Q&A: Demons, Church Troubles, Jesus As A Boy, And More!

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:09] Speaker B: Welcome back into the Think Deeper podcast presented by Focus Press. Your co host Will Harrop, joined by Joe and Jack Wilkey for. We were talking right before we got started. We think this is our fourth question and answer episode. [00:00:21] Speaker A: It's. [00:00:22] Speaker B: We've definitely done at least two. We. I'm pretty sure one of them got turned into a two parter. So for all intents and purposes, we will call this the fourth Q A episode. We're very grateful to everybody who submitted questions. We always enjoy these. We obviously like to talk about what we like to talk about a lot for these episodes but it's always fun and interesting to see, you know, what kind of questions everybody else has. Some of our listeners have what's on our list, our listeners minds and so we appreciate all the submissions. Special shout out. We are recording this on Jack's birthday. Very, very happy birthday to Jack. As I we said it in the deep end but he showing some, some true commitment to the deep thinkers here, recording a Q and A episode on his birthday. So very happy birthday to Jack birthday. [00:01:02] Speaker C: Well, thank you guys. I appreciate it. Couldn't. Couldn't miss out on a week just because there's nothing to celebrate getting older when you're at this age. So. [00:01:09] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, you know, 30, however old you are, Jack, y' all don't have parties really. I mean it's just kind of, you know. [00:01:15] Speaker C: Yeah, you know, we're gonna make a, a dessert on the weekend and Allison and I went out for dinner a couple nights ago, so that. Yeah, that covers it. [00:01:22] Speaker B: There you go. [00:01:24] Speaker C: What am I gonna go to the amusement park or something? Nah, it's. We'll get on and record, take the. [00:01:29] Speaker A: Day off and do yard work or something. [00:01:30] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:01:31] Speaker B: Work around the house. Yeah. [00:01:32] Speaker C: So just talk to these guys. Honestly. [00:01:34] Speaker B: Hey, that's our best birthday gift we could give you. Honest. [00:01:37] Speaker A: Gonna say it's just me, my presence. [00:01:39] Speaker C: There you go. [00:01:39] Speaker A: It's my present. [00:01:42] Speaker C: Nice. Very nice. [00:01:43] Speaker B: Well, on that note. On that note, no one thing we wanted to point out before we get started and Jack, I guess I'll hand it to you here shortly to kind of get us into the first question. But this podcast for those of you who might not know if you're an audio listener, Spotify just a podcast app. It is available on YouTube. Our YouTube views have been going slightly up and so if you are a watcher on YouTube, we do appreciate that if you have not already, we would invite you to do what all the YouTube podcasters do, which is, you know, like subscribe, comment, rate, review all the things that they say, you know, pretty much every single episode that we don't do a whole lot. But we're gonna ask you to today if you are able to. Cost you nothing. Hit that like button. Subscribe if you're able to. You'll get notified when we produce not just think deeper videos. Godly I'm in podcast videos, a lot of the other videos that Jack puts up there. And so yeah, again if, if you're listener on YouTube or watcher on YouTube already, we appreciate it. Guys, let's go ahead and get into this question answer episode. We got 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, close to 10. Looks like things to get into ranging from all kinds of different topics. And so Jack, I'll hand it to you as we kind of get started here. [00:02:52] Speaker C: Yeah, so some textual ones, some topical ones. I'm going to start off with the fun one that we got via Focus plus what is your most played episode? Now obviously I have the data on that so I can just give it to you, but I wanted you guys to guess. Now we're setting aside one particular episode that if you know anything deeper lore, everybody knows what the most played one is because boy did we hear. We still hear about it. So we're gonna set that one aside. But if obviously we're coming up on 200. That's a lot of episodes. I don't know how much you guys remember. I would not have guessed the top ones that are the top on YouTube and on our podcast hosting service. But I want to see what you guys came up. [00:03:32] Speaker B: Well, I cheated. I looked on both of them. [00:03:35] Speaker A: Okay. [00:03:36] Speaker C: I have not. [00:03:37] Speaker A: You know, our male female role ones always do very well. I would guess those are near the top. I feel like maybe we got some play on abandoned public schools. That's tough, boy. I don't know. Like you said, I. I forget. I'll be honest with you. By the time we record it about three weeks later when people are bringing it up, it's like, I'm sorry, we said what, what, what do we record? Yeah, when you've done. It's just you forget what all you've done. But you said it's surprising. Which one is it? Those wouldn't surprise me. [00:04:07] Speaker B: One thing to note real F before you go, I know we switched like kind of streaming platforms at one point. [00:04:13] Speaker C: Right. [00:04:14] Speaker B: So there when I pulled up the data from the current one that we use, it looks like all of the ones that just were basically when we switched over, it didn't pull the Listen, count or the streams from the old site. And so basically it was just from that point on, all of those were the ones that were the highest. So I don't know if you took that into consideration or not, but go ahead and reveal what we're looking at here. [00:04:37] Speaker C: Yeah, and I think we've grown a little bit over the years and so, you know, or enough that the more recent ones have more plays than the early ones or whatever. But Anyway, so on YouTube, it's not the abandoned public schools. It's the second one we did a couple years later talking about the topic which is the biggest threat to the church today is what we called it. [00:04:58] Speaker B: April 2024. [00:05:00] Speaker C: Right. And then via the audio, it was. Oops, I didn't click to the second page. A worship re examined, which we did two years ago today, actually is when it came out. So that's crazy. [00:05:13] Speaker A: I know. [00:05:14] Speaker C: People seem to enjoy it when we talk about, like, what the church does, you know, a lot of times on. On Sunday of church close, the sermons, the preacher, you know, the. The Lord's Supper contribution, things like that. [00:05:23] Speaker A: So do you have the top three there? [00:05:27] Speaker C: Church's marriage crisis and then the gentle parenting episode. All. [00:05:31] Speaker B: All in that summer of 2023. Now, there was also a point again, I think this is when we, before we switch one, the first one we ever had with my dad on about the church's kind of reproduction, reproductive issues and kind of. Yeah, I think we talked about in vitro fertilization. All kind of that. That one was pretty. That one was the number 11 for a while. So. Yeah, fun question. [00:05:51] Speaker A: Yeah. Make sure to tell your friends and, you know, let's blow that number, whatever the number is. I don't know what it is, but let's blow it out of the water and maybe we'll give you another episode here soon that serves the pot a little bit. We're not going to go any. Anything too crazy. There's been some things popping off in the church recently that have created discussion. But, yeah, we'll figure something out soon. [00:06:10] Speaker C: All right, our next one. What happened to Mary's husband Joseph? The Bible is full of recordings of the father of the family, but when it comes to Jesus, we focus on Mary and Joseph just seems to go away. He does seem to just go away. You see him, Jesus at the temple at 12 years old. So who wants to jump in on that one? And then, I mean, after that, you don't see him. [00:06:28] Speaker A: So. [00:06:28] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So I've got. That's what I had Luke to Interestingly, in John 6 his name is brought up is what I found. This was after Jesus fed the 5,000, of course, when he spoke about bringing the bread of life. And there are people that said, is this not Jesus the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know kind of present tense. And so there's some that have argued maybe he was still alive then in John 6. I think most historical tradition has that Joseph most likely died before Jesus's ministry started. We know almost certainly for a fact that he was dead when Jesus was crucified. And that's mainly from John 19, when Jesus on the cross, one of his few sayings from the cross, tells John, behold your mother, referring to Jesus's mother Mary. Again, we can kind of infer from the historical context that if Joseph was still alive, then he would have been good to take care of Mary. But since he was not, and since Jesus was dying, Jesus kind of commissioned John to take care of his mother. And they found another interesting thing that said if Jesus, if Joseph had been present at the crucifixion, then under Jewish custom he would have been expected to take charge of Jesus body. But this role was instead performed by Joseph Arimathea. So a couple interesting nuggets there. So obviously we can't say for sure, but the biblical indication would be that he did die sometime before Jesus's ministry or at least certainly before his death. [00:07:46] Speaker A: I ran across something I thought was very interesting on this one website. And of course apocryphal writing, man, you've got to throw out most of it, or at least a significant amount seemingly. But he said one explanation given for his death is given in the apocryphal Gospel of James written somewhere around 145 AD, supposed to be authored by or a proto evangelium of James, Jesus's brother, which claims that James was actually Joseph's son from a previous marriage. This is all theoretical, hypothetical. What I did find interesting is they say the canon gospels never mentioned Joseph's age, but this account of James presents Joseph as an old man who was called of God to look after the Virgin Mary. If this account is accurate, then the explanation of Joseph's absence later in the life of Christ or in Christ's life would be attributed to him passing from old age. I ran across that somewhere else as well. That and I don't know if you guys had ever heard that, that he. [00:08:35] Speaker B: Was like basically that Joseph was way. [00:08:37] Speaker A: Older than me, 60, 70 or 80. Somewhere in that range. Yeah, way older. Helping this young version and that he would have just died of