← I Don't Have Enough FAITH to Be an ATHEIST
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Foreign, ladies and gentlemen, why am I wearing this hat? I'll get to it. But let's talk about what we're going to talk about today. We have some questions that have come in. Can you be a believer in Jesus and be saved if you don't have feelings or emotions like other people do when they worship Jesus? We're going to try and cover that. That's a question that's come in. Second question. When Jesus said that his kingdom is not of this world, does that mean we should not be concerned about politics and government in this world or maybe other aspects of this world? Also, somebody wrote in and said, why didn't God stop Satan immediately? That could have saved a lot of trouble for everyone. We also had a question come in from a left leaning listener about parenting. I hope we can get to that. But the reason I'm easy for me to say, the reason I'm wearing the Live Free hat here is because I was just privileged to be on the live Free podcast when I was down in Dallas last week with my friends Carlos Arazo and Paul Cunningham. That's the podcast that Josh Howerton leads. Josh was on a trip, I think a Footsteps of Paul trip in Greece. And as you may know, Josh is the pastor of Lake Point Church down there in Dallas, kind of on the east side of Dallas, I think Rock Wall or that area is where the church actually is. And they now have the number one podcast, the live free podcast, the number one podcast in America that is a religious slash spirituality podcast in that category on Apple Podcasts, they just overtook Pastor Mike Schmitz who has been in the number one position for quite a while. And ironically, what we were talking about in the podcast, the live free podcast, and we'll put it in the show notes, you might want to take a look at it because we were talking about the Pope and the difference between Catholicism and Evangelical Christianity, Protestant, the Catholic versus Protestant question. And that was about an hour and a half long. We engaged on some issues regarding that and we also talked a little bit about Charlie Kirk. So we'll put that podcast in the show notes. They do a wonderful job. Every week. I watch every one of them. One of the things I love about that team and I love about Josh Howerton is he is a pastor that believes rightfully so, that Christians ought to be engaged in every area of life. You don't wall off a particular area of life like politics or cultural issues because you're a Christian. You need to be engaged everywhere, including politics, including cultural issues. And in fact, we have a question related to that. So I'll get into that a little bit later during this podcast. I was also down there for the TPUSA Faith Forward pastors conference. About 1100 pastors were there and it was held at Ed Young's church not far from the DFW airport. And he came out on Friday night and did just a. No, it's. It wasn't Friday night. What was it? It was Tuesday night last week. And he did a wonderful job talking about soft serve pastors. He had a soft serve ice cream and he was talking about how so many pastors unfortunately are soft serve pastors. They just want to talk about the nice things. They just want to be nice. They don't want to deal with any of the diffic issues that are that are swirling like a hurricane through their congregants life. They just want to give a motivational TED Talk and see you next week kind of thing. And Ed did a wonderful job. I hope that video is going to be available somewhere. If it is, we will put that in the show notes as well. I also spoke there and talked about how essentially the difference between the Christian worldview and and the worldview that seems to dominate much of our culture today is night and day. The worldview that dominates most of our culture today is critical theory, the idea that there are oppressors and oppressed. And if you're in the oppressor category, it doesn't matter how moral you might be as an individual, you shouldn't be heard, you're an oppressor. And only the oppressed people should be heard. Will put that particular talk. It was only about 20 minutes in the show notes as well. If we can find it, it's out there on the Internet somewhere because these pastors, I wanted to just give a perspective that maybe they hadn't heard about. And the reason they hadn't heard about is because the second most important job in American Christianity, or let me put it another way, it is important. But the second most difficult job in American Christianity is to be a pastor. The most difficult job is to be a pastor's wife. But the reason I say it's such a difficult job is if you're in an average church, 200, 300 people, the congregants expect you to be superman on every issue. And you can't be superman on every issue. Nobody has the capacity to be great on every issue and to also do all the hospital visitation and deal with elders and deal with the building and deal with all sorts of trouble that comes up among the congregation and prepare a sermon and answer questions. I mean, just, it's a very difficult job. And so I just wanted to give them a perspective. Maybe they hadn't heard because they're so busy trying to run a church that sometimes you just can't keep up with all the cultural issues going on. By the way, that's why we're going to start here@crossexamine.org probably in concert with TPUSA Faith, a new ministry to pastors. And you can check it out@pastorsbrief.com pastors brief.com we're still working out the details, but essentially me, Lucas Miles, the head of TPUSA Faith, my friend Jason Jimenez is also a pastor of Stand Strong Ministries. We're going to try and be a pastor's research team because you