The Dialog

Around 250 AD, Emperor Decius ordered everyone in the Roman Empire to sacrifice to the Roman gods in front of a government official. Valerian ordered church leaders sentenced to death. Diocletian had churches burned and Scripture burned with them.

And yet it still grew.

My co-host Nick Surface and I set out to talk about spiritual authority and started with the church itself.

How did early Christians respond to persecution?
Not by fighting in the streets or overthrowing the emperor. They rescued abandoned babies, fed the poor and nursed the sick during the Plague of Cyprian, at the risk of their own lives.

Has the church traded discipleship for crowds?
Billy Graham partnered with local churches so new believers would be discipled. Many churches copied the crowd instead. Following Jesus is simple, but simple and easy aren't the same thing.

Should every church run like a democracy?
That's the western delusion. Picking our leaders is a new gift, and not everything works that way.

If God establishes authority, who removes it?
Romans 9 says God put Pharaoh in place. David still called Saul God's anointed.

Scriptures
Matthew 28:19-20 · Luke 9:23 · Mark 6:6 · Matthew 8:5-10 · Romans 9:17-21 · 2 Samuel 1

Books
Watchman Nee, Spiritual Authority
John Bevere, Under Cover
A Tale of Three Kings

Chapters
0:00 Cold open and show intro
0:52 Why we're starting on spiritual authority
1:51 Are people following pastors instead of joining churches?
3:19 Billy Graham and the churches that copied the crusade
4:38 The key function of the church is discipleship
5:47 Following Jesus isn't easy
6:19 Seeker sensitive: simple isn't the same as easy
7:23 Getting to pick your leaders is new
8:53 Is choice the supreme virtue?
11:48 Decius, Valerian and the persecution of Christians
14:20 And yet it still grew
16:23 Diocletian burns churches and Scripture
17:47 What it cost to copy the New Testament
20:00 How did the early Christians respond?
22:35 The Roman Empire's safety net (Plague of Cyprian)
24:38 They didn't fight for their rights
26:29 The two times Jesus was amazed
28:09 Romans 9: what do we do with evil authority?
30:33 The western delusion: every leader works like a democracy
32:29 Three biblical ways to lead a church
34:07 Parents: the first authority you don't choose
34:42 Saul, David and A Tale of Three Kings
36:11 The man who said he killed Saul (2 Samuel 1)
37:15 If God establishes authority, God removes it
37:54 How does a child hold a parent accountable?
39:20 The question we pick up next time

Previous: 1.33 / What is your fatal flaw? The Greek word behind sin
Next: 1.35 / Do you have to honor a leader you disagree with?

New episodes most weeks.
Follow Nick on IG / https://www.instagram.com/nicksurface1/
Follow me on IG / https://www.instagram.com/joshuakcraft/
Go to my website / https://jkc.is

What is The Dialog?

Ancient philosophers used the dialog to find answers to life’s greatest questions. The Dialog is a search for truth in modern life through the lens of ancient philosophy, history, and theology. This podcast will challenge your assumptions, change your thinking and show you how to master modern living.

