NORTHSHORE CHURCH OF CHRIST

“If science, like art, is to perform its mission truly and fully, its achievements must enter not only superficially but with their inner meaning into the consciousness of people.” – Einstein

Launching from that quote by Einstein, author Ann Druyan (wife of Carl Sagan) began gushing about the value and place of science to our current culture. Notice her use of worship language:

“When I discovered Einstein’s rarely quoted words, I found the credo for 40 years of my life’s work. This always has been and always will be the dream of Cosmos… We didn’t know that particular Einstein quote when Carl Sagan and I began writing the original Cosmos with astronomer Steve Soter. We just felt a kind of evangelical urgency to share the awesome power of science, to convey the spiritual uplift of the universe it reveals, and to amplify the alarms that Carl, Steve, and other scientists were sounding about our impact on the planet… Nothing less than a global spiritual awakening can transform us. Science, like love, is a means to that transcendence, to that soaring experience of the oneness of being fully alive… this lack of a final destination, an absolute truth, is what makes science such a worthy methodology for sacred searching. It is a never-ending lesson in humility. The vastness of the universe—and love, the thing that makes the vastness bearable—is out of reach to the arrogant. What’s real must matter more to us than what we wish to believe… The misuse of science endangers our civilization, but science also has redemptive powers. It can cleanse a planetary atmosphere overburdened with carbon dioxide. It can set life free to neutralize the toxins that we have scattered so carelessly. Its unrivaled powers of prophecy are demonstrated by our current predicament.” (Ann Druyan in the March 2020 issue of National Geographic, p. 19).

Humans must worship something, and Druyan clearly renders obeisance to science. By her own admission, she gets her credo (her faith statement) from Einstein, and she speaks “with evangelical urgency” of science’s “awesome power.” Does science itself have awesome power? Science is the study or pursuit of knowledge. It is a human endeavor to know more about reality around us. Science is not a thing. When she speaks of the awesome power of science, Druyan is really talking about the amazing discoveries scientists have made over the years. Really, she’s reveling in the awesome universe around her and the brainpower and effort humans have made to discover it.

How does love enter the picture, exactly? Science does not create love, nor can it discover it, since it is not a tangible thing to be studied. Love is something apart from the physical universe, although every thinking human knows it to be real.

Amazement, delight, and appreciation of beauty also do not exist in physical forms. These metaphysical phenomena are the stuff philosophers argue about. Scientists have no business with metaphysics, unless they believe there is more to life than the physical universe.

On the one hand, Druyan says there is no “final destination” and no “absolute truth,” and that fact makes understanding the vastness of the universe (and love!) only attainable to the humble; it “is out of reach to the arrogant.” Her definition of humility, however, is not the same as that of Solomon or James in scripture. The humble, in her vision, are those who would ditch what they believe and just accept what is “real.” But wait. I am confused. I thought she said there was no absolute truth. How can she then insist that something is real?

By the logic put forth here, Ann Druyan should realize she does not have all the answers, and she certainly does not have enough to say there is no god but science. She has decided to worship science above all other things, which ends up being self-worship and the worship of other brilliant men and women who are all trying to figure this universe out. But they have decided, as a matter of fact, there is no spiritual realm—that’s completely off the table.

We just cannot help but worship something, can we? We are created with a need to worship, to give ourselves to something greater than ourselves. Ann Druyan sees the vastness of the universe as something worthy of adoration, just as the ancient Egyptians worshiped the Sun and the Nile River. Is there any difference? Those ancient worshipers thought actual supernatural beings sustained them and judged them. Druyan and other materialists believe they are their own judges, their own final standards of moral authority.

Though materialists do not accept it, Yahweh created all things in heaven and on earth, which makes Him more powerful and vast than the vast universe. We don’t have to wonder where love, truth, beauty, or joy come from. Yahweh loves, He is truth, He created that which is beautiful and good, and He created joy and delight in the human heart. We are created, in fact, to find fullness in Him.