old age up to that point. But he was mainly just called of God as this righteous older man to help with this. What are your thoughts? I've never, I had not run across that. But then I ran across it twice when I was researching and apocryphal writing. Again, you can pretty much. You toss out a lot of that because there's a lot that's just ridiculous and it's written 100 plus years after Christ. On the other hand, what are your thoughts on it? Had you run across that before? [00:09:06] Speaker C: The Catholics really like these because it makes their perpetual virginity of Mary thing a little bit more plausible that yeah, it says Jesus has brothers, but they were half brothers, Mary didn't have any more children, things like that. So for that reason I'm pretty skeptical obviously that you mentioned that one. It was second century, so that was a little before obviously the Catholic Church came around. Not a little before. It was a few hundred years before the Catholic Church became what it was going to be. Still, there's a lot of fan fiction being written at that time, I would say the apocryphal gospel. So I wouldn't give much credibility to that. This is one where it's so much blind speculation. I don't, I don't see a lot of value in it. [00:09:49] Speaker B: Yeah, I ran across that too in the research for this. It did seem a little fan fiction. Ish. But I mean, obviously there's, there's some legitimate reason if there's a document that was that close to the source that that puts that forth. Being. Seeing as we don't have any major textual indication to go to that it's, it's more of a. It's interesting is all I would say. [00:10:07] Speaker A: Because you have a lot of like early church fathers will go into what happened, like Matthew or what happened to the apostles. And so we kind of have an understanding of who made it down to Ethiopia, who made it over to India, who made it up to England, you know, whatever it is. And yeah, a lot of that's kind of church history that we think may have happened. There is very, very little about Joseph. Now apparently there's Josephology or something like that, which is Catholic side of it. As they dig into it, nothing's given. And I'm curious as to why the Bible decided not to. And maybe that is to make the separation of Jesus being the son of God and not can, you know, not. And maybe it's just because it's not important in the least. I don't know, but it is interesting that we know very little about him, so the way we do about the apostles. [00:10:48] Speaker B: Yeah, he doesn't even appear until other than by name after Luke 2, when Jesus was 12. [00:10:53] Speaker A: Right. [00:10:54] Speaker B: So, yeah, interesting. All right, I'll go ahead and move us into question number three. Why didn't all the demons die in the flood or at the flood, as you see in the New Testament water. And this is the commenter, as you see in the New Testament water was what did them in? When, where and when and how did they get back? Interesting question. I think I went first on the last one. So, Joe, we'll go to you first on this one. What are your. This one. This, this discussion always fascinates Joe. So I think it's fitting for him. [00:11:21] Speaker A: Oh, it's a very, very interesting one. And I was doing some study on this. I've done a lot of study on it previously, but there's some study on it. Because the question really arises, how did the Nephilim. That, that's. I think the question being asked is like, you look at the Nephilim, but there are two separate things that I would say is the sons of God, the way I take it is not Seth. But I think, yes, if you look at the. And I don't want to get into like the council of God, but Genesis 6. Yeah. The sons of God coming down, meeting with the. The daughters of men, being angels, being angels, fallen angels. But everybody assumes, if you look at this as kind of the. And you really get deep in like the heavenly council, the 70 gods, little G gods, you know, that God is the ruler above all BAAL and all of those that yes, they did have power. If they came and mated. The Nephilim are the offspring of that. Therefore the demons were able to go the same way Satan does. He roams the earth with Job and he goes back up. I get the sense they would have gone back up. They're going to be protected from the flood. It's the Nephilim, their offspring. That would not be. So then you go, how do you see him after? And the two theories are either Noah had some in his lineage and that would come out that way, which is probably the best explanation. But a little like some. [00:12:30] Speaker B: Are you talking some genetics in his lineage? [00:12:32] Speaker A: Yeah. Like genetically, there would have been some of that to pass on. Or it happened again where they came down and made it with the daughter's women. Again, the struggle with that one is man. Then why. Why flood the Earth if it's just going to happen again? And God knows, like man, in 20 years, this thing is, we're going to have to restart the entire process. Why would he do it to begin with? There's other things, and that's true as well. But like all of the negative. The evilness of the world, which this is, to me, the way that it reads. I think the way that Genesis 6 reads is like, yeah, that's kind of the end point is these gods came out of me. All of the thoughts of man were evil after this. And it seems like there's a big part that they play to some degree. To some degree that God is flooding the earth for that reason. If we're. I don't know, could it have happened again? Some people read Genesis 6, 4. Is that's kind of the reading of it is that, yes, they came down and made it with the daughters of men, the sons of God. [00:13:26] Speaker B: Daughters of men. [00:13:27] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I suppose that could happen. And then you have things like, what's the. The Jewish. The mission. Or the Talmud says that OG held onto the side of the ark. Have you seen that one? Oh, yeah, it's in the town. Like, where do you come up with this stuff? Like, what. What in the world? But, yeah, they survived by that. Like, okay, so what are your guys's thoughts? Sorry, that's me. [00:13:47] Speaker C: Yeah, I don't have as much of an issue thinking it happened again after, because I think that's what you're seeing in Canaan. You see the giants in Canaan. You see, that's why they were God's judgment on these people. It wasn't just Israel getting the land. They were also being sent to go in. And, you know, there were people that were supposed to be conquered, but these are the ones he's like, kill all of them. And numbers brings up that there were Nephilim in the land of that day, and that was their mission, was to wipe them out. And so when you've got legends and things like that of giants kind of all over the world, I think it did happen again. And gradually, you know, it was. It was something that was wiped out. It was. God brought punishment. And, you know, a certain point it did come to a stop, I believe. You know, obviously, I don't think that's something that's still happening today. We're also in the time period, I believe, where, you know, Satan's been bound and all the things that go with that. But to the point about demons dying in water, which I guess was the original question. Obviously you've got the pigs, you know, they go into the pigs legions. [00:14:43] Speaker B: Matthew 8, Luke 8. [00:14:44] Speaker C: Yeah. And go into the water there. And the demon that's throwing the little boy into the fire, into the water, like that's just destruction of the physical host. The demon isn't embodied, it's not killed by the water. And so, and I know it talks about it goes looking in dry places and then it comes back into it. So there's, there's something to that, but I don't think it kills demons. To the questioner's point. [00:15:09] Speaker B: Yeah, that was the only dirt. You guys covered it very well. Matthew 8:28 and Luke 8:26 is where, I'm assuming is where the commenter get talking about water killing the demons. As Jack said, it was the host, the pigs that were drowned doesn't really specifically say the demons were killed. And so yeah, this topic is always just a very fascinating one. Specifically how, because the question that does arise from if you do believe that it did happen again after the flood, well then how many times did it happen after that? And theoretically could it happen again right now? Obviously, you know, you can make the argument that, you know, once Jesus came, they couldn't anymore, but, you know, typically you do view the flood as kind of the delineation. Well, if they did it again after that, then what would prevent them from kind of just repeatedly doing it over and over again? How many times did the angels rebel? Can the angels rebel right now if they wanted to? Whole nother question that. The question that the original question did not really get into, but that's just kind of where my mind went with that. It's all very fascinating. [00:16:07] Speaker A: I do think there's something very physical about water that I don't, like you said, I don't know that it kills them. Every salvational thing dealing with water, there is absolutely something to that that like God and water go hand in hand and God or demons and water do not. So like you said, I don't think that means they're killed through water. It just means there's some correlation there. And I do think that Jesus now having all dominion, all rule and authority over all the powers and principalities, I think that's exactly what it's talking about, these 70 gods or whatever, if you want to say there's a council, if you want to just say the demons, if you want to say fallen angels, whatever you want to say, I think that's a part of him leading a captive, a host of captives, as it talks about Ephesians 4, like there's a, a beauty to this. And I think as we get into Revelation 4 and 5, that's him coming up to heaven. He's now on the throne. They're all shut up. They. They don't get to do that. They don't get. That's why I don't think. I don't really believe in demon possession, as I don't think they have the ability to converse the same way. Now, what that means. And we're not going to get into this question. It does open up to, like when we talk about, well, demons tempt us. Well, how so? Are they still around us or are they not? Can they be externally but not internally? So they can't embody us, but they can tempt us? I don't know. More questions for a different Q and A. Let's get into the next one. How do we grieve the Holy Spirit? Speaking of Ephesians, Ephesians 4:30, by sinning? Or is there more to it? Fellas? Jack, I think you're first on this one. How do we grieve the Holy Spirit? [00:17:30] Speaker C: So this works out well. This verse was in my sermon last week. And Ephesians 4:30 about grieving the Holy Spirit of God. I think in that context, it's very much about our relationship with one another, how we treat one another. And you can kind of lean on first John there about loving God but not loving your brother and things like that. But you see Jesus being grieved when the man on the Sabbath needs healing. And the Pharisees are all waiting to see, well, what's going to happen. And they're kind of waiting to trap Jesus for working on the sab. It says he was grieved and angered at them. You also have in the Old Testament, Isaiah uses this term a couple of times to talk about Israel rebelling against God. They were forsaking God, you know, kind of their spiritual adultery that grieved God. And so I think there's different ways to do it. But specifically in that context, in Ephesians, it's Christians treating each other poorly. Like the unity is such a big deal to God. So that's one facet of it. But there are more than one way to grieve God, I think is the way to notice that played out through the text. [00:18:33] Speaker B: Yeah, in the context is where I was going to go as well. There's a lot about speaking. There's a lot about verse 29, right before let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth. What is good for necessarification? Verse 31. