Navigate Podcast
Welcome to Navigate, we are two long term friends doing life and ministry together. I got tired of the same ole answers when I started looking for help when it came to my walk with God. So together we go deeper than most would on topics that most people have heard or were taught but never fully understood. It is our way of simplifying concepts that we may have over complicated throughout our lives. Bringing theology and life experience into each episode. It is our hope and desire to help Navigate your Christian walk with you
Navigate Podcast
Understanding Justice, Law, and Moral Clarity: Commandments Pt. 6
TJBHpodcast@gmail.com
As we navigate through nuanced discussions about justice and law, we examine the intricate balance between divine commands and state laws. By exploring scenarios like self-defense and state-sanctioned actions, we dissect the conditions under which taking a life aligns with divine intention. Our conversation is enriched by references to Exodus 22 and Romans 13, shedding light on the role of government as an instrument for divine justice, and the sanctity of life through the lens of Imago Dei. This segment also reflects on historical figures and events, pondering how societies devoid of divine guidance have often spiraled into tyranny and chaos.
Rounding off our episode, we dig into the ethical frameworks underpinning capital punishment and the doctrine of the lesser magistrate. By drawing parallels to modern societal issues like abortion and assisted suicide, we underscore the ongoing relevance of biblical commandments in our current moral and societal landscapes. Our dialogue calls for a deeper understanding of ancient teachings and their impact on justice and governance today. So sit back and reflect with us on how these timeless principles continue to influence our world and the leaders we choose to follow.
Hey guys, welcome back to Navigate. Justin's here, what's up, my man and Josiah's here. I'm back, we got him back. We got the Josie.
Speaker 2:He was here for our Sabbath talk. I was begging at the door ever since.
Speaker 3:Hey, when you have nieces and nephews, you're going to make them call you Uncle Si.
Speaker 2:Uncle Si, yeah, and I'll be drinking my sweet tea Is Si short for Josiah? Yeah, and I'll be drinking my sweet tea Is Sigh short for Josiah See what.
Speaker 1:I'm saying, and then he could just do.
Speaker 3:Hey, you know, I want to call you Sigh from now on.
Speaker 1:Dude, that's exactly right you should call you Josie, but Sigh sounds cool.
Speaker 3:You can call him Sigh.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't want to do that. He's like please don't do that to me.
Speaker 1:He'll catch months. Everybody would be calling you that after, so it's usually what happens. You are a trendsetter, so I am yes, yes, all right, moving on to commandment number six, the sixth commandment now real quick. I've heard this commandment two different ways. Okay, thou shall not kill, thou shall not commit murder.
Speaker 2:Yes, which one is it murder.
Speaker 1:like those two are different Murder, murder murder, just to be clear.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the King James translated this kill and there was just some it's just a. It's a, let's say, interpretive difficulty. That was around this where they made a statement and, in that day and age, assumed people knew with regard to murder, because the context of the whole Bible has just punishment and taking of life in lots of different areas, and so we have people who took the 10 commandments and removed them from the context of everything else that was said, and then we're reinterpreting that, and then you had all these pacifists and things that were coming out.
Speaker 1:Didn't make sense. I was thinking of that movie, hacksaw Ridge. Yeah, desmond Dawes, you know I'm not supposed to kill. I can't kill Exactly. Yeah, I don't think it says that. Yeah, well, it's funny.
Speaker 3:It's like, hey, you should read the rest of the book.
Speaker 2:It got a contradiction right after where it's like put this person to death.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Exactly so yeah, so there are some translations that will say thou shalt not kill. It very much is murder, and murder is the unjust taking of life, unjust taking specifically of human life.
Speaker 2:But yeah, and if you go ahead, Can I just make one comment on this? They didn't have a word for murder in the original language.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the context here is king. It's in the context of what is being stated the killing, taking of life. With regards to what this is stating, it is interpreted via the context of everything else God gives us in his law and book, so it interprets for us in a large way what this commandment means in light of everything else that is taught.
Speaker 1:So is it more like the reason behind why you're killing somebody? Yeah, exactly why you're killing somebody.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly when does taking life become wrong according to God? Because there's lots of places where he commands that you take life right. Oh, hundreds, yeah. So we would say, yeah, god doesn't contradict himself. The statement here is with regards to an unjust taking of human life. That's what we're looking at. It's unjust.
Speaker 1:What was the point of giving this commandment to Moses then, at that time?
Speaker 3:To make sure that the people had a clear moral and civil reality or perspective on what God desired for people to do. So, tim, it would be wrong for you to kill someone else right, unjustly, unjustly. But what makes it?
Speaker 1:would be wrong for you to kill someone else, right Unjustly, Tim Draper Unjustly but what makes it just Tim Draper?
Speaker 3:Great question when is it appropriate to take human life? It's appropriate to take human life in self-defense. It's appropriate to take human life on a grand scale, or let's say a civic layer for taking life and as a punishment for somebody else. So let's think of some fun ones that we could jump into right away. If you're interested. This is Exodus 22. If the thief is caught while breaking in and is struck so that he dies, there will be no blood guiltiness on his account. Okay, so here's your make my day law right here in Exodus.
