While we recognize that Jesus commanded baptism (Matt. 28:19), as did the apostles (Acts 2:38), we should not say that baptism is necessary for salvation.

Believer’s Baptism – Adult conscious aware full immersion (vs. other types of baptism i.e. sprinkling vs. affusion – i.e. pouring on head)

1. The Argument From the New Testament Narrative Passages on Baptism.
The narrative examples of those who were baptized suggest that baptism was administered only to those who gave a believable profession of faith. After Peter’s sermon at Pentecost we read, “Those who received his word were baptized” (Acts 2:41). 
The text specifies that baptism was administered to those who “received his word” and therefore trusted in Christ for salvation. 

Similarly, when Philip preached the gospel in Samaria, we read, “When they believed Philip as he preached good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both “men and women” (Acts 8:12). 

Likewise, when Peter preached to the Gentiles in Cornelius’ household, he allowed baptism for those who had heard the Word and received the Holy Spirit—that is, for those who had given persuasive evidence of an internal work of regeneration. While Peter was preaching, “the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word” and Peter and his companions “heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God” (Acts 10:44–46). Peter’s response was that baptism is appropriate for those who have received the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit: “Can any one forbid water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” Then Peter “commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ” (Acts 10:47–48). 

The point of these three passages is that baptism is appropriately given to those who have received the gospel and trusted in Christ for salvation. There is a clear pattern of cognitive understanding related to age and will.* There are other texts that indicate this as well—Acts 16:14–15 (Lydia and her household, after “the Lord opened her heart” to believe); Acts 16:32–33 (the family of the Philippian jailer, after Peter preached “the word of the “of the Lord to him and to all that were in his house”); and 1 Corinthians 1:16 (the household of Stephanas)

The common practice of baptism in the New Testament was carried out in one general way: the person being baptized was immersed or put completely under the water and then brought back up again. Baptism by immersion is therefore the “mode” of baptism or the way in which baptism was carried out in the New Testament (now referred to as “Believer’s Baptism”). This is evident for the following reasons:

Linguistic
(1) The Greek word baptizō means “to plunge, dip, immerse” something in water. This is the commonly recognized and standard meaning of the term in ancient Greek literature both inside and outside of the Bible.

Biblical 
(2) The sense “immerse” is appropriate and probably required for the word in several New Testament passages. In Mark 1:5, people were baptized by John “in the river Jordan” (the Greek text has en, “in,” and not “beside” or “by” or “near” the river). Mark also tells us that when Jesus had been baptized “he came up out of the water” (Mark 1:10). The Greek text specifies that he came “out of” (ek) the water, not that he came away from it (this would be expressed by Gk. apo). The fact that John and Jesus went into the river “Mark also tells us that when Jesus had been baptized “he came up out of the water” (Mark 1:10). The Greek text specifies that he came “out of” (ek) the water, not that he came away from it (this would be expressed by Gk. apo). The fact that John and Jesus went into the river and came up out of it strongly suggests immersion, since sprinkling or pouring of water could much more readily have been done standing beside the river, particularly because multitudes of people were coming for baptism. John’s gospel tells us, further, that John the Baptist “was baptizing at Aenon near Salim, because there was much water there” (John 3:23). Again, it would not take “much water” to baptize people by sprinkling, but it would take much water to baptize by immersion. (see also Mark 16:16

When Philip had shared the gospel with the Ethiopian eunuch, “as they went along the road they came to some water, and the eunuch said, ‘See, here is water! What is to prevent my being baptized?’ ” (Acts 8:36). Apparently neither of them thought that sprinkling or pouring a handful of water from the container of drinking water that would have been carried in the chariot was enough to constitute baptism. Rather, they waited until there was a body of water near the road. Then “he commanded the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him. And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught up Philip; and the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing” (Acts 8:38–39). As in the case of Jesus, this baptism occurred when Philip and the eunuch went down into a body of water, and after the baptism they came up out of that body of water. Once again baptism by immersion is the only satisfactory explanation of this narrative.”

