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A conversation at the intersection of Christian belief and culture where we aim to find Jesus in the way we think about and respond to our world.
Intro
foreign
[Music] a conversation at the intersection of
Christian faith and culture where we always aim to find Jesus in The Way We react and respond to our world found is
part of the Saddleback family of podcasts my name is Linda Tokar and I'm joined by my friend and co-host Brandon
bathauer we are in the information age aren't we everything is at our fingertips and the
belief behind the information age is if you just know the right stuff well then
you're gonna change you can know that Jesus says love your enemies and so does knowing that make
you love your enemies the conflict or the thing that we run into is that we have been given the
spirit and we are to lean on his power in order to be able to live the life we've been called to live but we often access the spirit for experiences and
like what we were just talking about but then when it comes to actually living Our Lives we fall back on our own strength
and one of Jesus's disciples Peter is such a great example think of how much he knew Walking With Jesus and think of
all the times he saw modeled for him good decisions yeah and think of that
Mountaintop experience that he had in the mountain Transfiguration and yet he
denied Jesus three times yeah so there's something else
hey Brandon well hello Linda and it is not just us at the table today right we
Welcome
have our boss our leader our uh esteemed
Sage Rob Jacobs is also here at the table what do you do with that type of
an injection a steam Sage I'll take boss always sounds so ominous I was gonna go with friend but you know yeah I mean I
like friend yeah you are a friend of the show and a sage
of the show I'll take Sage this sounds cool okay boss sounds I meant it in like the cool way like
that's so boss like The Fawns or something yeah exactly hey sorry well
with that the Gen xers rise up
all right well today we are going to be talking about how we change and grow now there are lots of approaches to making a
change in our lives a lot of theories about how we grow best the web is full of life hacks if you just do these three
simple things they'll revolutionize your life you can be smarter thinner fitter richer happier if you just follow these
steps or learn this new way of doing things now sometimes these life hacks are effective in the short term but
long-term lasting change is way more elusive we find ourselves frustrated seemingly
stuck not able to move toward where we think we want to go or become who we think we want to be and now part of the problem is that we
haven't asked some really important questions things like who do I really want to become what do I want to do and
why do I want to do it together these three comprise what's called a Telos a
picture of the ultimate end I'm aiming at and without a clear tell us we either lose our way completely or we spend a
whole lot of time pursuing things that won't actually take us where we wanted to go now as followers of Jesus are tell us
the thing that we're aiming at is becoming like him like him in character which is often sort of summarized by the
fruit of the spirit in Galatians 5 becoming like Jesus in the way we think that's referred to sometimes as having
the mind of Christ and then becoming like him in the way we love and lived conformed to the likeness of God's son
as Paul describes it in Romans 8. so that's where we're headed and I'm super excited for these episodes we've
been working on them for a while so Brandon that is your statement
thought I'd say it so Brandon why don't you give us an overview of where we're going in this episode and the next
yeah so again what we love doing uh on this episode or on found the podcast is
to triangulate different views so we like to hold different perspectives together that doesn't happen in a lot of
settings when you can kind of look at a Viewpoint see the values of it see the realities of it understand where it came
from but then understand kind of some of the ways that there are some pitfalls or where the ways that it's incomplete and
so man we have seen so much of uh the realities of people wanting to
grow wanting to grow more into the person of Christ within the church but
then just everybody wants to grow and so we've been wrestling with this and saying okay it seems like a lot of people are committed to wanting to grow
but we do kind of come up short in so many ways we don't grow the way we want
to and so it's like hey let's wrestle with some of the different viewpoints around this so we're going to be focusing on three different views
in how we grow the first one we're going to call information equals transformation the second view we're going to call do
the right thing shout out to Spike Lee you remember that yeah that was a movie Yes uh and the third one we're gonna
call power to the people shout out to John Lennon actually look at this musical show yes so information
equals transformation with your first View the second one is do the right thing and the third Viewpoint is power
to the people now the cool thing actually about these views is they kind of build on each
other historically the first information equals transformation really came to life in the enlightenment the second one
do the right thing really showed itself in the Industrial Revolution and the third power to people really showed up
in the social Revolutions of the 20th century now if I just suddenly lost you right there
don't worry no history degree is required to listen to this uh but it just kind of helps us understand how
these things build on on each other we got some good ground to cover now uh you'll see how each of these
viewpoints they kind of interact with each other and that they're not bad in and of themselves uh they are simply
incomplete I think of it like when you take a picture but you focus on the
wrong part of the picture the whole composition kind of gets thrown off the wrong things are in focus and then the
the things you really want to be Central are are out of focus and so what we want
to do is kind of show okay this is where that's a little bit out of focus this is why it's an incomplete picture and then
in the next episode the next installment of this we're going to talk about where we are now historically
what is facing us right now and the decision we have to make as followers of Jesus of really how do we grow
um a way that we think would really be a really helpful way of understanding growth
but for now let's kick off with our very first Viewpoint which is information
equals transformation [Music]
foreign
Information and Transformation
straightforward information equals transformation you can probably guess what this Viewpoint is if you're as if
you're swimming in the water we're all swimming in uh we are in the information age aren't we everything is at our
fingertips and the the belief behind the information age is if you just know the
right stuff if you know the right things if I can just get enough knowledge into
your brain and you can just think rationally enough well then you're gonna change so if you
want to change the answer is reason now think about our school systems this
is how we are all raised it's like sit here for these 13 years and we're going
to have you instill information into you we're going to transfer this information into your mind and hopefully that will
result in good citizens right and people who are able to grow and be good people in the world in
our society will be uplifted this is the heart really of liberal studies so uh again not uh
not a bad picture right but um a bit incomplete we'll get into that
but first where did this idea come from has reason always been the thing we've
held on to as the key to everything or is that kind of developed over time
Rob tell us a story all right well let's let's yeah let's tell a story it's a long story but we'll
The Solution of Choice
try and keep it short I do want to say first that we're we're kind of building on some ideas that I want to give credit
to a couple books one of them is the solution of Choice by Dr James Wilder and Dr Marcus Warner
um and Jim Wilder's books have been super influential to me they're I would recommend them the other is the
connected Life by Dr Todd Hall we just had Dr Hall on uh doable discipleship so
I would recommend that we can find that in the show notes but let's go all the way back to the Dark Ages so in the Dark
Ages the church is always right right the church is the final decider the judge the Arbiter of what's true and
false and so coming out in the early Christian faith there is a connection between
knowing about God and knowing god so they're Inseparable the personal relationship with God is connected to
the Practical outworking of one's faith in Ministry and this was a seamless connection of the two
and intellectual reflection was not pursued wholly for its own sake there was a connection between the experience
and the knowledge we would we would want knowledge to experience
um God we would want knowledge to help us learn to have a greater capacity for God and so the experience and knowledge
