On this special Q&A episode of the Denison Forum Podcast, host Mark Turman is joined by Dr. Jim Denison and Dr. Ryan Denison to answer your questions on some of today’s most pressing faith topics. They explore the role of the Pope, Christian nationalism, and the popular Chosen TV series and offer practical insights on what it means to live redemptively in today’s world.
You’ll also hear thoughtful discussion on the government’s role in social responsibility, Christian beliefs about communion, and how Christians should understand sharia law. Join us for a conversation to help you navigate today’s issues with biblical truth and Christ-centered wisdom.
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Topics
- (01:47): Questions about the new Pope
- (07:56): Understanding canonical law
- (09:50): The Lord’s Supper: different perspectives
- (18:38): Personal stories and faith journeys
- (28:24): The role of the Holy Spirit in daily life
- (31:01): Surrendering to God’s will
- (32:47): Living redemptively
- (41:28): Understanding sharia law
- (50:17): Christian nationalism explained
- (56:53): The role of government in Christian mission
Resources
- Ask Us Anything: [email protected]
- American Idolatry: How Christian Nationalism Betrays the Gospel and Threatens the Church: A conversation with Andrew L. Whitehead
- House plans to impeach the president: Why I am a Christian patriot but not a Christian nationalist
- The eye-opening success of “Christmas with The Chosen” shows how God does “impossible math”
- Should we fear radical Islam?
- A city on a hill cannot be hidden • Denison Forum
- How has Denison Forum impacted your faith?
- Subscribe to The Daily Article by Dr. Jim Denison
About Dr. Jim Denison
Jim Denison, PhD, is a cultural theologian and the founder and CEO of Denison Ministries. He speaks biblically into significant cultural issues at Denison Forum. He is the chief author of The Daily Article and has written more than 30 books, including The Coming Tsunami, the Biblical Insight to Tough Questions series, and The Fifth Great Awakening.
About Dr. Ryan Denison
Ryan Denison, PhD, is the Senior Editor for Theology at Denison Forum. Ryan writes The Daily Article every Friday and contributes writing and research to many of the ministry’s productions. He holds a PhD in church history from BH Carroll Theological Institute after having earned his MDiv at Truett Seminary. He’s authored The Path to Purpose, What Are My Spiritual Gifts?, How to Bless God by Blessing Others, 7 Deadly Sins, and coauthored Sacred Sexuality: Reclaiming God’s Design and Who Am I? What the Bible Says About Identity and Why it Matters and has contributed writing or research to every Denison Forum book.
About Dr. Mark Turman
Mark Turman, DMin, serves as the Executive Director of Denison Forum, where he leads with a passion for equipping believers to navigate today’s complex culture with biblical truth. He is best known as the host of The Denison Forum Podcast and the lead pastor of the Possum Kingdom Chapel, the in-person congregation of Denison Ministries.
Dr. Turman is the coauthor of Sacred Sexuality: Reclaiming God’s Design and Who Am I? What the Bible Says About Identity and Why it Matters. He earned his undergraduate degree from Howard Payne University in Brownwood, Texas, and received his Master of Divinity from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. He later completed his Doctor of Ministry at George W. Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University in Waco.
Before joining Denison Forum, Mark served as a pastor for 35 years, including 25 years as the founding pastor of Crosspoint Church in McKinney, Texas.
Mark and his high school sweetheart, Judi, married in 1986. They are proud parents of two adult children and grandparents to three grandchildren.
About Denison Forum
Denison Forum exists to thoughtfully engage the issues of the day from a biblical perspective through The Daily Article email newsletter and podcast, The Denison Forum Podcast, as well as many books and additional resources.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
NOTE: This transcript was AI-generated and has not been fully edited.
Dr. Mark Turman: [00:00:00] Good morning. This is Mark. I’m your host for today’s conversation on the Denison Forum Podcast. Thank you for being a part of this conversation. We want you to drag up a chair or a cup of coffee or keep your eyes on the road if you’re driving. As we talk today, we’re gonna do what we do periodically, which is we’re gonna have an ask us anything episode with me and Dr.
Ryan Denison, and also Dr. Jim Denison. We thought a three headed doctoral monster might be beneficial in some way. Three doctors is better than one guys? One hope it all depends on what the doctorates are in, I suppose. Yes.
Dr. Jim Denison: Mark, there’s this story about this plane that’s up in the air and it’s got four engines back in the day, and one of the engines goes out.
And the pilot comes on and he says, we’ve got lost in Ninja, but I don’t want you to worry about it. We’ve got four clergy on board and they’re praying for us and everything will be fine. And one of the passengers calls over one of the flight attendants and said, you know, I’d rather have four engines and three [00:01:00] clergy.
You know, just kind of depends on your setting as to whether this is a good idea or not. I guess we’ll know in an hour.
Dr. Mark Turman: You know, I, I I’m thinking that you had no idea that you were gonna start with that story. No idea whatsoever until right now.
Dr. Jim Denison: That’s right.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. Ryan, have you heard this story multiple times?
Actually, that’s a new one,
Dr. Ryan Denison: so I’m gonna have to remember that one.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, I mean, so we’re going from grandfather joke to dad joke, and we’ll see if that plays over the, the Ryan Denison dinner table tonight. We’ll see. At least you know where to attribute credit. You know, make sure you make the citation clear if it lands flat with, with the kids today. As it probably will. As it probably will. Yes. Guys, we’re glad to have this opportunity. We are glad that our folks are writing in and sharing some of their thoughts and questions with us. We’ve got a number of questions this morning to kind of start off around the idea of the Pope.
We have a new Pope the first American Pope. We’ve talked about that on recent podcast. If any of our audience wants to [00:02:00] go back and gather some of those thoughts but out of some of those conversations as well as articles that have been written both by us and by many. Talking about this very historic moment relative to Pope Leo the 14th.
We’ve got several questions there as well as some other things that people have on their minds that hopefully we can bring some clarity to. And so let’s just jump right in and see how far we get. We may not cover all of these, but if you have questions you’d like to share with us, we’ll try to cover them in future episodes of Ask Us Anything.
You can share that with just an email to [email protected], info in IN [email protected]. And we’ll be sure to try to include you in upcoming episodes of Ask Us Anything. Jim, let’s start with you around this idea of the papacy. One of our listeners wrote over the centuries, or he quotes you as writing Over the centuries, popes have included layman and deacons along with many [00:03:00] bishops.
In fact, quoting from your article, any unmarried male baptized Catholic is canonically eligible to be Pope. How then could Peter have been the first Pope having had a mother-in-law and thus obviously being married? No problem here, Jim. Just cover all the qualifications of being a Pope and how it got started and how we have made it 2000 years from one Pope to another.
