In Part 5 of our Resilient Disciples series, Stu, Tim and Joel dive into the Last Supper death work showcased at the Paris 2024 Olympics opening ceremony and explore how Christians can respond with both sorrow and love in the face of God being mocked.
They also unpack how being a resilient disciple involves living counter-culturally and partnering with God in His mission to make more disciples. As the world grows increasingly secular and Christians become a minority, it's crucial to resist the temptation to conform church practices and ourselves to societal norms. Instead, we’re called to return to the example of the early Christians, embracing the counter-cultural nature of our faith and supporting one another in our shared mission with God.
00:00 Intro
01:33 CULTURAL ARTEFACT: The Olympics Last Supper
17:02 CULTURAL ARTEFACT: Blues Brothers
21:58 Individualism has lead to entitlement in the church
29:39 Transformed to counter-intuitively work together
43:25 A lack of surprise that Christians are mocked
51:40 Just a Christian version of everybody else
1:00:33 The shift of Christians not being in the minority
1:05:52 Going to church is the counter-cultural distinctive
DISCUSSED ON THIS EPISODE
Alexamenos Graffito
Paris 2024 Last Supper
Blues Brothers
Jean Twenge
Does Money Make You Mean? by Paul Piff
Piss Christ
Moonbah Festival
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But yeah, being Christians means that we constantly have him to have that constant grapple with how do we live in this world we find ourselves in and I don't think we should define ourselves too much by the kind of society we live in and that's why I'm not that fast on the words exile because it's almost like our culture has created this response in us rather than the gospel of Jesus Christ causing us to disciple one another and be on mission together wherever we are. Hello everyone, welcome back to the shop with all the podcasts, my name is Joel and it's awesome to have you along with us and awesome to have along with me is Tim and Stu, our regular co-host. Hello. Hello. How are you? Good. Thank you Joel. Going well. That's good. Stu, is this the first time you've been in the studio with the city? Yeah, it's so perfect. I've been on a bit of a break. Yeah. It's sailing in the Bahamas. Have you? No. I didn't know that. Are we. Are we fighting? Actually, I don't know what it would be like to sail in the Bahamas, isn't there a triangle there? There are lots of UFOs. I might get lost. Yeah. Is it Bermuda? It's not Bermuda in the Bahamas. Oh, maybe. It's close. It could be. It's in the vicinity. Yeah, that's right. But yes, I'm here. And it is the first time, I think. Yes. First time since the soundproofing. Which I think. I like the soundproofing. Yeah. Looks good. The studio is developing. Well, it's not in any size, but in prominence. Take off. Take off. That's right. Okay. Well, as you may know, the Olympics are on. Yes. I've seen that. We just did a quiz that picked out our Olympic sport, Tim, what did you put in your height and weight? And they gave you. Yeah. I got. The sport. The sport. Yes. So apparently, Judo is my best sport. I got Judo too. Followed closely by golf. I'm not quite sure what that, I think that probably says that I'm not very athletic. Have you noticed that the people who play Judo very rarely keep all their clothes on? Right. Like the clothes fall apart. I mean, it didn't ask me that, but maybe that's why I got Judo. You like that? I don't know. I remember we did something similar like this at school when I was in high school. And you had to do a whole lot of different, rather than this website, which is just putting your height and weight. We did a whole lot of tests and, you know, the beat tests and all these kinds of strength finding that, you know, came back with, you know, your best skill and I can't mind with something like tiddly winks or, you know, chess or something. It was like kind of basically, yeah, you're clearly not an athlete. You're still an athlete. Oh, that's when you get those little discs and, yeah, yeah, they kind of make a jump. The first sport on my list that was somewhat active was indoor cricket. And I wonder what that was. And they said, yeah, because you only have to run halfway. Yeah. I like that. That suits me. It's a pretty intense game indoor cricket. Is it? Yeah. I ended up getting judo is my most judo, closely followed by golf and rugby sevens. Rugby sevens. Yeah. There is a tenuous link to, hang on, what's this one? It's not demon telling me. Yeah, I find golf extremely boring. I don't like doing golf at all. I've never. Oh, no, that's not true. I have played golf once. The youth works team bonding exercise, yeah, wasn't very exciting. And what do we get? Your Olympic sport. That's true. I think I was a discus thrower. Oh, javelin. Hamathrow. Hamathrow. Sounds pretty good. I reckon you should do Hamathrow. Or rugby sevens. Oh, we could play on the same team. We could. I wonder if they had other sport. I'm thinking about some of those. I mean, if it's discus, Hamathrow, shop port, if it's those kind of things, I'm wondering about those, the Scottish highland type games. Oh, kabatoss. Kabatoss. The shoulder. The shoulder. Bolder lifts. Yeah, that's kind of things. Oh, yeah. They have horrible injuries with those bolder lifts. I can imagine. They fall over backwards and things. Is that why you'd much rather do it? What? What? What? Is that why you'd much rather do it so you could get injured? I don't know. You get to wear a kilt. It's just pretty cool. Yeah. It makes me think of that. I don't know if it's in Scotland or England, but have you seen that thing when they have that big heel and they roll cheese down? Oh, yeah. That's people just smash themselves. That's the nut. Everyone breaks bones. Yeah. They get lots of broken bones. Every race. That's fantastic. Shoulder bones. Legs. Arms. Ankles. It's really funny. The amount of momentum that people pick up, they just like fly in the air down the hill. It's crazy. Must be such a steep hill. I wonder whose idea that was. Like, that's a crazy idea. Yeah. That's probably medieval. I always, yeah, I just wonder sometimes like how do things come into being like, who decided to make bread? Bread. It's interesting. I'm sure there's a number of PhDs on that topic. Right. Who figured it out back in the day? The fermentation grain. The fermentation grain. Yeah. Oh. It probably was a jar just left off to the side. Well, I think all of these things haven't accidentally. Yeah. Yeah, possibly. Yeah. The one I don't get is on Fraser Island, which hasn't been named yet, I can't remember the name. So apologies, but Fraser Island is a creek that's very alkaline or is it acidic? It's one or the other. And the first white people to land there were shipwrecked or whatever, and they drank out of this creek, and they got thirsty real quick, and then they drunk more and more and more and more, and then they dehydrated because of the creek was so acidic or alkaline. I can't remember. But the Aboriginal people who lived on the island used to drink the water using a leaf that had a basic quality or whatever it was that cancelled it out. Well, I see. Well, how have they worked that out? Yeah. Like, how many leaves did they have to try before they worked that out? Yeah. Yeah. That's really interesting. That's the stuff that I think about. That's extreme, though, isn't it? Like a whole heap of people land on the island. How do we drink this water? Yeah. I just see things like that's a great idea. Who thought of that? Will. It came up. The wheel. Yeah. Fire. Fire. Yeah. How did someone accidentally figure out fire? Great idea. Oh, we've smashed a few stones together and there's a spark. Yeah. Is that Hellic? It's probably thinking... It's probably thinking... It's probably thinking... It's probably something on fire. Oh, yeah. Sorry, Ryan. But how do you start it? Yeah, yeah. How do you start? Start attention. First person to start it. