Michael Gungor: Why a Christian Star became an Atheist?

According to his wife Lisa Gungor, musician Michael Gungor has become an atheist. What happened to the man who enthralled millions with his music albums? How could the son of a pastor become an atheist after many years in active ministry? In a Buzzfeed interview, Lisa said “Our ideas of God are still deconstructing. What is it that we still believe? Michael looks at me and says ‘I don’t believe in God anymore.’ Like I can’t believe any of it and he ends up talking more and I remember just like freezing in my whole body ’cause I was OK with the questions but I wasn’t OK with that,” Lisa recounted.

Let us see how this Christian boy transformed into an atheist over the years.

Abandoning the divine inspiration of the Bible

In 2014 Michael and Lisa Gungor revealed that they don’t believe in the Biblical accounts of Creation and the Flood.

This is how atheism starts: Not trusting the Bible. If you don’t trust Genesis 1:1, or Genesis 6:1, there is no reason to trust anything else in the Bible. This is in fact how once Christian West transformed into a pagan civilization: by rejecting the divine inspiration of the Bible and by refusing to submit to the authority of the Bible.

 

Embracing Darwinism rather than Creation

Gungor stopped believing in the special divine creation of Adam and Eve. They took Darwinian Evolution as a fact. There is nothing scientific about Darwinian evolution. Microevolution does happen in the nature. We can see it all around us. But nobody ever observed macroevolution. Darwin’s deception lies in the sleight of hand in presenting microevolution as evidence for macroevolution. Darwinism is a man made religion. Many people love it because it offers them a pseudointellectual cover to escape from the reality of God. Through their incessant tax payer funded school and college propaganda, Darwinists have been successful in convincing many Christians that macroevolution is a scientific fact. Sadly, Gungors fell for it.

Following Rituals without a Relationship

The Gungors followed the standard Christian traditions like no premarital sex, no cussing, no drinking. It is commendable. We should also admire them for taking care of a child with Down’s syndrome.

But, many people are putting their religion around a do’s and don’t s list, rather than cultivating a relationship with Lord Jesus Christ.

Suffering without Substance

Lisa visited the concentration camps in Poland and her perspective on life profoundly changed. She observed

“if I’m good enough or if I pray enough or if I believe enough then I get blessings and I get a baby or a good life. That’s not how life is.”

That is the false teaching so prevalent in Christian churches today. It’s all about you. God revolves around you. He is just waiting to give anything you desire in life: nice car, nice job, nice home, free tuition, nice partner, great kids, great friends. Forget about Jesus’ command which is to deny ourselves and follow him. This is the reason many Christians leaving the faith because they have been taught that when they believe in God, they do not suffer, they only enjoy blessings of life.

Lisa told that she once lost her faith when one of her cousins was diagnosed with cancer. They prayed and waited for a miracle.

Lisa was visiting Auschwitz concentration camp when she received the call:

“And so I get this call one day, and my cousin is healed”

“And everyone’s rejoicing and saying, ‘Praise God,’ crying. And I want to do that and have that feeling because I miss that. I miss that rejoicing. God has broken into the world and decided to heal someone”

Then Lisa got another phone call:

“Well, He’s partially healed.”

“I lost my mind,” she said. “Like, what does that mean? I went on a finely worded rant, all in my head and with Michael. I was like, ‘This is garbage! This whole idea is garbage!’ I said, ‘I don’t believe any of this, I’m an atheist.'”

This is garbage: Yes, that is. So, they prayed for healing of their cousin’s cancer. It did not happen. So, God is non-existent.

You see God never promised a miracle healing for every sufferer. Out of thousands of lepers in Israel, God healed only a few like Naaman. Jesus healed only a few out of millions of sufferers in Palestine.

My mother died this January after suffering from breast cancer. What happened to our intense prayers? Now my dad is suffering from multiple myeloma, a type of bone cancer. Will God heal him?

We should understand that God is not going to give physical healing to every one we pray about. Many false teachers preach that faith healing works for every sick person. They forget about apostle Paul whose request for healing thrice denied by our Lord. ‘My grace is sufficient for thee’ is what our Lord told the great Saint Paul. They forget about Job who suffered in the will of God.

The miracle God wants us to see is the miracle of resurrection. What did Jesus say?

But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas. Matthew 12:39

Many people demanded miracles from Jesus when he was in this world. But he told them they would be given only one sign: the sign of the prophet Jonas. That is the resurrection of Jesus from the death.

We should rest our faith on the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, not on the health of a cousin we have been praying about. God may heal our loved ones or he might call them to heaven. We don’t decide that.

Gungors became atheists because they committed this serious mistake of making individual acts of healing the foundation of their faith. No wonder they became atheists.

Feeling OK without God

Finally Lisa expressed her satisfaction about the life after leaving God.

“I think there was this idea in my head that once you don’t believe in God, now he’s gonna cheat on me and murder people. What [is he] gonna do? Have sex with everyone? And I was like, Wow, he is still a great father. He’s committed to me. His moral compass didn’t break and disintegrate.”

God’s light of revelation has been in this world for over six thousand years now. Christian revelation has been around for over two thousand years. Many atheists live under this morality cultivated over thousands of years by God’s light.

You don’t have to believe in the sun to enjoy the benefits of the sun. Yet every thing you enjoy on this planet will cease if the sun stops its activity even for a moment. The fruits we eat, the weather we enjoy, our health, happiness, existence, in fact everything depends on the sun. I can enjoy all those benefits without acknowledging the sun for a moment. Similarly, all morality in the universe came from God.

It is God who told us about the sanctity of human body, sexuality and marriage. Atheism sanctifies nothing. The moral atmosphere atheists enjoy is derived from God and His Word, not naturalism and Darwinism.

If Lisa had followed the worldview of Darwin, she would not be taking care of a child with Down’s syndrome. In Darwinian worldview it is all about ‘selfish genes’ ‘survival of the fittest’ and ‘dancing to your DNA’. Who are the people who promote abortion, euthanasia, infanticide in our world? People who believe in Darwinism.

Let us pray that God will make His presence known to Michael Gungor and his wife Lisa and they embrace Christ again in a scriptural way.