Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: Welcome in to the Think Deaver podcast presented by Focus Press.
Today we have a topic that has been on our hearts and minds for a little while now. My brother and I have been studying with one of our buddies, Shout Out Joey. I think he sometimes listens to podcasts. We also have the gym podcast Discord if you are not watching godly young men podcast, make sure to check that out and to join our Discord if you are a godly young man.
But on their rages, debate back and forth on several things that we have church Christ and we also have Presbyterian and Baptist and I think some Catholics and things like that on that Discord. And so they bring up some interesting ideas and some interesting things about just interesting perspectives, I should say, that differ from ours.
The more we get into this, the more we think about this, the more we're seeing some young men that are bringing up some challenging points, some things that may go against Church of Christism. We could call it the.
Not Protestantism per se, but really the restorationism.
They make some interesting. I keep saying the word interesting, but some interesting critiques and some points that we want to hit on today and really want to get into why we think the Church of Christ is important to stand upon why we are members of the Church of Christ. We've done done podcasts like this before, but we're going to take a little bit of a different bent to this one where we're going to go into some of what I think are the strongest reasons why the Church of Christ matters to us and why we plan to stick around in the Church of Christ and some of the best things we have going for us. And so that might be the introduction I would give it, fellas. What, what thoughts do you have?
[00:01:44] Speaker C: I think one of the other things that's really important to get right here and to understand is what people are looking for in religion these days. The state of evangelism, the state of seekers is way different than it was just a few years ago. And I think this is kind of a post Covid thing. Post the perspective has changed and people are looking for.
I think they've realized there is real evil in the world and they're looking for a strong way to stand against that evil and looking for religion. People that might not have even believed in God 7, 8 years ago started to believe in demons because of all the evil they were seeing and took that to say, you know what if there's demons, there's got to be a good thing on the other side, like something that can stand up against this. And so they're looking to religion and when they go looking for that, they're looking for something very solid.
The community churchianity, the kind of pat on the back, feel good sermons. That's not what these young seekers are looking for. We've talked about the Gen Z swing toward traditionalism, conservatism, things like that. They're looking for something very solid. And I'm worried that we're stuck on baptism in the instrument debates, debating the Baptist, things like that. And there's a place for that in the church of Christ and those debates that you have, have.
But we've been doing that forever. And what you realize is what young people are looking for is what can your church do to stand up against this stuff? For me, the family that I want to have, the life I'm trying to build and the world I want to see, which church helps is the one that can actually take a stand.
[00:03:21] Speaker A: Yeah. Why choose the church? Why choose the Church of Christ is kind of the question that we have to be prepared to answer. And as I think about my own kids, I think about, you know, the questions that they're going to have one day. I remember, I know I've told this before, but where I used to live in Alabama, I had a seven minute drive to church, to our, to our building and passed six other church buildings on my seven minute drive, like they were just. And you know, that's central Alabama. There's other places in the Bible Belt that are very similar.
And so, you know, I want my kids and I want other young men, really all people, of course, to be able to know the answer to the question of why choose the Church of Christ? And I think initially a lot of people, you know, if you grow up in the church, I think most of our listeners are church of Christ, although not all, but most of them. And so why is your Church of Christ? Oh, well, because it's true is the answer that's usually given. Right.
The problem with that is basically everybody who goes to a church of some kind would also give that same answer. Right. Like why choose the Baptist if you're a Baptist person? Oh, well, because it's, you know, they believe that they're true, that what they believe and what they practice is true just as much as we do. And so yeah, there's an element of we have to get a little bit deeper than that. Obviously we do believe it's true. We do believe it's the truth, the word of God, whether it be doctrinally, practically all these things, but we have to be able to answer that. And what we're going to get into with this episode is specifically, why choose the Church of Christ beyond just that basic answer?
[00:04:45] Speaker B: Well, yeah, because I was going to say that's. You guys are hitting on it like, obviously, baptism, obviously instruments. That's what separates us from that.
[00:04:53] Speaker C: That's why we do believe that the.
[00:04:54] Speaker B: Church of Christ is right on those things.
[00:04:56] Speaker A: Those are the most external things that people know are off the top of their heads, usually.
[00:04:59] Speaker B: Right, exact.
That's what we want to do with this, is go a little bit deeper on the things that really matter to the younger people that are, you know, they're looking at this. We've talked about this on the podcast before. We don't want to just beat a dead horse or bang the same drum. But on the other hand, we're losing a lot of people to high Church, to Anglicanism and to Catholicism and to Orthodoxy. And they're drawn to these other.
I mean, we might call them different religions, right? Like, they're drawn to these different. We're all in the quote, unquote, Christian realm, but just a completely different viewpoint, a completely different way. And so we're looking at it going, what is going on? Why are they leaving the Church of Christ? Why are we struggling so much? And when we continue to throw back the baptism, they may look at it and go, yeah, well, we do baptize. And then with the instruments, there are some, like in Orthodoxy that they don't use instruments. And so we may look at that. And then they go, okay, now what? Now what? Where do we go from here? They're going to say that they baptize. They're going to say they don't use instruments like in Orthodoxy.
Now what?
Well, you know, we have differences in xyz. We're talking bigger things underneath this, such as, I guess we could just kind of kick it off here, such as hierarchy, church hierarchy and church structure. So as you look at high church, of course, for the Catholics are going to have the Pope, they're going to go all the way to the top, and they're going to go down to archbishops and bishops and then priests over their parishes and such.
And I do think that this is where the Church of Christ gets it, right? With our version of our autonomy, with our understanding of autonomy. When you have somebody like the Pope, you have 2,000 years of Catholic history, and how many of those have served under a. Or how many years have been under a.
Basically an apostate Pope, a Pope that has. Yes, he's spoken ex cathedral. He has added to the canon of Scripture, basically, and said some pretty crazy things over time. There's some popes that are very down the line and stick to scripture in a lot of ways.
And then there's popes that don't. And they kind of seemingly make it up as they go. And because their system is set up where they are forced to follow that. I think the hierarchy structure is one of those things that I really appreciate about the Church of Christ, that we're not going to be quite as swayed by that.
[00:07:14] Speaker C: Yeah.
With the structure. And this is not just exclusive to Catholicism or Orthodoxy, but Presbyterian. And that's. That's what the Presbyterian system is, is like this. This church government kind of system.
But even the. The ones like Southern Baptist, you know, they've got the big sbc, the Convention, and, And that has influence, and their churches kind of pay into a POD and decisions are made and handed down and, hey, we're gonna spend money this way in these different ways. And that sometimes is looked at as a strength. It's like, wow, you've got this structure there, this support structure, and it's supposed to doctrinally keep you in line. I don't think there's any major denominational body or as you mentioned, Catholicism, where people are happy with the leadership at the top. Right now you look at the Lutheran ones, a lot of the Presbyterian ones have drifted so far progressively, and the people underneath it are having to revolt against it. And their churches are almost like one, you know, one location, Protestant churches against their own denomination. And so this thing that's supposed to be this guard against false doctrine, it just isn't. Whereas with the churches of Christ, yes, ideas flow from church to church. I mean, you just see that. You see the influences from different schools of preaching, different names, different conferences, things like that, as we've discussed on the conference one a couple weeks ago and a few other episodes. But still, you can isolate those bad ideas much more easily. And if your church doesn't like the direction another church is going, at least you don't have to, like, send them money. At least you're not connected. Or a preacher at a progressive church rises up and he's making decisions for your church. Now, you don't want that. That's an issue. And one of the great things about the churches of Christ that is in reverse to these other ones is when a church of Christ goes super progressive, they take the name off the door. They don't want to be associated with us anymore. Like, because there is that.
