Perspective versus Bias

Transcript

But tonight I want to talk about the difference between bias and perspective, particularly in regards to how we understand the Bible. First of all, I have to find what is the difference between the two. According to the Oxford Dictionary, perspective is simply a particular attitude towards something or a way of thinking about something. Whereas bias is a strong feeling in favor of or against one group of people or one set of an argument, often not based on fair judgment. So as I would define it in this context of the Bible, perspective is our unique viewpoint on things, whereas bias is how we allow ourselves to twist the reality of the scriptures to fit our perspective. It's an important distinction because different perspectives on the Bible are inevitable and essential to our collective understanding of the Bible. Whereas bias is perhaps the greatest threat to our understanding because we can mistake our biases for a legitimate perspective. Anyone who reads the Bible or anything really is going to perceive things slightly differently. As an example, I'm sure everyone has heard at least five different interpretations of Jesus saying it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God. We regularly have exhortations or classes that contradict each other in one aspect or another. And as contradictory as it sounds, this is an active benefit to our understanding of the Bible. As it's put in Proverbs, as iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another. Having different ideas presented forces us to search out the Bible ourselves and collectively come to a greater understanding, even if we don't ultimately end up agreeing on a point. But all those discussions are still within context of the truth and what is said in the Bible. Of course, not all perspectives are in line with truth. Non-Christadelphians reading a verse about the devil or the kingdom would interpret verses differently than we would. Jews wouldn't make the same Old Testament connections in the biblical story to Jesus, such as the idea of a sacrificial lamb or Moses striking the rock twice being representations of Jesus. I think about the Council of Nicaea sometimes. You know, it's supposed to be this grand council of all the great Christian leaders and theologians at that time. Yet they come to the wrong conclusion and effectively ban all future discussion on the topic. We do need to be careful. Noah has referred to the Bible without blinding ourselves. You know, altered perspectives can be wrong. That doesn't mean we should be afraid of them. You know, Christadelfia itself is a splinter group created through open discussion and thought about the Bible. You know, we need to be strong in our understanding in order to combat false doctrine. But how can we preach the truth if we have no idea what other people currently think? Any opening thoughts? Matt? You know, Josh, just to use an example of what you're talking about. Several years ago, we had Brother John Popol at the hall and he gave a class on the Song of Solomon. And his perspective on it was completely different than Brother Mark Vincent, who had done a bunch of classes on the Song of Solomon. Here's two people who are embedded in the truth and in our community. And yet they can have two different perspectives on something within the Bible. It is possible to have that not on the first principles, not on the basic understandings, but certainly on how we interpret certain things like prophecy or some of the things like that. So I think just just to clarify when you talk about perspective, I think that's the kind of thing you're talking about. So and we have our own perspective, each of us, and we make a basic assumption that our perspective is correct. And we also tend to make the default assumption that unless it's challenged, the majority of people will share that perspective. Sometimes our interpretation is just wrong. You know, it's inevitable. We can strengthen our understanding by reading and considering the Bible. But if we go completely alone, we rely on our own mind. We know it's flawed, biased and simple. It can keep us from developing a better understanding of the Bible and the world around us.

So where does bias come from? The first place it can come from is pride. We put time and effort into reading and understanding the Bible on our own. But it can lead us to ignore other people's perspectives in favor of our own pet interpretations. This is true of everyone, but I think it could be especially true of exhorters. We not only put our time into these talks, but to some extent, we put our name on them. And so through both intellectual and personal pride, we can fail to examine the possibility that someone else was right. And we were wrong in interpreting the Bible. Any exhorters of any particular insight or experience on that? Yeah, Josh, I think that's an important point. You know, sometimes we get emotionally attached to

our work. And because we've put effort into it doesn't necessarily mean that it's right. If you talk to anybody who has ever edited someone's

opinion piece or article or something, you know, it's really hard to have somebody edit your work. And sometimes that's sort of this pride, maybe. Or, you know, I put a lot of work into this and now it doesn't feel like me.

