>> Peter Kreeft: Let’s admit that pain is evidence against God. The God presented in the Bible is called a hidden God. He’s not like the noonday sun. You can’t avoid the noonday sun. You don’t have to search for the noonday sun in order to find it.
But God wanted us to search for him so he hid. Pascal says “God gives you just enough light so that if you want to find Him, you can, and if you don’t want to find Him you won’t.” So finding Him doesn’t depend on your IQ. It depends on your will.
In other words, He respects your freedom. He’s like Romeo. When he proposes to Juliet he doesn’t bring along a battery of logicians to convince her that she’s a fool if she doesn’t follow the syllogisms. [laughter] So God allows evidence against Him. and He gives you evidence for Him.
As one ancient skeptic said: “If there is no God why is there so much good? And if there is a God why is there so much evil?” Well, I don’t know how the atheist would explain all the good… But he has to, if goodness is an argument for God and he believes that
The evidence, good, doesn’t lead to the conclusion, no God, he has to show how. Similarly, the believer in God has to show how the evidence against God, namely, evil, doesn’t lead to the atheist conclusion. That doesn’t mean that even if my talk is totally successful, I will have proved the existence of God.
It’s defense not offensive argument that I’m going to give you. For more information about The Veritas Forum including additional recordings and a calendar of upcoming events, please visit our website at veritas.org
Interviewer: Where’s our guest? Guess we’re ready. We’re here to interview the one that God calls, “Satan,” “the devil,” or “the evil one,” and this interview is based on what God has told us in His word about Satan. Satan, let’s begin our interview.
Satan: Well, so much for an introduction. Welcome to me, the great spirit. Interviewer: Okay, with that said… The True and Living God has told mankind that He wanted the world created for His Son and that it was His Son who made all things for His Father.
That’s when you, Satan, came to Earth to destroy His Son’s creation. Satan: Oh, yes. I was there from the beginning, and I have caused every human to disobey their Creator, and by the way, I’m very good at it. Interviewer: Satan, God has told us that you are the father of lies.
Satan: And sooner or later, they will all believe me. Interviewer: God has also said that you’ve been lying and deceiving since the beginning, starting with the first two humans He created. Satan: Oh, yes. As soon as He finsihed His creation, I was there,
And ever since, not one of His humans has escaped me. Well, maybe there was One. Interviewer: Wow, and Jesus said you brought envy, anger, and murder into the world. Satan: Perhaps I did show them how to be envious and to want what their neighbor has
And that it is acceptable to hate their neighbor, but murder? Oh no. They did that all by themselves, but maybe I did kind of plant the seed. Interviewer: Uh, maybe? Hmm. Now, God’s word tells us that there had been war between good and evil in Heaven
And that you lost and were forced out. Satan: There was a great war in Heaven. I started it, and I won. Interviewer: Satan, isn’t that just another lie? God said you were driven out of Heaven by Michael His archangel. Doesn’t that mean you lost?
Satan: Yeah, I left, but I don’t feel I lost. Interviewer: Of course, you don’t. Even here on Earth, God said you almost destroyed the human race. Satan: (Laughing) I got all of mankind on Earth to disobey Him because I knew that God would punish them for their disobedience.
But it wasn’t me, it was God Who destroyed them all by flooding the world with water. Interviewer: Now, Satan, tell the truth; not all men were destroyed as you said. Satan: Alright, so there was one man left that had not disobeyed God.
Interviewer: So, then you admit that God did save that one man and all his family from the flood. Satan: Yes, but when the flood was over and they were back on dry land, I was right there to meet them and to deceive them once again. Interviewer: Ah, yes, the great deceiver!
So, ever since the flood, you have been tempting men to sin, and because of that, every man has sinned against the Heavenly Father and His Son. Satan: Oh, yes. They–God and Christ– want all humans to live that good life, and when they die,
Their spirits will be with Them where They are, where they will live forever in a place of peace. But I tell you this; everyone wants the fun life. You know, they want what feels good to them, and they can and will enjoy all pleasures, but only for a while,
And I am here to make them think that they have that good life, but they will all end up following me because I’m their king. Interviewer: Well, you sound pretty sure of yourself, Satan. However, Jesus has provided His armor of protection for all of His followers,
And by using this armor, they will be able to withstand your temptations of sinful pleasures. Satan: (Laughing) Well, I know about this protection He provides for your souls, but when I work at it, I get the ones in His Kingdom who are weak and don’t want the armor that God provided for them.
It gives me great pleasure to take away one of His, just like I did in Heaven when I led many of God’s angels away. Interviewer: I see. Interestingly, our Heavenly Father has told us that you are the devil, an evil spirit, and all your angels and those deceived by you
Will go into everlasting punishment, to the place that God calls, “Hell,” where there will be outer darkness, where you and all those with you will be tormented forever and ever. Satan: I am the great deceiver, and I understand God and His Son tell you only the Truth,
But only a few of you will believe the truth, and even fewer of you will do what Jesus wants for you. Because of me, they will get a different story, and I work hard at keeping them from His Kingdom, you know, His Church.
Even the Bible you’re holding in your hands tells you that only a few will go to Heaven. Interviewer: But if they listen to you, they’ll be separated forever from the One True and Living God, and instead, go with you to a place of everlasting punishment. Satan: Everlasting punishment; they don’t need to know.
Interviewer: I hear you, but it was important enough for Jesus, the Son of God, to give His life as a sacrifice for mankind so that every man can choose to follow Him and receive their reward in Heaven, a place where there will be no sadness, but only everlasting peace and joy with God.
Satan: Well, let me tell you, it isn’t over yet, and I am winning because I am going to take most all of mankind that Jesus created with me. As for their punishment, as I have said, they don’t need to know. Interviewer: Well, let’s just move on.
Jesus said that His followers can speak to His Father in Heaven, and He will hear and help them in their need and forgive them when they repent of their sins. Satan: I know, but let me tell you; God will only hear those who are really the ones that belong to His Son,
And they are the only ones He’s going to have in Heaven. Just know this; every human that dies outside of Jesus’ Kingdom will be in my kingdom with me, forever. I will help them with wars, disease, and abortion, and they are really good at killing each other.
Interviewer: And with that said, the Word of God tells us that you can change yourself to appear as an angel of light. You’re teaching them that good is evil and evil is good. Satan: Yes, I could be an angel of light because it helps me to hide my lies;
Things like false worship, or “you can attend the church of your choice.” Most will not ever go to this Church because they want to worship their own way, or they want to worship their own gods and not the One True and Living God.
See, the gods that I have made for them, breed false worship. Interviewer: And you’re actually teaching them that there is no Hell or punishment, despite what the Bible teaches about it, even though you know Hell is real and that there is a great reward in Heaven for those who do God’s will.
Satan: Oh, that’s my big one. When I get them to believe there is really no Heaven or no Hell, they will then do nothing to find out the truth about God and His Son. When they believe there is no reward for how they live and obey God or believe
There is no punishment for their evil, they will only do what they want to do. Interviewer: So, Satan, your evil is destroying the good that is in man, causing them to believe there is no God, Who actually wants to save them. Satan: Well, now, if I can get them
To believe there is no God that created them, and there is no Son of God that came to this earth to save them from their sins, then I’ve got them all. For these will do nothing to find God. Interviewer: Satan, you truly are the enemy of all human spirits as the Bible says,
And you want to destroy them by tempting them to seek out false gods and false religions that you very well know the True and Living God will not accept. Satan: I have billions of people believing there is no God. For those who do believe in a god,
It is the god that they’ve invented in their hearts and minds, and most of them do not worship the True and Living God, nor honor His Son. Interviewer: God said that He will protect the ones who are in His Son’s Kingdom
And that He wants all men to be saved in Heaven for His Son, Jesus, but it will be up to each human to decide who they’ll follow, Jesus or you. And God has told us that, one day, His Son will return from Heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire
And that He will take vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the Gospel of Jesus Christ and that they will be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord. In the same everlasting fire prepared for you and your angels.
Satan: So what, you trust that book too much. Believe what you want to believe, this interview is over, but I’m always around. Interviewer: What about you? If you were to die tonight, where would your soul go; to be with God in Heaven or to be in Hell with Satan?
Maybe you don’t know. Would you like to know for sure? I invite you to watch the next 16 minute program, Man’s Purpose: How and Why We Are Here. Then, I would encourage you to watch the 53 minute program, Video Bible Study,
That will tell you all that God desires you to know about the destination of your soul.
Pop culture is filled with depictions of fallen angels, once holy beings that have succumbed to sin. But how and why did the idea of fallen angels even come about in the first place? Here’s the untold truth of fallen angels.
Fallen angels are basically angels that have given up on the good and righteous path and turned to evil, right? Well, not necessarily. It’s true that Jewish and Christian traditions believe that fallen angels were originally just as holy as any of the other angels, but fell when the most beautiful of them – Lucifer
– decided to rebel and enticed others to go with him. But in Hindu traditions, it’s a little different. They believe that the creator god, Brahma, actually made some angelic beings good and some evil from the very beginning. Why? Because it’s meant to illustrate the natural order of things, and balance in the universe.
And fallen angels don’t even exist in Islam, where traditions says that all angels are good, including the ones tasked with overseeing those whose evil souls have landed them in hell. These angels are lording over hell, yes, but they aren’t fallen, as they are still doing divine work.
There’s another explanation for Satan there, too, and it basically says he’s not an angel, he’s a jinn: a creature made from fire and free will. Put a pin in that, because there will be more about this pesky “free will” stuff later.
Historically, those who believe in fallen angels typically have believed them to be responsible for things like tempting mortals into sin. And fallen angels are tricky about it, too, sometimes masquerading as good angels as they torment and tempt. How do believers know all this?
Well, these days, most of it comes from the non-canonical Book of Enoch, which was written about 350 B.C. The text claims to be the revelations of Enoch, who was taken up to heaven and told the universe’s deepest secrets, then shown just what would happen during mankind’s ultimate judgment.
Enoch shows up in other texts as well, which claim he lived to be 365 years old, and eventually told his tales to his son, Methuselah, who lived to be an impressive 969 years old. Strangely, even though the stories of Enoch were influenced by the mythology of places
Like Babylon and, in turn, influenced Judaism and Christianity, the only place that all 100 chapters of the book survived was Ethiopia. And among those chapters was a fascinating explanation on fallen angels. One of the most widely told tales of fallen angels says it was Lucifer who rebelled against
God and brought a bunch of angels down with him, but the story told in the Book of Enoch is very, very different. It tells a story of lust. According to the Book of Enoch, long before the Great Flood, angels and humans met and mingled pretty commonly, and the inevitable happened: children.
Those sons and daughters of angels were a race of 450-foot-tall giants. The angels started teaching their giant offspring evil ways, and God not only imprisoned them, but subjected them to judgment and sent the flood to hit the reset button on his creations.
Enoch, the story says, tried to speak on behalf of the angels and their giant children, but sadly, a lot of the texts are missing. We do know that Enoch was the one God selected to act as an intermediary to the fallen angels,
Instructing him to tell them what their punishment would be for their transgressions. They were to be condemned to the ends of the earth, with an eternity of punishment to follow. Early Jewish writers considered Enoch to be a prophet, but when Christianity started to
Adopt his teachings, he largely fell out of favor with Judaism. Christian writers then took the Book of Enoch with them when they converted isolated areas of Ethiopia in the fourth and fifth centuries. Though the Book of Enoch was lost to the rest of the world, it was preserved in Ethiopia,
And was finally brought back to Europe in 1773. In the meantime, though, with the Book of Enoch to guide them, Christian scholars and writers had centuries to let their imaginations go wild, leading them to the really convoluted origin of Satan as a fallen angel. See, that’s not actually in the Bible.
But theologians turned themselves into pretzels trying to explain how Satan exists in the first place. The reasoning went like this: God created everything in the universe, and therefore, God created Satan. But the only things God creates are good things, so therefore, Satan must have been good at one point.
He also needed to have the free will to turn bad. But since he clearly wasn’t human, he must therefore have been a fallen angel. Clearly, these scholars went to the Princess Bride school of logic and reasoning. “You must have studied, and in studying you must have learned that man is mortal, so you
Would have put the poison as far from yourself as possible, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me!” Oh, and once more, there’s that free will thing. Don’t worry, it’ll come up again! According to the Book of Enoch, the first batch of fallen angels was each responsible
For teaching humanity about a specific sin. Asbeel, for example, was repsonsible for teaching humanity about sex, so thanks very much for that. Tamiel, on the other hand, taught humanity about demons and spirits. And then there’s Shernihaza, who is apparently responsible for that race of giant half-angels.
Those giants, if you remember, led to the imprisonment and punishment of the fallen, as well as the Great Flood, which was brought to cleanse Earth of their gigantic sins. Perhaps the strangest fallen angel of all, though, was Penemue, who was credited with
Giving mankind something that led to all kinds of evil: the written language. With writing came knowledge, and that, of course, is really really bad, because it might lead to…free will. The big lesson you’re apparently supposed to learn from fallen angels?
That knowledge and free will are bad and will get you killed, so the only way to remain safe is to choose ignorance and obedience. Funny how that works. Maybe the biggest diversion The Book of Enoch takes from the regular Bible is its depiction of the Garden of Eden and the fall of mankind.
Everyone knows the traditional story from the Bible: a serpent, usually associated with Satan, tempts Eve into eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil (there’s that whole knowledge is bad thing again) and then, boom, goodbye, paradise!
In the Book of Enoch, though, it’s not Satan who tempts Eve, it’s a fallen angel named Gadreel. And then this jerk also went on to give humanity weapons and armor and teach us all how to kill each other. Sounds like Gadreel has a lot to answer for! Quick, describe a fallen angel!
There are probably some scowly faces, bat-like wings, maybe even some horns or cloven hooves, right? Maybe a double chin…who knows. But it wasn’t always like that. In early Christian art, fallen angels looked pretty much the same as their holier counterparts.
One of the earliest representations of the idea that there were angels and fallen angels opposing each other in an otherworldly battle is featured in an ancient mosaic in Italy. Jesus is in the middle, and on one side is an angel in red with some sheep, representing the home team.
On the other side are the bad guys, a figure thought to be Lucifer or Satan, standing with some goats. He’s wearing blue, which is the color of the damned, plus he has goats, so we know he’s the bad guy, but otherwise he doesn’t seem all that bad.
The mosaic even suggests fallen angels kept their iconic halos, which at the time were a symbol of power, not holiness. It wasn’t until the middle ages that images of fallen angels started turning more grotesque. During that time, something weird happened: Creatures from ancient Babylonian texts, called
Lilitu, began to be associated with Adam’s non-canonical first wife, Lilith. At the same time, parallels were drawn between Satan and the ancient Canaanite deity Beelzebub, and the ancient Roman half-goat, half-man god of nature, Pan. In the 14th Century, these pop culture influences led Dante to describe Satan as lording over
The depths of hell while sporting bat wings. And that in turn influenced the 17th century author John Milton to describe fallen angels in his work Paradise Lost as the sort of grody monsters we think of today. Remember those theologians who turned themselves inside out trying to explain how Satan existed?
Well, they faced the same issue with the rest of the fallen angels, and came up with some typically convoluted explanations. Until the 12th century, “pride” was the typical answer as to why fallen angels fell. But that meant God would have had to create something with a crippling, all-powerful amount
Of pride, and that didn’t fly. So scholars came up with the idea that angels had been created with a natural love that allowed them to love God, themselves, and each other. It’s the last part that scholars in the Middle Ages believe caused the fall of the angels.
After Lucifer fell because his love was a selfish love of power, the other angels who fell did so because they loved Lucifer. God was largely an absent, distant figure, after all, and Lucifer was their friend. Rather than condemning themselves to struggle for the acceptance of an unreachable father,
Perhaps they followed their brother into exile. It’s kind of heartbreaking, when you think about it, especially once you add love to free will and knowledge as things too dangerous for mortals to contemplate. According to the Mirabilia Journal, one of the most convoluted bits of theology that
Grew up around the legend of fallen angels is the way Christian writers used it to excuse and promote the persecution of the LGBTQ community. Scholars have long debated about whether fallen angels and demons are capable of love, with many believing that instead, fallen angels are consumed with lust, a desire to use others
For their own ends. Indeed, Christian writers as far back as the apostle Paul himself warned women about the danger of attracting the attention of a lusty fallen angel. But since they didn’t write anything about fallen angels having lust for members of their
Own gender, early scholars decided that meant that there was something so fundamentally wrong about the idea that even fallen angels wouldn’t do it. This kind of self-satisfied circular logic was used as an excuse for centuries of persecution, which still continues today.
Our contemporary view of fallen angels might suggest that they kind of got off easy. After all, though they might be in hell, they aren’t exactly at the mercy of the demons there, because they…kind of are those demons, right? Well, not exactly.
According to the Jewish Virtual Library, the seven archangels (those are the leaders of the good angels who stayed loyal to God) count the punishing of the fallen angels among their heavenly duties. Each one of the archangels was in charge of particular facets of the otherworldly life:
Jeremiel, for example, keeps watch over the souls in the underworld, while Michael protects Israel, Gabriel is the overseer of Paradise, and Uriel leads the host. They’re the ones with direct access to God, and they’re also in charge of punishing the fallen. Punish how?
Take Azazel, who according to some sources was the one who taught mankind how to make weapons rather than Gadreel. According to the Watkins Dictionary of Angels, Azazel was punished by Raphael, who put him in chains, threw him in a pit full of sharp rocks in the middle of the desert, and brought
The darkness down on him while he waited for his condemnation after the final judgment. That doesn’t sound so great after all. And it’s a pretty steep price to pay for expressing love and free will! Better luck next time, fallen angels. Check out one of our newest videos right here!
Plus, even more Grunge videos about your favorite stuff are coming soon. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don’t miss a single one.
Shalom everybody and welcome to another pod for Israel I’m here with Dr Golan Broshi my name is Dr Seth Postel and we are continuing in our series of the case for messiah and Old Testament defense of the New Testament faith and today we’re actually going to be looking at a passage
That has received quite a bit of heat from the anti-missionaries Isaiah chapter 7 verse 14 and we’re going to be asking ourselves did the gospel writers distort the words of Isaiah 7 14 so good
To see you back Golan welcome to you thank you so let me just kind of set the stage I’ll introduce kind of the issues here so we actually have two very different translations of the Hebrew text of
Isaiah chapter 7 14. and so we actually have for instance a new American Standard Version therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign Behold a virgin will be with a child and bear a son and
She will call his name Emmanuel the JPS on the other hand which is a Jewish translation of the Hebrew Bible actually says look the young woman is with child and about to give birth to a son and so
For a young woman to be pregnant is not so much of a miracle right that’s normal yes so the issue is the definition of that of that girl Alma versus correct so are we you know does the original
Hebrew word actually mean virgin or not so there are two very different translations and obviously there are two very different interpretations right so if we look at the New Testament both in Matthew chapter one and in Luke chapter one it’s clear that they understand that that Mary right Miriam
Is this virgin that is supernaturally pregnant and that is a sign that Jesus fulfills this passage whereas if you look at the Jewish rabbinic interpretations they would argue they’ve got a couple of different arguments they would say that this woman is is not a virgin right it’s Isaiah’s
Wife right and that by naming the son Immanuel she does it by the power of the Holy Spirit or others would say that the young woman is a has his wife or his daughter okay so so the rabbinic approach
Would be that the word Alma is for a young young girl but not not necessarily a virgin and he doesn’t talk about a future prophecy that that would be fulfilled 700 years but something that
Is fulfilled in the next chapter or in the same chapter correct so and we’ve got a kind of a a slide that kind of kind of summarizes the issue so here’s the anti-missionary claims against the New
Testament and they’re really two I mean we could probably add some but I think the main arguments that the New Testament has Twisted or distorted Isaiah 7 14 is first the gospels mistranslated uh the word Alma the original Hebrew word for Alma is young woman is what they argue and that if Isaiah
Wanted to say that a virgin is pregnant they would have used the Hebrew word Betula so he would have used a different word the different words so the Matthew basically muddles uh the the original word secondly and this is this is another argument is that Matthew and Luke ripped Isaiah 7 14 out
Of context the sign is given to ahaz right and therefore it had to have been fulfilled in the days of ahaz and the the sign is that Samaria and Iran would be defeated so it can’t be a prophecy that’s dealing with something that happened 700 years later so let’s focus now on the
First thing yeah that’s a really important issue what what does the word Alma actually means so in this podcast I think what we’ll do obviously we’re going to address these two concerns one at a time
Okay we’re going to deal it deal with it one at a time and so the big Focus what in the world does the word Alma mean right what does it even mean did the gospel writers abuse it mistranslate it
Let’s just be honest with our sources here too I think a book that’s that came out recently that’s a very important book is by Christoph Rico and Peter J Gentry the mother of the infant
King Isaiah 7 14 and they did a lot of work uh on on the meaning of Alma and Betula and so it’s a it’s a book that’s it’s worth a read okay so but before the word Alma we would just want to make
Clear what does the word Betula actually means so in modern Hebrew if you wanted to say virgin how would you would say that’s the only word right in modern Hebrew there’s no other word to refer to a
Virgin and so the argument goes likewise in modern Hebrew so in Biblical Hebrew there’s only one one word for Virgin and it’s a bit too long and it’s not the word that Isaiah uses he uses Alma correct
So the word Betula how many times does it appear in at least 50 times 15 versions okay Exodus 22 verse 16 uh in the English verse 15 in the Hebrew I’ll give you an example if a man seduces a virgin
Who is not engaged right and lies with her he must pay a Dao referred to be his wife so it’s clear that the word here Betula means she didn’t she didn’t know a man she didn’t sleep with anybody
Yet correct correct so um there is actually one contested use of Betula and again there’s 50 over 50 times it appears there’s one contested use of the word Betula and that’s in Joel chapter 1 verse 8. so Joel 1 8 says whale Like a Virgin a Betula girded with sackcloth for the bridegroom
Of her youth so some people would argue that this word the use of the word Matula here proves that Betula can’t mean virgin because how can a a woman who’s a virgin be lamenting the bridegroom of her youth in other words obviously they were already together however however it probably means that
She’s mourning the loss of her fiance before correct correct so so we would agree right that Betula does in fact mean virgin yep okay and that’s actually what Rico and gentry also they would argue that Betula actually refers to Virgin and in the case of it actually shows that Betula
Has no respect for age so in Hebrew Betula can mean batula doesn’t have any respect for age it’s just a virgin woman either young or old correct and also in modern Hebrew exactly alrighty so now let’s this is the debated what about yeah what about the word okay the word is used
Nine times right so it’s rare it’s not as common as batula in the Bible is it the word Alma is it is the meaning always clear in the Hebrew Bible nope and it’s not always clear and even
In in modern Hebrew it’s not so clear what do you mean when you say Alma is it a young girl is he it doesn’t it’s not so clear so what’s really important to notice that it the word is
Not used a whole lot in the Hebrew Bible and there are cases where you simply cannot know what it means because it’s used for instance for titles in the Psalms it doesn’t say what they are so Psalm 46 the superscription psalm 68 verse 25 Song of Songs one three First Chronicles
15 20. we don’t know we can’t use these to determine its meaning so in other words in some some places where the word Dalma appears it doesn’t say anything about it it’s just a title it doesn’t interpret it correct okay okay but and this is really important in every clear case in
Every clear case when the word is used the word it refers to a girl who is a virgin so for instance Rebecca Rebecca in Genesis 24 43 she’s a virgin she’s a young woman who’s not yet married Exodus
2 8. it’s clear that the word there means virgin Miriam is Moses’s older sister but she’s young of course right song of song six eight these are cases where the word can be checked and in these instances we’re dealing with women who are young and virgins so where’s the debate okay where’s the
Debate obviously actually well obviously the big debate would be Isaiah 7 14. but we can’t use that we can’t use that because that would be begging the question right we can’t use our you know our premise to prove the conclusion so we’re having one more place there’s one more place though
Um that the anti-missionaries love to use as proof that al-mach does not refer to a virgin that’s in proverbs 30 verse 19. so that’s the proof text that’s the proof text that it cannot mean virgin
So what does it say there so let’s read it okay proverbs 30 verses 18 and 19 there are three things which are too wonderful for me four which I do not understand the way of an eagle in the sky
The way of a serpent on a rock the way of a ship in the middle of the sea and the way of a man with a maid okay whatever that means this is the way of an adulterous woman she eats and wipes her mouth
And says I have done no wrong and so I’ve actually heard some of the anti-missionaries actually say here this is proof what what does a man do with a maid he sleeps with her and therefore she can’t be
A a virgin but there’s a problem with that just I want you to notice number one we’re dealing with poetry and so there’s a debate as to what exactly is the point being made what’s too wonderful and
Some have actually argued that what’s amazing is that the way of an eagle in the sky means that an eagle fly through flies through the sky and there are no traces he doesn’t leave a trace what about
A serpent on a rock also a serpent on the Rock and the Sheep on the sea doesn’t leave a trace doesn’t leave a trace and so if this is talking about a man sleeping with a woman there is a trace of
Course you would be pregnant she’d be pregnant and so the point being that this is a poetic passage and it’s actually can be argued in any number of ways and so we can only rely on those passages
That are absolutely clear to make our case so this is illegitimate yeah this is not a clear it’s not a clear text it’s a debatable text correct so Golan why then do you think if we’re saying that
Alma is a virgin and Betula is a virgin doesn’t that that’s kind of foolish right we have two two words so there must be a distinction there must be a difference between those two Hebrew words right correct and so so what does Rico and gentry conclude okay so they basically conclude that
Alma in contrast to Betula relates to a specific period in a woman’s life when she is both young and a virgin and this is clear in the case of Rebecca Genesis 24 43 and in the case of Exodus
2 verse 8 with Miriam so so in other words not only that Alma is the Virgin it’s a young girl a virgin a virgin a young girl correct a young a very young woman okay correct so the question then
Becomes is there any proof to this interpretation from the text itself so what do we always say what’s the best commentary on scripture but only scripture right so the best commentary in scripture is scripture and I think the best commentary and the meaning of the word Alma is in
The book of Isaiah in Isaiah chapter 54 because he uses the word Alma in a different format the same root but in a slightly different he talks about the period of time when a woman is in
Alma the period of her youth her Alum so her the period of her youth defines what it means to be an so let’s just read the whole section and you’re reading from Isaiah 54 1-6 correct shout for Joy o
Baron one the barren one here is a metaphor for Zion right xion that that after the Exile she’s empty of children the land of Israel is empty of children and so this woman has no children shout
For Joy o Baron one you have been have borne no children Break Forth into joyful shouting and cry aloud you who have not travailed for the sons of the desolate one will be more numerous than the
Sons of than the sons of the married woman says the Lord enlarge the place of your tent stretch out the curtains of your dwellings spare not lengthen your cords and strengthen your pegs for you will spread abroad to the right and to the left and your descendants will possess
Nations and resettle the desolate cities fear not for you will not be put to shame and do not feel humiliated for you will not be described traced but you will forget the shame of your Youth and
Here’s the word this is the period of an alma this all right and the reproach of your widowhood you will remember no more for your husband is your maker whose name is the Lord of hosts
And your redeemer is the Holy One of Israel who is called the God of all the Earth for the Lord has called you like a wife Forsaken and grieved in spirit even like a wife of one’s youth when
She is rejected says your God and so what’s really important here is that this text actually provides two different reasons for a woman in the ancient world to not have children in both cases for a
Woman at that time period not to have children was a disgrace right it was a shameful it was shameful at that time period And so Isaiah actually describes two situations in which a woman would feel shame for not having children scenarios correct okay so let’s look at the first
Situation and 54 Verses 4 verse a the first part fear not for you will not be put to shame and do not feel humiliated for you will not be disgraced but you will forget the shame of your youth being
An alma exactly the word shame of your being an alma the period of your I don’t know how to say it your youngness right okay your youth yeah the parallel line provides the solution to this problem 54 verse 5 a for your husband is your maker whose name is the Lord of hosts
In other words what is the solution to an alma not having a child a husband a husband takes her and in Hebrew the word the husband actually means the the actual intimate act correct so to become
A husband means to make an unmarried woman your wife exactly now let’s look at we’ll talk about this in a minute but I want you to notice the parallel 54 4B and the reproach of your widowhood
You will remember no more in other words here’s a there are two scenarios to shame the shame of an alma without children and the shame of an al-mana a widow without children a widow what’s the solution to the al-mana to the Widow and your Redeemer go away who is the Holy One of
Israel who is called the God of all the Earth in other words in this situation God will redeem he will redeem the Widow in other words to redeem a widow is to provide children for a woman whose
Husband who whose husband died and she doesn’t have a children so let’s stop here because this is really important in other words why would a woman what what is the shame of an alma in this text it’s that she never had a husband nobody ever took her and therefore she never had a
Child so Alma has to mean according to this text a woman that never that was never married or was never had a husband correct and that’s why she doesn’t have a child let’s be clear on this this is really important if we’re saying that the best commentary on scripture is scripture what
We’re saying here is that Isaiah In this passage defines for us what an alma is and Alma is a woman who doesn’t have children because she hasn’t yet been slept with she hasn’t yet been taken by a
Husband in other words she’s she’s the Virgin she’s a young virgin correct so let’s I I think it’s worth reading Rico and gentry summary about this passage it’s very well written the two women will forget forever the shame that they had bitterly suffered and they will no longer
Remember the fact that they were without hope of having Descendants the reason for the foreseen absence of progeny for children is different for each of the two women the first one has been married but her husband died before she could conceive so she is in a State of widowhood
The State of widowhood will cease as soon as the Redeemer the goel comes on the scene as for the second one she has never had a husband and she is in a state of alumim this state of alumim right
Being an alma I’m the word right will cease once a BAL a husband takes her in marriage the conclusion to which this strict parallelism leads us is that the word Alma can only refer to a girl who has
Never been married and who has never had children once a BAL a husband arrives in the scene both her celibacy and the absence of children or progeny will cease so in other words according to these two Scholars the difference between the Virgin and Alma is that Alma is a young virgin a virgin
Could be old or young but Alma is Almar refers to a young virgin correct specifically a young woman who’s yet to been take be taken by a husband and so I think that this actually as we kind
Of conclude the first response about the meaning of the word Alma the fact that Alma has to be a woman that has not yet known a man a young woman who’s known a man makes this text all the more
Startling so let I’m going to read it and actually if we look at the Hebrew here it there’s all sorts of beautiful plays on words here so you’re reading Isaiah 7 10 to 14. correct then the Lord
Spoke to ahaz again saying sha’al ask a sign for yourself from the Lord your God make it as deep as right and so it’s interesting is the word ask and she all sound almost exactly the same and
They look almost the same they look exam exactly so ask for yourself a sign make it as deep as [ __ ] right or as high as Heaven we’re going to get to that in a minute but ahaz said I will not
Ask nor will I test the Lord then he said listen now o House of David and by the way here he’s not speaking just to he’s talking to the House of David plural plural listen now House of David
It is is it too slight a thing for you to try the patience of men that you will try the patience of my God as well therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign Behold a Alma a virgin is
Pregnant it does not say an alma will become pregnant because that would not be a sign if she is but there’s an alma who is pregnant how is it possible for an alma who has never slept
With a man who’s not been taken by a man to be pregnant and here we see the beautiful play on words is there connection between Alma and as high as Heaven the same the same words it’s the
Same words it’s the same letters just reverse same letters yes right so what is this sign that’s as high as Heaven La Mala and Alma will is pregnant is and the emphasis on is it’s not tahar it’s she
Is pregnant absolutely and so here we see that this is truly an amazing sign and so so we can conclude at least for that part that the gospel writers did not reap a part to the the the the
Translation or the meaning of the word they did not distort the meaning of Alma I think that we see from the book of Isaiah that they actually that Matthew gets the the meaning and Luke gets
The meaning correctly so we tackle the the meaning of the word El map what about the next argument what about the context did the gospels writers reap out Isaiah 7 14 from its context well so
What’s the problem with the context oh does it is it a prophecy to be fulfilled or was it fulfilled in Isaiah times yeah so the whole issue of you know the context seems to tie Emmanuel’s
Birth to the time period of the Assyrians and if that’s the case obviously this can’t be about the Messiah obviously right and so maybe I’ll read it Isaiah 7 14-20 just so that we get a sense of the
Context therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign Behold a virgin will be with child notice I use the word virgin we probably should say young virgin right young unmarried woman right will be
With child and bear son and she will call his name Emmanuel he will eat curds and honey at the time he knows enough to refuse evil and choose good for before the boy will know enough to refuse
Evil and choose good the land whose two kings you dread will be forsaken ah here we go so Emmanuel had to have been born during the time of the Assyrians Case Closed you notice it says the
Lord will bring on you and on your people and on your father’s house such days as have never come since the day that Ephraim separated from Judah the king of Assyria again Assyria in that day
That the Lord will whistle for the fly that is in the remotest part of the rivers of Egypt and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria they will all come and settle on the Steep Ravines on The
Ledges of the cliffs on all the thorn bushes and on all the watering places in that day the Lord will shave with a razor hired from the regions beyond the afraides that is with the king of
Assyria The Head and the hair of the legs and it will also remove the beard and so so Syria is coming up a lot do they have a case is it is it is it the about the time of Assyria you know
What’s really important here Golan and and this is really important is that when we approach Isaiah 7 obviously the best way to interpret any given passage is in the larger context and what’s really significant and even the rabbis will admit it that all the Messianic prophecies of Isaiah are placed
In the context of the days of Assyria let me show you what I mean by this I want you to notice Isaiah chapter 10. now some people would argue like Isaiah chapter 9 is not about the Messiah
We’ll do another podcast on that so let’s the rabbis do agree that Isaiah 11 is about the Messiah right have you checked the rabbinic commentaries even the anti-missionary say but the immediate context of Isaiah chapter 11 is Isaiah chapter 10. so let’s read it let’s read
All right woe to a Syrian I’m going to start in verse 5 of chapter 10. woe to Assyria the rod of my anger and the staff and whose hands is my indignation wait the Syria again it’s Assyria I send it against a Godless nation and commissioned it against the people of
My Fury to capture booty and to seize plunder to trample them down like mud in the streets yet it does not so intend nor does it plan so in its heart but rather it is its purpose to destroy
And to cut off many nations for it says are not my princes all Kings is not Kano like carcamesh or hamat like akpad or Samaria like Damascus as my hand is reached to the kingdoms of the idols whose
Graven images were greater than those of Jerusalem and Samaria shall I not do to Jerusalem and her images just as I’ve done to Samaria and her Idols so it will be that when the Lord has completed
All his work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem he will say I will punish the fruit of the Arrogant heart of the king of Assyria and the pomp of his haughtiness now I’m going to skip down to
Verses 33 and 34 behold the Lord the god of hosts will Lop off the bows with a terrible crash this is talking about the Judgment of the Assyrians he’s going to cut down after the Judgment when
The Assyrians come down and wipe out or or kind of they’re used as God’s Rod of judgment against the people of Israel then God’s going to cut down the bows with the terrible question in other words the
Assyrians those also who are tall and stature will be cut down and those who are lofty will be abased he will cut down the thickets of the forest with an iron ax and Lebanon will fall by the mighty
One and then right after this cutting down of everything it says in chapter 11 verse 1 then when at the Judgment of the Assyrians exactly then a shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse another Messianic prophecy the rabbis absolutely don’t argue that Isaiah chapter 11
The context if we were going to take the historical context of Isaiah’s days we would say that this prophecy had to have already been fulfilled exactly and so this whole lopping off it’s it in some ways too the the parallel story of chapter 10 is when the Assyrians come and they’re
Standing outside the Gates of Jerusalem right if you remember the commander and he’s mocking and and you know where are the gods of this nation and that nation and God intervenes in a miraculous way and rescues Hezekiah so in some ways you could say that Isaiah 11 looks like Hezekiah just like
You could say that Isaiah 9 looks like Hezekiah or Isaiah 7 looks like Hezekiah but for the fact that we’re dealing with a period of time these descriptions of this exalted king and a forever Kingdom it can’t be Hezekiah we could say that the Deeds of Hezekiah are a sign for the Messiah
All right so we have you’re saying we have another Messianic prophecies which which apparently deal in the context of Assyria but are projecting for a for a later time absolutely so not only does Isaiah tie the birth of the Messiah right to the days of Assyria
We have another classic example in in Micah chapter five in Micah chapter five which also in rabbinic interpretation it’s a Messianic inter it’s a Messianic prophecy but as for you Bethlehem afrata too little to be among the clans of Judah from you one will go forth for me to be ruler in
Israel his goings forth are from long ago from the days of Eternity therefore he will give them up until the time when she who is in labor has borne a child then the remainder of his Brethren will
Return to the sons of Israel and he will arise that is this one born in Bethlehem and Shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord and the Majesty of the name of the Lord his God and they
Will remain because at the time he will be great to the ends of the Earth this one will be our peace when the Assyrian invades our land when he tramples on on our own citadels then he will raise
Against him Seven Shepherds and eight leaders of men they will Shepherd the land of Syria yep with The Sword and the land of nimrod at its entrances and he will Deliver Us from the Assyrian when he
Attacks our land when he tramples our territory so it seems like the word Assyria means more than what we think it is it has to be it it has to be okay but another interesting phenomenon that we see are that other Messianic prophecies that the rabbis would agree are Messianic prophecies
Are actually tied to the days of Israel’s historic enemies yep numbers 24 14 and 17-19 and now behold I’m going to my people come and I will advise you what this people will do to your people in
The days to come I see him but not now I Behold Him but not near a star shall come forth from the from Jacob a scepter shall rise from Israel and shall Crush through the forehead of Moab Israel’s
Ancient enemy and tear down all the sons of sheth Edom shall be a possession see ear its enemies in other words this whole use of Israel’s past enemies in the context of future prophecies is quite normal Rabbi ever used that verse as as was fulfilled as the Messianic fulfillment on barkva
Many years later that work absolutely and there it there it is and here we see this whole notion of what is it exactly unequal weights and measures equals weights and measures so here are the here’s the inconsistencies of the anti-missionaries one one well-known anti-missionary I’m going to quote
Him Isaiah 11 is a Messianic chapter Isaiah 11 verse 1 tells us about the kind of family he the Messiah comes from in the context of Assyria correct and it’s still a Messianic prophecy so you tell me why is Isaiah 11 definitely about the Messiah even though chapter 10 the
Context is Assyria but Isaiah 7 is not about the Messiah and he’s not the only Rabbi who agrees that Isaiah 11 is the Messianic prophecy right right talgum yonatan in Isaiah 11 verse 1 a king shall come out from the son of Jesse and the Messiah from his son’s son shall bear fruit
And thy staff that is the Messiah as it is said in Isaiah 11 1 and there shall come forth a shoot out of the stock of Jesse and the last the last reference from the talmud
Ah okay let’s see here let me see I have it here Ah that’s right from Sanhedrin 93 uh B the Messiah was blessed with six virtues as it is written and the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him
The spirit of wisdom and understanding the spirit of counsel and might the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord and it is written and his Delight right from Isaiah 11 shall be the fear of
The Lord and He Shall neither judge after the sight of his eyes nor decide after the hearing of his ears so even the rabbis of the talmud so is there 11 even though the context is Assyria they saw it as a Messianic Prophet so these anti-missionaries can’t have it both ways in
Other words if you’re going to say that Isaiah 7 cannot be a Messianic prophecy because of the reference to Assyria and the days of Assyria then Isaiah 11 has to be eliminated too but by the way many of the anti-missionaries are going after the legacy of Russia and we have a quote from
Russia Isaiah 11 1 that you can read ah okay and the shoot this is what Rashi says in Isaiah 11 1 and a shoot shall spring forth from the stem of Jesse and if you say here are the consolations
For Hezekiah and his people that shall not fall into his hands now what will be the Exile that was exiled to hallan Habor is their hope lost is it not lost eventually the king Messiah shall come
And redeem them so even Rashi here understands why this ought to be Hezekiah right he it ought to be Hezekiah because of the context of chapter 10 but Hezekiah becomes a picture of something of somebody so much greater and the enemy Assyria it’s it is is depicted as
An eschatological enemies the worst of enemies can you give can you give an example anywhere where Assyria is used and it’s clearly cannot be referring to the the kingdom the historical Kingdom of Assyria anywhere in the Bible maybe even in Isaiah okay in Isaiah chapter 14 verses
22-26 right so notice this is a judgment in the Judgment sections the oracles against the Nations I will rise up against them declares the Lord of hosts I will cut off from Babylon name and survivors Offspring and posterity declares the Lord I will also make it a possession for the
Hedgehog and swamps of water and I will sweep it with the broom of Destruction declares the Lord of hosts the Lord of hosts is sworn saying surely just as I have intended so it has happened and
Just as I have planned so it will stand to break Assyria in my land and he goes on but the point is is that in the book of Isaiah the kingdom of Assyria and the kingdom of Babylon are actually
Merged so that the fall of Babylon in some ways is depicted as the fall of a series of the fall of Assyria or Babylon is an extension of Assyria and it’s it’s not the only one the only place in the
Bible is there another place in the Bible where Syria absolutely does not refer to Assyria in the days of Isaiah and that and in Ezra the one you’re going to read the nether is really clear okay so
Ezra chapter 6 verse 1 for the context and then we’ll skip to verse 22. then King Darius issued a decree and search was made in the archives where the treasures were stored in in Babylon so King Darius is from the Persian period so we’re talking about Three Kingdoms later Assyria Babylon Persia
And notice what it says when they observe the Passover in the days of this Persian king okay and they observed the Feast of unleavened bread seven days with joy for the Lord had caused them
To rejoice and it turned the heart of the king of Assyria toward them to encourage them in the work of the house of God the god of Israel so again the name of Syria doesn’t necessarily mean the actual Assyrians it’s an eschatological term to mean the enemies the the most brutal enemies of
Of of Israel and of God sure and we also have that example numbers of amalek right this this you know amalek even in the book of of Esther and the scroll of Esther you’ve got Haman who
Is this amalekite and so you you don’t have any issue here again with using the name Assyria and making the Assumption okay that proves that it had to be fulfilled in the time period of Isaiah
So in other words if Isaiah 7 is talking about the the context of Assyria it doesn’t say it doesn’t it doesn’t mean that it’s not an eschatological event yet to come correct and once again if the anti-missionaries want to insist that Isaiah 7 is eliminated because of the reference to Assyria and
The kings in those days they have to be consistent they have to be consistent so let’s throw out Isaiah chapter 11 and yet the anti-missioneries say with confidence that Isaiah 11 is also a Messianic prophecy so I think it’s time to Summer to sum up the whole the whole episode correct what
Did we find out great discussion so number one uh the word Alma although the anti-missionaries would argue that Matthew and Luke they basically abused the text and they they used you know they don’t even know Hebrew or whatever the word al-mad does in fact mean a young virgin it’s
A young unmarried woman and that translation is affirmed in Isaiah chapter 54 Verses 4 and 5 and so what we really do have is an incredible miracle that you actually have a pregnant Alma exactly and then secondly and finally the New Testament didn’t rip Isaiah 7 out of the context in fact
All of the Messianic prophecies in at least in the first part of the book of Isaiah are set in the context of the Assyrian context and this interpretation is affirmed by the way that all Jewish interpreters treat Isaiah chapter 11. by the way we see it also in the New Testament
In the Book of Revelations where Babylon is used as the word for in a future enemy correct yeah so there’s no issue there whatsoever and so we see this in Matthew and I love it in Matthew chapter 1 verses 18 through 25 we’ve got this birth narrative it’s interesting we just coming off
A season where around the world people are all around the world celebrating the birth of a of a Jewish kid a little Jewish boy right which is quite quite remarkable but you know we can have
Our readers look at this passage after but gondan what do you think say would be the take on what’s the application that we can we can make from what we’ve just done I think at least personally for me
I can absolutely trust the words of the gospels and by the way when they wrote the gospels they had they had the Bible they had the tanach the Old Testament in front of them they didn’t have any other scriptures so basically what you’re saying then is that when Christians hear their faith
Being assaulted and against the New Testament and the way that the New Testament treats the Hebrew Bible you’re saying that actually that we can trust the way they’re interpreting the Hebrew Bible and and it’s not that we don’t welcome again we’re talking about the Jewish
Debate it’s an in-house debate and we welcome the debate we just want to to point out that we can trust what the Bible says and maybe one other application and that is is that if you’re seeking if you don’t you’ve not yet figured out you’re thinking through the Hebrew Bible and whether
It does in fact talk about the Messiah and whether Jesus is the Messiah or not we simply are here to tell you that actually by carefully searching the scriptures you will know that Jesus is in fact the Messiah amen the scripture is Rock Solid and we trust the rock amen amen [Music]
If this touched your heart will you help pay it forward to reach others who need to hear this message partner with our team to bring the gospel to Israel and the Nations [Music]
– Would you take out your message notes inside your Easter bag. I want us to look at how the resurrection gives us hope. How the resurrection gives us hope. When Jesus Christ was crucified in 33 AD, there were only about 120 followers that were true to his message at that time.
