Before saying 'I disagree' be sure you can say 'I understand.'

Today, under the influences of Eastern religions and philosophies imported into the West, many Christians confuse God's Spirit with our spirit and think our spirit is a spark of the divine, "the God within everyone." That's not how the biblical writers thought about our spirits or souls.

We're created in God's image, but our souls or spirits are not offshoots of God's own Spirit - as New Age teachers would have us believe.

Human beings are special, of higher dignity and worth than other animals, because they're created in God's own image and likeness. It's actually true humanism.

We, including many Christians, read the Bible through "eyes" conditioned by, and even accommodated to, modern Western culture plus the influences of messages and ideas from other cultures that are alien to the worldview of the biblical writers. Therefore, in order fully to understand the Bible and allow the Bible to absorb the world (rather than the world - culture - absorb the Bible) we must practice an "archaeology" of the biblical writers' implicit, assumed view of reality.

The idea of having no limits, either through education or money or possessions or power, is radically alien to everything the Bible assumes and says.

Before saying 'I disagree' be sure you can say 'I understand.'