John Piper's son goes viral laying into evangelicalism on TikTok
John Piper's son Abraham Piper has become a TikTok star with his offbeat comical videos, many of them slamming evangelicalism.
Abraham, an artist, has amassed over 920,000 followers, with many of his videos being watched hundreds of thousands of times.
In one video that's been viewed over 365,000 times, he lays into the concept of hell and suggests that most believers don't really believe in it.
"Even the most abrasive fire-and-brimstone preacher doesn't really believe in a literal hell," he said.
"If they allow themselves even a single banal luxury, they're proving they don't believe. How are you gonna take your family to Outback after church while millions of people are burning alive?"
In another, he railed against his Christian education as a youngster, telling fans that he had been "taught that the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Led Zeppelin all had satanic messages in their music."
He went on, "So let's say my teachers were telling us the truth and it wasn't just fear-mongering propaganda from another little 'ministry' hiding out in Colorado. Why didn't the devil have anything new to tell us? Shouldn't we have gotten that demonic head nod from Green Day or Nirvana? Maybe Garth Brooks?
@abrahampiper Hey, everyone’s talkin about ##hell right now. Fun! I wanna play… ##comforting ##nonreligious ##secular ##exfundie ##exvangelical ##exchristian
♬ original sound - Abraham Piper
"Anyhow, these lessons took place between teaching us how to defend Young Earth Creationism and protect ourselves from secular humanism which, in case you didn't know, is the root cause of every single atrocity that took place in the 20th century, if you went to my high school."
But in one video that's amassed over 3.6 million views, the son of the evangelical preacher says "nothing really mattering is the best".
"The universe is our host and they've said no big deal - about everything," he said.
"Our ultimate host is not p***** or sad, they just don't care.
"Nothing really matters and this is what gives us the freedom to feel our own meaning, and feel it with ease instead of a sense of fear or guilt.
"This my friends is the m******-f****** gospel. You like good news? The universe doesn't give a s***."
Abraham's father, John Piper, is one of the most influential figures in modern evangelicalism, offering answers to the big questions about the Christian faith on his popular website, Desiring God.
In another video, Abraham said he wasn't attacking Christianity but "narrow-minded" evangelicalism.
"Is one of my themes attacking Christianity? No. I don't attack Christianity. I berate evangelicalism. Fundamentalism," he said.
"It's a destructive narrow-minded worldview. And one of the most destructive, narrow-minded aspects of it is that its adherents feel as if they are the entirety of Christianity rather than the tiny sliver of it that they actually are.
"Evangelicalism is a toddler tradition that's cousins with Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy and the snot-nosed little sibling of mainline Protestant denominations. So yes, I'm out here saying that fundamentalism is bizarre anti-intellectual bulls--t. But that's not me attacking Christianity. Christianity is a big family. I'm just saying that one of the kids is being kind of a brat. And most of the rest of the family agrees."