Never underestimate the power of God’s word! It is far more powerful than any of us could ever imagine. Consider the spoken word of God. It is so powerful that God spoke the world into existence.
….
Consider also the written word of God. The written Old Testament was available in Jesus’ day. It was so powerful that by quoting the written word Jesus resisted the devil.
….
Let’s now look at the spoken word of Jesus. It is powerful enough to sustain the universe and keep it operating. He is upholding all things by the word of his power.
….
The written word of Jesus is just as powerful as his spoken word. The Scriptures make no distinction in the power of either. The written record of Jesus’ works was so powerful that John said one could have life by believing the written record of it.
….
Yes, the Word of God has the power to save! Trust it, believe it, obey it!
— Al Shannon, Church of Christ Preacher, excerpted from The Power of God’s Word
The words written by Al Shannon are a common refrain within Evangelical churches. According to Evangelicals, the Bible is an inspired, inerrant, and infallible book written by men as they were moved/directed by the Holy Ghost (2 Peter 1:21, 2 Timothy 3:16). While Evangelicals often debate how God inspired the Bible, all agree that the Bible is a supernatural book; that its words have the power to change lives and restore the broken relationship all people have with the Christian God. While the words of the Bible are just ink on paper, Evangelicals say that, if believed, those words can and will transform people, changing them from enemies of God into lovers of Jesus. According to 2 Corinthians 5:17, people who put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ become new creations. Old things pass away and ALL things become new.
Evangelicals assert, without any evidence, that the Bible is different from any other book ever written — a supernatural book penned or spoken into existence by God himself. Consider all the books ever written, from the great library in Egypt to the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. None of them is like the Bible. Simply put, the difference is, humans write books, whereas God, through human instrumentation, wrote the Bible. This book that God wrote is inerrant — without mistake — and infallible — incapable of failure or error.
It is for these reasons that millions and millions of American Evangelicals read and study the Bible, seeking spiritual power, insight, and direction. For them, the Bible is a Christian Ouija board. Just read the words and let God move and work in your life, Evangelicals are told. God can and will speak through the Bible IF you carefully listen for his voice! For many Evangelicals, the Bible is THE road map for life, a blueprint by which God’s people build their temporal, spiritual, and eternal homes. According to 2 Peter 1:3, God has given Evangelicals everything necessary for life and godliness. Of course, none of this would be possible if not for the Holy Spirit. It is the third part of the Trinity — who lives inside every Christian — that empowers the words of the Bible and makes it possible for Evangelicals to “hear” and “understand” what God is saying. 1 Corinthians 2:14 states, But the natural man [unsaved, unregenerate, non-Christian] receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. Atheists can’t and don’t understand the Bible because the Holy Spirit doesn’t live inside of them — or so Evangelicals say, anyway.
Evangelicals are fond of telling non-Christians that the reason they don’t “understand” the Bible is that its truths must be “spiritually” discerned. Since unbelievers are at variance with God, his enemies (James 4:4, Colossians 1:21), and the children of Satan (John 8:44), they can’t understand the true meanings of the Bible. Why then are unsaved people told to read the Bible? Good question. Evidently, the Holy Spirit opens the door of the Bible just enough for unbelievers to hear the gospel and be saved — that is if they are one of elect. This is why most Evangelicals reject much of what biology, archeology, physics, and cosmology tells us about the universe. Armed with inside knowledge given to them by God, Genesis 1-3 becomes not bronze age men trying to make sense of the world, but an exact blueprint for how God “spoke” the universe and life into existence. It is for this reason Ken Ham can build a $100 million replica of Noah’s Ark. Using Genesis 6-9 as the master template, Ham built a replica of the Ark, thereby reminding skeptics and rationalists that believing that the Bible is a supernatural book is a cancer that destroys the ability think and reason. Ham built the Ark Encounter because he thinks God told him to do so, and that, thanks to the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God, he can know exactly what happened in an unknown Middle Eastern desert 4,000 or so years ago.
Sure sounds like Gnosticism, doesn’t it? The Gnostics believed that they had spiritual discernment that other Christians and nonbelievers did not have. The last part of 1 Corinthians 2:14 says that the things of God are spiritually discerned. Only those who have a special decoder ring given to them by God can understand the teachings of the Bible. Many Evangelical sects and churches divide Christians into two categories: immature and mature. This is why James Dobson was able to say — with a straight face — that Donald Trump was a “baby” Christian. Hebrews 5:12-14 states:
For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.