No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world. I'm interested in one thing, the future, and believe me, I know the only way to get there is together. What we've got here is failure, milk Cake. You may think you know what tribute, but believe me, you don't what the truth. You can't handle the truth. For centuries, philosophers have used the dialogue to search for truth, because it's through conversation, through the logos, that we find it. This is the dialogue where ancient philosophy, history, and theology meet modern life. Together, we'll wrestle with big questions and give our answers to the way we live. Let's start the conversation. All right, man, So we uh, this is not very like this is not our usual. Hey, we're in the middle of the conversation because we actually finished up up like we you know. I don't know if this is part of the evolution of the dialogue, but we finished up with just kind of realizing that we need to dive in on spiritual authority, which I'm very excited to get into because I have thought about this since the last time i've been I don't know if i'd say eagerly anticipating, but you have to use scriptural language. But I've been I've been looking forward to this one man. Well, we were, yeah, we were in the middle of the conversation and we just had to we had to stop it because we were getting into some deep waters. You know, We've taken five turns and we were about to take another one, and so I was like, let's just let's just pause here, you know, refuel the car, and then we'll go again. So refueled and we're ready to go. So we've been talking about, Yeah, go ahead. I was gonna I was going to ask you, man, so I just want to dive in because here's my here's my thing, and you'll, I know, I don't want to. This is not a diversion. This is a to me and understanding of spiritual authority set up because I've been thinking about this. So I I I'm in leadership of the church, as are you at our church. We go to the same church. And so when you're in leadership of the church, people tell you things about when they're not happy. And oftentimes what people are not happy about is something that was said from the stage by a pastor, which in this case would be your dad, right, And so I was looking. You know, I've dealt with this and anytime someone brings me something, what they want is they want to argue the points. And what I say is I go, hey, let's assume everything you say is right. What do you think you should do about it? I literally never get into a point by point blowthing, even if the person's wholly wrong, because to me, it's more of because because what we're talking about today is really the point. But I was thinking about this with like, you know, there's some big name pastors in Dallas, and they're excited. They have massive social media followings, they have great podcasts, they have big youtubes, and I mean, do you I wonder oftentimes if people are starting to more follow a pastor than they are to actually, you know, be placed in a church body and understand what that means. I would you agree with that? Or do you think I'm off basis? Yeah? I mean I think we've I think we've made some big mistakes and leading the church the past fifty years. I mean, and I think one of those is uh, you know, it's really interesting man. It's like we start on this subject and then we get into this other thing we're gonna we're gonna do the spiritual authority thing. I think this is part of it though, That's why I brought yet this. Like, so Billy Graham at close to close to the end of his life, Billy Graham, you know, he would do these massive stadium crusades, reached millions. I mean, there's no one that probably reached more people for Christ around the world than Billy Graham, like in modern history. Right. So what he would do, what his emphasis was, he would come into a city, he would do crusade, and he would he knew that just getting someone saved or helping someone to experience Jesus was just step one, and there's a whole lot of steps for them to take, right, So he would partner with churches, like his goal is to partner with churches, plug them in to a church who's going to disciple them and you know, fulfill the Great Commission in which Matthew twenty eight says, teach people that Jesus says, teach people to obey all of commandity. Right. So, so there's this massive discipleship element that Christianity is supposedly all about. Right, And I'd say supposedly because of what's happened really in the modern church. So what happened and Billy Graham I heard Billy Graham talk about this. What happened was churches saw how many people came to a Billy Graham crusade, and so instead of focusing their church around discipleship and developing mature christ followers, they turn their churches into Billy Graham crusades. So you should have like for me, you know, and this is there's a whole bunch of different philosophies out here, right, but you should have aspects to your church that are like a new person friendly or that are salvation oriented, that which is like the first step is like learning and understanding the Gospel, and that's so powerful and all of that, but that's not really to me necessarily. The function of the church, like the key function of the church is to disciple people and develop them and raise them up. Well, the problem with that, right is that it's just not sexy, Like you're not going to get a whole lot of people up front your auditorium. Might you might not have ten thousand people in your church on and on, right, And that's not like an indictment of one particular person. That's like what the movement of the Western Church