373 -The Dilemma of a Belief in Eternal Punishment (w/ Two Pastors and an Atheist)

Co-hosts Chip Judd (very long-time Christian) and Matt Oxley (long-time Christian, gone atheist) discuss with Joey what he finds to be an "impossible position" Christians are in when it comes to their kids and the doctrine of hell. 

If dreaded eternal separation is on the table of possibilities, fear and life-trauma [in the end] is a good thing, especially if one is scared enough to repent and avoid going there.  Right? 

Chip and Matt both agree that religious people have taken advantage of this doctrine to control people. They also agree that a fixation on eternal separation makes for lousy Christians.  Joey makes a case again for Christian Universalism and Matt proposes that Jesus failed, if everyone isn't saved. 

Why are so many Christians not able to find peace while holding a belief in hell, while others can go about their life normally, not bothered by their many friends and family perishing in the end?  Do Christians really believe in hell?  What is humanity's flaw, and what is the gospel anyway?  A hell of an episode (pun intended).

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On Today's episode:
Matt Oxley  / Web  / Twitter
Chip Judd / Website / Instagram
Joey Svendsen (co-host) / Instagram / Twitter / Facebook / E-mail

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Thanks //  Derek Minor for theme song and Joel Hamilton / Joel Hamilton + friends for other music.

Transcript

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Check, check, check, check, check, check, check. Yeah, I'm still in Israel, how about that in this episode should be called the broken record episode, you'll even wonder why I'm even including this intro because about to say what I say 100 times in the next 45 minutes, which in my opinion accurately represents the Sucky situation and we are in specifically with Children in the event that eternal punishment is real, It's real. They need to know, I mean, especially if they're responsible for themselves to save themselves, they have to know and if it scares them small price to pay, If it traumatizes them small price to pay, I mean, what's the alternative? Not scare them, not traumatize them for them to go to hell forever. And this was me as a kid, scared, traumatized, not even sure of my status to be quite honest with you still didn't know where I was going, even though I'm scared shitless trying to do everything right, begging God to help me do everything right. I mean, so before we get into the trauma of hell, let's talk a little bit about happy meals, I'm going a little rant because I've been out of the, so McDonald's brought the old school happy meal box back and I say no, they brought the happy meal itself back because the happy meal was the daggone box and toy. So I'll never forget, I had been out of the happy meal game for a good 14 years or so and I was an adult adults don't eat happy meals, they had discontinued the box at this point. I remember my niece getting a happy meal and when she received it, I thought they had forgotten to give her a happy meal. I was like, this ain't a happy meal. She swore it was. She said, look, uncle Joey, look at the prize. I told her I said you've been ripped off, I'm sorry. They discontinued happy meals because that my niece is a lunch bag with the freaking toy just thrown inside. It's not a damn happy meal. All the technology you guys get as Children. This generation at least fast food restaurants took care of us as kids back in the eighties. I mean they gave us a cool box and toy ie happy meal and hell Mcdonald's even gave paper thin records one time records like you mean vinyl, it's exactly what I mean. So you get this record with your meal, you take it home and you play it on your record player and if the person on the record makes it through the menu song which is basically a song with the full menu of Mcdonald's. The singer made it all the way without messing up. You won a million dollars now kids, when's the last time you had a chance to win a million dollars from a happy meal, chick fil a do that for you know, it's not their pleasure to do that for you. It's really a crying shame today's kids generation, you need to demand to keep these happy meals great again. And I had a birthday at burger king by the way, I was like four and it was, it was a rad party and my parents weren't super poor. Have you had a birthday party at burger king when they go back to the subpar, fake not really a happy meal, Happy meal. Don't buy them kids, tell them you want the carton back, say if that was good enough for my parents, it's good enough for me. Give me the carton and what would you, what would you attribute to just all of a sudden everything you ever believed and known is blown up in smithereens and where do I go from here sort of feeling like it's, you have to relearn what's up and what's down and every, I was a fundamentalist and I believe that the bible is literally true and my interpretation of the bible was was I just had to kind of rebuild the way I understood the world outside of that thing that I always knew to be true when that's not true. What do you do with it? I guess that makes sense. Do you typically do your schedule to where you've got downtime on the weekends? No, I'm really bad about making my weekend super busy. I'm better about it now, but I tend to like, I want monday off. I like having monday off, but I haven't lately had that so I can like make sure everybody is up to date do kind of general maintenance on all my clients and not have to like answer a lot of call and stuff like that. But lately it's been less down time but that's okay. Yeah I had like a year and a half of like nothing but downtime. Yeah or maybe more pandemic and stuff. Yeah. Chip. Hey man how you doing? Pretty good. Y'all officially met? You have? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Did you do the one with Westboro now? That was that was Jack, I can't I can't keep all you guys right. I know what you mean man. Yeah. Alright pretty simple topic. I have no idea where it's gonna go. I was thinking though I would love to have Chip and matt just sit down and argue about theology. That'd be fun but Chip, I don't think that you and I have had a chance to talk about this and I've talked about it on here a few times. I want to go into a more specific direction but I have just recently started to mourn my fundamentalist upbringing and the effects that it had on me. I was laying in bed one time and I was tracing back my childhood and I was thinking my childhood was was tough once I started getting to like O. C. D. And anxiety and depression and all that stuff but when did that happen? When did I lose my sense of of childhood and the transition was very clear. It was right around the time when we went from Catholicism to a Pentecostal Church, that was more of a fire and brimstone sort of thing. From that point on, it's safe to say that I had just continual, I don't know if I was traumatized, my therapist would say, yeah, that that that's pretty traumatic for a kid to have to deal with this, repenting for not witnessing during, you know, during school lunch, it was constantly saying the sinner's prayer and I have recently and I think it's all good. Like I'm not mad at anybody, but I've recently, you know, even shed tears over this and I just, I'm finally seeing now just how impactful that it's been in my life, we can get into the theological part also, but how does anybody believe in eternal punishment? Especially when you add the fire and aren't traumatized, that gets me thinking in all sorts of directions chip, you've told me before, we're talking about beliefs and you're like, you know, the afterlife hell heaven, I don't really care what you mean by that is, those aren't like super essentials. We we don't know, but I don't see how any christian knows about an eternal punishment place and it's not constantly be wrecking you daily. That was probably the theory that thinking that drove the emphasis of that, that it was going to be uncomfortably motivating both motivating and you wanting to make sure you end up in the right place and motivating and you wanting to share to make sure other people end up in the right place. So, you know, as far as the, how people could believe in it, I mean if you think about it, it's a pretty slick way to motivate people, you know, we're forgetting for the moment, the right or wrongness of it. Uh it's a pretty decent pr campaign to uh to get people in gear, you might say now it's based on a pretty twisted picture of God and uh definitely kind of like everything you said, it doesn't engender this warm, cuddly loving, I think I'll go sit in his lap God, which is my main beef with all of that because it just predisposes us to have a crappy picture of God and you you know where I'm at with kind of exploring the afterlife and what really happens to people, how do we not see God in that light? I mean, you you believe in, I would imagine your your guess would be that there is hell, right? I don't know Joey, I can see where people build a case for it, the rob bell's and others that have built a case against it. I don't know that their arguments that strong and clear, but I can also see a case for there not being the classical traditional, you're gonna burn in a fiery hell forever, the reason I, like I say to you Joey, I believe in an afterlife, in other words, I believe life is beyond this physical realm, but as far as the details of heaven. And I mean, even the way we talk about heaven sounds pretty boring to me. I mean, I don't want to go sit on a cloud and sing songs. I mean, give me a break, man, I dig a good nap. Now I dig a good nap is you wake up to something exciting, more energized. I don't like the thought of an eternal worship sir, service. I mean, give me a break. How egotistical and insecure is God. Man, here's the thing. I think we're trying to solve problems at a certain level when the real problem of interpretation and application is down further and deeper. If you get, if you get wrong this much down here at the beginning, you're gonna be way off out here. Well, you you said that it's a slick