Fantasy Christianity | Theocast

Hi, this is Justin. If you listen to many people talk in the church, it seems that our Christian lives should be characterized by happiness, by excitement, and by always overcoming difficulty. But this life, if we're honest, is often characterized by pain, by toil, and by suffering.

So what exactly do we do with that? And what is it that we're called to in the church? And then in the members podcast, John and I have a conversation about the mission of the church and what it looks like to keep the main things, the main things.

We hope that this episode is helpful to you. We hope that it's liberating and encouraging to you. Stay tuned. Hey guys, as a quick reminder,.

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Fantasy Christianity and the Reality of Suffering

Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ. Conversations about the Christian life from a reformed perspective. Our hosts today are John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and myself, Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.

John, always good to be around the microphone with you, man. I've enjoyed our pre-recording convo today. And I'm eagerly anticipating your pro-con for this morning. You've recently returned from a little family getaway and you are a Californian.

And you're gonna be talking about things that pertain to the water and the surf. So you are an expert in this area and are qualified to speak on it. I'm sure the listeners can't wait to hear what you're in favor of and what you're against.

So give it to them, man. You know, this is one thing we didn't talk about, but I was talking about it last night with another Californian. You're always springing something on me.

So do you know what tri-tip is? What kind of meat tri-tip is? So I No, okay, yeah. I thought you were talking about something pertaining to water sports. No, tri-tip. So when I first moved out here to the South, they also, I learned this recently, they also call it the California cut.

But it's a part of the cow that Californians love because it's, it has, it kind of has a, like a, it's a lot cheaper to buy, but it has like a sirloin flavor and style to it. But, and you don't smoke it.

It's not a smoked meat. It's one of those things that you cook it, you kind of block, you scar the meat, you know, and then keep it. Anyways, we're just talking about California and I just found out that there's a local meat market that sells tri-tip.

So I'll be buying some tri-tip this weekend. And if you don't know Every time, every, go ahead. Every time you say California,.

I keep thinking, remember the Titans, like California. California. You know, like Sunshine, Sunshine from California. What a great movie. I know you don't like football movies, but that is, that one gets a pass.

Well, that one's Denzel, man. It's Denzel.

Anything with Denzel Washington in it is at least pretty good. Yeah. Anyways, tri-tip. That's for free. If you've never had tri-tip, I would

Bonus content today on Theocast. That's right. That's right, tri-tip.

Anyways Don't say we never do anything for you. My pro con, I am, I am, I'm gonna start with my con. My son and I tried to, we bought skimboards and we tried to do some skimboarding down at the, down in, where we were in Georgia.

We were right, just south of Savannah in Ty-Vee. And we were trying to do some skimboarding. And I'm gonna just tell you right now, it's a whole lot of work and not a lot of joy. It's one of those things that looks really cool and fun, but pretty sure we didn't know what we were doing.

But I got, I came to the conclusion that I'm not a fan of skimboarding. And then I watched all these videos of how to do it. And I was like, yeah, I think their boards are different than my board. But I will tell you, I am a massive fan of boogie boarding.

My kids, my two middle, my 12 and 14 year old and I, we stayed out in the water for five or six hours, faces completely scorched and just had some of the best time we've ever had. It was warmer in the water than it was outside of the water.

And This time of year, that would be true. But man, we caught some unbelievable waves that were just, it was one point we had all figured it out. And all three of us were riding these waves into the beach.

And as a dad, it was one of those things where I was like, I wish I had a GoPro right now just to like capture this moment. Yeah, exactly. It kind of hold onto this one. Oh, it was on. And then I found, so my daughter, my oldest daughter and I were walking the shores and that we had this game, like who could find the biggest complete shell.

And so I'm like, she's coming back with these, pretty good size, fit in the palm of your hand. I was like, uh-uh, it's on. So I run out there and within two minutes, I see it looks like What is this, amateur hour?

Exactly. Within two minutes, I see this half a shell sticking out. I was like, I'll just see what this is. And I pull out a conch shell that's completely, like it's no, nothing's cracked, bigger than my hand.

And I come walking up with it. Dad's the winner. And she's like, that is so not fair.

So anyways. So back to the water sports stuff, what you're saying is that boogie boarding is all kind of fun and pleasant. But that there is a lot of toil associated with skimboarding.

