Latest / Finding God at Work / 2: More than Information

Transcript

2: More than Information · Finding God at Work

• 0:06
  (Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hi, I'm Chris.
• 0:08
  This is Finding God at Work.
• 0:14
  In our current series, Fruitful Work, we're asking
• 0:16
  the question, what kind of fruit am I
• 0:18
  bearing at work?
• 0:20
  Because we don't always bear the fruit that
• 0:21
  we really deeply want to.
• 0:23
  And by God's grace, by the power of
• 0:25
  the Holy Spirit, we can bear fruit that
• 0:27
  is good.
• 0:32
  I want to start with a story.
• 0:35
  One of my earliest memories is my third
• 0:37
  birthday party, and I was served a slice
• 0:40
  of beautiful chocolate cake with a generous scoop
• 0:43
  of vanilla ice cream on top.
• 0:45
  And my little three-year-old mind, I
• 0:47
  looked at that delicious a la mode dessert,
• 0:49
  and then I looked at the utensils to
• 0:51
  the right of the plate.
• 0:53
  There was a fork, and there was a
• 0:55
  spoon.
• 0:56
  And I thought, oh my, cake, fork, ice
• 1:00
  cream, spoon.
• 1:02
  What will I do?
• 1:04
  And so I just smashed my face into
• 1:06
  it and ate it that way.
• 1:08
  And everybody laughed.
• 1:10
  It's probably why I actually remember my third
• 1:12
  birthday party was that moment of everybody laughing
• 1:14
  because of how I cut the Gordian knot
• 1:16
  and found a third way to solve the
• 1:18
  utensil dessert problem.
• 1:20
  So often in our lives, we need a
• 1:22
  third way.
• 1:23
  We're presented with just two options, but we
• 1:25
  know, ah, there's a third way.
• 1:27
  It's Coke or Pepsi, but ah, there's Dr.
• 1:29
  Pepper, right?
• 1:29
  It's Democrat or Republican, but ah, oh, eh.
• 1:32
  Maybe there's not as much hope on that
• 1:33
  one as Dr. Pepper.
• 1:35
  But we long for that, right?
• 1:36
  We long for something that can overcome the
• 1:38
  dichotomy between the political left and the political
• 1:40
  right because most Americans are actually somewhere in
• 1:42
  the middle.
• 1:43
  And as disciples of Jesus, especially, there's things
• 1:45
  to give us pause with either of the
• 1:47
  major party platforms.
• 1:49
  We can even think about this in terms
• 1:50
  of teams.
• 1:51
  Is it better to have a creative, intuitive
• 1:53
  approach or an analytical, rational approach?
• 1:56
  It's actually helpful to somehow integrate the two,
• 1:58
  to bring them together, to find a creativity
• 2:02
  and bringing things together that are unanticipated.
• 2:04
  And you can have logical reasoning and maybe
• 2:06
  actually hit deadlines sometimes.
• 2:08
  So we have this longing for the third
• 2:10
  way.
• 2:10
  When there's a false dichotomy, when there's a
• 2:12
  false either-or, we want a way to
• 2:16
  transcend that, to get beyond it, to find
• 2:18
  a different way forward.
• 2:20
  Well, in our current series, Fruitful Work, we're
• 2:22
  looking at this question, what kind of fruit
• 2:25
  at work am I bearing?
• 2:26
  And often, there are approaches to how do
• 2:31
  we become the kind of people we want
• 2:33
  to be that we might be familiar with
• 2:35
  in our culture.
• 2:37
  So, for example, maybe you have the perspective
• 2:40
  that you're going to watch TED talks about
• 2:42
  psychology.
• 2:43
  And because you're going to absorb as much
• 2:45
  as you can about emotional health through that,
• 2:47
  whether it's Brene Brown or other researchers who
• 2:51
  have great insights about human psychology, you're just
• 2:53
  going to absorb that.
• 2:54
  And that's going to help you be a
• 2:54
  healthy, whole human being.
• 2:57
  And that's going to make a difference in
• 2:58
  your workplace and everywhere else in your life.
