Creating Peace in a Polarized Culture

We need to bring the light into those dark places. We need to bring conversations into those dark places. We need to bring Jesus into those conversations. Listen, my opinion is not going to heal the land, but Jesus can heal the land. I don't want to have our conversation, because this topic, and I often say this, this is so important, but this is one that really is important and it's where we're at as the believers in Christ, in this culture, in this world. And how we engage the world, how we engage one another, but how we engage those that are outside the faith of Christ. I'm looking forward to it.

We're all going to learn a lot. I love Pastor Brady. He is my pastor here in Colorado Springs from New Life Church. And we're going to really get into how to behave as a Christian. So how about that? So you mentioned that Brady Boyd is pastor here in town and we're so glad to have you make the long trek down the road. Yeah, it was a lot. We're going to be talking about the book that Brady has written called Life Minded Eight Practices for Belonging to God and Each Other.

It's a terrific resource and you can get details when you call 800-AFAMILY or you'll see the link in the show notes. Brady, welcome back to Focus. Good to have you. Always good to be here. And this topic, you're correct. This is a topic that's worth talking about, worth praying about, worth fighting for in my opinion. It's one of those topics to me, it's like we're at a fork in the road, attitudinally in the church. And if we go down this path, it's fight and win. And if we go down the other path, it's stay engaged, certainly speak truth, but do it in such a way that brings honor to Christ, which is being rooted in the fruit of his spirit. It's a tough way to battle people though. Love, joy, peace, goodness, mercy.

Yeah, it is a counterintuitive in every sense of the word right now. But Paul said in Ephesians four to make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace. But here's the interesting thing. That's verse three, verse two says, be completely humble and gentle. And I think that's the decision we have to make right now. Are we going to humble ourselves and really believe that the teachings of Jesus can still penetrate the darkness today? Listen, the world's been darker than it is right now. This is not the darkest time in human history. I mean, it doesn't take a historian to see that there have been darker times in human history. And in every other case, the goodness of Jesus has broken through the darkness has never overcome the light.

Not one time. Yeah. And so why are we losing hope right now that the darkness is suddenly going to overcome the light in our generation?

Yeah. Let me, again, this is interesting because a friend of mine who's a non-believer said to me, boy, if you guys are worried, I should be really worried, which is funny because he knows enough of the book to understand that we as Christians should fear not. So he's going in essence, what he's saying is if you Christians are fearful, I should be really fearful because you're not supposed to be fearful.

Exactly. And listen to, I do think that fear is motivating a lot of this, anger, fear. We don't know what the future holds. We're unsettled. We feel unsafe. And when, you know, what's built into our human DNA, when we feel dangerous, when we feel afraid is built into us, it's been proven that we retreat to our tribes.

We retreat to a group of people that say, yeah, it looked like us. It's a sense of safety, right? It's tribalism. And I, and I think that's what's happening right now. But what the problem with that is that is exactly opposite of the great commission. Yeah. Which tells us to go into the world.

Right. And what we're doing is like, there's two groups of Christians. There's one group of Christians running toward their tribe and a small group of us that are actually running the other way, trying to say, Hey, let's go tell the good news. Let's go share some good news to a world that's burning down right now. You know, one of the things that made a real deep impact on me, we did the truth project with Del Tackett.

That's still available. It's one of the best video series that we still make available to everybody. But in there, he put up a comparison of what the world says and then what the scripture says or what Jesus said. And I mean, it was amazing cause it was 180 degrees different. And that's pretty much what you're saying that, you know, when we're in a position to fight like the world or behave like the world or act like the world, usually it means take a step back, take a deep breath and do exactly the opposite of what your flesh is telling you. And you'll be closer to what God is asking you to do. Well, that's why Paul calls in Corinthians, the foolishness of the cross.

I mean, think about this. Jesus had an opportunity to call down legions of angels and annihilate the evil Roman empire. And he says, you're not taking my life. I'm giving my life.

I'm surrendering my life. And he gave us a new way of using power. So instead of using power to dominate and control, he used power to serve. He, he stretched out his hands and died. And here we are 2000 years later, we have 2.2 billion Christians on the planet because he chose to die.

He chose to be resurrected. Why don't that isn't such a powerful counterintuitive way of living our lives. So every time I have a lot of Christ followers come to me and say, Brady, it's time to fight.

It's time to fight. I said, well, what about the cross? Tell me about, how do you justify that? How do you settle that kind of behavior when you know what happened at the cross? So what did happen at the cross? Jesus says, father, forgive them. Uh, they know not what they do.

It is finished. He, he did not use the ways of the world to fight the world. He uses, he says the weapons of our warfare are not carnal.

