You’ve Gotta See This: Tim Muehlhoff

When insulted, I do not want you to insult, Peter says. Rather, I want you to give a blessing. Now everybody's sitting there going, what?

How am I giving a blessing for an insult? Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson.

And I'm Dave Wilson, and you can find us at familylifetoday.com or on the Family Life app. This is Family Life Today. Let me read you a quote from a book I recently read. It says this, if miraculous acts are God's highlight reel, then common grace is the ever-present but oft-ignored elevator music that plays in the background of our lives 24-7. I read that same thing and thought, wow, that's so true because we often miss that background.

Well, it's because we want to see the highlight reel and we don't realize there's a highlight reel going all the time that we miss. And we have Tim Muehlhoff, the author of that quote, sitting in the studio today. Welcome back to Family Life Today, Tim.

Oh, it's always great to be with you, too. Do you remember writing that quote? I mean, it's so well said. You must be like a professor of communication, maybe? I am a professor of communication at Biola University in La Mirada, California. You know, you write these books a while ago and they finally come out. And sometimes in an interview, somebody will read a quote to you and you're like, wow, I wrote that? I don't know if I totally believe that.

No, I'm kidding. But I think that's true, at least in my life, is I want the big and dramatic. And to be honest, I can count on one hand, I think like three events that I would put in the category of this is the overtly supernatural. But I've been a Christian since age 13. So if that's all I'm going to praise God for, the cupboards kind of bear a little bit. Well, the doctrine of common grace is no, then you need to broaden your perspective because there are things that should be in that cupboard that we just aren't recognizing. And again, the book is a quote from C.S.

Lewis. We need to develop the seeing eye and see the many blessings that God has given to us every single day. Yeah. And just to remind our listeners, the title of the book is Eyes to See. And it's all about what you just said, this doctrine of common grace, which one of the things I love that you say often in the book is it isn't just for Christians, but non-Christians can see this.

And actually, it's one of the ways that we can reach people far from God is helping them see God's been good in their lives, even though they may not be able to see it. Yeah. I have a whole section on how do you use Netflix films to start conversations? And The Walking Dead, I'm a huge fan of The Walking Dead.

Are you really? I am a huge fan of The Walking Dead. It's really not about zombies. It's really not. It's about human life in the midst of an apocalypse.

Like there's no government. There's nothing to save you. Survival.

Survival. The themes that they deal with are just fascinating. So I struggle, just like your listeners, I just wish God would come up more in my conversations. Well, everybody knows about The Walking Dead. And you can start a conversation about The Walking Dead.

Well, there's a character named Herschel who starts every morning by reading from his King James Bible. And a person walks by and you can get the snarky comment in a zombie apocalypse, like, hey, kind of surprised to still read that thing. And Herschel's response is, no, faith is more important than ever before in a zombie apocalypse. And I love bringing that up to say, how do you keep your faith in the midst of a zombie apocalypse? I mean, how would you keep it?

Yeah, exactly. I've used that to share with more people than you can imagine. Tim, you don't know this, that I designed a series at our church when that show came out, The Walking Dead. And I called it The Walking Dead. I'm preaching at Easter. And I'm saying, you've got to come back next week. We're starting a series called The Walking Dead.

It's going to be about this. And this lady comes up to me and she goes, I'm done with this church. I'm leaving.

The fact that you would design a series off of that show. And I go, I've never seen the show. Please come back. And if you want to leave after next week, leave.

But please hear me out. And she came up after the next week. She walked up and she goes, that was ingenious. I had no idea that we are The Walking Dead. I go, yeah, my whole idea was that we are dead in our sin and yet we're still alive because of Christ. And so was this whole theology. But taking modern art and saying there's common grace in there that we can learn from is the way I think God wants us to reach the world.

Yes. And every show is imperfect. So please, one big disclaimer. There are parts about The Walking Dead that are hard to watch. I still never even watched it. I have.

I've watched part of it. But John Wesley once said, not about Netflix, but he said, I think every believer should be able to take the newspaper and from the front page be able to transition to the gospel. And I really think that that's true. So we know that God speaks through non-Christians as well as through Christians.

