Episode Transcript
[00:00:12] Speaker A: Are we pushing anything for this one? I feel like there was something we were supposed to or something we were going to last week.
How do you feel about, hey, it's summertime.
This is when a lot of families can kind of get disconnected from God. And so pushing wills, Devo family, Devo guide and pushing 365. We have a couple things, you know, specific to help families just get a little Bible in each day.
[00:00:47] Speaker B: We know that the summer teen Devos. Keep them, keep, keep them rolling or whatever. So there you go. All right. Why don't you lead it?
[00:00:56] Speaker A: Okay.
I think I led last time, didn't I?
[00:01:03] Speaker B: Yeah, I guess I haven't a while. I can do it.
[00:01:05] Speaker A: Yeah, go for it. Go for it.
[00:01:09] Speaker B: Welcome to think Deeper podcast presented by Focus Press. Jack Wilkie here with you once again with Joe Wilkie. Will harab. And this week we're talking about what you can and can't bind. We're talking about the broad brush. We're talking about is it a sin or is it not a sin? One of my favorite topics. So this is a good one. We'll put together the outline, so I'm excited to get to it. First, I want to tell you about our devotional books. Summer family can get disconnected. There's a million events, and so that's something that we've really been trying to do over the last few years, is give more material to ground you and your kids in the word. Will did the family worship guide a couple years ago. Just takes you through a ten to 15 minutes a night reading and prayer and song and just setting your family up for the devo. We also have our teen boy and girl Devos. Prove yourself a man and fearfully and wonderfully made. So if your kids are coming back from a camp or just something like that, where they're, they're really spiritually charged up, things like that are really good to help them keep it going. And then, of course, on focus. Plus every single day we have devotionals. We are going straight through the Bible. Uh, we are into the middle of Leviticus, which, uh, might sound boring. I think we've, we found some really good stuff for daily Devos there in the book of Leviticus. Uh, making it not boring, making it to where, uh, you can get something out of even the parts of the Bible you might usually want to skip. So check that out. Focuspress.org plus. Or on the Focus press store. You can look for our devotional books. But that's all we got to tell you about today. Let's go ahead and get to the episode. And will, if you want to just jump us into what we're going to talk about tonight or this after what it's Monday afternoon is when this comes out. We're recording tonight. This afternoon is when people hear it. So do with that what you will. For sure.
[00:02:48] Speaker C: For, for sure. So this is a passion area of ours, for sure. And it's one of those things that we're recording it early. I'm not really sure what Jack's going to title it, but kind of good, better, best is what we've got as the, the heading, the topic for this episode. So what we got at the top of our outline, and so we're going to be flushing that out here in the first few minutes. But it's a level or it's a style, not even a style, a type of preaching slash teaching that we firmly believe the church needs to do a much better job of putting to use, do a much better job of communicating as far as the leadership structures in the church, elders, ministers, preachers, communicating that to the rest of the congregation.
We see a huge need for this, and thus the reason for this episode.
To be honest, it feels like a lot of christians don't really know how to live as christians in this life.
They don't really know how to handle or how to tackle the, the obstacles, the things that the world is throwing at them. I think they, you know, they probably know how to handle the big stuff again. They know homosexuality is wrong. They know what standard doctrines they're supposed to uphold. They know they're not supposed to use instruments. They know that women really shouldn't be getting up there and preaching. They know the steps of salvation. They know the big stuff, so to speak. It's the, the things that they go through on a, you know, day to day basis, a week to week basis. You know, things that might present a huge threat to their faith or their kids faith that they don't really know how to, to handle. They don't really know how to answer. And the reason for that is because we don't employ this good, better, best level of teaching in the church.
What churches and pulpits are currently giving most christians is, to put it simply, a very watered down version of Christianity that we only teach things that are bindable. We only teach, again, the, the hard and fast doctrines that we've recited a thousand times. And everything else is pretty much every man for himself. Need to know how to raise your kids? Yeah, I don't really have much for, you need to know whether your kids should be going to prom or doing all these other things with their boyfriend girlfriend. Yeah, I don't really have much for you. Can't really bind that. I need to know what clothes your kids can wear. Yeah, I don't really have much for. You need to know what shows and movies and music you can watch. Yeah, don't really have much for you there either. Um, but I, you know, we, we've got the, the bindable stuff, we've got the plan of salvation, we got all these things. So we're at the point now where, again, most christian families don't really have any answers. They don't really have any solutions for how to deal with the modern issues of, uh, you know, of today's world or society. Kids, you know, challenged with pronouns. How do you, you know, should you stick technology in front of kids faces at age five, six? Like, these are questions that so many people have, and churches and pulpits are not giving them the answers. Not giving them the answers. And again, in the format of this, what's good, what's better, and what's best, it's, well, we can't really bind it, so we're just going to completely stay away from it whatsoever. Uh, we're literally to the point where if you ask a average church goer, what does it mean to be a Christian? I'd be intrigued to find out what's their answer going to be? Again, for most people, it's, they were baptized and they don't use instruments in worship. That's pretty much it. Uh, you know, they show up to church and, you know, they don't, they don't cheat on their spouse, they don't kill anybody. That's about it, guys. I mean, I'm kind of trying to lay out the problem here before we obviously get to what, why we feel like there's a huge need for this good, better, best preaching, what we mean by that. But hopefully I've painted the picture of, it's not anything that we haven't talked about before, but again, it feels like we have so many christians who are just looking around going, I don't know what to do with all this stuff. I have no idea how to live as a Christian in this world. All I'm getting from my pulpits, all I'm getting from my church leaders are, again, the quote unquote bindable stuff and nothing else. What would you guys have to add to that?
[00:06:35] Speaker A: Yeah, I think people are starving for it. To make your point. You know, they're starving for something. I think the church has done a very good job of separating why we're different from denominations and a very poor job of why we're different from the world. And I think that's kind of the crux of the issue here, is a lot of what's discussed from the pulpit. It's play the hits. It's, as you talked about, the intro music. Why we don't use women in worship. Okay, that's great. And that's why I'm not Baptist. Sure. But why is. Why should I not become, I don't know, eastern religion is, you know, coming back around and post modernism and just all orthodox that we're getting orthodoxy, wiccan, things like that, and druidism, like those things are coming back in, and they're. They're just gobbling up our kids. Our kids are. Are leaving in droves for all of these ridiculous things. Why? Because the only thing we ever wanted to do is play the hits, and they were hungry for more. We never gave it to them. And there's a lot of parents going, what? Man, I wish I had known these things. Yeah, well, your preacher is failing you. The church is failing you. The elders are failing you because they're really afraid people are going to leave. They're really afraid that if they do, what we're advocating for today is we're about to get into that. They will lose people. And the reality is you will. You will lose people when you start talking about the nitty gritty, when you start talking about the good, better, best approach, because you can't bind that well, we can't bind it, but it's wise. It's proverbs. We're going to get into these things. So I don't want to, you know, spoil everything, but, like, yes, it's. It's the proverbs. It's getting into what is wise. You will lose people. And elders need to back preachers who are willing to get up and say the difficult thing. Willing to get up and say, we should boycott Disney boy. I mean, you can't say those things from the average pulpit because so and so's family goes to Disney World 24 times a year. So we don't want to lose their support. We don't want to lose them as members. Okay, so then we don't say anything. We'll just go back to playing the hits. We'll go back to baptism and instrumental music and women's roles and things like that, which we all understand, and we go nowhere. Jack, any other thoughts before we get into it?
[00:08:29] Speaker C: Jeff?
