“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her…Fathers, don’t stir up anger in your children, but bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
Have you ever gotten started off on the wrong foot only to get back on track once things got up and running pretty well? I think about the NCAA Men’s March Madness championship game from a couple of years ago. My Kansas Jayhawks were playing UNC for the title. The game didn’t start very well. At the half we were down 15. We weren’t shooting well. They were. It was a pretty dispiriting beginning. But then things got back on track and the game went entirely more smoothly in the second half…unless of course you happen to be a UNC fan in which case this illustration completely fails. Just focus on the win over Duke in the Final Four and you’ll be fine. Let’s jump to something happier for you. The CBS sitcom Young Sheldon is coming to an end. As it does, one particular storyline is getting up and running really well. It’s become for me the best part of the show. Let’s talk about it this morning and why it’s such a good thing.
If you haven’t watched it, Young Sheldon is great. It’s the story of how Sheldon Cooper, the lead character on The Big Bang Theory, grew up. From the looks of it with just a couple of episodes remaining, the series is going to take us from when he was about 8 and in high school through about age 15 and his entry into grad school at Cal Tech. I’ll confess that I have never watched more than an episode or two of The Big Bang Theory, but from the little I have seen, Young Sheldon’s much more suited to my taste in sitcom than its parent series. The series about a bunch of single people living single lifestyles in a big city just don’t do it for me. They never have. And if you’re reading that and throwing things at your screen because you can’t believe I would say that…well…have at it I suppose.
In any event, Sheldon was a child genius, but with his outsized intelligence came an equally large gift of social awkwardness. Perhaps to put a blunter point on it, he’s an arrogant jerk whose obsessive compulsiveness and total inability to exhibit any kind of tact make him extraordinarily hard to like…even for his family…especially for his family. But he’s theirs, and so they love him anyway. They’re blown away by his prodigious academic gifts, but they are also extremely proud of him.
Most of the series has been focused on Sheldon and rightly so. It is kind of in the name of the series, after all. But as the series has continued forward, the writers have given the other main cast members more and more time in the spotlight as they have had their own adventures. The other cast members are Sheldon’s parents, George and Mary, his twin sister, Missy, his older brother, Georgie, and his grandma, Meemaw. As much as Sheldon is a lovable punk and the star of the show, it’s these other stories that have really captured my attention as the series has wound forward.
There was one plotline from last season in which George and Mary were fighting and disconnected and both of them flirted briefly with having affairs. In the end, though, they stayed committed to their wedding vows, reconciled with each other, and now their marriage is all the stronger because of it. During that storyline, the writers thought to show how their marital tensions were affecting the rest of the family, especially Missy. Missy reacted by making some poor choices of her own. Those got a happy resolution to them as well, especially when George and Mary worked through their own issues. I think what has so drawn me to the series over the years is that it has had such a consistent pro-family message to it.
This message has really been borne out through the plotline involving Georgie and his now wife, Mandy. This story has become so compelling that CBS has actually ordered spinoff series that will keep telling their story to premier this fall. The pair first met two seasons ago when Georgie was working at his Meemaw’s laundromat (which, until it was recently and finally shut down by the police, acted as a front for an illegal gambling room) and Mandy came in to do her laundry. She is much…much older than Georgie, but thinks him to be a great deal closer to her age than he actually is. Georgie successfully woos her into going to dinner with him which eventually translates into…other things. Before long Mandy winds up pregnant…and then discovers just how old Georgie really is.
Once the initial shock of the discovery begins to fade some for his family, two things happen which are really important. First, Mandy decides to keep the baby. Given the cultural context in which the series is taking place (the mid-90s now and in a conservative mid-sized town in Texas), talk of an abortion wouldn’t really have made much sense. Nonetheless, she decides to have the baby. Second, Georgie, who is a high school dropout, but street smart and a hard worker, with the encouragement of his father, decides to step up and be involved in his child’s life.
At first, Mandy doesn’t want anything to do with Georgie because of her anger at his deception about his age (to be fair, she was equally deceptive with him about how old she was) and the shock that her life path had veered off in an entirely different direction than she had planned for herself. But being pregnant, out of work, and rejected by her own family because of the choices she had made (a delightful reconciliation is in process on that relationship as the series wraps up), she finds she doesn’t have anywhere to turn but to Georgie’s family. She winds up living with Meemaw across the street. In the meantime, Georgie resigns himself to the fact that she doesn’t want anything to do with a relationship with him, but nonetheless commits to working hard to make sure both hers and the baby’s needs are provided for. In other words, he shows up and keeps showing up again and again and again.
