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What exactly is the church in your head look like?
16 Plays2 years ago
We all believe in object truths regarding abstract entities like numbers & the laws of logic, but can we also have and objective chruch like we have the number 7?
Transcript
Introduction to 'The Church in Your Head'
00:00:01
Speaker
All right, we are live. Thanks everyone that is taking some time to listen to this brand new podcast called The Church in Your Head. Somewhat might be concerned that it is a controversial title, but nonetheless it's a title that has a very important meaning and it kind of premises the entirety of what this podcast is going to
00:00:23
Speaker
to hopefully articulate and hopefully relate to those that are in a position where they are a bit concerned whether they're hearing things that don't make sense from the pulpit or participating in a church that seems to have quote-unquote deviated from the truth and the question is what issue.
Finding Truth in Theological Debates
00:00:41
Speaker
So I'm Scott and Brandon why don't you introduce yourself really quick.
00:01:17
Speaker
Mhm.
00:02:13
Speaker
Yeah. Or it might be a, I've heard it agree to disagree. So it is kind of like a
00:02:27
Speaker
you come to the table hoping to find a truth out of the one's position and the scriptures that they're using, and it might not even be a debate. I've been in just casual dialogue or conversations around a particular doctrine or theological, maybe disagreement between me and this person, and we'll both come to the table with scriptures. And at that point, before I've kind of discovered that there's more to this,
00:02:52
Speaker
Um, and many people probably can relate that are listening is you start to tackle it. You don't really get to that, that we've all had that gotcha moment, which is completely prideful. Um, but sometimes we go down that path anyways, we want to really show and articulate well enough to.
00:03:08
Speaker
draw a conclusion and ultimately the person listening would abide and conclude that, yes, you are right. This makes sense. It doesn't always happen. And I think for a while, it was just more of a, okay, well, I tried. You kind of hold to your thing and I'll hold to mine.
Impact of Scriptural Debates on Church Divisions
00:03:24
Speaker
And even on a bigger scale, this is what, I mean, they may not divide friends, but we also see kind of in the evangelical church, which you can elaborate more on, Brandon, is that
00:03:34
Speaker
when you have that conversation amongst people within a church, oftentimes the church divides and that's how you start to see more and more denominations. We have over 30,000 plus denominations just in Western Protestantism. How do I say it right? Protestantism, that's better. And it oftentimes starts with a division over scripture that they realize we can't come into agreeance, therefore I'm going to start a new church. Why is that problematic?
00:04:10
Speaker
Yeah. Yes, you are. We are live, my friend. You're good to go. Yeah. Yeah.
00:05:50
Speaker
Good luck.
00:06:51
Speaker
Yeah, it's very divisive, or hate speech almost.
00:07:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:36
Speaker
Yeah. And why does this, I mean, why does this even matter? Because right now you're kind of explaining something where we can, one might argue and say, well, we would, we would call it like this whole lowest common denominator was always, I believe in Jesus, Trinity. I read my Bible, et cetera. That's enough. And to a degree, we're all for that. And I think that's always going to be something we would never, you know, push people away from the whole reason why this matters.
Dangers of Bad Doctrine
00:09:00
Speaker
is the emphasis, even within scripture, on how clear it is that one can certainly walk away and be under the influence of bad doctrine. The scripture talks about doctrine of demons, flee from those people. There's going to be those who will leave sound doctrine, I think, in the book of Saint Timothy, where he talks about leaving sound doctrine to get their ears itched, to basically submit themselves to someone else who would
00:09:25
Speaker
give a better interpretation, probably. That sounds better. It sounds more refreshing. And maybe in our modern world, we call it a little bit more relativistic, hip, more a politically correct, you know, anything filling that blank. And the reason why there has to be an objective truth is because going to your Legos analogy, like, if it were a matter of if you build the Legos wrong,
00:09:50
Speaker
you're you die like weird weird like conclusion but imagine if that's it sounds like a really horror movie like I'm sure there is probably a movie like that but the emphasis of the game is build it build the Legos and build it to it to have it become this and I'll just call it a house if you do it wrong you're dead
00:10:08
Speaker
And it would be very tense to build this legos and you would very much discern where in the world can i find the right way to build the legos right is i hopefully that makes sense because i mean it's a matter of souls right i mean if paul wasn't clear around doctor the demons and
00:10:26
Speaker
and false doctrine and doctrine that could lead you astray and your salvation ultimately, then this wouldn't matter. Then it would be just a matter of speculation, our best attempts, and God up there himself is like, hey, I'm going to applaud you for trying your best to interpret the holy infallible scriptures and what will reward you on a curve, if you will. And I think the idea of having the Lego picture and or somewhere outside of our own mind,
00:10:55
Speaker
where the church isn't in my head or your head or my pastor's head. We start to see that, okay, there is something real here. There's something that makes sense. And it is no longer divisive. I don't think anybody would be divisive in building that horror Lego movie. If they know, you know, there is a source that would show them how to build it correctly, right?
