Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Speaker A: Welcome to the Truth Exchange podcast. This is a weekly program with doctor Jeffrey J. Ventrella where he answers questions from subscribers around the globe, answering questions about worldview, cultural apologetics and other miscellaneous items. I'm your host, Joshua Guillotine, and this is another edition of the director's bag.
All right. Olympic medals in your dicta. We had melody from Austin, Texas. She wrote to the Truth exchange team. I am fairly new to your content and have been floored by what I have come across so far. Would you take the time to define for me what paganism is? And if you're using it in a broad or narrow sense, such as all unbelievers are pagan because they are not christians, would you classify atheists, Mormons, and Jews as pagans?
[00:01:04] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a very perceptive question, and it's a very good reminder to us. Sometimes we end up in an echo chamber and use terms and not understanding our audience and the impulse it is. Let's answer that this way. Megan.
It is Megan, right? Did I get that right?
[00:01:21] Speaker A: Yes. No, no, no. I'm sorry, Melody.
[00:01:24] Speaker B: Melody, I know, was an m. I was going to say Megan, pagan. That's not right.
But oftentimes when we heard the word pagan, we think of slug hunters from the lower arboreal forest of Botswana or something, and we have this conjured notion of ancient aboriginal kinds of peoples. But from a scholarly, academic standpoint, we at truth exchange are using, based upon our founder, Peter Jones doctoral work, pagan in the sense of, it is of the earth, meaning that we see in Romans 125, the exchange of the truth for the lie. And then God gives them over because they worship the creation, that is to say, the earth, rather than the creator. So paganism really is a broad rubric that describes any endeavor to worship the created order in whatever way. And so in that sense, rather than. And we see this actually in the book of Ephesians a little bit, where Paul is talking to the church at Ephesus and says, do not behave as the Gentiles do. He's not speaking about non jewish people. He's speaking about unbelievers, no longer believe, as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. Rather, you learned Christ. And so consequently, we are to think in christian ways. So the juxtaposition is between those who are followers of Jesus and those who are not. And sometimes I think it's a good reminder to us, Melody, that when we use pagan, we may need to fill that out a little bit more because we're not using it as a slur or a slander, or saying someone's anti intellectual or stupid or less human at all. We're simply saying that the orientation of their worship impulse is toward the earth, that is to say, toward the creation rather than the creator.
[00:03:45] Speaker A: Next up, we have somebody, another anonymous poster on Twitter or X stated, in light of all the paganism in the pews, one has to wonder if we should stop focusing so much on cultural change and begin to worry about the mess within the walls of the church. I think this writer was probably writing to your most recent dicta about pagans in the pews.
[00:04:10] Speaker B: Sure, and that's an important question to raise, but I think the answer to that is one size does not fit all, because both are threats to the gospel. And so we never see in scripture anyone just to say, focus upon the redeemed or focus upon the gathered church. My burden in penning that dicta was just to point out that in some cases, we do need to focus on the pews. And it's important to recognize that because the reality is there, we can make mistakes in both ways by emphasizing one to the exclusion of the other. And so my counsel would be, is to seek the Lord and pray. Where are you particularly gifted? Where can you be effective? And then also, frankly, with your time, treasure, and talents, where can you support those who are not, who are doing what you're not able to do? And also to help you in doing what you are able to do?
[00:05:10] Speaker A: Yeah, I appreciate that the one size doesn't fit all. If I could make a comparison to just family life. My home is quite full with children and being married and then having work, and there's all kinds. Life is so complex, and there's various things that you have to deal with. You have to fix things on the house, you have to make sure your children are clothed, you have to make sure their education is going well. You have that long going list of the honeydews to do. You need to romance and seek after your wife. So there's so much complexities to life, and even life within the church is that way. Certainly. There's the preaching of the gospel, there's the administering of the sacraments. There is the edification that takes place for the saints. But there's the guarding, there's the nurturing, there's the tending to the wounded. There's dealing with church discipline matters. It's very, very complex.
