What exactly causes me to sin? Is it the little devil on my shoulder whispering in my ear? Is it my deep, dark desires finally coming to the surface? Or is it as simple as wandering away from the truth? Let's learn more about it together coming up right now on the Pleare Today Show.
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. Welcome to the Clearview Today Show with our host, Dr.
Abadan Shah. If you're listening for the very first time, we want to welcome you to the show, let you know exactly who's talking to you. Dr. Shah is a PhD in New Testament textual criticism, professor at Carolina University, author, full-time pastor, and the host of today's show. Dr.
Shah, welcome. It's good to be here. Good to see you. Welcome. It's going to be a great conversation on today's episode.
We candled this a little bit yesterday, talking about this issue of backsliding in the Christian life, where you sort of have this falling away and coming back, and falling away and coming back. And we talked about how, you know, we as believers, we're not just responsible for our own lives, we're responsible for the lives of others around us. Yeah, that's right. That's right.
Well, just for g don't rem Don't forget before you can backslide, you need to front slide. That's right.
That's so great. That's right.
So, you got to be saved to even talk about this. Yeah, whether or not you can backslide.
So, salvation is a must. That's right.
There are a lot of people who are out there worried about backsliding. They really need to front slide. They need to come to Jesus Christ. If you have Christ in your life, chances are you will sin. Chances are that you will go astray.
That always happens here and there. But. There is complete assurance that God will work with you. And sometimes, yes, it may be that end of life you are not where you need to be. I understand that those situations happen, but overall, God is working in you.
You can sense the conviction, you can sense the Holy Spirit guiding you and convicting you and encouraging you. But if you've never received Christ as your Savior, First things first, you need to front slide. Yeah, that's true. And I wonder y it's so funny because we spend so much time in these Christian circles talking about Christian things among Christian people on Christian networks. At the same time, I wonder how many non-Christians Want to improve their lives and just turn to Christianity as a sort of self-help.
But like these Christians have a discussion. Yeah, definitely. I think it happens all the time that there are people who are sitting in the pews who have never really been touched by the gospel of Christ. They've never truly understood. What it means to be saved.
So, what do they believe? I think they believe in God. If I may even say that sort of loosely, they believe in some kind of a power, a higher power, some being out there who is in control. But that's sort of all there is to it. There is no understanding of control.
Christ dying on the cross for our sins and then receiving Him in our lives. And again, you don't need to have a seminary-level understanding of the gospel. I was four years old. All I knew was I needed Jesus in my life. That's all I understood.
That's right.
I wanted to go to heaven. And Jesus could get me there. That's it.
Now you may say, well, did you understand all about the atonement? Did you understand about redemption and sanctification and all that justification? No. But I understood that without Jesus, no heaven. That's right.
With Jesus, there is heaven.
So I understood that part of the gospel very clearly.
So, if you've never done that, my encouragement to you is to give your life to Christ today. That's right.
As to people being in church who are lost, but they are taking advantage or think they're taking advantage of some theological or moral. System, that's very true. It happens, and that's where people wonder: are they saved? And backsliding, or are they not saved to begin with? And I think many of them are not safe to begin with.
Yeah. You know, one of the things that you said to me years ago, it was a passing comment. It wasn't like a deep, deep. Personal conversation. It was a passing comment that you made, but it has stuck with me.
You said that most of life is coming back to God. And I always bring that up in moments like this because, for whatever reason, God used that conversation between you and I to develop this really deeply held belief in me that that is what most of life is. It gets rid of a lot of the guilt. It gets rid of a lot of the shame that Christians feel when they do back. Of course, there's room for conviction.
I'm not saying that. But what I am saying is it. Recontextualizes the Christian life for me in a really great way. And I wanted to talk about today, if we can, this idea that, you know, what is it that's causing me to sin? And I think one of the things that you've said, we've talked about this off, Mike a lot, is that a lot of times people just get away from the truth, they wander away.
But the whole book of James is written to the scattered tribes, the 12 tribes. Just, I don't want to repeat everything. I hope people know the dispersion of the people of Israel began in the, I would say, the 8th century. And that was with the first 10 tribes, the northern tribes. And then in the 6th century or 5th century, really, with the last two, the southern tribes were scattered.
