Say More about Being Real

This week we discuss the Sunday Morning teaching at Fullerton Free Church on April 19, 2026 titled: Free From Pretending, Free to Be Real

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:23

Hello there. Welcome to the Save More podcast from Fullerton Free. I'm Darren McWaters, and I am one of the hosts, one of the people on the microphone, one of the MCs. Some of them try to rhyme, but they can't rhyme like this.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

You didn't rhyme though.

SPEAKER_02 0:39

No, I didn't. I never noticed the flaw in that lyric. I'm here with Kyle Kirschner.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Hey!

SPEAKER_02 0:47

And I'm also here with Morgan Peterson. Hello. Yeah, just like that. And we uh we want to begin with an apology. This is dropping on Thursday instead of Wednesday. Normally we drop it on Wednesday, but we just had our wires crossed yesterday. And so Thursday is was a better day for all of us. Made it work. Yes. Yes. So for those of you who must you insist on listening to the Seymour podcast on Wednesdays, you gather your family around the dinner table, big plate of spaghetti, and you listen to the Seymour podcast.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

They're still sitting there with their plateau spaghetti. The spaghetti's cold at the hearth.

SPEAKER_02 1:22

They have not moved. Really sorry. It's not your spaghetti.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

It's rotten.

SPEAKER_02 1:26

You shouldn't eat it now. Shelf life uh is pretty good on spaghetti.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

After cooked table. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:31

It just as long as you covered it, open a newspaper over it or not.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

They're literally just frozen, staring, smiling, standing around the Spotify pulled up on the iPhone.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

Mommy, when will the two more podcasts start? I don't know, honey.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

There's flies going on their face.

SPEAKER_02 1:49

Ooh, it's gotten kind of like a gory. Yeah, horror movie now.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

Don't touch that basta.

SPEAKER_02 1:55

I felt sorry. I felt sorry like when I began this apology. And now that you've painted this picture, I feel really sorry for the family that didn't get the podcast yesterday.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

They have to go to the bathroom. Shut up and sit down. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 2:08

There you go. All right. This escalated quick. Um the Seymour podcast is a weekly podcast from Fullerton Free Church, which, if this is your first time listening, you would have had no way to know that uh if I didn't tell you. And we on the podcast, every week we talk about the Sunday teaching from the previous week, which this week is April 19th. You both coughed almost simultaneously. We've been working on it. I know. I'll try not to laugh for the rest of the podcast. The teaching on Sunday, we're in the middle of our uh our Jesus Freezes series. So the sermon titled This Last Week, which was taught by Morgan, uh, was Free From Pretending and Free to Be Real. Morgan, you want to kick us off with maybe just like a 90-second summary of that message, if you can?

SPEAKER_00 2:51

I I only I prepared a 90-minute summary. Uh yeah, okay. Actually, explain a bit longer than that. Good. Yeah, it's perfect.

SPEAKER_02 3:00

All right, sit back, folks. Here it comes.

SPEAKER_00 3:02

Yeah, yeah. We uh we talked about free free from pretending, free to be real. So um I touched on uh how the ways that we pretend in general, but kind of talked about the two primary reasons why we start pretending a lot of times to fool other people um to present a certain image of who we want to be, but we're not, um, and then to to fool ourselves, which it sounds weird, but um is a lot about kind of um wanting to see ourselves the way that we wish we were, or trying to avoid pain and by ignoring it. And so um kind of set it up that way and then talked about um the ways that we've seen that be historically true with people in the Bible, and um then also the ways that we've seen God in the Bible um show us that there's forgiveness for whatever it is that we do and however we're pretending, and that we don't have to pretend because we talked about the unconditional covenant that God gave to Abraham and what that means for us, um, and ultimately leading to Jesus dying on the cross for us and how through that we can be real with him, and when we are real with him about how we actually feel we get to experience more of who he is and have a deeper understanding of and belief in his love, forgiveness, all these things for us. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:13

Then that security then sort of um gives us the ability to be real with each other because we have the sort of this stable foundation of who God says we are, our own understanding of who we are, and then that sort of then frees us up also in relationship with others. It was nicely done. And in fact, uh we you guys, we got a ton of questions this week, lots of feedback more than ever. Um, we'll have to go pretty quick through some of these, but I did want to mention that a couple of the people that wrote in uh wrote in with just like positive feedback. So they were not questions. Like, in fact, uh, one of these, there was a couple that wrote in and said, Um, we don't have a question. We just thought Morgan did an awesome job speaking about an uncomfortable reality for many of us, and we wanted to give her a shout out. It was a perfect blend of vulnerability to connect on a challenging topic while continuously grounding the concept back to scripture. Really well done. So that was a nice piece of feedback. I agree with that.

