Latest / How to Faith a Life Podcast with Faith Womack / Melissa Dougherty on Bad Theology, New Age & New Thought S3 Ep 3 of HowtoFaithaLife Podcast

Transcript

Melissa Dougherty on Bad Theology, New Age & New Thought S3 Ep 3 of HowtoFaithaLife Podcast · How to Faith a Life Podcast with Faith Womack

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: If you're listening to the How to Faith a Life podcast, where we wrestle with questions on how to live a life of faith, from everything from books to Bible studies, even Bible study tips.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is your place to wrestle with the hard questions and dive deep into what scripture really says for the Christian walk.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure you've subscribed to this podcast and your favorite podcast streaming services.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Review this podcast so other people can find it and share with other believers who want to ask the hard questions.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now, with all that said, let's begin.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Hi friends, welcome back to the How to Faith a Life Podcast, a ministry of Bible nerd ministries, and I am so excited for today.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Today we have Melissa Doherty.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: She is an amazing woman.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: You probably know her already, honestly, from YouTube, and her YouTube channel where she talks all about new age or new thought and the movement.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: And she shares really how she encountered Jesus and was radically transformed.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so now she equips Christians to spot counterfeit gospels and fringe spiritualities and stand firm in biblical truth.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: She's also the author of Happy Lies, how a movement you probably never heard of shaped our self-obsessed world, where she takes us on a journey all about this new thought movement, which has taken a lot of influence into the church today and is really often very misunderstood.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: So you're going to love this conversation as we dive deep into her story, her book, her heart for helping believers, growing discernment, and everything, Melissa.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: So welcome to the podcast.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thanks for having me on.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: I am so excited to talk about this book.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: I read it in a vlog and really just was reading it going, this is something that all Christians need to read today, especially if they're online.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so I wanted to ask you for those who don't know your background, haven't read this book, will you share a little bit about your journey and how you got so passionate about discernment, theology, and really worldview?
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, worldview.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: I like that you said that worldview.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: You mentioned new thought.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's kind of my background.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: So it's very personal to me.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: Grew up in what I would call a spiritual family.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we talked about Jesus, went to church.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I grew up with all these Jesus-y kind of sayings, but I didn't grow up in the church.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like we I didn't go and listen to DC talk, you know, the WWJ D bracelets that all the kids wore.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: There's a whole language of adult Christians right now that I don't understand at all because I just didn't I didn't grow up like that.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so it was more of an open spirituality that sounded very Jesus-y, very scripture-y, I guess, is the way I'll put it.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it was really just new thought beliefs, but I didn't know there was a name for it, thought it was new age, which I'll get into later.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: I became a Christian at 16.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: So a believer, diehard believer, did a complete 180.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I was in a very dark place, and I had a friend tell me the gospel at a party of all places.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's a fun story.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so then I went home, woke up the next day.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: I believed him, and I it was just everything was different.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: It was like I was in a Disney movie.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the light was brighter, smells smelled better, my thoughts were different.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: I craved different food.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: It was just, I was a new creation.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: Before I even understood what being born again meant, I experienced it and I had a hunger for the Bible.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: That was the biggest thing.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: Give me more.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: I want more, more, more, more, more.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: Long story short, there, I didn't get more.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: There was kind of a, I want to say anti-intellectual kind of vein in my experience as a Christian, my first few years.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: I really wanted to know questions about the Bible.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: Where did we get it?
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: Where did this come from?
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me more about this God.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: How does this God make sense with hell?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: Violence in the Old Testament.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: What about those who've never heard about Jesus?
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we're talking about Christianity 101 questions that I thought were new at the time, but have been answered for centuries, you know?
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: And it was just a tough getting questions answered.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so over time, I started supplementing the new thought beliefs I grew up with my Christianity because new thought looks Christian.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds Christian.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: Didn't know that, all right?
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: I thought it was just this higher, better, more spiritual Christianity.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: Cause you weirdos over here with your Bible thumping, you you literalists over here, you're just not loving enough and you're not open-minded enough.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: You don't use your mind.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: And over here, wow, it's super spiritual.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: Man, they use their mind, they ask questions, very tolerant, very super spiritual sounding answers to my questions that I had, which weren't satisfying, by the way, which I'll get to later.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: Fast forward, I have a child 2011, or 2010 is when I had her, but 2011, I'm revisiting all this stuff, and two Jehovah's Witnesses show up to my door, and I'm like, oh, somebody's here.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: I can ask them all these questions.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought all Christians, I was kind of a pluralist at the time.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: If you said you were Christian or believed in God, then you were good to go.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: We basically believed in all the same things, just in different ways.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I thought.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: It was all about being inclusive spiritually.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: It was about what we all had in common.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: If you were talking about the things that we didn't, then you just weren't thinking about it correctly, right?
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you could have these things over here, but it was always about the positive.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: It was always about bringing us together in unity, okay?
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: Spiritually speaking.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so that was my attitude, letting them in.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: And around the third or fourth visit, I'm like, oh, something's wrong.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: Something's very different about what they're saying than what I thought things were.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: There's a whole backstory to that, but one of the biggest things is there was a lot of things I thought they believed that were rumors, like Jesus being Michael the archangel.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, no, they don't believe that.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: People have that wrong.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, they they believe that.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: It was then that I just started, okay, I'm going to the computer.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to go research.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I found a lot of ministries that were talking about Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of them were former Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses who had become Christian.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: And all of a sudden I realized, oh, that's a cult.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: But what makes a cult, right?
