Should Christians Read Tolkien?

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00:00

What liberty do Christians have in regard to entertainment? That's what we're going to talk about today on Conversations with a Calvinist, which begins right now.

00:27

And welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist.

00:29

My name is Keith Foskey, and I am a Calvinist, and I'm joined tonight again by my good friend and fellow Calvinist, Jake Korn.

00:38

He's not a not-yet Calvinist.

00:39

He's an all-the-way Calvinist, and that was aimed at you, Matthew Henson, when you listened to this show.

00:45

I'm a seven-point Calvinist.

00:46

I pick up extra points on his behalf.

00:49

That's right.

00:49

That's right.

00:50

I like to add points every once in a while just to make people mad.

00:55

Well, tonight's show is an interesting one.

00:57

It's a little off of our normal subjects because Jake and I have been talking about this off camera for a while, and that is the subject of liberty in regard to entertainment.

01:09

We, as Christians, often hear things like, well, a Christian wouldn't play this game, or a Christian wouldn't watch this movie, or a Christian wouldn't engage in this activity.

01:22

And if you go back far enough in history, you will find that a lot of things that Christians do today, just a generation ago or two generations ago, they said Christians wouldn't do that.

01:34

For instance, going to the theater was just absolutely forbidden in the generations that preceded ours.

01:41

Playing cards, I remember as a kid being told, you know, Christians don't play cards except for the ones that do.

01:48

And it was always a thing.

01:50

And as many of you know, this show, we talk about Scripture, culture, and media from a Reformed perspective.

01:56

So today we're going to be talking a little bit about culture.

01:59

We're going to talk about things like fantasy films, fantasy games, things that we were told by Jack Chick would definitely send us to hell.

02:11

These are some of the subjects that we're going to be jumping into in today's program.

02:17

And I want to begin by asking just a simple question to you, Jake, and that is the question of why do you feel the need to talk about this? I know this is a serious issue and one that really bothers you.

02:30

And I just want to kind of get you to lay the groundwork for why we're having this conversation.

02:35

Oh, man, I love the way you frame that question.

02:38

So tonight, I'm more of a geek than I am a Calvinist.

02:42

And we can tell by your background, you know, that you kind of lean that direction as well.

02:46

I think for me, primarily, I want to think about this topic pastorally, because my primary aim is to glorify God, to live in right relationship with, you know, the Savior who saved me and his will for me.

03:02

And part of that as a Calvinist is being sola scriptura, right, taking our left and right limits from the sole infallible rule of faith and life for the church, which is God breathed scripture.

03:14

Now, I grew up, you know, listen, disclosure, my mom watches this show.

03:19

So I just want to kind of put it out there, mom, I'm going to kind of discuss some of your parenting.

03:25

And I know that everything you did was out of love and well-meaning.

03:29

And I just want to say, thank you, Jake's mom for watching my show.

03:33

You're like, that makes me happy.

03:36

Yeah, that's the other person that watches.

03:38

Yeah, I was gonna say, that means that we have an audience of at least three people are going to see this, my wife and your mom.

03:44

That's right.

03:45

But so, you know, I was raised, I was born in 85.

03:49

So I'm an early 90s kid.

03:52

And I was raised in the era of the Jack Chick tracks.

03:56

I mean, you went right there, right? So Jack Chick, if you don't know him, he was a fundamental independent King James only Bible thumping, you know, believe in Baptists who had this ministry of writing these really, I'm sorry, but terrible comic strip like tracks, right? That didn't just talk about the Bible, but would say things like if you play cards, you're inevitably going to go to hell.

04:26

And, you know, if you go down the road of listening to music with drums, that's definitely Satan's music.

04:32

And a big one was he had a Dungeons and Dragons track, right? That told the story of a young girl, you know, probably junior high age girl who was playing Dungeons and Dragons with her classroom, her classmates.

04:47

And the teacher was the dungeon master.

04:49

And the teacher was using Dungeons and Dragons as this like, like lure to bring her into a coven whereupon they like did sacrifices, real life sacrifices together.

05:02

And ultimately she killed herself because of demonic influence.

05:05

And great.

05:07

So that's like, so, so, so in this, in, in his obvious fictitious example, he went all the way with it.

05:15

Oh, completely.

05:15

Yeah.

05:16

To literally to this like 12 year old girl committing suicide because her teacher was a witch who used Dungeons and Dragons to, you know, they always say open the door for evil spirits to come into you.

05:27

And so, so that we call that era, the satanic panic of the late eighties, right? Which influenced rock and roll and all kinds of media, right.

05:36

Things you could watch and so on.

05:38

Yeah.

05:38

We were told that kiss stood for kids and Satan service.

05:42

Right.

05:43

Exactly.

05:44

Everything had a, everything, you know, if you play the Beatles backwards, it says, you know, the devil is good and things like that.

05:50

Everything.

05:51

Yeah.

05:51

And some of that, like 1% of that is actually true, right? Like 1% of that, there are these nefarious forces who are utilizing these things.

05:59

So, so, so my mom, you know, raised me to, to basically just completely, you know, strong arm, all that stuff.

06:07

And you know, we're not going to have anything to do with that.

06:10

That's witchcraft, you know? And I just being a young introverted boy, I always kind of moved to fantasy books and things like that.

06:22

I read the Hobbit when I was young and I was, I was before Harry Potter, you know, but so that was really tough for me because I wanted to be faithful and, you know, I was afraid of hell.

06:34

And so to me, it was like, well, you know, am I wrong for having the desire to play these things and watch these things? And like, where, where is the sin in this? Right.

06:44

And we just took a completely, you know, strong arm stance against it.

06:48

Well, you know, I had my rebellious college phase, which was playing Dungeons and Dragons.

06:53

You know, other people say other things about their rebellious college phase, but that was mine.

06:57

And I remember hiding the books from my mom when she came to visit.

07:01

Hold on.

07:02

It just, it just makes me love you all the, all the more that, because I know guys whose rebellious college phase included women and drinking and drugs and your rebellious college phase.

07:14

This, I love you so much.

07:16

That's great.

07:17

And I say, not to say that I've never done anything wrong, but like, that's what that phase was.

07:21

Right.

07:22

And, and like I said, when my mom would come to visit, I would hide my Dungeons and Dragons books and really had to wrestle as I became an adult and a more mature believer, like, okay, stop.

07:31

What does scripture say about this? Am I being unfaithful to God? Is this a secret sin or is it not? And as I really started to peel back the onion, I think we'd be surprised to see one, not just what scripture specifically says, but two, what is a healthy exegetical way to apply what scripture says, because we do know that when quoting the law, there are a wide variety of ways that people interpret how to apply the law.

08:03

And, and I've arrived at, you know, a position that's a lot more nuanced, but I think healthy because sola scriptura means not going further than scripture, right? Like it certainly doesn't mean like we're going to live without the law at all, but it definitely doesn't mean we're going to be Pharisees and over-apply what we call the hedge around the law, right? From, from the Pharisees tradition, which means if the law is here, right, they would put a more strict law around the law.

08:31

So you never get close to breaking the law, which is ultimately where I think a lot of this stuff lies because we're uncertain.

08:38

And if you listen to the, or you go back to the RPW podcast we did, it's kind of the same place, which is Christians who tend to be legalist favor fundamentalism over conservative view of scripture, a fundamentalist view, right? Is, is this teetotaling like completely, you know, separated from even entering the discussion of, is this healthy? Is this right? So for me, it was a really roundabout way of saying there is a pastoral issue involved.

09:15

If you're never interested in Harry Potter or Dungeons and Dragons or whatever, there's a pastoral issue here, which is ultimately how do we apply the law faithfully in our lives? Absolutely.

09:25

And, you know, I mentioned to you, mentioned this to you off camera.

09:30

I have, personally, I've never seen a Harry Potter movie.

09:34

I've never read the books.

