The Disconnected Disciple
Biblically Sound but Relationally Broken?
We’ve been unpacking “The Great Omission” these past few weeks. Theologian Dallas Willard coined the term to describe the state of modern (primarily Western) Christianity. We talk a lot about making disciples, but struggle to do it.
As we explored in last week’s post, disciples (or, frankly, anyone who wants to be formed more like someone else) are most successful in their journey when they intentionally engage the Five Elements of Formation: time, habit, community, intimacy, and instruction. These are common to most intentionally human-formative experiences, and Jesus and the early church modeled them abundantly in the Gospels and Acts.
However, we live in an age that greatly emphasizes one element over the other four: instruction. Though instruction is essential to Christian formation, it has become, in many circles, the assumed sole factor in our discipleship.
I was speaking with the head of a national Christian ministry recently, and he claimed that the core problems of culture and the church stem from one cause: a lack of biblical orthodoxy. If we just taught the right biblical things, the church would be reformed, and culture would follow.
It’s a difficult point to substantiate on at least two fronts:
- Our generation has more access to biblically orthodox teaching than any generation in human history. We have access to the best and brightest pastors, teachers, theologians, Bible studies, and Christian thinkers from the present and the past on our phones. You and I can instantly pull up one of an untold number of sermons, lectures, videos, podcasts, audio recordings, or speeches at any time. Surely a potential lack of biblical orthodoxy isn’t because of availability.
- I could (but won’t) write an unfortunately long list of “celebrity” Christian teachers, pastors, apologists, authors, and musicians who taught and promoted wonderful biblical orthodoxy, only for it to be revealed they weren’t living by the truths they professed, or had decided that these truths weren’t for them after all, and so they’ve “deconstructed.”
The standard Christian response to these sad and discouraging stories is, “Well, we’re all sinners. We need to look to Jesus and not to ordinary men and women.”
It’s a surface response that rings hollow, at least to me. Of course, we’re all sinners. And certainly, none of us will become sinless this side of death.
But shouldn’t we expect to sin less? If the point is to become more like Jesus over time, shouldn’t we expect those who espouse correct biblical doctrine to be the most loving, most compassionate, humblest, and most sacrificial of all of us?
One of the primary reasons why modern Christianity assumes such an overly formative role of instruction is because of some flawed ideas of anthropology – what it means to be human.
Much printer ink has been spilled by others about why our culture and our hearts now function from some wrong anthropological assumptions. Most trace the roots of these ideas back to French philosopher and scientist René Descartes, who famously claimed, “I think, therefore I am.” A few hundred years of the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and a swift pass through modernism bore a culture that assumes, as one of my pastor friends put it, that we are “brains on sticks.” We simply need to tell people the facts.
However, human beings are far more wonderfully complex than a device that takes in information and spits it out. We are embodied spirits. We have brains, but we are not brains. We are deeply relational, experiential beings.
These flawed and reduced ideas about what it means to be human have impacted everything from elementary school education to social programs to modern-day churches.
If you’ve ever sat on a pastoral search committee, you’ve probably experienced this. What is the primary factor many committees look for in a new pastor?
The quality of their sermons. The assumption is that the most important thing about a new pastor is their ability to write and deliver their teachings. That’s because the church assumes its community is most influenced by a weekly sermon. Granted, Paul lists “accurately handling the word of truth” as a necessary factor for someone called to leadership, but note that it’s amid a long list of other characteristics that are highly personal, relational, and experiential (lover of good, holy, upright, gentle, hospitable, etc.).
My family and I were walking into a Texas Rangers baseball game last year (World Series champs, in case you didn’t know), and we were greeted by “evangelists” shouting isolated Bible verses at us through bullhorns. They told us, in no uncertain terms, that we were all going to hell unless we repented.
Were they communicating factual information? Mostly. Was it formative? Yes, but probably not in the way they intended. I suspect people were bent more toward hell than heaven that day.
My wife, Jessica, didn’t fall in love with me because I shared my height, weight, and Social Security number with her. We experienced each other. We related to each other. And that love has grown and deepened over the years through the five elements.
Certainly, Christian instruction is vital to Christian formation. The issue isn’t that we don’t value and cherish Biblical teaching. It’s that, as a modern generation, we’ve allowed the other four necessary elements to wane.
The result of this “Formation Gap” is evident in many ways, but we often feel it. We sense it. Our guts tell us something just isn’t quite right if we listen carefully enough.
Shouldn’t there be more to the Christian life than what I’m experiencing? Am I taking part in this “abundant life?” The Bible says I should experience “perfect peace.” Is that my reality? How about a powerful, conversational, two-way prayer life? Is my love “abounding still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment?” How am I responding to suffering? What is my community like? How deep and healthy are my relationships with God, others, myself, and creation and culture?
Are we rightly studying and learning good biblical doctrine while experiencing relational disconnectedness and distance at the same time?
Do we love Jesus, not only intellectually, but emotionally and experientially? Do we feel, do we sense, His delight in us as we delight in Him?
Are our hearts attuned to the hearts of those around us?
Are we listening and paying careful attention to our own hearts, as we “draw out” their true desires and purposes?
Certainly, we live in a deeply disconnected age. Despite technology’s ongoing promises that social media fosters connection, study after study reveals a new pandemic: loneliness.
The cure for this disease of the heart extends beyond right doctrine, as important as that is. It’s found in relationships, in connecting, and in experiencing God. And we often experience God through experiencing other people.
As wonderfully complex human beings seeking to become deeper and deeper disciples, may we lead the way in curing the curse of loneliness and disconnection by loving God, others, ourselves, and His good creation with transparent passion and full embodiment.
