The Mapp
The Mapp is a long-form dialog podcast that is intended to be a platform for people from various walks of life to intimately and candidly share how they navigate different aspects of the human experience. The stories shared will undoubtedly hold nuggets of wisdom and meaning that we all can adopt and integrate into our lives. There will be rabbit trails, there will be laughs, there will be nonsense, and there will be gold. Welcome to The Mapp.
The Mapp
Rethinking Identity Faith and Social Justice
Can forgiveness truly liberate us from the shackles of bitterness, and how can the crucifixion be transformed into a symbol of hope? Join us as we welcome back Tim Churchward, a pastor with a unique perspective rooted in history, philosophy, and social work. Tim's insights challenge our understanding of identity, justice, and forgiveness, urging us to look beyond societal labels and rediscover our core identity as children of God. Together, we explore how subtle legal changes can lead to significant societal shifts, dissect the nuanced evolution of social justice movements, and question how personal convictions can sometimes become overshadowed by societal pressures.
Prepare to rethink what you know about justice, redemption, and the role of community in facing life's complexities. Our conversation delves into the transformative power of forgiveness through a Christian lens, highlighting profound themes such as the nature of original sin and personal responsibility. We examine the biblical basis for gender equality and reflect on historical injustices, all while discussing how invoking the Holy Spirit empowers believers to forgive in seemingly impossible situations. Tim shares powerful stories that illustrate the potential for growth through pain, and how embracing a mindset centered on redemption can benefit both the forgiver and those they forgive.
In a world that often feels disconnected, the importance of community, love, and forgiveness cannot be overstated. This episode touches on the narratives of selflessness within Judeo-Christian ethics and the power of shared experiences in parenting, marriage, and healing. Join us in exploring the balance between consequence and compassion in the justice system and discover how enduring adversity can bring us closer to a higher purpose. Whether you're contemplating your approach to justice or seeking guidance on personal growth, this episode offers a thought-provoking journey into navigating the challenges and triumphs of life through a lens of faith and forgiveness.
Thank you for joining The Mapp. If this resonates with you, don’t forget to subscribe and share it with others who might find it meaningful. Follow us on social media to stay updated and join our community of explorers. Together we navigate life’s pathways.
Hey folks, welcome back to the map. I got a good one for you today. There's a returning guest and a dear friend of mine, tim Churchward. For those of you who don't know, tim's a pretty fascinating guy. He's got a background in history, in philosophy. He has a master's degree in social work and psychodynamics. He spent years of his life in the UK as a social worker and a senior manager for Looked After Children, working with at-risk youths and young offenders. These days he's pastoring a church in Leicester called Chroma Church, where he leads an international school of ministry. And on top of all that he's a family man. He has three beautiful kids, wonderful wife.
Speaker 1:And today we dive into some pretty heavy topics. We start about thought policing. We talk a little bit about the case with Tommy Robinson and how small incremental changes in laws and policies end up reshaping societies in ways we wouldn't really anticipate or expect on the onset. And from there we dive into a deeper conversation about identity. And Tim breaks down this idea from a biblical angle, talking about how our true identity is rooted in being children of God, rather than any cultural or physical labels that we put on ourselves or that the world puts on us, and we tackle what forgiveness means, what self-sacrifice means and the core of the Christian response to ideas of oppression and actual oppression.
Speaker 1:And then we take a closer look at the impact of culture, community and how social movements sometimes stray away from the original mission and we talk about the justice and reconciliation aspect of that and how it's going to balance out society and how things go off track when these movements start to actually become the very thing that they're against and what they stand against. We talk a little bit about parenting and our techniques there and how we teach kids the difference between consequence and punishment, the mindset of focus on redemption versus just punishment. So this one goes deep Pain, suffering, faith, power of connection and exploring community, bringing healing in a time where people feel more disconnected than they have, even though they were more connected than we've ever been. So Tim has some powerful insights here and it really makes me question how we approach these big issues and how we can take ground for ourselves in love and in forgiveness with a higher purpose. So sit back, relax, get ready for the powerful and wise Tim Churchward. Two, one, zero, all engines running, liftoff.
Speaker 2:We're going to open up every can of worms where it's possible to open up. I teach our school, um, and yesterday night, last night, um, it was identity. So what does the bible say about identity? And you've got to understand like our church is massively multi-ethnic, so I would say that at least 60 of that room, all our rooms, are black, african, black, caribbean, and and it's really interesting because, um, when we talk about identity, um, in that context, what happens is is that we basically go back to the identity that the bible gives us and, and especially from the point of creation so you're a son and a daughter, um, you're a ruler and a raider, so you're, you're royal, you're all these things and everything else. That is how you look, what you feel like, they're all secondary claims to your identity that do not trump the identity of being a child or daughter of God. And it is really interesting.
Speaker 2:So one of the things we try to go through is, if you believe in a secular, humanist, materialist world where there is nothing beyond the material, nothing beyond matter, like the neo-Darwinism, dawkins, new atheism thing, then what happens is that you, number one, you have no transcendent morality, so you don't have any sense in which that you have anything to aspire to in terms of what is good and bad, and that, obviously, is us perpetually eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil to try and become like God. We were never meant to carry the weight of deciding moral goodness and badness. It was always meant to be God's design. And so, as a Christian, you hold to a set of moral values that is far and above what humans can define for themselves. But not only that. You hold to the fact that you're more than just human, that your identity is far more than just your physical self. And when you hold to that narrative, it is foundationally counter-cultural and counter-intuitive to a secular, humanist, materialist world, because what they would believe is that, essentially, you are claiming to be superior because there is nothing beyond you, there's nothing beyond me and there's nothing beyond any human being that makes us any different or give us any claim that there is a good or bad way to live and a good or bad way to be.
Speaker 2:But what I say in the school is is that, look, we are defined by two things in creation we're defined by the dust and by the glorious breath of God. So Adam is created from dust and the glory. And the thing is is that the dust is never meant to define him. The glory is meant to define him. The glory is meant to define him. And in our culture, what we often see happen is that we see us being asked to define ourselves by our dust, by our flesh, by our wants, our desires, by the things that we look like, by what we represent and all those things. But actually the Bible is very clear from creation You're not going to be defined by dust, what you look like. They're important things. They shouldn't be undermined or invalidated, but they're secondary to the glory that actually gives you life. In other words, your identity is glory because you're, because the glory brings you life. Anything else outside of that is just an aid to the life that you already have. And so when we think of it in that narrative, it's really important that we distinguish from when, when people are trying to draw us into an identity that is foundationally based on a group or foundationally based on how we look, foundationally based on the color of our skin or our gender or whatever it might be, because all of those things are representations of the dust. It's not a bad thing, it's not to be undermined. They're very important. We're not gnostics and try and whip our bodies away. We believe and love our bodies and our physical selves, but it's not our identity. So the whole point is is that then you shift your eyes to?
Speaker 2:So what is identity, what is the glorious nature of identity? And then you have the devil. And the devil and the demonic narrative in in terms of the entirety of creation, is he wants you to be defined by the dust. It's why he's represented as a snake, right. So he's the dust dweller, he's the one that whispers to you come down here, come and be defined by the thing that is mortal, come and be defined and have your identity based in the thing that is temporal. He tried to usurp the eternal god and he could not do it. So he is now trying to make us usurp, hit god and our identity in god by drawing us back towards the dust to be defined, as opposed to being allowing us to be defined by the glorious nature of who christ is. And we see this all the time. And the the great lie of the devil is oh man, I'm already going off on one, but like, come back to me after this. But the great lie of the devil is um, when adam and eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the lie was if you eat of this tree, you will not die, but you'll become more like God. Now, that's a lie, and we know that because we're already made like God.
Speaker 2:But it's far deeper than that. The depth of it is that the foundational narrative from the snake, from the serpent, from the devil, in terms of that creation story, is not just that you weren't like God when you were. It is also that God is a God of control. God is the patriarchy. In that sense he's the institution, in that sense he is the one who creates boundaries and moral frameworks for you, not for your benefit, but so he can control you, so he can keep you down, so that you don't have to become more like him, or rather that you don't become like him even though he created you in his image. And so the narrative the devil gives there is not simply that we're not like God, it's that God is a controlling oppressor and we are the oppressed. That's the foundational narrative there.
Speaker 2:And so whenever I hear anything at all that wants to pit someone as an oppressor and someone as oppressed, I immediately think of that story and think, okay, oppression and someone who has suffered oppression, someone who is an oppressor, is absolutely real, absolutely foundational, and we have to fight those things. But when the definition of your life when you things. But when the definition of your life, when you're invited into the definition of your life, to be to be defined by your identity, to be defined by how oppressed you are or how much you represent an oppression you've just stepped into the demonic practice of whispers to come down here and be defined by your dust. And actually, if you look at feminism as a really classic example that at least third and fourth wave feminism what they believe is that there are men of the patriarchy and what that means is is that they are always going to be oppressors and women are always the oppressed, and so what their foundational narrative is is that women are defined by being oppressed by men and men are defined by this toxic masculinity nonsense, which is basically that we are somehow defined by the fact that we've oppressed women and as soon as you get to that point where you're invited into identity either as the oppressor or the oppressed, that's what the devil did at the beginning of time, and so we have a foundational narrative, not even in Marxism or Hegelianism or Foucault, in postmodernism or any of those things which we normally associate with. It begins at the beginning of time, in the Bible.