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so I started researching that.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: Why do they believe us it's wrong anyway?
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: If the Bible says this and Jehovah's Witnesses teach that, I had to learn those two things.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like, why were JDBs wrong?
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: Why was the Bible true?
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: But then why is the Bible true?
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like all these dominoes started happening.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: And that's really what knocked me down, though, was realizing, okay, if the Bible's true, what I believe is wrong.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: And it was coming across a conversation about the serpent's lie that really knocked me down.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: That was it.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: That's what really did me in thinking, oh man, a lot of these beliefs that I believed all these years were wrong.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: I thought it was part of the new age movement.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: And that actually took me a long time to realize that there's a difference between new age and new thought.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: But that was in 2011.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: So that's a little bit of my backstory growing up, my spiritual backstory.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: I just got into ministry, I'd say online recently-ish, maybe around 2019, 2020.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, it's kind of history since then.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love that.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Hiya friends, I'm gonna interrupt this podcast really quickly because I want to make sure you don't miss out.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: You see, most Christians say they want to go deeper in their Bible, but here's the hard truth.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: Most of us are studying it completely wrong, and that's why we can't go any deeper.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: But my new book, published by Zondervin, comes out November 18th, and it's titled No More Boring Bible Study.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: I wrote it because I'm tired of watching Christians settle for shallow devotionals and misused Bible verses that just end up robbing the word of its power.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: This book gives you the tools you were never taught, the stuff pastors learn in seminary, but most Christians never even hear.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking how to actually handle different types of biblical literature, how to stop twisting scripture to fit into your life, and how to finally hear God's word.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: In truth, if you believe the Bible is true, you cannot afford to keep skimming it or even not understanding it.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: If it really is true, let's treat it like it is and feast on it.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: If you care about being faithful to God's word, this is the book you're going to want to pre-order.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: So here's my challenge.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: Pause this podcast right now, go to Amazon and pre-order No More Boring Bible Study.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's also on all the other websites that you get books.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: But don't wait until you forget.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: This is your moment to choose.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want shallow flimsy faith or deeper, richer study of the Bible that will actually change your life?
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's No More Boring Bible Study by me, Faith Womack, and you can pre-order today so that as soon as it's out, it's on your doorstep, reminding you, oh yeah, this is what matters.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Let's read this.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: Don't miss out and forget because if we really believe the Bible is true, we're gonna prioritize it.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's get back to the podcast.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Will you take a moment to define the difference and the similarities, if you do see them, between new age and new thought?
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: Because I do honestly intermix them.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: They get so confusing in my brain.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Will you help us?
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's like the first thing people go over.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: This is so useful to do this because once I saw it, I couldn't unsee it.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: All right, let's start with new age.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: If you're gonna go to the roots of new age, think Hinduism and Buddhism.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: Think of the Eastern mysticism.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then as far as practices, this is where we would look at this as Christians and think, oh yeah, that looks occultic.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like that looks like the red dude with the pitchfork and the ponytail.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: It looks very obvious.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's very much what New Age looks like, okay?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: You have tarot cards, you have psychic mediums, ancient aliens, chakras, reincarnation, yoga.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's very controversial, but yoga is actually a Hindu practice, right?
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's ex-new agers that are like, don't do it.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: I would have had no idea that yoga was new age.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't actually learn that until after I'd got out of these beliefs.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: Crystal energies, you have spirit guides.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: Those, there's some overlap with that.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: I was about maybe 80% new thought, 20% new age.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: I've never met a new ager that wasn't also a new thoughter.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: There is some overlap with me dabbling in some new age.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: Spirit guides were one of them.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: I thought it was biblical to invoke a spirit that I thought maybe was like an angel that would bring me wisdom and guide me.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, don't do that.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's bad.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: There's a whole list that I give.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: I break this down in, I think it's chapter three in my book, where I kind of give a whole list of things that are considered new age.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: Astral projection, golly, there's like so many.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: You have Mother Earth worship.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: Think of the things that are connected to Buddhism and Hinduism in that regard.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot that's not on that list, though, that's would be over in the in the new thought bucket.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so new thought, when it comes to the roots, think of it as more Gnostic in origin.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: This is something that was warned about in the New Testament, the book of 1 John, we hear a lot of these warnings that we don't really know what they mean to our ears nowadays.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: But back then it made perfect sense because the Gnostics were teaching things that were a hundred percent against what Christianity was saying.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: For example, the Gnostics, which is uh the Greek word for gnosis, so it's about knowledge, hidden esoteric knowledge.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's true reality.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: They would divide the world into two categories.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: You have a material world, which is evil, and then you have the spiritual world, which is true reality, it's good.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: So this is why, according to the Gnostics, Jesus couldn't have risen bodily from the dead because uh the body is uh you're trying to escape the limitations of your body.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: The truest part of you is spirit.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: So everything around you is secondary to what you feel in the spirit.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so if something's wrong in the spiritual realm, this kind of fast-forwards to a little bit more of an evolved Gnosticism, if you will.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: If something's wrong in the material world, you can fix it by bringing forth from the spiritual realm.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: So your body, for example, if something's wrong with your body, then you can bring forth from the spiritual realm to fix the material realm.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: How do you do that?
