Joshua Keith Craft

0:52 All right, man. So we uh this is not very like this is not our usual hey we're in the middle of a conversation because we actually finished up like we you know I don't know if this is part of the evolution of The Dialog but we finished up with just kind of realizing we need to dive in on spiritual authority which I'm very excited to get into because I have thought about this uh since the last time and I've been I don't know if I'd say eagerly anticipating but you know to use scriptural language but uh I've been I've been looking forward to this one man. Well, we were Yeah, we were in the middle of a conversation, then we just had to we had to stop it because we were getting into uh some deep waters, you know, we' taken five turns and we were about to take another one and so I was like, let's just let's just pause here, you know, refuel the car and then we'll go again. So, we refueled and we're ready to go. So, we've been talking about feedback. Yeah. Go ahead. Been fun. No, I was gonna Well, I was going to ask you, man. So, I just want to dive in because here's my here's my thing and you'll I know I don't want to this is not a diversion. This is a to me an understanding of spiritual authority setup because I've been thinking about this. So I I you know I'm in leadership at the church as are you at our church.

1:57 We go to the same church. And so when you're in leadership at the church, people will tell you things about when they're not happy. And often times what people are not happy about is something that was said from the stage by a pastor, which in this case would be your dad, right? And so I was looking I, you know, I've dealt with this and anytime someone brings me something, what they want is they want to argue the points. And what I say is I go, "Hey, let's assume everything you say is right. What do you think you should do about it?" I literally never get into a point by-point blow thing, even if the person's wholly wrong because to me, it's more of because because what we're talking about today is really the point. But I was thinking about this um with like, you know, there's some big-name pastors in Dallas and they're exciting. They have massive social media followings. They have great podcasts. They have big YouTubes. And I I mean, do you I I wonder often times if people are starting to more follow a pastor than they are to actually, you know, be placed in a church body and understand what that means. Do I would you agree with that or do you think I'm off base?

2:56 Yeah, I mean I think we've um I think we've made some pretty big mistakes in leading the church the past 50 years. I mean and I think one of those is uh you know, it's really interesting, man. It's like we start on this subject and then we get into this other thing. We're going to we're going to do the spiritual authority thing. Why I think this is part of it though. That's why I brought Yeah. This like so Billy Graham at close close to the end of his life. Billy Graham, you know, he would do these massive stadium crusades reached millions and I mean there's no one that probably uh reached more people for Christ around the world than Billy Graham like in modern history, right? So what he would do, what his emphasis was, he would come into a city, he would do crusade and he would he knew that just getting someone saved or helping someone to experience Jesus was just step one and there's a whole lot of steps for them to take, right? So he would partner with churches like his goal is to partner with churches, plug them in to a church who's going to disciple them and you know fulfill the great commission which Matthew 28 says teach people Jesus says teach people to obey all I've commanded you. Right? So um so there's there's this massive discipleship element that Christianity is supposedly all about. Right? And I I say supposedly because of what's happened really in the modern church. So what happened and Billy Graham I heard Billy Graham talk about this. What happened was churches saw how many people came to a Billy Graham crusade. And so instead of focusing their church around discipleship and developing mature Christ followers, they turned their churches into Billy Graham crusades.

4:38 So you should have like for me, you know, and this is there's a whole bunch of different philosophies out here, right? But you should have aspects to your church that are like new person friendly or uh that are salvation-oriented that which is like the first step is like learning and understanding the gospel and that's so powerful and all of that. But that's not really to me necessarily the function of the church. Like the the key function of the church is to disciple people and develop them and raise them up. Well, the problem with that, right, is that it's just not sexy. Like, you're not going to get a whole lot of people up front. Your auditorium might you might not have 10,000 people in your church. Uh on on and on, right? And that's not like uh an indictment of one particular person. That's like the what the movement of the Western church has been for like at least the past 50 years is we we we're going to grow.