Speaker 2:And so, actually, if we can get to grips with the fact that from the beginning of time, there is a demonic narrative that wishes to pit you against your neighbor, to pit you against your neighbor, to pit you against your brother or sister in terms of how you rank in the oppressive olympics or the oppressed olympics, until we recognize that we are always going to recreate oppression in our societies, because it is a vicious cycle. And this is why, and this is why christianity is the only answer, because christianity is the only coherent narrative to deal with oppression. And it is the hardest thing to do. Because how does jesus christ deal with oppression? What he does is that he is innocent, he's proven innocent, he has never done anything wrong, yet pilot washes his hands. So the roman governance of the time says we don't want nothing to do with this and so, therefore, are in league with the Pharisees to kill him. The Pharisaical tradition, the teaching of the law of the Sadducees, the Pharisees, they're like, kill him. From a religious point of view, he's blasphemed. So, even though he's done nothing wrong, he's been betrayed by his people. He's been betrayed by the authority that should be protecting him. He gets betrayed by his disciples who walk away and actually, he is crucified in the most horrific way, shamed and undermined in the most horrific way. So Jordan Peterson says it's the tragedy of tragedies, it's the ultimate tragedy, and the reality of that is that, therefore, it is the greatest oppression, it is the most oppressed anyone has ever been through, all time. And what is his response? His response is father, forgive them, for they do not know what they're doing now. If that is our example which, by the way, is physically impossible without the supernatural empowering the spirit, which is why christianity is the only coherent narrative to empower you to be able to live in forgiveness, if that forgiveness, if that is the real and understood narrative of how we should deal with oppression, what that also means is that, in that we get resurrected at the end. So, instead of being defined by our oppression, we actually overcome it. So the cross, which was the symbol in Roman times of keeping people down, of oppressing people, of minimizing their life, no matter what they did, whether it was stealing an apple from a tree or being anti-government, like the Maccabees were, whatever it was. The Romans put people on crosses outside every village in town to show people we are the victors, you are being, you are under our rule and, as a result of that, what we're going to do is we're going to show you that we're in charge. And that is the greatest form of oppression. And if Jesus had died and only died on the cross, he would have been overcome by oppression. But in actual fact, the point of the resurrection is is that that cross now becomes a symbol of hope in Christianity, because it's no longer the sign of oppression, it's the sign of overcoming oppression through forgiveness and self-sacrifice. And so then we get to the point where we are in a situation where now we're being invited to define our lives by the death on the cross as opposed to the resurrection power to overcome oppression. And that's why so sorry, bro.
Speaker 2:One more more example I had a girl come to me on sunday. She came to me and she said there's no way that I could be a christian. I was like, okay, why? What happened there? Um, and she said to me it's because my friends who are christians tell me that I've got to forgive everything. I have to forgive everyone, and I want to tell you that if someone killed my son, I would never forgive them and I was like look, christianity, jesus Christ, is the only way to fully comprehend this.
Speaker 2:Because, number one, you have a transcendent God. The Trinity is really powerful here. You have a transcendent God, you have a transcendent being who, at the foundation of the world, creates a set moral standard, moral code of behavior that keeps everybody safe. It's not controlling, it's for safety, but not only that. He brings the moral standard to earth in Jesus Christ, in his incarnation, to show you how to keep to the moral standards, even in the storm, even in the pain, even in the oppression and the trauma, never minimizing it, always spending time with people oppressed the prostitutes, the tax collectors, those who are isolated, the lepers, all those things. Jesus spent so much time with the oppressed but did not let them be defined by their state in society, but raised them up into resurrection, power that he would eventually show as he was resurrected from the death on the cross.
Speaker 2:And so what we have to understand is is the incarnation of Christ gives us the example of how we can walk a journey of forgiveness and life and we can walk a journey of not being defined by the things that happen to us, but instead be defined by his example, and ask him to give us strength in order to forgive the people that oppress us.
Speaker 2:But not only that. You then have the third person of the Trinity in the Holy Spirit, so that you don't actually have to forgive people. You ask the Holy Spirit to come in to your life to supernaturally empower you in order that you say I cannot do this on my own. Holy Spirit, give me the supernatural power that I can forgive people who hurt me in the gravest way. And here's the deal about forgiveness and Paul writes about this the whole way through the epistles is that forgiveness is not about the other person. The forgiveness sets you free from being bound in bitterness by the actions of someone else that has oppressed or hurt you. Forgiveness is not for them. It is for you to be released from being defined by the oppression of the oppressor over your life, and that is the solution. None of this hyper um definition of of oppression that keeps us round and round and round in the cycles.
Speaker 3:Done that's me thank you, pastor tim, we're gonna enter into ministry. If everyone wants to come down front and someone's gonna pray for you, uh no, we'll do an altar call first, though.
Speaker 3:Right, so if you want to, that's what I'm saying like we're gonna do a time ministry. Come down the front, dude. No, that was good, a lot to unpack there. So I'm going to like go. I had to write down some stuff as we go, so I'll go back to one of, like, the first thing you said about identity, and you know, ultimately, if we're you know, I've talked about this before Like, well, who are you?
Speaker 3:Well, my name's Michael. It's like, no, that's what your parents call you. Okay, who are you? Well, I'm a doctor. No, that's something you studied for and you're doing in your job.
Speaker 3:Well, I'm an American? No, that's where you just happen to be born in time, space and matter, and then they gave you a passport that told you that. But who are? So you just like, go down the list of the things that you're talking about and it's like it's too low resolution. Those are realities. I'm not saying they're not realities, like to your point, but we're like if we we have to go to a source, like who am I? Like I come from a source, and if we come from that source, that's going to define the parameters of who I am, how tall, how wide, how big, et cetera, and so all of my parents well, who's their parents? Who's their parents?
Speaker 3:You know, you go all the way back and so people, people, to your point now there's like a pretty big identity crisis in in Western countries because there's this huge push for globalism, a huge push for multiculturalism, but within that, people naturally will. It used to be said, america is the melting pot, but realistically, america is beef stew. Where you know you go to any city, there's Chinatown in New York, a little Jamaica, a little Moscow, et cetera People will kind of cluster wherever they're at. So when there's this influence to push globalism, to push diversity, you're not acknowledging that people automatically have biases. They automatically have biases because whenever someone has similar thought patterns or thinking as me, I'm going to inevitably group to those people, because it's easier to anticipate behavior, it's easier to cooperate, it's easier to cooperate, it's easier to build stuff. Okay. So that's all real.
Speaker 3:But whenever this, like in the states, there's always been like a kind of dialogue about racism, uh, but but when this stuff really started popping off, like when when obama took office, uh, that was kind of my departure point is like, oh well, didn't paul like already kind of address this, that there's not really any distinction anymore between us like slave, free, jew, greek, male or female. So sex, economic, class and ethnic group no distinction between us in the sense of like who we are. In him that there's a, there's a thing that we can aim at higher. So if we're looking at a ladder and it's like the highest thing I could possibly aim at is the creator of everything that exists as defining who I am, the next highest thing would be the state itself. The next thing underneath of that would be these groups that we're talking about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and what I would say in terms of like all of those things. I would say that so, for example, in terms of, like ethnic groups, I think culture and heritage is foundational to, to your, to informing your identity. It's just not your identity in its entirety. So I would say that, for example, there is something very powerful about being an American, or there's something very powerful about being British. It's something that I'm proud of, but it's not who I am and and but, but it's not who I am. It is something that, um, I take on as a choice and I can guess I can reject as a choice, um, but the thing that I would say about the ethnicity piece is that I think that there is something very real about the unique and individual expression of every single person that when you try and group it all together under a particular banner, you actually lose the individual aspect of who that person is. And I'm like I don't think that's okay, because I think that if we end up moving into a conversation where we have this group and this group and this group on the foundational narrative, that somehow they're homogenized, I don't agree with that.
Speaker 2:I also think that there is something really powerful to to know that when paul talks about no greek, no jew, no male, no female, no slave, no free, he's definitely talking about that in the context of, yeah, salvation, coming to know jesus christ. Absolutely right and so and so, when we think about, in terms of salvation, that that is absolutely real, but those people don't then go away and suddenly lose their culture or their heritage or their ethnicity or their inheritance, whatever else it is actually, those things are still really important. They're actually still foundational because they're a unique expression of who christ is. It's got to come under Christ and under that primary identity as being a son and daughter of God.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but that was my point is that we're being called to be sons and daughters. Therefore, the culture, the king and his family, therefore I'm your brother, Therefore, and so you can go down the line of like and this is my perspective that you know. Jesus crucified. He says when I be lifted up, I'll draw all men to me. So he sucks the entirety of humanity into himself. And so, in essence, me and Tim are somehow Siamese triplets with Jesus. Like I'm connected to one hip, you're connected to another hip. When I, when I try to find myself in him in some place, I'm going to see you in him. And so that's what I was meaning is like it's breaking down these things of like. Well, we can't.
Speaker 3:Uh, you know, we lived in a in a town, uh in germany, where there was a wall going down the middle of the town and there was a lutheran side and a catholic side and uh, if you were not allowed to marry somebody on the other side, you weren't allowed to go to butcher shop. These are all Germans, all white, all people look the same, but they were divided on this point. Like the same thing kind of happened in Ireland with the troubles there, so people naturally will want to gravitate towards their group and their biases. But really, the last thing that Jesus commanded people if you look through John, like before he went to the cross, is like don't be divided. Like don't be divided. And it's not saying like don't have different preferences of food, don't dress, like differently. It's not about that. It's about like a divisiveness, uh, in your, in your humanity. And he's like the way that people are going to know me is the way that you love each other. And so if you're trying to follow Jesus, if you're trying to do that, then you're going to have to try to do that. And that was my only point.
