Isolated Christians and the Bible
The Bible is the reason I went into ministry. It is the reason I stay. But for many Christians today, the Bible is not the basis of faith.
Many Christians believe that Jesus Christ can be known, loved, and followed apart from the Bible. They believe in a disconnected Jesus—disconnected from his language, culture, and teaching. For example, many Christians would question my opening sentence. “Surely,” they would say, “you went into ministry to follow Jesus. That’s why someone becomes a pastor, not to teach a book.”
Nope. I follow Jesus because Jesus spoke in the Bible. He formed me with the Bible. He summoned me to work for him through the Bible. The Bible really is the reason I went into ministry. It is the written expression of Jesus’s power.
When we disconnect Jesus from the Bible, our confidence is hobbled.
How do we know who Jesus is without a witness of his coming, power, and teaching that stretches back thousands of years across many cultures? What’s the difference between this disconnected Jesus and an imaginary friend?
I can describe people who come to my churches after trying to follow a disconnected Jesus.
One person hears about Jesus from a coworker. She believes her coworker’s story of how Jesus gave healing, protection, or enlightenment. It seems true-to-life. She prays to Jesus, wanting to experience the same thing. And she does see flickers of that power. She wants more. Long after losing touch with her coworker, she goes from group to group looking for others who know the same Jesus. Sometimes she finds them. Mostly she doesn’t.
Another person is invited to hear an amazing speaker at a massive church. He listens for many months. He hears such a compelling account of how the world works that he starts to follow Jesus—which to him means living a certain lifestyle. But it turns out the speaker himself isn’t living that lifestyle. The crowds stop coming. The disillusioned new follower looks for a Jesus he can recognize in other groups. And looks, and looks.
Still another person sees the power of Jesus in prophecy, healings, and speaking in tongues. But the prophecies are never quite fulfilled. They just evolve to fit reality. The speaking in tongues comes from actors’ training to lower inhibitions, not from the Holy Spirit. Many of the healings are staged. And, ugliest of all, the group’s system is authoritarian: you cannot ask questions of the leaders without questioning God. Gaslighted, angry, and isolated, this believer tries to find her Jesus in one group after another, switching from open groups back to authoritarian ones.
There are two common denominators in these experiences.
First, the information about Jesus all comes from personal experience, the word of a prophet, or the apparent success of a lifestyle—sources that claim to represent Jesus. But the information constantly shifts, blurs, and morphs. There is nothing finally known about him, only more experiences. Individuals struggle to make it work.
Second, believers in a disconnected Jesus are isolated. They drift with whatever unsettled information they can find. They are vulnerable to predators. They have no way to discern a group’s safety except their instincts. Often, people who have been spiritually formed in this isolation lose the ability to bond with other Christians. Their very belief in Jesus is isolated: a self-oriented creed based entirely on their subjective reactions.
I went into ministry because the Bible heals this isolation. It creates bonds of unity between people. I stay in ministry because the unity created by the Bible holds. No other unity does.
The reality of Jesus is grounded in centuries of biblical witnesses.
Their story created the expectation for Jesus’s coming and documented how Jesus fulfilled the expectation exactly. People who learn the Bible’s story today can describe how Jesus satisfied God’s justice at the cross, how he created a new Kingdom based on that justice, and how he empowers his people with his resurrected life. They are also able to explain their personal experience of Jesus in terms of the Bible’s story.
They’re using information about Jesus that doesn’t shift.
When these believers meet others who know the Bible’s story, they find a shared ground where they all stand. They come from different traditions, ethnicities, and backgrounds, yet they can talk with each other about Jesus from their many points of view. The Bible gives them a common space for those conversations.
To be sure, the Bible can become a tool of abuse. You can teach it in very small pieces, keeping people ignorant of the whole counsel of God. You can use those pieces to dominate people, deny them agency, and demand conformity. Authoritarians are always well-stocked with their favorite Bible fragments.
But where churches teach the Bible clearly, deeply, and completely, people grow into a unified freedom. The Bible overcomes prejudice, sectarianism, bitterness, and irrationality. It overcomes sin because that’s what God designed it to do. It has the power to unify people because it is Jesus speaking.