I saw a video where a Christadelphian speaker compared preaching Christadelphian beliefs with selling insurance. It’s an interesting analogy - but I don’t think it ends well for Christadelphians.

The insurance analogy

The talk itself was a study about why Christadelphians left the religion. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t agree with the speaker’s conclusions - but at least he went beyond common stereotypes like “They just left because they wanted to sin”.

What really caught my attention was an aside near the end:

I did come away from the study with an overall feeling of frustration. I spend most of my hours every day being a salesman, and approaching it from that aspect made me the most irritated.  We have the best product in the world that we are trying to sell. We have a great community, strong well-researched beliefs and doctrines, we believe in an everlasting life and in an eternal kingdom. Those things should be easy to sell. It’s like if you give me an insurance policy that was free and covered everybody with no exceptions. I mean, if I were to stretch the insurance metaphor, people are having trouble with all the exclusions. We’re having trouble selling a product, a belief system that we feel so strongly about, to the point that we seem to be losing people faster than we’re adding them. We’ve known our whole life that the Bible is perfect, Christ as our example is perfect, but we are not. So obviously something is wrong with the way that we as humans are presenting this belief system. We are the weak link. That’s not an attack against the beliefs but against the believers who are obviously fallible human beings who know that we are in constant need of change and improvement. It’s not a problem with the product but a problem with the marketing, and you can trust me, I had a minor in marketing.

What does the product include?

To me it seems there are three components being talked up:

  • A great community.
  • Good Bible understanding.
  • Everlasting life in an eternal kingdom.

Of those three, only the final one really sounds like it could be called “insurance”: Following the correct beliefs and practices provides insurance against mortality.

I’m unclear whether the other two are meant to be core parts of the product, or if they’re merely extra perks of the product.

What does the insurance cost? And what will we get for it?

A few months ago I wrote a lengthy post about the many reasons I don’t trust promises of an eternal reward (triggered by, of all things, a Marvel superhero movie). I don’t plan to repeat all that here.

Suffice it to say that I don’t see any reason to believe the policy will pay out, or even that the divine entity guaranteeing the product exists. I didn’t leave the insurance because I’d found a better insurance provider, but because I decided the cost was too high and the risk was uninsurable anyway.

In addition, I find it deeply ironic talking about an insurance policy which covers everyone, while being part of a tiny denomination which acts out its belief that “narrow is the gate, and few will find it”.

Sure, that means he’s probably right that some of the exclusions are over zealous Christadelphian gatekeeping of a product that should be more widely available. But there are plenty of other exclusions that are written into the product, the nature of which have been debated by Christians for many hundred years. In addition to the detailed exclusions, Jesus explicitly said there would be people who thought they were covered and only find out after it’s too late that they’re not covered. That hardly sounds like a product that “[covers] everybody with no exceptions”.

I have similar objections to talking about the insurance being free. I know the Bible likes to talk about it being a “free gift”, but the word “free” there has to do a lot of heavy lifting. In this case, the speaker is trying to sell membership in a high control denomination that will make significant demands on members’ time and money.

I’ve written about this one before too - some years back, the “free gift” language came up in a non-Christadelphian context, and I vented my frustration:

As someone who damn near broke myself trying to serve God in the way the Bible prescribed, saying that the gift was a free gift and God didn’t expect anything of us was a bridge too far.

Insurance companies have obligations

I think the speaker should be very careful about the analogy he uses. Once the insurance isn’t free - and it’s not - the analogy raises awkward questions like “What duty of care might the insurance provider owe the insured in exchange for premiums paid?” Questions that might even raise the dread spectre of salvation by works rather than by grace alone.

That comes with the territory, though. I don’t think we’d be too impressed by an insurance company that said “We don’t care what premiums you’ve paid or for how long. We owe you nothing - but in our mercy we’ll choose to give some of you a really good payout when disaster strikes”.

The role of indoctrination in sales

He says he and his fellow believers have known “[their] whole life” that the Bible is perfect and Jesus is perfect. I’m not sure he realises how telling a point that is. Where I was growing up, the vast majority of Christadelphians were born into the religion, and I assume it’s the same in his part of California.

To misquote Joshua, the mindset he’s relying on feels like:

As for me and my house, we will subscribe to Christadelphian mortality insurance till the day we die, no matter what it costs us.

(fun fact: the original Joshua quote was on the front door of the house I grew up in. That turned out well…).

Given he’s studying people leaving Christadelphia, his focus is “We all know the product is wonderful, so why are so many people leaving?” And it’s a good question to ask, though I doubt he’d like my answer to that question.

But I think the better question is: “If this product is so great, why haven’t more people bought into it?” With this perfect product held by so few people, they should be successfully moving into the vast untapped market, not trying desperately to sandbag the exits so more won’t surrender their policy. And they definitely shouldn’t need to sell the product to toddlers before they’re ready to reason about it.

Many ex-Christadelphians, like me, doubtless believed in the perfection of the Bible and of Christadelphian beliefs for many years. For me, it was something that I’d known all my life, and that most of the adults around me accepted without question.

