Living in Denial - Christian Edition

No, we're not talking politics (at least not in THAT way).

What does it mean to "Deny Oneself"?

Kirk and Sheldon discuss Pseudo-Christianity again, digging into Kirk's recent article.
https://www.kirkdurston.com/blog/pseudochristianity

Connect with Kirk everywhere else!
https://www.instagram.com/kirkdurston
https://www.x.com/kirkdurston

My name is Kirk Durston and I’m a philosopher, scientist, husband, and a legit Christian. On my channel, I explore assumptions and questions pertaining to God, questions about philosophy, questions about science and questions about the meaning of life, which I think about a lot. I hope you’ll join me on that Quest or perhaps you’re already on your quest about these matters and we can explore together.

Creators and Guests

Host

Kirk Durston

Scientist, philosopher, clergyman, outdoorsman, husband to the Queen of Hearts and father to six young adults.

Host

Sheldon Kotyk 🇨🇦

Father and Husband. “Fantastic and terrible in equal measure.” Probably not being serious.

What is Quest with Kirk Durston?

Kirk is a philosopher, scientist, husband, and a legit Christian. His podcast is mostly about exploring assumptions and questions pertaining to God, philosophy, science and life that he ponders about, hence the name Quest with Kirk Durston.

Kirk wants you to join him on that Quest or perhaps you're on your own quest about such matters and you can explore together.

All right, how are you doing, Kirk?

I'm doing well, Sheldon.

It's just a beautiful fall day.

The only thing that I'm not

doing well about is being

inside here when it's so nice out there.

We could just cancel this

and just go outside because

it is a beautiful blue sky, sunny day,

November in Manitoba.

The only problem we have

here is it's windy.

Oh, the wind?

You know, I'm not a fan of a lot of wind.

Yeah, and this is carrying, I think,

some Arctic wind with it.

So it was hoodie and then a rain shell,

windbreaker shell,

when I went to take the dog out today.

Well,

I enjoy landscape photography and

nature photography and wind.

I was out on Sunday

afternoon for a photo walk

and trying to photograph autumn leaf,

the last one hanging off a

branch and waiting for a

lull in the wind because

it's vibrating so fast.

And finally, I did take a few shots,

but I finally gave up after

about twenty minutes.

Did you finally get a shot

at all just as the wind

takes that leaf off?

Yeah, yeah, I did get a few of those.

No, not that.

No, not that.

That would be a rare photo indeed.

Yeah,

that'd be a once in a year when that

leaf lets... The leaf only

lets go of the branch once

in the entire year.

And you have to be there at

that split second.

That's...

I find the best time to

expect that leaf to come

off is right after you finish raking.

Oh, yeah, that's true.

They all seem to like to

hang on until you're done raking,

and then it's okay to let go.

The raker's gone now, boys.

Okay, we can all let go.

Yeah, exactly.

All right.

Well,

we are talking about

pseudo-Christianity again.

Why again?

Why is this important?

Yeah.

well uh first of all I have

just put an article up

online on my website at

kurtursten.com that

addresses this it's I I say

at the beginning of the

article it might be one of

the most important articles

I've ever written in my

life um because there's so

much at stake here your

whole eternal destiny is at

stake the way you live in

this life is at stake

But at the same time,

it's so basic that people,

if they see the title, or if they, oh,

that's pretty basic, I know about this.

But that's just the problem.

People think they know what

it is to be a Christian,

but what they think might

be radically different from

what Jesus actually said.

And he said that there will be many people

who will get a shock of

their life when they stand

before him at the end of history.

And the kind of

characteristics he spoke of these people,

you know, they did this, they did that,

were the kind of things his

followers were doing at the

time within that historical context.

So we're not talking about

somebody who comes to warm

the pew once at Christmas time.

We're talking about people

who were moving or were in

positions of leadership or influence,

but yet there was still

something wrong and he

actually says it right there.

It's not as if we all have to wonder, wow,

Am I one of those random people?

No, there's something he said and it's,

they were in positions of

religious leadership and influence,

but yet they, and I quote,

practiced lawlessness.

And he's not talking about

breaking the criminal code

in your country.

That's not what he's talking about.

When he said lawlessness,

he's talking about living by your own,

what you think is right and wrong,

what you think,

as opposed to what God's standard is.

So you tend to live

according to your culture,

and if your culture is not

living according to God's standard,

that's lawlessness, as Jesus said.

So that was the symptom.

All right.

Well, I want to pull up the article here.

Share it.

The reason I want to pull it

up is I wanted people to see this art.

So the court jester.

Yeah.

So why did you pick that?

Because it's like, oh, what?

Oh, OK.

What's he going for here?

Yeah.

So I did, I did that on purpose.

I thought, no, I like,

I like these old vintage

art paintings and you'll

notice on my website,

every pretty much every

article has something that

I think compliments the article.

