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You don't need to be an egghead to grow in faith.
You know, when I first started fishing, I bought a pack of these Powerbait Chigger Craws in the green pumpkin color. And I didn't know what I was doing, and I used them a few times, and I didn't catch anything.
Probably because I didn't know what I was doing, I didn't know how to fish them. In any case, recently a buddy let me borrow one of these, and it worked great. I caught a bass, and I found out how to actually use them, and when to use them, and stuff like that.
So I looked for the package I bought, because I had a bunch left, and I couldn't find it. So I went out and bought a new one, and then I found it the next day. So now I've got double Powerbait Chigger Craws.
So that's a score. In any case, I wanted to really quickly talk about something that... I was talking to my brother about this, and he gave me some really good insight into it. But actually, I started thinking about it because yesterday, I believe, Andrew Torba was live streaming an episode of the King's Hall podcast.
I don't think the episode was live, I think he was just playing it live, just to test out the new Gab Voice product. And brothers, I've heard of this King's Hall podcast before, I have not listened to it until yesterday.
You guys are doing a great job. I mean, there were so many things that resonated with stuff I've thought about in the past, but you guys put such a fine point on it. I wish I thought of some of the ways you were describing some of that stuff.
So that's really good. I'm going to have to listen to that podcast more often. I didn't hear the whole episode yesterday, because I kind of came in in the middle. But they mentioned something that got me thinking about something that I talked to my brother about, and it was this idea of egghead Christianity.
And egghead Christianity. You know, when I first became a Christian, there was sort of an idea that I don't think was explicitly taught, but it was just assumed. It was just part of the narrative that I got from mostly the Big Eva type people.
You know, the Tim Kellers, the Matt Chandlers, the Mark Driscoll, stuff like that. And it's this idea that the Christian life for a man, you're studying, you don't even have an office, you don't have a man cave, you've got to study, and you've got books, just tons of books behind you, and they're leather-bound, and you read multiple books at once, and you don't just read it, you really dig in and you study it, and you buy books, and in fact you brag about how many books you buy, and you haven't even read them all because you're just spending so much time camped out in this one book, you're reading Turretin, and you're just sucking the marrow out of Turretin, and it's just amazing, you get your jollies from this, and you sniff your book, I don't know about the sniffing part, but yeah, it's a very weird culture.
But at the time, I was a new Christian, so I didn't know any better, and I did have, I lived in New York City at the time, so I had this long commute that normally I would just play a stupid cell phone game or something, or just do nothing, and it was easy to redeem that time because it was just wasted time otherwise, so what I would do is I'd read, I'd read a lot of books, and I would read old books, I'd read new books, I'd read pop theology books, I'd read systematic theology books, and all kinds of stuff.
I remember I even taught myself first and second year Greek on the subway ride and stuff like that, and so I did that. I had a lot of books, and I didn't have a study because I lived in New York, and apartments in New York are tiny, but basically I had that going on, and I would post pictures on Twitter or Facebook or whatever of my leather-bound book collection and stuff like that, and that's what people did.
It was just part of the culture, and I learned a lot for sure. I enjoyed it, and it was great and all of that, and it was fine. But then when I left New York and I had other things that I could do and have a long commute, I didn't do that quite as much.
I didn't study systematics. Now, when I became a pastor, of course, I did because that's actually part of the job of a pastor is to study, but there's this impression that for regular Joe Christians, you know, Christians in the pews, that you basically have to treat your life as if you were a pastor even though you're not.
You spend your time studying, and it's not enough to even read devotionally through the Bible. You have to really study the Scripture. If you're not studying the Scripture, then there's something wrong with you almost.
I've come to realize that that's actually really not the Christian life at all. A lot of this stuff comes from guys like Piper. They write these poems about Christ, and it's almost presented as if this is the pinnacle of the Christian male life is to spend your time thinking about Christ and writing poetry about Christ.
If you do take a walk in the woods, you better be thinking about Christ while you're doing it and stuff like that. I just don't see that as the standard, normal, godly Christian life for everybody. Now, look, if you like reading theology books, you know, you get the new Turretin, and you just can't wait to dig in.
That's really you. You really get enjoyment out of it. Then that's a gift from God, and accept it, and knock yourself out, right? But that's not me. That's not me, and that's not a lot of people. I think you can even hear this kind of come through sometimes in podcast interviews.
Listen, if you've invited me on your podcast and you've asked me this question, I'm not mad at you. Okay, so don't hear me saying I'm mad at you. I'm not. But a lot is assumed sometimes where it's like, all right, well, let me ask you a question.