can't, if you're a pastor, you can't keep up with everything that's going on. We're going to try and feed you information that will help you deal with these very difficult issues today that are related actually to critical theory. In fact, I mentioned the four eyes. These four eyes are issues that you're going to be shouted down if you bring up in today's culture. And it seems like much of the problems that have arisen on these issues have arisen just in the past couple of years. And those issues are the four eyes are Israel, immigration, Islam and identity. Identity has been around a little bit longer in terms of its prevalence in our culture. But notice how Israel, Islam and immigration just over the past few years have really risen sort of to the top of our consciousness. And if you take a strong position on those issues, you might be shouted down as an Islamophobe or a xenophobe or a, a, a unconscionable Zionist of some kind. And gee, you can't be that or you're a transphobe or something like that. How can you keep up with all this going on? So we're going to try and help pastors with that. Pastorsbrief.com if you want to be a part of that pastors, you just go there, put your email address in there. We're not going to give your email address to anyone else. Once we have this thing lined up and all the details, we're going to send you an email and hopefully, if you're interested, you can be part of it. All right, friends, if you're listening to this on Tuesday night, the 5th of May, Cinco de Mayo, I am at the University of New Mexico. In fact, Melissa Daugherty is going to join me for the Q and A. You may be hearing this right now. You might want to jump over to YouTube if you're hearing this. On Tuesday night it's going to be 5pm Mountain Time, 7pm Eastern. And I'm going to do if God, why evil? And then Elisa's not Elisa. Melissa's going to join me. We just had Elisa last week at University of Tennessee. Melissa Dougherty is going to join me for Q and A. So that's Tuesday night, the 5th. If you're anywhere near Albuquerque, love to see you there live. Then the next night, the 6th, I'm going to be with my friend Skip Pietzik. I'm doing the Wednesday night service. I think it's 7pm mountain time there at Calvary Chapel, Albuquerque. Then the following weekend, the 16th out in Chino Hills. I'll be with my friend Jack Hibbs and others at the Giant Slayers Conference. That's Saturday, all day Saturday at Calvary Chapel, Chino Hills in California. A few days prior to that, I'll be here In Charlotte, the 13th Central Church of God for their Wednesday night service. And I want to keep you guys informed that CIA this year the Cross Exam and Instructor Academy will again be at Central Church of God here in Charlotte from the 31st of July all the way to August 2nd. And I'm going to show you a really short video on that right here. Check this out. You've got to apply to be a part. Here it is, ladies and gentlemen. You want to be more effective in showing people why Christianity is true and bringing them into the kingdom for eternity. In order to do that, you might want to attend Cross Examine Instructor Academy. It's not just me, but Greg Kokel, Natasha Crane, Elise Childers, Alan Parr and others. You'll learn from all those folks how to better present and answer the most difficult questions about Christianity. It's three days of hands on training from July 30th to August 1st right here in Charlotte, North Carolina. If you want to apply, seats are limited. Get on it now. Get off the bench and apply. Apply@crossexamine.org that's cross examined.org I'll see you in Charlotte this July. Let me now get to your questions. Oh, one other thing I want to mention. There were some great speakers at the TP USA event. Saw my friend Eric Metaxas, Seth Dillon, Babylon B, and of course the great Erica Kirk, who through all sorts of withering demonic attacks is standing strong, gave a great message to the pastors if we can find that message, we'll put that in the show notes as well. Please continue to pray for Erica. The pre trial hearing is supposed to be in a few weeks in May, although the judge is going to decide that on May 8th. Of course the defense is trying to stall all that because that's their only hope to keep this guy Tyler Robinson alive because it, the evidence really has piled up against him. And of course innocent till proven guilty. The trial still needs to occur. But if you would please pray for her, pray for tpusa, pray that these demonic attacks would wither on the vine because they're, they're unconscionable that people are attacking a widow with, with fatherless kids now. In fact, I mentioned this at the TP USA event that. Do you know if we were in the Old Covenant, what God would do? It says in Exodus 22:22, if you abuse a widow or the fatherless, God says, I will cut you down with the sword. And Deuteronomy 19 says that if you falsely accuse someone of a crime, then if you're found out, you're the one that will get the penalty of that crime. So if you falsely accuse someone of murder, you're going to be the one that's going to be executed. Man, that would shut down the Internet if we had those laws in place today, wouldn't they? This is why the Old Testament says you need two witnesses. I see people out there with conspiracy theories with zero witnesses. Just a lot of speculation. That is, if you were in the Old Covenant, you'd be cut down with the sword or you'd be executed for falsely accusing somebody of murder. If you're going to accuse somebody of murder, even insinuate somebody's guilty of murder, you better have some really good evidence. All right, let me go to Grant, who writes in. He's 17 years old and he says that I believe in Jesus in my mind, but I don't always