They were meeting in upper room, about 120 followers. Today, 2,000 years later, 2.3 billion people in the world, billion, claim to be a follower of Christ, 2.3 billion. Now let me put that in perspective. That means one out of every three people on this planet, one out of every three would say
I am a follower of Jesus Christ. The Christian church is by far, by far, the largest organization on planet Earth. Nothing else comes close to the size of the Christian church, nothing else comes close, 2.3 billion followers of Christ. The church is bigger than China.
The church is bigger than China and Europe put together. The Christian church, followers of Christ, is bigger than China and Europe and the United States put together. Nothing is bigger on planet Earth than the church of Jesus Christ. How in the world did that happen?
Why did Christianity spread so far and so fast? How did a little band of 12 poor fishermen, the people that Jesus chose to be his first followers, how did that expand into one out of every three people on planet Earth? In a word, the resurrection. That changed everything.
When God said I’m gonna come to Earth and die for the sins of all mankind and then I’m gonna prove that I’m God by coming back to life three days later, that is the single most significant event in history, nothing comes close. It split history into AD and BC.
Every other event in history is dated by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, either before or after. Even your birthday is dated by the day, the month, and the year on how many years it’s been since the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is the single most significant event in history. Because Jesus was resurrected.
Now let me explains the difference between resurrection and resuscitation, they are not the same. People get resuscitated all the time. If you faint, we’ll resuscitate you. If you go in a coma, you can be resuscitated. People will die for 15 minutes or 20 minutes,
Or my heart stopped for a certain number of time and then they go write a book about how they went to heaven and back in 20 minutes. You can throw all those books away, those are resuscitation. Resurrection means you’ve been buried in the ground
For three days and then you come back to life. Only Jesus Christ has done that. That’s not resuscitation, folks. That’s resurrection, and that single event changed all of history. And what it did is it turned these first followers of Christ from being disconsolate and depressed and disillusioned
And in despair and defeated into courageous and contagious people filled with hope. And they began to spread the message of hope everywhere. Because when they saw Jesus had come back to life, it changed everything. What I wanna do this Easter is I want us to look at
The six reasons why followers of Jesus Christ are the most hopeful people on the planet. We have more hope than anybody else, there’s no contest. We have far more hope than anybody else in the world because of what Jesus Christ did at the resurrection. Why do we have hope?
Six reasons, if you’re writin’ these down, here’s the first one. Number one, the first reason Jesus’s resurrection gives us hope is we have been completely forgiven. We have been completely forgiven. Jesus repeatedly said over and over, I’m gonna die on the cross to pay for all your sins.
He said it over and over and over. And then he said, and then I’m gonna come back to life three days later to prove that I am who I say I am. Now, if he hadn’t done the second part, the first part doesn’t really matter. If he didn’t come back to life,
Then I have every reason to doubt that he died for my sins. The two go together. Now let me give you some good news. There on your outline, the Bible says this. Ephesians chapter one, verse seven, In Christ we are set free by the blood of his death.
And so we have forgiveness of sins because of God’s rich grace. Now we’re all imperfect, so we all carry regrets and we all carry remorse and we always wish we had done things differently, we all have sins and things that we feel bad about, guilty about.
God doesn’t want you carrying guilt through life. God doesn’t want you carrying a load of shame through life. The whole reason he died on the cross was so that you could be free from all of that guilt, all of that shame. Guilt wastes an awful lot of energy.
It fatigues you, it tires you, it robs you of peace of mind. But Jesus said, I came to die for your sins so you don’t have to die for them. I was hung on the cross so you’d quit hangin’ yourself on the cross. I don’t know if you’ve ever asked the question
Or thought about it, who really killed Jesus? Who put Jesus on the cross? Who is to blame for Jesus bein’ on the cross? Well, it wasn’t Judas, and it wasn’t Caiaphas the high priest, and it wasn’t Pilate the governor, and it wasn’t the Romans, and it wasn’t the religious leaders,
And it wasn’t even the crowd. The answer is two fold, who put Jesus on the cross, and this is may shock you, this may shock you, but the answer is two fold. The first answer is this, God did. God did, God put Jesus on the cross.
It was his plan from the very beginning. It’s why Jesus came to Earth, to die for our sins. That’s the whole reason, it was God’s plan before any of us were ever born. Here’s what the Bible says in Isaiah chapter 53, in the Bible. All of us have strayed away like sheep.
In other words, we’ve all done our own thing. We’ve all left God’s plan to follow our own. Yet the Lord laid on him, talkin’ about Jesus, the guilt and sins of us all. From prison and trial, they led him away to his death. But who among the people realized
That he was dying for their sins, that he was suffering for their punishment. Nobody realized that at the time. He had done no wrong, he had never deceived anyone, but he was buried like a criminal. He was put in a rich man’s grave. But it was God’s plan that he should suffer,
It was God’s plan. Yet, now notice the chance in tense here, when his life is made an offering for sin, he will have a multitude of children. In other words, they’ll be people who will follow him. I don’t know if you noticed in this passage the change in tense.
The first part is in past tense and then it goes to future. When his life is made in offering for sin, he will have a multitude of children. You know why that change in tense, past tense to future? Because this was written 700 years before Jesus Christ. This is a prophecy.
And Isaiah, 700 BC is telling and predicting exactly what’s gonna happen to the Messiah, the Savior, the Son of God who comes to Earth, and this happened exactly how it happened. It was part of God’s plan. But the second one may surprise you too. Who put Jesus on the cross?
We did, I did, you did. If none of us had ever sinned, Jesus wouldn’t have to die for our sins. The Bible says this in Romans chapter four. Jesus was handed over to die because of our sins, and he was raised from the dead to make us right with God.
Circle the world us. He was raised from the dead, this what Easter’s all about. He was raised from the dead to make us right with God. Who’s included in us? You, me, us, we are made right with God. So we’ve been completely forgiven. That gives me hope, I’m not facing any judgment.
I have hope because I have been completely forgiven. Number two, second reason Jesus’s resurrection gives us hope, we’re no longer afraid to die. We are no longer afraid to die. Now, I mentioned this in the Good Friday services, that when Jesus Christ got on the cross,
One of the things he did is he broke the power of death and he broke the power of the fear of death. The fear of death is a universal fear, everybody has it. I’ve traveled all around the world. One time I went 46,000 miles in 40 days, literally circled completely the Earth,
And I found the fear of death everywhere. Because it’s unknown, we don’t know. But what did Jesus do? He came back to life. Let me explain this. If Jesus Christ hadn’t resurrected from the dead, you wouldn’t even know that there’s life after death. You wouldn’t even know it. You might guess at it.
You might say, well I hope there’s life after death. But you’d have nothing to prove it, but Jesus Christ came back and said, I’ve conquered death, there is greater life after death. And that’s good news, that gives us hope. Here’s what Jesus said, John chapter 11, verse 25.
Jesus promised, I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, even though they die like everyone else, they will live again. That’s a reason for hope, that’s a reason for hope. If Jesus Christ hadn’t resurrected on Easter Sunday, we’re all helpless and all hopeless,
Death is the end, it’s over, that’s it. Now, when Jesus died, they buried him in a tomb. In those days, they didn’t bury people under the ground as much as they buried them in caves, kind of like mausoleums. And they would put a stone in front of the cave
And they would roll it away and put somebody in then roll it back. And they did this because entire families for generations would have a family tomb and there’d be a lot of people buried in the same cave. And so after Jesus died, Joseph of Arimathea volunteered his tomb
And they rolled a huge stone in front of it. But then Pilate had it sealed so it couldn’t be moved back and he posted Roman guards on either side. Now, the 12 disciples who were followers of Jesus at this time, they’re scared to death.
They run, they turned tail and they run, they’re scared. None of them believed the resurrection would happen. And so they’re hiding in fear. They’re disillusioned, they’re depressed, they’re afraid they’re gonna be executed next as the followers of Jesus. And so they’re runnin’ away and they’re hiding.
Now three days later, on Easter Sunday morning, one of the women who’s traveling with the disciples, Mary Magdalene, decides she’s gonna go to the tomb to be there. So she goes to the tomb and when she gets there, she finds the seal has been broken, the stone has been rolled away,
There’s no body there, and the grave clothes that Jesus had been wrapped in are folded and sitting there on a step in the tomb. By the way, some people say, well maybe they stole the body. If you ever steal a body, leave the clothes on him. There would be no reason to take the clothes off of a person and steal the body. If you’re gonna steal, you may as well steal it with the clothes on it. But they’re left there. And so Mary thinks the body’s been stolen. That’s the logical conclusion.
And then all the sudden she hears a voice and so she turns around and Jesus is standing there, the risen Jesus Christ. And he says to her, Mary. And when she calls out his name, as she’d heard her name called many times, she knew it was the Lord.
And he says, Jesus says, go tell all my brothers, go tell all the disciples that I’m alive and I’m comin’ to see him. So Mary runs to this house where the disciples are inside with the locked for fear. She bangs on the door, they let her in and she says,
You guys aren’t gonna believe this, Jesus is alive. And you know what these great men of faith did? They doubted her, none of ’em believed her. They said, Mary you’ve either seen a ghost, you’ve had a hallucination, you’re just in deep grief. They don’t believe her at all.
What this clip on the screens. – Peter! Peter! Everyone, the tomb is open, he’s alive, I saw him! – That’s not possible. – I saw him. – Mary, maybe it was someone else. – You think I’m mad? Peter, see the tomb for yourself. – A cup, I need a cup and some wine. – What happened? – His body. His blood. I’m the way. The truth. And the life. – No. No, this isn’t real. – Thomas… Stop doubting. And believe. – It is you. – Because you see me, you believe. Blessed are those who have not seen me, but yet have believed. – So the point is this, even the disciples, none of Jesus’s followers actually believed he’d come back to life until they became eye witnesses of it.
It wasn’t just hearsay, they said I’ve got to see him. Now, let me ask you a question. If you saw someone walkin’ down the street that you had just buried three days earlier, how would you feel about that? Maybe confused, maybe scared to death, frightened, fearful, excited.
Do you think you would ever forget that experience? Not likely. Would it change your worldview about life and death? Oh yeah. Would it give you new hope? Oh yeah. That there might be life after death? Oh yeah, absolutely. One of the things that’s difficult to explain without the resurrection is the sudden change
In the disciples because at the crucifixion, they’re all scared to death, they’re running, they’re defeated, they’re demoralized, they’re in despair, they’re disillusioned, they’re depressed. Three days later, they’re ready to take on Nero and the Roman empire. What happened? They had seen Jesus, they were eye witnesses. They knew physically something had happened.
Not just them, but a lot of other people did too. But now they’ve got courageous confidence, now they’ve got contagious hope. Why? They are eyewitnesses. Here’s what Peter wrote down in his book. When we told you about the powerful coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, we were not telling
Made-up stories that someone invented, rather we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. And not only these original 12, but Jesus came and stayed on Earth for another 40 days, walked around Jerusalem for 40 days. That’s why literally tens of thousands of people became believers in a very short time,
Because there were so many eyewitnesses. Here’s what the Bible says, Acts chapter one, verse three. For 40 days after his death, Jesus appeared to people many times in many ways that proved beyond doubt that he was alive. They saw him, and he talked with them about the kingdom of God.
Can you imagine being one of the executors who put Jesus on the cross, one of the soldiers and you saw that guy die and all the sudden he’s walkin’ down the street? And you go, he’s back. That would be strange. Paul lists just a few of the eyewitnesses.
This isn’t even an entire list. First Corinthians 15 he says, Christ died for our sins, just as the scriptures said. Then he was buried, and then he was raised from the dead on the third day. Then he says, he was seen by Peter, and then he was seen by the 12 apostles.
After that, he was seen by more than 500 of his followers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died by now. He sits on a hillside and teaches 500 people. Then he was seen by James. Later he was seen by all the apostles.
Last of all, I saw him too. This isn’t even an entire list. For 40 days he has multiple meetings with a lot of different people. Friends, this is what’s called conclusive proof. This is what’s called definitive evidence. Having 900 eyewitnesses would stand up in any court anywhere in the world.
If I were to tell you that this afternoon over at Starbucks I saw the queen of England, you might have a reason to doubt that. ‘Cause it’s just one guy sayin’ it. But if there were 900 different people who said, oh no, she’s been here for 40 days,
She’s stayin’ at the Quality Inn. And we had dinner with her the other night and somebody says, oh well, we had breakfast. Another guy goes, well we went fishing with her. And I said, oh no, well we had her over for dinner. Another said, well we heard her with 500 people at a symposium.
And you had 900 eyewitnesses right off the bat, friends, now you’ve got a problem with your doubt. ‘Cause it’s not just me sayin’ it, it’s eyewitness and after eyewitness after eyewitness for 40 days. This is why the church exploded and within years, there were 30,000 members of the church just in Jerusalem.
And then it had grown to nearly a half a million and it exploded all over the Roman empire. And what had been persecuted, within 300 years is now the official religion of the Roman empire. Why? Because of the resurrection, there were so many eyewitnesses.
Now there’s a third reason we have hope and it’s this. We now have God’s spirit in us. We now have God’s spirit inside us. His spirit of power, his holy spirit, his spirit of love. The night before Jesus went to the cross, before he dies, he says, guys, I’m gonna be leavin’,
I’m goin’ back to heaven, but I’m gonna send my spirit to be inside you. Now at the end of 40 days, Jesus ascends back up to heaven. But before he did he tells ’em, he says, don’t do anything until I send your spirit. Don’t try to do anything on your own power.
Wait for my spirit, he’s gonna give you power. And in Acts chapter one, verse eight, Jesus says this, before he goes back to heaven. When the Holy Spirit has come upon you, you will receive power and you’ll tell people everywhere about me; in Jerusalem, throughout Judea,
In Samaria, and to the ends of the Earth. And so 10 days later, after 40 days of resurrection, this is 50 days, God sends his Holy Spirit to live in every believer. I want you to watch these last words of Jesus to his disciples, watch this. – When the Holy Spirit comes to you, you’ll receive power. The power of the Holy Spirit can be with you all wherever you are. Go into the world and preach the gospel to all creation. Peace be with you. – My brothers, my sisters… we have work to do. – This is the third reason why Christianity spreads so fast after the resurrection. They had seen Jesus face to face, and then he says, I’m gonna send my spirit to be in you and he’s gonna give you power
To do things you couldn’t do on your own. So now they’ve gone from fearful to fearless. They’ve gone from hopeless to hopeful. They’ve gone from being cowards to being courageous. Let’s take on the Roman empire. Nothing is gonna stop them now. They’ve seen Jesus alive, he said what he said he is,
And now he’s saying I’m putting my spirit in you, and they’re empowered by God’s spirit. Do you know that God never intended for you to go through life just on your own power? God wants to have a personal connection with you. He wants to put his love, his power,
And his spirit inside you. That gives you a supernatural advantage. It gives you additional power that you don’t have on your own. When you don’t have that power, you say things like this. I’m at the end of my rope. I’m barely hangin’ on. I’m ready to throw in the towel.
I’m sick and tired of bein’ sick and tired. I’m runnin’ on fumes, I’m out of gas. I don’t feel like I can make it to the weekend. Why? Because you were never meant to live your life just on your own power. God wants you to be plugged into the power.
Until you’re plugged into the power, you can’t fulfill your purpose. A blender can’t fulfill its purpose unless it’s plugged into the power. A vacuum cleaner can’t fulfill its purpose unless it’s plugged into the power. You can’t fulfill your purpose unless you’re plug into God’s power. Now here’s the amazing thing.
The same power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead, split history into AD and BC, that same power is available to you on a daily basis. You go, come on, Rick. No, I’m serious, look at this next verse. Ephesians chapter, verse 19 and 20. I pray that you will begin to understand,
This is the Bible talking, how incredibly great his power is, that’s God’s power, to help those who believe him. It is the same mighty power that raised Jesus, raised Christ, from the dead. What is this power? It’s the power of God’s spirit in your life.
Now listen, you say, well what does that mean to me? If God’s spirit can raise a dead Jesus, he can raise a dead marriage. If God’s spirit can raise a dead person, he can raise a dead career. If God’s spirit, resurrection power, can raise a dead man, he can raise a dead dream.
He can do anything in your life. He can do anything in your life, it’s all easy. What is this power? It’s the power to be free from your past. It’s the power to break those memories that have been holdin’ you back. It’s the power to start over when you feel like givin’ up.
It’s the power to change things you think you could never ever change and you can’t on your own. It’s the power to overcome habits and hurts and hangups that hold you back. It’s the power to keep goin’ when you feel like givin’ up. That power is available to you, that’s resurrection power.
That gave them hope, it’s the reason we have hope today. Number four, the fourth reason we live with the most hope, why we have more hope than anybody else is because God will never stop loving us. God will never, never, never stop loving us. Jeremiah chapter 31 in the Bible,
Verse three, God says this. I have loved you with an everlasting love. Did you know that? God says, I love you with an everlasting love. How long is everlasting? Forever, it’s everlasting, duh. God has never made a person he doesn’t love. In fact, you can’t make God stop loving you.
You can try but you’ll fail because God’s love is based on who he is not who you are. God will never stop loving you, and this is the fourth reason why Christianity spreads so fast, is because they carry not just the message of hope, but they carry the message of love.
God doesn’t wait for you to love him before he starts loving you. God loved you first. In fact, the only reason you’re breathing is ’cause God made you to love you. And the most famous verse in the Bible is John 3:16 and 17, it’s that next verse.
God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that’s Jesus, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send him son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. God wants you to know his love.
God not only wants you to know his love, he wants you to feel his love. Because when you feel God’s love, it transforms you and then you know what? He expects you to pass it on to other people. I’ve seen God turn hateful men into loving men.
I’ve seen God turn bigots and racists into gentlemen and gentlewomen. Because when God’s love hits your heart, it changes you. Now you’re saying, well I know God. Let me ask you, has your life changed? Well not really. Then you don’t know God. Because somebody as big as God
Can’t come into your life and it not change you. When God’s love comes into your life, it changes the way you react to everybody else. In fact, Jesus said it like this, John 13, it’s on the screen. I’m givin’ you a new commandment; love each other.
Just as I’ve loved you, you should love each other. And your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples. Years later, John, one of the original 12 guys, would reemphasize this, and in First John chapter three he wrote this.
This is how we know who the children of God are. Anyone who doesn’t obey God’s command and doesn’t love others is not a child of God. This is the message we’ve heard from the beginning; we must love each other. That’s the kind of thing that God changes in your life.
You start even lovin’ your enemies when God comes into your life. The most amazing conversion in the Bible is the guy named Paul, he later became St. Paul. Paul was a religious terrorist. His job was to kill Christians. And he traveled all around the Palestine area killing Christians.
That was his job, he was a religious terrorist. And one day he’s goin’ to Syria, to Damascus, to kill a bunch of Christians there, and on the road to Damascus he encounters the resurrected Jesus Christ. And Jesus says to Paul, why are you persecuting me?
Paul falls to his knees and says, my Lord and my God. And the man who had been a religious terrorist becomes the apostle of love. And Paul wrote the most beautiful words on love ever written, First Corinthians 13. They are read at weddings literally every single day around the world.
Listen to Paul, the religious terrorist who became the apostle of love, listen to him talking about love. – But then Jesus came to me. Not in righteous anger or in judgment, but… in love. Without love we are nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, it does not boast.
It is not proud, it keeps no records of wrongs. It rejoices with the truth. It bares all things, it believes all things, it hopes all things, it endures all things. When everything else disappears, faith, hope, and love remain. But the greatest of these… is love.
– Now, the fifth reason why we who are followers of Jesus Christ have more hope than anybody else is this. We know the purposes that we’re created for. We know the purpose of life. I’ve traveled all around the world and I’ve discovered most people don’t have the slightest idea
What is the purpose of their life. You say, what’s the purpose of your life? I don’t know. You can have success without having significance. Significance comes from knowing your purpose. Why am I here, what on Earth am I here for? Why does my life exist? What is the purpose of my life?
Does my life have any meaning? These are the fundamental questions of life. You could fill your life with popularity and power and possessions and all pleasures and not know your purpose, and there’s still the emptiness. When you don’t know your purpose in life, when you don’t know why you’re here on Earth,
Then there’s this big hole in you and you try to fill that emptiness with a lot of other stuff; money, sex, achievement, success, travel, pleasure, sports, hobbies. Those are all good things, but they’re never gonna take the place of knowing why in the world are you here, why do you exist,
Why are you even alive, what is the purpose of your life. There are thousands of verses about the purpose of your life in this book, but if you’ve never read it, you don’t know it. You don’t know what on Earth am I here for.
And at some point, even if you’re livin’ the good life, you put your head down on the pillow at night and you go, there’s gotta be more to life than this. Because there is, you were wired by God for much, much more.
You were made for so much more than simply the good life. You’re made for the better life. I don’t have time today, on Easter Sunday, to explain to you the five purposes of your life, but let me just quickly show you just a few of the thousands of verses
About God’s purpose for creating you. Psalm 138 says this, verse eight. The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me because his love endures forever. What is that verse saying? It’s saying the reason there’s a purpose for your life is because you have a creator who loves you.
God always acts in love towards you, and because he loves you, he made you for a purpose. You were made by God and you were made for God and until you figure that out, life’s never gonna make sense. It’s just not gonna make sense. The next verse, Jeremiah 29, says this.
I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans to prosper you, not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. He’s sayin’ that Gods’s purpose for your life is a good plan. You’re not gonna run from it, it’s not a bad thing.
It’s a good thing, it has hope and purpose and future. In the next verse, Jesus says in John chapter 10, Jesus says, My purpose is to give life in all it’s fullness. You’re not really livin’ until you’re connected to God, you’re just existing. You were made for so much more
Than to get up in the morning, go to work, come home, watch TV, go to bed, party on the weekend. Jesus said, you’re not really living. I came to give you life in its fullness. The key to your fulfillment in life is knowing your purpose in life.
The next verse, Romans 8:28, the Bible says this. We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who’ve been called according to his purpose. When you’re living out the purpose you were created for, that God made you for, God says,
I’m gonna bring good even out of the bad stuff in your life. I’ll take all of it, even the dumb stuff, even the bad decisions I make, even my mistakes, even my sins, he says, I’ll figure that all out. I’ll work it all out for good in your life
Because you’re going for my purpose. That’s a great thing, that’s a great news. And then the says this, in Mark chapter eight Jesus says, If you insist on saving your life, you’re gonna lose it. In other words, are you gonna go with your plan or are you gonna go with God’s plan?
If you insist on saving your life, you’ll lose it. Only those who give away their lives for my sake and the good news will ever know what it means to really live. He’s saying, your plan is gonna lead you to frustration, you’re gonna lose. And by the way, how’s that goin’ for ya?
You’ve been goin’ on your plan for your life, how’s that workin’ out for ya? You totally fulfilled, you totally satisfied? Life’s everything you want it to be? God says, no, no, you go with my plan, then you’re gonna know how to really live. But you can’t go with your plan
And God’s plan at the same time. You gotta decide which one you’re gonna go for, your purpose in life or God’s purpose in your life. You were made for so much more. And he says, only if you give your life away will you ever know what it means to really live.
What’s he sayin’ there? You’re not ready to live til you know what’s worth dyin’ for. Do you know what you’d die for in life? If you don’t, you’re not really ready to live. After the resurrection, first tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands, then millions of people because followers of Jesus Christ.
Of course as I said, now billions today. This scared the Roman empire because millions of people were becoming followers of the resurrected Jesus Christ. There were just too many eyewitnesses and it scared her to death. So the Roman empire started what was called the great persecution.
And for the first 300 years of Christianity, it was illegal to be a Christian. And if you made the decision to say I’m gonna become a follower of Christ, you were more likely to be fed to lions in the Colosseum, or crucified yourself, or beheaded. It meant ultimately, probably certain death.
People were signing their own death warrant by saying I’m gonna become a follower of Christ. Why did they become followers? Because of the hope, all the things we’ve just covered. All but one of the original 12 guys, original disciples, every one of those guys were murdered except one, John.
Steven was stoned to death, James was beheaded, Peter was crucified upside down, Paul was in prison in Rome and then he was executed. I want you to listen to the last words of Paul. Right before he goes to execution he says, I’ve fought the good fight,
I’ve finished the race, I’ve kept the faith. This is the kind of attitude, Christians were fearless in the face of death, why? Because they knew there was more to life than just here and now, watch this. – I’ve fought a good fight. I finished the race. And I kept the faith. – What baffled the Roman empire was how unafraid Christians were to die. Paul says it like this. For me to live is Christ, and dying is even better. He says, either way I win. If I’m alive, I’m just gonna live my purpose, the purpose that God created me for.
If I die, I just get to go to heaven sooner, I can’t lose. What do you do with a guy like that? Now, today American media doesn’t report this, but about a quarter of a billion, about 250 million of those Christians live in lands where they are persecuted for their faith.
In fact, about 90,000 Christians are killed every year right now. In fact, for the last 10 years, it’s been over a million believers, Christian believers, have been killed in the last 10 years, over one million. This morning in Sri Lanka a church was bombed and over 200 people died and 450 were wounded.
There is persecution going on today. But people go, why am I a Christian? Because I know there’s more to life than just here and now. That leads me to the sixth thing of hope and it’s this, here’s the sixth reason we have the most hope.
Because we have an eternal home waiting for us. We have an eternal home waiting for us. We know, as followers of Jesus, that death is not the end, it’s just the transition to better things. In fact, you’re gonna spend far more time on that side of eternity than on this side.
Here on this planet, you get 60, 70, 80, at the most you’re gonna get 100 years on this planet. But on the other side, those who know the Lord, who’ve accepted salvation, it’s trillions and trillions and trillions and trillions of years of freedom.
The last of the 12 disciples to die was a guy named John. Actually, the Romans tried to poison him. He was the only one not martyred, the poison didn’t work. So they exiled John to a prison colony on an island called Patmos in the middle of the Mediterranean.
And he actually lived to be quite an old man on the island of Patmos, in this prison. And by himself there, in his old age, he wrote the last book of the Bible, which is called the Revelation, and it is a vision of what heaven is like. What this, on the screen.
– I am the alpha and the omega, the first and the last. The beginning and the end. – I knew it, I’ve been expecting death to come. – There will be no more death or mourning or crying… Or pain. I am making everything knew. Yes. I am coming soon. May the grace of the Lord be with all God’s people. – Amen. – What is heaven gonna be like? Well, in a word, it’s indescribable. It’s indescribable, you and I trying to understand what heaven is like would be like a mosquito trying to understand the internet. We don’t have the brain capacity. Here on planet Earth, we’re limited by three dimensions.
There are far more than three dimensions. There are dimensions we don’t even know about. But we know it’s gonna be incredible, it’s gonna be beautiful, it’s gonna be amazing. Why? Because look at the Earth. This is a broken planet, this is a fallen planet. Nothing works perfectly on this planet,
And yet there’s still a lot of beauty; sunrises and sunsets, and skis, and mountains, and trees, and these beautiful flowers, and the beaches, and all of the beauty that God created on Earth and this is an imperfect planet. Imagine what a perfect place is gonna be like
With all the sights and the sounds and the colors and the smells, where it’s absolutely perfect, and the tastes that are there. The problem with most people and heaven is because you have a TV vision of heaven, and on television and movies, they always show heaven as, first place, it’s totally white.
