In this “Ask Us Anything” episode of the Denison Forum Podcast, Dr. Mark Turman is joined by Dr. Jim Denison and Dr. Ryan Denison for a thoughtful roundtable conversation. Together, they explore the purpose of affliction in the Christian life, what it truly means that David was “a man after God’s own heart,” and whether pastors should endorse political candidates. The conversation also touches on how Christians can love those living in sinful lifestyles, how to reconcile the violence of the Old Testament with a God of love, and whether miracles are still relevant today.
As the podcast prepares to relaunch under a new name—Faith and Clarity with Dr. Mark Turman—this episode offers a preview of what’s to come: biblical wisdom, honest dialogue, and clarity for navigating the complexities of our culture through the lens of faith.
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Topics
- (02:35): Discussing affliction and suffering
- (10:46): Understanding David as a man after God’s own heart
- (15:37): Navigating political endorsements as Christian leaders
- (23:17): Balancing love and truth in relationships with LGBTQ individuals
- (28:52): Addressing Old Testament questions
- (30:21): Understanding God’s wrath and love
- (31:34): Cultural context of biblical commands
- (37:21): Normalizing sin in modern culture
- (43:50): Miracles and the Holy Spirit today
- (49:51): Biblical perspective on divorce and remarriage
- (57:12): Upcoming changes and new resources
Resources
- Ask Us Anything: [email protected]
- How has Denison Forum impacted your faith?
- Subscribe to The Daily Article by Dr. Jim Denison
- Reconciling the “Gods” of the Old and New Testaments: Part 1
- Reconciling the “Gods” of the Old and New Testaments: Part 2
- What does the Bible say about homosexuality? • Denison Forum
- What Are My Spiritual Gifts?
- Who is the Holy Spirit?
- Power for Spirit-filled living in today’s world
- What does the Bible say about divorce?
- The impact of divorce on future generations
- Chip and Joanna Gaines’ new show features a gay couple
- Epstein backlash, Christianity is growing, Chip and Joanna Gaines controversy & Scottie Scheffler’s introspection | Ep. 28
- What should pastors say about the election?
- Avoiding the idol of politics with a biblical approach
- The intersection of faith, politics, and a culture of life
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] You are listening to the Denison Forum Podcast. I’m Mark Turman, the host for today’s conversation. And also I have the privilege of being not only executive director of Denison Forum, but I get to work with the doctors Denison, Dr. Ryan Denison and Dr. Jim Denison, who are joining us today again for another episode, a round table conversation that we like to call, ask us anything.
Now, I think we mean that gentlemen, but I could see that that could actually become a problem for us at some point if people really do ask us anything. Are y’all concerned about that?
Dr. Jim Denison: That’s why we have editing, you know, as we do these things together, right? Yes. So if you ask me what I really think about the Cowboys’ chances this year, maybe that’s not a place I should go.
We’ll just have to see. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Turman: And if, and if I ask Ryan what he really thinks about the Houston Astros, we would lose pretty much all of our Houston audience. I’m afraid we would.
Dr. Ryan Denison: It, it [00:01:00] would be a risk that’s probably not worth running, yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Turman: And mainly I just wanna talk
Dr. Jim Denison: about my grandkids the whole time
Dr. Mark Turman: you know.
Yeah. And nobody seems to be asking us about our grandkids. Yeah. I don’t know why that is. Yeah. Yeah. Let’s fix that. And we need to, we need to ask somebody to ask that question. That’s right. We need to do so today we we’re gonna, other
Dr. Jim Denison: questions? Can that count?
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah.
Dr. Jim Denison: Yeah. Can we submit questions to this deal?
How does that work?
Dr. Mark Turman: Absolutely there. If, I don’t know if we’ll get this far today, but I actually submitted some of my own questions. Oh, okay. And so I’m not gonna necessarily identify those. ’cause, you know, I wouldn’t want anybody to, to, you know, criticize the questions I offered. Especially we would never do that.
Yeah, yeah. But you listeners are familiar. I think, I hope if you’re not, if you’re a new listener, welcome. We’re glad to have you on the podcast. Dr. Jim Denison is the founder of Denison Forum and Denison Ministries. He is a philosopher theology professor and what we like to call cultural commentator.
We have a lot of other titles and things that we call him as well. [00:02:00] Yeah, we won’t go there. But we won’t go too deep into that. And the redeeming part of the family is Dr. Ryan Denison, senior editor for Theology, has a PhD in church history that we’re gonna draw on some today. And most importantly is.
The father of the two oldest Denison grandchildren. Most importantly. Most importantly, yeah. As, as long as Ryan stewards those two children, all will be well. All is good. Yeah. All right. Let’s dive in. We’ve got a lot of a lot of things to cover and a lot of things that are really important that we wanna talk about.
Jim, the first thing I wanted to get you and Ryan perhaps to comment on is a word really that I ran into listening to another podcast with a cultural commentator by the name of Andy Crouch. If you get a chance to listen to Andy Crouch I would encourage our audience very grateful to do that.
Very, very insightful Christian leader and commentator. But in the conversation he was in, he talked about how [00:03:00] we as Christians really struggle at times to live in the context with ourselves and with others in the idea of affliction. He went on to define affliction as those realities, those situations that we face that have no quick solution.
And I can imagine that people are running in their mind if they remember the story of Paul and his thorn in the flesh that he talks about in the Corinthian letters. But Jim, I wanted to talk about this in the context of the Hill country flood. We had a conversation trying to help people frame that in a faith and faithful way.
Actually became already the most listened to podcasts that we’ve ever done in three and a half years of podcasting. Dealing with just that terrible tragedy. But Jim, we’ve kind of now moved into a different phase. In some ways. We would know what always happens with the news, that the news moves on to the next story.
Read this morning [00:04:00] that the, the loss of life is now at 137 and there are now only two people that are unaccounted for, which is quite amazing when you remember some of the early reports, and there’s an explanation for that. But this part of the world, this part of our home state is moving into a different kind of, of reality now.
And you might call it affliction it. There are no easy answers. I was talking to a friend who was talking, had been talking to some of the leaders of the, of Camp Mystic, and he just said to me, you know, what they’re saying is they don’t, they’re not doing anything right now except going to funerals.
Yeah. And that’s a hard reality obviously, thoughts on affliction how we understand affliction, what it means for us as Christians to walk with ourselves and with each other in affliction.
Dr. Jim Denison: Three quick thoughts then. Yeah. Thank you. Mark. I don’t know that we could have a more relevant conversation than that.
Not just in the context of Mystic, but really I guess on any day of any week, [00:05:00] right? With just living in this fallen world. The first thought is that we live in a fallen world. Jesus said, in this world, you will have tribulation. The word translated tribulation flips us in. The Greek was used to describe the massive boulder they used to crush grain into flour.
