Applying the Bible in Home and Neighborhood with Rosaria Butterfield | Bible Study Magazine Podcast

[Music] i don't just play a christian on internet tv i'm one in real life solely by god's grace and that means for me what it means for you it means i open my bible and i read words from god that correct me because the flesh lusts against the spirit because the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak here are some of the words that correct me words of jesus as reported by luke when you give a dinner or a banquet do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid but when you give a feast invite the poor the crippled the lame the blind and you will be blessed because they cannot repay you for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just that's luke 14 12-14 in the esv now who actually does this who actually reads his or her bible and obeys these specific words i think i've basically done it once in my entire life i am very ashamed to say but i know someone who has given much of her life's energies after her amazing adult conversion her train wreck of a conversion she calls it to love of the stranger and she's written a book about the topic that has made a big impact on me in this episode i talked to the brilliant rosaria butterfield who in my opinion was given to the church for such a time as this i've read all her post-conversion books and she is someone whose insights and heart i warmly commend to you this is the first episode of the second season of the bible study magazine podcast we've transitioned from audio to video and audio and this season we are focused on bible application faithfully using the bible to change your affections your thinking and your behavior listen in for insight into applying the bible from rosaria butterfield welcome to the second season of the bible study magazine podcast we are moving to video now and i have as my guest someone whose ministry i personally have appreciated over a number of years now dr rosaria champagne butterfield who is the author most recently of this book and during coven 19 i don't have access to the faith life library this is the copy i bought from my wife about a year ago the gospel comes with a house key practicing radically ordinary hospitality in our post-christian world so rosaria you said i could call you rosaria because you're a lover of strangers that's what the greek word behind you says thank you so much for uh being my guest today on the bible study magazine podcast the the sincere pleasure is all mine wonderful now i read your book and i told you before we were on here i've read all three of your christian books i i guess i don't know if you wrote books pre-conversion i did but that's okay you don't need to it would not be good for you to read those so okay although i was really curious i'd really like to read that article that you wrote about promise keepers in the syracuse newspaper that's still that's still floating around i could find it on the internet i guess oh yeah and i could send i mean if you can't i'll send it to you but i would actually really like that yeah i was attending promise keepers events at least one way back in that very day so i'd be very interested i read your whole book um i you know that's the dirty secret of interviewers they don't always do that but i really did and i wanted to read it my wife doesn't often beg me to read a book but she actually really put some holy pressure on me to read this long before i ever thought i would get to interview you and i have to say this really nicely that i've rarely read a book that hit me so hard in the gut or even in the face and i just mean that with all the love and positivity i can um you know interviewers are supposed to sort of maintain an emotional distance but i just couldn't because this is right where i live and i have questions for you that whether other people are interested or not i've just got to ask them but i have to imagine they likely are yeah so first just thank you for your work for the body of christ really sincerely from our family thank you now to those questions and i'm going to start with a chick tract that i saw i don't know how many years ago jack chick has these tracks that i don't know if you've ever run into them have you seen chick tracts before no i have no idea what that is so just okay well they're like um they've kind of become a cult kitsch symbol they're kind of considered campy but they came from a guy who was uh just trying to get the gospel out he's also into conspiracy theories that we don't need to get into but this particular tract from probably back in the 60s um he's written a bunch of these in their little comic strips actually um yeah i always remember this one it was about a christian family who was wealthy and you got the sense that because they had an intact home a dad who worked full time and a mom who wasn't drinking alcohol all day they had extra money and so they had nice food and near to them next door was a single mother if i recall correctly with kids and who's struggling and it showed the lack of compassion that this christian family had for this non-christian family and the kids in the christian family were both ungrateful and haughty like the pharisee in the parable what bible do you apply to people like that because the reason i've thought about that image so many times is that could be me our family's intact the lord's provided for us well but there are broken families all around us what bible do you say to somebody who's not looking outward to those broken families right right right right well you know a couple of things one is you know there's a little pharisee working in all of us right you know we we love to steal um credit from god we love to think that somehow um our gifts are needed for the kingdom we we we um and we you know so we're all little pharisees at heart i think that the the issue might be larger than that though um i mean it could be i can't see into the hearts of the people in this cartoon or whatever it is but yeah i mean it could be that they think that they are better than the their poor neighbors it could be that they have no compassion it also could be that they're really afraid and they they don't they don't have a sense that god never gets the address wrong and those neighbors actually belong to them that there's a that there's a belonging so it could be a heart issue it just could be a kind of a lack of understanding of um of your your responsibility um it could be one of those things but i think you know we always have to be careful of the little pharisee in us you know we have to be right because you know jesus did not come for the righteous so if if you know if you're the righteous then you're the most pathetic person on earth because there is no gospel for you right so you know that's a heart issue it also could be a fear issue i mean there are all kinds of issues that would keep people from getting to know their neighbors and so what's really helpful is to just first of all give the charge you know rod never gets the address wrong as a christian you have been appointed to this moment i mean right now you and i are talking in the midst of covet 19. i don't know what's going on at your house but what's going on in our house makes the gospel comes with a house key look like hospitality on training wheels right so we are way busier than that right now things are things have moved considerably um wherever you are if you're a