has been for like at least the past fifty years, is we're going to grow. We're going to focus on growth. And there is this dynamic that comes with focusing on growth that you just try to make everything easy for everybody. Right, Well, the problem with that is that following Jesus isn't easy. It's the hardest thing you'll ever do. Jesus said, I have to lay down your life and pick up your cross. He said, you can't follow me without giving up everything that you own. So if you're just discipling someone effectively, if you're teaching someone how to follow Jesus, at some point you're going to have to have a lot of hard conversations about everything, about how they're doing money, about their emotional state, about their approach to whatever. The various temptations are that they fight in their life, on and on and on. Right, So what happened was they created this movement, or this movement was created it's called the secret Sensitive movement, right, which is now kind of an insult. For a long time, it wasn't an insult, but it's this idea of like, people are really open to the gospel if we just kind of make it easy for them. And I'm all for making things kind of easy to interact with and not super complicated. But simple and easy aren't the same thing. So you can make something simple like discipline is a simple concept. It's not easy though, right, It's like you don't have to spend three hours explaining to someone with discipline is It's like, well, discipline is just consistently making the right choice even when you don't feel like doing it. There's a whole lot of other ways to say that, right, But that's that's simple to explain. It's really hard to do. So what's happened, you know, to me, and this even relates to our discussion on authority, is we've leaned into as the church as like the Church of Jesus, we've leaned into a lot of Western delusion, right, And so it's interesting that you would start there, because that was like the thing in my mind was, you know, we live in one of the greatest times in human history, and one of the things that makes that a great time in human history is that we get to pick our leaders. Yeah, for real, Right, So, like I can vote for the mayor of my city. I can I can vote for the president of my hoa. There's so much in the West is like I get to decide who the leader of this is. Now, it's easy to think that that's just how life works. That's really not how life works. That's how the Western world works. That's really been developed really over the past two undred and fifty years. I mean, this idea of like representative government, and it's called republicanism, not republic not republican in terms of being a conservative or a liberal. It's just called republicanism. So this idea of like a republic, a representative republic is new, you know, but for most of human history, people didn't pick their leaders. So you know, you think about it in the context of the church, Like in the context of what you're saying, you didn't have the ability to get in a car and drive to like the next city over that was ten miles away. We commute to Emphesis from Corinth because you know, yeah, like you're yeah, if you don't like the church in the city that you're in, that's tough. Yeah, Like this is the church. So if you're going to go to church here, I mean, you could start your own church in the same city. But if you're gonna go to church here, that the options are pretty limited, right if you so we've developed. On one hand, it's good, like the power of choice is amazing. On the other hand, people think that choice is choices like the supreme virtue, right, and so like if I don't if I'm somewhere, if I'm at a job, if I'm in a relationship, if I'm at a church and I don't like what's happening for any given period of time, I could just leave and go somewhere else. That's that's to me, the danger of the danger of all the good things that have happened in the history of the Western world. I mean, because you think about so like to talk about authority. For most of human history, it hasn't been true that you get to pick your leader, right, Right, So you don't get to pick your parents. I didn't get to pick the parents that I had. You know, nobody does. Right. You have to be in whatever family that you're pretty much assigned to by God. And there's positives and negatives, and there's good families and there's bad families and all that. What's not going to change is you get your your ability to choose that right. So all these verses all throughout the Scripture, there's a lot of different perspectives all throughout the Scripture of spiritual authority, of submitting to authority, those perspectives. It's important to understand the context of a perspective like that because those perspectives come from a time and history where nobody voted for anything. In the Roman Empire, which is where Christianity was, which is where you know Israel was, and all that was a part of the Roman Empire. You had an emperor, and that emperor pretty much decided everything for everybody that lived in the whole country and the whole nation, and their decisions were ironclad and binding, and if you didn't respect their decisions, you ran the risk of death. If that emperor would put a governor over you or some kind of governmental structure over you, that that governor's job was not to represent So like we live in a country now, I'm just more like explaining our perspective versus like the historical person historically. Yeah, we live in a society now where the responsibility of the government is to represent me right and represent my issues. For most of human history, it's been the