Truthscript Tuesday: Enjoying God and Avoiding a Liberal Framework

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Welcome, welcome, welcome. It is once again, TruthScript Tuesday. We only have two articles today, so it should be a shorter episode, but they're good articles.

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I'm looking forward to getting into them. Most of you know that it is still summer where you are, and I live in the, well, close to the

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Northeast, close enough, and it switched today. So that's why I have my flannel shirt on if you're watching, because it did switch.

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It's still nice. You could still go outside with a t -shirt if you want, but if you're not being active, you might actually get a little chilly in the evening, which is when

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I'm recording this. So things are changing, and I'm looking forward to it. That means the fall retreat's coming up for TruthScript, and you can go sign up for that.

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The best place probably to go for that is overcomingevilconference .com, overcomingevilconference .com,

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and we're now, we're less than a month away. We are one day less than a month away from the retreat.

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It's on the 21st of next month, and there's a lot of information on that website, overcomingevilconference .com.

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If you want to see more, you can do that, and I look forward to seeing you there. I would just recommend if you're going to come, because I've had several people come to me and say,

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John, I'm going to come. Make sure that you sign up, because I will try to keep this open as long as I can.

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I know generally it's a week before when I have to give them the final count, but it makes it a lot easier for us, and it ensures that you will have a spot in case there are problems with the amount of room we have.

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You're going to want to sign up now if you're on the fence, overcomingevilconference .com.

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More information's there. You can also send an email to infoattruthscript .com if you have questions.

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I just had actually someone this morning send me an email and say, what about carpooling from Ohio?

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I was able to go to the website and look and see, yep, there is someone coming from Ohio, and they have extra seats in their car.

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We're answering questions like that, and hopefully that helps everyone out there. Just a few other reminders really quick before we get started.

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If you go to truthscript .com and you scroll to the bottom, there is a publish tab.

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If you want to write for Truthscript—some people ask about that—click on that tab. Many of the people that write for us are just ordinary people, but some of the best articles—it's funny to me,

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I knew this was the case. There are all these hidden gems out there. Some of the best articles come from people that they're not even pastors or they don't have a white collar job.

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Sometimes it's people who otherwise you probably wouldn't hear from that much, and they're writing in.

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That's not everyone, but there are people who have written in and written really good articles.

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The guidelines are there. If you want to contribute, if you think the

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Lord wants you to take some of His money, it's because it's not our money. We are the stewards of it.

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I know what people mean. I know my money, but it's ultimately the

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Lord's. If you think that the Lord wants you to use some of your money that He's entrusted to you to bless

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Truthscript, it is a 501c3. You do get a tax write -off. You can go to donate, donate tab, to the bottom, and you can help us out there.

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I think that's everything. Let's get started with the articles for today.

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We have two of them here. I've had my head buried in the last two days—just a little personal update,

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I suppose, here—on the 1607 Project, which is another pot

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I have my hand in. I have too many of them. This is a documentary on the founding of the

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United States. How did we get here really is the question. How did we get to where we are today?

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1607project .com, if you want to look into that more. That has nothing to do with Truthscript, but I figured I would let you know that's what

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I'm doing. That's why you didn't hear from me yesterday, because I was busy editing. It's going to be great.

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Let's talk about Truthscript stuff, since that's what we're here for today. What does it mean to enjoy

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God? To enjoy God is the article by Justin Puckett. I'm going to read for you this article.

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We're going to go through most of it here, if not all of it. Just talk about what this means.

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Justin Puckett is a Bible teacher at New River Baptist Church in Tifton, Georgia. I don't know where Tifton is.

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That must be a smaller town. I've been through Georgia, but I don't recognize that name. Anyway, he writes, "...many

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of us who are Reformed in our theology, yes, even us Baptists." There's already controversy, and I haven't even finished the first sentence.

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Some of the Presbyterians out there, and some of the Episcopalians, and some of the Lutherans.

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Well, are Lutherans even Reformed? I mean, they are. They're obviously Martin Luther, but did they think of themselves that way?

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Anyway, they all look at the Baptists kind of the same way. They give us strange looks, we'll put it that way.

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He says we're Reformed, though. There are Baptists who are Reformed, and that's true. The original Baptists were.