And I guess what I think I hear you saying is we need to develop an attitude where we strip that away. Is that? Yeah. Yeah. Some extent, exhorting is service of the ecclesiast, right? And, you know, we're also there to learn for ourselves. And the study we do is great and it helps us learn and is to help others learn. But sometimes we're just going to get things wrong. And if, you know, if we don't allow ourselves to learn, if we just hold to what I've found, you know, this truth, and just because somebody else said something that actually makes more sense, I'm not going to listen because it contradicts what I said. Josh, I think one of the benefits that we have as a community is the fact that we can hear, you know, different perspectives and cause us to rethink, you know, our interpretations. And so when we share things, one of the things we should always keep in mind is that

feedback from others is a valuable thing. Otherwise, you know, we could just be off in our own little world, separate from everybody else and think that we're going to, you know, study everything for ourselves. But the reality is we got has blessed us with a community that we can bounce ideas off of and listen and reflect. And so often, you know, when people share ideas, it helps. It doesn't always have to be a negative thing in terms of like, oh, my idea is wrong, but it can often, you know, other people bring insights that will strengthen it and help you see deeper meaning to what you saw a little bit of. They can help you take it further, that kind of thing. Yeah, absolutely. And one thing I've always found to be very helpful, Joshua, when I'm giving it. Muted yourself. There we go. It's digital. It doesn't work. One thing that I've always found beneficial and probably has kept myself out of some trouble. If I am, I try not to speculate too much. But if I do, I. You got bearded again. All right, I don't know why I keep disappearing. Yeah, wait a minute. Let me see if this will help.

See if that works anyway. You know, one thing I found to help is if you are going to speculate that you present it as a speculation or as an opinion or whatever, and you tell people that don't try to present something so dogmatic that this has to be the answer because I thought of it. But rather to make sure you're listening audiences aware that, well, this is how this comes across to me. And that's what I'm going to bring to you this morning. But, you know, I also could be wrong. So, please, you know, if somebody has another idea, please talk and see me afterwards and talk to me. You know, I'd love to hear somebody else's viewpoint. And I just think it's important not to try to present something. As if it's back unless you can absolutely back it up as fact. And, you know, that's something that's kind of always been a source spot to me when people do that. So I tried to avoid it. But I don't think you can really give a talk without, you know, some kind of presenting some kind of self interpretation or ideas or viewpoints.

Otherwise, you just never develop. Yeah, that's sort of what I mean by this sort of bias versus perspective idea. Our viewpoint is our perspective. You know, we look at the Bible and we interpret it a certain way. That's inevitable. And that, you know, strengthens us. And to me, bias is when we prevent ourselves from being able to adapt that perspective. And, you know, I put my name on this. I'm proud of this work I've put in. And now because of that, I'm not going to be able to accept that input from other people to either improve what they said I've said or to change it possibly. Because, as Brother Brian said, you know, we have this wonderful community where everyone's reading the Bible. You know, it's not the Bible is not in Latin only where only the priests can really read it. You know, everyone can read the Bible and everyone's got a good understanding. So it strengthens us by being able to listen to each other.

So this is anything else that we continue on to another source of where bias can come from is desire. You know, sometimes for an endless number of reasons, we may want the Bible to agree with or justify a certain perspective. We can allow us to warp in our minds what the Bible is actually saying. They're, you know, it's something that better fits our perspective that we find more fitting of how we see reality. There are many examples throughout the Bible of God through his prophets trying to tell the nation of Judah that he doesn't support their actions anymore. Meanwhile, false prophets just tell the kings and the people what they wanted and expected to hear. People have found an amazing ability to twist or they can choose from the Bible to mean anything they want it to mean. Whether you're looking for easy answers to complicated or unclear situations or absolution for our actions or cut and dry rules to follow. I think a great example of all three would be the situation of man born blind in John chapter nine.

Both the disciples and the Pharisees fall to this simple explanation that the reason why the man was born blind must be because somebody sent, which also validates them since they are not blind, so they and theirs can't be as bad. It's not a biblical concept and Jesus repudiates it. But the Pharisees, rather than welcoming one of God's people gaining their sight, end up focusing on Jesus breaking the Sabbath. You know, this fool and not on the miracle of love shown by Jesus to one of God's people. And while the disciples enter with the wrong perspective, they're willing to change that perspective. Well, the Pharisees response isn't to actually engage with what was done, but instead to lash out at the man saying you were steeped in sin at birth. How dare you lecture us? The idea that disabilities were punishments for somebody sitting was widespread in the culture at the time, which can be another large source of bias. People like the disciples circled mightily to get past the perspectives they had been ingrained with throughout their lives. They struggled for years with truly accepting Gentiles into the faith. And it took right up until the moment Jesus was leaving for

