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Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian and

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Speaker 1: doctor James Spencer.

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Speaker 2: I'm joined by doctor.

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Speaker 1: Shish Pharma, and today we're going to be continuing our

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Speaker 1: discussion of sort of our diagnosis of what's going on

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Speaker 1: in Christendom or Christianity or.

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Speaker 2: The Church or however we want to say that.

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Speaker 1: Today we're going to be talking about this dynamic called transaction.

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Speaker 1: And you can actually find all these diagnostic kind of

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Speaker 1: things and even download a guide on our website Thinking

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Speaker 1: Christian dot org backslash diagnosis if you want to look

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Speaker 1: into it further. But by what we mean by transaction

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Speaker 1: really is this notion about how institutions think about themselves

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Speaker 1: and how we think about institutions. And so it's a

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Speaker 1: question of are we so enamored with the institutions or

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Speaker 1: the platforms that we've developed that we're unwilling to give

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Speaker 1: them up because we so deeply believe that God is

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Speaker 1: using them, or because we so deeply believe that we

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Speaker 1: should be in this position. The narrative I go to

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Speaker 1: to kind of illustrate this in scripture is jeroboem Jerobom

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Speaker 1: is given half the kingdom, probably more than half the kingdom,

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Speaker 1: really he's given the whole Northern Kingdom of Israel, and

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Speaker 1: Rea Boham gets to keep the Southern Kingdom, so Benjamin

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Speaker 1: and Judah, but Jeroboam, because he's in the Northern Kingdom,

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Speaker 1: he doesn't have access to the cult and the Israel

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Speaker 1: and he gets a little scared, and so he proactively

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Speaker 1: sets up two pagan worship sites in Dan and Bethel.

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Speaker 2: Dan in the north, Bethel in the.

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Speaker 1: South, and the one in the south is on the

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Speaker 1: route to Jerusalem, and so it's intended to cut ten

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Speaker 1: to fifteen miles off the trip for the people who

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Speaker 1: are traveling from the Northern Kingdom to the Southern Kingdom,

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Speaker 1: so they can just go and worship at Bethel the

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Speaker 1: ones in the north. Obviously, there's a whole set of

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Speaker 1: people for whom it would be more convenient to go

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Speaker 1: worship with Dan than it would be to travel all

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Speaker 1: the way to Jerusalem.

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Speaker 2: And so what he was trying to do.

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Speaker 1: Explicitly in the text was to maintain the people's loyalty

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Speaker 1: to himself. He doesn't want them going back down to Jerusalem,

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Speaker 1: which is in Rae Boam's kingdom. What he wants is

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Speaker 1: for them to remain loyal to him, and he's afraid

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Speaker 1: if they keep going down and participating in the worship

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Speaker 1: at the Temple in Jerusalem, or participating the feasts and

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Speaker 1: those kind of things, that they're going to have more

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Speaker 1: and more of an affinity for Raye Bom, and so

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Speaker 1: he creates these two pagan sights. And the general idea

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Speaker 1: of the narrative is just this that Jeroboam is so

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Speaker 1: anxious to hold on to the kingdom that he is

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Speaker 1: willing to sacrifice faithfulness to do it. That's part of

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Speaker 1: what we mean when we're talking about transaction, and I

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Speaker 1: would emphasize the part of what we mean. But when

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Speaker 1: we talk about transaction, because there are a lot of

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Speaker 1: different ways that this can happen, and there's a lot

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Speaker 1: of different ways that institutional inertia, just this push for

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Speaker 1: an institution to continue as opposed to end and die,

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Speaker 1: tends to manifest itself. And so we're going to dive

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Speaker 1: into that today and I'll let us She's jump in

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Speaker 1: here and offer any thoughts after my introductory ramble there.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, far from a ramble. I I appreciate the way

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Speaker 3: you started. I think that there's some instructive points in

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Speaker 3: the narrative as you described it, because one of the

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Speaker 3: things that comes out of that narrative is that it's

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Speaker 3: not as if, forgive me, I always confuse them as well.

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Speaker 4: Jerebom in the north?

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Speaker 3: Is that right?

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Speaker 2: A jera Bom in the north the north?

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Speaker 4: Why do their names have to be so similar?

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Speaker 3: It wasn't as if Jeroboam was setting up an alternate god, right, correct.

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Speaker 3: This isn't like the Canaanites with bal No. This is

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Speaker 3: Jeroboam setting up an alternate site as the place of

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Speaker 3: worship of Yahweh. And that that's something that's probably a

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Speaker 3: little hard to grasp the significance of when we live

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Speaker 3: in a time in which you could go to, you know,

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Speaker 3: my own town, as I can think of one corner

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Speaker 3: down the block that there's two churches kitty corner on

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Speaker 3: the same block. Then you go down another block and

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Speaker 3: turn right and there's another church, right yeah, And none

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Speaker 3: of those churches are my church. There's just a lot

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Speaker 3: of churches everywhere. Which one do you go to? Are

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Speaker 3: these all all? Is this the same sort of thing

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Speaker 3: at play? And the answer is no.

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Speaker 4: But the question is why?

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Speaker 3: And what's that play? Is that in Jerusalem there's nothing

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Speaker 3: inherent about Jerusalem that makes it special, right, other than

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Speaker 3: the God of Israel, the covenant God of Israel, who

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Speaker 3: has named himself Yahwehs, the covenant God, has made that

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Speaker 3: place the place where he will rest. And the idea

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Speaker 3: is that this is then going to be the center

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Speaker 3: of what is to be the nation that is to

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Speaker 3: be the priesthood to all the world. Right. So what

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Speaker 3: makes that nation is the presence of Yahweh. And what

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Speaker 3: makes that nation geographically is it's encircling around.

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Speaker 4: That presence of Yahweh.

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Speaker 3: And what Jeroboam has decided is that, well, yeah, Yahweh

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Speaker 3: is our covenant God, but on our terms, right, So

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Speaker 3: two alternate centers, so we don't have to go down

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Speaker 3: to now this fractured half of the kingdom that's no

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Speaker 3: longer part of us. But functionally, what he's doing is

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Speaker 3: he's making the newly formed Israel, right sans Judah, the

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Speaker 3: Kingdom of Israel the locusts, and it is the rest

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Speaker 3: of or it is Yahweh who now encircles Israel is

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Speaker 3: the center.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 3: Israel sets the terms, Jeroboam sets the terms. And I

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Speaker 3: think that's an apt way to start this because despite

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Speaker 3: the rhetoric, I think oftentimes, and the sort of thing

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Speaker 3: we want to talk about this idea of transaction is

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Speaker 3: that we have Christian institutions that have a geography problem,

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Speaker 3: a spatial displacement problem, and that's that they seem to

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Speaker 3: have begun to think that their entity, their institution, their policies,

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Speaker 3: their content, whatever it might be, is what is the

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Speaker 3: savior of the world. Right, There's sort of a manifest

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Speaker 3: destiny notion that's at play, to the point where you

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Speaker 3: and I I won't name names, but you and I

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Speaker 3: know of an institute that wasn't it didn't infrequently say

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Speaker 3: things like God needs fill in the blank institution to

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Speaker 3: be fill in the blank institution now more than ever. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: and that always made me cringe. But the idea there

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Speaker 3: is that the work of God requires or that this

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Speaker 3: is the centerpiece. And that's very much the mentality of Jeroboam.

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Speaker 4: Right. It doesn't matter.

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Speaker 3: Where you worship God because the method of worshiping God

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Speaker 3: has to pass through the divine sanctioning and the social

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Speaker 3: sanctioning of this particular kingdom or in our case, this

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Speaker 3: particular institution. Right.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I think.

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Speaker 1: A couple of things that your comments sort of raised

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Speaker 1: number one, just to clarify for everybody in the Old

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Speaker 1: Testament context, there were times in Israel's history where there

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Speaker 1: were multiple worship sites similar to what we would have

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Speaker 1: had today, right. There wasn't always a centralized temple or

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Speaker 1: place of worship where they would go once a year

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Speaker 1: or twice a year, multiple times year, whatever they do

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Speaker 1: in order to go and worship. They could actually worship

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Speaker 1: at these different sites around And so it's even more

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Speaker 1: complex what Jaron Bohem is doing because he's hearkening back

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Speaker 1: to a time a different sort of system that would

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Speaker 1: probably have been familiar to the Israelites. And so this

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Speaker 1: has the appearance of not necessarily looking like it's completely

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Speaker 1: wrong or heretical, right, But at the end of the day,

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Speaker 1: what jere Boeham is trying to do is he's trying

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Speaker 1: to leverage the cult, the cultic apparatus in order to

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Speaker 1: retain the loyalty of the people and support his own

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Speaker 1: political agenda. And so that's where we start to see

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Speaker 1: this sort of deep transaction is the way I'm phrasing it.

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Speaker 1: This deep transaction between what is done and what's done publicly,

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Speaker 1: What structures are put out, what statements.

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Speaker 2: Are put out what you know, what everything is built and.

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Speaker 1: A we could call it a selfish motive. But what

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Speaker 1: I mean by self fish is not there's a you know.

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Speaker 1: I always think of the you know, mustache twisting villain

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Speaker 1: or the you know, the evil James Bond, you know

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Speaker 1: villain who's sitting there petting a cat.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: I don't have that sort of notion of selfishness in

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Speaker 1: my mind necessarily. I suppose that's one iteration. But by

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Speaker 1: selfish it just means that it is self serving. That

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Speaker 1: there's something that you're trying to preserve for yourself, and

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Speaker 1: you may have a really altruistic reason for doing that.

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Speaker 1: But either way, you're making a trade. You're making a transaction,

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Speaker 1: and that transaction is undercutting something bigger than you. It's undercutting,

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Speaker 1: let's say, the witness of the church. It's undercutting. In

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Speaker 1: this case, it was undercutting the sacred social order that

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Speaker 1: was to be coded in through Jerusalem in the United

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Speaker 1: Nation of Israel that has now been split into two halves.

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Speaker 2: But the way I usually try to.

