Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Before we get going, I just want you to know that someone raises a question today about child sexual abuse, and I don't want that to come as a shock when we get to it. God bless. The moment that comes for everyone has come for Chris Nielsen. You've died, Chris. If heaven is a place where you know only joy... Oh, man.
Boy, I screwed up. I'm in dog heaven. You're creating an entire world here. From your imagination, from anything you want. Where you feel no more fear. I'm gonna drown him. You can't, you're already dead. And anything you can imagine is real. It's your world! Could you let go? Hey!
Of the love you left behind. I need Annie. That'll change in time. Time does not exist here. And wherever it went, it's not going to make me need Annie any less. And how far would you go? You never see. I'm her soulmate. To get it back. I can find her. That's a clip from the 1998 film What Dreams May Come. It's one of the films you'll consistently find in lists of the best depictions of the afterlife.
The film is about Chris Nielsen, played by the legendary Robin Williams. He's a doctor who's had his fair share of loss in life. Both of his children are killed in a car crash, and in the aftermath, he watches his wife spiral into grief. Then Chris, too, is killed in a car crash.
He wakes up in his version of the afterlife, which looks like an impressionist painting. Chris journeys from his version of heaven into hell to save his wife, who's been relegated to an afterlife of misery. It's pretty heavy, but the visuals are something else.
A review of the film in Empire magazine at the time said, few films have the nerve or the imagination to create a world beyond, and the settings are consistently incredible, whether in the idyllic heaven or the paved with agonized faces hell.
Well, you may not feel ready to experience heaven or hell quite yet, but I tell you, many of you have questions about heaven and hell. Welcome to this season's Q&A episode, where I'm going to try and answer the questions you've thrown at us all year. I'm John Dixon, and this is Undeceptions. Undeceptions
Thank you.
Undeceptions is brought to you by Zondervan and their new book, How Not to Read the Bible, by Dan Kimble. Every week at Undeceptions, we explore some aspect of life, and today, death, faith, history, culture, or ethics, that's either much misunderstood or mostly forgotten. With the help of people who know what they're talking about, though that's debatable today, we'll try to undeceive ourselves and let the truth out.
Some of you recorded your questions on our website, underceptions.com, and it's great to hear your voices. And others went with the more traditional option. And I'll get producer Kayleigh to read out your questions. Okay, let's go. Kerry had a question about a comment you made in the five-minute Jesus segment of episode 24 in season two. That's the one with Rachel Gilson. Here's the question.
You say that you think Jesus does say that justice will be proportional, but I can't see how that fits with a basic understanding of us being saved by grace through repentance because of Jesus' ultimate sacrifice once for all. If some are to be punished more severely for a more severe sin, do you think that means there will be degrees of suffering outside of the presence of God? It reminds me of that quote from Madeleine Albright, "'There's a special place in hell for women who don't support other women.'"
Yeah, maybe. It didn't quite remind me of that. But the Bible is pretty clear that judgment is proportional. The Old Testament, for example, Psalm 62, says judgment will be according to what each has done. That expression makes no sense if it really just means judgment is the same for everyone, no matter what they've done.
Then Paul in Romans 2 speaks of unrepentant people, quote, storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God's wrath. That storing up word is a banking term, and it really means what it sounds like. You can store up more or less.
Then there's tons from Jesus on the same thing. In Luke 7, he compares two sinners, a Pharisee and a sinful woman, and he describes the Pharisee as owing God, the master, 50 days of wages. That's the amount of his sins. And the woman owes God 500 days of wages. But then he adds that neither can repay the debt.
He's clear that the debt is different, but he says neither can actually pay. God then forgives both. Then in Luke 12, he speaks of two people, one who breaks God's commands without having a clear instruction and one who breaks God's commands knowing exactly what the instruction is. And Jesus says the latter will receive more judgment.
And in Luke 20, he explicitly says that the professional religious teachers who are hypocrites will receive on the day of judgment, perisoteron, crimer, greater judgment, not just great judgment, greater judgment. For the nerds, that's a comparative, not a simple adjective. Kayleigh, yeah, you like that? Yeah, sure. Okay.
The point of this whole observation is to know that God's judgment will not be arbitrary. One blanket punishment for all.
To my mind, that makes no sense. It's going to be measured, appropriate, just. We don't have a clear idea exactly of how people's experiences of Gehenna will differ according to what each has done, but there should be no doubt that it will differ. Some will receive greater judgment and others lesser. God's word affirms it. God's justice guarantees it.
This, by the way, is why I can't find myself persuaded by those who think that judgment or hell is simply annihilation, the removal of someone's conscious existence. Because in that case, God's judgment would be arbitrary. He'd be giving the same punishment, non-existence, to anyone who disobeyed him, regardless of how large that sin was or how small. And that doesn't compute.
Oh, and by the way, none of this impacts the Bible's teaching on the other side of the ledger about salvation by grace. Because as Jesus said in Luke 7, two people can have a greater or lesser debt before God, but the fact is neither can repay. Forgiveness is forgiveness. It's full and it's free.
