You're listening to KFI A six forty on demand talking about controlling. It seemed
to be a little bit of a theme today, and I realize that it's
part of human nature to want to control and not have things get out of
control or get away from you in any way, shape or form. But
I want you to look at the model of God and the allowance of God
allowing humanity to have free will and to make decisions. And producer Neil often
jokes that God saw fit to give humanity free will, and the Church sees
fit to try and take it away. So there's a lot that church becomes
a point of control as well. We talked a little bit about controlling as
a parent, but the church ultimately is part of the parentship of humanity as
well, trying to guide and to point out and to equip and all these
things. But it can be misused as well, and I think that there
when you try and control too much, it is the equivalent of trying to
be God. We've talked about judgment in many ways, and the word God
actually means judge, so that concept, that term of the ultimate judge,
the ruler that looks over things, And I think that being in the state
of wanting to control things is being a mini God. You're trying to make
sure that everything conforms to something that to your comfort level. And the church
does that as well, and it's really not the place of the church.
The church's goal is to share the gospel to make sure everybody's heard it.
What that person does with the gospel is up to them, it's not the
churches. There's so many horror stories that I've heard over the years of people
forcing or tricking someone into saying the Sinner's prayer or something like that, and
there's not even the Sinner's prayer in scripture anywhere. But it makes somebody feel
better if they feel like they've tricked somebody into the kingdom, I suppose.
And that's just not how it's done. The purpose of the Gospel of scripture
and sharing these things and so that individuals can hear them and make the best
decision about their life or make uh use the best information to make the best
decision in their life, but they have the right not to. Does that
affect you, Yeah, sure it can affect you. There are people that
make bad decisions every day that affect people. There are people that drive drunk.
The question to people that are completely obeying the rules of the road and
are driving sober. People doing bad things will affect you. But the Gospel,
in Scripture and Christianity, it's not about getting everybody to do good things
so that your life is better. So it's just easier so that you don't
have to roll your eyes. I know that everybody Republican feels like, wow,
if everybody was a Republican, it would just make things easier. And
every liberal feels like if everybody was a Democrat, it would just make things
easier. It would just life would be better. And that's not the truth.
Now, you could argue if everybody was a Christian and adhere to the
laws of Christianity, the world would be better. It's obviously the show is
titled that Jesus Christ Show. Of course that's going to be our bent or
bias. But to look at God's example. God's example was to there is
punishment, and there is consequence, and there is these things, but there's
also that freedom. It wasn't about taking away the freedom. It was out
showing why that freedom should be used wisely. But the Church in its current
state is about using scripture to conform the masses to do what they want to
do, and that doesn't help anybody. As a matter of fact, that's
where perversion grows. Perversion grows from when you repress things, or when you
try and keep natural things down, then people find unnatural ways to do them.
There's horrible stories of people trying to control their children or trying to keep
them on a particular path, and the children outright rebelling, sometimes even killing
and taking the life of their own parents. It sounds unfathomable, I realize,
but it takes place. Now. I'm not saying that if you're controlling
or if you want good things for your child, it means they're going to
harm you in some way, or they're going to rebel to the point of
something vulgar like that. That's not my point. The point is it's human
nature to want to explore and move forward on their own freely. That's just
what humans will do. That's why I hear different political discussions about things like,
you know, undocumented workers and how well we need them for the economy
because they'll do menial jobs for small amounts of money, which is just the
most horribly racist comment. Because any human, no matter where they come from,
are going to want to progress. They're going to want to learn and
grow and become the best they can be. Nobody stays in any menial state.
They don't want to A child doesn't want to do it, an adult
doesn't want to do it, and people of faith don't want to do it.
People of faith want to grow and be curious and explore and learn and
know things and being able to touch them and ask questions and be curious,
not locked in some box with a cross on it that says this is where
this is where you stay. And I could hear the tone, the tenor
in people's voices under the guise of Christianity that don't want any change, that
don't want things to happen, and all hell is breaking loose, and God
has fallen off his throne. You can't let this happen. And these people
shouldn't be here, and this shouldn't happen, and these people shouldn't be allowed
to do this, and these people shouldn't be allowed to do that. And
I hear that, and I know that it doesn't come from God, and
it doesn't come from places stability and trust and true hope. It's the people
that want to control others the most, that I think have the weakest faith,
that love God the life least, that trust God the least, because
they are sitting there just like Judas and saying, if you're not going to
do it the way that I want you to do it, I'm going to
do it myself. God. If you're not going to come down and you're
not going to smite every single person and turn them into stone, turn them
into a pillar of assault, make it rain for forty days. If You're
not going to do these things, then I'm going to do it for you.
