Continued review of (Dis)Ordered by Rev. Christopher S. Esget.
Immanuel LCMS Fairview Podcast
Bible Class - September 8, 2024
So I have to show you all, you know, that I don't just work one day a week. I have a wonderful encouraging and fun video for you today that I filmed with some of my flag football players. Somewhere, I have it. Thanks. >> Thank you, Cynthia. >> I know I did. I did, I forgot, I'm sorry. (laughing) Even I forgot, Donna, good morning. All right, well, I pray you all had a great and wonderful week. Let's see, what do we got going on today? All kinds of fun stuff. We are, if you brought your disordered book, I think we're finishing up five, something like that. Chapter five, six, and if we do get to it, oh, chapter five and six, I guess. Chapter six, of course, being the, the one titled about transgenderism is, of course, a hot topic. But we start, if my thing will connect, chapter five, I think, born this way, beginning there, looks like chapter 79 and 80. Oh, unable to connect, hmm, let's try that again. (whistling) Maybe home. You know, and this is such an important video, you know. Gotta go through all this trouble for it. But I also wanna get the questions up on the screen for us to contemplate. Beginning on page 79, born this way. There we go, how about that? All right, so Marshall is a student at Faith Lutheran School, of course, down there in Plano. And I'm the flag football coach, and they are fourth, fifth, and sixth grade boys. And we were in the weight room because of the field was too muddy. And in the weight room, I'm trying to wrangle this herd of cats, and they wanna, you know, they see this way, they see that way. They wanna pick up dumbbells and barbells, you know, and hold 'em over their head, and, you know, they wanna get caught up in these machines and cables. Well, also in the weight room, there's a boxing dummy, a punching, I guess that's the technical term for it, a boxing dummy. It's a dude, right? It's his upper torso and face. And man, those kids, they wanted to punch that thing so bad and I said, all right, here we go. We're gonna make this an educational, we're gonna make this educational. So I told them the story of Santa Claus, where supposedly, according to myth, Arius was a fourth century heretic. He was a Christian pastor who had this problem with his mind, he had this problem with logic, right? Arius said, how could Jesus be true God and still die? And so Arius, and at the council of Nicaea, 325, Arius was promoting this idea that Jesus is not the same God as the Father. And Arius was gaining traction with this, and it's still, the thought is still around today, that Jesus isn't the same God as the Father. This is Mormonism and Jehovah's Witness. And so the story goes, Arius wouldn't shut up about this. He even would sing a hymn dedicated, we still have the hymn, and it was told that Arius, while all the pastors at this conference were trying to get Arius to repent and not do this wicked teaching, he just started singing the hymn and wouldn't shut up. So as the story goes, Santa Claus, Nicholas of Smyrna, the Bishop of Smyrna, supposedly got up and slapped him, told him, hey, shut up, right? You can't be saying this. And as the story goes, and this is the guy who was the origin of the Santa Claus story. And so the way it goes then is that Santa Claus was arrested for behavior unbecoming of a bishop, and he was in jail, but he was only in jail, I guess, for one day or so. But that became known as the slap that's heard around the world that we still talk about this day. So I told the boys, I told them that story, a few more details involved and such, because they were asking what this guy's name was. What was the tackle dummy's name, or the punching dummy's name? And I said his name is Arius. So in order to get their energy out to let them actually do it, I said you get to punch the dummy, but you have to say, being of one substance with a father, whack, because that's the part of the creed that we now say that that conference, that council at Nicaea, they stuck that into the creed to fight against arianism, being of one substance with the father. So maybe, kind of law, kind of losing its connection. (indistinct talking) (audience laughing) Well, it's just skipping around, I don't know why, but I had a line of about nine boys, one substance with the father, whack, whack, whack, whack. It was great. So I hope they remember Arius, the punching dummy, and that Jesus is of the same substance as a father for the rest of their life. But that's the fun that I get to do in being a flag football coach. And it's a lot of fun when you get to volunteer in your community, and then when you get to make it theological, I kind of nerd out on that. So, if you have one of those punching dummies at your house, feel free to name him Arius, and we'll remind you of the divinity of Christ. All right, very good. So we are in chapter five, born this way, and I have up on the screen, the, those, let's see. (humming) There we go. The questions for chapter five, and I'm gonna start with reading this, chapter 70, or page 79, the bottom, the couple of these paragraphs here. And I talk about this in the newsletter article also. Born this way. A primary reason our culture is at a crossroads is that while a portion of society still embraces a