When Jesus Isn't Helpful...

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You know, it is fantastic to be a father. It really is. It's awesome.

I've got four sons, and it's just a lot of fun.

It's a lot of activity. There's a lot of things happening. There's highs. There's lows.

Overall, it is fantastic. One of my favorite parts about being a father is you get to see your kids experience the faith from a kid perspective.

As Jesus says, of course, there's a lot you can learn from the faith that a child has.

I'll just give you a good story. My son is spending the week at day camp this week.

We were checking him in and all that kind of stuff. He was a little nervous. He was hoping his best friend was going to be in his cabin.

My wife told him on the way there, hey, he might not be in your cabin, but you can still hang out with him.

Don't worry about it and all that. Anyway, we show up, and it turns out his best friend is in his cabin.

He turns to his mother and he says, hey, mom, I was praying along the way that I wouldn't be too sad if my friend wasn't in my cabin.

Then all of a sudden, boom, here he is. He said it just like that. Boom. Man, that just makes you want to cry.

Tears of joy. What a mature prayer, too. He could have easily prayed to God, hey,

God, please let my friend be in my cabin. Instead, he prayed that he wouldn't be too upset if he wasn't, and then he was.

Wonderful. Things like that, they warm up my heart in a completely legitimate way.

My heart is completely full, and I'm not even kidding. I'm not even kidding right now. That being said.

Then the other thing about being a father is you see kind of where the Sunday school answers come in. You ask your kids something, and you just read them the answer, but then you ask them what's the answer, and they say,

Jesus? You can see the Sunday school training kind of come into play with your kids.

Jesus is the answer no matter what the question is. That kind of thing. To be honest, you can certainly understand why

Sunday school for children would be like that. You know what I mean? It's all about Jesus, and Jesus is often the answer, so you might as well shoot your shot and say

Jesus is the answer. You can see that happening with children, right?

But I have to be straight up with you guys. There is nothing more disgusting than keeping that mentality into adulthood.

Because when it comes to like the big spiritual questions about salvation, and about sanctification, and about these things,

Jesus is the ultimate answer. We understand that.

But sometimes as adults, and even as children, we should start training our children this way as well, because children will grow up believing and doing the things that you teach them.

Sometimes there are questions that if you just answer Jesus, then you're not answering the question.

And this is very frustrating sometimes. Like I remember the guy I used to co -pastor with, he would have these sermons where there'd be these applications, and the application pretty much every single time was look to the cross.

And that's fine as an ultimate answer, right? Of course, like a fundamental, philosophical, ultimate kind of answer.

That's true. But also, we need to do stuff, right?

Like if somebody says, man, you know, I'm really worried about my finances, and you know,

I don't have a job, and I mean all this debt, and all this kind of stuff. I mean, what do I do?

And you go to him, you say, look to the cross. You're actually not helping that person.

That's actually not the answer in that moment. Now, that could be one of the answers, and maybe ultimately you get around to it as well.

But there are also tangible things that you can do today that are actually better answers to that question.

Like, dude, get a job. How about that? Whatever job you can get, look, you need money, you haven't gotten the job you want, whatever.

Go over to McDonald's, apply for a job, and start working. Yeah, you're in a lot of debt.

Okay, stop taking on, don't get another credit card. Start paying off your debt. Like, everyone's situation's different.

I mean, these are just obviously like, you know, examples. But like, there are things that you should do, and you can even draw them from the

Bible, but sometimes you don't even have to, that you should tell these people, people need help.

And when you say stuff like, look to the cross, and that's all you say, it's not helpful.

It's not helpful. And I just, I wonder sometimes, like, you know,

I saw Matt Williams say, man, it must feel really good to say these pietistic nonsense things, because they always say it, and it's never helpful, and we always bring up the same, you know, issues, but they keep doing it.

It must feel really good. It must be like a real shot in the arm to, you know, feel good about yourself. Oh, just look to the cross.

Preach the gospel. Like, these are questions that are the answer when the question's appropriate, but sometimes they're not the appropriate answer, because it wasn't the question.

It's annoying. It's like when you listen to a pro football coach, you know, a pro football coach never answers the question, right?

So you ask him, yeah, why'd you go for on that fourth down, and they say, yeah, you know, our running game was great, and, you know, oh, yeah, he was really throwing the ball great.

Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I got all that. Why'd you go for it on fourth down there? He's never gonna answer. It's just so annoying, right?

