What's In Your Earbuds; Part 2

 I am more than the sum total of the religious podcasts I listen to. There are other podcasts too. *chuckles* That makes the sum total. 

They’re good, and I think you’ll like them. 

September 2019. Sam was there but we didn’t know it yet.

I used to be a runner, and I enjoyed it a lot. I still lift weights. These podcasts were in my rotation.

• Diz Runs—host Denny Krahe gives running advice with a bit of sarcasm and wit.
• Running for Real—Tina Muir hosts, and it’s a bit more holistic. 
• Run to the Top—different coaches giving different running advice. It’s like magazine articles being read to you with occasional interviews.
• The Dan John Podcast—the dude is a renaissance man of fitness, and people send him questions that he answers on health and fitness. I reviewed his book from Dad to Grad. Of the four podcasts I had to pick from, I chose this as the most recommended. 

I like history, especially in story format with some behind-the-scenes stuff. 

• Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History—the history behind the history. Dan takes a topic (currently Japan in WWII) and talks about it for literally a day. Seriously, each podcast is over three hours and part of a series. Good for road trips. 
• 5 Minutes in Church History—the opposite of the previous podcast in length. It was recommended by a friend and is only five minutes. Earlier this year, they covered Augustine. Its tagline is: This is our family history.  
• Jocko Unraveling—this podcast is like a shorter version of Hardcore History. Jocko actually likes that podcast. Jocko’s podcast, co-hosted with Darryl Cooper, covers the recent history and past history. Like Sadaam Hussein and the Iraq War and the links to the Cold War. Their goal is to show how situations unraveled to pop off these historical events. Like the often-repeated yet never-heeded phrase, those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.

I’m a big fan of self-improvement podcasts. 

• Jocko Podcast—Jocko, retired Navy SEAL who I mentioned above and often review, and Echo Charles discuss discipline and leadership in business, war, relationships, and everyday life. Interviews and going through different books. They run long. I listen to select ones of this one. 
• The Art of Manliness—Brett McKay interviews different people on topics to help make you a better, more well-rounded man. It hits twice a week, and I usually listen to all of them. 
• The Tim Ferriss Show—Tim talks to successful people and tries to reverse engineer what makes them successful. The topics and people are varied but hit and miss for me. He’s covering a lot about psychedelics now. 

These are some of the podcasts I like to listen to. I’m constantly stuffing my head with as much information as I can. So if you see one you like, give it a shot.

What’s In Your Earbuds?

 No one. Absolutely nobody…

Me: So, do you want to know my favorite podcasts?

Seriously, since the book reviews are doing well, I figured I should do a list type of post with my favorite podcasts. I love to learn, and there are laws against reading and driving. Podcasts fill that time. 

I’ll do the Christian podcasts this week and everything else next week. 

Of course, if these are playing while I’m driving, just imagine the education Sam will have by the time he hits preschool.

• Think Biblically: Conversations on Faith and Culture

Hosted by Scott McRae and Sean McDowell, they tackle where faith and culture meet, obviously. They’ve tackled Christian Nationalism, the Covid vaccine, the Equality Act, Transgender issues, and Progressive Christianity. 

• I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist.

Hosted by apologist Dr. Frank Turek, it’s a good podcast, though sometimes I get tired of the rhetoric. Recent episodes are “Your God is Too Small, Jesus is a Racist?” and “Return of the God Hypothesis with Dr. Stephen Myer.”

• The Naked Bible Podcast

You’ve seen my book reviews on demons and how the Bible isn’t boring. That author, Dr. Michael S. Heiser, has a podcast where he is currently going through how the Old Testament and Revelation connect. You have to be a hardcore nerd to enjoy this. He gets further into the weeds than Pastor Randy. 

• The Insurgence Podcast

The author, Frank Viola, of the book I reviewed called the Insurgence has a podcast directly tied to the book. Start at the beginning and work your way up; they build on each other. 

• The Church Leaders Podcast

Geared towards professional clergy and volunteer leaders, this podcast has recently begun doing series with a singular focus on current issues facing leaders. They started with Christian Nationalism, with interviews with Samuel Perry, Glenn Packiam, Franklin Graham, and Tim Keller. 