[00:08:29] Speaker B: Yeah, I said right at the top that this is one of my favorite subjects. And so I want to emphasize how big of a deal this episode is, like how much of a paradigm shift this is from the way it is done, the way we think, the way we process things to the way we should. And so in a lot of congregations, a lot of Christians, what we're telling you in this next hour is change your thinking, change the way you approach the entire Bible. Because the standard way we're talking about is to approach the Bible as a legal code book. And you'll see the preaching like this. Well, we do this, psalm 44, Isaiah seven, Galatians, two, three, and they'll throw 28 scriptures on it. Those things are important. You need to have scriptures. But the Bible is not a legal code book. It is, uh, it has those things in there, but it's also a story. It's, it's telling you who to become as a person, not a list of rules to keep. And when you look at it as a list of rules to keep, you do exactly what you guys are saying. What can we bind it? You know, Joe brought up Disney. Well, you're not going to find a verse there says you can't go to Disney or that you got a boycott, a company or the. And so, no, you can't say that. Well, why not? Let's look at the principles that are there. And can we say these things based on the principles? And you can disagree with principles. We, you can't disagree with the commandment. Okay, so when the Bible says, thou shalt not commit adultery, it's black and white. It's black and white, you know, well, what about, you know, homeschool or some of the things we talk about on this podcast? No, you can't bind that. And so a lot of people take that as well. You can't.
It's not, there's no command there, so we just shouldn't talk about it. Well, hold on. What principles do we have to work on and do the principles, as you're saying, do they lead us to a good, better best? Like, hey, this is the best way to live out the principles we have in scriptures? Or do we fall back on that? Because what you're talking about of churches, especially leaders and elders, preachers, giving people of this is very much a, and as a former recovering libertarian myself, you kind of look at things and just say, man, leave people alone. Let people live their lives. Let people make decisions for themselves. And there's a church leadership thing of that, of like, we'll give you, the things you have to do, the commands, the.
[00:10:32] Speaker C: But everything else is up to you.
[00:10:33] Speaker B: Everything else is up to you. Well, again, you look, four years ago, there's a reason why libertarian had libertarianism politically had a mass exodus, is when you saw COVID, you looked and go, people need leaders. People need help. People need guidance.
[00:10:47] Speaker A: They're looking for it.
[00:10:47] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, they're begging for it. And the same is true in churches, is people need guidance. Now, a lot of them aren't going to be able to stomach the teaching, which is exactly what Paul told Timothy in two, Timothy four about the itching ears. They're going to be able to stomach it. When you're trying to give them guidance, they think they know what they're doing, but you've got to give them the guidance. And that's not just we'll preach the commands and let them figure out the rest. No, it's teach them how to see the world as a Christian. And so what we're talking about here is an entirely different way of seeing the Bible than it typically is.
[00:11:16] Speaker C: Because what I would say again, just before we really dive in, is the way you just phrased it, Jack, how to see the world as a Christian. Be honest for a second with yourself. How many people who sit in the church building on Sunday morning don't see the world any differently than somebody who's not a Christian? They don't see the world any differently. Again, every, they look, they see through the exact same worldly lens. They see through the exact same kind of self, self indulgent lens. That's exactly right. Is how do I see the world as a Christian? How do I see the world as somebody who's trying to be Christ like? You can't get to that point of consistently asking that question and answering that question in only like four categories of your life. Again, my, maybe my worship attendance, maybe again, the way I was saved, what worship we use, it pertains to so much more than that. Again, every aspect of your life. And hopefully, if you're a longtime listener, hopefully you've, you've picked up on that as we've done multiple episodes on this kind of thing before, or at least that, you know, there's been threads of it throughout every episode we've done that. The reign of Christ is over. Christ reigns over every aspect of your life. Again, the way you parent, what shows you watch, who you choose to boycott, what you choose to, to do with disciplining your kids. Like, we're going to get into a lot of these specific examples later on. But again, I would challenge every single listener to look around your congregation, especially if you're at a more sizable congregation.
You're telling me that every single person there sees things through the lens of how am I going to be more Christ like, see things through the lens of being a Christian in today's world? So many people don't.
[00:12:49] Speaker A: Well, it's to your, your guys's point, mom and dad really hit hard on our homeschooling. Mom bought so much curriculum on worldview, and I remember at the time kind of thinking like, this is weird, and, you know, doing Francis Schaeffer and Jeff Myers stuff, and why is worldview that important? And turns out that's pretty much the most important thing that we learned in our homeschooling. And I know your mom did the same, your mom and dad, you learn how to get the worldview. And this is why I'm such a big advocate in all of my therapy and whatnot. I'm not just going to tell you what to do and how to do it. I'm going to tell you why to do it. Right. You need to know why. Because then you'll buy in yourself. How many christians do we have who are not buying into things? Why? Because they don't know the why. They know the what to do. They might know the how to do. Sometimes the preaching gets to that. Rarely ever do they hear, why do you do it? It's the same reason why when you ask, when I ask young people, why don't we fornicate? Why is that a sin? Because God says it's a sin. I know. Why does he say it's a sin? Why did he make that a sin for fornication? So many people have no clue why. Well, this is where we're failing in the pulpits is we're not telling people why. We're not getting into, you know, again, what's good, what's better, what's best. We're not getting into any of the nitty gritty. We're just telling people what to do. And that alone is enough. So to your guys's point, to sum it up, because I'm going to move us into the next part of the outline.
It is so much about worldview in this episode and trying to view the Bible through the lens and trying to, trying to understand how we ought to view the world going forward. And so as we get into this, I think we've spelled out maybe, you know, what, what we're looking to do just as an intro, but as we get into the need for this, as we're calling it, good, better, best preaching, teaching.
The Bible doesn't contain and will, I guess I'll hand it over to you or Jack, whoever wants to take it. The Bible doesn't really contain thou shalt, thou shalt not write to use the king James on every single issue.
Well, and so with that, I mean, where do we go on?
I guess, you know, there's a couple different questions we can go in this outline, I guess. But as we're thinking about where to go from. Okay. The Bible doesn't necessarily say those things. How do we then begin to kind of usher in the good, better, best, specifically with the you can't bind that mentality?
[00:14:58] Speaker C: Well, what I was going to say is, again, you think about the, the challenges that people are, that families are facing raising kids. We've bemoaned the, the youth dropout rate before.
At some point, you have to start looking at these things through the lens of, okay, what are the principles here? What does logic tell us, what does common sense tell us as opposed to the answers a lot of people give? I think I've referenced this story before and this is what we run into often, where we had an ep, I think it was an episode. We actually, we did actually on, um, the idea that, hey, you probably shouldn't be letting your kids date. Put that out on social media like we always do. Did not take long for quite a few people to pipe up, gospel preachers included, basically. Well, you know, that's really a decision that every parent has to make for themselves. So we basically shouldn't talk about it. Paraphrasing, of course. But that's, that's pretty much what was insinuated. And that, I think is the biggest source of our frustration is chalking everything up to, well, you know, it's just an individual decision. I mean, apply that to anything else, you know, and I'm going to give an example here because obviously you could, you could look at specific commands and say, okay, you know, that's not up to everybody. Let's say you've got a husband who is spending a ton of time at his office by himself with his secretary, hasn't cheated. Nobody knows that if he's cheating or anything.
But let's say somebody comes to him and says, hey, that's a really bad idea. You should not be at your office with your secretary by yourself late hours of the night, and somebody else says, well, you know, that's, that honestly, that's a decision that he needs to make for himself. And you really just shouldn't say anything about that. That's lunacy. That's ridiculous. Of course we can say something about that because that's, that's not wise. There's, there are principles behind that that says, you as a married man have no business being anywhere with a woman by yourself. Late hours of the night, late hours of the night or really anytime, even though a sin hasn't been committed. That's the key. We're always looking for a sin. You can't bind it. You can't bind it. Can I bind, can I just fellowship the guy because he's in the office late with his secretary? Of course not. No sin has been committed, you know, yet at that point. But for somebody to come along and say, well, you know, that's just a decision that he has to make for himself is ridiculous. And yet people want to do that with things like when we, and we're going to give these examples. When we bring up homeschooling, we bring up dating, we bring up any of these things. Everybody wants to jump to. Well, you know, it's just a decision everybody's got to make for themselves.