Now why would God, who created all the colors, make heaven so boring as all white? And then you’re walking around in fog up to about your knees and you’re wearing a white robe and you’ve got angel’s wings and you’re playing a harp. That would be hell. (audience laughing)
If that’s heaven, I don’t wanna go. I’d rather just stay here and serve, thank you. That’s not at all what heaven’s like, but the devil wants you to have this vision of heaven like it’s so boring, we’re all the same. The Bible says this about heaven, First Corinthians chapter two;
No eye has ever seen, no ear has ever heard, and no mind has ever imagined the wonderful things that God has prepared for those who love him. For those who love him. I’ll be honest with you folks, I’ve been a pastor here for four decades, I have walked tens of thousands of people
Personally through their pain and their sorrow and their suffering and their sadness and their sickness, and the more that I see the Earth with all of its abuse and the affairs and the assaults and the rapes and the violence and the racism and the prejudice and the war, all of the bad things
That we see, the evil, the terrorism, the more that I see of that in the world, in our broken planet and the more that I have friends and family that have gone ahead of me into heaven, my mother and father are there, my older brother’s there,
I have a son in heaven, the older I get, the more heaven sounds like a good deal and the more I look forward to it and the more I’m ready for it. I’m certainly not afraid to die. Now this is why the resurrection gives us hope,
These six things, why we have more hope than anybody else on the planet. First, I am completely forgiven of everything I’ve ever done wrong. I’m gonna go to bed tonight with a clear conscience knowing that even the sins that I commit tomorrow and next year and in 10 years, if I’m still here,
That they’ve already been forgiven and paid for by Jesus Christ, I am completely forgiven. Then I know that I’m not afraid to die, ’cause I’m just not afraid to die. Then I have God’s spirit inside me, who gives me the power to make changes in my life
That I could never do on my own; habits and hurts and hangups and stuff that I don’t like about myself that I never could change before. Now I have God’s spirit inside of me to give me strength to make these changes. I know that God will never stop loving me.
It doesn’t matter what happens in my dazed head, I know one thing for sure; God will never, never, never stop loving me. I know that I’m living the purpose that I was created for and I know that one day I’m going to heaven without any doubt. I don’t have any question about that,
I’m absolutely certain I’m going to heaven. You know what my prayer is for you? Is that you would have that confidence. If you were to die tonight, are you certain you’d go to heaven? You go, well, I kind of hope so. Hope isn’t enough, you need to be certain.
You need to be certain, and God wants you to be certain. I could help you develop that certainty today. I guarantee ya I can. And if you were to stand before God tonight and God says to you, why should I let you into my house?
Why should I let you into my home for eternity? Do you know the password? You say, well I tried to be a nice person. Uh, wrong answer. You can’t be good enough to get into a perfect place. Heaven’s perfect and I’m not and neither are you.
You need a savior, that’s what Jesus came to do. If Jesus didn’t need to die on the cross for you, then it was a total waste of his blood. There’s only one way. Before Jesus went back to heaven, he said to his followers, let not your heart be troubled.
In other words, don’t get discouraged. You believe in God, believe also in me. In my father’s house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. I’m going to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you,
I will come again and receive you unto myself that where I am, there you may be also. And Thomas said, Lord, we don’t know where you’re goin’ and we don’t know the way. And Jesus said, I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life.
No one comes to the father except through me. I’m betting my life that Jesus Christ, who rose from the dead, is not a liar. What are you bettin’ your life on? My prayer for you is that you will simply open your eyes, that you will today have a moment of clarity
That maybe you’ve never ever seen before. I want you to listen to this song before I finish, and during this song, I wanna challenge you to pray a simple prayer to God. Just say, God, open my eyes. Do you have enough courage to pray that prayer? Or does that even scare you?
God, open my eyes. If you’re really real, make yourself real to me. God, open my eyes, give me a moment of clarity. Help me to see the truth. – Thanks for checkin’ out this message on YouTube. My name is Jay and I’m Saddleback’s online pastor. I wanna invite you to take your next step by checking out our online community or help get you connected to a local Saddleback campus. Three things we have to offer you right now.
First, learn more about belonging to our church family by taking class 101. Second, don’t live life alone and get into community with others by joining an online small group or a local home group in your area. Third, join our Facebook group to be more engaged with our online community throughout the week.
Take your next step and learn where a local campus is near you by visiting Saddleback.com/online or email online@saddleback.com, hope to hear from you soon.
How are you saints i heard about 1200 of you i said how are you saints okay because i’ve seen about 50 of y’all getting starbucks all day so i know you’re woke uh i i i say this every tgc conference that i
Have the opportunity to teach it i i need to let you know i’m from a country called black church okay you might have heard me say that before what that means is when someone is speaking or teaching it’s not a monologue it’s a conversation okay so when when i say something that moves
You in your spirit you have the right and the authority and the permission to talk back to me you can clap you can speak in the tongue just find a translator but don’t throw don’t throw no shoes though okay you can do everything else but don’t throw your shoes
Up here unless i like them throw the other one and i’m gonna take it take it back home please turn in your bibles to genesis chapter 22. say amen when you got it sorry to get verse one it says after these things god tested abraham and said to him abraham and he
Said here i am he said take your son your only son isaac whom you love and go to the land of moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which i shall tell you
So abraham rose early in the morning saddled his donkey and took two of his young men with him and his son isaac and he cut the wood for the burnt offering and rose and went to the place of which god had told him on the third day abraham lifted up his eyes
And saw the place from afar then abraham said to his young men stay here with the donkey i and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you and abraham took the wood of
The burnt offering and laid it on isaac his son and he took in his hand the fire and the knife so they went both of them together and isaac said to his father abraham my father and he said here i am
My son he said behold the fire and the wood but where is the lamb for a burnt offering abraham said god will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering my son so they went both of
Them together when they came to the place of which god had told him abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound isaac his son and laid him on the altar on top of the wood then
Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son but the angel of the lord called to him from heaven and said abraham abraham and he said here i am he said do not lay your hand on
The boy or do anything to him for now i know that you fear god seeing you have not withheld your son your only son from me and abraham lifted up his eyes and looked and behold behind him was a ram
Caught in a thicket by his thorns horns and abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son so abraham called the name of that place the lord
Will provide as it is said to this day on the mount of the lord it shall be provided let’s pray lord i thank you for this moment thank you for your word i thank you for your spirit
I thank you for your church i thank you for our feelings and our emotions and how they are so involved in the way we read your scriptures i pray that you would do whatever it is that you want to
Do with us in this moment i pray that you would help me that you would use me that you would speak in jesus name amen this narrative opens up with the words after these things god tested
Abraham i think before we even get to the nature of the test we need to know something about the one being tested we are introduced to abram his original name in genesis 12. when out of nowhere
God calls abram an idol worshiper to leave his home leave his family leave his country and then god gives abram a promise he tells them that he will make him a great nation and that all the families of the earth shall be blessed through him we also learn some about his wife’s arrive
And how she is barren they have no children which makes god’s promise a smidge complicated because if abram is going to be a nation then abram needs a child in genesis 15 god speaks to abram again
This time he expands on his original promise he made he tells abram he’s going to give him a son but not only that god gets all built now the science guy on him and tells him to head outside
Look at the stars and that the amount of stars he sees is the amount of offspring abram will have this is a big promise because remember abram ain’t got no kids sarah’s womb is bearing barren
So abraham is like god how i know that’s going to happen this is the jhp version by the way so god backs up his promise by entering into a covenant with abel a covenant is a promise made between two parties to perform certain duties one party might promise to share their resources
Their strength and protection while the other party promises their loyalty if abram were one of us hypothetically speaking and he wanted to buy a house in 2022. he would have to get a realtor get on zillow redfin whatever’s your your thing find a house hopefully his
Credit score is in order that’s a word for some of y’all know some of y’all in the 500s god is able he’s able to do exceedingly and abundantly above all we can never ask i think his lender
Would then have to give him a decent loan to purchase the house when it’s time to close on the house he would sit down with a lawyer with a realtor they would give him a big old stack of
Papers for him to sign these papers and contracts between him and the bank he’s getting the loan from the contracts have a bunch of words but the bank is basically saying hey we promise to give
You this money you promise to give us the money back if you don’t you’re going to be homeless so when you purchase a home then you are entering into a loose kind of covenant both parties
Are making a promise to do a certain thing and if one party fails to keep that promise there’s a consequence in abram’s cultural context covenants weren’t ratified by signing a bunch of contracts they were a little bit more dramatic than that what would happen is that uh they would get
Some particular animals who would be killed sliced in half laid side by side creating a path for both parties to walk through the bodies by making a covenant this way the parties were reenacting what
Would happen to them if they didn’t do what they said they would do is them saying if i don’t keep my promise to you let me be put to death like these dead animals that i just walked through to establish his covenant with abram then god has abram get a heifer
A goat a ram two birds basically the whole meat section of the grocery store and abram cuts the animals in half except the birds because that’s odd and lays them side by side usually both parties that are ratifying the covenant would walk through the animals but this time shockingly abram
Isn’t awake for the ceremony abram goes into a deep sleep similar to the one that adam went into in genesis 3 and the bible says that a great and dreadful darkness came over him but what i don’t
Want you to do is take this as a abram laying down and taking a nap taking going to bed it’s probable as some commentators say that he is made unconscious by god’s presence and as that happens god manifests himself as a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch and god
Himself walks in between the dead animals god himself all alone walks in between their bodies walks in between their blood and by doing so god is saying that he is putting his very own nature on the line so as to make sure that this covenant is maintained remember
Abram asked god to give him evidence that god was going to do what he said he would do and god responded by saying if i don’t give you what i promised you the blood will be on my hands
Now that didn’t convince abram that god was worthy to be trusted i don’t know what else god could do moving forward you might be thinking okay now god then showed up as a pot in the torch and walked
Through some heifer blood sari is definitely going to get pregnant next week but nope abram and sarah just get old and older and older making god’s promise seem that much more impossible in genesis 17 when abram is 99 and sarai is 90 god shows up again adding even more specificity to
His promise he tells abram that sarah will have a son from her own womb whose name will be isaac in genesis 18 god shows up again and tells abram now named abraham that this time next year god will
Give him a son sarai now called sarah was being a little nosy don’t know if you remember the story she heard what the lord had said and the text says that by this time the way of women had
Ceased with sarah what does that mean it means sis ain’t got no time in the month no more okay her uterine lining ain’t shedding nothing but dust she ain’t used always she ain’t had kotex in her cabinet in decades and now god is saying it’s a women’s conference i can say that
Now god is saying she’s going to give birth to a son which is absolutely crazy so sarah laughs she like god must don’t know how old i am how in the world am i going to have a whole baby
This is one of my favorite parts of the bible the lord says to abraham because sarah had laughed when god said what he has said uh god says why does sarah laugh is anything too hard for the lord to which sarah responds like she ain’t talking to god i didn’t laugh
Then god was like no but you did let’s be clear but in all seriousness i think we all need to remember the reality of god and that there is nothing too hard for him all of us have something in our life where this truth needs to be applied
It may be the salvation of a family member the restoration of a marriage deliverance from addiction the opening of a barren womb the resources to adopt the power to forgive the ability to put to death your favorite sins whatever it is god can do it
Because this is the thing god is not like anyone you have or will ever know he has no limitations he is the one that made the heavens and the earth he is the one who has all power he is completely
Sovereign always strong and never tired but unbelief will move you to construct a god in your own image and therefore you will start to believe that either god has a weakness and cannot do the impossible or that god isn’t good and therefore he won’t do the impossible for you
Which isn’t to say though everything we ask of god he is obligated to do god is god so he has the right to move however and whenever and wherever he pleases but the challenge is this to believe that god is god which means god can answer my impossible prayers
And god can give me an impossible faith to still trust him if he doesn’t is anything too hard for the lord in genesis 22 or 21 the impossible happens it says the lord visited sarah as he had said and the lord did to sarah as he had promised and sarah conceived
And bore abraham a son in his old age at the time of which god had spoken god is not a liar so by quickly walking through genesis chapter 12 to genesis 21 we are clear on three things
God has promised to make a nation out of abraham that all families of the earth will be blessed through him and that god will do this through abraham seed isaac with that in mind now when we get to genesis 22 the first two verses should be shocking it says after these things god
Tested abraham and said to him take your son your only son isaac whom you love and offer him there as a burnt offering if you’re like me the first time i read this passage i was like now god
You promised this man that all nations of the earth will be blessed through his seed isaac you don’t make covenants you don’t walk through blood and became pots and stuff and now you’re telling him to sacrifice the son he done waited decades for not only that god’s promise
To abraham hinges on isaac being alive it’s crazy but what helps us to give us some pause is the beginning of this verse and how it begins by saying that this is a test the concept of testing
Is all throughout scripture usually it’s explicit like in exodus when god said he allowed israel to be in the wilderness for 40 years to test them or in luke 4 when it says that the holy spirit led
Jesus in the wilderness to be tested god tests for two reasons usually to reveal and to refine when a test is used to reveal something what is exposed is whatever is in your heart testing reveals
What you really believe if you really have faith if there are a few idols hiding in a corner somewhere a little pride that you didn’t know you had which is such a merciful thing for god to do because i don’t know if you know this we tend to think really highly of ourselves
The natural state of the sinner as described in romans 1 is that we think we are wise when we are full so we may have a self-conception that has nothing to do with reality but also we can get
Therapy we can take enneagram tests enneagram three wing four and b as be as self-aware as possible and even then it is impossible for you to discern everything about yourself so in god’s sovereign compassion he will allow your kids to act up so you can see how impatient you are
He’ll let your money get funny so you can discern your greed or your distrust in god’s provision tests reveal but tests also refine peter said in first peter 1 6 though now for a little while if necessary you have been grieved by various trials so that the tested
Genuineness of your faith more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire imagine who you’d be if you didn’t go through anything if your faith was never challenged if life never got hard intense if you never had any angst or confusion or anxiety about what to do or where
To go and and who to trust without the refiners fire what would the quality of your life look like i can bet that it might be easier but would it be fruitful why because tests purify your faith it is only fire that refines gold and it is only trials that will refine
You and yes i know trust me no discipline seems enjoyable at the time but it will yield the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who are trained by it circling back to genesis 22 since this narrative is fr as a test we can know that whatever god is doing with abraham it will
Reveal something to him and reveal something out of him and what greater test is there for abraham than for god to tell him to sacrifice his son the son he loves note that this is the first mention
Of the word love in the bible which is really fascinating to me that it’s set in the context of sacrifice and not self-centeredness but that’s a completely different conversation anyone one thing about this test is that if you’re familiar with abraham’s story at all
If you followed his life up until this point you know that this test actually isn’t unfamiliar do you remember when god commanded abraham in the beginning in genesis 14 what he commanded him to do he told him to leave his country leave his family leave his home and go where god wanted
Him to go abraham then is well acquainted with god telling him to sacrifice stuff that he loves since abraham was called he was repeatedly tested so even though sacrificing isaac is an extreme test god didn’t start there he has been readying abraham’s faith so as the test got more intense he
Had the stamina to endure it charles spurgeon said this he said the lord knows how to educate you up to such a point that you can endure in your years to come what you could not endure today
Just as today he may make you stand firm under a burden which ten years ago would have crushed you into dust perhaps this is the reason you don’t he read anything about abraham pushing back or asking
Questions he just he just gets up and obeys verse three abraham rose early in the morning saddled his donkey and took two of his men with him and his son isaac and they cut the wood for the burnt
Offering and arose and went to the place of which god had told him in other words abraham obeyed immediately why because he had faith the writer of hebrews says that faith is the assurance of
Things hoped for the conviction of things not seen another way to see it is that faith is an inner certainty regarding things you cannot see that engages your will leading you to act in relation to what you believe i’ll say it again because y’all taking notes faith is an inner certainty
Regarding things you cannot see that engages your will leading you to act in relation to what you believe for example you ever seen one of those team-building exercises called the trust fall it’s weird basically one person stands on a platform with their eyes clock closed and
Their arms folded looks like they’re about to die beneath them behind them are co-workers or their team standing in the line with their arms out ready to catch not the bouquet but the person the reason it’s a trust fall is that the person on the platform can’t see nobody
Can’t see the people behind them so they have to trust what they cannot see but it wouldn’t be enough for them to just say they trusted their team like yeah i trust you and stay there that’s not good enough words are easy trust is actually realized when the person chooses to fall backwards
The inner certainty gave them confidence that their team would catch them even though they couldn’t see them and that certainty engaged their will which was why they chose to fall i use this example because faith cannot be separated from behavior faith is at work in abraham because
Remember god has made him a promise and isaac is a pivotal piece of that promise is isaac dies the promise does too the irrationality of it all doesn’t seem to hinder abraham though i think any
Rational person would be like um god this test ain’t it there has to be another way tell people to steal my donkeys and burn down my tents but don’t make me sacrifice my son but the thing
Is abraham isn’t like me he doesn’t barter with god he is certain that god is going to do what he said he would do because he is god so because he believes and trusts god he behaves accordingly
It says that he woke up early in the morning cut the wood that he would sacrifice his son on and he goes to the place that god told him to go to then we finally get an idea of what’s in
Abraham’s mind in verses five and six look at it it says on the third day abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar then abraham said to his young men stay here with the donkey
I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you do you hear his faith somewhere in between god telling him to sacrifice isaac and him getting the wood he has concluded that after he has killed his son isaac is going to come back how does he know that
Who or what is he trusting to make him so certain it’s simple he believes god not merely the promise of god but the person of god because the promise is only trustworthy because the one who made the promise cannot lie so so it’s the very nature of god that abraham has
Considered and in so doing he has reckoned that because god cannot lie he is obviously going to do something to ensure that isaac ultimately doesn’t die the writer of hebrews said this by faith abraham when he was tested offered up isaac and he who had received the promises was in
The act of offering up his only son of whom it was said through isaac shall your offspring be named he considered that god was able even to raise him from the dead wait we are in genesis 22 right
Amen no yes okay so we are centuries before elijah raises a widow’s son from the dead we are we are centuries more for when jesus raised lazarus easter ain’t on abraham’s radar he don’t got a clue about pastel outfits and shiny white shoes there has yet there has yet to be an
Empty tomb for him to base his faith on so how is it then that abraham knew the very concept of resurrection was even possible i think that before abraham rose early in the morning while he thought
About what god was calling him to do and that it meant that he have to put his son to death i think i think abraham remembered his own body and how god had brought life from death before
So surely he could do it again unless you think i’m just making up stuff i want you to remind your romans 4 19 which says this he abraham did not weaken in faith when he considered his own
Body which was as good as dead or when he considered the barrenness of life or lifelessness of sarah’s womb the word dead here literally means corpse-like so then god had to resurrect their bodies in a real sense so as to give them the power to create life in the form of
Isaac abraham had the audacity to say that he and isaac would go worship and return because he remembered that god had did it before in 1953 this guy by the name of henry malaysian went in for brain surgery to treat his epilepsy during the procedure the doctor
Removed a piece of henry’s brain affected his memory especially his short-term memory and one recording a doctor doing a study this on netflix by the way i ain’t making it up a doctor doing a study on the brain in memory asked henry if he remembered what
He did yesterday henry said i don’t know the doctor asked him again what he did that morning henry said i don’t remember that either then they asked him if he knew what he’d do tomorrow to which henry responded whatever is beneficial you’d expect henry to have some kind of loose schedule
I’m gonna wake up i’m gonna get some coffee i’ma watch the news but he didn’t because henry couldn’t tell you what he would do tomorrow because he couldn’t remember what he did yesterday he answered the question the way that he did because the portion of henry’s brain that was
Removed affected henry’s ability to make new memories and since henry couldn’t remember the past he had no context for how to imagine his future without his memories henry had no expectation when abraham thought about the sacrifice that he had to make in the future
He remembered the resurrection in the past and that if god could do a miracle then then god could do a miracle now almost all of us have a hard time trusting god to do what he said
He would do in his word through his son and it might be because we have a memory problem how quickly we forget that he made the heavens and the earth that he split the sea and delivered his
People out of bondage how he brought life from a dead womb we forget how faithful he’s been to us and our family how he’s provided for us when we didn’t even ask how he’s protected us from all
Kinds of mess but when trials show up now all of a sudden is i don’t know if god is going to come through i don’t know if god is going to do this i don’t know if god is going to do that i don’t
Know if god is going to show up hasn’t god always showed up hasn’t god always been good hasn’t god always been faithful just because you change your mind every six seconds doesn’t mean that god does
He is the same god today as he was yesterday some of us don’t need to fast we need to remember and it isn’t isn’t this true that the word of god has provided for us 66 books worth
Of memories of who god is and how god works which will inform our faith so that we can obey without hesitation because abraham has faith in his god he is willing to sacrifice his only son the text says abraham took the word of the burnt offering
And laid it on his son isaac he took in his hand the fire and the knife and they went both of them together to the place that god had told him i want to be clear about something a burnt offering was a total sacrifice there were other offerings that would allow you
To sacrifice an animal and the priest could take a portion of it home to eat but a burnt offering was the one offering where the whole animal was totally consumed the process went something like this as described in leviticus 1 a male animal without blemish was taken
The offerer would lay his hand on the animal which was symbolic of the transferring of the offer ascends onto the sacrifice an act of atonement then they’d kill the animal blood would be collected and thrown on the altar then the animal would be cut into pieces and arranged on the wood
Then the animal would be burned and totally consumed and as the smoke of the animal rose towards heaven it was said to be a pleasing aroma to the lord and god told abraham to do that
To his son the son he loved if this were not a test god’s character would be questionable at best seeing that god himself said that human sacrifice was detestable in deuteronomy 12 and 18. but since it is a test sacrificing isaac or at least being willing to do it resolves god of any
Guilt and refines abraham of any potential sin this test solidifies abraham’s loyalty to god over and above love for his son it is clear that abraham has a deep affection for isaac god even acknowledges it by saying take your son your only son isaac whom you love
And this love is natural this love is good we should love our children they are good gifts from a creative god but how easy it is to take these good gifts and make them god isaac was special he was the promised child the seed through whom the whole world
Would be blessed abraham had parted ways with his son ishmael years earlier so this was the only son he had and maybe god knew abraham’s potential abraham was an idol worshiper before he was called so it wouldn’t have been out of character for him to worship something other than
God maybe god knew that the son he loved could become the lord he worshiped so to set him free from any inkling of idolatry god had to put him in a position to choose and he did he built the altar
He laid the wood he took some rope and wrapped it around his son’s body so he couldn’t move and i can only imagine the pain because it wouldn’t be a sacrifice if it didn’t hurt a sacrifice isn’t a sacrifice if it doesn’t cost you something
This body on this altar is his boy who he saw every day ate dinner with every night on the altar he probably looked at him and saw his own features in his face alongside fear but either way even with all the faith in the world sacrificing what you love is
Devastating but even then god must be worthy of it all and abraham knows that so with inner certainty engaging his will leading him to act in a way that is relative to what he believes he takes the knife
Ready to slaughter his son then he hears his name verse 11 abraham abraham and he said here i am he said do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him for now i know that you fear god seeing you have not withheld your son your only son from me
If there was any doubt who abraham’s god was this moment made it clear god had refined abraham’s heart removing any other allegiances and now he’d revealed it to for god to say i know that you fear god this anthropomorphic language god knows everything so it doesn’t
Mean that god didn’t know it it means that god is affirming that abraham’s faith is real and isn’t that what we all want the affirmation that our faith is authentic because there are those who will present themselves before jesus with a bunch of evidence for why they deserve
Glory did not prophesy in your name did not cast out demons and perform miracles on your name i think some of us in this room we would say god did not preach and expose at the passage correctly
Did not tithe didn’t i go to seminary and lead worship and go on mission trips and vote though certain ways surely that’s proof of my faith all of which looks impressive it looks like power it looks like the fruit of faith but jesus turns to these kinds of people
And calls them workers of lawlessness god forbid you have to wait till judgment to find out who you really are but the irony of it is this the very act of looking to what you’ve done for jesus
As evidence of that you know jesus might be the proof that you don’t because the truly faithful ones know that they have never done anything apart from jesus so when they stand before god they stand before him like the men and the parable of the talent saying this is what i’ve done with
What you have given me and do you know what the master will say to them he’ll say well done my good and faithful servant and that is the point of everything my friends when all the tests and all the trials and all the pain and all the angst and all the discipline
And all the suffering is over the point of it all is that the god of the glory the judge of the universe the one who cannot lie seated on the judgment say will say i know that you fear god
Verse 13 and abraham lifted up his eyes and looked and behold behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by his stars and abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son so abraham called the name of that place the lord will provide
This moment right here is an act of substitutionary atonement instead of isaac being sacrificed the ram is killed in his place with substitution one person takes the place of another bearing the penalty that we reserved for someone else if isaac was killed as a burnt offering a few things would have happened
He would have experienced the death and thus he would have been separated from his father he also would have experienced the desecration of his body as it burned in the fire and all of this would have happened at the hands of his father it is because
God provided the ram that saved isaac from death separation and destruction but there’s a problem with all of this sacrificing the burnt offering functioned as atonement abram and isaac were both sinners and the wages of sin is dead god’s justice had to be satisfied by virtue of blood
Being spilled a life being taken either their own life or somebody else’s life so the realm was not only sacrificed instead of isaac before isaac but even then the ram wasn’t good enough why because hebrew 10 4 says it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin
Meaning that this ram though it was a sacrifice it wasn’t a sufficient one if anything this ram was a shadow pointing forward to a better sacrifice one that would not be accomplished by jehovah
Providing a ram in a bush but by jehovah jireh providing his son in the flesh and who is this son i’ll tell you first of all the son was born to a woman by virtue of a miracle
His mother wasn’t barren but she was a virgin named mary who by all accounts should not have been able to get pregnant seeing as though she had not been with a man but because nothing is too hard for the lord she conceived by the power of the spirit the son grew up
Learned obedience through what he suffered being tested by the devil to turn stones into bread and to worship and thus love anything more than god but he resisted every single time to which god publicly affirmed that his son’s faith was real by saying that this
Is my beloved son with whom i am well pleased by then or but then the scenario for which the son habit was born came to pass the night before the son had prayed to his daddy prayed to his father
Said that he wanted this cup to pass from him he was in a position where he had to choose he had to choose either his will or his father’s will and he did this son was made to carry his own wood
On his own back as he walked toward the top of a mountain and while up there this son’s body was secured to the woods so that he couldn’t move the people said if you are the son of god
Come down the cross what they didn’t understand is if he came down they would have had to go up in his place not dying for them but receiving the penalty of death that belonged to us because
It’s easy to forget that since i was born a sinner and the wages of sin is death that if jesus did my sins i would have had to pay for my own that even if i sinned once that meant i deserve the judgment
That through this death i would be eternally separated from the life of the father that i would endure the the pain and the desecration of eternal destruction and that all of this would happen at the hands of god the father but for these people to tell jesus to come down the cross
They clearly didn’t realize that if he came down there would be no substitution and that the reason he stayed is because he loved them to death maybe they didn’t remember that day when abraham was asleep and god himself walked through a line of death walked through blood making it known
That he was going to keep his promise and do you know what on the cross god got blood on his hands god became man so that he could die so as to maintain a covenant relationship with his people
There he was god in the flesh being killed like an animal being slaughtered like the animals that he walked through becoming a lamb that he promised to be and there were no rams this time there was no voice to cry out from heaven to stop it there was only silence and then those
Three hours and the dreadful darkness of god’s presence was the only begotten son whose very own father was pleased to crush him jesus became sin so that you could be declared righteous jesus died so that you could have life jesus was bruised so you could be healed jesus rose
From the dead so that you could too that is the beauty of substitution jesus is the ram and the bush and jesus is the son who returned from the dead to worship with his daddy and now it is through this son jesus that all who have faith in his name are called
The sons and daughters of abraham and look at us a people from every tribe and every tongue and every nation a church that has lasted for centuries with millions of saints that have gone before
Us and who will come after us and if you just look into the crowd don’t we look like stars what god promised to abraham in genesis 12 has been realized in us the children of the promise is there anything too hard for the lord lord we thank you for this day we thank
You for your faithfulness we thank you for your nature and how you have revealed it through christ by the spirit in the scriptures we pray god that this would be more than words that this would be
More than knowledge that it would actually inform the way we do life the way we love people the way we engage on social media the way we engage with our families and our friends in our local churches
I pray that it even changes the way we pray that we would pray with power that we will pray with confidence knowing that we are praying to a good and a faithful god we love you in jesus name amen
NICHOLS: You know, you’ve heard people say—I’ve heard people say all sorts of things about who Christ is. And in our State of Theology survey, one of the statements that we put on the survey directly gets at who Jesus Christ is.
And the statement is this: “Jesus was a great teacher, but he is not God”. Now, when we put that survey to the general U.S. population, 52%—that’s the majority—agree with that statement. That’s to say that the majority of Americans espouse a heretical view of the person of Christ.
And this is a truly crucial, essential doctrine, because the person of Christ is behind the work of Christ. When we’re talking about the work of Christ, we’re talking about the gospel. And without the true gospel, people are lost, and they are without hope in this world, and they are facing eternal damnation.
There could be nothing more important than getting the doctrine of the work and person of Christ right. And as this survey shows, there’s a lot of false understanding and confusion out there about who Christ is. But what’s even more tragic about this survey is that we put that same question to evangelicals.
Now, when you hear us use that term of “evangelicals” in this survey, let me explain to you what that means. It’s not someone just simply checking a box. We actually attached at the end of the survey four questions which have historically served as sort of a grid to identify evangelicals.
There’s a question regarding biblical authority; a question regarding the necessity of evangelism; there’s a statement regarding who Christ is and His atoning death on the cross; and then, fourthly, the exclusivity of Christ, that only faith in Christ can lead to salvation.
So, people who strongly affirm all four of those, they get considered “evangelicals.” We can pull that data out separately and analyze that. And here’s the tragedy. When it comes to that statement, “Jesus was a great teacher, but he was not God,”
Thirty percent, three out of 10, almost a third of evangelicals agree with that statement. So here are folks who want to say, “Yes, we must have the death of Christ in order to be saved. It is absolutely necessary for this work of Christ.”
But then they turn around, and they’re just so confused that they affirm a heretical view of who Christ is. What are we to do with this? What’s the takeaway? All of this underscores the importance of our studying the doctrine of Christology and teaching the doctrine of Christology.
We just can’t assume that folks sitting in our churches and the Christians we know and our family will just “get it” by osmosis. We have to be intentional and programmatic about teaching this cardinal doctrine. Because if this survey tells us anything, it tells us that we’ve got a lot of work
– We don’t often so much have Catholic cultures, but we have secular cultures with Catholic patches. And so, what I mean by that is what we celebrate, what we spend our time on, what we get dressed up for, what we prioritize in our free time is often the same things as everybody else.
Right? And so, we’ll go to mass or we’ll say some prayers, but that’s kinda the thing we do over here and then for the most part, what we’re listening to, all that, it’s really pretty much the same as everybody else, because the faith hasn’t really sunk in.
And so the image I had is, like, we don’t want… We don’t want our faith in the… Yeah, we don’t want the faith to respond to and sink into our lives like chocolate chips in some cookies, right? So it’s like, oh, here, there might be a lot of chocolate chips,
But they’re sort of scattered. You want it, like… The yeast, you want it in everything, right? And it gets in there and it’s deep and it animates everything. – Thanks so much for watching this segment from the Poco A Poco Podcast. If you wanna watch a full show, head on right over here.
If you want to support the podcast, head on over to spiritjuice.org/pocoapoco. Whether it’s a one-time gift or a monthly donation, we really appreciate your support. And also, don’t forget to tell your friends about the Poco A Poco Podcast, all right? Little by little.
We don’t have time for an intro. “Midnight Mass” is a psychological horror show on Netflix from Michael Flanagan, who is the creator of the family trauma trigger fest “Haunting of Hill House” and the second gayest thing on Netflix, second only to “Barbie and the Dolphin Magic”, “The Haunting of Bly Manor.”
He’s known for creating, like, thought-provoking, humanistic stories that explore the horrors within ourselves as much as the horrors outside of us–blah blah blah. The whole series falls under the category of religious horror, which is like a sub-genre of horror, if you will.
So, religious horror relies on presenting things like motifs and symbols from real-life religions as fact within a given universe. It exploits and subverts the familiar rituals and concepts in order to scare the holy ghost straight out of your poor little bones.
This includes everything from, like, “Carrie” to “The Exorcist” to “Rosemary’s Baby”, “Midsommar”, and, of course… [Music] “God’s not dead, he’s surely alive…” “God’s Not Dead” follows Josh Wheaton, who, after refusing to do his homework, is instead forced to teach a college-level philosophy class that he and his fellow classmates are paying for.
He has no magical powers or skills and is forced to fight the sadistic, monstrous, maniacal professor to the death using only the powers of friendship and God. It has three sequels entitled “God’s Not Dead 2”, which stars Sabrina (the teenage witch)
Refusing to let her grandfather eat bacon, “God’s Not Dead 3: A Light in the Darkness”, where Reverend Dave reads the bible to scare off a bunch of construction workers, and “God’s Not Dead 4: We the People”, where they take it all the way to the top!
We’re gonna focus mostly on the first one and the third one–the first one because it’s the big one, the third one because I actually like it, and the other ones are… The fourth one’s a trip is all I’ll say.
We’re not gonna be breaking the films apart; we’re not gonna be fact-checking them (that has been done a million times). If you’re looking for an in-depth breakdown or, like, a very long explanation of everything that these movies get wrong, there are so many.
I will link some of them, including a really good series by Big Joel, in which he abbreviates “God’s Not Dead” to GND, which we will also be doing. So…thanks. Now, you might be asking yourself, “What does the Christian grassroots kickstarter love
Actually starring The Newsboys series have to do with the eight-episode, critically acclaimed miniseries, “Midnight Mass”? Apart from the obvious answer, which is tone, we have 19th-century existentialism, Russian literature, and the Christian Bible. Also, I have seen them both. That’s the main thing they have in common. That’s what got us here.
I saw one, and I saw the other, and I was like, “Hmm, I’ve got nothing else to do for six months.” “Seriously, you’ve got to get a life.” “Yeah, tell me about it.” In September of 2021, the man behind the mass, Michael Flanagan himself, said of using the
Bible as a kind of source material, that he was shocked for the first time comprehending what a really strange book it is. He said, “There are so many ideas I’d never heard before in church, and the violence of the Old Testament God is terrifying–slaughtering babies and drowning the earth.
It really struck me that I didn’t know my faith at that point.” And I am not here to give you a cliff notes of the Bible, but he’s right. He’s not NOT right. Like, Revelations, which is technically New Testament, sits somewhere between, like, season
Three of “Game of Thrones” and “Saving Private Ryan” on the gore scale, okay? The seas are turning to blood. The rain is turning to blood. The sun is scorching the earth, and there are evil demon creatures rising up from the
Bowels of the cosmos to dump, like, literal bowls of hellfire onto a decaying planet, ravaging its way through every molecule of joy and life left on its dry, cracked surface like Elon Musk running through Silicon Valley! Full disclosure: I was kicked out of CCD before I could make my confirmation.
CCD, if you don’t know — if you grow up Catholic, but you’re too poor to go to Catholic school — is what you do, like, a couple nights a week in addition to, like, Sunday School so
You can get your communion and your confirmation and, like, be holy in the eyes of the Lord, okay? It’s a requirement. I hated it. For reasons I will not disclose, I was not allowed to complete my studies and make my
Confirmation, so I don’t know if, in those last three months of eighth grade, they teach revelations, but I was never taught Revelations. I don’t know if they teach it in Catholic school; I would ask my mom, but it’s 1 AM, so…no.
Anyway, it is absolutely terrifying, which makes it perfect for filmmakers who are looking to, like, twist some religion into their horror. “Revelation.” The 1973 cult classic “The Exorcist” takes the concept of demons and devils and possession from intangible fears to absolute fact when 12-year-old Regan becomes possessed by an
Entity claiming to be the devil itself. That possession and following exorcism result in very real physical damage for the characters and the people around them within the universe of the film. Other films, like “Midsommar”, utilize religious structures and emphasize, like, the dangers
Of groupthink, blind faith, and what can happen when a simple religious belief falls into the wrong, twisted train of thought and barrels off the track. 2014 cinematic masterpiece “Left Behind”, which arguably religious horror for religious people, with its coordinating book series, is also a decent-ish example of this.
