Welcome back to The Willing Fool. We are here for episode 8. I am your host and lead fool, Paul Trimble, and we are going to wrap up this season today. I mentioned in the very first episode of this season that I believe, based on this observation and continuing to read and study throughout the years, that it can be a feature of our theology if we accidentally twist and distort God's good message.
It can be a feature of our theology to be very difficult to correct and address things within. And I think I've witnessed that both from afar and firsthand many, many times. I've done my best so far in this season to unpack. What those connections are the theology with the resistance and difficulty in Addressing things and improving and changing or even where you could use the word repenting.
So I'm gonna try to wrap that up today Uh, you can tell me if you think the case has been made or not, but, um, I thought it was worth the effort and worth the, uh, attempt to identify and articulate these things. So I've mentioned this idea of the Matthew 18 versus the Matthew 23 paradox. Matthew 18, Jesus says, if someone sins against you, go take it directly to your brother.
Of course, I'm paraphrasing here. And try to explain it to him, and if you won him over, then great, you won over your brother. If not, then, gather a couple witnesses, and if that doesn't work, take it to the church as a whole. And so, that's amazing advice directly from Jesus himself. Not advice, I don't mean that to mean it's a suggestion.
It's direction given, command, whatever you want to call it. It is, divine and God given. And yet, depending on how you interpret and apply that, You could put that at odds with Jesus himself along with pretty much all of his earliest followers Because Jesus did things like clear out the temple and rebuke people based on their behavior and departure from God's will and God's purposes he did the same thing in Matthew 23 when he Fully rebuked the religious leaders of his day who stood in opposition to him and John 8 he calls Religious leaders the who are arguing with him children of the devil.
I mean, these are really sharp words of course, you know, Paul didn't hesitate to address things as he saw them as well. And I don't think that any of those are necessarily in a contradiction of Matthew 18, if understood and applied well. But they can be, they could be perceived as such by people who think that any sort of addressing of something that's not positive within the believing community is somehow Wow.
errant or out of bounds, or sinful itself. And I've just seen that happen a lot. And so I want to continue just thinking about why that is and how we get there and how it continues to be in, um, an ongoing dynamic. So I'm going to just lay out how I think this works, in simple, very simple kind of stepwise psychological fashion.
I think that for many of us, the way we've understood the paradigm of the scriptures is this is what it's about. It's about a sin problem that humans have. We think of it as on the individual level, and we see it as a problem that needs to be, fixed by our moral slate being wiped clean through some sort of process conversion transaction, and Everything else is pretty much secondary.
I mean, that, that, that's what it's all about. And the stakes are your individual eternal destiny in heaven or hell. I mean, that's just boiled down to a nutshell, which people have been doing now for generations. They've been thinking, how can we, how can we reduce the gospel? What can we reduce it to? And I think that's where people have landed.
Like, that's what we're going to reduce it to. Uh, first of all, I'm not sure it's a good idea to reduce something because then what you have is something that's been reduced, which might not be the point. Secondly, if you did reduce it, I don't think that's the best summary you could get, reduction, but that's what we've reduced it to.
So there's a tight logic that goes along with that. So for those people who they believe that, which is the majority, and many swaths of Christianity, at least I'll say, or churches. Uh, if they've done that, if they've done what they thought they need to do, said a prayer, been baptized, used the term repentance, discipleship, whatever, at some point in their life, then they think, okay, I'm on the good side now.
I'm a good guy. So I'm, I'm, you know, I should be grandfathered in. I should be given the benefit of the doubt. I'm a good guy. I'm, I've done this thing. I'm on the good side. So, um, if. Anyone comes and says, well, are you sure you understood that properly in the first place? There's a very quick reaction, which is, wait a second, are you, are you compromising on that message?
The basics of the message, are you calling that into question? That's a slippery slope. There's great danger there. Because as I see the paradigm, all the danger is on one side. Which is if you waffle or water down the message about sin. You're simply increasing the danger that an individual is going that route and ending up in a bad place physically and metaphorically and there's an additional element to that which is We understand this process well, we know it separates the good guys from the bad guys and If anybody is not of the same camp doesn't agree with that I'm even less inclined to listen to them, because what do they know?
They are not even on the good, they're not even on the right team. They're not, might not even be on the good side. So there's a self isolation, a chosen voluntary isolation, that comes from, um, well really a place of superiority, and you could probably fairly use the term arrogance with it. So there's arrogance, there's superiority, and then that comes with a distance and isolation where we think, we're the ones that got it.
We've got the formula, we've got the real ones, therefore it's hard to listen to almost anyone else because they gotta make it through this thick filter of our defense and our superiority. Um, and likewise, the content, if anything, doesn't fit within our paradigm, uh, then I don't want to listen to that.