mimetic view of the world, see chapter one, and recognizes that man's desires are disordered, as outlined in the previous chapter, a large part of the culture now believes the opposite. Man is by nature good, but the structures of society corrupt him. The cure for society, according to this way of thinking, is to allow people to embrace their first impulses instead of evaluating personal desires against the standard of natural law or revelation, for example, the decalogue, 10 commandments. We should encourage people to follow their first impulses wherever they lead. Only then will life be authentic. Man can be free only if there are no external influences on his decisions. Social, religious, and moral expectations are not options to be considered. They are enemies of freedom. In past societies, particularly those of a generally Christian character, governing sexual relationships with social expectations in the force of law was considered imperative. The purpose of sexual ethics and laws was to preserve the institution of the family, protect women and children, and kept the peace. If the sexual revolution is to liberate people from these constraints, it is not enough to change or repeal laws and moral expectations surrounding sex. The foundations must be destroyed. The goal of the sexual revolution is not met merely by acceptance of homosexuality or transgenderism. The goal is the destruction of the Christian religion. Wow, he ends it with quite a statement, right? Do you think he's overstating it? No, do you think the people who are in favor of what he termed and surmised as the sexual revolution, do you think they have to have the intentional goal of destroying Christianity to go along with it? Do you think everybody knows what they're doing and going along with the sexual revolution? Yeah, I don't think so either. You know, I think without faith, nothing makes sense, right? Without faith, you can't think according to God's will and how things work. So they just really, right, born this way, the title, they just think, hey, I'm actually helping this person to be free, right? And of course, you know, at first is anchored in our own desire to be our own gods. So yeah, we can kind of see that. So the question then comes, and I thought it was really good that he brought this up and talked about it. I don't know that I would have gone this direction, but I'm glad he does then. In talking about this, how does this belief that people are good but society is bad, affect life in your church and community? You know, a lot of people will use this statement of Luther that he quotes on the next page. This on page 81. When Luther says, unless I'm convinced by the testimony of scriptures or by clear reason, I do not trust either in the pope or the council's alone for it is well known that they've often aired and contradicted themselves, I am bound by the scriptures. I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the word of God. Most people just know that statement. In fact, one of my neighbors actually said that to me. He said, oh yeah, you know, we were talking about stuff and I brought up church and he says, oh yeah, Martin Luther, you're Lutheran. He said that he has to listen to his conscience, right? That's what most people know Luther from, that you listen to your conscience. Whatever your conscience says, you need to stand firm on it and that's why a lot of people think Luther's a hero is because Luther didn't listen to the man, right? Luther's known for being this rebel. He started the rebellion and sticking it to the man but they don't know all these other, this other part of this quote of Luther that Luther says his conscience is convicted by what? By the scriptures, his conscience is at this point because the word of God has brought him to it and Luther understands, right, that conscience is good or bad. Ooh. (audience member speaking) Yeah, 'cause he says, even councils and bishops and popes, their consciences are leading them the wrong direction because they aren't going back to the word of God. So Luther understands the conscience of the diet of worms as being bad or contrary in our flesh, contrary to the will of God. And I'd say that, what do you think in answer to that second part of that question? Is that the same way people speak of conscience today? Or how have you heard it spoken of? Or have you? Do you have any thoughts on that? (audience applauding) I mean, you watch the news, right? And things like that, talk to your neighbors, I hope. How in your regular day-to-day life do you hear people or do you see people act as though the conscience is this pure guide? Think you should listen to your conscience no matter what. Do you, do you see that? Yeah, Jessica. (audience member speaking) And when we disagree with people, we're always, I mean, this is what he kind of gets to in this chapter, that whenever you disagree, it's seen as what? Not just judging. (audience member speaking) Yeah, and when we disagree with people we're always, I mean, this is what he kind of gets to in this chapter, that whenever you disagree, it's seen as what? Not just judging. (audience member speaking) It's seen as violence. That's right, that's why with this, and getting a little bit into the next chapter two, that people who are in favor of all these LGBT things, if you speak