Relative unknown Nicolas Cage stars in his breakout role as a pilot who is flying a plane (as they do) when suddenly, boom, half the people in the world are gone because it’s the rapture…and he got left behind. So, then it’s just him and Chad Michael Murray in a very weird rendition of “Speed”…?
But with a plane? Because they can’t land? Because all of the TSA workers evidently were great Christians and went up to heaven, so there’s no one to, like, coordinate a landing, and the world is falling into just sheer chaos below them.
So, they’re just driving around until they run out of fuel, and, luckily, his daughter–his godless daughter–also got left behind. And she’s, like, about to but she stops and calls her dad, and she commandeers a truck and, like, moves shit around and makes a runway so they could land the plane just in time
For the whole world to catch fire. It’s a hoot. Highly recommend watching it. Anyway, so, “Midnight Mass” does something similar, creating a very unique monster element by looking at the darker, more graphic imagery of the biblical texts like Revelation and stories like the Old Testament stories and taking it at face value.
The story is set mostly between the holy days of Ash Wednesday and Easter. It’s initially following Riley as he returns to his hometown of Crockett Island. Crockett is a strongly Catholic community, very isolated, and they become increasingly violent after a new priest rolls into town and starts performing some miracles.
So, we have these two worlds: the “God’s Not Dead” universe–a high-concept fantasy world in which the American education system functions as a tool for an oppressive regime designed specifically to smoke out and crush any and all faith in Jesus Christ as the savior per
Satan’s bidding–and we have “Midnight Mass”–an introspective horror series that takes place on a remote island where Catholicism dominates the social climate and lulls individuals into a twisted sense of righteousness and moral superiority. Two pieces of media coming from wildly different perspectives, serving wildly different agendas,
Both relying heavily on religion (specifically Christianity) as not only a theme and, like, motivator behind production but as the backbone for everything from the plot to the characters to the dialogue itself, takes notes from traditional religious structures and texts and utilizes scripture and its many interpretations.
Both “Midnight Mass” and “God’s Not Dead” offer prime examples of how religious interpretation and representation exists in our current media landscape. Also, it has vampires. Nietzsche (bless you) – Part two. There are not many things that myself and the creators of the “God’s Not Dead” franchise
See eye to eye on, but, on one front, we are united. And that is that any man who likes Ayn Rand is not to be trusted under any circumstances. I do not care who you are; I do not care if you wrote your thesis on it; I don’t want to hear it.
Ayn Rand is a red flag so bright it’s on fire. A burning red flag. Several, several burning red flags, in fact, lit up and lined up, spelling out the word “run” like an SOS on a remote island. And the “Gods Not Dead” crew absolutely knew this.
They had to know this because there is absolutely no other reason for Ayn Rand to be on this board unless they were trying to signal to the audience: “This guy = bad fucking dude.” This board solely exists to clue viewers into the kind of venomous thinkers that Professor
Rattlesnake is going to use to poison the minds of all the hopeful possible Christians out there if discount Logan Lerman does not step up his game. “Friedrich Nietzsche, Ayn Rand, George Santayana, Democritus…” Stakes. We have stakes in this film. Professor Radisson, resident bad dude, waltzes into class, declares God is dead, and then
Requires all of his students sign a paper agreeing to that fact and/or fail the class. Which is bonkers, but we’re gonna let it slide because “Midnight Mass” has vampires. Honestly, that’s gonna give “God’s Not Dead”, like, a lot of leeway just for the record.
So, in this nightmarish fantasy universe where the education system is the villain and philosophy classes look like this… “I would like to bypass this senseless debate altogether and jump to the conclusion whi–jump to the conclusion whi–jump to the conclusion whi–jump to–jump–jump–jump–jump to the
Conclusion which every sophomore is already aware of: there is no god.” The infamous God’s-not-dead mantra that 19-year-old liberal arts students everywhere have tattooed on their biceps, courtesy of the late 19th-century German philosopher and existentialist Friedrich Nietzsche, rears its ugly head. And we’re not getting on me about my pronunciation of Nietzsche.
I’m gonna try, but I went to the same high school as all of you; all I ever heard was “Nietzsch-ee”. So…bleh. He’s not here to correct me, and he has yet to pay for his crimes, so…”Nietzsch-ee.” Nietzsche was born in Röcken, Germany in 1844.
He was the son of a Lutheran pastor, and he was a super influential thinker, mostly known today for being the reason that that film major you dated sophomore year of university turned into a douchebag for a whole semester.
Also, the nazis got real hype on his work, which, he was mostly senile by that point, but it wasn’t exactly a stretch. It doesn’t take a genius to make the leap from “uberman” to “eugenics”, okay? It’s…it’s not even a leap. It’s not even a step.
It’s an elevator–a very, very packed elevator where everyone walks out smelling like shit. Anyway, Nietzsche–some of Nietzsche’s other notable contributions include the idea that man must accept itself as the part of the material world, physical world, classism, and also that time that he murdered God with gay science.
“The Gay Science” was published in 1882 and is severely lacking in homosexual overtones, if I do say so myself. The Homosexual Chemistry gets the most credit for popularizing Nietzsche’s murder of God because of this, like, sick ass quote, right? It’s good. It’s a good phrase. It’s a good one.
If you really want to know more about, like, where the ideas come from and, like, why that’s an important statement–because that was not, like, the thesis, right? “God is dead” is not, like, the end; that’s not his big proclamation–I would say you should read “Thus Spake Zarathustra” or “Zarath-uh-stra”? I don’t know.
It’s basically where this man, like, achieves enlightenment and, like, comes out of a cave, and, but kind of like Cassandra, sort of struggles to get anyone to believe him. He goes off for a couple of chapters about how humanity is just, like, a bridge between
Animals and the uberman/mensch/overman/superman–it’s a translation thing–but also, like… Then it goes into a whole, like, “faith is for the weak; we should just tough it out and be smarter like me; climb the metaphorical mountain, and you can be freed from the pain of regular life and prejudices and moral values”.
Then, he shits on Christianity for a little while, goes back into the cave, and starts over. Don’t fight me on that. He was all about being the “higher people”. He compares himself to Beethoven or something at one point! Nietzsche was kind of a dick. I shouldn’t put that in there.
I can’t just call Nietzsche a dick. Eh…he’s kind of a dick. And he’s writing all of this during the Enlightenment period, so he’s got–like, all these people are really already questioning the very Christian foundations that many societies had been built on. Science is advancing. It’s the tail end of the Industrial Revolution, right?
Things have changed; the world is different, and Nietzsche believes that God does not serve us anymore. The belief in God no longer serves us. So, when Jocelyn Wheatboy’s philosophy professor comes into class that day and says that it’s a metaphor, he’s mostly right.
Nietzsche never thought God existed in the first place–which is confusing because to say God is dead clearly implies that God must have once been alive, but Nietzsche did not think that God was alive. Nietzsche thought there was no God ever; he was not into it.
And there’s this misconception, I think, with the “God’s Not Dead” films that, because they are bad, they do not understand what they are talking about. Because they are not well made and they are unrealistic to a secular audience, that they must be using concepts and terminology that they just–they just don’t get.
I do not think that that’s the case–not only because I think that that’s a weak argument, but also because Professor Ratballs does not come in and require his students to write down the phrase “Nietzsche was right.” He doesn’t ask them to write down, like, “All hail Nietzsche.”
He asks them to write down “God is dead” because Nietzsche wrote down that phrase and made that statement famous. And because that is the quote that the film is referring to, people assume that that is the version of the phrase in which the film would like to engage. Maybe? Sure? We don’t know.
If you’ve learned anything from the two videos that I have made, you should know that we’re not here to take things at face value. We are here to always go one step too far–to go down the road less traveled by until we hit a cliff.
Wherever you–when you think you’re at the end, just keep going a little bit further. I want to give these films a fair shake, so we have to read beyond the quote itself and start looking at the concept of God being dead because that, my friends, is not a Nietzsche original.
Nietzsche’s use of it in The Queer Biology is most likely a reference to the philosopher Heine, who, in his work, “Religion and Philosophy in Deutschland”, cites Immanuel Kant’s first critique as “a sacrament brought to a dying God.” Okay! Sorry!
We’ll talk more about Kant in the ethics section (because there will be an ethics section), but, for now, all you need to know is that Kant basically was the guy who was like, “We can’t know anything about God. Real (question mark) (question mark) (question mark)?” and sort of just pushed that question
Out of, like, academic philosophical thought and into religious theological thought. He was just like, “Not my circus, not my monkey,” you know what I mean? Heine dug this and called Kant the “great destroyer in the realm of thought” and, his
Work (the first critique), as “the sword with which deism was slain in Germany.” What am I doing writing? Who do I think I am? “Who do you say I am?” So, then, Nietzsche comes along, fast-forward, with his, like, metaphysics of becoming and
His new enlightenment mindset, and he was like, “Yeah, God was dying; now he’s dead. We have killed him; let’s move on.” But saying that “God’s Not Dead” wants to bring Christianity back into the godless, communist academic hellscape that the world has become is also not a complicated read. It’s the plot.
Which means that we need to go even further back to the beginning because the idea of God dying and God being killed does not come from atheists; it doesn’t come from philosophers; it doesn’t come from scientists. It comes from Christians. Part three – The Christian Redemption Cycle…
…adds an extra six minutes to your laundry cycle, costs 50 cents extra, BUT it is the only one that will get those blood stains out. For those of you unfamiliar with the origin story of Christianity… *I am not here to give you a cliff notes of the bible* …here’s the cliff notes.
Jesus: son of God, but also kind of God (it’s confusing, roll with it); sent down to earth; has some hot takes; gets killed for those takes; is dead for, like, three days; rises from the grave; pops back to earth; forgives humanity for all of its debauchery.
That is the, like, literal-ish situation as it was recorded in the best, most detailed account of JC’s life: the New Testament, which is obviously biased. That’s a hot take on its own, right? [Eerie music] If you are looking for a more historically accurate understanding, “Let’s Talk Religion”
Has a really great video as part of a collaboration series about the likelihood of Jesus being, like, a real human dude. For our purposes, though, we are discussing the crucifixion itself with the presumption that it was at least a physical event that happened to a physical person, and it served
Then as an allegory for the beliefs of his followers and became the kind of bedrock story for what we now call Christianity and it’s 7.5 billion denominations. Because, whether or not we know that it happened, the idea that it happened–the story of it–is
The one thing that they all kind of-sort of-sometimes-maybe agree on: son of God dies for our sins; we know this because he comes back, and he tells us. And he has a really important theme of sacrifice; evangelizing; spreading the truth against
The grain; sitting in the darkness with nothing but your faith beside you; the ability to balance the scales of sin in the eyes of God. All of those elements and storytelling things sort of bubble out from this event. The death of Jesus Christ becomes both a physical and a psychological event.
The crucifixion of a dude who is going around with different ideas on God has a really profound effect on the psyche of the individuals who really believed that he was the S.O.G. They live on for three days thinking that God is dead. And, like, what the fuck does that mean?
They don’t know if he’s gonna rise again; they have no idea! They’re in the olden times still, like, with that Old Testament God who is super not kind all the time. The relationship with God is so different in that time; pre-C.E. humans were evidently rather disappointing in the eyes of the Lord.
At least we had the power to be disappointing, right? To disobey commands and ideas–intentionally or not. We were less like a game of Sims and more like a studio apartment full of, like, a shit-ton of puppies and kittens–seven billion puppies and kittens just running around, shitting
On the carpet, peeing on the plants, knocking things over, and occasionally killing each other. In pre-Jesus world, it was completely possible to be abandoned by God, not just on an individual level, but all of us. To be punished by God for your behavior, right?
With things like lightning strikes and famines and pimples. So, it makes sense that, while most people were kind of like, “Okay, Dave, whatever,” when Jesus said that he was the son of God, the people that did believe him were pretty
Fucking concerned when a bunch of their fellow puppies murdered him on a goddamn cross. Because, sure, he said “son,” but he didn’t mean that God got married, settled down, and Jesus was, like, off at college on Earth.
God, like, took a part of himself, put it into this woman, made a baby, and she came out, and that’s what we got. It’s a weird–it’s very weird. It’s, yeah, like, we’re not talking about immaculate conception because that is… Jesus wasn’t the immaculate conception, by the way. It was mary.
Anyway, that’s a pretty terrifying time to exist. It’s not a fun time to be a follower of Jesus. They weren’t quite called Christians at the time. So, when we talk about modern-day Christians living perpetually on Holy Saturday, we’re talking about them living psychologically in that space between Jesus’s death on Good
Friday and his resurrection on Sunday–i.e. Saturday [Applause]–constantly waiting for the second coming; for Jesus to return and validate all of their good work and forgive all of the sins that other people–I mean “they”–have been doing. Only, Jesus cannot rise again if he is not killed in the first place, and he didn’t exactly
Die a second time on that Sunday. So, what do you do, right? What–what do you do then, right? You go back to the beginning: eternal recurrence. Start spreading the word. Only, you can’t spread the word to people who already believe, so you need to find people
Who don’t believe–people for whom (wait for it)… God is dead. If I had a mic, I’d drop it. First episode of “Midnight Mass” includes one of my three favorite scenes in the whole series. It’s so good I googled “mass times” after it.
It takes place after mass, right outside of St. Patrick’s church while everyone is introducing themselves to their hot new priest, Father Paul, because he just gave this, like, sick ass sermon. “The crockpot…” So, Riley had been dragged to church by his family but did not go up to take communion.
Which is accurate; you’re really, like, not supposed to take communion if you haven’t been to confession and you’re not, like, practicing. It’s just–it’s rude. When I go to church, I don’t take communion. And you do get some looks. People notice; it’s very obvious when you don’t go.
So, Father Paul notices this, and he’s like, “Yo, saw you didn’t take communion,” and, instead of, like, shitting on Paul’s god for five minutes, Riley just says that he’s just not, like, really in a state of grace at the moment.
He’s trying to be nice about it; he’s trying to, like, let him off the hook. He’s like, “I’m just not feeling it.” And Father Paul looks at him and just says… “Uh, turns out I’m not much use to people who are in a state of grace.”
Such a perfect moment, and it’s right off the bat in episode one. It’s one of the reasons that this show immediately comes off as palatable to religious-wary folks and non-religious folks and probably even religious and probably even Catholics.
I have not actually asked any Catholics, but I cannot imagine that they’re that mad about it. It’s not that bad! And, like, I’m half Catholic; we never shy away from drama. We put children in, like, wedding garb and princess dresses to eat some crackers for the first time.
There’s a reason that they still wear those fucking robes and drink out of these, like, massive goblets, right? Like, it’s not necessary. We just like it. Catholics get a bad rep for being boring because, like, it’s true, but, also, we all like a little bit of sparkle.
Don’t let any of them tell you they don’t. So, this scene exemplifies the pulsing undertone of the capital-C Christian redemption arc. Riley had been this devout altar boy, like, practicing Catholic (he prays when we first-first-first meet him) who has been in a terrible accident, experienced trauma, and has been left with
Just, like, grief and doubt and self-hatred; he’s lost his way; he’s living alone on Holy Saturday; feels abandoned by God. He’s in this place where God is dead, surrounded by believers–like, concerned loved ones pressuring him to do things like go to church to make communion, to find faith because they think
It will fix him or because they think that it will look better from the outside if he does all of these things. Either way, all of these people just trying to shove him into the arms of a dead God as
Soon as possible, and it’s Father Paul, the priest, who just sort of shrugs, and is like, that’s kind of the point. He’s like, “Yeah, it’s fine.” He’s like, “You don’t have–like, that’s why we’re here.” He’s like, “That’s the whole damn reason.”
This stranger–on his first day at a new church, being love-bombed by, like, a desperate people trying to prove their devotion like precocious middle children who don’t feel seen by their parents–gives Riley an olive branch that we didn’t know we wanted him to have. And, suddenly, things change; because, suddenly, we trust Paul.
We maybe kind of want Riley to take this journey back to God, right? Because we want all of our protagonists to be happy and achieve some kind of security and safety and overcome their traumas and their shame.
And, at this moment, like, that’s being presented to us in the form of Catholicism, of Christianity, as this pastor coming into town like Jesus himself trying to make things better. In contrast to that setup, protagonists in “God’s Not Dead” films are rarely non-believers.
And they are technically ensemble casts, but the central characters in these films are typically not seeking any kind of salvation–religious or not. Usually, they are the ones doling it out. Josh Weedleboro is not presented as having lost faith and looking to re-enter, like, communion with God.
In fact, he is presented and remains one of the most steadfast, firm-believing Christians in the whole series throughout all of the films. He’s in, like, all of them, and he just never loses that. “Do you have a Bible?” “Yeah.”
Time and time again, he insists that he has to do this for God, sacrificed be damned. He loses sleep; his grades slip; his girlfriend breaks up with him, and he might have to go to the Newsboys alone. “My mother was so right about you.” But he stays devoted.
Because the emphasis in that version of the redemption arc is not on the lost and the fallen, who exist mostly as prizes, really, like adding up one by one like points at the end of a video game at the end of every film.
The emphasis is on the stalwart belief of these Christians who exist psychologically beyond the resurrection in a world where Jesus has already returned and given salvation to his followers. They are high on that forgiveness and proof of God. [Music] “When I, in awesome wonder, consider all…”
So, we have the characters in “God’s Not Dead” functioning in, like, a Jesus-like role, and, then, we have the characters in “Midnight Mass” pretty much functioning as, like, the apostles. Even Father Paul. All of its protagonists are psychologically in the place of the apostles either pre-crucifixion or between the crucifixion and the resurrection.
They’re all, like, wandering aimlessly, sort of searching for God. This is a very good reflection of Catholicism versus Evangelical Christianity that we see in the American South and what is presented in “God’s Not Dead.” Catholicism is all about that guilt with a capital-G. It’s about repenting your way back to heaven.
We’re still making up for the sins of Eve. We’re still guilty. Your baby is born guilty; that is why you baptize that shit. It’s just the way that it is. Whereas, you know, American sort of Evangelical Christianity as we know it in these films
Is presented with its strong focus on saving–on being saved. It’s got its roots in Protestantism. And the importance of giving your life to God and, like, verbally and physically acknowledging Jesus as your savior, being given salvation through the power of that faith and that belief alone,
Is very much reflected in the way that these two pieces of media approach the redemption cycle. Either way, the death of Mr. Jesus Christ of Nazareth is a core component of Christianity at its very base–at its very, the very bottom of its soul, it’s there.
And that story of sacrifice and martyrdom and redemption and fighting for your beliefs–all of these elements in this story are still found in the modern storytelling context that we know, like the hero’s journey and things like that, right? There’s, like, “leaving home”, “call to action”, “moment of doubt”; like, all of those can
Be sort of found in this redemption cycle as well as in other biblical tales. It’s why films like “Silence” and “Noah” are able to captivate audiences both religious and non-religious alike. It’s why “Left Behind” exists; it’s why Pureflix was able to make four of these films in the first place.
There are so many ways to tell this kind of story–to talk about redemption and forgiveness and faith. And all of them start with the death of God. Part four: God death – Causes, symptoms, treatment Episode one of “Midnight Mass”, we open on a flashback.
Red and blue lights; glass on the ground; Nickelback in the background; it’s nighttime, the scene of an accident; and we pan to our first protagonist, Riley, where he sits on the side of the road, all banged up, praying the “Our Father”.
For those of you who don’t know, the “Our Father” is basically the “Party in the USA” of Catholic prayers. It is the Billboard top 100 25 weeks in a row: stone-cold classic. It’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”; it does everything you need it to do; everyone knows it; no one forgets it. It’s *french kiss*, right?
It’s just iconic. And it’s definitely the only one I remember. “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us;
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.” Put a bit too much feeling in that. Sorry. So, Riley’s on this curb; he’s praying; he’s obviously horrified by the situation; scared out of his mind; not at all injured in this car accident; spends four years in prison;
Reads all the books, and comes to the conclusion that there is no God. There can’t be. And, therefore…atheist. On the other side of the void, in “God’s Not Dead”, our prominent long-time atheist, Professor Rodelson, is being a menace.
“But know this: if you truly feel the need to continue with this charade, I will make it my personal mission to destroy any hope of a law degree in your future.” “Know thyself, darling. Know thyself. Which I suggest means knowing your own limitations.”
We don’t get any kind of fun, like, flashback sequence for him. Instead, we just find out later that, long before Henry David Adam Rattlebomb was starting pissing contests with 19-year-olds instead of doing his job, he was a believer. And, as a child, he was, like, super gung-ho on God.
Then, his mom got sick, and he, like Riley, prayed to the Lord to save her. She was not saved, and, therefore, he reasons “No God”, thus…atheist. So, both of these films have come to the conclusion that a common cause of God-death for the individual
Is “Bad things happening to good people and prayers unanswered”–which is a fair conclusion given that philosophers and theologians and just general humans have been losing their minds over this forever. Fyodor Dostoevsky explores this and like 57 other concepts in his 1880 novel, “The Brothers Karamazov”.
Bet you thought I forgot that I mentioned 19th-century Russian literature, didn’t you? Nope, not even a little bit. We’re just getting started, but I didn’t want to scare you off. Because this book is way too long to summarize, but the gist of it is Mr. Karamazov was a
Shitty dad; he’s got three sons who pretty much get raised by different people. Alyosha ends up being, like, super religious. Ivan is a smart-ass philosopher; Dmitri is a soldier-turned-criminal-turned-like, kind of decent-dude. There is an inheritance; there’s some murder; a lot of asides; a lot of dialogues; and a lot of quips.
It’s really great; you don’t need to have read it in order to understand what I will be talking about when I reference it; trust me, Josh didn’t. But I love it. I love Dostoevsky; “Crime and Punishment” is one of my favorite novels. I think that his writing is just magical; it’s so good.
What you do need to know is that, during one of the many long dialogues between the brothers, godly man Alyosha is listening to diet Kierkegaard Ivan express his struggle to square the suffering of children with the existence of God. So, why should they serve as fertilizer for someone’s future harmony, right?
That is what Ivan says. In this world where suffering is often seen as a punishment by God for sin, how can innocent children who have not sinned be allowed to suffer and, on that note, why should they embrace a Lord that allows them to suffer, right?
His Euclidean ideal justice system that relies so heavily on acts of evil being punished directly (just as acts of good are rewarded directly) clashes with this idea of a benevolent, all-forgiving god who could return at any moment, empty out hell, and release all humanity from sin.
Ivan’s rejection of God differs slightly from Riley or Radisson’s in that Ivan is less concerned with the existence of God and more concerned with the value of God. He basically tells Alyosha, “If God exists–if THAT God exists that’s allowing child abusers
And monsters to walk free, and that is the world we live in? No, thank you. I politely would like to return my ticket,” right? That’s what he says. So, Ivan is really on the struggle bus here, because Alyosha is not doing him any favors because it’s Dostoyevsky.
And Dostoyevsky is a Christian whose middle name is “devil’s advocate”, and he was in, like, a shitstorm of grief when he wrote this–on top of just, like, a very long and painful life. And, so, basically, Ivan just ends up sort of exhausted by Alyosha every time they have a conversation.
“Today is critical for us, and I am finished. Complete honesty. How does it make you feel?!” So, he descends into full-blown madness over this (which I get–family triggers all of us), but, before any of that, he just kind of concedes to the argument, right?
He’s just kind of like, “Fine, it’s not God that I don’t accept; it’s the world that he created.” And that’s, like, enough to settle that chapter and move on. Now, Jasper Wedone tries to take a page out of this book and, basically, in his third
Argument with Professor Radisson, just starts, like, rattling Dostoevsky off on him and morality and quotes and just gets into a screaming match with Professor Raddison that cultivates in this moment: “It’s a very simple question, Professor. Why do you hate God?” “Because he took everything away from me!”
Plot twist: he was never really an atheist; he was just sad. And, luckily, when he gets hit by a car 14 minutes later, Reverend Dave just happens to be right there just in time for him to accept Jesus into his heart with his dying breath, thus saving him from eterminal damnation. Whew.
In a piece published by the University of Pennsylvania press, Eric Von Der Luft describes a key difference between the death of God from a Christian perspective and from a Nietzschean perspective, in that Christian’s the loss of God is something that happens by accident;
It stems out of a lack of faith; of spiritual blindness, right? The belief in God for the individual is killed by the oppressor, who simply does not know the truth. And, for Nietzsche, it is an act of defiance in the face of near-constant tragedy and turmoil.
It is not something that happens to humans but something that humans do. WE have killed him. Humans have deliberately done away with that which is no longer beneficial to our progress. Nietzsche was kind of obsessed with his own little idea of progress–not progress, like,
As we would see it in 2021, where people become more equal and understanding and respectful, but more of a spiritual evolution for himself. A metaphysics of becoming rather than being. Searching into yourself and searching for the self and understanding yourself and your connection to the world was of the utmost importance.
He wanted humans to be in a perpetual motion; constantly changing and becoming our sort of best, ideal versions of ourselves–like, the most awake, the most enlightened, the most perfect. Are you seeing why the nazis got so hype on this?
Anything that sort of hinders or interrupts that forward motion (like the idea of a perfect God who is infinitely better than man) has got to go. For Nietzsche, believing in God is like chaining your wrist to a block of cement and throwing
The key into an incinerator; a form of self-imprisonment, like a castration of the soul. Humanity has done and needs to continue to assert its free will and refuse to believe in the great man in the sky, therefore killing his presence in the collective consciousness and allowing us to become… superheroes.
And that is how Riley went about it. When confronted with the cognitive dissonance of bad things happening to good people, he reads all the books and comes to the conclusion that there is no God and just does away with that which is no longer beneficial to him.
Was he doing this with the intention of becoming the superman? No. But… Irony is gonna iron. Riley’s atheism is a choice; it is the killing of God in a deliberate and permanent fashion. He does not ever voluntarily take the sacrament throughout the show.
He does not return back into the covenant of the Lord. It is an evolutionary step in his psychology, arrived at following years of research and (not unlike Ivan) intellectual reasoning. “A lot of time to read in there, and I read it all: Torah, Quran, Talmud, Dao De Jing.
Came out of that an atheist.” Radisson’s atheism is a product of a cruel world; it is something that happened to him that caused him immense pain and suffering always and, most importantly, (like Ivan’s) is temporary. And, so, despite being set up for what could be a typical Christian redemption arc–Riley
Returning to the faith, the prodigal son both physically and spiritually—his story ends with him still outside of the covenant of the Lord–technically speaking, if we’re taking free will into account, which…we’ll get to. “Free–” “Free will. That’s the ball game, wasn’t it? That’s the whole thing.” When Riley killed God, it worked.
When Radisson killed God, he came back. And, so, there’s this, like, recurring theme in “God’s Not Dead’s” universe where, if a character refuses God, their life is… *Sobbing* …like shit with a capital-S. Bad things happen to them. They get cancer. Their moms die. They burn down churches and kill people.
Last one was an accident, but still–point still stands. These characters are consistently punished until they are either putting their faith in God or they’re just abandoned to wallow in their misery forever. *More Sobbing* The only solution to their pain and troubles…is Jesus. Part 5: [Music] “Why should I die?”
In order for Riley to stay out of jail, he has to do these weekly AA meetings; but there are only, like, four people on Crockett Island, and none of them are ready to admit their powerlessness to the blood of Christ just yet, so he is forced to go all the way to
The mainland every week so he can get his little paper signed by the dude for probation. This is a bummer because there are only two boats: one that comes to the island and one that leaves every day–that’s all you get.
So, if he misses that first boat and he misses this appointment he’s capital-F fucked, right? So, Father Paul is like, “Hey, I will start a chapter here so I can sign your paper, and you don’t have to go all the way to the mainland anymore.” And Riley’s like, “Sick!
That makes my life a lot easier. Let’s do it.” And this sets up a series of dialogues that happen between these two characters–these long, drawn-out scenes of conversations between Riley and Father Paul in this empty rec center right next to the church.
This feels a lot like the scenes that we get between various characters in “The Brothers Karamazov”, where you have two people with drastically differing opinions on a subject just playing, like, intellectual tennis just back and forth, back and forth, ripping open
Cans of worms one after another and letting them crawl all over each other like that was the point the whole time; pushing and pulling for answers and completely ignoring the nagging feeling in the back of your head that everything is meaningless and there is no truth because
We are forever trapped within our own personal perception of the world no matter how much talking we do. We’ll never truly understand if the color that I say is red and you say is red is actually the same color! Our stupid, weak little puny retinas could be interpreting entirely different sensations
In our brains, and we would have no idea because, technically, the same thing that we saw is also the same thing that we said, but it’s different and we don’t know. So, these long back-and-forths in “Midnight Mass” echo a lot of the discussions from “Brothers Karamazov”
Almost beat-for-beat, with Riley initially playing the part of Ivan or even, like, Nietzsche himself, when Father Paul says to him to say whatever he wants about Christianity. “…just not want to offend you.” “That’s tough to do. And AA is not about protecting people’s feelings, is it? It’s about recovery.”
Father Paul’s not doing this to convert Riley. Father Paul is doing this because he thinks it’s what he was sent back to Crockett Island to do, which is help people. So, when Riley makes the argument that Radisson makes and that Ivan makes, and he says,
“Bad things happening to good people…what’s up?” and Father Paul gives him the basic, like, “Who knows what the big man’s plan is; it’s got to be a good one,” Riley doesn’t hold back. He says “God works in mysterious ways” is just something people say as an excuse not to hold themselves accountable.
And Father Paul says this: “Look, there’s nothing in the scripture or in the world, for that matter, that suggests God negates personal accountability.” And, so, it’s this kind of dance around the subject of “God real (question mark)?” Because Father Paul very clearly believes in God and Riley very clearly does not, and
They’re trying to have this discussion about the structures and the way that people use religion in their lives because that’s something that they’ve both experienced. “We can all just stand by and watch Lisa Scarborough wheel herself around town. We can watch Joe Collie slowly drink himself to death.
We can watch so many people just slip into these bottomless pits of awful, and we can stand it. We can tolerate it because we can say things like, ‘God works in mysterious ways’.” So, Riley’s talking about the way that people use God, and Father Paul is kind of talking
About the way that God uses people. “God can take that pain and turn it into something good–something with purpose. Suffering can be a gift; that just depends on us.” And this is another one of those reasons that it’s so palatable, I think, to religious and
Non-religious people to watch “Midnight Mass”, because it takes these discussions very seriously. And it’s one of the reasons that Christians love Dostoyevsky and so do non-Christians, right? It’s not taking a side; it’s opening the discussion. And you get a sort of similar dynamic in the second “God’s Not Dead” movie, where Sabrina
The teenage witch is having, like, a dangerously close to flirtatious discussion with her non-religious lawyer when he asks her about why she became Christian. So, she tells this sort of vague story about her being in some kind of a bad place without
Any details and coming across a church with a sign that said “Who do you say I am?” And that scene differs greatly in depth and length because it’s an ensemble film; it’s not an eight-episode miniseries. They have a lot of story lines to get through, and, also, it’s important to remember that
Their target audience is Christians; so, the fact that there isn’t much time spent on or giving details about Grace’s pre-Christianity backstory makes a lot of sense and is very in line with Evangelical Christianity in the American South and, like, the American West. [Music] “And I was struggling with a lot of things.”
Evangelicals are born again when you accept Jesus into your soul; into your heart; when you re-baptize as an adult. Who you were before doesn’t matter. Who you are now is what’s important. You can accept God into your heart with your dying breath, and that’s enough.
Which, for the record, I do think is a very beautiful sentiment. And it works within the narrative, because Grace’s story is not about what belief in God gave her the strength to do or change; it’s the idea that simple belief was all it took.
She’s not trying to sell him on having to make all of the tough choices and do the things that she had to do after she found God; she’s trying to sell him on the feeling that believing in God gives her. “As I read it, I could hear the Lord speak to me.
So, that was the start of a journey that didn’t end until I found the answer.” But she doesn’t tell you what the answer is. “Please don’t forsake me…” When our journalist character is in remission, she finds herself in the church with Jude, where she confesses that she’s really struggling to believe.
And he actually does kind of echo the sentiment that Father Paul gives in the beginning of “Midnight Mass”, which is: that’s the point. [Music] “He delights in using us in ways we never dreamed of and giving us things that we never even knew we wanted.” The “God’s Not Dead” franchise paints this struggle to believe as not an individual struggling to achieve the state of believing but as the individual wanting so badly to believe but being bogged down by the world. It’s not that she doesn’t want to believe or she doesn’t believe, it’s that she wants
So badly to believe that the world is coming for her. “He who believes in me will live, even if he dies, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” *Screams* “Do you believe this? Then invite him into your heart, and make him the Lord of your life.”
The carrot that GND is dangling in front of its Holy Saturday characters is liberation from anything and everything negative. The message in the first two films is “just give Jesus the wheel, and he will drive you straight to heaven without a single surcharge. Sure, bad things happen, but they’re not your fault.
They’re not your fault as long as you believe. They’re the big, bad American education system’s fault. They’re the world’s fault. They’re the government’s fault. They’re the atheists’ fault. “What makes you so sure?” “Speed of change. Viciousness of the opposition.
The message of the gospel has us standing in the way of a lot of things that powerful people want, and our resistance to change that message because it’s not ours to change has made us a lot of enemies.” Grace isn’t about to lose her job because she started preaching during geometry class.
She’s not about to lose her job because she answered a question. She’s about to lose her job because the slimy, fire-breathing demon children of the leftist overlords are throwing chains around the Bill of Rights and shoving copies of “The Origins
Of Species” down the throats of hard-working American Christians and, God, why won’t anyone listen to Jordan Peterson?! And this sounds ridiculous. “I do think I have an unusually high regard for the value of evidence…” Because these scenarios are ridiculous. “You understand that I might die.” “I’m sorry about that.”
Sabrina would never have been fired or given any sort of discipline for answering a question about the story of Jesus in the Bible whilst they are talking about martyrs and influential thinkers. A philosophy professor would never force his students to sign a paper or fail.
Social workers will not shut down your homeschooling co-op because you taught your kids about Noah’s ark. These are not things that happen in the real world; but they ARE things that happen in the Bible. Jesus? Obviously literally killed for hanging out and doing miracles.
Pretty sure John the Baptist gets, like, imprisoned and then beheaded for calling out the king on his BS. Jacob ends up in prison. So many people go to jail; so many people end up in prison for believing in God. People get stoned, right? The seas run red with blood.
Like, this is the world of the bible. “Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer. I tell you, the devil will put some of you in prison to test you. You will suffer persecution for 10 days.
Be faithful–even to the point of death–and I will give you life as your victor’s crown.” *Screaming* Religious horror is about taking the more abstract elements of religion and legitimizing them as fact within a given story. When we look at the “God’s Not Dead” films as an exploration of the traditional Christian
Redemption cycle, placing its Christian characters in the place of Jesus the prophet and atheist characters as disciples on Holy Saturday, then what we have is the American education system and, later, the government serving as the infamous persecutors as stand-ins for
The devil himself, coming down with rage and fire and constant temptation that must be overcome somehow. “If we stand by and do nothing, the pressure that we’re feeling today is going to mean persecution tomorrow.” “What makes you so sure?” Imagine that you don’t read fantasy.
You don’t grow up reading “Harry Potter”; you don’t grow up reading “The Hunger Games”; you don’t get to read the Percy Jackson books or things like this; you don’t watch these kinds of films; you don’t watch a lot of TV; everything is very curated. What you do read is the Bible.
What you do do is go to Bible study three times a week, and what you grow up to do is make films. This is the kind of film you would want to see; like, this is reality. [Music] [Applause]
Belief in God is the only thing standing between suffering and not suffering in this world. Questions like, “Who will wipe the blood off us?” or “All things are lawful, then?” aren’t questions that need answers in the face of a dead God; they’re experiences of suffering.
Not knowing what is right and what is wrong, being lost and confused, is a form of suffering in these films–a product of God’s death for the individual. And, by extension, any and all moments where one does not have faith in a Christian God are experienced as moments of suffering. “You’re beautiful…” [Music]
“…I wish you didn’t have to do that.” So…so, these movies are racist. There’s no way to get around that; we’re not sugar coating it. I’m giving them a fair shake but not there. They’re racist in addition to also being specifically very, very, very anti-muslim.