What are you reading right now, AD? And it's like, I'm not really reading much, to be honest with you. I'm taking care of my kids. I'm playing with them. I'm going fishing. I'm doing stuff. But here's what I do do when I need to reference something, right?
Like something will come up in a conversation, or maybe I see something on Twitter, and I'm like, I wonder what Rush Dooney said about this verse. And so I'll go to my books, and I'll pull it up. I'll reference it, and I'll read what he said about it.
I'll read the surrounding context, and that's what I do. Am I really reading Rush Dooney at the time? No, I'm not really reading Rush Dooney at the time, but I am. And I'll read books. I mean, I'm not saying I don't read.
I'll read books when something interests me, but I don't do the thing where it's like, all right, well, now I've got to study. That's not really for everyday, regular Christians. And so if that's not you, I want to encourage you that that's probably fine.
By the way, the Scripture, if you do read the Scripture, which, of course, I have. One of the first things I did when I converted is I read all the way through the Bible beginning to end very quickly.
And if you haven't done that, I recommend doing it. There you go. But if you do read the Bible, you'll notice that the primary way that God expects his people to receive his word is through hearing it preached.
It's not spending your devotional time. You know, you get your little coffee, and then you open up your Bible, and, of course, you take a picture of it and put it on Twitter, and that's your devotional time.
Like, there's really nothing like that in the Bible. But it's assumed, like, that is the spiritual. If you're not doing that, I mean, you're not even a basic Christian. It's like, well, in the Bible, though, the primary way, if you like doing that, I'm not saying don't do that.
In fact, I think it's a good idea. But if you don't have time for it, right, if you don't have time to get your little coffee and to get your quiet time in, right, like especially for a young parent, like quiet time can be difficult to come by.
If you're not doing that, take heart. Take heart because the Christian life is about more than your quiet time, right? The primary way that the Gospels, I'm sorry, the letters of Paul about how the church is organized, you hear the word preached.
So if you're not doing that, if you're not going to church, hearing the word preached, there is a problem there, right? But it's pastors that are supposed to study to show themselves approved. If you want to study, too, that's fine.
But if you spend your time, maybe you're starting a construction business and you're in the field because you're just starting out. So you're out there, you're building stuff. And then when you get home, you've got to spend some more time actually after your kids go to bed, you know, you have to spend more time actually working on the business, right?
Like you're not always in the business. You have to work on your business as well. And you're buying, you're selling, you're making deals, you're stuff like that, you're hiring. If you're spending a lot of time doing that because you've got a vision to start a construction business for the glory of God and obviously for the benefit of your family as well, you want your kids to join you in it, you want to build a foundation for your family so that they're set in the future.
Like those are godly things, right? Yes, you need to teach your kids about Christ. So you need to know enough about them to teach their kids about Christ. And probably that knowledge is going to have to progress as they get older because when they're 6 years old, it's easy to explain things.
When they're 12, 15, 18, probably going to need to know a little bit more. But that's okay. You've got time to grow into that, right? You know, if you're not taking your family to church, that's a problem because the Bible is specifically explicit about that.
But what I mean is like if you don't have your study, you know, you don't have your leather-bound books and you're not bragging online about how many books you purchased and how many books are in the queue to read and you can't wait to get to the new Zwingli.
The new Zwingli. That doesn't make any sense. You know what I mean. Or maybe you don't even know who Zwingli is, right? You don't know who Zwingli is. Dude, that's okay. Because the thing is when you see the marks of a true Christian, of course you're growing in knowledge, right?
But most of those marks are character traits, things that you're doing. You're growing in holiness and obedience to God. Like if you don't know the Bible enough to know what obedience to God looks like, then you have some work to do.
There's just no question about that, right? But if you're not getting your quiet time in every day and you're not writing poetry to God because you don't like to write poetry, instead what you like to do is you like to work on old cars and stuff like that and maybe you're kind of working on a side project where, you know, you build an old car and then you sell it, you turn a small profit and then you get some more parts to work on a new old car and stuff like that.
That's what you like to do. That's fine, guys. That's fine. I say this all the time, you know, when I'm out fishing, of course sometimes I'll talk to God and I'll pray to the Lord and other times I won't.
That's okay. If you don't have a study project going on right now, there's nothing wrong with that. Like you don't have to go searching. You know, I got to study about the intricacies of this Trinitarian controversy.