00:11:28
Speaker
Right. Judge more.
00:12:01
Speaker
It's not doom and gloom. Yes. Right, exactly. Yeah, maybe this podcast moves towards Legos and we're sponsored by Mattel or something.
00:12:31
Speaker
I think one more piece on this whole nominalistic paradigm that you're explaining. Again, nominalism is basically there's no such thing as objective truth. It's really up to one's understanding of their mental capabilities of
00:12:47
Speaker
articulating and grasping what knowledge might look
Nominalism and Truth
00:12:51
Speaker
like to them. And I think what is interesting, it reminds me of when scriptures say, you know, a little leaven, leaven's the whole lump. All it takes is just a tiny bit to completely distort, you know, the entire bread in this particular case of scripture, but you can use anything, you know, a cup that we would drink and consume. And if you found out there was just a tiny bit of poison in it,
00:13:15
Speaker
Certainly, you would not want to drink that cup. And more importantly, you would want to know, where is this cup at? So I avoid it. And I would tell other people not to drink this cup. And again, you're not divisive when people realize the weight of the consequences if they were to be ignorant or if they were to just choose not to listen to you.
00:13:35
Speaker
and it is sad. People won't listen. Some people just would choose to remain ignorant because ignorance is bliss. In fact, I think we can agree, ignorant almost makes things a little bit easier in the Christian worldview because don't ask too many questions, then you're going to be fine. Or if you're like us and you ask too many questions, have a fun rocky road up to this mountain. But yeah, there is some hope. And I think, yeah, this isn't all doom and gloom.
00:14:03
Speaker
The idea of hopefully those who kind of get the idea have been there. We started out many times, many of us can relate to the whole your scripture versus my scripture and we'll have a whole separate talk on that. And we can get into like, you know, when you're having a Jehovah's Witness or Mormon at the door, you often get into that same argument, right?
00:14:22
Speaker
You're pulling out your Bible. They're pulling out their quote unquote Bible. Um, and, and what ends up happening, right? They, you both walk away a bit frustrated, uh, cause they just couldn't listen and it didn't see it that you can't see it. So you want to go into more of what we call, um, empiricism. Cause I think that'd be important for folks to understand when we talk about like church in your head, it does very much relate to this empirical sense data. What is that? And can you explain that a little bit more?
00:16:17
Speaker
Right.
00:18:08
Speaker
Well, it's easily reputable. In many cases, you've seen a lot more prominent atheist figures and YouTube influencers. And I've watched my fair share of debates where they are actually bringing up very valid arguments that would not stump, but it would put in check the Christian that was trying to hold to their position that there's such thing as God in a church, et cetera. And not to say that Christianity is all about the intellect. Like we don't want to go to the point where it's all in your head in terms of figuring it out or
00:18:37
Speaker
the knowledge is the highest faculty. No, it's not. We'll do another episode around what really is the faculty that we ought to be keeping in mind. But I think when I get to this hopeful moment of, yes, there is a relativistic, not relativistic, but more revelation in which there was a handing down, there was a guidance by the Holy Spirit of a true church in which the gates of hell wouldn't prevail against her.
