Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 422 | Should Christians Follow Old Testament Law? | Q&A

Episode Date: May 18, 2021

In our Q&A episode today, we tackle study Bibles, Old Testament law, and whether or not biblical counseling is supported by the Bible. --- Past Episodes Mentioned: Ep 134: End Times https://apple.co/3v1NgfO Ep 136: Jeff Durbin https://apple.co/3onkX8S Ep 283: Are We in the End Times? Part 1: How We Interpret Revelation Matters | Guest: Jeff Durbin https://apple.co/3u47Nz3 --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Today we've got another Q&A episode. We've got some fun questions today that I'm excited to get through. The first question that I was asked, what is my must have as a mom? That's a really good question. And there are a lot of things that I could say. All right. I'll just pretend like I'm only talking to women. I know that there are some men who listen to and watch the show. But I'm a woman. Most, the vast majority of my audience is women. I think that I can say these things and be comfortable. So I think that the spectra pump is the best pump that's out there. Like if you're looking for a pump before you, before you give birth, if you're a first time mom, you need to know that your insurance is probably going to cover it. You've got to call your insurance. You've got to go through that whole process. They'll cover it, or at least most of it. You order your pump and all that good stuff. I think you have to have like a note from your doctor or your midwife or something like that. But I think that you go for, and it might be little bit more money, the spectra pump, people like the Medella. I think that the spectrum is the

powerful. It's the best. However, it's kind of difficult if you're traveling. I've tried the Willow before. It just didn't really, it didn't work for me. I don't think it was worth all of the money that I spent on it. Sorry, Willow. I'm sure you don't listen to my podcast, but if you do, I just had a hard time with it. So if you're wondering if you should get like the Willow or the Evie or whatever it's called, my personal experience wasn't great with those things, but that doesn't mean that that's the experience of everyone. Spectra pump is the way to go if you are looking for pumps. Here's another one that I think is worth the splurge.

Now, it's not worth the splurge. If you cannot swing it, like if your budget is just not there or if you can't get it as a gift, maybe you can get people to chip in for this. If you can't, it's totally fine. There are other awesome products like this out there. But I really like the up a baby stroller. Like I think that you get a lot of bang for your buck. And it has all of just.

like the little tools that come with it are so helpful, especially if you get like the full Vista, you can get like the bassinet that comes with it. The car seat just automatically clicks into it. So that's really easy if you're just transferring, transferring in and out of your car. The car seat also that comes with this whole Vista package is extremely, it's extremely safe. It's good. It's comfortable. Like we really liked the car seat.

And then it also comes with like. like the toddler, I think it's called like the rumble seat or something that it just kind of sits straight up. I think an infant can also sit in it too if you get one of those pillows that you put behind their head. But it just comes with all of these things. And then if you have another child, you can actually just get like these adapters that allow you to put two kinds of seats in it. So you could put your toddler up front in the little just regular toddler seat. You could put your baby either in the bassinet or in the car seat up on top. And it just has every. And it just has every that you could possibly need. And the basket underneath the vista is super, super helpful.

When we've been traveling and we've had to take the stroller with us, having that huge basket underneath to put suitcases and put bags in has been really, really helpful. And it's really easy to tear down, or to, not, you know, not to tear down, but to take down and then to put back up. And so if you're traveling or if you needed to put it in the back of your car, It's really easy to put together. It's like, this is not a sponsored ad, by the way. I'm just telling you what has worked for us. So the spectra is number one.