5:38 we're going to focus on growth and there is this dynamic that comes with focusing on growth that you just try to make everything easy for everybody, right? Well, the problem with that is that following Jesus isn't easy. It's the hardest thing you'll ever do. Jesus said, "You have to lay down your life and pick up your cross." He said, "You can't follow me without giving up everything that you own." So, if you're discipling someone effectively, if you're teaching someone how to follow Jesus, at some point you're going to have to have a lot of hard conversations about everything, about how they're doing money, about their emotional state, uh about their approach to whatever the various temptations are that they fight in their life, on and on and on, right? So, what happened was they created this movement or this movement was created. It's called the seeker sensitive movement, right? Which is um now a kind of an insult. For a long time, it wasn't an insult, but it's this idea of like people are really open to the gospel if we just kind of make it easy for them. And I'm all for making things kind of easy to interact with and not super complicated, but simple and easy aren't the same thing. So, you can make something simple like discipline is a simple concept. It's not easy though, right? It's like I you don't have to spend three hours explaining to someone what discipline is. It's like, well, discipline is just consistently making the right choice even when you don't feel like doing it.

6:57 There's a whole lot of other ways to say that, right? But that's that's simple to explain. It's it's really hard to do. So, what's happened, you know, to me, and this even relates to our discussion on authority, is we've leaned into as as the church, as like the church of Jesus, we've leaned into a lot of Western delusion, right? And so it's interesting that you would start there because that was like the thing in my mind was um you know we live in one of the greatest times in human history and one of the things that makes that a great time in human history is that we get to pick our leaders. Yeah. For real. Right. So like I can I can uh vote for the mayor of my city. I can I can vote for the president of my HOA. like there's the so much in the west is like I get to decide who the leader of this is now. Um it's easy to think that that's just how life works. That's really not how life works. That's how the western world works. That's really been developed really over the past 250 years. I mean this this idea of like representative government and it's called republicanism.

8:04 Not not republic not republican in terms of being a conservative or a liberal. It's just called republicanism. So this idea of like a republic, a representative republic is new, you know, for but for most of human history, people didn't pick their leaders. So you know, you think about it in the context of the church, like in the context of what you're saying, you didn't have the ability to get in a car and drive to like the next city over that was 10 miles away. Yeah. We commute to Ephesus from Corinth because, you know, if you're Yeah. If you don't like the church in the city that you're in, that's tough. Yeah. Like this is the church. So if you're going to go to church here, I mean you could start your own church in the same city, but if you're going to go to church here that the options are pretty limited, right? If you So so so we've developed on one hand it's good like the power of choice is amazing. On the other hand, people think that choice is u choice is like the supreme virtue, right? And so like if I don't if I'm somewhere, if I'm at a job, if I'm in a relationship, if I'm at a church and I don't like what's happening for any given period of time, I could just leave and go somewhere else.

9:19 That's that's to me the danger of uh this the danger of all the good things that have happened in the history of the western world. I mean because you think about so like to talk about authority for most of human history it hasn't been true that you get to pick your leader right right so you don't get to pick your parents I didn't get to pick the parents that I had you know nobody does right you you have to be in whatever family that you're pretty much assigned to by God and there's positives and negatives and there's good families and there's bad families and all that what's not going to change is you get you you're your ability uh to to choose that. Right? So, all these verses all throughout scripture, there's there's a lot of different um perspectives all throughout scripture of spiritual authority of of submitting to authority. um those perspectives, it's important to understand the context of a perspective like that because those perspectives come from a time in history where nobody voted for anything like in the in the Roman Empire which is where Christianity was which is where you know Israel was and all that was a part of the Roman Empire. You had an emperor and that emperor pretty much decided everything for everybody that lived in the whole country and the whole nation.

10:37 uh and their decisions were ironclad and binding and if you didn't respect their decisions uh you ran the risk of death if uh that that emperor would put a governor over you or some kind of governmental structure over you that that governor's job was not to represent so like we live in a country now I'm just more like explaining our perspective versus like the historical perspect you're giving historical yeah we live in a society now where the the response responsibility of the government is to represent me, right, and represent my issues. For most of human history, it's been the opposite. The responsibility of government has been to represent the issues of whoever the highest authority is in the land. Right? So, so the role that the governor would have played, uh, well, you see this in the story of Jesus, Pontius Pilate, he's the governor of that part of the the Roman Empire.

11:37 His role was to represent Caesar there, not not to not to plead for the people to Caesar, right? There was there was dynamics related to that. But I want to give you this kind of perspective on Christianity. So for over 300 years of Christianity's existence from its very beginnings uh they were massively persecuted. So there's this emperor in in the 200 in like the 200s AD his name was Decius uh he issued an edict throughout the Roman Empire that they had to sacrifice to the gods to the Roman gods in the present of a government official. So everybody who was a part of the Roman Empire had to sacrifice to the Roman gods in the present in the presence of this some government official. And if they didn't, their whole family would be killed. How's that?

