Tuesday, March 19th | Forgive and Forget… or maybe not?

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A healthier, happier you is just a click away. With that said, let's start the show. Welcome to Clearview today with Dr. Abbadan Shah, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Ryan Hill.

I'm John Galantis. And you can find our show online at ClearviewTodayShow.com. You can send us an email to the same place at contact at ClearviewTodayShow.com. Or if you'd like to ride into the show, we'd love to hear from you. We'd love to be able to answer your questions on the air. You can text us at 252-582-5028.

That's right. Help us keep the conversation going. We want you guys to support the show. We want you to share it online with your friends and your family. We want you to leave a good five star review on iTunes and Spotify.

Absolutely nothing less than five stars for any reason. We're going to leave a couple of links in the description so you can do just that. Today is March the 19th, which means that our date the word is coming from Acts chapter 3, verse 19. Repent therefore and be converted that your sins may be blotted out so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.

You know, we get this misconception and people who listen to the show know exactly where I'm going to this. But if you're new, you know, a lot of people think that repentance just means I feel bad. I feel sorry. Repentance is an emotion. Or repentance is a change of action.

I'm just going to stop doing what I'm doing and I'm going to go the other way. But, you know, as Dr. Shah has said countless times on the show, repentance is a change of mind. It's when you change your mind about sin. So you repent therefore and be converted. You become changed.

It's not just a change of behavior, but it's becoming change, being converted. Like, we work a lot in audio and video, as you can tell, and so one of the things that we deal with is just converters. We always have one type of power or one type of signal that has to become something else.

And the reason is because this type of signal that we have is not useful for what I need. And so same with the world. The world needs godliness. The world needs – it just needs Christ. And so if I'm not of Christ, I have to be converted to be, I don't want to say useful, but a blessing or productive or useful to the world because that's what the world needs. Yeah, and if those converters – if once the signal or the power source or whatever passes through that converter and it is not changed, then the converter is pointless. It's broke.

It's not doing its job. So likewise, when we encounter Christ and we understand the gospel, we ought to be converted, which means that we ought to be changed. Our life after Christ should look different than it did before Christ. And this can be challenging, especially if you've grown up in and around the church. You may not really have a concept of life before knowing who Christ is. Right. But the more that you understand about God, the more you understand about the Bible, you should grow in godliness. That's right.

You should grow in your desire to be like God, and you should have less of a desire for sin. Love it. It's Tuesday. Tuesday.

March the 19th. You know what happened to them. You already know. This is what people come – this is what they clamor for. Oh my goodness, I love that gripe vine. Some people think that – some people are like, hey, the gripe vine is kind of negative. But I'm like, look, if I don't gripe on the air, I'm going to gripe to somebody else, and I'm going to hinder their worship. You know what I'm saying? Here's my gripe for the day.

Welcome to the gripe vine. Low-calorie pasta. Right. Okay. All right. I love pasta.

Sure. It's why I've got the belly that I do. My son asked me, why is daddy's belly so big? You know what I told him?

That hurts, doesn't it? You know what I told him? He did. He was patting my belly. He was like, why is your belly so big? I said, because daddy eats too daggone much.

Here's what I tried to do. I tried to – because all of it is from carbs. 100%. It's all pasta. It's all bread. It's all those two things.

And that's the end of that list. Here's – that's not my gripe. Here's my gripe. I tried switching to low-calorie pasta. Tell me why regular pasta is 200 calories per serving and low-calorie pasta is 180.

Yeah. That's not worth it. It's not worth it. You can't call it low-calorie healthy pasta and it be 20 calories less. That's my gripe. I don't think you should market it as low-calorie pasta. Yeah. I agree. It's not low-calorie.

It may be fewer calories, but I don't think it's significant enough that you call it low-calorie. No. It's not good. And it's not good for my soul. It's not good for my health. It's not good for my spirit.

It's definitely not good for my worship. No. No. My worship has been hindered by the low-calorie pasta. Yeah. And I hate that for you. Yeah. So that's kind of your low-calorie experience.

