Christian Liberty - Theology Throw Down of the Christian Podcast Community

All right, well, welcome to the first of many, we hope, podcasts of The Theological Throwdown.

This is a podcast of the Christian Podcast Community podcasters.

So all those who are podcasting on the Christian Podcast Community, we get together, or some of us get together, and we discuss different theology where we disagree sometimes, and we want to disagree in love and charity.

Tonight's topic is going to be Christian liberty. I hope we have some liberty with that one.

So we have several folks on right now, several podcasts represented.

I'm going to name each of them and then let each person just give a quick shout out for their podcast.

But we have Jamal Bandy of The Prescribed Truth.

We got James White, no, not that James White, the other James White of Everyday Ministries podcast.

We have, Kristen is with The Awe and Wonder. And we also have

Eve Franklin from Are You Just Watching? That's my favorite one, really.

No, I'm joking with her. The joke is her show is about movies and critically thinking through movies, and I am pop culture illiterate.

I joked with her. I did go see just for her. She did a podcast on Marvel Endgame.

So I went and watched it. Did you wear a suit and tie? Yes, I did. Yeah, they were.

I saw the picture. It's snazzy. Has it been the most uncomfortable three and a half hours of your life?

Actually, no. So you got to remember, I kind of grew up in a suit, so that's fine with me. But we were actually at a bar mitzvah.

And so we had three hours in between. So we decided to go do that. And Eve explained to me that you shouldn't go watch

Marvel Endgame as the first Marvel movie that you watch. Yeah. Because you don't kind of understand anything.

Yeah, you miss about 30 other movies, but it's okay. Okay, so you can see how into movies

I am. So Jamal, why don't we start with your show. Give a quick shout out for, since the doctor's in the house now.

Come on, Doc. Yeah, so my name is Jamal Bandy. And I was, it's a delight.

So my name's Jamal Bandy, and I'm the host of the Prescribed Truth podcast. The website is PrescribedTruth .com,

and I have a feature, my podcast, every week, preferably on Mondays. So I would be really grateful if you would check it out when you get a chance.

Thank you. All right. Who did I get mentioned next? James White, you're next in the list.

All right. Go for it. All right. Well, I'm James White. I'm one of the co -hosts on the Everyday Mystery Podcast.

It's me and three other guys. We do two types of shows. The one, the first one is every first and third

Monday of the week of the month. It is a 30 minute to an hour long episode where we discuss just a more weighty topic about everyday ministry.

And then the third and the second and fourth Mondays, we release an episode called

Ministers Minute. It's about a 10 minute episode about just a particular part of everyday ministry.

All right. Yes, I'm Kristen Hamilton with the In Awe and Wonder Podcast. My website is

Kristen -Hamilton .com and I will be putting out podcasts at least twice a month.

And it will be mainly for women to promote biblical literacy, doing

Bible studies and theology type of stuff. So yeah. So we can send that to Beth Moore, right?

Right. Sorry, she needs it. Sorry. Well, I'm going to get myself in trouble early.

All right. Eve, Are You Just Watching? Yeah, I'm Eve Franklin and I host, co -host a podcast called

Are You Just Watching? In which we pick one movie every month and discuss it from a Christian worldview, applying critical thinking and apologetics to what we're watching.

So we're not just shutting off our brain and let Hollywood do our thinking for us. And you can find us at areyoujustwatching .com.

And you have been podcasting longer than any of us. It's hard to believe.

I don't have as many episodes out though, because we only do one a month. Yeah. Okay. But you have been podcasting.

So you started when you were what? Like five, right? Because you've known for 10 years. All right.

And I'm Andrew Rapport. I'm the host of Andrew Rapport's Rap Report. I have a daily edition

Monday through Friday, two days, two minutes long. I have an hour long one that drops on the weekend.

I'm the host of Apologetics Live. If you want to join there, have any theological questions, apologetics questions, you can go to apologeticslive .com

on Thursday nights, 8 to 10 Eastern time. I also host or co -host the

So You Want to Be a Podcaster. And I am also the executive director of the Christian Podcast Community.

So tonight's topic is Christian liberty, which I don't know, with this past week or so, we may end up discussing, you know, is it, do you have liberty to have like, to say let's hold off on when a celebrity claims he's a

Christian? Is it okay to hold off before he becomes a worship leader?

Because boy, did people get in trouble just for saying maybe that we should wait on that? That could be a

Christian liberty issue. But I want to read Romans 14 just to set the stage for us. This is what

Paul talks about when it comes to basically passing judgment on others, dealing with things of food.

He says, as for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions.

One person believes he may eat anything while the weak person eats only vegetables.

Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains. And let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats.

For God has welcomed him. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another?

It is before his own master that he stands and falls and will be upheld, for the

Lord is able to make him stand. Another passage just to set the stage for us is in 1

Corinthians 10, this is verses 23 to 30, and it says, All things are lawful, but not all things are helpful.

All things are lawful, but not all things build up. Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor.

Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the grounds of conscience.

For the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. If one of the unbelievers invites you to dinner and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising a question of the grounds of conscience.

But if someone says to you, this has been offered in sacrifice, then do not eat.

Do not eat it for the sake of the one who informed you, for the sake of conscience.

I do not mean your conscience, but his. For why should my liberty be determined by someone else's conscience?

If I partake with thankfulness, why am I denounced because of that which

I gave thanks? And so the idea here is, you know, and some of you are probably very familiar with the text, right?

You have meat that was offered to idols. It was in a sacrifice. And because of that, some people would say they just can't eat of that because it came out of the idolatry.

And because of that, they felt it was sinful. It was against their own conscience.

So in their own conscience, it would be a sin to partake of that. I do find the

Corinthians passage so interesting for this reason. So many people think that given the choice of offending an unbeliever for the sake of sharing the gospel with them, or offending a believer worrying about their conscience, most

Christians seem to think that the gospel is more important than a brother or sister. And they would actually do the thing to offend the believer with the hopes of sharing the gospel with the unbeliever.

And that text says that's backwards. We should be sharing the gospel, but we have more concern with our fellow brothers and sisters.

So that kind of sets the stage for what we want to do and talk about a couple different topics.

And we're going to disagree, I'm sure, on some topics of liberty, especially when it comes to, you know,

I'm sure things with music, Jamal and I are probably going to disagree. Maybe.

No, but we're going to have some disagreements. But I think it's good to be able to have disagreements and talk through them.

So what are your, for you guys, just open it up. What are your thoughts when it comes to Christian liberty?

Just in general, before we get to some specific topics. Just off of what

I've seen in the text, it just seems clear that we're looking at, like you said earlier, what builds up our neighbor.

So like all things are lawful when all things build up. It seems to be the focus is whatever edifies someone. And I know a lot of times when we talk about liberty, it's mostly thinking about ourselves, self -centeredness in a way, not all the time.

You know, but that's, you know, that's what I try to look at when we're discussing or when

I'm discussing the topics with concerning liberty, whether it be like smoking a cigar or drinking a beer or any kind of stuff like that.

Is it edifying? How does it edifying and all that kind of stuff like that? I think that's where the text is driving it as far as how we honor the

Lord in what we do. Anyone else have any general comments?

Yeah, I think the other thing that we could take away specifically from the Corinthian passage is the idea of our conscience state.

For one individual, if it's not contrary to God's word, clearly, as Jamal was kind of touching on, there is smoking of something or participating in anything tobacco related or alcoholic related.

And there's other liberties that we could discuss, you know, music choices, even movie choices and different things of that nature.

A lot of times the issue is when it becomes our conscience. So for one individual, it could be sinful.

For another, it may not be if it's not clearly spelled out in scripture itself. So let's deal with some things that, well,

Jamal already mentioned some. Smoking cigars and drinking a beer. So we could start with those.

So is it a sin to drink alcohol?

Am I digitized? Am I sounding okay? I heard you okay. Okay. I was hearing something on my end.

So what do you guys think? And for some, like I typically don't take a position publicly on whether I think people should drink alcohol.

Just publicly. A reason I do that is I don't want to cause people to stumble. Now, clearly, I think we're all going to agree that drunkenness would be a sin, right?

We'd all agree there? Yes. Okay. Yes. But some people, when

I got saved, I was in a Fundamentals Baptist churches. And therefore, they would say, no, all alcohol would be wrong.

I remember hearing it preached, you know, that Jesus turned the water into wine, but that wasn't like wine.

It was such a low alcohol content that you can never get drunk off it.

And I was always like, okay, then what do you do when Scripture talks about the stuff that gets people drunk?

I mean, obviously, people were getting drunk off something. So what are different thoughts that you guys have?

And I'm going to throw a catch to you as well. If drinking is okay within Christianity, if it's not, you know,

Christians can drink. Would you advise or think it's wise to do it in a

Lord's Supper in communion? I've only seen that once, but I'll throw that as a caveat. I think that's a good question as far as me incorporating the

Lord's Supper. I think that would depend on, I think that would cause the elders to really know their congregation, to know who's there.

Even though it's controlled because everyone gets one, you know. But drinking,

I've heard this understanding from, he's a street preacher, a street evangelist.

Andy, not Moneo, I don't want to get him confused.

But anyway, he's an older gentleman, and his pastor did a video on this particular topic.

And his argument was, which I've been thinking about it for a while, is when is the line drawn between drunkenness or soberness?

Like the Bible calls us to be sober minded. So where's the line drawn between being sober and not sober? And whether someone, it may be different for different people, you know.

Whether one drink of beer may be it for one person, whereas it may take two, you know, just given one.

So where's the line drawn? Is that, do we judge soberness by the fact that we're not acting crazy or it makes us feel a little chill?

Any kind of altering the state of mind or anything like that? Is that where we draw the line with soberness? I think a lot of those factors go in the hand of discussing this.

Well, for the one that would say that alcohol consumption's permissible, then

I would say that it would even go a step farther than that and saying, is drunkenness, when you have a dependence on that, even though you're not overusing in the moment of.

So, for example, if drinking is okay, what about that individual that has to have that glass of bourbon, or that glass of whiskey, or that glass of wine every night to be able to cut the coldness and the difficulty of life?

I think that's questionable even at that point, if that's the stance one takes.

I'm curious if anybody that's on here now thinks that drinking alcohol would be sinful or not.

Me personally, I don't think drinking alcohol in and of itself is sinful. Yeah, I'd agree.

I don't think drinking alcohol in itself is sinful, but you bring up a good point.

I think when people feel they have to, I think Jamal, you said, take the edge off.

I grew up in a Jewish home. We would have wine regularly with meals.

It wasn't a big deal. My brother is a wine collector.

He's not saying, when he puts out a bottle of wine for Thanksgiving, it's a wine you're not going to be able to taste anywhere else.

