Bibliolatry: When Christians straight-up worship the bible.

Christianity is based on, and centered upon, the person and work of Christ Jesus. I hope you know this already. Most of us do.

But you’re gonna find a strain of Evangelicals who insist Christianity is based on the bible. They’re “bible-believing Christians,” as opposed to Jesus-believing Christians. (They would never say they don’t believe Jesus, but when they describe themselves, bible takes priority.) They attend “bible-believing churches”; I’ve attended more than one “Bible Church,” whether it be First Bible Church, Community Bible Church, Hometown Bible Church, and so forth. “Bible” has to be in the name somewhere, just to remind you they follow bible.

Being a bible-believing, bible-centered group, means they exalt the bible to a really high position in their religion. Nearly as high as God. Sometimes higher—and that’s where we cross the line into bibliolatry.

They will not call it bibliolatry, of course. They’ll call it love and respect for God’s holy word. Or “a high view of scripture” (a term which properly refers to how the Holy Spirit inspired it, not how highly we think of it). They’ll get into the Christian apologetics in which they argue for the bible’s centrality and preeminence.

But Jesus is meant to be center ad preeminent in our religion. If you put anything else there, no matter how good and useful it is, we’re talking idolatry. Doesn’t matter that it’s bible!

In my experience, bible-worship tends to happen most often among cessationists. No, they’re hardly the only ones who do it. But once you insist God turned off the miracles, and doesn’t talk to us anymore, what’re you left with? Well, your bibles. You’re kinda obligated to depend on your bible; it’s like if your mother abandoned you as a child, but left you a good-bye note saying she loves you, and you cling to that note and make it the most precious thing you own. It becomes a sad substitute for your mother. And for cessationists, that’s bible.

Likewise cessationists make bible a sad substitute for the Holy Spirit. We’re supposed to be talking to him, following his leading, developing his fruit. Cessationists believe we don’t do that; not really. They might imagine the Spirit afffecting our emotions somewhat, giving us nudges and warm fuzzy feelings… but as far as following his leading, nope; they follow the bible’s leading. The only way they expect to have a relationship with the Spirit is by reading what he inspired. By learning about him; not actually knowing him and having experiences of him. They reject such experiences.

So if we dare insult the bible, or show it what they consider a lack of respect, they’ll consider it blasphemy. They’ll actually call it that: We slandered their god. The bible must be treated with nothing but the greatest reverence. Never set your bible on the floor. Never doodle in it. Never toss it onto a table. Protect it in the biggest, thickest, real-leather bible covers. Capitalize “Bible” every time—even when we’re not talking about Christian bibles. To treat it as an ordinary book, is as if we treated God with anything other than majesty.

Yeah, the bibliolatry gets pretty blatant with them. It’s not at all hard to detect.

The word, and the Word.

Heck, some of them will actually say God and the bible are equivalent. Not kidding! The bible’s “the word of God,” right? Well, in the first chapter of John, Christ Jesus himself is the word of God—

John 1.1 NLT

1In the beginning the Word already existed.

The Word was with God,

and the Word was God.

2He existed in the beginning with God.

3God created everything through him,

and nothing was created except through him.

4The Word gave life to everything that was created,

and his life brought light to everyone.

5The light shines in the darkness,

and the darkness can never extinguish it.

—and some of these bibliloaters will actually claim Jesus is kinda the same thing as the bible. Both are the word of God. Both are holy. Let’s put it in the form of a logical argument, a syllogism:

1. The bible is the word of God.
2. Jesus is the word of God.
3. The bible is Jesus.

So x would be “bible,” y would be “Jesus,” and z would be “word of God.” And if x=z and y=z, then x=y, right? True in algebra; true in logic.

But… not. In logic we’d call this a “fallacy of the undistributed middle.” The “middle” is the idea we find in both premises, which helps connect ’em together into the conclusion. Here, the middle is z, “word of God.” It’s undistributed because the z in the first and second premises has two diferent meanings. In sentence α, Jesus is the ܡܶܠܬ݂ܳܐ ܐܰܠܳܗܳܐ/memrá Elahé, “word of God,” whom Pharisees identified as a person of the Godhead who acted as God throughout the Old Testament. Ge 15.1, 1Sa 15.10, 1Ki 12.22, 1Ch 17.3 John identifies him as Jesus, and we Christians later recognized him as the second person of the trinity.