09:35

I only recently was introduced to the Lord of the Rings.

09:41

Now that to some people, they would say, wow, but it was a couple at our church, the Hill family who my wife and I, we love them so much and their kids.

09:53

They love the Lord of the Rings and they let us borrow their CDs or their DVDs.

10:00

And we watched the first two.

10:02

I haven't, I mean, I still haven't seen the third one.

10:03

I don't know what happens with the ring.

10:05

So I can conjecture based on the memes about what's going to happen, but there were long movies, so I didn't get a chance to finish them yet.

10:16

But that's, but it's, it's, that's never been my style of fantasy or entertainment.

10:23

Sure.

10:24

But I'm a, I'm a huge comic book nerd and I have in a box, not, I mean, you can see Batman behind me in a box, not six feet from me is, is one of, one of my most precious possessions.

10:37

And it's a three by three steel box full of, of all of the comic books that were, were made the year that Superman died.

10:45

It was 1993.

10:46

They did the death of Superman.

10:47

And I bought, I went to the newsstand.

10:49

They used to have a thing called a newsstand that you actually went and purchased.

10:52

And I purchased every comic book and I put it in cellophane the whole year.

10:56

And I have those still to this day.

10:58

I plan to one day have them buried with me.

11:00

I mean, I mean, pass them on to my children.

11:03

Yeah, those are so, so that was my, that was my geek out thing was Superman, Batman, you know, Batman, 1989 when that movie came out, my daughter is nine years old now.

11:14

And I, and I'm like, should I let her watch this? I was, I saw it three times in the theater.

11:18

That was my geek out was Michael Keaton's Batmobile and the rubber bat suit and how cool it looked.

11:24

And, and again, I know pastors who would say, shouldn't, shouldn't involve with any of that.

11:31

That's, that's the world.

11:33

And you shouldn't love the world.

11:34

Can't, can't appreciate art.

11:36

Can't appreciate good storytelling, can't appreciate drama.

11:42

And you end up with a situation where these things, which are, which are interesting and do juxtapose the idea of good and bad, that there, that there are forces of darkness and forces of light that do tell a story that we can't have that, that we, the only thing that we can have is, is the stories that the Bible tells us.

12:06

And of course the Bible is full of drama as well.

12:08

And there's nothing wrong with being entertained in the scriptures.

12:12

And I do think that there are some, you know, thing, you know, I don't have a problem with people who put like the David movie or the Moses movie or thing.

12:19

I think those are, can be entertaining as well, but are we limited to that? That's a big question.

12:24

Yeah.

12:25

So first I have to ask in the Lord of the Rings DVDs, did you watch the theatrical release or the extended editions? I don't know.

12:33

I don't remember.

12:34

I, I'm telling you, see, I'm so bad.

12:37

I got to suspend your geek card, man.

12:39

I mean, that's just like one-on-one.

12:41

Does it help that I know that the chassis of the 1989 Batmobile was actually on a Chevy Impala? Does that help? Yes, it does.

12:49

You're in the club, man.

12:50

You're okay.

12:52

So, so yeah, like what's interesting to me, especially kind of as I entered my more academic phase of Christianity, right.

13:01

Going to seminary and stuff.

13:04

Church history, which is not our guide, soul scripture all the way, but nonetheless, right.

13:09

Church history informed me of a very different picture.

13:13

And, and frankly, this comes up in American Christianity all the time, right.

13:16

That we invented stuff within the last 150 years that we proclaim has always been the church, but the rest of worldwide Christianity and historical Christianity is like, no, dude, that's not a thing.

13:30

Let me give you some examples.

13:31

If you take grape juice at your communion, I just want to let you know, we invented that.

13:36

That did not exist, right.

13:38

If you have a very strong view of the end times being a pre-millennial rapture type eschatology, we invented that within the last 150 years.

13:50

If you want to argue with me about that, I'm not going to argue, but you know what I mean? So this, this view of fantasy literature, frankly, is new, is completely new.

14:02

Now the fundamentalists, and I don't mean that as like a subset of, of humanity that I'm not a part of, we all have a fundamentalist like bone in us somewhere, but the one who's making these decisions or framing their worldview through a fundamental lens, I think we'll believe this has always been the way fundamental, you know, Christianity has viewed this topic, especially people who have those views of alcohol or maybe gambling, right? Gambling is one that, that blows my mind, right? Like I can see why you wouldn't want to have a life that's controlled by a gambling addiction, but where are you pulling it from scripture? Like there actually is gambling in scripture, which is viewed positively occasionally, right? It's called the tossing of the lots or whatever.

14:45

But, but so with this, there's not a lot of scripture to pull from and church history doesn't support us.

14:51

So where do we pull that from? And I think it's, it's fear.

14:54

And I think it's having a truncated theological worldview that doesn't fill in the house.

15:02

So then how should we live with a, with a scriptural worldview? You know what I mean? Um, scripturally wise, it's overly simplistic.

15:10

Yes.

15:11

Like you said in, in the previous show, which by the way is, um, is tonight going to that section of your show that you were in has been cut down to a one minute section and it's going on our Tik TOK channel.

15:25

So you're going to be Tik TOK famous in about 30, in about 30 minutes.

15:28

Oh no, China's not going to know what to do with me.

15:31

Well, but you said, uh, fundamentalism is a cheap drug and I've, I've boy that, that has become part of my vernacular now because it's an easy high, right? It's, it's an easy way to get that bump of piety and piety feels like righteousness, right? It's not, but it sure feels like it, which is what the Pharisees were high on, man.

15:53

That's what their Pharisees addiction was feeling pious.

15:56

And a lot of times a pious person is a righteous person, right? But you can certainly have piety without righteousness or at least a form of it.

16:04

And fundamentalism gets you there so fast because it just says, just, just throw all the holy things, you know, uh, on one side of the room and the non-holy things on the other side of the room.

16:14

And we're going to live over there where sometimes, man, I know this sounds like I'm backpedaling, but I am not backpedaling.

16:21

I'm more of a legalist than I am, you know, uh, antinomian.

16:25

Like that's just, that's, that's not how real life works.

16:29

Um, and we can talk about tattoos and we can talk about shellfish and we can talk about all those ways of applying the law.

16:37

And this is, this is the same because where do we pull this from scripture? Those couple of places in the law where it talks about sorcery and, and, you know, not entertaining a medium where else, like, where else are you pulling this from? Do you know? Cause I honestly don't know this.

16:52

I don't think there's anything else.

16:54

Um, but there's so much fear and you get these, like these brow beating pastors, these, I don't even want to call them pastors, frankly, but like, you know, like these really aggressive, sorry fundies, but you know, independent fundamental King James only Bible beaten Baptist who will preach these, the, you know, this thing of, you know, if you are playing cards, you're gonna get a devil in you.

17:19

And that devil's going to lead you down a road of you're going to lose your salvation and so on and so on.

17:23

You're a backslider and so on, not grounded in scripture.

17:28

Right.

17:28

And so it's, it's just this road of, of this kind of toxic non-shepherding.

17:34

Frankly, it's not, it's not pastoring.

17:36

It's certainly not ex Jesus.

17:37

And that trickles down to a normal person like my mom, right? A normal person loves Jesus faithful believer.

17:44

No one would ever question her walk with the Lord.

17:47

Right.

17:48

Um, did she make this call because she's a Pharisee? No, it's because she's just a normal parent trying to do the best.

17:53

And she heard from some bad pastor who is in a position of authority that maybe she's not in a position herself to exegetically defend an alternate position.

18:01

And she goes, well, that pastor said that, you know, if you open this door, that spirits could get inside of you.

18:06

And then those spirits could, whatever, what's she going to do? You know what I mean? As a normal person.

18:12

Um, and again, I always, I always like walk us down this road of separating the line between lady and, and, and pastor elders, but pastor elder is a, is an office, you know, set apart by God.