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That group can recite the first question of the Westminster Confession in our sleep, what is the chief end of man?

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Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. We can wax eloquently about the glory of God and His attributes, loving kindness, mercy, and even the glory of His wrath and justice.

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Yet when we get to the second part of that answer, our voices trail off into an inaudible mumble, and we become uncomfortable.

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Why is that? Part of this, I believe, is due to our understanding of man. We believe that man is totally depraved.

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Romans 3 .10 is our life verse, and we will declare this biblical truth from the rooftops that all of man's thoughts and intentions are polluted and tainted with pride and prejudice.

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So when we consider this sinful, depraved, and prideful man enjoying a most holy and perfect God, something inside of us cringes.

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I believe the root of this to be an overemphasis upon the unregenerate man, and forgetting, even neglecting, the change that is wrought in the regenerated man.

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Now, if some of you will remember, we had an article by Pastor Danny Steinmeier.

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It was about Shakespeare. It was about the play Hamlet. He talks about how man is made in God's image, and he talks about how man also has a sinful nature.

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There is a tendency—if he didn't say this, he said it in so many words—there is a tendency to overemphasize in Reformed circles, especially that depravity.

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Maybe overemphasize isn't even the word, but just to focus on it to the detriment of the good instincts that God has given to all men.

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There are good things there. They don't accomplish heavenly good. They don't please God. They're not done for the right motivation if they're done apart from faith in Christ, or at least gratitude to God.

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There are things like feeding your children. That's a good thing, and God gives that to people.

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Anyway, this article is a really good complementary article to that particular one.

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In this article, the emphasis is on what we are in Christ after being redeemed.

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There are ditches on both sides, but not only is there a danger in the more

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Reformed evangelical world to focus too much on depravity to the extent that we forget that we're made in the image of God and other people are made in the image of God, but we can also do it to the extent—and this is even worse, perhaps—that we forget about the fact that we are saved individuals, that we're part of God's family, that He's redeemed us, that He's given us new desires, that we're on our way to heaven, that there are all these blessings for us.

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My wife calls it the pit. That cannot be taken into the pit with us.

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You know the pit. Many people like to sit in the pit. I don't like to sit in the pit, but there was a time in my life,

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I suppose, that I did more so and just think, man, I'm so terrible. I'm just so awful. Yeah, we are.

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Get over it, right? There is a sorrow, but then that sorrow turns to gladness, because God has decided in His sovereign will to save individuals who are sinners, have filthy sin that they commit against the

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God of the universe, and yet they're redeemed. They're changed.

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They have an alien righteousness. They're being sanctified. That's what his article is about.

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He says, earlier this year I was preparing a sermon on Romans 5, and as I was reading through the book of Romans while studying the grammar of the passage, two things suddenly hit me about a common trend in Paul's letters.

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First, he wrote to and about the saints in such and such a city, as born -again believers, we are declared saints before God.

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We are set apart, consecrated, and holy. What does this mean? The word saint—we're set apart.

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We're different. There's a special purpose that we have in Christ. He says, throughout the

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Old Testament, we see many profane, simple objects declared to be holy—dirt, bread, incense, lampstand, altar, tent, etc.

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However, those ordinary objects were only declared to be holy because God had called them to be set aside for His purposes.

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This is an interesting thing. I think dirt is probably referring to Moses, right? The place where he's standing is holy ground.

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It's holy dirt right there. He did this because God is holy, and they were to be set apart and used in His presence for His purpose.

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Likewise, the regenerated soul is no longer profane and common, but has been made holy in Jesus Christ by the indwelling of His Holy Spirit, by the

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Holy Spirit of God. The common, ordinary man is used and energized to do the will of God for His purposes.

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Philippians 2 says, for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.

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So when we think about man enjoying God forever, it is not the image of the sinful, rebellious soul who hates

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God in his ways. It is the redeemed who have been joined to the Son, regenerated by the Holy Spirit, and reconciled to the

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Father. Secondly, Paul speaks of the reality of this new transformation and our peace with God as a done deal.

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In other words, this is accomplished already. We're not in this stage of lacking assurance as to whether or not this will take place.