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: To your thoughts, words, and feelings.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: So your words have power, your thoughts are things, your material world is a response to your mental world.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's all new thought.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: Everything I just said is from new thought authors, new thought movement.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: From that flows beliefs that people would be very familiar with, like the law of attraction, which is what I just said, your thoughts are things.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: You can manifest, that's another word, your reality.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: Then you have Christ consciousness.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: This is a big one.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: Christ consciousness is a big trend right now.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: I actually just released a video on this where you can have the same consciousness as Jesus.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: And Christians wouldn't actually say, Oh, I'm God, right?
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: But they'll say, Oh, I can do the same thing Jesus did.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus is the way shower.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: He's the one who wants us to have the same level of power, if you will, as he did.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: We can do the things that he did and more.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's all actually from new thought concepts that were brought into the church later.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: And this is my point right here is that new age is a little bit more recognizable.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: New thought, my whole thesis in the book is new thought will deceive you before the new age ever will, because new thought is made to look Christian.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: They claim to be Christian.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: People with new thought ideas don't say I'm a new thought or they say I'm a Christian.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: So, in a sentence, if I were to define it a little bit more, I would say it's the positive thinking movement in America with Jesus as its mascot.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's a movement, it's a philosophy.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: In two words, this is how I saw it, I'd say it's a metaphysical Christianity.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: So it's beyond the literal.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's what I explained before.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's beyond the physical.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's a super spiritual type of Christianity that goes beyond what y'all have.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: You guys don't get it.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: You're just reading the Bible and taking it literally, but there's a hidden, secret, deeper meaning that only those who see can understand.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: So many people, this is not fringe, by the way.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of people interpret scripture like this.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: You don't go to the Bible to hermeneutically understand it in this perspective, because every in new thought, it's from within that you receive truth.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: So if I'm reading something in the Bible and it doesn't sit well with me, well, then I need to read that through the lens of love then, because my feelings are the interpretation of my reality.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's really because that's how you form your reality.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're having negative feelings, uh-uh, I can't have that because that's going to form my reality.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want negativity, I want positivity.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I need to interpret everything through this lens of love, this ultimate reality, if you will.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it makes you feel like you are actually accessing something higher in this higher reality and you're bringing it into your realm.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like it gets really messy.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll end with this.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: But if I were to define new thought in a person, the easiest person I point to that a lot of people recognize that is a new thoughter, but she says that she's a Christian is Oprah Winfrey.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: Oprah Winfrey, everybody thinks, is a new ager.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: No, she actually takes offense to this, denies being a new ager.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: She says, I'm a Christian.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: But then everybody listens to her and she'll quote scripture.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: She'll talk about Jesus.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: And she sounds really, really open-minded and loving about it.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: But every Christian that listens to her is like, I don't know what it is that something's off.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: And it's because it's new thought.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: The things that she's saying ultimately come from new thought material.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: The book that changed her life and that put her on the spiritual path that she's on today was a new thought book by a man named Eric Butterworth that she recommends still to this day, who is a new thought unity minister.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: And it was those beliefs that just made its way into culture, even though it's been there for a while.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: So hopefully that helps people kind of see the difference that these are two distinct belief systems.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, when I first got out of what I thought was New Age, right?
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: Again, there's some overlap there.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: New age would see Jesus as an ascended master.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: New thought would have a lot more emphasis on Jesus.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: Both teach that you're divine in different ways.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: There's some overlap.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: I immediately realized, like, oh, I think I was like a different type of new ager because people would ask me about Reiki, right?
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like sacred geometry.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, what is that?
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't know what that is.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then somebody was like, Yeah, yoga, an ex-new ager was like, Yeah, yoga is new age.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, what?
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: How is yoga new age?
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: I was so confused.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: I had no idea.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I discovered even early on, like, oh wow, what I was in sounded a lot more Christian.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like this sounded Christian.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: I had all these books and that I'm looking at right now that I use as source material research in my book that are new thought books that I grew up with that were on the shelf in my grand great-grandparents' house and my grandparents' house and my mom's house.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: And the ideas, you'd read it and they're talking about Jesus.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's almost like you cracked open this code.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, oh man, there's a secret hidden spiritual code here that people know about.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm one of the lucky ones that know about this.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: Even though there's like millions of hits on TikTok that are talking about, you know what I mean?
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's not that secret.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: It just sounds alluring.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds like you are the special chosen one.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds like you have tapped into something that nobody else has, even though everybody has.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: And that is the allure.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: And that's in essence a lot of Gnostic beliefs.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's nothing new about it.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, hopefully that helps people kind of grasp the difference a little bit better.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's really confusing for a lot of people who I don't know if they're listening and they're like kind of like me, and you know, you listen to Christian pastors all the time and you're not in the world and getting these like secular influences.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard to identify it if you don't know what it is.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so even just that breakdown kind of gives us identifying points.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: For me, sometimes I'll do videos where I'll like react to videos on social media.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: And one of them was talking about like the power of words and how it changes things around you.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, okay, like the Bible talks about how you know our words are powerful, cool, whatever.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if the science behind this is good, but whatever.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yes, words have power and like let's bring it back to that.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: And someone commented, they were like, that's actually new thought.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: You need to check out Melissa's book.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: As I was reading this, I was like, You're right.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't even catch it because I didn't know how to identify it.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: You're just like, well, yeah, there's like scripture behind that.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't care about the science.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna take this to like the spiritual realm of like, let me speak no cancer, you know, or something like that.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Let's unpack that.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so throw some stuff at me.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: Give me what you got, because I think that there that is what I struggled with right there, is that I'm like, it's in the Bible though.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: And then what do you do when it works?