Speaker 3:There is when this was like popping off, because when we go down that list, this is the highest thing that I can aim at. And then, if I can't, if I'm not aiming the state highest thing that I can aim at, and then if I can't, if I'm not aiming the state, political movements are underneath that to undermine or change the state. And so then we see people gravitating towards things. And one of the things I want to talk to you about is when we talk about confirmation bias. But, um, when, when people enter into like political activism and they create a foundation, which then bureaucracy comes into it, and we're going to define our kind of niche in society, the whatever the goal is with it. You mentioned feminism, so let's talk about women's suffrage, whatever.
Speaker 3:Whatever the goal is, it doesn't matter if you hit the goal or not, because, because you created this entity and and there's like a quote that like, uh, people don't have thoughts, thoughts have people, uh, in a sense, and and that's why, like paul writes, like you have to take every thought captive and bring it into obedience of christ, that like, thoughts can have a hold of you, and so, when you create these entities, the entity will become a monster that perpetuates itself. So I've, in private conversation, I've talked to people about political things or about religious things or whatever, and they'll, they'll confess something to me one on one. But then we get into a group setting and they're vehemently like railing against what they said, they supported. And I confront them later. I'm like, why did you do that? And like, oh, yeah, I'm just like like afraid, like within the group, to actually say what I think. And I think we're seeing that like across the board and culture now is like people won't think as individuals, they're thinking as a group.
Speaker 3:And so when you create this political movement, like women's suffrage of like having equal rights and voting and working, etc. This monster just starts perpetuating itself to your point where it's like now we have to, we, we can be like on equal as men, now we have to be better than men, or now we, in some cases, we are men now, but it but it becomes this like thing where it will just keep going in, regardless of the person's building. Whatever goal that you have, you just have to set new goals. I think, like the LGBT. Well, lgb movement is probably proof of that as well.
Speaker 3:It was a lot of push for marriage. Well, they got marriage, but then they had, like they had all this money and energy going into that as a political movement. So it's like what do we take next? We have to, like, set some new goal. And so with feminism, it's like what do we take next? We have to, like, set some new goal.
Speaker 3:And so with feminism, it's the same we have to set some new goal. And and it creates it. What it does is it creates an identity crisis in people because they don't actually know what they're aiming at anymore. Um, and then when it's like passing from one generation to the next, and I think all of this is kind of built into the gospel narratives as well, as as Paul. But, like, when we talk about like, what are you going to be defined by in in Jewish culture and and Arab culture, and even in Scandinavia in some places, when you introduce yourself my name's, you know either Al or Ben, like I'mael, son of so-and-so. And what was real fascinating is when jesus changes, uh, simon's name to peter. Have you did you see the chosen series? Have you watched it all the way through?
Speaker 2:yeah, so not all the third one we've seen.
Speaker 3:I think you see the first two series okay, well, when that, you'll enjoy this when it comes. But he changed his name to peter and it gives everybody a complex like. Everyone's like what, like how? And then they're like do we have to call him that now? And everyone like keeps getting it mixed up. But it's like when we talk about identity, it's like I'm gonna change your name and like even in revelation it says that, uh, god has like a stone, he's gonna write your name on the stone and no one will know it, but but him, uh. You say uh, well, I was born this way. This is who I am. I was born this way. Well, you have to be born again to enter in the kingdom. We're born of above, depending on how you want to translate that. So all these kind of things are like built, built in. What you're talking about, about transcendence of like, you're not, and paul says you're not a mere human. Stop acting like mere men, is what he says.
Speaker 2:Uh, and I and I'm like, I'm really actually I'm interested to see what you think about this, bro, because I'm like, is there a point at which those movements begin with an aim at transcendent truth? So, for example, yes, with suffrage, or feminism, or whatever you want to call it, let's, let's, let's start there. I'm like, equality between men and women, I mean that's biblical, so so men and women are created equal in the garden. So so for me, when that's not in place on the earth, it should. And so the idea of women's suffrage or equal votes, equal whatever it is, even equal pay. I mean, I've got my own views on that, in terms of the fact that you somehow find your identity as a woman in getting paid the same as a man, which sounds pretty ridiculous to me. But I'm a man so maybe I don't understand that. But even the equality of the gender, of genders, is actually really, really powerful. It's really important, the equality of the sexes, and we saw that there's that film about the women, the black women, who work for NASA I can't remember exactly what it's called, but they're incredible. But they've got to walk like two miles to go to the toilet or whatever it is, and the idea that that happens is freaking awful, and so the idea of feminism bringing those things to the surface, saying this, is not reflective of the standard of heaven. We must do something about that. I'm like, I'm all there.
Speaker 2:But what's interesting for me is when I got off the train with feminism is when third-wave feminism kicked in, when I was in social work and I considered train with feminism is when third wave feminism kicked in, when I was in social work and, um, I considered myself to be someone who was a feminist because of the first two ways of feminism. I could be a feminist even if I was a man I had the conversation with, like this third wave feminists are like hardcore, uh, anyway, let's not dwell on that too much. And I was like well, so I can't be a feminist because of a man. She's like no, like no, because men are the problem, men are the issue. I'm like well, john Stuart Mill basically supported the suffrage movement from all the way through, from 1880 to 1920, essentially, he spent 40 years working with them, so he was definitely a feminist.
Speaker 2:So what shifted? And the shift normally normally in my experience and my analysis of this and I'm not the genius of the world, I understand that, but normally the shift that I see is, as soon as a movement becomes anti-something as opposed to pro-something, it dies or it goes off the deep end. So we saw that in feminism, or it goes off the deep end. So we saw that in feminism. Suddenly, women's rights, the equality which we should all be working towards, was replaced with. Men are the issue. Men are the problem. We have a major issue with men being the patriarchy. They built this system for themselves.
Speaker 2:And not only that and this is the really interesting thing about feminism that has actually spread out across most of the social justice movements is that it's all done on purpose. All of this is done deliberately, it's all intentional, and the ascription of intentionality to every action of, say, every man in the Western world who built something so that men could be promoted it's just rubbish, it's just not even true, like just the reality of that isn't real. And I think there's something very, very important to acknowledge that some of these movements of thought, thought movements begin with a very powerful narrative, that is, around the justice that god himself believes in. But as soon as you take it out of the moral framework of Christianity, you take it out of God's framework, which includes forgiveness, love, self-sacrifice, when social justice becomes unmoored or untethered from the other realities of justice, which includes forgiveness and love and self-sacrifice, you've just walked into the trap that perpetuates oppression and perpetuates the cycle of injustice, and I think we see this all the time in social justice movements.
Speaker 2:And, for me, I would love to pinpoint the moment where BLM or the feminist movement or the LGBT movement, or whatever feminist movement or the LGBT movement or whatever it is, moved away from being pro-equality to being anti-everything else, and that is the moment in which I think that the demons get in.
Speaker 2:That's quite a big thing to say and I understand that. I don't know who's listening to this, but I believe in the spirit realm, I believe the devil is real, I believe he whispers, lies, and I believe that he tries to take us out by whispering to us and trying to make us the try to get the divine spark within us to be defined by the dust, not by the glory right. And I think, I think for me, I'm looking at these, these movements, and I'm like man. They started off so good and I'm really prone, and then, my gosh, you're right, they become entities in and of themselves and become monsters that we can no longer control, and then they become insatiable and bloodthirsty. They become the movements that want blood, they want death, they want you to die because you are the problem, you are the issue, and I'm like man. That is just not real.
Speaker 3:it's not biblical, and social justice in our current guise of it is not biblical justice well, to your point, like if you do a word study and you look at the word justice, whether you're doing it in the greek or in the hebrew, it's, it's inseparable from reconciliation, right, it's absolutely inseparable.
Speaker 2:Justice is unto something you want justice, not for justice's sake, it's to build the relational gap back.
Speaker 3:So but but yeah, but people, people and and in the states, I would say like it's definitely guilty here, like, when we talk about the justice system, it's about punishment, it's about I like, and I'm not trying to make any statement about death penalty, but I'm just saying, like you know, I made some guy like made the statement. It was like maybe stop and think he's like OK, so if somebody kills somebody, we need to kill that person to show people that killing people is wrong. So it is about punishment and I'm not trying to make a statement about that. And so, like, when you look at a biblical definition of justice, it always ends in reconciliation. The definition of reconciliation is to break separation and restore unity, um the person. So you're redeeming them back to the previous quality of like relationship, um, there, which we would call them like correctional facilities, like rehabilitation facilities in a sense, but most oftentimes people come out worse than what they when they went in. And I to your point, that's kind of it is like people come out worse than when they go in and they come in with noble, noble means. But I think if you don't have any kind of bumper lanes in place of like there are boundaries, there are limits there's. There's so far that we want to go, but people don't do well with moderation and I've had this discussion even in the business development world as like there's no tree out there that just grows and grows and grows and grows and grows and grows. Even we can find trees that are thousands of years old. They stopped growing, growing. They are existing there. So when we end, like with businesses, people just have these pie in the sky things of like realistically, like we don't need to be a trillion dollar business or multi-billion that, we don't need that. But that's what I was saying is like when you create an uh, there's a power of agreement, and like to your point, like what is what? Are we being driven by some kind of purpose or are we being led by the spirit of god? When you're led by the spirit of god, there's like people don't understand this as well with like movements. They call it a movement because it's a. It moves somewhere and then it can move in another direction, but they want to sustain a movement multi-generationally. I'm like you can do that to some degree, but if you just do a short look through scripture, you'll see there's cyclical cycles. Even in scripture there's seasons, there's a time to laugh, there's a time to cry, there's time, et cetera. So I think that's where the problem is, is that there's a time to laugh, there's a time to cry, there's time, etc.
