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You’re tired.
Not just physically; though yeah, that too.
You’re tired in your bones. In your soul.
Trying to be a steady husband, an intentional dad, a man of God… but deep down, you feel like you’re falling short. Like you’re carrying more than you know how to hold.
Dad Tired is a podcast for men who are ready to stop pretending and start healing.
Not with self-help tips or religious platitudes, but by anchoring their lives in something (and Someone) stronger.
Hosted by Jerrad Lopes, a husband, dad of four, and fellow struggler, this show is a weekly invitation to find rest for your soul, clarity for your calling, and the courage to lead your family well.
Through honest stories, biblical truth, and deep conversations you’ll be reminded:
You’re not alone. You’re not too far gone. And the man you want to be is only found in Jesus.
This isn’t about trying harder.
It’s about coming home.
Welcome back to another episode of Q and a with Chris. And when I say another episode, I mean the very first episode with q and a with Chris, um, as context here. We just got home from the dad tired retreat. We did a little q and a kind of spontaneous thing at the retreat where we're like, Hey, if you guys have any questions during free time, just come ask them.
And we expected, I don't know, a few dozen guys to show up and every guy pretty much from the retreat showed up almost all 300 and we could not get through all the questions I have here. I had to have them write them down when we left. I'm like, all right, I want to hit the questions we didn't get to, and I won't show them all here, but like.
Lots of questions. That's ridiculous. Lots of questions. Um, so, um, no question is off limits for you as a listener. If you wanna go to dad tire.com/question, you can submit a question anonymously. These questions are for you, but my personal goal is to make Chris Squirm like, I wanna see his face get awkward.
I wanna see his cheeks turn red, be like, oh shoot. Why did you ask me that question? Yeah, Chris has not heard any of these questions ahead of time. Every episode that we do each week where we do these, uh, I will never feed him the questions, he'll just hear them on the spot. Um, I think that's just kind of a fun way to approach this.
So, without further ado, uh, Chris, if you're ready, man, I'm just gonna throw let's some questions at you from every angle. If God is everywhere, how can hell be the absence of God? Okay, so for context for this question, you need to understand an ancient understanding of God's character called the Kenosis.
The kenosis is found in Philippians chapter two, where Paul has encouraged everyone to be united in Christ, if any comfort, if any, tenderness and compassion from being united with Christ and being of one mind in spirit. Uh, and then he goes on to. Quote, what is potentially in one of the fir first and earliest creeds, which says this in Philippians two.
Um. Had the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus, who being in very nature God, we wanna use these phrases, understandings. He was in nature. God did not consider equality with God, something to be grasped or held onto, but instead made himself nothing. That word there, that understanding is the kenosis he emptied himself, made himself nothing, taken the form of a servant.
Then as a servant being found in human likeness, became obedient to death and death on the cross. That whole thing. The kenosis signifies to us that for God to be divine and to maintain all of his attributes really means that he has access to them at all times. But it doesn't mean that he is manifesting or exercising all of those things at all times.
Think about Jesus on earth. Was there things that Jesus didn't know? Yes. But isn't he omniscient? Yes. Jesus says in Mark 12 or 14. I, I, beginning of Luke, beginning of Matthew, it says that Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and learning. Well, hold on. I thought he was omniscient. Does he know everything? How do you grow in wisdom if you know everything?
Because his kenosis limited those things. Think about yourself playing basketball with your 3-year-old at any point. You can wreck that kid in basketball, but because of a relational or a greater mission that you have, you don't exercise all those things at all times. So having access to it is really what we understand with divinity that he doesn't.
Exercise it in every given moment, or that he can limit himself is part of his superiority. Could you imagine a a God who is bound by all of his attributes, that he must use them at all times in all situations. We actually could picture a greater God than that one who is able to limit those things. So if we said that God can't limit himself in space, we'd be saying there's something that God in his omnipotence and omnipresence can't do, which doesn't make a lot of sense.
So Jesus specifically and other places we find out. With the conversation about hell, God can limit himself even though he has access and dominion to be president in all spaces, in all times at the same time, Jesus, when he was in flesh, John one, when he became flesh, s sched and became incarnate. He wasn't everywhere at once, so he has limited himself, but I thought Jesus was God and God is omnipresent.
See, it's the same argument. The ability to limit self is an important part of understanding the character of God. And just to clarify, when we're talking about hell, we're talking about everything where all the attributes of God that will not be there, right? Correct. Like you can maybe describe if that's true.
