Replay: Thinking For Yourself

When dealing with delicate, nuanced, disputed, or important issues, should Christians primarily rely on their own judgment or the authority of church leaders in their lives? Derek, Alastair, and Matt bring their own experience to bear, as well as a reliance on Scripture and authority, to answer this listener-submitted question.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:09

Should Christians think for themselves? My name is Matthew Lee Anderson, and you are listening to another episode of Mere Fidelity, the podcast where we think together about the word of God and the world we live in. This episode of Mere Fidelity is brought to you by our friends at Lex Impress. You can get all the Leximpress Mere Fidelity books at Leximpress.com, including the April book of the month, Zwingli the Pastor, a life in conflict. Uh this is it's a theological, historical take on Yeah, Derek, this is your jam, man. Like get a little Zwingli in your life.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

I I I you know, I have not actually done much time with Zwingli, so if that comes in the mail, I'll be pretty happy.

SPEAKER_02 0:53

It's it's few people have. I think few people have, and more people should. So you can get a little dose of Zwingli, get a discount on that at Leximpress.com slash mere fidelity. Shout out as well to the merry band of Patreon supporters. Also, this is just a personal plug for all of you, because you know, I know all of you bought a copy of Called Into Questions and have read it twice. I could my inbox is overflowing with feedback from readers. But if you are one of the handful of people who did not buy called in the questions, in the month of April, you can get that sucker on Amazon Kindle for under $3, $2.40, which is the cheapest it will ever be. So you can satisfy yourself by putting almost no money in your my pocket, which if you're worried about that, if that's been, you know, you've had a crisis of conscience about doing that, you can escape that crisis of conscience, which means you're now without excuse for buying and reading called into questions. That's that's the most shameless plug for the book I think I've ever done.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

They're just looking out for your spiritual life. They don't want you to be too engrossed with mammon. And so they don't want they're just not filling the coffers.

SPEAKER_02 2:07

The audience has always cared about my spiritual life more than anything. That's gotta be the right uh looking at the book tales. That's gotta be the right explanation. So, anyways, there's that. Guys, Alistair, uh, Derek, I started with a question that I almost broke down laughing as soon as I asked it. Uh, because, well, actually, for those of you who are listening, I did break down laughing the first time that I asked. I didn't warn Derek and Alistair that I was going to frame the opener that way. Should Christians think for themselves? But it's a it's actually an interesting question that we receive from a listener. It wasn't framed quite like that. It was framed in a more sophisticated way. Uh, the question was should believers think through heavily disputed or controversial theological issues themselves, or can they trust their local pastor's view, assuming the pastor's proven faithful to the gospel prior? Right. And there's there's this frames the question as you're already a member of a church, you're attending that church. Like, how much can you trust your pastor's views on things? How much should you work through these contentious theological questions on your own? But there's also, if you move to a new city, you also have to run through this set of questions, right? To what extent, how do I identify a pastor who I trust? How much do I have to have my own kind of theological system worked out on these controversial issues such that I even know which denomination to attend in the first place? Right. Uh I think this is it's a great question. And I was very grateful to you, James, for sending it. So another mere fidelity episode that is listener-prompted. I'm interested to hear what you guys make of this. Should Christians think through these contentious theological questions on their own? Alistair, you I think we don't have Andrew with us, unfortunately, for this one. I I wish he were here. You are teaching, I never remember what your current church status is. I know you're you're you know splitting time across the pond, so it's complicated, but you've done a lot of teaching and you think through contentious issues on your own. How much do you think that ordinary believers should be like you?

SPEAKER_00 4:41

Alistair Everyman.

