Welcome to Become who you Are . Podcast production of the John Paul 2 Renewal Center . I'm Jack Rickager , host . Hey , thanks for joining me today . St Catherine of Siena said that if you become who you are , that you would literally set the world on fire .
And St Athanasius , an early church father and the doctor of the church , said the son of God became man so that we might become God . You know , I beg a while to guess at this , but I bet you , most of us , are a bit disconnected from this divine life that these saints are pointing us to .
Yet St John Paul II said there's an echo of this story , of this divine life that we're created for , inscribed in each human heart , in your human heart , and if you put on a proper lens , if I put on a proper lens , we can get in touch with this echo within us in such a way that we have that aha moment .
See , that's the genus of St John Paul II in the body . It connects our lived experience of life to the gospel in such a way that our life takes on a whole new meaning and helps us answer those big questions that our whole culture is so confused about today . Who am I ? What's my purpose ? Why were we created male and female ?
How do I find happiness here on earth ? How do I find love that satisfies forever ? Hey , glad you're with me . I'll be right back for today's episode , excited to be back with Linda Piper . Linda and I are going to unpack audience number 64 . This is an exciting time . You know . This is he . John Paul presented this on November 11th 1981 .
This audience begins part three and this is very , very exciting . I mean , it is a powerful , beautiful episode here , or her audience . And it's the third panel of the triptych we're starting . So Christ appeals to the resurrection .
So a triptych , you'll remember , right Linda , is a three-part work of art , usually a panel painting , to visualize in your mind , maybe something like you know , if we've all seen those room dividers , that kind of separate into three panels , right ? So that's kind of the idea .
You know , if you took a work of art and painted those panels separately , you could actually fold them up and carry them someplace . So anything you want to add to that , this triptych kind of maybe want to take us back into what that triptych is , Linda .
Yeah , my math background PRI tri meaning three .
So those math people amongst us .
that might help remember . But yeah , the whole idea of the triptych and where we've been is that the first part of it is looking at our origin , like the very beginning before the fall . So the fall was the dividing line that ends the first piece of it , the first triptych , and gets us into the second , which is historical man .
So the first , we said original man . The second , middle piece is historical man , which is where we are right now . We're in history as we're living out our lives . But the third one , which is very exciting for me , is eschatological man . I love that word , eschatology which is the part of theology dealing with death , judgment and our final destiny .
So we might just think of it as our destiny . So our origin , our history , our current time and our destiny and the way we put it in the past in some of our podcasts has been you know , we need to look at where we've been and where we're going if we're going to understand how we need to live today . So that's essentially what the triptych is about .
Yeah , thank you for that . So , and this all has to do with marriage , with love , and that's just the power of this , because this speaks to all of us . So here's where all life is going to lead us , right .
So marriage , in the very beginning , is the Amago Dei , you know , the image and likeness of God himself , this primordial sign , this sign in the world of trinitarian love in the world . This is marriage .
it starts right away with this and the catechism and the bishops remind us that God is the author of marriage , and we need to really keep that in mind when we try to take the idea of marriage and redefine it in certain ways .
We didn't create marriage God did , and so we need to understand that as we , you know , move forward in our understanding of marriage .
Yes , and so it's not just a something we talk about , marriage in the family . This is actually the Amago Dei . This is how God designed to your point . God is the author of marriage and the author of , and he is love , and so he wants to write love , this love story , in the world , and he does this through our bodies .
This is really theology of the body , the God that's revealed to our body , our body called to express love , and that primordial sacrament means that that's that original before sin , adam and Eve actually coming together , open to life . And I remember Eve even saying , when she had her first son , that I produced a man .
She says something like this I produced a man with the help of the Lord . And I remember this so well , thinking , wow , you know you came together with Adam , but yet you know she doesn't give credit , you know , in scripture , to Adam , she knows that God is in there , that God is part of this . You know .
So beautiful to see Now that primordial sacrament and marriage is pointing us and this is where we're going today to ultimate union . It's this little sign of saying you know that the Trinity itself , the self-giving love , this eternal exchange of love , the Father , son and the Holy Spirit .