I think I've grown up with the idea that all sins are equal in the eyes of God. Perhaps I was told in Sunday school once that sneakily eating the cookie, deception and stealing were the same in God's eyes as hurting someone because it's all disobeying God. I feel like that view is really common. Where has that come from? It is common, yeah. It's also pretty modern. I think it was an argumentative strategy in...
in recent culture where people began to think of themselves as basically good and hadn't murdered or committed adultery or anything like that. And so parts of the church responded by saying, ah, but did you know
All sins, including stealing from the cookie jar, are the same as adultery and murder. I don't know how persuasive that ever was, but I think that was behind the strategy. And the verse that people tried to pin it on is in 1 John 3, 4. It says, everyone who sins breaks the law. In fact, sin is lawlessness.
But that verse is just like saying all crimes break the law. Therefore, all crimes are law-breaking. It doesn't tell you for a second anything about which are the greater or lesser crimes. It just tells you that they're all criminal. They're all breaking the law.
And Jesus himself said that there are weightier matters of the law. That's in Matthew 23. That means more important aspects of the law. And then he actually lists them as justice, mercy, and faithfulness. Or in Luke 20, as I mentioned a second ago, religious hypocrites will receive greater condemnation because their hypocrisy is a worse sin.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to your first day in the afterlife. You were all, simply put, good people. But how do we know that you were good? How are we sure? During your time on Earth, every one of your actions had a positive or a negative value, depending on how much good or bad that action put into the universe. Every sandwich you ate
Every time you bought a magazine, every single thing you did had an effect that rippled out over time and ultimately created some amount of good or bad. You know how some people pull into the breakdown lane when there's traffic and they think to themselves, "Ah, who cares? No one's watching." We were watching. Surprise! Anyway...
When your time on Earth has ended, we calculate the total value of your life using our perfectly accurate measuring system. Only the people with the very highest scores, the true cream of the crop, get to come here, to the good place. What happens to everyone else, you ask? Don't worry about it. The point is, you are here because you lived one of the very best lives that could be lived.
Jeff has a question about the flip side of this idea of proportional justice. Here's the question. Do you also propose a proportional heaven side? I think I recall scripture referring to seven levels of heaven. Basic scripture says if you believe and accept Christ, you go to heaven. No works necessary. But then, is there the possibility of segregation in heaven based on works? Could I end up in a different neighborhood of heaven, from family and friends that are also there?
I might be drawing ideas from fictional understandings of scripture here, so would appreciate correction. Any thoughts?
We heard a bit from the American fantasy comedy series The Good Place just before Jeff's question. The initial premise of the show follows Eleanor, a woman who's welcomed into The Good Place after her death. The Good Place is a highly selective, heaven-like utopia designed by the afterlife architect Michael, played by Ted Danson. The Good Place is purportedly a reward for Eleanor's righteous life,
But she thinks she's there by mistake and tries to hide her morally imperfect past so she can stay.
There's heaps we could say about The Good Place with all its twists and turns, but I don't want to spoil it. The point, though, is that there's this system of reward in the afterlife, and it's really specific. So singing to a child gives you a net gain of 0.69 points. Committing genocide, on the other hand, will cost you 433,115.25 points.
Maintaining one's composure in line at a water theme park will get you 61.14 points, but telling a woman to smile is a withdrawal of 53.83 points. I would never dare, never, ever,
The list goes on and on with debits and credits racked up according to what will bring another person pleasure or pain. So, is this how the heaven of the Bible works?
Well, just because God's punishment is fair, that is proportional in accordance with what each has done, that doesn't mean that the blessing of God's kingdom is fair or proportional. I mean, in some ways, that's the scandalous thing about forgiveness. It's not fair and no one deserves it. So to be clear, Christ's death on the cross, according to Christianity, completely cancels our debt with God.
regardless of how large or small that debt is. He bore the penalty for all our wrongdoing. And so his forgiveness is free to us, even if it's costly to Christ. And so in that sense, it is unjust, unfair, and
Having said that, I don't mean to contradict myself, honestly. There are passages that speak of reward in the age to come in God's eternal kingdom. The cool thing, though, is that it isn't described as varying degrees of forgiveness or closeness to God or better mansions with better views or anything like that.
The chief metaphor is the concept of a crown. Okay. So the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 9 speaks of winning a crown that will last forever.
Again, Philippians 4, he says that the Philippian church itself is his crown, his reward for eternity. He says the same thing about the Thessalonians in 1 Thessalonians 2, where it's clear what he's talking about is being rewarded on the last day by Christ himself and that this church is like his crown, his great honor. James, the brother of Jesus, says the same thing in chapter 1 of his letter.
And Peter also speaks about Christians receiving a crown of glory that will never fade away. Okay, so the big idea is that Christians get a crown and that's to do with glory.
The key point in all of this is that the word that's used, Stephanos, refers to what we would call a wreath, actually. It's not a valuable crown made of silver and gold that a king might wear. You know, some of us get more jewels or whatever. It's the wreath of leaves given to an ancient athlete for winning a race. It's actually worthless, except it means honor.