SPEAKER_01 4:43

Well, I think we need to exercise responsible belief, but at the same time, I don't think it's left for each of us to decide these matters for ourselves. And I think there's a difference between certain sorts of things here as well. So if we're talking about an element of doctrine, it might be different from a matter of church practice. So questions of sacramental practice is that's a matter that will be decided by your local church body and maybe by their confessional standards. And so, unless you are exercising authority within those structures, your choice is mostly between attending this church or that that church. What you think about it for yourself isn't necessarily going to change the actual practice or the polity. So I think it can be helpful to distinguish those sorts of matters. Also, thinking for ourselves is not the same thing as acting like cats that can't be herded. There are ways in which we can understand within the context of a local congregation the teaching of the elders and those placed over us as teachers, and respect and be tractable to their teaching and direction, while also being concerned to understand these things for ourselves. I think this is also a very strong concern of the New Testament, which doesn't just give us clear directions of what to do or what to believe, but gives us extensive reasons for why those things should be done or believed. And so there's an expectation that every Christian, to some extent or other, will be moving into a greater understanding for themselves. I think the problem comes when that movement becomes a sort of individualism where your individual belief and principles set the terms for everyone else and make it impossible to submit to a church body that doesn't dot every I and cross every T of your personal doctrinal standards, or to work with other Christians who might have different perspectives on things. And so it's often at that level that I think the issues arise.

SPEAKER_02 7:01

There are not hordes and hordes of people who are spending too much time trying to understand these contentious questions on their own, right? So let's just say this is a mere fidelity audience problem, right? Most, mostly, I think, outside of the mere fidelity audience. Our disposition should be yes, we should, you should spend a lot more time trying to think through some of these questions on your own in consultation with your pastor, under your pastor's authority. Um, but there is also a volume problem, even for the mere fidelity audience. I think this is why the question comes up, right? There are so many contentious questions, so many finer points of Christian doctrine that to even take up one responsibly, to devote a significant portion of your life to the doctrine of baptism, for instance, in order to come around to understand what your church's teaching is and why they're doing it in the way that they're doing it, that that leaves a whole lot of other doctrines behind for that season. And so it's just a it's just a volume problem in one way, right? Like there's it's hard to um it's hard to keep up if you are working a nine to fiver. Uh so while I want to say like that people should invest more time in understanding these doctrines, I recognize there's real challenges in in doing so, which is partly why I think we need the authorities and we need responsible authorities to take stances for us that we can trust so that we don't have to recreate the wheel on our own and do all the work all the time. Derek, what what's your take on this?

SPEAKER_00 8:54

Yeah, I mean, I have a lot of questions. I mean, the kind of the the the question of like what are contentious issues? Are we talking about long-standing matters of faith and practice? Are we talking about contemporary hot points, which are not always the same thing? Uh it's like, whoa, what do you think about X, Y, and Z BS controversy that is really a terminological discussion between two bloggers that way too many people online are invested in and is an utter waste of your time. No, no, you shouldn't waste your time. You know, if you haven't you haven't worked through the issues in like the 30 chapters or whatever Westminster, then you know, don't, don't, don't spend your time as much time there. I mean, some some of these things have have live questions. So, for instance, in the last few years, we've had a lot of contentions around just live issues, like what does your pastor think about masks or COVID or yada yada? Those are like, hey, should I defer or should I not? Um, this impacts the practice and the worship of my family. Um, so um so so there's the question is what kind of what kind of questions are you dealing with? Um two, like you guys said, the front loadedness, to some degree, picking a church, you have to have you know a shorthand kind of litmus test on a whole bunch of things that like, okay, this this passes my five-point evangelical uh doctrinal measure, or hey, it's a PCA church, they got Westminster, we know I I agree with that, or like 39 articles, Anglican, maybe if they're paying attention to it. Um, you know, you know, you have that basic hand. If you don't have like that basic, you know, hey, this is in hand, I basically know what I believe on the basics, etc., etc. Then from there, all the other stuff that are practical and real, um I think you need to prioritize that. And there's there's some there's some degree to which that can't be farmed out entirely. You do have to do some of your own reading there. That said, you can't just do it by yourself. Uh the it it th those kinds of doctrines are meant, that stuff's meant to be worked out, worked through in the church. And part of the point of the path of having pastors and teachers and elders is people who have been set apart uh so that they have the time and the energy to study these things and digest these things and set them out in a way that is accessible, relatable, cogent, and digestible, but not a good pastor, a good pastor is hopefully raising up members into the fullness of Christ, uh, is leading them into maturity. So there's a sense in which a good pastor is preaching and teaching and counseling and discipling in such a way that he is raising up people by God's grace who can think these things through for themselves, who is modeling a way of thinking these things through, who is making transparent his own kind of reasoning and judgment on these issues from the scriptures so that he brings before his people why he believes what he believes in such a way that they can think about why he's why he thinks that way. Right? So it's not just the pure um dictum of thus says the pastor. It's like, well, the thus says the pastor because he thinks, thus says the Lord, on the basis of A, B, C, D, E reasons from the text, which you can follow and reason about yourself. Right? So a good pastor is hopefully creating other reasoners, other thinkers, and raising, I mean it's like raising eventually your children should be able to argue with you. Like, like not hostily, but they should be able to reason with you. They should be able to ask like good questions of you. Now, a parishioner is not your child uh in that sense, and often they have wisdom beyond yours and and all sorts of things. So so my thing is there's this there's this level at which Christians should eventually think for themselves. And there's there's a way in which they already have to if they're gonna join a church, anyways. But at the same time, there is there, I think there's a proper in a healthy church, there's a proper deference though like, you know what, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna come to my pastor and immediately suspect every every every take they have on everything, unless I've got a 30-page document in front of me that they've given me that satisfies me on all like minor issues of liturgy and practice and so on and so forth. So there's this level, it it's kind of a dance. It's wisdom, it's it's judgment. There and there's more there, but but that's my my initial thing is eventually you have to.