That doesn’t make it the best product in the world. It just means we were in a bad position to effectively evaluate it. And, for me at least, that meant that the confidence couldn’t last forever. A few years ago I asked whether my deconversion was inevitable, and largely concluded that it was. The closed bubble where everyone knew the product was perfect couldn’t stay closed, and when it popped I couldn’t ignore what I learned forever.

“Having the best Bible interpretation” makes it a niche product

Going back to the three product components I mentioned earlier, I don’t know how many people are actually in the market for mortality insurance. I’m sure there are a lot of people who would like the idea - but how many of them think it’s possible or likely and thus worth seeking out?

Similarly, we hear a lot today about the modern loneliness epidemic and our need for community. A product which fostered a genuine, caring community could be very popular, whether that’s considered part of the core product or just a convenient perk.

However, I’m pretty sure that “We’ve got the best Bible interpretation” is the sign of a niche product. Society at large just doesn’t have the same deference to the Bible as God’s inspired word as my upbringing did.

I have so many memories of Bible-based teaching from my years in the religion - and none of them brought in the crowds. In childhood I remember the weekly Bible-based lectures on various topics, advertised and open to the public. The public didn’t come.

Then in my mid-teens I was a founding member of the Dandenong Bible Education Centre. As well as the weekly Bible based lectures - some of them led by me - there were also introductory Bible courses. I remember different versions of that course with names like “Learn to Read the Bible Effectively”, “Getting to Know the Bible Better”, and “Bible Reading for Beginners”. In addition, we had Christian books and related products for sale, and people could join our lending library and borrow Bibles and a wide range of Biblical books.

Basically, we wanted to make the Bible available to those who didn’t have it, and to emphasise its importance to those who already had it. “The Bible is the world’s best seller!”, we would proclaim, “so it must be important - but too often those copies are just left on a bookshelf gathering dust. Let us help you dust them off and find meaning in your life.”

In addition to that Bible Education Centre membership, I was also involved with Bible software development and lay preaching, and spent time in India on mission work. So many of my life decisions were based on the Bible being perfect, and on the world needing to hear that message.

I left that world more than a decade ago, and now it just seems so irrelevant. Most of the people around me don’t read the Bible every day, and many of them probably don’t even have a copy of the Bible, and they seem to get by just fine.

Here’s the thing for Christadelphians: Mortality insurance or no mortality insurance, the three components I mentioned typically are bundled together, and that’s part of what makes it a demanding, high cost religion. Sure, in reality there’s some flexibility - but how much is there?

There are other religious competitors who claim to offer life after death, both other Christian denominations and other religions. There are also many other sources of community, most of which don’t require the constant attendance and the strict adherence to (a certain interpretation of) the Bible that traditional Christadelphian belief requires.

He identifies a genuine problem - but it’s not the only one

In a follow up talk the speaker makes a well meaning attempt to consider whether Christadelphians should be more permissive on things like LGBT rights, women’s roles in the church, and just being able to wrestle with doubts safely. And perhaps those would be good things to change - but to me those things feels like he’s just tinkering round the edges. It’s trying to maintain that the product is perfect, but the people tasked with selling it and keeping it going just don’t always understand that perfect product perfectly. Doing better in these areas might remove reasons for some people to leave - but I’m not sure on its own it gives those people any reason to stay, or to come back if they’ve already quit.

When he talks about “fallible” human beings, I wonder if he’s going beyond talking about “imperfectly understanding the product” to talking about what in a sales force might be called “cultural issues”. If so, “fallible” is far too soft a word. There can definitely be a dark side to the community, and certainly some ex-Christadelphians who leave partially or wholly because they have terrible experiences with other Christadelphians.

However, none of those things explain why I walked away from the product. Nor do they explain why many - perhaps most - ex-Christadelphians end up with beliefs, practices and way of life quite different from Christadelphia. My impression is that many who initially leave because of terrible experiences with individual Christadelphians or ecclesias ultimately conclude there are issues with the product, not just the people. And that genie can’t be put back in the bottle just by improving the community and giving the sales force remedial training.

When you’ve stopped paying the weekly or monthly premiums for long enough and the policy has lapsed, it would require conscious effort to renew it. That gives distance and a chance to think. And many will then start to ask questions like “Can we trust this insurance to pay out?” and “Since childhood, this has been the most important thing ever - but do we even need it?”

The product is the problem

For myself, it’s really simple: I quit because I concluded none of it was true, and I’ve only found more reasons to distrust it in the years since. This isn’t just limited to minutiae of Christadelphian interpretation - I think there’s good reason to believe that Jesus never rose from the dead, that the Bible isn’t a reliable source of truth, and there’s no eternal reward waiting for us.

It’s not just me, either. I’ve heard a lot of ex-Christadelphians and ex-Christians say similar things over the last decade. This doesn’t seem like a failure in marketing to me, and I doubt there’s any amount of marketing which will convince me the product is perfect.

Be more open-minded!

It’s this kind of thing that makes me come away from his study with a feeling of frustration. He started off saying that as an insurance broker he’d want to find out more from people leaving his insurance products about why they’re leaving. Great idea, perhaps - but I don’t see how that fits with insisting the product is perfect. How can you be truly open to honest feedback from former customers if any criticisms of the product are dismissed out of hand as just a marketing issue?

