Theology in the Raw - S9 Ep969: Women in Ministry, Christians and Patriotism, the Afterlife, Christian “Failure Porn,” & the “Worst” Sin: Q & A with Preston Sprinkle

Episode Date: May 5, 2022

My patreon supporters sent me a truckload of questions, some of which I addressed in my Patreon-only podcast and others that I address here. Questions covered on this episode include: Are complementarian churches missing out on women disciplers? When should we give our kids a cell phone and let them call/text their friends? Can Jesus followers be patriotic? Are any forms of masculinity and femininity virtuous? Is all sin equal or are some worse than others? Does God bring whom he wants to church or are Christians responsible to created more diverse churches? What 3 questions would I ask Jesus? And many more questions. –––––– PROMOS Save 10% on courses with Kairos Classroom using code TITR at kairosclassroom.com! –––––– Sign up with Faithful Counseling today to save 10% off of your first month at the link:  faithfulcounseling.com/titr or use code TITR at faithfulcounseling.com –––––– Save 30% at SeminaryNow.com by using code TITR –––––– Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Venmo: @Preston-Sprinkle-1 Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Youtube | Preston Sprinkle Check out Dr. Sprinkle’s website prestonsprinkle.com Stay Up to Date with the Podcast Twitter | @RawTheology Instagram | @TheologyintheRaw If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review. www.theologyintheraw.com

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. I have on the show today myself. I'm going to be doing a Q&A podcast for this podcast episode. And as many of you know, I have a bunch of supporters on Patreon who once a month submit a ton. I'm talking fistfuls, folks, fistfuls of questions for me to respond to. And because the number of questions keeps getting bigger and bigger, I do address about half of them on the Patreon only podcast that I release once a month. And then I also answer the rest of them on a public podcast, which is this one, which usually releases toward the first of the month. So I have a ton of really,

really good questions. Almost all, not all, but almost all the questions that they send in are really complex, are nuanced, are thoughtful, and they really give me a run for the money. So these questions are no different. Let's go ahead and jump in from my first question comes from Jason. Jason says, it seems like in the complementarian versus egalitarian conversation, the thing that doesn't seem to be wrestled with is what it means to teach with authority. And what do we define as the gathering? Can you help us work through what these mean? He has a second part to his question. He says, I've also been thinking a lot about disciple making and the fact that I think

that women are innately better disciple makers than men. Has the church's suppression of women actually created a disciple making crisis in our churches? It's not entirely black and white, but I find women are much better at having embodied conversations than men. What can we learn from our sisters in Christ that tradition has denied us? Well, it's an interesting question with several different angles, and I'm going to just express a lot of resonance with where you're going with this, but I do want to maybe give some clarity to a few things here. We absolutely have examples of women discipling women.

Let me back up before I jump in. I'm going to take a neutral stance on the egalitarian, complementarian thing. So I'm not going to argue from a complementarian position or from an egalitarian position. I'm just going to kind of wrestle as kind of a referee in the middle of this debate. And so I'm going to wrestle with your questions,

not from a certain perspective, but just from as objective of a viewpoint as I can make. So, um, are, are we missing out by not allowing women to be disciple makers? Well, the commentarians would come right back and say, look, women are discipling other people. Women are discipling women in Titus two and simply playing some role in discipleship isn't necessarily a formal leadership type position. So even if we do limit women's discipleship ministry to other women, that still is, we can't say just flat out, a complementarian position doesn't allow women to be disciple makers. I think that would be too broad brush of a statement. And I will say my responses here are

trying to reflect the New Testament according to a complementarian viewpoint or according to an egalitarian viewpoint. I'm not going to try to represent the form in which this takes. So yeah, some forms of complementarianism would maybe not, would, as you say here, be very suppressive towards women, but that doesn't capture the original New Testament vision according to a complementarian reading of scripture. You raise a good question here that, you know, could our form of church be part of the problem? And I do think that that does play a role. I mean, church looks very different today than what we see in the New Testament. I mean, modern day churches typically reflect a very, uh, biblical, not, not unbiblical, not anti-biblical, but odd biblical, like a, a kind of church that is neither supported nor, um, critiqued in,

in the new Testament, but our modern church structure where we have a pulpit and two songs in the front end and three on the back end and a monologue by a speaker on some sort of stage. And everybody sits and listens and doesn't ask questions and it's, you know, thousand people in the audience or whatever. That's, yeah, that, that wasn't a thing in the New Testament. So when the New Testament is talking about gatherings, it's not reflecting that. It's typically a bit more congregational, democratic. At least you get that sense in like the Corinthian letters and other New Testament letters. The typical house church was about 20 to 50 people. Christians would typically meet in the first century at the homes of wealthier Christians.

So even a very wealthy Christian, the size of their house were still smaller than today's standard. So maybe 50 people kind of max, maybe if the other courtyard they can meet out there, you know, with the nice weather in the Mediterranean area. So yeah, we're not talking, you know, so it wouldn't be more of like a Bible study. It would feel like a modern day Bible study is how, you know, the first century church would have fell. So yeah, when we take what the new Testament says about our ecclesiological structures and then, you know, throw in men and women and all that, all those debates. And if we try to project on, on our modern day church context where there's going to be a lot of discontinuity there. So yeah, I do think in

the egalitarian complementarian debates, we do need to work extra hard at making sure we're not projecting modern day church structures onto the New Testament to try to force the New Testament to give clarity to something that's not designed to give clarity to. Are women better disciples? That's, I mean, that's a broad brush, right? I mean, you kind of hinted at that um and i don't know if that's true or how we would even measure that how would he what kind of data would you need to

justify that claim i mean it does sound like you're going on anecdotal and anecdotally in my life i don't that depends i don know. It depends on what we mean by disciple too. Like, what does it mean when we are being discipled? I mean, we're, we're discipled by books. We're discipled by music. We're discipled by individuals. We're discipled by family members or friends. There's formal discipleship meeting Tuesday afternoon for coffee and working through a book and, you know, saying, did you watch porn this week? You know, um, and other there's, but there's other ways in which people shape our Christianity that isn't, you know, sitting down for coffee. It's

just in the natural rhythm of, of life. So even the concept of being a disciple or being discipled by somebody or something, or being a discipler of somebody else, I think that concept can be really fuzzy. So, um, yeah, I'm not ready to say women are better disciples than men. I'm not saying you're, yeah, I'm just saying it'd be hard to kind of prove. There's just a lot of ambiguity there. What we can, the one thing I would love to correct is if somebody had the assumption that men are better disciples than women, I would say you can't prove that either. Like, let's just not even go there. That's just not helpful to say one sex is better at discipling than the other sex. Like that's, I think that'd be unhelpful. But if there was a church environment that whether

verbally or just practically gave the impression that women are not good disciples, then that would be, that would absolutely need to be corrected. You do touch on something interesting here. When you raise the question, what does it mean to teach with authority? And exegetically, as many of you might know, a big part of this debate comes down to the meaning of that phrase in first Timothy, where Paul says, I do not permit a woman to teach permit a woman to teach or to authentane, authentane, authentane, exercise authority over men. Now the Greek word for teach there is didaskale, didaskale, didaskale, the verb of didaskale, which is just a normal word for teaching. Okay. Authentane is really tricky and debated. Some people say it's intrinsically negative, like it talks about dominating somebody else.