them to accept that the Messiah was not going to set up the kingdom immediately as they believed based on the people's interpretation of prophecy. And we can still do that today. You know, those who study prophecy are far better biblical scholars than I, but prophecy requires interpretation. And if you make an interpretation and build other ideas off of that assumption, and an earlier assumption turns out to be wrong, it can lead to an understanding spiraling off in the wrong direction. We often struggle with our own entrenched perspectives. You know, for anyone born outside of Christadelfia, so I'm told, it can be really difficult to let go of aspects of the old ways of thinking or old religious ideas, perhaps traditions or the idea of penance, you know, that we need to pay things back. And I can't speak on that personally, but if anyone has their own perspective on that, you may have gone through it. I'd love to hear about it.

Josh, I could adjust if I could just share with you as a former Catholic and speaking with other Catholics is

nothing more frustrating than to, you know, have a discussion where, let's say, perhaps on the subject of infant baptism, which there is no biblical record of that anywhere in the Bible. And you could have a discussion where they'll completely agree with every aspect of that and say, yes, I, I don't know where the Catholic Church got that from. But when it's done, they said, but I was born a Catholic, and I will die a Catholic. And, and just know, you know, the word just does not have free costs in them that, you know, they, they, no matter what is said, they are going to hold to their beliefs, you know, or their traditions. So, if that helps you with an example of that, you know, That is really a great example because there's such a, a sense of personal bias. I mean, I have a sister, that's just what she said. I was born a Catholic, I'll die a Catholic. And that's just a bias. It's not a perspective. It's, you know, because she's not a good Catholic. I'm sorry, Jason, I didn't mean to cut you off. No, no, that's fine, Jim. I was thinking along the same lines with the confirmation biases we can have. And we see it a lot today in the news. You know, we, you can pay attention to information that just confirms your beliefs and become hardened in a path that, you know, in many ways it works like food. If we eat something, it has to work its way through, whether it's healthy or unhealthy. And whatever we're putting into our minds, whatever news outlet it may be, it's going to work its way through, through us. And it may confirm different ideas that we have. On my dad's side, both of his parents were Catholic, but my grandfather accepted the truth at the age of 70. But my grandmother was unable to because she was wanting to see her parents in heaven when she died. And that was a, she was never able to overcome that.

And both of them were taught, or my dad taught the truth to both of them. But one of them was able to overcome those biases of

the Catholic Church, so to speak. So it is definitely something to watch out for is our own confirmation biases where we think a certain thing, and then we just pull all the ideas together, which prove our point, rather than broadening our horizon or listening to the people around us. And I also would say that coming from a smaller fellowship into a larger fellowship, I've found that it's been very nice to have a lot more perspectives and a welcoming environment where people can express their perspective. And just to talk through ideas, because I think it's a great way to learn. Thank you very much.

Yeah, I really like that point out as well about, you

know, how new students who are leaning into biases, you know, algorithms these days, you know, they're mechanical, they just want to give you stuff that they think you're going to watch. So that means they just keep feeding you the same stuff. And so your perspective can develop over time that, you know, this is how everything is, whereas really you're just getting spoon fed or certain perspectives that can bias you to the way you see the world. That just isn't true.

Instead of getting a more holistic picture. Bias can also come from, in Christodelfia, certainly. We read the Bible from an early age, which is obviously good, but I do think it can warp our perspective somewhat. There are some things you just don't understand as a kid or can't quite wrap your head around, and that can carry over time. You know, when you hear a story growing up, you can grow kind of numb to it. You can hold on to your uncle's perspective because you just kind of skate over what you think you already understand. As an example, it was embarrassingly recently that I reread the story of Jesus wandering through the wilderness in Matthew 4, where it talks about him being hungry. And for the first time really internalized, oh right, by all human metrics, he's starving to death at this point. I've just been running with the childhood understanding of, you know, he's feeling hungry, he's kind of peckish, he wants to eat some food, and he's tempted by that.

