3 steps to real Christianity

1 - Reading the Bible, and learning basic biblical doctrine (like Berkhof's *Manual of Christian Doctrine*) and worldview analysis (such as Sire's *Universe Next Door*)

2 - Seeing the emptiness of establishment Christianity and recognizing the true direction (as described, for instance, in Tozer's *Pursuit of God* and *Knowledge of the Holy*)

3 - Conscious labor, intentional suffering (i.e. learning a practical language  of ideas, practices, and goals that you do in the real time, everyday traffic of your life such as *Fourth Way* by Ouspensky to truly increase understanding, conscience/consciousness, and real will)

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This post can be misunderstood or criticized unfairly in many ways. My fault.

I wrote it quick while reading A. W. Tozer.

He was basically sound doctrinally (that I know thus far), yet he saw the shallowness of Christianity at what I generally call the establishment level. The mainstream level.

This is a big theme that has been muted by establishment Christianity throughout the 20th century and beyond: the deadness and shallowness - the Spiritlessness - of churches and church leaders and educators and Christians in general.

Even a guy like Louis Berkhof wrote on it in his Stone Lectures (which have been made very difficult to find, but I wrote a summary of them here).

It's just a huge theme little talked of, but Tozer was brilliant in seeing it and articulating it.

It's spiritual warfare. Satan has created the deadness of the churches and the seminaries and so forth.

Anyway, in my post I am not saying the first step is something we leave. No, it's our foundation. Of course regeneration by the word and the Spirit is the beginning of it all. Basic biblical doctrine is our foundation we build upon. The John Calvin quote in my right hand margin of the blog gets at this as well.

To understand step 2 the best way is to just read those two Tozer books. They are very short and to the point. They are brilliant books. Exceptional works.

The third step is something Tozer would have probably stopped shy of. It's the practical teaching of everything he wrote about searching for, yet it's a big step for a human being. You really need the armor of God because it is direct spiritual warfare.