King's Banner Podcast
Welcome to King's Banner Podcast. We got tired of the same ole answers when we started looking for help when it came to our walks 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 you in your Christian walk.
King's Banner Podcast
The Screwtape Letters Part Three
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The devil’s best work usually isn’t a headline scandal, it’s the slow drift that makes you shrug at what should wake you up. We wrap our third and final Screwtape Letters conversation by going after the “small” habits that quietly harden a soul: flippancy that turns every serious topic into a joke, and a constant stream of noise that keeps us from silence, prayer, and honest self-examination. If you’ve felt spiritually dulled by content, scrolling, or nonstop entertainment, you’ll recognize the pattern fast.
We talk about distraction as a real strategy in spiritual warfare, especially when guilt makes us dread effective contact with God. That’s when we start wanting “unreal” prayers, quick religious duty, and anything that lets the sleeping worms lie. Then we get blunt about the gap between saying we’re “struggling” and actually fighting, because grace never meant passivity. We also challenge false humility that downplays God-given gifts, delays obedience, and buries responsibility under a mask of piety.
From there, we connect this to everyday faithfulness: working on your marriage by owning your role, rejecting the idea that unhappiness equals grounds for divorce, and remembering marriage as a picture of the gospel. We finish by confronting consumer Christianity, church hopping, and pastors who water down doctrine to keep people comfortable, plus why expository preaching protects the church from dodging the hard texts. If this series helped you, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review so more people find it.
Opening And Why The Devil Matters
SPEAKER_01Hey everyone, welcome back to King's Banner Podcast. Just and I are here again to talk through some more screw tape letters. The third and the third and final installment of after this, Satan will probably never come up again. Probably never. Probably. I mean, he he is he is not real, I hear.
SPEAKER_00That is the uh I'm reading a really good book right now called uh The Devil's Best Trick.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Fascinating. Guy who's like a non-believer undertakes a book on the devil to try to decide in the process of while he's writing it whether he believes in the devil or not. Okay. First half of the book, he comes to the conclusion the devil in fact exists. Second half of the book is um examining what the devil does best throughout history. It's fascinating. Highly recommend the book, but it's not for the squeamish.
SPEAKER_01Sounds kind of awesome, though.
SPEAKER_00It's a great book.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. The you know, the whole thing is the biggest lie the devil ever told is that he doesn't exist. And so if you put him front and center, um actually you you said something like this on our previous men's group about um you don't want to put your enemies behind you, you want them right there where you can see them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. You don't wanna you don't want to get past things, you want to be aware of where those things are at. Yeah. And I will tell you in a lot of churches, it's like you don't like to talk about certain taboo subjects. The devil is more like bad thoughts than an actual entity, you know, and the Bible has some different opinions about that. So no way, really. He exists.
SPEAKER_01Wow, okay.
SPEAKER_00Turns out.
SPEAKER_01Um, and I think that's kind of a decent framing for how we're closing out the screw tape letters, um, where you know, if you don't address things um like the devil, like the fact that he exists, you kind of become anesthetized to it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, and so I kind of want to bring up some stuff. Um, it's like sins that are in plain sight or things like that, but basically how you can um how you can deaden your own.
SPEAKER_00How you can be entertaining the devil without maybe thinking about it or caring about it.
SPEAKER_01Exactly.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, first Peter 5 tells us that the devil is like a roaring lion prowling around seeking someone to devour. And then uh you may think, oh no, no, no, that's for those special people. And then he goes out of his way to say, also, this is happening to all your brothers in Christ across the world. So if you're like the devil cares about other people, but you know, he's not worried about me. Uh he's probably already at your table, bro. So just keep, you know, keep that one in mind, I guess I would say.
SPEAKER_01If if you don't think the devil's worried about you, he's probably not because you're probably already well in hand.
SPEAKER_00I think uh I think that's what makes a screw tape letter so good is this reminder about the insidious nature of evil, how it shows up in ways that you think um I never thought about it that way. Oh yeah. And then uh interpret your life through maybe a slightly more scriptural lens. Yeah, yeah.
Flippancy As Spiritual Armor
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So what do you want to start with start out with? What do you got? Well, I want to start off with something innocuous, okay? Flippancy.
SPEAKER_00Oh nice.
SPEAKER_01Like it's just like we use the term flippant all the time. We're we're flippant with the term flippant. Sure. Um you're just it's not ever seen as a sin. It's just a way somebody can behave or somebody can somebody can go through life. But um at the end of one of these chapters here, it has a line about flippancy. Uh, and it's in the context um we kind of talked about it last time about humor and cruel jokes, and yeah, um, so it it kind of ties into that a little bit. Um but it says among flippant people, the joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it, but every serious subject is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already been found ridiculous found a ridiculous side to it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um if if prolonged, the habit of flippancy builds up around a man the finest armor plating against the enemy that I know, and it is quite free from the dangers inherent in other sources of laughter.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And so you you get this idea of someone who everything becomes a joke. Not a joke they make, but it's just the assumption of a joke, so much so that you can't ever really hit on serious things and nothing ever really penetrates past.