And then some of them came back, some of the Jewish people came back. Many didn't. Those are the scattered tribes. Out of those scattered tribes, those who got saved. To them James is writing this letter.
He's not writing to the letter a letter to the dispersed people. No, he says a bondservant of Jesus Christ means the believers out of those dispersed people. By the way, something very interesting to also mention. When we talk about dispersion, Yes, dispersion. was A designation given To those who are forcibly removed.
Okay? A seat in exile? Northern Kingdom. Babylonian exile, Southern Kingdom. Dispersion is that technical name for that forcible relocation program of the Assyrians.
And then later Babylonians, but they allowed them to come back under the Persians. But dispersion. really began In the time of Solomon. In the time of Solomon, when Solomon began trading. trading with countries far away.
The people of Israel business communities Tradesmen, they moved. People who were good at working on outposts. Military type people protecting the assets of the kingdom of Israel. They moved to some of these places.
So, in a sense, dispersion actually began. Not the technical dispersion, but the scattering began, I would say. Thousand, maybe a little after, maybe nine hundred BC. Wow.
So this is something that they are familiar with. This is the thing that they are familiar with being wanderers. Not wanderers, I would say, not living in your homeland.
Okay. Yeah. I would say they were just wandering. There were outposts in Africa. There were outposts towards Babylon.
There were outposts to the north towards the Assyrian Empire. There were outposts. These were trading posts. This is where Solomon had mining interests, and he was a very powerful king. Very wise, so he did all these things.
So, so a lot of people were living away from their homeland, they were accustomed to the idea of being an outsider, yes, okay, but. It it comes with a cost. Of course, there are plenty of pros. You're doing business, you're living in a foreign land, you're eating foreign food, you come home to visit, you know, you have some benefits there. But then there's also some cons in the sense that you lose that connection with your foundational roots, you lose connection with your people because you're living just like just like us here in America.
I mean, maybe not me, maybe even me. I'm from India, I'm living here now, and this is my home. I'm an American. Right.
So also you guys, you know, you have families origins going back to say Germany or to England or to Greece. You you've lost that connection.
So, also with these people, they had lost that connection for generations. And so. Mm-hmm.
Sometimes that is not very good because you begin to adapt Yeah. Value system and you begin to go down a wrong path. These people who were believers out of these dispersed peoples for almost a thousand years, right? They were scattering. They were going back into their old ways, but They were losing that sense of connection, connectedness.
How do you think that translates with us now? Like, like you said, like Ryan, you have roots in Germany. I have roots in Greece. We're living in America now, which is founded on Judeo-Christian values, but right now the culture doesn't really reflect that. You know, the, what do you want to say, the prevalent mainstream culture of America doesn't super reflect the values that we have.
And so, even for Christians, I can imagine it's harder. Yeah. To It's harder to live in that culture, you know, as salt and light. Yeah. Yeah, we I I feel like we've we've discussed this a little bit, but the people of Israel, when they were in the dispersion, there was this sense of like, that's my identity, even though I'm living somewhere else.
Whereas I don't think about myself as having descended from. German. Background. That is true. I have my last name you can trace back to Germany.
But I don't think like I'm descended from Germans. I think of myself as I'm an American. I've grown up here. This is my values. These are my, I don't have any affiliation with Germany.
No hatred to Germany, but I don't have any affiliation with Germany either.
So how does that differ when we think about the people in the Bible? The people that James was writing to?
Well, that's great. I mean, if we can take a couple of moments to talk about that, this is the 250th anniversary of our nation's founding, so great time to talk about it. Unlike These dispersed tribes who had lost their identity by moving away for various reasons, whether it was for trade or because of captivity, whatever, different reasons. They felt that away from Jerusalem Was less spiritual in a way. Compare that to people living in America.
Spiritually speaking, you are closer, much closer in your walk with Jesus Christ in biblical. Values. Than people in England or Germany or any or Greece. Oh, that's 100% true. I mean, when I went to Greece, when we went to see a lot of the churches there, they were tourist attractions.
Yeah. And I'm sure there are services that happen there, maybe, but man, there was no, at least for me personally, I felt no life. I felt no worship. I felt no, they were, they were. Tourist Money making Sites for people to come and buy the icons and buy all of this stuff to go home.