of those two things coming together was was a part of the early church and this is what the early church fathers were talking about there was an understanding
of the relation of the soul to God and the progress in Christian Life and so this was an understanding grounded in
the experience of Life as a follower of Jesus so think about the early church fathers
there is a Harmony between faith and reason when when Christianity emerges
from the centuries-old Roman Empire the early Christian Scholars they're faced
with a question at the time and and that question is what do you do with all this secular learning that we see all around
us in this Roman era in this Roman region and this Roman period you have
non-Christian Pagan Greek thinkers that the Romans love Plato Aristotle Cicero
the stoics and so what do you do with that how do you how do you put those together should you put those together
and so what happens is there's two conflicting attitudes that develop
and the first attitude is hey no Harmony keep it away right this is let's protect Christianity by disengaging from the
intellectual traditions of that Pagan Roman society uh the Roman Empire that
birthed these thinkers the Greeks we're going to keep that Tully separate that one of the famous thinkers in this line
of thought was tertilian he said what indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem
what Concord is there between the academy and the church what between
Heretics and Christians away with all the attempts to produce a modeled Christianity of stoic platonic and
dialectical composition he's getting excited we want no curious disputations after possessing Christ Jesus no
Inquisition after enjoying the gospel with our faith we desire no further
belief all right so tertilian is like no there's nothing that can be learned from Plato Aristotle Cicero and these other
guys now the other one was an attempt to harmonize and draw upon them so this
kind of foreshadows and points to the idea that knowledge and wisdom and the virtue of Christianity are all going to
be connected so we wanted Christians want to draw on these people
um and and adapt it in Justin marger in his first apology argues that the traces of truth that
that can be found in Pagan thinkers um and they all have this word called
it's a generative word the logos spermatocus is that how Brandon this was
this came from Brandon was the first to mention this word to me and I thought man this is a scary word I don't know
can we say can we say this on found well the spermi is a is a seed a seed okay
right like a seed of the Lagos and we digress anyways uh so in the one of the
Philo
thinkers in this line I think would be Philo and he used this idea called spoiling the Egyptians so as you think
back to when God instructs Moses the plunder the wealthy Egyptians as they get ready to head out into the desert
and exodus this is an idea that the Christians can take what is a value from the Pagan thinkers and use it for their
own purposes so we want to take it and we can actually use it against them so that the wisdom that we find in
Aristotle Socrates Plato Etc can be an apologetic against them so the rationale
was that we seek wisdom from secular philosophers as a way to use it against them as an apologetic against them
another idea that comes out of this is kind of that philosophy and science become what's known as the handmaids the
theology so that Christians come to adopt the fundamental view of philosophy and science as working for and working
with some of our theology Clement and Augustine are two thinkers
at this time and Clement's arguing that the Greek poets and the philosophers actually prepare a way for the gospel
and so the the thinking is that natural reason that through natural reason God
guides these philosophers toward truth even if it's kind of indirectly done
um you see someone like Clement saying Jewish law and Greek philosophy have been two rivers at whose Confluence
Christianity sprung forth like a new source powerful enough to carry along
with its own Waters those two feeders now Augustine at the time he seized a
deep connection and intertwining between Theology and the spiritual life and and he thinks that the purpose of reason is
to shed light on the truth of the doctrine and to deepen one's relationship and their experiential
knowledge with God so for Augustine to truly understand reason and logic one
must have deep faith and a relationship with God and this is reflected well in
the saying that um we've heard maybe you've heard before Faith seeking understanding sure right so again
putting together a marrying of the two of the the thinkers of the time with Christian Theology and thinking
now the fracture of the two ways of knowing um that happens eventually we get to
this place where there's a split between Theology and spirituality but between
the two ways of knowing so let's let's move to the Middle Ages there's this guy boethius who's kind of
like the first Scholastic who guy who's trying he's trying to draw and join faith and reason together so he compiles
the most significant contributions of history and reason in the Early Middle Ages and is trying to put these things
together and and this is called logica Vitas it's the old logic so he's he's
thinking to master and assimilate this massive body of accumulated knowledge that they've come across coming out of
the Roman Empire so you have the Theology of the early church fathers put together and blended with the wisdom of
classical Antiquity so the early church fathers meet Socrates and Plato right
and so this requires a massive amount of this this knowledge be translated and
systematized like we really start to see the systematizing of knowledge become
this goal that um that we'll see continue move all through uh the as we
move through history so he he says something as as far as you are able join Faith to reason and this
is where you get someone like Thomas Aquinas who comes out of What's called the scholasticism movement he's what's
called a Scholastic these are the guys who are trying to systematize knowledge and so you get Thomas Aquinas and his
massive I mean this thing's huge Summa theologica so let's Jump Ahead a little bit to the
Renaissance so again we remember in the Dark Ages the church is always right and then the
Renaissance you see Copernicus and Galileo they prove that the Earth went around the Sun not vice versa so what's
that mean the church was wrong so the idea that the church could be wrong and not know the truth or not have the whole
truth that idea starts to germinate in the in the minds of many thinkers
okay so now we arrive at the enlightenment so Enlightenment thinking was that
knowledge was viewed as crucial a crucial tool for social progress and
human emancipation Enlightenment thinkers believe that the advancement of knowledge through reason
Science Education these will lead to a more just and equal Society
so the acquisition therefore and the dissemination of knowledge was also seen as a means of Breaking Free from the
constraints of tradition Superstition Dogma any Reliance on God and
subjectivity basically the Enlightenment thinkers are like all the stuff the church always told us was right and was
the only truth Enlightenment thinkers are breaking that and breaking away from that because they want to promote
individual autonomy and rational in their words rational thinking so you get
thinkers like Descartes Locke Hume and Kant and these guys are pushing and
exploring the roles and limits of reason the issue for them is intellectual truth
to them this is Central to their philosophy they wanted to know what is true and how much truth was possible to
know so the enlightenment approach to science says that all things have a natural or scientific cause
and therefore because they all have a natural or scientific cause meaning they have a known cause they can be
controlled to some extent by humans so this is the idea that we might start to think about relegating faith and and
the thinking of the early church fathers to be outside of what the Enlightenment thinkers would call as knowledge and so
what's outside of those parameters of Reeves and is relegated to this inferior
domain that we just call Faith right because it's not provable and so it's
not scientific and that the deeper and more personal ways of knowing involving emotion feelings and intuition that we
see so heavy in the early church fathers play almost no role in The Knowing process in this rationalistic Paradigm
that you see from the Enlightenment thinkers so someone like the cart would say I I now admit nothing that is not
necessarily true I am therefore precisely speaking only a thinking thing
that is a mind understanding or Reason terms whose signification was before
unknown to me I am however a real thing a really existent but what thing the
answer was a thinking thing yeah and on that note like for Descartes
Descartes
this is um his first meditation so he's trying to figure out I'm going to doubt
everything right and then where I'm what what reality is there really and for him
he's saying well okay the only thing that I you know exists right now is me thinking yeah therefore I am a thinking
thing it was later on in kind of a question answer that he said the famous I think therefore I am but this was kind