The up a baby is number two. And then also, again, not sponsored, but I really like this company. And that is Pink Stork. So Pink Stork, they make all different kinds of stuff. But I've really liked their prenatal vitamins. I liked their postnatal vitamins a lot. Their postpartum kind of recovery vitamins. I'm not sure if this is why, but a lot of women, after they have their baby, they go through

postpartum hair loss. And I did not go through postpartum hair loss. And I'm wondering if it's because of these awesome vitamins that I took. And some prenatal vitamins make your stomach hurt. And I've taken, oh my gosh, I remember I ran out of my typical pink stork prenatal vitamins one day. And then I just went out to, you know, to the health food store or something and got some like organic vegetables. prenatal vitamins. I was immediately sick. I've never had any problem like that when it comes to these pink stork prenatal vitamins, postnatal vitamins, really like them. They also have like

labor prep tea. They have morning sickness tea, morning sickness tap, like lozenges that you can use like in the first trimester, which I did. And I just really like them. Like it's, they are obviously an American owned company. They're a women owned company. She's also a Christian, the girl who owns it. So I really like that. Also, if you're into sleep training, another thing that I recommend, you know, I've kind of taken from a lot of different sleep programs, but taking care of babies, her name is Kara, you might remember she was the subject of a cancel campaign because it was found out that she and her husband had voted for Donald Trump and donated like maybe $1,000 over the course of three years to the Trump campaign. The whole

whole baby world on the internet just unleashed their anger and their rage at her. All of these people who claimed to at one time be her friends through her under the bus. We of course supported her on this show. And I know for a fact that she appreciated that, all of you who ended up reaching out to her and just giving her support and following her, she, I know that she appreciated so much. But she's great. Like she is so kind. I think she's so balanced in the resources that she offers for her sleep training.

I mean, people swear by it for us. By six months, we had a sleeper 12 hours through the night. That hasn't stopped. And I am so very thankful for that, that she is a great sleeper at night and that we have been able to do that through. A lot of it has been because of Kara's program. So taking care of babies, I would recommend you. Some people are against sleep training.

And I know there are different opinions on that. And I'm not trying to have any kind of argument about that. People do what works best for you. And, you know, I think that you have to do what is best for your baby and what is healthiest for you guys. And so that's just my personal recommendation. So I hope that that was helpful for you as a mom, especially if you're a first time mom. There are a lot of people out there who have a lot more experience with motherhood than I do. So I don't pretend to be an expert in anything that I'm not.

But I'll just give you some encouragement that you can do it. You can do it. All right. next question is about study Bibles. So someone asked me what I think about study Bibles in general, which study Bibles I like. I really like the ESV study Bible. That's the first ESV Bible that I had the first, probably the first real study Bible that I had too. I think I probably grew up reading the NIV. A lot of us that went to Christian school, we were given these like NIV adventure Bibles, which I think are great for youth. The NIV is.

is very readable. In the 1980s version of the NIV, I would say, is better than I think it's the 2011 version of the NIV. But as far as translations go, I like the ESV. People ask me about this all the time. NIV as a translation is thought for thought from the original Greek and Hebrew. And so they take what the original language says and then they kind of paraphrase it into a thought that is more readable, whereas the ESV, the NASB, the KJV is word for word. And so rather than kind of paraphrasing and saying, okay, this is the thought that the original language is trying to bring across the ESV and other versions say, no, we're going to translate it word for word.

And so, of course, something like the message is even more in the direction of thought for thought. It takes like the thought of an entire passage or the entire few verses and says and summarizes and says, this is what this is trying to say. I even think that the message can be useful for some people in some ways, but I do not recommend it as the primary version of the Bible that you read from because you're going to be missing a lot that existed in the original text that I think is important for us to be able to read as far as interpretation and application goes.

So I'm an ESV girl. I like an ASB. I like in KJV. We'll do an entire episode. And by the time this is coming out, I'm actually recording this in March. This will come out later. So I don't know if the KJV only episode has already come out by the time that this is coming out. It might be out.

It might be coming out in the future anyway. We'll talk, we'll have already or we will talk about KJV only as M and why I do not think that's a legitimate movement. But the KJV translation is good. The ESV translation is very good. I like the ESV. I love the ESV study Bible. I currently use the John MacArthur Study Bible.

