Christian Engagement with the Culture - Theology Throw Down of Christian Podcast Community

With every Christian, there is a theology. For every theology, there is a defense of truth.

Is there or is there not a single shred of factual historical information to substantiate what you're asserting, that this is an addition to the text?

Personally, I don't know of manuscripts, but I read scholars who are specialists in that field, and they have looked at those manuscripts, or seen the lack of them there.

Could you give me your name? I'm not asking if you've got it now. So, are all the popes actually believers?

Are all the popes? I don't know. Some could, some couldn't be. I don't know. So, it's possible for the vicar of Christ to be an unbeliever?

Possible. Yeah. That's an interesting view. Time out.

This creature from the dirt defied the everlasting

Holy God. After that, God had said, the day that you shall eat of it, you shall surely die.

And instead of dying thanatos, that day, he lived another day, and was clothed in his nakedness by pure grace, and had the consequences of a curse applied for quite some time.

But the worst curse would come upon the one who seduced him, whose head would be crushed by the seed of the woman, and the punishment was too severe?

What's wrong with you people? I'm serious. I mean, this is what's wrong with the

Christian church today. We don't know who God is. He doesn't have faith.

He has confidence. Confidence. Confide.

From the Latin, with faith. Welcome to Theology Throwdown!

We, the Christian podcast community of podcasters, gather to discuss our theological differences with love and charity.

This is a ministry called Striving for Eternity. Well, welcome to another edition of Theology Throwdown.

This is where all of the podcasters of the Christian podcast community get together.

We discuss our theological differences, if we have any, and we do it in charity and in love.

As I had to play, I asked John Wilkinson, he does some of our sound work, our audio sometimes,

I said, give me a, throw me together a quick intro. A quick intro for him was almost three minutes long.

Never mentions the podcast, but it was great. So I had to play it.

Everyone else was going, wow, this is really long. I thought you said an intro. But we give a shout out to Mikel, who did our actual intro for this.

It was the first time we got to play it, or at least for everyone who's here. And he gave us an outro that we'll play later.

So with that, we always want to start off by introducing everyone who is here so that they can share their podcast a little bit about themselves and their podcast, anything before we get started with our topic.

Our topic tonight will be Christians response to culture.

And I think it'll be good. We have some people like, you know, Presbyterians here who we're going to be a little bit having a different view than sub

Baptist, so it should be good. But I am hopeful that Colleen, I know you're here.

You're from Theology Gals, but I hope you appreciate that John threw in a

Presbyterian like R .C. Sproul in that intro there. You know, he had to get that one in there, but that's a great clip from R .C.

So why don't we start off? I'll just go through the order in which I see them in my participants thing.

So we'll start with Colleen, Eve, Keith and then Jamal. And then

I'll wrap up just your name, your podcast, anything you want to share before we get started. I'm Colleen Sharp and I host

Theology Gals podcast and we're podcast by women, as you can probably hear from our name, and we discuss

Reformed theology and the Christian life and various topics which fit into those categories.

And I'm Eve Franklin, co -host of Are You Just Watching? in which we apply our biblical worldview to secular entertainment, usually movies, once a month.

And this is Keith Heltzley, host and co -host of Quest for Truth, where we talk about the worldviews and challenges to the

Bible. We try to bring a kind of a practical, realistic look to what that means.

And my name is Jamal Bandy. I'm a host of Prescribed Truth podcast. And what

I seek to do basically is just give a basic yet Reformed view refuting different ideas that are in a culture that are wrong and from false teaching in certain churches.

And Jamal wins the award for the best, you know, branding. I was thinking the same thing.

He's got the Prescribed Truth. For those who can't see, he's got the Prescribed Truth beanie. He's got,

I don't know, probably a green screen or something behind him. So you see the Prescribed Truth logo. And so, yeah, we can learn something from him.

I'm trying. I'm learning myself. I'm trying. I have my Prescribed Truth coffee mug next to me.

So I'm just going to say that. Oh, yeah. I'm going to represent Sip to the Truth, Colleen. All right.

My name is Andrew Rappaport. I'm the host of several podcasts. Andrew Rappaport's Rappaport, which is an hour, usually an hour, becoming an hour and a half late, but an hour or longer show.

It's weekly. I have a Rappaport daily, which is two minutes Monday through Friday. I also do, on Thursdays, we have a

Apologetics Live. That's a live show. So Thursday nights, go to ApologeticsLive .com.

You can join in, ask any questions, even if you want to challenge us. We get a lot of people,

Catholics and atheists and Mormons, that come in and challenge us. And we try to answer any questions we get.

Colleen and I are also the co -hosts of So You Want to Be a Podcaster, for those who may be interested in podcasting.

There's way more podcasts than are mentioned, that are represented here. We have now,

Colleen and I were checking, as of last night, from when we're recording this, we have now 21, was it,

I think I said, Colleen? 21 podcasts in the Christian podcast community, as of right now.

And so one of our newest is Keith with Quest for Truth. So welcome, and this is your first time with us here in this podcast and forum.

So, as I mentioned, the topic, this is, there isn't, when we do these podcasts, maybe we'll get, in the future, do more show notes and things, but this right now, the way we do it is more of a lively discussion.

Let everyone get to discuss what they think on the topics that we have. We don't have a set place where it goes.

We just have the topic. And so the topic is the Christian response to culture. There's a lot of different ways

I think we could go, but I actually, since Colleen is here, one of the, and I'm going to regret saying this,

I really think I am. One of the advantages to being Presbyterian, that just sounds wrong.

And for folks who don't know, Colleen and I do shows together and I always bust on her being a Presbyterian, she busts on me being a

Baptist. We'll both agree when we get to heaven, but until then we have fun with each other. When we're all reformed.

Yes, we'll be reformed in a different way though. That's called glorification. But being reformed,

Colleen, you do have the advantage that you have confessional statements that do work toward helping folks in dealing with different topics.

So I want to kick it off to you first, because I know when we were talking, you were talking about the two kingdom view.

And I think that could actually play in well to start us off on how the Christian should be responding to culture.

Because there's a lot of different ways we can look at culture. We can look, I know that Eve, your program deals with movies.

There's a lot of things we can get in there with that. And so music, you know, one of the things

Colleen and I were talking about today is, you know, we could talk about the question of, you know, should

Christians be listening to secular music or watching secular movies? So we'll probably get there.

But Colleen, why don't you start us off with just the Presbyterian or reformed view with some of the confessions that we have on the two kingdom view.

So that's actually not necessarily a confessional view. I'm not going to get into that.

Within the reformed and Presbyterian umbrella, there are actually two views. And you can, if you're sitting in a reformed or Presbyterian church, you can have one member of the church on one side of you that holds one and another member on the other side that holds another.

And so there's, on a basic sense, there's a one kingdom view and there's a two kingdom view.

And quickly, I'll just say on the one kingdom view, there are some different things which will fit into the one kingdom view.

You may hear of something called neo -Calvinism and a man named Abraham Kuyper. And then you also, and so he talked a lot about the cultural mandate and all of life is worship.

And I'm mentioning this first because it is distinct from the two kingdom view. And even people like Theonymous hold a one kingdom view.

So they would hold a view that you need to go into culture and make it Christian. So that is one perspective.

I hold what is the two kingdom view. And everything is under the control of the

Lord, obviously. But we see a distinction between the sacred and the secular. So the sacred would be everything that happens within the church and the secular is that which happens outside of the church.

So for me, when I think of something like music, and I'll just use that as an example since you brought it up,

Andrew, when I think of something like music, I'm going to be extremely picky under that umbrella of the church on what music should be sung.

Because I hold to something called the regular principle of worship, that we should only worship in the ways that God has commanded.

But then outside in the secular realm, that is still controlled by the

Lord. And I'm still to honor the Lord. And it's also sometimes called the kingdom of the left.

So that doesn't mean I go and listen to music that is blasphemous or uses coarse language or those sorts of things.

But there is what we would call Christian liberty, as long as it's not opposed to God's law.

So that's just some very basics. You can also tune into Theology Gals, where we talk about these things.

We have a whole episode on the two kingdoms and a whole episode on Christ and culture. So a little shameless plug.

Yeah, you don't have the beanie like Jamal to wear. And I'm sure

Andrew will link our episodes in the episode notes. Now I got to remember it. I'll send them to you.

But anyway, that's really, really basic. And I haven't done an extensive amount of research and thinking through the two -kingdom view.

But I personally, and I don't know how the rest of you guys see where you guys land, I would tend to be a one -kingdom person,

I guess. I think I see everything as under God.

And I'm not sure how much I see the secular. Well, but we see everything as under God, too.

So just to make that distinction. But we would not go into the world to make the world

Christian. We go into the world to preach the gospel. But we're not going to be out there making sure our politicians are necessarily

Christian and things like that. So, yeah. But I absolutely believe you would be more one -kingdom.

Oh, actually, no. And the way you explain it that way, I may be more two -kingdom. Because, yeah,

I mean, look. Huh? I said that's interesting.

To hear that broken down in that way. Actually, I'm not familiar with the difference between the one -kingdom view and the two -kingdom view.

But as Colleen, I keep saying Colleen, sorry. As Colleen puts it, I think I would see myself as being more two -kingdom.

I have to look more into that. Yeah, I may. I remember when

I was, oh, I forget who it was. It was Mitt Romney that was running for president at the time.

And I was in studio with Greg Koukl on Stand to Reason. And we were driving into the studio.

And we were discussing, because back then it was coming up, can you have a Mormon? Can you vote for a

Mormon for president? And he asked me about it as we were driving in. And my view was

I'm voting for president, not pastor. And so I'm not holding him to Christian values as the only possible values for president.

For someone who's going to be governing in a secular realm, pretty much.

So I may be more two -kingdom, Colleen, than I think. Uh -oh. Am I agreeing with Colleen?

That's bad. Yeah, but you're going to also find it's not specific. I would say both of these views, that if you were to push almost any

Christian, they're going to come, they're going to fall into one of these in a basic sense. I mean, the two -kingdom view really kind of started with Augustine and the two cities of God.

And, you know, the reformers are very influenced by Augustine. But even

I, like if you look at certain things that have influenced our country, like the Christian coalition and stuff like that, they really have more of a one -kingdom perspective, if that helps, too.

So let me ask this, and I know I want to see what everyone else's view is, but for clarification, so you'd see the one -kingdom view is more of when people are going out to try to make the world more

Christian? In other words, is it more of a premillennial type of view?

