Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - May 18, 2021


Ep 422 ｜ Should Christians Follow Old Testament Law？ ｜ Q&A


Episode Stats


Length

32 minutes

Words per minute

183.90887

Word count

5,947

Sentence count

339

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

9

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I answer a question from a listener about what is my must have as a mom and which products I think are worth the splurge. I also talk about what I think is worth the price of admission to the hospital.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Today we've got another Q&A episode. We've got some fun
00:00:14.040 questions today that I'm excited to get through. The first question that I was asked, what
00:00:19.820 is my must have as a mom? That's a really, that's a really good question. And there are
00:00:26.100 a lot of things that I could say. All right. I'll, I'll just pretend like I'm only talking
00:00:31.560 to women. I know that there are some men who listen to it and watch the show, but I'm a
00:00:36.320 woman. Most, the vast majority of my audience is a woman. So I think that I can say these
00:00:41.080 things and be comfortable. So I think that the Spectra pump is the best pump that's out
00:00:47.580 there. Like if you're looking for a pump before you, before you give birth, if you're a first
00:00:53.040 time mom, you need to know that your insurance is probably going to cover it. You got to
00:00:56.860 call your insurance. You got to go through that whole process. They'll cover it or at
00:01:00.300 least most of it. You order your pump and all that good stuff. I think you have to have
00:01:03.920 like a note from your doctor or your midwife or something like that. But I think that you
00:01:07.960 go for, and it might be a little bit more money, the Spectra pump. People like the Medela.
00:01:13.020 I think that the Spectra is the most powerful. It's the best. However, it's kind of difficult
00:01:17.980 if you're traveling. I've tried the Willow before. It just didn't really, it didn't work
00:01:23.040 for me. I don't think it was worth all of the money that I spent on it. Sorry, Willow.
00:01:27.220 I'm sure you don't listen to my podcast, but if you do, I just had a hard time with it.
00:01:30.660 So if you're wondering if you should get like the Willow or the Evie or whatever it's called,
00:01:35.160 my personal experience wasn't great with those things, but that doesn't mean that that's the
00:01:39.520 experience of everyone. Spectra pump is the way to go if you are looking for pumps.
00:01:44.260 Here's another one that I think is worth the splurge. Now it's not worth the splurge if you
00:01:49.220 cannot swing it. Like if your budget is just not there, or if you can't get it as a gift,
00:01:54.420 maybe you can get people to chip in for this. If you can't, it's totally fine. There are other
00:01:58.460 awesome products like this out there, but I really like the Up A Baby stroller. Like I think that you
00:02:04.840 get a lot of bang for your buck and it has all of just like the little tools that come with it are so
00:02:11.740 helpful, especially if you get like the full Vista. You can get like the bassinet that comes
00:02:17.920 with it. The car seat just automatically clicks into it. So that's really easy if you're just
00:02:22.440 transferring in and out of your car. The car seat also that comes with this whole Vista package
00:02:27.700 is extremely safe. It's good. It's comfortable. Like we really liked the car seat. And then it also
00:02:38.400 comes with like the toddler, I think it's called like the rumble seat or something that it just
00:02:43.380 kind of sits straight up. I think an infant can also sit in it too if you get one of those pillows
00:02:47.600 that you put behind their head. But it just comes with all of these things. And then if you have
00:02:51.400 another child, you can actually just get like these adapters that allow you to put two kinds of seats
00:02:58.380 in it. So you could put your toddler up front in the little just regular toddler seat. You could put
00:03:03.920 your baby either in the bassinet or in the car seat up on top. And it just has everything that you could
00:03:09.800 possibly need. And the basket underneath the Vista is super, super, super helpful. When we've been
00:03:18.040 traveling and we've had to take the stroller with us, having that huge basket underneath to put suitcases
00:03:25.260 and put bags in has been really, really helpful. And it's really easy to tear down or to not, you know,
00:03:32.220 not to tear down, but to take down and then to put back up. And so if you're traveling or if you
00:03:36.500 needed to put it in the back of your car, it's really easy to put together. It's light. This is
00:03:40.220 not a sponsored ad, by the way. I'm just telling you what has worked for us. So the Spectra is number
00:03:46.560 one. The Up-A-Baby is number two. And then also, again, not sponsored, but I really like this company
00:03:53.340 and that is Pink Stork. So Pink Stork, they make all different kinds of stuff, but I've really liked
00:03:59.680 their prenatal vitamins. I liked their postnatal vitamins a lot, their postpartum kind of recovery
00:04:06.440 vitamins. I'm not sure if this is why, but a lot of women, after they have their baby, they go through 1.00
00:04:12.080 postpartum hair loss. And I did not go through postpartum hair loss. And I'm wondering if it's
00:04:17.440 because of these awesome vitamins that I took. And some prenatal vitamins make your stomach hurt.
