Transcription
And we all have idols that are connected to money, sex, and power. See, this is the reason why I believe that the disciples and the early Jews who said the resurrection absolutely occurred, I don't believe they made it up because nothing connected their story to money, sex, or power.
So I have a close family relative. He's an agnostic. Um, he was a believer previously. Um, but he has a very strong belief now that God is selfish and that we are all meant to exist for the sole purpose of serving him. Let's keep him real. He also believes that nothing ever had to happen from the beginning of creation up to this point in time. Uh, and that includes that it was God's will that Lucifer turned and became the origin of evil. So my question is, how should I counteract that with a thought-provoking dialogue to support?
"Good question. Depends how well you know the guy." Then I would encourage you to tell him agnosticism is an intellectual option. I can stand here and intellectually say I'm agnostic. It's a practical impossibility. And that was one of the main points of the talk I just gave, right? Everybody worships. "I don't know. I don't know. I don't know." Oh, yes, you do know. You know what gets you out of bed in the morning. You know what you are going to invest your sweat equity in. You know what you're going to do with your money. You're not just going to drop it on the street. You're probably going to give it to a bank and probably going to learn how to invest it in stocks or in gold or whatever you're into. So, please don't tell me you're just agnostic. You just don't know. No, you have a philosophy of life. Everybody has a philosophy of life.
"No, Cliff, I don't." "All right, help me, Cliff. Understand what am I living for then?" Well, it's real simple. Just ask. First question, what do I sacrifice the most money, time, and effort to pursue? That's your idol. That's your god. Second question, who or what writes the purpose of my life? That's your idol. That's your god. Third question. Who inspires you or what inspires you most? What motivates you most? What are you awoke by? "Oh, I'm aruck by that athlete, by that musician, by that politician, by that whatever." That's your idol. And then next question would be who grabs your focus? Who do you give your attention to most? That's your idol. And the final question is, and who writes your values? Who or what writes your philosophy of life? That's your god. That's your idol. So please don't tell me you're just agnostic meaning by that you just don't know. Oh, yes, you do know because you dressed yourself a certain way this morning. You have priorities because you conduct yourself in an articulate way. You know by examining your life carefully what your idol is.
Stuart, and we all have idols that are connected to money, sex, and power. See, this is the reason why I believe that the disciples and the early Jews who said the resurrection absolutely occurred, I don't believe they made it up because nothing connected their story to money, sex, or power. And it's very similar to the idols of our heart, though in a different way. Today, we're not worshiping typically gold statues like the Israelites were called not to do in the Old Testament, but we are worshiping all forms of money, sex, and power. That could be through music. And so, it's at a subconscious level. It could be through pornography. It could be through working to try and get up the socioeconomic ladder just to please my own self and to get a trophy wife. It could be any number of things. So to start to question those idols and then put God as number one in your life, that's what we need to be doing on a daily basis because those idols, whether it's from a conscious or subconscious level, I promise you they are coming at us every single day.
"How is it justice or even fair to have um Adam and Eve be the reason that we came into the world with sin when we had nothing to do with them eating them?"
"You bet. Excellent question. Where's the fairness of people in Haiti not having the same opportunity you do or in Africa? Ma'am, it's an unfair world we live in. It's a messed up world. But let's be real honest. There are consequences to our decisions. And there were consequences to Adam and Eve's rebellion against God. There were consequences of Cain murdering his brother Abel. There were consequences of the people at the time of Noah turning their backs on God and God judged him with a flood. And there are consequences of goodness, of love. The good Samaritan heals the Jew beaten up on a bloody road to Jericho. And there are consequences of a doctor performing good surgery after the doctor has studied harder than I would ever study to get through med school. So there are consequences to our actions. I'm free to do whatever I want, but I'm not free to escape the consequences. If I love the guy, it's going to benefit him. If I hate the guy, it's going to hurt him. So, Adam and Eve made a horrible decision, but I've made the same decision. They decided to deify themselves, to deify their own opinion. And that's sin. It's just self-deification. It's relativism. Everything's relative. What does that mean? That means I define what's right and wrong. I define the purpose of my life. I define human value or lack thereof. I am the center. It's all about me. That is the heart of sin. It's exactly what Adam and Eve bought into. And it leads to horrible consequences."
"If I had a house, right, and then I saw you on the side of the street and I forced you into my house to follow my commandments and stuff. and if you didn't follow it, then you would send yourself to hell or something versus if you chose to come into my house knowing that you would have to follow. I mean, I don't know, just something like that."