Okay, first of all, someone doesn't listen closely to our podcast. I'm just kidding. Those episodes are how long ago?

Andrew listens to our podcast every week. So I don't want to get deep into this because it can get pretty technical.

I mean, if you think of things, sometimes people will accuse one -kingdom people of, you know, do we still fight against abortion?

They'll say things like, and I'm sorry for my dog making noise in the background, do we still fight against abortion and against homosexual marriage?

Of course we do because this is still God's world. But going in and saying, okay, I'm going to make the society

Christian. So think of that in terms of like a theonomist model. So most one -kingdom would want to make the society

Christian in some way, not to the extent that theonomists would, but you would probably understand that example,

Andrew, since you know something about theonomy. Yeah, I would. And I'm going to let everyone else jump in.

Yeah, I'll stop talking. So Keith, Jamal, Eve, what are your thoughts so far?

I think I'm with Jamal. I would need to find out more about what you mean by two kingdoms. But it sounds like what you're saying is the world is what the world is.

And I mean, we should desire to win everybody to Christianity, but for practical purposes, it's not going to happen.

Well, we should be trying to go into all the world and preach the gospel.

So there's probably no distinction on how we would do that. But the world is falling – the world is not going to be godly.

So we're not – I mean, if you think of like a postmillennial or theonomist, they want the world to be like a

Christian nation and things like that. I forgot one important aspect.

As idealistic as that might be, I don't want to see it happening. Right, right, kind of like Andrew was even talking about like a premillennial view.

One thing I forgot to say within the two kingdoms is there's a large emphasis on what we'd call the doctrine of vocation.

And so if you think of during the Reformation where there was the priests and then there was everybody else, and there's even stories of Luther where, you know, someone came and said, but I'm a shoemaker.

What can I do for the Lord? And it was almost like only the priest worked for the

Lord. And, you know, Luther said, go and be the best shoemaker that you can. This is not verbatim, obviously, and do it to the glory of God.

And so if I'm a mom changing diapers, I should do the best that I can in glory to the

Lord. And all of us, whether we're podcasting or moms or dads or husbands, wives, employees, friends, sister, brother, daughter, son, whatever we are, that's what the

Lord has called us to, and we should do it to his glory. And I've heard that concept years ago when

I was young, up and coming, 20 -something, people were recommending that maybe

I should be going into ministry or something. I've just never felt called to do that.

And some people were saying, well, you're not working for God unless you're becoming a preacher or a leader. Well, no, because, you know, my career path was the military, and I was in contact with a lot of people who weren't

Christian. But I felt like I was there to support them as best

I could as a Christian. It's not like every day was a prayer meeting, no.

But there were times when people knew they could come to me if they needed some input of a

Christian nature. Yeah, you were an example of Christ where the Lord had you. Right, and places where, yeah, the military has chaplains.

The chaplains don't sit in the foxhole with you. They're not in the barracks with you. I don't know where they go, but they're not where the people are most of the time.

Well, I would say that I would have to agree with Colleen, the

Two Kingdom view, the way she's explained it. But I think my position on this has always been that we should be

Christians wherever we are, and we should be striving to present, not preach to the choir,

I guess, which is kind of funny because that's what my podcast does, is it preaches to the choir. But if I'm going to be a writer,

I'm not going to be a Christian writer. I'm going to be a writer who is a Christian, and I am going to write stuff that I hope that people outside of the

Christian community would read. If I were a podcaster, I would want to podcast to everyone, and hopefully people outside the

Christian community would hear what I have to say. I think as Christians, a lot of times we segregate ourselves away from the world, and we only say things or do things that we want other

Christians to hear and see, but we don't necessarily reach out to the rest of the world. And then that way we relinquish the culture to the world, and they're never going to hear truth if we don't present it in a venue where they can hear it.

I know Jamal's dying to say something. I was waiting. No, that was good.

I agree with that too, Eve, as well. And as I'm hearing this conversation, it's making me think.

I know a couple times pre -millennialism is brought up. I just got tongue -tied there, seriously.

Jamal, just word it as biblical end times view. That's how you... That's the definition for millennialism that you just gave, by the way.

All right. But that's what I'm getting at. It seems to me that depending on your view, it may seem like you believe the world is going to get better, or you feel like it's always going to be the world.

It's depending on where you would stand, ultimately. If someone who would believe that the world is going to get better eventually, then

I would see them being, I guess, in more of the One Kingdom area. They would eventually believe that everything will eventually turn

Christian. Whereas, in my perspective, how I see the scriptures, is that because we do know there's going to be many who are going to go to hell, and there's going to be...

The elect, the few that God has chosen, is going to come to Him. And so, I don't see the world becoming

Christian, or doing everything the way God would want them to do, because the

Bible tells us that we're all rebellious, apart from Christ. And so,

I don't know. I guess that connection just makes me feel like it would be more of a Two Kingdom view.

I guess I want to learn more about it, just to understand more of the terminology and the criticisms.

I know Colleen didn't want to go too deep in it tonight, and I understand why. But it's definitely something worth looking into.

Yeah, I think that one of the problems we have today in Christian culture, not the culture around us, but really,

Son, Colleen, you mentioned the idea of, if only a priest can serve

God. I actually saw this, if you guys remember, some of the Francis Chan books on crazy love.

Then there was, I forget who wrote the book, Reckless. There was this big thing where, if you were not doing something really radical for Christ, then you really weren't serving

Him. You really weren't acting like a Christian should.

They put out this idea that we had to really be giving everything up in life for living for Christ.

And I think, and Colleen will correct me if I'm wrong on this, because she'll know for sure, I think it was

Michael Horton who wrote a book, and it was something like Normal Christianity.

Yeah, I was actually just thinking of that when you were talking, Michael. So David Platt wrote a book called

Radical. I haven't read David Platt's book, but I'm under the impression that it's kind of endorsing what you were talking about a little bit more, that I'm going to go out and be radical for Jesus.

And I don't know if he endorses some sort of asceticism, or exactly what sorts of things he does.

But Michael Horton, and he says he wasn't intending initially for this to be in response to Platt's book, but his book is called

Ordinary. And that's who we are.

I see this a lot with women in my podcast, where a woman comes and says, wow,

I just feel like I'm home with my three little kids all day, and I don't feel like I'm doing anything for Christ.

Yes, you are working for Christ in caring for your children. I thought of one other example in the

Two Kingdom. This might be helpful. When we had our episode, I talked about when I was in Southern California as a teenager, and we had the

Christian Yellow Pages. So in the Christian Yellow Pages, you can find a Christian plumber.

Wait, wait, wait. Stop, stop, stop. You have to first explain what Yellow Pages are first.

I think everyone but Jamal here should know, but before the internet, we had a phone book where you looked up.

I need a mechanic. I'm going to look up in the Yellow Pages under mechanic. So we had Christian Yellow Pages.

You can find Christian everything. You can go to the Christian dry cleaner. Kind of makes me think a little bit about what

Eve was talking about, how we segregate ourselves a little bit. So I'm going to go to the Christian dry cleaner. I'm going to call the Christian mechanic, and the

Christian carpenter, and everything. I mean, it wasn't like as big as the regular

Yellow Pages, but it was sizable for being all Christian. And so one example we would give in our view is that I need a plumber.

I'm going to call the best plumber, whether he's Muslim or whether he's Mormon or whether he's

Christian or whether he's an atheist. I'm going to call the best plumber because I need the best plumber to come and fix the sink.

And that would be an example too. Now, what's interesting with that that I was thinking was the

Muslim's way of thinking. And we want to talk theology, but the Muslims, Islam has a theology when it comes to hiring in these realms, and they would say you do hire a fellow

Muslim because they're Muslim. Now, the difference, and this is a radical idea for Christians, the

Muslim mindset is you hire a Muslim and you pay him more because you're taking care of one of your own.

Christians are not like that. Christians hire Christians and expect to be given a break, or they expect to do shoddy work and not worry about it because you're a brother of Christ, right?

Very different. So in a Muslim sense, in their theology, you should hire

Muslims because you're helping to take care of someone that believes like you. Now, I don't know how that might play into the thinking.

Well, if I love my neighbor as myself and my neighbor specific, let's just think in terms of the church.

If I've got a really good carpenter at my church, if he's a good carpenter, of course, he's going to be first on my list.

But I have seen situations, and I'm guessing, Andrew, you have too, where someone hires someone at church.

You've got a plumber at church and you just know he's a plumber. You don't know if he's good or not, but you know he's a Christian. You know he goes to your church.

Someone hires him. He comes and does not great work, and it ends up not ending very well.

I'm sure you've seen these situations. They expect a deal, like you said. Yeah. So, I mean, what do you guys think?

I mean, have you guys run into this idea of radical Christianity versus ordinary living?

Yeah, I've actually struggled with that, and a lot of that dealing with my background as well.

You know, coming out of the cult and everything, it's like if you're not operating in some arena of platform, then you're not fulfilling

God's work. You know, and it took a while. It was more of a relief to me to realize that, man, just being a – just, as my homie would say, killing it, like killing it at home as a father and as a husband is enough.

You know, like if I never had prescribed truth, I don't have to feel like I've lived my life unfulfilled as far as serving the

Lord, you know, which was a relief. Like I said earlier, it was a relief because I believed that I had to be in some kind of position.

I had a gentleman approach me lately who knew me back when I was teaching falsely, and he asked me, was

I going to preach again, or were you going to – were you thinking about pastoring one day? And I'm like, no.

I was like, don't have the desire for that now. You know, I like speaking, you know.

I have the ministry. I don't prescribe truth. But he was like, well, you know, God has called us to do his work.

And I'm like, yeah, he did. Like I'm doing his work, you know. And that was just like I'm not doing enough, you know.

And that made me step back for a little bit, and it's like, man – and I didn't know this was a two -king of you, one -king of you type deal or anything like that as far as how people are viewing things.

It just – you know, I just see it as how people view what you should do in your life for God, you know.

So it's a relief to know that, man, like my life, it may seem ordinary, but, man, it's spectacular.

Like living as a – trying to serve my wife or serving my children to the glory of God is anti this world, you know.

That's not what this world – that's, you know, that is not ordinary to the world, you know. It's ordinary for me to be passive.

It's ordinary to me to be passive with my children, be passive with my spouse and everything else.