00:04:22.580 And I've taken, oh my gosh, I remember I ran out of my typical Pink Stork prenatal vitamins one day,
00:04:28.140 and then I, um, and then I, I just went out to, you know, the health food store or something and
00:04:34.500 got some like organic vegetable, uh, prenatal vitamins. I was immediately sick. I've never had
00:04:41.380 any problem like that when it comes to, um, these, uh, Pink Stork prenatal vitamins, postnatal vitamins,
00:04:47.840 really like them. They also have like labor prep tea. They have morning sickness tea,
00:04:53.140 morning sickness tap, like, um, lozenges that you can use like in the first trimester,
00:04:57.720 which I did. And I just really liked them. Like it's, uh, they are obviously an American
00:05:02.840 owned company. Um, they're a women owned company. She's also a Christian, the girl who owns it. So
00:05:08.760 I really liked that. Also, if you're into sleep training, another thing that I recommend, um,
00:05:14.980 you know, I've kind of taken from a lot of different sleep programs, but taking care of
00:05:19.920 taking care of babies, her name is Kara. Um, you might remember, she was the subject of a cancel 1.00
00:05:26.200 campaign because it was found out that she and her husband had voted for Donald Trump and donated
00:05:30.920 like maybe a thousand dollars over the course of three years, uh, to the Trump campaign.
00:05:36.420 The whole baby world on the internet just unleashed their anger and their rage at her. All of these
00:05:42.480 people who claimed to have one time be her friends through under the, through her under the bus. We of
00:05:47.600 course supported her on this show. And I know for a fact that she appreciated that all of you who ended
00:05:52.420 up reaching out to her and just giving her support and following her. She, I know that she appreciated
00:05:58.360 so much, but she's great. Like she is so kind. I think she's so balanced in the resources that she
00:06:04.360 offers for her sleep training. I mean, people swear by it for us by six months, we had a sleeper 12
00:06:11.760 hours through the night that hasn't stopped. And I am so very thankful for that, that she is a great
00:06:18.160 sleeper at night and that we have been able to do that through a lot of it has been because of
00:06:24.460 Cara's program. So taking care of babies, I would recommend to you. Some people are against sleep
00:06:29.380 training and I know there are different opinions on that. And I'm not trying to have any kind of
00:06:33.180 argument about that. People do what works best for you. And you know, I, I think that you have to do
00:06:39.140 what is best for your baby and what is healthiest for you guys. And so that's just my personal
00:06:45.740 recommendation. So I hope that that was, I hope that that was helpful for you as a mom, especially
00:06:50.340 if you're a first time mom, there are a lot of people out there who have a lot more experience
00:06:54.340 with motherhood than I do. So I don't pretend to be an expert in anything that I'm not, but I'll just
00:06:58.820 give you some encouragement that you can do it. You can do it. All right. Next question is about study
00:07:04.880 Bibles. So someone asked me what I think about study Bibles in general, which study Bibles I like.
