Wars and conflicts continue to test our convictions, but as followers of Christ, where do we stand when the drums of war beat around the globe? We grapple with this question head-on to dissect the Christian response to international conflicts, such as those in Ukraine and Israel. We confront the delicate balance between pacifism and partisanship, recognizing that the peace Jesus spoke of is rooted in spiritual reconciliation, not necessarily the termination of all conflict.
In our thorough analysis, we peel back the layers of international disputes, considering the ethical implications of a Christian nation's involvement in foreign wars. The conversation takes us through the murky waters of media representation and the shaping of nationalistic narratives, as we ponder the line between justice and aggression. We reflect on historical events like World War II, using them as a moral compass to navigate today's complex geopolitical landscape, always with an eye on preserving the core values of freedom and human dignity.
Our dialogue culminates in an exploration of media literacy and its impact on our perception - a crucial skill in today's information-saturated world. We delve into the necessity of diversifying news sources, challenging the echo chambers that often distort reality. Through sharing our strategies for analyzing news with a critical eye, we aim to equip our listeners with tools to discern truth from manipulation. As Christians, we are reminded that while engaging with these issues is important, it is the transformation of the heart that truly embodies the Gospel, compelling us to live out our faith in every aspect of our lives, including how we interpret and act on the world events unfolding before us.
Wars and conflicts continue to test our convictions, but as followers of Christ, where do we stand when the drums of war beat around the globe? We grapple with this question head-on to dissect the Christian response to international conflicts, such as those in Ukraine and Israel. We confront the delicate balance between pacifism and partisanship, recognizing that the peace Jesus spoke of is rooted in spiritual reconciliation, not necessarily the termination of all conflict.
In our thorough analysis, we peel back the layers of international disputes, considering the ethical implications of a Christian nation's involvement in foreign wars. The conversation takes us through the murky waters of media representation and the shaping of nationalistic narratives, as we ponder the line between justice and aggression. We reflect on historical events like World War II, using them as a moral compass to navigate today's complex geopolitical landscape, always with an eye on preserving the core values of freedom and human dignity.
Our dialogue culminates in an exploration of media literacy and its impact on our perception - a crucial skill in today's information-saturated world. We delve into the necessity of diversifying news sources, challenging the echo chambers that often distort reality. Through sharing our strategies for analyzing news with a critical eye, we aim to equip our listeners with tools to discern truth from manipulation. As Christians, we are reminded that while engaging with these issues is important, it is the transformation of the heart that truly embodies the Gospel, compelling us to live out our faith in every aspect of our lives, including how we interpret and act on the world events unfolding before us.
On today's episode.
Paul Snamiska:Welcome to the Life Challenges Podcast from Christian Life Resources. People today face many opportunities and struggles when it comes to issues of life and death, marriage and family, health and science. We're here to bring a fresh biblical perspective to these issues and more. Join us now for Life Challenges.
Christa Potratz:Hi and welcome back. I'm Krista Poatretz and I'm here today with pastors Bob Fleischman and Jeff Samuelson. Today we're going to talk about a trying topic, a difficult topic, but one that really I think does command some attention to. Today we're going to talk about other people's fights. Christians take sides.
Christa Potratz:You know, in our day and age most Christians don't find it very difficult to choose a side when a family member is drawn into a conflict, or maybe when their own country is drawn into a war.
Christa Potratz:You know, people can kind of decide quickly, okay, what side of the issue they're on.
Christa Potratz:Things get a little bit more complicated when it's people that are fighting that maybe we don't know or don't have a strong connection to Particularly. You know, we're kind of alluding or talking about some of these current issues that we have in wars too. You know, in America and the Western world, christians and citizens sometimes struggle to know whether they should be supporting one side or another side in a war, and you know we can think of things like the war in Ukraine and also what is currently happening between Israel and Hamas in the Middle East. There aren't small questions, and when it comes to especially, people dying too, this is really a challenge that has to do with life, which is one of the reasons we really want to talk about this today too. So, you know, let's start with something pretty basic. So some people, you know, say to that, since we have a religion of peace, that we should be opposed to war and maybe, you know, never participated in it at all. Is that correct, and what should be a Christian's attitude toward war?