Dr. Jim Denison: There’s a lot in that, obviously, but I can do a few things pretty quickly and we’ll kinda see where it goes. When we take people to Israel, as you know, mark, we love going to Capernaum, which is where we think Peter’s house was and where we think Jesus actually healed. Peter’s mother-in-law, one of the guys that does the tourist with us, always sets all that up by saying it’s at this spot that Jesus did the most Christian thing he ever did when he healed his mother-in-law.
That’s, which I’m not sure is a very nice thing to say, a kind thing to say, and I didn’t say that. I want you to know that. That’s our friend that said that. Not, not me, but nonetheless, I mean, the question’s obvious that if Peter had a mother-in-law, [00:04:00] first Peter, excuse me, first Timothy three talks about bishops being the husband of one wife.
Then how is it that popes can’t be married? That bishops, that priests can’t be married in the Catholic church? They obviously know all of that. They’re familiar with those passages. So how did this happen and why did it happen, is the question people asked. That took place over centuries. In the early centuries, as I noted in the statement that was quoted, it was in fact the case.
The popes came from a wide variety of different walks within the Catholic church, and marital status was not one of the qualifications either way. Over the centuries, there came to be the belief, however, that an unmarried individual would have more time for the church, would be able to focus more directly on the things of the church.
They’re thinking now on some of Paul’s comments in one Corinthians about an unmarried person like himself, being able to devote more attention full-time to the gospel and to the work of the ministry. There was a thought toward purity as well. Sexual purity of celibacy was going to be required. There was the idea of being married, as it were to the Lord and being part of the bride of Christ [00:05:00] and all of that.
By 1123 and the first laddering council, there comes the official teaching of the church that priests and therefore popes must be unmarried in order to be qualified. Not deacons, not other offices in the church, but from a priest up to a bishop, a cardinal, and then to a pope that one must be unmarried to be in that position.
Others in the Catholic larger communion don’t agree with that. The Eastern Orthodox Church does not have that requirement, even in the Roman Catholic Church. If I were to convert to Catholicism being married and wish to become a priest, I could. I could be a married priest in the Catholic church as long as I was married before I joined the Catholic church.
So it’s a movement of the church toward protecting the purity of the priesthood and giving the priest an opportunity for full-time focus on the church. It does make one other point, and we talked about this in our earlier conversation about Protestants and Catholics as we tried to say there, one thing that makes Catholic different from Protestant is the belief that the Holy Spirit interprets the scripture through the church.[00:06:00]
So it’s over the centuries of the church coming to understand and apply scripture that the Holy Spirit leads the church. And so that’s how the church can develop doctrines that are not unbiblical. Nowhere does the Bible say you must be married to be a pastor that that they’re being unbiblical by doing this.
But there’s tradition that adds to. Scripture teaches that a Catholic would say is how the Holy Spirit led the church to apply the scripture. It’s like in the law context where we add laws to apply existing laws, laws to apply the Constitution from 200 years ago. So in the Catholic tradition, this can be done whether it’s priesthood or it’s the the perennial virginity of Mary or the bodily assumption of Mary or other doctrines that the church comes to teach over the centuries.
It got added for those reasons, and that’s why today Pope must be unmarried to be qualified in order to be a pope.
Dr. Mark Turman: Okay. Really, really helpful. And we’re getting deep into the weeds of Catholic, of Catholic teaching [00:07:00] and understanding. Jim give us a, a quick explanation if you can, about where the word Pope comes from.
It doesn’t appear in the Bible where does that word and title actually come from? Means papa.
Dr. Jim Denison: Actually, it’s an idea around Father Pontiff is actually Bridge Builder in Latin. So the whole idea here is that the Pope or the Pontiff is a person that builds a bridge from God to people. He’s continuing the ministry of Peter in Catholic thinking here that he’s, that they speak of him as being at the seat of Peter, the Sea of Peter.
And the idea is that as the Lord commissioned Peter gave him the keys of the kingdom, and now we can interpret all that. I don’t agree with that interpretation, but that’s the Catholic position and made Peter the rock upon which Jesus would build the church. So those that are in the succession of Peter continue as Peter did, to build a bridge from the Lord to his people and to the world.
And so that’s what the pontiff does. He’s a bridge builder and he’s the father, he’s a spiritual father or a pope or a papa to the people.
Dr. Mark Turman: Okay. All right, one more, one more definition I’m looking for. What in the [00:08:00] world is canonical law and how many laws are there in the canonical law?
Dr. Jim Denison: Yeah. Canonical actually Canon, as you know, has to do with scripture or any other place by which a rule is placed.
Canon means ruler, a ruler by which a ruler is developed by which to measure things. You have a ruler against which you can measure a straight line or measure a distance or whatnot. And so the biblical canon is that rule by which we’re to measure our lives. We’re to think biblically so that we can act as we know faithfully, as we speak of in our ministry, in the Catholic tradition and others, not just Catholic as well.
There comes to develop over the centuries other laws that are meant to apply scripture to our lives that get known as canonical laws as well, or canonical requirements. They’re just the requirements of the laws that the church has developed over the centuries by which to apply the canon of scripture to the issues.
Baptists aren’t familiar with that terminology because we don’t have those per se. We so emphasize the priesthood of every believer in the autonomy of every [00:09:00] church that we don’t really have extra biblical statements that are laws per se. Even in the Baptist world where we have a thing called the Baptist faith and message, that’s not a canonical law that we require all people to believe in order to be a Baptist.
On the other hand, when I joined the faculty at Southwestern Seminary some years ago, I was required to sign the Baptist faith and message in order to teach in a Baptist seminary. And so in that context, it was a canonical law because I was an employee of the Southern Baptist Convention teaching at a Southern Baptist Seminary.
So I guess we even have canonical laws on that level, but not on the same level as a Catholic tradition would or others that have these laws. In addition to scripture by which they seek to apply scripture.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. Lot to think about and, and can get pretty dense pretty quickly when you start down some of those roads.
And that includes Ryan. What I wanted to ask you about, another question coming from one of our readers goes down some of these same lines as well, particularly about how we understand and [00:10:00] practice the Lord’s Supper, what is sometimes called communion, the Lord’s table. One of our readers wrote this to us.
I was raised Lutheran in the Mis Missouri Synod version of the Lutheran Church. I believe the bread and the wine is somehow the body and blood of Jesus. I attend now a non-denominational church where it represents Jesus’s body and blood. I have no problem with either of, of these views, I assume is what they’re writing.
In fact, I love the mystery of the true body. I. The true body and blood. It is, is it possible that you could talk about this on one of your podcasts? That’s what we’re gonna do now. It’s, she goes on to write. It bothers me because someone in my family will not take communion at the Lutheran church.
I think that that’s trivial. I also know that some Lutherans will not allow you to have communion in their churches unless you believe their doctrine as they teach it. Ryan this has been a [00:11:00] significant issue throughout church history has a very significant root back to the Protestant Reformation.
How should we understand communion?
Dr. Ryan Denison: It is a big subject and continues to be a highly debated subject, but in the context of Lutheranism, a lot of it I think is helpful to go back even beyond the Reformation, where the, it’s helpful to understand the Lord’s Supper is something that we’ve been trying to understand since probably the second century, if not before.