18:23

So I hold those people to a higher standard, not that they deserve any special, like, you know, rewards, but they're, they're, they're held to a higher standard of what they should be teaching.

18:33

So normal people get wrapped up in this.

18:35

And I think that's where I ended up.

18:36

I can remember my girlfriend's mom and my theater teacher in high school at one point went to picket Harry Potter, being at the local movie theater as Christians, as their small group, right.

18:48

They were a Bible study group, a lady, just a lady's Bible study group, just a normal church, not a crazy IFB church, a fairly mainstream, not mainstream.

18:56

I mean, a, a big, you know, evangelical mega church, right.

18:59

So not even, you know, um, but their, their women's Bible studies decided to go picket Harry Potter movie theater one.

19:06

Like, what do you, what do you think you're going to accomplish by that too? On what basis, on what scriptural basis are you pulling this? You know, and then three, like, this is kind of a separate conversation, but, but Harry Potter alone is full of intentional Christian themes intentionally.

19:24

Like, like there are specific, like Christological references that JK Rowling put in there because she at least views herself as a Christian.

19:33

I don't, I'm not going to say whether or not she is right, but, but she's at least moved enough by the gospel narrative, whether or not she's personally a Christian, I don't know, to put those themes in there, to communicate something about Jesus.

19:47

And so I actually look at Harry Potter in the same way that I would look at the allegory of Jesus in the lion, the witch and the wardrobe.

19:56

Now, here was the thing that boggled my mind.

19:58

And this was just my young lawyer brain kicking in at a very early age.

20:02

But you know, my mom would let me watch line, the witch and the wardrobe back then it was a cartoon version, watch the hobbit.

20:09

Certain things got a pass Disney movies, like Sleeping Beauty for crying out loud, huge demonic looking dragon.

20:15

Right.

20:16

Who is a, who is a literal witch? Like those things got a pass, but then other things like Disney's the black cauldron, you know, or the last unicorn didn't get a pass.

20:27

And I was like, well, here's my favorite.

20:29

Where's the bell? By what standard? By what standard? By what standard? And I don't think my mom could articulate it.

20:37

But my lawyer brain is, even as a kid, I was like, this isn't adding up.

20:41

Tell me why.

20:42

Yeah.

20:44

To one credit, I will give to, to my stepmom.

20:48

She was, she was pretty much blanket across the board.

20:51

I couldn't even watch the Smurfs because of, because Gargamel was a wizard.

20:55

Yeah.

20:55

That, I mean, I mean, I mean, when I say I couldn't, I don't want to say she never let me, but it was, you know, it was always pointed out to me.

21:02

Yeah.

21:02

These, these things.

21:03

I think points for consistency is good.

21:05

Points for consistency.

21:06

Yeah.

21:06

And so, you know, uh, I, I will be honest, you know, I had never heard, I grew up with a dad who worked in a, um, my dad was, my dad worked for metal container, which is Anheuser-Busch.

21:17

He worked there for 35 years.

21:19

He was not a big reader.

21:20

So we didn't do a lot of, in our home, there was not a lot of reading of that, that kind of stuff.

21:25

My stepmom was a Christian.

21:27

She went to church.

21:28

She read the Bible, but you know, we, so I'd never heard of Lord of the Rings.

21:31

I never heard of J.R.

21:32

Tolkien or any of that.

21:34

I, I, I heard of Superman because Christopher Reeves was, you know, that, that, that, that was what I heard of movies.

21:40

And because those movies didn't exist when I was a kid, um, that was, or at least I don't remember them, you know, uh, that, that just wasn't a thing, but yeah.

21:49

When were you a kid? Like when were you born? I was born in 1980.

21:52

So man, there was a great films back then.

21:54

Well, like Krull, Beastmaster, Dark Crystal.

21:59

I'm talking about Tolkien and, uh, you know, C.S.

22:04

Lewis.

22:05

Yeah.

22:05

There were cartoons of Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit that were done, I think early eighties.

22:10

Yeah.

22:11

You should watch it.

22:12

They're phenomenal.

22:13

Well, and that leads to the next issue, the next question.

22:16

Um, and, and, and this is where I want you to go with this.

22:20

Um, cause I think this is where you were headed anyway.

22:22

And that's the idea of what are the distinctions? Cause I'm gonna ask you some pointed questions.

22:27

Some questions that I know I have been asked and I didn't know the answer cause I never saw this stuff.

22:32

Yeah.

22:32

If, if somebody were to say, okay, C.S.

22:35

Lewis, we know he has some theological issues.

22:39

Don't want to talk about that right now, but if they said, if somebody said, I believe C.S.

22:43

Lewis was a Christian, therefore I can, I can see the allegory in, um, in Lion, the witch and wardrobe, uh, J.R.

22:53

Tolkien was a Catholic.

22:54

So, you know, depending on where people stand on that, obviously I would have issues with Roman Catholic understanding the gospel, but they would say at least they understand, you know, righteousness and wickedness and, and the, the, the hobbits and the, and the Lord of the rings.

23:10

But we have, but we have, you know, this woman who wrote Harry Potter.

23:16

And from what I have heard, and again, haven't seen it.

23:19

So I literally am asking because I don't know, um, I have heard that there are legitimate incantation language that is used.

23:29

That is, that was, was again, these are things that I heard.

23:33

Sure, sure, sure.

23:33

Um, you know, don't, don't dismiss me too quickly.

23:36

Cause I don't know.

23:36

I'm not, that's why I'm asking.

23:38

I'm not dismissing you.

23:39

I'm dismissing the 12 other times I've had this conversation with other people.

23:42

That's a thing.

23:43

Yeah.

23:43

Yeah, they would say there's legitimate use of witchcraft language that is, um, because we do know there are people who legitimately practice witchcraft, not legitimately in the sense that it's right, but they do so believing that it's real.

23:56

When I worked for America online and at Halloween, there were people who had a cauldron out in the parking lot.

24:02

This was in the late nineties and they were gathered around it, having a seance in the parking lot of America online because America online was Thunderdome.

24:11

You could wear a bathrobe to work.

24:12

People did crazy things.

24:14

It was nuts.

24:15

We had a seven foot tall gay manager who wore a tutu to work and unironically, this was the, it was Thunderdome and they had, they had these witches outside around a cauldron.

24:30

And so, you know, Harry Potter, I have heard has real incantation language.

24:37

And, um, later, of course, we find out that apparently there was a hidden gay character Dumbledore being a hidden gay character.

24:44

So these are, these are the things that I've heard.

24:47

I don't know the answer you, you, you do.

24:50

So, so have at it.

24:51

Okay.

24:52

So let me, let's, where do I start? I'll start with the Harry Potter stuff.

24:56

Again, I'm not JK Rowling.

24:58

Does it go to my church? I'm not her pastor.

25:01

I have no idea.

25:01

Right.

25:02

I do know that there are, again, overtly Christian themes, uh, as far as the sacrifice of the innocent, literally the final like climactic scene takes place in the afterlife at a place called King's cross, where somebody who died a death, he didn't deserve chose to come back and fight for his friends.

25:21

I'm not saying he's Jesus, but it's certainly Christological and it's intentionally Christological.

25:27

Um, the, the incantations, man, they're just Latin.

25:31

They're just Latini words.

25:32

You know what I mean? Like Latin sounds super ominous, but like, did she crack open a book that says, you know, which witchcraft for dummies.

25:40

And then pull, I, I highly doubt that I would love to see some sourcing on whether or not that's true.

25:46

Uh, yeah, she did reveal an LGBTQ character later on after the thing was written caving to the culture, or maybe she just is super liberal in her Christianity, or maybe she's not a Christian, but again, is using overtly Christological themes and that's going to take, but on her, to her credit, she got canceled because she came out saying that women are men.

26:08

Yeah.

26:08

She is defending that, that her womanhood is, is unique and distinct.

