In Reality: How Our Faith Becomes Untethered

In essence, what happens is we say this cultural story is true, and then we use the Bible to undergird that cultural story. Whereas what should really be happening is we say, here's what's true based on biblical and theological interpretation. This is what the Bible says. Now, how does culture conform to that?

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Hey everyone, I'm Dr. James Spencer, and welcome to this episode of Prepped. You know, how do we know that we're not following our own version of Christianity? How do we know that our faith is actually anchored in biblical truth? And what if I told you that it's possible for many sincere Christians, perhaps even you, to have a faith that's become untethered from biblical foundations without even realizing it? And today I want to talk through some challenges, some realities that I think all of us are facing as we enter into a world that is increasingly chaotic, that is, as I like to say, becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny and distort God. And I think by the end of our time together, you'll be able to recognize some warning signs that your faith may be drifting from biblical moorings and understand the forces that are pulling it away. And I think most importantly, discover how returning to scripture as your final authority can provide an anchor for faith that you desperately need in these chaotic times. So this isn't about adding more religious information to your life. It isn't about setting forth a set of rules and saying, this is how you have to do everything. It's not about control, but it is about authority. And when we think about the Bible, we often refer to it, or I often refer to it, as the final authority for life and faith. Well, what does that mean? It means that whenever the Bible speaks on something, whenever the Bible speaks to something, that word is authoritative. So it doesn't deny things like science or, you know, the insights of psychology or anything like that, but those have to sit underneath that final authority. In other words, when a reality is presented that is contra the Word of God, the Word of God always wins. And that's what it is to recognize God's Word as the final authority for life and faith. And so you can see how quickly we might drift away from that final authority. We might decide that, you know, I don't really like this teaching in this passage, and so I'm going to go in a different direction. But the reality is that God has revealed himself and given us revelation about all of reality within his word. And so what we need to be doing is truing ourselves to that, not pulling ourselves away from it. And so I think that this episode is really about helping us understand how we are subtly shaped by the countless competing voices in our culture, how our own sort of unwillingness to change or unwillingness to conform to Christ actually pulls us away from the Bible's authority. And I want to offer some insights into how maybe we can draw ourselves back in underneath that final authority for life and faith. So if you've ever felt confused by conflicting teachings, you know, Christian teachings, wonder why sincere believers can reach wildly different conclusions from the same Bible,, or even just desire greater confidence that your faith is firmly grounded in Scripture rather than cultural trends, then what I'm about to share will be hopefully helpful and transformative for your spiritual journey. So let me just start with a story that I think illustrates what it means by— what I mean by untethered faith. A few years ago, I was on a panel discussing Christian nationalism. One of my co-panelists, who was a very sincere and educated Christian leader, made a statement that caught my attention. He said, as Christians, we need to stand up for our rights and take back this country for God. Now, on the surface, that might sound reasonable to many believers, but as he continued, I noticed something troubling. While he frequently referenced concepts like rights and freedom and taking back America, he didn't ground those ideas in scripture. And when he did reference the Bible, it was to support conclusions he'd already reached through a primarily political framework. That's what I call untethered faith. Faith that affirms biblical authority in theory, but in practice is shaped more by cultural narratives, political ideologies, or personal preferences than actually by scripture itself. And the problem isn't that this person was insincere. The problem is that his interpretive framework, the lens through which he read scripture, had become untethered from the teaching office of the church and proper biblical interpretation. And that untethering happens, I think, in several ways. First, we might say that there's something I would like to call selective reading, where we gravitate toward passages that confirm what we already believe while avoiding those that challenge our preconceptions. And we all do this to some extent, but when it becomes our primary approach to scripture, our faith begins to become untethered. Second, there's terrible simplification, reducing these really complex biblical teachings to simplistic formulas or soundbites that distort their meaning We'll explore this more in the next video, but for now, understand that the Bible's teachings on most significant issues are nuanced and multifaceted and not easily reduced to sort of bumper sticker slogans. Third, I think there's cultural captivity, where our interpretation of scripture is unconsciously shaped by the dominant narratives of our culture, and that happens to conservatives and progressives alike. The conservative might read American individualism into scripture, while the progressive might impose contemporary identity politics on out of the text. But both approaches untether faith from its biblical foundations, and that's a real problem. This final one, I think, which I'll call authority displacement, is connected to the third one, cultural captivity, because this is where we theoretically affirm the Bible's authority while practically giving greater