The whole metaphor is about receiving the reward of welcoming praise for what people have done. It's not about material or spiritual privileges. It's the emperor watching the race, bestowing the crown and saying, as Jesus puts it in several places, well done, good and faithful servant.
I love this idea. I want there to be public honor for the deeds that some Christians have done. Just this week, I spoke at the funeral of a gentleman whom you've never heard of, you never will, but he served my church humbly, practically, and frequently for 60 years.
He seems to me like the last of a dying breed of humble servants. I want you to witness one day in God's kingdom, the Lord of history bestow on him a crown and say, Richard Tress, well done, good and faithful servant. And I'll be at the very back of the crowd, but I'll be yelling and cheering my head off. This is a question from Laura.
I have a question about heaven. Why is it such a vague idea of paradise? If all our suffering is leading to eternal bliss, why don't we know much about it? Wouldn't that be a really important selling point for Christianity? They get to live happily forever, while everyone else is in eternal suffering. And yet the Bible doesn't give us a lot of detail about the place Christians will be forever.
This is a huge stumbling block for me. Heaven is the prize for believing in Jesus. And if what is awaiting Christians is eternal bliss, why stay and endure the suffering on earth? Well, we do know a couple of cool things. First, we do know that there'll be this honour thing. There'll be this wonderful knowledge, not only that justice has been done on the negative side of history's ledger, but that the millions of little acts of heroism will be honoured by God. Secondly,
And this is perhaps the most misunderstood aspect of the Bible's teaching on all these things. We are assured in many places of Scripture, Isaiah 61, Romans 8, Revelation 21, that we're not destined to be spirits in an ethereal bliss, but raised bodies in a new creation. The Eastern view of the afterlife is precisely the negation of the body and material creation. But that isn't what the Bible teaches here.
Christians are looking forward to what the ancient apostles' creed calls the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. The Nicene Creed, the creed accepted by all the brands of Christianity, says the same thing. We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.
There is no way the creator of a good creation is going to turn his back on the body or on creation. He's going to raise it up, restore it. Romans 8 says explicitly that the creation itself is going to be liberated from its decay. Not that it's going to be obliterated, but the creation liberated.
And it specifically says that this liberation is going to be analogous to the bodily resurrection of believers. Now, that may sound very nerdy and theological, but it has massive implications for what you ask, Laura.
If the afterlife were just a spiritual existence devoid of created reality, this would indeed be a denial of our contemporary world. This would lead to the extreme asceticism and pessimism about created life that you often get in Eastern philosophies. The goal in these philosophies is to escape from the material life. By the way, the ancient Gnostics believed the same thing.
The Bible's view is radically different. God loves creation and the body so much he intends to renew and glorify them.
That means Christians should be looking at life now as a tangible down payment, a foretaste, a prelude to future reality. Negation of the body and of the material world just isn't an option if God has promised to take these things and glorify them, not remove them.
If our spirits were destined to depart and live in an ethereal heaven, this would be no answer to bodily death, and it would give no significance to our material lives. But if all things, body and soul, the heavens and the earth, are set to be transposed into God's perfect melody, that does provide an answer to physical death.
And it gives enormous meaning to the melody of our lives right here and now. One of the most concrete images we get about, well, what you might call heaven is from Revelation. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain for the former things are passed away.
Which brings us to our next question about the suffering we experience while we're still on earth. My name's Liz. I was the victim of childhood sexual abuse. And in counselling, I've been told to think about Jesus being present and caring for me.
when those things happened. My first question is around what do we do about a God who is present when evil is happening but doesn't stop it? How is that a God who we can want to be in relationship with? And my second question is...
around, if the person who committed the abuse said that they are a Christian, what do we do about, how do we understand their faith? Or are they not really a Christian? And what does that mean for people who have committed really, really evil acts? First, can I just say thank you for opening up to us today?
Um, and Oh Lord, I'm so sorry to hear what you've gone through. I don't have a straightforward answer, uh, to why God stands by and allows particular evil, great or small, but I have been helped by two thoughts and I want to share them briefly. I have no idea if these are going to help you.
I've turned the question around and asked myself, what if God did intervene, step in and override our will at every potentially harmful moment? What sort of world would we be living in? Imagine if God intervened every time a crook went to pull the trigger of a gun or a husband thought of betraying his wife or a businesswoman wanted to withhold resources from the poor.
What kind of world would it be if God were stepping in all the time? And why stop there? Imagine if every time I wanted to buy takeaway, you know, I found myself mysteriously giving the money away to World Vision. Every time I wanted to buy a new shirt, like the one I'm wearing now, I found myself, you know, giving it to the person on the street. Every time I wanted to go skiing, you know, God magically changed my mind and made me give it to Opportunity International.
If God controlled every potentially harmful act, it's true we wouldn't be asking why does God permit evil? But we might be asking the more tragic question. Why has God made us without the ability to refuse him?
Except he wouldn't let us think that thought. As soon as we thought that thought, he'd replace it with happy thoughts. But that's not the kind of world we're in, according to the Bible. The Bible is clear that humans retain the capacity to say no to God, no to each other, no to generosity, no to care, and so on. And we use that capacity with tragic consequences. And you know that better than most of us.