campaign if it's true and they really believe it's true, there ain't no campaign. We're talking where your soul is going to be forever. So in my opinion, I don't think we're doing a good enough job if that place exists, I'll be honest, I've had that thought even the way I think about God, I thought to myself, dude, if you really believe there's an eternity away from God, it seems like you kind of got to get in gear. I think the most important form of evangelism is living a life that represents God. Well, does that make sense? And so for me, I am trying to encourage people to build a relationship with God and therefore end up in a good place, but not with the panic button, if you know what I mean, matt, you said that you relate to how I describe myself. Do you think that there's some people that are just wired up in a way that once they know the theology of heaven and hell, there's no getting out of that horrible discomfort mentally. But I I knew peers of mine that it didn't bother them and I was always so dumbfounded by why are we not all soon scared about our friends and our family and all of that. We're I mean, were you around any christians who through the doctrine of hell around and kind of seemed like it wasn't that big of a deal. No, not really. I have our time the idea that people actually believe it because of the lack of evangelism. If Westboro baptist church is correct about their doctrine, then they are the only ones fulfilling what they understand to be the gospel by being these street profits. You know, and you know, they're horrible, horrible people and their despicably wrong and everything about their doctrine is is from the, from the pit of hell, but they are an example of what the world would actually look like, what christendom would actually look like if people actually believed that their neighbors were going to hell, I think, but I tend toward extremes and I think you're probably the same way. I tend to grasp the most fundamentalist view of whatever theology, political philosophy or whatever and hold on to that and you may be kind of the same, especially when you were younger because I was that way big time. I think it was five years ago or so. So she would have been 91 of my daughters was in Children's ministry and the teacher real good. A friend of mine talked about hell and little did we know my precious little girl flipped into the same mode that I flipped into around that same age and I'm so glad that we opened up a conversation and she told us about it because she was doing the repetitive praying, constantly afraid and it stumps me because if I still believed in that traditional view of hell, it feels like this would be the choice that I'm left with. I can either make sure I do everything in my power to see that my kids go to heaven. I would traumatize them along the way. I could make the choice of, well I don't want to traumatize them in their childhood and mess up their brains when they're adults and all that stuff. Oh boy, but I don't want them to go to hell. Like that really seems to be the only option that we would be left with if we believe that way, underlying belief, confidence and again, confidence over time. Again, I wasn't raised that way, not in church and when I say that I'm not, I don't mean I'm not under or overstating. Like I remember, I don't know, it's probably 10, 10 ish years old and we had an oil refinery kind of over the horizon but it had one of those flames, you know, and if the clouds were just write that part of the sky would light up like it was on fire and having no church background. I remember one night seeing that and thinking, oh my gosh, it's the end of the world. Now I didn't necessarily go to, oh I'm going to go to hell kind of thing because I didn't I wasn't full of that kind of thinking, but there was still a sense of impending negativity you might say. But becoming a christian in my early twenties, the god that I've experienced is so kind. He's so gracious, he's so fair. So when we talk about an issue like this, I don't know what to do with hell, but I know this two things one, anybody ends up their God, God's gonna have tears. If anyone goes to hell and God doesn't cry then I don't want to go to heaven, I don't want to spend my time in heaven whether God who's okay with that? Now that sounds odd, connected to this in the with the God that I know it will be fair, what how could it be fair for somebody to spend forever in a crappy play, that's for God to figure out, not me, I don't start with hell and then what kind of a god I start with? What kind of a god and then say I don't need to figure hell out. It's not a driving motivation for me to be honest with the people that are motivated to come to God because of the fear of hell. Make crappy christians. I don't have any interest in that. I want somebody who comes to God because they found he's the most amazing representative of humanity and deity that he's ever seen and he's the most loyal, true straight faithful? I've never, there's nobody else I found that is worth living and dying for matt when you hear that, because when, when I hear