What would Jesus say about the hot topics of today? Feat. Jamie Bambrick

There is no doubt that conversations about Abortion, LGBTQ+, race and every other hot topic have become unavoidable... for the disciple of Jesus we must ask ourselves how would Jesus talk and engage with these issues? Is there a blueprint? An instruction? Perhaps God has revealed clarity to us on reality that in turn we can give to the world?

How would Jesus talk about the hot topics of today?

0:00 - Intro
1:26 - The WHY behind this podcast
8:45 - How do we know what Jesus would think x why listen to him?
18:47 - Jesus wasn't controversial so neither should his followers be?
25:54 - Should we try be friends with everyone? Or should we accept being hated as a normal reality of a disciple of Jesus in a fallen world?
41:26 - How do I as a follower of Jesus talk about these issues on a practical level?
49:30 - A summary
52:03 - Jamie's one takeaway

Transcript

Wildfire, the youth branch of Hope2Families, seeking unity and community, helping people come to know Jesus, and pointing people to the local buying.

Bye.

For people who don't know you, who are you?

Who am I?

That is the enigma.

I am an associate pastor, firstly and foremost a follower of Jesus Christ.

Let's go.

Husband, father of two, associate pastor of Hope Church, Craig Avon.

And then in my spare time, I make, as you may, as you pointed out earlier before this, edgy Christian videos on YouTube slash Twitter slash also now Instagram, because I'm a glutton for social media punishment.

So yeah, just putting it out on all platforms.

Yeah, so that's kind of me.

Been doing the video part for a year, pastoral background, multiple years, and married now for just coming up on 13 years.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, I've been looking at your content.

People are gonna start looking into your content now, because I'm gonna tag you, and it was like, just look, explore.

And that's all I'm gonna say on it, because I'll just start fanboying over it, like straight away, like I have done outside of the recording.

But the theme for today's podcast is, how would Jesus talk about the hot topics of our day?

The hot topics being abortion, LGBTQ plus issues, critical race theory, and more.

Anything that you're scared to bring up in conversation, and anything that you bring up in conversation that all of a sudden has everyone on edge, we want to think, well, why do we want to do this podcast?

Why did you say yes to this podcast?

We'll both give our whys.

Why do you think this is important to even talk about?

So I view, someone put it this way, church historian guy actually called Glenn Sunshine said, wokeness is a Christian heresy.

That's his term, is that this is actually a religious ideology.

These things are not just ideas that are detached from our Christian walk that sit outside in some sphere.

Actually, they very heavily borrow from Christianity in a lot of their roots.

So a lot of these ideas fundamentally take some Christian principles and concepts.

So for instance, there's a truth in caring for outsiders.

There's a truth in that lives are valuable and that we shouldn't discriminate.

There's a degree of truth in that.

But what they've done is they've detached that from all of the other truths of God's word and the saving power of the gospel, right?

So all of those issues have a number of challenges, I think, for the church.

So one of them being that they are shifting the culture in which we live in a very significant way that Christians have to navigate evangelistically when they're reaching the culture.

So we really have to think, how do we speak into a culture that is starting to believe these things?

And with us recognizing that, well, a lot of these things that are being put out there, and if we get into the details of those, we can go, well, this is what's not true that's being told.

There's a lot of lies that exist in our culture that are a significant hurdle for Christians when reaching the culture.

So we have to talk about, number one, for an evangelistic purpose.

I view it as outreach actually to talk about these things because you cannot speak into a culture with the message of the gospel without also confronting the sins and the ideologies and the religions of that culture.

You have to interact with those as a Christian.

So, and you see that by the way throughout church history and you see it throughout the Bible.

So for instance, I give the example of, in the Book of Acts, if you read the sermons in the Book of Acts and you read them carefully, that are given to non-believers, the gospel sermons, all of them bar one, which is in Acts 10 where Peter is preaching to Gentiles who kind of already believe, they just need filled in on some of the details, right?

But all of them bar one, confront a sin that is common among the hearers.

They confront an issue that those hearers are facing.

So in Jerusalem, Peter, when he preaches in Acts two, says, you crucified Jesus.

He's speaking in that context where this had just happened not long before, that this city had rejected him.

But Paul in Athens doesn't talk about that.

He talks about the false gods that they have and says, you've got this unknown God, right?

So you have to contextualize the gospel to the issues that you're facing and call people away from those things.

The call to repentance is a call to repent from the false ideas and the false religions of our day or of the here, right?

So there's that side.

There's also the side that because a lot of this stuff often cloaks itself in Christian language, it is a problem for the church because the church can quite easily hear words like justice or mercy or, you know, when you have this Christian vocabulary, but that underneath the surface is a very different, someone said, put it this way, wokeness is a Christian vocabulary, but a different dictionary.

What they mean by those terms is different.

But that makes it something that Christians can be very susceptible to.

And there's a natural inclination whenever you hear we're standing for justice, for the church to go, oh, well, we back that, so we got to agree with that.

We got to get on board with that.

So there's two sides as I see it.

There's the evangelistic side, and then there's the church discipleship side.

And when you have issues that are as prevalent and are infiltrating from every angle, whether it's politically, media, religiously, whatever it might be, it is necessary for the church to talk about them.

