July 27th, 2026
by Stacy Long
by Stacy Long
From Information to Intimacy: Why Truth Alone Is Not Transforming Us
Something has gone quietly wrong in the Western church, and most of us have not noticed it. We have inherited a way of thinking about God, discipleship, and transformation that was not handed down from the early church or drawn purely from Scripture. It was shaped, in large part, by the philosophical currents of the Enlightenment. And until we name it, we cannot move past it.
A Formula Built by Culture, Not by God
About five hundred years ago, the world shifted dramatically. The printing press spread ideas at unprecedented speed. Galileo and Copernicus used mathematics to demonstrate that the earth revolved around the sun, and for the first time, ordinary people began to wonder aloud whether the church had gotten things wrong. Trust moved away from the church and toward science and philosophy as the guides to truth.
The church responded, reasonably enough, by leaning into reason. Theologians argued that the intellect was the highest part of the human soul, that right thinking would produce right behavior. If people simply had enough correct doctrine, their character would follow. The formula became: God + Truth = Transformation.
It did not work as hoped. Being right produced division and judgment far more reliably than it produced love.
So a second wave of thinking emerged, one that emphasized the will. Puritan thinkers brought voluntarist philosophy into American seminaries and pulpits. The argument was that truth alone was insufficient. You also had to choose rightly. Willpower, accountability, and decision-making became the engines of discipleship. The formula expanded: God + Truth + Right Choosing = transformation.
But the Apostle Paul addresses this problem directly in Romans 7, where he writes about the agonizing experience of knowing what is right and still lacking the power to do it. He describes two conflicting wills within the same person. The will is not singular, and it is not strong enough to carry the full weight of transformation on its own.
Then came a third wave. If truth and willpower were not enough, perhaps what was missing was power. The charismatic movement answered that the Holy Spirit's power was the missing ingredient. Encounters, miracles, and spiritual experiences were added to the formula: God + Truth + Right Choosing + Encounter = Transformation.
Yet even this expanded model has produced uneven results. There are people who have been deeply touched in charismatic settings, again and again, who still struggle with devastating character failures. More encounters have not automatically produced more transformation.
What We Have Been Missing
Here is the uncomfortable conclusion that brain science and scripture both point toward: who we love and who we are connected to has more to do with character transformation than being right, making good choices, or gaining power.
Read that again slowly.
We have built a Christian culture that substitutes performance for connection. We serve, study, produce, witness, and strive. We believe in God, but we live as though he is distant and largely silent. We have confused knowing about God with actually knowing God. The result is what theologians call functional deism, the practical assumption that God wound up the clock of creation and stepped away, leaving us with a book, a set of rules, and our own willpower to figure things out.
But we have not been left alone. Jesus promised another helper, a living guide, the Holy Spirit, who is as present and accessible to us as Jesus was to his first disciples.
The Pharisees Had the Formula and Missed God
Consider the Pharisees. Of all the religious groups of their day, they were theologically closest to Jesus. They had more truth than the Sadducees or any other sect. They kept the law meticulously, making what they believed were right choices. They had power, influence, and position. And yet when God himself stood next to them, they did not recognize him. Jesus described their inner lives as whitewashed tombs, clean on the outside, full of death on the inside.
They had truth. They had discipline. They had power. What they lacked was sticky love. A deep, committed, unshakeable attachment to God and to his people. The kind of love a mother has for her child. The kind of love that cannot be reasoned away or shaken loose. The Hebrew word hesed captures something of this, a covenant love that is loyal, tenacious, and deeply relational.
The Pharisees had doctrine without devotion. Information without intimacy. And it produced exactly the kind of religious culture Jesus spent much of his ministry confronting.
Thinking With God, Not Just About God
There is a meaningful difference between thinking about God being with you and actually thinking with God about your life. One is a comforting theological idea. The other is a living relationship. One produces a kind of background reassurance. The other produces transformation.
When we move from thinking about God to genuinely engaging with him, asking him what he thinks about our situation, listening for his perspective on our day, our relationships, our fears, something changes. A mutual mind state with God, rather than simply a mental acknowledgment of his existence, is what the scriptures seem to describe as the normal Christian life.
Every significant problem in human society, when traced back to its root cause, lands in the same place: relational brokenness. Either with God, or with other people, or both. If that is true, then the church should be the most relationally skilled community on earth. We should be the best in the world at attaching to God and at teaching others how to do the same.
The Invitation
The church was never meant to be a classroom where we accumulate correct beliefs, or a willpower training center, or even a venue for spiritual experiences. It was meant to be a family—a hesed community. A group of people so deeply connected to God and to one another that the love flowing between them becomes the primary engine of transformation.
Transformation comes from the inside out. It is not behavior modification. It is not white-knuckling your way to holiness. It is the natural fruit of being genuinely, relationally, emotionally connected to the God who loves you and to the people he has placed around you.
The question worth sitting with is simply this: are you connected, or are you just informed?
