| Time | Text |
|---|---|
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Pastors And Pandemic Perceptions
00:02:17
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| And what's going on that the left seems to want to cancel traditional American culture? | |
| What makes them so obsessed with this? | |
| Yeah, one of the things that's really interesting, even as we talk about the religious persecution, the religious hostility in America, first of all, it's worth noting that one of the things that was very revealing to us in the middle of COVID is that there were many pastors who said, hey, we're totally fine leaving our church closed, right, for the safety of the people, et cetera, et cetera. | |
| Well, as more evidence was being, or more information, I guess, was being discovered about COVID, and you realize that maybe some of the things we thought we had heard weren't quite the case. | |
| It's not quite as deadly as initially was anticipated to be. | |
| Not to say that it's not dangerous. | |
| We all know people that have been impacted and been affected by it. | |
| But for example, if you are 50 years or younger, you are more likely to be murdered than you are to die of COVID. | |
| Well, that would indicate that really shouldn't change the way that we are living if you are 50 or younger. | |
| Now, if you are older than 50, it can be dangerous and much more so than if you are younger. | |
| But even there, dangerous on a relative level because the people that are getting COVID, it's over a 99% recovery rate from people that are getting COVID anyway. | |
| All that to say, churches were shutting down based on inaccurate information. | |
| And what we really saw during COVID is that there were a lot of pastors who did not view their church or their role as essential. | |
| And if the church doesn't view itself as essential, and I'm saying this, understanding there's a lot of really good pastors who are doing really good things. | |
| I'm not trying to throw those pastors under the bus, but I can go by name, some big name churches and pastors who before anybody even knew what was happening, they said, we're going to close for a year, maybe two years. | |
| We're just going to close down our doors. | |
| Well, the Bible talks about don't forsake the assembling together of the brethren, right? | |
| There's a reason God said, hey, I made you relational beings. | |
| It's healthy for you to spend time with other human beings. | |
| That is healthy for you. | |
| We know as people have been isolated, the rates of depression, the rates of domestic violence and alcoholism, a lot of other problems have come if people have been more isolated. | |
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Why Christians Matter
00:03:34
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| But if the church does not see themselves as essential, then it doesn't make sense the rest of the culture would see themselves essential. | |
| Now, this comes to even the canceling idea is the church has made itself fairly easy to cancel in a lot of ways because in many situations, the church has not viewed themselves essential. | |
| So why should the culture view us as essential if we don't see ourselves as essential? | |
| If we don't think it's essential to assemble together with the brethren every weekend, well, then why would the rest of the culture think it's essential? | |
| And I think part of what we are seeing is a reflection of the inactivity and unresponsiveness of Christians to stand up for Christian values and beliefs that are very clearly biblical. | |
| With that being said, we also have lived in a world where Christians have allowed the left and very secular left to define words, to define terms and standards, where now the left is saying that if you are tolerant, it means you embrace every behavior they have. | |
| And if you don't support them, if you don't promote their behavior, then you're intolerant. | |
| And that means you're hateful, you're racist, you're bigoted, and therefore you should be canceled. | |
| I remember not too long ago, like a couple of decades ago, when sometimes the most loving thing you could do for a family member was tell them, hey, I don't think that's a good decision. | |
| I don't think the choices you're making are going to be beneficial for you. | |
| And this should be very simplistic, big picture, because if we knew someone was struggling with an eating disorder, if someone was bulimic or anorexic, we would never say, well, you should, whatever they think about themselves, you should encourage that because we want to promote their self-image. | |
| No, if we know their self-image is not true, if it's destructive, if it's harmful, we would say, well, the most loving thing we could do is say, hey, right, that's not true, that that's not the way you are. | |
| You should not, right, go throw up after every meal. | |
| You should eat food. | |
| The most loving thing we could do would be present the truth. | |
| And now we live in a culture that says the most loving thing we can do is to promote whatever someone's self-view is or whatever their behavior is, whether it deals with their sexuality or their gender or their preference. | |
| And you can go down the list. | |
| The problem is that's not what love actually is. | |
| It's not the way love works. | |
| That's not the way God has called us to live. | |
| And that's not true. | |
| So to say that we're not going to walk in truth, we're not going to walk in love. | |
| Well, those are fundamentally the opposite of what Christians should do. | |
| But when Christians allow somebody else to redefine words, to redefine the culture, then in an effort that we want to be tolerant as Christians, well, that's not actually what it means to love somebody. | |
| It's not actually what it means to speak the truth. | |
| Jesus said that we would know the truth and the truth would set us free. | |
| And Christians now are even scared to speak the truth. | |
| So this is part of why we are seeing cancel culture because Christians did not stand up at the beginning, because Christians did not view themselves as essential. | |
| And this is just the outgrowth, right? | |
| That the rock was dropped in the water. | |
| This is the ripple effects going out from what we have seen of the inactivity of Christians, from the lack of involvement of Christians. | |
| But even right now, the only way this gets turned around is if Christians will once again start seeing themselves as essential, the church as essential, and the word of God as truth, not compromising. | |
| Truth is not unloving. | |
| What God has said is not unloving. | |
| What God told us was the most beneficial thing for us. | |