against, that's why they can say, our existence is being threatened. We are suffering violence every day because they consider, you know, violence every day because they consider speaking violence, and they consider it as an attack on their existence and who they are because that's what they hold. Yeah, any others, right? I know, yeah, Steve. - Well, I think maybe we should bring back the old ad is that sticks and stones, (laughing) they will never hurt, right? - I think he brings that up. (laughing) - Yeah. - It's not violence. It's not like being physically. (laughing) If you need to remind people about it. (laughing) - I have a question. When we're speaking of that particular group of folks and their use of the word violence, let us also remember history and where these people have what their lives have been like so they have experienced a lot of violence and a lot of rejection. And let us also confess that Christians who have struggled with same-sex attraction have had a difficult time finding honest conversation within the church. You cannot ignore that. And I guess I'd say that because that's how I was reading all of this stuff and I'm thinking and I'm thinking and I've been at this for 73 years and I remember things. And if anybody else of my age would also think about things that we've heard and things that we learned and how it was taught to us. You have to consider that and where it is now is has gone because of what was either mishandled or we just don't wanna do it because it's just but not even our Christian brothers and sisters. How have we been with them? - Yeah, and it's gonna continue. It's always gonna be there. The question now is where is society? And it's never gonna be perfectly executed, right? And a lot of times the crimes and the mistreatment if it bleeds it leads. But what we don't hear about also too are and he mentions somebody too also I think in the next chapter. I'm getting chapters, these next two chapters mixed up a lot 'cause they're so similar. All of the people who've been rescued out of this through the Christian church. That is the only rescue, right? And the question that the author I think is asking us to ponder now is where is society now? But in the past, yeah, we've seen things but what is our, where are we now? Yep, the author, no Christian would disagree. Repentance is the first order of the day, always. Always is. But what do we need to be fighting against right now? Kind of the same way in the past the Christian church would have, faithful Christians would have been arguing against literal violence, right? And fighting and going to the extreme on that. So yeah, is it perfectly implemented? No, but as you mentioned, repentance always, right? There's never an argument against that. The question now is a society as a whole, we as Christians in this time and space, what is the threat that we need to be on the lookout for? And yes, still, now which direction does the violence go? You can make, I mean literal violence. That's what I would invite people to consider too, that yeah, you're right, society changes. Things, politics, who has the power in society, who has the way, those things, that's why today we're reminded by the psalmist that you put not your trust in princes, but what are we fighting against now? Yeah. - I was gonna say with the violence and the past and stuff, most of all that I've heard talking about, if you don't agree with me, it's violence. If you say anything against wrongdoing, then you're basically attacking me. They're not even the older generation that had to deal with actual violence. They're a bunch of young people that just want to claim to be victims so they can feel special, and basically say you're the enemy. As we have in society now, victim classes and oppressor classes, and everybody wants to be in the victim class. So there are actions aren't questioned. They can do and say what they want, and you're automatically equal. Most of the old, like gay people that I've seen, they even sometimes speak out against what's happening now. Like if I would have known it would be taken to this extreme, I wouldn't have fought so hard. Like all we wanted was to be left alone to live our lives and not be attacked. We did not want to completely change society and everything the way is happening now. So most of the people who are screaming about words or violence have never actually known anybody. - Yeah, yep, it's a perspective, thank you. And that's the thing, which you mentioned there is that they didn't realize they're playing with evil. We just want to be left alone, right? They didn't realize they're playing with evil and you cannot control it. You cannot contain it. You don't know that the forces that you are playing with will run out of control, whether you like it or not. That's kind of why I started off with a question about the most people think to what's your point. Most people, they aren't working to chip away at the foundation of marriage by their own actions. They're saying, hey, I don't want to change everybody else, I just want to change what's right for me. And you don't realize what you're playing with when you go against the word, when you go against God's established order for society. Yeah, Kayleigh. You send always the facts of your people, always. You can think it's personal, you can just