00:07:10.440 I really liked the ESV study Bible. That's the first ESV Bible that I had the first, probably the
00:07:17.480 first real study Bible that I had too. I think I probably grew up reading the NIV. A lot of us that
00:07:23.820 went to Christian school, we were given these like NIV adventures, adventure Bibles, which I think are 1.00
00:07:31.040 great for youth. The NIV is very readable and the 1980s version of the NIV, I would say is better than,
00:07:37.560 I think it's the 2011 version of the NIV. But as far as translations go, I like the ESV. People ask
00:07:45.600 me about this all the time. NIV as a translation is thought for thought from the original Greek and
00:07:51.620 Hebrew. And so they take what the original language says, and then they kind of paraphrase it into a
00:07:58.340 thought that is more readable. Whereas the ESV, the NASB, the KJV is word for word. And so rather than
00:08:06.780 kind of paraphrasing and saying, okay, this is the thought that the original language is trying to
00:08:11.580 bring across, the ESV and other versions say, no, we're going to translate it word for word.
00:08:20.680 And so of course, something like the message is even more in the direction of thought for thought.
00:08:25.620 It takes like the thought of an entire passage or the entire few verses and summarizes and says,
00:08:33.800 this is what this is trying to say. I even think that the message can be useful for some people in
00:08:39.520 some ways, but I do not recommend it as the primary version of the Bible that you read from,
00:08:44.180 because you're going to be missing a lot that existed in the original text that I think is
00:08:49.880 important for us to be able to read as far as interpretation and application goes. So I'm an
00:08:55.420 ESV girl. I like NASB. I like NKJV. We'll do an entire episode. And by the time this is coming out,
00:09:04.720 I'm actually recording this in March. This will come out later. So I don't know if the KJV only
00:09:09.060 episode has already come out by the time that this is coming out. It might be out. It might be coming
00:09:14.280 out in the future. Anyway, we'll talk, we'll have already, or we will talk about KJV only-ism and why 0.93
00:09:21.120 I do not think that's a legitimate movement. But the KJV translation is good. The ESV translation
00:09:28.120 is very good. I like the ESV. I love the ESV study Bible. I currently use the John MacArthur study
00:09:34.840 Bible. The reason why it's a little bit difficult for me to read the John MacArthur study Bible as
00:09:40.460 much as I love and appreciate John MacArthur is because we have a difference in opinion when it
00:09:45.320 comes to eschatology. He is pre-trib, and so he believes that Christians are going to be raptured
00:09:52.860 before the tribulation. I do not believe that. And I've talked about that on this podcast before. I
00:09:58.820 have an episode titled End Times. And I also have two episodes with Jeff Durbin about post-millennialism
00:10:06.120 versus pre-millennialism, which is what I am and the scriptural foundations for why we believe what
00:10:13.320 we believe. But John MacArthur's eschatology definitely is in his commentary. And that's
00:10:20.600 the thing about study Bibles that I want to say is that the commentary can be very good. I think it
00:10:24.740 can be very helpful, but it's written by a fallible human being, which means that you might disagree
00:10:29.020 with it, which means there may be more than one interpretation of it. Now, that does not negate
00:10:37.800 the absolute truth and the singular meaning of a particular passage, but as fallible human beings
00:10:44.500 who don't know everything and who do have different opinions, you might have two commentaries from two
00:10:50.160 very solid teachers that say two different things. And we have to use our own discernment and rely on
00:10:55.360 the Holy Spirit to reveal to us as much truth as we possibly can. Not all of our questions will be
00:10:59.940 answered, but just understand that commentary itself is not infallible. It's not inerrant,
00:11:06.180 and it can't be 100% relied on. Any kind of human word or human wisdom is always subject
00:11:13.540 to disagreement, whereas God's word is inerrant. Whether or not we know the perfect meaning of it,
00:11:21.620 it does have a perfect and absolute and singular meaning. And so I do encourage you to get a study
00:11:28.440 Bible. It adds a lot of richness, I think, to our study and our understanding of Scripture.