26:12

And I think she's very brave for doing so.

26:14

So let me take that back now to Tolkien and Lewis.

26:17

Um, so Tolkien and Lewis were greatly impacted by GK Chesterton, right? GK Chesterton, uh, an apologist, Christian, uh, philosopher, um, highly influential to them.

26:31

I, I really recommend people read them if they've never read Chesterton, I'm sure you've read a bunch of his quotes because they pop up on Facebook a lot in his book, Orthodoxy.

26:40

Um, Chesterton kind of makes this overall point because you have to think about his time, his, his context was really dealing with modernism at its highest, right? So not postmodernism, what we're dealing with today, but modernism, which was really kind of the apex of the enlightenment, the idea that, Hey, science has killed God.

27:00

We don't need religion.

27:01

We don't need religious morality.

27:03

Those are all fairy tales, right? Science is going to get us there.

27:07

We don't need it.

27:08

And Chesterton kind of made this point that said, um, it's more involved, but I'm going to sum it up and I'm going to source, source it for you a little bit.

27:16

But basically he said, look, man needs to imagine again, humans need the presence of the supernatural.

27:27

You have to believe in the supernatural writ large.

27:30

Now I'm, I'm more of a presuppositionalist myself, right? So I'm not necessarily making that argument, but, but his argument was if man first opens his mind up to a general supernaturalism, you will see standing on that side of the room, Jesus and the truth, instead of this side of the room, which is no, no miracles, no supernatural, all science, right? He's, he basically said, if I have to choose a side, I'm going to choose the side that has supernaturalism, which includes yes, Egyptian mythology is over there and Thor's hanging out over there and weirdos hugging trees are over there.

28:05

But the truth of the gospel is on that side where supernaturalism exists.

28:09

It's not on this side.

28:10

Okay.

28:10

So, so in that context, Chesterton was making this point that like, I'd rather believe in fairies or read about fairies because fairies will get me to Jesus faster than will the other side of the argument.

28:22

Okay.

28:23

So Lewis and Tolkien were both kind of on that side.

28:26

Now you have to understand too, that their context as professors of medieval and Norse literature was also a big part of where they're coming from.

28:38

They like, like there was not a greater scholar of Viking, like mythology at that time than Tolkien and same for CS Lewis, as far as medieval cosmology.

28:50

They were professors in these fields.

28:54

And so they were just, they just love that stuff, right? That was their comic books.

28:59

They didn't have Batman at the time.

29:00

They didn't have, right? They had Beowulf.

29:03

That was the story that they had to read.

29:04

Now, did they think there was some Christian truth in Beowulf? No, that's just the thing they liked.

29:09

And then they wrote their stories based off of those influences, their experiences in World War I, their experiences together as friends.

29:18

And then some Christian, some, some greater Christian truths came out of them because they were Christian men.

29:23

Now, does that make these works, CS Lewis and Tolkien, are they Christian works? Well, Tolkien would say, no, this is not a Christian work.

29:33

However, you will see Christianity throughout it.

29:36

Tolkien's analogies were spread throughout, right? So, so in Narnia, right? Aslan is Jesus, straight across, easy, done.

29:48

Allegory over.

29:49

It's actually not.

29:50

There's a lot more to it that I'm going to bring up.

29:51

In Tolkien, he's going to say, well, if you look at the way Gandalf dies and comes back from the dead, there's some Jesus in that.

29:58

If you look at the way Frodo bears the sins of all of humanity in the form of the ring, there's some, some Jesus in that.

30:06

If you look at the way Aragorn is the king who rightly has the power to, to usher onto the throne and, and when he sits on the throne, all of the rest of nature falls into place.

30:17

There's some Jesus in that.

30:18

And those things are overt and intentional.

30:22

Now, is he trying to write Christian literature in the way we look at it today with some really like awful movies, like God is not dead and, you know, Bible man and, and.

30:33

Bible man.

30:34

Yeah.

30:35

Bible man.

30:36

Which there's a place for that stuff.

30:37

There's a place for that stuff.

30:38

But no, they weren't trying to accomplish bad Christian literature.

30:43

They were writing literature as Christians.

30:45

And that was okay.

30:47

It was okay because it has historically been okay.

30:51

And I want to make this real quick point.

30:52

I was studying Jude the other day.

30:54

Cause I was listening to the Solos album.

30:58

I don't know if you've listened to Solos, P-S-A-L-L-O-S.

31:01

They're a really cool band.

31:02

They write really awesome, heavy scripture music.

31:07

And they have one that's Jude.

31:09

And so I was like, man, I haven't really studied Jude in a long time.

31:12

So I kind of did a deep dive on Jude.

31:13

You know, if you know, if you read Jude, it's full of alliteration or it's full of citations from the book of Enoch.

31:22

Right.

31:22

Right.

31:24

And people go back.

31:25

I just taught on it a couple of months ago.

31:26

And it's fascinating.

31:27

It's a fascinating letter.

31:30

I love, especially what it says to the church.

31:32

But anyway, the way Jude treats Enoch, right.

31:35

Is not as if it's scripture and, and kind of immature Christians will go, well, since he's quoting, you know, we have to treat it like scripture.

31:44

No, we don't.

31:44

We don't because Paul quotes the Stoics and we're not going to pick up the Stoics and say it's scripture.

31:48

Like you can quote something and it's not scripture.

31:51

Well, what does that mean about the book of Enoch? That they valued it to the point that they understood it as a cultural allusion.

31:57

They understood the cultural reference about the archangel arguing over Moses's body.

32:02

Right.

32:03

This was a story.

32:04

I like to call it Christian fanfic, right? Like it was just a cultural myth.

32:10

Now, maybe it'll turn out in the final analysis that that's a true story that happened.

32:14

I don't know, but we're never going to make the case that the book of Enoch is scripture.

32:17

You certainly should not call it that.

32:20

Right.

32:21

So there's this category of, you know, this kind of spiritual myth.

32:27

That's probably fiction.

32:28

And was not only accepted right by the church, but he's quoted in scripture as acceptable.

32:35

Yeah.

32:35

Right.

32:36

So I want to build my framework from that, right? Because it is for freedom that Christ has set us free.

32:44

Within our Christian liberty, there's certainly warrant for this kind of realm of the myth, the Christian or the, you know, the Christianesque or the near Christ myth at the very least.

32:57

That I think is totally okay.

32:58

Now I'm going to, in the, in, I'm going to send you a link.

33:02

Now this link is going to be to a seminary class that I took on this subject.

33:06

It was the comparative theologies of Tolkien and Lewis.

33:10

The whole class is available online.

33:12

My professor, Dr.

33:13

Ryan Reeves taught this class.

33:15

So a lot of this information is coming from that class, frankly.

33:18

It's fascinating.

33:19

Totally fascinating.

33:20

I hope everybody watches it.

33:22

It's a free seminary class.

33:23

So I don't know why you wouldn't.

33:24

Um, he peels the onion on the allegory of C.S.

33:29

Lewis to a layer that, that goes way beyond Jesus equals Aslan.

33:34

It is fascinating.

33:36

Uh, I'll, I'll give just a very short version of it.

33:39

So there's seven books in Chronicles of Narnia, right? And we just, most everybody knows line, which the wardrobe and they say the line is Jesus.

33:45

And then they move on.

33:46

That's where the allegory ends.

33:47

Not true.

33:48

The allegory is way deeper than that.

33:50

So it's this, so in medieval cosmology.

33:52

So kind of how we viewed the stars and the spiritual realm and all of that in medieval times.

34:00

So not necessarily just the church, just, just how we view before Galileo, right? There was the earth.

34:06

And then, and then there was the spheres of heaven on top of the earth.

34:09

And those spheres were, were Mars and Venus and the moon and Jove, which is Jupiter.

34:18

Okay.

34:18

So there's, there's seven of them.