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Rub two sticks together? Friction? Who came up with that? That's crazy. Maybe they rub two rocks together to start off with the ages. That doesn't work? With no effect. Rub two cats together? Cats. Yeah. Static electricity. Rub two cats together on Windy Day and... Rub bison and a giraffe. You know, there might have been a whole list of things that people tried before they got two sticks. It's a lot harder to decide during the process. The water holds in work. Let's move on to the Jaguars. I was just thinking... Appearing an apple. Yeah. Well, like, Appearing an apple makes sense or rocks in what sense. And then you're like, a bison and a giraffe. You can't just pick them up in one hand. That's a tea spot. And rub it together. Yeah. Right. You pick up the bison. Yeah, you should see SI Oracle. Like four people rubbing things together. Try to make fire. I've seen the lightning once. Let's just rub the animals together. See if it works. Yeah. The reason that we brought up the Olympics was there's been some controversy from the opening ceremony, which I thought there was some things in there that was really cool. I like how they didn't hold it in a stadium, like they usually do. Yeah, I thought that was correct. And everyone went down the river seeing? Same. Is that the same? I don't know how to pronounce it. I thought they brought all the teams in on different boats. I thought that was fun. I thought it was too. Is it true that the president said he was going to try to get the river so clean that he'd go for swimming it? And then when the Parisians heard he said he was going to do that, they went to the toilet in the river to make it as polluted as they could. Is that true? Yeah. There was a whole website you could work out because how fast it travels. Get your timing. And you get your timing. Because if you lived out in the provinces, you've got to work out what time you want to poo in the sand so that it gets the Paris. So they actually did that. They actually went to the trouble pooing in the river. Yeah. And there was... It's not a myth. I know it was definitely organised. I don't know how much it actually went ahead. I thought it was. Got to be false information I thought. What am I? What are you Google Poopland for saying? I believe it. I believe it. It's going to wreck your algorithm. I don't think he... Swam. No, he didn't cry. No, I know. But they got the swimmers to swim. And the Australians all had antibiotics before they were swimming the river. Yes. So that was a controversy. Yes, I've had... There's been some controversies, hasn't it? Yeah. The controversies that we were going to get on... Did you know, just before we go on, at time of recording, Penrith has won as many medals as Italy, and they're currently eighth on the ladder. Penrith. The suburb of Penrith. The suburb of Penrith. Really? A kid you know. How many... We've got a few swimmers right there. I don't know. But the lady on the kayak, she's got three gold medals. Yes. So I think that must bring it up a bit, but there must be some swimmers as well. Jess, I forget... Just foxes it. Fox, yeah. Okay. I thought that was pretty cool for Penrith. They should have their own national anthem. Penrith. Penrith. Oh. I wonder what it would be. Is it like a... Penrith. Penrith. Possibly. Yes. Moving on to more controversial matters was the recreation of the Last Supper in the opening ceremony. And she would love to get your opinion on it because you actually evolved it in your sermon on the previous weekend. Yeah. And I really appreciated your take on it. Do you want to give us a quick synopsis of that? Yeah. Well, we were thinking on the weekend about how it's good for the people of God to honor God's name and to want his name to be glorified in all the earth. And I shared my own personal view that I think it's okay for us as Christians to be sad when we hear God's name dishonored, but that doesn't mean we should respond in vitriol or violence or attacks. But I do think that we should reach out to everybody in love, even those who consider themselves outside of the kingdom of God. I think that's the whole point of our mission on this earth, to reach out to those who are lost, which include people who will sometimes directly, frequently attempt to dishonor the name of the Lord. And you don't have to go to the Paris Olympics for that that happens every day. I mentioned that the number of people who take the Lord's name in vain in our society is prolific and even on our media now it's nothing for people to use God's name in all sorts of ways that dishonor him. Some Christian commentators seem to be very upset about the Last Supper and see it as a direct insult. Others seem to be more moderate in their approach and are saying that even if it is an insult, the greatest insult that's ever been is the actual crucifixion of Jesus. So anything less than that is less in context for that. I think if I understand that argument correctly, there are some Christians commentators who seem to be sympathetic to the views of the organisers who say they weren't actually trying to create a Lord's Supper. So I've read a lot on social media of Christians saying it was actually the celebration of Diane, I can never pronounce his name, Dionysus, Dionysus, thank you. My view was I think it was a deconstruction of Christian heritage because of the placement of the actors. I think having an actor sitting in the middle with a halo over the head was a very clear semiotic that has parallels with the Da Vinci painting of the Lord's Supper. I don't know if he has a halo above his head in Da Vinci, does he? I don't think he does. But the halo over Jesus is quite an iconic medieval depiction of Jesus. My understanding is that that person has affirmed that, yes, they were trying to do the Lord's Supper. That was her understanding of what they were attempting. But I think as you say, it's a deconstruction therefore it's an intentional mashup of lots of different things. So the fact that Dionysus is there and that that is also another European cultural heritage. It's an intentional, what do you, what's that word, pastiche? Is that the, like bringing together a whole lot of mashups, but again for the purpose of deconstructing? Yeah. And it deconstructs Christianity further to have the Lord's Supper with the meal actually being Dionysus, I think it's even more kind of full on to do that rather than the wine and the bread being there. It's like this pagan god that then takes over the whole scene and I mean you could read a whole heap of different things into that. But I really like something, one of my friends on Facebook wrote Michael Hyam where he wrote that he quotes that sort of a depiction is what he calls a death work. As a sociologist, he quotes called Philip Rief, refers to a death work as the act of using sacred symbols of a previous era in order to subvert and then destroy the original significance and purpose. And I think that's straight up what I saw when that was my impression. When I looked at it, I thought they were deconstructing it to subvert it and destroy its original significance that it once was considered to be a holy kind of depiction that was venerated. Now it's to be kind of deconstructed. I think that was a really interesting thing that I think was offensive to me. I found it offensive because I felt like it dishonored God's name. I thought it was just laughing at the whole idea of a Christ and someone who came to save us I thought. And people who follow him were subverted as well so, but yeah the main thing I think is sure it pales into insignificance in comparison to the cross but I remember the seeing for the first time that graffiti that was in Rome where someone had drawn a picture of Jesus on the cross with a donkey head and the guy worshipping it and said something like whatever the guy's name. What's his name? Alexander. Alizeminos. Alizeminos. Worship is God. I mean if I were past that on the street, oh that makes me sad, I think that's a reasonable thing to feel sad at rather than go, oh well it's just a less than the crucifixion itself or something. I don't know. I think it's okay to be sad about subversions of Christian symbols but at the same time I think pray for the people that were in that presentation and if I had an opportunity to sit down with the person who made that I'd love to share the gospel with them and see what they think about the gospel so I think it motivates me more to evangelism than anything else actually that I still feel sad about it. I just didn't hear any quite from the director of the opening ceremony and his name was Thomas Jolly and he insisted on an interview on French TV that it was that the last snapper was not the inspiration behind the scene, he explained that Dion, what is it Dion, Dionysus? Dionysus or Dionysus? It's the Greek god of gluttony or something. So that's interesting. So he apparently arrives at the table because he's the Greek god of celebration adding that the particular sequence was entitled Festivity and the idea was to create a big pagan party in a link with the god of Mount Olympus and you will never find me or in my work any desire of mocking anyone so I was in response to that. But I think what I enjoyed about what I really took out of your sermon on the weekend stew was also what was our response to it and you said like I want it, you wouldn't be more evangelistic but it's also was the contrast or the to holding the two things and once it's okay to be said about people poking fun at God but also to responding in love. So I thought that was a really interesting way and the way that you also tied into our series of two Samuel, where he was talking about how David is expressing his sadness about Saul being killed and his response to that as well, I thought that was a really cool parallel as well. Yeah and I mean it's a complicated connection but there is a sense that David is sad that God's anointed Saul died and he had every right in the world just to be angry at Saul for the way he treated him but it was the king of Israel that was killed and so he warned the loss of that and yeah it's an interesting story. Yeah nothing, thank you for preparing it because I enjoyed it. Just to move on and I think what we're talking about there is how do we respond in a way that is seen as counter-cultural because I think that's where some of the what you're saying in your sermon is responding to and it's something we're going to talk about in continuing our series of looking at Faith for Exiles and Practice 5 but one thing I thought to talk about first is something as a movie, kind of being a cultural artifact as well as talking about what happened in the Olympics was a link that I thought it was