SPEAKER_00Because they're already, already, you know, they're past it, right? Oh, yeah, of course. I've done this is particularly annoying in um oh church circles when everybody has to pretend that they get it and they understand and they're aware of that. And I've already moved past that one. And oh, I've one day, you know what I mean? It's like, no, actually, the fundamentals of the faith are kind of always taking you back to the foot of the cross. Yeah, they're kind of always taking you back to the fundamentals of things, and like you work from that place and then you end up back there, and you work from that place, you end up back there. And anybody who thinks that they've already nailed all those things and walk past them um is uh is in danger. But there's a there's a reality there where flippancy sometimes is um is a convenient mask for ignorance. Sometimes flippancy is just apathy in general. Um, sometimes it's this um it's this, you know, uh avoidant thing that people do as well. There's a couple of different reasons that'll come up, but it's almost never a good reason. Yeah, you know, flippancy is almost never a good thing uh unless it's a trivial subject that people are taking way too intensely. Yeah. But that's if we're talking about scripture in the Bible, that's probably not the category that you want to find it in.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean you can use flippancy to make light of a situation, but it's it's when it becomes a mindset for your whole life that it's an issue. Like I know those people, and I uh there's people I can think of that we both know who they've got that sort of laugh where they're laughing about everything, anything.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But it's not really because it's funny, it's because they're just dead-eyed inside.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, they they uh have to laugh at this point because they don't know what else to do. Yeah, yeah. It's I mean, it's kind of part of the world that we live in, man. Like I think we're oversaturated with negativity and stories about death and destruction and everything else going on. We've almost created a world where people don't know how to care in helpful ways about helpful things. And again, either you have to assume, you know, act like you already understand and you've already got that, or like it's not a big deal and move past it. Because I think ultimately it's horrible, you know, realities and very serious things. And if it's constant, you know what I mean, you get stuck in this cycle.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, but yeah, I I think flippancy is a uh definitely a uh a tool that the enemy uses to downplay um circumstances and ultimately try to excuse people from their responsibility to real weighty matters that actually are happening around us all the time. So if you treat movies with flippancy that are garbage, if you treat uh jokes that are going on that shouldn't be with flippancy, that's a problem. If you're treating the problems in your marriage with flippancy, um, you're the guy who's either saying, yeah, you guys are making a big deal and I'm not, which is probably a dangerous place to be, or you don't know how to deal with it. And so you're just playing it off like it's fine. All of which are a problem, and you know, the devil is probably sitting at your table watching you, uh watching you punt on actually dealing with the circumstances that are right in front of you.
SPEAKER_01Man, yeah, you know, you you talk about all of these things where it's just so easy to fall into it. Like, there's a problem in my marriage, no, it's not a big deal. There's a problem in like it's fine. It's all fine.
SPEAKER_00Like I've learned to live with it.
SPEAKER_01Well, and like you even brought up um, you know, this how it saturates the world. And I think of this phenomenon where you see one good or nice thing that someone does on the internet and it's like a puff piece, and people always respond like faith in humanity restored. And it's like, really? Like, it took some guy like doing something so small that it should just be second nature to all of us.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01That like, how dead are we as a culture?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think again, man, I think a media has a lot to do with that, and I think um our addiction to social community has created an inability for people to actually connect with each other and get to know each other. I hate to say it like social media and the internet world that Al Gore created, you know, um, is one of these things where we're so connected to what's going on in the public square that we're missing the stuff that's right in front of our face, and then we're so saturated with everything else going on around us that we stop being responsible or caring for the things that are happening right in front of us. And it's it's a problem, man. Like it's a problem. Like your neighbor now is like, oh, I left that, you know, I like that guy's status.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I'm just loving my neighbor. Okay, what about the guy next to? I don't want to meet them, that's ridiculous, right? But yeah, a different, different kind of flippancy, I suppose. Yeah.
Noise, Phones And Distraction
SPEAKER_01No, it's actually I I had another quote later on down in my notes that I I'm suddenly realizing is tied so perfectly to this. And it's it's about noise. Okay. And the enemy's talking, and he's like, music and silence, how I detest them both. How thankful we should be that ever since our father the devil entered hell, th though longer ago than humanity humans reckon in light years could express no square inch of infer sorry. Um square inch of infernal space and no moment of infernal time has ever suffered either of those abominable forces, music or silence, but has always been occupied by noise. Noise the grand diamondism, the audible expression of all that is exultant, ruthless, and virile. And like you're talking about social media and it's noise, it's just pure distraction. Just distraction. Um, and I I had kind of wanted to touch on this in the idea of um letting yourself sit in silence, letting yourself sit in worship and music and all these things, and how um we are all so fond of that stupid computer that sits in our pocket that just makes noise all day.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Or or just anything other than the silence of our own thoughts, uh, or or to put it another way, uh opening ourselves up to actually be praying without ceasing.
SPEAKER_00Just connecting to the real stuff that's actually going on, yeah, versus um having the ability to step in and step out of conversations, thoughts, and distractions at a at a whim. It's uh it's again, it's just um it's meta. Yeah, right. It's it's this ability to live in a world where you don't have any responsibility or accountability and jump in and jump out at any moment. Um this is the uh this is the thing that preachers gripe about about you know churches in general, right? Like if your church is so big that somebody can go in and sit there and go for a year and nobody knows them and nobody cares, like something is wrong. Like we've created an environment. This is not a community, this is a pop-up YouTube channel. Yeah, you know, and it'll be funny because I'm sure people are watching this on YouTube or listening, you're streaming it from some device somewhere. The goal isn't that you're just removing anything, but that you're making sure this stuff actually pushes you into something real that matters. People have often asked me, like, what book should I read? You know, and I like to tell them whatever is pushing you into spiritual disciplines and whatever is helping you fall more in love with Jesus, those are good things. I would say the same thing about content in general. Whatever's helping you live out your Christian life in a more godly way, and whatever is actually helping you fall more in love with Jesus, those are good things. Anything else may not be a great use of your time. You know, like it's just there's a there's a lot of noise out there. There's a lot of noise. Make sure what you're listening to isn't just a cacophony, it's a symphony. The the goal should be how is this uh how is this helping me, growing me, producing something in me that I actually want to see versus just distracting me and numbing me. And um, yeah, you used the word anesthetize earlier. I do think there's a um social media, entertainment, content in general has just produced a a world of meaninglessness for people where they feel like they're doing something when in actuality they're doing nothing. It's the uh it's the kid that's you know played 80 hours on a video game to accomplish this thing and celebrates at the end because he, you know, he did all the stuff that he was supposed to do in life. He didn't do that, but he did all of it on a game, and that means something.