Representative/Symbolic of Christ’s death and resurrection
(3) “In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of flesh in the circumcision of Christ; and you were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.” (Colossians 2:11–12; 1 Pet. 3:21; Rom. 6:1-18)

At one level, it was purely metaphorical: as I was pushed under the water, my union with the physical death of Christ was symbolized. As I surfaced, my spiritual resurrection in the physical resurrection of Christ was depicted.

The spiritual meaning of my water baptism was not possible without the physical death and physical resurrection of Christ. But the drenching of my baptism did not merely symbolize a past or present spiritual reality in me. I am now certain that when my physical death arrives and my body is placed in the ground, it will be planted like a seed, waiting to spring eternally in physical resurrection. The metaphorical act of my baptism symbolized what is possible only by the physical reality of Christ, and my spiritual union with him guarantees my physical future.

**We pray & desire that God gives us everything He has for us spiritually through baptism & communion and the other traditional Christian sacraments. 

By Dr. Joe Mulvihill

It is a substantively documented fact that Christianity has lost its culture-shaping or culture-
impacting power for a good many years now. This is nowhere more obvious than in the lives
of young people, and it seems to get worse from year to year here in the U.S., Canada and
Europe. I worked for about a decade and half in Christian education, at the academy (upper
high school) as well as at the collegiate level at a Christian university. As general education is
in steep decline due to a number of factors, an even more alarming issue is the Biblical and
theological illiteracy and ignorance on display for those in the field of Christian education. Again,
there are too many cultural factors to enumerate here to even attempt to bridge the gap
between correlation and causation. But we can get at practical habits to be attempted at
home and at church and in Christian institutions of education.

There is an Christian educator of whom I have just recently become privy that is attempting to
create and offer basic Christian worldview curricula that can set the basic building blocks in
place for a student to navigate the online onslaught against Biblical thinking and application
pre-graduation and prepare for the post-graduation bombardment of secularization or the
“propaganda of worldliness” one gets in an overwhelming way at University and piecemeal in
the workforce life of marriages and mortgages. This Christian teacher’s name is Elizabeth
Urbanowitz and her curricula idea was born out of a shocked reaction she had to what her
CHRISTIAN students were doing at her Christian school.

Story #1 - Elizabeth has a projector malfunction (PPT) and while she is repairing it so she can
start the lesson, her Christian school middle-school students start being led by a single
charismatic student into eastern religious meditation to calm them and help the teacher de-
stress during the unforeseen malfunction issue!

Story #2 – A child at Elizabeth’s church bitterly complaining about Elizabeth being that
Sunday's rotation teacher for kids church; "oh no..not you...I'm mad because I always get
candy for just answering 'Jesus' to every question with all the other SS teachers! But you
make us think, CHURCH ISN'T A PLACE FOR THINKING, SCHOOL IS FOR THAT, CHURCH IS A
PLACE FOR FUN!"

Now for those of us that have been in the Christian education para-church world for a while,
these kinds of stories are tragically boilerplate, run-of-the-mill, commonplace. So Elizabeth
attempted to frame the first past of her school teaching to her teaching level, which is sixth
through eighth grade (middle school) and frame it as “common lies of which to be aware.”
This keeps the ideas basic as well as contextually appropriate for middle-schoolers. She also
wanted to include practical, creative, illustrative ways expose the lies and make the lessons
really memorable.

Let’s look at the first four of her “eight basic lies” Urbanowitz covers in her first lesson;

LIE #1. “All truth is subjective, all truth is relative” – even middle-school students can grasp &
know the difference between subjective preference and objective fact. Elizabeth gives the
student a real map and fake or inaccurate one and then lets them find the issues. Urbanowitz
uses games and allows certain set-up students to cheat and doesn't initially stop the cheating
then asks all the game participants, "who wants the rules to be enacted and who wants them to
continue to be ignored?"

Urbanowitz uses another illustrative story of three guys jumping out of a plane up at seven thousand feet in the air; one man just has a superman suit and a ton of enthusiasm believing he will fly away, man #2 has a spacesuit on, he believes with all he has that he will actually not freefall but instead will go up into space. And the last has a parachute on and understands/has experience skydiving. Then she asks, “Who do you think survives? After the students answer Urbanowitz, she follows with, “Now, why do we rightly refuse to believe the outcomes of the gravity belief are all based on desire, will and sincerity, but we pretend that this is the case with far more important and crucial beliefs?”

