WEBVTT 00:00:37.040 --> 00:00:39.520 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. 00:00:39.520 --> 00:00:40.720 I am Corey J. 00:00:40.720 --> 00:00:41.840 Mahler. And 00:00:41.840 --> 00:00:44.800 I'm still woe. 00:00:44.800 --> 00:00:49.520 On today's Stone Choir, we're going to be discussing psychologizing sin. 00:00:49.520 --> 00:00:53.600 We're going to focus mostly on addiction today, which is a subject 00:00:53.600 --> 00:00:55.920 that was recommended by a listener. 00:00:55.920 --> 00:00:59.120 Before we begin, a warning to parents, we'll definitely be covering some 00:00:59.120 --> 00:01:03.040 adult issues that would be unsuitable for younger children, so you have 00:01:03.040 --> 00:01:06.960 to decide whether this is something you want your kids to hear. 00:01:06.960 --> 00:01:09.200 We know a lot of parents listen with their kids and that's 00:01:09.200 --> 00:01:12.320 awesome, but some of this is definitely gonna be a bit too 00:01:12.320 --> 00:01:14.480 old for certain younger people. 00:01:14.480 --> 00:01:18.320 The reason that this subject resonated with us when it was recommended 00:01:18.400 --> 00:01:23.280 is that the problem of addiction, which is itself to some degree 00:01:23.440 --> 00:01:29.120 a psychological and a medical evaluation of was effectively sin, you know 00:01:29.360 --> 00:01:32.240 It kind of goes right down the middle of a number of 00:01:32.240 --> 00:01:36.720 different problems that we have as Christians living in the world talking 00:01:36.720 --> 00:01:38.320 about everything. 00:01:38.320 --> 00:01:43.120 On one hand, there is the overwhelming pattern in modern life, and 00:01:43.120 --> 00:01:47.040 I'm guilty of it too, of using way too much psychological talk 00:01:47.200 --> 00:01:51.840 to speak like a psychologist when describing other people's behavior, you know, 00:01:51.840 --> 00:01:55.920 to attribute their actions or their motivations, is that you can see 00:01:55.920 --> 00:02:00.560 inside their psyche, which is another psychological term or you know, philosophical 00:02:00.560 --> 00:02:03.840 term, and you know what they're doing because you know something about 00:02:03.840 --> 00:02:06.160 them that maybe they don't even know about themselves. 00:02:06.160 --> 00:02:10.240 And while that's possible to some extent for some people, in general 00:02:10.320 --> 00:02:13.680 it's a bad habit because you're not taking things at face value 00:02:13.680 --> 00:02:15.920 that if you just did you would have a better understanding than 00:02:15.920 --> 00:02:18.320 if you tried to read into it like crazy. 00:02:18.320 --> 00:02:23.520 And so there is this circumstance where the general discourse just average 00:02:23.520 --> 00:02:26.800 people are talking like they're psychologists or psychiatrists. 00:02:26.800 --> 00:02:29.680 And it generates a lot of noise that just leads to silly 00:02:29.680 --> 00:02:32.720 conclusions. It ends up making it in a lot of cases more 00:02:32.720 --> 00:02:35.680 difficult to actually talk about what's going on. 00:02:35.680 --> 00:02:39.600 So one part of this, the minor part is maybe talk like 00:02:39.600 --> 00:02:42.400 that less often, try to break yourself of the habit of thinking 00:02:42.400 --> 00:02:44.720 about it, things like that. 00:02:44.720 --> 00:02:51.920 Because psychological terms, the notion of inner motivations and processes and 00:02:52.080 --> 00:02:55.760 you know, hormones, you know, things like dopamine that we'll talk about 00:02:55.760 --> 00:02:58.960 in a little bit, in the sense that all these things are 00:02:59.440 --> 00:03:02.400 describing problems, they're perfectly fine. 00:03:02.400 --> 00:03:06.800 In essence, psychology originally was a science. 00:03:06.800 --> 00:03:11.520 It's a soft science, like economics, so it's describing reality, but it's 00:03:11.520 --> 00:03:13.680 describing a fuzzy reality. 00:03:13.680 --> 00:03:15.920 It's not like math. 00:03:15.920 --> 00:03:18.480 It's not something that has absolutes. 00:03:18.480 --> 00:03:21.040 There's things in psychology where it's, you know, it could go one 00:03:21.040 --> 00:03:21.760 way or the other. 00:03:21.760 --> 00:03:24.000 You can try to describe something, but you're still not gonna be 00:03:24.080 --> 00:03:25.760 100%. That's perfectly fine. 00:03:25.760 --> 00:03:26.480 It's working. 00:03:26.640 --> 00:03:28.400 That's why it's called a soft science. 00:03:28.400 --> 00:03:33.040 But fundamentally, it's describing how people behave, how people think, how we 00:03:33.040 --> 00:03:36.800 feel, how we operate, what motivates us, what causes us to act 00:03:36.800 --> 00:03:38.240 or not to act, everything. 00:03:38.240 --> 00:03:41.280 Everything about the human life from the moment you get out of 00:03:41.280 --> 00:03:44.720 bed until you go back to bed, like it's all of it 00:03:44.720 --> 00:03:49.760 will fall to some extent under the lens of psychological evaluation, just 00:03:49.760 --> 00:03:50.960 in terms of trying to understand. 00:03:50.960 --> 00:03:53.040 Like you don't ever have to think about any of this stuff 00:03:53.040 --> 00:03:55.200 and you can be a perfectly healthy person. 00:03:55.200 --> 00:03:57.520 And this is one of the reasons that it really struck me 00:03:57.520 --> 00:04:01.440 when the subject was raised is that I realized that 200 years 00:04:01.440 --> 00:04:04.080 ago, literally no one talked this way because none of the stuff 00:04:04.080 --> 00:04:05.680 had been invented yet. 00:04:05.680 --> 00:04:07.920 And so that bothers me kind of on principle. 00:04:07.920 --> 00:04:11.520 Like, how did Christians, how did anyone talk about being a human 00:04:11.760 --> 00:04:16.000 before you know Jewish psychology and psychiatry was invented to tell us 00:04:16.000 --> 00:04:19.680 how we basically operate like automatons, which is another thing we'll get 00:04:19.680 --> 00:04:20.560 into later. 00:04:20.560 --> 00:04:21.840 And so it kind of bugged me. 00:04:21.840 --> 00:04:25.040 I want to sort of find a way of talking about these 00:04:25.040 --> 00:04:28.960 things that isn't completely bound up in this modern thing, just because 00:04:29.280 --> 00:04:30.800 people worked fine before. 00:04:30.800 --> 00:04:33.760 Like we had all these problems, we just didn't necessarily have words 00:04:33.760 --> 00:04:34.240 for 'em. 00:04:34.240 --> 00:04:39.200 You know, so before clinical depression existed, people were just melancholy. 00:04:39.200 --> 00:04:41.520 It was describing basically the same thing. 00:04:41.520 --> 00:04:44.160 And it was with the same care in some cases, but like 00:04:44.240 --> 00:04:45.600 that guy's just Melancock. 00:04:45.600 --> 00:04:46.880 You know, typically as a girl. 00:04:46.880 --> 00:04:50.320 That's more of a feminine thing, but it was understood that these 00:04:50.320 --> 00:04:55.040 things existed going back to antiquity and psychology came along and sort 00:04:55.040 --> 00:04:57.760 of systematized some of it, which is valuable. 00:04:57.760 --> 00:05:04.080 The problem is that because the origins of psychology and then psychiatry 00:05:04.400 --> 00:05:11.280 are almost exclusively atheistic and largely Jewish in origin, they're coming at 00:05:11.280 --> 00:05:13.920 all these problems from the perspective that there is no God. 00:05:13.920 --> 00:05:16.880 You know, we are evolved from monkeys to we're just these me 00:05:17.120 --> 00:05:20.160 robots that are doing stuff and we have programming and we have 00:05:20.160 --> 00:05:23.760 these habits as we have brains and we have all these things 00:05:23.760 --> 00:05:25.520 that keep us going. 00:05:25.520 --> 00:05:30.800 And so for the atheist who is approaching these things scientifically, absent 00:05:31.120 --> 00:05:34.880 God, everything becomes mechanistic to a degree. 00:05:34.880 --> 00:05:39.040 And that's where the real problem comes in with this approach to 00:05:39.200 --> 00:05:41.840 evaluating life. 00:05:41.840 --> 00:05:45.920 As soon as you shift from the descriptive form of, okay, well, 00:05:45.920 --> 00:05:49.040 you know, someone had something bad happen, and so they tend to 00:05:49.040 --> 00:05:50.000 be sensitive about it. 00:05:50.240 --> 00:05:51.760 That's descriptive. 00:05:51.760 --> 00:05:55.360 When it becomes explanatory and you try to reach in deeper and 00:05:55.360 --> 00:05:59.600 attribute to them that, you know, this person is permanently damaged, something 00:05:59.600 --> 00:06:03.440 about them has changed forever and nothing can ever fix it, that's 00:06:03.440 --> 00:06:05.200 just who they are now. 00:06:05.200 --> 00:06:09.520 As soon as it is elevated to identity and to have explanatory 00:06:09.520 --> 00:06:15.440 power, you've opened the door to excluding morality from the conversation. 00:06:15.440 --> 00:06:19.520 Because if someone was okay and then something bad happened to them 00:06:19.600 --> 00:06:23.280 and they had some change, you know, psychological change, and it's a 00:06:23.280 --> 00:06:25.680 permanent change or it's a change you want to deal with, but 00:06:25.680 --> 00:06:28.320 they're kind of stuck with it, and maybe they struggle against it. 00:06:28.320 --> 00:06:31.840 They don't want to do it, all that conversation about someone who's 00:06:31.840 --> 00:06:36.400 struggling with something is going to be in terms of the explanation 00:06:36.400 --> 00:06:39.440 for why they're doing it without any regard to the morality. 00:06:39.440 --> 00:06:41.520 And that's why this is a Christian concern. 00:06:41.520 --> 00:06:45.760 Because the outer limit of this conversation, the key part to remember 00:06:45.760 --> 00:06:51.200 is that all human action is either godly or it's sinful. 00:06:51.200 --> 00:06:52.560 Those are the only two options. 00:06:52.560 --> 00:06:56.640 That's the only binary that for Christians it should be our principal 00:06:56.640 --> 00:06:58.320 focus when we're looking at things. 00:06:58.320 --> 00:07:00.240 Everything should be filtered through that lens. 00:07:00.240 --> 00:07:03.280 Is what I'm doing godly or is it sinful? 00:07:03.280 --> 00:07:06.400 And then working back from there, if you find that someone is 00:07:06.400 --> 00:07:09.360 giving you an excuse, like you're doing this thing, you know, you're 00:07:09.280 --> 00:07:14.480 addicted to something, but it's not really your fault because of biology, 00:07:14.480 --> 00:07:16.160 because of trauma. 00:07:16.160 --> 00:07:19.840 The because of is a license to then sin. 00:07:20.080 --> 00:07:21.120 Say, well, it's not really sin. 00:07:21.120 --> 00:07:22.240 That person, they're stuck with it. 00:07:22.240 --> 00:07:23.520 They're a victim. 00:07:23.520 --> 00:07:25.200 No, it's still sin. 00:07:25.200 --> 00:07:27.440 It's just a complicated problem. 00:07:27.440 --> 00:07:31.840 As we've said in many past episodes, one of the chief dangers 00:07:31.840 --> 00:07:34.720 of sin itself is that it breaks things to the point that 00:07:34.720 --> 00:07:36.880 it can't necessarily all be fixed. 00:07:36.880 --> 00:07:41.040 You can choose or can have things done to you that will 00:07:41.040 --> 00:07:43.600 permanently alter the trajectory of your life. 00:07:43.600 --> 00:07:46.640 And if it's a sin and you realize it and you repent 00:07:46.720 --> 00:07:49.520 and you're forgiven for it, and you can step away as much 00:07:49.520 --> 00:07:53.760 as possible from whatever evil you were doing, you may still have 00:07:53.760 --> 00:07:55.280 permanent consequences. 00:07:55.280 --> 00:07:59.280 The silly example, if you chop off your arm and then you 00:07:59.280 --> 00:08:02.640 repent of defiling your body, your arm's not going to grow back. 00:08:02.640 --> 00:08:06.080 God will forgive you for harming yourself, but you don't get a 00:08:06.080 --> 00:08:06.880 new arm. 00:08:06.880 --> 00:08:08.960 You're stuck with what you've done. 00:08:08.960 --> 00:08:13.360 So there are certain aspects of this stuff that psychology will say, 00:08:13.360 --> 00:08:15.440 okay, well, this has changed and we just have to sort of 00:08:15.440 --> 00:08:20.400 deal with the outcomes, but they omit deliberately, because again, this is 00:08:20.400 --> 00:08:24.400 an atheistic science in some regards, they will omit that God is 00:08:24.400 --> 00:08:27.200 present and therefore morality never comes into it. 00:08:27.200 --> 00:08:28.560 And that's a real danger. 00:08:28.560 --> 00:08:31.920 It's not so much of people talking psychological terms as annoying, although 00:08:31.920 --> 00:08:35.360 it kind of is, and you end up sounding silly and not 00:08:35.360 --> 00:08:37.280 making a lot of sense most of the time. 00:08:37.280 --> 00:08:40.480 But But the more we get into that habit, and really a 00:08:40.480 --> 00:08:44.560 lot of this episode is about habits, the harder it is to 00:08:44.560 --> 00:08:47.200 then bring morality back into the conversation. 00:08:47.200 --> 00:08:50.320 Because if it's all just habitual, if you just do this stuff 00:08:50.320 --> 00:08:54.240 because of trauma or because of biology or addiction or whatever, if 00:08:54.240 --> 00:08:57.280 you're a victim, if you're down in it and you can't help 00:08:57.280 --> 00:08:59.120 yourself, then you're absolved. 00:08:59.120 --> 00:09:02.400 You don't need God to forgive you because you're act you're the 00:09:02.400 --> 00:09:04.880 victim. You're not the actor doing bad things. 00:09:05.280 --> 00:09:08.320 you're the victim of some bad thing just having floated from the 00:09:08.320 --> 00:09:11.680 sky. And that's the true danger, is that people will get into 00:09:11.680 --> 00:09:17.120 a state of habitual sin and then pretend that victimhood is an 00:09:17.120 --> 00:09:19.600 excuse from moral culpability. 00:09:19.600 --> 00:09:22.480 And as Christians, we have to draw the line there. 00:09:22.480 --> 00:09:27.440 So we're taking this subject from the approach of morality always has 00:09:27.440 --> 00:09:28.240 to be a factor. 00:09:28.480 --> 00:09:32.880 And because it is necessary as Christians to be sympathetic to the 00:09:32.880 --> 00:09:37.040 fact that these bad things do happen to people, sometimes, you know, 00:09:37.040 --> 00:09:40.800 some people are subjected to things that they had no intention of 00:09:40.800 --> 00:09:44.880 being participants in and it changes them in ways that then lead 00:09:44.880 --> 00:09:47.200 to sin in some portion of their life. 00:09:47.200 --> 00:09:48.640 That actually happens. 00:09:48.640 --> 00:09:51.600 It does not excuse the sin that flows from it, but it 00:09:51.600 --> 00:09:55.520 does explain how they got into that position, why they're doing this 00:09:55.520 --> 00:09:57.200 instead of something else. 00:09:57.200 --> 00:10:00.880 And so while I don't want to encourage people to be more 00:10:01.440 --> 00:10:05.040 have a greater affinity for this psychologizing or thinking about things in 00:10:05.200 --> 00:10:09.200 psychological terms, and there's kind of two different things, but it's psychologizing 00:10:09.280 --> 00:10:11.760 is when you know armture guys like me. 00:10:11.760 --> 00:10:14.640 I'm not trained and I don't care, but sometimes I do apply 00:10:14.640 --> 00:10:17.280 the principles that I think I understand. 00:10:17.280 --> 00:10:18.240 That's really the problem. 00:10:18.240 --> 00:10:21.520 When people think they understand something they don't, you start saying idiotic 00:10:21.520 --> 00:10:23.120 things that don't really apply. 00:10:23.120 --> 00:10:25.360 So it's a trap to get into that. 00:10:25.360 --> 00:10:29.440 But more importantly, you start drawing lines that make it impossible to 00:10:29.440 --> 00:10:33.360 talk like a Christian, which again, 200 years ago, nobody talked like 00:10:33.360 --> 00:10:37.280 this. We would talk about things in different terms, even though we 00:10:37.280 --> 00:10:39.520 were talking about the same things. 