You're listening to Clearview Today with Dr. Abadan Shah, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Ryan Hill. I'm John Galantis, and welcome back to the Clearview Today Studio with our host, Dr. Abadan Shah, who's a PhD in New Testament textual criticism, professor at Carolina University author, full-time pastor, and the host of today's show, Dr.
Shah. Looking forward to another great week here in the Clearview Today Studio. I am too. Thank you. It's my favorite show.
It's my favorite. You know, this is my favorite podcast ever that we host. This is my absolute favorite one. It is the only one right there. Yeah, well, that's the joke.
That's the joke. Hey, quick update and quick reminder for all you guys before we start the show today. We are putting out a new 30-day devotional. It's called 30 Days of Seeing Christ through Judges, or in Judges, excuse me. 30 Days of Seeing Christ in Judges.
You know, Dr. Shaw, a lot of people find it to be like a fun little trick that you can see Jesus in the Old Testament. Like, isn't that cool? Like, Jesus is kind of there. But it's not a fun little trick.
It's really the heart of the Old Testament. It's the heart of God's Word to His people. If we lose that. Truth that you can find Jesus everywhere in the Old Testament, we lose a lot. We lose our fundamental understanding of who Christ is, that He is not just somebody who dropped into our realm 2,000 years ago.
He was always there. And it makes sense because John's gospel opens with in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. It begins to make sense. It begins to make sense what the book of Hebrews talks about: how Christ is greater than the angels, Christ is greater than Moses, because he was always there. And then it also begins to make sense why Jesus, on the road to Emmaus, he Explained from the scriptures who he was.
Now, keep in mind, there were no scriptures as in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. There were no scriptures as in The book of Acts. No scriptures, as in Paul's letters, and Peter's letters, and John's letters, or the apocalypse. All of these things were still to be written. They were still like maybe 10, 20 years away.
So the scriptures that Jesus was. Expositing to those disciples who were very grieved and shocked and full of doubts and confusions and fears, he was going through the Old Testament and he was showing them who he was. And The Bible says There Their interaction with each other was with words like, Didn't our hearts burn within us when He opened the scriptures to us and showed who He was?
So. When you put all that together, you begin to realize that Jesus Christ is not just someone who was born. In the manger in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago. No, he was always there. He just entered our realm.
In space and time. Right. That's right. When he was born, but he was always there. And you find him doing all kinds of things in the Old Testament.
I love presenting it like that because it's not just, oh, isn't it cool how you kind of lined the words up so you could portray Jesus in this passage? Or, yeah, that's cool to think about. Like, oh, what a neat thing. God had a plan all along. Yeah.
No, it's not a cute little trick. It's Jesus is the subject of the Bible. That's exactly right. He's the main character. That's exactly right.
And it really begins to make sense because it's not just the crucifixion and the resurrection that radically transformed these disciples into martyrs. It's the fact that all of a sudden Life made sense, history made sense, their scriptures made sense. That, oh, this is the one who. just happened to become man, before our eyes but he was always there. And as I've explained before, I take the view that Jesus was fully God, fully man since eternity passed.
God is not time-bound. We are time-bound. By the way, this view is originally. uh attributed to Karl Barth. That he was always fully God, fully man.
So he said, Well, wait a minute.
So, what happened when he was born of a virgin? It simply took place. In space and time for us, that's right. We need time, and we will always have time. We will always be bound by time, but God is outside of time.
We say that we say that He stepped into humanity, but really, He just stepped into time. He stepped into our like, I do see it like you kind of mentioned, there's this like, I don't know if this is a silly way to think of it, but like there's this veil, and it's like made of water. You know, it's like made of this like cosmic space water or whatever. And Jesus is outside of time, always existing as fully God, fully man, but then stepping through that. That stepping through that veil and entering into our.
And I know we're sort of stepping away from the main conversation we have today, but if you think about it for a moment, when people ask the question, When God became man, in the second person of the Godhead, when fully God became fully man, did God grow? Yeah, I think we've asked that on the show before. Yeah, we've asked that, and then we have to answer that question. And most of the time, people just kind of brush it off and say, ah, that's a dumb question. No, no, that's not a question.
That's not a dumb question at all. It's a real question. It has to do with the nature of God. I mean, that's not a dumb question at all. Yeah, I mean, a question like: Did he now understand humanity?
We often say that is because he was made like us that now he understands what we go through. Right. No Now he can He can Stand on the day of judgment and say you have absolutely no excuse. Yes, true. That's a big difference.
Because if you do, if you answer that flippantly and said, yes, God grew, he added something to his character.