feel anything in my heart. How do I know if I truly believe in my heart? Like Romans 10:9 says, does real belief require strong emotions or can it still be real? Even if I don't feel much? I always feel guilty when people are bawling their eyes out in church or listening to worship music and I don't really feel anything, unquote. Grant, great question. Join the club. I'm not very emotional that way either. If emotion required somebody to be saved, I don't know if I'd be saved. In fact, my friend David Wood, some of you know who David Wood is. We've had him on the program several times before. A great apologist, particularly on this, on the issue of Islamic. David was with me at Christopher Newport University just about a month ago and I had him answer some questions and also talk about the Islamic dilemma. All that's on our YouTube channel if you want to see that. Anyway, David is clinically a sociopath, meaning he doesn't have feelings when it comes to, say, right or wrong. He knows what right and wrong is, but he doesn't have feelings that way. Does that mean that David can't be saved because he doesn't have emotional feelings like that? No, that wouldn't make any sense. And there's a difference grant here between belief that and belief in belief. That is believing that God exists and that Jesus rose from the dead. But even the demons believe that, as James says, the demons believe that and they tremble. They tremble. But there's a difference between belief that just intellectual belief and belief in trust in neither of them necessarily have to do with emotion. They have to do with making a decision. You can know something's true but still not assent to it. You can know that Jesus has risen from the dead, but say, well, I don't want to have anything to do with Jesus. In order to have your moral transgressions forgiven, you have to go from belief that to belief in. And that still is not just a decision of the mind, but also a decision of the will. It doesn't have to be a decision of the emotion necessarily. Remember, as a human being, you're at least mind, emotion and will. You have those three aspects of, of your psychology. You have an intellectual, you have emotion and you have a will. You can decide to do things. You can intellectually know Jesus has risen from the dead and not be saved. But you can also intellectually know Jesus has risen from the dead and volitionally say, I want to follow Jesus and not feel anything as a result of that. Then you're still saved because your will is, is what indicates to God that you want him. God is not going to force you into your. Into heaven against your will. If you don't want him now, you're not going to want him in eternity. So faith is not a feeling. Faith is a decision. In fact, as you know, marriage in this life is an illustration of our ultimate union with Christ. It's an illustration of our ultimate marriage with Jesus. In fact, one, one person put it this way. You can sum up what Jesus wants in five words. Jesus wants to marry you. Jesus wants to marry you. In other Words. He wants to enter into a relationship with you. And that's going to take not just your intellect, but also your will. If somebody asks you to marry you or marry that person. If someone asks you to marry, if you're a man and you ask a woman to marry you, you're asking that woman not just to make an intellectual decision, but a volitional decision. Hopefully there's emotion tied to that, but there doesn't need to be for it to still be a valid marriage. Some people are emotional. Some people are not. Some people are. Are driven more by emotion. Other people are driven more by analytics. Right. They're different personalities out there. They're not right or wrong, they're just different. We need all of those groups of people in a church because they bring different gifts to the body of Christ. But just because you don't feel emotional all the time doesn't mean you're. You're not saved. If you've made the decision and you want to follow Christ, then you're saved. And in marriage, you have something known as a vow. And the reason you have a vow is because feelings come and go. This is a big mistake we make in our culture. We think feeling is, or we think love is all about feelings. Love may be associated with feelings on occasion, but love itself is not a feeling. If love was purely a feeling, you couldn't love your enemies. Why? Because you never feel great about your enemies. You, you're. You're not feeling good things about your enemies. But Jesus says, love your enemies. What does that mean? Seek what's best for them. In. In. In. In the. According to God's will, seek what's best for somebody. That's what love is. Seeking what's best for somebody according to God's will. Not their will, not your will, their will. That's why Paul says in the great chapter on love that everybody reads at their wedding, but nobody obeys. Love does not rejoice in wrongdoing. Love rejoices in the truth. Love always protects. Love always perseveres. In other words, love doesn't mean approval. Love doesn't mean good feelings necessarily. Love means you're seeking what's best for the other person. You've made a decision. You've made a vow. You don't need a vow on your wedding day, you. You have these feelings for the other person already on your wedding day. You need a vow. Ten years later, when you wake up and you look over at your spouse and you go, you again. Why did it have to be you again? Right, because feelings come and go. But a vow is a decision to love somebody whether you feel like it or not. That's why you need a vow. You don't need a vow when everything's lovey dovey. You need a vow when you don't even like the other person. And we're all hard to live with. We're