christian you gotta roll up your sleeves because god has put you in just that place that he's going to use you but you've got to you know the thing that the christians need to be willing to do is to show up it's very possible though that our neighbors don't know how to do that without potentially violating people's privacy or getting in over their heads right and that's why it's always important to remember that as a christian you are your hospitality it you are an extension of the the local body so maybe maybe the neighbors across the street really do have big problems that you can't handle but maybe not but you're not alone in it because you got elders and pastors with whom you can discuss that you know maybe it's a matter of of providing some resources and fixing the screen door but maybe it's bigger and so it's okay to realize that that you are not in this alone and you can't do it alone so you're picking up on multiple scriptural principles you're applying the principle of the body you know paul's image of the church i'm going to be a persnickety interviewer for one second and press you on one part of my question and that is give us bible this is the bible studying magazine podcast what verses come to your mind yeah that my family needs to hear when we are tempted during covet 19 and frankly during other times to be insular okay we're busy we don't need to reach out to people's problems give us bible okay well here's a couple of them let's start with ephesians 2 10. um let's start with ephesians 2 10. for we are his workmanship created in christ jesus for good works which god prepared beforehand that we should walk in them before these crazy neighbors moved in god prepared good works for you to do and to bless them before we ever knew what coveted 19 was or uh stay at home ordinances or other things god prepared good works your good works are not contingent on the world around you this is also not only is it a scriptural principle it's a hermeneutical principle that christians don't read the culture and then find a bible verse right that you know sort of makes them feel good in that terrible whatever that terrible cultural place is rather we read the bible and then through that and we read it widely and deeply and and and and and in long seasons and through the reading of the bible we and we look at the world um and so so god's already prepared good works um he knows the the neighbors are a mess and he probably knows we're a mess too we just are so used to our mess we don't you know we're not upset right right we've been able to cover over the mess with a nice veneer lots of times you know there's also matthew 25 and there's um you know hebrews 13 that you are um that us you know strangers um are not strange to god right those are image bearers of a holy god and and really poverty is not a sin uh i mean it may create temptations to sin in ways that people with with means might not have but also having plenty it creates all kinds of temptations too that's exactly what the bible says so so yeah these are your neighbors are your responsibility god has already four ordained good works for you to do regarding them he knows they're a mess he probably he knows you're a mess too even if you don't know it and you need to show up but you don't have to show up alone and you don't have to put your family at risk um you don't have to do any of those things but yeah those are my concerns as a dad you know taking off my professional interviewer hat and putting my dad hat on i'm in my home right now because of covid19 and right over there i've got neighbors and right over there i've got neighbors and the kids in the neighborhood want to play with my kids and i'll tell you one of the things that i fear and i was hoping you'd give me some wisdom on this and i think it would apply to many people in as you call it our post-christian world because we can't assume of course we could never assume that everybody around us shares christian values we shouldn't assume that and we can't assume that we ourselves are always living them out but my kids learn things from the neighbors that i just rather they not know i'm gonna make a risk here i'd actually rather my kids not be aware of the music of particular pop stars that are super hot and that's exactly what the neighborhood kids are teaching them how how do i i looked at some of the reviews of your book and this was a concern that some people raised i want to do what the bible says i want to show love to the stranger and to my neighbor and it's one thing when it's a adult to adult but what what what fears um what fears are justified for that i have for my children and what fears are actually keeping me from doing these good works that i've been prepared for before the foundation of the world right right and you know first i would say you know you are the head of the household and setting boundaries around those things are extremely important and i think it's this is where it helps to just understand the different kinds of fabrics of different people's households now our household is made up of uh children who have been adopted out of foster care two of our children came at the age of 17. i learned some new words right i was not raised in a christian home my husband was not raised in a christian home i mean really sadly my kids came across um you know a a song you know they played a dvd and there was a bad word in it and you know and one of my kids said oh this must be grandmas you know okay so so i'm not saying that i'm because i'm proud of that i'm just saying that you know we're just probably in a different place than you are but what i would say in terms of neighbor children because we have a lot of neighbor children we've taken neighbor children to church camp we've take we feed neighbor children we've we've had to sit down with neighbor children and say things like you know in in this house the only time we use the word the god's name is if we're praying to him or reading the scripture so my suggestion is to move in closer see the problem is the kids are playing you know over there in the woods building forts you nailed it they're not they're not at your dinner table right and so the challenge i think is not to move away from the neighbor kids who are using bad language and really just modeling what they know right i i think the challenge is how to move in close and that does mean that we have to get out of our offices and go out and actually play with the kids and and i you know it is a great privilege to do that right it is a great privilege for me to have the liberty uh to both homeschool my children but also to go out and play with them and there are other things that when and even if you're not totally obnoxious maybe you're gardening maybe you're walking the dogs you don't have to be actually in the fort but you're you're you're close enough that you can kind of hear these conversations yeah you can also correct i'm gonna say bigger problems than kids learning a bad word and you know what they learn a bad word they need to learn that they're not to use that word because dishonors god and this is how and why um but you know there are other things you're going to learn you're going to learn which kid in the neighborhood is getting bullied and you're going to get to know that kid's parents and you're going to find out that you can really be some help to them and also they're not embarrassed to ask for help because they really need it because