of the moment in his meditations and you can see the focus his entire existence
was built on his rationalistic thinking it was because of his rationalistic
thinking that he uh he viewed his existence even mattered was because of
that yeah he's a Christian actually but he's just approaching his faith in a way
that it has to be everything has to be un as believed as not being real not
being true and then I will only accept what I can prove sure um and so
you know this this kind of sets up Christianity and and an interesting thing because many people like start to
pull from Descartes as like hey that's that's the way we should approach should approach our thinking about our faith
it's it's only what I can think it's only what can be rationalized Kant would say something like knowledge
is not a means to any practical end but an end in itself and it is that which makes a possible
source of pleasure and hence moral Improvement so again you want to be morally improved it's all about
knowledge John Locke in his essay concerning human understanding says that there's no
universally acknowledged truths okay so again now we're really starting to move away from Christianity right there's no
human there's no universally acknowledged truth humans are born without any innate knowledge and this is
where you get the famous analogy of the tabula Rosa the blank slate right so the mind is blank and it must be filled with
ideas and so we see this now then begin to play out and what we see
The Church
coming after yeah so I mean the church basically jumps in and does this right
we're like yeah we're rational like you were saying a lot of these philosopher these enlightenment philosophers were
Christians um now there were Christians that started to jettison certain realities of
the of the Christian Life as they like again going back to the image they
focused so clearly on one part of the image some of the other parts started getting blurry or left out altogether
um Lynn why don't you walk through a little bit of kind of like how this then shows up in the church today what have
we have we picked up on this well sure so perch always seems to reflect the
culture it's swimming in and so here when knowledge and and learning have become the primary source of of knowing
and changing and growing the pastor becomes a professor I mean he is the
nominated transfer of knowledge and you receive that knowledge and that's
how we think we grow is just by I need to hear the best sermons I need to hear the best teaching and as long as I've
done that then I must be okay I must be on the right path
um the growth of seminaries I mean this is when we begin to see now people who
want to grow they you know now it's like if you want to teach and you want to you want to be
go deeper in this now you're gonna go to Seminary and just fill your mind with knowledge more and more and more because
that's what we're you know that's the highest value yeah you think about the shift from Monastery to Seminary right
Monastery to Seminary
so Monastery knowledge is a major part of that sure but the religious Elites if
you would would go to uh Monastery um the monks would and spend this time
so in scripture practicing Community doing all these pieces you can see that shift where then seminaries become front
and center that's where you go because it's about information right because a monastery involved the disciplines and
it involved you know it it was a whole person experience experiential right whereas when you sit in a class and you
are downloaded some information that's a very different approach and you get a very different result
um we also see this in the denominations and the splits and the denomination because we begin to say okay well this
is what I believe oh well you think something different well then you can't be a part of my my group because this is the truth that
as we understand it and oh you disagree well then you better go you know away
from us because once knowledge is the the bar if you disagree with my interpretation
of what knowledge is then we can't be on the same page anymore so yeah you think about
Sunday School
um how our how we as evangelicals uh have thought
about even like catechism like this raising up of the next generation of Christians
um it can often lean into well go through these classes right um do these information transfer moments
and as long as we can teach you the right Doctrine the right um ideas get the right information into
you then you're going to be set to be a follower of Jesus um I think this was a little bit behind
some of the Sunday School movement sure that the church picked up on again you think about what is that Sunday school
you're basically just taking the school process now there's a lot of Sunday schools that have different approaches but you know you picture a bunch of kids
sitting at desks being taught information as the this is how to
prepare you for the Christian life and that's really buying into this Enlightenment Viewpoint that information
is what creates transformation now let's let's dig into this a little
bit um for you uh as a Christian walking through you may fall into this Viewpoint
by basically entering in saying all right I want I want some meat to chew on
right AKA I need an episode like this found podcast [Laughter]
I want a bunch of thick information and that is how I will change footnotes yes
exactly and and look I've been in that same thing like I want to grow as a Christian
well what I need to do is gain a lot more information I need to expand my my
thinking by just you know buying more books and filling my mind and again not wrong Rob just
looked at me like real sad because I love books we all have a lot of books
yeah so not bad but let's go into the analysis of of this a little bit likes okay so where is this a really helpful
Viewpoint uh and then where are there some pitfalls that can kind of we can
start falling into some problems as we over emphasize information as the way that we grow
Knowledge
Okay so this is not a wrong view that we need
knowledge the Bible talks talks about this in many places I had to narrow it down this very podcast is knowledge
right exactly so second Peter 1 verse 2 says Grace and
peace be yours in abundance through what the knowledge of God and our Lord Jesus Christ it's pretty easy to see it is
tying Grace and peace too how do we how do we get to that space through knowledge if you took that if you just
went there and said well how do I get to know God through knowledge it's right there
and there's a lot of you know you will know the truth and it will set you free
um Luke wrote so that you may know the certainty of the things that you've been taught so knowledge is important
but we have to do more than no we have to do what it is that we've learned
Jesus told a story in Matthew 7 or a parable and we call it
the wise and foolish builders he says therefore anyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into
practice is like a wise man who builds his house on the rock the rain came down the streams Rose the winds blew and beat
against that house but it did not fall because it had its foundation on the Rock but everyone who hears these words
of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on Sand the rain came down the
streams Rose and the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell with a great crash
so the difference between the the wise and foolish Builder is not the presence of the storm
it's not the crisis and the challenges of life it's both hearing and doing what
Jesus has said that is where the power for Life comes from not just knowing it
Power for Life
uh you know as you read that second Peter verse Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God
and of our Lord Jesus Christ what what will happen if we are over influenced by
this Enlightenment Viewpoint is that we will read that word knowledge as do I have cognitive informational
ownership of who God is and of who the Lord Jesus Christ is but shout out to
episode 1 of found you will know the truth and the truth will set you free that is a relational reality sure not
simply a cognitive or rationalistic um environment and so we'll get to that
we're hinting at where we're going next episode but I think it's important to know that even when we say the word
knowledge we have we've bent that word to a rationalistic understanding because of the Enlightenment water that we're
all swimming in and the thing about the knowledge is like it can be it can be measured and so we really you can see
this in in some of our church today it's like how many books have you read how many Bible studies have you done how
many chapters of the Bible did you read today what reading plan are you on it's it's you can metric size the knowledge
of and miss the relationship sure sometimes we get caught on metrics and
what do you know but if we're not living it then it yeah because that Enlightenment philosophy that we just
talked about told us that the ability to reason is what makes us human right instead of you
know being an image of God we're like well it's what we know and so then you get this this like you mentioned Linda
the Seminary start to make they Department lies theology it becomes a department with department heads and