00:10:39.520 --> 00:10:44.160 But the modern approach of saying, okay, I now know the cause, 00:10:44.160 --> 00:10:47.600 I have the explanation for why you're doing this, then it becomes 00:10:47.600 --> 00:10:51.440 a disease or it becomes a disorder or becomes something you're a 00:10:51.440 --> 00:10:52.320 victim of. 00:10:52.320 --> 00:10:55.920 And so you don't have to you know, changing is maybe going 00:10:55.920 --> 00:10:57.040 to be good for you. 00:10:57.040 --> 00:10:59.600 It's gonna be a positive outcome, but it's not a question of 00:10:59.600 --> 00:11:00.880 you stopping sinning. 00:11:00.880 --> 00:11:02.800 And that's really the crucial thing. 00:11:02.800 --> 00:11:06.400 We have to understand that as Christians, we can't save ourselves. 00:11:06.560 --> 00:11:09.760 Again, and we always say this because we're frequently accused of it. 00:11:09.760 --> 00:11:11.280 And it's so absurd. 00:11:11.280 --> 00:11:15.360 We will never say stop sinning and obey God so that you 00:11:15.360 --> 00:11:16.720 can be saved. 00:11:16.720 --> 00:11:19.360 We say stop sinning as much as you can and obey God 00:11:19.360 --> 00:11:20.480 because you were saved. 00:11:20.480 --> 00:11:22.000 God has done these things for you. 00:11:22.000 --> 00:11:24.320 He's forgiven all these terrible sins. 00:11:24.320 --> 00:11:28.080 When you know that as a Christian, the Christian reaction is to 00:11:28.080 --> 00:11:30.640 say, Hey, Lord have mercy and to fall into the arms of 00:11:30.640 --> 00:11:35.280 the gospel and to love the law, to say, okay, the God 00:11:35.280 --> 00:11:39.520 who has created me, who's created a world where when I sin, 00:11:39.520 --> 00:11:43.040 when I do these harmful things, everything gets worse. 00:11:43.040 --> 00:11:44.560 I want to live a better life. 00:11:44.560 --> 00:11:46.960 I want to live a life without these sins. 00:11:46.960 --> 00:11:49.600 And God's word tells me how to do it. 00:11:49.600 --> 00:11:53.040 So when we talk about behave, stop sinning all the stuff, you 00:11:53.040 --> 00:11:55.520 can't possibly save yourself by doing that. 00:11:55.520 --> 00:11:58.720 But because you are saved, because God loves you, he has told 00:11:58.720 --> 00:12:02.960 you both in your heart and in creation and in scripture, this 00:12:02.960 --> 00:12:05.440 is harming you or this is good for you. 00:12:05.440 --> 00:12:07.920 And as Christians, we're supposed to be there for each other to 00:12:07.920 --> 00:12:10.080 encourage each other and to help each other. 00:12:10.080 --> 00:12:13.280 Because again, some of these things, when people get into these holes, 00:12:13.280 --> 00:12:17.120 when they get into these situations, whether through their own sin or 00:12:17.120 --> 00:12:21.280 through the sin of others, it takes people helping. 00:12:21.280 --> 00:12:24.240 It actually takes someone else intervening. 00:12:24.240 --> 00:12:27.760 And that should be the foremost duty of a Christian to be 00:12:27.760 --> 00:12:29.680 able to understand what's actually going on 00:12:30.800 --> 00:12:34.400 so that we treat it as though there's sin occurring and the 00:12:34.400 --> 00:12:38.400 fact that there's harm is the proof that there's sin, but you 00:12:38.400 --> 00:12:40.960 still have to deal with what's right in front of you. 00:12:40.960 --> 00:12:44.240 And that may mean that you can't just lecture someone morally. 00:12:44.240 --> 00:12:45.440 You may have to help them. 00:12:45.440 --> 00:12:49.760 You may have to do something that is inconvenient to you so 00:12:49.760 --> 00:12:53.200 that they can step away from whatever's hurting them. 00:12:53.200 --> 00:12:57.520 And part of that is understanding that while repentance is a decision 00:12:57.520 --> 00:13:01.680 to say I turn away from my own evil in my past, 00:13:01.680 --> 00:13:03.840 it's also going to be a process. 00:13:03.840 --> 00:13:07.040 There will be things where you decide I'm gonna stop doing this, 00:13:07.040 --> 00:13:09.520 and particularly in the cases of things that we'd now describe as 00:13:09.520 --> 00:13:14.560 addiction, there's a pattern, and breaking that pattern is usually not going 00:13:14.560 --> 00:13:16.160 to be instantaneous. 00:13:16.160 --> 00:13:19.840 In case of some addictions, chemical addictions, it can actually kill you 00:13:19.840 --> 00:13:22.480 if you quit certain drugs cold turkey. 00:13:22.480 --> 00:13:25.520 So even in the act of repenting and saying, I turn away 00:13:25.520 --> 00:13:28.000 from this evil, I want to stop this sin. 00:13:28.000 --> 00:13:30.560 You know, in the case of someone taking methadone to get off 00:13:30.560 --> 00:13:33.200 heroin, you're still taking drugs. 00:13:33.200 --> 00:13:37.040 But you're not any longer taking drugs to get high. 00:13:37.040 --> 00:13:39.680 You're taking drugs to stop getting high. 00:13:39.680 --> 00:13:43.520 And so even though the behavior is similar in one small sense, 00:13:43.520 --> 00:13:45.440 you were no longer participating in sin. 00:13:45.440 --> 00:13:47.280 You're actively fleeing from it. 00:13:47.280 --> 00:13:51.520 In other cases, you slip back into something and do something you 00:13:51.520 --> 00:13:52.880 wanted to stop. 00:13:52.880 --> 00:13:56.720 For Christians to understand these things in spiritual terms and in Christian 00:13:56.720 --> 00:13:59.600 terms and in psychological terms is very helpful. 00:13:59.600 --> 00:14:03.440 It's actually beneficial, which is why I think that not disregarding the 00:14:03.440 --> 00:14:06.720 science of it is so crucial is that to help someone who's 00:14:06.720 --> 00:14:10.240 in trouble is you being God's hand in their life. 00:14:10.240 --> 00:14:12.560 And that's going to take more than just lecturing them. 00:14:12.560 --> 00:14:16.160 It's going to take actually understanding keeping are some of the mechanisms, 00:14:16.160 --> 00:14:19.920 here are some of the underlying reasons, but it doesn't explain to 00:14:19.920 --> 00:14:22.480 the extent that well this guy's just stuck being a sinner, he 00:14:22.480 --> 00:14:23.760 can never stop doing that. 00:14:23.760 --> 00:14:25.280 That's not Christian. 00:14:25.280 --> 00:14:26.560 It may be hard. 00:14:26.560 --> 00:14:30.560 It will absolutely require God's support and help in his prayer and 00:14:30.560 --> 00:14:32.480 your prayer as a friend. 00:14:32.480 --> 00:14:37.200 But it requires you to acknowledge that the more we sin in 00:14:37.200 --> 00:14:39.840 our lives, the more complicated we make things, and often 00:14:40.800 --> 00:14:43.200 the more difficult it is just unwind it. 00:14:43.200 --> 00:14:46.000 Sometimes repentance is not a single step. 00:14:46.000 --> 00:14:49.040 You can easily get so deep into something that you have to 00:14:49.040 --> 00:14:51.200 unravel a whole bunch of stuff. 00:14:51.200 --> 00:14:53.600 And other episodes we've talked about how that's the case with all 00:14:53.600 --> 00:14:55.040 of our civilization. 00:14:55.040 --> 00:14:58.080 We could solve any one of these problems, and there are going 00:14:58.080 --> 00:15:01.840 to be thirty more equally dire problems that also have to be 00:15:01.840 --> 00:15:04.880 solved. It is not an excuse not to solve any of 'em. 00:15:04.880 --> 00:15:08.960 It's an acknowledgement that when a civilization goes off the rails, when 00:15:08.960 --> 00:15:13.760 an individual's life goes off the rails through sin, the accumulated harm 00:15:13.760 --> 00:15:16.800 from that takes a while to fix. 00:15:16.800 --> 00:15:20.720 And as Christians, we can never say, you know, go and sin 00:15:20.720 --> 00:15:24.000 no more, you know, be fed and warm and just be happy. 00:15:24.000 --> 00:15:26.240 Like, no, it's you're gonna struggle. 00:15:26.240 --> 00:15:29.520 And as Christians, we have to acknowledge that so we can actually 00:15:29.520 --> 00:15:30.400 help each 00:15:30.400 --> 00:15:31.920 other. In 00:15:31.920 --> 00:15:36.960 a number of previous episodes, the issue of the nature of man 00:15:36.960 --> 00:15:42.480 with regard to division into parts has come up, and subsequent to 00:15:42.480 --> 00:15:45.440 those discussions, I've had a number of people ask me a fair 00:15:45.440 --> 00:15:49.520 number at this point, to expand on why I believe man is 00:15:49.520 --> 00:15:53.760 tripartite instead of simply bipartite, which is to say man has three 00:15:53.760 --> 00:15:56.640 parts instead of just two. 00:15:56.640 --> 00:16:01.840 Because in philosophy you typically have historical discussions and still ongoing today 00:16:02.320 --> 00:16:06.800 regarding the division of man into body and mind usually, and then 00:16:06.800 --> 00:16:10.160 in theology you usually have discussions of the division of man into 00:16:10.160 --> 00:16:10.960 body and soul. 00:16:13.120 --> 00:16:16.480 I believe that there are three parts to man. 00:16:16.480 --> 00:16:19.040 Now I'm not saying you necessarily have to believe this. 00:16:19.040 --> 00:16:21.360 I'm saying I believe it is correct and I believe it is 00:16:21.360 --> 00:16:23.280 a useful way to look at man. 00:16:23.280 --> 00:16:25.520 But you are not bound to believe this. 00:16:25.520 --> 00:16:28.800 It is not sin to disagree with me on this point. 00:16:28.800 --> 00:16:34.400 And so man is body, mind, and soul. 00:16:34.400 --> 00:16:39.280 Sometimes, historically, and in some contexts, you'll see someone say spirit instead 00:16:39.280 --> 00:16:40.160 of soul. 00:16:40.160 --> 00:16:44.480 I typically try to avoid that one because some people use spirit 00:16:44.480 --> 00:16:47.680 to mean mind, and some people use spirit to mean soul, so 00:16:47.680 --> 00:16:49.200 that one can be a little confusing. 00:16:49.280 --> 00:16:52.800 Twy I prefer to say body, mind, and soul. 00:16:52.800 --> 00:16:56.400 The problem that we have and that we're discussing in this episode 00:16:56.640 --> 00:17:02.400 is partly that scientists, atheistic scientists, I mean when I say that, 00:17:02.400 --> 00:17:06.560 and others in some of these fields focus only on the body 00:17:06.560 --> 00:17:07.840 and the mind. 00:17:07.840 --> 00:17:11.280 Now setting aside the fact that there's a very real problem for 00:17:11.280 --> 00:17:13.600 them of what is the mind? 00:17:13.600 --> 00:17:18.320 How do you have this immaterial thing in a purely materialistic universe? 00:17:18.320 --> 00:17:22.000 But they focus solely on those things, and so they wind up 00:17:22.000 --> 00:17:27.840 looking at man as being mechanistic, as being essentially an automaton, a 00:17:27.840 --> 00:17:32.720 robot. On the other hand, you have Christians who will look at 00:17:32.720 --> 00:17:36.720 these things and they typically won't bother with the tripartite division so 00:17:36.720 --> 00:17:39.760 they'll focus completely on the soul. 00:17:39.760 --> 00:17:44.400 Well, if you do that, you've effectively become a Gnostic. 00:17:44.400 --> 00:17:47.840 Because what you're doing is you're denying the reality of the flesh. 00:17:47.840 --> 00:17:51.520 If you don't look at the fact that man has these different 00:17:51.520 --> 00:17:54.800 parts, you are going to approach these things in a way that 00:17:54.800 --> 00:17:57.280 is not going to be beneficial. 00:17:57.280 --> 00:18:02.160 Because with regard to the atheist, he is going to ignore the 00:18:02.160 --> 00:18:03.840 spiritual aspect. 00:18:03.840 --> 00:18:06.160 He's going to ignore these things are sins. 00:18:06.160 --> 00:18:09.520 He's going to ignore why these things are even occurring. 00:18:09.520 --> 00:18:13.360 The fact that we're fallen, the fact that we have these proclivities, 00:18:13.360 --> 00:18:18.880 the fact that original sin gives us this tendency toward these behaviors. 00:18:18.880 --> 00:18:21.920 And on the other hand, if you're looking at the Christian side 00:18:21.920 --> 00:18:25.600 of things, they're going to ignore that many of these also have 00:18:25.600 --> 00:18:27.920 biological foundations. 00:18:27.920 --> 00:18:31.600 There are parts of our biology that feed into many of these 00:18:31.600 --> 00:18:38.640 problems. If you don't look at man as being this Gestalt, something 00:18:38.640 --> 00:18:41.760 that is greater than the sum of its parts, and then looking 00:18:41.760 --> 00:18:45.840 at the parts themselves, you are going to miss something, inevitably you 00:18:45.840 --> 00:18:47.680 are going to miss something. 00:18:48.400 --> 00:18:52.560 And so essentially, the breakdown is that the body is your biology, 00:18:52.560 --> 00:18:56.400 and so there are biological bases for some of these things. 00:18:56.400 --> 00:18:57.680 For instance, addiction. 00:18:57.680 --> 00:19:02.080 If you are addicted to alcohol, you have created in your biology 00:19:02.960 --> 00:19:04.960 an addiction to ethanol. 00:19:04.960 --> 00:19:07.040 And in fact that is one of the addictions that if you 00:19:07.040 --> 00:19:09.280 quit cold turkey it will kill you. 00:19:09.280 --> 00:19:12.320 In many cases, won't always kill you. 00:19:12.320 --> 00:19:15.600 But that's not how you quit using alcohol. 00:19:15.600 --> 00:19:18.400 You have to wean yourself off of that because if you go 00:19:18.560 --> 00:19:22.960 cold turkey, you are probably going to induce an emergency with regard 00:19:22.960 --> 00:19:28.000 to your biology than there is, with regard to the mind, the 00:19:28.000 --> 00:19:30.960 second part of man, psychology. 00:19:30.960 --> 00:19:37.120 Psychology primarily attempts to address how the mind works, what the mind 00:19:37.120 --> 00:19:41.600 does, how it interacts with the biology, because of course those two 00:19:41.600 --> 00:19:43.280 are very closely linked. 00:19:43.280 --> 00:19:47.600 Your biology and your mind are incredibly closely linked to the point 00:19:47.600 --> 00:19:50.240 where we almost can't disentangle the two. 00:19:50.240 --> 00:19:52.480 But of course the same can be said with regard to the 00:19:52.480 --> 00:19:56.480 mind and the soul, which I'll get to in a minute. 00:19:56.480 --> 00:20:02.000 But certain parts, certain subsets of the field of psychology deal in 00:20:02.000 --> 00:20:05.840 large part with the biological seat of the mind, which is the 00:20:05.840 --> 00:20:07.920 brain, which is your neurochemistry. 00:20:07.920 --> 00:20:10.400 Because we know there are certain things we can do to the 00:20:10.400 --> 00:20:15.520 brain that change not necessarily the mind itself, but how the mind 00:20:15.520 --> 00:20:19.040 is able to express itself in reality. 00:20:19.040 --> 00:20:22.560 And so if certain parts of the brain are damaged, it can 00:20:22.560 --> 00:20:25.600 change your behavior, it can change your personality. 00:20:25.600 --> 00:20:28.720 If certain parts of the brain are destroyed, it can change your 00:20:28.720 --> 00:20:33.280 capabilities at least At least until neuroplasticity allows the brain to compensate 00:20:33.280 --> 00:20:36.560 for that to some degree, not perfectly, of course, it's never good 00:20:36.560 --> 00:20:39.680 to lose any portion of your brain. 00:20:39.680 --> 00:20:43.360 But the mind is a part of who and what you are, 00:20:43.360 --> 00:20:44.080 and so it is necessary 00:20:44.960 --> 00:20:49.440 to have some field, some undertaking to understand that, and we call 00:20:49.440 --> 00:20:50.800 that psychology. 00:20:50.800 --> 00:20:53.120 That is the study of the mind. 00:20:53.120 --> 00:20:58.000 Yes, of course, again, to repeat myself and to emphasize it, today 00:20:58.000 --> 00:21:02.800 we have a lot of study into the neurochemical processes, into the 00:21:02.800 --> 00:21:08.320 actual biological foundation of these things, within the field of psychology Part 00:21:08.320 --> 00:21:10.640 of that is just because now we have the machinery and things 00:21:10.640 --> 00:21:12.320 where we can actually test these things. 00:21:12.320 --> 00:21:16.080 We didn't have functional MRIs in years past. 00:21:16.080 --> 00:21:19.280 Now we can actually look into the brain and see what it's 00:21:19.280 --> 00:21:24.160 doing, particularly when you are, say, formulating certain thoughts or you were 00:21:24.160 --> 00:21:29.840 viewing certain stimuli, that's very useful to the field of psychology. 00:21:29.840 --> 00:21:34.000 And then third, the third part of man, we have the soul. 00:21:34.000 --> 00:21:36.720 Well, that's religion, that's Christianity. 