Yeah, no joy. It's the fear of falling over. See, my thing is, you're skimming across the dirt and if you don't do it right, you're gonna fall. And as a man that's getting up in his age, I just wasn't excited about falling at all.

So there's that.

I hear you. And then there's surfing. John, you missed my attempt at a smooth transition. I saw it. I just went right past it. Man, you did. You just zoomed right by the thing. I mean, you didn't even slow down to look.

You just like flew right by it. Yeah. Surfing is something that I've never done but would like to try. And I appreciate the athleticism that it would require. You know, growing up in the mountains of North Carolina, I just went to the beach a decent amount, but there's also not a lot of great areas to surf in the Carolina coasts and all that, like where I would have.

Or even in the Gulf of Mexico, it's very, very calm. Anyway, we will transition to what we wanna talk about today. So in thinking about pleasantness and joy and toil and struggle and all of those things, we wanna have a conversation today about real Christianity over and against what we might call fantasy Christianity for those fantasy football participants and fans out there.

Little shout out to you. Fantasy football is something that I have never allowed myself to get into because I'm afraid that I would get hooked on it and it would be bad for my life and my marriage and my family.

But that's another conversation for another day. But fantasy Christianity versus real Christianity. We live in a world that's fallen and it's a world characterized, therefore, by suffering and by toil and by hardship often.

It's not that there aren't pleasant things in life. It's not that there's nothing good. God and truth remain. All of that is true. There is a point to this life. But a lot of times, as human beings in a general way and more specifically for the purposes of our podcast, people in the church have very unhelpful notions of what life should be like or what life will be like and in particular, what the Christian life will be like.

We've talked about things like triumphalism, where everything's kind of happy clappy and the trajectory of the Christian life is just always onward and upward. We've discussed those things before. But today, we wanna talk about a realistic approach to trusting Christ and living life in the church.

And we wanna recalibrate expectations in ways that we think are biblical and in ways that we hope will set people free, will liberate people from a bondage that they maybe have placed themselves under because their lives don't look like they think they should look.

And we wanna just have an honest discussion and a transparent discussion about suffering and toil and struggle and pain and what that looks like in light of God and his faithfulness and the promises that he's made to us in Christ.

And we wanna think about what we're called to as followers of Jesus in the church in particular. And so I'm hopeful, John, personally, that this is a conversation that is comforting to people, that is liberating for people, that doesn't depress people, but will give them an honest, sincere, realistic hope in Christ and perhaps a better handle on the things that are most important and what we're called to in terms of our life together in the church.

And I know you feel the same way. So why don't we start out maybe by just talking in a real and honest way about life in this world, unless you have something else that you wanna begin with.

No, I agree. We've been told that in Christianity, the primary focus of the Christian life is our improvement, how we become more and more, I guess, morally better. So it is all about self-discipline.

It's all about our relationship with God. And we had a visitor at our men's Bible study last night. We were even talking about communion and how communion, common union, the very nature of communion is a communal, meaning you come together as a unified community, right?

And we were having this conversation how to have communion by yourself, which I'm like, this is the epitome of modern day Christianity, where it's how do I do this by myself? How do I do this on my own?

How do I become the self-made man? How do I become the self-made woman where I can look back and be proud of my accomplishments? Well, most Christians look back and they're humiliated by what they haven't accomplished, what they haven't done, what they failed in, the amount of sin that still remains in their life.

And if someone's honest with themselves, there's nothing to be proud of when you think about, you may not be as a murderer, you may not be the worst parent in the world, but there's plenty to be ashamed of and there's plenty to be guilty of within any and all areas of your life.

And then you go to church and you hear about how you need to be better and you're just not, you're not better. And I had this thought the other night, I was laying in bed and just thinking about politics and the presidential debate and just what a circus that was.

You would bring that up. I know, I know. And then, well, then I just started thinking about the world in general. Like the United States is not the only country that's fractured right now. The world is falling apart, but the world's been falling apart for like how long now?

Well, it sounds like from the garden.

From the jump, pretty much from the jump.

And we have been told that everybody has these plans for utopia and everybody has these ideas of this is how the world can be made better. And then you start wondering like, what are we doing anyways?

Like, what is life all about? Because it doesn't matter what anybody does, they die. They suffer and there's pain. It doesn't seem like there's any solution that's being offered.

