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On Not Being a Tare · Scripture-ish

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, this is Ed Gallagher reading my essay called On Not Being a Tear.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's T-A-R-E.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's a reference to the Gospels.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'll get to it later.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: But On Not Being a Tear,
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: this is a continuation of the previous episode,
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: the essay on Does Christianity Make You Good?
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll start with this quote from the gospels,
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: which is not the relevant one for the tear, but we'll get to that later.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: But this one is Matthew 15, 13.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Every plant which my heavenly father hath not planted shall be rooted up.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: People are sinners, not some people, all people.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Every single person who has ever lived is a sinner.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: No one has ever escaped it, except for one person, the very one we worship as God.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Those who are not the embodiment of the eternal deity sin, and they sin a lot.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: There is a long-standing teaching that In some Christian traditions
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: about something called original sin,
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: which is basically an attempt to explain why people are so terrible,
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: such hopeless sinners.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's an infection,
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: a flaw in our nature, something we can't help but inherit from time immemorial.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: I myself do not accept a doctrine of original sin, certainly not a strong version of it.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: But since I've introduced the term,
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: I can now quote the famous comment from G.K.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Chesterton, an Anglican turned Catholic.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Who said more than a hundred years ago that, quote,
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: original sin is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved,
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: end quote.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's in his book called Orthodoxy.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: He meant that if you start with the hypothesis that people gravitate
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: toward wickedness, you will not lack for evidence.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: In the mid-20th century,
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Reinhold Niebuhr said something similar,
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: asserting that original sin is,
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: quote, the only empirically verifiable doctrine of the Christian faith, end quote.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: The century intervening between Chesterton and us has not proven him wrong.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: In his 2012 book on Christianity,
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: the Anglican layman Francis Bufford took the fact of sin as
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: a universally recognized datum.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: So obvious you can build an argument on it.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to argue for it.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: People can and often do display remarkable goodness.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: I gave some examples last time.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: This goodness seems most clear when it requires bravery,
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: as in the case of Caspar Ten Boom,
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: who told a Christian pastor in about the year 1943 that to die on behalf of
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: a Jewish infant would be a great honor for his family.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: The divine spirit which inhabits each one of us who have been immersed in the name
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: of the Father, Son,
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: and Spirit It works to produce goodness in us because goodness is one of the fruit
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: of the Spirit.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: But the relationship between adherence to Christianity and the display of goodness is complex.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: For it is not only Christians who might overcome their natural wickedness and display goodness.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: Non-Christians often do this.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Whether people of other faiths or no faith.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: And Christians often fail miserably to display goodness.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: For this latter category,
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: I gave several examples last time,
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: particularly the slave holder of the young Frederick Douglass,
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: who, as Douglass later recalled, got religion and immediately became more cruel.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: We can also look back at the more recent civil rights struggle,
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: especially in the 1960s,
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: and find many examples of Christians beclowning themselves,
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: directly opposing first principles of the gospel,
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: as if law and order were opposed to loving thy neighbor,
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: and even if they were,
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: as if it took precedence over the second greatest commandment.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: A century earlier,
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: To return to Douglass,
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: this former slave sprinkled throughout his 1845 autobiography bitter complaints
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: about Christians refusing to live Christianly.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: He did this so much,
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: in fact,
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: that upon rereading his memoir before its publication,
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Douglass realized that he might give readers the wrong impression
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: about his true feelings toward Christianity.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: So he added an appendix.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: To clarify things.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: And the main function of that appendix for us today is that it clarifies
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: for us how susceptible Christianity is to perversion.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to steal some valor here by excerpting a long section from Douglass,
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: one of the greatest orators this nation has produced.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, since I've never actually heard him deliver a speech,
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: maybe I should change that description.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Not orator, but speechwriter.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: The man could write a speech.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: I hesitate to identify Frederick Douglass as the absolute greatest speechwriter
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: in American history because I am thinking of his older contemporary who served
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: as our 16th president.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: In my mind, it's hard to beat out Abraham Lincoln as a speechwriter.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're looking for a great American speech,
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: it's hard to surpass the two speeches that are carved into the walls of
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Part of the reason that the Gettysburg Address and Lincoln's second inaugural are
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: so great, a big part of the reason, is because they're short.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: Short enough to chisel the entire text into those walls.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: They're compact.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: They pack a punch.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: I am not aware of Douglass giving such brief speeches,