There are principles here. There's common sense here, there's logic here that tells you, yeah, no sin has been committed yet, but no, again, no guys, any business being with somebody that's not his wife by themselves in their office, it's so clear to me. And yet we refuse to, we refuse to apply that same logic, that same common sense and those same biblical principles of wisdom specifically to our young people's lives. Again, that's going to be my soapbox for the episode, again, that we're going to get into with things like prom and things like just sending them to public school in general and any of these things entertainment. We refuse to apply the same logic. That, to me is what's so frustrating about that. You can't bind that mentality or the, everybody gets to make their decision for themselves. That doesn't mean you can't speak to the lack of wisdom in that approach.
[00:18:01] Speaker B: This is where we get charged with legalism is, well, you're adding, you know, there's no command. There's, you can't say that something is a certain way. The other side of the coin of legalism is to say, if I, if there's not a verse, you can't tell me anything, you know, and the stupidity to use a dumber example than the one will just gave is, let's say there's a 19, you know, 72 Ford Pinto with a, you know, 100,000, 200,000 miles on it, or a 2024 Toyota Corolla, brand new off the lot. They both cost $20,000.01 of them, you know, doesn't start when you turn the key. The other one is a brand new car that works just fine. And if you look at your buddy and you say, well, obviously, if you're going to spend the money, get the Corolla, you can't bind that. Are you, what are you legalistic? Like, you can't tell me that. I have to. Where's the, where's the Bible verse says, like, God gave us brains? And here's the thing for me, is I think a lot of people think that they. There's a maturity in saying, you can't bind that, so don't say anything about it. No, that's immaturity. Immaturity says, give me the list of rules. And that's how it is. And I wanted to read from Hebrews five because this sets exactly what we're saying here. Um, well, this is the part about meat and milk and him saying, I, look, we got to get into the deep stuff of Jesus, but we can't because you guys are stuck. And funny enough, he gets into chapter six, and he says the things that they are stuck on, the basics are things about baptisms, laying on of hands, resurrection of the dead, eternal judgment, heaven, hell, and baptism. I mean, like the basics. And yet we think when people say, man, the gospel was preached today, when you have the 38th sermon on sound baptism. Yeah, man, that sound gospel teaching. Well, it is. But like he says, let's get that down so we can move on to the mature things. And guess what the mature things are. He says in Hebrews 512. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need, again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God. And you have come to need milk and not solid food for everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature, who, because of practice, have their senses trained to discern good and evil. You don't need to discern good and evil on thou shalt not commit adultery. There's no discernment there because it's on the page. And so when people do well, you can't bind that. They're saying, you were not allowed to use discernment. You cannot use discernment between the Ford Pinto and the Toyota Corolla. It's lunacy. It is immaturity. He just says they're, they're milk guzzling infants.
[00:20:21] Speaker A: That's a great point. That, that's a very, very good point. I love that word discernment in there because that's exactly what we're talking about. I was going to tee you off on just how individualistic this is because this is something you've done a lot of writing on and done a great job of explaining to people. I think this is where the individual is. Individualization of society comes in of, hey, don't step into my business. To your point of the libertarianism, right, don't step into my business. You can't bind that. This is my decision to make. Or let's just let the parents make their own decision. And it takes all of the wisdom that has been passed down through the generations. Everything we've learned over the last hundreds of years say, well, that doesn't matter because he wants to do it this way. We see this with gentle parenting. Well, we can't tell, hey, it's their decision to make. Like, yeah, but they're going to ruin their kids if they do it. I'm sorry. They're just going to ruin their kids. It's not good. You can't bind that. You can't really tell them that yet. But there's been wisdom passed down through the generations, biblical wisdom and every other wisdom that we figured out to, to say that doesn't work. It's not good to raise kids up to the God level that we do, but it's an individualized society that shuns everything that's come before and shuns any other wisdom other than what I want to do. And then we wonder why we run society into the ditch.
[00:21:26] Speaker C: It's basically the attitude of who are you to tell me exactly?
[00:21:30] Speaker A: It's, and it's very individual focused. So that, I think, is one of the bigger underlying issues to all of this in terms of you can't bind. That is, I want to do what I want to do. And this is a biblical way for me to shut you down. But this is why the proverbs exist. I mean, going around to these points of wisdom, imagine if we made this point before, but imagine if Solomon's son looked at him and was like, I'm sorry, dad, I just don't read that in the law. I just don't think you can bind that. Me going to that side of town with the harlots.
Where do you read that in scripture? Like, hey, we could look at Judah and Tamar. I mean, he was on the wrong side of town, right? It worked out for him. I mean, they could pull out a lot of different examples for Solomon. You can't bind that, dad. Like, hey, I'm telling you not to. This is what's wise. And if you're. If you want to be a fool, go do it. But he's appealing to his son, assuming his son is looking to be discerning, to be wise. And most of the proverbs are about that, where you can't bind that quote, unquote. But what's best, son, it's best if you avoid these things. It's best if you walk by wisdom. For, you know, wisdom is. Is a woman that. That continually gives life, whereas you have this foolishness of the harlot. And, you know, better to live in the corner of roof than have a contentious woman. I mean, there's so many things like that that are wise and discern and so far beyond what we're willing to preach, because, again, so and so might get offended.
[00:22:47] Speaker C: Yeah. The thing I was going to say about the proverbs, before I give it back to Jack, is just there's so many things in there that don't fit into the standard, you know, again, commands necessarily, thou shalt, thou shalt not. There's proverbs, and, you know, just read through them. There's some, like, do not love sleep. Oh, so are we binding that? And, you know, somebody who. Who really enjoys their sleep is now in sin. These are wisdom principles. These are principles of wisdom. But again, we refuse to apply them. We refuse to take these things and apply them. Jack, did you have anything to add to that?
[00:23:16] Speaker B: Well, yeah, you know, Joe, you brought up individualism. I brought up the immaturity. The other thing is, we had the episode on the feminized Christianity that's a part of this, too, is you can't hurt anybody's feelings, and you can't tell them, man, you made a choice. That's not as good of a choice. And you kind of see this in parenting circles. Joe, you brought up gentle parenting, but also like, what you feed your kids. You know what? The mom who takes their kids for a happy meal three times a day, she's trying real hard. And you can't say that that's worse than the other one or the same, like with the health sphere, the fat shaming thing and all that. You can't say that a person who, you know, eats right and watches their. Their weight and is in a, you know, a good spot in their health is any better off than somebody who's 350 pounds?
[00:23:54] Speaker C: Like yes you can.
[00:23:56] Speaker B: Well a couple things. Number one, you can because it's the truth, but number two, you do not care about that person if you won't tell them that. And so a church that says, well I can't bind telling people where to send their kids, so I'm going to let them keep playing the 80% loss game because I don't want to bind that. You don't care about them. Doctor Brad Harab, who we work with here at Focus breast, Will's dad, to my knowledge, is the only big name or prominent figure, whatever term you want to use in the churches of Christ who has rang the warning bell about hormonal birth control. A about that it might be abortifacient, but also just how it wrecks health, how it's like it's not a good thing. I don't know, the rate of young girls that are on those who aren't even sexually active, they just put them on it. And when he talks about that, what he gets from christians is, that's weird. Why would you talk about that from the pulpit? Why on earth are christians talking about, why would you have an episode on that? What? Because we care about you, because it matters, because it takes your life. It's about living a better life. I mean you're talking about the proverbs. That's the whole point of the proverbs is living a better life, living a life as a, as a wise person rather than as an idiot. I mean that, that's, and somebody that will say, well you have every right to live as an idiot. Yeah, you do, but it hurts that way. You know, I like that old saying, life's hard, it's harder if you're stupid. Love somebody enough to help them avoid those pitfalls.