In this world, you will be crushed. Jesus didn’t make that as a conditional possibility in this world. You might be in this world. You could be. He said, in this world, speaking to his followers, to his own, to his apostles, to his disciples, to people who had left their fishing nets and their boats to follow him, he said to them, in this world, you will have affliction.
You will have tribulation. Paul had a thorn in the flesh. So many of the disciples were martyred. So that’s the first thing to do, is to expect it. It’s not your fault. It’s not something you did wrong. It’s not that God is necessarily at all punishing. It it’s just the way this world is. So the first thing to do is to expect it.
The second thing to do is to try to be ready before it happens. To try to stay prayed up as Hannah Smith used to say, to say, Lord, I [00:06:00] know I could experience affliction today and I probably will. So I wanna submit to your spirit now. I want to be empowered by you now. I wanna be thinking biblically, I wanna be acting redemptively.
I want right now to be yielded to you so that when the affliction comes, I have your strength and help. I want to turn to you ahead of time as I can. And then the last thing, and we talk about this a lot, is to be asking in the midst of it, Lord, how could this be redemptive? Even in the horrible, devastating tragedy of the central Texas floods, for example, we’re already seeing redemption.
We’re already see seeing people using their platforms to talk about their faith in ways that are gaining a national hearing. You know, I can say I follow Jesus on a good day and nobody pays attention if I follow Jesus in the midst of the worst devastation imaginable. People listen to that, and so already we’re seeing ways that God is redeeming this, Lord, how can I join you?
Redeeming this affliction in my life and for the sake of your kingdom. So if I expected, if I prepare ahead of time as best I can, and if I join with God in [00:07:00] trying to redeem it, then the affliction becomes a means to an even greater good, even as horrific as the affliction can be. Hmm.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. Really, really good insights, Ryan.
Your thoughts what does it mean to live faithfully as a Christian through just chronic ongoing challenges?
Dr. Ryan Denison: I mean, I think what my dad said sums it up really well. And the one thing I would add is when it comes to experiencing God’s redemption, I think God does redeem all that he allows, but it is so easy for us to miss that redemption if we’re focused more on our grief than we are on him.
And so I think that’s one of the things that we need to keep in mind as we go through this, is that it is okay to be angry. It is okay to have questions. It’s okay to grieve. We should grieve, but as the Bible says, we don’t grieve as people without hope. I think looking for the ways that God is working and the ways that we can partner with him in that is a key part of experiencing that redemption in our own lives and of being a part of that redemption.
And if we aren’t looking for [00:08:00] that, if we are. More concerned with being angry than we are with seeing how God is gonna bring good out of this, then I think it’s easy for us to kind of miss the good he’s doing, which only exacerbates the anger we feel. And so it, I really do just wanna encourage people as we’re praying through this, as we continue to pray through this, because we do need to continue to pray through it.
I un understand if the level of grief is such that it’s, it’s very easy to kind of just be overwhelmed by it. I, I know that’s how I was feeling, especially a couple weeks ago. I just kind of feel, felt like I reached my limit on how much I could grieve over this. And and I, I do think it’s important just to continue praying through that.
It doesn’t mean we have to be overwhelmed by the emotions that we should be, but just not to forget, just because it’s not in the headlines anymore. But to continue praying for ways that God can use us, ways that, and just keep praying that God will continue to work. Because I think that’s a prayer of honor.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, that’s, that’s a good word. I think, you know, as you say, it’s just so huge and so overwhelming as other situations are in our world. [00:09:00] And just to pray, one of the prayers, prayers I’ve learned to pray is just, Lord, what, what awareness and and ownership of this do you want me to have? I, there’s no way I can own all of it, but show me what part you would want me to focus on, you would want me to own, and tell me how I can be a part of that.
And if that means going to serve and volunteer in recovery efforts, if that means giving financially to things like Texan on Texans on Mission, which we’ve endorsed and recommend. Lord, show me what part, even, you know, what part of this do you want me to pray for? You know, you, we could read so many stories, but which story do you want me to pray through today?
And, and this whole thing kind of reminds me 40 years ago, I remember being in church when my pastor preached a simple sermon on a very small figure named Hamus, who was one of. Apostle Paul’s workers in his team. And Paul says about Tro Aus, I left him in my elitist, which was an old, a New Testament town.
I left tro tro Aus sick in my elitist, [00:10:00] and my pastor just preached, you know, sometimes Christians get sick or have other difficulties. Sometimes they stay sick, which is something we struggle to understand. But God has promised that at some point he will restore and renew all things, including those things that stay with us long term.
And that’s always been helpful for me. And I love what you said, Jim, that remember, it’s, it’s expected, but that doesn’t mean it’s your fault. Mm-hmm. Our, our world is broken in a way much bigger than we fully can appreciate. Hopefully that’s helpful. And like I said, we would recommend that you look for opportunities through your church and through other ministries like Texans on Mission to continue to help out in this tragedy and perhaps others that are more closely related to you.
Ryan, I wanted to shift a little bit to more of a biblical theological question that I’ve had for years and one of our listeners had, which is, what does it mean when the Bible says about David King David, that he was a man [00:11:00] after God’s own heart? As I pondered that listener question, I also came back to some of my own questions, which was what does the phrase mean in and of itself, and why is it only ascribed to one person in the Bible to David?
And does that in any way mean that it’s exclusive to him and not something that you and I can reach? Can you help us with that?
Dr. Ryan Denison: Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think. It is interesting the context in which David is called the man after God’s own heart. It originally occurs because Samuel says it to Saul when God has removed the kingdom from Saul, and Saul is grappling with what that means.
Samuel tells him God has taken the kingdom from you and given it to a man after his own heart. Paraphrasing slightly, but and I think that’s what’s important from that is clearly if you read David’s life, he was not a sinless person. He committed some of the more heinous sins in the Bible. In terms of what happened with Uriah and Bathsheba and so many other examples where one of the things [00:12:00] I love about the Bible is that doesn’t shy away from even its heroes being fallen people.
And so I think we are called, all of us are meant to be people after God’s own heart. But I think what that means in the context of David is he was one of the few kings. That never compromised his commitment to the Lord. He never worshiped other gods in addition to Yahweh. And that was really one of the things that set him apart from most of the Israelite kings and set him apart from Saul.
In a lot of ways, Saul talks about the Lord your God, whenever he talks to Samuel. And when David talks about God, it’s very much clear that he has a personal relationship with him. And while I think that relationship ebbed and flowed as he went through life like it does for all of us he definitely had his high moments where he was clearly walking closely with God and others where it seems like God kind of, he kind of distanced himself from the Lord or at least became less reliant on him.
I, the one line I don’t think he ever really crossed was worshiping another God or putting any other God before the true God. And I think at the end of the day, that’s what it [00:13:00] means to be a man after God’s own heart, is that you remain committed to the Lord above anything else.
Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm. Jim, would, would this be a version, perhaps an Old Testament version of what the New Testament calls being in the spirit or walking in the spirit?
Mm-hmm. And I, as, as Ryan was explaining it, I was wondering like, during those periods of sinful, you know, pretty blatantly sinful activity, particularly Uriah and Bathsheba and other situations in David’s life, I, I guess we would say he didn’t forfeit in a complete way being a, a man after God’s own heart, but was.
Was he doing the equivalent of what we see in the New Testament when people are not walking in close fellowship with the spirit of God?
Dr. Jim Denison: Yeah, I think for sure. In fact, one of his prayers is, Lord, take not your spirit from me. Prior to Pentecost, we see the Holy Spirit coming on individuals and then leaving as it were, after Pentecostal Holy Spirit comes to live in us.
And now we don’t have to pray that prayer. We don’t have to [00:14:00] say, Lord, take not your spirit from me, because he won’t do that. One Corinthians three says that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit. But in an Old Testament analogy to that, as you’re saying, he certainly wasn’t walking in the spirit in those places.
But as Ryan said, he never gave up his belief in the one true God. And the other thing I would add to that is that David seems to manifest a repentance spirit. In a way that has a level of depth and passion that’s pretty remarkable and pretty unique. Saul, for instance, when Samuel chastises Saul for not being obedient to God’s call, relative to eradicating the, that which was Canaan I, that which was sinful and all of that, and he starts making excuses and blaming other people.
When Nathan comes to David with his sin, David immediately repents. And Psalm 51 is a heartfelt expression of that repentance, of that heartfelt passionate desire to get back to the Lord, to be back in the Holy Spirit. And so the takeaway from me in that I don’t know that yeah, as y’all have said, no one else, but David is described as a person after God’s own heart.
But I think that description is in scripture for our [00:15:00] sake, in part, to teach us so long as we only worship the one true God. And as long as we are repentant, when we fail, when we’re not in the Holy Spirit, then we too can be people after God’s own heart. God wants that for all of us. God didn’t love David more than he loved anybody else.
God loves each of us as if there were only one of us. God is love. So God would want all of us to be people after his own heart. And when we worship him as our one God, and when we stay repentant, when we don’t, then we can experience that to some degree as well, I think.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. So a good goal, good. A good phrase for us to pray for and pray to and pray through in every way.
Jim, let me turn this to a practical question. A lot of our ministry over the last number of years has been helping people to live out their faith in the context of the political realities of our nation. And that’s always a really good thing to do, to remember that you’re both a citizen of heaven first and then also a citizen of a particular nation.
And, we [00:16:00] try to help people to learn what it means to be biblically civil and uncivil times is what we sometimes say. Mm-hmm. A recent IRS ruling caught our attention and we’ve written on this a little bit about that now according to current interpretation local church leaders, pastors and other leaders in the Christian community are now according to the IRS, given full permission to endorse political candidates.
And I would assume that means even, not only personally, but in the context of their local church this has always been kind of a. A gray issue. It’s been controversial at times. Churches and ministries have had their their tax exempt status threatened if they were endorsing political leaders in that kind of personal and direct way.
But one of our readers asked this question and he, he’s Hey, should leaders, Christian leaders, pastors be doing this? He says, I am a pastor and I have a close friend who’s gonna [00:17:00] be running for a statewide office. I’d like to support my friend, but I also don’t want to offend other people. Jim, give us some idea.
What, what would be your recommendation about doing this either as just an individual Christian, or being a pastor, being a church leader? Is it a good idea to publicly endorse one candidate over another?
Dr. Jim Denison: Yeah, I think we need to talk about what we can do in light of this ruling and what we should do in light of the ruling first in, in terms of what we can do.
The IRS is going back to the Johnson Amendment in 1954 that made it illegal for religious not-for-profit organizations 5 0 1 C3 organizations to endorse specific candidates or parties while at the same time receiving tax exempt funding. And, and that there’s a logic behind that, that the government is funding you and at the same time you’re taking partisan positions relative to some parts of the government.
And that was thought back in 1954 forward to be contradictory. All the IRS really did was offer some clarification in that regard. And it’s not as carte blanche as people are apparently making it to be. [00:18:00] If you look at the ruling in specific detail, what it’s saying is, if I’m a pastor, for instance, I can now in the context of a worship service.
Offer specific guidance relative to an individual or a party as part of the act of worship in a way that is consistent with the faith, beliefs and doctrines of my church. In other words, if I’m preaching on abortion, I’m now more allowed than I’ve been in the past to be able to say, and by the way, because I believe the Bible says life begins a conception and, and elective abortion is in principle wrong.
I can therefore come now one more step and say, and that is a position which is more upheld by candidate X than candidate y or is more aligned with this party than that party. I can say that now, but I’m only supposed to do it in the context of a doctrinal faith expression in an act of worship, as opposed to churches now becoming partisan organizations, churches now have having some carte blanche to now just marshal all the efforts of the church and their [00:19:00] budget and their resources and their pr and go try to get somebody elected.
That is absolutely not what the IRS clarification offered. So it’s much more much more narrow than people are thinking. For Catholics, it may changes nothing at all because the Catholic Church has never allowed its priests to use church facility or resources to endorse candidates, and they’re not changing in light of any of that.
And so it’s really not even relevant to Catholics at all. And a Protestant, it’s only relevant in the context as I described. Now, should we do that? I’m just gonna go out on a limb here and say, in my own belief, my, my own position is pretty adamant at this point that we should not, regardless of the IRS’s decision here, I think it’s a mistake for pastors to utilize their church platforms to endorse individual candidates or parties, even friends, even people with whom we’re closely related.
One of my best friends in the world was the mayor of Dallas at one point. I very much wanted to endorse and support and encourage him, and chose not to do that, and he [00:20:00] encouraged me not to do that as well. Several reasons behind this. First of all, once I as a pastor endorse a candidate, I’m on some level splitting my church relative to who supports that person versus somebody else.
It’s like I’m saying, if you don’t agree with my candidate, there’s something wrong with your faith. You’re a second class citizen or something like that. I can introduce the vision into the church immediately. Second thing that happens is I take the focus from the Lord onto the individual, even if I’m doing my best not to do that, even if I’m saying I’m endorsing John Doe because he follows Jesus and he’ll love the Lord and he’ll, and he’ll advance the kingdom and all of that.
You’re hearing the endorsement. More than you’re hearing the theological reason behind it. And I’m shifting from the Lord back to the person. I’m kind of what Ryan was saying before relative to David only having one God, I’m creating some conflict here around what the worship service is really supposed to be about.