Whereas someone with a greater understanding of things, or someone who has gone through something similar, would have a far better understanding of the desperation in that verse. Different stories, different aspects of the Bible may speak more strongly to certain people. Some people might have a good appreciation for or a better understanding of certain aspects. You know, some people connect more easily to the historical aspects of the Bible, or to biblical prophecy, or to the poetry in the Bible. Of course, it all works together towards the same message. Does anyone have certain aspects that speak to them, or a story that they really connect to or struggle with, perhaps? Josh, on a different note, but something that just happened as you were speaking, okay, and I find this very, very helpful as we share thoughts with one another, is that sometimes brother or sister's thoughts will inspire us to make connections that we haven't made before. So as you were speaking of Jesus hungering in the wilderness, I made for the first time a connection with Esau coming out of the field, okay, who seemed to be merely hungry. You know, he certainly hadn't been fasting for 40 days. And so you contrast Jesus, who didn't give up his birthright after 40 days of fasting, compared to Esau, who, you know, physically exerted himself and came in and might have felt very hungry, but certainly wasn't near death. Okay, so anyways, that is something that is very, very helpful when there's a free course of flow of information that we often help each other to make connections that perhaps we hadn't made before. So kind of a side note to the benefits of the discussion. Thanks, McCoy.

Yeah, I think the other thing, Josh, is too, when you talk about perspective and you say that people have different, you know, some people might enjoy the history of the Bible or some people might enjoy the prophecy of it. One of the challenges with perspective is, you know, when, for instance, when Rich gives one of his history classes, you know, I'm right there, I love the history of it. And then somebody else gives another class, and I'm like, oh, this would be so much better as a history class. And yet that person has a perspective that I ought to grab onto and appreciate more. You know, Rich, a lot of times is speaking to things that, you know, I'm fairly familiar with, where somebody else coming in, you know, talking about the poetry of the Psalms or something like that. I can learn a lot if I can stop and appreciate their perspective. Yeah, that's a good point. You know, we all have these different perspectives and, as I say, it all works together. And each of us bringing our own perspectives strengthens the whole. But that means that the rest of us have to be willing to, you know, accept that and learn from them.

Well, Steve? Yeah, one thing that's interesting is pride, because a lot of the times we can't accept somebody's other's

perspective is because our pride won't let us. That's true. Another place you can come from, as well as that certain bias, is our personal circumstance and our experiences in general, which lead us to different perspectives and our more individual biases rather than cultural. Personally, I have perhaps a little too much affinity for aggrieved older siblings in the Bible and is exactly healthy. People like Esau, Leah, Ruben, or Manasseh. You know, part of me hears the prodigal son's brother's complaints to his father about his brother and goes, yeah, yeah, he's got a point. And it probably warps my viewpoint on what's actually going on and what's right or wrong in these stories. Now, I think when channeled in a more healthy and beneficial direction, these personal affinities for certain people or ideas leads to a better overall understanding of the Bible. You know, a sort of parallel talk going on in my head as I wrote this class is that it feels like older siblings get a bit of a bad rep in the Bible. But that really has a lot more to do with God emphasizing the point that he doesn't choose based on standing. Jesus himself is an older brother to James and Jude and a certain number of other siblings. And it seems like older siblings get a bad rep because the idea of an older versus younger brother situation wouldn't generally come up otherwise. And it even does once come up with the sibling rivalry between Leah and Rachel. So ultimately, Leah is given more support by God despite being overlooked by her husband. It's not a condemnation of older siblings. That would be a misunderstanding of the point. And even if in the parable of the prodigal son, the father still loves and shows care for the older brother. Perhaps you connect this to the idea that Jews are both like being an older sibling to the Gentiles. Christians and God still having to be Gentile Christians, sorry, but God still has love for the Jewish people. I don't know, but there's the rudiments of potential exhortation right there that may or might not exist some day. I wouldn't have come to had I not been an older brother myself.

Just sort of this idea that we can allow stuff to be biases or perspectives that can strengthen the whole or allow us to warp our viewpoint a certain way. Any thoughts on that?

Other Chris Clark. So I came up with something similarly about you. So I just a few minutes ago. Learning from.

Others do. Yes. I think that.

That East that.

We think of.

Prodigal son. And. We think of the older brother who behaved himself worked hard. And then you had the younger brother who went crazy. And then you had the father trying to get the older son.