“We bring you good news, that you should turn from these vain things to a living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them. In past generations he allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways. Yet he did not leave himself without witness, for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.” (Acts 14. 15–17)

“The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” (Acts 17.30–31)

Jesus “is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1.15–17)

“He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.” (Hebrews 1.3)

Glory be to God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) – the creator and sustainer of the universe.

We cannot help but worship!

Atheists mock the Christian’s “God of the Gaps,” as they term it. Whenever we find a gap in science that we cannot explain, they fault us for quickly attributing it to God.

Carl Sagan wrote in The Demon-Haunted World:

“Hippocrates of Cos is the father of medicine. He is still remembered 2,500 years later for the Hippocratic Oath (a modified form of which is still here and there taken by medical students upon their graduation). But he is chiefly celebrated because of his efforts to bring medicine out of the pall of superstition and into the light of science. In a typical passage Hippocrates wrote: ‘Men think epilepsy divine, merely because they do not understand it. But if they called everything divine which they do not understand, why, there would be no end of divine things.’ Instead of acknowledging that in many areas we are ignorant, we have tended to say things like the Universe is permeated with the ineffable. A God of the Gaps is assigned responsibility for what we do not yet understand” (pp. 7-8).

Sagan makes the logical error of creating a false binary choice: either you can believe that God is responsible for things we don’t understand, or you can believe in science. Obviously, since many scientists also believe in God, these are not mutually exclusive positions. We believe in God who created science!

But the Atheist (who doesn’t believe in a god) must also pay homage to a higher power or principle than what can be directly observed in nature. As he laughs at the “backward” Christian who attributes all things to God’s power, he waves off troubling questions by appealing to his own god of the gaps.

How does the Atheist explain the universe, life, and morality?

Dan Barker once pastored churches and wrote religious music, fully participating in charismatic worship out west. However, in the 1980s he was “deconverted” (as he puts it) to atheism and became a champion evangelist for the anti-god cause. “I am a biological organism in a natural environment, and that is all there is,” he wrote in godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America’s Leading Atheists, p. 42. (Yes, it’s godless with a lower-case g.)

In Barker’s chapter on “Refuting God,” he writes,

“Many or most cosmologists are now convinced that some kind of multiverse is likely. A multiverse is a collection of universes, and there are many scenarios.” (p. 107).

“We have not proved such a multiverse of universes yet. All we know is that they are plausible, and that there is at least one. The important point here is that if there is more than one, then the numerator of the fraction that determines probability rises, making the ‘fine tuning’ of the constants (if they vary) to allow for life by random chance more likely” (p. 108).

In other words, Barker and these theorists use the all-powerful if to increase the odds in their favor. Nothing has yet been proved, but if it were true, it would make the creationist’s “fine-tuning of the universe” argument less powerful. I’m not a certified scientist, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how science works.

Barker answers the creationist’s argument that it’s highly improbable such complex life could have occurred through evolution:

“Using probability after the fact is like a lottery winner saying, ‘It was indeed highly unlikely that out of the millions of entrants I could have picked the right ticket, therefore someone must have caused me to win.’ It is indeed highly unlikely that any particular person can be predicted to be the winner—which is exactly what each contestant is trying to do when he or she obtains a ticket. But it is not at all unlikely that one person will win. In fact, we would consider it a true miracle if no one ever won a lottery.” (p. 110)

Now that is a good example of begging the question! It’s as if to say, “Well, since we are here by the process of evolution, I suppose that defeats your theory.”

The evolutionist must depend upon his god “enough time” in both the past and the future because it turns out he does not know anything. He speaks as if he is in lock-step agreement with all true scientists, and together they have proven these things. But when you dive in, you find suggestions and possibilities piled upon unproven theories. My translation of what the evolutionists are saying goes: “My dear scientifically illiterate Christian, if all the things we have dreamed up really did happen the way we hope they did, then we have explained away all of your points. Given enough time in the past, complex life as we know it today could have come about via evolution. Given enough time in the future, we will have the evidence to prove us right and you wrong. So trust us.”