think it's in your head, no one knows about it, but it ends up always affecting other people around you. I'm hurting them. I think that's, you know, whether they realize that their relations with same-sex partners are simple or not, they may not even realize it's simple, but it is not, you know, and it affects others. At the point now, we're affected all of the sides. Yeah, we can't be afraid of it either. You know, there's also that side of it. We can't be afraid. We have to, you know, as the scriptures, yeah, compassionate. Yeah, the scriptures say to speak the truth in love. You know, that big in love. If I have not love, I'm a noisy gong, right? Just a clanging, clanging symbol. So, okay. Okay, yeah, go ahead, shoot. - I think there might have, in her perspective, a lot of us can't see. I know a lot of people who are in the LGBT community because it's so prevalent at this point with my generation, and this kind of struggle for me is, you know, I love and hear for a lot of these people, right? But there's a distinction between me loving and hearing for you and accepting what you're doing. I can't, and a lot of times it doesn't even, you know that someone is part of the community, but you don't really have, you know, you're in a setting, so you just don't say anything, you just treat the person the way you treat anyone else, 'cause it's not appropriate to really talk about that. But it's really struggle to be like, you know, separate by, treat you. But then also, I cannot ever be able to do, I mean, I can't, you know, it's just a lot simple, and I can't, you know. If I say it's absent, then I'm denying my confession rate. So it's this struggle to be, hey, I love you as a person, but I can't, I can't accept what you do. So, and keep a lot of people in the family trouble alive, and I feel really, really, really solid. - Yeah. - I think there is, you know. - Yeah, how often is it a result of some sort of trauma, right? - I don't know, right, but, because people talk about that, she learns it. - Yeah. Yeah, it becomes clear, and part of this text, as I read in the first, you know, the first couple of paragraphs, that as a society becomes more disordered as a whole, and disordered desires become the main stream, more people are gonna be taken advantage of. The weak, and those who don't have the structure are the ones who are, the devil doesn't care, okay? The devil doesn't care who he hurts. He's okay with hurting defenseless children. He's okay with hurting those who have no family. The devil does not care. And I think, to your point, as I mentioned, that, you know, a lot of these troubles happen because people were taken advantage of, and they had no protection. (upbeat music) - I come from an acquirer that has been more, I mean, UT Dallas is a march of UT community. I don't think you know, but, like, it's becomes so, like, I think it's up 30 to 40% of what's been seen as the five section for, like, you know, so they're like, you gotta get the, you gotta get the, you gotta get the, you gotta get the, 'cause you kind of lose directly the rest of your life, you know, gangs, that's really, they'll just call us a five, and then it's, it's okay. - Yeah, I think it's, yeah, just college campuses in general, as I talk to students, yeah. - And I think when people are, you know, in this generation of people, they don't realize how many people it is. - Do you think they really are? - I don't know. - Right? Yeah, I don't think they know either, right? Yeah, Stephanie, are you raising your hand or just combing your child's hair, right? (laughs) - I would say, definitely not, I think it's what people are feeling, like the absence of their life, that they're trying to get some kind of satisfaction is they're busy Jesus from their life. Oh, I wonder, it will run around the body, or maybe I will crush my sexuality when they're, I mean, they're feeling that way with the wrong thing. - No. - They're trying to put the things of this world, which is what I'm all gonna do. So it's, and it's hard, I can relate to that because that whole attitude now is like, well, just couldn't, don't you want me to be happy, like don't you rather than be talking what God says in this He did, and it's like, I mean, the best thing I can do to show you that life is to just wait about it. - Yeah, and it's no coincidence that the Scriptures tell us that Christ's relationship to the church is like that of marriage. And, you know, that's where He starts, He starts to take us in this chapter and talking about how marriage, right, is not about self fulfillment, it's not about self pleasure, or it's not about, right, what does He say? What is the telos? What is the ending, what is the point of marriage? What is the ending of it? And if we, if we as the church, bringing up the past also too, let's see, where does He sort of start talking about that? The telos of marriage, and He brings up and talks about what ways has the Christian church not supported this idea of what is the final purpose of marriage, right? How is the church missed this, right? Can marriage, what does He say it? Can marriage, am I in the wrong chapter? Is that right? No, that's right, okay, yeah. Can traditional marriage survive in a society that accepts other forms of so-called marriage? Yeah, question number three. Do you think it can? Question