Christian Questions Bible Podcast

It was just a few weeks ago the events in Charlottesville, Virginia, sparked a firestorm of vitriol and reaction throughout our country.  What happened, what didn’t happen, who reacted and how - all of these things became the fuel for more protests and more protests against the protests and reaction of a very negative kind everywhere you looked.  Let us be abundantly clear on one point – those who would paint themselves as any form of supremacist, white or otherwise, are servants of a deep and destructive darkness.  Period.  Those who take the law into their own hands and use violence and threats as their primary tools to eradicate all whom they consider supremacists are also choosing to borough down that dark hole as well.  NONE of this is good!  All of this provokes hatred, and rightfully so.  Shouldn’t we as Christians hate such evil?  Yes we should.  The bigger question here, however, is HOW do we engage our hatred for evil in a Christlike manner?

Special Guest: Todd Alexander
We all would like to think that we are special in some way before God. We want to be sure of His love for us and His guiding hand in our lives. For most of us, being special translates into a feeling – an emotional response that produces a sense of security. But is that all there is to being special? For the Christian at least there is much more to it. We know that everyone is not called to follow Jesus and we also know that according to the Bible, God does specifically call some to follow. How does this work? How does God get your attention and touch your heart and mind? What makes us want to respond to God and what might make us shy away from responding to Him? Is it easy to recognize when God is seeking us out and trying to touch our hearts?

...Unless one is “born again.”  This phrase carries great meaning no matter what Christian denomination you come from.  The meaning of the phrase certainly changes depending upon your particular belief system, but the power of the phase remains intact. To be “born again” in all cases implies one of the most significant spiritual changes any person can ever experience.  So when does being “born again” happen and what does it really mean?  Does this spiritual change happen when one is baptized as an infant or when one commits their life to God through Jesus or when one is baptized as an adult or when one dies?  Is this spiritual change a prepaid one way ticket to heaven or an opportunity for power and control in your present life, or is it a sober and humbling opportunity to sacrifice all that you have and all that you are?

Christians like most other people are creatures of habit.  Although society has engineered dramatic changes in how we handle our lives, for many Christians the act of going to church remains a staple in their lives.  We go to church to do what?  Traditionally we have gone to learn about God, to have fellowship with those of like mind, to get away from the rat race of our lives and to remind ourselves about how to live in a Christlike fashion.  Traditionally we have gone to church to reaffirm our faith – to strengthen ourselves to better stand for our core beliefs.  As I said, times have changed…now it seems as though many of us go to church for different reasons.  In many instances church has become a place of neighborly activity, social acceptance, goodness, activities entertainment and fun.  Church is now a nice place to go to feel good about myself.  So, are these changes unhealthy or bad?  What’s wrong with feeling good about myself?  What makes a church a really good church?
To get to the bottom of such a basic question we really have to decide whose answer we want to focus on.  We could go with a broad-based opinion poll and find out what random Christians think makes one church better than another.  At first glance this might sound like a good way of doing things, as we would be considering the thoughts and impressions of many who name the name of Christ.  This approach would certainly provide an answer, but that answer would be fundamentally flawed as it would have its basis in what random Christians FEEL.  While feelings are important to recognize and acknowledge, they should NOT be central in our understanding of what makes a church “good.”
If we don’t base our thinking on what Christians think and feel, what do we base it on?  The Bible, specifically the New Testament.  Think about it, the New Testament is the place where we find what the Apostles did to set up “church” meetings and fellowship and how they did it.  We can see where they met, how they were organized, what was important, who was in charge and how they got to be in charge.  Now we might think that what the Apostles did and how they did it is over 2,000 years old and certainly needs an overhaul to catch up with our digital age.  Their way is surely outdated and no longer relevant – right?
Um, not so much…the Apostles taught us the fundamentals of what God requires of each and every Christian and built the “church” structure around those fundamentals.  Surely we don’t believe that just because we live here and now in a world of technology and advanced knowledge that God would require something different of us, do we?  Check out our July 31, 2017 podcast, “What Makes a Church a Good Church?” and see just how relevant the teachings of the Apostles are to our present day.  The biblical answers to what makes a church “good” will probably surprise you.   At the very least, I promise they will make you think about what you can personally do to make your own “church” experience far more valuable!

