April 28, 2022
How many times do Christians need to see a prominent celebrity pastor have a moral failing that completely negates his entire message before they finally recognize the pattern?
How many times do Christians need to see a church shutter its doors after it gains such a bad reputation that it collapses in on itself?
How many times do Christians need to see a church or Church culture blatantly harm people before they pause and wonder if there’s a greater issue at play?
It seems these things can happen forever without Christians ever really cluing in as to what’s really going on.
The “Bad Apple Fallacy”
I have a theory that I call the “Bad Apple Fallacy.” Essentially, it means that people or a group falsely believe that once a “bad apple” is weeded out, then you can safely assume you’re all good to go. That is, until the next bad apple is uncovered, in which case you just remove that one, and then you’re all good to go again. The cycle repeats indefinitely.
But really, the Bad Apple Fallacy is just a complete failure to recognize meaningful patterns.
As an example, say a celebrity Christian pastor is making waves around the world with his rousing sermons and his books are bringing in an overflowing amount of royalties. Then, suddenly, it comes to light that he’s having several affairs with multiple women. Clearly, this undermines his entire ministry and ruins the trust of his followers.
This guy is removed from his position and his followers say, “Phew, what a relief. We got rid of that bad apple. Now we’re good to go!” They then move on to the next prominent pastor or Christian celebrity.
Until… you guessed it. It comes to light that the next guy is doing something bad or wrong, and now he must be removed. And once again, everyone thinks they’re good to go because that “bad apple” has been removed.
But this pattern just keeps going.
Here’s the thing about catching a bad apple: whatever he got caught doing, he didn’t just start doing on the day he was caught. That means the guy was a bad apple long before anyone realized it, and he was doing wrong or bad things for a while before his actions came to light.
So the “down time” between scandals in the Christian community aren’t real down times. Bad behavior is happening all during that time, and it just hasn’t come to light yet. In my mind, I wonder how anyone would possibly be able to rest easy during that down time. If I were still a Christian, I’d constantly be on high alert, waiting and wondering who was going to fall next. Hell, I deconverted a long time ago and I still keep an eye on the Christian world and make predictions to myself about who will fall next.
The Christian community tends to treat each “bad apple” as an isolated incident. It’s like trying to contain the problem by pinning it all onto one scape goat so as to not admit that there’s clearly a bigger problem at play that’s affecting far more than the singular “bad apple” of the moment.
Why Does the “Bad Apple Fallacy” Persist?
One reason the “Bad Apple Fallacy” persists is because of a typical Christian’s need to externalize everything. Rather than trust their own selves and their own intuition, they project all that onto gods and authority figures external to themselves in order to learn how to live life, behave, and what to think or believe. So when the person they project onto fails them, they don’t yet have the tools, experience, or knowledge to finally stop relying on external figures and turn their own attention inwards to seek the Truth within themselves.
I recently wrote an article about the Association of Related Churches, a church-planting organization that has established numerous cookie-cutter megachurches in several cities around the country. Many of these churches have been involved in scandals where the pastor was caught sexually misbehaving. Yet the ARC continues to plant new churches, rotate these fallen pastors around after “rehabilitation” and “sabbaticals” and these churches continue to pull in tithing crowds. Why and how? Because none of the church-goers are connecting the dots here. No one is viewing the bigger picture. These are not dumb people; they can view the bigger picture if they want, but many of them—I suspect—prefer to remain ignorant to the bigger picture because then they’ll have no other person or entity left in which to externalize.
Conclusion
If too many bad apples keep surfacing time and time again for the same thing over and over, then the problem is not with the individual bad apples, but rather the entire system. There’s a flaw somewhere.
And when it comes to pastors and sexual misconduct, I know precisely where the flaw in the system is. I wrote about it in my article Why the Church Thinks Men Can’t Control Their Lust.
I guess there’s a little bit of positive news here: finally taking a step back and viewing the issue from a higher and more holistic perspective has spurred many to start their deconstruction journeys. I know this was one big thing that started mine.
And by the way, the Bad Apple Fallacy doesn’t just apply to religion. It’s very much present in politics too, but that’s perhaps an article for another time…
Thank you for your well written articles. I’ve added them to a growing list of truths exposing the ARC churches. I agree fully with you that these men are predator wolves. They gorge themselves on orphans and widows and weak willed women. Were there any godly men in their churches, they would throw them bodily out the front door. Sadly, there are few willing to do so.
However, these stories, which are many, ought not be used unfairly against authentic christians. We despise these liars as much as you. We expose them when we can and warn everyone who will listen. Surely you are aware of the small army of content providers who do this daily. weekly, monthly. I hope you don’t imagine that their wicked behavior will excuse your unbelief at the coming judgement.