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It will, it is, and it has. There is an already -not -yet component.

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But he says, this is clearly seen in the tense of the verbs Paul uses in Romans 5. We were weak ungodly enemies of God—past tense.

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We are now—present tense—and have been—past tense—strengthened, justified, and reconciled through Christ's work upon the cross.

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Again, in Ephesians 2, we formerly—past tense—walked according to the course of the world, and we were—past tense—without

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Christ and alienated from the people of God. Even in the verbs Paul decides to use, you can see this truth come out—that we are righteous before God.

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We are present. By the grace of God in Christ Jesus, you are not who you once were.

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No longer are you dead, rebellious, unholy, unrighteous, and godly sinner, but a living, holy, righteous, obedient, and godly saint.

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This is why when we sin, we are acting out of character. It is contrary and destructive to our nature and who we are in Christ.

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That is why James 3 says, from the same mouth blessings and cursing.

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Brothers, these things ought not to be. It is antithetical to who we are and who Christ has made us to be.

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Like honey that is bitter, a sinning saint is not only contradictory but wrong. Now, of course, the questions come immediately about, okay, then why do

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I still sin? That is the first thing. Why do I still sin? He tries to answer this. He says, the problem we run into is the fact that we still sin and do not act contrary to our new status.

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It is the great bane of the Christian existence. He quotes Romans 7 where Paul says, for the good that I want

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I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death?

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Sin will ruin our enjoyment of God, whether that be unrepentant, persistent sin in our life or the over -introspection of sin in our hearts.

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Too much time spent upon sin that Christ has already forgiven breeds guilt and shame, robs us of joy, and makes us reluctant to come before God.

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It keeps us away from the only one who can heal the wounds of past sin and purify our current corruption.

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Enjoying God is God. He says, enjoying God starts with enjoying the privilege He has given to us in Christ.

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There is a positional righteousness we have, that is what theologians call it. We are positioned in such a way that we are righteous before God because of what

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Christ has done, the great transfer. He took our sins on a cross, and then

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He gave us His righteousness. And so that is what God sees, that is what we are going to be judged by as believers in Christ Jesus.

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Not our works, not what we believe even, in the sense that we are not going to be judged based on the extent to which we have authentically and really meant.

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I am thinking of the people who pray prayers all the time, saying, Lord, if I was not sincere last time, help me to be sincere.

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It is not our sincerity. It is the work of Christ that saves.

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This is hard for some people to get. It just goes against our sinful tendencies.

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We want to do it on our own. He says we have this positional righteousness.

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Sure, we still sin at times, that we are being sanctified, that we are different. This process is taking place, and the process is already good as done, though.

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We are conforming more and more into Jesus Christ. Enjoying God starts with enjoying the privileges

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He has given us. Ephesians 1 says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies.

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What blessing has He blessed us with? Unlimited access to Him. It talks about the veil being torn when

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Christ died between God and man in the temple. Let us draw near, He quotes Hebrews, to the throne of grace.

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He has given us spiritual gifts through His Holy Spirit to serve Him in His church. Gifts and works He has created for us beforehand.

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He has placed us in His body. As some young men would call this, this is a white pill.

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This is an encouraging article. Look at all the things that you have. You are placed into a body.

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You have people to encourage you. You encourage others. There is discipline there. To neglect,

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He says, so great a means of grace and privilege is not only unloving towards ourselves when we desperately need them, but unloving towards the one who died and gained them for us.

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In short, God has given us Himself, the only source of true blessing, peace, and satisfaction. Whom have

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I in heaven but You? Besides You, I desire nothing on earth. My flesh and my heart fail, but God is the rock of my heart and my portion forever.

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Before our conversion, He says, we sought these things in the world only to be like salt water.

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Not only did the world not satisfy us but made us more thirsty. It was a drink that would ultimately have led to our death had we not been given a drink from the rock.

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The bitter waters of Marah have been made sweet. He closes with this.

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He says, He is not something, meaning God, we must carefully ration for fear of running out.

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No, there is enough for us to not only glorify Him but enjoy Him forever. This is really well written.

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I think this might be the first time I've read anything by Justin Puckett, but really well done. That brings us to our next article, which is a different topic.