Wheras the scriptures in sentence β are not this person. They’re simply stuff God and his prophets said and wrote. Commonsense should tell us there’s an obvious difference. Thing is, biblioaters aren’t all that abundant in commonsense. Their worship and emotions get in its way.

Let’s not confuse the person of Jesus, with God’s messages to his people. After all, Jesus is vastly greater than any one message, or even all the messages. Calling Jesus the same as the bible is like saying your brother is the exact same thing as everything he posts on Facebook. Not only is this a foolish thing to say, but it doesn’t say much for your brother. Or it makes far too much of his social media activity. Either way, you’ve gone really wrong.

In calling the bible a form of Jesus—or believing it’s as good as Jesus, claiming it’s as authoritative as Jesus, believing it’s a perfect substitute for anything Jesus might have to say today—we degrade Jesus and hugely over-exalt the bible.

Grandiose claims about the bible.

Even non-bibliolaters have a bad habit of claiming big huge things about the scriptures. We wanna show our love and respect for the scriptures, so sometimes we go too far in saying nice things about them. Hence the following beliefs or doctrines. Some of ’em are obvious exaggerations. Others are blatantly not true.

• The bible is perfect.
• It has absolutely no errors, contradictions, or discrepancies.
• It contains every answer to every question ever.
• If you add to or delete from any part of it, it’s blasphemy.
• It’s the foundation of our faith.
• It needs to be treated with respect and reverence.
• It’s okay to quote bible out of context because the verses will, magically, apply to every context we put them in.
• It needs to be interpreted literally. Even metaphors should be interpreted literally. Even the parables: It would ruin the integrity of the bible’s perfection to say that Jesus made up fiction. So all his stories were actually about real people. (As were any parables which taught truth, which would include Jotham’s story about the trees electing a king in Judges 9.7-15. How about that, trees have elections!)

Oh, there are even stranger claims. But notice the bible makes none of these claims for itself. Yes, Deuteronomy and Revelation warn people to neither add nor subtract from these books. Dt 4.2, 12.32, Rv 22.19 Commands, I should point out, the Pharisees violated when they reinterpreted the Law to suit themselves—and commands the “prophecy scholars” violate whenever they insist the bible hasta follow their End Times timelines.

Look, the bible’s an extremely important book collection. But in the end it still consists of books. And books, like humans, have no power unless the Holy Spirit empowers ’em. Like humans, these books can go horribly wrong when worshiped. You’ll notice how bibliolaters regularly construct a really complicated system of beliefs to defend and disguise their idolatry. How they’ll insist everyone follow that, and less so Jesus. How they define Christianity by whether people believe all the “correct” beliefs about the bible, and not so much by fruit of the Spirit nor obedience to Jesus. In fact, in their defense of their bible-worship, they’ll violate every fruit.

After all, their relationships aren’t with God. They’re with God’s book. A book they divorced from him.

Battling bibliolatry.

Whenever we mistakenly slide into idolatry, the first step out of it is to get rid of our idols. Which is kind of a problem when it comes to bibliolatry: We kinda need our bibles.

Used properly, the bible’s an extremely valuable tool. Misused, it can be awful, and that’s what bibliolatry does. Once we’ve caught ourselves worshiping it, we gotta take steps to eliminate the worship, but without ditching the bible; we gotta use it right instead of wrong.

So here are some steps that’ll knock the bible off its pedestal, so we can put Jesus back up there.

YOUR FAVORITE BIBLE’S GOTTA GO. Just about every bibliolater has a favorite bible. It’s the one they use more than any other. It’s the one they turn to first. Sometimes they don’t even have another. (Their idol is a jealous god.)

Well you know what you gotta do: Take that bible and give it away.

No, not to your spouse. Nor your kids, nor any other family member. Give it to someone who doesn’t live with you. Give it to a newbie who needs a bible.

I know. You might’ve spent a bit of money on it. You got the leather cover, gilt edges, tabs, and your name is engraved on it. It might have huge sentimental value to you, because it was given to you by someone special, or you wrote some family history in it. (Which you can write down again someplace else.) None of that matters. It’s an idol.