• 3:01
  And I'm actually really grateful for all the
• 3:03
  insights we can glean from psychology, sociology, other
• 3:06
  disciplines.
• 3:07
  If we integrate those insights with our faith
• 3:09
  as followers of Jesus, they can be incredibly
• 3:11
  helpful as we live out our everyday lives.
• 3:14
  At the same time, sometimes people take this
• 3:18
  angle on it as though just getting the
• 3:20
  right information, getting the right psychological information, getting
• 3:23
  the right social justice information, whatever it is,
• 3:25
  that that is the path to deep inner
• 3:28
  goodness.
• 3:29
  That's the thing.
• 3:29
  That's all we need is just the right
• 3:31
  information.
• 3:32
  And now on the flip side, different kind
• 3:34
  of challenge.
• 3:35
  I was raised in a relatively traditional evangelical
• 3:38
  subculture.
• 3:39
  And if you're in certain religious communities, you
• 3:42
  might have an attitude about deep inner goodness
• 3:44
  that's all about following the rules.
• 3:46
  So when I was in high school, we
• 3:48
  didn't just have rules about class work and
• 3:51
  rules about academic things.
• 3:52
  We had rules about moral things and about
• 3:54
  how we dressed and about the words we
• 3:56
  used.
• 3:56
  And it was like, this was kind of
• 3:58
  the philosophy.
• 3:58
  You've got a bunch of teenagers together.
• 3:59
  What do they need?
• 4:00
  They need rules.
• 4:01
  Got to keep them controlled.
• 4:02
  Got to keep them in line.
• 4:04
  And religious communities are particularly prone to this,
• 4:06
  this approach where it's like, if we can
• 4:08
  just figure out all the right rules to
• 4:10
  follow, then things will be OK.
• 4:14
  So there's kind of these two pathways that
• 4:16
  occur in many different cultures, what we might
• 4:18
  call the pathway of knowledge or wisdom.
• 4:20
  If you can just think the right things,
• 4:22
  you can just learn the right things.
• 4:23
  If you can just study the right scholars,
• 4:25
  then you'll have deep inner goodness or this
• 4:27
  kind of pathway of that's a rule based.
• 4:29
  If I can just find the right rules,
• 4:30
  if I can just honor the right code,
• 4:32
  if I can just keep the right rituals,
• 4:34
  then I'll find deep inner goodness.
• 4:36
  Then I'll be OK.
• 4:38
  The bad news is neither of these really
• 4:40
  works.
• 4:41
  And we've probably we think on our own
• 4:44
  experience can realize that like it's one thing
• 4:46
  to know an idea, but knowing an idea
• 4:48
  by itself does not give you the power
• 4:49
  to live out that idea.
• 4:51
  And if you've ever tried really hard to
• 4:52
  live out an idea that kind of cuts
• 4:54
  against the grain of your own habits, you
• 4:56
  know that that's true.
• 4:57
  Like, like I have understood the theory behind
• 4:59
  the benefits of exercise since I was a
• 5:01
  kid.
• 5:01
  I do not need someone to persuade me
• 5:03
  of the scientific merit of the idea that
• 5:05
  exercise is good for you.
• 5:07
  But does that mean that I have a
• 5:08
  habit, a regular exercise in my life?
• 5:10
  Well, that certainly hasn't been true.
• 5:11
  It wasn't true during most of my 20s.
• 5:12
  And I'm trying to make change my habits
• 5:15
  now in my 30s and see if I
• 5:16
  would really like to have a regular habit
• 5:17
  of exercise.
• 5:18
  But the information is it's not enough.
• 5:21
  Similarly, rules by themselves do not produce deep
• 5:24
  inner goodness.
• 5:25
  All those handbook things, did that suddenly change
• 5:27
  and transform the hearts of me and my
• 5:29
  classmates?
• 5:30
  No, it didn't.
• 5:31
  There was still words of contempt and cuss
• 5:34
  words and people acting out sexually and all
• 5:35
  the things that teenagers do.
• 5:37
  Those things still happened at my Christian high
• 5:40
  school.