what you just said, I really feel like are we not seeing this? Because yes, ideally it would be great for someone to be be drawn to God and feel God's love and grace and be compelled to give your life over. But if hell exists, I don't care if we scare people when you hear that matt the whole, I don't want people to go to God because of fear, do you? Do you think the same thing? Like well it doesn't matter, it's worth being afraid about. I've actually written about the same thing about how, how creates bad christians, I think it does for the same reason. That should just explain if fear is the motivating factor behind something, just like we were talking earlier about cancelation, when we were talking about if if fear of cancelation is your motivating factor for being decent and kind and respectful towards people, you and your opinion, let's just do that because we care about people not because we fear what they might do to us. And I mean the same thing goes with Heaven and hell. The most interesting thing to me is looking at hell from a historical context. Why is it something that's so commonly believed? When did it become so commonly believed? And who made those decisions? And I really think it all boils down to the first Council of Constantinople and Ephesus where these things were codified as the truth Ever since then. I think the gospel has been cheapened by that doctrine, by that cardinal doctrine that many people believe. And I used to believe that if you did not believe the right thing about you were doomed for it and everyone must believe X, y and Z things in order to be quote unquote saved. It's like this weird checklist that is nowhere in the bible that you have to to function under in order to be quote unquote saved. When is not really a concept that people accept in the bible? It is a it is a concept that is provided in the bible, there's no exchange? What do you mean by that? When Jesus said it is finished? If that if that is true, then there is nothing that you or I or anyone else can do to change our fate, right? That is done. That's that's who's, that's who's got me, that guy that you just said, jesus is the one that messed my head all up and I think and for a good way and it's because of what he said on the cross, it's finished and because these people don't know what they're doing, I want them to be forgiven. Like those two things what you just said about it is finished and then him asking God to forgive people because of their ignorance and we believe that God is going to turn around and I guess say yeah, jesus, that was a cute prayer, but I'm not answering that one. Yeah, I mean I think I think grace is is the only grace that really makes any sense. If it's not complete coming from a complete and eternal God, why is God limited? Why is God so small and so incapable of doing the thing he set out to do? If jesus came to save us, why did he fail? Because that's what it is. If if if you reject salvation, if you go to hell, Jesus has failed my question to both of what you're saying is okay then why did God do this? What's the purpose? That's a good question, as far as sending jesus? No, just everything. Why did he create this Zoo of craziness called earth with such pain, torment and radical beauty? Why why did he do it? I think too, and it's easy for me to say this, given what I think's going to happen to everybody in the, in the end, but I believe God wanted to share the love, expand it beyond the trinity and make make intelligent human beings that are made in the image of God, that there can actually be the logic in our heads. We can think and understand death and we are recipients of God's love. If his goal was to bring people into a love relationship with himself, and it was to use Mats phrase uh total or complete grace, I'd say he uh to use y'all's terminology, he's left up pretty bad because it sure ain't working as far as as far as the cross saving everybody forget the cross for a minute, as far as I'm gonna take that out of context. No, no. My point, as far as just the out working of reality and history. If God created this whole mess. Yes, to bring people into love, he's pretty impotent. Yeah, but I can go with the whole free will thing and basically God not wanting to make robots that are compelled to mats, the mats statement about grace is nullified. If there's free will, then it requires a decision. I I disagree with that. I don't think that you can choose something that you cannot know. So if you cannot you can't you cannot know. You cannot know until we are dead and gone. If if heaven is real or hell is really can't know God's real. I don't think that you I don't think that you honestly can, but maybe you can I can't speak for you. I certainly can't. My brother and I bumped heads on this one. I think he would be more in line with you. I feel like the best I can say is I'm convinced there's a God. God loves me. Holy spirit lives inside of me. But maybe less. Maybe let's shift into a technical scientific approach. None of us can prove God. So we can't know that. We know that. We know when you say yes, you can. You're