And I do think this

compliments the article.

Um,

the thing about a jester is that you

never know who he really is.

Like,

is he putting on the act or is this real?

And a lot of times he's

putting on the act.

I mean,

there's some famous comedians who

were very different in real

life from when they were on the stage.

The other reason I put on

the gesture is the gesture

had a way of making a fool out of you.

uh... as far as he would

dare make a fool of you

know obviously was the king

he had some reserve he had

to exercise some discretion

there but uh... in this

case and I always feel like

I'm a fool if I do

something that was really

stupid or I've been misled

I once got involved in a

scam a few decades ago

and checked out, you know,

all my checking out, looked, hey,

this looks good.

This was,

and then it turned out I lost a

nice little chunk of cash.

So I felt like a fool afterwards.

I'd been misled.

And so this is why I use the

jester as the symbol of

being made a fool of and of

something that you don't

really know is this legit or not.

And so...

Okay, so let me go down a little bit here.

So deconversion,

for those that aren't

familiar with the term,

why don't we get into that

a little bit because that

again is driving a lot of

your research and why

you're pushing this.

Yeah,

like one of the major reasons I've

really been thinking about

this idea of

pseudo-Christianity and

pseudo-conversions is

because of my research into deconversion,

and I've been doing that

over the last five years.

I've read a couple of books on this,

many articles,

but what I really found helpful

was to actually start

reading and listening to or

actually meeting with the

deconverters and hearing

their stories about what

life was like before they

describe their Christian

life and what led to their

abandoning their faith what

it is like now and I still meet

On a semi-regular basis with

various deconverters,

it reaches a point though

where you begin to notice patterns,

you begin to notice

similarities and you see, okay,

I have listened to, heard,

and read so many of these

that I'm beginning to see a

lot of repetition.

And some of that's pretty

scary because there's

patterns that when I look

around at fellow people

that I go to church with,

and I'm just talking generality,

I don't want,

if there's people that

happen to go to my church,

looking over their shoulder and thinking,

oh no, what's Kirk thinking here?

We do have a list of those people.

It's just hidden in the background here.

A membership list and little boxes,

X's and checks.

no that's the hard thing is

you never really know who's

like with the jester you

never really know who's a

real christian or not

although that being said uh

there are people that

really in my mind there's

no doubt that they are true

followers of christ but

there's a lot of people who

I really have if you ask me

are they a real christian I

I couldn't say yes I

couldn't say no I would

never assure them yeah oh

yeah no problem don't worry

about it you're

you're going you have

eternal life I because

there's just not only is

there nothing there but

there's certain symptoms

that the deconverters

exhibited that they're

already exhibiting even if

they haven't abandoned

their faith and that's the

disturbing thing the

symptoms and number one

relates back to what jesus

says it's this idea it's no con it's

Like,

they don't have a conviction of

things that are wrong.

Basically,

there are some things that are wrong,

and there's just no

conviction about this at all.

They just seem to be able to

quite happily do what

culture tells them to do,

even if it's flat out in

contradiction to what God

has designed culture to run on,

the morals, the ethics.

And I find when I'm hearing

somebody that I would say

is stuck in that culture-led Christianity,

I think you've referred to

it in the past as well,

they usually have a need

for people or something to justify it.

Yeah.

So it's like I...

the bible says this but I'm

going to go read these

fifteen books by people

that will allow me to read

the bible in a different

way so I can say that it's

justified but at no time do

they feel like there's a

reason they're going for

that is because there's

probably some guilt yeah I I mean for

You said a couple of things

that I think are really

interesting and important.

Um, the first,

first thing is that there

might be something within

the person where they, well, for example,

I know one, one person who has really,

he hasn't abandoned his faith,

but he has gone totally like, um,

culture led version of Christianity.

But he so happens to be a

person who's a bit of a, well,

not just a bit of,

but I think an affirmation junkie.

He really,

affirmation is something that he,

so he does not want to offend people.

He does not want to,

if there's tension there,

he would rather kind of

work that out somehow.

And when it comes to tension

between what Jesus taught

and what culture would like

Jesus to teach,

which are often two different things,

He has pretty much totally

gone with what culture approves of,

but why did he do that?

He has this need to please people.

I think would be a major one.

We, none of, well, none of us,

but a lot of us don't like

to offend people or to say things like,

like if I'm this election this past week,

if I see my wife was,

I didn't hear anything about an election.

yeah well um maybe I'm

mistaken you know I could

have been mistaken about

something probably another

country yeah it was

literally so my wife's at

this event and there were

some people there who had

very strong very strong

opinions and uh she this is

a time where she just

decided I'm not saying

anything here I mean why

should I throw gasoline on this fire

And I think wisely so.