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Let people who do what they want as long as no one gets hurt, a Christian sentiment. In this line,

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I'm going to talk just briefly to frame this because it is relevant. This morning, I had three people send me,

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Oliver Anthony, the guy who wrote the hit song, Richmond, North of Richmond. It was the first time in history that someone topped the

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Billboard top 100 charts from obscurity. He didn't even climb the charts.

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There was no climb. It was just number one because he recorded videos on his cell phone camera.

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It's just amazing. It's an amazing story. Oliver Anthony was on an interview.

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I didn't see the whole interview. I just saw a clip from it. Most of the things I've seen coming from Oliver Anthony are really good.

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He read a whole chapter from Ecclesiastes last Saturday at one of his shows. My expectations though aren't,

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I'm not looking at him as he's going to save us all or he's going to, our political situation.

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He's an artist. He's a musician. He's a normal guy. I don't expect more from him, but some people apparently,

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I think, do. He was on camera saying something to the effect of that diversity is our strength.

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That's one of the things that we got to do is get back to this unity, but a unity in diversity because people are being divided against one another unnecessarily.

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If they just understood diversity was our strength, I guess they wouldn't be divided, that kind of thing. They would realize we need each other.

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Now, people are criticizing this because they were saying Oliver Anthony is the working class man's hero.

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Did Christianity play into that? I don't think as much. I think it was more just, hey, he's a conservative, so why is he parroting this liberal claptrap?

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Well, that liberal claptrap was drilled into each of us. I mean, I was homeschooled.

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I was involved in the community, I suppose. I was in sports and things, but I had a good education,

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I would say, compared to my friends and my neighbors who didn't have the kind of education, who weren't homeschooled, at least in the area that I live.

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I'm not saying you have to be homeschooled at all. I think I had a pretty good education. I was pretty insulated from some of the negative things that other people in my neighborhood had to deal with.

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Yet, it doesn't really matter. I was still, I mean, it was able to penetrate past everything, all the good things, to get to me.

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I knew this early on, that diversity was our strength. I posted about this on Twitter the other day, that diversity is our strength, and you can be anything you want to be.

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I mean, it's because it's in all the television programs. It's everywhere you turn.

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Those two lies, really, were present there. Diversity is not our strength.

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Actually, it's what's leading to our downfall. It's multiculturalism.

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That's really what that means. Of course, you can't be anything you want to be. You should aspire.

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You should invest your abilities in the things that will achieve the highest good, but that does not mean you can be anything you personally want to be, as if your desires are somehow—there's a requirement that creation bends to your desires.

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Anyway, to get into the article, these kinds of phrases, these framings, these assumptions,

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I think a lot of Christians have, and they don't realize it. It contradicts things they say they believe from Scripture, but they don't realize it contradicts.

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Many of us—I'm sure there's things I believe that contradict themselves, and I just haven't figured it out yet. I haven't noticed the contradiction.

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That's something that is very common for Christians. I know Christians who, I believe they're saved.

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I believe they love the Lord, but they still hold on to even views about things like evolution, or I would say even views about decisional regeneration and things like that, which

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I would trace. I would say that if you take that to its logical conclusion, you're going to wind up in heresy land, because it's not

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Christ who is saving you. There's a synergistic thing going on there, to just pick one example.

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But God, in His grace, will allow people who are ignorant, or just haven't worked it out, or whatever the case may be, to hold contradictory positions on certain things without even knowing it.

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Maybe it's passed down by tradition. I'm not getting into all the specifics, because I know there's exceptions here, but I do think, though, that that is a common thing, and it's good for us to be challenged on these things.

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It's good for us to be aware where those things can come up, and this is a big one right now. This article is fairly relevant.

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It starts out this way. Dr. Bode Bauckham recently spoke in Moscow, Idaho, on the great errors confronting the church.

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He read Ephesians 5 .22, wives submit to your husbands, and he said, we can just stop right there. We can stop right there.

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We're already at war. We're already at war with our culture, right? I didn't even finish the verse, and we're already at war with our culture.

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Bauckham then identifies feminism, cultural Marxism, same -sex marriage as aspects of our culture that conflict with this verse and its implications.