After a while, Mandy begins to come around to the fact that Georgie is actually a really good guy who really is committed to her. He shows every sign of being committed as a father to their baby as well. This slowly begins to first soften and then win over her heart, and the pair finally decide to get married. The most recent events have seen them forced through all kinds of twists and turns together, but they have stuck with each other all the same. Georgie brings a dedicated optimism and spirit of hard work, and Mandy brings a few years’ more wisdom and patience. If either one of them were by themselves, they’d be a mess. Together, they are better. And when baby Constance arrives, the family is made even stronger.
From the standpoint of a biblical morality, there is much about this story to stand back and criticize. Pastor Jeff, the pastor of the church Mary attends and takes the family to mostly over their objections, and who you unfailingly want to punch in the face every time he’s onscreen, does much of this criticizing. The writers do a good job of making this come off as petty and uncharitable as it is. From the standpoint of modern sociology, the couple are getting the steps that lead to life success out of order. A great deal of research shows pretty conclusively that people who get an education, get a job, get married, start a family, and stay married for life do better on pretty much every social metric than people who don’t do those things in that order. Georgie and Mandy get some of those out of order and skip others of them altogether.
But…
At the end of the day, they don’t let poor choices stop them from making good choices. When they make poor choices, they don’t lean into those, but instead lean into their families and both commit and follow through on their commitment to make better choices in the future. Mandy’s willingness to invest in a relationship and learn to really love Georgie has been a fantastic love story to watch unfold. Georgie’s willingness to work hard to provide for his wife and daughter when most kids his age would run away and try to pretend the whole thing never happened, is an example worth following. Neither of them ran away from the consequences of their choices. Instead, they leaned into them and found redemption lying at the heart of them. No, the series doesn’t put any kind of a religious spin on any of this, but it’s really hard to escape the Gospel echoes ringing from it.
Georgie is loving his wife like Christ loved the church. He is laying down his life to make sure she is provided for. He is also fiercely committed to their daughter. In the latest episode, he begins the hard work of learning how to speak properly so that he can be a good example for her as she grows and learns to talk herself. He is working to teach her what is right and good even from her young age. In other words, Georgie has all the makings of a godly man. Now, again, has he gotten everything right? Of course not. It was a series of poor choices that set him on this path in the first place. But instead of leaning into what was wrong, he has leaned into what is right and good. He’s a good example of how committing ourselves to the path of Christ even from out of the standpoint of a sinful past can result in much good not just in spite of what was in our past, but because of it as God brings His redemption to it.
I hope that as the new series premiers in the next few months the writers will keep taking them down this path to show how a commitment to what’s right always, eventually, works out in our favor. If you haven’t watched any of Young Sheldon, I couldn’t recommend it highly enough. And now that it’s all over, you don’t have to wait to find out what happens. With the new series coming this fall, you might want to get on that effort. It’ll be worth your while.
The Nexus 
“… just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her. “
Now that is hilarious.
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Just for a moment, assume on the truthfulness of the story of Jesus as presented in the New Testament and the other things Paul has to say about Him. What exactly is hilarious about this? Would your wife not want you to live toward her with a sacrificial love that puts her and her needs ahead of your own in all things? Does that not seem like a good way to pursue a healthy, happy, lifetime marriage relationship? Does being willing to the point even of giving up your own life in order to see her become the best possible version of herself so far as that depends on you as her husband not seem like a really good way to be a husband? Is that not the kind of example you want to set for your son to follow (if you have one, I just know about your daughter) so that he can have a long, healthy, happy marriage someday? Is that not the kind of example you want to set for your daughter so that she sees what is right and reasonable to expect from her husband? You make a comment like that obviously to mock, but you’re going to have to help me see what’s worth mocking here. Even if the whole story is a bunch of made up garbage, it still seems to me that living toward your wife with that kind of a mindset is better than what most guys manage to achieve. Do you not agree?
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Only, Jesus didn’t have a wife unless you opt for Mary M and there was no church for the character to Iove or die for, now was there?
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Okay, so we’re still just mocking. Well, when you want to actually engage thoughtfully on the question here, let me know.
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Not in the least.
There was NO church for the character Jesus of Nazareth to love or die for.
And there has been plenty of speculation that JC had a relationship of some description with Mary M.
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I will add. Jesus is portrayed as a Jew. If he said anything at all he would have said synagogue.
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The church and the synagogue are two very different things with two very different purposes. Had He wanted to say “synagogue,” He would have. He was talking about something else entirely which, yes, already existed in a nascent form. And the word He used (in a passage that original to Matthew) was “ekklesia.” The Latin and later German word from which we get our word “church” came later and were poor translations of what Jesus was really talking about that have led to no small amount of misunderstandings about it.
