Are there underlying reasons as to why people are leaving the church today? Especially young people?
Ben and David come to you while on tour in Argentina, and discuss some of the spiritual and cultural reasons behind why this worldwide fallout is occurring, and how we can respond and take action as followers of Jesus.
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Questions, comments, or feedback? We'd love to hear what you think! Send them to provokeandinspire@steiger.org, or send us a message on Instagram.
Join the Provoke & Inspire Community!
Click below to follow the regulars on Instagram!
Are there underlying reasons as to why people are leaving the church today? Especially young people?
Ben and David come to you while on tour in Argentina, and discuss some of the spiritual and cultural reasons behind why this worldwide fallout is occurring, and how we can respond and take action as followers of Jesus.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Questions, comments, or feedback? We'd love to hear what you think! Send them to provokeandinspire@steiger.org, or send us a message on Instagram.
Join the Provoke & Inspire Community!
Click below to follow the regulars on Instagram!
You're listening to the Provoke and Inspire podcast.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Provoke and Inspire podcast road edition. David and I are in a little hut in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I don't think huts have windows.
Speaker 3:They can. They could have little like no, but you can't, because then if you have a window and a hut, the roof will cave in because there's no structures in the hut to hold up a window.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all right. Moving on, we are in an apartment in Buenos Aires. Why you ask? Because David and I are on the last no longer music tour of the 2023 season. We're a little over halfway through our tour here in Argentina and if you're new to this podcast, welcome. The Provoke and Inspire podcast is all about how to live faithfully for Jesus in a post-Christian world. We're part of an emissions organization called Stiger, and Stiger reaches people who would never walk into a church. We mobilize all followers of Jesus to reach the people in their lives, their sons, their daughters, their colleagues and friends and neighbors. That is our heart, that is what we do, and we challenge and train others to do the same, and that's what this podcast is about. And every once in a while, david and I do this thing called no longer music. My assumption is there's a lot of new people to this podcast. I did a lot of speaking recently and explain what we're doing before we launch headway into the full description of what we're doing here?
Speaker 3:Well, no longer. Music started in Amsterdam in the 80s, actually, and it was something that I felt like I needed to do to bring Jesus to a whole culture that would not come to church, and it's because they had such a negative idea about who God was because of the church they just thought it was some kind of a fascist thing to take away their freedom. They saw Jesus as an oppressor and they needed to see who the real Jesus was. And so it came out of that kind of motivation, a lot of all night prayer meetings, and so that's how the band started, and now Ben, who is my son, is leading the band and we've been touring all over the planet and we've seen many thousands of young people rejected God because of this wrong idea they have of him and so many coming to Jesus even last night, this town has a really interesting name it's Alejandro Corn for real.
Speaker 2:It's the name of the city and, yeah, the major pastor, the main pastor of the city, who is really gracious and he was super excited about bringing us to the city. He was arguing with the mayor basically throughout the show, the whole show, yeah.
Speaker 2:As the mayor was trying to shut us down, but nonetheless we had over 2,000 people come to the show. It was one of those moments where you could just tell, not literally, but it felt like the whole town was there. Someone who is part of that town seemed to fill this park, fill the square area. And you know, we though we do it in a modern way, using modern symbols and modern music. It's very visual and entertaining and powerful. This is, unapologetically, the gospel, and people were glued. I mean, they didn't move, they were just totally absorbing everything that you said. Then we had a huge local team and all of the band out in the crowd talking to people, crying with people for a like I don't know long time afterwards, and in our show we talk about suicide because it's such a huge problem, huge problem here, yeah, yeah, everywhere.
Speaker 3:Everywhere in the world right now and abuse, you know, and we talk about how Jesus cries about this and he's the answer to this problem. And I mean, after the like, this young girl came up to me afterwards and actually just wept because she said I was abused when I was, you know, and and this show just showed her how God cares about her and how he's Jesus is, you know, made a way for her to be healed and to be set free. And it was amazing and I don't know about you, ben, but it was unbelievable. The response.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when you're doing this night after night and God draws so many people, he changes so many lives, it's hard to process, honestly.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think the show before there's a girl that was going to commit suicide and after seeing the show she understood that she needed to live and that that Jesus offered her hope. I mean, and this is a lot of hopelessness out there today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we're seeing this extraordinary contrast where some of our team go out before the show and they interview people. They're asking them, you know, what's your purpose, what's your hope for life? What do you think can heal or bring hope for Argentina? And it's amazing because we'll often get to interview people before and after. You know that's not the plan, but that ends up. What's at what? That ends up, what's happened, that's what ends up happening. And you know, even just in this latest video I was sent by our videographer of the show two days ago, you know he interviews this guy who's like yeah, I don't believe in anything that I can't see, I'm not into that. And then, a couple hours later, after seeing the show, he's like yeah, I prayed with you guys, received Jesus because I felt his power, like I needed to give my life to him.