The reason why it's a little bit difficult for me to read the John McArthur study Bible as much as I love and appreciate John McArthur is because we have a difference and opinion when it comes to eschatology. He is pre-trib. And so he believes that Christians are going to be raptured before the tribulation. I do not believe that. And I've talked about that on this podcast before I have an episode titled End Times. And I also have two episodes with Jeff Durbin about post-millennialism versus pre-millanialism, which is what I am and the scriptural foundations for why we believe, what we believe. But John McArthur's eschatology definitely is in his commentary. And that's the thing about study Bibles that I want to say is that the commentary can be very very good. I think it can be very helpful, but it's written by a fallible human being, which means that you might disagree with it, which means there may be more than one,

there may be more than one interpretation of it. Now, that does not negate the absolute truth and the singular meaning of a particular passage, but as fallible human beings who don't know everything and who do have different opinions, you might have two commentaries from two very solid teachers that say to different things. And we have to use our own discernment and rely on the Holy Spirit to reveal to us as much truth as we possibly can. Not all of our questions will be answered, but just understand that commentary itself is not infallible. It's not inerrant. And it can't be 100% relied on. Any kind of human word or human wisdom is always subject to disagreement. Whereas God's word is inerrant, whether or not we know the person.

meaning of it. It does have a perfect and absolute and singular meaning. And so I do encourage you to get a study Bible. It adds a lot of richness, I think, to our study and our understanding of scripture, but just understand that the commentary, even if it comes from people who are brilliant and who know so much about the Bible, which it almost always does, it's not infallible. And it has to be weighed against the word of God. All right. Next question. If I were to enter interview one U.S. president, who would it be? I think I would want to interview one of the first presidents that we had, probably one of the founding presidents, or maybe Abraham Lincoln. I'd want to go back to the beginning and to try to explain everything that's going on and just

try to hear like, okay, like, what was your vision here? And here, kind of what their fears were about America that they didn't record that we can't already read, what their thoughts about the trajectory of a republic could possibly be. It'd be really interesting to go that far back or even maybe if it's just back a century. I think I would like to get some predictions from some older presidents on where America is going and see how accurate they are and just get some wisdom that we've forgotten about liberty that we've forgotten about the government and how the government is supposed to work and serve people. I think that that would probably be fascinating. Honestly, though, it would be

really interesting to interview Barack Obama. If I could just, like, really grill him on some things or, like, really question some things that he chose to do and his stances on things, that would be really fun. Because I think a lot changed in America under Barack Obama. It obviously be interesting to interview Donald Trump. I would love to interview Donald Trump. I would have loved to before the election. But I also think it would be very difficult because I personally think that he's hard to understand when it comes to interviews that he doesn't just like answer things directly. And I feel like I'd be frustrated by what I am unable to get out of him as far as an answer to a specific question. And so I think he would be very entertaining, very entertaining to interview.

you, but also he gets ruffled very easily when you kind of push back against him. And I think I would be kind of worried about that. I know I didn't say Ronald Reagan as much as I love Ronald Reagan. I just feel like I kind of, well, there'd be questions I wanted to ask Ronald Reagan. Like, you know you were wrong about China, right? You know you were wrong that if we exported capitalism, we, they would then import or that we could export capitalism and that they would take on freedom and that they would take on liberty and individualism. That just didn't happen. They took the spoils of capitalism and kept communism and totalitarianism. And I certainly think that Republican presidents are just as much to blame as Democratic presidents when it comes to that, even my beloved Ronald Reagan.

So I think that's my answer to that. Lots of people that I would want to talk to. Advice for a young podcaster, a young podcaster. Let's see. So, So I started a podcast when I had already been in this industry for a little bit. So I didn't start a podcast from scratch. And that doesn't mean that you can't do that. I think it's much harder to do that. If you don't have any sort of following on social media, it is very, very difficult to build an audience.

