How to discern God’s will, manifesting vs biblical faith, the reality of hell, and God’s unconditional love

In this episode of Faith & Clarity, Dr. Mark Turman, Dr. Jim Denison, and Dr. Ryan Denison sit down to tackle some of the big questions on our listeners’ minds. Together, they explore how to seek God’s will in life’s major decisions, why “manifesting” has become popular among teenagers and how it differs from a biblical worldview, and what it means to deconstruct faith. 

They also talk through topics like the age of accountability, the reality of hell, polyamorous relationships, and how God’s unconditional love relates to his conditional blessings. This conversation offers honest, biblical insight and practical wisdom to help you live out your faith with clarity and confidence.

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Topics

• (01:32): Discerning God’s will for major life decisions
• (06:57): The concept of manifesting vs. biblical teachings
• (13:16): Deconstructing and reconstructing faith
• (17:52): Understanding the age of accountability
• (27:13): Understanding the nature of hell
• (29:39): The urgency of sharing the gospel
• (34:29): The importance of choices and faith
• (36:43): Defining God’s agape love
• (40:22): God’s conditional blessings and unconditional love
• (42:07): Biblical perspective on polyamorous relationships
• (46:44): Advocating for equal rights as Christians
• (51:22): Conclusion

Resources

• Ask Us Anything: [email protected]
• How has Denison Forum impacted your faith?
• The lost art of civility • Denison Forum
• “Couple to Throuple” normalizes polyamory: Responding with secular evidence for biblical morality
• Massachusetts city legalizes polyamory: J. I. Packer and the privilege of standing for biblical truth
• Polyamorous “weddings” and the claim that affairs can “strengthen a marriage”
• ‘I have a fiancé, a girlfriend and two boyfriends’
• What is God’s design for sex and relationships?
• Ariana Grande, “manifesting,” and the path to a transformational Thanksgiving
• What is the New Thought movement?
• Dining with pandas: Reframing isolation as an opportunity to manifest the life of Jesus
• Is hell real? How could a loving God send anyone there? • Denison Forum
• Did Jesus go to hell? • Denison Forum
• Ask Jim: Jesus in hell, salvation after death, and “God made me this way”
• Pastor responds to columnist on reality of hell
• An Unconditional Love | First15
• What does the Bible say about love? • Denison Forum

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 Faith & Clarity 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 Faith & Clarity 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] Welcome back to Faith and Clarity, a Denison Forum Podcast. I’m Dr. Mark Turman, executive director of Denison Forum, and today we’re gonna jump back into one of our favorite episode styles, which is ask us anything. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get the exact right answer, but we’re gonna do our best to give you a biblical insight and perspective on some of the questions that you have sent to us.

And if you have a question that you would like to. Put before us that we can deal with in a future episode. You can submit your questions at [email protected]. That’s [email protected]. We would love to hear from you both with your questions and with any other feedback that you might wanna offer to us.

We’d be glad to respond to that. And we’re always looking for good questions that are on your hearts and minds and would love to respond to those in a future opportunity. So I’m sitting down today with Dr. Jim Denison, [00:01:00] our co-founder and cultural apologist, and also Dr. Ryan Denison, our senior Editor for Theology.

Good morning gentlemen. We’re glad to have you back on the podcast. Glad to be with you today. So we’re gonna try to see if we can give some insight into some things as we always talk about on faith and clarity. And at Deni Dennison Forum, we want to help people walk by faith, not by fear. We want to help them find hope beyond the headlines.

And that’s what we’re gonna do in dealing with these questions. And so let’s just dive right in and see where we go from here. Jim, I wanna pitch the first question to you and Ryan, feel free to weigh in as well. One of our audience listeners says. How can I discern God’s will for major life decisions?

Something that I think every Christian deals with. Everybody wants to know how do I know what God really wants me to do? Should I take this job or not? Take this job, marry this person, not marry this person, Jim. How would you answer that question? Thanks for starting with such 

Dr. Jim Denison: a softball question mark.

Yeah, that’s really [00:02:00] terrific. That’s, you know, you know, something that’s not really relevant to our lives on any significant level. Nothing we wrestle with on a daily basis. I mean, you know, how about those cowboys? What about the rangers? I mean, you know, lots of places we could start, so let’s just start there with major life decisions.

Shallow. Yeah. 

Dr. Mark Turman: You know, I thought you’d like the shallow water. To begin with. Sure. Yeah. Let’s just, 

Dr. Jim Denison: you know, let’s get, let’s get our feet wet here first, so Yeah. And then just wait on out there. And I, of course have the definitive answer to this. I mean, you know, I have this all figured out. I have God’s will.

Understood. I, you know, I’m gonna write a book on that someday and just explain, you know, how I absolutely, you know, never have any question about all this. And if you believe that I have some land off the coast of Florida, I’d love to ask you to consider buying. And obviously all of us struggle with this, and I’m so glad, really, that we can talk about it because it is such a practical question, I think, for all of us as even when we live our lives.

Because first of all, we want to know God’s will. That’s really, I think where you start. If you wanna know how to discern God’s, will you start by asking, all right, do I really want to know his will? [00:03:00] Do I wanna know his will just as an option for me to consider, or really more as an order to obey. I don’t think the God of the universe is interested in being consulted as just one option as we’re deciding what to do.

As I read scripture, he seems pretty definitive about wanting to lead us in his good, pleasing and perfect will, but we really have to want that first. So I think you start there. Lord, help me to want your will. Lord, if I’m not sure I do, help me to, to want to, Lord, help me to seek your will because I want to do whatever you say.

Kind of a blank check, I think is where we start. Then the second thing we do is understand that God speaks to us according to the way that he’s made us. In philosophy, we talk about three ways we know what we know. They’re called channels of epistemology to be technical about it, but the ways that we know everything we know are the rational, the practical, and the intuitive.

