Navigating Gray Areas

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00:01
Welcome to Conversations with a Calvinist.
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This podcast is dedicated to helping believers better understand scripture, defend truth, and engage culture.
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Get your Bible ready and prepare to engage today's topic.
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Here's your host, Pastor Keith Foskey.
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Welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist.
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My name is Keith Foskey, and I am a Calvinist.
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Today, I am joined by my good friend, Richard Roden, who is coming to us today to talk about a very important subject.
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We're going to be talking about navigating gray areas.
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Hi, Richard.
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How are you? Doing well, brother.
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How's it going? Doing very well, and I'm excited to have you on the program today, excited to have you back.
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It's been a while since you and I have done a show together, and I look forward to our conversation today.
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There are many things about which the Bible is very clear.
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The Bible is very clear on certain moral things, ethical things.
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The will of God is very clear in many, many areas, but there are other areas, other places where we come to things that the Bible just doesn't discuss or things that the Bible is somewhat ambiguous about, and oftentimes, that is referred to as the gray areas.
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On today's program, we're going to be talking about navigating gray areas, and this is actually a subject that Richard recommended.
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We were talking about what we could do a show about.
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This was something that you said, I guess this is a conversation you've had recently, brother? Well, it came up as a question in a Sunday school lesson.
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We were actually talking about the night before Jesus' death when he was praying, and he requested that if there's any way for this cup to pass from me, let it pass, but not my will, but yours be done.
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I was using the application of, and going off of R.C.
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Sproul's commentary, that in his humanity, strictly humanly speaking, Jesus did not want to do this, yet he was still willing.
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So I brought up the application of when we know that we are to do something and it's disobedience not to do it, then we should do it when it's clear and it's cut and it's dry, but I wasn't that clear in the Sunday school lesson, and someone asked a question, well, what about the gray areas that we went off for like 20 minutes? When it's not clear, cut and dry, what we're supposed to do, and it's not clearly laid out in scripture or you don't have a clear decision or path that you know this is what God wants you to do, this is God's will, how do you figure that out? And we couldn't go too deep into it because we're in a Sunday school class.
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We spent 20 minutes, but we got to get back to the lesson.
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So I figured, well, you could dedicate a 30-minute episode to it, why not? Sure, I threw it out there for you.
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Sure, and when we discuss God's will and things, I think one of the things that is often confusing, especially for folks who maybe don't have a reformed background is oftentimes we talk about God's will in at least two different aspects.
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We talk about what God decrees or what we would refer to as His will of decree, this will happen, versus His will of prescription or what He has commanded in the scriptures.
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For instance, He has commanded thou shall not commit murder, and that command, of course, is found in the Ten Commandments, but it certainly predated the commandments.
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When Cain killed Abel, it was ungodly for him to do so.
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When murder happened prior to the Ten Commandments, it was still murder, it was still wrong, and so it's part of an unambiguous moral law that exists in the heart of all men.
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We understand that there is something wrong about taking the life of another man premeditatively without any provocation, without necessity, and so that's something that we would say is without doubt that is part of the prescription of God's will.
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But God still has decreed that men will kill other men because that's why men do kill other men, and we talk about God's decree that God is sovereign over all things, and He certainly has the power to stop all murder, but in His decree, He has chosen not to do that.
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That's sometimes difficult.
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Right now, we're in apologetics at Sovereign Grace Academy, and in apologetics, we're discussing just this week, we're going to talk about the subject of evil and why does God, in a sense, allow evil to exist in His good world.
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So certainly, when we talk about God's will, we know there is God's decree, then there's God's will of command or what He has prescribed for us.
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Some people call it the prescriptive will versus the permissive will.
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I've never really liked the word permissive because it seems as if God doesn't have control.
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I permit things that I don't have control over.
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I tend to use the word decretive, but again, certainly, we're not here to solve that riddle, but when people ask, well, what is the will of God for me? For instance, if a person comes into my office and says, I want to leave my wife.
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She hasn't committed adultery.
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She hasn't abandoned me.
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She's not abusing me, but I want to leave my wife because she doesn't make me happy.
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She burns my hamburgers or whatever.
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I can say to that man, the will of God is for you to stay home with your wife, go home and love your wife.
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There certainly has been no covenant breaking sin that has been engaged in that situation.
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Sometimes we are dealing with black and white.
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Can you think of some other examples? What are some examples in your life or maybe in the life of your church where you would say this is black and white when it comes to God's will? Well, the first thing that comes to my mind that's black and white is the proclamation of the gospel.
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That's a clear black and white.
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God has commanded us to do that.
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Amen.
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But God has.
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But right off the gate, no, no, no, I'm not.
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And I'm certainly would never disagree, but it does raise the question of to what extent, like for instance, let's say a person goes to work.
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They know there's an unbeliever at work and they fail to share the gospel.
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Have they sinned by not doing so? I mean, that would be a further down the line question, but certainly God has commanded that we do that.
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Yes.
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This is Matthew 28.
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You mentioned already the Ten Commandments, those things within the Ten Commandments that are commands of God that we're to do or not to do, the oughts, the ought nots.
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If a man commits adultery, it's always wrong.
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Right.
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And there's even some more simple things you find in Colossians and Ephesians, letting the word of Christ dwell in you richly, be filled with the spirit, which means study the word.