SPEAKER_02 13:30

Well, I'm curious about when you say it's wisdom and a judgment. Alistair, you had raised this dynamic as well of you want people to think for themselves, but it can't be bottom out in a kind of individualism where we just are choosing from the smorgerboard smorgasboard of options because the options that we're choosing from are set there by authorities, right? And we're bound to authority. I'm just curious like what's how do you balance those two things, and how do you prevent the thinking from yourself from devolving into that type of individualism?

SPEAKER_01 14:05

Well, one thing to bear in mind is that the thinking through the teaching of those who speak to us is not necessarily an individual thing. Um we introduce, or you introduce, these episodes often where we think together about such and such. This is a matter that is not just for the individual, we're learning responsible belief, and we're doing it as a group. Now, I think that's a big difference between the sort of individual, each person must come to all their own convictions for themselves, and there's no way that they can be informed by this collective process. What a good leader will generally try to do, I think, as Derek has highlighted, is to give people reasons for the direction that's being given. So you're equipping people to think through the issues, you're giving them reasons why certain positions are supported or advocated, you're helping them to understand the rationale, and you're also helping them to giving them a context and processes with which to exercise responsibility. So they're not just doing a blind leap of faith, but they're able to act in a way that is thoughtful, that is able to take responsibility for what they're believing. And this has always been, I think, a key issue for Protestants that um emphasize the danger of just trusting to the Pope or to the church, but also recognize, on the other hand, the dangers of a pure individualism, a faith where everyone can do the come up with their own thing and there are no checks on people's individual notions. And so I think that is one of the balances that we're trying to strike. And Derek's illustration of parenthood, I think, is a good example here, that as you're raising kids, ideally you're bringing them to a point where they will be able to think through these things by themselves, not in a way that's just rejecting your perspective, but to understand your perspective and to be able to reason with it in an appropriate way. So when we're talking about reasoning through the things that were taught, the Bereans are a good example. The Bereans weren't going back to look at their personal Bibles. Presumably, what was going on was a process of collective deliberation about the things that Paul taught, where they would have someone who was a scribe who would open up the texts as they were raised in the conversation and they'd check these things out, see if it was so. But it was a more collective, communal experience. Now, I think another aspect of this is our idea, maybe particularly pronounced in the US, that we are defined by our personal um stances, and so you'll see this in the way that people will identify themselves as I am a Baptist, post-millennial, um, etc. etc. Give the full list of the beliefs that they adhere to. And at a certain point you think you're a member of hopefully a member of a church, and that stance of that church should really position you, irrespective of your personal convictions. I mean, I can be republican in my views, but I'm a subject of a monarchy, and so I need to live in a way that recognizes that structure that's over me and not just choose for myself. And that context of church choice that you have within a very individualistic society of mass mobility makes it very easy for us to think that all right our notions are the things that are the principle upon which the church finds its unity, and yet there are many times when the beliefs of the people who are leading us won't completely align with our convictions, or the practice of our church may be different from that of our personal convictions, and we need to learn to be good subjects of that anyway. Derek mentioned the controversial issue of COVID earlier, and I've always tried to say there's a difference between your personal views on what the policy should be and the actual policy of your polity. And the question is: can you be a submissive member of your polity while using your democratic and other rights of persuasion and public reason? And hold together those two things that you're submissive within the polity, but also exercising within the polity your freedom to persuade and to advocate for a position that is different from that that's taken by the authorities. And I think that sort of balance tends to get lost in this whole framework of thinking for ourselves. We need to be people who are exercising responsible belief, but also who are submissive to authorities, who recognize our limits of thinking alone, who need to gather communities of reason. And those sorts of balances I think are very difficult to find in the contemporary evangelical church that doesn't have a sense of the Catholicity of thought and the authority of the church and its teaching.