• 5:40
  Why?
• 5:41
  Because rules don't have the power to change
• 5:43
  the heart, right?
• 5:44
  They can be a good way of regulating
• 5:46
  things, but they don't really get to who
• 5:48
  you are in your character.
• 5:50
  So we're structuring this series by looking at
• 5:53
  Paul's letter to the Galatians and specifically his
• 5:56
  famous fruit of the spirit passage, which comes
• 5:58
  in chapter five.
• 5:59
  But chapter five comes after chapters one through
• 6:01
  four.
• 6:02
  And part of what Paul does in the
• 6:04
  kind of letter to the Galatians overall is
• 6:06
  he's actually offering a third way between these
• 6:09
  two different ways of conceiving deep inner goodness.
• 6:12
  On the one hand, you have what the
• 6:14
  Stoic philosophers would have taught.
• 6:16
  They were contemporary with Paul.
• 6:18
  Their ideas would have influenced the culture that
• 6:20
  the Galatians lived in.
• 6:22
  And then on the other hand, you have
• 6:24
  a Jewish perspective, some early disciples of Jesus
• 6:27
  who were Jewish, who had a misunderstanding about
• 6:30
  the place of the Jewish law in the
• 6:33
  life of the disciples of Jesus.
• 6:34
  And Paul is primarily addressing that second group
• 6:36
  whom he calls the agitators, like they're agitating
• 6:39
  things, they're stirring things up, they're confusing the
• 6:41
  Galatians, and Paul wants to kind of offer
• 6:44
  a corrective.
• 6:44
  But you can also see in the background
• 6:46
  his dialogue, so to speak, or his conversation
• 6:49
  with the Stoic position as well.
• 6:53
  So I just want to paint a picture
• 6:54
  of that Stoic position in this episode.
• 6:57
  And then in the next episode, we'll paint
• 6:59
  a picture of the Jewish agitator's position.
• 7:02
  And we'll see how Paul kind of transcends,
• 7:05
  finds that third way that goes beyond each
• 7:07
  of them.
• 7:07
  And then we'll finally be ready to dig
• 7:09
  into the fruit of the spirit itself.
• 7:12
  Okay, so who were the Stoics?
• 7:14
  And why do they matter to understanding the
• 7:15
  fruit of the spirit?
• 7:17
  Well, I want to be fair to the
• 7:18
  Stoics and let them speak for themselves, just
• 7:20
  like we're reading the New Testament texts and
• 7:22
  understanding what did Paul actually say?
• 7:24
  What did he actually mean?
• 7:25
  Let's read the other primary texts that we
• 7:27
  have from the same era.
• 7:29
  So one of the leading Stoic philosophers who
• 7:30
  was alive at the same time as Paul
• 7:32
  was named Seneca.
• 7:34
  He was a Roman, he had responsibilities under
• 7:36
  Emperor Nero, and then he wrote a great
• 7:38
  many letters to other people towards the end
• 7:40
  of his life, especially explaining Stoic philosophy.
• 7:44
  And so I want to read a few
• 7:44
  excerpts from those letters, which I think will
• 7:46
  kind of together give you a sense of
• 7:48
  how the Stoic philosophy works.
• 7:51
  So this is from his letter written to
• 7:54
  Serenus on the subject of peace of mind.
• 7:57
  And Seneca says, in every station of life,
• 8:00
  you will find amusements, relaxations and enjoyments.
• 8:03
  That is, provided you be willing to make
• 8:05
  a light of evils rather than to hate
• 8:07
  them.
• 8:08
  It almost sounds like he's giving an advertisement
• 8:10
  for like a vacation getaway.
• 8:11
  Amusements, relaxations and enjoyments.
• 8:14
  But then he talks about evil.
• 8:15
  He says you've got to be willing to
• 8:17
  make a light of evils rather than to
• 8:19
  hate them.
• 8:20
  So his point is there's going to be
• 8:21
  ups in your life and there's going to
• 8:22
  be downs in your life.
• 8:23
  There's going to be good experiences and there's
• 8:25
  going to be bad experiences.