And I felt no life. You know what I mean? I definitely feel way more connected to Christianity here in America than I did in Greece. And that's so interesting because America is a I mean, com by comparison, America is a much younger nation. Right.
And much further away geographically from the places in Scripture. I mean, we're across an entire ocean, whereas Greece is I mean, it's Paul went to Greece. Right.
England is just kind of right in the backyard. It's right there versus America, who is, I mean, we're all the way across the Atlantic. That's right.
Yeah. So, in that sense, the analogy doesn't work because you are the dispersed ones. I am the dispersed one from my home country where I grew up in India. But as to my faith or my walk with Christ or my biblical values, I'm way in a different world, in a very good world.
So, in that sense, the analogy doesn't work. But going back to James here, James is talking to these Christians and coming out, oh, believers coming out of the dispersed tribes, and he's reminding them: look, look out for each other. Make sure. If you see someone beginning to slip, to wander, to drift, Reach out to them, bring them back. Don't let them get lost.
It's easy to get lost when you are a minority or you are. In a strange culture with a lot of lures and attractions all around you, it's easy to drift. Keep Watch for each other. You talked about that a little bit yesterday when you first came to America. You know, that you didn't, that you didn't necessarily struggle with that as much as others who came here because the foundation that you had, but I'm sure that the temptation was there.
You know what I mean? Like your parents are 3,000-something miles away. You're in a new culture that's big and flashy and colorful and bright and different looking. I mean, do you remember feeling any of that temptation when you were young? Oh, yeah, temptation was always there.
When I came here, I was 17 years old. And all of a sudden, I'm free. All of a sudden, I can. live my own life and and be okay. I can be under the radar.
Don't do anything too bad and get kicked out of college. But you can, you know, do whatever you want to under certain parameters. But I always had that sense of Fear that I didn't want anything to reflect negatively on my parents because they did not deserve that. They don't. They raised me the best they could.
They sent me here to get Some Christian education before I would move out, launch out to do something else in my life. The last thing they needed was some kind of. Of a phone call saying your son did this or he did that, and I just did not want to do that because of that sense of connection with my family, because I had foundations, I had roots. Not just familial roots, but also faith roots. I had a testimony and I was not going to just destroy it.
Did I live a perfect life? No, I messed up, but at the same time, I never crossed the line. I probably never crossed that line. Do you feel like that was instilled in you by your parents or by your upbringing? Because I'm thinking about a lot of 17-year-olds in America.
I don't know that they would have the same sentiment. I don't know that they would say, as I'm striking out on my own, maybe they have the opportunity to go study abroad and do something in a foreign land where they can kind of live their own life. I don't know that some would, but I don't know that every 17-year-old would say, I can't do this because it's going to reflect negatively on my parents. Yeah. I don't know for sure if many would.
But I hope a lot of them who are growing up in Christian homes in church would think twice about doing things that would dishonor the Lord, dishonor the parents, dishonor their church. Yeah. You said this, you said this before, and this may be a, by the way, this may be a topic for another, another episode, but I think you said that that was one area where the West really doesn't have it together. You know, the West has everything going for it except for this strong sense of like family loyalty or family togetherness, this bond of family, I guess, where it's like kids don't really feel. I mean, even I remember being a teenager.
The temptation to go off and do bad stuff, that idea in my mind that I'm really going to let down my parents, genuinely, it wasn't a thought. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Now, let me clarify. I'm not saying that every parent, every family in the West is disheveled, or every family in the East is all put together.
No, there are plenty of families in the West that are grounded and solid and have foundations and are built on Biblical Christ centered principles. And there are many families in the East that are I mean, they're they're They are a disaster to put mildly. But overall, I would say the West, because of the breakdown of the family, because of divorce, which again, I'm not here trying to judge people or purposely trying to make them feel bad. I'm just stating facts. Right, that's right.
Because of the breakdown of the family, that sense of unity, loyalty, accountability has. Has diminished. I agree with you. And in the East, I'm not saying every marriage is happy. That's a big, big, big lie.
That's not true at all. I'm not saying that every family is just a model of how families should be. Not true at all. But at least they are intact. Good, bad, or ugly.
Intact. The intactness of the family, the togetherness of the family is a core value. Yeah. It's a value. Whether it comes from a good place or not, it is a value and that helps.