SPEAKER_01I'm gonna I'm gonna use a quote that you have used before. Yeah. Look on my work, ye mighty, and despair.
SPEAKER_00Despair, yes. Uh yeah, uh absolutely great poem. Thank you for bringing it up. Was it uh Percy B.
SPEAKER_01Shally? Uh I don't know the Ozzy Mandius. Yeah, Oza Ozamandius. That's the name of the poem.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I I brought it up before, man, but uh I think it's seven, seven and a half to eight hours a day is what's spent on entertainment for an average person like in front of a screen. I did the math, man. It's basically a bachelor's degree in a year. Like that people spend I mean, that's just on entertainment. More than a full-time job because that is including weekends. Well, I'm I brought it up before, man, but it's like comfort is devouring people's callings. Yeah. It's it's pulling the tools away that God has given them, it's keeping them from actually growing as individuals, it's keeping them from becoming who they're meant to be. When you're choosing comfort and distraction over actually equipping yourself for a calling man, like um it's it's killing you. This is this is why, like, okay, so we're talking about entertainment.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh I love the movie Last Samurai. Okay. I love this movie. And he makes the point, he goes to this place. Everything that these people do, every ounce of every day, is dedicated to mastering the craft that they're a part of or working on. You know, and I'm like, what would that world be like if we could get to a place where every part of our day, from the tea that we brew in the morning to the conversations we're having with our kids, to the food that we make, to the art that we're working on, I'm literally pursuing excellence in every aspect of my life.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you're talking about going to war.
SPEAKER_00I don't think we have that kind of focus. No. I don't think we have that kind of dedication. Like we're stuck in these cycles. And I'm I don't think we see that as satanic. It really is. Yeah. Like the meaninglessness is the realm of the devil. This is why Jesus says you'll be uh judged for every empty word that you speak. The things that you're doing that don't have meaningless, you know, meaning and the flippancy with which you're living your life, that's a problem. It's actually not worship, it's anti-worship. It's it's going the opposite direction and and taking something valuable like your life and allowing it to mean nothing rather than actually producing something with it. It's um it's like rebellion against the Imago Dei itself.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. So yeah, it you've you've succinctly, we're talking about like in my life, it's really easy to sit down uh during my work day, yeah, or or whatever. If I've got my phone in front of me, it's like okay, there's silence, I'm accomplishing a task. What can I put on as noise to just be there?
SPEAKER_00Vibe. Which by the way, when you say vibe, I think that comes uh it's short for vibrations, which I think is just paganism, right? It's like channel vibrations and frequencies from my deified self, you know. I'm like, I gotta stop saying vibe. I mean, that's just pagan to the core. But anyways, that's for free, all of you that are listening.
SPEAKER_01But yeah, so I guess the the challenge I would put to to you, Christian listening or watching this, um, what noise are you listening to? And what noise are you creating on that one?
Guilt And Avoiding Honest Prayer
SPEAKER_00What are you addicted to? Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01So um kind of segueing a little bit, but a little bit of a sidestep, talking about um like festering sins, and like some of this can be festering sins, some of this festering sin can often be a little bit more insidious. Um but it's talking about festering sins in the context of our attempts at worship and and the enemy's attempt to distract us. And I wanted to read this passage because it was close to home. It was a little juicy. So all humans at nearly all times have some such reluctance um, but when thinking about him the Lord involves facing and intensifying a whole vague cloud of half-conscious guilt. This reluctance is increased tenfold. They hate every idea that suggests him, just as men in financial embarrassment hate the very sight of a past book. In this state, your patient will not omit, but he will increasingly dislike his religious duties. He will think about them as little as he feels uh he decently can beforehand, and forget them as soon as possible when they are over. A few weeks ago, you had to tempt him to unreality and inattention in his prayers, but now you will find him opening his arms to you and almost begging you to distract his purpose and benumb his heart. He will want his prayers to be unread, unreal, for he will dread nothing so much as efficient or effective contact with the enemy. He his aim will be to let sleeping worms lie.
SPEAKER_00That's good.