They're not made in man's images. He said, but they are mighty for the pulling down of strongholds. And I think we can all agree that there are strongholds over our nation and over the world. We see this in Israel and Gaza. We see this in Russia and Ukraine. We see this in our own environments, politically, socially, economically, there are strongholds.

So how do we wrestle against those strongholds? Will we use the weapons that we've been given, which are prayer, which are service, which is discernment, intercession, being a witness, uh, the power of our scriptures. The scriptures are like a sword in our hands. Uh, we have the shield of faith, the breastplate of righteousness, the helmet of salvation. Those are not just metaphors. Those are real weapons that we have, but they just look nothing like the weapons of the world.

And that's where I think Christians are being poorly discipled or maybe just being negligent and discernment. Really. I want to do, let me ask you about life. Minded that really came out of a conversation you had with two other friends that were kind of at odds with each other at a restaurant. That story's in the book. Tell us that story. It's a great story. I got it. I have a couple of friends.

They've been my two of my best friends for over 20 years. And when I'm writing the book, we were in a little hole in the wall, Mexican restaurant in Southwest Arkansas. We'd been riding four wheelers and hunting all day long. They had Mexican food there? Yeah. It's not, it's not great, but it was the only place we could find.

So we're in there. And there's just the two of us of the three of us sitting at a table. And we're talking about everything, vaccines, politics, racism, every hot button topic that we were, we were going at it, the three of us and talking and disagreeing and bringing up our viewpoint, but it never got nasty.

It never got angry. It was, it was strong because we were highly opinionated, all three of us. And the whole time we were talking, there was a mom with her two little children sitting at the table next to us.

And we were the only people in the restaurant. So she's listening to us. And this went on like a pretty robust debate for about an hour and a half, a lot of salsa, a lot of, you know, guacamole, salsa on your words. Yeah. And that didn't help.

A lot of spicy words was spicy food. And so we get up to leave and as she's, I could tell she had been eavesdropping. And she goes, Hey, Hey, can I ask the three of you, who are y'all? And I said, what do you mean? She goes, I just listened to you guys have that conversation. She says, I do not have a group of friends that I could have had that kind of conversation with without losing my friendships. And she said, well, what, what, who are you guys? And I said, well, I'm a pastor from Colorado.

This guy here, uh, is a business band from Dallas, Fort worth. And the other guy owns a property that we're staying at around the corner. And we get, listen, I said, we've just been friends for over 20 years. And I said to her, it takes a long time to become old friends. And we cherish that. And we're not going to let anything come between our friendships.

And it gives us then permission. If you see, if you've made up your mind that this friendship is important to me, my relationship with you is critical. If both parties agree to that, then that gives you permission to kind of talk openly and more honestly, with what, in fact, that's what friends do. You're really not friends with people that you're not honest with. Hmm. I mean, you have relationship with them.

You can be an acquaintance with them, but don't call someone your friend that you can't have an honest conversation with. And I think that's what I said to her. Okay.

The funny part of this story is that we got out to the vehicle and we're driving away. And one, my other friend said, I wonder who she agreed with. That's the ultimate question.

All right. So my friend says, let's find out. So he turns around and goes in, he goes, I'm going to find out. I will not sleep tonight if I don't know who she agreed with. Oh, he parks the truck and he goes back in and she's paying her bill. And he goes, who'd you agree with?

He goes, I think I agreed with the pastor. And that was like the biggest win of my life that I was able to convince this woman sitting next to me. My two friends were so mad at me, but they were, she agreed with you. She agreed with you.

You could say I was right. Let me ask you this question, because in that context, this is the balance. You know, so often we're looking for formulaic solutions. It's one of the parenting problems we have.

If you do this formulaically, you will get this product. It doesn't work that way because there's something called free will. But in this context, how do we keep our relationships healthy and still be able to stand on principle and truth in, you know, variety of contexts. You may be with Christian friends in this context, but maybe with non-Christian friends. And it gets a little dicey, especially in the political season.

So I guess I am asking you for that formula. How do we maintain what are first principles? What are the right things? We've got to stand on truth as Christians, and then we have to remember the relationship. So which is first, the truth or the relationship? Well, the relationship is you have to start there.

You can't, nobody wants to hear the truth unless they know that you love them. So I mean, that's the bottom line is before you bark at them, how about get to know them? So I wrote, there's two chapters that I write. One is on curiosity. I talk about the idea, are we truly curious about other human beings?

Are we asking good questions? For example, I had a lady bark at me recently, she's disagreeing with me and she's, you know, challenging me on my beliefs. And I stopped her and I said, you're very passionate about this.