It's ordinary for me to not lead, you know. And so it's interesting how that perspective is.

You know, it's interesting with your background. You mentioned you were involved in a cult.

And I was dealing with a cult that is called the Church of Wells. And there was – people would go down there, and that was a big thing.

They'd say, you just – you got to come. And as soon as people went down there, they got pulled into it.

And it really was somewhat of a fascination to me to try to figure out what was going on, what was happening there.

And what I think it was was they built this little commune where everybody could live that radical life.

And they all worked together. They lived together. So you had a lot of love bombing going on. But they had a company that I guess the guys that started the church owned, and everybody worked for the company.

Granted, they worked for free. But they ended up just all feeling like they were – when they'd get down there, they felt like they really were living the

Christian life that they were meant to live. And it dawned on me that it's sort of this way we deal with the

Christian culture that we're talking about now is just – that's what drew people into it was they thought somehow living just an ordinary life, just going to – like Keith says, being in the military and serving the country, somehow that's not really serving

Christ. You have to give all that up and just be working for the church and sharing the gospel, and that's it.

And I tend to think that no, you could be my background, my trade.

Mike is engineering. I'm a software engineer by trade. So that's my background.

I can do that to the best of my ability. And that glorifies God, I believe. And maybe that's more the two -kingdom view that Colleen is talking about.

I'd hate to be agreeing with her. Well, I was wondering too, it's like now just – so the scripture that talks about how we should do good to all men, but especially those in the household of faith, paraphrasing if you allow me, like is that the argument that is given behind why we should be seeking for only

Christians who do such and such or our fellow church members who perform certain trades or work that we're looking for versus going out to the world?

Is that the argument that it would come from, one of the arguments that we use? I don't know if you're asking me.

I'm not sure, but I would definitely assume that something like that.

And that verse is definitely true. I mean if you look at – we're called to love our neighbor as ourself, which for us includes my

Mormon next -door neighbor and my atheist son and any person around me, but we see in scripture that we're called to a very specific type of love for our brothers and sisters in Christ.

I guess maybe there would be a disagreement on how that plays out maybe. Yeah, that's something that just came to mind as I was thinking about it.

It's like sometimes when I hear different views, I try to see where the other side would object or try to think about where the opposition may have come from.

And that's the first word I think about that somebody could use to say, hey, especially to those in the household of faith.

So like you said, how would that play out? Is that the example where Andrew was talking about where the

Christian brother is doing work for free, where he's not expecting to get paid as much, or where they get paid more because you're doing especially well to them, so you're doing more than what they would normally charge, just being more general.

And even if they don't do the best job, not looking for the best work, but the fact that they are of the household of faith, which

I don't agree with that. I think if you want a job to be done, you should look for it to be good.

And I'll give you an example. A guy reached out to me, he was a pastor, and I used to do not really deep graphic design work, but I can make a banner and I can make flyers and stuff like that, and I'm pretty okay with Photoshop.

And so he hit me up and wanted me to design a banner for him. And I guess because he was a

Christian and because he's a pastor, I wasn't going to charge him as much, because maybe if I charged him, I wouldn't charge anybody else.

And he paid, but he wanted me to hang it up. And so I charged him for that.

But the thing is he wanted me to do a miracle, which I don't have the expertise. When it comes to hanging stuff, give me a nail and some wood,

I probably can make it work, but I'm not the type to measure everything, to make sure it's completely centered. That's not me.

And I explained that to him. I said, hey, I can hang it for you. Just tell me where you want it, and I will try to put it there.

And I would charge you based on that. And so he had these brick walls, and he wanted me to drill a hole in his walls, and I told him

I refused to do it because I was like, I'm not going to drill a hole in your wall because I could mess it up.

And that's a hole in a brick wall, and it can be seen. And I don't want to mess your wall up. And so he was like, okay, well, use whatever you can.

So I found some adhesive. I knew it would not work, guys. I knew it wasn't going to work. I was like, okay, I'll use some adhesive. He wanted to hang it outside where it was wind, it was blowing, it was raining.

And I was like, okay. So I took some adhesive, some grill tape, and I hung that banner up the best way I could. And when it fell down, he was upset.

He called me up. He was like, that banner fell. I said, well, I told you it would fall. I told you it would fall.

And he's like, well, what am I going to do? I said, well, see if you've got a brother in the church who may know how to hang it up.

I said, I can't do that work. So that's an example of, hey, you wanted somebody to do it right.

You should have looked for somebody who could do it and be willing to pay. But I admitted to him, I don't do that kind of work.

Well, maybe one thing that we can do, you said like you do graphic design. Maybe you hear that someone in your congregation that doesn't have a lot of money really needs some graphic design.

And you go to them and say, hey, I have some free time this

Saturday. Maybe I could help you. And maybe that's one way that we approach that,

I guess. And I think a lot of people do those sorts of things.

My friend's husband is a carpenter. And if someone in their church needs something done, it's not necessarily them coming to him saying, hey, can you come do this for free?

But he hears there's a need and says, you know what, I've got Saturday afternoon off, and I'm going to go help this family in my church.

Eve, what do you think? There's a couple of guys who do that. They're mechanics.

And they have a shop. And if somebody that they know, I mean, they don't just like advertise, we're going to fix your car for free.

But they will if they know you need it. I mean, they might tell you, just buy the part, and we'll do the rest.

But they do that because they like to do mechanical work. So, Eve, what do you think?

Eve's the one that I always have to try to pull into the conversation. She's like, oh, quiet. Not on her own show, though.

No, I'm not quiet. Not quiet. I wasn't the quiet one in the last throwdown. I would say that a worker is worth his hire, regardless of whether he's working for somebody in the world or working for somebody in the church.

If he wants to donate his services, that's, you know, on him. But you would have to look at whether he has another source of income to be meeting his personal needs and the needs of his family.

I know, like, I work in ministry. So I get paid for doing ministry. And, you know,

I don't expect to do it for free, and I'm not expected to do it for free, because that's my source of income, and that's how

God provides for my needs. But I do donate design work to my church when they ask for it.

I don't charge my church for that because I consider it a service to the Lord. A fellow

Christian who asked me to do something from my church, a fellow body member, I would probably do something.

I had a gentleman in my church who asked me to help him with his logo, and I did, and his business was a fudge business, and I says just Amy and fudge.

So, you know, a bartering system. That can be fattening. Yeah. So, you know,

I figure it can be a little bit of a bartering. It can be a little bit of meeting people's needs as you can.

I have my accountant is a member of my church, and I pay her what she charges for her accounting services.

So I don't expect her to do it for free. And so, yeah, I just think that in that instance that, you know, when you're using your what

God's given you as gifts, you can choose and be sensitive to the leading of the spirit, whether you ask for money or whether you do it as a service to the body and to the

Lord. So let's ask this as a change of topic here, and I'll start off with Eve because your show will lead into this actually.

So there is debate. Can Christians go and watch?

And I'm going to use the term secular and sacred, the two kingdom discussion, because I think it's just easier for us to understand it.

But can a Christian go and watch a secular movie? Or should

Christians only be watching Christian movies? So this also goes for music.

It goes for art. It goes for a whole lot of things. But I want to start off with that one.

And I'll start off with you, Eve, because I know where your position is going to be. Because if you say no, it's wrong, your whole podcast would be kind of an issue because it's all in secular movies pretty much.

Yeah. Well, I think that that is definitely something that you have to be spirit -led on.

If you're sinning by spending time in the world in certain ways that are going to be leading you astray and become a problem.

And we dealt with this even in our last throwdown where we were talking about being a stumbling block for weaker

Christians and that kind of thing. There's lots of ways that you can personally draw the line on how much of the world you step into.

But Christ himself said that you need to be in the world, but not of the world. And if you're not of the world, then you're following half of it.

But if you're also not in the world, then you're disobeying because we have to be out there.

And the purpose of my podcast isn't to lead Christians into secular doctrine.

The whole point of my podcast is to how to approach secular things from a

Christian worldview, to be able to have discernment when you're approaching the world and being in the world, that you're not just turning your biblical filter off and just letting the culture of the world influence you.

Because if you can do it with movies, then you can do it with other things. You can do it with the news.

You can do it with your education. You can do it with all kinds of things. It's just teaching yourself how to use the discernment that God is giving you.

Anyone else want to wage on that one? I mean, should we, as Christians, you know, are there things where we shouldn't be going?

You know, should it be that Christians only see Christian movies put out by Christians? And I'll even emphasize more.

You can also answer this. What defines Christian? Does it have to have the gospel to be

Christian? Like, or, or can it be Christian and not share the gospel? Let me put it this way.

Everyone knows Mr. Rogers. Well, I've never met him, but I've seen his

TV shows since I was a kid. He did preach the gospel on his shows, but everyone could tell, even if he didn't know he was the ordained minister.

You could tell that his show is for kids. Had the gospel message.

And then, even though he didn't say altar call, come down here now, you know what

I mean? I think that we can certainly live our lives and enjoy.

Culture around us without participating in it. And the way we do participate in it,

People will realize that there's something different. We're not. We're not doing certain things.

We're not saying certain things. We don't use certain words. And by our behavior, they'll know.

No, we're not. That way. I'll put that beat around the bush too much on that.

Well, we are the light of the world, right? As, as Christians, I think

Eve, I, I appreciate your show. Cause. You know,

I think a lot about, I'm not a big movie person. Sometimes I listen to your show just to learn about a movie, but, and you'll, you'll even look at, is there any, you know,

Christian themes here, different things like that. And I'll sometimes before we go see a movie,

I'll go and read about it. How much bad language is it? Is in it or, you know, is there any sexual content?

And if, if there is my husband, I don't go and see it. And so definitely, I think. I think that we have

Liberty, but we don't have Liberty to do things that would be contrary. To the

Lord. And, and what is good. And so like, I. I'll go and see a secular.

Movie, but I'm not going to see a secular movie. If it has sexual situations in it. For instance,

I wouldn't say two is people go to movies to be entertained. And if the movie is entertaining, then it's enjoyable.

And I was just listening to another podcast that dealt with this issue recently. And they were saying the reason why

Christian movies are. So terrible is because we're not entertaining.

Because, you know, you go. You get. Peppered with. Applicational.

I mean, there's a whole. There's a whole. Image word pictures of what a gospel message is.

And. Some people don't find that very entertaining. Sometimes it's just because it's a little budget, but Christian films can't really help that.