Speaker 3:This is where it's coming from. It's saying hey, if somebody breaks in and he gets killed while you're defending your family or your property, you are not guilty of any sin. Why? Because you were defending and protecting what God has called you to defend and protect. This then applies to a larger, like government scale as well. If the government or, let's say, a state, is invaded or has a large enemy that is seeking to destroy, take life, take property, take whatever their goal is to defend on a larger scale, the house, so this principle gets applied in a larger sense, if you want, to societies themselves and the state system. This is why, for instance, in Romans 13, it says the government is given a sword for the sole purpose of going to war with those who are doing evil, those who are attacking what God has called good. They're literally to wield the sword and accomplish God's justice. Vengeance is actually the word, which is awesome. It says they're an avenging servant. What's interesting that people need to correlate is this In Romans 12, I think it's verse 19,.
Speaker 3:It says Vengeance is mine, says the Lord, I will repay. And then it's like a couple verses later in chapter 13, which is not a different letter, and those numbers weren't there before. There's not a separation. He's talking about the state being God's avenging servant to carry out his vengeance. So when God says vengeance is mine, well, how is he going to carry that out? Then he says you know how I carried that out, through godly state systems that are fulfilling and accomplishing the law that I've put in place. That is the arm of the Lord in a civic sense to accomplish the vengeance that belongs to him. So, tim, why am I not out doing, let's say, vigilante nonsense? I love Batman as much as the next guy. The Bible actually prohibits this. You are not to take the place of God's avenging servant unless you are actually uniquely in that role that God has ordained for that purpose.
Speaker 1:So the avenging servant, meaning like officials, like the police, the state, yeah yeah, exactly, the state itself.
Speaker 3:The state yeah, yeah, exactly the state itself is called to uniquely bring about and uphold, let's say, restrain wickedness and uphold the standard of God, the law that he's given to us through the state. And some of that means, like we read in these places. That means, let's say, going to war with eminent threats and people who are doing wickedness on a large scale to defend what God has given us. That means putting to death in some cases. There's a bunch we could get into here, but when the punishment fits the crime, you would take someone's life as a payment, as a covering, as part of the standard that God has given. What is this? Genesis 9-6, where he says this if man takes life, then by man your blood must be shed. It's kind of this whole picture of if you do this, this is what you get in return. In the same way, it talks about the wages of sin. Is death right? The picture there is that, yeah, if somebody takes somebody's life, you have to take their life in payment for what they did.
Speaker 3:Now, was it Rush Dooney man who had this awesome picture? He was making the point that, look, human life or humanity itself, we would say is made in the image of God. We call this the Imago Dei. Okay, the image of God.
Speaker 3:They carry this and his point was the Imago Dei is such an important thing that if somebody takes the life of somebody who is made in the image of God, you would have to take their life on principle, because their salvation and if they're right or not before God is um is so serious that you would need to send them up to a higher court for God to decide the verdict on their life. Wow, so he's saying you um and this is what I'm trying to think of who the people said in the crusades, like, get in there and God will sort them out. You know what I mean. Like it's not a one-for-one there. But his point literally was man, if somebody takes somebody else's life, especially on purpose, it is your duty to send them up to a higher court for God to decide where their standing actually is, which is so interesting to me.
Speaker 1:But yeah, unless you're defending your property and your family.
Speaker 3:Well, unless you're defending your property and your family. Well, that's kind of so. That's kind of. The whole point is at that point the man is taking his life into his own hands and he's in sin, doing something he should not be doing, and you are called to defend and protect what God has given to you. So, yeah, those are kind of the three areas Self-defense, capital punishment and to uphold the standard that God has called us to in any given environment.
Speaker 1:Okay, you look like you have something to say there, josiah.
Speaker 2:I had a lot of things to say. Jump in buddy, no, it's really good. I would say that the I mean obviously we have to address this. I mean Paul's underlying assumption there. When he's talking about Romans 13, what kind of government is he assuming? The civil magistrate at that time? I don't want to get too much in the weeds of that, but when he's saying that they're meant to be a terror to the wrongdoer, I mean, what's the wrongdoer in Paul's worldview?
Speaker 3:The one who's breaking God's law.
Speaker 2:God's law exactly. It's not some arbitrary system where you can have a tyrannical government that then starts executing everybody. And this is very important because you'll get guys in history, say, adolf Hitler, who decided that he should exterminate an entire race of people because he saw them as parasites.
Speaker 2:And what's ironic about Adolf Hitler. I believe it's Joe Booth that quotes this in the Mission of God amazing book, by the way. But Hitler said that the curse of mankind was on Mount Sinai. And it's interesting because he hated and abhorred God's law. And you see how that literally manifested in the way that he ruled, where he would just exterminate groups and races of people. Because he's ruling on an arbitrary standard his own standard.
