Latest / The Salty Pastor / Retaking the Joy of Christmas [Ep. 148]

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Retaking the Joy of Christmas [Ep. 148] · The Salty Pastor

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Doug: So, oftentimes we, as people, we get an opinion, we do something,
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but we don't have anything that mitigates or limits our opinion.
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Jesse: Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the Salty Pastor Podcast, a
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podcast dedicated to helping you learn and grow in your faith and
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your critical thinking skills.
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I am very blessed today.
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Um, as the host of the Salty Pastor Podcast, to have both Peakes on the
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desk with me today, Zack Peake, and of course the Salty Pastor himself, Dr.
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Douglas Peake.
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And I am Jesse Maher, your host, and we just want to welcome you to our
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podcast, but, um, we have been spending some time, talking about Christmas.
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Doug: Yes.
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Yes.
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And last, uh, Tuesday, you guys did a great job of Luke chapter two chapter
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two, reading the Christmas story and, uh, talking about, uh, the birth and
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then about the shepherds in their fields.
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And I was really, uh, interested in your discussion on how they were afraid,
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like how angels would appear and what does it mean to have a fear of God?
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Angels are scary.
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Zach: They're not the guys in bathrobes
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that we usually.
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Doug: Yeah.
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They're not nine-year-olds bathrooms.
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Yeah.
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Who stumble over their lines.
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Uh, they're pretty scary.
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Yes, they are.
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They're massive.
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But, uh, what's really interesting.
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What I thought is your discussion about the fear of the Lord, and
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that people have kind of left that.
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And that got me thinking today on how, what you guys studied on
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Tuesday really applies to our world.
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And that is, is that, you know, I talk a lot about postmodernism and
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what postmodernism basically says is that there is no absolute truth.
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There's no objective truth.
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And really that basically means that they have lost any respect or fear of the Lord.
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There's nothing objective outside that holds them accountable
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so they can just make up their own reality, their own truth.
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Have you seen that in your generation?
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Jesse: I think so.
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I mean, I'm slightly older than Zach, but I mean, at least for me, it's
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everybody wants to give their own.
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It's like, we can just do whatever we want.
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Like the more and more the culture evolves towards this,
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whatever you believe is true.
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If you don't believe there's anything scary or you rely on the government or
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immediate to tell you, what's scary.
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I think that's where most of our fear comes these days.
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It's not like an innate moral sensibility of like
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we should be fearful of this wonderful, amazing God that could smite us if
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he wanted to, but loves us instead.
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It's instead you should be afraid of this thing this week and this thing
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this week and saying this thing, cause you might delete to this thing.
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Like I think that's where a lot of the fear comes from it.
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My generation, as opposed to like kind of a mortality slash, understanding of who
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God is and what he's doing in our life.
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Doug: Then you, you point out a perfect example of what postmodernism produces.
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And that is, if there is no objective truth, then we don't
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know what to be afraid of.
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And if you don't know what to fear, you end up fearing everything.
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Jesse: What about you, Zach?
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Are you seeing similar stuff?
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Zach: I think that, um, I won't limit just this specific
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generation too much, I think.
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Yes.
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It's very prevalent in this one, but I think that if we look back that,
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you know, uh, a belief in an objective reality, Uh, you know, human rights
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and thinking about others, you know, in selflessness is a very unique thing,
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you know, throughout all history started with Jesus really, and then only,
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you know, countries that were heavily influenced by him and his followers
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have ever had any semblance of that.
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So I don't think its isolated to this generation.
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I think what's unique about this generation is that our country
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and our culture is slowly been heading more and more this way.
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What it really is, is an arrogance.
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It's an arrogance that if you don't believe there's an objective
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reality and you believe you can think whatever you want.
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That's incredibly arrogant, and all arrogance is rooted in insecurity.
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And that's why we see so much fear.
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Is because arrogance and insecurity go hand in hand.
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Okay.