if you think the mouthy 10 year old is a problem you should hear what's going on with the 15 year old so i would say that if you you know problems are like kicking horses if you stand too far away from a kicking horse it can really wind up and break your leg but if you move in a little close it's gonna it's gonna rough you up a little but it's not gonna hurt that much you can also be there to help your kids navigate that yeah this is it it depends on how old your children are too i would say that i truly and we have done you know we've done we've made all kinds of decisions we've had to make decisions that we couldn't play with certain children for a certain season until other things were getting figured out and there's nothing wrong with making that decision that is a responsible parental decision you are not to put your children at risk in the name of hospitality or something else because not that's not hospitality this is a date it's not worth it i believe that tyndale's plowboy the average person should have the bible in contemporary language that bible translations therefore are key tools for the great commission that christ gave us to disciple the nations to teach them to observe everything christ has commanded us i believe that regular christians can and must read and study their bibles on their own i believe that we're not on our own that the spirit will guide us into all truth and i believe that one of the spirit's most important tools for doing this is other human teachers despite our own failures i believe in bible study and all this is why i find myself constantly turning to logos bible software and all my work it makes the bible text accessible to me at a level of detail i just don't get elsewhere and it also gives me quick and inexpensive access to the work of many many careful bible teachers the new logos 9 now makes it even easier for me to do this and i want to show you what i mean if i type in any bible passage into the passage guide i 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about bible study you're probably pretty serious about it you should not remain content with the free resources available on the internet check out the new logos nine yeah and you've said you said in your book that in order to invite people into a home that's what hospitality is we have to have a secure place called home and once if hospitality especially on the level of children is actually violating that space or going past barriers physical barriers of energy or what have you that um that god put there then you no longer have a home to invite people to now i really should have worn steel-toed boots to this interview because i don't know how you did this but it's just like you hear in these conversion stories where somebody's sitting in the audience and it's like the preacher is talking right to them and everything the preacher is saying just happens to fit the details of their lives like almost everything you said like word for word is exactly the experience that we have and let me tell you what my heart does when i listen to you talk because because you're giving me bible i hunger and thirst for righteousness i think not here's this high bar that i could never meet i think christ met this bar for me and he does he did prepare me for these good works so i want to and i i just call out to him while i'm talking to you for grace to do these things i want to do these things i i want to follow the bible i'm sure that is the way that our uh the people who watch and listen to the bible study magazine podcast are so now let me let me take another verse here because this season uh is all about application of the bible and this episode of the bible study magazine podcast is focused on applying the bible in our homes and i let that include our neighborhoods and i couldn't think of anyone better to talk to than you rosaria so here's a verse luke 14 12-14 jesus says basically i'll just summarize don't invite people over who can invite you back the wealthy people in your church the the friends that you already have that are at your same level who are inclined to invite you back invite the people who could never invite you back and that is one of those verses that i've just always known it's there here's jesus he really couldn't be more clear and i have barely ever done it in my life i i did try there was a time in my life when that was easier to do because of where we were at like like geographically right and the great irony was we invited this lady over who lived in an adult home for people who couldn't really function in society and guess what she did she invited us out to chick-fil-a and paid for it with money i don't know where she got it so even then i was like i tried to obey jesus and she did invite me back but what do you say to the person who looks at a verse like that and says you know i can almost not even name where it is in my heart that is has resisted this for all these years why has this just never happened where do i even start that's a lot of questions boil into one but talk to that person who might be me well the first thing i would say is what a beautiful example of god's spirit working in you because if god's spirit was not working in you you would read that verse and you'd pivot you'd pivot you you'd have you'd have you'd go cherry pick a bunch of other verses that would explain why you're too important to to have to deal with the riff raff right and that your gifts have just they just kept you busy in this sphere and you get a pass right the fact that it's it you know if we don't if the bible doesn't make us uncomfortable if the if we don't feel you know that the bible is speaking to us and that on our own strength we can't measure up if we don't feel that way there's something really wrong then we've become god and not let him have the authority over absolutely and a book that i just you know i really love it's um um a.w pink's profiting from the word you know because if you wanna if you want to turn a prophet on this word you know you you want the word to make you more like christ you don't want to just have a lot of head knowledge and then it has to do certain things to you that you've just described so i would say first of all praise god you're his now what you do with a verse like that is you don't look at how you're going to tackle it alone and on your own strength so that's the big problem that evangelical christians have in general that i think see i'm such an outsider but i've never met people who tend to look you know who say well it's god's grace it's god's power it's god's but then there's so much like me i've got to do it i've you know got a double down just wait a second you know you're part of a body so to think about you know does everybody have to do this all the time no but if nobody in your church is doing it there's a problem right so i'm part of a body maybe this is not the right time maybe you have an aged parent who would be very very threatened by this or a child with autism who would be very very threatened by this or a newborn or and you know there god knows what other pressures you have but what i would say is you know this verse also appeals to the challenge that we have in our nice middle class homes of meeting strangers you know they just don't fall from the sky we have never ever ever had a stranger fall from the sky we've actually had to go and seek the stranger and so the challenge is how do you seek the stranger like how do