You do math rationally. You start a car practically. You like people intuitively. We all do all three, but God knows our wiring. He knows which of those tends to dominate our personality, and he often speaks to us [00:04:00] in alignment with that wiring. Because I’m primarily rational by nature, God seems to lead me more directly through his word, through logic, through common sense, through reasoning things out, through getting a piece of paper down and writing the pros and the cons down, and, and, and looking at the options and trying to kind of explore this thing as logically as possible, that that’s one way God seems to speak in my life.

My wife is incredibly intuitive. And God just speaks to her spirit. She just gets a sense of leadership in her life. One of my best friends in the world, Jeff Bur, he and I’ve worked together for 38 years now, is very practical. As you guys know. Jeff’s an engineer by training and background and very pragmatic, and God will speak to him through circumstances and open closed doors, and do we have enough money for that?

And do we have enough time for that? And so one of the ways I’ve learned over these years to seek God’s will is to look to the places where I’m strong and then ask for help where I’m not. Hmm. So if it’s a major decision, I really wanna know what Janet’s thinking and feeling, [00:05:00] and I really wanna know what Jeff thinks from a practical point of view.

He’s gonna be the guy to say that sounds good, but I’m not sure we have the money for it, or the time for it, or What will we not do in order to do it? That sort of thing. Hmm. And in that kind of collective sense, through the practical, the rational and the intuitive God speaks in my life, and I think that’s often how he speaks in our lives.

Last thing, I would say God’s will is good, pleasing, and perfect even when we don’t think it is. Even if we’re not sure it is, we can trust him for what is best. Even though at the moment it may not seem that way. We’re looking at the parade through the knot hole in the fence. God sees the parade from the parade stand.

God sees the in from the beginning, and if we trust his will, we can experience his will, which is the most important thing. Am I in his will right now? Am I submitted to his spirit? Right now. So those are some thoughts on that softball question with which we’re starting our conversation today. 

Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And I, I think it’s really helpful because you know, a, I love the comment that you made.

You know, [00:06:00] we, we sometimes wanna know God’s will as an option to consider rather than as something that’s. An instruction for us to obey. I know in my own life, I remember as a young Christian reading a book about knowing God’s will. And there’s always an element of faith, especially in big decisions.

I’ve heard you speak and say this many times, Jim, that you can’t know that the job that you should take is the job you should take until you take it. You can’t know that the person that you’re gonna marry is exactly the right person until you marry them. So there al are always elements of faith in that.

But we tend, I know I tend to be the person that wants well. God, I wanna know your will so that I know everything’s gonna work out in a pleasant way for me, that it’s going to end up good. And sometimes I, I probably have gone down the road of saying I want somebody else to blame if it doesn’t work out.

Good point. And maybe God would be a good scapegoat for me. If things turn out not to be the way. That I would want them to be. And, and I’m gonna jump around a little bit with the [00:07:00] questions we’re dealing with, but this kind of just seems to connect to a question that we also have from one of our listeners about something you see particularly among teenagers and young adults right now.

Which is the practice called manifesting. And so I did a little bit of, of work around this, learning a little bit more about this. The word manifest just simply means to make it clear or to make it obvious. And the opposite of that obviously would be something that is not obvious or clear but we’re seeing a practice that’s really kind of something old put into a new set of clothes really.

But among teenagers, especially in the aftermath of COVID probably, or possibly as an attempt to kinda regain control and a sense of agency in their life you can find a lot of different social media influencers who will coach people or teach people this supposed practice of manifesting what they want.

I listened to one [00:08:00] particular presentation for a few minutes where she said, Hey, I’m a manifesting teacher and my goal is to teach you to get exactly what you want, how you want it, when you want it, whatever it is that you want. And I thought that’s kind of a contrast to what the Bible would teach us and what you were saying a minute ago, Jim, about first of all, simply saying, do I want to know what God wants in my life?

Or do I want to invent that on my own? And then these teachers typically go through a practice of teaching people how to visualize and how to meditate how to go through practices of repeating phrases or journaling over and over again, what they want and that if they can simply. If they can think it hard enough would be a way I would summarize it that the tho that thing that they want will come true.

It sounds a lot like other forms of prosperity gospel what we used to call, name it and claim it sounds a lot like the power of [00:09:00] positive thinking that if I just think it often enough and in positive context. Interesting. You know, if you go and look in the Bible, the word manifest is almost never used, only two times in the Bible.

And one of those, it talks about Jesus being the manifestation of the presence of God that he was obviously and clearly. The incarnate presence of God, that he became one of us and that that is God’s way of showing his presence most of the time. This manifesting practice has to do with quote unquote channeling the energy of creation.

It doesn’t have anything with calling on God in a personal sense. That we would understand that Jesus teaches us and that the Bible reveals to us. But very much a contrasting way of approaching decisions and desires compared to what you just laid out, Jim, in terms of, of pursuing them through the Bible and through prayer and through [00:10:00] circumstances and through that intuitive sense that God gives us in the spirit.

Does all that seem to. Make a, a reasonable contrast between the two approaches. 

Dr. Ryan Denison: Yeah, I think it does. And one of the things I love about how you, you phrase that is that it, it really kind of highlights that the manifesting part is about, even in a Christian context, it’s more about kind of us trying to get God to give us what we want, treating him kind of more like a genie than the Lord.

And I know what. If anyone’s seen the film, Bruce Almighty. It’s got a lot of theological issues to it, but one of the things I love about that is it does a great job of showing how awful we are at knowing what we really want. And like at the end of the film, everyone gets what they want and the world falls apart in a day.