Okay. God's not gonna, that's one attribute of hell that, that God is not gonna be there. But what does that mean specifically? What will it be like? Well, I, if the understanding that the New Testament gives us that every good and perfect gift comes down from the father or we, we even talked, you talked about this at the retreat job, chapter 38, where God is essentially manifesting all of his beauty and his wonder and his power and creation.
We assume all those things, that those would be there even if God wasn't there. Right. That if God jumped outta the picture, we would still have. A good time. We would still enjoy ourselves. We would still have comfort and peace of mind, and things would be rational and ordered and sustained. Those are all borrowed.
This is what Isaac Newton knew when he wrote Prince Principia Mathematica, which is essentially probably the most important mathematical document ever written. The book, um, that. The reason we can do math and science is because God has ordered and sustained the universe that electrons are the same today as they were yesterday, and things move again at the subatomic letter level.
They're very weird, but I can give you a quiz and say, at what temperature does water boil? Assuming you're at sea level, 212 degrees Fahrenheit, a hundred degrees. Celsius. I can give that to you on a quiz because it's not gonna be different tomorrow. And the random and sustained order of the universe is assumed to do math and science, that the only reason we have to believe that everything's gonna be the same tomorrow is that it was the same yesterday.
And this is actually part of God's character. So if everything was always everywhere, we wouldn't know what really to trust in and how. Right? If the Gods of the Parthenon or the Pantheon are all true, then if tomorrow Zeus is angry, then maybe gravity's a little bit different. And if tomorrow, uh, Hades comes and boils up the foundation of the world, and maybe we, we wouldn't jump in the ocean 'cause maybe it'll be boiling water.
So. The what I mean behind all that is to say every good and perfect gift, including sustainability in nature and comfort, peace of mind, the ability to think rationally, to enjoy a good meal, those are actually all gifts from God meant to woo us towards him. So. Everything that we enjoy is from him. Now, just imagine all of those things being taken away.
So if he is the God of all comfort and all peace, and all joy, and all knowledge, and all sustenance and all providence and, and the satisfaction to our hunger and the soul's greatest desire, if all that's gone, then what you're left with is a uncomfortable discord, a mindless in terms of, um. When it talks about weeping and gnashing of teeth and screaming, and this is what scripture talks about when it talks about hell.
Why? Because everything that we borrow from God, every joy and peace and comfort is no longer there because his presence of God has removed itself. So I think that's how we should understand health through a biblical worldview. And the fact that we talk about fire and brimstone and those things, those are all, um, basically, uh, placeholders for the idea of purification like we find in Isaiah chapter six in the Throne Room of God.
So I. Do I think there's gonna be actual flames and everything in hell? I don't think so. Um, I think it'll be far more about torment than it will about torture. Just what happens to the human mind when everything that it assumes and every peace and joy and comfort is taken away. I just think it'll be torment a lot more than it'll be torturous.
So interesting. I think that's, that's a better understanding of the, the idea of hell. Interesting. Do you have to be baptized in order to get to heaven? No, there's nothing about baptism that saves. I do, however, believe in what we call lordship salvation, which means I. If God tells you to do something and he is Romans 10, nine through 10, your Lord and Savior, then whatever he says goes.
And so when the New Testament makes it very clear right when, when Peter delivers the address at Pentecost and basically tells everyone, uh, Jesus was God, you killed him. Now repentant, be baptized. I think we would all say that repentance is an essential part of the salvation process, and it would be really interesting dialectically or even, um, hermeneutically, that's a fancy word that means in how we interpret scripture to say, um, when the, when the men ask Peter, what must we do in response to these things?
That we would go, well, we gotta take the repentance thing really seriously, but let's forget the second thing he said. He literally combines them with the Kai and the Greek. This is the word, and repent and be baptized. Those are two ideas, one after another, and no one would go, well, baptism will get you in, and repentance isn't necessary in the same way.
We shouldn't go. Repentance is crucial, but baptism isn't really that important. It seems to be extremely important. But we have people even in the New Testament who are unbaptized and we know that they're saved. Namely the thief on the cross. He's nailed up there. He doesn't have a chance to go and, uh, get baptized in the river Jordan.
And yet Jesus says, today you'll be with me in paradise. Are there concessions? For sure. But if you are a believer in Jesus and you haven't been baptized, and the scripture's clear that you ought to be baptized and you say. Thanks. I don't question whether or not baptism can save you. I question, do you really see Jesus as king of your life?
