A Strange Boldness
Cooper is also shocked by how unashamed former Christian leaders seem to be as they announce the fact they have left their faith. Cooper thinks this attitude is strange because these people are essentially saying, “I’ve been living and preaching boldly something for 20 years and led generations of people with my teachings and now I no longer believe it..therefore I’m going to boldly and loudly tell people it was all wrong while I boldly and loudly lead people in to my next truth.” He asks, “Why be so eager to continue leading people when you clearly don’t know where you are headed?”
A Misleading Authenticity
It’s also odd, Cooper thinks, that these leaders feel they need to announce everything they are going through. It’s not necessarily authentic or brave to share every dark experience you’re having, he argues, and it’s important to consider the consequences if you do share what you are going through. The singer says he recently read a statement by a renowned worship leader who renounced his faith, in which the leader refers to his difficulty accepting that a loving God would send people to hell. This is likely a reference to Marty Sampson, who in a post on Instagram said no one in the church is willing to discuss that question.
In response, Cooper says, “Brother, you are not that unique. The church has wrestled with this for 1500 years. Literally. Everybody talks about it. Children talk about it in Sunday school. There’s like a billion books written on the topic. Just because you don’t get the answer you want doesn’t mean that we are unwilling to wrestle with it.”
Jesus’ Teachings Without Jesus Himself
Cooper’s final reaction to these influencers is that they are being inconsistent when they renounce Jesus but still encourage people to hold to certain, obviously Christian, morals. He says, “No child is ever born and says ‘I just want to love others before loving myself. I want to turn the other cheek. I want to give my money away to others in need.’” Rather, those ideas are from the Bible. So if people teach those values while rejecting Jesus, what they are doing is “endorsing the words of a madman.”
And if these leaders came to a point where they were willing to renounce beliefs they held for decades, who is to say they won’t come to the same place eventually with their current values? Cooper asks, “Will your ideas of what is ‘good’ be different from year to year based on your experience, culture trends, popular opinion etc and furthermore will you continue year by year to lead others into your idea of goodness even though it is not absolute?”
Return to the Word
Cooper ends his post with a call to the church to “rediscover the preeminence of the Word.” He says, “We need to value truth over feeling. Truth over emotion. And what we are seeing now is the result of the church raising up influencers who did not supremely value truth who have led a generation who also do not believe in the supremacy of truth. And now those disavowed leaders are proudly still leading and influencing boldly AWAY from the truth.”