professors and it you just keep separating knowledge out you know a way further and further from the church in
Jesus and everything just becomes a propositional truth in a systematic way of thinking about things and you start
to miss you know that Jesus is like right there with you right um the whole relational constructed yeah
we just we become so problem focused and analytical that we miss like the thing that you know was most important yeah
Problem Focused
we're playing with this image of like the the photograph you know that uh focusing on the wrong thing just to kind
of emphasize what happens when you focus when you over focus on reason and
rationality uh the first bit is like evil the worst thing that can happen is
falsehood or heresy so for a lot of the church I mean you read
centuries worth of work and it was largely about wrestling with certain
heresies which was largely around um yes it's perspective stuff that they're wrestling with but a lot of it
was these um these cognitive ascents to a certain set of logical principles and we're
wrestling with those uh all the while it felt like the heart of the church slowly
was dying actually during that time right I mean and thank goodness for those early church fathers and those
thinkers who were doing so much of the wrestling and that's where Creeds come from but we're not saved by a Creed
right right we're saved by a savior exactly so the further we move away from that the fuzzier the image gets yeah one
of the things as I was thinking through and preparing for this episode you know you mentioned the fact that
Enlightenment thinkers they wanted only what could be confirmed by their five senses
right only what they could observe and sometimes
when we as Believers we think you know like what we've been saying that knowledge increases
Therefore your life changes and so we'll dig and study and Exige the text to death to try to get every ounce of
knowledge out of it and then believe that we've grown but just simply by knowing it but the role of the Holy
Spirit has become ancillary at that point because you can't you know he's not observable that way he's not part of
that but he's not considered a requirement if all you have to do is know then the holy spirit is almost left out
and that trips the Trap that Enlightenment thinking sets for us because we can actually only understand
God's word because of the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit right yes like
what you're saying Linda is basically you can know that Jesus says love your enemies and so does knowing that make
you love your enemies no nope you need the Holy Spirit Paul's
super clear about that simply amassing knowledge doesn't make us mature it doesn't make us grow it makes us smart
but it can also make us prideful or judgmental or critical the other thing that I was thinking
about is that no matter how much scripture we learn there will always be things that fit
into the category of mystery God is eternal he is you know his thoughts are
higher than our thoughts his ways are higher than our ways so there will always be things that we can't
understand but which was must be received by faith or believed by faith the bar for what is true cannot be my
ability to understand it or grasp it with one of my five senses that is just because that is not possible does not
mean it's not true that's so good so all right so we've got
Enlightenment
this Enlightenment and yes sometimes what's helpful is we make a caricature a little bit of the Viewpoint and so you
may be gone obviously that's me obviously I know that there's way more to life than just one of my five cents
uh cognitive Ascent logical proposition one thing just to keep in mind you may
be over influenced by this Viewpoint if if when you really are thinking through
Idol
your growth personally your answer immediately goes to and if
you're just honest with yourself your your answer goes to I just need more content I just need to learn more I
need more information and that that's that's my step forward so if that's the place you normally go you may be over
influenced by this view within this Viewpoint and this is going to sound a little bit strange I think every
Viewpoint creates an idol an idol is a false god a false direction that we lift
up something that is good but we lift it up higher than it ought to be lifted up
I think Truth uh becomes kind of bent in this and we lift it up as the most
important uh rather than the one who is the truth right we can make an idol
actually of the Bible where the Bible becomes Our God rather than the story we
get wrapped in up in and transformed by in our love and connection to God and so
that's where it starts getting out of order because it's I need to know the right things so I'm not going to spend
time with God I'm going to spend time with the Bible and I'm going to learn all this stuff
and by the end of your 20 to 30 minutes a day reading the Bible you've never once said hello to your creator that may
be that you're being over influenced by this view so good and then I would say the last one I think is
um if I I think there's a also kind of a Pharisee in every one of these viewpoints and
Pharisee
uh I think in this Viewpoint the Pharisee is a drive for certainty
that questions that mystery is a bad thing it's something you want to be
hesitant about that when we talk about believing in Jesus that word belief is
not a commitment of our life a faithfulness to it's only do you commit
to this correct list of propositions and if so then you're in otherwise you're
out um I think that's where we can I think that's a place where we start to become over influenced by this View and that
picture all these are good things but that picture starts to get out of focus
Information does not equal transformation
all right there it is information does not equal transformation friends it is a part of
it it is not the whole of it let's move on to the second Viewpoint we are
entitling it do the right thing
[Music] foreign
Do the right thing
do the right thing the way that we're describing this Viewpoint is it's a Viewpoint that moves from it's just
information to making the right decision making the right choice if you can just
make the right decisions and do the right things then your character will
change your heart will change you will become more like Jesus now we see this
really in so many places around us it is all about building that habit if you can
just build this habit get just use that willpower as hard as you can to build that habit in your life no matter what
your character will change uh it's the Nike right just do it get
out there make that right decision and you will be able to do it we we teach about ethics as a well you know yes
knowing the right thing is important but it's about putting it into practice it's do that thing
um Pharisees right they did this of basically like here are your list of rules it's not just about knowing the
right things the Pharisees were like you better do it follow these rules follow these laws follow this way of life
Life hacks
um the internet is filled with life hacks I believe the most searched thing on
YouTube is how to Blink because it's about action it's about doing it's about decision making uh there are lifestyle
apps that are blown up everywhere right now that say instead of scrolling use this thing to help you build these right
habits these right attitudes these right um decisions into your mind you think
about gym memberships what we really pay for in gym membership is the community aspect I don't pay for a gym membership
so I can't say we let's be honest uh but to feel the community atmosphere of
people support and then to have that coach that trainer and what is that trainer doing
Telling You Hear the right decisions to make commit to them do them so that's kind of the Viewpoint I hope
that's clear I don't know if anyone wants to add anything to that kind of cultural reality I think a lot of those
apps help us with something around called accountability yes right so it's it's so important in the doing I have to
have someone or something holding me accountable for the doing yes yep so they so again the Viewpoint here do the
right thing so it's not just about knowing do it now where's this come from what's the
background behind this viewpoint so as we move on from the enlightenment we move it the Enlightenment thinkers
are realizing you know it turns out I know a lot of things and I don't do the right things so there's a disconnect so
you get another uh line of reasoning coming out of the Enlightenment that individual reason and rationality
in making choices and decisions is where we need to start putting our focus and
this sees the cultivation of good habits as being a key component of personal development
so Enlightenment thinkers in this you know moving on start to think that habits can be developed through
individual effort and discipleship discipline becomes very important
philosophers argued whether or not one believed in truth made no difference until one made a choice so free will
choices inhabit these become the central questions as we move into kind of this second wave of the Enlightenment
and so what arises then there must be two paths out out of moral rules because
