[00:00:09] Speaker A: Welcome in to Think Deeper, presented by Focus Press. I'm your host, Joe Wilkie, joined as always by Jack Wilkie and Will Hare. And today we have a riveting episode, part two of last week, where we had looked at the progressive side of the church. We talked about maybe more of the left or the right lean. And now I think we tease this one like seven times in the last episode. So we're gonna get to that. We're gonna get to that. Well, we're here. We've gotten to this side of it, which is now looking more at the. Did we ever come up with a better term? I, I guess conservative.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: Some might say hyper conservative. I don't know. That feels a little pejorative, but I don't know.
[00:00:46] Speaker A: Yeah, so we're looking more on the conservative, I guess, swinging the pendulum back to the other side as it goes with progressivism, from progressivism. And so Jack's put together a fantastic outline. There's some things we didn't get to in the last one we definitely want to start with on this one. But fellas, any thoughts, any introductory thoughts before we just jump right in? I hand it over to Jack.
[00:01:04] Speaker C: Yeah, I would just say what's tough about this and why we were kind of struggling to come up with a word for this is because all three of us would label ourselves as conservative. And so it's not one of those things where you can just say, oh, one side. You know, the left leaning side that we talked about last week would be progressive. The right leaning side would be, you know, just kind of blanket, maybe conservatives. Because again, all three of us would, would argue or, I mean, I would, I kind of believe myself to be conservative. And so we're not even.
[00:01:32] Speaker B: We're.
[00:01:32] Speaker C: And I think a lot of people who listen to us, a lot of people across the Church of Christ as a whole would consider themselves conservative as well. That's not really who we're talking about, though. We're talking about, to Jack's point, kind of using the, the word hyper conservative, whatever it is, the. Even farther to the right side than just the conservatives, if that makes sense. And so obviously I think we're going to flesh this out a little bit more as to what exactly we mean. But I wanted to kind of give that preface because, you know, where we, what we established last week was there is somewhat of a spectrum. You've got the far left leaning, the far right leaning. And most Christians are going to fall somewhere along that, along that spectrum. And so that's what kind of makes this particular episode difficult is because again, I would say 90 to 95% of people who listen to us are probably going to label themselves as conservative. So if you hear us say conservative or hyper conservative or whatever, to Jack's point, that's not necessarily pejorative. We're, you know, that's just to the, the far right leaning realms of the, of the Church of Christ. If that makes sense. That, that makes sense.
[00:02:31] Speaker A: Yeah, that's good clarification. We don't want people looking at it going, okay, well I guess they're fine with like we are conservative, we are just. There are those that, yes, from a pendulum standpoint, swing it to the far other side. There are those that, that don't even go, you know, they take church Christ off the door because they're so progressive type of thing. And well, you know, can women really not get up in the pulpits? We talked about some of that and then there's some that are not that far with the instruments and women, but pushing the envelope maybe a little bit. We talked about that last week in some of the, the institutions, schools and such that are pushing that. This is the other swing to the, of the pendulum back to the side that is making everything a first level issue. And so we want to get into that. But Jack, I want to bring you in on this. You put together a fantastic outline here for us just to go down and so any introductory thoughts before we get started with where we left off last week?
[00:03:22] Speaker B: No, I mean, I agree with you guys. It's very hard to like, as you said, like where we are on this. And I think most people are very much in some kind of middle ground. And so this episode is going to be for most of them looking at like last week, things you've observed on the left, things you're observing to your right, things like that. And, and even within this middle ground, there's, there's quite a spectrum. I mean there's disagreement, there's room for that disagreement. There has to be that. I mean you can't, there's, there's never going to be a handed down because that's what they're trying to do on this far right end is hand down the list and we're all going to agree there's some kind of list, but it's not exhaustive. There's going to be some room for wiggle room on opinions and differences, things like that. And so when one crosses over from one to the other, it doesn't really work that way. It's very much like the spectrum thing of you start moving in a certain direction, and after a while of moving further and further rightward, you look around and go, wow, I've cut everybody out of fellowship. Everybody's one step away from the landmine of disfellowship. And maybe that's not a safe place to be. And so I think that's. That's what we want to get at here. There's. There's not a line or so you're in this camp, you're not in this camp. It's. Are you moving in that direction toward just your fellowship grows thinner and thinner and thinner versus the other side where last week was. It gets broader and broader and broader. So that's the, the ends of the spectrum we're talking about.
[00:04:50] Speaker A: Sure. So one of the things that we left off our discussion last week, we wanted to get to, but I think is pivotal to this entire discussion is our hermeneutic. It's how we understand and interpret scripture because we can all look at it, we can all do our own Bible study, our own exegesis, whatever you want to say.
The ability to interpret scripture to determine what's important, to determine what's not important to, you know, how we come to understand what are the commands of Scripture, what should we be doing? The typical is command example, necessary inference. That's probably the, the standard in the Church of Christ and the standard in a lot of Christendom, I'd say to a certain degree from, from what I've seen.
But command, example, necessary inference. Jack, I'm curious, I'm tee you off on this. What are your thoughts on that as a, as a hermeneutic? It may be a hot take just to come in and say, well, it doesn't work. No, I mean, I think there are some legitimate parts that are fantastic on that. It also seems to have some limitations, maybe some things that aren't as good about it. And so I'm curious your thoughts on where you fall specifically on the command example necessary and why that's important.
[00:05:56] Speaker B: Well, I want to back up a bit. You said kind of standard. In a way, it is. In a way, it isn't the starting all the way back to Calvin and Zwingli and some of the reformers. You had the regulative principle of worship, which was this idea that, well, it's about the silence of Scripture, right. Like, if God doesn't authorize it, we can't do it. And it's funny they would look at regular principle of worship, and there's still a Lot of RPW as it's called.
And there's still a lot of those people in Presbyterianism and other groups that hold to that, but will have instrumental music because they'll look and say, well, the Bible does regulate that in the Psalms and the Old Testament, so it's okay for us to do it. And we would disagree with that or bring it forth the New Testament and things like that. But the command example, necessary inference, is almost like a distillation of that. Like it goes down to the purest form of looking for authority in the Scriptures and the silence of Scripture and all that. And one, this is how you get our hyper focus on things inside the building and kind of leave out sometimes the Monday through Saturday stuff as we talk about, because you just think the Bible is there as this blueprint book to be searched through and picked apart to find how to structure the church and Sunday worship and leave out a lot of other things. But the other thing about it is it is an interpretive principle. It's not a complete hermeneutic in itself. It's a tool.
And it kind of.
Because you'll, you'll hear especially, you know, when you get into this a little bit further, it's direct command, binding example, necessary inference.
What is a direct command? What is a binding example? What is a necessary.
[00:07:36] Speaker C: There's still interpretation that needs to be done with that.
[00:07:38] Speaker B: Well, yeah, I mean, even commands, commands we should all be able to agree on, right? Like if the Bible says commands, you know, thou shalt not steal. Okay, that's pretty straightforward. Greet one another. The holy kiss is a command.
I mean, like, okay, well that's exactly what I'll just say briefly, like, why don't we do that? Well, you get into. Well, because. Culture. Okay. So yeah, there's, there's more to it than just the words on the page.
[00:08:02] Speaker C: That's exactly what I was going to bring up is my.
[00:08:06] Speaker A: As far as.
[00:08:06] Speaker C: One of my biggest issues with it is it feels like the application is very inconsistent. You had greet one with a holy kiss, Jack. But you also go to First Timothy 2 talking about I desire. This is Paul saying, I desire that the men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands. You know, if I started doing that at our congregation, Joe, this Sunday, you know how many people would look, would look at me and go, what is this liberal guy doing right now?
[00:08:29] Speaker A: Including.