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, evil speaking, be put away. Verse 32, Be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving one another. I do wonder. The concept of grief is interesting to me because you see God and obviously this specifically referring to the Holy Spirit, but do not grieve. The Holy Spirit of God would perfectly fall into that. There's a lot of responses to sin in the Bible as far as God goes. There's anger, obviously, there's wrath, there's jealousy. For grief to come in specifically with all those answers that Jack just gave as well. I do wonder if it's specifically when people who know better, when people who know the right thing to do and then choose not to and choose to do, you know, and which in this context would be again, treating each other poorly, not being kind to each other, not forgiving each other, because they know that they should. I don't know, just kind of thinking out loud off the cuff here. I wonder if that does play a part in the. In the grief that the Holy Spirit or that God feels when, you know, as opposed to just a simple, you know, not a simple, but a regular sin specifically done by somebody who is maybe outside of Christ or somebody who is extremely wicked. Like not maybe there's not much grief there. [00:19:52] Speaker A: There's. [00:19:53] Speaker B: There's anger there. I was having a study with somebody a couple weeks ago and somebody that, you know, I disagree with on a lot of things, and this person said, well, you know, when we sin against God, God is. God's not angry, he's just disappointed. And, you know, flatly disagree with a sitcom dad. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. The kind of classic trope there. I do think different people's sins elicit different responses from God, I guess is the way that I would put that grieving the Holy Spirit again here to me does seem to be referring to, you know, how to act toward each other, put away bitterness, put away evil speaking, forgive each other. This, this is pretty easy stuff. And, you know, don't grieve. The Holy Spirit is kind of the way that I would look at that. Joe, what thoughts do you have? [00:20:39] Speaker A: All I was going to add is two things real fast. First off, we talked about. One of my favorite verses is going back to Ephesians 2, 9 and 10 talks about, or 210 rather. For we are his workmanship created in Christ for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we would walk in them. I do think that when he puts good works in our path and we just don't, and instead we do choose everything mentioned in chapter four. I think that does grieve the Holy Spirit. The other thing is there are walk three separate times, you see, at the beginning of chapter four, verse one, walk in a manner worthy manner. Verse 17, walk no longer just Gentiles also walk in futility of their mind. And then verse one of chapter five being tears of God's love, children walk in love, he says in verse two. So there's this idea of walking. And I think when we are walking in the wrong direction, that's kind of the point that he's making is don't walk like the Gentiles. Walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you've been called. Walk in love. When you have turned kind of done the about face and are walking away from the good deeds he's put in your path, away from all of those good things, toward all of the negative things that put us back toward the Gentile futility of their mind, all of those things that grieves the Holy Spirit because he's given us a path to walk and we're choosing to walk the other way. So I think the walk kind of comes in here as well. [00:21:46] Speaker C: But that'd be. [00:21:47] Speaker A: Yeah, that'd be the only thing I'd. [00:21:48] Speaker C: Add one last thing, taking us back to Genesis 6, that it's what it says after the Nephilim, after, you know, the man was wicked and evil continually, but God was sorry he made man and was grieved in his heart. So you see the Father, Son, assuming that's the Father, Father, Son and Holy Spirit grieved at different points in the Bible. Ruby gets promoted to serve the queen of the beehive. But then she lets it go to her head. Be humble. The latest book in the Ruby's Happy Hive series teaches children about the importance of humility and how we ought to treat others with illustrations they will love and characters they will remember. All the books in the Ruby's Happy Hive series will help your children grow in godly character and teach them all about bees in the process. Look for Bee Humble, B E E Humble by Heidi Fowler on Amazon today. And check out the other books in Ruby's Happy Hive series. R U B E E Happy Hive series from Cobb Publishing. Fascinating. [00:22:44] Speaker A: Very good. [00:22:45] Speaker B: All right, next one. And I think we're going to be going to Joe first here. Our preacher recently taught in a class that Jesus as a boy made mistakes. He was adamant about that statement that Jesus made mistakes. He tried to prove that Jesus was below the quote, unquote, age of accountability when he was 12. The commenter says he'd preached before that the age of accountability is around 12 to 13. I don't know that. And this commenter again says, I don't know that I would call a child learning and quote unquote, growing in wisdom as making mistakes. Maybe semantics, maybe not growing in wisdom, obviously being a reference to Luke, chapter 2, verse 52. Jesus increasing in wisdom and stature and favor with God and men. This was after he was discovered at the temple by Joseph and Mary. Yeah, this is. This is fascinating, Joe, we'll go to you first and what thoughts you have. I mean, essentially, was Jesus a perfect child all the way through, or did he pick on his siblings? Is kind of the gist of the question here. [00:23:43] Speaker A: I think this is honestly a question about the divinity of Christ. Like, is Christ just like us? Yes and no. Yes and no. Was he attempted in every way? Yes. Was he different than us? No doubt. Yeah. He's all God too. And therefore, to me, no. The other thing is age of accountability. Okay, he says it's 12 or 13. I know people that think it's 18. Which is it? I know people that think it's 21 or 20. Right. As it goes back to those who could serve in the army, going back to Deuteronomy and such. So which is it? Where's the age of accountability? So Jesus up to 20, I suppose, could do whatever he wanted, and then he becomes a man. [00:24:17] Speaker C: Like, also, like, one day it snapped, like, oh, I can't do anything bad ever again. I've got to, like, every. [00:24:22] Speaker B: Right. That he was a perfectly normal child who, you know, talked back and disobeyed and then like a light bulb went on in his head. Yeah, like, that seems not very plausible. [00:24:31] Speaker A: It's. So I'm. He was a perfect child. No. Going back to apocryphal. Was he creating clay pigeons at 6 years old and turning them to real. No. You know, things like that. No, I don't think he was doing that. But on the other hand, he's all God, and he was all God before the Spirit came to him. That just was the miraculous, you know, going and healing, starting the ministry, the blessing of God the Father. You know, all that happening at the baptism at 30 doesn't mean that for the first 30 years, 29 years of his life, he was just sinning and doing whatever he wanted in the Spirit. Absolutely not. [00:24:59] Speaker B: Well, I'd be interested to hear the biblical case that proves that he did make mistakes, which it sounds like from the comment that that's what the. The preacher was saying, I don't think you can make a case specifically not, you know, just from the. Well, he grew in wisdom, which meant that he was corrected. And, and again, it's kind of the way that I'm taking that comment. I don't really think you can make that case. My take is I think we're all in alignment here. The difficulty is, so I tend to believe that Jesus was different from the very start, that even as a toddler, 7, 8 year old, that he was very different. That he was not, you know, talking back to his mother, that he was not, you know, beating up on his siblings or whatever it is. But that is also heavily tainted by my kind of subjective, arbitrary view of the age of accountability. I mean, there's a lot of people that hold to a hard, fast age, whether it be 12, or as Joe said, 20, 18, 16, whatever, whatever it is. And I think if you hold to that, it does make it easier to believe that maybe Jesus, by the time he hit the age of accountability, you know, he had all, you know, everything was in motion as far as him not sinning, him, you know, fully carrying out, even as a child, again, 12 or 16 or whatever the will of God. But maybe at 7 or 8, when he had not hit that hard, fast age of accountability yet there were still things that he did just like any other 8 year old. So I can see how people get to that. But again, I would disagree. But I think a lot of it does have to do with, I don't think the age of accountability is a hard, fast birthday type of thing. [00:26:33] Speaker C: This whole thing is a proxy for the discussion of original sin and accountability. Because obviously we don't have text of Jesus as a 4 year old. We don't have text of how he interacted with his siblings at seven, did he ever steal James's dump truck, things like that. With that being the case, that means you're taking your