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These are things we're commanded to do.
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We're commanded to pray.
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We're commanded to take the Lord's Supper.
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These are things that are clear cut and dry, that are the will of God for believers within the church and in their daily life to do.
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So those are some examples of clear cut things that I would throw out that are black and white.
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They're non-negotiable.
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There's no negotiation that we're to pray.
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There's no negotiation that we're to minister the gospel.
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There's no negotiation that we're supposed to be students of the word.
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These are things God's commanded us to do.
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And again, the Ten Commandments things we're commanded not to do.
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They're clear cut and dry.
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Do you have some different examples that were coming to your mind when you were thinking about this? Well, honestly, you know, because we, obviously we talked about this before the show and I had, I had a thought, you know, um, how about the subject, maybe getting a little more, uh, contemporary with some of the arguments going on, maybe the subject of homosexuality is homosexuality always wrong.
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There's, there seems to be a, uh, a rise within the, the modern contemporary church to argue that there are, uh, there are expressions of homosexuality that are not wrong.
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Uh, one of the most, one of the most common that is argued for is that if a man, uh, is in a, is in a committed, uh, monogamous married, and I use the word married there, you know, in quotes, married relationship with another man, then he is, then he is in a righteous relationship, uh, because from their perspective, he would not be committing fornication because he's married and he's, he's not cheating.
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So he's not committing adultery.
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And, and so the, the act of, uh, one man having a relation, sexual relation with another man would not be wrong because it fits within the parameters of monogamous, uh, marriage.
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And that I can see your face.
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I can see you just love this argument.
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I'm not making the argument, Richard.
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I'm saying this is the, this is the point that, that is often raised is that, um, well, this is just a gray area.
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This is not cut and dry.
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You know, where would you take somebody if this was you, if this was somebody in your church who said, you know, um, um, uh, I'm having trouble drawing a convincing picture because I can't imagine this happening, but I guess it could, somebody comes to your church and it's two men and they're holding hands and they're saying we're in a committed monogamous loving relationship.
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And, uh, we believe that God's word is, um, unclear in this area when it comes to homosexuality, where would you take them to, to say, no, it's, it's black and white.
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Well, to go to your, you know, this may or may not happen.
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It has happened in a sense of, we did have a lesbian couple attending the church for about a month.
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Now they weren't trying to join or anything like that.
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They just attended on Wednesday nights and we're more happy that more than happy to happen there.
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We were, people were nice to them.
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We greeted them.
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We talked to them and all that.
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No one was in their face.
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Now, had they tried to join the church, then we would have to address the situation.
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Um, because I think this was a, as we said, air quotes, a married couple.
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Um, but, uh, you would have to start, um, initially with Genesis, God made them male and female.
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We have Adam and Eve.
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He did not, I hate to use the Oakley shade and Adam and Steve, but I mean, he did not marry the first marriage was not between a man and a man or a woman and a woman.
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It was between a man and a woman, Adam and Eve.
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Um, I forget there's places, uh, in the, in the, in, I think it's Leviticus where it describes homosexuality is an abomination.
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You have Romans one, where it has a very lengthy description of men and women doing things that are unnatural with one another.
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Um, that was part of God, uh, handing them over.
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Um, you have Ephesians five, 22, 33, that whole description of marriage.
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And it is clearly masculine.
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Feminine is man, woman, a man leaves his mother and clings to his wife and the two become one flesh.
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This is, it's very clear in scripture in multiple places that, uh, marriage is to be in a committed relationship between a man and a woman.
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Um, so those are the places I would take someone who was trying to say that because we're monogamous and we're committed and we're supposedly married under, you know, earthly, uh, human law.
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Um, but it's still in clear cut and dry violation of God's commands for what marriage should look like.
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So those would be some of the areas I would take someone to.
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And of course you have to be speak truth and love, which is difficult to do sometimes.
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Um, when you're trying to help, not only explain how this relationship is in contradiction to God's design for marriage, but you're also trying to lead them to Christ at the same time, pointing them to Jesus and his design for marriage and how, when you look at marriage, especially the Ephesians five, 22 to 33 context, marriage is a picture of the gospel.
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And I've always said this homosexual marriage basically is a distortion of the gospel to a degree when you take marriage and you pervert it and marriage is to be a picture of the gospel because it's a husband has to be a picture of Christ.
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The wife is a picture of the church, um, and how the husband cares for his wife and the wife is submitted to the husband.
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The Christ cares for his church and the wife is committed and the, and the church is submissive to Christ.
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Um, if you pervert that in any way, you pervert to some degree, the gospel.
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So these are thought, these are places I would go if I was trying to explain that to a homosexual couple concerning what the Bible actually says about marriage.
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And you may have some different thoughts on that.
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No, you can take the, you can take the reins.
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No, no, no.
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I'm, I'm, I'm a little more careful, uh, running to the Leviticus passage, even though I think it certainly applies.
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I think there are, uh, there are times when, uh, I would, I would start in the, the new covenant and work my way backwards, uh, seeing as that's where we are in God's historical timetable.
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And let me be clear, Leviticus ain't my first place to go.
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That's no, no, I know that.
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Yeah.
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That was just examples I was given.
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Sure.