all fallen. We all need a savior. In fact, if you look at, say, David in the Old Testament, you know, David sinned. He committed some awful sins, adultery, murder. Yet you know what David never did? He never denied God. And you can even be mad at God and question God and still be saved. In fact, half the Psalms are that God, where are you? What's going on here? Job questioned God, but he still loved God. It's okay to question God. It's okay even to be mad at God. God can take it. What you don't do is you don't deny God. A lot of times you might have feelings like God. Why'd you do this? You're still saved. Yet you see, other kings in Israel, they follow other gods. They don't just sin, but they follow other gods. That means that they're not committed to Yahweh. David was committed to Yahweh, even though he had. He had certainly periods where he ran from God and he did evil. Just need, just read Psalm 51 about that. When he repents of his adultery with Bathsheba, he. He never completely denied God. He. He fell out of fellowship with God. His sanctification went the wrong direction, but he was still a believer. So grant, if you don't have feelings, that's not the issue. Feelings are just part of the three aspects of your and my personality, mind, emotion and will. Emotions come, emotions go, feelings come, feelings go. But your decision to follow Jesus is what saves you, not emotion. In fact, if you come to Jesus on emotion and that, and that's all you come to him as. You can leave them based on emotion. Because feelings come and go. Feelings are fickle. I think it was Martin Luther who said something like this. I may have this wrong, but I think it was Luther. He said something like feelings come and feelings go, and feelings can be deceiving. My warrant is the word of God. Naught else is worth believing. Feelings come, feelings go. Feelings can be deceiving. My warrant is the word of God, not else is worth believing. So don't let that trouble you. Grant. Although I will say this, if. If you do want to feel the presence of God, if you want to open yourself up to that, praying the Psalms is helpful. And also contemplating the heavens. If you read Isaiah, chapter 40, Isaiah says, or God says in Isaiah chapter 40, if you want to know what I'm like, look to the heavens. And when you look to the heavens, there are stars equivalent to the number of sand grains on all the beaches on all the Earth times 100,000. That's how many stars there are out there. And God says. He says that in Psalm 103. It says, God's love exceeds the height of the heavens above the earth. God's love exceeds the height of the heavens above the earth. And how high are the heavens above the Earth? There are stars equivalent to sand grains on 100,000 Earths. And just to go between two of those stars in our galaxy, if you could go five miles a second, space shuttle speed would take you over 200,000 years. Contemplate that. Marinate on that. If you want to get a sense of. Of what awesome means, a term where you we throw around too loosely. If you want to get a sense of what awesome means, contemplate the nature of God by contemplating the vastness of the heavens. All right, next question comes into us from. Why don't I have the guy's name here? I thought I had his name here. Well, this gentleman wrote in and he said, I listened to the Josh McPherson podcast about Christian involvement in the political arena. I found it interesting but inconclusive. Jesus Christ told Pilate that he was a king, but not of this world. Ephesians 6 and 2 Corinthians 5 refer to Christians as ambassadors. Hebrews 11 and 1st Peter call us strangers and pilgrims, or as we would say today, aliens. By definition, ambassadors and aliens are not citizens. They should have no direct influence on voting polls and have allegiance elsewhere. Okay, I think you're kind of straining a. A meaning of a word out a little bit too far in this situation, but I'll comment in on that in a minute. Anyway, the gentleman goes on to say this. We Christians are in the world, but not of it, and we are here to represent Christ's kingdom. For illustration, if the Russian ambassador tried to influence American elections, he would be sent home immediately. Well, that happens all the time, ladies and gentlemen. On the other hand, he energetically voices his concerns about how local politics impact overseas relationships. Just so with Christians, my burden is to the bride of Christ rather than the Republicans, which are not synonyms. Okay, yeah, I know they're not synonyms. However, let me address this directly. You said he energetically voices his concerns about how if he Is that what you said? Iffy energetically voices his concerns about policies, how they impact overseas relationships. That sentence doesn't make sense to me. Are you saying he's going to be sent home? Well, the reason he is an ambassador is to bring forth his concerns to our nation. And that certainly is political. Let me say that. But let me go back to your point about we're ambassadors. And in my view, what you're saying here is really a false dilemma. Because you can follow Christ and influence laws. Your ultimate allegiance is to Christ, and your ultimate responsibility is to worship Christ, love Christ, love God, and then love your neighbor. Can you advocate for good laws that reflect both of those priorities? Can you advocate for good laws that say allow people to worship freely and protects them from evil? Wouldn't that be a way of both loving God and your neighbor? Are you suggesting that only atheists are qualified to run the country? That Christians ought not be involved at all? Why would you say that? Do you know that God created government? It's one of the three institutions God