Why Christians Feel Spiritually Disconnected Even When They Believe
We have been exploring what Dallas Willard called “The Great Omission,” the surprising condition in which modern Christianity talks a great deal about making disciples while often struggling to help people actually become them.
A disciple is an apprentice of Jesus, someone who is slowly being formed to think, act, relate, and love as He does. If that is the goal, then discipleship cannot simply mean believing the right things, attending the right church, or accumulating more biblical information. It must involve genuine inner transformation over time.
As we have explored elsewhere, people are most likely to become like someone else when they participate in an intentional formative environment that includes five elements: time, habits, community, intimacy, and instruction. Jesus and the early church embodied these elements abundantly, and nearly every serious formative environment still relies on some version of them today.
Modern Christianity, however, tends to place disproportionate weight on one element: instruction. Biblical teaching is essential, but in many churches it has become the assumed center, and sometimes nearly the whole, of discipleship.
The result is that many people become increasingly informed while remaining spiritually disconnected from God, other people, and even themselves.
Is Biblical Orthodoxy Enough?
I recently spoke with the head of a national Christian ministry who argued that the central problems facing both the church and culture could be traced to one cause: a lack of biblical orthodoxy. If churches would simply teach the right biblical truths, he suggested, the church would be reformed, and culture would follow.
That conclusion is difficult to sustain for at least two reasons.
First, our generation has greater access to biblically orthodox teaching than any generation in human history. The best pastors, theologians, teachers, Bible studies, lectures, podcasts, books, sermons, and recordings from both the present and the past are available on our phones. At almost any moment, we can listen to a brilliant sermon, study an ancient commentary, watch a theological lecture, or hear a respected Christian thinker explain nearly any topic imaginable.
If we lack biblical information, it is rarely because the information is unavailable.
Second, we have all watched prominent Christian teachers, pastors, apologists, authors, and musicians proclaim sound doctrine while eventually revealing lives deeply disconnected from the truths they taught. Some were living double lives. Others harmed people around them. Still others abandoned the beliefs they had publicly defended and announced that they had “deconstructed.”
The standard response is usually that we are all sinners and should keep our eyes on Jesus rather than ordinary men and women. That is true as far as it goes, but the response often rings hollow.
Of course, we are all sinners, and none of us will become sinless in this life. Yet if the purpose of discipleship is to become more like Jesus over time, should we not expect those who teach correct doctrine to become increasingly loving, compassionate, humble, sacrificial, patient, and relationally wise?
Shouldn’t we expect to sin less?
The Problem With “Brains on Sticks”
One reason instruction has assumed such an outsized role in modern Christianity is that we have inherited a reduced understanding of what it means to be human.
Many people trace this shift to René Descartes and his famous conclusion, “I think, therefore I am.” Several centuries of Enlightenment thought, industrialization, modernism, and rationalism eventually produced a culture that often treats human beings as what one of my pastor friends calls “brains on sticks.”
The operating assumption is that people primarily need accurate facts. Give them the right information, and they will make the right decisions. Explain the truth clearly enough, and they will change.
But human beings are far more wonderfully complex than devices that receive information and produce behavior. We have brains, but we are not brains. We are embodied, relational, experiential, emotional, spiritual creatures whose hearts are shaped through time, habits, stories, relationships, suffering, love, trust, disappointment, and desire.
The head can learn something the heart has never experienced.
This reduced anthropology has shaped education, social programs, leadership, politics, and modern church life. We keep trying to solve relational and spiritual problems primarily by transferring information.
What Churches Look for in a Pastor
Anyone who has served on a pastoral search committee has probably encountered this assumption.
What is the primary characteristic many churches seek in a pastor? The quality of the sermons.
Churches often evaluate candidates according to their ability to interpret, write, and deliver biblical teaching because the weekly sermon is assumed to be the primary formative influence on the congregation. A pastor may be relationally immature, emotionally unavailable, deeply insecure, or poor at cultivating healthy community, yet still be considered highly qualified because they can preach.
Paul certainly includes the ability to handle the word of truth among the qualifications for leadership. But he places that ability within a much longer list of relational and character qualities, including gentleness, hospitality, integrity, self-control, uprightness, and love of what is good.