Last week we began our conversation by saying that pride can be a tricky thing and prejudice can be an awful thing.  We focused our attention on the pride side of the matter and its insidious way of taking over our lives.  Now it’s time to talk about prejudice, and this is a hard conversation to have. For most of us, we can observe what we think is prejudice in others.  We see a skewed view on some group or approach and we think about how unfortunate it is and wonder why they cannot see a bigger picture.  Well, the bigger picture begins with these questions: How prejudiced am I in my view of the world and of others approach?  Am I willing and able to recognize prejudice in my own thinking, and when I see it am I willing to attack it with the same passion that I feel about the prejudice of others?  Prejudice needs attention and eradication, no matter where it’s found.  How do we do that?
To even think about eradicating prejudice is monumental.  Prejudice exists and comes to be in so many different ways that it is hard to know where to start.  Think about it – we are all born into less than perfect circumstances with less than perfect parents who have had less than perfect experiences in their lives, sometimes due to their own less than perfect parents.  The point is that imperfection breeds misunderstanding in our lives about what happens to us.  This misunderstanding often breeds a mislabeling of what our experiences or other people actually mean and stand for and this leads us to a confused conclusion about it all.  The end result is personal prejudice and this prejudice not only lives in us it ends up being a conclusion that we fight to protect.  Kinda scary and kinda confusing, isn’t it?
Ok, now what?  Well, I think the best way to understand and combat prejudice is to do two things.  First we have to be willing to look inside of ourselves and honestly assess our own thinking, conclusions and positions against true and clear biblical principles of love, mercy, compassion and justice.  By making ourselves the focal point of our prejudice investigation we are automatically removing some of our fallen natural propensities to judge – to potentially misjudge others.  The second way to combat prejudice is to listen to someone who has fought this battle successfully.  This is an enormous step to take because if you find the right example it will bring shivers of inspiration to you.  We found such an example.
Our July 24, 2017 podcast, “Can Our Pride Make Us Prejudiced? Part 2” features the detailed story of a young woman who was born into, grew up and embraced the harsh and hateful belief system of the Westboro Baptist Church.  In a TED Talk, she detailed her journey from being a five-year-old on a picket line holding a hateful sign that she couldn’t even read to her decision 20 years later to completely walk away.  Her story epitomizes the power of true human compassion, and coupled with scriptural principle, it shows us how to stand up and fight against prejudice.  You need to hear this.  Everyone needs to hear this.  Please take the time and then please pass it on!

Pride can be a tricky thing and prejudice can be an awful thing.  Let’s focus on pride right now.  On the one hand we are told to take pride in our work – well, at least when I was a kid that’s what I was told!  We want to be proud of our children and to be proud of our country.  We want to take pride in the things we own and we want to leave a legacy that we can be proud of.  So, pride is good!  Well, on the other hand, we can see how pride comes before destruction, how pride can skew our view of others and how pride creates temptation to be dishonest.  We can see pride becoming obsession, and we can see how pride can create a lack of trust in others, a lack of compassion for others and a lack of credit to others.  So, pride is bad!  Obviously this is a subject that needs not only clear definitions but clear principles to establish clear thinking.  There is only one solution – let’s see what the Bible says!
Even though pride has both a positive side and “the dark side,” you don’t get that message at all when you look at the Bible.  In Scripture, “the dark side” of pride is most often featured and you rarely ever see a Scripture that even hints at the positive kind of pride. This may come as a surprise to many.  After all, we are always talking about the Bible as our text book for life so it would seem appropriate that it show us how to have the right kind of pride in contrast to the wrong kind, right?  Well, sort of.  First of all we need to remember what the Bible is and why it was written.  The Bible is both history and prophecy as well as a textbook of God’s dealing with humanity.  It shows us His greatness and His plan.  It really is all about Him as our Almighty Creator.  The Bible details many of the wanderings of humanity as a result of sin and is always teaching us to circle back to focusing on God.  You see its main message is to look up to Him in humility and put aside our own ways to adopt His.  No room for pride!
In the midst of this looking up to God that the Bible teaches us, it thoroughly destroys the idea of “the dark side” of pride.  It details pride’s insidious behavior, objectives and methods and teaches us how to first recognize them and then how to battle them.  It teaches us that this battle is long arduous and deeply important.  It shows us examples of those who have gone wrong and it focuses us on those who have overcome.  The Bible also does deal with the positive side of pride – but in a very unique fashion!
Check out our July 17, 2017 podcast, “Does Our Pride Make Us Prejudiced? Part 1″ and see how all of these pieces fit together to fashion a positive and wholesome Christian life and how the positive side of pride actually fits in.  And by the way, Part 2 comes the following week all about prejudice.  Don’t even get me started on that one – not yet anyway!