As for the speculation about a physical relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, yes, there has been plenty of it. It’s pretty uniformly been advanced by critics of the church trying to find creative ways to somehow undermine the church’s credibility, and it generally carries about as much credibility as the claim that the moon is made of green cheese. But, yes, there has indeed been plenty of such speculation.
But then you’re deflecting still rather than actually and meaningfully engaging with the questions that I asked.
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Of course the words church and synagogue are two different things.
He would never have used the word church or any derivative. It did lot exist.
The was no, nascent church! What a preposterous thing to assert.
Furthermore he would have spoken Aramaic, not bloody Latin!
Your questions are meaningless in context. As there was no church the character Jesus of Nazareth could neither have loved it or died for it.
And that is the only point of my initial comment.
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Of course Jesus spoke in Aramaic. That’s why the issue of a later Latin translation matters. And, yes, Jesus did not use the word “church” or any derivative of it. That’s what I said. He used an Aramaic word that Matthew translated as “ekklesia.” And the idea of the church didn’t exist because Jesus was creating something new. As for the rest, you don’t appear have enough of a background in the theology of the church (that I can tell anyway) to be able to have much a meaningful conversation about it. That wouldn’t likely be worth either of our time.
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And ekklesia does not mean church yet my KJV uses the word.
It is erroneous.
As the Church had not been established then the character Jesus of Nazareth could neither have loved it or died for it.
Your condescension is noted.
My background in theology or rather lack thereof has absolutely no bearing on my initial comment regarding the hilarious claim Jesus loved the church and died for it.
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Yes, your KJV (which, unless it is a modern and properly footnoted KJV, is not the most accurate translation to the original Greek and Hebrew and Aramaic texts of the Scriptures, and so you would do yourself a favor to get ahold of a better translation) uses the word as does my CSB. There’s a long story about why translators have chosen to continue to use the word “church” instead of the more literal “called out gathering” (which consists of the total group of Jesus’ followers that, yes, existed at the time of the crucifixion, but which would also grow to include all the Jesus followers since, such that Jesus absolutely died for the church both contemporarily and as a sacrifice for future generations) that includes the guy who first tried to get everybody to make the change being hunted down and eventually martyred as a heretic by the church (how ironic, yes?). The word “church” is an erroneous translation of ekklesia, but it’s what we’re stuck with for a variety of reasons.
I had no condescension in mind at all in spite of what my digital tone may have conveyed. I mean this with all the humility I can muster: I’ve spent the better part of my life studying these things. Unless you have some foundation of knowledge and understanding you are keeping close to the vest for the time being, the kinds of arguments you are making bear all the hallmarks of the kinds of things someone who doesn’t understand what he’s talking about here would make. That you think what Paul wrote in Ephesians 5:25 is hilarious because you don’t seem to understand what he’s talking about is noted, but is a fairly meaningless observation that didn’t interact at all with any of the substance of what I wrote. Your subsequent and ill-informed bluster about the church has continued to avoid actually interacting with the questions I posed in my initial response.
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Total group of Jesus followers?
How many would that have been then?
You have any stats/ evidence?
Yes, we are stuck with it for a variety of reasons. None of them are honest or reflect the historical facts.
What is claimed Paul wrote is hilarious for the exact reason I have been at pains to explain.
From our interactions to date your lifetime study has not encouraged any apparent form of enlightenment in this field as you still cling desperately to an evangelical understanding of the Bible showing scant regard for the major scholarly disciplines and what they have revealed.
If you genuinely wish me to engage your questions perhaps you need to separate it from my comment and ask it in a different manner?
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Well, Luke puts the number at 120, so at least that many. As for the rest, you’re just making my point for me. I’m talking about a lifetime spent studying the church and you’re pulling out a red herring and talking about everything but that. The comment is irrelevant to the matter at hand.
The questions I asked are right back up at the top of this thread. If you want to meaningfully interact with the questions, they’re right there. If you don’t, that’s up to you.
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Again, the questions about my relationship with my wife and kids are irrelevant with regard my initial comment about whether the character Jesus loved the church or died for it.
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Those questions were an invitation to engage with the actual substance of the post rather than merely settling for taking a meaningless and irrelevant pot shot at it. You chose not to do that and have continued to stomp around about the irrelevant part. Shame on me, I guess, for getting sucked into it.
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The bible sets itself up for pot shots.
If it cannot withstand genuine scrutiny then it is not worth the paper it is printed on.
Why do you have any interest in my relationship with my wife? That is somewhat creepy.