This is where marriage points us to , this is where we're going , and so we're pointing to heaven , and then marriage won't be needed in heaven and this is where we're going to go , because we already got to heaven .
So marriage and you have to kind of sit on this for a second but marriage is a sign , a little sign within , that God allows each one of us to procreate , to bring these beautiful and I just told Linda , right before we came on my son and his wife just had a child last night .
So this is our seventh grandchild and you see , these are eternal beings that are going to be with God forever and God allows us to partner with Him to bring these eternal beings into heaven and war . All be union and communion with God . And the last thing I'll say right now is Christopher West made a statement that I always liked .
He said people are worried that we're not going to be given away and married in heaven per se . And we go oh my gosh , what are you talking about ? And he said but think about it . He said it's not the delete button , it's the complete button .
So when I go out to visit my son , linda , there's a big sign as I'm getting about 100 or 200 miles away and it says you know 100 miles to Denver . Well , I don't stop at the sign and say , okay , I made it right and so we know the sign is pointing me to our ultimate destination .
But when I get to Denver , I no longer need my GPS , I no longer need the sign because I'm there right .
Right , it's the end of the route , as the GPS tells us . That's a great analogy and , I think , very simple one to help everyone understand that the signs are pointing us to something , getting us somewhere , but when we arrive at that destination , while we say the third triptych is our destiny , we arrive at that destination . What is that exactly ?
That's Christ appealing to the resurrection . And we talked a lot in the second part with our last few audiences about the redemption of the body . Christ came to redeem our bodies and truly the resurrected body is that fulfillment . It is the end of the route . It is that point that we're headed for .
So , while the concepts might seem like we're throwing a lot of maybe complicated ideas , they really all flow together very smoothly into that one idea that the resurrection of the body is a reality of the future world , as the Pope explains here , and that's where we're headed .
But he also tells us right in paragraph one , that in appealing to the resurrection he's going to point out that they're very important words he'll bring up in the Gospels for understanding marriage and also in that other call to love . That is not marriage , it is that life of living for the kingdom of heaven .
So rejecting or not going the path of the conjugal route but living for the kingdom . So very exciting ideas here of how this all comes together with looking at the resurrection of the body .
Yeah , sometimes we wonder how can you be fulfilled in heaven if we're not married ? And again to your point , it's very important for us to have these images , these people , these saints in our tradition , and the same thing with the religious life where they renounce the conjugal life , the married life , for the kingdom of heaven .
So , basically , and you see , these passionate saints like St Catherine of Siena and St Teresa of Avila , these passionate saints that are on fire , and you think , wow , I mean these incredible women who say they've reached such an intimacy with God that it just takes over their whole hearts .
You know St Faustina , you can think of many , many other ones , and men too , st John of the Cross , and men like priests , like Padre Pio and so many others . And so what they do is they open themselves up to this intimacy that we're heading to and say God , can you really fill my heart ?
Can I really skip marriage and the family and grandchildren and all of that ? Right , how can I do that ? Well , the only way you can do that is God really does fill your heart . You know he really does pull you into this . So let me just step back for a second now , because John Paul starts this out .
Christ appeals to the resurrection we're going to talk about resurrection of the body as a reality of the future world and he makes a statement he is not God or the dead , but of the living .
So these are all fascinating points , but I just want to step back a little bit , because John Paul opens up and he says Today we take up again , after a rather long pause , the meditations we've been presenting for quite a while , which we have defined as reflections on the theology of the body .
Well , the reason he says this is the last audience that we spoke of just last week was presented on May 6 of 1981 . That was six months ago . Well , john Paul II was shot in St Peter's Square as he was about to present his next audience on May 13 , the next week .
This , by the way , was the feast of Our Lady of Fatima , and it marks the first day in 1917 on which our Blessed Mother appeared to the three shepherd children of Fatima in Portugal .
Now , the shooter was a professional assassin and he shot at John Paul II from close range , and John Paul II recounts that it was Our Lady of Fatima , he says , who redirected the bullets away from his heart and saved his life . It was also the day that he was to announce the institution of the Pontifical Institute for Marriage and the Family .