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like, these are the things that I struggled with because I'm like, I did manifest, I did do these things.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: I I see here in scripture it's saying ask, believe, and receive, which is the formula for the law of attraction.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: You have Proverbs talking about the life of life and death is in the power of your tongue.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: And you have Mark 11:14, is that the right one?
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: Where it's talking about, you know, ask whatever you want and I'll give it to you.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what do you do?
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then that's what tripped me up big time.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing with new thought is that yes, you're right, it does misuse.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: This is a big one.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: I really want to do a deep dive on the misuse of science that nobody can verify.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: You'll have people like neuroscience say this quantum mechanics and quantum physics back up the fact that we can create our reality with our words.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then they'll quote some ambiguous pseudoscience study.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: And this happens all the time in the church.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: I see Christians do this all the time.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: They'll post a study, okay, and they'll throw it out there and say that there's some truth to it, right?
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: Say that there is something where it's like, yeah, there's vibrations and there are frequencies, but then there's this whole line to draw from that to, oh, that means that it's scientific and biblical, that your words create your reality.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: Play that movie forward for me.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: There's where the logic comes from and the critical thinking and the questions, and there has to be a proper hermeneutic.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: So, new thought, the movement, has had a lot to do with that as well.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: The self-help movement, that the seed bed, the foundation for the self-help movement came from new thought authors, like Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: You had Dale Carnegie.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: There's some really good things in those books.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like Napoleon Hill can help you become a really good business person.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: But then there's something called the it works trap, where if you're doing the things that work, right?
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you're using a face cream that cleared up your acne and you're like, man, this really works.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna buy their serum now because this company has shown me and proved to me I can trust them.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so you start buying their other products, right?
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then along with buying their products, they're also telling you, oh, this serum has a higher vibrational frequency.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: And then all of a sudden, you're buying into this pseudoscience.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: You're buying this other spiritual world view that is coming along, your face cream that works, but and under but underneath it is this worldview that you don't really realize you're you're signing up for.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of that is hand in hand with the new thought movement.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: You're getting something that really is helpful and works, but along with it is pseudoscience, like stuff that you don't think is pseudoscience.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: But because you trust who's saying it, you believe it.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, that's a long explanation, but we can unpack that a little bit more if you want to go in there and talk about that.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: Because I know a lot of Christians might be struggling with that.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think it's really interesting that again, for me, like I'm in my Christian bubbles and I don't see, you know, crystals pop up on my social media feed or in articles or anything that I read.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yoga, nothing like that.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like I am totally in the southern white girl algorithms, the Christian, you know, here's some, you know, Proverbs 31 applied to you, but nothing more than that.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so to really see it unpacked, I mean, I loved your chapter when you walked through the history of it.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: That was really eye-opening for me to be like, oh yeah, no, it's already here, it's in the house, it's in the home field, and it's interwoven, whether I have realized it or not, whether like I don't have anybody in my life touching crystals, you know, but it's here and it my children are gonna interact with it.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: My loved ones are interacting with it, and I need to have a framework to identify it.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think now, as somebody that loves hermeneutics, like I can catch when a Bible verse is used out of context very easily, right?
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's my strong suit, but I can't always see where they are connecting dots.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like you have that history that's so incredibly helpful where you're like, Oh yeah, no, yoga's tied to Hinduism, you know?
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: And if I had but never been taught that, if I didn't know that, like I would be like, What do you mean?
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's just moving my body, it's just a great exercise.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: So, how would you encourage listeners to like think critically and identify these things other than just like let's go back to scripture?
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like, are there any common themes that they do when they jump from science to spiritual, even if it's just like self-reliance?
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot to go on there.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you have to think about the message behind it all too.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: Here's where I think a lot of Christians can get a little stumped up with this.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: First, yeah, I mean, without going back to scripture, I mean, that's kind of like the thing is hermeneutically understanding what that actually says.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: And this is where I think it gets personal because a lot of Christians really will think and believe, oh, but this is what this means.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: This is what this scripture is saying, that God always wills you to be healthy and wealthy.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: That this is where this is this is the scriptural thing that Jesus is trying to teach us that we can do more things than He did, right?
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: And all these things.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: This is where it got me.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: Who is getting The glory.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Question God and give power is Satan's MO.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: I went half of my Christian life, I went to church, like actively went to church.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: Had no idea any of these beliefs were unbiblical.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: I thought you guys had no idea what you're talking about.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I really thought that I just had it figured out because I had this deeper understanding.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: If I heard something from the pulpit, for example, I'd be like, oh, he just doesn't get it.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: That is what I'm talking about.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: The pride.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: The pride that goes along with this is so stealthy and it's so tricky.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: I remember getting so upset thinking everybody was just a legalist.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: I called everybody like a Pharisee.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: When I was just as legalistic, I was just as prideful.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like, think of the Pharisee and the tax collector.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: This one hit me between the eyes when I saw it because here's the Pharisee going up, right?
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: Before God.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: And he's like, oh, look at all the good I do.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm such a good person.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: Look at all the knowledge I have.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: Look at this filthy tax collector.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: He's such a loser.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like, that was me.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: I know what I believe.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: I know what this scripture says.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: I am so overly confident.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: And it was all pride.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: All of it was pride.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: Cloaked in this just me thinking I was the wisest, most spiritual person in the room.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: And here's the cat tax collector over here on his face, begging God for mercy.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: Have mercy on me, a sinner.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: And it was just black and white.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: And it was just so interesting to see the difference.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: There's a scripture talking about, I think it's in James.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: We're on YouTube.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: We have like, I would say that we have platforms.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: There's a level of clout that gives me the ick.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just gonna be real direct about this.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: I don't like it.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: I don't like the clout.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: I don't like the ick.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: I don't like the show.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: I don't like the preacher sneakers walking out.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you're go sit with be with the lowly, right?