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Jesse: Well, and the ability for that fear to be propagated is so
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much easier these days, despite what generation you are, right?
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The internet thing of that.
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Zach: That is very unique.
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Uh, you know, in some ways we'll, it's funny.
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Cause sometimes people will admit things about, you know, my generation
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and I think that I'm like, well, that's happened a lot of times before, so it's
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not just our gender still a problem.
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It's not just our generation.
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That's true.
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But I do think that the internet and especially things like
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Twitter, just increase the velocity of change so quickly.
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Like I w I'd kind of wonder like in the ancient world, you know, or even just
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a thousand years ago, like if you were scared of, you know, if there was a fear,
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even whether it was founded or unfounded, whether it was of the Lord or of something
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else, like an entire village or society could be afraid of something of the
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same thing for, you know, generations.
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And now there's a new thing every week on twitter.
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And the trending thing.
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And like, I, I enjoy Twitter sometimes, and I don't think that Twitter on
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its own is this evil thing, but I think it definitely increases
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the velocity of what happens.
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There's a new thing every week to be worried about.
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Jesse: And the rate at which it can be propagated.
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So let's say, you know, uh, uh, culture is afraid of the God in the volcano, right?
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Like we, we don't want to make the volcano angry.
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Right.
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It could take a long time for that fear to like spread out just because the way
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information traveled back then was slower.
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It's like, yeah, look, I might wander to another village and be like,
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Hey, back in my own village, we have this God that rests in the mountain.
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And sometimes he gets angry and blows things up.
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Right.
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Like, yeah, that would be a thing, but it would be a slower process of spreading
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out, especially across the world.
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Like most of it would die or.
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Argued against before then, but now it's like, you can type in
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three seconds, 48 characters and send it out into the entire world.
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And it may get picked up by some random media person.
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And then suddenly it's the news of the day, right?
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Yeah.
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Zach: Well, it was viral.
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It just expands the entire world almost instantaneously with it.
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Doug: I think those, those, uh, Those modem, modalities require rapidity.
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When you live, like you said something earlier, uh, it's so
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much easier for people to be afraid today than before, which is odd.
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When we live in such an affluent and advanced society, we
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should have less fear and safe.
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We should have less things to be afraid of, but what's really amazing is
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that's because people don't know what they believe or why they believe it.
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And so with RA, with the shallowness, It requires rapidity.
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Uh, some people may not be familiar with this, but, uh, here in Idaho,
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river boating is a big deal, especially, uh, through rapids and stuff.
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And I don't mean whitewater rafting.
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What I mean is river boating and these boats are made out of aluminum.
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They're welded together and they put jet thrust engines in them.
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And so they can, uh, basically cruise up rivers in water.
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That's just 18 inches deep at times, you know, because, but in
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order to do that, the boat has to travel at a high rate of speed.
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If the boat slows down, it'll settle into the water and it can
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settle down 20 inches into water.
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But when it's cruising over the water, it displaces maybe two inches of water.
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Cause it's just, you know, zooming along.
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So these guys, they get in these things and then they just go
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flying up these river rapids.
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It's just really crazy what they do.
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Well in the same way.
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This stuff that's being propagated requires rapidity in order to maintain
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its shallowness, and then people will end up believing anything.
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Like just case in point this week, I was reading articles about Christmas.
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Here in Idaho, we have a bunch of local web based type of media outlets that
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run in tandem with the Idaho statesman.
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And there they produce these things called conversations and they all pick it up.
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It's like kind of like a news story released on the AP, but they'll
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pick it up and they'll propagate it.
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And I think this is one of the things that bothers people about the news media.
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And how and why people call it fake news because this guy, he's Thomas Adam
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from the university of Arkansas, and he just wrote this little Christmas story.
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Right.
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And it's titled how Christmas became an American holiday tradition with
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the Santa Claus Gibson tree published by the Idaho press on December 6th.