[00:08:30] Speaker C: I mean, that. Yeah, exactly, exactly. But no, that's, that's Paul saying that lift. I desire that the men lift holy hands. That is looked at as liberal. Well, you know, that's pretty clearly a command. I'd go to James 5 as another place to where James talks about is anyone among you suffering? Let him praise, and when cheerful, let him sing psalms. That's kind of the first thing. We don't really have any psalms that we sing. But then the next verse, anyone, when you sick, let him call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him. Anointing of. Anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.
New Testament command. Nobody does that. And so I think that's my confess.
[00:09:04] Speaker A: Your sins one to another. Right in that passage.
[00:09:06] Speaker C: Right, right. How often are we, how often are we doing that? And so the inconsistent application of it is kind of the biggest issue that I have with it, because you add to it something we've discussed before that is, once again is a staple when it comes to the far right leaning side of the church of Christ. And that is the invitation, no command, no example, no necessary inference anywhere in the New Testament about that. And yet that's the thing that we have to hold on to. And so, you know, I think we could go back and forth about whether or not it's. It's a, you know, useful hermetic tool or helpful or whatever it is. All I can say for sure is that, is that it is inconsistently applied in the churches of Christ, at least from my experience. And as far as the congregations that.
[00:09:45] Speaker A: I've been at, that's my biggest issue with it, I think, is that the other thing is the historical context. And you can get into problems with it because people take historical context, go, well, baptism was historical context. No, that's not true. At the same time, there are certain things that, you know, I look at giving. I think it's good to give. I think giving can be a part of worship. I don't have a problem with it being a part of worship. I think using 1 Corinthians 16, 1 and 2 as our, as our example to give, I think was a very specific command to a specific church for a specific time that isn't necessarily applicable to us today. Again, I don't have a problem with it. I think it's very good.
[00:10:22] Speaker C: Even. Even if it is, it's an interpretive jump to get to that conclusion.
[00:10:26] Speaker A: Correct. I mean, you're looking at it one, when you guys are gathered, go ahead and give. It's like, yeah, but if you look at the context of what's going on in Corinth, they are taking up a collection for the saints in Jerusalem. They were to set it aside for a time for when Paul comes to have a, a singular collection be made, you know, when, when Paul comes. So I think I could look at that and using command, example, necessary inference, realize that does kind of fall apart based off of the cultural context and based off of what's taking place contextually in the scriptures, but we'd still use it. And so to me it's. Will you hit the point on the head? It's inconsistent. That is my issue with it. Like if we're going to, to be the people that are command example, necessary inference to the death, then let's be those people. Let's greet one another, the holy kiss, let's confess our sins one to another, let's do these things. But that's just not how it goes. And yeah, I don't know what you do with that per se, because this is where we start to fracture. This is where we start to differ. If we don't use that, what do we use then? Jack, as you talked about, you could go back to that which the progressive side is going to see silence as permissive and the other side is going to be silence. See silence. We see silence as restrictive if the Bible doesn't say anything. And so you kind of are on these two different sides. Once again, a pendulum swing here. But where does it end? You know, if we swing to the other side and silence is permissive, we can get away with all sorts of stuff. If it's restrictive, then why in the world do we have the invitation? It is restrictive. That's like you said, that's not in there. Why didn't we restrict on that one? So it's just, it's inconsistently applied. So. Jack, I'm, I am curious. Well, will you. You may have had a thought.
[00:12:01] Speaker C: No, I was just going to ask your guy. You got you guys very briefly, like I, I tend to lean more towards silence being restrictive and maybe that's because the way I've been raised, I didn't know what thoughts you guys have on that is. I think if you go the direction of silence, being permissive, that does get you into a lot of dangerous territory and a lot of things where you're probably toeing the line quite a bit. And you know, I don't. Maybe the better to be safe than sorry approach is not the correct one. But I, I personally when it comes to, you know, worship or church practices or whatever it is, I do tend to lean more that that silence is restrictive. I was curious what kind of where you guys fall on that before Joe, you hand it back to Jack.
[00:12:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I. I mean, I tend to be that way myself because as you said, it starts opening.
Where does it stop? Like, there, there's.
I mean, at a certain point, you do have to have an end point and so not going farther than what's there.
You can. And I know some people will, you know, quote, well, whoever adds to or takes away from this book. Okay, that's not really about this specific thing, but, you know, because there are things. Is there a church building in the scriptures? Well, no, but we can infer. So it's a necessary inference that you can have a place to get. I. I'm fine with that argumentation, but it is silent, like, so you have to acknowledge there's some in there.
[00:13:18] Speaker C: That's another.
[00:13:18] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, microphone, I mean, like sound system, things like that. And yeah, that's being a bit pedantic, but in another sense, it's like, it's. It's there. So I don't know. Joe, what'd you have?
[00:13:28] Speaker A: No, I would agree. I would agree. I think this is where you get into the.
It's important, I guess. And this is going to be me answering the question I was going to ask Jack. It's important to realize principle matters. We can extrapolate, and this is. They're going to look at the extrapolation as inference. Some of these things are inferred, and some of this I don't think is inferred. I think we can look at.
I'm trying to think of an example on the spot, but I think we can look at specific things that are more like, if you understand scripture, you'll know what to do in this situation. If you don't, you may not know. That's not going to be a command example, necessary inference. That's going to be like. Scripture doesn't speak about smartphone usage. We can extrapolate from what we know in the Bible how we ought to approach my iPhone and how I ought to approach my screen time and the things that I'm looking at. I can take that away from scripture, though. I don't need a necessary or. I don't need the command examination, necessary inference so as to get there. So I think principle a lot of times is missing in it, which really boils down to common sense.
[00:14:24] Speaker C: This is my other problem with it, Jack. And then it's all yours. Joe, you bring up smartphones, you could talk about, I don't know, the education practices for your kids. There's a lot of things we talked about before in the churches of Christ, because there's not a command, necessary inference attached to those things. Guess what? We don't do. Don't talk about those things, don't preach them, don't teach them. Like, well, you know, there's no command example necessary inference. That's my other big problem with it. Is it in a way like restricts ministers and restricts church leaders to where they feel like if there's not any of those things really anywhere in Scripture, they're not able to talk about it. You know, smartphone usage you brought up, like stuff like that is my kind of my other big problem with it.
[00:15:03] Speaker B: But yeah, that's where we get that phrase that we deal with so much. Well, you can't bind that because it's coming from this seni C E N I command example necessary inference. That's the acronym SENI framework that everything is either there is divine authority, therefore it has to be done a certain way, or there's not, and therefore it doesn't matter, we don't talk about it. Whereas the folks we talked about last week will say, well, no, it's not this framework. Because when you look at command example, necessary inference, it's very much a legal framework. It's very much a reading the Bible like a lawyer would. And I was reading somebody making that point that a lot of, or not a lot, but a few of the influential guys in the restoration movement over the last couple hundred years were lawyers. And so they approached the Bible with that mindset of what legally is in there, what principles do we extract and how do we apply them and what's precedent and things like that.
And that leads to this view of the Bible. Whereas the guys we talked about last week, you're looking at it theologically and saying, well, it's actually about this broad story that God is weaving into history and there's some truth to that. But it also can just go to where you don't have any pillars to rest on. Like, you take those away and it's all kind of flowy, as Will said last week, nailing Jello to the wall, because there's nothing firm there.
This is at the heart of this entire thing. There are. Nobody can define first level issues, nobody can define what is the primary things we have to agree on. And inside of that, you're a Christian. And then we can debate out the rest. Everything can be to. To the right side, everything can become a first level issue. To the left side, almost anything's up for negotiation other than maybe like one or two things like it really gets lesser and lesser and lesser the farther left you go.
