You're listening to Clearview Today with Dr. Abaddon 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 to the Clearview Today studio with our host, Dr. Abaddon Shah, who's a Ph.D.
in New Testament textual criticism, professor at Carolina University, author, full-time pastor, and the host of today's show, Dr. Shah.
So good to see you in the studio today. Welcome to the studio today. Welcome, welcome, welcome.
So a quick update before we get into the show today, I want to remind you guys that we do have a weekly devotional podcast with Dr. Shah.
It's called The Lighthouse every single Saturday morning, 8 a.m. I want you guys to join us for a very short, it's a very short episodes, but it's very, very powerful devotionals. It's available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pray.com, Abadanshah.com, ClearviewBC.org. And really cool thing, if you follow us on the Clearview app, you're going to get that as a push notification every single Saturday morning. And it's a perfect morning devotional from all of us here at the Clearview Today Show.
You get push notifications from all kinds of things. Yeah, you do. You get push notifications from your social media telling you to second. You get emails that are coming in. Why not get a push notification?
That's right. And it's a very special show for us because it's the show that pushed us into a full weekly schedule so that every single day of the week there is a Clearview podcast dropping right there on your phone. That's right. Dr. Sean, we've got a pretty cool check-in today.
Yeah.
Somebody wrote into the show.
Okay. It says, hi, guys. I'm a listener out of New York. I'm a new Baptist who came out of Catholicism. I still struggle with letting go of some things, especially the rosary.
It always gave me structure and kept me focused in prayer.
Now sometimes I feel lost without it. Is there a way to adapt something like the rosary in a biblical way, or should I just leave it behind? I don't want to dishonor God, but I do want to stay disciplined in my prayer life. Thanks for your show. It's been such an encouragement.
Well, to start off, thank you so much for taking the time to write to us. We appreciate that more than you realize. We do get a lot of emails and messages, but questions like this really encourage us to dive deep into what it means to be a believer.
So I really personally appreciate that. Those who are listening, those who are watching, and especially this person, thank you. To start off, Christian life is a relationship with God. Of course, it's a religion. People often say, you know, Christianity is not a religion.
It's a relationship.
Well, it is a religion, but it's a religion that's based on a relationship, right? That it's not just that God is over there and I'm down here. I know him and he knows me and he lives in me. We never got into that whole, like, I hate religion, but love Jesus thing. Yeah, maybe someday we can cover that topic.
That's a terrible way of looking at it. But it's a relationship.
sometimes what happens is traditions like this or anything that is more done out of habit or you know just a rote thing sometimes begins to get in the way of a relationship like imagine if i were to do that with nicole you know my wife nicole instead of talking to her if I were to have a set of beads that I just kind of move around. And instead of talking to her, I am doing this number. It's all about her. Every single bead says that I love her and I am grateful for her and I care about her, but it's the beads that I'm doing. What do you think she would say?
Eventually she will say, why don't you just tell me? Why don't you just talk to me? I don't have to. I have the beads. That's what the beads are for.
Yeah, and I can say to her that the beads are really about you. Yeah.
But you see how even things like that can get in the way.
So, yeah, I don't, you know, discourage them as much as I want believers to really think about them. I have great, great friends who are from the Eastern Orthodox perspective who love icons. They love an image, you know, drawn of Jesus. And they love that as something that helps them focus. and I get it because they will tell you I don't worship that image and I know Jesus is much more than that image but it helps me to bring my thoughts into convergence but again how quickly does that image that portrait, that frame becomes the object of my worship that's a good point I treat it with respect I treat it with a sense of sacredness I have lost sight of it just like I would do with Nicole.
Instead of talking to her and being loving towards her, I would get a portrait of her and put it on my desk, and that's what I deal with. It's like, yeah, of course, I love Nicole, but this helps me focus. Yeah, something is wrong with that. Right, because I feel like, and maybe you can speak on this too, people who put a lot of their focus into objects, even whether it's rosary beads or whether it's like when we go overseas and we see a lot of the Christians who will kneel down and they'll kiss the paintings of the saints and they'll kiss the floor. They kiss like objects of the cross.
If those objects were taken away, they would say that their worship is drastically impaired. They can't just worship God. They have to have this object. And if that object were destroyed or removed or whatever, they would find that their worship is tied to that object. Even though they would say they're not worshiping that object, if it were removed, they would say, at least admit their worship is severely impaired.