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Speaker 1: Get people to think about this narrative is, look, the

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Speaker 1: division of the Kingdom was geographic and national to the

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Speaker 1: extent of those terms aren't anachronistic, which they are, especially

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Speaker 1: in the national one is to a certain degree. But

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Speaker 1: the tribes are divided, They're truly divided, and they're divided

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Speaker 1: under two different rulers. And that wasn't supposed to mean

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Speaker 1: that there are two different gods. That wasn't supposed to

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Speaker 1: mean that their collective witness as now two separate tribal organizations,

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Speaker 1: was not supposed to come together. Still, in Jerusalem, jero

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Speaker 1: Boeham is doing this not because he's received some word

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Speaker 1: from God or because he feels like Jerusalem is corrupt

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Speaker 1: or anything like that. He's doing it explicitly for himself

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Speaker 1: and to maintain the loyalty to the people. And so

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Speaker 1: it's just a really interesting narrative. I would say the

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Speaker 1: last thing I just throw out there based on your comments,

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Speaker 1: it's like institutional inertia I think is really real. And

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Speaker 1: I think this is a point where I always come

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Speaker 1: back to this, like language actually matters.

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Speaker 2: So I have a bad habit of saying.

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Speaker 1: Lucky, Oh man, that was lucky, Like, oh, you're lucky.

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Speaker 2: Whatever. The reality is, there is no luck. Right.

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Speaker 1: What we usually refer to as lucky is really blessed.

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Speaker 1: It's God working something out in your life that seems

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Speaker 1: serendipitous to us. We couldn't have seen all the different

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Speaker 1: pieces coming together and getting you to a point where

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Speaker 1: you have this beneficial outcome.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: That's God's sovereignty working itself out, And so to call

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Speaker 1: it luck undercuts something deeply theological about the structure of

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Speaker 1: the reality that we live in. And I think sometimes

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Speaker 1: when I hear institutions phrase as you noted, like you know,

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Speaker 1: God really needs us to be this today, it's like,

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Speaker 1: I don't know that God really needs us to do anything.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: What probably the more appropriate phrasing is is we're really

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Speaker 1: trying to discern who God wants us to be in

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Speaker 1: this moment. We're really trying to understand how it is

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Speaker 1: that God is trying to use us in this moment,

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Speaker 1: and we're just trying to be faithful in the moment

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Speaker 1: to do that.

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Speaker 2: But when we.

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Speaker 1: Start talking about God needing us, I think that creates

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Speaker 1: this weird dynamic between us and God, as if there's

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Speaker 1: something that he really needs us to do in order

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Speaker 1: to advance his kingdom, but he doesn't need us for anything.

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Speaker 1: There's not a sense in which he wants us to participate,

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Speaker 1: I think, but I'm not exactly sure that that verbiage

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Speaker 1: of need doesn't betray something about the transaction that's already

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Speaker 1: taken place, right that, like, we are really important to God.

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Speaker 1: We've been chosen not only for this moment, but probably

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Speaker 1: for a lot of other moments into the future. And

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Speaker 1: so we need to be who we are. We need

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Speaker 1: to focus in on our branding. We need to be this,

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Speaker 1: we need to be that. And that tends to lend

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Speaker 1: lend itself, I think, to more narrowness. Right, It's an

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Speaker 1: oddly market oriented logic that.

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Speaker 2: Tends to focus.

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Speaker 1: More on what the audience wants than on what God

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Speaker 1: is requiring us to be. I'll leave it there.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I want to defend lucky language a little bit,

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Speaker 3: go for it. Yeah, But and I don't want to

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Speaker 3: do it for merely semantic reasons, but because I want

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Speaker 3: to get to the same place you're getting, maybe in

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Speaker 3: a slightly different way. Fair, and see what you say

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Speaker 3: about it, Because I want to say that what lucky

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Speaker 3: gives us might preserve an important feature of an alternate path. Okay,

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Speaker 3: And I'm not saying in this that every use of

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Speaker 3: lucky is the same right. Most of the time when

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Speaker 3: we say lucky, it's it's just a thing that we say.

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Speaker 3: There's not a lot of depth of thought in it, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 3: But to the degree that we.

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Speaker 4: Want to say that.

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Speaker 3: Sometimes things that we perceive to be good happen, or

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Speaker 3: institutions are raised, or groups of people gain a certain

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Speaker 3: sort of prestige or power or able to do certain

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Speaker 3: things that we might think to be have good results,

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Speaker 3: that I think we would still want to draw a

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Speaker 3: line between those things happening with conclusions that we might

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Speaker 3: like to more or less degree and a direct move

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Speaker 3: of God saying you therefore, or this right there, that

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Speaker 3: this group or this mechanism is something that is what

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Speaker 3: I want to happen. So I'm going to appeal to

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Speaker 3: another Biblical UH storyline, and that's the Book of a Back.

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Speaker 3: Abacca cries out to God, the richer oppressing the poor,

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Speaker 3: please help. And he's talking about within UH, within biblical Israel. Right,

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Speaker 3: He's not talking about Babylonians oppressing Persians oppressing. He means

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Speaker 3: within Biblical Israel, the rich are oppressing the poor. And

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Speaker 3: God's responses, Yeah, Babylon's on.

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Speaker 4: Their way right right, and back responses Wait, what no, no, no, no,

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Speaker 4: no, no no, that's not what I meant.

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Speaker 3: Babylon's worse than are rich, and God doesn't say not true.

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Speaker 3: God more or less is yeah, they'll get their own.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: I want to be careful to say that the luck

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Speaker 3: of Babylon, so to speak, that is able to accomplish

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Speaker 3: the things that Tobaccoc wants done, even though not in

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Speaker 3: the way that Backak wants. Is therefore God raising up

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Speaker 3: this group that's even worse to do this. I'm not

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Speaker 3: so sure that what we mean with the Biblical account

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Speaker 3: means by God raising up Babylon to do this work

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Speaker 3: means that God wants Babylon as it is to be

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Speaker 3: these great shapers of the world. I want to say, alternative, alternatively,

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Speaker 3: that God always works in from the margins, or primarily,

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Speaker 3: I shouldn't say always primarily works in from the margins

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Speaker 3: and in the margins in this instance, rather than work

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Speaker 3: from within the power structure of the people group that

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Speaker 3: we're supposed to be formed as a nation of priesthoods

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Speaker 3: for the nations, for the rest of the nations, right

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Speaker 3: the people that are supposed to be always people. God

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Speaker 3: allows the rising powers outside that he might otherwise have

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Speaker 3: held back, let's say, in an alternate universe where David

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Speaker 3: been fully faithful, where Solomon's wisdom had transcended the entirety

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Speaker 3: of his life and not given way to an honoring

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Speaker 3: of the gods of the nations right and an oppression

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Speaker 3: frankly of those around him, right, which is what Jerobohma

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Speaker 3: is raising himself against. Ideally the nation, not the nation

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Speaker 3: in the modern sense, but this idea of biblical Israel

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Speaker 3: as a priesthood before the nations is supposed to would

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Speaker 3: hold back the great might of Babylon right in the

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Speaker 3: way that God has and in moments and the Old

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Speaker 3: Testament opens Prophet's eyes to see these angelic hosts standing

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Speaker 3: up in defense, right, And that same mechanism would mean

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Speaker 3: that or that same reality would mean then that you

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Speaker 3: don't have Habaka having to cry out to God saying

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Speaker 3: the richer oppressing the poor, right right, But instead you

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Speaker 3: have the removal of those gates, and the working of

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Speaker 3: the margins is all right, fine. The course of things

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Speaker 3: that are at play outside of this land of what

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Speaker 3: was supposed to be sort of an Eden light to

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Speaker 3: make way for a new Eden. The walls are broken

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Speaker 3: Babylon comes in and that's gonna that's going to bring judgment, right,

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Speaker 3: But that doesn't mean Babylon is good.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 3: So I want to get back to lucky and say,

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Speaker 3: sometimes sometimes what lucky can mean is that God works anyway,

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Speaker 3: rather than.

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Speaker 4: I keep saying institution, you know.

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Speaker 3: Rather than an institution that raises up and accomplishes perhaps

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Speaker 3: what seems like good things, but maybe it does so

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Speaker 3: in bad ways and in terrible ways that it's hard

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Speaker 3: to say that God approves of this or God is

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Speaker 3: behind the raising up of this. Right, I suppose one

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Speaker 3: could say that the message of Jesus did go out

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Speaker 3: throughout the whole world and this colonial European colonial expansion

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Speaker 3: movement from the fourteen hundreds through the nineteen hundreds, right, yep?

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Speaker 3: Is that the same thing as saying God raised up colonialism? Right?

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Speaker 3: The fact that the fact that you have a vibrant

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Speaker 3: African American church populace historically at vibrant traditions doesn't justify

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Speaker 3: the North Atlantic slave trade, doesn't justify the global carving

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Speaker 3: out the world as if it was in the name

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Speaker 3: of God and actually with people and cyclicals for the

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Speaker 3: Catholic Church, Protestant affirmations from Protestant churches that this is

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Speaker 3: God's will?

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Speaker 2: Right?

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Speaker 4: Does this make sense?

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Speaker 2: It does so?

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Speaker 4: But God works anyways. What I'm saying, yeah, and that

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Speaker 4: might be what luck he's getting at.

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Speaker 2: I think.

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Speaker 1: So let me clarify I mean by it, because I

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Speaker 1: do think it's it's an important point and we probably

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Speaker 1: need to get a little deeper into it. But Daniel

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Speaker 1: Kahman kind of alerted me to this. He's a economist.

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Speaker 1: He wrote a book called Thinking Fast and Slow, and

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Speaker 1: in his book he talks about, you know, the ascension

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Speaker 1: of Google, let's say, and he said, you know, when

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Speaker 1: you when you look at the you know, the founders

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Speaker 1: of Google and the way that they did things, you

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Speaker 1: always get these sort of how to books right where

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Speaker 1: people are writing and they're saying, oh, look here are

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Speaker 1: the moves that they all made or what have you? Right,

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Speaker 1: And he said, but they never really account for luck,

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Speaker 1: like all of these things happened because other things didn't happen.