And so, yeah, I mean, you really do have to nail those things down because again, all of this is just window dressing, theory, speculation, whatever you want to call it, of just kind of talking about things without any concrete stuff. Until you have that. Until you have. Here's the fundamentals we all have to agree on.
[00:17:10] Speaker A: I like your pillars illustration because that hits me like the problem we're talking about is the side that builds a mansion on the sand, you know, on no pillars at all, versus the side that builds a shack on 30 pillars. You don't need 30 pillars, per se. You, you know, there's a time and place to build a house. There's also time and place to make sure you have those pillars shored up. This is the issue, though, is define the pillars. How do you define the pillars? Where do you go to define the pillars? The more you talk to people specifically within the church about this, this problem, you are going to find the split. You are going to find the legalistic side to the lawyer part, right? The legalistic side that's going to make everything a pillar. We talked about it before, but, like, why would you make everything a pillar? Because you're incentivized to. That way you're not missing out on anything. You make sure that. I mean, you do. Boy, your house looks shored up, man. Like, whatever you end up building on top of it. I've got 30 pillars where I can bring out a bazillion Bible verses to talk about it. Even if I rip them out of context, you are incentivized to do so. And you look down on anybody else who has like six pillars to their house or whatever it is, you go, wow, you know that, that's a crumbling house. That's. That's progressive, that's liberal. Whatever you want to say, or anybody.
[00:18:16] Speaker B: Anybody who builds 29, like, oh, that's a move towards, towards zero. Like, well, you know, in this, like, it's a great point in the most technical sense. It could appear to be that, but that doesn't mean it is. That doesn't mean this person's gonna build a house without foundations. But it's. Wow, you're looking a little liberal. That sounds a little denominational. Like I was reading something where somebody was using the term sin nature.
And it was, you know, in the churches of Christ. And, you know, your, your senses go up, right? Like sin nature. But I don't have a problem with that properly defined. But you look at it like, oh, Boy, getting a little flirting with the Calvinism there. Like, no, he's not a Calvinist. This is ridiculous. But, oh, he moved one pillar left of me. And so, yeah, you have that problem.
[00:18:54] Speaker A: But what's missing in that situation? Relationship. Asking him, hey, what do you mean by that? Let's. Let's define that. What do you mean by that? You know, we've. We've been flamed. We'll all open the can of worms here. As we've talked about it, we've been playing on this podcast. 18 months ago, we got pretty flame for something. And it has reverberated until even this week. You know, Dr. Dr. Brad was getting texts where he's getting canceled because of things like this, because of our alcohol podcast. Literally.
[00:19:17] Speaker B: Literally getting canceled. Like, you're not invited to come speak anymore.
[00:19:20] Speaker A: On evidence. 18 months later, evidences not on alcohol. On evidences. 18 months later. The. The. I'm sorry. There's just a lot could be said on that. But in this now, I lost my train of thought because I. Boy, I get worked up when we start talking about this.
The problem when it comes to those pillars, though, is you're going to look.
[00:19:40] Speaker C: Relationship is what you were talking about.
[00:19:41] Speaker A: Yeah, there you go. Relationship. Like, they don't know you. They don't know. And if I sat in a room with these people and talked for 20 minutes, we probably realize we are insanely close on a lot of different things. And they'd probably come away going, yeah, he's a good guy. The moment I mentioned that, it's like it's out the window. They don't care about the relationship. They don't care about defining terms. They don't care about where we're coming from. They don't care about the heart. They don't care about anything. But did you get it right? And I don't know you from Adam. I just had a guy approach me literally three weeks ago on that same thing, same issue on the alcohol thing, and tried to dress me down in front of a bunch of other people.
I mean, these things are still taking place 18 months later. And what's lacking in that is a relationship. We get canceled all the time. And it's like, does anybody care to know us? Because if you did, you'd realize we're pretty conservative. We're pretty down the line on a lot of those things. They don't care.
[00:20:32] Speaker D: Hey, guys, Jack Wilkie here. If you enjoy our work with podcasts like Think Deeper and Godly Young Men and our books, articles, seminars, and Want to support the work that we do.
[00:20:41] Speaker B: The best way to do so is.
[00:20:42] Speaker D: To go to focus press.org donate that's focus press.org donate thanks again for listening.
[00:20:53] Speaker B: Let me go the other direction on that. And I steel man it as we like to do.
Relationship should definitely change your approach where it's not like, one strike and you're done. I'm going to shoot you down and that's it. But there is. If one of you guys came, was like, you know what? I kind of think I don't have a problem with lgbt. I think God wants us to love these people and not preach at them and all the catchphrases and stuff like that.
It wouldn't be like, I'm never talking to you again, like some of these guys do, and I'm going to ruin your life. On the other hand, it would be, all right, you're not preaching this Sunday, number one. Number two. And so there's a degree of that. The problem is if every time we disagree, it has the potential of being that what you create is an echo chamber where somebody's really afraid to disagree. Like, wow, I can't say I differ with anybody on any verse. And so you end up rehashing the same things over and over. Nobody. And again, there is that danger of, well, we'll restudy it. That's never, you know, usually not a good thing. On the other hand, saying, well, I disagree. I read that verse this way.
There's got to be room for that. On some issue.
[00:21:59] Speaker A: A relationship is asking, why? How'd you get there? Like, even if you were to come and tell me that, I'd go, well, that's wrong. But how in the world are you coming to that? Because I know you're pretty down the line guy. So what are you seeing that is completely wrong? Like, how'd you get there? Because you're not wrong on a ton. So the relationship would give me the. You know, it give you the benefit of that for at least me to ask what's going on? I don't agree with it. Scripturally, it's wrong. And we would come to that conclusion, I think. And if you double down and we looked at the scriptures and I asked why and I really got into your life and you doubled down hard on it, I'd go, okay, well, like you said, you're not preaching this Sunday, and, you know, we'd start drawing lines of fellowship shortly after type of thing. If that was going to be the case, after I've used my relationship, after I've asked questions. How'd you get there? Why are you thinking this way? What. You know, what are you coming to? We sat down and we've looked at it. This is a one and done approach. The moment I say something. But you're done. You're out of church. I'm going to write a letter about you. I'm going to kick you out. I'm going to say that you're a heretic. Like, you don't know the first thing about me. And you never asked how we got there. And then when we explain how we got there, didn't matter to you. Because honestly, like, this is. We go back to the same issue. What's the pillar? This is the 30th pillar.
[00:23:07] Speaker B: I'll come back to. It wouldn't matter how you got there. Like, I would if. If one of you know, the folks in our company got on Facebook today and posted, you know what? I've changed my mind on this. It'd just be like, look, we'll deal with the relational stuff behind the scenes, but publicly, especially for those in ministry, publicly facing, no, we are going to have to cancel your speaking engagement. I don't have a problem with that side of it, in theory, with handling it in a way of you lose your platform or whatever else I have the problem with. Every last disagreement counts that way.
[00:23:38] Speaker C: Well, the lines of fellowship thing is the issue here, determining and kind of differentiating what is a line of fellowship. Because, Jack, in the example you brought about lgbt, you know, Q. And then somebody saying, well, no, I support that. That is a major jump into the category of, whoa, you are now like, Right.
[00:23:57] Speaker A: And I guess that's where I'm coming from. Yeah, that's a good point.
[00:23:59] Speaker B: Right.
[00:23:59] Speaker C: Whereas I think what Joe's talking about is something different there. But that's the episod episode.
[00:24:03] Speaker A: Right.
