What Is Deneff's Embrace Of Religion?

Abstract: Deneff begins with a discussion of the state of holiness in modern times. For him, the church has not sufficiently approached this subject with the intensity it deserves. This can be seen in how the values of Christians are often the same as those of secular people. The only way for people to truly embrace moral living, however, is the a strong embrace of religious principles. From here he moves on to articulate some of the ways our culture has begun to incorrectly think about God. In modern times we no longer see God as frighteningly holy, we see Him as a sort of pushover who doesn’t demand a certain standard of living. In ancient times, people were afraid of mispronouncing the name Yahweh, now we think we can come to God without

Deneff thinks that one problem with the theology of struggling with sin throughout life as Keswick though is that it can lead to a person redefining their own sin as venial or unserious, or they can simply begin tolerating it in their own life. We must focus on love, neither minimizing sin nor obsessing over it, and then we will be holy. Part of our problem with sin comes from the dichotomy we have made between the brain and the body. We take one seriously and the other not. However, Luther pointed out that sin always begins with thinking wrongly about God. So we must transform our minds with knowledge of God's word. The problem here is that there are high rates of illiteracy around the world and sermons often ignore the Bible. The solution is for people to devote themselves to the scriptures entirely. We must seek entire sanctification, but we cannot determine when it will happen. All we can do is devote ourselves to studying the Bible, learning, gathering in church, spending time alone with God, learning about past Christians, praying more, pair with other Christians, take scripture literally and stay alert. Finally, Deneff moves into a listing of ways to know if one is

It does definitely seem that in our modern evangelical Christian culture that we have lost sight of the grandeur of God, instead replacing Him with a watered down version that functions as something more akin to a moral and emotional life coach/shoulder to cry on. Particularly I remember being in a devotional life group type thing at Piedmont prior to transferring to Asbury. Here a young woman asked whether we thought that God's feelings were hurt we rejected Him. This strong me as very wrong at the time, and I pointed out that God can only have His feelings hurt if He is insecure, which He is not. In any case, the fact that such a question would even be asked seems emblematic of this general