34:20

This is weird, right? Well, each one of the books of the Chronicles of Narnia corresponds to a realm of medieval cosmology because he was the preeminent scholar of medieval literature of his day.

34:34

Each of those books is, is tailored to one of these realms of medieval cosmology in so much as the language is different in how he writes per book.

34:46

I'll give you an example.

34:47

So the horse and his boy is the book that takes place immediately after a line, which the wardrobe.

34:52

And it is the one that corresponds to the realm of Mercury, which you can kind of think of the Greek God, Mercury, who is known for being fast and he's a God of poetry and communication because he was delivering messages.

35:07

Well, the whole book is about how a young boy has to quickly deliver a message from one country to another country.

35:14

And the whole time he's being chased.

35:16

And if you read the dialogue, all of the dialogue in that book is different from the dialogue in the other Narnia books.

35:22

It's all written like Shakespearean prose.

35:24

It's very fanciful, flowery language that reads like you're reading Shakespeare.

35:29

Well, if you smash cut to The Silver Chair, it's the sixth book in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

35:34

It corresponds to the moon, which is all about they, they, the, the medieval philosophers connected the moon to water.

35:42

So all of the analogies are made about water.

35:45

It's very wet sounding.

35:47

And like one of the characters name is Puddle Glum, and he's very sad and the colors are all white and silver.

35:54

Prince Caspian is Mars.

35:56

It's all about kids going to war with one another.

35:58

Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is, is Jupiter, Jove, which is kingliness and celebration.

36:04

And what's it about? It's about the return of the king.

36:07

Fascinating.

36:08

So what's interesting is this code was written in C.S.

36:13

Lewis's like personal letters that just like laid hidden for 50 years until like a student at Oxford just found them and like unlocked this super deep analogy, which was all really ultimately pointing to, to Christ or at least a version of Christ.

36:28

Now he's not writing it as an evangelical tool.

36:31

He's writing it as really great literature that happens to include his thoughts and his artistic expression about Jesus.

36:39

So the book is called The Narnia Code.

36:41

It's fascinating.

36:42

And I'm going to have the link for this class, which discusses all this stuff up in the, in the comments and stuff.

36:49

Yeah.

36:49

If you'll send it to him, I'll put it in the show notes.

36:51

And that way if people are interested, and like you said, if you can take a free seminary class, why not? Especially on this.

36:56

Yeah.

36:56

Yeah.

36:56

And you should get, you should get Dr.

36:58

Reeves on the show, man.

36:59

He's awesome.

36:59

He's got a lot of cool thoughts on church history.

37:02

Is it here in Jacksonville? Love that.

37:06

Love to get him in the studio.

37:07

I'll, I'll try to reach out.

37:09

I know some guys over there.

37:10

So like, that's the positive way of looking at this.

37:14

Now I'm not saying Christians should take in everything, right? They certainly shouldn't.

37:19

So that was just what I was fixing to say.

37:21

But before we go there, because I do want to, I want to ask where the line is, but I do want to say something.

37:25

I pulled up a quote earlier.

37:27

It's been sitting here for a minute because I read this quote recently and it made a huge impact on me.

37:33

This is a CS or a GK Chesterton quote.

37:37

So you mentioned him.

37:37

So I'm, I'm, I'm quoting him now.

37:40

He says, fairy tales don't tell children that dragons exist.

37:44

Children already know that fairy tales tell children that dragons can be killed.

37:51

And I do think in that regard, I think Chesterton hits on the, on the value of what, whether, whether the, whether this is Narnia, whether this is Harry Potter, whether it is Superman or Batman, the idea that there is good and evil.

38:07

And that there is this, this, um, that, that, that, that there's a reason to fight and a reason to stand and a reason to be truth.

38:16

You know, what, what did you, what did was, you know, the, the idea used to be, what was Superman truth, justice, justice in the American way.

38:24

And, you know, in the last movie they took the American way out, which was stinky, you know, for the postmodernism man, where we have to deconstruct everything.

38:34

And when I think about that and I think about, you know, it gives, it gives value to saying to my son, you know, my son recently saw me with a sword.

38:43

He'd never seen me with a sword before.

38:45

I've owned swords ever since I was 14 years old.

38:47

I I've been not a collector, but I have several swords that I purchased over the years.

38:52

And I pulled one out from the back of the closet.

38:54

He'd never seen it.

38:55

He's six years old, seven years old.

38:57

And he'd never seen me with a sword and I walked out with it.

39:00

And ever since then, he's been so excited to see me because dad, where's your sword? I put it at the church because I, you just, I used it for a karate class or an illustration.

39:09

Dad, when you bring your sword home, that, that it was a big deal to him to see that sword because that represented something to him.

39:16

I years ago, there was a, there was a program called raising a modern day night.

39:22

And it was about taking a boy from you and I may have talked about this before.

39:25

We're taking a boy from childhood to manhood and the processes of that and, and, and giving a sword was, it was a symbol of giving that.

39:34

And it's just this, we have so neutered everything where there's, you know, a kid, a six-year-old picks up a stick.

39:42

It's a sword.

39:42

It's a, it's a machine gun.

39:44

It's a, it's a, it's something it's, it's something to go to war.

39:47

And what are they going to war against the bad guys? They don't want to be the bad guys.

39:51

They want to be the good guys.

39:53

I remember saying that in a sermon.

39:54

One time I saw, I saw a couple of mom's eyes open.

39:56

Cause I said, the reason why your sons pick up sticks and they charge the enemy in their mind, the imaginary enemy is because in their mind, there is a something built within them.

40:08

And I believe it's God given that wants to charge the gates of hell that wants to be, that wants to be on the side of the victorious King.

40:15

And, and, and, and I do think that there's good in that.

40:18

And maybe I've taken it a little weird, but I do.

40:20

No, not at all.

40:21

I completely agree with you.

40:23

I think that God built us to have that in us, right? I mean, Adam's first charge was, was dominion, which he ultimately failed at.

40:33

He should have, you know, gotten the snake out of the garden, not, you know, not allowed his wife to talk to it.

40:39

And I think that's always going to be a piece of us.

40:41

The Lord is a warrior, right? The Lord is his name.

40:44

And I think there's, there's something ingrained in us as being made in the image of God.

40:49

That's a piece of that puzzle.

40:51

And that's a good thing you aspire to.

40:54

And like, again, it's, it's historical.

40:58

It's completely historical.

40:59

Even in Jesus's day, the Jewish people had mythology.

41:04

They told stories that, that we don't find in the Bible.

41:08

Although you might find some of them in the Catholic Bible, frankly, you know, like, like stories of, of demons and evil spirits and monsters and things that needed to be defeated.

41:18

And, you know, like, well, Bell and the dragon, right? Yeah.

41:22

Yes.

41:23

What, what, what is your familiarity with Michael Heiser? Uh, yeah, yeah.

41:28

Uh, the, uh, he talks about the divine council a lot.

41:32

Um, he wrote, what was that big, that one major book? His, his, his main work is unseen realm.

41:37

Unseen realm.

41:37

Yeah, yeah.

41:38

I have that book.

41:39

I only recently found out he's in Jacksonville.

41:41

Oh, really? I, I, yeah, he, he's, uh, I think he's at celebration church.

41:45

At least that's what somebody said.

41:46

No, that makes sense.

41:48

Cause he is, he is a little more charismatic and I know he doesn't like Calvinism, but I have, I have wondered if he would be willing to come on the show.

41:55

So if anybody out there knows Michael Heiser, if anybody, I would just love to pick his brain on this subject because he is, he is a scholar about supernatural in scripture.

42:04

His, the stuff he writes about the divine council, uh, is fascinating.

42:08

Um, a lot of it comes up in the Bible project.

42:11

I know people have thoughts about Bible project.

42:13

I'm generally pro Bible project.