LIE #2. “Follow your heart - be the true you, be the you you want to be” OR “your own heart
(will and desires) is the most reliable guide for truth and personal identity.” Urbanowitz then
links the "you do you" slogan to this lie and lie number one. Elizabeth reminds the students
that NO ONE, practically, lives this way and our “hearts” often steer us in the wrong direction.

LIE #3. “‘Love’ is affirming and accepting everything I want and feel at the moment!” This is
also expressed in the current slogan "love is love" (popular nonsense). Another way of stating
this is “my feelings make anything I currently desire or want into ‘love.’” Urbanowitz really
hammers this idea that "if we love them we will never make anyone uncomfortable” which
even middle-schoolers can see is foolish as their teachers and parents are constantly placing
the kids into uncomfortable & undeseable but positive and beneficial training practices. So
everyone really knows that this is foolish. Love has always been defined as more than good
feels & positive affirmations. Urbanowitz ends this teaching with the crucial importance of our
definition of "love"?

LIE #4. ’Faith’ is the opposite of knowledge.” It is unfortunately true that some Christians
actually believe and profess this idea that “faith” is intentional naivety, soft nonsense, or a
resolute will to believe what you know is not factually true, in other words "faith" is just
equated with wishful thinking / Ligonier ministries annual state of theology among Christians
41% of evangelicals believe that their religious belief is really “just opinion” (like all other
opinions). The apostle Paul makes it abundantly clear that Jesus needed to really die and
really rise again, not “in the hearts of his disciples” but in concrete space-time history/ If the
resurrection of Jesus is not a historic fact, as opposed to a fleeting opinion, then Christianity
is finished and we are people to be pitied the most. (see 1 Corinthians 15) Our faith tradition is
a knowledge tradition that makes objective truth claims about events that happened to real
people, in real places, in real time periods and eras.

Elizabeth Urbanowotz is attempting to do Christian cultural apologetics with really young
children, an enormously difficult task. But she has my deep respect not only for taking the
initiative, but doing this kind of needed instruction thoughtfully and with excellence. Parents,
kid & youth pastors as well as formal classroom instructors would benefit enormously from
her curricula or even familiarity with her work. It is a blessing to see this approach really
helping children in their adolescent and early teens in their walk with Jesus, an age many
thought too early to engage in an approach like this.

by Dr. Joe Mulvihill

The most common type of book authored and published today are self-help, happiness/human flourishing & well-being books. There are many contributing factors to this publishing phenomenon. One is the altogether normal human desire for rest, catharsis and pleasure/deep satisfaction. Standing in the way of this pleasure, flourishing and rest is pain, risk & hardship, which can be mitigated by us, but never eliminated or fully controlled by us. Over the span of human history there have been various techniques to attempt to reduce or eliminate the power of this common human experience of pain, hardship, sorrow & risk in order to, in some way, secure happiness and satisfaction on the other side of “dealing” with evil and pain which is no “respecter of persons.” In what follows, you will see a criminally brief summary or sketch of the most popular attempts to deal with “the problem of pain” which thwarts our pursuit of happiness and satisfaction.

There are seven basic attempted answers to “the problem of pain” or, put another way, “how to be happy” by understanding what is in the way of said happiness that have remained through the ages.

The Buddhist answer.
Existence is pain. Happiness is illusion. Blessedness comes from cessation of existence which is
achieved through the denial & suppression of desire.

The Pantheist answer.
Division – the assumption of your existence as a separate being – is pain. Happiness is found by
becoming one with everything – cessation of existence as an individual being & training your mind to suppress the ubiquitous notion/powerful perspective that there are significant differences and distinctions everywhere.

The Hedonist answer.
Existence is pointless suffering/pain and happiness is a lie. Existence can be rendered more
tolerable by the constant maximization of pleasure and minimization of pain.

The Stoic answer.
Existence is suffering. The self-commanded man can become happy by disregarding pleasure &
pain, becoming indifferent to the travails of the world and motivated only by his own sovereign will.