you're saying chip Judd can this is my experience. But bottom line is I know you're not but joe blow down the street may think you're a liar. So your personal experience can't be proof to anybody. But you do you think that's a fair statement? I mean, I think in in the sense of pure black and white logic, it's probably a fair statement, but it violates the way we do life in every other area. You know if I tell you halls chophouse is a great restaurant You don't have any way of knowing that until you go. The reason you go is because I told you it was a great restaurant. So we act on information with, we'll call it a 95% confidence. How do we know there was a big bang? I mean a bunch of really smart people with slide rules and computers mathematically figured it out. Did they see it? Is there evidence of it? No, but there's a point where we we all have to decide what information is good enough for us to make decisions about reality based upon. And I'm one who happens to believe experiences relatively reasonable. Part of that collection of, you know, in a sense, what you do is you reverse engineer reality. You say, okay, there's there's there seems to be purpose and design, there seems to be relational, important, you know, you reverse engineer it and say, okay, what makes the most sense to me is there was a heart and a mind behind it. But then I look at the horror of it and I say, okay, there's gotta be there's gotta be some other agenda, some other theme because if it was just a heart and a mind designing things, they wouldn't be so jacked up, let's say I believe in, we'll just go the whole way eternal conscious torment the same daughter that really had some troubling thoughts on it, let's let's say she actually comes to me and asking theological questions after life and I have all those traditional beliefs and I go up to you and I'm like, Chip, I want to tell this girl the truth because she she needs to know so that she can do whatever she needs to do except jesus and all of that. But I also don't want her to get on the same road that it put me on, in my opinion, that was the culprit. I didn't realize that until recently and I'm I'm not mad at anybody, it's hurtful, but Chip, I don't want to see Gwen, you go down that same road. But what, what do I what do I tell her? I mean, I think that there's some doctrines that man, I get the whole I mean the age of accountability thing is as funny because I don't know where we got that. But even even to high schoolers, it's like man that is some tough stuff to have to process at etcetera. But what would you say? I mean, my mind's going several directions. I mean, I would say, and this isn't what you'd say to your daughter, but I would say the church has done a lousy job of picking its priorities of communication in other words like mats said a minute ago, were way back there somewhere, they decided these are going to be key tenets of how we present the blessings and challenges and consequences of Christianity. And I think they just did a crappy job picking what those should be. I would do everything I could to zero my daughter in on on who God is, what his ultimate objective is, which is to have a relationship with you. There's people that for whatever reason chose to use fear to nudge people that direction. I don't think that was God. I think God wants you to see his kindness and the blue sky and the clouds and the beauty and the you know how you have a dog that wants to sit in your lap and love you. Well, that's all representative of God's character and that's how he feels about you. And I would do everything I could to pound the love of God and push it that direction. And I would I would probably keep her away from sources that you know feed the other view some of what you guys said a minute ago, You know what if it's true? Well, the bottom line is she's taking the steps necessary to not worry about it, but then she need to be worried about it. I just it sounds like you would encourage me to not teach her what I would find the highest priority that I need to teach her, which is what if you don't do something, you could possibly be separated from God forever. So what's the what's the something she needs to do? I'm talking about traditional beliefs as far as accepting jesus. And so let's assume for a moment that she believes the bible and its teaching about hell the way some people present it? And then let's say you present the Gospel in its traditional sense, or at least what do you call it Evangelical? And she's accepted jesus basically what it boils down to is why isn't that enough to alleviate her fear of hell? I believe that the doctrine of hell poisons the well because you can trust, but you will always doubt your own trust, especially when you're young. That's the kind of thing that drove me into circles. I would think I know for a fact and I, you would never get me to admit that there were doubts in my mind, but deep down they were always there and those things were driven by a fear that I didn't believe the right thing, I didn't know the right thing or had been misled. Um, and in that way, I think that