Christian Ethics: Beyond Sunday Sermons

Music. Hey, everybody, and welcome back to episode nine of the Life on 11 podcast.

Today, Jeremy and I build upon our ideas from last week when we talked about predestination, and we talk about Christian morals and ethics. How does Christianity inform the decisions that we make every day? So without further ado, let's take it to 11.

What's going on, Jeremy? How's your night? Oh, it's rainy. It's a good night to be a duck. It's a great night to be a duck. In fact, I felt like a duck on my way in. You kind of looked like a duck. Waddled in. Was that a fat joke? It wasn't a fat joke. Okay, it sure sounded like it. It was a moist joke. You were moist when you walked in. I was more than moist. I was soaking wet. You were damp. My feet are still wet. Yeah, smell them.

No, that's your feet. Oh, cool. What's going on? Everything's good? Yeah, everything's good. It's a Monday. It is a Monday. Made it through the day. Yep. Had a great weekend. Celebrated Mother's Day yesterday. Yeah. What'd you do for Mother's Day? Well, Tara and Talyn were gone all day. Happy Mother's Day to them. So they went down to watch some gymnastics in Doswell. Okay. So they were down there all day. Me and Riley went to church, came home from church.

My mom came over and we had some pizza and you're like a good son. I took a nap while she was over there. Awesome. Yeah. It was good. What about you? We, yeah, did church. And then afterwards we had a Mother's Day cookout with Jess's mom and my mom and Jess. We made Philly cheese steaks. They were on point, if I do say so myself. Let me guess. You're saying they're on point because you cooked them. No, I'm saying they were on point because they were on point and I did cook them.

Both those things can be true and are. Thank you. I need proof. I can do that. I don't have one in my mouth. They were so good that there is not the opportunity for you to have one in your mouth because they're gone. Well, the day's not over. Well, that's true. All right. And yeah, cook me one after this. We had a great, great Mother's Day celebration. And like you afterwards, I took a good nap.

Good nappy poo good job naps are good for you naps are you know Jesus took naps he did yeah absolutely I'm just saying yeah creator of the world even through a storm even through a storm perfect guy yep took naps yep might be related yep just saying, So yeah, so it was a good weekend, good weekend for everybody. We hope you had a great Mother's Day. We hope that you enjoyed some time with your mom or mother-like figure. It was a really good day. It was a really good day. It's always a fun day to

celebrate moms at church. Every church kind of does it different. Funny story, we don't do Mother's Day sermons at Mount Zion. We don't have specific Mother's Day sermons. Do you know why? You're going to tell me why. Because I have preached two specific Mother's Day sermons in my life, and both of them were horrid. Were they horrid because you said they were horrid or somebody else told you

they were? I mean, nobody else told me, but it was just one of those like, well, then you don't know that. I mean, it could have been great. I mean, I don't think so. Have you preached a sermon where somebody did tell you it was horrible? I don't think so. Really? I mean, I've had a couple words. Maybe somebody told me it was heresy, but man, you got a horrible, you got a lot of friendly people. Man, are you saying I've had horrible sermons? Oh, I'm not saying you've had horrible.

That's what it sounds like. No, no, no, no, no, I'm just saying the fact that no one has ever told you that they didn't like their sermon is... Well, I mean, that's good. Most folks wouldn't tell you that. They would tell their friends and relatives that after church. But then you would hear it through the grapevine. That is true. That is true.

It's not very ethical. It's not ethical. Speaking of ethics, good segue. Hey, you see what I did there? Yeah, I did. So last week we talked about predestination and we talked about how we felt that predestination was at its best, false, at its worst, completely laughable. I will say at its best. We had a few people that reached out and expressed their support of our humorous interjections into the life of predestination. So no, no displeasure. I heard no displeasure. Okay.

Now, again, we invited people to tell us, though. Yeah. The window's still open. Well, it's not right now because it's raining, but that's true. That being said, so this week's podcast, we're going to build on that idea because if we say that predestination is not right, it's not true, then we have ethical decisions that we have to make by choice of free will because if we're predestined, then we really have no choice in our behavior or choice in how things are going to play out for us.