(This blog was created from Stacy's original sermon using pulpit.ai)
Something has gone quietly wrong in the Western church, and most of us have not noticed it. We have inherited a way of thinking about God, discipleship, and transformation that was not handed down from the early church or drawn purely from Scripture. It was shaped, in large part, by the philosophical currents of the Enlightenment. And until we name it, we cannot move past it.
A Formula Built by Culture, Not by God
About five hundred years ago, the world shifted dramatically. The printing press spread ideas at unprecedented speed. Galileo and Copernicus used mathematics to demonstrate that the earth revolved around the sun, and for the first time, ordinary people began to wonder aloud whether the church had gotten things wrong. Trust moved away from the church and toward science and philosophy as the guides to truth.
The church responded, reasonably enough, by leaning into reason. Theologians argued that the intellect was the highest part of the human soul, that right thinking would produce right behavior. If people simply had enough correct doctrine, their character would follow. The formula became: God + Truth = Transformation.
It did not work as hoped. Being right produced division and judgment far more reliably than it produced love.
So a second wave of thinking emerged, one that emphasized the will. Puritan thinkers brought voluntarist philosophy into American seminaries and pulpits. The argument was that truth alone was insufficient. You also had to choose rightly. Willpower, accountability, and decision-making became the engines of discipleship. The formula expanded: God + Truth + Right Choosing = transformation.
But the Apostle Paul addresses this problem directly in Romans 7, where he writes about the agonizing experience of knowing what is right and still lacking the power to do it. He describes two conflicting wills within the same person. The will is not singular, and it is not strong enough to carry the full weight of transformation on its own.
Then came a third wave. If truth and willpower were not enough, perhaps what was missing was power. The charismatic movement answered that the Holy Spirit's power was the missing ingredient. Encounters, miracles, and spiritual experiences were added to the formula: God + Truth + Right Choosing + Encounter = Transformation.
Yet even this expanded model has produced uneven results. There are people who have been deeply touched in charismatic settings, again and again, who still struggle with devastating character failures. More encounters have not automatically produced more transformation.
What We Have Been Missing
Here is the uncomfortable conclusion that brain science and scripture both point toward: who we love and who we are connected to has more to do with character transformation than being right, making good choices, or gaining power.
Read that again slowly.
We have built a Christian culture that substitutes performance for connection. We serve, study, produce, witness, and strive. We believe in God, but we live as though he is distant and largely silent. We have confused knowing about God with actually knowing God. The result is what theologians call functional deism, the practical assumption that God wound up the clock of creation and stepped away, leaving us with a book, a set of rules, and our own willpower to figure things out.
But we have not been left alone. Jesus promised another helper, a living guide, the Holy Spirit, who is as present and accessible to us as Jesus was to his first disciples.
The Pharisees Had the Formula and Missed God
Consider the Pharisees. Of all the religious groups of their day, they were theologically closest to Jesus. They had more truth than the Sadducees or any other sect. They kept the law meticulously, making what they believed were right choices. They had power, influence, and position. And yet when God himself stood next to them, they did not recognize him. Jesus described their inner lives as whitewashed tombs, clean on the outside, full of death on the inside.
They had truth. They had discipline. They had power. What they lacked was sticky love. A deep, committed, unshakeable attachment to God and to his people. The kind of love a mother has for her child. The kind of love that cannot be reasoned away or shaken loose. The Hebrew word hesed captures something of this, a covenant love that is loyal, tenacious, and deeply relational.
The Pharisees had doctrine without devotion. Information without intimacy. And it produced exactly the kind of religious culture Jesus spent much of his ministry confronting.
Thinking With God, Not Just About God
There is a meaningful difference between thinking about God being with you and actually thinking with God about your life. One is a comforting theological idea. The other is a living relationship. One produces a kind of background reassurance. The other produces transformation.
When we move from thinking about God to genuinely engaging with him, asking him what he thinks about our situation, listening for his perspective on our day, our relationships, our fears, something changes. A mutual mind state with God, rather than simply a mental acknowledgment of his existence, is what the scriptures seem to describe as the normal Christian life.
Every significant problem in human society, when traced back to its root cause, lands in the same place: relational brokenness. Either with God, or with other people, or both. If that is true, then the church should be the most relationally skilled community on earth. We should be the best in the world at attaching to God and at teaching others how to do the same.
The Invitation
The church was never meant to be a classroom where we accumulate correct beliefs, or a willpower training center, or even a venue for spiritual experiences. It was meant to be a family—a hesed community. A group of people so deeply connected to God and to one another that the love flowing between them becomes the primary engine of transformation.
Transformation comes from the inside out. It is not behavior modification. It is not white-knuckling your way to holiness. It is the natural fruit of being genuinely, relationally, emotionally connected to the God who loves you and to the people he has placed around you.
The question worth sitting with is simply this: are you connected, or are you just informed?
(This blog was created from Stacy's original sermon using pulpit.ai)
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