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And it's really interesting because in it, he says, Uh, the whole idea
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of Christmas trees, uh, in your house came to America through German
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immigrants in the 18 hundreds.
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And then he said the idea of putting a candle on an evergreen was inspired
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by the pagan tradition of celebrating the winter solstice with bonfires on
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December 21st, these bonfires on the darkest day of the year were intended to
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recall the sun and show her the way home.
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The Christmas tree was essentially a domesticated version
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of these bonfires.
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And the reference that they're making was a pagan tradition
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in Rome called Saturnalia.
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And what he's saying is patently, unequivocally, false.
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And it's historically proven false.
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And what happens is we have people who write this stuff, people who
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read this stuff and they become more shallow in their belief because
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it's built on a house of cards.
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It's a falsehood.
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Because all you have to do is take five minutes in or not even that.
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And just Google.
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Well, where did Christmas trees come to?
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You go to history.com.
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You can go to history today.com and everybody says the same thing.
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And that is, is that the whole notion of li lit candles on Christmas trees
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was started in the 15 hundreds by Martin Luther, the religious reformer.
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And he was walking home,
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one night, and he was seeing the glory of the twinkling skies and he went
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in and he says, you know, we need to put candles on our tree and we want
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to celebrate the birth of Christ.
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You know, that it was, you know, the shepherds all the night and
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then the Wiseman followed the star.
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And that's why most Christmas trees have on the top of them.
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What?
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A giant star.
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You know, and so, but what's interesting is that what postmodernism does
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and what a secularist try to do.
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And these are people that I think at their core, have a
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conviction that absolute truth.
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Eh, they're skeptical of it.
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They reject it.
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And, but the problem is they never become skeptical of their own skepticism.
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They never take any accountability for what they produce and what
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they produce is people who are fearful of everything and anything.
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And when people become fearful, they become fascist.
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You know, they want to impose, their belief or conviction without any
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scientific fact around their conviction or in any type of historical fact around
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their thing or any data fact around it.
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But because they're convinced this is their truth, they
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want to impose it on you.
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This, it started out with religious types of things.
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And now we're seeing this, uh, scientifically the things that
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people want to impose on our nation in order to deal with a pandemic.
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I mean, it's really fascinating.
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It's, it's one thing to say.
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You have the freedom to pursue any type of prophylactic or therapeutic or whatever,
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depending upon your healthcare needs.
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But what's happening today is this overwhelming desire to impose
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therapeutics, impose prophylactics, pro impro, impose all of these things
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upon people against their will.
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Which that, that only results from a society that has become too
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post-modern and its orientation.
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Jesse: So, what you're saying is you're really for what this guy
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wrote is what I'm hearing and your, oh, you heard right Zach.
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So maybe I missed the plane, but
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Doug: I just think when people publish this ridiculous tripe, it just
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hurts people more than we realize.
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Jesse: Well, and I think we see this more and more where there is
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a sense of like distrust in the media, but if it's written, we have.
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What we were taught in school.
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At least what I was taught was in order for someone to publish something in
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a newspaper and asked to be sourced in, like it's supposed to be sourced
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and like, fact checked, right.
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Like, but that was what we were told growing up.
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So people who are not going well, maybe.
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What we were told is not always true.
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We'll just assume that, oh, well it was written in the paper.
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Therefore the main must have done the research, so I don't
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need to do the research.
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Therefore it's probably accurate.
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Yeah.
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Doug: And it's not, I mean, like another thing he says here that is
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really interesting, as he says that the notion of Santa Claus was created
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and it first appeared on the front page of the union army in 1862.
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Uh, and well, it was, it was published in Harper's weekly in it.
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What it had is it had in 1862, an image of Santa Claus visiting the union army.
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Right.
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And so he was saying that's when it was created.
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Well, I could, you could make an argument that the image, you know, of.
