Theology in the Raw - 638: #638 - Gender Expression, Church Membership & Discipline, and Salvation of the Mentally Disabled

Episode Date: March 12, 2018

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How should Christians express their gender? What do I think about membership and church discipline? And what about salvation for the mentally disabled children? I'm Preston Sprinkle and this episode of theology in the raw special thanks to my patreon supporters who have hand-picked yes hand-picked these next one two three four five questions that i'm going to address here in just a minute. Thank you so much for your support and for throwing me some really tough questions. I'm excited and also nervous to get into these. There's some great stuff here and it's also sad

to overlook some of the really good questions that also got thrown my way. If you want to send in your questions, you can go to, or you can email chris at pressandsprinkle.com. That's C-H-R-I-S at pressandsprinkle.com. Please keep your questions as concise as you can. If you need to give some background information, please highlight your question so that I can see exactly what the question is, and then I can also read some of the background information. I will say that I actually got the, by far the most concise question I've ever had on this podcast. We'll get to it in just a couple of minutes. Um, it's, it's a, yeah, it's an interesting question. Really big open-ended question that was stated

almost too concisely. Um, let's see, March 9th and 10th, I'm going to be in Dallas, Texas, the Dallas-Fort Worth area, speaking at the Rethinking Hell Conference. That's RethinkingHellConference.com. If you have any thoughts, concerns, consternations, or constipations about the doctrine of hell, hell would highly encourage you to come to that conference. It's very cheap. I think it's like 50 bucks or something. You will definitely get your money's worth by going to that conference. I'll be giving a keynote address that Friday night on March 9th and then also being part of, I think, a couple different panels the next day. And then there's several other keynote speakers, including Chris date, um,

Greg Allison and others who will be speaking. I'm super excited and you should be too. That's rethinking health conference.com. Uh, and, uh, I pretty sure registration is still open. They have room. So, uh, go ahead and check that out. And if you want to know about other speaking engagements that I will be involved in, you can go to PressAndSprinkle.com. Check out the speaking page that I try to keep updated every few weeks. I try to update it because there's always new stuff coming up. Or also, if you want to go to CenterForFaith.com and go to, there's a speaking page there or an events page where I will be speaking through the Center for Faith, Sexuality, and Gender. You can go there as well. All right, with that in mind,

let's jump into our questions. How should Christians express their gender? In the process of researching the factors that go into considering mixed orientation marriages, I stumbled upon www.genderspectrum.org and their organization's understanding of gender. I agree with some of Gender Spectrum's understanding of gender, but I do not agree that biological sex should be separated from one's gender identity. Since gender norms fluctuate from culture to culture and from subculture to subculture. Would you please comment on any principles that Christians should follow when expressing the various aspects of their gender expression to a fallen world, like dress, hairstyle, non-sexual activities, etc., assuming that you agree that gender expression and gender identity should be distinguished? This is a great question, And I can always tell when somebody is well-learned,

well-studied on certain topics, you can just tell by the way they word things and what they say, what they don't say, the precision in which they're speaking. And this is a really well-worded question. So, whoever wrote this is, I mean, yeah, you obviously have done a good deal of research on these questions because questions about gender are incredibly complicated and confusing today. I mean, the term gender is one of the most elastic, misused, and confused terms used today. Up until the 1970s. A little bit of background. Sex and gender were used synonymously. Sex is gender and gender is sex. But in the last few decades, gender is often used to mean many different things. And I mean, the list is really long in terms of how many

different ways in which people use the term gender. I would say there's probably four primary ways in which people use the term gender. Number one, something like your own internal sense of self, who you think you are, who you identify as, or who do you believe yourself to be. Number two, some people say that gender is how you express yourself. This is kind of what the questioner here was getting at, you know, clothing, mannerisms, interests, and hairstyles, and so on. Thirdly, gender is often used to refer to cultural expectations for what it means to be a man or a woman. So, here it's not so much focused on you as an individual, but more those sort of cultural expectations out there. And then fourth, a lot of people still use the term gender as a