of blues brothers and I know that Stuart for example you're a big fan of that movie. I remember my parents telling me this is a really good movie and basically saying you should watch it and they did say just before recording that it's almost like the only musical that I actually like because I'm not a huge fan of musicals but then you counted it a little bit by saying oh is it just a movie with songs in it but tell me what you like about blues brothers because I agree it's a fun movie. Yeah maybe I've had my head in the sand but I've never heard someone call it a musical before so that's really good to hear you call it that because there is a lot of singing in it. What do I like about the movie? I think that the music is what I like about the movie mostly but I also love comedies and I love the the synergy of comedic musical if that's what it was. I loved the multiculturalness of it I love the different races coming together and I love soul music a lot and it's not my generation's music but I think it's incredibly powerful and I love how the late 70s early 80s whenever it was that blues brothers came out was like a resurgence in soul music so you go back to the times of Sam and Dave and some of those kind of artists and some of the songs were just absolutely incredible and to take songs that are really moving but are also really fun and putting them in a comedy of course the other part of it is they smashed so many cars it's unbelievable I think it was a record at the time for the number of cars that they smashed it. They drove a car through a shopping centre they drove all the police chase through a shopping centre and one of my favourite lines in the movie was when they drive past a shop that sells the old mobiles they say oh the old mobiles are on sale this year pretty cheap or something like that I thought that sort of stuff was terrific it's just crazy. Princess Leah with a machine gun shooting them in shooting at the minute in a dream like who thought of that that was pretty funny. Yeah it's a really good movie but it's also a feel good movie as well I actually went to Chicago two years ago and went and had a look at some of the sites that were filmed on blues brothers and we went down into South Chicago and saw the scene where they did the shake the tail feather scene where the bridges and outside the music shop and that was pretty moving to actually stand on the same road that was really cool so yeah I really like the movie I think it I mean it's also a deconstruction like it's it's a funny movie though actually like it it betrays the catholic churches this at once fierce and and scary kind of institution but also something worth preserving because they you know they have this whole thing in the movie about being on a mission from God and that God helps them to raise money for this mission where they grew up where they were taught so it's an orphanage so yeah it's an interesting movie because it sort of is subtle it doesn't just demonize one you know the catholic church it actually has redeemable qualities in in it but also it's still terrifying to them because you know the none the chief none wax on with the ruler and all that sort of stuff. Yeah that's a start isn't it yeah one really great line in the movie was when he goes Illinois Nazis I hate Illinois Nazis they proceed to drive their car towards it they will jump off the bridge in the middle of the demonstration it's very funny but it's funny enough a lot of young people think it's long and slow but yeah I think I think long form movies are a lot more interesting than short movies actually so yeah that's an interesting thing too. I'm just I think the dynasty with Aretha Flanken is probably my favorite thing but I like how it starts with these are four fried chickens and a coke is that what they order is it four whole fried chickens and a coke and a loaf and there's that there's one in the front yeah yeah that's right and a loaf of bread and a loaf of bread yeah I currently exactly yeah there's two out two people out the front there were four fried chickens and a coke and wood yeah the blues brothers and then you got Aretha Frank I didn't realize that there's a Franklin one just that and that song the way she sings it in that scene unbelievable yeah respect it's such a good song yeah it's cool anyway so well we've talked about that but like I think our listeners and watchers or viewers will figure out why we're talking about it in a second but I've got an opening question for you guys and Tim you want to go first on this one yeah yeah I know that's the point I'm gonna I'm gonna surprise you okay so we've talked about the rise of individual to people feeling more entitled and if so how do you think that's impacted the church has made people more entitled yeah I think so as in I think we expect things to be about us so we're becoming more and more shaped by our culture to expect that I will be catered for in my particular preferences and it should be and that's what it should be sorry that's on and I'm saying that that's the cultural you know expectations yeah is it things should be carried towards me and also particularly yeah in the West where there are so many options available to us I have the right to choose the thing that is most suited to me and I should have options available to me and so there's the expectation that if you you've got to earn my attention you've got to earn my allegiance and my you know I tend to set a you know church service and my money in the plate and I'm free to go to which I can take myself and my money my attention my service hours my whatever it is to another church if I like so you as the minister you've got to do the hard work of keeping me here rather than me just assuming that my allegiance is to this place I'm going to work hard at it so I think we we definitely have that and like many unsaid cultural assumptions I don't think many people would actually articulate it like that it might be horrified to hear that that's what they're thinking but I just think that we are we are so discipled by our culture towards that that we yeah it's an unsaid assumption it's just the water we swim in and so we bring it to church just like we bring it to our devices just like we bring it to our Spotify playlist to our Netflix selections to I mean even the fact that when you search something in Google and I search something in Google we will get different results based on the advertising that's been paid for and our previous search results so even the answers you get to a question are particularly catered to you so yes I mean it's I think this is a long standing but the technology we have is driving this further and further to my individualized I'll say that again my individualized experience so yeah to expect that in a church as well I think that you have to be particularly counter-cultural and particularly aware of yourself and your social location to to realize I need to actively work against this because actually part of being a body of Christ is being in situations that are not catered explicitly to my experience yeah that's interesting because in this chapter of faith very close that we're going to look at he mentions Jean Jean Twenge I think is how you pronounce it who's done solid social research and extensively written about a narcissism epidemic and that the higher proportion of people in our society that today display characteristics of narcissistic behavior compared to the past studio you want to have a think about entitlement or individuals and entitlement and how that's impacting the church yeah another angle on entitlement is um Paul I think I'll pronounce his name right Paul Piff and he's a psychological science PhD at Berkeley Uni in California he's done a really cool TED talk actually if people want to look it up which I looked at ages ago and found it very interesting called does money sorry does money make you mean and his take on it is um on individualism and entitlement is that the more wealth we have the more entitled we are okay so an example might be you might be at the airport and um a poorer person who's getting on a plane might be told by the lady who's checking you in sorry that you're checking too late and the person goes okay um yep I'll go the next plane and then the next person's really rich and she goes well you can't get on the plane and it will tell me why I want to see the manager like I should be on the plane so that kind of attitude comes with a higher socio economic status people who have a higher status like that tend to exhibit behaviours that reflect a sense of entitlement they may be less empathetic and more interested self-interested and more likely to prioritise their own needs over others so I suppose the corolla or Lee if that's the word is that the more money I have the more I am able to control my world the more I control my world the more I expect to be able to control my world so there's a theory called the theory of increasing expectations so the more I can do it the more I feel like I can do it's quite a powerful theory because it actually brought down the whole of the Soviet Union because they decided to give fridges and TVs to people in the Soviet Union and when they had fridges and TVs they had expectation for more so the more they gave them material goods the more material goods they wanted and the system couldn't cope with