But since we resist the idea of predestination, we then are saying that our ethics matter and that our ethics guide decisions in our life. Is that true? Absolutely, it is true. I mean, obviously, very simply, we can look at the Ten Commandments as a baseline. But we're talking about much more than that, the simple day in and day out things, I would say.

I mean, one I talked about right when we came in here is a real simple one in business, business dealing with other people like in a sales role or in any kind of business where you're transacting money is, you know, the ethical thing to do is give people the right change and to not take advantage of somebody if they give you too much or, you know, whatever. Those things, not taking a kickback on a big sale, like those are things that are business ethics, so to speak.

But I would say those also play into our role as Christians to live like Christ in our business dealings, our personal dealings, all of the above. Agreed. Agreed. And so. If we don't embrace predestination, what we're saying then is those decisions, both big and small, can have life-altering consequences. Now, let's be clear. Salvation is not through works. So I'm not saying that. But faith without works is dead.

Correct. Right. So you can, your ethics may not determine this is, okay, I got to think through this because I don't want to say something wrong here, but. Well, you can always go back and correct it if you say it wrong. That is true. Our ethics do not determine our salvation necessarily. True. But they can affect our lives on earth, even just momentarily, but for a long time as well. So we need to be ethical, not because we are saved by it, but because we want to reflect the one who saved us.

Exactly. I think you said that exactly how you wanted to. Okay. And it literally only took you five seconds to think through it. That's, I'm proud of you. Thank you. I want a star. You know what I'm thinking about? What do you think about? The movie Flywheel. Talk to me about it. That's a great movie. Talk to me about it. So, all right. So obviously you've seen it.

Absolutely. Okay. All right. so flywheel in the movie is following a it's it's a used car salesman for anybody who hasn't seen it christian based film kendrick brothers great movie that i suggest that you go rent it tomorrow or actually you can probably stream it for free it's low budget film but it's really good just remember their their films have gotten a lot better since then their films have gotten much better since then but

it was still a great movie anyway it's about it's about the dealings of this used car salesmen and you know a lot of no offense to anybody who listens to this who's a used car salesman but throughout history used car salesmen tend to get a bad rap. For whatever reason, you know, one used car salesman made a sour deal and nobody ever forgets it.

So in this story, the used car salesman becomes saved and actually goes back and gives people money back where he took advantage of them and then decides from here on out, we are going to make a fair profit on every car we sell because that's what Christ calls us to do. It's still fair to make a living and make money, but we're going to do it fairly and ethically. And that's what the whole movie is about. It's a great movie. If you haven't seen it, I seriously suggest checking it out.

Great movie. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And that's the thing. Like the scriptures, while they do not necessarily give commands for how to do business, right? There's not like, you know. Well, it's not like your profit margin is capped at seven and a half percent. Right. You can't turn to 1 Thessalonians and get the chapter on business dealings. They do frame ethical guidelines for Christians with integrity and responsibility, just those things. Those things inform our ethical decisions.

What gets tricky is, is that the ethical decisions that aren't mandated by the Bible are still a reflection of our Christ likeness. And that's where I think it gets a little tricky because some of those decisions are not like you said, there's not a verse in scripture that says seven and a half percent is your profit margin. And so you could have folks who are interpreting those things very differently,

right? You absolutely can. Yeah. And it, you know, it all depends on, it all depends on your mentality too. Like if you, if you set out with the goal to take advantage of somebody, then obviously that's not ethical. Right. Right. I mean, right. I think that's pretty simple. It's hard to say because there's so many people that lack ethics now that they can't even teach somebody what good ethics are because they don't even know. 100% true. Yeah. And that's scary. Yeah.

I'll tell you another one is ethics in terms of media, music, television, the things that we consume. Right. Again, there's no like biblical mandate for what we should or should not watch on TV or listen to in music or all of those things. But yet there are certainly ethical guidelines that the scriptures put on us that we should consider. And that is like one of the questions that I get asked fairly often, you know, like, do, is it okay to listen to non-Christian music?