SPEAKER_01 5:05

Thanks for taking the time to write it in and say it. I know when I was walking out of service, I was walking behind this couple who I don't know, and I overheard him talking to his wife, and he's like, I never stopped paying attention today, not once. And I was like, that's a really big deal, you know, like that's that's a cool compliment.

SPEAKER_02 5:22

So it was great. Somebody else said, uh, thanks for the message, and this should be added as an annual message for our church. So I like that comment too, in that it it felt both an affirmation of the teaching itself, but also like this topic is important. And I think that's probably why we see as many questions as we do, too. So anyway, uh here we are. We're gonna go through some of these. If you wrote in a question, I think everybody that wrote in a question this week wrote like a four-part question. So you'll notice we've done a little bit of summarizing, we've done a little bit of reduction for the sake of time. I also want to say a couple of you asked like kind of personal questions. So there were things where you're like, maybe with like with Morgan particularly, like, can you speak more about your experience with the way you struggle with this or that? And I just want to let you know, we sort of decide in advance that's probably a better conversation for like a one-on-one or a coffee talk or like grab a grab a bite to eat or whatever, than to ask Morgan necessarily to put, you know, talk about her struggles. Not that she minded, but I thought rather than put it on a podcast where you're sort of putting those things on display for people you may or may not know very well. Um, so those questions are still valid, but because they were kind of personal in nature, we're just gonna sort of say circle back to those with Morgan directly, and that'll be nice later.

SPEAKER_00 6:33

So yeah, grab coffee with me sometime. There you go.

SPEAKER_02 6:36

What is your coffee order?

SPEAKER_00 6:38

Tea. Oh yeah, so cool. Yeah, great, hot Earl Grey, honey splash of oat milk. Wow, wow. You're set. Or English breakfast if they don't have Earl Grey. That's very sophisticated.

SPEAKER_01 6:51

Um the first question is we love because God loves us, is something that you said a couple of times. How do you sit and love people that have hurt you beyond compare? I know one of the things is to forgive everyone, but what do you do when you feel they've done too much to forgive them? Thank you so much, was one of the questions that we got this week. Well, that's interesting.

SPEAKER_02 7:11

I mean, there's a couple things I'd say about this. The first one is it's I I think I have to sort of default uh to the judgment of God, right? It talks even the Bible talks about the fact that like Jesus didn't uh he didn't need to like avenge himself, but he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. So there's a sense in which like the that last statement of like, what do I do with people who I feel like have done too much to be forgiven? I think I'd run that through the matrix of like, well, does God think they did too much to be forgiven? And if so, what is the thing that's too much to be forgiven that God couldn't do it? And therefore, if God can forgive them and I'm trying to follow after Jesus, then I'm going to trust his judgment in my interactions with other people. Now that said, that helps me bring up a spirit of forgiveness for people that have hurt me, but I am not required, even for those that I forgive, I'm not required to put myself in a position to be hurt again and again. So sometimes what people equate with forgiveness is like, oh, I have to restore like a close friendship, or I have to be willing to like walk into the same circumstances where I got hurt by these people before. And that that isn't true. Forgiving somebody isn't necessarily putting yourself at greater risk or um having to re-engage in a way that's not safe for you, or maybe even good for them. So I would say like forgiving is the act of saying, like, you know what, this person hasn't done anything wrong. That's so great that their standing before God is ruined, or that I can't treat them as another human being made in the image of God and give them the dignity of that position. At the same time, I don't have to be best buds with them, and I don't have to put myself in a spot to be hurt.

SPEAKER_01 8:49

Yeah, it it uh it makes me think of a time in my life where I had a friend who I had been really close with, and then we weren't in the same location anymore, and he did something to like really hurt me, really hurt my life or whatever. And it took me a long time to get to the spot of forgiving him, but in that I I really struggled with I'm like, well, how do I restore this relationship? I'm like, I don't know, we used to live in the same place and now we don't. Like, it's never going to be what it was before, even if this pain hadn't happened. And uh, and so being content with, I don't know, life keeps changing, and like it's okay that I grew and changed, and I can forgive them, but I don't need to like try to go back to something if that's not where life is anymore. And it was kind of a freeing recognition that I had also grown a little bit in like life and in direction anyway. So it was it was like really freeing.