SPEAKER_01Um so to kind of unpack this, um be careful about what you are letting distract you from your prayers, what you're letting distract you from um worship. And wishing for those distractions. And exactly, and wishing for those distractions. Uh I can't tell you how easy it is when I sit down to read the Bible to suddenly have a million things on my mind of what I'm supposed to do. And it's really, especially when you're in a time where you know that you need to be guilty about something or you need to feel that guilt, or in true form, you need to repent of something. It's you're welcoming that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um yeah, like, ooh, anything that would distract me from this right now would be great. Yeah, I think um you see that on faces, you know, Sunday mornings during sermons, you know, you see that in uh deep conversations with different people, a desire to find a way out. Yeah, you know, and if you can't find a physical way out, you'll find a mental way out. And again, here we are back at technology. But I think phones have provided an opportunity for anybody to check out, like at any given moment. Yeah. You know what I mean? Just you can you can just disappear, you can evaporate and it's total and it's acceptable. Yeah you know what I mean at some level. People like, oh you know, I'm on the Bible app or whatever it is, you know what I mean? But um yeah, I think um we do that too. We're treat, we're we're teaching ourselves to be shallow, we're teaching ourselves to be brainless and not to think and not to wrestle with things. Like even just thinking about Jacob wrestling with God all night. Look, uh, I love jujitsu. You do uh you do like three or four rounds that are six minutes, you're dead. All right, you're exhausted, you're sweating in a pool. What did it look like for Jacob to wrestle with God all night long? He certainly could say, I'm not letting you go until you're blessed. Yeah, yeah. I mean, like is it possible that so much of the breakthrough we're we're not seeing in our life in different areas of difficulty or whatever, simply because we'd rather be distracted than actually hold on to God and wait for that breakthrough to happen? Yeah. And I feel like so many people would rather uh keep status quo and are okay with the worms that are slowly eating them alive than wrestling with God until they see that breakthrough. And um, it's a problem, bro, but it's it's real. I think so many of the things that I'm just trying to convince people of when it comes to this is like you're you're choosing um sleepiness, you're choosing uh, you're choosing this apathy, you're saying you're tired, you're saying you're worn out, but ultimately you're just not inspired. You're not excited about anything, you're not convicted by anything. And and then it becomes this like ongoing process of just like, uh, you know, kind of a blase lifestyle where I'm just avoiding all the things that actually matter because I I don't actually want to get to a place where I have to feel. I don't want to get to a place where I'm actually convicted or feeling like I'm called to something because that would mean so much I would have to change. Yeah. That would mean so much has to go differently in my life. That would mean I would actually have to be awake and aware and alive. And I'm choosing, I'm choosing to drown instead. Yeah. I'm choosing to breathe in the the water and just just let it be what it is. And I'm like, why is it that Satan, you know, sin produces death because sin gets comfy, it sets up shop in your life, and then it gets you to punt on the things that you should, and eventually it takes you to the bottom of the pool and you're happy with it because you just don't want to swim anymore. Yeah, it's like no, no, no, the pool. We got into the pool to swim. We got into the pool to enjoy it, to to be in the sun, to do all the things. And and a lot of people, man, are I'm telling you, they're going to sleep, and Satan is putting them to sleep, and um, it's the stupid little things that they're just not pinging. Attention to and their inability to want to wrestle with God, they're not inspired, they're not convicted, and they like it that way. And um, that's how the Israelites always plunge back into some nonsense and then mayhem breaks out. And when uh everything's falling apart around you and you don't have the luxury of comfort, um, the people around you oftentimes are the ones that wake up, but you're too far gone, you know? And it's that next generation that bears the burden and actually has to do something about it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. No, and I I like how the the book puts it where you dread nothing so much as effective contact with God.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Because you've grown so comfortable in your sins. I I'm so sick of hearing people say they're struggling with X sin, they're they're struggling with Y sin, and they just wish they, you know, they didn't do it anymore. It's like if that were true, you would just know. Where's the fight, bro? Like you wouldn't, yeah, you wouldn't say you're struggling with pornography. You just wouldn't look at pornography.
SPEAKER_00I heard Piper say this one time. He said, I see so many Christians whining about their insecurities and their failures and their addictions and their shortcomings. And he said, and I see so little war. Yeah. So like you just you're not even fighting. You don't even really care. Quit squabbling about this or griping about it when you don't even you don't even care enough to actually fight through and see this thing happen.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You're um you're beating yourself up, you know what I mean, as a way to like help yourself feel like you actually feel bad about it. But that's as far as you're gonna go as trying to atone for my own sins by beating myself up and not actually changing any of the things that I'm doing in my life. Where's the equipping? Where's the where's the sweat? Where's the sacrifice? Not there. And it's like you realize the Bible doesn't yield its fruit to the lazy, right? Like breakthrough doesn't happen because you're sitting on your couch with a Pepsi, you know, uh eating a bag of Cheetos, you know, and then throwing up a microwave prayer to God and then wondering why it doesn't happen. Like it's that's not this is not the way. And this is not the heritage of Christians who are being eaten alive in the Coliseum by wild animals. And we're we're here now just so comfortable in our world, man, that people don't even have to take steps of faith anymore. And it's so, it's so sad to see what Christianity has become. And I gotta tell you, um, at this point, like in the grand scheme of what's happening in the world, we are no match for Islam at all. No. And and I'll say this, we're almost no match for like the progressive nonsense either. Like these people eat, sleep, and breathe what they believe and are serious about it. And so many people are just asleep and don't care. It's the uh uh forgive me, it's like the boomer mentality, it's the Hezekiah mentality. Oh, at least it won't happen in my lifetime. It'll be somebody else that has to deal with it. And that that kind of I'll punt on it, somebody else will deal with it, I'll send it in and then blame God because ultimately, well, I prayed. Great, thank you for that. Where was the action? Where was the steps? Where's the war? Yeah, where's the war? So yeah, man.
SPEAKER_01No, and it's it's funny because prayer is the first response, but not the last resort. When you pray for God to send someone to go do something, don't be surprised if he sends you.
SPEAKER_00Um yeah, or I would say if you're praying about something, you probably are the response to that prayer, right? Yeah, other Lewis quotes, right? Yeah, your kingdom come, your will be done by me right now. Yeah. Yeah, there has to be responsibility for it where you won't take spiritual responsibility, you have no spiritual authority. Yeah, so quit praying if you're not serious.
