I'm not touching you. I'm not touching you. I'm not touching you. It just occurred to me that if you don't know what that is a reference to, then that probably felt really, really uncomfortable for you to listen to. So let me just clarify it right now. When I was a kid, not only in my family, but in everybody's family, there was this thing that you could do to irritate your siblings where if there was a rule and it was like, don't touch the other person, you could still get in their business and do and say all of the annoying things you were going to do and say anyway. But as long as you didn't actually touch them, it's completely legal. It's kind of like the completely legal trick that I use to almost get away with unplugging the phone when my sister was on at that one time. It's this obnoxious do everything but honor the spirit of the law approach. And come on, we've all obviously done that. So when we get to this fulfillment of the practical law statement from Jesus in Matthew chapter five about loving your enemy, my brain kicks into fourth grade provoke my sister and little brother mode. And I want to find ways to weasel around this. Like, okay, I get it. I'm not supposed to hate my enemy. Fine. But there's a lot of things that I can do that aren't technically hating my enemy, but that aren't also exactly loving my enemy. And I came mentally prepared to tell you what some of those things are. Here are things that I do, and these really are reflections of just how difficult this one is amongst all the others. Here are some things that I do that are not hateful toward my enemy, but that also fall short of Jesus' standard that he's holding out here of fulfilling the law by loving my enemy. One, I can do a thing in my brain where if somebody really hurts me or really hurts people that I love, or they just irritate me because they're good at stuff. Maybe I get jealous. I don't know. I can do a thing where I ascribe to them either ignorance or bad motives. Just mentally, I'm like, they're wrong and they're bad because they're just so simple. They just haven't thought it through. They just don't have the data. They just operate in ignorance. And that is a way to not hate them. It almost sounds like loving them because look, I'm pitying them because of how much dumber and simpler they are. But it's not doing what Jesus said. It's pride and it's gross, and frankly, I'm not having a lot of fun admitting it. But hey, now we've started this course together, so I am just going to continue on it, regardless of results. And the other one, I can imagine somebody saying, well, it's loving to say the truth. And the truth is that if that person is being bad and has malicious motives and you're pretty sure of it, then, you know, acknowledging that in your mind and understanding that that's who you're working with is right. But that's, I mean, maybe it's good to know the tactics of people who are your enemies, but it certainly falls short of the mark that Jesus is holding out of actually loving them. So that's that's two ways that I maybe don't hate my enemies when people really hurt me, but I'm obviously not really loving them either. Another one that I think we might no, not we. Why am I saying we? This is not the royal we. This is, I don't know if you do this or not. Another one that I have tried in the past that isn't hating my enemy, but also isn't loving, is the technique of simply out foxing my enemy. Like I'm going to defeat them using only techniques that seem to kind of fit with Christian values or kingdom values, but obviously don't because I'm not willing sometimes to do the actual loving thing toward my enemy. Again, because it's brutally hard. Another thing that I can do that is not hateful toward my enemy, but certainly isn't loving, is to simply nothing my enemy. And honestly, I think this is probably the one I do the most. I think if somebody really rattles me, or I just don't trust them anymore, or I'm very hurt by their actions and don't feel like I can get to a place of resolution, I will nothing them. I won't hate them, I won't love them, I won't do things to hurt them or gossip about them or tear them up, but I also will not go out of my way to serve them or care about them, like what's being held out here in Matthew chapter five. And in doing so, I nothing you. There's something darkly cathartic about that because it's like you're just blocking someone out of your reality. And yes, it is an excellent self-insulation technique. And yes, I think it is far better than going on the war path and gossiping and destroying and going scorched earth and doing whatever kind of revenge damage you can toward other people. But it's this kind of weird, passive-aggressive thing that can be attractive to me at times, and maybe it can be attractive to you as well. The point is that I think a lot of the stuff that I do that might even score me points for seeming very mature and handling that with grace, still, even the best stuff that I do usually does not meet up to the standards that Jesus is describing. And that is why I would say that all of the statements that Jesus makes previous touch on topics, some of which are difficult at times, some of which it's just like, I don't know, it's not really my thing. That one I can navigate okay. They all expose problems with my motives. They all expose my lack of kingdom value adherence for what it is, but nothing does like this last one. And I think the experience had to be the same for the original audience. They're going along with Jesus, and maybe some of them are like, ah, that one doesn't get me. That one doesn't get me. That one gets me. And uh, yeah, you know that one gets me, Carla. You know that one gets me, Doug. Yeah, I see you over there, Dale. I know, I know what Jesus is saying. I hear it. And I'm guessing that was kind of going on in the vibe in this tight-knit community from a small town that are all hearing Jesus talk. And as he goes