00:21:36.720 --> 00:21:40.080 You need that as well to address these problems. 00:21:40.080 --> 00:21:44.480 Because if you simply address man as being biology and then somehow 00:21:44.480 --> 00:21:49.840 that produces a mind, again ignoring the problem of making that leap. 00:21:49.840 --> 00:21:52.000 You haven't looked at the totality. 00:21:52.000 --> 00:21:56.960 You haven't looked at the whole of the situation because why do 00:21:56.960 --> 00:21:58.560 we do these things? 00:21:58.560 --> 00:22:00.960 Why do we have these proclivities? 00:22:00.960 --> 00:22:06.720 Why are we inclined toward sin, toward these destructive behaviors? 00:22:06.720 --> 00:22:10.320 Biology does not provide sufficient reasons. 00:22:10.320 --> 00:22:11.520 Religion does. 00:22:11.520 --> 00:22:15.840 Christianity gives you the answers to those questions, and it is also 00:22:15.840 --> 00:22:18.320 part of the solution to these problems. 00:22:18.320 --> 00:22:23.200 So if you have an addiction, it is necessary to approach it 00:22:23.200 --> 00:22:25.360 with all three of these in mind. 00:22:25.360 --> 00:22:28.800 An addiction is not generally something that you are going to solve 00:22:28.800 --> 00:22:33.840 purely biologically, purely psychologically, or purely spiritually. 00:22:33.840 --> 00:22:37.760 And so those who simply tell you will stop sinning are doing 00:22:37.760 --> 00:22:42.000 you a very real disservice if they don't recognize that certain sins 00:22:42.000 --> 00:22:49.360 do also have either a biological basis or a biological consequence. 00:22:49.360 --> 00:22:53.040 Because for some sins, if you if you engage them at least 00:22:53.040 --> 00:22:54.160 over a long period of time. 00:22:54.160 --> 00:22:57.760 Actually some sins it can be instantly, for instance, heroin. 00:22:57.760 --> 00:23:02.320 But generally speaking, if you engage in certain sins over a long 00:23:02.320 --> 00:23:08.080 period of time, you are going to create a reinforcing mechanism biologically 00:23:08.320 --> 00:23:11.840 that gives you a predisposition toward that, even if you didn't have 00:23:11.840 --> 00:23:14.720 it originally, which you may very well. 00:23:14.720 --> 00:23:17.280 That is another aspect of this. 00:23:17.280 --> 00:23:24.320 There are genetic predispositions in certain populations to certain kinds of sins. 00:23:24.320 --> 00:23:27.200 That is simply a reality of the fallen world in which we 00:23:27.200 --> 00:23:30.480 live, and we've gone over this in previous episodes with regard to 00:23:30.480 --> 00:23:34.400 biology, with regard to race, and things like that. 00:23:34.400 --> 00:23:38.720 If you are part of a population that has a genetic predisposition 00:23:38.720 --> 00:23:42.480 to a certain sort of sin, you should be more careful in 00:23:42.480 --> 00:23:46.720 avoiding that Then would be someone in a population without that genetic 00:23:46.720 --> 00:23:52.320 predisposition. One of the most obvious examples would be the Amerindians. 00:23:52.320 --> 00:23:56.960 The Amerindians have a reputation of being alcoholics. 00:23:56.960 --> 00:24:01.040 Part of the reason that they have a proclivity toward that particular 00:24:01.040 --> 00:24:04.800 kind of sin is that they lack the same level of an 00:24:04.800 --> 00:24:10.000 enzyme that breaks down alcohol, that breaks down ethanol, when compared to 00:24:10.000 --> 00:24:11.200 European populations. 00:24:11.200 --> 00:24:12.880 We have more of it. 00:24:12.880 --> 00:24:16.080 And so if you drink the same amount of alcohol as a 00:24:16.080 --> 00:24:20.800 European, you are not going to have the problem with alcoholism that 00:24:20.800 --> 00:24:24.720 an Amerindian would at the same level of consumption. 00:24:24.720 --> 00:24:27.440 Because his body is not going to break it down in the 00:24:27.440 --> 00:24:28.960 same way that yours does. 00:24:28.960 --> 00:24:31.360 Of course there are also differences across gender. 00:24:31.360 --> 00:24:35.760 Men break down alcohol more readily and in greater volumes than women. 00:24:35.760 --> 00:24:39.200 These are biological differences, and they play into 00:24:40.560 --> 00:24:44.960 that addiction, potentially, we call alcoholism. 00:24:44.960 --> 00:24:48.960 Now there are of course psychological aspects to that, because for many 00:24:49.040 --> 00:24:50.560 it is going to be a coping mechanism. 00:24:51.360 --> 00:24:55.680 And saying that something is a coping mechanism is not psychologizing, it 00:24:55.680 --> 00:25:00.000 is not using psychology to explain away the sin, because something can 00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:01.920 be simultaneously a sin 00:25:02.960 --> 00:25:06.400 And a psychological condition. 00:25:06.400 --> 00:25:12.560 So for instance, if you take heroin, you are going to create 00:25:12.560 --> 00:25:16.880 a biological dependence on that drug, in most cases, the first time 00:25:16.880 --> 00:25:18.480 you do it. 00:25:18.480 --> 00:25:21.600 So incidentally, do not do heroin. 00:25:21.600 --> 00:25:23.920 This is not something where you say, oh, I'm going to experiment 00:25:23.920 --> 00:25:26.320 with you can't experiment with certain things. 00:25:26.320 --> 00:25:29.280 Because you will be addicted immediately. 00:25:29.280 --> 00:25:33.200 Incidentally, caffeine is the same way, but the caffeine addiction is nowhere 00:25:33.200 --> 00:25:37.440 near as destructive as a heroin addiction, and unlike heroin, caffeine actually 00:25:37.440 --> 00:25:39.760 has legitimate uses. 00:25:39.760 --> 00:25:43.280 But you are going to create that biological basis for that addiction, 00:25:43.280 --> 00:25:45.920 partly because the system already exists, because if you didn't have the 00:25:45.920 --> 00:25:48.640 receptors for the drug, you couldn't become addicted. 00:25:48.640 --> 00:25:52.000 But using the drug reinforces that. 00:25:52.000 --> 00:25:54.400 You become addicted immediately. 00:25:54.400 --> 00:25:56.720 And then there's the psychological aspect. 00:25:56.720 --> 00:26:02.160 Because psychologically speaking, you are going to enjoy using the drug. 00:26:02.160 --> 00:26:06.880 If heroin didn't feel good, no one would do it. 00:26:06.880 --> 00:26:09.360 The problem is that it does feel good. 00:26:09.360 --> 00:26:11.040 It's also extremely destructive. 00:26:11.040 --> 00:26:13.840 It will destroy your life and everyone around you. 00:26:13.840 --> 00:26:15.680 That's the problem with sin. 00:26:15.680 --> 00:26:18.320 As we've mentioned many times before. 00:26:18.320 --> 00:26:23.360 If sin weren't enjoyable in some sense, no one would do it. 00:26:23.360 --> 00:26:26.640 Because ultimately it is incredibly destructive. 00:26:26.640 --> 00:26:30.560 It has to have some sort of perceived positive it brings along 00:26:30.560 --> 00:26:33.840 with it, or no one would be enticed. 00:26:33.840 --> 00:26:36.240 If Satan just came up to you and said, Hey, you should 00:26:36.240 --> 00:26:39.600 chop off your foot, very few men are going to say, That 00:26:39.600 --> 00:26:41.600 sounds like a great plan. 00:26:41.600 --> 00:26:44.880 But if instead Satan says, Hey, you should drink a gallon of 00:26:44.880 --> 00:26:46.160 soda every day. 00:26:46.160 --> 00:26:46.960 Well guess what? 00:26:46.960 --> 00:26:50.080 You wind up losing your feet just the same. 00:26:50.080 --> 00:26:53.280 But there is that perceived positive that comes along with it because 00:26:53.280 --> 00:26:56.080 you probably enjoy drinking the soda, if you're the sort of person 00:26:56.080 --> 00:27:00.400 who likes really sugary beverages, which most human beings do Beings do. 00:27:00.400 --> 00:27:01.680 That's how sin works. 00:27:01.680 --> 00:27:04.640 There has to be that positive, that perceived at least positive that 00:27:04.640 --> 00:27:06.320 comes along with it. 00:27:06.320 --> 00:27:12.160 But psychologically speaking, what you've done is you've now created what starts 00:27:12.160 --> 00:27:15.200 out in many cases as a habit, obviously heroin doesn't start as 00:27:15.200 --> 00:27:18.400 a habit, it starts out as an addiction, but it starts out 00:27:18.400 --> 00:27:22.400 as either an addiction or a habit, and it eventually, once you've 00:27:22.400 --> 00:27:25.600 lost control of it, which again in some cases happens immediately, it 00:27:25.600 --> 00:27:28.480 becomes an addiction, psychologically speaking. 00:27:28.480 --> 00:27:32.880 Well now you have biology and psychology at play with regard to 00:27:32.880 --> 00:27:34.160 this addiction. 00:27:34.160 --> 00:27:38.000 And spiritually speaking, it's a little different, but at the same time 00:27:38.080 --> 00:27:39.280 it's not. 00:27:39.280 --> 00:27:42.160 Because what is it going to do? 00:27:42.160 --> 00:27:45.360 It is going to become an idol, is essentially what you're dealing 00:27:45.360 --> 00:27:47.680 with when you're dealing with an addiction. 00:27:47.680 --> 00:27:49.440 Now it's sort of a minor idol. 00:27:49.440 --> 00:27:52.800 You're not really looking to it for all good in your life, 00:27:52.800 --> 00:27:55.920 but you're looking to it for some good in your life, because 00:27:55.920 --> 00:27:59.520 this has become the thing you turn to in order to feel 00:27:59.520 --> 00:28:02.880 good about your life, in order to maybe feel like you have 00:28:02.880 --> 00:28:06.720 control, or feel like something is going right, although really you're making 00:28:06.720 --> 00:28:11.280 it worse, but there is a spiritual aspect to addiction. 00:28:11.280 --> 00:28:14.960 This is the reason, again, that those who are atheistic in their 00:28:14.960 --> 00:28:19.760 views Jews cannot truly treat addiction because they always ignore one of 00:28:19.760 --> 00:28:20.800 the aspects of it. 00:28:20.800 --> 00:28:24.560 There is a spiritual aspect to addiction. 00:28:24.560 --> 00:28:28.880 But if you as a Christian ignore the biology and the psychology, 00:28:28.880 --> 00:28:33.440 you are not doing yourself or the other person any good, because 00:28:33.440 --> 00:28:37.440 what you're doing is you're telling him just stop sinning. 00:28:37.440 --> 00:28:41.440 Has that ever worked in all of history? 00:28:41.440 --> 00:28:44.880 The answer is no, because you have to have some sort of 00:28:44.880 --> 00:28:48.560 concrete steps in order to stop engaging in the sin, regardless of 00:28:48.560 --> 00:28:50.880 what the sin happens to be. 00:28:50.880 --> 00:28:54.800 If, for instance, it happens to be drugs, then you should probably 00:28:54.800 --> 00:28:58.320 put some safeguards in place where you are not exposed to those 00:28:58.320 --> 00:29:02.400 drugs, where you don't have the opportunity to acquire them. 00:29:02.400 --> 00:29:06.880 That is a concrete step to avoid engaging in that sin. 00:29:06.880 --> 00:29:11.920 And so biologically, physically you are preventing yourself from being in a 00:29:11.920 --> 00:29:16.320 position to engage in the sin, psychologically you are putting up barriers 00:29:16.320 --> 00:29:20.320 to defend yourself against engaging in that behavior, and then that is 00:29:20.320 --> 00:29:23.920 what is enabling you not to not to sin, not to commit 00:29:23.920 --> 00:29:25.920 the spiritual transgression. 00:29:25.920 --> 00:29:30.720 All three parts of man are involved in these things. 00:29:30.720 --> 00:29:34.000 And one of the examples and the reason that Woe gave the 00:29:34.240 --> 00:29:39.840 parental warning in the opening one of the best examples is pornography, 00:29:39.840 --> 00:29:44.000 because it is so rampant in our society, unfortunately, and very little 00:29:44.000 --> 00:29:46.720 is being done to combat it. 00:29:46.720 --> 00:29:50.800 It plays on a number of systems in the brain, but we'll 00:29:50.800 --> 00:29:54.240 simplify for the sake of the episode because we're not doing a 00:29:54.240 --> 00:29:58.640 biology or psychology podcast, neurochemistry. 00:29:58.640 --> 00:30:01.520 It basically plays on the dopamine system, which is the reward system 00:30:01.920 --> 00:30:03.120 in your brain. 00:30:03.120 --> 00:30:07.760 And simplified, how the reward system in your brain works is that 00:30:07.920 --> 00:30:13.600 when you do something that your biology likes, it releases dopamine. 00:30:13.840 --> 00:30:18.240 And the dopamine is a feedback loop so that you will do 00:30:18.240 --> 00:30:18.960 it again. 00:30:18.960 --> 00:30:20.160 It's a reward. 00:30:20.160 --> 00:30:24.480 It feels good, you do it again, because generally speaking, that is 00:30:24.480 --> 00:30:26.480 how we respond. 00:30:26.880 --> 00:30:30.720 It's definitely how animals work, and in so far as we are 00:30:30.720 --> 00:30:34.000 creatures, we are biological, we are mammals. 00:30:34.000 --> 00:30:34.880 We are animals. 00:30:34.880 --> 00:30:37.200 It's just that we are more than that because again we are 00:30:37.200 --> 00:30:42.880 tripartite. And so what happens is you do this thing, your brain 00:30:42.880 --> 00:30:46.880 gives you a reward, and now you want to do it more. 00:30:46.880 --> 00:30:50.480 Because you have that biology telling you this was good, here's a 00:30:50.480 --> 00:30:52.640 drug, and that's what dopamine is, it's a drug. 00:30:52.640 --> 00:30:53.920 Not all drugs are bad. 00:30:53.920 --> 00:30:58.080 Dopamine is fine if it's doing its actual duty, if it's doing 00:30:58.080 --> 00:31:00.240 the thing it should be doing in the body. 00:31:00.240 --> 00:31:02.160 And then psychologically 00:31:03.200 --> 00:31:06.480 you have a proclivity toward this now because you had that reward 00:31:06.560 --> 00:31:08.240 and your mind goes, I want more of that. 00:31:08.240 --> 00:31:11.200 This is a good thing because I got a reward when I 00:31:11.200 --> 00:31:12.240 did it. 00:31:12.240 --> 00:31:17.120 Pornography is hijacking the system that is supposed to help you pairbond 00:31:17.200 --> 00:31:20.320 with your wife, and I'm just going to speak in terms of 00:31:20.320 --> 00:31:25.440 being a man because overwhelmingly this is a male addiction, and I'm 00:31:25.440 --> 00:31:27.840 male and I'm speaking to mostly men. 00:31:27.840 --> 00:31:30.560 This is a system that is supposed to be used to help 00:31:30.560 --> 00:31:33.120 you pair bond with your wife. 00:31:33.120 --> 00:31:35.760 Because sex gives you a reward. 00:31:35.760 --> 00:31:37.760 It releases a number of neurochemicals. 00:31:37.760 --> 00:31:40.000 Obviously, it's not just dopamine. 00:31:40.000 --> 00:31:43.760 You've also got serotonin and oxytocin involved, other things like that. 00:31:43.760 --> 00:31:48.000 But the reward system that is dopamine gives you that reward when 00:31:48.000 --> 00:31:49.600 you have sex. 00:31:49.600 --> 00:31:53.360 Because biologically your body wants you to do that again. 00:31:53.360 --> 00:31:57.040 Partly, this is how God built in a reward for doing the 00:31:57.040 --> 00:32:00.000 thing you are supposed to do in marriage. 00:32:00.000 --> 00:32:03.360 Do remember that God told us to be fruitful and multiply, and 00:32:03.600 --> 00:32:07.360 you can't really do that unless you have sex with your wife. 00:32:07.360 --> 00:32:11.280 So it's partly a reward for doing that thing you are supposed 00:32:11.280 --> 00:32:12.000 to do. 00:32:12.000 --> 00:32:15.440 And in that context, it's good. 00:32:15.440 --> 00:32:18.640 Because it builds that relationship with your wife. 00:32:18.640 --> 00:32:20.560 Which is what it should be doing. 00:32:20.560 --> 00:32:25.520 But pornography hijacks that you're not building a relationship with your computer, 00:32:25.520 --> 00:32:28.080 at least I hope you aren't. 00:32:28.080 --> 00:32:31.920 But that's what it gets you to think, because it's building on 00:32:32.080 --> 00:32:35.360 that system in your biology, in your brain, to get you to 00:32:35.920 --> 00:32:40.880 have the same reaction, the same sort of feedback loop, viewing this 00:32:40.880 --> 00:32:46.080 horrible material that you would actually interacting with your wife. 00:32:46.080 --> 00:32:49.760 There are a number of points here that are vitally important. 00:32:50.160 --> 00:32:54.720 One is that this system is part of God's design in your 00:32:54.720 --> 00:32:58.800 brain. It is part of God's design of your biology. 