Speaker 3:But I think that's just a very important point though, ben, is that people feel God's power. It's not just representing another religious idea, but they actually comment on I feel this, what is this? I'm shaking and I don't know why. We hear that a lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So with that in mind, here's the plan for today. I wrote a series of blogs not too long ago, and one of the blogs I wrote was four reasons why your kids are abandoning their faith. And that's a little bit more narrow in scope than I intend for this conversation to be, but the basic idea is the reality is that Gen Z, even millennials, are abandoning the faith, if they ever had one in the first place. They're growing up completely devoid of any religion or certainly not interested in coming to church when we invite them and I know I would say all of you I was gonna say most of you, but I would say all of you when I talk about the subject of a son or a daughter or a neighbor or a friend or a grand kid that has walked away from God, I know I'm talking to you. I'm not talking about some distant academic subject. I'm talking about your life. I know there are specific people that come to mind. They have abandoned their faith, they don't seem interested in the church and it feels hopeless. And so what I wanna do in this podcast, through the lens of the tour that we're on, just the broader experiences that we've had, is to ask the question why? Why are they walking away?
Speaker 2:We talk to pastors every night here in Argentina and they're always so amazed after our show because they're like these young people are not coming to our church. They'll never seem to wanna come to our church, but here they are. I mean, we did this show in Montevideo, uruguay, and there's a long story. We weren't supposed to play inside of a church. We got completely rained out. We had this amazing turnaround in an hour to be able to even pull off a show at all, redirecting everyone on social media. All these people come to this church. So that's the story for another day. But this really cool pastor, really open-minded pastor, let us come and we're sitting there right before the show starts and the place smells like weed. And I'm sure the pastor is thinking well, it's probably the first time my church has smelled like weed before, but in a lot of ways it's like praise the Lord, right, because there are people in that building that need to hear about Jesus, and so I thought it was the perfect kind of illustration.
Speaker 3:Well, that was kind of funny because a few of the guys that were there crazy guys up in the front by the stage wanted a picture with me.
Speaker 2:I don't know why you like this story so much.
Speaker 3:And so they're all there getting the ready, and then this one guy, just before they took the picture, he turned around and he mooned the camera. So I thought this is definitely probably not happened in the church before.
Speaker 2:And I thought we got Definitely probably not.
Speaker 3:Yeah, maybe not. And it was 30% chance and it was you could tell that we had the right people there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally different podcast might be what precipitated the mooning craze of the early to mid late 90s.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was there early mid late. Was there a mooning craze? Huge Really.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like it was a Gen X thing. Everyone in your band was mooning people in the 90s.
Speaker 3:I don't remember that part of my history.
Speaker 2:I don't remember a few moon, but that would have scarred me from a Freudian perspective.
Speaker 3:I just I know Gary did that a lot.
Speaker 2:He's like the guy that's still wearing bell bottoms. I know it's true Pun intended.
Speaker 3:It's true, yeah, but there's no judgment, gary. We love you, gary, yeah.
Speaker 2:All right.
Speaker 3:Four reasons why our kids are abandoning their thing, so we're not gonna do a random story today.
Speaker 2:That was it All. Right, you really wanna do a random story?
Speaker 3:No, it's up to you, I don't care.
Speaker 2:All right, go for it.
Speaker 3:David's random story. So anyway, I think that pastoral care is important. That's why we'll often have a pastor travel with us in the band to do pastoral care. But on this particular tour we don't really have that. We have a guy, Greg, from New Zealand. He's a very MacGyver kind of guy. I don't even know who. Did people even know that reference MacGyver? I don't know, I don't even know it.
Speaker 2:Not really. Yeah, he was the guy that would have like some gum, some lint and a couple of sticks. He could make anything work. He could make a bomb, yeah, anyway.