I said, I love it when people bring passion into the discussion. It disarmed her, but I said, tell me when this became important to you. I want to hear the story. Tell me, when did this really become a really important topic to you?

What was the catalytic moment that this became a big deal to you? I'd love to hear that. And I was, I'm not trying to manipulate her. I was genuinely interested and she knew that. So the chapter that I write on curiosity gives us some questions.

It de-escalates conversations and it gets it down to the human level and to the emotional level. That's one chapter. The second chapter that I'm really proud about is the chapter on discernment. The, so discernment is not just telling the difference between good and evil. Discernment is the ability to determine wise versus unwise or wise versus foolish. In other words, coming into every environment, every, like this conversation I'm having with you or a conversation that I'm having with my neighbor, do you have the ability to discern what's going on? Can you, can you be taken into a spiritual realm of sorts and say, you know what, Lord, I don't see everything, but the Holy Spirit sees everything. And can you clue me in on what's happening in this moment? Am I confronting evil?

Am I confronting a childhood pain? Am I just having a good conversation with a friend? What do I need to say to bring life into this conversation today? See, if you're asking that question instead, you know, most people are asking the question, how can I win this argument today?

That's not the question we should be asking. We should be, how can I bring life into this relationship today? How can I bring the life of the Holy Spirit into my conversation today?

Even when you're talking about hard things, even when you're having a political debate or a sociological debate, how can I bring the life of the Spirit into this conversation? And again, I'm not responsible for you. I'm only responsible for me. And in fact, I want me to get it right. I want to get this right.

Well, part of getting that right is relationship, like you said, and truth. Brady, you have a great story about a friend who called you while you were standing in a garden, I think in winter, but or late spring, whatever. Yeah, it was early spring and the ground was thawing out at my house and I have some buds that I'd planted, you know, they come up around that time, around Easter time.

Wait a second, there's no way early spring in Colorado, that's late spring, that's called May. Yeah, well, it was warming up, we know that. But I was out in my garden and I was kind of kicking around some of the soil.

Yeah. And I saw just the first signs of spring, the bud was just coming out of the soil and I knew in the next couple of weeks there'd be flowers there, you know, it's that magical time when winter is retreating and spring is arriving, right? And I at the same time got a phone call from someone that I'd been praying for reconciliation and I'm standing there real time looking at this little tiny bud come up out of the semi-frozen ground and this relationship was coming back to life at the same time and I just thought, you know, that I think God does this with us sometimes, he puts us in situations where he's kind of yelling at us, like I can bring all things back.

Just because it's dead now, just because it's barren right now, doesn't mean that God's not at work in those hidden places. And I want to encourage, you know, people ask me, why did you write the book? What do you want to happen when you finish the book? I want you to finish the book and then pick up your phone and trust the Lord to restore a broken relationship. Because I'm seeing that happen in my life right now, some relationships that I lost are coming back because I wrote the book and I'm following these practices and I pray that would happen for people that are listening.

The broken relationships, things that you've given up on, the prodigal may be coming home, I believe that for the people listening. Brady, another aspect that you mentioned in the book that's so critical and sometimes really overlooked today by the Christian community and that's service toward others. You know, you think of, you and I both love the early church history.

I think I shared a book with you back in 2007 when you first got here. I read every page of it. How Christ changed civilization. I think I quoted it last Sunday when I talked about the widows and the orphans.

It was a remarkable book. It was, it's a, listen, history repeats itself in the church and we're back at that moment now where we're living in Rome again. And it's so, you know, it's enlightening to see what the early church did because they were closest to the real deal.

So they knew what they were doing. Yeah, Rome was much more evil than anything we're experiencing right now 2,000 years ago, the perversity, the evil. And yet again, I want to emphasize that the light will always overcome the darkness if there's a group of people willing to carry the light into the darkness. Well, and one of the things, one of the reasons that Alvin Schmidt in that book says that Christ changed civilization is because the believers in Christ begin to do good works. They begin to set up orphanages. They save babies that were thrown away at the Roman dumps for exposure. And that, that's the other aspect of this.

When we behave Christianly, that usually garners respect from others because we're doing good things. I mean the church, New Life here in Colorado Springs, you're doing this great work with Mary's home, helping, you know, poor moms find a place to stay. The problem with serving is people think they have to solve the problems of the world. In other words, I need to go solve the Gaza conflict or I need to solve the problem in the Ukraine. You don't have the individual power to solve global conflicts. What we do is we have the ability to take care of the single mom in our neighborhood.

We have the ability. It's right in front of you. Right in front of me. So who are you responsible to serve?

Whoever is in front of you. And I tell people, find something that's broken in your city and start fixing it until Jesus tells you to stop. Yeah. That's it.