And I think that’s really kind of a good reminder that if we really, if God did what we asked him to all the time, our lives would not be better for it. And I think there’s a bit of humility that’s supposed to come in that that is key to understanding what God’s will is and avoiding kind of the downsides of this whole manifestation idea.

Because I [00:11:00] think a lot of it goes back to the idea, like when we’re praying for God’s will to know what his will is, are we asking for confirmation of what we want and are we fixated on a particular answer? Are we truly open to what God wants or where God wants to lead us? Because only the latter is really gonna lead to his blessing in our lives.

And I think it also speaks to the reality that. A lot of times God’s will isn’t nearly as singular as we tend to make it. There’s a lot of things in our lives where we ask God, am I supposed to do this or this? And God’s and God’s answer might legitimately be, I can bless either of those. So whichever one, whichever one you choose, I can still bless you, will still be inside my will.

And I think when we fixate on God’s will is if he has. A plan for every single small decision in our lives. It’s really easy to kind of paralyze ourselves with analysis there. Versus just living in a constant reliance upon his guidance. ’cause sometimes the reason God doesn’t give us just a, a clear direction, I think is because he wants us to walk through that with him as a process rather than tell us where to go.

[00:12:00] And then just kind of trust will end up there. Because I know in my own life that’s, that’s part of why I don’t, I think oftentimes why God doesn’t reveal more of his will. Is that as much of it as he does, I tend to just kind of rush to the end versus walk with him in that process. And I, I think a lot of times we, we kind of tend to forget that God cares about every moment of every day, not just kind of making sure we don’t stray from his will one way or the other.

And so I, I think that’s one of the reasons why manifesting is, does have some problems to it. And why oftentimes it’s counterproductive to truly knowing the will of God. 

Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, I just, as you were talking, I was thinking about all these college students that are starting school freshmen, that type of thing.

And we, we don’t usually hear people say, you know what? God may turn around and say to you you choose if, if if you’ve been humble before God, and if you’ve been prayerful in asking and pursuing his will and you’re looking at two or three colleges to possibly attend, he may say, you know what? I can bless any of those, as you said a moment ago, and.[00:13:00] 

You choose? I’ll be good with any a because it’s more about the relationship and it’s about the ongoing process. Not just making sure you pick the exact right school in that sense, which kind of segues Ryan into maybe a follow-up conversation, which is. This topic of recon or deconstructing your faith.

Your dad wrote on this in one of the daily articles earlier this week about a popular Christian leader named Jen Hatmaker, who’s coming out with a new book. Her story is one of. Deconstruction in her faith that is still ongoing. She’s very upfront about that in some interviews recently. Talk to us about what deconstructing your faith is all about and why that terminology has become pretty prevalent in our conversations around faith these days.

Dr. Ryan Denison: Yeah, I, I think one of the reasons is that it, it can be a healthy process. There’s a whole lot of people, I think that, especially if you grow up in the [00:14:00] church, you get, you become an adult with enough of an understanding to God to think that you’re kind of set. It can be real easy for that to happen. And a lot of the deconstructing when it’s done well, I think is an attempt to.

Look back on your life and truly explore why do I believe what I believe? And as long as it’s done with the baseline of, okay, I still want to believe in God, I still, I want to understand my faith better, then I think it can be a really healthy process. The, the problem is when people deconstruct without a desire to reconstruct.

And I think those two have to go together. And the motivations behind it I think are important. And that doesn’t mean that. Yeah, if you’re having faith questions and if you’re genuinely struggling in your faith that that’s a sign of, of weakness or spiritual, like spiritual malignancy or anything like that that can be sometimes there are times in our lives where our relationship with God that, that we.

As we understood it doesn’t seem to fit the needs of the moment and in, in those times, being able to go back to God and truly explore not [00:15:00] only what do I believe, but why do I believe it can be a really healthy process? It, it’s also, I think though one of the reasons that God calls us to do that in community with other believers, because if you’re just trying to reconstruct your faith on your own or deconstruct your faith on your own, then you’re likely to kind of fall into some pretty.

Pretty important gaps that just because all of us have blind spots, all of us have biases that would keep us from doing that well. So I think it’s one of the, one of the things that is most necessary when we’re deconstructing or reconstructing our faith is to find a group of believers that you trust, find people you trust and just have those conversations with them.

Be open about it. Don’t try and hide it or feel like you shouldn’t be able to have those conversations. It’s not a bad thing if you have doubts. It’s not a bad thing to have questions. I I think it’s, it’s just a sign that you’re actually thinking about your faith. But I, I do think one of the ways that God likes to lead us through that is to use other believers to help us process that as we grow.

Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, and I think that’s, I think that’s such a good word of [00:16:00] calling out the need for community no matter how healthy or unhealthy you feel like your faith is. And, and I think it’s almost inevitable that we go through some kind of process of both building and rebuilding our faith all the time.

I told a, a friend of mine one time, you know, I, I have to get up and, and be converted every morning back into the life of faith. Because, you know, I’m, I’m the guy that wakes up and, and I don’t, I don’t usually say Good morning, Lord. I say, oh Lord, it’s morning. And I have to start all over from scratch.

It feels sometimes. But I do think it’s somewhat built into us that we’re going to construct a faith of some kind. Now whether or not that’s a healthy and biblical faith and one built in community, that those are choices that we get to make. But it can also come and, and seems to be coming pretty frequently in our conversations today around disappointment.

People get disappointed with God’s will. They get disappointed with church leaders. They get disappointed with other problems [00:17:00] going on in our culture. And that level of dis. Disappointment and disillusionment leads to questions, deep questions about what I thought was true may not be true or doesn’t appear to be true right now.