Well, now you have to contend that, was it good or bad that he did that? No, it was good that he did that. Or even something like saying that means God can change his mind. Right, yeah. But I mean, if you say he added something, he grew, and it was good that he did that, then you have to concede that he was incomplete before he did that.
That's right. 100%. Can't do that. But we believe that that's not the case. And we can even go beyond this simple argument and talk about.
what happens in the book of Genesis. He made us in His image. In his likeness.
So what is that? Because God is spirit, right? You think we'll cover that? Did I share God's nose? Yeah.
I mean, are my cheekbones the same as God's?
So we have to ask that question: if He was spirit. That's what we often think. Yeah, he is spirit, and which he is. Then, how does it work that we are made in his image? And why does the spirit look like this?
Why does the spirit, why do we not have three eyes? Why do we not have why do we have hair? And some of us don't have hair. What if the pre-incarnate Jesus. Was in essence fully man, then we can be made in his image.
So, do you think we'll find the answers to this in 30 days seeing Christ through Genesis? Maybe. Judges specifically. You could have started because we wanted it to be a thing where, all right, 30 days, now we're going to venture into exploring Christ in the Old Testament. Seems like a no-brainer.
We're going to start with Genesis, but you chose Judges. Do you think Judges was the most difficult one to start with? In this series? No, just in like the Old Testament. Do you think there's a harder book to pin Christ down than Judges?
Oh, wow. Not harder, like it's a stretch. I would say Judges was the hardest. Yeah. Because it has been so often misunderstood and maligned for so many years, centuries, I would say, that it was harder to say that these.
These judges were not the bad guys, they were the good guys. And that's where people say, Yeah, yeah, I know that, but but they were flawed characters. Right, right. And you have to go, No, they were not flawed characters, they were just different. Sure.
In a different time and place, but they were not flawed because the Bible never calls them flawed. Right, right. Bible calls sin sin. You yeah, exactly. You can't say that the judges were anything other than just sinful human beings in the same that we are.
You can't be like they were pretty bad people. No.
Well, if you're ba saying that they were sinful human beings based on some of the things they did. No, then we have to say that's not correct. Right. You can't say things about the judges that the Bible doesn't say. Right, exactly.
And you must, you have to say things about the judges the Bible does say. If the Bible praises the judges as heroes, which it does, then we've got to regard them as heroes. Yeah, if the Bible puts Samson in the hall of faith, there's no reason for me to say, oh, or Gideon. I mean, if Gideon, that's where they say, oh, the Ephod, you know, the Ephod incident. How did he make it into the hall of faith?
Exactly. That is a big, then we have to go back and say, does the Bible ever condemn Gideon for the ephod incident? And if the Bible doesn't, then we have to now dig, dig, and dig some more to figure out if the ephod really was what we have made it out to be true. It's crazy because the Bible is quick to condemn Moses, quick to condemn Abraham, David to condemn David. All these heroes that we prop up.
The Bible's quick to condemn them, but never the judges. No, the judges. But we say, no, we don't like that.
So book is coming out maybe, maybe, maybe. This is a real tentative. Maybe late September, maybe early October.
Sometime this fall. That's right. Fall 2025. That's right. That's on the lookout for a devotional coming to shelves near you or an online store or Amazon or wherever it is you get your devotionals from.
That's right. People rioted. They really were into the dysfunction conversation on Thursday. Things got a little, we got a little interesting conversation on Friday, and now people are like, I thought we were talking about dysfunction, Ryan. Give the people what they want.
Give them the verse of the day. Verse of the day today comes us from Colossians 3.30. 13, bearing with one another, and if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.
Sounds simple, right? Easy to do, Dr. Shah, because it sounds so simple. Hey, look, God has forgiven you, so you forgive people too. We hear it as little kids in Sunday school.
Why is it so hard to do?
Well, it's hard to do because we feel like You know, we deserve justice. And those people need to suffer for what they did, what they have put us through. There needs to be some form of recompense and We have to understand that, yes, that may happen in this life, or that may not happen in this life. We have to trust God with His power. Plan and it may be that in his plan, he will show mercy to them.
Okay, so we have to show mercy. We can never go wrong in showing mercy. That's right. That's right. Where does the dysfunction conversation come in when people are struggling with forgiveness or they're struggling against things that people have done to them or against them?
Where do we enter into the dysfunctional conversation? Territory. Great question. We know we talked about this. The there is a difference between experience and identity.