It is, as far as I'm concerned, wrong for the church to not speak about them.

There's a moral responsibility, particularly on church leaders, to talk about these things.

One last point, Natanen, you're gonna ask, sorry, that's a long answer, but the Bible talks about wolves in sheep's clothing, right?

The issue with wolves in sheep's clothing is they look like sheep.

So it's hard to distinguish, right, particularly for sheep.

This is where a good shepherd needs to be able to tell the difference.

A good church leader needs to be able to spot, this thing is like it looks right on the outside, underneath the surface, that's dangerous and to be avoided and to be driven off.

And so it doesn't surprise me that a lot of Christians on the ground level, now I think we're seeing a shift in that, but over the last few years, as these things have come in, the initial reaction of a lot of lay Christians has been to get on board with some of those things, you know, to varying degrees.

I'm not surprised by that because that's actually not, and I'm not in any way putting people down that are in the laity, but it's the job of the shepherd to say that's a wolf in sheep's clothing, that's the shepherd's job.

So church leaders actually have a real extra responsibility to be well-educated and to speak clearly and to define the difference between what is good and of God and what isn't.

I mean, great answer as to why you're doing this podcast.

And to distill that down for people, but man, I love what you were saying there, is the heart of why we're talking about this and why we do anything is the gospel.

And we are not called to conform the gospel.

We're called to bring the gospel and let it conform us into his image.

And I love what you said about contextualizing the gospel.

So it's about putting the gospel in its context.

And you see that in Acts with Paul and the false gods.

And it's like, there's a lot of false gods, a lot of idolatry and a lot of issues in our day.

And we need the gospel in those areas.

We can't shy away.

And at the heart of why I want to do this podcast is love.

Man, I am loved by God and I love him.

And that mutual love that we have for one another makes me love people.

And if I love people, I need to stand for truth.

And as you're rightly saying, hey, if we want to love people well, we need to stand for truth.

But in order to stand for truth, we need to know what truth is in the first place.

And so we're going to get into that as like, what is truth?

How do we know what truth is in order to actually stand for it in the first place?

So let's think about the gospel, let's contextualize it to our culture, and let's see what we need to conform to and what we need to stand to as the church.

And the question that I have for you is, how do we know what Jesus would think?

Right?

And maybe you could caveat it with why should we listen to Jesus in the first place, number one, and how do we know what he thinks?

Sure.

So why should we listen to Jesus?

Well, number one is Jesus is God.

So he's right.

Whatever he says is right.

He rose from the dead.

I think the guy that rose from the dead has a say in these things.

If he's conquered sin and death and hell, he has the ultimate authority in the entire universe.

And so that's the Christian position.

And I hope that Christians, when they hear that, go, yeah, of course, that makes sense.

To the non-Christian, I would say this.

Jesus' words have been proven throughout history to be the most transformative of any words of any person.

Furthermore, his words have constructed everything good about the world and the society that we live in.

If you like things about living in a free and good place, there's a reason why we live in a place like that.

It is the message of Jesus Christ that has infiltrated this culture for 1,500 plus years, 2,000, if you go out to the Mediterranean, I'm speaking specifically to an Irish context, 1,500 years since St.

Patrick, really brought the gospel here en masse anyway.

And so there is a proven track record of Jesus being right throughout history and a very comprehensive track record.

And furthermore, as a non-Christian, if you don't believe that Jesus is God, I would encourage you to, number one, look at his words, number two, look at the resurrection.

And so that's where I would point people.

So we should listen to Jesus.

As Christians, we listen to Jesus because he's God.

And as non-Christians, I would say, well, I think there's good reason to listen to him anyway, but I obviously encourage you to go the whole way and accept him as God.

That is part of the message of Christianity, right?

So that's why we should listen to Jesus.

Why, what would Jesus say about these things?

So there is plenty that Jesus says and affirms explicitly and directly in his own claims about some of these issues.

So if we take issues like homosexuality, transgenderism, for instance, Jesus himself says, in the beginning, God created the male and female.

He talks about a man leaving his father and mother and joining with his wife.

So he's affirming the gender binary.

He is affirming male-female union as what is right in the sight of God.

So he makes very explicit claims about those things.

He also talks about out of the overflow of the heart comes all of these things, but he names among them sexual immorality.

And he defines that he doesn't change the meaning of that term to his context.

When he's using that term, he's using it in a way that would have been understood by a first century Jewish audience.

And he seems to be affirming in that what they believed about that.

So Jesus has spoken to many of these issues very directly.

Some people say he didn't ever talk about homosexuality.

No, he did.

He affirmed what God had said explicitly on that.

Furthermore, Matthew 5, he says, I have not come to destroy the law, but to fulfill it.

And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than one jot or tittle to pass away.

So that's, and jot or tittle is a weird, the tiniest speck of writing from the entire Old Testament to disappear.

It's easier for heaven and earth.

He affirms all of it.

He is the Word made flesh.

That's how he is described.

So he is the embodiment of not just God in the flesh, but scripture in flesh, the Word of God made flesh.

This is who Jesus is.

He is the scripture embodied.