And if you found something that is truly low-calorie and is a legitimate sub for pasta, help my boy Jon out and, you know, write in and let us know. We'll be right back. We wanted to make sure that your worship doesn't stop when you walk out the door on Sunday morning. Our music is more accessible than ever.

You can worship God in any situation. In the car, at home, in the gym, while cleaning your house. Wherever you are, we'll be right there with you. You can check us out on Apple Music or on Spotify, anywhere digital music is consumed. We've got a few singles out right now. We have an EP out as well. And right now, at this moment actually, we are working on our first ever full-length original album.

Hopefully that's going to be out sometime this coming summer. Clear View Worship on iTunes and Spotify is your 24-7 place for inspiration and worship. Follow us today and let God's message of hope, love, and faith be a guiding light in your life.

Amen. Let's hop back into the show. Welcome back to Clear View Today with Dr. Abbadan Shah, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ. You can visit us online at ClearViewTodayShow.com, or if you have any questions or suggestions for new topics, send us a text, 252-582-5028.

That's right, and we are here in the Clear View Today studio with Dr. Abbadan Shah, who is a PhD in New Testament textual criticism. Dr. Shah, we talked about this on the show before, the counting the calories and stuff. And we were kind of griping a little bit about the woes of people who love pasta. People like myself love carbs. And they have low calorie pasta that's literally only 20 calories less. It's not low calorie enough to be considered low calorie.

You can't mark it as low calorie. And then it got me to thinking, I was like, you know, I don't see Dr. Shah really eat a lot of pasta. Carbs maybe every now and then with like pizza and bread and stuff, but you don't really eat a lot of Italian food. And I started looking back and I was like, I don't really think I've ever seen him eat a lot of pasta.

I like it. I just think sometimes Italian food almost looks like child's food for me. It's like spaghetti. Why can't we just make it just a big blob of pasta?

No, we're going to string it out. And grown people will just sit there and slurp it up. Yeah. And they have to twist it. And it is kind of kid's food because it's so easy. That's the thing. People lean on spaghetti because it's the easiest thing to make.

It is really easy. And if you make it look good, you can trick people into thinking you can cook. Or ravioli. Like there's a little big ravioli. Why do we have to bake it and make it small?

What is the purpose in that? Why don't we just make a big dish and just bake the whole thing? Just one casserole would be fine. If you put a bunch of pasta dough in there with casserole, it's like, yeah, that's called lasagna.

But even then, grown folks are sitting there layering it all together and squishing it out. Italian food is awesome. I mean, it tastes good.

I'm not against it. I love it. I love it. I do. Have you ever had people make Italian food, but they didn't cook it, right? Oh, a lot.

Yes. And sometimes you go to some restaurants that do not specialize in Italian food, but they claim to be. And that turns you off from Italian food. It's nothing but tomatoes and oil.

Yeah, true. There is a story. I don't know. We have a church member who is Italian and who makes us Italian food sometimes and is a really, really good cook. But the very first time you see, I love pasta.

I love Italian food, all those carby goodness and stuff. And he invited the three of us over one time and he was like, I'm going to make you guys a lasagna. And in my mind, I'm like, oh, baby.

Yeah. So we were talking about it all week and stuff. And he came. He invited us over to his house and he said, man, I hope you guys are hungry. And I put my foot in my mouth.

I was like, I'm starving. I bit into it. It was not noodles. It was not pasta. It was zucchini.

Do you remember that? I bit right into it. And Dr. Shah and Ryan were like, oh, man, this is great. And I was sitting there with zucchini in my mouth and I had just told this dude how starving I was. Now, taste wise, it tasted delicious. Zucchini lasagna was really healthy for you.

Oh, yeah, it was it was good. But if you're expecting noodles and you bite into zucchini, that's not a good feeling. And I was like, oh, oh, and you were expecting kid food.

Oh, yeah. I was expecting mush. I got grown up food. I was like, but you know what? I was like, I just told this guy how hungry I was. I'm eating this whole plate. And you did. You ate the entire thing.