False Humility And Burying Talents
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And I would kind of trying to tie this into the next one I want to talk about. Um I I think too many people will sacrifice this willingness to do something at the altar of false humility.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01Um, like, well, I'm I'm not good enough for that. I'm I'm I'm not the guy. I I'm too humble. I'm sure I'm to all this. And it's it's interesting because the the book has some interesting things to say about humility. Okay, go ahead. Um So it says fix his mind that the the idea that humility consists in trying to believe those talents to be less valuable than he believes them to be. No doubt they are in fact less valuable than he believes. But that is not the point. The great thing is to make him value an opinion for some quality other than truth, thus introducing an element of dishonesty and make believe into the heart of what otherwise threatens to become a virtue. By this method, thousands of humans have been brought up to think that humility means pretty women trying to believe they are ugly and clever men trying to believe they are fools. And since what they are trying to believe may, in some cases, be manifest nonsense, they cannot succeed in believing it, and we have the chance at keeping their minds endlessly revolving on themselves in an effort to achieve an impossibility.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's good. I think, I think ultimately, too, it's a spit in the face of God who gave you the gifts and the abilities that you have, and then you saying with some false piety, oh, I I'm not the person for that, I'm not gifted enough, I don't have this. Well, what you're saying is, you know, God just didn't give me what I needed to do to do anything about it. God hasn't equipped me to be able to actually be able to do these things. This is the Matthew 25 parable of talents. I took what you gave me and I buried it into the ground because I knew you to be a hard master reaping where you didn't sow. Yeah. You're looking for something from me that ultimately I can't give you because you just didn't give me enough to do it. You know? It's like, oh, oh, oh yeah, it's God's fault. Yeah. You're right. Oh, act like I'm saying it's my fault when in reality I'm blaming God for not doing what I think I would need to actually be equipped to do this.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And um, it's my favorite quote from Exodus. Who made your mouth? You know, Moses is telling God, I have a speech impediment and I'm not the guy. I shouldn't do this. Okay, um, okay, buddy. Um, I made your mouth. I made you who you are. I made you the thing that I wanted for this purpose at this time in this place. How about you just go do what I told you to do? How about you get in there and let me make up what's lacking? And uh every time you're saying, I'm not enough, or I don't got it, or I can't be the guy for that, you're probably the guy. You're probably the one that's supposed to step up and do something about it. And when you're doubting yourself in those scenarios, you're actually doubting God, not yourself. So just take a chill pill. Your humility is actually spitting in the face of who God made you to be. Maybe not as humble as you think it is.
SPEAKER_01Not so much. Um and you you mentioned how we in the current climate are unequipped versus like Islam.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, and it made me think of a meme, kind of on the subject of um sin as a motivation versus righteousness at a motivation.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01And it's don't tell me you can't do something. Look at that crackhead. Do you think he gets up in the morning and says, Oh, I have no money, I have no talent, I'm not gonna be able to. No, he goes out, he makes it a con, gets it done and gets some crackheads.
SPEAKER_00He's gonna get that crack.
SPEAKER_01Don't be outdone by a crackhead. It's it's so good. It's a terrible meme, but how are we being outdone by the wicked in this world?
Delayed Obedience Reveals Real Priorities
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Our motivation is uh is at an all-time low, and we've used grace as a reason to excuse uh our own lack of enthusiasm in doing what God has called us to do. And um, I would just encourage you guys, you who think you are insanely busy and have a lot going on in your life right now, and it's and it's you know, there's so much, you know, get to that stuff eventually. You won't. No, you won't. Like either you're going to make time now because it's actually a priority, or you're not going to get to it. And I feel like so many people have this idea that eventually I'll do those things, or eventually I'll make that stuff happen. And I'm telling you right now, um, prolonged disprolonged obedience is still disobedience. What you're saying eventually I'll get to, what you're actually communicating is it's just not a priority.
SPEAKER_01No.
SPEAKER_00I talked to a friend of mine the other day, love the guy, great guy. But he's saying, like, oh, we're at this church, we don't really want to be there anymore. I know I need to be somewhere else. I'm not active the way that I was, I'm not doing this, and I should be. But uh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna hang out for the next year and we're gonna get this done and we're gonna get that done. And I was trying to explain to him, what you're actually saying is, hey, you know how we have these priorities and we're telling everybody they're the most important things in our life. Actually, there's some other things that are more important. So we're gonna focus on those for a little while. And we'll get back to that priority later at a time that's more convenient for us. This is um this is seen in a small way when people pray, uh, God help me to forgive someone instead of God, I I choose to forgive this person. Because what you're saying is, Lord, I'll be obedient and actually forgive that person when you make the circumstances more convenient for me to do so. The reality is, God has given you his spirit, he's equipped you with everything that you need for life and godliness, and he's called you to walk these things out. And if you're telling God, I'll get to it eventually, what you're just saying is I'm just not ready to be obedient right now. Yeah, I'm not ready to do the thing that you've told me to do. No, you can forgive that person. You don't want to. Yeah. And you're blaming God for not making the circumstances better for you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, unforgiveness is just disobedience.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Like if you know that you need to forgive someone and you pray not to forgive them, but to have the object.
Marriage Means Owning Your Role
SPEAKER_00But make it sound pious. You're just lying to yourself. In the same way with the larger scale stuff in your life, whatever you're saying is so important and is a priority as a family that actively is not showing up as a priority in your family is not the priority in your family or your life or anything else. You whatever you're saying is secondary or tertiary in your life, it cannot be the first thing. And if God is calling you to something or calling you to walk in something or to a ministry or to a project or work that He's calling you to or to work on your marriage or whatever it is, and you're too busy for it. I'm telling you right now, you are punting on the responsibility that God has placed on your life. And maybe you're in that spot where you're like, I'm just not that guy. I don't know if I can do it again. Oh, you're gonna spit in God's face again and tell him that you made me wrong. I'm not well enough equipped. But no, no, no. If you're feeling that this is what's going on, make it the priority. God made your mouth, go do the thing that he told you to do, and the rest of the stuff can wait if you're serious about what you believe. And if you're not, don't lie to yourself anymore. Call it sin. That's what it is.