Speaker 3:So he could make anything, fix anything. But he also is an Anglican priest, but he's kind of useless as a pastor, so we don't really have one. And so we were getting ready to go to Uruguay and so I saw two people from the band and one guy had his head down Like God I don't know how to describe it His head was down, he looked really bummed out, you know, and he's with his wife or girlfriend.
Speaker 2:I never know who's married here, but we're really we're going this recent into the bag, so then I go up to him and I go is he crying?
Speaker 3:And she goes, yes, and then all of a sudden I realized they weren't part of our team. It was just two random people and I said that's good, it means he's finally getting in touch with his emotions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then I'm looking around because they just happened to have planted themselves in the middle of our band and we're all looking at you, like why are you talking to those two random Uruguayans?
Speaker 3:You know, and I just said, it's good to be in touch with your emotions and to cry. It was brave.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all right, let's talk about this dilemma that these pastors we are talking to every day here on the road in Argentina, but I also know at home where they're saying these kids that are showing up at your shows, that are seemingly so receptive to the gospel, that are giving their lives to him, you know what's going on. Why have we been unable to reach them before? And I'm not trying to say this is all about us, but I want to just use this tour as a way to talk about it, and the first of my four points is that it starts with me, right? So when it comes to specifically, I would say, the people that are close to you, your kids, your brothers, sisters, neighbors, whatever people that you see a lot, that you interact with a lot and again, these are in no particular order, but I really think it's about what is going on in your life.
Speaker 2:I feel like often we think you know, I just did all the right things, I checked all the right boxes, I brought my kids to all these different events and put them in all these different things and I think, counterintuitively, sometimes it's more about what they see in us than what we say. So can you kind of comment on that, in terms of when you want to impact the people closest to you. Maybe it's something that can explain why they don't seem interested. That maybe we need to start with what's in us, because we can't give what we don't have.
Speaker 3:Well, obviously, if we don't want to just pass on a kind of cultural Christianity, that's how it has to be. How am I encountering him? And you know, it's not just if you happen to be at a stage in life where you're married and you have kids. I mean it's at every stage.
Speaker 3:Every yeah it's. I can't give what I don't have, and I think a lot of reasons that if we're talking about why kids abandon their faith, it's because they've never seen a real faith in their parents. It's more of a set of rules that you need to follow or stay out of trouble in the world that we're in, and be successful.
Speaker 3:And what and how success is defined is no different than the world. Actually, you know what is success, and and and so it needs to be. Am I seeking God? Am I authentic in the way I talk about who he is in my own life? Do my kids see that desire inside of me? I think that's really, really important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think one of the more profound ways to demonstrate God's power is to be able to share with the people around you what God's doing in your life. I think we too often make it about a set of intellectual propositions or about a certain code of ethics, like you said, or a ritual. It's about doing certain things and that's kind of our barometer Are they doing the right things, are they going to the right places? And I think what people need to see is this in real time, lived out, authentic faith. Right, they need to see that in you. They need to see that you're wrestling with these things, that you're being transformed in real time by the power of God, maybe even more importantly, that you're living out this faith in the real world, that there's not this dichotomy between this ritual thing that we do on certain nights, at certain times, but that there is a 24 seven aspect to the way that you're living your life, that it affects you.
Speaker 2:And I think it's very profound when a kid can see this lives beyond the church, right, I see my dad having an impact on his neighbor. I see my dad exercising his faith outside of the church, you know, at the soccer game or whatever, or at the grocery store, I see him praying for someone or demonstrating with his life that this stuff is not just intellectually understood but lived out in a real way, and so I guess that would be the place I would start is, get on your knees and demand a deeper intimacy with Jesus. Right, make that your goal, say, look, I can't seem to obviously make them come here or change them in any way, but, lord, I want to know you in a new, radical way, and I want them to be able to see evidence of that in my life.
Speaker 3:You know, I want my kids or my friends or whoever at school, I want them to know you more. I need to know you more Exactly. That's where how it always starts. Right, I need to see a change in our country, I need to see a change in our city, or whatever. Change me. Right? You know, it always starts with me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think it's part of it. Starting with you is also, I think, the full picture. You know, I think when it comes to the people that are close to you, it often becomes about arguing over certain lifestyle behaviors or certain ethics or morality in some way, or maybe certain kinds of theology or whatever. And I'm not saying that those things aren't real, those things aren't true, those things don't need to be discussed. But I think people need to see sort of an authentic faith lived out in you, and I think that includes your own struggles, right?