the doctor hell has been poisoning the well of the Gospel for a very long time and diminishing its effect in the world. Well, I mean, you know, we're operating from the premise like joe is using his daughter as an example for the sake of argument. We're assuming that it's real and how do you deal with a daughter who's whatever, where are you at with all of this chip? I'm curious, just like you had to guess, do you think people are eternally existing apart from God those who don't choose to accept christ, Do you think they're annihilated or you literally just are like that's not my concern. Like I don't have anything to do it. Yeah, I don't want to say go so far as to say it's not my concern where I've left. It is the way hell has been presented. The way it's been strategically used does not equate or or or line up with my sense of the God that I've built a relationship with. So I'm perfectly comfortable to say God, I don't know what the life after this is gonna look like. I'm not okay with again, with the way I've heard it presented. So here that I'm not okay with the ultimate reconciliation or maybe even what Matt said a few minutes ago, that total grace is grace, which again, forgive me matt and correct me if I'm wrong, but that jesus died to save everybody. Therefore everybody saved scriptures. Just full of consequence. In other words, if I if there's A and B in front of me and I choose B. When I should have chosen A, there's gonna be a consequence. Please don't go from there to heaven and hell and all that, it's not what I mean, It's a violation of the very fabric of the universe that God created to think that, you know, it doesn't matter how you live, what you did, what you didn't do, who you listen to, who you didn't listen to? We're all gonna end up then the purpose of the Gospel is to just blow that up. What up what you just said, blow up responsibility, No, blow up the whole, hey, this is, it's it's not, it is in our nature for there to be consequences for this, consequences for that. If you do more of this, you might get that if you don't do enough of this, you might not get like that's how we operate. The Gospel, jesus comes in is like I've destroyed all of that. There's no more consequences. No, I I definitely think there's consequences here on this earth, but as far as like eternal consequences here on earth. Well, because it's just the very nature of our beings. I mean, well if we get addicted to drugs, it's gonna mess up charge too much on our credit card. We're gonna maybe if there's a creator and designer, why did he build consequence into reality? Not the responsibility. That's not the Gospel. The Gospel is that that responsibility has been taken. That responsibility has already been met the crux issue. I don't even necessarily believe that jesus was talking about saving anybody from anything but themselves or from the society that they were living in, that didn't care about one another, that did not care about the neighbor that did not care about the foreigner actually think that that's what he's trying to save us from us from a society where we don't love each other. The doctrine of hell practically ensured that that that plan failed, that I kind of, I like the way you worded that, I agree with that. I think when jesus did the last supper and I would put it in the context of a covenant, he was re enacting or enacting a new covenant and he was saying to them, you know, drink this wine, eat this bread and this is the new covenant. Again, I'm an old faith guy. Covenant means like if the three of us entered into a covenant right now, what we're saying, I walk away and here's what I'm saying to matt Joey, I'm gonna go pay your debts and anything, anybody you owe money to, I'm gonna take care of it. In other words, everything you, oh I'm gonna pay everything you own though is now mine also. But then here's the interesting thing Jesus goes to the cross, I believe, to defeat our number one enemy and our number one enemy is me. Nobody can take my life anywhere crappie but me, I know bad things could happen, Jesus restored kind of what matt just said, Jesus restored to me the opportunity to figure out how he meant for life to be lived in the first place and he gives me the opportunity and I believe the power to figure that out incrementally, I wish he'd just do it zap a reno, but he doesn't, so I think choice matters, I think do I think it matters to the extent of somebody burning in hell forever. I don't know, that's a bit much for me, especially when I consider that a lot of reasons people don't want, jesus is because of his kids and I think, you know, that's kind of not fair that somebody would go to hell because I was a crappy christian. So I mean, that's what I mean, I don't know what to do with it, but I know God is gonna end up being fair now that we would agree and I think you have fair, kind of as a mystery and you could be right for me fair just seems kind of black and white. I've talked to tons of atheists who would love to believe, they can't believe and they say, hey, if there's a God God knows what I need in order to believe