Yeah, I said this before we recorded, there's a pretty good book that's been written on a lot of this stuff that we're discussing and it's called Ecclesiastes. I would highly commend it to people where they could pick that up and read it and they could listen to Solomon who was given wisdom that was superior to any man that had lived or lived since.

God gave him a unique insight into life and the things of this world and God and everything else. And he writes a lot like what you just said. I mean, it's, he says that there is a vanity to this life.

There is a toil and a struggle that's associated with life under the sun. There are so many things that happen that frankly are just bad, you know? And it's, he speaks or he writes in a way that we don't let ourselves talk in the church a lot of times.

You know, he acknowledges that there are things that are just wrong and hard and that things should not be this way and yet they are this way. And so like, what do we do with that? You know, because people a lot of times want to come in and put their hands over Solomon's mouth, so to speak, with respect to Ecclesiastes.

And it's like, you shouldn't talk like that in the church. You know, it shouldn't be this way. In which he's like, yeah, but it is this way, so what do you got for me, you know? And we live in a world, I want to say this maybe before we get too much further into the conversation.

It does nobody any good to diminish the hardness of difficulty and pain and suffering. We don't want to act like things are just easier than they are. We don't want to wallow in self-pity, but at the same time, we need to acknowledge the difficulty of the hard.

And we live in a world where we bury our children and people suffer, and cancer is a thing, and financial hardship is a thing, and hunger is a thing, and sin runs rampant, and only a fool would look around and say that, yeah, things are as they should be and all is well, because it's not.

It's not yet, you know? And so we want to be, as God's people in the church, we want to be able to call things as they really are. And I think that we all, as human beings, because again, citing Ecclesiastes 3 .11, God has written eternity into the hearts of man.

And so we do all have a longing for utopia, like you have alluded to already, and we have a longing for the epic. The problem is, we so often think that that's what life should be like now, and we expect it to be that now.

If we just think the right way, if we are just disciplined in the right ways, if we just get our theology straight, if we just get our hearts right and get our minds right and all these things, then we can be delivered from suffering and weakness and pain and toil and struggle.

And the answer to that biblically, the response to that biblically is, you have been redeemed by Jesus Christ if you're trusting Him. And at the same time, you have not been bodily resurrected yet unto this incorruptible existence that will be your reality forever.

That has not happened yet. And so we want to be able to help people think about what they can expect in this life, and at the same time, not fall off the other side of the horse into this nihilistic, everything's meaningless perspective, or this kind of cynical, jaded approach where just everything sucks.

And like, well, we just may as well just stick our heads in the sand because it's all going to hell in a handbasket, and what can we do? That's right. Well, my kids suffer from this.

If they can't do something perfect, they don't want to do it at all. And I was like, that's not how life works. Because if you can't do anything perfect, and then you're not going to do anything at all.

So there is this, it's almost like, if I can't have utopia now, or if this isn't the design that God has for me, then why care at all? You know, just even that's a good, you know, I left in his Bible study last night with some of the prayer requests that were offered, and, you know, they're painful.

They're really, really hard. People suffering from cancer and children that may not be, you know, viable at birth and, you know, there's just, there's a lot. So then, you know, you tell people, well, you know, we need to have faith and trust in the Lord and God will provide and all things will work for good.

And he's going to teach us contentment in all things and all that. Yeah. And that's true. Right. And people go home to their quiet homes or to their messy homes or to their kids that are screaming. And, you know, all those platitudes mean nothing.

They still have anxiety. They still are suffering. They're still hurt and upset and angry. Yeah.

Well, if I may briefly, the whole like God works all things together for good, Romans 8, 28, that people just slap up on the refrigerator and act like we've now solved the problem of pain. Like we shouldn't, we should not be, you know, that reductionistic and that, I know you and I agree on this, that promise of Romans 8, 28 and all the promises, by the way, you know, of Romans 8, 28 are eternal promises and they are true and they are real in terms of what God has done, is doing and will do for us eternally speaking.

And at the same time, none of those promises mean that our lives will go well. And it is a fool's errand for us to try to read through all the lines of God's providence to try to figure out exactly what he's doing.

Because that's not what they're for. You know, for me to like look at the difficulty and the suffering and be like, all right, well, God's working all this for good. So let me just like mine through all this and try to find the good.