[00:25:16] Speaker A: We'll hit on a very interesting point though, that I want to come back to because I think we had skipped it over in the outline, but it mixes in perfectly with all of this, which is a lot of people. We have to be careful of painting with a broad brush and we have to be careful of avoiding painting with a broad brush at the same time because I do think that, you know, as, as you look at it, there are dangers in kind of making everything generic, everything kind of painting with a broad brush, skipping over the nitty gritty. And you do see this from a lot of pulpits where they'll say things like abortions wrong, but when we get into in vitro, when we get into birth control, like this, you know, the plan B pill or whatever, when we get into all the, like, the actual nitty gritty of what abortion is, we can be very vague and go, abortion. Amen, brother. Preach it. Preach it. Okay, but now we're getting into things that maybe people in the pew have done. Maybe people in the pew are, you know, that. That cuts a little close to home, or that cuts really close to home. They're cut to the heart or cut to the quick, you know, as it says in acts two. And so it's easy to paint with the broad brush as a preacher and go, see, I preached the gospel here. I preached a hard message. Yeah, but did you get into the nitty gritty? To the flip side of this, though, I think sometimes it's okay to preach with a broad brush. And this is where we get the tone. Police coming after so often is, well, you can't say that because, you know, there's. There's one person over here in the middle of Africa who. That doesn't apply to. Therefore, nothing applies. Yes, it does. And so this speaks to both sides of it. But it drives me nuts. When you come out with a general principle and people take the general principle, they find one example where it doesn't work and then lambast.
[00:26:48] Speaker C: You see, it's the exact same thing that opponents of baptism do with, a, the thief on the cross, and B, what about the person you brought up? Africa. What about the person in Africa who's never heard the gospel? What about the person who never has the Bible translated?
[00:27:00] Speaker B: Somebody who doesn't have water.
[00:27:02] Speaker C: Yeah, right, right. Exactly.
[00:27:04] Speaker B: If the gospel is preached on Dune. They're not.
[00:27:09] Speaker C: Exactly. But that's the exact same logic.
[00:27:11] Speaker A: Of course.
[00:27:11] Speaker B: Sorry.
Somewhere. Sorry, carry on.
[00:27:15] Speaker C: I'm not. I'm not a dune guy. Sorry. But anyway, what I was going to say was, obviously, in the churches of Christ, we look at that and like, that's ridiculous. It still obviously applies. And yet, as to Joe, to your point, that's exactly what we do in these instances. You know, the. We've talked a lot off air and then on air about the shopping cart jack or an article like, you know, people apply this when you're like, hey, bring the shopping cart back. It's not that hard. And, man, did he have a dozen people. Like, I'm a single mom with four kids, and, you know, it's just too hard for me to take it back or, you know, I'm handicapped. All these things. Like, there's a. There's a time and a place for broad brush teaching, taking the shopping cart back is one of them. And obviously we're on this. We're on the. The page of how to raise your kids, doing, you know, doing the, you know, having certain guidelines for your kids and all these things. That's broad brush that's acceptable to use. And the one thing that I want to get to real quick, Joe, and I'll give it back, right back to you. I'll go, I'll go ahead, introduce, introduce this concept. You can hit on or go back to the broad brush thing, but we bemoan our unity all the time, man. We're not unified. We're not unified. We're not unified. Well, how shallow, or I guess I should say, how deep is our unity going to be when we never get specific about anything? Imagine for just a second you have somebody over to your house. I'm going to try to. I'm the metaphor guy, apparently, for this episode, have somebody do over house. And you literally only talk about generic things, whether, you know, I guess, you know, how are, you know, politics, economy, like, you just. You're very generic. Never get into any specifics about, you know, how's your family, tell me about your kids, tell me how you met your wife. Tell me about, you know, what are your passions? What do you really love to do? You just keep everything super generic, the most boring dinner of all time. You would, you would, you know, you would not be able to wait for the person to leave because, like, man, there's just no depth here. We're just having a shallow conversation. That's how it is in most congregations.
That's how the unity is at most congregations. You know why? Because we keep everything generic, we keep everything vague. We keep everything ambiguous. There's never anything specific other than, again, plan of salvation. We don't use instruments. We don't let women preach. We need to be here on Sunday morning. Don't murder, don't cheat, all the commandments. But other than that, there is nothing specific. Well, no wonder we don't have it, you know? Or no wonder why we don't have deep unity when we have a bunch of shallow unity. Just imagine for just a second how much deeper the unity could be if we applied these principles, we applied these wisdom principles to how we raised our kids, and we all had a lot more in common to the things we do or don't watch or do or don't listen to as we'll be getting to later, you know, if we all had the same, you know, mindset towards we probably shouldn't be going, sending our kids to that prom dance. We probably should not be, you know, allowing our kids or even ourselves to watch these shows. We probably should be here on Wednesday night. We probably should, again, fill in the blank to any of these things that we've talked about.
Think about how much deeper our unity would be. But it's not because we don't teach those things. It's not deep because we just allow, again, every man for himself. Make sure you get baptized after that doesn't really matter. No wonder we have shallow unity.
[00:30:12] Speaker A: Well, people are going to listen to this and they're going to go. So what you're talking about is a cult. You have to agree on everything. No, here's what I would say.
We need to be unified around the type of people we are. We are people who think we're discerning. Right? Discerning what's wise and what's not, what's righteous, what's evil. And we are people who strive to be holy. We're striving to please God and everything to the glory of God. If those two things, holiness and discernment, are two key things that we rally around, we can have individual disagreements about how we get there. What drives me nuts is just goes back to Jack's Corolla point. Let's take prom, for instance. We're beating up on this one for obvious reasons. It's nice and easy to beat up on. So the person says, well, I let my kid go to prom. Now let's, let's apply these two things. The reason our unity is shallow is because we don't agree on hardly anything. Now, if they were able to give me a solid reason as to why a, that's drawing them closer to God and that's not really, you know, the case, but if they could give that and if they had really reasoned it through and they had discerned what they thought was to be right and we were able to have a back and forth, I would come away with respect for them and I would say, we don't, we don't agree on this, but we do agree on the main point of trying to be holy. Now, how we try to be holy. Ultimately, I think this is why we talk about elderships. Elderships need to kind of disseminate information down and such as what that looks like on an individual level in the person's life, in the sheep's life. But I think those are the type of things we have to rally around lest it be a cold. Oh, we got to agree on everything. No, but you better have a reason for why you believe what you believe. We have way too many people who don't think a lick about things. And the moment that you say, hey, I've done actually a lot of research on this. I've thought about this a lot. They go, well, okay, but that's just your opinion. No, no, no.
[00:31:53] Speaker B: Just as good as that, Evan.
[00:31:55] Speaker A: It is not just as good. I have spent hours and hours and hours researching what a board efficient are, you know, and looking at maybe the plan B pillar, whatever I am. And Doctor Brad Harrod got doctor before his name. I mean, he's done a lot of research on these areas. When he comes in with that, it doesn't necessarily make him right because he's got doctor before his name. But maybe we should listen. He's got the right heart, he's trying to please God and he's trying to be discerning. And for the person to come in and go, well, I don't have either of those, but I'm just hurt, so I don't want to do it wrong, that's not the right answer and we're never going to have unity around that. Does that make sense?
[00:32:25] Speaker C: It does. And what I want to say to that, and before I hand it back to Jack, is I agree. We don't all have to agree on everything. We all need to be moving in the same general direction.