Speaker 3:People that want to be God really hate that. God exists and has already spoken.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and what you find fascinating is like a lot of people can get abhorred because they look at the Old Testament. They're like, oh man, there's all these capital punishments and there's all these executions that have to go on. But, man, if you look at any other system that completely rejects any Christian foundation, you see far more rabid wickedness going on. I mean, we just consider for a moment Mao's ruling and how many hundreds of millions of his own citizens were killed and executed, stalin, for instance. I mean all these atheistic systems that just liquidated and murdered their own people unjustly because they completely abandoned God's standards for human rights. And what's happening now in the United States?
Speaker 2:I mean, this one was obviously going to come up at some point, but we've abandoned God's standard here in the US and now we're murdering unborn children. And so you see what begins to happen If people want to complain about the Old Testament, the laws in the Old Testament. You see throughout history, as man begins to depart from the human rights that God affords him in his laws, that man actually goes beyond, god becomes far more tyrannical. Not that God is tyrannical in any sense, but he becomes far more wicked and he takes human life all the more without God's law, and so I think that that's an interesting point to caveat on.
Speaker 3:It's worth making point, too, that the whole picture of the Bible is God working through the mess to bring about peace. And even the standards, the rules, the things that he gives us with regard to justly taking life are for the purpose of ultimately bringing about peace and restoring safety where it didn't exist before. So when you have taking of life, that's not for the purpose of ultimately restoring peace or something else. Then you have things like jihad. It's a lawful system let's say, if you're a Muslim to take life but it's not for the purpose of restoring peace, it's for taking over the world. All of this now belongs to me, right, and I'll kill people to get it. That is not a biblical principle. That's nothing in the law stating anything like that either.
Speaker 1:So, just to be clear, what about stuff like the death penalty? I mean, is that a biblical stance too, there? That sounds like it would be.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yes, I quoted Genesis 9, 6 earlier. Right, if a man takes, you know, sheds blood by man, his blood must be shed.
Speaker 1:God makes it pretty clear there's um what about, like doing it in a humane?
Speaker 3:way, or 16 reasons for capital punishment. Uh, in the old Testament, like different things that we would say hey, if you do this, the the. Let's say that the extent of the law could be capital punishment. That's worth noting. Like one of these, Tim is hey, if your son is drunken and unruly, you could stone him to death.
Speaker 3:Hey, if your son is drunken and unruly, you could stone him to death. Okay, and it's also worth noting that historically, there is no history of that actually being used to the nth degree. So it seems like there's some laws that God gives that it could be up to this if it was that bad of a situation, or as a reminder to society. It is really important that you obey and take care of your kids. However, yeah, there's a lot of different things in scripture where God says in some of these scenarios, like I said, I think it's 16 or 18 different things that the Bible says could deserve the death penalty in some situation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I want to add on to that point that it's the supreme punishment could be capital punishment. But there seems to be an indication. I just pulled it up here, but it's Numbers 35-31. And it's Joe Boot that actually made this analysis, and we've seen this throughout church history as well. With this interpretation it says Moreover, you shall accept no ransom for the life of a murderer who is guilty of death but he shall be put to death, is guilty of death but he shall be put to death. And what's fascinating about this is that there's an implication here that you could ransom people out of other crimes that were deserving of capital, but potentially deserving of capital punishment, but it was murder, was the one crime you could not ransom anybody out of. So again, this is important to understand that God, when he's saying that you shall put this person to death, it's not in all cases, it's up until, like, that's the maximum punishment that it could go for.
Speaker 3:Right Kind of like our own court system.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:So this gets thrown out because I had somebody I was talking to talking about this. Well, if a teenage daughter goes out and gets pregnant and has an abortion, are we immediately saying death penalty? And I would say no. I think there's some conversation around. What were the circumstances? Where is that person at mentally? Would we execute minors? What's the standard around this? Are there some circumstances where there should be death penalty for something like that? According to the Bible, 100% there is penalty for something like that according to the Bible, 100% there is. But not every circumstance where it says you would surely put this person to death means that you would immediately do that, because this is a case law system. It's saying this is the principle you would derive and up to this standard, you would execute on it. No pun intended.
Speaker 1:He just keeps using capital punishment. What are you talking about when you say that execution?
Speaker 3:Capital punishment is the taking of somebody's life theoretically, in a just sense. I don't know if you want to do this, Tim. I wrote down knowing that we were going to jump into this. Let's say some Christian, just war theory, just the principles.
Speaker 3:From this you want to hear this real quick, I don't know if you'd be interested, but the Bible lays out some standards and these have been held throughout church history. This is not Justin's list, okay. These have been pretty solid things that have been established by scripture and used throughout history. There's seven of them. Some people will say there's six, some are like these are the big four, but I'll list them for you.