If my kids wanted to have a sip, I was like, okay, it wasn't a big deal.

But now, if I'm in a restaurant, even if I think drinking alcohol is okay, if I'm in a restaurant,

I wouldn't do that publicly. If I have other believers over, especially ones

I don't know well, I don't know if this would cause them to stumble, I would say, no, we shouldn't do it.

Even with me, even with believing that it's not sinful, when

I used to drink alcohol back then, I would do it a lot. Not a whole lot, but when

I would do it, it would be to chill, so I could chill. If I'm nervous, if I'm around people

I don't really know, and I'm trying to be sociable, I would drink a couple glasses in order so I can be sociable.

And so then I realized I'm actually doing this. I feel like I need this in order to get along with people or talk with people I don't know and all that stuff.

And that would make me feel uncomfortable coming to this point here. But if I did feel like I need to drink something in order to get along with people or to start conversation, to talk, and to be cordial, so to speak, then

I feel like that would be sinful because I'm putting trust in something and not the Lord, not trusting the Lord to help me to love my neighbor, so to speak.

And so, yeah, I think that's where a serious line is drawn at that point, dependency upon anything else outside of God.

I don't think that alcohol in and of itself is sinful, but it's an academic topic for me because I don't drink.

I've never liked the stuff of any type. So I stay away from it personally in all ways, but not necessarily for spiritual reasons.

I just don't like the stuff, so it's an academic topic for me. And I go to a church that doesn't like it, so I will just avoid it.

Yeah, and for me, I agree that I don't believe that alcohol is a sin to drink, but getting drunk would be.

But yeah, I personally don't drink either, and mainly it's because my husband doesn't and he doesn't for personal reasons, and so we just avoid alcohol altogether because I don't want, you know, if I were to take a drink or anything,

I don't want to cause my husband to stumble, so that's where we're at.

But I also wanted to mention, too, that years ago, I was the administrative assistant at a church, and part of my employment there was

I had to sign a statement that I would not drink alcohol. And, you know,

I understand that from not wanting anybody in the congregation to stumble if they ever were to see me drinking or anything like that.

So just an interesting little side note on there. Sina, I have two things that I think of.

I remember my first pastor had moved into a new home.

The previous owners, just as a gift to him, they left a bottle of champagne in the refrigerator, and he and I were so busy.

We were trying to move him while doing everything else with the church, and he and I were kind of moving in stages, and we took everything in a cooler from his one refrigerator.

We brought it over to the new house, and he just shoved everything in, and that bottle went to the back of the refrigerator and stayed there for years.

And he called me up because we had to go down to the police and pick up someone from the church.

One of the guys in the church got arrested. He basically got himself drunk and was chasing a train naked.

And so he had no ID on him, and the only thing he could remember was the church phone number.

So the pastor called me, and we went down to the station to pick him up. So the interesting thing, though, is when the pastor asked him, what were you doing?

He says, well, you know, since it's okay for you to drink it, I figured it was okay for me to drink. And the pastor's like,

I haven't had a drink since I got saved. What makes you think it's okay? Well, we had a

Bible study at the pastor's house. He went in the refrigerator to get milk for his coffee, and he saw that bottle and concluded that the pastor must drink, and therefore it's okay for him to drink, but he couldn't control himself with the drinking, and it allowed him to make that excuse.

My pastor, I always remember this, he went out of his way to make sure that he got rid of that bottle and no one saw.

He poured it out, put it in a bag, didn't want to leave it in his own garbage can.

He took it to the dump and dropped it off there. And it really helped me understand how easy it is for people to jump to a conclusion and you can cause someone to stumble without even realizing it.

And so that's always been something that was impressed upon me. And then I had this. I was speaking at a church in Ohio, and it was the first time that they served alcohol.

They served wine, real wine, during the communion. And I'll throw this out to see, since we're talking on this topic, what you guys' thoughts are on this one.

But so here, you know, when you go to communion, you have those little small cups that are, you know, that look like, you know, like,

I don't know, maybe have like a couple of teaspoons of grape juice that they hold. They had grape juice that was in the small cups.

Small communion cups. And then they had glasses that they filled.

I mean, filled. Probably had what, you know, like, you know, like two glasses of wine in the one glass.

You know, it's like where it's like half a bottle of wine per glass. And it made me,

I just got done preaching, and now they have the Lord's Supper, and they brought this out.

And I was uncomfortable. I was uncomfortable, one, because I didn't expect it. It was the first time I ever seen alcohol, real alcohol being used in a communion service.

The other thing that really kind of set me off was, I'm having this little thimble cup of grape juice, and I'm watching the pastor hold up a full glass of wine, because they'd each pour it themselves, and each of these guys would pour like a full thing, and he just gulped the whole thing down.

Oh, my God. In front of the congregation, I'm like, let's do this in remembrance of him.

And I'm just like, so what are your thoughts on that? Wise, unwise, good to do, sinful, not sinful?

I think to have wine in your communion, you would have to have close table as a congregation.

So you would have to only allow members of that church to participate in communion.

And even then, I think, as you kind of just alluded to, you'd have to have both options. Now, maybe not have a wine glass for those with wine and thimbles with those with grape juices, but I think you have to.

And then even that, it would take months on months if you participate regularly in communion to explain why you're doing this before you do it, and then explaining that there is two options and why some should abstain and all of that.

And so that's where my thing would lie is, is it that important of a aspect to add the wine to it in the case of becoming a stumbling block for some?

Also, that too is interesting, because you think about when Jesus and the disciples had the

Lord's Supper, it was a supper. They sat down and ate. They talked. They sat for a while, whereas you have this moment in your service where you are taking this small moment to drink this and to eat this bread.

And so to take a big glass like that and to chug it, I think that's unwise. I feel like you could just have a small portion because you're doing a quick, just a small sip, and then you're still taking part of the wine and the bread.

But to do the go, I think that's overkill, because you shouldn't drink wine like that anyway.

And so, yeah, I agree that it should be closed table. It should be members of the church, and also it should bring about accountability.

There are brothers in the church who know there are other members who have struggled with this. Hey, I know you're a brother.

You need to opt for the juice. Even if somebody says, hey, I'm okay, it's all kind of like,

I think like what James said, it may take months to really break down why we're doing this, and so therefore people will think responsibly.

But yeah, I don't see a problem with incorporating real wine in the service.

I've oftentimes wondered why some churches don't, why we don't as a regular. But I can understand why, given our culture and how alcohol affects our culture and so on and so forth,

I understand. But to actually hear an example of someone actually doing it, it's encouragement.

It was also kind of scary when you say they had these big old glasses and they had the small little things for the juice.

So that was my only red flag. It's like, oh, why? Why would they do that? Well, I think, well, actually,

Kristen or Eve, did you have anything you want to add into that? Well, I just would say along those lines, we just recently moved in the last year, and so we were looking for a new church, and we did attend several different ones.

And when they would serve the Lord's Supper, my husband would always ask them, you know, do you use wine or grape juice?

Because he did not want to participate if it was going to be wine. So that's just something

I would think would be unwise for churches to do just because you don't know everybody's situation.

Yes, and now I'm actually going to disagree with James and Jamal.

I don't, you know, and I just talked to a pastor this week that had someone come visit the church, and that actually was a reason he separated.

The person actually came, there was, and when it came to communion, because there wasn't the wine served, he was like,

I can't go to church here. So he literally was going to make it an issue of separation. Now, I never hear anybody argue for unleavened bread.

I mean, you have to keep in mind, like Jamal was trying to explain the setting, right? It was a Passover meal, right?

So you had unleavened bread, you know, because I found it funny that the church I was in, they had real wine, but they had a loaf of bread that everyone would take a piece of it and then pass the bread around.

And I was like, that wouldn't have been, like, if you're going to argue for the real wine, you have to argue for the bread.

But I just don't, I don't think, in my opinion, right,

I don't think churches should ever serve alcohol in front of people because, again, it sets the precedent where, yes, the pastor and the people that do it may have self -control and know that, but even if it's closed, and a closed,

I think you explained that, James, a closed communion is basically where it's just members of the church.

Some closed communions, I think, will allow, they just serve to members of the church, but others can be watching.

But even there, I mean, you have members of the church, you may not realize all their background and what, you know,

I know one church that only has alcohol. And their argument was he had to take dominion over it, and then they had a guy who had a problem.

He started drinking on his own because he started with communion, and it spiraled down.

So let me ask you this. If you'd say no church should ever do that, would you preface that by saying in the

United States, or would you just say that worldwide? That was what I was going to bring up because it is cultural here in the

United States to be very anti -alcohol and to have problems with alcohol. But there are other countries where alcohol is culturally served at every meal.

It's not as big a deal. You don't get, people don't drink to get drunk. They drink for social reasons or for, because they can't trust the water.

There's lots of reasons, you know, why they drink or would use wine. I think that culturally, the

United States, Americans especially, seem to have problems with alcohol, but I don't know that that's true culturally across the world.

Yeah, I think, so that's a good point, and I should preface that because in the

United States, you know, we don't need to, we have such a variety of things we could substitute in place of wine.

We could trust the water for the most part. But I think, you know, in my mind, part of those passages

I read earlier, you know, it's in the Corinthians passage or in the

Romans passage, if you're causing someone else to stumble, and here's 1

Corinthians 8, 12 says this, thus sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ.

Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat lest I make my brother to stumble.

So I think that in churches where it's not culturally customary, right?

Like I said, growing up Jewish, we would have it. It wasn't a big deal.

You know, people didn't get drunk from it. We just had it with meals.

And there are cultures where that is the case. And it's not a big deal.

If that culturally is the issue, if it's like that, then yeah, I think that it could be okay because you're not causing someone to sin against their conscience.

I guess my whole thing is I don't want to do anything that would cause somebody to stumble based on that passage

I just read out, 1 Corinthians 8, right? Because if I cause it, and now, let me give the argument

I hear back. I had someone who is arguing, now keep in mind the person that was making this argument, believes that we have to take dominion over alcohol.

He actually believes every Christian must drink alcohol, even if they have a problem with alcohol in their background because they have to show they have dominion over it.

And so, yeah, that's like, I'm like, okay, you got a totally different gospel when you're starting to say that drinking alcohol.

He uses scripture to support that. That's like being okay to go to a strip club because you got to have dominion over the lust.

I always said that I was waiting for him to make that argument because I'm sure he was,

I'm like, eventually he's going to get there. But yeah, I mean, you're adding this now to the gospel.

He actually said it was a gospel issue. But his argument to me was, you're always putting up pictures of food, of sushi, and I have a weight problem, so you're causing me to stumble.

