 Have you ever felt like the Christians around you, and maybe the church that you go to, were trying to get you to suppress your doubts and questions about your faith? Well, if so, you can probably relate to this popular YouTuber who recently made a video about how he left the Southern Baptist Church. Here's a clip. Let's deal with one of the main reasons I left the church. Repression. Not just repression, but repression of information, repression of science. You see, the Southern Baptist, at least my church that I grew up in, really did not like people questioning things. And I've always been this kid, even now, 29, I'm an adult. I've always been somebody who I value learning. I'm still learning. I don't want to stop learning, learning, learning, learning, and just being educated on things that I don't know about. For whatever reason, it just sparks this passion for me. When I find out something that I didn't know previously, when I learned something that I didn't know about something that I'm interested in, I just get excited. Learning is so valuable and so important. And one of the things that I experienced in the Southern Baptist Church that I grew up is that they didn't like people learning. I mean, they did, but they only like people learning things that was in their realm of acceptance, meaning that it was suppressed information. It was information that anything that questioned their ideology, questioned their religion, was automatically condemned, looked upon as heresy, and therefore was wrong and sinful. It's adding to me to hear that this guy, Repsion, encountered a church or he was at a church that didn't seem to allow him to have doubts and questions. It sounded like he went to a Southern Baptist, maybe fundamentalist church, and all denominations have their issues. I know that that kind of act of Christianity definitely falls more often than not into more kind of legalism. And in those kind of circles, yes, questions are kind of dangerous. Doubts are scary. And even for me, in the times that I've experienced, maybe people close to me or just people out there talking about their own doubts and questions, it's kind of scary sometimes. You're like, oh no, well, don't go too far. Don't take this too far because then you might leave the faith and it might be done. But I think what this, that kind of mentality and that kind of like scared mentality within the church, oh my goodness, we just need to suppress all questions and doubts because if we start acknowledging them, maybe a breakout of doubts and other people will start having these doubts and questions too and everyone will leave the church. It's just has a lack of understanding of God's sovereignty. I truly believe that God wants us to work through these doubts and questions that we have in our heart because they are going to be, they could either be a catalyst for us going deeper in our faith, in Christian community, or they could be, if we suppress them all this time, it's just this thing in the back of the head where we know we're not being authentic and honest to what we're experiencing. And one day that's going to come out. And why wouldn't we just want to deal with that when it happens? Why are we so scared? And it's because I think for a lot of Christians, we just have a lack of faith in God to do what he does in saving and drawing people to repentance and giving them faith and all that stuff. Like, I just think we're so scared that, oh my goodness, you have a doubt, you're on the path to hell, no. It's like, well, can't we actually learn from this? Can't we actually realize that if we work through a doubt, that actually makes our faith stronger? Hopefully, church would be a place where these doubts could be aired in the safety of a nurturing and mature Christian community. Unfortunately, it sounds like that wasn't the case for this guy. I want to make a couple last points here. It's easy to trash on a church that may be contributed to this guy suppressing his doubts and his questions and that kind of thing. At the end of the day, a church can't take responsibility for your own personal faith, if a church is negatively influencing you to suppress those things, that's terrible, but at the end of the day, it's up to you to be like, okay, well, are these things that the church is teaching me true? We need to take some responsibility on ourselves. And obviously, it's a sad situation when that person is younger and impressionable and they can't really discern for themselves that the church is teaching them good things in accordance with the Bible, because the Bible doesn't teach suppression of questions. The Bible is very confident and God is very confident in his ability to prove himself to be faithful and prove himself to be who he is. So he's not scared of that. It's just too bad that at this point, Repsion, he couldn't have kind of worked through that himself and discerned that this kind of church wasn't teaching in linement with the scriptures and being young and impressionable. That's not a great situation. And one last thing here. I don't think it's wrong to believe that you found the truth and stay strong in that. Some people will say that to believe in Jesus is narrow-minded, that you need to continue to open yourselves up and don't really land anywhere particularly, just so then you can grow more and become a fully enlightened person. I don't think this is true at all. When we found the truth, when we find the truth, we want to hang on to it, right? And sure, you can explore the world views and ideas, but at the end of the day, you need to come back to what is true. And if Jesus is the way, the truth and life and the only path to the Father, then we need to be coming back to him. Why would we settle for lesser things, for lesser ideas, for lesser world views, simply for the cause of this kind of open-mindedness? No. One last thing here for those of you who do kind of struggle with more doubts and questions. I would just encourage you don't let one doubt or one question tear apart your entire faith. We're giving these things more weight than they deserve, just because it's one little thing and we can't quite figure it out yet. Then we start to believe, okay, well, maybe this whole thing is over and we freak out, but it's important to have some perspective and take some time and wisdom and just, okay, what, you know, I don't necessarily need to have the answer to this right now, but maybe in conversations with people and just further growth and maturing, I'll come to truly understand what this is about or what this is about. Just take time with it. You may have one question today and a new set of questions tomorrow, but ask God each day to give you a renewed faith that you may see him clearly and that these questions wouldn't be a stumbling block, but rather an avenue to know him deeper. Thank you so much for watching this video. For those of you who are new to the channel, my name is Isaac David and this is The Daily Disciple where I help you follow Jesus daily. If you enjoyed this video or got something from it, I encourage you to hit the subscribe button down below because I'm putting out new videos all the time. And the only reason I can do that is because of the wonderful people on Patreon that support me and my ministry on a monthly basis. And if you want to help support me in this mission of helping people follow Jesus daily, you can head on over to the link in my biopatrion.com slash daily underscore disciple and help support me on a monthly basis. Thank you so much for watching guys and I will see you in the next video. God bless.