The sentimental value is a chain which is keeping your idol attached to you. It’s in the way of your relationship with God. You know you gotta give it away. So do it.

AND DON’T REPLACE IT. Usually when something happens to one’s favorite bible—it wears out, gets ruined, gets lost, gets stolen—Christians replace it with what’s meant to become the new favorite. Sometimes it’s the very same edition of that bible, or the upgrade—better print, newer notes, updated translation. Or this time they splurged on the fancy accessories—the leather cover, gilt edges, tabs, and engraved name.

It’s like when an earthquake knocked down a really old Zeus statue, so the pagans built another, better statue. We’re trying to avoid that. We’re trying to break a habit, not replace it.

I’ve found the easiest solution is to replace the one favorite bible, with multiple bibles. Get a bible for the bedside. Another for your desk. Another for the magazine rack in the bathroom. Another for the car. Another loaded onto your phone.

Make sure none of them are the same edition. Or even the same translation. (Certainly not the same translation that your favorite bible was.) We need to get in the habit of reading multiple translations anyway, and break the idea there’s a best translation. One of the fastest routes to bibliolatry is the insistence there’s only one translation for you.

AVOID EXPENSIVE BIBLES. If you think buying multiple bibles sounds expensive, it’s because you’re planning to buy pricey bibles. Don’t! Buy inexpensive bibles. Buy bare-bones gift/award bibles. Paperback when available! You only need the biblical text, so why should any of your new bibles cost any more than $10?

See, sometimes a little bit of Mammonism gets mixed in with the bibliolatry. The reason Christians revere a particular bible is often because they spent a lot of money on it. And the reason Christians spend a lot of money on bibles is because they revere that particular translation, or commentator, or edition, or whatever. The monetary value helps discourage us from breaking away from the idol. It’s a classic case of the sunk-cost fallacy.

So don’t get sucked into it. Buy discount bibles. In fact the cheaper they are, the easier they are to give away—and any time one of these bibles threatens to become your new favorite bible, that’s what you oughta do the instant you realize it.

Does this mean you can no longer own one of those awesome all-in-one study bibles? Usually yes. And that’s okay! It’d be a good idea to start investing in bible commentaries, bible encyclopedia, study guides, and devotionals. You don’t actually need a feature-packed bible, and with individual books you’ll actually have more features. Better ones.

Okay, so much for the physical print bibles. Now to repair your way of thinking. It’s time to double-check all your beliefs about the bible.

Good theology needs to follow a proper interpretation of the scriptures. So whatever we believe about bible, oughta be based on a proper interpretation of the scriptures. Anything we believe about scriptures the should be proven by the scriptures.

So back up and look at that list of grandiose claims about the bible. Do the scriptures actually make any of these claims about themselves? And don’t just quote verses at me: Look up the verses. Make sure you quoting ’em in context. Make sure they really mean what you think they mean, ’cause bibliolaters are notorious for not caring what they mean: They only care about what they want ’em to mean. Consequently they miss God entirely:

John 5.37-44 NLT

37“And the Father who sent me has testified about me himself. You have never heard his voice or seen him face to face, 38and you do not have his message in your hearts, because you do not believe me—the one he sent to you.

39“You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me! 40Yet you refuse to come to me to receive this life.

41“Your approval means nothing to me, 42because I know you don’t have God’s love within you. 43For I have come to you in my Father’s name, and you have rejected me. Yet if others come in their own name, you gladly welcome them. 44No wonder you can’t believe! For you gladly honor each other, but you don’t care about the honor that comes from the one who alone is God.”

Jesus said this to Pharisees who thought they believed in Moses, since they quoted him all the time. But they’d taken Moses so far out of context, they weren’t really quoting him anymore. They were stating their own beliefs, disguised as bible. Bibliolaters do this all the time.

As do a lot of Christians who have been taught, intentionally and unintentionally, by bibliolaters. I certainly was. Which means all us Christians have to dig through our beliefs, and make sure we’re not repeating their faulty teachings. As Jesus pointed out, the Pharisees who did likewise didn’t know the Father as well as they thought they did. As a result they missed Jesus completely. Scary, huh?