The second thing is something that actually comes from the French atheist Albert Camus. He was mostly known for writing about the futility of the universe, the unrelenting silence, the nothingness out in the blackness of creation. But he saw in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ a potential answer.
to the human longing for divine sympathy in the midst of evil. And he wrote this essay called The Rebel. Let me just read this paragraph. I think it's incredibly illuminating. Christ came to solve two major problems, evil and death. His solution consisted first in experiencing them. The man God suffers to with patience. Evil and death can no longer be entirely imputed to him since he suffers and dies.
The night on Golgotha, where Jesus died, is so important in the history of man only because in its shadow, the divinity abandoned its traditional privileges and drank to the last drop, despair included, the agony of death.
Camus, who didn't say he actually believed this stuff, was nonetheless putting his finger on the most remarkable part of the Bible's teaching, frankly, that God is not passive and distant. He's involved and wounded constantly.
He has wounds that speak to our wounds and that is nowhere clearer than the narrative of Christ entering into the world, experiencing injustice and torture and betrayal and a final breath on the cross. That doesn't answer why he allowed you to endure what you've endured.
But it does mean you can go to him with your complaint and know that he knows what it is to experience torture and betrayal. And that might make a difference. It certainly does for me. And as for this claimed Christian who did this to you, I can only say that anyone can be forgiven for anything because of Christ's death. But only if there is genuine remorse and restoration toward God and you.
If this person hasn't sincerely begged God's forgiveness and your forgiveness, if he lived in this state of opposition to God and you after doing this thing, then no, this person has no right to call themselves a Christian. And God will make this up to you in his justice on the last day. Now we've got a question from an anonymous reader. Here it is.
I am always struggling with the same question. What about the people who don't believe?
All the people who have never had the chance to hear the gospel, or the opportunity for it to transform their lives and themselves, what about them? When I think about it too much, I start to wonder how the gospel can actually be good news. Surely it's better to live in a world that's ultimately meaningless than in a world where millions, even billions of people, have potentially been condemned to hell, even if it means that I myself may be saved.
Is there some way to be a Christian without constantly feeling sick at the thought of all the people in the world who are not so fortunate as myself to have been called by God to hear and accept the gospel? Wow. It's fascinating how many questions are coalescing around heaven and hell. We haven't stacked this Q&A episode. I assume you haven't, Kayleigh. No. Okay. This is a fair representation of the many questions that were sent in.
Okay, so let me try and answer this question. In short, as a Christian, I think it's right to hope God has mercy on those who've never heard about the Christian faith.
But I also don't think it makes sense to believe God is obliged to have mercy on them. Let me give the slightly longer answer. There are two things I don't believe. I don't believe God judges anyone for having not heard, right? There's no crime of having not heard about Jesus and salvation. So it would be completely unfair for God to judge people on the basis of having not heard.
being exposed to the Christian message. And the other thing I don't believe is that sincerity is the criterion that lets us all in. People often say that that's what means they should be saved, right? Because they were sincere in whatever they thought. But the thing is, where do you draw the line? Sincere what? Sincere Taliban? Sincere Canaanite sacrifice of children? They're sincere. So sincerity just...
It's not the road to clarity on this issue. So what do I believe? I believe that the criterion of judgment is how people responded to what they actually knew.
What do they actually know? Well, it seems pretty clear that human beings know to revere the Creator and care for other human beings. You could put it in more biblical language and say the fundamental thing every human being knows is that they're to love God and love neighbor. Let's just go with revere the Creator and care for other humans. Now, in theory, I'm happy to say someone who does this with
without knowing Christianity, has real faith. They've responded to the obvious realities of the universe in a kind of faithfulness. And I believe in that hypothetical, they would find God's mercy. It wouldn't be on the basis of their activity. It would be on the basis of Christ's death, even if they didn't know about that death. The question is, how many people are actually like this hypothetical? And I'm not sure.
What I do know that if a person is granted God's mercy, it will be through Jesus' death, not through their works. I don't think anyone deserves God's love and mercy. So as I say, I think it's right to hope that God has mercy on those who've never heard about the Christian faith. But I couldn't go so far as to say that God is obliged to
to have mercy on them. Whatever he does, it will at least meet the true standard of justice, and it will likely show the world God is more merciful than anyone deserved.
Hi, John. Thanks so much for your podcast. I'm really loving it. My question is, do we lose our free will in heaven? In Eden, Adam and Eve enjoyed God's presence, had intimate communion with him, and yet still chose to disobey. In heaven, when we have this same right relationship with God, do we lose the ability to choose ourselves over God? Sin. What stops heaven from being another Eden that falls? Thanks.
Thanks for that question, Rachel. The short answer, which is pretty much all I've got, is the spirit.
Next. No. Look, the fundamental difference between this age and the age to come is the fullness of the Spirit that will animate all things in God's kingdom. That's what the Bible teaches. We might say that the creation we live in now, including our wills, is subject to the natural decline of mere created things, things that live in studied independence from the Creator.
