How Our Beliefs Are Formed (And Reformed) | Ep. 122

Ever wonder why one viral clip can feel louder than years of Sunday teaching? In this episode, we explore how beliefs are formed—through family, church culture, and now social media—and how to rebuild on truth without losing Jesus. Learn the difference between eisegesis and exegesis, why context matters, and how simple Bible study guardrails protect your faith from hype. If you’re ready to trade borrowed assumptions for biblical clarity, this is your starting point.

Continue the reflection in Hello Virtue: When Old Lies Return

Transcript

Welcome And Free Study Guide

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This is episode 122, and I'm your host, Satoya. And this is Equip the Next, where you get equipped to lead, disciple, and move the mission forward. So, where were your beliefs formed? You don't want to miss this. If you are new, thank you for stopping by. If you are returning, you already know what it is. If you're able to grab your pen, pencil, whatever you can. If you're driving, you know not to grab anything, just listen. But if you are new or if you haven't already and you would like to just have a clear, grounded way to approach scripture, grab my free guide, The Bible Studies Guard Rails. It's a gift to you from me, and it should help you. It's literally like one page, you know, just to kind of give you a little checklist, if you will, to help you approach scripture with a little bit more confidence. So, anywho, that's there for you. It's in the show notes, it's in the description box. I don't know. Depending on where you're listening to it, it's there. So be sure to grab that. Now, we are in March 2026, and I wanted to talk about um, you know, how our beliefs are formed. Where did they come from? You know, because theology and our thinking and what we've learned does not appear overnight. It forms slowly. But it's important to know where that foundation is. Ask yourself this question: Where did my understanding of God first begin to take shape? I know that's a loaded question, but it's a very important question. You know, I often tell people this. Um, it took me like two years to unlearn things. And then I had to relearn truth. So it took me two years to unlearn um things that were taught to me in error, not blaming the people that taught it, because they learned it in error, a lot of them. And I did learn a lot along the way, don't get me wrong. But I had to unlearn some stuff in order to learn truth. Learn how to actually study the Bible, learn about Christ, have a real relationship. There's a term that I've recently came across. I forgot what it's called, I think it's called deconstruction, something like that. It's a term that I'm just now seeing. It's something new. But, you know, if that's what people call it, fine. I just say I unlearned some stuff that were taught to me in error. That's what I do. That's just my safe space right there. But I want to unpack that because maybe you're in that situation yourself. And you're not wavering with your faith. No, no, we're not doing that. We trust God, we believe God, you know, we we love Jesus here, we rock with Christ all the way here. So it's not that we're wavering in our faith, but it's just that a lot of things that we were taught in error, we're starting to scratch our head and say, wait a minute, is this what the Bible really means? And that's where Equip the Next comes in, because I want you to grow in confidence, grow in the word, but I want you to grow in truth and be free. You know, have that freedom that God blessed you with. So I put these in two categories, and these are just my opinion. This is just my opinion, rather, on how our beliefs are formed, you know, where we usually get our theology. I did a then and now comparison. So the then comparison was like I would say 10 or so years ago, really before the social media era, right? When we look at how our philosophy, or some not philosophy, how our theology, our belief systems were formed, I put those in four categories. They were either formed by our parents or a family. That's like one category, church, if you grew up in church, friends and community. So they should start in the family, in the home. That's where they should start. They should start in the home first. And then, you know, if you grew up in church, you definitely got it there. Some people may not have grown up in church, so then we can look at, you know, friends or community that were that surrounded you. That's usually nine times out of ten where our feel uh our theology was formed. But then we look at now, 2026, and we we see a shift. Actually, I listed four things in that, and I don't list family in that. Here's what's shaping our theology now: social media, culture, society, church hierarchy. That is just my humble opinion. Social media, culture, society, and um church hierarchy. Notice the family or parents is not in that. Because let's be honest, let's be honest. Most of the time, the thing that influences us most comes from social media, and social media is a glab uh a gathering of culture that then shapes our society. And then church hierarchy, you know, it's the leader with the best title, the flashiest car, you know, the very vocal um