[00:32:34] Speaker A: I very much agree with that.
[00:32:35] Speaker C: You know, if you have. If you have a congregation where everybody is just going all their separate ways and we're all over the place again, you're never going to have the unity, you're never going to have the congregation that you want to have. And so of course, we are the biggest proponents of, like, there are Romans 14 issues. There are opinion issues that you need to allow each other to disagree on. Goodness knows we've gotten into trouble talking about that on this podcast before. At the same time, we need to be moving in the same direction and that direction needs to be fueled by real quick. Sorry. That direction needs to be fueled by wisdom and following these biblical principles. You're exactly right that somebody might, can reach a conclusion that is different than mine and still be applying wisdom and biblical principles. We need to come to grips with that. At the same time, I think it's pretty clear to see that there are certain things where it's like, there's no way that wisdom and biblical principles got you to that point. So let's move away from that.
[00:33:25] Speaker A: That's exactly it. The more we apply those the less I think we will argue about things because I think wisdom and again, discernment and holiness will win out. And I don't think you can be holy and be on two wild ends, the opposite ends of the spectrum. We can have disagreements that are fairly close and say, okay, we're disagreeing, but we're ultimately kind of trying to get holier in that. I think you can. Again, as long as those two, those two things are in place, I think you'll find yourself getting a lot closer to those people in general and making more of the same decisions.
[00:33:55] Speaker C: And to give an example, real quick example, sorry, Jack. And then it's all you of that concept of, you know, each striving for holiness. You have one person that says, yeah, I went and watched Star wars over the weekend. Great movie. Other person says, I went and watched the Wolf of Wall street. Awesome movie. You can very clearly see one of those things is not leading someone towards holiness. Like to me there is some objectivity to this. There is some objectivity to it.
You're exactly right that not everything is objective. But I think on things like that, there are a lot of, a lot of times we can look at it and go again, no wisdom, no biblical principles going into that. And that has to be called out. And where we are in our current church of Christ, state and culture is that that stuff does not get called out at any point.
[00:34:37] Speaker B: Well, and so I'm glad you guys brought up Romans 14 because that is a big part of this is, I think part of what you're saying is the verse. I'm going off the top of my head, so I'm not going to say where it is. If two are, unless two are in agreement, you know, they can't go together. Somebody pull that up for me because I'm butchering it. But you need to be on the same page. And, you know, somebody might say, oh, so like you're saying, joe, that's a cult. We have to agree on everything. No, not at all. We do have to be pointed in the same direction. And so in Romans 14, it really is about those things of, by celebrating this holiday, it draws me closer to God and the other person saying, you can't celebrate that holiday or you can't make me celebrate that holiday. And, and, or by eating, by abstaining from eating the, this meat, I'm being holier. And you can look at the other guy who's like, well, it just doesn't matter. It's not going to affect my holiness if I do it. And you can look at him and say, well, I think that's the wrong decision, but you've got to allow him to live with that. And so we're Amos three three, by the way. Thank you. Appreciate that. Amos three three. I need to do a better research next time. But when. When people say, well, and I've. We've gotten comments, man, those guys don't think deeper. They just think they're right about everything. Like, well, everyone thinks they're right about the opinions they hold.
We boldly proclaim our opinions, and we are. We are always willing to hear your opinion. If you can come with, here's how I show your math, is what I'm saying. Pull the scripture out and say, you know what? I'm striving to please God. I. I went through all these principles, and this is why, you know, going to prom is totally morally neutral. Well, I'm going to have a hard time disagreeing with you there, but if you can really show the math and say, you know, I really am doing this out of a heart that cares for what God thinks, man, I'm going to disagree strongly with you. But okay. Versus, you know, and so what we are most against is somebody, as Joe saying, who just shows up, has no consideration whatsoever, but just basically says, I can do what I want because you can't bind it. We can't be in agreement with that person. We can't go anywhere with that person because we're not pointed in the same direction. So it's, everything you guys are saying is grounded in Romans 14 of, yeah, there are differences of opinion, but here's the other point I wanted to make about Romans 14. A church has to pick one. You know, we always make it about Christian Christmas and or Easter. Every church decides if they're going to have a baby Jesus sermon and a resurrection sermon or if they're not. Okay. And so you can say, well, it's just opinion we can't buy, but you pick one, and if you go, well, we'll just default to not doing it. So it's not defending one. You pick one. It's okay that you did, but you did. And the same thing of, well, what are we going to preach on? On homeschooling and public school?
Well, you can say, we're going to preach. Homeschooling is the best option by the biblical principals. You can preach on public schooling is the best option by the biblical principals. Or you could just say, well, it's morally neutral. That's a take. That is an opinion in itself. If you're just saying, well, we're just going to stay out of this because it doesn't make a difference. That's your opinion.
[00:37:18] Speaker C: It's the myth of neutrality, right? Yeah.
[00:37:20] Speaker B: You cannot not preach an opinion is what I'm saying. The myth of neutrality. You're taking a stand on these matters of opinion, opinion one way or another. Even if you're saying, well, there's no one's good, better or best, that's your opinion. Okay. And so why do we get heat for saying these are our opinions and here's why. We strongly hold them and are really going to push them? Everybody does. And so it's just having the against the grain opinion that people really don't like.
[00:37:47] Speaker A: They don't like strong opinions. That's what you find is people really, well, strong opinions.
[00:37:52] Speaker C: And I would say opinions that are counter to what makes people comfortable.
[00:37:56] Speaker A: That's true. Yeah. Strong opinions that, again, cut against the grains. Jack talked about swim upstream, whatever metaphor you want to use. And this is why we talk about worldview. This is why we're saying think. Why. Why the why is so important to me. You have to come with a why. And if you don't know why you do what you do or don't know why you believe what you believe, figure it out. And if you don't know why, that's okay, that you don't, but you better have a heart to figure out why, because you cannot sit here and go, well, I don't really care. It doesn't matter. These things matter. So figure out why it matters and why you do what you do, and then we'll be on the same page. We may, we may not be on the same page about why it matters, but at least you're thinking, at least we can work with somebody who is taking steps toward figuring these things out.
[00:38:37] Speaker C: Jack's been really big on this concept of becoming a people or creating an us, I think are kind of the two terms he use. Creating a culture, whatever word you want to use.
Listen, I'm a firm believer that you, you literally can't do that. You literally cannot have that. Without this good, better, best concept. Without this good, better, best preaching and teaching, you literally can't do it. Again, it speaks back to the point we were trying to make earlier about the unity and all these things. So let me give you another example here.
[00:39:02] Speaker B: Examples.
[00:39:03] Speaker C: Try to get into some of these. Yeah, exactly.
[00:39:05] Speaker A: Mister illustration. This is great.
[00:39:06] Speaker C: I know, I know. So I gave the example of the guy saying late at the office with the secretary by himself. Everybody again with a brain can look at it and go, really bad idea. No, no reason should. Let me give you another one. Lets say you put 216 year olds together in an unsupervised location, most likely going to be alcohol somewhere in the room. Theyre going to be romantic setting, not going to be dressed super well.
And theres a general expectation of what goes on at this set event. Again, a lot of hormone raging young people usually are driving themselves, going out by themselves.
