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[WW] Words Matter:Half Truths and Other Things Christians Say. Part 4 · The Wesley Word

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Wesley Ware.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: He's been doing a great series this month, and he's been going through a lot of phrases in this book by Adam Hamilton, Half Truths.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: The one on the cover is actually this phrase: God helps those who help themselves.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: God helps those who help themselves.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: Has anyone heard of that before?
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Show of hands?
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: No?
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: Only a couple.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: Come at this with a very fresh perspective.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: In the book, Adam Hamilton kind of talks about the origins of this phrase, why it's sort of become uh more mainstream in the idea of popular culture.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: I think at one time he says, um, and again, this might have been a few years uh before y'all's time, but eight in ten Americans thought that this phrase was uh in the Bible.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it's not in the Bible, but um it came into popular culture um a long time ago.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um Hamilton talks about the origins of you know Greek mythology in the fifth century BC, um, where this sort of thinking originated.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then during the time of the Enlightenment, Benjamin Franklin um popularized it in his book Poor Richards Almanac.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: Anyone heard of that one?
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, a little bit few more there.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um and you know, Hamilton calls it a half-truth.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he makes arguments for why he believes it's true, why he believes it's it's not true.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um his arguments for why it's true, you know, there's there's a cause and effect nature about the universe, right?
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: You don't you don't just get to not study for your exam and have your professor give you a hundred, even though Bella, we talked about that earlier today.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um Proverbs 1915, for example, says that laziness brings on deep sleep and the shiftless go hungry.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: Hamilton also makes arguments for why it's not true.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: And unfortunately, this phrase has been used as an excuse for inaction in the face of need.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: And it's funny, the Proverbs 19, 15 verse, just two verses later in 17, it says, Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will reward them for what they have done.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: So I think there's a there's an element of this God helps those who help themselves.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um there's some truth to it, but then you know, whoever is kind to the poor lends directly to the Lord.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so there's a struggle with this type of phrase, as you know, Steve has been going through with all these phrases.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: And to be honest, for me personally, you know, I definitely struggle with finding faults kind of in this particular saying, you know, self-reliance is a core value of Clemson University.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, there are parts of both my upbringing and you know my own experience and and wisdom that you know make it difficult to try to find something to um to kind of go against maybe some of the undertones of of what this is saying.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: And speaking of undertones, there's also a lot of political undertones in in this type of phrase and maybe how it's been um weaponized by different sides of particular political aisles.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'll steer clear from the politics of it because if you're trying to get a political stance from me, you're asking the wrong person.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um and there's probably likely institutions that create problems as well as those that solve problems.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um sometimes they're the same institution.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: What I want to talk about tonight is, you know, I think there's there's three other aspects of this in light of this story that Jack read for us, um, that I just think are much more intriguing when we talk about this phrase and the heart of this story.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you'll have to join me on a side quest as I talk about uh you know why it's important now more than ever to understand where phrases come from, how they're generated, and the syntax and semantics of this particular phrase.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um second is how the story of the Good Samaritan kind of obliterates the notion of policies and parties and sides and friends and enemies.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um then the third is just the very real personal good news that I find in the story of the Good Samaritan, which I think this half-truth of God helps those who help themselves fails to capture.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: My name is Schuler Cotton.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'm a 2018 Clemson graduate.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you may know my wife.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: We were talking earlier, she's everywhere.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm kind of tucked away in my basement over there in the athletics department.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but if we haven't met yet, um look forward to to getting to know you guys.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: Emily Elizabeth and I, you know, we're Wesley students and we help serve with Steve.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um we always love getting to know y'all.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so um, if either of us can ever do anything or you know, you want to grab coffee or lunch, we're happy to do that as well.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um but professionally I I work here because uh of my job uh at the athletics department.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh my official title is Assistant Athletics Director for Enterprise Systems and Analytics.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's a little bit of a mouthful.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um you may have heard the term analytics.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: Has anyone show of hands heard that term?
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know what it means fully or partially?
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, we got a couple people.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: It can be quite vague, it's a little buzzwordy, analytics.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, hey, what's what's this actually mean?
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um and there's one commentator, Tristan Andy, who put it this way: analytics is the practice of analyzing data to make truth claims.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: Hmm.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: Truth claims, that's that's kind of interesting.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um Analytics has grown tremendously in the in the past decade, and it's obviously allowed me to um make a living.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um I do enjoy lots of lots of facets of it.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um and the data that we collect now in our society has grown tremendously, thus the rise of analytics.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: And just like in the Enlightenment era of Benjamin Franklin's day, you know, this new information age that we find ourselves in, it's ushered in an era of trying to make sense of the world given all this new information.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: So, this of course has culminated in everyone's favorite personal assistant.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: First name chat, last name GPT.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: Anyone have heard of that?
