Friday, December 16, 2011

Pre-prolegomena: Introduction

How is the Christian life to be lived? That is probably the most asked question for all Christians. Yet it seems that for many Evangelical Christians, the Christian life consists of data mining the Bible for principles to live by. Is that however the way Christians are to live?

It is my contention that such is not the biblical way to find out the way the Christian life is to be lived. In fact, I would even venture to say that it is probably the most un-Christian way of finding out what the Christian life is about. The method is just about as able to discern the biblical principles of Christian living as it is able to discern how to fry an egg from examining the molecular differences between a raw and a fried egg.

The data-mining approach to Christian living has resulted in the re-definition of Christianity as the religion of Moral Therapeutic Deism. Christianity has become it seems the religion of the philosopher Immanuel Kant. Christianity is all about being moral and being good in this life, with an additional benefit of going to heaven after death. Jesus saves us from hell, so after we have our hell insurance, it's about time we brush up our lives in our growth in (moral) sanctification.

This however is a lie from the very pits of Hell itself.

This is about as far from true biblical spirituality as you can get.

This if taken to its logical conclusions damns the professional believer to an eternity without Christ.

We should see why this topic should interests us. And I intend to therefore cover the topic of Christian living. How are Christians to think of and behave, in a manner that is true to Scripture?

We will cover the topic in 2 main sections. Section 1 will be the basis of the Christian faith and life, while section 2 will focus on the implications it has for us.

As this is called pre-prolegomena, I would try to write this using simple vocabulary and simple concepts as much as it is possible for me to do so. I will try to write shorter paragraphs and shorter sentences to aid comprehension.

With this, let us begin.

[to be continued]

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