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He is correct, of course, but conservative Christians already recognize these movements as alien and hostile. When Bauckham warns in so many words that the enemy is outside the gates, he rallies a receptive audience.

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It is well for him to exhort us to vigilance and standing our ground.

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Lord knows we need it, but I wish to raise the alarm about a far more insidious part of our culture, which is not only inside the gates but deep in our minds, embedded like a malignant tumor that degrades our ability to think clearly about moral issues.

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I mean the liberal idea that everyone has the right to do as he pleases, so long as all parties consent, or as the occultist put it, do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

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What is good is defined subjectively by everyone for himself, while evil is defined objectively as a non -consensual harm.

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This idea grew out of northwestern Europe in concert with the philosophical, political, and economic developments of the last several centuries.

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Enlightenment humanism with individual liberty as ultimate moral law gradually settled at the bedrock of western civilization, thanks to its compatibility with a market -based multicultural democratic order that harmonizes diverse and competing interests.

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This is already a great article I'm really liking. He's already thinking deeper than,

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I would say, most of the Christian blogs out there. You're not going to see this kind of analysis, even though I think it's accessible.

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You're just not going to see it on most of the pop blogs. They're not going to talk about this, and it's worth talking about.

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What do we really live in? What's the water we swim in? It is this market -based multicultural democratic order.

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That is what it is. In the West, and in America particular—and by the way, I should just say something because I'm anticipating some of the more libertarian -minded people are going to say, it's not market—look, it used to be called commercialism.

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Now it's called capitalism. It doesn't mean that the free market is actually, in effect, what's happening before our eyes.

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What it means is that we look at everything with dollars and cents. It means that we want to do, even if it's ill -advised, we want to do what's best for the market.

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There are obviously Keynesian approaches that are not good for the market, but the idea is the prioritization here.

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It is a market -based multicultural democratic order. In the West and in America, particularly the ethic of individual autonomy is assumed without question across the political spectrum.

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From do your own thing and my body, my choice on the left to don't tread on me on the right.

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By the way, I love the fact, I should say, that he used the word autonomy instead of individualism.

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If you read a Gospel Coalition article, I guarantee if they tried to say something similar -ish, they're going to go after individualism.

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It's murky. You don't really know. He's going after really the root issue here, which is autonomy. From my body, my choice to don't tread on me on the right.

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It has become a pervasive and omnipresent that we forget. It's historically aberrant and culturally unique.

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By the way, I should say, I'm qualifying so many things here. I guess I probably should just let the article speak, but I have so many thoughts.

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I need to share some of them. The don't tread on me thing. Originally, I think there's a case to be made here that this was don't trample over the sovereign colonial governments.

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Don't do that. I think he's right that it's become more than that.

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It's become anytime there's ever a challenge to something that as a conservative, you don't want to do, that becomes a moral justification.

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Even if it's the right stand to make, that really shouldn't be the moral justification that just don't tread on me or come and take it.

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There's a place for it. The justification must come from something greater than the slogan.

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In fact, social psychologists have coined the term WEIRD—Western Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic.

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It's an acronym precisely because it is so unusual. Furthermore, in mistaking our socially conditioned moral sentiments, which belong to a particular time and place for eternal and universal truths that hold at all times in all places, we find ourselves obligated to enlighten a darkened world.

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This manifests as a continual dredging up revision and judgment of historical transgressions in time and as a crusade to export democracy, make the world safe for human rights, and proclaim the social justice gospel in space.

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This guy gets it. I have to say this guy really does. Since liberalism abolishes all distinctions and levels everyone to the same status as individual, it implies a radical equality resembling that of the church in Christ.

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But since God is missing from the picture, it is counterfeit. In Christianity without Christ, like all successful counterfeits, it has gained currency due to a superficial similarity with the genuine article.

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I have to say I have been coming more and more to this. I think I was reading some of the critiques of modernity from agrarian writers.

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Then I read a book called The Demon in Democracy. I am really starting to see more clearly.

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It is coming into focus that the social justice gospel was easy for me to see.

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I have been trained as a political conservative my whole life. At least my parents were that way.

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I was easy to see it. And this has not been as easy to see because I am living in it more.

