I Believe in Jesus, Not "The Bible"
There's a BIG difference.
A couple of years ago, a conservative Christian friend and I were having—let’s call it a lively discussion—about Jesus, his divinity, and what his message meant or didn’t mean for our lives. Her argument seemed to boil down to a singular question: “but, do you believe in the Bible?”
My answer to her (and countless other conservative Christians since) is simply: no. I don’t believe in the Bible—I believe in Jesus. And as you probably know, there’s a big difference between the two.
To be clear, when conservative Christians simply declare they “believe in the Bible,” it’s somewhat disingenuous. What they believe in is not the Bible per se, but usually a rather narrow interpretation of the Bible that has its roots in St. Augustine, Luther, and Calvin. 1
This flawed interpretation usually centers around a few bad ideas: that humans are inherently evil and broken from birth, that God demands a blood sacrifice to forgive sins, and that believing the right things about Jesus is what saves you from eternal punishment.
It's a messed up interpretation that turns Christianity into a sort of cosmic true or false test: believe “the right” things about Jesus, and you'll be safe from external punishment.
But nothing could be further from the truth.
Because the truth is that none of these ideas came from Jesus himself.
When you read the earliest accounts we have of Jesus in the Gospels of Mark and Q (a source scholars believe Matthew and Luke both used), you find a message that’s very different from the message preached in conservative churches every Sunday.
You find a Jesus far more concerned with how people lived than what they believed. You find someone talking constantly about a coming Kingdom of God that will transform the world through love and justice, not someone obsessed with getting people to believe the right things about him.
In fact, throughout the earliest Gospels, Jesus seems remarkably uninterested in having people believe specific things about him. When people ask if he's the Messiah, he usually deflects the question. When they try to worship him, he points them toward God instead.2
What he does care about—deeply and consistently—is how we treat each other, and especially how we treat the poor and marginalized.
The point of it all.
The Greatest Commandment makes this crystal clear. When asked what's most important, Jesus doesn't say "believe that I'm God" or "believe that I'll die for your sins." Instead, he says to love God with everything you've got and love your neighbor as yourself. That's it. That's the whole point.3
This isn't to say the Bible isn't important or valuable. It absolutely is—it's our best record of Jesus's life and teachings, and it contains profound wisdom about the human struggle to understand God.
But the Bible itself isn't meant to be an object of belief or worship. It's meant to point us toward something greater—the transformative way of life that Jesus taught and embodied.
When we turn the Bible into an idol—when we worship the book instead of following the way it points to—we miss the entire point. We end up with a religion about Jesus instead of the religion of Jesus. We end up arguing about doctrine instead of feeding the hungry. We end up excluding people instead of creating beloved community.
So no, I don't “believe in the Bible,” or Paul, or Augustine, or Luther.
I believe in Jesus—in his message of radical love, in his vision of a transformed world, in his way of being human that prioritizes relationship over rules and love over doctrine.
And to be sure, this isn't some modern liberal invention (I’m not a liberal anyway). It's actually closer to how the earliest followers of Jesus understood their faith.
Of course, that was before Christianity became the official religion of empire, before it got tangled up with power and control. When Jesus lived, his message was about creating communities of love, equality, and mutual care.
That's the religion I “believe” in. That's the Jesus I follow. And while the Bible helps me understand and connect with the real, historical Jesus, it's not the Bible I worship. Jesus taught us that love—not correct belief, not proper doctrine, not biblical literalism—is the only thing that actually matters.
So the next time someone asks if you "believe in the Bible," maybe the better question is: do you believe in the way of Jesus? Do you believe in love that transforms both people and systems? Do you believe in creating beloved community? Because that's what Jesus was actually about—and that's what our faith and our lives should be about too.
Merry Christmas, friends.
BONUS READ: Here are 5 Bible Passages That Prove Christians Must Embrace Socialism - my latest article for The Dawn, a newsletter for Christian Socialists.
The idea that humans are born inherently sinful (often called "original sin") and that the Garden of Eden story represents humanity's "fall" from grace is not found in the Hebrew Bible itself, but was developed by St. Augustine in the 4th-5th centuries CE. Jews read Genesis 2-3 as a story about moral choice and human maturation, not cosmic corruption. Similarly, the notion that God requires blood sacrifice for forgiveness and that Jesus's death serves this purpose was developed by medieval Christian thinkers, particularly St. Anselm and later Calvin. These interpretations have become so dominant in Western Christianity that many assume they're plainly stated in Scripture, when they actually represent later theological developments. For more on how Jews read Genesis differently, see James Kugel, How to Read the Bible (Free Press, 2007). For the development of atonement theology, see Delores Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness (Orbis, 1993), pp. 143-147.
For evidence of this, see Mark, the earliest surviving Gospel, where Jesus frequently tells people not to spread word about his miracles or identity (see Mk 1:44, 3:12, 5:43, 7:36, 8:30). Scholars call this the "Messianic Secret." Additionally, when directly asked if he's the Messiah in Mark 14:61-62, Jesus gives only the cryptic response "I am," without elaboration. His consistent focus appears to be on teaching about the Kingdom of God rather than his own identity. For more on this, see Bart Ehrman, How Jesus Became God (HarperOne, 2014), especially chapters 1-3.
The Greatest Commandment appears in all three Synoptic Gospels (Mk 12:28-34, Mt 22:34-40, Lk 10:25-28), which scholars consider our earliest and most historically reliable sources for Jesus's teachings. The Gospel of John, written decades later around 90-100 CE, reflects a more developed theological understanding of Jesus as divine and emphasizes belief in Jesus's divinity as central to salvation (see Jn 3:16, 14:6). However, most scholars agree John's Gospel represents later Christian theological development rather than Jesus's own teachings. For more on this distinction between the historical Jesus and later Christian theology, see Marcus Borg, Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary (HarperOne, 2006).
Well said and 100% spot on.
Yes!