That. That reputation, that standard that's there. They're like, oh, that's yucky. I don't want to, you know, be like those. Those backwards, you know, legalists or whatever. And so they. They self filter out, whereas in the other direction, they go up the ladder and take over the whole thing.
[00:09:26] Speaker A: Yeah, that's what I was going to bring up. You think about all the.
The jokes that people make about how, you know, we're just gonna let California kind of like fall off the edge because of how crazy they've gone.
I think that's kind of somewhat the approach with a lot of these congregations that would. That previously would have considered themselves Church of Christ and then decide to start having women preachers or decide to, you know, pretty much be tolerant of LGBTQ or whatever it is. Usually it starts with instruments and women and then kind of gets progressive toward, you know, from there. I think about Otter Creek was one in our area. Woodmont Hills was one in our area. Middle Tennessee, 4th Avenue made the news a decade or so ago now for having a female intern preaching intern. And they've since. But to Jack's point, they're not still trying to stick under the name of Church of Christ. And the autonomy that each congregation has allows. Allows us to say, yeah, they're doing that over there. Number one, we can call that out as wrong. And number two, we don't have to do what they're doing. We can do that. In fact, we're going to under the leadership of our elders, which I'm sure is probably the next kind of tangent of this to cover is, as Joe was mentioning, kind of the hierarchy of the way it's set up within congregations.
The elders of our. Of this congregation are not subject to the elders of another congregation. And so they pretty much get to. And this is where it's important to establish what doctrinally has to be gotten right, therefore, not to. That way we don't bring women up to teach, or we don't start saying, yeah, it's okay if somebody's homosexual or whatever it is. But other than that, within the individual congregations, the elders have autonomy and they're not going to be necessarily swayed by what this congregation over here is doing. And again, kind of like to the California thing where they just kind of fall off the edge. Again, in a joking way, that's what happens to a lot of these congregations that would call themselves Church of Christ and then decide to go progressive.
[00:11:15] Speaker B: Well, the self policing is a very interesting point. And A very.
Yeah, it's really cool to see, actually, that we don't have to have some upper body come in and go, you're no longer holding the standard. Like, they just kind of know they're holding to a different standard, which tells you the name Church of Christ does actually have meaning that people can ascribe. We can look at it and say, well, anybody can be Church Christ. Like, not really. Not really. Because even these guys recognize they're kind of outside of what would might be considered the normal Church of Christ. And, yeah, they may look at it from a stigma point of view if they don't want to be as Jack, you said, the backwards people. On the other hand, it tells you that the church Christ, there is a standard that's important. Now, you think about the average denomination that has these. I don't know if it's polities or, you know, these church structures, Presbyterians, things like that. As you go up, imagine if an Otter Creek or somebody like that. And I'm not looking to cast aspersion on anybody, but they took Church Christ off the name, right? So imagine if they decide to get super vocal and they just move their way up the ranks. And now the elders of Otter Creek are over the entire Nashville area. And these guys are the ones calling the shots. These guys are the ones like, you know, we really rethought about this. I had a daughter and, you know, she was asking, why can't.
[00:12:24] Speaker A: Right.
[00:12:24] Speaker B: Why can't I serve? And all of a sudden it's like, wow, you know, I restudied it and came to a different conclusion. And now this guy gets to make church policy in the Nashville area. That's how these things work. And so, man, chalk this one up as a major plus, in my opinion, to the Church of Christ, where they look at it and go, no, they're.
[00:12:43] Speaker A: Off the deep end. And we're not going to.
[00:12:44] Speaker B: We're not going to do that. So we have an ability to look at that and say, that's not right. Our church is not going to hold to that standard.
What is the Baptist, the Presbyterian, the Catholic, the Anglican, the Orthodox? What is their, you know, their recourse in that situation where you do get a pope? Pope Francis was a disaster. Like, he was completely liberal and off the. Off the charts in so many ways, talking about LGBTQ and talking about abortion and things like that that are just historically abhorrent to Catholics.
What's their recourse? What do they do in that situation? They can either stick with him, which is going in A direction to he who knows the right thing to do it doesn't do it. It's sin. So they're against James 4:17, or they push back against it. It's like, well, join the club. Here you are, you are a restorationist because you have now decided to split from church doctrine based off of what your own view of Scripture. So if you do that and you go against the governing body, you become like us. If you stick with the governing body, I don't see how you're not in sin based off of you violating your own conscience. So it really puts them in a pretty tight spot. And maybe I'm oversimplifying this, but I do genuinely think it puts them in a pretty tight spot. To think of having these leadership structures not to steel man it. Jack, I'm curious to get your thoughts on this. To steel man it. They're going to go to Jerusalem council in Acts 15. You know that it really helped to have a governing body. They're going to go to just the way that the Old Testament set up. And I'm curious to bring in this historical point. I want to get your thoughts on this and will you as well. But these. The historical point of. I've heard that, you know, there was bishops going back to second century, that they understood early church structure, understood that there was going to be bishops, and there's going to be those that were over them, whether that be Ignatius or that be who's the other one right underneath Peter. Not just a miter, a martyr, there's another one, Clement. Clement. Yes, Clement of Rome. So, you know, they. And they're going to look at this as, man, you're talking less than a hundred years after they've already established bishops.
I'm curious to get your thoughts on that. They feel they have history on their side. We're looking at it going, man, I think from a church structure point of view, that's not the way that Paul's talking about it in the way that it was set up. So what would you say to that?
[00:14:54] Speaker C: With the Jerusalem council in Acts 15, it's like, man, if we had the apostles and people who walked with Jesus and miraculous inspiration of the Holy Spirit, things like that. Yeah, I would submit to that, too.
But I mean, they did have ecumenical councils for hundreds of years. And we go by a lot of the things that were established on those trinitarian doctrines and things like that are important.
But what if they had decided wrong? And that's exactly. I mean, the whole Protestant thing, you've got the Filioque controversy, the east, west, the Orthodox Roman Catholic thing. And from there, it just started fracturing over and over and over. And what everyone's doing every single time is picking a side. Well, I don't like what the council said, so I'm going to go a different direction.
And so, like, everybody agrees with everybody, does that at a certain point. Everybody says, no, this council over that council, like, that's unavoidable. And so I. Where people say, yeah, you guys just don't submit to anybody. It's like everybody picks their own way. Everybody is kind of their own Protestant against something. And so, like this, everybody want. Well, not everybody, but in this conversation, they want to claim this, like, historical, you know, pure line. And you'll see these graphs of, like, you know, well, here was us, the Catholic Church, and here's where all of you sinners broke off, or here was us, the Orthodox, and there's where the Catholics went astray and everybody else split off from them. It just doesn't work that way because, as you said, in some of these groups, even today, people are like, yeah, I don't like what that Pope said, so I'm just not gonna agree with him on that. Then you're not submitting to the thing that you say is an advantage. So to bring it back to the advantage of autonomy, you isolate those bad doctrines. But the other thing is, you can have outsized influence on a congregation.
I mean, like, you can have your one congregation that's a holdout against your denomination's progressive movements or against a bad pope or whatever, but you're still part of this large structure that's drifting away. I don't know. Are you guys familiar with Redeemed Zoomer?
[00:16:50] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:16:51] Speaker C: He's a humongous YouTuber. And it's one of those, like, who gave this kid a platform. I mean, he's really young guy, and his thing is reconquering the mainline denominations, the Methodists, the Presbyterians, that all have those, like, beautiful church buildings, and anytime you go into a major city, they got the beautiful church building with a rainbow flag out front. He's like, what we need to do is go in and just basically wait him out. Sit there as a member long enough to get into leadership, let the leadership die out, then we'll get those church buildings back, and we'll take those things back.