So can I really hang on to this or should I hang on to it? And I, I love what you point out, Ryan, that just the word deconstruction is not necessarily a bad thing. It is in many ways a necessary thing. For us to come to an even deeper, more personal relationship that is our own relationship with Christ and not just something that has been presented to us.

We have to decide if we are going to choose to believe which is the fundamental act of faith. We’re gonna get to even. It’s a tougher question here about what the Bible talks about in terms of the reality of hell. But maybe a good way to segue into that. One of our readers, a different reader asked a question that is sometimes on our minds, which is, what is it, what is [00:18:00] the age of accountability?

So if I’ve. Was asked that I’ve been asked that question as a pastor from different times. The Bible never uses this terminology specifically of the age of accountability, but people wanna know at what point does my child become responsible for their own life and in that way responsible for their own sin?

This terminology may be pretty distinctive of evangelical Christianity. This was never. The kind of terminology we had around our house when I was a child growing up in a, a Catholic sense, even though they have some expression of this. But this phrase really has the idea of when does a person become old enough to make significant faith decisions?

Because they are old enough to understand really important, really big concepts like faith. What is sin and what is the what is the offense of sin in [00:19:00] terms of a relationship with the Holy God? Sometimes different parts of the Christian family have said we need to kind of gauge this based off of the actual.

Age of the child kind of following along some of the Jewish tradition around when a boy or a girl becomes quote unquote a man or a woman a child of the law is what is expressed in a Bar mitzvah. There’s some ideas, some struggling of, okay, when is this person no longer? A child covered under the general grace of God, but now they have a, a sense of right and wrong.

They have a sense of a sense of responsibility and accountability not only to their parents and to their community, but they have a sense of response. Ability to their God. And what we have generally understood in the evangelical world is, is that there is no one set time for this. It might be generally falling in that age, somewhere between say, seven and 14.

[00:20:00] But that there is this sense that as we grow and as we mature. Toward adulthood that we can, and we do become more and more aware of what right and wrong is and what the accountability and responsibility for both our right and wrong decisions are in particularly in relationship to God. And that, that.

Will happen and should happen in each person’s life. And as we watch that as parents helping our children understand what truth is and what right and wrong are all about that, they need to understand that that has an aspect, a direct encounter with the God who created them, who loved them, but who also wants to redeem them.

And helping them get to a place where they can understand those concepts and make a decision. Whether or not they will believe or not believe in the God who created them. All right, Ryan, did I get all that right? Does that sound reasonable as an exp expression [00:21:00] of what the age of accountability is?

Dr. Ryan Denison: I think that’s a great explanation of it and it really kind of points back to, I think the. A lot of what goes into this topic, and a lot of the reason people ask about it is there’s a, a sense of fear I think, behind it that wants to know at what point is my child no longer safe eternally. And I, I think there is to some extent a need to just leave that in God’s hands and trust that he knows.

I, I do think the key is just that at what point, and you could take this idea way too far, much farther than I, I think you, we should press it, but. I do think to some extent there’s a, a sense of has God called him, called them to himself and have they said no? And at what point do they understand really if they’re rejecting God’s call to salvation or are they accepting God’s call to salvation?

But I also think it, it’s prevalent a lot more in denominations that place a heavy emphasis on a single moment of salvation versus denominations, where that’s more of a process. A lot of the more [00:22:00] liturgical, types of denominations where you kind of like that place a heavy emphasis on catechism, whether that’s Catholicism or others.

There there’s this idea within those that you kind of grow into your faith and you don’t see the age of accountability emphasized quite as much in those traditions. And I, I think there’s a risk of making too little of the fact that at some point you have to make that faith your own and you have to place your trust in Jesus.

I also think we can go too far down that road to minimize the degree to which it is a process and it is something we’re meant to grow and over the course of our lives and at the end of the day. We kind of have to just trust that God has a plan for it and that, I mean, the God who wants people in heaven, the God who loves our kids more than we do, has a plan for their salvation.

And while that doesn’t mean we minimize that, or even or by any means, ignore the need to make that decision, I do think it if our, if we’re making, if we’re asking these questions out of fear, then that’s maybe a sign that our we need need to go [00:23:00] back to the Lord and kind of just ask for some help there as well.

Dr. Jim Denison: Okay, mark. The only thing I would add to that, and it’s right along the line with everything you guys have said, which I think has just been terrific just thinking about this as a father and a grandfather, something that has been clear and helpful to me over the years, and as a pastor as well. It’s just a simple idea.

It’s one thing for our children to want to become Christians, we would assume that they would, especially if they’ve grown up in a family where they’re going to church, where they’re worshiping, where they’re attracted. We would hope to the Christian faith, it’s another thing for come, for them to come to the place where they know they need.

To become a Christian. Mm-hmm. When they have come under what we would call the conviction of sin. Where they’ve come to a place where they recognize they need for their sin to be forgiven and for Jesus to be their Lord. And to me, that’s a real important distinguishing line kind of a line in the sand and, and a place at which a person could be considered to then be accountable.

For that knowledge that I really do need to God to forgive me. I really do need to repent of my sin, whatever that means to [00:24:00] that child. And, and there becomes a need. When that need becomes present is when I think we can really know that the Holy Spirit’s really working in their life in a way that is really moving them into this kind of personal next step.

And their relationship with him and, and that need becomes a real important thing for us to look for in their spiritual journey, I think. 

Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, and I think that’s a really good way of framing it for parents as they talk with their children and for grandparents, if they have opportunity to be in these conversations of, hey, it, it can feel very normal that you would want to be a Christian and that you would want to be baptized.

That’s often where this conversation gets generated in young children. But let’s talk about the need. And how the need is distinct and different from just the wanting. Both of them are good. Now, do 

Dr. Jim Denison: you wanna to become a Christian? Yeah. Is kind of the question, why do you want to join the church? Why do you want to be baptized?