The ancient Gnostic/Bolshevik/Socialist answer.
The current state of existence is a lie designed to entrap and disenfranchise men by an evil and
arbitrary authority. The internalization of this evil system by men produces suffering. Happiness
can be found if the current order is destroyed; thus, for “salvation” to be accomplished, both the current state of existence and the nature of man must be changed. This change can only be
accomplished by transgression and destruction. The new order of salvation will arise once
sufficient transgression and destruction has been accomplished, bringing happiness.

The general Theistic answer.
Suffering is brought about by transgression of the Law, given by God. Salvation comes through
following the Law. If you are saved, God will make you happy & fulfilled. This understanding is
fundamentally transactional; pay undeserved suffering & obedience, then receive happiness &
satisfaction.

The Christian answer.
For man, suffering and death came with the Fall through the immoral, rebellious use of our free will. God blessed and hallowed suffering and death by Himself choosing to suffer and die – so He does not ask of us anything He has not done Himself. Salvation comes via cooperation with God – He who is the Real, the Beautiful, the True, and the Good in His very nature. This cooperation is accomplished through obedience and imitation of Christ, the Logos – the Way, the Truth, and the Life, the right order and reason of all things. Obedience consists, in part, of accepting suffering – to “embrace the Cross” as our Captain sought and embraced His Cross and, in part, through yielding to the Holy Spirit to receive power to “abide in” Jesus & obey him. Happiness, in this life and the next, comes from union with God – a “marriage” between God and man. This is a non-transactional relationship. Ultimately, those Saved will become Sons & Daughters of God – things like God Himself, in union with Him.

Regardless of their merits or effectiveness, these are the seven approaches that have convinced or been pushed on people to stand through time. There is so much more to be said about pain, evil, suffering and happiness, perhaps we can explore this subject more thoroughly in the future. I wanted you to see what many believing and non-believing scholars have noticed about Christianity. That is, that the answer Jesus and the Bible give to ubiquitous human suffering and pain is unique, robust, realistic and outdistances the competing “solutions” given through alt religions and life philosophies.

Suffice to say that the Christian answer to the problem of evil and pain has the greatest resources for not “solving” the issue on this side of eternity but resolving it in our experience here on earth before heaven.

12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You by Tony Reinke
By Dr. Joe Mulvihill

I have no interest here in giving you Reinke’s 12 ways – we will discuss two and hopefully, that will be enough for you to decide if this book deserves a full read.

First, before we dive into two of the twelve warnings, I feel compelled to remark that the forward by John Piper is typical Piper excellence. The retired pastor tells the reader that despite the myriad issues with smartphones that he nonetheless still believes they are a gifts from God. He sagaciously warns of how this tech makes it easier than ever to avoid contemplating your own mortality and the all important eternities. He tells why he wrote the forward, not only because he underwrites the subsequent content and believes the call to warning but also because he has the twin advantage of himself being near death and living through the entire computer revolution – start to present day.

Let me (Dr. Joe), go on record and say that the latter of the two claims about ubiquitous smartphone addiction is not only better evidenced but is also anecdotally undeniable in my educational and ministerial experience. I kind of like the sound of “dystopian pessimism of the technophobe”- guilty.

After a great teachable, preach-able section on theology and technology which sounds more boring than it should, Reinke turns to “way” number one our phones are changing us; we get more and more addicted to distraction.

Entire books have been written on this phenomenon of distraction and tech/social media. We are lured by distraction because we don’t see immediate or significant consequences and we need something to keep people away. But the most pressing reason distraction is addictive is that it takes our attention away from eternity and our approaching exit of this life.

A prominent pastor is quoted in this section, was once asked online: Why do you think young Christian adults struggle most deeply with God as a personal reality in their lives? The pastor replied: “Noise and distraction. It is easier to tweet/post than to pray!”

Reinke ends the chapter with the crucial Christian practice of excess identification (confession to ourselves and God) and suggests 10 diagnostic questions which include;
 
1. Do my smartphone habits expose an underlying addiction to untimely amusements?
2. Do my smartphone habits reveal a compulsive desire to be seen and affirmed?
3. Do my smartphone habits distract me from genuine communion with God?
4. Do my smartphone habits provide an easy escape from sobered thinking about my death, the return of Christ, and eternal realities?
5. Do my smartphone habits preoccupy me with the pursuit of worldly
success?