synonym for biological sex. So, I mean, this can be super confusing. I mean, if you hear people say, you know, there are only two genders, and I agree with that actually, but what they typically mean is there's two biological sexes, which I agree with. But sometimes people just use the term gender to refer to biological sex without distinguishing the two. Now, I believe that sex and gender are related and you can't separate the two completely, but they do hit on different aspects of what it means to be a man or a woman. And so, whenever you're in a conversation with somebody about gender, I would go no further until you define exactly what you mean by the word, because two people often or rarely don't use the same word gender in the same way and in a conversation

you know it's like that scene in a princess the princess bride when an ego mentoya says you keep using that word i do not think it means what you think it means like i've been conversations all the time with people about gender and and sometimes they'll use the term gender in like three different ways in a single sentence uh this is why Facebook, last time I checked, has 71 different gender options, I think. It keeps kind of growing, so I don't know if that was like so 19 or 2017. I don't know.

71 is last time I checked. Tumblr has, last time I checked, 117 different gender identities. So, yeah. So, what do I think about all this? Here's the best quote that I found in terms of distinguishing sex and gender without divorcing the two completely. Here's the quote, sex is a bodily biological reality and gender is how we give social expression to that reality, okay? So, sex is a bodily biological reality and gender is how we

give social expression to that reality. In other words, both sex and gender are binary. Male and female are the only two options. Humans are male, which is expressed in maleness. So, humans are male, that's their sex, which is expressed in maleness, that's gender, or they're female, which is expressed in femaleness. Now gender, or they're female, which is expressed in femaleness. Now, it's obviously true that people experience and express their masculinity and femininity in different ways. And some people, I would say, I mean, we need to also acknowledge that some people experience intense gender dysphoria where there is massive incongruence in their psychological experience with their biological sex. However, I think it's unhelpful to create a different gender identity for every individual experience, okay?

Otherwise, we'd have billions of genders. If you just take gender as each individual experience or each individual expression or each individual's psychological relationship with their biological sex, then I think gender loses all its meaning. that's completely cultural, like we're just conditioned into it and there's no sort of biological contribution to gender. That is scientifically wrong, like flat out. That's just not true. Yes, culture does contribute to and shape gender, especially different cultural expectations, but there are universals that we see as well, where maleness and femaleness does have some universal expectations across all cultures. And yeah, so anyway, I'm getting off track a little bit. So, I'm fine using gender to refer to the different ways in which people are male and female, but I don't think we should use the term gender in addition to male and female, okay? So, gender should be understood within, not in addition to the two biological sexes of male and female.

Okay, so that's Sex, Gender 101 by Preston Sprinkle, Theology in Iraq. Let me give you three final thoughts that maybe are more directly related to your question. Number one, and I've already said this, there are biological realities to gender expression. So, I don't want to separate the two completely. I mean, just for example, again, this is just the science. Hormone levels differ between biological men and biological women, and hormone levels do affect not only your biology, but your psychology. Yes, people with more testosterone tend to be on average more aggressive, more competitive. Notice I said tend to be and on average. This doesn't mean that if you're aggressive and you have a female body that you therefore are a man. It just means that on average, males tend to be more aggressive,

more competitive than females. and we can scientifically trace that down to the influence that testosterone levels have on the human person, which is precisely why when people transition, when they want to change sexes, what do they do? They take hormones. If hormones didn't have any effect on masculinity or femininity, then that would be irrelevant to take hormones. You just not do anything. So, yeah, so hormones do affect one's gender experience and expectations. It doesn't determine it, but it does have an influence on it.