And if it’s just because I want to or because my friends are, or because it seems like a good idea, you know? That’s not. Maybe the compelling of the spirit that [00:25:00] may not be the conviction of the spirit yet. It’s a step in that wonderful step in that direction. It’s a wonderful thing, but I’d be looking for that deed piece myself.

Dr. Mark Turman: Okay. That lays a pretty good foundation for this next question that we’ll deal with after a, after a brief break one of our writers or one of our audiences written to us about what the Bible teaches about hell. And we’ll come back and deal with that pretty big question in just a moment.

We’re, we’re gonna step aside, take a. Brief break and then we’ll be right back. All right, we’re back on Faith and clarity. Thanks for staying with us. We’re gonna pick up a really heavy question today. So one of our readers, one of our listeners, I should say talks about his own faith how he is trusting in Christ for his salvation.

All that Jesus did for us on the cross and through the resurrection. But he also makes reference that not so long ago we could measure this perhaps by, you know, 50 years, maybe a little bit further. Certainly back in the first half of the 20th century. [00:26:00] How. Churches and preachers particularly spend a lot more time in what we might describe as fire and brimstone teaching.

A lot more emphasis seemingly in that season around the reality of hell the danger of hell. There’s not very many sermon titles that I remember, but one of them is from long, long ago called Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God is a famous sermon. But our. Listener says that, you know, many preached strongly in terms of what the Bible teaches about hell, we don’t seem to talk about it that much anymore.

Or we seem to be using a different kind of language that we talk about the wages of sin being separation from God for all of eternity even though. That particular terminology is not really all that explicit in the Bible, or at least as he reads the Bible. So his question is simply this, according to the Bible [00:27:00] as we understand it, are non-Christians doomed to an eternity of torment in a fiery furnace with Satan.

That’s a pretty straightforward way. Ryan, how would you respond to that question? 

Dr. Ryan Denison: Yeah, it is a very straightforward question for a very difficult and big subject. I think I, I think one of the, I think where I would like where I would begin though is when we think about hell, oftentimes, I, I, I do think it’s, it’s important to remember that it was created for Satan and his demons as a place for them.

Not necessarily as a place for. That God intended for humanity. I, I don’t think that means we don’t go to hell. I think Jesus was quite clear that we do that, that there is that option. But I, I’d also think that it’s important when you look at all the, all the imagery that that’s used to describe, hell, the, the thing that underlines all of it is just this idea of you do not want to go there.

And so I think we can make too much at times of what is the nature of hell? Is it a fiery furnace? Is it a place of eternal darkness? [00:28:00] Yes, scripture says it’s both those things. And I, I think it’s, it says both those things because at the end of the day, the reason that it’s, it’s in the Bible is to help us understand this is a place you don’t want to go.

This is a place that is not, that is so far beyond this, the glory of spending eternity with God, that it should not, it, it should be scary. It’s meant to be scary but it’s not meant. To, I think, scare us into our relationship with Jesus as much as it is to emphasize how much, how important it is that we fully appreciate what awaits us in heaven.

Because the other aspect of that is I, when you look at punishment throughout scripture, God’s discipline throughout scripture, it’s always redemptive. It is always meant to draw people closer to God or to, to draw them back into a relationship with God. And so when we think about hell. I don’t, while it is a place of torment that’s, it’s not because God designed it to be awful, it’s because it’s a place that where God is completely absent.

It is not meant necessarily even to be a punishment as [00:29:00] much as it is just a place for God to honor the free will option he’s given us to reject eternity with him. And so while scripture wants us to know that it is not a place we we should ever want to go, it’s not a place we should ever want anyone else to go, and we are meant to.

It’s meant to inspire us to help others know the Lord and to place their faith in Christ. It’s not when we think about, as like a place of eternal torment, the flames and all that, I, I don’t think it’s meant, God didn’t create it to be awful. It’s just by definition going to be because he’s not there.

And I, I think that’s what we need to really emphasize. And so often, and I think also when we think about hell in the context of. What happens to those who don’t know the Lord? And so the, the main reason I think the Bible talks us to us about hell is to encourage us to know that we need to go out and share the gospel.

That at the end of the day, like I think there are a lot of questions around it that scripture doesn’t answer nearly as clearly as people. Tend to believe it does or tend to think it does. I think there’s a lot more [00:30:00] gray area than people when it comes to the nature of, you know, what happens to those who haven’t heard the gospel and questions like that.

I, I think there’s more gray area than we often are comfortable with, but at the end of the day, the, the primary purpose of why the Bible talks about it is to help us know that if you know somebody that doesn’t know Jesus, that is not. Something for us to take lightly. It is our job, our obligation, our privilege to go and share the gospel with them and encourage them to place their faith in God because there is nothing better than eternity with the Lord.

And as a result, there’s nothing worse than eternity without him. 

Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm. Yeah. Really lots to think about, Jim. Thoughts you want to add to that? Yeah. And it’d only be an 

Dr. Jim Denison: adding to the terrific insights I think that Ryan’s just offered us. Bible says in the Book of Revelation, if anyone’s name is not found written in the book of life, he’s cast into the lake of fire.

Hmm. It just says that that bluntly, we all love John three 16 that says, for God so love the world that he sin has only begotten son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. But we stop short [00:31:00] of verse 18. Where in John three 18, Jesus says Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe in him is condemned already because he’s not believed in the name of the only begotten son of the Father.

So the Bible just couldn’t be clearer. That salvation is through faith in Christ and that is essential. He is the way, the truth in the life. No one comes to the Father except through him. The apostle said there’s no other name under heaven given among them by which we must be saved. And if as CS Lewis said, if we choose to reject God, God honors that choice.