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Sure.
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And, and, and, you know, like I said, that's, that's, you know, we're not necessarily trying to solve that today on the, on the program, but, but you made a good point.
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There are certain passages you would go to, to say, this is a black and white issue when it comes to God's will.
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This is not something that is unclear in scripture, even though there would be people who would say, I disagree with your interpretation.
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This is not one of those areas where there really is a lot of room back and forth.
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Even though there are those who try to argue that the Romans one passage isn't really about homosexuality and the, you know, the, the, the, the first Corinthians six, when it talks about the effeminate and men who practice homosexuality, they would say those, those are not referring to what we would say is committed monogamous homosexual marriages, which again is a, is, is the argument, but in my opinion, and I think your opinion and, and, and up until about a hundred years ago, or even less, the opinion of just about every scholar who'd ever read the Bible, it's very clear in regard to its view of homosexuality.
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So, so we've talked about things that are black and white, murder, adultery, homosexuality, and, and, you know, there's, there's any number of things that we could say.
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If a person came to my office and said, you know, I'm about to engage in thus and so I could open up the Bible and I could say, here is where that is unwise, because the Bible says that's a sin and it's unwise to engage in sin.
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And that would be the answer.
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There wouldn't be a gray area, but that leads to the next question.
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The next question is, well, what are some examples of gray areas? What are some of the areas that we would say, well, the Bible isn't super clear about, um, you know, and, um, you know, what, what, you know, like I said, you had a 20 minute conversation about this with a group of people.
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So maybe you have some immediate examples and I'm, I've had my own thoughts, but I'll let you opine first.
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Well, here's the one that was brought up in class.
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Well, not necessarily brought him in class.
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He just kept saying gray areas, but after class, we had a more thorough conversation.
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He brought up the gray area in his mind of debt.
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Okay.
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Is it biblical to have, is it biblical to have debt? And where he was going with it was, okay, we live in the United States of America.
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Dave, Dave Ramsey would say it's no bueno.
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So, so are you being disobedient in the context of living in the United States of America? One, we have as husbands and fathers, as men to care for our families, which means we have to work.
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We have to provide a home.
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We have to provide food and all these things.
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We have to take our kids back and forth.
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Our wives need transportation.
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We have all these things we have to take care of, but in the context of United States.
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In order to do that, you had to go into debt.
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Is it unbiblical? Are you being disobedient while trying to be obedient to the command of taking care of your family, but at the same time being disobedient by having $200,000 in debt for a house, $30,000 in debt for a car, or should you not go into debt rent or whatever you have to do until you can save the money to purchase? And that was the gray area we were talking.
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He was talking about in more specific terms is how do you deal with that kind of situation? Or is there biblical debt that is their godly debt? I guess you could say in the sense of, okay, if you're providing for your family and because of the context of we live in the United States, you can't just go and build a grass hut to take care of your family.
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We're not in the back in Brazil or something in the jungle.
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So you have to take on this debt in order to take care of your family and you're going to spend 20 years paying it off.
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And then because some people would argue that's the godly debt because it's helping you to take care of your family, what you're commanded to do, and you have no other option.
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But ungodly debt would be spending money on boats and four wheelers and toys and credit cards and lavish trips.
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And then you're sitting 100 grand in debt on one end.
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It's just superfluous nonsense that doesn't go toward any type of biblical command to take care of your family.
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So that's where we were going.
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So I'll turn it over to you to answer that question because it's a difficult question to answer.
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Are you disobedient in having $150,000 in debt for a house? Hey, you're not supposed to tell people my business.
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I'm not telling people your business.
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We won't talk about what I'm about to spend in building the house.
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Yeah, it's so funny because I'm in your old bedroom right now.
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This is our new studio, which we've created for my wife.
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She teaches here, and I'm going to start using this for the podcast.
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And yeah, I mean, right away, I know that there are men like Dave Ramsey who discourage Christians from carrying any type of debt.
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But at the same time, and again, I have not studied a lot of his material.
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I do know that his debt snowball is very helpful.
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There was a time early in my adult life where I had accumulated some debt, and we did the debt snowball, and it was very helpful, and it was useful.
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So I would definitely say to anyone who is dealing with debt that his materials are helpful, and certainly much of his advice is sound and wise.
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But to your point, Richard, the question of is all debt sinful? I think we do have to address the scriptures, which clearly says that the debtor becomes the slave to his master, basically the person who owns the debt.
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But at the same time, as you have pointed out, and I think you're correct, there is a certain reality of how we function in the world in which we are in.
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And so I think that there is a call for wisdom there.
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I think there's a call for one, first and foremost, if a person, if it's a conscience issue, and I know this is a little further down the line, but if your conscience is denying you the possibility of debt because in your heart it would be sinful to take on debt, then immediately I would say Romans 14 would be very clear, don't do it.
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And that would be without question, right? Because again, there are no gray areas when it comes to the conscience, because the conscience, if the conscience knows it shouldn't do it, then we shouldn't do it, even if it's not a sin.
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Other things can be brought up, drinking a bottle of alcohol or whatever, or a glass of alcohol.
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That's another area that's often considered to be a gray area, because people would say the Bible isn't very clear.