And if you want to talk about group level dynamics or problems, that doesn't really fit my categories. for sin or even being that important because it's not in that category of what I understand and identify as, um, identifiable sins that have a particular label. The problem is That just throws out almost all of life and experience, and it throws out, along with it, almost all of the problems in scripture that we read about.
That Jesus fought these battles, God himself fought these battles, the prophets that are bringing God's word and message fought these battles. Think about those examples I gave you. Matthew 23, John 8, John the Baptist in Luke 3. Um, none of them were carrying out what we would consider a... Matthew 18, uh, process precisely the way that it's commonly understood.
And I even used the example of Abraham and, uh, Sarah and how in their respective stories, parts of their story, they were acting out that scene in the garden with the snake and the fruit. And, at those junctures of their life. They were not following God's will. They. We're following the path of the snake in those moments, and could I label what they did as an exact sin, like the label of theft or murder?
No, but you know, that doesn't mean they weren't on the right track. As Jesus purged the temple, he quoted Jeremiah 7. Jeremiah himself had a showdown in the temple, and he was addressing the people at large, including groups of people, including group dynamics, and they talked about things like... Uh, they talked about things like justice as well.
And that was considered part of the will of God, part of the legitimate considerations and desires of, of God. And as Jesus quoted that, he invoked all of that context at the temple. Uh, I know from my experience that there's times where we won't even consider considerations like that in the context of church because, and I've heard this directly from people, many, not many, but, but.
Good enough that I know it represents a portion of, a good proportion of people that because they don't think that falls within the purview of individual sin and a need for salvation through a salvation process, it's an illicit consideration within the church. It's out of bounds. It's bringing the world into the church.
That's a pretty big, that's a pretty big departure from the message of the scripture. It's a pretty big departure from the examples that we see. Um, and so I just think about these examples, I think about Genesis 3, all of humanity experiencing consequences based on, the choices of a couple. I think about Genesis 6, I think about Genesis 11, the people being scattered, that was a group consequence.
I think about Genesis 18 and Sodom, that was a group consequence, it wasn't in the future in heaven and hell. It was, it was immediate. It was. Contextualist, physicalist, media, I think about what happened with Pharaoh and Egypt on both sides. People's consequences are often linked together, not separated individual by individual.
As much as that might betray our sense of justice, it still was the reality. I think about the disobedience. The Israelites and Exodus 16 and other chapters around there and how those consequences were at the group level and immediate I think of the slaughter based on the golden calf incident I think about Leviticus 16 the atonement for the people And the goat being sacrificed for the sins of all the people I think about Leviticus the description of covenant blessings and discipline that applied collectively to the people of God I think about the spies faithlessness and the people's response and their faithlessness and numbers 13 and 14 I mean I could go on and on and on there's just just countless just dozens or hundreds of examples Where the current paradigm of hey, everything must be discussed at an individual labelable sin at an individual level Or it's not in bounds for discussion among God's people It's not in bounds for addressing For Unteaching and unlearning, saying, Hey, we gotta walk that back, because you know, when that was said and that was done, that was wrong and here's why it was wrong.
I hear so, so little of that when the need for it is so enormous. It would provide healing, it would provide guidance, it would provide replacing really poor understandings of God's character. and the role of people, uh, replace it with healthy ones that foster people's lives being nourished, maturation.
And I've, I've, I've heard the arguments of why it can't be so, and I've just found them all very, very wanting. And you might think, well, if, if If this path of considering only individual sins and, um, people just being need to told, being need to be told by leaders what to do and to do the same things over and over and to just focus on, being personally righteous and sharing their faith more and helping other people and don't question the message and don't question what's happened before.
Don't, don't get bogged down in learning from it or going deep into the scriptures. Just don't do this. Don't do that. Don't do this. Don't do that. Don't there's there's I think underneath all that I hate to say this but I think underneath all that there's not only a naivety but a desire to control
and The argument is often made. Well, this is how you keep people doing. Well, this is how you Make a healthy church. This is how you create healthy disciples and help them mature but I've looked around and I thought well, I I'm actually hearing this This pushback to correction a lot from people that have been in that environment for 20, 30, 40, 50 years.
And I thought if this is maturity,
if this is flourishing, if this is the wholeness of Christ and the body of Christ.
I don't know. What I'm seeing is lack of maturity in many cases. What I'm seeing is extreme fragility and ego involvement. What I see is, in many cases, ignoring not only the obvious, but ignoring what I think God cares about very deeply in the name of honoring God. People have been doing that for a very long time.