that manufacture process and so it ended up that Gorbachev actually said this system is not sustainable because people's expectations are going too high and I think that's also I know it's a strange thing to make a correlation between but there's a similar problem in our churches in the west where people expect more and more from churches and from ministers and from ministries and feel like they can get angry if those needs aren't met and it's similar to a situation at the airport when someone comes along to church and they can feel slighted if their needs aren't met and they can get quite upset and yeah I've sometimes jokingly said that I've spent a large proportion of my ministry over the last 30 years talking Christians into coming to church rather than getting on with mission so I find that ironic that people pay me to talk them into coming to church I think it's really strange because they could save a lot of money if they just came to church and they paid me to do mission and the church they want to grow would actually grow more because the minister wouldn't have to spend as many hours a week cajoling some people into it really is important to come it's really important to be involved and yes that person looked at your sideways but they didn't drown a kitten so maybe you can forgive them for that or that's not to say there aren't real problems that go on in churches and I don't want to minimize those things but yeah the things that richer people get upset about seem to be increasingly trivial to me and they have higher and higher expectations on what church should be. I think that's a really good background to set against what we're going to talk about today because if we look at practice five and I might refresh everyone on the practices before we go of be going to practice five of the five practices of resilient faith so practice one is to form a resilient identity and experience intimacy with Jesus. Practice two in a complex and anxious age develop the muscles of cultural discernment. Practice three is when isolation and mistrust are the norms forge meaningful intergenerational relationships and practice four which we discussed last week Tim and I to ground and motivate an ambitious generation trained for vocational discipleship. Practice five they say there's probably one of the hardest but is kind of working against those ideas of entitlement that we talked about and practice five says curb entitlement and self-centered tendencies by engaging in counter-cultural mission and that's why I kind of linked it to the blues brothers because they say they're on a mission from God so we are we are on mission and as you said that that's one of your major jobs is to be on mission as a as a pastor of the church but what I thought was interesting was that he kind of sets the scene in kind of what I did with the opening question of where that entitlement comes from and there's one interesting point he makes about millennials and Gen Z's basically saying we need to avoid entitlement but also where it's come from and he does make a joke about participation trophies that everyone gets to get something that's one thing that he talks about he says most 20 something to expect to have a team their dream job within the next five years but only half of them say they have clear goals of how they're going to get there but there was the last story just to talk about here was he knows a legend legendary music producer doesn't name him he's also a musician and songwriter and once said these millennials come into my studio and trim me like I am their peer not just in terms of age but in terms of experience and accomplishments it's so rare to find a good musician who was singer these days who doesn't think they deserve to be a star and then he says welcome to the youtube era and the expectation of making it all the time and I should do it right now I thought those they were all interesting but what do you think also about where those tendencies might come from we've kind of talked about being in a digital Babylon and that we have access to being famous we talked about last week that a lot of people in their research that they've done actually think that they're going to be I think it was a third of them possibly think they're going to be famous that they will end up being famous which is interesting because we constantly expose to the fact that talking about algorithms and content and all those kind of things we see people when we think they're famous but they're only famous to a small group of reasonably small group of people someone like Taylor Swift though has that overarching fame that you don't really get so much anymore which I thought is interesting the next thing though was he's looking at why there is that entitlement and self-centeredness that we've kind of talked about so the seventh place trophies might be one of them but can you think of anything else that you might might be contributing to why millennials and gen Z's think they can make it any time any place you want to go first him any thoughts on that my mind spinning off in a different direction so if I can take your questions a comment and move on no just on the curious with me is I'm hearing what you just read out and my mind went to oh isn't it interesting that the whole idea of the shock absorber is to actually empower and listen to the younger generation okay and so now I'm starting to think oh okay if we are actively seeking to empower the younger generation to speak up into the church to be the cultural shock absorbers to the maturity of the church and say that the the flexibility of a church is going to be in the youth and the maturity the strength of the church is going to be in the wisdom of the older saints and they need to be working together is there perhaps a danger that we could use the shock absorber analogy in order to continue to reinforce that entitlement attitude of well of course you're going to be heard you're a young person so that's now what I'm buzzing in my head thinking oh this is interesting what does it look like to for a generation who may already assume that of well of course we're going to be listened to whereas you know you might go back a number of decades and say listening to young people was completely revolutionary and it means to you so for years the idea that you know no one listens to you until you're 40 and we're saying no no we want to actually listen to our children we want to listen to our young people and allow them to shape the church I'm now wondering oh okay is there now a possibility that we're contributing to this level of entitlement so sorry I started thinking about oh what are the repercussions of this rather than what are the causes but I don't know what you think to do yes that's why I think we build into the shock absorber model that if it's too flexible it'll break yeah if it's too strong and rigid it'll break yeah so if there's a tokenism from the adults towards listening to young people and they don't take bottom up feedback seriously it's too rigid and it'll break yep but if the young people have a sense of entitlement and feel like they know more than the older people and they have nothing to learn then it'll break which is trying to think which are the four models of youth ministry which is the one the strategic where the young people are generating their own expressive church so you just send them off to do their own things flexibility without strength I think yeah yeah yeah and then then preparatory approach which is let's just run a top down sunday school model where we take the kids out of church and just teach them that's too too rigid strength strength but it's not got the flexibility yeah so I think the missional one is also a bit too flexible because missional approach you go out of the church to just go and hang out with the young people let them set the culture and then try and find a way to almost apologize for bringing the strength into it the intergenerational pieces is great in the four views of youth ministry by mark center inclusive congregational though having young people with older people all the time doesn't give them a space to experiment so they don't that's why we call our intergenerational approach moderate intergenerational because we have spaces for young people and older people but they also come together and it's works if if all those spaces are non-token so that we don't just pay lip service to getting together with everyone or we don't just pay lip service to being together in our own generation because I would imagine that many who follow the inclusive congregational end up being some sort of preparatory yes I think so because it's a danger you train the young people are included they're inclusive in the things you're doing but I imagine that for most of the churches who are following that kind of model the culture is of the church is still being set by the mature side and it's not listening to people yeah I mean they would they would level down their presentation so young people can understand it yes make more accessible their own idea so are we seeing that kind of those approaches to youth ministry or even just to young people are less than ideal especially when it comes to the entitlement of a generation that thinks they should be able to make a deal well I think if you ignore young people they can get entitled and if you