And you kind of understand why football coaches do that. It's annoying, but you kind of understand why people do it.

But why do people do that with Christ? Why do people do that with Christ?

I don't understand. You don't see Christ doing that. You don't see John the Baptist doing that.

Sure, they talk about the deep spiritual things, but there's also actions that they talk about.

There's applications, real applications, that are actually helpful that they talk about. Why do we do this?

Why do people do this? It's like people never grew up. Here's a great example from that dark mistress,

Karen Swallow Pryor. You know, like, you have no expectations of Karen Swallow Pryor, but it's amazing when your expectations are so low that you feel like they can't possibly get any lower, and somehow she dredges the depths even further of how evil she really is.

I mean, she's really evil. There's just no question about it. Here's a tweet from Ryan Duff.

I don't know who Ryan Duff is, but I like to give people the five minutes of fame that they're looking for. Here's a sermon where—not a sermon, it was a debate, rather—and this is what it says.

It's got Joel Webb in, and he's talking, and what he says is this.

Actually, let me just play it. It's a 12 -second clip, and then I'll read you what his tweet says. Well, I don't think

Jesus—this is one of those statements that you don't want to come out of your mouth as a pastor very often, but I don't think

Jesus is particularly helpful here. Okay, so a 12 -second clip where essentially

Joel Webb in says, I don't think Jesus is particularly helpful here. That's what he says.

And of course, there's no context here, but the thing is, even without context, you kind of know that this is probably explainable very easily, because he even says, this is a statement you don't really want coming out of your mouth very much as a pastor.

So Joel gets it. He understands that what he just is about to say isn't something you typically hear, and so you don't even have to know what the context is here to know.

I mean, this guy still gets it, obviously. So here's what Ryan Duff says. He says, I'm inclined to believe this statement explains a lot of the problems with Joel Webb in theology.

Jesus is the Father revealed. If you're dismissing him, you have the wrong view of God. Whoever denies the

Son does not have the Father either. And so Karen Swallow Pryor jumps all over this.

This is a huge opportunity for her. You know, she's been adding the eye of newt to her witch's brew.

You know, she's been mixing it up, keeping it over an open flame in her cauldron, and she all of a sudden sees an opportunity.

Wow. I mean, I was about to prepare this potion, but this is easy. This is red meat to my idiots.

And she says, when a man who claims to be a Christian pastor says he doesn't find Jesus particularly helpful, believe him.

And so what you're supposed to do as one of her idiotic followers is to say, oh, Jesus doesn't really find, or I'm sorry,

Joel doesn't really find Jesus that helpful. Yeah, Joel doesn't get it. I mean, he doesn't understand that Jesus is the

Father revealed, and if you don't have the Jesus, you don't have the Father either. He doesn't get it. And so his theology is just all jacked up because he doesn't even get who

Jesus is, because Jesus is the answer. Jesus is the answer. Now, anyone with a brain, anyone with an

IQ higher than room temperature is going to understand that, you know, and really in order to understand if Joel really is a heretic,

I actually have to know what this was regarding, because it could well be that Jesus's statement here, whatever he's talking about, is unrelated to the issue at hand.

And so that's why Joel is saying this, because Jesus himself is helpful.

Fundamentally, of course, Jesus is the answer, but it could be that whatever they're talking about, it's unrelated to what

Jesus was saying in this particular circumstance. Like, everything Jesus says is not appropriate for every single question.

You know, there are certain... Jesus answers questions. Jesus talks about certain things. Jesus does certain things in certain contexts.

And so if Jesus is saying something over here, but you want to relate it to the pedophiles over there about, you know, the legitimacy of what they're doing, well, obviously, we understand that Jesus wouldn't be particularly helpful in that question.

And of course, so you don't even need to know. You don't even need to know anything about the context to know, I need more information here, obviously.

And as it turns out, of course, there's a real answer here. Joel was talking about... they were debating Calvinism, and Leighton Flowers was trying to say that because Jesus was marveling at the faith of certain individuals, that must mean that there really is no sovereignty when it comes to salvation, because he was surprised.

He was marveling at it. So Jesus was marveling at their faith, so obviously, you know,

Calvinism is a heresy, of course. And so Joel Webben is saying, yeah, and he's even laughing about it, because he knows what this is going to sound like, obviously, so he even makes a comment about it.

He says, yeah, I don't think Jesus's marveling here is really helpful to the question at hand regarding Calvinism, regarding sovereignty, regarding election.