Number two, this is really important. Most of our stereotypes come from culture, not the Bible. And this plays into some stuff you said in the question about, you know, hairstyles and different male-female interests and so on that are culturally driven. Yes, I just want to agree that yes, most of our stereotypes about what it means to be a man, what it means to be a woman come from culture, not the Bible. The Bible does not actually give a lot of specific guidelines on what it means to be a man or a woman. This is so liberating, folks, that the Bible doesn't tie the bow really tightly on masculinity and femininity. I mean, think about it. Was David being manly when he killed Goliath or when

he was playing his harp and writing poetry? Was Jesus being manly when he turned over the tables in the temple or when he, or when he let other people beat him up and when he cried over Jerusalem, wishing to gather his people as a mother hen gathers her chicks? You know, in the Bible, some women have babies and some women win wars. In the Bible, some men are, you know, like in Exodus 31, some men are seamstresses. Seamstresses? Seamstress-i? Seamstresses? They sew garments on people. And other men, you know, fight battles and, you know, hunt lions and so on. The Bible gives tremendous flexibility on what it means to be masculine or feminine. For example, look up the

Titus 2 passage, okay? And if you're a woman, you probably have this passage memorized because you probably grew up in a church where, you know, every single women's Bible study did a, you know, 18-week study on Titus 2 because Titus 2 is where it talks about older women, you know, teaching younger women to love their husbands and do all these things. Here's what's fascinating. There are 10 commands given to younger women in that passage, 10 commands. Eight of the 10 are also applied to men elsewhere in scripture. Eight of the 10. There's only two commands there.

There's one about, you know, being, staying at home and another one about like loving your husbands and, you know, all the other, and those might be okay. Those, those might be unique to women in that context in that day. But the eight of the other 10 commands are found elsewhere in scripture given to men or just given to Christians. The Bible is much more concerned about being godly than living out some specific type of masculinity or femininity. There's tremendous flexibility, biblically speaking, on what it means to be a man, what it means to be a woman. Thirdly, lastly, male-female differences should be celebrated, not erased or downplayed. By saying that the Bible gives flexibility on masculinity and femininity doesn't mean that men and women aren't different. It just means that we

shouldn't stuff them into a stereotypical box and say that they have violated scripture if they color outside the lines, if you will. But that said, yes, men and women are, as I think there's a book by this title, they are different by design. I don't know if it's a good book or not. I just recall the title. The fact that men are typically stronger doesn't mean they're better because the Bible doesn't say stronger is better. A lot of bad people were strong. A lot of weak people were good. But yeah, I mean, that's just a biological reality. Men are typically, not exclusively, but typically stronger, typically taller. Taller doesn't mean better. In fact, in God's eyes, a lot of times tall people are kind of looked down

upon because they're filled with pride for being so tall or whatever. Women are typically better at multitasking. This doesn't mean that they are typically smarter. I think that we need to think in terms of differences under the umbrella of equality and value. God created us different. We are all equal. It doesn't mean we're all going to do the same things or like the same things or even want the same career paths as each other. And this is where the whole, you know, oh gosh, the James Damore memo, remember that with Google, where he basically wrote this large memo saying that men and women are different, have different interests. And everybody says he's, you know, he got fired for being a sexist and racist and bigot and Nazi and slave owner and all that stuff. And all he was doing is just pointing out that, hey, look, there could be biological reasons for why more men, on average, typically, tend to be more interested in the so-called STEM fields of science, technology, and so on.

Doesn't mean there shouldn't be equal opportunity for men and women to pursue those careers. And there will be some women that like those typically male careers. That's fine, but we shouldn't expect a 50-50 outcome because humans are not all the same. We do have different interests that could be, generally speaking, that could be, generally speaking, viewed under the large umbrella of sex difference. Have I answered your question? I hope I have, because I've said a lot about this. So, all that to say, when the Bible does give command, well, there's some prohibitions about crossing gender boundaries. Of course, I'm thinking like the cross-dressing prohibition in Deuteronomy 22.5 or 1 Corinthians 11. Paul's whole conversation there is all structured upon the fact

that there are male-female differences. Like, the fact that men and women are different is sort of the foundational principle driving everything that Paul says about the order of worship in 1 Corinthians 11. And there's other commands that say men should act like men, women should act like women. But again, the Bible is incredibly flexible in what that looks like. I think what it is prohibiting is men identifying as women, women identifying as men and expressing themselves as the opposite sex, now that gets really dicey, gets really blurry because clothing, especially in Western cultures, is, there's a lot of unisex clothing and a lot of crossover, you know. So, that's where I think it's not so much, let's not get lost in the weeds of, you know, the types of fabric that are on your skin,