So what Jesus says is whatever the Bible says on these issues, which means that we can pull all of these things back to you.

As Christians, you are not outside of your remit by going back to the Old Testament to look for explicit claims where Jesus doesn't make them if you can find some issues.

So for instance, Jesus never raised bestiality as an issue.

He didn't touch that, but what would Jesus say?

Well, he would say what the Old Testament says on that.

He agrees with that.

That's his stance.

Now, you can say there's maybe differences in terms of penalties because he took the price for sin and so on, right?

So there's a different discussion there.

But in terms of what is right and wrong, that's where he points us.

That's where he referred to.

Jesus referred to the Old Testament.

This is remarkable, by the way.

The Old Testament was Jesus' authority for life.

Jesus submitted to the Old Testament law and fulfilled it.

That's a pretty strong endorsement of it.

So in any of these things, if we're looking at abortion, and we could get into them if you want more specifics on any one of them, but if you look at abortion or sexuality or any of these things, you can also go to those Old Testament texts that talk about those, and the answer is not, oh, those have passed away, because Jesus says, no, they haven't.

Right.

So that's where Jesus goes with it.

So there's things that he has personally said.

There's things that he has also affirmed implicitly by affirming the entirety of the Old Testament as being the word of God, that I think make that the foundation for us as believers.

I love that.

So why should we listen to Jesus over issues that directly relate to our lives, that are actually gonna change us?

And you're saying, well, this person, Jesus, his identity is not only man, but also God, and Jesus is the one who conquered death and hell and sin.

He's the one who rose from the dead.

So who are you gonna listen to?

Your classmate friend, who's read a few books or a few social media pages, or Yahweh himself, who, as you said, has an amazing track record, anywhere where the Christian gospel is.

That is, it's actually practiced and lived out, okay?

I don't disregard there's been blemishes of people who have done things in the name of Jesus, but people who have actually done things according to Jesus and how Jesus lived, you see a direct influence, a positive influence on the culture, and in a society where you yourself would want to live.

So that's why you should listen to Jesus.

Also, the resurrection, an event that preceded that was the crucifixion.

So Jesus is God, yes, but he came to this earth to die for us, and to bridge that gap, to bring reconciliation, to bring peace and restoration of a relationship that we ourselves never could.

But if he loves me in that way, I want to love him.

If he's the person who would die and cross for me, and love me in that way, I want to submit to whatever he says, not just because he's God, but because he's the lover of my soul.

He's good, he's good.

Like what he says is actually good for us, which is a remarkable thought.

Like it's not just a tyrannical God saying, here's my arbitrary list of rules.

It's like, no, I want the best.

I created you.

I know what's good for you.

So here's how you're to live.

So Jesus being God, he wants the best for you.

Like fact, period.

So whatever you hear from anybody else that Jesus doesn't want the best for you, or he wants to suppress your free will, these are all lies.

These are all lies.

From the commandments of God flows blessing, blessing innumerable.

And what you said about Jesus speaking to issues, I have heard this raised before, that Jesus himself doesn't speak to issues like homosexuality or worship.

Like the hot topics of today, Jesus has no authority, not because he's not God, but because he doesn't say it.

Like, I can't go anywhere.

And as you said, Jesus, okay, again, contextualize everything, was himself a Jew, a practicing Jew.

So he himself submitted to the scriptures in the Old Testament.

So whatever the scriptures say in the Old Testament, we know Jesus believed that.

Jesus taught from that.

Jesus fulfilled that.

And there's scriptures where he says, like, submit to the law on the prophets and the Psalms.

And as you said, Jesus affirms the binary.

He affirms male, female, and he affirms the covenant of marriage, which is between a man and a woman.

Absolutely.

So, man, love all of that.

If you want, we can go into one of the-

Abortion is one that I think people don't often know where to go for.

So that might be a useful one, just to give a quick-

Like, here's a good text for that, right?

A lot of people go to Psalm 139 for me and my mother's womb.

Very good text on goal of creating, but does it explicitly say that that's a person prior to birth?

You can find wiggle room there.

What's interesting is in the story of Jesus in Luke 1, Mary conceives by the Holy Spirit and goes immediately to her sister, Elizabeth, or yeah, she goes to Elizabeth, who is pregnant with John the Baptist at that point.

And there's this meeting of the two babies in the womb.

So Mary is probably a couple of weeks pregnant, wouldn't have even known that, realistically wouldn't have known that she was pregnant at that point, other than the fact that an angel had told her, right?

So this is as early as you can get.

And that's assuming that the pregnancy was instant at that point.

When Elizabeth sees her, she says, the mother of my Lord has come to me.

So Mary is from the, like as early as you can get, a mother and Jesus is Lord in the earliest moment of conception.

So if you want to find, is that a person that God affirms the life of in scripture from that moment, that's your text.

I just think that's a useful one to have maybe for clarity for some people that maybe want that.

Yeah, 100% that's so good.

Jesus wasn't controversial though, right?

As in, so if Jesus wasn't controversial, either should we, we're called emulate, right?

Like it is a legitimate, a legitimate come back from people like, well, you're a Christian, so you're not supposed to judge, and you're a Christian, like you're supposed to do what Jesus did, and Jesus was placid.