Speaker 3:The first one is just cause, just the principle, principle of just cause. There has to be an actual reason for going to war, for for for uh entering into this kind of battle or something in the situation to say, if this is legit, all right, I E what we had talked about before, um, like, is that our lives being taken? Are we under some kind of serious assault? Um, is this? Is there a real reason to sure uh, reason to go into this and make sure this thing happens? The second is last resort, the principle of last resort, which means is there a potential for peace instead of just going to war? If you can solve this with a pen, do you have to use the sword? If you can sit down and get guys to chill out, you should do everything that you can to do that before you go to taking the life of somebody who bears the image of God.
Speaker 1:It shouldn't be the first thing you do Right, right, it should be so it's like do I have a just cause to do this?
Speaker 3:Maybe you have a just cause. Is there a better way to take care of it instead of war? Okay, let's do that first. Let's see whatever else we can do. Let's see whatever else we can do.
Speaker 3:Three is legitimate authority. Like I said earlier, you can't have vigilantism. You can't have a bunch of people saying, well, I think we should. This is why guys like James Brown and things who are killing people who are, who believed in different things like slave trade and things like this, and they're taking it into their own hands, you're not a legitimate authority. If God is the avenging servant, then the civil magistrate is the one who actually has to enact the law or walk those things out. Some people want to take those into your own hands, so somebody can't declare war. That isn't a legitimate authority given by God for that purpose.
Speaker 3:Fourth is a successful prospect.
Speaker 3:You would not enter into a Christian war unless you were going to lose more lives and more people in general by doing this, then then finding another pattern until something was actually, you know, a reasonable, a reasonable approach to something.
Speaker 3:So like if, if you know, hey, if I, if we go to war with these guys, every but more people are going to die than if we didn't, and and we're not actually going to succeed then you wouldn't do that Because human life is too valuable to do something just because there would need to be the outcome of peace and safety and everything else for that to be the case. Peaceful objective again I brought up earlier that's the principle of a peaceful objective. It means ultimately, the goal is not just to obtain more land for yourself or get more resources for yourself or get the stuff that you want. The goal actually is more peace and more safety, and if that isn't the ultimate goal of of what you're doing, then you shouldn't go to war in the first place. Proportionate means um, some people call this this would be lex talionis. Tim say lex talionis.
Speaker 1:Lex talionis Lex talionis.
Speaker 3:This is the law of proportion. What you're saying is it has to fit the crime. You cannot. This is a big question. Like, okay, so when the United States dropped nukes on people, okay, the question of Lex Talionis comes up. Was what we did proportionate or reasonable considering what they did to us? Was this an eye for an eye or was this an eye for a family? It's a reasonable question to ask and it's a serious one, and a lot of people would be. You know, Cobra Kai, strike first, strike hard you know what I mean, it's okay.
Speaker 3:Right, right, and there's a Christian war theory here that we should be paying attention to saying did the punishment match the crime here, or did we double down or triple down in this area? The seventh would be civilian immunity, and this doesn't mean that civilians are never going to get hurt in the process. It means they can't be an intentional part of the strategy or you intentionally harming civilians because they don't matter. The goal would be to eliminate the amount of civilians that are hurt in any kind of process.
Speaker 3:Trying to eliminate the actual issue, like going into gaza, right, this is one of those things where it comes up, where it's like man, this is tricky because you have all these people who don't have any kind of just war theory and they think, yeah, if they're going to abide by this law, then I'm going to do everything that I can to leverage their own law against them.
Speaker 3:I'll take, take these people, I'll use them as shields, everything else In those circumstances. There's not a way to mitigate that or get around it. But ultimately, you're not going to bomb a bunch of areas that just have civilians to find one person who doesn't. The goal would be we want to eliminate civilians and make them immune from this as much as we can in given circumstances. So there's a whole theory around when is it appropriate to go to war? When is battle actually a thing that you should consider, and the Bible actually has a lot to say about it, and I don't think most Christians in the last 50 years have even like tapped this on the shoulder because this hasn't been a thing.
Speaker 2:No, they haven't. Yeah, I think and this has been around for a long time that this has been articulated. It was St Augustine of Hippo. It was the 5th century. Yeah, I think he died. It was 430 AD or something like that, but he articulated these things. We've been using it ever since.
Speaker 3:Well, people who have been immersed in war have had to think about it.
Speaker 2:They've had to think about it, and what's fascinating is that you've totally lost this understanding, because what we've made, the maxim you could say, is humanism, and that can be whatever you and your relativism, arbitrary ideas think it should be, whether it's just pacifism all the way out and there should never be a war. But the problem is, christians stop thinking like Christians. We stopped depending on what God has spoken and we started depending on how we feel, and it's very feeling-based with how we feel about war, and war is never good. And the problem is, I mean, ultimately St Augustine went as far as to say that war there are times that it's necessary because of the fall, and so I don't know. I think we would be a much better society if Christians got back to understanding these principles from scripture.
Speaker 1:Well, based off that list, and you kind of brought this up too, before we even started recording. But this isn't just about somebody taking someone else's life. This is also kind of defending life as much as you can.