• 8:26
  But it's not actually the bad experiences that
• 8:28
  rob you of peace of mind.
• 8:30
  It's the way you think about the bad
• 8:32
  experiences that rob you of the peace of
• 8:34
  mind.
• 8:34
  If you can learn to make a light
• 8:36
  of evils, make light of the bad experiences
• 8:39
  rather than hate them, then you'll actually still
• 8:42
  be able to find the good stuff that's
• 8:43
  there in the experience.
• 8:45
  You'll still be able to find the amusements,
• 8:46
  the relaxations and the enjoyments.
• 8:48
  So you'll see in this a kind of
• 8:49
  key feature of stoic philosophy, which is mind
• 8:52
  over matter.
• 8:53
  The idea that what you think is going
• 8:56
  to determine whether you're really in distress or
• 8:58
  not.
• 8:59
  And the right way of thinking is kind
• 9:01
  of your ticket out of unnecessary distress.
• 9:04
  You see this again in a different way
• 9:06
  in his letter number 59 to Lucilius.
• 9:10
  The wise man is joyful, happy and calm,
• 9:14
  unshaken.
• 9:15
  He lives on a plane with the gods.
• 9:17
  Now go question yourself if you are never
• 9:19
  downcast, if your mind is not harassed by
• 9:22
  any apprehension through anticipation of what is to
• 9:24
  come.
• 9:24
  If day and night your soul keeps on
• 9:26
  its even and unswerving course upright and content
• 9:29
  with itself, then you have attained the greatest
• 9:31
  good that mortals can possess.
• 9:33
  If, however, you seek pleasures in all kinds
• 9:36
  of directions, you must know that you are
• 9:37
  as far short of wisdom as you are
• 9:39
  short of joy.
• 9:40
  Joy is the goal which you desire to
• 9:42
  reach, but you are wandering from the path
• 9:43
  as if you expect to reach your goal
• 9:45
  while you're in the midst of riches.
• 9:47
  OK, so you can kind of get why
• 9:51
  Seneca became popular.
• 9:52
  He has this great kind of polemical, almost
• 9:54
  funny way of addressing his opponents.
• 9:56
  But he's getting at this difference between this
• 9:58
  kind of serene, tranquil kind of joy, a
• 10:01
  deep joy that doesn't depend on your circumstances,
• 10:03
  and a more superficial chasing after pleasures.
• 10:07
  This chasing after pleasures actually had a technical
• 10:09
  term.
• 10:10
  It was called living by your passions.
• 10:13
  So the passions were understood to be these
• 10:14
  kind of irrational, emotional responses.
• 10:18
  Now, not irrational in the sense that your
• 10:19
  thinking wasn't involved in them.
• 10:21
  Actually, Seneca believed that your thinking is what
• 10:23
  determined your irrational responses, just irrational thinking.
• 10:26
  The wrong kind of thinking is what determined
• 10:28
  these emotional responses.
• 10:30
  But they would be things like pain and
• 10:32
  pleasure, desire and fear.
• 10:35
  And so pleasure is that sort of superficial,
• 10:38
  my body has a desire, so I'm going
• 10:39
  to go satisfy it, right?
• 10:41
  And I'm going to feel good.
• 10:42
  He's like, if you do that, you're not
• 10:44
  actually going to have deep joy because when
• 10:46
  you're deprived of your pleasures, then what?
• 10:48
  If your pleasure is dependent upon circumstances, it's
• 10:51
  not very profound.
• 10:53
  Whereas this joyful, happy and calm, unshaken, wise
• 10:56
  person, they can experience joy in all the
• 10:59
  ups and downs because they're thinking about things
• 11:00
  rightly.
• 11:02
  And the method here that Seneca recommends is
• 11:06
  rational reflection.
• 11:07
  So if thinking the wrong way is what
• 11:09
  leads to these kind of superficial responses, then
• 11:14
  thinking in the right way, rational philosophical reflection,
• 11:18
  that's what gives you wisdom.
• 11:19
  And that's what he encourages.