Jeff Samelson:Well, starting with that first part of that Christian pacifism, as you just described it there, it's rooted in two big errors. The first, and most important, is that it completely misunderstands the peace that we preach and rejoice in, that Christ came and won for us. You know, we've just celebrated Christmas. The angels to the shepherds announced peace on earth and lots of people are like, oh wow, that's all about no more wars. And there's Isaiah's prophecy of the coming Messiah, calling him the Prince of Peace, the peace that Jesus came to bring.
Jeff Samelson:The message of reconciliation that is ours to share is a spiritual message. It's not a political one. It's about peace between the Almighty God, who is righteously angry at human sin, and human sinners who see God as an enemy and resent his call to holiness. And what Jesus's coming did, what his substitutionary suffering, death and resurrection did, is that it changed all that. It removed the guilt and offense of our sin. It gave us his perfection, so that now there is no hostility remaining between God and man. There is no longer any gap between us. That's peace of the most important kind and it will last forever. Scripture, in various places, uses the language of the ending of wars between peoples and nations to illustrate this peace, but it's an illustration, it's not the reality. The only time Scripture promises an end to all war is when we see the end of all things, when Christ comes in judgment, and well, that's an end to all conflict.
Bob Fleischmann:Well, conflict becomes newsworthy If you guys are all getting along, nobody's talking about it. In our 21st century culture, news is part of the entertainment division. So the moment there's a conflict, I mean it gets splattered all over the place. I had been asked a number of years ago to present at a Presbyterian conference. They wanted me to talk about Lutheran view of facing death and one of the presenters there was a Presbyterian minister from Jerusalem, and so during lunch we sat together and we were talking about. I said, oh man, oh, the fighting that's going on. And I remember him saying to me he goes do you know that almost all of that occurs on like one or two streets in Jerusalem? He goes everybody knows you don't go onto those streets, but that's where it's happening.
Bob Fleischmann:It's a small, isolated area, but at that time and again, this was probably 20 years ago, but at that time you would have thought that the whole country was in turmoil, and that's oftentimes the way it is Now. That in no way belittles conflict. But that brings me to my second point, and that is the first point is the media grabs it because it's conflict and it gets blown up. But the second point is that it becomes an issue, the closer you are to it. I remember once I had visited two people in the hospital and one fellow, a teenage boy, who had been in a motorcycle accident. His one leg was crushed, I mean they had it all wired together and everything like that. The other patient was in there for having his appendix removed. It was a scheduled surgery and I said to him I go, oh well, that's a relatively minor surgery because I just got done visiting this guy with, and his comment was well, minor surgery is what other people have.
Bob Fleischmann:And I always thought that that was a good observation, something to keep in mind. The point is is that when you're living in Ukraine and the bombs start falling on Kiev and you live in Kiev, you really don't have a choice. You are taken aside. It's a matter of survival For us living over here. It becomes one step removed. Now. Christian life resources used to have some life centers set up in Ternopol and Kiev and Sevastopol, and so we know some of the people there, so we tend to take a higher interest in it. You talk to other people who don't even have that contact. They're like well, I don't care, not my battle, and so forth. But the point is is that and I think and this is probably going to push the argument down the road a little bit that is, I think, when you view fellow Christians as as your kinsmen, that these battles do become a higher concern for you, and so you do want to start taking a side.
Bob Fleischmann:Everything Jeff said is 100% true, and that always troubles me, especially over the Christmas season. Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me and, of course, start by being a person of faith. You know that's how you do it, but that's not what they're talking about. And every year and I've seen it in devotions and art circles and I've heard it in sermons they're always telling the story of Christmas Day peace that they had in the battle where both sides agreed that for Christmas we will not shoot at each other, and they make wonderful stories and everything like that.
