Project Podcast

Alright ladies and gentlemen, thank you for watching Project Podcast. I'm here with guest speaker Vitaly and we will be discussing our 10 points from the Mere Christianity book. So, let's get started with our 10 points from the Mere Christianity book, and I'm going to give you a little bit of background on what we're going to be talking about today. We're going to be talking about the 10 points from the Mere Christianity book. We're going to be talking about the 10 points from the Mere Christianity book. We're going to be talking about the 10 points from the Mere Christianity book. We're going to be talking about the 10 points from the Mere Christianity book. The 10 points from the Mere Christianity book. The 10 points from the Mere Christianity book. The 10 points from the Mere Christianity book. Alright ladies and gentlemen. The first question we have for our guest tonight is, is Christianity hard, easy, or both? Yeah, so I would think in today's world that many Christians would probably say that Christianity is easy, and I think it's easy to say when it's a very surface level Christianity of let's say basically just going to church. I think that's one of the easier things, but then where it gets difficult, in my opinion, is once the world starts pushing back on your beliefs, how are you going to respond to that? So for example, with you being in high school now and transitioning to college soon, you're going to be eventually brought to a point where someone is offering you some sort of drugs or alcohol. Let's say you're in areas where there's a lot of LGBTQ type stuff where the Bible, it does not support those things, but we as Christians have to love them but still be able to tell them that what they're doing is immoral. So that's where I think it's getting more difficult because nowadays everybody gets canceled for going against anything that doesn't fit the mainstream narrative. So I think it's more difficult, in my opinion, personally. What would you think, though? So I've stated before, too, as like it was hard because it's harder to put faith and trust into a being that we can't see or haven't even met in our lifetime at all. We read it in the Bible and it's called like blind faith, so somewhat. Very understandable. And I would say that's one of the questions that the world will always throw at Christianity is we can't see God, so why should we believe in this fairytale God? And that's where faith comes in and believing in what Jesus and God did for us is the power of Christianity. We live by faith and not by sight. All right, so for our next question out of the book Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, he has a quote that goes like this. We can't conceive of being like God, but we can get the faint notion of it. What does that mean to you, Paul? So for me, when I read that quote, the first few words, we can't conceive of being like God. So when I was younger, I used to picture God as like a king on a throne, you know, in children's books. But as I got older and got more reasoning in my mind, then I started to realize that God is a king on a throne, but it's not like as in a children's book, as it portrayed a king on a throne. It's like something that like we have no clue what God is. Like I said, we get the faint notion of it. Yeah, I agree with certain things of that. I don't think the human mind is capable of fathoming what and who God is to his full extent. You know, I do think when we're younger, we have this picture of God as being this older, you know, type of grandpa type of man with a beard and a white robe. But I think God transcends anything that we can even think of what God is, because God is in everything and everywhere. Even in the Bible, it says, let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Plants, you know, are even praising the Lord. Animals, they have breath, they praise the Lord. So God is not just this being that we have in our minds of like this ultimate man, you know. God is so much bigger than that. All right. For my third statement of the book, Mere Christianity, I have chosen is, there are people in other religions who are being led by God's secret influence to concentrate on those parts of their religion which are in agreement with Christianity. What do you think about that? Yeah, I think there are religions and cults that will hijack Christianity and pick and choose the parts that they like about Christianity, and then they'll dismiss the other ones. That's where the New Age part steps in. And there's also religions like Islam where you have, they also take the Torah, which is in the Bible, and they use that, and then they have their own books, and then they call it the Quran, you know, versus we have, you know, the Torah is in the Bible as well, and we have our other books. So I feel like that's also partially, we're going to pick and choose what we want, and then the other things in the Bible we don't want. What do you think? Yeah, I agree with what you said about picking and choosing, about people wanting to hear what they want, and people not hearing what they don't want to hear kind of thing. And I guess with Islam, it's, I guess it's more closer to Christianity than other religions because of, like, they believe in one God, Allah, and we believe in one God, and it's our God. Very similar. Very similar. They just have their own name for God, and we also have our own name for God. We have Yahweh, we have