• 11:20
  He encourages everybody to read Plato, read Aristotle,
• 11:24
  read the other philosophers, read the Stoics, read
• 11:26
  my letters, and then, you know, you'll get
• 11:28
  closer to wisdom.
• 11:30
  So it's about knowledge.
• 11:31
  It's about how can I take what I
• 11:33
  know about reality, think about things in the
• 11:36
  right way, and then overcome that kind of
• 11:39
  more superficial reaction.
• 11:42
  Now, Seneca and other Stoics came in for
• 11:44
  a great deal of criticism about just this
• 11:46
  approach because other people from different philosophical schools
• 11:49
  would say, that's not how feelings work.
• 11:51
  Like, you can't just think your way out
• 11:53
  of feelings.
• 11:53
  Like, you're going to feel sad if you
• 11:54
  have a family member that dies.
• 11:55
  You're going to feel afraid if circumstances are
• 11:58
  looming over you.
• 11:59
  But Seneca won't have it.
• 12:01
  Seneca replies to this.
• 12:02
  You know, he's giving an example of somebody's
• 12:04
  making this argument.
• 12:04
  And he says, and do you know why
• 12:06
  we have not the power to attain the
• 12:07
  Stoic ideal?
• 12:09
  It is because we refuse to believe in
• 12:11
  our power.
• 12:12
  Nay, I've assured you there is something else
• 12:14
  which plays a part.
• 12:15
  It is because we are in love with
• 12:16
  our vices.
• 12:17
  We uphold them and prefer to make excuses
• 12:18
  for them rather than shake them off.
• 12:20
  We mortals have been endowed with sufficient strength
• 12:22
  by nature.
• 12:23
  If only we use this strength.
• 12:25
  If only we concentrate our powers and arouse
• 12:27
  them all to help us, or at least
• 12:28
  not to hinder us.
• 12:29
  The reason is unwillingness, the excuse, inability.
• 12:33
  That's from his letter number 116 to Lucilius.
• 12:37
  So again, it's funny to read Seneca.
• 12:40
  He is so persuaded of his own view,
• 12:42
  so energetic.
• 12:44
  And yet, what's he basically saying?
• 12:45
  He's basically saying, try harder, right?
• 12:48
  You think that that's not how you control
• 12:49
  feelings.
• 12:50
  You haven't really given it the old college
• 12:51
  try.
• 12:52
  You haven't really given it what it really
• 12:53
  demands of you.
• 12:54
  If you're making excuses for yourself, if you
• 12:57
  really just commit yourself to rational philosophical reflection
• 13:00
  and think the right ways, you will get
• 13:02
  there.
• 13:03
  Nature has endowed us with sufficient strength.
• 13:07
  Okay, so this might sound extreme, but it's
• 13:11
  not that different than what a lot of
• 13:13
  us tend to do.
• 13:14
  Again, think about how common it is to
• 13:17
  read a self help book and say, if
• 13:19
  I can just get the ideas down in
• 13:20
  the self help book, then I'll be okay.
• 13:23
  In our last series, I mentioned Tony Robbins
• 13:24
  and how popular he's been for decades, because
• 13:26
  people feel like, if I can just internalize
• 13:28
  the ideas that Tony is saying, then I'll
• 13:31
  be able to live life in a way
• 13:32
  that's really satisfying.
• 13:34
  It's really full of the things that I
• 13:35
  want it to have.
• 13:36
  If I can just, like Seneca, think the
• 13:38
  right thoughts, then maybe I'll find that inner
• 13:41
  strength.
• 13:42
  There's a kind of positive thinking power to
• 13:44
  the people dynamic here, where he says, it's
• 13:47
  because we refuse to believe in our own
• 13:48
  power.
• 13:49
  You get those inspirational speakers who say, you
• 13:51
  know, like, what really matters is what's inside
• 13:54
  of you, right?
• 13:55
  If you can just harness the power within,
• 13:57
  then you'll have all the resources you need
• 13:58
  to live the life you want.
• 14:00
  Seneca would have made a great, like life
• 14:02
  coach, inspirational speaker.