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like be with the people that don't have the platform.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: Be with the people.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: Those are the people that probably know more than you.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: You are no better.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: You are no better.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: I am no better than the person sitting next to me at church.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: I don't care that I have a plat.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: I don't care that I have a platform.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: So with that as a mindset, think of in essence, the point that I'm making with this is that think of the status that we give ourselves.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: And we think, wow, God is blessing me.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: I must know more than them.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: That's unbiblical.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: That is unscriptural.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: So my point in saying all this, without even using scripture, the pride, watch it.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: Watch the pride.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: Because the spiritual lust that these beliefs give you is designed for pride.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: It sells you pride with the language of humility.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: That's how often this comes up.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: Because you think you are just the most humble person.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: It emphasizes you with the guise of thinking you are glorifying God.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: And the new thought movement, this is really why the history is important.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm glad that you mentioned it.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: Because let's take health and wealth prosperity teachings.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: This is a big one.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: This is one that people get really tripped up on.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: Because I wrote a whole chapter about this.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I even interviewed Yeah, I interviewed Dr.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: Bowman on this.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: And what I like to do is tell me where I could have done better.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like tell me what I got wrong.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: That was one of the parts of the questions I asked him because he's an expert on this.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like he knows what he's talking about.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I use some of his material as the source material for my chapter.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I drew four lines of health and wealth prosperity teachings that go directly back to new thought.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: I suggest people check that out because I think he did a really good job of kind of putting forth a whole interesting argument that I might expand on later, where the history of new thought in the word of faith movement, the lines drawn on how it got there is very interesting.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: And he makes a different point that I think is very interesting.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: Here's my point Nobody's gonna argue.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: No historian, no scholar is gonna argue that the word of faith movement has new thought and teachings in it.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's no argument.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's very clear that there are new thought teachings in the word of faith movement, which I'll get to what they are in just a second.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: Question is, how did they get there?
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so I attempt to answer that in that chapter.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: The four lines that go back to New Thought, okay, with the prosperity, health, and wealth teachings.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, first, prosperity teachings and health teachings, right?
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: The idea that God always wants you to be healthy and wealthy, the idea that God is good if you are a child of God or even as a human in pure new thought teachings, you have the ability to heal yourself through your thoughts and your words.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: You have the ability to make yourself prosperous through your thinking.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever you want, you can have through your thinking.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so there's two.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: Third one is the little God's doctrine.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, little gods doctrine is the idea that in the word of faith movement, the reason why you have the power that you do, and kind of why you see a lot of the weird beliefs that you see, like trying to control the weather, having authority over things around you, has to do with the idea that you are now in the same class as God.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: This is what I meant before by Christians won't say, I'm not God.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's blasphemy.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: But we're in the same class as God.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: We have the same power as He does.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like you'll hear these things in Christian circles, or at least a form of it, that you can have access to that, right?
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: The little God's doctrine very clearly can be lined back to the New Thought Movement.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: The fourth one is affirmations, uh, declaration, prayer.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: All of these, by the way, began with the New Thought Movement, not the Bible.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're looking at it in order, the beliefs came first in the New Thought Movement.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so think of the line that's drawn here.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus comes, he dies for the sins of the world, Paul comes, scripture's written, you know, everything's distributed.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: No, this was not a teaching for all this time until boop, post-Enlightenment.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody gets these wiggity-whack weird beliefs, all these cults start popping up, and here comes the new thought movement, and uh you have this history behind why these beliefs, how they got there, and then all of a sudden, the word of faith movement is formed, and all of a sudden that's drawn over from the new thought movement.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: So it's anachronistic, in other words, right?
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's like you're having these beliefs just kind of pop up, the health and wealth prosperity teachings.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's the lineage, though.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then the other part of this is the declaration prayers, affirmative prayers.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: Speaking in the I am, speaking in the affirmative, praying in the affirmative.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: I am healthy, I am this, I am that.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: You're declaring what is true.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: And the way that in in New Thought you would think of it as is it's true in the spiritual realm.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: I can draw this forth and make it materialize here and now because that is God's will for me, because God is good and He only wants good for me.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: So I have the power, I have the authority to make this happen.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: God has given me the power, okay?
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's the way it's framed.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so you don't ask for anything, in other words.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: You do not ask, you demand, you declare it because God always wants to give it to you.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's this lineage there, okay?
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: And it's very controversial, but it shouldn't be.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: My main bone to pick is actually looking at scripture and what it says.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: Because here's the thing bad theology hurts you.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: And this is my whole argument with New Thought Teachings is that it's not a good thing to believe.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: You have something wrong in your life.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: You are believing that God doesn't want that thing to be wrong because you're always taught and told that this is something that scripture teaches, this is who God is, which goes back to the attributes of God, what scripture actually says about God.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: If we're getting that wrong, then we're getting our hermeneutic wrong, we're getting our theology wrong, and we're believing something wrong about God that isn't true.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: What it reminds me of is like when we think we hear something from God, right?
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: We think, God told me this.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: God told me to go apply for this job.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: God told me.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: I remember one time this guy at church came up to me and he's like, God told me to come talk to you.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I knew what he was doing.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: My hands were in my pocket, I was wearing some gloves.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think he saw my wedding ring.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Did God tell you I'm married?