That's what I talk about in the book. Find something that's broken in your neighborhood or city. Start fixing it until Jesus tells you to stop. Well, that's the idea of serving. To your earlier point, if 2.2 billion Christians are doing that, that will change the world. There's 150,000 Christ followers in El Paso County by the recent estimation.

150,000 beams of light. Now tell me, what could we do in our county if we all mobilized and started finding the widows, the orphans, the single moms, the shut-in, the broken person in our neighborhood? What if we all took it seriously instead of retreating to Netflix at night? What if we went into our neighborhoods for 30 minutes and just checked on people? Just knocked on the door and said, hey, I'm your neighbor. Can I help you with anything?

Let me know if I can ever do something for you. I know that sounds invasive. I know that sounds like maybe even creepy to some people. But listen, I was with a mental health professional just two weeks ago and it's a lady that I know and she said that the amount of anxiety and depression that she's seeing in our county here in Colorado is exponentially greater than it was five years ago. And it's almost overwhelming to her practice because she can't take the clients. There's just too many of them.

Wow, that's sad. And I said, my goodness, I said, this just sounds like a pandemic. It sounds like a crisis. She goes, it is. I said, so what's the solution? All right, here's what she said.

Eighty percent of my clients would see improvement if they had a human being checking on them every day. Yeah, there you go. Just one person. One person just calling them and coming by the house. Hey, how are you?

How can I do? You want to go buy groceries together? You want to go out for coffee? Can I pray for you? Five minutes, 10 minutes. I said, hold it.

I said, you're oversimplifying it. She says, no, I'm not. She said, the amount of loneliness in our culture, the amount of isolation in our culture is causing a huge rise in anxiety and depression.

She said, all we have to do is talk to one another and heal most about 80 percent of our wounds right now. Yeah, that makes me think of Elijah after he overcame the prophets of Baal. He retreated and he seemed like he was depressed and he kind of had this moment where he was telling God, I'm all alone. It's just me and God met him. I love that scripture.

Would you just talk about that a little bit because that was a really great part of the book that I resonated with. I'm the only one that hasn't bowed my knee. I'm the only one that, I'm the only one doing the right thing and then God surprised him.

He's like, you know what, I've been with you the entire time. I'm involved in ways that you haven't seen and this is what I want to remind all the believers that are listening today. God is at work in ways that we can see and in ways that we cannot see and at the end of the day, we have to trust the Lord. I was just praying that this morning.

Have I lost my ability to trust the Lord? Yeah. In other words, it's one thing to control the outcomes is what we want to do. Yeah. But it's an entirely different thing to say, Lord, I am, I'm out of control.

I don't know, I can't control this but I trust you. This is where I love what God did. He met him in a quiet moment.

Yes. Because there was distraction and then there was exhaustion and God met him in a whisper, not in all the other stuff that went on. Well, having solitude and silence in our lives is is honestly one of the most healing, one of the most powerful times we could have and just having times of quiet. No, nothing in our earbuds, no digital screens in front of us, just sitting and smelling and looking and seeing nature and just being still before the Lord. Be still and know that I am the Lord. And I think there is a sense that we got to get back to that for the safety of our own souls but we become better human beings when we're hearing the voice of the Lord. Yeah. Brady, let me ask you, you know, a few weeks ago and this is that question about seeing things correctly and I think the concept in the book is not to respond to other people's sin by getting angry.

That sounds pretty simple but I'm telling you, we saw a political convention where they had a mobile abortion clinic and vasectomy and they were giving free abortions and free vasectomies. That drove me nuts. I mean, I wrote about that. Yeah.

A news group picked up the article that I did on that. It's so frustrating. I mean, where is your respect for life? Right. And, you know, not to get angry at other people's sin.

Really? I mean, you're right but oh, it's hard not to. Our anger is not the problem. It is completely acceptable in the scriptures to be angry. The Bible says be angry but sin not.

So the fact that that was out there made me angry. It should have made every believer upset and angry but then what do we do with that anger? How do we then take that anger and turn it into something that's helpful instead of something that's sinful?

And that's what the Bible says, be angry but sin not. Okay, now what I recognize is there are people who are really broken. So what can the church do in response to a mobile unit? How about being there offering them care and hope and prayer? How about giving, making sure that they have all the medical attention that they do need?

Well, this is a great lead-in to option ultrasound. That has been our response. Yes.

Over 500,000 kids saved. I mean, we're really pleased with that. That's the response. But it's a response and I still think, you know, you got to manage that as a Christian in a mature way. Yeah.