opposite. The responsibility of government has been to represent the issues of whoever the highest authority is in the land. Right, So the role that the governor would have played, well, you see this in the story of Jesus Conscious pilot. He's the governor of that part of the Roman Empire. His role was to represent Caesar there not not to not to plead for the people to season right, there was there was dynamics related that. But I want to give you this kind of perspective on Christianity. So for over three hundred years of Christianity's existence, from its very beginnings, they were massively persecuted. So there's this emperor in the two hundred like the two hundreds AD, his name was Dseus. He issued an edict throughout the Roman Empire that they had to sacrifice to the gods, to the Roman gods in the presence of a government official. So everybody who is a part of the Roman Empire had to sacrifice to the Roman gods in the present, in the presence of this some government official, and if they didn't, their whole family would be killed. And that's not just for Christians. That was just like you're going to do this or we're going to murder all of you. Right and also just just as a as also something that's worth mentioning, they didn't have police force police in the ancient Roman world, right, right, so it's a it's pretty much we have more freedoms, we have more protection. Like people talk now about how oh man, you know, like the kind of people that are going to say, hey, it's worse than it's ever been, like in society and in the world today, are completely delusional. Oh they had no context whatsoever. Yeah, oh, no, matter what's happening. We live in a safer time in world history. We live in a time where we have laws that protect us. I mean for most of human history this wasn't true. So just talking about the beginnings of Christianity, so they were treated like a Jewish cult. The Jews try to kill them. Well, anyway, the Romans end up kind of joining that because in Roman, in the Roman Empire, it wasn't just about worshiping the Roman gods, it was about worshiping the emperor, because the emperor was seen as a deity. Right, So this guy named DCUs comes, he starts to kind of force this well, then there's this guy named Valerian, Emperor Valerian. So he comes after Deseus and he orders all church leaders, pastors, whatever role you played in the church, he orders all of them sentenced to death, and he strips Christians, any Christian, anyone who identifies as a Christian. He strips them of all their land, possessions and titles, so anything that they owned, any just that's not your anymore. Right, Yeah, then that wasn't even like the worst part. So then you have a Diocletian. So Diocletian in the three hundred, so this is like starts around two hundred and fifty a d. This goes for over one hundred years. Okay, so a whole generation of people that are Christians experience this, right, and yet it still grows. Yes, Christianity grows. I think that that's amazing, Like to when you think about there's no good reason, like if you're ever a person, I just want I want to pause you real quick, so you could take a some of that energy drink. And also just to. Just just to point out, like I've been like researching just for my like my conviction in the truth of what we know to be true has just deepened because the more I look at what's actually happened in history, like not even like biblical or Church history, but just human history as a whole, and then looking at how the Bible lines up to it, and then you hear something like that, like, hey, we're gonna start like I'm a marketer if I was selling something that the reward for being a part of it was eternal life, you know, which you're going to get eventually when you die. But in the meantime, you're gonna lose all your possessions, everything that you've worked for, and you're basically going to be like absolutely have the whole of the government against you. That's a hard sell. I don't even know how it would market that. Yeah, your whole family's gonna die because you've seen other people experience the same thing. I mean, yeah, and yet it grows. Man, I love that. It's amazing. Sorry, I just want to interjectcause I just think that's such a fantastic No. And dude, the foundational documents of the New Testament was written. I mean it was written before this, but the New Testament was written in this kind of context. Yeah, yeah, Okay, So when the Bible and the New Testament also is written in the context of slavery. Right, So the Book of Colossians, Paul says, you know, you don't work for your earthly masters, you work for God. So do everything you do is under the Lord. That's not about Hey, go do your job today and don't worry about how much you're getting paid. It's like, if you're a slave, be a really good slave. Now that's that kind of sucks, like honestly, like why why you know? So? So the authority dynamic you know, to me in the Bible is something we don't understand. I agree of how much you know because you have to have such an understanding of the context of this to understand how the Bible talks about authority. So uh so, then to go on like Diocletian, Right, he was the worst. He was the worst of He was the worst before Constantine came and made Christianity the the the state religion of the Roman Empire. So he ordered all churches, all churches that they could find, you ordered them all burned to the ground. Any scripture that his soldiers found, they he commanded it to be burned. They they kept confiscating church and church possession. So it wasn't like they had buildings. It was like they would if they if you had like