Speaker 2:I think sometimes we feel like we present this image to the people around us, especially the people that are close to us, maybe even more especially the people that we want to come to the church, that we have it all together, and I think what would speak more powerfully is that this is real. You know this is. This isn't easy. I struggle with these things too. It's not that we have this kind of weak faith, that's not what I'm trying to say but I do think it breaks down the perception that, well, on this side of the line is people that have it all together, and it's about this sort of moral cleanliness and perfection On that side of the line. It's the opposite. I think that you come to Jesus and it's real, and he knows you. He deals with the things that are really going on in your life. He's not indifferent to those things. You know what I mean, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3:I mean, the biggest thing that people need to see is reality. I'm real. Everyone has to make their choices. But it's going to be easier for you or for your kids or your friends to want to make that choice when they see that, Like I don't know about you, but if you ever read books by people who've started missions or whatever, and they always have the right attitude. So it's like I read the. It's like I won't say who it was, but they started a mission and they always had faith, they always had the right attitude, and I'm like well I can't really relate to that.
Speaker 3:So I guess you know, and it's not, that, like you said, it's not this weak kind of faith. God does change us, he does refine us, he makes us vessels of gold that he can use for any noble purpose. But at the same time we struggle and we have doubts and we, when I read even about someone who is God, is using a great way, but I only see perfection recorded in their attitudes.
Speaker 2:It doesn't inspire me that I can follow Jesus too Well in the Holy spirit didn't seem to apply that approach to the Bible itself, right? I mean, if there's any great example of like the ubiquitous flaws of all the heroes of our faith, and again I think it's that tension, right, because there is too far the other extreme, where it is almost about glorifying weakness.
Speaker 2:And that's not what we're saying. People also need to know like God changes me. There's power in this, it's true, but I think we can inadvertently create this sense that I have to fake it to be in and that's not true. You know, I would have been saying lately is one of the most profound hungers of every human being is the desire to be fully seen, like really known, and to be fully loved at the same time. And it's rare to have both.
Speaker 2:Right Like our world is filled with people who are presenting an image of themselves because that's the way they think they'll be loved, like if I'm fake, you know, if I filter who I am. There's other people maybe. They feel seen, but they feel ugly and they feel worthless. They feel like nobody loves them, that they do see them for who they are. They are exposed as the worthless person that they are, and rightfully so, that the world doesn't love them. And yet Jesus, and only Jesus, can fully know you, like all of you and still chooses to fully love you, and that's the profound thing about it.
Speaker 3:If it wasn't that way, it wouldn't be profound. It's the fact that this creator of all things, the one who holds the universe together with his power, knows me completely, all the things I'm ashamed of, and still still loves me.
Speaker 2:Past present and future.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I know it's beyond.
Speaker 2:It's a bizarre thought until you have kids right, like I know that sounds like a weird thing to say, like of course I'll never fully comprehend the mystery of God's grace, but I can understand as a dad, nothing changing how I feel about my kids.
Speaker 3:You want them to succeed, you want them to not hurt themselves, you want them to make good choices, but your love for them stands outside of that.
Speaker 2:It stands totally outside of that, and I'm, of course, just a drop in the ocean compared to God's grace and unconditional love for us, but I do get a glimpse of that where I'm like, because of my love for them, I want them to do things that are going to be for their good for them to thrive for them to succeed, like you said, but that's not why I love them.
Speaker 2:I love them in a sort of I don't know, like I love my own flesh, like I can't even not love them. It hurts. It hurts, yeah. So it starts with me and I would say redefine success there. If you feel desperate to reach those in your life who are far from God, ask him for a new revelation, ask him for new intimacy, pray in a new radical way.
Speaker 3:Personally, you know it's like you know the whole cliche change starts with you.
Speaker 2:You know, and make that a thing in your life, and I think it'll do a lot of things. I mean, not only will it transform your life, but God will unleash his power through you in new ways and, like it says in 1 Peter 315, people will notice this profound hope that's in you and they'll begin to ask in one day.