Can we look at that and say, yeah, no, not a lot of wisdom there. Probably shouldn't be doing that. I just described prom. I literally just described what, what happened two weeks ago in my hometown weekend. Everybody was posting about it. Everybody was doing it. This is not a prom episode. The thing is, it perfectly applies to what we're talking about. We should be able to get into, get up into a pulpit and preach exactly what I just said of, for all these reasons, this is not a good idea. We can't. And I don't think you could get up there and say, yeah, you're in sin if you, if you allow your kid to go to prom or if you're a 17 year old baptized person and you go to prom at the same time. How many pulpits do you know of that got up there and said this is not a good idea. And biblical principles, biblical wisdom lead us to this conclusion. This is not a good idea. I'm going to wager zero. Maybe a couple, maybe there were some, but the vast majority of congregations didn't say a word about prom. You know why? Because most people within the church posted pictures about prom, were really excited their kids were going to prom, pose with them. It's things like this that we should be able to get up there and preach good, better, best. And yet we don't. Got a few more examples on here. But again, we can look at the guy staying at the office with his secretary and say really bad idea. We don't do the same thing with, again, 216 year olds that are driving in the really nice car, dressed up, really nice romantic setting by themselves at multiple points in the evening. Give me a break here.
[00:41:08] Speaker A: And the why, go ahead. Sorry, I was just going to say briefly and the why to that is it's a rite of passage. You know, everybody did it and it's just, is what is, eh, wrong. That's not a good enough why. You didn't bring scripture into it. You didn't bring wisdom into it. You brought anecdotal evidence into it of it's a good time. Oh, it's a rite of passage. Everybody does it. That's not a good enough why?
[00:41:29] Speaker B: For you to send your kids up to. Exactly. Proverbs on, you know, the temptation.
[00:41:34] Speaker A: Stay away from that part of town. Yeah.
[00:41:36] Speaker B: To your point about the unity, a church that says, yeah, we don't really have an opinion or position on whether that's a good idea or not. And boy, Bible doesn't give any commandments, so I can't tell you anything. So you've got families in that church who are like, yeah, we're not sending our kids to that. Other families who are going to. And then they're going to say, well, we feel judged by the other family. Well, this is the kind of stuff that happens where the church taking an opinion on it. People could disagree. And it's not like you're going to tell them you're in sin or we're going to disfellowship because you disagree, but they're going to have to hear it. Hey, this is not something that's recommended.
So what we're doing with this, the unity you're creating, everything you agree on is a brick, you know, in your wall of unity, in this temple of the church that you're building, this house of the church, whatever you want to call it, and when it's okay, we agree on Jesus, we agree on baptism, we agree on not instruments, we agree on eldership, we agree on male preachers, we agree on that. You're building a solid wall of biblical church governing doctrines. And that's one wall. That's one dimension. You don't have a house, you have a wall. And this is why you have christians who are so compartmentalized is where their Christianity doesn't touch the rest of their lives. Because we tell them, well, you're, you're free to choose on all these other things. And so how you fill in that, that whole house, the room, rather than just one wall is these other things where you say, you know what, we agree. We're going to teach the biblical's principles and sensibilities. That another one we've stirred up a lot of controversy with is broad brush on the whole. 90 plus percent of young people should get married, should be looking to get married as they become adults. Marriage is good. Singleness into your thirties is not helpful. And you're seeing all these articles, people coming out going, there's nobody left to marry. I ruined, I'm miserable. I'm on my own, I'm in my forties and I'm on my own. And I thought this was the good life. I traveled, I did all that, and I've got nothing to show for it. We're trying to help people. As I said earlier, it's out of love that says it's not good for man to be alone. Most of you gather some people with the gift of celibacy that don't have that drive, that don't have everything. First Corinthians talking about. But most people do need to go get married. Same thing of christian couples should have kids. The Bible abundantly makes that clear.
[00:43:42] Speaker C: That is the quickest one, where people jump to the what? You know, you can't really bind that. What about people who can't?
[00:43:47] Speaker B: Exactly. And, you know, I coined the term and it didn't get any legs, but I was pretty proud of it. On an article to get the Granny Johnson syndrome, or, you know the game, the Granny Johnson gambit of, let's say you go to a wedding and they say, all rise for the groom or for the, for the bride to come in and somebody says, well, wait a minute, granny Johnson's 98 years old, in a wheelchair. She can't rise. How offensive. She can't do that.
Nobody was talking to her. Everybody knows that. It's people that didn't want to get up themselves that blame her and use her as a human and hide behind her. Yeah, they hide behind her. Well, what about the people who can't have kids? Nobody's talking about them. We feel awful for them. They are some of the people who, generally speaking, will be the ones to tell you, we would love to have children. We know the importance of children. We acutely feel the importance of children. And so that's why there's that love and that pain that we all feel for them, as we know that children are good. And it's so despicable when people hide behind them, be like, well, they can't. So we're not allowed to talk about this. Or you know what? This person who really wanted to get married, but they couldn't, we can't talk about marriage being good because it hurts their feelings. No, they know that it's good. You know, it's the person who's trying to pretend that it isn't. And so, again, when you have a church, let me round out this point here about the house that you're building up. Well, we're not going to take a position on whether marriage is good, on whether children is good. And so you're going to end up with a 37 year old feminist in your church and a family with six kids in your church. And these people are supposed to be on the same team and they can love each other, but they're never going to be very close. Whereas a 37 year old girl who just never really wanted to get married and just, it didn't come together for her, she's going to feel a kinship toward that family, the couple that can't have children. It might hurt to see a large family full of children, but they're on the same team. They're on the same page. But if we just say we can't talk about any of this, you're going to end up with people all across the spectrum. And so there's no unity. You've got one wall of unity, which is what we do on Sunday. That's it.
[00:45:40] Speaker A: Man, you guys got great illustrations. Tonight, I'm, I'm blanking on all these. I'm gonna have to come up with some good ones by the time we end. But I love that concept of the wall because you're right. We get the one Christianity side of the wall when it should be in a house made of Christianity. But to fill out the other walls, I think we run to modern day therapy, we run to self help books, we run to social media, we run to our Facebook groups, we run to CNN in or Fox News or whatever it is. And so all of the other thoughts that really round out a person's life about all these other things, how many people would rather turn to Candace Owens than their preacher to get really hard, stern advice on transgenderism or something? That's pathetic. And that is pathetic that we are now taking what ought to be pulpits, churches in America, specifically church of Christ, coming out hard on these issues. And instead we would just rather listen to some political pundit who does it better than us. Look, I'm all for Jordan Peterson, whatever else, you know, that's great. That's great. There's a lot of good people. Charlie Kirk, there's guys that Tucker Carlson, you know, they're out there speaking whatever we have used them to get away from. And this is what rounds out the house, to your point, Jack. I'd rather turn to them to get all my thoughts on all of these social issues because the church won't address it well.
[00:46:48] Speaker B: People say, why are they going to masculinity influencers? Because the church tells them masculinity is reading your Bible like it doesn't have anything beyond that. And again, we're so passionate about this because we get railed on about this all the time I had people literally hitting the laugh react and giving me grief on Facebook for writing an article on masculinity and the falling rates of testosterone. Why are you talking about testosterone in a Bible article? Like, because God made relevant. And this is where Christian Nazism. Well, the gnosticism starts setting in of like, well, Christianity isn't actually for anything. Real world. Christianity is only heaven focused. And so if it matters about getting you to heaven, okay. But as far as, like, the, the getting your hands in the dirt stuff of the real world, no, Christianity didn't have Joe Rogan. Yeah, yeah. And, well, those people say Christianity has nothing to say. Other people who are starving, like you say, the people in our pews who don't have these things turn to Joe Rogan, turn to Jordan Peterson, turn, unfortunately, like Andrew Tate and things like that. And people go, why are you looking there? Because they're not getting it from the Bible where they should.
[00:47:54] Speaker C: Not getting it from pulpits either, is what I would say.
[00:47:56] Speaker A: I mean, you can tell why we're so passionate about this is because people are starving. The comments we get to the positive end to the negative of the things that we're doing.