That's true. We have experiences that can be dysfunctional. But when that becomes our identity, which is that Man, I came from a dysfunctional home, I came from a traumatized life, or I am a victim. That's when your experience has become your identity. That's where there's a problem.
In our culture today, that word dysfunction is used in a way that almost legitimizes a person's bad behavior or whatever else they want to do and act any way they want to act, that they are licensed to do that because of what they went through. That's okay, and you have to reconcile, recognize that, and validate them. That's where I think. We say there's a problem. I see this a lot in like young people, especially young people who are very vocal on the internet.
It seems like if it comes to their trauma. their sexuality. Things that are attributes of them, they make those things their entire identity. And I'm not sure if it's because they don't have an identity of their own, so they want to cling to those things because they garner a reaction, or if there's some sort of deeper spiritual reason why people are prone to say, I was traumatized or I went through this traumatic experience, so now this marks me. This is who I am now, and I have to live that way.
I think it's in the past. ten years or so, maybe less, ever since the coming of social media, that we have seen this very disturbing trend. That people are Are so quick. To Display themselves and declare themselves as victims, as those who have been through a lot. You don't know what I've been through.
And I know there always have been people like that, and we have time to time done that in a manner some of the things I've been through. And that's okay to do. But It has really been been you know, cranked up to a whole different level. In the past few years, there's an increased emphasis, and you talked about this in your messages, Dr. Shah.
There's an increased emphasis on mental health, which there are positives to that. There's an increased emphasis on taking care of yourself and going to therapy and talking through things that you need to talk through, biblical counseling. You know, we've got a counseling arm here at Clearview Lighthouse Counseling, and it is a wonderful thing to be able to, you know, parse out some things that you're struggling with.
However, the flip side of that, the dangerous side of that, is this is now who I am. My struggle is me. I am the things that I am dealing with, the things that I am fighting against. Yeah. Yeah.
And one of the things that David mentioned was. Why has the pride of pity the Become more prominent than the pride of conceit.
So. uh feel sorry for me rather than Um I am I'm too cool or I am Invincible. Yeah. What what has happened here. And I think the more our culture and when I say culture, I'm talking about people have become soft.
And there's a reason for that. That softness has come through pain, through broken families. I hate to even use that term because that is so, in a sense, derogatory. But it is. Sadly.
the state of our our society today, but it's because of Marriages breaking apart, families splitting up, mom and dad are no longer together. You're here one week, you're there the next week, you're here with people on the weekdays, and then you're on the weekend somewhere else. All of this has brought a sense of pain in people's lives. And you mentioned hurts in people's lives. You're exactly right.
And you mentioned this on Thursday: that when that happens, especially with young people, they tend to say, okay, I've got a dysfunctional family, they're broken, they're whatever. I'm going to separate myself. But what they're missing out on, and I think what a lot of us have missed out on, is that the family unit is the, I would say, the, how did you say, it's like the critical thing that plays a big role in the healing.
So for you to heal without that family unit intact is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to do. Yeah, I mean, I read that statement from, I believe, Dr. Gingrich, who was Nicole's mentor in her master's in counseling. And this person said, you know, in our fragment, and I'm paraphrasing right now, in our fragmented, isolated culture. We still need a community that helps us in the healing process, and a victim's primary healing community.
Is the family. And you need the family.
Now, what happens when the family itself is the source? of the trauma.
Now you have to go okay, let's take some steps. to substitute the community The first community of a victim. That's when you can say, we have to step out. We need to get help. We need to find out.
But the place to begin is for. the family to provide The first community of healing. Right. Your family is the one who is the closest to you for better and for worse.
So a lot of times when people are talking about dysfunction and they're talking about trauma, it's going to be centered on the family.
So usually those perpetrators are coming from places that are close to you, people who are closest to you or causing those offenses. But you brought up a great point, you and Nicole, in your message, that the church family plays a role as well. It's not just our biological or our nuclear family, the family that we're adopted into. It's our church family that plays that secondary layer of building that concept of resiliency. Yeah.
How do you give that advice to someone who is not even in church or who's not a believer? Because you know, I would say that the vast majority of our listeners are Christian, but let's just say that there's an atheist or someone who doesn't have that support system, and they're like, well, that sure would be nice, but unfortunately, there's no recourse for me. People look for community somewhere. It may be just their neighborhood, it may be a club, it may be people. who have who share the same hobby or a sport.
Or a gym membership. I mean, people will find a place where this these are my people. This concept of like a found family. It is there. Yeah.
It's always there.
Now, and I'm not saying every single person on the face of the earth has does that, but most of the time people will find that community. You know, I work out at the gym at the Y. And there is a community there. I mean, I don't depend on these people, but definitely when I walk in the gym, I look for them because they're people I work out with. Right.
