Episode 1: Introduction

In this very first episode, Kurt talks about his spiritual walk, his beliefs, and about his ministry Defenders Media.

Listen to “Episode 1: Introduction” on Spreaker.

TRANSCRIPT:

Kurt: Welcome to Veracity Hill. Thanks for joining me this afternoon. I want to first send a special shout-out to my partners in crime here, Joel and Chris and I want to thank them for helping me set all the equipment here in our makeshift studio. So this is our very first episode and I’m very excited to get this under way after months of planning and fundraising. I’m very excited to be speaking to you here this afternoon and with this first episode, I wanted to take the opportunity to introduce myself to you, to tell you a little bit about my beliefs and where I’m coming from, and then also to share about the ministry that I work with, Defenders Media, and so if you are listening in and you want to call in the number that you can call is 505-2STRIVE and the numerical number there is 505-278-7483, so if you’ve got questions for me or comments, you can call 505-2STRIVE. Again, that’s 505-278-7483. I’d love to answer your questions if you have anything, any questions pertaining to theology or apologetics, politics or economic theory, I’m happy to engage in discussion with you. The tagline for the show is striving for truth on faith, politics, and society, so it’s really a broad spectrum of issues.

I know if you know me personally on my Facebook I tend to be very engaged in political issues including candidates. Here on the show, however, we won’t be talking about candidates, but we can talk about policy, so if you want to talk about policy and the issues and theory, political theory, I’m happy to do that, so I’d love it if you’d give me a call and we’ll have a great discussion.

So to start, basically, I was born and raised in a Christian home and every Sunday I went to church and I was the kid that would pay attention in Sunday School. Not all the kids did, but I did and I started to learn about the Bible and my interest in what the Bible had to say and what it meant grew out of even just paying attention in Sunday School and so when I was in third grade I went to a Christian camp for the first time, Lake Geneva youth camp, and it was there that I heard the Gospel message for myself, not just for my parents’ faith, but for myself, and it was at that time that I made a commitment to become a Christian myself and, you know, I prayed a prayer, but of course, the prayer just doesn’t do it at that. There’s more work to be done, and I could see the evolution of my faith building.

When I was in sixth grade I started having another moment in my life where I realized that I called myself a Christian and I tried to act it and the students around me, I grew up in the public school system, they started calling me the Christian kid, and so it was then that I realized that “Boy, there’s something different about being a Christian that’s different and that people would even make fun of.”

Then, when I was in high school I sort of reached another stage in my faith, my walk. I really became aware of how people just called themselves Christians, but they didn’t even know what they believed and they didn’t really act it and so I began to teach people, basically, what they believe and there was one fellow that I went to school with, he said that I was sort of reconverting people to Christianity, but interestingly enough it was during this time in high school that I began to doubt the Christian faith, you know, whether or not it was historically true.

I didn’t doubt the existence of God, but I really questioned whether Christianity was true and I began to engage in discussion with people of different beliefs. Muslims, atheists, agnostics, Hindus, the lunch table that I sat at was quite culturally diverse, it was different, not a lot of people’s experience, but I had a lot of fun engaging and discussing with those people and I learned a lot and I began to read books, my very first book from a Christian apologist was by Paul Copan which was “True For You But Not For Me”, and it’s basically a critique of moral relativism. It’s a very good book, very accessible, and again I read it in high school and it really helped me understand that, boy, relativism can’t be true. It just doesn’t make sense. It’s self-refuting, and then I began to get into Ravi Zacharias and I started listening to his podcast, his Let My People Think podcast and I started just eating those up like it was candy. It was there I realized that Christianity is objectively true against these other worldviews that I had been genuinely and sincerely learning about. The discussions I had at the lunch table with these people, it wasn’t just to try to prove I was right. It was in a sense iron sharpening iron. One of my personal goals is just to seek out the truth and if I’m wrong on an issue, if there’s a good argument to be presented against a belief that I have, I’m willing to concede that maybe I should change my beliefs, and this has certainly been the case for some of my political views over the past, say, six to eight years, I’ve reevaluated a number of my beliefs, found myself becoming more Libertarianish. I don’t call myself a Libertarian because I’m a Lockian on some core issues and so there’s some differences politically between Libertarians and Lockians. One of those differences is Libertarians believe the individual is the fundamental building block of the society whereas a devout Lockian, I believe that the family is the fundamental building block, so that’s a fundamental difference between the two camps, and then of course from that there are certain entailments, things that arise out of those core beliefs, where you might find policy differences.