SPEAKER_00 19:24

One one thing that I think is helpful is I think about the um the phrase that comes to mind me is the centurion who speaks to Jesus is I'm a man under authority and I have uh those under authority under me. And I think of that when it comes to like the model of a good teacher. Um, I always tell my students, uh, you know exactly what I think on any number of subjects. All you have to do is Google the Westminster Confession of Faith. This is what I subscribe to. And you can ask me questions about all that kind of thing uh and go back and forth. And I'm gonna try and distinguish when I've got an opinion that is doesn't, I don't think it has that that much authority, like my I my my view that you should all be wearing minimalist barefoot style shoes or whatever it is, and and then uh then what the word of the God says about justification by faith. That sort of, you know, there's just uh there's there's there's a clear difference there. You try and have that. But the joke is though, you know, uh I this is why I do think confessions and ordinations and things like that matter, and because uh a good it can go bad, but it but a good pastor who is looking not just to subject we use that submission, subject, uh a pastor is not looking to subject their parishioners, not looking to subject their members to their personal will or their personal whims or their personal opinions on on a wide variety of subjects and just being the guru, being the the know-it-all in the congregation. And I think a check on that, hopefully, uh is the process of having submitted yourself, the process of having uh joined a tradition, joined a church, submitted to the, you know, I submit to my brothers in the presbytery, uh fathers, you know, in the faith, etc. And and like re- you but you yourself have to reason about the standards, you have to reason about the confession, you have to re-do I do I have scruples, are there are there things I need to submit to? Like you you have to go through that process and and and recognize the structure of responsible authority, otherwise, you there is that tendency towards uh certain kind of individual, hey, I've got my take, I've got the I've worked it out this way, I haven't figured that out. And and then the the the tendency towards um teaching by whim and uh personal offense, uh like the the identification of the self with your opinions, then injects uh uh another layer of personality and uh personal offense taking within pastoring that I think can get really bad within certain church contexts. Uh this is there's no, I mean, there are tyrants, there are small-minded little congregational tyrants in every denomination you can find them. Um, but I I think that whole way of doing things, that when when you yourself haven't been submitted, uh, when you yourself aren't subject, when you yourself haven't been a part of the community of reason, that kind of thing, you've just been kind of pulling it together yourself. I think itself doesn't foster the kind of pastoring uh in this area that we want uh that to to raise people up. And now for a quick word from one of our sponsors. Beaston Divinity School is an interdenominational evangelical seminary on the campus of Stanford University in Birmingham, Alabama. I've been there. It is actually a lovely campus led by world-renowned faculty, Beaston formed students in person in a kind of a community-oriented model of theological education. And they have top-ranked scholars who engage their students at kind of very small class sizes. It's a warm environment. And now, thanks to Generous Gift, Beaston is actually offering uh new full tuition scholarships for the 2025-2026 incoming class for their flagship degree, the Master Divinity. So this kind of makes the whole thing more affordable than it's ever been. Now, these scholarships cover the cost of tuition and fees for three years, which is the average time it takes to finish the MDiv. And I'll be honest and say I wish I had known about this or had an opportunity to look at this one when I was heading to seminary. So if you're interested, you can apply and learn more information at Eastendivinity.com. And so this brings me to a question I kind of want to get into is we've talked about on the show before is is kind of the guruism of the pastor as guru, the pastor as answer man in all different areas of life. This is one thing I've I've seen and heard about in certain congregations where a pastor who's super into authority, super into submitting, I pick pastors who talk about submitting to authority all the time. Like, look, if it's in the text, it's in Hebrews, it's whatever, you gotta talk about it. And it's right and it's good, it's in the text. And there's a lot in, there's a lot in the Old Testament about that. There's, there's a, you know, we're modern 21st century egalitarian liberals, we probably need a little bit more. But when it's the guy's shtick and it starts to expand out to like, okay, well, I've given you my opinion on what you should, how you should be raising your kids. I've given you my opinion on whether or not you should like, I don't know, move your family. I've given you like the the level of like, what does it mean to submit to an elder? Like where, you know, thinking for yourself and then like submission to pastors and submission to elders, those are related things. And I'm curious what you guys would say about that, because there's this line at which I feel very comfortable saying directly, no, you need to do X because I have very clear commands, and you're not submitting to me personally. This is the this is a Bible verse. And if you're not submitting on this, you're not submitting to God. So, like, don't fornicate. That that's not about me exercising control over your life or something like that. Um but there's other things where pastors really they veer into govern your personal lifeland that makes me uncomfortable. And so I'd love to hear more about that.

