Is a Low Desire to Read the Bible a Sign of Poor Faith?

If I don't have a desire to read the Bible, is that a sign of poor faith? That's just one of the questions we'll be answering on today's edition of Core Christianity. Well, hi, this is Bill Meyer, along with Pastor Adriel Sanchez, and this is the radio program where we answer your questions about the Bible and the Christian life every day. You can call us right now with your question. Here's our phone number. It's 833-THE-CORE.

That's 1-833-843-2673. You can also post your question on one of our social media sites. And, of course, you can always email us at questionsatcorechristianity.com. First up today, let's go to Sean calling in from Arkansas. Sean, what's your question for Adriel? Oh, yes.

Let me just try to word this where it makes a little more sense. But my wife and I are just kind of tossing back and forth things that we learned as children and growing up in different religions that in the end of times where it says that Satan and hell and all the destruction of the evil will happen. What about the people? Will people be destroyed and basically non-existent, or is there actually going to be a living torment?

Hey, thank you for that question, Sean. So that is a view that some have taken. It's sometimes referred to as annihilationism, that is that those who are judged are just destroyed. They cease to exist. They do experience a kind of judgment and shame and so forth before the Lord, but then they cease to exist. The traditional view of the Christian church is that hell or the lake of fire as it's described in the book of Revelation where Satan and all the evil angels go together with all those who have rejected the gospel is a place of conscious, ongoing torment or judgment away from the presence of the Lord.

That's been the majority universal position of the Christian church, and I think for good reason. I think when you look at these passages in the New Testament that describe the reality of hell, which by the way in recent days I think has been minimized in many circles, but the reality of God's judgment does seem to depict a place of conscious torment. Sometimes people read those verses too literalistically, but in any event the fact of the matter is there is a place of conscious judgment or torment away from the presence of the Lord. I think the passage of Scripture that you're thinking of related to the final judgment, Revelation 20, verses 7 and following, and then I'll actually begin in verse 11 where it talks about the great white throne judgment.

John says, And I saw a great white throne, and him who was seated on it, from his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened, then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books according to what they had done. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them according to what they had done. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. And so my view is that that lake of fire is a place of conscious torment. That's going to be different for different people.

Some people are going to be judged more severely than others. The Bible does seem to indicate that, but it's a real place. And so that's the answer that I'd give to you.

Now, I just want to go back to you really quickly, Sean. It sounds to me like you guys were wrestling through that idea of annihilationism, but does that make sense what I've said? Yes, it has made sense. Actually, with our religious background and my religious background just kind of varies from the witnesses to a parent that was basically atheist and wrestling with, is it complete annihilation? Then what's the point of everything or complete just conscious torment forever and ever? Yeah, well, youth of the witnesses, I'm assuming Jehovah's Witnesses, and I know that's one group or sect that does take that view of annihilationism.

And so here's the thing. God is perfectly just and good, and he's holy. A lot of times I think one of the reasons we have an issue with the idea of hell is because we minimize the great holiness of God. We minimize sin as this terrible offense against the Lord. And so part of what I think needs to be recovered today is that understanding of the holiness of God as he's revealed to us in Scripture and recognizing that he's perfectly just. Sometimes we think, well, God, is this unjust for God to do this? We know that God is perfectly just on the basis of his word, that there is no injustice in him, that each one is going to be judged or punished on the basis of that which is right, and that those who are saved are saved purely by the grace and mercy of God, because all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and were it not for the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, all of us would be condemned. So we have great hope for ourselves, but also for others as we go and we share the gospel of Christ with them.

John, God bless you, and God bless your wife as well. You know, one of the things that's always confused me about those who believe in the annihilationist view, Rob Bell and others, is how do they justify, how do they explain the verses where Jesus himself talks about hell? Do they just say those have been misinterpreted? Yeah, the argument is just that it's referring to a kind of final destruction, and that Jesus is using this very colorful language, but that it's not to be taken literally.

It's not really that the fire never dies out, you know, and so forth, and so that's how they would understand some of those passages. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adrian Sanchez. We'd love to hear from you. If you have a question about the Bible or the Christian life, doctrine, theology, we're open to your questions. Here's the number, 833-THE-CORE.