Continuing with the insurance analogy, it’s like if a former customer responds “We’ve carefully analysed the Product Disclosure Statement and all the related company files, and we believe the risk is over stated and the premiums are too high. In addition, we can’t find any evidence the company has paid out on past claims, the company’s underwriters don’t seem to exist, and in short there’s no good reason to believe the company will pay out if the risk does materialise”. The sales person thanks them, then at their next sales meeting says “I wish they’d told me about their doubts earlier - I could have headed them off from this reckless course of action. I should have sold the product better.”.

“You should be more open minded” (to the existence of our god) is one thing that gets thrown at non-Christians and ex-Christians alike, and so it frustrates me when they won’t own that mindset for themselves. As I put in an earlier post (inspired by Dracula this time 😛)

For them, open mindedness is just something that others should apply to their god.

Open-mindedness meant that I could re-evaluate my childhood religion and eventually quit it:

Being open to the possibility that I might be wrong is a great thing: It’s what brought me to where I am today. Like many ex-Christians, I came to my current position because I was open minded enough to consider that there might be truth outside the Bible. However, it also made me realise that not all beliefs are equivalent: There are better reasons for believing some things than others.

For me, a major realisation was that there were far more ways for Christadelphia to be wrong than for it to be right. That doesn’t make it wrong, of course - but I think Christadelphians should be open to the fact their product might be wrong, and also open to the idea that in a vast and diverse world their product might have a much smaller target market than they’ve been led to believe.

And who knows? Once they’re open to that, maybe they can also accept that ex-Christadelphians like me aren’t in that target market.

We aren’t obligated to listen to sales pitches

In the lead up to quitting religion I tried to read arguments from both sides for balance, even though I could see I was overwhelmingly leaning towards quitting and it became frustrating hearing the same unconvincing arguments over and over again. Then I kept doing it for a year or two after quitting. I wanted to be open to different points of view and to finding ways in which I was wrong. But it was still often frustrating because few of the religious arguments were unfamiliar or taught me new things.

What helped cure me of this was recognising that believers are acting as sales people. That means that if I want to I can listen to their pitch, or try to understand what problem their product solves and it’s a problem I have and a solution I can trust. But I don’t have to.

To me, it also makes the sales pitches themselves a bit more suspect. My goal is seeking out truth and understanding more about the world, and alternate perspectives definitely help with that. I’m not so sure that sales pitches do.

The purpose of a salesperson isn’t sharing information or seeking out truth - it’s trying to sell a product or solution. That gets us into the realm of persuasion rather than truth.

They’re not obliged to tell us the negatives of their product, or to discover the reasons why we actually don’t need their product, or to help us discover that a different product or service would fit our needs better. And when it comes to understanding competing products, they don’t necessarily need to completely understand them - just know enough of their downsides for a pitch to dissuade waverers.

Some salespeople are in the job because they genuinely believe their product is the best product, and some salespeople are interested in doing their best for the customer even if it doesn’t make a sale - but we can’t rely on these things. As they say, caveat emptor - let the buyer beware.

I also think Upton Sinclair’s words apply to sales:

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

In the case of Christadelphians, it’s not about money, and I’m not doubting that many of them sincerely believe they have the best product in the world, and that they have an obligation to make more people aware of that product. I’m just not sure they’re in the best position to assess that claim, particularly if - like me - they grew up with it. When your community, your family, your way of life and your eternal life depends on not finding issues with the product, it’s difficult to see the issues that are there - or perhaps difficult not to explain them away or minimise them when you do come across them. Even more so when you’ve been spending the years hearing sure-fire product perks, sales tips, and criticisms of competing products from fellow salespeople. Not impossible - I’m the living proof of that - but definitely difficult.

Leaving all that aside: I firmly believe it’s not my responsibility to prove to a Christadelphian salesperson that I don’t need their product. Nor is it my responsibility to give them my time so they can try to sell the product to me. The same goes for people from other denominations and other religions, and it goes whether they have a genuinely novel pitch I’ve never heard before or whether they have same tired arguments all over again.

I don’t go to bed at night feeling it’s my fault that somewhere a salesperson missed their quota for the month, and nor should I go to bed feeling responsible for a Christadelphian’s guilt that I’m missing out on their perfect kingdom. That’s very much a “them” problem, not a “me” problem.

I may well choose to engage sometimes, but I don’t owe it to them or to lofty ideals like truth to do so. It’s also irrelevant whether they’re convinced by my reasons to surrender the policy and then refuse to take it up again, just that I’m convinced by them.

Conclusion

Many years ago, I thought I held good, solid mortality insurance. Not only did I pay the premiums myself, but I thought everyone needed the product and so I tried to sell it to those around me.

Nowadays, I’m not in the market for that insurance: I think there’s good reasons to doubt its effectiveness, and I’m aware from personal experience that the premiums are high and the exclusions onerous.

That’s not an issue with the salespeople or the marketing. It’s an issue with the product. Period.