SPEAKER_02 25:03

I mean, there's there's certainly the what you what you do with the directive commands, and you've got scripture. I think it actually goes further than that though, Derek. It's the the force of the command based on scripture is one which has the backing of a certain type of soft power with the right. Uh, the authority has the ability to exercise church discipline, to withhold communion, to remove from communion if one continues down that path. We've had lots of conversations about what you do with people and how you do this badly and and well in the over the last year or so. So we don't need to rehearse those. But it is interesting that it's in those cases, it it carries with it real force. And so one way in which you can see a distinction between the authority to command and the authority to counsel would be, or the conciliar authority, right? Where where you're saying, here's here's a way in which it might go, is that that doesn't have any sort of punitive force behind it, right? Yeah. It's when you know, like I think about I'm gonna, I'm just gonna throw out like ask Pastor John to pick on a very prominent evangelical pastor who has built a very large ministry and has spent a lot of time getting very close to the guru level of offering his advice and counsel on a whole range of very personal questions that he has been asked. What's interesting to me about that, there's a lot that's interesting about it, but there's a gap that I think many people feel for the around this type of very specific practical pastoral counsel and direction that has uh the weight of authority of someone who has studied the scriptures and immersed themselves in the scriptures, but also is not punitive, it's it's directive but not commanding, it's conciliar, uh, it's it's counsel. People want that, and they want that about the granular details of their lives because they need it and they are interested in living their lives faithfully. There's a technical name for this in moral theology, which is chasistry, right? Which is the working out of moral principles in specific situations and the decline of chasistry everywhere among Protestant Catholics everywhere. Uh, it's happens earlier for Protestants than it does for Catholics. But the decline of chasistry leaves people bereft of the means of finding a way to seeing how the gospel links up with their very practical situations. And I think actually what that does, Derek, to your point about guruism, is this type of advice then gets channeled into these public contexts where pastors are asked these sorts of situations in very broad ways and they become gurus for a lot of people as a result. Well, agony ants. Yeah, that's right. Or agony ants, he said, right? Um, and I I think these I I don't actually mean to like this is actually not critical of John Piper, because I think he's he's among people who have filled this sort of role, done so very responsibly in the main. But it is, but it is a a problem, I think, within evangelical ecclesiology and the types of moral formation that's happening in those sorts of contexts, um, that that local pastors are not actually providing, and they're not equipped to provide this sort of specific directive counsel in ways that don't fall into the type of I'm going to command you and I'm gonna exercise church discipline on you if you don't raise your kids in exactly the way that I say your kids ought to be raised. And I actually do think that that the lynchman here is the language of submission and the ways in which, like it the sort of weird or or deeply problematic notions of submission to church authority then get ramified and reified throughout the parental relationships, such that you know, like I've I've been working my way through Titus, and in Titus one, you know, Paul has this claim about elders who that says that their children should not be open to the charge of insubordination, right? That children shouldn't be insubordinate. And you think like, well, what does that mean? A few verses later in verse 10, he says, for there are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision party, they must be silenced, right? These are not children who are disobeying at home, right? These are children who seem to have been insubordinate to church teaching and are causing problems in the broader community, right? These are public formal charges. And and I think like the question of submission in that sort of highly precarious environment where the church is new. And as we talked about last time, I think it was Alistair, right? The newly forming ecclesial structures of the churches, the question of submission and insubordination is much more front than it is in a context where the church is well established. Um, and so I think that the the there's two sides of it, right? You have to make sure that you have some sort of distinction between conciliar and commanding authority on the one side, but then you also have to have notions of submission that are equally dignifying and honoring and don't get expanded and utilized in ways that um distort the types of submission to which Christians are called, to authorities churchly or otherwise.