Speaker 3:So I I think like that that's where the problem is is that there becomes a conflict of interest when money gets involved, when bureaucracy gets involved and we, like we, you know, there's all these memes I see of like how would the government make a sandwich and it shows a slice of bread? Like standing like this and it shows ham like this, another slice like this. It's like when you delegate it out and someone, there's an incentive for somebody to keep things going. Uh, sometimes, like drug law enforcement would be an example of this like I'm about like actually paying police more money and they only make like 45 000 a year and they put their life in a line. I feel. I feel like it attracts sometimes the wrong kind of people. If you pay them a bit more and give them more training, probably be better off for everybody. But anyways, if I get X amount of money, of funding, because there's X amount of crime, there is an incentive for me to arrest more people or write more tickets or, like we. You know, people make statements about quotas.
Speaker 3:So that's the true with bureaucracy, that's the true with political movements and like, to your point, how do we keep? How do we keep the momentum? Well, people love outrage, people love injustice. Like, if you're talking about this narrative of like, even in the beginning there's this march. Like marxist, marxism is a theology. So it's borrowing from this narrative that the devil is like, oh, I need to put you at odds with god, because he's he's withholding you know, things from you. You could actually have more. And to add to what you said, like, if you want to be like god, do this x, y and z so you fill in socially, politically or religiously. How do we close the gap to be like god? It's something that we have to do. We have to fight for you know, beastie boys, you have to fight for your right to party. And so in America there's a big push for rights, rights, rights, rights, right, that's the narrative for the like, for a good portion of politics. Now you need your rights and rights and rights. But there always has to be this relationship between I have rights and tim has rights, and I have to respect that. Tim has rights and I have a responsibility to protect tim's rights, even if we're not in a, in a you know agreement.
Speaker 3:And I think like denominational, like denominations, would fall under what you're talking about as well, like denominationalism in the sense of like you look at somebody like John Wesley who, like, had, like these, really strict methodology on how communities should function together and it was all about taking specific ground. But then people just kind of lose their way and when you get into like a hardline denomination, get into like a hard line denomination viewpoint or mode of thinking, then it's like, well, they're not us and like this is about maintaining who we are and differentiating ourselves in the group versus a. God is the source. I come from God and this is just.
Speaker 3:This is like me picking a different kind of perfume as you, I have a different fragrance, but we're still like the same. We're still, you know, meat bags walking around with ghosts inside of us, like a Holy Spirit inside of us, but I just sprayed a different kind of perfume on myself. Or you know, we come from the same. It's a soda dispenser at McDonald's and like you're Sprite but I'm Dr Pepper. You know brown and white, but we still came from the same soda dispenser.
Speaker 3:We came from the same source but completely different flavors can different, completely different companies per se um and importantly so, and importantly different because intentionally intentionally, I think I don't want to lose that that you're made completely the way you are on purpose, it's not by accident. It's not by accident because when I watched the chosen, that was one of the things that like really struck me and my wife was that you know, you kind of get like as we, as we like domesticate christianity and post-christian countries, and then you try to simplify and make things more and more shallow so children can understand it, which I think that I think I don't want to go off another rant here but they did a study with American kids and Japanese kids in math classes and there's all this weird stereotype about how Asian people are so smart at math. But then they actually dug into it and what they found was the the there's a range where kids really struggled to get the concept Like they're actually you're stretching them. In Japan it's 40% of the time that they keep them in that range of like, making them think and stuff. In America it's 2% and that was like the differentiator.
Speaker 3:And I think, like with kids, when you're teaching kids, kids, I think it's the same like you have to call them basically transcendence, but you're like telling them stories that are very simple stories but the you can't dilute the meaning in the story. You're planting the seed inside of them and their brain and their heart have to like, actually marinate on it and catch up to it. But we want to pre-package things in a sunday school way to give it to kids where they can like, immediately regurgitate it back. We're in that Western mode of thinking about memorization regurgitation. But man, what was I going off on that rant for? You said some point and then I was.
Speaker 2:Going from justice to the education system.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, I think I lost it, man, I'll come back to it.
Speaker 2:well, I think I think I think, for me, I'm like I the, the idea that you started with, which was the idea that the justice system is about, is's not about rehabilitation. It's actually about, um, punishment, punishment and and I think punishment, yeah, consequence is a really important thing, and then the differentiation between consequence and punishment, um, I think that's really that's a that's a whole other conversation, but I think I I think that there's this really interesting, there's this interesting narrative within the context of justice well, let me reframe.
Speaker 3:So like, yes, consequences, there is consequences. Like there's laws are set in place, you know, like there's statute of limitations with that. Uh, I guess what I'm saying is it depends on the heart by which you're executing. Okay, so give an example if, if my kids are misbehaving, there's all kinds of like routes we can go, we can we, we can do time out, I can take things away, I can use the carrot method or I could like smack their hand or smack their butt, in that sense. So, out of what, what? What is my departure point for doing that? So, when you talk to most people, it's like you got to calm down, you got to be neutral, you got to explain thoroughly.
Speaker 3:The kid, me and you had this conversation, I think, about my son. He's like scorched earth. Nothing works with him in terms of like discipline that I was finding, unless I like give this slow, methodical build-up of like hey, buddy, you bit your sister, she's bleeding. I'm gonna have to like smack your hand, um, but you're gonna have to pick which hand. Like I'm empowering him in that like thing. But like, is it the left hand or the right hand? He's like no, daddy, no, no, no, I don't want it. It's like barely a tap, like I'm barely going through the motions of it, um, and it's so devastating to me I'm not a bad boy. This makes me feel like a bad boy. I'm like no, I never said you're a bad boy, but he's like getting like okay, we're just talking all the time there's consequence. Now I could just fly off the handle. I'm like don't bite your sister and smack his hand. I'm delivering basically the same thing, but the mode is completely different.
Speaker 3:So when somebody will use like I saw this clip of a guy. He was a serial killer and they went through all the people he like he just stone faced the entire trial, no remorse. I think he killed like 40 women, like something crazy, and, uh, all their relatives were there like in tears, and they were like they were so you know, understandably so angry and hurt and they're like I hope, I hope you die and you burn in hell and I hope you rot. And there's just like, person after person who's like I hate you, I hate you, you stole my, my family member from me. Then this big, big bellied guy with a white beard and rainbow suspenders gets up and he's like I remember the dude's name. He's like Mr Blah blah blah. A lot of people here hate you, but I'm not one of them and you made it very hard to do what I believe in. But I believe in Jesus Christ and what I believe is that I'm supposed to forgive you and you're forgiven and the guy starts crying. Dude, the guy who is on trial starts crying, and so the guy's going to be executed or life in prison, whatever it is. But that's what I mean.
Speaker 3:It's like the difference of like. There's going to be a consequence, for sure, but what's like the heart motivation here? Do we want to see the person redeemed? And some people don't, because, like the depths of evil we are repulsed by. But we all want to put ourselves morally higher than other people, even in prison. If you have abused children or something like that, you are the lowest of the low. You can be a violent criminal with violent criminals, but they have their own hierarchy of like. What's the worst, worst? And so we we're anyways I'm going on a rant about, but that's what my point was.
Speaker 3:Like, yes, 100 like. There needs to be a justice system, there needs to be consequences, but what's our heart motivation for people is that we want them to be redeemed, we want them to transcend. Or it's like I want to validate this in my endocrine system which tells me you're bad, you're wrong and let me punish you. And like I'm definitely like guilty, guilty of that dude, anything with kids, anything like that. Like I'm just like my, my, my go-to is like bury them under the jail. Like I'm just like done, but I'm just saying like when we? Anyways, I'll let you speak, so.
Speaker 2:No, I think that's real because there's also this sense in which actually the justice is meant to protect the vulnerable. So if the way to protect the vulnerable is by life imprisonment I'm not personally a fan of the death, but I don't think I think it's too final. But life imprisonment I'm down. If you cannot show that you are able to live a life which is worthy of the society that we've built, then you can't live in it. It just is what it is. That's a consequence. But for me to suggest that there is no redemption, even for the greatest sinner is is anti-biblical. And if I'm honest with you, I'm like there's a very real extent that we are all children, right for our culture, because the serial killer and the two-year-old who buys his sister obviously part poles apart in terms of life experience and the horrendous things or whatever like buying your sister. I'm not trying to compare buying a sister to being kidding for women, but what I'm saying is is that we're all kids and the Bible's really clear. The Christian ethic, judeo-christian ethic is really clear. We're all children.
Speaker 2:Now the thing with children is is that children do not do well with punishment. They don't do well with punishment because they live a life foundationally on the narrative of that, they've got something to be scared of and punishment and I mean the Bible is clear. So are these familiar? I think? Punishment we, we, we, we, we. I think it's Paul. I need to find the scripture, maybe we can look it up, but, but we are. But I need to find the scripture, maybe we can look it up. But fear has to do with punishment. So the perfect love casts out all fear, because fear has to do with punishment. Yeah, I think that's one, john, and so what I'd say is that when we consider that we are all children, all of us are children of God. That's how we were created and designed to be. All of us need consequence, but I don't think God ever punishes us.
Speaker 2:Now, that's an interesting narrative to unpack. But, for example, I've heard so you know like and I always go back to creation because I think there's a lot of simile there and at the beginning of time, when Adam and Eve eat the tree of knowledge good and evil what happens is they become shameful. They try and cover themselves with fig leaves. So fig leaves are this skin irritant. That's a really good. That's an important thing, that when we try and cover ourselves. It's actually just an irritation to ourselves, like when we try and cover up our shame or cover up our sin, actually just makes things worse. We're also not very good at it because we only cover up parts of our body, and what's really important to know is is that god actually removes the fig leaves and gives them skin to walk out of the of eden with and and?