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like did God really tell you that, you know?
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: So it's one of those things where it's like we we kind of have this ambiguity, this fuzziness.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: The beauty is that it doesn't have to be that way.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's my bone to pick with it.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of a little bit more laser focused on one certain thing within churchianity, if you will, Christianity, and some of the overlap there with new thought in that regard.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love it.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's so helpful to identify and see, yeah, like you said originally, who gets the glory, who's the heart of this, because it's really just putting ourselves on the throne and being like, I want to be cancer free or I want to be wealthy or whatever, and manifesting it instead of am I living unto the Lord?
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's the classic misuse of like Philippians 4 13 and Romans 8 28 and all the ones that people misuse, and you know, interpreting it so that we're on the throne instead of God's on the throne.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like, look at the context.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about us making our life awesome and we get what we want, you know.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: But we love to that's the thing, though, is like that's the answer to suffering is Christianity.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: And if you take away the suffering, I understand that.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I get it.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: I understand the temptation to take away suffering and evil, I get it.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: But you're taking away the answer when you do that.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: You're in essence putting your head in the sand and you're taking away why Jesus even had to come on the cross in the first place.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, I have a whole chapter on relativism, reality, and truth.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: If we don't understand what truth is, what reality is, and we're just denying it, we're gonna get a lot of this stuff wrong and we're gonna be lying to ourselves.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like this is why people lose their faith.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: This is how this is the stuff that shipwrecks your faith.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you're believing and thinking something and then a crisis comes along, but God, didn't you say, no, he didn't.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: But you're you don't believe that, right?
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: You think that God's a liar now.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, think of the domino effect with this.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: God wants to be understood in the way that he revealed himself.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then you have people that come along and distort that, that distort his identity, and we believe the distortion so that when something actually comes along that is aligned with reality, if we don't have proper understanding of God that is rely aligned with that reality, we stumble.
• 32:02
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• 32:09
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• 32:25
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• 32:28
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• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: I went myself to check it all out.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: I paid my own way, it's not like they asked me to come out, but I can tell you, this mystery is the real deal.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: And they're doing kingdom work, and that's why I want us Bible nerds to be a part of it.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: Joe and I already gave$5,000, which is 100 water filters with the discipleship and the missionaries coming to the homes and all of that.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm asking the Bible nerd community to join me to do something bigger.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: Let's fund 2,000 filters together.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's 2,000 families with clean water and the living water.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: Please don't assume someone else will cover it.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you're hearing this, the need is still real.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: There's something so valuable in the worshipful response of saying, yes, Lord, use me, even with my couple of bucks.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: So before you keep listening to this awesome podcast, pull up the show notes.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: You'll see there a link to give as a Bible nerd.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: And even the map of where you can track the impact of our Bible nerd community in Kawanguari.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: You can see their faces, their names, some of the families I even got to meet who now have water because of you guys.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: Let's stop just reading the word and start living it out in our lives, even where it hurts, even in our wallets.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: Will you join me?
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: Open the show notes now as we get back to this podcast.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: And suffering, suffering is a big issue.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: In New Thought, there is no suffering.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually an illusion.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: If something happens, you brought it on yourself.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: I remember watching a documentary about the secret with the law of attraction.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: And there was one person they had on that documentary.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was Jack Canfield.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: Chicken soup for the for the soul guy.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, he's a new thoughter man.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's been a year since I've thought about that.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: He probably says he's a Christian.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: They're everywhere though.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: He was trying to explain the law of attraction, right?
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: And he's like, Yeah, you got in a car accident that afternoon, and you're thinking, wow, I didn't attract that.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'm here to get in your face and tell you, yeah, yeah, you did.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: You attracted that.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: He is being honest.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like, that's exactly how it is.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: Every good and bad thing that you can think of, like this whole vibrational stuff, like you think that there's a vibration of worship music.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: Let's play worship music at this megahertz, that there's a healing vibration or frequency.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: What do you do when you're playing that music all the time and it doesn't cure your cancer?
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's no different than putting a crystal in your chest thinking it'll serve you from like heal you from your cold.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's like you are pushing the will of God.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: You are not God.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that the sovereignty and providence of God is totally missed.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's transferred over to you.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: You have the power, you have the will, you have this, and it's just messed up.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: It'll mess you up, it'll mess up your theology.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: So sorry, I had to add that because it's an important genuine question, but I forgive me if you mention this in the book.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: What would they do then with like Job?
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: And it's clearly laid out there that Job didn't like manifest it or whatever.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: No, so here's what, okay, for somebody in new thought, this is what I did.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, this is very important.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: The way to answer that question is the same way you would ask that question of anything else in the Bible.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_01: What about this?
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_01: What about that?
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_01: Because there might be people listening, they're like, Well, what did they do with this?
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_01: John 14, 6 says, Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: How do they get around it?
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: Here's what you do.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter what the scripture is, it doesn't matter what the story is.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: Remember, it's metaphysical Christianity.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_01: Your true authentic self, your intuition inside from what's within is what determines your reality.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever that is, is tied eternally and explicitly with your feelings.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_01: That is where the power is.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_01: So you do two things.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_01: One, everything in the Bible has a metaphysical definition.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: There's always a hidden esoteric meaning to the story of Job.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: Now, what that is is subjective to what your true authentic self within is telling you.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: So if I'm reading Job and I'm thinking, okay, God, what do you got for me today?
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: Let's open up the book of Job and see what the spirit tells me, right?
