0:00:00 - 0:00:22 All right. I'm gonna try to summarize some thoughts. I just had a, a text exchange with a friend and I think I'm gonna make the choice to make this as general as I can. So, um, if, if I use specifics, more people will get dialed into that if it overlaps with their particular religious experiences and 0:00:21 - 0:00:43 beliefs, but I'll alienate the larger part of people who might not have those specific beliefs. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna keep this general and, and he asked me a question and it was highly keyed to several religious ideas that are specific and it was obvious to me from the way he phrased the question 0:00:43 - 0:01:03 , which he phrased it. Well, what that, what he was expecting or what he envisioned in his head that he had this big cloud of ideas of things that he had thought about and understood somewhat. And then there was this little incremental bit that he was missing. And uh in his case, that where that, where 0:01:03 - 0:01:27 that came from was he had a question from his son and he thought, huh, I'm not actually sure. So there's an exposure of ignorance and then he passed that on to me with some work on his own between those two steps. And so I replied to that and I said, I asked him sub questions to his question and most 0:01:26 - 0:01:50 of those questions were about terms he was using. And he said, if XYZ then ABC, but what about EFG? And I said, what do you mean by A and he said what he meant? And I said, what do you mean by B? And I said, what do you mean by C? And then we kept diving down a couple of layers with this. And then very 0:01:49 - 0:02:16 quickly, what we had done was established a network of questions. And it started to become evident to him that this little increment of missing information was actually an enormous chunk of interrelated pieces of missing information. When we ask a question, our ability to get the answer to that question 0:02:15 - 0:02:46 is going to deter uh be determined by how open we are to our own ignorance. So we think we have this model and I think for most people, it's subconscious, we have this model of incremental development of knowledge, meaning everything that we've learned so far, we assume is going to endure whatever comes 0:02:45 - 0:03:12 next and whatever we're missing, we think can be distilled to a little piece. And that's just not true. Almost all the time in the extreme, we actually have to develop the assumption that everything we know is incorrect or incomplete. And that little piece, that seemingly little piece that we're looking 0:03:12 - 0:03:40 for right now. We should always assume that it's connected to an enormous network of new information, all of which we do not have and most of which will directly collide with what we already believe. You should probably re-watch that a few times to grasp the magnitude of what that would mean. Every single 0:03:40 - 0:04:00 time you acknowledge something that's missing something that you don't have that you need and everything I'm saying here, I'm speaking specifically about questions and information, but it applies to everything. Not just questions, any need. You have any problem you have in your life, anything you want 0:03:59 - 0:04:30 in your life, you have to grow towards the assumption that that little piece could tear down everything you already have. That's a terrible thing to think about, isn't it at the same time? And this is where God comes in at the same time. You have to develop a deep enduring trust that whatever comes next 0:04:30 - 0:04:55 is better than anything that came before. That's not to say that that you're fulfilling the the negative example given in Isaiah of saying tomorrow would be like to today only far better. What I'm saying is that every step towards God is improvement, no matter how brutal it might seem. So, I mean, just 0:04:55 - 0:05:24 the very basics like when we get baptized, you immerse someone in water. And one of the things that symbolizes is death, but you come back up a new and better person symbolically. So that's the idea. It doesn't matter how bad it seems it will be better. So, um what comes out of all of this is first an 0:05:24 - 0:05:42 understanding of just how hard it is to answer these questions. Because if you are speaking to your, if you know the answer and you are speaking to yourself, well, it'd be a one sentence answer and that would be sufficient and would be very clear. But if you're dealing with someone that's missing huge 0:05:41 - 0:06:06 chunks of the network of understanding the level at which this answer exists, then, um, you've got a lot of work to do and this is where it's so important to understand, to assume because you're not gonna see it from where you are. If you have the question, you, you, you don't understand everything that's 0:06:06 - 0:06:29 required to get the answer. If you did, you'd have the answer. So you have to walk into that assuming that it's not just a little piece. You have to, you have to want this more than anything else. And that sounds so extreme to people who've, who've been bred on this idea of. Well, I mean, you go to school 0:06:28 - 0:06:49 and you, you spend another 10 minutes in class and you come out 10 minutes