There's a structure that goes all the way to the top here that you can't fight against, but in the churches of Christ, you can. In a congregation, you can help drive it in the right direction.
Even if the guys down, I mean, we deal with this right where we are. The guys down the street are out to lunch.
It has no impact on us. It doesn't take us down and we can steer right down the narrow path with the Scriptures and not have to be beholden to them.
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[00:19:10] Speaker A: Here would be my question, Joe I think that's very well said, Jack, but as you talk about kind of Jerusalem Council and the councils that extended, you know, a couple hundred years or so, or however long it was after the church was founded.
Joe I guess I'll turn it back to you to ask the question of, like, what would if we're steel mail, if we're steel manning it, what would their response be to Because I agree with the thought of, like, hey, you know, if you've got Peter and James, the brother of Jesus, who are there leading your council, like, okay, that's one thing. We don't really have anybody like that today.
But in the pastoral epistles, it seems to be pretty clear the way that biblically speaking, when, as Paul is writing that God wants the church as a structure to be laid out, you have an evangelist and, you know, we can quibble about who appoints the elders and whatnot, but like, you have an evangelist, you have elders, you have deacons, and you know that, again, you can look at Timothy, you can look at Titus, like, that is the structure that you see post Jerusalem council, post Acts 15, as Paul is visiting these churches, as Paul is writing to each of these churches individually, the problems in Corinth, you know, Ephesus does not have those problems. So he's writing about different things. Same in the church in Galate, in Galatia and all those things. The structure seems to be pretty clearly set that, hey, you have an evangelist, whether it's Timothy, whether it's Paul himself, appoint elders. They're the ones that are going to be in charge. You have deacons, etc. What would their response be to that? I'm trying to put you on the spot, Joe, but like that, that would be my response initially if somebody wants to, you know, maybe protest with, hey, what about Jerusalem Council? Okay, what about all the post scriptural or all the scriptural evidence of what it looks like post Jerusalem council? Because the apostles aren't gonna. Weren't gonna be able to live forever. James, the brother of Jesus, was not gonna be able to live forever. So what would you. What would you say to that? Or what do you think they would say to that, I guess is better?
[00:20:49] Speaker B: Well, I think that's why they go to Ignatius and guys like that directly under Paul is they had their own guys and they recognized that, yes, elders in each church, they may not disagree with that. Elders in each church, you know, the, the bishops or Presbyterian, whatever it is, or like the, the local level, the bishops, rather sorry, would be over at a higher level, the Roman peninsula. And so they would have a recourse, and this is to their, you know, what they would say to their credit, quote unquote, is, man, what do you do if the elders have a specific issue, a doctrinal issue that's really coming in, and they need a second set of eyes on it, and they need somebody that's really going to come in and kind of navigate that for them.
What do you do? Well, in this situation, they can run it up the hierarchy, the chain of command, and go, okay, we need help with this particular situation in this. In this part of our church.
[00:21:37] Speaker A: I was gonna say it's almost like the way businesses are set up. You've got your, like, regional manager, you got your. Your, you know, and the assistant.
Right, yeah, exactly. And then the, you know, presidents go, you know, goes up from there, and it's just the regions keep getting bigger and you've got somebody that is at a higher level responsible for more. It's kind of what you're saying it sounds like, Right?
[00:21:57] Speaker B: And so it. For them, it's very nice to have somebody that they can run it up the ladder, run up flagpole, be like, hey, what do we do here? And for somebody to be able to give them a very qualified biblical answer on something. This is, in my opinion, this really goes to the strength of why we talk so much about getting appropriate elders in place. If you have men of the word who really know the Word and who know their flock, know the congregation, know what they're supposed to do, man, why would I need to run it up the flagpole to somebody else? Like, I'm here. I understand. You know, that's little miss so and so. I've known her for the last 30 years. Um, I saw her husband pass away. I know that she's got this specific need, this specific issue. Why do I need bishop so and so to come in and tell me how to help Sister Mary, you know, who's just this. This widow. I don't need that. Well, I got this, you know, young couple in their 30s, and they're getting. They're heading toward a divorce, and there's been infidelity. I really need to check with the guy up above. No, I don't. That's why God put me here, is I know the flock. I know their struggles. I married them. Or I. The preacher married them. I was at their wedding. We can really rely on that and lean on that. And that's the beauty of the autonomy and the beauty of the eldership and deacon system and the preacher system is. It is hyper individual, like, hyper focused on the individual church instead. I mean, you could get a bishop, and he's over 30 churches in the area, or 15 or whatever they allow for, let's say, a dozen churches.
Okay, if there's a dozen churches and they all average, let's say, even if it's 50 members, you're still talking, what, 600 people that he's got to have a pulse on. He doesn't. So all we're going off of is, and this is why they stick to creeds and traditions so much, is they're going to go off of the structure that they can provide in a creed. The individual moments of this person's kid is turning transgender. Well, we tell you what the church thinks about transgenderism. That's great.
What are we going to do about this family and their son? We can throw scripture at him, and that's obviously a good thing to have scripture backing us up. There's Also going to need to be that personal touch to go in there and be like, hey, I can tell that the dad's been really aloof and that there are other reasons that this is taking place.
A bishop can't do that. So they may look at it and say, it helps us to be able to go to somebody up above and somebody to be able to rule on different church issues who has a different pair of eyes. Right. A different set of eyes and who's more wise. I think you're losing out on a personal touch, though, in my opinion.
[00:24:12] Speaker C: Now, somebody would say that Paul like that. That's what he did. Paul was over all those. So did he have the personal touch or whatever? I think that is very abundantly clear in his work. He did it in Acts. What he's telling Timothy to do is we're passing this off. I'm not going to be here forever. Let's get elders who can handle all.
[00:24:29] Speaker A: Of them tell us to train faithful men too.
[00:24:31] Speaker C: Right. Timothy And Titus, he says, I put you there to appoint elders, like that's why I left you in this city, is to make this happen. And even in Acts, they went and started a bunch of churches and they went back a few years later and put elders in all those churches. And when you read Acts 20 where he's saying his farewell to the elders of Ephesus, he's telling them, all right, I declared the whole council of God. Guess what your job is now. Your job is to protect the flock.
Yeah. Keep them from wolves, things like that.
Yeah. Paul had that distance. He wasn't there. But he also, that was not a permanent role. There's not always going to be a Paul. And it's weird to try and like make a guy Paul like Paul was Paul, like Paul was commissioned by the Lord. And again you have the apostleship and the way things played out in the New Testament. But again, even his outlook on his job was, let's get you self sustaining. Let's get you the men in place who can handle this thing and pass it down to others. And the second Timothy 2. Two thing about, you know, Paul to Timothy to faithful men who can teach others. Also not all right, Paul to Timothy, now you're the head honcho in Ephesus, Timothy. And that was never how that was planned to work.
[00:25:38] Speaker B: You know, going to the history point, which I think is interesting. And all of this is they're kind of bound. Well, you know, of course, Paul passed it down to guys and Peter passed it down and John to Polycarp. Right. They passed it down like, okay, but the early Church fathers, and this is difficult, and this is going to kick off the other part of our discussion or kind of the next part here is this idea sola scriptura.