Would you like to dismantle that?

I would definitely like to dismantle that.

They did crucify him.

So I think you'll find that he was not crucified for going round and being nice.

He was crucified for taking on the elite establishment of that day.

That's really what he did.

If you were to put it politically, which is not quite the right terminology, but functionally, Jesus was the leader of a populist movement where the sort of lower middle classes, lower classes, those who were not considered to have the cultural power, were following this guy.

And he was taking on the movers and shakers of the day.

Jesus targets for the most searing criticism.

And he said some really, like stuff that if your pastor said, you'd probably get, his elders would be like, yeah, you can't say that again.

Like, please don't.

Jesus would get kicked out of most churches for saying the things that he said.

But the people that he targeted were the Pharisees and the Sadducees by and large, who were the sort of political establishment and the cultural elites of his day in that context.

He was not a shy and retiring figure.

He talks about Herod being a fox.

He criticizes the political leader.

He talks about the Pharisees.

He doesn't call them a brute of vipers.

What does he call them?

Whitewashed tombs is the term.

Pitter vipers is John the Baptist.

Jesus also seemed to quite like John the Baptist, so he probably agreed with him on that.

He pointed about all of their flaws.

Most of the teaching of Jesus, I don't know, I don't have a percentage, but I think if you go through it, you'll probably find it's about half, is an explicit argumentative confrontation with the Pharisees and Sadducees.

Most of the stuff that we have in Scripture is Jesus in debate.

Jesus going backwards and forwards, being asked these trick questions, people trying to trip him up, or him noticing something that they're doing.

Even some of his miracles were like an act of controversial resistance.

You have the man with the withered hand on the Sabbath in the synagogue, and they're sitting there waiting to see if he'll heal him.

And Jesus does it openly in front of everybody and then criticizes all the people that don't like it to their face right in front of them.

They tried to kill him multiple times as well.

There were multiple attempts on his life where they picked up rocks to stone him, walks through the crowd or whatever.

So Jesus is probably the most controversial figure of history.

There's very few people that if they said the things Jesus said, you would consider them to be right out there.

I mean, part of it is also his claims to divinity, very controversial, right?

But a lot of his other practical teachings as well were a direct refutation of what the average person was taught and believed at the time.

And so, yeah, he was very happy to be controversial.

The judge not passage is the one that every non-Christian, every non-Christian's favorite Bible verse.

Jesus also says, with the judgment you used, that's what he follows that with.

So he's not saying you're not allowed to in any way say this is right or wrong, because he did plenty of that.

The Bible also calls us to judge with a righteous judgment.

He was asking for a couple of things.

Number one is consistent standards.

So you're not allowed to be a hypocrite.

You're not allowed to say, you can't do that, but I can.

Now, you can say, we can't do that and occasionally mess up and fail.

That's not hypocrisy.

We recognize that we're sinners.

So if you say sexual sin is wrong, but you fall into sexual sin, but you're repentant, you go, God, I'm sorry.

That's not hypocrisy.

Actually, that's the standard is higher than I can live up to.

And I accept that, you know, and I turn to God.

So even that's not hypocrisy, but he is asking us to try and live up to that standard and be consistent with it.

But he's also saying, don't condemn, because so condemnation is different than saying right or wrong.

That passage, do not judge is more like do not condemn, which is you are unsavable.

You are reprobate.

That's not language we should use.

I think we see so many people come from all over the spectrum and the political map and the cultural map to the faith.

So we don't want to pass final condemnation on people.

But can we say that actions are right and wrong?

Absolutely.

And Jesus did that all the time.

So you're saying Jesus is controversial.

Very controversial.

Absolutely.

Yeah, and that relates to his nature.

Jesus, an important thing to know about the historical Jesus, who is both man and God, he says that I am the way, the truth and the life.

So Jesus makes himself exclusive, right?

He says, yeah, guys, there's going to be multiple ways that the culture is going to present you.

But there's only one way, and that's me.

There's only one truth, and that's me.

So someone who is that exclusive, it's going to bring confrontations, it's going to bring controversy, and that's simply because of who Jesus is and what he stands for.

And if we believe the identity of Jesus, then we must stand for the same things he did, which, as we've talked about, is the totality of scripture, those 66 books that Yahweh has preserved for us.

And just by standing for that and saying that this is the way, this is the truth, this is life, is the most loving thing that you can do.

And it is exclusive, but truth and its exclusivity in the context of this world is going to bring controversy.

And Jesus doesn't blindside us to that.

He says, this world will hate you, but remember, it hated me first.

And yeah, this is the Christian walk.

And if you're not ready for it, Jesus says plenty of times, you need to take up your cross and follow me.

And if you're not willing to do it, then don't.

You can't be my disciple, right?

And we need to definitely dismiss that idea that you can be a lukewarm disciple, that you can be a half-hearted disciple, that you can be one foot in, one foot out.

Nope, Jesus was all in for you so that you could be all out for him.

That's beautiful.

Should we try to be friends with everyone?

Or should we accept being hated as a normal reality of a disciple of Jesus in a fallen world?

Two things to balance in that regard.

Scripture does say, be at peace with one another as far as it depends on you.