weight to other voices—political leaders, cultural influencers, or even our own institutions and preferences. And so in essence, what happens is we say this cultural story is true, and then we use the Bible to undergird that cultural story. Whereas what should really be happening is we say, here's what's true based on biblical and theological interpretation. This is what the Bible says. Now, how does culture conform to that? Where does it fit with it, or at least, you know, align with it to some degree? And where is it off so that we can look for places for reform? And I think that the result of these various factors is a faith that remains Christian in name, but it's really become untethered from the actual teachings of Scripture. And the most dangerous part is that it happens very gradually, almost imperceptibly, so that many sincere believers don't even realize their faith has drifted. Now, Scripture itself warns us about this danger. We see it in 2 Timothy 4:3-4. Paul writes, "For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. Notice the progression here. So first, there's a rejection of sound doctrine, not necessarily an outright rejection of Christianity, but a turning away from the fullness of biblical teaching. Then there's a gathering of teachers who confirm what people already want to hear. This doctrine they've rejected opens up the ability for them to fulfill a particular desire, and then the teachers come in and they say, yes, let's cultivate, let's encourage that desire. That's a right desire to have. And then finally, there's a turning away from the truth toward myths, stories that might contain elements of truth, but ultimately lead away from the reality as God defines it. I think those myths are closest to what I call, you know, stories that deny or distort God. And this passage describes exactly what we're seeing today, not just in obvious heresies, but in subtle distortions that occur when faith becomes untethered from proper biblical interpretation. Jesus himself confronted this issue with the religious leaders of his day. In Mark 7:6-8, he quotes Isaiah and he says this: These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain. Their teachings are mere human rules. Then he adds, You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions. Now, the Pharisees hadn't rejected the scriptures in a formal way. It isn't as if they would have said, uh, the Torah is worth nothing and they throw it in the garbage. They revered scripture, but they'd allowed human traditions to become the primary lens through which they interpreted God's word. What would reinforce what was already happening? How is it that this status quo that we've created and that we're benefiting from, how is it that we can understand God's word so that we can reaffirm this, we can reinforce this, so that we can continue pursuing our own desires. And so their faith had really become untethered from its true foundation, which is the word of God. And I think the same danger exists for us today. I mean, we might affirm biblical authority with our lips while our hearts and our actual interpretive frameworks are far from God's intended meaning. So how do we start to recognize if our faith is becoming untethered? Well, here are some warning signs. First, I'd say, do you find yourself more passionate about cultural or political positions than about the core teachings of Scripture? Do you find yourself more passionate about the cultural and political positions of our day, getting one person elected or another, getting one law passed or another, you know, advocating for, you know, a certain sort of wholesomeness as opposed to holiness than you are about discipleship. And it doesn't mean that Christians shouldn't engage in cultural issues, but when these become our primary focus rather than discipleship, rather than helping people live under the authority of Christ, I think it's a good warning sign because discipleship is what we are supposed to be doing. We are supposed to be teaching people to live under the authority of Christ. And if we're not doing that, it suggests that we are teaching them to live under some other authority. And that we're in the active mode of trying to create that authority either through the enactment of laws, the election of certain political officials, the development of social groups that would reinforce a certain sense of morality. On their own, none of those are necessarily good or bad, but they need to be nested within discipleship. I actually talk about this a good bit in my book, Serpents and Doves. And so if you wanted to check that out, you can. It's available on Amazon. But essentially, Essentially what I talk about there is that, you know, our lives are immersed in the worship of God. That's what our lives are supposed to be. They're supposed to be immersed in the worship of God. And so everything we do is to be an expression of that worship. And that worship always has God on top. It's always aiming to point to and glorify the Lord. And that means that as we become more focused on a particular cultural issue or a particular moral issue or a particular political issue, Regardless of whether that political, moral, or cultural issue is right or wrong, what we've done is we've displaced God subtly from the top. And so a lot of our concerns, our passions about these different things in society, they need to emerge from discipleship. They need to emerge from what we're immersed in. And if they don't emerge from that, we can almost be sure that we're creating a distraction for ourselves. And so we just have to be careful as we're thinking about this that we don't have other primary issues primary issues that we won't let go of, even if those primary issues end up not glorifying God. Second, I think, you know, we need to ask ourselves if we are primarily seeking out teachers and resources that confirm what we already believe. Now, on some level, I think that's a difficult question because we should be seeking out teachers and resources that have a sense of orthodoxy about them. And so I'm not talking about doctrinal orthodoxy. I'm not suggesting that if