[00:24:04] Speaker C: That's the heart of this episode, is alcohol, holidays, you know, the new heavens, new Earth. You know, we talked about before kind of these things that those who lean to the far right are just absolutely convinced that things are a certain way. The difference is they do treat that like the LGBTQ issue. Like where if you came out and said, I believe that homosexuals are going to heaven is the exact same thing as saying, I think Jesus was born on Christmas Day. And so that, to me, is once again, kind of the heart of this issue, is that where are the lines of fellowship? And that's what we disagree on. Because there are. I mean, there are things that we had a Halloween episode a couple months ago now Joe pretty vehemently disagrees with both Jack and I on that. And still recording a podcast together. There's still, you know, really good relationships there. Joe hasn't sworn us off or written a letter about us or anything like that because Joe doesn't view that as something that is a first line of fellowship issue. We have people at our congregation kind of a lot of different opinions about Christmas and holidays and, you know, that kind of thing is. But we all still worship together. And so the heart, once again, I think the heart of this issue is figuring out how do we determine what is a line of fellowship issue and what is not. Because those who are on the far right to Yalls, as we've said, all episodes so far, that list of what is a fellowship issue where the lines of fellowship, the list gets longer and the lines of fellowship get more and more drawn in together, where that circle gets smaller and smaller and smaller. But this is where I feel like, man, there's got to be. Joe, you said common sense earlier.
You have to be able to look at an issue and say, okay, whether or not somebody puts up a Christmas tree in their house and has a nativity scene on their mantle is a little bit different than somebody coming out and saying, I think homosexuals are going to heaven. A little bit of difference there. Somebody who comes out and says, you know what? I think drinking is wrong, or I think social drinking is wrong, drunkenness is wrong. But know, maybe I'm not going to go any farther than that. Is different than somebody saying, you know, I don't really think hell exists or, or. Or something like that. Like the common sense that just gets taken out of the discussion. To group everything under the realm of false teaching, false teacher. We haven't really talked about that yet. Those two things are not the same. And I feel like that's what this. This whole far le. Far right leaning side of the church has forgotten how to do or has not figured out how to do is to be able to differentiate between something of that nature. Again, hell doesn't exist, or homosexuals are going to heaven or whatever it is versus a nativity seen in your front yard. Does that make sense? Like, I feel like the common sense has just been completely removed from the equation in so many of these instances.
[00:26:41] Speaker A: But as Jack said, this is the slippery slope. They're going to look at it and go, you're on a slippery slope, buddy. The issue is their slope is like this. So it's basically an A frame. You stand on the. The very, very tip which does Lead toward Phariseeism, leads toward puffing up. Because I'm on. I don't know about you, but I'm. I've hit that. The moment you step off it, you're down into hell. That. That's. And this is why grace is. Is pretty much non existent on that side. I'm sorry, but it just is non existent from their point of view. Like, there is no grace for any issue because the moment you take a step to the left or a step to the. There really is no step to the right. I would, you know, seemingly. But the moment you take a step to the left, which could be, hey, don't do it. Drinking is horrible. You know, you. I really. We discourage drinking strongly.
Social drinking is wrong. Like you said, drunkenness is wrong. I'm just not going to condemn a guy for. For sipping on some wine, boom, you've taken a step to the left. You are all the way down. Like, it's such a slippery slope. Well, yeah. Where's the grace in that? Now, to Jack's point, I could look at it and say, what about the LGBTQ issue? Yeah, way different. Way different. I'm not going to have that. That's very much. If we want to go to command example, necessary inference pretty strong in the text right there that we could say, you are definitely down the slope. But I'd like to think that the slope is like, there is a place where you can reach where you are very firmly in Christ, and it's not. One step to the left or right is going to cause you to lose salvation. It's going to be you jumping off the cliff, like, with an LGBTQ discussion.
[00:28:11] Speaker C: Here's what's funny about this. The New Testament talks about all these things because there were matters of opinion, there were things that Jews and Gentiles were vehemently disagreeing about about, you know, staying attached to the things of the Old law, you know, eating meat, sacrifice to idols. Again, everything you see in Romans 14. And we have New Testament writing about, here's how you handle those things. And so even without getting into the text specifically about the specific things that Romans 14 brings up, what does Romans 14 tell us? Okay, so there are some things that it is within the realm of acceptability for Christians to disagree about and still be brothers and still be unified. At the very least, before you even get into what the issues themselves are, that precedent, if you will, is kind of set to show, once again, there is a realm of acceptable thing. Like there's a realm of acceptability in disagreeing with each other on Halloween on again. We're around Christmas time right now, so I guess it's on my mind.
But, you know, whether or not you should be able to celebrate Christmas, those types of things.
That's once again, to me, the heart of this episode is how far do those things extend? Because you don't see in Romans 14, Paul say, you know, you know, if one person says baptism is okay and one doesn't, then you just have to. No, obviously not. I mean, in the book of Romans prior to that, he establishes the. The necessity of that. And yet what you see in Romans 14 is kind of the. What it clearly defined is, or what you clearly see as secondary issues. The ability to distinguish between those, I think is once again the skill that is missing or not skill, the, you know, ability that is missing. I guess in a lot of these discussions.
[00:29:45] Speaker B: Yeah, I. We've brought up the new heavens, new earth thing a few times as just an example of what we're talking about here, because a friend of mine, a good preacher buddy, decided at one point and he went to one of the more conservative schools and that was kind of his circle of friends, and he kind of studied that and came out that side saying, and very little changes. It's, we're going to spend eternity with God. There is going to be a judgment. There is, you know, eternity and eternal life. All those things. It's, it's geography is all you're arguing about is where it is, physical or spirit. You know, things like that.
I mean, it's way deep down the eschatology rabbit hole. Well, he decided, you know, I'm coming around on this. Lost his entire social circle. I mean, like all of his friends, family members and stuff like that, like questioning him and just a ridiculous amount of throw excommunicated essentially from that side of the church. And I think they probably some of his previously best friends would say he's going to hell now for that, which, ironically enough, Alexander Campbell is also going to hell now because, you know, of beliefs he holds on those same things, which that's. He, you know, some people might go, all right, amen. Yes, he is. Whatever.
But what I wanted to get at here is there is an unintentional radicalizing effect in the other direction with this stuff. I was trying to find the meme. Have you guys seen the one where it's kind of. You've got the people in their heads or pie charts and one person is all one way and one's the other, and the third party is kind of neutral and the more the one yells at the other, like the more the third party changes their mind to side with the other person.
If you're one of those people that has just been blasted by the right, has been disfellowshipped, has been ripped in this way, it starts pushing you the other direction. You have to be careful not to just drift into. Grace covers everything. It doesn't matter. I mean like that, that's what ends up happening to a lot of people. I've seen some of the hardest right people end up way on the other side of doctrine. And none of it matters because you get pushed that way. And so like, let's say you're Mr. Conservative. You've got your, you know, the, the bona fides. Bona fides, however you pronounce it, that man, you can, you've got all the doctrines, right? And then somebody comes to you and goes, you use a new King James, you hellbound false teaching heretic. I'm calling all of your friends. I'm gonna tell your church to fire you. I'm gonna put pressure on your elders because you have the gall to use a new King James.
You take that guy's job away, you know what ends up happening? Everything that you agreed on, which was 99.999%, he starts sliding on. That was like, man, maybe I was a little too hard on things. I've seen this happen over and over and over. This is what this creates.
[00:32:24] Speaker C: There's a guy that I know who he was, went to a, I think he went to Heritage Christian University.
Pretty staunch hard right on a lot of things. He's a young guy. I remember he put a post on Facebook up about how you have to have Church of Christ on the sign and you know, put all the virtual reference like that, that type of thing.