Reinke’s second warning is Reinke’s second warning is that "our personal technologies (smartphones) encourage us to ignore flesh and blood human image bearers."

He comes out the gate in this chapter with the most blaringly obvious tragic example of foolishness indexed to this new digital reality;

Texting and driving is such a commonplace habit, the stats are
now canonical. Talking on the phone while driving a vehicle makes
you four times more likely to get into an accident, but texting
while driving makes your chance of a crash twenty-three times
more likely. Assuming a driver never looks up in the average
time it takes to send a text (4.6 seconds), at fifty-five miles per
hour, he drives blindly the length of a football field. Texting and
driving is so idiotic, forty-six of fifty states have banned it. But
even these frequently cited facts haven’t brought a stop to this
drastically reckless distraction. They’ve hardly made a dent.

Reinke then recounts another clear issue in digital reality is the pull toward disembodied mockery, bravado and bombast because of the anonymity and lack of traditional consequence for such misbehavior. “Our typing thumbs lack empathy without living faces in front of us. It
is much easier to slander an online avatar than a real-life brother.”

Reinke rightly points out that the Bible puts a premium on face-to-face personal interactions. Yes, much of the New Testament is made up of letters but the content in those letters suggest, command and assume an embodied gathering of Christ followers. Reinke closes the chapter
highlighting the traditional communion and baptisms as irreducibly personal, embodied events.
These are practices which carried over from the fulfillment of Judaism and its Old Testament covenant activities and are the New Testament “leads” in the new covenant
sacraments. As such, they can tell us much about how God wants us to commonly interact.

Though Mark Zuckerberg and his Facebook platform are endeavoring to move life over into the digital world with his “Minority Report” inspired Metaverse project, the history of Christianity and the Word of God itself seems to stand against this totalizing attempt to digitize all of life including weekly church life (some churches have capitulated to what are being referred to as “metaverse baptisms & communion.” (or “digital baptisms” or “online communion” with non-physical “components”) Thankfully, these are still presumed to be sad parodies of the genuine activity at this point.

Reinke’s book is another remarkable resource that just work its way into common ministry deployments. It is a quick read with outstanding relevant information for what is now our collective addiction in first world settings.

by Dr. Joe Mulvihill

It seems as if, contra religions’ critics, religious practice is not going anywhere. The presumption stated with almost breathtaking bombast and repeated like a mantra is that as our world is more and more affected by technology and scientific advancement there will be a commensurate drop in religious interest and practice. Even in the Western world where Christianity is declining, interest in spirituality and religions and prayer practice is on the rise. Worldwide, Christianity is exploding and doing quite well, and the number two most believed religion, Islam is in the midst of a significant decline. What is clear is that the secularist presumption is largely mythic, there are even skeptics in America and Europe who admit to praying regularly!

In the great monotheistic religions of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, prayer is at the very heart of what it means to believe. Muslims are called to pray five times a day, while Jews have traditionally prayed three times a day. Each branch of the Christian church is saturated with various traditions of common prayer, private prayer, and pastoral prayer. Prayer is not, of course, limited to monotheistic religions. Buddhists use prayer wheels, which fling “prayers for compassion into the atmosphere,” in order to knit the spiritual and natural, to relieve suffering, and release kindness. While Hindus may pray for help or peace in the world to any of several gods, the ultimate goal is union with the Supreme Being, Brahman, and escape from the cycles of reincarnation. People in other cultures, such as the Beaver Indians of southwestern Canada and the Papago Indians of the U.S. Southwest, pray through singing. Their poetry and music serve as prayers that unite the spiritual and physical realms. 47 Prayer is one of the most common phenomena of human life. (Keller, Prayer)

There are two basic prayer types common across the world (Biblical Christianity has five main types derived out of the Psalms).

One prayer type is advanced by the family of Eastern religions that are pantheistic and monistic. This is the deeply mystical prayer of contemplation where one finds an inner something that provides a positive feeling of “awareness” and “understanding.” “Understanding and awareness” of what you might ask? The fact that there is no true distinctions or differences in life, that all distinction is an illusion to be cast off by meditation, that all things are really unified and one composite whole. This is a central tenet/idea of the majority of the Eastern religious traditions. We’ll call this internal prayer model “A.”