Barker’s fictitious creationist continues to argue, “Everything has a cause, and every cause is the effect of a previous cause. Something must have started it all. God, who exists outside of time and space, is the eternal first cause, the unmoved mover, the creator and sustainer of the universe” (pp. 114-5).

Barker answers, “The major premise of this argument, ‘everything had a cause,’ is contradicted by the conclusion that ‘God did not have a cause.’ You can’t have it both ways…” (p. 115).

Yes, you can have it both ways if it is true. Just saying “you can’t have it both ways,” doesn’t automatically change reality. We have a book in which God has communicated to us and told us He created everything in heaven and on earth. This is not a theory for us. We did not dream this one up. We know it is true because God revealed it to us, which is the only way we could have known. This divine communication Barker has rejected completely, and now he must come up with all kinds of theories and if-statements and bad arguments blended smoothly so as to appear logical. Barker rejects the above argument as illogical because he has already rejected the premise that anything exists outside of the material universe (unless it’s more universes, of course).

Actually…perhaps I spoke too soon. A few chapters later Barker toys with the idea that something could exist outside the known universe—something that did Not Begin to Exist (NBE, as he termed it).

“But perhaps there could be something outside the natural universe that would be accommodated by NBE, besides God” (p. 133).

“If theists, however, allow the theoretical possibility of an impersonal transcendent object in NBE—and it seems they must allow this, or some other nontheistic hypothesis—and if they have not convincingly eliminated it (or them) from the set of actual items in NBE, then they must remain open to the possibility that the origin of the universe could be explained in a purely naturalistic manner” (p. 134).

“Who is to say that personality could not have arisen from an impersonal cause? The impersonal might be more complex. If this is impossible, theists must explain why” (p. 135).

Notice what he’s doing here. He throws out more wild theories and then tells creationists we have a duty to consider these possibilities. Why should we when we already have the most plausible answer staring us in the face? This man is a loose cannon on a ship—every time it fires, the canon knocks over the crowd behind it and ends up facing another random direction.

Years ago, Darwin looked to the future for validation of his theories of macro evolution. He just knew we would discover all kinds of transitional fossils which would fill in the gaps on his evolutionary tree.

“Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record.” (The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, 1859, p. 220).

Fast forward almost 200 years, and we still have not filled in those gaps. Instead, we have discovered biological complexity far beyond what even Darwin understood, making his macro-evolution theories less and less likely (and evolutionists to borrow more and more billions of years from their god of the gaps to make up for it).

Richard Dawkins, another evangelist for atheism, writes in his acclaimed book The Blind Watchmaker:

“Given infinite time, or infinite opportunities, anything is possible. The large numbers proverbially furnished by astronomy, and the large timespans characteristic of geology, combine to turn topsy-turvy our everyday estimates of what is expected and what is miraculous” (p. 139).

The rest of the chapter Dawkins gives over to wild speculation about how spontaneous generation might have happened and the probabilities involved.

Atheists have their own gods of the gaps. Two are called “enough time” and “if.” It’s actually quite hilarious when you sit back and observe the lengths to which they go attempting to explain reality. You can quickly tell they do not have solid footing. Their house is built on shifting sand. Many of these men brilliantly defend their positions, from the world’s standards of brilliance, and it is a shame they have squandered the gifts God has given them. They bring darkness to the world, not light. They destroy hope in the promised life ahead. They severely limit themselves and all who would believe in their preaching. They believe their thoughts are deep, but by rejecting their Creator they reject true life and true light. Science cannot fill their gaps.

God’s kingdom will overcome all these tiny fiefdoms. May God reign, and may Jesus route and overthrow the enemy of His people.

The preacher hammers the importance of daily Bible study, and most of the church sits feeling condemned, inadequate, and guilty, because we sure messed that up last week!