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, we got a few more nods.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: All right, we're slowly things we've heard of is increasing.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, AI will will, you know, the thought process is hey, AI will help me make sense of this or that.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's seen everything, it's read everything that's on the internet.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's it knows what's best in most situations.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: It can help me make sense of both the world at large, but also my daily environment, even suggest actions I might take amongst my friends and peers.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I'm not anti-AI or immune to it myself.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: I use it professionally, personally, most days.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: But I hope you see that the way that it operates, how it functions, it's it potentially creates a lot of dangerous situations.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um has a significant ability to take all this past data and spit out something that seems true, but maybe a half-truth.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: An analysis here that seems plausible, a takeaway here that seems good, but similar to the half-truth that we're looking at this evening, God helps those who helps them who help themselves, which Benjamin Franklin tried to collate all of the information that he was seeing in that new era and make these claims in poor Richard's almanac.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: The final output, the final phrase, it's just a model that's trying to make sense of the information it sees.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: It can't be true.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: It can't be.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, Steve, for the podcast.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: It can't be true in every situation, can it?
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: Now, much more important than the jargon and the words and the large language models and how does phrases get generated.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, there's much more important text here to examine.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um I always find the words of, especially today, like I always find the words of Jesus to be much more soothing and calming uh versus this kind of era of fire hydrant level of information that we deal with every day.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: We'll read through this passage um again, although I appreciate you, Jack, for reading it for us.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um this time we're gonna be good Samaritans, we're gonna slow down carefully, examine what's going on, starting in verse 25.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: On one occasion, an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: Teacher, he asked, what must I do to inherit eternal life?
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: Am I going to heaven or not?
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of the big question, kind of like a lot, a really big question that I've wrestled with throughout my life.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: Am I going to make it?
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: Am I doing enough?
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: What's beyond this life?
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: I joke, of course, but you know, I think death is something that we all think about uh more than we'd like to admit it or not.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, these kind of questions drive us to ask these deeper questions, um, such as the teacher of the law asks here.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus replied, What is written in the law?
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: How do you read it?
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: He answered, Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: You have answered correctly, Jesus replied.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: Do this and you will live.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: All right, sweet.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: I've narrowed it down from all the possible sayings and all the possible things that I need to be doing to inherit eternal life.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: But wait a second.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: I I need to get a few more specifics first, just so I know what I can optimize for.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a data analyst, after all.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: What's the best usage of my time?
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: What's going to be the best for the people that need my help, for the people that I'm serving?
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: Which policies, which service organizations, which parties should I promote and vote for?
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, and who is my neighbor?
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: In reply, Jesus said, A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho when he was attacked by robbers.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: They stripped him of his clothes, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the stretch of road that was actually in Jerusalem, uh, in between Jerusalem and Jericho at that time, the two towns actually weren't too far apart.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: It was called the Bloody Way.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: It was notorious for things like this happening at that time, and we have no reason to believe that Jesus' uh story wasn't just a parable, but it was plausible.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: It was plausible to the listener of the day of the day.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: So, too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him pass by on the other side.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: My takeaway from this is there will be people in this life that that pass by on the other side, and oftentimes it's me, oftentimes it's us.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's sure, sometimes it's pure coldness or apathy or evil.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: But oftentimes, I find this in my own life, I make up fairly good sounding reasons as to why I shouldn't stop.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: Make up my own half-truths as to why I can't come to the aid of another.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, my family really needs me.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: I made a commitment to them.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: I gotta get home.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know the first thing about wound care.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: What I'll do more harm than good.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: I can't possibly carry this guy to the end by myself.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is the bloody way.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: I have no chance I'm stopping here.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'll be half dead right next to the guy.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was, and when he saw him, he took pity on him.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn, and took care of him.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: The next day he took out two dinari and gave them to the innkeeper.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: Look after him, he said.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: And when I return, I'll reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's such a great story of compassion.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: Going the extra mile.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: And not just for a complete stranger, even an enemy of the Jews, a Samaritan.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's a great story of not passing the buck.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you should ask so-and-so.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: They've got more time than I do.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: You should talk to so-and-so.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: They've I've only got two denarii.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: They'll be much more financially capable.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's a great story of not being afraid.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: Unlike the lawyer who was afraid, when he asked Jesus, Who is my neighbor?