And then the third thing I’m doing is whether I intend it or not, I’m endorsing that person, co blanche carte blanche, past, present, and future. Mm-hmm. I go out in public and I [00:21:00] endorse Mark Turman to be the next mayor of McKinney. And if in two years, mark Turman takes some position that isn’t, that’s contrary to biblical faith, it looks like I’m endorsing that position because two years ago I endorsed him as a candidate for dog catcher or whatever it is I’m doing here.
It looks like I’m endorsing everything the press ever discovers about that candidate. Anything they’ve ever done wrong, anything they ever will do wrong, I’m now tied to that individual by making that endorsement. And so for all those reasons, I just think myself, it’s a mistake. To do this, even if I have a narrow ability to do it on a level that’s a little different than it used to be.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. Yeah. So really important. And yes, dog catcher is about the highest level of office I’m probably qualified for, and I’m not even
Dr. Jim Denison: endorsing you for that. Mark. I’m here. We’re,
Dr. Mark Turman: we’re gonna be clear about that right off the top. But it is an important issue. I, you know, I, I’ve pastored in the same town for 25 years.
I did have even local political candidates want me to endorse them. And it’s been a [00:22:00] struggle for me at times because, like I said, sometimes these were good friends of mine and I was glad that they were running for office. But it just didn’t seem to be healthy for the church because there are always, in almost every election, a lot of different opinions and a lot of different candidates that are being supported.
So we would encourage people to think deeply and pray deeply. About how you handle this issue and that you keep your focus primarily on the Lord and on the mission of the church. We obviously want, and we strongly encourage people, Christians, to be active in the public square. And as you’ve said often Jim, that we believe God’s calling many believers to be people who run for office and serve in politics.
We need those people and we have many of those people and we wanna see that continue to happen. But how we handle these issues of endorsement and how much, and how and where we bring it into our local churches really does matter. Because we have a unique mission [00:23:00] that is different from. What happens in the political world and we need to always remember that high calling of being citizens of the kingdom first, and that’s important for us.
Alright, one more question that I’ll try to walk us through and you guys can help me before we take a a few minutes of break. We got a question from one of our listeners. We’ve seen questions like similar questions like this before. She says, my sister is living a homosexual, lesbian lifestyle.
And she says, I love her the same as I did before. She revealed this part of her life. And she said, but I’m confused about where is the line of loving someone as Jesus would. Condoning this behavior or lifestyle. She then makes reference to something Jim, that you wrote about relative to Chi and Chip and Joanna Gaines and their new television show in which they feature a gay couple and their children living out on the frontier in an experiment of getting, getting away from technology, that types of things.
Other things in the news [00:24:00] recently about this here and again in our home state one of the schools that I graduated from Baylor University got into a controversy recently. They had a, received a grant to work in the area of studying homosexuality and its integration in various ways. And there was so much controversy around that, that Baylor chose to basically reject the grant.
And that was significant. But this is a really, really challenging issue of how do I love people whether it’s in a homosexual lifestyle or other sinful context. It’s obvious that somebody is not living according to biblical truth. How do we love them? How do we relate to them well without condoning and affirming their choices?
We, we know that we sometimes get criticized as Christians for using phrases like you love the, love, the, the, not the sin, but you do love the sinner. I think that phrase is [00:25:00] legitimate in some ways, although it can seem trite. One of the most difficult passages I’ve ever confronted is the passage in Corinthians where Paul says, basically, if someone says that they are a follower of Christ, but they are obviously living outside of what biblical teaching holds, that we should not even eat with such a person, that there should be a restriction of fellowship.
So there’s at least two different ways to look at this. One is, is, is the person claiming to be a Christian or not? That somewhat informs how you relate to them. We do know that Jesus was oftentimes called the friend of sinners, that he got close to people that other religious leaders and other religious people would stay away from and would consider unworthy.
But Jesus never condoned any sinners sinful choice. Just by being present with them or relating to them, befriending them, loving them, caring for them was [00:26:00] not the same thing as affirming their poor or unbiblical choices. We think of the woman at the well who Jesus connected to, related to, but he not only identified her sin but he stopped short of doing anything to celebrate or affirm or accept the sinful choices that she had been making relative to her own sexual activity.
So I think there’s a lot to pray about. But I think we do need to realize that there needs to be boundaries. That it’s not enough. It’s helpful to tell people that are living unbiblical lifestyles that we love. It’s helpful to say, I’m concerned for you. I don’t think this is the best for you. This is not what God wants for you.
But it’s also not the best thing. And it’s maybe it may happen, but it would be rare that you would ever say, you know what? I’m just gonna not relate to this person at all. That might happen in some cases, but I think that would be an extreme situation. You want to try [00:27:00] with boundaries to have the best redemptive relationship you can have.
Does that sound like a reasonable way to approach this to you guys? Ryan? Jim, what do you think?
Dr. Ryan Denison: I think it’s a great place to start. And I, I think. I love the way you talked about it in terms of not losing sight of the inherent value and worth of somebody just because they’re living a lifestyle that the Bible calls sin.
I think that’s one of the things that Jesus did the, did a great job of modeling throughout his ministry, is that relationship, that ability to walk up to someone who is living in sin. Confront their sin, but do so in a way that didn’t drive them away, that didn’t make them feel lesser as a result of it.
And I think that’s the balance we really need to strive for as Christians, especially when the person you’re confronting is a clo is a loved one or a close friend. I mean, those are relationships that. Ideally should be strong enough and deep enough to to hold up under that kind of scrutiny, to [00:28:00] hold up under that kind of accountability.
And we need to work to make sure that they stay that way. But starting with the idea, like going back to that love, love the sinner, hate the sin kind of idea. Like I, I agree that it gets thrown around way too much. But I think the truth that we can’t lose in that is the idea that we are still called the love people in Christ regardless of their actions.
And I think one of the mistakes we make far too often is we define people by their sin rather than their identity as someone that God loves, someone made in the image of God and someone for whom Jesus died. And I think that’s the balance we need to keep throughout this.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, really helpful. Really helpful.
All right, we’re gonna take a break for a few minutes. Let our audience catch their breath and we’re gonna do the same. And we’ll be right back with a few more of your questions and hopefully thoughtful answers that will be useful to you. We’ll be right back.
All right, we’re back with more of your questions on the Ask Us Anything podcast here at the Deon Forum podcast. Ryan, we’re gonna come back to you [00:29:00] with a question that many Christians struggle with. I struggle with which is, particularly when we’re reading the Old Testament we’re watching this relationship between God and the ancient people of Israel.
And we often see a lot of wars, a lot of violence, some of which God commands. And you have a, a lot of things in there that make you wonder about is God really a loving God? And then we have people that say you know, maybe these were just mythical figures that didn’t really live or didn’t experience things that are described such as the Exodus and the crossing of the Red Sea in a miraculous way.