And it's not, you know, for those who haven't watched Prescribed Truth, go to Prescribed Truth's YouTube page and look for this playlist,

Woke Brother, and you'll get this reference. You have to go watch that. I don't want to just give an inside joke and not give you where to find it.

But go to Prescribed Truth, go listen to Woke Brother, and you heard Jamal Bandy explain that, you know, he's got this weight to him, not because he stuffs his face, but because of racism.

That's all it is. That's all it is. I'm trying to tell people. They don't want to listen. It's a great parody.

I'm being woke. But, I mean, so is me putting pictures up of food on Facebook the same as, because my argument to him was he's putting up pictures of beer on his

Facebook every day, and I'm saying that that could cause someone to stumble in the area.

He's saying, well, you putting up food can cause someone who's a glutton to stumble. Is that the same?

What do you think? Well, we could apply it completely different because my podcast is all about watching secular media.

I actually dealt with the First Corinthians 8 passage in my book on how to watch movies critically and from a

Christian worldview. Movie watching can be very much the same kind of thing or reading books or anything that we partake of that's of the world.

You can do it to excess, and you can get in trouble, and you can lead others astray by doing it.

It is a matter of conscience, but I think at the same time you have to apply some kind of reasonableness to it.

You have to be reasonable about what you allow your weaker brother to infringe on your liberty,

I guess, which is the whole concept of this topic is we're talking about how far do you take

Christian liberty. You don't want to make it selfish where you're just doing whatever you want in the

Lord. You have to be sensitive to your fellow brothers and sisters and sensitive to the

Spirit telling you your own conscience when you've gone too far. I guess

I'm also thinking about what we read from the Romans passage. I don't know the contrast with Corinthians.

If eating meat causes my brother to stumble, then I would never eat meat again. But in the

Romans passage, it's more or less like, okay, why should I feel condemned for the liberty that I have?

Let everyone do unto himself. And so I wonder then if we're concerned about the alcohol.

That was a topic we were starting off with. If we were talking about the clothes setting earlier, we were just members. And like you said, you made a good point,

Andrew, with dealing with it. You may not know who in congregation may still be dealing with things. Because not everybody is telling everybody everything.

They're not always doing that. So there may be a brother who's not saying, hey, I'm struggling with alcohol this month or I've been really dealing with it.

And he still may partake and see everyone else drinking and use that as an excuse to drink. It can happen.

But I wonder if we're talking about liberty, is it when you're to yourself? Is it only when you're to yourself?

I know we're dealing with how it affects our neighbor. And I think we all agree that if we don't want to be the catalyst of someone stumbling,

I don't want to be me sharing a drink at home and I have a brother over and he feels the need to feel like he can now get drunk.

But if I'm in the privacy of my home, or I know we talk about church and the communion, but is it a privacy of the church where we all have the understanding?

Would it then be sinful? I can understand the caveats here if somebody has a problem.

But in and of itself, would it be a wrong thing? Well, you definitely don't want to flaunt it.

I mean, it's like you know somebody who's a weaker brother who has a problem with that. You're not going to invite an alcoholic to the bar to get a drink.

I mean, you have to be conscious of your environment, your surroundings, and the people that are around you and who would be affected by what you're doing.

So I think what I would kind of curious of right now is to what brother and what sister are we accountable for?

Are we accountable for all brothers and sisters in Christ? Are those a part of our congregation?

Because when you do look at Paul's letter to Romans or even the Corinthian church, they're quite specific to those congregations and what they're dealing with.

I mean, for example, in the Corinthian church, what he's dealing with is pagan sacrifice in this temple to false gods.

And it was cheaper meat. And so you had the ones that were less worth the eating of it because they could afford it.

But that's not what's going on in Romans. So is it contextual to our specific congregations that we're a part of or is it to all believers?

Well, that sort of gets with what Eve was just saying because she was saying, okay, if you have someone that you know is an alcoholic, you don't bring them to the bar.

But I'm thinking, what if you don't know the person? This is the reason I say we shouldn't be serving wine and communion because I don't know who's struggling with it.

And I'd rather not be the stumbling block. It is interesting you bring up the Corinthians passage, 1 Corinthians 10, because he says, if you're going to go eat, don't even raise the question.

Don't ask where the meat's from because it doesn't matter. If no one knows, then fine.

It's all to the Lord. But once the person knows that it was offered unto idols and they struggle with it, now it becomes an issue.

Yeah, because it's for the conscience of the individual that's bringing it up is what

Paul's making the point of there. But I think that's what's so hard about this topic and even some of the other ones that are kind of falling under Christian liberty is because so often people are not really sharing with what their struggles are in this area.

And so they're not telling us, I deal with alcoholism or I deal with being addicted to tobacco or watching things that aren't necessarily edifying or listening to music that's edifying.

And so they're not necessarily coming out and saying it. So I think that's what the hard aspect of this conversation.

Well, yeah, I think what you end up seeing, though, is to what level are we accountable to our fellow brothers and sisters?

Because otherwise, if we try to say we're not going to make anybody stumble ever, in America, you can't do anything.

Everyone's offended by everything. Jamal's offended that I'm white. Pasty. Pasty.

Pasty? Pasty white. I'm not just white,

I'm pasty white. That definitely goes into, there's a lot of aspects to this because your original question was talking about posting things online and things of that nature.

But in the society that we live in now that's comparing one another and really egotistical, who's to say that anything we put on Instagram or Twitter of our vacations or families or anything of that nature isn't causing someone to sin in some capacity or another?

Well, yeah, I'm just thinking like, so you get a new believer coming to the church that's a super liberal.

I mean, they just, they're of the world. Everything you do could offend them. So how do we then apply

Christian liberty? Like if we're saying, if the rule always is you try not to cause them to stumble and you got someone that,

I mean, there are people who are offended. I had a woman get upset with me just a couple of weeks ago because I opened a door to the convenience store for her to hold it open for her.

And she told me she was offended at that. She's like, I can do this myself. And I'm like, I'm just trying to be polite.

Now what? I got to not open doors, right? But then someone may be offended if I don't open the door.

How do you decide? The question I'm thinking about as you're saying that, Andrew, and something that James said as well, is in Romans and Corinthians, we have these situations here.

In Corinthians, we have an issue with someone stumbling whether or not they're going to fall into idolatry because they got meat sacrificed to idols.

And so if they see you eating of this meat and they didn't know it was sacrificed to idols, it may make them think it's okay to worship this idol, you know, eat and worship.

Because eating the meat in itself isn't the sin. It's the fact that it was sacrificed to an idol. But then in the

Romans passage, you have someone who's offended at liberty. Like, you know, one person thinks it's okay to eat meat.

A person is a vegetarian. But why would you judge the one who eats and doesn't eat?

So that one can be offended at what you do versus somebody who actually stumbled into sin. And so I wonder if, and I'm wondering when it comes to liberty, should we be focused at the one who's offended at our liberty?

Or we should be concerned with the one who stumbles because of their liberty. Yeah, I think it's a matter of, yeah,

I would think it's a matter of who's the weaker brother. Because if we go on the topic of what offends people,

I think that that is a completely different topic. The Christian liberty and the offense of a weaker brother, this is somebody who you could lead away from the gospel or lead astray into a life that puts

God below other things. And so the whole edifying and building up of our fellow

Christians is not providing things that would cause them to go down a false path in relation to their walk with the

Lord. We don't want to lead them down a false path. And so I don't think you'd take it as to the extreme of, oh, that offends somebody, so I'm never going to do that.

It's more of being able to sit down and disciple somebody and say, hey, if this is a serious problem with your walk with the

Lord, seeing me do this, then I will do away with that habit while I am being a disciple or discipling you in your walk with the

Lord because I know that that's a stumbling block for you. So I think it's more of a personal commitment to the believers that we are personally discipling and leading on the path of righteousness towards Christ.

I don't think it can be a general thing in that it's just anybody who might out there might be offended by what we're doing.

We could easily become very legalistic in that aspect where we just start setting a bunch of rules that we're following and then we're following rules and we're showing other people to follow rules instead of following Christ and the conscience that the

Holy Spirit gives us working in our lives. And the whole point of being a believer is not following rules, but being sensitive to the

Spirit and following the truth of Scripture. And discipling weaker brothers and sisters has to be able to show them the difference between following a rule and following your conscience as prompted by the

Holy Spirit. Yeah, I think that's right on with that idea because I think of my, since we're specifically talking about alcohol,

I think of the area I'm in. So I'm probably, can any of you say that you live in a dry town or do you even know what a dry town is?

I know what a dry town is, but I'm not in one. I went to college in one.

Maybe if I went up to Utah, that's probably a dry state. I don't know.

I said it's humid here. Well, see, that's what I am.

And there's so many churches in my general area that they have a church covenant that says that you will abstain from the use or the sale of any alcohol.

And some of them will even say tobacco consumption. And so it's quite interesting.

And I have a good friend of mine that he's a minister and he thinks it's a matter of conscience and he had no issue participating in drinking of alcohol.

And like Jamal was getting at earlier, he did in the prophecies home and he took a pastorate of a church and that was their understanding.

That was the covenant that this church had. And I think it was a great example of how we handle a situation like that.

And whenever he joined that church and started pastoring that church, he gave up his liberty for the sake of his brothers and sisters in Christ.

But in this area, it's such a big thing. And I think like Eve was alluding to there is that in this area, it's taken so legalistic and it's taken to the far, far extreme.

And that's why, I mean, I know anyway, I'm not going to go into all that. Well, I think

Eve really hit the nail on the head of what I wanted to get to before the show ended, which is with any of the issues of Christian liberty,

I think it's very easy to get into legalism. And that's when we just have that checklist.

You don't do this. You don't do this. You don't do this. Or you do this. You do this. I'm being a little bit more maybe legalistic by saying

I don't think it's wise in America to have alcohol in the

Lord's Supper. But I'm saying if someone's going to do it in their own home, and, you know,

I want to see a difference there, because a church and a service, I just think that's public.

It's for all. But Eve, I think, hit on the nail on the head with the point that it's really about our heart attitude.

I think that's what you see in both those passages, the Romans and the first Corinthians. It's our attitude toward our brother, not the lost person we want to evangelize, but the heart attitude we have toward our fellow brother or sister, that we have concern for them.

Can we accidentally cause someone to stumble? Sure. But our heart attitude isn't to try to cause them to stumble.

I mean, there are people that are like, you know, just man up. You know, you got to mature. You know, it's like, well, no, we shouldn't be doing that.

You're right. The Bible tells us whatever is not done out of faith is sin. So if they're not doing it in faith, you know, they're manning up ain't going to help them.