view of a child and their misbehavior and things like that and bringing it into this. And I think the standard view in the churches of Christ, you know, obviously the standard Calvinist view would be total depravity. And so they don't think Jesus is totally depraved. And the virgin birth and all the things that go into that, of course the Catholics even back that up to have the immaculate conception, which even goes one level higher. All trying to explain this thing like how could Jesus come out perfect? And it's very, you do have to walk a fine line to get a sinless, guiltless, good Jesus in this view, that doesn't make for original sin. And that's why I think it's very important that we acknowledge a bent nature. A like, kids don't come out bearing Adam's guilt, but they come out bearing Adam's qualities. We did a whole episode of who Let the Dogma on? Who Let the Dogma Out? On this, my other podcast. And so you might check that out if you want, like the deep dive on our sin nature. But we kind of have to grapple with that on a little bit of like, how could Jesus have this? How, you know, every kid messes up and is different and then is it fair? Is it fair that Jesus came in and didn't have the same struggles and tendencies we do? Well, I think he had the same shot Adam did. I don't think he had the same shot I did because I am Adam's son. Like God was directly Adam's father. God was directly Jesus's father here on earth and they got that same shot. Adam messed it up, Jesus got it right. But all of us who have descended from Adam bear the resemblance to our parents. Right? And so that is the issue at hand here. So it's a much deeper discussion that would get somebody to where they would positive view of what Jesus did at that age. I think we can say that he was not a kid who was out there hitting other kids over the head because of those, because he was good, he continued to be good. And so it's a very entangled discussion with a lot of other theological tie ins. [00:28:50] Speaker A: The struggle in that is Adam is born, quote unquote, as a, you know, he's created as an adult. So we don't have Adam the child. If Adam was a three year old. Has Adam thrown toys and things like that? You know, like, well, he'd have no parents. He's the first man. But you know what I mean? Like, that's what makes it difficult to understand this. I agree with you and I think that's a great take. That he has the same chance as Adam did, which is before the fall, and he decided to make different choices. I think you can see this, like, I think typology plays that out as you look through the different choices, the temptations of Christ and some similarities and things like that. It's just, yeah, we don't see Adam as a baby and that is what throws it around. And then you say, is it wrong for a kid to do that? Because part of it, and I've been on both sides of this before because I Used to say, we'll move on, Jack, you can read the next one. But I used to say that it's not necessarily wrong. It's a kid learning his place in the world. A kid. Yeah. Kids are inherently selfish, but that's also part of, like, who am I? How do I relate to everybody else? What are my needs? How do I get my needs met? Which would mean also that Mary would have had to be a pretty special mom to make sure his needs are met. Because otherwise. Yes, kids will cry out. Kids will do things to make sure kids. Their needs are met. And I don't think they're wrong for that, per se. It's like a kid looking for attention. Kid may do some bad things looking for attention, but that means the attention is not on them. How much can you blame the kid who doesn't know any better? So then you get into that discussion, and I don't want to go down that rabbit hole either. But it is difficult to know what constitutes a sin for a kid who's just trying to understand his place in the world, his individuality. That means Jesus must have understood it pretty much from the beginning, which is what makes him God. So. Yeah, anyway. Yeah, interesting. Yeah, you got the next room. [00:30:31] Speaker C: On to the next one. Figuring out what to do with Deuteronomy 22:24. I should have pulled that up, but it's the. You got to go ahead. [00:30:40] Speaker B: Yeah, Deuteronomy. You want me to read the whole context or just. [00:30:46] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, sorry. [00:30:48] Speaker B: Verse 22. If a man is found lying with a woman married to a husband, then both of them shall die. The man that lay with the woman and the. And the woman. So you shall put away the evil from Israel. If a young woman who is a virgin is betrothed to a husband, and a man finds her in the city and lies with her, then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city. You shall stone them with stones or stone them to death with stones. The young woman, because she did not cry out in the city, and the man, because he humbled his neighbor's wife. So you shall put away the evil from among you. That's through verse 24. [00:31:13] Speaker C: All right, so with that, it says here the woman is punished if she does not cry out. But there are several responses that people commonly have to a traumatic situation. Fight, flight, freeze and fawn. Fawn and freeze are common responses specifically to sexual abuse. So are trauma responses trainable? It doesn't make sense that it would be a death penalty for an uncontrollable instinctual response on her part. How has she done anything wrong here? And then There is verse 29, where the man who rapes her must marry her. This just seems like giving her right into his hand to do with whatever he wants. If he would rape her before marriage, the abuse will only increase after marriage when she is bound to him for life. In that case, it says specifically that they cannot divorce. She literally has no options to get away from him. I mean, very complex situation there. The trauma response being part of it. We'll turn to Joe here first on this one. What do you got? [00:31:59] Speaker A: The trauma response, I'd say in this situation, look, if somebody's being kidnapped, I don't think that's a trauma response of freeze or fond. The trauma response you typically see in sexual abuse. Unfortunately. Unfortunately, I do work with this a decent amount. When it is done in a quiet room, when it's done from somebody you trust, most of the time it is. It's done from somebody that you trust or somebody that's a family member. That's a much different situation than somebody forcibly trying to do something in public. That's not usually the fawn moment. Sometimes that's a freeze response. Most of the time, though, like in a kidnapping situation, you're going to call that out. What this is specifically speaking to is a woman who lets it have like consensual versus not. Yes, exactly. Like she's. She's consenting basically, and allowing it to happen. He's about to get into. It happens in a field and she calls out. She's not, you know, she's not responsible for that because nobody was around to save her. It seems to be like it's less about the trauma response. It's more about is she okay in letting these things happen and being taken advantage of. I do think in a kidnapping situation, it's more common for somebody to scream out because it's somebody that they don't know usually. And it's in a public place done in a forcible way. I'm not saying trauma responses don't come in, but usually that's going to be done more in private than in public. [00:33:10] Speaker B: To me, this breaks down pretty well. I was going to go ahead and I'm just going to read 25, which is immediately following that all the way through verse 27. But if a man finds a betrothed young woman in the countryside and the man forces her and lies with her. That word forces is not in that 2022 through 24 section. That just said if a Man, if a man finds her and lies with her, but verse 25, man force her in, lies there, then only the man who lay with her shall die, but she shall do nothing to the young woman. There is in the young woman no sin deserving of death. For just as when a man rises against his neighbor and kills him, even so is this matter. For he found her in the countryside, and the betrothed young woman cried out, but there was no one to save her. So to me, this breaks down, you know, it's. It's less about as you spoke to and as you spoke to Joseph's trauma response, it's less about, you know, did she make an audible sound? But whether or not it was consensual, whether or not the man was forcing himself upon the young woman, or was this, you know, something that the woman essentially did not have a problem with, that's again, 23 through 24 is seemingly describing a consensual act, thus why both of them need to be stoned. Verses 25 through 27 clearly referring to a non consensual act, thus the reason why the man is the one. The man is the only one deserving of death. And then as you continue on, because she asked about verse 29 as well, if a man finds a woman who is a virgin, who is not betrothed, and seizes her and lies with her, they are found out. So in verse 28, specifically, she used the word rape. The NIV actually also uses the word rape. Not to go Greek here. It can be overdone. That is not a correct translation of the word there in or the Hebrew. Sorry, yeah, not to go all Hebrew here. That is an incorrect translation of that word. As far as seized is what new King James has, it's the same word that is used quite a few other places for handling something or just picking something up. A lot of different references we could go to here. But that's one of those instances where once again, so 23 and 24 seem to be pretty clearly referring to consensual. 