42:15

Um, I got through about 60% of unseen realm, but then I stopped because he literally says like the entire premise of this book only will work.

42:25

If my understanding of libertarian free will is true.

42:28

And I'm like, well, then, then your premises is going to fall apart because scripture said now, but, but he does take very seriously, like the few, very few scriptural references to these spiritual divine beings that are above humans, but below God, which frankly we have to deal with.

42:47

We have to deal with seriously.

42:49

You know what I mean? Um, and, and, and basically like it comes down to a lot of the spiritual realm is just not given to us.

42:56

It just isn't now humans.

42:58

We love superstition, man.

42:59

And like, like, especially I think kind of on that more dispensational side or whatever, like we love our angelology and our demonology.

43:08

And, you know, this, this angel's name is this, and he's got these powers and this demon's name is Guga mugug.

43:15

And he's the demon over, over, you know, jealousy.

43:18

And you know what I mean? Like, we love that stuff.

43:21

It's just a culture.

43:22

Um, and that's not just Americans.

43:24

That's not fair.

43:25

That's, that's present certainly throughout all of Catholicism too.

43:27

But like this kind of over obsession of like, this is where it gets weird.

43:32

I just thought about this, but it's, I think it's a good point of like discerning the truth of the spiritual realm.

43:38

Like I want to know the exactitudes of how the spiritual realm functions.

43:43

I want to know who is the Prince of Persia and Daniel, what his name is, what his powers are, what his weaknesses is, if it's kryptonite or whatever.

43:50

Like, I want to know the exactitudes, right.

43:52

Of the spiritual realm and, and kind of master it.

43:56

Vice is where I'm coming at is like, I just want to have like cool stories that I don't believe are true.

44:01

Right.

44:01

But maybe there are some indelible moral truths in them, you know, so those are kind of two realms, but I don't know if you've seen, have you seen that like naming demons and naming, you know, right.

44:12

And a lot of that comes from sub-Christian literature or pseudo gospels.

44:17

A lot of it comes from that realm.

44:19

Dream interpretation and everything else.

44:20

Yeah.

44:21

Yeah.

44:21

You know, this is as a hell and, you know, it's like, well, yeah, Abaddon is named like twice in the Bible, but like, we're not given more information about what or who that is.

44:33

If God wanted us to have that, like we have it.

44:35

Right.

44:35

But like just cling to Christ and, you know, he's really ultimately the one who can save you.

44:40

So what does it, what does that stuff matter? I've always thought that, but.

44:43

Yeah.

44:43

And that's the thing I think that's somewhat the danger in Heizer's work is, is I do think that he follows many lines that are just, he goes too far, but the positive, I would say that I've, that I have gleaned from Heizer at this point is that he does make a point that Americans in general, modern people, not just Americans, but modern people in general tend to be anti-supernatural when you, when you start thinking about, even about God, they want everything to fall into the category of the natural rather than the supernatural.

45:17

Yeah.

45:17

God is supernatural.

45:18

Jesus is supernatural.

45:20

Walking on water is not natural, dude.

45:23

I mean, like when people are like, oh, the Red Sea, you know, when the, when the, when Moses turned the river to blood, it was this like parasite that, that, you know, stained the water.

45:34

And it's like, no, it's a supernatural God.

45:36

And, and in fact, the supernatural.

45:39

Water don't stand as a heap on both sides.

45:41

Water doesn't stand up.

45:43

And I've read like, oh, there was a certain tide that pulled back and there was like a marshy place where the people could walk.

45:50

It's like, no, that's not what the Bible says.

45:51

The Bible says he touched the staff to the water and it split and they were dry.

45:55

Right.

45:56

And, and I don't even like the term supernatural, frankly, because God is the order of nature and he is the master of it.

46:04

And so if he says water go that way, that's not anti nature.

46:09

That is God who is master over nature.

46:12

Now we can't do that, but it is completely a natural thing for the creator of the master to have the ability to do that.

46:18

So I don't even like supernatural, but I, yeah, I think, I think you're entirely right.

46:22

I think the best example of this is, is the, it's just six, the, what are they called? The sons of God and the daughters of men.

46:33

Yes.

46:34

Nephilim.

46:35

Nephilim.

46:35

Yeah.

46:35

Like, man, how many Bible studies have you been in where you open it up for general questions and somebody is like, well, what do you think were the Nephilim? Oh, bro.

46:44

Like, I don't like, I have some thoughts.

46:47

Like I studied enough Hebrew to have some thoughts, but like, there's a reason why this one's not an open and shut case.

46:53

And I'm not going to open and shut it today.

46:54

You know what I mean? So, so like, again, though, I think what that points at is humanity has this like internal drive to be connected to the greater things and, and, you know, to, to wonder and think and dream.

47:06

And, and so like, there's a healthy way to do that.

47:10

And to just completely say, well, I will have nothing to do with fantasy fiction is certainly not it.

47:17

It's not scriptural.

47:18

It's not historical.

47:19

So I just don't think there's a point.

47:20

Now the line, right? So, so I think there is a line.

47:24

I don't know if I have a hard and fast line.

47:27

I kind of have this general rule.

47:29

If I'm watching something that cause others to be in sin to make it that I'm not going to participate in that way.

47:37

So someone fornicating, for example, right? Like, I think there's a realm of sexuality that is gratuitous, but again, there's sex and violence in the Bible.

47:48

Now it's not showing it, but they, if they had video back then, would it exist in some form? How much, if, if the Bible were written today and it was all a video thing, it's just a thought experiment, right? So, so judges is being made and it's, it is intended, inspired by the Holy spirit to be video instead of describing the sex acts or the, or the, or the violence, how much would be shown? How much would be shown with the violence? I don't know.

48:18

We get pretty explicit as far as describing violence.

48:21

And I'm not saying we should build rules off of that, but, but for consistency sake, it isn't worth thinking through.

48:28

What do you think? What do you think that means? Because there is explicit sex, explicit violence in the Bible.

48:33

Now, is it gory? Is it gratuitous? Well, no, but it's certainly there.

48:38

So again, T totaling is not, is not necessarily the answer.

48:42

It's not the scriptural answer.

48:44

Um, but, but you, but you would agree that, that someone should avoid pornography.

48:49

Yeah.

48:49

Right.

48:49

Yeah.

48:50

Something that would be intentionally like, you know, things like game of Thrones that are intentional for, I think intention has a lot to do with it, right? What is the intention of this person? Um, I don't even mind like a parent saying, this just makes me feel uncomfortable just in my discernment as a parent, it's just not right for us.

49:13

Right.

49:13

And just say, not because there's a scripture I can point to, but just because either, whether it is the Holy spirit or whether it is just, you know, your conscience, like that's, I think that's fine as a parent to just say, it's just not going to be for us.

49:28

And when you're an adult, maybe you make a different decision.

49:30

I think you go too far.

49:32

When you say something about a spiritual door opening, you know, that you don't necessarily know that that's actually true.

49:40

I don't know if that's true.

49:41

Or when you abuse scripture to get there, I think that's not good or true, but I think if you, as a parent go, I just don't, this isn't for us.

49:48

I think that's fine.

49:50

Just own it on that level.

49:51

You know what I mean? Yeah.

49:52

It's a Romans 14 issue.

49:54

Like in our house, you're not allowed to talk about football.

49:57

We have no, okay.

49:59

We don't in my house either.

50:00

There's no one's interested.

50:01

That's right.

50:02

Well, that, yeah, that was the joke.

50:03

Like, it's so funny when my brother and his kids are all into football and it's football season.

50:08

And so he puts posts, all these, and they're great.

50:10

My neat, my nephews are all love it.

50:12

And they've all got these gridiron gang, you know, this is in like, we're here dressed as Superman.

50:17

My kids are running around, you know, play.

50:20

It's just, it's just a different, you know, it's just, it's just, that's our, that's their geek thing.