The reason that most Evangelicals are just like the unwashed, uncircumcised Philistines of the world is that they are immature —on the bottle — baby Christians. These Christians are saved, but barely so. They have had their tickets to Heaven punched, but they struggle with the basics of what it means to be a Christian — often unable to discern good from evil. Other Christians are, however, mature, able to discern good and evil because they eat the strong meat of the Word of God. While some Evangelical sects and churches debate whether “true” Christians can be weak or immature, most believe that churches have an admixture of people who are spiritually immature and mature. While every Christian should desire to run the race set before them (Hebrews 12:1) and move on to maturity, many (most?) don’t. Their loss, mature Christians say, but at least they will get to go to Heaven when they die!
Ask Evangelicals what it means to be a true Christian, an immature Christian, and a mature Christian, and well, you will get all sorts of answers. Many Evangelicals believe that a true Christian grows in knowledge and grace (2 Peter 3:18). This growth can be charted and observed, with true Christians maturing in their understanding of the Bible and sensitivity to the leading of the Holy Spirit. Some Evangelicals believe that Christians can fall away, losing their salvation. Others believe that Christians can fall away, remain saved, but bring upon themselves the chastisement of God. And yet others believe that Christians must persevere (remain true) until they die. A failure to persevere until the end means the person never was a true Christian.
For those who have never been Christians or members of Evangelical churches, what I have written above sounds like nonsense, the ranting of Jack Nicholson’s character in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. For those of us who were once considered mature Christians and devoted servants of the one true God, these words remind of us of the days when our minds and lives were saturated with the words of the Bible — along with sermon tapes and Christian books about the Bible. As mature Christians, we so immersed ourselves in the “things” of God (1 Corinthians 2:10) that we thought or talked of little else but God, the Bible, and the works God called us to do on earth. It is for this reason many of us were willing to devote much of our time and talent and give our money for the proclamation and advancement of the Kingdom of God. (Though in retrospect, much of what we did now looks like building man’s kingdom, not God’s.) Believing that the gospel must be preached to the ends of the earth, we sacrificially gave ourselves to evangelizing the lost and building up Christians in the most holy faith.
For those of us who are Evangelicals-turned-atheists, it is hard for us to look at our past lives and not be filled with a sense of regret, shame, and loss. Despite what our detractors tell us about our true spiritual condition, we fully committed ourselves intellectually and emotionally to believing that the Bible was some sort of divine magic book; that it alone had the power to guide us and transform both the saved and the lost. Now, if and when we read the Bible, we find ourselves saying, how could I ever have believed this nonsense? And therein lies what I believe is the crucial point: for someone to believe the nonsense found within the Bible, one must first believe the Christian God exists and that the Bible is the very words of God. Unless one believes these presuppositions, the teachings of the Bible will never make sense. Unless people believe that God lives inside of them, they will never believe that there is some sort of divine entity tasked with teaching them Biblical truth. (The Michael Mock Rule: It Just Doesn’t Make Sense.)
The reason millions of people no longer believe that the Bible is a supernatural, God-inspired book is that they do not have the requisite faith necessary to suspend rationality and just believe. I am currently corresponding with an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) preacher who has lost his faith. While he is not an atheist, he no longer believes the “truths” that guided him throughout his life, including a decade and a half in the ministry. When this man’s mentor found out about his wavering faith, he encouraged him to stop reading other books besides the Bible and to just, by faith, believe. I have had similar responses from former church members and ministerial colleagues. My problem, they say, was the fact that I read too many books besides the Bible. Just read the Bible, let God speak, and all will be well! In essence, they wanted me to just faith it until belief returned.
