Ethereal Truth

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  • Navigating the Fear of False Conversion

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    I originally wrote this as a YouTube comment under a video about leaving Christian Hedonism, but the comment was removed. Christian Hedonism, for those unfamiliar, is John Piper’s branded theological framework built on the slogan “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.” Like MacArthur’s branding of “Lordship Salvation,” it became one of those identity-marking systems that shaped an entire online wing of Reformed culture. Rather than let these reflections disappear, I’m sharing them here. I know many people have lived through the same spiritual anxiety, fear cycles, and internet revivalist culture that shaped me. If this helps even one person untangle their faith from dread, it is worth it.

    I resonated deeply with the video. I came out of the Paul Washer / “illbehonest” / online Calvinistic revivalist world too, and looking back, the whole thing operated like a sophisticated machine built on spiritual insecurity baiting.

    Every normal human struggle becomes evidence against you. Marriage tension? “Examine yourself.” Discouraged? “Maybe Christ isn’t in you.”Recurring sin? “Cry out until your repentance is real this time.”

    It becomes a dread based spiritual pressure chamber, the more fear you feel, the more “serious” they say you are. What looks like holiness is actually ambient shame conditioning, wrapped in the very Reformed theology many of us once treated as our inner circle’s badge of seriousness.

    And the scriptural maneuvers are honestly deceptive, almost like a well rehearsed stage parlor trick performed the same way at every conference, sermon clip, and YouTube upload, designed to dazzle you into accepting the illusion before you realize what just happened. Matthew 7 gets turned into a universal guillotine even though Jesus is condemning people appealing to their works, not a crowd of Christians trying to cling to justification by faith alone. Washer flips it: if your works aren’t strong enough, maybe Christ doesn’t know you.

    It becomes a theological funhouse mirror masquerading as exegesis, shaping you into someone who professes faith alone on the outside while inwardly being conditioned to suspect you are a doomed imposter, trapped in a judgment day script you are never allowed to disprove.

    1 Corinthians 6 says “such were some of you”, but they twist it into “such may still be you if you are not sufficiently terrified.” They say you “cannot inherit the kingdom,” then demand you constantly check your internal spiritual temperature to “prove” Christ is in you, which is the exact opposite of Paul’s point. Paul actually ends that whole section with assurance: “but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified” — a reminder that Christ truly is in the people he is addressing, not a threat that they might secretly be imposters.

    And this ties directly into how these same preachers abuse passages like “examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith” or “make your calling and election sure.” When Calvin wrote about election, he framed it as a deep comfort meant to anchor trembling believers, not as a psychological cudgel to keep Christians in a state of perpetual self suspicion. But the neo Calvinist and neo Reformed crowd flips that into another fear cycle: instead of encouraging assurance, they turn examination into an endless, self cannibalizing loop where you are never allowed to rest in Christ, only to interrogate whether you truly have Him.

    The irony is staggering. Calvin originally wielded these doctrines to dismantle Rome’s sacramental system of penance, confession, and perpetual uncertainty, arguing that Scripture freed believers from living in a state of anxious, works based self scrutiny. Yet these modern neo Reformed types invert that entire project, building a kind of non sacramental sacramental system, a reversed replica of the very structure Calvin dismantled. Instead of priestly absolution, you get internal interrogation. Instead of sacramental penance, you get psychological penance. Instead of assurance, you get a worldview where you can never know who is truly saved, not even your pastor, not even yourself.

    The College Age Exploitation Nobody Talks About

    One of the things that hits me hardest now is realizing when so many of us got swept into this. For many young men, it happens right at the moment when they finally have mental breathing room after thirteen straight years of public school structure, when life slows down just enough for real questions to surface for the first time. That late teens to early twenties window is often the very first time you can actually think for yourself.

    And ironically, that is exactly when you are most vulnerable. You are away at college, or working, or just starting adulthood, and you desperately want to believe the right things and live faithfully. You want clarity. You want truth.

    That is the moment these online preachers swoop in.

    And the wild part is this: these are men we will never meet, yet we were conditioned to treat their:

    • articles
    • sermons
    • commentaries
    • “studies”
    • and even their personal opinions

    as if they belonged on the same shelf as Scripture itself. Piper’s Desiring God articles become your devotional life. Washer’s sensationalized warnings carve fear grooves into your brain. MacArthur’s massive “body of work” turns out not even to be written by him, yet you are told to build your entire theological universe around it.

    It is a subtle but powerful form of outsourced spiritual authority, where impressionable young men hand over their conscience to celebrity preachers who will never know their names and will never bear responsibility for the psychological and spiritual damage they cause.