That would be the Keystone Institute , the Promo Gate , this teaching that we've been unpacking every Wednesday , that's so important to John Paul II , to the church , to the institution of marriage and the family and to each and every person all over the world . So this powerful teaching was going to be , and it was .
It was established in Rome , it was established in Washington DC and in other places . John Paul II , as we know , is always very aware of dates and anniversaries .
He could see divine providence at the hand of God at work in and through history , and he dwelled on facts , he dwelled on dates a lot and in fact , cardinal Caffara , who John Paul tasked to begin this institute , to institute this in Rome , was later to write the Sister Lucia because he felt an attack within the church of people against this within the church
and also from without the church . I mean the enemy , satan himself . He does not want to see this teaching out there , he doesn't want to see this teaching in the church . So he wrote , the Sister Lucia , who was the main visionary of Fatima , died in 2005 , the same year . John Paul II did so , not so long ago really .
And she wrote back to Cardinal Caffara and said this the last great battle between our Lord and Satan is going to be over marriage and the family . And Cardinal Caffara , when he was talking about this , said and we know that this time is what we're in today . And then I'll just finish with this .
Sadly , you see , that force against this teaching it continues to come out and it continues the battle of this . I mean , if this is the Amago Day , is marriage , if marriage is the sign of God's love in the world , what would Satan want to do ? He wants to take out not only God , but he can't .
God's too powerful , so he's going to take out the image and likeness of God in the world . That's what he can do . So he's twisting marriage and the family . The attack , the focus on children is just amazing today , right . So sadly , that Institute found it in Rome was taken out and gutted out under the direct orders of Pope Francis . It's very sad .
I'm not going to get into that that much , but that in fact , in keeping with John Paul's often repeated word or phrase , he said you know , just read the sign of the time .
So he said read the signs of the times and that told me years ago that we're in for a real battle within the church , and I spoke about that years ago already and wrote about that years ago already when that happened or soon after that happened .
And we continue , unfortunately , to see that battle for the heart of the church being played out today with the German bishops we know in that are blessing same sex marriages and you see this twist and distortion again of this Amago day , of this original primordial sacrament . So this is a big deal .
You know , whatever you think about , you know homosexuality or same sex marriages , whatever . I'm not going to push on anybody , but I would just say that this , this is not the church , though you know you don't have to belong to the church .
You can , you know you can live the way you want , but within the church we see this and so this is very disturbing .
Of course , yeah it is . And a couple of thoughts came to mind On the good news side .
I have become aware of many secular writers who have noticed that , yeah , the attack on marriage and the family , which is our basic building block of society , has played a great role in the crumbling of our society and of our culture even if they don't frame it in religious terms , you know , even if they're not thinking in terms of , you know , being the sign
of the Trinity and all those more higher level ways of looking at what's really happening here . Let's see my my other thought that I had here was okay . While much has happened since John Paul gave us theology the body to attack the family and marriage in particular .
You know we could go back through the litany of things that have happened and culturally , with no fault , divorce coming on board , I believe back in the 70s , maybe the early 80s but I think it was the 80s .
Yeah , I think it was . Ronald Reagan . Unfortunately , he did a lot of great things , but I think he actually signed it into .
Yeah , and so you know . Go down the list of all the things that have happened since then . And one of the problems is that , on a surface level , it all appeared , and this is the great deception that the evil one plays on us is that these things all appeared to be helpful in some sort of way . You know .
So , with no fault , divorce we're saying well , you're supposed to stay in this bad marriage , blah , blah , blah .
You know that's not good for the kids even . Yeah , blah , blah yeah .
Yeah , yeah , and so you know , let me just add quickly because I just heard this yesterday and I don't have the facts , I mean the woman's name in front of me , but somebody's going to send it to me is that the woman that was behind that no fault divorce that really pushed this and it got into the , you know , got into the kind of the mainstream , started
to get in the mainstream thought and then finally passed into law , has since come around and saying she was wrong . And so I have to dig that up because and so sorry to interrupt but she came around and realized that , wow , we made this easy .
And to your earlier point , linda , this is showing up in our culture and it's actually showing up in a demise , maybe , of Western civilization .