you're an evangelical Christian or a Protestant that you go go out and find, you know, teachers who are teaching heresies. That's not it. But what I am talking about is, are you seeking out people who are willing to let you continue down a path that is leading you further and further away from God, as opposed to giving you a hard word that would potentially turn you back and true you up to where you're supposed to be? You know, are we willing to be challenged by the full counsel of scripture, even when it confronts our own preconceptions. Third, we need to ask ourselves when we're discussing these controversial issues of the day, do we begin with scripture and allow it to shape our thinking, or do we begin with a position and then look for biblical support? Now, ultimately, this is sort of a methodological issue, right? I've done it both ways. When you're— when we're looking for a topic in scripture, oftentimes I will go into scripture and look for that topic. So the point isn't, you know, is, you know, is it ever okay to decide, hey, I'd like to know what the Bible teaches about X, and then go in and try to find these biblical passages that are teaching you about X? That's not it. The problem is that when I define my position and I say, this is the position, now let me go find biblical passages to support my position. Now we're no longer giving scripture that final authority. What we've decided is we've said, nope, here's my position. This is what I believe. This is what it'll always be. And if scripture supports it, great. If I can't find the right scriptures to support it, maybe I'll just leave them out this one time. And so there's, it's not about a, it's not a question of methodology, right? It's a question of once we're going into the scriptures to evaluate what the scriptures say about a given position, are we willing to modify our position and have, allow scripture to shape our perception of that position? Or are we unwilling to shape that position no matter what Scripture says? That's the real trick with that one. Fourth, you know, do we find ourselves dismissing certain biblical passages or teachings because they just don't align with contemporary values or personal preferences? Now, there's part of me again that— notice how some of these sort of work themselves out in very odd ways. But what I would say is, you know, I was challenged by a podcast guest some time ago to look at slavery in the Old Testament.. And it was really challenging. I think when I look at those slavery passages, they are really difficult to understand. They're difficult to navigate. And they talk about an issue that is so intrinsic to American culture and such a hot button in America's culture that it's just difficult to wade your way through them. Now, ultimately, I tried to take a fresh approach to that. I looked at the way God makes decisions just in general and how certain other biblical passages might shed light on what God is doing with regard to slavery. I tried to stay out of the normal, you know, is God good, is God evil sort of debates on slavery. And you can find those on my author page on Christianity.com if you'd like to read more about them. But ultimately, I think what we often do is we often sort of sit back and say, well, Well, what if I just didn't address this issue? What if I pretended like this didn't exist? What if I pretended that this tension in the scriptures isn't even here? And I think there's a real problem there as well. I think we have to dive in. I think we have to recognize that there are just some things we won't understand. There are some things that are going to be really uncomfortable. There are going to be some things that maybe don't fit with our preconceived notion of who God is. Um, and, and we need to wrestle with those things. And I'd say the last thing, you know, do we understand Christianity in a way that aligns more with a particular political or cultural tribe than with the historic teachings of the church across cultures and centuries? So this is where I get into this idea of opting for wholesomeness as opposed to holiness. I often think back to my time growing up in small town in central Illinois, and you could find any number of people who would come over and help you build a porch on the front of your house or clean up your yard or re-roof your house or something like that, right? But it wasn't always clear that they were doing it because they were Christian. A lot of times, you know, that's just the culture of small-town America. There was an interdependency there and people were nice and kind and there's nothing wrong with being nice and kind. But for Christians, we can't settle for nice and kind. We're pushing beyond wholesomeness, no matter what we may think of it. And I think obviously wholesomeness is a great thing, but wholesomeness can't be our end. It has to be holiness. And so we have to push beyond just, oh, everything seems okay enough. I like to phrase it as we can't leave people less lost. We got to get them across the finish line to actually being found. And so as we're thinking about this, we just need to make sure that our Christianity doesn't lose the impetus of what is the basic function of Christianity. It's to make disciples. And that entails baptizing them, baptizing new converts into the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. In other words, encouraging them, leading them to make a commitment to be loyal to the triune God and the triune God alone, and then teaching them to observe all that Christ commanded. In other words, living under the authority of Christ. So I think if you recognize any of these warning signs in your own life, in your own reading, and I think most of us will, if we're really being honest, I know I do, it doesn't mean that you've abandoned the faith. It simply means that in some areas of your Bible reading, of your life, you may be becoming a bit untethered from and trying to operate outside of the final authority for life and faith which God has given us. So what are the consequences for an untethered faith? I think they're pretty profound, both for individuals and for the church