Speaker 3:And you go okay, well, how does what does that actually mean? Well, it means you have to seek God differently than you are right now. You can't expect to change by not doing anything differently, so you have to put a plan together to seek God in a way that you're not doing it now. And it might be as simple as before I go to sleep tonight. I'm going to take a walk around the block in my neighborhood, no matter what the weather is like, no matter how I feel. I'm going to walk around the block and I'm going to say God, here I am, I need a breakthrough in my life. I need to know you more. I'm not happy with what's happening in my family or the situation that I'm in, but I know I need to know you more. I need more of your Holy Spirit in my life.
Speaker 3:Sometimes you feel like it, sometimes you don't feel like it. It's not a trying to earn anything from God. It's comes from more of. I need a breakthrough, I need to see you more, and that's what it means. You know and I mean I know these guys that were businessmen and they wanted to see a breakthrough in their city, so they would get up at like four in the morning and they would meet in kind of this cave outside of the city, you know, just kind of this weird kind of cave in the ground, these businessmen, and they just would cry out to God, help us. We need to see a breakthrough in our city. I mean, there's so many examples like that, so that's what it means.
Speaker 2:Yeah, All right, I'm going to kind of condense point two and point three because they kind of go together and I think we can do that. Point two and three seems like a paradox or a contradiction, but people are walking away from the church in your life because the cost is both too high and the cost is too low. So let me just explain both of those. The cost is too high. Is the idea that if you have a cultural faith right, if your faith is something that you've inherited from your parents, if it's a set of intellectual beliefs or a kind of a moral guidebook to life, that works. If the moral framework around you is in alignment with that, then that works right, Because then you're congruent. Especially if you're young and you're a lot of your goals to kind of fit in and to be, you know, accepted among your peers, then it's cool. If the moral framework you inherited aligns with the moral framework of your peer group, cool, right, You'll go with it.
Speaker 2:The problem is in the West, in the US and the majority of the world. To be honest, the overwhelming majority of people do not see biblical Christianity as moral. In fact, they see it as immoral, they see it as being sexually oppressive and bigoted and anti-scientific and homophobic, and et cetera, et cetera. And so now you know you're 20, you were sent to Iwana your whole life and VBS, and you're in the Christian schools and you're at youth group, but your faith never really internalized, you never had that revelation, you never had that moment of profound surrender. And so you've got this inherited cultural faith, and now you go into a peer group where your framework is not only seen as morally neutral, it's actually seen as immoral. Are you going to hold on to that Right? You're going to jettison it? And so that in a lot of ways explains both the dangers of cultural Christianity but also the reality of our culture around us and the legitimate challenges people are facing today to stand up for Jesus.
Speaker 3:Well, that's why your faith can't be based on a set of moral guidelines. It has to be based on an encounter with God himself.
Speaker 3:You know, paul said the kingdom of God is not talk but power. Right, and it all changed for me when I had that encounter with God not, I believe these moral absolutes to be true or whatever, but it came when I had Jesus himself, the Holy Spirit, fall on me and you know, I had a face in the mud experience, and that's when I thought I understood finally what it meant to know God. And so I think that's what needs to happen. And again it gets back to what we were talking about before If I haven't had my face in the mud experience with God, how can I forgive that to someone else? And so I think that's especially I mean, it's always been that way, actually, not especially now but there's no way I'm going to want to know God and Jesus if I don't experience his reality and power in my life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's absolutely the case, and I do think when we recognize in the church or in our own families that that is the reality outside of the church, it should affect our approach. Right, if you don't realize that it's a war outside of your walls, you're not going to prepare your kids in the right way, and I don't mean that in a hostile way or an antagonistic way. You got to prepare them for battle and arm them with us all this knowledge. But the fact is you have to help them understand that the world outside of the church is going to be hostile to the things of God, and it changes your approach. You have to teach them to, first of all, as we continue to say, have that deep, intimate, personal relationship with Jesus. That is above all else.
Speaker 2:But beyond that, I think that's where we have to get people to understand the deeper, why we have to get them to understand who God is, why he's designed the world the way it is. It's not just about kind of rote memorizing these certain things about God, these certain characteristics about God, but having a little bit of that apostle Paul, you know, and in modern times, like a CS Lewis or Tim Keller, kind of a way of grappling with the things that the world doesn't get about God and coming up with with more sophisticated, deeper responses to those questions. I think part of it is we prepare kids with a lot of knowledge, just kind of Bible knowledge or basic sets of things about who God is, but we don't help them understand how to apply that to the real world.