And while it is biblical , jack , the idea that you know something by its fruits is very common every day thinking to that if I engage in a certain action , it has certain consequences and if the consequences aren't really good , that action probably was not a good thing . It's very common , you know , to understand that idea and to think that way .
But perhaps she came around understanding the true fruits of this way of thinking about divorce .
And you can take all the issues , the homosexuality , the trans ideology , all of these things , and they're all presented deceptively as something good for the people who are involved right , and yet the fruits are not good , and we can see that and we could spend a few podcasts , you know , talking about that directly .
But what underlies it all , I think , is many people still do not see how any of these are a direct attack on marriage and the family , you know . So we're seeing that's what's happening , and then we're looking at all these ideologies , if you will , and then the behaviors that come with , and we're not connecting the dots yet .
And I think it's only when we begin to connect the dots , which , with the trans , some of that I think is coming out already , when you see the bad fruit of those who have really , you know , gone down that path and many now who are trying to come back because their lives have essentially been ruined , and they're trying to come back and saying this is not
the right path . You know , kind of reminds me of when you're traveling on the road and you take a wrong turn because you didn't read your GPS properly and you end up in a dead end road with lots of , you know , unpaved surfaces and so on . You realize , oh , you know , there's something wrong here and I'm going to turn around and go back .
So we need to , I believe , help folks see how these are a direct attack on marriage and the family , and I think , starting at the beginning , you know where we are with Christ . Appealing to the resurrection and explaining how that directly affects marriage and the family will be helpful , don't you ?
Yes , yes , and just you know the thoughts on something like no fault divorce . You know why . The indissolubility of marriage . You know why is that important ? Well , if this is a sign like we were unpacking , if this is a sign of trinitarian love in the world , then you know , is God faithful or not ? Is God faithful to himself or not ?
And of course , that would be like saying that the Father , the Son and the Holy Spirit are going to split up . You know that this can't happen , right ? So that if marriage and the family are a sign of that , you could see why Jesus says , you know , and speaks against the indissolubility of marriage , even though he acknowledges that we live in a fallen world .
You know he'll call it and again , this is just off the top of our heads here but he'll say you know , it's the hardness of your heart , right , that has you divorcing your wife in the beginning . We didn't have this hardness of heart in the beginning . It was not . So . Look , this is probably worth dwelling a little bit .
When you start to do what you said and you start to twist this and distort this and how it goes downhill . You know , the number one focus now is on the innocence of children . So we have now the culture and the world elite really have put an actual target on the back of children now and then it's really something to see .
And so the sadness is that in our heart we have a desire for God . This is an innate desire for God . This is built into us . This is not more information , this is the DNA . Religion is around today and it has always been around .
You know , not because we're trying to make things up over that , you know , forever it's that we have this desire in our heart . The catechism itself starts at the very beginning , part one , section one , chapter one . The desire for God is written in the human heart , because man is created by God and for God , and God never ceases to draw man to himself .
Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for , and the dignity of humanity , men and women rest above all the fact that he's called to communion with God . That's where this is all going , with communion with God .
And so think about this If a child , if young people today have this desire in their heart for God , they're going through puberty and early , early adolescence and their bodies are changing and they're a little uncomfortable and they have this desire for something more , but they've never been told what that desire is for .
In fact , they've been told the opposite that God is the great oppressor , and if your parents believe this , then they're the great oppressors . And so what do we do ? We twist and distort it . So here's a line just to show you . I mean this happens . I could pick a thousand of these . This was just on Twitter yesterday .
It took my 14 year old to the doctor Friday , as if the renewed mask charade wasn't bad enough . Halfway through , the doctor asked me to leave Over my dead body . I said this is my child and anything that can be discussed with her can be discussed with both of us . The doctor then proceeded to ask if there are any questions .
She's asking my 14 year old any questions about her gender identity . And I stood up and I said nope , I stopped it right there . And then she goes on to say we cannot continue to fuel this madness . We have to stand up . We have to defend our kids . Don't let your children fall prey to the manufactured identity crisis .