And. It's kind of funny because I don't need that community because I have it at church, I have it at home, I have it with our staff, but I still look for them. Mm-hmm. Not needing them. I still look for them.
So most of the time, people are looking for some community somewhere. But I'm sure you would say, and maybe you can kind of speak to this, that if when it comes to those communities, whether it's at the gym, whether it's a book club, whether it's some just gaming community that you're part of, that there is that a church family really isn't a category of its own. That's not like another helpful community. Absolutely. I would never, ever, ever substitute my church family or the friendship I have with our staff here to any other circle of friends anywhere else, whether it's at a gym or in the neighborhood or with some hobby or some academic interest.
I don't think it can compare. Why do you think that might be? Because our loyalties and our sense of value systems are being derived. From the Bible, from a book in which I am trusting for my life here and in the life to come.
So Other people, yes, I will listen to them for certain things. Like, hey, you know, y'all try this kind of a Exercise is going to help you with your biceps, or try that, and it will help you with your quads, or whatever.
Okay, let's try that. Or, hey, have you ever eaten this? Have you ever eaten there? I'll listen to that. Hey, look, be careful about that medicine.
Because it it it messed me up. You know, maybe you need to talk to your doctor about changing that prescription. Maybe find something that's comparable, but don't take Okay, so there are some benefits. But beyond that I don't look to them for real life issues. Advices.
Because they can't help me there. That's right. That's right. And yes. Changing my medicine.
Maybe Help my daily life. Maybe changing my exercise routine may give me more physical strength. Maybe eating better may improve my health. But Life choices are much deeper and far more impactful than just How I work out. And What I eat.
and what medicine I use Life issues are far more important than that. I think that's a great point because if we're relying on those things, those bonds are built on things that are by nature temporary. Even our health is temporary. If Jesus doesn't come back, all of us are going to grow old and we're going to have issues that come along with growing old. And then eventually, you know, our physical bodies are going to give out on us.
But if our bonds are built on something that is eternal, then the benefits are going to be eternal in comparison. The benefits from those bonds in terms of resiliency to the dysfunction of life and to the difficulties in life are going to be much more long-lasting than if it's, hey, this is my friend from the country club or this is my golf buddy or this is the guy that I play games with over the internet. Speaking of like, speaking on like people and relationship dynamics, you guys are leagues and leagues above me. You've got a degree in counseling, Dr. Chai, you've counseled people for the last 30 years.
Do you think it's out of the question for someone listening to this to say, I'm not a believer. I don't believe in God. At the same time, I'm desperate for some.
Sort of community to go through this healing with.
So I may as well. Find a church and start meeting people there. Do you think that's something that's out of the question? No, people do that. Yeah.
People do that. And that sometimes is the first step into. The church door. Just because I'm here. I'm not quite sure about all this Jesus in your heart stuff and submitting to the leadership of the Holy Spirit and digging deep in the Bible and the Word of God.
I don't get all this. It's very interesting, but I do like. The fact that my children are in church. I mean, there are people who come here who I don't know where their faith level is, but they want their children to have biblical education. And it really surprises me because they're not they're not living Christian Values.
They're not living. A faith with Christ, a relationship with Jesus Christ, but they still want. Because they know at the end of the day, it's going to make their children. Have a better life. and not make bad decisions.
And not go off the deep end. And overall be good. Healthy people.
So, yeah, I want them to have this, but in reality, I'm not sure where they stand. Yeah. I think there's a reason that the Bible tells us to be the hands and feet of the gospel and says things like, you're the salt of the earth, you're the light of the world, because we are that touch point for people when they are coming to a community, when they're coming to faith. That's right. You know, we can't just say, here's a Bible, go read it, and then go get saved.
We are the ones who are. What's the best way to say this? We're the instruments that the Holy Spirit puts on to accomplish God's will in the world around us. Amen.
So, we, I mean, that's a check for us who are in ministry. This is a check for us who are on, like, serving in churches. Don't assume that everybody who walks in the doors are believers. In fact, many people who walk on those doors. Are not.
I'd be very interested to see. Like, I wish, I wish there was like a thing where, like, the Holy Spirit gives you eyes to see who is and who isn't. Because I'd be really interested to see the reasons that people walk through the church doors. I think, in a narrow view, I've adopted this idea that the people who come here are looking for God. When really the the The truth might be that they're looking for community.