you where do you find these people um and you know here are just a couple of things just to think about um you could work with an organization like safe family for children safe family for children is a christian alternative to foster care those of us who work in safe family believe that christians could put the welfare state out of business and we mean it instead of individual families being home studied and then working individually with other families a couple of families in the church get home studied and you get to participate in the life of this other family to the degree that you can um you know if you are busy and you're traveling and you have important things to do you probably won't won't be able to take in twin three-year-olds in your house but you can always buy gas cards for their mom who needs to get to work and maybe think about leading a bible study for dad on money management so it allows you to have full access to the profile of this family in crisis but it allows you to participate in a way that you can and again when you have three families in the church doing this and we've had examples we're a very small church but we've we've had you know some amazing experiences where we have you know we each have done our our own part and it's all worked out and you know one of the things that we've realized we came to realize personally is that this family that was displaced by homelessness who was then living with us and another family in the church we were kind of tag teaming on this well this wasn't just a family displaced by homelessness this was a christian family displaced by homelessness we didn't know that until you know some other balls have been rolling so i'm just saying you know you have to have a bridge to this verse and something like like or like being home studied in an organization like safe families for children which is a christian organization could be the very bridge that you need and it's very safe because if you're not able to to do that right now it's okay somebody else will be there you're part of a team christian you're part of a body it's not you all alone yeah don't panic i think that's something that's a theme that's come up at least twice now in our short conversation that um if you said it in your book i don't know that it registered with me as much as as it is right now that this doesn't have to be me and my wife even just rising up to this massive challenge it can be me reaching out to other members of the body saying how can we help together which is one reason why you want to be part of a local church so that you can actually do that the geography of my area actually makes that a little bit difficult but there are possibilities i'm thinking of even right now for that now i was actually on a walk the covet 19 has been really great for me meeting my neighbors oh yeah my wife put it right she said it's kind of like now people are like oh there's another person hi hi so sure enough i ran into uh two men who live next door to each other or in the same house i'm not totally certain but one of them has an awesome yard and i've always wanted to talk to him but he's never out there when i'm in the neighborhood but now i was walking to the post office so i talked to him for half an hour and i talked to his roommate about linguistics and then i we the next house now two houses down we talked to the guy who's a a truck driver who's off of work and so he's taking the time to improve his house and he's staying six feet away but showing me the woodwork in his 1908 house and we're having a great discussion now he said something that actually i wanted to mention to you he said i said well so how do you like this place and he said oh we love it he says ah but we don't like being so close to the walking dead and he points down the street and there is a a community of homeless people who are who often congregate in certain areas of our little town and one of them is right across the baseball field from where this guy lives and there's a guy who is who lives in his car who was there for about a year his car was just always parked there there's always people walking up to him and i'm just again going to sort of confess my fear and ask for you to apply the bible to me and to others to i think this applies to as well i was afraid and i wasn't afraid for them to hurt me like i'm fast i think i'm strong it's not a problem is not a fight i'm afraid i'm going to waste my time because here's what's happened to me over the years when i was younger and i didn't have a family when i would reach out to homeless people it actually happened a lot more when i was in my early to mid 20s i was lied to so repeatedly the most bald-faced obvious lies it really did make me justify the eye-rolling response and i'm no longer doing what that sign in the in the background says loving the stranger i'm keeping my distance i've talked to others and so okay i'm going to ask you to both handle that and help me use a verse here where jesus said one i think one of the most shocking things jesus ever said i've thought about this so many times he said give to him who asks of you and i'm going to quote the king james here because it's what i grew up with and of him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away help me apply that verse to this situation with people i am afraid will lie to me and waste my time right right well i would say first of all um your your time isn't your time and your money isn't your money amen so you know okay okay it's time consuming it's really laborious um but but i would also say and i was thinking about hebrews 13 about the um entertaining strangers um is the same thing as unwittingly entertaining angels yeah the king james says unawares unawares yes and you know i would say god's god has already preordained these conversations that you're going to have including the experience of getting walked all over and getting lied to getting robbed um he's he then let's just be clear we i believe that that's not surprising the lord a couple of years ago when i worked in urban ministry everybody's conversion story had about 40 christians who shared the gospel and helped and they were all part of the story but they but they weren't ready you know they weren't converted yet but they were all part of the story so you know what who knows you're part of that story probably maybe you don't like the role you played in that story well guess what you didn't get to pick it i'm a slave i'm a disciple i don't get to go to the master and say no no i'd really like this other assignment you do not get to pick the role you play in people's lives so that's one thing the second thing is that um you know it you definitely are taking a risk to um adopt a teenager out of foster care um get to know a homeless person you know all of these things but you know they're taking a risk too and for all the times that you've been lied to right yes you know what kids don't end up in foster care because their parents racked up library fines okay that's just not how you get there you get there because the people who are supposed to take care of you betrayed you at the very moment you needed them so yes i understand it you've been lied to you've been robbed you've been hurt i get it that's not i'm not you know i don't sound terribly sympathetic but i i i really believe that those other people have have also been hurt and what you need to do is not is not you know that the thermometer that