It's like, now I think you will exhaust yourself if you do it that way. But what you're clinging to is the eternal hope and the promises that God has made to you through Christ. And that at the end of the day, it will all be well.

That's right. I know we're going to come back to that in a minute. Keep going though, man. People go back to their homes and they're still angry and they're still sad and they're still anxious.

And what do we do with that? Yeah, there was reading our Minsk Groupers going through Trues You Can Touch by Tim Chester, which we'll probably do a podcast on that here soon. He gives this illustration of someone saying, Christ is sufficient for you, Christ is sufficient for you.

And the single mom who is going to go home to an empty house where she longs for human touch, like to be held by a man, to love and care for her and to be a father to her child. And then she hears you say, well, Christ is enough.

She gets home and how is Christ enough for her in that moment? You know, that's where reality sets in. When a spouse dies and then they go to church and they hear Christ is enough, how? How is Christ enough?

And those are the things that basically we sometimes, this is the fantasy side of Christianity where we just throw phrases around and we just throw it out there and assuming that it's going to, this is what people do when people die at funerals.

They say the most unhelpful, unthoughtful phrases.

They mean well, they mean well, but they say things that are frankly stupid.

But they've been trained to say the most unbiblical things. This is why Paul says you weep with those people. You close your mouth and you cry because that's the appropriate thing to do. And one of the things that we want to always do is we want to solve the problem, but you can't solve the problem.

It's unsolvable, right? It's not, you can't fix it. And that's where Christianity thinks we have the answer for everything and there's no mystery involved. There's no, you know, and I am speaking from a lot of hurt and pain and you can probably hear it in my voice because I'm so tired of seeing Christians suffer needlessly when they can have hope, but that hope is being offered in a way that is so unbiblical that it actually squashes the real hope that's off.

We're excited to announce that we have a new free ebook available at our website called Faith Versus Faithfulness, A Primer on Rest. And we the hosts put this together to explain the difference between emphasizing one's faith in Christ versus emphasizing one's faithfulness to Christ and how one leads to rest and how the other often to a lack of assurance.

And you can get this at theocast .org slash primer. And if you've been encouraged by what you've been hearing at Theocast, we'd ask you to help partner with us. You can do that by joining our total access membership.

That's our monthly membership that gives you access to all of our material that we've produced over the last four years, or simply by donating to our ministry. You can do that by going to our website, theocast .org.

We hope that you enjoy the rest of the conversation.

The Limits of Suffering, Trials, and Pain

The promises of God to us in Jesus do not take pain away. Like in the moment, you know, it doesn't take grief away. It does, sure, give us a framework and a filter to kind of push that pain through. But for us to think that even saying that Christ is enough is going to make somebody feel better about the death of a loved one or a cancer diagnosis or whatever it may be is foolish.

And we're gonna get to why those promises matter and what they really are intended to do for us as Christians in just a minute. But even along these same lines, John, you think about James chapter one, where James does tell us to consider it joy when we encounter trials of various kinds because of what God is doing in us, right?

Like he is working in us to produce really good things and all that stuff. And people will often cite James one and say, you know, you need to, man, you're going through some terrible stuff, but you need to consider it joy, you know, because you're encountering trials and God's gonna do good through this.

To which I wanna say, yeah, okay, true. But James's theology in James one is a statement about the greatness of God to be able to work through pain and suffering to produce good. It is not a statement about the goodness of the trial and suffering.

Trials and suffering by definition are bad. And the miracle is that God actually uses pain and suffering and bad stuff to produce good things in his people. But we should never Yeah, steadfastness is what he says.

Right, exactly, steadfastness. And what is that? Well, it's just like, it's a continued hoping and trusting in Christ and the promises of God through him. And we could have a great conversation about that sometime.

But it's not as though we should invite suffering upon ourselves, that we should look for trial, that we should like pray for it so that we might be sanctified. It's like, no. These things that God uses

Don't stand in front of a poor house and cause a controversy. These things that God uses in our lives are things that we would never sign up for, right? And again, it's a statement about his faithfulness and goodness to us, not about the fact that trials are good or that suffering is good or that death is good.

None of those things are good. And we need to stop talking in kind of reductionistic, foolish ways like that in the church. It sounds really spiritual, but if you think about it for like five seconds, it becomes quite clear like, this is crazy talk.