You find people like Justin Martyr writing about how Christ’s body and blood inhabit the elements and using elements that kind of came to be known as transubstantiation within the Catholic church, and that was in response largely to. The agnostic heresy that taught that Jesus didn’t have a physical body.
And so it was kind of the church’s way of taking what they perceived as a theological threat and putting something in there kind of weekly rituals to kind of combat that heresy. And I think over time that kind of developed, and it [00:12:00] was never really a universally established doctrine within the Catholic Church until the 12 hundreds.
After that, it kind of became one of the points of contention within the Protestant Reformation because Luther looked at that and he said if you’re saying that Christ’s body and blood have to be physically present as a sacrificial offering every week to maintain your salvation, then that means that his.
That kind of took away from the efficacy of Christ’s sacrifice for us. And so he tried to move away from that. But again, like when we talked about the nomination, we one of the things we brought up in that conversation was how a lot of the reformers had to be really mindful of how far they could push people before they said no.
And so Luther’s attempts, Luther’s understanding of the Lord Supper kind of was very, very close to transubstantiation without really crossing into the, there being a physical change. He called it consubstantiation. That continues to be sort of, some version of that continues to be kind of the Lutheran especially in the Missouri syn [00:13:00] version of Lutheranism today.
There were other reformers guy Lord Swingley actually agreed with Luther on 14 to 15 important points where they couldn’t agree was Lord’s Supper. And that’s why their movements never combined. And so it, it kind of points to how contentious this issue has always been. Swingley pushed for more of a memorial sort of understanding that we see within Evangelicalism today.
But I think a lot of it goes back to I think it’s helpful to remember that the original purpose of communion within scripture, if you read about it in Acts, it was meant to be something that brought the body of Christ together, a chance to worship and remember Christ’s sacrifice. So regardless of, you know, what, what sorts of, what level of transformation, what level of spiritual inhabitation of the elements you want to believe, whether that’s a memorial view all the way to the transubstantiation of Catholicism, I think it, it’s, the thing we can’t lose sight of is that the purpose of the Lord’s Supper was to bring us together and to give us a physical reminder of what Christ has done for us.
And I really think we need to hold onto that in. [00:14:00]
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And it’s, it is really a struggle. I had an opportunity a few years ago to visit Wittenberg, Germany, where Martin Luther had his ministry and where this became a real contention that he decided in one case that he was going to serve communion in what was called both kinds.
That is that he was going to offer those that came to worship both bread and wine because there had grown up the practice that the people were only allowed to participate in the bread and not in the taking of the wine or the juice. And so Luther didn’t think that that was legitimate. So he, he created controversy just by simply offering both elements as, as opposed to that.
I wonder, Ryan, if, if your, your point about this ought to be a place that brings us together it’s common among differing groups of Christians, some practice communion every week. Catholics certainly do that. Other groups as well. More in the Protestant tradition. It’s less often can be [00:15:00] sometimes once a month or even more random than that.
Other than remembering that this is something that’s supposed to unite us as a very core element of our faith. Are there some other couple of suggestions you would say for individual believers that when you do have the opportunity of communion there is great respect and caution that the Bible points us to broadly speaking.
We might at times say traditions like Catholics and Lutherans take communion too seriously, and Protestants don’t take it seriously enough. If those are the extremes what would be maybe one or two other ideas that you would remind us that Christians should remember when they come to communion?
Dr. Ryan Denison: Absolutely great question. And I think a, a key part of it is to remember that it’s meant to be a call back to remembering Christ’s sacrifice, which should at the same time mean that it should drive us to repentance and remember why Jesus had to die. And so it’s not so much just [00:16:00] gratitude for Christ’s sacrifice, but also a chance to remember why he had to make that sacrifice in the first place.
And so if we ever take it for granted and start treating it like, like in the Baptist context, it’s usually just grape juice and crackers essentially. And if we, I think there is something that’s, we lose by kind of just viewing it at from a purely memorial sense of if this stays crackers and and juice, then it’s easy for us to kind of forget why it’s so important.
So really kind of going back and taking the time as it’s being passed out, taking the time as you’re waiting in line to go get it, however your church does it, to really kind of go back to. Just repentance and go back to asking God to show you if there is anything in your life that is not right between you and Him.
And taking the time to address those is a hundred percent what something we need to be doing every time we take communion. Whether that’s weekly, whether that’s quarterly, or however often you do it. And I, I think it’s also important to remember that it shouldn’t take communion to get [00:17:00] us to remember the nature of Christ sacrifice and that culture repentance.
If the only time we’re actually going back to God to make sure we’re all right is when we’re standing in line to get communion, that’s also a problem. And so I think in a lot of ways communion is a very helpful reminder of the communal el I guess that’s why we call it communal, is the commun, the communal elements of it.
That it is meant to draw us closer together as a body of Christ closer to Jesus, closer to one another, but also just something that’s meant to drive us closer to Jesus by calling us to repentance.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm, that’s a good word. It’s a good word. Our next question comes from, again another related Catholic or Catholic question.
I can’t get my a’s out today. One of our readers wrote to us, my son converted to Catholicism in college after growing up his whole life in a Southern Baptist church. A non-denominational Christian school. He says now that he has joined the Catholic church because it’s true. He believes it’s the closest thing to the early church and that the [00:18:00] schism was false.
Both the Protestant Reformation, possibly the schism of 10 54 that we talked about in the last episode. She goes on, he now seems to have disdain for the Protestant reformation. Which has really broken our hearts. Even the church we attend often baptizes people and they say that these people who are being baptized came out of a Catholic background and a works centered theology.
Sometimes you will hear that in Protestant reformation or Protestant churches. Some of our family members see Catholicism as a cult. There are many things we don’t agree with. We desperately want to know that our son is still a Christian. Let me handle this question and you guys weigh in if you feel led, but this is really my story in reverse.
I was raised in a Catholic family for the first decade or 12 years of my life. My family had been very dedicated. And then by the time I was coming into my teenage years, my family really dropped out of church. And that was great with me as a child. I didn’t [00:19:00] enjoy going to Catholic worship at all.
But when I came to Christ personally later in my teens. I, I picked up on, on this idea in the Protestant church that Catholics are not real Christians, that they might be a cult and that their theology is works based. There’s a lot in that. And it was very difficult. You know, I had some really hard conversations with my parents and with my extended family at times about what I was learning, what I was understanding from the Bible and from my church, and how that differed in some ways from Catholic teaching.
Over the years. Since that time, both with my family and with others, I’ve come to understand that. You can be a sincere believer and fa and practice your faith in Christ in the context of the Catholic church, I obviously, we obviously believe that that is true of Protestants as well, and as we refer to in our last podcast that, that there’s been a [00:20:00] lot of work and a lot of reconciliation, particularly since the mid 1960s trying to bring some reconciliation between Catholics and Protestants.