12:29 And that's not just for Christians. That was just like you're going to do this or we're going to murder all of you. Right. And also just just as a as also something that's worth mentioning, they didn't have police force police in the ancient Roman world. Right. Right. So, it's a it's pretty much uh we we have more freedoms, we have more protection. Like people talk now about how oh man, you know, like the kind of people that are going to say, "Hey, it's worse than it's ever been like in society and in the world today are completely delusional. Oh, they have no context whatsoever." Yeah. Oh, no matter what's happening, we live in a safer time in world history. We live in a time where we have laws that protect us. I mean, that for most of human history, this wasn't true. So just talking about the the the beginnings of Christianity. So they were treated like a Jewish cult. The Jews tried to kill them. Well, anyway, the Romans end up kind of joining that because in in Rome and in the Roman Empire, it wasn't just about worshiping the Roman gods. It was about worshiping the uh the emperor because the emperor was seen as a deity, right? So this guy named Decius comes, he starts to kind of force this. Well, then there's this guy named Valerian, Emperor Valerian.

13:41 So he comes after Decius and he orders all church leaders, pastors, whatever role you played in the church, he orders all of them sentenced to death and he strips Christians, any Christian, anyone who identifies as a Christian, he strips them of all their land, possessions, and titles. So anything that they own, any just that's not yours anymore, right? Yeah. Uh then that wasn't even like the worst part. So then you have a dial. So dial uh in the 300. So this is like starts around 250 AD. This goes for over a hundred years. Okay. So a whole a whole generation of people that are Christians experienced this, right? And and yet it still grows. Yet Christianity grows. I think that that's amazing like to when you think about there's no good reason like if you're ever a person I just want I wanted to pause you real quick so you can take us that energy drink. And also just to uh just so just to point out like I I've been like researching just for my like I my conviction in the truth of what we know to be true has just deepened because the more I look at what's actually happened in history like not even like biblical or church history but just human history as a whole and then looking at how the Bible lines up to it and then you hear something like that like hey we're going to start like I I'm a marketer. if I was selling something that the reward for being a part of it was eternal life, you know, which you're going to get eventually when you die, but in the meantime, you're going to lose all your possessions, uh, everything that you've worked for, and you're basically going to be like absolutely have the whole of the government against you. That's a hard sell. I don't even know how I would market that.

15:14 Yeah. Your whole family's going to die because you've seen other people experience the same thing. I mean, yeah. And yet it grows, man. I love that. It's amazing. Sorry. I I I just want to interject because I just think that's such a fantastic and dude the foundational documents of the the the New Testament was written I mean it was written before this but the New Testament was written in this kind of context. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Amazing. So when the Bible and the New Testament also is written in the context of slavery, right? So the book of Colossians, Paul Paul says, you know, you don't work for your earthly masters, you work for God. So do everything you do is under the Lord. That's not about, hey, go go go do your job today and don't worry about how much you're getting paid. It's like, if you're a slave, be a really good slave. Now, that's that kind of sucks. Like, honestly, like why why, you know, so so the authority dynamic, you know, to me in the Bible is something we don't understand.

16:11 I agree. Yeah, I agree. of how much you know because you have to have such an understanding of the context of this to understand how the Bible talks about authority. So uh so then to go on like Diocletian right he was the worst he was the worst of he was the worst before Constantine came and made Christianity the the the uh state religion of the Roman Empire. So he ordered all churches, all churches that they could find, he ordered them all burned to the ground. Any scripture that his soldiers found, they he commanded it to be burned. Uh they they kept confiscating church and church possessions. So it wasn't like they had buildings. It was like they would if they ca if you had like a house church and you're a Christian, they would take your house away from you, kick you out of your house. uh Christians Christians were prohibited from assembling in any size group, right? Uh if you own scripture, you would be executed or tortured. Uh and the preferred, you know, there's this there's this like apocryphal story. I don't know how true it is, but the idea there was a the a term called a Roman candle, right? in Roman kingdom was uh when at night these are stories that are told about this in in like all these different histories.

