Going to College. Leaving Church Behind.
- Justin Schefcik
- Feb 11
- 9 min read
“Well, I still think there are some translation issues with the Bible...”
Those are the words of a young man (we'll call him Mr. Evan, short for evangelism) that I had spent a considerable amount of time talking to about the truths of the Bible and the gospel. Evan was extremely receptive to everything I was sharing with him. He had great questions about what the Bible had to say about life and eternity. He had a surprising look on his face when I had answered all of his questions from the Bible without hesitation. But when it came down to it, he didn't trust the Bible and shrugged it all off as if it were nothing--"Well, I still think there are some translation issues with the Bible," he digressed. Somewhere along the way, someone made the claim that you can't trust the Bible because it had been corrupted over the course of time. Whether or not he had any evidence for that, I do not know. Time didn't allow the conversation to continue. All I know is that he believed that to be the case.
Is Evan's story an isolated incident?
Word on the street is that nearly 70% of youth raised in church are leaving the Christian faith after they graduate. After only one year at college, we are shocked to find that they have not only abandoned their faith but adopted a secular, non-Christian worldview. This is not just an alarming statistic, but a heartbreaking reality and one that most of us have witnessed in the lives of people we know and love. There are, of course, a number of factors that would lead a student to "go to college and leave church behind" but one of those factors could be that they were never properly grounded in their faith.
In his book, Surviving Religion 101, New Testament scholar Dr. Michael J. Kruger suggests that one of the reasons is because they just aren’t being prepared intellectually. What he means by this is that students aren't prepared for the intellectual onslaught against Christianity that they will face on the college campus. Colleges and universities are a melting pot of ideas. People attend from all over the world and bring their ideas with them. Some college professors, who make high-handed claims about the Bible—saying it’s untrustworthy, full of errors, poorly translated, et cetera—can sound very persuasive. After all, they are the ones with fancy degrees from prestigious universities! Many students are no doubt listening to these claims (like Evan) and thinking, "Who am I, as a student, to argue with my professor? They are the smartest person I know." And while there are billions of Christians around the world, and probably hundreds or thousands in that college town, the college campus or any public school for that matter can be a lonely place for Christians (getting involved in a healthy local church and campus ministry can really help avoid this!).
Sometimes it's hard to think deeply about an issue until you're facing the issue yourself. We learn the most and learn the best when we're going through it, if you know what I mean. So if, as a teen, unless I'm confronted with arguments that say the Bible isn't trustworthy, I'm probably just going to accept what my parents or my youth pastor said--that it is trustworthy. I likely won't think about reasons why it is trustworthy until a teacher or professor comes along and begins to challenge my assumptions. However, ideally, students should be prepared to think deeply about their faith before they go to college. They need to know there are legitimate reasons to believe that Christianity is true. They need to know not just what to believe, but why to believe it.
Kruger notes that a lot of youth ministries do a great job of focusing on personal conversion (how to be saved) and personal piety (how to live as a Christian).[1] They are serious about sharing the gospel and putting their faith into action, and that’s great! We need that emphasis. However, if we aren’t preparing them for some of the critics they'll face in the real world, they are sitting ducks for the enemy. They don’t have to have all the answers, but they do need to know that there are good answers out there and that they are not alone. Christians have been answering hard questions since Christ ascended!
At Alliance Berean Youth, that’s what we're all about. We want to challenge young people to know Jesus, to walk with Him, and to be equipped to answer difficult questions about their faith. Over the course of their time in youth group, we desire to see them become familiar with their Bibles, learn to study it properly (using proper Bible study methods), and to trust it as the divinely inspired and holy Word of God that it is--that it has the answers to make the best sense of their world. As it has been demonstrated, if someone like Evan doesn’t trust their Bible, they’re less likely to open it and take it seriously. They're more likely to dismiss it.
The Apostle Paul raised this point in II Thessalonians 2:13. He wrote, "For this reason we also constantly thank God that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe." Because they believed that the Word of God was really God's words--not just the words of mere men--it changed their lives! In other words, it matters what we think about the Bible.
This is why Harold Lindsell, in his book The Battle for the Bible, rightly identifies biblical reliability as a watershed issue. What he is implying is that just as which side of the continental divide rain falls on determines whether or not it ends up in the Atlantic Ocean or Pacific Ocean, so whether or not one believes the Bible is the trustworthy Word of God may determine whether we end up in unbelief or belief, apostasy or truth, and spiritual growth or spiritual dearth. Why would someone like Mr. Evan or the Thessalonians care about what the Bible says and apply it to their lives if they don't believe it's actually God's Word?
When Mr. Evan claimed there are "translation issues with the Bible," what he meant was that he assumes that there have been so many changes to the biblical texts throughout the centuries that we can't really know if what our Bibles say is what the original authors actually wrote. Things have been "lost in translation" and errors have crept in. If Mr. Evan were sitting across the table from me today, I might respond to him with these 3 basic arguments:
Scripture claims to be the Word of God.