a house church and you're a Christian, they would take your house away from you, kick you out of your house. Uh, Christians. Christians were prohibited from assembling in any sized group. Right. Uh. If you own scripture, you would be executed or tortured. Uh. And the preferred you know, there's this there's this like apocryphal story. I don't know how true it is, but the idea there was the term called a Roman candle, right, and Roman candle wash when at night. These are stories that are told about this and in like all these different histories, they would tie Christians to a stake and then throughout the cities and burn them at the stake, right, and they would burn through the night, and that would that would be uh called it's called a Roman candle allegedly. Right. So the real quick, sorry, Josh, I'm just just like this is stuff I've been researching stuff. So I want you to for everybody once again, I this wasn't part of the plan, but I feel like that's I don't know why we say that anymore, because we should just know that that's that the plan is to not Lord. It's been a flow at all times. We are man. But I just I love this flow so much because when you look at it and like, please get on chat sheet BT or whatever your AI sources and ask about the historical documentation for Christ. When you start realizing, so listen to what. Josha said a couple hundred years after Jesus has been here, Diocletian's like, hey, if you find anything, burn it, anything about this Christian which Christian was christ? Right? This is not Hebrew. At this point, they've already sacked Rome, they've ended this the nation of Israel, and they've expelled all the Jews from Jerusalem. That's already happened, right, So that's already been take care of, and now this Christian sect is going. When you start realizing that Jesus is the most well documented historical figure where there's literally like over ten thousand manuscripts with documentation for Christ, with the New Testament writings that were copied and repeated and stored, and like, think about the price that these people paid for how important this was. And by the way, it wasn't cheap to get these manuscripts made It's not like they could go down to Kinko's and like run off a few copies. How's that for old school Kinkos. I don't even know where that came from. Dude, I'm pretty sure they're. Out of business. But like, it's not like you could get office now right right, Sorry I forgot FedEx bom now. But the point is it's not like you could just you had to like, first of all, if you want to get papyrus paper, it was not cheap, right, and that would last a lot longer with that, it was not cheap, and then you'd have to find the scribe to actually just inscribe it for you. We're talking like months, and like I looked at I looked it up a book. Like Romans that's long. It would be a year's wages to pay for all the materials and the time to actually have it made. So think about the trouble. It's like, hey, we're gonna get killed for this, and it's really expensive. It's massively inconvenient, but it's so important we have to do it. This is the this is what we have, and we have the privilege of getting to read in forty six translations on our phone. Now because these people paid that price. Well, and huge, untold numbers of people throughout history, right, were martyred for this, you know. And if if these are, if these are a set of false beliefs, it sure costs people a lot, right, Oh my gosh. Yeah. So here's the challenging thing though about all this. It's like, oh wow, that's so amazing, that's so crazy, all the persecution of Christianity and all that. How did Christians respond? That's and this is where the ancient Christian response, I feel like personally deviates from the modern Christian response. Like the the ancient Christian response was to be more loving. They didn't, they didn't they whatever, right, So I'll well, I'll I will come back to this in a second. But they didn't. They didn't fight people in the streets. They weren't focused on, uh overthrowing the emperor. They didn't militarize themselves. They didn't. They didn't become fearful and insecure of their beliefs being taken away. Their beliefs were already pretty much being taken away, right, right, So what happened? What happened in the context of Rome, Well, uh, for here, here, here's what happened throughout these persecutions for Christians. So the first thing, the most of one of the biggest things was often people that were you know, in that time in history, if you had an undesired child, if you had a child you didn't you didn't want. Like again, they didn't have a social safety net, okay, so they didn't have welfare, they didn't have government assistance for food. So if a person couldn't feed their children, or if they had an undesired child, they would just abandon them, right, they would leave them in areas outside of cities and they would just let the kids die. Right. What Christians would do is they would they would find these kids and they would rescue them and they would adopt them. So this this, it's so funny because if you read these these histories, like these Romans didn't believe that well, they thought that the Christians, it didn't it wouldn't enter their mind that the Christians actually wanted to take care of these kids. So they thought that Christians were cannibals. I know, I remember you saying that to me. That's crazy because the thing that made sense to them was, well, they can't afford to feed the kids, but they'll eat the kids. Dude, that's your thought process like that, that's you show you how how savage things were back then, right, is like the