Maybe those were just mythical stories intended to try to teach us. Some kind of lesson, but they didn’t really happen. This particular writer includes a quote from a theologian by the name of Mial Ball, which tells me this is not a lightweight guy asking a lightweight [00:30:00] question if he’s reading Mial Ball.
I think we can count on that for sure. Ryan, help us with this question. How do we understand what we see in the Old Testament, particularly examples of God’s anger, God’s wrath how do we square that with what we see in the other parts of the Bible, particularly the person of Jesus.
Dr. Ryan Denison: I think it’s important to start by recognizing that this is not a new question.
Even going back to the early church period you see one of the, one of the not main heresies that the church confronted was gnosticism and they outright rejected the Old Testament because they couldn’t square the old t the God of the Old Testament with who they saw in Jesus. And so this tendency to have trouble really reconciling those two images of the Lord, I think is not a modern concept.
And that’s important to understand because it, it’s easy. One of the easy ways to approach this question is to write it off as a modern invention that we’re meant to just take on faith, and that’s not the case. [00:31:00] This is a struggle that people have had throughout Christian history. And I think where the, I think where that dichotomy gets misunderstood at times though, is that we do tend to separate Jesus from the, we tend to see Jesus as a God who would never command the Israelites to go into the promised land and completely destroy the people there.
And we look at so much of the judgment and the wrath we see in the Old Testament and say that’s just outside the character of Christ. When it, it’s, it’s not, I think it, it demonstrates a different side of God’s character that’s being emphasized. It’s God’s holiness, it’s God’s righteousness. And it’s important to contextualize it, to understand that, especially with especially when the, when you see the Hebrews going to the promised land and God commanding them, leave to kill everybody in these cities.
It’s important to start by understanding the level of depravity that was present there. To one of the last things that Moses taught his people in Deuteronomy 18 was he warned them. He said, let no one be found among you. Who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire who practices divination or [00:32:00] sorcery interprets omens, engages in a witchcraft or cast spells, or who’s a medium or spiritualist or cons, or who consults the dead.
And the reason that he had to warn his people about that is because they were about to encounter cultures that did all of that. So many of the laws that we read in Leviticus in Numbers and wonder, why did they possibly have to say, don’t do that? I think it’s because they were about to encounter a culture where people did that.
And the level of depravity and violence is such that it is worthy of condemnation and worthy of judgment. And that’s why I love that quote from mayoral vol. Where Vol said, though I used to complain about the indecency of the idea of God’s wrath. I came to think that I would have to rebel against the God who wasn’t wrathful at the side of the world’s evil.
God isn’t wrathful in spite of being loved. God is wrathful because God is love. And I think that really speaks to the truth that we find here and the fact that we don’t see Jesus, that we see Jesus commanding us to love our enemies rather than, and to pray for them. I, I think that’s not incompatible with what we see in the Old [00:33:00] Testament.
It just speaks to a different time in a different in a different application at that same principle. But where we can get in trouble with this is we get so focused on the violence and trying to explain it away that we, and so focused on Christ called the love, that we tend to minimize or forget that God, it’s still the same God.
He finds our sin just as abhorrent today as he did in the Old Testament times. And so a better approach to this, I think is to, when we read these stories, is to not so much get hung up on the violence, but to. Focus more on just seeing them as a reminder of the fact that God still hates our sin. The fact that he doesn’t command our death as a result of our sin, doesn’t mean that he doesn’t hate our sin.
It just means that we’ve been safe through Christ, and it’s meant to drive us to gratitude for that salvation. But also it’s meant to remind us that our sin is still bad. Our still, our sin still has consequences, and we should never minimize those.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, no, it’s so good. You know, but it’s just, like you said, it’s been a long struggle.
I [00:34:00] remember in the latter season of my life, I gave my mom a new Bible and she started reading it more intently than she had at any season of her life, or at least it seemed that way to me. And she said, you know, I just, I just stay in the new, I don’t like that old side. And that’s certainly, you know, I’m working my way through parts of the old Testament right now, the story of the Kings and recorded in Chronicles.
Sometimes you’re like. Lord, you’re just gonna have to help me understand this. But I love your point there at the end that, you know, our sin is, is more abhorrent to God than we ever want to, to realize or confront. Jim, you have a thought or two to add on to that? Did he get it right? As always got
Dr. Jim Denison: it right.
The only thing I would add to that is just to remember the season in which we’re trying to eradicate the Canaanites from the promised Land, and that is to establish a nation through whom a Messiah can come. And so at this point in time, it’s vital that all of the paganism and the sin and the [00:35:00] idolatry and the witchcraft and the child’s sacrifice of the Canaanites that Ryan described, that he, that he pointed to not be in infecting the children of Israel so that they in fact can be a conduit through whom the Messiah can come for all the Canaanites, for all the sinners, for all the people of all time.
And so that’s why in the Old Testament, you see God acting in this kind of almost solidarity focused way around the entire peoples of the, of the Canaanites. Whereas in the New Testament, now that the Messiah has come. Now the Lord isn’t focusing so much on individual, on people groups as he is on individuals.
And now we’re not thinking about the Romans or we’re thinking about the this, this people living in Spain or the people living in Asia, Asia Minor or whatever. Now we’re thinking about individuals because the Messiahs come for all of us. All that to say what God said about the Canaanite was critical at that point in history as a means of establishing the nation through whom the Messiah could come for all people of all history.
And it’s when they rejected his commandment that they got in trouble. It’s when they didn’t eradicate the Canaanites, [00:36:00] that inevitably they fell into the same paganism and Baal and sinfulness as the Canaanites, and then they fell into sin and God had to judge their sin and had to even judge their nations, attend Northern Tribes by the Assyrians, the two Southern tribes by the Babylonians, all of that because they didn’t do what the Lord said to do relative to the sin of the Canaanites.
They thought they could enslave them and use them, and they wound up being enslaved by. The very sins that the Lord was telling them to eradicate. But again, for a season in history, that was essential as a means to a much larger purpose of bringing them aside for all of us. I think that’s an important point to keep in mind.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, really good. Lots, lots for us to think about and to, you know, I come back to this conversation often and just that part in Isaiah 55 where it says that his thoughts are not his, his thoughts are higher than our thoughts and his ways are higher than our ways that he has a perspective. And he has a perfect balance of both justice, truth, and love.
And [00:37:00] we’re, we’re never gonna understand until we’re fully with him what that actually looks like and how he sees how all of these things properly work together and what he has to do with any individual or group at any time. To be both just and loving in a perfect way. Yeah. Thank y’all for that.
Jim. I wanted to come back to something that you wrote about recently in your daily article. You made reference to the anniversary of the Scopes Monkey trial. And then also elaborated from there about how in our own lives and in our culture we have this pattern of normalizing sin. And I remember it threw me back to a comment made by one of my mentors that what we tend to do with our sin is we glamorize it and we popularize it.