so God can do that at any time. I mean, I I know people like that and for God to say, yeah, you sought me and I know that you wanted me. You just never found me so depart for me at the very least make it abundantly clear, hey, there is a God, God loves you and chip. I've heard people respond to that by quoting, I think romans one. Well, I mean things are clear where it says, we just look into creation and and know that there's God. Well if that's the case, then everybody who was seeking God would look at a mountain and be like, oh, now I get it there, there is a God that's a little too too easy. Probably don't like that chip. Well, it's it's you know, it's and again, i it was intended. It's obviously grossly oversimplified. Again, joe you've heard me say this before. I I think one of the key things that the church has gotten wrong, and I understand why it's, to me it's more frightening than hell except for the eternal dimension. Way back in genesis, one God creates this that and the other day seven, he says, let's make man, let's make them in our image, let's make them in our likeness. And let's let them rule this planet. I think we haven't even begun to properly unpack that for me, it covers an immense amount of ground here. Here's my boiled down summation of what God wanted. He wanted to rule here from there through us. He wanted to establish the culture of heaven on earth through his kids and their that's why choice is so important, Joey. I agree choice is important on this earth, every single thing that we do. I just don't think that we have the capacity to make good choices when it comes to to the afterlife. I think along the same lines of matt saying, I mean, it's we can't know. And so how could that be held against people in general, I mean, especially when you visit the idea of people in other places where the Gospel hasn't been shared. I mean it goes on and on and on. But matt, are you familiar with Andy Stanley? You know that is so somebody yeah somebody who goes to Andy Stanley's church actually, I remember a few years ago he wrote some blog, Andy Stanley wrote some blog post or basically something along the lines of we should be willing to question inerrancy if that means reaching more of the millennials by the Gospel. And I was like that's a really weird thing. If you if you believe the bible is inerrant then just why wouldn't we just stick with that? Almost like kind of him shifting in some of my beliefs, but I can't go there. Well this guy told me that he did the same thing about the L. G. B. T. Q. Community and and this guy's head, he believes that there's a huge possibility that Andy Stanley becomes kind of the first big megachurch to become affirming. But it it really is interesting how cryptic he handles things like that. I don't really know much about Andy Andy Stanley or how fundamentalist he is, but I'm really hopeful for the day when the doctrine of hell and salvation are seen as heresy by and large in the church because that's what I think they are. You can let go of that heresy and you can be a lot more comfortable around in the LGBT community, I mean, matt, where that takes my thought is like why the cross, I don't necessarily believe that the cross was the point. I think that the acts of jesus were the point, the the preaching of jesus was the point. The Cross was the result of standing up against the state. That shows you the power of a state that could tell citizens what and how to live and what to do, which is exactly what Jesus was warning us against. Is this loyalty to this thing that is being prioritized over God. I I think that he was preaching a form of Judaism which was rejecting the roman state. That is why the cross and for no other reason or purpose. What would you say is the fundamental flaw in humanity fundamental flaw. I don't know if there is a fundamental flaw really, I think the fundamental flaw is that we can be right and wrong and that's just part of it. I think the fundamental flaw is that life happens and so you you just either flow with it or you don't and you grew up or whatever. The fundamental flaw today in humanity, like that's killing us all today. I think it's capitalism, that's nice capitalism, which is one of the things that I don't think this would be very cool with me, I would take that statement and I would just take it back two or three steps, capitalism is based on greed and greed is based on idolatry and idolatry is based on fear and fear is based on living from an alienated place from God alone and facing the immensity of creation and reality by yourself. Certainly depressing because if you ask me what's the fundamental flaw in humanity, I would say independence, a lack of reliance on and so for me, the gospel is the answer to that. The gospel is, is God through jesus saying the bar is pretty high, you're never going to reach it. But two things one, I'd love to put you in a position of forgiveness to where you don't need to reach it. I did it for you and to I'll live inside of you, give you the power to get as close to it as you can chip. Do you believe in penal substitution? Like