you have in your hand needs to not be stuck in your emotion but rather in what god's calling you to do you know and right now during copit 19 it's very hard to know what to do with our homeless population it's extremely hard because our shelters are full and many times infected and it's you know what i i haven't heard a good solution if you have one i love to hear it so you know everybody's on edge but here's what i know you share the gospel and you know obviously sharing food with people you know that's a no-brainer okay i mean you know they'll eat it or they'll not eat it but i you know i have a dear friend who a neighbor in fact you know my neighbors um bob and donna we've been for years um our our two households have been praying for our neighborhood and and we were just saying when this started i'm so glad we laid the groundwork you know i'm so glad we laid the groundwork um and i am you know i am because there's we can get more quickly to the hard things with people because we have had the opportunity to lay the groundwork but but bob always keeps you know peanut butter crackers and bottles of water and a bible extra bibles and he gives those to people and if it's a situation that he really is like wow this this we need to do something he will go and you know bring one of his deacons to the street corner and you know come up with a better solution but nobody has a magic bullet for this one i think the challenge is you know we like to be able to manage tasks that we can be successful at and we don't like to get involved with people or problems that we can't see the end of this and again that's why this is a body issue you know you see you see a homeless community talk to your elders talk to your deacons see what can be done um it's you're not going to fix the problem but you don't have to flee from the problem either and it's ultimately not yours to fix you just you're you're a you're an ambassador for christ i planted apollos watered god gave the growth so whether i'm the planter or the water or one of 38 waterers i'm a slave i'm a disciple i'm just going to obey you know to be perfectly honest um i gave your book five stars on goodreads and then i thought to myself wait a minute if i give this five stars that almost like constitutes a vow then i'm gonna do these things and i thought i i need to think about this longer this is this is life-changing stuff if i'm really going to reorient my life it it is scary but i'll tell you my heart responds to bible and if my master tells me the slave this is what you must do at the very least it's weighing on my conscience as i think it ought to do right i'm embarrassed to say how long it takes sometimes for god's trees to grow and for my life to respond with obedience but my heart rises up to what you're saying i want to do these things and i'm thinking of people in my neighborhood for whom this is true and and this is part of the answer i think already to my next question which is loving the cultural stranger so not only do i have people who [Music] are near me and are across borders of culture and dare i say class we're not allowed to say we have class in america but it is a reality i think we have to grapple with or we're going to misunderstand the ways to love one another but i have people who stand across world view divides that have become even deeper as a christendom has run more and more on fumes and been replaced i think with alternate world views so we're sitting there at the birthday party and our next door occasional neighbor long story we really love her we get along great our kids play totally lost she's casually commenting about the crystals that she has that you know have some effect on her and i can't remember and i'm suddenly thinking oh boy do i let this become a clash or do i smile and nod how do i love strangers across the across the cultural divide and i'm going to add one more anecdote here before i let you weigh in and i really hope for your wisdom i'm going to keep it a little vague here but i have a relative who is almost everything that you were before your conversion i mean it is uncanny well everybody does i can't tell you how many cousins i have out there this is uh yes that's i'm and so i know people are reading your books um in the christian community in order to show love to these people they they don't feel they understand um and i even had these dreams about well you know conservative christian and radical leftists you know write cordial letters to one another and then post them well it hasn't gone that well um it it's it's this kind of situation where her social media feed is dedicated more than any i've ever seen to hatred of evangelical christians and no amount of gracious backpedaling and acknowledging a fault that i can do can possibly mollify this relative now let me be clear she loves us and sends our kids gifts and we love her too and we've actually had good interaction with her for sure but then the the bile that is just poured at all evangelicals and she well knows that we're among them it gets wearying and we're not sure is there a point at which um you just you do take a step back um i'd like so i've kind of asked you about two different circumstances but still across a cultural divide the more friendly person and the really hostile person how do i apply the bible verses about loving the stranger because that word in the background that's a bible word that you've got there how how do we apply those verses to these situations right right right right well you know one of the one of the biblical um gestures of hospitality is actually not to move away but to move forward and so i think that's that's just something that we need to think about that when we you know you know so what we're dealing with are competing religions i mean maybe it would be easier if you were just saying and you know my cousin is a muslim or my you know um you know my next-door neighbor is a buddhist but no the crystals and the lgbtq leftist rights this is this is a religion peter jones talks about this extremely well we we we minimize the problem when we think we're dealing with a secular world see a secular world can tolerate very easily different world views that was what it was set up for classical liberalism is we're gonna supposedly set aside ultimate values so people won't uh fight each other anymore right right but the fight is on because this is a religion and you're talking about peter jones luxem press book the other world view right oh you know i was i was actually thinking about a new book that privilege of reading that isn't out yet called rainbow okay um but yeah no but yes i mean and his theory of one-ism and two-ism i think all of this talks about that in that book extremely important because if you don't know what you're dealing with you're not going to have you know you just you don't even know which tools that you're supposed to take from the biblical toolbox right so i'm going to just say something that we we are um i i you know this might sound not very generous but i think evangelical christians are really hoping for a kind of quick response to these people sort of that you know the word of god does not return void i'm going to say a biblical verse they're going to repent and turn around and we're going to get on with things or at best they'll splutter and have no response like calvin against mo the bully yeah yeah but you see you know one of the things at least you know just from my own experience