Bob Fleischmann:But that's not the peace that we're talking about. We have this peace through Christ, with God, and we keep that. And Scripture does say, you know, near the end times there will be wars and there will be rumors of wars. But why would it even be mentioned if it wasn't supposed to be something that we are to take concern of and be aware of? And so, as we kind of, you know, move this discussion down the road we're going to get into the hard part of you know. Do you take sides? You know?
Jeff Samelson:Yeah, and one thing that I guess needs to be said Christians, as the Bible, clearly deals with war as a reality. You know this is part of living in a sinful world with sinful people, and certainly nowhere in the Bible does it say you can never do this or it's always wrong. But Christians will always view war as a bad thing. It is something that we want to avoid. We don't want to see it, because there's death involved, there's suffering involved, there's all sorts of other bad things that go along with it. So Christians are going to hate war and prefer to have no more of it. You know we want peace everywhere in our world, but again, we have to work with reality. You know not what our preferences are and because nations are made up of sinful human beings, wars will come. Maybe they'll come to us, maybe they'll come to other people, but we're going to have to deal with them. As Bob mentioned, jesus told us to expect them. It's not an unusual thing for the world when there are wars. The unusual thing is peace.
Christa Potratz:So should the reason then for, or the purpose of war matter? To us Kind of seems like yes right, absolutely. So, why the war is going on should be of concern to any Christian.
Bob Fleischmann:In the Beatitudes, the peacemakers are the ones that are called blessed. So a Christian will want to pursue peace. I think the desire to pursue peace is different than being a pacifist. The pacifist just says I'm not going to get involved, I'm going to stay away.
Bob Fleischmann:But you pursue peace and being a peacemaker, pursuing peace pretty much removes you from being the aggressor, because when you are a peacemaker, you don't create peace by poking at somebody to start a fight, but sometimes they bring you into the fight and then you have a responsibility to stand your ground, to defend yourself and so forth. So I would say that, first of all, as a Christian begins to start sorting out his feelings on this, you start by beginning with the idea I am supposed to be pursuing peace. So if I go into battle, my ultimate goal is to pursue peace, because not blessed are the warmongers, it's blessed are the peacemakers. That's what we want to do and, like Jeff said, there is a reality here and the reality is it's going on and we live in a country right now where you can volunteer for the military. There were times in my lifetime where you could be drafted, so you're called in to serve. I mean it comes with membership.
Christa Potratz:So when we hear about a war then being fought in another country or between other countries or groups, then should we consider in deciding whether we personally should support one side or another.
Jeff Samelson:One thing to remember just from the start is that foreign affairs are, almost without exception, complex. So we've got to be careful not to presume that there is one clearly Christian position on this and it's just obvious. Sometimes it will become quite obvious. But try not to simplify things to the point where you're just not actually doing any real thought on the matter. But the inclination is going to start with well, how does this affect me? As Bob mentioned, you know, like with Ukraine, if you know people there, or if you know people in Israel, or if you know people in Palestine. You're going to start probably with that Well, this affects me in some way. But the flip side of that is to say, well, this doesn't affect me in any way, I don't know anyone there, so I'm not going to care. That's not a Christian attitude either, especially when you've got war with its pain and its suffering and death and everything involved.
Jeff Samelson:So we start by simply trying to find out what we can about how and why the war started, who did what and what was done to whom. Sometimes that's really clear. Sometimes it's not very clear when country A simply invades country B and says, well, we're doing this because we want to take this piece of territory or we want to settle this old score. Yeah, it's pretty easy to say this side is the right side and the side is the wrong side, but there's a lot of confusion. Often in that and often deliberate Country A usually wants to manufacture some kind of excuse for its invading country B, and so they try to make it look good. So there's just a lot that needs to be sorted out. You need to do some homework very often to decide, okay, who's in the right here and who's in the wrong.