00:11:32.480 But just understand that the commentary, even if it comes from people who are brilliant and who know
00:11:39.460 so much about the Bible, which it almost always does, it's not infallible, and it has to be weighed
00:11:44.220 against the word of God. All right, next question. If I were to interview one U.S. president, who would
00:11:54.460 it be? I think I would want to interview one of the first presidents that we had, probably one of the
00:12:02.140 founding presidents, or maybe Abraham Lincoln. I'd want to go back to the beginning and to try to
00:12:08.500 explain everything that's going on and just try to hear, like, okay, like, what was your vision here?
00:12:14.620 And hear kind of what their fears were about America that they didn't record, that we can't
00:12:20.140 already read, what their thoughts about the trajectory of a republic could possibly be.
00:12:27.660 It'd be really interesting to go that far back, or even maybe if it's just back a century. I think I
00:12:34.240 would like to get some predictions from some older presidents on where America is going and see how
00:12:40.360 accurate they are, and just get some wisdom that we've forgotten about liberty, that we've forgotten
00:12:46.540 about the government and how the government is supposed to work and serve people. I think that
00:12:50.860 that would probably be fascinating. Honestly, though, it would be really interesting to interview Barack
00:12:57.360 Obama. If I could just, like, really grill him on some things, or, like, really question some things
00:13:04.240 that he chose to do and his stances on things, that would be really fun, because I think a lot
00:13:09.400 changed in America under Barack Obama. It'd obviously be interesting to interview Donald Trump.
00:13:16.540 I would love to interview Donald Trump. I would have loved to before the election, but I also think
00:13:22.660 it would be very difficult, because I personally think that he's hard to understand when it comes
00:13:27.380 to interviews, that he doesn't just, like, answer things directly, and I feel like I'd be frustrated
00:13:33.400 by what I am unable to get out of him as far as an answer to a specific question. And so I think he
00:13:40.220 would be very entertaining to interview, but also he gets ruffled very easily when you kind of push
00:13:46.900 back against him, and I think I would be kind of worried about that. I know I didn't say Ronald
00:13:51.960 Reagan as much as I love Ronald Reagan. I just feel like I kind of, well, there'd be questions I wanted
00:13:57.180 to ask Ronald Reagan. Like, you know you were wrong about China, right? You know you were wrong that if we
00:14:02.380 exported capitalism, they would then import, or that we could export capitalism and that they would
00:14:10.560 take on freedom and that they would take on liberty and individualism. That just didn't happen. They took
00:14:17.220 the spoils of capitalism and kept communism and totalitarianism, and I certainly think that
00:14:22.800 Republican presidents are just as much to blame as Democratic presidents when it comes to that, even
00:14:27.120 my beloved Ronald Reagan. So I think that's my answer to that. Lots of people that I would want
00:14:34.200 to talk to. Advice for a young podcaster. A young podcaster. Let's see. So I started a podcast when I
00:14:45.080 had already been in this industry for a little bit. So I didn't start a podcast from scratch, and that
00:14:51.320 doesn't mean that you can't do that. I think it's much harder to do that. If you don't have any sort of
00:14:55.660 following on social media, it is very, very difficult to build an audience. It's difficult
00:15:02.700 to build a listening audience, because if you have not proven yet that people want to follow you on
00:15:11.520 social media, it's hard to convince people that they want to take even more time and take even more
00:15:17.200 efforts to listen to you. Because it's not very much effort at all to follow someone on Instagram,
00:15:22.800 but it's a lot of effort and a lot of time to listen to someone's podcast. People need to know
00:15:30.020 that your thoughts are valuable, which I totally believe your thoughts are valuable, but you kind
00:15:33.940 of have to prove it in a way that is easily consumable for people before you can really
00:15:39.460 convince them, I think, for the most part, to listen to you on a podcast. That's not always true.