There's some references where people use the term authentane to refer to murder. Like it could have an intrinsically negative kind of exercise of authority, or the counter argument is no, it's just, it could just be neutral. Like it's just exercising authority in general. And so the egalitarian argument, at least one of their arguments is that Paul's prohibiting some kind of negative kind of abuse of over, you know, dominating authority that

for whatever reason, women were exercising over men in Ephesus where he's, where Paul was, where Timothy was, was a leader at. So a lot, yeah. Anyway, I don't even know if you were trying to go there, but that for the rest of us, as we're working through this question, um, there, there is some deep exegetical spade work that needs to be done there. And it's been done many times over. I'm just saying it'd be good for, as you're wrestling through this text to really do a deep dive study on the meaning of that phrase. And it's even tricky because if the second word is negative and the first one's positive, that adds another question, like teach or exercise authority over men.

If the second word's negative, like don't dominate men, but the first one's just kind of neutral. Didascale is just a normal for teaching. So you could have one word that's neutral, like, or, you know, there's something negative about teaching, but then the second word, even if that is negative, how are these two words joined together? A positive word and a negative word. Anyway, there's a, I, you know, and I don't, I haven't done the research yet to be able to answer that question for you, but just to alert you to that is a big debate.

Your last statement, you know, what can we learn from our sisters in Christ that tradition has denied us? Oh my word. We can learn. Even if I was staunchly commentarian, I would a hundred percent say, and I've said this many times over, um, that we can absolutely learn and hunt from women. Um, and I, I, hopefully every single commentarian who reads the Bible should be able to say, um, women are absolutely, absolutely essential to the advancement of the kingdom of God, the flourishing of the church, um, the church being what the church should be like. If there were no women involved, it would be disastrous.

And men need women and women need men in the church. And women can be involved in all kinds of ministry. The question is not women in ministry. The question is women in a formal leadership teaching slash pastoring slash eldering position in a local church. That's what the question comes down to. pastoring slash eldering position in a local church? That's what the question comes down to. Yeah. I mean, even if you take a staunchly complementarian view,

even then we should be able to say that men absolutely learn essential things from women in Christ. Cause let's flip it around. Um, let's just say, does all your learning come from your elders at your church? I mean, you could all ask that question. Like your, your entire kind of Christian or the majority of your Christian, like, um, advancement and progress and maturity and discipling. Did that, did that come from just your elders at your church? And I hope, I think a lot of you are going to say, no, some of you are going to say, I don't even know half my elders in my church. Like, it's not think a lot of you are going to say, no, some of you are going to say, I don't even know half of my elders in my church. Like, it's not like they're the ones that are like, you know, the, the complete, like we're completely responsible for my spiritual formation.

So just in a sense, if someone says, you know, no without women leaders and women can't be influential in people's lives, it's like, well, wait a minute. Are you saying that the only people influential in your lives are leaders of local churches? I don't, this hasn't been my experience. I love my leaders. They're great. But I mean, there's many other avenues of influence in my life.

So, yeah, I want to make sure even with this question, we don't assume a, almost like an unbiblical view of leadership and following. Sometimes when I hear people debate egalitarian and complementarian, they, typically it comes from egalitarian complaints about complementarianism is the very assumption in some of their counter arguments seems to assume a very secular view of leadership. And I got statements that I've been taking notes on where it's like, oh my gosh, like your argument here assumes a very kind of CEO, top-down authoritarian kind of view of leadership, which I'm sorry if you've experienced that. That's terrible, but that's not, doesn't reflect the New Testament vision for what it means to be a leader, what it means to be a follower. And by the way, announcement time, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Remember how I've said

often, I'm like, man, this whole debate, I, there's so much literature out there. There's so much to read. You know, every time I feel like, ah, I'm going to try to dig into debate, I, there's so much literature out there. There's so much to read. You know, every time I feel like, ah, I'm going to try to dig into this. I come across, you know, uh, 25 books just to get me started to read and work through and cross check and check their sources and look at the footnotes and do word studies on Kefale and Authentain and all this. I'm like, I just, I don't have time to do that. I wish I can get release time to just figure out this question. Well, guess what? Drum roll, please. I've got the release time. It's coming up. I have a sabbatical coming up next fall where I am dedicating loads of time to figuring out this question. So I'll save you the details on how that came about, but I have gotten, I've received kind of what I've been wanting for

years to receive just some space to not travel, not speak, not write other things, but just really focus on this question. So I've got stacks, folks, stacks of books coming my way that I'm going to work through. And here's the thing, here's the thing. I am actually legitimately 100% on the fence. I don't know where I'm going to end up. And there's nothing in my ecclesiological, ministerial, economic, sociological environment that needs me to land on a certain position or another. I will not lose a paycheck. I will or another. Um, I will not lose a paycheck. I will not lose a job. I will not lose hardly. I don't think I'll lose any friends if I land on this side or the other side, there's nothing in my life. My family will still love

me. Like there's, they don't have strong views, really. Um, all my friends on both sides, uh, the church I go to is complementarian, but the, they're, I don't, I'm not on staff of the church. I don't preach to the church. I don't, you know, and even if I did, did ask me to preach to the church one day, like, I don't think if I held to one position, I don't think if I held to an egalitarian position, they would say, Oh, you're not allowed to preach anymore. Unless maybe it was on, on that, you know, going against the church's teaching, which I'd be fine not doing that. So there's, there's really nothing in my environment. My, I don't have a denomination. There's nothing I don't have. There's very little, if any, like economic sociological things in my life that are kind of like nudging me to make

sure I land on this side or make sure I land on that side. I don't even have a publisher yet. So, um, yeah, but I got to write a book on this topic and here's what I'm going to do. I don't even have a publisher yet. So, um, yeah, but I got to write a book on this topic and here's what I'm going to do. I don't know if I haven't seen anybody do this yet. Um, I'm going to write the first chapter like right now, like soon, like basically in real time saying, Hey, I'm going to go on a journey in this book. I'm writing this chapter long before the rest of the book. So I don't know. I'd like the first chapter is not going to know where I'm going to land up. It's just going to say, here's, here's kind of some questions I'm wrestling with. Um, and here's how I'm going to plan this journey. Here's some, some of the research I'm going to

plan on doing. I'm definitely going to do research in the women in the first century Greco-Roman society. Um, I know more Roman influence, uh, cities had a kind of slightly different view of women from what I hear. I'm aware of some of the big topics of debate was Junia and actual, you know, capital A apostle or just a messenger, you know, what,

how do we, what do we do with first Timothy two and first Corinthians 14? What about female prophets? And what about, you know, Phoebe and King Korea and Romans 16, was she a deacon or just a servant?

And if she was a deacon, is that a, is that a teaching authoritative leadership position and on and on it goes. So I'm aware of the debates and some arguments on each side are stronger than others. And, and it really, there's, there's no, there's nothing internally or externally nudging me to land on a certain view or another. So should be exciting. I don't want to make some of you nervous. You really want me to land on one side or the other, but Hey, uh, I will land where I land. I guess you can pray that I land on the view you want me to land on, I guess if that's kind of weird prayer, but pray that God would give me the wisdom and

courage to go with the text leads as he, as I always pray. So next question, Matt, after attending the Theology in the Rock conference, which was one of the best things ever, that's what Matt said. I didn't put that in his mouth. He said that we incorporated Slido into a recent sermon on Sunday. So Slido is the platform that I use to do text and Q&A questions. It's awesome. It's fantastic. I like self filters. People can be anonymous. There's a word limit. You don't get the weird people that stand up and just want to hear themselves talk, you know, for an hour and everybody's like, Oh my gosh, take the microwave. Um, it's great. It's fantastic. So one of the, um, one of the questions we got, you say was, uh, can a Jesus follower also be patriotic after a bit of struggle in a moment, I settled on how you define patriotism. Like what, what does it mean to be patriot, patriotic?