I think we would all agree that it’s also true that you can be a Protestant, you can be a Baptist or a Methodist, a Presbyterian, and you can also be a Catholic and not sincerely have a relationship with Christ. You can be following the forms of those faith, but not actually in a relationship with Christ.
And I think that’s really the primary issue here is do you believe the, the essentials of the gospel, that Jesus is the one and only son of God and the savior of all of us, and that by. Trusting in him, not by going to church or following a particular practice of faith, but by having a relationship of trust in him as your forgiver and as your Lord and leader.
That’s the real core question here, and if any person, including [00:21:00] this person’s son, if they have made that kind of faith response to Christ, then yes, they are a Christian and they are sealed in that faith by the power of Christ, not by the power of their faith, but by the power and promise of Christ.
And that there is an assurance in that, that we can lean on. Ultimately, we never know a hundred percent about any other person’s faith, our children or any spouse, but we know that Jesus said there are indicators that we will know those people buy their fruits and one of those things. Indicates the presence of a relationship with Christ is how we treat each other and the respect we show for each other and even the concern.
I came home from church one time on a Sunday morning and we’d been talking about the importance of the gospel, the importance of belief, and I wasn’t sure where my parents or my siblings stood, and it was just, it was really fearful for me. And that was one of the best conversations I ever had with my mother, just [00:22:00] kind of talking this through.
And that would be my encouragement to both this mother and her son, that they spend time being humble before e before each other and having meaningful conversations about how they understand faith, both from his Catholic per perspective and expression, and from hers as a Protestant. So guys, anything you want to add to that that, did I get it right?
Oh, mark. I think that’s
Dr. Jim Denison: excellent. Thank you for doing that and for sharing it in such a personal way as well. Agree with everything you just said. I would only go back and emphasize a couple of points, and that is that there’s no guarantee in any denomination that one is a believer by attending that denomination.
I was pastoring a church at one point, a very large church in which we had a member who had come from another large church in a different city, and in that church he was on the baptism preparation committee as he told the story where a person would come forward, they would confess their faith in Christ, and then his committee would take over and get them ready to be baptized and talk with them about their process.
He was talking to this one businessman in the community and said, I’m just so [00:23:00] glad that you’ve trusted in Christ and made him your Lord. In the businessman. Said, I didn’t do that, and the man, my friend said you came forward to confess your faith in Christ and to be baptized. He said, no, I just wanna join this church for the business context.
Oh wow. And making the point. And that was in a Baptist church making the point that not, I think it was Augustine that said the Lord has some, the church hasn’t, and the church has some, the Lord doesn’t, you know, hasn’t. And so we can’t be certain about all of that. There’s the fellow that woke up in after surgery and looked around and said, is this heaven?
And then he saw a surgeon and said, no, I can’t be because he’s there, you know? And you know, we just don’t know. None of us really does know, do we? The other thing very quickly is just to emphasize your point about the security of salvation. Once we trust in Christ as a Lord and Savior, Jesus says, we’re born again.
You can’t go back and be unborn at that point, Ryan, bless his heart as my son, he can’t help it. He didn’t get to choose it. He had no say in it. He probably doesn’t wanna be my son a lot of the time, but he can’t go back and not be my son. Once [00:24:00] you’re born as somebody’s child, you’ll always be their child.
I. So it is with this individual, they’re in a Catholic tradition now as opposed to a, a Protestant or Baptist. But if they ever trusted Christ as their Lord, as it sounds like they certainly did, they became the child of God and they will always be the child of God. And that’s the, and as you said, mark, it’s not because we’re holding onto him, he’s holding onto us.
And John 10, Jesus said, you’re in my hand and no one can take you from my hand. And that’s the promise that all of us clinging to whatever our denominational tradition.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. Such a, a good thing. I can remember having conversations with my family that. You know, grace is about, look, if you can’t do anything to earn it, then you can’t do anything to lose it.
That’s right. That’s, that’s the very nature of grace. Alright, one more question in this kind of intersection with our friends in the Roman Catholic faith. This comes from an article, Jim, that you recently wrote which I is a good call out for me to just let people know that, hey, if you wanna read other articles written, Jim’s written a number of articles about the [00:25:00] ascension of Pope Leo the 14th, and other writers Ryan and some of our contributing writers.
A lot of great material that you can find at our website, which is simply denison forum.org. Dennison forum.org is easy. Many of you subscribe to the daily article that Jim and Ryan write, and you get that in your email, that’s great. But there are a lot of additional articles that we produce and publish.
All of those are available on our website. We would encourage you to check that out. Jim, in one of your recent articles about Pope Leo the writer was caught in this moment with a little bit of a question and asked the question coming off of your reference to Pope Leo’s first homily, does Pope Leo, as you understand him, does he believe all followers of Jesus spoken about in Matthew five in the Beatitudes where it says, blessed are those who are pure in heart, for they shall see God.
In reference to that. Pope Leo talked about all followers of Christ communing with God and communing [00:26:00] with Christ in one body. This writer says, I choose to believe that Pope Leo is speaking about all believers, not just Catholic believers. Do you believe that that’s what he was referencing?
Dr. Jim Denison: I do in his homily, and I didn’t, I didn’t have access to the entire transcript, just along sections of it from various reporting Newsweek and others that reported it in some, in some length.
He makes it clear in the homily that he’s speaking to all believers, not just to those in the Catholic tradition with several of the comments that he made. And back to your point about Vatican II in the mid 1960s, it’s one of the major changes in Vatican two was to make it clear in that context from a Catholic point of view, that all who follow Christ.
In that theology would in fact be the people of God, would be the children of God just in different rooms of the house or different lanes on the freeway as it were. And so if he is in fact in keeping with Vatican two, as I’m sure he is, then he would just on that basis believe that non-Catholic Christians are in fact Christians, just as we’re saying that Catholic Christians are Christians if they’ve trusted Christ as their Lord.
He would [00:27:00] say the same of us in this conversation today. And of those outside the Catholic tradition all around the world, it’s one of the reasons the papacy is such an important thing is that in many ways he represents not just 1.4 billion Catholics, but the larger Christian communion as well. In a way, nobody else really does.
Billy Graham would’ve come the closest to that, I suppose, back in, you know, the heyday of his, of his popularity and so forth. But today, when you think of a Christian leader, the Christian leader, the larger world. Looks to the Pope in a way that transcends any other figure. And I think the Pope would agree with that, that this is the larger ministry that God has given him by virtue of the call that he has on his life.
Dr. Mark Turman: Oh yeah. And just really good to see that there’s a lot of movement toward reconnect, reconnecting, respect for all people across all different Christian groups. And a, a call to unity especially as it pertains to communion and the opportunity. There’s so much more that we have that connects us than that divides us.
And [00:28:00] we need to remember that. We’re gonna take a, a, a short break now, folks, let you catch your breath and maybe refill your cup of coffee. And we’re gonna come back in just a few minutes with some different kinds of questions from some of our other readers, and we’ll see you in just a moment.