50:25

And people don't realize it, but if you're absolutely in that and you're geeking out over football, you're, you're a geek too.

50:30

It's just a different geek.

50:31

Oh yeah.

50:31

They, they do a full cosplay dressing up with your favorite character and everything.

50:37

I just, I did dress as, as the Jaguar quarterback a couple of years ago, but it was only because he looked like the uncle from Napoleon dynamite.

50:45

That Gardner issue.

50:46

That's what made me happy.

50:47

It had nothing to do with the football.

50:49

It had everything to do with uncle Rico.

50:51

Yeah.

50:53

But it's tough, right? Because there's, there's so much of this stuff that's not made by Christians and it's not made for Christians, certainly.

50:59

But can you read a work of fiction that's not written by a Christian or for Christian, but see a Christian theme and find value in it? I certainly think so.

51:09

I'll give you a good example.

51:11

And this is, this may be, this isn't necessarily fan.

51:13

What is fantasy? I am a huge George Orwell fan.

51:18

Now Orwell was not a Christian.

51:19

I think he intentionally even spoke against the clergy and animal farm when he named the Raven Moses.

51:24

And he was basically a liar who talked about candy, sugar candy mountain and how everybody went there if they worked hard.

51:30

No, that's pretty overt.

51:31

Yeah.

51:31

Yeah, yeah.

51:31

I mean, I mean, his allegory, but I just did a on, on, on my YouTube page, I just did a top five books that I would recommend to people.

51:37

And I did a bonus book and the bonus book was animal farm because I think it teaches about deception.

51:42

It teaches about, in an allegorical way, the danger of people in power who are empowering for their own gain.

51:51

And I mean, animal farm to me is, is, is hugely enlightening.

51:55

But, you know, again, it's not a Christian book and it's not written by a Christian, but, but it's, I think it's useful.

52:02

But if you ask, if you ask Jack Chick, should you read a book about talking animals? Right.

52:06

He would say that's demonic and in doing so, or he would say it's not Christian and you shouldn't do it.

52:11

And again, that's, that's where's the line.

52:16

That sounds holy, but it's not the historical interpretation of that lifestyle.

52:21

It just isn't.

52:22

It just isn't.

52:23

It's something that we've, we've invented and it is a pharisaical interpretation of how scripture should be applied.

52:29

It just is.

52:30

So, no, I completely agree.

52:32

I think that there is, there is a lot of value in redeeming and God uses redemption of worldly things like, you know, the tabernacle, right? When the, when the Hebrews received the tabernacle, that was not the first tabernacle that existed.

52:51

Tabernacles existed in Egyptian rituals prior.

52:56

Now there was slightly different in form and obviously different in function because the God of the universe didn't live in them, but the concept of a traveling tent that, that conveys God or a God, that was something that the Hebrews had seen previously.

53:12

So God redeemed, glorified, used a concept to his glory, or maybe somehow they got an advanced copy of it and copied him poorly.

53:24

I don't know, but, but there are lots of examples in the Bible of God taking something that the world has and redeems it for something better, the cross for crying out loud, right? It was, was something that has been used to redeem.

53:38

So this idea of like, I hate the overuse of, of don't be like the world.

53:44

Cause like that is so overused by the fundamentalist community.

53:48

Like going back to talking about music, like, well, you can't have drums because that's how the world worships, or you can't have laser lights because that's something that the world uses.

53:58

Well, the world uses oxygen, the world drinks water, the world, you know, uses two by fours in the, in the buildings.

54:04

Like, like again, with where and how are you applying that? Now, if I'm establishing worship and I'm saying, I'm going to set up this worship so that I look like the world so that I get people in the doors.

54:18

Well then, yeah, then you're wrong.

54:19

That's a heart problem, right? But reading Lord of the Rings, because you know, it's, it's of the world.

54:25

I just, I don't see how you get there if you're being honest with the text and you know.

54:30

Yeah, absolutely.

54:31

And I think, I think what you hit on earlier is, is very helpful.

54:35

Maybe this is where we can begin to draw this, draw this to a close.

54:38

And that is the idea that ultimately this does come down to a conscience issue.

54:42

And if you're a parent and you don't want your kids to participate in something, you know, there are, there are things that our kids don't do.

54:50

You know, we let our kids play Minecraft, but we don't let them play.

54:55

There's another game that my daughter wants to play that I don't let her play because I, and the issue for me is because it's a, it's a, you talk to other people and I say, you're not talking to anybody outside of this house while playing a game.

55:07

There's not, that's not going to happen, you know, because I know that there are 40 year old perverts who, who get on those games and want to talk to children.

55:19

And so she doesn't understand.

55:21

She's nine years old and she sees her other friends in school that are playing this game and she comes home and says, daddy, I want to play this game.

55:28

And I say, no, I, I've researched it.

55:30

I'm not, I'm not happy with the, the, the, where the door that that opens for people to talk to you.

55:35

And therefore you don't have to understand it.

55:37

You have to trust me.

55:39

This is not, this is not good for you.

55:40

And I know that's not the same as the fantasy thing.

55:42

But what I'm saying is as a parent, you have to draw a line and you have to know why you're drawing that line.

55:47

And I think explain, I've explained it to her.

55:49

There are people out there who would use this game in a way that's bad.

55:52

So we're not going to do it.

55:54

Yeah.

55:54

I think where we, where we lose that is where, when we draw those lines internally in our household, when then we apply them to someone else's household, if it's not a scriptural, like playing scriptural issue, right.

56:05

Making my, I said this in a sermon very recently, I said, you know what, there's, there are things that are OBO and that's a phrase we've used for years.

56:13

OBO stands for our business only.

56:15

And that means it's in the Foskey house.

56:17

And I said that from the pulpit.

56:18

I said, there are things that the Foskey house, it's our business.

56:24

And the, and as a church, I love you, but you don't have the right to come to my house and tell me how to put my silverware in the drawer.

56:29

That's my business.

56:31

Yeah.

56:31

And you're going to do it your way.

56:33

And I'm going to do it my way.

56:34

And as long as I'm, my children are, are being taken care of and they're healthy, then really you don't have anything to say about it.

56:39

Yeah.

56:39

And, and it's not licensed to sin, right? It's not either, or that doesn't mean if you, if they see you bring in a mistress in your house, they shouldn't say something about that because that's not my business.

56:48

Yeah.

56:49

Yeah.

56:50

It's tough though.

56:51

Right? Like, like the Christian life is tough and listen, I love that God has, has given us so much range.

56:59

Why? Because that forces us to rely on an active relationship with the spirit to, to be actively involved instead of just the black and white 616 laws, you know, laws in the book of Leviticus.

57:13

He could have given us a Leviticus.

57:14

He could have given us that, but he didn't.

57:16

He said, instead, I'm going to write my law on your heart, which sometimes because we're just sinful or stupid doesn't always seem as clear.

57:25

And so there's some area where, what are we supposed to do? Bear each other's burdens, right? Understand that if there's some contention between two believers over something, that's not the law, right? That Christ already took that into himself when he died for your sin, he took that as well.

57:44

Like there's a lot of beauty in the fact that the Christian life is grayer.

57:50

I'm not saying there's not right and wrong, but, but there are just some things that, that are, how do we live together? That as you watch acts unfold, like they're kind of figuring out as they go, right? Otherwise we wouldn't get an X 15 and, and how, how do we, what's with circumcising? Are we still doing that? What do we do? You know what I mean? Like they had to figure that out.

58:11

And so smash cut to 2000 years later, when Roblox comes on the scene and we- That's the game.

58:19

I know I'm an eight year old girl.

58:20

I understand.

58:21

Yeah, I got it.

58:22

Right.

58:23

Well, now we got to figure it out.

58:24

We can't rely on Gamaliel to figure that out for us.

58:27

He didn't have Roblox, right? And we can't look at Ephesians.

58:30

Ephesians didn't say thou shalt not let us thy child and play Roblox.