It ends with us and it continues to claim more and more children until the family and our children literally become unrecognizable . Don't fall for the love narrative . This is a political path that leads only to pain and suffering from everyone involved , especially the child . Now , this is just a mother , that's writing this .
And then , just to show how absurd this is , getting a male a boy was crowned homecoming queen , beating out four girls in a Missouri school . Oak Park High School students in Kansas City , missouri , just got sent the message loud and clear Boys are just better at things than girls are , even at being a girl .
Tristan Young , a male student who identifies as female , was crowned the homecoming queen this week . He beat out four lovely female candidates because actually identifying as the gender that you are is like so old fashioned , right , I mean , this is getting absurd . And let me just finish with this , linda , because this isn't .
You know , I'm reading things that aren't religious . They're on purpose . But I just want to read a quick thing from Carl Young . I have this book man , modern man in Search of His Soul . This is Carl Young , who was not an overly religious man , you know .
Especially in the very beginning he was really trying to work his way through this , but he's looking back , as an older man , on his practice . Why do people come to me and , and and ? Was I able to help anybody ? And he says this this is Carl Jung , one of the founders of psychoanalysis .
However far-fetched it may sound , experience shows that many neuroses are caused by the fact that people blind themselves to their own religious promptings because of a childish passion for rational enlightenment . The psychologists of today ought to realize once and for all that we are no longer dealing with questions of dogma and creed .
A religious attitude is an element in psychic life whose importance can hardly be overrated . And it's precisely for the religious outlook that the sense of historic continuity is indispensable . He's saying historic continuity is indispensable . You have to go back , you have to be able to draw forward and you have to understand that this has always been with us .
And then , finally , he said , looking back on his patients among all the patients in my life this is one of the most famous psychoanalysis , psychotherapists in history right Among all my patients in the second half of life , that is to say over 35 years old , there has not been one patient who came to me whose problem , in the last resort , was not that of
finding a religious outlook on life . And it's safe for me to say that every one of my patients felt ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age had given to their followers . And not one of my patients has been really healed who did not regain his religious outlook .
Yeah , I remember reading that and thinking about that . How very interesting that he came to that conclusion . You know , I recall in a RCIA class where we had , you know , people who are on the path to becoming Catholic .
One of the classes I don't even know for sure , it was on the sacraments where we were but the priest that was talking about it said you know , the church recognizes the value of all the sciences you know psychology , sociology , all of those that have something to offer us about man and about who we are , and there's no problem with any of that .
But he says , you know , they're all the separated disciplines , if you will , but the church has provided us with the knowledge of all of those , as it's integrated with that first sentence in the catechism were made by God for God , and that that is what pulls it all together .
And , jack , if we're made for God , that means that there's something beyond just everything we're experiencing here on earth . So what does that mean ? Brings us right back to the third triptych , that our destiny is God .
And if I can go back way back 10 minutes ago , something has said where , when we're looking at marriage and people were questioning , well , how can I be fulfilled , christ tells us there's no marriage in heaven . Again , that point is the fulfillment . Remember how we've been saying God wants to marry us .
Well , that's where it happens , right In our destiny , in the eschaton , that finally we find ourselves at the wedding feast with the lamb and we're in marriage . And I think Carl Jung here , you know , has grappled with that and has a sense of that and everything that he has said from a psychoanalytic viewpoint .
And for folks who think that's really , you know , beyond my pay grade kind of thing , no , it really isn't . It's just one way of expressing the same ideas of having that been made for God . So we have that echo in our hearts and it tells us that we're headed somewhere and for someone .
Yeah , how beautiful that is . Well , I'll tell you what , linda . We're not going to be able to unpack a lot of this today because we were kind of set up the groundwork here . But I would like to delve in this last , let's call it five , six , seven , eight minutes here , really just kind of taken through .
So in 64.2 , if anybody's following us directly from the book here , man and Woman , he created them . I just want to read that section there because I think we should do that and then kind of comment on this and then pick this up again next week , but just to show people where we're going and where this came from .
So the revelation of this dimension of the body , stupendous in its content , yet connected with the gospel , reread as a whole and in depth , emerges in the dialogue with the Sadducees who say there's no resurrection . So this is from Matthew , chapter 22 , verse 23 .