three. Yeah, it's kind of, it's kind of persevered, right, and in small corners and whatnot. We see it, I don't know, what do you think? Can we start about that? Shoulder than the other, the other so-called marriage, yet, the march of some way. Okay. And today. Yep, yep, good, Adam. I think, especially with my generation and generation, I think traditional marriage is viewed as what it is now. So, am I an answer to that question as well? Because if you're a marriage, it is more of a dating, I mean, the divorce rate is a lot higher nowadays than it was in the traditional sense. And I think that marriage is not viewed in the same values as it is. Yeah. Yeah, what did we see? What did we see about divorce rates, right? That once you get no fault divorce, or once you have no reason to stay married, divorce rates go up, and then also to Abigail's point as well, that when you start giving benefit to being a victim in society, those rates and those numbers are gonna go up, whether they call it a social contagion, where we went from two, maybe under two, what is, I don't know, correct me, two to 3% people were LGBT, something like that, to now what you say, you know, four, 20 to 30%, are those numbers somewhat accurate? Yeah, I know, who knows? But once you start giving benefit, right, college students wanna identify that way because they're going to benefit in some way, right? What is the benefit then of marriage? Well, if your perspective is, that marriage is all about my sexual pleasure, if marriage is just about that, right, and there's no structure there for it, as he then, he goes into marriage on page 84 and 85, he starts talking about this, that what is, what, and we as the church, what should we see as the tell-offs of marriage? Do you see that, page 84 and 85? Had you heard the term tell-offs before? Do you know what that means? It helps us in considering everything, doesn't it? When we are looking at, well, my dad would say, I needed to learn the tell-offs of tools, right, don't use a screwdriver as a hammer. You know, what is the end, what is the end, what is the end purpose of it? What is the reason for it? Okay, yep, it's not just pleasure, but this is the way in which God continues to bring children into the world. This is how he grows the church. So he says the tell-offs at the top of page 85, okay, the tell-offs of marriage includes procreation, not merely personal pleasure. This means there is every reason to limit it to the man and woman who can be father and mother. We're not speaking here to that sad condition where a man and woman are not blessed by God with children through no choice of their own. Marriage's end is in reflecting the image of God in the one flesh union, which results in the calling to parent the children born from the union. Homosexual marriage, therefore, has a fundamentally different tell-offs, and where that end is generally accepted by society, it will necessarily affect marriages. Verse 85. Homa, I'm chapter verse, page 85, middle. Homosexual marriage would have been unthinkable in a society that did not embrace first the pleasure principle, which resulted in the acceptance of divorce and then smaller families where the pleasure of sex was decoupled from the natural outcome, children. And finally, two people who express no desire for children. That this other tell-offs is already at work. We can see in the widespread acceptance of divorce, even in the church. So this is where he kind of takes the discussion and says, look, once you divorce, right, once you divorce having children from marriage, then you are going to open yourself up to all sorts of ideas as a society. He then takes it into pornography, right, on page 86. And then abortion, right, where pornography, this paragraph, I have this line, underline, where pornography destroys the end of marriage passively through complete disconnection from family, abortion does so actively. The mindset of abortion is that children are disposable and unwanted. Birth control resists or avoids the natural fruit of holy marriage, but abortion murders the child God gave as a blessing. So he talks about it from two different sides of if you're separating this idea from, if sex is all about, if it's all about pleasure, then there are no, if there are no guidelines, no guides to that, and we would say from God's word, then we open ourselves up as a society. It's an interesting point. - It's no longer a sacrificial society it's all about what's in it for me. - Yeah, I think so. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, good point. Yeah, in marriage itself, right, that it's not about what I'm doing for somebody else, first spouse and then child, it's about me. - Then I think some of what enters into that is their laziness because they don't real like. - Unless you're married to my wife. It's a vacation, it's heaven on earth. - They'll never know later, but it won't. - What's that? - Right, right, yeah, yeah. And it's like the, you know, and I talk about it often or have before in the past that, you know, along with the deterioration of the understanding of marriage and reluctance to get married, you know, you almost first see that in people's reluctance to be part of the church. That membership in the church is a vocation. It is something that you are part of the Christian church