remember we're trying to escape the the faith only the mystery stuff and we need
you know rational thinking but the thinking's not enough because now we're seeing we need some sort of action
Enlightenment thinkers you know these guys are not eager to have God's moral rules continue to govern their behavior
so they just they kind of create two Escape Routes one is something called determinism and this approach says that
we're creatures of natural laws so that our drives our instincts our passions our affections our chemistry the energy
that flows from us is simply a result of the laws of nature and this would be
someone like Thomas Hobbes who believes that Free Will is an illusion in fact that all human actions are ultimately
determined by prior causes that people do not choose their actions freely they're compelled by their desires or
their aversions that freedom for Hobbes is simply the ability to do what one desires without any external impediments
and this Einstein would fall into this that the laws of quantum physics will determine what will occur later on you
see someone like BF Skinner a psychologist behaviorist who wrote a book called Beyond freedom and dignity
who says that human choices were determined by natural forces beyond their control so these guys the
determinists are like it's all about choice but you don't really even have a choice right right so then the indeterminists
um these are people like Descartes and William James and others and they developed the idea that a free human
will was Central in fact to personal growth and life change that they made
choice and chance the primary forces that shape our Behavior William James
who was in the early American psychologist and philosopher wrote that the greatest revolution of our
generation is the discovery that human beings by changing the inner attitudes
of their mind can change the outer aspects of their lives the cart says
conquer yourself rather than the world so this is where you see choice and
decision become Primary in this line of thinking someone like Thomas Jefferson one of the founders of this new nation
these guys who can literally with their own will and choice Forge a new nation says that government is best sorry that
government is best which governs the least because it's people's discipline and allows people to discipline
themselves he says do you want to know who you are don't ask act action will delineate and
Define you right so again action habit choice will uh Benjamin Franklin said
your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good
ones that's so Ben Franklin moral algebra
Andrew Carnegie so like an industrial think of the man who created the Carnegie steel company in the United
States still later on one becomes one of the richest men in the in America says if you want to be happy set a goal that
commands your thoughts liberates your energy and inspires your hopes he also said all human beings can alter
their lives by altering their attitudes so these this line of thinking that
emerges you see people who believe it is their choices their decisions and their
habits that become the primary means to pursuing their faith and that and that
these guys can shape themselves but not only shape themselves they can shape the world
around them they they have the power to remake themselves and thus remake the world through their habits choices and
The Industrial Revolution
decisions yeah this is like the beauty right of the Industrial Revolution right that you have from the enlightenment a bunch of
philosophers who what do philosophers do they sit around and think uh but then they thought and they said wait a second
we we can actually bring some clarity to this world this very confused world and the industrialists picked up on that and
we're like well we can put this into action so like what if we used what we know about the
air and uh and force and we built a
plane that could fly for the very first time and you know like you can see the excitement that comes with that of like
okay if we know stuff great that's fine again philosophers you guys can all sit around but like we can
do stuff with all the stuff that we know and we can reshape the entire world we can we can do everything here we are
shooting rockets off to space and this is this is awesome like we're doing stuff with our knowledge now
um now this shows up I think in so many ways uh within our church world this
viewpoint that we've adopted I think so much of this that's about decision and choice
and action you may be like yeah that's exactly what transformation is what else would it be because so much the water
we're swimming in right so uh Habit building is a huge and Central piece to
how we think about how we grow as followers of Jesus there's uh what what
we like to call the church church checklist right right of like okay here are the things you're supposed to do you
know show up on the weekend be in the small group show up to the classes do the thing do this thing serve in this
ministry right and if you do the right things well then your character will just like
change right right and in this in this Viewpoint the
pastor ends up being like a life coach right three easy steps to happiness four
easy steps to Joy and it's like they're just like okay if you do these things these four or five things you're gonna
have that thing that you want and so we begin to
we move away from we're not talking about well how is the spirit going to
change you it's just you're going to do this checklist and you're going to be transformed and there's excitement in
that right because I can do it I have power there right it's not the indeterminists or the determinists where
it's just like well I I don't know the Holy Spirit didn't change me so I guess I just have to sit around and hope that someday he will right it's like I can
take the power into my hands and I can do this thing that's so exciting and just by the sheer work of my will
by the end of this I'm gonna be I'm gonna be like a a Christian hero you know I'm gonna be awesome yeah you can
Becoming a Christian Hero
see it happening yeah like it's it's it's it's it's it's visible knowledge is a little less visible right yeah it's
somewhere in there but man habit and decisions you can see the impact of it immediately right
um so it does create that sense of like man I really do have some power here you
Cultural Value
know well and we value culturally like we like to see you know wow that person's really you know they've got a
deep Faith how do I know because they do this they do this they do you know we evaluate People based on what we see
them doing and so we fall into that one of the things when I was researching
the period of time that Rob just sort of described it coincided with a spiritual
Revival called the Second Great Awakening and which emphasized doing good works and perfecting Mankind
through those good works that was kind of what was happening one of the main Ministers of that time was a guy named
Charles Finney and he said that religion is something to do not something to wait for
so he was very committed to social reform including things like Temperance and the abolition of slavery so these
became really important themes during the same time frame kind of parallel to
the history that Rob was just talking about and during these revivals it was interesting because the emphasis on
sanctification by doing was so strong that church membership actually improved
social standing oh they're a committed member of their church and they're doing all these good things that was seen as a
high value because it was it was visible kind of what you were saying a minute ago Rob and religious practice proved
that a person had the values and determination and discipline to succeed in society so church membership became
linked to social Mobility which kind of an amazing thought right well
Protestant Work Ethics
it's the old Protestant work ethic sure out there right that this is a thing that's fed into the prosthetism was this
like you can do this so just grip use that will and put things into into
reality I mean I think about even John Wesley yeah um and methodism this practice of okay
you're gonna get into these smaller groups and you're gonna work through this stuff together and you're going to keep each other accountable and you're
going to do these things and he himself I mean the circuit writer he was the
amount of Miles he logged on his horse going from Community to community to help support that's driven by a mindset
of like there is power in the will to change
character and we have a major part to play there was this also this time in history
also saw the rise of what's called volunteerism so you had the American Bible Society the American Sunday School
Union the American track Society we're gonna spread the biblical message and our moral character and the way to do
things right you know that that was what these groups were committed to was do do and we're
gonna actually organize and do a lot of things and and that is how we're going
to spread the gospel and um the temperance movement as well right right
Holiness Movement
this was a huge thing of uh leading up to Prohibition of 1920s where it's like no no we're gonna we're gonna be holy