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Some of these things I believe in. Even if I am unaware of it, there is a loyalty that I have to some of these beliefs that I should not.

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I am starting to shed some of those more so. Some of them I think I instinctively rejected, but I did not know why.

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I am doing that more and more and more. One of the things I am coming to realizing is exactly what the author here says, that liberalism itself functions as a religion.

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In fact, it is so similar to—I do not even know if you can keep them distinct, the social justice religion and liberalism.

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There are separations. There are differences. There is this neutrality that liberalism wants to maintain.

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I am seeing more and more though that they help each other. They work off of each other.

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There is room that is made in society for social justice stuff to come in because of liberalism.

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Then liberalism eventually adopts the premises of the social justice religion.

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You can see this easily with just something as simple as the LGBTQ movement. Just a few years ago, people who said they were classic liberal would say—Glenn

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Beck would say he is a classic liberal. He would say things like same -sex marriage. He opposed it essentially.

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He at least gave some pushback. Then I want to say about maybe 10 years ago that it was more, well, we should just get the government out of the way.

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Now I think he has realized what happened, but there is still this kind of neutral ground he wants where you can have same -sex couples pursuing a marriage license.

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You can have heterosexual couples pursuing a marriage. It does not really matter as long as you do not force me and my church to do because it is about me.

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It is not about how God actually wants society to function according to his natural order.

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So the author here says it can flexibly accommodate a wide range of moral tenets and imperatives.

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Hives submit to your husbands, for instance, can be expressed within a consent -based framework by asserting that wives sign up to submit in the same way that military recruits voluntarily forfeit their rights during service.

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Likewise, abortion may be opposed by asserting the right of the unborn to life. Although, since rights belong to persons, the debate devolves into the question of personhood and its beginnings.

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For a long time, liberals with Christian sensibilities have been able to reconcile the two faiths.

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However, I think that is exactly what has happened. Now everything is coming unwound, and they are not able to do it anymore.

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Cultural changes sometimes force matters to a head and expose a fundamental rift, the resolution of which plays out according to an oft -observed pattern.

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Conservative liberals who cling to the vestiges of a pre -liberal tradition out of custom and habit at first protest the incipient changes.

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But because their opposition is based on a preference for the familiar and established, they become accustomed to new norms with the passage of time.

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In the age of television and social media especially, it does not take long for the initial resistance to imbibe new attitudes through repeated exposure and the impulse to conform.

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This is kind of like the boomer con phrase that's thrown around a lot.

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Someone's a boomer con because they accept the post -World War II consensus. It's not true conservatism.

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It's a conservatism that wants to conserve the last iteration of liberalism. The conservative liberal is never able to mount a principal defense because, in principle, he is a liberal.

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Eventually, he openly embraces his true faith, shedding Christian trappings as so much excess baggage.

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Time and again, we have seen leading figures in church and state come out and declare their allegiance to the liberal religion, typically in response to critical issues that reveal a great chasm fix between it and the scripture.

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Ted Cruz, a Republican, I covered this on the podcast. Do you remember this? When Ted Cruz condemned the

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Uganda law that prescribed the death penalty for homosexual acts with minors and homosexual acts knowingly carried out with the risk of HIV infection.

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Cruz called the law an abomination and a human rights abuse. His sharp choice of words was from Leviticus 18.

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Marks an unmistakable dividing line and leaves no doubt about his loyalties. After all, individuals have the right to do as they please.

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Who are we to say what consenting adults may not do in the privacy of their bedrooms or on the street in broad daylight or before groups of small children?

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As progressive soldiers march ever onward along the path of depravity, war clouds seem to be gathering around the sexualization of children.

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Even now, the cloud is being prepared. Gender ideology in school, surgical and hormonal interventions, suggestive themes in media, graphic depictions in sex education, family -friendly drag and pride events, and the creeping normalization of minor attracted persons all serve to inculcate the view of children as sexual beings.

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Given the additional premise that children are individuals with the power to consent, it follows that consensual sex with children is both appropriate and morally justified.

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Now this is where he's going to step on some toes, and I want you to keep listening. Don't turn it off because you're offended about who he goes after.