So that was high school. In college I went off to BIOLA University which is a Christian school and I was interested in film and learning how to do film and I got there and I realized, boy, I was really bad at making movies. It was like, worse than Kirk Cameron type stuff, and I was like, “Man. I am not creative in the least!´ So I was undeclared so I didn’t really waste any credits taking film classes so I’m in a sense thankful for that and my spring semester of my freshman year I took a philosophy course, intro to philosophy, and everybody complained about how hard philosophy was and how they were struggling to get good grades and I had a 98% in the class, so I thought “Hey. I should become a philosophy major.” So the next semester I did and started taking philosophy courses and there were even brighter, more well-read philosophy students than where I was coming from and they were very gifted philosophers, better thinkers than I was, but I was very appreciative of how I learned to think well and I hope through this show, the various episodes that we’re going to have, but that maybe you two can learn to think just a little bit better. We’re going to have some episodes devoted to different issues in theology such as natural theology, especially the realm of what’s called apologetics. In philosophy this is called natural theology, sort of what God has revealed to all men and so we might deal with questions like “How do I know God exists? Why does He allow evil? Where is God?”, that’s the hiddenness of God. Issues like that, but we’re also going to be dealing with other issues not in natural theology so, you know, divine foreknowledge. Does God have foreknowledge of the exhaustive future?” or “What does it mean that God is sovereign?” or other issues too like predestination and original sin, which is the area that I’m studying in my doctoral work.

So I hope that through this show you’ll be able to learn better about some issues, maybe we’ll even do some shows on just logic, learning to think more critically, learning arguments like modus ponens and modus talens, and categorical syllogisms and what not. So let’s get back to my story.

I was in college at Biola. I was in my undergraduate years, philosophy, and then I picked up a poly-sci major. I’d always had an interest in politics since the general presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore. It was when my dad first taught me about the electoral college and I started getting interested in how that all worked and it was really a fun puzzle and I realized, “Boy. There’s multiple ways you could win the puzzle, you could win the prize.” And so since that time I have been interested in political campaigns and what not and so by picking up the poly-sci major I ended up spending a semester in Washington D.C. and I was an intern on Capitol Hill for Senator John Thune and that was a blast. It was a great experience in that I realized I didn’t want to become a worker for the politician. I sort of wanted to be the politician. Granted politicians do need staff. I just didn’t find the work as valuable for myself, though I was happy to serve Senator Thune during that time.

I double majored and then I stuck around at BIOLA an extra year and did a Master’s degree in Christian apologetics and I was actually the very first person to complete the program in a full year. I started in the summer and I basically took on a big load, but I think my undergraduate thinking in philosophy had trained me to sort of think very well in those courses in apologetics, and of course at BIOLA everyone had to take Bible units and so I took theology classes beforehand, so I had a foundation to build upon, and then I wound up getting married to my wife Michaela and we went to England for a year where I did a Master’s in systematic theology and that was a real fun year of just going overseas and being in a different culture, although the British culture and the American culture are similar in many ways, there’s a very small language barrier, it’s a vocabulary barrier. That made some of the basics very simple, but there still are many different beliefs between the Brits and Americans. So sometimes, especially in political theory we compare different countries and sometimes that works. Sometimes it doesn’t and so I know one issue has been the Brexit one. One recent issue has been Britain leaving the EU so Americans tend to sympathize with what happened and yet some of us think, “No. Maybe it wasn’t a good thing to do.”

At any rate, maybe we’ll devote a show to that at some point in the future. So we did the Master’s degree and then we came back and moved to the Western suburbs of Chicago where I’m originally from and we sort of settled in for a little bit, a couple of years, and then I started my Ph.D. program at Highland Theological College, and the degree is conferred by the University of Aberdeen so that is where the piece of paper at the end of the day will come from and I studied the doctrine of original sin and the so-called Semi-Pelagians and that’s an issue I’m hoping we can devote a show too as well, and a lot of people I think misunderstand John Cassian, Vincent of Lerins, and Faustus of Riez, and I’m really looking forward to publishing my academic work someday. I’ve got to get it done first though. If we have shows devoted to it, I think that’d be a fun things to do.

We have our first caller. We’ve got Khaldoun here on the line. Khaldoun. Are you there?

Khaldoun: I am.

Kurt: Thanks for calling. What would you like to talk about?

Khaldoun: Well, congratulations on the show.