And so the Sadducees come to Jesus to present him an argument that , near judgment , shows the reasonableness of their position . This argument was supposed to contradict the hypothesis of the resurrection . So the Sadducees , just quickly , don't believe in the resurrection of the body , and I'm not going to delve into the reasons why .
We can pick that up again next week if we want to , linda .
But the reasoning of the Sadducees is the following , Teacher he's asking Jesus Moses wrote for us that if a man and this is Levitical law right , so teacher Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies , leaving a wife but no child , the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother .
Here the Sadducees appeal to the so-called Leverite law , and by attaching themselves to the prescription of this ancient law , which is right in Scripture , they present the following case to Jesus now . So they're going to really try to trick Jesus right and get them . You know , see what Jesus says about this . So there were seven brothers .
The first married and , when he died , left no children . The second married her and died , leaving no children . The third married the widow and died , leaving none , and all seven did that , left no children . They all married her . They left no children . Last of all , the woman herself died in the resurrection . When they will rise , whose wife will she be ?
For she had seven , right , seven men had married her . Do you want to pick it up from there , linda ? I mean , it's fascinating if you think about it . And how will God himself ? Who knows this ? How will he answer this ?
Yeah well , his answer , the Pope tells us , is one of the key answers in the Gospel , where he takes his purely human argument as a point of departure . And you know , just as in the past , they're trying to trick Jesus and he doesn't fall into the trap . So he reveals another dimension of this question that corresponds to the wisdom and power of God himself .
This time , jesus answers as follows , and here's the quote Is not this the reason ? You are wrong ? That you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God ? For when they rise from the dead , they take neither wife nor husband , but are like angels in heaven . So this is the fundamental reply to the case , or the problem that they bring to him .
Since he knew the ideas of the Sadducees and saw their real intentions , christ immediately takes up the problem of the possibility of the resurrection denied by the Sadducees .
And he goes one step further here by saying and as for the dead being raised , have you not read in the book of Moses , in the story about the bush , how God said to him I am the God of Abraham , the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob . He is not God of the dead , but of the living .
Isn't that powerful .
Yeah , yeah . So you know , he's pointing out here that the Sadducees don't understand the scriptures and they don't understand the wisdom and power of God , and Pope John Paul takes us down that path of looking at it from those perspectives .
I love the power of this right . You said you neither know scripture nor the power of God . I am God , said . I am the God of Abraham , the God of Isaac , the God of Jacob . He's not the God of the dead , but of the living . And so why are we like angels ? Well , you know , angels are only spirits , right ? Aren't we a body in the soul ?
Yes , and God , and Jesus means there that you know , angels don't get married , they don't procreate . You know , we procreate . In fact they say that's one of the reasons that Satan was so jealous of mankind , because he takes on a body and it's actually a procreator , it actually becomes a partner with God in bringing new beings in the world .
And that's why you could see why God , why Satan , would like to twist and distort that human being , that baby that's being born , you know , kill him first in the womb and then , if they escaped the mother's womb , to render them sterile , to twist and distort their minds , their hearts and then attack their very bodies .
And so this is a very diabolical the trans movement is very diabolical movement that we see , you know , that can tell a child , really tell a child that you might have been born in the wrong body and then to do the impossible , to attempt to do the impossible scientifically impossible , medically impossible , spiritually , emotionally , psychologically impossible is to tell
a boy you know , in this case of this homecoming queen that he actually is a girl , when you know it's literally impossible .
You can mutilate some of these body parts , but my maleness is not just in my sexual organs , so you can cut them off , you can castrate somebody , and it's really terrible what they're doing to young kids that aren't even of the age where they really understand what they're doing .
It's a sad thing that's going on , but you don't know scripture , nor the power of God , and so we have to proclaim to these young people that they are searching for something more . And they're correct . Their hearts are not lying to them . They need , they are searching for something more . It's just they came into a story and here's Jesus telling us the story .
You came from someplace in the beginning , we fell and sin has entered the world . Your heart searches . Your desire is for me , for God , for eternal life . This is your desire not to try to recreate your own body and your own image and likeness . This is an impossibility , right you ? said earlier on .