    And there is an even stranger phenomenon tied to all this: there are numerous stories of young men making what are essentially pilgrimages to see Paul Washer in person, traveling across states to attend his conferences, standing in long lines, hoping for a moment of personal interaction, and in many cases trying to speak with him directly about their salvation. Some go seeking a definitive spiritual verdict, a final “yes” or “no” about whether they are truly in Christ, spoken by someone they believe carries a weight their own pastors do not. I have even personally heard of one instance where a young man drove across multiple states specifically to sit down with Washer and consult him about his salvation.

    But the most publicly visible example of this broader dynamic comes from outside the Reformed world: the widely circulated Liberty University incident, where a young man rushed the stage during Jordan Peterson’s address, sobbing that he needed help and desperately trying to reach him. It revealed the same phenomenon, broken young men looking to a distant public figure as if their psychological or spiritual survival depended on validation from someone they have never met. When a movement produces that kind of pilgrimage like desperation, it reveals not spiritual vitality but spiritual crisis.

    The Horror Movie Psychology They Never Admit

    One of the most damaging aspects, something these preachers never acknowledge, is the existential spiritual dread they cultivate. It is like being trapped inside a private, psychological religious thriller where you are both the protagonist and the victim.

    You carry around this constant sense that a hidden plot twist is coming, that at the end of your life, the camera will pan, the music will swell, and God will suddenly reveal:

    “I never knew you.”

    This creates what can be described as divine solipsism. Your entire internal world becomes a suspense film where every stray emotion, every moment of numbness, every lapse in motivation is interpreted as a clue that doom is coming. You cannot rest, because the “villain” in the story might be you.

    It reframes spiritual life as a psychological horror genre, a perpetual jump scare where you are always bracing for the final twist.

    The Outcome

    It strips you of dignity. You stop relating to God as Father and instead relate to Him like a cosmic supervisor running an eternal performance review pipeline.

    That is why this video hit me so hard. It names the system. There is an entire generation who internalized this high pressure, shame soaked internet revivalism and mistook it for maturity, when it was actually a fear based spiritual economy that feeds on insecurity.

    If anyone reading this is still trapped in that world, the constant dread is not proof that you are “serious.” It is proof the system is working on you. You are allowed to walk out of the horror movie.

    If you have experienced any of this, the spiritual dread, the constant self examination, the fear of being a false convert, the confusion caused by online preachers, or the emotional collapse that gets presented as “holiness,” please know this: you are not alone, you are not defective, and you are not imagining the harm. Many of us have walked this same road and found real, lasting healing on the other side. There is a form of Christian faith that does not feed on dread. There is a way to believe without constantly accusing yourself. And you do not need fear to stay faithful.

  • Understanding Spiritual Insecurity in Modern Evangelism

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    This is my first post on WordPress, and I thought it would be a good one to start with. I hope to write more theological posts in the future that may benefit those who have had similar experiences. This post is a long-form comment I wrote on a YouTube video titled “Pastor Reacts to Paul Washer | “Your conversion is false…” https://youtu.be/o-JWdazBvPY?si=hxxpziLw0I-bVNfM