In some ways, it’s a worse hell to force you into heaven if you don’t want to be in heaven than it is to reject his presence. Now, beyond that, as Ryan said, we’re dealing with symbolism, whether it’s heaven or it’s hell. We could come along and ask logical questions of symbolic language, of metaphorical language.

For instance, how can a spirit being be bound in physical chains? And yet the Bible speaks of Satan as being bound in chains. How can it be eternal darkness and eternal fire at the same time, we could be asking if we’re [00:32:00] asking literal questions of symbolic truth. Now, it doesn’t make the symbolic any less literally true.

It’s just that symbolism is a part of scripture. Jesus calls himself the door, but that doesn’t mean he is made of wood. He said he’s the bread of life, but that doesn’t mean that he’s made of wheat. And so there can be symbolism about hell. And as Ryan said, the whole point of the symbolism is to say, you don’t wanna go there.

It’s worse than you can imagine because it’s the absence of the presence of God. Theologians from St. Augustine or Augustine to Billy Graham have agreed that the, the language about hell is, is intended to be understood as symbolic, more than as physically literal, but that is in no sense a deterrent.

The deterrent is that you’re spending eternity in the absence of the presence of God. The Lord grieves that he sent his son to keep that from happening for us. And now it’s our job to share the gospel in such a way that nobody has to spend eternity there. I used to tell, I’ll, I’ll say this quickly, mark, he used to tell my seminary students that as we were talking about these [00:33:00] very issues and the, the essentialness of sharing the gospel with every person that they might come to know Christ in, in our culture that’s seen as oppressive, that seen as judgmental, that’s seen as angry.

We’re afraid of hurting peoples. Feelings we’re afraid of, of offending them on some level. And I used to tell my students, here’s what you don’t want. You don’t wanna be standing next to someone in judgment. Hear the Lord, condemn them to an eternity in hell. Have them turn to you and say, why didn’t you tell me and have to say, I didn’t want hurt your feelings.

Hmm. Now, I’m not saying that’ll actually happen in the way God does judgment and all of that, but that’s what you don’t want. Is them to spend an eternity in the absence of the presence of God because we just didn’t wanna hurt their feelings because we just didn’t want to take a chance or be afraid that they might not like us much or be afraid of injuring a friendship or whatever.

There needs to be an urgency to this because of the urgency of hell, and that’s the point of hell. It’s there so that we can know. We don’t want to go there and we don’t want anyone else to go there either, and that’s the urgency that I think we need to [00:34:00] embrace today. It 

Dr. Mark Turman: Remind reminds me, you hear this occasionally from some lost people who if they understand the facts of the Christian faith, the facts of the gospel, they’re like of course they should tell us if this is what is really true.

This, if this is what they really believe. That is the most I important thing in the whole universe. We would want them to tell us if this really is true. You’ll even hear that sometimes from, from some well-informed people who are not yet Christians or not yet believers. It also just makes me listening to both of you talk.

It just make, it just reminds me. That life and our choices matter. We are not living in a fatalistic, predetermined world. We are not robots. God has made us in his image and he has given us this enormous. Opportunity and power and responsibility of choosing and our choices matter both in terms of our own choice to believe as well as our choice to share [00:35:00] our faith.

That that’s a way of saying, I guess, that the stakes are high and that we need to consider these things very deeply. I believe the core sin that leads to all other sin is the sin of disbelief. Mm-hmm. And that we need to ponder that question very deeply and we need to let that question motivate us in terms of the living of our faith as a compelling testimony.

As a friend of a new friend of mine said to me recently. Live your life in such a way that it demands an explanation. Live your life so beautifully for Christ, that the people around you will go, what is, what is up with you? What’s different about you? And you’ll have an opportunity, hopefully, to talk about Christ in that way.

And Ryan, I totally agree. I don’t, I don’t think that the teachings that Jesus and the Bible give us about hell are intended to scare us. Into a decision. But I also remember [00:36:00] hearing a great quote from a preacher of a previous generation. A guy by the name of rrg Lee pastored the, the Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis.

RRG Lee said, on one occasion, if it had not been for my fear of hell, I would’ve never started toward heaven. And that’s a good way of summarizing at least some of how God can get our attention even from this very difficult and sometimes hard to understand teaching. But our choices do matter.

And Ryan, that really segues into. A good way of talking about the next question from another reader and follower, or listener. I dunno why I keep saying reader, another follower of our ministry who asked us the question about God’s love. This comes from a former pastor. Who would regularly remind people when he was leading churches that God’s kind of love what the Bible calls in the Greek language.

The agape kind of love is a love that wants what is best for you. And that would certainly be a [00:37:00] relationship with God for all of eternity. This kind of unconditional love that never, ever stops and is described for us in Romans eight and other places like that. The re the, the follower asks us the question.

Could you define this kind of God type love in a fresh way? How would you express what the Bible means by this unconditional agape love of God? Ryan, what would you answer to that? 

Dr. Ryan Denison: I’d start by by saying, I, I think you’re right, especially coming with a hell conversation where it’s it should remind us of the importance of a relationship with God.

But if our entire relationship with God is built on the idea that we don’t wanna go to Hell rather than this agape love for God, then I think we’re, we’re missing something important there. Because I think when the Bible talks about love, it’s really important to understand that. It speaks of it as a choice rather than an emotion.

And I, I think that’s one of the ways that it’s easy to get mixed up because when our culture talks about love, it’s typically the emotion of love. It’s, I feel, [00:38:00] it’s something we feel, whereas in scripture it’s something we do. It’s a choice we make to prioritize others. And I love the definition that it, they include in the, in that.