created. He created government. He created the family, he created the church. Are we supposed to be just 2/3 of a Christian? Are we supposed to only be concerned with the church and the family? And don't you know that the government can affect how well the church and the family can survive and thrive? Don't you know that many governments prevent the church from being the church? Don't you know that many governments intervene in the family in a negative way way, like say, advancing single motherhood, tragically, as our government does. If you don't have a man in the house and you keep having babies, you get more and more money. Do you think that's a good thing for those babies? It's a false dilemma to say that we can't both follow Christ and be an influence on an institution that God himself created. But he has other reasons. This gentleman, he says, let's see, he says, please don't misunderstand me. This does not mean that we should be quiet, but that we speak up for the interests of the heavenly kingdom. Let me stop right here. What's one of the interests of the heavenly kingdom? That people have a right to promote the heavenly kingdom right here where they are. And that includes having the freedom of religion to do so. In fact, the questioner goes on to say, we are compelled to call sinners to repentance. We must preach the truth regardless of that price. Sir, you can't preach the truth if you're in prison for being a Christian. How are you gonna. How who are you gonna reach? Well, you may reach some cell mates. What if you're in solitary confinement, as many governments do to Christians? In fact, why don't you try and go over to Iran and try and build Christ's kingdom over there? They might execute you if you convert from Islam to Christianity in Iran. The price of that is death. That's Sharia law. Do you think God wants Sharia law put in place? Or has God put us in place as his ambassadors in order to prevent Sharia law and protect the freedom of religion, the freedom of speech, the freedom of assembly, the freedom of petition, the freedom of the press? These are the freedoms in our First Amendment. The questioner goes on to say we should learn apologetics so we can clearly point skeptics to eternal values. I'd like your thoughts about ambassadors and citizenship in the heavenly country and what happens when the two kingdoms are at odds with. With each other? Well, they may be at odds with one another, and they're certainly going to be at odds with one another if Christians aren't involved in governments here. This is what I don't understand. When people ask these questions, why do they think that Christians ought not be involved in government when God established government? When God even told the exiles that were taken to Babylon in Deuteronomy, sorry. In Jeremiah 29, he tells them, seek the welfare of the nation in which you live, because that will help you and help others there? Aren't we supposed to love our neighbors by seeking the welfare of them? And isn't part of the welfare of them based on the performance of the government and the laws that are passed there and the laws that are enforced there? Of course, this gentleman goes on, I think at some point to say, oh, yeah, Jesus Christ told Pilate that he was a king, but not of this world. Okay, let's. Let's go to that passage. Let's take a look at that passage if we can. This is both John 18 and John 19. Let's take a quick look here at first of all, in. Let's see, we are in John before Pilate. This is John 18. Oh, this is when Pilate asked Jesus, are you the king of the Jews? Jesus says, is that your idea? Or did you. Did others talk to you about it? And Pilate said, I'm a Jew, or am I a Jew? Pilate replied, it was your people and your chief priests who handed you over to me. What is it you have done? And Jesus said, my kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my Arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place. You are a king. Then Pilate said, Jesus answered, you are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born. And for this I came into the world to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me. And then Pilate says, what is truth? And then he went on to say, I find no fault in this man. Well, he just uttered a truth claim. Isn't it interesting? Pilate said, what is truth? And then he said, it's true. This guy is not guilty. Okay, so he says, my kingdom is not of this world. What does he mean by that? Well, part of the context can be seen if you just keep reading. If you get down to. Let's see. This is in the next chapter, 1910. This is John 19:10. When Pilate is questioning Jesus. He says, where do you come from? He asked Jesus. But Jesus gave him no answer. Do you refuse to speak to me? Pilate said, don't you realize I have the power either to free you or to crucify you? And Jesus answered, you would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above. Whoa. When Jesus says, my kingdom is not of this world, what he's saying is that first of all, he's not a threat to Pilate in his first coming. And secondly, the power that Pilate has, as you can see here from John 19:11, the power that Pilate has comes from God. God has established Pilate in government. He's established government itself. So the. The power to crucify Jesus comes from God himself. God is the one who has authority over life, and he grants that authority in capital crimes to government. That's what Romans 13 is all about. So this institution that God created, government. He has delegated that authority on life and death for capital crimes to the government so they can punish wrongdoers. This is the main purpose of government, is to punish wrongdo and protect innocent people from evil. I'm