Sound Doctrine vs. Relativism
00:19:05
Speaker
And we ought to know
00:19:07
Speaker
which church this is, and ultimately, when we submit ourselves to the life of the church, I would say, not to a church, that's when we can start to really understand that, okay, there is actually, you know, true sound doctrine. Paul isn't just saying that as a buzz theological term, like he means it for what it is. It's sound. What's the opposite of sound, right? I don't know. It's not good.
00:19:31
Speaker
So there is sound doctrine, and that doctrine, as we know, dictates how you live. And what I see now, and many of those who are listening can probably see and or relate or might even know someone, that this kind of modern relativistic culture of a church and the pastor's head has unfortunately led more and more people to atheism. I hate to see it. I have friends of mine who grew up in the church and no longer believe in God or believe in a deist.
00:19:58
Speaker
have just kind of lost their quote unquote passion because what is it all about for them? They want a church that looks like the world and immediately it feels good. It looks like a glorified Starbucks with a rock band playing guitar solos and you know that's all good and well but it's not sustainable because Paul talks about that you know we're looking for the meat or not you know we treat you as babes you know still drinking milk and he's referencing doctrine here he's not talking about just
00:20:25
Speaker
of the hipster, you know, cool looking church and how we can make it more evolved and more relativistic and glamorous because we're seeing a trend of those that just are leaving the church or even worse bread and churches conform to the world and how they ought to look like. So now you're starting to see things politically motivated, socially driven, that has again, gone away from what would be objectively true and sound.
00:20:52
Speaker
to a kind of a peer pressure, maybe a sense of seeker-driven focus of, well, church is more or less now a business. So how do we get people in? Well, if we look more like the world, we follow suit to some of the claims that the world would want us to make as a truth claim, then we will do that. And that should therefore increase the amount of newcomers. And now you have yourself a business model.
00:21:19
Speaker
We don't have to go down that road. But go back to the hope, because there is hope. I want to definitely finish the good news.
00:21:53
Speaker
It fell out the sky. No, the Bible fell out the sky. Under the rock. Somebody found another rock.
00:22:43
Speaker
Yeah. Right. Yeah, we're assuming scriptures are infallible and objective. That's our presupposition, I think is what you're trying to say. But you're basically taking out a layer back
00:23:08
Speaker
and asking the question, well, how did we even get the scriptures? And many times we just think, well, God, He inspired the holy prophets and the apostles to be, what is the word?
00:23:22
Speaker
or they'll be able to write and pen the words of scripture that we now have today. And the printing press made it a reality. I think that's kind of the natural kind of conclusion that some and I had for a long time. But when you really think about it, like, no, one, it didn't fall out of the sky. And two, we do presuppose that we have these scriptures and we do presuppose that they are the infallible word of God. And we agree they are. The question that you're asking that we are kind of working through is,
00:23:51
Speaker
Where did we get them? Because they all weren't just together at one moment and then was discovered. I mean, this took five, six, seven hundred, seven centuries to kind of formulate the Canada scripture. So you're kind of proposing this notion of, well, if the scriptures, if we believe they're infallible, we ought to then maybe pay attention to those, the church, the Holy Spirit that guided that church and those fathers that put together the scriptures to see, well, what else were they saying and teaching?
00:24:21
Speaker
Were they teaching something different?
00:25:04
Speaker
fallible man creating an infallible book. Yeah, whatever it is. Yeah.
00:25:23
Speaker
Right. Or they might say to you, like, okay, I'll give you that. The men, quote unquote, these fallible men did give us the scriptures. I believe we have them. The follow-up question you have is, okay, the doctrines in which they held to as true at that time
00:25:38
Speaker
would you also conclude that they are also right? And I think that the conclusion is if you were to say no, then you're kind of cherry picking. You're basically saying the Holy Spirit was present for the moment in which the canonization needed to be formed. But as soon as the final scriptures were put together, as soon as Revelation was put together, the Holy Spirit took a break.
00:26:00
Speaker
gonna clock out, right? And then now it's back to a bunch of fallible men trying to figure all things out and then now trying to interpret the scriptures and you have all these denominations, etc.