And a lot of people don't understand a lot of Christians don't even understand
the relationship and where it went south with Judas and me, and really where
it went south is Judith. Judas rather had expectations of me coming and being
a warrior and destroying the political parties and the things that he didn't like,
and I didn't. He betrayed me. And I think that that's happening in
the church today. I think the church is looking around and going God's not
doing enough. God is not making these people go away. God is not
damning them on this earth, and it's making me uncomfortable, and I'm going
to go out. I'm going to do it myself. I'm going to force
people to be Christians by way of laws. I'm going to force them to
do the things that it talks about in scripture, because that way it will
be done. And God's not in that at all. And in that you
become Judas and you lean in and you kiss me, and you say,
not thy will be done God, but My will be done. Michael.
Welcome to the Jesus Christ Show, are you Michael? All right? Good
morning. Well I kind of have a question about the Old Testament teaches about
Methuselah and many of his contemporaries and people of that time living to extraordinarily long
times. I think Mathusa lived over nine hundred years, the steady progression of
the lifespan all the way down to I believe it was you that said in
the New Testament, but someone did that the life span of a man had
been allotted to one hundred and twenty years. Incredible come down from the time
of Methuselah. But we don't get one hundred and twenty years in our last
four or five years. Ten years are not very comfortable. We are in
incredible pain where incredible grief. It affects those around us, it affects our
lives. Why is this how we end up from I mean Mathusla must not
have had his first you know, high blood pressure till he was seven or
one hundred years of age. He must have been living the life of a
thirty year old when he was five hundred. Why are we in the position
that we're in now? And as the Bible said, why don't we get
our one hundred and twenty years? It's kind of bizarre to think about too,
I mean, just living that long. And when you think about all
the things you experience in the years that you're here, whether they be seventy
or ninety or one hundred more and more, I think you've noticed that people
are hitting that one hundred markt used to be a much more of a special
thing, and you'd hear about it, but now you're hearing people that are
living to one hundred and four, one hundred and five and things like that.
It's actually right now, strangely going in the other direction, and people
are getting older, and that's an attribute to science and modern medicine quite honestly,
and knowing more about what they eat and those types of things. However,
the theological question is a tough one. There are many different views on
what it is. Some will go to the language and say, well,
maybe it didn't mean nine hundred years, but there's not a whole lot of
room for that kind of interpretation. Others will look at things that have changed.
So is what changed in the Old Testament? And it happens rather rapidly.
It's not like it goes from nine hundred or there's different people that lived
hundreds of years, not necessarily all nine hundred, but that goes from Genesis,
and then quickly it changes quickly, it changes to people living much less.
So there are those that talk about certain things that have changed. When
you look at something like that, what would be the drastic change. Genesis
one, six and seven talks about the water above the expanse, and there
are those that believe that that water broke during the flood, and that that
water was something a canopy of sorts that protected the planet and gave perfect everything.
So the temperature was right, the radiation levels were different. You didn't
get the radiation because you were protected by this canopy, and that those things
changed that so when that was broken for the flood, then that went away
and there is no longer that protection. In addition to that, there's other
factors as well that tie in, one of which, if Adam and Eve
were created perfect, as scripture says, then you have perfection bringing forth perfection
and less genetic anomalies or problems or mutations, and that as the lineage gets
further down the line, you bring in sin, you bring in pollution,
you bring in all these other factors. Then that goes back down, down,
down. Adam, Welcome to the Jesus Christ show. I do this.
Thank you for taking my call. Please have a question as to whether
or not it was okay to translate the Bible into modern vernacular and slang.
Yes and no in the sense is it a sin. No, absolutely not.