Ayisha is our character who is stereotyped as being, like, forced to cover up with a hijab and is presented as like– I’m sorry, I think–so, this is the point–this is the point in the script–I just realized
This is the point in the script where I started referring to people for whom God is dead as “deadlings”…? So, just henceforth…deadlings? So, Ayisha is stereotyped as being forced to cover up with her hijab and, like, presented as a deadling.
God is dead for her, and she is experiencing all of the horrible suffering as a direct result of her not being raised in a Christian household. She is kicked out of her house, not because her father is abusive and making a bad choice,
But because he doesn’t believe in Jesus Christ as the Lord and savior. Apart from the blatant misunderstanding and sheer lack of respect for Islamic culture and practices like hijab-wearing, the film also goes out of its way to make it very clear
That just believing in God is not enough; it has to be a specifically Christian God–their Christian God. “No, Papa(?), Jesus is my Lord and savior, and he died to save me from my sin.” And, now, we have a similar-ish story in “Midnight Mass” after the miracles start happening on
Crockett Island, where Sheriff Hassan’s son, Ali, wants to go to church and see what it’s all about because he’s 15 and his best friend’s girlfriend just started walking out of her wheelchair, right? Fuckin’, I would go too. And the sheriff is not stoked about it.
It’s actually really, really, really difficult for him that this is happening, because Bev Keane is so shitty, first of all, and also he has, like, a lifetime of racism and intolerance behind him. His wife had recently passed, and he had kind of converted to Islam for her, and they raised
Their son in this, in this faith. And, so, it opens up, like, a whole bunch of wounds that his son is now questioning. “If he handed Lisa Scarborough a miracle but let a child die of a brain tumor across the way on the mainland…no. No, that’s not how it works, Ali. It’s not.”
He’s not just upset that his son might be considering Catholicism. He’s upset because he feels like he’s losing his son. But, instead of kicking his son out of the house and right into the arms of Bev Keane,
It kind of opens up this dialogue where they discuss the different ways in which one can be connected to God outside of the bounds of any specific religion. The line that sticks out to me that he specifically says is–he says, “We already have him. We already have God.”
“I will not tell my son not to look for God. Son, oh. We already have him.” “Midnight Mass” also gives the opportunity for Sheriff Hassan to actually explain a bit about Islam to a room full of Christians and Catholics, and he breaks down that Muslims
Do actually believe that Jesus was a prophet–just not the last one. And, full disclosure, I didn’t know that. I had no idea–absolutely no idea. I…like I never…I spend a lot of time thinking about Christianity and thinking about Catholicism
And its split from Judaism, and I really have sort of left the other Abrahamic religion on its own, so i feel…I felt kind of shitty, but, um, but now I know. So, I’ll look into it. Also, that scene and, like, an hour and a half or so spent on Wikipedia and Google is
Kind of all that I have to go on, so please correct me if that was wrong or I did anything incorrect there. Please feel free to leave resources or any other information in, like, comments and stuff, as I would like to be corrected, and I would not like to spread misinformation.
Speaking of misinformation, “God’s Not Dead” doesn’t leave space for that kind of an explanation or any kind of education about any other religion because it simply will not do. You simply cannot be saved by Jesus if you don’t believe in Jesus, so…
That’s their logic. I do low-key think they tried to correct this in the third film. The thing about the third one is that they tried to correct a lot that they did in the first two that people really were not happy about; and one of the things was, I think
They were trying to be more tolerant; they were trying to make it seem like they were being more tolerant, but they definitely weren’t ready to give Muslims a chance, so they were, like, just having the judge be Catholic (which is a miracle on its own).
One of the two branches between Christianity and Catholicism is that Catholicism focuses really, really heavily on guilt–I mean repentance, sorry. It’s about feeling guilty, admitting you were wrong, feeling guilty, actively repenting, feeling guilty, saying ten Hail Mary’s, feeling guilty. That’s, that’s, that’s it. That’s the whole shebang, uh, to be honest.
There’s other things? There’s other things. The idea with the ten Hail Mary’s is you confess your sins to the priest through the screen, and, then, he kind of assigns you how many of what prayer you should say to make up for it.
And, technically, it’s like…repeating this prayer is for you to believe it, right? It’s the more that you say it, the more the words can sink in and the more you’ll be able to mean it. What it is, though, is spiritual capitalism. And we’re gonna get into that later.
But it relies on repenting for your sins first in order to gain forgiveness later…maybe. You’ve done wrong, so you have to make up for that; you’re constantly trying to, like, play catch-up to make sure that you are sort of in the right balance. Have you been to church enough?
Have you given enough to the collection? Have you gone to confession? How many times do you go to confession? Like, what are the good things that you’re doing? How many prayers are you saying to make up for all of these other terrible things that you’re definitely doing? Like…breathing.
We don’t breathe without the Holy Ghost. So, that’s a core foundation of Catholicism, and that comes all the way back—allll the way back–to pre-pre-split; like, Roman Catholicism pre-schism. Schism’s a big deal. I love a schism. There’s a million and five schisms, I think, exactly.
I think it’s, like, one million and five-and-a-half schisms that Christianity has had since its inception. But hot boy summer of 1054: THE Schism. The schism is, basically, when Western Roman Catholicism split from Catholicism and what we kind of now call Eastern Orthodoxy.
That’s important because that is kind of spread over to Russia; and what do we know when we’re talking about Russia? What are we talking about with Russia? Dostoyevsky and “The Brothers Karamazov”. So, that is the version of Christianity that they’re dealing with. So, now we have three (if you’re not keeping up).
We have the, like, American Evangelical Christianity that comes kind of from Protestantism, um, and has that emphasis on saving. We have Roman Catholicism or, more so, modern, like, New England Catholicism, which is, like, a bit irish, a bit all over the place–all guilt, all day.
And we have the Eastern Orthodoxy, which, that’s Dostoyevsky’s kind of wheelhouse. Same as Nietzsche, though, he’s in the enlightenment period, so things are changing; lots of political structures are changing; things are going crazy all the time everywhere. And the form of Christianity that we see in “Brothers Karamazov” is much closer to what
We get in “Midnight Mass”, in that there is a lot of that emphasis on kind of guilt and repentance, and there’s a strongly held belief in this book that one must suffer in order to repent and be forgiven, right?
We have characters who feel a tremendous amount of shame and guilt and desire to suffer as penance for God. Joe Collie is an alcoholic; he’s a loner; he’s a deadling. A few years before the events of “Midnight Mass”, he’s out in the woods drunk, shooting
What I’m assuming were dear I guess, and accidentally shoots little Lisa Scarbrough in the back, paralyzing her from the waist down. He wasn’t exactly well-liked before, but now he’s public enemy number two. Do I need to tell you who public enemy number one is? “It’s just, you’re wearing a gold chasuble today.
Shouldn’t it be green today? We’re in ordinary time; seventh sunday of ordinary time.” Joe Collie mirrors Dmitri in a lot of ways, one of them being, you know, terrible crimes in the past; a lot of it being that people have just given up on them.
In TBK, everybody just kind of assumes that Dmitri has killed his father or will kill his father. Like, they all think that he’s gonna become his father; he’s kind of seen as just, like, a lost cause. They’re like, “He’s a scoundrel; whatever,” and it really takes people kind of believing
In him and…and fighting for him to…for him to get the opportunity to grow as a person, and he does. Joe Collie is in the same boat. Everybody’s given up on him; they don’t think he’s capable of change; they hate him for
Shooting a little girl; and they don’t think that he’s worth their time or their love; and this is a struggle for Ivan in Brothers Karamazov as well. He says, “One can love one’s neighbors in the abstract or even at a distance; but, at close quarters, it’s almost impossible.”
Which is the same thing that Riley points out in one of those first AA meetings, where he says, “Yeah, everybody’s talking about how God loves everybody and we’re all God’s children, but they let Joe Collie drink himself to death; no one wants to give Joe Collie the time of day.”
Interestingly, though, Ivan really focuses on the suffering of children and the abusers of those children; and Riley really sees the Lisa Scarborough/Joe Collie situation for exactly what it is–which is just an awful, awful situation. Admittedly, um, Ivan’s not talking about, like, an individual situation; he’s talking about kind of grand scale, but still…
Neither of them can square this, right? This “God letting terrible things happen and allowing suffering”; it’s just error 404, please check your connection and try again later. It does not compute because it’s a cognitive dissonance. What is a cognitive dissonance?
A cognitive dissonance is what happens when you have two or more thoughts or experiences or beliefs or rationales rattling around in your little goldfish brain, existing in opposition to each other. The fact that you are a goldfish is not consistent with your understanding of a goldfish.
The fact that it is raining outside is not consistent with the fact that the weatherman said it would not rain. Unicorns are not real, but also… The little wires inside of our brains are desperate for consistency; normalcy. They like when things make sense.
We like watching the wine moms slot all of their cans right into spaces along the inside of their fridge, fitting perfectly across in a line. We like watching the Tetris pieces fall right where they’re supposed to. We like watching people organize things and do their…satisfying videos is an entire genre for a reason.
We like it when things come together nicely; we like it when things make sense; we like it when movies have good endings. We don’t want to be confused; we don’t want to be scared. It scatters our little brains and makes us malleable and weak like this dental guard
That I had to buy to stop myself from stress-grinding my teeth into nothingness while I lay in the dark for eight hours, every night, desperately hoping I’ll be sucked down into the wormhole of my subconscious for just a few short hours.
Cognitive dissonance fucks with your brain; it fucks with your sense of self and your sense of reality. And this is what happens when you are told that God is good always, and, then, not-so-good things are happening on God’s watch.
In order to resolve this issue, one of the incongruent thoughts must be abandoned, thrown away, spat on, and left for dead in a mysterious alleyway. My own experience and self-image does not line up with what I know to be the experience and image of a goldfish.
Then, I am either not a goldfish or I am not myself. Which, frankly… If the weatherman says it’s not raining, but it’s clearly raining outside, either the weatherman is wrong or my perception of reality is wrong; which, frankly… Either unicorns are real or this doesn’t exist.
Riley, Professor Radisson, Ivan — all presented with the same cognitive dissonance. The solution for Ivan is to return his ticket. The solution for Riley is that God is not real. The solution for “God’s Not Dead” characters is this… “God is good.” And the solution for Father Paul is, well… [Intense music]
Part six: “What do you want, Paul?” [Music] “Excuse me?” So. Here’s how it went down. Monsignor Pruitt: super fucking old; totally losing it; whole island sends him to Israel, the holy land; as, like, a make-a-wish before you die kind of thing.
On this trip, he does die (more or less), walking alone in a desert, totally off his rocker, runs into an angel who saves his life, makes him all young and hot again, sends him back to Crockett Island, takes this angel in a Trunkit, then he goes back to the Island,
Calls himself Father Paul, and starts lying to everyone constantly. One of the lies that he tells comes up during an AA meeting with Riley, right after Lisa Scarborough has begun to walk again. Riley, in an attempt to ease the cognitive dissonance of that shit, lays it all out for
Father Paul, and he’s like, “Look, scientifically, I get it. I can explain a misdiagnosis; I can explain miraculous recovery. It happens. I get how she can physically walk again. What I don’t get is how you knew she would be able to do it.”
And what this tells us is that Riley has enough faith in Father Paul as a person to know that he would never have asked Lisa to stand if he didn’t know she could do it. And the answer Father Paul gives him is that he just knew.
And he says, “I know that’s not enough for you. I envy you. I wish I could see the world scientifically and be able to reason like that,” but he just doesn’t know. And it’s out of his hands.
But, the truth is, he knows it’s not gonna be enough for Riley because he knows it’s bullshit. Father Paul knew she could walk again because he’s been spiking the communion wine with the blood of the angel that made him young again–not because of any kind of intuition.
He didn’t have some weird feeling; he didn’t walk on a ley line, okay? He’s been deliberately trying to make everybody on this island young again because he’s got dreams he wants to relive. Father Paul Monsignor Pruitt has been lying to everyone everywhere since he got here. His name’s not even Paul!
He made it up! He named himself Paul after Paul of Damascus. You know what happens to Paul in the Bible? Paul is sent through the desert to Damascus to arrest Jesus Christ and, on the way there, God steps in and is like, “Hey, please don’t arrest me, you lunatic.
Instead, go to the city, wipe your browser history, and wait for instructions.” “Lord, what do you want me to do? Then the Lord said to him, ‘Arise and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.'” I wasn’t kidding. And I’m not shaming Father Paul for lying.
We all have to lie sometimes. He’s got this big ass secret that he does not understand, topping off a very, very long life full of secrets and lies from before any of this madness began. All of them, all of the lies, varying degrees of commandment breaking, right?
We have some sod–I’m not gonna say sodomite, he’s not. Although, by biblical definitions…he might be a sodomite. By medieval definitions, he’s certainly a sodomite. Ask Eleanor Janega. So, he gets to the island with this trunk full of angel.
How he got it through customs, what he did with the rest of his things, God only knows; but he gets there with a lot of conviction, right? He’s confident. He knows what he’s doing. He gives this whole, like, long ass confessional sequence basically to us and to himself, I
Guess, justifying his actions, explaining everything he is doing and how it is the right thing and how he’s doing capital-G, capital-W “God’s Work”, and that is the Father Paul that is sat across from Riley when he is talking about how people treat Joe Collie and the
People on the island and how they use God’s will as justification for treating people horribly. It’s that Father Paul who says absolutely fucking not. He argues against Riley’s idea that he can’t believe in a higher power and also own his mistakes.
He tells Riley straight up that there is nothing in scripture that says God negates personal accountability. We talked about this already, I think. Oh, I do this every time. And this is pretty powerful stuff, right? It means a lot. It’s impactful.
You can tell that this is coming from a man who has made mistakes and done things that he regrets; who is still making his peace with the Lord; a man who has lived a full human life already. The thing that’s so captivating about Father Paul for people is he’s this young man who
Has the wisdom of an elder because he was; because he lived for 80, 90 some years. He was on his death bed; he didn’t remember who he was. In certain lights, this is a gift from God–to have lost to yourself, and to be able to be
Young and in a position where you’re respected, and be able to share that kind of wisdom with people is such a gift. He has the knowledge and life experience and wisdom of an old man and the confidence of
Someone finally getting a do-over; a chance to go back and fix everything; to do the things he didn’t do; say the things he didn’t say. It’s the one thing that we all want and will never get, and he has all of this. And, so, when he says this to Riley, it matters.
It’s inspiring; it inspires Riley; it inspires the kind of confidence that Riley’s gonna need to have in him to say, “I don’t know how you knew she could walk.” But he’s still a dirty liar; he tells himself and us that he’s doing all of this lying to
Protect the people of Crockett so that they are prepared for when the real miracles come; for the healings; for the words from God. He doesn’t want to upset them, and he doesn’t want to scare them before he can help them.
He wants to let Lisa run again; he wants to help people get sober; he wants to make people feel young again. But old habits die hard, and the man just can’t stop lying. And I’m not saying that he shouldn’t have lied; I’m just saying that it’s this lie that
He tells to Riley about how he knew that Lisa could walk again that is the beginning of the end. This is the first turn of the screw, where the dynamic between Riley and Father Paul begins to shift. No longer is it the steadfast intellectual reasoning of Ivan and the holy man Alyosha
Discussing the suffering of innocence and the responsibility of God. It is something different now. “I really don’t have an answer that’s gonna satisfy you. Not you.” Father Paul tells Riley that it must be nice for him to be able to explain all the miracles via science.
He envies Riley’s freedom from the belief in the transcendental because his own personal belief in the transcendental, his proof, now has consequences. It’s not just big ideas and big plans in a trunk. It’s happening; and, sure, it’s fine now. People aren’t needing their glasses; their backs don’t hurt; everything’s fine.
But, as the miracles continue, and the healing becomes more, Father Paul begins to feel more and more powerful because he is, right? In the eyes of his community, he is practically a god: completely infallible. At the same time, his dependency on the angel blood that made him young in the first place
Is wildly out of control. It’s turning into a full-blown addiction. *Hacking* And, so, another cognitive dissonance rears its ugly head, and every step that Father Paul takes to relieve that dissonance–take more angel blood, pray, try and do more good–all
Of that just leads him further and further down the rabbit hole of violence and contradiction that becomes harder and harder to square with his belief in God as he knew it, before his twilight era. By the time that he is just a priest standing in front of an alcoholic, asking him to become
A vampire, he is visibly unhinged. He is like Ivan, who, if we remember, slid so far into madness that he started having conversations with the devil himself, and he still couldn’t win. He is shaking; he is sweating; he is talking to himself; he is repeating prayers over and
Over and over again, like a shark who can’t stop for fear he’ll never start again. Father Paul has worked himself into a gordian knot of anxiety, and Riley has just been chillin’. Riley, who made a calculated nietzschean decision to reject God for his own betterment, has absolutely no difficulty with this conundrum.
In the face of absolute moral insanity; bathing in the light of the promised absence of guilt and pain; in the reign of the freedom from moral dilemma that Josh Wheaton promised his philosophy class, came with blind faith, Riley is like, “Absolutely fucking not, you psycho.” Riley is having none of it.
In “God’s Not Dead”, the act of believing, of giving yourself to God, is the gift of living in a world that is black and white; free from the consequences of regular life. No longer do you have to be tolerant of others; no longer do you have to make the choice between
Right and wrong and deciding what the best move is. God does it for you. And, if you choose wrong, well, that was just his plan in the first place. You get to try again next time; and all you have to do is believe; all you have to do is believe.
And believing is not something we can see or quantify in those films, but “Midnight Mass” makes the act of believing a physical one. You have to enter the covenant of the Lord by drinking the blood of Christ in order to receive that gift.
Jesus’s actual blood and flesh were not on the menu at the last supper, okay? It was a metaphorical idea. It was an act of “choose to drink this” and “choose to believe”. “Midnight Mass”, being religious horror, makes that real. It is real blood. You have to really choose that.
The existence of God does not negate personal responsibility, nor does your belief in God negate personal responsibility. Evidently, God itself, in an act of supernatural mercy, is the only thing that can abolish any kind of moral responsibility–in a physical act of sending the blood of something transcendent down.
The characters in “God’s Not Dead” are constantly reminding themselves that God is good; God is good always, and always God is good, over and over again. He uses all things and works in mysterious ways that we can’t see the whole picture.
If we could; if only we could see the world the way that God does, then we would understand; there would be no cause for guilt or pain or suffering or confusion. And that is what the angel gives us; it gives the people of Crockett; it gives Father Paul,
Practically on a silver platter: the ability to feel and see like God. All they have to do…is drink. “God’s Not Dead” requires faith and rewards it with proof; “Midnight Mass” offers proof and rewards action. Part 7: Easter Rising “Wait ’til Easter.
If it weren’t for that and Christmas, some people would never come at all.” *Screaming* So, Jesus kicks it. He decides to let himself be crucified to save humanity, comes back, restores faith, fucks off. Time goes on, societies advance, kingdoms and empires rise and fall and scatter, and
There is no second coming in sight. Centuries passed. Christianity starts creeping its little claws all over every continent, digging its way into the laws and the royal courts and all of that jazz, and still no sign of Jesus. So, we start to get philosophers and metaphysicians working tirelessly to provide some kind of
Evidence that supports the existence of God. Neoplatonism emphasizes the transcendence of God; Descartes was like, “God is perfect, and a perfect thing can’t not exist.” That seemed to suffice for a while? But people keep thinking, and people keep thinking about other things, and people want to have other kind of conversations.
So, as long as you weren’t publishing blasphemy, and you sort of tack on a footnote about God being the perfect creator of all things, the church would, like, more or less leave you alone and let you write about all the trapezoids you want.
So, that kind of covers the general population’s belief in God, right? But what is true of the general public is not always true of the individual, and three days is a long time. When the three days are a psychological, metaphorical experience, three days can start to feel like
A lifetime; and a lifetime is just about long enough for some of that capital-D Doubt to sink in. And this remains true for forever. People’s belief in God diminishes the further and further away we get from the resurrection.
And that is because, in order for God to have any personal meaning for the individual, he must bring himself down to the individual’s level. In order to surpass that “the court says you have to believe in God, so you say you believe
In God” barrier, in order to have real meaning for a person’s life, he has to send part of himself down to earth. He has to get on our level. He sends part of himself down to earth in this human form as, like, a gift to humanity
So he can teach us some shit; but the problem is that, like, Jesus can’t just, like, move to Miami and, like, live out the rest of his life selling cars and be, like, “Alright,” and die at like 97.
Because, if he did do that, he’d just be some dude who’s going around saying that he’s God, and when was the last time that that worked out well for literally anyone involved? Which brings us back to the thesis point: he has to die.
But, if he dies, then that means that God can be killed, and that makes God a lot less godly, you know what I mean? Plus, you’ve got like a shitton of people just living their lives thinking that God has died and abandoned them. No bueno.
Not to mention that he’s got shit to do upstate, so he can’t just stay on Earth forever. He can’t just die and float on up to the heavens like every other good Christian. Also, he’s got all these apostles hanging out, trying to write a book, and what kind
Of a friend would he be if he just left them with that kind of an ending? He’s all-knowing. He knows what happens when Game of Thrones ends. He wouldn’t do that. Which brings us to the next necessary element of the Christian redemption cycle.
The death of God is the first; God has to die. Second part is that three days, those three days of waiting; he’s got to be dead for somebody somewhere or Christianity doesn’t work. And the next necessary point on the Christian redemption cycle is this: the supernatural proof. He’s got to go back.
“We have to go back, Kate.” Big man gets nailed to the cross, dies, takes a quick detour into hell, frees all the sinners (except for Solomon; fuck Solomon), comes back to Earth, takes a bow, forgives humanity for all of its sins, then zip-zap-zops back up to Daddy.
Which is some next level proof-of-the-divine shit, right? This is in line with Red Seas parting; this is bushes burning; this is angels flying down in a desert to tell you what to do. The resurrection serves as that necessary supernatural element that will sustain faith for a very long time.
The resurrection will sustain people for a long time; and Descartes will come in, and he will sustain people for a long time. But man cannot live on metaphysics alone, and that “son of God” candle only burns so bright for so long.
Eventually, say 2000 years later, in this post-Easter Sunday world where God can be killed not physically but spiritually for the individual, it’s a lot harder to believe. And it becomes increasingly difficult to carry out this redemption cycle without that supernatural element.
The “God’s Not Dead” films really struggle with this because they place their characters in the position of Jesus, but they’re not really able to fully accomplish that true, “I am God, believe in me” vibe, right? Like, no one can do it like Jesus can.
As Eric Von Der Luft says in his essay, “The bridge between infinite immortality and finite mortality must be made by the immortal making itself mortal, lowering itself to humanity’s level.” Which means… Vampires. We’re talking about vampires. Part eight: the morality of eating people.
Father Paul/Monsignor Pruitt: old, wrinkly, in a desert, gets Benjamin Buttoned by Dobby on steroids, comes back to Crockett Island and starts drugging everybody with Dobby’s blood. We learned all of this, remember? I just talked about it. Father Paul gave that confession to himself because he felt really shitty about being
A damn liar, which I get because I’m also a damn liar sometimes, and it’s one of the ten commandments, but, in his defense, it is the ninth one; and anyone who’s ever read a Buzzfeed listicle knows nobody reads past number six.
He feels bad, but he does it anyway because he’s got big miracles on the horizon. Lisa walks again; the woman that he had an affair with 40 years ago and had a secret love child with: she’s young and hot again; Erin’s unborn child mysteriously disappears
From her womb completely as if it was never there. Okay, maybe they’re not all great changes. So, like, WE know that they’re not all great changes, but Father Paul does not. Father Paul thinks he is doing the Lord’s work, and he is riding that train as far as it can go.
That’s all he’s ever wanted. He’s a priest. That’s that’s that’s the gi–that’s the gig. That’s the gig. He swore to never have sex all of his life because he wanted to serve the Lord. Mmm…he failed the first time around, but this time…this time’s different. He feels like Moses.
He’s got an angel commanding him to save people, and it’s all fun and games until he gets addicted to the angel blood, and kicks it–only to come back again…full Dracula. *Screams* “Monsignor, ah, thank God.” For the record: Father Paul/Monsignor Pruitt has died twice. *Laughs* *Gunshot* …comes back full Dracula, immediately murders Joe Collie.
Joe Collie, who was just there for some guidance because he’s trying to get sober, and he was gonna buy a drink, but he didn’t, and he came to Father Paul instead, and Father Paul ate his brains. Michael Flanagan morally fattened Joe Collie up like a pig for slaughter, and I will never
Forgive him for it. So, he’s eating Joe Collie’s brains out by the skull, and who should walk in but Bev Keane: top-tier Christian; Queen of God’s work. It’s all over, right? It’s only downhill from here. The number one Bible follower has just walked in on you eating someone; it’s got to be over,
Right? Wrong. Bev Keane has been waiting for this moment her entire life. “Okay…okay.” So, there’s this moment where we have these two devout religious characters who have already interacted with what they believe to be proof of the divine. Bev is already aware that Father Paul has been made young again.
They have the opportunity to take this as a command. Father Paul’s body, the body that was resurrected (a la JC himself) is demanding the blood of Joe Collie to survive. It is physically craving and calling him to, well…
At the same time, in a year far, far away (Genesis 20:22), God rolls up to Abraham and is like, “Hey, so you know that kid you have? That kid that you love so much? That miracle baby that I gave you and your wife after you were childless for so long?
You know that kid?” and Abraham’s like, “Yeah, Isaac. Super into dinosaurs; really good at darts; love him; he’s the best,” and God’s like, “Yeah, I know, he’s great. So, here’s what we’re gonna do: we’re gonna take him…and some wood…maybe a knife…we’re
Gonna take a little road trip, top of that mountain over there you’re gonna…*gestures*…burning offering for me, and we’re gonna call it a day. Right? Got it? Solid. Awesome. Seeya in three days. And Abraham does this.
Now, if you don’t know the story, God swoops in a la ram ex machina and, like, gives him a sheep to slaughter instead at the last possible moment. And, in religious context, I have been informed that this story is about faith because Abraham
Is like, “I told you, Isaac, he would never make me kill you,” and everything is just hunky-dory. And I cannot tell you how much I do not understand that read. I hate this story; I am obsessed with it; I think it is the best story in the Bible;
I think about it all the time; I am always thinking about this. I remember being in CCD in, like, second or third grade and being taught this story and just being like, “What the fuck are you guys talking about?”
It’s horrifying; it’s terrible; it is gut-wrenching; I feel sick every time I think about it. It wasn’t until two years ago (two years ago!) when someone laid it all out for me in excruciating detail over the course of like two hours that I finally began to kind of understand what
It is that apparently everyone else sees in the story, which is that the message in the story is not “You must be willing to kill your kid for God,” it is, “God would never make you kill your kid.”
It’s like, I always thought it was a reward; I always thought that God only sent that ram because Abraham was like this close to doing it, and he was like, “Solid. He would really kill his kid for me.
I’ll…I’ll let him have his kid as a prize,” not that you should have faith that God always has another plan. The thing that people say about it is, “You can never see what God is leading up the other
Side of the mountain,” like, a ram was coming up the other side of the mountain the whole time, you just didn’t know it. So, you have to have faith in God. I…I just really…I just thought it was a God-fearing story.
I swear to God, I always thought it was just the absolute wrath of God, who would make you kill your own kid, and, even knowing this now, I still don’t really see it. I get it on, like, a cognitive level, but I still read this story as about a man who
Has to spend three days with his beloved son just walking him to the slaughter; and what, in God’s name, Isaac must have been thinking; and how do you get past that? How do you…how do you look your father in the eye when that ram comes down?
How do you go to breakfast every morning after that? How do you look your kid in the eye after you were willing to murder him? Like, how do you… I feel like even understanding that story requires a level of faith that I just don’t have and couldn’t have.
Um, it’s probably why I couldn’t make my confirmation. And there are other reads of this story, I’m sure; for me, I find it more interesting from that angle, but that’s just why it’s such a good story; that’s why it’s the best one; it’s so good. In fact, everybody loves it.
Even moral philosophy professors. Bet you didn’t think that had a point, did it? Abraham’s near sacrifice of his son, Isaac, has long been a topic of debate amongst philosophers, amongst the Kierkegaards of the world. Because, like, what do you do when God commands you to do bad things?
If you couldn’t tell, this is the ethics section. “For Christians, the fixed point of morality, what constitutes right and wrong, is a straight line that leads directly back to God.” “Oh, so you’re saying that we need a god to be moral? That a moral atheist is an impossibility?”
“No, but, with no God, there’s no real reason to be moral. I mean, there’s not even a standard of what moral behavior is.” We’re in the ethics section, which means we have to lay some ground rules. For this section, we are presupposing the following two premises: 1. Killing people is bad.
2. Everyone is aware that killing people is bad. These are our assumed norms for this topic, because, just as there is a cognitive dissonance with God being all-powerful and also not stopping bad things, there is a cognitive dissonance
When you’re being commanded to do something evil by a good God, especially when we are working within a framework where most of the moral decision-making is based in Christianity. So, if we have a perfect cartesian God, then that God would not command something evil. He COULD not command something truly evil.
So, any command that is being given must, therefore, be good. Abraham killing his son cannot be truly evil. That is way out number one; justification for doing the thing. That is what Bev Keane does, and she runs with it straight off the tracks, right into the sunrise.
But, like, what if you’re not Bev Keane? Because we can’t all be Bev Keane, try as we might. And, sometimes, you really really really really really don’t want to do the thing, but God is telling you to do the thing.
If God is telling you to do the thing, then is it morally wrong not to do it? Robert Adams, in “Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics”, suggests a moral constraint on our obedience to God’s commands. And a moral constraint is essentially a rule that helps one identify what is the ethical
Choice. Kant very famously had a moral constraint against lying all the time, and it drove poor Chidi insane. That is the problem that Adams is trying to solve with his moral constraint, saying that, “If, upon reflection, a purportedly divine command seems to be evil, then one should
Not accept it as a commandment of God’s.” So, if it sounds bad–probably not God. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a goose. If it sounds too good to be true, it’s probably too good to be true.
And what Adams is doing here is using a critical sense to assess morality under God’s transcendent goodness, saying that we should always question any human view about what God is, because humans are not transcendent; we don’t have a perfect transcendent perspective. Let me just get…
How obvious is it going to be if I have this cough drop? Probably. I’m losing my voice. So, we, as humans, should always question and be critical of any human assessment or human understanding of God and what God is or any empirical test of value that humans provide.
We have to be critical of our evaluation of morals and ethics and not just say that everything is okay because God said so. Because we have to believe that God would not command us to do evil, which means that we have to hold ourselves to a standard that we do not truly understand.
“God’s intention concerning evil is to one day destroy it.” “Well, how convenient.” We have puny little fish brains. We cannot understand what is good, because the only thing that can really understand what is good is God because God is perfect and God is only good.
So, any understanding that we have is just, like, a sad little echo put together from scraps falling off a table that we’re, like, hoping looks like good. “Every day, the more I give myself over to God, the more I hear the voice of his angel, and you will too. That’s okay. That’s good.
Know you will be moved to act, and there will be things you cannot change.” We cannot truly understand what is good; only God can. Therefore, any commandment presented by God should be followed. The moral constraint means that, in between these two steps, we take a minute and we say,
If upon further reflection, that commandment does not add up to what our understanding of good is, it should not be taken as a commandment from God. Which means it’s not God telling you; it’s the devil. We could definitely still be doing wrong by not following God’s commandment but, morally
And ethically, we are justified in not doing the thing. With the understanding that God is only good in a transcendent way that we cannot understand, even that idea that we cannot understand God’s transcendence is a human idea.
Any traits or attributes or ideas that human beings are putting onto God need to be critically assessed before they are taken as fact. So, had Abraham said, “Killing people is wrong dude; I’m not gonna do it,” he would have been equally justified in that act that he was in doing the act.
However, Risler disagrees with that in his work because, “in the case of Abraham and Isaac, Abraham does ultimately decide that he must sacrifice Isaac. In order for him to reach that conclusion via Adams’s framework, he must alter his perception
Of the meaning of evil in order to accommodate that for which he does not understand.” He argues that we shouldn’t be messing with the moral aspect of the whole thing but the psychological. Because we’re stupid. We’re stupid humans, and we’re dealing with a cognitive dissonance; our brains are cracking
Under the pressure; we cannot be left alone to decide what is morally right and what is morally wrong; that is what God does. God is supposedly so perfect that we literally cannot understand his commands. So, instead of putting the constraint on the morality of those commands, we put the constraints on ourselves.
The psychological constraint that Risler presents is, “If, upon reflection, one is certain that a command is from God, then one should obey it.” Basically, we’re gullible. We’ll believe anything’s God if it smells good enough. Adams’s idea is still intact.
If God is commanding something, then it can’t be evil, but we are definitely off the hook for deciding whether or not something he’s commanded is evil. That’s not our job anymore. Our job is just to decide if we are actually receiving a commandment from actual God.
So, they all should have just not done it, right? Or am I missing something? Hold on, am I forgetting something? Let me see… “And Abraham stretched forth his hand and took the knife to slay his son, and the ang… *Screams* Oh… Right… That…
“Given the limited nature of our epistemic abilities, and given our inclination to try and doubt that God would give a seemingly evil command, I am inclined to think that achieving certainty that God is commanding one to do something abhorrent would require direct supernatural intervention, such that, despite one’s best attempts at doubting the
Divine authorship of the command, one would simply remain certain that God has issued a particular commandment.” So, he has a point… Unfortunately, so do the people of Crockett. “Just then, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of God shone around them,
And they were sore afraid, and the angel said, ‘Fear not; fear not; be not afraid!'” Boy, oh, boy, do the people of Crockett have a reason to believe that commandment came from God. *Shouts* So, when Father Paul and Bev rope the mayor and friends into their crazy scheme, they
Have no issue following this order, because, as far as these people are concerned, that commandment came from God. Catholicism has a long-standing belief that, if your priest pulls a Lazarus on you, you should probably do what he says. He’s always been the mouth of God; you’re not gonna start doubting it now.
And, yet, you could probably argue that, like, that’s the same justification Bev Keane uses, but I think we all know that Bev Keane has been waiting for a moment to justify murder her whole life. Either way. Bev justifies cleaning up the body by quoting Deuteronomy (“…where one must obey the priest
At all times.”); but she also quotes Matthew 10, and she kind of spits out, “Think not that I come to send peace on earth. I came not to send peace but a sword”; a passage that can be interpreted in a number of ways.
R.T France, a new testament scholar, argues that, in context, it means something closer to, like, the sword of social division cutting family ties and dividing individuals who choose to follow the faith or choose not to; not necessarily like a military sword.
Whether Bev Keane is convincing the mayor to sever himself from his previous beliefs about the whole murder thing or just saying that Jesus came in with guns ablazing, we’ll never really know; but, regardless, she yells at him not to cherry-pick the glories of God which is just…it’s just beautiful.
Especially when you remember that Jesus also specifically said that he did not come with a sword at one point; that’s in, like, his story; I think that’s before he, uh, before they arrest him one time. Editing note: I went to find the source for this, and he didn’t actually say that he didn’t
Come with a sword. He said to his friends to put down their swords because they who draw the sword die by the sword. But he also immediately follows it up with, “Do you think I cannot call on my father,
And he will at once put at my disposal more than 12 legions of angels?” Which is just very…it’s very, like, “my daddy’s a lawyer” vibes. Anyway… Having two contradictory thoughts and reasonings is just kind of part of the territory when you’re dealing in a cognitive dissonance.
And you start to see how Abraham’s cognitive dissonance that Father Paul and Bev and everyone is now dealing in–this, like, “murder is wrong but God is making me murder” thing–is really starting to weigh on these characters. I mean Father Paul is crumbling; Bev is higher strung than ever; everyone is nervous all
The fucking time, and more and more people are forced to face this moral conundrum of a God-given command to break a commandment. But here’s the thing: you might have justified your action in the eyes of the lord morally speaking; but that does not mean that the rest of the world agrees with you.
“Erin Greene. I’d like to finish our discussion.” So, sure, when Father Paul gets brought back to life via God, makes friends with a winged raisinet, and wants to murder people, it’s pretty easy for his, like, devout followers to justify following him in his footsteps, right?
It’s easy for them to say, “Alright, this is fine.” But what about the next person who becomes bat food? “How convenient.” Riley, on the other hand, has already given up his faith in God. He has reasoned his way to atheism.