00:15:44.840 It depends on your demographics. It depends on the people that listen to you, the people that follow
00:15:49.780 you, the subjects that you're talking about. And so not everyone has to have a social media following
00:15:53.920 before they start a podcast, but I think it's helpful. Like I had been writing, I had been
00:15:59.640 posting videos, I had been posting on social media, I had been a part of the blaze, I had been on Fox
00:16:05.100 News for a couple years before I started my podcast. And so when I started a podcast, it was just kind of
00:16:11.440 like a natural step into the next realm of my career. I already had that built in audience that I had been
00:16:18.340 working on from scratch, by the way, from 2015 to 2017. And I did start from scratch by starting
00:16:26.440 a Facebook page. I'm not even sure if that's necessarily possible today. I think that the
00:16:31.360 environment, that the climate has already changed a lot when it comes to like how influencers gain
00:16:39.960 influence. But I just started by posting things, by posting videos, and they eventually took off.
00:16:45.940 Um, and then I, uh, was then later hired by the blaze in a very small way and actually a behind
00:16:52.740 the scenes way, like a social media manager. Um, and then I just kind of kept on working up and
00:17:00.280 getting more opportunities and getting in front of the camera more. And then Fox News asked me to
00:17:05.460 come on as a guest and that kind of led to more things. And this whole, actually how I started
00:17:09.140 before the Facebook page was I was speaking to organizations and to college students for free about the
00:17:15.180 importance of voting in the 2015 primaries in the 2016 election. Um, so I started from nothing. I
00:17:21.220 started by not getting paid. I started by asking for opportunities, reaching out to people as a way
00:17:28.960 to get in front of people in a way to talk about the things that I cared about. And I was working full
00:17:34.800 time while doing that. I was, I had a full time job while I was reaching out to sororities and asking
00:17:40.380 if I could speak to their chapter about the importance of voting. And I was getting nothing
00:17:44.100 out of it except for exposure and except for experience and except for doing something that
00:17:48.780 gave me a lot of energy. And so I kept on doing that. And then, um, you know, by the grace of God
00:17:54.140 was able to continue in my career and then do it full time starting in 2017 and then in 2018 starting
00:18:00.800 the podcast. And so it had actually been about three years before I started the podcast of doing what I
00:18:06.200 had been doing. Um, and then it's been, I guess, three years now. Yeah. So it's been six years total
00:18:13.740 of doing this and three years this month of doing the podcast. And so it takes a long, it takes a long
00:18:20.340 time. That's, I mean, that's a relatively quick amount of time, but six years to doing what I'm doing
00:18:27.440 now, three years to actually starting the podcast, but it's taken six years to grow to what I'm doing
00:18:33.020 now. And I haven't been nearly as aggressive or ambitious as a lot of people in this industry
00:18:38.100 are because I have other priorities in my life. There are other things that are more important to
00:18:42.800 me. Um, and this is not my entire life. My career is not my entire focus or even most of my focus,
00:18:50.340 my family is. And so, um, it depends on how much time also you're willing to put into it. So anyway,
00:18:56.520 advice, I would say, um, I would say, try to build an audience, like build a rapport, start asking,
00:19:04.960 um, even small publications. If you can write for them, if you can write opinion pieces, um,
00:19:11.600 start a blog, just get your voice out there. Uh, start sharing things. Um, it's probably,
00:19:18.500 you're probably not going to get any big names to get on your podcast. If that's what you're
00:19:23.400 hoping, not right away. Uh, but over time you will like, just keep on putting your thoughts
00:19:28.960 out there, be a good writer, be a good communicator, start a blog, start submitting op-eds,
00:19:36.520 start having some kind of social media presence. If you want to do those things. And then in a little
00:19:42.740 while, start your podcast, or if you want to start your podcast now you can, but it's probably,
00:19:47.740 if that's the only thing you do, it's going to be very difficult to build an audience. You have to
00:19:51.760 have multiple avenues, um, to build that audience. And it just depends on how much time you want to
00:19:56.640 put into it and then ask yourself. Um, and this is still something that I don't do perfectly that I,
00:20:02.580 that we're constantly trying to hone, but ask yourself, um, what you are contributing to the
00:20:11.760 dialogue that other people aren't like, what is your special insight that you are giving that people
00:20:18.420 want to hear that you don't see a bunch of other people doing? Like we were, this podcast was one
00:20:23.940 of the first female conservative Christian podcasts, one of, one of the first. And now in the past few
00:20:30.820 years, there have been quite a few that have cropped up, but there weren't before, which is awesome.
