Should You Change What You Believe Because Your Tribe Betrayed You?

This morning I have an essay at The Gospel Coalition titled, “Experiences Shape Beliefs. They Shouldn’t Determine Them.” Here’s how I begin:

Not long ago I was listening to an evangelical writer give an interview about the writer’s own political and theological journey. The interviewer noticed that the writer seemed less conservative and less traditional these days than in the recent past, and had sometimes received criticism—including some insulting, demeaning comments—from fellow evangelicals for it.

In response, the writer talked at length about feeling betrayed by his fellow evangelicals. They had, in his view, taken a hypocritical, harsh, and cynical turn. The writer felt an understandable hurt and confusion over some of the ideological realignment that had been going on within his tribe the last few years.

And yet, after I listened to his remarks, I realized the writer had not actually explained his altered political or theological beliefs in terms of being persuaded that his new positions were true. Instead, when asked about convictions, he talked about people: the people who had betrayed principles, the people who had made (in his view) serious errors of moral judgment, and the people who had been cruel to this man. This gave the impression that his shifting beliefs had more to do with reacting to people than being persuaded by principles.

To be sure, cruelty from those you counted as friends or at least fellow Christians can be devastating. But it was remarkable that even in a conversation ostensibly about belief, the focus was on experiences. I was sympathetic to his plight, but convinced that, even if everything he had said about his former tribe was true, he had essentially subordinated the search for what’s true beneath the search for what’s pleasant.

In the rest of the essay, I make a case for why Christianity is a uniquely factful religion. We care about what’s true, not just what’s helpful. The trauma of having been turned against inside our own churches, denominations, and peer groups is real. But surrendering our convictions to those experiences is simply another kind of betrayal.

Read the whole thing here.