SPEAKER_02 9:42

Forgiving people too isn't the act of pretending like the thing they did that hurt you didn't happen or that it didn't matter or that it wasn't bad. So being able to forgive someone it also includes recognizing that what they did was hurtful or harmful, you know. So it's not about denying that, it's about going like, oh no, this thing hurt me. But I like a lot of times unforgiveness doesn't hurt the person you're withholding forgiveness from, it hurts you. You're the one walking around with all the bitterness and pain. And when you forgive, you set yourself free in some way.

SPEAKER_00 10:14

So I know I Proverbs 19, 11 has been on my mind a lot recently, um, which the second part of it says it is to one's glory to overlook an offense, um, which has just been very convicting for me. And while I think like I don't want it to be this message of like, oh well just pretend they didn't do it and like just ignore it or whatever. Um, but just more so the idea of like like it's it's to my glory that I overlook this. Like there's there's something in it that is like beneficial for me and that like like almost like I don't know, is like honoring to me in in and myself and what I'm feeling and like honoring to the way that I'm approaching this that is me overlooking or forgiving someone else. Um and like it's not just letting them off the hook like there is like goodness for me in that, right? Like as well as for the other person.

SPEAKER_02 11:13

Yeah, that's good.

SPEAKER_01 11:14

Yes. What else? What's next? Um, so this question kind of to summarize it in and then read uh the portion of the question we were reading. Morgan, you shared a lot about uh freeing yourself from like the the lies that you've believed or or those sort of things. And so this person asked, what recommendations do you have when you come across a scripture that you don't believe, but continue to hear that like you should believe? What do you what do you do with that? Maybe maybe speaking to a little bit about where this question's coming from first before we get into answering.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

Yeah, I I gave a I'm assuming that this question is stemming from I gave a list of scriptures during the message um that are basically pretty familiar that I said, hey, like here are things that we hear a lot and we we might think that we believe, but the way that we live our lives kind of proves that maybe we don't. So I'm assuming that this is is kind of stemming from that. Because there are things in the Bible that I read that I go, I I like cognitively believe that's true, but I don't I don't feel that's functionally, my experiences don't feel like they line up with that. So that's where our pretending comes from, where we go, I'm I I know I should believe this, so I'm gonna pretend that I do. Um and it just ends up being unhelpful because we still we still like feel the way that we do. It doesn't change that when we pretend like we don't. So the number one is like being honest, like on honest, honest, like with God and with yourself of going, okay, what do I actually feel about this? Which means that you have to be okay with like expressing things that you might know are not theologically correct, which is really hard for some people because we feel like we can't we can't achieve. Yeah. And like if you look in the Psalms, like you see it talking about things that are like accusing God of things that are theologically not true of Him. Like God, where are you? I feel like you're not here. Right. Um, but the Psalms show us like what God can hear, and so he is able to hear those things. So being honest with what we actually feel about them, and then um uh we kind of recollect ourselves. Connor talked about this the other day in our staff meeting. I've read some about there's this kind of phrase that of recollection that people have used of um basically like placing ourselves back in truth. Um, and I I heard someone say in a sermon a few years ago one time that stuck with me that we're not we a lot of times we think we're being hypocrites if we are uh living opposite of what we feel, but really being hypocrites is living opposite of our convictions. And that was really helpful for me to be like, hey, if I'm convicted that these things in the Bible are true, even though I don't feel that way, it's not pretending or me being fake for me to like tell myself these things and live this way. Um, it's pretending and being fake when I pretend like I actually feel that way. So it's like I I will I try and live by those being true while also acknowledging that I don't always feel like they are true.