According to some of my former Evangelical acquaintances, once I said, I no longer believe and I am now an atheist, all the knowledge and understanding I accrued through fifty years in the Christian church and twenty-five years in the ministry dematerialized and wafted out into the ether. Remember the Men in Black movies? You know, where they would take a neuralyzer and wipe someone’s memory clean? Evidently, when I deconverted, God used some sort of supernatural neuralyzer on me and wiped my mind clean of everything I once knew about the Bible. While fair-minded Evangelicals realize that such claims are absurd, others frequently remind me that until I repent and either get saved or come back to Jesus, I will never comprehend the wisdom and riches of the only supernatural book ever written — the Protestant Christian Bible. Until I am born from above (John 3), I will remain an ignorant atheist who knows nothing. I could spend the reminder of my life studying the Bible, yet without having the special God-given seer stone, I will never be able to understand the Bible. It is for this reason that sold-out, bought-by-the-blood, super-sanctified, filled-with-the-Holy-Ghost Evangelicals can so easily dismiss people such as myself. If I was truly once a Christian, I would still be a Christian. If I was truly once a man of God, I would still be a man of God. And since I am not, many Evangelicals say, with a wave of the hand, Bruce, you don’t know Jack crap (or shit). (1 John 2:19)
Once people come to understand that the Bible is NOT a supernatural book, nor are its words able to magically change or transform lives, they are then able to see that the Bible is just one of many ancient religious texts. By all means, if people are so inclined, they should read the Bible and plumb the depths of its wisdom. Personally, I still value some of the teachings of Jesus, along with some of the Psalms and the book of Ecclesiastes. The rest of it? Fiction of the best/worst kind. Since I have read the Bible from cover to cover dozens of times and have spent over 25,000 hours studying the Biblical text, I am at a place in life where I can safely and authoritatively say: I know what the Bible says.
As Buzz Lightyear would say, to infinity and beyond! There are way too many unexplored books to read for me to spend my time pouring over a book that I have already read and studied more thoroughly than have ninety-nine percent of the people who claim to be followers of Jesus. Outside of checking verses for blog posts, I am content to let my leather-bound Oxford King James Bible gather dust on my bookshelf. Having exhausted its content, it is time for me to move on to new intellectual pursuits. As bibliophiles are fond of saying, so many books, so little time.
Does what I have written in this post sound like your former life as an Evangelical Christian? Do your one-time Evangelical friends now consider you ignorant of the Bible and its teachings? Please share your thoughts in the comment section. Let the ignorance flow, comrades!
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Connect with me on social media:
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.
Because I love books so much I could never only read the Bible, and nothing else. I often despair that I won’t be able to read everything that I want to read in my lifetime 😉 even if I could read 24/7.
My love of books made it easy for me to believe the Bible was a magical book though. I also like stories where books play a big magical role, like they do in Inkheart or Harry Potter. However, because the Bible was this magical book, it was sometimes hard to phantom that so many stupid things were also part of it. Like condonance of slavery, or negative ideas about women. It was hard to see Jesus being so great and all, but also quite rude on occasion. Jesus was my hero; how could he be so rude?
I felt that our modern ideas were often more superior than the societies and their rules in the Bible. Things like not having the death penalty for every offense and having or aspiring to equality and democracy. I very much disliked the ideas that some Christians have of establishing a theocracy. There have been (and still are) plenty of examples of what that looks like! Hint: not so great at all.
So there was this big clash in my mind where the Bible was supposed to be perfect and the answer to everything, yet at the same time I struggled with quite a few parts of it. It made me question the Bible’s wisdom but also my own. If you’re taught God is perfect and the Bible too, and you dare to question that, you are the one at fault, not God. So for the longest time I felt guilty about being too critical a person, too proud: thinking that I knew better than God.
It is good to shed that guilt. However, I’m still learning to trust myself, to even like myself, to stand up for myself. And yes, I do blame the Bible, Christianity, sexism as a huge part of that, as well as, a few other problems. When you are told you are a sinner, although you try your very best to be a good person, it does quite a bit of harm. Instead of giving kids a firm foundation to build their life on, it takes away whatever natural resources they did have.
I’m interested, Bruce, in which words of Jesus you value still. One thing that happened to me when I left the faith was that I rapidly became disillusioned and disappointed by what he was reported to have said. Many of his words were so evidently put in his mouth by the later church, or they were so ridiculously demanding no-one could possibly comply with them (and no-one ever has), or, when he did appear to make sense, it turned out he was only repeating the words of others who had gone before him. Of course this doesn’t mean that some of what he said might have value, but with so much of it false in one way or another, it was difficult not to dismiss it all.
Well, I most certainly think it is impossible for us to know exactly what Jesus said. All we have are the gospels, and they are not first person accounts. Too bad Jesus didn’t write a book of greatest quotes. 🙂 That said, I do think some of what he purportedly said in the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount have value, especially those verse that are sympathetic to my liberal, socialistic viewpoints. 🙂
Must be those commie, liberal thoughts of taking care of the poor and widows and orphans! 😉
Well if ‘God’ really wanted to give us his infallible inerrant word I think he slipped up at the Tower of Babel. It would have been so much easier if there was one universal language and thus no translation issues which now mean English translations don’t agree on the exact words.