00:32:58.800 --> 00:33:01.600 You cannot get rid of it. 00:33:01.600 --> 00:33:05.280 You will never be 100% the master of it. 00:33:05.280 --> 00:33:09.600 It is something that is to some degree out of your control. 00:33:09.600 --> 00:33:14.400 Similar to how you will never be 100% the master of hunger. 00:33:14.400 --> 00:33:17.920 You can You can suppress it while you're fasting, you can suppress 00:33:17.920 --> 00:33:20.960 it in order to lose weight, but it will still be there, 00:33:20.960 --> 00:33:24.000 it will still nag it you, and it will get stronger over 00:33:24.000 --> 00:33:28.320 time. There are certain things built into your biology over which you 00:33:28.320 --> 00:33:31.680 cannot exercise one hundred percent control. 00:33:31.680 --> 00:33:35.760 Because to believe that you have perfect control over your biology would 00:33:35.760 --> 00:33:37.120 be Gnosticism. 00:33:37.120 --> 00:33:40.080 It would be denying the reality of the flesh and saying no, 00:33:40.080 --> 00:33:43.280 it's the mind or it's the soul that's completely in control, it's 00:33:43.280 --> 00:33:45.520 not the biology. 00:33:45.520 --> 00:33:48.640 Now, you are to discipline your body. 00:33:48.640 --> 00:33:52.080 But that is because there is a proper outlet for these things 00:33:52.320 --> 00:33:53.920 with regard to hunger. 00:33:53.920 --> 00:33:54.960 You eat good food 00:33:56.000 --> 00:33:58.400 in reasonable portions. 00:33:58.400 --> 00:34:02.480 With regard to this reward system, insofar as sex is concerned, you 00:34:02.480 --> 00:34:04.000 have sex with your wife. 00:34:04.000 --> 00:34:05.600 You're supposed to do that. 00:34:05.600 --> 00:34:09.600 The system is working as it should when you use it in 00:34:09.600 --> 00:34:10.960 that way. 00:34:10.960 --> 00:34:16.080 But again, pornography hijacks it and that is how it works. 00:34:16.080 --> 00:34:19.600 So you can't completely suppress that drive. 00:34:19.600 --> 00:34:23.600 Because as a man, you are always going to enjoy seeing naked 00:34:23.600 --> 00:34:29.120 women. Unless you are given the gift of celibacy, and you probably 00:34:29.120 --> 00:34:32.000 aren't. I highly doubt there's a single man listening to this podcast 00:34:32.000 --> 00:34:33.440 who has been given that gift. 00:34:33.440 --> 00:34:35.680 And if he is, I don't know why he's listening to this 00:34:35.680 --> 00:34:39.200 particular episode or at least this section of it. 00:34:39.200 --> 00:34:43.280 So it's something that is going to be with you your entire 00:34:43.280 --> 00:34:46.560 life. Because it has a legitimate purpose. 00:34:46.560 --> 00:34:50.480 It was designed by God to serve a legitimate end. 00:34:50.480 --> 00:34:54.720 It is just that sin hijacks it and uses it toward wicked 00:34:54.720 --> 00:34:57.920 ends. That's the spiritual aspect of this. 00:34:57.920 --> 00:35:00.160 Because that's a sin, we all know that. 00:35:00.160 --> 00:35:03.280 Viewing pornography is a sin. 00:35:03.280 --> 00:35:06.960 Having the inclination to view it is also a sin, because we 00:35:06.960 --> 00:35:09.440 have that only due to original sin. 00:35:09.440 --> 00:35:11.600 That is part of our fallen nature. 00:35:11.600 --> 00:35:15.760 In a state of perfection, you would not have that inclination because 00:35:15.760 --> 00:35:18.800 your only sexual desire would be towards your wife. 00:35:18.800 --> 00:35:21.520 And that is perfectly legitimate, that is a good thing that is 00:35:21.520 --> 00:35:22.480 from God. 00:35:22.480 --> 00:35:25.040 You should embrace that and focus on that. 00:35:25.040 --> 00:35:29.680 And incidentally, that is the cure that Scripture gives. 00:35:29.680 --> 00:35:31.440 Let each man have his own wife. 00:35:31.440 --> 00:35:34.640 That is the cure for sexual sin according to the Word of 00:35:34.640 --> 00:35:40.480 God. But with regard to this addiction, which is what viewing pornography 00:35:40.480 --> 00:35:45.360 becomes for so many men these days, you can't address that addiction 00:35:45.360 --> 00:35:49.440 without addressing all of the parts of that problem. 00:35:49.760 --> 00:35:53.680 Biologically speaking, it's going to depend on how long you have been 00:35:53.680 --> 00:35:56.640 viewing it, and how frequently. 00:35:56.640 --> 00:36:00.160 Because the longer you do that, the more it is going to 00:36:00.160 --> 00:36:00.960 affect you. 00:36:00.960 --> 00:36:04.320 It actually decreases the gray matter in your brain, it rearranges connectivity 00:36:04.880 --> 00:36:07.120 in the frontal lobe. 00:36:07.120 --> 00:36:09.840 There are all sorts of things that it does. 00:36:09.840 --> 00:36:12.480 It obviously impacts your dopamine system. 00:36:12.480 --> 00:36:16.720 It actually causes some resistance to dopamine. 00:36:16.720 --> 00:36:20.960 It requires a greater dose of dopamine for you to feel anything 00:36:20.960 --> 00:36:23.920 when you've been engaging in this behavior for too long. 00:36:23.920 --> 00:36:24.960 Various things like that. 00:36:24.960 --> 00:36:27.040 We're not getting into necessarily all of the biology right now. 00:36:27.040 --> 00:36:28.720 It's not the point of the episode 00:36:29.600 --> 00:36:34.560 But biologically speaking, it alters your brain. 00:36:34.560 --> 00:36:38.960 And so you have to account for that in how you address 00:36:38.960 --> 00:36:40.080 the sin. 00:36:40.080 --> 00:36:43.040 Because you have created, by your own actions, 00:36:43.920 --> 00:36:49.360 a feedback system, a feedback loop, in which you are now more 00:36:49.360 --> 00:36:53.680 biologically addicted to this thing than you were at the beginning. 00:36:53.840 --> 00:36:57.840 And so biologically, you have a problem. 00:36:57.840 --> 00:37:02.080 It's not just psychological, it's not just spiritual. 00:37:02.080 --> 00:37:04.880 There is a biological basis to it now. 00:37:04.880 --> 00:37:07.040 That has to be addressed as well. 00:37:07.040 --> 00:37:11.600 Unfortunately in this case, the best way to address that is simply 00:37:11.600 --> 00:37:12.800 to stop. 00:37:12.800 --> 00:37:15.840 But you have to stop and hold to that for a period 00:37:15.840 --> 00:37:19.360 of time, because your brain has to repair itself from the damage 00:37:19.360 --> 00:37:21.200 that you have caused. 00:37:21.440 --> 00:37:26.240 Psychologically, we have some better tools because psychologically it's not just hey 00:37:26.320 --> 00:37:28.720 you have to stop and then hope for the best over a 00:37:28.720 --> 00:37:30.720 period of time. 00:37:30.720 --> 00:37:37.120 Psychologically, what you can do is remove the things that create that 00:37:37.120 --> 00:37:41.920 temptation. You can avoid the things that cause you to fall into 00:37:41.920 --> 00:37:42.960 that sin. 00:37:42.960 --> 00:37:45.760 And so for every man it's going to be different because there 00:37:45.760 --> 00:37:47.440 are going to be different temptations. 00:37:47.440 --> 00:37:50.800 There'll be some similarities, of course, across men, but it's going to 00:37:50.800 --> 00:37:52.000 be specific. 00:37:52.000 --> 00:37:54.880 And so maybe you need to have your computer in a public 00:37:54.880 --> 00:37:58.080 part of your house, so that you don't have that temptation where 00:37:58.080 --> 00:38:01.600 you are alone with this thing that facilitates your sin. 00:38:01.920 --> 00:38:06.720 Or maybe you should restrict your internet usage between certain hours. 00:38:06.720 --> 00:38:10.000 There are all sorts of steps you can take that will help 00:38:10.000 --> 00:38:11.680 you psychologically. 00:38:11.680 --> 00:38:15.040 Maybe when you have that temptation, you go to 50 push-ups or 00:38:15.040 --> 00:38:18.000 whatever it happens to be, run a mile. 00:38:18.000 --> 00:38:20.480 These are sorts of behavioral approaches. 00:38:20.480 --> 00:38:24.800 We're almost talking about cognitive behavioral therapy here, but there's sorts of 00:38:25.120 --> 00:38:31.120 approaches here, psychologically, where you can use the same sort of psychological 00:38:31.120 --> 00:38:35.440 systems that were hijacked in order to get you to engage in 00:38:35.440 --> 00:38:40.240 this behavior and continue engaging in it To diminish the engagement and 00:38:40.240 --> 00:38:42.960 form a positive habit instead, which is really what you're doing. 00:38:42.960 --> 00:38:47.040 You're trying to form a new habit to replace this old habit, 00:38:47.040 --> 00:38:50.160 which is a point I want to emphasize here. 00:38:50.160 --> 00:38:54.800 If you have a negative habit, generally speaking, you are going to 00:38:54.800 --> 00:39:00.080 have more success replacing it with a positive habit than simply trying 00:39:00.080 --> 00:39:02.240 to get rid of the negative habit. 00:39:02.240 --> 00:39:04.880 It is more effective to create a replacement 00:39:05.760 --> 00:39:10.000 than simply attempt to suppress or destroy the old habit you no 00:39:10.000 --> 00:39:11.760 longer want. 00:39:11.760 --> 00:39:15.040 Which is what you are trying to do when you create a 00:39:15.040 --> 00:39:20.640 new set of incentives or circumstances that will have you doing something 00:39:20.640 --> 00:39:22.400 other than the sin. 00:39:22.400 --> 00:39:25.360 And again, so every man it's going to be different. 00:39:25.360 --> 00:39:30.080 But spiritually, the third aspect of this, because again man is tripartite, 00:39:30.080 --> 00:39:31.920 it is sin. 00:39:31.920 --> 00:39:34.720 You need to confess the sin. 00:39:34.720 --> 00:39:38.960 It may be, and in many cases it definitely is, that confessing 00:39:38.960 --> 00:39:42.800 the sin to another man is going to be beneficial. 00:39:42.800 --> 00:39:44.800 That doesn't have to be your pastor. 00:39:44.800 --> 00:39:48.880 Maybe it isn't your pastor, because these days many pastors are questionable 00:39:48.960 --> 00:39:52.800 we'll say, without getting too deeply into that topic here. 00:39:52.800 --> 00:39:56.080 It is certainly not going to be your wife. 00:39:56.080 --> 00:39:59.680 And I want every man listening to understand that. 00:39:59.680 --> 00:40:04.480 If you decide that the wise thing to do, and it's not, 00:40:04.480 --> 00:40:06.880 but if you decide that the wise thing to do is to 00:40:06.880 --> 00:40:10.480 confess this sin to your wife, You are going to destroy your 00:40:10.480 --> 00:40:13.600 marriage. At the very least, you are going to harm it. 00:40:13.600 --> 00:40:17.440 This is something that you confess to a male friend whom you 00:40:17.440 --> 00:40:19.280 truly trust. 00:40:19.280 --> 00:40:22.800 This is something you confess to another Christian man who is going 00:40:22.800 --> 00:40:25.600 to hold you accountable. 00:40:25.600 --> 00:40:30.400 This is the reason that we need to have male Christian friends, 00:40:30.400 --> 00:40:31.200 one of the reasons. 00:40:31.200 --> 00:40:34.960 It's not the only reason obviously, but it's one of the reasons. 00:40:34.960 --> 00:40:38.320 Because we are to confess our sins one to another. 00:40:38.320 --> 00:40:40.240 But that's a matter of wisdom. 00:40:40.240 --> 00:40:43.440 You need to know to whom to confess that sin, and it's 00:40:43.440 --> 00:40:47.920 going to be again another man who can help hold you accountable. 00:40:47.920 --> 00:40:49.600 And one of the ways that you can create that sort of 00:40:50.000 --> 00:40:54.240 accountability is that if you fall back into the sin, you tell 00:40:54.240 --> 00:40:59.520 him. And he'll chastise you for it, encourage you to stop, and 00:40:59.520 --> 00:41:04.480 that's part of it, encouraging each other to avoid these things, helping 00:41:04.480 --> 00:41:09.360 each other to avoid the circumstances that create the temptation to fall 00:41:09.360 --> 00:41:12.320 back into that sin. 00:41:12.320 --> 00:41:15.440 I'm not saying that any of this is going to be easy, 00:41:15.440 --> 00:41:18.320 because obviously, for some men, it's going to be very difficult. 00:41:18.320 --> 00:41:21.360 Different men are tempted to different things. 00:41:21.360 --> 00:41:23.360 Not every man is an alcoholic. 00:41:23.360 --> 00:41:25.840 Not every man is addicted to pornography. 00:41:26.080 --> 00:41:28.800 The difference, of course, in the case of pornography is that every 00:41:28.800 --> 00:41:31.040 man again enjoys seeing naked women. 00:41:31.040 --> 00:41:34.160 Not every man actually enjoys alcohol, some don't like it at all, 00:41:34.160 --> 00:41:39.120 and some have no inclination whatsoever toward being addicted to it. 00:41:39.120 --> 00:41:40.560 Each man is going to be tempted 00:41:41.600 --> 00:41:45.680 in different ways toward different things. 00:41:45.680 --> 00:41:46.240 And so 00:41:47.440 --> 00:41:54.720 the takeaway from understanding man and man's nature as a tripartite being, 00:41:54.720 --> 00:41:57.440 is that you need to address all three. 00:41:57.440 --> 00:42:03.120 If you address only one aspect, you're handicapping yourself, you're hobbling yourself. 00:42:03.120 --> 00:42:07.840 You are setting yourself up for failure by not addressing the totality 00:42:07.840 --> 00:42:09.040 of the problem. 00:42:09.040 --> 00:42:13.280 If you address only part of a problem, you probably aren't going 00:42:13.280 --> 00:42:17.600 to solve it, because really what you're effectively doing is you're addressing 00:42:17.600 --> 00:42:21.360 symptoms in many cases instead of the root cause. 00:42:21.360 --> 00:42:23.760 If you have a leak in your house, let's say you have 00:42:23.760 --> 00:42:27.120 a leak in your roof or a leaky pipe in your crawl 00:42:27.120 --> 00:42:31.760 space, whatever it happens to be, and instead of fixing the leak, 00:42:31.760 --> 00:42:34.960 you just keep repairing the ceiling? 00:42:34.960 --> 00:42:36.800 You haven't really made things better. 00:42:36.800 --> 00:42:40.960 Sure, you've probably stopped the water temporarily from dripping on your head, 00:42:40.960 --> 00:42:43.760 but you haven't addressed the actual problem. 00:42:43.920 --> 00:42:47.440 And so if you focus only on the biology, you haven't really 00:42:47.440 --> 00:42:48.880 addressed the addiction. 00:42:48.880 --> 00:42:51.840 The same thing is true of focusing on the psychology which is 00:42:51.840 --> 00:42:55.680 so common today, or in the case of many Christians, focusing only 00:42:55.680 --> 00:42:57.520 on the spiritual aspect. 00:42:57.520 --> 00:42:59.520 You have to focus on all three. 00:42:59.520 --> 00:43:02.000 You can't deny the reality of the flesh. 00:43:02.000 --> 00:43:06.480 You can't deny the reality of quite frankly psychology because psychology is 00:43:06.480 --> 00:43:07.920 real. We know that. 00:43:07.920 --> 00:43:11.520 One of the things that can be used to test a worldview 00:43:11.520 --> 00:43:13.680 is its predictive power. 00:43:13.680 --> 00:43:18.080 Many things that have come out of psychology have very strong predictive 00:43:18.320 --> 00:43:20.480 powers. They're true. 00:43:20.480 --> 00:43:24.160 They have been proven time and time again, they have been tested. 00:43:24.160 --> 00:43:26.640 When we say that it can be dangerous, and you don't want 00:43:26.640 --> 00:43:30.960 to go overboard, we're talking about psychologizing, which is what those who 00:43:30.960 --> 00:43:34.080 deny the reality of the soul do. 00:43:34.080 --> 00:43:37.200 Because they say that everything is just biology in the mind. 00:43:37.520 --> 00:43:40.000 And so just leave the soul aside. 00:43:40.000 --> 00:43:41.600 It's not a sin. 00:43:41.600 --> 00:43:44.560 It's because of this, that, and the other. 00:43:44.560 --> 00:43:47.920 But we know as Christians that we have a soul. 00:43:47.920 --> 00:43:52.400 We know as Christians, that the spiritual itself is also real, and 00:43:52.400 --> 00:43:56.400 so that has to be addressed along with the other two. 00:43:56.400 --> 00:44:00.000 And so again, what we're really doing in this episode is we're 00:43:59.920 --> 00:44:02.960 saying that there is a via media. 00:44:02.960 --> 00:44:06.560 As we have said in so many other episodes, we are recommending 00:44:06.560 --> 00:44:09.200 that you fall off neither side of the horse. 