the Holiness movement is also what's kind of tied into this is you know don't don't drink don't be part of these
communities because again that's habits that's actions and that is how your character is changed
um now that's a little bit of this reality let's let's kind of look at it a little
bit where where's this Viewpoint obviously this is embedded in a lot of what we do as a church honestly as a
team we have all of these resources to help people build habits of Bible reading and prayer so hopefully there's
some good in this yeah there's great I mean let's talk about this we teach one of the classes every month discover your
purpose too is four habits right you know so there is again habits decision these are these
are good things they're excellent things I mean but I think anybody that's walked
with Jesus for any length of time knows that you can do all the things and not
actually know him I mean I Think Jesus had a conversation with some people that went something like but didn't we do
this and this and this all these things and he's like I never knew you
The End Goal
yes so um you know part of it is in the end goal so the end goal can often be on the
surface I think about Jesus saying uh calling
the Pharisees who were doing everything right right whitewashed tombs which is
really tough I mean if I had a I had to roast somebody to call them whitewash tomb is kind of really clean on the
outside rotten Bones on the inside same thing with the cup right like don't
don't clean the outside of the cup first that's not the part the food goes in like it's the inside of the cup so this
Jesus kind of saying like hey I got a challenge here a little bit like you can clean and have all your actions
on the outside look really good this is a lot of the challenge of the Holiness movement is you could have all the right
rules uh carry out the right actions but man like their hearts were far from me well
and the idea of whitewash tomb tombs were not just icky but they were unclean
Unholy separate from God so to call somebody a whitewashed tomb is saying
more than just like you're a mess on the inside it's saying you're not even part of me like you are separate from me
so it's it's where's the good in this Linda walks through some scripture where there's some good sure I'd love to so
obviously the Bible is clear that we do need to live out our faith like just knowing isn't enough we gotta do it
James 1 22 very well-known verse do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves do
what it says I love that James makes the note that if you only know and do not do
you are deceived you think you're growing you think you are on the right
track but if you're not living it out that's actually a problem and goes back to that verse that uh what Jesus was
sharing before if you build your house on the sand if you're not if you just know it but you're not doing it so
that's clearly like it makes sense that we that these build on each other that you start with knowledge then you move
to okay let's do it right for sure I think you know we we do need to know things we do need to live them out
um but the reality of when we know and even when we try to make the best choices we
can even when we are intentionally attempting to make good choices we don't always do it
and I think one of my favorite passages just because I relate to it so well it comes out of Romans 7.
um I had a pastor that called it the Roman 7 experience and it was just this Paul's writing and I just love this he's
like I do not understand what I do for what I want to do I do not do but what I
hate I do and then he goes on to say you know it's sin living in me and and I just don't
understand but he's basically he's going after this idea that I want to make good choices I know the
right choices to make and we're talking about the Apostle Paul somebody that we would all agree was probably I mean he
was walking with Jesus he was probably pretty mature at his faith he'd gone through a lot of things you would think by the time he's writing this he'd
probably have figured out how to make the right choices he knew the right things he should be making the right choices and after all that time he still
is saying I don't know what the heck is wrong with me I don't I'm not even
making the right choices that I know I need to make and I consistently make the choices that I don't even want to make
so something else is going on and so I just you know this idea that if
you just make the right choices that is a whole lot easier said than done and so you can make what look like the
right choices and your heart can be far from God but you can also intend fully to make the right choices and still not
make them so that's why this is an incomplete view because clearly even somebody like the
Apostle Paul wasn't able to do that consistently and live the kind of life he wanted to live all the time
and we all say Amen because uh I mean I don't know if you've said a New Year's resolution before ever yeah but again
that Viewpoint starts with I have the I have the ability to choose which scripture has that right Joshua 24 15.
choose this day whom you will serve right so we do have choice in the matter we do have decision other people may
disagree with me sorry about that isn't there uh Calvinism yeah yeah yeah sorry
about it but all right who really has the will and the choice here we'll talk offline
but I would say that uh we then tried we
lean into that choice piece right and we say okay I'm going to lose this much weight by whatever I'm gonna build this Habit in and what happens
the difficult thing about the will is I think about it like a uh somebody's
explained this kenba has explained it like a little uh noodle one of those floaty noodles in the pool yeah that you
can stand on for like a little bit right but it's fighting to come back up to the surface and as soon as he let off the
gas the beach ball underwater yes it'll pop up to the surface that's how the willpower works so it's got power it's
definitely got power to change but it's more in a catalytic way like it can be a catalyzing force to do other types of
transformation in our lives but it if you're relying entirely on it you're gonna come up short it never lasts you
know a lot another analogy is like will is like a muscle it's just a certain point you just run out of it there's
it's not an inexhaustible Source that's right
so uh let's summarize this Viewpoint yeah yeah so uh you may be over
influenced by this View um if what is
evil if all that is wrong is bad decisions
um if when you think about all that God is uh seeking to make right
if you boil that down to only sin and sin being the bad thing you did this may
be an over emphasis of this Viewpoint now the bad stuff we do is a part of the
evil and the incompleteness in this world all the ways that God is going to redeem and restore but when we have this
incomplete picture we emphasize that as everything right because what is the
other side of that the other side of that is well I have all the power and the will to make a good decision so if I
don't that is the entirety of everything wrong um as far as that Idol uh that we can
make of this again these are good things that get put out of order and we worship that rather than God I think it's
disciplines um the disciplines of man are you doing your Bible reading are you doing your
praying are you being silent before him are you doing the Sabbath and I helped run the retreat center here at
Saddleback Church and uh we teach the disciplines these are deeply valuable things but if they become God
they are not good Masters right means not ends yes they will destroy you you
will be filled with guilt and Brokenness and shame yes shame and so that can
become an idol when decisions become the center of everything that we do and then finally the the kind of Pharisee part in
this Viewpoint so again you're maybe over kind of over influenced by this View
if you start viewing yourself as your mistakes those few times you made the decision
incorrectly or the often time that you make your decision incorrectly and you walk around and your identity is tied
to those mistakes you've bought into the Viewpoint that all of the weight is on your shoulders
and it is all about the will that you bring and if you're not making good decisions
then you're hopeless and this is not true right this is this is a bad uh this
becomes a bad King over you when um decisions become everything so yeah
do the right thing it's a good thing to actually put these things into practice absolutely but we can create these World
Views where it's all about that action all right Let's uh finally for this episode we're
gonna move on to the very last viewpoint which we're calling power to the people
[Music]
all right power to the people now this is the third Viewpoint we're going to be
working through today and this Viewpoint really came to being I would say over
the the last 50 to 100 years see here's the thing out of
um out of the Enlightenment right we were there then we went into like the Industrial Revolution so we got the
enlightenment philosophers sitting around thinking with their funny little wigs then we go to the Industrial Revolution and you got these like big
Titans of industry and then we thought well then we changed this solved all the