Yes, and then for those who are wondering now, so what is the solution? The solution is faith. Faith is something, of course, we know it's the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Of course, I know that Hebrew's definition. But faith is knowing that he is there even if he is not there for me to physically, visibly see.
He is there.
So the moment I bring in rosaries or an icon, what I'm saying is I'm not going to take the trouble to go down the road of faith. This is going to help me out. Good point. You'll never develop those muscles if you continue to lean on the easiness of having something physical to look at. Right.
So the very thing that we should be doing is through the eyes of faith, means saying, God, I don't see Christ in front of me, but by faith, I know that he is real. By faith, I'm taking his word that when I'm talking to him, he is with me. He promised that he will never leave me.
So he is here. He promised.
So I'm going by the promise and then exercising my faith and then talking to him. Moment you bring something else, you're saying, I know the promise and I know I have to exercise faith, but I'm going to stand on this rather than that.
So I like what she says here. She says, I want to stay disciplined in my prayer life. Is there a way that you can do that without bringing in objects? I mean even if it something simple as just like a prayer tracker like a journal a guide an app is there something that you can stay disciplined in your prayer without relying on an object Of course And I don do that as much I used to in my early days but because now it become a part of my daily habit Right But there are several good books that have been written in that direction. Again, I don't 100% agree with those books.
The only book I 100% agree with is the Bible. That's right. So there are two books out there. One is Richard Foster's book on spiritual disciplines. I think it's called The Celebration of Discipline.
And the other one is Donald Whitney's book on spiritual disciplines for the Christian life. And in these books, there are really good books. There are chapters on meditation, a chapter on prayer, a chapter on fasting, a chapter on discipleship, service, ministry, all of that. There are chapters there that help you practice your faith in tangible ways. and I don't think they're substitutes for faith like a rosary or an icon would be.
They're just things you do to help maintain that faith life. In some places, I think they kind of flirt with the other side and they go into the direction of icons and rosaries. And that's where I have to go, well, you just crossed the line. And I know both Richard Foster and Donald Whitney are trying to, not Donald Whitney. Yeah, I think I'm right.
Yeah, they are sort of trying to bridge that gap. Makes sense. I think that's helpful in understanding too, that it's not just a Catholic or Baptist thing. There's a deeper issue of faith here. And if you're leaning on those things, you're not really exercising your ability to stand on faith.
That's a process. Yeah, and unfortunately, it has repercussions because the moment you start doing those things to substitute, to supplement faith, then very quickly they begin to do for you what only faith can do. Yeah, yeah. You start finding satisfaction in them and you start finding that sense of completeness.
Okay, I've done this. Yeah.
Now I can move on. Right.
Yeah, good point.
So helpful. Thank you for writing into the show. If you guys have a check-in that you'd like to write in, ask Dr. Shaw a question or just let us know how the show is impacting you. Yes, absolutely.
You can always write in at 252-582-5028. We'd love to hear from our listening audience. That's right. Our verse of the day today is coming from Acts chapter 17, verse 26. And he has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth and has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings.
Someone checked in and said, someone did send a text that said, you guys have been doing your verse 17, your verse of the day in Acts 17 for the past four or five days. And I was like, we just got back from Greece. Paul is on our mind, but also with everything happening in our nation. Any nation, Dr. Shah, whether it's his rise, its borders, maybe it's its unique role in history, no nation is planted there by accident.
It's part of God's sovereign design. And we've really been setting the stage to say America is unique. And we're not unique because we're better, but because in his providence, God has allowed us to be the greatest nation of our time and probably in all of history for a specific reason. When we say greatest nation, I know immediately people say, are you telling me you don't have faults? Are you telling me that America has a perfect history?
Absolutely not. When we say greatest nation, what we're talking about is the value system, the foundational values that have built this nation or that undergird this nation. That's what makes America great, not our past. Of course, we have some good things and we have some bad things, but greatness is referring to the foundational values. And our foundational values are very, very unique.
Never in the history of the earth have we had a nation built upon the foundational values that we are. That's right. We focused on three in our previous show. We talked about how the Bible, one third of the quotes in the Constitution are coming from the Bible, specifically from the book of Deuteronomy. The other third would be classical writers.
and those classical writers were quoted by enlightenment thinkers who are the other third.