I think in her case,

it's just there's time to

shut up and just not pour

gas on the fire.

But sometimes if the issue,

and we're talking the most

important one of all,

we're talking about your eternal destiny.

Sometimes if you're going to represent God,

you have to sort of maybe

say things as graciously as

possible that you know some

people are really not going to like.

Other people will be

life-saving for them to hear this,

and that's the other thing

you have to remember.

And you don't know who's who sometimes.

Yeah, that I think is the big thing,

is when you're... Well,

let's just say if you're

not letting the Holy Spirit guide you,

you can run into some serious problems,

because you'll open your

mouth at the wrong time, or the wrong way,

or sometimes both.

Yeah.

It's easy to fall off either

side of the fence.

I mean, for me, I probably have, I mean,

I'm bothered if I let

myself think about it by

all the times I should have

said something and I never did.

And I really regret that.

And I'm probably, I just say, God,

forgive me for my trespasses.

Because I can't even make a

list of them all.

Because...

I'm not even sure I should

have said something, but I think I should,

you know.

And then the other hand, I've had my,

you know, I've said things that, oh man,

like, why did I say that?

And then it caused problems.

I've had to go back and

apologize to people afterwards.

So, you know, I...

Yeah.

Um,

do you ever think back years and have a

memory of it's like, oh,

I should have said this.

Oh yeah.

That's the problem is that I think back,

I remember too many,

I think back into my

childhood as I was a boy, um,

You know, I should have,

I wished I had talked to that,

to my friend.

But as a boy, I was, you know,

in your early teens, you want to be cool.

You know,

you don't want to be talking

about religion.

You know, you're cool.

I mean,

I think the really cool people will

talk about what needs to be talked about,

but I was not a really cool person.

Let's put it that way.

So I just tried to fit in.

And yes, that's the problem.

If I allowed myself to think

back over the years, I

I have a lot of regrets

because I'm a shy person.

I don't like walking up

to... I don't like... I

just want to live in a

cabin in the bush in a

remote wilderness lake and

not have to deal with people,

but I know that would be wrong.

Well,

here you're stuck having to live

stream from...

Yeah, yeah,

and there is something to be said.

I felt I really do need to

be representing God,

as any Christian should,

but we all do it in different ways.

And my way was,

I'm more comfortable talking to,

let's say, a thousand,

being up on a stage talking

to a thousand people,

rather than going up to one

person and say, hey, you know,

have you thought about that?

Just give me the thousand

people and put me on the stage.

That's much more relaxing than...

And, uh,

so that's the way I've mostly done

it for the last few decades

is just talking to large

groups and universities in

North America and Europe.

And that's okay.

Well, let's dig back into this article.

I scrolled down a little bit.

Um,

We talked a few weeks ago

about pseudo-Christianity.

You can go and take a look

at it at the live stream back then.

So I don't want to dig into

those details then,

but we talked about the rich young ruler.

Jesus lets him walk away.

So he said, I obeyed all the rules.

And Jesus said, great,

now give away everything you have.

And he's like, no,

I'm not interested in doing that.

And he was incredibly disheartened or, uh,

Cygnasus.

How do you pronounce that?

Well,

I have fortunately an app that tells

me how to pronounce it,

but I never trust these

apps because that sounds a

little bit computer voice to me, but, um,

Cygnasus.

And it's to be in a state of

intense dismay, be shocked, appalled.

So Jesus said something here.

But basically there's just

one problem and it works

down to you got to deny yourself,

which we will need to unpack a bit more.

But he was, that was not just a,

he couldn't do it.

It was just too close to it.

It was too much of his

identity was tied up.

But deny yourself is the real problem.

Like, what does that mean?

It definitely does not mean

crackers and water for the

rest of your life.

It doesn't mean wearing

black sackcloth for the

rest of your life.

Or it does not mean trying

to first clean up your life and then,

you know, put your faith in Christ.

Cleaning up your life

Here's the analogy that he uses.

It's not an analogy.

It's actually real from God's perspective.

He says, literally, you are dead.

Physically, you're not yet dead,

but the important bit about you,

the spiritual aspect of yourself,

it's dead.

in your trespasses and sin

and if you want to know

what the symptoms are read

the news and all the stuff

going on in the world right

now are symptoms of the

spiritual death and so

basically you're a the

closest illustration we

have nowadays is a zombie

the walking dead now on the

outside we're different

from zombies in the sense

that you still look

reasonably presentable yeah

we won't get a little bit

for people I just tell

people don't look too

closely at my face and just

stay that far away will be

good yeah um but um

reasonably on the outside

we are good but we are

deteriorating the dispute

the spiritual death affects

the physical body and

that's eventually dies and this is why i

don't look as good as

sheldon here because

sheldon younger I'm older

I'm closer to packing it in

so to speak but this is

where the denial comes in

he says you need to take

everything about you

because you're dead he

literally says you were to

the christian true

christian he says you were

formerly dead in your

trespass so you need to

take everything about you it's a corpse

cannot drag it into the real

you need to get rid of it

so physically when you die

we bury that body in a

cemetery or go to a

crematorium because we

don't want the issues that

come with the health and

sanitary issues by having

bodies laying around but we

do have dead souls dead or

spiritually dead people

that fill this world and we

have a lot of issues there but he says

There is a way out.