smarter. It just builds and builds and builds forever. No, it doesn't. It's like, it's like incrementally building a city and frequently you're gonna have to tear down old buildings. It's when, when you come to the limit of your 0:06:49 - 0:07:10 current sewer system, you can't just keep adding pipes. You got to tear up the whole thing and replace it. So that's how it is with understanding and the more sophisticated your understanding becomes, the more often you have to make major renovations on what you already thought. So that's one piece of 0:07:10 - 0:07:31 why this is why this is difficult. And if you've got a question nine times out of 10, the reason you don't have an answer, it's not because the question is hard or whatever else, it's that you're clinging to things that can't coexist with the answer. So suppose the only way for you to know something 0:07:30 - 0:07:57 was to read a 400 page book that was kind of complicated just as a random example and say, well, I'm not doing that. It's a simple little question. Well, it might seem simple to you. But what if, what if the most condensed concise way of telling you the answer requires 400 pages. If you say you don't 0:07:57 - 0:08:19 want to do that, then it means you don't really want to know the answer, right? And we cut ourselves off so thoroughly from what God would like to teach us what he's, he's standing ready to share with us. And this is one way that we do it getting back to the specific context of religious specific religious 0:08:19 - 0:08:48 questions. One of the main reasons why every single religion goes stagnant. Every single religion currently is stagnant. The reason why is because people go numb to the limits of what they understand. They get so tied up with the confidence of knowing something that they stop being curious. They stop 0:08:48 - 0:09:13 hungering and thirsting, they stop paying attention to the contradictions, the limitations, the insufficiencies of what they currently know and they just shut their eyes to everything else and this is why it's so important to subject what you believe to reality. How do you do that? How do you continuously 0:09:12 - 0:09:34 do that? It sounds like it'd be a really hard thing to do. It's actually, it's the easiest thing in the world conceptually, you just actually live what you say, you believe. That's all it takes. So my friend asked me this question. All I did was to ask him what he meant by certain words and he hit a 0:09:34 - 0:09:58 wall cause he's like, wow, I don't even know basically. And I said, well, dig there, dig there and you'll probably find the answer to your original question, right? Because if we don't even know what we're talking about, you know, we, we get so burrowed into the jargon or the practices or the rules and 0:09:57 - 0:10:22 everyone just stops thinking about it. You need to open your eyes and really push into life in the uh push into life with your beliefs, leave them intensely fully all the time. And you're going to find things that show you where to look, they're going to call to you and say, wow, this just isn't good 0:10:22 - 0:10:42 enough. I need to know more. I need to be better. I need to do this. I need to do that. And then when you do have the most of these questions will actually get answered before you even ask them. But when you do have questions now, there's this whole catalog of resources that can be drawn upon to more 0:10:41 - 0:00:00 easily answer the question. So you don't need a 400 page book. You just need a little tweak most religions, the vital helpful piece of them. You know, I, I describe my friend and this isn't, I'm not picking on him. This is how it is with people. You've got this network of things you think, you know, 0:00:00 - 0:11:28 and you think there's this tiny increment that you need invert that the truth is that a tiny piece of what you think, you know, is actually valuable, the rest of it is garbage. But you don't know that yet because you're more comfortable holding to it as if it were true than actually living it. And finding 0:11:28 - 0:11:52 out you don't get to the giant network of things that are reliable with the tiny increment that you don't know except through pushing very hard against life by living what you actually say you believe. So I, I terminated this conversation with him by, well, that sounds terrible. But the, the last thing 0:11:52 - 0:12:18 we talked about. Well, I asked him, I said final question, please explain to me how this matters for repentance or why it's more important. And he said, well, I, I don't think it matters and it's not more important. That's a problem. That's a problem. You see, if you care about something more than anything 0:12:18 - 0:12:40 , everything else becomes subordinate to it. And if we're in a state where we're continuing to do anything differently than what we think sincerely believe God would do in our place. There is nothing more important than fixing that truth, be told. Everything we seek lies on the other side of that decision 0:12:39 - 0:12:54 . And so there's no point. So I hope this is valuable to think about. I hope you take a minute to think about it, maybe watch it a couple of times and share it with people who you think might be helped by it.