So classical writers, Bible, enlightenment thinkers, those make up the three foundational stones. And I would say the Bible is the major one. Yeah, that's right. The major one. Yeah.
The linchpin of everything, it hangs on scripture and people debate this. People try to cover this up. People try to erase this from history. But if you are a true student of history, you can't escape the fact that our nation was built on biblical values. That's just fact.
Well, we've been looking kind of in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk's assassination these past few days, really this past week. And I think everybody who's podcasting, everybody who's got some sort of platform is talking about this. But people often say this as a critique. They say this would only happen in America. And I think they're right, but not in the way that they mean.
You know what I mean? They mean it as a critique. But I think, like you said, Dr. Sean, what we were talking about yesterday, America is so unique that I think that even though, yes, this happens in America, the benefits of living here, the uniqueness of America has created something truly remarkable that I think the whole world is trying to understand, trying and failing to understand. I'm not even sure if they're trying to understand.
I think they are just being parroting, I would say, would be a better way to say it. There are a few voices that are very loud and very critical of America, especially at these points where we are shocked and we are grieving the death of a man, the murder of a man who was speaking the same things we speak. But then there are voices that have come out that say, how dare you? Yeah, it was wrong to use violence against someone's opinion, but how dare you celebrate a man like this? Right, right.
And I'm disappointed because some of the people who are saying this are actually scholars. and some of them are actually biblical scholars with earned PhDs from institutions, I would say more prestigious than the one I got my PhD from. Right.
I mean, in the world standard, I don't think my work was any less than their work. Right.
But if you were to say, hey, how about this institution? What is this? People would say, oh, this one probably is the, you know, more prestigious. Sure, sure. How can they, having earned PhDs like this, say the things that they're saying about what Charlie Kirk said.
If I can back up again, hermeneutics is very, very important when it comes to biblical studies, whether it's your graduate level work or postgraduate work, PhD work. Hermeneutics is very important in any kind of biblical studies or theological studies. Sure. They are breaking all the rules of hermeneutics. Do you think they aware of that while they doing it I think so Just in order to get a quick shocking statement out there they breaking those rules And it not even a quick shocking statement It just their entire premise is based on breaking the very rules that they often claim and they stand on.
And the bottom line rule of hermeneutics is context. Context, context, context. From a scholastic standpoint, I mean from the mind of a scholar, they would have to know that they're breaking those rules. I mean if you're a scholar, you shared a little bit about your PhD work, Dr. Shah, how attention to detail is critical and you're operating under a specific set of parameters.
You're working with a mentor and you just – every detail matters. How you say things, where you get information from, how you use sources matters. They would have to know that they're breaking those rules.
So are they doing it for a larger goal? Are they doing it for some net gain? Why are they willing all of a sudden to make that departure? And I want to be careful here because if I start speculating that I'm making the same mistake that I'm accusing others of, which is judging motives. I don't know their motives.
I can only speculate. Their motive could be notoriety. The motive could be book offers, contracts. Just in this era, when you stand out from what the larger crowd is saying, then you are looked upon as being a trendsetter or you are this person who is the lone warrior who's out there standing for truth and the rest of the world is blinded and blindly following some lies, some ideological untruths.
So you are this voice in the wilderness calling people to come back. I mean, a lot of reasons, but I'm not sure exactly which one that could be because I don't know. They haven't told me. But the methodologies they're using to evaluate Charlie Kirk's statements, if they are doing that there how I mean and I admire their scholarship because I have their books I've read their books and many places I agree with them but it really calls me to question their integrity like a doctor imagine somebody who's a great great medical doctor I mean he is a surgeon of the highest caliber if you ever have to get a surgery let's say neurosurgery, you would go to this person and they are phenomenal. But then you see that same person out there doing something like hurting somebody or just being very sloppy in what they're doing, what they're doing.
It's going to make me wonder, are you going to operate with the same mindset and behavior in a surgical room that you just did out there? You expect that precision to go with you in all aspects of your life because it's such a huge part of your life. Yeah, it's like you're a neurosurgeon. You have to be so careful because one wrong cut can leave someone paralyzed. But then I see you putting on a band-aid on somebody and you are just so sloppy that the cut is down here on the knee and you're putting the band-aid on somebody's neck.
or you're just like making that wound even worse. Imagine that. Maybe that's a better analogy. You're just like digging deeper into that person's cut and you're going like, oh, why would you do that? Why would you do that?