Two years later, now he is going to community. He's baptized into some community church and is a hardline Calvinist, kind of preaches grace all the time. Exactly what you're talking about. Of he was hard right. Gotta have Church of Christ on the sign. You know, this, that and the other thing about, you know, hard right in the Church of Christ got ended up in a community church. And where you also see this, Joe, you might. This is. I'm curious to get your thoughts on this. Where you also see this is in parenting, if, if you see somebody who parents this way and listen, I'm all for disciplinary parenting even, you know, I think a lot of parenting is far too loose nowadays. I'm not saying don't Be strict with your parenting. But like, over the top strict. Can't, can't listen to any kind of secular music, no entertainment whatsoever. Really restrictive. What does the kid do when they get. Turn 18 and go out and try to experience the things that they didn't get to all the time, living up or living in their home. And so it creates these kids in the church of Christ that kind of go off the deep end. And so that's kind of a parallel that I see there when it comes to parenting. Because what's missing in all of it, as we've, I'm sure brought up before, is a love for God in the parenting example, a love for your parents, a love for God, a love for his word that is so often missing to where it's just, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this. They again, leave the house. It's like, well, I'm going to go, you know, experience some of those things. And so the love for God is missing in, in a lot of this. But Joe did. What thoughts did you have on that?
[00:34:08] Speaker B: Well, just briefly. Yeah, it's a system to be mastered rather than the, the love part. Now, I'm not saying it's relationship and not religion, but like, you've got to have both of those things. Go ahead, Joe.
[00:34:18] Speaker A: Right. What I was going to say, you know, when you got the guy who is, he's, he's Mr. Sports Guy. Jack, you were this guy for a long time, you know, Mr. Sports Guy, you know everything about sports.
Okay, so that's fantastic. And everybody knows you as such. What happens when you come up against a guy who knows more than you? If your identity is in that, as I'm the guy who knows everything about sports, I'm probably the most knowledgeable guy I know. And then somebody comes in and goes, you know, blows your doors off, you go, whoa, okay, well, maybe I'm not this. Am I, am I the sports guy? I thought I knew everything, but this guy knows more than me. You start having this crisis internally, this identity crisis, because the thing that was yours, that you knew was yours is no longer yours. And I think the same thing happens with this, which is like their identity is not based on love of God, it's not based on having a relationship with Christ and also, again, a religion and relationship. I don't want to swing the pendulum again back to progressive side, but having both, it's not in that.
It is in being right. And when you come along and somebody goes, well, you're not right. It's a complete paradigm shift. I think it breaks their brain to say, well, who am I now? Because I was the guy that was always right of everything, and I thought I was right on everything. And now that I'm not, which could be on all of these issues. It could be on the King James only. It could be on holidays, Christmas, it could be on the alcohol discussion, could be on new heavens, new Earth, whatever. It is the bazillion of one things that they kind of make a first level importance issue.
If you are wrong on one of those, then who are you? Because you were right on everything. And so I honestly think there's an identity piece to this that you start finding your identity and being in being right rather than in being a Christian in. We incentivize because you see that the more.
[00:35:54] Speaker C: Go ahead, I'm sorry, finish your thought.
[00:35:56] Speaker A: No, just. I just think we incentivize this because the more right you go, and the more. The more right you are, the holier, quote, unquote, you are. And then if anybody's less, you can always look down and go, oh, can you believe that they would do this? Which seems to solidify your position in heaven. Now them, I don't know about them. I don't think they're going to heaven, but I'm going to heaven. So we kind of incentivize this Pharisee culture.
[00:36:17] Speaker C: The identity piece I would absolutely agree with. Because you do see that on the other side as well, going back to the progressive side of people whose identity is kind of wrapped up in being the I'm not attached to tradition, I'm a relationship over religion guy. I all about love.
[00:36:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:36:31] Speaker C: I'm really going to go out of my way to like, you see, with like ministers on progressive sides, like, that's kind of their identity. But you're exactly right, Joe. Back to the right leaning. It very much is an identity thing of like, once there's an issue that you're no longer the most conservative guy in the room about, it's like, huh, that's. That's kind of my territory here is to be the most conservative guy in the room.
[00:36:50] Speaker A: Now what right.
[00:36:51] Speaker C: The incentive structure that is built up to say, you know, I've got all my issues correct. I don't know about all these people. They're kind of out there in left field because they disagree with me on one or two things. That's kind of the structure we built, Jack.
[00:37:03] Speaker B: You either move into that more or you do hit that wall. And you start looking around and go a different direction. And so Brad had posted a while back, and I thought this was really interesting. He posted about the Church of Christ's deep state that there are people kind of behind the scenes, pull the strings, and it's real. I mean, guys that are in ministry circles, you know, like who the names and players are and things like that, and this is part of it is kind of. You've got to have your conservative credentials. You don't deviate from the talking points and things like that. And honestly, it is a great blessing here at Focus Press. I've been here only 14 years. In a couple of weeks, I've changed my mind on a few things. Nothing major. I mean, Jesus is still Lord and death, burial and resurrection and baptism for the remission of sins. And I still worship a Capabelle. I mean, all the major outward things, you see. But I've had some changes of thinking and. And I'll own them. I've said them in my writing. Man, I was wrong about this. I was wrong about that. Like, I think that's important.
There are organizations within the church. You're just not allowed to do that.
And not like there's a rule posted on the wall that says, don't change your mind. It's the minute you do, you're not on that channel anymore. You're not on that lectureship anymore. You're not on.
If they get a panel of guys together, you don't ever see somebody which happens. You know, where we can be in a bit of an echo chamber, where we're in lockstep on a lot of things. On thing deeper, you are allowed to go. No, not. Not that one. I'm not. I'm not with that. I'm not. Okay. Like the Halloween thing. Will brought up earlier, things like that. And you know, you're allowed to change your mind if you don't evolve in your thinking on something over decades. And again, this people are gonna go. It sounds like the progressivism thing because we talked about the restudy and things like that. There is that. But on the other hand, if. If nothing in your mind changes from the time you're 18 years old to the. When you die at 83.
I don't think you kept reading the Bible like the human brain changes your understanding, your perception of things, that you might go, well, I was a little bit off on this, that or the other thing. But you've got this, as Will was talking about incentive structures to never change your mind, to never study deeper. You go into The Bible with your hermeneutic, with your principles that you have to find the answers you already have rather than reading consecutively through the text and letting the text shape you. And so you just end up really stuck. And again then there's the cancellation to the people who don't aren't in agreement with you. You're not going to let them talk or anything like that. And you can't let them talk anywhere else. You're going to let other churches know, hey, don't have that guy. I mean like it really creates this, this just tiny echo chamber. No thoughts outside allowed. No. No thinking allowed. Really. As we, we had an episode on Brain Free Christianity. Give me the list and all the things like that is what's created out of this. But I want to go back historically before we run out of time here in a little bit. We talked last week about the other side. Says we're the heirs of the stone Campbell restorationist movement. It was a unity movement. They were about grace. They were about removing the lines that had divided people. And that's what we're here to do. Had a problem with that. This side of the equation says no. The restoration plea was restoring pure New Testament Christianity. And that's what we're doing by establishing authority. Everything we do, you'll see a guy get up and say, all right, we're taking of the collection because Paul said in Corinthians, you know, let no say lay by in store each first day of each week. And that's why we're doing this. And we're doing the Lord's Supper because First Corinthians 11:26, I received from the Lord that which I also delivered you. We establish authority for all of these things. That's the restoration idea is go back to the Bible, find the authority for it. If there's no authority. All of the things we talked about with that hermeneutic.
What do you guys say to this idea that we are. That this is the continuation of the Restoration.