Kurt: Thank you so much. Thanks and thank you so much for your support of the ministry work that I’m doing as well.

Khaldoun: Any time brother. I wanted to mention something about my journey in the apologetics arena. I became a believer when I was about 15 or 16, I can’t remember the exact time, but it was around that period of time.

Kurt: mhmmm.

Khaldoun: It was a slow gradual thing for me, but when I went off to college is when I really had my socks blown off on me and the world shaken up under me because I started to develop a friendship with some guys on the college campus who happened to be all philosophy majors who seemed to specialize in taking apart my worldview and I just wasn’t prepared for it and so I was at the point where apologetics didn’t get me saved per se, it wasn’t the journey that led me there, it was definitely the journey that kept me there.

Kurt: Hmmm. Uh huh.

Khaldoun: Apologetics kept me in my faith because I had to find answers and reasons for why I believed what I believed regarding the historical reliability of the Bible, the existence of God, the veracity of the resurrection narratives, etc.

Kurt: mhmmm.

Khaldoun: I did not have that. I thought I had the answers.

Kurt: Yeah

But I just kept putting my foot in my mouth when I was asked and I found a whole plethora of literature, a world of literature in Christian thought from Augustine to Aquinas to Pascal that just gave me a grounding and an energizing as they provided answers to these gentlemen that were asking these important questions and challenges.

Kurt: Yeah. Now hey, so you’ve brought up an interesting issue. It sort of kept you in the faith and apologetic methodology is something I like to think about and I think we sort of had similar journeys a little bit, you know. I never gave up the faith, but it’s interesting that some people do. Why do you think that is, that they give up their faith altogether when they have these doubts?

Khaldoun: I think it’s mainly because, it’s sad to say, a lot of emotionalism. 70-80% of the people who come forward in Crusades, which is the Billy Graham Crusades, according to general studies on these who have actually looked through those, follow-up procedures, have walked away.

Kurt: Yeah.

Khaldoun: 70-80% walked away because it’s an emotional experience for them and anything that’s an emotional experience you can get into and you can also get out of quickly.

Kurt: Yeah

Khaldoun: Like falling in love or having a crush when you’re a teenager that quickly fades when you find someone prettier.

Kurt: Sure. Sure.

Khaldoun: Or something more of another nice shining object that you’re going after. There’s so many factors involved. People don’t have a grounding for it. There’s so much work involved regarding people who left the faith in younger generations and one of the main reasons is they don’t have a solid grounding, a solid anchor in truth and historicity and archaeology and paleontology that grounds their faith scientifically. A lot of it is emotionalism and since it’s an emotional experience you get into, it’s not surprising another emotional experience will get you out of it.

Kurt: mmmm. Yeah, and it’s really a reminder to us Christians that we’re not just called to have people pray that prayer with us. We’re called to make disciples.

Khaldoun: Amen.

Kurt: Yeah.

Khaldoun: And it’s ultimately Him who saves us, not our prayers.

Kurt: Yes. God is the ultimate reason for salvation and it’s because of His grace that we are saved for sure. Yeah. Hey, well Khaldoun, thank you so much for giving us a call and I’m looking forward to seeing you in three weeks time at the Defenders conference in Oak brook.

Khaldoun: Thank you Kurt. I appreciate it. Anything coming up in a particular show that I should be looking forward to?

Kurt: Well I’m going to be talking a little bit about my beliefs broadly speaking and then talking about what Defenders Media is about too so stay tuned.

Khaldoun: Wonderful. Well, Lord bless you.

Kurt: Thank you so much. Thanks for calling.

Khaldoun: Thanks so much.

Kurt: So that was Khaldoun Sweiss. He’ll be speaking at the Defenders conference on August 5^th and 6^th. He’s going to be presenting an interesting talk on how to combat the secularists, sort of philosophies that our culture is dealing with. So where was I at with my story?

So I started a Ph.D. program and meanwhile I’ve started concurrently with my educational pursuits, I’ve pursued starting apologetics ministry and this took the form of a website I originally called Real Clear Apologetics and the mission of that web site sort of evolved over time and now it’s called socialapologetics.com and you can check that out if you’d like. It’s basically a web site devoted to helping Christians network together that are interested in apologetics to gather together to ask the questions to seek out answers that they’re looking for.

While that web site was going I ended up joining an organization called apologetics.com and I’ve worked with them for a couple of years and then last autumn I started Defenders Media and before I tell you about Defenders Media, I want to tell you a little bit about my beliefs, but before we get to that, we’re going to take a short break, and we’ll hear a word from one of our sponsors.