SPEAKER_01 31:19

I think that's a that's very helpful to think about. The groups that tend to emphasize submission the most are often incredibly rebellious when they don't like some authority. And that authority may have genuine authority over them, but they will really push their resistance into very overt forms. And it seems to me that a proper form of submission allows for difference, allows for disagreement. And it's very much about the honor that we pay to those who have been placed over us and recognizing their responsibility, recognizing how we stand relative to them. And that allows for us to disagree with some of their determinations, to think that they've been imprudent in some judgments or some policies, to think that their particular beliefs on some matter are incorrect, and yet as much as possible to seek to be peaceful in our relationship with them, to break differences down to size, to use the means of persuasion that are open to us, to encourage respect for them as elders, etc. And when you see the whole dynamics of submission that you've described, Matt, Matt, that are just really poisonous, what you tend to see is this extreme submission, extreme rebellion dynamic. And part of the challenge is being submissive when we really do not like what we're being told to do, or really do not like the beliefs of some group to show respect and appropriate dignity while also being able to draw lines and to disagree, etc. And beyond that, I think there's a further factor of just being tractable to persuasion, to reason, and being prepared to hear arguments and wanting to be persuaded, if at all possible. And in these sorts of contexts, I think this has a lot to do with the reputation of the church, the reputation of Christians more generally. And if you want other people to submit to you, you should not be exercising that um excessive authority. Rather, much of the time, it is this counseling recognizing the particulars of their situation and recognizing the difference between the conscience binding thus saith the Lord, that can be delivered in certain contexts. You'll find in the context of presenting the gospel, for instance. It's a thus set the Lord, an absolute command to believe the gospel. But when we're thinking about the general situation that someone finds where it's a difficult moral determination, it does not come with the same force of a thus set the Lord, a categorical command. And it is not something that we are competent enough to deliver in that way in many situations. We don't have all of the information that would be relevant. And so what we give in that situation is very careful counsel that brings the weight of the clear determinations of scripture to bear upon the situation, that recognizes the prudential categories that scripture affords us and that reason provides, and we bring those to the situation that someone faces, and we'd resource them in their responsible position to exercise a responsible um course of action in the light of those things. We're not directing them to make that action of that particular kind, we're not telling them exactly how to treat a particular misbehaving kid, for instance, but we're giving them the resources by which they can make a responsible judgment. And I think in contexts that tend to focus a lot upon submission, that whole process tends to be um misfiring.