00:26:11
Speaker
And I think that's what you're trying to explain. And I would agree is incredibly problematic is that we can't just say, okay, the scriptures are infallible. The Holy Spirit guided them, but everything around that era, if you will, was, is up for debate that they also could have been wrong because then the conclusion is, well, then they also could have been wrong that the scriptures were not entirely correct. Meaning they did put in the right books because there are been, there are, as we know, lots of books that didn't make
00:27:07
Speaker
into the cannon, right Yeah, that's a good question
00:27:11
Speaker
Right.
00:28:05
Speaker
For what I feel, even worse.
00:28:25
Speaker
Right. Right.
Objective Truth in Church Teachings
00:29:20
Speaker
And to those, yeah, and to your point, like to those that would say like, well, this, this is, this is not worth going down because, you know, it's, it doesn't make sense or it's too divisive or, you know, who are you to say, make that kind of claim? I mean, we can take something even outside of the Christian paradigm. And let's just, you know, a good example would be like, it just numbers itself. No one could ever subjectively interpret like, three is only three if I see it, like on a whiteboard or a chalkboard or written down on a piece of paper because
00:29:49
Speaker
The idea is, what if I erase the number three? Does three cease to exist? Obviously, no, because the whole idea is three is objective. The number is outside of us, right? Numbers aren't something that we created. You and I didn't create the number three, or any mathematician, a good mathematician, would never say math was created. It's always discovered, and a discovery
00:30:11
Speaker
is a way, it's a meta-level way of saying that you are receiving something outside of you and your mind and your mental constructs. So that's the beauty of, I love about numbers and math and philosophy and logic is what we're trying to explain is just like numbers are outside of us and we can objectively say two plus two is four and we can show you why. Whether you feel two plus two is five or whether you think you see two plus two is more around six
00:30:39
Speaker
is irrelevant at that point, right? Because again, we can go back to using the laws of logic, et cetera, to show, nope, as much as you feel like it's six or five, it's always going to be four because I can show you objective that can justify it. I can have explanatory power that can give you an explanation as to why we came to that conclusion. This is why we're, this core lesson to the church. The church is very much the objective
00:31:03
Speaker
of what we've received, we call that revelation. And I'm excited for this, these series of episodes. We'll get a bit more granular. We'll also have some great guests on, some guests that are well-known in the space, particularly on YouTube, that I'm excited to introduce, as well as those that we know personally, because I think it's important, I think you can attest to this, Brandon, that we don't want it just to be about us. We are going down this journey together
00:31:30
Speaker
We want to learn and be humbled. There are things that we probably make it wrong, but the whole idea around this is to have the discussions, to ask questions, and we believe questions lead us to the truth, and questions are not divisive. Questions are part of a critical, healthy way of thinking, and going back to the analogy of the Legos, and we talked about it a lot, but if it's a matter of life or death,
00:31:55
Speaker
No one's gonna be okay with speculative interpretation, right?
00:33:06
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:33:47
Speaker
Yeah, you see that in many cults, too. I mean, God did leave, and there was some kind of great apostate, apostasy, and then shows up and divinely reveals it to one guy, like E.G. Joseph Smith or Charles T. Russell. But yeah, I think, and then finally, in conclusion, I think it just goes back to, I think it's in John 16 when Christ himself says the Holy Spirit will guide you into not some truth, but all truth.
00:34:11
Speaker
And if Christ's words, as we believe and would all agree, are infallibly true and divinely inspired, if you were to say, the spirit will guide you into all truth, then he means it. And so it wasn't ever meant to be, he'll guide you in all truth. Now, good luck finding that truth. We know that doesn't make sense. And so we believe it is there.
00:34:31
Speaker
And I think in love and with the unity that we all are trying to accomplish and the Christian paradigm, I think it's important to look back at Christ's word and say that, yes, this is a discoverable.
Episode Conclusion and Future Discussions
00:34:43
Speaker
This is something that has been always available. It's just, here we are starting to dig in and ask the right question. So look forward to more episodes and thank you.
00:35:32
Speaker
Yeah, a lot of fun. Yeah, until next time. Cheers.