Yeah, true. True. And we're talking about like the Christian life, right? This idea of home, whether it's your home country, your nationality, whether it's the idea of the togetherness of the family, this idea of home. If the Christian life, the Bible is your home, right?
That's your foundation. You think it's fair to say the further you wander away from it, the more you're going to be tempted to get into it. Oh, 100%. Absolutely. Absolutely.
And that's exactly what we're talking about here. Yeah. The truth. I mean, it says right here: brethren, if any among you wanders from. The truth.
It's not just wandering. from the truth. And what is truth? First of all, it is doctrine. The beliefs that we have, which are being constantly assaulted in our culture.
Yeah. Truth about Jesus Christ, being fully God, fully man, truth about the Trinity. Father, Son, Spirit, three and yet one. Truth about the Bible being the inerrant, inspired, authoritative, sufficient, necessary, clear word of God. Truth about salvation is by grace through faith in Christ alone.
Truth about there's a real heaven, real hell. Truth about the church? Being a body of believers. who have been Called to not only come together and glorify God, but to be. A change agent in the world, salt and light of the world.
These are some of the core doctrines. If you begin to wander from the truth, And I can add more into that group if you want to, but I think this is pretty Basic, then you are in danger of getting lost. But truth is not just doctrinal, it's also behavioral truth. God's instruction on how we should live. Values Now I know every generation will will try to interpret things a little differently.
So hundred and fifty years ago, Women wearing Clothes a certain way was considered to be modest. Today, women wear jeans and pants. We're not here to get hung up on that and say, Hey, now you need to go back to the fashion of 200 years ago. Yeah, maybe, but I'm not going to get into that because you can't really win those arguments. They become very quickly, they become very, very caustic and.
and very uh judgmental.
So we have to sort of go Maybe your idea of Change in style and change in fashion is not the same. But there is a place for modesty. That's right.
There's a place where no matter what style you're espousing, how do you present yourself? Are you presenting yourself in a way that dishonors God, your family, your church, yourself? That I would say would be immodest. Then there are Things like Alcohol. Alcohol was just sort of part of the culture.
How potent was it? Probably not as much. But then alcohol Became very potent. And the content of alcohol was very, very, very high. And people became alcoholics.
And the gin craze that happened that destroyed lives and homes and marriages and brought in all kinds of abuse. And so. There was a backlash against that. And then you have movements where complete boycott of alcohol. that we need to outlaw it.
Now alcohol It's not good. I will go and tell you that. It's not good. alcohol, will that solve our problem? But where if America's history has anything to tell us, it did not work so well for us.
People found a way to bootleg alcohol. Oh, yes.
Now we are at a different place. Where alcohol is there. And It is very tempting. It's become part of our culture, kind of a social Drinking is is is part of the culture. But at the same time, I preached on this before.
Is it worth it? No, not at all. Is it worth destroying your testimony? Is it worth doing things that you will regret tomorrow morning? Yeah.
Maybe not. You had a really great sermon series on alcohol and how it's presented in the Bible versus how we think of it today called influence. And if you haven't paid attention to those messages, I don't know if we talked about them on the radio show, but maybe we'll link to those episodes, but go back and listen to those episodes, watch those messages, because I know that there are people who are watching who are like me, who have people in their lives who drink. And you're trying to figure out how to navigate that conversation.
Well, Jesus turned water into wine. You know, why is it okay in the Bible and it's not okay now? Dr. Shah did a great job in that sermon series of talking about what alcohol was like in Bible times, how it functioned culturally, and what it means for us today.
Well, I think that that goes to. To Dr. Shaw's point, too, is that when people say that, when they say, well, Jesus drank wine, there's alcohol in the Bible, it's an attempt to get back to the actual truth, right?
Now, that's not, you know, that's there's a big misconception about how alcohol worked in the Bible, but it's at least an acknowledgement of. If I get too far away from this Bible, I have to reconcile with the fact that this is sin.
So there's at least a half-hearted, sloppy attempt to get back to, well, if it's in the Bible, I know that it's okay to, you know what I'm saying? Bumbling, stumbling, but I'm trying to find my way back, right? Exactly.