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: There's a spectrum, right?
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: This is what I would is more on the new thought Christian spectrum.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then you have like a more secular new thoughtter who might be on TikTok who wouldn't call themselves a Christian, but they're manifesting, they're doing the law of attraction, doing Christ consciousness, trying to tell you what the Bible's teaching, right?
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: But they wouldn't say that they're a Christian.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: I was definitely more on the more Christian side, like a Joel Osteen, right?
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: Joel Osteen has a lot of new thought.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: We won't go there today.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_01: I would read Job, for example.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_01: This is actually a picture of what I would do when I would open the Bible.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: I would try to open it up.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: I would read Job.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_01: And the first thing I would think is, well, what does this have to do with me?
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: What kind of, how does this fit in my life?
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_01: What code is there?
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, Job is struggling with this.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm struggling with this.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: There's a hidden answer in Job's story that somehow fits in my life because that's how it's aligned, because this is my reality.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: See how messed up this is?
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: Oh no, I see that every single day.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_01: We do this as Christians.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: We open up the Bible.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, and Matthew.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_01: Matthew is a new thoughter's favorite book of the Bible.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: There's so many ambiguous things to understand in Matthew if you don't know the Old Testament.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's written to like a Jewish audience.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so, like uh, you know, the parable of the wineskins and the lamp and the hidden coin and all of them.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, the Sermon on the Mount.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: There's a whole book written by Emmett Fox, who's a New Thought author, called The Sermon on the Mount.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: And what he's doing is, yeah, he's taking a metaphysical reinterpretation of the Sermon on the Mount.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of his most popular books.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm so surprised how many Christians read it, but they love it.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: They want to know what is it really saying?
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_01: What's this deeper understanding?
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I never knew that.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_01: And they love it.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's the stuff that got me.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so you'll have these commentaries, these metaphysical commentaries from people who are not Christians but say that they are.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_01: And they'll give you that deeper esoteric hidden meaning, but it's new thought.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like all of it is connected.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_01: So that is how you handle all of it.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_01: So it doesn't matter, Genesis, Leviticus, it doesn't matter what it is, doesn't matter how disturbing it is.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: There's always esoteric meaning to it that you have to subjectively interpret, which makes it all about you.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: Really is so common.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: So that was really helpful for me to hear because I deal with that every day.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, people's favorite thing to comment on my videos is you don't need help reading the Bible.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: All you need is the Holy Spirit.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd be like, yeah, like we definitely ascribe to the fact that the gospel is plain and clear in the Bible.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yes, but I wasn't born with a natural understanding of what the exile was.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't born with a natural understanding of the temple.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yes, you do need resources to understand things, a basic Bible dictionary to define things.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: But people hate when I'm like, here are some things to help you understand the Bible.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, no, it's just me and my inner spirituality interpreting how I want for my life.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_00: And this helps me really make connections, truly.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's so dangerous.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: Why in the world would God okay?
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: Here they are talking about the Holy Spirit.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_01: See, this is why I think every Christian should take a logic and critical thinking class right here.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_01: Because here you are talking and I'm thinking, I'm thinking, I'm thinking.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_01: How does that logically play out?
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_01: Let's play that movie forward.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: Why in the world would God give by the Holy Spirit a gift of teaching if nobody's supposed to teach?
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_01: If I'm supposed to be like, hey, Pastor, I don't under what are wineskins?
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_01: I don't understand why we had to do animal sacrifices.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, Mike Winger, you have no idea what you're talking about.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_01: Be got go back to whatever church you came from.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: You can't listen to anybody then explains to you anything other than you.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: Do you see how dangerous that is?
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_01: Because you're thinking that God can only talk to you.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_01: I can only interpret the Bible through the Holy Spirit and what he tells me.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_01: Well, how are you gonna test that?
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_01: How are you gonna test that's scriptural?
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_01: If the Holy Spirit is the catalyst in which scripture is written, and the Holy Spirit's telling you, hey, test things, test everything, think critically, know what you believe and why you believe it.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: And you're saying, okay, but this is what the Holy Spirit's telling me.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm over here saying, Well, this is what the Holy Spirit's telling me.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_01: We both can't be right if we both have a different interpretation, right?
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_01: You have to test it, you have to critically analyze and struggle and wrestle with the text, and you have to have other believers, some of them with the Holy Spirit gift of teaching.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, like that's a gift of the spirit that can actually help you struggle through that and reach through it.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_01: Theologians, think of this.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: What is theology?
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's the study of God, okay?
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_01: The study of God.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_01: And then you have to go even backwards from that.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_01: You've taken seminary.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_01: Have you ever taken like a prolegomena class?
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's a big word, it's systematic theology, but it's like you systematize your theology, you're going through soteriology, Holy Spirit studies, you're going through Christology, you're going through all, you're studying all these different things, bibliology.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's good.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_01: But then there's this thing called prolegomena, which is before you even get into the Bible.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_01: And this is what Frank Turek does, right?
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_01: This is actually kind of brilliant.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_01: When he goes and does an apologetics conference where he's teaching things, right?
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like he's teaching the Bible, he's teaching you how to defend the faith.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_01: He starts with three questions.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_01: And this is basically what I learned the first semester seminary in my prolegomena class.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, oh, Frank Turek, that genius, this is what he's doing.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_01: Does God exist?
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_01: Does truth exist?
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_01: And can miracles happen?
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like those three questions you don't even need a Bible for.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_01: Before you're even talking about theology or the Bible, you have to ask somebody, like, okay, well, what do they believe about truth?