Riley is not a Christian who’s lost faith; he is not an angry atheist; he is like Nietzsche. He’s got his own beliefs and his own ideals. And, when he gets presented with “God has commanded me to eat people, and eating people
Is abhorrently evil,” it’s not exactly a challenge for him to chalk premise one out the window like the baby in the bathwater and make the unselfish choice instead of the self-serving one. Which he does. In an act of sacrifice, Riley turns himself into dust. *Screams*
Part nine: the morality of eating people, part two The lord is burning my throat. Unlike the rest of Crockett Island, Riley was not waiting for supernatural intervention. The potential Christian redemption cycle that he was being set up and primed for in the first few episodes is long off the table.
This happened when Father Paul lied to him about how he knew Lisa could walk, remember? That was the moment that the tables started to shift. That is when the idea that Riley was just a person not in a state of grace that Jesus was surrounding himself with was taken out of the equation.
That storyline was cut off; flipped on its head (narratively). Suddenly, his difference in belief, like Sarah’s and Sheriff Hassan’s, are front and center as part of who they are and part of their arcs. The more miracles that start happening after that moment, the greater the divide becomes
Between people like Riley and Sarah and Sheriff Hassan (the people who don’t have a Christian belief system; the deadlings) and the Christians. Tensions begin to rise in a similar manner to that of the third “God’s Not Dead” film, where, the more righteous and determined Father Paul becomes to fight for this church, it
Becomes a bigger and bigger problem. In “Midnight Mass”, it ends up in a full-on war. In “God’s Not Dead”, it ends up in like a glorified pep rally. And, in GND, the only way to relieve that tension is for God to come down and personally
Speak to Reverend Dave and tell him, “Cut the crap.” Which he does. He lets it go; he lets the church go, and he decides to build a church elsewhere. I don’t know if I explained the plot to the third one at all.
If I didn’t: basically, this kid accidentally kills someone and sets a church on fire, and Reverend Dave is like, “Please, school board, fix my church,” and the school board’s like, “Maybe we should just tear it down,” and then that’s what the fight is about. He doesn’t want them to tear his church down.
But, eventually, God comes to Reverend Dave after he punches a kid and is like, “Bro, you gotta take a step back,” and Reverend Dave does it. This, by the way, is why I like this movie; I think I said that in the beginning. I do actually really like the third one.
I think it’s…I think it’s watchable. There’s a lot of interviews where the actor who plays Reverend Dave says that he wanted to show him as, like, a normal guy, like, “Pastors are regular dudes.” And the way that they do that in the first two movies is just, like, have him spill his
Coffee a lot. But, in the third movie, they really took it seriously, and they they showed him not just being like a normal person with like a family and family troubles, but being, like, someone who makes wrong choices sometimes, even in the eyes of God, and who has to, like,
Atone for them and has to change his ways. And that, I think, is a really, really great, like message. I think that’s a good way to take the story; I thought it added depth; I’m here for it; I love the third one. I’ll watch the third one if I have to.
If I ever end up quarantined again in, like, a youth group, and they want to watch “God’s Not Dead”, I’ll be like, “Put the third one on,” and I would be fine. He does literally build a new church outside of the college campus, and I’m sure that there’s
Some kind of, like…there’s probably a connection there with, like, Solomon building a church in hell and, you know, Jesus building churches and stuff, but we’re 18,000 words in. I’m…I’m done; I’m calling it. Anyway, for Riley, “God’s is dead” does not insinuate that God was ever alive at any point,
Which is what makes it so interesting that he then becomes the Jesus of this story. He goes from being the apostle to playing the role of Jesus in this story, being the one to understand the truth in the way that no one else can; making a sacrifice for the
Betterment of others; literally dying as opposed to giving up his beliefs and living the way that Father Paul was living in that moment. He gets the most Christian death of all of them. He literally gets greeted by an angel of the woman that he killed as forgiveness and is,
Like, carried up into the heavens…more or less. He gets the most Jesus-like ending without having to believe in Jesus at all, and the characters who have been waiting desperately for this return of Jesus–the ones who have been living out their redemption cycles, waiting for more proof of the divine, waiting for
The resurrection, trying to prove their worthiness in the eyes of God–when Father Paul and Bev Keane stand up there and say drink this rat poison, lay down your life in the name of God, trust that he will bring you back, a lot of them are willing to do it.
And this is exactly what Nietzsche was worried about: their belief in a transcendental, all-good, all-powerful God that is more than they could ever understand, and the, frankly, very good arguments that Father Paul and Bev are making, hinder their ability to make a moral judgment.
The supernatural proof that they have been provided hinders their ability to make a psychological assessment. They’re unable to be critical in any way. Morally speaking, the only way that they have out is the first way that we talked about; they have to change a premise. And they choose to change the second one.
They can’t argue that this isn’t coming from God; they can’t argue that it’s morally wrong; they just have to believe that their perception of what is morally right and morally wrong is wrong. They have to change the second premise, and they have to decide that eating people is, like, probably fine.
Because, if they don’t, then they can’t follow God’s commandments; and, if they’re not following God’s commandments, they are actively denying the Lord and, therefore, actively following the devil. They are now vampires, a lot of these people. A lot of these people are now experiencing not only the physical sensation of desiring
That person’s blood, the changes in the way that they’re seeing things, you know, the world looks different now. And they also are experiencing that, like, absence of guilt and shame; that release from all pain and responsibility. Of course they decide that they should be killing people. What else would they do?
“Do you have guilt in your heart for doing what you had to?” “Not at all.” “Then ask yourself why God let that cup pass you by.” It’s a euphoric feeling. There’s no pain; they’re drunk with it; they’re caught up in the power; in the fight for God.
And it’s sort of like ships passing in the night when we look at “God’s Not Dead: A Light in the Darkness”, because Reverend Dave has also become increasingly violent and aggressive in his own fight for God.
He is wrapped up in his desire for justice; he is grieving, and he wants to believe that Jude’s death meant something. He wants to believe that his friend wasn’t just killed because some poor kid was sad that he got dumped.
He wants to believe that his best friend didn’t just die because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And, if he could just get this church fixed, if he can just keep it there, then maybe it won’t hurt so much.
Everyone is telling him that he needs to stop; that maybe he’s taking this too far; and I think that part of him probably knows that, but he’s so caught up in this desire to fight for God–to live out Jesus’s story, to be the Jesus in the redemption cycle–that he just keeps pushing through.
He’s searching for the same liberation from pain and suffering that the characters in “Midnight Mass” have already received. “Murderer.” “Well, I suppose so. But here’s the thing: I had no guilt; none. And, knowing that I should feel guilt, but accepting that I did not, finding grace where the guilt should be, I…”
As the night rages on in Crockett Island, we watch a handful of characters slowly come to realize what it is they are doing. They are killing each other; they are killing their parents, their children, their friends, and they don’t even care.
The line that Jonathan Waterboy so neatly drew for us in the first “God’s Not Dead” film? Washed away. Soaked in blood. Can’t see it anymore. And they want to know why God would allow that to happen.
If the idea is that following God is following goodness, why would God allow us to live in this doxastic state where we understand that what we’re doing is wrong, but we also understand that what we’re doing is good. Why would he allow us to live with this cognitive dissonance?
Why would he allow humans to live in a world where they cannot tell what is right and what is wrong? Why did God command that Abraham murder his own son? Are they all just Abraham waiting for a ram to be brought up the other side of the mountain?
Is there any moral weight to what happens at “Midnight Mass” at all? Or were they all just going to end up in the same afterlife anyway, and nothing matters because this is the way that it was supposed to happen? Lisa’s last line indicates that the monster itself died, so his blood stopped working
To cure her. Was all of this just so that they could destroy that demon? Are they Jesus, or are they the persecutors? What is their role in this story anymore, and why would God allow them to be confused like this?
The massacre that they have carried out on Crockett Island has pushed a very simple cognitive dissonance as far as it can possibly go; and now everyone is feeling a bit abandoned by God, even the most devout. So, Mildred is Sarah’s mother, the woman that Father Paul had an affair with years ago;
And she is the reason that he is doing all of this. He wants a second chance to get it right with her, and to get it right with his kid. He’s watched Sarah grow up with another man as her father, and he hasn’t been able to say anything, and he regrets that.
That’s at the core of why he’s doing all of this, and everything else is just fodder. “That’s why I put that thing in that trunk; that’s why I bribed and lied and smuggled it back here. That was the reason; I didn’t want you to die.”
Mildred was pretty stoked when she was young and hot again, but Mildred has not been a fan of what Father Paul’s been doing since he gave a very violent sermon. And she says to him when he kind of confesses what he’s done…you know what, just play the clip.
[Music] “But that’s over now, John. We made our choices; we lived our lives. She grew up, and we faded away, and that’s how it’s supposed to work. It’s supposed to be over.” So, after Father Paul tells Sarah’s mom that he just did all this so she’d be hot again,
They walk out of the church, and they find Bev Keane and the other vampires being absolute fucking menaces, okay? I think it goes without saying that Bev Keane was not one of the characters who came to any sort of realization about what she was doing over the course of the night.
But, either way, Father Paul walks out, sees her being a cunt, and just kind of suddenly realizes that maybe he got this wrong. “It’s between them and God, isn’t it?” “No.” “I’m sorry?” “No; we got this wrong.” “Oh, don’t be ridiculous” “Oh, Beverly, please, look at them, would you? We are the wolves.”
And it’s heartbreaking; because this is the moment where you realize that he was never a villain at all. He really, truly believed that he was doing God’s work; and the realization that maybe he was wrong ,and maybe Mildred is right, and we’re not supposed to get do-overs, and
People aren’t supposed to behave like this, that realization hits like a cold bucket of water. “I was wrong. We…we…we were wrong. We are wrong, and this needs to stop.” And when he comes into the church a few moments later and sees Sarah–his daughter who doesn’t
Know that she’s his daughter, that he so desperately wanted to be with and to take care of and to start over with—is pouring gasoline all over his church, just everywhere, preparing to burn that shit to the ground so that there’s no shade for the vampires to hide in in the
Morning, he looks her in the eyes and just says, “Good.” He gets it. It took all of, like, five minutes. And, just like Reverend Dave, he sacrifices his church. Because it is the best thing for everyone involved.
Two sides of a coin: these two devout religious men choosing to sacrifice and give up a place of worship that has meant so much to both of them and has played such a pivotal role in their own personal journeys to being men of God and followers of the Lord and leaders
In the church. They both give it up. The only difference is that Reverend Dave makes this decision after he gets his supernatural proof, after God commands him to chill, and Father Paul makes this decision in SPITE of his supernatural proof. “Don’t be ridiculous.” “Oh, Beverly, please, look at them, would you?
We are the wolves.” “John?” The people of Crockett Island, except for Bev Keane, have their return to consciousness moment in spite of their supernatural proof. Whether it is a feeling of physical guilt returning, or like an intellectual understanding
They should be feeling guilt and yet they are not, they suddenly have been forced to accept both of our premises. The only way out is through. They have to accept that eating people is wrong, and God has commanded me to eat people. They’re thrown smack into the middle of another inconsistent belief system.
Instead of engaging with the psychological constraint and saying that maybe this wasn’t God that commanded them at all, or throwing out the premise that God has any moral authority in general and discarding their belief in God, instead, the people of Crockett Island
Choose guilt; they choose personal accountability; they make the choice that Riley made, and they choose personal accountability. There is a parable in “The Brothers Karamazov” about a woman who was sent to hell for being a terrible person; but she really doesn’t want to be there, so she tells God about this
One time that she gave an onion to a beggar on the street, and he’s like, “Alright, fine.” And, so, she gets the opportunity to be pulled out of hell via holding onto an onion root. While she is holding on desperately to this onion root and climbing to her freedom, all
Of the other sinners also start trying to grab her ankles and be pulled up as well, and she’s not having any of that, so she kicks them off, and suddenly the onion root disappears, and she’s stuck in hell. Getting very “Hadestown” vibes but with an onion.
It’s like the Orpheus and Eurydice country vegetable medley. The idea there is that moral redemption is always possible up until the very last second. Had she just allowed the others to come with her, that would have been enough; that would have been the good deed.
The onion didn’t matter; no one cared that she gave an onion to someone one time. You can always do the right thing, even if it’s with your dying breath–sometimes even after. And “Midnight Mass” kind of echoes this parable when, after having slaughtered and/or cannibalized
Most of the island, the remaining people of Crockett choose death; whereas “God’s Not Dead” sort of sticks more to the original understanding of the Abraham and Isaac story. Cause Abraham could have said no at any point. Up until the moment that he had his blade pressed into Isaac’s neck, he could have said,
“Ehh, maybe not.” He could have had a Father Paul moment where he said, “Maybe I got this wrong,” but he didn’t. So God sent a ram instead. Because the story of Abraham and Isaac is not about morality; it is not about moral decision-making.
It doesn’t matter if Abraham was able to decide whether or not that was a moral action; it doesn’t matter if he was on or off the hook, because that story is about faith in God; that story is about belief.
Pastor Dave could have stopped his aggressive fight for the church at any moment, but he didn’t; so God had to step in and tell him to cut the crap because, like the Abraham and Isaac story, what’s important in the “God’s Not Dead” films is not morality; it’s not action; it’s just blind faith.
Just like it doesn’t matter what Grace was doing before she gave her life to Jesus, it doesn’t matter what other choices Professor Ratball has made in his life, as long as he chooses to give his life to Jesus and accept him as a savior with his dying breath. That is all that matters.
It doesn’t matter how Abraham felt about killing his kid; none of that matters. The only thing that matters is that he trusted God, and that is why God sent the ram. In “Midnight Mass”, choices matter. Choices are important. Actions in the face of God are what’s important.
The “God’s Not Dead” movies, they use the closest thing they have to a supernatural element as a reward for faith: they cure cancer, and they give joy and happiness to people who have given faith. We don’t know if the characters in “Midnight Mass” are saved or not; we don’t know if they
Are redeemed in the afterlife; we don’t know if they’re in hell; we don’t know if they’re given an onion; we don’t know what’s going on. The only character that we do see beyond the ashes is Riley; and Riley is then escorted
By an angel with the face and image of the woman that he killed to what looks like a very, very Christian heaven. From the fact that she’s wearing all white, to the fact that she is forgiving him, to the sun coming behind her, it is so explicitly Christian.
And the reason it stands out is because Riley very much did not think that that was what was going to happen. There’s a very, very long, drawn-out dialogue between Riley and Erin where they talk about what they think happens when you die; and Riley basically is like, “I don’t know; you
Trip balls for a couple minutes, and then you’re done.” “Dream to end all dreams; one last great dream as my mind empties the fuckin; missile silos, and then…I stop.” And it’s not until the moment that he gets this Christian, bringing-you-to-the-gates-of-heaven death that you realize how important that scene was.
All of this despite his refusal to carry out what was presented to him very reasonably as God’s plan. He is rewarded with a Christian afterlife not for his Christian beliefs, but for his very Christian actions; for choosing to behave like Jesus; to act like Jesus; to live the
Way that Jesus lived; to help people; to sacrifice yourself. He is rewarded with the Christian idea of heaven, which is just forgiveness and light and freedom. The fact that we don’t see what happens to the rest of the characters only serves to
Support that thesis; to support that idea that that’s not what matters. It was impactful when we saw it with Riley because Riley didn’t want it; Riley didn’t think he was going to get that; Riley didn’t believe that; a release that we didn’t know we wanted with Riley.
The rest of the characters, we don’t need to see the afterlife presented for the rest of the characters because it doesn’t matter. What matters is their choice, and their choice in the last moments of their life is to sing, “Nearer, My God, to Thee”.
And it is Riley’s mother, actually, after sacrificing herself to get the children out and to the boat to safety, she is the first one to start to sing. She is the one who, after everyone looks around and is like, “What happened,” and the sun
Is rising, and there’s nowhere to go, she is the one who starts to sing. “Nearer, my God, to thee. Nearer to thee.” And it reminds me of the moment when Mary is given a tour of hell, and she is so horrified
By what she sees that she encourages all of the sinners to pray so that they may be freed. Mary, who is, like, mostly known for being a virgin and being Jesus’s mom also did this other incredible thing.
The islanders choice to sing and to praise God in the face of the hell that they have created, in the face of the horrors that they have just committed, directly echoes the way that the sinners listen to Mary, and they pray.
Riley’s mother plays the part of Jesus’s mother, Mary, in saving the sinners. And she does this while being a sinner, which is not something that Mary did. Mary was immaculate; Mary was free from original sin; Mary wasn’t even born with Eve’s mistakes; it was a fluke of nature.
The character Riley, who doesn’t even believe in God, gets to play the role of Jesus and gets rewarded with a Christian death for his Jesus-like actions despite his belief, and Riley’s mother, who is quite far from the idea of Mary in the fact that she is a sinner
Herself, carrying out the story of Mary, encouraging these sinners to pray. And, while the biblical tale has the sinners being released from hell, we don’t get that; we don’t get to see if the people of Crockett Island are saved because it doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter; that’s not the point; it was never the point; the point is free will. “Free will.” I just said that. “I mean, you could shoot me right now; it’d just mean I’m five minutes behind–” *Gunshot* Part ten, part ten, part ten, part ten, um part ten
I’m so tired, but I’m so close to the end. “It’s supposed to be over.” Because the Christian redemption cycle is a cycle, it is cyclically cycling Solomon’s son’s sickly souls for sport. We all kind of know what the fuck is going down, right? We all know what’s gonna happen.
There’s only so much that one can change without sacrificing the integrity of the arc. Jesus dies; is dead for three days (we have a period of darkness, lack of faith, fear, and confusion amongst his followers); supernatural intervention (i.e the resurrection, redemption:
Jesus grants forgiveness to all of the sinners in hell and on Earth–except for Solomon, fuck Solomon; clean slates all around); and then you do it all again. Otherwise, what else are you doing with your time? You’re not writing 30-page, single-space essays on a series of movies and television shows
For two wildly distinct audiences just because you thought the title would be funny one time at 2 AM. Instead, you’re stuck. Because, if you know that God’s not dead, and everyone else around you knows that God is very much alive–your sunday school wine-mom brunch buddies, they’re believers; your tears-or-it-didn’t-happen
Summer youth group group chat; your homeschool co-op believes; even that group of strong conservative men that you hunt naked with in the woods twice a month while your wife thinks you’re golfing, they believe in Jesus–it’s too late; that only leaves you with one question left to ask. Well…? What would Jesus do?
Or, rather, what did Jesus do? Before he got snogged to death by Mr. Iscariot in that garden over there, what was he up to, really? How far were you from that grassy knoll, huh? Why were they so mad? What do you know about the Library of Alexandria?
Where were you on January 6, 2021, Mr. Christ? The answer is “busy,” actually. Super busy. Jesus had a packed schedule, and we know this because he had like 12 assistants keeping track of it for him. It’s all there in a checklist.
If you want to do the shit that Jesus did, just crack it open. Turning water into wine…no. Okay, not that one. Making blind men see? Skip. Walking around the Earth, spreading the word of God? That one I can do. Gain some followers? I can also do that. Help the sick; yes, totally.
Feed the hungry? Also that one. Love thy neighbor? Mmm…okay, so here’s the thing… Point is: there are a lot of things that people do to emulate Jesus’s life at that point in the cycle: to go forth and to spread his good word, to volunteer at hospitals, to do food drives, blah blah blah.
But there is one thing; there is one holy grail, elder wand, infinity stone act in all of Jesus’s canon that really just wipes everything else out of the holy water. And I get it, okay? I do; I really do.
Someone dies on a cross and comes back to life, that is probably gonna overshadow the eighth-grade clarinet solo that they had, as far as, like, “previously on” sections go. We’ve been talking about it for two hours; this is the big one; no matter how you twist
It, turn it, mangle it, this is the story of Jesus Christ, and it remains to be one of persecution and martyrdom; of hanging on to belief and truth like it’s a rope dangling from a helicopter in a windstorm of oppression; hanging on to that belief and faith like it
Is an onion root pulling you out of hell. Being willing to die in the name of God is top-tier iconic behavior. It’s not for everyone. And, perhaps, in the year of 33 AD, when sneezing too loudly could start a war, perhaps, it
Wasn’t too difficult to be killed in the name of God, right? But, now, in the year of our Lord 2022 (or 2014 for “God’s Not Dead”), in the United States of Goddamn America, not so many people running around with crosses and bags of nails, you know?
So, if you want to express your willingness to die for your faith, then you need someone to be willing to kill you over it. And, if Reverend Dave and the “God’s Not Dead” franchise have chosen the American education system as their big bad oppressor, then Beverly Keane has chosen literally everyone else.
“Sheriff, of course, I wouldn’t run you out of town; and it makes me sad that you would think that of me.” Bev Keane has decided that literally the entire world is her opposition at all times constantly.
She is a servant of God first and foremost; she is at the top of the spiritual food chain; first in line at the gates of heaven, and she does not care how many dogs she has to kill to stay there.
Whether she is calling out Father Paul for wearing the wrong color robe on his first day, baiting the sheriff into accusing her of some shit that she knows she did just to deny it, or shaming Erin for throwing out an empty bottle of Windex, Bev Keane creates
Persecution against herself for the sole purpose of appearing to overcome it. She wears blinders, and, like Josh and Grace, they walk past the damage that their actions are doing to the people around them in the name of the almighty martyrdom, the holy grail of Christian behavior.
Reverend Dave’s decision in the third GND film to sacrifice his church has the most profound effect on the deadlings in that film. It’s not just the characters who were explicitly Christian and sort of questioning or losing their faith like keaton, but the whole damn school; the whole town; the whole surrounding
Vicinity have suddenly become Christians. And they’re live streaming about it. “Call it a publicity stunt if you want, but we were there. I mean, this dude’s legit.” “There’s no doubt about it; we…we make these films, first and foremost, for the church
To encourage people in their faith, so they can stand up, and I think that’s one of the reasons why the first one was so successful.” But, in order for any of this to work, you need that villain; you need the monster that is Kevin Sorbo’s facial hair. “Nooooo!!”
But, due to the nature of the redemption arc, because Jesus was so perfect, placing your main character on the prophetic side of the redemption cycle, characters like Josh and Grace and Reverend Dave are then stripped of their agency within that cycle. Sure, they choose to fight…but that’s kind of it.
They don’t get to make a lot of other decisions throughout the course of their films. With the exception of the moment where Reverend Dave chooses to sacrifice his church (which arguably wasn’t really his choice because God told him to), all that the central Jesus-like
Characters in these films do is make the same choice over and over and over again, and so they remain stuck in that first half of the redemption cycle, the persecution, and can never really move beyond that. Because, while they may be functioning as the prophetic martyrs within the narrative,
They are not actually prophets; they cannot perform the supernatural acts required to complete that arc, not only because they’re human, but also because these films are made by Christians for Christians, and, therefore, you cannot have your characters performing actions that surpass the actions of Jesus Christ.
So they remain stagnant; they are awaiting an interruption from God that will allow them the opportunity to convince the surrounding characters that… “God’s not dead; he’s surely alive. He’s livin’…” It’s not Grace who loses her faith in the second film, it is supporting character Brooke,
Who is grieving the loss of her brother and is inspired by Grace’s steadfast belief, that finds Christianity. Keaton and Adam who, after Dave hears the voice of God, they are the ones who find God, who choose to give their life to God.
It is Radisson who chooses to believe in Jesus Christ as the savior. The deadlings are the only ones who make choices in these films because they behold their characters to these strict boxes of Jesus-role and deadling-role.
They do not get to make the choices that characters like Riley, who was a deadling then became Jesus, gets to make. They don’t make any choices because they’re locked into this cycle. One of my biggest gripes with the first GND film is that it is not Josh who finds Ratballs
In the street after he’s been hit by a car. Imagine how good that would have been! The…the emotional journey that those two have been on; the emotional payoff that that would have given us of these two characters who have been at odds with each other like
All of the brothers in “The Brothers Karamazov”, and like Riley and Father Paul who have been at odds with each other, and having these back and forths, and discussing the big things of nature; and then the one who was so adamant not to believe in God suddenly needs God,
And it is the character that he’s been bullying and treating like shit this whole movie who is the only one there with any even remote connection to the Lord; he’s the only one who can even possibly kind of take this man into his arms and say, “Do you accept Jesus
Christ?” and he’s the only one who can hear that confession and be like, “I verify; I vouch for him,” and…and give him that salvation in his dying moments. How good that would have been! It would have been so good! Because they have been fighting, they’ve been fighting this whole movie because Riddlestone
Has been treating Waterballs like garbage this whole movie; he has been tormenting him, and Josh has had to stay steadfast in his belief in God and just take it. And he finally wins that argument, and he’s like, “Thank God, I am done with this. I am done with dealing with this professor.
I get my grade, it’s over.” And, then, he’s walking to this Newsboys concert, and he sees this crowd of people in the street, and he goes to see what’s going on, and it’s Ratbomb; and it’s Rainbottom.
And he is on the floor just dying, sad; and Josh has to choose to not just do the Christian thing, which is save this this dying person, but the personal thing, and Josh gets down on his knees and looks this man in the eyes and forgives him. “I forgive you.”
But that’s not what happens. Because that would muddy the waters too much between personal forgiveness and godly forgiveness. It would mean that part of Radisson’s being saved was dependent on Josh choosing to be there and choosing to love thy enemy, which he can’t do because they’re not allowed to
Make these kind of choices. Instead, what happens is by, supernatural intervention, Pastor Dave just so happens to be walking by in that moment. Essentially, the supernatural proof element used in the first “God’s Not Dead” film is basically that God sent Dave to happen to be walking by just at the moment that Radisson
Would need him most to give him the chance to be saved at the last possible moment. “I believe it’s God’s mercy that brought me here right now.” And that is literally Dave’s job, by the way. We don’t get to see him or any of the other Christian characters make any other decisions
Or choices that change who they are in any sort of fundamental way. Like Bev, they all stay exactly the same the whole way through because Bev Keane…Bev Keane doesn’t give a shit about who she converts. In fact, she’d probably rather people stay out of the church, if she had her way.
Which is also a pretty accurate reflection of Catholicism. We’ve never been big on recruitment. We prefer to just sit and stew in our guilt until the free-market spiritual forgiveness scheme finally suffocates all of us with our last 10 Hail Mary’s. “It is almost as if he is preparing you for that.
You sit there, blessed among men, smirking when I say ‘God’s will’.” “I’m frustrated.” “I know.” Bev’s spirituality is so capitalistic that she literally cannot process the fact that she wasn’t chosen by God to become a vampire. She is practically twitching with rage throughout this entire scene that they’re trying to keep
Riley calm until the sun sets. She does not understand why, after all that she has done, after all that she has paid, she was not rewarded as she should be. Her constant pursuit of self-interest leads her to recruit workers underneath of her to
Help cover up Father Paul’s crimes: minimizing her labor, increasing her potential benefit, growing her spiritual capital. And she is just boiling over with the fact that Riley, who has not even taken the sacrament since he’s arrived on the island from prison, has just been gifted eternal life over her. She can’t deal.
She has become a victim of spiritual capitalism, exploited for her labors. So, when she steps into the leadership role at the end of the battle, when Father Paul begins to question what they’ve done, she thinks that she is justified in this because she was a servant first. It is the American dream.
She pulled herself up by her bootstraps. She deserves to be the leader. And the leader has the most power. And the leader can, therefore, export the most good in the eyes of God; and thus gain the most profit, i.e. favor of God, fast track to heaven. “It was always going this way.
You were always…you were always going to be the last, the hardest, test of my faith…you.” She wants to go from follower to profit; she wants to make the jump from religious zealot to saint; she wants to be seen as holy; she wants to reap the benefits of her faith that
The characters in GND already do. But all that’s required of them is faith. And, in the end, it is her inability to see past herself, her blind pursuit of self-interest, that leads her to let everything burn down. Which is the ultimate cause of her own destruction.
There is a bug flying around, and we’re just gonna be friends with it, just for the record, if it’s in the shot… “The polluted, the murderers, the fornicators, the sorcerers, idolaters, and all of the liars; their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.
Let it burn.” She chooses to do what is best for herself over and over and over again. She digs herself deeper and deeper into a hole that she will never get out of. And, despite her move into spiritual leadership, she dies in exactly the same place that she
Started, literally digging herself a hole to bury her face in the sand. *Sobbing* *Singing* She does not sing with the others; she does not pray; she does not speak to the Lord; she does not apologize; she does not ask for forgiveness. She just keeps digging.
She could not make the leap that Riley does; she could not experience the growth that characters like Keaton in GND do. She never gets a chirotic moment; she doesn’t get a come to Jesus moment because she doesn’t do anything to earn it.
She does not make any alternative narrative choices outside of her initial role. She does not exercise her free will. And the way that Christianity is presented in “Midnight Mass” requires action for reward. “…because, your whole life, I think you’ve needed to hear this. You aren’t a good person.” “Well…”
So, according to Jesus’s pals, there was this one time that he was walking in the desert, and he got tempted by satan himself to turn some stones into bread; but, for whatever reason, he’s like, “No, I’m not gonna do that.”
And, so, then the devil’s like, “Okay, jump off that cliff, but the angels will save you because you’re the son of God.” And Jesus is like, “No, um, I’m not gonna do that either.” And, so, the devil’s like, “Alright, rule the fucking world then.
You’re Jesus, son of God; you should be able to do that.” And Jesus is still like, “No, I’m also not going to do that?” A couple thousand years later, Fyodor Devil’s Advocate Dostoyevsky, he’s alone and grieving; struggling with his faith and the ever-changing Russian political climate of the time; he’s
Writing TBK, and he includes this parable that is supposedly written by Ivan, and it is called “The Grand Inquisitor.” And, in this story, Ivan basically writes fanfic about the Grand Inquisitor story, and he imagines that, in the 1600s, Jesus did come back.
In Ivan’s world, he comes back and immediately gets arrested; because, remember, we have all come to terms with the fact that humans cannot be trusted to decide what is good and what is bad; what is right, is what is wrong. We cannot be left alone to our own devices.
We learn this in Genesis; we learn this in Adam and Eve. We talked about it a couple sections ago; we’re no good with the decision-making. And, because of this, the church had to step in and feed the people, and govern them, and
Bring order to a chaotic society; and, so, the inquisitor is basically grilling Jesus about the fact that he said no to everything the devil asked him to do, and he’s like, “If you can turn stones into bread, why did you not feed our hungry people?
If you can bring life back, why are you not bringing people back to life? If you could rule everyone peacefully, why are you not doing that?” He points out that Christ’s decision not to use his magic powers to turn the stones into bread led to people suffering because they were starving.
“Because you’re right. There is…there’s so much suffering in the world, so much. And, then, there’s this higher power, this higher power who could erase all that pain; just wave his hand and make it all go away but doesn’t? No.”
By not being the all-powerful God that you are, and fixing things and healing people, you are allowing your people to suffer; and, for that, you must pay. Because they punish people on Earth for their crimes, and people get punished in hell for
Their crimes; so, if Jesus is going to come back into a world that is shaped by his existence, shaped by his church, then he is gonna also be held accountable for his crimes. The existence of God does not negate personal accountability. And why does a good God allow terrible things to happen?
Ivan tells this story mostly because he’s trying to push Alyosha’s buttons, because every conversation that he has with Alyosha leaves him spiraling. But he also tells this story because it is something that he uses to justify his belief that the church should actually be in charge.
He thinks that the church should be in charge of governing people and sending people to jail and all of that; he thinks that they should make the laws. Even if they are doing satan’s work. Because he thinks that people will listen better and follow laws if they believe that
They are being given by God, because, without God… “…then everything is permissible. And, not only permissible, but pointless. If Professor Radisson is right, then all of this, all of our…” Two things we need to talk about with Josh’s use of this quote in this scene. One: it’s not real.
It is in the book; it is a concept in the book; it is a very, very important concept in the book; but no one ever phrases it like that. “As Dostoyevsky famously pointed out…” This is not a direct quote. It’s also not a direct quote from Dostoyevsky himself.
I have a strong dislike for people who quote things that characters say as if the author is saying them. I just think that you’re missing a layer there if you are saying that this is something that the person said.
If you’re gonna do it, put a comma and the title of the book that it’s from, but don’t go around saying that, like, John Green said, “Okay, okay.” Like, yes, technically, but he didn’t just say that for fun one day. It’s in a book.
So, the concept is in the book; it’s a very, very important concept in the book that gets explored really thoroughly, but, when they’re saying “God”, it is more of a reference to the immortality of the soul, which is directly and intrinsically linked to the concept of
God, but what they’re talking about is the idea that you will live forever after you die; that your actions on Earth have consequences after your death. That is what they are talking about; not about God and whether or not God will tell you that something is permissible.
They’re talking about whether or not your actions on Earth have consequences after your death; they’re making the argument that, if your soul just ceases to exist at the moment of your death, then everything that you did on Earth before that doesn’t matter.
Which is why Ivan thinks that the church is important; because he thinks that people need to be kept in line while on Earth, despite the fact that he doesn’t believe there’s an immortal soul, and he doesn’t believe there’s anything after. That is what that quote is talking about.
That is why the church needs to be making laws and controlling people on Earth: to keep them in line while they are alive. Because, if they know that they’re not going anywhere after, then they will do whatever the fuck they want.
Someone needs to be keeping people in line, and someone needs to be making laws. That is why he thinks that the church should be in charge of laws. And that brings us to the second thing. Which is the use of the word “permissible.” It gets quoted like that a lot.
I will give it to the directors and the creators of the film that it is most often quoted like that; because that sounds a lot better, doesn’t it? “All things are permissible? Then everyone is allowed?” And Dmitri actually does kind of say it like that at one point.
I think he says, “…then men can do what they like,” which is a much more, like, titillating way to say it. But the word that is used, at least in my translation and, like, two of the other translations
That I checked, I got two ebooks and I have one physical copy, and the word is mostly “lawful” or “legal” or, like, a version of that, when they quoted that section. Which I think is a much better translation for what they are talking about…which is laws.
See, I told you that he did not read the book. Anyway, so the grand inquisitor is berating Jesus with questions and accusations and shit. “Instead of taking men’s freedom from them, thou didst make it greater than ever.
Didst thou forget that man prefers peace and even death to freedom of choice in the knowledge of good and evil? Nothing is more seductive for man than his freedom of conscience, but nothing is a greater cause of suffering.
And, behold, instead of giving a firm foundation for setting the conscience of man at rest forever, thoust didst choose all that is exceptional, vague, and enigmatic.” Thank you, drama school. Where Nietzsche saw the death of God as an opportunity for humanity to build a new, better
Moral system, many of the characters in “The Brothers Karamazov” see it as disastrous, if not downright evil. Ivan’s proclamation that everything is permissible, lawful, without a god is both utterly horrifying and completely seductive. There is a character in “The Brothers Karamazov” called Liza or Lise; I don’t know how it’s
Pronounced, if you haven’t caught on to the fact that I’m not big on pronunciation accuracy, then here you go: I’m not big on pronunciation accuracy; at least not with things in the public conscious; pronounce people’s names correctly; don’t be a dick.
In TBK, we meet Liza as a 14-year-old girl who is paralyzed and using a wheelchair. She is wide-eyed and innocent and suffering this terrible affliction until an encounter with Alyosha’s father figure, Elder Zosima, in which he performs some religious healing, and suddenly her condition is improving.
Elder Zosima is like a monk, by the way. And, after this, throughout the course of the novel, she becomes very tempted by Ivan’s ideas. Basically, Ivan’s idea that everything is lawful without a god spreads like wildfire and causes lots of problems, and Liza is one of these people who gets infected by it.
She starts acting out; she’s deliberately cruel to the people around her; she is slamming her hands in doors, causing herself pain; she is putting herself through physical and emotional suffering as penance for these dark thoughts and doubts and fantasies that she’s having. Which we’ve all been there.
Because she’s a kid, and she’s also about to be married off to someone who is very much not a kid. She gets a little bit older; I don’t think she’s 14 when they start talking about getting married, but still. She recounts all her dark fantasies to Alyosha; slams her finger in the door.
This is very common with the characters in TBK; they all think that suffering is a way to make penance with God. But it’s interesting because our Lisa in “Midnight Mass”–already established to be a sort of holy figure; completely devout, innocent, sweet victim of a horrible crime; suffering
A physical affliction in a wheelchair–regains the ability to walk through a similar encounter with a spiritual leader, and we get a similar outburst from our Lisa when she decides to pay Joe Collie a visit. This is her first time speaking to him since he shot her in the back.