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Speaker 1: All of these things happened because you know, they they

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Speaker 1: just got they just stumbled onto something that they didn't

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Speaker 1: necessarily have to stumble on. There's no clear path that

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Speaker 1: they actually took that you could have predicted beforehand without

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Speaker 1: any sort of with any sort of accuracy, to say,

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Speaker 1: if you want to be the biggest search in company

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Speaker 1: in the world, here are the steps you'd need to

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Speaker 1: take exactly. And he's he talks about these this sort

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Speaker 1: of element of luck within the whole system. And so

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Speaker 1: I think that's sort of where you're coming at it from,

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Speaker 1: is to say, there's all of these different things that

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Speaker 1: are moving around, and I would think of it more

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Speaker 1: in terms of like God is orchestrating all of this.

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Speaker 1: He's like the conductor and an orchestra, and these things

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Speaker 1: are moving around, and there's not necessarily a control that's happening,

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Speaker 1: but there's a there's a register in which God is

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Speaker 1: sort of moving these pieces about and making these things

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Speaker 1: come about even within their fallenness. That doesn't necessity or

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Speaker 1: that doesn't necessitate authorization or legitimation. Jeremiah, even when God

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Speaker 1: calls Nebukan or his servant, it's only a couple verses later,

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Speaker 1: and I'm blanking on what those verses are exactly, but

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Speaker 1: he says, you, Nebucanes is my servant. He's going to

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Speaker 1: come in and then Israel is going to go into exile.

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Speaker 1: But then set years later, you know, the Babylonians will

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Speaker 1: be punished for what they do to my people.

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Speaker 2: I don't take that as.

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Speaker 1: The act of taking them into exile is the real problem, right,

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Speaker 1: Israel has to suffer the consequences for the sin that

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Speaker 1: it has against has committed against God.

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Speaker 2: It's the way it's done. It's the brutality, it's the.

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Speaker 1: It's the arrogance, it's the unwillingness to recognize that that

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Speaker 1: Babylon is to a servant of the Lord. And so

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Speaker 1: if we look at those passages, now, if we just

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Speaker 1: fast forward real quick, and I know these are weird connections,

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Speaker 1: but when Paul talks about the master and the bond

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Speaker 1: servant in the New Testament, what we really see there,

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Speaker 1: what we see is that God is above both, and

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Speaker 1: that because God is above both, this should recalibrate transform

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Speaker 1: your word, transfigure right the way that a master relates

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Speaker 1: to a servant and a servant relates to a man,

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Speaker 1: because neither of them are actually doing anything autonomous of God.

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Speaker 1: And so when we go back then into the Old Testament,

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Speaker 1: we're looking at Nebuzar as God's servant. God is wanting

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Speaker 1: nebecanezer to do this. This is now he's doing this

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Speaker 1: under the auspices of God's sovereignty, But the way he

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Speaker 1: does it isn't as if he's sitting under the auspices

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Speaker 1: of God's sovereignty. He's a lousy master, and lousy masters

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Speaker 1: will be held accountable, right, And so I think there's

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Speaker 1: this aspect I agree with you. I don't think God is,

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Speaker 1: you know, sort of authorizing the entire colonial project because

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Speaker 1: spreading the Gospel is a good thing, right, as if

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Speaker 1: all of the bad stuff that happens within any given

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Speaker 1: context is okay as long as we get to share

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Speaker 1: Christ with someone, right, it's not. I don't think God

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Speaker 1: is that sort of black and white about the whole thing.

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Speaker 1: I think what's happening is we can look at it

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Speaker 1: and go, yes, this is good that Christ is being proclaimed.

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Speaker 1: And there are a lot of people who are going

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Speaker 1: to be held accountable for the irresponsible and in moral

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Speaker 1: ways that they have preached to Christ and the Gospel.

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Speaker 1: They're going to be held accountable for the misrepresentations of

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Speaker 1: lifestyle that have happened to allow Christ's, you know, the

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Speaker 1: Gospel to be proclaimed. I think that's the tension we

404
00:24:24,400 --> 00:24:27,119
Speaker 1: have to hold on to here, and that really is

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Speaker 1: the transactional issue in a nutshell, it's for these institutions

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Speaker 1: to think that they can.

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Speaker 2: Just carry on forever.

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Speaker 1: They have to focus on only the good things that

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Speaker 1: they have done and ignore the negative consequences of their operation, right,

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Speaker 1: And I think for most of us we have to

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Speaker 1: do that. You can see us doing that on an

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Speaker 1: individual level, right right. It's the reason most of us

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Speaker 1: think we're pre to good people.

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Speaker 4: Right for sure, right, Like.

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I'm pretty good guy.

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Speaker 1: But their negative consequence to a lot of the things

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Speaker 1: that I've done in my life that you know, I

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Speaker 1: think God sort of brings to mind and I end

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Speaker 1: up having to work back through. Institutions have a different

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Speaker 1: inertia than an individual most of the time, in my estimation,

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Speaker 1: there are a lot more players involved, there's a lot

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Speaker 1: more pressure in there's more stakeholders to that institutional life

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Speaker 1: than there normally are to an individual person. And that's

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Speaker 1: part of why platform or for me, platforms important to

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Speaker 1: include in this sort of transactional mess, because.

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Speaker 2: We do have figures who have deep, big.

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Speaker 1: Platforms, right, just individuals whose ministries would no longer exist

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Speaker 1: if they were no longer there, right, and if they

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Speaker 1: did exist, they'd exist a much lower in a much

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Speaker 1: lower profile than they do right now.

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Speaker 2: And so I.

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Speaker 1: Think in all that, I hopefully I think I'm agreeing

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Speaker 1: with you and just saying what I think we need

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Speaker 1: to get at. When I'm mentioning Luck, what I'm saying

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Speaker 1: is I think that we need to recognize the hand

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Speaker 1: of God here in both directions that God is at

437
00:26:26,560 --> 00:26:31,080
Speaker 1: one time using, and at some point in the future

438
00:26:32,440 --> 00:26:36,520
Speaker 1: is going to hold accountable. It's not as if you're

439
00:26:36,720 --> 00:26:41,359
Speaker 1: being used by God exempt you from any of the

440
00:26:41,359 --> 00:26:44,359
Speaker 1: negative consequences that will come along with you being with

441
00:26:44,440 --> 00:26:48,440
Speaker 1: you irresponsibly bearing that name of being God's servant.

442
00:26:50,640 --> 00:26:56,320
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I think that that raises a parallel theological issue,

443
00:26:56,600 --> 00:27:00,679
Speaker 3: right if what we're really pushing against, and maybe this

444
00:27:00,800 --> 00:27:04,200
Speaker 3: first part of the description is, in various ways, from

445
00:27:04,280 --> 00:27:08,200
Speaker 3: various angles, this sort of presumption of manifest destiny. God

446
00:27:08,240 --> 00:27:12,199
Speaker 3: has raised this up, whatever this is, in order to

447
00:27:12,280 --> 00:27:14,840
Speaker 3: do X, Y and Z, whatever those things are.

448
00:27:17,720 --> 00:27:19,480
Speaker 4: That's theological problem, let's.

449
00:27:19,280 --> 00:27:23,399
Speaker 3: Say one, and maybe the more obvious one that maybe X,

450
00:27:23,520 --> 00:27:28,120
Speaker 3: Y and Z happen in spite of this group being

451
00:27:28,200 --> 00:27:32,480
Speaker 3: raised up right, because because nothing escapes the providential work

452
00:27:32,480 --> 00:27:32,760
Speaker 3: of God.

453
00:27:32,800 --> 00:27:33,840
Speaker 4: God is always at work.

454
00:27:33,880 --> 00:27:36,639
Speaker 3: He's always massaging, it's always transfiguring, he's always working in

455
00:27:36,680 --> 00:27:42,240
Speaker 3: from the margins, such that what God is doing is

456
00:27:42,359 --> 00:27:45,840
Speaker 3: sort of a perpetual in my reading anyway, a perpetual.

457
00:27:46,119 --> 00:27:49,480
Speaker 3: I can work with that mentality, yes, right, And I

458
00:27:49,480 --> 00:27:51,040
Speaker 3: think that's what we see, for instance, in.

459
00:27:51,000 --> 00:27:51,800
Speaker 4: The back of narrative.

460
00:27:51,840 --> 00:27:54,960
Speaker 3: But then the parallel theological issue that's maybe more subtle

461
00:27:55,359 --> 00:27:58,359
Speaker 3: that I think you're also getting at, maybe we can

462
00:27:58,440 --> 00:27:59,680
Speaker 3: draw it out, is that.

463
00:28:02,200 --> 00:28:03,200
Speaker 4: Whatever it is.

464
00:28:05,920 --> 00:28:09,800
Speaker 3: That enables the market or the economic or the social

465
00:28:09,960 --> 00:28:14,960
Speaker 3: rise of a group because of the nature of the

466
00:28:15,000 --> 00:28:17,119
Speaker 3: way that the world is organized, right, the way that

467
00:28:17,160 --> 00:28:20,440
Speaker 3: creation I want to be. Since we're talking about words here,

468
00:28:20,480 --> 00:28:23,120
Speaker 3: I want to use. I want to take Norman Weirsba seriously,

469
00:28:23,160 --> 00:28:26,800
Speaker 3: who talks about the need to say creation over nature,

470
00:28:26,880 --> 00:28:29,840
Speaker 3: not because the word nature is inherently bad, but because

471
00:28:29,840 --> 00:28:34,399
Speaker 3: creation gets an agency, right, it's specifically this sense of

472
00:28:34,440 --> 00:28:38,760
Speaker 3: relationship with the God who is Creator. And so the

473
00:28:38,880 --> 00:28:41,760
Speaker 3: organizing of creation as we.

474
00:28:41,840 --> 00:28:44,320
Speaker 4: Know it is not in any sense the ideal.

475
00:28:44,360 --> 00:28:48,640
Speaker 3: It's not the mechanism described either in the first couple

476
00:28:48,720 --> 00:28:52,080
Speaker 3: chapters of Genesis, nor in the final chapters of Revelation,

477
00:28:53,080 --> 00:28:55,520
Speaker 3: nor the various passages in the Bible that allude to

478
00:28:55,600 --> 00:28:56,560
Speaker 3: those final chapters.

479
00:28:56,840 --> 00:28:58,640
Speaker 4: Right, So what is it.