Welcome back. We’re gonna pick up a few more questions, going a little bit of a different direction. So Ryan, let’s start with you. One of our listeners wrote in what does submitting to the Holy Spirit look like? Practically, this phrase is used often, but it is rare that the person using it provides inside or teaching on how to do so and or what it looks like in practical living in relation to preparing for our final home, which I assume is a reference to heaven.
So you’ve written on this and I know you have some thoughts to share. What does it look like to turn following the Holy Spirit into practical day-to-day life?
Dr. Ryan Denison: Thank you. It’s a fantastic question, and I do think the reader is right, that we don’t do a good [00:29:00] enough job of talking about how to do this when we talk about the need to do this.
And so I appreciate the chance to kind of expound on that a little bit. I, I think the first step is just recognizing that on some level. Partnering with the Holy Spirit and allowing, kind of like submitting to the Holy Spirit isn’t sort of like this three step process that’s gonna look the same for everybody, because at the end of the day, the Holy Spirit is just God’s presence within us.
I mean, if you look at the, the spirit’s power throughout the, and the way the spirit often shows up throughout scripture, the way Scripture talks about the Spirit, a lot of times it’s, you go back to Genesis one, where the spirit is hovering over the waters and how when God creates us, he forms us out of the same dirt, outta the same same kind of substances that other creatures are made of.
But what’s different is he breathes life into us. And that word for breath is the same word for spirit. The ACH in in Hebrew is kind of that idea that the New Testament picks up on with the Holy Spirit. And then you know, even Jesus talks about how he breathes the spirit onto us. And like I think when you see the spirit show up, [00:30:00] so much of it I think is, it’s important to start with the understanding that if you’re a believer in Christ, if you’ve given your life to him, the Holy Spirit lives inside of you.
This isn’t some sort of power you have to tap or some sort of power you have to control. It’s more you have to submit to the spirit’s control. And I think what that looks like on a practical level is just making sure that there’s no part of your life that you have sectioned office from. The God is saying, this is mine.
If we’ve given every aspect of ourselves over to God, every aspect of our lives, we have been truly submitted to him and the perspective of God, whatever you tell me to do here, I’m gonna do, then that is what enables the spirit to really speak and move in our lives in a powerful way. And I, I think what that looks like is gonna be unique to each person.
’cause each person is unique. But I think it also we’re called the trust that the God who made us knows how the spirit’s gonna work best in our lives and how to best communicate with us. And no one wants you to communicate with the Spirit more than God himself. And so that this isn’t a process where God’s gonna [00:31:00] throw up blockers or give us tests.
So we have to pass before we can really see the spirits work in our lives. It’s more. This is about us. Just truly surrendering and just going through our lives, going through every aspect of our lives and every aspect of our day, asking God what we should do. I think when Paul talks about praying continuously or pray without ceasing, he doesn’t mean that we’re just supposed to be in prayer all the time.
I, I think it just means that conversation with God is never supposed to end like we should never, like personally, I think one of the ways it’s helped me is I just, if I’m praying with the Lord, I don’t say amen. If it’s in a public setting where other people need to know okay, we’re like the prayer’s over now, like that’s important, but I.
Even something as small as that really has made a big difference in my own life. ’cause it, I always grew up like Amen was the end of the conversation. So I just don’t say amen. And it’s made a big di big difference in my life and my ability to really just know that I’m commuting with the spirit. If God, everyone wants to speak, I’m there to listen.
And I think at the end of the day it’s what it looks like practically [00:32:00] is gonna be different for everybody. But that’s a great place to start is just making sure that there’s not a single aspect of your life that hasn’t been surrendered to God.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that’s just a great reminder of the kind of day by day, moment by moment, hour by hour kind of intimacy that we can develop with the Holy Spirit.
And, you know, some of the metaphors that you and your dad have offered in writing about the spirit being like the wind and being like fire being like oil. Those things, those metaphors can be helpful to kind of help us connect to him. And like I said, develop this ongoing conversation and ongoing listening.
And, and not just restricting that maybe to 15 or 20 or 30 minutes in the morning, but letting it be an all day kind of experience. And that kind of relates to the next question that I’ll try to respond to. You guys jump in anywhere you want to in this as a free flowing conversation. But this is a separate reader offering a similar kind of [00:33:00] question.
Who said con quoting from us and some of our writings, right? Confessing our sins, forgiving those of others, thinking biblically and living Redemptively. Are the best ways to experience the abundant life that Jesus talked about in John 10 10? Here’s the question they ask, what do you mean by living redemptively?
How is that done practically? I think this reader must have been listening into the conversations we’ve been having about just the direction of our ministry and how we’re trying to refine that and, and move that forward over the next number of years. Our mission as Denson Ministries and Denson Forum is to bring biblical resources to people, to equip them and empower them.
We like to say three things that we want to equip every believer to think critically about all things by applying the Bible. We want them to live redemptively. That is, we want. All of us as we encounter God’s truth and love, we want every person to embrace [00:34:00] that personally and let it inform and transform the direction and the decisions of their life.
If, if we’re not believing these things and living them out ourselves, then we’re really just talking heads or what the Bible might call a sounding gone. But then the last thing we like to talk about is we encourage people to serve redemptively. And that’s very much a practical day-to-day kind of thing.
And I think it relates Ryan, to what you were saying about relying upon the spirit that this is not a formula. It’s really a set of principles to try to commit your life to. And when it comes to living redemptively, it’s. Really asking the question in any situation that you’re in, if you’re in a difficult conversation with a friend or a family member or at work or in one of your hobbies, maybe in your neighborhood you know, you or your neighbor wants to build a new fence and you can’t agree on how that’s gonna happen or who’s gonna pay for what.
The question always ought to be, how can I [00:35:00] do the most God-honoring and people blessing thing in this situation? I have a really good friend who has a way of turning a phrase. He said, you know, if you’re danged, if you do, and danged, if you don’t, you might as well be danged for doing the right danged thing.
And sometimes that can be hard to figure out. But Jim, you’ve really helped me and others, and I, and I think this is really true. When you get into almost any situation, if we can grow deep in the spirit, we ought to ask ourselves, first of all, does the Bible speak directly to this situation? Is there a clear command that applies?
Don’t murder? Okay, that’s pretty clear. Don’t commit adultery, don’t steal. Those things are clear, they’re unequivocal, and they are timeless, and that should always be a starting place. But many times we get into situations that call, not for something that the Bible speaks directly or explicitly about, [00:36:00] but the question is, are there biblical principles that apply?
What does it mean to speak the truth in love in this situation, both truth and love? Paul does this through the extensive letter of the Corinthians where he gives about four or five principles where he says, I. If it causes a brother to stumble, I’m not going to do this. Or if there’s the possibility that I’m going to be mastered and dominated by this thing, be it food or drink or by some other activity or habit, if there’s the possibility that it will come to master me, then I’m just gonna do without it because the only master I want is Jesus.