human human rights and the sanctity of a human life that that really comes from Christianity. I mean that didn't exist at this time in their own empire. So so they thought Christians were cannibals because they were taking all these kids. Well they're raising them. But they were like, no way, no way is a person going to raise this kid? Yeah? Right, So then then what they did throughout the time, throughout all these different persecutions hundreds of years, they fed and cared for people who were in need, like poor people, people were in need. Christianity became the social safety net of the Roman Empire. So it was normal at that time in history to die of starvation. Well, Christians did their best in the cities that they lived in to make sure that people didn't die of starvation. Right then, one particular big thing there was a plague called the Plague of Cyprian and at the at its height, it killed It killed up to five thousand people per day. Right, it is just crazy. So most Romans, when they discovered that their family members had the plague, they would they would just send them out into the streets to hopefully prevent themselves from getting sick, right, adults and kids alike. So Christians, we were the only people who took people in during this time in history and cared for them. So they cared for these sick people at the risk of their own life. Right. So how does the story end here as it relates to this, The Roman nobility starts to notice all the great things that Christians are doing, and they're like, man, like these guys, we probably shouldn't persecute these guys. We should probably adopt some of their practices, right, And this leads to this is like the sub the subtext of what leads to Constantine's conversion. And it's a whole long story that is not for it's not topical for what we're going to talk about today. But Constantine makes Christianity the state religion of Rome. What Constantine ends up doing is he establishes bishops. He takes the leaders of the churches all throughout the Roman Empire, and he makes them responsible for the social safety net. So he starts to give money from the Roman Empire to the church. So they can help take care of the people that live there. Right on and on, I could go down this whole road. So the reason why these really great things happened and Christianity became this and the Catholic Church became all that started with not fighting for their rights, not rejecting authority, not rebelling against what was happening, even though what was happening was evil. And I think that's like this huge challenge, okay to learn about from just from this perspective that their response, the Christian response at that time, was not to fight it and not to rant and rave against it because you know what, their voice didn't really matter. Like if someone if and you can read this like you talked about the Sack of Jerusalem. There were all these different Jewish revolts, right, and they they the Roman army put them down so much. They they didn't so before it was called Palestine. So this is what what made uh what changed the name of Israel to Palestine. So it's called Judea, right, and it's like the land of the Jews. Well, the Romans came down so hard on the Jews because of all their different Jewish revolts. They changed the name of Israel from Judea to Palestine. That was so they did their best. These guys revolted, and they did their best to just erase them from history. Now the Jews, the Jews made it through, and so did Christians and all that. But the Romans had if you rebelled against the Romans, if you rebelled against the Empire, they were just going to kill you anyway. And so Christians didn't even have the option of that right. But what Christians had was the perspective that the Bible has on spiritual authority, right, and so for most of human history. The reason why I spend all that time on that history is for most of human history you didn't get to pick your leader. You just had to deal with whatever your leader was. Right, So yeah, okay, keep so yeah, So the obvious transition goes, how does it? Because like, ultimately, who establishes authority is the kind of the underlying thought process. Because there was only two times in Scripture when Jesus was amazed. One was at the lack of faith in his own town, and the other one was the Roman centurion whenever he said, hey, you don't have to come to my house, just say the word of it am a man of authority, so like to amaze Jesus. And one of the things he was amazed at was too well, there's two things, right, a lack of honor or a lack of faith, I should say, and then an understanding of authority, so that like clearly God, God operates an authority. And it's it's revelatory to me that I've always wondered, like when you think about authority and the work that God's given you to do and what He's given you dominion over. I think it's very interesting when when in Genesis three, whenever he hands down the punishments, it's like, Okay, you guys screwed up. There's gonna be punishment. It's very specific to each person in there's the snake, there's the woman and the man, and you think, okay, how. Are you gonna punish them. You're gonna punish them with what you've given them the dominion over. So what's the woman's punishment. She's gonna have like pain and child bearing, and her desire is gonna be for her husband. He's gonna rule over her. Oh man, you're supposed to be the helper. We're gonna make that hard. You're supposed to reproduce. We're gonna make that hard. Hey man, you had dominion over the ground. You were supposed to work it and keep it like I gave you. That was the mandate that