25 through 27, non consensual. And then based on the context, 28 and 29 appear to be referring to once again consensual. And then that's why they're not permitted to divorce. But Jack, what thoughts do you have? That's my reading of it based on. [00:35:30] Speaker C: Back to the trauma response thing. What you're saying, Joe, is it's not going to prohibit her from being able to cry. Because I think what we're talking about is like a Timeline here of like if somebody breaks into your house, scream. If somebody grabs a hold of you and is like, you know, dragging you to a room or whatever, like scream. The trauma response is as it happens or after it's happening, all that kind of thing, like the freeze and things like that. It doesn't happen like all of a sudden. Right. And so I think there's like that, that time period before of like, hey, you've got a chance to cry out and let people know something's wrong. And then after that it's, it's a little different. So to her question about the trauma response is that. [00:36:09] Speaker A: Let me add this real fast because I know you're going to get the other one partially. You think about how we train this with a rape whistle, with self defense classes. Yes, we do train them to scream out, we do train them to use the rape whistle. So there is a part of this that is trainable to say yes, if this is taking place, scream out, call out, gouge the eyes. You know, things like that. Like we, we do teach women to do those things. And so to that extent, yes, to some degree it is trainable. So I'll just say that as well. But Serge. [00:36:36] Speaker C: Yeah, so I mean that, that kind of again, gets back to the point you guys were making at first of like this whole thing is, did you take the opportunity available to you to let somebody know this is not consensual? You know, like that's is the separating thing. And so, yeah, this is. We don't want to overthink it. And I think that works pretty well in that sense of the way it was set up. And this is something that comes into the issue with David and Bathsheba. People always say, what's the power dynamics and all that. Like, yeah, did David rape Bathsheba? Is the question by the law? No, you can go into, yeah, he sent for her and he was the king. Could she have said no to the king and all those things? Like, yeah, that's kind of a 21st century reading of it is a little different then. But yeah, that's one of the other things we have to be careful of. These is, you know, in the MeToo age, you know, some of the good things that exposed, you know, people who are doing things they shouldn't, but a lot of, you know, over correct or over accusation things like that. And so it can lead to readings of law texts like this in Deuteronomy, Leviticus and such in, in a modern way. [00:37:48] Speaker A: Joe, let me also speak to this real fast because this is a great gotquestions.org has this. He says it is necessary to take Deuteronomy 22:28:29 together with Exodus 22:16, 16:17, which says this. If a man seduces a virgin who is not pledged to be married and sleeps with her, he must pay the bride price and she shall be his wife. These two passages cover the same situation. A man sleeps with a virgin who's not betrothed. Note that in Exodus 22, there's no hint of force or rape. There's only enticement or seduction. The penalty is he must pay the dowry and marry the girl. So I think those two do have to be taken in tandem. This Exodus 22:16 17 passage to say, yes, there's seduction. It's not a forcible thing. He's grabbing a hold of her. But it does seem to be indicating less of a rape act and more of a decisive decision on both of their parts, because the Bible clearly condemns the rape on the other side if there's nothing on the consensual end of things. So, anyway, all right, let's get to the next one. And this is a tough one. And Will, we're going to start with you on this one. How do you deal with church disappointment? This question comes mostly from the lack of elderships in the local congregation. Lack of eldership in the local congregation and in others that we have witnessed. No involvement, no shepherding. One elder has never spoken to my husband. All caps, myself or my family. We've been there over two years. He also isn't qualified. Not married a widow and was previously divorced. Immodesty is rampant, stuff like this, and nothing being said really brings us down. We know we aren't perfect and we shouldn't expect others to be, but at what point is that just an excuse? Tough question. Will, what are your thoughts? [00:39:17] Speaker B: Very tough. Yeah, this is the one. As I was. Of course, we got the questions beforehand. I was kind of preparing kind of my brief thoughts on all of them. This was the one that, to be honest, I didn't have a lot initially to put down just because that is. I mean, I heavily sympathize with whoever the person is that submitted this because there's a lot to consider there. No involvement, no shepherding an elder. That's not qualified. Kind of blatant disregard for modesty standards. And listen, I completely understand how continually trying to involve yourself in a congregation like that with people who you clearly don't seem to see the Bible the same way. Don't seem to share the same Christian worldview can be very exhausting and disappointing. I mean, that's the word used is disappointing. And so, yeah, I sympathize with you, with the person and anybody who is going through this. I think to me, the most interesting part of this question is one that we've kind of hashed out or hashed out and thrown around before, and that is at what point, because we are all pretty opposed to church hopping. At what point is it reasonable to leave a congregation? At what point is it reasonable to seek to find another congregation to go attend? Elders who you believe are qualified first of all, but also believe will shepherd your soul as well. And I don't have a firm answer on this. I'm going to answer the question under the pretense of staying at the congregation because I think that's probably the way the question was asked. But I'll let one of you guys maybe take the other angle of when do you leave as far as staying at the congregation goes? This is something we talked about on or me and Joe have an episode coming out shortly with the Gallium podcast about. It's kind of a new perspective that I've found with some of the leadership principles I've been studying. And that is just the idea of extreme ownership. Controlling what you can control, owning what you can own. It can be very easy, whether it's in a business, whether it's in a marital relationship, whether it's in a friend relationship, whether it's in a, you know, church, you know, co worker, whatever relationship to basically when other people are not holding up their end of the bargain in, in our eyes to just kind of throw up our hands and, you know, say, well, I'm going to stop trying, then, you know, they're clearly not trying. This is frustrating. I can't believe they're, they're doing this. And again, I, I, everything this person said, like, I, I, I fully sympathize, but the, the proper response and something that just takes kind of mentally training yourself is I'm going to do what I can do. I can't worry about what other people are going to do. I can't control that this elder is already installed as an elder and is not qualified. I can't control that there are people around me who choose to dress immodestly. What can I control? Well, I can maybe go talk to those people. I can maybe go out to coffee with whoever it is or the mother of whoever it is, or father or whatever it is. What can I do? Well, I can try to meet with my elders. People aren't involved. Okay, well, I can't really control that. What can I control? I can control how many people I invite over to my home. I can control, you know, and again, I'm saying all that to say like you still, that still might not get people very far. You still might have people that don't come over for dinner. The conversation with the immodest person might go terribly. The elders might say, you know, I don't really care what you have to say, we're going to keep this guy in salt as an elder. But I think that was my main answer for this, is that under the pretense of you're going to stay at the congregation and just kind of deal with the disappointment, focus on controlling what you can control. Are you opening your home? Are you contributing in Bible classes? Are you looking for ways to serve? Are you trying to maybe address head on, as difficult as it might be, the immodesty or the unqualified elder, or maybe things that aren't being, or things that are being taught that aren't super correct biblically. And once there's a peace of mind that comes with that extreme ownership of like, once, once, you know, you've done everything you can do, it's again, not that you throw up your hands then, but it's like, you know, I, I've done my part to be at peace with all men. Like I, you know, as far as it depends on me. So that's my long winded answer again. It's very tough. And a lot of this just might come down to leaving the congregation. I don't know who's next, but what, what thoughts do you guys have to, to add to that? I think probably to go to Jack next. [00:43:35] Speaker A: Jack, go for it. [00:43:36] Speaker C: This actually is probably one of the questions, topics of questions I get more than any other, you know, because I write about like the, the weakness of church leadership and just what we think of as church leadership. And I hear from people who don't have an eldership or the eldership they have is out of touch, unattached, whatever, going the wrong direction, things like that, it's really hard. It's one of those where that frustration does set in and you got to care for your family and all those considerations certainly come into it. The thing I will say is there have been situations in which I know the church needs to go a different direction. What it's doing is not ideal or whatever. I don't have the cards to fight it. And so Sometimes the answer is to move on. A lot of times it's, you got to be thinking long term, we're talking years, maybe decade or two kind of thing. I mean there's a certain point at which, hey, if there's an unqualified elder and they're not getting rid of him, he will be out of the way at some point. That's a harsh way to talk about it, but that's, it's also a biblical way to talk about it with, you know, some of the leaders you see in the Bible. Start building up your handful of cards, you know, like the, the cards you can play that, that you, you know, you're kind of looking at what you have and what else is out there. And, and the way to do that is the things Will was talking about is being active, being involved and really getting the trust of the people in the church. Knowing you've got people in your corner, knowing people there, if they know that you love them, you care about them, things like that, you're going to have some poll when you make a comment when you rock the boat a little bit, which, because nothing gets better without somebody rocking the boat, that's one of the other hard parts about this. And if you rock the boat but you don't have the cards, that just goes very poorly. If, if you've really built a rapport with the church where people realize, hey, this is somebody that cares about our souls, cares about the direction of this church is involved, they love people, they're, they're, you know, on fire for the Lord. That helps a lot. That doesn't make it easy, that doesn't make it smooth sailing, but it does help. And so kind of building up your hand and realizing that is going to come slowly. You're going to have to feed yourself, you're going to have to look for other opportunities for fellowship. We talked about a couple weeks ago, some people have to