Personally, I take it that the creation story in Genesis 2 and 3 deliberately underlines this point by making clear that humans were mortal from the beginning. They weren't immortal by nature.
They had to sustain themselves, not just with ordinary food, but with the food of the tree of life, as Genesis 2 puts it. That's a picture of humans being able to live forever only by depending on the sustaining life of God. The difference in the new creation is that this will be a life and a world, including our own wills, fully animated by God's own sustaining spirit.
All who turn to God in this mortal life receive a deposit of the Spirit in their life now, aiding them to be what God wants them to be. But this is just a deposit.
of the full measure of the Spirit that will animate all things in God's kingdom. In that environment, we will not fall physically or morally. Our lives will have been taken up into God's own life and power in a way that was never true of this age. Callum asks, I find the whole idea of demon possession very confusing.
Obviously, Christians should not engage with evil spirits, but I find it very hard to come to terms with possession when there's a strong scientific community to argue against them. Are they real? Is it just mental illness? Can mental illness and demon possession be the same thing? And why don't we see possession in the Western world? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
I have three thoughts about demons. First, I think they're real. My main reason is that Jesus thought they were real, and I think he gets to call the shots because I think he rose again. And so someone who rose again gets to call the shots on all the spooky stuff, as far as I'm concerned. I'll also admit that I have had one experience in my decades as a Christian that, to my mind, was tangible evidence of someone demon-possessed and delivered.
And no, I won't be telling the story here. The second thought that I have is that we can't really say the Bible writers were all dummies who ascribed things like mental illness and epilepsy to demons because they didn't know better. We just can't say that. That would be convenient for my skeptical listeners. I get that. But the fact is the Bible also knows ailments like epilepsy and mental illness to be natural states in some people.
Our culture is different, of course, because we've destroyed that spiritual world in our minds anyway. And so we assign everything to just natural causes. The ancients and the Bible writers in particular were just more subtle, nuanced in their view of reality. I hope I'm not upsetting anyone. They thought that there were many such things that were purely natural, part of the decay of creation. And they thought that some such things on occasion were part of the darker spiritual realm that was also in decay and rebellion.
The third thing I'd say about all of this is that the principal work of demons, the devil, Satan, and all that, which yes, I do believe in, the central work is deception. And I don't just say that as a plug for undeceptions. It's how the Bible describes things over and over. In John 8, Jesus said, when the devil lies, he speaks his native tongue, for he is a liar and the father of...
Paul, in 1 Timothy 3, speaks of people believing deceiving spirits, things taught by demons.
In 2 Corinthians 10, which is one of Paul's most upfront statements about our battle with the dark spiritual powers, he says, quote, the weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. And we take every thought captive.
to make it obedient to Christ. I could go on. My point is just that you're just as likely to see the work of demons in the falsehoods of the advertising industry, the local shopping center, corrupt religion, and a university course as you are in a seance or devil worship.
It's always so great to get your feedback on the podcast. Honestly, creating this podcast has been one of the greatest and unexpected joys of my recent ministry. Thanks, Producer Kayleigh, for convincing me to do it.
There were a heap of questions in the latter part of this year. Maybe you had more time on your hands. So we started with a theme in the first part of this episode. But in the next half of the episode, producer Kayleigh is just going to throw random questions at me.
from whether Christians should eat meat to the whitewashing of Jesus to whether the church is too bogged down in arguing against same-sex relationships. And I promise that my answers in the second half will be as brief
This episode of Undeceptions is brought to you by Zondervan Academics' new book, ready for it? Mere Christian Hermeneutics, Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically, by the brilliant Kevin Van Hooser. I'll admit that's a really deep-sounding title, but don't let that put you off. Kevin is one of the most respected theological thinkers in the world today.
And he explores why we consider the Bible the word of God, but also how you make sense of it from start to finish. Hermeneutics is just the fancy word for how you interpret something. So if you want to dip your toe into the world of theology, how we know God, what we can know about God, then this book is a great starting point. Looking at how the church has made sense of the Bible through history, but also how you today can make sense of it.
Mere Christian Hermeneutics also offers insights that are valuable to anyone who's interested in literature, philosophy, or history. Kevin doesn't just write about faith, he's also there to hone your interpretative skills. And if you're eager to engage with the Bible, whether as a believer or as a doubter, this might be essential reading.
You can pre-order your copy of Mere Christian Hermeneutics now at Amazon, or you can head to zondervanacademic.com forward slash undeceptions to find out more. Don't forget, zondervanacademic.com forward slash undeceptions.
68-year-old Tirat was working as a farmer near his small village on the Punjab-Sindh border in Pakistan when his vision began to fail. Cataracts were causing debilitating pain and his vision impairment meant he couldn't sow crops.
It pushed his family into financial crisis. But thanks to support from Anglican Aid, Tirat was seen by an eye care team sent to his village by the Victoria Memorial Medical Centre. He was referred for crucial surgery. With his vision successfully restored, Tirat is able to work again and provide for his family.