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So, you’re still refusing to engage with the actual substance of the post. You’re just making silly comments now. Do other Christians you engage with find this kind of nonsense convincing or compelling at all?
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So you still want to discuss personal details about my relationship with my wife?
Why?
Again, my initial comment was regarding the nonsense of the character Jesus of Nazareth loving the church and dying for it.
Do you have this creepy prediliction with any other people’s marital business?
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So then, yes with the silliness. Let’s just drop this one, I guess.
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So then, yes with the weird prediliction about my relationship with my wife.
I actually consider you have a bloody cheek to even raise the subject to be honest.
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Once again: sigh…sure.
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Not even a vague suggestion of an apology?
Okay… I suppose the writing was always on the wall. My own self to blame. I’ll know better in future.
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Which is a funny allusion to make since that story is about a bunch of people who were carrying on like God was a nobody suddenly discovering that He was entirely more real and powerful than they ever imagined.
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So no apology for your weird insistence I engage your question about my relationship with my wife.
Got it.
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If I felt the need to offer one, I most definitely would. Seeing as how you have chosen to respond to the original blog post and everything since with nonsense, I’ve felt no such need.
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As I noted. Okay. Out of interest, do you encourage other men to discuss their marital relationship with you?
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As a pastor, I have had several couples reach out for marital counseling over the years as well as husbands on their own and looking for counsel and encouragement. That’s part of the gig. I’ve had the chance to walk with more than one couple through some pretty tough issues and seen them come out with a stronger marriage on the other side. It can be a pretty rewarding gig.
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Your training includes marriage counselling? Interesting.
What qualifications are you required to obtain?
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I refer quickly and actively. I stick with what things I can speak to with confidence (what the guys who contributed to the Scriptures have to say about marriage, how to get it right, and what that might look like in a practical situation), and stop there. I let the licensed counselors tackle the real work. I’m pretty comfortable with my limits.
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Do you encourage prayer?
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Of course.
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Why?
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Put yourself in my shoes, take on how I see the world for a minute, and see if you can answer your own question.
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Remember, I have no belief in the supernatural and there is no evidence to support it either.
Neither is there is evidence of the efficacy of intercessory prayer.
Therefore as you are aware of this, surely you recommending prayer is like putting a band aid on a leaking dam wall and thus such a recommendation would be at best a placebo.
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Once again: you reject the evidence to support as you are limited by your commitment to scientism. Because I am not aware of either of those things except as they exist in the minds of folks like yourself who have refused to believe or accept the volumes of evidence, often in the form of personal testimony, but which exists by the hundreds of millions, no, I don’t share your narrow view on the question here. But for a narrow slice of humanity who have locked themselves into an ideological framework that cannot countenance such a thing, prayer is a natural reaction for people in hard situations. It has always been. When something is and has always been so natural for people, again, but for a tiny slice of humanity who has adopted your particular ideological framework, it starts to appear that you are the ones who are missing what’s true rather than the other way around.
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As I mentioned. At best a placebo. However, as we have discussed this before, what evidence is there to demonstrate the veracity of claims of prayer/ the supernatural?
Experiment:
As you believe demons are real perhaps this would be the perfect example for you to use?
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You’re trying again to apply a scientistic framework to a supernatural question. That’ll be a flop from the start.
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It is obvious you consider the efficacy of prayer over and above the feel good benefits ( calmness, a degree of clarity of thought etc). So, despite the absence of evidence,( as far as I am aware) use the lens of your worldview and explain how prayer has worked?
It will be a fascinating exercise.
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https://www.facebook.com/share/v/saZxujGkh8j7S3Zs/?mibextid=oFDknk
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I couldn’t agree with him more. I look forward to the day that moment arrives for you with respect to the Christian worldview.
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🤣When Hell freezes over!
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Well, hey. If I’m right about Hell’s not actually being really hot, then it could be cold instead. You’re halfway there ;~)
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I think it’s enough that one of us is delusional.
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Agreed.
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Perhaps you should consider seeing a medical professional in that case?
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Well, see, I don’t agree with you about which one of us is potentially delusional.
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And this is exactly what a delusional person is likely to say.
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You’re right!
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If you had genuinely been studying rather than simply reading things to affirm your faith you would have very likely deconverted.
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I understand that because of the worldview blinders you wear you cannot conclude other than that, but it sounds both arrogant and ignorant every time you say it. You really should find a different drum to beat.
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Are you suggesting someone like Ehrman is blinkered, arrogant and ignorant?