Raphael. Same thing. We have multiple names for God, they just only have one. And, yeah. So for our fourth statement, in the book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis has a quote that goes like this. All sorts of people are fond of repeating the Christian statement that God is love. What are your thoughts on this? So, when I think of God as love, in technicality, God is love. God is perfect and God is just. There's nothing wrong with God. But when people just say God is love, they're missing half the picture of that God also has a wrath side. And in Isaiah 45, verse 7, it says, There is none beside me. I am the Lord and there is none else. I form the light and create darkness. I make peace and create evil. I, the Lord, do all these things. What do you think of that verse? Yeah, that's a very controversial verse amongst Christians, too, because some will say it's mistranslated or it doesn't mean that exactly. But ultimately, let's jump back to God is love. God is full of love. He is the definition of love. You know, he sent his son Jesus to die for us, to give us redemption, save us, give us eternal life. But you're absolutely right, though. A lot of Christianity is all always showing God's love of things and it doesn't show God's wrath. And I think that there is a side to God that we and a lot of Christians don't understand yet. And I think that verse is maybe just scraping the surface of God's maybe wrath, you could say. And I'm sure there's a lot more to it, too, that the Bible doesn't tell us like it does in a lot of other things. But ultimately, God is love. But I think there's more to God than just love. All right. For our fifth statement that I've chosen of the book, Mere Christianity is everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea until they have something to forgive. What do you think of that? Yeah. I think forgiveness when you're younger as a child, forgiveness is a lot easier to forgive. You know, they say sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me. And I think once you get older, you realize it's the opposite, that words hurt a lot more deeper than sticks and stones. And forgiving once you're older is a whole lot harder because sometimes it's the people closest to you that do the most damage to you, that cause the most pain. And those are the people that are hardest to forgive. And those are the ones that God wants us to forgive. Because it says forgive others and you shall be forgiven. What do you think? So I totally agree with the children and adult idea that children have it easier to forgive than adults do. And me being still young at 17 years old, forgiving is also hard for me too. But for some reason I find it also easy to forgive others. I've had a few instances where I had to forgive someone and I had to just build the confidence I just had to go and do it. Like God just puts this conviction, like you just gotta do it and I'll go and do it. I agree. So for our next statement from the book Mere Christianity, it says, It says, So basically, why would not all Christians be nice? Why are there some that are nice and some that aren't? If we're all Christian. Yeah. What do you think about that? So I think when I see or I've heard or I don't remember, but I think Christians tend to always be like, you're wrong, I'm right kind of thing. They have this thing of they want to shove the Bible in your face and be like, look, this is what the Bible says and I want you to believe it. And they're forgetting that compassionate side of, hey, instead of wanting to shove this down your throat, we need to come with compassion. But see, but that's where, even though we're all Christians, I think we all come from different backgrounds, from different families, different upbringings. So we have different temperaments. And I think it'd be very hard to just say all Christians are all nice. We have nice people, good people, same way as you have good police officers and bad police officers. You have, just in general, good people, bad people, same with Christians. You will have a few bad eggs in the bunch. All right. For the next statement of the book of Mere Christianity, it says, when we Christians behave badly or fail to behave well, we are making Christianity unbelievable to the outside world. What do you have to say? Yeah, I think there's a lot of truth to that because we're supposed to be the light of the world. You know, we're supposed to show the example and set the standard on how to live properly, how to behave. You know, and if we're Christians and doing immoral things, say, you know, you end up on the news because you ended up shooting somebody, you know, that's the worst case scenario. And, you know, and say, let's add on top of that, you are a pastor. You know, that just puts Christianity in a bad light, you know. So it's one of those things that because we're Christian people, we want to be better, you know, than everybody else. I'm not saying that we're perfect and obviously we're going to make mistakes and, you know, nobody is excluded from that. But we have to strive to do our best to set a good example and standard for other non-believers. You know, otherwise we would be no different. All right. For our next point, there is a chapter in the book that is called Making and Begetting. I believe it's, which chapter is it? Book four, chapter one. Book four, chapter one. Can you elaborate a little bit about what Making and Begetting means