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: And how do I inherit eternal life?
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: The expert in the law replied, the one who had mercy on him.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: And Jesus told him, Go and do likewise.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: Now the love of our neighbor is not a condition of salvation, but hopefully it's a fruit of it.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: What the law requires, what the experts knew, Jesus said, My good news will actually produce within you.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: And the gospel, the good news is this that God loved us so much that he came to us in our lowly, half-dead state, caused not simply by misfortune, but by our own iniquities, our own shortcomings, wounds that we have brought upon ourselves.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: God may yet help those who help themselves.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: I hope to ask him someday.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: But my hope is that I'll have that moment with him face to face.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: Having inherited eternal life, that hope is solely in the fact that Jesus stopped to tend to me.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: Not with wine and oil, but with his body and blood.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: And that is the full truth.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's what I reckon with to get past my own judgments, my own analyses, and to live more fully into Jesus' call of mercy.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'll close with this story.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: I entered Clemson as a freshman in the fall of 2014.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: And just six weeks before, uh, my family used to go up to my aunt's farm in New Jersey about every other summer.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's a beautiful place in the countryside, if you've never been to central New Jersey.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: Lots and lots of plush farmland.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of in the middle of nowhere where they lived.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: And it was towards the end of the trip, take about a week-long trip, and my dad and I were kind of itching to do something different.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: So we grabbed some bikes out of their barn and headed up the long gravel driveway, took a left, went out onto the main road.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: It was a beautiful, pleasant trip on a sunny summer day.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: As we were rounding the corner to come back to the house or to the barn, I see my dad traveling probably no more than three miles an hour on his bike, and he lost his balance.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: He just fell over on his right side.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how it happened.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: I immediately threw my bike to the ground.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: I saw his body hit the pavement and um, you know, rushed, quickly rushed to his side, turned him over on his back.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: The wind had gotten knocked out of him, so he couldn't really say anything.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: He was just kind of groaning in pain.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: And then I saw blood coming from his from his head.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: It was probably one of the scariest moments of my life.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um I panicked.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: I quickly kind of looked at my surroundings.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't have a phone on me.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: We were kind of in the middle of nowhere.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: I was it was just close enough to maybe bike back to the farm and try to get someone's attention.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I told him something that I don't know if it was true in that moment.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know if it was true or not, but I said, You're gonna be okay.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna be right back and I'm gonna get you help.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I grabbed my bike, pedaled down as fast as I could down to the farm.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, there were people coming in the opposite direction.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, hey, there's a guy up there, he's hurt on a on a on a bike, fell off a bike.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: As soon as I hit the gravel driveway, sprinted towards the barn, yelling for whoever I could to uh call 911.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: My dad's brother actually came running up the opposite direction, uh, sprinting towards my dad's side.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: And thankfully, neither he nor the EMTs were the first people there to attend to my dad's wounds.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: There just so happened to be a nurse who lived in a neighboring farm.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: I kind of saw the whole thing play out.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: Excuse me.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: She helped him enough to get him to the ambulance.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: We transported him to the Trenton, New Jersey head trauma center, where he thankfully, by the grace of God, made a full recovery from a fractured skull, fractured scapula, five broken ribs, and a major concussion.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: I can still see his face looking up at me, unable to speak.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's my dad laying right there.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, half to me, could have been half dead.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: He's my hero, he's my best friend.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like there was no nothing else in the world could have possibly taken my attention away from the sense of urgency that I needed in order to save him.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: And as I was preparing for this talk, I think that's the main thing that God wanted me to take away was that sense of urgency, that, you know, level of attentiveness.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's what he wants from us.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: There's no time to slow down and ponder who actually is my neighbor.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: There's no time to do long-term statistical or analytical studies of the efficacy of me helping the guy on the side of the street, and you know, he's asking me for a meal, and is this going to help him in the long run?
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: There's no time to do argue and bicker about the societal debates and policies and programs that so easily divide us.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's people all around us that are literally and figuratively half-dead from the misfortune of pain, suffering, loneliness, PTSD, cancer, from the weight of sin, from the pit of addiction to alcohol, drugs, food, pornography, our mobile devices.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm charging myself today, and whether it's my dad or not, to have that same level of urgency that I did that one summer day, as I daily go into the world that's around me.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: Go and do likewise, our Lord says.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: The Wesley Word is a production of the Clemson Wesley Foundation.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: For more information about Clemson Wesley, check out our website or follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, get out there and love your neighbor.