"I got you. Like would you say that it would make more sense that people who chose to come here to this earth accepting that they would have to face grief and you know tragedy. Do you think that that could make a little bit more sense as to you know"
"No, it would not make more sense. It would not make more sense because you didn't choose to be born and I didn't choose to be born. We didn't choose to be born. You didn't choose to be born. You've been given the gift of life. I've been given the gift of life. Now we are responsible for what we do with this incredible gift called your life and my life."
Stuart, what do you think? Well, remember so the promise is that we would have done every single thing that Adam and Eve would have done back in that day. So there's personal responsibility and corporate responsibility. Personal guilt as well as corporate guilt. We see this from a political level. Well, it's very similar to what Adam and Eve did and what we still continue to do and how our very issues that we have bought into and the sin that we have done unfortunately poisons the community. So, it makes a lot of sense. But we're dirty rotten sinners just like Adam and Eve were. We would have made the exact same mistakes. And I think that makes a lot of sense. I mean, if you're from if you take an atheistic perspective on matters, well, then it wasn't really wrong what they did. is what not really wrong what we do because there's no objective morality and everything just from flows naturally from evolution. That's why this atheist who I brought up yesterday who was at Oregon State who would never have been here obviously six foot seven absolutely jacked comes running at me saying no no no there's not such a thing as sin there's not such thing as evil and suffering those are such religious terms let's get rid of them everything is just normal there selective adaptation there's mal mala adaptation as well mal maladaptive things get in and poison things he says but you need to normalize it because there's no moral value behind them that causes them to be evil. All right. When he's confronted with what happened at the Catholic church not too long ago with the kids who were shot, I don't think he's going to go to that church and say, "H, maladaptive behavior. This poor guy, you know, he was just confused and nothing really wrong with what occurred. It's not really evil."
"How could there be so many different denominations of it? Why is the um religion so separated? And how am I supposed to know which ones are right or wrong?"
"All you have to do is read the New Testament letters of Paul. I don't care if it was the church at Corenth, the church in Ephesus, the Galatian churches, the church in Ephesus, the church in Rome. Every church is going to have problems. Why? Because the church is made up of people who are sinners and sin blinds me to the truth. I have prejudices. I have biases that I come to the Bible with. And that's sad. So the way you work through that is by praying, Lord Jesus, I want to know you. Help me. Then you read. And you had better because you're a university student. You had better ask the question, what is the way to interpret any book, not just the Bible, but any book. And I would plead with you to interpret fairly. You respect literary style. If it's a poem, you read it as a poem. If it's history, you read it as a history. If it's math, you read it as math. If it's science, you read it as science. You respect literary style. Secondly, you don't rip one line out of Shakespeare's play and say, 'That's Shakespeare's worldview.' You read the whole play through. You read in context. Then if it's still difficult. Thirdly, you study the historical context of the author. You ask who's the author and who's the audience? Who's the author? Who's the audience? And the reason this is so important is when it comes to Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, who's the author? For the majority, not all, but for the majority of it, it's Moses. Who's the audience? Some Jews sitting in their tents so scared about going into the promised land to kick out the Canaanites, the Philistines, the Hittites. They're not sitting in their tents asking what scientific process did God use to create. Totally irrelevant to a bunch of Jews. So if you're going to attack Genesis with your science book in one hand and the Bible in the other, you're making a fundamental mistake. The same way if you read the Pentatuk, the first five books of the Old Testament, with the works of Shakespeare in one hand and the Bible in the other, you're making a fundamental mistake. Genesis to Deuteronomy is not scientific literature. It is not poetry. It is not a play. It has history in it. It has allegory in it. It has symbolic language in it, but it does not have science or math. So, if you're going to ask hard questions, keep asking them. That's good. Bravo. But you got to do some studying. You can't just drop it and say, 'Okay, now who am I going to trust? The Haja's witnesses or the Baptists?' Uh-uh. No, you have to do your homework. I'm sorry. You can't trust me. You have to do your homework."
"Uh, so I in the past have like had a era where I kind of had a really self-destructive, you know, period in my life and I committed a lot of sin and I've repented to it a lot and I know that I'm forgiven."
"Good. But, um, I'm just having a hard time with the feeling of regret. And I just want to know for not only me but my friends at home, like how do you use God to help you with um, that feeling?"