So wandering from the truth could also be bad. Don't be drunk with wine, but be filled. With the Holy Spirit. That's right.
Drinking with wine leads to dissipation. Don't get into that. Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit.
So when you wander from that truth, then you can be lost. I'm not talking about lost as in salvation lost, but lost as in no longer walking with Christ, no longer in the Word, no longer being fruitful. For the kingdom of God. That's what we mean here by lost. You know, years ago I was Hiking up in the Appalachian Mountains with a good friend.
Since then, he has passed away. And at one point, the cam director said that we are going. to go off the trail. And climb the side of the mountain.
Now, do you like hiking? Are you an outdoorsy? I was. When I was in college, we hiked every Sunday afternoon. After lunch.
So We would go to Campus church. Church would get over by Oh, by eleven o'clock, ten to eleven.
Sometimes maybe 12. I don't know. I can't remember now. Either it started at 10 or started at 11. But, anyways, go to.
Cafeteria, eat lunch. And then a few of us would meet And we were in the mountains. Tocoa Falls College is situated in the northeast Georgia mountains. We had a fall, so the tallest fall, taller than Niagara Falls on the back of the campus. Not as wide, not even close, but definitely taller.
And so we would climb up the mountain and make our way into the woods. It would stay in shape. Yeah. And I mean, I've done a lot of hiking in college every Sunday afternoon. We would go leave about maybe 1:30 max and then be back by 7 o'clock.
Wow.
So 2:30, 3:30, 4:30, five hours.
So now you're up hiking in the Appalachian Mountains. Yeah, with a friend. And I used to go there to speak at a camp. And so Appalachia is a dense forest. Those of you who have been there, this is not like Arizona or New Mexico, like desert, that you can see miles and miles.
You can get lost easily. You can get lost very, very quickly. And at one point, we had to slow down because some of the campers who were with us were sort of lagging behind, and we could no longer see them.
So, our group had some leaders in the back as well.
So, I was like, I think we're good. But. I realized how easy it was to get lost. All I had to do was make two turns. But since I had hiked before, I was like, I'm not gonna do anything.
I can see that there is sort of a trail, but this was not a marked trail. This was not a path. I mean, you're walking through the woods. It's like you have to really be looking and know that that trail is there, otherwise you're not. Yes, yeah.
Having hiked before, I was like. I think I'm on the right track here. Uh, but if I hadn't hiked before and I was You know, lagging behind a little bit to pick up some berries here or check out this and check out that. And it would have been very easy to get lost. People die in the Appalachian.
That's right.
Every year, people die.
So. I asked the camp director at the time, I was like, so, you know, do people get lost? He said, Not in our camp. because we stay in the safer areas and we stay together. One of the things to understand about the Christian life is you cannot ever go wrong by staying together.
That's right.
Don't isolate. Don't drift. Don't wander off. Don't launch off by yourself. The vast majority of sins that I've committed in my life that I regret, almost every single one of them, I was by myself.
Yeah. I was all by myself. Yeah. That's a good word for us. That's right.
Guys, make sure you join us in tomorrow's episode. We're going to be diving further into this topic of how to handle backsliding and how to get back on the right track. Thanks to those who are tuning in for the first time today. Thank you to our sponsors for making today's episode possible. And if you'd like to talk about sponsoring the Clearview Today show, write in and let us know at 252-582-5028.
And you can always support us financially at Abhadanshah.com forward slash give. That's right.
Also, big thank you to all of you guys who have pre-ordered your copy of the New Testament in the original Greek. That's the Byzantine text form 2026 edition. It's going to be out very soon, but you can get your pre-order by linking in the description below. And also, if you don't read Greek, what do you do? You just don't buy the text form?
Absolutely not. You can still pre-order it, and you can tune into our brand new podcast that's coming out this summer. It's called How to Read Biblical Greek with Dr. Abadan Shah. It's going to be a live video series that's done right here at Clearview Church, produced for you and put on Apple iTunes as a video podcast.
And our promise to you is this: oh, by the way, I should say it's a companion series to a podcast that we already have out called How to Read Biblical Hebrew. And our promise to you is this: if you commit this summer to learning just an hour or two a week, you will be able to read the New Testament in its original language. That's right.
We love you guys. We'll see you tomorrow on Clearview today.
