3 The Day Christianity Started Running on Backup Generators
There was a moment—a real historical pivot—when Christianity shifted from power to procedure.
From Spirit to structure.
From Presence to polity.
From daily one-anothering to weekly weakly services.
When did Christianity begin running on backup generators?
Not in one dramatic moment.
But slowly:
- The dispersion from Jerusalem under persecution, and then destruction of Jerusalem (AD 70)
- Separation from Judaism, as the old guard pushed them out, not wishing to believe that the Messiah they had waited for had come. “The real Messiah would have overthrown the Romans, because that’s what we want him to do. So, Jesus is a fraud because He didn’t do what we thought was best.”
- Rise of proto-clergy, the big dog, boss-man-in-charge
- Adoption of Roman governmental structures, and trying to put biblical names on them to justify them
- The appeal of predictability over commitment—heart, soul, mind, and strength
- And the political need to control crowds
In the 60 years recorded in the New Testament, “Sunday” was only mentioned twice. It was NOT their special holy day, as Saturday had been for the Jews. It never came up. It came up literally ten times in a recent sixty-minute bible study I was in. “Sunday sabbath” “attendance” is just not what Jesus brought to earth. “I fear I’ve wasted my time on you because you adhere to times and places and holy days and holy ways, a mere shadow of the reality that is in Christ.” -Paul, paraphrased
By the time Constantine declared Sunday a holy day, “Christian sabbath,” in AD 321, the transformation was nearly complete.
The church no longer needed the Holy Spirit to function.
The System could run on:
- tradition
- ceremony
- hierarchy
- buildings
- paid clergy
- ritualized offerings, obligatory tithes and dues that disappear into who-knows-where really
- Concerts, books, indulgences, “love offerings”—the word of God sold as Peter, Paul, John, and Jesus would never have dreamed of, or tolerated
- perfunctory “worship”—enjoyed by many just for the beat or the melody
It was the perfect storm — a religion like other world religions, but just a different logo and bumper sticker and Main Character. And captured for bottling and exporting in a System that could survive entirely without the Living God. Thus was born a “studied” theo-logic God as a new sport, a “scientific method” Dewey-Decimal version of what Jesus (kind of) brought, that would be primarily desirable to Westerners.
But the Ecosystem Jesus birthed?
It cannot survive without Him. And we can’t truly survive or prosper into “the FULL measure of the stature of Christ” without His Ecosystem of Together Life daily. That’s what He said. Hebrews 3:12-14. Do look it up?
And that is where His glory is discovered and lived.