for you and what you think? So Making and Begetting is two different things. Making is, as Lewis describes in the book, is creating something that's not of your own. And Begetting is kind of like begetting a son. As John 3.16 says, for God to love the world, he gave up his one and begotten son, that whoever believes in him shall not die but have eternal life. And they're different because when it says God created the world, I would say it's not his, but he created it so that us people could live on it. It's not like he begot the world, you could say, you know. He begot Jesus. God begat Jesus. God created the world, create made. It could be different, but in the same terms, it's kind of the same thing. Interesting, yeah. And there's actually even another term that the Bible uses, I believe, in Proverbs, where it talks about this figure. And it kind of presents it as a feminine type of character, and it almost personifies wisdom. And it speaks about how God didn't create nor begot, but he pulled wisdom forth from somewhere. So that's a whole other interesting thing from the Bible that a lot of Christians don't even know about. So I think it's pretty cool that God has different ways of doing things. He can create, he can beget, and he can just pull things forth from, I don't know, from the ether or, you know, from the heavenly realms. I don't know. So our next statement from the book, the statement goes, well, to start things off first, in the book, there's a chapter where it's basically comparing, you could say, a state and all of the, you could say, like, the government, let's say the people in charge, the governors, the workers. Everything has its own specific, you could say, its own specific flow. You have to have workers to do certain jobs, and then you have to have certain jobs for, you could say, a community to function. And as this gets bigger and bigger, we go into a state, and then obviously bigger and bigger, we go into a country. But it's taking that comparison and comparing that with the church. So here's one of his quotes. It says, in the same way, churches exist for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. Kind of basically saying church exists, its sole purpose is to basically bring in people to Jesus. You know, and then you have all these other jobs, like in the church you have a pastor, you have deacons, you have, you know, ushers, you have the worship team. So there's all these things that need to be in place to kind of make this whole thing function. Similarly, as he compares to a state where you have to have laborers, you know, buildings, all these other things. I don't know what you would put to add to that. But what do you think? So for the church versus state, so as he said, the state must have laborers and workers to have a functioning state. And also, I guess, state or country, they must have an army. They must have specific things in order for it to work. Because other than that, it's going to be like a useless country that everyone could just, I guess, destroy. I don't know. Same thing. And it's all for people to have a good life and to prosper. These agencies are set in place to, you could say, promote a better way of life. Kind of like the church is there to promote Christianity and Christ. Yeah, and with the church too, if it doesn't have, I guess, the specific roles in place, like the pastor and the deacon, the church is going to be useless. Because then you wouldn't be able to share the message of Jesus clearly to other people. Instead, it would just kind of, I guess, not be. Yeah. All right, for our final point, it is a chapter, Book 3, Chapter 8. It is called The Great Sin. So as Lewis refers to in the book, the great sin is pride. And he names other ones as unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness. And all of that are mere flat A vibes in comparison. And as he says, it was through pride that the devil became the devil. Pride leads to every other vice. It is a complete anti-God state of mind. What have you got to say? Yeah, absolutely. Pride is definitely, you could say it's one of those sins that a lot of people, and you could even say non-Christians, wouldn't even think that being proud is a sin. Right? Because who are you hurting by being proud? Right? Say if you did something and you were proud in yourself or like, you know, it seems like it's a harmless sin. But pride is ultimately what caused the devil to be cast out of heaven. And it even says in the Bible, pride comes before the fall. So those who are proud, we know that they will eventually have a fall, that there will come a time where they will fall due to their pride. Same as the devil was cast out of heaven because he became so proud. Now, C.S. Lewis claims that that's like the greatest sin. And I think that is a super big sin. But ultimately, sin in God's eyes, it's all equal. But it's the consequences that are different for the sin. But what I personally think would be the greatest sin, because it's ultimately not forgivable, is blaspheming the Holy Spirit. Because I believe that's the only one that there is no way back, basically, to my understanding, is once you blaspheme the Holy Spirit, there is no more salvation for you. So I personally think that that's the greatest sin. Maybe once you're a Christian, actually, because I think if you're a nonbeliever and you don't know the Holy Spirit, you can't blaspheme something or someone you don't know. You can say