You need to take everything

that's important to you

because everything that is

important to you is

important within the

context of you being a

spiritually dead person.

You need to take everything,

the most important things, your identity,

your significance, your value.

You need to abandon that.

That's all been tainted and

has arisen out of

this dead inside corpse that

you are carrying around,

that's inside of you.

And instead,

I will give you a new

spiritual birth to a new you.

He literally uses the term

new self later on,

where self is the Greek word anthropos,

and anthropos is the normal

Greek word used for human.

I'll make a new human that

created in the lightness of

God for good works.

And it's one or the other.

You can continue in your

deadness or you can abandon that and say,

sign me up here for this

whole new spiritual life.

I don't want anything to do

with the old nature.

Now, unfortunately,

the symptoms of that dead

spiritual nature, the effects of it,

do continue.

He calls it the...

the old self with its practices.

So we still have to contend

on a daily basis,

am I going to allow this,

the dead practices here or

the old nature to influence me,

this dead nature?

Because when I say me now,

I'm not talking about me as a dead,

spiritually dead person.

I'm talking about a new person.

Or will I live the supernatural life?

But at least I have a choice

now to live by the old way

or live by the new way.

So that's part of the denial.

So I want to just maybe

clarify the difference

between denying oneself or

selling everything you had

because Jesus asked you to

do that and legalism of, well,

Jesus asked this person to do it,

therefore I should do it

too because then I earn my way.

Yep.

Excellent question.

Excellent question, because legalism,

I would go, I mean, maybe it's not,

there is a huge branch of

pseudo-Christianity that is

false Christianity, that they're not

doing all sorts of wild,

crazy stuff that culture's doing.

Quite the contrary,

they've got this list of

rules and regulations and

what you can wear and not

wear and what you can...

They've got this.

But that is, again,

totally not what he's talking about,

this denial.

the people, and here it is, the old self,

let's say the dead self,

we like to have all our I's

dotted and T's crossed and

it gives us a sense of security.

Oh,

if I just do these twenty-five things

here and check these boxes off, I'm in.

that looks simple enough

it's going to be hard you

know some of those twenty

five things I gotta sign

off on but at least I have

eternal life so they think

and this is what the

pharisees did they they

were the poster boys for

legalistic rules the poster

boys yet jesus made it very

clear that in general there

were exceptions with

amongst the pharisees but in general

they would be worse off on

Judgment Day than pretty

much everybody else who's

ever lived because they

were in a position of

spiritual leadership,

but at the same time

spiritually dead and

hypocrites and just totally

not what it takes to deny

yourself and follow Christ.

Does that clarify it?

Because instead of denying themselves,

they were...

really just adding on these

rules and regulations to their old self.

Yeah,

they're affirming some of the

characteristics of the old self.

The old self is the kind of

old self that they like to be,

I like to have everything dotted,

you know, T's crossed,

and then I'll feel good.

Jesus says, no, no, no,

this isn't about that at all.

It's not an accounting

program that you sign up for.

It's not a basic training in

the military that you're signing up for.

In fact,

you're signing up for a whole new life.

A whole new life.

And if you have an addiction,

let's take the serious

worst case problem.

This wouldn't be maybe with the... Well,

okay, so if you have an addiction,

let's say, I don't know,

you're a gambling addiction.

Something that I'm talking about,

not that you think you have an addiction,

but you have a real legit

addiction by the definition

of what addiction is.

And those are... Those are...

enormously difficult to get rid of.

But I know a lot of people,

you can even get rid of

addictions without being a Christian.

It's not like you need that.

But let's say you got an addiction here.

The moment you put your

faith in Christ and

experience that spiritual rebirth,

Sometimes there is what I

call the honeymoon phase

where there's just some

supernatural wow for a whole week here.

I have not had any

temptation whatsoever on that area.

It's like it's no temptation at all.

But then God wants to refine us.

He puts us through the fire.

Then he says, okay,

you've had your week of

protection or your month or

whatever it is.

now you're going to have to

learn to overcome this

there's going to have to be

a victory so what I'm

saying here is that if you

have an addiction I've seen

some people instantaneously

and some of them are my

relatives or I know this

isn't some story I read on

the internet but these are

people I personally

instantaneously that's it

it's just gone but other

people have battled that

for another two years but

They did eventually have

permanent victory in there.

