My wife doesn’t usually read my blog posts because I think some of what I write makes her cringe. She was rightly disturbed by me saying I have no Christian friends. She worried it might offend Christians who do consider us their friends. First, I must apologize for putting it so broadly.

Yes, I certainly recognize Christians who would consider me their friend, and I appreciate their kindness toward me. For the sake of those leaving Christianity, I do write often about the difficulty of maintaining Christian friends when you do not conform to their culture. Yet, on a superficial level, more people at my local church have shown me kindness than not. I can count dozens who have only shown me kindness, yet only a few who haven’t.

Most people wouldn’t write about these deep personal issues because it could make them look like they’re whining or only thinking about themselves. It would be wrong for me to say people unfriending me doesn’t hurt my feelings, but I don’t write because my feelings are hurt. I write because one of the most common paths out of the church is when someone says something that conflicts with that church’s microculture or traditions and a church member attacks or unfriends them. This is very common and one of the major issues that drives people away from Christianity. This happens because competitive piety is the MO of most religious institutions, including Christianity. Competitive piety is also the root of the culture wars (I’m better than you, and you are the devil because you are different than me).

So, I am sorry if I came across as ungrateful to those who show me this kindness. That is far from the truth.

To be clear, I want you to understand that I don’t unfriend people because they disagree with my, somewhat exotic, ideas. They reject and attack me. I expect most people to disagree with me and that’s okay. I try very hard not to play the competitive piety game, which I did for thirty years as an evangelical. If I measure people, I measure them by Jesus’ simple commandment to love. When I look honestly at how people love, I sadly realize I am not above others, but likely inferior.

I’ve only unfriended two Christian friends. One was when he told me he had sexually abused his daughter and her heard the voice of God saying it was okay. I told him it wasn’t, and because he didn’t agree, I unfriended him. The second was a very good Christian friend who became full MAGA in 2016. That wasn’t enough to end our friendship, but when he sent me AI-doctored images of Hillary Clinton with a turd coming out of her mouth, and then with her being raped by Donald Trump and his friends, I unfriended him. If he had sent me photos of Donald Trump’s daughter being raped (as a liberal non-Christian friend did), I would have unfriended him as well.

What I should have written previously is “I have no close Christian friends.” Many studies show the benefits of having friends, especially as we get older. The benefits are limited to “close friends.” The studies have tried to define what a close friend is and use terms such as high levels of emotional intimacy, reciprocity, self-disclosure, and trust, exemplified practically as: 1) you could ask them for money in a crisis, and/or 2) they would visit you in a hospital if you were seriously ill.

When I say I lost my last good friend a couple of years ago, it is by that definition. I wrote on my blog that I love philosophy, and he attacked me for it. From that day forward, he saw me as the devil, and the relationship became impossible.

So when a young person, or even an older person, questions their church beliefs, the typical reaction, driven by competitive piety, is to condemn them, turning it into a moral issue rather than giving an honest answer to an honest question.  At that juncture, they face the (unspoken) choice of either conforming to the culture or being rejected. I’ve seen many of these people feel so lonely in church that they leave.

The conservative church has a plethora of things that the person must conform to, including now being a Republican. I’ve found the progressive church, while being a little more gracious, still requires the person to conform to their culture, including now adopting a postmodernist philosophy (all religions are the same).

Even on the few essentials, believing in God and loving others, if they have honest doubts or questions, they must be free to ask them and to engage with a well-informed person (not a competitive-piety person). And even if they reject those two essentials, the person must never be rejected.

From this footing, I want to write about Christian microcultures and the dynamics of such as I go forward.

Repectfully, Mike