17:31 They would uh tie Christians to a stake in the in throughout the cities and burn them at the stake, right? And they would burn through the night and that would that would be um uh called it was called a Roman candle allegedly, right? So So then the question is real quick, sorry Josh, I'm just this like this is stuff I've been researching and stuff. So I want you to for everybody once again I I this wasn't part of the plan but I feel like that's a I don't even know why we say that anymore because we should just know that that's that the plan is to not be part of the flow. We're just in a flow at all times. We are man but I just I love this flow so much because when you when you look at and like please get on ChatGPT or whatever your AI source is and ask about the historical documentation for Christ when you start realizing. So listen what Josh just said couple hundred years after Jesus has been here Diocletian like hey if you find anything burn it anything about this Christian which Christian was Christ right he's not this is not Hebrew at this point they've already sacked Rome they've ended this the the nation of Israel and they've expelled all the Jews from Jerusalem that's already happened right um so so so that's already been taken care of and now this Christian sect is going when you start realizing that Jesus is the most well-documented historical figure where there's literally like over 10,000 manuscripts with the with with documentation for Christ with with the New Testament writings that were copied and repeated and stored and like think about the price that these people paid for how important this was. And by the way, it wasn't cheap to get these manuscripts made. It's not like they could go down to Kinko's and like run off a few copies. Uh how's that for old school Kinkos? I don't even know where that came from, dude. I'm pretty sure they're out of business. But like it's not like you could FedEx office now, right?

19:07 Sorry, I I forgot FedEx bottom out. But the point is it's not like you could just you had to like first of all if you want to get papyrus paper it was not cheap right that and that would last a lot longer that it was not cheap and then you would have to find a scribe to actually you know inscribe it for you we're talking like months and and like I looked at I looked it up a book like Romans that's long it would be a year's wages to pay for all the materials and the time of to actually have it made. So so think about the trouble. It's like hey we're going to get killed for this and it's really expensive. It's massively inconvenient, but it's so important we have to do it. This is the This is what we have and we have the privilege of getting to read in 46 translations on our phone now because these people paid that price. Well, and untold numbers of people throughout history, right, were martyred for this, you know, and if if these are if these are a set of false beliefs, it sure cost people a lot, right?

19:59 Oh my gosh. Yeah. Um, so here's the challenging thing though about all this. It's like, "Oh, wow. That's so amazing. That's so crazy. All the persecution of Christianity and all that." How did Christians respond? That's and this is where uh the ancient Christian response I I feel like personally deviates from the modern Christian response. Like the the ancient Christian response was to be more loving. They didn't they didn't they whatever, right? So, I'll we'll I'll I'll come back to this in a second, but they didn't uh they didn't fight people in the streets. They weren't focused on uh overthrowing the emperor. They didn't militarize themselves. They didn't they didn't become uh fearful and insecure of their beliefs being taken away. Their beliefs were already pretty much being taken away. Right.

20:52 Right. So, what happened? What happened in in the context of Rome? Well, uh, for here here here was what happened throughout these persecutions for Christians. So, the first thing the most one of the biggest things was often people that were, you know, in that time in history, if you had an undesired child, if you had a child you didn't you didn't want, like again, they didn't have a social safety net. Okay? So, they didn't have welfare. They didn't have government assistance for food. So, if a person couldn't feed their children or if they had an undesired child, they would just abandon them. Right? They would leave them in areas outside of cities and they would just let the kids die. Right? What Christians would do is they would they would find these kids and they would rescue them and they would adopt them. So this this it's so funny because if you read these these histories like these Romans didn't believe that well they thought that the Christians it didn't it wouldn't enter their mind that the Christians actually wanted to take care of these kids so they thought that Christians were cannibals. I know. I remember you saying that to me. That's crazy.