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I think the Bible is clear about alcohol, I don't think it's a sin, but at the same time I do know people who believe that they cannot drink alcohol because it violates their conscience, and I would say for them not to drink it because it's a sin.
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And I think in that sense, I think debt is first and foremost very much that way.
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And I think your point, your secondary point is true.
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Unnecessary debt would certainly be unwise, at least would be unwise for someone to be choking themselves to death with debt that they have no hope of ever paying off.
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I think this often happens in student loans and things like that, where there's very little value in what's being purchased, especially anymore.
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Getting a master's degree in early feminist studies is not exactly going to allow you to do a whole lot in this world, except for maybe go on Tucker Carlson and argue for a ridiculous position.
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So if you spent $80,000 on that degree, I would say that was an unwise debt.
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However, I have a choice when it comes to my home, I could pay twice as much as what I pay for rent.
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I'm sorry, if I paid rent on a home that I'm living in, it would be twice as much as my mortgage payment.
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Right.
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And there wouldn't be a way commensurate with my current salary for me to save over the next 20 years the ability to pay off this home.
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Do you understand? So what I'm saying is if I had to pay twice as much as I'm paying in mortgage for this home, then the next statement is I would never have the opportunity to purchase a home because the twice as much going to rent.
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Am I making sense? Is my math? Oh, you're making sense.
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You're making perfect sense.
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But here's the interesting caveat that my friend brought up.
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He said, well, the reason that everybody goes into the debt purchasing a home is because that's all they ever talk.
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What if as Christians, we tried to change the culture with our own children and teaching them and trying to set them up young to where when they're ready to leave the house, they could possibly purchase a house without going into debt.
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You see what I'm saying? In other words, let's say there's no way for me or you to do that now, but we could begin to set up something like a trust or something like that that would compound money over time so that when our children became of age, they could start off debt free and they wouldn't be able to buy a $400,000 house.
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But if you could give them a home debt free, then they're starting off not being a slave to the bank and they have a home because you provided that for them and then they could continue that trend with their children and so forth and so on.
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Somewhere along the line, I guess you can make the argument that we've lost that in the Christian culture and Christianity because of the American dream, the American rat race, the way we do things.
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All we've ever known is you set yourself up for 30 years worth of debt, you purchase a home and you pay your mortgage payment and you go on about your business because that's normal.
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That was the counter argument he brought up that is, is it really normal or are we just accepting has the world infected the church that much that this is just normal because that's what we've always done? But is it really biblical to do it that way? Sure.
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That's a tough question.
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My perhaps my response might be that that's I don't disagree that that would be wonderful.
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I do have some questions on the how it works out.
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How does you're saving for your children, which is wise.
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The Proverbs tells us that it's good that a father leave an inheritance for his children, so that certainly that's biblical.
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And there is even I would even say a lot of generational wealth is built by parents building for their children and their children coming into wealth because the parents are forward looking and those things.
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So certainly there's wisdom there, but that doesn't get that doesn't get back to the question of am I in sin right now for having a mortgage? So again, not challenging this invisible person who's not here to defend himself.
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And I appreciate his thought.
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And again, I agree that creating an atmosphere of generational wealth where you're setting your children up for success rather than failure, setting your children up for a blessing rather than curse is wonderful.
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And there are certain ways in which my wife and I have discussed and are even hoping to be able to accomplish that.
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Now, we have five children.
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So there and so do you.
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So wait a minute.
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Do you have four? Four.
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I'm sorry, I beat you.
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You are the winner.
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Yeah, I win.
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So, you know, but between us, we have nine kids, you know, buying nine houses between a bread man and a pastor that might be that might be a little tough.
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So but I get the I get the idea, right? Think about, you know, several hundred years ago when the estate, the home, the family's estate passed generationally.
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And rather than, you know, brothers and sisters moving away, they built homes on the estate and the estate grew.
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You know, the things certainly things have changed.
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And again, we've sort of gone every one of these could go a rabbit trail.
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But I appreciate I appreciate his thought.
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And I do think that this is an area where Christians need to be wise.
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We need to be wise and how we look at debt.
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And I do not believe that all debt is necessarily sinful.
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But the Bible talks about debt as a as something that is can can master us.
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It can overwhelm us.
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It is certainly something that can be very dangerous.
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And we see that with credit cards and we see that with the way people handle, you know, car payments.
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Like I said, I know car payments, their car payments are now much more than what house payments used to be.
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And I'm talking about just over the last few just over the last few years, car payments well into the eight, nine hundred thousand dollars a month.
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An amount that to me would, you know, I sold cars.
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I don't know if you know that when I was when I when I was when I got what have you done? I've let me tell you something.
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God took me through a series of very terrible jobs before he called me into ministry so that I would be able to to empathize with many people.
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But I know and handle the rigors of ministry.
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Hey, it's how I met you.
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Well, it's not how I met you.
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We met in high school, but I met in school.
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But but it's how we got reconnected through the bread company.
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So God used that.
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But but no, I was selling cars when I was when I was when I got married.
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In fact, we the company allowed us to borrow a van for our honeymoon.
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We drove a van down to Orlando.
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This is how poor we were.
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We literally had grocery bags for luggage.
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And I'm not kidding.
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We walked into a hotel carry in and I was in my tux.
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Jennifer was in her wedding gown and we were carrying when Dixie bags with our clothes.