They rely on a lot of the early Church fathers for their church structure, for their, you know, how this kind of plays out. And what Paul did replicate, Paul did establish somebody as himself. And I would look at it and say, okay, so they assume, and I don't want to get it wrong, but I believe it is Ignatius that they think is kind of directly underneath Paul and the Clement of Rome's underneath Peter and the Polycarp's underneath John. And they have this, okay, they disagree and Ignatius disagrees with himself based off of early and later writings. And so which one's right? Like, if we're going to go off of them, we're going to hold up these traditions. These, these early Church fathers, we can learn so much from them.
But this is where we really go off the rails, is, well, we think that Paul established that. Okay, so are you going to follow Polycarp as an apostle or as the follower of John? Are we going to follow Clement of Rome? Are we going to follow Ignatius? Are we going to follow all of the other ones that came out of this? What do we do with the early Church fathers and that structure?
There's already going to be disagreement in how the Church was set up. And the idea that Paul replicated himself, that would have been through Timothy or Titus, not anybody else, you know, not in that vein. That would have been through Timothy or Titus. And their whole job was to help set up elders. And so that's the beauty of sticking to Scripture, is it simplifies things. Whereas once we get into early Church history, things go off the rails real fast based off of disagreements. Like, they can't both be right. And so who's right? Do we follow John? Do we follow Peter? Do we follow Paul? Do we follow. Who knows?
[00:27:17] Speaker A: Because then how far down do you go as well? What if Ignatius had somebody under him? You know, do we follow his writings? And how far does that go down beyond that?
And what is frustrating about it is you have to keep in mind, and it seems like a fairly obvious point, but even if Polycarp was under John or Ignatius was under Paul or whoever, one of those was inspired by God and it wasn't Ignatius, it was Paul. Right? One of those was expired by God and it was John, not Polycarp. And so, you know, is there value in looking at what the early Church fathers believed on a particular issue because they were so much closer to the source, as far as, you know, from a time perspective than we are. Sure, I think there's value in that. But to take that and kind of elevate it to the same level or maybe just right beneath the level of Scripture and kind of use that in a proof texting way similar to, unfortunately, the way we do the church Christ. Sometimes I don't think that. That. I think that's a bridge too far. And that's something that, once again, as Joe spoke to, they do disagree about about various things. I mean, the marriage, divorce and remarriage thing was big, you know, a big item that a lot of those early church fathers disagreed on and appeal all the way. You know, if they believe, you know, permanence view, they appeal to them. And there are certain people who say, well, these early church fathers didn't teach permanence view. And so, like, that's where anytime, to Joe's point, I'm just kind of echoing what he said, that you step outside the realm of what does Scripture teach to what did this person who might have been mentored or discipled by Paul, what did they teach? You have to be very careful. Jack, what are your thoughts on that?
[00:28:50] Speaker C: That's really why we talk, or we're talking about this in this episode, is when people are looking for something solid. As we talked about, church history is a big part of it. It's like, who has a historical claim? Who has that? Number one, scripture comes before anything anybody said in church history, any church authority, anybody says, which we'll get to in a minute. Number two, church history is not a monolith. It's not like you can pick, hey, everybody always agreed up until Martin Luther in 1500, that's the way some people really present it. And it's like, that just isn't true. Obviously, there were splits, there were disagreements. There's the east, west split, things like that. And so you can't really appeal to that. And so it comes down to, well, then can you even have history? And it's like, yeah, you can. But what unites history? It is faithfulness to the Word. It is like that, that standard. And there's really no other. Like, if it's not that, then what is it? Is it just. Well, somebody says so. Well, that doesn't work either. And so it's a very fine line to walk. But I guess the point I'm getting at is you don't have to have this clean view of church history. This is 2000 years of humankind who are imperfect, trying to do something, trying to carry out the Gospel. And sometimes they did better than others. I mean, like, things happened. Sometimes somebody would say the Reformation was a needed correction because the Catholic Church had gone so off the rails, given the Pope so much authority, all of those things.
Then we would say the restoration was a needed correction because the Reformation didn't go far enough. It just kind of held on to a lot of vestiges of the Catholicism that it tried to leave. And so we went this other direction. So you end up with Church autonomy, which is how, again, you isolate these things and you have the opportunity to, as a group, get back to Scripture. And there you're doing Scripture as you can, apply it in your own situation. And so I think that is really the strength that we have to offer. And just that conclusion of this is you don't have to have a perfectly clean view of history because the people who say they have it are kind of being dishonest. They're kind of. Dishonest is a mean word. It's misleading. Right. The claims that they make to Church history. And so I think that case is overstated.
[00:31:05] Speaker B: Well, Catholics and Orthodox have two different views of Church history. Who's right? The other thing is, we don't even know that Peter made it to Rome.
There's no indication that Peter ever really ruled over Rome, especially based off of the Book of Romans. So if that's the case, and we can't, like put a stamp of approval on he. Absolutely. They based an entire doctrine off of Peter being the Pope in Rome, like going all the way back in. It's, I think, a misunderstanding of misreading of Matthew 16 and, you know, upon this rock I'll build my church. And that being the Petra and Petros and, you know, all those things of who's. Is it the building on Peter or is it building on his confession? And we. So we split from there.
Well, at that point, if you can't definitively tell me these things in history took place, that's not good. You know, we need to have a pretty concrete history. It's like this to this, to this, to this. And you can't tell me that the very first person, Peter, the very first guy that you hold up, even made it to Rome. And I'm basing the entirety of Church history off that. Probably not. And then again with Orthodox, they have their own version of history and their own. Their own way, their own events, their own councils, the people that they follow.
Okay, so it's really muddy 2000 years ago as to what took place. I do think, Jack, to your point, there's a through point in this, which is it is those who are trying to get it right. There's the book Traces of the Kingdom. Yes. You know, we've heard about it. I think there's some holes in it. I've talked to people that are in Orthodoxy and they can't stand the book and they think that the guy is a charlatan, I think.
But I think there's some struggles in it, per se. I think there's some stretches, things like that. By and large, I don't think we have to trace the Church of Christ per se. I think we have to trace faithful Christians who are trying to get it right, doing the right thing. The other thing is there's a lot of nuance when you have one Bible chained to a pulpit written in a language that the people couldn't read or like. Yeah, there's some nuance here as to what takes place there. All I'm saying, though is there are certain things you're going to base it around. And Jack, you spoke to this, another big one. And I think this is a feather in our cap. In church, Christ is sola scriptura. Because when you're looking at these other ones, they are. It's. It's not sola scriptura they're adding on the giveaway.
[00:33:06] Speaker A: Doesn't know what that means. Just.
[00:33:07] Speaker B: Yeah, just.
[00:33:08] Speaker A: It's Latin.
[00:33:08] Speaker B: But yeah, just the Scriptures is really what it. I mean, technically, sola scripture is what, one?
[00:33:14] Speaker C: Yeah, there's five SOLAs out of Reform or the Reformation, and we don't hold all of them, but that one we do.
[00:33:20] Speaker B: Yeah. So the, the idea that we're down to just the Scriptures, that is the authoritative approach. That's not necessarily what the other ones believe. Now, they may hold the Scriptures up there at the top, but they're going to have tradition of men. They're going to have like the Apocrypha, they're going to have the, the early Church Fathers, and they're going to have those up there. Like, they don't put it right on the same level as scripture. They put it a step down.
But by and large, they're really hinging a lot on tradition, on the church tradition as it's passed down the last 2,000 years.
And a lot of those things. And so it's not sola scripture.
[00:33:54] Speaker A: What I would compare that to for us in the Church of Christ, you know, they say, well, what about you Guys, and your, in your commentaries or your stuff like that, not to speak for everybody, but to me, the way that we use those is far more of a tool to understand the main, the main objective, which is scripture. Right. As opposed to what, you know, Joe is saying, which is, you know, those apocrypha, you know, the apocrypha, the early church fathers of tradition, those aren't tools. Those are things that they're very much referring to, similar to they, the way that they do with Scripture. And to me, this has always been one of the.