And C.S.

Lewis one time said that

sometimes God is more interested,

rather than handing us

victory on a silver platter,

he's more interested in the

kind of spiritual maturity

that develops over a prolonged battle.

Because he knows that in the end,

you will get victory in this area.

And he will be there.

It's not like you're on your own here.

In fact,

here's a pro tip for a person from me who,

you know, if you ask me, Kirk,

here's a twenty-five list

of sins you got and I want

you to quit them all and

you're not allowed to get help from God.

I would just say, well, forget it, buddy.

I mean,

I could behave myself most of the time,

but what I have found is that the key

The key to living a life

that's good and true,

or at least on that road

where you're going in that direction,

is to simply love God with all your heart,

soul, strength, and mind,

and ask Him to help you

love Him the way He fully meant,

not the way you think He meant,

but the way He actually meant.

And I found when I started

praying that on a daily basis, wow,

it was just so...

There's an extra power there, I think,

and Jesus said that.

If you love me,

you will live in a way that

basically you're doing the right thing.

Yeah,

and sometimes I think the reason that

we aren't instantly healed

or protected from those

addictions or the things

that we've done in the past and, okay,

now that we're a Christian, okay,

Why is it that when we pray that prayer,

it doesn't miraculously

prevent us from ever having

temptation again?

It's because we're... you

said it's the renewing of the mind,

it's not renewed,

it's a renewing of the mind,

and we're never at that

space until we're gone that

we could actually say, okay,

we're complete.

because there's a war going on here.

Yeah, it's a process of maturity,

spiritual maturity, like how,

if I never faced temptation in this life,

like say I was just protected from it,

I don't know.

I mean,

I would say discerning what's true

and right and good as

opposed to what's not.

He says it requires training.

That's in Hebrews,

I think it was the last

part of chapter four or five.

He says, because of, how does it,

because of,

by now you should have your

senses trained to discern good and evil.

But they still weren't at that stage yet.

But God somehow wants us to

become more and more like Him,

to choose freely what's good and right.

And He leaves us in this

temporary world where we

have to make deliberate

choices because we love God.

We love Him.

There's things that I don't

do in marriage because I love my wife.

And it's not just like I

don't chase other women, of course not,

but there's other things

like there was an oil spot

on the garage floor and

it's been there for months

and she bought some kitty

litter for me to put on it

and it sat beside the oil

spot for a couple of months

and just last night or this

morning she said,

when are you planning to

put the kitty litter on the oil spot?

And, you know, my initial response is,

well,

I got so much to do and everything else.

But then, for Pete's sake, man,

we're talking like, thirty seconds here.

So, I thought about this afterwards,

and because I love her.

It's big thirty seconds, Kirk.

It's a huge thirty seconds.

In light of eternity,

it's almost the same.

Well, because I loved her,

I continued to think about her,

and this morning, I thought,

I need to go right out there

right now and put some

kitty litter on that oil spot.

Why?

You know, it'll help clean up the oil spot,

but the real reason is

because I love her.

And anything that I can do

is what I want to do.

And it just,

my relationship with her is close.

And then I came in afterwards and I says,

I went and put the litter

on the oil spot.

And then I actually put the

kitty litter away on its

shelf where it's going to belong.

And we're closer now,

one incremental bit closer.

Not that there was a problem before,

but it's just something you can do.

And it's the same with God.

He often uses the marriage

analogy and love.

That's the greatest command, he says,

to love God with all your heart, soul,

strength, and mind.

Okay, well, let's get into...

We talked a little bit about denying.

Now let's get into the

taking up the cross.

Now,

I remember a movie came out a number

of years ago, Da Vinci Code.

It had a, I think it was Da Vinci Code.

It was one of those Dan

Brown movies where it was a...

a certain sect of the

Catholic Church that would

beat themselves and really

hurt themselves.

And they were using this idea,

taking up their cross,

taking up the cross as a

reason they needed to do.

And so I don't see it as

taking up your cross is, okay,

I'm going to physically

subject myself to pain.

There's that legalism again.

Yeah, no.

And people have different ideas on that.

For years I've heard people, let's say,

they didn't get the job

that they were applying for.

And they'll say, oh,

that's part of carrying my

cross in this life.

Not really.

That's not really what it means.

And it's like we literally

have an explanation of what

taking up your cross meant

in that culture.

Because when we read the gospel accounts,

one of them talks about, we're told,

where Jesus had to carry

the cross piece to his place of execution,

but he was so

done.

He couldn't even do that and

they pressed somebody else into doing it.

But what that tells us is that sometimes,

at least,

condemned criminals would have

to carry this cross piece

to the place of execution.

And so what's he talking about?

What's that got to do with me?