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That's how that's how poor we were.
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And we didn't have anything.
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But but getting back to the car sales back then, an average car payment, you know, two fifty three hundred three hundred dollars a month.
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I mean, if you got somebody with a four hundred dollar a month car payment, that was almost unheard of.
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You know, five.
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They had bad credit.
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Yeah, yeah.
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They were so high.
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We used to say they couldn't afford to put cheese on a Whopper with with a cosigner.
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They didn't they didn't have they didn't have very good credit.
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Yeah.
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And so that's the reality.
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But like I said, that kind of kind of taken kind of taken us away.
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Is there is there any other you know, I've got my own thoughts on on some of the gray areas.
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Is there anything else you had in mind before we before I throw one out there for us to chew on? You go ahead and throw one out there because that one took 15 minutes.
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So, yeah, it did.
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We're going to go a little long today.
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Hopefully, hopefully folks are enjoying it.
31:19
If nothing else, I'm I'm advertising our church's name and you're advertising your church.
31:23
Well, not our church's name, but our church's motto.
31:26
And you're advertising your church and we're doing a good job for those who are watching the video.
31:33
I'll tell you one that people often think is a gray area, but I don't think it is.
31:38
And maybe this could be a maybe we'll go maybe we'll disagree.
31:41
I don't know.
31:42
We didn't we didn't chat about this before the before the show.
31:46
Um, I think that the subject of church participation and and membership is is is somewhat of a of a gray area for people.
31:59
And and here's what I mean by that.
32:01
If how many people do you know who would tell you, yeah, I'm a believer, but I'm not I'm not a member of a local church.
32:10
And they would assume that that's OK.
32:12
I don't know a whole lot of people, but I'm familiar with the sentiment.
32:19
I mean, I've come across those arguments in Facebook, you know, comment threads and things of that nature.
32:26
So, yes, I'm I'm familiar with the with the argument.
32:28
Yeah, I actually hit I hit this on people a lot or I run into this a lot is what I mean.
32:36
And what I because it often comes up when people hear that I'm a pastor, people will say, well, oh, I believe in Jesus, but I don't go to church.
32:46
I don't see the need and being in church.
32:51
And, you know, you and I, I think immediately that just grates against our our sensibilities to say that, you know, you don't because as long as I've known you, you've been well, almost as long as I've known you've been a churchman, a man who loves the local church.
33:09
And obviously I'm a churchman.
33:11
So to hear somebody say that I'm a believer, but I don't have a desire to be part of the local church.
33:19
I mean, is that a gray area or is that somebody that's just wrong? Well, obviously, is somebody who's just wrong.
33:29
Because the I mean, the classic verse to go to is Hebrews 10, 25, do not forsake to gather yourselves together.
33:35
We're supposed to come together.
33:38
And not only just that's a specific verse that says gather together for worship.
33:44
But when you look at all the epistles that were written, they were written to local church bodies.
33:53
These were churches that Paul is writing to.
33:56
It's a group of people in Ephesus, a group of people in Philadelphia.
34:00
It's a group of people all over the place or Philippi, not Philadelphia, but Philippi.
34:05
I don't know why I said Philadelphia.
34:08
Whoa.
34:09
There's a letter to Philadelphia in Revelation.
34:14
So you could have just stuck with it.
34:16
You didn't have to say a word.
34:19
But they're written to local churches, the church in Corinth, so forth, so on.
34:24
So the idea of a local body of church meeting together with elders, deacons, a church structure, a church government that is autonomous from other churches is prevalent.
34:37
So anybody who says they're a believer in Christ, but has zero desire to go to the church, go and be with other believers to worship together, to pray together, to fellowship together, to break bread together, to participate in ordinances together in the whole nine yards.
34:56
They may believe that Jesus did some things, but they don't know him because they knew him.
35:01
They'd want to be there.
35:04
Do you think that's universal, though? And I'm not trying to defend somebody not going to church.
35:14
Forgive me if it even comes out that way.
35:17
What I'm saying, though, is there not anybody who is not in church today who's a believer? Oh, I would imagine in some instance somewhere, there's someone who's in church who doesn't attend church that is a believer.
35:35
But I would imagine, to some degree, there'd be a desire to want to be.
35:39
Maybe there's things preventing them from going.
35:41
Maybe there's even, as much as I hate to say it, church hurt, maybe.
35:49
That kind of was in my mind.
35:51
There are people who, and I've said this before, if you've been hurt by church, I shouldn't keep you from church, obviously, because it wasn't Christ that hurt you.
36:04
But at the same time, there is legitimate times where people have been drug through the hard coals at churches.
36:14
Or there's even the instance what I went through where I was in the midst of a very large controversy, and I was in the middle of the whole thing.
36:28
So I backed away from the church.
36:30
I was actually looking for another church at the time.
36:32
But I backed away from the church because I didn't feel like I was welcome there anymore because I was in the middle.
36:39
I was part of the controversy.
36:41
So I didn't want to grace.
36:42
I didn't want to go back in there because I didn't want all the heads to turn and everybody to be angry because I'm in the room.
36:47
You see what I'm saying? Now, here's the beauty of the church.
36:52
A year later, when I did go back, because I was invited by a man who was being ordained as a deacon, he wanted me to come.