get lost in the weeds of, you know, the types of fabric that are on your skin. It has to do more with your heart. Are you identifying as the sex that God has created you to be? Let's move on. Let's move on. This has been a long question. Number two, membership and discipline in an organic church model. I'm interested in the simple organic church model. So, your last series was very intriguing and enlightening to me, though I have a lot of questions about your new church experiment. Here's just one topic for now that I'd like to hear from you. Do you plan to practice formal church membership? And if so, will this include things like church discipline when necessary? How do you expect to carry this out practically? Well, you know, we haven't gotten that far yet. Thought about it and I have gone back and forth on the membership question. People say, well, it's not biblical to have, you know,

membership and well, it isn't, it isn't. I mean, I think in the first century, if you just were a Christian, you were a member of a church, not formally, just factually, like that's what it meant to be a Christian is you belong to the body of Christ. Now they didn't practice as far as I can see in the first century, you know, kind of local church membership in the way that we view it. It was just, hey, if you're a Christian, you belong to Christ. And so you belong to to this church if you can walk here on Sundays or Saturdays or whatever. I mean, that's just, I just think they didn't really need to cultivate some sort of formal church membership also because the churches were so much smaller,

you know, on average between 20 and 50 people is what historians say. The first, you know, local churches were between 20 and 50 people. So, when you have a church that small, you kind of don't need membership, especially in a context like the first century when, you know, converting from Judaism to Christianity or converting from paganism to Christianity was a pretty big deal. So, it's not like you had people that kind of like would try it out for a little bit and then go back. Like that was, you know, conversion was a pretty big deal. And so, either you were in or you were out. So, I think we're in a much harder context today where you have a lot of cultural Christianity and kind of, for lack of better terms, you know, lukewarm or, you know, people that are just kind of,

yeah, dipping their toe in the deep end, but not really diving in. Like, you didn't, you know, I think in the first century, either you dove in head first or you sat on the edge of the water, you know, but here we have people that are dragging their toes across the top of the water, just trying to test it out, see if it works for them. And when it doesn't, they, you know, take it out or whatever. So, different situations, which is probably why we don't have explicit commands about what we call church membership in the New Testament. So, I'm just kind of thinking out loud here, really. I do see value given our cultural context in having membership, though I don't think it's required. context in having membership, though I don't think it's required. And if you can get by having an informal view of membership where, especially in a small church like ours, if you're hanging

out with us for a while, you're sort of included into the practices of the family or called upon to bring a meal to this person in need or to maybe organize, you know, a Sunday afternoon outreach or to host a, you know, a barbecue at your house after church or to bring the coffee for Sunday morning gatherings or whatever. Like, it's small enough to where it's kind of, you don't kind of sit on the sidelines very long before you start getting invited into what we call the practices of the family. So, in that sense, it would seem that, I mean, formal membership might not be necessary because people are, after a while, are going to either be in or out. But that's my, maybe that's my idealistic thoughts right now. Maybe we will need something more formal, but I think we'll play it by ear. We'll see how it goes. And if it's too messy or

too complicated by not having membership, then we're very open to doing that. But yes, to answer your second question, I do believe in church discipline. Yes. I mean, it's kind of hard to get around if you take the Bible seriously. I think it can be overly practiced. It can be underly practiced. And I want to avoid both extremes. I think it's a very, very serious thing. So, I don't want to take that lightly. And yet, by ignoring it all together, I just don't know how you can read passages like

1 Corinthians 5 and others where Paul rebukes a church for not disciplining a member who was living in ongoing unrepentant sin. Salvation for mentally disabled children. Does someone who has limited mental ability live by the same standard a typical person does when it comes to the judgment of God. A couple leaders in my church have referred me to Matthew 18, 2-4, the childlike faith section, of how to interpret the question. I've also seen, on the other hand, where people with limited mental ability have confessed

Christ as their Lord and Savior. I know this is a tough question, but reading Preston's materials and listening to his podcast has really pushed me in how I treat people and looking at people the way Christ sees them. All right. So, I was going to go to the Matthew 18 passage there. Yes, I do think that while Jesus is not talking about mentally disabled people, he is talking about people that in that culture were viewed as less capable intellectually or even spiritually than adults. Children were looked way down upon in that culture were viewed as less capable intellectually or even spiritually than adults.