"Good guilt is I did wrong. My conscience is informing me, Cliff, you did wrong. That is good. The way I deal with guilt is by turning to Christ for forgiveness. My atheist friends have no one to turn to for forgiveness because they don't have God. The reason we have guilt is because God gave us a conscience. That conscience convicts us. And I'm glad your conscience has convicted you. I'm glad it's convicted me because ma'am, I can promise you I've sinned just as much, if not I've sinned more than you. I'm 71 years old for crying out loud. So, I've sinned far more than you have. Okay? But Christ has forgiven me and I got to accept that forgiveness. Okay? Now, bad guilt. Bad guilt is shoot, I lost a button off my shirt. I feel guilty. What guilt is you did wrong. There's nothing wrong about losing a button off your shirt. If I'm in a car accident because someone slams into me or because I make a mistake, I don't feel guilty. But if I go to sleep because I'm too tired or something, then I would feel guilty. So you got to be very careful. And remember, when you ask Christ to forgive you, he promises to forgive you. Oh, Cliff, I can't forgive myself. You don't have to forgive yourself. You don't forgive yourself. Instead, it's God who forgives you. And Christ promises that when you ask him for forgiveness, he forgives you. Which means if you keep on feeling guilty after you've asked Christ for forgiveness, that's false guilt. Don't listen to it. Kick it out. It's wrong."
Stuart, what do you think? Yeah, you should feel guilty about that that guilt. Really, any any psychologist is going to look at you and say, "Well, just learn to love yourself better. Just love yourself." Is that really the way to deal with things? I think that's going to just turn this nation more and more narcissistic. So what Jesus says is, hey, look, for every one time you look at your sin, look to the cross 10 times. Look at your sin and say, "I am a dirty, rotten sinner. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength." We're not up here just saying, "Hey guys, try and get more and more and more knowledge, and then you'll be a better Christian." No. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Is simplify also and understand we are sinners. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Now turn to the cross and see I better not be feeling guilty because Jesus would not have gone to that cross if he didn't think we had a sin problem that he need needed to truly save us from. But if I feel guilty, I'm saying, "Well, Jesus, you didn't really need to go to that cross. I'm gonna feel guilty and try and fix myself. So, every time you feel guilty, say, "Hey, I'm gonna repent and I'm only going to take one minute to repent and then try and leave this guilt." And it's hard. We're stained. I get that. We are totally stained. And the devil gets in there and wants to say, "Hey, I'm not going to show up primarily by fangs on your back. I'm going to show up primarily by sewing seeds of lies and shame and guilt in your heart." And so confront that by going to the cross and saying, "Jesus, it's by your grace. This is the only faith out there. That's by a relationship with him, acknowledging that I'm a sinner and I'm going to continue to sin, but that he has saved me so I don't have to beat up on myself and I don't have to go the route of narcissism, which says just love me better and don't worry about my guilty feelings."
I think I'm speaking for a lot of my non-believing friends um when I say it seems like we are living in an era where a great um area of Christian hypocrisy is our attitude towards violence. It seems like we are the first people to defend war, to defend violence, to clamor for our gun rights. I think a great example was the video from the Department of War with the Lord's Prayer over, you know, footage of combat. Um, and that to me seems to very strongly contradict Christ's teachings of loving your enemy, doing good to those who persecute you, turning the other cheek, all the verses that you cited at the beginning. Um, so what would you say is the Christian attitude towards violence? Does it have a place in the church? Are we called to nonviolence as believers?