(Commercial break)

Kurt: Let me just say a kind word about Rethinking Hell. They hold to a specific doctrine of Hell, about what it’s like. I won’t go into details yet because we’ll probably have Chris on the show here in the next couple of months, but I don’t presently affirm the same position that they do, though I’m open to changing my mind, but I really appreciate their willingness to do theology in community. I know Chris, he really seeks out having public discussions, radio debates, dialogues with people, and it’s really important to do theology in community because if you do theology in isolation, you’re going to make mistakes. We live in a fallen world and our interpretations of Scripture are prone to our own biases and so it’s really important that we be a part of a community where we can double check each other’s work, for there to be peer-review at the academic level, and to hold each other accountable, so I really appreciate that about what Chris and Glenn are doing at Rethinking Hell.

So a little bit about my beliefs. I am a Christian and I mean that in the historical orthodox sense. I hold to the traditional beliefs about the Trinity and that God is one essence in three persons and I hold to the humanity and deity of Christ, fully God, fully man, and I also hold as a good Protestant, I hold to the belief that Scripture is the final authority on all the matters that it addresses. Now that’s not to say that we can’t have authority from other areas such as reason and tradition, but I think Scripture’s the final authority. Even still, we need to consider how, say, reason can affect the way we interpret Scripture. We need to think well about how we view the Scripture. So with that we’ve got another caller on the line. Here we have Cody who’s got a question concerning the Chicago Statement on Biblical Hermeneutics or perhaps Biblical Inerrancy so Cody, are you on the line?

Cody: I am.

Kurt: Great. What’s your question?

Cody: So my question to you Mr. Jaros as you said, it’s about the Chicago Statement on Biblical Hermeneutics. I assume you’ve probably heard of it before.

Kurt: mhmmm.

Cody: And basically my question is “What do you think the people at this council were trying to accomplish with what they were declaring and do you see what I’m seeing, which is a tendency towards an almost fundamentalist, very literalistic attitude, and an attitude about Scripture that actually excludes things like, say, the tradition, and other forms of divine revelation.

Kurt: Boy. That is a very good question Cody. What likely will be the case, well I’ll give you a short answer now, however we should likely devote a whole show to dealing with inerrancy, which would deal with the Chicago Statement, especially since some of the listeners may not be familiar with it so I can tell that you’re very interested in theology and so that’s a good thing. We are of like mind in that respect.

The short answer I think would be this. The Chicago Statement is not an ecumenical council so this is not Protestants, Catholics, Eastern Orthodoxy, coming together and the leaders of the churches coming together to come up with a statement on their view of Scripture so as that, I think we need to be careful in giving it a certain type of authority. I know I had one professor while I was at BIOLA who really touted the Chicago statement and he almost treated it like it was on par with core Christian doctrines such as the Trinity or the two natures of Christ and so I think, without getting into specifics with this statement, let me first just say I think if you have some healthy skepticism about it, as long as it’s healthy skepticism that’s a good thing because we need to keep things in perspective. In Protestant circles today sadly there is an overemphasis on Scripture at the expense of these other areas of authority like you mentioned and people say “Sola Scriptura. Sola Scriptura”, but we need to realize that sometimes we have assumptions about what the text is saying and assumptions about the intention of the author and so sometimes those assumptions may be faulty and they’re going to come through with people touting the Chicago Statement with the importance they think it has.

In that respect I think you’re thinking well in being healthy towards the Chicago Statement so that’s all I’ll say right now, but you know Cody, I appreciate your call and I’ll definitely make a note to have an episode devoted just to Inerrancy where we can focus on the Chicago Statement and even go through it with some of the listeners unfamiliar with it.

So if you are listening to this show either live or on podcast, do a google search for the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy and begin to read it. Prepare yourself because we’ll have a discussion on it. I hope that can whet your appetite Cody.

Cody: Oh it does. Thank you Mr. Jaros.

Kurt: Thanks so much for your call!