God is the author of marriage , god is the author of our sexuality . But here's , here's the point , right , satan is sexless . A man has sex , a woman has a sex , but Satan has no sex , right ? So you think about wow , he really wants to create you in his image , in the sexless image , and you think , wow , this is really diabolical stuff .
Well , yeah , and dehumanizing and minimizing the importance of the body . See , he doesn't have one . And it does say we will be like angels . It doesn't say we will become angels . And that's a point of confusion for people .
We will become like angels in that we will have the beatific vision , but our bodies will be a part of that in the resurrection of the body . So what he's managed to do in our current culture is , through abortion , try to make it seem like that isn't another body .
You know my body , my choice , the pro , like people , try to stress no , there's another body there , and you see how hard they've worked at trying to convince us that there isn't . And here , in this case , with transgenderism , again just totally minimizing and skewing what it means to have a body that's made male or female .
So it's this constant push against the body as God created us to be . And , like I said earlier , no , by the fruits you will know them and we see the fruits of this way , of this wrong way of thinking , where we can actually crown this young man as the queen right .
And so the thinking has become so distorted and I think , deceptively again , that anyone going along with that thinks in some way this is something good because we're helping this person right .
And the reality is that we've totally distorted and we're harming that young man man very much , as well as the girls who are told you're not as good as a girl as this guy is .
Yeah , you're not as beautiful and womanly as this man is . I mean , what a distortion . And people go along with this . This people go along with this . So what can we do ? We have to proclaim the gospel to these young people , you know , and because they don't really have a choice .
If all I have is a choice of two distorted things , am I really free to choose ? And so this is what you're seeing , linda . You're seeing Christianity and the gospel taking out of the culture . Well , why do they want to do that ?
Because they know , if the gospel is proclaimed now , you have some real choices right Now , my heart can be moved , then I have a choice , I have faith , but then I have hope and then I have life right . So Jesus says that you know , the sons of this age take wife and take husband , but those were considered worthy , worthy , worthy of the other world .
And when I see that word worthy , I think you know all of you people that are distorting and putting these targets on the backs of children . You better be careful , because you know , tick , tock , life , it gets over fast , right ?
And then he goes on to say of the other world , the resurrection of the dead , take neither wife nor husband , and then , indeed , they cannot die anymore because they are equal to the angels and , being sons of the sons of the resurrection , they are sons of God . We are sons and daughters of God . This is our human dignity . Right , you know ?
Christ appeals to the very power of the living God . I am right . I am , and and and the father of Abraham Isaac . You know , jacob , I am your father , linda , and my father to Jack and everybody that's listening , I am your father , I'm calling you into eternal life . And and when you step away from this , you see the distortions .
If there's anything good out there , linda , it's that the insanity is very clear to see , and for those of us who have heard the gospel , you can really see it . And then you see the urgency for us to continue to proclaim this to young people , and then they're free to make a decision , but they're only free if they've heard the gospel first .
Otherwise , you're free . For what ? Yeah , I don't even know my choices . How could I be free , right ? Only the truth will make you free . Only the truth will make you free . All right , linda , any last words ? And we better wind this up , and we did actually . We went a little long , but we did actually finish the .
We finished this so we can go down to the next , the next audience .
A great job . You brought up a lot of important points , and if we can just leave our listeners with the idea where we're headed , that crisis appealing to the very power of the living God , and that's it's just so awesome If there's repeating .
Yeah , yeah , yeah , and yes , and eternity . Eternity doesn't mean tomorrow , Linda , right , eternity means forever . You to your point , you know , you know God is calling us into this intimacy today . See , see , this is the power of this . We keep thinking , well , I'm going to die and figure this out . No , no , no , no .
He called those smart , those saints that we were talking about , and those mystics . He called them here in this life . The minute we were born , we were exploded onto the stage of eternal life , and so we just have to embrace it . That's the power of this segment .
So thank you , linda , so much for being with us today , and we look forward to catching up again next week God bless you next time , Thank you everyone . Talk to you soon , bye , bye .