480
00:28:58,560 --> 00:29:04,600
Speaker 3: That makes a particular group rise. It might be that

481
00:29:04,680 --> 00:29:07,640
Speaker 3: God has said I can work with that, and he

482
00:29:07,720 --> 00:29:10,240
Speaker 3: works anyway in the midst of something. But it also

483
00:29:10,400 --> 00:29:12,360
Speaker 3: might be the case, and this is where the concern

484
00:29:12,400 --> 00:29:17,080
Speaker 3: comes in, that a group rises for reasons that can

485
00:29:17,120 --> 00:29:22,000
Speaker 3: be solely attributed to minding the social, economic, financial, whatever

486
00:29:22,400 --> 00:29:26,520
Speaker 3: framework of what they're in, right, and perhaps they do

487
00:29:26,560 --> 00:29:31,680
Speaker 3: something good in the middle of it, but that doesn't

488
00:29:31,720 --> 00:29:39,200
Speaker 3: mean that they're rising was anything more necessarily right than

489
00:29:39,320 --> 00:29:43,760
Speaker 3: these social forces at work and playing playing.

490
00:29:43,520 --> 00:29:44,120
Speaker 4: The game with them.

491
00:29:44,200 --> 00:29:49,040
Speaker 3: Right in the non explicitly theological arena, we can think

492
00:29:49,040 --> 00:29:54,040
Speaker 3: of many billionaires, many billionaires billions over in the world

493
00:29:54,400 --> 00:29:56,680
Speaker 3: who I have a hard time saying God wanted that

494
00:29:56,720 --> 00:30:01,640
Speaker 3: person to be a multi billionaire, then use that to

495
00:30:01,760 --> 00:30:05,200
Speaker 3: do who knows what, to control countries, to control media organizations,

496
00:30:05,240 --> 00:30:08,200
Speaker 3: and so on and so forth. That strikes me as

497
00:30:08,280 --> 00:30:11,320
Speaker 3: odd to claim that God is behind that. But even

498
00:30:11,400 --> 00:30:15,000
Speaker 3: in the arena of those who would call themselves theological

499
00:30:15,080 --> 00:30:20,880
Speaker 3: organizations explicitly often they're still wrapped up in social innovations

500
00:30:20,920 --> 00:30:27,360
Speaker 3: and social pressures that you know, they're deeply intertwined with them,

501
00:30:27,480 --> 00:30:31,840
Speaker 3: and their financial stability is often the result of being

502
00:30:31,880 --> 00:30:34,800
Speaker 3: able to play these market games. Now, what I'm not

503
00:30:34,840 --> 00:30:37,600
Speaker 3: saying here is you shouldn't understand how market works. It's

504
00:30:37,640 --> 00:30:39,880
Speaker 3: not at all what I'm saying. What I'm saying is

505
00:30:39,880 --> 00:30:41,640
Speaker 3: we shouldn't confuse.

506
00:30:43,320 --> 00:30:46,120
Speaker 4: That as divine stamp of approval.

507
00:30:47,040 --> 00:30:50,760
Speaker 3: Right, And so that parallel concern for me theologically is

508
00:30:50,800 --> 00:30:54,520
Speaker 3: that often these institutions do confuse the two, and we'll

509
00:30:54,560 --> 00:30:57,080
Speaker 3: say things like, well, you know, we're making this particular

510
00:30:57,120 --> 00:31:00,440
Speaker 3: move for financial reasons, and that just is stamped with

511
00:31:00,480 --> 00:31:04,120
Speaker 3: approval by God because this allows us to continue in existence.

512
00:31:04,800 --> 00:31:07,640
Speaker 3: Whereas when I look at Scripture, those things that God

513
00:31:07,680 --> 00:31:12,240
Speaker 3: wants to get done and very strange ways God gets done, right,

514
00:31:12,280 --> 00:31:18,600
Speaker 3: whether it be first King seventeens, where this widow just

515
00:31:18,680 --> 00:31:21,920
Speaker 3: has this never overly abundant in this particular scenario, but

516
00:31:22,040 --> 00:31:26,240
Speaker 3: just has this coffer of oil and this coffer of

517
00:31:26,240 --> 00:31:28,560
Speaker 3: grain that just is enough until the harvest comes.

518
00:31:29,200 --> 00:31:31,920
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, go ahead.

519
00:31:34,240 --> 00:31:36,400
Speaker 1: Well it brings up a few different narratives from me.

520
00:31:36,920 --> 00:31:41,360
Speaker 1: So the obvious one is Tower Babbel. Right, there's a

521
00:31:41,400 --> 00:31:44,200
Speaker 1: clear sense within the Tower of Babel narrative that these

522
00:31:44,480 --> 00:31:48,240
Speaker 1: builders are taking advantage of the technology and their own

523
00:31:48,320 --> 00:31:52,480
Speaker 1: human capacity to communicate with one another in order to

524
00:31:52,520 --> 00:31:56,920
Speaker 1: build something that God is not involved with at all. So,

525
00:31:56,920 --> 00:31:59,480
Speaker 1: in other words, they're getting an awful lot done without God.

526
00:32:00,640 --> 00:32:04,280
Speaker 1: Right now, Ultimately he comes down and he confuses the language.

527
00:32:04,320 --> 00:32:07,400
Speaker 1: He stops what they're doing. But as he does, so,

528
00:32:07,600 --> 00:32:10,280
Speaker 1: what does he say? He says, if I don't do something,

529
00:32:10,320 --> 00:32:12,280
Speaker 1: they are going to be able to do. Basically, whatever

530
00:32:12,280 --> 00:32:14,959
Speaker 1: they set their mind to. There's no end to what

531
00:32:14,960 --> 00:32:17,959
Speaker 1: they could do. And so I think that narrative is

532
00:32:18,040 --> 00:32:21,320
Speaker 1: God admitting that, yeah, humans can do an awful lot

533
00:32:21,400 --> 00:32:25,240
Speaker 1: without him, because of the capacities we've been given, because

534
00:32:25,240 --> 00:32:28,240
Speaker 1: of the ingenuity we have with regard to technology, the

535
00:32:28,680 --> 00:32:32,760
Speaker 1: raw resources of creation that we can sort of utilize

536
00:32:32,800 --> 00:32:36,160
Speaker 1: for our own benefit. And so I think that there

537
00:32:36,200 --> 00:32:39,400
Speaker 1: are these narratives where we could look and say, yes,

538
00:32:39,480 --> 00:32:42,800
Speaker 1: this dynamic that you're painting, are absolutely right that there

539
00:32:42,840 --> 00:32:46,320
Speaker 1: are times when when left to our own devices, we

540
00:32:46,360 --> 00:32:47,320
Speaker 1: can be quite.

541
00:32:48,520 --> 00:32:49,160
Speaker 2: Successful.

542
00:32:49,200 --> 00:32:53,520
Speaker 1: And I'll do that in their quotes right, successful apart

543
00:32:53,600 --> 00:32:56,680
Speaker 1: from anything that God is really wanting to have happen,

544
00:32:57,960 --> 00:33:01,040
Speaker 1: and while that may occur for a certain period of time,

545
00:33:01,800 --> 00:33:02,320
Speaker 1: there's no.

546
00:33:02,560 --> 00:33:05,200
Speaker 2: Guarantee that it will last. Right.

547
00:33:05,600 --> 00:33:07,040
Speaker 1: The other narrative I was going to go back to,

548
00:33:07,080 --> 00:33:09,720
Speaker 1: it's a little more contested Deuteronomy six one through four,

549
00:33:10,200 --> 00:33:12,800
Speaker 1: where we see a clear instance of boundary crossing the

550
00:33:12,800 --> 00:33:14,920
Speaker 1: sons of God and the daughters of men, whoever you

551
00:33:15,000 --> 00:33:18,600
Speaker 1: identify those characters as it's clear that there's a boundary

552
00:33:18,600 --> 00:33:20,480
Speaker 1: crossing that the sons of God are not to mix

553
00:33:20,520 --> 00:33:24,080
Speaker 1: with the daughters of men, but they accomplish what they

554
00:33:24,120 --> 00:33:29,040
Speaker 1: want to accomplish, until, of course God wittles down the

555
00:33:29,160 --> 00:33:31,840
Speaker 1: human population to Noah in his family.

556
00:33:32,720 --> 00:33:35,760
Speaker 2: And so you do have these times.

557
00:33:36,000 --> 00:33:38,160
Speaker 1: If we were to take a a if we were

558
00:33:38,160 --> 00:33:40,360
Speaker 1: to look across human history and look at you know,

559
00:33:40,400 --> 00:33:42,320
Speaker 1: a short like let's say one hundred or one hundred

560
00:33:42,320 --> 00:33:47,160
Speaker 1: and fifty year span, you could probably make the case

561
00:33:48,560 --> 00:33:50,640
Speaker 1: right that a lot of these things are being done

562
00:33:50,960 --> 00:33:53,960
Speaker 1: apart from God, that somehow God isn't stopping them, that

563
00:33:54,040 --> 00:33:57,720
Speaker 1: God is in some way pleased with them, or something

564
00:33:57,800 --> 00:34:00,480
Speaker 1: like that. But ultimately, I think when we take the

565
00:34:00,520 --> 00:34:03,680
Speaker 1: broader view, you sit back and you say no, God is.

566
00:34:03,760 --> 00:34:04,520
Speaker 2: Patient, right.

567
00:34:04,560 --> 00:34:07,440
Speaker 1: I always go to Genesis fifteen sixteen, Not Genesis fifteen

568
00:34:07,520 --> 00:34:09,760
Speaker 1: six which is the one everybody knows, but Genesis fifteen

569
00:34:09,840 --> 00:34:13,719
Speaker 1: sixteen where God tells Abram that his descendants will live

570
00:34:13,760 --> 00:34:16,080
Speaker 1: in a land in slavery for four hundred years because

571
00:34:16,160 --> 00:34:20,560
Speaker 1: the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. And

572
00:34:20,600 --> 00:34:23,240
Speaker 1: so this people group that's occupying the land of Canaan,

573
00:34:23,840 --> 00:34:27,440
Speaker 1: he's not ready to move them out yet. They haven't

574
00:34:27,440 --> 00:34:30,720
Speaker 1: gotten to the point where he's done with them there yet,

575
00:34:31,200 --> 00:34:35,360
Speaker 1: but he will, and so that happens across four hundred years.