Speaker 3:So, every one of the Ten Commandments, you want to think about the inverse of what it is too, because whether it's a positive or negative statement that God is making about something, generally speaking, the inverse is what you're teaching on as well, right? So if I'm saying murder is wrong, what am I to infer from that? That life is valuable, that I'm fighting for life, that I want to defend life. If I'm saying, hey, lying is wrong, which we'll get to, what am I saying? The truth is valuable and you should fight for it. If I'm teaching, remember the Sabbath day, make it holy, don't break that, what am I saying? It's really important that you apply that in your life. Everything has a negative and a positive that you should be looking at. Now there's some details in both those areas. You can take them to an extreme and make that unhelpful. Yeah, the ultimately, this commandment is saying the Imago Dei, the life that God has given, is really important, and when you take life, you had better have a great reason for it. If you don't, it's murder. This is why abortion is murder. It's an unjust taking of human life.
Speaker 3:Another area where this bugs me is assisted suicide. We have so many people now that are like oh, this person's old or they have this going on, or they've been in a hospital. I mean, dude, canada is crazy. Now they just recommend to people oh, would you like us to assist with this? Basically right, I'm trying to think of the word they have. They don't say assisted suicide anymore, they have a whole vernacular built around it, but this is a legitimate recommendation they make. I think this is the case. You have to check me on this. I was hearing somebody talk about this now in Canada. Like a young kid, like children, can say I don't want to live anymore, and it is a legitimate option for them to go and end their own life without any repercussions. If somebody signs off and says, yes, they have this legitimate thing, they want this to be done, kids can just go and their life, I mean it's, it's. It's horrifying because we don't value what God has stated and where God has said there is value.
Speaker 3:Now To Josiah's point. It becomes humanism, whereas humans decide what they think is best, and this can go a variety of ways. Either you become a tyrant and wants to take everyone else's life, or you think you have some kind of selective sovereignty and say I can take my own life whenever I want or whenever it's convenient. And just as abhorrent to me as abortion is, which is this taking of innocent life?
Speaker 3:Is this idea that you think it's okay to take your own if the circumstances feel like that should be the case, and that's equally disgusting to God, but ultimately a consequence of a world that doesn't care about the sixth commandment and loves to find ways around. There's movies now, too, about this person who had this terrible life, and it's his right to take his own life if he doesn't want to live anymore. No, it's not. No, it's not. God says here's my standard. I've given you this. You don't get to decide when you want to do that or not, because God has spoken and everybody wants to come up with some emotional case for why what God said shouldn't be followed and it's wrong.
Speaker 1:Along that kind of same vein. What about people who are sick and, hey, this surgery could save your life, could not, and they refuse to do it and then they end up dying? Is that another form?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I would even apply some of the same principle there from when we were talking about, like, going to war. Is the purpose of doing this to bring about peace and safety? Yeah, and is it a dangerous thing to do? Could it go south? Yes. Is it a reasonable success? Yes. Is it for the purpose of godly outcome? Yes, okay, then I'm within my bounds to do this, to see this happen, if I know, if I do this I'm probably going to die. It's not worth it. No, I wouldn't apply that. No, I wouldn't apply that.
Speaker 2:Also say that you as a person have a moral obligation to be a good steward of your body so that you can continue to live, to continue to advance God's kingdom. So if you're in any way trying to shorten that and play God, then I think that there's an issue.
Speaker 3:How does this stuff get so distorted? Well, I'll tell you where I think it starts. I mean, there's probably a bunch of other places, but you brought something up at the very beginning of the episode, okay, like is it murder or kill? Yeah, all right, we brought up conscientious objectors in the world who are like the Bible says don't kill. And you read a lot of other places in the Bible that apparently we just don't pay attention to. Or simple stuff like Jesus.
Speaker 3:Jesus talks about later in Matthew five right, if somebody strikes you on the cheek, turning him the other, a lot of people like what that means is, if somebody hits me or murders me, I'm not supposed to do anything back. And I would say well, you have to do. To do that is ignore chunks of the Bible that are far more explicit about that particular situation to elevate that text. Now, we brought up this text before. This is talking about an insult or a challenge. God's saying hey, if you can avoid it, it's the same principles we talked about. If there's another means, use that other means that you can clear this up without going to war, then clear it up without going to war. But I'll tell you right now I've never heard anybody apply that principle in this situation. Somebody comes into your house and I'm a conscious as a, you know I'm an objector, I wouldn't, I wouldn't do this.
Speaker 3:So Jesus says turn the other cheek. Do you believe that in the case of rape, do you would? You, are you serious, like some that's happening to somebody and you're like you know what? Turn the other cheek Bad metaphor there. But I'm trying to make the point Like that's horrifying.