Bob Fleischmann:Oftentimes, what makes it messier is that the action taken going to war. The reality might be, there should have been action taken, but not that action, like, for example, if a country had dishonestly done something and refused to turn it over, surrender it whatever it is, and so then the other country says, well, we're going to come in now, we're going to bomb you, we're going to do Okay, there's a problem and it began at both sides and it's interesting Just talking. We can talk specifics a little bit with Israel and Hamas. It's been interesting trying to watch the way it gets played out in the media, and what I found interesting is that all of a sudden, we began hearing of Pakistanians protesting and their argument is well, they've abused us for so long. This is what happens, which, by the way, sounds very similar to inner city arguments for justifying violence in the inner city. Well, because we've been treated, I'm sorry, there just is no justification. For you know, I felt like you've wronged my ancestors, I felt like you've wronged my family, so I'm going to come in and shoot you all. You can't support that with scripture. So I think some errors have to be recognized as errors.
Bob Fleischmann:The difficulty I've had whether we're talking Ukraine or we're talking, israel is trying to get down to what is really going on. When Jeff says it's very complex, he said it's most of the time. In my world it's all the time complex. By the time it goes through translators, by the time it goes through whatever media outlet wants to report it, you just never know if you're getting the full scoop or not. That's always been frustrating, so a lot of times, without knowing what precipitated it.
Bob Fleischmann:Personally, big problem with Hamas coming in and shooting up people and stuff like that. I just have a big problem. If the tables had been reversed, I again would have had a big problem because I can't find justification for that kind of action. So now it escalates to the next level and that is you now have Israel responding. We talk about it a lot around the house here because we're looking at this and I can see the Israelites going wow, when our people took over Canaan, they were told to wipe them all out. So we're going to wipe them all out. Well, they begin to find modern-day mandates in old mandates, and I'm not quite sure that that's justified either. We're told in Scripture that there are weapons that are used in the world to bring about change and God gives you weapons or tools to bring about change. You have to remember, if you're going to play the tit for tat game, you're going to run into problems because you pretty much have lured yourself to a level of a world that is not going to continue to exist.
Christa Potratz:An interesting part, or some part of the conversation that we can kind of have, too, is okay, as a Christian, you hear something going on in the news and you think, all right, I'm trying to gather information, I support this, I don't support this, I think we should do this, I don't think we should do that. Then it becomes, though, another issue. I think, besides just kind of talking like what your feelings are now, should our nation support this? Should we give financially to this? Should we go to war with this? That type of thing how do we kind of look at that aspect of Christians in trying to get involved in another war as a country or something like that? I just think, too, I leave the history to you guys here, the history buffs, but just thinking back about World War II and our involvement in that and how it looked like America was really kind of needed to get involved in that, what should our attitude as Christian Americans be then when it comes to some of these situations?
Jeff Samelson:Yeah, it's still not easy. If it's a clear thing where it's like okay, country A is attacking country B and country B is full of Christians and country A is attacking country B partially because of the Christians, or something like that, in that case it's like, okay, we know who to support here. When you've got a situation which has been true throughout European history of you've got an ostensibly Christian country A and an ostensibly Christian country B, is like okay, then which side do I support here? Well, then we start thinking of things like okay, well, as Christians, we're in favor of things like justice being treated equally under the law, people having freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and things like that.
Jeff Samelson:If there's one side that is of the war that is for those same things and another side that's not, then those are the times where we might say, okay, well, I think I know which side I'm going to support and you know what? I think it's probably in my nation's, america's, interest to be supporting that as well. Maybe then that's what I'm going to be writing to my senator about, or what I'm going to be arguing about with my friends, or whatever that. I'm going to be saying this. There are all sorts of other issues like it's like okay, well when we want our nation to support it.
Jeff Samelson:you know, does that mean we're committing troops, or does that mean we're offering ammunition and supplies? Does it mean we're simply saying, okay, we're going to try to grease the skids for you financially so that you can process this war? It's going to vary on the situation, but we should not, as Christians, be afraid of stepping up and saying you know, I think our country should be involved in this If we believe it is a just war and it's clear to us which side it is on the side of justice.