They don't have the Hollywood budget. The bigger films have. I mean, so there's that.

I mean, if you want to be entertained and just be careful, you know, what you subject yourself to, like you said, you know, check and see if there's, if there's language or, or nudity or whatever the film may have.

And if it has it, then. Don't watch it. Well, well, Keith, I'll challenge it that a little bit, because if you think about the

Kendrick brothers back when they started, maybe not now, but they, they had no budget.

It was a church that did it. They had church that people in the church that were actors, but they decided that they didn't want to make something that looked cheaply done that.

You know, look low budget. And so they, they put a lot behind it. And I, I think that you can do that.

You know, I'll give you a great example in a, in a, a ministry that put that same mindset into place.

If, if you think about museums, if any of you have been to the creation museum in Kentucky, if you haven't, what is wrong with you?

No. But that is like phenomenally done. And I'm not just saying that because I'm one of the founding members, like who helped support it, right.

To get that going. It was amazing to see that done. The, the detail that was put into it.

And I had the privilege of going there before they opened. And I, I got to see some rooms before they were done, but you could, you could tell the amount of detail that they put into that.

Why? Because they said, look, we know that people bring kids to museums. Why? Because here they, they come in and they're entertaining.

They look at it. Oh, it's so amazing. And then you go to Christian museums and it's like, okay, you're done in an hour.

You know what I mean? The thing that blew me away is my son hates museums. We went the first time for the creation museum.

We were there for two days and I, I was like worried. Cause like I wanted to sit and read everything.

And I was figuring my son was going to want to bolt and I was going to have to deal with it. We're there for two days. We went one day read through everything.

And my son was like, can we go again? And I was like, okay, why? Because it was so well done.

Same with the, the Kindred brothers, their movies that they did. It was low budget. They, but they wanted to be competitive with the world in that sense.

But I think a lot of, I will agree with you that, that those people too, I mean, to me, that was like the beginning of the

Christian film industry really coming around. And people who pay attention to that and the entertainment industry will say that the

Christian films had gotten a lot better in the last 10, 15 years. And they have been at a long time.

Yeah. And I think, I think that some of it though, is look, I think that one of the things from generations ago, now granted, most of you guys know,

I didn't grow up in a Christian home, so I didn't grow up watching Christian movies far from it. But the thing that I did,

I do notice is that the movies that were from a generation ago, it's like, they all had to be evangelical.

They always had to be the whole goal. The movie was the gospel. So people would get saved. And I remember when

I was in college and I'd watched some of these movies as a believer. And I was puzzled. Cause I'm like,

I'm already a Christian. Like I want to watch a Christian movie that, you know, doesn't, it's not just the gospel.

Right. I mean, like it seemed like for Christian movies, everything was, you had to share the gospel because it was all for the unbelieving world.

And yeah. The unbelieving world isn't going to watch it. Thank you. The whole point that I was saying earlier about preaching to the choir is that Christians tend to do that.

We tend to produce material that only Christians are going to read or watch because we get so heavily in our, our

Christian speak that somebody who is. A non -believer is not going to pick it up and read it.

And that's why I made the comment that we need more, more writers who are Christians, not more Christian writers, because if, if we let the culture,

I mean, like let's take, for instance, Harry Potter, Harry Potter was a book that was written for young people.

And it, it got this massive audience across the world and it got, you know, even church people were arguing about whether they could let their kids read these books.

And Harry Potter basically introduces young people to a paganistic worldview without very little theology, if any backing it up because the writer's pagan.

And if we had a Christian writer, like let's say

CS Lewis, who writes a series of books that have a Christian underpinning to them of Christian foundation, but they're not necessarily preachy, but they're entertaining books that kids like to read or have read to them.

That's what we need is more CS Lewis's in the world who are writing to a secular audience. That's writing and producing material that secular audiences want to read and watch.

And we don't have that in our culture right now. We don't. And when Christians do produce stuff, preaching to the choir, half the choir disagrees with the theology and then gets mad at it and says, well, you can't go watch that because you know, that has this in it.

And that was done by a post -millennial. And we start nitpicking over the theology of the doctrine that we don't agree with and, and half the audience goes away.

And that's why Christians can't make money producing for Christian audiences because we're too divisive inside of our own camps.

Okay. I want to show you my notes there. Look at that. Harry Potter. That was the next topic that it's like, you just read my notes there.

I got to say that those are such good points. Eve, you just made a couple of really excellent points that have me really thinking.

So I appreciate your comments. Well, I did want to talk about Harry Potter cause there was very interesting.

I noticed the interesting thing with Harry Potter. Now full disclosure, I have read all of Harry Potter, but I've also read all the

Da Vinci code and the other works of Dan Brown. I've read, I read a whole lot of bad stuff because it comes in the church and people ask for a response.

And I'm, I do original research. So when someone asked me to do some, I check it out. Now here's an interesting thing.

And Colleen on theology, huh? Except I'm not, no one comes to me and says,

Hey, you know, pastor Andrew, what do you think about this movie? See? So I, fortunately I've, I've, but if someone comes to me and I'll, I'll go watch the movie,

I guess, maybe, but that's what I have. Are you just watching for, see,

I don't have to, I just go back and look in the, the, you know, the, the old episodes of, are you just watching?

And I go, look here, just listen to, you know, even Tim, tell you what to think about the movie.

So I'm glad that you do it for me. I can't do all the heavy lifting myself.

Eve on our podcast feed, it's kind of buried way deep in there.

We have a very slow moving project that my cohost and I decided to start.

We're talking about superhero movies and, you know, how a lot of superheroes have a lot of dark angst and, you know,

Superman's not the same Superman he was back in the golden days of 50s or 40s or 60s or whatever.

And we came up with an idea for a superhero. You know, we hashed out a storyline.

We have about two shows posted, but I have about five scripts written and there's about 15 altogether.

And the whole series. And it's about the way that I want to do it.

It's not much like what you've described. And that is to have a superhero who does superhero stuff.

And just do his behavior and actions. You can tell he's a Christian. And you can tell he's not a Christian. And I'm not sure if he's a

Christian or not, Now, of course, my cohost being a Baptist preacher. He had this discussion about, but at the end of the, of the series, everybody gets saved.

And they all come to Christ. This person's going to die. This person's going to die.

Because of what you do in the good story is people get killed off. Because that's what makes a good story, the tragedy and the angst of it all.

But we can do that, I think, by, you know, having people die, making it realistic.

And in the end, no, not everybody gets saved. Maybe kill people along the way. Because we do want to have a

Christian undertone to it. And I have an awesome cliffhanger that goes into a follow -up story.

And what's that cliffhanger? It'll be revealed in due time. I'm impatient, say so.

But you know, here's the thing, on Theology Gals some time ago, I don't remember the episode number.

Colleen can send me it. Harry Potter? Yeah. Oh, the one called, yeah. If you go to TheologyGals .com, look up Harry Potter.

Okay, go ahead. Did you do that? Can you just give me the episode number by now? Come on. I know, I didn't look it up, but I'm going to.

Okay, before this show is over, we'll have that episode number. But they did an episode on Harry Potter. And here was the thing

I found so interesting, because this I didn't know. I was approached with a Harry Potter because I was pastoring at the

Chinese church. And I had one of the ladies whose children wanted to watch the movie. She was very much against it because she saw a news article that said that it teaches witchcraft and all this stuff.

What I didn't know, and I learned from Theology Gals, was that was from The Onion, which is a satire.

Yeah, let me tell that story real quick. It, by the way, is episode 38.

It's called Entertainment Literature in Harry Potter. So I'm sure Jamal's probably too young, but the rest of us,

I don't know how old you are. We all remember Jamal's youth. Jamal, it's not our white privilege.

It's our elder privilege. Yes, it's our elder. Back in the early days of the internet, when we were all excited to get our emails, and remember how, especially in the

Christian community, people would pass on emails, and you get all these chain emails, okay?

And so several people had sent me this one about Harry Potter and witchcraft, and how kids ended up embracing witchcraft, and I mean, it sounded really bad.

And my sister -in -law's in -laws sent it to her, like, you can't do Harry Potter because of this article.

Kids are becoming witches because of Harry Potter. And so I was at Bible study one night, and one of our friends said to me, hey, did you get that Harry Potter email going around?

And this is probably around 2000, 2001, something like that. And I said, yeah.

He said, by the way, that's from The Onion. And so they were passing around just the text without saying it's from a satirical paper.

But to this day, and that actually made a list that was called, it was like, you know, five times

The Onion fooled everyone, where The Onion put out an article and people passed it around as truth. And I think that there are some valid things with Harry Potter, and we may even disagree within here.

I myself was kind of against it and not really knowing a lot about it.

And then my pastor and his wife and another elder's wife read it, and then another one of my friends did, and they said, this is not what we thought it was at all.

We think it's okay to let your kids read. And I saw my kids learn to love reading with those books, with the

Narnia books, with the Harry Potter, with Lord of the Rings. So here was an interesting thing. I have somewhere on my shelf,

I have a two -volume, two or three -volume set from someone dealing with Harry Potter.

This was the really interesting, and this is where I think this is going to play in when we think about culture and how we respond to it.

He basically was making, he had three basically authors or book series in mind.

The Harry Potter series, which was his book, was basically about Christians should not read Harry Potter.

It's evil. It's wicked. It teaches witchcraft. Then he had Chronicles on Narnia and Lord of the

Rings. And with those two, he was basically saying, this is good fiction, Harry Potter, bad fiction.

And I'm trying to evaluate it because he was saying, Harry Potter's bad because there's witchcraft, but Chronicles on Narnia has that too.

And so I was like, wait a minute, you're saying it's witchcraft, but you're not saying, you're just saying witchcraft.

Well, they both have witchcraft. And I'm looking at Lord of the Rings and I'm going, he's saying, well, good

Christian books are always going to be teaching Christian principles. And I'm like, what's the Christian principle in Lord of the

Rings? Because there's actually a book out there called Finding the Gospel in the Lord of the Rings. Now, my theory is if you have to write a book about how to find the gospel in Lord of the

Rings, it's probably not clear. I don't have to do that with Chronicles on Narnia because it's really clear.

Like if you know the gospel, you can see that message there. But I actually argued that I could present the gospel easier through Harry Potter than I could

Lord of the Rings or Chronicles on Narnia. Because I mean, if you know that whole story, it's like, okay, here's someone because of love, he's got to die and be resurrected for everybody else to live.

