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1 Peter 1:13—Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 

If you were paying attention, you likely noticed that this verse begins with the word “therefore.” This little word marks a massive shift in Peter’s letter. For the first twelve verses Peter has yet to tell us what to do. Everything has been about what God has done.

God has called Peter to be an apostle of Jesus. God chose these believers. God foreknew them. God sanctifies them by His Spirit. God sprinkles them with the blood of Jesus. God gives us grace and peace. God is blessed. God is merciful. God causes us to be born again to a living hope. God rose Jesus from the dead. God is keeping an inheritance in heaven for us. God is guarding us until the day Jesus returns. God is testing our faith through trials. God will give us praise and glory and honor when Jesus returns. God will save our souls. God sent prophets to prophesy about the coming of Christ. God sent evangelists to tell us the Good News about Christ. God sent His Spirit to work through prophets and evangelists. God sent Jesus to suffer in our place.

Do you see what sets Christianity apart from every other belief system in the world? Buddhism begins with your desire and gives you an eightfold path to eliminate that desire. Hinduism begins with your suffering and gives you a system of karma to escape the endless wheel of suffering. Islam begins with your submission to God (the word “Islam” means “submission to God”) and is expressed through five pillars that tell you how to submit. Do you see how they all begin with you?

But it’s not just major world religions. Secularism begins with your senses and attempts to explain the universe and everything in it with what can be tested and verified by the scientific method. Postmodernism begins with your confusion—since we cannot know everything for certain we cannot know anything for certain. There is no absolute truth. Your morality may work for you, but you cannot impose it on me. Marxism begins with your struggle against inequality and outlines three phases for obtaining societal utopia. We could go on and on.

But it’s not just people “out there.” There’s a “you-centered” version of Christianity plaguing many American evangelical churches. Sociologist Christian Smith calls it “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.” [i] He describes it’s beliefs like this:

1.     A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth.

2.    God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.

3.    The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.

4.    God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.

5.    Good people go to heaven when they die. [ii]

Even though nobody would call themselves a “Moralistic Therapeutic Deist,” this you-centered counterfeit of Christianity is rife throughout Christian radio, Christian music, Christian publishing, Christian conferences, and more. God is like a cosmic therapist or a divine butler, ready to help you when you need it. He’s kind of like Aladdin’s genie: he exists to serve you, and you’ve never had a friend like him.

How different is biblical Christianity? It begins with God. This is not just how Peter begins this letter, it’s literally how the Bible begins. “In the beginning God.” Christianity is first and foremost not about what you and I must do, but about what God has done. Our job is to respond rightly to what God has done.



[i] Christian Smith and Melissa Lundquist Denton, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 162.
 

[ii] Smith and Denton, 162–63.