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Daniel of Doulogos Name:Daniel
Home: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
About Me: I used to believe that evolution was reasonable, that homosexuality was genetic, and that people became Christians because they couldn't deal with the 'reality' that this life was all there was. I used to believe, that if there was a heaven - I could get there by being good - and I used to think I was more or less a good person. I was wrong on all counts. One day I finally had my eyes opened and I saw that I was not going to go to heaven, but that I was certainly going to suffer the wrath of God for all my sin. I saw myself as a treasonous rebel at heart - I hated God for creating me just to send me to Hell - and I was wretched beyond my own comprehension. Into this spiritual vacuum Jesus Christ came and he opened my understanding - delivering me from God's wrath into God's grace. I was "saved" as an adult, and now my life is hid in Christ. I am by no means sinless, but by God's grace I am a repenting believer - a born again Christian.
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Daniel's posts are almost always pastoral and God centered. I appreciate and am challenged by them frequently. He has a great sense of humor as well.
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His posts are either funny or challenging. He is very friendly and nice.
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[He has] good posts, both the serious like this one, and the humorous like yesterday. [He is] the reason that I have restrained myself from making Canadian jokes in my posts.
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This post contains nothing that is of any use to me. What were you thinking? Anyway, it's probably the best I've read all day.
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Daniel, nicely done and much more original than Frank the Turk.
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There are some people who are smart, deep, or funny. There are not very many people that are all 3. Daniel is one of those people. His opinion, insight and humor have kept me coming back to his blog since I first visited earlier this year.
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Tuesday, December 22, 2009
What we've learned from Mary Mallon.
History remembers her as "Typhoid Mary", a "healthy" carrier of the Typhoid Fever. We say, healthy in the sense that while the bacteria that caused typhoid lived and thrived in her, it did so without producing symptoms.

Now, this post isn't going to be about typhoid, or Mary Mallon, but rather about Christians who acquire and pass along profound truth, without ever applying it to themselves. We might call them intellectual Christians, or Academic Christians, or Seminary Christians - what we are describing is someone who has a head knowledge of Christianity, but at the same time lacks a "heart" knowledge, if you will. They can pass along Christian truths to others, but for some reason, they themselves are practically immune to them.

It is as if Christianity were a disease and they were a carrier. They eat, sleep, drink, talk, and think "Christianity" - they expound it, they support it, they promote it, they work tirelessly to define it, both for themselves and for others around them. They do all this, but they fail to do the one thing that is most needed: they fail to live it.

When I think of the people who will be most sorry on judgment day, I think the people who themselves were never "infected" by Christianity, but were only carriers will be among them.

The one thing I fear in all my learning, is that it would evaporate without ever entering my heart. I tremble at the thought that I might believe a thing in my head, but never put it into personal practice. I dare not live out my life, as I have noticed some do, wherein I make a grand effort in defining precisely what the Christian faith is, but make no such effort in actually living out whatever it is I decide Chrsitianity is.

God help us all to be in truth what we claim to be on our lips.
posted by Daniel @ 9:51 AM  
3 Comments:
  • At 5:01 PM, December 28, 2009, Blogger Marcian said…

    I often fear this, too. Practical Atheism I call it. I often find myself in the middle of it, though, and need to recall to mind the privilege of living out a lifestyle of daily worship.

     
  • At 2:50 PM, January 07, 2010, Blogger M.A.C. said…

    Hi Daniel,

    Consider text from the bible as the guide to living the way you are called to live.

    2 PETER 1:3-11 (New King James Version)

    As His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

    But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love.

    For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.

    Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble; for so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.


    Notice that this text assumes we have faith as the base of what we are to build upon. Giving all diligence add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love.

    With the end result being love is this not the path of the true believer in Jesus Christ?

     
  • At 3:22 PM, January 07, 2010, Blogger Daniel said…

    M.A.C. - I think that is the path every believer is called to walk upon, yes - though I wouldn't be surprised to find love entering the picture well before one reaches the end of that list.

     
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