They're looking for healing. And in the process, the Holy Spirit works through them. Right. I think that the underlying thing is they are looking for God because on some level, all lost people are searching for God.
However, the immediate need is: I'm searching for a community. I'm searching for healing after the situation that I'm grieving. I'm searching for mending of a broken relationship.
So that's the immediate need. But the underlying need is always: I need Jesus. And I'm kind of hyper-focused on non-believers, but I would assume that even Christians who are looking for healing from dysfunctional or traumatic experiences are sort of coming to a church for the same thing. That's right. Um You know, we talked about what we should do to become a resilient family.
And some of the things we suggested was: number one, seek professional help. Uh you need Counseling as a single person, as an individual. You need counseling as a couple. You need counseling as a family. This is a place to begin.
There's no shame in asking for. A time slot so you can sit down and talk to somebody. At Clearview, we have Nicole, my wife, who's heading up our lighthouse counseling ministries. It's wonderful to sit down and talk, and many people are benefiting from that. I mean, I have seen that personally.
Why do you think people are so ashamed to seek professional help? Like, I'm thinking like people my dad's age. I wouldn't say my dad would fall.
Well, he probably would, but like people my dad's age, if you said, Hey, you know, if you're feeling this way, maybe you should go talk to someone. I'm not, I'm not fooling with none of that. Yeah. Why do you? And I think there was a stigma to it.
You know, lying on the reclining on a couch and trying to blame all your parents and grandparents for how you turned out.
So. Especially in the South, there is a stigma to talking to a shrink. Yeah, yeah. That's my little mind. I don't have a clue.
I mean, I know English, I know Greek, I know Latin, but I have no clue where the idea of a shrink comes from. Like, where that word comes. I have no clue where we got the word shrink. My dad would call him shrink. Yeah, I mean, that was what they were talking about.
I wonder if they're going to write in and let us know where did the word shrink come from? I wonder if they're offended by that. I wonder if you call a professional like. Counselor, I shrink. I wonder if they'll get offended.
Would Nicole get offended? Nicole's confessional because it sounds nice. Yeah, no. Shrink seems like somebody who's over there playing with your emotions. I think the flip side of that, too, like there's a there was the stigma at one time about seeking mental health, but I think the pendulum has swung maybe too far in the opposite direction where counseling and mental health, it's just become like, I'm going to the doctor for a checkup.
I'm going to get some, I'm going to my counselor. Like, it's just an ongoing thing where I just sit and talk about my issues, but it, it. Becomes this echo chamber where the counselor is just repeating back things that you want to hear. And then charging you $200 for it.
Well, right. I mean, if you can just sit there and listen to people and charge $200 an hour, 100%. But, um, You know, one of the things that Nicole does as a counselor, and one of the things that biblical counseling does is focusing on addressing the spiritual component as well and moving people toward a solution. Absolutely. And that's what is good biblical counseling.
That's going to help you build family resilience. Yes. Because our goal is not a healthy family because we know there is no such thing as a healthy family. Every family is dysfunctional because of Adam and Eve, because of Cain and Abel, because of Noah and his family. We're all carrying that dysfunction.
DNA, a dysfunctional DNA, but our goal is to become resilient.
So seek professional help. Talk to people you trust. Talk to people who are capable and share with them and then find some suggestions on how to make necessary changes in your life. But also build family resilience. I would say you've got family resilience because I just texted Nicole: if a client called you a shrink, would you consider that offensive?
She said, not really. Wow. That's a resilient woman.
Okay. But now I wouldn't be insulted. You would, Pharaoh? Yeah, yeah. So I called you a shrink.
Yeah, it doesn't sound great. Yeah. It's like calling a pastor a preach. I don't like preach. Yeah, I don't like that.
I don't like when they call you like preacher, when they like address, like if someone would say, That's my preacher, that's pretty cool. But if someone's like, hey, preacher, what's going on, preacher man? Yeah. Like, clap you real hard, but too hard on the shoulder. I don't like that at all.
I don't like that at all. Don't do that. Don't do that. If you're talking to your pastor, just call him pastor. Yeah, you'll go.
Don't call him preacher. Yeah, don't do that. That's going to put somebody off. But Nicole, you can call her a shrink, apparently. She's okay with it.
Don't. Don't. Don't, but she's fine. She's kind of hard to offend anyway.
Well, guys, make sure you join us tomorrow. Same time, same station. We're going to be diving into another great topic here on the Clear View Today show. Thanks again to our sponsors for making today's episode possible. And don't forget that you can support us by subscribing to the show on iTunes, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast from.
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We'll see you tomorrow on ClearBee Today.