And it's funny you said that, Andrew, about not the lost person we're trying to evangelize, but our brother, because it's interesting.

I brought this up to you before when we talked a while ago. There is a

Christian brother. I know we're talking about alcohol, but it still goes into liberty. His brother was making a big deal about celebrating

Christmas and, you know, saying it was rooted in paganism as far as the symbolism with the trees and all that stuff like that.

And I know you too much don't worry about it, Andrew, and all that. But like, it's interesting because he gets offended at it.

And I remember telling him when we have a conversation about, I was like this, you know, he was like, people don't come to church.

Like there are an African -American context. There are black people who don't come to Christian churches because they say, well, you know, you're not woken from one is consciousness.

And then you're celebrating paganism. So therefore they keep different even coming to your churches. And I was like, well, this might be celebrating

Christmas. And the thing about it and seeing that liberty, as far as that concern is not about them, you know, if I got a brother in Christ who is struggling for some reason, he sees my

Christmas tree and feels like he's wants to worship. And a God that had nothing to do with the

Christmas tree, then there's an issue there. And there's a brother in Christ who's stumbling there, but I don't see that play out, you know, and this has been this.

I was actually excited when we was going to do this podcast because this conversation isn't going to come up again.

It's seen as the holidays rolling around and everything else. And we're going to discuss some more liberty, our liberty.

I guess I'm just, I'm going to, I want to give some context of why I'm saying this, but I want to just throw it out again, just for clarity.

So when it comes to our Christian liberty, where are, we should be, I know we talk about, we're not as focused on those who are offended versus our brother in Christ, but what about the one who we are trying to evangelize?

Like, you know, do we discuss liberty? Do we even go there? Do we even worry about that at all? Concerning those were evangelizing versus our already brothers in Christ or sisters in Christ?

I think it depends on the context of who you're trying to evangelize. For example, if you're trying to share the gospel with somebody that for the sake of the conversation we've been having, that's an alcoholic.

Obviously the best way of sharing the gospel with him is probably not sitting beside him on the barstool enjoying your, your beer.

You know what I'm saying? And so I think that just being intelligent with our context of how we share the gospel with somebody,

I think that's important in that. And so it depends on that individual and your relationship to them.

I think that's a big part of it. And that makes sense because once you evangelize that brother by God's grace, if the

Lord saves him or her, then that you'll be abstaining from it anyway for the sake of not wanting them to stumble.

Exactly. Because if you do your job as a follower of Christ, you're going to take that individual and teach them how to follow

Christ and disciple them. And so you're going to have to pull away from whatever that is that was their issue anyway.

See, I used to get the reverse because I grew up Jewish. My wife grew up nothing.

We never had a Christmas tree. And I had people in church who would come over my house and be like, you need a

Christmas tree. And I always told people, I said, if you can give me one reason why

I need a Christmas tree, other than the fact that you grew up with one, I'll get one.

And I just watched person after person go, yeah, because they thought

I needed a Christmas tree because they grew up with one. I'm like, I think you need a menorah. You need a menorah in your house.

My wife and I, we've been married six years and we're not big, that aspect of Christmas people.

And so I think out of the six years we've been married, we've put up a tree twice. And last year was one of them just for the simple fact that my niece was going to be there and hers, she's two.

And so, you know, and it's something they do. So we did it for her. And so, and we don't necessarily do it at Christian Liberty or anything of that reason.

I just think it's interesting. I did get a Christmas tree just because my kids wanted it, but now that they're out of the house, if they don't come visit, it won't go up.

Kristen, you've been really quiet. What are your thoughts? You celebrate Christmas? Yes, we do.

Christmas trees and candles. Yes. Yeah.

It's been an interesting discussion and yeah, I've been thinking about. Like you were talking about the difference between.

You know, practicing our Christian Liberty. Or not with a believer versus unbeliever.

In, in regard of the unbeliever, I would say just so that you are making sure that.

Not only our personal reputation, but the reputation of Christ is not, you know, taken through the mud and destroyed for them.

So. That would be my thought. I mean,

I guess, I guess the thing with, with which, I mean, we, Jamal mentioned cigars. We mentioned Christmas.

We mentioned alcohol. and we'll probably mention a bunch more, but it ultimately, I think it comes down to our attitude.

Right. It's, I mean, to me, it seems like it's, are we seeking to honor God? Are we seeking to love our brothers?

Are we seeking to not put a stumbling block? Not. A bunch of dudes.

I mean, like I had, you know, granted you guys probably didn't grow up in fundamentalist churches. I remember a guy who came in my home and saw that I had a

TV and basically said, I wasn't saved because of a TV, the one on devil.

Yeah. Well, it's basically it was, it's, he had a checklist, right? And so to be a

Christian, you have this, this, this, and you, you, you don't watch movies or certain movies. You don't want, in his case, it wasn't any movie.

Probably. I don't know what he would do with like some of the Christian movies that are coming out, but you know, just having a

TV was enough. And so I think, I think people set up these, these rules because it's easier to, it's easier to follow rules.

I mean, if liberality and legalism are easy, they require no thinking, right? Legalism, it's a checklist.

You either do this or you don't do this. You don't have to think about liberality. Everything goes, you do whatever you want.

But the truth is kind of in the middle where I think we struggle. That's why it's, we talk about Christian liberty. We, we struggle over.

Can I do this? Is it wise to do this? And there's, you know, I remember my pastor gave like a 14 point checklist when, when it comes to Christian liberty,

I should have pulled that out for this discussion, but there were things you asked, you know,

Jamal, you asked about, you know, you, you mentioned the cigars and that was one of the examples we give is smoking cigarettes.

Is it, is it a sin? You know, and he would go through, we'd go through this list. He'd always do this with folks that they see.

Okay. Does it glorify God? That was one of the things. Does it cause my brother to stumble?

You know, he just had all these scripture verses that go along with these things, but things for us to ask ourselves, because I think the,

I think the biggest struggle with the issues that we talk about when it comes to Christian liberty is there's some people who not all people, some people who do these things because they, they want to satisfy their flesh and they want to say, well,

I'm under grace. What do you guys think? Do you think that's an accurate statement?

Oh yeah. Yeah. We're supposed to be representing

Christ, not representing the world. So if your habits that you are partaking in is, and you claim quote unquote, that it's

Christian liberty, but it's making you look more like the world than like Christ, then you may be going, doing it for the wrong reason.

Not because you can, because it's liberty under Christ, but because you didn't want to give it up that aspect of the world that you enjoy so much.

And it becomes an idol in your life without you even realizing it. I think it goes to the similar extent of what we see in the

Corinthian churches. The whole thing was idol worship. And so often we may not think of in the same light of it, but before we knew

Christ, we worshiped something. And for some, it could be alcohol. For some, it could be tobacco.

For some, it could be movies or whatever the case may be, whatever form of liberty we're going to put into that category.

And so we could be holding onto idols in our lives as we try to hold on to these aspects of our lives.

I don't think that's always the case with somebody holding onto liberties. Like I know plenty of brothers in Christ that participate in alcohol and tobacco that didn't do it before they knew

Jesus. And they didn't even do it before a certain point in their lives. And so I don't think that's always the case, but I think it could be the case.

Let's do a topic that Eve will be perfectly set up for. What about movies?

Some people would say you can't watch any R -rated movies. Can we say that? I know

Todd Friel won't watch an R -rated movie.

What do you do when you have Passion of the Christ? Do you go watch that? I think he didn't.

Even though he knows why they gave it an R -rated. But can you watch

R -rated movies? Or is that something that's just sinful and of the world? And I think

I'm teeing this one up more for Eve because I think she has a podcast on things like movies or something like that.

Are you just watching? When she jumps into it, I'll say this. I think there's a lot of Christian movies we shouldn't see.

But anyway. Okay. You can't just drop that bombshell and walk away.

So which Christian movies shouldn't we see? Well, one, a lot of them are just terrible.

I'm just going to throw out my opinion there. Not produced well, bad acting. I think we've seen an uptake in that in the last few years.

But there is some. If you get on Netflix and things of that nature and look at some of the

Christian movies that they have on there, there's some that are just theologically unsound and quite dangerous in a lot of ways.

And so I think even things that are portrayed as good, we should be on a watch for. We don't typically review

Christian movies. We've had requests for that on occasion. We've done one or two in the past. But the whole point of our podcast is to point out, number one, where things are leading you astray from Christ.

And number two, how Christ is represented in things, even when the people making the movie definitely did not have the intention of portraying

Christ. It does happen, believe it or not. You can usually, he is the creator and he's present in everybody, even when they are denying he exists.

But it's on the topic of what movies you should watch and rated R. I personally do not go to see rated

R movies, but my reason for it is not necessarily because rated

R is like this line you cross and it's suddenly sin. It's more of a, of a market thing.

It's like, I am not going to give them money for their rated R movie because that encourages them to make more rated

R movies. And I would prefer to use my, my vote in the marketplace to vote for things that are more family friendly.

So I won't pay them to watch a rated R movie. Now would you go see say Passion of the

Christ? I did not go see Passion of the Christ. I did eventually see it, but I did not pay to see it.

Ah, okay. See now, if you really want to be, if you want to be Jewish like me, you go to your local library and get them all for free.

If you want to watch a movie. Oh, sorry. In light of that, let me ask this.

Would you say that that would fall into the modern ratings or the ratings in which the movie was released?

And what I mean by that, for example, like Jaws, Jaws is now rated PG if you look it up and, but when it was released, it was rated

R. Really? Yeah. And you have to take into consideration the rating systems are completely arbitrary here in the

U S a movie that's rated R here could be PG 13 in Canada. Yeah. Well, yeah.

Well, the reason I bring up the Passion of the Christ is because it was, they made it rated R because they wanted less people to see it.

Right. That was their reason. So it was like, Oh yeah, there's violence, but there wasn't.

I mean, so it is somewhat arbitrary. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know that I would put it on the rating is as far as what the, what it contains, you know, what is the, the issues going on?

And like, we'll talk about with alcohol, you know, what are you struggling with? You struggle with rage, anger, a lot.

Then you probably shouldn't be watching anything dealing with a lot of murder. You know, are you struggling with lust?

You should be watching out for nudity, you know, being mindful of those things. Cause most times when they do give a rating, they do let you know what is, you know, being portrayed in the movie.

Like you mentioned with the Passion of Christ, even though it is violence, you know, it ain't like, it ain't like scar face violence, you know?

And so it's, it's different. And so that's my, my thought on that as far as, you know, what are you personally dealing with?

And you know, Jamal, I would watch it. I would completely agree with you on that because when we first started our podcast, we had an entire episode we did on where we draw the line.