I think so. I listen to non-Christian. The majority of what I listen to is Christian music. I would say 75 to 80% of what I listen to is Christian music. The other things that I listen to, though, I do try to have somewhat of an ethical compass on language that's being used or the topic of the song, which is funny because the topic of the song probably bothers me more so than the language in most cases. Yeah, there are quite a few songs that have some topics that whoo. Right. Right. Yeah.

And so, you know, like those are the same thing with television, right? Like there's a famous story. Maybe you've heard it of there was a young adult Bible or Sunday school class many years ago at church. And we were talking about a particular show that came out and everybody in the Sunday school class watched it except for a handful of us. And we were we were talking about how somebody was saying they couldn't watch the show anymore.

And I said to them, well, why is that? And they said, well, because they've introduced a gay couple and I'm not watching that. And I was like, whoa, hold up for a second. And they were like, what? I was like, that entire show is about adultery. Sex outside of marriage. Like, you know, it was one of those like ones, like a hospital where everybody's having sex with everybody. Everybody's sneaking into the back room.

Everybody's running around and that was just fine. But the second they introduced a homosexual couple now we crossed an ethical boundary for you however i would make the argument that sexual fornication is sexual fornication and so why is it okay to watch a show where there's open adulterous sexual immorality but the second they cross that line that's really interesting how did that conversation go it ended up a few weeks later like a lot of people in the class

decided they were going to stop watching the show period and shows like it not because of you know just because they were like oh we understand that like that was a really good conversation yeah that's a great point but you know those are those things like that's what we're talking about in ethics like we we can't just pick and choose now we hang the bar are we combining ethics and morals i think so yeah i mean we're kind of together okay all right yeah because a lot of people would

argue like well you're you're talking more about morals okay ethics but ethics you know i think i agree i i think they're very much the same yeah in that sense so i think the first thing that that sets christian ethics morals all those things apart from the world is divine command okay our ethics are not determined by us they are commanded by God. Okay. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, although not specifically, like we talked about. Right. But yeah, I mean, I think...

And some of this even goes to, like, even what the world says is not okay, which is kind of weird to think about that way. But, like, you know, there are things that, I mean, even most people would agree that cheating on your spouse is not okay, even in the world today. Unless your spouse cheats first. Or unless they, I mean, that's the thing. Okay, bad example. Okay, never mind. Situational ethics, right? Let's just go ahead and cut that out. That was dumb.

But seriously, that's a really good point. Should I just leave? We adopt situational ethics. You're right. You're right. I'm glad I brought that up. Yeah. And that's what the world teaches us, that you shouldn't do this unless this happens, and now you're justified. Then you're in the clear. Right? Yeah. Okay. Not okay. Well, yeah, not okay, but I'm saying okay, because I agree with the idea. But that's not what the scriptures teach, right?

At no point in scripture does it does does does that get you don't get a pass for doing x y and z whatever that is you know it doesn't say you know you shouldn't have an affair unless these things happen and then it's okay yeah absolutely yeah you're right and so in a world so that's why we need divine command ethics because if not it becomes either situational or ethical or ethical behavior as mandated by by the popular vote right or the ones who get the most media attention absolutely

absolutely and and even like now because i think one of the differences for a lot of us is you like you were talking about i feel like our generation was kind of the first generation where christian ethics and and like american ethics they started to jettison one another like i think up and before different paths yeah like before us like like you were saying like overall even if you weren't a christian divorce was frowned upon true it really feels like in the

past 20 years that's you know like you know all those things things have changed a lot, for sure. Right. And so we can't even... I had this discussion with one of our kids the other day where we were talking about just because something is legal does not make it ethical or moral, that the United States can make something... We were talking about drugs, right? Okay. He was asking about marijuana, right, and the use of marijuana.

And I said, well, the question is, is just because something is legal, does it make it right? Right. And, you know, his response was like, I don't know. And I was like, well, actually, you do know because you are you're anti-abortion. You are pro-life. And he surprised it. But yet there are laws in the country saying this is how you can have an abortion. Just because it's legal doesn't make it Christian, Christian morally right or

ethically right. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You know, sorry, I'm going to kind of switch gears. No, you're fine. Because I keep thinking about this in my head, but think of also how Christian ethics and morals have also been kind of flipped on their head as like a way to attack the world to attack Christians. Absolutely. Because of their morals and ethics. Yeah, say more. Say more? Or say no more? Say more, yeah. Okay.