along, like one at a time, everybody, either publicly or privately, gets flicked down in their own sense of superiority or their community sense of superiority. But if anybody was left, and maybe there were a few who are like, I am the most pristine, noble, kind, not lusty, not hatey person in the entire village of Capernaum, and then we get to the last one, and everybody has to take a seat because nobody loves their enemies. In the world system that conditions our brains to do things a certain way, a system predicated on the assumption that we materialized and that of all the lucky, crazy fluke things, there is the certain permutation and combination of particulate matter that turned into a thinking, sentient being that lives for 70, 80, 90, 100 years, and it turned out to be us. And we have these dreams and ambitions and goals and flaws and beautiful character attributes. But, you know, hey, it was a fluke. And as a result, we live, we die, we get what we can out of this thing. That system, that mindset, which is the default setting of humanity, does not, must not prompt the soul to say, I will love my enemy. It prompts the soul to say, I must self-protect. I must insulate myself against the danger posed by that bad person, which is, I think, really reasonable. Who wants to get chewed up and spit out by their enemies? That's not a good feeling. But if we go one step beyond just the behavioral, the heart level expectation Jesus is expressing, this one not only we find holds up a mirror to ourselves and our ultimate inability to love that which hurts us, to love people who harm us. But it further turns over more of Jesus' cards about the nature of the tension between the kingdom he's the king of and this world kingdom. The kingdom he's inviting us to participate in comes with the implicit rejection of the pursuits and the rhythms and the priorities and the mindsets and the tactics of the world system. He's inviting us to play a different game. That is what this says to me. And I'll be interested to see, and maybe I'm reading it wrong, maybe you come at this a different way, but I mean, come on, eyes wide open, we've been going through this thing together. I I really think that is what he must be driving at here. If you're playing one board game and it has one set of ground rules, and you move the pieces this way and you accumulate wealth this way, and you try to defeat your enemies in this way, and then you flip to another board game that's say one like uh yeah, maybe a disappointing time to bring up pandemic, but one like pandemic or forbidden island, where it's all of you against the game, and you're playing together not to defeat the people sitting next to you, but to work together to defeat this faceless, larger, invisible evil. Well, that's a completely different game. You can't use the tactics from like risk, where you're trying to kill everybody, in a game like Forbidden Island or Pandemic, where you're playing against the board game. It just doesn't translate. Likewise, I really think that is the implicit invitation here. I think that is the practical point that Jesus is making with all of these, you've heard it said, but I tell you that statements is that if you want to do this, if you assent to this, and it's hard to argue with the things he's saying here, if you assent to this, you just cannot navigate the world and life the way you have been doing it. You got to wad up the rule book and the objective statements of the board game you have been playing and adjust everything about your strategy for this other rule book and this other objective of this other game. And I think implicitly, and it'll get explicit here as we go further through the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is like, compare the two rule books. Like, which one is life-giving? Which one is is filled with the things that we know are beautiful and redemptive and good? I mean, it's not it's not the one where we all go and kill each other. It's the one where we are agents in this group of people trying to defeat this larger evil. Dang. So if I'm reading this right, Jesus has brilliantly flipped this thing from something that cuts to the heart of each of us in illustrating kingdom values, something that demonstrates that God does not want your cold external obedience and doing the proper religious paperwork. He wants your heart. He wants you to think and prioritize and latch on to the vision to catch the feel of these values of the kingdom and have it shape everything about who you are down to the level of the essence. He's not just talking about the values of the kingdom. He's not just talking about how God wants your heart and wants it to transform your motives, but he's also further developing this kingdom manifesto and putting before us this enormous choice between two sets of rules. Play the kill everybody board game or play the join together with your family to participate in doing something redemptive and beating the faceless evil version of the game. I'm gonna hit time out, and tomorrow we are going to talk about what I think is the epiphany moment here between what we're used to in terms of the invitation to participate in Christian things and what Jesus is inviting us to here. It might be a short one tomorrow, but that's the way we're gonna do it. Hope everybody's doing well and hanging in there with everything that's going on. Thanks again to everybody who continues to support what's happening here with the podcast. It just you're awesome. It means a lot. Thanks so much. That's it. Patreon.com slash the TMBH podcast. If you're into that, if you're not, hey, sweet, no problem. You get an internet high five. Here's what that sounds like. Awesome. Tomorrow we're gonna compare these two invitations the one that we imagine goes along with Christianity and the one that Jesus seems to be actually holding out. All right, I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. We'll catch you tomorrow.