I would never try and persuade a pacifist to change their position, but I'm not a pacifist. Why? Because I believe in the reality of sin and evil. And if you and I walk into McDonald's and there's a guy spraying machine gun bullets in a kid's bodies, if you hit him high, I hit him low, we break his neck, that's not murder. That's killing motivated by a drive to protect the innocent from being slaughtered. And so when I spoke at West Point last spring, it was an honor to speak to about 200 cadetses over breakfast and one of them asked that very question you've asked. He asked, you know, I'm being trained to kill people. I'm a foll of Christ. How on earth can I do that? And I said, well, I hope that you'll never kill anybody to keep gas prices low at the pub. Instead, I hope that you will only kill someone if your government has called you to do that in order to prevent the slaughter of innocent people. So, I think you've raised a very good issue that followers of Christ disagree over. The idea that the United States formed the idea of a just war, I think is historically incorrect. I think that there were many Christians back in the 300s and 400s and 500s who were struggling with this. Why? Because in the first century, many followers of Christ refused to fight in Caesar's wars of conquest. They would not do it. I'm glad they didn't. To be part of Caesar's wars of conquest as a follow of Christ, I find to be a contradiction. But if you're in a situation where you're trying to prevent injustice, where you're trying to stop the spread of evil, and if you use force to do that, I support you. Biblically, I think you have a case to make because evil is real. Human life is valuable. Evil people try and murder others and we need to stop them. We just can't pray that they stop. Now, one of the differences between us is the following. A guy was standing beside a river. He saw a body floating down the river. He jumped in, swam to the body, grabbed him, and pulled him out of the river. It wasn't easy. He's catching his breath. He sees another guy coming down the river. He hops into the river, gets the drowning guy, pulls him onto shore. Now he's getting quite tired, but he sees a third guy floating down the river. He hops into the river, gets the guy, pulls him out. Now he's exhausted, but he sees another guy floating down the river. And so he hops in, grabs the guy, and they both drown because he's so exhausted. Okay, I respect that guy highly. But I also respect the guy who sees the body coming down the river, rescues him, and then hightails it up the river to find out what's going on up river. And lo and behold, up river, he finds that there's a factory, and that people are throwing other people into the river to drown them. And he busts into that factory and tries to stop the throwing of people into the river to drown to death. That is a different example of how we support justice. Some of us are more compassionate oriented and we're just going to save the drowning guy out of the river. Others of us have an ability to think through what is just and what is unjust. And if there is a factory upstream that's throwing people into the river, I'm going up there to stop that injustice. It's a difficult ethical question. and followers of Christ disagree how they answer it. I think both of those options are good and real.
I set a spot where I'm not I'm kind of between not believing, but I'm not opposed to believing in God, but I just don't I feel like I don't have enough proof myself that I can wholeheartedly believe in. And one question I have is if God is this all powerful being that exists beyond How whatever we can conceive if he is omnipotent why does he seek to be loved by others why does so would that if he is omnipotent why does he have a as I believe you said a human emotion y that being the need for love or want for love
God has not decided not to give you enough evidence or me enough evidence of his existence. But it is the way he chose to do it. It's not the way I chose to do it. It's not going to be the way you chose to do it. I mean, I would like so pyrochnic fireworks myself from God. That would really help me a lot grow in faith. But God chooses not to give me those pyrochnic fireworks. Instead, God chooses to give me a rational mind. He creates a very orderly universe. He gives me the ability to experience love. He gives me the innate drive for meaning and purpose in life. He gives me innate desire for life after death. I mean, I enjoy life so much that if there is life after death, I'm interested. And that forces me to think more deeply. Where do these desires come from? Is there anything that can dissatisfy these desires? Does that make sense?
Yeah. Now, what I've said to you means that the universe is not religiously ambiguous according to the Bible, according to Paul in Romans chapter 1. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became feudal and their foolish hearts were darkened. And Paul's getting at the fact I have an innate prejudice against God. Me, Cliff. I have an innate prejudice against God. Why? Because I want to do my thing my way. That's why I love moral relativism. Because moral relativism allows me to write the rules. So, the challenge is to get beyond that, to ask myself, wait a second, Cliff, are you really sure that you're so pure as you think you are? so smart like you think you are, so loving like you think you are? Or is it more accurate to say at times I am thoughtful, at times I am loving, but at other times I'm not this great person that I wish you would believe that I am. And I think that's a more accurate assessment of me.
Some things that I hear seem a little to be round about and not exactly straight to the point questions. And that's usually how I try to I guess divide different answers is whether or not it's a direct point or kind of roundabout. And most answers I hear from any religious talk usually seem to be more roundabout and not a direct answer. I don't really know how how else to explain it.