If he makes a decree to be baptized and you say. No, that doesn't really seem like lordship. That's where that word in the Greek comes from. Kurios, which means lord or king. Is he your king? Right? Like imagine a kingdom where a king issues a decree and you take it under advisement. Personally, that's not the way that kingship works.
It's Yes, sir. When he says jump, you say how high on the way up, and that's how we should respond to God's calling to get baptized. Yes sir. As soon as, as soon as I can, I'll do that. And just as a side note, super cool to see. I think we had, uh, about 10 guys. I, I wasn't counting, but there's, there was somewhere around 10 guys that got baptized at our dead tired annual conference this last, um, weekend, which was really, really cool.
Um, is gambling and sports betting and or sports betting sin, um. I don't know how to answer that entirely. I would say the best answer that I would have is what comes outta First Corinthians when it says everything is permissible, but not everything's beneficial. Everything is available to me, but I'll not be mastered by anything.
It's a very similar question, I think in terms of that you would ask about alcohol or um, about, um. Some other vices, potential vices in the Christian life. If your mentality is some is good or more is better, if it's your schema that you're going to use to feed your family and you're gambling with money that is sufficient to take you down.
I think there's a great lack of wisdom there. Gambling is, um, that limbic reward system, that law of diminishing return process is very, very big in gambling. That's why gambling has gamblers anonymous just like sex. Alcoholics Anonymous or Alcoholics Anonymous or drug addicts. So there is a reward cycle in gambling that we have to be very aware of.
Now, here's where I wouldn't go. Um, if you're gonna watch a game on a Sunday, on Sunday night that you otherwise wouldn't care about, I. And you put $3 on it for the chiefs to beat the Ravens or whatever it might be, and you sit down and you watch that game and you have a structured controlled system by which you do that.
For me, it would, it would be really difficult to call that a sin in the same way that would go into a movie I. Be a sin would, would be would paying for entertainment to go see the newest movie that's out in theaters be a sin. So if putting down $3 on a game makes me really interested in it and it's entertaining for me, and I could potentially actually win my money back and some does that.
Different than going and seeing a movie? I don't think so. Once you finish that game and you go, oh, I lost, now I've gotta double down on the next game. Okay, oh shoot, I gotta put a lot more money. And you start that endless regression. I think that's where it becomes dangerous. But I, I think when the New Testament talks about not judging people on things like that, this would be one of those things we, we.
Everything's permissible, but it's not necessarily beneficial. If you have a personal problem with it, don't do it. If you have a personal legalism in your heart, stay away from it. If you gambling is causing your extremely fundamentalist brother next door to to stumble, don't do it. If someone in your family's addicted to gambling and you're doing it in front of them, these are all biblical mandates to refrain from that.
If you have a healthy relationship with it and you're controlled in it and, and you have a process by which you can go about it, I'd have a hard time of saying it is carte blanche sin. So it's a little bit gray, but I would say that's my best answer. In the scriptures we see that God scattered people at the Tower of Babel.
Do you think God cares about, is there any correlation to us trying to colonize Mars or space exploration or do you have any thoughts on what you think God thinks about us exploring? At the universe and specifically trying to colonize planets like Mars. Yeah. The Tower of Babel is not God's anti colonization project.
It is the Bab. The, the people at the Tower of Babel were tr were trying to earn their way to heaven by building themselves up a tower that reached to the heavens. I think it would be bad. I. Exposition and ex of Jesus to think that that is God's anti colonization mandate. There he scatters them and he confuses their languages because in their unity, they were all of one mind that you can reach God by building something tall enough to get there.
And so I think God and His grace and mercy purposefully confused them so they would start such a trivial and futile mission. So I, I don't think. Yeah, you, you, you don't wanna create what's called an anachronism. You the Bible can never mean now what it would've never meant then. And that was not God's anti colonization message and we shouldn't take it as that.
So, second part to that question, you feel like God would be okay with our exploration of sin or exploration of space and potentially. The colonization of other planets. Yeah, I, I'm a big fan of not making the Bible say what it doesn't say. And so if you can't find something that goes against the heart of the law, the spirit of the law, or the letter of the law, then of course I, I think that would be, I.