Speaker 2:When we think about that in terms of the narrative behind it, it's that god covers us when we cannot cover ourselves, even if we are in sin, and we know that that is the foundational narrative for the atoning sacrifice. Jesus becomes the atoning sacrifice and then he does look across to set us free from every sin, which is actually prophesied by God, giving us the animal skins to walk out of God and be eaten with right. But it's more than just that, because the lord yahweh, god, he puts the, the cherubim, at the at the end of the door with a flaming sort of fire, which is two things. Number one, the only way you re-enter eden is if you go through the fire, which means that you have to be perfected to go back into perfection. Otherwise you're not perfect. But not only that. People were like gosh, isn't it harsh that god kicked them out of the garden. The women have pain in childbirth and men have to till the land. But had they stayed in the garden and eaten of the tree of life, then what would have happened is is that they would have been eternally separated from god because they were sinful, because the tree of life brings eternal life. And had they eaten of that tree in their sinful state, they'd have been separated from God because they were sinful, because the tree of life brings eternal life. And had they eaten of that tree in their sinful state, they'd have been separated from God. So actually, the flaming sword at the entrance of Eden is not punishment, it is a consequence, but it's also for our protection. So that's the difference. Children have consequences to protect them. They have boundaries to protect them.
Speaker 2:Now, in our culture, which is obsessed with social justice, we're also obsessed with the idea that we should define ourselves. We are not children, we are adults. We are the ones who should be in charge. We are the ones who do. We don't need protection, we create our own bubble of protection, and we all know that that's a load of bollocks. But I'm sorry, excuse me, maybe we should put that we all know that that is not true. Is that a bad word is bollocks a bad word? Yeah, yeah, yeah, for me it is our pastor, but we but we, but we can't, we never.
Speaker 2:We aren't able to create the environment for our own safety, which means that if we are children, we have to accept that when we do something that a father figure in Christianity, the divine father, says is wrong, we receive consequence. So everybody says to me, people come to me all time, bro, and they say to me how can a good god send people to hell? And the answer is he doesn't. Yeah, so hell is a choice, it's a consequence for what we believe. God literally said over my son's dead body will anyone ever go to hell? But you can still jump over jesus's body, and it's a consequence. So hell is a consequence, not a punishment. You chose it.
Speaker 2:So there's, there's something really powerful to acknowledge that within the context of our culture, we don't want to be kids. We want to define ourselves, we want to define what's true, what's moral and what counts as justice and injustice, and the christian concept that we're all children who need consequence, who need discipline, but not only that, who all need training so that they can live a life of holiness and, when they fall, can be redeemed. You have to be a child to receive that and that's why you have to get born again, or born from above, because you have to reinherit the childhood that the devil tried to steal from you at the beginning of time. That's the purpose of the whole narrative of the bible, and when you talk about justice, when you talk about punishment, when you talk about there's no rehabilitation, it's because it's become unmoored from, or at least detached from, the narrative of forgiveness, of redemption, that christ self-sacrificed, that he died on the cross. And so when the justice system, when the education system, when social justice as a concept and as thought movements become separated from the narrative of redemption which is is why I'm like hey, but so anti-racism is a crazy concept biblically, because anti-racism basically says you're always going to be racist, you're always going to have a major problem, there's no real redemption for you, there's nothing that you can do. You just have to get good at recognizing when you're racist and receive the feedback that you are a racist and I'm like guys, but that maybe, maybe I'm, maybe I am always racist. I don't know, I hope not, but maybe I am, even if I am well, even if I am, how? How is there no redemption for me? Because there's Christ? Why Christianity is the only answer to the world's issues. And so, to bring that thought to a close, I'm like, if we are not children and if we don't accept adoption and rebirth into a higher narrative, a kingdom of heaven, we end up creating the world that we live in, which is full of rage, full of anger, full of despair, full of um false hope, full of self-identification, full of a meaning crisis. Identity crisis, a meta crisis is what they call it in the philosophical narratives. Why is that? Because we have become untethered from our identity as children of god, and if we do that, it means that we create spaces where we have to kill everything that doesn't agree with us, because that's what kids do they cancel each other.
Speaker 2:My daughter does this all the time. She's like I don't want a sister anymore because she called me a poo-poo face. I'm like that is the narrative of our whole culture. And when you want leadership, the reason why leadership is important is because you say to people hey, honestly, I'm so sorry that she called you a poo-poo face, like I'm really sorry that that's real. I'm really, really sorry.
Speaker 2:I'm actually heartbroken. I'm heartbroken that you had to experience that pain from a man. I'm heartbroken that you had to experience that pain from someone who was a different colour to you. Genuinely, it grieves me and I hate it, but you're a child of God, not even but. And you're a child of God, which means this that Christ in you is the hope of glory. Christ in you is the one that can bring redemption and it can empower you to live a life free in forgiveness, not bound by bitterness.
Speaker 2:And because we have a society run by children who don't want to be children, we actually have a society run by orphans, and a society run by orphans means that everyone has to stake up for themselves, everyone has to protect themselves, everyone has to create their own moral framework so no one can hurt them, and that is a society of disaster. That is what we're seeing, but there is a story of redemption. It's're seeing, but there is a. There is a story of redemption. It's the ecclesia, the church, it is faith in jesus christ and it is the ultimate narrative of us being children of god yeah, well, you mentioned god sending people to like.
Speaker 3:People say I can't follow god because he sends people to hell. I don't know, know if it was Lewis or who said it, but they said hell is God's final granting of man's final wish to be left alone, and there's an invitation to relationship, there's an invitation to family, as you're saying. I think, like in scripture. You can kind of pour through scriptures and and Paul. Sometimes things are interchangeable, but sometimes things are intentional with how they're phrased, uh, word wise, and so sometimes in the epistles you'll see him referring to people as children and then sometimes sons, and so that there's a differentiation there. For sure, what you're talking about of like when, when someone's calling me, you know, so this is my son or this is my child, uh, it's denoting a. You know, this maturity, this age thing, this dependency thing that you're, that you're talking about, um, but I would say you know to your point, if people don't, if you're gonna act like again, like this is in the western culture we're trying to like they're post-modern, you know, passport, passport, post-modernism, but we're trying to dismantle structures that have existed and ways of thinking existed and build something new. But ultimately what we're aiming at is you.
Speaker 3:You know Tim has his truth, I have my truth, and so I'm I'm like a I'm concocting this recipe that I'm the only person in the history of the human race ever thinks like this. I have all these biases and all these filters and there's a pipeline on how, like there's, there's glasses on how I see the world and there's all these special lenses that I put in. That's based off my experiences, based off what my parents taught me, based off pain, trauma, based off the group and all these things that we're talking about. Identifying yourself, and so that's where I'm choosing to see the world from. And when Jesus is calling you, come up here. Like, see things from my perspective, from the cross that's what Paul said like we're co-crucified with Christ. So that story is not just a story. That's my story. I was present there. I was present in the resurrection.
Speaker 2:Carry on with this. But that thing about having a perspective from the cross being raised on the cross is really important, Because where you get perspective from is cross being raised on the cross is really important, because where you get perspective from is in your death to yourself. That's where you get perspective. You get a higher perspective as you die yes, but that was the point is.
Speaker 3:You talked about fire earlier, and so there's all these references through scripture to fire. So what? This fire, what? There's all these farming references and scripture. So what do you do? When you harvest wheat, you like, you have to cut it, you have to thrash it to beat the crap out of it, to get the actual wheat kernel separate, and once you separate it, there's, there's part of the, the wheat that is not useful or not going to be used, and so we burn that.
Speaker 3:And so when we come into contact with with god, that's an inevitability when we're being crucified, well, what's being crucified? What's being crucified and and supposed to be dying off, are these things that are not going to fit in the kingdom. There's no prioritization of them in the kingdom because they're not pulling in the same direction. And so when you do that, your, your ego, is going to take a hit and like what people don't want to like. This is like, not really talked about that much, but just the idea of, um, everybody who's been born ever, uh, has fallen short, uh, of a standard and you're, you're defined like, within your identity, as a center there, and that you're missing something and you don't have the ability to save yourself, like I call it hustle porn, but, uh, success porn. But basically the self-made man is the ultimate lie of like and in any, any story, no matter how inspiring it is, like, especially guys who are like in your 20, 20s. And you're listening to this and you're following these influencers and they're saying, yeah, me and my family had nothing, my dad left and this. And then I studied all this stuff and blah, blah, blah. And then I have a billion-dollar company. That person had so many people, countless people, pouring into them and teaching them. Somebody taught that person how to walk. They wiped their butt, they fixed them food. So many people poured in that person, that person standing on the shoulders of all these people to get to where they are.
Speaker 3:It's a complete lie. It's a false narrative that you can save yourself and scripture says that clearly. If you say that you don't need the blood of Jesus, you make Christ a liar, meaning that you don't think that you need a savior. You do need a savior, but the savior that you need is not a political party, it's not an ethnic group, it's not your state, it's not your parents, it's not you. You can't save yourself.
Speaker 3:The parable of the lost coin, the parable of the lost sheep and the parable of the pearl of great price. These things could not save themselves. They had innate value from God's perspective. That he is going to, the coin's value does not change, irregardless of his lost and found, the sheep, and as well the pearl, the great price. These are all things of denoting that we don't save ourselves. God's the one who comes in and saves us and we have innate value in that.
Speaker 3:But we have to acknowledge that, and a lot of people don't want to acknowledge that I, I, I am the problem, me, michael, personally, I am the problem in my own life and in the world. They don't want to look inward, they want to look outward, they want to play a blame game. So if I'm starting with the point, I am the problem, I need to be fixed, I need to transcend, and I can't do it myself. If you're not willing to start there, then you're not going to go to where you need to go, and so we're undercutting ourselves in our identity, we're undercutting ourselves in our destiny, in that sense. And so when we look at, I think me and you have talked about before of, like Thomas Sowell, he's an economist and he kind of like leans into this, but he talks about the unconstrained and the constrained worldview and in the unconstrained worldview it just believes that people are innately good, they're born good.