So, I mean, just like I said about the minority making the rules just because they get the most attention. I mean, so you think of all the things recently about transgenderism, homosexuality, all those things where people are like really coming down on Christians and the churches that are not supportive of that lifestyle, where in actuality, nobody has ever said that they're not going to speak to those people or that they don't love those people. Some people have, but it's a minority.

Yeah. It's a very – Right. The majority of people will say, absolutely, I love them. I respect them. They are God's creation. That's not up for debate. But as soon as you disagree with a lifestyle, it's like you're guilty of hating them, which is not the case at all. Right. Right. And the fact that. Just because you like, and I think that's the other trick with morals and ethics is we all miss the mark on them. No one is perfect.

And so there has to be a moment where we can call other people to morals and ethics while also understanding that we have moments in our lives and things in our lives that we are not. Well, that's the same thing in the story that you were talking about before.

I mean, they quit watching the show because they introduced a homosexual couple, But at the same time, there was all kinds of other promiscuity and premarital sex and all these things happening in there that they said they didn't agree with, but they watched the show until this one thing happened. So, yeah, same thing. You're right. We have to look at ourselves and where we fall short and be aware.

We have to be aware of ourselves and acknowledge that. And we also have to realize that sometimes Christian morals and ethics are personal in nature. True. There are some things that some Christians feel. I think that the Holy Spirit guides us. When I think about what guides Christian ethics, number one is scripture. Number two is the Holy Spirit. Number three is church tradition. Okay. And those three things inform my idea of what Christian ethics should be. How about personal conviction?

Would that be like the Holy Spirit personally convicting? Yeah. Okay. Just making sure we're on the same. Yeah. So like the Bible decrees it. And then there are some things that like you have to have a conviction. For example, okay, this isn't necessarily I guess it's kind of an ethical decision that Jess and I made. Like we decided to be foster parents. That does not mean that everybody in the world are supposed to do this, right?

That is something that the Holy Spirit spoke to us about our situation on how we could help some of the moral problem and the moral fabric of our community was to open our home for foster children and help rebuild the morals of our community by helping those children. That doesn't mean now that we have to push that upon everybody else. Yeah. Right? And you can simplify that to those who don't have television. I mean, they're like, hey, there is nothing worth watching on TV. I...

I had to get rid of it. Like, it's gone. Like, so that's, yeah, that doesn't mean everybody needs to get rid of their TV. Right. But for that person, they needed to get rid of it because it was causing them to make poor choices. And also the other side of that is understanding that we are all on a faith journey and road. And sometimes there are things that are morally or ethically wrong that we need to give the Holy Spirit time to work on with that person.

Like I've, I've had this conversation with people in our church about people who use tobacco, they use snuff or they use cigarettes. And, you know, I'm like, yes, I, I don't wish that no one would use tobacco products. A, cause I think that it's, and I used to smoke. So I'm not saying this as somebody who's never done this. Like I, I smoked for a long time and I quit.

A, I think that people should stop smoking because I think that it is an addiction and it can, it can have an effect on your relationship with Christ. And B, I think that God wants his best for us. And I think that sucking down the additives and the things that go in cigarettes that causes cancer and emphysema and all those things is not God's best for us.

But that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm going to stand up in church on Sunday and say, absolutely, every Christian needs to stop smoking right now, because they might have 15 other things that the Holy Spirit is working on them. And at some point, that's going to get there, because I can't look in the Bible and say, like, thou shalt not smoke a cigarette.

Like, I pray that they will get to that conviction and I pray they will get there, but maybe there are some other things going on in their life that I need to give the Holy Spirit room to convict them instead of me being the one to step up and dictate an ethical or moral response on their behalf on something that, while I think makes sense from the scriptures, is not specifically mandated. Okay. Yeah.

Does that make sense? Yeah, it makes sense it looked to me like you were getting ready to do a mic drop there but my mic's on a stand i can't really drop it but i mean we could find a way to make it work if we need to sometime yeah well and then i think the third part of that then becomes community tradition and i think we.