That's 1-833-843-2673. Let's go to Adrian in St. Louis, Missouri. Adrian, what's your question for Adrian? Yes, well, Pastor Adrian, how are you guys doing today? Doing well, Adrian. How are you?

Doing good, doing good, doing good, doing good. I have a question. Well, I was listening to a pastor the other day. He was saying that, you know, not in the spirit of the Bible, Christ had talked about it, right? But we kind of wanted to know, he was trying, but he was trying to speak about it, 10 or 9. He doesn't have to say that.

10 or 9. Hey, Adrian, you're cutting out a little bit, but I think I got the gist of your question, which had to do with the nature of true discipleship. Are you a true disciple of Jesus Christ, and how do we define discipleship?

I love this question. I think that too often in the church, we sort of, I think we have a real narrow view of discipleship. And what I mean by that is a lot of times people will say things like, well, are you being discipled? Are you discipling someone? And we imagine the discipleship looks, first and foremost, like, you know, you get together with somebody once a week at a Starbucks, and maybe you guys are going through a book together, and you're growing, and you're learning. You're discipling people, and other people are discipling you. And there's nothing wrong with that.

There's nothing wrong with, you know, having those kinds of meetings. But the fact of the matter is, is you as an individual, me as an individual, as a pastor, we don't make disciples. Jesus is the one who makes disciples through the ministry of the Word in the context of the local church. Discipleship is growing more and more into the image of Christ, maturing in the Christian faith, and that happens in the context of the community of faith.

And that's precisely what the Apostle Paul says in Ephesians chapter 4. And by the way, let me just give a plug here for the local church. If you want to grow in your relationship with Christ, if you want to be discipled and mature as a believer, you can't do that apart from the local church. And too often, I think today, we've misunderstood what it means to have a personal relationship with Jesus. We think it's all about me and my relationship with Jesus all by myself.

It's very private. Well, we do have a personal relationship with Jesus, but it's not in isolation. It's as a part of the body of Christ. And I want you to listen to, again, getting to this idea of the heart of discipleship. Discipleship being growing in Christian maturity into the image of Christ more and more. Listen to what the Apostle Paul says in Ephesians chapter 4.

This is verse 11. He gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry and for the building up of the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunningness, by human cunning, and by craftiness and deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. At the heart of Christian maturity, growing into the image of Christ here, no longer being children tossed to and fro by all the weird doctrines that are floating out around out there. At the heart of it, Paul says, is this community of faith where we're growing together as a body of Christ being built up under the ministry of the Word.

That's why God gave these apostles and prophets and evangelists and shepherds and teachers. We need this for Christian maturity, and so discipleship, I would say, is that growth in grace, maturing as a believer, reflecting more and more the love and the life of Jesus Christ in our own lives, and that happens in the school of the church, if you will, in the body of Christ. I know I'm a pastor of a local church. I love the local church. I'm so grateful for our church. And I just long to see believers united to solid churches where they're growing, truly growing, and being encouraged and using their gifts for the building up of the body as well. We need that, and as that happens, discipleship is taking place.

Amen. And unfortunately, the statistics would show there's a lot of Christians who are not plugged in to a local church, and there's this kind of mindset, I think, among some. You said, it's Jesus and me. You know, it's kind of this Lone Ranger Christianity, which is so unbiblical and so tragic, really. Yeah, well, it is, and I think part of the problem is in many churches, we've just minimized the importance of the local body. You know, like, you'll hear things like, well, you don't go to church. You are the church. And I understand what people are getting at when they say that, but we have to be careful that we don't begin to denigrate the importance of actually going to church and being with other Christians and sitting under the preached word. God calls you to that. God calls us to that. And so, you know, it's just a part of what is the ordinary Christian life.

It's how we grow. And one of the big issues, I think, in the church today is that we've minimized that. So well said. Thanks for that, Adriel. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. We'd love to hear from you if you have a question about the Bible, the Christian life, maybe something about your church that you're struggling with, or maybe there's something you've run up against, some kind of persecution in your workplace or in school.