And there are four or five principles like that where Paul says, you know, all things are permissible for me, but not everything is really beneficial. And so I ought to be looking for that which is most beneficial to the honoring of God, to the advancement of God’s purposes and kingdom, and to the blessing of people.
Those are the things [00:37:00] that really start to flesh out in day-to-day decisions, what living Redemptively looks like for every Christian. Anything that y’all would add to that?
Dr. Ryan Denison: I would say one thing that’s, you know, I would echo everything you’re saying there. I think that’s a great, great explanation of it. And I think so much of it does go back to just this idea of like I was saying before, just submitting to God and allowing him to be the one to guide us from that.
Because I do think ultimately what that looks like for each of us, I, I, one of the struggles I think we have as Christians is we really want a formula and like a step-by-step process for how to live faithfully. And I don’t think God gives us that because he wants it to be relationally. He doesn’t want us figuring out what it looks like to live redemptively or to serve him without consulting him.
And so he is not gonna give us a step-by-step process. And it can be frustrating at times, but I think it means the practicalities of a lot of this really are unique to you. He gives us principles to go [00:38:00] by. But I, I do think going back to God and just saying, Lord, what does this look like for this situation in my life right now?
And then praying that prayer already having committed to obeying whatever God tells you to do is I, I think a really important piece to it as well.
Dr. Jim Denison: Yeah. Mark, the only thing I would add relative to the idea of being redemptive with our thinking here is the whole concept of redeeming, as you know, is exchanging something for something else.
Something for something better is the idea here, I’m old enough, maybe y’all aren’t to remember, s and h Green stamps. Mm-hmm. These were pieces of green kind of rectangles that were given to you when you checked out at a grocery store as a way of getting you to go and spend money in there. And if you collected enough of these sticky, kind of messy things, gobby things, you could take them to the SNH Redemption Center and trade ’em in for a bike.
Or for a baseball bat, or for a baseball glove or whatever. And what you were doing was turning these books of sticky, smelly, kinda yicky green paper in for something that was much better. That’s a whole idea of redeeming here, you know? That’s what the Lord does in our [00:39:00] lives. He redeems us, redeems bad for good, redeems, evil for good.
It’s like Joseph saying to the brothers, what you meant for evil. God meant for good. If we go through life looking for ways to be redemptive, what we’re looking for is ways to turn where I am now into something that’s even more God honoring. Hmm. Something that’s even more a blessing to others.
Something that even more serves something that even more advances the kingdom. Doesn’t have to be a bad thing, doesn’t have to be brothers rejecting Joseph or SNH, sticky green stamps. It can just be the moment I’m in right now where I’m saying, Lord, in this conversation, how could your spirit use me to redeem this discussion in a way that would even more honor you, that would even more draw people to you.
That would even more help other people. And when we’re thinking in those terms of being redemptive. Then we’re joining the Holy Spirit at work because that, that’s what he’s up to in every moment, in every situation. He’s looking to redeem that moment and that situation to advance God’s kingdom. When we join him at that, then we’re living a life God can bless.
As my wife, Janet often talks about living a life. God is able to bless [00:40:00] when we’re thinking and living redemptively, then we’re partnering with the spirit in that way. And that, to me is a really important principle for life.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And, and it’s really important, really great thoughts that you’re not that you don’t fail to do something because there’s too many times there’s all or nothing thinking that we like I’m not gonna be able to get it as good as it should be, so maybe I just won’t try it all.
I think that’s poor thinking a lot of times in the messiness of life with sinful people, us included, that we are not gonna reach the best redemptive solution that we might envision or want, but we could still hopefully do something to move it to a better place that might put it on a. Platform or, or, or plateau where it could move eventually to even greater levels of something that honors God.
And that’s where I also, you know, I’m, I’ve never been a huge memorizer of scripture, but this is where some scripture memory can come into play. And just reminding yourself in all of these situations that the first great [00:41:00] command is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and then trusting him that all of these other things will get added in those kinds of reminders from scripture.
We memorize that we come across, over and over again, can help us continue to have the framework for this. And Jim, that really, really sets up on a kinda a larger scale. A bigger question about how do you live Redemptively in this situation? Let me describe it to you. One of our readers wrote you have written on the rise of Islamic communities and efforts to institute what is called Sharia law which you can help us be reminded what Sharia law is and that some of this establishment of Islamic communities and possibly Sharia law are happening in the context of the United States.
Particularly. There’s one story growing just outside of Dallas where we’re based where a community like this is being proposed by some of [00:42:00] our Muslim friends. This reader really wants to know what thoughts, Jim, you, and we might have on this. He feels like there might be some kind of a plan by Muslim folks, Muslim communities to systematically establish greater presence and influence in the West.
I. He cites an example in England, in the city of London where this might be true. Can you speak and kind of what is, what is responsive and redemptive action in this kind of a story? What does that look like for us?
Dr. Jim Denison: It’s a very, as we keep saying, obviously these are very, very large subjects, and to try to do this very, very briefly, there’s a balance here, which is really kind of tough to keep and on some level makes us all frustrated, I think on one side or the other of this.
So the specific issue that the reader’s asking about is a thing called Epic City. It’s a proposed community by a group called the East Plano Islamic Center that’s Planos, a suburb north of Dallas. And the idea here would be to build a community of a thousand homes. There would be a [00:43:00] there’d be a mosque there, there would also be what they’re calling a faith-based school and a community college.
And Governor Abbott’s gotten involved in this. Others in the state have gotten involved in in all of this as well. And there’s been a concern. That if this particular project were to go forward, that it would be an institution of Sharia law in our neighborhood in the, in the larger Dallas community on, on some level.
And is that a good thing or a bad thing, or where is this headed? What’s inside all of this? Then people point to London and some point to Dearborn, Michigan and other places as examples of things like this. This is in fact a growing movement. 15% of London is Muslim now. London has its first Muslim mayor.
Richardson, another community just north of Dallas, just recently elected its first Muslim mayor as well. They’re very large immigrant populations coming into Western Europe and coming into America who are themselves Muslim coming for a variety of reasons, but some of which come to be evangelistic.
Unlike Buddhism and Hinduism, and most of Judaism, Islam is as evangelistic as [00:44:00] Christianity is. Islam believes every person should be a Muslim, just like we believe every person should be a Christian. And so in recent decades, especially with the advent of, of much larger immigration waves in recent decades that’s happened on four levels.
Muslims have especially targeted prisons to try to reach prisoners. For Islam. They have targeted neighborhood community centers, such as is in view here. They’ve targeted schools and they’ve placed Muslim professionals in underserved areas, Muslim doctors, Muslim lawyers, in places where there aren’t as many doctors and lawyers as a belief that they could get perhaps a toehold in the community.
