Is Christianity Like Telephone?

Did you ever play the telephone game when you were a child?

The first person creates a message and whispers it to another, who then whispers it to another, and so on. The message at the end is so unrecognizable that hilarity ensues.

Christianity is seen by many as an historical game of telephone. It cannot be trusted.

Jesus said things thousands of years ago to his apostles, they told others, who told others, and so on.

People think what we have now is so distorted from the original, that they laugh at anyone who actually claims to know for certain what God said. Even Christians think there are so many mistakes lost in transmission that their duty is to reconstruct the real story two thousand years later.

Except they are wrong: Christianity is not like telephone. What takes the “fun” out of the game of telephone is when the first person writes their message down and passes it to the next when they whisper.

Suddenly, the next person in the chain is able to compare what they think they heard to what the person wrote down.

This is why notes (now texts) are the preferred method of communication among kids in class. Oral transmission cannot be trusted.

The message of Christianity is found in a book in which believers along the way have consulted to ensure the message they heard aligned with what was written.

When churches do not believe or use the book, their message becomes a game of telephone: it will not be what it was in the beginning. These churches are the most popular kind.

Only by making the Bible the final authority in what God said, can any Christian be confident that what was inspired by God has been well preserved.

Christianity does not proclaim in history “it is heard”, but instead, “it is written.”

For His glory,

Justin “operator” Johnson