576
00:34:36,000 --> 00:34:37,920
Speaker 1: So I think we have to avoid this sort of

577
00:34:38,000 --> 00:34:41,920
Speaker 1: thought process to say, yes, everything that's happening around us

578
00:34:42,000 --> 00:34:46,600
Speaker 1: is God ordained, right. I think what we have to

579
00:34:46,760 --> 00:34:51,480
Speaker 1: think through is God is allowing certain things to happen.

580
00:34:51,239 --> 00:34:52,520
Speaker 2: Within the world.

581
00:34:52,640 --> 00:34:55,640
Speaker 1: But nobody is going to get by with doing something

582
00:34:56,040 --> 00:34:57,960
Speaker 1: that they shouldn't have been doing. No one is going

583
00:34:58,000 --> 00:35:01,960
Speaker 1: to get by with not a lot lining with God's

584
00:35:01,960 --> 00:35:06,520
Speaker 1: sacred order. It just doesn't happen. It may look like it,

585
00:35:06,520 --> 00:35:11,239
Speaker 1: it may outlive us, right, but at the end of

586
00:35:11,280 --> 00:35:14,360
Speaker 1: the day, it doesn't happen. And so I think that

587
00:35:14,440 --> 00:35:17,160
Speaker 1: there is a real sense in which as we think

588
00:35:17,200 --> 00:35:20,600
Speaker 1: about this notion of transaction, that one of the questions

589
00:35:20,640 --> 00:35:23,799
Speaker 1: we need to be asking ourselves is how much are

590
00:35:23,840 --> 00:35:26,040
Speaker 1: we actually accomplishing apart from God?

591
00:35:26,640 --> 00:35:28,120
Speaker 2: And what I mean by that apart.

592
00:35:27,840 --> 00:35:33,360
Speaker 1: From God is using our own capabilities and resources to

593
00:35:33,440 --> 00:35:37,719
Speaker 1: accomplish things that may not necessarily be evil, but that

594
00:35:37,800 --> 00:35:42,040
Speaker 1: we may have just set on default and said I'm

595
00:35:42,080 --> 00:35:47,360
Speaker 1: going to continue accomplishing this because I can not because

596
00:35:47,400 --> 00:35:50,240
Speaker 1: I feel like God is particularly leading me toward this anymore.

597
00:35:51,600 --> 00:35:56,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, So there's there's sort of two purposes. It sounds

598
00:35:56,239 --> 00:35:59,680
Speaker 3: like that we want to get across, right, and that

599
00:35:59,719 --> 00:36:03,960
Speaker 3: one is in either direction. Just on account of an

600
00:36:04,000 --> 00:36:11,480
Speaker 3: institution running its course, you can't jump to moralistic conclusions, correct, right,

601
00:36:11,560 --> 00:36:14,480
Speaker 3: because an institution may have risen in ways that are

602
00:36:14,480 --> 00:36:20,520
Speaker 3: frankly really problematic. So to just sort of stamp divine

603
00:36:20,600 --> 00:36:22,280
Speaker 3: manifest work of God on the side.

604
00:36:22,120 --> 00:36:24,000
Speaker 4: Of it is problematic, yep.

605
00:36:25,440 --> 00:36:29,520
Speaker 3: But also an institution can decline just simply because its

606
00:36:29,520 --> 00:36:33,160
Speaker 3: course has been run. It might also decline. Others might

607
00:36:33,200 --> 00:36:35,800
Speaker 3: also decline from for real moral failings.

608
00:36:35,840 --> 00:36:36,000
Speaker 2: Right.

609
00:36:36,000 --> 00:36:37,839
Speaker 3: We have plenty of examples of those, But that's not

610
00:36:37,880 --> 00:36:40,760
Speaker 3: necessarily the case is what we're trying to get out here, right, correct,

611
00:36:41,280 --> 00:36:43,480
Speaker 3: And so I think I think of.

612
00:36:43,800 --> 00:36:44,800
Speaker 4: The example that.

613
00:36:47,680 --> 00:36:50,680
Speaker 3: Jesus specifically is is but you also sort of see

614
00:36:50,680 --> 00:36:53,960
Speaker 3: that metaphor and scripture frequently and that he talks about

615
00:36:53,960 --> 00:36:56,680
Speaker 3: a seed and that the seed cannot bring forth new

616
00:36:56,680 --> 00:36:59,319
Speaker 3: life unless it enters the soil and dies. So the

617
00:36:59,360 --> 00:37:02,120
Speaker 3: seed itself eyes to give forth the new life. And

618
00:37:02,160 --> 00:37:05,759
Speaker 3: the larger implication seems to be that old ways have

619
00:37:05,880 --> 00:37:09,840
Speaker 3: served their purpose and sometimes they need to die to

620
00:37:09,840 --> 00:37:11,960
Speaker 3: give life. But his larger purpose also seems to be

621
00:37:12,440 --> 00:37:16,080
Speaker 3: to point to himself, right that as a member of

622
00:37:17,000 --> 00:37:20,799
Speaker 3: the humanity in the line of atom, as a representation

623
00:37:20,880 --> 00:37:24,560
Speaker 3: of those people of the earth who need redemption, he

624
00:37:24,719 --> 00:37:27,799
Speaker 3: is entering the soil as to then be to die,

625
00:37:27,920 --> 00:37:31,560
Speaker 3: right to then become the first fruits of a new creation.

626
00:37:32,400 --> 00:37:36,239
Speaker 3: That's right, and sometimes that's just what needs to be

627
00:37:36,280 --> 00:37:44,880
Speaker 3: the case. But additionally, one could say that sometimes institutions

628
00:37:45,239 --> 00:37:47,759
Speaker 3: can die precisely because.

629
00:37:49,040 --> 00:37:49,760
Speaker 4: They are faithful.

630
00:37:51,280 --> 00:37:55,759
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, there, there is a real dynamic of persecution

631
00:37:55,880 --> 00:38:00,000
Speaker 3: that can exist. I think it's overly sighted. Sometimes institutions

632
00:38:00,080 --> 00:38:05,440
Speaker 3: can exist precisely because they're unfaithful sometimes, and this is

633
00:38:05,480 --> 00:38:07,640
Speaker 3: what I wanted to preserve in the in the idea

634
00:38:07,680 --> 00:38:14,560
Speaker 3: of lucky. Sometimes institutions can die or persist, persist in

635
00:38:14,600 --> 00:38:18,880
Speaker 3: spite of being unfaithful or in spite of being faithful.

636
00:38:19,320 --> 00:38:21,720
Speaker 4: Right. So the goal here is to say.

637
00:38:21,600 --> 00:38:25,600
Speaker 3: You can't look at the institution's death and jump to

638
00:38:25,640 --> 00:38:28,520
Speaker 3: automatic conclusions from it. Nor can you immediately say, well,

639
00:38:28,560 --> 00:38:30,319
Speaker 3: they did X, Y and z, and we like that,

640
00:38:30,400 --> 00:38:35,480
Speaker 3: therefore they continued to exist, or we like that, therefore

641
00:38:36,200 --> 00:38:38,520
Speaker 3: their death is an active persecution. Right. There's just there's

642
00:38:38,600 --> 00:38:40,479
Speaker 3: very little we can say, just as there's very little

643
00:38:40,480 --> 00:38:44,480
Speaker 3: we can say about providential that God's providential work apart

644
00:38:44,480 --> 00:38:48,200
Speaker 3: from God is providentially at work. Right. So what I

645
00:38:48,239 --> 00:38:51,000
Speaker 3: think that means in the longer term is to is

646
00:38:51,040 --> 00:38:53,480
Speaker 3: to begin to question the sort of high rhetoric.

647
00:38:53,600 --> 00:38:53,759
Speaker 2: Right.

648
00:38:53,800 --> 00:38:54,480
Speaker 4: The goal, the.

649
00:38:54,440 --> 00:38:58,279
Speaker 3: Goal of an organization, the goal of a movement at

650
00:38:58,320 --> 00:39:02,440
Speaker 3: its best, is to be honest about its past, for

651
00:39:02,520 --> 00:39:07,200
Speaker 3: better or or worse, probably for both, right to press

652
00:39:07,239 --> 00:39:10,880
Speaker 3: forth into the present faithfully heart stop.

653
00:39:12,880 --> 00:39:13,080
Speaker 2: Right.

654
00:39:13,160 --> 00:39:17,000
Speaker 3: That's certainly entailed being aware of financial pressures.

655
00:39:17,160 --> 00:39:18,200
Speaker 4: Just money is real.

656
00:39:18,280 --> 00:39:22,680
Speaker 3: We have to pay attention to money. But when money

657
00:39:22,719 --> 00:39:30,400
Speaker 3: takes over the concerns, it's not uncommon for the reliance

658
00:39:30,560 --> 00:39:33,680
Speaker 3: reliance upon God to be shown to be less than

659
00:39:33,680 --> 00:39:34,399
Speaker 3: what it should have been.

660
00:39:34,960 --> 00:39:38,920
Speaker 2: Right, that's right, No, And I always find it interesting.

661
00:39:39,840 --> 00:39:43,319
Speaker 1: So slat voice Hieshek is one of my favorite sort

662
00:39:43,320 --> 00:39:46,480
Speaker 1: of just oddreads. Right, most of the time, I don't

663
00:39:46,480 --> 00:39:50,160
Speaker 1: really understand what he's saying. I'll be honest, it's pretty complex,

664
00:39:50,640 --> 00:39:53,360
Speaker 1: but he's just he makes me laugh, honestly, and he

665
00:39:53,400 --> 00:39:55,400
Speaker 1: makes me think, and so I like reading this stuff.

666
00:39:56,239 --> 00:39:59,640
Speaker 1: He's got a lecture online called maybe we Just Need

667
00:39:59,680 --> 00:40:02,759
Speaker 1: a Different Chicken, I think, is what it's called. And

668
00:40:02,800 --> 00:40:06,560
Speaker 1: at the beginning of that lecture, he says that ideology

669
00:40:06,640 --> 00:40:10,440
Speaker 1: is a problem, not because it doesn't address real issues.