The ability to teach matters. But the kind of person doing the teaching matters just as much. Perhaps more so.
The Evangelists at the Ballpark
My family and I were walking into a Texas Rangers game last year, which was especially meaningful because they were the reigning World Series champions, in case you had somehow forgotten.
As we approached the stadium, several “evangelists” greeted the crowd by shouting isolated Bible verses through bullhorns. They informed us, in no uncertain terms, that we were all going to hell unless we repented.
Were they communicating factual information? Mostly.
Was the encounter formative? Absolutely, though probably not in the way they intended. I suspect the experience bent more people away from heaven than toward it.
They possessed information, but there was no relationship, attunement, affection, trust, or shared life. They were speaking at people rather than being with them.
That distinction matters because human beings are not normally transformed by facts in isolation. We are formed through the relational environments in which those truths are embodied.
How Jessica Fell in Love With Me
My wife, Jessica, did not fall in love with me because I gave her a list containing my height, weight, Social Security number, and several technically accurate biographical details.
We experienced one another.
We spent time together, developed habits, formed community, grew in intimacy, and learned from one another. Our love deepened because all five formative elements were present over time.
Information was part of the relationship, but information did not create the relationship.
The same is true in discipleship. Christian teaching is vital, but teaching becomes genuinely formative within a life of time, habits, community, intimacy, and shared experience with God and other people.
The problem is not that we value biblical instruction too highly. The problem is that we have allowed the other essential elements of formation to wither.
The Formation Gap
This absence is what I call the Formation Gap.
Nearly every intentional formative ecosystem includes extended time, repeated habits, consistent community, trusted intimacy, and transformative instruction. We see these elements in families, marriages, athletic teams, military training, education, recovery communities, and the early church.
Modern churches often provide instruction and some degree of community, but many people have limited access to the other elements. Relationships remain casual, intimacy is rare, habits are fragmented, and the time required for deep formation is continually interrupted by busyness and institutional programming.
When all five elements are not present together, people may become active, knowledgeable, and sincere without becoming deeply formed.
They live in the gap between what they believe is possible and what they actually experience.
The Feeling That Something Is Missing
The Formation Gap appears in many ways, but we often sense it before we can explain it.
A quiet question begins to surface: Shouldn’t there be more to the Christian life than this?
We read about abundant life and wonder whether we are experiencing it. Scripture speaks of perfect peace, but anxiety continues to govern us. We hear about conversational prayer, yet our prayer lives often feel one-sided, uncertain, or mechanical.
We are told that love should abound in knowledge and discernment, but our relationships remain shallow, guarded, or reactive. Suffering exposes how little peace and inner security we actually possess.
We may know the right answers while feeling spiritually disconnected from God, others, ourselves, and the world around us.
That disconnection deserves our attention.
Biblically Sound but Relationally Broken
It is possible to study sound doctrine while remaining relationally distant.
We may love Jesus intellectually while struggling to experience His delight. We may understand grace while treating ourselves harshly. We may defend the importance of community while allowing almost no one to know us deeply.
We may know a great deal about God while rarely noticing our own hearts or the hearts of the people around us.
This is part of the Discipleship Dilemma. Genuine discipleship requires growing in knowledge of both God and ourselves, yet many Christian environments emphasize the first while neglecting the second.
Without self-knowledge, our hidden ideas, fears, desires, wounds, and control strategies continue shaping us outside our awareness. We remain internally divided even while our beliefs sound entirely correct.
Do We Experience the Delight of Jesus?
One of the most revealing questions we can ask is whether we experience Jesus not only intellectually but emotionally and relationally.
Do we sense His delight in us as we delight in Him?
Do we experience Him as attentive, welcoming, kind, and present, or do we live as though He is mostly evaluating our performance?
A person may affirm the love of God while functioning from the idea that God is disappointed, distant, demanding, or disinterested. That gap between belief and experience is one reason hidden ideas about God shape spiritual life so powerfully.
The heart does not always agree with the mind.
When the heart remains unconvinced, instruction alone may not resolve the disconnect.
Are We Attuned to Other People?