in the in the very lovely christian home of ken and floyd smith was that they never thought that my questions and my concerns were going to be answered in a sound bite these are the people who were most instrumental in your conversion when you were a radical leftist lesbian professor they showed hospitality to you over and over again right and i probably had 500 meals at their house before i committed my life to jesus okay let me let me i was not a a low maintenance thing but what we would do was very consistent we would eat we would talk and then at a certain point we would stop talking and ken would open the bible and we would read the bible we would sing from the psalter we would discuss what we just read and we would pray and we would say good night and we would come back and do it again and i think the challenge is to stop thinking about how to have the right word and to start thinking about how to have the right relationship the kind of relationship where you can say now look these are really uh these are good observations these are interesting observations i don't share them at all but it's a long story and would you be willing to have that long story would you be willing to engage with me in that long story and i understand that right now you can't come to my actual dinner table but one of the things that i do know about right now is uh six out of seven continents are in an existential dilemma and the gospel responds to that and here we are speaking on zoom and you can do that with your neighbors you can you can say to your crystal loving neighbor you know i'm wondering if you would be willing to first of all for me to hear more about what you're saying because the snippet at the kids birthday party i couldn't catch it and i'm wondering if you would be willing for me to share with you what i believe to be true according to scripture and you know what people will actually take you up on that now the social media issue is a different issue and i'm probably significantly older than you are so i might um this might be generational but i just i think that the way that people use social media is so strange it's so strict it's so it's so um it's so foreign to my sense of of of of just common sense social media makes so it flattens that relationship between public and private and everything private becomes public why in the world do people take pictures of their lunches and put it on facebook if you're not going to eat it with them it makes no sense to me but what it does is it creates a generation of people who speak without understanding that some things are private and some things are public and so what i would say in that case is don't model what your cousin is doing but don't take undue offense at it i mean you know the late christopher hitchens accused mother teresa of exploiting the poor in calcutta um a a writer for usa today whose name i won't mention uh you know because i've got some history here in this conversation too has accused samaritan purse of of um engaging in a practice he calls bigots offering charity both this writer from usa today and christopher hitchens you know we're not talking about stupid men but we're talking about pretty idiotic things i i just we really we really are and so what you need to do in the face of that is show up do the right thing and leave it to god how these people are going to interpret it and jesus says in the sermon on the mount that's actually an occasion for rejoicing rejoice when people say all manner of evil things against you falsely for my sake and i didn't anticipate how painful the falsely part would be you're you're actually ready for people to say things about you um that are true you know if they're if they're gonna call your love for other people evil and wicked which actually this relative has done said that all of our love for other people has just been driven by the motive of proselytizing right um right i was ready for that what i wasn't ready for was the false the people twisting words and misrepresenting what my christian motivations were so i've had to think about that verse repeatedly and you're helping me apply it to this these these situations that i have these are very helpful words i think you've got more i want to let you keep going on that oh well i just i mean i just i think it's it's crucial again to not be emotionally driven prickly people um and to and to and to let uh let it work itself out make sure that you are scrupulous make sure that your deeds before men are indeed um you know that they are exactly what the lord jesus would have and just like the bible says that elders have to be given to showing hospitality it says that they ought to have a good reputation with those who are outside the church so it's recognizing there is this level of common grace that our neighbors generally do regard our love for our children and are giving food to the poor family down the street what have you as good things they're not usually going to turn around and say that's actually bigotry in disguise right unless you write for usa today and you right have a platform and a book coming out and have some you know have some access to god but you know what god's gonna use all of that but make sure that you aren't um failing to obey jesus because of the um the backlash and it is hard and it is very very painful and there have been times i mean kent and i have been the target of just pure hatred some you have so many directions that at one point we looked at each other and we said you know this is a little bit like that scene in jurassic park where you know at the end alan grant has got the the you know the velociraptors here but then the then the t-rex comes and eats that you know like it just it it's absurd um but you need to stay focused on what it means to be a jesus follower you know i've just been thinking a lot about exodus 10 24. and um you know it's partly because of well partly because i heard an excellent sermon on it um recently um you know that we've got so we've got a good time to listen to sermons and i did i had an excellent sermon on it and um and uh you know the it's in the middle of the plagues right and we're in the middle of a plague and um you know so moses stretched out his hand toward heaven and there was thick darkness in all the land of egypt three days they did not see one another nor did anyone rise from his place for three days and at a certain point in the bible uh just just a verse of the verse ahead of it it said that this darkness was a darkness that could even be felt but then here's the line but but all the children of israel had light in their dwellings i was listening to a sermon by i think it was toby sumter and he was saying where'd that light come from where'd that light come from you know that that light is the light that comes from jesus that that light is what it means to be people who stand in the resurrected christ there's a power that comes from the resurrection that is imparted to you it's still very scary there is still darkness that can be found that can be felt there is still this novel virus and you know those of us who are old enough to have lived through the beginnings of aids remember viruses never come with user manuals this one is especially vexing because apparently you get it from breathing and we have to do that inhale exhale breathing it's very popular in america and in china popular yes very necessary but we know that covet 19 will not overcome the world