problems we we shaped the world into what we want it to be and then World War One happened
and then World War II happened and we realized we are a mess still and
maybe you've come to the same realization about yourself like I know the things I went to the right classes
and then you know what I did the things and I'm still a mess maybe not as big of
a mess as World War one but you know you're still we're all kind of a bit of a mess inside still and so it was like all right
what do we do with this where do we go with this Viewpoint and this Viewpoint says that's all about relying on a power
bigger than you that you get to the point you go I can't figure this out myself I need to rely on
something that will give me the power to change change myself and change this
world we're going to be talking about people like uh Frederick Nietzsche and
some other thinkers that um that kind of spoke into this viewpoint but if you
think about today this is all about drawing on something outside of me so whether that is my
involvement in the right tribe um the right political tribe or economic
tribe or social tribe I'm going to say this is who I'm identified by sure and when I group into this tribe then I have
this special power that can allow me to change me and change this world it may
be uh there's been this growing kind of focus on psychedelics and this leaning
into well if we can just have these these special experiences that allow us to transcend
ourselves it's like we're getting connected to the universe and so we're relying on something that is bigger than
us we even see this in kind of this Reliance on motivational speaking sure
because just by myself if I get the right knowledge and the right decisions that's all good but I need some extra
power I need some extra oomph to actually make these changes in our lives
um I mean a major one that we've leaned into since the Industrial Revolution is
that we as a society have relied so heavily on technology sure a power that
is outside of us that we can just rely on that will help us over that hill and
then I can experience the change and the growth that I want so I'm going to rely
on this whatever technology is that new app that new capability none of this
episode was written with chat GPT AI help maybe a few quotes were actually
brought up with them I don't know but this is reliance right on some other bigger power
experiences the political movements I can't change me but I can change the
world if I'm a part of this movement and I hold that sign or I say that chant or
I put on that bumper sticker then change will come in me and in this world so
this is a Reliance on a power that is bigger than me because we realize we can't do it ourselves we need something
more we need a little extra gas in the tank where's this come from
how this emerged well as you have you been listening to the episode right we have the Enlightenment thinkers who who focus on
knowledge and then you got another set of thinkers who realize man knowing things didn't fix
anything and so they start to focus on you know the choices and the decisions and willpower and then you start to
realize well I couldn't make all the choices and decisions and willpower that I needed to make and so the line of
thinking comes to this post-enlightenment maybe even post-modernist view that power is the
way that individual agency self-determination political freedom and
often in opposition to the traditional sources of authority become the
preeminent way to to create change this is the will to power the idea that we
have a desire to have the power to create achievement ambition accomplishment and accolades
and so this this post-enlightenment view on power is marked by a deep skepticism toward traditional sources of authority
certainly the Bible would just be out um heightened focus on individual autonomy and freedom that will is the is
only important if it leads to the power to take action and get results
so um Brandon mentioned Nietzsche already this is his idea is this concept of Will To Power
um he saw power as Central the central driving force in human life and he
believed that individuals should seek to overcome oppressive power structures and create their own values wow in his
famous book Thus Spoke zarathista I'm pronouncing that wrong but roll I he
said I teach you the over man man is something that shall be overcome what
have you done to overcome him hmm so he believes in this fundamental Drive
of that all beings have is the will to exert power over their environment
According to Nietzsche the will to power is the fundamental aspect of human
nature it's the driving force behind all our action another thinker in this line
Jean-Jacques Rousseau believes that power should rest in the hands of the people rather than the
ruling Elite so again you see someone who's looking toward political power as being the most important thing
and that true Freedom can only be achieved through direct participation and political decision making
his famous quote freedom is the power to choose our own chains
um so in this view power is what provides choice and that's the way we
can change yeah and then I think about um some postmodern thinkers like uh
Mikhail Foucault and um yeah who would basically say
all right who is the one setting the meta-narrative because whoever sets that is the one that's uh basically setting
reality and so who are the people that are in power that choose what is the big
picture because whoever decides the big picture they're the ones who are kind of setting what things are going to be and
so the goal is you rise up to power yeah do you get through those people deconstruct what's been given to you
what you've believed previously yep and then rise up and kind of flip that
narrative and you get to set that that meta-narrative and so as you can see there's there's a lot there's a
political strain on this but then you also think there are during this time there's also an emergence of a lot of
kind of like spiritual lists you know you saw this revival of Eastern thought
in the west where there's this thought of like you know just rely on the Deep
inner self there's rely on the universe there's this sense of like we can't do it on our own so you can seek after
political power you can seek after spiritual power you can seek after these a community kind of power or this kind
of um you know even some senses of going back to to a kind of pre
-enlightenment uh Community sense of traditions and that type of thing like
I'm going to rely on these different spaces and that is where change is going to come
now it's an interesting thing right when you think about what has happened in the
church in how we've responded to this um I think we started to think about
power this way too we were like okay well we can't we we know the right things okay that
didn't solve it okay we're doing all the right things well that didn't solve it either well what we needed to rely on we
got the best power we got Holy Spirit power we got the power of Revival We Got The Power of of
kind of the the revolution of the Jesus movement in the world so we're gonna
rely on that and then change will come and I think we begin to see that because
there were movements where the emphasis was on these visible demonstrations like do you have the holy spirit's power you
know and how can you demonstrate that because if you can then you're going to be able to change and you're going to be
able to be a change agent um but that got really dangerous right because not everybody has those those
experiences the same way so things like Miracles are speaking in tongues and all these different things those are
evidences of the spirit's power but they are not the only evidence that you have the spirit's power
yeah right so you have on one side you have okay transformation comes in yeah
this kind of charismatic renewal that happened in in many ways um and so much good yeah of course but
again it's showing an emphasis on a certain Viewpoint and so um we're relying on the spirit and so
now it's not so much about my character but it's now the expression of the power of God through me
um in healing in miracles in speaking in tongues in some of these places and then and then you've had something now shift
as well and I think we're all in this water where then there's the power of relying on that special experience with
God and so we have that in our in a weekend service or in a in a worship
Gathering where if the if the music and the this moment this experience can
bring me to a higher plane well then I am now kind of in the space of the power
of God and maybe change will come that way and then and then I would present the
other side of it too so you've got this like kind of corporate Gathering very expressive but then I think we also do
it in more contemplative Spaces by like did you have that special encounter with
God when you were quiet with him when you were doing that discipline did you go to that Retreat and you are now coming down off the mountain and you're
glowing because you now have that special experience with them now those things happen we do have special
experiences in worship with God we do have special experiences when uh when we
are alone with him but when we rely on those moments as the
solution to growth you can probably guess what starts to happen