SPEAKER_00 35:16

Yeah, I mean that that's something I have to think through a lot with my students. Um, in you do college ministry, you're you're doing a lot of advising, you're doing a lot of parenting on the spot kind of thing, because you're like you're the parents are miles away, thousands, whatever, and you're you're a different kind of semi-authority figure. So I I I will regularly, somebody will ask me something, and I was like, okay, so you have to I try and draw very clear lines of like, look, there's two or three options you got, et cetera, et cetera. This is unscriptural, this is that. I think this is wise. But if you do something else, if you do X or if you do Y, like, you know, you haven't sinned against me. You're not like you're you're not, it's just a different call. I think you should, I think it's the best thing you should do. But again, if you do, if you do the other thing, you're not like can't show up at RUF anymore, et cetera. I'm not mad at you. Like there's you have to, you're, but you are trying to give, I'm I'm trying to give students the capacity to be adults, to be uh reasoners as best I can. And I think that that kind of that kind of cake casuistry thinking through, actually, a pretty good example of some of this was as interesting as I have been listening to some of the Alice for some of the Theopolis discussions around Deuteronomy all have um with Lightheart and Myers and and um Bijan. And that kind of thinking through, I mean, a lot of a lot of Old Testament Torah. Torah is a whole bunch of you've got the absolute commands, you've got a lot of case law that is actually now that's law, right? But it's but it's cases that are actually meant to be reflected on and expanded on and to shine forth principles that that allow people to think things through. And I think it it should be seen as a maturing thing in itself, and not just the the goal you're looking for is not just let me fall solve that one situation for a parishioner or something like that. It is also let me help my my congregation become the kind of people who can think this out even without me in the room, right? You you shouldn't want them constantly needing you in the room, you know?

SPEAKER_02 37:17

It's worth noting that a standard medieval priest, say, uh, who heard confessions regularly might have spent more time hearing confessions than a standard therapist today spends in their office talking with clients. Right? The the the level of the level of knowledge of situations uh that one could gain by listening to parishioners' problems and by thinking with them about what they ought to do is just extraordinary, actually. It's one of the things that I think pastors uh have uh one of the opportunities I think is their greatest opportunity to grow wise. And and Derek, I I I think you're right that you know there are these ways uh you're wrong about application, but you're right that there are these ways of talking with students. And I I I generally find actually putting multiple paths on the table and trying to help people discern what the risks and dangers are within each path is a more effective way of forming them to be reasoners than giving them an answer to the question, right? This is one of the things I actually will disagree with, ask Pastor John as a method about, right? He while I think he does a fine job uh in general, I think actually that the type of formation that we should have is not ask Pastor X, who then gives his answer to the question. But actually, if it's asked pack Pastor X, he gives, well, here's one answer to the question. Here's another answer to the question, Lincoln style, Lincoln Douglas style, right? Where you have uh multiple paths and you lay them out and you allow people to weigh up the benefits or the downsides in each one. But it's it's there that takes more time and is hard. So, Alistair, do you want to chime in here on all this?

SPEAKER_01 39:19

It helps to have a multitude of counselors, and often having these paths discussed by a number of people or presented with reasoning from a number of gifted counselors can be more helpful than just having one person trying to represent all the different potential paths. And maybe we need to just to push ourselves to engage in this sort of wisdom, to get some seasoned counselor on and work through some cases with them as a group.

SPEAKER_00 39:50

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 39:50

Wow. Well, I mean, we can we could set up cases and we can all work through them. I'm I'm all about that manner of moral reasoning. Um, that's that's my love language, Alistair. I you got you're just speaking straight to my heart here. As long as it's not application in sermons, though. Uh, and I'm gonna take that as the final word. And Derek, you're just gonna have to submit to that being the final word. Uh so you know, authoritatively dictating that the show has come to an end. But guys, in seriousness, this has been a really constructive conversation. My last question, which I didn't get to, which I will just for further conversation, is our theory of responsible belief too idealistic? And does it account for all those mediocre Christians who we need to make room for in the church as well? So we'll take that up at a future time. We're gonna be back later this spring with other conversations as well. It's been a terrific time so far. Uh, and we're we hope that you have enjoyed this slate of conversations that we've had. I've certainly enjoyed them. I think we're on one of our best runs uh that we've had here at Mir Fidelity. If you have enjoyed the show, we would love for you to rate and review us on iTunes to tell a friend. You can drop us a line. We've done our last two episodes, have been listener prompted as ideas. It's hard. We don't take up all of our listener questions, we don't take up some uh all of our listener ideas, but we do love to get them. And sometimes we get topics that we uh have not considered and that would be great to consider, like this one. So if you do have an idea, send us a note. We'd love to hear it. If you have criticisms, we'd love to hear it. Otherwise, we're gonna be back in the weeks to come with other conversations. This has been Mere Fidelity, the podcast where we think together about the word of God and the world we live in. Thanks for listening.