It's actually not the study itself, but our failures along the way. We make commitments (or at least have a vague idea of what we ought to do) and end up not fulfilling them. We don't hit our targets, don't actualize our vision, don't work the plan perfectly. And our hearts condemn us.

It's as if we feel God accepts us based on whether or not we hit our daily targets.

I know God wants me to spend time in His word (“a minimum of 15 or 20 minutes a day” is the goal I set for myself), and I never got around to it. And I missed yesterday, too. The days pile fast and guilt grows. I'm failing God, myself, my family, my church. I can't let the church know I'm a failure at this because this is what being a Christian is all about, right? If I'm not in the Bible every day, they might think I'm not really a Christian—or at least not a serious one. I'll tell everyone else they should be reading the Bible every day, I'll put on a face like I'm getting it done, and I'll continue to feel bad every week when I don't make it.

Have you ever felt this way?

Trade Law for Grace!

We feel like this when we see ourselves as under law. When we don't understand why Jesus died for us, we can get the idea that God is pleased with us only when we have our act together and displeased when we don't get “enough” works in—as if our works keep us holy and in His grace.

Get this, Brothers and Sisters: as many of you as have been baptized have put on Christ, you are one in Christ Jesus, and you are sons of God through faith (Galatians 3.26–4.7). Because you are sons, you are heirs alongside the Son, Jesus. You inherit eternal fellowship with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! God adopted you into His family while you were spiritually immature and broken--and He continues to cover you by the blood of His Son while you grow in Christ. You have freedom in God's house even while you are not perfect! God does not accept you on the basis of what you do for Him, but on the basis of what Jesus Christ has already done on the cross. Nothing you do for God now will make you more holy, more righteous, more acceptable to Him—you are totally accepted right now in Christ Jesus!

So don't feel condemned and guilty when you don't get the works perfect. Keep loving God; keep loving your neighbor; keep loving your family. Keep striving to know and understand more. You have not fallen out of God's favor when you fail.

In God's grace is an amazing freedom—including the freedom to fail and keep right on going. There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8.1).

Being under a heartless law system stifles growth and kills the spirit. But being under the grace of a kind and loving God provides and promotes an attitude of steady joy in the face of all our failures. I hope you and I forever revel in that joy!

Interestingly, those with this biblical understanding of grace find their Bible study becomes even more frequent and fruitful!

Our country experienced a “sexual revolution” in the 60s and 70s. Young hedonists rebelled against parental and societal guidance, pushing norms of morality several steps down the line. “Make love, not war,” they said, blending sex and love, which are not the same thing.

Obviously, this butted right up against the church and the teachings of the Lord, so the free-love movement was an anti-religion movement. Religion was the reason why parents were so stiff and unyielding and wanted to keep the pleasures of sex away from their children.

Over a fairly short period of time, the societal shame of unmarried couples “shacking up” diminished. Used to be, people would blush if they talked about an unmarried girl living with a guy, but no one bats an eye now.

Television shows and movies glamorized the sex act. Big-screen heroes did it with whoever they happened to be with on their current adventure: James Bond, Indiana Jones, etc.

Today the envelope has been pushed so far that same-sex coupling has become normal, and some of the most crass and perverted acts are discussed openly as if anything and everything is acceptable.

The contraceptive industry rakes in billions of dollars. We have statistics on teenager contraceptive usage in the United States…because teen sex is generally accepted. The abortion industry continues to kill millions of pre-born children. They want the sex but not the natural result.

Our cultural leaders inform us our sexual orientation is a majorly important characteristic, and we are constantly encouraged to go public with it. The number of those who identify as LGBT has greatly increased over the past few years. Think about that—our identities are being boiled down to who we like to have sex with.

Are Folks Content?

How is this hyper-sexualization working for the country? Do people seem happier because of it? Are they more content? Are they feeling fulfilled in their relationships?

This article reports that 1 in 4 women in the United States reports “completed or attempted rape victimization at some point in her lifetime.”

Seventeen percent of adolescents in 2020 experienced a major depression episode, a period of at least 2 weeks of serious depression.