So I want to find points of contact that we can have common vocabulary and conversations with my non-Christian friends. And even with our kids. And even with our kids, entering their world and sitting down and seeing the things that they like. Like, I really want to know what my students at Biola are watching because it gives me a little bit of a peek. Now, of course, discernment has to be used and maybe we even confront every once in a while when we do watch what our kids are watching and we're a little bit horrified. Then you have one of those conversations like, is this really good for you to be watching? But that's why the book is using illustrations to foster all of these conversations about common grace, about God.

Where is he in the world today? So because I'm a communications professor, I absolutely had a chapter on communication because Americans don't agree on much today. But a study came out that said 98 percent, think about that, 98 percent of Americans agree incivility is a threat to our country. 68 percent believe it's already at crisis levels.

And 45 percent of Americans say, I do not feel safe sharing my perspective publicly. So with that in mind, Deborah Tannen, a Georgetown linguist, calls this the argument culture. And again, we can see it.

Just turn on the news. We see it all the time. Well, has God abandoned us to the argument culture?

No. He gives us an interesting proverb. In Proverbs 18, 21, life and death is in the power of the tongue. And that probably won't shock anybody who's listening. Very famous verse.

But here's the cool thing. Did he just give that idea to ancient Jewish writers or did he give the idea to everybody? So in the book, I created a chart of other spokespeople that kind of said the same thing.

So listen to this very quickly. Hinduism, nearly 1.5 percent, 1.1 billion of the world's population follow the teachings of Hindu scriptures. One Hindu mystic says this. Words can comfort or hurt.

It is our pride that makes us use words to hurt. Buddhism. Buddha said words have the power to both destroy and heal. When words are both true and kind, they can change the world. Even Muhammad, who writes in the Quran that people who truly follow Allah speak righteous words. Confucius said without knowing the force of words, it is impossible to know more.

Now think about this for a second. We know there's virtually no chance the Buddha had any opportunity to read the book of Proverbs. But listen to what he says when he says words have the power to both destroy and heal. By the way, if that was written in a paper by one of my students, we're having to talk about plagiarism. I mean, you don't directly quote Proverbs 18.21, but we know that that's what you're—well, Buddha is not referring to it. So where did he get that idea from?

Here's what I think Common Grace does. I'm going to give you an idea of what positive communication can do and what hurtful communication can do. I'm going to give the human race a vision of how words can hurt and how they can heal. And I think we need that today as just a reminder. And he didn't limit it just to Christians.

He gave that message everywhere. I quote Sam Harris, one of the most famous atheists today, who virtually says about communication, conversation, it's the last hope that we have. So God is flooding us with this idea of your words matter. So I quote a study where these researchers say, when I give you a $50 bill, how does your brain react? And then if I give you a compliment, how does it react?

And is it similar? Her research leads to the conclusion, receiving a compliment, your brain registers that the exact same way as if you just received a cash gift. Wow. Now, God created us that way. I think we have this propensity, God given, to receive life-giving words. I love that. So give life. Say thank you to people.

Walk up to them and affirm them. We all know that from family life marriage conferences. Our words make a huge difference. I think God has primed us in a world that he knows. I mean, how many of the Proverbs have to do with your words are like the thrust of a sword or you can break a bone with your words? That's the negative. But then he gives us the positive.

And I think we desperately need both in today's world. Yeah. And it's interesting. You're not saying that, you know, Buddha and Islam is true. Right. Just because they hit on a truth. You're saying there's a God that reveals common grace to all of us, regardless of who and what we believe. Yeah. And we've been quoting a lot of C.S.

Lewis. So here's him in Mere Christianity. He said, I think in even the wackiest beliefs, there's a hint of God's truth because God has saturated the world with his truth. Augustine said, all truth meets at the top, which means if it is true, then it's God's truth. Whether the Buddha recognizes that or not. Now, we know, Dave, to go into detail about what you said, that no doubt that same Holy Spirit is convicting a Buddhist heart that there's spiritual truth out there that you're not getting to.