And that was all my current cohost at the time, Daniel Lewis and I, we both had different things that we would draw the line on based on what we struggle with spiritually.

So you have to be aware of where your struggles are and be conscious of that.

You're not feeding those struggles. I think the other side of that though is this is one, in my opinion, that's big on watching out for our brothers and sisters in Christ because it's easy to throw on a movie or a

TV show for that matter. And be watching something that we are perfectly fine with, that it may not be good for our brother or sister in Christ.

Right. Because sometimes we may get used to something and think that it's just in the background or in the backdrop of the room or whatever the case may be, but it may not be beneficial for them.

Kristen, what do you think? You're like the quiet one of the group here. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I agree with what

Jamal said. I think it depends on what you're struggling with and try to research the show or the movie first and figure out why it's rated, what it's rated.

And also, yeah, just your personal, your line where it's at.

Like for example, we don't watch much that isn't,

I mean, yeah, that is any worse than PG -13, but like if there's too much swearing or even just saying,

Oh my God, you know, that's taking the

Lord's name in vain and it deeply offends me. Like I physically feel like ill almost sometimes from hearing things like that.

And I just, I can't do it. So that's my line, you know? So I just think that's sort of a personal thing, but also then to be aware of who's surrounding you, you know, like we have three teenage daughters and so we're in the phase right now of, of monitoring everything that they're watching and taking in and critically thinking about everything.

So, yeah. And you know what, with what

Jamal said, I remember my first pastime is going back like 30 years now.

I used to watch a lot of TVs. I used to, I used to be, cause that's all I did. I used to just sit and watch movies and I'd re rewatch them.

And, and I remember he came over my apartment and I was talking to him and the

TV was on and I was, it was playing a movie, tango and cash. If any of you know that the history of that one, and I'm, I'm sitting there telling him that I'm struggling with like with revenge.

Like when people do wrong to me, I want to get revenge. And he just looked at me, he looked over at the

TV, pointed to the TV and said, where do you think he might be getting that from? And the whole theory of tango and cash is these two guys that get everyone back.

And I'm like, boy, almost all the movies I watch are like action movies where there's a revenge theme to it.

I'm like, Oh yeah. And that's what really got me to go. Maybe I shouldn't be watching these things. It may not be the best for me.

But, but let me throw this out as a, as discussion. See where you guys, since we kind of all agree on that, maybe there'll be disagreement here.

One of the, one of the Christian movies that they did review on, are you just watching is war room.

And I had, I did not like war room and I haven't liked anything that they've done since war room because not because of the content, but the actors themselves who they played, because this is a, you know,

Christian film and they're bringing in people who would be heretics and who, you know, word of faith people you have, you have, well,

Beth Moore wouldn't be word of faith yet. She's kind of on that path I think, but you have Beth Moore's been in their movies.

You have, was it Priscilla Shriver has been in their movies. So they're trying to get people that have a platform, but some of them are in a platform that I don't think we'd say is

Orthodox Christianity when you're getting people that were to faith. What do you think about that?

Is, is with, is it wrong? I take the position. I won't go watch. My favorite movie of all time is fireproof done by the

Kendrick brothers, but I won't watch anything else now that they put out because they're starting to bring people who are, who

I wouldn't say are in the faith as the actors. Hmm.

I would like to, I would like to hear some thoughts on that. Me personally, I don't know if I would, if I would be as concerned with the actors as far as, as far as what they're portraying.

Yeah. Cause like, like something James said earlier, it's like you have some, some Christian television shows or Christian movies that aren't sound, you know?

And so it's like, you know, so it's a content sound. You have that, you know, the actors who are made who aren't sound, but is the content itself sound?

Well, see, it didn't seem like a contradiction. It's like you have them doing something that isn't. Yeah. Well, let me, let me specify.

So, so I'm clear with it because my, my issue is not that it's just, I mean, they can have an unsaved actor.

I mean living waters, Ray comfort, they, they put a movie together audacity and they did not have believers.

They had professional actors. They weren't believers, but they were sharing the gospel with those people all the time. Would I still watch that?

Well, yeah, I guess the issue I have with, with the Kendrick brothers are doing now is they have people who are word of faith and they're bringing them in to be actors or actresses because they have a platform in, you know, and it's because of the platform that they're becoming the actor or actress.

And I think what it does is it, it blurs the line for Christians to say, Oh, you know, I like this person because she played this in this movie.

I'm going to go check out what Priscilla Schreiber, you know, is, is in, you know, her ministry and find out more about her scene.

And that's where I, I guess as like Eve was saying, I don't want to give my money to support that and, and then promote heresy.

Yeah. To promote that, that what I would think of as heresy. Kind of like very similar to this idea.

And I know this is getting into a different conversation, but much like hip, you know, listen to music from Hillsong or some of these other guys are questionable in what they're putting out.

They may release something that's decent and good, but in supporting one of their songs or something of that nature, you're supporting their entire ministry and what they're doing as a whole.

Kind of like that. You're afraid that it's added more to their platform, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's, I mean,

I, I was going to bring up the music after we heard this, so you just segway there.

But yeah, I mean, I have the same thing. I won't, I don't want to sing Hillsong because people,

I mean, even if they have a couple of good songs, it's not the good ones that I'm concerned about.

It's all the ones that are, it's what they teach and people go and follow them and start to, you know, to look up,

Oh, look at Hillsong and then get into all that stuff. So basically like giving validity to what they're doing.

And you know, I get, I understand that completely. I would say that I would be more concerned about it when it comes to music than I would the movie itself.

I do get what you're saying in that, but I would be more concerned with music mainly because, and it may just be the way

I watch movies, but I don't get caught up on who's acting is what I'm more focused on the storyline or the specific thing going on in the movie itself rather than who's acting that character.

So. Okay. Then James, let me ask you, do you, do you, would you have the same position with Hillsong as in if Hillsong was on a movie?

Well, if there's Hill, well, either in a movie or if like someone was to want to come to your church and they want to do a solo and it's a

Hillsong song, even though that one's decent. Well, we're still getting into that.

That's what we're still getting into the music side of it though. That's what I'm saying. Like I'm more concerned about the music than I would be about the movie itself, like movies in general, but it's because of, that's more of a on the,

I'm more on the nose on when it comes to the music than I am the movies, my personality. Yep.

Jamal, we got into music. Jamal's getting serious. The hat came off. The hair's coming out.

I got hat hair now. I promise you it's not worse than mine. That's the reason

I just don't wear a hat. Yeah. I was the thing that was like with the, see when you brought up War Room, I wasn't,

I wasn't privy to who the actors were as far as what they, as far as the people who were Word of Faith and all that stuff.

I didn't have any idea. And so you brought it up. So now like, I kind of want to go and see like who they are because I look them up because I've never heard of them.

Let's see. That's because Justin Peters put out a article about it. So I knew,

I knew who was in it. Yeah, that's interesting.

And, um, but yeah, I'm with, I guess I'm also with the music as well. Like there's a, so I know we segwayed into music or we're segwaying into music.

And so like there's a, um, a Christian, well he used to be a Christian rap artist named

Jay Givens. And, um, he recently, um, came out as being homosexual and, um, and he's still doing music.

He's still doing music, but like he had older music and this has been a debate that I think I had, you know, end up having last year.

And I was still, the jury stood out on as far as my thoughts on it. Like when he was, when we knew, when we believed that he was in the faith and he was, um, he was under, uh,

Humble Beasts, the record label. Um, you know, we listened to, he put out a couple albums then.

And so the question was, was it wrong to still listen to his older music though we know now that he's come out, you know, and, um, and even though he's still making music, so we're not supporting the new stuff, but is it wrong to still listen to the old, you know?

And, um, and when hearing what you guys were saying here is like, I wonder if listening to the old still gives validity to saying, oh, well, you know what, because he had this, this talent and because we had these lyrics, you know, he could be okay.

You know, it may not be as bad as we, as we're making it seem to be with his turn now.

So I don't know if you guys. Okay. Well, let me, let me tweak that a little bit more. Cause this may be similar as well.

Do you, do you recommend or read books from Joshua Harris now?

Say you agreed with, you know, the, what he wrote in his books now that he's come out and said, he's not a believer.

Or could you still recommend those books, even if the books, even if they, if you believe everything that they taught were true or biblically true.

Well, even not to keep twisting the initial question, but what about, what do we do with the

Puritans and what do we do with the hymn writers and the different people that wrote most of the songs that we're seeing in churches that had some kind of slave background or, um, um, the different things of that nature.

Um, that's where that same question falls in line there is what do you do in those moments?

Do you still sing those hymns though? They've had some grievous sins in their lives or. Well, I think one of the, even, uh, um, trying to remember which one

Luther wrote a song that was the tune of it was from a bar, uh, uh, you know, like a bar song.

Well, that's what the hymns were. They were taken from modern ways of singing and put

Christian words to them. So, uh, but in the Jonathan, John, John Wesley did a lot of that as well.

Oh, they used to do that back then too? Yeah, exactly. So it's kind of like preaching us, you know, by, uh, uh, you know, sermon series on the movie jaws, right?

Same thing. Well, I would definitely disagree with weekends at the movie, but anyway, you'll get the pastor side of me out.

And if we start on that conversation, yeah, that's what I was just about to say. You can tell which one of us here is pastors.

We don't know what Kristen's hot button is, you know, and I know the movies with Eve rap music with Jamal, anything dealing with preaching with, with James.

I don't know. I can jump in there with Joe Jamal with the rap music though. So, so, so, okay.

I, I thought, or Chris, were you going to say son? No, go ahead. You've been so quiet.

I'm trying to, all right. So I, I used to argue, so my, my view of music, um, and I may get myself in trouble with this.

I actually have a paper on the, on, uh, strivingfraternity .org on my view of music, but I'm more concerned with the music than the lyrics.

I think that music affects the emotions. And so the, when, yeah, when I look at counseling, you know, the thinking is the strongest defense against sin.

But if, if you get past the thinking, the mind, you get to the emotions, it's a lot more, it's more likely someone's going to commit a sin.

And if they get past that to the volition, it's, you know, there's a progression there.

So because of that, I think actually the, the lyrics are not as concerning as the music because everyone focuses on lyrics.

And I think the music style could be more of an issue. You know, I heard, um, was it

Sandy Patty or, I think it was Sandy Patty sing amazing grace, great lyrics to amazing grace, but the way she sang it,

I think was completely sinful. It was all breathy and sensual. Right. And the, the emotion that it can bring.

I think that's a thing people don't don't think about now with the rap music.