There is a sense in which on a personal level, you don't want to be getting into unnecessary arguments with people that are not to do with matters of faith and conscience.

If someone cuts you off in traffic, do you get out and fight them in the name of the Lord?

That's not the Christian response, right?

That's good.

And on cut off, I have to cut the offer.

And go from the...

Yeah.

So, do you want to go from the start of that question?

No, that's good, I'll be able to peg it in, I think.

We were still rolling there, weren't we?

Yeah, yeah, great.

You know what, I'll go again with the question.

No, don't worry, don't worry, I'll go again.

So, don't fight anybody on the street.

Don't fight people on the street.

That's probably, barring someone attacking your family or something like that.

But generally speaking, yeah, you want to have a peaceable nature to people, and be genuinely a kind person.

Like that is important, and in spite of my, sort of, I said, make edgy videos or whatever, it's because I'm dealing with hot topics, but on a personal level with people, I genuinely do try and do that.

I do it imperfectly, of course.

But so you want to have that side of like, people actually, they really disagree with you, but they actually go, wow, he's kind of a nice guy.

That's quite nice if people will think that about you when they know you, right?

But as you said, like Jesus said, don't be surprised if the world hates you.

They hated me first.

And rejoice when people persecute you and revile you and call you all sorts of things, right?

Like for great is your reward in heaven.

So there's this side of the gospel that and of following Jesus that requires us to be very willing to take stands and take on fights and arguments that are not always popular.

Very interesting that Jesus commands us to love our enemies.

There's two sides to that, right?

One is you're genuinely supposed to love everyone.

Like you really, like the people that you disagree with strongly, you are supposed to love.

So that's true.

The other side of it is Christians are supposed to have enemies.

That's implied in that is that Christians should have people that don't like them.

That is the implication of what Jesus is saying.

If you hear that verse and you go, I don't think I have any enemies, you do have to ask whether you're obeying Jesus then, because you should.

You should have some enemies.

Now, are the enemies on your part, enemies on God's or on their part?

Like you don't want them to have their lives destroyed.

Your aim for that person is that they come to faith, right?

So as far as you're concerned, ultimate goal, their repentance and salvation.

But there should be people that view you as an enemy.

And there are also ideologies that I think we can view as the enemy and the work of the enemy.

And so we try and recognize that idea of our fight is not against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities and every thought that sets itself up against the knowledge of Christ.

So we try and separate the people from necessarily what they believe, because we know that God can save them out from that.

And we know that there but for the grace of God go I.

So you're not sort of saying, oh, I'm superior or elite because I'm a Christian.

But yeah, there is a call on Christians to develop the right kind of enemies.

Like that is important.

There should be people that are out to get you as a Christian that really don't like what you're doing.

And I think that has been probably one of the sort of downfalls and perhaps the besetting sins of the Western Church is niceness, that we feel like if it's not nice, it can't be godly.

Like the problem with that is niceness is really determined by the other person and not by God himself.

You know, so I don't like that.

Like, so I have two kids, right?

Two boys, one of them is 18 months.

He's not really old enough to get any actual discipline yet.

But I have a five year old and you know, sometimes you go sit in the step, whatever.

He probably doesn't find that nice.

Like, but niceness isn't the standard.

Niceness doesn't determine whether it's right or wrong.

Like sometimes there needs to be a confrontation that has to happen there.

He's a great kid.

We love him very much, right?

So it's not like constantly ongoing, but you know what I mean?

So that's true with us in the world as well.

Like if you're doing and basing your actions off what they perceive to be pleasant, you will not obey God, because they're not trying to obey God, at least in some areas.

So you have to be willing to lose friends and lose some of that outward societal respect in order to be a faithful follower of Jesus at times.

And it's not something that I think you need to run around.

Again, you don't want to be unnecessarily argumentative over everything and turn everything up to 11.

Not every issue is equal here.

There's lots of time.

There can be a divisive spirit, there can be quarrels and those things are not good.

But there are some serious issues going on in our world right now, and Christians need to actually just go, you know what, for some of these things, we're willing to take a stand that might not be popular.

Really important to do so.

Yeah, that's so good.

We are called to emulate Jesus.

So whenever Jesus came into this world, his mission was to reconcile the world back to himself.

And the ministry that he has given us is a ministry of reconciliation.

So if anyone ever says to you that they're a follower of Jesus and they want to emulate Jesus and you want to know anything about Jesus, everything's about reconciliation, about restoration and about love and about kindness.

But the reality is whenever Jesus, the reconciler, he's stepping into a context of chaos and sin.

And so just by Jesus stepping into that context, that by nature will create enemies.

And so listen, disciples of Jesus are not leaving their house every morning and being like, okay, how many enemies can I make today?

No, we're stepping out of our house being like, how can I reconcile the world back to their creator?

How can I love people?

But we know that we're walking in to an environment of chaos and of sin, and because of that context and the message that we're bringing in, the message of Jesus, you're gonna get enemies as a result of that.

And so what you're saying, Jamie, is if you are being a disciple of Jesus and you're taking a stand and you are actually reconciling the world, you're doing it in a context of sin and chaos.

So that will bring enemies.