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[00:42:03] Speaker A: I mean if you go back in history and look at Alexander Camel and Barton Stone and some of their writings, I don't think you'd come to that. That was a unity movement. And so no, I think the progressives can take it way too far. At the same time, the reason they did that is like guys, we've gotten way far out on a limb where it's all this man made tradition and you know, with, with the Calvinists and Lutherans and people like that. And we really want to get back to what unifies us. That was the whole point. Let's go back to the Bible to figure out what unifies us, what can we. Because he came from Presbyterianism and he wanted to fellowship some of those people. He was not about kicking everybody. Speaking of Alexander Campbell. He was not about k everybody out of the church. He was about figuring out what are levels of first importance, matters of first importance. Because he wanted to be able to establish a greater sense of unity within that, within the church and not be bound to creeds and traditions and everything else that had really seeped their way in which funny enough, in establishing levels of first importance you are kind of establishing a creed in a certain way. But that was the whole point of it. So to me, for them to look at it and go, well, he's speaking about us. He's speaking about establishing authority in all those ways. No, he's trying to figure out what is it that matters most that's going to unify Christians together rather than us breaking apart and beating each other over the head. Over the head with stuff that's, that's my interpretation of Alexander Campbell as, as the, the little bit that I've read and the classes I've taken on it.
Yeah, that's my lay Atlanta. So I don't know if that answers your question, but yeah, I don't think they can say we're the rightful heirs of the Alexander Campbell movement. That guy was way more open minded than they ever are.
[00:43:36] Speaker B: Yeah, I, I've used the illustration before, the playing baseball thing of get the rules right, go out and play ball and I think the other side goes out and plays ball without getting the rules right and it turns into Calvin ball, you know, from Calvin and Hobbs, where. Oh, just make it up as you go along. And we don't even need a field. Just run out there and whatever. Whatever you want. On the other side, it's. We think that this is the point. We think that sitting down and rehearsing the rules and studying, combing through the rule book is the point. Like, now, the point of it was to get you to go out and play ball. And so the idea of the restoration was, let's restore this thing and get to work. And Campbell really expected. I just wrote about this on my site last week, that the restoration movement just, like, stopped. It's like you restored the car and you never took it out for a drive, to use another illustration there. And so his idea was, let's get this. And if we get our stuff together and we can be united as a religious body, then we can go evangelize the world more properly. We can. We can really build something up.
[00:44:38] Speaker A: We never did.
[00:44:39] Speaker B: The only thing we build are internal things like lectureships, like, you know, things like that. And the. The external things that you see other groups do, we don't have. And so they would say tent meetings.
[00:44:53] Speaker A: They baptize thousands.
[00:44:54] Speaker B: Right. But I mean, like. But even beyond that, okay, you got the people. What are you doing with them? And you look at, like, the Catholics and all the hospitals they build and things like that, and the ways they impact the culture and things the Baptists have done and their political sway and things like that. Like, they made an impact on the world. Ours stays in the dugout and just stays in. And baptisms are great. I'm not doubting that whatsoever. But you're supposed to bring the people in, and then you build an army with which to go out and do more in the world culture. Yeah. And with the restoration, it just became, as I said earlier, kind of the lawyers, like, combing through. All right, let's get this right. And our lectureships are coming together to affirm we got it right. And, you know, I. I've talked about this before, so I don't need to go into it much more. I think the restoration was supposed to be, let's do that and get moving. Not like, let's keep doing this for 200 years.
Yeah.
[00:45:42] Speaker C: I don't. I don't have a ton of thoughts on that side of things. I have a very tough question to ask, though, as we're getting close to the end, but I feel like we would be remiss if we did not talk about at least kind of this concept and throw this Question out.
And that is, as we thought, as we've had a two episode arc now on kind of the spectrum within the churches of Christ. And you go to one side and it is far left, progressive, allowing things that probably should not be allowed, maybe compromising on doctrine, accepting tolerance. Come to this episode, we're talking about the far right, which is very much once again binding, binding every single thing, making a, making every single thing be a first level of importance issue. Cutting people off know, fellowship issues.
How do we have unity within the churches of Christ? This is a, I've been thinking about this for the last week now as we've had these episodes back to back in the sense of like, that is a very wide range. That is a very wide spectrum. Far left, far right. And if again, as we've talked about how most Christians fall somewhere in the middle, somewhere along the spectrum, how do we have unity and how do we pursue unity? Because I, I think it's very obvious that that is a big emphasis of Paul's in the New Testament. Not just Paul, but throughout the New Testament of, you know, be unified.
You know, obviously one Corinthians one that is kind of, you know, let there be no divisions among you. You've got that. And then obviously Ephesians talks about unity, like keep the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. Ephesians chapter 4 throughout the New Testament.
[00:47:08] Speaker A: John 17, right.
[00:47:10] Speaker C: Jesus prays for it in John 17. It is a big point of emphasis. How do we have unity with on one side, people who once again we would look at and say, you're compromising doctrine. You can't do that.
And yet, in a way, Joe, I know you've argued before, it's almost harder to have unity with those on the other side who are basically sending you to hell for stepping outside their tiny, tight circle of acceptable doctrinal beliefs. It's almost harder to have unity with those people. And so I'm just looking at, as we're having this episode, I'm just looking around going, man, how are we supposed to have unity with either side? And so I would love to throw out that question and just have a really solid answer. Well, here's how we do it. I don't, I'm genuinely curious what you guys think. Like, because there is a, something to be said for pursuing unity with certain members of both sides is just going to be in vain. It's just going to be a feudal effort to try to pursue unity with people who's once again their identity is wrapped up in. I'M the tolerant guy, I'm the, you know, I'm the relationship of a religion guy or I, my identity is wrapped up in you. You can't disagree with me on any single issue in the Bible, otherwise you're going to hell. That seems like a feudal effort to me. So I, I felt like unity was something we at least need to bring up before we wrap up this episode, kind of this two episode arc. So what thoughts do you guys have? That was the one question I wanted to ask that was kind of off of our outline here. How do we best pursue unity? I think within our congregations maybe it's a little bit easier because obviously if you're already working, if you're already worshiping with somebody, then they're probably not going to cut you off and, and send you to hell or anything like that. And so that's going to be a little bit easier of kind of. That would speak to Joe's relationship point of making sure that you're establishing those relationships so that you can have these spiritual discussions. But what about outside your congregation lectureships and kind of the, the Church of Christ again, just kind of environment like how do we have unity? What are your guys thoughts on that?
[00:49:04] Speaker A: Jack, you want to take that one?
[00:49:07] Speaker B: I, I think you hear this phrase in, in politics, you know, I'm politically homeless. I'm, I'm the, the left thinks I'm too far right. The right things, I'm too far left, whatever. I think there's a lot of that in the churches of Christ. And I wrote something about this years ago of like man, the right pushed me out. Well for alcohol or I have talked before I preached or wrote an article on. We talked too much about baptism in the instrument, let's again get the rules and then go play ball kind of thing. And I mean people went nuts. People went lost their minds. Like guys were preaching sermon series about me. Like my name was in the title about the heresy of Jack. It was like are you kidding me? And again, lost friendships, things like that. And then of course the people on the left were like, well you restrict women and all these other things. You're, you're the worst kind of. And so I just kind of wrote like man, are there any like normal in the middle average kind of people? And there's tons of us and we are by far the overwhelming majority. So number one, let's, let's start with that of like the extremes are the loudest. The squeaky wheel principle, things like that.
Most people are cool. On the other hand, when it does come to unity. And the questions you're asking Will, I think, and this brings up the chair's illustration I talked about last week. It's very easy to extend unity to people to your right. You might go, you know what? You're more restrictive than me, but I'm cool with that. I get that you're trying to do that, as long as they're not, like, burning you down for being a little bit there. The hardest thing is to give a little bit of room to your left, like, things that you're not comfortable with. But you can say, you know what, you're still a Christian. For somebody, it might be, I will not celebrate Christmas religiously. Somebody who puts a nativity scene in their house isn't necessarily in sin. Or like, even if it is sin, you might think that it's sin. You might go, well, there's grace for that. They just don't understand properly that there, there can be a little bit of room for somebody to get something wrong here or there.