It's not... that marveling has nothing to do with this conversation. It's not helpful.

But of course, I mean, you know, witches like Karen Swallow Pryor, they don't care about that stuff.

They're This is a great lie, because it does sound bad coming out of a pastor's mouth.

Joel even said so in the clip itself. He understands what it sounds like. So this is an opportunity for his enemies to say, see,

Jesus, he doesn't even get it. He doesn't... guess what, guys? Every statement of Jesus is not helpful for every question or thing that's being debated.

It doesn't apply every single time. There are certain contexts where it's helpful, and in the other context, if you try to apply it, you're actually doing violence to the word of Christ.

It's not helpful to do that. It's not helpful to do that. People do this kind of stuff all the time.

Jesus told you to love your enemies. How can you be in support of the death penalty? Jesus's words, love your enemies, is not helpful when you're deciding whether or not to execute a murderer.

That's not related. It's not the same issue. It's not the same context. That's not saying

Jesus isn't helpful. That's insane to think that, and Karen doesn't think that. She's a liar.

She's just lying. But the thing is, people do this kind of stuff all the time, and there are other ways to do this kind of stuff, too.

This is another child. This is a childlike reasoning here. This is what children do.

You train this out of your children. My nine -year -old might answer a question this way, but he's nine, and over time,

I'm going to help him to learn how to nuance things. When you're a child, things are more black and white, and that's fine because you're learning the fundamentals.

I was just talking to my son about this. In baseball, right now, the level that my children are at, pretty much the play is to first every single time because what they want is they want the infielders to get used to fielding the ball and throwing it to first.

That's the level that they're at. My nine -year -old is almost out of that level for the most part. We're working through that with him now.

But my younger kids, definitely, the play is to first. Throw it to first. You feel that you throw it to first.

It's black and white. It's an easy answer. This is what you do with children. You train them in the fundamentals.

But in the back of your mind, you know, eventually, we're going to get to the stuff that's more complicated.

Sometimes, the play is not to first. Sometimes, the play is to second. Sometimes, the play is to third.

Sometimes, the play is to home plate. When they're seven, it's too early to introduce that.

What you want is to get them used to fielding and throwing to first because usually, that's where the play is. But as they grow, you start to add nuance.

All right. There's a guy on first. There's one out. If you're a second baseman, you get the fielded ball.

You throw it to the shortstop who's covering second. That's too complicated for a seven -year -old. But for a nine -year -old, 10 -year -old, 11 -year -old, 12 -year -old, they start to understand that.

You have to layer in that kind of stuff. You need to help your children to learn how to think in certain categories.

In different situations, you do different things. This is how you train a child.

Some of us never grew up though. But the thing is, we did grow up, just not in the faith.

We grew up in every other area because I don't think Scott is a child in every area of his life. But when it comes to the faith, too often, he's a child.

He never grew up. Oh, what Jesus said, you have to have faith like a child. Yeah, that's an example.

In this conversation, that's not helpful. You believe your father like a child, but that doesn't mean you think like a child.

It's not always a black and white issue. This is a video.

I don't know why. I can still see this post for some reason. But for some reason, I can't see here.

Maybe she protected her tweets. But this is Lizzie Marbeck had shared something about nationalism from Stephen Wolfe.

And he's talking, we have no of our own. Here's Scott. This is not helpful, Scott. You're thinking like a freaking child, man.

Grow up. Grow up. You guys like to have this high ground, like you're the adults in the room.

And we're just over there sharing memes and acting like children. You're the one thinking like a child.

This is Stephen's quote. We have no place of our own. He's talking about Protestants.

And he says, yes, we do. It's called the heavenly Jerusalem. Like, what do you do with a guy like this?

Besides make fun of him? I mean, this is this is embarrassing. This is an embarrassment. He's proud to say this.

And he gets a little hit of something in his arm. You know, he's just like, put that pietism in there.

You get a quick rush and then it's over. What do you do with someone like this?

This is this is the this is the kid who's not a kid. He's 40 years old.

He's a shortstop. He feels the ball, the place to second. But he throws it to first because he's still thinking like a child, like a nine year old.

He can't think in the category. Well, yeah, there's a guy in first man that changes things a little bit. He can't think that way.

Look, we have our heavenly Jerusalem. Yes, ultimately, fundamentally, that's our home.

But we're also people living on Earth. And we also have other homes.