Failure, as everyone knows, is an unlooked for and unwelcome commodity in life.  It disrupts our plans, impedes our progress, upsets our feelings and is generally intrusive to our lives.  As a result of failure’s glowing resume, we often do whatever we can to avoid it, and when we experience it we often try to soft-pedal its impact or even hide its presence.  All in all, these descriptions of and reactions to failure are really quite unfortunate.  Failure gets too bad a rap.  It is judged too harshly.  A few weeks ago we began a journey towards a better understanding of failure.  In that journey we began to see the place that failure holds in our lives and the value that it can bring us.  Let’s get back to it, for success begins when we understand our failures!
In Part 1 of this podcast we talked about failure due to a lack of knowledge and failure due to immaturity. When you think about it, these two types of failure are the easiest to deal with as they can be overcome in well defined ways. If you have a lack of knowledge, you just need to find the right knowledge for next time. If you are immature and fail the remedy is well defined but not necessarily easy. Grow up some and find success. Either way the path to success passes through the manageable obstacles of time, learning and practice.
The next two paths to failure are a different story. Next on the list is failure due to weakness. This is a situation where you already know better, you have already been able to do better but you fail anyway. This kind of failure is more personal, because it hits you in a way that can be embarrassing and humiliating. No more can you use the excuse that you didn’t know or you hadn’t yet learned. No, this time you have a more complete responsibility in the failure. Dealing with such failure requires not only greater humility but it also requires greater effort as now you not only have to add to your knowledge and experience base you now also have to take some things away in order to beat it. Not easy, not fun, but oh, so necessary.
Before introducing the next and by far the most difficult path to failure, we need to put the question out there – is our eternal destiny judged based upon our weaknesses? If you think the answer is yes, then I would ask you to listen in, as our conversation deals directly and scripturally with this, and our answer is different. Most importantly, we believe our answer is biblically sound.
Finally, we explored the most difficult type of failure – failure due to choice. Here we have and understand the knowledge we need to succeed, we are clearly mature enough to recognize and follow the path to success and we have proven to be strong enough to get through the obstacles along our way. The trouble is…we don’t want to. We decide on a different path and a different approach that suits our ego and preference. What then? Check out our July 10, 2017 podcast, “How Do You Manage Failure? Part 2″ and find out. This really is a “need to know” matter!

241 years ago the course of world history changed, for on July 4th, 1776, the 13 colonies adopted “The Declaration of Independence” and proclaimed themselves to be The United States of America. Since then these United States have risen to become a world power and have been the source of many amazing world innovations. One innovation that seems to never be talked about or even noticed is this country’s profound contribution to recognizing, appreciating and preserving the wonders of the natural landscape: Nature. It covers the world with its intricate complexity, its unfathomable beauty and its breathtaking majesty. For most of us, our park system doesn’t feel like an innovation; rather it feels like a common, scarcely noticed commodity – yeah, we have National Parks – cool! Today we stop for a moment and ask how did these National Parks came to be, what was the motivation for their existence and what does all of this have to do with Almighty God?
To help us drill down to understanding the connection between God and the American National Park System (and yes, there is a BIG connection) we brought in friend of CQ – Tom Gilbert.  Tom is a devoted Christian who spent his adult life working for the National Park System and knows a thing or two about its history and objectives.  What he revealed about how these parks came to be was not only fascinating but surprising as well.  Before we crack open the door of proof (which our podcast on this subject clearly does), let us state a factual conclusion about the founding of our national parks:  Christians were the main movers to develop America’s national parks and their primary reason for doing so was to make the wonders and awe-inspiring aspects of God’s creation accessible to the average American.
Think about that for a moment.  These parks were preserved so America could praise and honor God as they observed the magnificence of the natural world!  These parks were founded so we could see God in a whole different way than in the Bible – they were chosen lands to showcase nature in all of its pristine beauty.  In those days the miracle of nature, commonly called “God’s Second Book,” was recognized on a national scale as an important part of what the United States of America stood for.  These sentiments were not only seen in the establishment of our national parks but were heard in the verses of many American anthems.  Look up the words to “America the Beautiful” and see what that song is really all about.
It is tragic how we today have truly lost sight of God and His role in our lives.  We need to fight that tragedy, and you can start by checking out our July 3, 2017 podcast, “Does America Show Us the Nature of God?”  Listening can only feed and strengthen your passion for the greatness of God.  Once strengthened, go and ask some folks about the founding of America’s national parks and then share with them the “why” behind it all.  God speaks through nature, so let us speak of God through nature as well!