And on your way to the execution,

I've thought about this for years,

and I might not have the final word,

so take it for what it's worth,

but I'm thinking about that.

I've thought about it for years,

and what if I was carrying,

what if it was me?

What if I'm carrying my cross piece?

Well, I realize that you're going to die.

You're going to be crucified

in a few minutes, or maybe fifteen.

And then you're going to

hang there and you're going

to die a terrible death.

So I am not,

what it means is that I'm not

thinking about my next career move.

I'm not thinking about, you know,

the party on the weekend or

nowadays in our culture

there's a lot of things

that we occupy our mind

like for example getting

more followers on social

media so if I'm on my way

to my execution I'm not

thinking about I'm not I'm

certainly not obsessed with

getting more followers on

social media although

I've seen some YouTube influencers,

and I am sure they'll be

doing selfies on the way to

their crucifixion.

I am sure.

Even on the cross, they'd be saying,

can you hand me a cell phone, please?

And they'd be doing a few selfies there.

But basically what it is,

is we don't have to really

guess what it means, because later on,

in these letters that Paul wrote,

under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit,

he actually gives us a kind

of an explanation of what it means.

And what it means is that you,

this old dead self that you now have,

when you've put your faith in Christ,

you've got a whole new self.

He says things like,

here's a little quote here,

we know that our old self

was crucified with him so

that the body of sin might

be brought to nothing,

so that we would no longer

be enslaved to sin.

for one who has died has

been set free from sin.

Now, if we have died with Christ,

we believe that we will

also live with him.

So that's one way of putting it.

Another way, he says,

in reference to your former way of life,

you are to rid yourself of the old self,

which is being corrupted.

That's kind of like, it's rotting,

like the old nature.

You don't change the way you

naturally wear before you

put your faith in Christ.

He doesn't say change the way,

change the old, change the natural self,

the old self.

No, you can't, don't bother.

He says it's getting worse

and worse all the time.

So the things that you would

never think of when you

were twenty-one years old, when you're,

say, fifty-five years old, you could say,

wow, boy, this old self here,

that terrifies me, you know,

because it continues to get

worse and worse.

So he says,

He says,

you're to be renewed in the spirit

of your minds and to put on the new self,

which in the likeness of

God has been created in

righteousness and holiness of truth.

And so it's a constant daily,

and it's not just the

influences of the decaying

old self there, which is not you anymore.

You are a new person.

But there's that, the practices, he says,

there's that there,

but there's also the

influences of our culture,

which is a massive pile of

dead spiritual zombies, massive.

So we somehow are enslaved

to that before that spiritual rebirth.

You have to do what you want to do.

If you're not spiritually reborn,

God says you are a slave

and you've got no choice in

what you do because you do

what you want to do.

And the you there, he says, is dead.

But now you've been released

from that slavery.

You don't have to do those things anymore.

There is this whole new way of living.

And then God,

I think Momoke brings out a

really good point here.

It's not me trying to change my life.

Like, I have tried that.

I'm old enough now to say, yeah,

I've been there.

Tried to do all these things

of my own power.

That is exhausting.

Rather...

I have found when I focus on

just loving God with all my heart, soul,

strength and mind and

literally asking him,

change me however you want, Father,

change me.

Like I pray that at night

before I go to sleep so I

don't waste six or seven or

eight hours of sleep doing

nothing or not becoming

more a better person.

I want God to make me a

better person even then.

So he does the spiritual growth,

this flourishing.

It's like an acorn you plant

and it slowly grows into a

whole new tree.

It's not changing that old dead self.

That is lying there

being corrupted, as he puts it.

It's you as a new living

creature that he's

producing a whole... So,

when people look at you,

they haven't met you for forty years.

Wow, is that guy ever different now?

I mean,

that's the most encouraging thing to me,

is to see the changes that

God makes in people's lives,

whereas this legalistic

thing that the Pharisees

were doing and that you

mentioned earlier on, Sheldon,

that doesn't make change.

It's like...

It's like putting a bandage

over an infected abscess.

Yeah, okay, it looks presentable now,

but if you peel the bandage off,

it makes you want to lose your lunch.

And you can usually smell through it.

I think that when I think of

what it looks like when

somebody's had a genuine

conversion experience,

they've died to self,

and they're renewing their mind,

that's when the fruits of

the Spirit become evident.

And so if you're not seeing

love and joy and peace and

patience and kindness and

gentleness and faithfulness

and self-control in

somebody's life that claims

to be a Christian, yes,

they may be having a bad day.

They may be living in their

carnal ways temporarily,

but if you're looking at

them over a period of time

and they're not showing those fruits,

I would seriously question

whether you should look at

them as a Christian,

somebody who truly follows Jesus,

or somebody who's claiming

to follow Jesus.

Yeah, no, that reminded me of...