22:01 Because the thing that made sense to them was, well, they can't afford to feed the kids, but they'll eat the kids, dude. That's your thought process. Like, that that's even shows you how how savage things were back then, right? Is like the human human rights and the the the sanctity of a human life that that really comes from Christianity. I mean, that didn't exist at this time in their Roman Empire. So, so they thought Christians were cannibals because they were taking all these kids. Well, they're raising him, but they were like, "No way, no way is is a person going to raise this kid." Yeah. Right. So, so then then what they did throughout the time, throughout all these different persecutions, hundreds of years, they fed and cared for people who were in need, like poor people, people were in need. Christianity became the social safety net of the Roman Empire. So, it was normal at that time in history to die of starvation. Well, Christians did their best in the cities that they lived in to make sure that people didn't die of starvation, right? Then, uh, one one particular big thing, there was a plague called the plague of Cyprian, and at the at its height, it killed, um, it killed up to 5,000 people per day, right? It's just crazy, blood. So most Romans when they discovered that their family members had the plague, they would they would just send them out into the streets to hopefully prevent themselves from getting sick, right? Adults and kids alike. So Christians were were the only people who took people in during this time in history and cared for them. So they cared for these sick people at the risk of their own life, right? So So how does the story end here as it relates to this? the the Roman nobility starts to notice all the great things that Christians are doing and they're like, man, like these guys, we probably shouldn't persecute these guys. We should probably adopt some of their practices, right? And this leads to this is like the sub the subtext of what leads to Constantine's conversion. And it's a whole long story that is not for it's not topical for what we're going to talk about today. But Constantine makes Christianity the the state religion of Rome. What Constantine ends up doing is he establishes uh bishops. He he takes the leaders of the churches all throughout the Roman Empire and he makes them responsible for uh the social safety net. So he starts to give money from the Roman Empire to the church so they can help take care of the people that live there, right? On and on I could go down this whole road. So what the reason why these really great things happened and Christianity became this and the Catholic Church became all that started with not fighting for their rights, not rejecting authority, not rebelling against what was happening even though what was happening was evil.

24:52 And I think that's like this huge challenge, okay, to learn about from just from this perspective that their response, the Christian response at that time was not to fight it and not to rant and rave against it because you know what, their voice didn't really matter. Like if someone if and you can read this like you talked about the sack of Jerusalem, there were all these different Jewish revolts, right? And uh they they the Roman army put them down so much. They they didn't so uh before it was called Palestine. So this is what what made u what what changed the name of Israel to Palestine. So it was called Judea, right? And it's like the land of the Jews. Well, the Romans came down so hard on the Jews because of all their different Jewish revolts. They they changed the name of Israel from Judea to Palestine. That was so they they they did their best. These guys revolted and they did their best to just erase them from history. Now the Jews the Jews made it through and so did Christians and all that. But the Romans had if you rebelled against the Romans, if you rebelled against the empire, they were just going to kill you anyway. And so Christians didn't even have the option of that, right? But what Christians had was uh the perspective that the Bible has on spiritual authority, right? And so for most of human history, the reason why I spend all that time on that history is the for most of human history, you didn't get to pick your leader. You just had to deal with whatever your leader was.

26:25 Right. Right. So So yeah. Okay. Keep keep So yeah. So the obvious transition goes how does because like ultimately who establishes authority is is the kind of the underlying thought process because there was only two times in scripture when Jesus was amazed. One was at the lack of faith in his own town and the other one was the Roman centurion whenever he said hey you don't have to come to my house just say the word of I too am a man of authority. So so like to to amaze Jesus and one of the things he was amazed at was two well there's two things right a lack of honor or lack of faith I should say and then an understanding of authority. So that like clearly God God operates in authority and it's it's revelatory to me that I've always wondered like um when you think about authority and the work that God's given you to do and what he's given you dominion over. I think it's very interesting when when in Genesis 3 whenever he hands down the punishments, it's like okay, you guys screwed up. There's going to be punishment. It's very specific to each person in there's the snake, there's the woman, and the man. And you think, okay, what do how are you going to punish them? You're going to punish them with what you've given them dominion over. So, what's the woman's punishment? She's going to have ch like pain and childbearing. And her desire is going to be for her husband.

27:31 He's going to rule over her. Oh, man. You're supposed to be the helper. We're going to make that hard. You're supposed to reproduce. We're going to make that hard. Hey man, you had dominion over the ground. You were supposed to work it and keep it like I gave you. That was the mandate that you had, aka the authority that you were given. Well, now that's going to become hard. And I think I think that like God operates in authority in a way that we don't really I I don't I can't say I fully grasp it, but I know that uh I know that I it's it's you if you're not in align with his authority, you're just off having a nice walk. And you and even even if you see cool things happening or you think you're you're doing it, it's like you need to you need to understand that God works through authority. Yeah. And what's so challenging right that um that's really hard to reconcile like and this is like a deep cut of Christianity right is if you read the book of Romans if you read Romans nine or Romans so God establishes all authority so then the question becomes what do we do with evil authority right God in in Romans nine God says he put Pharaoh in place over Egypt to display his power, right?