SPEAKER_01So you you mentioned working on your marriage, and I just want to sidetrack for a second. Yeah, working on your marriage is working on your role in that marriage, it's not working on your spouse. And I I think people get this so confused sometimes because oh, I'm gonna work on my marriage. I just need to make her better, or I just need to make him my project. Yeah, why don't you make you your project and trust God will reward your faithfulness?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I agree. I also think that some people are being incredibly passive with their spouse, right? And that's still a you problem. Yeah. Right. Because you need you need to be assertive, you need to be clear, you need to communicate. Um, or if you're that person who won't shut up, maybe you're the person who needs to reel it back in a little bit. But um, yeah, in some circumstances, um, your neglect of other people saying I'll just work on myself right now, may in fact be a way that you're sidestepping your own responsibility as well. But yeah, in in general, um, work on yourself. Grow, grow what's going on in your own life. Make sure you're doing what you're called to do. And uh, if if by you saying I'm gonna work on my marriage means I'm gonna finally get them to do what I think they're supposed to do, I don't think you're understanding um what's actually supposed to happen in that scenario or the nature of people in general. So good good point.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, and uh I have this quote written down about marriage. Um so uh it's talking about love in general, and it says, now comes the joke. The enemy described a married couple as one flesh. He did not say a happily married couple or a couple who's married because they were in love. Yeah, but you can make make humans ignore this. You can also make them forget that man, that the man they call Paul did not confine it to married couples. Um, and the point being made here is marriage isn't about how you feel in the moment. And being one flesh isn't about how you feel about your spouse, it's about the commitment you made before God.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And the the last part about there, about Paul talking about even unmarried couples, is a stark warning to this world that sex actually matters, and not just in insofar as what you can get out of it. But it's it's not it's not just a sin against yourself to have sex outside of marriage, it's a sin against uh against the very nature of what God has designed as his purpose for you.
When Unhappiness Becomes Divorce Logic
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's rebellion against the order of creation itself and what he intended, but um, you touching on that for a second, I think this is important. We've made the goal and reason for marriage happiness, which has consequently made grounds for divorce unhappiness. And we see this all over our society today. And if you're um if you are branding your unhappiness as emotional abuse as a way to get out of your marriage, shame on you. I'm just telling you, I've heard so many people use the word emotional abuse, and it just means whatever difficulty I'm struggling with mentally uh in my current struggle that I'm in. You know what I mean? Oh, this is I can call it abuse. Stop throwing that word around uh in some, you know, whatever way I need to to help me feel more justified in whatever is going on. Now, and I can get into, I'm sure there's some different scenarios and I can talk to different people about different things, but unhappiness is not grounds for divorce. And you could say, I'm the most unhappy I've ever been in my life, and I feel this way and that way. And I'm like, listen, um, do you think Jesus was like uh going to the cross, you know, bleeding, dripping sweat, you know, drops of blood in his sweat, um, and was sitting here like, you know, I'm just not happy, so I think I'm gonna stop. I just I'm just not happy right now. So I guess, you know, this is grounds for divorcing the bride of Christ, right? Like, I think we really misunderstand ultimately that marriage is a picture of the gospel. It's a presentation of Christ and his bride, it's a parable of heaven itself, and you're declaring to the darkness and to the principalities the picture of Christ and his church and what it is supposed to represent. You think that's gonna be like a cakewalk? You think that's gonna be chill and you're just thinking about the American dream, and I go, oh, the the girl at home and this and that, and the kids and the truck and the dogs and the land, and all I'm like, what you're trying to do is create a Christless heaven. You're you're trying to get Jesus to give you all the things that you want so that you don't actually need heaven. You just need the stuff that you think is in heaven, which is probably why when you think about heaven, you think about everything but Jesus. You know what I mean? Um happiness has become grounds for divorce and it's it's eating our culture alive. And again, it's this picture of our desire to get what we want and stay distracted and just utilize God, you know, microwave prayers. I'm not gonna wrestle, I'm not gonna have a fight, I'm not gonna pick fights, and I'll blame God for it because ultimately he hasn't equipped me for it. This there's just a myriad of lies people buy into to defend their own disobedience to what they're called to. And it's killing callings and um honestly, it's it's wrecking the next generation. Like I said, you have a whole group of people that uh eat, sleep, and drink lies and are serious about it and convicted about it. And uh so many Christians are sleeping because they have equivocated the American dream with Christianity or conservatism with Christianity. They're not the same thing. No, that they're not. Like if you don't have the burning fire of faith in your guts because God has changed your life and called you to do some uncomfortable, faith-filled things, maybe you don't have Christianity. Maybe you just have a brand because you don't like evil, but that doesn't, that's not the hating evil is not the same as loving God. No, hating evil is not the same as I actually love Jesus and want to fight for it. You're just you're just trying to uh uh take your stand on morality and act like that's enough. It's not enough. It's gonna take you right back to where you were before.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, to borrow from Lewis, I don't have this quote exactly, but he talks about um this kind of mentality is like a child who is so happy playing in the mud that he kicks and screams when his loving parent tries to take him to a vacation on the beach because he can't comprehend.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, he's more content playing with mud pies because he has no concept of what a vacation at the sea would even look like. Yeah. Yeah. No, no desire to do it. I'm I'm happy where I'm at. Yeah. Materialism and moralism uh are so pervasive in again social media as well, where it's like, I need all this stuff, and I want people to see the stuff that I have so I can get recognition from them. And then also I need people to see me as moral. And people seeing me as moral and people seeing as me having the life is ultimately what's gonna bring me happiness because it's other people's opinions about what's going on that brings me the most joy. It's like, oh, that's your God. We found your God. Yeah, yeah. There it is. That's why you're going to hell. Okay, good luck. I should you should probably get the real gospel and give your life to Christ and try again.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um to be blunt, sorry.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. No, that are why are you sorry for preaching truth?
