Part 1, The Cost of Biblical Illiteracy on our Well-being

My Journey: I started following Jesus at age 20. First, I read through the Bible, then through the NT many times. The OT did not make much sense to me. In seminary, my OT professor kept telling us the only way to understand the whole Bible was to read it cover to cover, over and over again. I started doing that. As I read through the Bible, I became convinced that the Bible was a unified book. I also became convinced that to live the Christian life well, we needed more than a list of instructions to live by. We needed an intimate relationship with God. We need to become familiar with the story of God’s relationship with his people and see that he wants that relationship with us. We need God’s story to become our story. Rather than living our lives and seeing how God fits, we need to look at God’s story, God’s will for the world, and make his plan, our plan. If we know and love God, he will guide us in every decision, so we no longer need a list!

Our devotion to the Bible: Do you know the story the Bible tells? Do you care about what the Bible teaches? Do you know God’s will for your life? These questions are related. I started making sense of the story of the Bible for myself, and I wanted to teach it to others. In my first ministry position, I developed a series to teach the story of the OT. I wanted the teenagers of the church to see how the stories of the OT fit together and point to Jesus. I wanted them to see that God wants us to join his people to continue the story in the Bible. Later I attempted to summarize the whole Bible on one sheet of paper. I wanted people to read it, learn it, and then they would understand the Bible. The problem with my initiatives is that they are useless to people who do not read their Bible. No sermon, teaching series, or anything will help a person who is not interested in God. If you are not interested in the Bible, you are not interested in God. Many would argue that the Bible is a complicated book. This is because the church is biblically illiterate. Illiteracy in a general sense refers to not being able to read. Biblical illiteracy is not being able to read the Bible. If you are unable to prepare a Bible study on your own, you are biblically illiterate. If you cannot tell me the general movements of the story of the Bible, you are biblically illiterate. Being biblically illiterate does not mean that people are not smart people. It means they have not spent time studying the Bible in-depth. The only solution to biblical illiteracy is to get serious. Get a bible you understand, get a notebook. Start reading the Bible. You may choose to read a book of the Bible in a day and then try to summarize it. You may decide to read a book of the Bible in a week. You may mobilize others to read the same book to discuss it. Write down your thoughts and questions on your reading, on every sermon you hear, and discuss what you learn with others. Becoming biblically literate takes time. No one becomes biblically literate by setting 15 minutes aside for God every day. It does not have to be two hours per day for the rest of our lives, but if we never go through a season where God takes over our calendar, we will remain as we are, more or less indifferent to the things of God, and our Christian life will be summarized as: “We had prayer requests when life got hard.” If you have followed so far, you know this series cannot cure anyone of biblical illiteracy. Only Bible reading can do that. My goal is to show you the cost of biblical illiteracy and indifference. I want to show you that by not knowing your Bible well, we cannot live the godly lives God intends for us. It will affect our well-being, our relationships, and our ability to witness. In this message, we focus on well-being.

In this first point I want to show that if you do not know your Bible, you may be practicing a false religion: Moral Therapeutic Deism: A small proportion of Christians know their Bible well. If you do not know the Bible, how can you be sure that you are a Christian? Most Christians are satisfied with the bare minimum to get to heaven. They want a shortlist of dos and don’ts. We cannot love God if we think our relationship with him consists of our obedience, and him helping us when we are in trouble. If all God wanted us to do is follow the 10 Commandments, the Bible would just be one paragraph long. God gave us the whole Bible to shape us into the people he wants us to be. In 2005, the book “Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers” came out. This book summarizes what teenagers who grow up in church believe. They believe: (1) A God exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth. (2) God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible, and by most world religions. (3) The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself. (4) God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem. (5) Good people go to heaven when they die. According to this study, teenagers who grow up in the church do not understand the Christian faith at all! This false-religion is Moral Therapeutic Deism. The system is about people’s benefits rather than the glory of God. It is weak on the repentance from sin, devotion to God, and developing character through suffering. God is not the sidekick we call when we are in trouble. He is the main character of the story. We live to serve him. Finally, “good people do not go to heaven,” only sinners who repent from their sins. The way we get to this false religion while being a member of a Church is by only opening your Bible once a week on Sunday. We need our relationship with God to be shaped by the Bible. We need our identity to be shaped by the way we see God relating to his people so that God’s story in the Bible would become our story. Now very practically, I want to show that Biblical Illiteracy comes at a cost to our well-being. If we do not know our Bible, we will be more afraid, and less likely to trust God when things get hard.