as a whole. So for individuals, I'd say untethered faith really leads us to instability. James 1:6-8 describes this person who doubts as, quote, "Like a wave of the sea blown and tossed by the wind, double-minded and unstable in all that they do." And I think when our faith is untethered from Scripture, we become vulnerable to every shifting cultural wind, every new teaching, every compelling voice. And that instability creates anxiety and confusion. And many Christians today are feeling overwhelmed by competing voices claiming to represent biblical Christianity. And I think without a proper framework for biblical interpretation, they lack confidence in discerning truth from error. And when I say a proper framework, I'm thinking of something like the ancient creeds, let's say like the Nicene Creed, that lays out the doctrinal orthodoxy really of what it means to be a Christian. And so without that proper framework, that's really difficult. We used to do this in the Lutheran Church. I grew up Lutheran. No, I'm not Lutheran any longer, but when I grew up Lutheran, we did catechism. And catechism was really very much designed to provide a framework for understanding the Bible, for reading the Bible. And without those frameworks, we're in a really difficult spot. We don't always know how to think through all these different passages. So, untethered faith, I think, can also lead to division within the body of Christ. And when Christians approach scripture through different cultural or ideological lenses without really recognizing those lenses, they end up talking past each other. In other words, if I'm left to my own devices to create whatever framework I would like, it's highly unlikely that that framework is going to be exactly the same as your framework. And so as we're interacting, ultimately our preconceived understandings, our frameworks are not going to align, and we're going to find that they're going to be somewhat divisive. So I think, uh, perhaps most seriously, what happens with untethered faith, aside from just the anxiety and the difficulty, the potential division, I think untethered faith really does undermine our witness to the world. When non-believers see Christians reaching wildly different conclusions from the same Bible, often aligned conveniently with various political positions or cultural movements, they reasonably conclude that we're simply reading our preferences into the text rather than submitting to its authority. Authority. And for the church as a whole, the consequences are serious. Throughout church history, periods of revival and reformation have almost always been characterized by a return to scripture as the final authority. Conversely, periods of decline have typically involved a drift from biblical authority, not necessarily in theory, but in practice. And again, those are broad statements. I realize that, but the reality is that if we just think about this in a theological mode, right? The Holy Spirit is involved in our renewal. He's involved in our restoration. And so as we neglect the Holy Spirit and as we reject God's word as the final authority for life and faith, we are largely charting our own course. And whenever we decide what our path should be, we're always in a worse position than allowing God to determine what our path should be. So I think today we're seeing some of this play out. Churches and denominations that have allowed their faith to become untethered from scripture are declining numerically and spiritually, while those that maintain a firm commitment to biblical authority, to properly understood those sound interpretive principles, are often thriving, though not necessarily numerically. I think we have to avoid this sort of notion, and I think I said it wrong here above. Let me rephrase what I said. I do think that we're seeing this in real time. What I think we're recognizing is that the numbers can't tell the whole story. That oftentimes faithful churches may be small and dwindling and having a difficult time, whereas unfaithful churches may be growing by leaps and bounds. And so I always tend to liken this to companies. You know, you look at some of the biggest companies in the world, Google and Apple, and, you know, some of those, these are not Christian companies. These are not companies that are necessarily guided by biblical principles, but they're massive. They're huge. You know, lots of money. Amazon's another example, right? You see these companies growing, but that numerical growth isn't necessarily a sign that what they're doing is aligned with biblical teachings at all. And I think we can see the same thing in churches. There are numerous ways to grow without God. There's a lot of things we can get done without God. I discussed this in my my episode on the Tower of Babel narrative. So if you wanted to listen to that, you could look back in the prep series and you'll find the Tower of Babel narrative. I think it's called Unrestrained and Unguided Human Capacity. And so what we end up with in the Tower of Babel narrative are a group of people who do things without God, do things apart from him, independent of him. And they, you know, God comes down and sees it and he says, oh my gosh, if we don't do something, they're going to be able to achieve an awful lot. And that's an awful lot apart from his authority, on their own, on their own terms, doing what they want to do. And so we just have to recognize that as we're seeing some of these things play out, that faithfulness is not necessarily aligned with success in the worldly understanding of success, nor is a lack of faithfulness going to always end up in misery. Not in this temporal world. And so we've got to keep some of that in mind. What we're looking for is a truing to reality, a faithfulness to reality, regardless of the consequences of that, especially the temporal consequences of that. So I think here's the crucial point. Simply claiming to believe in biblical authority just isn't enough. And I think a lot of groups, a lot of people, me, myself, I claim the Bible as my authority, and I claim that while reading it, even though sometimes I don't