you had, ak the authority that you were given. Well, now that's gonna become hard. And I think I think that like God operates an authority in a way that we don't. Really I don't. I can't say I fully grasp it, but I know that I know that it's it's you. If you're not in align with his authority, you're just off having a nice walk. And and even even if you see cool things happening or you think you're you're doing it, it's like you need to you need to understand that God works through authority. Yeah. And what's so challenging, right that it's really hard to reconcile, Like, and this is like a deep cut of Christianity, right, is if you read the Book of Romans, if you read Romans nine, where Romans so God establishes all authority. So then the question becomes, what do we do with evil authority? Yeah? Right? God? In Romans nine, God says he put Pharaoh in place over Egypt to display his power, right, which is like, Okay, that's that's awesome, except for the past, the fact that like a lot of people died at Pharaoh's hand. Yeah, and it was Slage four hundred years Hey, it was like what, Yeah, God did that, and God's saying he did that, And then he basically says, who are you to question that? Right? Who are you to question who I put in authority? He says, you're You're I'm the Potter, You're the clay. Yeah. So so in America we've developed this and even like you hear Christian Christian like thinkers in America talk about this, They're like, well, the government's not the authority worthy authority like we the people, right, which is in in a lot of ways true. I don't really I agree with the statement. I don't agree with the line of thinking and what and what I what I mean by that is that you, you and I have no guarantee of godly authority, right of having people in place in authority who are godly and we also potentially and I don't have like a right answer on this. This is just a conversation that I think is worth having. We also probably don't get to decide whether or not godly authority is in place. What do you well, what do you by that? Because because we have part in America, we have part in the democratic process, I mean in our local elections. We're trying to you know, influence that right now, Right, so, I mean there is something that we can do. Well, you've been given I mean that's that's the cool thing is we've been given like a level of a part to play on some level. Right, But then if you extend that, if you extend that line of thinking. So here's what people do, right, they extend that line of thinking into the church and into a lot of different places where that's not really how it works because not And that's where I'm saying, like the Western delusion, for me, the Western delusion is thinking that every leadership environment works like a democracy, right, Okay, yeah, So so it's wonderful, man, the American experiment representative government. I am not ever against that. It's a it's amazing. Not everything works that way, though, right, but even the idea, even that idea can make us think that we have more power than we actually have. Like like if the you know, we live in a country where the majority of people who vote probably shouldn't vote like they're well, no, I think everyone would agree to and depending on their position, like they they're not people. The average voter is not educated enough on the issues to accurately vote. Well, yeah, that's yeah, that's that's pretty. They're going to vote a straight ticket, like a liberal is going to vote liberal, a conservative is going to vote conservative, and it's going to be very rare for one of them to be that educated on the issues, right, because to me, one of the signs that you're actually educated on the issues is you don't vote a straight ticket. Right. The founding fathers in America talked about how the two party system would really be the death of America, right, And that's that's pretty much what we've developed. Why because people don't want to be educated on the issues, so they just go, well, like which part of this do I agree with? And that's not really the conversation for today. But we've developed something that's about again making it easy for people, so instead of a person having to be educated on the issues before they vote, they can just go vote based on whatever information they take in that they that may or may not even be true, right. But in the church, we don't have to vote, but people kind of they want to vote. There's basically in the New Testament, there's three different leadership. There's three different biblical leadership structures for a church. Okay, a lot of people think there's only one, but there's three. So there's what's called a congregational led church, which is the congregation of the church votes on everything, and they see everything, and they vote on everything. Who the pastor is all that. Then there's an elder led church, so elder led churches all throughout scripture. But then there's also what's called an episcopal church. An episcopal church is a church that's led by the past right, and it's not a vote. It's not a vote scenario, like the Catholic Church doesn't operate with votes and elders and all that. So if you talk to like the average Christian, they think that the best run church that they are not the best run, but the most biblical church is an elder run church or a congregational church. But really there's like these three models that you can pick from that neither one of them are more biblical or less biblical than another, and they all come with significant benefits and significant drawbacks, right right, so real quick for those that are wondering. So