And a good litmus test for your stand and your intimacy for Jesus is actually, how many enemies do you have?

And if you don't have any enemies, well, one or two things is happening.

It's because everyone is a disciple of Jesus in your interactions, which I don't think is the case.

Or you're not standing for truth.

Yeah.

And we are living in a context where you're gonna get more.

So there's a very interesting, it's an article, I recommend pretty much everything that I talk about because it's very helpful.

There's a guy called Aaron Ryan, he wrote an article for First Things Magazine, it's a big Christian magazine online.

And he talks about the three worlds of evangelicalism, basically talks about the positive world, the neutral world and the negative world.

We used to live in a world where being a Christian was viewed as a positive and holding to broadly speaking, Christian moral principles was a good thing.

Good living, that kind of thing, would have been a term locally for a good Christian person.

They don't pay their taxes.

And most people would have assumed Christianity when it came to issues of sexuality, issues of abortion, all those things.

Not that long ago, like this isn't ancient history.

This is 1990s, 80s, whatever people would have held to those things.

And the broad mass of society would have agreed with the historic Christian teaching, which has been the way our society has been, as I said, for like 1500 years.

That we had the neutral world for a while, where it was like, that's good for you.

Don't push it on anybody else.

You can hold to your morals, and that's fine, and that's good.

And in those worlds, you could kind of be faithful.

You could be faithful in most issues without getting a ton of pushback.

But now what we live in is the negative world, where the broader society, where you say you're a Christian, and particularly where you get into any detail as to what that actually means on any of the issues that they care about, you're now viewed as a bad person.

It's a moral negative.

It's like that's a mark against your record.

You must be bigoted, whatever it might be, all of the ists and isms that get thrown around, right?

And so in a world like that, you're definitely going to have more enemies being a faithful Christian.

It was maybe more possible to have fewer enemies.

I think you still needed some, because there were issues back in the day.

It's not like we've had some issue-free society.

But we certainly are likely to have more in our day.

So I do think that that is a key thing for Christians to just get over it, just get over what people think of you.

That's really important.

That's not the standard.

Yeah, so just to really press in on this point, because I know that there's so many people sitting there.

Like I'm in work or I'm at football, and I have this incessant desire.

I really want people to like me.

You know, like if I was coming in, my idealistic environment is that everyone likes me, they love me, looks my favorite person.

So what I do with that feeling, again, I know that we've sort of alluded to it, but if you want to just speak personally at this point to people who are me in that area, it's like, I love Jesus, I want to stand for Jesus.

I also really want to be liked.

And be as blunt as you like, because maybe that's what's needed.

Yeah.

Okay, let me be blunt.

Get Over Yourself would be the short answer.

What people think of you is not that important, right?

And I'm not...

Get Over Yourself is me being facetious and super blunt, right?

But it is totally natural to want people to like.

That is of course a normal human thing.

It's not like that's some unnatural desire.

It's a good thing that people like you.

It is genuinely a good thing.

You're desiring something that's not innately immoral when you're desiring people to like you.

But we have to pair that with a number of other things.

So all of these verses that we've quoted, they'll hate you because they hated me.

Rejoice when they persecute you and speak evil of you, right?

Take up your cross and follow me, deny yourself.

That desire to be liked must be submitted to scripture.

It must be submitted to these other areas in order to be a faithful believer.

So it's not wrong, but it's secondary.

It just comes lower down the order.

I would say that the primary solution that I would give to people is to grow in a greater consciousness of your identity in Christ and what God thinks of you.

Because you're not standing at the end of the age.

You see, however the end plays out, don't really care for the purposes of this discussion.

There will be a judgment.

There will be a judgment of Christians where it's a judgment based on rewards, what you receive in the life to come.

The world will not be asked for its opinion.

The people that you care about, whether or not they like you, no one's asking them.

God is the one who's gonna make that judgment.

And as Jesus said, if you're ashamed of me before others, I'll be ashamed of you before the Father.

That should hang over us as a much weightier factor.

So an eternal perspective, also knowing that in Christ, you are loved, you are redeemed, you are righteous, you are being glorified, sanctified, going from glory to glory, being renewed day by day.

All of those things should take precedence over that, as I said, very normal, legitimate desire that you would like people to like you.

You shouldn't be praying that people don't like you.

It's not a disordered desire, but it's just secondary.

There are things that were...

Put it under the broad category of persecution, which can be super minor to somebody who's just a bit cold towards you, to dying for your faith and anything in between.

You shouldn't be praying for persecution.

That's a wrong thing.

It's actually disordered to go, oh, I need to be persecuted for my faith.

You shouldn't be praying for your brothers and sisters across the world to be persecuted for their faith.

It's not a good thing.

But will it happen in a fallen world?

Yes.

Is it something you should be willing to go through?

Yes.

So not wrong to feel that desire.

I get it.

But it just has to be at some point.

And part of it is probably an age thing as well.

I'm probably at that age now.

I'm 34, right?

I have my friends.

I've got a wife and family.

I've got a few people, and I care about what they think of me.

And I don't really give that much of a rip what anybody else does.

And when you're younger, you are more social and you see more people and all of that.

So it's also something to go, yeah, I'll shift in a few years.

You'll grow out of it.