If it's America first, then maybe not. But if patriotism is gratitude for what the nation you were born in has to offer you, then that's possibly a good thing. How would you handle that question? What do you think? So that's, that's Matt was, Matt's asking me how I would, um, how I would handle this question. So yeah, I think that's a great, uh, I think your approach is perfect. What do you mean by patriotic? Also, I don't like, I mean, I, yeah, this is how the question's

worded, but can a Jesus follower be patriotic? I would want to word it like, should a Jesus follower be patriotic? Because can and should are two very, kind of goes in two very different directions. Because can a Jesus follower believe things and do things that are contrary to God's word? Yes. Should they? No. So I'm more interested in the should, not the can. Because I mean, can a Jesus follower be patriotic? Well, yeah, of course, there's tons of Jesus followers who

are patriotic. I'm not going to necessarily question their salvation based on that alone. There's all kinds of reasons why somebody might be patriotic. But yeah, I think you're absolutely correct to say, what do you mean by patriotic? Should a Jesus follower put their country above their allegiance to Jesus? Absolutely not. Do some Jesus followers do that? Yes. Am I going to say they're not truly Jesus followers? No, I'm not going to say that. I really hesitate, really hesitate judging someone's salvation. That doesn't mean I don't hold strongly to certain viewpoints where I think, no, Christians should not be mixing allegiances. And yes, I think any kind of national patriotism, whether you're living in Zimbabwe or Iceland or North America or America or Canada or whatever, yeah, absolutely.

Your national identity can easily become practically or explicitly prioritized over your allegiance to King Jesus. See it all the time. Yeah. So anyway, that's probably how I would navigate that question. I would change can to should, explain that I don't want to judge people's salvation. I would unpack different forms of what might be classified as patriotic and then, and then go from there. And I would, Matt, I would highly recommend always with this, it's really sensitive. There's so many assumptions people come in, thick lenses in which they're going to read your response. And, um, I just be, I mean, anything, I'm a big fan of just being really, being clear, being super gracious and humble in how you address this kind of question, because the very types of people that maybe need to be challenged in this area sometimes don't respond well to a lot of snark and extremism and just categories thrown at them that they just haven't even thought through before. So I want to slowly kind of move people to see things in a more gospel-centered light rather than just kind of like, you know, bomb them ironically with some kind of like what seems to be an anti-patriotic kind of, you know, message. So

it sounds like you handled the question well. Clark, next question says, oh, not a question Preston, but a challenge for you. You did a great job with the ECT annihilation dialogue debate with Chris Date and Gary Brashears at the conference. If you could swing a YouTube podcast, moderating a dialogue debate between Christopher Yuan and Nate Collins to talk about identity in Christ for those who wrestle with same sex attraction, that would be awesome. Maybe, um,

if anyone could do it, it would be you a bonus challenge, a dialogue between Wendy Alup and Beth Allison Parr and complementarian versus egalitarian. From a woman's perspective, with a dude like you listening in, that would be awesome. Or backup plan, Rachel Green Miller versus Sandra Glahn. I admit, I know all of those names except for Sandra Glahn.

So I'll have to check that out. But yeah, you know, I've done, I'm all for that. So Nate, Chris, if you're listening, let's, let's do it. See if you're interested. Why I have other people that would rep if Chris and Nate couldn't or didn't want to do this other people that could represent this. I mean, I did do a dialogue debate between Greg Coles and, uh, Rachel Gilson on this question. In fact, I literally just did one a week ago on that. That was on, that wasn't on the podcast.

It was on a webinar that I did through the center for faith, sexuality, and gender. You can check it out center for faith.com. And, um, it is behind a paywall. So you have to pay like 20 bucks to get access to it. But, um, so I have, I've, have done this kind of conversation before. Um, but yeah, I haven't done it with, uh, I think Chris Yuan and Nate would be great or, or Chris Yuan and, and Greg Collins or Greg Collins, Greg Coles. I think that would be great too. Uh, Greg is really passionate about this topic. Um,

and, and for those of you kind of like, what, what do you, I don't even know what you're talking about. Um, identity in Christ, is it for a Christ follower who follows a traditional sexual ethic? Should they even use the term gay to describe themselves? Or is that too strong of an identity for a Christ follower? Should you simply, you can say, oh yeah, I wrestle with same-sex attraction, but it's not part of my identity. But if you call yourself gay, that is part of your identity. That's how, I don't want to misrepresent Chris, um, you on, but that he would be more concerned about Christians using the term gay, um, where Nate Collins would say that it would

be, it's fine for a Christ follower to use that term. So, um, Wendy Allsup and Beth Allison Barr, I've thought about doing a complementarian egalitarian discussion dialogue. Personally, I would want to get two biblical scholars to do it. Beth is a historian. I just had Beth on just the podcast release on Monday. She's a delight to talk to. But if I brought on Beth as a historian, I'd want to have another historian on to talk about history. I do. I mean, I really enjoyed Beth's book.

I had lots of questions, pushbacks on it, which is why I liked it. Like I enjoy books that like cause me to think I'm like, yeah, but what about this? What about that? I didn't, you know, as a Paul guy, I wasn't, this what about that i i didn't you know as a paul guy i i wasn't i was probably least impressed with her chapter on paul um for several different reasons um too many to get into uh we didn't really get a chance to go into i already took her over her time in the podcast and you know i already i kind of wanted her uh i want to kind of i want to get clarity on some of the ideas that were more in her field or the history.

Cause I mean, as a Paul guy, I know all the disputes and debates and everything. I know everything's way more complicated than she made it out to be, but that's, it's almost, I don't know. It's kind of,

I don't want to be unfair. Like, cause everything in Paul's debated and I don't expect a non Paul specialist to, to know all that. Just like if I had a chapter on women in history, I would think that Beth would probably be a little more gracious with a Paul guy wandering into history and trying to figure things out. Like, of course, I'm going to miss some of the nuances there. So, yeah, I would be more interested in having two biblical scholars like a Cynthia Westfall and Tom Schreiner or Craig Blomberg and Craig Keener, maybe, um, on, on this debate. Um, yeah, I don't know. I'll think about that. This is, um, I've

done a few dialogues like this in the podcast. Some have gone better than others. They're not, they always sound good on paper. And then at the end of the day, when they come out, I'm like, I just didn't go the way I was expecting it. So, but I'll, yeah, I'll think, I'll think about this. Might do another, another one of these. Aaron, follow-up question from your last podcast with your wife. At what age did you allow your kids to have a phone to start calling and texting? Did you find an age that worked best? and texting, did you find an age that worked best? So man, so tough. So for us, uh, social, our non-negotiable is no social media until 18 for our kids. Um, and when I say social media, I'm talking like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, snap, and what's the other one? Tik TOK. I guess that's not even social media. Really. They are on YouTube. Um, and to, you know, some of my kids are on YouTube more than others. Um,

my son loves to do these trick shots. So he's always, you know, like looking at trick shot videos and trying to get ideas and stuff. And you just, he's super creative with creating these videos. So I'm like, that's kind of a skill. And I, as much as I'm like, Oh, what do you do? Make you live it off YouTube. And it's like, well, yeah, I could be a millionaire by 20. I mean, that's what kids do these days. So he does, he he's developing a creative skill by doing that. So I'm like, we do allow YouTube. Um, uh, phone. I, so when my oldest daughter was 13, she was, she was into horse, uh, horses. Like she was, she was, um, she would give horseback riding lessons and would go and work down to down like a mile, half mile away to learn how to ride better. And sometimes the horse people she was hanging out with,

people who have horses, horse people. The image you got in your head right there. Love it. All these people with really long faces. Where am I going with this? Oh, yeah. So she was kind of at 13, kind of out of the house. And we're like, all right, we need to get her a phone.