like you're part of a marriage. You're not there for everything to be about you. You are there to live a life of sacrifice for these people that God has put around you. I mean, it's to me in my mind, I don't know, I may just be nerding out, may just be kind of goofy, but for me, thinking about the people that we're surrounded with at our church, that these, I mean, it wouldn't happen except by God. Think about the people who you are a brother and sister with. I mean, specifically just this church, 301, Country Club Road, what are the odds that you would have, well, I mean, some of y'all are in that cult up on the hill, but what are the odds that you would have met the people that you're surrounded with? I mean, it is such, in my mind, it blows my mind, maybe 'cause I'm the pastor and it's a little different for me, but the people that I meet, I mean, it's wonderful, it's so great, and to think, you know, what are the odds that I would have just run into you people out on the streets and would have known you, right? Or you looking to people you're surrounded with. That's one of the beautiful things about our churches. We as a church are so strange. We are so different from each other in so many different ways, different upbringings, different ages, different likes, and yet, we come together here, not demanding everybody bow down to my desires and wants, but it's like a marriage. You come here because God has brought you together and you get to sacrifice for people that you didn't choose. You don't get to choose, you know, who's here? I mean, some of you might want to, (laughs) sometimes I want to, (laughs) no, but it's just such an amazing experiment, I don't even want to call it experiment. You know, you think about it like marriage. You know, the odds of you meeting your spouse and how God directs these things. You know, it's quite amazing. And then God says, and I'm going to give you the tools you need. I'm going to be with you. And you know what, those people you're gathered around with, you know, and marriage and whatnot, but there's not a sin that they can do to you that you can't forgive. And then you stand in front of God and you say, this is the one that God has given me to love. I mean, so in my mind, it's kind of very much related. So we also too can, as we picture and as we look at marriage and the telos in the end, and is marriage all about me and what I want, or is it about what I can do for this one in this specific vocation of husband and wife, and how it relates to our walk as a Christian. Very much does, it's very, very similar. And the both of them are beautiful. So as he continues in this discussion, page 87 there at the bottom. And this is rather recent here. I had wanted to read a couple of paragraphs, but look at the bottom of page 87 under homosexuality. All right, let's just start at the front there. People who view sex as mere impulses to be acted on with whomever one wants to, will often label objection to homosexuality as homophobia. This removes the issue from moral discourse because phobias are seen as irrational fears, not moral issues. Then once they have severed sex from a meaningful act within a larger human telos, they see sexual expression as a matter of taste outside the realm of objective goods or evils. To them, objections to homosexual or any other kind of sexual behavior, denote irrational prejudices, not reasoned moral thinking. They see the person with the phobia as mentally ill and in need of therapy. Love is love was one of the most effective slogans leading to the 2015 Obergefell and Hodges ruling where the Supreme Court of the United States invented a right to same sex marriage. After the ruling, love wins was displayed on progressive church signs in my neighborhood. This notion of love is not unique to homosexual activism, but it has become ubiquitous. Anywhere love is equated with desire. The contemporary understanding of love is hardly distinguishable from selfishness. The object of this sort of love is essentially the means for personal indulgence. Our culture's definition of love is a twisted form of self adoration. What I love exists to satisfy me. Love of pizza, whiskey or sex becomes a little different from loving a person. So then what does love mean? From a Christian perspective, if we're talking about disordered love so much, how do we show ordered, rightly ordered love? Where do we start? Yep. God is love. - Proud of the love of love. - And also the reverse of that, people who say love is God, right? - Love. - God is love, okay. So, okay. How does, and I mean this is a softball question, but people also have different gods, different definition of God. Okay, God is love. That's a good place to start. Any other ways where we can define love from a Christian perspective? - We love the Christian perspective. - Yep, good. - That's love. - Sacrifice? - Forgive me. - Okay. What does love mean from a Christian perspective? - The fruit of the spirit, yep. - I was looking at it from a Christian perspective, so we have this understanding of God as a Trinity. The Holy Spirit is part of that. It's part of the spirit, it's part of the spirit. It's part of the spirit. So, and if that is how love is acted out during the location, they're working in it. - Yeah. Any other, yeah, Jessica. - As Christians, we love with the