Oh, mercy me. That is too funny. That's hilarious. It was just one of those things where I was like, man, I could be really toxic right now and just not eat it. Or point out like, hey, I thought I was getting this, but I'm not going to.

Yeah, that's good. We began yesterday on yesterday's episode talking about toxic people. We've all met them. We've all encountered them in our lives. And yesterday's episode was especially helpful in categorizing how that toxic person is approaching you.

Are they falling into one of these 10 categories we talked about yesterday? So if you haven't listened to it, I really want to encourage you to download it on whatever podcasting platform you listen on. Go back and listen to yesterday's episode. It was really helpful in categorizing those toxic people. But on today's episode, we're going to continue that conversation. Dr. Shaw, what is the daily encouragement for our listeners and our viewers today? Don't be toxic. There you go, man.

That's easy. And hopefully after yesterday's episode, maybe some morning flags going off in your mind. Like, I might be hitting some of these categories. Sometimes we can become nagging. Sometimes we can become demanding. Sometimes we can be too critical. And we all have done that. So don't be a toxic person.

Well, I love the way that you ended the episode yesterday because it's very tempting to listen to an episode like that. And then come to the conclusion, like, I'm just going to avoid them. I'm just cutting all the toxic people out of my...

I see that on social media all the time. Time to cut all the toxic people out. But then you're just, you're not going to have any people in your life. Sometimes the person saying that also has a little bit of toxicity. Then you're left with your own toxicity.

Now I have to confront the dark pit that is, well, me. Why are you saying that? Why are you so bent on removing those people in your life? Maybe you're trying to tell them that they are toxic. Now, a person who is not toxic will not do that. They will not make other people feel toxic. That's true. So you're doing this. Why? You know what? It's time for me to cut out some people from my life because they're negative.

I just don't need them. Who all are you saying that to? Yeah, I know. What is the rubric that you're measuring other people's goodness against?

Because guess what? That sounds like you might be a little bit of judgmental. That could be the judgmental. That could be the self-absorbed. That could be the arrogant. That could be any number of those categories. Well, that's why I like that we devoted that episode, yesterday's episode, to going through them because it was helpful for me. There was places when we were talking about the self-absorbed person, I was like, you know what?

I do a lot of things that are designed to make my life easier, more comfortable, more fun, better. That's kind of self-absorbed. Well, I think you said it well, Jon, is that we a lot of times will look at other people and be like, wow, that's really toxic.

But then we will examine ourselves and be like, that's something I kind of struggle with. That's the other thing is I like that they're separated out into these categories because we typically think that a person is toxic or they're not. And so then of course it's easy to be like, well, then I'm not toxic. Because who's going to be like, yeah, that's me. I'm toxic all the way.

So I think it does help to kind of verify or really just recognize that there are different levels and that in some ways we can display those. Joshua, you shared a story on yesterday's episode. Do you want to recap it today just in case somebody missed yesterday's episode and then we can talk about maybe how you handled that toxic person in your life?

Yes, of course. There was a person in my life who was close to me. And in time that person became toxic and I wouldn't say super close to me, but close enough to be part of my life. And this person just became hateful.

And if I were to pick from that list of 10 that Dr. Bradbury gave, I would say that person was envious. They saw me doing things and achieving things and getting the accolades and they felt like it's time for them to take that. And so when that began to happen, I was sort of naive because I thought this person was in my corner and they would never think like that because they're benefited so much from all that's going on. And every time I would get some benefit, I would always pass it on to him. But unbeknownst to me, that person had this green-eyed monster in his heart. And by the time I realized that, this person was already bit by that monster. And they were already doing things that were very underhanded, doing things that I never imagined that they would ever go behind my back and do that.

And talk to people and try to do such evil things. So once I found out, as hard as it was, I knew there had to be a break. I had to make a break from this person. And when I began that break, this person then shifted their persona to being the victim. They went from being envious to being a victim. Like, poor me, look at how this person is, Abaddon Shah is treating me.