And she rips him a new one. She talks about how angry she was; she talks about how she hoped that his place was dirty and disgusting; she hoped that he was miserable and alone because of what he’s done to her with one of the best lines in the entire show.
“You reached through time, Joe Collie! You reached through time, and you stole…” Which, again, why do I write anything? And she follows up this outburst and this outpouring of anger and frustration with an act of radical forgiveness.
She literally says, “If God can forgive you, and he says he can, then so can I.” And Joe Collie falls apart, and it is like getting hit in the chest with a baseball bat every single time you watch it. “And if I can forgive you, Joe Collie, then anyone can.” *Sobbing*
It’s soo good. It’s so good. It’s a moment of such, like, strength and…and growth as a character. It’s so good! It’s not really something that we get to see a lot of from Liza in “The Brother’s Karamazov” just because we don’t really get that much of Liza in “The Brother’s Karamazov.”
Apparently, there was gonna be a sequel, but… Anyway. Lisa does this, and it gives such strength and dimension to her character, and exemplifies her faith, and puts her on this pedestal, as well, of not only someone who is a devout
Believer, not just someone like Josh who goes to church every day, not just someone who holds on to her belief no matter what, but someone who struggles sometimes and who makes the choice to choose to behave and to act in a godly manner.
And it’s this moment, not the fact that she could walk again, not when Bev Keane killed his dog, it is this moment that triggers Joe Collie into attending his first AA meeting with Riley and Father Paul. God, this show is so fucking good.
Joe Collie, who has been drinking himself into oblivion and hating himself day in and day out ever since the accident, has started to attend these AA meetings; he is trying to get his life together; and he is really starting to do it until Father Paul fucking eats him.
We have Bev with this twisted idea of protecting the town and the community in the name of God killing Joe Collie’s dog at a public event, punishing him even further and causing more stress in the community, and then we have Lisa, equally devout–a character whose choice
To live by the word of God, to be the one who forgives–that creates a ripple effect of actual good in the community and also brings people to the church. For Bev, trying to exist like the characters in “God’s Not Dead”, like Josh and like Pastor
Dave, it is counterintuitive to what she wants, which is more praise from God…I guess. Because she doesn’t live in a world where blind faith is enough; she lives in a world where action is required for the rewards that she is seeking. She needs to make choices, but she won’t make choices.
Had Jonah the whale been allowed this kind of freedom in his narrative, Lisa’s freedom, then we could have had a similar moment of reckoning; we could have had that moment on the street in the pouring rain with Josh and Ratcakes; we could have had it; but we can’t
Because Josh making that kind of a choice would have distracted from the real focus of the story, which is blind faith. Put in “watch ‘God’s Not Dead’ and find out why Adam turns himself in.” Oh, we’re not doing that.
The emphasis on the “fight persecution” and “faith from the same perspective of the prophets” in “God’s Not Dead” limits its protagonists’ actions in both scope and scale, seemingly circumscribing the very thing that the narrative is working to save, which is freedom of will.
It feels like a contradiction; it feels like a cognitive dissonance; it feels like it should be tearing apart every neuron in their little brains every time the director calls action; it feels like hypocrisy at its finest. But we know from “The Grand Inquisitor” and from the Instagram stories of the disciples
That Big Man did not use his free will to turn the stones into bread, he did not use his free will to push satan off that cliff, and he did not run off and join the army under a false name to save China.
He used his free will to do one thing and one thing only: he used it to trust in God. That’s what he did. Because man does not live on bread alone; and, if you are living in the GND universe as a godling or a deadling, then that’s it; that’s your move.
So it’s gotta be a big one; it’s gotta make noise; it’s gotta be the Taylor Swift “Reputation” stadium tour, and it’s gotta have a ripple effect so massive that it almost feels supernatural. You get one shot per movie. You can only afford to have the Newsboys on set for so long.
“I want everyone to go to their contacts and click on everybody you know and text them three simple words:’God’s Not Dead.’ And there’s 10,000 of you out there; and everyone knows about a hundred people? That’s a million messages right there.
A million times we’re gonna tell Jesus that we love him in the next three minutes.” “Midnight Mass” places the emphasis on the “sacrifice” and “forgiveness” portions of the cycle, so its characters have a full range of experiences. They can bounce back and forth between godling and deadling, faith and not faith, like me
At a party when I didn’t take my meds. You can take Riley from deadling atheist to Jesus in a rowboat and back again; you can take him, put him up against the prophet-esque Father Paul, who is exhibiting nothing but
Jesus-like kindness, and you can set that up of “Jesus and apostle”, and you can flip it upside down, turn it inside out, wring it out over the narrative like blood dripping from a rag you can’t get clean. Father Paul dies, then comes back, starts performing miracles, dies again, comes back
Again, starts fucking shit up, and he is still not the Jesus. It all comes back to that moment when Father Paul looked Riley in the eyes and lied to him about how he knew Lisa could walk again. He had free will in that moment, and that’s what he did with it.
There is so much free will in this series dripping all over the place that, divine intervention be damned, these characters will not do what they are supposed to do; they do not stay in their assigned roles. So, later, when Father Paul chooses to lie to Riley again about Joe Collie visiting his
Sister, because he doesn’t know, when he chooses to continue playing God, it is that choice that brings Riley back to the rec center when he gets eaten by Dobby. Which is the only reason that he is able to tell Erin what is happening and send these
Notes to his family, so that, later, when they all become bat food, they understand what’s going on, and they choose to fight it, and it’s the ultimate undoing for Father Paul, and it’s all because he’s a dirty liar. That was a lot. Um, none of that was in the script.
This comes from, um, right, okay. “There’s so much free will dripping all over the place that divine int…these characters will not do what they’re supposed to…they won’t stay in their assigned roles…to lie again about Joe…” It’s only because Father Paul used his freshest free will to lie that he gets taken out of
The position of Jesus Christ. Riley gets placed in it, is given the opportunity to make that sacrificial choice, and it opens up the floor for everyone else to make the same kind of sacrificial choice and save the world. Part eleven: who do you say I am? This is the last one.
Final episode of “Midnight Mass” contains the second of my three favorite moments. It’s dark; shit is on fire; most of the island have either become bat food or become the batman; and Bev Keane has appointed herself judge and jury; standing outside of Saint
Patrick’s church, deciding who shall continue to live as an eternal blood-sucking soldier journeying to the mainland to spread their glorious gifts onto the unsuspecting world; and who shall be jet fuel. She’s about two seconds from having one of her minions strip some poor dude for parts when Mildred steps in.
Remember when I said that Father Paul walked out of the church to find Bev Keane being a menace? This is…this is Bev Keane being a menace. And mildred is like, “Bev, maybe don’t,” and Father Paul tells her to bring him to the church because all are welcome. All have to be…
“All have to be welcome, or this isn’t really a god’s house!” Father Paul, who we have seen lose himself in the madness of being an immortal demon creature, has had this world-shattering experience. His faith has been challenged; shaken to its very core; run through a blender with a copy
Of the Necronomicon and the first installment of the “Maximum Rise” series, only to be dumped out onto a blood-soaked altar and set on fire. Just put that clip of you saying, “Burning offering? For me?” And, then, just go right into…
This man’s church is a war zone; his friends hate him; he has created a monster that he cannot control with the help of another monster that he cannot control; all of this under what he believes to be the instruction of a god that he has dedicated his entire life and existence to.
“That’s the thing about priesthood: it’s never supposed to be about me; it’s supposed to be about God!” By all accounts, Father Paul should be feeling so abandoned by God; so utterly betrayed by heavenly father that lucifer himself should have shown up to give him a pep talk.
The devil should have brought him on with a salary no man could match. And Christians aren’t allowed to lend money to other Christians, so God couldn’t have done shit. I mean, he probably could have hired him legally, but when was the last time a Christian organization had books that were clean? *Cheers*
Father Paul should be so lost, angry, and dejected, that, if God has not been killed for him, he should be murdering God with his bare hands as we speak. And, perhaps, maybe he is harboring a deep, Radisson-like hatred for the God that is dragging
Him by the collar down a blood-soaked road to a freshly minted hell of his own design, but we don’t know that, and we’ll never know that because he doesn’t say anything like that, and he doesn’t do anything like that.
You know what he does do when confronted with the consequences of the choices that he made? That is exactly what he sees. His choices. Not God’s; not the angel’s; not Bev’s. His decisions. Because, God or no God… “There’s nothing in the scripture, or in the world for that matter, that suggests God negates
Personal accountability.” He finally finds himself standing in Riley’s shoes, staring out from a curb at the mess that he has created, and he does not look away. He does not wander aimlessly without faith. He retreats into it.
He recommits himself to the God that saved him; the God that made him; the God that inspired that priest; the man who offers to start an AA chapter just so that one guy doesn’t have to go to the mainland twice a week; who brings daily mass to the elderly who cannot go to
Church anymore; who once scoured an island looking for a very specific-looking mouse just so he could keep one kid’s faith alive. The God that created that man who says things like, “I am of no use to people in a state of grace,”; that is the God that Father Paul commits himself to.
That is the God that he chooses not just to believe in, but to act like. And, when he walks into that church that he has just declared to be God’s house, and he sees Sarah dumping kerosene everywhere, he just says “Good.”
Because he knows; and he sees in that moment that the best way for that building to be God’s house is to burn to the ground. “He said, ‘this building is not my church’.” It is a powerful moment in both of these films when our godly hero chooses to sacrifice their
Place of worship because it is a sacrifice. And sacrifice is what makes the story of Jesus Christ different from traditional hagiography. This act of free will, of martyring oneself, is the most potent act with the most profound effect on the people around them.
So, it begs the question: does it matter that the only reason Reverend Dave sacrificed his church was because God told him to? We’ve already made the claim that Riley doesn’t need to believe that Jesus Christ himself
Walked the Earth and gave his life in order to free humanity from their sins in the eyes of an all-forgiving all-powerful god. He just needs to do the right thing. He just needs to recognize evil. It doesn’t matter why Riley recognized the evil, be it by its biblical definition or…or
By the harm that it’s causing. It matters that he put a stop to it. “I don’t think that Reverend Hill rolled over. I think that he saw people suffering, and he made a sacrifice for them. Surely, their parallels to Christianity are not lost on you.”
It doesn’t matter if Reverend Dave only put down his sword because Daddy told him to; and it doesn’t matter who was there to offer Professor Sorbo his salvation in the eyes of God. It just matters that he got it.
“The God that you don’t believe in has given you another chance; another chance to change your final answer.” To sing, recite, or teach a text is never a neutral act.” If we are looking for a traditional monomyth in the “God’s Not Dead” films, we are not going to find it.
That’s not what they’re for. They are made by Christians, for Christians. They are acts of praise. They are retellings of the Christian redemption cycle with characters fulfilling the role of Jesus, without actually being Jesus. Which makes them a lot less like protagonists and a lot more like saints.
And, if they are saints, then these films are just visual hagiography; hagiography being the retelling of the lives and achievements of saints, culminating in a chirotic moment where that saint’s badassness is officially acknowledged by God himself to the world.
The chirotic moment is the moment when the Lord comes and says, “I choose you.” Holland says, “In hagiography there is no room for interpretation of events prior to the chirotic moment, because everything leads up to that and is painted in the light of that.
There is no moment where the protagonist could have gone a different route or made a different moral choice. Time is not linear anymore; it is all the same. In narratives, before a climatic moment, everything is up to many interpretations.”
The GND movies go down one way and one way only; they ask one question (“Who do you say I am?”), and they answer it: God is good always, and always God is good. They are straightforward; they are palatable. Pureflix is the Dhar Mann of feature length video content.
Does that mean that they are harmless? No. They are offensive; they are full of stereotypes and misinformation, and I do not even want to know where their money comes from or where it goes. They are problematic in the most basic sense of the word.
There are so many well-researched and well-articulated articles and videos about that fact, and, yet, they still made four of them. They’re doing it for somebody, somewhere out there. That is why I wanted to give these films a fair shake.
“The biggest thing is that…that God has a specific purpose and a plan for your life; and, uh, and he is real, and there is hope in him.” “So, April…” What’s interesting about the film’s use of that phrase, “If there is no immortality of
The soul, then all things are lawful,” or, “If there is no God, all things are permissible,” is that they use it to support the film’s idea that the bible gives us answers. It gives us guidance that belief in Jesus Christ can give us the freedom and liberation
From pain and suffering that we all so secretly, deeply desire. But, in context, in “The Brothers Karamazov”, that statement actually brings about a lot more questions than it does answers. When Dmitri poses that specific question, “All things are lawful, then?
Men can do what they like?” he’s proposing it to a journalist right before his trial for the murder of his father, which he did not commit. And the journalist responds by saying that clever men already do what they like.
Ivan is concerned that a world where no one believes in God or is governed by a belief in God will fall into complete chaos and injustice, when it’s already happened. Dmitri is found guilty. Dmitri gets sent to jail for something that he didn’t do. A murderer walks.
It’s already happened; the death of God has already occurred in their world. You cannot unring that bell. “God is dead. We have killed him. We have free will.” That monstrous world that Ivan describes–that selfish, evil, lawless land where cannibalism
Runs amok–that is the world that “Midnight Mass” presents to us as a direct product of the belief in God as a moral authority. In “The Brothers Karamazov”, the belief in God brings nothing but questions; in “God’s Not Dead”, it gives us answers; and, in “Midnight Mass”, it gives us justification.
If Dostoyevsky was putting Eastern Orthodoxy on trial to see if it prevails, then Michael Flanagan is nailing Catholicism to the cross to see if it will rise again. They are rewarded for their actions; they are rewarded for how they choose to love.
In the final moments of “Midnight Mass”, the people of Crockett Island stand amongst their burning homes–the wreckage of their God’s work. *Singing* And they begin to sing. They liberate themselves from their belief in a transcendent God that would require such monstrous acts of them through a return to their most basic principles.
As the sun rises on Crockett Island, Ali and Sheriff Hassan begin to pray; Erin lies like Jesus on the cross beneath the angel; Father Paul and Mildred hold Sarah’s body on a bridge that she loved as a child; and Lisa and Riley’s brother are sat on a tiny rowboat in the middle
Of the water, watching everything that they have ever known and everyone that they have ever loved turn to ash. And Lisa looks at him and says… “I can’t feel my legs.” Suffering has returned; liberation is over, even for the innocent. “Weeping may last through the night, but joy cometh in the morning.”
“Midnight Mass” was never about resurrection; it was never about bringing God back from the dead; it’s about standing in your darkest possible moment, when you have become the devil, and answering the question. It’s about keeping God alive whoever you say that he is. Alright. That’s it. We’re done. We’re done. We’re done.
God save the queen. I can’t believe I’m done…I’m so happy to be done filming this. This has been the hardest thing that I’ve done in a really long time. Like, between the fact that I started the script in September and just the sheer amount
Of research that was required, and there was always something else that needed to be looked into and explored, and the script didn’t make any sense for so long; it still doesn’t; editing is gonna be a fucking nightmare, but… And, then, the tech issues…
And I film all this on my phone; I have to keep everything on a hard drive because I don’t have space on my computer to even run Final Cut. Like, this is…this has been such a monster. So, thank you for watching all of it. I appreciate it. I would like to do more.
I’m planning to do more. I hope they don’t take this long. I’m trying to get better at other social media, so I do post some stuff about this on my Instagram; but, like, my Instagram’s, like, mostly my family and my friends, so it feels really weird to post anything, like, advertisey?
So, don’t expect, like, influencer-level content if you follow there. But, if you do, I do sometimes post about like the process of these and…and how they’re coming along, so there’s that. Um, you can follow my tiktok…that’s mostly gay shit. And, um…yeah. That’s about it. I appreciate your help.
Not that you did anything, but…you know. I apologize to chairs, so… I can hear my neighbors; okay. I…it’s 2:02 AM, I can hear my neighbors talking, so I think they’re probably about to come complain about how loud I’m talking so… Bye. That’s a wrap! I keep on waking up, walking alone in the street… I keep on hearing the voices; they’re trying to scream… A child in a blanket of lead, on the river I wade through Searching reflections for all of the answers I thought I knew
I wanna burn down the farm Set fire to the wood that built me so strong For a world that I cannot Survive I want to watch it all fall Swallow the ashes I make of the stall In the hopes that they might Make me feel alive
Family of monsters can live as long as their youngest So, cut down the fountain of youth and tie it to her wrist A child in a cave, on the edge of the river I’m hiding Traded her matches for all of the time she’s spent biding
I wanna burn down the farm Set fire to the wood that built me so strong For a world that I cannot Survive I want to watch it all fall Swallow the ashes I make of the stall In the hopes that they might Make me feel alive
Call the fire department Tell them there’s been an arson Forget the village buckets There’s not a damn thing left Call the fire department Tell them there’s been an arson Forget the village buckets There’s not a damn thing left
I wanna burn down the farm Set fire to the wood that built me so strong For a world that I did not Did not survive I want to watch it all fall Swallow the ashes I make of the stall In the hopes that they might Bring me back to life
So greetings of peace everyone. Welcome to this panel discussion. Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, depending from where are you joining us today as we have speakers from literally all over the world. Uh it is my great pleasure to welcome all
Of you either who are following us on the live stream on different channels. Uh as I said, this will be the panel discussion under the title countering hate speech interfade and intergenerational perspectives. Uh this is organized as a part of the
Fellowship program. Myself, hello when my colleague Amina Furdak are beside other roles that we are having, we are also fellows. So, as a part of our final Kaisit Fellowship Program, we decide to organize this webinar on the occasion of the World Interfaith Harmony
Week and even though World Interfaith Harmony Week is happening at the first week of the February, as we all know, it is, there is plenty of activities organized throughout the month of the February and one of that is today’s panel discussion that we are
Organizing. So, I would just like to shortly introduce all co-organisers of today’s panel discussion. The first one is of course Kaisit International Dialogue Centre, SBI Dare Fellows. So the Kaisit Fellowship Programme brings together leaders and educators from different religious
Backgrounds from all over the world. For training in dialogue facilitation, intercultural communication and promoting social cohesion. Uh and this is all done by by the pool of Kaisid expert. The program equips fellow ops with the skills to educate their students and communities about
Interreligious dialogues so they can become facilitators and leaders in the dialogue and active peace advocates in their communities and we hope that this today’s panel discussion will contribute this aim as well. The second organizer is Youth for Peace which is Youth
Led Organization from Bosnia and Youth for Peace bring young people of diverse, religious, spiritual expression coming from different cultures and tradition backgrounds from all over the Boston Hertz of Govina And this organization is established to promote dialogue, interfaith and
Interactive cooperation to end all kinds of violence and to create culture of peace and justice for youth. A youth for peace is also CC of United Religion Initiative which is our third partner on this webinar. So United Religion initiative is a global
Grassroot interfaith network that cultivates peace and justice by engaging people to bridge religious and cultural differences and work together for the good of their communities and the world. Europe is one of the eight URI regions and I’m very glad to
Say that URIN presence in all in more than 111 countries currently with more than thousand groups called cooperation circles and even for peace is one of them. You can find more more information about all these organization on the links that will be provided
During the livestream. Now I would like to welcome all of our panelists of today’s discussion. We have very nice group of people coming together from all over the world as I said. So welcome again. Thank you very much for making extra
Effort to join us today despite all this time differences and a lot of activities that is happening throughout the month of February. We are really happy that you accepted our invitation And we decide to discuss about this topic of countering aids hate speech
From perspective of interfaith and also intergenerational perspective because we know unfortunately that today’s hate speech is presence all over the world and and especially now when we are using the social media and when we are all present in the online sphere so
Much. So we thought that this will be very important to discuss what can be done in terms of bringing people from different backgrounds together not just in a religious sense but also a different generation. Therefore we would like to hear what our
Distinguished speaker had to say on this topic and I would like to invite Tahil ah Sharma. He is regional coordinator for North America in United Religion Initiative. So Tahil welcome. I will just shortly use him. So, Tahil is an Interfaith activist based in
Los Angeles in United States of America. He was born to Hindu father and a sick mother. Following the Oak Creek shooting of Sikh Temple in 20 12, Tahil become involved in efforts for Interfaith Literacy and Social Justice and he has
Also been doing this very professionally for the past eight or nine years. He also serves as the Los Angeles coordin term for Sathana which is coalition of progressive Hindus and he also serve in various organization in different capacity to educate,
Engage and serve various communities that promote interfaith cooperation and ethic analytical pluralism, a social and and productive norms is society including Interfaith Youth Cord, the Parliament of the World Religion, of course, his role in United Religion Initiative and much more. So I
Think the Tahil is a great person to give us input on the topic that we are discussing today about countering hate speech as a young person, as also in a person who is working quite a lot in Interfaith field. So, Tahil, we are happy
To have you with us today and please floor is yours. Thank you so much, Layla. Good morning, everyone. It’s a pleasure to be here. It’s such an important time for us to be able to talk about countering hate speech Um mainly because a
Nature of how we address it has been sort of a constant question in the context of many countries in the world but particularly in the United States in a country that professes an idea of the freedom of speech. Um there has
Been a very troubled aspect in approaching this idea of what is acceptable speech and what is not acceptable speech. Um and coming from a space where I work with a lot of religious and spiritual I know that especially in the space of the
United Religions Initiative, the nature of how we engage in this work is centered around creating a space for appreciative inquiry, getting to know people as much as possible, and trying to deepen our understanding of them as making it a process of deeply
Understanding ourselves as people. Um and what happens in this work sometimes can be very challenging because the nature of dialogue in in the context of Interfaith Cooperation especially makes it especially challenging to be able to address differences in a way
That make us really feel like we can really empathize with other people. And sometimes the nature of empathy can be itself very challenging because we like to use the framework of filling in or feeling as if we are in someone else’s shoes. Um
But what happens when you can’t actually fit into those shoes What if those shoes feel uncomfortable? Uh the nature of empathy is actually to go a little more than just trying to make sure that you know the exact person’s experience. You
Don’t need to know their suffering to be able to help them. Um you don’t need to experience their exact suffering to be able to help them either. Um what you do need to understand is the nature of building those powerful bridges between
Communities and individuals. Uh requires us to be able to step into a space of solidarity to step into a space of that appreciative inquiry that allows us to go a lot deeper than we usually do when we’re stepping into spaces that are
Unknown or uncomfortable to us. Um and in the United States for the past several decades the ability of mitigating the the speech that is sort of targeted towards many minority religious and cultural and ethnic communities. Um continues to be a challenge today. Um because
Is in the nature of how we understand even our own United States Constitution that interpretations allow people to understand the nature of the freedom of speech as very different things. Um for me entering this perspective personally speaking, the nature
Of having freedom of speech is essential to the way that we interact with each other but we need to remind people that a speech has consequence, both good and bad. Uh and the nature of the intention and ways that you are expressing the speech
Are essential in how you are able to make or break communities. Um and in my work personally as someone who has been doing interfaith work for just about a decade now. While at the same time being someone that is deeply involved in the
Mission and values of the United Religions Initiative it becomes very clear that when we centre an interfaith narrative or an interfaith foundation to the nature of dialogue. Um we are able actually mitigate hate speech in ways that we haven’t
Been able to see before. Um the nature of this work of standing up for communities that are facing things like anti Semitism and Islamophobia specific examples tend to be pushed by a lot of misinformation, by a lot of conspiracy theories that are
Both historical and new. Um and it it took a lot of Interfaith communities to show up for Muslims and Jews here in the United States to make them feel like they were not alone and to be able to start deeper conversations with them and
Engaging this idea that solidarity looks like a lot more than just seeing you when you’re happy and seeing you when you’re sad. It’s being able to show up and say what do you need and how can we keep this relationship flourishing?
Um so that’s kind of the context I’m bringing in this morning. Um albeit it may not be comparable to others experiences who in the in around the world having interfaith dialogue can be something beautiful but it can also be something that can get
Boring after a while when it is the same people talking about the same things. Uh but there is a a an active role that each of us can play in making sure that we are talking about things that are transformative and being able to improve
Society. So thank you for that this morning Linda. Thank you very much Tail for this very valuable input and I think that you already start this discussion and highlighted some very important thing as you said we definitely need to discuss about empathy but
Beyond just understanding of the empathy but stepping outside of our comfort zone and providing space for dialogue with others and also it is great to hear what is URI doing all over the world especially stepping not just into shoes of
Others but also trying to others when they are attacked and standing there for them. So thank you very much for sending this very important message. Now we would like to go to another young person who is Sahil who is joining us from
The United States early morning. Now we are going in the middle of the night to the Philippines and it is my great pleasure to introduce Ren Zargaro who is coming from different roles that he’s having and a huge biography but
As Tahil is coming from United the Legion Initiate is coming from another very big organization, religion for peace, so I just want to shortly first introduce even it is very hard to introduce him shortly, as he’s quite young person but with impressive and
Huge biography, so Doctor Renz Argao is the president and chief executive officer of Argao Health International. He is a registered psychologist and psychometrician and international also certificate expert in the psychotrauma. He’s one of the handful of Filipinos who hold the status
Of diplomat of the American Academy of Expert in Traumatic Stress and his work as clinical psychologist include over a decade of experience in clinical administration, case management, psychological assessment, psychotherapy, mental health and psycho social support services. He also work
In quite a lot of conflict areas and in addition to his impressive clinical practice, Doctor Renz is also peace activist and he is engaged in a faith-based diplomacy and development work through religion for peace. He is coordinator of the International Youth Committee
Of Religion for Peace which is the world’s largest and most representative multi-religious coalition where he also serves as a member of the World Council of Religious Leaders as well as international executive committee and he also has quite impressive academic career and
As you know, he’s holding the PhD diploma and I think that I will stop over here because if I continue it will took half hour to go through all your impressive biography but once again, thank you very much for accepting to be with us today
And we are looking forward to hear your input on this important topic. So, floor is yours. Thank you very much, Leila for that introduction. I can feel that you’re overwhelmed. I I got overwhelmed with, the introduction as well. Um, good
Evening from my side of the world. Uh, from the Philippines. Good morning. Good afternoon to wherever you may be. And ah I’m happy to be joining you in ah this panel and this session that we’re having today. Um it’s very
Important and timely to talk about hate speech and what we can do to counter it especially at this time wherein hate speech is becoming a major threat to peace. Um largely due to the now more connected world that we live in. Of course
Thanks to the internet and our social media platforms. Um the social media platforms and their companies seem to continuously allow the proliferation of various expressions that advocate initiate, promote, or even justify hatred, violence, and discrimination. All over the
World. And all all of this are disguised in the context of the freedom of expression or as he’ll mention the freedom of speech. And true. We have that freedom to express ourselves. But let us not forget that freedom is not absolute. As
Victor Hugo puts it the liberty or the freedom of one citizen ends where the liberty or freedom of another citizen begins. That is your freedom ends where my freedom begins. And hate speech is not mere expression of opinions or of
Your thoughts or your ideas or an exercise of the freedom of speech. It is one that can already step on and one that is violating the fundamental human rights that each of us should be able to enjoy. Ah the European Commission Against
Racism and Intolerance already recognized that there is a dangerous link between hate speech and violence. They add that hate speech possesses grave dangers for the cohesion of a democratic society. The protection of human rights and even the rule of law. Um for
Many of us, we have witnessed this in many circumstances. For us, Asians, for example, many of my fellow Asians have been injured. Worst, some of them have been killed due to anti-Asian expressions, especially when the Covid-19 pandemic started. Um, hate
Speech directed against Asians especially due to misinformation and racism, stigma and stereotypes have caused fear, trauma, and suffering to many Asian communities in the west. Here in my own country in the Philippines, hate speech is already a weapon of choice when
It comes to political propaganda. Um, it was expressions or speeches or even jokes that are filled with stigma that was used to justify the deaths of thousands of people in what called the war on drugs. It was also hate speech that brought emotional
Trauma to those who were even given or receiving death threats. Ah some were being intimidated and some are being wished to be killed, to be sick, or even to be raped. And it is hate speech that continues to divide our people.
And that threatens the very fabric of our own society. And this is not just in the Philippines. This happens in many different parts. Um of the world. Now when we look at it, why is there so much hate speech Well, we can’t just
Blame social media, of course, and the internet. We also have to look at the role of our of our own values and our ethics. Um, for us people of faith, for example, we often look up to our religious leaders, in our religious institutions. To
Guide us, when it comes to fighting hate speech. All of our religions and faith traditions teaches love. And none of these religions, none of our faith traditions teach hate. So when we see hate speech being normalized, we get to wonder why our own values
And principles are leading to this hate speech. Where are our values and principles? Those that make humanity human. In this context that lead us to hating one another or to promote violence against one another. Why are we not reminded or even taught the
Value of respect, human dignity, or even care for the other. Why do some leaders or those who should be guiding us towards what is good? Or those who ignite the flame of hate speech? What are we doing? Or what are we not doing? For the
Youth speech is something that seems so common nowadays and not that I’m saying that it is common for the youth to use hate speech. What I mean is that the youth can read, hear, or encounter hate speech in almost everyday of their lives.
It is on social media. In the mainstream media, in the streets, or in places where we gather. Sadly, I even once heard while I’m in in church. Uh, the thing is, we, the youth, have the potential, and the power to combat hate
Speech. The youth of today is the largest generation of the youth. Um, that is no in the history of human civilization. Today’s generation of youth is also the more connected. Well, that’s a good side of the internet and social media.
Hence, if we use this connectivity to influence positive changes and to counter expressions of violence, hatred, and discrimination, we can affect a shift from hate speech to speech that respects human dignity and human rights. The youth is also more
Motivated and driven by their passion to make this world a better place. We can use this to start conversations that highlight collaboration, common actions, and harmony. We can talk about what peace means and what we can do to achieve it.
We can and discuss our values and ethical principles that can help fill in the gaps that allow hate speech to start and to even grow. More than that, we can start by taking actions like calling out our friends and educating them about the
Impact of hate speech. We can also do so by signing up for others and by being the voice for those who are silenced. I too have seen how young people have fought hate speech. We have a friend in Myanmar that
Started a campaign on what they call as love speech on social media. They respond basically to hate speech with love and care and respect. A friend in India organized learning sessions to talk about the impact of hate speech and the
Danger it brings using sports, using activities that are allowing young children to learn better about values and and ethics. It is possible to bring change. We just have to take that first step towards it. Let us teach empathy. That he’ll mention empathy a while
Ago. As well as understanding. Let’s promote and celebrate diversity and inclusivity. Let us turn back to our faith and values. We also need, of course, to be mindful of our own thoughts which then becomes deeds and words. We all need to
Find the root causes of hate speech and counter or best to address these. Let us advocate for the important balance between ending hate speech while still promoting and of course, protecting the freedom of speech, expression, and belief. We need to hold
Platforms like social media platforms, accountable for hate speech. Report those social media accounts that promote hate speech or those that incite violence. Demand, demand actions from social media platforms and hold their companies accountable. Of course, let us not forget it.
Ah, we need to give support as well for those individuals who are victims and targets of hate speech. We can all do this together only if we work together. This emerging tradition of hate in speech, in actions, has gone a long, long
Time. So let us all choose to be the generation that breaks the habit on behalf of the world and of generations to come. So again, thank you for having me. I hope I was able to share some of insights from
This side of the world and from our generation to all of you. Thank you very much and may peace be upon you all. Thank you very much. I hope that you are okay for me calling you Renzo. We are almost a similar
Age. So Doctor Ergo seems a little bit too special. Great. Uh thank you very much for bringing this insight and for sending this important message and I’m sure that all our listeners on our live stream got really inspired by all
These words that you share and you highlighted same as Dahil very important things because we usually forget that hate speech is not just hate speech somewhere online but this is affecting people in offline and that it can lead to the hate
Crime and of terrible things that you mentioned some of them that are happening but on the other side it’s great to know that young people are are starting these great initiatives that you mentioned some of them and we definitely
Need more love and more peace and less hate and we hope that this webinar will contribute into bringing a little bit more more positive stories into this space where there is too many too much hate present everyday so thank you once again and I’m
Looking forward to our question and answer discussion because I’m sure that there will be some question in the line with all these great initiative that you mentioned and now we are moving to if I may say a little bit older generation because as
We said this is intergenerational approach. So more wisdom that we are looking forward to hear from our dear Sally. Sally welcome and thank you again really much for accepting our invitation to join us today as you are really inspirational for a lot of us
In URI but I’m sure beyond URI as well. So I will just try to shortly introduce you even it will be very hard to short introduce. So Sally Mahe is senior consultant and she’s a founding staff person at United Religion Initiative so this
Great organization that I present at the beginning. She held her has held senior staff position for over 20 years. And Sally formerly served as URI, director of organization development and director of global programs as well in United Religion Initiative Sheberg primarily with regional
Staff across the world. and a senior consultant right now, Sally is on call for consultation and makes career high values, practices, and in-depth organizational wisdom available to DRI community globally. Uh Celia also co-authored the birth of the global community in 2003 and
Another book is the great greater democracy day today, day by day. Sally also hold master’s degree from Harvard and she lives currently in the Bay Area with her family. Uh she maintains the every voices which I highly recommend all of
You to take a look at the URI website as there is plenty of inspiring stories from URI community all over the world and there she writes about the variety ways URI cooperation circles or member groups all over the world give voices to
The URI and also contribute to it to its success so thank you Sally for as I said founding URI and being inspirational person as you are and really looking forward to hear your on today’s topic so floor is yours. Oh. Well, thank you so
Much, Layla. I so much appreciate your enthusiasm and it’s like receiving a flow of just earnest desire to do good and to be together at this moment and again, I appreciate the fact that we get to have this conversation. It’s so
Important even though we think we know about it to be engaged with ideas, with perspectives that really matter. And really matters. I want to begin with the sentence to ignore injustice, hurts. I heard that a few days ago and it stopped
Me in my tracks to ignore injustice, hurts, And they made me feel really for in a new way the emotional connection between hate speech and our intrinsic need as human beings for justice. So we all maybe have experienced this topic from many perspectives. But
It’s important I think and I’m happy we get to talk about it here. We get to raise up these feelings and these issues here. Cuz hate speech in all its forms isn’t justice. Hateful words or prejudice, making assumptions, ignoring, propaganda. They’re not just
Bad behavior. But they violate justice. And they hurt us as individuals and our societies. So to allow micro or macro expressions of hate speech to proliferate. Without confronting them. It rips in our souls. And it it degrades a nation. It’s not just bad
Behavior I think, but it’s dangerous. It’s dangerous habits. It’s dangerous patterns that deeply hurt people and society. So, we are called to confront our own interactions with hate speech. It requires introspection and personal choice. So, what do we do? When
We maybe are confronted that we’re helping to perpetrate it. What do we do when we witness it? What do we do? When we’re victim So some choices are we can just let an incident go by kind of minimize its impact Uh we can
Remain fixed in a perspective and just unaware of of assumptions we might hold. We can choose to let our own victimized feelings fester and get buried inside of us. We can choose to continue to spread the stories of the bad ways
We’ve been treated by retelling these stories of mistreatment over and over. Now, a personal experience with that. My daughter converted to Islam many years ago and I have a Muslim, in-law family, and three grand kids and we were out on the sidewalks. Oh,
Again, maybe three, three, or four years ago and yeah, here are my, me and my daughter and little grandsons and People hurled some hate language towards us. As Muslims because she was wearing a hijab. So I had a choice then. And I I
Often fell down. I would I just kept telling. Oh do you know what happened to my daughter? Do you know what happened to us? Do you know what happened? I kept repeating and repeating. A very ugly incident. Yes it was emotional. But that made me
Realize that I forgot to say multitude kind, generous, protective, solidarity acts that they also experienced. So again, the choice of what we choose to amplify, what we choose to carry on is really ours to make. So, another choice, choices that I think
Tahil and Rent have spoken to. Is it we can be open to learn. There’s a lot of learning that’s that’s available to us now. We can be trying to recognize our own undiscovered prejudice within ourselves We can become, learn more about
Becoming empathetic. I like to call it listening ears but we’re really listening hearts. For people who we know are feeling afraid or feeling victimized by hate speech. We can practice and it usually takes practice to speak up against hate speech, especially
When it’s directed at us. to take courage, to intervene when we witness this. So I think each of these choices involve usually new behaviors. For us and for organizations. So whether we’re unaware of perpetrators or angry or hurt victims, letting these kinds of
Experiences go by unattended. Believe it eats away at our insides. And it infects our environment. So again to ignore injustice hurts. As people have said here, the bad news is that hate speech in myriad forms is on the rise. It’s fueled as you
All have said, social media, migration, insecurity from climate change, economic insecurity and injustice and unrelenting change. But the good news is that this is kind of entrenched behavior of hate speech which has been with us for a long time. It’s coming
Out of the shadows. It’s demanding our attention. I did just a brief Google search before this to prepare for this call. And it turned up many different kinds of training programs and how to understand it, combat it much of what was spoken here. I’ve
Learned a new term which you may know called counter speech. So, there’s trainings now in counter speech which is ways to present alternative narratives rather than censorship of offending speech. Counter speech is a direct response to hateful or harmful speech which seeks to
Undermine it. So there are, as you know, there’s lots of good training programs, so I encourage all the people listening, to go online, and to look for them. So, I was asked to speak from an intergenerational perspective Um, and I think Layla and Amina
Invited me in part because I was involved in an intergenerational project, hosted by URI, a few years ago. So our of this project was to launch, you might say, a counter movement We wanted to create new ways for elders and youth
To interact We wanted to just practice behaviors that would replace traditional attitudes and assumptions. With meaningful listening, a new ways of cooperating and standing with each other. So, our purpose statement, I think is still relevant. It says, our purpose is to establish
And intentional international community of millennials and elders of different backgrounds to explore dialogue, relationship building, and cooperation between these generations. Our aim is to be a learning laboratory where we learn from each other. By honestly addressing the issues our different generations face.