give them too much opportunity to lead everything they get entitled but the same thing happens with older people too yeah feel I've got my I've done all my study I've lived my years no one listened to me for 40 years now it's my turn so that can be a big problem as well so I'm thinking now so let's workshop an entitled generation into each of those models so if you have a preparatory model which is very top down and there's not a lot of listening to the younger generation then the you have an entitled generation coming through saying we should be listened to then that's the kind of church which is going to end up frustrating young people and the young people are going to say well if you're not going to listen to me here I get listened to on my social media I get listened to when I make TikTok videos why would I stick around here and not get listened to when there are a lot of other spaces in my life particularly in the digital space where I do get listened to so I wonder if the danger in a preparatory model with an entitled generation is that they'll leave before they're old enough to have a voice yep the the danger with a strategic model might be that again you're empowering the entitlement of young people to say yes everything everything you say let's let's do that let's create a culture that's specifically about you without you having to accommodate to some of the historic faith and traditions and wisdom of the older and so that then allows them just to kind of spin off without necessary enough guardrails and maturity to say yeah let's take your enthusiasm your you know your willingness to generate culture and create creative spaces but you're completely loose and you're off doing your own thing without any you know good leadership around you the inclusive congregation or perhaps you might but again I think it might potentially have that same frustration and then for a missional I guess the mission or the tension there is always how do you bring those you've gone out of the church to mission to how do you bring them back in and not grab those same issues whether a frustration or a strategic issue so whereas the shock absorber model is going to say okay you're again I think like an entitlement is you know the worst form of this but a positive would be that they they want to create they want to contribute they want to help set culture the shock absorber model is saying yes we want to listen to you we want you to participate we want you to have genuine contribution here and you're going to learn to do that in the context of the maturity and the strength of having mature saints around you who will help guide you and shape you and provide those guardrails that stop you just you know going off on your own things without that maturity and wisdom as you don't well stew not very well yeah yeah I think it's a new form of intergenerational cooperation so before the industrial revolution old people and young people needed each other through economic necessity so young people had the strength to plant and the older people had the wisdom when to plant so they needed each other but then when you get machines then all of a sudden young people don't need the old wisdom anymore because new knowledge is more powerful than old knowledge so that is increasing exponentially in our age as older people find it harder and harder to keep up with all the technological change young people know more my uncle was a panel beater then he he did that for whole of his career and then he went to be a tafetechon teaching panel beating but then after a year he decided to quit that job and retire early and I said to my uncle john why did you do that and he said well the technologies that were coming out in the shops meant that the kids knew more about panel beating than I did so I'd be teaching panel beating but then they'd be saying oh so there's a new machine that does that now and so I think that's happening right across our society where young people are often picking up new things quicker than older people are not that older people aren't picking stuff up they are but they're not picking it up as quick but then there's an entitlement that comes from that too because young people now have a dual benefit where they have the youth to be the youthfulness to be able to work hard and also the knowledge so once they only had the youthfulness and they depended on the old knowledge so before the industrial evolution new ideas were distrusted as dangerous but now in this new world old ideas are distrusted as dangerous so the challenge is to get young people particularly rich young people who have access to all this technology to not be independent of older people so it's counterintuitive to them it's intuitive for them to just act with people who are going to give them the most economic benefit which is people their own age and new technologies and that will give them more choices and that will give them more freedom to do what they want to do so they feel constrained by working with older people not actually benefiting from that so it's counterintuitive to do a shock absorber because old people feel threatened often by young people's new ideas because they're feeling undermined and you know change is oh we're just changing the church for the young people and likewise it feels intuitive for young people to not have anything to do with old people what what's that person got to help how can they help me in my life and so the challenge is to help every all the Christians to be countercultural and to think counterintuitively that means they need to be transformed by the renewing of their mind through the scriptures to see the spiritual benefit of having old and young working together which is to think like God does rather than just to think like we would naturally think I love that that last bit that's really cool they were brought all together for me thank you the the kind of byline of this chapter in Faith of Exiles is engaging in countercultural mission means living as a faithful presence by trusting God's power and living differently to cultural norms and I thought it was interesting that he we're talking about well earlier about how putting safety too high on a priority list of looking after our kids and making sure they're kind of helicopter parenting kind of that script into the church too he says that some of the research that happened through Barna said that many millennials who dropped out a church say that their chief reasons was feeling their church was overprotective kicking them insulated from seeing and experiencing the real world and I feel like we're talking about like taking on the wisdom from the older Christians if that's not a regular part of their church going experience then you're going to that may contribute to that is if you're just isolated in your own kind of demographic that you might not be able to know what the real words like from Christians that have experienced that yeah so the problem with top down is that we can canonize our theological transfer of knowledge but we can also canonize our corporate cultural expression of that theological perspective so young people feel inhibited by a previous generation's cultural expression that they're expecting the young people will adopt them and continue to live in and I think that's the other thing is that how do we and comes from this book too is that how can we have give our young people courage and confidence to go out in the world and be ready to discuss Jesus but not like we've seen with the the last supper depiction of the opening ceremony react in a in a way that is like this will be the end of the world if you disagree with me that's another thing that they talk about in the book here is saying and we've talked about it way back in our evangelism series was that people felt like they were equipped to like acknowledge about the gospel but didn't know how to share it because they may have been that over that part of it may have been that overprotective element where they can't actually engage with something like when the last supper gets depicted in a way that they find offensive they can't show their love well I just think it's this posture of exiles which is really really key and we're in this transitional part of history I feel that we we're struggling to re-identify as exile when we're coming out of you know Christendom and post-Christendom and so and it goes back to what you said Stuart about the raising expectations so yeah I think about we talked about alexaminos graffiti from you know about the two year 200 and you know you walk past a depiction that is mocking Jesus that is mocking Christ God your faith and I imagine that the Christians in 200 AD didn't feel that they could complain to the management and say I find this offensive can you take it down please whereas we're coming out of this period of Christendom there were yeah post-Christendom where we're offended by a particular artwork in a opening ceremony and yet we still have this kind of cultural expectation as Christians that we have a certain level of empowerment and therefore I expect that I can complain to the IOC and hear my things heard and that they might offer an apology that I'm sorry we're offended you didn't mean to offend you it wasn't actually that in the start with like whatever it is like they feel that they can hear our apology whereas you know if