670
00:40:11,400 --> 00:40:14,720
Speaker 1: He says that ideology does address real issues, the deep

671
00:40:14,840 --> 00:40:18,320
Speaker 1: problems that we have in our societies. But he says

672
00:40:18,360 --> 00:40:21,800
Speaker 1: that the problem really with ideologies is that they begin

673
00:40:21,840 --> 00:40:25,440
Speaker 1: to define the questions, and so then the questions become

674
00:40:25,920 --> 00:40:28,560
Speaker 1: part of the problem as opposed to part of the solution.

675
00:40:29,760 --> 00:40:33,880
Speaker 1: And so part of solving these issues is trying to

676
00:40:33,920 --> 00:40:37,640
Speaker 1: get outside of these ideological boxes that we find ourselves

677
00:40:37,719 --> 00:40:42,320
Speaker 1: in and asking ourselves what is it that we're really

678
00:40:42,360 --> 00:40:48,000
Speaker 1: trying to solve for? And what questions or what arrangements,

679
00:40:47,239 --> 00:40:52,400
Speaker 1: what new way of being in the world might really

680
00:40:52,560 --> 00:40:56,600
Speaker 1: solve for those if we weren't stuck in these boxes,

681
00:40:58,160 --> 00:41:00,959
Speaker 1: you know. So I work with a lot of higher

682
00:41:01,040 --> 00:41:04,319
Speaker 1: ed institutions. Still I still do a fair bit of

683
00:41:04,320 --> 00:41:09,160
Speaker 1: consulting or at least conversation with different CEOs or provosts

684
00:41:09,239 --> 00:41:12,000
Speaker 1: or what have you. And a lot of times what

685
00:41:12,040 --> 00:41:16,680
Speaker 1: you run into is they're stuck in a box. They

686
00:41:16,680 --> 00:41:20,799
Speaker 1: have buildings to pay for, they have you know, lms's

687
00:41:20,920 --> 00:41:24,680
Speaker 1: to support, you know, learning management systems, technology issues, all

688
00:41:24,680 --> 00:41:28,000
Speaker 1: these different policies and all this different stuff. But really

689
00:41:28,040 --> 00:41:29,959
Speaker 1: a lot of what the people I talk to want

690
00:41:30,000 --> 00:41:32,040
Speaker 1: to do is they just want to educate the body

691
00:41:32,080 --> 00:41:32,560
Speaker 1: of Christ.

692
00:41:34,840 --> 00:41:36,959
Speaker 2: And once you.

693
00:41:36,880 --> 00:41:40,279
Speaker 1: Step outside of accreditation, and once you step outside of

694
00:41:41,560 --> 00:41:47,000
Speaker 1: buildings and dormitories and you know, faculty on staff and

695
00:41:47,160 --> 00:41:50,520
Speaker 1: all these different things, you certainly get a different.

696
00:41:50,360 --> 00:41:52,680
Speaker 2: Tone about what that education can look like.

697
00:41:53,560 --> 00:41:56,040
Speaker 1: But it may be far more sustainable than we're capable

698
00:41:56,040 --> 00:41:59,160
Speaker 1: of doing right now as a church in this context,

699
00:41:59,400 --> 00:42:01,960
Speaker 1: given the prices that are available to us.

700
00:42:02,440 --> 00:42:02,680
Speaker 2: Right.

701
00:42:02,840 --> 00:42:04,759
Speaker 1: I mean, you mentioned, I agree with you. Money's real

702
00:42:04,800 --> 00:42:06,919
Speaker 1: and we have to think about money. But I also

703
00:42:07,040 --> 00:42:10,360
Speaker 1: think part of what we're doing constantly is we're trying

704
00:42:10,400 --> 00:42:14,000
Speaker 1: to preserve a very specific model. And when we try

705
00:42:14,000 --> 00:42:16,640
Speaker 1: to preserve that very specific model, we lose sight of

706
00:42:16,680 --> 00:42:18,840
Speaker 1: what we're really trying to do in the first place.

707
00:42:20,160 --> 00:42:23,640
Speaker 1: I don't know anybody who's gotten a PhD in theological

708
00:42:23,680 --> 00:42:26,799
Speaker 1: studies or ministry or Bible or anything like that that says,

709
00:42:26,840 --> 00:42:28,919
Speaker 1: you know, what i'd really like to do, I'd really

710
00:42:28,960 --> 00:42:30,880
Speaker 1: like to work the rest of my life to preserve

711
00:42:30,920 --> 00:42:34,799
Speaker 1: an institution. I don't really think that's what people want

712
00:42:34,840 --> 00:42:37,279
Speaker 1: to do. I think that's a proxy for what they

713
00:42:37,320 --> 00:42:40,000
Speaker 1: really want to do. In other words, it's the current

714
00:42:40,120 --> 00:42:42,279
Speaker 1: vehicle that allows them to do what they really want

715
00:42:42,320 --> 00:42:46,240
Speaker 1: to do, which is to form and educate young people.

716
00:42:47,880 --> 00:42:51,680
Speaker 1: Form and educate people are going into ministry. That's what

717
00:42:51,760 --> 00:42:54,640
Speaker 1: most of us who do this kind of education want

718
00:42:54,680 --> 00:42:58,719
Speaker 1: to do. The structure is starting to get and I

719
00:42:58,760 --> 00:43:01,280
Speaker 1: would say increasingly start need to get in the way

720
00:43:01,560 --> 00:43:05,959
Speaker 1: of that, and we're starting to see institutions sort of tople.

721
00:43:05,600 --> 00:43:07,000
Speaker 2: A little bit more, a little bit more, a little

722
00:43:07,000 --> 00:43:07,440
Speaker 2: bit more.

723
00:43:08,360 --> 00:43:11,640
Speaker 1: But I would argue that that's a contextual problem, not

724
00:43:11,719 --> 00:43:16,760
Speaker 1: necessarily always a specific institutional problem, right.

725
00:43:17,480 --> 00:43:20,000
Speaker 2: And the way we solve it, Oh, go ahead.

726
00:43:19,719 --> 00:43:22,560
Speaker 3: Well, and to add into that not specifically a theological problem, right,

727
00:43:22,560 --> 00:43:24,600
Speaker 3: which is not specifically interpreted.

728
00:43:24,320 --> 00:43:27,279
Speaker 2: That's right, not specifically a theological problem. I think the

729
00:43:27,320 --> 00:43:28,160
Speaker 2: way we solve it.

730
00:43:28,080 --> 00:43:30,480
Speaker 1: Is we have to sort of step back and ask ourselves,

731
00:43:30,760 --> 00:43:35,800
Speaker 1: have we substituted seminary education? Have we substituted this particular

732
00:43:35,880 --> 00:43:37,560
Speaker 1: model for seminary education.

733
00:43:37,360 --> 00:43:42,279
Speaker 2: Or what have you? For what we really want? Right? Like,

734
00:43:42,840 --> 00:43:44,120
Speaker 2: is this what we really want?

735
00:43:45,280 --> 00:43:47,560
Speaker 1: And if we've substituted that, then I would say a

736
00:43:47,560 --> 00:43:51,040
Speaker 1: transaction has taking place, Right, That's what we really mean

737
00:43:51,120 --> 00:43:54,440
Speaker 1: by that transaction, that there's something else that's substituted and

738
00:43:54,480 --> 00:43:57,879
Speaker 1: it becomes sacro synct, not because we really care about

739
00:43:57,920 --> 00:44:02,200
Speaker 1: it that much, but because it has now been substituted

740
00:44:02,280 --> 00:44:05,839
Speaker 1: for the thing that we really do care about. And

741
00:44:05,960 --> 00:44:08,040
Speaker 1: so you'll often hear it if you're really listening to

742
00:44:08,040 --> 00:44:10,279
Speaker 1: people who care about these things, it's like, well, what

743
00:44:10,320 --> 00:44:12,840
Speaker 1: would we do if all the seminaries blinked out of existence?

744
00:44:14,719 --> 00:44:16,879
Speaker 1: They don't mean by that, what would be the next

745
00:44:16,920 --> 00:44:19,720
Speaker 1: paradigm we would execute to train the people of God.

746
00:44:20,160 --> 00:44:22,400
Speaker 1: What they're really saying is we wouldn't be able to

747
00:44:22,400 --> 00:44:24,080
Speaker 1: train the next generation of the people of God.

748
00:44:24,120 --> 00:44:25,400
Speaker 2: If these seminaries weren't.

749
00:44:25,160 --> 00:44:27,520
Speaker 4: Here, right, it's doom and gloom.

750
00:44:27,719 --> 00:44:27,959
Speaker 2: Right.

751
00:44:28,040 --> 00:44:29,840
Speaker 1: I would agree with the first part of that question,

752
00:44:30,000 --> 00:44:33,040
Speaker 1: like what are the possibilities of doing this beyond seminary

753
00:44:33,840 --> 00:44:36,399
Speaker 1: totally agree with that. I very much disagree with the

754
00:44:36,440 --> 00:44:40,080
Speaker 1: former now I happen to be I love seminary education.

755
00:44:40,200 --> 00:44:45,000
Speaker 1: I would like to see it continue, but that preference

756
00:44:45,080 --> 00:44:49,839
Speaker 1: can't drive. And I think that's part of what I've

757
00:44:49,880 --> 00:44:52,439
Speaker 1: had to come to, just the more I work with

758
00:44:54,160 --> 00:44:56,839
Speaker 1: and seminaries and Christian colleges and those kind of things,

759
00:44:56,880 --> 00:45:01,200
Speaker 1: is that my preference can't drive it. There has to

760
00:45:01,239 --> 00:45:04,879
Speaker 1: be something else driving. And for a while, I think

761
00:45:04,920 --> 00:45:09,640
Speaker 1: I would say that was the reality of the money

762
00:45:09,880 --> 00:45:13,399
Speaker 1: right for me was driving. But I think even now

763
00:45:13,440 --> 00:45:16,920
Speaker 1: I would say that's been displaced. And I think the

764
00:45:16,960 --> 00:45:20,160
Speaker 1: deeper question has to be asked, is what is God

765
00:45:20,320 --> 00:45:26,239
Speaker 1: really wanting us to do in the moment in order

766
00:45:26,280 --> 00:45:29,880
Speaker 1: to make sure that his people are well discipled, in

767
00:45:30,000 --> 00:45:34,880
Speaker 1: order to make sure that his people are formed and

768
00:45:34,920 --> 00:45:37,240
Speaker 1: shaped and continually conformed in the image of Christ.