It's difficult to build a listening audience because if you have not proven yet that people want to follow you on social media, it's hard to. convince people that they want to take even more time and take even more efforts to listen to you because it's not very much effort at all to follow someone on Instagram, but it's a lot of effort and a lot of time to listen to someone's podcast. People need to know that your thoughts are valuable, which I totally believe your thoughts are valuable. But you kind of have to prove it in a way that is easily consumable for people before you can really convince them, I think, for the most part to listen to you on a podcast. That's not always true. It depends on your demographics. It depends

on the people that listen to you, the people that follow you, the subjects that you're talking about. And so not everyone has to have a social media following before they start a podcast, but I think it's helpful. Like I had been writing, I had been posting videos. I had been posting on social media. I had been a part of the Blaze. I had been on Fox News for a couple years before I started my podcast. And so when I started a podcast, it was just kind of like a natural step into the next realm of my career. I already had that built in audience that I had been working on from scratch, by the way, from 2015 to 2017. And I did start from scratch by starting a Facebook page. I'm not even sure if that's necessarily possible today. I think that the environment, that the

climate has already changed a lot when it comes to like how influencers gain influence. But I just started by posting things, by posting videos, and they eventually took off. And then I was then later hired by The Blaze in a very small way and actually a behind the scenes way, like a social media manager. And then I just kind of kept on working up and getting more opportunities and getting in front of the camera more. And then Fox News asked me to come on as a guest and that kind of led to more things. And this whole actually how I started before the Facebook page was I was speaking to organizations and to college students for free about the importance of voting in the 2015 primaries in the

2016 election. So I started from nothing. I started by not getting paid. I started by asking for opportunities, reaching out to people as a way to get in front of people in a way to talk about the things that I cared about. And I was working full time while doing that. I was, I had a full-time job while I was reaching out to sororities and asking if I could speak to their chapter about the importance of voting. And I was getting nothing out of it except for exposure and except for experience and except for doing something that gave me a lot of energy. And so I kept on doing that. And then, you know, by the grace of God was able to continue in my career and then do it full time, starting in 2017. And then in 2018, starting the podcast. And so,

It had actually been about three years before I started the podcast of doing what I had been doing. And then it's been, I guess, three years now. Yeah. So it's been six years total of doing this. And three years this month of doing the podcast. And so it takes a long time. I mean, that's a relatively quick amount of time. But six years to doing what I'm doing now, three years to actually starting the podcast.

But it's taken six years to go. grow to what I'm doing now. And I haven't been nearly as aggressive or ambitious as a lot of people in this industry are because I have other priorities in my life. There are other things that are more important to me. And this is not my entire life. My career is not my entire focus or even most of my focus. My family is. And so it depends on how much time also you're willing to put into it. So anyway, advice, I would say, I would say try to build an audience. like build a rapport, start asking even small publications if you can write for them, if you can write opinion pieces.

Start a blog. Just get your voice out there. Start sharing things. It's probably, you're probably not going to get any big names to get on your podcast if that's what you're hoping not right away. But over time, you will. Like just keep on putting your thoughts out there. Be a good writer.

be a good communicator start a blog start submitting op eds start having some kind of social media presence if you want to do those things and then in a little while start your podcast or if you want to start your podcast now you can but it's probably if that's the only thing you do it's going to be very difficult to build an audience you have to have multiple avenues um to build that audience and it just depends on how much time you want to put into it and then ask yourself um and this is still something that I don't do perfectly that we're constantly trying to hone, but ask yourself what you are contributing to the dialogue that other people aren't. Like, what is your special insight that you are giving that people want to hear that you don't see a bunch of other people doing? Like,

we were, this podcast was one of the first female conservative Christian podcast, one of one of the first. And now in the past few years, there have been quite a few that have cropped up, but there weren't before, which is awesome. Like, I'm so excited about that that there are more conservative Christian women now out there who have a podcast. But we were one of the first three years ago. We're one of the only female podcast who talks about the things that we do, who talks about things like critical theory, like critical race theory, like reformed Christianity. Like, there just aren't very many women who talk. talk about the kinds of theological and political and cultural things that we do on this podcast

and who find kind of the niche that we have found in young Christian, or I would just say young as relative, but Christian women and moms who are trying to navigate the craziness of culture and parenthood and politics from a conservative and Christian perspective. that is what this podcast is and it's different than any other podcast or most podcasts in that way. And so ask yourself what you can bring to the table that other people aren't. Don't try to reiterate or regurgitate other people's ideas or other people's formats. Like create your own, create something different, create something good, create something of value. It doesn't have to be so unique that no one else has done it.

obviously there are other people who do things like relatable, and that's fine. But what can you bring to the table that you don't see a lot of other people doing? And how can you do it as genuinely and as effectively as possible? All right. Another question that I got is about biblical counseling. Is biblical counseling? Biblical? Is therapy biblical?