Suicide rates are extremely high, and have increased 30% from 2000 to 2018, declining slightly in 2019 and 2020, according to the CDC. A CDC website header states, “Suicide is a leading cause of death.”

Inarguably, society has become a mess of misery and disfunction. People are not happy, not fulfilled, not content. Talk of euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide is heating up. Canada has plowed well down that path already.

Of course, sex is not the only issue, but it sure is staring everyone right in the face.

Faithful, Married Couples Have the Best Sex

Most who are in faithful, married relationships will agree: the sexual life of the married is far superior to those not committed to a spouse or who sleep around.

Christians know this is because God created man and woman, marriage, and sex. God designed marriage to be much deeper than the sexual act itself. It’s about intimacy with a life-long, trusted, loving partner. It’s about total commitment to faithfulness. It’s about not being alone. The Christian husband sees his wife as his only source of sexual pleasure, and she knows she’s his one and only. She feels secure in the relationship. Both enjoy fulfillment because of their mutual commitment.

Think of marriage as a garden God prepared for you. There is so much beauty, pleasure, and joy to be found in this garden. Other gardens exist out there, but this is the one God prepared for you. God said to stay inside the fence—but you can enjoy everything inside the fence, which is quite a lot if you would just focus on your own garden and put down the binoculars you’ve been using to search around for other gardens. Satan whispers about the greener grass on the other side of God’s fence. Indeed, there are pleasures to be found out there, for sure, but they will kill you in the end, draining your life and losing forever the true joys God had prepared for you in your own garden.

What Does God Say about Sex?

Positively, one of the first statements about sex in the Bible is with Adam and Eve: “A man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2.24). Becoming “one flesh” includes the concept of coming together sexually because Paul tells the Christians in Corinth, “The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord…Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, ‘The two will become one flesh’” (1 Corinthians 6.13-16).

Two of the Ten Commandments talk about sex: “Thou shalt not commit adultery” and “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.”

Speaking on the purity and sanctity of marriage, the Hebrew author writes, “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous” (Hebrews 13.4).

“Because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband,” Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 7.2. Sexual immorality is any sexual activity with someone to whom you are not married. If you are single, God forbids you from having sex with anyone, because you must be married to your sexual partner. If you are married, God has blessed you with the one to whom you must be faithful. Paul continues:

“The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control” (1 Corinthians 7.3-5).

Love and Respect and the Gospel

God did not create marriage solely for the sexual aspect—no, the world has limited our vision and gotten us to think so much about the sexual aspect that we can easily lose sight of the deeper and greater gifts inside of this most intimate of relationships.

Husband, you are to love your wife as Christ loves His bride, the Church.

Wife, you are to respect your husband as your head.

Husband, you are to learn your wife and honor her as a weaker vessel and as a fellow heir of the grace of life.

Wife, you are to submit to your husband’s leadership and love your husband and children.

If husband and wife both serve one another in these ways, we become a real reflection of Christ and the church (Ephesians 5.22-33). The Christian marriage becomes a way of showing the gospel of Christ to the world. Why be faithful to an imperfect wife? Because Christ is faithful to His imperfect bride. Why submit to a husband even when it’s hard? Because Christ submitted himself to His Father even when it took Him to the cross (1 Peter 2.21–3.1).

Tend your own garden and reap the fruit God has prepared for you.

In my younger days, I heard much ado about TULIP, the five tenets of Calvinism. I did not hear about the five solas of the Reformation. Do you know these?

1. Sola Scriptura (scripture alone – as opposed to scripture + church tradition)
2. Sola Fide (faith alone – as in faith apart from works)
3. Sola Gratia (grace alone)
4. Sola Christo (Christ alone – He is the only way)
5. Soli Deo Gloria (to the Glory of God alone)

All of these were shifts away from the Roman Catholic Church, and Sola Scriptura was a major key. The Reformers recognized the church should be guided only by the authority of Scripture, not by additional books or church traditions. They knew church traditions were not necessarily sinful in and of themselves, but they refused to recognize church tradition and official church declarations as authoritative, to which I lend a hearty amen.