SPEAKER_00Well, I was uh, you know, uh sorry, no, maybe a little bit off of the uh notes of what we were going on, but I went ahead and went there.
SPEAKER_01Um so we were talking about when the subject of marriage you talk about the church being the bride of Christ, and I want to talk about the importance of the church.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um and this uh there's a couple of of quotes here, but I want to talk about the the pervasiveness of church hopping and the kind of the damage it can do. Okay. Um so surely you know that if a man can't be cured of church going, the next best thing is to send him all over the neighborhood looking for the church that suits him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches. A church smaller. Yeah, church sommelier. Um I want to hear your take uh and your thoughts on the damage that can do because I it's brutal.
SPEAKER_00This is so it's look, it's incredibly complicated because the whole system is broken.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00All right. Let's go back to the first century. You have Christians who are in communities who are relying on each other for life and uh fellowship and hope and like support. Uh there's persecution of the church. It's not popular to be a Christian, it's not popular to worship God, it's popular to worship Caesar, it's popular to uh to enjoy the pantheon of God. So you have these small communities, you know, some are larger, some you might have 150 people, something like that, all coming together in uh a large home or a small home or meeting in several homes, and they relied on each other. Like we're not gonna make friends because we're weird here. We're not gonna have people because like we're the only people that are out there. Like whatever we have that's a problem, we got to work it out. Because if I go out there, I'm probably gonna not have a job. I'm not gonna have support, nobody's gonna have my back. And if things go south, I have no community around me unless I go back to the dark. Yeah. All right. And so that's the um, that's the environment in which things like church discipline uh is supposed to take place. Or if you remove somebody from the congregation, you're removing them from their ability, the the thing that's actually helping not just sustain their spiritual health, but their family and their community and their friends. It was a way of saying, like, you have got to get this fixed before you can come back here and be a part of what's actually going on. Now we live in a marketplace of churches where somebody can just go from one place to another to another without suffering any real damage. No, uh, it's not um, it's not um uh a thing that is ill respected, you know what I mean, to to go to church. We're not being persecuted right now, at least in the Western world. Um, in other places in the world, if you're in, you know, China, yeah, like your community, the saints that you're with, man, those are your people. And I don't have people outside of this because if they know what I actually who I actually worship and and what I believe, there's a good chance I'm thrown in prison or my family has already had a functional funeral for me. I'm not allowed back. I I'm I'm cut off. Like it meant something real in that time in that environment to actually be part of a congregation, to say you love Jesus and to take it seriously. In our community today, where there's churches everywhere, you can get away with a lot. You don't have to take responsibility for sin. You can just blame other churches for not doing what you felt like you needed, etc. That's one set of issues. Another set of issues is just how capitalism has got uh in bed with the church in general, and the church has become a product, uh, not a people. And so people are looking. For the most comfortable and convenient version of the thing that they're supposed to be a part of, so they can say that they're a part of a church without actually having to grow in their faith or contribute to the body of Christ. When you have massive churches where you can show up and functionally do nothing for anybody else there, but you consume and maybe send money, that's a subscription. That's not a church. You're not, you're not involved. You're not doing you're going there and paying money to hear somebody who brings you a good message and helps you feel hyped up, but functionally, if nothing is changing in your life, you're not loving the people that are around you, you're not participating in the community that's there, you're not serving your brothers and sisters, it's not pushing you to grow in your faith. Bro, I hate to tell you, like, that's a that's a Costco membership. I give this, you give me this, that good. We got it. Like that's that's not the church, that's not Christianity. And um, so many people have this mentality of I'm looking for the most convenient, easiest place to go. And if their doctrine is good, that helps me feel better about it. So I'll go to those places, check the box of this is what I'm supposed to do as a minimum as a Christian, and we're doing the right thing, and then I'm moving on. But it doesn't require faith anymore. No, it doesn't require sanctification, doesn't really require any of those things. I I picked the literally the the path that is most traveled by. You know what I mean? And it's just this is the easiest thing to do. Okay, here's the other side of this. You may be at a church that is dead. You may be at a church where it's like, dude, I'm not growing here. I'm not being pushed here, I'm not in community because there's not community to be found. I'm trying to do the real thing and I'm finding that nobody here actually is serious about it. Okay. In that instance, you may want to find another church. You may want to find some people to worship with or get after. Look, my my personal heart is wherever you are, start a fire. Yeah. Okay. So if you're at a church and it feels dead and nobody wants to do community, nobody wants to get into the Bible, nobody wants to take it seriously. Well, find a couple of people and say, let's go get into the Bible together. Let's go, let's go grow, let's do this, let's take it seriously. And if they kick you out for that, that's weird. Um, but I would say you need to be in a place where there are real Christians. And by that I mean people who are taking steps of faith together, supporting each other, encouraging each other. It should hurt to leave a church.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It should suck. Yeah. It should feel like I lost something real. I didn't just lose convenience and I'm frustrated that the coffee and the seats aren't as comfortable or the the you know, the children's ministry isn't as robust. It should feel like, man, I walked away from people who I dearly loved. And there's going to be some times in your life where that happens because there's gospel goodbyes. There's times in your life where God is calling you to go do something else. You got to move to another state or different things can happen. And it can be dark. Yeah, I know, right? Um, but in general, leaving a church and going somewhere else should be painful, not inconvenient. And uh too much of our convenience culture, the way we think about restaurants, the way we think about um the people that we want to do business with has become exactly the same as how we find a church. And that that is disgusting. I hate to say it, but it's just disgusting. Like the church is not a program that is to be put on. It is the hope of the world, it is the bride of Christ, it's a community of people that are walking together, bearing each other's burdens, calling each other to more, feasting, laughing, in fellowship with each other, um, and and taking the sacraments, exercising church discipline, taking the word seriously, praying together, worshiping together, and looking seriously different than the world in such a way that that uh everybody else around us would notice. Man, they're kind of weird. That's different. That's that's not like everybody else. Good. That's what it's supposed to be. It shouldn't be like everybody else, it should be a different thing. So there's a convenience mentality that's pervasive here that's a problem. I would also say there's um there's types of churches that exist now that are just in general shallow and become a place for people to go and check boxes. And if you're at that place, you may need to find the real thing um somewhere else too. Yeah, both of those things.