• 14:04
  But this is where we hit a problem,
• 14:06
  the problem of how bad we are at
• 14:10
  converting truth to action.
• 14:13
  As human beings, if you consider truth to
• 14:15
  be an input, right, right thinking, that's really
• 14:17
  important.
• 14:18
  And then action to be an output.
• 14:20
  We garble it up in the middle.
• 14:22
  We cause all sorts of problems in that
• 14:23
  middle step.
• 14:24
  Because we're not just working with ideas.
• 14:27
  We're also working with our bodies and our
• 14:29
  bodies are not just a result of ideas.
• 14:32
  They're also a result of how we've been
• 14:34
  formed over time through habit, through routine, through
• 14:38
  just the things that we do over and
• 14:40
  over again.
• 14:41
  And this is exactly what Paul gets at
• 14:43
  when he talks about what he calls the
• 14:46
  works of the flesh.
• 14:48
  Again, Paul's kind of in dialogue with the
• 14:50
  philosophical customs of his time, because one of
• 14:53
  the things that others would do is they
• 14:55
  would create vice lists and virtue lists.
• 14:58
  And so Paul says, well, I can do
• 14:59
  that.
• 14:59
  I can create a vice list and a
• 15:00
  virtue list.
• 15:01
  And that's actually what the fruit of the
• 15:02
  spirit is, is it's Paul's version of a
• 15:04
  virtue list, but it's immediately preceded by a
• 15:07
  vice list.
• 15:08
  So I want to read that because it
• 15:09
  actually puts the virtue list of the fruit
• 15:11
  of the spirit in context.
• 15:13
  Paul says, but the works of the flesh
• 15:16
  are evident, sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery,
• 15:22
  enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions,
• 15:27
  divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.
• 15:33
  So that's that's Paul's vice list.
• 15:36
  Now, some of the things on that list
• 15:37
  might seem kind of extreme, like orgies, although
• 15:39
  if you go to any major metropolitan area
• 15:41
  in the United States today, I think that's
• 15:42
  probably still an issue that's affecting real people's
• 15:44
  lives.
• 15:45
  But it's important to point out that Paul
• 15:47
  is not just talking about like bodily appetites.
• 15:49
  He does include those like sexual immorality, impurity,
• 15:52
  sensuality, drunkenness.
• 15:54
  But he also looks at social dynamics with
• 15:56
  equal attention.
• 15:58
  So the envy, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries,
• 16:01
  he's saying you might have something inside of
• 16:03
  you that causes you to be clickish in
• 16:05
  a way that breaks down true community.
• 16:08
  You might be prone to be really jealous
• 16:09
  of another person's prestige or maybe their possessions.
• 16:13
  You might give yourself to fantasizing about revenge
• 16:16
  or indulging in contemptful anger.
• 16:19
  And then he also has a spiritual category
• 16:21
  here.
• 16:22
  He mentions idolatry and sorcery.
• 16:25
  Again, we might not be tempted to think
• 16:27
  of idolatry in terms of worshiping idols like
• 16:30
  physical idols, although depending on our religious background,
• 16:33
  that might be something that's been part of
• 16:34
  our experience.
• 16:36
  But any time that we are seeking spiritual
• 16:38
  power from a source other than the God
• 16:40
  revealed in Jesus Christ, that is idolatry.
• 16:43
  And that's actually the heart of sorcery as
• 16:45
  well as trying to use spiritual power outside
• 16:47
  of the covenantal authority of God.
• 16:50
  I mean, there's ways that that shows up
• 16:51
  in our culture today.
• 16:53
  Again, even in maybe a new age context
• 16:55
  or even a self help context where it's
• 16:56
  like, I will find the power within that
• 17:00
  attitude is basically an attitude of sorcery.
• 17:02
  It's an attitude of magic.
• 17:04
  It's I'm going to use spiritual power for
• 17:06
  my purposes, apart from any kind of covenant
• 17:08
  standing with an authoritative God.