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A fat guy in a red suit and stuff, but it's factual history that the whole
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notion of Santa Claus, Saint Nick was based on a fourth century monk known
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as Saint Nicholas, who lived in Myrna, which is on the coast of Western Turkey.
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And he was a priest.
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And what he would do is he found girls that were from poor families, uh, that,
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uh, were unable to pay a dowery or unable to cause they had inverted it then.
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And, and so what happened the whole concept of doubt, where you can go on
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that if you'd like to discuss a little bit, but these girls couldn't get married
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because they didn't have any dowery.
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And so what he would do is he took money that he got, and then he would go in
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the middle of the night and he would give them a dowry coin, you know, that
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was enough for them to get married.
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And so that was a really big deal.
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And so it was a giving of gifts and he would do it at this
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certain time during the year.
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And that's the whole notion.
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That's why we call Santa Claus Saint Nick, because he's based the legend
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of sin on this actual character.
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Right.
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So I think, I think when, when people don't know their history, then what
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happens is you end up believing anything.
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And then when you believe anything, you become afraid of everything.
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And I really, I really appreciate how you guys talked about, you know, that these
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things that happened were remarkable.
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They created fear in people, but not in a bad way.
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You know, Zach talked about how fear can be a good thing.
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Zach: And I think it's important to recognize that there's kind
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of two different types of fear.
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There's fears that are rational and fears that are, you know, accurate.
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I've always been a little bit afraid of Heights.
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Doug: I can't imagine why
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Jesse: You guys are some of the tallest people?
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I know.
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Why are you afraid of heights.
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Zach: I don't think six
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inches matters when you're looking over a cliff, but maybe that's just me, but
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yeah, like, you know, if you're, if you're standing over 100 foot cliff
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and you're a little bit nervous that.
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Probably pretty rational.
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That's pretty accurate.
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That's not necessarily a bad fear.
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That's a fear of founded on facts,
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Jesse: You have a respect for gravity.
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I have a respect for electricity.
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Its not that I'm afraid of it.
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I just have a healthy understanding of what it can do.
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Zach: But
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what's really interesting about you bringing up that healthy respect is I
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remember when I was younger in Sunday school and we talked about how in the
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Old Testament we'd do Bible stories and we'll talk about the fear of the Lord.
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And that's the number one way they tried to make a sense.
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We were like as little kids.
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Why are people scared of God?
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It's like, well, they're not, it's, it's a healthy respect and that's a
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great way to put it is that's what this fear is of angels in the Lord.
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It's a healthy respect of knowing that is very powerful that I am very small.
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Jesse: Yes.
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I have a very healthy respect for large
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wild life.
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Zach: But those are fears that are based on reality.
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But what we see now, besides a little phone call.
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Thanks.
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Sorry.
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Um, is fears that are based on insecurity and untruth.
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There are fears that are based on lies, your fears that are based on
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things that are purely emotional.
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You know, emotions can help us in a lot of ways, but if we're basically.
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Things purely on emotions.
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Just like if you're facing things purely on science or anything
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else you're going to go wrong.
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Fears are purely emotional.
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They're purely based on how people are feeling or what they're scared of
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in the moment and everything because of our society and the postmodernism
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and the arrogance, all of our fears now are based on insecurity.
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That's not founded on reality.
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That's not founded on truth.
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That's not a healthy respect for something that is an emotional
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response that people are giving into.
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Doug: Yeah, well, and I think that that's really important.
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I read a book a long time ago called, uh, uh, uh, it's called following the
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called Follow Me, uh, experiencing the loving leadership of Jesus and is
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written by a pastor he's retired now.
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Uh, oh quite a while ago, his name was Jan Hettinga.
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And kind of the Bothell kind of the Puget sound area.
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And he wrote this book and I read this book and it was really, really fascinated
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because fascinating to me, because he said that in our society, we are
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skeptical of any and all of authority.
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We reject all authority, you know, the rebel kind of attitude.