The same question applies to our relationships with others.
Are our hearts attuned to the people around us?
Do we listen carefully enough to notice what another person is feeling, fearing, desiring, or trying to say? Are we able to remain present without immediately teaching, correcting, advising, or comparing their story to our own?
This kind of attunement is central to presence and spiritual formation. People are often changed through the experience of being known, heard, and accompanied by someone who does not treat them as a problem to solve.
A person may hear the right doctrine about love while rarely experiencing loving attention from another human being. That is not a small problem.
Are We Listening to Our Own Hearts?
We are also invited to pay careful attention to our own hearts.
Scripture speaks of drawing out the deep purposes within a person, yet many of us have little practice noticing our thoughts, emotions, desires, words, relationships, bodies, habits, or use of time and money.
At Soil & Roots, we call this practice Heartview. By gently attending to these Eight Indicators with Jesus and a trusted friend, we begin to notice the hidden ideas and desires shaping our lives.
We may discover that our anxiety reveals an idea that God is not trustworthy, or that our resentment exposes a desire for control. We may realize that our constant activity protects us from grief, loneliness, or questions we do not want to face.
Self-awareness is not self-absorption. It is part of becoming integrated, honest, and available to love.
The Loneliness Beneath the Noise
We live in a profoundly disconnected age.
Technology repeatedly promises connection, yet study after study describes rising loneliness, isolation, anxiety, and relational fragmentation. We are more reachable than ever while remaining increasingly unknown.
Many people participate in churches, workplaces, online communities, and family systems without experiencing meaningful intimacy. They are surrounded by people but rarely feel seen.
The cure for this disease of the heart extends beyond right doctrine, as important as right doctrine remains.
It is found in relationships, connection, presence, and the experience of God. And very often, we experience God through other people.
This is why the kind of Christian community our hearts need must involve more than gathering in the same room or consuming the same teaching. Formative community requires enough time, trust, safety, and intimacy for people to become genuinely known.
Information and Transformation Belong Together
The answer is not to abandon instruction. We need Scripture, theology, wisdom, and careful teaching. False ideas about God, human beings, and the world can cause profound harm, and truth must be cherished.
But truth is most deeply formative when it is embodied within relationships and practiced over time.
Jesus did not simply deliver lectures and distribute accurate information. He shared life with people. He ate with them, traveled with them, answered questions, allowed interruptions, corrected them, encouraged them, and remained present through failure and confusion. He embodied all five elements of formation.
The early church did the same. People learned truth within communities of shared meals, prayer, suffering, generosity, work, worship, hospitality, and everyday life.
Instruction belonged within relationship.
Becoming Integrated People
The goal of discipleship is not simply to become more biblically informed. It is to become more like Jesus from the inside out.
That means becoming less anxious, angry, defensive, controlling, and self-protective. It means becoming more loving, generous, peaceful, courageous, humble, and relationally wise.
These qualities are not produced through information alone. They emerge as the whole person is formed through truth, experience, habits, community, intimacy, and time with God.
We should expect sound doctrine to produce good fruit, but fruit grows in an ecosystem. When the ecosystem is missing, even excellent teaching may remain largely intellectual.
From Disconnection to Communion
If we feel spiritually disconnected, the answer may not be another sermon, podcast, book, or Bible study, though any of those could be helpful.
The deeper invitation may be to ask what formative elements are missing.
Do we have relationships in which we are truly known? Are we practicing habits that make us more attentive to God and our own hearts? Do we have enough time and safety for intimacy to develop? Are we part of a community that embodies truth rather than merely discussing it?
Are we learning to experience God rather than simply accumulating information about Him?
The Christian life is fundamentally relational. It is life with God, others, ourselves, and His good creation.
As wonderfully complex human beings seeking to become deeper disciples, may we help cure the loneliness and disconnection of our age by loving God, other people, ourselves, and creation with transparent passion and full embodiment.
Duc in altum.
Brian Fisher is the founder of Soil & Roots and the author of Soil & Roots: Cultivating Deep Discipleship. He writes and speaks about spiritual formation, the inner life, and how people become more like Jesus from the inside out.
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