Hmm. I mean, did the author intend that? Well, clearly not. She's not a believer. She's very much against Christianity.

So I wouldn't say that that was her goal. But when people are trying to say, well, the Lord of the

Rings presents the gospel, I don't see that. I see a lot of truths that we know in any,

I mean, you know, greed and, you know, in Lord of the

Rings and him, you know, the greed and stuff. You could see that in any act because that's part of human nature.

So I just, I look at this stuff and say, I think sometimes we say, well, a

Christian shouldn't do this. Like they should only be reading from Christian authors. And somehow if a

Christian writes it, it's got to be better. You know, I think if you have a

Christian, and this I'm going to agree with Eve. If you have a Christian that wants to be a great author, like, you know, a

J .R. Tolkien, if you want to say, okay, here's a Christian who's a writer, but he wasn't writing a Christian book. I mean,

I believe that he even said that it wasn't, you know, he wasn't trying to teach Christian principles, but it's a fascinating book.

It's a great book to read. And it's not having this Christian overtone throughout it, but someone that may be a believer who writes it, does that automatically make it better?

No, but he was an expert at his craft. And that's what I would say when it comes to the culture,

I don't have a problem. I don't know how you guys are going to feel. Like there was that, and I couldn't remember his name,

Jamal, probably remember, Colleen and I couldn't remember today, but there was a rap singer,

Christian rap artist who started to do secular music. I always say it's Lecrae and it's not Lecrae, because I keep getting corrected.

But there was a guy who, he did a secular album. Now, the only question

I have is, is the album promoting things that are anti -Christian or things that Christians shouldn't be focused on?

If the answer is no, if it's teaching principles that are godly and good, but it doesn't have a definite

Christian overtone, fine. Be an expert at your craft. And if you can do that, even in where the secular world is appealed to, great, fine.

What's the big deal? You know, I think that there's many

Christians, I don't know if any of you guys have this view and want to disagree with me, that'd be good.

But I think we have a lot of Christians who think that somehow Christians should only be entertained by Christians.

And somehow that makes it different. Even if, like Keith said, if it's just poorly done, but somehow we should only be watching

Christian stuff or reading Christian stuff. What are your thoughts?

I think it makes us less able to communicate with the world.

If we're going to go out and preach the gospel, I'm not saying we have to use Star Wars or Lord of the Rings or something like that to find the gospel in it and present the gospel to somebody.

We use the Bible to present the gospel because that's what the gospel is in, is the Bible. Not in any Christian or secular written entertainment, but it gives us an in into a conversation.

A lot of times you can sit down and talk with somebody who's unsaved using, you know, a movie that's currently out or a book that's currently out.

And if you're familiar with that material, you can carry on an educated conversation that can lead to the gospel.

Not because you're using that material to preach the gospel, but because you're using that material as a conversation starter to get yourself to the gospel.

And that's why I really appreciate about, Andrew, when you do your interviews, you need to do that little game where you try to lead, take any topic and see how quickly you can

The spiritual transition game. Yeah, the spiritual transition game. I think that's something that's useful for all of us to try.

And it is helpful to at least have some understanding of what the world is imbibing so that we can, at least have some common ground to start conversations.

I don't think I was going to, I wanted to add to that, because I agree. I think when we mentioned this in the last throw down, and I was kind of on the same side as Eve with this, but it's something

I think about when we talk about Christian things that have the stigma as far as being like, being terrible or bad and kind of stuff like that.

I was listening on the hip hop side of things, it's this guy named, well, his rap name was

Creator. I don't know what his real name is, but he has this, he does videography and cinematography.

And so I was wondering, like one time I was like, well, I wonder if, how to, like how someone in an urban setting would film a video or film videos depicting a concept that's

Christian, like he's a Christian, but yet not making it where it's so, it's not relatable, you know?

And so what I mean by that, it's like, he does videos that kind of depict how it would be in the urban streets, right?

Dealing with gang activity and stuff like that. He films this stuff, yet there's no cussing in it, he doesn't use, there's no cussing in it, but it's so believable.

Like it's, the way it's filmed, the way it's shot, and he releases them on YouTube. And the way they're shot and everything is like, man, this is captivating.

Like this is, this is relatable, you know? I don't, I'm not, it's not cheesy, so to speak, you know?

And that's what, that's what we get a lot of times. Like, I would love to see like a movie, like a

Christian movie that's depicting how things could be in the urban settings and in the streets, you know? And how a person like comes and bring their life to Christ.

But a lot of times when those kind of things are being depicted, it's very cheesy and it's like, they're not, they're not realistic.

That's what I'm looking for, realistic to what actually happens. It's because they're trying to fit themselves in this box and feel like they go outside of it at any point, just for a little bit, that's going to be non -Christian.

It's going to be, you know, heresy or it's going to, you know, and that's why I think that's why we have a lot of problems with a lot of Christian movies is because of that.

They feel ashamed or scared to be natural, you know? And it's like, man, like God saved us where we are, you know?

Like our hearts are changed. We come to know the truth, right? We don't believe in the falsehoods.

We come to know the truth. But who we are, our personalities and all those things are intact, you know?

We're not, we're not robots. And so we should be still be able to be relatable and still be able to make content that should be relatable, you know?

Especially like evil Santa's want to reach the world, you know? They don't talk like us. They don't think like us, you know?

And not in that sense. But it doesn't mean we don't live, we don't, we live in the same earth and therefore we should be able to relate to them in some way, you know?

And so that's interesting. I was just thinking about a creator who does music, you know, who does music and videos and good quality.

I mean, you know, I don't know what kind of budget he works off of, but he does excellent quality for what he has. And then the content is realistic.

And so that's a good example of somebody who's trying to do it right, you know? So I just sometimes want to throw in there that it is possible, you know?

Well, I think Eve said something very important that I want to highlight. And that's, you know, when you do have

Christians that put out movies and things, it's a lot of times we're so busy fighting over the theology of it or, you know, like there was a, there was a movie put out by Hollywood and I'm trying to remember the name of it,

I can't, but Edge of the Spear. Now, there was a big issue with that.

End of the Spear. It was called End of the Spear. End of the Spear. Okay. You know, maybe

Eve has a program on it that I haven't heard. I know. I'm kind of like the expert on that movie, so.

Okay. I consider it a really good movie too, but I don't know that, I don't believe we reviewed it.

Well, my, my, my great uncle was a, was a missionary pilot and friends with Nate Saint, so.

And one of my, and his son actually, I think, made the plane for the movie. But one of the things that was with that movie was they, they specifically casted the main character, they casted someone who would purposely, because he was homosexual.

So, there were people that wouldn't go see that movie just because of that.

We have people that could do movies and it's like, well, if I don't agree with your theology, I'm not going to go watch that movie.

And what Eve said, that the infighting that we have, I think it really is, it almost is like the enemy's way of doing a divide and conquer, but we're doing it to ourselves.

I mean, we, we divide so much that we be almost become ineffective in reaching the, the world in the sense that we're so busy fighting amongst ourselves that we're not focused on, on the lost and focused on, on helping those in the church that are struggling.

And I think that, I think, I mean, that's part of why we're doing this, the theology throwdown is we, we haven't had too much disagreement yet.

We're going to have to do like end times or something, you know, get some disagreement here.

Because two throwdowns and we've been, and we've ended up having just slight disagreements, but we, we wanted to do this to show that we can talk theology and we can disagree with one another with love and charity, because that's not something we see displayed in social media.

It's not something we see when, when Christians respond to other Christians responding to the culture. You know, and I was, as Eve was talking,

I was thinking, you know, we talk about relating to, to unbelievers through movies and things like that.

And I know Christians that would say, that's wrong, that we shouldn't do that. And yet they watch sports because you think about it, you watch a football game, a soccer game, basketball game, hockey, those are not

Christian. I mean, they're not, I mean, even, even if you get a guy that, you know, bends his knee, you know, like a

Tim Tebow who'll bend his knee and do a prayer when he, you know, you know, if he scores or whatever, you know, that's not sharing the gospel.

That's not Christian overtly like the game. Yet, I know that I used to try to watch sports.

I'm not good at it, but I tried for the exact thing that Eve was saying. I was trying to relate to people so I could share the gospel with them.

Just to have that, that kind of in where we have something in common to start a conversation. But if we're, if someone's going to say,

I think, if someone's going to say, well, you can't watch a secular movie or listen to secular music because it's not

Christian. Well, do you watch a secular sports team? Or, I mean, maybe we should just have

Christian football and only Christians are playing. You know, what are your thoughts?

Some people, some people even say that playing football itself is sinful competition. Yeah. Well, with the sports that I watched, that's a little bit more so because well, tennis is not a big deal.

But as some of you guys know, I am a, I do mix martial arts.

I do jujitsu. So I do enjoy watching that, but I have, I'm not looking for people to beat each other up.

I'm looking for the skills and things like that. So it's a little different, you know, but I do, that's a, that's, that may be one we could disagree with theologically.

At some point, you know, watching karate films, which are full of violence. I mean, I always enjoyed watching those actually.

Like you said, I didn't watch them because I was pouncing on somebody in a dark alley. Just because they're fun to watch.

And so if I could, and I guess if for a moment I could play devil's advocate, the thing here is like.

How about you just disagree? We don't want any advocates for the devil here. Okay. I'm going to disagree. You got like people who will say, so what the music and stuff like that.

So just like we talked about watching karate, because, you know, we see in the, we enjoy the art of it.

We see the moves that are being made, how they are landing the hits and all those things like that. But we're actually watching somebody hit a fellow image bearer of Christ, image bearer of God.

So you're enjoying watching somebody get hit who, you know, their body being beat and abused and so on and so forth.

When it comes to the music, whether it's secular or not, whether it's secular or the movies when it's secular, even though you may look at it for a review or it may be, we're taking time and watching something that is opposed to God because it's flesh.

And these are the arguments that are made. You know, this is just what is being thrown out there. Now, you know, when it comes to mixed martial arts and all that stuff like that, like it was my engage in a culture.

I agree. I think you can actually watch something like that for looking at the sport. You know, I was on a pack as long ago as we talked about, should we watch

UFC? You know, I know it's my movies earlier, but it's still dealing with a culture like should should Christians watch the

UFC, the company itself, you know? So we get into talking about what they, what they promote and what they're big on and what they look for and all the kind of stuff like that.