00:20:36.200 Like, I'm so excited about that, that there are more conservative Christian women now out there who
00:20:41.280 have a podcast, but we were one of the first three years ago. We're one of the only female
00:20:46.840 podcasts who talks about the things that we do, who talks about things like critical theory,
00:20:51.540 like critical race theory, like reformed Christianity. Like there just aren't very many
00:20:56.920 women who talk about the kinds of theological and political and cultural things that we do 1.00
00:21:03.320 on this podcast. Um, and who find kind of the niche that we have found in young Christian,
00:21:12.180 or I would just say young as relative, but Christian women and moms who are trying to
00:21:18.960 navigate the craziness of culture and parenthood and politics from a conservative and Christian 0.98
00:21:25.160 perspective. Um, that is what this podcast is and it's different than any other podcast or most
00:21:32.340 podcasts in that way. Um, and so ask yourself what you can bring to the table that other people
00:21:38.560 aren't. Don't try to reiterate or regurgitate other people's, um, ideas or other people's
00:21:44.540 formats, like create your own, create something different, create something good, create something
00:21:50.000 of value. It doesn't have to be so unique that no one else has done it. Obviously there are other
00:21:54.640 people who do things like relatable and that's fine, but what can you bring to the table that, um,
00:22:00.440 you don't see a lot of other people doing and how can you do it as genuinely as, um, and as effectively
00:22:09.220 as possible? All right. Another question that I got is about biblical counseling. Is biblical
00:22:15.300 counseling biblical? Is therapy biblical? Is it something that Christians, uh, should, uh, should 0.99
00:22:21.600 engage in? Should we care about what's the difference between biblical counseling and secular counseling? So
00:22:25.740 I think counseling can be extremely beneficial for the Christian. I don't think that it 1.00
00:22:30.340 should be idolized. I do think that we live in a time of the self-love and self-care movement
00:22:34.500 that idolizes therapy, that like everyone has to go to therapy in order to be a healthy person. I don't
00:22:40.280 think that's true. I do not think that everyone has to go to therapy to be a healthy person. I don't
00:22:44.440 think that every single person has mental health issues. I don't think every single person has dealt
00:22:48.480 with trauma, but a lot of people have, and a lot of people do have those issues. I did. And so in college,
00:22:54.380 or right after college, I saw a counselor, a biblical counselor, and she was wonderful. And she helped me,
00:22:59.520 um, through the power of the Holy Spirit, overcome an eating disorder and all kinds of other bad
00:23:04.180 things and habits that were going on in my life. I write about this, um, in my book. And, uh, and so
00:23:11.720 yes, I absolutely think that biblical counseling can be important. Now that's different than just a
00:23:17.060 Christian counselor. You want someone who is a licensed biblical counselor because a Christian
00:23:21.740 counselor can kind of, um, it's kind of like organic versus natural. Like anyone can say that they're
00:23:26.900 natural, but in order to truly be organic, you have to be certified organic. Well, anyone can say
00:23:32.020 that they are a Christian, that they were coming from a Christian worldview, but they could be totally
00:23:37.720 opposite from what you believe. They could believe that the Bible is mostly hogwash, except for a few
00:23:43.640 words that they tend to like, and they're not going to lead you in the right direction. You want a
00:23:47.360 biblical counselor that is using scripture as their guide to help you break strongholds, to help you
00:23:52.980 break bad habits, to help you work through sin, to help you work through relationships, whatever it
00:23:58.280 is. Now, I don't think that therapy is necessary for everyone. And I don't think we need to be
00:24:03.580 convinced that it's necessary for everyone. I think the church in a, in a big way has dropped the ball
00:24:09.420 when it comes to providing opportunities and ways to cultivate intimate friendships and mentorship