And I have my own home. I have my own house and property. That's my home.

I live in New Hampshire. That's also my home. I'm an American. That's my home.

I would do it would be so you would you would see how low IQ and retarded this is.

If he if if he if he said, yeah, you know, where's your home? And I'm like, oh, yeah, I live in Keene, New Hampshire.

And he's like. Heavenly Jerusalem, Jerusalem is your home. You look at him like he'd have 10 heads, but he's saying he's doing that exact thing right now.

And somehow he gets a little shot of something by saying this. He he gets his little superiority feeling.

Well, I actually get it spiritually. You don't get it. You don't get it. You actually don't get it.

That's the point. This is this is the exact kind of issue that James was writing about in his book, where he talks about the person who says, be warm and filled, but does not give him the things needed for the body.

That's the exact thing they were talking spiritually, be warm and filled, and they have a hamburger in their pocket.

Probably without cheese, because, you know, the Jews didn't have the cheese on the hamburger and he won't give it to you.

I'm hungry. Be warm and filled. You've got a burger, dude. It's embarrassing, man.

It's embarrassing. And this kind of Jesus juking is not helpful. It's not that Jesus isn't helpful.

It's that your use of Jesus is an embarrassment to the faith. It's not helpful.

And I don't think God smiles upon you when you do this kind of stuff. When someone comes to you looking for help,

I'm looking at porn. I don't want to. How do I not look at it anymore? And you say, look to the cross.

Look to the cross. And you've said it to him a hundred times. And he's like, yeah, I get it.

But I need I need some strategies here. Look, ultimately, look to the cross.

I get that. We all get it. But that's not the question being asked.

He's looking for strategies here. He's looking for strategies here. He's looking for practical advice, things that have worked for you.

That's what he's looking for. I don't think Jesus smiles upon you when you use him in that way, when you abuse the text, when you just give these pious sounding rhetorics out there thinking that you're doing the right thing, but you're actually not doing anything.

I think, in fact, that you can find examples from Scripture where Jesus condemns that kind of behavior, where you think just because you're praying and using all these words that God hears you.

He doesn't care what you say if you're not actually doing any. It's frustrating, my friends.

It's frustrating. Sometimes the Sunday school answer of Jesus is not helpful.

We've got to learn how to think like adults in the faith as well, in the faith as well.

It's embarrassing, man. It's a Scott and Neal. You should be embarrassed by this. And it's not you being persecuted because you're just too focused on Christianity.

You're not focused on Christianity enough. You're focused on sounding like you get it, but you don't get it.

You don't get it. That's not what Stephen was talking about here. He was talking about nations here on earth.

He understands the heavenly Jerusalem, but he also understands what life is like here on earth, and that God actually cares about how life is organized and lived here on earth as well.

He cares about that. He's got things to say about that. And when you say, yes, we do.

It's called the heavenly Jerusalem. So I guess, you know, whatever. It's just complete nonsense, man.

It's complete nonsense. And then, of course, the political thing is just, it's very complicated for people.

And I'm not going to talk too much about this. We're just about done here. We're just about done here. But of course, you know, people want to be pure in their politics.

You know, the Republican Party is no longer anti -abortion or whatever. I don't even know. I didn't read it. I don't care. Okay. I really don't care.

That's not what I want to talk about today. I do care, obviously, but that's not what I mean. That's not what

I want to talk about today. What I want to talk about today is that politics is rarely ideal.

In fact, Isker, and I think it was him, and he liked this tweet, so I think he agrees that it was him.

One time he said something that really helped me out. And I didn't used to always look at politics this way.

I used to be one of these purists, one of these idealists. If you're like that now, I totally get it because I used to be there.

And I'm not mad at you, but I totally understand why you're like that. I get it. But this was very helpful.

And it was something like this. He basically said, politics is always and only a decision between options.

Okay. It's always a decision between options. And not every ideal option is always available at any given time.

And so you have to consider that my ideal choice is not happening.

It's not available. I have option A. I've got option B. Maybe I have option C. And none of those are ideal for me.

None of them. But option A is really terrible. Option B is okay, better than the option

A. And option C is far out there, not really realistic. So what do

I do? That's the game. That's the game. Option B is obviously better than option

A. Option C is a non -option really. And so option B is completely legitimate and it makes sense choice.

Because if you go with option A, things are way worse than they would have been. If you go with option

C, things are way worse than they would have been. If you go with option B, things aren't ideal, but they're better.