Speaker 3:This would really fall into postmodernism. But people are really born good, but society somehow has all these chains and institutions which already implodes on itself. If people are good, then where does the evil come from? So the evil comes from these institutions. Well, who made the institutions? People. But anyways, we won't implode the narrative right now.
Speaker 2:People are good. People who make the institutions are the male patriarchy and they're the problem.
Speaker 3:Well, but I'm saying, like the narrative begins all people are just born.
Speaker 2:good, they're innately good, but they're born into chains. And it's completely self-defeating because, basically, you have to. So you, you have to drill down and say where's evil come from. And evil can only come from people who were evil. And so what I'm saying is with feminism, for, for example, the evil people aren't women, it's only men. So you end up having to isolate the problem of evil to a people group, and this is what happens in social justice all the time.
Speaker 2:In fact, I mean, I'll go back to creation here again, but the blame game starts in creation, because God's like hey, why are you hiding from creation? Because God's like hey, why are you hiding from me? Eve's like, hey, it wasn't me, the snake gave it to me. And Adam's like it wasn't me, the woman that you created, he blamed God for it, like that's why I'm in trouble. And actually what happens is that there's these innate defense mechanisms. Basically, we don't have to take responsibility for being stupid or for being sinful. It's really interesting, because if you cannot associate the evil in yourself, then what you'll have to do is you'll have to associate not even evil, the not good in yourself. Then you'll have to try and blame someone else for that. And when you're talking about the internal self-analysis. We actually do that in our culture, but only to promote ourselves, and our internal self-analysis is I must be good, I'm absolutely fine the way I am. No one should tell me what to do, and this is why because I am this or I am this or I am this or whatever it is but actually for a Christian worldview to associate the pain or the not goodness in your life means that you have to take the responsibility to walk a journey of looking like someone different to the person that you currently are. And what's interesting is is that original sin is a really important part of that. So the doctrine of original sin keeps you grounded and it's not that you're not innocent. This is a really important distinction.
Speaker 2:Children are innocent, but actually they're still tainted by original sin on the basis that they are born into a world that teaches them how to lie. It teaches them how to do things like manipulate. My kids are so manipulative it's unbelievable and I like sometimes I love them for it and sometimes I'm like gosh that if you do that as an adult like you are, you are a sociopath in the making. There's just something really really powerful there that in their childlikeness. They're innocent. They don't know that they're using, like the, the tendencies of their humanity, the fall of humanity, to create an environment where they are on top, they're the winners, but that's what they do.
Speaker 2:But they're innocent in that and our job as parents is to train them that, as they become less and less innocent, that they have a self definition or self-regulation that says, oh, I'm doing this for my benefit, not for your benefit. I am saying, oh, mommy, I love you so much because I want chocolate, as opposed to I actually love you right, like it's all real guys, like if you listen to this and michael, who is, has to listen to this because I'm ranting we do this all the time in our culture. We want to say the right thing so that not the person who we're talking to feels built up, but so that we get what we want. We, we live in a constantly manipulative society where we say, hey, do you know what you're awesome, give me five pounds or whatever it is. And like we have to be aware of that because as you get older, you learn and you become not innocent and actually then you become the person who manipulates and the person who becomes the person who becomes a sociopath, and we have to understand those things. So all of that rant to say, is that what, what you're saying about the nature of, of how, of how we in, how we, how we analyze ourselves, is so important? Because we have to associate the narrative of sickness and find it within ourselves, ask for the healing to come for Christians, and the only coherent narrative is Christianity.
Speaker 2:For this, it comes from laying down your life and your rights to come to Jesusesus christ and say heal me, holy spirit, come and empower me so I don't live like that. So you identify the evil was in, is within you. You repent of that. You say sorry, god, hey, help me not live this way, heal me.
Speaker 2:And then you live in the power of the spirit, which is two things the fruit of the spirit, which is peace, patience, kindness and self-control, plus the other three I can never remember. And you live with the, the spirit, which is two things the fruit of the spirit, which is peace, patience, gentleness, kindness and self-control, plus the other three I can never remember. And you live with the power of the spirit, which is that you prophesy, you hear from god, you heal people, you raise the dead, you cleanse the leper. You heal the sick and also you get to walk and you go to the orphan and the widow, like in james one, and you hug them, you love them, you bring them out of the societal standing where they are and elevate them up when they can't do it themselves. You elevate their voice when you can't do it themselves. But it all comes out of associating the evil within yourself in the first place yeah, well, I think to your point.
Speaker 3:If everybody is playing a zero sum total game and I feel like I'm the only person who's being like genuinely, like, hey, this is where I'm at, this is what I'm dealing with and I'm trying to transcend that, it might feel a bit redundant. I'll give you example. So, uh, I work in like business development, high ticket sales, things like that in the past and my, my, my litmus test is, if I would not sell this to my mom, I'm not gonna work in this offer for this business if I. That's like, if you can't sell it to your mom, you probably shouldn't be doing it. And then the way that you sell it, would you sell it to your mom? Like that, would you? Would you?
Speaker 3:And so there's a tension of you're trying to connect people with products and services and sometime you have a better. You have a well, most of the time, you have a much clearer understanding of what it is you're doing and how it's going to benefit that person, and you have to detach yourself from the outcome of like, I need you to buy this so I can make money. I need you more than me, but it's like, genuinely, is this going to get you to where you need to go. And so there's this tension of sometimes people don't realize that if they don't act on this, what it's going to cost them time and money, wise. And so you have to like paint that picture for them of like, okay, you could go off and figure this out on your own, maybe. Picture for them of like, okay, you could go off and figure this out on your own, maybe. But like this is probably what's going to happen, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then there's another element of I am going to leverage fear and pain in a way, weaponize it to manipulate you to make a decision, like pressure Right.
Speaker 3:And so my, my departure point is like I just want to be brutally honest with people. There's like all these like kind of tactics, like you don't reveal price and you don't do that. I just kind of just have a conversation and use critical thinking with the person and what I'm doing is not really replicable. They'll take recordings of it and not say I'm like the greatest person at this, like there are people way better and they implement these kind of in the sense of like closing people. But if you, if you, if I'm just in it, of like, well, everybody else is doing this, so I'm just going to do it this way. Then we're victimizing people as a victim, because I, like I have to use you as a stepping stone to get to where, where I want, and I'm not seeing the humanity in you and then I'm not allowing the humanity in myself to come up and like compassion and empathy. And some of these things are not really convenient.
Speaker 3:Like I think sometimes about Jesus walking around and like he would have people. So you see it, like with the loaves and fish, he just multiplies it Right. So it's just kind of arbitrary for me sometimes when he sends the disciples out to get stuff like just manifest it, dude, just like snap it. But. But I just think about that kind of thing and I think about he's literally the creator of the universe and he's on an assignment, and then some just random person comes to him like motivated by faith, and they're just random person comes to him like motivated by faith and they're like grabbing a hold of him, they're not going to let him go until he heals them, or like they're petitioning him for something. And that word Greek word is spagnizimae, which is basically talking about your intestines, like your guts, being like wrencheded, like someone's grabbing a hold of you, like we would say like our hearts kind of turning our chest, but it's like a physical.
Speaker 3:A physical like uh, urge, uh, in a sense he's, he's moved by compassion and I think you know, circling back to I said before, uh, I have to see myself in him. That's the departure point. If I'm not able to do that, then it's all about me and my ego is not going to allow my dignity to take a hit. And you listed off all these fruits of the Holy Spirit. Dignity is not a fruit of the Holy Spirit. Prosperity is not a fruit of the Holy Spirit, irregardless of what Joel Osteen is saying. It's not a fruit of the Holy Spirit, irregardless of what Joel Osteen is saying. And every other thing I saw the other day would say every breath that you suck in is mercy and, like you know, everything is a gift, irregardless of what you know, the hardships of life that we face. But in that like of me seeing myself in him, I have to see Tim in him. And if I'm not able to do that, then I'm in opposition really of being able to transcend, being able to grow within my own life.
Speaker 2:Because I'm going to stay by the prejudice. But if you want to define prejudice, that is what it is. If you cannot see me in god or god in me, if I mean, we can talk about theorists at a different time and then the nature of becoming one with god, but but if? But if you cannot see that or so, so if I cannot see you as a person who is women in god, as a generic group of people, or my wife or whatever else is, I'm foundationally sexist. Because what? Because what happened is there, and this is what I would say the root of prejudice is is that you cannot see someone as god sees them, but also you cannot see that they are created in the image and they reflect God. In that sense, and I think that for me personally, what you've defined there is the foundation of federal prejudice.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, again, you have to hold things in the tension and context of the moment, the moment that you and I are living in right now, in eternity. And so if we talk about forgiveness, we talked about forgiveness, justice, reconciliation. Forgiveness really only finds its real context in those two lenses, cause if, if I think, right now, the moment that you and I are sharing, that's all that exists, not the past, not the future, then I'm very compelled to forgive you. But if I'm holding intention everything that has happened between us and I'm bringing that up as an account of all the things that Tim has done because Tim's an awful person to me, he's done to me I'm holding your list of wrongs.
Speaker 2:Or that I represent someone who is an awful person to you.
