Formed By the feed, not the word

Tonight, I encountered individuals who identified as Christians. They spoke confidently about morality, tradition, and how the country should be run. They shared “wise” posts they had found online. They praised political power as if it were evidence of righteousness.

What struck me was not simply what they believed, but how they were being formed.

Scripture was absent. The Spirit was never mentioned. Prayer was invisible. What shaped their imagination came instead from social media, nostalgia, and political loyalty. Christianity functioned less as a way of life and more as a cultural inheritance—something defended, not practiced.

I am Pentecostal. That distinction matters.

Pentecostal faith is not inherited by proximity to tradition or nation. It is formed by encounter. At Pentecost, the Church was not shaped by familiarity or power, but by disruption. “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them” (Acts 2:4). The Spirit crossed borders, confused categories, and refused containment.

What I witnessed bore little resemblance to that.

The early Church “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer” (Acts 2:42). Formation was communal, scriptural, and embodied. It was not outsourced. It was not curated by empire.

Scripture warns explicitly against replacing divine formation with cultural conformity:
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2). Formation is unavoidable. If the mind is not being renewed by Scripture and Spirit, it will be shaped by something else.

As a Mexican-born U.S. citizen, I am sensitive to how easily Christianity becomes entangled with nationalism. But Jesus was unambiguous about the limits of political power: “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). When faith is organized around national identity rather than the reign of God, it ceases to be Christian in anything more than name.

Pentecostals should know this better than most. The prophet Joel’s promise, fulfilled in Acts, declares: “I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh” (Acts 2:17). Not on citizens. Not on voters. Not on the culturally dominant. On all flesh.

The Spirit does not disciple through algorithms.
The Word of God does.

“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16). Yet Scripture cannot form those who do not open it. James is blunt: “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves” (James 1:22). A Christianity built on consumption rather than obedience inevitably hollows out.

What I witnessed was not Pentecostalism. It was cultural Christianity—a faith shaped by fear, grievance, and media, baptized in religious language but detached from the practices that actually form disciples.

Jesus warned His followers that authentic faith would be visible, not merely verbal:
“By their fruit you will recognize them” (Matthew 7:16).
And the fruit the Spirit produces is not cruelty baptized as strength, but “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Galatians 5:22–23).

This is not about left or right.
It is about formation.

If Facebook shapes your ethics more than Scripture, something is disordered.
If nationalism excites you more than the work of the Spirit, something has shifted.
If the Bible remains closed while political talking points flow freely, discipleship has been replaced by consumption.

The altar forms us through surrender.
The pit reveals what actually survived.

Pentecostal faith should be recognizable by humility, conviction, generosity, and openness to the disruptive work of the Holy Spirit. “Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,” says the Lord Almighty (Zechariah 4:6).

The question is not whether people claim Christianity.

The question is whether they have been formed by the Spirit—or by the algorithm.