36:59
When I walked back in the door, I was not greeted with vitriol.
37:03
I was not greeted with, how dare you be here? I was greeted with tears and hugs.
37:08
And we love you.
37:08
And we want you back because that's the church.
37:11
That's what the church is supposed to be.
37:13
It's forgiveness.
37:13
It's, you know, accepting those back in.
37:17
I mean, I apologize to tons of people.
37:19
And we went, there was a lot of healing that had to be done.
37:22
But that's the beauty of the church.
37:26
But yes, there's people that, you know, for whatever reason are believers, but they don't go back because, you know, they were just, they're burned.
37:37
That's one of the other things about the local church is you have wheat and you have tares, you have sheep and you have goats.
37:47
And a lot of times the goats just chew everybody up.
37:50
And unfortunately, I mean, it's just what it is.
37:54
Some of the most hateful people you ever meet are in a local church and they can be nasty and people can get hurt and they don't want to come back.
38:07
So I want, so I guess I'm having to retract my first statement to some degree is in the sense.
38:16
So let me rephrase it.
38:19
If you have, if the only reason you're not going to church because you just don't want to, and, but you say you believe in Christ and you believe the Bible and you want to be obedient to Christ and Christ is your savior and he's your Lord, but you just have no desire to go to church, then I'm not sure you know him because you would want to go.
38:41
And I'm not talking about new believers or I mean, new believers got to be taught these things.
38:45
I think that's part of discipleship.
38:46
I'm talking about somebody who knows better.
38:48
They know better, but they just don't want to go.
38:50
There's something else going on there.
38:53
So would you agree with me that when we talk about gray areas, there are, there are, there are many people who would disagree on what qualifies as a gray area.
39:06
Sure.
39:07
Yeah.
39:07
I mean, that's, that's really what we're showing right now, even in our interaction is that we, you know, and it's not because the Bible is unclear.
39:15
Just like what you just said, the Bible is not unclear that we should be part of the local church.
39:19
In fact, somebody who tells me the Bible doesn't say I should have to go to church.
39:23
I just say, you don't know the Bible.
39:25
I'm not trying to be ugly, but you don't know the Bible that, like you said, it's written to the church.
39:30
You know, the Bible itself is, is, is for the church.
39:36
It's to be proclaimed within the church.
39:39
I mean, it is the, you know, the, the, it is the very foundation bedrock of, you know, of the church.
39:46
And so, but as I said, there are people who would say, well, that's a gray area.
39:51
I don't believe it's a gray area either.
39:53
I think the person who loves Jesus should love the church.
39:56
And I wasn't trying to make an excuse for people who don't.
39:59
I'm just saying, is it not possible? And certainly it could be possible that a person is not in church.
40:05
But I think you're right when you say that that person should feel, certainly feel a missing component in their spiritual walk if, if they're not in a, in a church.
40:19
As we start to draw to a close, you know, I wrote this as one of my questions, as we were talking about this subject of gray areas.
40:28
Where do you think the, the subject of causing others to stumble fits in? How, how do you, when you're explaining that to people, when you're working through that in your Sunday school classes, when you're talking to people, what, how do you think that fits into this, this conversation? So in other words, gray areas that would call someone to stumble and how to avoid that? Well, when someone says it's no longer a gray area, because it's, it could cause somebody to stumble this again, going back to the alcohol thing.
41:01
I've heard a lot of people say alcohol is always a sin.
41:04
And when I say, well, the Bible doesn't say that they say, well, it can cause others to stumble.
41:11
Therefore it's always sin.
41:16
Well, you could, here's what I say this concerning alcohol, because I've had these conversations multiple times.
41:24
When it comes to you, if you have a member of your church that, you know, believes that alcohol is a sin, no ifs, ands, but about it, you know, this guy just is vehemently against it because of his conscious says he can't drink it and nobody else should drink it.
41:46
It's sin.
41:49
Well, Romans 14, I think around verse 22, it says that you should keep your faith between you and God.
41:56
But if it causes your brother to stumble, then don't do it in front of him.
42:01
Of course, the conversation there is meat.
42:04
You know, and if I remember correctly, the context is, you know, with what's going on, there's a brand, a Jewish convert who doesn't eat particular meats.
42:14
Well, if he doesn't eat meat, then don't eat meat in front of him.
42:16
Don't call it a stumble.
42:17
But when you're when you're at home by yourself in your castle, do as you please according to your conscience.
42:24
So I wouldn't flaunt it or do it in front of that particular person.
42:32
But in my own home, when that person's not around, I have the liberty to do so.
42:40
Uh, so you just had to be careful.
42:44
Now, the gray area that comes in is you don't know what everybody thinks about it.
42:50
So you have to be extremely careful because you could very well call somebody to stumble that you didn't know you were going to cause a stumble, which I think why Paul writes in there and God, you know, through the spirit had Paul write that in there, you know, in verse 22, keep your faith between you and God.
43:12
What you do in the privacy of your home or in your own conscience, as long as within the confines of scripture is permissible.
43:21
As long as you're because it's just you and your family and everybody, you and your household understand that this isn't a sin.
43:27
So if you want to have a beer, have a beer.