To get back to the question that I started with, you know, why choose the Church of Christ? You know, why is that something that we are, you know, passionate members of? And it is due to the fact that I think we are in the text. We refer to the text. We, you know, if there's a problem, if there's a, an issue, that's where we go far better than anybody else does. Now we've got our complaints and gripes, as we've added podcast episodes about before, about kind of maybe the way that we do that sometimes and maybe the inability to, you know, decipher a cultural message through the lens of scripture just due to being so stuck in, you know, scriptures and whatnot. But as far as truly basing all of our worship practices, doctrinal beliefs, even practical living things, the Church of Christ does the best job of staying in the text and determining, okay, what does scripture teach? What does scripture say? What does the inspired word of God have to say? And the other thing about it is if you believe the Bible is inspired, which I would, you know, most denominations do, that has to be. Or that should, I should say doesn't have to, because they don't. But that should be the number one source that you go to. And yet it's often not Jack.
[00:35:33] Speaker C: Yeah.
So 15 years ago or so, there was this young, restless Reformed movement. There's all these young Calvinists guys, and a lot of people are flocking to Calvinism because they walk into these churches and wow, they're just opening the Bible and preaching from it. Now, I would disagree with their conclusions, but people were just wowed by. They're just preaching from the Bible and it's like, yeah, we've been doing that the whole time. Like, that's what we do around here. You know, like that's one of the strengths of the Churches of Christ is the everything you have to have the text. You know, if you don't have the authority of the text or you can't make an argument from why it's okay by the text, it doesn't fly. And that is a real strength that we have. And so. But then people will come back to. It's never sola scriptura. It's always, you know, scripture and someone's interpretation, which is true, that's unavoidable.
But then you get into.
You're still, if it's not that, then it's scripture, someone's interpretation, and me choosing which person I think interpreted right. And this is where the Catholic and Orthodox, they, they say that we've got this solved. We don't have to, like, think through this. We just receive the teachings of the church, we receive the traditions, we receive all of that. And we go with what they say. Like, why are you Orthodox over Catholic? Your own personal interpretation. You had to study for yourself and say, I think the Orthodox are right. So you can't avoid that. It's really a cop out to say, well, you guys just interpret everything for yourselves like you did too. That's why you are where you are. You have to do that. And so why not cut out the middleman?
Why not just say, hey, let's all open the scriptures together and figure this out? And I think when you do, you'll come to, I had somebody arguing with me today. And this has been a frequent thing lately, the baptism thing.
So you're telling me people are going to hell if they're not in water? Like, well, let's see. First Peter 3:21 says, Baptism now saves you. Acts 2:38, the people were convicted. They were pricked to the heart, and they said, men and brethren, what shall we do? And Peter said, one of the first things is get baptized. Yeah, seems pretty important. So I'm gonna stick with that. Like, I've got scripture for that.
And so let's roll with that. Let's just open the book and see what verses we got and put it all together. And if you're not doing that, then what are you doing?
Well, we've got this guy that says this, okay, well, how does what a 4th century writer say, why does that go head to head with or even trump what I can show you in the scriptures?
It sure shouldn't. And even the church authority thing, like, you have the idea of elders, you have the idea of the local church. Where do you have the idea of a denomination with a government at the top that people pay dues to? Like, I'm sorry, where'd you get that?
[00:38:14] Speaker B: But we're looking at. And this is where people can kind of.
I Don't know. I think they view themselves as lesser. And this is why we hold up certain men. And no doubt we're going to hold up people in the Bible, but we talked about it. It kind of comes into play with the way we hold up certain men on lectureships and things like that. Everybody's going to gravitate towards somebody else's reading of the Bible to some degree. I hate to say it, like you can read Augustine and go, man, that guy gets it. And that guy is infinitely smarter than me and he is.
But Augustine's not going to stand in heaven on my behalf. I have to answer to God for the way that I apply the Scriptures and the way that I came to them. And that's a scary thing. And yeah, I can read Augustine and I can look at, I can read all the early church fathers.
[00:38:55] Speaker C: Well, the funny thing is the Calvinists claim him, the Catholics claim him. The orthodox, everybody claims him. Like everybody says he's on their side. Well, he can't be on everybody's side.
[00:39:03] Speaker B: Exactly. And you know, he may be a great scholar, but at the end of the day that's also his interpretation of the same text I'm looking at. And so when we have this low sense of self, like man, I'm an idiot, I don't know any of this stuff like, but we're supposed to, you know, there's nothing special about the Bereans other than they search the Scriptures. Well, they're just super smart people. No, they had a heart for God. They wanted to know what was right and they searched the Scriptures. We're not told that they're all Einstein's, they're all geniuses. We're told they search scriptures. That's what's required of us is are you searching on your own or did you check your brain at the door and go, well this guy believes that and he's pretty smart. So I'll just, I'll do that. Like that's the struggle of non sola. Scripture is you're looking at.
Yes. Adding to it to some degree with. Well, I really follow this early church Father. That's great. This is his interpretation of the Scriptures. Well, he's a lot closer to Jesus. Yes, that's still his interpretation as to what was said. And do you believe that the 66 books that we have in the Bible, do you believe that that is sufficient? That Scripture is all scriptures inspired by God, that this is sufficient? We've been given everything pertaining to life and godliness. Do you believe that? Because if you Don't. That's a completely different discussion. And they kind of don't. They may say they do to some degree. Then it's like, then can I understand it for myself and apply it for myself? That's the question. Or do I need a priest to apply it for me? Do I need Augustine to apply it for me? Do I need John Calvin to apply it for me? Like I believe? And maybe it's an arrogant position to say, so I believe I can read the Scriptures and apply it for my life. And ultimately, yeah, because I'm going to stand in the judgment on behalf of this and I'm not going to have John Calvin get up there and go, well, hey, you know, this is why Joe has to believe what he believes. Like, Joe has his own point of belief in the Scriptures and what I'm supposed to do with it. So I think it's just, I don't want to get too individualized and say that we're not part of something bigger, part of a bigger church. Church, wide body. But at the end of the day, we will be judged individually for what we do with the Scriptures. And so if I'm going to adhere to somebody else, make sure you don't check your brain at the door and just go. Because that guy's super smart. And I know once again, it's an oversimplification of what they would say is the. Is the situation. And I'm not saying I'm on Augustine or any of those guys playing levels, but they're not answering for me.
[00:41:12] Speaker C: I am.
[00:41:12] Speaker B: So does that make sense?
[00:41:17] Speaker C: Hey, guys, I wanted to tell you about A Closer Walk with the Volume One. It's a devotional book written by Joe and me. It is 90 days worth of devotionals that each day gives you a Bible reading, a prayer, a meditation, and a discussion question. Something that you can do quickly. It's something you can share with others. Something that will give you three months worth of devotionals to get your year off on the right foot. It's currently available on Amazon, coming soon to the Focus Press store. So go check out A Closer Walk with the Volume One today.
Yeah.