Speaker 3:Nobody, actually I don't know anybody who would apply that to other forms of violence or things that are happening, or child abuse or whatever else. They would never say no, no, no, go ahead, hit the kid. It's really sad that he's doing that. But God tells us to turn the other cheek. So tell your six-year-old who's being abused or something that it's totally fine. Or sexual assault or things like that, right, like it's deplorable. So if you read the rest of scripture, the Bible has a lot to say about when to act, when not to act. But people have taken principles from scripture, removed them, especially from old Testament teaching, them especially from Old Testament teaching, amplified specific teachings that Jesus said out of context and recreated a humanitarian type of Jesus who's more interested in people's feelings, happiness and, let's say, general emotional state in the moment. That is not really what Jesus was talking about from the cultural or biblical context itself.
Speaker 1:Love your neighbor, you know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think it's more of a hijacking of Jesus. It's kind of like hippies you know what I mean Going around saying you know, make love, not war, okay. Or like coming up with this idea of who Jesus was he's the original flower child. It's like this is not it's not accurate.
Speaker 3:This is not what he was saying. And so if you have, let's say, a humanist perspective, which is ultimately whatever is good for humanity is what's good for me, and everybody should do things that are ultimately just good for what I think is best for humanity because I've abandoned what God's saying is best is actually what's best for humanity Then I will go back to scripture. I'll find the teachings that seem to line up with what I think is the case, I'll make those louder than anything else in scripture and then I'll just continue to run that. Eventually I can create a type of Christianity that doesn't have any bedrock or anchoring to the things that God actually said, but leverages Jesus for platitudes to promote a humanist perspective instead.
Speaker 1:It's funny attitudes to promote a humanist perspective instead. It's funny my wife will show me like shorts and TikToks and stuff people using Leviticus or Deuteronomy or all these laws about tattoos and abortion and whatnot you know, and he could tell right away that this person's never actually read scripture just by how their defense is not there.
Speaker 3:They're just quoting the scripture.
Speaker 1:The Bible says this, guys, so you know look up something provocative it says, so I can say how crazy.
Speaker 3:Well, here's what's funny too is somebody just looks it up and says look how horrible this sounds. According to what? According to what are you saying? Listen to how bad this sounds, because some of these verses, you know, if you said that in a different country, they would look at you like you're a crazy person, which means that I'm a byproduct of my current culture. I'm not attached to anything that has substance or history along with it, I'm just an ideologue of the current cultural temperature. How shallow. You know what I mean. And then I'm going to try to mock somebody with a 6,000-year-old history that's rich and tried and true and the very bedrock especially if you're in the Western world that built the civilization you're in and the reason you can say what you say and you're mocking it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yikes, I'm going to shake my fist in the air and blow up the very stones that I'm standing on.
Speaker 3:That is it. That's exactly what they do.
Speaker 2:That is it Just to piggyback on what you were saying earlier, Justin. I think it's also important, I mean, when Jesus cites the Decalogue, because a lot of people go here 10 Commandments.
Speaker 3:The 10 Commandments, the Decalogue, the.
Speaker 2:Decalogue when Jesus cites the 10 Commandments in the New Testament and he goes over. You know, if you hate your brother, you know if you hate him in your heart, you've committed murder in your heart. By no means is Jesus saying or advocating that people should be arrested for committing murder in their heart. Okay, If you study enough of the Old Testament, you will find that they do make a distinction between sins and crimes. Yeah, Not every sin should be punished as a crime. Okay, and so the simple way would be not every sin is a crime, but all crimes are sin. Okay, and so the simple way would be not every sin is a crime, but all crimes are sin. Okay, and so when Jesus is saying these things, what Jesus is trying to get to the root of because the issue with the Pharisees is that they were so concerned with the outward guise of how they would follow the traditions of the law, but inside they were tombs. They were these whitewashed tombs. You clean the outside of the cup, but inside it you're dirty.
Speaker 2:Jesus is getting to the heart of the matter, that it all comes from the heart. Where does murder begin? Murder begins with somebody who hates someone else enough that it will then manifest into an action. Jesus by no means is saying that he's not convoluting crimes and sins. And if you want to say that Jesus is doing that, then Jesus is contradicting himself as the Logos who wrote, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the Old Testament. That or you have to come up with some crazy, arbitrary, divisionalist system to where the Bible does contradict itself in different epochs, which we're not obviously advocating for here.
Speaker 2:That's nonsense.
Speaker 3:But to your point it's exactly right. Not all sin is a crime, but every crime is a sin. Ultimately, if you want to back it up with a biblical principle, there's some crimes now that should not be crimes. I don't want to go too deep into the recon aspect of this, but I do want people to know ultimately there's a just way to take life, there's an unjust way to take life. God gives us clarity on all of this stuff and in the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments itself, it's making the point do not unjustly take life. And we know from this that everything that God gives us in the Ten Commandments are for our well-being, our benefit and so that we would thrive and flourish and do well.