There are dozens of success stories like Tarat's emerging from the outskirts of Pakistan, but Anglican Aid needs your help for this work to continue. Please head to anglicanaid.org.au forward slash Tarat.
As my answers in the first half were long. Here's a question from Tim. I'm partial to some Aussie beef on the barbecue and have a question. As a Christian, is it ethical to kill and eat animals? How do you justify eating meat? Did Jesus eat meat?
I've spent some time investigating the environmental and health arguments, but I'm stuck on the ethical discussion. Any chance you could help a brother out?
Okay, did Jesus eat meat? Yep. That's really easy. Killing and eating a lamb was a central part of the annual Passover festival for Jews. There can't be any doubt that Jesus participated in that. But there's more to say, of course. Where animals have been mistreated, as they sadly often are in the meat industry, it is unethical.
They are living beings who experience pain and fear. And the Bible is clear that God cares for the animal world. So I think sourcing your meat and your eggs, by the way, from reputable producers is an important ethical decision.
The economic drive to produce more table meat means that some producers cut corners at the expense of animals. And we have to resist that and reward with our purchasing power the producers that give priority to the welfare of animals. That said, honestly, I see no problem with killing animals for food.
Obviously, the Bible allows it. It's everywhere in Scripture. But my own ethical reflection leads me to conclude that the animals we eat don't have the level of consciousness or prospective thinking, you know, dreaming about what they want to do when they grow up, that humans do. And so ending their existence humanely for our sustenance, I think, has no moral freight.
Here's a question that relates to our episode on how the New Testament was put together. This time, it's about the Apocrypha, the so-called hidden books outside of the accepted canon of Scripture that at some point in time were prized, but later fell out of favor.
Hi, John. Thanks for all the work on the show. As a historian, I was wondering if you see any benefit for Christians in reading the New Testament Apocrypha or whether it is something that we should just stay well away from. Thanks. That question was from Matt. Hey, Matt. A few things to clear up. What do we mean by Apocrypha?
The word itself sort of means hidden, but it doesn't mean hidden away. It just means not the public books to be publicly read. There's an Old Testament apocrypha and there's a New Testament apocrypha. And they're quite different things. The Old Testament apocrypha is just a Protestant term for six or so extra books in the Catholic Old Testament.
Catholics follow the Old Testament as it was found in the Greek version in the first century because most Christians spoke Greek. And Protestants just decided that they would follow the version of the Old Testament that Hebrew-speaking Jews have, and that lacks those extra books called the Apocrypha.
The New Testament Apocrypha is a far more slippery thing. It can just refer to all of the hundreds of writings produced by Christians which aren't in the 27 books of the New Testament. And some of those writings are fantastic.
They never made any claim to be scripture. They were just the writings of Christian leaders in the period straight after the apostles. We talked in a previous episode about the apostolic fathers, 1 Clement, Didache, Letters of Ignatius, and so on. And I'd love to think Christians would read those. I read them quite a bit. Then,
Then there were writings that tried to pass themselves off as scripture, but were wisely sidelined by the first Christians. There's the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Judas, and so on. And these are plainly anti-Semitic Gnostic writings from a Christian splinter group, which are deliberately critiquing the earlier Gospels. They're real factional materials.
And you can read them if you like. Personally, I think reading them is the surest way to realize they've got nothing to tell you about the original form of Christianity. But I don't think you can get any Christian benefit from them. Then there's New Testament Apocrypha that is sort of in between, not very helpful, but probably not heretical in the way the Gnostic Gospels are.
I'm thinking of documents like the infancy story of Thomas, which you may have never heard of. But it's a really interesting document from the late second century, probably, where some unknown Christian has just invented all sorts of stories from Jesus' childhood because people were frustrated that the actual four Gospels didn't tell us enough stories. And so people just started to invent stories and they ended up in this book called The Infancy Story of Thomas. And basically, Jesus is a superboy.
He's, you know, like from 10 years of age, he's looking pigeons out of...
clay and he's able to lengthen pieces of wood to help his dad, the carpenter. You know, when his dad makes a mistake, he can fix it up. And then there are some really unpleasant stories like when a boy, when Jesus was a teenager, ran past Jesus and bumped him in the shoulder. Jesus turned around and said, you shall not walk any further. And he dropped down dead. And then when the parents complained to Joseph and Mary, Jesus made the parents blind.
So it's awful. And I teach this at Sydney University and the students can't quite believe that anyone who claimed to be a Christian would have invented those stories. But they surely were invented. No historian gives any stock in them. So that's another example of New Testament apocrypha. It's not pleasant, but it's not heretical in the sense that it teaches Jesus wasn't God or whatever.
Okay, I'll stop. I've said enough. Apocrypha, it's a big category. Some of it's really dodgy. Some of it's partly dodgy and some of it is fantastic. From whether you should read stuff that didn't make it into the Bible to whether you should believe in Jesus at all. One of our listeners, Hannah, has a challenge. Hey, John. So even if I did believe in a God, why would I believe in the Christian God? What makes Jesus so special as opposed to...
Say Islam.