And I was like, treating you? You know what you're doing and you are now claiming this identity? How dare you? That's terrible. How can you live with yourself?

How can you look at yourself in the mirror? How can you claim to be a follower of Christ and then switch this way so that you can further malign me? And so it hurt and it was a very difficult time because people were looking at me in a sense of, with almost like, okay, you might be a great preacher and all that stuff and good theologian, but you have this thing that your good friend is telling us about you. So all that to say, I was really hurt.

How do you, as a leader, right, how do you draw that line like you're talking about between, hey, this is the cost of leadership versus this should never have happened? This is sin. You know what I mean? Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, just the benefit that came out of that relationship all of a sudden became very clear to me. It's like, there isn't a benefit here. It's a one-way street. And another thing I noticed was throughout the years, there was always only a one-way street. Wow.

That's a great point. I kept thinking there was a two-way street, like, look, I'm benefited so much. So this, and even for a moment, I felt like, well, maybe I took advantage of this person because it was like, wait, that's not true. Yeah.

What did they do? What was the benefit that I was getting? Yeah. And I realized it was very minimal compared to what this person was gleaning from this. But that wasn't enough for this person who wanted more. So all that to say, I was really hurt. I was angry. I was hurt because now I have to carry on and also have to take what people are thinking about me, how they're perceiving me, and you did this to me. So I have to continue now. So I was really hurt.

And there was that place in my heart that was really bruised and bleeding, but I kind of shut it off and I said, you know what? I'm not going to deal with that. I'm going to leave it alone. And I'm going to continue loving my family, loving God, serving God, and wholeheartedly pour myself into what I need to do. That's what I need to do.

I don't need to give in to this garbage. But it did impact me. And then a person came into my life, is still there, who saw that, who saw through that veneer. He saw through the surface and knew that something had happened to me.

And so one day we were out having lunch and he said, hey, can I talk to you about something? I said, sure. I said, Ken, you know, I feel like you've been hurt. And I said, well, I don't know.

Why do you say that? He said, but I can just tell if you don't mind me telling you that. And I can tell you how you can get over that. And I was sort of dismissive at that point. I said, oh, okay.

Yeah, sure. And he said, well, the way I think you should deal with this is that you don't have to pretend everything is fine. And you don't have to pretend that this person didn't hurt you. What you have to do is you have to follow Matthew 544, where it says, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.

So here's what he said. He said, pray for the next 20 days for this person and pray that God would bless them. And I was like, yeah, sure, I'll pray. Yeah, I'll pray that all their teeth fall out.

Yeah, no, sure. They need blessings. All right. He said, you have to pray for every kind of blessing. So you have to pray for physical blessing, that they will be blessed in their health. You have to pray for a spiritual blessing.

And I was like, ah, okay, fine, I can do that. And then he said, the third one, which was the worst one, he said, pray for them to be financially blessed. Not that one. That's a step too far. They can be healthy, they can have a relationship with God, but let them be bankrupt.

Yeah, that's right. Especially they can't have more money than me. Absolutely not.

No, they need to be broke and sitting on a street corner begging. But be godly. Yeah, that's right.

I just want your heart to be good, but I want your physical life to be... Yeah, they can get into heaven, but they gotta go through the poor house to do that. Yeah. So I began and he had warned me, he said, be aware for the first time when you do this, it's going to be impossible to mouth those words. And he was right. Yeah.

It just tastes like hot, like ash in your mouth. Yeah. So it began that way, but he said, keep doing it and do it again and do it again, do it again. And one day you'll be able to mouth those words without even feeling that hate towards that person or anger or bitterness or hurt. You will begin to see a release if you pray for that person to be blessed in every way. It's fantastic advice. And I can tell you firsthand that it works.

And I can also tell you firsthand that he's 100% right. It made me sick to my stomach to do that. And I can tell you just firsthand, I gave up a couple of times. I would pray for a couple of days that this person would be blessed and this person would genuinely love that you bless him. And I would just stop praying right in the middle. And I mean, I was ashamed of it, but I was like, I cannot do it. I don't feel it.