• 17:11
  Okay, so that's just to say that Paul's
• 17:13
  talking about multiple categories in his vice list,
• 17:16
  the sensual, the social, and the magical or
• 17:20
  sorcery.
• 17:21
  Oh, that alliterated.
• 17:22
  I didn't even attend that sensual, social sorcery.
• 17:25
  Oh, that's all the lions and tigers and
• 17:27
  bears.
• 17:27
  Oh my, that's what Paul's doing with his
• 17:29
  vice list.
• 17:30
  But what he also does with his vice
• 17:32
  list is he frames it with a very
• 17:34
  specific phrase.
• 17:35
  He calls it works of the flesh.
• 17:39
  And the word flesh there, it really does
• 17:41
  mean flesh.
• 17:42
  It does mean your body.
• 17:43
  And sometimes you might have heard a teacher
• 17:45
  or preacher say now Paul doesn't mean that
• 17:47
  the body is bad and they're right.
• 17:48
  He doesn't mean that the body is bad,
• 17:49
  but he does actually refer to your body.
• 17:52
  When he says the flesh, it's just your
• 17:53
  body understood in a specific perspective.
• 17:57
  The philosopher who I often cite Dallas Willard,
• 17:59
  he puts it like this.
• 18:00
  He says the flesh is quote the body
• 18:03
  formed in the ways of evil and against
• 18:06
  God.
• 18:07
  That's from his essay, the human body and
• 18:09
  spiritual growth, because our bodies are routine factories.
• 18:14
  We learn things and they get reinforced by
• 18:16
  routine over and over.
• 18:17
  So think about when you first learned to
• 18:18
  drive, when you were starting, you had to
• 18:20
  remind yourself, look in the mirror, put your
• 18:23
  hands at 10 and two, right?
• 18:25
  Turn on my signal, right?
• 18:27
  Check my blind spot.
• 18:28
  You have to consciously do all of these
• 18:30
  things.
• 18:31
  Well, now hopefully when you drive, you do
• 18:32
  all those things without even thinking they're just
• 18:34
  automatic.
• 18:35
  And the reason they're automatic is because you've
• 18:37
  done them hundreds of times.
• 18:38
  And that's actually the way your body is
• 18:40
  designed to work.
• 18:41
  Your nervous system embeds those signals so that
• 18:43
  they become what we call muscle memory.
• 18:45
  It's actually nerve memory.
• 18:47
  So that we can just do things without
• 18:49
  even thinking about it.
• 18:50
  That's a good way.
• 18:51
  That's the way your body works.
• 18:52
  But because that's the way your body works,
• 18:55
  you can also have really bad evil, contrary
• 18:58
  to God habits that continue to express themselves
• 19:01
  even once you become a follower of Jesus.
• 19:04
  So while we're talking about driving, think about
• 19:05
  what happens when somebody cuts you off in
• 19:07
  traffic.
• 19:08
  Do you have an immediate reaction of anger?
• 19:10
  Maybe you say, oh, what a jerk, or
• 19:11
  maybe you cussed them out or something like
• 19:12
  that.
• 19:13
  The more often you have that exact emotional
• 19:16
  response, the easier it's going to be for
• 19:18
  you to have the same emotional response when
• 19:20
  the same situation occurs in the future.
• 19:22
  This is the way our brains work.
• 19:23
  This is the way our bodies work.
• 19:25
  We are routine factories.
• 19:28
  And that includes routines that reflect the things
• 19:30
  that Paul was talking about on his vice
• 19:32
  list.
• 19:32
  So so that burst of anger, if you
• 19:34
  indulge it, that's kind of like what Paul
• 19:36
  is talking about when he says fits of
• 19:38
  anger on his vice list.
• 19:40
  And so it's like we have a good
• 19:42
  idea of what we know is the life
• 19:44
  we want.
• 19:45
  But then that good idea comes in and
• 19:47
  it clashes hits against these bodily habits that
• 19:50
  are embedded inside of us.
• 19:52
  We've got neural pathways, you've got automatic responses.
• 19:56
  And Paul is saying, look, you've got those
• 19:58
  in your body.