I have to admit that I've gone through an evolution. Um, I used to think that it just seemed like it was wrong and wrong because of the style, the fast pace of what, what

I interpret as aggressive style. Um, and yet realistically what you think of it, what

I think of it as when you have the Christians that are doing it, it's a, it really is a very fast paced sermon for some of these guys.

We're just, it's a ton of theology packed in, like, like super packed in, like, you know, speed up John MacArthur, like triple speed and that's rap music, you know,

Jamal, when you think of aggressive Christian rap artists, who do you think of? Aggressive Christian rap artists.

Yeah. Like his tone. Aggressive. Don't say

Kanye West. He hasn't been saved long enough. No, he actually, he hasn't been, he wasn't aggressive in his own. No, not at all.

Was it, was it show Barack or was it, um, who was it?

It was one of them guys. Um, I don't know if I was part of 116.

They were part of, um, um, what's the other album?

Label. Not one more six, but the ones that show Baracko and all of them were on. Uh, Humblebees? No, not

Humblebees. Um, Reach? One with, uh, um,

Tillman and all of them. You know what I'm talking about? I can't remember the name of the label. Um, but I can't,

I think, I can't think of a most aggressive one off the top of my head. When I think about an aggressive one, um, man, uh,

I have a guy in my, I have a picture in my head. I just can't think of his name right now. Um, but he's with, um, uh, a hog mob.

That's what I said. Right. For those who listen to the old Christian hip hop, do not butcher me because I messed it up, but, um, but, um, but yeah, that hog mob,

I ain't got the time to do it, but, um, he got some, he got some music that's kind of aggressive, but at the same time, he's not always aggressive.

So I don't know. I can't really think of an aggressive Christian rapper. Is it Derrick Minor? No, that's not who

I was, that's not who I was thinking of. I'm thinking either Derrick Minor or...

He's Hispanic. Yeah, it was... He's a Hispanic guy. Yeah, he is.

Um, it was, I forgot who it was. It was somebody. But, I mean, the point I was trying to bring up...

Let's not say that. I enjoyed his music because there was an aggressive tone to it. It's just ironic that Andrew said that because that's what stood out to me about his music.

And that's the only reason I liked it was because it was different. I remember I was counseling a guy and he was struggling with anger issues.

And, you know, I don't even know why I asked him this. I just asked him, what is it you listen to when you're driving to work, when you're at work?

And he would listen to Striper and Petra all day long. And that music style was a very aggressive type style.

And I said, this is what I want you to do. I want you to cut that out for an entire week. I don't want you to listen to any of that hardcore...

Listen to sermons, listen to whatever. And he actually said to me after a week, he said he noticed a huge difference.

And then, of course, unfortunately, he told me... I said, so you're going to permanently cut that out?

He goes, no, I like it too much. And I said, okay, and don't come to me with anger issues. You don't want to change.

I don't take those things as aggressive, that kind of music. Because music is something

I listen to a lot in a lot of different styles. And I guess it just doesn't affect me in the same way. So I find that interesting.

Yeah, I don't think it's the... It wouldn't be the tone that affect me. It would be the tone with the lyrics. I know you said,

Andrew, that you're not as concerned with the lyrics. But I know in my experience... I was just going to say, from my experience, the aggressive style when it comes to hip -hop, along with the lyrics, is what affected me.

I know I had anger issues and temper problems when I was younger. So I would listen to a lot of angry songs.

Just the common rap songs that talk about getting back at somebody and A, B, and C. That was good.

I liked that. I listened to that on the way to school. I listened to it on the way to work. And so on and so forth, back and forth.

But when it comes to the Christian hip -hop side of things, if someone has an aggressive tone, but talking about...

To me, I see it as being passionate, dealing with... Especially talking about the things of the Lord. Talking about salvation and everything else.

It's passion. And the tone is loud, but it's expressing how we really feel. Like, man,

I desperately need Christ. So I see it as like, man, it just gets me more into it.

So I enjoy it, being in aggressive style. But it's just along with the lyrics.

I guess what it means, I mostly focus on what is being said versus how it's being said.

But I understand what you said concerning the singer. They were singing in a more sensual tone.

I can get how that can throw some people off and how that could be someone who's in the crowd listening.

They see the person, they're attracted to them. But then the tone of the song versus... They're singing amazing grace, but it's the tone that's now attracting them.

I can understand that. I do think that, just like everything else we've talked about,

I think a lot of it has to do with context of the individual and where they're coming from in life.

Kind of their generation and just kind of how they were raised in a lot of different ways. I don't know the gentleman that you're talking about,

Andrew, but if we step that back far enough, the reason why he would have possibly began listening to music like that was because of his aggression or because of some other circumstance in his life.

And maybe there was more to it, attached to it, than just the music itself. Because I think you do have some people that are generally just like that style of music for whatever reason.

And I'm like, Jamal, it's about... To me, when I hear stuff like that, a lot of times it's about the passion behind it rather than it is like an anger or anything of that nature.

Yeah, I mean, I think that some people are affected by the music more than others.

I mean, it's like any of the other topics we've been talking about tonight. Some people are affected. For some people, it could become sinful.

And for some, it wouldn't be. And that's why we have to apply the liberty. Kristen, we're going to try to get you talking again.

She's been the quiet one. She's muted now. Oh, she's muted. All right.

So, Jamal, I didn't realize he had come out. Oh, really?

No, I didn't. Because I keep up with Humble pretty...

That's one of the main ones I keep up with now when it comes to record labels. Mainly because I generally like what they put out.

And that, you know, you said that earlier, and I just want to come back to it because that brings up the big issue for me when it comes to, you know, what to listen to and what not to listen to.

Because there's another guy. He's not a rapper or anything like that. His name was Gungor. And some of his...

And he was kind of like that hipster, indie -style music. And his early stuff was just not only lyrically, but like musically very, very talented.

But then he come out completely unorthodox about 10 years later.

And this happened, you know, probably two, three years ago. And I was under that kind of dilemma because he was going to be playing in Birmingham, which is about an hour and a half from me.

And I've always wanted to hear him live. You know, it's just something I've always wanted to do. That's where my dilemma came into.

It's like, not only do I not listen to him now, his new stuff, but do I not support him in going to his concert even though musically

I love his stuff? Even his newer stuff, it's not Christian, right? He kind of moved away from that topic altogether.

And so it's really, if you didn't know who he was, he wouldn't sound any different than any other secular artist.

But because we know that he's one that has walked away from the faith, that adds a different dilemma to the situation.

And I think that's the hard part for me is, what do you do then? Do you continue to support what they used to listen to now that they've walked away?

Kind of like the Joshua Harris flip that Andrew added to it. What do you do with it then?

Yeah, and that's the thing. I struggled with that because Joshua Harris, and I'll be honest with you guys,

I didn't read his books prior to him coming out. Me either. So I wasn't as familiar with him like that.

So when he did come out, I won't be recommending him because, you know, where he is, but I do wonder that.

And something you mentioned earlier, like the Puritans, people who may have had bits in the past, but when someone leaves the faith, and I know

Joshua Harris, he still gets revenue from them books. He'll still get sales and people keep buying them, so it'll still support him.

But are we supporting his apostasy in supporting the older works in doing so?

Just like with Jay Givens, am I supporting his homosexuality and listening to something he made before he came out?

And I think the argument that came up with Jay Givens was during the time that he was recording with Humble Beasts, he was struggling with these things.

We just didn't know about it. He didn't make it public. But if you listen to his, going back and listen to his lyrics again, you can kind of tell where he's like, okay, well, you know what?

It seems like he may have been dealing with something here, just the way the lyrics were. It's like he's trying to say something without saying it, dealing with himself.

But he doesn't come out with it. So I can see that. But I just wonder, will it be an issue then?

Will it be liberal to do so or not? Let me tweak. I'll go back to that tweak, but I'll change it from Joshua Harris, since you guys didn't.

And I only read one of his books. I've read his book, I Kissed Dating Goodbye, years ago.

So I can't really remember. I mean, it seemed fine at the time, but I used to have a friend,

Mark Cahill, had written some excellent, excellent books on evangelism.

And they're great books. He's very, I mean, really well -written, very easy to read.

And I love the books. But then he's come out and, you know, not to debate

Calvinism or Arminianism here, but he's come out to say that anyone that's a

Calvinist is not saved. See, now I have a real problem with that because now he's basically not, you know,

I mean, he basically told me I'm a Calvinist because I preach on stage with Calvinists. And I'm like, but so have you. Is Mark Cahill, was he

Muslim background? No. Okay, I'm trying to think of who Mark, I know Mark Cahill, but I can't picture who he is.

Yeah, he's, he was, he's tall. He's like one of those, he likes to give me a hug and it was an almost uncomfortable thing because he's got to bend down, like how he's like 6 '10".

But, you know. I know who he is now. Super, super generous guy, really, really love, lovable kind of guy.

But the problem is, is that I feel like if I recommend his books to people,

I don't want them going into where he now is starting to, you know, he kind of left and started hanging out with people that are, you know, don't believe in original sin, believe they're sinlessly perfect and things like that.

And so is purchasing a book from someone like that or recommending an older book that the book is still good, you know, is that something we can do?

Is that, does doing that, and this is sort of along, you know, James, like you said, with the

Hillsong, it's sort of the same issue. Can I promote it? Can I recommend this book?

Can I give out this book? And does that taint, does what he believes today, you know, or what

Hillsong teaches, does that taint being able to recommend that book?

Same thing with Joshua Harris. Okay, so I think your context matters there.

That's what I was going to, about to say to Jamal, talking about listening to that guy, is

I think the context is what matters here because like, and I would kind of rebuttal by asking who you're going to recommend the book to.

Are you going to do it openly on your YouTube channel or are you going to do it to an individual you know? And so I think there's a right way of recommending things, but prefacing them with what's going on now.

For example, if I even, if we take Joshua Harris, for example, if somebody really enjoyed that book and thought it was a fantastic, solid way of explaining how to approach dating as a believer,

I think there's a right way of recommending that book and prefacing with, you know, and explaining what that guy's done now and then do it in that way.

Mark Cahill is the same thing is I think you could recommend that book and preface it to whoever you recommended it to is that because his newer stuff, you should stay away from it.

But some of these specific topics, I think they're okay. Much like I think of the early church fathers.

All right. So for example, you take Augustine or however you want to pronunciate that.

And you take his different readings, his different writings throughout his time, he fluctuated in what he believed he was working through his sanctification.

And so you'll read at some point that he wrote some very good things and some other points. He wrote some things that were not so great, but do you not recommend him altogether or do you just recommend specific things and preface it, you know?

Okay. So James, this one's directed toward you then. Would you like in church for church service, would you sing a

Hillsong song but preface it? I personally wouldn't because the setting's different because you're talking about the gathered body of believers coming together.