769
00:45:38,960 --> 00:45:43,480
Speaker 3: Yeah, So again, what I'm hearing about is that the

770
00:45:43,520 --> 00:45:45,920
Speaker 3: goal is to be faithful in the moment, right, and

771
00:45:45,960 --> 00:45:48,080
Speaker 3: it's to be innovative in the moment. It's to sort

772
00:45:48,120 --> 00:45:51,040
Speaker 3: of take that posture that I'm wanting to say, is

773
00:45:51,080 --> 00:45:54,400
Speaker 3: how providence works, whatever exactly God is doing in a moment,

774
00:45:54,480 --> 00:45:56,960
Speaker 3: whether or not we can interpret it that, it's that

775
00:45:57,040 --> 00:45:59,400
Speaker 3: God can work with what's there in the present. It's

776
00:45:59,440 --> 00:46:03,239
Speaker 3: sort of that we need to have rather than the

777
00:46:03,280 --> 00:46:08,080
Speaker 3: sort of mentality that this institution is God's savior of

778
00:46:08,080 --> 00:46:08,399
Speaker 3: the world.

779
00:46:08,480 --> 00:46:09,439
Speaker 4: No, actually, it's not.

780
00:46:09,880 --> 00:46:15,600
Speaker 3: Anymore than you know, the Northern Kingdom of Israel was

781
00:46:15,680 --> 00:46:19,279
Speaker 3: the thing that God needed, right, The existence of the

782
00:46:19,280 --> 00:46:21,440
Speaker 3: Northern Kingdom Israel, as well as the Southern Kingdom of

783
00:46:21,520 --> 00:46:25,880
Speaker 3: Judah was predicated upon the presence and work of Yahweh,

784
00:46:25,920 --> 00:46:29,160
Speaker 3: not the other way around. The existence of filling the

785
00:46:29,200 --> 00:46:37,680
Speaker 3: gap institution is predicated upon the desired good work of

786
00:46:37,840 --> 00:46:40,920
Speaker 3: training people to be ministers in some way, shape or another,

787
00:46:41,000 --> 00:46:44,600
Speaker 3: training people to be educators, training people to be you know,

788
00:46:44,640 --> 00:46:47,640
Speaker 3: whatever it is that we need them to do. Times

789
00:46:47,640 --> 00:46:51,680
Speaker 3: that's nurses, right, physicians, depending on the school and what

790
00:46:51,719 --> 00:46:58,680
Speaker 3: their their larger mission is. And there's good reason often

791
00:46:58,680 --> 00:47:02,239
Speaker 3: to preserve some of these institutions, sure, but it's the

792
00:47:02,320 --> 00:47:06,279
Speaker 3: heavy handed interpretive, dynamic right of what this institution is

793
00:47:06,320 --> 00:47:08,560
Speaker 3: and what its failure may or may not mean. What

794
00:47:08,600 --> 00:47:11,839
Speaker 3: this institution must do, how it must compromise in order

795
00:47:11,880 --> 00:47:16,920
Speaker 3: to continue to exist because of its larger divine mandate,

796
00:47:18,000 --> 00:47:24,280
Speaker 3: the sorts of theological problems that it must marry itself

797
00:47:24,320 --> 00:47:31,520
Speaker 3: to in terms of the formations of social capital that's right,

798
00:47:32,520 --> 00:47:36,040
Speaker 3: or economic capital in order to just do you know,

799
00:47:36,200 --> 00:47:38,560
Speaker 3: and justifying that based upon the greater good that it

800
00:47:38,600 --> 00:47:41,359
Speaker 3: sees itself. There's where the problems are. Right, that's being

801
00:47:41,440 --> 00:47:46,920
Speaker 3: tied to an institution as if its existence is is

802
00:47:46,960 --> 00:47:50,440
Speaker 3: what solves beaning in the world. And the reality is

803
00:47:50,440 --> 00:47:55,200
Speaker 3: is that that's just never been the case for any institution.

804
00:47:56,680 --> 00:47:59,440
Speaker 4: No means faithfulness, Yeah.

805
00:47:59,480 --> 00:48:02,560
Speaker 2: I Like we said at the beginning, you know, Israel

806
00:48:02,760 --> 00:48:03,800
Speaker 2: and Judo were.

807
00:48:03,600 --> 00:48:09,440
Speaker 1: Not going to be successful unless they were walking with God.

808
00:48:10,520 --> 00:48:14,120
Speaker 1: That God's presence was the secret sauce. You put it

809
00:48:14,120 --> 00:48:16,560
Speaker 1: that way, right. I tell this story about my son

810
00:48:16,600 --> 00:48:20,319
Speaker 1: and I walking down Michigan Avenue occasionally we'd moved up

811
00:48:20,360 --> 00:48:23,680
Speaker 1: from Central Illinois. He'd walk with my wife and I

812
00:48:23,680 --> 00:48:25,640
Speaker 1: ond to be running ahead a block block and a

813
00:48:25,640 --> 00:48:28,799
Speaker 1: half because there's no traffic and there's no people, right,

814
00:48:28,920 --> 00:48:32,719
Speaker 1: So you know, little kid, you know, in first second grade, he.

815
00:48:32,680 --> 00:48:33,760
Speaker 2: Can do that, no problem.

816
00:48:34,760 --> 00:48:36,560
Speaker 1: But when we moved up to Chicago and he's trying

817
00:48:36,600 --> 00:48:40,759
Speaker 1: to move down Michigan Avenue, that's a whole different beasts, right,

818
00:48:41,000 --> 00:48:43,960
Speaker 1: And so he's like getting jostled around. You know, people

819
00:48:44,000 --> 00:48:46,319
Speaker 1: are texting and walking, they're on their phones, they're doing it.

820
00:48:46,320 --> 00:48:48,480
Speaker 1: You know, they're not watching for a little kid that's

821
00:48:48,520 --> 00:48:51,680
Speaker 1: like down by their knees. And so he's getting shoved around,

822
00:48:51,680 --> 00:48:54,160
Speaker 1: pushed around. And so I let him run ahead just

823
00:48:54,160 --> 00:48:55,800
Speaker 1: for a few minutes, and then you know, kind of

824
00:48:55,840 --> 00:48:57,320
Speaker 1: called him back to me and just said, hey, just

825
00:48:57,360 --> 00:48:59,920
Speaker 1: walk with me. And when he walked with me, he

826
00:49:00,080 --> 00:49:03,880
Speaker 1: could walk basically a straight line through the crowd. I'm

827
00:49:03,960 --> 00:49:08,080
Speaker 1: not huge, I'm six foot to twenty something. Right at

828
00:49:08,080 --> 00:49:10,680
Speaker 1: the time, I was about that size, I'm you know,

829
00:49:11,680 --> 00:49:14,440
Speaker 1: and so it's not like I'm shoving my way through people.

830
00:49:14,520 --> 00:49:19,879
Speaker 1: But I'm also more noticeable than a first grader, right,

831
00:49:20,480 --> 00:49:22,640
Speaker 1: and so I don't I don't have to dodge, and

832
00:49:22,680 --> 00:49:25,000
Speaker 1: I don't get jostled around as much. And it just

833
00:49:25,320 --> 00:49:28,040
Speaker 1: it's a different experience for me walking down that sidewalk

834
00:49:28,080 --> 00:49:30,839
Speaker 1: than it was for him. But when he walks next

835
00:49:30,880 --> 00:49:34,480
Speaker 1: to me, he takes on that stature. He now becomes

836
00:49:34,520 --> 00:49:38,120
Speaker 1: six foot to twenty right in a very real way.

837
00:49:38,719 --> 00:49:41,760
Speaker 1: And I think that's what we're shooting for. And sometimes

838
00:49:41,800 --> 00:49:44,640
Speaker 1: I feel like what we've done is it's an old

839
00:49:44,640 --> 00:49:49,759
Speaker 1: Travis trip foot Travis Tritzong right, six feet tall and bulletproof, right,

840
00:49:50,000 --> 00:49:52,400
Speaker 1: like he starts to feel that way, but he's not

841
00:49:52,520 --> 00:49:53,360
Speaker 1: actually that way.

842
00:49:54,520 --> 00:49:55,040
Speaker 2: And when we.

843
00:49:55,160 --> 00:49:57,400
Speaker 1: Start to feel like we're six foot fall and bulletproof,

844
00:49:57,480 --> 00:50:01,440
Speaker 1: either as individual Christians or His institutions, we start to

845
00:50:01,480 --> 00:50:03,920
Speaker 1: think that we can just accomplish whatever we want, and

846
00:50:03,960 --> 00:50:06,359
Speaker 1: that we actually God actually needs us to be here,

847
00:50:06,960 --> 00:50:11,920
Speaker 1: and that we're the secret sauce. It's actually a really subtle,

848
00:50:12,480 --> 00:50:14,880
Speaker 1: I think shift that takes place.

849
00:50:15,280 --> 00:50:18,040
Speaker 2: We see it in places like Deuteronomy eight. God warns

850
00:50:18,080 --> 00:50:20,319
Speaker 2: the Israelites to not forget.

851
00:50:20,120 --> 00:50:21,920
Speaker 1: Him when they go into the land and they're eating,

852
00:50:22,200 --> 00:50:24,560
Speaker 1: living in houses they didn't build, eating from fields to

853
00:50:24,560 --> 00:50:29,120
Speaker 1: the implant, drinking from cisterns they didn't dig, and they'll say,

854
00:50:29,280 --> 00:50:33,640
Speaker 1: my might and my strength have gotten me this well,

855
00:50:33,680 --> 00:50:36,320
Speaker 1: like they become the center of the universe as opposed

856
00:50:36,360 --> 00:50:38,600
Speaker 1: to God, and so part of it is when we

857
00:50:38,680 --> 00:50:41,520
Speaker 1: say being faithful in the present, I think that's a

858
00:50:41,560 --> 00:50:44,560
Speaker 1: good picture of what it means to be faithful in

859
00:50:44,600 --> 00:50:49,320
Speaker 1: the present, is that we're constantly trying to be people

860
00:50:49,400 --> 00:50:52,360
Speaker 1: who stand in the presence of a holy God and

861
00:50:52,440 --> 00:50:55,920
Speaker 1: allow him to do the work through us, as opposed

862
00:50:55,960 --> 00:50:58,279
Speaker 1: to starting to think that we're the ones who need

863
00:50:58,320 --> 00:51:01,200
Speaker 1: to do the work and if God kicks in, that'd

864
00:51:01,280 --> 00:51:05,000
Speaker 1: be great, because I think that's sometimes where we.