Can it be misleading sometimes yes, because slang tends to change, even
modern lingo tends to change. So in the in the hands of somebody who
understands slang and modern lingo and the vernacular of the day, then it's not
going to be a problem. In the hands of someone else, it might
be confusing. So it's one of those things that I think that can be
helpful when reading just you know, doing plain reading. You know, maybe
for younger folks that enjoy I want to just sit down and read scripture and
the other translations are a little daunting. However, when you get into word
studies and actually doing you know, heavy studies in scripture, it can be
quite difficult to kind of mine meaning out of you know, these kind of
more hip or versions of scripture. But there it's not a sin or it's
not a you know, there's many different versions of scripture that are in kind
of casual language. Sometimes it softens the meaning a little bit, but it
never should remove the meaning. If it was so lacks that it removed the
meaning, and then yes, there'd be a problem, all right, because
you know, back in ancient times when they were choosing what to go into
the was going to go into the Bible, and they were to changing words
around, you know, they were changing the words of the prophets and what
God told them to write. And I'm doing that now. It seem to
be the same. How So you've seen it's very anecdotal what you're saying,
but it's a pretty heavy claim. Are you saying about the councils? The
different councils that took place, or are you having some sort of secret knowledge
as to people messing with scripture in its original form. No, no secret
knowledge, just like the councils it choosing what scripture was going to go into
the Bible and what words because they changed they did change the wording. No,
there was no changing of wordings. I know that. That's that's one
of those popular thought that kind of gets perpetuated with no evidence. People say,
well, you have twenty five thousand parts and whole manuscripts of the New
Testament alone, twenty five thousand more than any other work of antiquity. It
is very easy to see what was stated and what was meant in context without
any changing. They still exist. So it's not a matter of going,
well, the Council of Trent council and I see a Council of Chalcedon said
this, that or the other. Nothing is going to take away from the
fact that these manuscripts still exist, not to mention that you could destroy all
of the manuscripts for the New Testament and recreate it by speeches and teachings of
the early Church fathers. So it's not really it's one of those things that
people say and I've even heard teachers make that claim, but without any substance
behind it. There wasn't words changed, there wasn't context change. There are
things that are have asterisks in front of them because they're not in all of
the manuscripts. There are books that were left out because they weren't consistent in
one way or another bibliographically, meaning that the authorship didn't seem to be who
it said it was, that the writing style didn't seem to suit the period,
that the statements were somehow contradictory to the rest of scripture. But as
far as you know, things like you know, people have said that reincarnation
was taught in the Bible and it was taken out. That's garbage. People
have said that there's been you know, things like this that were taught and
somehow the early Church cut them out, which really, if you're a church
father, a sinner, a human being, you're gonna you're gonna take reincarnation
out and leave things that say you can't have premarital sex, you can't eat
what you want when you want, necessarily in that context. Really, the
things that were oppressive in scripture are the things that are still in there by
human standards. Humans want to do what they want when they want. They're
not going to worry about theological things like reincarnation. They're going to worry about,
Hey, how come I can't have ten wives? You know, how
come I can't have a slave? Or how come I can't have this or
do that. That's what they're going to think about, not trying to theologically,
you know, tighten up some sort of belief system around the trinity or
something. That's just not how people think they want to preserve their right to
do wrong. And so when you look at scripture and you actually go through
Hermoneutics in the study of the harmony of Scripture and how all these books come
together, You've got sixty plus books written over a span of fourteen hundred years
by forty some odd authors on three different continents, in three different languages,
in times of peace and times of war, by peasants and kings alike,
and it all points to the same truth that's pretty powerful due to you know,
polishing, because people say, oh, well, you know, you're
talking about thousands of years people could have been polishing this up and refining it.
And the old concept of telephone playing the game telephone and if someone tells
it to someone else and then by the time it gets to the end of
the line, it's completely different. It doesn't really work because you can go
back to the original manuscripts. You can go back to writings that were within
sixty years of my death and life. And you know, you're saying that
to be sixty years removed, that if you removed all videotape options and recordings,
that you couldn't tell me who Martin Luther King was because it was sixty
years ago. These are pretty These are pretty authentic and verifiable works of history,
and they often get poo pooed because to be accountable to them is to
live a life. You know that is not always comfortable for people. But
you're talking about a work that is unlike any other work of antiquity, you
know, Caesar's Gaelic Wars. I think there's only ten copies in history of
the manuscript left currently, So you compare that against ten or twenty five thousand
hole in parts of the New Testament, it kind of kind of looks a
little weak done it. Yeah, So as far as the two questions kind
of pair out, one slang is not a bad thing. There is slang
used in scripture. There was modern slang used in scripture. I mean when
it says Stephen got stoned in scripture. Now you read that today and you'll
get kids going Stephen got stoned or you know, because it doesn't necessarily translate
into what they were thinking. Or there's some that say there will be no
bull in my house, and modern day thought of what that would mean could
be vulgar. But in that context they're actually talking about a bull, you
know, or an ass or these types of things. So there is a
slang used in scripture. Paul uses slang or vernacular that was understood by the
people of his day as well. It's just as far as translations go,
the meaning can't be mutated, perverted, polluted, or modified in any way.