We publicize it, and we’re doing all of that in attempts to, in many ways, rationalize our sin and [00:38:00] normalize it in our culture. And it got me thinking about some of the things you pointed out, things that in, let’s just say the last hundred years. That we in our culture are moving down this path of, of attempting to normalize things that the Bible says are clearly wrong.
Expressions of evolution marked by the Scopes Monkey Trial being one of those. We think about what we’ve talked about already this morning, talked how we have personalized our sexuality ethics abortion being related to that, homosexual homosexuality being related to that same sex marriage.
My, my question to you, Jim is, is partly down the why do we keep doing this, but more is there a way that not only an individual, but is there a way that a culture can reverse this process? And it made me think of conversations you and I have had in the past about the Civil Rights Movement being perhaps a case.
In a way of [00:39:00] reversing something that it, that had normalized a sin. The sin of racism had been normalized in our country. God used the civil rights movement, not perfectly, but in many ways to try to reverse that normalization of something that was evil. Help me, help us with this process of what always seems to happen with normalizing sin.
Dr. Jim Denison: Yeah. And you do see it all through scripture. You see it all through history, don’t you? And you see it certainly happening right now. My wife and I are watching a series right now on television. It’s a detective series, and I wrote about this in one of my das. The protagonist sleeps with the local lifeguard.
Whenever she’s discouraged and depressed, the most attractive character in the entire cast is of course, gay. I mean, of course he is. Of course, when he’s most down, it’s his gay partner who is the most encouraging and sympathetic and gracious and wise, wisdom giving person. I mean, of course they are because again, normalize, normalize, normalize at every point that we can is just what’s happening in the culture, whatever the [00:40:00] topic might be.
Couple of thoughts by way of why that is and then maybe what we do about it. Michael Medved back a number of years ago, wrote a book called Hollywood Versus America. Michael Medved is himself a media critic, a movie critic, very involved in, in that industry, and he makes the point that the kind of morality that you see demonstrated in Hollywood isn’t so much an intentional nefarious strategy to change the world.
That is the people in Hollywood simply reflecting the world as they see it. In their world where again, lesbian lifestyles are very, very common in their world where divorce is very common in their world, where sex outside of marriage is very common. When they portray those things in TV and movies and and music and whatever, they’re simply reflecting the world as they understand the world to be.
Now it still has the same normalizing result and med Bed makes that clear, but it’s not so much a nefarious strategy as it is people just telling the truth as they understand it about the world as they experience it. And that helps me a little bit, but it also goes, I think, to maybe answering your question, how do we reverse that by doing what they’re [00:41:00] doing?
What we wanna do is come along and use our positions of influence in order to communicate the normal life that we think God intends us to experience, to normalize biblical morality, to normalize biblical sexuality, and to use our platforms as ways of doing that in ways that can be influential and connective for people who are willing to hear that message.
Now we’re up against something that the sexual liberation movement has in its corner, and that is as fallen human beings, we are attracted to sexual immorality. We’re attracted to messages that say, if it feels good, do it. We’re attracted to messages that say, my body, my choice. Love is love. We’re attracted to that as fallen people.
So we’re swimming upstream a little bit here, but nonetheless, we can use our places of influence. We can use our platforms as those in media have done to normalize biblical morality. But we have to first of all, live it ourselves. We have to first of all, want to be countercultural. Personally. [00:42:00] I have to watch this TV series and consciously say to myself, that’s wrong.
This is not what God intends. They’re normalizing here. Years ago, a good friend of mine taught me a little thing that he does with his kids that they call Spot the Lie. It’s a little game they play with their family. When something comes on television that’s unbiblical the game is who’s the first one to spot the lie?
They can get paranoid with this and do kinds of things that he’s not recommending, but nonetheless, be discerning here. Think biblically about the media. I’m consuming. Don’t let normalizing happen to me. And then second be saying, Lord, how can my influence, how can my platform, whatever it is, normalize biblical morality and biblical behavior in a way that you can use to your glory as well.
So we fight back by doing what they’re doing as it were, but doing that with biblical truth and to do it for the sake of speaking the truth in love. And as we do that, it doesn’t take much to make a difference. It doesn’t take much to make a tipping point in a culture. It’s always too soon to give up on God and what God can [00:43:00] do.
Whether that’s gonna be a spiritual awakening at some point, whether that’s going to be a movement around specific issues like William Wilberforce and eradicating slavery, or Martin Luther King and all the faith leaders that were behind the Civil Rights movement or whatever it might be. God is, is moving and God is gonna continue to move.
God has not given up on us. And if we will normalize biblical morality through our influence, God can use us to his glory.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And you just, you just never know how God’s gonna put those pieces together. And you know, sometimes he creates a movement that becomes a significant hinge point in history. Many times we don’t see that until after the fact, but the calling is to be faithful.
To be faithful in our own lives. And with whatever influences you said that God, GI has given us at this point let’s try to move along ’cause time will run out on us and we want to use our time. Ryan, we had a question from one of our listeners about miracles. The wonderful thing about the Bible is, is that there are some incredible stories of God stepping in and [00:44:00] intervening in unique ways.
But this listener wants to know, has God stopped doing miracles and he just did that in times past, but doesn’t do it anymore. And then kind of related to that is how the Holy Spirit gifts people now are some people would say some of the spectacular gifts of the Holy Spirit like speaking in tongues that we read about in the Bible, that those are kind of miraculous as well.
Help us understand whether or not God is working in that way under this banner of miracle, or has that, was that just something for the past and not for this time?
Dr. Ryan Denison: Yeah, I think it’s an important question because we do, and especially in the West, we see miracles of a biblical nature. Like what you see in acts with the, with healing speaking and tongues and stuff like that.
It’s, it’s less common than it is in other parts of the world. I do think the fact that it’s still present in other parts of the world is an important counterpoint to those who would say, because it’s not present in the West, it’s just not present. [00:45:00] And I, I don’t necessarily know the cessationist to, or those who believe some of those more, some of those miracles stopped in the biblical times.
I don’t know that they was necessarily frame it that way or phrase it that way, but I, I do think that’s at the heart of it. It’s important to remember that God is still at work. God is still capable of miracles, and I don’t think there’s any reason to think he would stop performing miracles. I, I do think it’s important to look at the purpose behind the miracles we see in the Bible.
And so many of those, especially in acts, were meant to demonstrate to a culture that did not believe in Jesus that the. Jesus was still alive and working through the Holy Spirit and that the Holy Spirit was working in not the same Holy Spirit that was working through the disciples was the same God that did all the miracle Jesus did.
