0:00:00 - 0:00:23 A lot of religious people, they get a bad rap, some would say deservedly. So for having simplistic ideas about God and about the world in particular and most intelligent people, when they get a whiff of this, they stay as clear from it as they can. They instantly recognize that those belief systems that 0:00:23 - 0:00:53 these religious people hold are completely insufficient to um to impart meaning to the richness and difficulties of life of which they're aware. It turns out that fairy tale religion is only any good if you live a fairy tale life. And ironically, the lives of holy people in the scriptures chief, among 0:00:53 - 0:01:19 them, Jesus Christ were anything but a fairy tale. They were filled with very hard things. And in fact, if there's any pattern, I submit that that pattern is that the holier the person is the harder their life is in general. I, I think you could make a very strong case for that. So how is it that religion 0:01:18 - 0:01:44 sells itself as a support system or a, a source of meaning that empowers people to do more and better than they would otherwise do? Well, it doesn't make much sense and this is why in the common case, Christianity, it reverts to a feel good message that doesn't really have much substance. And the well 0:01:43 - 0:02:01 founded complaint from these outsiders is, well, I can do better than that without that. Or these people don't know what they're talking about and they're living in a little bubble and when that bubble pops, which it always does, they're going to be in a world of hurt. And sure enough, that's what happens 0:02:01 - 0:02:30 . So it turns out that God knowing all things, he designed a system where we have uh essentially automatically we have everything. We need to be fairly decent people all on our own. And when I say all on our own, I don't mean independently. I just because all good things come from God, what I mean is 0:02:30 - 0:02:56 that He's filled us and surrounded us with everything. We need to be fairly decent people without stamping his name all over those things. And so most people would agree that we have a conscience, but most people would not agree that that comes from God, including most Christians, ironically. And unfortunately 0:02:55 - 0:03:16 because God doesn't have the need to stamp his name all over that. If he did, then all of those people that are so dead set on not believing in Him. Well, they would have really hard lives. And so it ends up being better for everyone, for Him to just stand back a little bit in terms of connecting himself 0:03:16 - 0:03:39 . Explicitly to all these things. So it turns out that if that's where you live in life at this very superficial level, you can probably get through the whole thing without ever having to need, having to, to think about God explicitly. And you can design for yourself a fairly nice life. Unfortunately 0:03:38 - 0:04:04 , that's the place that most Christians also live in. It's not just the people that don't believe in God, it's the people that say they do. So. Why is that the case again? God in his mercy. Although although the full breadth and depth of what is bad is sprinkled all over this earth and everyone has close 0:04:03 - 0:04:26 enough access to it to see that it exists. Even if what they experience personally of that is just a tiny little piece and it seems sometimes random, not everyone dies of stomach cancer. For example, even though that might be the case, everything is there to provide sufficient evidence that it really 0:04:26 - 0:04:49 is that bad. But most people, they treat this like some kind of reverse lottery. And as long as I don't pull the losing ticket, then I win and I don't need more than what I have. A few people have the honesty to look at that, that uh display of just how bad things can be and say, you know, I need to 0:04:49 - 0:05:14 be prepared to contend with the summation of just how bad things can be. Not just the tiny slice that comes to me through what seems like random chance. It turns out that the closer you march into the valley of the shadow of death, the more you will need what the gospel really is, the less you're exposed 0:05:13 - 0:05:41 to that, the fewer reasons you have to do what it takes to find and live what the gospel really is. Unfortunately, in this world today, unfortunately, for Christians, it happens to be the case that a whole lot of people who say they don't believe in God do a much better job at this. It happens to be 0:05:41 - 0:06:05 the case that a whole lot of people who say they're Christians just sort of skim the surface of what the world is. This is really not great for a lot of reasons. One reason is that to live the gospel, to really live the gospel, that is an extremely intense life. It's a really intense life, it's a very 0:06:04 - 0:06:30 rich life, but it's very intense. And along with the good, there's a lot of intense, bad. And so it's, it's, it's uh it's unfortunate because Christians are mi missing out on that richness of life and everything that comes with it, which includes much greater joy and peace and strength and service and 0:06:30 - 0:06:58 love. Then they know, and God wants all of us to have all of these things, but it's our choice. And so historically, the situation is, as I described where God kind of sprinkled these things across time and space and people might get hit with a need to search more deeply for God. But for the most part 0:06:57 - 0:07:18 , they could get through life with a really superficial attempt at the these things for better or for worse. I think it's for better. I have strong reasons for that. But I think many people disagree. We live in a time where that exposure is not going to be so optional. We live in a time where we will 0:07:18 - 0:07:47 be progressively exposed to greater and greater challenges in life and the average situation will be more challenging than most people have faced over most of history. If you're familiar with even some of the the most trying moments of our history as humankind, um that should give you pause as things 0:07:46 - 0:08:02 fall apart and as things get worse, it will be an opportunity uh in providing more people with greater reasons to seek and discover more of God.