And I think one of the best passages for knowing what it looks like to live that out is first Corinthians 13, where Paul really kind of. Just goes through the list of everything that should characterize love and the way we love others, the way we love God. And I, I won’t read the whole thing now, but I think if you’re, if you’re looking for a better understanding, that’s a great place to start.

And I, I do think that’s one of the things that. Differentiates biblical love from cultural love is that it’s, and that’s why God can, that’s why Jesus can command us to love people, is because it’s a choice we make. If it was an emotion, then it would be outside of our ability to control. And God doesn’t set us up to fail like that.

He wouldn’t command us to do something we were incapable of doing. And so if God is commanding us to love, it’s because it is always within our capacity to do doesn’t mean we have to like. People to love them. And I think that’s really important to understand as well. And I think that’s one of the ways that [00:39:00] really kind of sets this sort of agape love apart is that it, when our love is about.

May doing what is best in the other person’s interest. Then it takes, it doesn’t take emotions outta the equation, but they’re no longer the motivating factor for it for what we do. And I think that’s really when we see our love for God and our love for people is connected, where our love for people is an extension of our love for God, then I think we’re equipped to love people in this agape style.

And but it has to start with loving God that way. It has to start with prioritizing what God wants from us. Pri, prioritizing obedience to the Lord over obedience, to to our own desires. And so much of that. I think when we look at what it means to love others as an extension of how we love God, I, I think it makes all the pieces start to fall into place.

Dr. Mark Turman: That’s, that’s helpful. Let me also get you to take that one step further. Ryan this former pastor in his in his comments to us he pointed out something I thought was really valuable about the love of God. He says, God’s blessings are often [00:40:00] conditional, but his love is not. Can you unpack that a little bit about we, we tend to think God loves me if he’s blessing me but we may be wanting him to bless something that is ungodly or unholy.

Kind of unpack that statement when it said, when he says God’s blessings are sometimes conditional, but his love is never conditional. How do we understand that? 

Dr. Ryan Denison: I think so much of it goes back to if God’s love was not conditional, where if God’s blessings were not conditional then I do think it would not be a loving.

We talked before when we discussed kind of just the way that we discern God’s will, how sometimes if, if we just, if God did everything that we in the moment would consider a blessing, it would be a curse. And I think that’s so much of why God’s blessings are conditional is that they’re. We have to be in a place to receive them.

We have to be in a place to use them well, otherwise they can turn into something that’s not best for us. I think Gia speaks to that idea to some extent in the Sermon on the Mount when he talks about you know, even a [00:41:00] father, a good father knows not to, isn’t gonna replace bread with rocks or fish with snakes.

That kind of idea where if you’re. If you’re a kid on the back of a cart driving down the road and you, and you’re really hungry and you see a snake that looks like a fish on the side of the road and your father tells you you can’t have it, you’re gonna think he’s, you’re not gonna think he’s blessing you in that moment.

All you know is you feel a rumble in your stomach and your father’s not doing what clearly to, in your estimation, looks like something he could do to meet that need. When we understand that God’s God loves us enough to disappoint us at times, then I think we’re in a place to receive God’s blessings.

And that’s so important that we, that we don’t doubt God’s love for us. When his blessings, when he doesn’t give us the blessings we think we want or when we’re, when he doesn’t, when he requires more of us. In terms of our obedience to him and our commitment to him before he, before we receive those blessings.

Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. That’s, that’s so helpful. Yeah, so helpful. All right I’m gonna see if we can get through a couple of more questions [00:42:00] before we run out of time this morning. As we talk about some of these questions. Let me see if I can frame this one and give some kind of a response. One of our followers ask us the question, what does God think about polyamorous?

Relationships. Poly meaning many loves the word poly, meaning many. Obviously we see this in our culture somewhat growing in popularity in a way that we didn’t really expect would ever come back. We see this in the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament where some of the more prominent leaders, David, Saul, others that were even considered heroes in the Old Testament days, had many.

Spouses or many wives. And what is the Bible teaching us about that? Is God really opposed to multi loves or multiple marriages? You don’t see this. I, I can’t hardly think of a single example of this in the New Testament. Maybe the, the bad governor of Judea in Jesus’ time, a guy named [00:43:00] Herod who we know.

Took his brother’s wife. We don’t know if he kept the first wife that he had, but we know that he took his brother’s wife and John the Baptist, the forerunner of Jesus spoke very directly against that. I think it’s important, as both of you have pointed out at times in your writing and in your teaching, that what we see in the Bible is not always prescriptive.

It is sometimes descriptive of what is happening. It is not telling us that that’s the way it should have been or should be for us. And that’s one of the things that we point to as indicating the honesty and authenticity of scripture is that the Bible doesn’t hide. The shortcomings of its heroes.

Even the most stellar people were still sinful, broken people, whether it’s David or Moses or any other person that you can name in the Bible they all struggled with sin and sometimes with very grievous [00:44:00] sins, such as the practice of, of many loves and of many wives, but by the time you get to the New Testament, you don’t see much of this, at least not being recorded.

And certainly not being the prescriptive recommended and God-honoring practice among the Jewish people as Jesus came and was a part of that. I also heard somebody teaching on this not long ago who said, you know what? Yes, the Bible does describe. Pal or multiple loves on a number of occasions.

Every time it does, it describes it in the negative sense that it was not a good thing for anybody that was involved in these multiple marriages. It was happening, and it happened for a lot of different reasons, particularly in the Old Testament, sometimes as a way of creating relationships among nations.

But it is never described as a God honoring thing. It is never described [00:45:00] as a positive, beneficial thing for the people that are involved in it. So it is not something that God commands, and in fact, God commands exactly the opposite, starting with the 10 Commandments where God says, do not commit adultery which could be seen as a form of many loves.