28:40 Which is like, okay, that's that's awesome. Except for the p the fact that like a lot of people died at Pharaoh's hand. Yeah. And it was slaves for 400 years. Hey, what? Yeah. Yeah. God did that. And God's saying he did that. And then he basically says, "Who are you to question that?" Right. Right. Who are you to question who I put in authority? He says, "You're you're um I'm the potter. You're the clay." Yeah. So, so in America, we've developed this and even like you hear Christian Christian like thinkers in America talk about this. They're like, "Well, the government's not the authority. We're the authority." Like we the people. Right. Right. Which is uh in in a lot of ways true. I don't really I agree with the statement. I don't agree with the line of thinking. And what and what I what I mean by that is that you you and I have no guarantee of godly authority.

29:37 Correct. Right. Of having people in place in authority who are godly. And we also potentially, and I don't have like a right answer on this, this is just a conversation that I think is worth having. We also probably don't get to decide whether or not godly authority is in place. What do you Well, what do you mean by that? Because because surely we have part in in America, we have part in the democratic process. I mean, in our local elections, we're trying to, you know, in influence that right now, right? So, I mean, there is something that we can do. Well, you've been given I mean, that's that's the cool thing is we've been given like a level of uh uh a part to play on some level, right? Um, but then if you extend that, if you extend that line of thinking, so here's what people do, right? They extend that line of thinking into the church and into a lot of different places where that's not really how it works because not and that's where I'm saying like the western delusion for me. The western delusion is thinking that every leadership environment works like a democracy.

30:42 Right. Okay. Yeah. So that makes sense. So it's wonderful, man. The American experiment representative government. I am not ever against that. It's it's amazing. Not everything works that way though, right? But but even the idea even that idea can make us think that we have more power than we actually have. Like right like if um the you know we live in a country where the majority of people who vote probably shouldn't vote like they're not trouble. Well, no. I think everyone would agree to and depending on their position like they they're not people the average voter is not educated enough on the issues to accurately vote. Well, yeah, that's yeah, that's that's probably easy to defend. Yeah, they're going to vote a straight ticket. Like a a liberal is going to vote liberal, a conservative is going to vote conservative, and it's going to be very rare for one of them to be that educated on the issues, right? Because to me, one of the signs that you're actually educated on the issues is you don't vote a straight ticket, right? Um the the founding fathers in America talked about how the two-party system would really be the death of America, right? And that's that's pretty much what we've developed. Why? Because people don't want to be educated on the issues. So they just go, well, like which which part of this do I agree with? And that's not really um the conversation for today, but we've developed something that's about again making it easy for people. So instead of a person having to be educated on the issues before they vote, they can just go vote based on whatever information they take in that they that may or may not even be true, right?

32:24 But but in the church, we don't have a vote, but people kind of they want to vote. I there's basically in in the New Testament, there's three different leadership. There's three different biblical leadership structures for a church. Okay? A lot of people think there's only one, but there's three. So, there's what's called a congregational church, which is the congregation of the church votes on everything, and they see everything and they vote on everything, who the pastor is, all that. Then there's an elder church. So, elder church is all throughout scripture. But then there's also uh what's called an Episcopal church. An episcopal church is a church that's led by the pastor. Mhm. Right. It's not a vote. It's not a vote scenario. Like the Catholic church doesn't operate with votes and elders and all that. So, so if you talk to like the average Christian, they think that the best-run church that or not the best run, but the most biblical church is an elder-run church or a congregational church when really there's like these three models that you can pick from that neither one of them are more biblical or less biblical than another. And they all come with significant benefits and significant drawbacks.

33:31 Right. So, so real real quick for those that are wondering. So, like the elder church, obviously that's talked about quite a bit in Timothy, I believe, right? Which was to Ephesus when he's talking to him about what the elders should be. I think it's also in Titus that he talks about about um what like what leaders should be. I think there's two places. Where do you see the congregational lead and the Episcopal? Like, do you know where those are at? Um, let me uh give you a little time to look it up because I could I could pull it up, but but I think it's not it's not the most I I don't know if it's the most relevant to what we're talking about, but Okay. Yeah. I'll I'll say this. So, to come back to like talking about the authority thing. Yeah. The how does God set up the first and primary authority structure that we have in our life? He just gives them to us, right?