And it turned out it was cheaper to put a smartphone on our plan than to get a flip phone because you have to have a separate plan for that. Or I didn't, I don't, I don't know if I'm repeating that correctly. All I know is it was so odd, but I'm like, wait a minute, it's more expensive to get a flip phone than a smartphone. And then smartphone, she has the map. She can navigate. There's certain things on a smartphone. That's like, well, that would be actually beneficial for her. She's, you know, you know, several miles away with a bunch of horse people, a bunch of horses. And we're like, she needs to get ahold of us or whatever. So, so we got her this smartphone. Well, that kind of set the pattern of, oh, but we didn't allow texting. That was the big one for us.

Sometimes texting flies under the radar, even with people that are social media conscious. But we were like, dude, texting is, how many relationships do you, I mean, all you listening, like how many times have you gotten to a little spat and kind of offended relationally through a texting conversation? Maybe you pour your heart out to somebody on a text and the response back is thanks for sharing. And that's it. And you're like, what? That's it? That's all you have to say. But what if they were at a stoplight? They read your text. They know it registered red. So they had to respond real quick. And they said, thanks for sharing. The light turns

green. And then they're planning on responding to you later. And they forgot. What if they forgot? I've done that. So there's just, there's two, there's so many unknowns when relational unknowns behind texting back and forth. And I have seen so many relationships, either maybe not destroyed. Well, some, I think, yeah, some, or just, um, strained through texting. Texting can be okay when you've already established a verbal embodied relationship with somebody. But what we're finding with my kids is like texting becomes a primary form of relationship. And I said, oh, that's relationally, that's not healthy. So we actually didn't allow texting until they had an embodied relationship with somebody. And she's like, well, all my friends, all they do is text. I'm like, well, they're not

just tell them to pick up the phone and call you. Like, then don't never do that. I'm like, well, they're not good friends. So move on. That wasn't quite, I wasn't, I wasn't, I wasn't that much of a jerk, but, um, yeah, I, I don't know. So, so we did, so we, we were, we were caught, we did give him a phone at 13. And then once you do it with the first one, I feel like it's just the pattern. Like we had to kind of the next one is like, I can't wait till I'm 13. I get my phone. I'm like, ah, geez. Okay. So, so against my better advice, 13 was the age when my kids got a smartphone. They would typically, we would do hand-me-downs. So like if I was due for an upgrade or something,

I would give them my old phone and then they would be able to respond to all your emails. Just kidding. We'd wipe it. Yeah, so that's what we did. I don't recommend that. If I had to do it over again, I probably would have paid the extra money, done a flip phone until 15 or something like that. Like I still, and even now, like we're less vigilant with texting and calling and stuff.

We're constantly, my wife and I constantly are thinking, rethinking and rethinking and second guessing. And did we allow too much here or not enough here? So it's an ongoing conversation. But all that to say, I would, yes, I would. And we, and again, I'm not, everything I'm saying, I'm not saying we do it well, but in terms of what we want to do, we don't want kids kind of just on their phones, texting all the time, even if it's innocent, even if it's a good friend, even whatever, like I just, just that, I just don't think that's good. Like it doesn't cultivate

your humanity in really healthy ways. It distracts you from being present where you're at and many other things, you know, and then the other whole problem of just miscommunication through text. And so we try to monitor it. Don't do it the best that the, the social media thing is that that is the one where we're black and white. They know it. They don't even ask like 18. That's when they can do social media.

And what's kind of cool is like my oldest is 18 now. So she got an Instagram account and she's not, it's like, she's not on it a ton because it hasn't been, I don't know. She's, she's went several years without social media. So she's kind of cultivated the healthy way of living without it. So when you add it to your life, it wasn't as all consuming. Um, all right, next question. Um, is there, is there really any more teaching in the Bible about being more masculine or more feminine with some specific characteristics? It seems it's been a cultural teaching of men being more dominant if they really want to be godly.

Good question, John. Here's where I, here's how I handle this question. Here's how I handle this question. There is, as far as I can tell, is no moral mandate to be feminine or masculine. There's no moral mandate. We are all to live gentle and quiet and godly lives. We are all to be kind and sober minded and to be courageous. We are all to andridzomai, the verb in 1 Corinthians 16, sometimes translated act like men that Paul commands the entire congregation of men and women to do that, which scholars say andridzomai, which can be translated, act like men. It's probably better translated to be strong and courageous because that was the kind of like assumption that men were strong and courageous. So, Paul does draw on gender stereotypes there in that culture,

but he's commanding all Christians to be strong and courageous. So, in terms of virtue, I don't think there's any intrinsic virtue of being feminine that men are not also called to be. Again, I'm talking in terms of virtue, gentleness, godliness level of testosterone versus estrogen that is pumped through the bodies of mammals, mammals with high levels of testosterone that's being received by the cells the way it typically is, received by the cells the way it typically is, okay, the cell receptors are receiving and processing the testosterone, that that does have an effect on the way mammals think and act and behave. And same thing with estrogen. I think that those are just biological realities, but they are generalities too, okay? These are generalities. These are bell curves. These are not absolutes. These are, you know, males, male mammals generally will act and tend to act in a certain way. And, and male or female mammals will tend to act in another way.

And there's overlapping similarities there. They both get angry. They both can get feisty. They both can be protective. They both can be nurturing on some level. Um, but there are general sex differences in how mammals generally behave. Have I said the word general enough? Cause I don't want to make these absolute men are from Mars. Women are from Venus. It's almost like it should be like, um, what's the, yeah. Men are from Mars. Women are from Venus. It's more like men are from Montana and women are from Idaho or something where it's like, yeah, there's a different States, but a lot of overlap, you know? And like, what does that even mean? That's a dumb analogy. Don't read into that. I was trying to come up, come up with something on the fly that's better

than Mars and Venus analogies, but it didn't work. So, so yeah, so, so I want to, I want to acknowledge sex differences in behavior and attitude and interests on a general level. There's always going to be exceptions, but I don't want to baptize those general patterns in moral waters. So most men are going to be more, say, maybe, maybe, I don't know if this is true, like fact check this. Analytical, that'd be, yeah, most men might be more analytical where most women might be a little more intuitive, a little more, have a little more kind of like insight in ways that aren't strictly analytical. My wife and I would fit these two categories very much so. And I think we would probably fit that. Like I think many men and women would also resonate with that on some level, but say in a

marriage, you have a wife who is more analytical and the husband is more intuitive. You know, maybe he's an Enneagram four. She's an Enneagram, what? I don't know. Seven, eight, one. Pick your number. I don't know.

Maybe three, five. No, five. Five is more analytical, right? I don't know. Like that's okay. Those might be exceptions to the normal pattern, but that doesn't make it unvirtuous for a female to be more analytical than men. So yeah, I don't want to baptize these generalities and more in the moral waters. The Bible seems to be very uninterested in the morality of femininity and masculinity. It is very interested in the category of simply being

godly, but godly characteristics are almost exclusively true for both men and women. And of course, we do have the debates about what about male and female relationships in the home, husbands and wives, and maybe even in the church, but we've already kind of worked through some of that. So at the most, there might be some specific virtues in the home of the church that apply to men and women uniquely, but the overwhelming majority of virtues in the Bible are not, they apply both to men and women equally.