Pioneers at the fountainhead of psychology as an analytic discipline, like Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, declared that this was the more advanced, preferred model of prayer. How could this be since Freud was areligious and Jung a nominal Christian? They agreed on this type being superior to traditional prayer primarily because it was self-focused and self-referencing “prayer” – “prayer” with an inward focus, a prayer model that begins and ends with the individual performing the "prayer."  The practice of Eastern meditation is at home in this prayer model.

The competing, dominant prayer model is common to all monotheistic religious traditions, it is prayer construed as “communication out external to the pray-er and directed to another higher Being (God).” This model encourages self-forgetfulness to the degree it focuses upon God and his purposes. We’ll call this external prayer model “B.”

As an aside, this is yet another reason why just asking-prayers (petition) using this traditional prayer model almost mimics the other non-Christian type of inward, self-focused prayer. Overusing the asking prayer in this way, or put in modern vernacular, “treating God like a cosmic butler or heavenly ATM” actually reverses the trajectory of this traditional prayer type ("B") and converts it to the other (self-focused inner "A") through the overuse of personal needs being everything.

This external traditional prayer model/type ("B") enjoys the further distinction of being the one to which humans most naturally gravitate. Consider that Hindus have to break their pantheism into discreet polytheistic (many gods) units numbering in the hundreds of millions (330 million gods) to simulate an experience of them praying in transactional terms to beings that are not them. That is to say, to experience a personal connection in the prayer life of a devout Hindu that have to temporarily suspend their pantheistic theology.

Budddhists have perhaps the strongest disincentives to pray with either model but still feel drawn to pray in front of a statue of Siddhartha, pray to him after his death though he gave no indication that he survived death or could hear them, nor did he pray to any other while he lived. Even religious “nones” and religious skeptics oddly admit to praying overwhelmingly using the “B” external prayer;

Daoists and Confucians end up praying and talking to / asking for aid from their departed family
members in a striking further example of the attraction of external prayer model “B.”

Jonathan Edwards assures his readers (when commenting on prayer ) that he is not going down
into himself to touch the impersonal ground of being. He is meditating on the words of God in
the Scriptures, and the resulting experience is not one of just wordless tranquility. This is not the “pure awareness” that gets beyond predication and rational thought. In fact, Edwards is
overwhelmed with the power of the words and the reality to which the words point. I believe
Heiler is right in this regard—that prayer is ultimately a verbal response of faith to a
transcendent God’s Word and his grace, not an inward descent to discover we are one with all
things and God. (cited in Keller, Prayer)

Prayer is likely here to stay, regardless of how far “advanced” humans get with technology. It seems to be a built-in part of our created nature. Interestingly, there are only a few religions that can explain both the phenomenon of ubiquitous prayer practice AND type “B” external cross-cultural preference. Christianity has explanations for both as we are created in God’s image with a powerful affinity for a love relationship with Him.

John 3:16 - 16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever
believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
Acts 17:27-28 - 27  God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and
find him, though he is not far from any one of us.  28  ‘For in him we live and move and have our
being.’ [b]  As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’

By Dr. Joe Mulvihill

So, the word “religion” has taken a beating over the years, or rather, the concept has not aged well. In a rapidly secularizing, materialistically dominated culture, this word is either weakened to an opinion or said to be linked invariably to naïveté and superstition. Even in Christian contexts, the word is almost always expressed as a pejorative one. That is to say, “Christ delivered me from religion to relationship,” or “dead religion is not Christianity,” or “God does not want religion, he wants your heart.”

There is a truth encoded in this bungled expression for the Christian, & a need for general correction to the skeptical expression as well.

First, the modern materialist actually understands the traditional definition and disdains the lack of concentration on the physical, practical world. However, for the secularist to bypass or undermine the enormous influence religion has had across the ages is to court ignorance. There is an undeniable individual and social power to attempting to organize and live by ultimate principles.