And Jesus. And then the other biblical writers are very clear about affirming that we are to be people of, if God calls us into marriage, it is to be with one person of the opposite sex in a covenant relationship until death parts, that relationship. And that that is the biblical standard of sacred sexuality that is honoring to God and pleasing to God in a consistent way.

And it is consistent from the Old Testament all through the end of the New Testament. And that that is God’s desire and ex expectation to us for those that are called into marriage. And that there is a very clear teaching in scripture that [00:46:00] some are not, some are called into a life of singleness and to living in a joyful and abundant life without the experience of marriage.

But for those that are, that they are to be in a relationship with. One man, one woman in a permanent covenant for life. And anything outside of that is sinful and is also destructive. It’s not only dishonoring to God, it’s destructive to the people that are involved in it, which is part of the reason God wants us to avoid it.

So I think that’s a pretty clear and consistent teaching in scripture. All right, guys, I’m gonna give you a chance to, to respond to a couple of more again. Lightweight softball. Shallow end question here for both of you. Jim, let me come back to you. One of our listeners asked how can Christians.

Be real advocates for equal rights for everyone without falling into the trap of thinking that racial and cultural differences don’t matter. [00:47:00] That’s another softball for you this morning. 

Dr. Jim Denison: Yeah. Thank you for that. And what, two or three minutes? You know? Yeah. The 

Dr. Mark Turman: result. Or two or three hours. Or two or three hours.

Or two or three hours if you need them three weeks. However, 

Dr. Jim Denison: this needs to work, you know? Yeah. You know, in my own thinking about all of this, I think Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Has been enormously helpful in helping to understand that there’s a tension and a balance there. He made it clear that he wanted a culture in which people were judged, and which his children were judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin.

So that there wouldn’t be this kind of racial inequality as a means of balancing racial inequality so that there wouldn’t be this kind of forced sort of accountability that is in some ways unfair to human nature. And so there’s this sense of equality on the one side and on the other being aware of differences.

The fact that we are made differently as men and women and as chronological differences between adults and children, and we want to embrace the uniqueness of that individual, but the equality of all people, we’re all created in the same image of God, but we’re all created [00:48:00] uniquely in the image of God.

And so the only way I know to balance those is to maintain the balance, is just to choose that we’re going to embrace that balance, that we’re going to affirm that balance, that we’re going to do what we can to affirm the absolute equality of all individuals. As the Declaration of Independence says that all men are created equal and endowed by the creator with an inalienable rights to life, liberty in the pursuit of happiness, but to do so in a legislative way, in a judicial way that understands our uniqueness, that honors that uniqueness, that works against discrimination, where it does exist, that works against injustice, where it does exist as a means of embracing equality.

But not in a way that in some sense advances racism to defeat racism or that advances inequality and reaction to inequality. And boy, that’s a tough thing, isn’t it? It’s a tough thing to manage in a, in a fallen society as all of our societies are. So maintaining the balance is, I think, the right way to do this.

And I think Dr. King would agree with that. 

Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. Ryan, thoughts you would add to that? How can we, how can [00:49:00] we do this without wiping away all of the distinctives that characterize our lives? 

Dr. Ryan Denison: I mean, I, I think what my dad said is crucial to as a place to start with that conversation. And I, I do think it, it highlights the, the dangers of making any of these qualities, the foundation of our identity.

One of the things we talked about in the Who Am I book that we wrote I guess it was earlier this year when that came out, is just the reason that it is so essential to make the foundation of who we are and how we see ourselves are being made in the image of God is that is the one quality that all of humanity shares.

And when we try and build our identity on something that is not held in common, then it naturally is gonna breed a, a sense of competition that I think is behind so much of the racism that we see. So much of the of the inequality that we see is just based on this idea that if. If my race is the foundation of who I am or my gender, or my wealth or my status, or if anything, but the fact that we’re made in the image of God becomes the foundation of who we are, then we’re naturally gonna be competing with [00:50:00] others and almost in an unavoidable sense.

And so there is no solution to the injustices we see in the world other than getting back to the foundation of we are all made in God’s image because that puts us all on the same, all on level footing. And it’s what enables these differences to be additive rather than subtractive. It’s what enables them to to help us see these as part of God’s intent for creation.

If God wanted us to all be the same race, he would’ve made us all the same race. He would’ve God could’ve done that. He could’ve, he. Created us in a way that this, that like the present diversity we see wouldn’t have happened and he chose not to. And I, I think that’s important to see this as a feature, not a bug of the system.

And I, I think that what enables that us to do that is the knowledge that that these, that the diversity doesn’t change our value, it doesn’t impact our value. It’s meant to add to the ways that God can use us to help people know him. God, the ways that God can use us to grow is and expand his kingdom.

They’re meant to be good things. They’re meant to be. They’re meant to [00:51:00] be great. They’re part of who we are. They just can’t be the foundation of who we are. And I think keeping that in balance is, is an important place to start. 

Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, a good word in that they, I love that idea that it’s a feature, not a bug.

It’s an, an aspect of the beauty that God is creating. Not something that takes away from the beauty of what he’s doing. Guys, thank you for the conversation today. I think it’s been really helpful. We have more questions that we’ll get to in our next episode of Ask Us Anything, but we wanna thank our audience for joining in.

We hope this has been helpful. If it has, please rate review us and share. This podcast with others who may be working through some of these questions. As I said before, if you’d like to offer us a question to respond to, you can send us an email at [email protected]. As we always like to remind you, there are other additional resources.

Articles from both Jim and Ryan and other authors, as well as other podcasts that you can connect [email protected]. We’re [00:52:00] grateful for your attention and grateful for your prayers and support as well. We’re seeking to bring resources that are biblical timely, relevant, and digitally accessible provided by our donors.

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