And, and so when you get down to that, it's like, well, yeah, I think UFC is going off rails. It's like, yeah,

I don't want to really too much pay attention to that, but is it okay to watch mixed martial arts? Is it okay to watch this and enjoy it?

You know? And I think it's okay. You know so there are some people who will say because of the fact that they are in the ring and they're fighting each other, they aren't hating.

They're not, they're not, you can't say that that person is loving their neighbor when they're boxing them.

You know, so whether regular boxing or football, you can't say you loving your neighbor when you're wanting to win, when you're wanting to beat them in the competition, you know, when you're supposed to be humble, the

Christian is supposed to be humble, you know what I'm saying? So there's like, this is like, this kind of stuff that's been said, you know? So how would you guys give like give answers to something like,

I know I said a lot, but like, what would be the response to some of the stuff like that? Like how can you love your neighbor if you're participating in competition in that sense?

How are you loving your neighbor? You know, and that kind of, and that kind of stuff. You know,

I thought of, oh, I'm sorry. Being somebody who's played a little football in high school and being somebody who has done a little bit of martial arts, not very much.

You do that because you expend energy, you know, your youthful energy.

You actually participate with others who are doing that. Part of karate is learning how to take the fall or take a hit.

Playing football. Yeah. You're, you're hitting that tackling dummy, but you're, you're, you're getting back as much as you're giving.

And you just know how to take those hits and take those falls.

And you're, you're, you're, you're just used to that. The couple weeks ago,

I went to a wrestling, semi pro wrestling match with my grandson and said, that's what he likes to do.

He likes to watch that. I'd never been to one before. And he watched it on TV and said, oh, that's fake. Well, I will say it's, it's choreographed pretty well.

And they really kind of do know who's going to win. But when they're hitting, they're really smacking each other around, but they, but they, that's what they do.

And they, they, they know how to take the hits. They know how to give as much as they get.

And so they're, they know what they're getting into. It's not like you're just a pounce on some innocent bystander to grab them to play on the field.

So I guess I'm trying to say is the people who do that, they, they're prepared for that. I guess

I can relate a little bit to being a Christian and being in the military. People say, how can you do that?

That's killing people. I never had to do that. I was never in a war situation, but I was always in an infantry units that potentially could be doing that.

How could I justify that as a Christian? Well, it's, it's difficult and I can't get into the whole of what your mind goes through to deal with that.

Sometimes you, you hold a job that you do and knowing full well what you're getting into.

And you, you train and you work and you exercise to learn how to take those hard hits in the falls.

Cause you, you know, the more you train the easier it is to deal with. I don't know if that answered the question or not.

No, no, that's good. I actually, I know Colleen was going to say something. Oh no, I, I was thinking, just to move on to another quick subject and you're the one that made me think of it,

Jamal, because of a guy that went after you. You probably remember that guy that, okay.

And thinking even of, of kind of Christians and culture with the holidays coming up you know, you have people that will say, well,

Christians shouldn't celebrate Christmas because of the materialism or, I mean, there's all sorts of reasons or the, or the paganism and things like that.

And I know I was thinking, Jamal, just while you were talking, I don't know why it popped in my head cause that guy that I forget exactly what, you know, that was going after you over that, that you weren't against the something holidays or something.

Yeah. Yeah. And he's actually starting back up again now. Oh, fun. He's going in.

So a year later he's on the same boat. Oh, is it the same thing too? The holidays stuff again?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He started, he started before, before, back in September, he was already prepping up the posts about Christmas and everything else coming up.

So I've been debate, I've been debating whether I was going to respond to him on anything. I've been really praying about it. So we'll see.

But, um, but yeah, I was actually talking about him when I was mentioning these things. Like he, he is one who would say that Christians should not be participating in sports because the competition, he would misuse, um,

Galatians talking about the works of the flesh and the warrior talks about, um, rivalry.

He takes that and talking about having a rival, like an opponent who stands across from you, like the football team or the opposite basketball team or the opposite boxer, you know, they're, they're your opponent.

Therefore they're your rival. And therefore you're now committing the sin of rivalry. And I think he just has a misunderstanding of what the word actually means in the text, you know, and, um, but anyway, that's another thing.

But like, so it's arguments on that. And there are people who believe that, he's not the only one. There are a lot of people who believe that and buy into that, you know, and dealing with the culture and they'll say, well, this is sin.

You're not loving your neighbor. You know, when you, and I get what you're saying, Keith, um, I wrestled when

I was in high school, my senior year in high school and, um, and I enjoyed it, you know, um, it was tough, you know, it was hard.

Um, I've got wrestled guys who were way bigger than me at the time I was smaller. And so it was like, it was, it was very, it was, it was, it was interesting.

It was good. Um, but I, but I didn't, you know, I remember doing that time. I didn't feel ill will towards my opponent.

You know, I didn't feel like when I go in there, I'm just going to, I'm going to rip them to shreds. And I just, and I wasn't saved in, you know,

I wasn't saying I was a believer of nowhere near it. But at the time I wasn't thinking about like, man, this guy, I hate this guy.

I hate this man. Like I can't wait to just put him on his back. You know, I wasn't thinking that, you know, it's,

I think, I always think these stuff come back to the heart issue. Like you were saying earlier, like when listening to content or watching content, like, like where's your heart, you know, where's your heart at?

You know, are you, are you in sin or, you know, examine yourself, you know, are you in sin or, you know, if you watch this movie, you know what it's kind of content is going to have.

Like, okay. You know, you should be watching that. You know, you know, you struggle in that area. You should be watching it. Especially if you know you're always angry or violent person and they do what you struggle with rage and all that stuff like that, where you may not need to watch a movie with somebody who's like boiling up with a temper and getting angry all the time.

You know, that's going to make it make you feel like inadvertently, like, you know what, I can relate to them.

I get angry like that too. You know, people need to listen to me, you know, it just things you need to check with yourself, you know?

Well, I think, I think like with the example of watching mixed martial arts, the best argument

I heard came for against it comes from Matt Slick and he, a similar argument that you have is, you know, is someone is, is maiming, marring someone made in the image of God.

And I think that that, that would probably be the best argument. Now, you know, there's, there's a lot with that.

And, and, you know, I actually, I haven't watched in a while, but it's not because it's more, because I just don't have time in the day to, to, to watch any sports.

But I think that there's areas that this is, you know, last throw down we talk Christian liberty. I think this is one of those areas where it is a little bit of liberty.

You know, I go, I go to a church where they're pretty much against mixed martial arts. Yeah. And, and so it's, it, it's an issue.

You know, and I have a member of the board, it's driving fraternity that trains people, you know?

So, you know, he's, he's, he's trained professionals and stuff. So in mixed martial arts, but it's, it's a, it's a challenge.

And I think that ultimately, I think that it comes down to the heart attitude of the individual with a lot of these issues.

And I think a lot of these issues are ones where, when we're trying to engage with our culture, we can't avoid the culture.

Like you said, we're in the world, but not of the world, but we can,

I think we can enjoy some things that we see in culture, but it doesn't, the question is, are we given over to it?

You know, you can, it's like, you know, we were just preaching through first Timothy.

So we get to the end of chapter six. So, you know, the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. So money is not a bad thing, you know, having working hard and making money and be able to enjoy some of that.

But if you go and you do that, some people are doing it because they want the things money can give them.

Others are just saying, well, I've, I've earned this. I'm going to go enjoy it. There's, there's someone I know who he enjoys boating.

He likes fishing. He likes going on a boat. He's a Christian. He got himself a nice boat. And a pastor of a church told him that, you know, that was sinful.

He should have given the money to church. Now, maybe he has a, maybe there may be an ulterior motive for the past.

I don't know. But I was like, what's sinful about enjoying the fruits of your labor?

But now if the guy's living for like, like everything's going into his boat and trying to, then it might be an issue.

But that wasn't him. And you know, it's, I think it comes to our motivation. It comes to why do we do, we do, why are we in trying to enjoy code?

Like what are we just enjoying it? Cause it say, this is a great book. I'm enjoying it or movie or music or whatever.

I mean, you know, Colleen, I'm going to out Colleen, ready? Colleen enjoys listening to music in foreign languages, like French music that she doesn't even understand the words, but she enjoys it.

I don't understand it, but Hey, I understand. I understand a lot of French.

My grandkids will watch YouTube, but all of a sudden you hear French and Chinese. These kids listen to this stuff cause they,

I don't know what they like the sound of it, I guess. Well, that's because music is prettier song in certain languages.

I took four years of French. So actually do know some French, but I listened to French and Italian, Russian, some

Chinese, but especially French and Russian and Italian are just beautiful.

You're listening to the, the human voice as an instrument instead of as a delivery of a message.

Yeah. I, I, I always look up the translation to songs though. Yes, I did.

I was into a Japanese song and I really liked it. I enjoyed it. And I'm just the instruments behind it.

And even how they came in with the, with their words and how they just like Eve was saying, like just the sound of it and how they just the energy behind it was really nice.

But then I looked up the lyrics and it was like, they were talking about some like, I got the, I got the power, the power to do this and this and that third, and basically like man to me and type deal like over his own mind and body strength and that kind of stuff.

And I was like, well, yeah, that's it. That's why I always look up words. One of the points that I wanted to make because of the, uh, what you were all were talking about was sports and things is that I think the biggest deal for a

Christian, especially in by being of the world is that we have the correct order of priority in our life.

And if, if you're enjoyment of football or basketball,

I see some people that they're, they just basically live on basketball during a certain time of year when all of, and I, I'm so totally sports illiterate that I'm like Andrew Rappaport with movies.

So, uh, but they, it becomes, you know, where it interrupts their life.

They can't, they can't, um, have the proper priority order of God and family, you know, spouse, children, whatever is in your life and, and football or basketball suddenly bumps to the top of the list and you're putting it above everything else.

Then you should be concerned that you're not, your enjoyment of the world is encroaching or becoming an idol in your life because anything that replaces

God in your life is an idol. And that is, I think where we

Christians have to wrap ourselves around with culture is that we never let, uh, especially secular culture take its place above God in our lives.

And then we're creating idols. Yeah. I always think with, with,

I'm not a big team sport watcher, but I've always,

I'm always amazed when I listen to people talk about sports, like they talk about their team, right?

Oh, and what we did, what did you do? You sat on the couch and watched you didn't do anything in that game.