go to the conferences, go elsewhere to find like minded Christians, maybe Christians in the town nearby or at another church. Even if you're not going to leave churches, find people that you can draw encouragement from while you shore up the situation you're in. I mean there are a lot of people in the Bible in bad situations that were biding their time. I mean David spent years of his life on the run just biding his time. And you know, Nehemiah facing a really tough situation, you know, Moses, those, those long years of kind of building towards something better, it's hard. I certainly can sympathize with that. Joe. [00:46:19] Speaker A: Man, you guys covered it really well. The only other thing I'd add is just pray lots. Yes, pray for the local congregation. Pray for the right words and the right time, the right opportunity to confront your elders or to confront the the struggles of the congregation. Or pray that God leads you in the way he would have you go. Sometimes it is going to be just waiting it out and other times it's going to be getting up and moving and going and doing what's best for your family. By and large, I'm with them. I'd stick it out and make sure you've exhausted all options. On the other hand, lots of prayer can help because it'll bring you peace. So just be in prayer. I think this is a time when fasting should be involved. Just that ultra supercharged prayer of man. God help me to know what to do, whether I need to leave or stay. So that's all I'd add. But you guys handled it well. [00:47:05] Speaker C: Hey guys, Jack Wilke here. I wanted to tell you about our seminars at Focus Press. Each of us involved in the work have a series of lessons that we have prepared to encourage churches to help you understand the Word better, how to navigate this culture. We cover a wide range of topics from things like evolution and apologetics to cultural issues to the family to the godly young men. Kind of content that Joe and will do to church Reset, which is of course my passion to schedule one of us. Whether Dr. Brad Harab will harab Joe Wilkie or me. Jack Wilke, reach out to [email protected] if you'd like to talk to me or if you'd like to talk to one of the others. I'll pass your information along to them. We'd love to come and encourage your church and put on one of our Focus Press seminars. [00:47:51] Speaker B: All right, got a couple more to get to. This commenter says we drain kids mentally, physically and emotionally by keeping them just to set the context so everybody knows we're talking about talking about church camp and kind of culture of church camp. Baptisms says we drain kids mentally, physically and emotionally by keeping them up until 1am Then we give them super force fed baptism lessons every day for a whole week when they aren't thinking clearly. So you have a bunch of nine year olds getting baptized without understanding what sin even is. No studying with them, just let's get it done only to find out years later they all get re baptized in their 30s. I'm really disappointed in the way the church has created this camp culture of baptisms. So, yeah, not. Not really a question in there. I certainly have a take, but I went first last time. I don't. Joe, I do believe I clicked on. [00:48:36] Speaker C: There because the question I. Sorry, I kind of cut and pasted here. The question was, have you guys talked about church camp? And we have done a couple of episodes where we touched on church camp, but this spec angle of it, we didn't. When I went back and looked, we didn't spend a lot of time on was the baptisms and the validity of the baptisms, the high pressure baptism, things like that. I know a lot of people get baptized at camp and come back around and do it later because they have those questions. They feel like I, I don't know if I was in my right mind that week. It was just such an emotional high, which is, you know, all part and parcel of the camp experience. And so high pressure baptisms at camp. There's. I'm not wanting to like, assign motives or anything like that, but there, there is a peer pressure thing. There is a, hey, this would be a great place for me to get baptized. Everyone around is here and, and you know, like, there's, it's, it's such a spotlight of who, you know, who's going to be next kind of thing. And like, that's not a healthy way to do it. Other people would say that's great. You know, as long as we follow up, that's. That's a great way to get. I don't think it is. And I think the question makes a great point here to raise the question about what do we do with camp baptisms? How do we. Is this something we should be doing? And I really think that should be dialed back a lot, the high pressure and things like that. Our conclusion on the camp episodes was, have fun. Yeah, you're going to learn your Bible a little better. There's going to be some spiritual experiences. Do not turn this into your understanding of the spiritual life. And that I think includes the baptism part of it. [00:50:11] Speaker A: This is a tough one because Acts is not normative in a lot of ways. But you see this next where like, it's a very spur of the moment thing, the flippy in jailer Acts two, you know, the conversions, there seems to almost be an emotional appeal in some of these things. And so the one hand you could say the emotional appeal is not always wrong. On the other hand, I'd be much more comfortable with, hey, let's put this off for just a second. That's where everybody goes, well, what if they died? On the way back and God knows the heart. What if we put this off until we're back around your church family? We're back around your family with your, your parents, assuming that, you know, the relationship is good. I'd love to study with you a little bit more. Study with the preacher when you get home. Study with your parents. Here's some key questions that I want just as I'm thinking out loud, like, I think you can put it off for a second to see or at least have something like some sort of sheet. I had to fill this out when I went. The evangelist at Bear Valley asked me questions like, do you know this? Do you know that? What about this? And I had the right answers on these things. And so it's kind of like, yeah, I think you're ready. My buddy who was going to go get baptized did not flat out said, I don't think he's ready. He didn't get baptized. So it's not that he got to the say. It was more of judging by your answers. It shows you don't really have a full understanding of what you're about to do and the decision you're making and what this means going forward. So even implementing something like that in camp, if you want to get baptized, why are you doing this? Having them write that down, that's a key piece. Can you adequately say why you want to do this? Because that would eliminate so many of these second guessing in a decade. Man, was my heart in the right place? Like, got it right here. This is what I understood at the time. This is why I was doing it. And if you see a kid that's kind of like, I don't know, I just, I'm really caught up in the moment. Not that they're going to say this, but you can tell they're really caught up in the moment. Their three buddies were just baptized, you know, and those are more of the answers or kind of the leanings. Then, yes. I think the church counselors or whatever you want to say, camp counselors need to take a second look at that and say, maybe we need to study a little bit more on that. So that would be my only thing is, I don't know that I like necessarily kicking it down the road when they get home, having a questionnaire and having something that they could fill out at camp for. Is this legit? I would be all in favor of that because this is kind of an issue. Will, what are your thoughts? [00:52:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't think I would. I mostly agree. I think it sets A bad precedent to basically say, well, just wait till you get home, you know, pick this up with your parents or the preacher when we get home. Where I would agree largely is force feeding the baptism lessons and really, really adding to the emotional appeal. Obviously the spiritual high thing that we've talked about with camp before is somewhat unavoidable, but I do think you can kind of fan the flames a bit with the type of lessons that are preached and, you know, the, the, you know, again, just the, the stream of people that come forward. I, I think if it was me creating the perfect world as I see it, it would be if somebody comes forward to baptized get, there is a certain amount of study that takes place, but it would be at the camp, you know, later that night, you know, specifically. If the person seems pretty intent that they want to get baptized. I've always said that's pretty good sign. But maybe we're not just going to baptize you at the drop of a hat. It's going to be, you know, let's take the, the counselors or whoever the, you know, if the minister's there, whatever it is, we're going to study with you. I want to know why you're getting baptized. I mean, if that. Again, that's just me. I would never feel comfortable baptizing anybody who I wasn't sure was getting baptized for the right reasons. But to me, my overall take here, and so I guess the first thing I'll say, Joe, is like, I do agree that we need to be a little more cautious. I don't know that I would say, well, wait four more days until you get home and then we'll talk about it. I think I would try to do it as quick as possible just to determine what their level of understanding is. My overall take, though, is that I would agree with this entire comment that this is a serious problem. But my response would be, I don't think this is just a camp specific thing. I don't think this is a problem. I think it is a symptom of a much larger problem that I've spoken about before, and I'm sure you guys have as well, and that is the Church of Christ over emphasis on our baptism stats, our baptism numbers. I think this church camp thing is a symptom of that larger issue. There's a. Sports fans might not get this, but there's two quarterbacks that actually still play in the NFL, but who are on the back nine, so to speak. In fact, they're on hole 17 or 18. Russell Wilson and Aaron Rodgers, great players in their prime. They were last couple years have been catching a lot of heat because what you see them do at is they will not turn the ball over a lot. They won't throw a lot of interceptions, they won't fumble the ball a lot. But in Russell Wilson's case, what he was doing instead of trying to make a play, he would just take a sack because he didn't. He was protecting his stats is what he was doing. Rogers has been accused of the same thing, not wanting to throw interceptions and kind of boost his