34:24 Like again to go back to parents, that's the first that's the primary the first primary um leadership structure that we get in our life is the one we don't choose, right? Okay. So, so that's so that's like the first one. Then then let's go to the Old Testament. So the Old Testament you have the relationship between Saul and David. Okay. And this is where I want to like uh give a give a perspective that's probably different than what a lot of people kind of think on authority. Okay. Um so Saul and David there's a great book another book I would recommend for anybody to read. We talked about Watchman, Watchman Nee's Spiritual Authority and Under Cover by John Bevere last time but there's an amazing book. It's like it's written in story form.

35:16 It's called a Tale of Three Kings and it talks about Saul and David and Absalom and really how David responded to Saul and Absalom which is just really fascinating. Um but what did David what was So God establishes Saul as the king of Israel, right? The Israelites asked for a king. God establishes him as king. He's a bad king. God anoints David as the next king. So everyone knows David's going to become the next guy, right? including David and Saul. And what does David do? He does everything he can to not to not uh do it himself. Right. Right. He doesn't rebel against Saul. He doesn't take half the kingdom away. He doesn't say, "Saul's a bad guy and I'm a good guy. God said I'm a man after his own heart and Saul's not anymore." The whole time he calls Saul uh he calls Saul God's anointed.

36:11 Yeah. There's there's there's even a a part in the story in 2 Samuel 1. So there's a story of Saul. Saul goes to the battlefield. Him and his sons are all killed by the Amalekites, right? Everyone knows David's like anointed as king, right, for is he's the next guy. Saul dies this kind of gruesome death, right? He he falls on his sword, but he doesn't die. So there's this Amalekite who shows up and he and Saul pleads to this Amalekite for the Amalekite to kill him. He says, "Please kill me." So the Amalekite kills him. Well, the Amalekite goes to David and says, "Hey, I killed Saul." Thinking that David is going to reward that behavior cuz what you know, like why wouldn't he? He's he's God's man and Saul's not God's man anymore. David kills that guy, right?

37:04 For for touching the Lord's anointed. Yeah. So, so I'm going kind of like deeper on that, but there's this interesting dynamic with leadership and with authority that if you really believe that God establishes authority, okay, and God's the one that puts authority in place. So what comes with believing that God puts authority in place in life is believing that God also removes the authority. Right. Right. So so what a lot of people don't realize is if you actually buy establishes authority then you have to also buy into the idea that God removes the authority that it's not your responsibility to hold them accountable. Now that's we should unpack that but like that's really challenging. So to go back to like let's make it more practical to go back to like the idea of the church. Okay. So what a lot of people want to talk about in the church is we should hold the pastor accountable, right? Um how do you as a child and um this this could be a challenging like metaphor for people, but how does a child hold their parents accountable?

38:17 Yeah, I mean that's it's a great question unless unless you know with the legalities of some you know some kids have divorced their parents but that's obviously not like the norm. That's a very Yeah, they could I mean I guess your kids like Elijah or or Hope or Eevee like they could call CPS on you. I mean Yeah. There's there's protective services but they'd have to prove something. There's certain things but it's really hard. Yeah. Right. So So to use your family as an example, use my family as an example. I have a responsibility. Like there's actually not a lot of people in my life unless I choose them. There's not a lot of people in my life who can hold me accountable right now with how young my kids are for how I'm parenting them. Right. And that can be scary. And it is scary when you have evil people that become parents. Right. But it still doesn't change the accountability dynamic. So, so, so for me, and this is this some of this is my own thinking and opinion and interpretation, how I've lived and what I've experienced and what I've read in the Bible.

39:22 I have to ask myself this question. How much does God make me responsible for holding leadership that he puts in place accountable? Thank you for listening to The Dialog. Make sure to like, share, and subscribe. And also, if you think someone else would enjoy this, please send it to them. If you want to get in touch or learn more about me, what I think, speak, and write, you can go to joshuacraft.com. Or you can also follow Nick and I on Instagram. Our handles are in the show notes. We'll see you next time.