that christ will right first john 4 5. we know that that that it's but it's still scary you could still look out there in the darkness from the light you have inside and be terrified so don't do that put your eyes in the right place and you know that's another reason i think for christians to be very careful about their use of social media because you also are engaging in a world that collapses public and private i really believe that social media is best used for simply description of events prayer meeting moved from 7 30 to 8 o'clock tonight things like that i think that when people start to engage with ideas it it you you it it really you don't know you're not you don't know with whom you're speaking and maybe you know for some christians that's great you know some christians they kind of set their clock on how many people they've offended but um i think that's i think that's sin that's not looking for that good reputation among those who are outside the church it isn't loving your neighbor as yourself no none of those things yeah it's when you when you use social media especially in my experience i actually get this in part from alastair roberts who pointed out that when you argue with somebody in public they have now a bunch of face saving reasons to conclude that you're totally wrong if you approach them in private a soft word turns away wrath there might be an opportunity for you to gain your brother um yeah i'm i'm tracking with you completely on these things now some themes are coming out of our conversation that was about hospitality that i think apply to the whole second season of the bible study magazine podcast um we're talking about application but what i hear you repeatedly doing rosaria is applying the bible to every little thing in your life that it is easy even if you've been a christian a long time to kind of just absorb whatever your culture is even your conservative christian culture let it kind of dictate your values rather than the bible okay and the theme i'm getting from you is i am such a slave and disciple that i'm obligated to be looking around for how to apply the bible to my life in every little area and one of the things you said that was was just the most in a way cutting in the very best way and made me say god help me was when you said first error your time is not your own i mean you you just you just went right up against american individualist culture something that i've assumed you know i have this book getting things done well you're not going to get stuff done on your list if if you have to invest in people's lives which maybe means that you need a new list you need a list that is written by your master and not by you this is a very sobering conversation for me but i go ahead it also means that you need to have good advisors it means that your pastor and your elders and your your your body your community your christian community is working together with you because there are things that require deep concentrated rhythm books don't get written if one is not sitting at one's desk right and and you know there's always a lot of things going on out there and um i spent tuesday with my daughter we were on the road for 12 hours delivering food and i do have a book to write you know and and so i have friends who are saying okay rosaria let's spend tuesday doing this but i need you to give me this this and this you see what i'm saying because i i would not get to those other things if i didn't have people who just said that's your tuesday job and now your wednesday job is going to look a little different that is just funny we need friends like that who are willing and able and who know they're welcome to correct us even when they say but you're doing a little too much of this kind of good let's get on to the other kind of good and and that's a recognition of the body principle right that you have a couple places in the body many that i couldn't even know about but from reading your writings listening to your lectures and things i know you have this important uh this important place in the body of reaching out to other christians to talk about hospitality to talk about um hot cultural issues of sexuality and identity and then you have this other hat that the lord has given you to show love to your neighbors who may have no idea what you're doing for the christian community you know you you've been given that place in the body maybe i maybe somebody else my wife other people in my church of course we're gonna have different uh assignments in the body of christ but we need to be looking out for how we can apply the bible uh by fulfilling those assignments do you want to know which i think is more important i do yes delivering meals delivering meals to 55 households on a tuesday with my 14 year old daughter who survived major surgery last year and in the middle of a pandemic is wondering why she came through it and to watch um you know to see so many blessings from god on that day you know you met 55 strangers with a box of food and it was pretty amazing and i think that's much more important and so because of that i have people who literally have to tie me to my desk uh-huh that that raises a bible question i have for you actually there is a verse galatians 6 galatians 6 10 how how does this shape your hospitality apply it to us it says so then as we have opportunity let us do good to everyone and especially to those who are who are of the household of faith and again an anecdote here for you help me apply the bible to my life and i think and hope this will be helpful for others i have tended and i've actually had people in spiritual leadership in my life tell me it seems mark okay let me rewind back a little bit i've expressed frustration that in my efforts at evangelism over really boy it's been 25 30 years back to little league baseball i've not seen much success um especially when i was younger i was more frequent at it but i enjoy it i like talking to people i enjoy talking to strangers but nobody ever gets saved um and i've had people tell me well maybe your gift is edifying the body of christ and i've even thought about this verse i'm a bible teacher i write bible study articles i edit stuff for a christian publisher lex and press i do this podcast um which is watched you know 100 by christians and zero percent by non-christians um am i living out galatians 6 10 by especially doing good to the household of faith and applying the body principle or am i missing something now you don't know me you don't know all how i spend my time but in general the many people in the christian world who are able to live and even make a living in the christian bubble pastors can often be this way apply this first to them does it allow some people to basically spend pretty much all their time focused on helping other christians well i don't think there's anything wrong with that actually i i really really don't i think again unless you're cherry-picking this verse and you're saying well because of my special bible teaching gifts and my high intelligence and my you know amazing abilities in these erudite ways i am never to interact with a stranger ever i'm just going to equip the peons to go out and do that i mean if that's what you're saying then you know you're insane your elders need to give you a smackdown and if the bible hasn't already done it you're you know right so i'm not saying that no no but you know i think i think it's true i believe that we need