By doing that as well, with a genuine desire, an unabashed desire to bring people to come to the Islamic faith, that’s the desire that’s behind that. That’s just like Christianity with an evangelistic impulse. That difference is this thing called Sharia law. Sharia law is the idea of living by the Quran.
Living in every dimension of life by the teachings of the Quran as they’ve been [00:45:00] expounded by Muhammad and by jurisprudence Muslim jurisprudence in the centuries afterwards. What makes Islam different from Christianity is that the Quran reads kinda like Leviticus. I’ve read through it several times.
I’ve taught classes on it. I’m pretty familiar with it. And I, I can say to you that the Quran is a set of laws. Regulations in a way that the Bible is not. It prescribes what to do about interest rates. It prescribes very specific kosher dietary laws. It prescribes civil marriage laws and, and divorce laws and things such as that.
There are really four levels of Sharia law, and so one can live by Sharia Law, as is the case in Saudi Arabia, for instance, or as is the case in some other parts of the Muslim world on some level of specificity. One can live by Sharia law in a way that you can’t live by Christian law. The Bible doesn’t prescribe a code of conduct.
It more teaches you how to relate to the Lord. And that, as Ryan was saying earlier, the Holy Spirit will lead us to live in a redemptive way. You can do Christianity [00:46:00] in pretty much any civil construct, whereas Islam and Sharia law can, in its fourth expression, be a way of living every dimension of life.
So the bottom line concern here is, is this movement, whether it’s up in Plano or it’s in Detroit or London or whatever, is it really a desire to take over the community and impose Sharia law? That’s the question that’s behind some of this. You see this with a moss where they used democracy to get elected and then abolished democracy.
Mm o of Bin Laden said, democracy is heresy. Why would you want the laws of bin when you have the laws of God? So there certainly are some in extremist Islam and radical Islam. Who would want. To use democracy to get elected so they could abolish democracy and impose your real law. That definitely would be the desire of some, probably a very small minority of the Muslim world that are considered radicalized Muslims relative to what’s happening in Plano, what’s happening in Detroit, or even in London.
I can only tell you that Muslim [00:47:00] leaders steadfastly. I mean, almost vehemently deny any of that. Deny that they have any desire to do that, any desire whatsoever to impose Sharia in place of democracy. They’re just simply, simply seeking to live their lives as Muslims and practice their faith the same way the rest of us should have the same first amendment to practice our faith free from coercion.
Now the skeptic comes along to say yes, but they might say that in order to get elected so that they could then impose your real law. Now we’re reading minds and we’re trying to predict the future and all of that. Bottom line Mark, there is an element in Islam, a very minority position, I would say, that would seek to impor Sha real.
They understand it, a very puritanical first century of Islam, kind of, approach to every dimension of life on any area where they could. Mm-hmm. I think the vast majority of the Muslim world would not agree with that. In Indonesia, for instance, the world’s largest Muslim country. It’s a functioning democracy, a thriving democracy, and yet, as I said, it’s the largest Muslim [00:48:00] nation on earth.
And so there certainly can be democracy and Islam. One hopes that’ll be the case, certainly in London or wherever Islam could have some majority position in the culture. I myself don’t believe that there’s necessarily a kind of a nefarious, larger plot at work here across all of Islam to try to take over America for Islam.
But I also don’t wanna deny the radicalized element within Islam that does exist and that we need to be vigilant about. At the end of the day, if we’ll obey the Great Commission fully, if we in the power of the Holy Spirit can win Muslims and others to faith in Christ, we won’t be having this conversation.
Our ultimate thing to do is to pray for our Muslim friends, to pray for them to know Jesus, to pray. They have a very high view of Jesus. They believe Jesus was born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, ascended to heaven, and will return at the end of history. A lot of Muslims are pretty offended by the low view of Jesus that a lot of secular American culture holds, and so we can work off of that and we can pivot from the high view [00:49:00] of Jesus as a prophet.
They have to explaining the difference Jesus made in my life, the transforming difference he made in forgiving my sin. Now, Muslim can be assured of their salvation. They can’t know that they’ve kept the laws of Islam, the five pillars of Islam so fully, that they’re guaranteed to be in paradise, and so we can offer them the security of salvation in Christ.
One of my dear friends came out of Islam to Christianity because of the appeal of security of salvation in Christ. And so we can offer that and pray for our Muslim friends and pray for the day that they know Christ as we know Christ, because that’s the greatest gift we can give anybody.
Dr. Mark Turman: Such a good word.
And, and in any conversation that we get in on these matters that we treat everybody with, with respect, with love, and with grace, and that’s right. And honor them in that way. We’re gonna step aside for another short break and then we’ll come back, have just a couple more questions to try to get to today, and we’ll see you in just a second.
All right, we’re back answering some of your [00:50:00] questions. And thank you again for writing in. If you’d like to contribute a question to ask us anything here at Denison Forum, you can do that by sending us an email at [email protected] and we’ll try to get to your questions on a future episode of Ask Us Anything.
Ryan, as we kind of get ready to close up with a few more questions one of our readers must have been sensing that there is an election coming a lot of community elections, state elections happen in the spring, at least when, where we live. And it won’t be very long before we’re back talking about another national election midterms and that type of thing.
Seems like we just do politics 24 7 these days. But this reader wanted to have a reminder of what in the world is this thing we talk about sometimes called Christian nationalism. What is that? And he says I love this comment. I’m a follower of Jesus and I love my country. Does that make me a Christian nationalist?
How would you [00:51:00] explain this to our reader? I.
Dr. Ryan Denison: I would start by saying the short answer to your, to that question is, no, it, loving Jesus and loving your country are both great things, but that does not make you a Christian nationalist. A Christian nationalist is someone who would seek to kind of like what my dad was just talking about with Sharia law and Islam at, at, its at its worst.
Christian nationalism kind of wants to do that same thing in America for Christians. It’s based in that’s an oversimplification of it. It’s based in the belief largely that America was founded on Christian principles, which is true. But that it was, they go beyond that to say that it was meant to be this sort of city on a hill concept.
And we’ve talked about that in a previous podcast that I kind of, explained a bit more about that last, last fall. So I, I think we can probably link to that in the notes for more on kind of what the city on the hill thing is. But a lot of it does go back to this idea of the best way to be a Christian in America is to love Jesus and through your love for Jesus, love your country.
To not get those out of order. And I think where Christian nationalism [00:52:00] tends to go into, tends to get into a better trouble, is that it tends to equate those things as if loving your loving Jesus and loving your country are on the same level. Or as if almost your love for country is like the best thing you could do for America is to make it a Christian nation.
When the reality is nations can’t be Christians. Only people can be Christians ’cause only people have souls. Only people can have a relationship with Jesus. And so at the end of the day, I think that’s that’s where our focus needs to be. If that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be involved in politics, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be involved in wanting to see Christian morality kind of exercised in our country.