Is it something that Christians should engage in? Should we care about? What's the difference between? biblical counseling and secular counseling. So I think counseling can be extremely beneficial for the Christian. I don't think that it should be idolized. I do think that we live in a time of the self-love and self-care movement that idolizes therapy, that like everyone has to go to therapy in order to be a healthy person. I don't think that's true. I do not think that everyone has to go to therapy to be a healthy person. I don't think that every single person has mental health issues.

I don't think every single person has dealt with trauma. But a lot of people have and a lot of people do have those issues? I did. And so right after college, I saw a counselor, a biblical counselor, and she was wonderful. And she helped me through the power of the Holy Spirit, overcome an eating disorder and all kinds of other bad things and habits that were going on in my life. I write about this in my book. And so, yes, I absolutely think that biblical counseling can be important. Now, that's different than just a Christian counselor. You want someone who is a licensed biblical counselor because a Christian counselor can kind of, it's kind of like organic versus natural. Like anyone can say that they're natural, but in order to truly be organic, you have to be

certified organic. Well, anyone can say that they are a Christian, that they were coming from a Christian worldview, but they could be totally opposite from what you believe. They could believe that the Bible is mostly hogwash, except for a few words that they tend to like, and they're not going to lead you in the right direction. You want a biblical counselor that is using scripture as their guide to help. you break strongholds, to help you break bad habits, to help you work through sin, to help you work through relationships, whatever it is. Now, I don't think that therapy is necessary for everyone,

and I don't think we need to be convinced that it's necessary for everyone. I think the church, in a big way, has dropped the ball when it comes to providing opportunities and ways to cultivate intimate friendships and mentorship between believers in the church. I think that we have replaced other kinds of relationships and the importance of other kinds of relationships like friendship and mentorship with marriage, which, of course, I love marriage. And I think that it's so important if God calls you to be married to get married and to have kids and all of those wonderful things. But God doesn't call everyone to be married. And we can't regard people who are single in the church as missing out or just someone that we put off on the margins or stick in a waiting room

and hope that they get married one day so they can finally reach full happiness and really start their lives. That's not what the Bible says. The Bible says that it is a gift to be single, that it's better to be single than to be married because then you can devote all of your time and all of your efforts to the Lord. They don't have to be split between your family and God and ministry. So if that's the case, then we need to be treating single people as that. We need to be providing single people in the church. And I would say even married people in the church with ample opportunity to cultivate very deep and profound and fulfilling platonic friendships and those kinds of relationships outside of marriage and mentorship.

Because I think a lot of what our culture, our highly, highly individualized culture is looking for today is actually community. Like I think we're actually looking for fellow Christians to confess our sins to. And we're actually looking for advice. We're actually looking for mentorship, which has historically, traditionally been found just for free in fellow believers. is inside the church, and now we actually feel like we have to pay $500 an hour to get it. Again, I'm not saying that you might not need counseling.

I think that I did need counseling, and I might need counseling to get in the future. I know a lot of wonderful people who have needed counseling. I know a lot of wonderful biblical counselors. I am so thankful for biblical counseling. It's different than just getting advice from a friend. You might absolutely need that. But I also wonder, I also wonder if the kind of psychotherapy that has become so, pervasive, both in and outside of the church, could at least be supplemented by or reduced by

really good and faithful and intimate and profound friendships and mentorship within the church. I think that's something that the church really needs to focus on and think about and get better at. And I don't know all the answers to the how of that, but I do feel, and if you're single, you might feel this too, like single people are just put in this waiting room. and that in the hopes that they'll meet someone else who is waiting to and that they'll get married and that like life doesn't start until you get married or you have kids. But that's not true. Like our goal in life is not to get married and have kids.