A gray area of liberty that people could, right? If you think you need to go to Mars because we're gonna find another savior, or that when we find aliens, they're finally gonna fix our world, then you're putting your hope in the wrong thing. But if it's, um, like Isaac Newton, his curiosity was, I want to go figure out what it is.
I think God has made space and planets and the depths of the ocean for us to explore. It's the work of it. It's the. I love how the Old Testament talks about the earth is the, the Lords and everything in it, the earth and all who belong in it. And we can see the wonders of God through the mountains and the rivers and streams and things.
So I think we should explore them and then give glory to God because we have. Hmm. Well said. Um, this might hit the, what we were just talking about, a gambling, but this person asked, is it, uh, are, is smoking a cigar or a cigarette? A sin? Does the Bible talk about that at all? Um, no, it doesn't talk about that.
And I think it goes to the same passage in Corinthians. I dunno if you have your, um, Bible, you can look it up, Jared, but that passage right there of the, um, everything is, um, it's permissible but not beneficial. That's that same thing. Don't be mastered by anything. So I again, that the Bible wouldn't, I mean, Jesus drank at the Last Supper.
Jesus. John two made 180 gallons of wine that the Mastro of ceremony said was the best wine he's ever had. So with that you could go, yeah, but, but, um, cigars, they can hurt your lungs or cigarettes can do those things. For sure. Absolutely. They can. So can alcohol and what it does to brain cells and those different things.
There seems to be a level of permission giving that Jesus gives for things that are done under control in controlled environments and that aren't causing brothers to stumble. I think cigars would be the same thing. If you're smoking a pack of day that's very similar to a slow form of suicide, that's not okay if you're doing it occasionally with buddies or in a family structure, or you have a, uh.
Post Thanksgiving cigar every year with your in-laws more power to you. I think some of those things are available to the Christian without needing to feel any sense of guilt. As long as you have a personal legalism that permits you to do so and that the people around you that your grandma isn't like smoking from sighting and you just like blow it in her face so that she knows that's the wrong heart to have With that, uh, first Corinthians six 12, all things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful.
All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by them. First Corinthians six 12. Yeah, it's a great one to keep in the back of your mind when you're asking questions about is this available to the Christian? That passage is really helpful. Yeah. Um, is it okay for Christians to use profanity and at what point do you walk away or interrupt a conversation that might become profane?
Yeah, unfortunately the Bible is extremely clear on this one. Um, when you talk about, uh, James, when you talk about Ephesians, there seems to be a pretty blanket prohibition for profanity and it, this is how it's put because I think Paul knows how smart we are and how much we try to get around statutes and limitations.
He simply says this. Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouth, but only what is useful for building one another up. That is, um, that's what a dad does when their kids are like, what am I allowed to do in the backyard? And instead of saying, no throwing baseballs at windows, no throwing footballs at windows, no throwing bats at windows.
No, it is like, no father would get caught up in the foolishness of trying to mark everything. And so he says something really, um, carpeted, which is this. Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouth. James says the same thing. How could both blessing and curses flow from the same mouth? That's the same thing as if you said you've got a fresh water stream and a salt water stream flowing from the same source.
These two things cannot be for, how can a fig tree bear olives, or how can olive tree bear figs? So he uses these agrarian concepts. Is for us to understand that if we sit in church on Sunday and say, holy, holy, holy is a Lord God Almighty, but then we're making profane jokes or we're swearing throughout the week, even if it's culturally acceptable, these things are not permissible in the kingdom of God.
So, um, this, and again, this is what James talks about when he says taming the tongue, the tongue is like the a. A bit in the horse horse's mouth that can change the whole person and set the whole world on fire. His whole world on fire. So a, a really simple way of doing it. And there's gonna be 300 things.
Well what about this? What about that? Paul is brilliant. Is it wholesome? Then don't say it. You know, so it's, it's. I think that would be the best answer, and he's really careful with that. The same thing when people go like, well, how far is too far before you're married? How far can I go with my dating relationship before we're married?
What does Paul say? Treat her like a sister. There you go. Right? Like if you do it with your sister, then you know, well I, yeah, you can get too much into that. But that, that's clear for a lot of guys. For a lot of people, that would be very clear. Guess. Yeah. Okay. So that's the boundaries to it. That's a pretty clear boundary there.
Be standard. Chris. Thank you brother. Um, if you are a listener again, you can go to dad tire.com/question. Ask your question anonymously and we will try to tackle it here. We'll do this every week on Fridays. A new episode will drop q and a with Chris. Thank you guys for listening.