touchdown to interception ratio. And so he just throw the ball out of bounds instead of trying to make a play. And the point that the sports commentators are making is they're just trying to boost and make their stats look better and it's costing their team. Strange analogy to make but it's kind of the way that I see a lot of the way that we do it with conversions, with baptism. We got to boost those baptism stats, we got to boost those baptism numbers as much as possible. The studying afterward, the discipleship that we talked about before as that's not quite as important because again, like I would agree once again, I agree fully. This is a camp specific issue. But I also think this is an issue that you see on short term mission trips. I also think you see this at gospel meetings with four hellfire and brimstone sermons in a row that are appealing to the emotional. I think you see it on evangelistic campaigns. I think again my overall take is that this is a symptom of the much larger problem which is we are padding our baptism stats at the expense of the overall spiritual health of the individual. Again similar to the way Rogers and Wilson were protecting their stats to the detriment of their team. So those are kind of my my thoughts. I was curious, I know you've already talked, but I was curious kind of to get yalls take on that as a bigger issue because again, I see the exact same thing at these gospel meetings and short term mission trips. And it seems pretty common. [00:56:13] Speaker A: What you're going to get back is people that are like, well then you don't want any baptisms. You know, you're what, do you just don't want people to be baptized? Like. No, I agree with your point. I don't think that's the point. It is man. It seems like one of the only ways that we can get people in the water and en masse is getting up the emotion, really bringing it up as much as possible. And I think there are Again, it happens in acts, but there are better ways to do it. Jack, I am curious your thoughts on that. I would push back a little bit on the parenting, though, the parenting thing, though, because I know my parents. I think your parents probably did the same thing. How many times do parents kick the can down the road to see if the kid's actually serious? Like, I. It was not the first night I came to mom and dad, if I want to get baptized, let's do it. So hop in the car. It was like, what do you think about that? Let's sleep on this. Let's think about it for a little while. I want to study this with you. I want to know that, you know. And so we had actually done a little study. If they were at home, that would be very normal. I don't think if your kid came to you on some random night, they haven't talked to you at all about this. They haven't thought about it. And then it's like, well, let's just go do it. They must know most, at least in my experience, most parents were going, right. But I'm saying if it was at home, we would kick the can down the road. The road by three, four days, make sure that they're, that we're paying attention, make sure we've done the study, make sure that we ask all the right questions. The kids still can't sleep three nights in. It's like, let's do it at camp. It's like, let's get him in the water. Well, hold on, let's. But because the parents have that judgment, to know their kids, emotional well being, to know their kids, you know, spiritual health, whether they've been engaged in church or not. Camp counselors don't know that. They don't know that this kid's been playing Pokemon in the back for, you know, that he hasn't paid attention to one sermon he's ever been to. Like, they have no idea of the heart. And the kid is getting really caught up in the moment. Parents know that. I want the parents to be involved to the best of their ability. They should know that. Yeah, I want the parents to be involved to the best of the ability. When you have a younger kid, he's 16, 17, 18, that's different. But when you have a younger kid making the biggest decision of his life and it's apart from his parents, I'm not as keen on that. I don't think his parents should kind of be on the outside of it. Just because camp counselors called it a day they don't know what this kid's like at home. They don't know what he's been like at church. Like there's so many other factors to this, in my opinion. So that's all I'd say to that. [00:58:16] Speaker B: Well, just to respond, I, I think I am fundamentally viewing it from the perspective of a 15 year old and higher as we've had our age of accountability. [00:58:23] Speaker A: Sure, sure. [00:58:23] Speaker B: Like your average 11, 12 year old. Again, as I've said, I think that's too young to be baptizing people. I think if you have a, to have a 15 or 16 year old come forward and I'm the minister, know the kid. But maybe not super well. I think you can know fairly soon. And again, maybe it's not that night, but maybe you study into the night, maybe you study the next morning. You can know within a couple hours of a Bible study is this person ready or not. And I would just be very fearful of the precedent to say again, let's say you sit down and I'm not saying rush him in the water quick again, that was my whole point is I feel like we do that quickly. [00:58:53] Speaker A: Sure, sure. [00:58:54] Speaker B: But for, you know, again, let's say I study with that 16 year old. He seems to know pretty clearly that, you know, why he's getting baptized, what the purpose of it is for. I would be fearful of the President to say, well, let's just wait until three, three more days until you get home. And then to me, that feels like a baptism Sunday type thing that the denominations do. I know it's not exactly the same. [00:59:15] Speaker A: But I know what you're saying. Precedent wise, I feel a little better. 16, 17, 18, on the other hand, then you start wondering, okay, if he hasn't already been asking about baptism up to 16, 17, 18, what's taking him so long? And is this the emotion, the thing that's kind of pushing him over the edge here? Because most of the kids in Church of Christ are already asking their parents, 12, 13, we've already done the episode. I think all of us are in agreement that, yes, waiting a little longer, but they already are going to be having these conversations. 12, 13, 14, if this is the first time a kid's bringing it up at 16, then that's questions as well. But Jack, sorry, we're going back and forth on this. What are your thoughts? And, and on Will's. I think Will's great first point on the. Or maybe second point on that. So we may, we may squabble a tad bit on this One. But I think overarching his points. Yeah. What are your thoughts? [00:59:57] Speaker C: It's just a lot easier to get support for anything when you can put numbers on it. Oh, man. We had 12 kids get baptized this week. What a great work the church is doing. Like, okay, you know, let's. Let's see the follow up on that. But to the other question, I would like to see, like, how much changes if it's a low pressure situation, because I think you got. You're onto something there a little bit, Joe. Of like, an older kid who's been in church every single week and hasn't felt compelled. Why do they feel compelled right now? You know, in this week? Again, they're wired, they're tired. There are all those things that are going on with camp. There's the emotion, there's the peer pressure. There might be high pressure from the camp. And then all of a sudden, yeah, now's the time. Like, you know, and. And honestly, maybe a little more pressure at a congregational level, you know, so, like, in. In day to day life, in, hey, you know What? You're. You're 14, 15 years old. You thought, like, if you feel like that's where you are as a church, and I know some parents are very, like, hands off on that, then sometimes the kid just never gets baptized. Like, at a certain point. Let's have that conversation as more of regular life where, you know, versus the. All right, this is kind of our. It's almost like a sales funnel. Like, we're gonna funnel them towards this thing. And this is where we close is all right. At camp. And I've known people who are like, you know, you're talking about the scheduled baptism thing. I've known kids who are like, you know, I've been thinking about getting baptized. Baptized. And, you know, camp's coming up, so I'll probably do it then. Like, I feel like I'm gonna be ready about the time camp. Like, that's kind of. [01:01:24] Speaker B: Well, I don't condone that either. [01:01:25] Speaker A: No. [01:01:25] Speaker C: And I'm not saying, but like, in. In either sense, if you take the pressure, if you take kind of the, I don't know, extra. Those baptisms have an extra aura to them, and if you kind of take that away, I think maybe this levels itself out a bit. [01:01:39] Speaker B: So would you make that same application then to the gospel meetings and the mission trips? [01:01:43] Speaker C: Yeah, no, I think. I mean, the tent meeting thing. I know people can point to the numbers. They always point to the numbers. We've talked about the invitation before and, like, the history behind that and just how manipulative it is. And I remember talking to a guy on the first iteration of the Think Deeper podcast, and he was telling about all these baptisms and the soul winners workshop, and we baptized 50 people last year. How many of them are still coming to church? 