But they're better. That's what politics is. It's not an ideal situation.

It's not an ideal game. And I want you to really wrestle with that, man. Because that's how life is.

You got to deal with reality. You can't be living in this ideal universe that doesn't exist. We don't have an ideal universe in some ways.

We have the universe that we've been given. And so you've got to work with less than ideal circumstances.

And you do this all the time in your life. You do this all the time in your life. You wake up one morning, you're not feeling great, but you have some things to do.

And now you've got to figure out how to do those things while you're feeling less than good. And so that might mean you have to adjust how you approach them.

You might have to adjust the order of them. You might have to adjust the intensity of how you do things. But you do this every single day.

You see this with sports teams too. There are some players that they really are great, but they're only great in ideal circumstances.

When they're ahead in the count, it's 3 -0, 3 -1. They can get big hits in those situations.

But when they're behind in the count, they're just completely lost. When there's two outs, two strikes, they're completely lost.

And those players are so frustrating to watch because it's like, man, I know you're good. Why can't you produce when it really counts?

They compile stats, but they can't produce when it really counts. We all know players like that.

We all know teams like that. You might say the Yankees are like that right now. The Yankees started off the season so well.

Everything was clicking. Everything was going great. And they hit a little bit of adversity, and the wheels have fallen off.

They can't win a game. Everything is wrong. The entire team is wrong, with the exception of Judge and Soto.

They can't win a game. I'm not one of these Yankee hater Mets fans. I like the

Yankees. It is kind of funny to watch them struggle, but I like the Yankees. And it's just amazing.

You see this. You don't know how good a team really is until they hit some adversity, when they have less than ideal circumstances.

Maybe there's an injury. Maybe less than ideal circumstances will show you what you really are, how you really think, how intelligent you really are.

Everyone can be intelligent when things are going great. Not too many people can do the right thing when things are tough.

And that's the game in politics, man. Less than ideal circumstances. We're in a real pickle. And so we've got options.

And it makes perfect sense to choose the option that will move the ball some way forward.

Even if it's just a foot. Even if it's just a couple inches. It's better than going back and taking a sack.

Option A will take a 10 -yard sack. That's not progress.

You don't get any points for that, for sticking to your principles and getting sacked in the end zone.

You still got safety. You stuck to your guns, but you still got safety. You know what

I mean? That doesn't do any good. That doesn't do any good. So politics, man, you've got to understand it as a choice between options.

And oftentimes, they're not ideal options. But you still got to figure out a way to win the game.

When you're on the one -yard line, your own one -yard line, you've got to come up with a play that's going to move the ball forward, even though you're in less than ideal circumstances.

It doesn't do any good to not choose. It doesn't do you any good to stick to your guns.

Like, yeah, we've lost yards on this play every single time. Let's run it again. Doesn't do you any good.

You've got to figure out a way to win. You've got to figure out a way to get out of the situation. You've got to figure out a way.

And I think a lot of people are tempted to say, let's just take the sack, and then everyone will see that our team is in a complete disaster, and they'll eventually wake up, and then we'll sign all these great players.

That's not how it typically works. You play to win the game. You play to win the game, not the future game.

You play to win the game that's in front of you, not the eventual future game that's, really, it's just in your mind.

It's just in your mind where that game exists. Anyway, that's all for today.

We really, desperately need to learn how to stop thinking like children. Like, the

Karen Suala Pryor Jesus juke is just absolutely such a good example of it.

But it's just, it's really obvious because she's just a liar. But that kind of thing with the Scott O 'Neill thing, it's the same kind.

It's the same kind of thing. And we've got to get away from that kind of stuff, man. Yes, Jesus is the answer. And when someone's asking the ultimate questions and the foundational questions, sure,

Jesus is the answer. But sometimes when you try to try to push the conversation into those ultimate things, when that's not really what's being asked, that's not really what's being asked.

When the person says, hey, I'm in financial trouble, what do I do? And you say, look to the cross. I don't think

Jesus smiles upon that. That guy's asking for help. He's asking for a hamburger and you're telling, you're sending him off saying, be warm and filled.

When there's burgers in your pocket, they have to be McDonald's burgers because they have to be wrapped up. It's the same thing.

And there are harsh words for that kind of behavior. This kind of behavior should disgust you.

It should disgust you. Not only because he's thinking like a child, but because this is what passes for spirituality these days.