Speaker 3:And what we see, tim, ultimately, as soon as we get sin enters into the world, is that the first offspring are killing themselves or you're killing each other. You know what I mean. It is a natural consequence that when sin enters into the world, which is a spiritual death, that we immediately move into a physical death that would accompany that spiritual death. I think it's Proverbs 8, 36, where Jesus says all who hate me love death. You know, all who hate God have an obsession with death. And I think this plays out throughout history and again, and bring up the abortion industry and why this is so significant. But people who have a desire to assault the Imago Dei ultimately have no love for God or desire to uphold his standard. And if you do want to hold up his standard, it's not because you love death, it's because you love justice and you know God has called you um, you know to be a part of whatever entity he's called you to in that unique way, to uphold those things.
Speaker 2:What is it? The Orwellian picture 1984, of the boot constantly stomping on the face of mankind. I mean, that's the atheistic system. You know, that's when we abandon God, when we want to create a humanism, a humanistic system.
Speaker 3:You created a humanism, you created a humanism.
Speaker 2:That's funny when you've created a humanistic system, that's ultimately what it's going to devolve into. It hates itself and it seeks to destroy itself. It is God is the only one who gets to establish the rights of mankind.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so don't be mal, don't. I did a humanism I did a humanism, just kidding.
Speaker 3:No to your point. And this is gosh. I always forget the guy who is interpreting art and culture throughout history. It's going to kill me, I can't think of it. History, it's going to kill me, I can't think of it. But, um, yeah, his, his whole point was in when, when, uh, a nation rejects god, the government becomes god right. When the nation rejects god, the state ultimately becomes by god, because nature abhors a vacuum. Somebody has to set the standard for laws and everything else. And this was, this was um nietzsche's whole point in Thus Begs Zarathustra, when he was talking about the death of God and the reality that he was predicting that the 20th century would be the bloodiest century ever.
Speaker 3:Because if you remove God philosophically from people's minds and how they think, with evolutionary thought and all these different kinds of things, what you ultimately do is remove the moral need for the standards that people have. You make humanity, or whoever is in the most power at that moment, the arbiter of right and wrong. And he basically said if we do this, a lot of people are going to die. And it was just the bloodiest century ever, with Mao and Stalin and Pol Pot and Hitler. We just saw millions and millions of people systematically murdered because all who hate God love death. And if you set yourself up against God and you put yourself in the place of God, then ultimately you will attack the image of God.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so you probably already answered this, but this is kind of where my head's gone. But when you talk about the magistrate, like the government are the ones who should decide these things. What?
Speaker 3:if they've— I didn't say that, just so we're clear. I said God should decide these things. I think the magistrate should enforce what God has said.
Speaker 1:Right and when they don't—this is kind of going back to the whole vigilante thing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, right, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, the system screwed me, so now I have to take matters in my own hands, type of thing. Yeah, yeah, what is that Great question.
Speaker 3:Okay, so great question. So there's something called the doctrine of the lesser magistrate. That is very important. What this is saying is people who are in the state system also have an obligation to uphold the law when other people won't. Okay, so think about it this way. Won't Okay, so think about it this way. When somebody who is, let's say, in some kind of state position, decides to go the opposite direction, he is not above the law and he is not the law. He doesn't get to decide those things. He is to establish and continue to uphold the law. So if that person stops doing that, what you would want to do is find somebody who will uphold the law in this righteous way and help get behind what he's doing to bring about the, let's say, the redevelopment or the retaking of this system. Get yourself into a godly system and find people who you can follow, who are upholding the law of God, to call those people to repentance and to get back to what God has called them to do.
Speaker 1:Not just turn into Judge Dredd. So think about it this way yeah.
Speaker 3:So think about it this way. Let's say, you have a small town or something. Okay, who's the mayor? Find the mayor, and if the guy three steps above the mayor is being ungodly, then I'm going to ultimately follow the godly let's say, civil magistrate who is upholding God's law, and my obligation is first to the person that is upholding God's law and second, to the person who is not All right. So let's take this into consider, and you can get really into the weeds with this.
Speaker 3:Let's take into consideration the fact that everyone who wrote during the first century about a bank, government paying tax, all that stuff were under a regime that was actively killing Christians. Okay, so it wasn't like it was some perfect environment where they were just making some points about some things. It was rough. Let's be honest, though. Every single one of the apostles died as an enemy of the state. Well, it's not like they were saying we're supposed to obey everything that the government says in these areas, even if they're wrong. No, they understood obey everything that the government says in these areas, even if they're wrong. No, they understood where they're wrong. You're not supposed to obey them. They also understood that God has instituted government and where it is godly and upholding what God has said, then we should follow that and get after it. He actually brings us up, I think it's what is it Second Peter or first Peter? Where he talks about godly government and what that's supposed to look like, and they're carrying out the law of God. So, yeah, thoughts about that. Josie. Doctrine of lesser magistrate.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean I've got nothing to add on that one Basically find someone solid who will go to war against the person who is not solid to bring reformation in that area and get back to what God has called you to do. Nice, All right. Yeah, hey, just to bring this down to a practical level, yeah, here's what I would say. Not to be cliche here, this topic can be used a lot to make it just as a spiritual, ethereal thing that doesn't actually affect the world around us. This commandment is huge and God has spoken a lot about this particular topic and when people do this thing where they're like, just boil it down to well, God said hating somebody is the same as murder. You're eliminating so much of what the Bible has to say about this. Yes, To hate somebody in your heart is not good and it is the sinful equivalent of murder. It is not the, let's say, the external, lawful equivalent of murder.
