, I won't say that that was, you know, a hundred percent across the board, but I do think there are Christians that absolutely believe in God. They believe in Jesus Christ. They, you know, they trust them for their salvation, but they're choosing re you know, lifestyles of rebellion. Um, and, and I was experiencing a lot of that, you know, where my vice is. Okay. I can double down into my advice and I could be a gossip or a slander, and that's okay because I'm saved, you know, but, or in spite of being saved, it's just, I didn't realize at a very deep level, like human psychology or this idea of the center Saint, um, I didn't have very good education, Christian education and deeply reflecting on the problem of evil and how that would affect my church experience. That was a lot, but there a lot of stuff that packed into that and, you know, I had to really deal with, do I even want this to be true? Um, and what do you do with that? I,
Speaker 0 00:41:29 I feel like that came out some in your response to when you started listening to the atheist debating, right? Like, like there's a, there's a part or two where you say, I expect, I know when I listened to him that he is going to be really profound, he's going to be a great, you know, um, argue or he is going to have these fantastic points and so ready, set, play, you know, go. And, um, that, wasn't always what you experienced, um, when you listened to those debates. But it, but that is almost an aside because, because what, I've, what I felt like I gleaned from that is you're, you're in this and you're going, I don't know if I, if I ask God, search me and know me, would he say you don't want this to be true, but even then he is big enough and grand enough and secure enough for all of our questions in that space. Right? So even for those of us who are going, I probably won't ever watch a Christian debate. I have no interest in what you call apologetics or whatever, but we do, but we are questioning people. So can you just, I just was really hoping that you could just tell us a little bit about that from like your heart experience and what makes that, what makes God, and, and his relationship with us unique in that we can question him and it's okay.
Speaker 1 00:43:08 Yeah. I think that in a more that I study, um, my re like God, and then the more I spend time in my relationship with God, I begin to realize that he made me a creature who has rationality and part, you know, and emotion and human desire. And part of that, having that gift of rationality is that I can question things. And I, and actually, that's not a bad thing. As you read through your new Testament, um, especially apostle Paul he's in your corner. If you're a questioner, he is right there with you. He says that the Bereans in acts 17 when he preached to the brand's Luke's reporting that he saying they were a more noble character character, because they checked out what he was saying. Like they actually checked it out and see if what he was teaching was true. He's not excusing his own teaching from us investigating and seeing if that's true.
Speaker 1 00:44:06 Uh, and then first Thessalonians five 21, he tells us, Paul tells us, um, check, test everything and hold onto the good, and he's referencing what you're hearing in church, because that's the context is prophecy in the church. So God has made us in a way in which we are creatures, who question, that's how we learn. That's how we grow. It's part of who we are made in his image. And he wants us to be engaged with him in conversation. He wants us to be people who grow immaturity in our knowledge of God and conformity to Christ. And you know, this, this life of discovering who it is we profess and, uh, just deeply knowing our God, this is all part of, you know, getting to, getting to know him and building our relationship with him. And so for me, apologetics what it does for me, this defense of the faith, which sounds very like, Oh, that's argumentative.
Speaker 1 00:45:02 And you're not supposed to be argumentative by the way. But what it does for me is that it helps me to know my God better. And if like, so if I want to get to know you like this, we're going to have to hang out and we're going to have to find out about you and I'm actually have to do research and study you not, I mean, those are weird words to use when you're talking about your friend, but that's what you're doing. What kind of music do you like? Where do you, um, what's your favorite coffee? Um, you know, those kinds of things where I'm learning about to, and growing in my knowledge of you and in that way, because you are a person and I'm a person that's how you and I grow and our relationship, well, God is also a being with personhood.
Speaker 1 00:45:40 So as I learn about him as a communicate with him, as I study him, I become, he becomes more real to me like, yeah, she is a person and I can, you know, either learn to distrust him or I can learn to trust him. I can learn about him, or I can grow distant from him, just like I can with people. And I think that's what apologetics really just drove home for me, uh, is making God very real in my life and then means starting to understand, I'm starting to understand who he is, um, that he has personhood. And that, that played a big part of my distrust of God, was that I began distrusting people that transferred over to distrusting God who also has personhood.
Speaker 0 00:46:24 Yes. I, I love, I love that part, um, where you talk about, um, having trouble trusting God, because he's a real person and it's like, this is a real relationship. And so you realize he's going to reveal some things to you about himself and maybe not others. And it was, you know, just this, like really this, this reality of relationship, even though he is divine, he does have personhood. And, um, and he relates to us. So thank you for expanding on that a bit. I want my hoping, maybe we can wrap up kind of back a little bit when I kind of teased and said, I want to get here. Um, I feel like now we need to go there. Um, the beauty, because you're talking about getting to know God more and your chapter on beauty wrecked me. And so I would just say, take anything, anything from that realm, that space that you think might be relevant to this conversation or you, or you feel God leading or to our listeners or whatever, but can you just talk about the beauty of God and that part of your experience?