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: but I imagine he was usually called upon to fill an hour or more
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: because people enjoyed the experience of listening to Frederick Douglass.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: So he wasn't in a position to give brief speeches,
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: but let me tell you, when he writes a speech, he brings it.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Lincoln wrote speeches that were thoughtful, calm,
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: considering great thoughts,
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: applying the current moment to the great themes in history.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: The outcome of reading Lincoln is solemn contemplation on the serious issues just discussed.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: Frederick Douglass is different.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: I don't mean that he's not thoughtful.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, he's brilliant.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: But his speeches do not lull the reader into solemn contemplation.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Rather,
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: the reader of Douglass' speeches has the sensation of having been hit over the head
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: by a two-by-four or walloped in the gut.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, could Kreef read his most famous speech, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it is clear that to this meeting of the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: in 1852, Douglas has brought a sledgehammer.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: I imagine the assembled crowd, abolitionists every one, listening to that speech immediately.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Leaning further and further back in their chairs the more he talked,
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: or maybe hiding under their seats to protect them from the thunder coming from
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: the rostrum.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: But then,
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: afterwards,
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure they mobbed their invited speaker to tell him, thank you, we needed that.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes you need to be hit by a two-by-four.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus knew that well enough.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: So here comes the two by four.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, we don't have Douglas to read it, only me.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: I won't do it justice, but the words stand on their own.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: I won't be reading one of his famous speeches or any of his speeches,
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: but rather a section of the appendix to his first autobiography.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's a long quote.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: Here it goes.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: I find since reading over the foregoing narrative that I have
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: in several instances spoken in such a tone and manner respecting religion
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: as may possibly lead those unacquainted with my religious views to suppose me
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: an opponent of all religion.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: To remove the liability of such misapprehension,
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: I deem it proper to append the following brief explanation.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: What I have said respecting and against religion,
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean strictly to apply to the slave-holding religion of this land and
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: with no possible reference to Christianity proper.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: For between the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ,
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: I recognize the widest possible difference,
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: so wide that to receive the one as good or Pure and holy is of necessity to reject
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: To be the friend of the one is of necessity to be the enemy of the other.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: I therefore hate the corrupt,
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: slave-holding,
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: women-whipping,
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Indeed, I can see no reason but the most deceitful one for calling the religion
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: of this land Christianity.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers,
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: Never was there a clearer case of stealing the livery of the court of heaven
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: to serve the devil in.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: I am filled with unutterable loathing when I contemplate the religious pomp
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: and show,
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: together with the horrible inconsistencies which everywhere surround me,
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: We have men-stealers for ministers,
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: women-whippers for missionaries, and cradle-plunderers for church members.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: The man who wields the blood-clotted cow skin during the week fills the pulpit
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: on Sunday and claims to be a minister of the meek and lowly Jesus.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now I have,
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: that's the end of the quote,
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: I have read to you only half of the first paragraph of that appendix.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: He has more accusations, which it would be good for you to read.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually he quotes a long section of Matthew 23,
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: With the denunciations of Jesus in reference to the hypocritical scribes
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: and Pharisees of his day.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: But Douglas applies those denunciations to the Christian slaveholders of his own day.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: And here is another quote from that appendix.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: Dark and terrible as is this picture,
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: I hold it to be strictly true of the overwhelming mass of professed Christians
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: in America.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: They strain at a gnat and swallow a camel.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: Could anything be more true of our church's?
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: They would be shocked at the proposition of fellowshipping a sheep-stealer,
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: and at the same time they hug to their communion a man-stealer and brand me
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: with being an infidel if I find fault with them for it.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: They attend with pharisaical strictness to the outward forms of religion and at
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: the same time neglect the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: They are always ready to sacrifice but seldom to show mercy.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: They are they who are represented as professing to love God
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: whom they have not seen whilst they hate their brother whom they have seen.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: They love the heathen on the other side of the globe.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: They can pray for him,
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: pay money to have the Bible put into his hand,
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: and missionaries to instruct him while they despise and totally neglect the heathen
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: at their own doors.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: Such is very briefly my view of the religion of this land,
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: and to avoid any misunderstanding growing out of the use of general terms,
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean by the religion of this land that which is revealed in the words, deeds,
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: and actions of those bodies,
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: north and south,
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: calling themselves Christian churches and yet in union with slaveholders.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: It is against religion, as presented by these bodies, that I have felt it my duty to testify."