You've explained it very well. I think some Christians just go roundabout. Don't really answer the question. I think I've done that at times and I'm embarrassed by that. This is a very good point you make. All right. Now, I know you don't have pen and pencil, but I'm going to go down through a list of things that I go through when I struggle with doubt. And I struggle with doubt. First point, non-existence does not produce existence. And yet an atheist, a person who is agnostic is saying, "Oh, no. I think non-existence produces existence. There's no God, no creator. There's non-existence before the Big Bang. And now all of a sudden, we've got existence. Are you kidding me? Non-existence producing existence is a miracle. It requires a miracle worker. But if you have no God, there's no miracle worker. Second point, if there is no God, chaos produces order. That's a miracle. I don't see chaos producing order. It takes an intelligent mind of some type to produce order. I don't care if it's your address, a BMW, an articulate book, a well-ansered exam that points to intelligent mind. If you and I are walk up and down a beach and we come to John loves Mary in the sand and you ask me, "Hey, Cliff, how'd that get down there?" And I say, "It's the waves. The waves just, you know, they come up during high tide and it wrote John loves Mary." The reason that's so stupid of me to say is because there's too much densely packed information in John loves Mary for it to be an accident or written by the waves. So when you study the DNA of a cell, there's too much densely packed information for it to just be chance. There's got to be some type of intelligent mind behind the message of the DNA of a single cell. The third point is right. So the first point is non-existence produces existence. Uh-uh. It takes a living intelligent being to produce existence. Second point is chaos produces order. Uh-uh. Order is produced by an intelligent mind. The third point is life produces non-life. At one time before the big bang, there's no life. Whoa, whoa, whoa. We got tons of life around us now. Life does not come from non-life. Life comes from life. And that helps me overcome my doubts about whether God exists because I see plant life comes from plant life. Animal life comes from animal life. Human life comes from human life. You never ever experience or observe life coming from non-life. It does not happen. So is it more reasonable for me to believe that there's a living being, i.e. God before the Big Bang or is it more reasonable for me to believe life comes from non-life? I'm sorry. There's nothing in my observation that supports that.
My first question was, why does God want to be loved? And I don't think I got an answer.
Okay, good. God is love, which means God is a personal being. Hate to say it, but your computer does not love you. Right? My computer does not love me. It takes a person to love because love is a free decision to work for the well-being of the other person. In other words, love is the opposite of self-centeredness. It's the opposite of narcissism because love is a drive to share, even to sacrifice, to give to the other. Now that is the nature the character of God. God is love. So he creates us not as his little robots, not as as his little computers. He creates us as persons for a purpose to love him and to love each other. In other words, your body is very important. You've got a handsome, healthy body. Ultimately, that's a gift from God. And that's wonderful. But you see, according to the Bible, you're more than just a body. You're a soul, a person with the ability to love, a rational mind, a conscience, free will. You are amazing. You're a human being, not just a physical being. Just one last point. When I almost lost my faith, it was because I was kind of doing what you're doing right now, which is saying Christianity has to hold up to this certain standard of perfection. People have to stop dodging certain things and then I'll believe in it. See, that's when I became a hedenist when I was looking at it that way. But then I started to realize, okay, wait, wait. If I'm gonna be fair, if I'm gonna be an actual truth seeker and fair, I need to look at all the worldviews then and say I'm gonna hold them to the same standard. So, I don't know if you're an atheist or agnostic, but I really hope you're taking your worldview and not just saying, "Oh, I don't know, no, no. I'm just going to poke holes in Christianity." I don't think that's fair as a truth seeker. I think if you're an honest truth seeker, you want to say, "Okay, fine. I'm an atheist. Now, he just brought out the soul and things like consciousness and meaning and God is love and where does love come from? So, all these intangibles and the tangibles you have to look at, hold under a microscope and say, does the atheistic worldview make sense of them more than the Christian worldview? And I know you're already doing that to a certain extent. I'm just saying there's so many atheists though I know who don't do that. They just look at Christianity and say, "I want to poke holes in Christianity." So for me I was there with my existential crisis of faith but then all of a sudden I said wait who this is completely unfair. What about atheism? What about hedenism? Agnosticism. Last point connected to that is a world view has to make sense from a intellectual level and an experiential emotional existential level. All right. What do I mean by that? Intellectual level is these tough questions of why in the world does this place seem like it's perfectly fit for human beings? Did we just pop up accidentally from a primordial soup? Those types of can something come from nothing. You brought up the great crunch. All right, those are all intellectual issues. But following that, you have to deal with the experiential issues, emotional, existential, cultural issues. What do I mean by that? How does atheism make sense of justice as a value, a material value? How does atheism make sense of human rights in the sense of why would I sacrifice for somebody across the entire world who looks nothing like me will benefit me in no kind of way so my altruism will not benefit me in any kind of way consciousness how do you get consciousness from immaterialism and materialism and so these thing like emotionally why do you have these drives to fill a god-shaped hole what is that so you have to look at it in a rounded kind of way and then come to the point of saying, "All right, which world view makes the most sense intellectually and experientially how I experience life?"
Hey guys, thanks so much for tuning in to this episode. Like and hit that subscribe button in order to join the family. Also want to invite you to our church where we pastor at in New Cananan, Connecticut. It's called Grace Community Church. We are currently meeting at a middle school, Saks Middle School, and we start at 9:30 a.m. Hope to meet you there. See you soon.