00:44:09.200 --> 00:44:11.520 Because if you fall off the left or the right side of 00:44:11.520 --> 00:44:15.040 the horse, in either case you've fallen off the horse. 00:44:15.040 --> 00:44:16.080 That's not what you should do. 00:44:16.800 --> 00:44:19.280 It may be that falling off one side is worse than the 00:44:19.280 --> 00:44:22.480 other. I've mentioned before as an example, maybe there's a cliff on 00:44:22.480 --> 00:44:23.440 one side. 00:44:23.440 --> 00:44:28.800 If you just psychologize, that's probably worse because you're denying that man 00:44:28.800 --> 00:44:29.920 has a soul. 00:44:29.920 --> 00:44:32.560 In that case, you're basically an atheist. 00:44:32.560 --> 00:44:36.240 That doesn't mean that it's good to deny the biology and the 00:44:36.240 --> 00:44:41.440 psychology by making everything spiritual, because then you're spiritualizing, which is falling 00:44:41.440 --> 00:44:42.400 off the other side of the horse. 00:44:42.400 --> 00:44:44.480 That is also bad. 00:44:44.480 --> 00:44:48.880 Recognize that all three of these things are part of man, they're 00:44:48.880 --> 00:44:52.880 all three in play with regard to addiction, and they all three 00:44:52.880 --> 00:44:57.120 need to be addressed, because otherwise, you are approaching it with an 00:44:57.120 --> 00:45:01.760 incomplete solution that will probably wind up making things worse. 00:45:02.560 --> 00:45:06.080 If you think about these things from the perspective of Satan the 00:45:06.080 --> 00:45:08.880 Tempter, it makes perfect sense that he would target 00:45:10.080 --> 00:45:16.160 a part of the human body, you know, dopamine receptors, some aspect 00:45:16.160 --> 00:45:19.680 of your biology that God put there for a good reason and 00:45:19.680 --> 00:45:21.440 for our pleasure and enjoyment. 00:45:22.080 --> 00:45:26.000 Satan's going to target that thing that's going to feel good as 00:45:26.000 --> 00:45:31.280 a mechanism so that he doesn't simply have to convince you mentally, 00:45:31.280 --> 00:45:32.400 oh, here's a good idea. 00:45:32.400 --> 00:45:36.480 Like Corey said, you're not going to conclude even with suggestion that 00:45:36.480 --> 00:45:40.160 you should chop off your own foot, but you will conclude that 00:45:40.480 --> 00:45:44.400 two liters of Coke taste pretty good and you keep drinking 'em 00:45:44.560 --> 00:45:48.080 and a long enough timeline, you get diabetes and you lose your 00:45:48.080 --> 00:45:55.040 feet. So the temptation comes by applying a misdirection. 00:45:55.040 --> 00:45:58.000 The evil outcome the Satan ones is for you to engage in 00:45:58.000 --> 00:46:02.080 sin and ultimately essentially to make your belly your own God. 00:46:02.080 --> 00:46:05.920 This is something that Scripture says explicitly. 00:46:05.920 --> 00:46:10.320 Philippians three says, Brothers join in imitating me and keep your eyes 00:46:10.320 --> 00:46:13.280 on those who walk according to the example you have in us. 00:46:13.680 --> 00:46:16.720 For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell 00:46:16.720 --> 00:46:20.640 you, even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ, 00:46:20.640 --> 00:46:24.800 their end is destruction, their God is their belly, and they glory 00:46:24.800 --> 00:46:27.360 in their shame, with minds set on earthly things. 00:46:27.840 --> 00:46:30.640 But our citizenship is in heaven and from it we await our 00:46:30.640 --> 00:46:34.880 Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ who will transform our lowly body to 00:46:34.880 --> 00:46:38.080 be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even 00:46:38.080 --> 00:46:38.800 to subject all things 00:46:39.680 --> 00:46:41.520 to himself. 00:46:41.520 --> 00:46:46.240 When it is written their God is their belly, it's specifically talking 00:46:46.240 --> 00:46:49.440 about the seed of physical desires and appetites. 00:46:49.440 --> 00:46:51.440 It's talking about these mechanisms. 00:46:51.440 --> 00:46:53.520 As Corey said, you get hungry. 00:46:53.520 --> 00:46:55.360 God made you to get hungry. 00:46:55.360 --> 00:46:58.160 He made you to hunger for good things. 00:46:58.160 --> 00:46:59.680 What's Satan gonna do? 00:46:59.680 --> 00:47:02.320 He's not gonna try to convince you not to be hungry. 00:47:02.320 --> 00:47:05.040 He's gonna take that thing that you've been given as a gift 00:47:05.040 --> 00:47:06.400 and weaponize it. 00:47:06.400 --> 00:47:12.640 It's Aikido, it's judo, it's misdirecting the momentum of one side to 00:47:12.640 --> 00:47:14.800 redirect it to do something else. 00:47:14.800 --> 00:47:18.960 That's where the power of evil temptation comes from. 00:47:18.960 --> 00:47:21.760 It's not by trying to get you to do a 180. 00:47:21.760 --> 00:47:23.440 That doesn't work on most people. 00:47:23.440 --> 00:47:26.320 It's trying to just get you to maybe accelerate into the thing 00:47:26.320 --> 00:47:29.200 that you already want to do and then move you off course. 00:47:29.200 --> 00:47:33.280 So that as Corey said, you have a natural desire for the 00:47:33.280 --> 00:47:37.440 female body, but then it is disordered because it's not for your 00:47:37.440 --> 00:47:39.920 wife. And if you don't have a wife, you have a real 00:47:39.920 --> 00:47:43.360 problem because you have a natural desire without an outlet. 00:47:43.360 --> 00:47:47.600 And so Satan uses what God has made for good for evil 00:47:47.600 --> 00:47:49.760 purposes, and we let him. 00:47:49.760 --> 00:47:54.320 Because we're greedy, we're impatient, we would rather have the pleasure of 00:47:54.320 --> 00:47:58.960 eating too much of consuming substances that, you know, maybe they can 00:47:58.960 --> 00:48:01.440 be good for us, but in access they're not. 00:48:01.440 --> 00:48:04.880 We're doing actively evil things because we want to cheat. 00:48:04.880 --> 00:48:06.080 We want to cut in line. 00:48:06.080 --> 00:48:07.760 We're not going to wait to get married. 00:48:07.760 --> 00:48:09.680 We're not going to have sex with our wife. 00:48:09.680 --> 00:48:13.280 We're going to do something else because we want our fix now. 00:48:13.280 --> 00:48:19.200 The fix, the biological satisfaction, the psychological satisfaction that we get from 00:48:19.200 --> 00:48:21.360 doing something that would have been good if it were done in 00:48:21.360 --> 00:48:25.040 the proper context, when we get greedy, when we get envious of 00:48:25.040 --> 00:48:27.920 what someone else has, we just want more, more, more. 00:48:28.000 --> 00:48:31.760 When we make our god our belly, we're engaging in idolatry. 00:48:31.760 --> 00:48:33.840 That's really what this boils down to. 00:48:34.560 --> 00:48:40.240 It becomes idolatry to substitute even something that's good, that's given for 00:48:40.240 --> 00:48:44.640 a good purpose, and then to effectively bow down to it. 00:48:44.640 --> 00:48:49.040 You make your God your belly when you make yourself subject to 00:48:49.040 --> 00:48:51.840 your own appetites, whatever they are. 00:48:51.840 --> 00:48:53.200 And it could be a good appetite. 00:48:53.200 --> 00:48:56.560 You know, it's I've said before, I don't have any physical appetites 00:48:56.560 --> 00:49:00.480 for anything for which there's a psychological category or a sin. 00:49:00.480 --> 00:49:04.160 I don't suffer from alcoholism or anything like that, but you put 00:49:04.160 --> 00:49:06.800 sugar in front of me and I'm gonna consume all of it. 00:49:06.800 --> 00:49:09.600 I don't go down the candy aisle because I don't want the 00:49:09.600 --> 00:49:12.320 temptation. I know if I bring it home, it's not just I'm 00:49:12.240 --> 00:49:13.040 gonna eat it. 00:49:13.040 --> 00:49:14.720 I'm gonna eat it all in one sitting. 00:49:14.720 --> 00:49:18.320 I bring home two pounds of gummy bears, tarbo gummy bears, I'm 00:49:18.240 --> 00:49:19.120 gonna eat 'em all. 00:49:19.120 --> 00:49:20.400 That's bad. 00:49:20.400 --> 00:49:23.680 So my self control in the face of that temptation is to 00:49:23.680 --> 00:49:25.600 leave it at the store, not to buy it. 00:49:25.600 --> 00:49:28.080 Or if I occasionally enjoy it, I do it once in a 00:49:28.080 --> 00:49:31.360 while, knowing that even if I go overboard a little bit, it's 00:49:31.360 --> 00:49:33.200 gonna be months before I do it again. 00:49:33.200 --> 00:49:35.520 I don't know to what extent I'm indulging in sin and to 00:49:35.520 --> 00:49:39.680 what extent I'm just sort of metering out my lack of self-control, 00:49:39.680 --> 00:49:43.120 but I have I have to at least have a conscious choice. 00:49:43.120 --> 00:49:45.040 I'm not gonna go down that aisle. 00:49:45.040 --> 00:49:47.920 I'm not gonna buy that thing because I know I don't have 00:49:47.920 --> 00:49:50.320 the self-control to leave it alone. 00:49:50.320 --> 00:49:52.480 That's what I struggle with, and there's not a name for that. 00:49:52.560 --> 00:49:55.920 Like there's no disorder, it's just being greedy for sugar. 00:49:55.920 --> 00:49:58.480 But I know personally that that is my weakness. 00:49:58.480 --> 00:50:00.720 Other people find sugar repellent. 00:50:00.720 --> 00:50:02.480 They don't even like the taste of sweets. 00:50:02.480 --> 00:50:04.080 I think that's kind of crazy. 00:50:04.080 --> 00:50:09.680 Part of the reason for talking about these distinctions in psychological terms 00:50:09.920 --> 00:50:12.720 is acknowledging the fact that we are different. 00:50:12.720 --> 00:50:16.080 We all have the same basic set of appetites, the same basic 00:50:16.080 --> 00:50:18.720 set of potential sins that we're going to commit. 00:50:18.880 --> 00:50:21.520 None of us are doing anything original, but we do fall into 00:50:21.520 --> 00:50:22.800 different buckets. 00:50:22.800 --> 00:50:26.720 I've said in the past, like my sins, my particular sins, probably 00:50:26.720 --> 00:50:27.440 not yours. 00:50:27.440 --> 00:50:30.080 I'm tempted by things that you were not tempted by. 00:50:30.080 --> 00:50:32.960 The reason for acknowledging that is that if I say, well, I'm 00:50:32.880 --> 00:50:35.680 not tempted by this, so I'm I'm better than you, like crap, 00:50:35.680 --> 00:50:39.680 no. I'm tempted by things that you find laughably non-tempting. 00:50:39.680 --> 00:50:42.400 I can't try to one up myself and or one up you 00:50:42.400 --> 00:50:43.840 and say, look how much better I am. 00:50:43.840 --> 00:50:44.560 That's nonsense. 00:50:44.560 --> 00:50:48.640 I'm weak to things that wouldn't even register for you, and maybe 00:50:48.640 --> 00:50:50.000 the vice versa is true. 00:50:50.000 --> 00:50:53.280 That's what's essential for us as Christians to understand about each other, 00:50:53.280 --> 00:50:56.720 is that my weakness is not going to necessarily be your weakness, 00:50:56.720 --> 00:51:00.080 but we do have the same propensity for weakness. 00:51:00.080 --> 00:51:03.760 And I think that's one of the valuable things about acknowledging not 00:51:03.920 --> 00:51:07.760 only from the spiritual side, the sin problem, the fact that we 00:51:07.760 --> 00:51:12.160 will tend towards sin, but also the psychological elements. 00:51:12.160 --> 00:51:17.040 Because when you begin to break down the differences among men, it's 00:51:17.040 --> 00:51:20.000 possible then to become sympathetic even to someone who has a problem 00:51:20.000 --> 00:51:21.760 that you don't have at all. 00:51:21.760 --> 00:51:25.680 You know, another example from psychology that some people will laugh at, 00:51:25.680 --> 00:51:27.120 some people take seriously. 00:51:27.120 --> 00:51:29.760 I think it's a useful tool, like all this stuff. 00:51:29.760 --> 00:51:31.600 The Myers Briggs text. 00:51:31.600 --> 00:51:34.880 I'm not recommending it, but Corey and I are both I and 00:51:34.880 --> 00:51:37.200 TJs, rapidly so. 00:51:37.200 --> 00:51:42.640 And that is a very particular approach, a mental approach, a psychological 00:51:42.640 --> 00:51:47.280 approach to life, to problem solving, to everything that happens. 00:51:47.280 --> 00:51:49.760 This is very much an INTJ podcast. 00:51:49.760 --> 00:51:52.000 And you don't have to know anything about that or care. 00:51:52.000 --> 00:51:52.960 It doesn't matter. 00:51:52.960 --> 00:51:54.720 I'm not suggesting you care. 00:51:54.720 --> 00:51:59.520 I bring it up because there is a certain explanatory power to 00:51:59.840 --> 00:52:03.280 the Myers Briggs description of personalities. 00:52:03.280 --> 00:52:07.200 There's certainly some degree of malleability to the way Myers Briggs breaks 00:52:07.200 --> 00:52:09.040 down some of the personality types. 00:52:09.040 --> 00:52:13.760 And although it originated with Jung, who is absolutely despicable human being, 00:52:13.760 --> 00:52:17.840 it really rearranges the way he approached things in a fundamentally different 00:52:17.840 --> 00:52:21.040 way. Again, I'm not recommending you take it. 00:52:21.040 --> 00:52:24.480 I am bringing it up because Corey and I are so very 00:52:24.480 --> 00:52:29.200 specifically INTJ-like that if you were to read those descriptions, like that's 00:52:29.120 --> 00:52:30.720 exactly what those guys are like. 00:52:30.720 --> 00:52:34.560 In it's in a mutable property of who we are as men. 00:52:34.560 --> 00:52:37.440 When you read so there's I N T J and then there's 00:52:37.440 --> 00:52:42.640 E S F would be the alternate, their four parts with two 00:52:42.640 --> 00:52:44.560 possibilities for each of them. 00:52:44.560 --> 00:52:49.120 As an INTJ, when I read the ESFP description, I find it 00:52:49.120 --> 00:52:50.320 to be nightmarish. 00:52:50.320 --> 00:52:54.640 I am looking at the description of the most crazy insane person 00:52:54.640 --> 00:52:57.120 beyond imagining for me. 00:52:57.120 --> 00:53:00.640 But I the reason that I think it's valuable to have that 00:53:00.640 --> 00:53:03.280 awareness is that they're not a bad person. 00:53:03.280 --> 00:53:05.360 I'm not morally condemning them. 00:53:05.360 --> 00:53:07.600 The reason that it's valuable is I look at that like, well, 00:53:07.600 --> 00:53:10.160 okay, this is a different type of person. 00:53:10.160 --> 00:53:13.200 This is a person that's going to approach different problems in different 00:53:13.200 --> 00:53:16.720 ways that I find completely alien, that I for me would be 00:53:16.720 --> 00:53:18.160 completely distasteful. 00:53:18.160 --> 00:53:20.400 But if someone else is out there doing that thing and there 00:53:20.400 --> 00:53:23.120 are a lot of them, they're more of them than me, I 00:53:23.120 --> 00:53:24.000 can't hate them. 00:53:24.000 --> 00:53:27.520 I can't think that they're retarded or dumb or immoral or they're 00:53:27.520 --> 00:53:29.760 not defective, but they're different. 00:53:29.760 --> 00:53:33.120 And I think that that's another valuable thing that we can we 00:53:33.120 --> 00:53:37.200 can learn from psychology is that the acknowledgement of something is completely 00:53:37.200 --> 00:53:39.280 obvious. Like obviously people are different. 00:53:39.280 --> 00:53:43.760 When these things were systematized, it made it more clear that there 00:53:43.920 --> 00:53:46.800 are certain subgroups of people that are going to approach life in 00:53:46.800 --> 00:53:47.440 different ways. 00:53:47.920 --> 00:53:51.120 And when I learned about it, I was thankful because it made 00:53:51.120 --> 00:53:54.160 me more sympathetic to someone that I find alien. 00:53:54.160 --> 00:53:56.560 Before I knew about that, I would have just thought these people 00:53:56.560 --> 00:53:57.760 are crazy and retarded. 00:53:57.920 --> 00:54:00.400 Like I said, when I read the description, it's horrifying. 00:54:00.400 --> 00:54:03.200 But then when I see the people in reality, they're not horrifying. 