And so a minister for a minister, or for the elders, or for a higher church of priests and so on, they have to manage multiple facets and you certainly don't want to let one wing of life go to despair or go to be unchecked. So culture is just as much as important as dealing with theological matters.
[00:06:33] Speaker B: Very well said. That's exactly right. We were greeted this morning as we awoke, my wife and I, to ants in the kitchen. Okay, full stop. We've got to go play with ant traps and figure out what all that is. You know, I didn't plan this. Yeah, someone else did.
[00:06:50] Speaker A: What kind of advice would you give to parents who have children who are going off to college, who are looking for a church? We actually had somebody write this in this morning. So this is an off the cuff question for you, Jeff. But they were asking that their son and daughter is going off to college this fall without their parent, them wanting to micromanage every aspect of their new college students life.
They're wanting to give good, sound advice, but they're concerned after having read the dicta about the state of the church theologically and what has come in, what kind of advice would you give to parents who are sending their kids off on where they could go to church?
[00:07:41] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a very important question.
Thank the enquirers for that. Oftentimes we, you know, we think of college in terms of, you know, money and outputs. We don't think about the spiritual formation that will occur. The question is whether it be good or not, but it will occur. So I would say a couple of practical ideas is, one, you need to pray for that, pray for those connectivities. Number two, if you have friends that in that area, or if you have friends that have children that went there, word of mouth is going to be very important. And talk to them about the options that are there. They're going to be different in a college town than they would be in, say, New York City. And so you've got to make some decisions that way and understand that there's no, we say this all the time, but we don't live in terms of it. There's no perfect church. So you want one that fairly balanced. It's not consumed with hobby horses. You want one that does proclaim the word of God. And there are certain non negotiables, and your own convictions based upon God's word are going to have to drive those non negotiables. So, for example, our family are convinced that we believe in believers baptism, but not exclusively. And so we baptized our covenant children. It just so happens that our daughter, the best fit for her in college, and she regularly goes and is plugged in is a baptist church where they faithfully preach God's word. They have good interaction and fellowship and those sorts of things that I'm not going to get all exercised about. But there are other things that I would find non negotiable. And if she said, hey, we're going to be going to this, I would say that's not a good idea. But then, of course, recognize that of a parents of an 18 or 19 or 20 year old. All you're there to do is give advice. You can't coerce them. Now, I suppose some parents may turn off the financial spigot, but then what does that tell us about the nature of the faith?
We have to be very careful about that. I'm not saying one way or the other, but I think that we need to be thinking in those categories as well.
You know, bedside Baptist Church or pillow Presbyterian are not options for the college student. They really need to be engaged in a local congregation, and they need to be engaged, I would say, in a, whatever you want to call it, fellowship group or something that does have some of their college peers with respect to it, because there's going to be commonality there, whether that's a dorm led Bible study, whether that's a recognized campus group. I would also say that there are particularized campus groups that can be very helpful to them. Razio Christi has many chapters that deals with an intellectual defense of the faith and helps students to stay strong. Are they going to a christian school or nothing? That's a big deal as well, so we want to be careful there.
I think there's other factors that bear upon this. What cities are they in, those kinds of issues? I think I alluded to that, but that can make a huge difference. Do they have a car or not?
What kind of transportation is available?
Are they in New England, where it's 50 degrees below zero, are really going to commit to walking to that sort of thing?
There's all that kind of what we might call circumstances of worship that actually come to bear with respect to that.
[00:11:35] Speaker A: All right, next up is Billy from Columbia, South Carolina. That's my backwoods. I've been involved in a ministry that helps young ladies reconsider murdering their unborn baby at an abortion clinic. Now, I know that you are you or truth exchange cannot endorse a candidate, but now it seems like christians have nowhere to go in terms of voting.
I'm just gonna interject. I think that Billy's referring to the republican party has made abortion less an issue for them.
And obviously that the democratic party is quite a become the party of death. So he goes on to say, are we to pray and cast our votes to the wind, as it were?