00:24:15.680 between believers in the church. Um, I think that we have replaced, um, other kinds of relationships
00:24:23.800 and the importance of other kinds of relationships like friendship and mentorship with marriage, which
00:24:28.740 of course I love marriage. And I think that it's so important if, if God calls you to be married, to
00:24:33.940 get married and to have kids and all of those wonderful things, but God doesn't call everyone to be
00:24:38.560 married. And we can't regard people who are single in the church as missing out or just someone that we put
00:24:43.320 off on the margins or stick in a waiting room and hope that they get married one day so they can
00:24:48.820 finally reach full happiness and really start their lives. That's not what the Bible says. The Bible
00:24:53.660 says that it is a gift to be single, that it's better to be single than to be married, because then you
00:24:57.720 can devote all of your time and all of your efforts to the Lord. They don't have to be split between your
00:25:03.480 family and God and ministry. Um, so if that's the case, then we need to be treating single people as 1.00
00:25:11.020 that. We need to be providing single people in the church. And I would say even married people
00:25:16.500 in the church with ample opportunity to cultivate, um, very deep and profound and fulfilling platonic
00:25:23.920 friendships and those kinds of relationships outside of marriage and mentorship. Because I think a lot of
00:25:30.140 what our culture, our highly, highly individualized culture is looking for today is actually community.
00:25:36.040 Like, I think we're actually looking for fellow Christians to confess our sins to, and we're
00:25:40.380 actually looking for advice. We're actually looking for mentorship, which has historically,
00:25:44.800 traditionally been found just for free in fellow believers inside the church. And now we actually
00:25:50.120 feel like we have to pay $500 an hour to get it. Again, I'm not saying that you might not need
00:25:56.300 counseling. I think that I did need counseling and I might need counseling to get in the future.
00:26:00.800 I know a lot of wonderful people who have needed counseling. I know a lot of wonderful
00:26:04.460 biblical counselors. I am so thankful for biblical counseling. It's different than just getting
00:26:08.440 advice from a friend. You might absolutely need that. But I also wonder, I also wonder if the kind
00:26:16.240 of psychotherapy that has become so pervasive, both in and outside of the church, could at least be
00:26:23.180 supplemented by or reduced by really good and faithful and intimate and profound friendships and
00:26:31.700 mentorship within the church. I think that's something that the church really needs to focus
00:26:35.840 on and think about and get better at. And I don't know all the answers to the how of that, but I do
00:26:42.040 feel, and if you're single, you might feel this too, like single people are just put in this waiting
00:26:46.800 room and that in the hopes that they'll meet someone else who is waiting too, and that they'll get
00:26:52.620 married and that like life doesn't start until you get married or you have kids. But that's not true.
00:26:58.180 Our goal in life is not to get married and have kids. Those are wonderful things, and I think
00:27:02.660 they're gifts of God, and I'm so thankful for them myself. But your goal in life is to glorify God.
00:27:09.620 And if that's single, if that's being single, praise God. If that's being married, praise God. If
00:27:14.000 that's having kids, praise God for that. But He might be calling you to be single. And if that's true,
00:27:20.060 like I said, the church needs to regard that as the gift that it is, not put single people off in a
00:27:24.840 waiting room, but use them as the gifts that they are to the body of Christ and to help them cultivate
00:27:31.740 their relationships, the friendships that we all need in addition to or even instead of marriage.
00:27:38.920 All right. Last question that I have is ceremonial law versus moral law. So you may have seen there's
00:27:50.620 like a heap—well, I don't know. What is it even called? Is it? No, I don't remember what it's called.