What I would just sum it up with is you're doing this anyway. You might think you're like, circumventing the need for interpretation. As I said a minute ago, you're not. You have to do it anyway. You might as well go somewhere where they let you do it, where it's like part of, like, from upfront, we're honest about your need to interpret. Right. And so Be a Berean, search the scriptures daily to see if these things are true. I mean like can you imagine Paul's preaching to the Bereans, Acts 17:11. And you know that they're commended. They were more noble minded because they were searching the scriptures daily. And one of these guys comes in like, no, no, no, you're not supposed to do that. Just listen to Paul. Like, just listen. Even Paul thought, you know, like Luke thought it was a good thing that they were checking Paul's teachings against the scriptures. That should be what we do. And I think that's a positive thing. So again, the church autonomy thing, I believe in the churches of Christ is a very strong point that is lacking elsewhere. The sola scriptura just telling you up front, you need to have your Bible open and be studying along with us and checking these things. I think that's another strong point. I do think when we talk about appealing to these younger generations and when we say this, it's not being seeker sensitive, it's not saying, well this is what people are looking for, so let's give it to them. I don't believe in that at all. I believe nicely. Sometimes what people are seeking also lines up with what is right, with what we should be doing. And that's what we're trying to do here is make the case that we can do that. But there's ways we can improve in that as well. And it's our impact. As I said, people are looking for something that can stand up to evil. And not just something that is about your individual salvation, your individual walk with God, but a place where it's like, man, there's some real evil in the world and I need a stronghold against that.
This is where I think we are falling short of it because we're still in that software in our brains where we're trying to study out all the minute details of the text with people.
What they're asking, they're evaluating on fruits, not on your ability to answer a question, not on your doctrinal questionnaire. They're evaluating what are the fruits of your church. And baptisms are a very good thing, but they're not the only thing, they're not the only fruit we should have. And one of them should be external engagement with the world.
I don't know, I feel like we should fall short on that. Where do you guys stand on that part of it? That again, it's something people are looking for, but it's also something I think we should be doing in the first place.
[00:44:08] Speaker A: I think the evidence of it is why all these young people are vacating the Church of Christ in favor of some of these other denominations or orthodoxy or whatever, is due to the fact that to a large extent, we don't have the answers to their questions about things having to do with the culture. So we don't have the answer beyond, you know, and this is where, you know, we will proudly stand up and say, we believe in the Church of Christ. You should be a member of the Church of Christ and also the church Christ has problems, not the least of which is what I would call an over. I'm sure you guys would as well. An overemphasis on some of those things like baptism and what instruments we, you know, or the lack of using instruments in worship. And some of those things, while important, if that's the extent of the answers that we can give to our kids. Because you talk about fruits, Jack, what is, what is the probably most impactful fruit you can have? Can you pass on a legacy of faith to your kids? I know we just had an episode on that, but that to me is the. Is the perfect definition of what kind of fruits are you as a church bearing? And I know the youth dropout rates across Christendom are nothing to be proud of necessarily, but the Church of Christ certainly has nothing to be proud of as far as that goes. And so you talk about bearing fruit that to me, in a lot of ways, where we fall short in passing our faith, the next generation, is because we can't in many cases relate our faith to what's going on in the culture. The questions that they have about, you know, the things that they're dealing with, the things that people in the world are asking. We don't have the answers. You talk about engaging the culture.
The majority of, I shouldn't say the majority, but a large portion of the Church of Christ is trying to shout down things like Christian nationalism or men leading their homes or, you know, shout down the opposition against feminism and things like that. And, man, it just falls flat. And what it leads to is a once again to focus on young people, a group of young people who look at the Church of Christ to a large extent and say they're not really standing for much. Sure, they can tell me why we can't use mechanical instruments of worship, and they can tell me why, you know, I'm supposed to get baptized for the remission of my sins.
[00:46:13] Speaker B: That's great.
[00:46:15] Speaker A: They can't tell me how to be a faithful husband and father. They can't tell me how to disciple my kids into faithfulness. They can't tell me, you know, a number of these things. And so I'm kind of rambling to say that yes, I would agree with that critique, Jack, that this is where a bit of a struggle comes in for the church.
[00:46:32] Speaker B: But two, and I think it's on two fronts. I think the day to day is a struggle.
You look at the appeal of something like Catholicism where you can go to mass all the time and you can have somebody to talk to about your sins, about your struggles, somebody to relate to and somebody that says, hey, you know, here's how to be better.
That is a huge appeal. To have a daily. The common book of prayer. For the Anglicanism. For Anglicanism.
Sorry, yeah, Book of Common Prayer. Got that backwards. The Book of Common Prayer.
You look at it, you know, how practical, how helpful that is.
Do we have anything like that? It's very much like a. We talk about choose your own adventure. Like, hey, go home. Hopefully, you know, hopefully you'll open the Bible during the week and say some prayers and come back and we're all kind of in the same boat together. Like, man, what if we did a day to day, what if we took a day by day approach of how to help one another? I'm not saying everything needs to be central around the building, the way that mass is or something like that. On the other hand, having something like that book, con prayer, whatever it may be, where we can pass that out and having it, that is something that can really help establish a church where people know what to do. We got a lot of people coming in, like, what do I, how do I live? What do I do? Like, hey, just read the Bible and be a good person, man. There's a lot more there. So I think on a day to day smaller level, we're letting people down. I also think on the big, you know, think deeper, right? Like think big amazing things that God can do. You look at the Catholics, how many hospitals and schools and everything else came through that? Yes, millions of dollars also kind of help and everything else from the Catholics. I get it. On the other hand, what a legacy. You look at the gothic architecture, beauty matters. And I do think God gave his eyes to see and gave colors in the world for us to appreciate beauty.
And I'm not saying that every church needs to be a bazillion dollar church, but man, those are gorgeous. And it's like Christians did this and there are people that are willing to work on a Cathedral for 300 years. They would never see the end of it. And they were willing to work on it because it matters. It's beautiful. We talked about this last week and the importance of that. But it's like they were able to build out a Christian culture where the central point of the community was the church building. That is really cool. So everybody knows this is where we're going to get benevolence. This is where I'm going to go find God. This is where I can talk to people about my problems.
We don't have that in the Church of Christ. We have not thought big. We don't have a whole lot of men's programs. We don't have a lot of, you know, we don't. We're not building major things for God. We're not doing any of those things.
So externally speaking, that's where I think autonomy does. It's not falls short, but where autonomy is a little bit difficult is the Catholics can get Catholic churches from east to west, you know, to pool money together to get these things done. On the other hand, I do think we could be a little more externally focused in terms of really planting our flag in the community, getting out into local politics, getting out into the local community, making a difference, making a name for ourselves, running ministries that people do see us. And unfortunately, what you see a lot is the churches that are willing to do it often go liberal, and I hate that. But the churches that you see that are most vocal are those that are canceling Monday or Sunday morning worship so they can go serve the poor. Like, can we not do both? Can we not have a fantastic time of worshiping our almighty God and then go serve the poor? It just seems like, you know, one is giving up for the other. I don't know why that is, but that's where I think we could really improve as a church is being more, more vocal about some of these things and being seen on a day by day level, but also on a big picture level.
[00:49:56] Speaker C: Is it in our DNA to not look outwardly? I mean, obviously like the charitable thing, I feel like that's different. But then the impacting culture thing, I get so much pushback when I write about that.
And I mean, there's the politics part of it, but just in general of like, hey, let's, let's try and have some sway be on ourselves. No, no, let's just. Jesus didn't say he didn't send us to change laws or cultures. He sent us to baptize.
But when you baptize a lot of people, that should change a Culture, it should externalize. But everything we do is so internal. All of our money is spent. There's this whole internal economy of our conferences, our camps, our colleges, the things like that that we have. And it always just kind of folds back in on itself.