Those are wonderful things. And I think they're gifts of God and I'm so thankful for them myself. But your goal in life is to glorify God. And if that's single, if that's being single, praise God. If that's being married, praise God. If that's having kids, praise God for that. But he might be calling you to be single. And if that's true, like I said, the church needs to regard that as the gift that it is, not put single people off in a waiting room, but use them

as the gifts that they are to the body of Christ and to help them cultivate their relationships, the friendships that we all need in addition to or even instead of marriage. All right. last question that I have is ceremonial law versus moral law. So you may have seen there's like a he, well, I don't know, what is it even called? Is it, no, I don't remember what it's called, but there is a movement that's going on within evangelicalism, I would say, is mostly where it presides, where Christians are saying that you now, have to abide by Jewish ceremonial law in order to really be clean because Jesus did. And that's what we're called to do. We are also called to keep the law of the Old Testament.

That is not true. So there is a difference between ceremonial law, which Christians are not expected to keep, and the moral law, which Christians are expected to keep. And so, the moral law, the Ten Commandments, for example, are the moral law. Like we believe in God's law to not create idols to honor our father and mother, to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength, to love our neighbor as ourself, to not covet, to not lie, to not murder. All of these moral laws are fulfilled in Christ. He actually doubles down on all of these moral laws in the New Testament. He says, it's not enough that you don't kill someone. You also are not supposed to hate someone in your heart. That is akin to murder. He said, it's, it's not enough

that you don't lash out at your brother. It's not enough that you don't manifest these sins. Also, if these sins start in your heart, you've already committed the sin. Like, it's not enough that you don't, that you don't commit adultery. You actually, if you are lusting after a woman in your mind and in your heart, you've already committed adultery. So Jesus brings those moral laws into focus, and he doesn't get rid of them. He says he reemphasizes them and he doubles down on them and he brings them to the heart of the matter. And he says that's where sin starts and that's where repentance has to start too. Of course, Pharisees were whitewashed tombs.

They look really good on the outside. They've got all the piety in the world. And yet on the inside, they were rotten. They were full of corpses. And so that's what Jesus is calling out. He emphasizes the importance of us keeping the moral law, not just in a least. legalistic external way, but also internally by regeneration of the Holy Spirit. As far as ceremonial law goes, the book of Galatian speaks to this, that if you are trying to

keep one law, then you've got to keep them all. You're putting yourself back under the authority of the law, which means you are subjecting yourself to the punishment of the law. And so if you are trying to put the burden on someone or on yourself of keeping the law in order to maintain your holiness, then you've got to keep the entire law. And it is your perfect maintenance of that keeping with the law that you are trusting will make you holy before God. The problem is that that's impossible. That's why in the Old Testament they had to offer sacrifices. And that's why in the New Testament Jesus serves as our perfect sacrifice.

And so because Jesus serves as our perfect sacrifice, he serves as that propitiation that the sacrifices in the Old Testament did. And so he is our cleansing. Like we don't have to follow the ceremonial laws that the Jewish people did to be cleansed or to be pure because we have Jesus who became our purity. He became our ceremonial covering. Like he became that intercessor on our behalf. He became our blood sacrifice.

And unlike other, the blood sacrifices, the animal sacrifices in the Old Testament, Jesus' blood sacrifice lasts forever and ever. And so while there was temporary righteous, after a sacrifice as long as they kept the law in the Old Testament, we have eternal righteousness that's given to us by the sacrifice of Christ that we get to cling to forever and ever. It's done. It is finished, Jesus said. And so we do not have to abide by ceremonial law to be clean as Christians because Jesus has already made us clean. But because of his sacrifice and because we follow him and because we love him, we do keep those moral laws that Jesus again emphasizes

throughout his ministry down to our heart. So I hope that makes some sort of sense to you. That's all the questions that I have for today. We will see you guys back here soon.