Zach, would you agree with the statement, all sin is equal sin, or all sin is equal, sin is sin? My pastor seems to think that homosexuality is a worse offense because it's an unnatural desire. Yes, this, Zach, this comes up a lot. So, the phrase, you know, he's getting that from Romans 1, but the phrase is not a natural desire. I just want to be clear here. And these, I don't know if these are his words you're summarizing, or if you're just kind of loosely summarizing his position, but if somebody says unnatural desire, that's not quite the phrase. Romans 1 does talk about women having sex with women, men having sex with women, and that going, the phrase is katafusin,

against nature. There's a lot of debates about katafusin, against nature. There's a lot of debates about what that even means, against nature. What it doesn't have to mean is that it makes it a worse sin. That's where I want to make a distinction. Yes, the Bible does use the language against nature on same-sex sexual acts, not desire, acts like activity, behavior, sex. It does call it a natural. That's just what it says, but that raises the, but it doesn't, it's not clear what exactly that means. I would say it probably means like the Stoics use this phrase a lot in the first century,

Katafusen, um, when something kind of goes against the grain of creation, the creator's design, the Stoics might not say the creator's design, but you know, against the grain of the way of the rhythms of creation. So they would kind of rely a lot on what we now call like natural law. And so I think that's probably what Paul is saying there, that same-sex sexual behavior does have a component to it where it goes against God's created design, whereas sex outside of marriage, male and female, is morally wrong, but doesn't necessarily go against the creator's design for that act per se, if that makes sense. Now, some people don't even like that distinction. I get it. But I think that's, that's a, I think lens through which you can read the term unnatural. But to your point, that doesn't mean it's worse though. That this is where I

don't like the language of worse. What does that mean? Worse? How do we determine what's worse? No, that, so that, that's, that's the main question. How do you determine what is a worse sin than another? What's your, what's your methodology? Like if he wasn't, if not he, okay, let's move this out of your pastor. I don't know your pastor, but like, if someone says, yeah, same sex sexual activity is, is a worse sin than opposite sex sexual activity. And I was in there in a court of law and I'm the judge, I'd say, prove it, prove it. Well, it's unnatural. Okay. But that doesn't, that's a, that's a non sequitur. It could be non-natural. It doesn't mean it's necessarily worse. So what's your argument

for saying it's worse? How do you determine what's worse? Do you go on quantity? How many times something is condemned in scripture? Well, if so, then same-sex sexual behavior would be one of the least worst sins. Because it's hardly ever mentioned. Five times. Six times. You know, if we went on quantity, you know what? Pride, idolatry, misuse of wealth,

over 2000 passages condemned the misuse of wealth on some level that those would be the worst sins. Okay. What else? What, what, what's, how do we, what about the, the, the levels of punishment? For instance, like an old Testament law, and you have some levels of punishment in the new Testament. Those are a little more debated Matthew Matthew 10 and others. But in the Old Testament, you know, some sins required the death penalty, others, you know, kind of a slap on the wrist and pay a fine, you know, two cows and a goat and you're good. Well, even that though, I mean, some of the death penalty commands are like disobedient children and picking up sticks on Saturday, death penalty, you know, and other things were like, that we would think should be more strict, were a little, seem to be a little looser.

So I think if we actually laid out and evaluated the levels of punishment in the Old Testament, I think we'd be a little shocked, like which ones were, you know, punished really severely, which ones weren't. I don't think we're going to map that structure on today. So, the closest I have, the closest statement I have that might be helpful in like worse sins, and again, worse, what does that mean? Does it mean like worse in the eyes of God, worse with your ecclesiological social ramifications? Like if you have an affair with somebody else's wife and you're married and you have three kids and they have four kids, like sociologically, that's going to be disastrous, dude. Like your life will never be the same. And generationally you've passed on

something. Is that worse than murder? So you say murder, that was kind of justified. So say it was like in self-defense, a guy, you know, hits you and you hit him back and he fell back, cracked his head open and he died and you'd be guilty of maybe first, or that might be manslaughter. I don't know. Um, I don't know. Just pick like, like there's some sins that could have less sociological ramifications. Um, does that mean it's not as bad or do we just take it the worst in the eyes of God? And if so, how do we determine what's worse in the eyes of God? It just becomes really tricky. The statement that might help us is that statement by Paul in 1

Corinthians 6, where he does make a distinction of sins outside the body versus sins against the body. And there he's talking about sexual sin. And there is, I would say, severity or consistency in the severity surrounding judgment for sexual sins. First Corinthians 6, 9 to 11, Ephesians 5, 3 to 5, Revelation 2, the last part of that chapter there where Jesus lays into the two churches and many other, whenever same, whenever, no, not whenever sexual immorality, generally speaking is addressed that the language is really severe. So does that make it a worse sin? I don't, I don't even, I don't even like that language. Is it a serious sin? Absolutely. But to your point, it's all sexual immorality, not just same-sex sexual immorality. Would same-sex sexual immorality be included in that? Yes, absolutely. But when the Bible

severely addresses sexual immorality, porneia, um, it doesn't, I mean, it condemns all forms, even first Corinthians six, nine, that does mention same-sex sexuality. Um, as under that rubric, it also doesn't mention adultery and fornication and other things that aren't limited to same-sex sexual sins. So, um, so there's no real answer to that. I would say, no, there, there, well, I would say, no, there's, there's no clear answer to that. I would say no. I would say no. There's no clear biblical evidence that same-sex sexual behavior is a worse offense. That's where I would land. I would say try to make a case for that. And when I've tried to make a case for that in my own mind, it just falls short of representing what the Bible says. of representing what the Bible says. Next question. I am deeply, this is from Cindy. I'm deeply convicted about a diversified church that talks about race, sexuality, gender, disability, treatment of women, et cetera. Good. I'm glad you feel convicted about that. We all should. But it seems that my church leadership is content to stay where we are. And I've heard

on multiple occasions that God will bring us who he wants us to have. What's the balance of trusting God's sovereignty and doing all you can to not only welcome, but actively attract people with differences. We are a smaller church, 100, 150, and I'm a female worship director in a complementarian church. The church is thoughtful in this area, but shrinks back from having hard, other hard conversations. Yeah, this is, this is tough. It's hard for me to give any kind of top down. I don't know your church leaders, the people, the situation, like it could, you know, my advice might look different from one situation to another, depending on getting to know the church, you know, which, which, which I can't. Um, I, I do, I would, I don't personally, I'm not really impressed with God will bring us who he wants us to have kind of language. Of course, God is sovereign.

Of course, that's true sortating the complexity of understanding who, who actually shows up at your church and wants to belong to your church. Yes. God will bring us who he wants to have, but God also works through people. And sometimes people do good things. Sometimes people do bad things. So, um, so it's a little more complex than just let go and let God, like God is working through leaders and evangelists and people at the church and relationships.

And so how are we doing with the, um, extension of God's sovereignty that's been entrusted to us? How are we stewarding our gifts? How are we stewarding our gatherings? Um, I think that's important too. Every church gathering does have an attractive, attractional element to it. I mean, if your church excels at like good music, you will probably attract people who appreciate that. I mean, if you, if you're, if you're, if your worship was not in the kind of soft rock genre, like 98% of white evangelicalism,

but it was in more of a, let's just say the more reggae genre or maybe hip hop genre, like 98% of white evangelicalism, but it was in more of a, let's just say the more reggae genre or maybe hip hop genre. Like the genre of worship music is going to attract people that enjoy resonate with that kind of genre. Like if you had a reggae styled, like tone to your worship, you're probably not going to have a lot of like 80 year old ladies, white ladies with gray hair. Like I doubt, prove me wrong, do it for five years and see who ends up coming to your church. And that's not like, wow, we happen to have, you know, a bunch of people, the dreads showing up at our church. Like, well, yeah, you're, you're, you do things to, to attract a certain kind of person. And so, I'm going to argue, no, I'm not arguing, I'm just going to point out that ethnically dominated churches, whatever that