That’s why, especially if you read acts, so many of ’em are, are framed as sort of a continuation where you can find mirrors of them in the ministry of Christ to show that it’s the same God still working through and the same power still working through the, the disciples, nearly believers. But just because we don’t see those as [00:46:00] presently or as commonly today in the West doesn’t mean God’s not doing them.
I think it is perhaps cause for us to ask why. And perhaps part of it is because we don’t expect ’em to. Perhaps part of it is because we’ve decided that he won’t do ’em anymore, so we stop asking him to and I. But what is ultimately, I think behind a lot of those and what’s important to keep in mind is that even in the New Testament times.
The early believers were never the ones in charge of when the Holy Spirit worked. Acts is in many ways the gospel of the Holy Spirit in the same way the gospels of the Gospels of Jesus. And I think that’s where we get into trouble with this topic is we start to try and think, why can’t I’ve prayed for healing, I’ve prayed for to speak in tongues, and I haven’t done it yet.
Why? And I, I think a lot of it is at times we’re motivated by this desire of God. I want to be able to do that, and we’re not the ones in charge of that. And I think that’s one of the ways that the more miraculous giftings are different from the other spiritual giftings that the scripture talks [00:47:00] about is a lot of those the other spiritual gifts are kind of related more to our personalities.
We wrote about this in a book we released several years ago called What are My Spiritual Gifts and How to understand those. And kind of went into a lot of, we didn’t talk as much about healing and spiritual and tongues because I think at the end of the day, a lot of those are. They’re gifts that the holy, when the Holy Spirit choose to use them, he will use them, but they’re not up to us.
We’re not necessarily gifted in a way that we are ever in control of when that happens, and I think that’s really an important piece of this to keep in mind, is that if you haven’t seen healing, if you haven’t seen spirit speaking, seen spirit in tongues, that doesn’t mean God’s not doing them, but. And it’s worth praying to find out maybe why.
And it could be that just in your context, they would be counterproductive. There’s a lot of areas of our culture in the West where if you go to church and people are speaking in tongues, that’s not gonna draw people closer to Christ, that’s gonna drive them further away from the Lord. And [00:48:00] so of course the Holy Spirit isn’t gonna work in, in a fashion that’s going to be counterproductive to the advancement of God’s kingdom.
And I think part of it, so part of it I think is cultural. But I, there’s just, there’s a lot to it that I think at the end of the day, what’s important to remember is that God is still capable of working in the same waste today as he was in New Testament times. And if he’s not, it’s worth asking why.
But that, I don’t think the answer to that is gonna be just ’cause he doesn’t do that anymore.
Dr. Mark Turman: No, that’s a good, a good word. Ryan. I just wanna follow up with that in one way and just say, just ask you, do you think, do you think Christians should specifically pray for miracles? Or is it more that we should just always be confident that God can do miracles anytime he wants?
But is it, should it be a specific prayer request for a specific kind of miracle, like the healing of a disease or something like that?
Dr. Ryan Denison: I think we should p, we should pray for that. I think we should never give up on the [00:49:00] idea that God could perform that miracle. I think the way that he performs that miracle may.
Look differently today than it would’ve been 2000 years ago or than it would on the other in a different culture or context. I mean, a lot of times I think God heals today through medicine and that doesn’t make it less miraculous that we know how to do that. Just because he chooses to involve people in that miracle, through doctors or through medicine, doesn’t mean that he’s not still the one still not still part of that process.
But I do think it’s, it’s never wrong to pray for miracles, but all of our prayers I think, should start with God, what do you want to do? God, teach me how to pray for this and then pray in response. And just let the Holy Spirit be the one that guides our prayers, not just that guides what we pray for, not just the end result of the prayers.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. Okay. Let’s take one more question and then we’ll have another short break before we finish up. Another pastoral question that we sometimes get, people asking for different help help in different categories. We had one listener say, you know, how can I [00:50:00] help my friend who is getting a divorce?
And then the question of can believers or should believers remarry after divorce? We see several different things about this in scripture. We know that the Bible says that God hates divorce. That does not mean that he hates people who get divorced. God doesn’t hate anybody. But he does hate what divorce does to people.
And we know that it was not his original plan, that it was intended, that God said that he would call some, perhaps many into marriage and that it would always be three people in the marriage. That it would be one man, one woman, and the spirit of God building that covenant relationship together. That would reveal some of the aspects of the love of God that it would bring companionship and joy to the man and to the woman that it would be the means, kind of this thing that we really gloss over, in my opinion sometimes, which is that a [00:51:00] covenant marriage was intended by God originally to be the means by which a brand new human being was created.
That is, the more you ponder that, the more astounding it is that, you know, God could have created new human beings any way that he wanted, but that he would involve us in that process through what was intended to be this covenant relationship of one man, one woman. We know, however, that because of sin, that divorce became a reality in the Old Testament and continues on to this day.
You get into this question, kind of, Jim, about what you were saying is about what we can do versus what we should do. Now there are obviously cases of infidelity, cases of abuse where the most redemptive thing that could happen perhaps would be a divorce. That the relationship between these two individuals become so destructive and so dangerous that the marriage should end even [00:52:00] though that’s not the way anybody would’ve wanted it.
I don’t think anybody ever starts a marriage with the desire and the intent of getting a divorce. At least nobody that I’ve ever known. And I do believe the second part of this question is, can a believer ever remarry after a divorce? I believe they can. I think the circumstances of their divorce.
Inform that in some way. There obviously if a person, particularly a believer, experiences divorce, that there should be a time of recovery and a time of healing, a time of really trying to understand what happened in that marriage, that that died. That enough people, many people don’t do that. And they end up getting into a second marriage and they bring some of the same problems and tendencies that they had in their first marriage.
So I think it’s best to take these as a case by case basis rather than just creating big blanket rules or [00:53:00] ideas. But I think we, we have to start with the original intent of what God was after and that he knows that if we don’t build our marriages around him and with him and in his truth, we are setting ourselves up for pain and for failure, and he doesn’t want that to happen.
So it, I’ll stop there and see if either of you have a, a follow up comment that would be helpful to how people think about divorce and how they help people that they love that are contemplating or experiencing divorce. Jim, anything you want to add to that?
Dr. Jim Denison: Yeah, thank you Mark. And as you know, as a pastor, it’s just such a difficult place that people find themselves in, and we wanna be as redemptive and helpful as we can be.
As you know, the biblical categories by which divorce is permissible have to do with adultery, abandonment by an unbelieving spouse. And I think abuse, the Bible number specifically says that as it does adultery and abandonment, but because life is the highest value, I think threatening life, coming to that place of abuse is a third [00:54:00] category by which divorce is permissible.
Doesn’t mean divorce is mandated. As you said, but by which the biblical permission would come forward. And in that context, if if your spouse has co had, has committed adultery against you, or if they’re an unbeliever who’s abandoned you, if you’ve been a victim of abuse, then being remarried on the other side of that would not in any way, I think be an unbiblical thing to do because the divorce wasn’t your fault to begin with.