SPEAKER_02 14:11

Yeah. I think you're you're hitting on a couple things that are I think really important. And one of the things I would add on to it is we live sometimes as if God doesn't already know how we feel about um a particular passage or or the the dissonance between what we've been told and our lived experience. Like if there are places where people are quoting to you, you know, like God has your best interests at heart and he's working everything for good for you, you know, and you're like, well, that hasn't been my experience. And then you feel guilty because you're feeling like you're arguing with what the text says, but your lived experience is different than what your community is telling you you should feel. It's important to remember God already knows the truth of how you actually feel and what you're struggling with. So to admit that, like the psalmist does, which you've already brought out, is just already stating to God a thing he's already aware of. So there's no, there's no risk in it. But then I would say, secondly, I'm reading a book right now that's talking about the fact that like in high control evangelistic systems, we as kids we're told like you have to have the right answer if you want to be in community. Community with your parents, community with uh your church friends, community with God, right? If you don't have the right answers to these questions, God will, you know, he will separate himself from you and he'll cast you out. So you got to have the right answers at the right times to both be a good kid in our family and a good participant in our church, and also to have good standing before God. And so you sort of do everything you can to get that acceptance and to get that um attachment in some ways. And when you realize, like, wait, no, God loves you independent of if you have the right answers, or independent of how you feel about Him, or independent of whether or not you interpret the scripture correctly. And while your parents' affection or your friend's affection might be dependent on whether you share the same answers with them, God's God's affection for you is not dependent on you getting all the answers right to the test. So when somebody says to you, God works everything for your good, and in your heart you're like, Well, I'm not sure that that I believe that because that's not been my experience. Number one, God already knows that. Number two, your admitting that you feel that dissonance doesn't separate you from God's love at all because he didn't love you because you were getting the answers right in the first place. So kind of correcting that mindset is really helpful to set you free to be able to lament, like the psalmist does, or to be able to say, God, where are you? Even though theologically we know God is everywhere. If if the psalmist felt experience is God has abandoned me, it's not wrong for him to say so. God already knows that's how he feels, and God isn't quizzing him on having the right theology about omnipresence, you know? So sorry, that was a long answer.

SPEAKER_01 16:53

No, and it really ties into kind of this other question uh that's being asked just to move it. As as we can we share some examples of like what that looks like to live in a community where we take the risk of stop pretending this person went on to further ask, as pastors in a church, like how do you do you ever well, they said podcasts and leaders? Oh, yeah. Um yeah, yeah, yeah. But how do you like go up in front of a church service? Like, do you when you're not feeling it? Like, uh, what do you do? And and how do you feel the pressure to perform or or that sort of stuff as well? So I don't know what does this actually look like? Like, if I said, hey, tomorrow, we as a community are gonna stop pretending and start being real, what would that look like, actually?

SPEAKER_02 17:39

You know, it's funny. One of the like really important philosophies of ministry that I brought with me when I came here was this like, we're not gonna try to be slick, we're not gonna try to be produced, we're not gonna be putting on a rock and roll sideshow here on Sunday mornings. Like, I want it to feel like real people. And sometimes real people aren't professional showmen and they're maybe you know, they might be um amateur musicians, or they might be like the the people who are reading scripture sometimes are they get pronunciations wrong, or you know, like we just we took away all of that temptation to put on an entertainment as a part of our worship services. And that that sort of stems from what this person's asking is like, do you feel the pressure on the days when you're not feeling it or whatever to pretend or to put on a thing? And I think as best we can, we're we're trying to make that like a thing of the past, like that need to perform goes away. Now, admittedly, there are a lot of people who insist on pretense. So, like, if you're if you're very honest or if you are very much your true self, you will have people that will like complain or gripe about the fact that you jumble up a word or you get a nickname wrong or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 18:55

Hey, you know what?

SPEAKER_02 18:57

On Sunday, uh Morgan accidentally, and that wasn't the point of her message at all, but she accidentally referred to Abraham's nickname as Israel.

SPEAKER_00 19:06

Well, in my defense, Abraham and I are close, and that was my opinion. That's what he asked me to call him that, yes.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

Yeah, I've heard of her your guys' friendship, you know, Abraham.

SPEAKER_02 19:15

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there's a certain group of people who like when when a pastor makes a mistake like that, they want to be like, hey, just so you know, it wasn't Abraham's nickname who was Israel, it was Jacob, you know, and and it wasn't, you know, technically Israel was not Jacob's nickname. It was the name, you know, whatever. Yeah. But there is a sense in which people don't like the honesty and the um the lack of pretense in just like an honest mistake. And yet I would go, that actually is more beautiful at the end of the day. So I don't feel a lot of pressure to pretend on on a regular basis, whether it's on the podcast or in our church, but I will say that the lack of pretense uh is a source of much critique from people in the church body because there are Christians who are really hungry for slickness, they want it all to feel produced, and they don't ever want to see, they don't like a pastor who says, My interpretation of this text is one of many, or I'm sharing with you my opinion on the thing, as opposed to being like, I have all the answers. And so, you know, there's a wrestling match that goes on with trying to set yourself free from pretending, even a professional Christian level.