43:29
But when you're out in public or with other church members and you don't know where Johnny stands on it, or you don't know where Sally stands on it, then it's probably best not to do it just because you don't, you don't want to cause them to stumble or even cause them to think less of you and your testimony, because now you've walked into this in their mind.
43:52
You're just openly sending.
43:54
Does that make sense? It does.
43:56
I'm going to, I want to throw out a challenge, not necessarily to you, but that, that line of reasoning I have, I have heard before, and I've even in a sense kind of taught the same thing, but there is a challenge to that.
44:11
And it's something that that's really recently kind of been in my mind and thinking about, you know, it's almost always that alcohol is the one that's used for that one.
44:23
You know, well, we shouldn't do it because it might cause, you know, brother, brother less to drink more or whatever, you know, but the next question though, is the question, and this is, I really want people to consider this is the question is, is it a sin or not? And here, here's why I think that matters because while I think Romans 14 can apply in regard to making someone stumble or being the cause of stumbling, what if it were something else that wasn't drinking? Because like I said, it's almost always drinking.
45:07
What if it was Richard, you can't fish anymore because there are people in your church who believe that fishing is unnecessarily hurting animals that are, you're not going to eat those fish.
45:21
I've watched you throw them back.
45:24
And, um, I think that you shouldn't do that because you're going to cause me to stumble if you do that, you would say you, you, you, you would go ahead.
45:34
I'll, I'll let you answer.
45:36
Well, um, I would point to the fact that we've been given dominion over the animals and the birds of the air and the fish of the sea.
45:44
Um, which is why we can catch them.
45:47
We can farm them.
45:48
We can raise them.
45:50
We can kill them.
45:51
We can eat them and nowhere in scripture does it give any, I, any, um, pro prohibition new covenant was to any of that.
46:05
Um, but what if I were to say, and again, not trying to, but what if I were to turn around and say the same thing could be said of alcohol, that there, there is no prohibition to drinking alcohol.
46:17
There is there, there, in fact, there are, the only prohibition is to drunkenness, but throughout the Bible, there are passages that actually talk about, uh, wine being, uh, something that makes the heart glad, uh, being used as a blessing.
46:34
Uh, and, uh, Jesus himself making water into wine, I think is, you know, even though there are people who would say it was non-alcoholic wine, which is, I do not believe that argument holds water.
46:46
But you understand my point.
46:48
What you're doing is you're taking the fish analogy that I gave you and you're, and you're going to the person and you're saying, but here is the Bible's truth on the, on fish.
46:59
Now the person disagrees with you, but you're not allowing their disagreement to make you stop.
47:05
You're causing, you're letting their disagreement cause you to justify what you're doing.
47:10
Well, but there's one caveat in, you know, using fishing as an example, me going, and several of the apostles anyway, um, there's nothing, uh, inherently going to, um, I can't fish too much to, uh, be inebriated.
47:41
And now I can make fishing an idol.
47:43
I know we could go that far.
47:46
I could say you fish on Sundays and it keeps you out of church.
47:50
That's your, well, then I'm in sin.
47:51
I need to stop doing that.
47:53
Okay.
47:54
Well, that's the same, but I would say the same thing about being inebriated.
47:57
That's a sin.
47:58
I shouldn't do that.
47:59
But it's a lot easier to fall into drunkenness than it is to, you see what I'm saying? You don't think there's, you don't think there's guys who make idol, idolatry out of fishing? Oh, I'm sure.
48:08
Oh, there's, yes, there's a meme.
48:10
There's actually a meme that says, you know, I'd rather be in a boat thinking about God than being in church thinking about fishing.
48:17
So, so I've got, I've got meme evidence.
48:20
Now again, I saw the meme and I'm, I'm sitting there looking at it.
48:24
My fingers are itching to want to say something, but I didn't say nothing.
48:28
So like I said, I mean, I, I agree, I agree with you.
48:32
Certainly there are distinctions to be made.
48:34
I just think that one of the things that we often do is, um, we, I think that we take the causing others to stumble text and use it to impose our will on others.
48:52
And, uh, I'll give you a great example.
48:54
There was a pastor who I know who had a beard and, uh, he was preaching at a church.
49:00
He was a visiting preacher.
49:01
And when he was done, one of the ladies at the church who believed that facial hair was a sin, she believed facial hair was a sin.
49:10
She walked up to him and she said, uh, pastor, that was a good sermon, but, uh, you need to shave your beard because your beard is causing me to stumble.
49:21
And she, and his response was awesome because he looked at her and he said, madam, unless my beard is encouraging you to grow one, then, then I don't think you understand that passage.
49:40
Uh, so doing something in front of someone is not, I don't think this is where it's really been affecting me and making me think doing something in front of somebody is not necessarily a cause for them to stumble any more than, uh, you know, if, if I drink in front of somebody who doesn't drink now, if I encourage somebody to drink, like you said, if I'm having Larry Lester over to the house and that's not even a person that's from, you know, Larry Lester, Larry Lester, just in case somebody thinks I'm talking about somebody, Larry Lester is the name of a person from the breakfast club.
50:14
I don't even know why his name came to my head, but if I'm having somebody over and I serve them alcohol, knowing that I think that is a picture of causing them to stumble.
50:27
Um, but I don't think that necessarily, uh, it's meant for the church to impose on others their, their particular person, you know, understanding.