And again, other than like charitable things, a clothing drive or something like that, which, you know, that's fine, but external impact is not really. It's like, if that's something you want to go do, okay, you know, you've got some members of the church who are, you know, run for office and things like that. Yeah, you know, okay, go ahead and do that. That's your thing. But as far as really trying to say, hey, what we should be doing is strengthening people in here to go out and influence the culture externally. And you see some groups doing this now. You see the crec, which is kind of Presbyterian, it's reformed, but it's denominational group that very much has their eye on, like, we want to externalize this. We want to help other people see Christ and everything that, you know, everything. There's people that like view this as icky to really get involved in culture war stuff and influencing the culture.
Every bit of life that you enjoy is because Christians used to do that, is because like people led the charge and brought Christendom to be what it was for over a thousand years. And the west and the prosperity and the freedom and the safety and all of these things.
It just drives me crazy when a guy gets up there on a stage in an air conditioned building on a live stream to people all over the world and all this great technology that came out of this to go, this is bad.
Like, you're taking all that for granted and you're spitting on the graves of everybody who gave you that and saying, we shouldn't take that ball and march it forward. We need to run it back in the other direction and score in our own end zone. Like, rethink that.
That's not a good idea. So when it comes to, again what young people are seeking, something that can stand up against the evil in the world, something that can project a positive vision. You brought up like male leadership in the home.
Why can't we be that? Why can't we, you know, young men and women who are looking again for a return to tradition and values and things like that, and they come in and realize you're going to be expected to live up to that here.
We're going to preach and teach that, hey, as men you got to lead your families and provide for and women you got to submit to your husbands and, you know, raise your kids and all the things that go into that. We don't have to say it. We've said it on so many podcasts. That is not what you hear most of the time.
[00:52:47] Speaker A: Yeah, so this has been maybe a little bit of a different type episode, I would say. At the very least, I hope we answered some questions about why, once again, why choose the Church of Christ? Why is this something that we believe so passionately? And again, I know a lot of our listeners are members of the Church of Christ, but I'll refer back to what I said at the start.
We have to be able to answer more, you know, something deeper than just, well, because it's true. Again, it's what everybody believes about their own particular denomination or faith base or whatever it is. They all believe it's true, otherwise they wouldn't be a part of it. And so, you know, whether it be due to some of the things we've discussed, I hope this episode has helped give a little bit of a deeper understanding to why we do believe the Church of Christ is true due to the soul of scripture and the way that, you know, the autonomy that we have. These are some, some wonderful things about the Church of Christ. And as we kind of spent the last 10 minutes discussing some of the maybe critiques that we have, that's the great thing about it is that we each, each of us listening or each of us talking and then each of us listening can go to our congregations and do what we can to, to be the change that we want to see. It's a lot harder to do in some of these other places where again, you've got a governing authority that's, you know, determining policy and stuff like that. That's, that's not the case for us. And so that should be an exciting thing, that should be a motivating thing for each, for each of us within our own congregations if we have a change we want to see.
You know, we might not be an elder, we might not be a, even be a preacher or anything like that. We can, we can really go and inspire that change. So those would be kind of my concluding thoughts. Joe, what thoughts you have as we get ready.
[00:54:20] Speaker B: I love that point. I love that point because that's something. I was talking with a young man one time, he was looking at going into orthodoxy and that's something I said is like, maybe that makes me a control freak, but man, I really love the idea of being able to have a hands on approach and effect Change and talk to people and inspire people to be better and to think of things differently and everything else. And I'm encouraged by that. I think that is a.
You know, that's a big part of this is, man, we have an opportunity to be special, to do something that's really cool, to be a light in the community, to talk to people about what makes this different.
There's just. There's a beauty to all of that, and I don't want that to be missed based off of us being a.
I don't know, we're so busy talking about the standards of baptism and things like that that we just miss that we have a really beautiful structure that can speak to people, meet people where they. Where they are, what they need.
Let's not lose sight of that as members of the Church of Christ. If you're not a member of the Church of Christ, we'd love to get your comments on this. Make sure to comment and let us know what you think.
But for those that are members of the church, Christ people think we're liberal. I think a lot of the time, because we'll talk about these things. We're not going anywhere. We do believe in this model. We do believe what we're doing here. But, man, we just have a vision. And I want to cast that vision of what we could be, of being a beacon of hope where people, when they're turning to Christianity, they come here first. They don't go find it with Catholicism, they don't go find it with Presbyterianism. They're not going to the Lutheran. So coming to the Church of Christ because they see what we have here is special. What we have here is right in.
Just because they're not seeing it doesn't make them dishonest. Doesn't mean that, oh, wow, you know, they're. They're dishonest people.
No, sometimes they just need to see the light. They need to see what we have. And so make sure that we're casting that vision as well and do what you can in your own local area. Jack.
[00:56:03] Speaker C: Yeah, so the other ones, they've been so active online, they are very good at marketing. And it's like, peel back the layers, see what's really there. I think you're going to find substance is something that you have here is, as I said earlier, it's always going to come back to your own interpretation at a certain level. So just start here. It's always going to come back to what the local church can do, work with that. And so that would just be My pitch is see through the marketing, look at what's really there. I really think the churches of Christ have something special, but we're going to wrap right there. We haven't done a think fast in a few weeks, but we're all sports fans and unfortunately there is this unavoidable news event that has happened this week. So for our Think fast, Travis Kelsey tied in for the Kansas City Chiefs and Taylor Swift, semi famous recording artist, musician.
[00:56:52] Speaker B: A couple people know her.
[00:56:52] Speaker A: You might.
[00:56:53] Speaker B: A couple people know her?
[00:56:53] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:56:54] Speaker B: So a couple albums, man.
[00:56:55] Speaker C: It's one of those, like, I don't care. I don't follow this thing at all. ESPN.com sent me a notification. They're engaged.
[00:57:01] Speaker B: Like breaking news.
[00:57:02] Speaker A: Jack has been the biggest critic of this for about a year and a half now.
[00:57:06] Speaker C: I just, I don't need to know, okay? But, but I do. Everybody knows about it, but there's a lot of interesting angles to this. And you guys, we chat about it last night. I'm interested to hear which direction you guys take it. So for our Think fast, what is our analysis on the big engagement?
[00:57:21] Speaker A: Joe, you want to start? You want me to start?
[00:57:23] Speaker B: You go for it. You go for it.
[00:57:24] Speaker A: Yeah. So it's crazy how much one romance, one, you know, couple getting together can truly dominate. And I know I'm in the sports world maybe a little bit more than some, but you don't have to be in the sports world for this to be a story. I mean, this started, I think it was late 2023 and then for all of 2024, what was just a massive story.
And I saw something today where the Taylor's. Taylor's Instagram post announcing it is now the most liked post by a celebrity of all time. It passed as Zendaya, I think in her post with Tom Holland. It's now number one. Not a surprise at all.
I have a couple things that are very fascinating for me about this. Number one is the idea that you have somebody who is kind of the, the face of feminism. Maybe not the face, but she's a face certainly of feminism and kind of girl power. And you know, very much. She, she is the, she's an idol for women all across the United States. The, the other thing about it is the age range of the women that idolize her. Like it ranges all the way from 12 years old still to 40s, mid-40s, like mid 40 year old women still just absolutely adore and worship Taylor Swift. And so she's kind of is a face of feminism.
And yet I had A tweet pulled up that I thought was. It kind of summed it up perfectly. It's like, what are most people loving about Taylor Swift? It's not that she, you know, is putting out a new album. It's that she's getting married. This tweet. The tweet said her post about her engagement has about twice as many likes as her post about owning her masters, her master CDs. You know, the fact that was a big deal that she got her own masters.
The post about her getting married is now double the the likes that is of. Or the post about her getting married is double the likes of her biz. Her biggest business accomplishment to date. It's dwarfed by her getting married. And I find that so fascinating for. For several reasons I'm sure you'll get into. You guys will get into just that.