is, do tend to do things that reflect that ethnicity. And if they don't diversify that, ethnicity, and if they don't diversify that, they will tend to attract that dominant ethnicity because our ethnicity does create a certain kind of cultural way of being in the world. And if we don't reflect on that, that will tend to attract a more monochromatic, mono-ethnic church. And some churches are like, fine. They're like, I don't care. This is what we like to do. And that's what we like to do. I don't care. Great. Whatever. But like, don't be shocked when your church tends to attract the same kind of people. Um, if you have a church that doesn't have a youth group, you'll probably end up with not a lot of youth. I mean, I don't, hopefully this isn't too debated. So yeah, all that to say, I don't think

it's simply God will bring who he wants. I do think there are ways and rhythms in which we do do church that will attract people that like those ways and rhythms. So a church that does things kind of one way all the time will attract people that want that. If you have diversity in music and thought and preaching and tone and leadership and all these things, then you will probably, depending on the neighborhood you're in, attract people that reflect that kind of diversity. I'd be curious. I would challenge any leader to do this, to do somehow get into the hands of your entire congregation to the best of your ability, some kind of anonymous survey, anonymous survey has to be anonymous to say, what are some things you would love to hear addressed at church? What are some topics that you're wrestling with theological or cultural topics that you're wrestling with? Theological or cultural topics that you're wrestling with? Are there certain viewpoints that you would like to see presented? Or I would just go back to the first one.

What are some topics that you would like to see addressed biblically, graciously by the leadership of the church? And just see what comes up and have them ranked. You can do that through MailChimp or whatever, MailChimp or no, SurveyMonkey or SurveyChimp or MailMonkey or whatever it is. I just did one recently and it's cool. Like you, you can ask these questions and, and they get rated. So you can see what are the top rated things that your congregation wants to see the church address. And if it is the timing of the rapture and whatever, then, then, okay. Um, I would be, I don't know your church.

I'm going to guess that something like, well, I'm just looking at your list here. Race, sexuality. I don't know if disability would come up. Maybe it would. Treatment of women depends on, it depends. Maybe that might come up. You could even, because sometimes even if you do an anonymous survey, people get in churchy mode. So they don't even think they can put like race or sexuality. But what if you list, what if you listed 20 topics and race and sexuality, treatment of women, disability, we're all on that list along with, you know, like how to have a, a better reading plan, um, how to, uh, save for retirement. I don't know. I'm just making, I'm making stuff up. Like, well, what are the, what are the things that the church does

really good at addressing frequently and put some of those on there? Like, okay, what are the, what are the things that the church does really good at addressing frequently and put some of those on there? Like, okay, here's what we kind of frequently come back to, you know, in our, in our preaching and teaching and discipleship. So put a few of those on there to see if the very things that the leaders are consistently addressing, if that's something that congregation feels like they need more of, and then, you know, um, mix in some of these other maybe hot topics that the church doesn't always like to address

and see if those get voted on more or less. And if they don't, then they don't. So from my perspective, I still, there's certain things I think people do need to wrestle with, even if they don't even think they need to wrestle with it. So that still wouldn't exclude, that still wouldn't, to my mind, say we shouldn't address these things. But yeah, I'd be curious. What does the congregation want the church to wrestle with?

Next question, Austin, how did you know it was time to return to higher education? I'm graduating in three weeks with my master's degree in ministry leadership. I'm convinced that I don't ever need to return, but I would love to hear your journey. So my Austin, my journey is, I think a little different, a little unique. So don't take my journey as like, this is what every journey needs to look like. So I get saved at 19, fell in love with studying. Like it was an addiction to me. Couldn't stop learning, learning, couldn't stop studying to put this in perspective, a couple of years later, I spent a semester in Israel in fall of 1999. And just, that might've been the height of my addiction to studying. I just couldn't stop studying. I just couldn't stop. Here's an example. So final exams,

stop. Here's an example. So final exams, and this is my last semester in college. We took our final exams. I study all morning, all night, all day for final exams. Probably studied three times as much as anybody else. Cause I didn't want to just, um, get a good grade. I wanted to know, know the material backwards and forwards, you know, up and down inside and out. The second I finish in the library, finished a final exam, I submit it and I walk over to the bookshelf in the library and grab a Greek textbook and start studying to get ahead. Cause I was planning on going to seminary the next semester and, um, take like a Greek class and a Greek, a second year Greek. I'd already had a year of Greek, but it was like a year ago. So I wanted to refresh my Greek. So literally seconds, like 30 seconds

after I turned in my final exam, exhausted, most people were like exhausted from studying. I need a break. I went over and started preparing for seminary, which was going to happen in like the next, like in four weeks or something like that. When I was playing baseball at master's college, it was called master's college back then. It's master's university. Now I would literally, and baseball's, you know, you guys know, I, I love baseball. I mean, it was, it was my God for many years. Um, when I was playing baseball at master's, I would keep, keep Greek vocab cards in my baseball mitt so that when I'm in the outfield shagging fly balls in between swings, I would look at a card, memorize a couple of Greek words and then put them back into my glove or my back pocket or whatever. And that's what I would do.

I built a secret little table in the back of the master's college library where nobody can find me. I think I would sneak coffee back there. You're not supposed to, you weren't supposed to have coffee, but it's sneaking in a mug and sneak it back to her. I had this little makeshift table out of bookcases or something. And I would go there because I didn't want to be disturbed. Cause I wanted to memorize the theme of Amos and Jeremiah and, you know, during the old Testament survey class or whatever. Like, so that, that's, that's weird, dude. Like that was, that was, I was, that was too much. Um, so for me, when I graduated college, it was like,

I couldn't wait to go to seminary when I graduated seminary. I couldn't wait to go to my PhD. I would say at the end of my PhD, I was like, okay, I am, I'm what, 31, 29, however old I was. I'm like, could I keep studying? Yeah. But should I start pouring out a little bit and teaching? I'm like, yeah, I know I was starting to, I was starting to get hungry for working with college students and stuff and, you know, actually passing on all this information that I was learning. So, so yeah, so I was, I was excited about that, but all that to say, to answer your question, don't, if you feel done after a master's degree in leadership, then, then be done, be done. If you feel the urge to go on and do another degree, maybe later than,

then that'd be great too. I'm always, if someone has the urge, the financial means and the skills, um, not even skills, but maybe, maybe just the passion for more education, I will always say, sure, get more. I admire people that have two PhDs or have a postdoc or have done even beyond a PhD. I mean, some people shouldn't. If they're just eggheads that don't care about people and it's just kind of like a, like a, um, an escape from life or something just to keep your head in the books and then die someday. Like, yeah, then that's probably unhealthy. But like, if you have good reasons for pursuing more education, then great do it. Um, but man, you got a master's degree ready for ministry,

then don't feel guilty for not doing more is I guess my very long answer to a short question. Next question, Danny. Uh, there was a really fun question last month about the time travel to see Jesus. I don't know if I would address that on the public podcast, but yeah, that came up in last month's Patreon questions. Um, this made me wonder that if you had a chance to ask Jesus questions, what would you ask him? Uh, no chance of altering timelines or anything. Just what about, what questions would you prioritize? Maybe your top three. Okay. This one was hard, man. So I don't know if these are my hands down top three, but these are three that immediately came to my mind. Number one, I would ask Jesus

something about the problem of evil and universalism. I would love some kind of divine response about, you know, if God is God, if he's also good, why is there so much suffering and evil in the world? To me, and it's like, well, everything works out in the end. I'm like, well, not for the overwhelming majority who go to hell, according to most paradigms. So to me, the only theological response that really makes some sense and create some resolution is universalism.

