Delete That by John Crist

Long time, no writing. I’ve had a LOT going on. And this sort of touches on some things I’ve been thinking about with regards to my story. And I will probably be delving into more of my background later this year although there is a bit of it in this review for context. Also note, I’m also putting this as my review on Goodreads. I’ve edited both because I thought I took my sarcasm too far.

Two instead of one because it was interesting, I didn’t ha it, and a great starting point for discussion.

I started this and I was interested, but I got really sick of a grown-a** man’s whining and excuse making. “Everyone is a lying hypocrite so it’s okay I’m a lying hypocrite, it’s not my fault I’m a lying hypocrite, etc.”

I am a woman raised in the church, we moved from a typical southern Baptist church to a reformed Baptist (hyper) Calvinistic church when I was 11, where as an immature 11-year-old, I realized that I wasn’t actually saved. I’ve lived in that world excluded, I was not one of the elect. In many parts of America particularly the Bible belt there are huge cultural, social, and familial benefits to being Christian. And depending on the situation, not being a Christian cannot merely mean no positives, but it can actually mean negatives, it did for me.

Some people want all that but they also want all the world has to offer. They want the best of both worlds and none of the consequences. They present as goody-goody, they are the behavioralists, the ones who parents compare the “bad” ones to. The ones who when caught often are excused by the inner circle and always unrepentant, they always have an excuse. Sometimes they stay and claim to be Christians, John Crist seems to be one of these on steroids although it seems that he wasn’t completely excused. Other times they “deconstruct” and blame the entire religion instead of admitting that they were frauds. To both, just take the “L” and own that you snned or that you aren’t a Christian, my stars!

These types of people have hurt the types of people like me, who are honestly not saved and sometimes as in my case (if a woman especially or maybe even only if a woman), expected to still behave like a Christian. I’m expected to have the worst of both worlds. I’m really not sympathetic to these types of people (plus I’m bitter, clearly). He was also in his twenties, thirties, etc. (I think he’s close to 40 now).

Crist is very equivocal in this book, not forthwright and honest. He points out hypocrisy, calling people out, but he uses it as an excuse too. “See everyone is a hypocrite, so it’s okay if I am.” Yeah, no, yours is no minor hypocrisy dude, and someone else’s wrong doesn’t make a right either.

Also, normal people sharing highlights and keeping you know, private things private, is not professing Christianity and living secretly in sin. Social media influencers curating a more cultivated brand authentic to them and being more private since they are public is also not lying and being the total opposite. Not everyone is a huge lying hypocrite about their entire lives.

He would imply he’s sleeping around with multiple women, no acknowledgement that he was in sin, no repentance know, still trying to act like he was sick, that he couldn’t control himself. He wasn’t merely sinning then, he isn’t acknowledging the gravity now, also this behavior is not merely blatant immorality for a Christian, it is incredibly dirtbag behavior for an unbeliever. But then then later he says, “Even though this was shaping up to be perhaps the first sex scandal in history where no one was having actual sex, I could tell it was going to be a sordid scene in Nashville for a while.” Um, what?

Elsewhere he talks of calling out and cancel culture (why is it okay for him to do it though?) and Christians calling each other out. He confuses (deliberately) petty squabbles over minor things of Christian liberty with grave doctrinal error/sin/heresy which call for Biblical rebuked and excommunication with petty squabbles of Christian conscience.  If someone defies biblical doctrine and calls God a liar, they do need to be confronted.

At some point he talks about Jesus not being okay to Christians. Jesus not being “in” with the Pharisees so not comparable to Crist getting caught in sexual sin, with his posturing as a Christian and then turning out to be a white-washed tomb, that makes HIM the Pharisee.

And then as regards to mainstream culture/humanity as a whole and artists, criminal and flawed are not the same thing. Criminals deserve cancellation and prison. Aspects of #metoo were right, it started out right, exposing and taking down a criminal, then got watered down to include noncriminal acts and then further to slander. Crist seems to be classing all this into “flaws.”

On page 196 in Kindle version, he mentions visiting a prison and meeting a chill murderer and others, “Physically, these men were imprisoned, but mentally, they were free.” That is called sociopathy.

He kept mentioning feeling empty, left out, having a void. A genuine Christian would know God and his church are to fill that hole. He mentions mental illness, I can’t really tell how much of that is just innate or a consequence of his choices or put in there to be a smoke screen for obvious sinful choices, he seemed to function pretty normally in wild circumstances which in my personal experience I could not do in mild situations. Everyone is different, it just felt like it fell right in line with his long overt and implied excuse-making. Regardless a Christian starts with God, Bible, church, counseling and a doctor to deal with life. Any or all of those above booze and women, plenty of unbelievers do too.