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He said, but what that does is that exacerbates fear in a person.
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And he said, if you want to be a secure person, How, how do you, and he
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said, how do you overcome your fears?
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Right?
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He says, well, you have a greater fear.
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That's how you do it.
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And he said, when you fear, God, He said that gives you the clarity, the focus, the
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strength to overcome any and every fear.
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And what it does is it gives us a, uh, it gives us a limiting factor in our lives.
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So oftentimes we, as people, we get an opinion, we do something,
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but we don't have anything that mitigates or limits our opinion.
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Right.
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And that is the.
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Uh, here's how this, the logical syllogism works.
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And that is, is that there is a God, you're not him.
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Number two, you are going to be held accountable for your life and your
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choices because you have free will.
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Number three, this God came in the form of Jesus to die on the cross,
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to save you from your sins and to redeem you and give you a new life.
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Okay.
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That's awesome.
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I'll say so then some people think, okay, well then let's
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make everybody believe in Jesus.
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Because it's so much better.
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And you're like, wait, there's a limiting principle there.
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And that is, you're accountable for your sins because you have free will.
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Therefore we believe in the doctrine of non-corrosion and
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that is we'll make the case.
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We'll plead the case.
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We'll prosecute the case, but in the end, everybody has to be given the
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freedom to make their own choice.
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You can't force a person to fall in love.
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Right?
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So what we have to do is we can create opportunities to learn
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and experience we can share.
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We can proselytize.
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We can evangelize.
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But in the end it's everyone's own choice, right?
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So that's called a limiting principle.
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Well, if, if you don't have a greater fear and if you don't have an objective
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reality or objective truth, then some, even some of your lesser fears,
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then you want to impose with no limiting principle on everybody else.
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Yeah.
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And that's a problem.
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Jesse: Yeah.
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Cause then it just spirals out of control spirals out of control.
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Yeah.
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Like you said, there's no end to it.
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There's no like,
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Doug: Well then communism is a perfect example.
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There's a story of a man who, uh, there was, uh, a leader under Stalin.
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Uh, it wasn't himself, but his daughter did a piano concerto, like a piano thing.
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And she came out and played the piano.
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And so the people stood up and started clapping and everybody
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was afraid to stop clapping.
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You know, and then it just went on and on and on.
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I mean, it was absurd when for half an hour people were, and
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then finally one person just said like, this is so, so stupid.
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So he stopped clapping.
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They arrested him and sent him to a Gulag.
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See, that's how ridiculous it gets.
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After 45 minutes of clapping for a little girl's piano recital.
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That's a little, nutty.
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Do you see that's what happens in postmodernism and that's what's
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happening in our society today is that people want to get elected to office
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for one reason, one reason only.
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And that is, I want to impose my vision and my values on everybody
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else, as quickly as possible.
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It's a power play it's power play.
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It's a hundred percent powerful in a way that's going to tear America apart because
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America was not designed for that purpose.
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America was designed for the purpose of how do you get
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people with all these different,
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belief systems and values and stuff, to get along and be at peace, solve
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political conflict, peacefully have peaceful transitions of power.
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And, and you do that by limiting the power of the people in
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charge as much as possible.
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Who you serve?
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Jesse: They're supposed to be balancing each other.
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They balanced Akili with the two party system.
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It was supposed to be.
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Checks and balances checks in the system, right?
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Doug: Yeah.
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But now it's starting to try to get around that.
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And that's what I find fascinating.
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Is it in the end, I don't think that's going to be
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healthy for anybody in America.
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Jesse: Right.
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I wonder as we, as we kind of talk about these, this treating like people
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that understand who God is and have a healthier spectrum, as we talked
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about, they have more confidence and courage in other matters of their life.
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They don't let the.
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Fears that are being perpetuated, these smaller fears or these unfounded
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fears kind of rule their life.
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We see this a lot with, I mean, we all love movies.