to build up the local church and and in fact i think that so many of the ridiculous wars on twitter and the absurd you know polemics quote-unquote ministries that are just slander machines it's like the national enquirer out there you know i think if we had a strong local church we wouldn't have that kind of stupidity and it is stupidity and we wouldn't have it so please build the local church and and may you be may your local church be such a presence in your life that your neighbors look over and they say hmm that mark guy is a little hard to understand you know i i don't i don't i don't understand it but they have friends who care for them they care for those friends they look at look at the way that one lawnmower goes around to 14 different homes or you know does is it true that they have one inch the pot that they all share or you know what's what's all this sharing about i mean i remember when i lived in syracuse it didn't take much you'd look across that horrible snow-filled you know parking lot and you'd think i want to be friends with people who have snowblowers i want people to even if it's for the wrong reasons to say that about christians i want to be friends with people who have other friends who help them in times of need who don't forget them in their homes who don't throw people away i want to be friends with people who don't throw people away boy that is a that's a heart cry that so many people have and and just by you living your life you know with the you know the windows the shades open you know people can they can see those things and so no i don't think i think unless you're using this to pivot and skirt other responsibilities no i do think though this that that christians need to understand that hospitality is just a matter of doing what you do and opening your arms a little wider okay it it it's not some there's not a special gifting that goes with it it's not a specialized enterprise there's no phd that's going to be granted to the the the you know the giving of hospitality it's just doing what you do and opening your arms a little wider including more people it's not entertaining you said in your book you know i had this image of the 1950s housewife who gets everything perfect and only then basically is showing off that's what kind of entertaining means yeah you're saying do what you normally do and include other people let me ask one final question that's going to be very topical and we're actually going to try to get this out to the public sooner than originally planned because of covet 19. how do we prepare to show hospitality to apply the bible's many statements that we've been talking about to love of stranger to what very well could be a coming great depression 2.0 and you know i loved you know i i had seen that question beforehand and i i mentioned to kent my husband i said finally somebody is looking past you know may here because i think that's right i think it's really important so i'm going to share just a couple of things one is that we have lived in a very privileged um economically privileged condition you know we have been living like the kings of babylon and with it we've had the sins of babylon and what will happen when we are no longer an economically accomplished nation is that some of those sins will not be things we can afford um there will be no garnering of sympathy for people who say that they are men trapped in women's bodies just won't be there um a love warrior will not be someone who um divorces her husband to marry another woman it it's we just won't be able to afford those things um massive displays of gay pride marches and the level the things that happen in those will not be easy to overlook um basic things are going basic truths are going to rise to the surface they already have you know you've heard the the uh governor of new york who before was a complete relativist my truth your truth when he talks about how many ventilators he needs he's not saying my truth your truth he has got a number and it's objective there will be very important things that will come because we don't have the money to engage in the idols of our day but if the idols of the gay rights community are going to be taken down and the idols of you know the abortion industry are going to be taken down you can guarantee it that our idols are going to be taking start with the household of faith and yes and this is a heart test christian do you want to live in a in a poor country that that that doesn't have a gay pride march for whatever reason because we're social distancing and we don't want more than five people whatever whatever reason or do you want one that does and you you know wall street's looking good um it's a heart test about where we stand but no we we really have i mean it's i think we've destroyed our economy um and and we can you know i'm not a i don't have a crystal ball i don't know if all of these measures were necessary or not i'm not i'm not commenting on that i think that christians are to follow the civil magistrate but it it's been a long time and i mean i you know it could be that that what civil disobedience means in 2020 it could mean that civil disobedience means going to church going to work and getting a haircut i mean it just it couldn't it could come for that but i do know that we can no longer just rail against the idols of of of of the world and keep our own and what god may very well be doing and only he ultimately knows all his purposes we know his ultimate purpose is the glory of glorifying himself but what he may be doing is toppling idols that the bible talks about when it says it encourages us to pray don't let me be so wealthy that i forget you and most definitely that is the temptation of the vast majority of christians that i know and it's my temptation i've never been hungry a day in my life could that day come in which i have to prepare to show love to the stranger and and give from a place of lack rather than a place of plenty you know i have a feeling that we could talk long because the bible has so much to say about loving our neighbor it's the second great command love our neighbor as ourselves which is just a mind-boggling statement again from jesus how could anyone do that love my neighbor as much as i love myself well what you've helped us do rosaria and thank you is taking these bible verses that talking about ways to love our neighbor and press them further into our lives and i for one am very grateful thank you for being my guest on this first episode of the second season of the bible study magazine podcast it's been my pleasure may all the glory go to god amen i agree [Applause] [Music] thanks for joining us for the bible study magazine podcast our audio video technicians are jack underwood and brandon van beek i'm your host mark ward editor-in-chief of faith life's bible study magazine and because i love all you strangers i'm going to urge you to do something for your own good subscribe to the bible study magazine podcast or to the magazine itself we're just here to help you study the bible with the best tools available

Channel: Logos Bible Software

Views: 2,588

Rating: 4.9436622 out of 5

Keywords: bible study, hospitality, love of the stranger, xenophobia, coronavirus, hospitality in a pandemic, bible application, applying the bible, podcast, bible podcast, mark ward, rosaria butterfield

Id: bHGxeSoDOGM

Length: 69min 4sec (4144 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 30 2020