When you said, maybe having a bad day,

God says, if anybody says, I don't sin,

God says, you're a liar.

But the difference is,

is that a true spiritually

reborn person will feel bad about it.

They'll be convicted and

they don't want that.

And we have a pretty extreme

example in the Corinthian church there.

Some guy was sleeping with his stepmother.

he was which is bad you're

not supposed to do that

let's make that clear don't

do that even the pagans

don't do that paul says

like even the gentiles they

don't do stuff like that so

what happened though we see

in the second letter we we

see that the fellow when

confronted with this he felt

Total repentance.

Remorse.

I need to stop this.

That's a serious issue.

It's not just like you were

sleeping with your stepmother.

There's got to be other

things inside that need to

be worked through and

confessed and whatever.

And it's not just something.

But anyways, he felt terrible about it.

He confessed that and

repented and he stopped doing that.

And that's the mark,

that's the difference

between a true spiritually

reborn person who does

something wrong and someone

who does something wrong

who's not spiritually reborn.

And here's where we come to

the culture-led version of Christianity.

There's certain things to do with, say,

sexual morality and so

forth in today's culture

that's totally fine, totally accepted.

But in a culture-led version

of Christianity,

instead of being convicted and saying, oh,

this is not right,

the way I'm living or the way I am.

This is not right.

I don't want this.

They turn to God and, God,

I want to live by this new

supernatural way.

That's the way a Christian

would handle this.

whereas the non the

pseudo-christian will try

and instead of instead of

being convicted of what

that is wrong we'll try and

make the wrong right they

will say well that's

actually we'll reinterpret

the scriptures we'll make

this right it'll be okay in

fact um god's fine with

this you know and so that's

the two different ways you

will see it being dealt

with now it's not always a

very clear uh line down the

middle on some issues that um

because there's the

legalistic thing and the

always it rears its head

like an ugly snake because

there will be people saying

well you should never

listen to non-christian

music for example now that

is an example of a

legalistic rule and well I

say I told my kids here's some criteria

Listen to the lyrics.

Are they wholesome or are

they not wholesome?

The arrangement, the tune.

You can put all these things.

This is what makes good music here.

And it really doesn't matter

whether the person was

spiritually reborn or not.

You can still make beautiful paintings.

You can still make beautiful

landscape photographs.

You can still make beautiful music.

And so you can't... So

that's where the line might

take some wisdom and discernment, like...

Other things,

it's pretty clear from God's Word that,

oh, you shouldn't do this.

And if you find yourself

trying to justify that and saying, well,

actually,

that's not what God really meant.

What he really meant was,

then you do some work,

and sometimes it's a lot of work,

to try and make him say the

opposite of what he said.

Then you should be examining yourself.

Am I a pseudo-Christian?

Because I'm not being

convicted of something wrong.

that appears to say you shouldn't do this.

I don't have that conviction here.

And if you're not being

convicted of stuff that's obviously sin,

that means your conscience is seared.

It's very clear.

Your conscience will say, hey,

if you're not going to listen to me,

I'm not going to be as loud.

And next thing you know,

you're getting deeper and deeper.

The other kind of thing is,

I read a book by a psychologist,

he talks about a false conscience.

And a false conscience is something like,

let's say when you're,

he used an example there,

this girl as she's growing up in her home,

this little girl, her father,

I don't know,

maybe she looked attractive

and pretty or something,

and the father had an issue,

and he always used derogatory language,

like called her,

like uncomplimentary terms

you might call a

You know, a woman who, in his mind,

you know, basically this.

So he called her these things,

and in her teen years,

when she started to want to wear makeup,

he would say,

what do you want to look like,

this or that?

And those this or that was

not very complimentary.

But he didn't say that.

He says, you are these things.

And so the girl, when she became a woman,

was terribly promiscuous.

And eventually it got so bad

she went for professional counseling.

And it all emerged in the process of this.

She told the counselor that

she feels guilty,

like she's violating her

conscience if she's not promiscuous.

And the reason is because

her dad told her that she

is all her life and all

this kind of stuff.

So that would be an example

of a false conscience.

So I'm always second guessing myself.

Just because I think

something is right or wrong

doesn't necessarily mean it

actually is right or wrong.

What I have to do constantly is say, God,

renew my mind.

Help me to think the way you

want me to think.

because like I was raised to

you when you go to church

on Sunday you wear your

best clothes your suit I

don't do that anymore and

but I have to admit I was a

little you know there were

there was a transition

thing because I had this

artificial false conscience

that you always got to wear

a suit to church and um you

know today you

And not because of nowhere

in the Bible does it say

you need to wear your best

suit to church.

No, in fact,

they met mostly in people's

homes where they probably

just wore whatever they

wore every day over to that

person's home.

So it's not about what the

clothes you're wearing.

I mean, as far as dressing up or not.