Speaker 3:For sure. And then I'm thinking in the future of like. I'm going to withhold myself, withhold things, withhold opportunities from you, because I am not willing to forgive and reconcile with you. And so I have to be holding on to the future and the past in a very tight, fisted way for me not to like, let myself hold you, but I have to be holding on. I have to pick a point. I have to pick a point when I started keeping score in the past and I have to pick a point of like in the future and I have to omit my own faults and capacity for evil. I'll just like you. You kind of skirt around around. I'll just say it straight up like we have. We have gold inside of us, but we also have snakes inside of us in some degree or capacity. Um, and then so I'm. I'm thinking about the present moment. That's where forgiveness and love really finds its its true context as being in the moment, but then also eternity.
Speaker 3:And it seemed like I remember francis chan did this demo at his church one time as an object lesson. He had a big rope and he like did this little, like sliver of tape on the rope and he's like this is when you were born and this is when you died, and like he just had this rope and it was like on and on and on around the church. He's like and that's eternity. And he's like so you're really just gonna hold on to this thing, um, whatever. And so like when you're like, yeah, but tim, you don't understand how bad that hurt, and it's like let me validate you do have an endocrine system, but your endocrine system is an alarm system.
Speaker 3:Protect you from future. Uh, pain, violence, you know things you're afraid of. That's what it's for. It's an it's alarm system and when that alarm system is like, there's a thought pattern that gets ingrained from that alarm system and then everything triggers you. It's a faulty alarm system. At that point it was supposed to do a job but the wires got crossed, and so if everything's triggering you, your endocrine system is lying to you. It's not your master, it's not your master, it's not your mind. It's an alarm system and people are driven by their alarm systems and in Western culture, specifically in America, we've been conditioned to believe I shouldn't feel pain. Our doctors have even said that, like when your doctor gives you a plan of action if you have a procedure here, they've convinced people that you just shouldn't feel any pain. So, hey, I'm going to drug you up before the operation. I'm going to drug you up after the operation, I'm going to give you a narcotic pain opioid and send you home with it so you don't feel any pain. And then lo and behold what happens when you flood your body with opioids for extended period of time, when you stop taking them, what do you feel? Pain? So you're addicted to not feeling pain. America it.
Speaker 3:We have the highest rate of uh, anti-psychotic uses in the world. Like it is astronomical, of how many people take anti-anxiety and anti-depressive medication. And if you, um, I'm not like dogging anybody for this, I could just say for myself when I was in my 20s, I felt like I was depressed. I take these medications and then I just have a brain between my ears. I look on the bottle and it says side effects, suicidal thoughts, homicidal thoughts, psychotic. So I'm like these pillsidal thoughts psychotic. So it's so. I'm like, well, these pills just make me feel numb, they make me feel not, they are not happy pills. I don't take these pills and then feel happy. I just don't feel anything. They're blunting me and so.
Speaker 3:So anyways, just to wrap that up is that we get into this mode of like. We're not. We don't want to experience pain, fear, any kind of discomfort. We want comfort and pleasure. And then we create this whole ecosystem of what we're talking about, of how do I relate to other people, and I get into my little echo chamber and I get into my safe space and we're building this whole thing so we can maintain that worldview.
Speaker 3:And what's so provocative about christianity is god is coming in and saying your worldview sucks and it's not.
Speaker 3:It's not like I'm attacking you, it's I'm your dad, and right now, what you're doing is going to lead you to a place you don't want to be, but you won't know until you get there.
Speaker 3:And so I'm telling you ahead of time, because I've seen like life play out for billions of people and you're not, and I told people this, gave this preach the other day and I said anything that you're experiencing, whatever it's been, if you, if you've experienced rape, if you've experienced abuse from your parents, if you experience addiction, if you experience just fill in the blank there's been billions of people who came before you who experienced the same thing.
Speaker 3:Some of them have never been able to overcome that thing because the war in their mind and they succumb to suicide, they succumb to drugs, they succumb to whatever fill in the blank. But there's been other people who transcended that and made something absolutely beautiful out of their lives. And sometimes there's things that destroy our lives, they completely shatter us. But God gives us the ability to pick up the pieces and build something different. And you have to make the choice of what are you gonna do. I'm not saying that's easy, I'm saying that's very, very hard, but it's still a choice and, like to your point, you're not going to be able to do that, uh, within yourself, because you can't save yourself and anyways you have to have people around you who will pass through and look after you.
Speaker 2:So it's not like, hey, you're on your own, get over it. That's not the message. The message is hey, listen, that's freaking awful, and I've never that. All I can tell you is that I believe that there is a narrative in the Bible that says that, no matter what has happened in your life, you can overcome and be redeemed or be healed. But I'm not saying off, you go and do it. I'm saying I'm here, I'm your priest, I'm the one that stands in the gap for you when you cannot do it on your own. I'm here, I'll put my arm around you, I will cry with you, I will laugh with you, I will journey with you. That's community, that's Christianity. So it's not simply like you've experienced this and you've experienced this pain and God says you're going to be, you will be well. He works all things for your good. I'm going to prove that God does that by being the one who walks this journey out with you, if you'll have me. So it's because we are not just the ones who bring the truth of God and the truth of scripture, we're the ones that enact the truth of God and enact the truth of scripture, which is why we have to have pastors as well as teachers. We have to have people who love, people who will spend hours and hours with people, as well as people who spend hours and hours in scripture to try and figure out what the Lord is saying.
Speaker 2:And I think, and I think like for me, there's something so significant about this pain thing, because obviously we know that social media really is the new numbing agent of our time the death scolding and the doom scolding. And I mean, I know so many kids who are 20 to 25 who are just completely like numb. But they're completely numb, they live in an alternative reality. Obviously, the students in our church we've got 400 students, 200 rock up every Thursday. They're a crazy bunch, but they're none. They don't know how to worship, they don't know how to lay down their dignity, they don't know how to raise their hands, they don't know how to move, they don't know how to do anything except think about what the person next to them is thinking about them. And it's really interesting because that's what social media does.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's true, that's true, but but you know, very short, I do not what the person next to me. I haven't. What the person thinks next to me is none of my business within within the bounds of a reason. What I'm not saying is I don't have a responsibility to Tim or my wife and the relationship that we have, and like I'm going to be an ass. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying to your point, what you think about me, tim is none of my business, because I'm actually performing for the audience one, and that's not permission to be like super weird, and just how weird can I be? Or whatever. But it's like if I, if I live in that realm, I have to perform for tim every day. But the reality that we know is that, no matter what I do, me and tim are going to diverge on points and like I could be perfectly trying to perform for tim and at some point I might get rejected and the audience for one.
Speaker 2:It's important because, basically, in the audience for one, you're cut, you're told to prioritize more, so so that's the whole purpose of the audience for one is that I'm not performing for anything, I'm in love and I'm connected and that love overflows around me. So I don't care what you think about me, but I really care about you, and it's a really important shift. But when we talk about numbing pain, I actually think there's some pain that shouldn't exist. I think there's some pain that should not exist. I think that if you're in pain because you're sick, I think that God brings healing to that. Now that is sick. I think that god brings healing to that.
Speaker 2:Now, that is not to say that he brings healing, um, so that you avoid pain, um. I think that there is something really powerful in this story and this is the last thing I have to say, bro, because I've got to run um, but, but there's but. There's something really powerful in this story of pain, because I think the the. So if we take the example of peter, peter goes through two storms. One storm he's called to walk through. The other storm he's delivered from, so so what I'm saying is is that um, the, the, the in the, the disciples are delivered from a storm.
Speaker 2:But in one storm um the, the, the sea is calm and they're completely fine. In the other storm, peter has to walk through it, he has to come to jesus, he has to say, okay, I'm walking through the storm. So I do think that there is some pain that we're delivered from. If there is some pain that we have to walk through and the issue is in our culture is that we are told that you should never experience pain. But here's the deal. Listen and this is why the jay christian ethic is so important moses, the hero of the faith. Yeah, what's next? What happens to him? He is about to get killed. He gets put in bull rushes. He goes to throw his daughter. He goes back to his mum, jack and beg, because miriam walks alongside him, says I know a woman who can look after this kid.
Speaker 2:Then, at the age of four or five, he goes back into the pyramid I'm not pyramid, sorry, the palace, not the pyramid. He goes back into the palace and he's raised as an egyptian. But somewhere he knows that he's a hebrew. Of course he does. And so he kills an Egyptian who's beating a Hebrew slave. Why? Because he tries to take the destiny that's already been in his life into his own hands and take the law into his own hands. He tries to take justice into his own hands and he tries to create justice by killing someone else.
Speaker 2:What happens? He spends 40 years in the wilderness as a shepherd by himself, until when he experiences the glory of God in the fire that does not consume him, the burning bush, where he takes off his sandals. But here's the deal. He then goes for a very short period of time back to Pharaoh, gets the Israelites out and then spends 40 more years in the wilderness walking around. And then what? He doesn't even get in the promised land. How much pain, how much isolation, how much wilderness has that man experienced?
Speaker 2:But he's the hero. Why? Because he walked through the pain with God as a friend, and even though he never experienced the fullness of the promise of the people that he was given to oversee and lead, he walked a journey, faithful despite pain. And why is that important? Because the glory of God is made manifest in the pain that you're not meant to avoid. So the glory of God is made manifest in the burning bush. The glory of God is made manifest in the 12 plagues of Egypt where the Israelites are delivered. The glory of God is made manifest as he is in the tent of meeting and the cloud descends and he speaks to God face to face, which, by the way, is Jesus Christ incarnate in the Old Testament.
