“Jesus wasn’t trying to get people to agree with him,” said Joseph Yoo in a recent social media posting. “He was inviting people to follow him.”
It is an important distinction and a needed reminder for those who claim faith in Jesus but consider faithfulness to his life, teachings and calling to be less deserving of time and commitment than seeking to hold and enforce a “right” belief or opinion.
Yoo, an Episcopal priest, notes how Jesus called and still calls his followers to be more than admirers. We are to be disciples — a role well understood as being apprentices who model our lives after the one God revealed in Jesus.
John Mark Comer also employs the concept of apprenticeship in his book, Practicing the Way: Be with Jesus; become like him; do as he did.
“For those of us who desire to follow Jesus, here is the reality we must turn and face: If we’re not being intentionally formed by Jesus himself, then it’s highly likely we are being unintentionally formed by someone or something else.”
Those words from Comer are worth reading again. He asks the vital question of who is — intentionally or unintentionally — doing the primary shaping of our lives.
To claim to be a disciple while giving that formative function to someone (or a group) who promotes values (often labeled as “biblical”) in contrast to Jesus’ calling to truthfulness, justice and compassion is very harmful.
It is not only personal unfaithfulness and damaging to others, but a dagger in the heart of the Christian witness.
Often professing Christians — who affirm Jesus as savior and adopt all kinds of religious practices — will then divert their time, attention and allegiance to a self-serving, nationalistic ideology that while falsely labeled as “biblical” or “Christian” is completely at odds with how Jesus calls his followers to live.
This happens within and without congregational life, and with the blessings of those considered to be Christian leaders locally or on the public stage.
To be consistently faithful apprentices who seek to reflect what Jesus revealed to be “the way” of abundant and eternal life requires careful discernment — a biblical way of calling for a good BS meter.
Simply taking as truth whatever feels or sounds good — because someone attached a selective Bible verse to it and deemed it Christian — has done deadly harm throughout history and continues today.
Jesus is not for sale to the highest bidder. Yet he is often coopted for causes that reflect nothing of his own life, death and teachings that are fully in conflict with abusive power. We see that clearly in today’s warmongering.
We must ask why and seek thoughtful answers.
Why have so many professing Americanized Christians capitulated to an ideology of fear, discrimination and deception with complete disregard for how Jesus called his apprentices to live?
A lack of discernment is certainly part of that answer. But there are likely other factors revealed by the strong and exclusive commitments to religious ritual and doctrinal rightness that so often overtake faithfulness to the very basics of following Jesus.
The rise of the religious right in the late 1970s — an unholy marriage of bad politics and worse doctrine — shifted Christian ethics from Jesus’ greatest commandment and other teachings to merely political opposition to abortion and equal rights.
These have become the trump cards of Americanized evangelicalism. No matter how cruel, unjust or abusive (even the sexual abuse of children) some action may be, it is quickly excused by deflecting to: “But abortion…” or “But trans…”
The result is that being Christian in America today has very little to do with Jesus.
What happened to all those fellow believers who were once so adamant that Jesus is Lord? Why do the life and teachings of Jesus now appear irrelevant to them?
Why does Jesus’ call to all would-be disciples to self-denial and full-fledged love of God and neighbor get treated as a lesser, even unholy option to the very things he sought to counter: grievance, fear, dominance, discrimination, hostilities, untruth, corruption, anger and conquest?
And why are so many voices of those called to spiritual leadership silent to the clear blasphemy, chaos and destruction coming from current proponents of white nationalism masquerading as Christian faithfulness?
Some answers — suggested above — come quickly with institutional preservation being one of the more obvious.
Other factors include being swept up in the moment due to a lack of discernment, identity fusion with supposed political heroism, and separating worship and other religious practices from Jesus’ primary calling.
In doing so, Jesus becomes a mascot for one’s favored cause. He is reduced from being lord of one’s life to being a “personal savior.”
Asking questions about our own commitments must be deep and ongoing. That is, if we take seriously what it means to be apprentices of Jesus rather than merely fans of a god whose image we tend to make in our likeness.
John D. Pierce is director of the Jesus Worldview Initiative (jesusworldview.org), part of Belmont University’s Rev. Charlie Curb Center for Faith Leadership. Join us for the second annual Jesus Worldview Conference in Nashville October 12-13, 2026.