865
00:51:05,000 --> 00:51:08,880
Speaker 3: Get Yeah, I'm with you and everything, But the Travis

866
00:51:08,880 --> 00:51:11,800
Speaker 3: trit song, I don't know anything about that, but I'm.

867
00:51:11,680 --> 00:51:12,840
Speaker 4: Assuming it fits.

868
00:51:13,600 --> 00:51:14,520
Speaker 2: It does trust me.

869
00:51:15,400 --> 00:51:19,920
Speaker 3: I'll trust you, And I think that that is the

870
00:51:19,960 --> 00:51:22,839
Speaker 3: takeaway again. Right, Perhaps I'm a broken record at this point,

871
00:51:22,840 --> 00:51:27,160
Speaker 3: but it's that the institution, the group, the whatever has

872
00:51:27,239 --> 00:51:34,920
Speaker 3: to be receive its identity from Jesus, right, and the

873
00:51:34,960 --> 00:51:36,719
Speaker 3: work that Jesus has called us to do, and not

874
00:51:37,200 --> 00:51:40,240
Speaker 3: because we're human, because our institutions are created by humans.

875
00:51:40,239 --> 00:51:45,040
Speaker 3: It means constant repentance, and I think that's part of

876
00:51:45,120 --> 00:51:47,879
Speaker 3: what institutions seem to be afraid to do, right, because

877
00:51:47,920 --> 00:51:53,120
Speaker 3: repentance means repudiating something that someone else perhaps loves. Yeah,

878
00:51:53,160 --> 00:51:56,240
Speaker 3: but that's part of the process of constantly coming to God,

879
00:51:56,800 --> 00:51:58,640
Speaker 3: displacing ourselves and our.

880
00:51:58,520 --> 00:51:59,960
Speaker 4: Institutions from the center.

881
00:52:01,000 --> 00:52:05,799
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, it's it's what enables us to be like

882
00:52:05,880 --> 00:52:09,399
Speaker 3: your son as a first grader, having a stature that

883
00:52:09,800 --> 00:52:15,839
Speaker 3: really isn't dar own. Yeah, while recognizing that it isn't

884
00:52:15,880 --> 00:52:18,600
Speaker 3: our own, right, that's really the repunance part is important

885
00:52:18,600 --> 00:52:21,960
Speaker 3: of that right, and recognizing that again, when when an

886
00:52:22,000 --> 00:52:24,960
Speaker 3: institution or a group might meet its end, perhaps it's

887
00:52:25,000 --> 00:52:26,279
Speaker 3: just to make way for something new.

888
00:52:26,440 --> 00:52:26,600
Speaker 4: Right.

889
00:52:26,840 --> 00:52:29,839
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know how current we want to get.

890
00:52:29,880 --> 00:52:34,560
Speaker 3: But recently Stephen Colbert's Late show came to an end,

891
00:52:34,560 --> 00:52:36,360
Speaker 3: and I really appreciate that one of the things he

892
00:52:36,440 --> 00:52:38,960
Speaker 3: said was regardless of what the reasons for that were,

893
00:52:39,040 --> 00:52:42,440
Speaker 3: he refused to at least explicitly weigh in on that.

894
00:52:42,600 --> 00:52:45,920
Speaker 3: He said, he's excited for what's the next. Right, Maybe

895
00:52:45,960 --> 00:52:50,680
Speaker 3: he needed he needed this change in order to actually

896
00:52:50,719 --> 00:52:53,480
Speaker 3: save his life. Right, so that he still while he

897
00:52:53,920 --> 00:52:56,160
Speaker 3: while he still has the energy and the ability to

898
00:52:56,200 --> 00:52:58,160
Speaker 3: do new things, he can try new things he wanted

899
00:52:58,200 --> 00:53:01,839
Speaker 3: to try, right, Yeah, regardless of what you think about

900
00:53:01,880 --> 00:53:06,640
Speaker 3: that show, whatever, regardless of what you think about any institution,

901
00:53:07,400 --> 00:53:10,640
Speaker 3: the attitude there I think is spot on, right, And yeah,

902
00:53:10,680 --> 00:53:15,200
Speaker 3: in his case, coming from someone who openly and probably

903
00:53:15,239 --> 00:53:18,759
Speaker 3: professes as faith in Jesus, that's a good model.

904
00:53:18,680 --> 00:53:19,920
Speaker 2: Right, Agreed.

905
00:53:20,760 --> 00:53:23,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think I think part of what

906
00:53:23,880 --> 00:53:25,960
Speaker 1: we were trying to do in all these diagnosess and

907
00:53:26,000 --> 00:53:28,879
Speaker 1: we've got two more pieces that we'll do in this series, but.

908
00:53:30,320 --> 00:53:30,959
Speaker 2: I think it's just.

909
00:53:30,840 --> 00:53:34,279
Speaker 1: Important to kind of recap this. We're really trying to

910
00:53:34,280 --> 00:53:39,960
Speaker 1: get Christians to broaden their understanding, not narrow it down.

911
00:53:41,120 --> 00:53:44,120
Speaker 1: And so if we think about I was trying to

912
00:53:44,160 --> 00:53:45,799
Speaker 1: explain this to my son just the other day, we

913
00:53:45,800 --> 00:53:48,200
Speaker 1: were walking through some of this stuff. He's doing a

914
00:53:48,239 --> 00:53:52,320
Speaker 1: theology degree at Saint Louis University and so sometimes periodically

915
00:53:52,360 --> 00:53:54,480
Speaker 1: we'll talk about some of this stuff like this.

916
00:53:55,520 --> 00:53:56,399
Speaker 2: But I just told him, I.

917
00:53:56,320 --> 00:54:00,759
Speaker 1: Said, if you just think about God's self disclosure as

918
00:54:00,800 --> 00:54:06,800
Speaker 1: being additive to any perspective that we had before, it,

919
00:54:06,880 --> 00:54:11,839
Speaker 1: subtracting that, discounting that, ignoring that, denying that whatever verb

920
00:54:11,880 --> 00:54:14,600
Speaker 1: you want to apply to it, ultimately is going to

921
00:54:14,600 --> 00:54:17,400
Speaker 1: give us a narrower perspective than we would have if

922
00:54:17,440 --> 00:54:21,759
Speaker 1: we just embraced it. And I think that all of

923
00:54:21,760 --> 00:54:24,840
Speaker 1: these we've done assimilation, we've done fragmentation, and now this

924
00:54:24,880 --> 00:54:28,880
Speaker 1: one's transaction. What we're trying to get everybody to understand

925
00:54:28,960 --> 00:54:33,440
Speaker 1: is that we're constantly narrowing our vision because we're not

926
00:54:33,840 --> 00:54:38,759
Speaker 1: sitting under the authority of God's self disclosure. We're not

927
00:54:38,880 --> 00:54:42,719
Speaker 1: thinking about it well, we're not allowing it to sort

928
00:54:42,719 --> 00:54:46,359
Speaker 1: of govern our lives. And what that means is not here,

929
00:54:46,400 --> 00:54:51,160
Speaker 1: here's the set of rules. Just do this and you're fine, right.

930
00:54:51,640 --> 00:54:54,719
Speaker 1: It's more of an improvisational activity where we have to

931
00:54:54,800 --> 00:55:00,359
Speaker 1: deeply know it, constantly circle back through repentance, confession, through

932
00:55:00,440 --> 00:55:04,840
Speaker 1: basic investigation and try to understand these things. But ultimately

933
00:55:04,880 --> 00:55:07,640
Speaker 1: the narrow incomes when we say, we really no longer

934
00:55:07,760 --> 00:55:11,279
Speaker 1: need this. We've got enough of this figured out. There's

935
00:55:11,640 --> 00:55:14,160
Speaker 1: enough of a clear and consistent story that we can

936
00:55:14,200 --> 00:55:17,640
Speaker 1: adopt that we can live our lives without real reference

937
00:55:18,480 --> 00:55:21,120
Speaker 1: to the Word of God anymore. And so the next

938
00:55:21,120 --> 00:55:22,880
Speaker 1: one we're actually going to address is called what we

939
00:55:22,920 --> 00:55:27,560
Speaker 1: call inversion, and it's this dynamic that talks about you know,

940
00:55:28,160 --> 00:55:32,640
Speaker 1: when human leaders are communities sort of close interpretive questions prematurely,

941
00:55:33,920 --> 00:55:38,279
Speaker 1: and then those interpretive questions become the authority for the

942
00:55:38,560 --> 00:55:41,440
Speaker 1: individual or community's life as opposed to the Word of

943
00:55:41,440 --> 00:55:42,600
Speaker 1: God on which they're based.

944
00:55:43,200 --> 00:55:46,480
Speaker 2: God's word sort of gets enveloped.

945
00:55:46,200 --> 00:55:49,560
Speaker 1: Within the interpretive community, as opposed to sitting atop the

946
00:55:49,600 --> 00:55:53,600
Speaker 1: interpretive community, and so we call that inversion. But all

947
00:55:53,640 --> 00:55:56,880
Speaker 1: of these are basically getting at very similar things like

948
00:55:57,000 --> 00:56:00,160
Speaker 1: let's not narrow our vision, let's actually remember that we

949
00:56:00,200 --> 00:56:03,719
Speaker 1: serve a God who is capable of doing abundantly more

950
00:56:03,719 --> 00:56:07,719
Speaker 1: than we could ever ask or think. So I'll close

951
00:56:07,719 --> 00:56:11,120
Speaker 1: out with that today and thanks to the conversation today,

952
00:56:11,120 --> 00:56:14,160
Speaker 1: ASHIESH really appreciate it, and thanks everybody for being here.

953
00:56:14,360 --> 00:56:16,080
Speaker 2: I hope you enjoyed this episode and we'll catch you

954
00:56:16,120 --> 00:56:17,279
Speaker 2: on the next one. Take care,