I'm not meaning that in some patronizing way, but it's just a genuine thing.

As life progresses, your perspective on friendships and relationships and what other people think of you does shift.

So that's part of God sanctifying process as well.

That's a few thoughts.

Sorry, a bit scattered.

That's good.

You're saying the presence of that desire to be liked, that desire can be present, but there is a text in Scripture where it says, Paul wrote, if I seek after the approval of man, I'm not a follower of Christ.

And it's whenever you start seeking anything other than the kingdom of God.

Jesus himself said, seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all of these things will be added on to you.

And so it's whenever you start shifting and replacing the kingdom and Jesus for any other desire, that's when the desires are no longer a good thing.

But if you're seeking the kingdom, and you have that implicit desire to be liked by people while doing it, hey, that's a good thing, but it's whenever you allow the desire to be liked to dictate your advancement of the kingdom.

So that is so good.

How do we engage in these hot topics?

Please, tell me, okay, we've got issues that we have touched on, such as abortion, LGBTQ plus issues, and critical race theory, and transgenderism.

These are issues that have an emotional pinch and really entrench themselves in family situations.

How do I, as a follower of Jesus, talk about these issues in a way that upholds both truth and love?

So probably a couple of key things.

Not everybody has to start an edgy YouTube channel.

And I'm uniquely positioned to be able to do that because I'm in a church that agrees with me on that.

I've talked before, I've paid something of a price historically for having had some disagreements on that, tried to do so well, but paid a significant price.

And I've definitely lost some opportunities and so on over doing that.

So it's not like it's all been easy, but not everybody has to do what I do to do that.

Probably two things that I think are important.

Number one, there's a book by a guy called Rod Dreher, who has written quite well on some of these issues.

He has a couple of good books on it, but one is called Live Not By Lies.

And the premise of the book, the title of the book, is taken from, I can't remember exactly which country, former Soviet country during communism, and a shopkeeper that refused to put up the communist propaganda in his shop.

That was just a little stand.

He just, and he put it this way, he refused to acknowledge the lie.

He refused to, it wasn't, he wasn't even going out making a big argument.

He wasn't going out and getting stuck in.

He was just like, I'm just not going to affirm what I know to be a lie.

I'm not going to go along.

I do think that that is probably the key starting point for a lot of Christians in every context, whether you're a student or working or professional or a pastor or leader, whatever it might be.

That when there is pressure to, so let me give the specific examples, pronouns in bio, no.

Pronouns are decided by God.

You don't pick your pronouns, right?

Pronouns are a use of language to affirm a reality that God has established about you, whether you're male or female, not a choice that an individual makes for themselves, because you're not your own God.

God created you in the body you're in, and your pronouns are the way the world and the way language reflects that, as God has preordained, right?

So pronouns in bio, no, we don't do that.

Do we do rainbow flags?

No, we don't.

Wear the rainbow flag and work?

No, sorry, I can't do that, I'm a Christian.

You don't have to be aggressive, you don't have to be nasty, just go, sorry, I can't do that, I'm a Christian.

Whatever, critical race theory, you know, hashtag BLM, whatever the pressure is to do, you just don't go along.

And there can be a price just for doing that, but sometimes it's not as bad as you think.

Often the pressure is more than you might imagine.

A lot of the time, the enemy, I think, primarily works through the fear of what might happen rather than often what does.

And worst-case scenario, you lose your job, so what?

Right, get another job.

You know, you'll not die, probably.

And if you die, you go to glory, right?

But there are very few people actually starve to death over these issues, at least at this point.

And I think it's very important to take that kind of...

That's not a difficult stand where you need to have all the arguments outlined.

You need to be fully versed.

Some people are called to do that, but not everybody has the time or the responsibility to do that.

But when something's wrong, can you just not acknowledge that?

Can you just go, no, I'm not going along?

That's what my advice is, people just go, sorry, I can't do that.

I'm a Christian.

I don't believe that.

That's all you need to say.

Anybody says anymore, hey, it's an opportunity to share the gospel.

Praise God.

Right.

But most of the time people go, but that's kind of it.

Right.

So that'll be my first one.

My second one is to when there's a pressure to be silent, when you disagree with things, you feel that when there's an uncomfortable conversation and you feel like, do you know what?

I know I disagree, but I just don't want to get into it.

I think it is good to very calmly and thoughtfully voice some disagreement.

If you're in a conversation on any of those issues, and a good way to do it is just often ask a good question, a good probing question.

Well, when do you think life does begin then?

Why is it different to kill a child outside of the womb than in the womb?

When does that child become a person?

You know, those kind of good questions.

Is it really as good for a society to have male and male relationships or female and female relationships that don't produce children because that's why we have marriage, as this is the basic unit of a society?

Like, is that really as good?

Can you justify that?

Most people have not thought these things through.

They've got their sort of, you know, any child, just a little bit of some pushback, a thoughtful question.

Yeah, you know, that can be uncomfortable, and people will talk about you after, but so what?

You know?

So those will be my two things of like, don't acknowledge the lie, and if you have the chance to speak, you can do so.

You don't have to say everything.

You don't have to be fully versed.

Have a couple of weak thoughts, and do so with confidence.