Speaker 3:But a lot of people are carrying this stuff around and I saw a statistic that was something like the average kid today, by the time they're 15, sees like 120,000 murders through media, Like 120,000 murders, whether it's video games that they're playing, movies that they're watching clips that they've seen, whatever. We have a culture that has been totally desensitized to the assault on the image of God and I don't think we think about the repercussions of that. I don't think we have. So if you show people again and again and again the thing that's supposed to be made in the image of God being killed and destroyed and murdered and whatever else, there's something in us that becomes desensitized to that and leads to more of that kind of thing. There's another reason why I love to you know if I haven't pissed anybody off about this already.
Speaker 3:When you're watching horror movies and everything else, what's always happening people who are made in the image of God being destroyed and killed and mangled and everything else and I would say it's not just sin for them to do it, it's sin for you to revel in that or take part of it in some kind of way. That is not wholesome. Now there's some movies you're going to watch where it's depicting a war and something awful. This is what was happening and we need you to know and see. Like Saving Private Ryan is this crazy movie where it's showing you how awful war is and what men had to sacrifice and what it had to do.
Speaker 3:That's different than meaningless killing, which is what a lot of things are doing and as we're medicating more people with psychotropic drugs and all kinds of stuff, as we're desensitizing people with the amount of murders and things that they're seeing, and as we're constantly removing God and laws from people's philosophical worldviews and from the system in which they think they should follow, we can only see this number continue to spike unless we see revival and people turn back to a deep love for scripture. His law and ultimately, the 10 commandments are the thing that we should look to again as an expression of who Christ said he is and what he wants us to do to reform some of these things in our life. But I would say from a psychological standpoint, this commandment is 100% under attack in a million different areas and we're seeing the repercussions of this and I only see this getting worse, not better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's sad. Final thoughts there, cy.
Speaker 2:Oh, this is going to stick, isn't it? I would say just study what God's Word says. Use it as your ultimate standard. Don't, again. I mean, the temptation here is to run into a maxim saying well, god is love, so I just need to love, love, love. Don't read the rest of the Bible. God's the one who gets to define what love is. And God, I mean the ultimate standard. I mean you have to harmonize. Why did Jesus tell his disciples to buy a sword? Why didn't he chastise Peter in the Garden of Gethsemane when he cut off the ear of the? Well, I mean, he chastised him for cutting off the ear of the servant of the high priest, but he didn't chastise Peter for owning the sword. At least we don't see evidence of that. I mean Peter was commanded to even get one. And so you have to harmonize these things. And again, the maxim is what has God said? If you don't know what God has said in his word, then you are ill-equipped to handle judgments.
Speaker 3:You're a slave to Instagram girls trying to slanderously say things about Levitical law.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 3:And you'll buy it up and think they're totally right. Laziness is the enemy of depth in your life. Okay, read, learn what God has had to say, pay attention to what people have written throughout history and ultimately served the Lord Christ. And when you see people abandoning God, abandoning the law that he's given to us, abandoning the moral standards that we're supposed to have, arbitrarily subjecting their children and their families to murderous images and a dulling of the sharpness that that should give to us, and then the mass medication, everything else everybody is being put on man. I want you to see a world. That is exactly what I said earlier from Proverbs 8, right, it's this.
Speaker 3:All who hate God love death, and we have a culture that is kind of obsessed with death and it started with, you know, let's say, different people killing different people. Then it went to killing children, and now it's going to killing teenagers and anybody who's sick and kind of feels like they just don't want to live anymore. And it's going to killing teenagers and anybody who's sick and kind of feels like they just don't want to live anymore, and it's a. I mean, a suicide is a pandemic, mental illness is a pandemic. This, this commandment, is a big deal, and I think it would just do well for us to put this podcast on the map, help people start thinking about it and remember the positive perspective on this. You are to love and defend life because it represents the Imago Dei. It's carrying that and you need to be somebody who's a champion for that in a world of people who no longer are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's good. One final thing to add I would also say that you don't have to do this alone and isolate yourself with studying the Word of God. God's given you 2,000 years of church history that has helped articulate these things, and so it would be beneficial for you to also investigate that.
Speaker 3:One of my favorite things— Anything on the Crusades. It is.
Speaker 2:John Cotton's Laws in 1641 for Massachusetts, I think is a helpful reference point. I don't agree with all of his interpretation of it, but it's certainly a solid place to go if you want to see how this stuff began to influence Western culture. But, yeah, other than that that's all I got Amen. Well, thanks for being here, Josiah.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 3:Have a good week everybody.
Speaker 1:Catch you all next time.