Have you noticed how easy it is to offend people these days?  There seems to be such an overt need to accept and to be accepted that we go overboard with the “correctness” of our words and behavior lest we hurt anyone’s feelings at any time.  Now, being accepting of others is a good thing, but is it the most important thing?  Should we willingly lay all other principles and standards upon the altar of mutual acceptance?  Are we compelled to accept the world the way it is without regard to the good we have gleaned from the way it was?  How did Jesus do it?  He certainly spent time with the sinners of his day but was it at the cost of higher principles?  Did Jesus actually “hang out” with sinners?  Was his time with them to make them feel good or accepted?  What is God’s role in all of this?  If we want a relationship with God, does He accept us as we are or is there more to it?
Let’s start with the basic truth that both God and Jesus love us.  Ample evidence of this is displayed in the Bible in many different ways.  To begin with, God’s love was expressed for the first man and woman in the environment He gave them – the Garden of Eden.  It was beautiful, alive and perfect.  You don’t give a gift like that to someone you dislike!  Second, God gave them rules to live by.  Any parent worth their salt knows that children need guidance, and without it they will not know how to stand or what to stand for.  Of course,Adam sinned and messed up the loving gift and guidelines he was given and needed consequences for his actions.  He got those consequences – again – because God loved him.  Adam’s sin did not lessen God’s love, but it did change how God would manifest it.
Enter Jesus.  The consequence for sin was death, and that could only be reversed through a just transaction, which again is a sign of love.  We know  Jesus loves us because he became that transaction and gave his life as a ransom price for Adam.  He willingly suffered and died as a man to buy back the consequences of that original sin.  So, what we see here are multiple evidences of love towards humanity from heaven.  This love is big, it is powerful and it is everlasting, but it is not the whole story.  We now need to figure out how acceptance fits into this masterful and benevolent love.
Just because you love someone does not mean you accept them.  At face value, this sounds contradictory and sounds like it demeans the power of love.  After all doesn’t love mean acceptance?  Love meaning acceptance is probably one of the most important misunderstandings to correct for the sake of our everyday lives.  Grasping the truth on this can truly alter the way we see life on so many levels. Love does not necessarily mean acceptance.  Knowing and living this needs lots of support and explanation.  To make it clear, please check out our June 26, 2017 podcast, “Does God Accept Us As We Are?” for the details, the examples and the all important applications.  Learning how love and acceptance interact is a critical life skill you cannot afford to be without.  Get started!

Nobody likes failure.  Even when we have been told that failure is good for us, that it is a stepping stone and that you don’t learn from success nearly as much as you learn from failure, we still don’t like it!  For many of us, failure can be discouraging, debilitating and even depressing.  So, what do we do with this?  We learn from it.  We look into the lives of those whom we consider successful and study their failures and their reactions to those failures to see how we can use their experiences to help us navigate our own experiences.  The Bible is full of great examples of faithful ones who had many failures, and the Bible is also full of their success stories afterwards.  What are we waiting for? Let’s get started with this whole making-failure-work-for-me thing!
Probably a good place to start to make failure work for us is to understand how failure works its way into our lives.  There are actually four basic ways that we come to fail.  The first way is as a result of a lack of knowledge.  Let’s say that you try and do something but you were legitimately never informed of some key point in the process.  Failure becomes an almost sure thing in this scenario.  The good news here is that this reason for failure is probably the most easy to fix, because the reason for the failure is both simple and external.  This means our ego will most likely stay intact as the failure was not generated by our own carelessness and moving forward can be easy and productive.
Let’s look at an example of failure that can sound like a lack of knowledge but is really generated by the second way failure comes to visit.  You’re a guy and you are driving (dare I go down THIS road?) to an unfamiliar destination.  Somehow someone must have moved the destination because it is not where you have driven to (I can say this – I’m a guy and I have done this).  As it gets to the point of being late, your wife is telling you to stop and ask someone (of course there is no cell service – they must have moved that as well) but you insist on finding the place on your own.  Guys, face it – this is epic failure, not due to a lack of knowledge but due to (I’m going to say it) a lack of maturity.  Failure can often come because we are just not grown up enough to recognize it.
What do we have so far?  We have two ways to fail and not a whole lot about what to do with them, and we haven’t even mentioned the other two ways that failure finds us.  This can only mean that you need to check out our June 19, 2017 podcast, “How Do You Manage Failure?” Part 1.  In that podcast we get really practical about learning the process of failure and how to maximize it for our benefit.  We also take a look at some really big questions about how God views our failures and the failures of the world.  Checking this out will really be worth your time!  Oh and guys, I promise you won’t have to ask directions!