You don't have to do so mainly, but just go, yeah, you know, as I said, don't agree with that.

I'm a Christian, you know.

That's a useful starting point, I think, for people regardless of context.

So in these issues that are the quote-unquote hot topics of our day, you're saying, no, not just what you stand for, but who it is you stand for.

And that's both the same thing.

So you stand for Jesus.

So you stand for everything that Jesus stood for.

How do I know what Jesus stood for?

Well, we talked about it.

It's in the text of scriptures.

So you actually need to know what the scriptures are first, to know what Jesus stands for, to then know what you need to stand for.

Once you know what you stand for, you then have a context to which you're called to stand.

And in that context, you're saying, just stand firm.

Affirm what Jesus says and not what anybody else says.

Just say that and see where that takes you and follow it in obedience.

And you've got the protector of Yahweh, like His hand on you whenever you live in faith.

I love that.

And then you're also saying, in terms of talking about these issues, actually just be inquisitive.

Ask people the questions and they themselves actually leave themselves to either a trap or to truth.

A trap that is their own belief system and how it's flawed or to truth that is found in Jesus.

And that's just by asking questions, not so much being this, someone who imposes.

Now, you need to peg yourself in.

I'm going to tell you what you need to believe.

You're saying, hey, just stand for what you believe and ask questions.

Yeah, I think it's a great starting point.

I mean, it's great.

If you can learn all the debates and read all the books and stuff like that, and again, there's people called to do that, but you just got to recognize the reality that most people are in.

They can't always do that.

But you can, exactly what you've said, learn some of the key texts, figure out some of the key issues, just a few, okay, here's the flaws in the logic here, and allow that to play out.

And you haven't got a ton of work and back reading to do if you do that.

You're just putting another thought in there and going, there's a reason why people don't agree with this.

And people recognize that, yeah.

That's brilliant.

We've come to the end of the podcast, and I just want you to think about what one thing do you want people to take away from the podcast?

And while you're sort of gathering your thoughts, I'll summarize everything that we've talked about.

So we've talked about the hot topics, specifically how would Jesus talk about them.

And the reason why we've chosen that is because it's not about how you shouldn't be imposing morality.

Rather, Doug Wilson says it's about what morality are you imposing?

Because everyone is imposing a morality.

Everyone has a philosophy.

Everyone has an ideology.

It's just about what is that?

And we're saying that we stand with God.

He's the one who designed everything.

He's the one who created everything.

And God himself walked this earth, Jesus.

So I'm going to go with Jesus, the one who's God and man, who conquered death, conquered hell, conquered sin.

And I'm going to follow his example wherever that leads.

And Jesus himself was a controversial figure.

There's no getting away with that.

But the reason why he was controversial was because of who he is.

He is the truth.

He is the exclusive way.

And so we stand for that exclusive way in the context of the fallen world.

So things are going to get chaotic.

They're going to be sinful.

We're not going out desiring those things, but we are desiring Jesus and whatever that leads.

That's what we're saying as followers of Jesus.

And in terms of hot topics, we've sort of alluded to abortion, homosexuality and transgenderism and critical race theory.

And in all of those ways, we've just said, hey, just look at what Jesus stands for.

And you stand for it as well.

You affirm what Jesus affirms.

And just ask people questions.

Engage in dialogue and conversation.

And I don't know whether I'm naïve or not, but I'm just a firm believer that no matter what the context, I stand for Jesus.

Okay, so you believe in abortion, you believe in homosexuality, that it's good.

You believe in these things.

Like, hey, I just know inward who I stand for, so I don't go to panic stations.

And I know that, hey, this is an opportunity for us to just converse, right?

You believe what you believe, I believe what I believe.

Someone's wrong.

And let's just talk about it.

And I'm willing to not hate you if you're willing not to hate me.

And if you can go down that avenue, great.

But we're saying be prepared that not everyone is going to be like, yeah, I don't hate you.

Be prepared to have enemies, but don't go desiring enemies.

And stand for Jesus because he loves you and you love him and you got to love the things that he loves and love the people because that's who he loves.

But that comes with standing for truth and standing with Jesus.

What one thing do you want people to take away from this podcast?

CS.

Lewis made a great point on courage.

He talked about courage, and I can't give the perfect quotation of it, but he talked about courage basically being the primary virtue.

He said that courage is every other virtue at testing point.

If you can't show love when it takes courage to do so, are you really loving?

If you can't show kindness when it takes courage to do so, are you really kind?

I do think that that is something that Christians really need to cultivate in themselves and actively seek to cultivate, to actively go out and go, I need to learn how to be courageous in our day.

Because we're going to face innumerable challenges, likely in the years and decades ahead, for our faith in a way that perhaps we haven't in the Western world for quite some time.

I personally believe we're going to win, and things will turn around.

I'm very optimistic, not perhaps in the next five years, but I think people affirming the opposite of reality can only go on for so long, and then reality wins.

Nonetheless, in order to stand faithfully and to be part of that turning around, courage is essential.

So my call to the church is to have courage and to cultivate courage.

I think if we cultivate courage, we'll be okay.

Thanks for listening, everybody.

And thank you for being part of this podcast.