wondering if the questioner thinks that only non Christians should be involved in that process, because that makes zero sense. Just because Jesus says, my kingdom is not of this world doesn't mean that Christians ought not be involved politically. It merely means that Jesus's kingdom does not operate like Pilate's kingdom. In other words, Jesus is not going to bring whole a whole bunch of angels to his defense or followers to his defense against Pilate at this time. But when Jesus comes again, he's going to bring a sword. A sword's going to be coming out of his mouth. And that is the time he's going to use force to overpower the evil forces, the forces of darkness. But to take this phrase and to say that Christians ought not be involved in government, even if you could make a case that Jesus is saying something other than what I'm saying here, this would not overpower all the other places that God says, be salt and light occupied till I come. Seek the welfare of the, of the nation in which you exist. Love your neighbor. How are you loving your neighbor? If you're allowing a government to be put in place and you have the power to prevent a bad government from being put in place, how are you loving your neighbor if, if, if you don't take that power and use it to protect your neighbor, you're not. How are you loving God if you don't put laws in place when you have the capacity to do so that protects your neighbor and your ability to preach and live the gospel, you're not, you're not following Jesus if you're not loving God and loving your neighbor by ensuring that laws are put in place when you have the capacity to do so, that allow people to freely love God, to freely love their neighbor, to freely preach and live the gospel. By the way, to say, my kingdom is not of this world. If you were to take that logic to its absurd extent, you could, you could use that logic on anything. You know, your, your wife could say, honey, take out the trash. My kingdom is not of this world. I'm just concerned with heavenly things, honey. You know, Johnny just fell off the swing, he cut his knee. We got to take him to the emergency room. My kingdom is not of this world. I mean, this is a, this is silly. People pull out phrases out of the Bible, don't understand the context, and then they. If we were to do that and apply that without proper context, it would be absurd. You got to pay more attention to me, honey. My kingdom is not of this world. You got to pay your taxes. My kingdom is not of this world, silly. So let me quote Abraham Kuiper, who back in the 1800s had an address opening a university where he said this. There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign overall, does not cry. Mine. In other words, every area of your life has to be submitted to Jesus. Not just at church. You have to submit yourself to Jesus and followed Jesus at church, at home, at work, online, in the voting booth, in government, at school, everywhere. Jesus is 24, 7, 365, 360 degrees. That's one reason I love my friend Josh Howerton because he is a pastor that understands that. That is one reason I love Charlie Kirk because he understood that people, we've got to stop compartmentalizing Jesus and saying, I'm only going to follow Jesus at certain times. I mean, my friend Alan Jackson gives this illustration. I think I mentioned it a couple of shows ago. What would you say of a husband who said, I'm only married at home? You know, when I go to work, I'm not married. When I'm out online, I'm not married when I'm in the community, I'm not married just at home, you'd say that guy is not committed to his wife. Yeah, exactly. If you're only married to Jesus at church or married to Jesus at home, but you're not married to Jesus at work, or you're not married to Jesus in the voting booth, or you're not married to Jesus online, you're not married to Jesus. So we've done other shows on Christians being involved in politics, but I, I thank you for writing in on this. But yeah, those are my thoughts right there. You're an ambassador for Jesus in every area of life. At church, at home, at work, online, in the voting booth, in your community, in school, and for Christians not to be involved in politics. Why don't we just let the atheists and the Muslims take over and then we won't be able to preach or live the gospel free? That doesn't make any sense. All right, here's a question. All the way from Madagascar, from Tsiki is his name. Hope I'm pronouncing that right. He says, I give thanks to God for what he's doing through you. I actually have a question. Why did God allow Satan to wander and deceive people? Why didn't he simply judge him and cast him into the fire? Thank you for taking the time to read this. Well, thank you for your question. You know, we get a lot of questions, and you may not know this, but many of the questions that we get, we have videos on from the college campus. So if you go to our YouTube channel, in fact, I bet if you went to our YouTube channel and typed in why did God allow Satan? You'll find probably two or three videos where that same question came up and we have a five or six minute answer to it. So I'll urge you to do that. In fact, maybe we'll find one of those and put them in the show notes. But the short answer is this why did God allow any of us to have free will to wander and deceive people, not just Satan? In fact, I was at Michigan State a number of years ago and I knew there was a militant atheist in the audience because he was just not happy with my presentation the whole time. I could tell he had a scowl on his face. And when the Q A started, he popped his hand up immediately. And I said, yes, sir. And he said, if there is a good God, why doesn't he stop all the evil