Let us know. Here's the number, 833-THE-CORE. That's 1-833-843-2673. Let's go to Edgar in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Edgar, what's your question for Adriel? Hello? Hey, Edgar. Hey, Pastor Sanchez. I've got a question for you. I've been listening to somebody say that defending homosexuality, and I know they're wrong, saying that David's love for Jonathan was greater than that of a man for a woman. And I know they agree. There's several words for love, you know, brotherly love and agape.

But we're just old people, so I don't know if there's an explanation or if you maybe shed some blood on that. No word in the scripture. Yeah, Edgar.

Hey, thank you for that question. So Edgar brings up a really interesting text in 2 Samuel 1 as King David is lamenting Jonathan's death, his friend Jonathan. He says, this is 2 Samuel 1, verse 25, how the mighty have fallen in the midst of the battle. Jonathan lies slain on your high places. I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan. Very pleasant have you been to me. Your love to me was extraordinary, surpassing the love of a woman. Interesting how there he even addresses Jonathan as his brother.

It's this familial love, this care. Now, it's a sign of the times that we have just sexualized everything in our society, in our culture, and that we seek to twist the Word of God in order to find justifications for our sins. And that's precisely what the quote-unquote gay Christian movement or the LGBT movement has sought to do with a number of passages in scripture, including this one. They'll point to this and say, look, you know, David says Jonathan's love was better than the love of a woman, but we're not talking about some kind of a sexual relationship there. Of course, we know that David was submitted to the Word of God. I mean, he sinned in grievous ways, was called to repentance and to confess his sins, and indeed he did.

You look at places like Psalm chapter 51, but this was something that was forbidden very clearly in God's law, is still forbidden according to the Word of God, according to the moral law of God. And so there's no indication that this relationship was anything other than this brotherly love, and it makes perfect sense because who was Jonathan's father? It was King Saul. And Saul hated David, wanted to kill him, and tried to kill him on several occasions, and it was Jonathan's care and concern for David, realizing that he was innocent, that was so precious to David, and in part that helped him escape the grasp of Saul. And so David here is mourning.

He's heartbroken. He's lamenting that his friend, his brother, Jonathan, had been killed. And that's why he says what he says there, that this love that they experienced, this bond, this friendship between these two men was so powerful. And again, it's a sign of the times that we're in, Edgar, that everything has to be so sexualized and everything, passages like this get twisted to try to support things that they don't support. And another just principle of Bible interpretation that's really important is that we let Scripture interpret Scripture, and we let the clearer passages of the Bible help to interpret the less clear passages of the Bible. Now, I don't think that there's anything not clear about this.

I think we're reading, people are trying to read stuff into it. But again, it's very clear throughout the Bible in Leviticus and Romans and 1 Corinthians that God forbids homosexual relationships, that homosexuality is, you know, gay and lesbian relationships are sinful, that those desires are disordered, that they're sinful, that they need to be confessed to the Lord, and that God is gracious and merciful, that He forgives, that He's kind, that He folds us into the Church and washes us, justifies us, sanctifies us. And so we have to submit to the Word of God here, and the Word of God is clear. God bless.

Well said. Thanks for that, Adriel. You're listening to Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. Our phone lines are open. If you have a question about the Bible or the Christian life, maybe a passage of Scripture that has always kind of confused you, here's the number, 833-THECORE.

That's 1-833-843-2673. I also want to mention a really cool free resource we have. It's ten songs that really point to God's Word that you can sing together with your children. Yeah, the resource, Ten Songs to Sing as a Family, is a free resource, as Bill was saying, over at corechristianity.com forward slash radio, and it's going to introduce you to ten great hymns of the faith with devotional reflections that you can use together as a family, and so a great opportunity for you to teach some good music to your kids, good songs, good lyrics, but more importantly, to dig deeper into those wonderful truths that we cherish as Christians that we learn through songs so often. You can find that by going to corechristianity.com forward slash radio, and feel free to browse around our website.