This is the Bible's testimony about itself. Some 3,800 times, the Bible declares "God said," or "Thus says the Lord." 2 Timothy 3:16-17 says that "all Scripture is inspired by God." A better translation of "inspired" might be "God-breathed." This means that God essentially exhaled the Scriptures into being through the human authors. 2 Peter 1:21 says the authors, from Moses in the Old Testament to John in the New Testament, were "moved by the Holy Spirit" to write what they did. The Greek word for "moved" suggests that like a ship's sails are filled with the wind and the ship carried along, so the biblical authors were "carried along" by the Spirit to write what they did. This was done without removing their unique personalities, perspectives, and literary styles.
So all of Scripture, regardless of the book or the color of the letters (Jesus' words in red or Paul's words in black), are equally inspired by God--word for word and from beginning to end. The Bible claims to be the Word of God and reads like the Word of God. No other book is like it. No other book has this life-changing power (Heb. 4:12).
There are more manuscripts for Scripture than any other ancient book.
While we do not have any of the original autographs (the actual writings that maybe Isaiah or Paul wrote), we do have numerous copies that we call manuscripts. The reason for this is because many of them were written on materials such as papyrus or leather scrolls and deteriorated over time as one would expect.
Most ancient books average around 10-20 manuscripts in existence. However, for the Old Testament, we have around 3,000 Hebrew manuscripts, 8,000 copies of the Latin Vulgate, more than 1,500 of the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament), and 65 copies of the Syriac Peshitta.[2]
The New Testament has the most manuscripts of any ancient writing at a staggering 25,000, dwarfing the number of any other comparable book. The next highest is Homer’s Iliad at a mere 1,800 manuscripts, then Demosthenes at 258. For reference, trusted writings like Gallic Wars by Caesar has 10, Herodotus has 8, and Thucydides also has 8.
The vast number of biblical manuscripts allows textual critics to determine the exact words of the original author. If there are any differences among the biblical manuscripts, they are mostly minor matters of grammar and punctuation that have no effect on doctrine or meaning. Bible scholar John A. T. Robinson writes,
“The vast array of manuscripts has enabled textual scholars to accurately reconstruct the original text with more than 99.9 percent accuracy.” [3]
The manuscripts for Scripture are more reliable than any other book.
Before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, in which thousands of ancient Jewish writings were found in caves near the Dead Sea, many said that we could not trust the Old Testament. However, these scrolls dating back to or before the time of Jesus (3rd century BC to the 1st century), affirmed that the Old Testament has been carefully transmitted up to our present day (for example: The Great Isaiah Scroll). The reason for this is quite simple: Hebrew and Christian copyists believed they were actually copying God’s Word and thus transmitted letters and words with extraordinary care. They were strongly committed to preserving the original text.
Another factor to consider in reliability is the time gap interval between the original autographs and the manuscript copies. Basically, the shorter the gap, the better. The closest time gap between autographs and manuscripts for the Iliad is between 350-400 years. For Gallic Wars, Herodotus, and other comparables, the gap is 1,000-1,300 years apart. In stark contrast, the earliest New Testament fragment (the John Rylands fragment) is only 27-48 years from the original. Other, larger New Testament texts are dated within 100-150 years of the original. Two of the most important and complete copies, Codex Sinaiticus & Codex Vaticanus, have been dated to around 325-350 AD, only 250 years from the original. David Limbaugh writes,
"In comparison with the average ancient Greek author, the New Testament copies are well over a thousand times more plentiful. If the average-sized manuscript were two and one-half inches thick, all the copies of the works of an average Greek author would stack up four feet high, while the copies of the New Testament would stack up to over a mile high!" [4]
When Mr. Evan said that he thought there were translations issues with the Bible, he meant that he didn't think that the Bible we have today can be trusted. He figured there were so many changes to the text over time that we can't really know we have the same text as the originals. However, between the sheer number of manuscripts, the accuracy of those manuscripts, and the short time gap interval between the originals and the manuscripts, we can have great confidence that when we hold the Bible in our hands, we are holding the words of God. Sir Frederick Kenyon said it well,
“The Christian can take the whole Bible in his hand and say without fear or hesitation that he holds in it the true Word of God, handed down without essential loss from generation to generation throughout the centuries.” [5]
More could said about the uniqueness, continuity, and integrity of the Bible. We didn't even touch on archaeology, prophecy, eyewitness testimony, or the resurrection! But if you'd like to explore this subject more and learn to better defend your faith, you'll find a list of helpful books below:
Surviving Religion 101: Letters to a Christian Student on Keeping the Faith in College by Michael J. Kruger
Christianity for Skeptics by Dr. Steve Kumar
Why I Trust the Bible by William D. Mounce
The New Testament Documents by F. F. Bruce
Jesus on Trial: A Lawyer Affirms the Truth of the Gospel by David Limbaugh
The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus by Lee Strobel
Thanks for taking the time to read this. Please leave a comment if you were blessed by it.
May the Lord bless you and keep you and make His face shine upon you.
Pastor Justin
[1] Michael J. Kruger, Surviving Religion 101: Letters to a Christian Student on Keeping the Faith in College (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2021) 18.
[2] David Limbaugh, Jesus on Trial: A Lawyer Affirms the Truth of the Gospel (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 2014), 234.
[3] John A. T. Robinson, Can We Trust the New Testament? (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1977), 36.
[4] Komoszewski, Sawyer, and Wallace, Reinventing Jesus, location 720. Quoted in Limbaugh, Jesus on Trial, 214,
[5] F. G. Kenyon, Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts (New York: Harper, 1958), 55.