You know what I mean? But it does not mean that we can't look at the writings of Buddha and say, I think there's some truth there. I have a great colleague, Greg Tenelsoft, who wrote a book called Confucius for Christians.

Now, you want a book that people either love or hate. But he believes the same thing. With this sermon, just like with the Netflix series, we go to Confucius and we say, I think there could be some God's truth here. I just need to find it and be careful because there's no doubt there's ways that Confucius goes that obviously as Christians we cannot go.

But that's the kind of adeptness we're going to have to have today is to look and find like Easter eggs hidden. Where's God's truth throughout the entire world? Well, go back to the communication idea. If I'm called by God to speak life and it has power, you illustrated that. What about speak truth?

What's the balance? Because when Anne and I wrote, even in vertical marriage, you know, marriage needs the spouse. We need to speak life rather than death to one another. The questions came, well, what about when I have to say something, a hard truth to my spouse or hear a hard truth?

How do you balance that out? You're a professor of communication, so if anybody can answer that, it's you. Well, I do think love has to precede truth. My ability to receive your truth is going to be based on what we call a communication climate. If the climate can support that, then I think you have a better chance that truth is actually going to change the person. I mean, some of us just get frustrated and, hey, I'm going to lay some truth on you. I don't want to do all the hard work of making sure I'm civil, kind, all the things Paul talks about, compassion. I'm just going to lay some truth on you. Well, I don't think that's what we're being called to in the New Testament. So it's love and truth.

I love the beauty of that. And so I do want to lovingly tell the person the truth. If I can't lovingly do it, I don't think I'm ready to tell the truth. So I love the fact that it's both and we need to have the courage to speak truth. But today we're just getting raw truth telling without any of the love. There's no respect in our political system. There's no kindness.

We're just flat out, well, I'm telling you the truth and I'm sorry if you can't handle it. Well, you know, the word gentleness is found out through the entire New Testament. But Perry Glasner from Baylor University did a study on the word gentleness. It is literally being removed from our lexicon. For the last 300 years, how many times the word gentleness has been used in writings has decreased.

And it's at an all-time low. Gentleness is literally being taken out of our vocabulary. As Christians, we need to be gentle as we tell the truth. I thought this quote was really interesting, too, as we're talking about communication. And this is from the book The Miracle of Dialogue by Howe. He says, dialogue is to love.

Do you hear that? Dialogue is to love what blood is to the body. When the flow of blood stops, the body dies. And then you go through physically what's happening to our bodies when we don't have relationship.

I'm going to read a couple of these. People who lack strong relationships have two or three times the risk of early death, regardless of whether they smoke, drink alcoholic beverages, or exercise regularly. Another one is terminal cancer strikes socially isolated people more often than those who have closed personal relationships. Another one, divorced, separated, and widowed people are five to ten times more likely to need mental hospitalization than other married counterparts.

Like, these are fascinating that that's so important in our communication and what's happening when we socially isolate. And we know this from Family Life conferences. We all quote John Gottman, who, by the way, is not a Christian. And yet we all use his research.

Now, we have to, again, be discerning. But, man, John Gottman is quoted by Christian researchers and writers as much as non-Christians. And he's brilliant.

And he's brilliant. Great insight. He talks about the five to one ratio. He says, for every one negative comment, it takes five positives to overcome the negative. Think about that just for a second in today's argument culture, how much work we have to do, because we're throwing that one negative all over the place. So, we have to step back and say, if God's word is true, my words are like the thrust of a sword. So, am I really going to do that to you right now?

Yeah, we speak truth, without a doubt. It's called feedforward, the anticipated effect of my communication. I think all of that reasoning process is God's common grace. We are creatures who can not only think about an object, right? I can look at this table and analyze the table.

Do I like the table, you know, the shape of it, the color of it? The cool thing is we can do that with ourselves. We literally can step back and say, how am I coming across in this interview?

