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.

Today we cannot assume people, even all Christians, understand the Bible's implicit, underlying view of reality. We have to dig it out and show it to people, including Christians, and ask them to "see reality as this" rather than "as that" - where "that" refers to any number of unbiblical ideas about reality.

To some of us, raised and trained in allowing the Bible to absorb the world (that is, to "see" all of reality through the biblical story), the Bible is quite clear about all really important matters.

Scripture is our norming norm and tradition is our normed norm and that in a doctrinal controversy Scripture alone has absolute veto power while The Great Tradition (orthodox doctrine) has a vote but not a veto.

As the perfect parent, God suffers emotional pain when his creatures, created in his own image and likeness, rebel against him and do evil instead of good.

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

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.