And you start getting into the examples. That's where you're going to get yourself canceled of, like he said, what is allowable. But, like, I. I do think you need to have.
It's important for everybody, I guess, is what I'm getting at. Just take stock and say, all right, I'm probably good with allowing people more restrictive than me. What you do need a line on the left. As I said last week, the problem with Rick Atley's chair's illustration is he never draws a line on the left. And that just keeps going and going and going and going. And you have to have a line to say this far is too far. But inside of that line, we're Christians. You might be. I might think you're badly wrong. I might have a big problem with that. I might not go worship at your church building, but we can have unity inside of this line. If there is not a single inch to your left that you're going to allow or to your right, that's a problem. That is kind of the nobody saved but me thing. And so the unity has to start there of kind of looking at yourself on the spectrum and saying, which, what is the wiggle room in each direction? Joe?
[00:51:57] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a very good answer. And something that I was thinking about myself is, man, there's so many down the middle. What it's going to take, though, in my opinion, is those people down the middle actually stepping up and saying something. Jack, you had a great post on this earlier this week.
Brad gets canceled Again. And I kind of sparked your post, which is, you know what? We've had so many people that privately message us like, hey, guys, we support you. They don't ever say it publicly. They don't ever come out against. So they are down the middle. They're on our side. There's a lot of us out there that are trying to get this right, trying to be down the middle here.
We don't ever hear from those people, because the moment that one of the higher ups to the other side, specifically to the right side, to the legalistic side, the moment that they say something, everybody just shuts up. And so we'll get canceled and we'll get called heretics and kicked out of the church and everything else, allegedly. But then the average person goes, guys, I'm so sorry. You know, I. I agree with you, okay? We'll say it publicly. If we had all the people down the middle going, hey, zip it, okay? We're sick of your lack of grace. We're sick of you kicking everybody out of the church because they disagree, because they use an NASB Bible. We're sick of it. So, no, we're not going to do it. We're not showing up to your lectureships. We're not going to support you. We're not going to support your ministries. We're not going to let you cancel people and tell them, you know, the next time that. That they call an eldership and say, hey, don't support. Focus Press, which we know happens. The next time that that happens, the eldership needs to go, no, you are in sin. You need to go. Make it right. If you have a problem, you cannot harm somebody else's ministry. This is Philippians 1. Hey, Christ is proclaimed.
That's. That's what needs to happen, is all the elderships and all the people that privately agree with us need to step up and shout these people down and go, stop. We're going to kick you out of the church because you make us all look horrible. You make us look like everybody in the South. You know, you talk to people in the south, it's like the Church of Christ, they're the only ones thinking they're going to heaven. They're incredibly legalistic. And it's like, what am I supposed to tell them? It's true. It's true. The Pharisee culture, the legalistic culture, the. You're the only. We're the only ones going to heaven. Everybody else that is slightly to the left of us, they're all going to hell.
That's Not a great look. That's not what I want to be known for. I want to be known for somebody who's trying to be like Christ and, you know, and trying to be like Christ. I'm going to get some things wrong and thank God for grace. The biggest question they need to, the legalists need to ask themselves is what can I disagree on What? What can somebody disagree on with?
[00:54:19] Speaker C: Is there anything to know that that's right?
[00:54:20] Speaker A: Is there anything to the left, specifically, to Jack's point, is there anything to the left that I can disagree on with somebody and still give them grace? The second thing is, what does grace mean to them? I think a lot of them have the I will go 95% of the way and Christ will cover me. The other 5% that I somehow don't get right wrong. You go 0% of the way. Christ covers 100 and out of that drives your theology, drives your desire to be like him, drives your. It's love, it's gratitude, it's all that. Not for them, it's fear. That's why hellfire and brimstone is such a big deal. It's fear for them. They want to fear their way into heaven. That's not what God's calling for. So what does grace tangibly mean to them other than God will cover you the rest of the way? That is a poor, poor theology that is sending a lot of people into I'm never going to be enough.
And that's really where you have a lot of people fall away, is I'm never going to be enough. Or they swing like Jack talked about earlier. They swing back to the other side, to the left side, progressive side, because it's like, well, I can't get all of this right and I can't continue to go to the right because I'm just never going to be enough there. So I'll swing. Even if I don't leave Christianity, I'm just going to swing to the progressive side. And we're losing people that way and it's really, really sad. We want to make sure that side doesn't hold answers either. It really is trying to get down the middle. So I know that's a long tirade here, Will, but for your question on unity, I do think it's going to take the average guy in the middle standing up and going, this is where we stand. And when 90% of us stand up and say it will be unified.
[00:55:42] Speaker C: That's a really good answer. I'm really glad you said that there at the end, Joe. About understanding that your salvation, your Christianity is not comprised of.
Because I don't worship with instruments and because I got in the water, I'm going to heaven. That's it. I mean, I did, I've checked those two boxes.
Understanding that. I mean, we're studying Romans as a congregation, the three of us teaching class. We haven't gotten to chapters two and three yet. But what I love about chapters two and three and chapter one, of course there towards the end is Paul makes the point. You are hopeless. You are completely dead in your sin. Like there is nothing that you can do because all are guilty.
It's justification by faith. Because you put your faith in Jesus and because God mercifully gave us the gift of his Son's blood that serves as the propitiation. That's Romans, chapter three. For our sins. That's why you can, can, can live for Christ. That's why you can stand up and say I am holy, I am righteous. Is because of Christ. Not because you, you checked all the boxes yourself. Not because you, you know, subscribe to this belief, this belief, this belief. And that's why you're a Christian. That's why you're going to heaven. Understanding things from that framework and to give the qualifier doesn't mean you can believe whatever you want, doesn't mean you can do whatever doctrinal practices you want to do. But what it does mean is once again, it's because of Christ. And that being the framework that you have to pursue the correct doctrines to make sure that, that you are trying to interpret the Bible to the best of your ability in accordance with what the New Testament and what all of God's word teaches. It's just for me, it's a framework thing. What framework are you operating under? Are you operating under once again, Gotta check all the right boxes. Gotta, gotta make sure that my beliefs line up with the, the keynote speaker at polishing the pulpit. Wrong framework, absolute wrong framework to be, to be operating under. So that would be kind of my contribution to it is it's a whole lot easier to have unity when I feel like you're operating from that perspective in that framework. So I think that's once again just. I know a lot of people are gonna be listening to us going, man, far wide spectrum here. How do we have unity? So I wanted to address that before we, before we wrap up.
[00:57:52] Speaker B: Yeah, just to wrap up the two episode arc. If things sounded a little progressive this week, go back to last week where we criticize progressives up one side and down the Other if things last week sounded a little too conservative, you know, like, okay, then this week you want to find balance. And as I said last week, we also don't want it to be. I thank you, Lord. I'm not like these progressives and legalists or anything like that.
It's just an acknowledgment of man's nature to be drawn one way or the other toward legalism or antinomianism. And that's just what you're dealing with here. And it manifests heavily in the churches of Christ. We've experienced it from both sides and yeah, we're all working together to try and get it right down the middle biblically the way it's supposed to be. So yeah, covered a lot of territory the last couple weeks. Thanks to everybody who has listened. We do have a think fast to get to before we wrap up.
[00:58:42] Speaker C: Yes. All right, I'll take it away here. So there's, there's a lot going on in the news but you know, we're recording this the, on a Tuesday. By the time this episode drops, the, the news stories will probably be gone. So I didn't want to go that route. The other thing is this episode was kind of heavy. So I was trying to think of like what are, what are some, some things that, that we can discuss here that is a little bit more light hearted. And this isn't the most light hearted thing in the world. But I did want to ask you guys, we're getting close to Christmas time here. Big, big point of disagreement for a lot of people, of course, within the church even again I've mentioned our congregation. We have people who are, you know, adamantly. If I was talking to somebody the other day who basically if anybody mentions the idea of Jesus being born on Christmas that they need to be publicly corrected and you know, shown that that's not the truth.