But eventually it starts working. Yes. Yes.

It took some, I mean, Dr. Shah and I would talk and we would talk and I would pray and then it would come to those times during the prayers where like, I know I have to do it. And you know, over time it did start to get easier to where I actually start meaning it. Yeah.

It's somewhere in that second week you feel it. Okay. I can say this. Not that I'm like, next day we're hanging out together and going places and back to the same old.

It never went back to the same old. This person tried to contact me, by the way. Really? Oh yeah. He tried to contact me and wanted to do business. Like, hey, I know the church is doing this and that and I can build that for you.

And I was like, hey, thank you so much. But I think we've given that contract to somebody. To someone else. Because I didn't want that person to come back and do the same thing again.

So it's not like doing this means you go back to normal. And I emphasize that to people, especially who've been through abuse and hurt. Not trying to minimize your abuse and hurt. What I'm saying is, you have to forgive that person without letting that person find their way back into your life. Right. So that's a great point because a lot of times we are fed the line, forgive and forget. Yeah. You don't have to forget.

And I think that people who've grown up, especially around church culture, and what I mean is not necessarily like in church every single Sunday, but in like this Christian-ese bubble that we have kind of here in the south. You hear this forgive and forget and you think that that's godly. Right.

When in reality, the Bible tells you to be wise. Right. That's right. You know, we should forgive people.

We should be loving. But just like you said, that doesn't mean that things go back to normal. That doesn't mean you're hanging out the next day. You need to exercise wisdom. Right.

That's right. And this is a lesson that has been painful, painful, painful for me. And I'm still learning it day by day. But if you are harmless as a dove without being wise as a serpent, then you're just harmless. And there's nothing to you. Because when the time comes where you need to be wise, you need to be a strong leader, you can't. You're just in the way.

And being harmless, like you said, without being wise. People, I think we've been fed this like Disney Channel belief that like when you forgive someone, there's always reconciliation. Things go back to normal.

We're best friends again. And we're stronger for it. It would be great if you can do that. But many times in this sinful world, you're expecting what only can happen in heaven. That's a good point.

Yeah. So in this life, you're hoping that that other person has already submitted to Jesus Christ wholeheartedly. You're expecting that that person will not do the same things again.

They won't repeat the same offense. But that's not possible. That's right.

Especially if abuse is involved. You want that back in? No, you can't. So, yes, forgiveness, but not forgetting. Right. Right.

There's a way that you've put it before. It's that it's not that you are praying for these 21 days to repair that relationship. You're praying so that you'll be free. To free yourself from that toxicity. You've cleared those toxins out of your system. Right. Because when people mistreat you, they're poisoning you. That toxin is not just being splashed on you and then you go home and shower and wipe it off.

It's seeping into your body. Right. Now, there's another thing that I want to emphasize in this whole discussion about toxicity. There are toxic people. Right. But then there is something called toxic encounter.

And those are two different things. Toxic people, you know who they are. Right. Immediately, your spidey sense goes off when they get around you. You can see.

Yeah, it's like I know some people who are toxic and whenever I get around them, I have to go, OK, all right, this person is going to say or do something that's going to spoil my day. Right. I'm going to do it. So what should I do now? So I already have a plan of action. What can I say? How can I say it?

How can I make a good contact and yet remove myself from that setting? I already got that figured out. It's done.

OK, it's going to happen. But toxic encounters are very different. Toxic encounters are those little things that happen, little things like someone messes up your order in the drive through. Toxic encounter is someone cuts you off on the freeway. Call the blinker.

Oh, yeah. Toxic encounter, when you do something with someone, they don't thank you. You hold the door and they just walk past you like you should be holding the door. What are you looking at? Toxic encounter is when you wave at a friend and they don't wave back with the same energy. Yeah, like you're like, eh, and they're like, especially like out in public, you're eating dinner with someone, you see someone, you know, you're like excited to see them and they're like, oh, yeah, what's up?

I can give you a worse one. Yeah, what's that? You put something on Facebook and you think everybody's going to love it and like it.