How do I come across with my kids, my spouse, my coworker? That is what Aristotle said separated us from the animals, is I can reflect on myself. And I think we need to do that. I remember thinking about this. I was with a small group of moms. We all had teenagers at the time, and we were complaining. We were talking about how this is such a tricky phase of their lives and our lives. And we talked about how we were complaining about them to one another, but then how we were doing that in the homes. And I remember saying, you guys, I feel like I hardly ever compliment my teenager anymore. And they were all agreeing, like, you're right, because we're saying you're not doing this. You need to do this.

Why aren't you doing this? And so we all agreed in our small group, like, let's try for one week to say nothing negative to our teenagers. I'm telling you, first of all, I realize I do nothing but complain and say negative things to them. It was the most eye opening experience. And when we came back a week later, I said, you guys, how was it for you?

And they said it was nearly impossible. And we had no idea how much complaining we were doing, how much criticism. And the other thing that came out was how seldom we complimented them.

And here's what I discovered. I had the best week with my teenager that week than I had had in months. Is it because I didn't criticize and I did compliment more? You know, so it's interesting, I think I have this terrible teenager not really realizing the effect my negativity was having. I think we do the same thing in our marriage.

Yes. I mean, we can do it with our teen. But I know that, you know, we've said this many times, when Ann started speaking life words to me, it made me a better husband. Not because I was any better. I wanted to be better because I'm like, she thinks I'm good? What?

I've never heard that. She's like praising me? I'm like, I'm going to be better than you've ever met? It's just the power. And again, it goes back to common grace. It's like eyes to see the good in your spouse, in your son or daughter that you may not see. That's God giving you different eyes to see. And then when you speak that out, it changes everything. And maybe we need to start with some self-reflection. Like, we're all speakers for family life, marriage conferences. So one speaker said a stupid thing, and I went and did it. Here's the stupid thing you said. He said, men, I challenge you to do this.

Go home and ask your kids how you come across to them. Dave, don't ever do that. Well, I did.

What did you hear? I pulled my three kids together. I said, okay, talk to me.

If there's one thing you could change about dad, what would you change? Three hands went up instantly. I was like, do you need some time to think about it?

No, got mine, got mine. I'm like, what is the, you know, it's like, that was way too quick. And all of them were like, you know, when you get irritable, you kind of shout a little bit at us. I was like, what? I was like, oh, my goodness. Now, listen, you can either receive that or not.

Like, that's a huge moment. And I'll say my feelings were hurt. But now I'm going to get defensive or not, because, you know, Book of Proverbs compares life-giving words to honey for the soul. So I received that. But, Ann, that's exactly what you were saying, is I had just gotten into a pattern, a negative pattern, just being irritable about everything. And so the cool thing is you can rewire yourself to go back and say, I'm going to say positives.

It's the five to one ratio. And I would challenge listeners to do that. It's really hard. But it's a great diagnostic where your soul is and where your relationship is. But all of that is not to be taken for granted.

That is God's common grace. That ability to reflect on yourself is totally unique to human beings. Like, my dog never says, I just wonder how good a family pet I've been doing today.

Have I been living up to expectations when they got me from the shelter? My dog never does that. But we as human beings can do that. And I think that is God's common grace.

And he's wired our brains to receive these compliments in a life-altering way. So remember the movie, The Help? Oh, yeah. The great movie, The Help, where you get African-American women who have been brought into a lot of wealthy white homes to help raise the children. And one woman's been brought in, and there is a rather pudgy girl. And the mom is always saying hard things to this girl, like, hey, no dessert for you. Do you have to eat that? Sit up straight.

Why don't you do your homework? It's just so crushing to watch. But when the parents leave, remember, she takes this child, puts her on her lap, and they do this daily routine. And you all know, we could all do it together. You are kind. You are nice. Right?

It's just beautiful. Well, guess what? You are smart.

We can do that. Now, here's the really cool thing about Christianity. Paul says, do that to your enemies. Oh, now he steps into the heart area. See what I mean? Don't just do that to people you like or agree with. What does Peter say?

We share this at the conference all the time. First Peter 3.9. When insulted, I do not want you to insult, Peter says. Rather, I want you to give a blessing.