Pastors Who Water Down Truth
SPEAKER_01And I mean, I've got I've got this on that type of church specifically, the pastors of those.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um talking it in the book, it's talking about a specific church. And he says, at the first of these, the vicar is a man who has been so long engaged in watering down the faith to make it easier for a supposedly incredulous and hard-headed congregation that is, is now he who shocks his parishioners with his unbelief, not vice versa. He has undermined many a soul's Christianity.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. There's um there's a type of pastor who has become excellent at um having a tongue of a serpent. And you gotta be careful, man. Um a pastor who doesn't ever want to piss anybody off is probably not preaching the Bible. Uh a pastor who isn't touching on particular text that that speak directly to what's going on to his own congregation or what's going on in the world around him is somebody who is bought and is intent on keeping uh the product where it is rather than actually producing a purified people. And um, I just found out just a church right up the road from where we're at, as um female pastor doing a gay service. So there's a bunch of people piling in that are uh that orientation, whatever that means. And um I wonder often how does that happen? But I think we all know how it happens. I think we're just disgusted that that happens in church. Like, how is it? How did you go that far? And I will tell you, it's the the the compromising on small things because you don't want to offend anybody that immediately puts you in chains where you feel like I can no longer bring these things up because I've actually set the standard of not making people upset. And now I am held captive, not by the word of God, but by what people think about me or what people are saying uh, you know, is acceptable in this particular time in this place. And eventually um you end up becoming a vicar of Satan. And I wouldn't use that language, but I think the Bible uses that language. You become a wolf, you become the person who in Galatians 1 is to be anathema, damned by God, because you're not preaching the true gospel anymore. You've you've gone off the cliff. And I don't think people start that way. I think a lot of people start with good intentions or like wanting to do the right thing and eventually are um a victim of emotional manipulation and worldly standards and just don't want to go against the grain of how things go. And this is why pastors are supposed to be bold-hearted men. We're okay with pissing some people off because they love God and they're gonna preach fire and they're gonna bring what the word says, and we're gonna dress sin, we're gonna deal with what's going on. And if you don't have that in you, and you think being a pastor functionally means being a counselor and just helping people get through difficult things, you're you're probably not a pastor, man. That's probably that's probably not where you're at. And and honestly, you should check your own heart to see if helping people find comfort in Christ is more important to you than helping people find Christ. Because I think a lot of people are looking for comfortability, help me feel the way that I want to feel, help me feel better about the stuff that I'm dealing with, help help me get to a place where this doesn't feel like as big of a deal as it seems like the Bible wants to make it. And uh, I'll stay there. And man, when you when you when you stop preaching on those texts, um, and I would say this, this is part of why expository preaching is so important. Yeah, pick a book, go through the book. Yeah, don't just pick certain texts and avoid other places. Preach the whole council of God, preach the whole Bible. Whoever you are, if you're wanting to be a pastor, if you're wanting to get into ministry, or if you're teaching other people, I want to encourage you, do not dodge the Bible. The second you feel like I can't teach on this text because it might hurt somebody's feelings, you are already becoming a slave to what sounds right and people's opinions, and you're not serving God anymore. You you've already left the ballpark. Yeah. So yeah.
SPEAKER_01All right.
Final Warnings And Closing Charge
SPEAKER_00Man, we've been going for a little while already. We have.
SPEAKER_01I have I have more. I'd love to talk about, but um guys, go read Screwtape Letters.
SPEAKER_00Go read the book letters, go give it a go. It's fantastic. It'll address a lot of things going on in the world around us. It's incredibly intuitive, it's prophetic in a lot of ways. Good news. If you read the book, uh God wins in the end, it goes well, but you should definitely read it. Um, and be aware. Yeah, the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. And there's a myriad of ways that he goes about it. And it's not the in-your-face explosive stuff that's happening. In fact, those things usually wake you up more to the gospel. It's the slow drift into nonsense that is um that is ultimately killing people. And uh, the bride of Christ has, I'll say it this way. The bride of Christ has aborted a lot of children by walking a different direction and living in apathetic, uh, convenience, comfort mentality because it doesn't actually want to do the work of bringing up the next generation and planting churches and establishing families and training pastors and and calling godly men to more. And when we do that, we're we're we're relieving ourselves of responsibility, but not really. It's superficial. You're still responsible for all of it. Um, and it's sad to watch. It is. Don't be that person in this generation who punts all that nonsense. Be the person who stands up, takes the word seriously, and fights for what God has called you to fight. And to do that, you have to identify where the devil is working. Yep. Uh, you don't even know what to shoot at unless you know what the target is. So get the book, give it a go. It's fantastic. It is right on all right.
SPEAKER_01Well, thank you so much. And thank you guys for joining us for these three episodes on the screw tape letters. Like Justin said, go read it. Uh if you don't read, get it on audio. You can get it for free.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I think Andy Circus recorded this on uh on YouTube. So if you want to hear Gollum reading a screw tape letters too, give it a go.
SPEAKER_01I think there's uh John Cleese recording too.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, that's good.
SPEAKER_01There's just so much. Like, just go go do it. Go do it. And Christian, go get after it.
SPEAKER_00Right on. We love you. You guys have a great week.