Kurt: So we were talking about the Scripture and we were talking about my views on being a traditional Christian in the orthodox sense and then, yes I had talked a little bit about Scripture so I hope that view there on Inerrancy is an interesting one. I will say this. I do affirm, I presently affirm Inerrancy. Now what is meant by that? I simply think that the Bible is without error as the authors intended to write what they meant to write. That is to say, if an author intended to tell us a story in the Gospels for instance. We have stories that are in chronologically different timelines, so a survey of the Gospels can identify this, that some stories are out of order. Does that mean there was an error? Well some people, especially those that like to affirm the Chicago Statement that Cody brought up think that, “Oh, well that’s because Jesus healed Jairus’s daughter twice” or something like that. Right? That’s just an example. So they come up with, shall we say, stretched interpretations, and I think there are better ways of interpreting the text, and next week we’ll have Mike Licona with us and I think he’ll be able to help us understand why it is that we have different stories in different order and we have sort of creative biographies. The way they wrote biographies back then was different than the way that we do biographies today and so it’s really important to understand that and place that genre in its historical context.

So a little bit more about my beliefs. Theologically speaking, in terms of non-essential doctrines, I study the area of original sin and I am sympathetic to what’s traditionally called the Eastern Orthodox view, even though I’m a Protestant, I’m sympathetic to the view of the fall that we see in the east, in Eastern theology, and so you think of the Cappadocian Fathers, of Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, so those fellows, and so essentially, to give you a background a lot of Protestants in the Protestant tradition believe that the fall, the very first sin committed by Adam and Eve, brought about very very severe consequences including the inheritance of that sin and sometimes this is a substantial inheritance so the inheritance of guilt so that we are guilty for Adam’s sin and so much so that some thinkers even think that we were present there at the tree.

Also, some things where people don’t disagree are on the concept that we inherit mortality. Now we die. We experience death. That is common throughout Christendom as a consequence of the fall. So I’m looking at the doctrine of original sin and some monks from southern France, the 5^th century of southern France, named John Cassian, Vincent of Lerins, and Faustus of Riez, and I think a lot of people have misunderstood these fellows. They are categorized as semi-Pelagians and that is a term that is related to the Augustinian-Pelagian controversy which dealt with the nature of grace and the nature of free-will and I’m sure we’ll devote some shows to that, but let me just say that I think calling those monks semi-Pelagian is an anachronism and we’ll again have a show just devoted to this because there’s a lot at stake here. I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding and so I hope to clear some of that baggage, that brush, that can affect the way we read these fellows.

Of course, there’s also a lot of theological beliefs that are entailed from our reading of Scripture and we’re going to get into that but we’ve got a little bit more time here in the show so I want to talk briefly about my political views and then I’ll talk a little bit about Defenders Media.

So my political views, I am fiscally conservative, so I believe in limited government and I believe that capitalism is a long-term solution towards the growth of wealth in a nation. It explains how we have refrigerators and cars and IPhones and how Pokemon Go can get people walking out into parks and churches faster than any government program could do. So I think capitalism is the long-term solution and interestingly enough, Bono, the lead singer of U2, he used to be a strong advocate for foreign aid and over time he’s given it more thought and he realizes that foreign aid is just a band-aid. He said this. I’ll be sure to post the link over at Veracityhill.com in a blog post if you want to see this. He’s gone on to say that capitalism is the solution; free enterprise, the free market, competition leads to lower prices. So I’m a strong proponent of that.

Socially, I have a sort of nuanced view of the Constitution and states’ rights and so I’m a big proponent of states’ rights when it comes to, say, moral issues, so I’m really disappointed in the overstepping of our federal government, specifically the Judiciary Branch, our court system, I believe has interpreted, misinterpreted the 14^th amendment and now has applied the Constitution to every state. I don’t believe that was the original intention and that also goes against previous precedent. One court case that comes to mind is Barron V. Baltimore and so you can Google that if you’d like and you can read about how the Supreme Court during the 1800’s understood the role the Federalism system that we have, the role between state and federal governments.

So that’s a little bit about my political issues and so now I want to take the time to tell you about my ministry work with Defenders Media. So Defenders is essentially an umbrella organization. Within it, there are a number of ministries, some that fall within the legal scope of it, some that just fall within sort of a working relationship so I call these groups of ministries an alliance. So you’re looking at ministries such as Risen Jesus, the Library of Historical Apologetics, Beliefmap, Social Apologetics, God Loves Mormons, and Veracity Hill. I think I’ve covered all of them. Hopefully I haven’t forgotten any.

Veracity Hill of course is this ministry here that you’re listening to right now. It just got started today. I mean, we did a pilot episode but this is the first live episode that we’re bringing to you and then Risen Jesus is the ministry of Dr. Mike Licona, who’s a scholar at Houston Baptist University and he is a specialist in the resurrection of Jesus, understanding who the historical Jesus and what the Gospels can tell us about Jesus. On his web site he’s got great resources and he’s on social media as well. I think everyone’s on social media. That’s the thing to do these days.