Speaker 3:You have to be involved in the real world in a meaningful way to know how to.
Speaker 2:Again, you can't give what you don't have. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 3:It reminds me of, you know, when I was having this conversation at a university with somebody and they're asking you know, we're in a cafe and they're asking really honest questions and I was just and I think also part of that is not thinking I know everything, right, of course, but I was just trying to listen and carefully and answer the questions as best as that I could. And this lady over here is us and she comes running over to the table and says God said it, I believe it and that settles it, and we're both like uh-huh, you know, and it kind of just like come on, I mean, that's why he was not open to knowing he was when we started to actually could actually talk and we could actually look at things. But I mean we can't have that kind of, you know, a slogan-eering and think that people are going to want to know Jesus. I wouldn't want to know Jesus if I felt like I couldn't really ask questions about anything or I couldn't be honest about, you know, the problems that I'm facing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I just think having an open-eyed, real understanding of the world around us should profoundly impact the way that we are training and equipping our kids right and ourselves. Um, I was having a conversation at our first show here in Argentina with a guy and you know I went out and I could tell his body language. He was a little, a little bit closed off, but we started talking and he had all these very sincere, honest questions. You know, and I found myself in conversations like that where it's obvious the person doesn't want to know they. They're just trying to trip you up, they're just trying to throw things at you but you could just see they're not really interested in having a conversation. That was not the case with this guy who's very sincere, but he just had all these questions.
Speaker 2:You know, how can I believe in God? I can't see him. So then I said well, you know, this world is, Is full of things that you can see, that you can measure with your senses, but there's clearly way more to life than just what you can measure in a test to. You can't measure. You know love and relationships and beauty and justice and ethics and freedom, he said. You know, science can tell you how are here, but it doesn't answer the questions of why we should even care about being here, why we should even be alive. I said your life is more than just what you can measure in a test to. And he's like yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, the fact that he was at a concert, I mean music right, but anyway, so I.
Speaker 2:So I answer that question. Then he's like Well, why is God not more obvious if I want to find him? So then he said well, you know, if you walked out of this club and his name was alexis said, if you walked out of this club and in the sky it said alexis, I am God, believe me. He would go. Ah, all right, all right, god, there you are, I believe you. You know. Begrudgingly you would say well, I guess I have no choice. He's left it beyond doubt. I don't have a choice, I said. But God is doesn't want that. He wants a genuine relationship with you. And so I said I believe that God Reveals himself to those who sincerely seek him, but he reveals himself in a way that allows you to make a free will choice. You can decide yes, god, I, I want to believe you, but he's not going to coerce you.
Speaker 3:Right, well, now it doesn't work anyway. I mean, I've had people, have had amazing but experiences, and I think God is everywhere. I think his evidence is overwhelming.
Speaker 2:Right, but it's overwhelming, but it's not coercively. Evidence force, force, it's not in such a way where you are left with no choice.
Speaker 3:I well, what's that? What's the story? It's in the bible, where Lazarus the the rich man, yeah, is in in hades.
Speaker 2:But I'm that's yeah, yeah, no, rich man is. And he says please go warn my brothers.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and he said. Jesus said even if someone raises from the dead, they would not believe, they will not believe right now.
Speaker 2:I sincerely believe it. It ultimately is about pride and surrender. It's about saying I am not god, you are god. I give up control. I'm. You know I don't. I don't say this with any joy in my heart, but I am thoroughly convinced that god could reveal himself in the flesh to Richard Dawkins and he would still say no.
Speaker 3:Well, and I think he does, though in a in many ways right. I think anyone who is sincerely looking has to acknowledge god right.
Speaker 2:So again, I had this amazing conversation with this guy. You know, shotgun style. He just kept asking me all these hard questions. I felt like god has really equipped me to answer them well and I'm very convinced he's probably never heard those kinds of answers to the questions he had. I I could tell in some ways that he kind of expected them to be unanswerable and that that would just kind of shut down the conversation. And yet he kept going.
Speaker 3:Oh.
Speaker 2:Okay, you know, and it's like I was just removing a little bit of Something that was blocking the cross, and then I was removing a little bit more of something that was blocking the cross, and then I end up praying with him.