2. Again, you've got your sales funnel and you've got your number. Yeah, but, like, what are we even doing here? And so, yeah, I don't love that part of it. So, yeah, I think the high pressure. [01:02:23] Speaker A: The. [01:02:23] Speaker C: The bringing it all to a moment at the end of the sermon. Like, man, if the person. And I've seen this one, too, Somebody walked in, they're getting baptized today right now. The water's right there. Well, we're going to go through the service. We're going to have the sermon. When they ask, you know, they. Everyone stand and sing, then they're going to go forward. Why? And so, like, rethinking that on all of these levels would probably help. And I know sometimes people have genuinely been affected by a sermon in the moment and want to go get baptized. I feel like that's a little rarer than the. We're building toward this and funneling them that direction. We got to move on to the next one. Joe, you have any final thoughts on that? [01:02:57] Speaker A: No, no, It's. It's a tough situation because I see both sides and I see what will saying, like, man, if somebody's ready, they're ready. It's just, man, we're putting them in situations where it's really difficult to determine what is what. So, yeah, that's good thoughts. [01:03:10] Speaker C: Very interesting question. I appreciate them sending that one in. All right, whoever has the last one, we're down to one. [01:03:16] Speaker A: I'll read the last one. And whoever wants to or will. Maybe it's your turn. [01:03:19] Speaker C: I think around to me, so I'll go ahead and grab it. Joseph, she said, thank you for all you do. I have a question, potentially for the Q and A. I'm in a relation with the guy. The guy. We've been together for about nine or 10 months. He attends a denominational church and does not believe in baptism for the remission of sins. We've been studying together since December. He attends my church with me and my weekly Bible studies. In short, how long should you study with someone you're dating before deciding you should move on? I know I will not marry someone with different beliefs. How long should a baptized Christian study with someone before moving on? I'll be 25 this month, and don't want to waste my time. I want a family and kids. And I'm seeking advice. I certainly am sympathetic to that. Got married almost 27 myself. And yeah, I mean, you just kind of feel the years going by. That's. And if you feel like you've got somebody who's a real prospect. And this is different than what we talked about last week of the woman, like spiritually educating the man, like from zero to now you're a Christian. This is a guy that has his faith and all that. So a different angle for it this week. So what do you guys think about this one? [01:04:16] Speaker A: Don't nod to me. Will go for it. [01:04:19] Speaker B: That's. [01:04:19] Speaker A: No, this is a man. You know, we talked about last week in our episode of not being uniquely yoked. We got to be very careful on that. And you, you do speak to that of, you know, not wanting to get married to somebody like that. And I do believe, as Jack said, I do think it's different. I would like to know where his heart is surrounding baptism. Is it a hard no or is it like, okay, that's interesting. You know, is he willing to study it? [01:04:41] Speaker B: Going to change his mind? [01:04:42] Speaker A: Correct. Like, is he willing to change it all or to study it further or to come to a different understanding of anything, or is it all. I've got it locked down. Because my guess, if you're 25, he's probably somewhere in that range. He does not have it all figured out, nor does the 80 year old or me or anybody else. Is he open to. Could be off on that. I'm curious to know your thoughts. Why do you think that that to me is the biggest thing. Is, is his heart in a place to ask why do you think that? Tell me more or is it. Nope, I already know it. And yeah, I would say keep going. If he's really in the. You can tell he's got a heart for God, he's seeking, he's asking the right questions. You know, he does want to know your side of it. And maybe he studied it and said, man, I don't see it. And then we can, you can take it to your dad or to, you know, somebody else and say, I'd love for you to study with somebody else and see how he handles it, man to man. Does it get combative? You know, is he only just treating you well? There's other ways to handle this. I think those are my initial thoughts on it. [01:05:35] Speaker B: Yeah. My answer with the question of, you know, how long should you study with someone before or someone you're Dating before you decide to move on. To me it is less of a time factor and more so of just answering that question that Joe brought up. Or is this person willing to change their mind? Does this person have a moldable heart? Is kind of the way I generally refer to it. But I feel like you can know that fairly quickly. You know, not to put a time frame on it, but like if you've been studying with somebody for a couple months, it sounds like specifically the, the topic at hand is baptism. Well, you can get through most of the, you know, verses and kind of scriptural concepts surrounding baptism in what a handful of hour long studies call it to be a little bit liberal. Six hours of Bible study. And so my answer, and I know everybody's different, different for every person. Everybody's religious background is different. I think you can know fairly quickly within the study is this person willing to change? And as difficult as it is, I mean, this person says, you know, I don't want to waste my time. I think that's a very noble thing to, to say. If you can see that they're not, they're pretty hard nosed, they're not really willing to budge on much. If it was me and certainly if it was my daughter, I would say we're going to probably cut bait here. We're going to, you know, move on. And that might sound harsh, but it's just too risky in my opinion. It's just far too to draw on the episode from last week. You're playing with too much fire. You know, if you're fundamentally viewing the Bible and salvation and justification different from the person that you're going to be bonded to for the rest of your life, I just find that to be a little bit too risky. And so again, my answer would be it's less of a time thing and just more of like over the course of again, just several studies. If it is mainly baptism you're discussing and studying, is this person willing to change? Are they coming around? Are they seeding some ground like, okay, I see that, that does make sense, but what about this? And then you maybe address that. All studies go differently. I understand that. But again, I think somebody's outlook and attitude towards, you know, well, you know, this is the way I've always taught. My parents taught me this. My, you know, I've got family members who believe this and they've already passed away. So I'm not going to change my mind on it. You can determine that fairly quickly would be kind of be my answer. So Jack, I'm Curious what you have to say to that. [01:07:49] Speaker C: The thing that stood out to me is that he's attending church with her and her Bible studies. And so there's a degree to which he's kind of come over her direction. Like he's not holding on his, no, I'm going to my church where they teach these things and these beliefs. He's cool coming that far, but like he's not going to agree to it. Well, it's like, so he's kind of, we're honestly at the point where the ball's in his court. Like, are you, Aren't you? And he feels like he's very much riding the fence because it's a convenient kind of thing. On the other hand, putting down the ultimatum of like, well, you've got to agree to baptism for the remission of sins or else this thing's over. As we talked about, that might not be the, the best way to handle that either. So I think your advice is good of like, all right, we're coming to the point where this decision needs to be made on this. Let's study, let's figure out what your hang ups are and all that. So yeah, not much more to add on that. But it is interesting that he's attending with her and so I don't know what to do. Our heart goes out. You know, if it's what the Lord wants, we hope it works out. We hope he kind of can see the light in the scriptures and if not, we hope you get a clear answer soon enough to move on and go a different direction. [01:09:03] Speaker B: I don't want to broach ground when we're already what, an hour and 10 minutes into the episode. But the interesting question is one that we discussed in the deep end that the, that our regular listeners did not get a chance to hear for last week and that is, let's say they do get baptized. Should you just dive headfirst right into marriage or should there be a bit of a time frame to kind of determine the. Sounds terrible to say, but legitimacy of the conversion because you do see people who will get married or who will get baptized just for the sake of, well, it's what my fiance. Fiance wants me to do or it's what my, my marriage prospect wants me to do. So I'll just go ahead and do it two or three years down the road that that conversion was not, you know, the heart was not there. Heart is not there. So again, not necessarily asking Yalls opinion on that, but I think that's also an interesting aspect of Just this. This whole concept and not really in the question, but it's difficult. [01:09:52] Speaker A: The fact that he's already, as Jack spoke to, already going to her church, already does have some level of faith, you know, in his denomination. He's not coming into, like, wow, who is Jesus? You know, he already knows these things. There's. I think it's a little bit lesser on that, but I agree. Yeah, there's. There's certainly a man I hate anytime an ultimatum is involved of I won't marry you until, or I won't get engaged until, because then it's like, okay, formality. Yeah, let's just do it. Because I guess I should like, to the best of your ability, I keep any ultimatum away and try to kick the can down the road until you've really been able to nail down. Is this. Does he have a multiple heart? Is all I'd say, because that really forces people's hands. And then it feels like you'll never fully know whether it's legitimate or not. And other than, like, way down the line when you can tell it's really taken. [01:10:40] Speaker C: I'm gonna add this. I like what you guys said about bringing, you know, whether it's her dad or, you know, a man. A man at the church or whatever. If he's coming to church, he's obviously, he's gonna know maybe the minister or some of the elders he's met, some of the guys there, have them handle this. Have them be the ones offering the study maybe. So he doesn't realize. So it's not being offered as an ultimatum, but you can kind of from a distance make it that, like, they're gatekeeping for you and like, hey, they're studying with him and, man, he's just not coming around. Then he's not doing it with you over his shoulder. But, you know, there. There's the opportunity for him to make that decision kind of separately from you and if. If he's not coming to that. So, yeah, Lord willing, the men in the church can. You can enlist their help and. And that's why community is so important in things like this, in marriage and in leaning on each other for support and guidance and help and all those things. So great questions this week. That's all we had. As always, we'll have a deep end. If you guys have spinoff questions to the questions on Focus plus, you can go ahead and get those in FocusPress.org plus join us over there. Any final thoughts from you guys? [01:11:47] Speaker B: Appreciate all the submissions. [01:11:48] Speaker C: Yeah, thank you so much. We were kind of long overdue, so obviously makes it for a bit of a longer episode. But we appreciate everyone sending them in and we'll talk to you guys on the next one. Hey guys, Jack Wilke 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, the best way to do so is to go to focuspress.org donate that's focuspress.org donate thanks again for listening.