Children were looked way down upon in that culture. In some cases, he viewed as kind of less than human. It was kind of like the man, a grown male was the most human. A woman is kind of human. A slave is not really human. And a child, if he's a man, a boy will end up being human at some point, but isn't quite there yet. So, yes, children were looked upon probably through similar lenses that some people look upon people with mental disabilities today. So, I think that is a very relevant section. And if you remember there, Jesus elevates childlike faith. So, this could answer your question. Well, and also, when I think about the people I've known that have had mental disabilities, even severe mental disabilities, I see a ton of faith. I may not see, you know, somebody who is maybe understanding all the

theological components of Christianity or articulating, you know, the hypostatic union of Christ, but in as much as faith means trust, trusting in God, trusting in those around you who are mediating God's presence to you, then man, I see a lot of faith, a lot of faith, a beautiful faith, a humbling faith in the sense that how come I can't have that much faith? Faith is more than just believing all the right things, it's trusting in God and mentally disabled people can absolutely do that. I would say, ultimately though, whenever I get these kinds of questions, I want to go to Genesis 18 where it says, will not the judge of all the earth do what is right? It's a rhetorical question that should be answered in the affirmative.

Yes, our trust is in God who will do what is right. Even if at the end of the day, we're not 100% sure of what's going to happen to mentally disabled people. From what I see in the character of Christ and in the teaching of Christ, I think God has a special place for people with a mental disability. But at the end of the day, my confidence, my ultimate confidence is not in that special place or believing that. It's in God who is righteous and just and loving and will do what is right. Fourth question. Here's the record, the shortest question on theology in Iran, the history of theology in Iran. Here's the question. What are your thoughts about Calvinism? The end. I'm going to need a drink to this one.

That was water, by the way, just in case you're wondering. What are my thoughts on Calvinism, about Calvinism? Well, that's a big question. I've got lots of thoughts about Calvinism and it depends on which aspect of Calvinism you're asking about. But typically when people mention Calvinism, I kind of know what they're getting at. So, I was raised early on in my Christian faith in a pretty Calvinistic environment, master's college, master's seminary, where I went to school early on, uh, master's college, master's seminary, where I went to school early on was fairly Calvinistic, not in this. So like super reformed capital R like baby baptizing, you know, pipe smoking reform type of Christianity that you may have at like Westminster seminary or, you know, reformed theological seminary or whatever. Uh, but it was, it was really Calvinistic. Uh,

seminary or whatever. But it was really Calvinistic. I was a five-point Calvinist growing up and I read a lot of A.W. Pink, read a lot of J.I. Packer, read a lot of, who's that guy, Anthony Hokema. Anthony Hokema, he's written a lot of really good books about nature of man and salvation and read a lot of R.C. Sproul and John Piper, of course, and many others. So, yeah, that was how my theological thinking was formed, was in a very Calvinistic environment. I haven't completely left all that, let me be honest with you. I still, there's much of what I hear from John Piver that I love. I still, my life verse, if I have a life verse, is Psalm 115.3. My God is in the heavens. He does whatever he pleases. Or, sorry, our God is in the heavens.