empty words, maybe. Kind of like, for example, if, say, a random stranger came off the street and started saying all kinds of nonsense to you, would you be hurt by it? Or would you be like, you're some random person, I have no idea who you are, so your words don't matter to me. Now, say if your mom or your sister or somebody came and said something hurtful to you, that would be a lot more painful than a random stranger. And also, another sin that I think could also be one of the greatest sins is holding a grudge as well. It says to forgive in the Bible, but holding a grudge is kind of like hating the person, not being able to forgive them. They did something to you, you're kind of like, oh, I don't like you anymore kind of thing. Yeah, and ultimately by holding a grudge, I would even go in deeper and say because you have a grudge, you probably have unforgiveness for this person that you're holding a grudge to. Because ultimately there's some reason that you have this grudge, and usually with grudges comes unforgiveness. And if we don't forgive, we won't be forgiven either. So we must forgive, but I agree, it's super hard to overcome grudges, ultimately leading to forgive to overcome that grudge. All right, for this last statement, or quote I should say, in chapter 7 of book 3, it says, It is no good quoting, thou shalt not kill. There are two Greek words, the ordinary word to kill and the word to murder. And when Christ quotes that commandment, he uses the murder one in all three accounts, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And I am told there is the same distinction in Hebrew, all killing is not murder, any more than all sexual intercourse is adultery. What do you have to say? Yeah, I agree with that. For the longest time, I always thought that basically it was thou shalt not kill. And that's absolutely right, you're not supposed to kill. We're not saying to go and do any killing. But I think there is a distinction biblically, and it even translates in Hebrew differently, from you have kill and murder. Because even in the Old Testament, God, you could say, allowed and killed many of the enemies of the Israelites. There was actually a time where God sent one of his angels to fight, I believe it was the Assyrians, I might be wrong here, but he sent an angel in the night and he slaughtered 185,000 men in one night. And that's God giving the order to do this. Is this murder? Is this killing? Is this justified because God is doing this? So I think there definitely is a distinction between killing and murder. I think murdering is, you have this, it's usually premeditated, it's not always, it can come up in the spurt of things, but usually you have this want or desire or this dislike for someone that you want to end their life. Versus, let's say, killing. Let's say, hypothetically, you accidentally hit someone with your car. You didn't mean to, you didn't want to, it's not like you meant to go and hit them. So you killed them, but I wouldn't per se say that you murdered them. You had no ill intentions towards this person, it was pure accident. It's not really how it ties in with God doing things, because when God doesn't like the enemies of his people, God just, he'll go and wipe them out. And I don't think it's murder, I think God killed them, because they disobeyed God all the time. So I guess another example would also be in Egypt, where the angel of death came and he killed the firstborns of the people of Egypt, or just all over Egypt, unless they had the blood of the lamb on the doorpost. So the angel of death, would that have been God sending that angel to kill these babies? Yeah, it's kind of brutal that God would make this type of rule of, if you don't have the mark above your door or around your door, that the firstborn will be killed. But God does things in mysterious ways, we don't understand God. We can't fathom how he does things, what he does, his being in existence. But we do know that we must obey and fulfill everything that God tells us to do. And, but, I will say, once God sent Jesus, I feel like that almost maybe got rid of God just slaughtering and killing a lot of people. Because you can see in the Old Testament, God killed a lot of the enemies to help the Israelites. Versus in the New Testament, I can't think of any examples where there was just, you could say, mass slaughter, where God or Jesus kind of did things. Because Jesus came in and kind of, you could say, flipped the script and brought in this, you know, love, peace, and all these other things. So we should strive not to do those things. But ultimately, say, if you were in a bad situation, where you were in a corner, you were, had nothing else to do, and you were about to die, unless you were to take this other person's life to save your own. You know, I think in those cases where it's mine or yours, and I'm doing this to survive, you know, I think God would see that not as maybe murder, but maybe as you killed someone, you know. Because it's not that you're killing this person because you don't like them. Maybe in that moment you dislike them, but you're doing this to survive, you know. Some leaders. Alrighty, I thank y'all for watching and listening to Project Podcast, and I thank you for coming out and discussing with me these 10 points that I had. Thank you for having me, Paul. I appreciate the invitation and having this discussion. Very nice. Thank you guys for tuning in to Project Podcast.