58:34

So we got to, we have to figure that out within the two poles.

58:38

I always say it's never either, or it's always two ditches on the side of the narrow road.

58:44

There is a narrow way.

58:46

And our, you know, tendency is to want to lean one way or the other.

58:49

And it's just not that easy.

58:50

Now, some stuff is easy.

58:51

Porn is easy.

58:52

It's easy.

58:53

I mean, I'm not saying it's easy if somebody's trapped and addicted.

58:56

And I mean, obviously you need help.

58:57

But I'm saying it's easy to identify.

58:59

It's discernible within Christian witness.

59:01

I think Chronicles of Narnia is easy.

59:04

It's a super intentional Jesus analogy.

59:08

Harry Potter.

59:09

I think people want to make it easy.

59:11

I think they want to make that easier, but, and you can for your house, right? Cause that's a YBO.

59:17

It's your business only, I suppose, in your household.

59:20

But, but when the, when the church goes and pickets it, you know, at the movie theater, now you're, you're kind of, now you're making it our business.

59:28

Cause now the church has to say, ah, I mean, I don't really know if I agree with you.

59:32

I don't know if I agree with you pulling God into it.

59:35

You know, it's like how we look at Westboro, for example, like, like, I mean, like you're now besmirching the entire church with how you're wrongly applying scripture.

59:46

So now we're all kind of involved.

59:48

You know what I mean? And so I look at the damage that Jack Chick did, and there probably is a reasonable discussion for how children play Dungeons and Dragons, how much they should play Dungeons and Dragons under what context, you know, maybe we can wrestle with these things a little better, but instead he just went flip the table.

01:00:04

Absolutely not.

01:00:05

And by the way, you're a bad parent.

01:00:06

Your children are probably going to hell if you let them play.

01:00:09

Well, now we haven't had a discussion.

01:00:11

That's right.

01:00:11

And I think completely wrong.

01:00:13

Dungeons and Dragons is awesome.

01:00:14

Everybody should play it.

01:00:14

I play it.

01:00:15

It's phenomenal, but you can play it wrong and weird and gross and scary.

01:00:19

It's a game, right? Like you can, you can do that just like you could use a gun.

01:00:22

And you can use a gun poorly.

01:00:24

It's a tool, you know? So like, I don't know.

01:00:28

I love this topic though, man.

01:00:29

And I love helping people wrestle with it.

01:00:31

And all I ask, I'm going to finish with this, right? All I ask is if you really, truly ask yourself by what standard and chase after that, if you are asking that question, by what standard am I making this decision and chase after the truth of that? Are you being honest? Am I honestly observing scripture? Am I honestly taking my cues from church history? Is my pastor honestly an honest broker in this issue? By what standard? And if you come up with, I don't know, I'm just not comfortable with it.

01:01:01

Great.

01:01:02

Go for it.

01:01:04

Yeah, that's fine.

01:01:04

And I think that's a safe and charitable ending.

01:01:10

This Sunday, I'm going to be, I don't know if I mentioned this earlier, but I'm going to be preaching on the, if I get to preach, because if Jennifer has the baby, I won't be preaching.

01:01:18

But if I preach this Sunday, I'm going to be preaching on Augustine's Maxim in Essentials Unity and Non-Essentials Liberty and all things charity.

01:01:26

And the reason for that is we just had a new member's class.

01:01:28

I just finished three years in Genesis, so I'm doing some subject-based messages, and I want to talk about what are the essentials and what are the things that we should stand for? And then what are the things that we can legitimately disagree on? Honestly, we can legitimately disagree on things like schooling, whether or not our kids are homeschooled or private schooled or public schooled.

01:01:55

You're not going to say somebody's not a Christian because they disagree on that.

01:01:58

You may disagree with what they do, but you can't say somebody's a Christian because of that.

01:02:03

But if somebody comes up and says, I don't believe Jesus is the Son of God, well, yeah, they're not a Christian.

01:02:07

And where are those lines? And again, in the new member's class, we talked about the fact that as a church, we have to agree on the essentials, and we have to agree on some secondary things, things like baptism, things like how we understand the Lord's Supper, because we're doing those things together.

01:02:26

But ultimately, there are things, whether or not, again, you let your kids play Roblox.

01:02:33

I'm not going to come to your house as your pastor and call you to repentance over that unless, of course, maybe you're being derelict as a parent and your kids are playing Roblox for 48 hours at a shot.

01:02:46

That may be an issue.

01:02:48

Yeah, I think if you look at Scripture, wisdom literature is not given to us as the law.

01:02:54

Proverbs is given to us as a, hey, it's kind of best if you live this way.

01:02:58

Also, if you live this way, it's not a guarantee of positive result.

01:03:04

You know what I mean? It's kind of this, hey, as you live, maybe consider these things.

01:03:09

And if your neighbor is doing an OBO that you don't think is the right way, it's okay to say, hey, man, are you sure that's wise? I love you, and I just want to know, how did you arrive at that decision? That's living together, but standing in judgment or authority.

01:03:23

Well, if you're not standing on Scripture or something else, then you're probably wrong in doing that.

01:03:32

That's just part of the Christian life, is continually bearing with one another in love.

01:03:37

Absolutely.

01:03:37

And that's great what you just said, asking somebody, is it wise? It's not the same as saying you're in sin.

01:03:41

Yeah, totally.

01:03:42

And I do think that there are times where, as brothers and sisters in Christ, as we iron, sharpen iron, to ask somebody, hey, is it really wise to do—I mean, our elders have those conversations.

01:03:55

We had an elders meeting right before tonight.

01:03:58

That's why I was a little late doing our recording.

01:04:00

And we were asking a question about the wisdom of an activity.

01:04:04

Is this the wise thing? And one of them said, don't think so.

01:04:08

And I thought about it, and I said, yeah, you're probably right.

01:04:10

And so we're not going to do it.

01:04:12

That's why I love the way Reformed Baptist polity is, right? That we don't have an overall structure of someone we've never met determining what is right for our congregations.

01:04:24

We have men who God has called and planted who live in that congregation.

01:04:30

Who can look at these issues that are not overtly scriptural issues and apply scriptural wisdom to them because they are there.

01:04:37

I think that is the way God designed that system.

01:04:40

Is it slower sometimes? Is it sometimes messy? Well, of course, that's the human experience.

01:04:46

But assigning those rights to somebody who's never met me or met my congregation to come down and say, laser lights, no.

01:04:56

By what standard? Was it six bells now? Yeah, yeah.

01:05:02

Well, Jake, I want to thank you again for being on the program.

01:05:04

I always enjoy our conversations and enjoying just getting to know you better.

01:05:08

And I'm sure our audience is as well.

01:05:10

Look forward to having you on again.

01:05:11

I know that we're planning another live edition.

01:05:15

May have to be after the baby comes, but that live edition has blown up on some of the metrics.

01:05:21

People really enjoyed hearing you and Matthew and I talk about Calvinism.

01:05:26

So hopefully the next time you come on, we'll be able to do that again.

01:05:28

So thank you again for coming.

01:05:30

Yeah.

01:05:30

Thank you for having me.

01:05:31

I hope someday I can actually come do a live show with you in person if the U.S.

01:05:35

government will allow me.

01:05:36

Yeah.

01:05:37

Have you in studio.

01:05:37

That'd be great.

01:05:38

And again, I want to thank you, audience, for being with us today and hopefully enjoying today's conversation.

01:05:44

If you have a question that you would like for me to address on a future episode, please send it to me at calvinistpodcasts at gmail.com.

01:05:50

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01:05:54

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01:06:00

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01:06:05

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01:06:11

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01:06:17

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01:06:24

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01:06:26

Thank you for listening today to conversations with a Calvinist.

01:06:29

My name is Keith Foskey and I've been your Calvinist.

01:06:32

May God bless you.