Speaker 2:Won't go into that right now, but not only that the glory of God is made manifest in the tabernacle, where the cloud departs and all the fire departs and leads the Israelites and places them in a geographical location for the next stage of their journey. The glory is made manifest when Moses hits the staff on the rock and water comes out. The glory is made manifest when Joshua sits in the tabernacle in the glory of God, learning how to be delivered from the slavery inside of him. So this is the really interesting narrative that for 40 years Moses lives around the desert. Why? Why is it that the Israelites go from slavery to the wilderness?
Speaker 2:because you can emancipate someone from slavery, but actually, they have to get the slavery delivered from in them, because if you're going to inherit the promised land, you have to walk through the pain of the hurt and the trauma in order that you get the royal mindset. It's why two things, three things the world cannot bear up, the first of which is this a servant who becomes king. Why? Because if you cannot walk through pain and cannot walk through being a servant into being royal, then what happens is that you cannot inherit the promised land because you can't defeat the giants there. And Moses spends 80 years in the wilderness and still doesn't inherit the promised land.
Speaker 2:And this is why the Judeo-Christian ethic is so powerfully important for now, because the heroes of that faith don't numb pain. They couldn't. They don't minimize pain, they don't try and skirt around the wilderness experience. They say god, even in this moment, I believe that your glories may manifest in me and I will lead these people to a place where it's not about me, but it is about the legacy of my children and my children's children.
Speaker 2:And the foundational narrative of the Judo Krishna ethic is this it's not about you, it's about your kids and their kids. So what are you creating? You creating a hedonistic lifestyle for yourself and rejecting your responsibility to build a legacy, which means that you have to walk through pain. Or are you actually going to think about okay, I'm going to walk this journey, so my kid doesn't have to, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get. I'm gonna get on with my life and make money, not because I want to be rich, because I want to set my kids up for the future. Like, where's our motivation? The jihad christian ethic is the only answer to that motivation to two incomes.
Speaker 3:No kids, tim. That's the answer. Live your life well. The the entire story.
Speaker 2:I mean, oh no, that's a joke, but but it's absolutely.
Speaker 3:But that's mindset.
Speaker 2:Dude, until you're married and have children, you're the most selfish person on earth, because you have no idea how to live for anybody apart from yourself. The reason why God set God, chris, adam and Eve together and then says go forth and multiply, we'll go back to creation. Go forth and multiply. Is this because you then have to communicate and co-labor with your wife or your husband, and you have to die to what you think that you want and you have to do things together. And then you have to have kids, which kills you even further because basically, you have to lay down the entirety of your life for these crazy, dependent, nutty human beings that really can give you nothing in return apart from a sweet smile that makes your tummy go funny.
Speaker 3:I'm saying like there's something really powerful about marriage and children you know, to encapsulate the entirety of what you just said there, there's a passage where you're aware, like moses has, people are getting bit by snakes, they're begging god, you know the whole bit right. So he raises up the staff and the snake and he makes them look at it. And peterson parallels this to his practice where he said he had a client who was deathly afraid of needles uh, couldn't be around needles. So I don't remember what they call the therapy exactly, but basically he he would bring the needle into the room. He had wrap it in a cloth and he just let the person know hey, before you come into the room, the room, there's a needle in there, it's wrapped in a cloth, it's on this table. Just do your word, you want to come in. They're like yes, so you have to like invite the person to look at the snake, look at the thing, so they come in. He said the next session I would bring it on the table and I like be poking them on the skin with the needle and over time you take the cap off and get it close to them, and so it was about being forced to be in it and then through that you're adapting again, like when we go back to the endocrine system.
Speaker 3:You have to train your endocrine system. When Paul is talking about the flesh, it's a, it's a word that's interchangeable. Sometimes, when he talks about the flesh, he's talking about the old man that exists, that's not regenerated, does not have the Holy Spirit and dwelling in it. Sometimes he's talking about the flesh, he's talking about this meat bag that you walk around in. The meat bag you walk around in your stomach is like your second brain. That's literally what it said. 95% of your serotonin production is happening in your stomach. Your immunosystem, like autoimmune diseases, they come from something. So your endocrine system is a alarm system that's inside of you and you.
Speaker 3:If you have not been trained and have not trained yourself on how to curb that and control it, it will control you. And so then when you say we, we crucify the dictates of the flesh, we're talking about your horniness, your hungriness, your tiredness, those things. And like, what do we do? Well, we practice celibacy until marriage. What do we do? We fast to like curb that. What do we do, you know? So we forego, forego sleep to pray. There's some principles or disciplines that you can do to help you curb that, hold plunges. You know that's a great one. So the snake thing was one, the other thing just quickly on the snake thing.
Speaker 2:And then, obviously, in john 3, jesus says behold, as the snake was raised in the wilderness, so the son of man will be raised for the healing of all mankind. So jesus is saying that, just as to overcome the greatest fear in your life, you must confront him if you want to be healed from the poison of the world, the poison of injustice, the poison of all of those things. You must look at me, cross, yeah, you must look at the cross and the son of man who is crucified, because it's in that moment that you realize you can be delivered and redeemed yeah, and I didn't like throw it in there, but just for context, people don't know that story.
Speaker 3:The people still got bit by snakes while they were looking at the snake on the pole. They were still getting bit. So they were not to tim's point delivered, they were like experiencing it. And I think when people are chronically sick, I had a with my um what, my daughter's gone. We had this conversation but uh, she has an autoimmune disease and we talk she's one of the most joyful people I know and we talk about that that in the church sometimes you're conditioned to think that God is somehow not in the situation if you don't get a healing or whatever. But it's like god is in that situation with you and I think job would be another story of that. When we anyways, we can go on another round.
Speaker 2:But one of the craziest things is you can't be healed unless you're sick. Yeah, so, so, so, so. And when jesus goes and he was the guy who's blind the disciples like well, whose sin is this? Is his sin or is his parents in? It's like well, it's nothing to do with sin. Jesus says it's the fact that the god's, god's glory is about to get revealed.
Speaker 2:And what's really important is is that our immune system is designed to get sick so that we get better. It's crazy, it's nuts. If you just think about that just for a minute. Our immune system only gets stronger if we get sick. Why is that important? It's not because sickness is the thing that defines us. It's because healing comes. It's because we get healed as a result of processing sickness with the lord. That's the whole point. Even our physical symptoms of sickness are for us to say jesus, I hate this, but I know that the only way you can heal me is if I accept this and not accept that somehow you'll be defined by it, but that this is the process that God can be for God's glory. It's foundational. The narratives are insane in Christianity if you actually look for them. Anyway, do you have something?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So just to wrap up to your point, there is an adaptation phase that we have to go through, even through deliverance Like my wife went through some pretty massive deliverance when she came to Laura. And like we're talking about sometimes a decade worth of like process and we don't like process and you just alluded to like 40 years. But like people are not. That doesn't. That's a hard thing to sell. It's an easy thing to sell. Like hey, say these magic words and all your bad feelings go away and they're replaced with good ones and life just incrementally improves. You're just scaling, you know, quality of life from here, versus like hey, say these words and believe this and you're going to get into this process.
Speaker 3:And I remember you know we were talking about Moses doing all that and not really entering, and not entering the promised land. I remember a conversation that me and my mentor I first started following Jesus had and he said, when he was in university, this big name, he was doing his master divinity, this big name speaker came and he was talking about all this stuff and you know theological stuff about heaven, you know theological stuff about heaven. And the guy who mentored me just said you know, if all, if this is all that, there was meaning that we just live in earth and when we die like nothing would happen, like that's all that we have. But I get to know Jesus in this life. It's enough for me, right? And everybody kind of like looked at him weird and like me and him both started crying when he said that. Because unless somebody knows what it's like to be lost, then you don't really know what it's like to be found. And I can say, even like with health stuff, there's times where I've had health, chronic kind of health issues, and then I go through a treatment or something and then I start feeling normal. But it normal feels like way better because my normal is so bad. And we were like very emotional, even like in that time when he was telling me the story, because we got it, we experienced the love of God and when you talked about Moses, he experienced God firsthand.
Speaker 3:And I remember Francis Chan made this statement where he said the church he said the church has been conditioned, that heaven somehow is the goal, like postmortem, like getting to this place is the goal and it's really about knowing God. And he said let me paint it this way, if you could, at when you die. You have all your favorite people, you have all your favorite food, you have all your favorite leisure activities, you have all the natural beauties of the world, but you have no pain, no war, no sickness, no conflict. If you could have that place forever without Jesus, would you have it? And I think like this is going like completely another direction.
Speaker 3:We'll wrap up now, but, but I think, like when you, when you told me that story, that was what was really provoked within me I was remembering back to sitting across. I can remember it like yesterday, sitting across the desk and us like just nodding at each other, like for us this is enough, this is enough, but if somebody has not really encountered Jesus, that would be a very perplexing statement because it's like, well, what do you, what do you mean? Like that that's the whole goal of this thing. But it's really relationship, because if you're content not not having relationship, not having burning bush, not on the mountaintop, uh, you would have him be kind of boring in a sense.
Speaker 2:Um, but I do, I'm pretty good. All right, man, because sorry dude, because I've got to go home get the kids, um, but yeah, let's do it again next week yeah, we'll get into confirmation bias yeah, cool. Thanks, bro, for your time it's run.
Speaker 3:It's really fun, it's great yeah, yeah, all right, man, go be with your family love you buddy cheers okie dokie.
Speaker 1:That's a wrap. Big shout out to tim for coming on, dropping some serious knowledge and some truth bombs on us. If this conversation made you think or it helped you see things in a new way, do us a solid and share it with someone else who you think would dig it as well. Reach out. Reach out via social media. That's what it's for being sociable. So let us know specific stories, insights, questions. We have not arrived, we never claimed to have arrived, but we love feedback and hearing from you. So thanks for hanging for us. We'll see you next time on the map.