Jesus had to save us from God reading the Blue Parakeet book, I love how scott mcknight address the fact that there's all sorts of atonement that are dealt with in the bible and it's not necessarily meant to pinpoint, but I really resonate with the crystals victor. It's not jesus saving all of us from a wrathful God, but it's God and jesus base basically on a rescue plan to defeat evil the flesh, defeat any spiritual entities, like just take things back and become the king of this world that would be where I fall. I do. I have a childlike faith that the crosses was absolutely necessary for us to be able to be fully connected with God. I did hear something super interesting in that even if jesus was not necessarily doing anything that had to be done. The fact that there was no retaliation fact that he surrendered to even death. That's counterculture to every single country, every single thing going on in this earth, that's just not what we do. And if you truly live the life that he's calling you to, it changes absolutely everything changes everything. My challenge to that Joey would be again, that last version that even if you don't believe anything else, just his submitting to the cross was countercultural etcetera, etcetera. But it's no, no, no, I know that joint, but it's still that way of thinking still leaves me alone. What the way I see it leaves is a god who originally created us to have a relationship with him and and partner with him and lean on him and genesis three. The fall, we call it to me that the essential thought there is satan statement was you can know what God knows, you can live forever and you can uh be my God. All three of those are things God wants for us, what he said was, you can do it without God. And so for me, the ultimate, the ultimate enemy is my tendency to think I got this. And so for me, the, the key things I look for in a person and a theology is the humility of impotence, that the humility of of I can't and don't want to do this by myself. Like I tell people all the time, the cry, I didn't solve our problem is solved God's problem. God's problem was, you know, I'm holy etcetera etcetera. And I love these jerks and I want to get my hands on them, but I want to help them with every problem they have. So I've got to legally do something that eradicates the ability of any error any of us makes from separating us from God. Not that we're not gonna make more errors, but they no longer have the power to separate us from God. I'm digging that. And you you would say because this is how this is how I believed you would say that there's something in the spiritual realm that we don't understand in which something had to be done. Like basically what you just said is it it's it's necessary. But I don't know if we can necessarily put a finger on exactly what's what's going on. I'm not sure I'd agree with you Joey. I think, I think scripture explains enough for us to have a pretty decent idea. Yeah, I guess what I'm asking though is do you think that there, how things are it requires sack sacrifice. Like the condition of humanity on this earth. There's something in the spiritual realm that we don't understand. But it was necessary for jesus to come and fix it. Every area of everything everywhere in the universe operates on the principle of sacrifice everything. And the reason for this question is I've heard arguments that I can understand, but I don't resonate because I do believe that Jesus's death and resurrection was necessary, but there's basically some people that say God is the creator of the universe, he could do whatever he wants. So if he wants to say, I am declaring you all righteous without anything happening, God can do whatever he wants. And so I guess I'm saying we're on the same page, something had to be done. Those documents. God can declassify. Okay, I mean, I agree that I agree that he could, but I've basically bet my life on the fact that that's just not how he chose to do it. He chose to do it through a person himself in this supernatural process of incarnation etcetera etcetera. And he, I believe he chose to do it in a way that just like at the original creation, Joey your thing about the whole end result is a love relationship, then we can't be robots. I believe that the cross of calvary, jesus again offers fallen humanity an opportunity to choose to have a relationship with him. And If we don't, he leaves the 99, I don't know the deal with hell, but I just know my experience of God is when we get over there and look at it, we're all gonna go, gosh, that makes sense, matt is gonna be giggling and just being like Joey, you're right, God exists and he loves me and chip, You're gonna be giggling saying, and everybody's here to Joey. I would love it. Anybody who wouldn't love it and calls themselves christians like the calvinist, I've actually read a calvinist piece of work and it says that basically we rejoice over the soul, being tortured forever because it's to God's glory. I'm like, I hate Calvinism, I wish you would have said, I hate calvinist just now, that would've been classic. I hate the system, it's.