00:54:03.200 --> 00:54:04.560 They're strange to me. 00:54:04.720 --> 00:54:07.840 Some of their approaches and their conclusions, like how did you get 00:54:07.840 --> 00:54:11.760 there? But when I realize it, it's a different approach to the 00:54:11.760 --> 00:54:14.480 very same set of facts that's in front of me and they 00:54:14.480 --> 00:54:17.520 reach different conclusions, I can't get angry at them. 00:54:17.520 --> 00:54:18.720 I can't condemn them. 00:54:18.720 --> 00:54:21.120 I think as a Christian, then just as a person who wants 00:54:21.120 --> 00:54:24.800 to try to be right, that has value of its own. 00:54:24.800 --> 00:54:29.760 So realizing that different people have different problems, have different approaches makes 00:54:29.760 --> 00:54:32.720 us more sympathetic to people who are different than us. 00:54:32.720 --> 00:54:36.640 You know, some people will listen to 15 minutes of this podcast, 00:54:36.640 --> 00:54:39.760 and because we talk and think like I and TJs, they want 00:54:39.760 --> 00:54:41.120 nothing to do with it. 00:54:41.120 --> 00:54:43.520 I honestly think that a big part of that is a serious 00:54:43.520 --> 00:54:45.680 mismatch and that personality type. 00:54:45.680 --> 00:54:47.440 And so it doesn't bother me. 00:54:47.440 --> 00:54:50.880 I don't think they're stupid or wrong or dumb for not enjoying 00:54:50.880 --> 00:54:53.040 our approach, 'cause it's very particular. 00:54:53.040 --> 00:54:55.360 And some people find it very appealing, and other people find it 00:54:55.360 --> 00:54:57.920 alien and gross and stupid and pointless. 00:54:57.920 --> 00:54:59.920 Even if they agree with us, they don't want to hear us 00:54:59.920 --> 00:55:01.120 talking about things. 00:55:01.120 --> 00:55:05.760 That makes sense from the perspective of those different personality types. 00:55:05.760 --> 00:55:08.880 To understand that there are different types of people. 00:55:08.880 --> 00:55:11.200 You know, we've talked in the past about there are different races 00:55:11.200 --> 00:55:12.960 of people that do things differently. 00:55:12.960 --> 00:55:16.800 I am very English with a strong dose of German, even though 00:55:16.800 --> 00:55:18.720 that's minority in my part. 00:55:18.720 --> 00:55:20.800 Italians are alien to me. 00:55:20.800 --> 00:55:22.160 Greeks are alien. 00:55:22.160 --> 00:55:23.440 Russians are alien. 00:55:23.440 --> 00:55:26.320 And Russians and Italians are alien in a very different way from 00:55:26.320 --> 00:55:27.040 each other. 00:55:27.040 --> 00:55:29.600 That's genetic, it's not just cultural. 00:55:29.600 --> 00:55:31.040 It doesn't mean they're bad. 00:55:31.040 --> 00:55:34.640 I don't think Italians are terrible or Russians are monsters. 00:55:34.640 --> 00:55:36.960 I think they're different than me. 00:55:36.960 --> 00:55:40.400 And I think it's important for us to all acknowledge that there 00:55:40.400 --> 00:55:41.920 are different types of people. 00:55:42.160 --> 00:55:44.160 The worst thing that we could do to the world is try 00:55:44.160 --> 00:55:45.680 to make everyone the same. 00:55:45.680 --> 00:55:48.960 I guess one of the worst things about the outcome of mass 00:55:48.960 --> 00:55:53.040 media is that because America has been in the lead for the 00:55:53.040 --> 00:55:57.360 last century of exporting our culture to the world, it's created a 00:55:57.360 --> 00:56:01.440 monoculture everywhere else where everyone eats the same things, drinks the same 00:56:01.440 --> 00:56:05.200 things, talks and thinks in the same way, even in their own 00:56:05.200 --> 00:56:08.960 languages, listens to the same music, same TV shows. 00:56:08.960 --> 00:56:13.680 I think that's a terrible outcome for humanity because it's destroying the 00:56:13.680 --> 00:56:18.400 distinctions that made all these other races and cultures and places so 00:56:18.400 --> 00:56:20.320 interesting on their own. 00:56:21.120 --> 00:56:25.280 I find it very fascinating the approach that, for example, the Russian 00:56:25.280 --> 00:56:26.720 mind takes to things. 00:56:26.720 --> 00:56:31.280 I think it's fascinating that Russians think we're retarded for smiling. 00:56:31.280 --> 00:56:35.600 They think you must be either insane or retarded to smile. 00:56:35.600 --> 00:56:37.760 That's how Russians view other people. 00:56:37.760 --> 00:56:40.480 Whereas as an American, I'm I'm fine with smiling. 00:56:40.480 --> 00:56:44.320 It's my nature not to be grumpy or dour, as unreasonable as 00:56:44.320 --> 00:56:46.160 that may seem to some people. 00:56:46.160 --> 00:56:47.760 It's a very different distinction. 00:56:47.760 --> 00:56:51.600 So I find it fascinating that a Russian would process everything he 00:56:51.600 --> 00:56:53.920 takes in completely differently than me. 00:56:54.080 --> 00:56:57.360 See, this isn't necessarily about sin, but it can become about sin 00:56:57.360 --> 00:56:59.840 if I decide, well, these Russians are acting weird. 00:56:59.840 --> 00:57:00.400 They're sketchy. 00:57:00.400 --> 00:57:01.200 They never smile. 00:57:01.200 --> 00:57:01.680 I don't like them. 00:57:01.840 --> 00:57:02.880 I want to hurt 'em. 00:57:02.880 --> 00:57:04.720 Like, okay, we've caused a problem. 00:57:04.720 --> 00:57:07.920 You can acknowledge that they're different without hating them. 00:57:07.920 --> 00:57:11.520 And frankly, it's a big part of the race question for every 00:57:11.520 --> 00:57:15.760 race. For the races that we think have serious problems, I'm not 00:57:15.760 --> 00:57:20.480 going to hold those races to standards that they can't meet. 00:57:20.480 --> 00:57:22.560 There are things that they can do that I can't do, there 00:57:22.560 --> 00:57:24.800 are things that I can do that they can't do. 00:57:24.800 --> 00:57:27.840 For me to hold them to my standards when we're not talking 00:57:27.840 --> 00:57:30.960 about morality just doesn't make any sense. 00:57:30.960 --> 00:57:36.240 There are things that I take as an approach intellectually and emotionally 00:57:36.400 --> 00:57:39.760 as an INTJ that someone who's different than that substantially 00:57:40.800 --> 00:57:44.240 is gonna find it off-putting and strange and think I'm cruel. 00:57:44.240 --> 00:57:48.800 You know, artlessly analytical is like is a mastermind is the name 00:57:48.800 --> 00:57:49.760 that it's given it. 00:57:49.760 --> 00:57:51.120 All the names are s aggrandizing. 00:57:51.120 --> 00:57:53.680 I'm not saying anything nice about myself. 00:57:53.680 --> 00:57:58.160 Like some people think that MBTI is effectively horoscopes for men. 00:57:58.160 --> 00:58:00.160 And to some degree maybe it is. 00:58:00.160 --> 00:58:02.320 I would think that if not for the fact that it was 00:58:02.320 --> 00:58:05.760 so so embarrassingly accurate about me. 00:58:05.760 --> 00:58:07.680 Like I'm not at all unique. 00:58:07.680 --> 00:58:09.920 That was also part of the relief of discovering now. 00:58:09.920 --> 00:58:11.840 Like, okay, well, I'm not alone. 00:58:11.840 --> 00:58:13.840 There are other guys who think the way I think. 00:58:13.840 --> 00:58:15.840 That was actually nice to discover. 00:58:15.840 --> 00:58:18.960 And to understand sort of the mechanisms. 00:58:18.960 --> 00:58:22.960 I think the the reason that I do find a certain appeal 00:58:22.960 --> 00:58:27.200 to psychology as a science, as a discipline, is it has this 00:58:27.200 --> 00:58:28.800 sort of explanatory power. 00:58:28.800 --> 00:58:32.240 Both when we're talking about, you know, mechanisms of addiction, which lead 00:58:32.240 --> 00:58:38.160 to sin, and just mechanisms of habit, mechanisms of intellectual and emotional 00:58:38.160 --> 00:58:40.000 processing of whatever's coming in. 00:58:40.000 --> 00:58:42.320 And it's important to have different types of people. 00:58:42.320 --> 00:58:45.280 I would hate a world where everyone was like me in terms 00:58:45.280 --> 00:58:46.960 of being an INTJ or anything else. 00:58:46.960 --> 00:58:50.160 Like I said before, like one of me is plenty. 00:58:50.160 --> 00:58:53.280 People who are different are going to register differently. 00:58:53.280 --> 00:58:54.800 And that's often enjoyable. 00:58:54.800 --> 00:58:56.640 Like I like talking to people who are different. 00:58:56.880 --> 00:58:59.840 In a lot of ways, because I can learn something. 00:58:59.840 --> 00:59:02.880 There's not a lot to learn from people who are exactly like 00:59:02.880 --> 00:59:05.280 you, who agree with everything you think. 00:59:05.280 --> 00:59:08.080 You can enjoy their company and you can have a familiarity and 00:59:08.080 --> 00:59:12.160 a camaraderie with them that you're deprived in situations where people are 00:59:12.160 --> 00:59:15.280 very different, but you're not necessarily going to learn a lot. 00:59:15.280 --> 00:59:17.440 You can learn a lot from people very similar, but it can 00:59:17.600 --> 00:59:19.280 be in very minute ways. 00:59:19.280 --> 00:59:21.840 The things you're going to learn from people who are very different 00:59:21.840 --> 00:59:25.520 are going to be broad strokes, things you never even imagined were 00:59:25.520 --> 00:59:30.160 possible. And then you discover that someone with the polar opposite personality 00:59:30.160 --> 00:59:32.720 of you can exist and be a nice guy. 00:59:32.720 --> 00:59:36.000 Like, okay, I had no idea that was possible. 00:59:36.000 --> 00:59:38.560 And so in a way, some of this is kind of a 00:59:38.560 --> 00:59:40.400 celebration of diversity. 00:59:40.400 --> 00:59:45.200 There's so many things that are left coded today, things that we 00:59:45.200 --> 00:59:48.640 consider to be you know, just just Lib Tard stuff. 00:59:48.640 --> 00:59:51.120 It's stuff that we're dismissive of from the right. 00:59:51.120 --> 00:59:54.080 We think that it's wishy washy and dumb because a lot of 00:59:54.080 --> 00:59:55.600 it has been really poisoned. 00:59:55.600 --> 00:59:58.800 Like when we're talking about psychology and we're talking about addiction and 00:59:58.800 --> 01:00:04.240 the way that the post-God world, when these atheists thought that they 01:00:04.240 --> 01:00:09.520 killed God and then replaced him with these new mechanistic approaches to 01:00:09.520 --> 01:00:13.600 things, they're left with a horrifying world where people don't really have 01:00:13.600 --> 01:00:14.720 agency, where robots 01:00:15.680 --> 01:00:19.760 producing programmatically output based on our type. 01:00:19.760 --> 01:00:21.280 And I don't think that at all. 01:00:21.280 --> 01:00:24.160 I think that the diversity that we've been given is a gift 01:00:24.160 --> 01:00:27.440 from God, the fact that we're created in different ways, the fact 01:00:27.440 --> 01:00:31.200 that the English are created different from the Germans are created different 01:00:31.200 --> 01:00:32.880 from the Russians is a blessing. 01:00:32.880 --> 01:00:35.520 And it's good to have all of those people. 01:00:35.520 --> 01:00:39.360 But when they come together, they're probably gonna butt heads because it's 01:00:39.280 --> 01:00:41.040 alien to a degree. 01:00:41.040 --> 01:00:45.280 And not everyone is going to be able to be sufficiently sympathetic 01:00:45.280 --> 01:00:48.480 to sort of tease out, okay, well, I understand why this guy 01:00:48.480 --> 01:00:51.840 is different because you know this backstory. 01:00:51.840 --> 01:00:54.960 At most, sometimes all we can do is just acknowledge there's a 01:00:54.960 --> 01:00:55.840 different kind of guy. 01:00:55.840 --> 01:00:57.920 I'm not going to be too hard on him because I just 01:00:57.920 --> 01:00:58.640 don't get it. 01:00:58.640 --> 01:01:00.560 I don't know where he's coming from. 01:01:00.560 --> 01:01:02.960 That's another important aspect of this. 01:01:02.960 --> 01:01:07.440 Simply acknowledging that there are different kinds of people in And that 01:01:07.920 --> 01:01:13.920 you don't have to be a radical leftist liberal to sympathize with 01:01:13.920 --> 01:01:16.640 that, to cut people slack. 01:01:16.640 --> 01:01:20.800 There are cases that come up for me fairly often where some 01:01:20.880 --> 01:01:23.280 Someone who I've known for a while, for whom I have a 01:01:23.280 --> 01:01:24.480 great deal of respect. 01:01:24.480 --> 01:01:27.760 If they're going through a hard time, the things that I would 01:01:27.760 --> 01:01:31.920 normally say to them to maybe correct errors or misstatements or whatever, 01:01:31.920 --> 01:01:34.320 I try to shut it down as much as possible. 01:01:34.320 --> 01:01:35.040 Give them room. 01:01:35.040 --> 01:01:37.280 I'm not going to step on their toes because I know that 01:01:37.280 --> 01:01:38.480 they're having a hard time. 01:01:38.480 --> 01:01:41.120 And for me to say the things I would usually say would 01:01:41.120 --> 01:01:43.120 just make their life worse. 01:01:43.120 --> 01:01:50.560 One of the valuable aspects of treating psychological evaluation of others 01:01:50.720 --> 01:01:56.000 properly is to have that sort of sympathy, to actually identify, here's 01:01:56.000 --> 01:02:00.160 this other guy who is feeling and thinking something different than me 01:02:00.160 --> 01:02:01.040 right now? 01:02:01.040 --> 01:02:02.320 Do I go at him? 01:02:02.320 --> 01:02:03.200 Do I correct him? 01:02:03.200 --> 01:02:05.040 Do I whatever I would normally do? 01:02:05.040 --> 01:02:07.280 Do I do my usual thing? 01:02:07.280 --> 01:02:10.720 As a Christian, that's valuable to know, especially for friends, or really 01:02:10.720 --> 01:02:11.360 for anyone. 01:02:11.360 --> 01:02:14.800 If you know someone, you know they're having a hard time, back 01:02:15.120 --> 01:02:19.680 off. Don't double down on the thing that's gonna give them grief. 01:02:19.680 --> 01:02:21.760 Maybe the only thing you can do right now is just listen 01:02:21.760 --> 01:02:24.400 to them and let them vent and you know, if they said 01:02:24.400 --> 01:02:27.360 something dumb, next month they can come up and you can talk 01:02:27.360 --> 01:02:29.200 about it when they're not hurting. 01:02:29.200 --> 01:02:32.080 Yeah, it's interesting there was a an empathy test that was going 01:02:32.080 --> 01:02:35.600 around last week on X, and Corey and I both got a 01:02:35.600 --> 01:02:38.720 couple of the highest scores of anyone that I saw, which is 01:02:38.720 --> 01:02:44.160 hilarious because we seem like some of the least empathetic guys possible, 01:02:44.160 --> 01:02:48.240 where we can actually feel what other people feel as they feel 01:02:48.240 --> 01:02:49.120 those things. 01:02:49.120 --> 01:02:51.840 That's really what empathy is. 01:02:51.840 --> 01:02:56.320 To put yourself in someone's shoes is to hurt with them, not 01:02:56.320 --> 01:02:58.960 to simply say, Yeah, that I see you're in trouble, I'm gonna 01:02:58.960 --> 01:03:02.640 leave you alone, but actually feel pain with them. 01:03:02.640 --> 01:03:08.160 It's both a psychological term and it's a spiritual gift or it's 01:03:08.160 --> 01:03:10.480 a blessing and a curse depending. 01:03:10.480 --> 01:03:13.600 But I just find it very conspicuous that of all the guys 01:03:13.600 --> 01:03:19.360 who would think that we're totally unappathetic on a neutral evaluation, we 01:03:19.360 --> 01:03:22.240 actually scored pretty high. 01:03:22.240 --> 01:03:25.840 And that's in part because of introspection. 01:03:25.840 --> 01:03:29.760 To actually want to understand other people Is gonna hurt. 01:03:29.760 --> 01:03:33.600 If you're willing to put yourself in their shoes, you're gonna feel 01:03:33.600 --> 01:03:34.560 their pain. 01:03:34.560 --> 01:03:36.960 It's a liberal thing to say, but it's not wrong. 01:03:36.960 --> 01:03:40.720 I mean, I feel your pain is literally expressing empathy. 01:03:40.720 --> 01:03:44.960 I hurt with you to weep when someone is weeping because they've 01:03:44.960 --> 01:03:47.520 lost someone, it's not a weakness. 01:03:47.520 --> 01:03:49.920 There are degrees and like you know, some of that's like a 01:03:49.920 --> 01:03:53.280 Russian's not gonna weep when an Italian would. 01:03:53.280 --> 01:03:57.760 So there are those distinctions, but it's not a complete flaw as 01:03:57.760 --> 01:04:02.400 a man to respond in pain with someone for no reason other 01:04:02.400 --> 01:04:05.680 than that you're there and you care for them. 01:04:05.680 --> 01:04:08.880 As Christians, we can't just write all of this stuff off as 01:04:08.880 --> 01:04:12.560 either completely liberal or that's all psychology or psychiatry. 