Now this project didn’t take off. Um but I its main intent is valid here at this time. So, again, it goes to something really at the core in us. Whether forms of bigotry happen among elders or youth, different people of diverse religions, classes,
Races. I believe what doesn’t change is people’s basic need for people for we each need to be seen. We each need to be heard. We each need to be understood. So People, I don’t think need to be agreed with as much as we
Need to be visible. To be given dignity for who we are. And I think most of us have experienced what it feels like to be misunderstood, rendered invisible, or without value. Uh, most of us hold onto these bitter feelings. And when we’ve
Had our own words ignored, or have been made invisible by another person, or a cultural mindset. The and the diminishment lurks inside of us. It was that long ago, I think two years ago now, maybe last year, I participated in a URI
Panel yet led by young adults regarding the role of youth leaders in the Interfaith Movement. And I remembered, I took notes, and I heard these speakers express anger at being stereotyped, or assumed to be people who are good at computers, yet the young people
To help us with the internet. And I feel as well. I heard the pain inside of the young people who say, well, we’re we’ve been used as tokens by our organizations. They want young people to show up for them but
They don’t really give us responsibility and authority. And I heard frustration about misguided compliments. Oh, the youth, the young people. We are relying on them at this time. We we need them so much. But they still are denied actual roles and responsibilities and
Important decision making. So, these are hard feelings to take but again, in this situation, the good news is that the results of lifting up those different feelings and experience actually was incentive to produce a book and it’s called the toolkit for
Meaningful youth participation. When I’m finished, I’ll put it in the chat box. It just came to me yesterday, hot off the presses and it’s quite practical in bringing up the very issues that I spoke of and offering perspective, offering alternatives. Well,
What can we do when we feel this way? Um so, that’s a very good homemade kind of resource that did come out of a group of young adults who are all part of the URA network. And it’s yeah a lot of practical situations. So
Wherever we encounter it, hate speech, I think and it’s dramatic and it’s subtle expressions. It won’t. It’s not going to go away anytime soon. So, I encourage that each of us make it a priority for ourselves and within our organization To acknowledge it
Is here with us and to humbly but actively learn better ways to listen and to treat one another. I wanted to close with two practical points. What we’re involved in is personal. It’s not out there. It really connects with most of our own
Experiences. And what we elders learned in school and in university. We learned over 40 and 50 years ago. The world has changed. We do have wisdom from life experience. But we don’t understand well the world as it is now. So elders need the
Knowledge and leadership of youth to meet today’s issues. Many elders have learned resilience, have learned perspective that’s can be removed and a bit distanced which is helpful And wisdom. But youth and elders need to listen to each other. And give
Elders a chance to offer offer assurance often encouragement and offer courage. So confronting hate speech is also political. I think both Tahil and Rentz mentioned it. As autocracies gain power across the world and use hate speech, propaganda to secure power. All
People are called to stand up for core democratic values. That demand respectful listening. And the inclusion of all voices. We’re called to create all of us are called to create safe spaces. For diverse to come together And raise their voices and be listened to
And make decisions that affect their lives. So it’s it’s the impact lunch deep. Combating hate speech is about standing for justice. And it’s about upholding values. At the heart of democracy. Every day we make choices about how we interact with other people. Important
Choices that can be overlooked as being trivial. But these choices define us. There are statements of who we choose to be in this lifetime And what impact we will have. On the ones close to us and our nations and the whole world. So
Thank you so much for this opportunity to offer some thoughts about this really crucial topic. Well thank you very much. I I listen to you in different occasions but always somehow you managed to impress me by all the level of the wisdom and
The words that you are sharing with us so I’m I’m really glad that you accepted invitation to join us and thank you very much for sharing all these important things that I hope will inspire all our audience to take the
Action as you said and yes you highlighted some very important things we all need fight especially in justice and this is something that is hurting all of us and I’m glad that managed to bring together a Legion for Peace and United
Legion initiative which is their core values are having desire to create peace, to create peace in the world, where there will be more justice and peace and healing for the whole human beings. So I’m really happy that they managed to bring these younger
People and wisdom from the older generation that we speak today and also thank you very much Sally for all these practical things that you share with us because I think that we all need to take action idea of this webinar and panel
Discussion is not just to share our ideas and thoughts but to motivate our audience and ourselves as well to do something after this webinar. At least maybe to letting some of our stereotypes and prejudice that we may have and
Next time when we set in our computer or meet somebody else on the street maybe to think twice how we will approach this human beings and what we will share with them. So thank you once again and you also mentioned something very
Important. This practical toolkit that we will share a link to it and I’m really happy that URI produce something like that that we will be able to share it with others but you also mentioned in a few times that hate speech should have
Alternative and counter narratives that hate that we should fight with hate speech not just by ignoring it but we need to bring some extra values and I’m so happy that my colleague Amina is is with me here today and even though we
Will now move to the Q&A section before that I would like floors to her because we were also part of the project called Alter Hate. Which was the project bringed by you know organised by young people from Religious for Peace Europe. And
Idea was to provide alternative alternatives to the hate speech. So I mean I think that this is the right place right now to share a few information about that. Before we move to next session of our webinar. So thank you Sally once again and
Amina Flores yours. Thank you Layla. Thank you very much. Um I will try to share a few words about the outer heat which is what the campaign that we had the opportunity to do in the Western Balkan specifically Um we were concentrating on
Serbia, Albania, and Bosnia, Herzegovina. But also it’s really important to say it’s a a part of the larger platform called speech for change which is a platform within religious for peace. And more precisely we were doing it inside the framework of European
Interfaith Youth Network of Religions for Peace. But one of the one of the very, let’s say, immediate results that we had and that we actually did last year on the occasion on the World Interfaith Harmony Week. We’re actually two important
Things. It was again one webinar. We already talked about the interface perspectives and interfaith importance of countering hate speech to let’s say bringing a better Interfaith Corporation. But very important and very dear to me. Output is that we try to root our alternate
Response in the interfaith. And we decided to create a post where we decided to you know just dig into different religious traditions. And we found 11 different religious traditions and again I want to say that there are many more spiritual directions,
Traditions that were not a part of our poster because again we were working also with limited resources, limited time, limited number of people who could work on this poster and it took us a lot of time to actually come up with this
Poster and to find quotes and verses inside religious traditions, inter religious scriptures and inside just oral traditions of the of different religious traditions and create this poster where we that we actually symbolically called no hate speech rule poster. And we
Found in those 11 different traditions we found quotes that are supporting good speech, that are supporting supporting positive speech. Speech that is actually encouraging people to listen to each other not to use harsh words as be and and also sometimes those were there were
Some quotes that are basically somehow prohibiting people to use harsh words to hate each other and to use words that are going to do harm to those to whom we are speaking. So I will just briefly share with you
This poster. Uh some of you had the opportunity to to see it already. The post is already available on our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and it’s completely free for use because we had some inquiries from people. Is it okay that they
Use it? That they promote that they you know put it in their classrooms even. So for me this is like really important output and really important, it’s here, it’s really important to hear from people, their reactions, and their wish
Actually to use this as a learning material. So I’m just sharing this very briefly with you. Um, and probably you, you will see it, so just tell me, give me a thumbs up when you can see the poster, and as you
Can see, we decided to, dig in, let’s go in into Sikhism, Buddhism, Judaism, the high fate, Jainism, Hinduism, Confertianism, Islam, Zorastrianism, Tao and Christianity. And of course, as I said there are many other spiritual thoughts, many other traditions that we did not
Manage to include, but we invited people to send us also the, the quote. So, maybe we will have another version of the poster, maybe we will have no hit pitch rule number two, or maybe we’ll have something like more comprehensive, and
Added with other religious traditions, but, I just wanted to to share this as one of the ways how we as young people wanted to react to hate speech. How we as young people wanted to root ourselves in the interfaith and you know show
That that religion you know is a source of of positivity, is a source for peace, not just for violence because unfortunately in media we mostly see how religion is being manipulated and used for not so nice actions. So we we decided to
Show something different, something alternative. And that’s how this hate no hate speech roll poster was actually born and I do hope that you like them, you like it, and I do hope that also our viewers will be able to see the poster
And will be able to you know, get something out of it but you can definitely find it on our alter heat Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter as I said. So, Layla, thank you for giving me the opportunity to share this
With you as well. Uh and thank you to you panelist for your amazing inputs. I have to say Layla that all the three speeches were so powerful. I really You know, I found myself asking like, you know, where were all these people? I mean,
We were doing campaigns, you know? Where were all those inputs? Because you know, you really touched my heart. I’m not saying this just because you know, you are our panelist, but you really spoke from your hearts, and this is important
Because you understand, and you see when people are speaking from their hearts. And it’s really touched me because, you know, you spoke about hate speech and about the real problem without like, you know, I don’t know, citing different like definitions, citing you
Know, you can do this, you can do that, you know, because you’re really speaking about practical and very important things that we need to consider where we are countering hate speech and I really hope that our viewers actually could
Sense this. Uh I was really moved by also personal experiences that you decided to share with us because those personal experiences, I think it, they have to be much more present in the media, much more present, on social media, much
More present in the public, that people actually see how people, you know, react to hate speech and what hate speech can do to people because a lot of times I spoke I spoke I spoke to to different you know especially to young people and
They, they say, you know, sometimes, you know, it’s just words, it’s hate speech, maybe it’s not going to harm anybody, you know, we were just joking, etcetera, etcetera and then like, it’s not a joke. Because at some point, this hate speech
Can lead to hate crimes unfortunately. Luckily, most of the hate speech is not that dangerous, but we never, we can never know, you know, who can be listening and who can actually take seriously what we just said. And and act upon
That. And we we saw that many times you know with the public persons who were spreading hate speech. They were just thinking okay I’m saying something because I it’s my freedom of speech. And then actually somebody takes that very very
Seriously and acts upon it. But again thank you for your inputs. Um I had a lot of questions roaming around my mind. When you were speaking that I would actually try to address to each of you one of the questions that came to my
Mind that I would like to learn more. That I will also give to lay life. She wants to say something. Uh but I would like to start with Tahil because he spoke the first and I’m just going to follow the order. And
Tahil I know that a few days ago you moderated one event that was again dealing with hate speech. It was called the power of words to say or not to say. And you had also three amazing panelists. I know that
Because I was part of the event so I had the opportunity to listen to those people but I would like to ask you just to with us few highlights from this event. Just few highlights, you know, few important messages that you
Actually found in this event. So, Tahil the floor is yours, please. Thank you so much Amina. Um thank you for the plug for our last event. It’s nice to be able to be able to share some of the highlights from that space because I think
You know we often times do not consider the role of how we use our very own languages in the nature of addressing hate speech itself. Because we always look at hate speech from the frame of this is specific language that we’re using
Against a specific community that is targeted. But sometimes what actually happens is both historically and traditional we note that there are of terms and phrases that are picked up by our own mother tongues that are actually rooted in injustice, that are rooted in
The oppression of certain communities. Um especially from the context of looking at the lens of anti-blackness, many communities around the world use words and phrases to be able to describe people of African descent or of darker skin colors as people who are
Inferior in society. Um one of the major things that actually came out of our conversations with folks from a couple of days ago was the fact that the nature of challenging this means being able to step up our ability to be able to stand in
The way of using this language. When it comes to people using this language very naturally, they don’t assume that they’re going to be challenged and we don’t think about how certain words and phrases have a certain etymology or origin
That allow them to to you know prosper in certain communities. So, it is up to us in a lot of ways to be able to step in and say, you know, I think you should consider using another term or phrase that allows a
Person or a community to feel humanized. A good example that came up was of a colleague of ours by the name of Firaz. Um who was speaking to his friend from Saudi Arabia. Um I don’t remember the term exactly but when it came to referring
People of African descent, particularly Um the term that the Saudi colleague of his used to describe them is translated to the word slave. And the person used it so naturally in conversation that Firaz got taken aback and said I’m sorry
Are am I hearing this word correctly? Are you referring to this person by this term? The person said yeah it’s just been a part of conversation so like what other term do I have? And Firaz took the initiative to be
Able to say actually you could just call person by their skip color or you could just call them by their name rather than demeaning them in the way by using such a derogatory term. And often times we don’t feel comfortable in being able to
Step in to be able to interrupt or try to cause discomfort when it comes to these kinds of things. Um but a major point that I actually brought up is how do you stand up for people? Or a community when they’re not
In the room? And what Firaz did was one of the key ways that you’re able to do that. When you know that someone is using certain derogatory terms and they sometimes use it only because they’re in the safety of one of their own
Communities. It’s up to us as allies and accomplices for justice to be able to step in and say, no, that is not the right thing to do. You should not be doing that. Um because it takes a lot of effort from,
You know, folks who are learning about communities who are showing solidarity to be able to do so when spaces do not have the representation necessary for folks to be able to intervene and say no this is not the language you should be
Using. Um it would also became very clear is that the nature of using language itself can pose a lot of different challenges. Um one of our colleagues on the panel by the name of Izzy had spoken about his journey in getting to study
Hebrews specifically. Um and when he was asked about you know what he does for a living, what he does for his studies and he had mentioned that he studies Hebrew, someone explicitly asked him, why are you studying the language of
The enemy? In other instances, one of our colleagues, Sibu, who, you know, is a polyglot in her own right, has studied numerous languages, decided to go to China and was using Mandarin Chinese with people, and was abused by people who
Thought she was of a different ethnic origin, but was still able to speak Mandarin Chinese. Mind you, she is not Chinese in origin in any way. She comes from a Costa Rican and a Polish background. But her ability and her interest in studying
Chinese brought her into a space and because she looked different and was speaking the language of the people that people were disrespecting her. So the nature of hate speech is very complicated. It is rooted in so many different forms of
Injustice. It doesn’t look the same everywhere you go. Hate speech can be directed at you. You can espouse speech that is a culturally a part of community or you can just talk and hate can be thrown towards at you for using speech. Um so
The nature of being able to combat all of those things is rooted in us being able to speak up and to stand up for what is right in the face of any of those challenges. And I think it becomes even more
Clear that in the nature of addressing that we do have to learn about the nuance of where language is used and how it’s being used. Uh because often times we don’t know the roots of why language is the way that
It is. Um much of it can be rooted to you know colonialism and the ability of those who have conquered various countries within Asia and Africa to be able to hold onto language mainly because of languages like English and
French that sort of pass on from generation to generation. And many other times through observation of what the community sort of examine and express. You’re able to also determine that there has been you know connotations that are intentionally negative towards
Specific communities that have developed over time So, this is both a historical challenge to the status quo and both the modern challenge to the status quo when we are trying to counter hate speech. Thank you very much Tahal for
This input Tanya. It is very interesting Respective when you are when we can discuss about language itself. Being the root causes of the hate speech. So thank you for bringing this dimension and I want to use this opportunity to invite all
Our people who are following us right now and watching this live stream to go to your Facebook account and account of the organization who coordinated the seminar yesterday and take a look as it was really interesting discuss and a lot of inputs that relate
To the to today’s topic as well. Uh now I want to as this presenter on the TV say like we have interruption in the program I would like now to bring us back to our speakers. So Doctor Lakshmi welcome. Uh
We hope that you manage to find the space to join us. We understand what we are organising events in different time zones than it can be really confusing. As we said at the beginning. Some of us are coming in the early morning,
Afternoon, evening, so we are glad that you managed to join us. And of we’ll be more than happy to hear your input to this topic as well. So far we have our three amazing speakers, the inputs and we start with the question and
Answer but we will now give floor to you to share to give your inputs on this topic in like five to 10 minutes and then we can continue with the question but before we give Lord to you I would like to
Shortly to introduce you as well. You also have impressive biographies like all our other panelists so I will try just shortly to give some glimpse of of your incredible and I’m sure that our followers will be able to read more about it. So
Doctor Lakshmi Viyas dedicates a lot of her time for charitable organization and her main objective is to unite the Hindus of Europe under one umbrella. Hindu forum of Europe. She coordinate recently celebrated Diwali in European Parliament that was held last
Year on the 9th of November which bring together attendance of members of European Parliament, High Commissioners, NGOs, spiritual organization, non-political communities, from UK and all over the Europe. Uh she also coordinates the UK census on their consultation and being a standing advisory
Council on religion education. Doctor Lakshmi is also well versed in Hinduism and has clear view of immigration and in an integration as the head of quality and she also works with you with people and learners from all walk of life.
She also had quite impressive academic career with writing different of books and publications so we are really happy to have you with us here today and I would like to give you floor, to give your inputs on important topic that we are
Discussing. So, Doctor Lakshmi Floor is yours. it please unmute yourself. nice, thank you very much Eliza for that wonderful introduction. Um I was wondering, I mean, are we starting the meeting or are we going to start it at at five
O’clock? Yes, so the meeting already started. We are in the middle of the meeting already one hour. So, you were a little bit late. It’s probably there were confusion by the time zones. So, our speaker already gave their input. We started
With Q&A session but we will now give floor to you and continue with the Q&A. And and that I joined late. No problem I have confusion. It was the time confusion. I am very sorry about that. No problem. We are
Happy to have you with us. So please floor is yours. Yeah, hate speech and countering hate speech is one of the biggest problem for leaders And of course, people who may run the organization, different organizations. It’s it’s a nightmare sometimes. So, it is
A hateful hate speech is a form of expression through which intent to vilify, humiliate or incite hatred against a group of people. I mean all these things everybody must have spoken. So I’m not going over it again. Ah I would like to
Say that technology has made it a lot easier for ah all all of us to share ideas and information. Seek advice and much more. And while most of this interaction is kind and respectful. There are those who use it to demean, insult, bully
And abuse. Hate speech, by and large is dangerous and may to low esteem, depression, isolation, anger, anti-social and self destructive behaviours. So, ah generally we as leaders have to provide the right direction to parents and educators seeking to prevent
Children under their care from experiencing or engaging in hate speech. As well as dealing with it in healthy ways when they encounter it. But it’s not just for a caregivers, hate speech can affect people of any age. Including adults which is why
We need to curb and allow it to happen at the same time, punish the perpetrators. Here I, I’ll give you two live examples of ah what happened in the past one or two years ah, of ah, ah, hate speech, ah, and, and, and,
And their true incidences and we, may be all of you may be familiar with it also. The first is the Oxford university incidents where ah Rashmi Samant a small town girl from Karnataka was all excited about being elected. The first
Indian women to be the president of the prestigious Oxford University Students Union. Rashmi Samant who ran her campaign on decolonization and inclusivity platform won the elections. She made the headlines in India and across the world all major Indian and diaspora
News outlets proudly covered the news. Two days later, however, it all fell apart. Samantha had to resign amid allegations of racism, anti Semitism and transphobia. A few days later, Samant quit Oxford and was on her flight back to India after being bullied,
Threatened and abused with hate speeches. For being Hindu. Leading the charge against Samantha, a staff member who still works in Oxford University and he goes scot free. When all the trauma was faced by Samant, who attributed all this to cyber
Bullying, hate speech, against Hindu student. Ah I mean this is the story and finally I think ah ah Rashmi Samant has come back and she has been reinstated ah but ah the staff who actually initiated all this, he is still
There, he is not moved out. Ah this is what happened in Oxford University. And I mean it was widely publicised by BBC and other newspapers. The second issue again ah an Hindu ah harassment by ah for a by not by Hindu. For the Hindu
Students. Ah this this is in ah New Jersey ah university Audre was the faculty member who is the main person who was ah instigating the Hindu students when traumatic. So, what happened was the the Yuva Student Union of the Regulus
University they ah they all Truscare had tweeted that Mata Sita in Valmiki’s Ramayana basically tells Bhagwan Rama that he is a misogynist pig and unkuth. I mean these are all ah worded from whatever it it came through. Nothing is cooked by
Me. She tweeted an announcement of her extremely provocative ah new course ah history of South Asia, Modi to Moguls. And also she suggested that Bhagwan Lakshmana was lusting did not allow the festival of Holi to happen in the she tried
To block the campus event on Kashmiri Hindus. Where the film maker Vivek Agnimoti was the main speaker. Ah the students were shocked and crestfallen when they found out that the animal administration did not only support Trust Gate but also childed students and other
Attacks on Tuskegee and her academic freedom. Trust K is full of hate and demean Hindus openly and was suing hate and hate speeches against Hindus. She also instigated Hindu students to join her and try to achieve her end through them. She was openly abusing
The Hindu Gods. The sad news is the university authorities did not take any action against her. The students were forced to go in in groups and came around with copied of copies of trust case social media posts. In their present to the university
Administration. They demonstrated how Truscare had repeatedly and consciously mocked Hindu deities, misrepresented the rivered ancient texts such as Ramayana and Mahabhata. Ah and tried to whitewash ah other historical atrocities in the Indian subcontinent. Finally ah after several ah rounds of
Presentation the ah the university bosses apologized. But trust K goes ahead with her agenda. She is still free. So hate speech is something which happens on all around. It’s a very very difficult scenario to tackle individually. So ah we can
Counter counter it very intelligently and very politely. So ah some of the points ah how can we counter the speech? Or the trolls. So challenge the message. Never the person who spread it. This is very important. Secondly, use facts and data to call out
Generalization and inaccuracies. I would also add here, display the harm of hate speech by showing a different perspective. Politely. And be polite in your reply. Don’t become abusive yourself. sorry The biggest source for source of hateful comments on the
Internet is trolls. A troll is a profile intentionally created to spread controversial or off topic content and provoke inflammatory responses while remaining anonymous. So, once again we need not keep quiet about it. Um if if you are not
Scared, if you are not ah ah afraid of anything, you can counter ah counter them. So what ah some things which you need to remember is we need to recognize them first. Here are some points which you can follow. Their
Name is usually non descriptive. The the one who trolls and or even just series of numbers. Remember, trolls always aim to remain anonymous. Secondly, not setting a profile picture. They generally don’t do that. So, that makes them suspicious. The same applies if
They use famous person’s image or a stock foot Next, look at their followers. How many do they have? Are they trolls themselves? And lastly, now look at their account behavior. Most of them, their activity is very irregular and repetitive. So, once you
Identify the trolls, don’t give them the recognition they search for. When you see their provocative comments on social media, the best thing to do is probably ignore them. Never feed the roles. If you have, if you are a victim of hate speech
Or online shaming, it might be better to mute your account that is provocating you and harming you when you recognize the troll, immediately block and report it. So, you have to learn how to respond to the Facebook et cetera et cetera.
And it is better that you know you work in a group rather than in single. Let let your friends also join you in replying to such ah notes. And look after yourself very carefully. So these are some of the words
Would like to ah suggest to people to counter hack. At the same time ah there is too much of politics in all our rules and regulations. It is sometimes very difficult to keep a watch on all the atrocities that happen in the
Social media ah television and news media. Each country has to monitor its own social media and remove the apps in all those mobiles and ah cell phones who deal with abuses. Ah I feel the media is also paid to do ah hate speech. And
Generally hate speech weakens and destroys communities. Sowing seeds of fear, hatred and distrust. Ah when left unchecked it can lead to violence and even genocide. So ah when I am talking about the Hindus ah Hindus all around the world are generally soft
Spoken, a God fearing and they believe in their scriptures. Ah the term it means ah respect to all the religions and follow the paths accordingly and do what is right and fair. We I will ah in conclude with this statement that we have all we
We have and will always remain committed we as Hindus we will always remain committed to our guiding principle of Vasudaiva Kudumpakam that is the whole world is one family Means the whole world is one family. The diverse of the Hinduism is
Uniquely beautiful and the principle of meaning leading those benighted by ignorance to the light through equation and genuine mutual learning. Thank you. Great. Thank you very much for this reminder about hate speech and how we can react and on all
These concrete examples that you share even though some of them are very painful but I think that it’s very important to highlight them and to discuss about them. So, thank you Doctor Lakshmi for joining us. We are glad to have you
With us and you definitely contribute with your speech and especially highlighting from your Hindu perspective which is highly appreciated and now we have about 15 more minutes left so I will now give Floor back to Amina because she mentioned
That she has some more question for other panelists and the time is really running when you have this nice discussion but Tamina Floor is yours and let’s discuss about few more things that were on your mind. Thank you, Layla. Thank you very
Much. Um and as you said like I really had a lot of questions that I wanted to ask our panelists. And my second question will go to the corner of Friends because we know that rents as a psychologist. He
Works a lot with people on on mental health. And mental health is also connected to hate speech at some point. So I wanted to ask you how does hate speech actually affect our mental health? But both of those who are you know target
Of the hate speech but also of those who are perpetrating hate speech. I think in conversations about hate speech, we tend to discredit people who are perpetrating it. We don’t speak about it. So, how does, you know, all of that
Hatred that we try to perpetrate also affects us and what we can do about it. I know a question is probably too wide and you could pick hours about it but please give us some of your thoughts about it. Thank
You. Let me try to to do that in a few minutes so you can ask the other questions that you have. Um The effect first on those who are targets or victims of hate speech. Um since hate speech incites violence, it incites
Discrimination in in in hatred towards a certain individual. That person experiences severe threats. Um and varying degrees. And this threat becomes not just a threat to their lives but also a threat to their dignities. Now when each of us are facing threats
That causes us significant amount of stress. Um and worst part of that would be what we call traumatic stress or trauma in in simple terms. And whenever we are traumatized that causes negative impacts in the way that we think, the way
That we feel, and the way that we relate with other people. Um, some of our panelists mentioned that, hate speech has caused depression, suicide is actually the second leading cause of death among young people all over the world. Um,
It’s not even, I, actually now, it’s the leading cause of that. And a lot of that come, comes from hate speech as well. Because, it it removes your sense of humanity. It pulls down your self-esteem. And of course you’re afraid for your
Life. So it it causes you to hide in fear. So it causes many of these negative impacts on an individual that often leads to many long term complications in their emotional and psychological well-being. Now we do not usually talk about perpetrators of hate speech.
But when we try to understand where all that hatred is coming from we also need to look at the cycle of violence and the cycle of hatred that exists. Uh are theories that explain that someone who might be bullying or abusive of someone else
Themselves may have experienced a form of abuse or violence or bullying. So the human mind basically learns what it observes. So if you as a young child for example grows up in an environment that fosters violence, hatred, and all of
These things. You learned that that’s the normal way of doing things. So if you grow up in a household where your parents for example throws violent curses with one another. They disrespect one another. You learn that that is the way to
Deal with other people. And it it continues. Okay? For you you become a victim of it. You start victimizing other people. Those you victimize will start victimizing other people. So it’s a never ending cycle that perpetuates violence and
Hatred. So when we look at that perspective as much as we would like to say that we condemn those who are doing hate speech. If we ourselves condemn them then what makes us different from them, right? If they’re doing hate speech and
You respond with hate speech we’ll never achieve the goal of ending hate speech. That’s why we respond with love. We respond with understanding, with empathy, with care. All of this because we try to understand that this human being is starting to promote
Hate because they may be hurt. In in my practice as a clinical psychologist, we often say that hurt people hurt people. So, maybe try to understand where they’re coming from. And then understand that pain Give them love. Give them care, empathy,
And understanding. Maybe that way we can help them change the way they do things. I hope I answered your question. I mean it’s quite a short time but I hope I was able to explain that. Thank you very much friends. As as you said it’s
Very short time but this is coming from you as as somebody who’s working a lot with people with you know a mental health I’m sure that our viewers now will you know take this into account because as you said, it’s always easy to just start
Judging and it’s always easy to just start, you know, somehow pushing back, but instead of trying to put yourselves in the, a style set, sometimes the shoes are not always easy to put ourselves in, and it’s not always easy to understand, but
Anyways, thank you very much, and I think you provided very, very clear, very concise answer in such a short time, and, I really appreciate it. Uh, and third question will go to the Sally’s corner because I would like to ask you a bit more
Because you you were mentioning a lot intergenerational cooperation and you were mentioning a lot what you were doing in URI but can you tell us how effectively we can actually you know foster and and go forward with this intergenerational approach. How
We can meaningfully include young people because you were mentioning precisely that you know unfortunately you put young people in people very often feel as talk of and somebody just to brag about them. We have them. Uh so what what would be yours let’s say
Some kind of advices or tips and tricks for for all of us working in this especially in the interfaith spaces because I think these spaces are super important and it’s very very important that we connect those on the seniors with the with
The younger ones and and you know provide the space for for exchange. Um and we are already exchanging on an interfaith basis but what about this generational one. Thank you. Again, not so much time to answer but please, the floor is
Yours. Yeah. well, thank you, Amina. It is so much easier to talk about it than to do it and to make the changes. Um I’ll just say a few things when we were doing that project. One elder gentleman in my age
Group, he said, you know, I humbly, he was humble and open and he said, I really don’t understand the challenges that the twenty Five year olds are facing. I’m curious. I really want to know. So for elders check your curiosity. Do you really want
To know what’s inside a person who’s in their 20s or in their 30s right now. What’s going on? What their their fears are. What their hopes are. So that struck me as something that isn’t about a manual. It’s just about giving true curiosity Um
I what Elder the other thought that we did and I think it was Tahil. This appreciative inquiry, this way of creating a condition where you really are asking each other questions. In that same manner, about who, you know, who you are and what
You, where you have been your best in your life, on both sides. So, within an organization, for instance, we think we can just sort of notice it and then, it’ll kind of get better. But I don’t think so. I think you have to
Make it a priority and and bring people of different age groups in this case into these kinds of conversations where they are asked to tell each other about their stories, about their life issues, and then be listened to. Um this
Book, this toolkit, go to it. It has very practical answers to just these questions. They point out myths And then in assumptions and then they point out what the reality is and then they also it also gives what you can do to bring people
Together. So, I think I’ll stop there and really refer people to that toolkit. Thank you. Thank you very much, Sally. Um I already shared the link to the toolkit on our Facebook comments below the this very panel discussion that is live
Streamed so I do hope that people will have the opportunity to see it yesterday. I saw it. It was very nice nicely done and it’s very you know very lively and very youthful and with all of those colors and and you know,
As you said, very very practical recommendations on how to meaningfully include young people and I think more resources like that are very very much needed and more conversations like this are much needed because intergenerational operation is something that we are
Definitely speaking and we are definitely doing a lot about in the lawsuit years I would say. I think it wasn’t that prominent before but in the last few years it became very important that we need to work together in order to let’s say
Somehow confirmed and face all the issues that that this planet and we as human beings on it are facing. So these intergenerational perspectives are super important. So my another my fourth question which is going in the corner of Doctor Lakshmi. Uh we’ll be you
Know about this cooperation between youngsters and between seniors and about hate speech and about you know these initiatives countering hate speech. So can you tell us you know if you’re familiar with some of these kinds of corporations and you know if
You are familiar and if you have worked because I know that you had you have a lot of experience in this and I had the opportunity to be on one forum that is concerning hate speech against migrants and refugees and I had the
Opportunity to work with you. Uh so maybe you can just give us a few inputs and hints about the initiative that you worked on. Thank you. Please unmute yourself. Yes, I have been working on with the migrants and refugees, not personally but on their
Work and how we can support them. Ah so culturally, cultural diversity in Europe should be taken as an advantage. Ah and celebrated instead of being seen it as negative thing. That is number one. And secondly ah migrants and refugees ah they have miss
Perceptions and misunderstanding regarding the laws, customs and conditions in their host country. You know because they come from different places. These gaps can be reduced by promoting their participation. Moreover their full non intervention decisions that have an impact
On their lives. So I mean we keep it keep the migrants at a distance. Instead cooperate them in the you know take them in your work and in you know in make them more and more inclusive. That would help a
Lot. So my request to each and every person. Mix with the variety of people. Much different from you. Ah may be difficult in the beginning but it is very important for religious leaders and important ah ah both you know people holding good portfolios. That
Ah they it’s ah they mix with a variety of people. Ah political leaders and managers to know different kind of people and rediscover your relationship and make life happy for everyone. So, if you mix, for example, people travel all
Around the world and they have different kind of food. But why not mix with different kind of people and enjoy their food, you know, going to their house or restaurants or something like that. So, that’s, that’s sort of an attitude has to
Develop all round. So, valuing multiculturalism is an important aspect of ah ah you know hate speech and abuse abusive speeches. it’s very important that every become, everyone should start liking or or or at least in start doing a sort of a multicultural group
Work or something like that which will bring people together. Where every every religion is a different but they have some common things and and finally we are all human beings. You know we are not in you know any other persons. We are all human
Beings. So, why can’t we come together? If we make an effort, definitely we can. Thank you, Doctor Lakshmi. Thank you for this, let’s say, call, call to people for coming together and basically asking ourselves if we are coming and if we are
Human beings and why can we just come together and and understand each other but thank you for addressing this issue of hate speech against migrants and refugees because Europe for the past year was you know, all entangled in this you know, a
Lot of people were migrating from different parts of the world to Europe. So Europe was facing this. And a lot of hate speech was rising there. Uh I had the opportunity to work on several initiatives in Bosnia Herzegovina which is just small
Country on the route. Um on the migrant route and not a lot a lot of migrants coming but still there is you know boiling hate speech because it’s something unknown. It’s something that we don’t know and it’s something that we you
Know are as you said like not trying to understand not trying to to come as human beings and understand what those people actually went through to to come to our country and you know what kind of road and path
They had to go through. And you know you you just have to understand what is what what can happen to you that you have to leave your home to go somewhere else. You know this is the question that mostly we
Don’t ask ourselves when we are working with refugees and migrants and this is something that we we should definitely think of. So Layla I finish with my questions and I have a lot of them now but yeah it’s
Already 6: 30 PM in my in my place and it’s very late in Philippines so I would like to you know send back send rents to go to sleep. And for the sake of time I will just hand you over to wrap up the finish
And thank you very much again. Thank you very much Amina. Yes as I said when we have this nice discussion always time runs really quickly and there’s so many open questions but there there is beauty in this because then have chance to
Meet again and to continue a discussion and to open floor for discussion in online. See you again. So I would just like to thank all of you for participating, for giving you a very valuable inspo for being such a great inspiration and
Not just inspiration but for all this call for action and I hope this all our viewers will learn something that they already learn something from this and then they will take action after this and so according to all your suggestions all your nice
Inputs. I want to invite all of those viewers who are watching us right now to step outside of their comfort zone, to try to be more empathic, active listening and now to go outside if it is not too late in the
Airplane and maybe to meet somebody that they didn’t have chance to meet earlier. So as you all said, may peace prevail on earth and let all us come together for the sake of the peace, justice and healing. So thank you once again and thanks
All of those of you who are watching on Facebook and especially thank you for all of you who woke up early in the morning to join us and who stayed late in the evening. It shows how dedicated you are for
This work and I’m sure with all of your efforts and passion and knowledge that we will bring some more positive change to this world. So thank you again and thank you Amina for co-hosting this event. Thank you.