Justin Vollmar, the popular vlogger who is pastor of the virtual church for the deaf, has been rather silent lately, and has now come out and announced why – he no longer believes.
Here below is that announcement from 7th February where he uses sign language (and subtitles) to explain his journey to doubt
- This was not an easy decision for him
- He struggled for a very long time … years ..
- And only now has reached a point of clarity
- He has now completely changed his mind and no longer believes
- He was greatly helped by the clergy project (a safe place for clerics that no longer believe).
- He will have more blogs in the future all about why.
Curious to know more? Well you can read a bit more about all this within a CNN article that he wrote on 10th Feb. There he writes about some of the things that went on, such as …
I was a pastor in Silver Spring, Maryland, working 60 hours a week for little pay. My senior pastor was a harsh taskmaster, scolding me and always pushing me to work harder. Meanwhile, he earned $80,000 a year and played golf two times a week. I lived in poverty and did not see my children much. I got burned out.
He resigned, and was then shunned by this “loving” community. Now that is quite frankly appalling behaviour by any group, and so this is the reason he quite? Nope, not at all, he picked himself up, started again, and eventually went on to establish the virtual deaf church.
So what happened? Well, he clearly he faced up to the way things are and asked himself questions …
how could dozens of Christian denominations fight and call each other false churches? Why are there thousands of conflicting interpretations among Christians? How could God be so loving when he will send millions to hell?
… and so the doubts churned away inside until …
… to my complete shock, I found that my doubts led me into atheism. As part of my study at Liberty, I was exposed to many criticisms against belief in God. After studying theology and philosophy, I realized the Bible was not the word of God. Supernatural miracles did not happen. Jesus Christ was a mythical figure who did not rise from the dead.
People come and people go, that is that nature of beliefs. People will join and leave for really bad reasons and also for good honest reasons as well, and this is a fabulous example of the latter.
This is clearly a man who has struggled with his beliefs and has had both the integrity and also the honesty to face up to things as they really are. It takes a lot of courage to change your mind publicly, especially when you have previously taken a very different stance, but when faced with evidence that pointed in a very different direction he had the courage to follow it.
The believers are truly ticked off and have a few nasty things to say about him, in fact you can find an example of that here. What strikes me about their complaint us just how controlling and manipulative they are, his former pastor writes …
..I had permitted him to have his vlog and I did allow him to do this every Sunday, and he would send it out via the church website. I noticed he started requesting to send out on additional days and I told him to slow down…
“permitted him” … “allow him” …”told him” …!! .. That all leaves me astonished at the degree of control and manipulation going on inside that community, and so it strikes me that it must come as a considerable degree of relief to be finally free of all that.
Now that he is free from all the superstition what comes next? Well, he says that he wants to help Christians “break free from their traditions and superstitions.”.
Now that is indeed a nobel ambition and so I offer him a salute for the courage to come out, and also encouragement with his ambition to also reach out and help others.