you can play to the Romans that there was graffiti on the wall in 200 they would have laughed at you because there was no cultural power there there was no actual expectation and I think this is where we are in this you know in 2024 we're in this weird cultural thing where we're coming out of a world that had you know layers of Christendom where you know many people will have been offended at depictions that were a death work of Christianity of the old religion if you like and we're saying oh that's really offensive and this year you brought me a sermon of the weekend young Madonna and other artists who have you know done this kind of death work death instruction festival yes you mentioned something else too the painting Piss Christ oh yeah the sculpture Piss Christ which was you know basically a marble statue of Jesus in a container of human urine and it was this I mean that was in the late 90s I think it was so it's been decades and decades of this deconstruction and and part of it is you know they're wanting to be offensive they're trying to stir the pot they're trying to be very postmodern and edgy and part of you know we're now a few decades later we in 2024 now there's even debates about Christians of oh how edgy was it really you know do we need to be offended all these kinds of things but as we think about this next generation get back to the question this idea about exile so if we recognize that in this particular period of time we are exiles and we're raising our kids to kind of like the 200 ad they would have you know walked their kids past that and you know Danny what's going on there what's what's that that looks like what we talk about with Jesus but it's got a donkey head what's going on and they say yeah most people that we walk past son daughter you know hate Jesus have no interest in Christianity and think that what we believe is stupid that's the world we live in we believe that Jesus is the Christ 90 percent of the people that we interact with are not going to think that and so all of our festivals, media, graffiti, everything is contrary to our faith beliefs and it feels now that we're kind of this post-Christian and we're moving more towards that world again where you know as Australia 45 percent in the last census in Australia ticked Christian which means 55 percent you know the majority of people we interact with in our daily lives would not tick Christian on the census box far less I think it's some like 85 percent do not go to a church service monthly or more so so there is that's the expectation of you know I see the opening ceremony and people mocking my Lord Jesus and as she said it's right to be sad at that just like I think it would have been right for this sadness of the Christians walking past the exeminence graffiti to be sad they're mocking my Lord and Savior they're mocking my Christ but to hold that somewhere in tension with but of course they are like because that's the culture that we're in and for our young people to realize and I think this is part of the this book he's trying to establish is how do we be resilient disciples how do we hold on to Jesus passionately joyfully in a world that will mock I mean this I expect that there are going to be many many more death works that continue to mock Christians how do we raise our young people our teenagers to say yeah actually this is it's sad it's right to mourn it's right to be offended what do I do with that offense I turn it into prayer I turn it into resiliency I turn it into asking Jesus to protect me and my family and I continue to turn it towards a stronger discipleship of those that I know Christians and as she said a stronger mission towards those who are not because but I'm it's that I suppose it's that lack of surprise that you know we're being mocked of course we're being mocked 55% don't take Christianity on a census in Australia so 55% at least have no identity 85% have no physical practice okay that's the world I'm in how do I now live I think that's going to be part of that tension yeah anything you want to add yeah just quickly at the end of the Cold War people didn't know what was going to come next there was the United States versus the USSR and everything was seen in those categories so just after the fall of the USSR there was just the USA as the only superpower and people were trying to work out what was going to happen next and no one really knew so they were still using language of the Cold War mark one to describe the new world like trying to work out that but really quickly people came up with new categories to describe in the new world that we were living in and it was a new world defined by more defined by the internet than it was defined by the Cold War bastions of the United States and the USSR you see during the Cold War companies would emulate the Cold War duopoly of the United States and USSR so in the Cold War period Apple and IBM would not collaborate with each other they'd compete with each other just like the Cold War paradigm would suggest but with the invention of the internet that quickly replaced the duopoly of competition with competing in a new networking environment so all these strange things happen where members of the Apple board started working on Disney board for example stuff like that so it was really interesting. Churches have taken a long time to work that out and I think we're still grappling with moving away from the Cold War paradigm because usually the church takes a bit longer to pick up on cultural change maybe because we don't listen to young people that's one of my theories but however I see a similarity between the end of the Cold War and what came next and what's happened with the end of Christendom and what comes next so people are struggling in our generation to work out what does it look like to be Christians in a post-Christendom environment much of the debate over the last 20 years has been trying to convince Christians that we no longer have entitlement and we're not at the center of the society anymore we're not in control and we're not in the majority and our societies have changed and they're looking for new categories to define that and exile is one of the things they're saying we're now living as exile so at one level I'm not discounting that but I think we need an even stronger language or metaphor than that because in some ways we're not exiles we're not the people of Israel who've been taken off their land and put in Babylon so there's a lot of talk are now we used to live in in Zion now we're living in Babylon I don't think it's a really helpful metaphor to go back to the Old Testament to look for a schema that helps us to understand our current situation I think it's better for us to see ourselves as missionaries in an increasingly secular culture and I think seeing ourselves as the early Christians did in around the Mediterranean is a better metaphor and we're missionaries so we need to teach our kids to be missionaries so if they're going to be missionaries they need to have really strong identity in Christ they need to be clothed with Christ they need to be comfortable in their difference that they are different to the world but the problem with the post Christendom context is Christians have so got used to the fact that we are just a Christian version of everybody else that they're not used to being a separate identity yet and the parents who are helicoptering their kids are still actually teaching their kids to be part of the culture now they know the culture is different but for years and years we've thought that if we get the culture right in the church people will come to church that's the whole incarnational model which is if we do great worship services that are just as professional as the concert down the road then people come to church because the theory for the last 50 years is the church is so hokey and old-fashioned that people who are used to going to quality events come to church services and go this is really embarrassing and I hear people over the years say things like oh this church is too embarrassing to bring my friends to because it's not done very well and every time there's a mistake in a song or up the front people go you've got to get that right you've got to be more professional but underlying all that there is this idea that if we are culturally reflecting the culture around us and we're the same as the culture then we'll succeed another example of that is it's really interesting how Christians for generations have opposed alcohol and smoking now when Christians stood up and said we shouldn't smoke the myth that kind of developed amongst Gen X and maybe the baby boomers to a certain extent was that oh my parents told me I wasn't allowed to smoke and that meant I didn't smoke and that meant all my friends laughed at me for being embarrassing because I didn't smoke and drink and if I had smoked and drink they would have listened to me and I would have been able to share the gospel with them and so many right across the board Christians have just stopped complaining about the excesses of alcohol and cigarettes dancing or you know raunchy themes in movies all those kind of things Christians are now trying to be cool and hip and smoke and drink and you know be all the the same as everybody else but and if you follow my argument that it's almost like the exile if if we're going