In Jeremiah 7, the sermon that Jesus quotes as he clears out the temple, uh, Jeremiah says, don't, don't put your faith in these words. The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord. And I'm paraphrasing. He says, the temple Lord isn't going to save you. And I think there's a tendency within, uh, us religious people, religious circles to kind of find a false security and comfort.
And confidence and arrogance and the language and the trappings of religion. And I think that's what Jeremiah is addressing there. The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord. We're in the temple. We're the people of the temple of the Lord. And we might not use that language, but we might use the language of church, discipleship, Jesus, hallelujah, Christian repentance, obedience, faithfulness, commitment.
Baptism,
followership, and we can put a lot of confidence in those, those terms and the, the, the practices and the trappings and the conventions, meanwhile, opposing that which God might actually be trying to do. And is this not what people in Jeremiah's day found themselves doing? Is this not what Jesus conjured when he quoted Jeremiah clearing out the temple and when he addressed the people of God in Matthew 23 and the people of God in John 8 and called them children of the devil and hypocrites and whitewashed tombs and brood of vipers, sons of the snake, essentially.
There's no confidence to be put in the language. I think likewise there's no confidence to be put in. Well, I went through this formulate process at one time in my life, and therefore, I must be right. I must be on the good team. I must be doing what's right. I must be honoring God if I say I'm honoring God.
I must be defending God's honor if I think and feel and say I'm defending God's honor. In John 17,
Jesus says that what he's done, he's done in the name of God. As he's loved and lived with his disciples. He's done it in the name of God and I think we hear these things, you know, in the name of Jesus, the name of Jesus is powerful and da, da, da, in the name, in the name. And I think we think it's the literal word, the name Jesus or the name God.
And you have to question, is that really it? Because if so, then of course, all you have to do is just the words themselves have power, the name, the trappings, the convention. The things of God.
It says, I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world. I am coming to you, Holy Father. Protect them by your name that you have given me, that they may be one as we are one. While I was with them, I was protecting them by your name that you have given me. I guarded them, not one is lost. it keeps going on from there.
And was it the name of God that Jesus gave them? Was it, was it Yahweh? Was it the Shema? You know, I mean people had had that for generations. They knew the name of God. They said it repeatedly, or at least had it in their heads. They said a substitution for it every day, multiple times a day. But the name.
When God sent the Israelites out of exile, He said, I'm gonna send an angel and my name is gonna be in him. And God's name It's his presence. It's who he is. It's his character. And so you can use God's name, the letters, the word, the sounds a thousand times a day. But if you misrepresent his character,
you're not necessarily under his blessing. If you misrepresent him by being arrogant, unaware, harming people, having a hypocritical judging affect. And being blind to that and being resistant to correction, then there's no, there's no coverage for you under the name. If you're acting as a son of the snake, then eventually at some point you have to think that's, that's who I am being, that's who I've become, or that's who I am at least in this moment.
Let me not put my confidence and faith in the terminology, the trappings, the people who Jesus called children of the devil. They had the temple, they had the law, they had the Sabbath, they had that these things that God had sanctioned, they were sacred, but the way they latched onto them made them actually oppose the very nature and character and desire and values and priorities of God.
That is no less possible today. So this, these names and these conventions, they can become rocks to hide under, to hide at poor behavior. Poor actions under a real, what our real life is.
And I think understanding the scripture in its totality, what the scope of it is, what the sweep of it is, what's in view, how to sin fit in properly can really help us with these things. These, these, these things we're talking about, many, many things should be discussed. If God isn't going to entrust. His family, his believers, thrones authority over the nations to judge angels, then, you know, you know, maybe you can treat people like something approaching adults, not, not simply sheep and not simply children for decades at a time.
I understand there's a time and a place for our things, but I think there's a principle at work here that's very real. God thinks so highly of us. The stakes are high. How can we be one of his children and not seed of the Nakash, the serpent? It won't be through the words we use. It won't be through the trappings or conventions or even, even simply the practices.
Divorced from the warp and wolf of our lives, our words and our actions and our thoughts. We have to choose what kind of people to be. The story is weirder than we have thought. It is crazier than we have thought, but is also better than I think we've often thought. More encouraging, a higher standard, more, if anything, accountability for sin, a broader understanding of what sin could be more intense and its consequences and the stakes.
But ultimately, I think as God sees it, we're not the bad guys in the story, we're the stakes in the story. We're the ones he's been fighting for all this time. We're the ones he won't give up on. We're the ones he has a huge high calling for and simply will not be denied. You
might ask, what can we do to think the same way, to be of like mind, to be able to be transformed into his likeness and his image? Some things to think about. I want to thank you so much for the time you spent with me this season. Thank you for listening. Thanks for your attention. Welcome any feedback.
Much appreciated. Willing Fool signing off. See you next time.