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_01: I had no idea.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_01: There was different theories about how people believe truth.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, of course things are true.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then you're talking to somebody that can't tell you the difference between a man and a woman because truth is subjective.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_01: Postmodern truth and relativism has made it where you have to actually fight to understand what is objectively true.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's like Winston in 1984.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_01: He has to, in uh Orwell's book, he has to wake up every day reminding himself two plus two is four.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_01: Two plus two is four.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: Because everybody's trying to convince him it's not.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: Men are not women.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_01: Women are not men.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like we have to wake up every day and remind ourselves what's true, right?
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_01: Is God real?
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_01: And if he is, who is he?
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_01: Can miracles happen?
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_01: Because if miracles can't happen, Jesus could not have risen from the dead, right?
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_01: So like these are the things before the things.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so my whole argument with that is that's just silly.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_01: I hope you never teach anybody then.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_01: I hope you never teach anybody what the Holy Spirit is saying.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_01: It that eats its own tale.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: Totally.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: But it's exhausting with those people.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, well, you're never gonna have a faithful reading of the text when you're just reading a new text that you have no understanding of.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_00: You're just gonna be relying on yourself and you're gonna, I don't know.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_00: Obadiah is not talking about Edom, it's talking about my backyard.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't know.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: You're just gonna read into everything yourself, which puts you on the throne and this whole like new thought stuff.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I do have to ask you, I ask everybody that comes on the podcast, what are some of your tools or practices that have helped you grow in studying the Bible deeply and faithfully?
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, the first thing I would say is listening to people who are a lot smarter than me.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_01: Critical thinking is another one.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_01: I I honestly really think that this right here, okay.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_01: If you're going to read anything, okay, if you're gonna understand anything, this is actually a godly concept.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's like laws of of math, actual unphysical law to explain why two plus two always has to equal four physics, the universe, all the things, okay?
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_01: There's the same rule with logic.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_01: There are rules to this.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_01: So if we're reading something or if we're arguing, right?
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's an argument going on, you're like, ooh, that's a straw man.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's this, that's that.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like you'll be able to spot it and think better.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_01: That has really helped me to think well and to be loving when I spot something that's off.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's helped me to be more kind and it's helped me to be more humble while at the same time knowing I might be right.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense?
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_01: I have to test it.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: The third thing is, in a way, it my face in scripture, really wanting to draw from it what it actually means.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_01: That sounds so simple, but being in a church that actually exegetes scripture, actually teaches the Bible, maybe like 80% Bible teaching, 20% application, or even 50-50.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: At this point, it's it's lucky if we get that.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_01: Where I'm going to church and I'm like, wow, that's what that scripture means.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_01: And he breaks it down, discusses the Greek word, what it means, whatever it is, and then you know, gives you an application for it, but doesn't like life application it to death or jumps up and down, really excited, telling you, you can do this or whatever.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't need a motivational speech.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_01: I need to understand theology.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like, this is what I go to church for.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_01: Getting myself in a church culture, if you will, like getting myself around people that can feed into me.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then the fourth thing I'd say is having somebody to hold me accountable, like having people that are not afraid to tell you the things you don't want to hear, especially having a platform.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_01: We need this because pride will sneak up on you.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_01: You need to have people that are going to hold you and say, hey, like my pastors at my church.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's like if you watch a video of mine and something's off, tell me.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'm underneath you.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_01: There's an understanding of this accountability that I need and I crave, right?
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then the last thing I'd say is boundaries.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_01: There's lots there that we talked about before we got on.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_01: But all of this together, I think helps put a lot of this in perspective.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_00: You have been such a blessing, I know, to all the listeners, and you've just totally encouraged them.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_00: So when they go buy your book, I'm speaking it into happening.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_00: No, I'm sorry.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: So, but I do encourage them to go get happy lives.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: What do you want them to get from this book?
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_00: What's like your prayer for them?
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_01: I hope when they read it, they feel like I'm giving them a hug while at the same time telling them something they need to hear.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'm holding their hand, telling them, I'm here with you.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_01: I've been through this.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_01: Let me give you a hug, man.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_01: Be mad at me.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_01: You are perfectly allowed to not like me, but listen to what I say.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll give you a big hug while you don't like me.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_01: I will force you to hug.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: No, I'm just kidding.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_01: But it's like that's kind of what I want.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_01: I want people to kind of lean into it.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of what I did.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_01: I end the book kind of with that, is that I could have ran from this.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_01: I could have really gone and I was really embarrassed.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_01: Let me just say I was really embarrassed.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's the word, the feeling I felt when I discovered this was what I believed.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_01: I was angry because I'd gone to church and nobody told me, and I was embarrassed.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I feel that might be some of my audience reading that book.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I just hope that they get that sense where I'm like, let me give you a hug while I tell you something that you may not want to hear.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_01: And you can be mad at me if you want, but I want you to lean into it.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like, where am I wrong though?
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_01: Is this wrong?
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_01: Where's the lie though?
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of thing.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_01: Challenge yourself because here's the thing is that if you lean into it, not only will your theology get better, but your relationship with God will get much better.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_01: And you will be a better witness for the gospel.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's my hope.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now, where can people connect with you online?
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm on YouTube.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_01: People might know me best from YouTube, Instagram, X, Facebook.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_01: If you Google my name, my website will come up and it's kind of like a one stop shop there.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, perfect.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for coming on.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_00: I know this blessed so many people, including me.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was fun being on.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me.