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Consider whether it's true. He says, sensing the urgency and underlying logic of the situation, Joel Barry of the

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Babylon Bee writes, Christians had better start researching and preparing robust defenses of the age of consent from history and scripture, and they need to start yesterday.

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Here we see the character of the Christian with liberal sensibilities, who retains Christian commitments while remaining within the liberal moral frame.

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He will, if possible, defend Christian positions within a system of autonomy and consent, but wherever the system contradicts scripture or produces absurdities, he abandons it in favor of deeper convictions of the heart.

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Unmoored from the liberal system, therefore, yet lacking anchorage in a Christian moral groundwork, the

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Christian with liberal sensibilities finds himself cast adrift, unable to justify the tenets of his faith except by meekly pointing to scattered passages in the

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Bible. Let me read that again, that quote, Christians had better start researching and preparing robust defenses of the age of consent from the history and scripture, and they need to start yesterday.

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So age of consent is what he's trying to defend here. It's age, how do we prevent this evil?

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We're going to put a bulwark here, a defense, a shield around age of consent. It's still trying to operate within this consent that gives the moral authority for whether an act is permissible or not.

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What if scripture appears to be silent on some controversy? What if, for example, experts agreed and science affirmed that children as young as three can indeed consent to sex?

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What argument is he going to use then? He could dispute the premise, or he could grasp for a verse like Luke 17 .2,

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which assumes what he wishes to prove. But in no case could he argue an alternative framework that aligns naturally with Christian moral intuitions.

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Now, I wish that I had all of the scriptures memorized, but I don't have Luke 17 .2

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memorized, so let's see what it says. Okay, so this is, I do know the scripture.

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It is better if a millstone were hung around his neck and he would drown in the sea if he causes a little one to stumble.

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So that's the scripture he's appealing to there. So he says, it is bad enough that the

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Christian with liberal sensibilities is off balance and tactively disadvantaged with respect to apologetics and the cultural world.

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Worse still is double -mindedness. It's psychologically corrosive and demoralizing. He is apt to feel embarrassed and ashamed, not because scripture opposes the culture, but because he opposes himself.

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Reflecting this pathetic state, his leaders can be heard to utter dismal encouragements. Look, you don't have to like what the

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Bible says. You don't have to agree with it, but just accept it. Okay? Submit to it and trust God. Meanwhile, ever theological conservatives are instinctively drawn to positive positions.

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Rather, they oppose. Mike Winger, a Calvary Chapel affiliated pastor whose popular YouTube channel is committed to thinking biblically, recently took up the egalitarian versus complementarian debate on women in ministry.

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While Winger affirms that scripture is complementarian and bows to it dutifully, he admits that he actually wanted to become an egalitarian before studying the issue.

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Is it any wonder Winger is, like the majority of Orthodox conservative faithful Bible -believing Christians in America today, a

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Christian with liberal sensibilities? What would it mean for us to be Christians with Christian sensibilities instead?

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What if we could feel at home and ease in our faith without controversies, tensions, or discomforts?

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What if we could preach unvarnished and unashamed without apologies, preambles, disclaimers?

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What if Christian attitudes, opinions, and judgments came to us as second nature? What if we were acculturated into a

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Christian moral framework rather than a weird modern liberal one?

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Then our moral intuitions and reasoning would be at peace once again, and we would cease to be divided against ourselves.

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Therefore, let us unearth and examine the cherished assumptions we have inherited from our civilization. Let us demolish every towering edifice built upon the satanic foundation and do as thou wilt.

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Rather, let us build anew that we may stand on a solid, mutually reinforcing structure grounded firmly in divine order and purpose.

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Let us plant the first and greatest commandment that our posterity may sit in the shade of what is noble, true, beautiful, and good.

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This is really, really well done. I'm impressed by this article. Marcus Henry is a software developer with a background in philosophy and the classics.

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He lives with his wife and children in the woods of Northern California. I hope he writes for us some more.

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Well, that's it for TruthScript Tuesday. I hope that was helpful for you. Obviously, more is coming.

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I do plan to have another TruthScript Tuesday next week. Appreciate everyone out there who is listening.

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I hope you're enjoying, if you are in an area similar to mine, the seasonal switch that's happening.