to take that exile argument the exiles are trying to be like the Babylonians and they're saying oh well if we don't mind too much that they have a last supper look they probably maybe they meant it maybe they didn't but hey you know it's our problem because we interpreted it that way honestly there's a row of people there's one in the middle with a halo there's people on either side in different poses you put a picture of you know those painting underneath that it looks almost exactly the same you chuck a diagnosis of whatever it is in front of it and then say oh no it was all about a Greek thing well no it wasn't it's the blending of two different images yeah to create a death work that's what it was and it was that's what's funky about it that goes all the way back to data which and maybe before but you know data after the Second World War where where people were painting all these grotesque images of what used to be glorifying war now they're actually taking the mickey out of war or whatever it might be so and we do it all the time I mean the British at the end of the British Empire in order to get used to the fact that the British Empire was over made fun of it Monte Python was so successful in the 60s because the British needed some way to get their head around the fact that they were no longer the greatest empire in the world so they poked fun at middle class white people who were in the army and who were in business and and that was really funny and it helped them to move on well here's the last thing I'll say there's this is a strange thing too but there's a there's a communist called Gramsci who was trying to create a revolution in Italy at the same time as the Russians had a revolution in Russia but he couldn't get the factory workers in Italy to rise up against the factory's owners they put him in prison and when he was in prison he wrote a theory called hegemony. Hedgermani is that he wrote basically the simple idea was the reason he couldn't get the workers in the factories to unite against the owners of capital was because the people in the factories believed that if they played by the rules they would be successful and have their own factory one day and the reality was the majority of them would never have a factory but they believed they could get a factory if they played by the rules fast forward to the 1950s African Americans in America used to straighten their hair dress in suits talk like white people try and get educated in in the same way as white people with the belief that if they could be like white people then they'd be successful but then the Black Panther Party for self-defense said in in Oakland in the 1960s a bunch of young people you're African of heritage let your hair go curly be black like own your black identity you're never going to be accepted in white culture because you're black so that was a hedgermani that the the African Americans were believing that if they were dressing like white people and talking like white people they'd be successful but they won't they never were as successful as white people so actually becoming diving into their black heritage I think was one little step along the way to an American president who was an African American because Obama didn't pretend to be a white person he was black and he he really vibed that black identity now take all that hedgermani idea and look at Christians we've come out of Christendom and now we're thinking if we can be like everybody else and realize that we're not in charge anymore and we're not different but we can be like everybody else then that's a hedgermani Christians think if I drink and smoke then people will listen to me well for the last 50 years Christians have been drinking and smoking and nobody has been coming to church it hasn't worked so the exile motif I think is an attempt to say let's get back to who our identity is and different in the rest of the world but my problem with that is that's an Old Testament reference to a people of Israel who've been taken off their land waiting for their land to be given back to them whereas I think we got to this point of having so many Christians in the first place because of mission so I think we actually need to be Christians who are in the minority in the in the majority now one last thing that I think is really interesting is that we talk about the fact that a lot of Christians haven't got it that the world has changed from Christendom to this new world and I've already said that I think some Christians are still trying to work out what the new reality looks like but I think a lot of young people and a lot of Christians are starting to realize that they're in the minority and they're actually not just vibing the hegemony anymore and what's really interesting I'm noticing about this latest controversy in the Olympics is some Christians are using the language of Christendom to argue against that death work some Christian commentators are trying to encourage people who are negative about the death work that they're not in the majority anymore and they should get with the minority but interestingly there's more and more people on the internet on YouTube who are saying well we're one of the minorities so how come we're being treated differently which I think is really interesting I'm not saying that's the right response but that's new that's like when we went from the cold war to the internet when I hear those kind of voices I'm like ah now they're Christians they might not be doing it well but they're vibing that they're saying well you don't attack Islam you don't attack Jews at the Olympics why did you attack us we're just a minority so there's actually people criticizing the French for being the people in power who are punching down on Christians why are you punching down on us and and that's a really interesting change and I think that's starting to grow so I don't know if that's the future or not but that's interesting yeah and I think but part of that is that those who do death works on Christianity still assume the Christianity is the hegemony so they will say oh no we're punching up we're punching up to the powerful white Christians and so therefore this is this is okay and I think you're right that there is a generation code through going but hold on we're clearly not all they've ever known is not being christened yeah yeah and they're now saying well you're punching down on me because I don't I don't have any power you have all the power you've got billions of dollars you could have done anything you wanted why did you punch on us and the thing is maybe the the people who ran that presentation might be stuck in the old view there's a podcast I was listening to during the week that had a really interesting version of this there was two the guests and the hosts of this podcast chatting away the host sorry the guest particularly is very much a sort of a pacifist Christian which I don't fully agree with but I just think it was an interesting take and he's kind of standing out this kind of being culturally different um was that for things in America the you know Pledge of Allegiance and National Anthem he will actively uh not aggressively but just calmly not participate so if he's at a as his everyone baseball game and everyone stands up for the National Anthem I just very quietly just stay seated um and if there was a Pledge of Allegiance uh it's something he's talking about he said uh I'll sit there and I'll recite the Lord's Prayer rather than the Pledge of Allegiance to remind myself that I'm part of God's kingdom not any earthly kingdom now he will take the particularity of any of those things I think what's interesting in this conversation is he's kind of doing a little bit more of this black panther thing of saying no no I'm not going to uh try and be like everyone here and hope that my similarities but with Jesus is missional I'm going to just be here and if someone goes oh why are you not doing this uh he's able to say well my allegiance is to King Jesus um would you like to know more about that and be able to have that conversation so I think this this idea of you know as minorities within a culture they're going to be distinctives uh and I just as I was listening to this I didn't even know we were talking about this today but early in the week I was listening to that and I thought oh wouldn't it be interesting if you know you looked at you know like a stadium in America where they all sing the national anthem and just you've got these little pockets around of people who are just quietly non-aggressively just sitting um to get to a point where people go oh yeah those Christians yeah they they don't sing the national anthem because they've got a kingdom that they belong to that they think is more important than insert ex-country and I thought oh that's really curious like I just that imaginative like and again I'm not advocating for that particular practice I'm just thinking what are those practices maybe it's drinking smoking whatever it is that say oh people will look out and go oh yeah those minority people though you know it's like when you see someone um you know in a Tibetan robe and you think oh yeah there's I don't see that very often there's a minority culture I recognize I know who that is and it's a little bit odd that I see somewhere in a Tibetan monk robe because it's distinctively them and