The Library of Historical Apologetics is run by Dr. Tim McGrew who is a genius, a literal genius in all senses of the term. He is a grand master in Chess. That was a recent thing for him. Basically, the web site, Historicalapologetics.org is a resource for people interested to learn about what apologists from the past have written on and what they can teach us about today, so apologists from say the 1700’s, you know dealt with certain issues in philosophy and guess what? Ecclesiastes is right. There’s nothing new under the sun. They dealt with the same philosophies that we deal with today and so sometimes they’re just repackaged. There’s new words that are given new meanings in the attempt to conceal these, shall we say, heresies. Some of it is in terms of Christian heretical views. Some of it is just non-Christian incorrect worldviews.

Then we have God Loves Mormons which is run by Rich Sanford in Southern Utah. Rich has a great web site with resources that are geared towards Christians and Mormons. The videos he makes, he’s really trying to help to reach Mormons to realize what their faith is about because believe it or not, a lot of Mormons, like many Christians, they don’t know what they are supposed to believe. We’ll say supposed to believe, or ought to believe, because out of our respected holy beliefs that come from that and sometimes our own beliefs are inconsistent with that. So there are a lot of Mormons that don’t know what they’re supposed to believe and then there are a lot of Christians that just don’t know what Mormonism is about and so Rich makes some really great videos and then he also does street preaching Thursday nights. He goes out to the temple square there and tries to reach Mormons.

Social Apologetics I’ve already mentioned to you. It’s a web site where people can do networking with each other.

Did I mention Beliefmap? I’m not sure if I did. If I didn’t, I apologize. Blake Jones has got this wonderful wonderful website called Beliefmap and it essentially is a mind map and so if you have a question about, say, the existence of God, you sort of click it and from that will come objections, either supporting points or objections, and then respective to that you have responses and this isn’t just Blake’s own thoughts. It’s very well documented academic sources, the best Christian philosophers, the best atheist philosophers on issues of existence of God and then he has other issues as well such as Jesus mythicism or divine hiddenness, so it’s really great mind map.

I think that might be all of them. If not we’ll cover them again sometime I’m sure. We’re running low on time here and I want to thank you for tuning in this afternoon. We’re hoping to do this show every Saturday at 1 PM although that’s suspectible to change. If you’ve got questions, we’re on social media. If you want to make a statement or ask a question you can do so and you can leave the message throughout the week. We’ve got a system that will take your calls and that number is 505-2STRIVE. Again, the number is 505-278-7483, and if you have any questions about theology, apologetics, political theory, again not candidates. I’m not going to be speaking about that. Political theory or economic theory or just any issues in society that we may be dealing with. Pokemon Go is a big one right now. How should we understand that? The Olympics? How should Christians view sports? What sort of attitude should we take on that?

The Christian worldview affects every area of our life. When the Pharisees asked Jesus what we should do with our money, how should we pay taxes to Caesar, Jesus said “Well, whose face is on the coin?” Caesar’s face was on the coin so it belongs to Caesar. Implicit on that sort of answer is that we bear the image of God and so everything that we do belongs to God and so that includes how we think about certain issues, how we engage in discussion with people. We need to do so in a winsome way, in a civil way, not in a way that attacks people or insults them. With the advent of the internet sadly I see this often with Christians who will just go to insulting and making fun of people when it’s unjust. Again, there is a place for humor in the Christian life and sometimes humor can be just I think when you’re poking fun at people, but the question is when it is or is not, the sort of context to do so.

But who knows? Maybe we’ll have a show to that. If you want to have a show on humor let me know. Leave me a message. Write me a note. If you’ve got any questions that you want to email, my email address is Kurt@veracityhill.com and I want to thank you for listening to the show and for being a part of what I’m doing here. If you want to become a patron, patrons are the people that support me, you can do so at Veracityhill.com/patron. There are different levels there. $5 a month. $10 a month. And there are different perks as well that come from sort of being a supporter of mine and so I’d love to tell you more about that and so with that, again, if you’ve got any questions for me I’d love to be able to answer those for you and this show is really for you. I want to be a sounding board if you’ve got any questions or comments about the state of American politics feel free to just ask away and I hope to devote shows and I appreciate the calls from Khaldoun and Cody and thanks for their interest in the show and so with that, thanks for listening and I hope that you’ll give me a call sometime next week.