The Worst Parts of Being a Christian #3: You Can’t Honestly Discuss the Bible
There is nothing to discuss since the answers are obvious.
Who I Am
I was 17 when I voluntarily aligned with conservative Protestantism. I had not been raised in that world, although I was aware of it. I had been reading the Bible for some time and then had a conversion experience. My next step was to walk in the door of a Baptist church near my home and say, “Here I am; what do I do next?” That was fifty-two years ago.
Several years ago I started reviewing my life, specifically the time I’ve spent in the world of US conservative Protestantism. My understanding of the people I knew at church all those years — and my understanding of the relationships I thought I had with those people — has changed considerably.
I continue to attend church regularly and I talk to other Christians as much as they will let me.
The Series So Far
My purpose in this series is to lay out what I’ve learned about how to talk with conservative Protestants. Specifically, the sometimes awkward and disappointing adjustments I need to make — temporarily — in my own perspectives so I can understand and respect where the conservative Protestant is coming from.
Part #1 was about the need to keep firmly in mind that the conservative Christian typically has a narrower view of Christianity than I do — narrower in both time and in space.
The difference in time, by which I mean history, is not that I might happen to know something about our Christian past that the conservative Protestant I’m talking to might not. The difference is that any appeal I make to Christian history is incomprehensible to the conservative Protestant. For them, Christianity seems to exist in a permanent state of right now. There is no past that is connected in any way to present.
Regarding space, by which I mean geography, the conservative Protestant typically seems to think Christianity consists mostly of people they know. Brothers and sisters in other parts of the world, or even in other parts of town, don’t seem to exist. My wife and I have moved to several new churches in recent years and, each time, we cease to exist for everyone we knew at the previous church.
It would confuse the conservative Protestant in the US to mention believers in other countries. The only exception regards persecution. Conservative Protestants do like to talk about how most of the world’s 2.6 billion Christians are routinely hunted for sport by the government of whatever atheistic country they live in.
Part #2 was about giving up any expectation of discussing disagreements with a conservative Protestant.
Disagreements aren’t easy to discuss in any social group. But Protestant theology makes the Bible the ultimate authority and insists that it can be understood by everyone without earthly help. That means that anyone who disagrees with you must be wrong. Creating a new denomination is the go-to solution whenever disagreements arise.
I can’t expect a conservative Protestant to even imagine discussing any topic with me that we don’t already agree on. The fact that I even have a question about a topic such as abortion or divorce or homosexuality or baptism or whatever indicates I must be in the wrong denomination. If we don’t already agree, I belong somewhere else.
Part #3: Conservative Protestants and the Bible
When I aligned myself with conservative Protestantism at age 17, I thought we would all be using the Bible as our ultimate guide for faith and practice. Since I wasn’t very happy with the life I had so far, and since I was ready to leave home and start a new life in college in a new town, I was ideally situated to commit the entire rest of my life to doing whatever the Bible taught. I really dug into the Bible because I wanted to know how to live.
I eventually realized that conservative Protestants don’t typically operate that way. As a teenager and new Christian at that Baptist church, what I learned from the Bible was the precise order of the cities Paul visited on his three missionary journeys. God, apparently didn’t provide the Bible as a guide to living our lives. One of the worst parts of being a Christian for me is accepting that the conservative Protestants around me don’t seem to have much interest in what the Bible says regarding our own choices and behavior.
There are several reasons for this strong disinterest.
For one thing, the Bible for conservative Protestants is mostly a symbol for things already believed; it’s not viewed as a source of wisdom and guidance that can lead to personal growth. Conservative Protestants may want the Ten Commandments in public schools, but they don’t want to learn anything from those ten commands. Are we supposed to be making Saturday a holy day? Do we want to acknowledge polytheism and slavery? Do we want to scale back coveting even if doing so destroys the economy? Similarly, conservative Protestants may want the Bible in public schools but they sure don’t want teenagers with internet access openly discussing what they find when they actually start reading what’s in the Bible.
To put this point in stronger terms, the Bible functions as an idol, something worshiped for its own sake. It’s not viewed as something that points to God. It’s not viewed as something worth reading.
Another reason conservative Protestants can’t see the Bible as a source of wisdom that leads to growth is the insistence that the Bible is somehow perfect in and of itself. This unforced error puts conservative Protestants totally on the defensive when it comes to the Bible. The time they do spend on the Bible text is mostly wasted making up wild defenses of the apparent problems they have voluntarily supplied their opponents by claiming inerrancy in the first place.
The belief that Bible teachings about how God wants us to live are clear and certain makes the thought of actually reading it a frightening prospect. But Protestant theology provides the way out: since all you need to do to get saved is recite a magic spell (the sinner’s prayer) at some point in your life, there is no need to read the Bible to learn how to live. Reading the Bible is not important. During my exit interview at one church I’d tried to become part of, I asked why there was no adult Sunday school class. I was told that the church leaders had learned that an adult doesn’t change much after the first three years of becoming a Christian.
So for me, one of the worst parts of being a Christian is not being able to talk with other Christians about what the Bible says regarding how to live. I can’t be honest about questions because as soon as I ask a question I reveal that I, unlike all the other Christians, don’t already “get it”. That situation is not what I expected when I became a Christian.
Coming up…
In the next and final portion of this series I will discuss one last disappointment about Christian life: the lack of interest in evangelism.