Hey, thanks, Hannah. In some ways, my answer is the last 35 episodes of Undeceptions. But let me be sort of brief and hopefully helpful. My answer is that Islam and Christianity are in a sense both right, that there is an eternal mind behind the universe who created and sustains all things. There is a huge overlap between these systems of belief. The question is, how could we go beyond that, beyond knowing that there's some mind behind the creation?
Sure, you can establish the existence of, say, an architect from looking at a well-designed house. You can work out that there was a director from looking at a beautifully shot film. But how could you know what the architect was like?
what the director was really like, unless the architect knocked on your door and invited herself in for a cup of tea, or the director puts himself in the film, like Martin Scorsese sometimes does. Only then do you get sort of a tangible glimpse of what you knew was there, but now you actually see it for yourself. And my point, of course, is how could we know what God is really like unless he stepped out of eternity into history?
And this is where it seems to me Christianity leaps from the pages of history. It really looks like Jesus lived, taught, healed, died, and yes, rose again. The life of Jesus is a verifiable signpost on the world stage pointing us to God. And no other religion offers this tangible earthly marker of what God is like.
I mean, you can believe what's written about God in the Quran, but there's no external way of testing if it's true, because it doesn't actually make claims that you can verify. Does God require me to say five daily prayers? I don't know. Does he insist that we've all got to make a pilgrimage to Mecca? I mean, I could believe that, but I don't have any way without first already thinking the Quran is the word of God of actually testing the idea is true.
But the life of Jesus is tangible, testable. You don't have to first believe that the New Testament is God's word before you can actually come to a rational judgment that the history in the New Testament is broadly very solid. That's why Christianity. Heidi asks, with so much talk around race and prejudice at the moment, I've been pondering a few things.
Has the modern church tried to whitewash Jesus? How can we make sure that racism and prejudice don't creep into church and that we're welcoming to a diverse flock? This is a great question, especially in a year when we've seen so much anguish in the US and here in Australia and elsewhere. We're actually doing a whole episode on the topic of race at the end of the season, just a few episodes away. I've spoken to the US author Jamar Tisby, who wrote a book called The Colour of Compromise,
all about trying to uncover the truth about the church's complicity in racism. His latest book, How to Fight Racism, answers Heidi's question, I think. How can Christians sort of courageously journey toward racial justice?
In that episode, I also speak with Brooke Prentice, an Australian Aboriginal woman who heads up a group called Common Grace. More about that when we get to it. It's a great episode. All I'll say for now is that Christianity does provide a rational basis for ending racism.
Since no Christian can logically believe that humans are more or less important on the basis of skin color or cultural background, the Bible teaches, after all, that all men and women are made in the image of God. That's an expression that implies God sees us as his children, just as my children bear my image. So God sees humans as all bearing his image. So racism is ruled out from the very first page of the Bible.
And Christianity in its first few centuries was the most multicultural movement imaginable.
hugely successful across races and cultures. So just think of this. It started amongst Semitic peoples, Galilean and Judean Jews. But within 20 years, it was embraced by Indo-Europeans in Asia Minor, Greeks, and Italians. Within 200 years, it had spread amongst Arabs, North Africans, Gauls, that's the people in France, the Spanish, and even the Celts in Britain.
It's these foundations in the Bible and in the first Christian centuries that make the later story of racism in the church so tragic, so despicable. And I'm going to let Brooke Prentice and Jamar Tisby tell you more about that in that coming episode.
In our last episode from season two, we spoke to Rachel Gilson. She's a Christian woman who's sexually attracted to other women, but has written a whole book on how she comes to terms with her belief that God doesn't want her to act on her attraction and desire. Producer Kaylee tells me it's our most downloaded episode, and actually quite a few of you had questions specifically about it.
Here's one from Eddie, who says he was so captivated by Rachel's story in the episode that he ran out and bought her book. In his message, he pondered the power of the gospel in Rachel's story. Hi, John. It's Eddie Ozole here.
in relation to your episode with Rachel Gilson. Given that an atheist and a lesbian at that could go to university open-minded enough to actually inquire into Jesus and trust him to the point of turning her life around is testimony to what Paul says about the power of the gospel.
My question is, is the church trying too hard in its attempts to persuade same-sex attracted church people to live holy lives rather than relying on God and the power of the gospel? Thanks very much. Well, let me first say that Christians have made a lot of mistakes in this area. And back in that episode with Rachel, we do try to be honest about
about the failings of the church, Rachel herself is pretty critical of the so-called conversion therapies designed to reorder same-sex attraction. But as Rachel also makes clear, classical or traditional Christianity is pretty plain in its criticism of all sexual activity outside of a lifelong commitment of a man and a woman.
That puts Christians completely out of step with society. I get that. And I suspect that's just something Christians and society have to get used to. The art of looking like an idiot goes right back to Jesus and even before. But to the specific question, I'd point you back to that episode with Rachel Gilson because she says two things that I think are pretty helpful. First, she says that the gospel brings us forgiveness for every departure from God's ways.
and grants us the deposit of the Spirit, which moves us to want to obey God and even to actually achieve obedience to God, failingly. Secondly, until the kingdom comes and the animation of all things happens by God's Spirit, we will always find ourselves in a struggle between what we want to do and what we find ourselves fully capable of doing.