Second, for our purposes, or for the Christian. The word “religion” is a basic category of understanding deriving from the Latin. Take this definition from the reliable Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy;
religion as a taxon for sets of social practices, a category-concept whose paradigmatic examples
are the so-called “world” religions of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism,
Confucianism, and Daoism… The concept religion did not originally refer to a social genus or
cultural type. It was adapted from the Latin term religio, a term roughly equivalent to
“scrupulousness”. Religio also approximates “conscientiousness”, “devotedness”, or “felt
obligation”, since religio was an effect of taboos, promises, curses, or transgressions, even when
these were unrelated to the gods…though the term continued to be used, as it had been in
antiquity, in adjective form to describe those who were devout and in noun form to refer to
worship (Biller 1985: 358; Nongbri 2013: ch. 2). (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, entry “The
Concept of Religion”)
Defined as such, Christianity is clearly a “religion.”

Also, it only takes a moment’s reflection or minimal Biblical exposure to see that Christianity includes clear “rules.” We are even told to obey God’s laws as they are from our Creator to us and are indexed to our nature as creatures. *Even relationships include rules and parameters that make it healthy or even a relationship at all.* So there are significant downsides to this common cliché in Christian circles.

Here is the Biblical truth lying beneath the Christian expression, “no rules, just love God in relationship.” Because of Christianity’s uniqueness in content (i.e. truths about who we are in relation to the God Who is) there is a major distinction. One major line of demarcation between Christianity and every other religious system or ultimate commitment to principles (perspectives) & practices is how Christianity situates the God – human initiative & subsequent relationship.

There are many unique concepts embedded in Christianity about a variety of subjects, but this is foundational and significant. Christ did not give us a list of practices and say, “keep them and then get graded at the end of your life,” every other religion reduces to that. This was Jesus’ main issue with the scribes and Pharisees, reducing God love to just commands/rules and then failing to keep them consistently.

Instead, Christianity begins with God seeking to reconnect with us on a variety of levels BEGINNING with we humans admitting we cannot keep the rules, regulations, parameters, & laws. This is why repentance is crucial to salvation. It is grace alone that saves (Eph. 2) but as Martin Luther’s genius right hand man, Phillip Melanchthon, said “…but if the belief is authentic the grace and faith never remains ‘alone.’” In other words, a true faith bears fruit of repentance and acceptance of what God has done for us through Christ, His Son. So, we don’t offer our inadequate and mixed moral record to God, instead, we use God’s provision in Christ to reconnect and order our loves properly with His power and grace. The rules are then kept in increasing frequency and blessing as we mature in holiness starting from an apex point of
admitting our insufficiency and utter dependence on God!

Let’s be circumspect in our use of “Christianese” as it is not all poor, there is power in summary statements. Christianity clearly is a “religion” when defined by basic categories, but it is also much more than that and the defining, alpha difference is absolutely crucial to understand. We also don’t want to lead people astray as we show them the wonder of Christ’s uniqueness in teaching, identity and theology by posing as if this means we are lawless or antinomian. Christianity is more than man’s understanding of God, and offers something needed and unique…a way to live according to God’s loving plan for us on our way to our true home.

Our Engagement with the Invisible Lover of Our Souls / CREATOR
by Dr. Joe Mulvihill

Matthew 26:40-41 - 40 And He *came to the disciples and *found them sleeping, and He *said to Peter, “So, you men could not keep watch with Me for one hour?  41 Keep watching and praying, so that you do not come into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

“Getting through duty to delight.” J.I. Packer
My prayer life never seems adequate. Part of this, no doubt, is due to my continued residual Fallenness or sin in my life. However, another part is the honest difficulty with having a relationship with an invisible, non-material God.

Many brilliant Christian thinkers, leaders, theologians have commented on this over the years. Listen to C.S. Lewis on this subject of our difficulty with maintaining focus and momentum in prayer,
By the very constitution of our minds as they now are-whatever they might have been when
God first made man - it is difficult for us to concentrate on anything which is neither
sensible/sense-perceptible (like potatoes) nor abstract (like number). What is concrete yet immaterial can be kept in view only by painful effort. Some would say, ‘because it does not exist.’ But the rest of our experience cannot accept that solution. For we ourselves and all that we most care about seems to come in the class ‘concrete (that is individual and real) and insensible.’ (Not made of matter, not physical) If reality consists of nothing but physical objects and abstract concepts, then reality has, in the last resort, nothing to say to us. We are in the wrong universe.” (Letters to Malcolm pp. 113-114)
Notice Lewis here says we have a longing for and unspoken value for the immaterial / non-physical or what he terms as "insensible" (that which cannot be picked detected by our five senses).