That's going to be the truth of the matter. So if you want
to encourage you know, young people or you know folks that want to read
scripture in a certain way and this motivates them, fine, I don't.
I'm not pleased with the neutering of Bible. People try and neuter the Bible
and make it kishi or they and make it kind of encompass everyone. When
that's not the way it was written, and you shouldn't see it as a
slight against men or women, because men and women have their place in scripture,
both of great importance, both equal completely and utterly. But people trying
try and find some offense in scripture or trying to modify it and do the
very thing that they accused the forefathers of doing when the forefathers didn't do it.
There are things throughout the Church where the Church had not modified scripture per
se, but adopted certain beliefs or certain things that weren't in scripture that became
traditional and could be seen as problematic because of the traditions. But all in
all, scripture has remained as it is, even I quote the Old Testament
was referred to as the Old Testament in the New Testament, and those types
of things. So you can even find in scripture it quoting itself before anything
was ever canonized or or there was any counsels or anything like that. So
these things help point to the veracity of scripture and the importance of it being
as is. Translations notwithstanding, but making sure that the context is never left
out or somehow skewed. David, Welcome to the Jesus Christio close, sir,
pleasure speaking, will do? It's my pleasure? How many I help
you? I wanted to ask what recommendations for guidance you have for compulsive behaviors
and addictions. What kind of addictions are you talking about? True in particular
being gambling and love addictions. Okay, so sex, pornography, yes,
and also going from one relationship to another hoping to find true love when in
fact that is that does never happen. Okay, Well, they probably stem
from the same place. You're searching for something, a high, a feeling,
an emotional response to the change or excitement or thrill of something, or
what have you, and you continue to up the game. It's hard to
up the game in real life, but through pornography or jumping from one person
to the next, you can try and at least feel like you're upping the
game a little bit and changing the thrill, when in reality everything finds its
normalcy, and that you'll continue to thirst and try and find these things when
they will never be satiated. So you have to look as to why you
do this, and I think that's the first and foremost thing. So let's
start there. Why do you think you're so compulsive about these things. Well,
as far as you love, because I want to, I think it's
the person to marry a woman who I would truly love, or so I
think, or so I perceive, and it's not really or maybe it's otherwise,
something something underneath that I don't I'm not aware of. And then the
as far as the gambling goes, I think, consciously I would I'm only
trying to win too, to get to get money with wish to shay other
expenses. But subliminally I'm guessing it's more just like every other addiction, trying
to get a fixed or a high, momentary high. Yeah, you're trying.
You're trying to get that win. You're trying to get to that place
and stand there in that. Even love you, you see, is gambling.
You're just gonna randomly find someone and it's gonna work. Do you like
yourself, David, not really, so it will be difficult for someone else
to and dare I say, it be very difficult for them to love you
if you don't. So there's a it's interesting scripture talks about loving your enemy
as you love yourself, and people kind of you know, look over that
and don't understand that you have to love yourself and know yourself, not be
egotistical, not be narcissistic, but you have to you have to love yourself
before you can love others. There's a lot of things going on here,
more than we can we can tackle. But I would tell you the basic
steps are to reverse the ones that you've taken to get there. So you
have to just like you, you know, how do you get home from
wherever you are? You go back the way you came or in a similar
direction. You need to reverse those steps and it's going to come through therapy
and really being accountable. You have to be accountable to somebody, not just
yourself, because you're not trustworthy in that sense for your own judgment. You're
looking for the payoff of things, and that's not what life is. Life
is absolutely as corny as it sounds, the journey. It's not where you
arrive, because the final you know, destination is death, So it's not
about the arrival. It is truly about the journey. And then for those
of faith, of course, the final place is to be with the maker.
But in your case, David, I would say that all these things
stem from that desire to just have that win rather than the process of the
win when you earn money. And yes there are professional gamblers, different thing,
and there are people that just love the gaming and that's different. But
when you are looking for the win to make a difference in your life,
like you said, to pay off debts or do, it's a bad place
to be and now you end up going down and it becomes a perversion.
But I assure you sex, addiction, and gambling come from healthy places.
They have a healthy version of those things. Love and passion is the healthy
version. Challenge and exploration and pushing yourself is the healthy point of gambling.
So all those things have a healthy brother or sister. You've just taken them
to a perversion because you're looking for the payoff rather than the process. So
you need to find somebody that can help you walk back through that process and
understand it more to start clearing these things away. And it will take some
time. It took you a while to get there, it'll take you a
while to get out. Remember these words. I Am with you Always,
KFI AM six forty on demand