You know, it's just, it's, it's the, the idea of the ownership that they have, they get so invested in it as if they own it.

You know, it was funny because, you know, I was talking with my uncle once and, and we were talking about the fact that people talk like, you know, he's hearing people talk about, um, the

LA Rams when they were in LA. And he was like, they were talking about, you know, our team did this and we did that.

And he's like, you don't own the team. I do. I, it's my team. You know,

I can say that, you know, and it was just funny because he had a different perspective. He actually did own the team.

He did have part in it, right. But he hired the ball or he, I guess he didn't do, there were a bunch of people, but, um, you know, it's, it's, there's a different perspective and you end up seeing how people get so,

I guess, engrossed in it, that they lose their own identity in the identity of their team.

And that becomes like everything. I mean, it's amazing to me to see, I will see even professing believers that almost go to blows over sports, like disagreeing over sports teams, which

I just don't get it. But I, granted I'm not a sports watcher. So, but I think that's, it's like what you were saying, it becomes something that it encroaches so much in our, in our life that it overtakes the priorities.

And I think that's where I think we'd all, I'm going to assume we're all would agree it's sinful when that happens.

But let me flip it now because and ask this for the, for the person like Jamal was saying, you have people who are, who start to judge other people because of the sports you watch, the books you read, the music you listen to, the movies you watch, and they start to judge you.

Is there a fair level of judgment that people can have biblically in, in these different areas where people could be enjoying culture?

Is there, are there lines where we could say, okay, we should judge that. And lines, we say, you know what, that's

Christian liberty. We, we shouldn't, we shouldn't say, what do you guys think? I mean,

I guess in my mind, if I'm, if I'm here correctly, I'm thinking it depends on like the content, like, you know, just, just a content, like depending on what line is crossed in that, like, or is it a

Christian liberty to like, or we talk about sexual themes and I'm going to an extreme because, you know, just to see where we can draw, where the line is drawn.

So like where, where the sexual. Where would you, where would you draw your lines?

Where do you see the line should be drawn? Where do you think that. See, I don't like, okay. So me personally, it's just, if it's, you know, the sexual things, like what is being shown, is it's a sex scene or is it just a nude here?

Pop that, you know, pop out and pop in and pop out, you know, cause you, you see, if there's one scene that's probably show

Brad's just throwing it out, there's just showing breasts and throwing out, but it's going to get a rating of a ma because it's going to show nudity.

You know, that's, that's just there. So is that enough to not watch completely for me? Is that where the line is drawn for me?

Me personally? No, that's not going to bug me. That's not, I'm not going to look at it unless, you know, just seeing this in and out.

Now, is there a sex scene involved? Is there, if I find out there's a sex scene involved, yeah, I'm not going to watch that because I don't want to be tempted by pornography.

And so there's a, there's a line that I draw, even when it comes to the sex, when it comes to the sexual side of it, when it comes to the cussing, is there some cussing or is it a lot of cussing?

You know, is there a lot of, is it, is a lot of blasphemy or is it blasphemy at all?

You know, me, I don't want to, I don't want to watch anything that I know is like, they basically spit in the whole movie, like blasphemy to God, like, you know, a lot of GDs all through the movie and everything else.

Like I don't want to hear that, you know, if it's ever once, okay, cool.

But that goes for me talking to somebody who may have already seen it, you know, and, and have, can tell me that happened.

If I'm watching it and it just pops in, I'm not going to cut it off just because I hear it once that makes sense. And so it just, it depends, you know, and I'm trying to think of something else like, like, like even a gory content, like violence.

Like, like I like films, like older films with, like with some violence and stuff like that.

Just the way it's shot and stuff, you know, all that kind of stuff. So I know some people will say, you shouldn't watch violent films. I'm okay with watching violent films.

It's not, it's not going to make me think murderous thoughts. It's not what you want to go out and commit murder or do any of these things or me glorifying it or saying it's okay that they got killed.

You see what I'm saying? And just watching it to me, I'm watching this art. And so I don't know, it just, it, it depends on how far something goes.

Like, even though like I watch a gangster movie here, I'm not going to watch a movie where it just shows somebody like taking a knife and slowly ripping somebody's head off.

Like, I'm not going to do that. You know? And so it just, it would depend on the, the level of, of stuff that's in it.

I guess if I can make it simple. Anyone else?

I'm not a huge movie watcher. I'm with you, Andrew. But there are times,

I mean, I, I think you and I may have talked about this. I watched a

TV show. I like more historical things. So I was watching, my wife and I were watching a show called the crown historical about, you know, the queen of England and first series, first season was fine second season.

And, and I know that this is historical or it historically happened, but you know, the queen sister had crazy relationships, but there was no need to actually show stuff.

And like my wife and I were just so like, as soon as that happened, it was like, Oh, well, like, and it actually, for us turned it off.

We, we like, we don't have a desire to watch it anymore. You know, just from one scene because we don't know if it's going to continue.

You know, it's, it's my wife and I say, you, you almost can't watch TV now without them pushing a homosexual agenda.

Like, you know, they're trying to get every TV show to promote it one way or another.

And, you know, so, you know, for us, it's like, you know, we just don't care to see any of that.

We don't, you know, I mean, but then again, we're not the type that, it's not like we got a whole lot of free time in the first place, but it's, it's easy for us to fill that time with other things like reading.

So, but, but then you get into the question of, are there books we shouldn't read? I think there's certain books that are, would be inappropriate.

You know, you don't have to see stuff on a screen to have inappropriate thoughts that come up and you can have that in books.

So reading a lot of books is what I do. Okay. You need to explain to folks that one listening to books.

Yeah. Well, I'd love audio books. And what

I found out, you know, I used to like to read a lot of Stephen King kind of stories and thrillers and like, you know, war books and things.

And, I don't know, years ago, my kids were still kind of young, living in the house and I was listening to a book and all of a sudden my kids are like commenting about all the swearing is in the book.

I guess I didn't notice it. But now that they pointed it out, it's like, yeah,

I guess I ought to not read the book while you're in the house or maybe not at all for that matter.

Or, you know, years ago, whenever I did have the superpower of eyesight,

I did, I still read a lot of books. And what I found me doing then is it's like, okay, read the book.

Well, here comes the sex scene, flip the page. Okay. I didn't miss anything. So we're just keep on reading.

Audio book, you just can't flip the page. You're kind of stuck with that or fast forwarding past it.

And either you just kind of mentally tune it out or you do fast forward it or because there's a lot of story.

Why let one horrible scene in the book ruin, you know, the whole six hours of book reading time.

But the other, there is some, I guess, lines you can draw, but either just not reading it or recognizing,

Oh, here it comes. Fast forward or in some way coping with it. So you can enjoy the story, but you're not having to really input all the garbage in.

I think we've kind of circled around back to our discussion that we had in the last throw down where we're, we're talking about, and this is the same point that I made in our last throw down was that we have to be careful of treading into legalism where we, we just follow rules instead of listening to the spirit in our lives.

Because I think it's really easy for us to, you know, well, this is the line and anything that crosses that line, nobody can do.

I mean, we'll just, we'll box all the Christians in over here and we'll say, this is what defines Christian behavior.

I would only agree that there is a line that everybody needs to set their own line. Well, yeah.

And that's, what's the point I'm making is that that line is going to be different for every Christian based on their, their own personal sins and their own personal relationship with the spirit and being able to hear his voice and have his conscience telling you what you shouldn't, shouldn't be doing.

And, you know, it says in Timothy, we're not supposed to test the spirit. We're not supposed to you know, try and make him upset with what we're doing in our lives.

So I think as Christians too, we should find that line and then back off of it instead of constantly going, well, can

I get away with this? Can I get away with this? Can I get away with this? You find, you know, what you can't do and you don't press that.

And, but I think we tend to in Christian, you know, having, you know, what

Jamal was talking about, you know, this, this gentleman who is, you know, kicking back on the things that he shouldn't be saying or shouldn't be doing.

We tend to be trying to remove the speck out of other Christians eyes instead of examining our own lives for where our own trips are.

And so I tend to not be the person that's going to, to tell someone else what they can't be reading or can't be watching.

I feel like that's something they need to work out with the Lord in their own lives because I have my own problems with that.

And I'm not going to be criticizing someone else for it when I still have to deal with it in my own life. And I just,

I think that's kind of the point of the, you know, the, the sermon on the Mount where it was telling us not to be judgmental.

It's not that we can't judge Christians and the fruit in their lives, but we have to be judgmental in a way that we're doing a lot more self examining before we start critiquing others.

And I think that's in a level like, like you was getting at it. I think it's important for accountability as well.

Like I get what you're saying as far as like, you know, not criticize, overly criticize anything like that. And I don't think you would agree with me on this as well as just if there's some, especially if somebody comes to you and they're a share to a, that they're dealing with some things and then you may hear about something they listened to or watching it, you make you encourage them.

First of all, accountability is like, Hey man, you may not want to listen to that. You know, you may not want to watch that, you know, because they've shared with you struggles.

They share with you what they are dealing with. Oh, a one -on -one accountability is definitely different.

I'm, I'm thinking more of a standpoint of a person that you don't even know that's coming at you for reasons that they have about what they feel that you're doing wrong.

And even publicly, I think that those kinds of things are best dealt with in private. It's like, like the guy was dealing with the whole

Christmas thing. Like in a general sense, like if someone is analyzing Christmas for the simple fact of about give some materialism, then yeah, there's a problem there.

You know, you shouldn't be celebrating Christmas for that reason. You know, because that's not what it's about, you know, but it's like the general, the generalize and say, well, you should celebrate it at all because of, you know, a tree and, or because, you know, these were pagan customs.

And I mean, I'm going to share with you guys something that somehow I'm thinking about today about the word pagan, the term pagan.

And Andrew, please, I'm looking for correction if I'm wrong in this. And I'm thinking about when we see the word, the term pagan is automatically as being seen as being evil, automatically evil.

You know, I know because it's always being used generally, generally dealing with idol worship or idol, idol worship or images and stuff like that.

But by definition, if I'm, if I'm not, if I'm wrong, let me know, please. Like by definition, the word pagan just means that it's, that it's like just natural or is it just in itself that is, that is, that is not based in Christianity or not based in Judaism, but it was just something that was just out there, like just culturally, something that's cultural is not necessarily something that would be evil.