Now everybody's sitting there going, what? How am I giving a blessing for an insult? Well, we have to know what he means by blessing. And so that blessing isn't forget about all the bad things you've done to us. That's not what it meant by a blessing. A blessing would be, even though you are harsh towards me, I'm going to be gentle towards you.

Even though you are not kind to me, I will be kind to you. Even though your words towards me are meant to be hurtful, I will speak life-giving words, even as I disagree with your position, even as I confront you on the mean words that you've said to me, I am committed to you that I'll do it in such a way that the tone is one that reflects who Christ is. That is really unique to Christian speakers. And sadly, I wonder how much we're living up to that in today's argument culture. How much has the argument culture infiltrated the church? We probably could have some good self-reflective thinking about that. We've said this before, it comes back to us as parents modeling us in our home, for our kids. You know, we had Joe Rigney on here a few weeks back, president of Bethel College and Seminary, and he made a comment about the power of a dad in this area.

I want to play it, and Tim, I want to hear you just respond to this. The heavens declare the glory of God. It's that principle, and then you just run it. It's not just the heavens that do that. Everything does that. Honey does that.

Pumpkin Crunch Cake does that. Which means, made things make invisible realities visible. So, in Romans 1- General revelation. General revelation. That's exactly- Seminary. You're like, I want to come to college.

She's like, she's already got the seminary. So, the idea there is that God has revealed himself in the things that he's made. His invisible attributes, his eternal power, his divine nature, clearly perceived in the things that are made. Now, so made things make invisible realities visible. That's step one. Step two, you're a made thing. You're a made thing. You're made. Well, okay, so follow the logic.

Therefore, you make invisible attributes visible. That's why God made you. Which means, now then you go, okay, now we're right to the home.

Which means, what's my role in the home as a dad? I want to tell the truth about what God is like. That's really good.

Yeah, it really was. I love it. We incarnate the attributes of God in our home. We know from research that early on, attachment styles are formed early on with our children. They are seeing at a very young age, this is what a dad is supposed to do. This is what a mom is supposed to do. This is how God relates to me.

That's the power of attachment styles. I connect to you and will eventually connect to God based on your loving kindness. So, we want to change the world. All of us do. It's kind of above our pay grade. Let's start in our own house.

My friend Rick Langer, who's part of the Winsome Conviction Project, I'm the co-director. He said, if we all swept out in front of our front step, we'd pretty soon get pretty clean cities. And we all need to take care of our own house first. So, all this stuff about common grace just needs to be shown in how we interact with each other within our houses, within our communities, within our cities. And then maybe we'll see a revival that could even sweep the whole country.

We've seen revivals before. We're going to hear from Dave and Anne again in just a second. But first, our guest today has been Tim Muehlhoff. And he's written a book called Eyes to See, Recognizing God's Common Grace in an Unsettled World. We'd love to send you a copy as our thanks when you go to familylifetoday.com and give to help more families learn about God's common grace. Now, Dave and Anne, we love hearing stories about how God is changing families. It's one of our favorite things, isn't it? Let me tell you, there's nothing better than getting an email or an actual letter sent to us about the impact that family life today is having on a marriage and their family.

It's my favorite. I cry when I read them because God is really changing hearts, legacies, families. And you talk about Eyes to See, what God's doing. That letter, that email, it's like, oh. You know, we sit in the studio, we produce content we hope helps, and then we hear God meets people through this program. Every listener, every financial partner could see the impact you're making through your donation. Yeah, and keep sending those letters because your gifts enable those kind of impacts to happen. And if you've never joined in as a family life partner and given financially one time or 12 times, jump in.

I'm telling you, your gift gets those kind of letters sent in because God uses that to impact lives and generations to come. Yeah, and you can give online by going to familylifetoday.com. And this week, when you partner financially with Family Life, we'd love to say thanks by sending you a copy of Tim Yulhoff's book, Eyes to See. You can get your copy when you give at familylifetoday.com. And tomorrow on Family Life Today, David and Wilson are joined by Peter Mutabatsy, who shares an intense story of leaving his abusive dad, making a life for himself as a homeless street kid, losing his identity, and then everything turning around when someone calls him by his name. That's tomorrow. On behalf of David and Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.