[00:12:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
The franchise of voting is a privilege, it is a blessing, and it is something we should not cavalierly just reject. And I don't hear him saying that he's actually burdened his conscience with respect to that. Oftentimes when it comes to candidates, we hear it framed this way. Well, I've got to vote for the lesser of two evils, which means I'm voting for evil.
I think I would refrain from doing it that way. I would rephrase it and say the issue is not the lesser of two evils. The issue is which vote produces less evil. So we understand that the law of God is a map, a mirror and a yemenite muzzle. It restrains evil, which is what we're supposed to do. And so our vote can be utilized in that way to restrain evil. So which of the positions produces less evil in aggregate. So you've got to know your word. You've got to understand the hierarchy of evils that are out there. There are not moral equivalents in some of these kinds of issues. And then I think in the United States system we need to recognize that, for example, voting for the president, you've got to consider the person, right? Are they a person of character and so on and so forth. And then you've also got to understand that that president and his team or her team will deal with personnel. They will appoint somewhere between four to five to 6000 people. Well, who do you want appointing those people? Because personnel is policy. And then you need to look at the actual policies of the person. Do those line up with God or do they not line up with God? Which line up more closely with God, which do not, which flat reject, for example, creational norms as to maleness and femaleness, as to life and non life, as to this idea that one can transmute into a different sex. All those kinds of issues. What is the nature of marriage? Is marriage fungible, flexible and I modifiable? Those are very important uses because they're creational norms. And then finally you have to look at in our system, the party platform, which platforms are most aligned because no one's perfectly aligned. And I think that becomes a very considered issue now it still may be that one would not vote in a particular race, say, let's just make it easy, the presidential race, but down ballot. There's going to be some very viable elections that matter. And I would say that in our american system that would be the Senate. The Senate controls what appointments and in particular, judicial nominations. Well, you saw when the Senate was able to hold firm and produce three largely conservative justices that led to the overruling of Roe versus Wade. The Senate matters. I said that in 2016, and I had, you know, I certainly didn't want one candidate to become president. I didn't vote for the other one. But I really went out of my way to make sure the Senate was where it was, because that's what really matters. So if a Senate, a more conservative Senate can block a more liberal president, and a more conservative Senate can affirm the selections of a more conservative president. So you have to understand the overall system, because politics in many respects, is a very pragmatic endeavor in our system. I hope that helps. But I do appreciate your conscience issue there.
But we should not just throw up our hands. That is not a christian give up those sorts of things. I don't hear you saying that, but I want to caution you from going, because it is very murky, very difficult, but you always want to make the choice that produces less evil.
[00:16:29] Speaker A: Roger from Tulsa, Oklahoma, says, tell me about the truth exchange intensives.
[00:16:35] Speaker B: Glad to do that. The truth of things, if I could say it, the truth exchange intensives are a program that we have, basically says, we come to you. What we want to be able to do is equip God's people. Truth exchange exists to inform the public, to equip God's people, and to protect the future. So at a truth exchange intensive, we come to you, whether it's your ministry, your group, or your church, and put together a custom set of presentations that are not just talking heads, but we come together in a way that analyzes and addresses the kinds of questions that your particular situation has and then equip you to address them going forward. And typically, we're looking at maybe a Friday night and half a day Saturday, or even all day Saturday. But we're eager to do that. Please contact us. And we really don't want them to be a financial burden on your church. Obviously, we can talk about that, but we really want to get close to you and show you our hearts that we really want to equip people. Don't worry about it. Some of. Some of my writing, I know, tends to be a little bit. That's pretty heavy in footnotes, and there's reasons for that. We can explain maybe later, but the reality is we will put the cookies on the bottom shelf. You tell us about the audience, and we will craft them in a way that scratches exactly where the local itch exists.
[00:18:00] Speaker A: This concludes the recording of the director's bag. For more resources from Truth exchange, please visit us online at www.truthexchange.com. you can follow us on X as well as Facebook for more updates and content related to Truth exchange. Be sure to join us next week for more questions from the director's bag. I'm your host, Joshua Guillot, and this is the Truth Exchange podcast.