To understand. First of all, he said everything I have is yours. So what he's saying is his younger brother is not going to get anything more. That's it. That everything his father had is going to be his. Second of all, his father said to him. Your brother who was lost is now found. And so he's saying, you know, your brother came back. He came to his senses. Isn't this wonderful? And he was trying to get him to get into that mindset of having a godly view instead of a fleshly view. And, you know, it's and that's, of course, why Christ gave that parable to try to teach something. About the spiritual values and being concerned about. You know, a person even and God is always open. No matter how far a person has gone away from God, he's still there. His hand is always outstretched. All we have to do is reach out and grab it.

So a lot of the times, you know, people don't understand that. They say, oh, well, they should be made to suffer. It's kind of like they are suffering. They may not. You may not see their suffering, but they're suffering. And you want to show love and compassion to them. And, you know, that's the thing to realize is being concerned about others. So that's the only thing I wanted to mention. No, you're right. And the older brother gets so wrapped up in his own vendettas, his own persecution complex, to some extent, that, you know, his father's favoring the brother over him. Really, his father's just trying to take care of his kids, all of them. And they can allow us to, you know, the brother starts to resent his father, despite everything the father does for his sons. He can lead down a dark path. He allows that hatred for his brother. They warp how he sees the world.

In that sense, he sort of loses the comfort he should be getting from his father, who loves him. Another interesting thing we touched on this a second ago is that we're limited in how we understand the Bible as well by the fact that we're 2000 years removed from the Bible at its most recent and in our case are living on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. We were talking about some classes during Sunday School might be more historical versus some more poetry or anything else. I also really enjoy the historical classes. So I think they give us a greater understanding of what things were like at the time and that can help us to understand the stories. Because while human beings aren't all that different, the cultural context they can live in can shape how people understand what's going on. One example that comes to my mind that pops up in the Bible here and there is oaths.

Oaths were taken far more seriously in the ancient world than they would be today. When we look at it now and question why somebody would do something that seems so clearly wrong or stupid just because they swore an oath about it, to them it would have been much more important that people hold to that promise. Saul makes the army at one point swear an oath that nobody eats until they're done riding the Philistines, which is blatantly a bad idea. It leads to a bunch of problems and always ends up with Saul killing his own son, Jonathan, who just won them the day. I didn't have any particular examples they can think of of how I sort of struggled to understand that holding on to an oath. But I don't have any other ideas or think they'll say. I don't have anything specific on oaths, Josh, but I do think that there are certain aspects of scripture that it's always more impactful when we understand it in the context. When you talk about oaths, the important thing is to understand the context of how oaths were treated. Like you say, in this day and age, if somebody makes an oath, they don't keep it within a day. Great Brother Chris was talking about being raised Catholic. We used to have to give up something for Lent. I can tell you I used to give up something for about a week, and if I made it a week, that was remarkable. So it is a different day. But one of the great things we have as a community is an understanding that you have to take everything in context. And if you can understand the context, you can get a much better perspective. It's the same way with Brother Brian or Brother Dave saying it's always good to understand the Hebrew because then you're taking the word in context. So there's a lot of different contextual things that help us to better understand what we're reading and to have a stronger perspective. But at the same time, we always want to be careful not to allow ourselves to let our own personal biases take over. So that we think that, you know, my way, my understanding is more correct or my perspective is more correct than somebody else's, which I think is the essence of what you're trying to say. Yeah, you know, along those lines, Jim, you know, it's sometimes the bias of living in a modern era. We can't understand or appreciate what life must have been like. And we assume that, you know, our experience is the experience of the ancients. And so we just assume that, yeah, you know, this is how people react to these things and can be very different. You know, you think about, you know, giving thanks for your food before a meal. I mean, it's it has a completely different meaning to somebody who has had to forage for their food as opposed to go to the local store and pick everything up all prepared. When you think. I think one interesting part of that problem is because some of the Bible does speak so very strongly to people, regardless of what time period you're in. You know, some verses you read and it's exactly, you know, exactly what we go through right now. Some of the verses seem weird because it is slightly different, like with those and whatnot. We treat it differently. You read other portions of the Bible and say, yeah, that's exactly what I'm going through right here right now. That hasn't changed in two thousand five thousand years. Yeah, yeah, that's a fair point. I was thinking about the idea of living in tents. You know, you think of Abraham. You know, I don't know if it was our Tim Demers van. You know, they live in a van. Well, they live in a van with a television set in the fireplace. You know, these people were literally living in tents. You know, you go on a brother's weekend. We're still waiting to see where we're at at that point. But, you know, even brother's weekend. It's like, oh, my gosh, going to sleep on a hammock.

