A trip to Disney World is almost like a trip to another planet. It is designed to help you escape the realities of life for a brief time, to live in a fantasy world of abundant fun and happiness. The fantasy fun ends quickly when you realize that the “fantasy world” experience just cost you large amounts of your “real” money.

We laugh about that, but the routine Christian life focused on superficial religious activities alone can be that way as well. It is the double-mindedness or dual-world mindset (James 1:6-7) that is so debilitating to our genuine Christian growth. We go to church (Bible World) and then we go home and re-engage with the TV, our conflicts, and the pressures of life (Everyday Land) and life goes on for another cycle. No matter how we slice it, our practicing theology usually falls way short of our professing theology.

The deficit between the two is called our “integrity gap.” This term was coined by Dr. Garrett Higbee and is described as the distance or gap between our diluted perceptions of our spiritual life and our inconsistent obedience to God’s Word. Sadly, it always shows up in our Christian character. Notice what the Apostle James says about this,

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. James 1:22-25 (ESV)

Part two will help you understand the luring elements that deceive us into believing that a dualistic spiritual life shared in the “flesh” is acceptable. For now, I hope you see that consistent spiritual growth happens when our practicing theology validates our professing theology (1 Pet.1:16). When the proper investment of God’s Word is regularly incorporated into our hearts and it changes what we believe, the humble Christ-centered change motivates us to function with biblical integrity. The fog of the self-focused life begins to lift and we will one day realized that “Bible World” is “Everyday Land” to God.