The divorce wasn’t your choice. It wasn’t your sin. And so you, it’s not that you’re being unrepentant here and compounding sin or something like that. If the divorce was not in those contexts, then there is a, a sin level here that I think does have to be repented of, has to be dealt with, or you bring it into the next relationship.
And that I’m with you, mark. That doesn’t mean the person can’t be remarried, even if their previous marriage did not. And because of these biblical reasons. But it does mean that there needs to be even more an intense period of counseling and reflection and, and repentance were necessary so as to make certain this doesn’t come into the next relationship as well.
But the [00:55:00] last thing I’ll say is something I heard years ago from an evangelist that the church is the only army that buries its wounded. That tends to be the case here as much as any place else our family has seen divorce, we have we have extended family members that have been through divorce and it is a living death.
As you said, nobody intends us to be the case. The pain of this, the ongoing pain of this deserves the compassion, the sympathy, the solidarity, the support of the people of God. Now, I’m not helping somebody by endorsing what hurts them. When we talked earlier about loving the sinner and hating the sin, if I love the sin or I have to hate the sin, I.
If I love my son, I have to hate the cancer that he’s dealing with. I have to do that because I love him. That’s just how that works. But that doesn’t mean at the same time that I come along in a way that puts the sin ahead of the sinner and that doesn’t understand the ground’s level at the foot of the cross.
I have not been through divorce by God’s grace, but I’ve had other issues that my divorce friends haven’t. I’ve made other mistakes that they haven’t made of being in a position [00:56:00] of complementarity and solidarity and community as we seek the grace of God as beggars, helping beggars find bread is the right way to go about this other.
Otherwise, we are that army that buries us wounded, and that’s the place we most want not to be.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, and for anybody that’s been through a divorce or loved somebody who was experiencing divorce, it is so hard. I, I came to a metaphor a few years ago to realize that people that were contemplating or experiencing divorce felt like.
They were in the middle of a, of an ocean by themselves with the smallest life preserver, and that they were emotionally feeling like they were about to drown. And that, that’s how desperate people often feel. And so obviously staying close to people that you love, that are struggling with struggl, an unhealthy marriage possibly going through a divorce, staying with them, as we said at the beginning of our podcast, that it is like dealing with a long-term affliction.
I have never met a [00:57:00] person that went through a divorce that wasn’t changed very deeply by it for the rest of their life. And that it is something that we need the love of God and the love of the church, the love of each other to walk through. Doctors Denison, in the interest of time, I’m gonna save the rest of our questions for our next episode of Ask Us Anything.
And just wanna take a moment now to thank our audience for not only writing in, but for listening, and we hope today’s conversation has been helpful. But before we get away, a couple of new things that are coming. Ryan, you’ve got a new book coming out soon. Tell us real quickly about that book.
Dr. Ryan Denison: It’s a 30 day devotional walking through what it means to love God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and then to love our neighbors ourselves.
And it’s something I was privileged to write with my dad. Kind of goes through every day. It’s five sections in it. The first starts with just what does it mean to love? ’cause I think understanding how the Bible sees love and how the Bible defines the act of love is very different from how our [00:58:00] culture sees it in ways that heavily influence the way we understand how we love God and others.
And from there every other the next four sections are just devoted to what it means to love God with your heart, what it means to love God with your soul, mind strength. And then at the conclusion of each section, we, and throughout we also talk about what it means to love our neighbor in that same way and to really see.
God’s call or Christ called to love our neighbor as ourself, as an extension of our love for God. And how so one of the things we try and emphasize with the book is that we can’t love others well unless we’re loving God well first and really allowing that love for God to be the foundation from which we love others.
And so I really hope when it comes out, y’all take a look at it. I, I found it very helpful. I know from when while writing, I, I know God really used it to help me grow in my walk with him. And our prayer is that he’ll be able to do the same with y’all. But it’s a 30 day guide where it includes questions for reflections, guide for prayer.
And our hope is that the Lord can use it to draw you closer to him.
Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, so look forward to that resource [00:59:00] coming out August the 11th. You can find out [email protected] and you’ll be able to access that, that resource if God leads you toward it. Also wanna let you know that this is the very last episode of the Denison Forum podcast.
Now, don’t be sad. That’s not bad news. We are actually rebranding and relaunching our podcast under a new name. And so starting on August 6th, we will now be called Faith and Clarity with Dr. Mark Turman. You can leave off the last part if you want. Just remember Faith and Clarity and a couple of reasons.
Dr. Jim Denison: Mark, which of those are you, faith or clarity?
Dr. Mark Turman: Or either,
Dr. Jim Denison: either one of those would
Dr. Mark Turman: be my question. I’m trying to get to both of them if I can. Oh, okay. Alright. Okay. Gonna have,
Dr. Jim Denison: right,
Dr. Mark Turman: you’re gonna have to find out if podcast
Dr. Jim Denison: and see if that works or not.
Dr. Mark Turman: You have to find out if I’m anywhere close. Okay.
Alright. But so this is coming. We’ve been working on it for the last several months. And you’ll be looking for a new logo that we’ll share with you called Faith and Clarity. Several [01:00:00] reasons for the change. One is we’ve been podcasting for three and a half years and we just wanted to take a time and evaluate how we’re doing and what we might do to improve.
And so this has been part of the process. You may or may not know that Denison Forum actually now has three different podcasts. We have the daily article, which is an audible version of what Dr. Denison writes and Ryan writes every week in the daily article that you can receive as either an email or a podcast.
So we have that, that podcast. We have a new podcast that we started in January called Culture Brief that is hosted by two of our friends, Micah and Connor. They try to take the top new stories of the last six or seven days, give you a brief overview and a spiritual understanding of how you might think about those events.
That’s intended to give you more of an overview of the news in the last seven days. And then Faith and Clarity is just what [01:01:00] we’ve been doing today. Take a deeper dive on some of the issues and trends that stand behind the news. We’ll continue to do conversations like this of Ask us anything. We’ll continue to have special guests.
We’ll have Governor John Kasik from Ohio. As one of our early guests, we’ll have Dr. Byron Johnson, who has been a leader in what is called the Global Flourishing Study as well as other round table conversations. We’ll bring in our friends from Christian Parenting, Steph Ling and others. We’ll talk about how families now face really complex questions about how to choose a school and an educational process for those, for their children.
We’ll talk about all of that in in upcoming weeks on the Faith and Clarity Podcast, and we wanted you to know that that’s coming and that you’ll check out not only this podcast, but all of our podcasts and our other resources at www.denisonforum.org. Again, thanks for listening. We look to see you down the [01:02:00] road, and we hope that God blesses you in a special way today.
We’ll see you next time.
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