Bob Fleischmann:This morning there were two pieces of news that relate directly to what we're talking about. The first piece is the story that within Gaza there are two remaining Christian congregations. The aggression that's taking place now were Israel's retaliating that those Christian churches. Theory is they might be wiped out. So now if we were favoring Israel because we thought Hamas had been brutal in what they did? Now all of a sudden Israel is going to be wiping out Christianity. Okay, so that's one issue. To me, it just illustrates how messy it gets.
Bob Fleischmann:The other issue that came up was that it was revealed this morning that the Premier of mainland China had announced a timetable that he has for bringing back Taiwan. And, of course, the administration, the US administration, is trying to discourage that. You know, and, as pledged, we will not let that happen and things like that you know. So when does it become our battle? When does it become our war? I think if we leave anybody with one impression when we're done talking about all this is that you're going to have a bucket load of opinions on it. I mean, you're going to have 10 people in the family and you could have 10 different opinions on it, because it's a matter of not knowing the facts. And two, it's a matter of strategy, because for me, when I look at that, the peacemaker side of me says wasn't there another strategy? Okay, so they came in, they shot our people and so forth. You got your answer. You know where they're coming from, so you have to defend yourself.
Bob Fleischmann:I think you know, when we live in a country like we do, you have to take the good with the bad, and so our country will be inclined to go to war because they have to go to war for whatever reason. And the people that we've been entitled to elect for office? Hopefully we're reflecting our views about protecting the people who need to be protected. Will they be right all the time? Absolutely not, but we want to. And then, when they're wrong, we've got avenues built into our country's system to make your voice known, do your protesting, write your letters. We still kind of get to go back to the same thing, and that is, if you really want to change the world, you got to change the heart, and there is no bullet and there is no big club and there's no bomb that's going to do that, like the word of God.
Christa Potratz:But you had said before too. We were talking about sifting through media and, as we hear information coming out, how do we evaluate some of the media, and even social media, that we see out there?
Bob Fleischmann:The moment you like it. It's probably you better move on, you know, because you know the problem is that the you tend, you tend to we all do this you tend to gather around yourselves people who think and talk and act and feel just the way you do. For me, on a very practical level, as I try to walk through these minefields on occasion, is that I get paid subscriptions to the Wall Street Journal and to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which also includes USA Today. I have unpaid news feeds from Washington Post. Well, I listen to NPR radio, which is very liberal. We just love when they're collecting money for NPR because they're always telling you balanced and fair, fair reporting. And even liberals know that that's not true. You know, but I mean. But they say that you know but.
Bob Fleischmann:But the point is is I listen to the opposite views and it aggravates the daylights out of me. I look for the slant, I look for all that kind of stuff, but at the same time you got to recognize that your favorite sources, if you like, fox News or ABC or whatever it is, they tend to sing kind of what you're, what you're looking for. I have found personally this will be a free advertisement for them. There's a, there's a website called 1440.com 1440.com, and their big deal is that we don't take science and they're highly evolutionary. So so they do have a site.
Bob Fleischmann:You know they. They have a little segment that they devote to latest discoveries and evolution. But it is remarkable and it always reminded me of if I was out driving during the day, I sometimes would turn on NPR and listen to the. They'll have the BBC and what's. It is fun listening to the BBC report on American news because because like they don't care, first of all, they have a tone that sounds like they don't care. So you find those kinds of things, but even then you just have to find multiple sources.
Christa Potratz:So when I think you know about all right, like 30, 40 years ago, right, obviously there was still news you'd turn it on, you'd get your news, you know, and maybe some things would tend to swing liberal or conservative or whatever. Now you can go on YouTube, tiktok, anywhere, and you can get news from any person like random Joe, I mean, you know, just anywhere.
Jeff Samelson:And put news in quotation marks.