delivery, if you will, the mo the best motivational speaker, if you will. That's typically what's shaping our theology now. And some people are really kind of burnt out about it. And I understand, but we have to understand that these things don't appear, like I said, overnight. It's a growing process, and that's why you know I tell people you must unlearn things that have that were taught to you in error so that you can build upon a truthful foundation, which is Christ. But how do you know? Like, what if you don't know what is true? What if you can't, you don't know how to study scripture? What if what's been taught to you in scripture, you you don't know any other way? What do you do? How do you navigate that, Latoya? How do I unlearn things? Well, we have um a community here. Uh, we have other people um that I know you're maybe hopefully you go to a local church that teaches you um how to study scripture. But I'm gonna give you two terms that I say all the time. I say this in the Bible Foundations course um that I have, and if I get enough people interested, I will definitely open it up again. But I say these two words so often because they're so important. And those two words are eisegesis and exegesis. Actually, I think a lot of leaders know this term, pastoral leaders. But I know it's hard because they have to appease the people, and sometimes that can get very crowded and cloudy. But I want to kind of tell you what those mean. If I'm looking at exegesis, it means to lead out or comes out of. And eegesis means to lead into. We're gonna break that down if you are new. Let's start with the eisegesis, because I think that is the most problematic, and that's the thing that we see in social media, culture, society, and church hierarchy. It's when I give the passage a meaning based on my experience, my culture, my background, my language, my prejudice, my biases, my flashy car, my abundance, right? And I don't consider the original context, the culture, the language, the audience, the genre of the passage. That's where you get a lot of things, like a lot of prosperity gospel and a lot of faith-based gospel, and you get the doctrine of that because they are looking at their life and they're putting and reading into the text what it should be in their minds and not what it actually means. Isa Jesus, I, just think about that, and then we, and I'm saying we, meaning the body, because I'm not pointing any fingers, but we tend to then point that to everybody, and everybody should live according to that because that was my life or my trauma, my frustration, my anger. And that is not the way you look in scripture because it's not about us, it's about him. You want to look at it from an exegetical point of view, which means that the meaning of the passage, what it what it's coming out of it. I'm observing that original text and its original context, the culture, and its language, the audience that it's meant to be for, the genre of the passage, and I'm leaving myself out of the way. That's how we understand and unpack the text. That's a start at least. Again, like I said, you can grab the free um Bible study guardrails. It's a very clear practical way that you can start to approach scripture today, that you can learn how to study scripture today, but understand we always talk about the Christ thread. I'm gonna give you three words that you want to remember when we look at the Christ thread. I go into detail um in our email, so you can subscribe if you want, but you want to look at the truth because God is true, the word is true, and he reveals himself in it. And we don't we know that Christ is the word made flesh. John talks about this. It's important to understand what you are reading, it will set you so free. I know that's not grammatically correct, but it I just it just came out that way. It will set you free for real. In your mind is what I'm talking about. You're already free because you you got Christ, but in your mind, the bondage and the chains, once you know how to actually study scripture and that the Lord loves you regardless of what you do, what you say, and get the burdens off of you. That's the most important thing that I want you to get out of this month as we build upon strong foundation, which is Christ. So I'm gonna challenge you this week. Um, I want you to identify one belief you've always assumed was biblical and revisited in scripture this week. But I also don't just look at the verse or the section, pericope, whatever. I want you to look at the surrounding text. So look at a couple of verses before that uh verse that you're looking at, and a couple of verses after that and see if that can unpack something and remove your trauma, your fear, your doubt, remove everything that was taught to you, whether it's good or bad. You still just want to just have a clean slate, allow the Holy Spirit to come in and then read the text. Read it to understand who he is. That's what I want you to do this week. We are going to be unpacking this a lot more in detail. So don't worry, we're coming back. Don't forget to follow or subscribe depending on where you're listening, so you don't miss an episode. Thanks for listening. Now, grow in Christ or grow in God's word and leave boldly and grow in Christ too. Bless you.