01:04:12.560 --> 01:04:14.080 I want nothing to do with it. 01:04:14.080 --> 01:04:16.080 There's Christian stuff here. 01:04:16.080 --> 01:04:19.680 And it's unfortunate that it's been originated by and then ruined by 01:04:19.680 --> 01:04:22.160 some of the worst people in the world. 01:04:22.160 --> 01:04:27.520 Because when you look objectively at the descriptive power that has, it 01:04:27.520 --> 01:04:29.360 makes us better Christians. 01:04:29.360 --> 01:04:33.520 To actually understand, they're guys who process things completely different than me. 01:04:33.520 --> 01:04:35.520 So I'm gonna cut 'em some slips. 01:04:35.520 --> 01:04:37.120 That made me a better Christian. 01:04:37.120 --> 01:04:41.440 I'm not going to get angry or annoyed or dismissive of someone 01:04:41.440 --> 01:04:44.240 when I understand that's why they're doing that. 01:04:44.240 --> 01:04:47.200 Now, there are plenty of other reasons why I'll still think someone's 01:04:47.200 --> 01:04:51.360 retarded, but just because they're processing things differently isn't gonna be one 01:04:51.360 --> 01:04:52.080 of 'em. 01:04:52.080 --> 01:04:55.760 And I think it's delightful to actually discover someone like that who's 01:04:55.760 --> 01:04:58.800 processing the same things as me in a very different way because 01:04:59.200 --> 01:05:03.440 when they get different answers, I can look at that and learn 01:05:03.440 --> 01:05:06.800 something. They're gonna see something that I didn't see because there's that 01:05:06.800 --> 01:05:08.800 widely divergent parallax. 01:05:08.800 --> 01:05:10.400 I have perspective here. 01:05:10.400 --> 01:05:13.520 They have a perspective half a mile down the road, we're gonna 01:05:13.520 --> 01:05:15.120 see the thing very differently. 01:05:15.120 --> 01:05:18.320 And so when I hear what they think, I've learned about the 01:05:18.320 --> 01:05:20.560 same thing that we're both looking at. 01:05:20.560 --> 01:05:24.160 As someone who's curious, I think that's a great thing. 01:05:24.160 --> 01:05:28.400 And to realize that those differences are in some cases pretty intrinsic 01:05:28.640 --> 01:05:32.160 makes it possible for me to step back, not name call and 01:05:32.160 --> 01:05:35.440 not dismiss and say, okay, w from your perspective, what do you 01:05:35.440 --> 01:05:37.120 see? This isn't stupid. 01:05:37.120 --> 01:05:38.240 This isn't a leftist. 01:05:38.240 --> 01:05:40.880 This is it's intelligent and it's Christian. 01:05:40.880 --> 01:05:43.440 And I'm thankful to find that there are places where we can 01:05:43.440 --> 01:05:44.800 be both at the same 01:05:44.800 --> 01:05:45.440 time. 01:05:46.480 --> 01:05:50.320 An aspect of this that we've sort of danced around in this 01:05:50.320 --> 01:05:53.840 episode but not stated explicitly thus far 01:05:54.720 --> 01:05:59.520 is that as Christians we are commanded, you can think of Colossians 01:05:59.520 --> 01:06:05.680 three, to bear with one another and part of that is recognizing 01:06:05.680 --> 01:06:10.560 that these differences do exist, and that sometimes these differences are going 01:06:10.560 --> 01:06:16.480 to play out in terms of different proclivities with regard to sin. 01:06:16.480 --> 01:06:20.560 Different men are going to be tempted in different ways. 01:06:20.560 --> 01:06:24.560 And indeed men and women are going to be tempted in different 01:06:24.560 --> 01:06:27.760 ways. Perhaps so it doesn't feel like we're just beating up on 01:06:27.760 --> 01:06:30.320 men with the pornography issue. 01:06:30.320 --> 01:06:31.280 Women are going to be 01:06:32.240 --> 01:06:38.560 tempted to engage in behavior that elicits attention, and men generally are 01:06:38.560 --> 01:06:43.520 not. Now of course that's not universally true with regard to either 01:06:43.520 --> 01:06:47.120 sex, because there are going to be men who engage in attention 01:06:47.120 --> 01:06:50.960 seeking behavior, and there are going to be some women who do 01:06:50.960 --> 01:06:52.400 not want attention. 01:06:52.400 --> 01:06:57.120 But by and large, seeking attention, and in this case it is 01:06:57.120 --> 01:07:01.280 attention that you should not be seeking, is something that is particular 01:07:01.280 --> 01:07:03.200 to the female sex. 01:07:03.200 --> 01:07:08.080 Just as pornography is particular to the male sex. 01:07:08.080 --> 01:07:10.800 There are women who look at pornography, there are men who are 01:07:10.800 --> 01:07:15.280 attention seeking, but by and large there is a skew in one 01:07:15.280 --> 01:07:20.400 direction or the other with regard to those sins. 01:07:20.400 --> 01:07:25.840 Some men are going to be tempted to overindulge with alcohol. 01:07:25.840 --> 01:07:29.600 Some men are going to be tempted to overindulge with nicotine. 01:07:29.600 --> 01:07:34.240 If you are smoking multiple packs a day, you've gone overboard. 01:07:34.240 --> 01:07:39.920 I'm not going to say that all smoking is necessarily morally impermissible. 01:07:39.920 --> 01:07:42.640 Neither of us is going to go that far. 01:07:42.640 --> 01:07:45.920 But there is a certain level where once you cross it, it 01:07:45.920 --> 01:07:47.840 has become an addiction. 01:07:47.840 --> 01:07:51.440 And there's a psychological aspect to that, and there's a biological aspect 01:07:51.440 --> 01:07:54.480 to that, and there's a spiritual aspect to that. 01:07:54.480 --> 01:08:00.080 Part of bearing with one another is recognizing that these differences exist, 01:08:00.080 --> 01:08:04.880 and part of the Christian life is not just avoiding sin for 01:08:04.880 --> 01:08:09.600 ourselves, it is also helping our brothers and sisters to avoid sin 01:08:09.600 --> 01:08:11.440 as well. 01:08:11.440 --> 01:08:16.080 Scripture says that temptations will come, but woe to the one by 01:08:16.080 --> 01:08:18.240 whom they come. 01:08:18.240 --> 01:08:23.280 It is sin to cause others to fall into temptation. 01:08:23.280 --> 01:08:27.120 And so for instance, one of the most common instances of this 01:08:27.120 --> 01:08:32.000 that we see in the modern world is women dressing inappropriately. 01:08:32.000 --> 01:08:35.280 If you are a woman, and you are going out and wearing 01:08:35.280 --> 01:08:40.720 revealing clothing, causing your brothers to fall into sin You are sinning 01:08:40.720 --> 01:08:47.840 yourself. It is a very real thing that causing temptation is 01:08:47.840 --> 01:08:50.160 itself sin. 01:08:50.160 --> 01:08:55.440 That doesn't mean that every behavior that could potentially serve as temptation 01:08:55.440 --> 01:09:00.160 for another is sin, because of course we can't avoid all possibility 01:09:00.160 --> 01:09:01.840 of temptation. 01:09:01.840 --> 01:09:04.720 There are going to be some men somewhere in the world who 01:09:05.280 --> 01:09:08.800 are still sexually tempted when they see a woman in a burqa. 01:09:08.800 --> 01:09:11.840 That doesn't mean that all women have to dress like a trash 01:09:11.840 --> 01:09:15.360 bag. We're not going to ever go that far, obviously. 01:09:15.360 --> 01:09:17.600 We would never argue for that. 01:09:17.600 --> 01:09:19.120 But there's a line. 01:09:19.520 --> 01:09:21.120 It's a wisdom call. 01:09:21.120 --> 01:09:24.400 There's a reasonableness assessment here. 01:09:24.400 --> 01:09:28.320 Part of bearing with one another is doing what we can do 01:09:28.560 --> 01:09:32.480 within the bounds of reason, not to cause others to fall into 01:09:33.360 --> 01:09:37.680 sin. Because that's part of avoiding sin ourselves. 01:09:37.680 --> 01:09:41.520 And it's also part of just living a Christian life. 01:09:42.000 --> 01:09:46.720 Because yes, part of your goal obviously is to avoid sin yourself, 01:09:46.720 --> 01:09:50.160 and so if you have problems with addiction, you need to recognize 01:09:50.160 --> 01:09:55.040 that there are biological aspects and psychological aspects and spiritual aspects, and 01:09:55.040 --> 01:09:56.720 address all of those. 01:09:56.720 --> 01:10:02.400 I know that we haven't necessarily given some exhaustive list of concrete 01:10:02.400 --> 01:10:05.440 steps to take, as if that were even possible. 01:10:05.440 --> 01:10:07.120 But that's not the point of the episode. 01:10:07.120 --> 01:10:10.080 The point is to give the contours of this, to give the 01:10:10.080 --> 01:10:11.200 outline of the subject 01:10:12.400 --> 01:10:16.080 to help give you at least some tools and some pointers where 01:10:16.080 --> 01:10:20.560 to find other tools in dealing with these matters. 01:10:20.560 --> 01:10:24.000 And so recognize that if you have an addiction to something, there 01:10:24.000 --> 01:10:25.760 may be a biological aspect to it. 01:10:26.560 --> 01:10:29.040 That needs to be investigated. 01:10:29.040 --> 01:10:32.960 It may be that you need to seek medical attention. 01:10:32.960 --> 01:10:36.240 If you are addicted to opiates, you are probably going to need 01:10:36.240 --> 01:10:39.520 some drugs drug to help you get off of that addiction. 01:10:39.520 --> 01:10:42.240 Because there is a biological aspect. 01:10:42.240 --> 01:10:45.600 You are probably going to need to employ some of the psychological 01:10:45.600 --> 01:10:48.880 measures we mentioned, and there are others as well. 01:10:48.880 --> 01:10:52.320 Because there is a psychological aspect to that addiction. 01:10:52.320 --> 01:10:55.680 And you are going to need to address it spiritually as well. 01:10:55.680 --> 01:10:57.520 It is something you need to confess. 01:10:57.520 --> 01:11:00.800 It is something you need to hear the words that you are 01:11:00.800 --> 01:11:03.440 forgiven. I know that there are some in the audience who hate 01:11:04.080 --> 01:11:08.080 the idea of someone else pronouncing forgiveness. 01:11:08.080 --> 01:11:11.760 They hate the idea of a pastor standing up and saying, I 01:11:11.760 --> 01:11:15.120 forgive you in the name of Christ. 01:11:15.360 --> 01:11:19.280 Incidentally, you can announce forgiveness to any other Christian just as a 01:11:19.280 --> 01:11:24.320 Christian. But that is a very real part of the Christian faith. 01:11:24.320 --> 01:11:28.160 It has been a part of the Christian faith from the beginning, 01:11:28.160 --> 01:11:32.320 and it is vitally important to hear those words. 01:11:32.320 --> 01:11:35.680 There are many times where you need to hear specifically the words 01:11:35.840 --> 01:11:38.240 that you are forgiven for your sin. 01:11:38.240 --> 01:11:40.480 Maybe it's a particular sin. 01:11:40.480 --> 01:11:43.040 Because it is going to take that weight off your conscience. 01:11:43.040 --> 01:11:45.760 It is going to be part of what helps you to deal 01:11:45.760 --> 01:11:46.960 with that addiction. 01:11:46.960 --> 01:11:50.320 That is how you address the spiritual aspect of it. 01:11:50.320 --> 01:11:53.760 If you are part of a tradition that does not have that, 01:11:53.760 --> 01:11:56.880 then at least go to a Christian brother and ask him to 01:11:56.880 --> 01:11:59.120 tell you you're forgiven. 01:11:59.120 --> 01:12:04.320 If you're uncomfortable with a pastor saying, I forgive you, then just 01:12:04.320 --> 01:12:07.120 go to a Christian brother who will tell you you are forgiven, 01:12:07.120 --> 01:12:11.360 because any Christian can, of course, announce that forgiveness, because it's true, 01:12:11.360 --> 01:12:15.200 because it was accomplished at the cross, because all sins were forgiven, 01:12:15.200 --> 01:12:20.080 in Christ's once and for all time sacrifice. 01:12:20.080 --> 01:12:22.960 But you need to be reminded of that. 01:12:22.960 --> 01:12:28.080 It's not enough to know, intellectually, that all sins for all time 01:12:28.240 --> 01:12:30.240 were forgiven at the cross. 01:12:30.240 --> 01:12:36.000 That's the reason that we have absolution, confession, and absolution. 01:12:36.000 --> 01:12:38.880 That's the reason that we have the sacrament. 01:12:38.880 --> 01:12:41.760 That's the reason that we have baptism. 01:12:41.760 --> 01:12:45.520 All of these things are to serve as reminders. 01:12:45.520 --> 01:12:48.320 In the case of baptism, of course it also gives you faith, 01:12:48.320 --> 01:12:52.000 so it does forgive your sins, but they also have a reminder 01:12:52.000 --> 01:12:55.120 aspect to them of reminding you of the fact that you have 01:12:55.120 --> 01:12:56.880 this forgiveness of sins. 01:12:56.880 --> 01:12:59.920 Even if we don't get into all of the differences that various 01:12:59.920 --> 01:13:03.440 groups have with regard to how we conceive of the sacraments, and 01:13:03.440 --> 01:13:06.080 of course as Lutherans we conceive of them in a particular way, 01:13:06.080 --> 01:13:08.480 and we've gone over that in previous episodes. 01:13:08.480 --> 01:13:10.080 That's not the point. 01:13:10.080 --> 01:13:13.600 The point is that God has given us many different ways in 01:13:13.600 --> 01:13:17.600 which He announces to us and reminds us that our sins are 01:13:17.600 --> 01:13:23.120 forgiven. That spiritual aspect cannot be ignored. 01:13:23.120 --> 01:13:27.360 It needs to be addressed with regard to addiction and these various 01:13:27.360 --> 01:13:28.560 other problems. 01:13:28.560 --> 01:13:33.120 But it cannot be done at the expense, it cannot be done 01:13:33.120 --> 01:13:36.640 while ignoring the other aspects. 01:13:36.640 --> 01:13:39.920 And so if you have problems with addiction, if you struggle with 01:13:39.920 --> 01:13:43.600 these issues, you need to make sure that all three of these 01:13:43.600 --> 01:13:45.760 things are being addressed. 01:13:45.760 --> 01:13:50.000 And part of that is having other Christians in your life who 01:13:50.000 --> 01:13:54.560 can help you along with these things? 01:13:54.560 --> 01:13:59.200 One of the most common ways of describing the Christian life is 01:13:59.440 --> 01:14:01.040 as a marathon. 01:14:01.040 --> 01:14:03.040 It's a long distance run. 01:14:03.040 --> 01:14:05.440 And I'm saying this is someone who hates running, it's one of 01:14:05.440 --> 01:14:09.760 the forms of cardio I do not enjoy whatsoever. 01:14:09.760 --> 01:14:14.480 But the Christian life is most often described as a marathon. 01:14:14.480 --> 01:14:17.280 It is not something that is done in one day, it is 01:14:17.280 --> 01:14:22.320 not something that is done even in a week or a year, 01:14:22.320 --> 01:14:23.360 a decade. 01:14:23.360 --> 01:14:26.640 It's a very long marathon, incidentally. 01:14:26.640 --> 01:14:31.120 Part of being able to run that race successfully is having others 01:14:31.120 --> 01:14:35.360 along with you, is having others who are also running that race 01:14:35.440 --> 01:14:37.520 who can encourage you. 01:14:37.520 --> 01:14:41.520 It is much more difficult to deal with these things when you 01:14:41.520 --> 01:14:42.720 are alone. 01:14:42.720 --> 01:14:46.240 That is one of the fundamental realities of life. 01:14:46.240 --> 01:14:48.080 Scripture speaks to it. 01:14:48.080 --> 01:14:50.720 You can think of Adam in the garden, and God says that 01:14:50.720 --> 01:14:52.640 it is not good for man to be alone. 01:14:52.640 --> 01:14:54.080 Psychology speaks to it. 01:14:54.080 --> 01:14:59.760 Isolation is something that is extensively studied and the psychological research, atomization 01:14:59.920 --> 01:15:01.120 as well. 01:15:01.120 --> 01:15:02.960 And spiritually it's true. 01:15:02.960 --> 01:15:06.800 We are not to forsake the gathering together of the saints. 01:15:06.800 --> 01:15:10.720 You don't want to run the Christian race alone. 01:15:10.720 --> 01:15:14.480 And you should not let your brothers and sisters run it alone, 01:15:14.480 --> 01:15:18.400 when you can come alongside them and help them, whether it is 01:15:18.400 --> 01:15:22.800 with doubts that they have or struggles with addiction, whatever it happens 01:15:22.800 --> 01:15:26.560 to be, when you can offer that aid you should be doing 01:15:26.560 --> 01:15:29.600 so. Because that is part of what it means to be a 01:15:29.600 --> 01:15:34.720 Christian. On the one hand, we do what we can to avoid 01:15:35.680 --> 01:15:40.640 serving as an opportunity or a cause of temptation for others. 