We have like jettisoned that one like somehow i don't know how we got to the point where we think that 2 000 years of church history means nothing because there is something to be said that if the church has done this for 2,000 some years and God has blessed it, then that should be taken into account, for our morals and our behavior. Agreed. And insert whatever thing here. The opposite can also be true. The opposite can definitely be true.

But I don't know, for some reason, I know we all get tired of like, well, we've always done it that way, but this is not that. This is that if the early church saw the hand of God and did something, and now we have built upon that, and for 2,000 years, it's been going okay. And then all of a sudden, we're just like, that doesn't matter anymore. We have a new enlightenment or we have a new understanding. Boy, that can be problematic. You're opening a whole other can of worms here. But seriously.

You're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. Which, I mean, from guys that are Anabaptist in our roots, like God's voice is heard through community, right? I think that's a conviction we both hold. God speaks to me, but God speaks to us. And when God speaks to me, I should talk to the us about it. And so while we wouldn't look to the voices of the past as a way to interpret what God wants us to be doing right now just boggles my brain.

So I do think that that's another way that our morals and our ethics can be defined, that this is kind of how we've done this for a long time and God's had his hand in it. Or we've been doing it this way and God hasn't had his hand in it, so we should probably change that. That's probably a harder conversation to have.

Absolutely. For sure. Absolutely it is. so how do you jeremy like in your life every day how we've talked about business what other areas of our lives do we do christian ethics come into play that aren't so obvious like you know it's like you talked about the ten commandments it is obvious obvious that a christian ethic would say don't murder okay well that's pretty easy can you think of other areas in your life where um those ethics come into play i mean just just thinking about as

as growing up and joining the workforce and things, you know, cause work is so much of our lives. That's, that's one thing I think of you like, you know, stealing time, like standing by the time clock, waiting to gain an extra 15 minutes, you know what I mean? By clocking in a minute later, whatever.

So, you know, just things like that, just simple decisions. I mean, while yes, the Bible doesn't say you can't stand there and wait for an extra minute or 30 seconds to clock in to get 15 more minutes of pay, you know but it's just one of those things like is this really the right thing for me to do so just things like that and you know treating people with respect. Honoring people with the way you talk, things like that come to mind. I mean, not using inappropriate language.

For me, those are things for me that I consciously try to do. Now, that doesn't mean I don't mess up because I mean, I don't want anybody to listen to this and hear me say a word and be like, wait a minute, you said we mess up. Right. No doubt about it. Yeah. So, but yeah, those are the things that come to mind for me. Yeah. Well, and I think, you know, There's a level where, so one of the big ones for Jess and I, we had this discussion.

One of the things that we loved, or we still do love, is the way it impacts your finances and the way you spend your money, like beyond the tithe.

A Christian ethic is more than just you pay your 10% tithe, right? It comes to some other things too. One of the things that we really appreciate is like our investments, my retirement and things are with Ader Financial, and they offer brethren values investing.

And so the the portfolios that we invest in they don't go to you know any business that has holds in pornography or or alcohol or tobacco or weapons uh production or anything like that and so that's really important to me to know that like my money is not going to fund hmm interesting that was a thing yeah yeah well and you know for a lot of people it isn't but that's the attractive thing about investing with somebody like Ader, right?

Again, any business or any company that invests in Planned Parenthood, my money's not going to support that. That's not in the portfolio. And so you can even get as specific as that. When you really start to dig into Christian ethics, it's more like you talked about using appropriate language. Well, a Christian ethic is more than just don't murder, because Jesus said, I tell you that if you call your neighbor a racha or an idiot, then you are guilty of murder, right?

A Christian ethic is more than just don't have an affair. It is lust. And the way that we look at those things and understanding that we can sometimes dial those ethics back, I mean, for whatever. Oh, absolutely. You know, parenting. Well, there's things in the Bible about how to parent, but more than that, there's an ethos in Scripture that tells us how we're supposed to parent. Yeah. There's not a step-by-step instruction book. Man, I wish there was. Don't we all? We do. We do.

