When the Bishop Comes to Town · The Disciple Machine

When the Bishop Comes to Town

We spent weeks preparing.

The moment was almost here.

The bishop was coming! Yee! Haw! The Bishop is coming.

Service began like normal. The priest called for the doors to be shut. “The doors! The doors!” they cried, as though Roman soldiers were still outside waiting to kill us for practicing communion.

Then he entered.

The song began. I do not remember the words, but I remember the sight.

The robe was splendid. The hat was enormous. The whole room shifted around him. If you or I walked in wearing that, people would think we had lost our minds. But because it was religious, everyone treated it as holy.

He sat in his chair.

Then the children started getting a little noisy. Their parents began to correct them. The bishop scolded the parents.

“Let them play,” he said. “Let them have fun. This is the house of the Lord. Suffer the little children unto me.”

It sounded beautiful.

It sounded humble.

It sounded holy.

Then he began telling his story.

When he was a child, his parents left him at the steps of the church. They dedicated him to the church. He was raised by the church. He never watched television. He never listened to the radio. His life was separated from the ordinary things of the world.

People heard that and probably thought, How humble. How holy. How beautiful.

But I heard something different.

I heard a story that raised serious questions.

Are we supposed to believe it is holy for parents to leave their child at the church and let someone else raise him? Is abandoning responsibility now a spiritual virtue? Were they being righteous, or were they avoiding the weight God had placed on them as parents?

And here was the man who was supposed to lead us.

A man who had barely lived in the world was now positioned to speak to people who were fighting real battles in it.

How does someone address real-world problems when he has been kept from the real world?

How does someone understand the pressures of ordinary believers when his whole life has been shaped inside religious walls?

It is easy to perform humility when your whole environment was built to reward it.

But should religious humility be the basis of our existence?

I do not believe so.

We are not saved by how low we can make ourselves appear. We are not accepted because we have mastered the posture of religious modesty. We are not made righteous by robes, titles, offices, hats, rituals, or stories of personal sacrifice.

We are covered by the blood of the Lamb.

We are forgiven.

We are accepted because of Christ.

We are not responsible for producing our own goodness. Christ is our righteousness. That is not a reason to bow lower under religious performance. That is a reason to rejoice.

And this whole scene with the children bothered me.

The bishop corrected the parents as though he had stepped into the place of Christ Himself.

But sir, your name is not Jesus Christ.

You are not His replacement.

You are not standing in His absence.

Why?

Because Christ is not absent.

He lives in every believer who belongs to Him.

That is what religious hierarchy often forgets. It builds a stage, dresses a man in sacred clothing, raises him above the people, and then teaches everyone to call it humility.

But it is not humility.

It is theater.

It is religious superiority wearing a humble face.

And I am tired of pretending otherwise.

Constantine may have helped build this kind of religious machinery a long time ago, but we do not have to keep bowing to it.

Put down the hat.

Roll up the sleeves.

Join the fight.

Because the world is not reached by men performing holiness from elevated chairs. The world is reached by the gospel of Jesus Christ carried by believers who know they have been forgiven, covered, raised, and sent.

That is what a bishop was supposed to be.

The early office of bishop was not a throne. It was not a jurisdictional empire. It was not a costume. It was not a religious celebrity office.

It was a responsibility.

It was oversight for the sake of the gospel.

It was service.

It was labor.

It was getting the message of Christ to the world.

So when the bishop comes to town, I do not need the spectacle.

I do not need the robe.

I do not need the chair.

I do not need the religious humility.

I need to see Christ preached.