Category: Uncategorized

I Never Stopped Being a Christian

~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ 3 Comments


A mother once wrote to C.S. Lewis on behalf of her concerned son, who was worried that he loved Aslan, the lion Christ figure from Lewis’s children’s series, more than Jesus himself. Lewis wrote back with this consolation:

Laurence can’t really love Aslan more than Jesus, even if he feels that’s what he is doing. For the things he loves Aslan for doing or saying are simply the things Jesus really did and said. So that when Laurence thinks he is loving Aslan, he is really loving Jesus: and perhaps loving Him more than he ever did before.

Lewis obviously meant this literally: Jesus is a real, living, breathing, present being, and the third person of the Trinity. But, even if we don’t take a literal view of the Christ myth, there is truth in Lewis’s words, if only at a cultural and psychological level. Imagine my bewilderment in realizing that I, a 35-year-old secular atheist, am the little boy Lewis was writing to.

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The Set and Setting of Porn

~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ Leave a comment

A startling number of men have told me how seasons of porn use have been the darkest times of their lives. They felt like evil monsters and rapists for what often seems to me moderate levels of porn consumption. They describe feelings of shame, depression, and fear, and they hate how it ramps up their sexuality.

In the online “Reboot” community – a vast movement of men abstaining from porn and masturbation – the mood is similarly dark. Men regularly share suicidal feelings, describe themselves as perverts and failures when they “relapse”, and blame their various woes, like erectile dysfunction and struggles to find real-world sex partners, on porn use. (I’m not linking to these communities because, frankly, they are a bit scary and are known to retaliate against criticism.)

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I Left Christianity Because I Stopped Believing In It

~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ 1 Comment

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In a recent article for The Atlantic, Jake Meador writes about the enormous decline in church attendance. He cites two reasons for the decline: abuse at the hands of the church and, most significantly, the structure of American life. Meador argues that our American culture of overwork squeezes people so much that the additional commitments of attending church just don’t feel feasible.

I have no doubt that Meador is describing a genuine phenomenon. Modern life is exhausting, and church, like all community, takes effort. Who wouldn’t prefer to sleep in on Sunday morning when you’ve spent the entire week at the office, stressing over bills, and taking care of your kids? “Workism reigns in America,” writes Meador, “and because of it, community in America, religious community included, is a math problem that doesn’t add up.” He’s concerned about this because church attendance is an important institution that correlates with general well-being:

Participation in a religious community generally correlates with better health outcomes and longer life, higher financial generosity, and more stable families—all of which are desperately needed in a nation with rising rates of loneliness, mental illness, and alcohol and drug dependency.

I agree with his concerns. I worry about the loss of institutions that contribute to human flourishing. But I want to point out another reason people stop going to church that is conspicuously absent from Meador’s article: they no longer believe the truth claims of Christianity.

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Are the Truth Claims of Christianity Literal?

~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ 2 Comments

In last week’s article The Motte and Bailey of Christian Belief, I commented on a trend I’ve noticed among Christians to make bold, hard-to-defend claims (the resurrection of Christ) and then retreating to broad, easy-to-defend claims (God is the ultimate mystery or “ground of being”) when pushed to defend the former.

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My Satanism Is the Test of Your Commitment to Religious Freedom

~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ 5 Comments

If there is one thing I find myself continually communicating about my Satanism, it is this: my Satanism isn’t about you. You might feel such a unique revulsion at my practice, or you might be so flummoxed by the religion that you can only assume that it is about deliberately provoking you.

This all assumes that you, the offended, are at the center of my religion. But my Satanism isn’t about you. You, the offended, don’t figure into 99.9% of my religious practice. It isn’t about offending, hurting, or provoking you. My Satanism is about me — my catharsis, my fulfillment, and how I choose to practice compassion toward all other creatures. That it offends you is incidental.

But offense, even if that is not my Satanism’s primary goal, does have its utility, and it is this: my Satanism is the test of your commitment to religious liberty.

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I’m an Intellectual Groupie and You Probably Are Too

~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ 3 Comments

On his podcast Deep Questions, Cal Newport said something that has gotten deep into my brain and utterly complicated my life. I notice, by the way, that the very best things tend not to make my life simpler — they make my life more interesting, complicated, and challenging. This is one of those things:

I think a lot of what we see on social media is basically what I call intellectual groupieism. Like, I don’t want to do the work, someone else tell me the cliffnotes. What are the basic ideas we all agree with, and more importantly, what’s good and what’s bad, and what do I do to make sure I do the good thing and not the bad thing? like great, I’m with it. And now I’m going to, with great fervor, push this philosophy, but there is nothing below it. You haven’t read any of the things, you haven’t done the hard reading, you haven’t confronted the criticism, you haven’t read the alternative and let that collide and then let your roots grow deep. On social media you are often just a groupie for intellectuals, and say, “I just trust you. Just give me the cliffnotes I need, because I just want to go around with your metaphorical jam band and make sure I have bootleg tapes from your concerts…” We don’t do this anymore – we don’t build philosophies from scratch, we don’t go to the sources. Social media says “don’t bother with that. In fact, if you do bother with it, we might yell at you, so just come on, we will just give you the cliff notes.

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