Currently, the focus is on LGBTQ issues. First, with Juli Slattery on how the church can begin the LGBTQ conversation. Gregory Coles spoke about how it’s possible to be same-sex attracted and fully surrendered to Jesus. Mark Yarhouse on how to pastor someone who has gender dysphoria. Ed Shaw on how God used his same-sex attraction to equip him as a pastor. The latest is the above-mentioned Sean McDowell on how Scripture is very clear about God’s design for sexuality. 

A lot of different voices on important issues today. 

• Stand To Reason and #STRask

The first is hosted by Greg Koukl, and he has a monologue or a guest and then takes callers with questions. I reviewed his book Tactics. It’s a good podcast that’s an hour-long and twice a week.

#STRask is also twice a week, but it’s pure Q&A. You send him and Amy Hall questions on Twitter with that hashtag, and they answer them. It runs for about 20-30 minutes. 

• The Cold-Case Christianity Podcast

I reviewed this host’s book by the same name. J. Warner Wallace looks at Christianity and culture with the eye of a detective. 

• Defenders Podcast

This is a philosopher and theologian William Lane Craig’s Sunday School class. It’s a seminary-level education. I love it, even though I don’t always understand it.

All the apologetic and theological podcasts! Any preaching?

Why yes.

• Tony Evans’ Sermons
• Love Worth Finding with Adrian Rogers (get back to my Baptist roots with these.)
• Timothy Keller Sermons (Gospel in Life) (He feeds my mind and soul.)
• First Assembly NLR Audio Podcasts (from my church FirstNLR with Pastor Rod Loy.)

Next post, I’ll do the rest, a blend of podcasts from fitness, leadership, and history. 

Gray Hair Isn't A Sign of Maturity

 I’ve been thinking about maturity as of late. What is the most evident sign of it?

I think it’s the ability to be teachable. Where you can accept corrections and learn. That’s definitely a sign of humility. 

I recently got a book titled Uncommon Ground: Living Faithfully In A World of Difference. It’s a collection of essays from different Christians from different walks of life. A few reviewers ripped it apart as anti-white. 

As I read, I did see some criticism, along with different perspectives from mine. It was things I’ve been tangentially aware of or didn’t know about at all. I was learning.

While some issues are black and white, society is morally gray because it’s run by morally gray people. 

Who are these people?

Everyone. None are good (Romans 3:22-24), and most aren’t all bad. Even cannibals who eat their neighbor rather than love them still love their kids—shades of gray. 

I read this quote from Dan John’s Wandering Weight’s newsletter and copied it. 

“Unconditional positive regard means offering compassion to people even if they have done something wrong. A therapist practicing unconditional positive regard would respond with compassion to a person in treatment who may have gambled away their savings, lied at work, or mistreated a friend. It is striving to respond with understanding rather than contempt for the individual.

However, unconditional positive regard does not mean unconditional acceptance. We should be careful to not enable others to continue to act in harmful ways out of our desire not to hurt their feelings. Rather, having positive regard means treating people as fallible human beings regardless of what they do, even if we don’t like what they’ve done.

Whereas judgment and shame elicit defensiveness, acceptance fosters safety, which invites honesty and self-exploration. It’s offering the sort of grace we wish others would offer us when we fail.” Source is here.

No matter what side of the divide you sit on, you’re not in a position of superiority. A conversation over a meal is better than a lecture or SHOUTING IN ALL CAPS ON SOCIAL MEDIA. 

With a morally gray society, the potential for abuse is ripe. Even the angels who actually saw God fell. 

Don’t be surprised when fallen humans fail. But if they’re teachable, you can work with them. 

 Six years ago, I read a book about tying the Bible to today’s culture. In it, I have 142 highlights and 4 notes. If you want to make sense of the intersection of faith and culture, try reading…

Think Christianly: Looking at the Intersection of Faith and Culture

by Jonathan Morrow

“”Think Christianly, in a compelling and accessible way, equips Christians young and old to engage the culture winsomely, intelligently, and confidently.” – Chuck Colson Jonathan Morrow believes that only when Christians learn to present a compassionate, engaging, and informed voice to our culture can the church again become a place the world turns to for answers. Think Christianly gives church leaders practical tools for helping their congregations thoughtfully engage today’s cultural questions.””