SPEAKER_01 20:25

So I know that um, you know, 10, 20 years ago, kind of in this the new kind of Christianity that emerged out of the old 90s Christianity, this there was such a focus on like this on authenticity um word. It became like the buzzword for all of Christianity. And I feel like that it went to a space where it became like authentically, I'm just not great all the time. And uh, and like so every person on stage was like, I am this, I am a mean person, I am a liar, I am a and then it became like okay, but like, don't you want to do better? Like it went too much, and I feel like what I've felt here at least is that no, like we can be like, hey, I'm not, I don't have it all together, I'm not perfect, but also like I want better, like I'm I'm not happy being not further along. Like, like, like I want more and I'm not disappointed in myself and I don't hate myself because I'm not there yet, but also like it's okay to be like I'm still trying, and yeah, and there's to me, there's a real there's a reality to not perfect, but desiring um that really, I don't know, just lands here that I hadn't felt in a lot of other places. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:43

The person, the same person that asked the question about like if we feel the pressure says, Can you share examples of what it looks like in a community when we take the risk to stop pretending? And I think the key there is our like our sense of grace for one another goes way up. Um Our sense of um like patience with each other. Like it's funny, this week I get to talk about on Sunday I'm teaching about the difference between disagreement and division, right? That Jesus sets us free from division so that we can be free to disagree. But I think when when you stop pretending, the reality is sometimes you've got answers that are not fully formed, or you've got feelings that are are not in alignment with orthodox theology or whatever, the stuff we've already been talking about. And if you're gonna be real in community, then a couple of the things it takes is that when someone comes to you and says, like, I am actually sad, not in a performative way, but in a way that says, like, I just don't feel like God is close to me, or I feel like I'm wrestling with one particular person at work that I just cannot forgive or whatever, that you don't feel the need to set that person straight and get them back on a road of pretending, right? But instead you're able to go, hey, thanks for sharing that with me. Like, I appreciate you being honest, I appreciate you walking the path with me. I don't know if I have answers for you, but like if you ever want to talk, I I read a thing, I might have said this before, but like 90% of what people need in community is empathetic witness. Like most of the time, people just need a safe place where they can come and share what they're actually processing without being judged. And sadly, Christian community is seldom good at empathetic witness. Most of the time, we want to correct and we want to fix and we want to make sure people are in alignment with our statement of faith or whatever. And there's something really beautiful in a community that stops pretending, it becomes a haven for people to go, yeah, I don't know, I have a question about this, or I don't think I understand this part, or I feel confused about what happened over here. And there's uh room for people to be gracious and patient with each other while we walk the path, but but we don't lose our community. Like we still lock arms, but we're not locking arms and having it all figured out or or in all looking a certain way. We're locking arms in our recognition that we're all on journey, you know? Yeah. Sorry, once again, long speech.

SPEAKER_00 24:03

Yeah. No, anything?

SPEAKER_01 24:04

The great, great I I I I am reminded of uh a passage that I've like a different kind of vision of a passage that I've really been in love with recently in uh the Sermon on the Mount when Jesus is talking about the the speck in someone's eye. Um and instead of looking at just the like, hey, get rid of your planks, um, the idea of just someone noticing a speck in someone else's eye and wanting to like help get it out, it that starts with only if you're close enough to them to be able to notice a speck in an eye. Like, I can't notice a speck in your eye from across the room. It's only when we're close enough. And the desire to like, hey, I want you to see better because it's better for, but like all of none of that is about correction from a distance and finding the right answer. That's only like once you're legitimately close enough to people to engage in that sort of way. It was just kind of a cool rethought for me that I've been going through.

SPEAKER_02 24:56

So that's interesting. I, you know, I like that as an as a philosophical idea. I don't actually like it when you get close enough to me. Great, physically.

SPEAKER_01 25:05

I uh I've been trying to touch your eyes. I know, I know. I keep having to slap your hands away.

SPEAKER_02 25:10

I'm like, I'm like, just will you please not touch my face? Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 25:15

Let me really get it.

SPEAKER_02 25:16

Put your hands at your sides. Do not ask them to touch my eyes anymore.