Why would you? And that person is screaming and you're like, yeah, yeah, I'm going to do this. I feel like doing this. Yeah.
Yeah, and you of all people, like a neurosurgeon, why would you make something like that worse?
So that extends then to scholars who are operating this way. Why are you abusing these principles? Why are you departing from what you know to be true in scholastic research? Are these Christian scholars? Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Unbelievable. Yeah, absolutely Christian scholars. And again, I cannot judge their motives. I don't know. And they're definitely judging my motives or motives of people like me.
I don't even know if they read my work or watched the show or heard my sermons. I don't know. But it's like, wow, you're judging us that way, but you're doing the same thing there. In fact, you are completely trashing basic hermeneutical principles that you would use for any text. Forget about the Bible.
You would do that to Shakespeare. You would do that to Charles Dickens. You would do that to any work of literature. Right.
And you're doing that to Charlie Kirk's words. Do you think there's some wokeism involved here? Oh, absolutely. How much of Christian scholarship do you think has gone woke? Oh, it has gone woke and wokeism paid off.
But now wokeism is not paying. But I believe many of these scholars have so committed to this that it's very hard for them to back out of it.
So is this sort of a grasping at straw? It's like a cash grab trying to stay relevant, trying to make ends meet? I think so. I think so. I think some of that is happening.
I think some of the old guard is still there. I think a lot is changing in our world, and I hope so. I mean, it's been very, very frustrating, and it's been very overwhelming to watch what has happened to truth over the past, I would say maybe two, three decades, at least two decades, I would say. Where you're seeing all these Christian scholars making this, is this largely on social media?
Social media, blog posts.
So people are, so I guess that was my follow-up. They're devoting their time to actually write about this. Oh, yes, absolutely. Not just like a shocking headline or like a meme or something. They're like writing articles and writing scholarly blogs, criticizing.
And I think it's done with two purposes. At least that's what they seem to be saying. One is to sort of affirm their solidarity with people who are on the other side. but it's also in a sense to chastise people like me or others to say how dare you how dare you and and i and i think reading their work because they assume that i'm not going to read or we're not going to read it we read your work we followed your hyperlinks and it's like really it's it's It's weird, and maybe see if my logic tracks here, but I feel like if you asked the mainstream left, mainstream liberals, what they thought of Christians, especially like Christian scholars, Christianity, they would say that they're all right. Every single one of them is right.
But now we're seeing Christian scholars who are leaning so far on the left to try, whether it's to get a payday or whether they really believe this or whatever it is. it almost feels like Christians can't win. Like the Christians who are actually on the right or Christians who are really sticking to conservative values, I should say, can't win because the left all thinks that we against them And then the people who should be on our side are skewing more towards the left especially people in scholarly authoritative positions within Christian scholarship Well the ones I referring to were already on the left I think they've already gone over. This wasn't a switch. This was not as much of a switch.
But unfortunately, because these scholars are respectable, then those who have some brains and have some integrity feel like, I got to go their way, or at least I'm just going to stay silent. And this is what's sort of happening. I see. Because I don't want to be labeled as, you know, a MAGA or I don't want to be labeled as these evangelical conservatives who are going to hail this guy no matter what he said. And my challenge to them is examine what he said in his context and examine every one of those statements in their proper, proper context.
For example, one thing they said is Charlie Kirk was against immigrants, like even from India. Yeah, he said that. He said that, you know, hey, we need to slow down there. We need to stop. We've done plenty of that over here.
Now, here's my question to people who have a problem with that. Is that true? Yes, it is true. unfortunately a lot of Indian immigrants who come here they come because it's a place for free enterprise and they end up supporting socialist governments but people leveraged that people online leveraged that against you because they thought I think they assumed that you and us like them buy into group identity so since he said that about Indian people you should be offended and it's crazy that you're not no I'm not because let me tell you why Because, yes, if we're bringing in more and more educated people here, of course, taking American jobs, but I would also say Americans need to step up and let's raise our educational system. There's a bigger problem there.