And at times I feel like I'm in elementary school going, you're stupid. Yeah. You know, and that's not, that's not the healthy Christian response but it's the real one. Well, when you see outlandish behavior, it is, and we're seeing it more and more common in the culture where it's just not sensible.

It's irrational. It's beyond anything we've ever seen before in my lifetime and I think we do have to manage our responses and we have, but we do need to respond. We need to bring the light into those dark places. We need to bring conversations into those dark places. We need to bring Jesus into those, listen, my opinion is not going to heal the land but Jesus can heal the land.

Amen. So let's bring Jesus into these situations instead of just our opinions, instead of just our own convictions, our own aggravations. What would Jesus do?

Would Jesus go stand alongside that van and hold their hand and start asking questions and start asking questions? Yeah. And maybe say offer them an opportunity to see an ultrasound of their baby. Before you make this decision, would you like to meet your baby? Yeah.

Wow. I mean that's what Jesus would do. That's what I would do if I had the opportunity and I think there are solutions if we can get past our aggravation and really ask for wisdom.

I think the Lord can lead us and guide us in this season that we're in. Well it's so good and you know Jean has listened to the audio version of this. She said to tell you she is devouring it. That was the word. She said make sure you tell Brady devouring it because it's so good.

Thank you. So there's an endorsement from Jean. Yeah but that's all I need right there.

That's the only endorsement I need today. I will now start listening to the audio version of the book when we go to bed at night because that's when she does it. Hey you want to listen with me? So I'm going to hear the book over and over again.

I'll have it memorized by the next time we see each other. Let's end with this question. One of the most important practices that you share in the book is to let the main thing be the main thing with all the distractions that we have as Christians in this life.

What is the main thing Brady? Yeah Jesus gave us two last commandments. He gave us the great commandment to love the Lord your God with all your heart soul and mind love your neighbors yourself and then he gave us the great commission and the great commission is to go and to all the world and tell people about Jesus baptize them disciple them but we won't accomplish the great commission if we're not first in really embracing the great commandment and if we start hating our neighbor we you you won't reach people that you hate or afraid of.

Yeah you justify not doing it. Yeah so my prayer today is you know I'm a conservative white male I'm a middle I live in a middle class neighborhood I have every reason to you know to fall into all those traps of tribalism and just hang out with the people like me but I am I am consciously putting myself in situations where I'm around people who are different than I am. I'm taking trips into places I'm in uh we're involved right now in the southeast corridor of our city I'm down there all the time meeting the neighbors. I mean the church is doing great work. We're down there I mean we're down in the areas of our city that are unreached right now that they're under resource for sure and I think the moment that we lose touch with people that are different we lose the sense of the great uh commission and I I'm going to stand before the Lord one day I'm not going to stand before my congregation at the great judgment seat I'm going to stand before the Lord and he's going to ask me did you fulfill my commission did you go did you love your neighbor so it won't be my congregation that judges me it'll be the Lord and I want to please him. So I told my church I'm not going to preach things to you that you want to hear I'm going to preach things to you that we all need to hear and I think that's my charge to pastors who are listening right now this is not a popularity contest so be kind be gracious no don't you don't have to be angry or mean or mad but we need to challenge our congregations right now to live like Jesus and that's that's why I wrote the book it's challenging it's going to aggravate you and upset you a little bit it it upset me when I wrote it I mean I and so I need to read it again that's make sure I stay upset and aggravated you know you've done a great job with this book it is timely we are at the fork in the road there's so many scriptural references to why we need to do these things and behave in a christ-like manner and of course for you take Jean's advice devour this it's really good and Brady I so appreciate it thanks for being with us oh it was a joy I always love being with you you are always so much fun so thanks for having me on it's so good and you can get a copy of this great book Life Minded by Brady Boyd and as we normally do if you can make a gift of any amount be part of the ministry either monthly or one time we'll send it as our way of saying thank you for being involved with us and helping others and reaching out to others perhaps saving some of those babies lives with the ultrasound effort that we have underway here for the last 20 years at focus but be a part of it just get engaged if you can't afford it we'll get it to you because that's not what it's about we just want you to be engaged in the ministry so that it accrues to your account and together we can do more good in this world so get a hold of us donate today as you can and you can do that when you call 800 the letter a in the word family or click the link in the show notes and on behalf of the entire team thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family with Jim Daly I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ hey parents parent here if you're searching for biblical and practical tips for your kids specific age you know with all that extra time you have well you can stop focus on the family has weekly agent stage emails that bring the tips to you each week i get an email for my son that i can read on my phone and put directly into practice no more sifting through junk on the internet i can focus my time on being intentional it's easy visit mykidsh.com add your kids age and get to parenting better that's mykidsh.com