Why 'lifestyle discipleship' is so needed today

I've just started a YouTube channel on living out the biblical worldview in day-to-day life.

I'm best-known among remnant Christians for boldness and perseverance in the culture war (and among LGBTs as a leading symbol of "hateful bigotry"), but my inner core as a man is about allegiance to Christ and His Word.

The Holy Spirit has inspired me to start showing others what He has taught me about living the biblical worldview, and to do it by example. You've undoubtedly heard about lifestyle evangelism; this is lifestyle discipleship – focused on helping those who are already saved to break free from the dominant Humanist worldview that corrupts all things in the modern world, and to re-align our thinking and action to the biblical paradigm.

Acquiring the biblical worldview is simple but not easy: it comes from studying the Bible for yourself, relying on the Holy Spirit to guide you in understanding it through meditation and discussion with other believers. Importantly, it requires study of the whole Bible, from cover to cover, as one comprehensive, integrated and self-explanatory document, because true Christianity is holistic: Christ is sovereign over all things – "in Him and through Him do all things consist" – and His Word is all-sufficient for answering every question, solving every problem.

As Paul wrote about the Old Testament, "All Scripture is God-breathed and useful for instruction, for conviction, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, fully equipped for every good work" (2 Timothy 3:16-17). Certainly, he defined existing New Testament writings as "Scripture," but we mustn't forget that the New Testament hadn't yet been compiled then and much of it hadn't even been written.

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A paltry and unbalanced scriptural diet in the modern church has given us something akin to spiritual scurvy or rickets. Like adults trying to survive on milk alone, we've grown too intellectually and spiritually weak to defend Bible truth in public. Thankfully, many remain unwilling to surrender completely to Humanism, but most (including many clergy) are inclined to hide in church sanctuaries for lack of strength and motivation to "contend earnestly for the faith" as former generations of believers did.

Consider the implications of these two verses: "For everyone who lives on milk is still an infant, inexperienced in the message of righteousness" (Hebrews 5:13).

What, then, is the "milk"? The Bible says it is "repentance from dead works … faith in God, instruction about baptisms, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment" (Hebrews 6:1-2). No wonder the church has no strength, since these are precisely the topics of the vast majority of the weekly sermons across Christendom! The constant repetition of the same elementary teachings is not only unbiblical, it is so boring that it tends to drive away all but the most devoted believers (and those who come for reasons other than the sermons). To compensate, many churches turn away from teaching to entertainment to retain members, further diminishing biblical literacy.

Part of this is the consequence of "seeker sensitivity" – a marketing concept that is very alluring to the "religious corporations" we have become (thanks in large part to our Secular Humanist government and its 501(c)(3) registration and monitoring system).

But it also reflects the century-old Humanist strategy of putting Christianity under siege to drive us from the public square. They invented the "social gospel" (Christian good works divorced from Christ Himself) as a platform from which to compete for American hearts and minds on the theme of humanitarian "goodness" while concurrently attacking the church's embrace of hard-to-defend doctrines and biblical passages, especially those of the Old Testament. The church responded first by retreating from the "hard teachings" (in some cases totally abandoning the Old Testament) and then by withdrawing from the public square anyway by ghettoizing (creating Christian schools and media instead of competing to preserve the biblical worldview in public schools and "mainstream" media).

The biblical worldview is thus the fruit of "whole-Bible Christianity," not just the New Testament. Every verse must of course be studied in the immediate context, but also in the larger context of the entire Word of God.

Acquiring the biblical worldview also requires the use of your own critical-thinking skills, not the blind adoption of other people's perspectives, including those of your pastors and teachers. "Come let us reason together," said God to Isaiah, and Paul echoes that in Philippians 2:12-13: "work out your own salvation [sanctification] in awe and trembling." While in the abundance of counselors there is wisdom (Proverbs 15:22), we need no intermediary between ourselves and Jesus, who invites us to "approach the throne of grace with confidence" (Hebrew 4:16).

Here I must repeat my concern about denominationalism, which specializes in perpetuating slates of pre-set doctrines and perspectives rather than teaching critical-thinking skills necessary for independent conclusions. There's nothing wrong with "flocking together like birds of a feather," but that should be an educated personal choice reached by testing doctrinal tenets against opposing views and (most essentially) the Word itself. If you don't know why you hold a human-defined doctrine, you should study the matter further before presuming to teach it to anyone else or to dispute with others (though respectful discussion is always beneficial).

Where can one go these days to pursue biblical literacy and critical-thinking skills without being expected to embrace the specific views of the teachers? Where can you find guidance on living out the biblical worldview on the "non-milky" aspects of human life?

You can join me on YouTube as I work to develop a community of remnant believers who want to learn and practice lifestyle discipleship in a place where many non-believers can observe us in action. I will fight the culture war in other venues, but in that particular place, let's talk about holistic Christian living and contrast biblical reasoning with Humanism on questions of daily life. Feel free to email me on this topic if it interests you.