This issue has been weaponized into an actual argument against God’s existence called the argument of divine hiddenness we can address in a later post. Notice too Lewis is also pointing out that the “things” that make life worth living are not themselves physical but have effects in the physical world around us. This would be ideas that are the common themes in great literature and music. Themes like love, virtue, care, loyalty, redemption, reconciliation. But then we are brought right back to our own issues with reaching to an immaterial yet real ("concrete") God again. Here is more from the great theologian J.I. Packer on how unsettling our resistance to prayer is to even a moderately reflective Christian. It is a lengthy quote but worthwhile for our purposes here,

For while we talk about it, all the rest of our experience, which in reality crowds our prayer into
the margin or sometimes off the page altogether, is not mentioned…Well, let’s now at any rate
come clean. Prayer is irksome. An excuse to omit it is never unwelcome. When it is over, it casts
a feeling of relief and holiday over the rest of the day. We are reluctant to begin. We are
delighted to finish. While we are in prayer, but not while we are reading a novel or solving a
crossword puzzle, any trifle is enough to distract us. And we know that we are not alone in this.
The fact that prayers are constantly set as penances tells its own tale. The odd thing is that this
reluctance to pray is not confined to periods of dryness. When yesterday’s prayers were full of
comfort and exultation, todays will still be felt as, in some degree, a burden.

Now the disquieting thing is not simply that we skimp and begrudge the duty of prayer. The really disquieting thing is it should have been numbered among duties at all. For we believe that we were created ‘to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.’ And if the few, the very few minutes we now spend on intercourse with God are a burden to us rather than a delight, what then? If I were a Calvinist, this symptom would fill me with despair. What else can be done for-or what should be done with – a rose tree that dislikes producing roses?

This is an unwelcome and uncomfortable truth about ourselves. Thankfully, the Bible anticipates this and encourages us to think and reflect on the unseen often (2 Cor. 4:18, Col. 1:15-17, 2 Cor. 2:11, 1 Tim. 1:17, Eccl. 3:11).

Hebrews 11:3 - By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.

Some steps toward remedying this as we mature as Christians is as follows;
First, simply humble yourself. In the master prayer given by Jesus at the request of his closest and most loyal disciples we are instructed to begin with the asserting of our CHILD-like status before God. There is so much we don’t understand and cannot see, and every prayer is to include a trust based on the reality of our dependence and status before the Almighty. Even non-believers with only the benefit of common grace / general revelation affirm the deeply healthy habit of knowing what you don’t know or understand, i.e. accepting the reality of your ignorance or grasping our general and particular limitations.

Second, vary your prayer life. We are living in an age of UNPRECEDENTED availability of differing prayer expressions. It is something close to technological magic that someone can instantly enjoy Beethoven’s Fifth symphony (albeit audibly diluted considerably less skill (like Darrell Evans "Trading My Sorrows") and then their current favorite modern worship song of considerably less skill. Great, authentic, God honoring worship is really just solid prayer set to music. Remember that the song and prayer book at the center of God’s word is the Psalter, and there are at least five distinct prayer and song types across the one-hundred and fifty chapters.

Variety is built into the mature Christian’s prayer life so that your prayer life doesn’t get
reduced to the one type among the five. The one basic prayer type of which we are all tempted to pray in exclusion to the others is petition or the “gimme-prayer.”  If this is your only prayer expression it can paradoxically lead to nihilism, selfishness, depression and anxiety! Why? Because dysfunction results from disordered priorities. How does this dysfunction happen when we only pray petition prayers? One way is by creating the habit of focusing/concentrating on our shifting and often contradictory wants. Another way this happens is by really highlighting over and over again what we haven’t yet received or what we currently lack in our lives.

So, it has never been easier to vary your prayer life than it is today and even secularists concede the power of humbling yourself, so let’s continually ask the Holy Spirit to give us discipline to
form mature, holy habits as we strengthen our prayer life.