in-game in mind, which is our eternal salvation, we turn it alive, so the end flow of what we deal with in the small internet is really small, impaled, in comparison to the joy of being able to take a table of Christ. You know, that's a great joy. - Mm-hmm. - That's like what we do. We love each other, yeah. - Yeah, it's interesting you bring up, yeah. We would call this an eschatological view with the end, right, in mind. And I love that you brought up the feast. When I was young, my family took a couple of weeks trip down into Mexico, and we drove a couple of cars down there, and we had all kinds of adventures. One of the places we went to was an art gallery. I don't remember where it was. And it affected me, I remember it to this day. There's this art, there's this work of art where it's this picture of a banquet or a meal for the believers, but then the other painting, next to it, or the bottom of the painting, it's a picture of a banquet in hell. And each person is sitting at a table, but what's interesting about it is the utensils. Their spoons or their forks are like, yeah, are really long, they're like five, six feet long, and they have this beautiful meal set before them, and down in hell, they're all dying. They're starving to death, why? 'Cause they can't, they're utensils, they can't reach their mouth, but in heaven, what are they doing? They're feeding the people on the other side of the table. They're using it right that way. So that had a big impact on me as a kid seeing that, and I think it's a really neat picture of this, and you're bringing up the feast, and how can we serve others in our unique vocations, showing love from a, how do we define love from a Christian perspective? It's also being willing to what? To say, sorry, you're wrong. This what Abigail says we all wrestle with is how love from a Christian perspective says, I'm sorry, but you're wrong, when people have disordered desires. And how you do that? That's gonna be the fruit of the spirit. That's what you need to pray to God for, for discernment and wisdom. Love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness, self-control. All right, how have churches treated some sexual sins as less sinful than others? I think to your point, in the past, it's very easy to pick on, I mean, it's very easy to pick on homosexuality, right? In the church. I don't wanna say easy, that's probably the wrong word, but among us in the church, right? Or am I misguided in that? Are there some sexual sins that the church has treated as less dangerous? Yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah, okay, yep. Any other sexual sins the church seems to, seems to just turn a blind eye to. Living together without being married? Yeah? Yeah. I don't know, to me, I would think that you'd want the support of the church family to end the love of the church family to tell you, hey, no, don't do that. You're just putting yourself in a situation, you know, just wait until marriage to move in together. Any, any others that come to mind? Yeah. Sure. - This has been several weeks ago, one of the times when you were gone, and the pastor, I can't remember saying my name, I guess I'm a flower man. (coughing) And Bob looks like, that's just a human. - Pastor Hubel, okay, yeah. - This was a novel class, and he was talking about, I guess in the 70s, when (gasping) that he was in a group like other pastors, and the discussion of abortion family. - Yeah. - And he said, well, you know, what do we need to be doing about this? What do we, how do we need to be aggressive? And he said, one of the other pastors said, that, well, I'm not going there. I'm just, we've got this. Does anybody else remember what he said? Something about, well, we've got the issue of abortion, and we have the issue of people of putting together outside of marriage. And, I don't want to talk about, I don't want to go on this planet. - Mm. - I'm like, did I work this bit? And then I got my shirt for something to, to that effect. And so, but what he was signing, and I guess my question to you, he is, he was signing there to give us a discussion about the pastors, that nobody wanted to go there. - Oh, right, yeah. - Yeah. - Yeah, I wasn't born then, I don't know. (laughing) - Go ahead, yeah. - When I read some of this, I'm going, yeah, well, you're 40 something years old, and you're writing this, and yes, you are looking back historically, but you cannot ignore what, how it was presented, what was ignored, our commission and our own missions, as with Ms. McThe Christian Church, and where we are now. - Mm-hmm. - Actually, after I read the chapter, I said to myself, what is exactly as this chapter? 