SPEAKER_01 25:21

Um the last thing that someone was asking about. Um, this person asks a lot of really good uh kind of questions within it, but we just kind of grabbed one little part um uh out of it. Why does God require blood sacrifices in the first place? As we're looking at that uh that passage in Genesis chapter 15 where your good friend Israel is hanging out with God. Um why, oh, you know, with Cain Abel with the other sacrifices required, the animals, or did they always require blood in order to be sanctified and forgiven from sins? Or was this just the case of the blood covenants like that with Abraham? Like, what's up with the blood?

SPEAKER_02 26:00

Um is there yeah, so this is a this is a more like technical question that has a couple of answers. So to go back to the idea of like different people see this different ways. A couple things that are important to understand. The the ceremony, the covenant ceremony that Morgan referred to, where the animals are split and God walks down the center, that's a that's a covenantal ceremony, not an atoning ceremony. So um it is she did a great job of drawing the parallel between the fact that what Jesus does in um in taking our sin upon himself, that that is foreshadowed in this, but there are two different kinds of covenants. In this particular case, with the sacrificing these animals, it wasn't so much about the blood as it was like the seriousness of the covenant and the fact that we're both saying like we will keep our covenants to each other. And God, in his doing of it, says, I'm I got us both. Like I'm with you even if you fail. But the deeper question here has to do with blood sacrifice, and I think it's probably tied with like a broader question, which is like, why is this the thing? Like, why is shedding of blood? Like, what's the deal with Cain and Abel? It's worth noting with Cain and Abel, by the way, that God never asked them for those sacrifices. Um, there is, I think most theologians will agree that part of what the Cain and Abel story is trying to demonstrate is that there is something in human nature that desires to make a sacrifice in recognition of what God has given. What's interesting in the Cain and Abel story is that uh one of them gets it right and one of them gets it wrong. So uh, you know, that tells us something about what God finds acceptable, and I think that has to do with the intent of the heart. It's why later the prophets will say, you know, that God isn't as concerned about your blood, like that God in some cases hates your sacrifices because your hearts are in the wrong place, which we talked about a little bit on Sunday, too. All of that to say, I there's two ways to think about blood sacrifice in the Bible, two broad ways, and I'll give them both to you. One of them is that the all of the blood sacrifice in the Old Testament was a foreshadowing and a preparation for the sacrificing of Jesus and the shedding of his blood for the atonement of sin. Um, and it all it all was kind of building up to that pinnacle of human history. Jesus is like the pivot point upon which everything else sits, and the shedding of his blood is the thing that makes mankind right. We we all are familiar with that sort of atonement theory. That still doesn't totally answer the question, like, why did God set it up to be like this? Like, why does it have to be blood and not something else? Why couldn't it be some other thing? Leviticus talks about the fact that life is in the blood. So the second thing I would want to point out to you, just to kind of wrestle with and think through, is there are other theologians who would look at it and say, sacrifice, blood sacrifice was already a common practice in the people groups of the ancient Near East, right? So when God enters into covenant with his people, he's not reinventing the wheel and he's not the pre presenting them with something they wouldn't have understood or comprehended, but he's taking a thing that is culturally normative at the time, the sacrifice. And in in those ancient cultures of the Near East, that would have included the sacrifice of babies and all kinds of things, which God forbids. So what God does is he enters into a covenant with the people of God, and he says, this will be a system that is familiar to you culturally, but I'm gonna ask you to do it in a different way. I'm gonna ask you to use pure animals, and I'm gonna ask you not to sacrifice your children or the children of other people. I'm gonna ask you, you know, like it's kind of like what God does with slavery. For a lot of people, they look at slavery as it's represented in the Old Testament and they go, why doesn't he just show up on the scene and say, knock that off? Quit treating other humans with indignity. And the answer to that is he's stepping into a culture that already exists and he's improving upon it with a trajectory and an eye towards all of human history where he will eventually get to the New Testament and say, slave free, Greek, Scythian, you know, like it doesn't matter whether you're Gentile or Jew, you're all one, male, female, we're all one in Christ. There's a trajectory there that he doesn't introduce on day one because if he dropped in in that ancient Near Eastern culture and said, no more slavery, it would have been too much for them to deal with at the time. What he does instead is he takes the culture of the day and he adapts and adopts it, including blood sacrifice and their sense, because we know scientifically that life doesn't just reside in the blood, even though Leviticus says that. Leviticus isn't intended to be a science book or whatever. They perceived that that's where the life was. So that had high value to them. It's why they were making sacrifices of blood already. God steps in in this theory and says, You already get this. I'm telling you it means more than what you've thought, and I'm telling I'm prescribing for you a better way to do it, with a trajectory towards a day when Jesus would be the ultimate blood sacrifice, and then blood sacrifice would no longer be necessary. So there's a trajectory in which God is eliminating blood sacrifice over time, which then tells us God never had an affinity for blood sacrifice. That wasn't like his big deal, right? But man did, and he used that and appropriated it, and then brought it to a place where it could be fully atoned in Christ and then moved past. So we now exist in a time where blood sacrifice is no longer necessary because Jesus was the perfect atoning sacrifice, which was always God's plan. Now, again, there's lots of people who disagree with that. There's people who would say, like, no, God just cares about blood. That's just his thing, you know? But if you're looking for a way to answer the question that was asked, I actually like the answer that says, not just with regard to this, but with regard to the way he talks about women in the Old Testament, the way he talks about war in the Old Testament, the way he talks about slavery in the Old Testament, the way he talks about sacrifice. All of those things have a trajectory to them where he is introducing himself in ways that were culturally normative, and then he is pushing them up the road to a place where those things would be radically changed with regard to gender, with regard to slavery, with regard to bloodshed, with regard to all of that. So take it or leave it, there's there's a couple of answers done really fast.