You can tell we strike a nerve with people when we start talking about these things because they don't get it anywhere other than political pundits and people like that, you know, their favorite podcast, listeners of, again, Joe Rogan. Whatever it is, that is a travesty. And I, we don't want to be the ones out here saying it. I would love for 60, 70 year old men, wise men of God, who studied the Bible two times longer than I've been alive, man. I want them out there saying these things where we're not the ones having to say some of the harder, more difficult things. Things this. I don't mean to sound arrogant in any way, but few people are saying the things that we're saying, which is why partly we have a following and partly we're hated by a lot of different people. I would love for the 70 year old to stand up and start, you know, denouncing feminism and how bad feminism is and how we have to get back on track and save the young man. I would love for that to be something preached from, from wise, godly men in the pulpits.
Where is it happening? It's not.
[00:48:55] Speaker B: So.
[00:48:55] Speaker A: No wonder why we're passionate about this. It's like, man, if the older people would just step up and maybe they'd take the charge and they'd be willing to take the arrows, we wouldn't have to be on this podcast saying it. And I'd be fine if we had two people, like, if we didn't have a podcast, or if we had two people listen to the podcast because they were so busy getting it from their own pulpits, that would thrill me to death. I'm not getting, you know, this is. I'm glad that we have a listenership that's fantastic. We don't get paid for this or anything like that. You know, it's like we're making a ton of money from it. We want to get these concepts out there, because at the end of the day, if we had godly pulpits who were saying these things, we'd be out of a job, and that'd be the best thing in the world because the church would be a stronger place for it.
[00:49:29] Speaker B: Well, shout out to the guys who are, because there are guys out there that are. And I, we. And if you have a preacher like that, thank God for them and let them know I've said that before, because they are rare, unfortunately. And we need to start realizing that, hey, you know, preaching in season and out of season and not tickling their ears is not telling them mechanical instruments of worship are not scriptural. Yeah, tell them that. But the. The hard stuff that we're talking about, the stuff where people get real squirrely when you start talking about. That's the stuff.
[00:50:01] Speaker C: And that's exactly what I was going to say. This good, better, best preaching and teaching is incredibly difficult for people because you are guaranteed to ruffle feathers. You are guaranteed to. To have conflict that you might initially think, well, that's going to lead to more disunity.
At first, it might. In the short term, it might again, especially if this is something that you are having to kind of adapt to, and this has not been the case. Yeah, there's going to be some fet, some feathers ruffled, but at the end of the day, this good, better, best preaching, and we got a ton more examples that we're not really going to have time to get to here. Um, again, things to do with the family. We should be able to get up in pulpits and say it is better for women to not work outside the home. Stats back it up. Uh, psychology studies back it up. And then obviously, the ability to, you know, to follow the pattern laid out in scripture for the husband, the wife, to raise the kids, to homeschool the kids, et cetera. It is better for the wife to work outside the home. What is it, 70% of church of Christ women work outside the home, and so you are going to ruffle a ton of feathers. It is better, you know, we should be getting the pulpit and say, it is better to homeschool your kids. We should be able to get up in the pulpit and say, it is better to discipline your children. It is better to not let 215 year olds date each other. It is better to raise your boys, uh, a certain way and raise your girls a different way. None of these things get talked about. None of these that matter. You know, you brought up masculinity, femininity as well. We keep it so broad, we keep it so vague. And so, again, I would just suffice it to say on that point.
It's difficult. It takes, it takes a certain level of understanding. I might get some blowback from this. And this goes for preachers, and this also goes for elders. And as we've talked a lot about elders on this podcast, had episodes on it. Elders a lot of times. If this is a broad brush, shout out to those who are not doing this. Elders many times seem to be under the mindset of let's keep the peace as much as possible. Let's not light any fires. Let's just, um, you know, try to control the, the wildfires that might start. They kind of view that as their job. That's not their job. Their job is to make sure that sound doctrine, in this case, being the things that are going to allow christians to understand how do I live my life. Their job is to make sure those things are being taught not to bind things that we can't bind, but to use biblical principles. We, we've got several other, again, items on here that we're not going to have time to get into specific detail on entertainment.
You listen to a sermon on entertainment and it just stays so broad, it stays so vague of, you know, fill your mind with good things and all these things. Like, people need to know what you're talking about. People need specifics that, hey, you probably should not be going to XYZ, R rated movie. You know, I could name drop some if I wanted to. Music, like, there's so many different things, raunchy tv shows, we never get specific on these things. And so we have these christians who are living a worldly lifestyle, never gets called out. Joe.
[00:52:44] Speaker A: Well, let's, let's get specific. The new Taylor Swift album is not wholesome for the average Christian, specifically for young christians in the mind. And I should say for any christian, not just average, it's not wholesome. Going to her concerts, I saw christians that were posting about taking their kids to a Taylor Swift concert and paying through the nose to get tickets. She dresses like a prostitute. She does. So why are you bringing young kids there? She's singing about fornication. She's singing about all these things. And we're spending hundreds of hundreds of dollars to take our kids to get inundated by these things. Like, that's not goodness.
[00:53:18] Speaker C: Thousands of Taylor Swift fans in the church. And so that right there, probably people listening to this possibly just got really ticked off that Joe used that name and they're immediately going to jump to, you can't buy now. You can't buy now. And we could have used a dozen other names. Any, any rapper ever. Um, you know, stuff like that. But, yeah, that's.
[00:53:35] Speaker A: But she's the benign one, quote unquote. In the culture, I think everybody knows rap's a little edgy, things like that. But, oh, it's Taylor Swift. I've been listening to her since she was 15 years old. Yeah, things have changed and she's not a great role model. But these are the things that we're talking about. When you get up in the pulpit and you use specifics, yes. You will tick people off. You go, well, then why do we need to use specifics? Why are we trying to upset people? We're not trying to upset people. We're trying to hit people where it counts. We are. What's the point of preaching if it's just going to be so generic that the guy who is blatantly in sin, or the kid who, you know, the person who's not in sin, but who's really living in an unwise, ungodly way, they're going to prom or, you know, they're taking their kids to Taylor Swift conscience, whatever it is they say, well, we don't want to step on their toes. Maybe we do want them thinking about things in a different way. Maybe we do want them calling themselves to a holier standard here. Because if we paint so broad and he goes around, he goes, man, we're delivering a great christian life. But it could be better. It could be best. That's what we're advocating here.
[00:54:28] Speaker C: Well, one more, Jack, you're muted real quick. I'm just going to go, um, one more example here.
You think about the, the reason why we, we say these specific things is because if you keep everything generic, nothing ever gets done, nothing ever changes. It's all futile. It's all in vain. I think about, again, to use the example, um, in the position I'm in, uh, with the job that I'm at. I, you know, have a decent bit of meetings throughout the weeks where get together with the other leaders in our group and we discuss leadership. We discuss, you know, how to grow as leaders. But you know what we discuss specific things about leadership. Specific instances during our day, specific things that have to do with our job, specific things that have to do with our day to day tasks. You know, how productive our meetings would be if we just all got together and we're like, you know what? We need to. We need to be better leaders. We really need to make sure that we are good leaders and that we are leading really well. And I just, I didn't tell you anything. I didn't accomplish. We didn't accomplish anything if that was the basis of our meeting, if we never got specific about this is how we grow as leaders in this specific position with these specific things, by saying these certain things, by doing these certain things. You know, any, any leadership book out there that people have read, the good ones are specific. The good ones are like, yeah, do this as a leader and don't do this as a leader. Not, well, you know, you know, you need to be a really good leader, and you need to make sure and lead people well, I didn't tell you anything that's not specific, but at least.
[00:55:49] Speaker A: Nobody got their toes stepped on, right?