Speaker 1 00:47:43 Yeah. Um, I will tell the listeners that this is newer for me, so, um, I want to encourage them to go well beyond anything that I say with this. Um, my experience in the church was that the church was really good at discussing the goodness of God. And so there's a lot of issues on morality of the church. Um, and we're also very good about discussing the truth of God, so that God is real. Then, you know, a lot of what I deal with and apologetics has to deal with that, but we've sort of just completely forgotten about the beauty of God. So there's three transcendentals of God that the goodness truth and beauty of God, and there, you know, there's historical reasons why we've left that, and I'm not going to go into those because that deals with the reformation and all sorts of stuff. Um, but for me, I was so drawn to God, uh, by the beauty that I saw in the world that he made and in the cosmos, and then my dad just loving outer space. And that's how, I mean, Carl, Sagan's all, he has a book called cosmos. So I just saw great beauty in the world. And I, as I'm coming to God, like it's, I'm questioning what is this all for? One of the things I've found in the Bible is that God is our source of beauty because he himself is objective really beautiful.
Speaker 1 00:49:04 There is no teaching that I received in the church on that at all. Um, what I received instead was that beauty was dangerous. Um, beauty was linked to lust so that, um, I began to distrust beautiful women. I began to distrust things like looking beautiful or performing, like I I'm very moved by the performing arts. So I tried to bring that into the church and it was always met with this distrust, why do we have dancers on the stage? Why are they in dance uniforms? You know, things like that. And I, for me, it was very disheartening because one of the main things that drew me into guy was constantly being pushed back against and being told that it was Eve, I was being told basically that it was evil. So I didn't know what to do with beauty. Uh, and I think that affects a lot of people in the church today.
Speaker 1 00:50:00 I don't think that, uh, leaders in the church are doing this intentionally. I think they're doing it out of trying to protect people from lust, from the, you know, maybe the pornography issue. That's so rampant in the church today, but at the same time, they're not balancing it with what do we do with beauty? Uh, if we, if there's a beautiful person in your church, I watched this time and time again, useful women, powerful, intelligent women being marginalized in the church, just because they were beautiful and smart. And, uh, you know, what, what are you teaching people about? What is the purpose of that? And one of the things that I had come to, and what I concluded in chapter nine was shouldn't the beauty that we see in the world, including humans, if you find somebody attractive or beautiful, shouldn't that point? You back to the beauty of God himself, shouldn't that be a testimony that God is creative and that he himself is beautiful.
Speaker 1 00:50:55 Uh, so that's kind of where I can came to, is that for me, I am to appreciate beauty in the world no matter where I see it, because it reflects my creator, just like goodness and truth too. And that, that was what, uh, I think you're talking about in chapter nine, which is that, and I haven't gotten a lot further along, um, just cause I do a lot of teaching in other areas, but this is something like I would recommend Roger Scruton. Um, and his works on this. What is beauty for, and what are we supposed to do with it? What is it supposed to point us to? So, um, it's not just, we shouldn't just view beauty with a skeptical eye in the church, but we should teach what it's for and then what to do with it.
Speaker 0 00:51:47 Thank you. I was, um, reading, finishing your book up when we happened to be on a beach vacation, we just got to get away for the, for the weekend. And I was, we were out and there was actually a tropical storm, like on the horizon. It's going to be coming in in the next day or two. And we're just looking out at the waves and the, and the sand and the birds. And, and of course, you know, even reminiscing, you know, my husband coming and going, we're in the mountains and you know, all of this, but it's just like creation is so beautiful. And, and I, I just kind of stopped in, for me, it was one of those, like, I don't know anybody who would say this is not beautiful. And it helped me kind of begin to think about beauty as being objective, because it's an aspect of God.
Speaker 0 00:52:36 And so, so thank you for that, um, for that part of your book and for kind of elaborating on that, because it's something that I've been mulling over and it just, um, it just makes me smile. It's just like a really, it's a really wonderful, like heartwarming thought of just thinking that God puts his own beauty inside of us and inside of creation as a way to point back to him. So Mary Jo, what we've, we've like we've covered so much today, but what would you like to leave us with that you feel either we haven't talked about or need to be reiterated as we close out?
Speaker 1 00:53:17 Yeah, I would thank you for asking that. I would definitely say that, um, I'm hoping that people under the people who are listening, understand that the hypocrisy of the individual believers cannot negate or be the litmus test. Let's say the hypocrisy of the believers, can't be the litmus test for the truth of Christianity. God has left of so many evidences of his goodness. Uh, we have that historical, we have the historical event of Jesus's resurrection to show us who he is and how much we mean to him and how much we are valued and loved. And so, um, just to keep in mind that Christianity is a testable faith, that's evident, you know, it has lots of evidence, but that there's also so much beauty and goodness and truth to be found there. Um, the don't just let the behaviors of the Christians around you be that test for you, um, look into it for yourself and see what you find.
Speaker 0 00:54:16 Thank you so much. And Mary Jo, where can we find you on, on the web, on social media and where can we find your book?
Speaker 1 00:54:26 Ah, thank you. Um, my, my website is Mary Joe sharp.com and then you can find my book, why I still believe on amazon.com or Barnes and noble or Christian book.com pretty much wherever they sell Christian books. Okay.
Speaker 0 00:54:40 Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story.
Speaker 1 00:54:44 Thank you so much for having me
Speaker 0 00:54:47 The links for all the resources mentioned in today's episode can be found in the show notes, music and podcast production by Seth B city. Be sure to give us a review on iTunes and subscribe at your favorite podcast listening app, you can also visit us at that. Makes total sense.com.