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We talk about them quite a bit.
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You see this as a trope in a lot of movies where it's like the main character
22:27
has some innate fear that they end up overcoming to save the life of the
22:32
love interest or a child or whatever.
22:34
And it's like, you can kind of take that same thing.
22:38
In your walk with God is once you find something you care about more
22:43
than the thing you're afraid of, you're willing to do whatever you
22:46
need to, to do it if up to that step.
22:48
Right?
22:48
And so it's like, if we treat God the way that these main characters treat their
22:52
love, interests, children, whatever.
22:55
Then there's, it's not that we won't, you know, still have some fear, you know, we
23:00
have that, but it gives us this courage.
23:04
And we see, we talked about this last week on the podcast is the, Bible's
23:08
constantly filled with points in time where God, or an angel or somebody
23:11
saying fear, not I am with you.
23:13
I go before you, you, you know, I'm going to be with you.
23:17
And it's like, when you have that, it's like, Still recognize that
23:21
you have fear of it, but it's not going to rule your life instead.
23:24
You know, I know somebody bigger, better, stronger than
23:27
anything else the world can do.
23:29
And he's going before me to take care of it.
23:31
Doug: Yeah.
23:32
And I think that it has a lot to do with the greatest fear of
23:36
all, which is the fear of death.
23:38
You know, and, uh, you know, as a pastor over the last 34, 35 years, I've spent,
23:44
you know, the last few moments w uh, with a lot of people who have passed away.
23:48
And I can tell ya, it is unmistakably clear.
23:53
That people who know God who know Christ, um, are so much more at peace
24:00
than people who don't, you know.
24:03
And I mean, it's, it's a market difference between the two types of situations.
24:09
And I, cause I think people are afraid of death.
24:11
They are afraid of being wiped out of existence and.
24:15
You know, nativism is the result of, of meaninglessness.
24:21
And so the fear of death is, you know, w what brings our lives, meaning, and
24:26
now I don't want it to be meaningless.
24:28
And so we had this huge fear, and I think that, that corrupts down into every single
24:33
area of your life, you know, your response to the pandemic is directly proportional
24:37
to how afraid you are of death.
24:39
You know, because, and what we're trying to do.
24:42
And I think some people are so strongly opinionated about it because what we're
24:46
trying to do is a basic human drive.
24:49
And that is we're trying to impose control over something we don't have control over.
24:54
You know, and that's the thing about an a pneumatic virus and airborne virus
24:59
that's traveling around is, is that in the end, there's really, I mean, you can
25:05
try to slow it down or you can do other things, but, uh, blaming people and their
25:12
behaviors for, you know, that everybody's going to get infected eventually is
25:19
like arguing that it's gravity fault.
25:22
Yeah, it's gravity is a constant, a virus is going to get everyone eventually.
25:28
And there's really nothing we can do about that other than slow it down.
25:32
Jesse: Well, I think this is a great example of that exact thing.
25:35
When you were talking about where people who know Jesus and how to have.
25:40
An interesting response to the pandemic was when, when we first heard about
25:45
it, we encourage people to watch from home, but we never closed our doors.
25:49
We still had them open if people wanted to be in the building.
25:51
And what was interesting was some of the oldest, most at risk people were coming in
25:57
to the church to be at church on a Sunday.
26:00
And we're like, you're the most like in danger in there.
26:04
You know, I survived a war.
26:06
If this kills me, it kills me, but it's not going to stop me from spending
26:09
time in church and with God and doing what I'm going to do with God.
26:14
Yeah.
26:15
And so it's like, that was like the most fascinating thing.
26:17
It's like the people most at risk, we're the ones that are
26:18
like, I'm going to church.
26:20
And, If you guys have the doors open, I'm showing up.
26:23
And it was just like fascinating because you're the ones we're hiding for.
26:29
And it was like, they're like, whatever
26:31
happens, happens.
26:33
Doug: Yeah.