Christa Potratz:Well, no, I guess you know. Yes, yes, that is true, but I mean you get these, you know, opinions and people saying things. Now you just you have tons of stuff and I mean too like, all like, as you were saying too, bob, you know we get news that is kind of like in line to what we hear and that is I mean there's all those algorithms and stuff too, like you start clicking on YouTube or I mean you know, you're just, you're getting the things that you're listening to and the things that are like the things you're listening to, and so I mean it really can distort what really is going on in reality.
Jeff Samelson:Yeah, and related to that. Just Bob's talked about trying to get multiple sources of information and such, and you know there's just a healthy skepticism that you want to have when you're looking at these things. But I just also related to the. You know the rabbit hole that algorithms can take you down is just be wary of any kind of news source with quotations or not that is trying to manipulate your emotions.
Jeff Samelson:Now, some of these, some news that we get, like the you heard about what happened in, you know on October 7th when Hamas came in, and you know to those, those capuzas in Israel, some of the things that particularly we heard about, you know, in the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the atrocities that were committed there, you should have an emotional reaction to some of that stuff.
Jeff Samelson:But there's a difference between that and having your emotions manipulated. And when you get the sense that whatever source of information you're having is trying to lead you to a conclusion and lead you to a point where you're thinking about it not on the basis of, well, this is what I know has happened, but oh boy, I really feel strongly that these guys are awful and these guys are great, that's time where you step back and you say okay, what can I more rationally see? Here Again, look for balance and just try to use your, your understanding of the situation to get in, get a sense of what's what. Sometimes you may say I can't make heads or tails of this, but there's somebody I trust who can, and I'll rely on that person. But you know to the most, the greatest extent you can try to do your own thinking on it.
Bob Fleischmann:You know, living here in the Promised Land of the Midwest, is the Nightly News. National Nightly News comes on at 5.30. So 5.30 to 6 o'clock. So on occasion I have sat down at the kitchen table during supper and with a pad of paper and I will rewrite the news stories as they announce them. They'll say there was an explosion in Vermont and two people were killed. So two people killed, explosion Vermont, all right, and you do this through the whole news.
Bob Fleischmann:You'd be surprised how little news you actually got. And secondly, you'd be surprised how comparatively this is going to sound harsh, how comparatively irrelevant some of it is. You know like, for example, there is a storm front coming across, coming out of the Texas Panhandle, you know, or the Florida Panhandle, and it's coming up the East Coast and it's going to cause snowfall and all that kind of stuff, but there's no news and it's all trying to create, you know, excitement and everything like that. So when they cover the war, the problem is, when they cover any war you've got to play with emotions because otherwise there's no news. You know, because the bombing continued today.
Bob Fleischmann:That's not exciting. But if I could interview a mother who's wondering if her child will be found in the rubble. That will take two minutes and that'll tug at the emotions and that'll get you engaged in everything. But you've got to be introspective enough to acknowledge that even your own emotions can be manipulated and that, first of all, that's your biggest hurdle, because most of us think we can steal ourselves against it, and it's not true. There is no one I know who can't have emotions that are manipulated, including, if not especially, me.
Christa Potratz:So just kind of shifting a little bit here too. We've talked about some of these principles that we can think about when, thinking about, maybe, what side to choose on or what side to take, or just knowing if we should get involved at all. How can we apply that to the pro-life position here at home?
Bob Fleischmann:There is. I mean, we always talk about it like it's a war. We're in the battle to protect unborn children, we're in the battle to protect women's rights, we're in the battle to protect your autonomy at the end of life. I mean, it's always characterized as a war and I think part of that again is this wonderful marketing, because you need an oppressor and you need a victim, and war has a great way of. If you think very simplistically, if you don't get complicated about it, war, very simplistically, will usually have an oppressor and a victim, and so we do use that terminology. But if you think about it from a Christian's perspective, every battle has its own set of tools. There is the Chinese, the Chinese warbook.
Jeff Samelson:The Sun Tzu, the Art of War.