The book’s chapters are interviews with different people about cultural topics. It’s broken into three sections: Understanding Our Intersection, Preparing To Engage, and Areas We Must Engage.

This is the first place I learned about the religion of many Americans—Moral Therapeutic Deism. What’s that?

“The dominant religion of today’s American teenager is Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD), a concept developed by Smith and Denton. Not Protestantism, Catholicism, Islam, Judaism, or Buddhism. Regardless of their professed religion, here is what God looks like to the majority of American teenagers (and again, this sample includes those in conservative Protestant and evangelical churches):

• A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth. 

• God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions. 

• The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself. 

• God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life, except when God is needed to resolve a problem. 

• Good people go to heaven when they die. 

God is sort of a nebulous combination of divine butler and cosmic therapist. Smith summarized the approach to life that flows out of this belief system as “be nice and call on God if you need him.”

 It should go without saying that it is impossible to navigate the pressures and challenges of adolescent or adult life with such a feeble worldview. More importantly, this is hardly the vision for life that Jesus offers his would-be followers.”

That’s convicting. Am I looking at God like that?

“The simple fact is that core Christian beliefs, that is, a biblical worldview, are not guiding the vast majority of adult Christians. The numbers have not changed over the past thirteen years (for example, four national surveys in 1995, 2000, 2005, 2009). Only 9 percent of all American adults have a biblical worldview. And to be honest, these next six statements, which define a “biblical worldview,” are a thin substitute for the robustness of historic Christianity. 

1. Absolute moral truth exists. 

2. The Bible is totally accurate in all of the principles it teaches. 

3. Satan is considered to be a real being or force, not merely symbolic. 

4. A person cannot earn his or her way into heaven by trying to be good or do good works. 

5. Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth. 

6. God is the all-knowing, all-powerful creator of the world, and God still rules the universe today. 

When narrowing the focus, the news doesn’t get much better. Only 19 percent of professing “born again” Christians hold to a biblical worldview (a respondent would have had to agree that “they have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in their life” and that “they believe they will go to heaven when they die because they have confessed their sins and have accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior.”

“We must move beyond Sunday morning Christianity and learn how to speak in a compassionate, winsome, and informed voice to our culture, starting with the questions they are asking. As Everyday Ambassadors, we build bridges between cultural moments and the gospel of the kingdom.”

“”Culture is the environment and atmosphere in which we live and breathe with others.” That’s good. Philosopher Garry DeWeese helpfully unpacks this concept a bit more by defining culture as a “shared system of stories and symbols, beliefs and values, traditions and practices, and the media of communication that unite a people synchronically (at a given time) and diachronically (through history).” The most transferable way I have found to summarize what culture it comes from Andy Crouch: “Culture is what people make of the world.”

The following quote is timely even more today than when it was written a decade ago.

“Here are two suggestions. First, we need to stop being against everything — especially the media. While our viewpoints may not be fairly represented all the time, grumbling and complaining about it on camera will not change anything. Most Americans can tell you what Christians are against — usually homosexuals — but few could tell you what Christians are actually for, namely, truth, redemption, justice, and human flourishing. Second, as Christians we need to understand those we disagree with (and why), be fair in representing their positions (especially from the pulpit), and do our homework on the issues of our day (part 3 of this book will help). People may still disagree, but they will notice that our carefully considered convictions are based on clear thinking — which will help them see that Christianity is a thoughtful faith. Finally, our distinctions of culture, pop culture, and the world help us shape the appropriate response, given the particular cultural moment we find ourselves in. What we are against is the influence of the world system on culture. We need to abandon the sledgehammer mentality, which often causes collateral damage and unintended consequences, and instead adopt a surgical and tactical approach.”

This is just the start. Chapters cover thinking Christianly about all of life, becoming like the Jesus the world needs, Jesusanity versus Christianity, engaging our media-saturated culture, the good news about injustice, and many more. 

Writing this review makes me want to reread the book. I gave it 5 stars.