You know? And so much, and I do think sometimes, Jeremy, that, you know, I think one of the downfalls for Christian ethics, and man, we could do this on another episode, too. Is like we tend to grab the low-hanging fruit. Oh, that's everything in our lives most of the time. Christian ethics are more than just be nice, treat others as you want to be treated, go to church on Sundays.

Christian ethics, I feel like if every Christian actually embraced Christian ethics, man, our whole world would look different, right? Yeah. Because there are so many things like we say that we're Christians and some of the policies and some of the procedures that end up happening. Like you said, we're all we're all sinners. We all we we all we're not perfect. But there are plenty of things that you will hear somebody say, like, you know, I can't vote for this person because I'm a Christian.

And then they vote for something just as un-Christ like on the other side. And you're like, hold on a second. That's not Christian either. What's going on, right? It's more than just be nice and play well with others. Like there are hard Christian ethical things that we, I mean, I even think about, you know, you and I both, we do some hobby farming, right?

If we had a Christian ethic of the world and of creation, the farming industry would look completely different than it does in the United States right now.

True. Completely different. If we really had a creation ethic and practice, and that's one of the reasons why we do grow our own food here, is we can kind of mandate how those animals are taken care of and what's going into their bodies and how it's responsibly resourced and things like that. That's a decision that we got to make because we were blessed to have enough land to do that.

But that was like an ethical decision on Jessica and I's part that we can do this and we are not supporting what we think is a very immoral way that some, not all, please hear me, not all, but a lot of the supermarket meat, in my opinion, is unethically resourced. And so we can do that here. Yeah, absolutely right. You know what you've done now. What's that? You have got us to food. Oh, yeah. You're talking about meat. We did.

And I'm thinking about eating that steak that's out there in your pasture right now. Well, there's not just steak in the pasture. There's steak in the freezer. From last year's? Yeah. Dude, there's steak on hand in this house all the time. Then why don't you make me a steak instead of a... I would love to make you a steak. Okay. Okay. All right, let's do it. It's a date. No, I mean tonight. Okay. Okay. We'll make you a steak when we're done.

All right. Sorry, we're not done. I interrupted you because you brought food up. Sorry.

Where was your train of thought going? Oh, no, I was just going to kind of wrap it up by just saying, if you're a listener, what Christian ethical things maybe do you wrestle with or where do you get your ethics from? There's a whole bunch of – every word of the scriptures is useful for training and righteousness, for correction and rebuke and for teaching. And, you know, so there's, there's all sorts of ethical things in there.

If we just pick up on them and really start to dig into, um, I know one thing, one thing I was going to say when you were, when you were talking about Christian ethics and people, one thing I think that's huge, I know has been for me is recognizing what my weaknesses are as far as that goes. Because once you know what your weaknesses are, as far as, I mean, specifically morally and ethically, then you can work towards combating them better, I guess is the right word. Absolutely.

Yeah. So there's a lot of people that I think really... They try to hide their weakness or the things that cause them to sin. They try to hide those because they feel guilty. But once you know what it is and you open up about it, it's easier to deal with than just trying to keep it hidden because you feel bad about it. Yeah. Well, there's also something to be said about proactively knowing those things and then avoiding the things that trigger those actions. Yep. Right? Right.

So, yeah. So we would love to hear from you how the scriptures impact your ethics and morals every day and how you as a believer struggle or the victories that you have in these things. It's been a good episode tonight, Jeremy. It has been. I want to end it with one little test for somebody to see if they're listening. Okay. We're thinking about changing the name of the podcast to Ramblings on 11. Yeah.

Yeah. Ramblings on 11. Yeah. So I just want to see if if if anyone happens to to hear that you know let us know let us know let us know let us know you're listening yeah that'd be great and and also we we are working on getting a couple that we're going to try our first guests oh yes we wanted to get a few episodes under our belt before we started getting folks and make sure we had our feet under us and all those things but i think i think maybe

next week we might have a guest in to talk so it'll be good we'll have more information on that coming i hope you guys have a good week jeremy have a good week As always, it's been fun. Always. See you later. Music. And that's a wrap for this week's Life on 11 podcast. As always, we hope that you will subscribe to this podcast wherever you get your feeds from. You can follow us on our social media channels by searching at Life on 11 podcast.

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