He does whatever he pleases. I think God as God has the ability and right to do whatever he wants to do, even if it flies in the face of human standards of justice and rightness and fairness. So, high view of God, yes. High view of scripture, yes, absolutely. I want to go where the text leads, interpret it correctly. I do believe that God is the primary and ultimate agent of salvation when it comes to divine and human agency in salvation, God gets the priority and the primacy. I have faith because He enabled my faith. I am saved because 2,000 years ago, Christ died for me. Or as one of my friends said, you know, I got saved

2,000 years ago, I just found out about it recently. Okay. That might be a bit of an overstatement, but I love putting the emphasis on Christ's death and resurrection, not my own sort of, you know, choice of God or whatever. So, that sounds pretty Calvinistic. So, let me give you the other side to all this. Some things that would be very un-Calvinistic of me, I don't like theological system. Well, let me say this. I think it's wrong to believe that one theological system is sort of nails it and the other ones are wrong. So, I don't embrace like a Calvinistic theological system. Really, if people ask me, are you a Calvinist? What are your thoughts on Calvinism? I really do need to know like what specific question do you have in mind because I'm not going to give some big blanket yes or no on some huge theological system, parts of which I might agree with and parts of

which I don't. So, I'm a big fan of not embracing whole systems, but looking at individual theological themes within the system and looking at each individual theological piece of evidence for each individual theological theme or doctrine. I think sometimes we get too locked up in the systems and then we end up reading that system into parts of scripture where it doesn't exist or where Scripture itself critiques some aspect of that system. So, that's, again, a very un-Calvinistic thing to say. I, on the whole predestination thing, you know, I mean, I grew up believing in what would be called, I mean, yeah, unconditional predestination. God

elects some unto salvation and I've never been a double predestinarian where he therefore chooses others to damnation. I've always been more of the God elects some unto salvation and leaves the rest of humanity up to their own rejection of him, like in Romans 1. It talks about God sort of giving people up to their rejection of God. That would be my default and I haven't thought too hard about election or predestination in, gosh, at least 10 years, if not more. And I've changed my view on several things since then. So, I would be very open to different views of God's sovereignty and sort of in election and predestination. So, I'm not at all committed to the Calvinist position on that just because I'm a Calvinist

and I can't change my view on that. No, no, I'm very open to, upon further study, having a different view of predestination. As long as we maintain, I think biblically, it's very clear to me, having looked at this for many years, that when it comes to God saving somebody, that He is the primary agent in that salvation. Ezekiel 36, Ezekiel 37, and Paul's 13 letters and other passages seem to make that really clear. My one big departure from Calvinism, and this is more of a cultural critique, is that, I hate to say it, but most Calvinists that I know don't at least give the impression that they are holding onto their views with humility and grace toward those whom they disagree with.

And I know because I used to be like that. And a lot of my friends were like that. We would look down upon people who weren't Calvinists and, oh, you're just a four and a half point Calvinist. And, oh, you just haven't arrived theologically. And it took me years to sort of detox myself from having that assumption. You'd meet another Christian and you'd get really excited if they're a Calvinist. And you had this almost like upper level kind of camaraderie with them if they're a Calvinist and if they weren't, I literally would like look down like, oh, so you're not quite there yet is how I would think and feel. And I would say most of my Calvinistic friends have and have or had and have that posture as well. And that's just arrogance, you guys. That's

just not, I don't want to be that kind of Christian. And so, I am turned off by the, if I can say, the streams of condescension or the condescending attitude and in many ways, arrogant attitude that some, not all, maybe many, I don't know, Calvinists have in their Calvinism, both maybe toward their doctrine, you know, they're really overly confident in what they believe and they look down upon other people that don't believe the same. So, I just, I can't. I would much rather be at a church filled with Armenians, non-Calvinists, who are humble and seeking the Lord than a bunch of Calvinists who are not humble in their beliefs. Last question, does Ephesians 4.14 say we shouldn't question our beliefs?