you begin to seek those experiences as like you need them in order to be able
to grow so if you're not engaged in those experiences if you're not having them then there's nothing to Spur your growth
I mean I often relate to Peter when he was up with Jesus on the Mount of transfiguration and he was like this is
so awesome let's just build booths and stay here like it was the ultimate Mountaintop experience
and yet that was not the thing they had to go back down the mountain and they had to
re-engage in the world and so I think I just relate to that wanting that I used to women's Retreats used to be for me
like those Mountaintop moments disconnect plug in for a weekend you know just do that but that can't be my
source of strength and power all the time because you can't always have that experience
means not ends again like right when when we think about we can become experienced junkies yeah that's a great
descriptor where it's like I just want to go to the next thing and I want to go to the big conference and I want to go to the big experience and I want to be
wowed and I want to be I want to I want to cry I wanna you know I want that
so that I can feel empowered to do my life and it's like that's not what those are for yeah well and we you know it's
funny in all these things we can we are dethroning God when we don't have
a holistic Viewpoint um when we over emphasize these points so what we are often doing is using God
to seek an experience that's what starts to happen in the same way that in the enlightenment view we use God to bring
rational um uh integration to all of our thinking so like God of the gaps we just use God
to kind of fill the Gap so that we have a holistic Viewpoint and in the actions we want to be good people so we'll use
God to become good ethical people in the same way with this we use God to have
these powerful experiences to to kind of use his power to exert more force over our world yeah
and that starts getting real real scary real fast so I guess we're already into the analysis of this but let's uh
let's keep digging into that what is what does Scripture have to say about all of this oh scripture says quite a
bit so in Romans uh
Paul writes about the fact that yes we have an incredible power says that the
spirit of God who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you that is the power that
we have so as followers of Jesus yes we do need a source of power that is why
just knowing is incomplete that is why just doing is incomplete we absolutely
require the spirit's power to do any of the things that we've been talking about to make changes and so the
conflict or the thing that we run into is that we have been given the spirit and we are to lean on his power in order to be able to live the life we've been
called to live but we often fall back we we access the spirit for experiences and
like what we were just talking about but then when it comes to actually living Our Lives we fall back on our own strength and that's what Paul kind of
talked about in Galatians where he's like who has Bewitched you are you so foolish after starting in the spirit are
you now finishing In the Flesh and so I think that with when we're talking about
power and the power to make good choices as followers of Jesus we have the power
that we need but it's the it's the holy spirit's power the problem is that we often end up deflecting and saying well
my power is because of the group I'm a part of my power is actually be part of the church I'm a part of like well I'm
part of this church so that gives me Authority or that gives me power and that's like we're we're looking at the wrong thing we have the Holy Spirit and
because we have the Holy Spirit we have the power to do what he's called us to do yeah without
um foreshadowing too too much the next episode I I think about the difference between an encounter versus abiding
that's good you know that um we seek the encounters now that would
be a really bad marriage if all you did was like those really special nice dates
and those were the only times you ever met with your spouse uh versus abiding
of like what is the relationship we are truly forming together and you can see how that starts to get really really
skewed because guess who's the center of this power
thing me and God can often become a means to my end
yeah when we were doing the putting this together and you use the phrase leveraging the holy spirit for my memes
and that just that stuck with me because I thought how often I set a goal or I
set a direction that I want to go and then I pray and seek God to get to
the end that I am seeking for myself and so it's just it's an easy trap to
fall into yeah and you know I think about the um they're such good here as you think
about the rollout there's something so beautiful about saying I can't do it on my own I need to rely on something some
someone larger than me like I would rather take somebody today that's
seeking to find some meaning and some purpose and some impact in some tribe or
the universe or whatever I'd rather that person than somebody who's so certain about reason being the thing that's
going to solve all the problems or a complete awareness of I can just I can will this into action
like I'd rather that person who's like I'm incomplete and I need to rely
like so there's such good there but uh you know I think about Jesus when he
talks about he's talking to his disciples um Linda you probably know where this is
um you know where this I shouldn't say probably of course you know where this is uh but Jesus says uh do not Lord
power over each other the way the Gentiles do if you want to become great you must become a servant and I think a
lot of this Viewpoint when over emphasized becomes about me getting to
the top and leading from the top and leading with power and uh influence and I think
over the long run there's some major uh we get very far from Jesus as we do
that and one of Jesus's disciples Peter is such a great example of think of how
much he knew Walking With Jesus and think of you know all the times he saw modeled
for him good decisions yeah and think of that Mountaintop experience that he had
in the mountain Transfiguration and yet he denied Jesus three times yeah so
there's something else at play here which sets us up I think really
beautifully for our next episode coming up yes so you may be you may have listened
through all of this and you're saying okay all right um this is cool I've gotten three
good pictures uh but they're all a little bit incomplete where do I go now
I'm not saying that we have every answer all figured out but I am telling you that in the next episode uh you will
hear I think a Viewpoint that is deeply rooted in Scripture that I have
experienced and I think we can all say around this table we have all experienced change in our lives in
Mighty ways as we've entered into this viewpoint on growth and change so
uh until then uh let's let's rely let's let's look again at our viewpoints and
as we're wanting to change I I'm hoping that you can realize there's value in what we know sure um you're listening to
this podcast because you value information and you're thinking I want to think differently about things my
perspective on the world matters and that is so true and then I we do want to
say there's more and so if you say oh okay then what I want to do is out of this
episode I want to really start wrestling with what are my viewpoints and how am I acting them out and can I act them out
differently well then you're falling into the second Viewpoint yeah you know what a good choice would be is to
subscribe to the show and then get the next one that would be an excellent decision boom nice nice action step
right there look at how you fit that in that's so nice so okay so so much good there right and then finally I hope we
can all rely more and more on on the power of God to see change come into our
lives um but as we do uh just know we are praying for you and
um we're excited for the next episode that we'll release we won't make you wait too long before we release it uh as
we talk about where we are right now um just a little preview
I think there are a lot of people right now who say I don't want to change anymore because I
don't think I can um and so we're gonna deal with that wrestle with that and then talk about
maybe a different way that we the church can't we the church won't follow in the same
footsteps we have where we just reflect culture right maybe we can help lead
culture in a different way by pointing to something far greater that is a perfect place for us to end
and hey if you'd like the show notes for this episode just go to saddleback.com
found and join our mailing list and we will get those to you right away yeah
there's so many great resources of books and quotes and all the articles that we researched to dive into this we want to
get those to you we can't put all those links in YouTube and podcast stuff there's not enough space so we will email that to you just jump in and uh
and kind of join our community that way friends we love you and we are so grateful that you join us for these
episodes and we just uh we'll be praying for you and we'll see you next time thank you
this is a Saddleback Church podcast