And I think it's a much different platform to preface that. If I was talking to somebody that I was walking through a specific topic with or there were, for example, if they were studying something in that book would be beneficial for them.

I would recommend a book to them that somebody that may not agree with completely, and then preface it.

So I guess a good context, and that would be the same scenario you're speaking with someone, you know, one -on -one more personal.

And would you recommend a Hillsong song, you know, like to listen to, you know, say, Hey, you know, this, the lyrics, but preface it, you know, the lyrics are pretty okay.

You know, they're not, this particular song may not be heretical, but you know, they, they have some eyes of disagreements with what they believe and stuff like that.

Possibly, I'm sorry to interrupt, but I would just say possibly, but I don't particularly know any songs that I would recommend in any setting just because I don't listen to them.

So it's harder for me to say, I haven't listened to them in eight years. So I was just going to bring up the fact that we have a bit of a celebrity mentality here in the

United States where we seem to idolize the people who write music, or I see it like with this whole defensive,

Beth Moore going on, it's like Beth Moore had a good Bible study that touched my life sometime in the past.

And so now I have to defend her to the death because, you know, she's, she touched my life sometime in the past, and I'm not,

I'm not saying she actually has, I'm just saying this is the argument that you hear from a lot of women. And so we have the celebrity mentality that if they did something good once that therefore they have to be put up on this pedestal and practically worshiped by Christian, by Christian community, and they can't do any wrong.

We have to remember that every living Christian and dead Christian for that matter has feet of clay.

We all have something that we stumble with. We all have ways that we're going to be wrong because we're not

Christ. We're only trying to exemplify Christ in our life. We can't hold, we cannot put

Christians up on pedestals because we set them up to fail. They're always going to some weakness and their, their walk with the

Lord is going to get exposed publicly by being put up on pedestals. That's why James told, told us that not many of us should become teachers because it, it gives us, it puts us under greater scrutiny and, and it's, it sets us up.

And so I think that that is a difficulty in the mentality of the, of the

Western church that we idolize people. We put them up on pedestals and then and then it just makes us all stumble when they fail because they will fail.

It's only a matter of time. So can we say Kanye West? Right. I mean, it's amazing that,

I mean, you talk about celebrity status. I mean, I'm amazed at how people are defending the fact that here's a new believer of six months and we think he should be leading worship and preaching like, no, if it was anybody who wasn't a celebrity, would we support that?

No, but everyone defends it. You're totally right. I'm not,

I'm going to abstain from this conversation because I think it may lead us to discussing stuff much, much longer.

I'll go for it. I mean, we're, Hey, look, we're, this is about us disagreeing in love, right? So I think like let's take the

Kanye for example. Listen, I listened to maybe one or two of his songs before.

I've listened to his album. I've listened to it several times. The idea of him being a worship, a leading worship.

I think that's questionable. Most solid people that I've talked to about his album wouldn't consider him leading worship and wouldn't even take it to that level.

Especially if you watch some of the videos of the kind of the actual, I forget his name.

And I love the fact that I don't know his name, but the pastor out at Adam Teller. Yeah. You see him present the gospel.

He's the one speaking to the congregation, the crowd. I'll call it that. Now I will immediately say that the idea of calling them church services is quite questionable to me.

He has been invited since to church services and has spoken during church services.

Yeah. Oh, go ahead. I was just going to say,

I do think, I think,

Hey, everyone catches. We have a pastor that was just speechless. Just I think time will quickly tell if he's

Virginia or not. No, I think, I think he is legit. I do too, but I think he might, he may get possibly shipwrecked if he does.

I mean, I think he's, I mean, I hope that pastor Adam continues to disciple.

And that's what I said on my apologetics live show is that I think a lot of this is going to be on pastor Adam to say, Hey, look, you really shouldn't be going to Joel Steen's church.

You really should be going to, you know. And I think that's where we may disagree some too, because if he preaches the gospel like they've been doing at his concerts at Joel Osteen church, it could be.

Oh yeah. No, I know there, there are, we're going to be in agreement. I've always said I will go anywhere if they don't. I mean,

I got invited to speak at the flat earth convention. Dude, if I could, if I, you know, they asked me for the, you know, what do

I want to speak on? I was like out of Isaiah, that the world is a sphere for some reason they didn't want me speaking, but maybe

I should have been more deceptive in the title. Well, I'm always reminded of, you know, one of, and I know everybody may not be a fan of him, but Matt Chandler, one of his most famous sermons is the moment where he says, you're, you're not

David. I love that one. So often

I think we forget that he preached that at Stephen Furtick's church where they were talking about them being

David. And he did this in the middle of this conference. And so I think there could be good in moments like that.

That's like everybody was kind of attacking and I don't know much about it. I didn't keep up with it.

Francis Chan for speaking at these different events with the different heretics. Um, I initially didn't have a reservation against it because if he was preaching the true gospel in those events, it'd be a fantastic thing.

Um, but some of his, some of the way he handled that was questionable. Yeah. I mean like Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron got a lot of question because they were on TBN and, and their attitude was the gospel was going out.

I mean there were so many TBN people needed to hear the gospel and they were getting saved. So, um, but I think it's more if, if I'm, I mean, if I was at Joel Steen's, I wouldn't,

I wouldn't just preach the gospel. I'd be preaching against what he teaches and then preach the gospel sort of thing.

I think. And I think the point that I was making was, is that we don't, we attack heresy.

We don't attack heretics. So we have to be careful of where we're drawing the line.

And my whole point about bringing up people have, you know, we're all Christians. We all feed a clay. I mean, do we strike the

Proverbs from the Bible because King Solomon strayed in the later part of his life and took prostitutes and, and left the

Lord. And, but we have, what is it? Three books of the Bible that were written by King Solomon and David stumbled as well.

I mean God put people who stumbled in the Bible so that we would know that we don't have to be perfect.

No, that was good. Well, think about even the book of Jonah, right? The entire book is about a man running away from what

God was calling him to do because of, and he's still disgruntled at the end. It was never a good story.

No positive moment in Jonah's life. It was good for none of them for the time being.

So Eve, you believe that Solomon wasn't saved in the end, huh? I don't know.

I mean, we, we honestly can't know what goes on in people's hearts. Only God does.

So I think it's, we need to be careful about judging people. I, I frankly, we do have to judge what comes out of them, their fruit, but whether or not they're, you know, the end result of them is,

I think is really up to the spirit and up to God. I mean, we can't look into their hearts like God can.

So Eve, this is going to be completely different than what we're talking about, but I'm curious your take on this. How should we handle movies that tend to have an agenda behind them?

When I, just to be pretty specific, I think of a lot of TV shows and things now where they're taking, you know, homosexuality and transgenderism and things of that nature and not just making them a part of the plot line, but they're making that the center of the plot line.

What's your thoughts on that? I don't like it any more than anybody else does. In fact, we, we had this discussion on one of our recent podcasts.

I'm trying to remember which movie we were talking about. My cohost Tim was very upset about a social justice issue that was prevalent in the movie.

And I, and I can't remember which movie we were talking about. It was a recent, it was a recent one.

It was a recent episode. It really just threw him out of the movie. Not Jeremy or was it something man?

Not Gemini Man. It was the one before that. It was an older movie. Oh yeah.

Adjustment Bureau. I bet it was that one. Yes, Adjustment Bureau. Yeah. Now I have never seen that movie, but I did listen to the podcast.

So just for the record, you don't have to actually watch movies to learn how to think critically about movies.

And if you listen to, you know, are you just watching? You actually get to know a little bit about some of the movies.

Yeah. I watch it. I like some different shows on just different TV.

And that's like, um, DC TV shows. They really are.

Well, but not even, let me throw something else at you, James. My wife and I tried watching, uh, we watched, um, it was like on Victoria or one of the

Queens of, in England. And they had, it was like a series.

So first season, fine. By the second season, all of a sudden they're throwing all kinds of, you know, they're all of a sudden there was a scene with, with, you know, two guys and a, and a girl.

Well, the interesting thing about that was it was historically true.

I think they could have handled that a lot better than they did, but obviously they didn't for their reasoning.

But historically that did happen. And so I can see why it was in the plot line, but it could have been insinuated to some extent and left it up to the mystery of the mind, uh, rather than how they did.

I liked the season until all of that happened. That's exactly what

Mara said. Like, you know, like, why do we have to see like, it was just, we like more historical stuff.

Well, I think that go ahead. Well, I just think that your, your initial question was what do you do with that?

And I think as Christians we have to make our decision is, you know, whether we want to watch it or not, whether, because you have to remember that your viewership is a vote.

So when you watch something that, that contains things in it that you don't like, you're basically telling, you know, the producer of that you're voting in favor of it by watching it.

Uh, Amazon recently came out with something called the boys and I watched the first episode of it and had so much bad stuff in it.

I'm like, I can't watch this. And I actually put it out that I couldn't watch it. I, you know, I put it out there.

I wrote a review on one of their advertisements and I got blasted, you know, for having a conscience, but I'm like, you have to let people know the reason why you're not going to watch something.

Uh, cause it's your vote, you know, you're going to, you're going to tell them. I'm glad you brought that up about that particular show.

Cause I, I was seeing the, um, the previews for it and it looked interesting. Like I was thinking about actually watching it.

I was like, okay, superheroes, cool. Doing this thing. And then, but then when you said that, then

I'm like, you know, that makes sense. We're in this culture, you know, it's like, it's, it's a given, you know, so it's good.

I'm glad that you actually brought that up. I mean the whole concept of the boycott of, you know, not buying the things that offend you.

I think as Christians, we just need to be careful of what we're voting for when our consumership, uh, in, in our culture, it's like, if you're going to go watch a rated

R movie, that means that you're voting for them to produce more rated R movies. If you watch a show that is very, uh, progressive in its ideals and, and very open about, you know, things that you disagree with and you continue to watch it, then you are voting in favor of them producing more content like that.

So. So let me ask this. Did you watch Friends any, or do you watch Friends any?

No, no, I haven't. Okay. Well, you know, it's a fairly old show.

Um, and so in that show, in this time period, it would have been quite aggressive, uh, progressive, um, second or third season, one of the main characters wife leaves him for another woman and it's kind of intertwined throughout the show.

Um, but it's, it's not the main thought behind the show, you know, it's not the main driving moment, um, where you see some of the shows and movies out now that's the kind of like the heart behind it.

Like what I was talking about with the CW, they came out with Batwoman, which I'm not a huge fan of Batwoman, but I thought it was interesting.

But the whole reason she becomes a Batwoman is because she's a lesbian and, um, drive.

Yes, exactly. That was the drive to it. And so like, can't watch it.