This year, you'll be in a new facility that has nice beds and heat. I know it's called the it's called the Marriott down the street. I know. Stop it. It'll be good. Looking forward to it.

So, ultimately, you know, we're all human. We'll all make mistakes in our understanding of the Bible. Even the best of us will be wrong, inevitably. John the Baptist, who Jesus declares the greatest prophet who ever lived. Even he didn't understand that the Messiah was going to be sinless until Jesus explained that to him. Nicodemus was one of the most well-respected Jewish scholars of his day.

But he was the only one among those scholars who was truly willing to study the scriptures and re-evaluate his perspective when faced with something he couldn't reconcile with

what Jesus told him. So we need to be open to having our perspective challenged, willing to keep an open mind. And maybe we're currently on the wrong to go back to the Bible to check that everything is correct. Brother Steve? Yeah, just thinking on that,

that I think it was Nicodemus or Demelio, one of the two,

went and he went at night to talk to Jesus. And he did that because people didn't like that and he was afraid to go and hear what Jesus had to say. But at the end, when Christ had died, he didn't care anymore. He was convinced that Christ was the Messiah. And he was open and above and he probably lost his position in a lot of other things, but he didn't care because he said, this is the truth, this is what God has said. Nicodemus didn't just change his perspective, he changed his bias as well. John Ballolo has something for you too, Joe. Oh, I can see that, Joe. Okay. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yep. Okay. Yeah, good. I finally learned how to use that hand-raised thing. You raise a very important point about understanding other people's perspectives. It's especially true in preaching. Jim, your father can appreciate this because my wife was Catholic and in trying to understand how to preach to her, I'm a third generation Christadelphian. And I really did, even though I was Italian and a lot of people almost assumed I was Catholic, I didn't know anything about the church. And it was quite a shock actually and quite a learning experience to being able to do that. And I think we have the same, we have the same probably within the community. We don't understand always other people's culture and how they're brought up and what perspectives they face. And I can tell you, Mary and I have lived in the Midwest twice.

We've lived in California. I worked for some years in England. And every place has a different culture. And until you're there and you understand it, you don't necessarily feel comfortable. Now, I can tell you right now, I don't really always feel that comfortable with this class because you New Englanders are clearly not as open and charge ahead like us Italians from New York. We're much more straightforward in what we say and do and we don't get offended easily. But your point is so important because in preaching work, my son who was in South Africa preaching in the tribal areas, what I've told you about trivial cultures, for me and Mary, there's nothing compared to what he faced there. And I think the challenges for us as a community in reaching out around the world is we're learning things about preaching in Africa and Asia. I mean, I gave a Bible class in China a few years back and it was really hard to be able to understand how to do this without making a complete jerk out of myself, although I've done that at times too. So what you bring up is so important in relating to each other. And I could tell you somebody said something about perspectives. If you came to one of the Ecclesiastes here in the Ann Arbor area, not Ann Arbor because Ann Arbor accepts almost everybody, even Steve. So the real challenge and you started to give a Bible class and said that the revelation is not interpreted on a continuous history. And so you want a new perspective. You probably would not get any further than that. So we're not always so tolerant of new viewpoints if they disagree with our world perspective. And so I can understand in a sense what the Pharisees looked like. I mean, I don't agree with them, but they were originally a reform party and they had become the status quo. And so Jesus came along. He actually said, there's one of the great passages in the New Testament where he says, listen to them, but don't do as they do. And I think that is, I think, one of the great lessons for us. We need to be more tolerant of each other. We need to understand that not everybody has the same kind of personality, the same approach to ideas. And if they don't agree with us, pay attention. Maybe you'll learn something. And one of the great things that Matt brought back from South Africa was a quote from Nelson Mandela. He said, he's never wrong. He says, because when I'm wrong, I learn something. And that was a really good thought. So I really like what you're saying, because I think we underestimate this idea of perspective and how we relate to each other and how we preach. Before Mary, I never even thought of talking to Catholics. I thought it was hopeless. Later I found out that they were, when we were in Long Island, that that was one of our best audiences, because Catholics on the whole who were religious were way more committed to religion than a lot of Protestants who just, they went to church, they really didn't care about anything. So thanks. I like the approach. And I think I want to emphasize, I hope everybody will appreciate what you're saying. It's really important. It's not just a side issue. Thanks. Thank you.