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If he made that kind of conclusion about my personal belief and what I have or have not studied and the conclusions I have drawn from it and why, absolutely I would. For him to make the same worldview-dependent suggestion you are that if only I had actually studied (assuming without evidence beyond worldview rooted assumptions that I haven’t) I would deconvert (assuming again on the basis of worldview rooted assumptions the kind of conclusion I would draw from my study), that would be an argument borne out of worldview driven ignorance and arrogance.
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Example: Your worldview presupposes miracles are real. But not, I suspect, miracle claims from competing religions.
Your worldview insists demons are real.
Your worldview insists possession by demons is real.
Your worldview insists Hell is real, as is the afterlife
Your worldview does not require you to produce evidence for a single one of these claims and faith is all that is required. Thus you are able to indoctrinate children in such beliefs with impunity.
However, for some strange reason, evidence does not support your faith.
In fact not only does it not support your faith or the Bible claims this faith is based upon, much of it is flatly refuted by evidence.
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What exactly are you offering an example of here other than your worldview-driven (and possibly experience-driven too, but I’m still not totally sure about that one) critiques of the parts of the Christian worldview that atheists typically enjoy dunking on?
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Was my explanation of your worldview and it’s shortcomings not clear enough?
“Experience-driven” ? What are you alluding to!
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As far as a caricature of it through a secular lens that focuses entirely on the parts I’ve mostly already acknowledged to be challenging and totally excluding the parts that are most significant in such a way that is designed to make the whole thing look ridiculous, yes that was pretty clear.
As for “experience-driven” I’m just wondering if there’s some other bad experience with the church or with Christians in your past you haven’t shared with me. that has contributed to your being such an enthusiastic evangelist and apologist for atheism. Perhaps not.
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You cannot present these aspects of your Christian worldview in any other light, unless you are going obfuscation and deceit.
I only ever actively engaged the foolishness that is Christianity once I began writing my first book. I have explained this before.
🤦
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Your presentation was along the lines of the newspaper that promises a story about a man who pushes old women in the street in order to tell about a man who shoved an old woman out of the way of an oncoming car at the risk of his own life. You consistently present the parts you want at the expense of the parts you don’t so that you have an easier time rejecting the whole thing. As long as you keep caricaturing the faith like that, we really won’t be able to get anywhere.
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You want to concertrate focus away from these aspects as best you can.
Don’t want to scare the kiddies before we’ve had a chance to bring them into fold, right?
If these aspects can’t stand serious scrutiny then what exactly are you trying to hide, Jonathan?
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I don’t try to hide anything and have consistently engaged with your serious questions about them while trying to sift those out from the more simple mocking. It’s easy to make a mockery of something when you give all of your attention to the hard parts and none of your attention to the easy and good ones. That’s a choice you make.
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So you tell children that demons real?
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If they ask, yes.
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So you are unwittingly or otherwise guilty of child abuse.
Why would you lie to children?
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Sigh…more of this again? When you’ve got something new to add rather than continuing to recycle the same arguments that didn’t carry any weight with me the first dozen or so times you raised them, we can keep rolling again.
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There is no need to add something new. Telling children that demons exist is a blatent lie and is nothing short of child abuse.
Such disgusting garbage is as bad as accusing a woman of being a witch.
And in days gone by we all know what happened to ‘ witches’, and very often to those possessed by ‘demons’.
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If I saw things the way you do, I’d no doubt feel the same. And that’s one of the ongoing differences between us. I can imagine your perspective and can frame it out in the most reasonable possible light. You don’t share the same capability that I’ve been able to tell which is why you have to keep falling back on accusing me (and by association all the rest of the Christians in the world) of lying and child abuse. It does get tedious after a while.
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Your hand-waving and obfuscation is simply pathetic and equally tedious.
You have no evidence for ‘demons’ and if you were to diagnose an individual as being possessed without recommending medical attention and something tragic came as a result I should hope you would be charged to the full extent of the kaw.
We are in the 21st century in case you had not noticed?
To indoctrinate children with this filth is child abuse and as an educated man you should be thoroughly ashamed.
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Every time you try to apply a scientistic framework to a supernatural issue, you are going to come away disappointed and frustrated. There’s really no other way such an effort can go. I really am sorry your ability to engage thoughtfully with these kinds of questions is so limited by your worldview commitments.
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How do you discern between fact and obvious fiction?
Example, as there is no evidence of demons how do you justify your belief to a child, even through the lens of your worldview?
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Well, through the lens of the Christian worldview, there is evidence for demons. Because I accept the argument that the Scriptures are historical and reliable, and because the guys who contributed to the Scriptures whom I believe were inspired by the Holy Spirit to write the things that they did consider demons to be real, I’m willing to take their word for it. In other words, what you call “obvious fiction” I don’t think is fiction at all.
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