[00:55:51] Speaker C: But at least everybody could go away going, oh, my, I must be a pretty good leader. You think about the Bible Jesus is teaching, you know, how easy it would have been for Jesus to just come to earth and say, you know what? Just love God, love others. Um, make sure that you're a good Christian. Make sure that you follow me. No, there's, you know, ver books upon books. You know, that we got the gospels of verses upon verses, I should say, of Jesus being very specific. She's being very specific in, this is how you live. And yet again, we just want to keep everything generic.
[00:56:18] Speaker B: You ever do that as a kid where, like, you're trying to hint to your parents, boy, you know, I know we had dinner. I'm still kind of hungry, and something cold and maybe kind of sweet would sound pretty good. And you're kind of hoping they're picking up what you're laying down about a popsicle or ice cream or whatever, and, you know, like, obviously they know what you're doing, but on the other hand, they're like, sometimes if you're not directing your communication, they might not know. And especially when we're dealing with adults, we're dealing with real world stuff. And what you're saying, be direct. I mean, like, we need to be able to be frank with each other. That's one of the ways truth gets out, not through hints and suggestions. And, I mean, this goes to our church discipline. A lot of this stuff is building on each other, of people really think all the church can do is just suggest, like, well, we just suggest. We hope you'd kind of think this way. We hope you kind of, hey, think twice about the entertainment that you're going to watch. Yeah, sure. All right, let's pop in. Wolf of Wall street, which, you know, I know it's a ten year old movie or whatever, but it's. It's a real bad one from everything. I understand. And so, you know, something like that. But I mentioned the Hebrews verse earlier. I want to also draw on one of my favorite verses, just Hebrews 510. It's in the middle of a larger discussion of light and darkness and just says this much. And it's one worth. Worth memorizing and thinking about, trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord.
That's christian life. That's walking as children of light is. And I think this gets to the end of everything that we're saying here. I'm not saying we're wrapping up here. We're pretty close. But ask yourself, is this pleasing to God? Don't ask, well, is it a sin? Don't ask. Well, can somebody bind that? You know, if they tell me to do that, can they, do they have the right to bind that? Ask, is this pleasing to God? I'm trying to discern. I'm trying to build that taste. I'm trying to build a sense of what matters to God and how he would navigate. And it goes back to that old, what would Jesus do? Thing. Think that way. What would please God? Because Jesus was, well, pleasing the father in all things. I want to be like that. Okay, well, guess what? The Bible is not a constantly updating book. That's like, well, here's the verse on Taylor Swift. It's here's principles that you have. Well, you can't show me verses. Thou shalt not listen to Taylor Swift. I don't care what principles are there that guide you to say, you know what? This song drops the f word, blasphemes Jesus Christ, and talks about fornication. Yeah, that's probably not pleasing to the Lord. Was it a sin? I don't care. I don't care about that question. I mean, like, yeah, there's certain things that stone cold, you can say it is most of the time. I don't care about that question. Stop asking it and ask, is it pleasing to the Lord?
[00:58:44] Speaker C: That's such a great point. Um, Jack, I think you might have said Hebrews 510. That is Ephesians 510.
[00:58:48] Speaker B: Ephesians. Well, Hebrews.
[00:58:50] Speaker C: I just want.
[00:58:51] Speaker B: Well, he was where I read earlier. Ephesians 510 is where the other one.
[00:58:55] Speaker C: Occasion I looked it up, I was like, that's talking about Melchizedek.
[00:58:58] Speaker B: I appreciate that.
[00:58:59] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, that's a great one, too.
No, but that's a great point. That's exactly right. To be honest, Joe. Guys, I don't have a ton else to add. Again, there's some other things we could get into, but we've kind of hit around every single thing that we have on our outline here of things that we should be able to get up in the pulpit and say it's best if we do XYZ.
[00:59:19] Speaker A: Joe, something real fast. I mean, we've talked about church discipline. Jack mentioned it. We're not talking about church disciplining for homeschooling, you know, just so people are clear. And I think we made it clear throughout, but because I know how people sometimes can. Well, is this what you're saying? No, we're not saying we're going to church discipline you if you don't homeschool your kids. We're not saying we're in church discipline you if you do gentle parenting. That's exactly the point we're making, is we always jump to what can you, you know, is it a sin? And so as we're talking church disciplines, we're talking all these things. These are just, those are not sins. We cannot bind where the Bible has not bound in that way.
But the whole principle is, yeah, absolutely. We're going to say this, and so I don't mean to beat a dead horse here, but I just want people to realize, like, the point is, no, we're not going to church discipline you over it, but in order to create better unity, in order to create holier people, you need to give some serious consideration to this. And once again, if you don't know why you do what you do, you don't have a strong why, you don't. And it has nothing to do with getting holier to God or being more discerning in the. In the ways of righteousness. Think again. Go back to the drawing board. I mean, that's what we come back around to. This is a worldview based discussion.
[01:00:22] Speaker C: That's exactly what I was going to say, and I'll make those. I'll make this my closing comment. And then, Jack, I don't know if you want to wrap us up. You had a banger of a section there that would be make for good closing comments for you, but I'll let you wrap this one up after I kind of give my last thoughts here. And it just goes back to what Joe said. I think it was Joe a few minutes ago.
Just the concept of we need to be in a place where we can have these conversations with the Bible as our foundation and openly communicate about them. What we have right now is, once again, people shutting down the conversation on the basis of caring for the rest of the congregation. Again, I'm talking about preachers here. I'm talking about gospel preachers, ministers who are out there who just want to keep the peace, who don't want to ruffle any feathers, who are telling people like us and telling other people, you know, you really can't say that's for other people to decide. You know, that's just, again, you can't bind that. That is what we're saying has to stop. You know, we're not saying everybody has to agree with myself, Jack, and Joe on every single issue. That's ridiculous. But we need to be in a place where we can have these conversations without having the people interject and jumping, no, you can't. You can't bind it. No. Let other people decide for themselves. We need to move past that. We need to get to a point where we can use scripture as our foundation. Have this discussion, say these things from the pulpit. Open it up in a Bible class. That's one of my favorite things that we've done at Jackson Temple. I did. Even before these two guys attended there with me, I just threw stuff out there like, hey, what do we think about this? What are our thoughts on this? Let's actually have a discussion. Instead of immediately shutting down the conversation for fear of alienating certain people, for fear of binding where the Bible doesn't bind or anything like that. Let's have these discussions and open up these discussions with the Bible as our foundation on what is good, what is better, what is best. I'm here to tell you, I mean, if pulpits and elders and preachers and ministers, if this is what was taught, I think at the bare minimum, you would have christians that have more clarity on how to live in this world. Maybe there'd be more debate. Maybe there'd be a little bit more disagreement. Maybe. Maybe some people might leave as we've discussed before, there'd be more clarity on this is how I live as a Christian. This is how, to use Jack's phrase from earlier, this is how I see the world through the lens of a Christian. See the world through the lens of Christ. Let's open up these conversations, Jack.
[01:02:35] Speaker B: Yeah, this is just iron. Sharpening iron is. We all want to get better. We're going to be open about it. We're going to agree. I want to get closer to Jesus. You want to get closer to Jesus. Let's push each other and figure out the best ways to do that. And, yeah, let's. Let's just stop getting so, man, everything just hits the brakes. Well, no, we can't talk about that. Can't talk about that. Cannot. Well, again, now we got nothing left. Our unity is one dimensional. And so, uh, there's a great episode that will put together for us. Um, love to hear your comments because a lot of this deals with, as we said, a lot of the criticism we get when you guys think you're right about everything. We're going to advocate for what we think is the best way to follow God in this current culture. Absolutely. We would love it if you advocated back and not in a way that basically says, doesn't matter and, and act like those things are, are totally equal. No, we all need to be striving in a dark world that's driving away from God at 100 miles an hour. We, as the church, can sharpen each other's iron. So we're going to close right there. Thanks for listening, and we will talk to you guys on next Monday.