like the elder led church, obviously that's talked about quite a bit in Timothy, I believe, right, which was to ephesis when he's talking to him about what the elder should be. I think it's also in Titus that he talks about about like what leaders should be. I think there's two places where do you see the congregational lead and the episcopal Like do you know where those are at? Let me give you a little time to look it up, because I could pull it up, but but I think it's not it's not the most I don't know if it's the most relevant to what we're talking about, but i'll I'll say this. So to come back to like talking about the authority thing. Yeah, the how does God set up the first and primary authority structure that we have in our life? He just gives them to us, Like again to go back to parents, that's the first, that's the primary. The first primary leadership structure that we get in our life is the one we don't choose, right, Okay, So so that's so that's like the first one. Then then let's go to the Old Testament. So the Old Testament, you have the relationship between Saul and David. Okay, and this is where I want to like, uh, give a give a perspective that's probably different than what a lot of people kind of think on authority. Okay, So Saul and David. There's a great book another book I would recommend for anybody to read. We talked about Watchman Needs Spiritual Authority and undercovered by John of Your Last Time. But there's an amazing book. It's like it's written in story for him. It's called a Tale of Three Kings and it talks about Saul and David and Absalom and really how David responded to Saul and Absalom, which is just really fascinating. But what did David? What was So God establishes Saul as the king of Israel, right, the Israelites asked for a king. God establishes him as king. He's a bad king. God anoints David as the next king. So everyone knows David's going to become the next guy, right, including David and Saul. And what does David do? He does everything he can to not to not do it himself, right, right? He doesn't rebel against Saul. He doesn't take half the kingdom away. He doesn't say Saul's a bad guy and I'm a good guy. God said, I'm a man after his own heart, and Saul's not anymore. The whole time he calls Saul, uh, he calls Saul God's anointed. Yeah, there's there's there's even a part in the story in Second Samuel one. So there's a story of Saul. Saul goes to the battlefield, him and his sons are all killed by the Amalekites. Right, everyone knows David's like anointed as king, right for he's the next guy. Saul dies this kind of gruesome death right, he falls on his sword, but he doesn't die. So there's this Amalekite who shows up and he and Saul pleads to this Amalekite for the Amalekite to kill him. He says, please kill me, So the Amalekite kills him. Well, the Amalekite goes to David and says, hey, I killed Saul, thinking that David is going to reward that behavior because what you know, like why wouldn't he He's He's God's man and Saul's not God's mand anymore. David kills that guy for touching the Lord's anointing. Yeah, so I'm going kind of like deeper on that. But there's this interesting dynamic with leadership and with authority that if you really believe that God establishes authority, okay, and God's the one that puts authority in place. So what comes with believing that God puts authority in place in life is believing that God also removes the authority, right, right, So what a lot of people don't realize is if you actually bind establish his authority, then you have to also buy into the idea that God removes the authority that it's not your responsibility to hold them accountable. Now, that's what we should unpack that, But like that's really challenging, so to go back to, like let's make it more practical to go back to like the idea of the church. So what a lot of people want to talk about in the church is we should hold the pastor accountable? Right, how do you as a child, And this this could be a challenging like metaphor for people, but how does a child hold their parents accountable? Yeah? I mean that's it's a great question, unless unless you're with the legalities of some you know, some kids have divorced their parents, but that's obviously not like the norm. That's a very care they could I mean, I guess your kids, like Elijah or Hope or Evie, like they could call CPS on you. Yeah, there's there's protective services that they'd have to prove something. There's certain things, but it's really hard. Yeah, right, So so to use your family as an example, use my family as an example. I have a responsibility. Like, there's actually not a lot of people in my life unless I choose them. There's not a lot of people in my life who can hold me accountable right now with how young my kids are for how I'm parenting them, right, And that can be scary, and it is scary when you have evil people that become parents, right, but it still doesn't change the accountability dynamic. So so for me, and this is some of this is my own thinking and opinion and interpreting I've lived and what I've experienced and what I've read in the Bible. I have to ask myself this question, how much does God make me responsible for holding leadership that He puts in place? Accountable. Thank you for listening to the dialogue. Make sure to like, share, and subscribe, and also if you think someone else would enjoy this, please send it to them. If you want to get in touch or learn more about me, what I think, speak and write, you can go to Joshuacraft dot com or you can also follow Nick and I on Instagram. Our handles are in the show notes. We'll see you next time.