26:33
They, they were well, and it's interesting because they took it seriously.
26:37
They knew the dangers, they knew the risk.
26:40
It wasn't like they were being ignorant, you know, or Pollyannish about it.
26:43
They knew all that, but their faith, right.
26:46
Was more powerful than their fear.
26:50
And so, you know, I I'm, and I'm not trying to say that people who are taking
26:54
extensive measures, you know, to deal with this stuff are acting out of fear.
26:59
I'm not saying that at all.
27:00
I, I, you know, I fully support people who are getting vaccinated.
27:04
I think, especially if you're in a high risk population, I think
27:07
it's, um, you know, I've said this on the Salty Pastor before.
27:09
I think it's a medical modern day miracle that it's even available.
27:12
I think it's awesome.
27:13
And, but what I do think is that fear comes in when our choice
27:19
has to be everyone else's choice.
27:23
You see?
27:23
And I've seen that because I've seen some people who are saying,
27:25
I'm never going to get vaccinated.
27:27
And stuff.
27:27
I said, well, that's great for you.
27:29
And they say, and everybody else who does is, you know, something.
27:35
Yeah.
27:35
Okay.
27:37
You just went from rational to irrational in the blink of
27:39
an eye and then somebody else.
27:41
And I just read an article today.
27:43
This poor woman lost her husband.
27:45
You know, he was fully vaccinated and everything, and it was a breakthrough
27:49
case, but he had a lot of comorbidities.
27:51
He had all of these health issues, you know, heart disease problems and heart
27:55
attacks and all this kind of stuff.
27:56
And she said, the only reason my husband is dead is because
27:58
people won't get vaccinated.
28:00
I'm just like, yeah, I'm sorry.
28:02
You lost your husband, but that's totally irrational.
28:05
That's totally irrational.
28:06
Um, and so I think that's the difficulty is that you see, we go from rational
28:12
to irrational in the blink of an eye.
28:14
How is it that human Americans have become so shallow and so judgmental because
28:19
they've lost their respect for God.
28:22
That there's an objective
28:24
truth outside of ourselves that holds us accountable.
28:29
And because it holds us accountable, then that means every thought,
28:33
every action we have to think about, you know what I'm saying?
28:37
We have to think about it.
28:39
There's a limiting principle there.
28:41
And the limiting principle is, there's a God, I'm not him,
28:45
I'm not, God.
28:46
I, I cannot make choices for everybody else.
28:50
And I like the way you said it earlier in that is, is that,
28:53
you know, it's just, it's just really arrogant to live that way.
28:56
And yet we've become so opinionated and so want to impose our opinion on everybody
29:01
else that we're becoming a more arrogant
29:05
and shallow society because of it.
29:07
Zach: Yeah.
29:07
Well, I mean, I don't think it's any surprise when you believe that
29:11
there is a God that has created you and he has overall things and
29:14
you know him, it's a little bit hard to get too full of yourself.
29:18
Yeah.
29:18
You know, it's a little bit hard to get too full of yourself
29:20
when you read about Jesus.
29:21
Oh, yeah well, these a lot better than being a lot of different things.
29:24
So I should probably take a back seat, you know, but if you don't have that
29:29
and you know, as we talked about with postmodernism, it's all about your reality
29:33
and you know, what's the number one thing about post-modern, it's all about you.
29:36
It's all about.
29:37
Doug: me.
29:38
Yeah.
29:40
Zach: Uh, how could arrogance not arise from that?
29:42
Yeah.
29:43
And again, arrogance partners with insecurity because it's not built on
29:46
anything real, you know, everyone who builds, you know, the reason why this
29:50
guy wrote an article, you know, attacking Christmas tradition and trying to make it
29:54
sound like it's not some actual, you know, thing that was founded on grace and love
29:59
and gift giving is because he's insecure.
30:01
Yeah.
30:02
And you know, one of we, we talked about fears and what the great human fear is.