I think what you say about the Pharisees is particularly interesting, because, yeah, they were this reform group, and they did a lot of great things. But they were trying to fix what they saw as the flaws in the Jewish community. But in a sense, they won. And because of that, they stopped really being willing to think about things. You know, they set down the rules, and that's how it is now. They're not going to accept any further perspectives. And so in a lot of ways, they should have been welcoming to Jesus. Because here's another person who's clearly a student of the Bible. Even if he's wrong, they can engage with it and strengthen their beliefs in what it actually says. Josh, if I'm talking about the Pharisees and what Jesus had to contend with, I think we can learn from their example in the sense that their main focus was trying to preserve and keep the purity of the law. And they saw anything outside of their thinking as a threat to that purity. And it's a challenge to the Christian helping community in the same way that we're trying to hold on to what we perceive to be our understanding of the truth. And anyone's idea that is different to that, we take as a threat. I can say that this particular Bible classes, midweek class,

and most of Stoughton's outreach is rather open-minded and willing to accept different ideas. But I know there are certain ecclesias that would be totally threatened by the idea that you might bring in, inevitably, if you bring in a collection of ideas, some of those ideas are going to be wrong. But I think that if we're sufficiently good Bible students, we will weed out the wrong ideas and settle on an agreement as to what is correct. But some ecclesias are totally threatened that if someone were to introduce an idea that is wrong, that the whole ecclesia is going to go astray because they're so consumed with lauding over the truth from their perspective. So anyways, there's some parallels between what the Pharisees were caught up in and what we need to be careful that we don't fall into the same trap in stifling free thought. You know, Josh, I know David Levin is on tonight, but in his new book, Legalism versus Faith, he's got a couple of new chapters on the Pharisees. And one of the things that fascinated me in reading the book was that when I read the Bible, I get the assumption that the Pharisees had always been around. But David points out that they really were a new group almost, you know, only 400 years old or something, you know, by the time Jesus comes along. So anyway, if you want some history on the Pharisees, I'd recommend that book and a couple of chapters in there in particular. Hey, Josh, this is Sandy. Sandy Davis. Hi, Sandy. I just had a couple of thoughts when John was talking about preaching and how Paul always knew his audience. You know, and I think that we have to be that way as well, know who we're talking to and what their life experiences are and what they haven't experienced as well. It takes a lot of humility and to put our pride aside and to listen to other people's thoughts on certain things. And I think that can be a hard thing to do. But I think it's, you know, having patience and understanding and love that we can, we're able to do that. So.

Well, that's pretty much all I had. If there's any further ideas, I'd love to hear it. But the talk is pretty much over. As it says in Isaiah, someone let us reason together. Together we can create a better understanding of the Bible. We need to look it out ourselves to bring something to the table. But I think we're all strengthened by being able to listen to one another. As I said earlier, you know, bounce ideas off each other.

Brother Josh, I just thought I bring I see Brother John put his hand back up. But if I just throw in my two bits a bit here, referred perspective from several former Catholics. I know I was supposed I was raised in a Catholic home, but then it's also a broken home. So I spent most of my youth not knowing what my faith was supposed to be. So by the time I'm 23 and I'm introduced to the Bible, I didn't really know what I was supposed to believe. I got some idea of what people do believe out there, but I didn't have any understanding or faith of my own. But I was introduced to the I was asking my friend about he was talking with signs of Christ return and he couldn't answer my question. So I said, read the Bible for yourself. So I opened up the Bible for myself and started page one like you do in any book. And I marveled when I got to Genesis, Chapter three, and we learned that man wasn't allowed to have an immortal soul. And from my understanding, then everybody out there taught that you had one. So what is truth? This is supposed to be God's book. And it says right there in the beginning that we didn't have an immortal soul. But the churches say you do. And I think the Bible itself can be a wonderful cure to biases. If you allow it to speak, let God do the talk and be open to what he has to say. So whatever rubbish I thought I knew, if I was willing to let God tell me what he had to say, those perspectives were being tossed, allowing room for what God had to teach. So like from the beginning right there is OK. Is there is there not an immortal soul? Let's keep on reading and see what God has to say. But it sounded like the churches were wrong right there. That was just one small tidbit of my experience with that when it came to the truth.

The Bible can be a wonderful cure for those biases.