How to Fail in Life (book)

From Conservapedia
Jump to: navigation, search

How to Fail in Life: Believe Everything You Learned ... in Church (A Southern Baptist's Remorse) is a book by John V. Rutledge, who identifies as a former Southern Baptist. It was originally published in 2015 as a self-published title.

The central theme of the book is the author's total disdain of historical Christian beliefs in general, and specifically the beliefs and practices of his former denomination. However, Rutledge goes far beyond even what is generally accepted within progressive Christianity: for example not only does he not believe that Moses authored the Pentateuch, he disbelieves that Aaron and his two sons were capable of physically performing the rituals needed to purify the sins of 600,000 Jewish men on a single altar within a single tabernacle, and even disbelieves that Moses was a real person[1]. Further his book contains numerous curse words and even a profane reference to Dr. Martin Luther King's sexual habits (though he does correctly note that Dr. King was not faithful in his marriage).

Rutledge's viewpoints claim that Southern Baptists have a traditional disdain for secular business success (claiming that only two in the entire history of the denomination's existence -- or at least in modern times -- have ever become notable in the secular world for such)[2]; even so he claims that they lacked "originality" like that of Jeff Bezos and others (all of whom, he says, were successful because they were either atheists, agnostics, or Jewish).

Rutledge further claims that the traditional "plan of salvation" in Southern Baptist churches has to be taken from numerous, disjointed verses of Scripture: were a CEO of a business to develop such a plan he would be "fired with a tweet". Instead, he argues that the only thing Jesus told followers to do was "follow me" and "serve others"; yet in the very next chapter he calls anyone who wants to know what that entails as "denominational bureaucrats", "ambitious clerics", and "nervous legalists" (and further argues that Paul's writings on the topic are "hard-to-follow convolutions in which preposition follows preposition in tedious attempts to explain, defend, and convince" -- that is if was ever an actual historical person).

Outline

  • Prologue
  • Preface
  • Introduction
  • Chapters
  1. The Nature of the Beast
  2. A Backward Look Down a Long Road; a Long Look Down a Backward Road
  3. Myths: Transitions to Understanding
  4. Myths: The Shame of Literal Belief
  5. Churches Abhor Critical Analysis
  6. Churches Reject Reason, Logic, and Common Sense
  7. Churches Scorn Human Capacity; Foster Self-Doubt
  8. Churches Disallow Personal Initiative; Disparage Secular Success
  9. Churches Promote an Imbalanced, Church-Centered Life
  10. Churches Motivate with Fear
  11. Churches Project an Arrogant, Our-Way-and-No-Other-Way Provincialism
  12. Churches Complicate Christianity...
  13. Redemption!
  • References

References

  1. Ibid, location 452 in the Kindle edition.
  2. Truett Cathy of Chick-fil-A and Steve Green of Hobby Lobby.