So I would love to know from Jesus, like, are you a universalist? If not, how would you help me work through the problem of evil in a way that makes sense? And if he's like, you know what? I'm God. You're not. Just too hard to explain. You're not going to get it. I if he's like, ah, you know what? I'm God. You're not just, ah, just too, too hard to explain. You're not going to get it. I'm like, okay, okay, cool. Like I'll, I'll still trust this. My trust of you isn't on the line here. It's just, it's,

you know, would help me a few days of the week to, uh, have a, a satisfactory answer to this. That'd be number one. Number two, if you want to be in relationship with everybody and have the power to be in relationship with everybody, why don't you just do it? It would be another, I wouldn't ask it that way. I would ask it hopefully in a more humble way, but why don't you peel back the curtains of heaven and tell everybody I'm here. Look, look, I would look up here. Maybe stop for a second. Look up here. I'm here. You know, I'm big head peeking out of the clouds or whatever. Like I'm here. You want a lightning bolt here. I'm here. You know, I'm big head peeking out of the clouds or whatever. Like I'm here. You want a lightning bolt here? I'll throw a lightning bolt, hit a tree or something just so you know, I'm not, you're not dreaming or something like here I am that Bible down there. Y'all have

a copy of it. Read it. It's true. Believe it. Follow me. See you in a few weeks or, you know, why isn't there more? And I know the theological response is God speaks to us through the trees. What are you talking about? And rocks are there for his glory. I'm like, I don't, I kind of agree with that, but I don't know. A nice, big, loud audible from heaven. I think it'd do a lot of work.

I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong, but why, why not that? And number three, I would love for Jesus to explain the time in his earthly life when he was most sexually tempted. Tell me about the time when you're looking at another person and the desire with the temptation was just getting so overwhelming, but man, you didn't get in. so overwhelming, but man, you didn't get in. Hebrew says Jesus was tempted in all ways we are. How many of you, show of hands, are sexually tempted?

Okay, good. That means Jesus was too. What was that like, Jesus? And how did you overcome it? Very question makes some of you nervous. Made me nervous right now. I'm like, I don't know this is going to go over well, but if Hebrews is true, then Jesus faced sexual temptation. So I want to know what was the most intense time, your most intense temptation would love to hear him walk me through how, what that was like and how he overcame it. Uh, Maddie, uh, would you be

able to unpack more of the conversation about resurrection versus modern day going to heaven, the modern day going to heaven conversation you had with N.T. Wright? Can you explain the contrast between them and what scripture says? Yeah. So in short, um, so yeah, well, scripturally speaking, both N.T. Wright and I understand scripture to say that when humans die, they go to what's called an intermediate state. Believers go to, it's called various things in Luke 16, it's called Abraham's bosom. In Philippians 1, it's to be with Christ. In other passages, Philippians one, it's to be with Christ in other passages. It might say going to heaven to be with Jesus, you know, um, and unbelievers go to a place called Hades. Uh, Luke 16 also mentions Hades.

Uh, old Testament calls it Sheol. Sheol's a little tricky. It's kind of could be a temporary state for all people with different, different like dorm rooms or whatever. Um, or it could be just for the wicked, but then sometimes righteous people go there. So it's a little tricky. But yeah, that's the intermediate state. And then whether your soul is asleep or alive, that's where you are.

And then when Jesus returns, he raises the dead, gives them new bodies to face judgment. Believers go into a place called the new heavens and the earth, the new creation. And unbelievers are, that's when they go to hell. And N.T. Wright, you know, has some interesting views on what that place is. But all that to say, the whole going to heaven when you die is part of the story.

It never really occupies a major part of the story. But his whole point and my whole point, and not me and him, but like most biblical scholars would say that's, that's not, that's not the ultimate goal. Like when we talk as if, well,

if you believe in Jesus, then you'll go to heaven when you die, period. It's like, well, that, and that's like, that's like when I go to Disneyland,

I'm going to jump in line and get a churro. Well, then what? Like, that's kind of like, and for what? Like, what's the, what's like when I go to Disneyland, I'm going to jump in line and get a churro. Well, then what? Like, that's kind of like, and for what? Like, what's the, what's the end goal? Because you want to swirl around the Matterhorn, right? And throw up your churro. But, but that, that's the common way people talk, right?

If you do this or don't do that, then you go to Jesus when you'll, you'll be with heaven when you die. You'll go to heaven when you die. Confess your sins and you go to heaven when you die. Like, like we, we, we state the middle part of the story as if it's the final part. And we, we miss out on this grand, all pervasive doctrine called the resurrection, which permeates the fabric of every letter in the entire new Testament. Huge, right? So, um, huge, right? So, um, that's our biggest point is that we, um, is that we have taken, we've kind of just given a really distorted picture of the story of salvation. When we make going to heaven, when you die, kind of the end point, the end goal, we need to talk in terms of a renewal of

creation, uh, revelation 21, 22, the new heavens and new earth. We need to talk about the groaning of creation that's redeemed in Romans 8. We need to look at Genesis 1 and 2 and say, how is this resolved? Genesis 3 really screwed up Genesis 1 and 2. And if we just escape to heaven when we die, then it's a God-like aborted mission. Like this whole beautiful creation he created, it's like, well, that didn't work out right. I guess we're going to do, you know, hit, eject and do an escape plan up to heaven because this whole creation thing didn't work out. So yeah, we want to get back to a more robust creational theology that begins in Genesis one and two ends in Revelation 21 and 22. And yes, there is a place for going to heaven when you die, but that's a temporary part of

the much greater story. Caroline, do you think you would ever host two conferences in a year? Uh, maybe at one, at some point, Caroline, I've, I've had a lot of churches request to host a exiles in Babylon conference around the country. Um, so those requests are there, um, which is really encouraging, but we really do want to do it in Boise. Um, it was, there were so many times in prepper and prepping for the conference that having the church right down the street from our house, well, 10 minutes away from our house was so convenient. And oftentimes it's kind of hard to explain, but there were so many moments in six months leading up to the conference where my wife and I looked at each other and kind of chuckled saying, can you imagine doing this in a different city? That would have been a nightmare.

So not opposed to doing it in another city, but for now we want to do it in Boise. And, uh, can we do two conferences a year in Boise? I mean, I think it'd be awesome, but again, it took so much work and I don't know if you guys know, I'm theology in a raw is a small part of my work week. Like basically Tuesdays I've devoted to theology and Rob podcast. The conference took more time than that, but still I was like, I do have a full-time day job. I'm, you know, running the center for face, sexual and gender. I'm also doing other writing projects and stuff. So pulling off a conference took a ton of work, a lot of work. Even now, Caroline, we're, we're, um, we're planning next year's conference. We're, we're, um, yeah, uh, we're actually, I think I've mentioned this before. We're doing, um, uh,

four sessions. So, um, the first night we're doing a future, the future of the church. I've got some killer invites. I'm not going to name speakers because I still haven't gotten like contracts out, but I'm really excited about the people coming out. We're going to do a few, the future of the church. Then we're doing the next day, the disability in the church, which is a huge topic that we absolutely need to talk about more than we do. We're doing another race conversation. And then we're doing, I'm planning, don't hold me to this because it's, I need to make sure I get the right speakers lined up, but I want to do two different Christian approaches to the problem of evil and suffering. I do have one speaker nailed down.