01:15:40.640 --> 01:15:44.480 And on the other hand, we help those who have fallen into 01:15:44.480 --> 01:15:49.120 these things by lifting them up again and serving as encouragement. 01:15:49.120 --> 01:15:53.040 The Christian life is meant to be lived in community, not in 01:15:53.040 --> 01:15:57.200 isolation. And so that is one of the things that is absolutely 01:15:57.200 --> 01:16:00.480 necessary for dealing with issues like addiction. 01:16:00.480 --> 01:16:03.760 Do not deal with it alone. 01:16:03.760 --> 01:16:07.920 You are not going to get over it on your own. 01:16:07.920 --> 01:16:10.960 That is simply the reality of how God made us. 01:16:10.960 --> 01:16:13.440 He made us to be social creatures. 01:16:13.440 --> 01:16:17.520 Now, sure, there are some cases in which a man, simply through 01:16:17.520 --> 01:16:21.440 sheer force of will, gets rid of a particular addiction. 01:16:21.440 --> 01:16:24.080 There are undoubtedly many men in history who have done that with 01:16:24.080 --> 01:16:30.880 alcoholism. But by and large, most men, most women, are going to 01:16:30.880 --> 01:16:32.880 need help from someone. 01:16:32.880 --> 01:16:37.120 If it's a drug addiction, you probably need help from a doctor. 01:16:37.120 --> 01:16:41.600 Particularly if it's one of the more nasty drugs out there. 01:16:41.600 --> 01:16:45.120 If it is something that is psychological, you are probably going to 01:16:45.120 --> 01:16:48.560 need help from some of the tools developed by psychology, and yes, 01:16:48.560 --> 01:16:50.320 some of them are useful. 01:16:50.320 --> 01:16:54.320 You may need the help of someone who is trained in psychology. 01:16:54.320 --> 01:16:59.360 There are Christians who specialize in psychology and do so without discounting 01:16:59.360 --> 01:17:04.800 the reality of the spiritual, without trying to psychologize everything, simply recognizing 01:17:05.280 --> 01:17:11.200 that there are tools in the psychology handbag, in the toolbox, that 01:17:11.200 --> 01:17:14.320 can be used to treat certain things. 01:17:14.320 --> 01:17:17.600 Again, I mentioned cognitive behavioral therapy. 01:17:17.600 --> 01:17:23.600 It has shown great utility in many cases, including with addiction. 01:17:23.600 --> 01:17:28.080 And then again there is that third part, the spiritual aspect. 01:17:28.080 --> 01:17:31.280 You need to live with and among other Christians. 01:17:31.600 --> 01:17:34.960 You need to have other Christians with whom you talk, other Christians 01:17:34.960 --> 01:17:39.360 with whom you discuss your struggles and your problems, and, in many 01:17:39.360 --> 01:17:43.360 cases, particularly with regard to the things about which we have been 01:17:43.360 --> 01:17:46.880 speaking in this episode, you need other Christians who will hold you 01:17:46.880 --> 01:17:53.040 accountable. And you probably need to make sure that if you're a 01:17:53.040 --> 01:17:57.360 man, they're male, and if you're a woman, they're female. 01:17:57.360 --> 01:18:00.800 Men and women do not interact in the same way. 01:18:00.800 --> 01:18:03.840 Men and women do not think in the same way. 01:18:03.840 --> 01:18:08.480 There are very real differences between men and women, and men are 01:18:08.480 --> 01:18:12.080 going to do a better job holding other men accountable, and women 01:18:12.080 --> 01:18:15.200 are going to do a better job holding other women accountable. 01:18:15.200 --> 01:18:18.320 Now for women it comes with the caveat Don't let it turn 01:18:18.320 --> 01:18:19.600 into gossip. 01:18:19.600 --> 01:18:22.640 That is one of the sins that is particular to women. 01:18:22.720 --> 01:18:26.080 And with men, there's going to be the challenge of actually discussing 01:18:26.080 --> 01:18:27.840 the issues whatsoever. 01:18:27.840 --> 01:18:31.600 Because by and large, male friendship is something that has just fallen 01:18:31.600 --> 01:18:33.760 away in the modern world. 01:18:33.760 --> 01:18:36.000 Now there are a number of reasons for that, I don't want 01:18:36.000 --> 01:18:40.080 to get into them in this episode at this point. 01:18:40.080 --> 01:18:42.880 But it is a problem that needs to be surmounted. 01:18:42.880 --> 01:18:47.040 You need to actually have male friends with whom you discuss these 01:18:47.040 --> 01:18:50.000 things, and you need to have male friends who are willing to 01:18:50.000 --> 01:18:53.200 hold you accountable for various things. 01:18:53.200 --> 01:18:56.800 This is one of those cases where perhaps the men who frequent 01:18:56.800 --> 01:19:00.240 the gym are going to be more prepared for this in some 01:19:00.240 --> 01:19:04.480 ways. Because you probably have a gym buddy who holds you accountable, 01:19:04.480 --> 01:19:08.400 or at least someone who's a friend perhaps from childhood or high 01:19:08.400 --> 01:19:11.360 school, whatever it happens to be, who asked you when you went 01:19:11.360 --> 01:19:15.040 to the gym last what weight you're doing on a particular exercise, 01:19:15.040 --> 01:19:15.520 something like that. 01:19:15.920 --> 01:19:19.600 He is holding you accountable so that you keep doing the thing 01:19:19.600 --> 01:19:21.520 you know you need to do. 01:19:21.520 --> 01:19:24.320 The same thing is true of the Christian life. 01:19:24.320 --> 01:19:28.480 You need to have other Christians who can hold you accountable, who 01:19:28.480 --> 01:19:31.520 can help you to run the race, who can pick you back 01:19:31.520 --> 01:19:33.680 up when you fall. 01:19:33.680 --> 01:19:36.000 It's not just the case with addiction. 01:19:36.000 --> 01:19:40.000 Addiction is sort of the worst case scenario because that's the thing 01:19:40.000 --> 01:19:42.000 where you absolutely need the help. 01:19:42.000 --> 01:19:45.840 You probably can't get yourself out of the pit without someone throwing 01:19:45.840 --> 01:19:50.480 you a rope or a ladder or just something to help you. 01:19:50.480 --> 01:19:55.760 But just living the Christian life, even without the worst case scenario, 01:19:55.760 --> 01:20:01.120 just running the Christian race, you need others alongside you. 01:20:01.120 --> 01:20:04.160 Really what we're doing, what we're attempting to do, and what other 01:20:04.160 --> 01:20:07.120 Christians need to do, because this is not something that anyone can 01:20:07.120 --> 01:20:09.520 do on his own zone. 01:20:09.520 --> 01:20:12.640 We need to rebuild Christian communities. 01:20:12.640 --> 01:20:16.720 Because even with regard to those who attend a church who have 01:20:16.720 --> 01:20:21.040 been attending it perhaps for many years, know everyone in the church, 01:20:21.040 --> 01:20:23.680 you're probably still relatively atomized. 01:20:23.680 --> 01:20:28.240 How often do you talk to those at your church outside of 01:20:28.240 --> 01:20:32.160 church? When is the last time you had dinner with someone from 01:20:32.160 --> 01:20:36.080 your church, or played cards, or went golfing, whatever it happens to 01:20:36.080 --> 01:20:41.760 be that you enjoy doing, you need to have a Christian community, 01:20:41.760 --> 01:20:45.200 or else it doesn't really mean that much. 01:20:45.200 --> 01:20:48.960 Yes, attending church is obviously important, and we are not to forsake 01:20:48.960 --> 01:20:52.480 that. That is a vitally important part of the Christian life. 01:20:52.480 --> 01:20:56.160 But there is more to the Christian life than an hour on 01:20:56.160 --> 01:20:59.360 Sunday, or two hours, or three hours, however long your service and 01:20:59.360 --> 01:21:04.480 your Bible study, whatever else happens to be. 01:21:04.480 --> 01:21:07.440 This is very similar to one of the things that we mentioned 01:21:07.440 --> 01:21:09.760 in so many episodes. 01:21:09.760 --> 01:21:15.120 We're talking about the and then what of the Christian life. 01:21:15.120 --> 01:21:19.360 Usually we are talking about that with regard to justification because you're 01:21:19.360 --> 01:21:22.320 justified, you're saved, you have faith. 01:21:22.320 --> 01:21:23.120 Now what? 01:21:23.120 --> 01:21:23.920 What do you do? 01:21:24.160 --> 01:21:27.360 How do you live the Christian life? 01:21:27.360 --> 01:21:32.240 This is similar in that we are talking about Christian community. 01:21:32.240 --> 01:21:33.840 You attend church. 01:21:33.840 --> 01:21:36.640 Great. And then what? 01:21:37.120 --> 01:21:39.920 Do you talk to those people outside of church? 01:21:39.920 --> 01:21:42.960 Do you break bread with those people outside of church? 01:21:42.960 --> 01:21:44.800 Do you help those people when they need help? 01:21:44.800 --> 01:21:47.600 Do they help you when you need help? 01:21:47.600 --> 01:21:51.440 If those things don't happen, you don't really have a Christian community. 01:21:51.760 --> 01:21:54.400 You just have a bunch of strangers who happen to sit near 01:21:54.400 --> 01:21:57.680 each other for an hour every Sunday morning. 01:21:57.680 --> 01:22:01.120 That is not a Christian life, that is not a Christian community, 01:22:01.120 --> 01:22:03.600 and it isn't a real church. 01:22:03.600 --> 01:22:07.840 We need to get away from this view of Christianity as being 01:22:08.160 --> 01:22:12.720 an hour here or an hour there, a Wednesday service here, Sunday 01:22:12.720 --> 01:22:17.200 morning. That is not the Christian life, and it is insufficient. 01:22:17.200 --> 01:22:19.680 It is not the sort of life, it is not the sort 01:22:19.680 --> 01:22:22.800 of community that is going to be able to address these very 01:22:22.800 --> 01:22:25.280 real problems. 01:22:25.280 --> 01:22:29.760 And the way that we start addressing this is simply by rebuilding 01:22:29.760 --> 01:22:35.600 those Christian friendships, having someone who will hold you accountable, having someone 01:22:35.600 --> 01:22:39.360 with whom you can discuss your sins, and someone who can help 01:22:39.360 --> 01:22:42.480 you to overcome those sins. 01:22:42.480 --> 01:22:46.160 It is not enough to listen to a podcast. 01:22:46.160 --> 01:22:49.840 It is not enough to attend Sunday morning service. 01:22:49.840 --> 01:22:52.000 There is more to the Christian life. 01:22:52.000 --> 01:22:55.760 There is more that needs to be done by Christians for each 01:22:55.760 --> 01:22:56.320 other. 01:22:57.440 --> 01:23:01.840 Most of these things have fallen away in the last fifty to 01:23:01.840 --> 01:23:03.280 one hundred years. 01:23:03.280 --> 01:23:09.200 They've all collapsed because they have not been maintained by previous generations. 01:23:09.200 --> 01:23:13.520 We are rebuilding these things that should never have been allowed to 01:23:13.520 --> 01:23:17.760 become moribund or just completely absent. 01:23:17.760 --> 01:23:20.160 It is going to be hard work. 01:23:20.160 --> 01:23:22.000 It will not be easy. 01:23:22.000 --> 01:23:24.560 That is simply the reality of it. 01:23:24.560 --> 01:23:26.240 But it is necessary. 01:23:26.240 --> 01:23:28.800 It is our Christian duty to rebuild these things. 01:23:28.800 --> 01:23:32.560 It is our Christian duty to take care of other Christians. 01:23:32.560 --> 01:23:34.800 And that includes not just helping 01:23:35.680 --> 01:23:40.720 them by not serving as a cause for temptation, not serving as 01:23:40.720 --> 01:23:45.040 an occasion for temptation, but also by helping them to overcome those 01:23:45.040 --> 01:23:48.560 temptations when they fall into them Whether or not it becomes a 01:23:48.560 --> 01:23:51.200 full blown addiction. 01:23:51.200 --> 01:23:55.360 The Christian life is a life lived in community, because it is 01:23:55.360 --> 01:23:57.760 a life lived for others. 01:23:57.760 --> 01:24:00.560 We went over this in the episodes on love. 01:24:00.560 --> 01:24:02.160 What is agape? 01:24:02.160 --> 01:24:04.320 It is a self-sacrificing love. 01:24:04.320 --> 01:24:06.960 It is a love that seeks the good of others. 01:24:06.960 --> 01:24:09.840 And as Christians, we do that by seeking the good of our 01:24:09.840 --> 01:24:14.160 neighbor. One of the ways we can do that is by helping 01:24:14.160 --> 01:24:18.160 our neighbors who have fallen into these sorts of problems, who have 01:24:18.160 --> 01:24:20.800 fallen into addiction. 01:24:20.800 --> 01:24:23.280 There are many ways we can do that and they are going 01:24:23.280 --> 01:24:24.960 to be unique. 01:24:24.960 --> 01:24:26.400 At least they are going to be different. 01:24:26.640 --> 01:24:29.360 They are going to differ from one man to the next, from 01:24:29.360 --> 01:24:31.040 one addiction to the next. 01:24:31.040 --> 01:24:34.320 These are issues of wisdom, they're issues of reason. 01:24:34.320 --> 01:24:36.240 We can't just give you an outline. 01:24:36.240 --> 01:24:39.040 We can't give you a flow chart if this then that. 01:24:39.040 --> 01:24:43.680 But we can recommend by pointing you to certain tools, we can 01:24:43.680 --> 01:24:46.560 say there are things that are useful in psychology. 01:24:46.560 --> 01:24:50.320 We can recommend that you read scripture as we always do, because 01:24:50.320 --> 01:24:53.440 scripture contains wisdom, it is going to guide you in many of 01:24:53.440 --> 01:24:54.160 these problems. 01:24:56.880 --> 01:25:01.600 But we definitely and staunchly recommend that you do not make the 01:25:01.600 --> 01:25:05.840 mistake that so many Christians make these days By asking for a 01:25:05.840 --> 01:25:09.760 verse for every single thing that anyone ever says. 01:25:09.760 --> 01:25:14.880 You are not going to find cognitive behavioral therapy in scripture. 01:25:14.880 --> 01:25:20.080 You are not going to find dopaminergic neurons in scripture. 01:25:20.080 --> 01:25:23.680 You are not going to find serotonin in scripture. 01:25:23.680 --> 01:25:25.600 But these things are very real. 01:25:25.600 --> 01:25:27.120 They have utility. 01:25:27.120 --> 01:25:32.480 They are part of the reality of creation that God created. 01:25:32.480 --> 01:25:36.880 And so we can use them insofar as they are true, insofar 01:25:36.880 --> 01:25:40.640 as they are useful, to serve godly ends. 01:25:40.640 --> 01:25:43.920 Just because there are atheists involved in the field of psychology does 01:25:43.920 --> 01:25:47.680 not mean that not mean the field itself is atheist. 01:25:47.680 --> 01:25:51.120 Many evolutionists are involved in the field of biology. 01:25:51.120 --> 01:25:55.440 It doesn't change for a second, it doesn't change one iota, that 01:25:55.440 --> 01:25:58.560 God is the author of biology. 01:25:58.880 --> 01:26:01.920 He spoke all of that into reality. 01:26:01.920 --> 01:26:05.520 And so studying those systems is still useful. 01:26:05.520 --> 01:26:09.600 The results of those systems, even when studied by atheists, can still 01:26:09.600 --> 01:26:13.040 be useful, particularly when used by Christians 01:26:14.560 --> 01:26:21.200 And so remember that man is these three parts, and recognize that 01:26:21.200 --> 01:26:24.240 all of them are part of the Christian life. 01:26:24.240 --> 01:26:27.520 The Christian life is not just the spiritual, the Christian life is 01:26:27.520 --> 01:26:32.080 not just the psychological, the Christian life is not just the biological, 01:26:32.080 --> 01:26:35.280 and that is in terms of both the good and the bad. 01:26:35.280 --> 01:26:37.920 Whether it is things that are good for us that God has 01:26:37.920 --> 01:26:42.400 created, that we rightly enjoy, or things where we have fallen into 01:26:42.400 --> 01:26:46.960 sin and temptation, where those systems have been hijacked by Satan to 01:26:46.960 --> 01:26:48.800 cause harm. 01:26:48.800 --> 01:26:54.320 We must approach these issues recognizing the reality of the systems that 01:26:54.320 --> 01:26:58.560 are in play, and recognizing the reality of what we need to 01:26:58.560 --> 01:27:02.800 do using the wisdom and the reason that God has given us. 01:27:02.880 --> 01:27:05.280 That is an actual Christian life. 01:27:05.280 --> 01:27:07.680 That is how Christians should actually live. 01:27:07.680 --> 01:27:11.120 And that is how we start to address all of these problems 01:27:11.680 --> 01:27:16.880 that previous generations have allowed to fester and that Satan has exploited 01:27:16.960 --> 01:27:19.120 so effectively.