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: It is important for us to hold in mind such critiques as these by Douglass,
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: for we are often in danger of missing the point of Christianity,
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: which is becoming like Christ.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: We are often in danger of missing the point of Christianity as we concentrate
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: on some much more minor point.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: In the case of Douglass,
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: the minor point was whether or not the Bible explicitly condemns slavery.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: And the idea that it does not distracted some professing Christians
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: from pursuing Christlikeness.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now for us,
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: since chattel slavery has been illegal for more than a century and a half,
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: we encounter different distractions.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps about politics,
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: or about sexual ethics,
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: or about transgender people in sports,
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: or the issues that are more particular to our religious traditions.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: Including various aspects of the administration of Christian baptism or
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: the activities of the Christian assembly.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: I say again that these issues are distractions to the extent that contemplating them
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: and discussing them with others does not contribute to our growth into the image
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: of Christ.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: I do not say that these issues necessarily distract us.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: Contemplating them may indeed contribute to our growth into the image of Christ,
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: but not necessarily.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: And if we think that,
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: for example,
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: getting baptized is the main point of Christianity,
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: we have abandoned the religion of Jesus and set up our own religion,
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: and we stand condemned by the words of Douglass.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: Religious people often fail to enact their religion and we see in our own day
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: as we see in our own day and in our scripture.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: The book of Acts shows amazing examples of Christian faithfulness and courage
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: and some examples of Christian cowardice and pride and deception as in the case
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: of Ananias and Sapphira.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: The Old Testament is filled with such tales.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: For every Daniel resisting the stupid and cruel laws of a pagan regime,
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: a forerunner of Caspar Ten Boom,
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: there must have been dozens,
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: hundreds,
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: thousands of exiled Judeans perfectly happy to go along to get along,
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: who just didn't want to call attention to themselves,
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: who cared little for piety or goodness or With such people,
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: Caspar Ten Boom was as familiar as was Daniel.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: Here's how Corrie Ten Boom described it.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a quote from chapter five of The Hiding Place.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: The true horror of occupation.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: She's talking about the Nazi occupation of Holland.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: The true horror of occupation came over us only slowly.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: During the first year of German rule, there were only minor attacks on Jews in Holland.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: A rock through the window of a Jewish-owned store.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: An ugly word scrawled on the wall of a synagogue.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: It was as though they were trying us, testing the temper of the country.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: How many Dutchmen would go along with them?
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer to our shame was many.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: The National Socialist Bond,
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: that's NSB,
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: National Socialist Bond,
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: she says,
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: the National Socialist Bond,
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: which is the Quisling Organization of Holland,
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: grew larger and bolder with each month of occupation.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: Some joined the NSB simply for the benefits.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: More food, more clothing coupons, the best jobs and housing.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: But others became NSBers out of conviction.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: Nazism was a disease to which the Dutch, too, were susceptible.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: And those with an anti-Semitic bias fell sick of it first.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's the end of the quote.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: We remember what the householders said.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: To his servants, when they wanted to gather up the tares from among the wheat.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: This is Matthew 13, verses 30 and 31.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: Nay, said the householder,
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: Let both grow together until the harvest,
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers,
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: gather ye up To gather first the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them,
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: but gather the wheat into my barn."
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: We live among tares.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: Very possibly we go to church with tears.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: We have seen that throughout history there have been tears
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: that have called themselves Christians and lived what might be called
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: a normal Christian life.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: They don't know they're tears.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: We need to consider the possibility that it may be a tear staring back at us from the mirror.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: It is not our job to determine who is a tear, but it is our job not to be one.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: To avoid being a tear, first, recognize the possibility.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: More than that, recognize that you are a tear in some ways.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: And second, desire not to be a tear.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, I'm not sure which of these points is most important.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: I think there are people who can't imagine that they might be on the wrong side of
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: an issue,
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: or at least they give the impression of never having considered
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: whether they might be wrong.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: They seem to think that every moral question is obvious and that God is obviously on their side.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: A great American orator,
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: possibly the greatest,
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: Had this to say about a disagreement,
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: one we've been talking about that had already led to massive bloodshed.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: Quote,
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: both read the same Bible and pray to the same God and each invokes his aid against
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: the other.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: End quote.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: There are people who can't imagine that they might be in the wrong situation.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: Christianity teaches us that we are often in the wrong.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: Remember what I said earlier about original sin.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: Then again,
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think there are people who don't mind being a villain,
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: or they even rejoice in it and expect others to celebrate with them.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: Who, knowing the judgment of God,
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: that they which commit such things are worthy of death,
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we elect such people to political office.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they are celebrated in the church, Christians celebrating wickedness.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: What we need is training,
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: moral training,
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: so that we look at Caspar Ten Boom and marvel and honor him and long to be that kind
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: of person ourselves.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: And we look at a tear,
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: such as Douglas's in Slaver,
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: and recognize it as a tear and are repulsed by its tear-ness, just as God is.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: We need to identify heroes and honor them and tell stories of wickedness
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: and contemn them and make sure we know which is which.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: Always comparing to what Jesus tells us explicitly and repeatedly is
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: the most important thing in life.