Nobody even cares. Yeah, you're already planning how you're going to spend all that viral money. Yeah. All my likes, all my comments.

Or even your family pictures up and you're hoping people will like it, love it, and the people who should do that, loved ones, family ones, they don't. Yeah. They know, they see it, but they don't. Yeah, they don't like it. And now a hundred people could like it, but this one or two people didn't like it and it's now, now that poison is just growing.

Yeah, you're right, because that is, it's kind of a funny example, but you start to overthink. You're like, what does this mean? Yeah. Why didn't they let my picture? Why didn't they?

Have I done something? Yeah, they normally do. Yeah.

But, but why didn't they? Now there's, there's gotta be a reason. Yeah. These are the toxic encounters and the way to deal with that is first recognize when your spiritual or even your emotional equilibrium has been disturbed. Recognize that something has happened. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. When you don't, then you take it out on somebody else.

So always recognize that, okay, somebody did something, I am not where I need to be. Okay, I need to deal with that. I need to deal with that.

Yeah. And, and so how do you deal with it? Well, take charge of your internal conversation. It can be they don't like me or they hate me or they are my enemy or they are, they will do something bad to me. I mean, you have to take charge of that conversation because as the Bible tells us in 2 Corinthians 10, 5, bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Jesus Christ.

That's a good point. That's a very good point because I think when we have those toxic encounters, we, we don't, we let our thoughts run wild. You know, but like we talk about how disrespectful people are, how unappreciated I am, or if you were, if you really cared about me, you would be doing this. But it, all it does is ruin your own attitude. It ruins your own spirit. When it sounds like when you're dealing with a toxic person, then you have to recognize that the problem is within that person.

When you're dealing with a toxic encounter, maybe the problem is in that person, but the responsibility is on you, on how you handle that. And I'm not nearly as masterful over my own thoughts as I think I am. You know what I mean? What I mean by that is like when I start, and I've done this, when I start letting all those thoughts come in, they're not staying locked up inside me for very long.

They're coming out. Just like, make no mistake. I would also suggest refrain from judging the motives of other people.

Okay. 1 Corinthians 2, 11 says, for what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of man, which is in him. That's something that I don't want to go too much into detail, but I remember you and I were in a very tough conversation with a church member, I'm talking like eight or nine years ago. And even then I remember someone said, no, but he did this and he's doing it because of this. And even back then you were like, well, I'm not going to judge motives at all. That's not even going to be part of the discussion. And back then I was like 22, 23, but it made a big impact on me. And even now I remember that and I have taken that into some of my leadership where I'm like, you know what? I don't know why they did it. And it doesn't, it's not part of this conversation.

It's not as clear. So refrain from that. But also I would say keep in mind that you have to pray for that person. Follow the example of Jesus. Sincerely pray for that person. As Jesus said in Luke 23, 34, that Father forgive them for they know not what they do. So sometimes people have done things, but they do not know what they've done. So be careful about that.

That's true. For that differentiation between toxic people, toxic encounters, and how we handle both. How do we navigate that? You're going to come across it. Maybe you already have, maybe you're dealing with it right now.

Pray for that person and pray that God would change your heart and meet it with, meet that situation and that individual with us. That's right. So good. If you guys enjoyed today's episode, if it was helpful for you, write in and let us know. 252-582-5028. We'd love hearing from you guys. We want you to visit us online at ClearViewTodayShow.com. And don't forget, you can partner with us financially on that same website. If you like what you're hearing, if you enjoy the Clear View Today Show, give and help us make this show stretch as far and as wide as possible. Jon, what's coming up tomorrow for our listeners? There are good things happening in our country right now.

The problem is you can't see it because there are people who don't want you to see it. But this nation is still a nation that stands on Judeo-Christian values. We believe in that. We talk about that all the time on this show.

And guess what? We're going to talk about it a little bit tomorrow, so stay tuned. Love it. Make sure you guys are here for tomorrow. We love you guys. We'll see you tomorrow on Clear View Today.