00:27:56.100 But there is a movement that's going on within evangelicalism, I would say, is mostly where it
00:28:02.400 presides, where Christians are saying that you now have to abide by Jewish ceremonial law in order to
00:28:15.720 really be clean because Jesus did. And that's what we're called to do. We are also called to keep
00:28:20.380 the law of the Old Testament. That is not true. So there is a difference between ceremonial law,
00:28:29.180 which Christians are not expected to keep, and the moral law, which Christians are expected to keep. 0.98
00:28:39.220 And so the moral law, the Ten Commandments, for example, are the moral law. Like we believe in
00:28:44.600 God's law to not create idols, to honor our father and mother, to love the Lord our God with all of
00:28:51.040 our heart, mind, soul, and strength, to love our neighbor as ourself, to not covet, to not lie,
00:28:56.280 to not murder. All of these moral laws are fulfilled in Christ. He actually doubles down on all of these
00:29:03.640 moral laws in the New Testament. He says, it's not enough that you don't kill someone. You also are not
00:29:09.880 supposed to hate someone in your heart. That is akin to murder. He said, it's not enough that you
00:29:15.780 don't lash out at your brother. It's not enough that you don't manifest these sins. Also, if these
00:29:21.660 sins start in your heart, you've already committed the sin. Like it's not enough that you don't,
00:29:26.000 that you don't commit adultery. You actually, if you are lusting after a woman in your mind and in
00:29:31.740 your heart, you've already committed adultery. So Jesus brings those moral laws into focus and he
00:29:38.320 doesn't get rid of them. He says, he reemphasizes them and he doubles down on them and he brings them
00:29:44.380 to the heart of the matter. And he says, that's where sin starts. And that's where repentance
00:29:50.040 has to start too. Of course, Pharisees were whitewashed tombs. They look really good on the 0.95
00:29:55.380 outside. They've got all the piety in the world. And yet on the inside, they were rotten. They were full
00:30:01.240 of corpses. And so that's what Jesus is calling out. He emphasizes the importance of us keeping the moral
00:30:06.380 law, not just in a legalistic external way, but also internally by regeneration of the Holy Spirit.
00:30:13.360 As far as ceremonial law goes, the book of Galatians speaks to this, that if you are trying to keep
00:30:19.000 one law, then you've got to keep them all. You're putting yourself back under the authority of the
00:30:23.960 law, which means you are subjecting yourself to the punishment of the law. And so if you are trying to
00:30:28.700 put the burden on someone or on yourself of keeping the law in order to maintain your holiness,
00:30:33.080 then you've got to keep the entire law. And it is your perfect maintenance of that keeping with the law
00:30:41.180 that you are trusting will make you holy before God. The problem is, is that that's impossible. That's
00:30:48.200 why in the Old Testament, they had to offer sacrifices. And that's why in the New Testament, Jesus serves as
00:30:54.560 our perfect sacrifice. And so because Jesus serves as our perfect sacrifice, he serves as that
00:31:03.060 propitiation that the sacrifices in the Old Testament did. And so he is our cleansing. Like we don't have
00:31:09.840 to follow the ceremonial laws that the Jewish people did to be cleansed or to be pure, because we have
00:31:15.400 Jesus who became our purity. He became our ceremonial covering. Like he became that intercessor on our
00:31:23.260 behalf. He became our blood sacrifice. And unlike other, the blood sacrifices, the animal sacrifices 0.99
00:31:29.480 in the Old Testament, Jesus's blood sacrifice lasts forever and ever. And so while there was temporary
00:31:35.980 righteousness after a sacrifice, as long as they kept the law in the Old Testament, we have eternal
00:31:41.840 righteousness that's given to us by the sacrifice of Christ that we get to cling to forever and ever.
00:31:47.380 It's done. It is finished, Jesus said. And so we do not have to abide by ceremonial law to be clean
00:31:55.640 as Christians, because Jesus has already made us clean. But because of his sacrifice and because we
00:32:04.020 follow him and because we love him, we do keep those moral laws that Jesus, again, emphasizes throughout
00:32:10.220 his ministry down to our hearts. So I hope that makes some sort of sense to you. That's all the
00:32:16.260 questions that I have for today. We will see you guys back here soon.