Yesterday, Pastor Brown of First Baptist Church of Boaz delivered a sermon that, like so many within Southern Baptist Fundamentalism, framed the Christian message in strong terms of human depravity, divine wrath, and absolute submission. As someone who embraces The God Question’s philosophy — a commitment to reason, moral clarity, and honest evidence — I want to explore how this sermon illustrates the deeper challenges of evangelical Christianity.
My goal is not to belittle Pastor Brown personally, but to test the ideas he presented. Because if we care about truth, then even the most deeply cherished beliefs must be held up to examination.
1. The Framing of Human Nature as Fundamentally Worthless
Pastor Brown repeatedly characterized human beings as:
- “helpless”
- “slaves to sin”
- “incapable of any good”
- “terrible”
- “born in rebellion”
He even suggested that God expects us to fail.
This is an extraordinarily harsh anthropology — a theology of cosmic self-loathing. It depicts people as worthless unless they submit entirely to a divine authority.
Yet from a reasoned, human-centered perspective, human beings are far more than this. We are capable of empathy, courage, moral growth, and solidarity — no supernatural grace required. Civilizations have built ethical systems for thousands of years without the threat of eternal punishment.
The God Question would argue this rhetoric of worthlessness is a tool for manipulation, breaking a person down so they can be rebuilt under the control of a spiritual hierarchy.
2. Prayer and “God’s Will” in the Face of Suffering
At the start, Pastor Brown offered prayer for victims of flooding in Texas, asking God to comfort them and protect first responders.
But this raises the problem familiar to many:
- If God is loving and all-powerful, why permit the tragedy to happen?
- If God designed the laws of nature, why allow a world where rivers suddenly rise and kill children?
Blaming these disasters on “a broken world in rebellion” makes no sense. Rivers do not rebel. Storms do not sin. Nature is nature.
If believers want to say God could intervene at any moment, but usually chooses not to, then we must ask why such a God is worthy of worship. That is the honest question Pastor Brown’s theology tries to sidestep.
3. Substitutionary Atonement and Inherited Guilt
A major theme of the sermon was how Christ’s righteousness is “imputed” to believers because no human can meet God’s standard. According to Pastor Brown, all people are doomed to fail unless they accept this divine swap: Jesus’s perfection for their cosmic guilt.
But think carefully about this:
- Why should one person’s execution 2,000 years ago erase my moral responsibility?
- Why would a wise, just God require blood sacrifice instead of simply forgiving?
- Why declare a newborn “guilty” for existing?
This is scapegoating, not justice. The notion that you are guilty simply for being human, and require a blood sacrifice to be forgiven, violates any reasonable idea of moral fairness.
4. Psychological Manipulation and Fear
The entire sermon revolved around a classic spiritual bait-and-switch:
- First, break the hearer down with reminders of their failures.
- Second, insist there is no hope except total surrender to Jesus.
This is emotional and mental manipulation, pure and simple. It is designed to create despair — and then offer a rescue. That is how authoritarian systems control people: undermine their confidence and then sell them the only “cure.”
At The God Question, we believe that a worldview requiring fear, guilt, and shame to sustain itself is a worldview that deserves deep skepticism.
5. Intellectual Honesty About Jesus
Pastor Brown assumed as fact that Jesus existed, was divine, and rose from the dead. He did not even mention the possibility that:
- Jesus may never have existed as a historical figure
- The stories of miracles and resurrection are legendary or invented
These are legitimate questions, backed by serious scholarship, and yet they were left completely unexamined.
If Christianity is true, it should withstand honest inquiry. Instead, Pastor Brown treated its core claims as beyond question. That is an intellectual failure.
6. The Moral Framework: Obedience as Love
Finally, Pastor Brown equated obedience with love:
“If you do not obey, you don’t love.”
That is a disturbing equation. Love should be free, voluntary, rooted in mutual respect. Obedience, on the other hand, is about power and hierarchy.
Tying love to obedience is a strategy for control. It trains people to submit, and to call that submission “love,” which blurs the line between healthy relationships and spiritual coercion.
The God Question holds that real love is about honesty, growth, and chosen commitment — not servile obedience to an authority figure.
Conclusion
Pastor Brown’s sermon was heartfelt, no doubt sincere, and in line with long Baptist tradition. But it stands on a theology that demands human debasement, fear, and unquestioning obedience — all enforced by threats of condemnation.
At The God Question, our invitation is simple: question it. Don’t take these claims on faith alone. Investigate them. Measure them. Test them. Demand moral coherence and intellectual honesty.
If there is a God who gave you a mind, wouldn’t that God want you to use it?
God or Delusion? 