But I think what history shows is that when we try to legislate morality, it always ends poorly. And that’s the line we can’t cross. It goes back to just. If we are following Jesus, if we are following his will for our lives, then that will, the best way we can bless our country is to just be people God can bless and encourage others to do the same.
And I think that’s where our focus needs to be. So Christian nationalism, I, I think, has some, [00:53:00] some big, pretty big problems with it. Christians who love their country, that’s a good thing. And so I think we need to aspire to be the latter.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. Being, being Patriots in the best sense of the world really.
Yeah. Great. For that. Thanks for that answer and for sharing with us. Another one of our readers, real quickly ask, what is your opinion of the chosen, the very popular many series about the life of Jesus? That has been very much in the, in the forefront of people’s awareness over the last number of years.
The most successful crowdsourced. Television show in history, I believe. So people are asking what is your opinion of the chosen and also by extension the idea of Ecumenicalism, which is always a challenge for me to say that, right? I for 1:00 AM a big fan of the chosen and I know a number of believers including my own child who is a radical, radical fan of the chosen.
I’ve had a chance to meet the creator of the chosen Dallas Jenkins. Got to share a banquet [00:54:00] stage with him a couple of years ago. Delightful guy. Very intense guy in many ways. But not everybody is a fan. I know at least one pastor here locally who said, I don’t watch the chosen because I don’t want my understanding of Jesus to be in any way.
Narrowed or formed in a way that doesn’t come through, just simply learning about him and reading about him from scripture. And I kinda understand that. But at the same time, these artistic expressions of Jesus, whether it’s Jim Zel in the Passion of the Christ, or Jonathan Rumi in the chosen, in the way that they have tried to not just simply follow the gospels as it tells us the story of Jesus, but try to fill in some of the lines in between to make it more of a a fully rounded story, which is, I think, the intent of what they’re trying to do.
My experience has been that they’re doing a pretty good job. Obviously, not everything is [00:55:00] conveyed to us in scripture because there’s a lot of detail that we wish we knew, but we don’t have because as John said, if I told you everything that could be said about Jesus. You could fill up the whole world with books and stories of everything there is to know about Jesus.
And, and so I think they’re doing a pretty good job of conveying the, the core teachings and the core stories that we find in the four Gospels. And as to, as to ecumenicalism, that’s like saying as a Christian, do you believe that Christians should be united? At the core of that, we talked about that already.
Absolutely. Jesus calls us to unity. Jesus makes it possible for us to have unity not only with him, but also with each other. We’ve talked about in previous episodes that Jesus passionately prayed that we would be in oneness, in unity with both him and with his father and with each other. That was his prayer just before he was arrested [00:56:00] in the Garden of Gethsemane and went to the cross.
In part to break down the walls between us, obviously to break down the wall of sin that separated us from him and from God, but also separates us from each other. So to say, do you believe in ecumenicalism? Is is a way of saying do you believe in Christian unity? And I think we are called to that. We have to be about that, and that is our joy, our privilege, as well as our anticipation that one day when we’re in heaven, we really will experience the deepest, most profound experiences.
Of what it means to know and love and care for each other in ways that sometimes we struggle with because of our ongoing battles with sin here on the, on the planet until we see Jesus face to face. All right, so one last question and that’s coming your way, Jim and you can round out our conversation today.
Our reader writes, as Christians, what role should the government play in carrying out the mission of Jesus and [00:57:00] helping or expressing the hands and feet? We sometimes say of Jesus, doing what Jesus did in the world. He asks, should responsibilities like caring for the poor, providing welfare, doing foreign aid to other countries, should those things be the work of our government or should they be the work of, of Christians, of nonprofits and churches?
Lots of different opinions in this, on the political platform. Jim, should it just be that the government does most or all of this, or is this really the work that believers should be more focused on?
Dr. Jim Denison: And the answer is yes.
Dr. Mark Turman: And we can be done
Dr. Jim Denison: right there. There we go. We’re done. We can wrap up.
Yeah, but I, I absolutely appreciate the question because there’s a spectrum here. There’s a spectrum over on the evangelical world where I live that would so focus on getting people saved, as we might say, on leading people to pray a salvation prayer that we don’t quite know what to do with them once they do.
But nonetheless, we think that should be the entirety of our focus and we wouldn’t be focused on social ministry wouldn’t be focused on [00:58:00] hands and feet as terms of providing welfare and aid and all the things that are involved with that. Over to the other extreme of what used to be called the social gospel movement of a century ago, Walter Ross and Bush, and others who were so focused.
On providing social, meeting, social needs, that really the gospel of the necessity of personal faith in Christ was sometimes lost in that someplace or overlooked a little bit. And you see denominations kind of fall across that spectrum to some degree as well. And the one saying, you’re not caring about the poor and the other saying, but you’re not caring about the lost.
And the answer is it needs to be all of that. If we’re gonna follow Jesus, if we’re gonna be his hands and feet, then we have to do what Jesus did and Jesus did all of that. Jesus met physical need to beat spiritual need. As we know He healed bodies to heal souls. He was involved in the holistic concern for all of humanity.
It’s this Greek construct that separates the soul from the body and Sunday from money and spiritual, from secular and religion from the real world. The Bible doesn’t do that. God made all of us in his image just for fallen. But he cares about each of us, loves all of us, wants [00:59:00] all of us to be ministered to now governments when they’re correctly ministering to the needs of their constituents, to doing the same thing.
And now I don’t know that they’re preaching the gospel necessarily and leading people to salvation in Christ, but they’re meeting felt need. They’re meeting physical need and emotional need, social need. So the right answer is to partner together where we can. It’s to work with government where we can to do things that we can do in a way that doesn’t compromise either one, where the government’s not compromising our message and we’re not asking the government to be on some level sectarian relative to our denominational beliefs.
Where we can build houses together, where we can do aid together, where we can be concerned about the hungry together and the impoverished and prison reform issues and things such as that. Not only should believers be involved in governmental leadership. And I’m convinced, mark, that God’s calling more Christians into public service and are answering the call, not only should they be running for office, and not only should they be serving in so-called secular leadership, but I think churches [01:00:00] and government can work together in, in ways that are appropriate and are redemptive, as we said before.
So it’s a both end. It’s not that one does one and the other does the other. As long as they respect the uniquenesses of each position, they can work together to a common cause that advances God’s kingdom and, and serves the common good in ways that glorify the Lord.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. Such a good word and a good opportunity reminds me of when the disciples said, Hey, we saw these people doing things in your name and they’re not a part of our group, and said, Hey, Jesus said, if if they’re not against you, they’re for you.
Mm-hmm. Work with everybody you can, where you can and when you can for good things that I. Serve people and help their, help them to have better lives. Guys, thank you for answering some of these questions and helping to equip our believers. I want to thank our audience as well. Thank you for the questions and please send us more.
We would love to respond in future episodes of Ask Us Anything. Again, thank you for your following and support of our [01:01:00] ministry and we look forward to seeing you next time on the Denison Forum Podcast.
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