Like if that excites you and you want to do that, go for it. But if you have no reason to do that, you don't have to do it. It's just that simple. I remember I did a study. I've done one study project, like a real intense one is what I mean.
I've done small ones, of course. I've done one study project on an issue of theology when I wasn't a pastor, right? Like just for my own purposes. And it had to do with prayer. Because I remember as a young Christian feeling like there was something wrong with me because most of my prayers I was asking God for something.
I was very needy, right? I felt needy. Like I needed help with something. I was worried about something. Something was coming up that I needed help with. And I kept hearing Big Eva type pastors tell me that that was wrong.
They'd be like, if you only pray when you're in trouble, then you're in trouble. And they made it seem like you should feel bad if most of your prayers aren't magnifying his glory and they're not prayers of praise or thanksgiving.
If most of your prayers are asking God for something, there's something wrong with you. And so I was wondering, where do they get this? I find myself often praying when I need help. And I didn't feel bad about that.
But then I was kind of being made to feel bad. I was like, where are they getting this? So I studied prayer. I looked up exhaustively every instance of prayer in the entire Bible. And I would read the instance of prayer.
And then I would read the surrounding context. It took me a while to do this. And I would classify each prayer into like four or five categories. You know, either asking for something, thanksgiving, praise, glorifying God, whatever it is, right?
And I forget the exact categories I used, but I used like five categories. And what I found after an exhaustive study of this was that like 80 of prayers are asking God for something. So I remember thinking, you know, these Big Eva guys.
At the time, I didn't know they were Big Eva. They were just the teachers, you know. You know, I'm not going to listen to them so much on that. I'm not going to feel bad for asking God for help when I need help.
If I'm in trouble, I'm just going to ask God for help. And that's just as simple as that. And if most of my prayers end up being that, I'm okay with that because that's what we see presented in the scripture.
No apologies. And that was an issue that I was not a pastor at the time. I had no project I was working on. Like I wasn't writing a book or something or just something I was interested in. And it came up in regular life, and it's been so helpful to me.
And if you've never done that, then that's fine. But if something comes up and you do decide to do it, that's fine too. I don't know. I just want to encourage you because I feel like there's probably a lot of regular guys out there that aren't theological eggheads that when they see the Thomas Aquinas wars that are going on on Twitter, like, what the heck is going on here?
Like, I don't even understand any of this stuff. That's fine, guys. That's fine. You don't have to understand it, and it's totally fine. Obviously, over time, we're growing in the knowledge of God. We get that, right?
We get that. And that's going to happen if you go to Sunday worship service, right? That's going to happen. But you don't need to be out there learning Greek if that's not something that excites you. That's not something that interests you.
That's okay. You can just enjoy your life, raise your family in the fear and admonition of the Lord, take care of them, provide for them, work on your legacy, all that kind of stuff. That's totally fine.
The Christian life is not the life of a pastor. That's not for everybody. God gifts certain people. My brother is one of these people that's gifted like that. He just loves reading systematic theologies.
He gets a lot of pleasure out of it. And that's good because he's a pastor, and it's required for his job. But my job is not—I'm not a pastor. That's not required for my job. There are certain topics about theology that interest me, and so I read about them.
Not all the time, but I do. You know what interests me right now? Fishing interests me right now, so I'm doing that. I'm writing a children's book right now, so I'm doing that. Lots of topics interest me, and that's okay.
In any case, I just want to encourage you guys, Christianity is for normal people. And if you're living a normal life and you're obeying Christ, then good. That's good. That's fine. You don't have to brag about how many systematics you've read this month.
In fact, I would think it's preferable not to. In any case, two more quick things. The last video about Torba, somebody reached out to me, and he seemed like a good guy. He was very concerned with me for supporting Torba, and he was confused.
He thought that maybe what I was doing was like an enemy is an enemy is my friend kind of thing. So like the ADL hates Torba, and I hate the ADL, so therefore I support Torba. And I wasn't really supporting him.
It was just like an enemy is my enemy is my friend. I want to clear that up right now. That's not what's going on. So I figured maybe other people thought I was doing that as well. I'm not. No, I support Torba.
I think he's a brother. I think he's a solid brother. I think he's a force for the kingdom of God, and I support him. And, you know, I hope to talk to him more in the coming years and stuff like that.
And hopefully, you know, that'll be a good partnership, and I consider him a friend. So there you go. There you go. I want to make sure that that is totally clear. In any case, I hope you found this one helpful.
God bless.