Would you say there's a difference between what we can, what should or should not watch if it's the drive behind it, rather than just in passing or.

I think that's for you to make that decision where you draw the line. Clearly he doesn't listen to your podcast.

So, so let me throw this out at you to tweak what you're saying. What about a movie like star

Wars where it was to teach a religious view of, you know, the force, you know, this

Eastern mysticism. Could you know, would that fall into the same? That's where I thought you were going to go with it when you started until you, you know,

I was like, Oh, well I definitely don't approve of people who try to take star

Wars and turn it into a Christian story. I've, I've, I've heard people do that, you know, try to try to turn it into the gospel, you know, the gospel according to star

Wars, definitely wouldn't do that. I would review a star Wars movie and I would point out where they're, you know, having false ideas and, and then use that to present the gospel as a counter to it.

It's like a show. This is a, it came out. I don't know if any of you will watch that series, but it was, it was a nice, it's like, it's like, you know, when it first came out, it was like a family show, you know, really, really nice.

I mean, it got you into the plot, you know, just made you feel for dad. And you know, it's the family and everything else, just a storyline, but into the season that came recently,

I haven't kept up with it since most of this season. It had a moment where the daughter of one of the characters is a black guy.

His daughter had an episode where she came out as being or having same sex attractions. And, and they made that where it was something in passing, as with Jameson, but then it became, you tell, they was pushing the agenda, you know, that it's okay.

Like, this is like, it's okay. You know, it's just you, you know, we love you anyway and everything else, you know, just kind of pushing that agenda.

Like, you know, oh, you come out, if you're a lesbian and no one will love you, everybody will hate you. You know, where it's not really understanding that it's a sin that's against that we're against versus dealing with the individual.

But it's like, um, but yeah, so I, I became, it became uncomfortable for me to watch the show as much because not only that, it wasn't just that, like, that was a part of it, but then you had the son, the black guy, not only did his daughter come out to be a lesbian, but you had his, he met his father, he finally caught up with his father, his real father, but then finally his father was homosexual and they, they flaunted that in the screen, you know what

I'm saying? And then just seeing what it was promoting and some of them would, he would say like the companies who make these movies and make these shows, they don't know what we're looking at.

And if we're disagreeing with this and that, they just look into view, you know, I got the count. No, I think,

I think they have an agenda. I think, I mean, I know they have an agenda. I go back to, and I'm going to date myself.

But I remember watching the movie Kramer versus Kramer, which now is considered a classic, but why?

The reason they put that out was to normalize divorce, because when that movie came out in the 80s, like nobody that I knew in my school had parents that were divorced.

But after that came out, all of a sudden it was, I recognize within the year, a bunch of my friends' parents got divorced, like after that movie, and just normalized it.

Now, let me, because we're, I know we're gonna end up having to wrap up, and we haven't had too much disagreement,

I'm gonna try now. I'm gonna throw something out at Eve, let's see. So Eve said that we shouldn't try to take

Star Wars, and finding the gospel in Star Wars. How about Lord of the

Rings? Because there was that book that came out, Finding the Gospel in Lord of the Rings. Just because the author professes to be a

Christian, does that make the book and movie Christian? No. No.

And I'll give you the thing, I'll give you background on this, why I'm asking this question, see what you guys think of it.

When Harry Potter came out, the books, there was some, and I think it actually started on like The Onion, which is satire, where they had something about Harry Potter teaching witchcraft or whatever, but here was the thing.

A whole bunch of people came out against Harry Potter. I was pastoring at the time and had to, people were asking me about this.

Now, when Da Vinci Code came out, I read Da Vinci Code. I mean, I'll read these things. I've read

The Hobbit, I've read Lord of the Rings, I've read Chronicles of Narnia, and I ended up reading

Harry Potter. Now, I ended up reading a book that someone gave me to read that basically blasted

Harry Potter, but praised Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia.

And somehow they were trying to say that in Harry Potter, there was magic and magic was bad. I'm going, but there was a ton of magic in Chronicles of Narnia, and in Lord of the

Rings. No, Chronicles of Narnia did seem to have, I mean, C .S. Lewis did have an agenda of trying to promote the gospel.

I don't think that was the case with Tolkien, with Lord of the Rings. And I made the case that if you know the storyline of Harry Potter, I could actually,

Harry Potter was not written as a Christian book, but you could see the gospel easier in Harry Potter than you can

Lord of the Rings. I mean, I'll ruin the ending for any of you guys that didn't read it, but in the end, here's a guy who's, what makes him special is he has the love of his mother, but he has this ring, this resurrection stone.

And so the way he saves the world is he has to die for everybody.

And he uses the resurrection stone to resurrect himself and come back and defeat the bad guy.

And I'm like, I can make that, I mean, that's really easy. I mean, resurrection stone and everything makes the gospel easy, but Lord of the

Rings, I think that's pushing it. So, but a lot of people have an issue with that because, well,

A, they say that it was sinful for me to read Harry Potter, but. They wouldn't listen to my podcast then, would they?

Yeah, I mean, so I think that just because, you know, like the argument that a lot of people make is that Lord of the

Rings is good because the author was saved. And I'm saying, but no, it's the same fantasy. It's the same,

I don't see how you, the content of the book doesn't make it somehow

Christian in my mind. I definitely will agree that you can't get saved reading the

Lord of the Rings. It's not the Bible, it's not the gospel. I think that my opinion on something like the

Lord of the Rings is that we need more people writing that kind of fiction who are

Christians because they exemplify Christianity in their writing, even if they're not writing the gospel.

They can put forward Christian morals and Christian ethics and lead people to question and look for more truth.

I think that if you're going to be writing fantasy, it's better to back it on a

Christian foundation than to back it on any of the other world religions out there that will lead people astray.

I've read fantasy from people who are pagan to the hilt and their morals and their ethics come through in their writing and then you have to sit down and like I do with any of the movies that I review and are you just watching, you have to, this is where they're wrong.

This is where they're presenting the wrong worldview. This is how this doesn't fit into Christianity.

Well, the Christian authors and Christian movie makers and Christian songwriters, they're going to bring their faith to what they create, but that doesn't make their creations gospel truth.

So you always have to understand that they are presenting things out of their worldview, which means that there are going to be things in there that we like, but they're not scripture, they're not ordained scripture.

So you have to put them in the position on the side saying this is nonfiction or this is fiction written by people who have perhaps the correct worldview, but it's still fiction.

Okay, let me do this then. I'm going to tweak that, throw something out for each of us. We're going to wrap up.

So I'll let each of you answer and wrap up anything else you want to say. And so here, let me ask it this way, because so here you have a believer that writes something that's not

Christian based. This is a big argument people make. So can a, what's his name?

I think it was Shailene that was a Christian rapper that then started writing secular songs.

Can a Christian produce a book, music, you know, anything in the arts that doesn't point strictly to the gospel?

In other words, if I'm a Christian musician, does every song have to be Christian based? If I'm a

Christian writer, does everything have to have the gospel in it? You know, if I produce movies, does it always have to point to the gospel or a

Christian theme? So we'll go in any order you guys want and then hit that or any of the other topics that you want to wrap up.

Well, I definitely have a position on that. I believe that we need more Christians that are writing for secular audiences because we're not reaching the world if all we're doing is preaching to the choir.

And I'd much rather read a fantasy book written by a Christian author than a fantasy book written by a pagan author, you know, if I'm gonna read fantasy.

And so I think that, yes, definitely we should be using our skills and our talents that God gave us to sneak our worldview and our ethics and our morality into the world.

They do it to us, why shouldn't we do it to them? You're encouraging us to be sneaky?

I just like to listen to Eve laugh, I kind of...

Okay, which one of you guys want to go? I'll agree with Eve on that. I do believe that as believers, no matter what we're producing and everybody's producing something.

It may not be any form of artwork, but it could be the way we work, the way we live our lives, the way we parent. It has to be informed by the gospel.

Now, does that necessarily mean that everything we say or do points directly to the cross and what

Christ accomplished for us? Not necessarily, but it may speak to how we now live our life in light of the gospel.

And we may still look like in movies or music or anything of that, for example.

It may speak to reality of life and the difficulty of life without necessarily spelling out what the gospel is, but it could be pointing to the effects of Christ in our life now, so.

Yeah, I guess it's gonna be just a disappointing thing because we're gonna agree. I was saying the same.

I was thinking about when you brought the question up, Andrew. I think I have like a separate channel that I do, that I have like just like kind of vlogging.

I rarely be on it. I've been doing it mostly now since I started growing my hair back out, doing like a lock journey.

It's a YouTube culture thing. But it's like when I create those videos for that particular channel,

I'm not preaching the gospel every time I come on. I'm just basically talking about the process of growing dreadlocks and why

I grow them. And I guess to me, it's important because a lot of people that grow dreadlocks, they have this stigma because they're trying to be a

Rastafarian or they are this more conscious type people. So yeah,

I definitely think it should be - And you do it because of my white privilege, don't you? I do it for exactly that reason.

Yeah. Exactly that reason. I want to be able to show that there's something that your privilege can't touch. Can't touch this.

You guys are hilarious. I think we've been on here too long, guys.

All right, well, we'll wrap up with this. I mean, I think here's the thing

I think we started with, we saw throughout. When we look at the different issues and we looked at a number of them,

I think the overarching theme that we see in scripture is that we need to be seeking to glorify

God. And we do need to be aware of whether we could cause our brothers or sisters to stumble.

And so, maybe folks who are listening, there's other issues, maybe you disagree with us.

We're gonna do more of these on different topics. We'll probably find some that we disagree more with.

Coleen wants to do one on baptism, so. Being like one of the few

Presbyterians in her community. She's probably waiting for more Presbyterians to come on in and then we can do it.

Do one on church government or something. But check out the different podcasts on the

Christian Podcast Committee. Go to ChristianPodcastCommittee .org and you can see all of the podcasts.

The Christian Podcast Committee is a ministry of striving fraternity. We've had represented here tonight, Prescribed Truth with Jamal Bandy.

We've had James White, who is one of the guys from the Everyday Ministries.

Eve Franklin, Are You Just Watching? And although Kristen dropped out, she's with In Awe and Wonder.

And I'm with a whole bunch of podcasts, so. I got four of them.

So, but check out our podcasts, listen, share. We try to produce some good content for folks.

And so with that, next month we'll be back.

I don't know what topic we'll choose. I'm gonna leave that up to James to help me figure out a good topic. Maybe one that we'll have more disagreement.

We actually thought there'd be more disagreement here. But we're all pretty like -minded. We need to get to know each other.

Some others in here, I guess. So until next episode of The Theological Throwdown, we hope to see you.