I don't believe Jesus was born on Christmas.
I also don't. I'm not gonna think it's the end of the world if somebody else does. I'm just kind of curious your guys thoughts on what should the church's kind of position or practices be as we get close to this time of year where debate around a. Should you have a Christmas sermon? Joe has tasked me with preaching in our congregation on the Sunday before Christmas. So I've got to decide, you know, what am I going to teach? Preach and teach.
[00:59:52] Speaker A: Oh, is that, is that the Sunday before? I'm so sorry. Yeah.
[00:59:54] Speaker C: Coincidental.
[00:59:55] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:59:55] Speaker A: Joe.
[00:59:55] Speaker C: Oh, Will, can you preach the 22nd? But no, I'm just kind of curious your guys thoughts on that. I don't think we're going to talk about this this year in the next couple weeks. And so I wanted to throw it out there as far as like Christmas sermon, nativity scene. Just really like what should the kind of position of church leaders, church ministers be when there is a lot of disagreement? Should it be, let me characterize it this way. Should it be a, let's just stay away from the discussion, don't want to offend people, let's just take the easy route. Or should it be more of an embracing of, hey, the world is talking about Jesus, the world is focused on Jesus. Let's kind of take advantage of that as those are kind of the two positions that are normally held by congregations. What would your thoughts be on that?
[01:00:39] Speaker A: I lean toward, toward the latter. It is interesting that the legalists really don't want to because they want to be right and Jesus wasn't born on Christmas and so that's not right. And so we got to get it right.
[01:00:50] Speaker B: The funny thing is I just looked this up to be sure. Most people, including churchgoers, don't believe Jesus was born on December 25. It is the question of can we just pick a date, you know, stick one date on the calendar and you can go into the whole history. It's not pagan like people say, but okay, we're going to pick this date to celebrate it. Well, we don't have authorization to celebrate. Well then you get into that whole debate like we just talked about. But that's derailing your point. Most people don't actually believe he was born on that.
[01:01:15] Speaker A: That's very interesting. That's very interesting. Yeah, I think people want to get it right. You know, the legalists kind of want to get it right. And I'm all for getting it right. Historically, probably somewhere in April.
Man, you have most of the world talking about Jesus and we could say, well they just want to talk about baby Jesus and you know, he's. He. They don't want to talk about King Jesus and okay, there's some legitimate point. Yeah, legitimate, yeah. Legitimacy to that. At the same time, I don't have a problem shying away from it. I think last year in the my Christmas sermon I preached on Philippians two of him taking on flesh. That to me, of him leaving heaven and coming down. This is a great reminder to remember that the Lord of the universe left heaven, the creator of the universe left heaven, came down and died on a cross for our sins. Yeah, Baby Jesus is included in that. It's the taking on flesh. So that's how I have chosen to, I guess to cover it, you know, to. To think about it. I have no problem with church shying away, but personally, I think it's a church by church issue. If elders decide to do it, that's great. If elders decide not to do it, that's great. It's really whatever. Or the men in the congregation, whatever it is, it's really whatever is there. I don't think it needs to be. Well, we're going to offend everybody else. It's like, where do we want to stand on this? Does it matter to us that much? And so I've asked the guys that are congregation, what do you want from me? And they're like, we're not really big into the whole Christmas sermon thing. Okay. So I preached on taking on flesh just because everybody's thinking about it, but I'm not going to make a big deal out of it. So I guess that's my answer. Jack, what's yours?
[01:02:36] Speaker B: Yeah, I was going to say congregation by congregation. The funny thing is I've been in congregations where very hard line on it, where members had a nativity scene in their house. Like, even within there, there's kind of Romans 14 kind of thing happening. And some people take Romans 14 to say, therefore the church should not do it because it's a matter of opinion. You don't want to. Well, if the church goes that way, if that's what your congregation does, I mean, that becomes the tyranny of the weaker brother thing of like, well, everybody but wants it but one guy. So this church isn't going to do it. Well, no, I don't think that should be the case either. The congregational leadership, the idea that it's a sin, I mean, like, that's literally what Romans 14 says is you. You're going to honor some days over another. There's going to be that difference in there. And so not to get too far down the Romans 14 rabbit hole, but yeah, we need to allow for differences. And if your congregation, like as Joe said, they're not comfortable with it, they don't want that. That's not the way they view it. Acknowledge that and live within that. On the other hand, if it goes the other way and you can draw on hundreds of years of Christian history and things like that, and you know, just to say, hey, this is. This is a thing that happened and it's important to recognize that it happened.
Yeah, it is important to recognize that it Happened. People say the Bible never said to celebrate. The Bible never meant to said to celebrate God becoming a man. Like, did it need to tell us to celebrate that? I mean, like, it's a big deal that we. And I think sometimes the people who shy away from it on December 25 shy away from it in general. Like, the incarnation is a really important doctrine.
So whether you do it here or some other time of the year, get to it, be sure to hit that point in the text. But, yeah, I. It. We need to leave it in realm of opinion, even on a congregational level.
[01:04:19] Speaker C: Yeah, look, I get a really good point.
[01:04:21] Speaker A: Yeah. No, they always say you could preach baby Jesus in July. It's like, well, do you. Do you do it? Yeah, well, I mean, that's a point to make, but do it.
[01:04:29] Speaker C: I think it's. I tend to think that it's irresponsible when everybody's mind is on kind of a certain thing to then go preach Ezekiel or something and not, not to disparage Ezekiel. You know what I mean? Like December 25th or some really big national, you know, abortion gets overturned or something. It's like, well, I'm going to kind of ignore that and preach on something. Like, I don't know. I. I feel like there's a level of responsibility that falls on church leaders to kind of what is captivating the attention of your congregation? What is? What is. I mean, I felt like to use another example in 2020 probably needed to be some division sermons, maybe some racism sermons, some whatever it is that were on people's mind. Jack, you did a sermon on immigration a couple weeks ago. It's fantastic. Like, that was kind of capturing people's attention. And so, yeah, that's the only other thing. I mean, I agree with both of you guys that, you know, if the elders in your congregation, like, listen, let's just not do that, okay? You know, that's just what we're going to do. However, if they say we're going to take this time to embrace and kind of, you know, not celebrate the birth of Jesus, but at least acknowledge that the world is, you know, talking about it. And so maybe we have a sermon about Jesus on Christmas, no problem with that at all. I think that's probably the more responsible thing to do. You know, now, if we're talking setting up nativity scenes in the church building or decorating that, you know, like, okay, I can see how that's going to be taken a little too far. But as far as the sermon goes and kind of how the Sunday before Christmas goes. That's the way I would lean is is talk about it a little bit more just because that's what people are thinking about. So. But guys, any preview for the deep end that we want to give for all of our Focus plus subscribers, Dare.
[01:06:02] Speaker B: We give our first level principles?
[01:06:06] Speaker C: There you go. There you go.
[01:06:08] Speaker B: Maybe give our we'll do it there where we're less cancelable than out here.
[01:06:16] Speaker A: I'm good with that. Yeah. Nothing to add.
[01:06:18] Speaker B: All right, so we'll get into what makes the first primary issue. Not that we're checking it out, it'll come out in other ways. I'll write on it. We'll do other stuff on it eventually too. But we ran out of time to get to it in this episode. So if you want to catch that in the deep end, focuspress.org/ is your your link to go look for sign up and more info and all the things you get on Focus plus, including our new Roman series. Will is joining us and teaching through that series. So be sure to join Daily devos, all kinds of other stuff at Focus Plus. And that's all we got for this week. Looking forward to your comments and we'll talk to you guys on the next one.