That you're just telling me that like basically, oh my gosh, my cancer is a blessing. Or that man, the death of my loved one is like a blessing from the Lord. It's like, no, it's not. It's terrible. And yes, I continue to trust the Lord.

I don't wanna get too far mired in the weeds.

No, you're good, you're good. So I think this is at this moment where we're gonna go from fantasy Christianity, everything that's been offered to you is not real. It never can be, it never will be. And you most likely are feeling it.

If you're listening to this podcast, you know that what you've been offered from Christianity has never delivered. And it's kind of like that goalpost that keeps getting moved. The moment you think you're gonna achieve it, they just move it again.

They just move it again. It's like we said a few weeks ago, it's Linus and Lucy and the football. It's like every time you come up to kick the ball, it's just removed from you and you're on your back.

That's right.

Looking like a moron. That's right. So real Christianity, Christianity that comes from scripture that we would argue comes from a reformed perspective, reformed meaning that the way in which the Bible has historically been understood and applied comes from this tradition that was regained during the Reformation.

We hold to a covenantal reformed perspective from a Reformed Baptist 1689 perspective. And so a lot of what we're about to say comes from our understanding of scripture. And I will tell you that real Christianity, it's more than this, but if we're gonna make it simple for our conversation today, I would say that the purpose of the Christian life, what you're going forward and what is offered to you, first of all, is a real hope.

And I would say a sure hope.

Everything that is Yeah, a sure and lasting hope.

Right. So everything that the Christian life is drawing you towards is not assurance in yourself and not a surety in yourself and not the assurance in your moral improvement or your performance improvement where you're performing better than you were before, but Christianity is driving you towards a hope that is outside of yourself and a hope that is not in your faith.

You're not having faith in your faith, but you're putting faith in the object of your faith, which is Christ. So the entire Christian structure, real Christianity, is about the day in and day out structure that is pushing you towards the hope that is outside of your current circumstances.

I don't see anywhere in scripture where you are told to put your hope in your current circumstances, that these circumstances cannot bring hope because we live in an already not yet situation, meaning that I'm already a child of God, but I'm not yet living with him.

I'm already considered pure and holy, but I am not living in that reality because I don't have the new body that Christ has promised me.

Right, God tells me all the time that he is faithful and that he loves me, and yet my life is just wracked with pain and suffering. Like, how do I reconcile those things?

That's right, if he truly loved me, why wouldn't he prevent this from happening? Why would he prevent my child from dying, from getting cancer, from this and this and this? So we live in that constant tension.

I think we have to understand a biblical worldview that's real Christianity, and the real Christianity is that God has a purpose and a will that he is accomplishing, and we don't fully understand that.

That's the mystery of Christianity. We don't fully understand how God is accomplishing what he's doing because I don't understand all of the pain and suffering that goes on in this world, but it's not needless.

That's entirely right, and so this sure and lasting hope that we have, I mean, it is found in Jesus Christ and in him alone. Like, you've already stated that it's outside of us. It stands unchanged regardless of how we're doing or how we're feeling or what we're thinking.

Like, Jesus Christ will carry the day. He has saved us, is saving us, and will save us, and we trust and rest in him, and the deliverance is coming, but it's not here yet, right? And so even to think about, like, Paul's language that is quoted often, you know, that he's learned contentment in all things.

It's like, well, the only way that you learn contentment in all things is to realize that there is something more ultimate that's coming, you know, or when he'll say that, you know, these light and momentary afflictions is not worth comparing to the glory that awaits us.

That, again, is a statement about the greatness of the glory that is ours in Christ that will be our experience one day. It's not a statement about the fact that the trials are actually small. Many of them are huge, and so we are orienting ourselves in clinging to this steadfast and lasting and certain hope that we have in Christ, and at the end of the day, a lot of times, that's all we have to cling to because everything around us is giving way.

You know, like we sing. I mean, when all around my soul gives way, he then is all my hope and stay. That's essentially our experience, but a lot of times, we're in the midst of stuff, bro, that's just, it's really, really hard.

Yeah, well, and I will say, to add to what you're saying, Justin, when I say real Christianity is about a sure hope, what people assume I'm saying is that, oh, we need to just focus in on the gospel, and if we just focus in on the gospel, we'll have that sure hope.

Well, actually, I'm not saying that. What I'm trying to say is that your sure hope, as it's handed to you, comes from outside of yourself, and the way that it's sustained in you comes from outside of yourself.