    I deeply appreciate when people accurately call out Paul Washer and other so-called “biblical” celebrity preachers. I used to listen to him and others like him (from the I’ll Be Honest crowd, John MacArthur, Piper, etc.). However, after years of stepping away from listening to them and objectively reflecting on their preaching and exegesis, I’ve realized they commit many serious errors. This issue cannot be separated from the modern evangelical industrial complex, filled with conferences, study Bibles, media, and more. As humans, we like to be entertained. We are naturally drawn to drama—a show to watch. We want to feel like we’re part of a story, and in Western culture, which leans heavily toward individualism, this desire is amplified. While the early church met in homes and emphasized relational and experiential Christianity across all demographics—young, old, strong, and weak—our modern culture of mega-churches and conferences often creates a giant chasm. It replaces the relational aspects of Christianity with a focus on heady theological melodrama, tailored to individual experience. Paul Washer and many other “biblical” celebrity preachers (as opposed to the unbiblical Word of Faith types) seem to employ what I call “spiritual insecurity baiting” or “validation dependency preaching.” Although Washer presents himself as conservative, Reformed, and traditional, he is one of the most emotional preachers I’ve ever seen. He criticizes the emotional manipulation of altar calls, where music and pleas compel people to walk the aisle and recite prewritten prayers. Yet, in a twist reminiscent of the horseshoe theory (the idea that extremes on opposite ends of a spectrum can start to resemble each other), Washer mirrors this same emotionalism. He is so against the emotional appeals of altar calls that he ends up making people emotionally resistant to showing emotion. He criticizes the music and pleas of altar calls, but his alternative seems to suggest calling you to stay in your chair and retreat inwardly—or perhaps even leaving church—because you might not be “truly” saved or serious enough about salvation. He opposes prewritten sinner’s prayers but often makes it seem like even faith alone isn’t enough to save you. In fact, sometimes it seems like he pushes this idea that you need to exist in a kind of pre-faith, pre-repentant state, anxiously asking for the salvation that truly saves (how’s that for someone who claims to hold to a Reformed soteriology and Ordo Salutis?). By the way, I thought that in Romans 1:16 it says the Gospel is what saves not these lengthy emotional performances where you place your listeners into a psychological thriller/horror movie every time. A boring Gospel presentation is more powerful than a false Gospel that is one thousand times more engaging and thrilling. The biggest problem with these preachers is that they often operate like politicians. When cornered on theological issues, they use “get out of theological jail free card” phrases like, “We are saved by grace alone through faith alone,” or “All our righteous deeds are like filthy rags.” But in practice, they blur the lines between justification and sanctification, making the Gospel message vague. They erode the Law-Gospel distinction—until they’re cornered again and revert to the necessary phrases to avoid being labeled heretics. Meanwhile, these vague teachings become fodder for selling books, study Bibles, and conference tickets to explain away the confusion they themselves created. And so the cycle of spiritual insecurity and spiritual validation/dependency continues. As opposed to the Roman Catholic system where you participate in man made religious acts like going to a confessional booth, doing penance, and praying the rosary…these types of evangelical cardinals and popes present the man made neo-sacraments of doubting your salvation and stewing in your own existential dread. Another issue with these types of preachers is that, while they often talk about their support for the “local church,” in practice, they functionally elevate themselves to an elite status. It’s very common, in my experience, for people who follow Paul Washer to become dissatisfied with their “regular” churches and even want to leave them entirely (If you’re unfamiliar with this, consider how the Church of Wells cult got started and how highly they spoke of Paul Washer when they first created their own “church”). Although they claim not to believe, like Charismatic churches, that the offices of apostle or prophet are still active today, they often operate in a way that places them above even an apostle. Their influence and reach on a daily basis far surpass anything the apostles themselves had. Moreover, they position themselves as the ultimate arbiters of what Scripture “really” means, often leaving no room for alternate perspectives. It’s worth remembering that Jesus didn’t just condemn the Pharisees—He also condemned the scribes, the supposed masters of Scriptural interpretation, for their hypocrisy and arrogance. The book of James warns that teachers (most likely men leading small, regular local churches in his day) will be held to a stricter judgment. However, I wonder how much stricter God will judge those who brazenly presume to speak judgment and condemnation over the entirety of Christ’s body and His sheep on such a consistent basis—especially when they harm His weak and battered sheep by insinuating they are not truly His. The issue is that you will never be satisfied listening to these preachers. To put it bluntly, they are putting salt in the water. You come seeking the life-giving Gospel of Jesus Christ, but it’s mixed with something that leaves you even thirstier. You may become envious and angry toward those who simply believe the Gospel and are not as spiritually dehydrated as you are. You’ll go from conference to conference, sermon to sermon (likely never meeting these men in person), and never feel satisfied. I’ve never seen a literal shepherd who leads their sheep from behind a YouTube screen. A true shepherd seeks the lost sheep, lifts it out of a hole, and cares for it. A true shepherd doesn’t convince a sheep it’s not part of the flock and kick it off the farm for not being perfect. Yet we’ve accepted these evangelical popes and cardinals, despite knowing where that road leads. Anecdotally, listening to Paul Washer has led many people I know (and myself) into legalism, reclusiveness, and religious scrupulosity. Before I started listening to him, I was joyful and appreciative of life, especially when I first started really focusing on God in my late teens and early twenties. But once I got into Paul Washer and the “I’ll Be Honest” content, a dark cloud of doubt began hovering over me. I started doubting my salvation and engaging in endless navel-gazing: Did I evangelize for the right motives? Should I have spoken out in class against the non-Christian professor? Was I a coward for not thinking/talking about God 24/7? Was I reading the Bible for the wrong reasons? It was relentless. And it didn’t stop there—the dark cloud grew. I became overly critical of others as well: Why are those Christians so happy? Don’t they realize the lost need the Gospel? Are they evangelizing as much as I am? How can they listen to secular music when I gave it up for Christ? In closing, remember that people can appear “biblical” but not truly be Christians. The ultimate irony would be discovering on Judgment Day that the very preachers who perpetually sowed doubt about salvation were themselves not Christians. They used the Bible to gain money, clout, and notoriety. So follow Jesus, not men. Read and study the Bible for yourself. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.” (Matthew 23:27-28) “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28)