The first cost of Biblical Illiteracy is fear. In Matt 6:25–34, Jesus teaches not to be anxious. He says that anxiety comes from a lack of faith. In Matt 6:32, Jesus says non-Christians worry about food, shelter, and clothing. How can Jesus say that? When I worry, I need to be reminded that it is because I am not thinking about God correctly. If you are worried often, you must start to wonder if you truly see the world the way Jesus wants you to. Many of those Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol Building on Wednesday go to church on Sunday? How can it be? They warm a pew but do not know God’s Word. They are afraid and anxious. Anxiety can be a particular mental health problem that requires medical attention. But anxiety can also be a result of Biblical indifference, and a false-view of God. Christian Moralistic Therapeutic Deism leads to fear because God is pushed to the side. God is only called upon when things go bad. This leads to a weak relationship with God that barely affects how we view the world. A mature Christian allows God to be involved in all areas of life. So that when the hard times come, we can trust him because we have learned to trust him in all circumstances. Immature faith means that our fear and anxiety completely take over our lives in a way that cripples us. Biblical literacy, knowledge of the Bible allows us to make much of God and little of ourselves. When our problems are big, God is always bigger. If we know the Bible, we know it records a story that spans over at least 4000 years of God’s faithfulness to his people. Church History teaches the church has continued to thrive for the last 2000 years. God uses the Bible to renew our minds so that we would view all of life as he does. We do not worry about life, food, drink, clothes, finances, health, or politics, because according to Matt 6:32, it is unbelievers who worry about those things. We know that our heavenly Father provides for our needs. Next time you are afraid ask yourselves: how am I thinking/feeling/hoping differently about this situation because I am a Christian? If you are not thinking differently about it, chances are you are indifferent to the Bible or biblically illiterate. Application: What do you worry about? Is it this country? The Bible teaches us, our God reigns. Countries come and go. We are called to pray for our leaders. We are called to love our enemies. Love of country can become sin. John says the Love of the world is hatred for God (1 John 2:15). If our love for country leads to partisanship, slander, and fear it is an idol. You need to turn to God. If you worry about your finances, it can be sin. I have everything I need and beyond and yet, I worry from time to time about what my finances will be like in 30 years. I need to repent and trust that God knows exactly where I’ll be, and what I need. I should stop worrying like a non-believer. Even worrying about your children and your children’s health can become sin if you stop trusting God. The solution is to make God a bigger part of your life. Acknowledge him in the things you take for granted, and you will have his peace, even when your world seems to be falling apart.

The second cost of Biblical Illiteracy on our well-being is our response to suffering. The Bible could not be clearer, God exists and suffering exists. Whenever people say they do not believe in God because suffering exists, I think that if God claimed that suffering did not exist, I would not believe in that god either. The way we live through suffering separates mature Christians from the immature. It separates those who love God and their Bible from those who do not know their Bible. Suffering offers opportunities for spiritual growth in maturity, and one of the best opportunities to witness. It is by the way we respond to suffering that others see that our faith is real. If we believe in God when things are great but stop believing when things get hard, we never knew the God of the Bible. When we hang on to God when things get hard, non-believers see that our God is real to us. I want to share an example of how to respond to God when things get hard. Judges 6:11–13 illustrates that Gideon had no problems believing in suffering and the existence of God. The Midianites were oppressing the Israelites. The angel of the Lord told Gideon, the Lord is with you. Gideon responded: “Please, sir, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us.” So, suffering in our lives does not mean God does not exist. It does not even mean he is not with us in the midst of the suffering. Illustration: Bart Erhman is a NT Professor at Chapel Hill. He describes how he lost his faith: If there is an all-powerful and loving God in this world, why is there so much excruciating pain and unspeakable suffering? The problem of suffering has haunted me for a very long time. It was what made me begin to think about religion when I was young, and it was what led me to question my faith when I was older. Ultimately, it was the reason I lost my faith. This NT Professor teaches us Bible knowledge that does not lead to a more intimate relationship with God and life transformation is useless. How can we say we do not believe the Bible if there is suffering in the world when the Bible is full of suffering? Job lost everything and still praised God. John the Baptist was beheaded, Jesus was crucified, and Apostles were murdered. Jesus and Paul promised that all Christians will suffer. The only way we can say we do not believe the Bible because suffering exists is if they do not know the Bible. Love the Bible. Read it when you suffer and you will find encouragement (James 1:3–4).

Conclusion: We have seen that biblical illiteracy has consequences. I believe it is a pandemic. It is a worldwide disease that leads to fear and is the reason people abandon their faith when things get hard. I realize the tone of this message is on the harsher side. I want us to know the risks of not knowing the Bible through hours and hours of reading, studying, and meditating. The Bible is God’s story. It is not a manual for life, a rule book, or a love letter to us. God reveals his plan for humanity in Gen 1–Rev 22. His desire is for our faithfulness in loving him and loving those around us to see Him Glorified! Nowhere God promises us happiness, wealth, health. He gives us himself, and promises to make us more like Jesus if we continue to pursue him! When we start to see over and over that God continually works for good and fulfills his promises, we will learn that our faith casts out fear. If life is about holiness rather than comfort, suffering becomes our friend, not the enemy. May we be known as a loving community who loves God and loves his word. May our love for God manifest itself in our love for others. May our faith cast out fear, and endure through all hardships.