'Cause I'm, what is the summation of this? And I wrote down a piece of paper. Here, we are Christians, and the essence of Christ and the church, marriage, and we are the cure of the Holy Grail. How have we kept that? We have not, and he has this, is here a couple of different times. We can not change something, if we don't admit that we failed in that, and turn it around and go a different direction. Well, again, I'm saying to you, as someone who is very old. (laughing) - Well, as lived in the '60s and '70s, all the stuff that I grew up with, and then again, as other people in my age, will admit to. - Nobody will admit to that. (laughing) - It is what it means. (laughing) - Yeah, yeah. - Because it's the players that fail to where we are. - Sure, yeah, and also too with the recognition each. You know, people, you know, his age, right, doesn't really have a, he doesn't wanna draw attention to that. What he wants to say is, what does God's words say? That's where he wants to direct us. So, age and time that we're brought up at, yeah, it has an effect on how we interact with society, but it, you know, the word of the Lord never changes. So, but with this, you know. - I'm sorry for being, but how, what do you all, what do you, what do you, as a pastor, be terrible? Would other pastor be terrible? - It's the same stuff. It's the same stuff. It really never changes. Some things are stressed more than others, but it's the same challenges. If you ask directly specifically, and I don't have much time, if you ask me directly specifically as a pastor, what is, what are the challenges? It really doesn't change. I mean, it's, and that's what he's trying to get to, to the root of these things, so that we can be equipped, because it isn't gonna stop with transgenderism. It isn't gonna stop here, right? There's something else coming down the pipe that we are going to look back, I'm going to look back and say, I was completely blind to this. Every generation, every person has their blind spots. None of us gets the perspective perfect, but that's why we keep running and fleeing to the word of God to guide our desires and how we interact with the world and pray for wisdom. The challenges are the same. I mean, as a pastor, I deal with the same things. These pastors in the past have had to deal with. They haven't had to, they didn't have to deal with the social contagion aspect of it, where people just claim this victim status because they're gonna benefit from it. But I don't know. I don't know. It's a longer answer to your question, I think. I deal with these things on a regular basis with members and people who stop by and visit. I do. You'd be surprised at the number of crazy people I talk to besides y'all. (audience laughs) I have people that will stop by and they're just random. They come to a church and they come here and they pour their life out and then I pray with them and then I never see them again. And that's always kind of the thing with the church. It's all the devil disordering the ordered creation that God has established in his word. And so trying to figure out where that's manifesting itself. But it's almost like the old problems never go away. We just get new ways in which the devil attacks the word of God. So yeah, abortion, same things that they were talking about. And then in reality, how do we, I hate this phrase, but how do we meet people where they're at? And that's the tough job as the pastor and as the church is how do we kind of to his questions. How do we meet people where they're at and help bring them in and show them that they are loved by God? And that's why the people business is so fun. As you can say something and you meant to be nice and somebody took it the other way. But it is a joy in the end, it really is. In the end, we're gonna be sitting at that banquet table at the Lamb's Marriage Feast and we're gonna say it was all worth it. It was all worth it. And it was beautiful. 'Cause right now St. Paul says we see Demli through a glass right now, things just don't look, they don't work as they should. But in the end, we will see. And all the struggles and the difficulty, we're gonna look back, I guess it may be kind of like one of our members has a child who's celebrating their 50 year wedding anniversary. And I guess when I go to some of these celebrations and wedding anniversaries, they say it takes work, but a lot of times I also hear people say it was all worth it. Looking back, at the time it seemed difficult and hard and this also too is gonna be for us Christians. Somewhere it is written, what is a little suffering now compared to the joy that we will behold in the end. So yeah, it's tough, different attacks, but in the end, and we have to remember that, it's a joy. And even when we reluctantly do these things, even when we reluctantly stand up, the Lord sanctifies our good deeds and he perfects them. So fix your eyes on Jesus, that passage in Hebrews. Fix your eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of your faith, he perfects you. So even the things you do for your neighbor, okay, whatever, you do just kind of out of reluctance. Even that, the blood of Jesus cleanses. It's pretty great, it's wonderful to be a Christian. It's great to be in a world that forces, it's a great to be in a world that enables us to stand out as a light. Even if the darkness wants to try to move in on it. So good, all right, let's pray. Yeah, let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for the opportunity to come together as your church, that we are given your Holy Spirit, that you sanctify us, you forgive us, and you strengthen us in our Christian walk. Help us to speak the truth and love, help us to not compromise on what is true and right, but grant us, O Lord wisdom, to navigate these later, gray and later, bladder days. We know you always hear us and answer our prayers, grant us patience to wait on you, to wait and see that you are good. We ask this through Jesus Christ, our Lord, amen.