Sure. Has been for decades, right? We already agree with that. But what I would also say is America was built as a Christian nation. I preached on this way before Charlie Kirk's murder.
I talked about this, that America was built as a Christian nation. We as believers in America need to guard this fact. Are people welcome from elsewhere? Yes. But I hope they also realize you cannot come here and tamper with the motor.
The motor is Christian. The motor is Bible-based. Right.
So don't just throw a word or an identity and expect me to just say, oh, yeah, I guess I'm on your side now because he just talked about me. No, I'm going to research that and figure out what exactly was being said and where it is true and where it is false. There's a big difference in you are welcome to come and become a part of our country, become a part of our nation versus you can come across the border or come across the ocean or however it is that you're getting here and then change the fundamental DNA of what America is. I would expect for people, just random people online to take clips of Charlie Kirk and take that out of context and then paint, you know, this person is a racist. He's a homophobe.
He's a bigot. I would expect that. I even accept that that's what you're going to do. Because if you counter and say, hey, did you listen to the full hour-long podcast and get the – no one's going to do that. But scholars who that's their work.
Right.
That's their – They should do that. And I'm wondering truly, and I know we're not judging motives, but I truly wonder how would you, how do they justify not doing that? Because of course other scholars would eventually call them out for that, right? I doubt it. Really?
I doubt it. I doubt any of us will ever call them out because to call them out would be, I won't. Let me tell you why I won't. I will do it on the show, but I'm not going to do it by name because that gives them more notoriety. Which is what they want.
Which is what they want. It's like a clickbait thing, which is like, oh, you're interacting with me? Great.
Now, explain to this. How can you hate yourself? Because he hated you. He does not want you. And then I have to explain.
But who's going to listen to the explanation? They're just going to go for the soundbite that says, look at this idiot pastor with a PhD in textual criticism, and he hates his own self. Yeah, you'll end up in a two or three hour debate, and then people will just use clips from that. Right.
So I have to look at it and go, is it worth getting into the ring with somebody like that? Because is that going to really help truth to come out or is it only going to feed their agenda? Because most of the time, debates like that, the people who spread those sound bites are usually people on the left. Do people on the right do it? Yes.
But not to that same extent. most of the time people on the right are like you know what i don't want to deal with this i'm gone i don't want to even care about the internet but the left is like oh all right here we go yeah i'm getting started bring it on i'm ready for this i have a job okay right most of the people on the right you know they have places to go things to do on the left sitting there as digital creators so they have plenty of time yeah a good point plenty of time to shame you plenty of time to to make fun of you plenty of time to say things in ways that you may not even be able to respond because you don't even know what they're saying and it makes you look like a fool so most of the time people on the right just kind of walk away that's a great point that's a really really good point and and i wish we didn't have three minutes left in the show but even this like the content we create we we largely create for platforms and networks not for just the internet at large yeah you know i'm saying like we create like we're on truth network so we're creating content from them uh we're creating content for pray.com we're we've got a we've got a potential deal with another platform that I'm not going to name right now. But I guess all of this is to say like we're not creating content for widespread engagement with the internet. Yeah.
Individual use, especially on like a social media type thing. Right.
Right.
They handle all that stuff. We just kind of deliver the show to them. But it's interesting because like you just said, most of the influencers on the left are typically young people who are like directly putting their stuff out to try to garner as much engagement as possible. Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's a great point. It's so interesting. The more we kind of peel back the layers to see what all is entangled in this conversation. I wish we had more time to talk. I know.
I know. Well, we've got other episodes. I know. There you go. Guys, make sure you join us tomorrow.
Same time, same station. We're going to be diving into another great topic here on the Clearview Today Show. Thanks again to our sponsors for making today's episode possible. Don't forget that you can support us by subscribing to the show on iTunes, Spotify, Pray.com, wherever you get your podcasts from. You can also support us financially at Abedonshob.com forward slash give.
John, what are we leaving listeners with? Definitely just want to echo what Ryan said, Pray.com. You know, we just had a meeting with some of the guys over at Pray.com this morning. Can't say exactly what's happening, but big, big, big exciting things are coming through the Pray.com platform.
So make sure you go and follow Dr. Abadhan Shah right now because you don't want to miss it. That's right. We love you guys. We'll see you tomorrow on Theory Today.
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