You might know who it is, but I'm not going to say his name because the contract isn't in hand. But yeah, I like the idea of that Saturday morning doing kind of a theological dialogical debate. I loved our conversation on hell last year. I thought about doing like women in the church. We might do that the following year, but I really, this is one that I think everybody wrestles with, but sometimes we don't realize we're wrestling with it, the problem of evil and suffering. So yeah, super stoked about next year, but even honestly right now, I can't imagine planning one for the fall and for the spring. That, wow, that'd be a lot of work. So as much as I had the time of my life, and I know a lot of you all did too at the conference,

so two a year on paper looks amazing, but it'd be too much right now. We couldn't do it. So yeah, at least for the next two or three years, we'll do at least, I mean, just one a year, but maybe in the future we could expand it out. Last question, Davis, where's the line between holding the church accountable for past actions and calling those things out like the rise and fall of Mars Hill and the new Hillsong documentary and disgracing

the bride of Christ. I have to watch the Hillsong. Oh, I have yet to watch the Hillsong documentary and I'm not sure I should. I like validating, listening to people who have been hurt by the church, but I'm not sure where the line between validation for victims and tearing down Christ's bride is. This, this is another, David's great question. I've been wrestling with this. This would be another topic of debate. In fact, I've even thought about, I don't know if we'll do it this year. I've kind of planned another things, but at the conference, I've even thought about, I don't know if we'll do it this year. I've kind of planned another things, but at the conference, I think it'd be really cool to have kind of two different approaches to your question.

Cause I don't know if you remember, I don't know if you're at the Theology of the Rock conference, but John Tyson said he did not like the rise and fall of Mars Hill. He is, he does not, he thinks this is kind of failure porn is, you know, the phrase that a lot of people have used. And so he would be on that side of things. I would love to get like Tyson and Mike Cosper, the host of Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, in a dialogue together. In fact, maybe I could do that on the podcast, actually. That would be really cool.

Thanks for that idea that you implicitly planted in my mind. I'm going to do that. I'm going to write that down. That would be a great conversation. Um, uh, I don't know. I, okay. Here, just in all transparency and honesty, when I listened to the rise and fall Marcelle last summer, when everybody was, um, I thought it was well done. I was nervous going in. I was like, ah, it's just, is this just going to be low hanging fruit? was like, ah, it's just, is this just going to be low hanging fruit? You know, Driscoll's arrogant and abuse power. It's like,

yeah, two plus two equals four. Like we kind of know that, like, do we need to, and it's just going to be one side aches. I'm like every, there's always another side to stuff. Um, people are itching for, to call out, you know, especially like male leaders who have been kind of abused their power like that. I think people are just clamoring for to expose that probably some legitimately because people have been hurt by that. So I get the motivation, but part of me is like, I don't know, it's just, it's one-sided, handpick all the horrible things that he said and did or whatever. And I didn't get that at all. I really felt like it was done well.

I thought the journalism was fair. I feel like they did portray the compellingness of Mark's, I don't know him personally, so Driscoll's voice. Like when I used to listen to him preach I'm like back in the early 2000s I'm like man yeah he was very compelling and there's a lot of good that he did in fact I I've got a friend of mine can't say I won't say their names but they're fairly high profile um and they tell me some of the amazing things that Mark did for them personally. And they had a hard time with Rise and Fall of Marcellus.

Well, you didn't see how he walked us through some of the most excruciating, like some of the most difficult circumstances we will ever face in life. And he was so gracious, so giving, so loving and walked us through that. Like we need to be able to, like we, that, that needs to be told to not to excuse the bad things people do. But if all we do is highlight the bad people, we do give a warped narrative of, of the person. All that to say, I, me personally, I wasn't involved in Mars Hill. I don't know. I never met Mark or I know some people that were some some people that were pretty high up in the movement. And I feel like it was pretty accurate.

And when I talked to Mike Hosmer on the podcast, he seemed like a wonderful, I had a wonderful talk with him. So I am typically more on the side of, no, where the where there's, where the church does bad things, let's call it out. Let's expose it. Let's do so fair. Let's not give a one-sided picture. Let's not assume every allegation is accurate. You know, um, let's not retweet something that comes out without doing our own fact checking. Like let, let's not be so eager to expose stuff that may or may not be true, but where it is shown to be true, then let's expose it. I mean, if the church does, here's the thing, if the church doesn't expose it, the world will. And when the world

looks on seeing non-Christians exposing it, Christians ignoring it, that's not good either. Like that hurts our reputation. Could the church get overzealous at exposing this and exposing that and exposing this and exposing that and you make your whole, you know, raison d'etre, you know, the reason for existence, just exposing the abuses of the church. And yeah, that's hopefully have more to do with the gifts and callings that God's given us. And I do think we have to be nervous with, you know, people do love these stories. And, you know, if you're a journalist or a public figure and you kind of all you're doing is always exposing the underbelly of the church. Like I would question whether that's because if all you do is expose the underbelly, then again, that does build a narrative. I mean, if you followed me around all

day with a hot mic to my brain, and all you did is retell all the negative, twisted, dirty, dark, mean, angry thoughts that I had throughout the day, you would create a horrible person. Even if all of those things are individually true, when that's all you report on, you implicitly build a narrative that gives a warped perspective on who the person actually is, totally speaking. So yeah, I am nervous about that. So I don't know. I don't know. Is it failure, porn? People just go, they just can't get enough. I've seen, you know, the dark side of the church. I don't know. I mean, yeah, it could be, I guess it could be. I don't think it intrinsically is. I don't think the rise and fall of Mars Hill is intrinsically failure porn. Even if some people listen to it, lurching for that kind of satisfaction, maybe they've been wounded

so many times over. So to hear somebody being exposed was kind of like, ah, finally, you know, justice is done. There could be some kind of healing effect of that, which may or may not be healthy to have a podcast be the source of healing for your trauma or whatever. But, um, yeah, I haven't seen the Hill song documentary probably won't like I'm, I haven't seen the Hillsong documentary. Probably won't. Like I'm, I don't know. I do.

Okay, so here I'll end with this. I do think that hopefully these kind of exposing media outlets, exposing media outlets, hopefully they are being supplemented with a lot of positive stuff too. Is it that we have so many positive messaging out there about the church that they have some, some more, you know, some, some spaces where the underbelly of the church is exposed. Maybe that still is the minority and we have too many Joel Osteen's out there, whatever that need to be offset by rise and fall of Mars Hill.

I don't know if that's even works, but, um, I mean, maybe that's true. I don't know. I don't know. I know for my own heart, I think I do need to keep those. I do need to keep that intention, um, for every, for every big name leader that falls or has an affair, you know, and bezels money. Like I do need to remind myself of 10 other, 20 other, 30 other godly leaders who have been married for 40 years and, or been single for 40 years and, and have been faithful and are super humble and generous. And, and, you know, maybe they're even, I know several like mega church pastors that

are so relational, love their people. And they, you know, the church has grown great. You know, it's got a lot of money. Great. But they, they genuinely want to see people grow closer to Christ and, and radically follow him like genuinely. And they love their kids. The ministry didn't destroy their kids. So I know a lot that that doesn't get the headlines. That's part of the, that's from my view, that's kind of part of the problem is like the kind of basic, simple, daily faithful Christian doesn't make the cover of Christianity

today, right? But these stories do. So just that alone can give a warped picture of the church. So I will end with that. Thank you all for your questions. Thank you to my Patreon supporters for keeping the show going. If you would like to support the show, yes, you do. the show going. If you would like to support the show, um, yes, you do. If you do sign up for patron, you, you can, you can be a person who asks questions that I will either address on patron or

on the live podcast Q and a, um, so that might be some motivation. You get access to some, uh, behind, you know, paywall, um, goods and services from, from theology and Rob, but I really enjoy it when I get, um, you know, the email from somebody saying, hey, thank you for, you know, these extra perks or whatever, but I'm supporting you because I believe in what you're doing and want to keep,

I want to show you in a tangible way that I appreciate Theology in the Raw. So if that's you, you can go to patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw support show for as little as five bucks a month. So if not, that's cool. I'll keep releasing the podcast. So thank you all for, uh, your time and attention. We'll see you

next week on Theology in the Raw. you