50:40
And again, I, I, you know, I'm, I'm still working that out in my mind, what it looks like, you know, when I go, I was gonna say, here's the example from this is, this actually happened years ago.
50:53
I had a friend coming over.
50:55
I knew he was, he didn't believe that he believed alcohol was a sin.
51:00
If you drank it, I don't, I had a six pack in the fridge.
51:05
This man, when he came to my house, my house, his house, he'd go in the fridge, get where he wants.
51:10
I took the beer out of the fridge, put it in the closet just so he wouldn't see it because I didn't want him to, I didn't want him to stumble.
51:19
I didn't want him to feel awkward or uncomfortable because his friend had beer in the fridge.
51:25
You see what I'm saying? That's the element I'm getting at.
51:27
It's not doing it in front of him.
51:29
Cause that's what, that's the gist of what Paul was saying.
51:31
If you're, if your brother doesn't eat meat, then you don't eat meat.
51:36
You don't eat meat.
51:37
If your brother doesn't do this, you don't do that.
51:40
And you see what I'm saying? Yeah.
51:41
So, you know, trying to be all things to all people where you can.
51:44
And I don't think that the it's, and I don't think the, the spirit of what's being said in that particular passage is the one person's imposing themselves upon Paul.
51:55
Paul's just being courteous to this person.
51:59
Yeah.
51:59
It comes from the, it comes from the heart of the person giving not the person demanding.
52:05
Correct.
52:05
If you have, if you have a situation like a woman with a beard or somebody says you shouldn't fish anymore, cause it makes me sin, they go and they're making stuff up, then that's the problem.
52:17
Yeah.
52:17
But, but, you know, as well as I do, there are people out there that believe fishing is a sin.
52:22
Probably.
52:23
I haven't met any.
52:24
Um, well, it's cause we, cause we're both from the South.
52:27
Yeah.
52:28
Well, I guess it would be your, um, your animal rights activists that are Christians that would believe fishing is a sin.
52:36
Just like I got in trouble for throwing a plastic bottle in a fire because it polluted one time.
52:40
I got berated for that.
52:42
I can't believe, you know what? You're never invited back.
52:45
You, you are, you are off the program.
52:48
I'm just going to go ahead and shut us off.
52:50
I can't believe you and your, uh, you have your carbon pollution, your footprint just got this big, my friend.
53:00
Oops.
53:01
But, but to wrap it up, cause we, you know, I think we've, uh, we've exhausted the conversation at least to, to what we wanted to do today.
53:09
I think the, the thing that really is, is most important is doing what we're doing right now.
53:16
And that is if there's something that we are, um, dealing with, whether it's, uh, if we're not certain, if it's a gray area or if the Bible is black and white to get together with another believer who is mature.
53:30
Uh, and I'll let the listener decide which one of us that is, but to get together and discuss, you know, what does the Bible say and really try to be honest because we should want to do what God wants us to do.
53:51
Uh, I, I, I, I said this years ago and it sort of stuck with me.
53:54
It kind of became sort of my unofficial statement, but to do life the way God, to do life, the way the author of life intended is obviously the best, the best way to do life.
54:05
If God, if God wants us to do something, he doesn't want that.
54:10
He doesn't, he doesn't call us to that for no reason.
54:13
He calls it, he calls us to that because that's the best way to do life.
54:17
That's the best way to do what he has called us to do.
54:20
But that, but I think that's, that's it.
54:23
You know, it's, I think as simple as it is, I think Christians need to have conversations with other mature Christians.
54:30
They need to study the Bible.
54:32
They need to go to the word.
54:33
And if, you know, if it is an opportunity to save your brother's conscience by not trying to offend them or, or, or intentionally or even unintentionally, I think that we should, we are called by Paul to do that.
54:44
Uh, both in Romans 14 and first Corinthians, which he very clearly, uh, just delineates that for us.
54:51
So Richard, I think we've, uh, we've talked a lot about today.
54:54
I'm sure there are many gray, gray areas that people on the, um, on the, uh, listening end of this have probably thought about and said, I wish they would've talked about this, or I wish they would've talked about that.
55:04
So listener, I'll say this to you.
55:06
If you have a question or you would like for Richard and I to talk about your question, I would encourage you to send us an email at calvinispodcast at gmail.com.
55:18
Again, that's calvinispodcast at gmail.com.
55:21
I'd love to have Richard on again for us to talk about your question and maybe provide you with a biblical answer.
55:28
Richard, thank you for being on the program today.
55:31
You're welcome, brother, anytime.
55:32
And thank you again, for being with us today.
55:35
Uh, and thank you for listening to coffee.
55:38
Oh, conversations with a Calvinist.
55:41
My name is Keith Bosky and I've been your Calvinist.
55:44
God bless you.
55:45
Thank you for listening to conversations with a Calvinist.
55:48
If you enjoyed the program, please take a moment to subscribe.
55:52
And if you have a question you would like us to discuss on our future program, please email us at calvinistpodcast at gmail.com.
56:01
As you go about your day, remember this, Jesus Christ came to save sinners.
56:07
All who come to him in repentance and faith will find him to be a perfect savior.
56:13
He is the way, the truth, and the life.
56:15
And no one comes to the father except through him.
56:18
May God be with you.