SPEAKER_01 32:11

Well, and I will say that part of that is such a draw towards what next week's gonna be about, where it's like you can disagree. The more that you take in from different uh from if everyone is giving you the same answers, then you have no opportunity to like grow and change through them. And so, like, I I love that there is uh freedom to have different views and uh and to disagree on them, and that's that's great. I'm excited for uh to see where this goes.

SPEAKER_02 32:37

What's fun too is that there's so much great scholarly work by people who deeply love God, love the scriptures, care about the faith community, but just see things very differently. And the Bible was written in a way that it could be perceived in slightly different ways with regard to like why did this happen this way and not this way, X, Y, or Z. So it's kind of fun. I love it.

SPEAKER_00 32:59

Morgan, anything else? Morgan, you all right? Yeah, no, I'm great. I actually I have a question.

SPEAKER_02 33:03

What what is your take on the podcast?

SPEAKER_00 33:08

No, forward to free.com. Because I'm just curious of like, um, because in the garden, the when Adam and Eve sin, and then the animal is killed, and like God, God kills the animal in place to cover them and clothe them.

SPEAKER_02 33:21

Right.

SPEAKER_00 33:22

Yeah. So I I guess I'm I'm just curious, like, what is your if that if it started with man and not with God, then what does that look like in regards to that passage?

SPEAKER_02 33:32

To me, I think there's a sense in which death enters in as a result of disobedience. So that God had given them a good choice, which was obedience and alignment. They chose themselves. So they chose their own wisdom, their own godlike, you know, they they chose to succumb to that temptation. And there's lots of different ideas about what the nature of the temptation even what is the thing that ultimately tempts them? But the consequence, without question, was death. That was always the case. So I think with the with the sacrificing of the animals in order to provide covering for them, I think that's an immediate and clear demonstration to them of what God had said about the consequence of their own selfishness, that it would result in the loss of life. But even in that, even in that making coverings of skin, there's not a lot of talk in that space about blood. And there I'd have to go back and look at it, but if memory serves, there's no talk about atonement in that moment. It's like a it's like, look, now these animals had to die in order to cover your nakedness, but your nakedness wasn't an issue until you disobeyed. So it's like byproduct of the of the like the dysfunction and the sin, the separation between them and God and obedience, then there's like an immediate byproduct of that. Does that answer your question? I don't know. Yeah. I mean, it's a yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:53

I loved this. It was definitely the most uh like theologically deep pod we've had in a long time. This was good. Well, sometimes that's the case, you know. You never know what you're gonna get. This is what happens when we record Thursdays instead of Wednesday. Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:07

The spaghetti family are gonna be like, just go back to Wednesday. Please go back to Wednesday.

SPEAKER_01 35:13

I want more jokes. Less uh talk about bloody gross. Be less real.

SPEAKER_00 35:19

Um touching Darren's eye. Don't.

SPEAKER_01 35:24

I've asked you several times. I thought we were close. Hands off the face. Uh thank you all.

SPEAKER_02 35:29

Thank you all. Thanks for listening. We'll see you guys next week. Goodbye.

SPEAKER_01 35:31

Bye.

SPEAKER_02 35:35

And always forget to turn your mic down so I don't have to hear you whispering. I don't like it.