Bob Fleischmann:Yes, and that's supposed to be like these strategic Bible for engaging in war. Well, christians have their own, and it's a different set of tools and so forth. So you still live in the world, so you still want to get candidates who protect life in the office. You still want to. If you're allowed to be part of a protest, you want to be part of a protest. My problem is is when I see people try to elevate it to an actual war level. All of a sudden there's shootings at abortion clinics or shootings and fire bombings at pro-life clinics and that kind of stuff, and sometimes we do it, and I think that that's again part of the problem of injecting an awful lot of emotion and using the war terminology in what we're doing.
Jeff Samelson:Yeah, I mean there are again definitely similarities that are worth noting. One is how human nature is involved. Why do nations go to war? Because sinful human beings are using their power to achieve their own selfish purposes, just the way sinful human beings do. What goes on in all the life issues? Well, it's the case of sinful human beings using their power on a much lower or smaller scale, more individual scale, to achieve their selfish aims and things like that. And another similarity is in both war and life issues.
Jeff Samelson:We've got people deliberately killing inconvenient people In war. It's the people who live in that territory you're trying to take. They're inconvenient because they live there, so let's get rid of them. And we have the same issue in so many of our life things that that child in the womb is inconvenient to me. Or you know, in my girlfriend's womb that's inconvenient or whatever. So well, let's get rid of it. Grandma, stay in there in the hospital just hanging on. That's not convenient for me. Let's make her dead. Those are similarities there. It's just kind of a difference in scale, and Bob was pointing out the appropriate responses and such.
Christa Potratz:So do we have any other final thoughts on war and some of these life issues that we've been talking about as well?
Jeff Samelson:Well, just to the whole point of taking sides, one thing is to recognize that we're often dealing with the fallacy of a binary choice. Other people will tell you well, you've got to be on this side or you've got to be on that side. There's no in between. Well, actually, as Christians, very often there is, because we'll say, yeah, this side's got it right in this and wrong in that, and the other side's got it wrong in that and right in this, and we don't necessarily feel we have to be on team this or team that. We're on team Jesus. You know we're on the side of the gospel and that's something to do.
Jeff Samelson:But a caution also if you find yourself rationalizing atrocities, genocide, all sorts of awful and evil things that people are doing, just because, well, I'm on their side, maybe you're on the wrong side, because that's not something that Christians are ever going to be okay with. If you're making excuses for sinful choices and behavior, whether it's in war or just in life, that should be something that makes you stop and consider what you're doing. And maybe your support is still going to be for that side, but it's going to be a qualified support, and you're going to say they're messing up here and I'm going to do what I can to stop that. But lately I've seen far too many Christians who are just saying well, I know what side I'm on and therefore it doesn't matter what that side does in this war.
Jeff Samelson:And well yeah, it does.
Bob Fleischmann:I think the final thought on this would be Christians will differ, sometimes will differ. It's just the way that we've received information, the way we understand the information and the way we're trying to accomplish God's will. So there will be differing on this, but none of it ever has obliterated your assignment from God to share the gospel. So the challenge is on us, as people of faith, to try to walk through this minefield in a way to fight the good fight and to finish the race and to have performed admirably. That God is pleased. And you got to keep going back to that because, quite honestly, in the end we're just talking opinions on some of this stuff and if it isn't rooted in God's word, that's all it is as an opinion, and it's not enough to create a wall.
Christa Potratz:Well, thank you both for this discussion today, and we thank all of our listeners too, and if you have any questions on this topic at all, reach out to us. You can find us at lifechallengesus, and we'll look forward to having you back next time. Bye.
Paul Snamiska:Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Life Challenges podcast from Christian Life Resources. Please consider subscribing to this podcast, giving us a review wherever you access it and sharing it with friends. We're sure you have questions on today's topic or other life issues. Our goal is to help you through these tough topics and we want you to know we're here to help. You can submit your questions, as well as comments or suggestions for future episodes, at lifechallengesus or email us at podcast at christianliferesourcescom. In addition to the podcasts, we include other valuable information at life challengesus, so be sure to check it out. For more about our parent organization, please visit christianliferesourcescom. May God give you wisdom, love, strength and peace in Christ for every life challenge.