It has nothing to do with your individual effort.

Right, and a lot of times, like I'm tracking with you, brother, and what I want to reiterate to people is that a lot of times, even when we talk like this, you know, this sure and lasting hope, we're clinging to Christ, it's like, even in those moments, my mind and my heart are all over the place, and like, I don't feel it.

You know, I'm not in a good place mentally or emotionally or even spiritually sometimes, and I'm just acknowledging the fact that I'm a wreck and that things aren't going well in my life, and I'm feeling all kind of ways about that, and so when we say that this sure and lasting hope is found in Christ and the gospel, that does not mean that it will produce a feeling all the time of contentment within you.

It doesn't mean that it will produce a feeling all the time of peace in your soul, but what we mean is is that even when you are not content and even when you are anxious as the day is long, Christ has you, and he is not going to let you go, and so it's not like the gospel is this consolation, you know, that is just going to always make you feel differently every time you think upon the Lord Jesus.

Here, I'm going to offer a quote from C .S. Lewis that I think is really good that speaks to, I think, some of what we're getting at. He says, quote, "'Talk to me about the truth of religion, "'and I'll listen gladly.

"'Talk to me about the duty of religion, "'and I'll listen submissively, "'but don't come talking to me "'about the consolations of religion, "'or I shall suspect that you don't understand.'". Close quote.

That's good. Bro, it's so good, man, and that, just for anybody that's interested, that is taken from his book called A Grief Observed that he wrote after his wife died, and he wrote it under a pseudonym because he was so concerned that those who had been influenced and impacted by his writings would be devastated to see his wrestlings, you know, with life and suffering and pain, but then later on, you know, it was published under his name.

It's a good read, you know, for people that are able to, like, really look into the heart and mind of a man they respect and trust and see him kind of all over the place, you know, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, but even a man like C .S. Lewis, who many of us have profited from, he was not immune to the things that we're talking about because this is every Christian's experience.

The Fellowship of Love in the Church

That's right. So one of the conversations.

That Justin and I had this morning, we were just talking about sports and life and TV shows, and Justin made this observation about how a lot of sports movies, they depict the kind of the 1 reality, and even it's fantasized of what football, so, you know, Justin grew up playing football, played college football, and what you see on TV Sunday and Saturday and what you see in movies is they show you the high points and everybody assumes that's what playing football is like, and it's not, and if anybody's ever played sports, you understand that that's like the smallest, I mean, it's great, and why we play sports.

It's very small, yeah. But the majority of it is the grind day in and day out and working and practicing, and it's all the mundane things that are not fun. They're not enjoyable. They're actually just pure pain and work, and one of the things when we talk about A Sure Hope, the fantasy Christianity is that you show up on Sunday morning and there's this hoopla and it's all hype and it's big and it's glorious, and you hear people think and say, I just want Monday through Saturday to feel like Sunday at 10 a .m., and they assume somehow if they can get there by listening to Christian music and reading Christian books that they can live on that spiritual high, and if they live in that spiritual high, then the rest of their life is going to fall in line with it, and that's actually what they're told on Sunday mornings as well, and that's not the Sure Hope we're talking about.

Nah, bro, I mean,.

Yeah, I could riff on the whole football thing. You know, like when you're practicing, you're wearing helmets that don't have decals on them. Your practice gear is very plain looking. You know, it's not shiny.

It's not, you know, you're not spatted up and you're not wearing armbands, and it's not this like rah-rah excitement all the time. A lot of times you're just like, man, the last thing in the world I want to do is go to practice, and the game is not as like, you know, Hollywooded, dramatic as it's depicted.

It's, if anything, more violent, but it's more of a grind, and I could talk about that for a long time, but I had a great conversation, John, along these same lines, just to try to illustrate in another way what we're trying to get at.

Had a great conversation with a brother in our church yesterday about his job, and he's recently taken a job that he likes that he wanted, and he said, bro, yeah, I'm glad I've gotten this job. I'm thankful for this job, and I'm really glad when Friday gets here and I have the weekend off because I'm tired, you know, by the time Friday rolls around, and then we talked about how this modern notion that you should like love your job so much and love what you do so much that you'll never work a day in your life, you know, and like that's the goal and that's the ideal is utter nonsense because the reality for humans for thousands of years have been that they are toiling in their jobs.