I just wonder again this whole like if we're trying to be too much like the world there's not enough distinctive for people to recognize oh that's interesting there's there's something going on there for that Christian they're not buying in full tilt with what the majority culture is doing um and I think you know we are in a space where we can start to imagine what are those practices um that are clear maybe this is something as simple as my Sunday mornings or my Saturday nights are sacred which you know and because it's always church time um and you're known as someone who will always calmly politely joyfully say oh I actually can't meet with you at that time but can we find another time because this time is my church time and that's the most important thing I do during the week yeah I know I love I love that you're exploring that because it's actually really complicated isn't it? Totally yeah yeah fine it's so difficult because at one level sitting down for the national anthem might be saying yeah I'm not going along with American nationalism but at another level it's actually going along with American progressivism because there's a lot of progressives that won't stand for the national well yeah I mean this is the how do I tickle yeah yeah so the complication is this reason so the complication is as a Christian there are actually progressive Christians that sit down and you'd be like them and they're all being like everyone from Portland and then and then everyone who's from Texas are all standing up as Christians and they're thinking they're actually counter-cultural to the people who are Portland so the culture is so divided that if you take a personally one of the things I've been thinking about is I liked what you ended with which is let's let's be Christian let's pray let's read our Bibles let's do everything we can to live at peace with everybody as much as it's possible for us let's actually go to church church is the way to actually stand up and publicly say I follow Jesus and I'm going to church and that's my most important priority I love that bit personally for the standing of the national anthem and you and I you know you're not advocating that other position but is it was an interesting curious example I think it's great you raised it yeah yeah but no my my personal impression is I'll stand up and sing the national anthem because I'm an Australian and I render under Caesar what a Caesar's and I render under God what is God's so I personally don't like I mean I don't disagree with protest I think protest is part of the democratic process but I'm still trying to unpack as a Christian what's the place of protest when we're also supposed to render under Caesar what a Caesar's and do what the state tells us to do and I think that's it obviously you don't do what the state tells you to do if it's an evil thing but you know national anthems things like that are actually also socially cohesive so it actually fulfills the function of living at peace with one another if we can all be Australian but yet I do have a higher I have a higher authority allegiance yeah and I think one of the reasons someone I heard someone on the internet say this week they were wondering if maybe one of the reasons that people do punch down on Christianity is because it's still widely accepted by a lot of people and it actually kind of does stand in the way of power of the state being absolute because if there is a group of people who who will listen to the state and then judge it based on what God says so if the state says go and do X but the Bible says don't do X why am I going to do it so the Bible doesn't say don't stand for the national anthem so I think it's actually literally listening to our authorities and actually saying oh what does God actually think about that now again that's really complicated but it's that tension of Romans 13 yeah of yeah just obey the power authority that's right and you look again you look at the early church and so Paul is advocating that you obey the emperor that's right you follow the emperor and yet you also get this tradition going alongside of that not in any of Paul's letters but we know from church history that when they came to say you know give this incense to show that Caesar is Lord they'll say no no no I will obey Caesar because I'm trying to my best to live at peace with all those around me as a member of the Roman Empire and yet there is a step beyond now again we're always trying to work out the interpret that in different ways for you know our modern times but yeah it is that like we are citizens of Australia yeah there is going to be a lot that we say yeah these are the things that Australians do because we're Australians and so you know social cohesion obedience to you know the king the prime minister the general governor governor general yeah like there are so many ways in which we're we will look a lot like all other Australians because we are living at peace and we are obeying those in authority above us that's right and and the one of the problems for us as Christians going forward is our young people might pick up on progressive protest culture and think that's the way to evangelize the world just as much as some of our young people might pick up on ultra nationalism and think that you know melding the state is the way to go so we're going to have to walk a really fine line between those if the listeners are interested we did a whole series on the evangelical line which is different to progressive and fundamentalism Christianity it's actually evangelicalism is Bible based Christianity that yeah I think ask the questions of both those approaches and says well is that actually really what the Bible teaches it's interesting that after 11 chapters in Romans Paul has one chapter on the church and how we live in the church and then straight away the next chapter is how we relate to the government it's fascinating to me that and it's called the Romans the letter to the Romans so if you want to apply the gospel you need to actually submit to the state unless they contravene God's law yeah so you know and that's why I find it so complicated and difficult when people catastrophize current events and align them with events in the past that Christians had to stand up against so if I call someone Hitler then of course they'll have the right to protest and not do what they say but that's leading people to pull down the American flag out of the main station in Washington and raise another country flag that's not even a country the Palestinian flag and then burn the American flag outside the station I'm like okay that's not actually doing everything we can to live at peace with one another and there are what's a ways to stop wars but I don't know that's necessarily the best way to do it so I think as Christians we can also say people who are ultra-nationalists who are saying people shouldn't be allowed to protest at all well that's that's actually going too far as well so but yeah being being um Christians means that we're constantly having to have that constant grapple with how do we live in this well we find ourselves in and I don't think we should define ourselves too much by the kind of society we live in and that's why I'm not that fast on the words exile because it's almost like our culture has created this response in us rather than the gospel of Jesus Christ but causing us to disciple one another and be on mission together wherever we are and I think that's a better kind of paradigm personally anyway yeah well there's so much to think about there I think it might be a good time to wrap up the other side but um just lastly just as we finish the those practices of resilient disciples at Faith for Excellence talks about um I think I do think that some of those things that you've just talked about like the protest culture or the nationalism is like there is that that version of individualism entitlement uh playing into that a lot um and they do in the they kind of finish this chapter by saying entitlement narcissism self-centredness consumerism individualism they all act as hungry hungry hippos gobbling up our time attention and compassion um and they steal away our precious time for vain and fruitless things but then they say but by participating in Jesus' counter-cultural mission in the world we can make a difference and we can carve out a life well lived and for the sake of others and just their five dot points which kind of summarize these practices was we can sacrifice ourselves we can put aside selfish ambition we can pray for the peace and prosperity of our cities we can experience Jesus doing miracles and we can trust God's power and live differently from cultural norms yeah so I just thought that was a good way to wrap it up but thank you very much for your time today thank you judgement I really appreciate it I really appreciate it just seeing you back listening to you guys talk about it was really good thank you save me a lot of time like effort anyway didn't save me time but that was great um and if you do have anything to contribute to what we've talked about today please email me at jol@shogglesorber.com.au uh really value when we get feedback from listeners so thank you very much for that when we do but uh yes thank you again guys and thank you to everyone listening and watching and we'll finish for the one way [Music]