If you're the high priest,

you have a very specific dress code,

but we're not talking about that.

They didn't usually show up

at the home churches.

And having to wear that rope

would have been always a

little scary for me.

Okay,

so we've got about fourteen minutes

left here.

Do you want to dig into

anything else in the article?

Do you have a takeaway at the bottom here?

I think one thing I just

want to emphasize is that

when Jesus said to the rich young ruler,

you need to do this, which was, it's,

he's really focusing on

what does give him his identity,

his value of security.

That'll be different from

person to person.

And a lot of this stuff is like,

people will say,

I've heard it so many times.

I need to clean up.

Okay.

I like this.

I want this,

but I'm going to have to clean

up my life.

I got to stop doing this and that.

And the other thing that,

In that case,

there was something tangible

and material that Jesus

gave him to do that would

really put him to the test

whether he wants to totally

commit to Jesus.

But in a lot of cases,

and especially cleaning up your life,

I want to emphasize this,

and you may have addictions,

you may have the way you are,

whatever it might be, you can't

change this.

You can't clean up your life.

You can't do, like,

forget it before receiving Christ.

What you need to do, I think,

is that most people who

truly do have a spiritual

rebirth might not even be

aware of this verse where Jesus says,

deny yourself, take up your cross.

I wasn't.

But the attitude that I had

when I put my faith in

Christ was very much that attitude.

I realized I am lost for all eternity.

I am toast.

It's not about,

can I make it through this life or not?

It's like,

what happens in the big picture?

Where am I going?

And I just totally...

Like, put myself in the hands of God.

I think that's what he's

looking for in this denial.

Deny yourself.

It's not like there's terms

and conditions.

Like, I have heard people say, well,

I'd like to do that,

but only if... And then

they have their terms.

Like the rich young ruler was as well.

Other people might be something else.

It might be their addiction.

Maybe they have alcohol.

addiction or whatever.

Or it could be their identity.

And today, identity is a big deal.

So the identity is, this is the way I am.

But God is saying,

don't bother trying to

change that or whatever before that.

What you need is a spiritual rebirth.

And this is where you put

yourself totally in the hands and you say,

whatever you want to do with me, God,

do it.

And you honestly mean that.

I think that's pretty much

sums it up what it means by denial.

It's that I don't want the old way I was.

I don't want it.

I want this whole new thing.

And I didn't even wrap my

mind around it right now, what you mean.

But I want that.

I want eternal life.

I want this new life with you.

I want to be released from

the things that I find

myself having to do all the time,

whatever they might be.

I want this.

And then he starts a

spiritual rebirth and God

starts to work in your life.

And as we said before,

it may not be one quantum change.

For some people it is, others it's not.

But the thing is, I like the way C.S.

Lewis put it,

it's ever higher up and further in.

And the last thing I think I

just wanted to emphasize is that,

what was it that I wanted to emphasize?

I don't know,

maybe I accidentally

emphasized it just now and

then it got deleted off the

list of things to do on the

back end of my brain.

The brain is a wonderful thing,

especially when it works.

The other thing I would just

like to point out is the

story of the rich young ruler,

it wasn't about the money.

That wasn't the problem.

The problem was he had these

things and wasn't willing

to give them up.

That's the problem.

Because there's a lot of

rich people out there.

I have some very rich people in my family.

But they're the most

generous people that I know.

Yeah, I know that too.

Because they're not seeing

this wealth as being their identity.

No, they see it as a stewardship.

I'm sure there's a fight sometimes.

I'm sure there's a fight in

their mind sometimes.

But I just think it's very

easy for people that don't have money

to say, oh, well,

why does he allow those

people to have it?

What about the rich young ruler?

Well, it wasn't about the money.

It was about their heart.

Exactly.

Nailed it.

And so you could be very

poor and holding on to that

as a source of pride.

Mm-hmm.

you you could be and you're

just in the same same boat

as that person right yeah

and there were groups and

sex that whether you had to

take an oath of poverty and

and you could get pretty

proud about that and the

other thing to keep in mind

is that uh you mentioned it

a little bit that god

entrusts us with certain

talents and abilities and

resources it'll be

different from person to

person some people he

entrusts with great wealth but

they will be accountable to

God what they did with that

and like you I know some

very wealthy people who

that's the whole purpose of

their company is not to get

rich it's to do it's a

giveaway basically wisely

into the things then you

might be poor as a church

mouse as they used to say

but god might have another

different talent and

ability for you that you

may not know about yet but

it will cause that gift to

flourish and grow within

you everybody everybody is

of infinite value to god

and has god will give you a

gift where you can do

something for eternity for

humanity in god not what

after you're spiritually reborn

Awesome.

I love that way to end.

Thank you, Kirk.

We'll see you again next week.

Same time, same place.

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