By definition, it just, am I on the right track with that? Well, it was used the way

Jewish people would refer to Jews, Gentiles, basically anyone not Jewish is

Gentile. Anyone not Christian is pagan. It's, it's really in early

Christianity was used in a similar way, I think, at least from my understanding. Okay.

That helps you. Yeah, that helps us a lot. And so that's what I think about when I say like, so, so like my tree that I, the tree that I buy from Walmart, it would be pagan, but not being paganist because it was, it's not, it would be pagan, not in the sense that because it was used for idol worship, but the tree, the person who made the tree did not make it to say,

Hey, I'm making this to be given to Christians or make this to the Christian God. You see what I'm saying? Is that, is that a fair connection?

Oh yeah. No, it's, I mean, look, we, we were, we talked about, I think

I was talking with Andy Olson from Echo Zoe. We talked about for, because we're recording this in December and we, we talked about doing an episode on Christmas.

Like, do you, do you, do you celebrate Christmas or not? Like theologically, because it's a real problem for some people.

And I, I used to have a different thing that in, in this, where I used to, having not grown up Christian, my wife growing up, nothing, we would go to church and people would come over our house around this time of year and be like, you need a

Christmas tree. And I have a common response. I'd say you give me one reason why

I need a Christmas tree other than the fact that you grew up with one and I'll get one.

And people would sit there and be like, ah, okay. Yeah. You know, I think you need a menorah in your house.

I mean, you should have eight days of candles lighting and reading your singing of Hebrew.

Okay. You need to do that. And, and eight days of gifts, by the way, I like that.

I like that part, but they were always smaller gifts. You got the big one on the first day and they just got less and less and less.

But so all the anticipation sizzled out quick after the first day, but right.

I mean, that's our traditions. That's nostalgic for us. And sometimes we put that on other people and be like, well, this is what's nostalgic for me.

This is what makes this time of year festive. So you should do it. And for others, it's like, well,

I left all that because I think there's some people that when they become a Christian, there's certain things they identify with and they want to just be away from it.

You know? You know, I guess here with this time of year, even though by the time this drops, it'll be after Christmas.

I just got a message from someone on Facebook today asking me, can you give me some advice on how to let my two little girls know that mommy and daddy have been pretending to be

Santa Claus? And I was like, well, I, you know, I have no experience with that because I never did that.

I never even told my kids about Santa Claus. I was the, I was the kid in school then

I like, I think it was kindergarten or first grade that I ruined it for some little girl and told her parents were lying to her.

We never made an effort to teach our kids about Santa Claus. In fact, we never mentioned

Santa Claus at all. And then one day our kids come in and said, what about Santa Claus?

I was like, you brought up first kids. Yeah. Yeah. No. Okay. Here's the irony.

I got in trouble once mentioning that the

Easter Bunny is not real and Santa Claus isn't real to my sister's kids. My sister is

Jewish. Help me understand this one. But this is how culture can, can overtake people where even, even though they're, you know, she's

Jewish grand, her husband is Catholic or claims to be, but you know, they're, they still talk about Santa Claus and Easter Bunny.

Now, I think that what you see is there's no religious overtone there, but I think that this is the, again, this is an area where culture can, can overtake.

I mean, is, is Christmas rooted in paganism and non -Christian holiday?

Yes, it is. I mean, that's why they chose December 25th, right? It was a pagan holiday.

It was an un -Christian holiday. They Christianized it. And so when we sit there, you know, it's kind of interesting.

You know, you think about people saying we got to take Christ back, you know, in Christmas, put Christ back in Christmas.

Well, you know, he wasn't originally in it, right? We, we kind of Christianized it.

So there, there is, I think a legitimate argument for people that don't want to celebrate that holiday.

Now, should they force it on others? That's, that's where I guess I would draw a line. Like I don't care if to celebrate

Christmas or not. It's just not, it's, it's not nostalgic for me. You know, when we do it, we make it all about Christ.

But if, if people want to have a tree and, you know, put candles on or whatever,

Hey, fine, who cares? But I'm not going to force, you know, say that others should go by what

I, how I, my preferences. And I think that's where I think the cult, but again, like, you know, he was saying earlier, there's a limit where culture takes too much control.

We make too much. I think it's, it's, it's sad to see how Christians are focusing so much on just the materialism.

I have a podcast that's going to drop from when we're recording this. It'll drop on the wrap report on this

Sunday is the topic of why striving for eternity. That's the name of the ministry

I work for. And, but so many people are confused on the name. We're going to talk about why striving for eternity.

And one of the things we're going to talk about is how materialism has really changed things. You know, people lose their focus on Christ.

That's what Eve was saying. Sometimes the culture could be good, but too much of it can become where we lose focus on Christ.

We get fixated on things of the culture, right? And they may not be bad in and of themselves until we're so fixated on it, that we're not fixated upon Christ.

And I think there's, there's a level there. And I mentioned this in the podcast, but when we think about the, the

Proverbs says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And as we think about that and we think about the culture, people typically think that fear is a bad thing.

We have a negative connotation of it, but what does it mean the fear of the Lord? Cause obviously the fear of the Lord is a good thing.

So how could the fear of the Lord be a beginning of wisdom? And the way I try to illustrate this is so you're walking down the street, you're talking with your spouse about painting the living room and someone comes up and sticks a gun in your side and asks for your money or your life.

Now, are you continuing your conversation about what color to paint the living room?

No, no. Why? Because fear has got you captivated, right?

You are captivated with this person, with the gun in your, in your side, it is captivating all of your attention, all of your thoughts, all everything.

It grabs it all. It completely in captivates everything about you.

When you'd have that attitude toward the Lord, that's the beginning of wisdom. Now, as long as that's your attitude, can you enjoy the things of the culture?

I would say yes, because your fixation is on Christ and you're enjoying what

Christ has provided. God has created these things and, you know, we go out in nature and enjoy the beauty of it.

Is that wrong? God created that too much of it could be bad, right? And so I think we have to start always with this is, yeah, we have culture, but if we're going to be like you said, in, in the world, but not of the world, then we have to be having the fear of the

Lord fixated upon the Lord so that that is our all encompassing mindset.

And the other things are things we enjoy because the Lord has provided your thoughts. Sorry if I was preaching

On fear is, is I really appreciate all, all that concept, but there's a part in Old Testament when

Moses, when they sent the spies into Canaan, they came back and people says, we can't do this.

They were going to attack Moses and Moses feared and fell down before them.

Now, if Moses can take his fear off of God and fear the crowd is coming at him with what kind of weapon.

I mean, it's human nature that sometimes we will take our eyes off God and we will fear the wrong thing, but that shouldn't be our go -to walk in life.

We should be abiding in, you know, healthy fear of God and not, you know, getting caught up in our lapses and falls.

All right. So we got about three minutes left. If anyone wants to, anyone has anything last couple minutes to say on the topic of engaging the culture and that's a question.

I would say, don't be afraid to be in the culture and part and participate.

But because of our fear of God and because of our Christian walk, we should know our own boundaries and what my boundaries are may not be what yours are.

And so I, you know, I should realize I, like I said, I can't press that on you just like I would expect you to not press yours upon me, but just participate as much as we there, because how else we will, we will reach the last if we're not in the same pool with them.

Anyone else? We need to be engaging the culture as Christians, bringing

Christ into the culture, not bringing the culture into the church. Amen.

So I'm going to close out with this and let folks know that we have a contest going on the

Christian podcast community. We are all podcasters that are part of the Christian podcast community. You can always go to Christian podcast, community .org

to look at all of the podcasts. These are five or so, maybe a little bit more because I have a couple, but we have several podcasts represented here.

And the list is growing. If you want to consider joining the

Christian podcast, we go to Christian podcast, community .com. So .com that's kind of commercial side.

That's where you join. But if you want to listen, go to .org. So Christian podcast, community .org.

And we, we have a contest going on and we are giving away over $750 worth of theology, books, evangelism, books,

CDs, DVDs, thumb drives, a ton of material to some one person that's going to win all of it.

It's going to be a pretty heavy box. I was, I was trying to weigh it before, but we're, we're going to be sending that out.

And what you do is you're to go to the contest. I'm going to give you a short link and we'll have this in the show notes, but go to bitly .com

slash CPC contest. So that's bitly. That's B I T L Y .com.

So bitly B I T L Y .com slash CPC. That stands for Christian podcast, community

CPC contest. And when you go there, you'll see all the ways you can, there's over a hundred ways you can enter the pod, the, the contest.

There are different. You get different number of entries for different things. So there's some things that you enter once and you get, you know, like if you subscribe to a podcast, it's worth five entries, but then there's things you can do every day, like sharing different episodes.

So you want to go check that out. If you could go to Christian podcast, community .org, go to the homepage.

I'm sure it's going, there's the link there and you can find it there. And we're going to be doing this until the end of February.

So at the end of February, someone in March is going to get a very, very large box of books and DVDs and CDs and flash drives.

We have stuff from John MacArthur, Justin Peters, Ray comfort, Jim Osmond, all kinds of, of the thumb drive for Justin Peters alone is tons of material.

Just teaching on one of the neat things. He's got a whole, he had a whole dialogue with Joe witnesses and he got it all on tape.

So it was kind of neat, but all that's there interviews. He has with Kosti Hinn.

If you know the last name Hinn, that's Benny Hinn's nephew. So that's on there. So there's a lot of material that you can get if you enter to win.

And so we want to encourage you to check that out, be checking out all the podcasts that are in the

Christian podcast community. It is a great community of podcasts. If you're looking for good podcasts, you can check them all out.

And if you want, you can even go and subscribe on any podcast app.

You can go in and search for all of them. You can search for Christian podcast community. That actually is its own feed.

And it has all those that are hosted with, with the Christian podcast community.

They're hosted. They, their, their shows will show up. Not everyone's hosted with us. And so those that aren't, you want to make sure you subscribe to them.

And so we have a good variety, whether you want theology, you want more, you know, if you want entertainment movies, things like that, you could, are you just watching?

We have ones that are dealing with evangelism, ones that are being geared toward children, some geared toward women.

And by the way, for the women, you have blue stocking Baptists along with theology gals, which are the

Presbyterian. So we got the balance just saying, but I can never,

I can never miss a chance to give a jab to Colleen. I'm just saying I get it back, but go check out the, the contest at bitly .com

slash CPC contest. And we're glad that you, I hope that this is educational for you guys.

We look forward to you joining us for the next throw down. Please.

Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please.