in the world? And I said, sir, that is an excellent question. Maybe because if he did, he might start with you and me because we do evil every day. You ever wonder why when we talk about evil and God allowing it, we always talk about somebody else doing evil? God, why didn't you stop him? God, why didn't you stop her? Why didn't you stop the shooter? Why didn't you stop the Holocaust? Why didn't you stop Satan? Why don't you? Why do we never say, why didn't you stop me? Because we do evil every day. I mean, if God were to stop evil at midnight tonight, would you still be alive at 1201? No, you wouldn't be and neither would I. Because we all do evil. None of us are perfect. You have probably been short with somebody you love today. If not yesterday, you've probably had evil thoughts today. You've probably not been as selfless as you could be. You've probably been selfish. In fact, it's easy to be bad. It's hard to be good. We're bent towards sin. We're depraved. If you don't think so, try and bring up a toddler. A two year old. You don't have to teach a two year old to say mine. He already knows that. You have to teach him to share repeatedly, over and over again. We're bent toward evil. That's why we need a savior. Now, in the last podcast, or maybe two podcasts ago, I talked about this idea of how redemption is better than innocence. Because related to this question is why didn't God just prevent sin from happening at all and take us right to heaven? Because redemption is better than innocence. Going through difficulty enhances your capacity to enjoy God and others. When you don't go through difficulty, you don't get the kind of depth that redemption brings you. And Paul talks about this in Second Corinthians, chapter 4, verses 16 to 18, where he says, our light and momentary afflictions are achieving for us a greater weight of glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, for what is seen is temporary. We fix our eyes in what is unseen, for what is unseen is eternal. So going through difficulty enhances your capacity to enjoy God, not only now, but in eternity. And you don't get that by just innocence. Innocence is a good thing, don't get me wrong. But if somebody falls and then they're redeemed out of that pit, whoever redeemed them out of that pit is going to be admired and loved by that person. That's what God does for us. Out of gratitude for what God has done for us, he's pulled us out of the pit of sin. We have a deeper relationship than if we had never sinned. And by the way, God to end evil, which. Let me make one other point here. The answer to the problem of evil is Christianity. If we had never sinned, there would be no reason for God to add humanity to His Deity, come to Earth and allow the creatures that rebelled against him to torture and kill him so he could take our punishment upon Himself. If we had never sinned, that never would have been necessary. But it is necessary because we have sinned. So God comes into this world and takes evil upon Himself. But the way he ultimately ends evil is not to take away our free will. The way he ultimately ends evil is to quarantine it in a place called hell. So everyone has the free will to either follow Jesus or not. Everyone has two choices in the end. To either to be judged or to be forgiven. Because there's only two things you're going to get in the afterlife. You're either going to get justice or you're going to get grace. Does anybody listening to me right now, watching me right now want justice from an infinitely just being? No. I hope not. You shouldn't want justice because you haven't been infinitely just and neither have I. But an infinitely just being must, must punish sin. Otherwise he's not infinitely just. So he punishes an innocent substitute in our place. That's what Christianity is. Christianity is really about substitution. God comes into our world, takes our punishment upon Himself, and then he grants us forgiveness and grants us his righteousness out of love. So why did God allow Satan to wander and deceive people? The same reason he allows us to do the same thing. Because if he doesn't give creatures freedom, then this isn't a moral universe. We can't love. We're just robots. But since we use our freedom sometimes to do evil, God initiated a rescue plan to Come in and save us from it. And that's what this world is all about. To make that decision and follow Jesus. All right, last question comes from a gentleman, Chris, who says, I'm writing to you as someone who enjoys your show from a left leaning perspective. Thank you for listening. Chris, I'm wondering if you may be willing to give your thoughts on an issue I'm. I'm wondering about. I'll get to the bottom line here. He says, I now understand the consternation articulated by cultural conservatives regarding protecting their children from political and cultural messages they find objectionable. He finds objectionable some messages coming from the right. Okay, I get it. I resonate with the instinct to prohibit the use of YouTube in short videos, but I don't know if that is a realistic boundary to be set, especially given that I place strong emphasis on holding for. Confirm what I say. If you are a young parent, how could. How would you protect your child from poisonous online content? I do not want my child to become cruel, antagonistic and disrespectful. Great question, Chris. I'm not sure if Chris. Chris is a man or a woman, but let me assume spelled with a K, maybe a woman. Chris, thank you for being concerned about your child in this way because I see too many parents just handing off iPhones to their kids and it's a great babysitter, but you're destroying, I think, the innocence of your children and maybe making them