listen to it. And so I think the key is not just affirming biblical authority, but developing the skills and discipline to interpret scripture faithfully, and then in, as part of that interpretation, actually putting the scriptures into practice, obeying the scriptures, living along them. Them. And so this brings us to part of the solution and how we can ensure our faith remains tethered to biblical truth in a world of competing voices. So I think part of the solution to the untethered faith is not simply reading the Bible more, though that's certainly important. Part of the solution is learning to read the Bible properly with the right interpretive framework. And I think that begins with understanding what the Bible is and what it Scripture is not primarily a collection of isolated verses to be applied directly to contemporary situations. It's the unfolding story of God's redemptive work in history, culminating in the person and work of Jesus Christ. And when we approach Scripture as a collection of proof texts, we can make it say almost anything. But when we approach it as a coherent narrative with Jesus at the center, we develop an interpretive framework that helps us understand individual passages in their proper context. I think the second thing we need to do is to recognize that no one approaches scripture from a neutral position. We all bring cultural assumptions, personal experiences, and theological traditions to the text. We won't always come to the same interpretation, and that's not the point of this. We may not agree on how to interpret a particular text, and the goal isn't to eliminate all those perspectives or even to get to a point of total consensus. But it's to become aware of them and hold them a little more loosely than maybe we are right now and allow scripture to challenge and reshape them rather than vice versa. Third, we need to recover the role of the teaching office within the church. God's given teachers to the church for a reason. We see this in Ephesians 4:11-12, and that reason is to equip individual believers so they can go out and do the mission. And while every believer can, and I think should, read the scriptures, we're not meant to interpret it in isolation. We need guides who can help help us understand the historical context, the literary genres, the theological frameworks of scripture, and ultimately help us understand what it means to live according to an orthodox understanding of the biblical text. That doesn't mean blindly following any teacher who claims biblical authority. It means seeking out teachers who demonstrate a commitment to sound interpretive principles, who approach scripture with humility, and who are accountable to the broader body of Christ. I think we also need to engage with the historic creeds and confessions of the church. I mentioned the Nicene Creed earlier, but these documents don't replace scripture. They provide guardrails for interpretation, representing the consensus of faithful believers across centuries and cultures. And when our interpretation contradicts that historical consensus of the church or its core doctrines, it should give us pause. And finally, I think the most and most importantly, we need to approach scripture not just as an object object or, you know, a thing to be studied, but as the living word of God. It has authority over our lives, and the goal of biblical interpretation isn't just to understand the biblical text, but to be transformed by it, to have our hearts and our minds renewed and our lives conformed to the image of Christ. And in part, that's why we've, if you're not familiar, we're doing verumseminary.com. Uh, verumseminary.com is an initiative we're pulling together to try to help people read the Bible more effectively, uh, to sit under the final authority of life and faith. And so we have a course called Reading the Bible as the Final Authority for Life and Faith. And the course is designed to help people, to give people an interpretive framework for really understanding the Bible and where it's going. And so if you wanted to look more for that, you can find that at verumseminary.com. But I think this, the general idea here is that we want to emphasize that the issue of untethered faith isn't just an academic concern. It's not just a concern for folks like me who have spent a lot of years studying the scriptures. It really is a matter of thriving in your spiritual life, or maybe better put,, but it's about conforming to the image of Christ or allowing yourself to be conformed to some other image. You know, Jesus said, if you hold to my teachings, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free, as John 8:31 and 32. You know, true freedom comes not from untethering our faith from biblical authority. It's not from disconnecting ourselves from God's authority, but from allowing God's word to be the foundation that anchors us to live in reality. God's reality, the reality of the triune God. And in the next couple of videos, we're going to discuss how this works. So we're going to do one called In Reality: How Cultural Stories Hijack Biblical Interpretation. And we're going to explore more deeply how these cultural narratives really do subtly reshape our understandings of scripture and how we can recognize and resist that influence. So I'd encourage you to watch that video to gain a fuller understanding of how to keep your faith firmly grounded in biblical truth. If you just subscribe to our channel here on YouTube or subscribe to the podcast, cast, you'll be alerted whenever that's posted. Until then, I'd invite you to reflect on the warning signs we discussed today. Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal any areas where your faith may have become untethered from scripture, and consider joining me in the Reading the Bible as the Final Authority for Life and Faith course at verumseminary.com to develop the skills you need to interpret scripture faithfully in these challenging times. Thank you for joining me today on Prepped. May God bless you as you seek to ground your faith more firmly in his word.

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