Speaker 2:You know, and I always can tell I'm praying for a non-Christian, because they kind of just stare at me, you know they don't close their eyes or bow their hands, or I like that, yeah but, man, his eyes were welling up and he was clearly emotional and I was able to, you know, in the context of the prayer, really say, you know, thank you for this young guy, thank you that you know him, that he's not an accident, that you, when you see him, it's like you're looking at your son and you're so proud of him and you know you want to have a. You know, I was really able to kind of affirm him in the context of this prayer and, man, it was profound. But the fact that God has given me so many experiences outside of the church has helped me know the kind of battle I'm in, which has allowed me to prepare the kinds of weapons I need, which is not, you know, just a self-righteous anger that they are doing immoral things. It's a ability to navigate the difficult questions, the honest, difficult questions that they have, so that they might see the cross right, and so that's really, really important. And so that's.
Speaker 2:That's the idea that the cost is too high. On the flip side of that, the cost is too low. I think what we need to be very careful of in the church is to say, oh, the world doesn't like us, the world is against our stances. Let's just remove all stances. Let's just make it super welcoming and and not stand for anything and not have any ideas of what's true. Not draw any lines in the sand. That's not working either, right, well, I?
Speaker 3:mean the thing that everyone wants, the thing that I wanted and still want, is something worth giving my life for. You know, something worth dying for. And the only Jesus worth following is the Jesus that requires everything from me. In my experience has been the more I present that message to people outside of the church, the more they respond. They're going yes, because everyone has that. They're going. I want something that's worth it, something to believe in. That's that Requires everything from me.
Speaker 3:And when you present Jesus because that's how he is actually he's he's the one who said if you want to follow me, you need to deny yourself. Take up the cross and follow me and the. It's hard to understand the cross these days because it's become a symbol. You know a piece of jewelry that you wear, but that is so intense what Jesus was talking about, the cost. You know it's 100 and it costs you everything, and that's what every human being wants. No other Jesus is going to be someone that I'm going to be able to follow in this way unless he's. He requires everything from me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, obviously it's such a lie that what people are really looking for is just an easy path, right, just something that requires nothing, costs nothing. No, we're attracted to extraordinary, we're, I think that's why you have so many.
Speaker 3:You can have so many giant churches where nothing happens, because it's it's just this will improve your lifestyle or help you be better with your money, or you know it's it's okay Whatever I mean right, but I think today we need the revolution, with a revolutionary Jesus.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's why you see People so attracted to like a Tony Robbins, or why you know self-help books are Always the highest selling, or why, you know, on tiktok and other forms of social media, there's so much interest in these motivational gurus and these people telling you to do more, do better. I think that's why you see Jordan Peterson resonating so much with people where he's not saying you're great, he's saying you're not great, get your life together, do better, you know, because we want to be called to something higher. And so, again, lost in the nuance of that is that the way we react to the world is by our moral stances and by being against everything and by being self-righteous and smug. That's not it. It's 100 grace, but it's also 100 truth. Right, and those are not mutually exclusive. Absolutely, god loves you. You can't earn it. There's nothing you can do to earn it, and yet he doesn't want you to kill yourself with this crap in your life. So deal with it, yeah the wages of sin is death.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and again, for those who are parents, it's so easy to relate to right you Love your kids unconditionally, but you don't. You're not happy about the things that they're doing that are destroying them. You want to see him set free from that stuff. You want to see them live a great life and push themselves and Be extraordinary. So again, these are not paradoxes. The way you don't respond to a world that seems Impossible to reach and is wary of our moral stances is by just neutering the church of all that stuff.
Speaker 2:No no, you, you make it hardcore, you make it worth dying for. That's what people really want.
Speaker 3:What's hardcore is the love, is their sacrifice. That's the what's the hardcore part not taking bigger stands against. No, no, no, no, exactly, you know certain moral issues that obviously are not right. It's no greater love has anyone to then to lay down their life for their friends. Yeah, you know, it's, it's, it's someone hits you on on the cheek gives you know, give them the other cheek. If someone takes your, your, your something from you.