• 19:59
  They are the works of the flesh.
• 20:01
  The idea by itself is not enough because
• 20:04
  the idea is going to going to come
• 20:05
  up right against those embodied habits.
• 20:09
  And the embodied habits are going to win
• 20:11
  versus the idea.
• 20:12
  That's why the stoics are wrong.
• 20:14
  They think that just thinking about things right
• 20:16
  is good enough.
• 20:16
  And it's not because even with the world's
• 20:18
  best ideas, our habits end up taking us
• 20:20
  where we don't want to go.
• 20:22
  So what do we need?
• 20:24
  We need a power greater than ourselves to
• 20:27
  dwell in us, in our bodies and help
• 20:30
  us.
• 20:31
  And that's exactly what Paul says we receive
• 20:33
  in the gift of the Holy Spirit.
• 20:35
  So I'm going to go a couple verses
• 20:36
  further back to starting in verse 16 of
• 20:39
  Galatians chapter five.
• 20:40
  He says, but I say walk by the
• 20:42
  Spirit and you will not gratify the desires
• 20:44
  of the flesh.
• 20:46
  For the desires of the flesh are against
• 20:47
  the spirit and the desires of the spirit
• 20:49
  are against the flesh.
• 20:50
  For these are opposed to each other to
• 20:51
  keep you from doing the things you want
• 20:53
  to do.
• 20:54
  But if you are led by the spirit,
• 20:56
  you are not under the law.
• 20:58
  And then he continues.
• 20:59
  Now the works of the flesh are evident
• 21:00
  and it gives that vice list.
• 21:03
  You see how he's saying this?
• 21:04
  He's saying you're going to have these embodied
• 21:05
  dispositions that are contrary to the Spirit of
• 21:09
  God.
• 21:10
  But you also have the Spirit of God,
• 21:11
  which is contrary to those bodily dispositions.
• 21:14
  And that's what gives us hope if you
• 21:16
  are led by the spirit.
• 21:18
  So it's an interactive relationship with the spirit.
• 21:21
  As we interact with the spirit, we learn
• 21:24
  how to manifest the fruit of the spirit
• 21:26
  in place of those natural embodied responses of
• 21:30
  the flesh.
• 21:31
  So the vice list gradually gets displaced by
• 21:35
  the virtue list.
• 21:36
  We leave off works of the flesh and
• 21:38
  take up bearing the fruit of the spirit.
• 21:42
  That's why there's hope.
• 21:43
  So again, that's Paul's third way, the way
• 21:46
  he overcomes the approach of just knowledge or
• 21:50
  information that the Stoics offered and the kind
• 21:52
  of more rule-based thing that the Jewish
• 21:55
  agitators offered.
• 21:57
  We'll talk more about that in our next
• 21:59
  episode.
• 22:00
  But for this episode, just hang on to
• 22:02
  that image of being led by the spirit.
• 22:04
  This is a relational, interactive dynamic where God
• 22:08
  makes a change on the inside.
• 22:10
  And that's what makes it possible for us
• 22:12
  to live out what he teaches us.
• 22:17
  Lord Jesus, thank you for dying and rising
• 22:18
  again so we could receive the gift of
• 22:20
  your spirit.
• 22:22
  We welcome your Holy Spirit in our hearts
• 22:24
  and we ask that you would do your
• 22:25
  work in us as we do our work
• 22:27
  with you.
• 22:29
  Amen.
• 22:34
  Thanks for listening.
• 22:35
  Finding God at Work is a production of
• 22:37
  Mission Central, a ministry based in Aurora, Illinois,
• 22:40
  dedicated to forming Christians for mission in everyday
• 22:42
  life.
• 22:43
  You can subscribe to the podcast wherever you
• 22:45
  listen to this episode to get 10 minutes
• 22:47
  of teaching on faith and work every Tuesday
• 22:49
  and Thursday.
• 22:51
  To get resources to go deeper with each
• 22:53
  podcast series, read our blog and get info
• 22:55
  about upcoming courses on faith in the workplace,
• 22:58
  go to our website, mission central.church.