Too many American (and other) Christians revel in feelings and/or morality and don't care to develop a biblically-shaped Zeitgeist or worldview. The result is folk religion rather than classical, historical Christianity which has always included sound theology.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Only a loving and covenant-making personal God can provide humans with unique dignity, worth, and rights. Blind nature cannot do that. So, for the Christian, "secular humanism" is an oxymoron.