I'm going to turn here to Ephesians 4.14. And then we'll read, I want to read this question here. It says, Ephesians 4.14 warns against being thrown, or sorry, being blown around by every wind of teaching. How should we hold and interpret this passage when one believes like you do, that questioning one's beliefs is healthy and that the truth may not be what you currently hold? Plus, how would I answer my fundamentalist Christian friends when they quote this verse to me anytime I bring up a different view about some theological point? First of all, let me answer that second question first. I wouldn't, in most cases, I don't answer my fundamentalist Christian friends. I used to be

one. I know the mindset and any challenge to their fundamentalistic beliefs is a challenge on the truth. And so, if you are perceived as challenging the truth, there's not going to be any dialogue. So, it's a waste of a conversation and your short life on earth to waste it talking to people that have zero ability to budge on anything. So, talk about football. Talk about, you know, Chris Tomlin or whatever. Talk about church. Talk about how awesome, you know, the King James Bible is or whatever. I don't know. Talk about something else. Don't get into these debates with people that have a worldview that assumes they are absolutely right and any challenge to their rightness is wrongness, is evil, and shouldn't be entertained. Like,

that's just a waste of conversation. I would recommend recommend though, as I've done several times in this podcast, I would recommend devouring the book, The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. It will give you a wonderful renewed perspective on how to think through these conversations with people that are either, you know, maybe they're more on the fundamentalist end or maybe they're more on the progressive end, but whatever end they're on, they're entrenched in their views. And that book is amazing at helping us or, you know, understand how to dialogue with people in those sort of far extremes. Ephesians 4.14.

in those sort of far extremes. Ephesians 4.14. Let me go back and read the whole context here, because it's really important. We'll go back to 4.11, that he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up, for building up the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the son of God to mature manhood or personhood to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. It's a very Christ-centered passage. All these gifts are given so that we can be built up as a community into Christ and exemplify Christ so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning and craftiness and deceitful schemes.

It goes on to talk about speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ from whom the whole body is held together. It's a very Christ-centered passage. And when it talks about being tossed around to and fro by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, it specifically says in the verse, in verse 14, by human cunning and craftiness and deceitful schemes. This is talking about people who have let go of Jesus or are not focusing on Jesus because deceitful teachers have steered them away. This isn't talking about people who hold to a older theology of creation. It doesn't talk about

people who believe you can lose your salvation. It doesn't talk about people who believe you can lose your salvation. It doesn't talk about people who are denying the rapture or whatever. It's not talking about people who change their views on secondary doctrinal matters. It's not talking about people who believe in annihilation versus eternal conscious torment. These are not things that Paul has in mind. It's talking about being persuaded by crafty, deceitful, wicked people who are trying to steer your attention away from Jesus. So, how would I answer people who use this verse to say you shouldn't question your beliefs? I would just say all that. It depends on what they mean by questioning your beliefs. Again, this passage isn't talking about the kinds of beliefs that I'm talking about when I say it's

healthy to question your beliefs. And by questioning, I'm not saying that, in fact, I don't know if I've actually used that phrase, questioning your beliefs. If I have, here's what I mean, that we hold our beliefs with somewhat of an open hand, always willing to be corrected by further study of scripture and further conversations with God's people in conversation with scripture. So, it's not, I mean, I don't, that's a good thing, right? Following the Bible, correcting your inaccurate beliefs because of the Bible. So, that's all I mean by questioning my beliefs. I'd rather, rather than saying questioning my beliefs, I'd say holding your beliefs with humility and an openness that upon further study of the Bible and further theological

reflection, that you would recognize that your prior beliefs were unbiblical or not as biblical, say. So, I don't see, yeah, I just don't see anything wrong with that and I see everything right with it. So, boom. All right, folks, you've been listening to Theology in a Row. We'll cut it off here and I've got a next fresh round of questions that I'm going to post on my Patreon account for my Patreon supporters to vote on. So, uh, if you're a supporter,

be looking for those in the very near future. And if you would like to support this podcast, you can go to patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. We'd love your support, but I appreciate just having the opportunity to be able to talk about these things. I get emails all the time from people that say they really love this podcast and are listening to almost every episode, if not every episode, and are really encouraged and challenged by it. So, I'm so thankful that the Lord is using this podcast

in your life. We will see you next time on Theology on the Road. Thank you.