cruel, antagonistic, disrespectful, and also anxious. Let me recommend a book not written by a Christian, written by Jonathan Height, who is an NYU professor. He may even be an atheist. I think he is. The book is called Anxious Generation. It's several years old now, but it talks about what social media can do to a young person in particular and even older people. It's making them anxious. So if I were, I brought my kids up before the iPhone. Okay? I think the iPhone came out. My kids were already out of high school, most of them, so they didn't have that capacity that we all have now. So I would recommend you read Anxious Generation and ensure that your kids do not have access to the Internet until they're probably 18 or 16. You know how mature your kids are better than I do. So you'll have to figure that out. But you're going to have to restrict that. And if you've already given them that iPhone or that Droid or whatever you're going to say it's going to be World War III to take it away, my question would be, okay, what's your point. I know. It's going to be World War three. Parenting is hard. Hey, parents out there, if you thought parenting was going to be convenient, sorry, it's not. You're going to have to take a stand because you love your child. They're going. They may hate you for it, but, sorry, you're the parent here. You need to lay down the law because your children are worth a fight. You need to fight for your kids, and that means you want to shield them from things that are evil. On the other hand, I think along that same period, you ought to be talking to them about what is on the Internet. So when they do experience it, they're already ready for it. Okay, from our perspective, a Christian perspective, we want to tell them about transgenderism. We want to tell them about. About LGBTQ issues. We want to tell them about pornography. We want to tell them about macro evolution. We want to tell them about atheism. We want to tell them about the issues that churn through our society like a hurricane. We want to tell them about critical theory. We want to prepare them so when they see it, they go, oh, Mom, Dad's already talked to me about this. I know what this is about. My friend Katie Foust, who we've had on the program several times, I once asked her on a previous show, when should you start talking to your kids about, say, transgenderism or gender roles or even sexuality, sex itself? And she said, a year too early is better than five minutes too late. You want to be the one that your kids rely on. You want to be the one that, when your kid has a question, they come to you. And they don't go to their friends or they go to the Internet. They come to you because you're a safe person to talk to. So you don't freak out when these issues come up. You talk to them directly. But I do want to ask you this, Chris, as a parent, do you have evidence that human nature is inherently sinful? I think you do. Especially if there's. Well, any. Any. Any age growing up, even adults. We're inherently sinful. If we're inherently sinful and there is a standard of justice out there, then we all need a savior. So I don't know if you're a Christian or not, Chris, but if you're not, I think that your very concern about your child is illustrating something that the Christian worldview, and only the Christian worldview really understands and has a solution for, and that's the depravity of human beings. Jesus is the only solution to that, because we can't. If there is an infinite standard of justice out there, we can't live up to it. We've already fallen. Well, actually, there is a way to live up to it. You just got to be perfect your whole life. Too late for me. How about you? Yeah. Okay. So we all need a savior. So please consider Jesus. Jesus is the Savior. The evidence is there that this is really true, that God exists. Jesus did come and rise from the dead. And by trusting in him, you're not only forgiven, but given his righteousness. Now you might say, well, I don't like some of the viewpoints that Christians or the Bible puts forth, that the Bible says certain sexual behaviors aren't good. Right. And true. Okay, Understand you might not like that. But what really is true, if God isn't the standard of righteousness, who is? It's not us. There are no rights if God doesn't exist. So those would just be preferences. God has a reason for us to be here, and that reason is to know him and to make him known. And that's going to require us to be disciplined in some areas, certainly of sexuality and other areas. Of course, if there is no God, there is no standard. Everything's a matter of opinion. I don't think you believe that. I don't think most people, if they thought about it, believe that, say, murder or rape or these kind of things are just a matter of opinion. So God must exist. And if God exists, he's also a judge. He's the standard of judgment. And we all need somebody to cover our sin. We need somebody to take away our sin. We need somebody to grant us his righteousness. And that's what Jesus does. So thank you for writing in, Chris. Thank you for listening. Even though you're. You don't agree with maybe a lot of what we say here, but please consider the very fact that you want to protect your kids proves that there's evil out there. If there's evil out there and evil in. In us, we need a savior. Consider the Savior, please. All right, friends, don't forget tonight, University of New Mexico. Tomorrow night, Calvary Chapel, Albuquerque. And also next week, the 13th Central Church of God in Charlotte and the 16th out in Chino Hills with my friend Jack Hibbs. All that's on our website. Also see CIA in person coming up. Check it out@crossexamine.org Hope to see you here next time. God bless.