^^^This. The English speaking RC church finally released the new Order of Mass in 2010. They changed the English translation of the Latin Mass (made in the 60’s) to be a more accurate translation from the Latin. This was like a 10 year effort! From just Latin to English! When it was finally introduced, people in the pews and choirs bitched and moaned for IMO, minor wording changes.
Isn’t it funny how the bible is the chosen holy book of most cults? Jim Jones used the christian bible, he didn’t use the koran or the vedas. So I don’t get how christians think it contains the power of god.
Fundagelical life turned and twisted the Bible into so many unrecognizable knots that I had to quit reading it. All that crap about “quickening the word” and verses jumping off a page because “God meant this for YOU today!” And the literal interpretation of the inerrant Bible? Yikes!
As for the friend you’re mentoring: I would tell him just to live by faith, period. Put away all the books and music and Bible study and trappings, and just live it out in your life. Jesus said, “Whatever you DO to the least of my brothers, you do unto me.” Not pray. Not Bible study. Not worship. DO.
Whatever faith I have left is wrapped up in this philosophy. I am hoping to finish soon a website for a church with a prison ministry. I did it because they have been so supportive, and because they DO in so many wonderful ways. Next week starts the effort to help more than 700 families get food, clothes and gifts for Christmas. I put away all the books, music, Bibles and crap, and just DO. It has saved my sanity.
Re “Consider also the written word of God. The written Old Testament was available in Jesus’ day. It was so powerful that by quoting the written word Jesus resisted the devil.”
So, these Jesus worshipers do not believe that Jesus is co-equal with the Father, part of the Holy Trinity? If they did, they have to explain why Jesus needs to quote from a book written by humans to “resist the devil.” Jesus did not have the power to do that without help from the OT? So, the OT is holy scripture of power, equal to the New Testament in power? Just what do these idiots believe?
Correct me if I’m wrong here, I have seen Al Shannon’s name on other fringe and extremist sites. I wouldn’t take that guy seriously.
Trust the power of his word alone. Well, the entire bible is a grouping of myths that happened to get written down. There is archaeological evidence that before being exiled to Babylon Judaism was polytheistic. They had a goddess called Ashra. There are physical statuettes of her. So religion changes over time.
However, once the bible got written down at various times different groups decided their version was the true version. Some Christians think only the King James is true.
I just read an article in Scientific American that particular black holes (smaller than the ones at the center of most galaxies) have been found by gravitational lensing. Obviously this is not in the bible.
I’ll be 70 in May 2022…. In my lifetime, Jesus’ words have been said and resaid and what is considered an appropriate response has steadily altered. Now extrapolate that over a few thousand years!
I try my best to forget about Jesu and as TLC says above, just do what I can for those I have the fortune to see nearby. The war between good and evil is a construct of business. You realize this when you ‘do’ something rather than preach it.
Hi Bruce,
The Fundamentalists keep telling me that I cannot understand the bible because I don’t have the Holy Spirit illuminating it to my understanding.
Well Fundamentalists, I can read and let me tell you that your book is full of contradictions and atrocities. Examine the Joshua led military campaigns, with wholesale slaughter of little children and babies and the burning of cities to the ground.
You Fundamentalists can’t agree on biblical hermeneutics, theology and ethics. There are over 40,000 different denominations in the world today, most of which are Evangelical. Most of these denominations differ on one, or more, issues of theology, ethics, biblical hermeneutics and church organisation.
If the Holy Spirit is guiding Evangicals or Fundamentalists, he is certainly doing a very poor job. It seems that God is a God of utter confusion. Can such a God exist?
Is the bible the most powerful book on earth? No! This book was written by ancient and ignorant savages. There is no way that it is inspired by God because it contains atrocities alleged to be committed , and commanded, by God. It is full of contradictions.
It is full of ancient myths. It contradicts modern science and it’s ethics is often appalling.
Though there are many compassionate parts of the bible, these are at variance with the barbaric and morally repugnant ones. Every Christian picks and chooses which parts of the bible to really believe.
It seems that many Fundamentalists pick and choose the nasty passages and use them to bible bash atheists and agnostics. They mistakenly think that their bible bashing has power. All it does is to drive rational people away from repugnant Evangelicalism.