As Martin Luther famously stated at the Diet of Worms: “Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason—I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other—my conscience is captive to the Word of God.”

However, many have taken an extremist view of Sola Scriptura and have interpreted it to mean that each person should start fresh with his Bible and interpret it from start to finish with no input from others. As one brother puts it: “Just me and my Bible under a tree.”

This viewpoint has been labeled Solo Scriptura (with an o instead of an a) to differentiate it from Sola Scriptura, as they are not the same.

Being led by Scripture alone does not mean we should throw out all the excellent studies of men through the ages. When we come to the text, it is good practice to do some preliminary wrestling with it to see how much spiritual ore we can extract from its deep mines. But it is also good practice to follow up our own observations with further study from faithful Biblical scholars who have spent lifetimes studying the same Word.

Churches with roots in the Restoration Movement can be especially bad about this. We tend to throw most of church history largely out the window with claims like, “We just need to get back to the simple gospel,” and “use Bible words in Bible ways.” I agree with both of those statements, but I do not agree with throwing out the whole church history baby with the bathwater of church traditions.

Sola Scriptura does not reject creeds outright; it keeps creeds in their proper place. Creeds are “I believe” statements, and the ones which have endured have been well-thought-out and tested by many men over long periods of time. Some of the oldest Christian creeds are the Nicene Creed, Apostles Creed, Athanasian Creed, and the Creed of Calcedon. All of those were written during the first 400 years of the church, and they are helpful to show us how the early Christians understood our Scriptures.

Sola Scriptura in humility invites the criticism of the church because it accepts that many Christians have thought through God’s word before us. Solo Scriptura (just me and my Bible) tends towards divisiveness and pride—because my interpretation is just as good as anyone else’s (better, if I’m honest with myself, right?). I know of several families who have left the churches they were with and started their own house church because they couldn’t find a church which agreed with them on their interpretation of Scripture. Their fellowship became incredibly small; indeed, it was just them and their Bible under a tree rejecting the rest of Christ’s kingdom.

I bring this up in our Restoration environment as an encouragement to open our ears to a wider range of Christian input. Don’t be afraid to pick up a commentary by Dr. R. C. H. Lenski (a German-born Lutheran) or Adam Clarke (an Irish-born Methodist) or Alfred Edersheim (a Scottish Presbyterian of Jewish extraction) or John Calvin (a French reformer). These men have made outstanding contributions to the study of Scripture, having spent countless hours in the true effort of not only diving deep into the text but also inscribing their observations for later generations.

Do not blindly accept anything a person writes about Scripture – the men are not authoritative in themselves – but read and listen with a heart open to evaluate what they say. You’ll find nuggets of enlightenment everywhere.

Adherents to Solo Scriptura find themselves lonely and divided. This can happen on an individual scale, or it can be on a church or denominational level. Among the churches of Christ, the autonomy of each local church is a flag flown high. The result, at least in some cases, has been a bevy of loner churches mourning how small Christ’s kingdom is. Even at the more macro level of the “churches of Christ” we may still have this problem. Conservative, non-institutional churches tend to see even institutional churches of Christ as possibly non-brethren because of their view on things such as spending church money on orphanages and church kitchens. The result is a tiny brotherhood.

Maybe they are correct. Perhaps the true brotherhood of Christ is very small. Perhaps it is just the collection of non-institutional churches of Christ who have got all the correct worship items figured out.

Alternatively, what if no ONE person and no ONE church has it figured out? What if our salvation is dependent not upon how perfectly we understand Scripture but upon the honor we give it and how we submit to what we do understand of Scripture, God, and Christ? What if our salvation is dependent not upon faith in our personal interpretation of Scripture but upon faith in Jesus Christ? What if God wants us to walk in humility and fellowship with others who name Christ as their Savior (and live like it)?

What if we are not supposed to do this Christianity thing solo?