Check out some of our other free resources. A lot of great ones there that'll help you grow in your faith. While we do receive voicemails here at Core Christianity, you can call us 24 hours a day and leave your question for Adriel at 833-THE-CORE.

Here's a voicemail from one of our listeners named Donna. My question is, I always try to read the Bible, but I never have the feeling to do it. I pick it up, I read it a little bit, and I put it down. I have no problem watching TV or keeping my attention with Facebook, but when it comes to the Bible, it's so hard for me, and I feel like I'm forcing myself. What does that say about my faith? Thank you.

Donna, God bless you. You're not alone in that struggle. I'm sure that there are people listening right now who they think, yeah, I know what that's like to open up the Bible and feel like I'm just reading these words on a page. I don't understand what I'm reading, and it's not long before my eyes start to glaze over. That's not always the case. I think sometimes we go through seasons where we're really excited about prayer and studying the Scriptures, and then as we seek to continue to do it and to build that habit, it becomes difficult. So what does that say?

And a couple of things. First, I would want to encourage you by saying, look, prayer, studying the Scriptures, even going to church, this is something that requires discipline, and that's a word that's hard for many of us. In the same way that you don't wake up early in the morning and think, man, I really want to go run a couple of miles right now or go to the gym. It requires discipline.

It's something that people do. Think of bodily exercise that people do because they realize that there's a benefit. You don't always see that benefit immediately.

You don't always feel it. But as you create the habit, you realize, okay, there's something good that's coming out of this. And actually, the Apostle Paul ties lines of analogy between this idea of physical exercise and exercise in godliness. He told Timothy in 1 Timothy 4, verse 7, Have nothing to do with irreverent silly myths. Rather, train yourself for godliness. For while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. Well, what does it look like to train yourself in godliness?

I think it means to be under the Word, to be studying the Scriptures, meditating upon the law of God, upon the Word of God, as the psalmist often says, to grow in prayer, to pray every day, to commune with God in prayer. But it is a discipline. There's a training associated with it, and the fact that he uses those words, I think, should be a comfort to you because a lot of times discipline and training, those are hard for us as believers. And so if you struggle with it, if you just feel like, Man, I don't know if I just, I just don't feel, you know, like doing this, what does that mean? Well, it requires discipline. It means that we have to be disciplined.

It means that we still pursue this, not as a way of saving ourselves or justifying ourselves, but we do it because we recognize that there is the promise that is given to us, not just the promise in this present life, but also for the life to come, this growth in grace. And so my encouragement to you would be, Okay, you feel this way. You can bring those feelings to the Lord. You can say, God, I'm having a hard time right now even wanting to open your Word. I'm struggling.

Help me. Help me to grow in a love for you. Help me to grow in a love for your Word, not just to read it, but to meditate upon it and to listen, Jesus, to your voice.

You speak to me through your Word, Lord. Pray those prayers and continue to read. Even when you don't necessarily feel like it, you know, as the Lord gives you time, building those habits of prayer and studying the scripture are so wonderful.

And again, you don't always, you know, see the benefit right there immediately, like you wouldn't, you know, if you started going to the gym all of a sudden or, you know, changing up your diet. But in time, as we grow in those disciplines, we're strengthened more and more. And I've found that when we do that, we grow also in our love and appreciation for God's Word. And so may God bless you as you seek to do that and help you and help us all in that training in godliness.

So well said. And of course you mentioned earlier the importance of the body of Christ, the local church in that process as well. And a lot of times when we get together with other believers, we can, you know, learn more about God's Word and maybe get encouraged or inspired by something one of our fellow brothers and sisters finds in God's Word.

Yeah, absolutely. And so it does circle back to the importance of being within the local church. I mentioned, right, even going to church requires discipline. You got to get up early in the morning and you're going and you're preparing your heart for worship, hopefully. You're prayerfully approaching the Lord's table. You're prayerfully approaching hearing the Scriptures preached.

This requires effort. I think a lot of times we want this sort of fast food spirituality. God just sort of zapped me into sanctification.

It's more of a slow process. It's planting and watering and growing and seeing fruit produced by the grace of the Holy Spirit. So may God help us and encourage us in that. God bless. Truth of God's word together.