Speaker 3:It's a supernatural love and forgiveness and sacrifice and caring. And you know, when you follow Jesus you laugh the most, you dance the most and you cry the most. You know you take on the the weight of the world in a way that's not human, not which is goes against the selfishness that permeates everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah so starts with me Cost is too high, the cost is too low, and we've kind of weaved in this final point throughout the whole thing, so we don't have to dwell on it too long. But it's the idea that people are leaving the church because it's all talk and no power. You know 1 Corinthians, 2, 3, 3, 5, that we quote a lot my message in preaching we're not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith may not rest. It's an interesting verb, right on human wisdom but on God's power. More than ever we need to experience God's power in our lives, because if it's just a competing ideology, it will not last.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. What's the point? More than ever, I personally need God's power in my life, and if you want to know how to talk to other people, think about what you need, what you personally need from God, and that's just going to spill out to everyone around you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think it has to be an ongoing thing. This is why we go back to that first point of make it your own. You know it starts with you, right? I don't think experiencing God's power is just about having these certain moments every once in a while, or even once, but it's an ongoing desire to see God's power working through you, right? It's a continuation, and I don't think you can rest on last year's experience of God's power. I mean, I think there's, as we said in other places in this podcast, there's so much evidence that you can experience God's power and still walk away. So it's not just about an experience per se, about, rather than a presence.
Speaker 3:It's an ongoing presence, it's a daily thing that I need.
Speaker 2:And I even wonder and I'm kind of thinking out loud here, but I even wonder if it's less about what we feel than we even realize. Does that make sense? It's like we think what that means is I see God do something miraculous and that gives me the confidence to continue to believe. I don't know if that's what it is. I think it's God's power, his supernatural power, operating in you, and that's something that I think is less felt than lived. In other words, I'm convinced that if I, with a sincere heart, am committing myself to seeking Him on a daily basis, god's power is working in me.
Speaker 3:Sometimes I feel it.
Speaker 2:Most of the time I don't, but I really can believe in confidence that God is in me, working through that. He's working in me, he's working through my life, he's working in the lives of those around me. And so, when you say that it's less about, we shouldn't allow our emotions to be the gauge as to whether God's power is at work.
Speaker 3:Faith is a decision rather than an emotion, and if your faith is only emotional, you'll never do anything. Because my emotions can be determined by how much coffee I've had, by how much sleep I've had. A lot of different things affect my emotions, but real faith is a decision. I have decided to follow Jesus and then it's based on action. Like in James, it says faith without works is dead. So it's not just an acknowledgement of a certain thing. It involves change, decision, and when I have an act of faith then I start to experience what I read about in the book of Acts. Then I start to experience wow, I understand now why Jesus is worth everything. But it's by having an act of faith that's based on a decision, not just acknowledging, but there's action apart of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the whole emotions thing is interesting to me because it's like I'm at one of these shows and I'm out there and I'm talking to these guys and they didn't really see the show or truly understand it. So I was able to re-explain the gospel to them in a very clear way. I said do you want to pray with me that you can receive this gift that I've received? And they said, yeah, so then we're praying to receive Jesus, and I didn't necessarily feel something, you know, like some feeling, but that is a demonstration of God's power, that's God's power at work. That only can be explained by God's power, and so I don't know.
Speaker 2:I just think it's an interesting thing to dwell on. That it's not about how you feel. It's something so much more profound than that, so much more omnipresent than that. It's derived from pursuit of intimacy with Jesus on a daily basis and then a trust that he is working in power through you and that your faith rests on that. That's cool. So, all right. Well, from a hut in Buenos Aires, that's right. I am David, he's been, or the other way around.
Speaker 3:You decide, you're Ben, you're Ben.
Speaker 2:Oh, what's funny is yesterday, like I was at the show and everyone I don't even know how they knew our names, but everyone kept saying David, david, picture, picture, David, and a couple of times I corrected them and then I thought I'll forget it.
Speaker 3:Really, I'll be, david, I'll be whoever you need me to be. There's a part of the show where you said if you have a, what was it? If you have a light with a camera on it?
Speaker 2:If you have a light with a phone on it or if you have a. But you also said no, I didn't. So great to be here, la Nuche.
Speaker 3:I did not. And it is La Nuche? No, it's not.
Speaker 2:All right, that's it. We're going to go. We love you. Leave us a rating and or a review. We need to.
Speaker 3:We need some ratings, some reviews, we need the three Rs and we will. We will acknowledge you, we will salute you.
Speaker 2:Yep, he's right. All right, we're going to go before anything more incriminating comes out of our mouths. We love you. Talk to you next time, peace.