I mean, we find this in all sorts of things. I know I should do more for the poor of the world, but I still find myself struggling to be the generous person I want to be. And in an analogous way, though far more serious and difficult,
Rachel herself says that she still experiences same-sex desire and doesn't really think that's ever going to change. It's part of who she is. She lives with attention and does so with a grace and beauty that I found really moving. I'd urge everyone to go back and have a listen to that episode.
♪ And keep you ♪
make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you lord turn his face toward you
That's a clip from the Blessing Australia video, which was released at the height of the Australian lockdown during the peak of the coronavirus in our country earlier this year. A collection of churches, worship leaders, artists and nerds partnered together across Australia to put something together that would offer a bit of hope in a dark time. It was great fun to be involved. That was my voice there at the end of the clip.
The song we're singing, The Blessing, was written by musicians Kari Jobe and Cody Carnes from the Elevation Church, a really big church in the US. The song was co-written by Stephen Furtick, who's the pastor of Elevation Church, who writes quite a few songs, actually. Anyway, this next question from Jack is sort of about that song. John, um...
This is awesome. Huge fan for a very long time, so thank you for what you do, a better fan from a distance. Look, my question is, and I'm
how much I loved, uh, you singing in the Australian blessing video. Um, I've been really, really touched by that video and all the other ones, uh, done around the world. Uh, I could watch a hundred of times and probably tear up every time still. Um,
My question is from that and related to American Gospel, which also sort of recently watched after it's come on Netflix. Obviously, that blessing song's come out of Steve Fertig and Elevation Church, who I'm generally a really big fan of. However, I'm certainly not on the health, wealth and prosperity message either, and
So my question is to you, how do we deal with that? Should we completely disregard the health, wealth and prosperity teachers or can we listen to them and discern in the message what we should and shouldn't be taking on board? Thanks very much, Tim. Bye.
Hey, Jack, I love you back. But man, oh man, I hate questions that force me to be the arbiter of the good and the bad in the church. You know, frankly, the people whose theology I most agree with, and that would include the Gospel Coalition people and the producers behind that documentary you mentioned, are often the least humble people.
the least compassionate jerks you will ever meet. That includes me.
On Stephen Furtick himself, I've only ever heard one sermon, and it's when I shared the platform with him actually in Chicago some years ago. And I thought he was utterly brilliant. And he pointed us to Jesus without even a whiff of the prosperity teaching. Now, if he is offering a prosperity gospel, I can only say I think that is the opposite of Jesus.
genuine Christianity. Any suggestion that the work of Jesus was to make us wealthier and healthier, which is the core idea in prosperity preaching, just can't survive any honest reading of the life and teaching of Jesus in the four Gospels. Certainly when I sang the words, the Lord bless you and keep you, make his face shine upon you, and I'm sure this is the case with my other co-performers, the blessing that we were hoping for wasn't prosperity.
but an assurance of God's forgiveness, an awareness of his care for the world, and a sense that he will one day mend everything that is broken. That's the blessing.
If you've got more questions, just send them to Kayleigh. No, okay, no. You can tweet them to us via at Undeceptions. Send us a regular old email at questions at Undeceptions.com. Or if you're brave, like a few people have been for this episode, just record your question, go to Undeceptions.com, click the record button. While you're there, check out everything related to this episode and tons of other bonus content. And if you like UnDeceptions,
what you see, please consider clicking the donate button. We do need your support for the wider Undeceptions project and every little bit helps. Thanks so much. And if you like this show, why not check out the other programs in the Eternity Podcast Network? Just go to eternitypodcasts.com. Next episode, we're talking New Gears resolutions. Well,
I'm going to try and convince you, especially if you don't believe any of this stuff, to take up the challenge of one particular New Year's resolution, to read a good hundred pages of the Bible in 2021. And my guest is Dan Kimble, who's written one of the best books
books of the year. It just came out last month. How Not to Read the Bible. He tackles every weird thing you might have heard about in the Bible. Sexism, the genocide, bizarre Old Testament laws, slavery, unicorns, yes, unicorns, and much more. That's coming at you in 2021 next week. See ya. Music
Undeceptions is hosted by me, John Dixon, produced by Kayleigh Payne and directed by Mark Hadley, who's away on holidays, and I think we did really well without him. Yeah, all right. Love you, Mark.
Our theme song is by Bach, arranged by me and played by the fabulous Undeceptions band. Editing is by Nathaniel Schumach. Special thanks to our series sponsor, Zondervan, for making this Undeception possible. Undeceptions is part of the Eternity Podcast Network, an audio collection showcasing the seriously good news of faith today. Head to undeceptions.com. You'll find show notes and lots of other stuff designed to undeceive and let the truth out.
Before I go, I want to give a quick shout out to Opportunity International, who are world leaders in microfinance, providing people living in poverty with access to small loans and financial services to grow their own businesses and climb out of poverty. It's amazing work. Check them out at opportunity.org. Brought to you by the Eternity Podcast Network.