It's almost like you can see feminism as a farce. It's almost like you can see people deep down know. No, the coolest thing now about Taylor Swift and the thing that fascinates people the most is that she's finally found somebody. And will it last? Probably not. Like, will they be divorced in five years? Probably not. Say. Not that I wish them. That I wish them the best, of course, but, you know, I find that fascinating. The other thing that I find just kind of as a side note, very fascinating. And then, Joe, I guess I'll hand it to you. Taylor Swift's dated a lot of people. Taylor Swift has dated a lot of. Kind of effeminate, you know, a couple guys that are British, you know, not trying to cast as Persians on British.
[00:59:53] Speaker B: People, but guys that don't, as you.
[00:59:55] Speaker A: Repeat yourself, guys that are not the most masculine individuals in the world. And who does she settle down with?
Bit more of a man's man, you know, in Travis Kelly, you know, big, tough type football player. I don't know. I find that kind of interesting that the biggest pop star in the world is settling down with a tight end. Not even a quarterback who's worth like $40 million. I don't know. That's. That's interesting to me. Joe, what thoughts do you have?
[01:00:17] Speaker B: I'd give anything to be able to do premarital counseling with them, just to see their.
Just to see their dynamic.
[01:00:23] Speaker C: So if you guys are watching Wilkie counseling at Gmail.
[01:00:26] Speaker B: That's right.
[01:00:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:00:28] Speaker B: If you stumble across this, it's only 10 million a session, so don't worry about it.
But anyway, no, I'd love to see their dynamics as to, like, how much is he able to push back on her. She's been a big face of feminism. And yet Will, to your point, that's what stood out to me, is we can pretend that marriage has kind of jumped the shark and people aren't getting married these days and they don't care about marriage until something like this happens. And all of a sudden, marriage is the biggest deal ever. The royal wedding was a huge deal. Like, there's something magical about marriages and about weddings that as far down as we may go as a society, people can still come back. And feminists despise marriage.
[01:01:06] Speaker A: That's what's interesting.
[01:01:07] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And she's a big feminist. I mean, she's talked about being the girl boss and some of her music and things like that. And yet all of the people that follow her are still liking this because. Yeah, you know, it's. I think there's a worship, idol worship level to this as well that has to be brought in of like. It's insane to me that this is everywhere. And I think a lot of this is staged. Personally, the fact that ESPN has, you know, five articles on this particular thing is just ridiculous. But either way, I think people are idolizing this. They. They are idolizing them. In, in absence of God, that's what you're going to do, is you're going to find the closest thing to God in your opinion, and that's going to be idolizing celebrity culture and all these people that have what you want. But it is interesting that the have what you want is marriage. They want that. They want to be loved. They want to have a fairy tale, picturesque wedding of somebody that cherishes them. And sure, they want the riches and they want everything else, the fame and the fortune. But there's something very biological about this. And the most rabid effeminate is still going to like the post. And the most effeminate guy, or the most masculine guy is still going to see.
Not that I'm liking the post, but it's still going to see that as a traditionally good thing. And that gives almost a little hope, as bizarre as that may be.
[01:02:20] Speaker A: Well, family is cool again, the Scottie Scheffler thing as well. It's related to another sports, you know, guy. Sports thing. Scottie Scheffler, very the best golfer in the world. Nike comes out with an ad about him and his son almost glorifying children, which is strange coming from Nike. Family has resurfaced a bit in the public.
[01:02:38] Speaker B: And the appalling nature of the Coldplay concert You know, everybody kind of being up in arms about it, like, hey, that's not okay. You can't do that. Like, what. What's it to you guys? Well, they understand the sacredness of marriage to some degree. Jack, what are your thoughts?
[01:02:50] Speaker C: Yeah, it's weird. The marriage gives hope, right? Like that. It's kind of, hey, maybe getting married, maybe if they have a kid, like, it'll open their eyes to, you know, he's a bit of a man child, he's a bit of a goofball. Maybe that, you know, wakes him up a little bit. She's obviously all the things you guys have talked about.
Who knows? It doesn't always work that way, but sometimes it does. Sometimes you see, like, I didn't. You'll see women say, I did not expect to love being a mom this much and the change that it brings and. Or I, you know, I was do it all for myself kind of, I don't need no man kind of woman. And you find the right one, you get married and it's like, oh, wow, suddenly I'm a, you know, a wife, and I love being a wife. And for guys, like, they kind of, again, they can grow up into that role. It doesn't always happen that way, but sometimes it does.
And so when you see something like this, like, who knows what it'll bring about? Who knows, you know, like, how much of an impact it has on people that are that entrenched in an identity. But on the other hand, like, the downstream effects of, you know, there are tweets about this making every guy in his late 20s that has a serious girlfriend sweat. Like, well, if Taylor Swift got engaged, you know, his girlfriend's gonna want to get engaged. Like, that's gonna trickle down, people saying, if she gets.
[01:04:00] Speaker A: If she gets pregnant after they get married, there'll be another baby boom.
[01:04:03] Speaker C: Essentially, literally, like, it'll influence a lot of those people. Like, okay, this is cool to do now. And, yes, that's ridiculous. But it's what. It works that way. Yeah. I mean, you don't have royalty in America, and so celebrity becomes that, you know, de facto royalty.
So, yeah, like, we'll see what comes of it. But it is interesting, as you said, the rolling back in this direction. There was a guy, a podcaster guy, two years ago that said, like, you're gonna see a correction back hard. Some of these feminists, some of these LGBT people, some of these, like, that's going to go out the door, and traditionalism, family, you know, marriage are going to be brought back in. And it started with some commercials, you know, super bowl commercials. There was a couple of those things like that. And maybe he's right. Maybe we are moving in that direction. And it's. It's a really positive swing. Even if I don't like the Kansas City Chiefs, Taylor Swift, Travis Kelsey, any of them, I hope it goes well for him.
[01:04:58] Speaker B: To that end legitimately, I think we should be praying for them. We need to be praying that God uses them. Because could you imagine if they come to Christianity, if they return to traditionalism, if they have a kid and decide they don't want to be the girl boss? Like, could you imagine what that would do if they start bucking the way of the world and go back to traditional values? Go back to Christianity? Yeah, that may be a long shot, but nothing is impossible for God. I really do think we should be praying that this turns into a return. That's a great thought. Great Christian values, you know, and if it comes through, hey, stranger things have happened. I suppose that that'd be really weird if Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey are the ones bringing it back, but they are big enough to have that much of an impact and sway on the culture that literally people were, like, melting down that they got engaged. There's a power here that it would be fantastic if God used it to really usher in a new age where people started looking at having kids. And yeah, there's gonna be a bazillion of 1 kids named Travis and Taylor. But on the other hand, hey, we love kids. We want more kids. We want Christian values taught. And if it comes through them, praise be to God.
[01:06:01] Speaker A: That's a great thought.
[01:06:02] Speaker C: Still, if it doesn't happen, don't let your kids listen to Taylor Swift because, wow, what a terrible one.
[01:06:07] Speaker A: Yeah, don't idolize. That's for sure.
[01:06:09] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:06:10] Speaker C: Very bad influence. Lots of bad lyrics.
Again, hopefully this is the catalyst for a shift in the other direction, but that's our thing fast for this week. We will talk to you guys on the deep end on Friday. For those who are members of Focus plus, we always tell you about it focuspress.org plus you can find out more about what you get as a Focus plus member and check out the deep end and if not on that one, then we'll talk to you guys next Monday.
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.