30:06
I think in most cases for people whose greatest fear is not God, it's
30:10
their greatest respect is not for God and his creation and his reality.
30:14
It usually becomes being left behind, being part of the crowd.
30:18
And I think that's why we see things
30:19
that move so fast and they get so shallow is because everybody just
30:22
doesn't want to be the law or the first person to stop clapping.
30:26
They don't care if there's nothing objective about.
30:29
There's not a single thing objective.
30:31
It's purely, I don't want to be the first person to stop, or I don't want to be the
30:34
person left behind, or I, you know, I want to be in this group and not that group.
30:37
And I don't know what it takes, but I'm just going to kind of hang out
30:40
here and that's not built on anything real that's built on insecurity.
30:44
And so those partners with arrogance and that's the, what is the world and our
30:49
culture is trying to highlight in people.
30:51
That's what it's trying to build up more than anything else.
30:54
And the way to combat that,
30:57
is to have our fear and our respect, you know, those ha pair those together.
31:02
When thinking about God, respecting him, knowing him, loving him and accepting
31:06
his love also recognizing he is the Supreme authority of the entire universe.
31:12
And we're accountable to him.
31:14
And pairing that with, you know, our understanding of reality, of truth.
31:21
How can you be arrogant in that?
31:23
How can you be overly self-confident?
31:25
I look at so much of this discourse on COVID and vaccines and, you know,
31:29
anything that happens that comes up politically, you know, even non
31:32
COVID things, but just like certain rights, whether it be abortion or
31:36
taxes or whatever it may be, and just seeing people speak so incredibly,
31:42
just engulfed with their own opinion.
31:44
It's incredible to me because I look at it and I'm like, well,
31:46
I can see how I get there.
31:47
I can see I get there.
31:48
And I just, I feel like I'm in this space because of my relationship
31:52
with Christ of being able to look at somebody and be like, yeah, they think
31:55
this, and I can see how they think this, and this is their experience.
31:57
And let's work together to make something better.
31:59
You know, because I know that I am not the center of the universe.
32:02
Right.
32:03
But if you think you're the center of the universe, it becomes, why is
32:05
that person not agreeing with me?
32:06
Well their dumb.
32:08
Oh, you know, and then they use because of the deconstructionism that's compare,
32:11
that's paired with the postmodernism.
32:14
All it takes is one little technicality, any little thing
32:17
you can bring somebody down for.
32:19
Oh, them they're not a reporter.
32:20
Throw them out.
32:21
So they're out.
32:21
They're not academic enough.
32:22
That's fine.
32:23
Oh, they use this statement wrong.
32:24
Boom.
32:25
And then.
32:26
Every single opinion.
32:28
You're the only thing that's left.
32:29
And then you don't have any joy because you're isolated.
32:32
Doug: You have no joy.
32:34
So,
32:35
Jesse: well, I've really enjoyed having both of you on the desk today.
32:38
It's been a great conversation.
32:39
Zach's going to um, kind of wrap up this portion that we've
32:42
been talking about this week.
32:44
Um, on Sunday as he shares a message.
32:46
And ultimately we just want you guys to be having discussions like this
32:49
with your friends and your family, um, really understanding what you
32:53
believe and why you believe it is the real point of this podcast.
32:57
We want to encourage you to critically think through your beliefs and
33:01
understand why you believe them.
33:02
Don't ride your parents theology.
33:03
Don't just do it because you know, your spouse or whatever does it.
33:07
It needs to be your belief system.
33:08
Otherwise it's not your belief system.
33:11
It's just affect, simile of one.
33:13
So please have discussions because that's going to be only grow you
33:17
and further your understanding of what you believe in why you do.
33:19
So thank you guys so much for joining us.
33:21
We hope you join us on Sunday here in beautiful Boise, Idaho
33:23
at Foothills Christian Church.
33:25
Doug: Blessings.