{"id":4397,"date":"2025-11-09T04:07:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-09T04:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=4397"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:31:18","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:31:18","slug":"two-troubles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=4397","title":{"rendered":"TWO TROUBLES"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ronald Reagan famously said, &#8220;The trouble with our Liberal friends is not that they&#8217;re ignorant; it&#8217;s just that they know so much that isn&#8217;t so.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And I would say that, unfortunately, American Christianity suffers from both troubles: ignorance and wrong belief.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Both, in the end, amount to unbelief.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Off the top of my head, here are a few important things I would guess most American Christians are ignorant of:<\/p>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\n<li>The scope of the gospel<\/li>\n\n\n<li>The historical context of various books of the Bible<\/li>\n\n\n<li>The cultural contexts of the original audiences<\/li>\n\n\n<li>The metanarrative of the Bible<\/li>\n\n\n<li>Church history<\/li>\n\n\n<li>The major themes of the Bible<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And a few of the things, in my opinion, which many American Christians &#8220;know that isn&#8217;t so&#8221;:<\/p>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\n<li>Hell as eternal conscious torment<\/li>\n\n\n<li>Calvinism and all its distinctives regarding predestination, election, sovereignty, and etc.<\/li>\n\n\n<li>Penal substitutionary atonement\u00a0<\/li>\n\n\n<li>Faith as mental assent to propositional truth<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ronald Reagan famously said, &#8220;The trouble with our Liberal friends is not that they&#8217;re ignorant; it&#8217;s just that they know so much that isn&#8217;t so.&#8221; And I would say that, unfortunately, American Christianity suffers from both troubles: ignorance and wrong belief.\u00a0 Both, in the end, amount to unbelief. Off the top of my head, here [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4397"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4398,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4397\/revisions\/4398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}