[00:00:06] Speaker A: Hi. My name is Katie Malone.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: And I'm Brendan, the husband.
[00:00:09] Speaker A: And you're listening to The Little Flock, the podcast that offers practical insights about living a counterculture of goodness, truth, and beauty in a world of increasingly hostile secularism and indifference.
[00:00:19] Speaker B: So if you're looking to learn from two imperfect followers of Christ about how to live like the wheat amongst the darnell, this is definitely the podcast for you.
Hi, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Little Flock Podcast. My name is Brenda Malone.
[00:00:38] Speaker A: And I'm Katie Malone.
[00:00:39] Speaker B: And it's great to be back with you again.
[00:00:41] Speaker A: It really it's been a long time.
[00:00:42] Speaker B: It has, isn't it? How long have been I was just trying to figure that out.
[00:00:44] Speaker A: I don't think we should count because it means the year's going very fast.
[00:00:47] Speaker B: Because Katie left us. She abandoned us.
[00:00:50] Speaker A: Rude.
[00:00:51] Speaker B: No, she didn't. She had a short term contract, doing a bit of a working class, a power woman, a career woman.
[00:00:57] Speaker A: Working class.
[00:00:58] Speaker B: Working class. Well, we're all working class.
[00:01:00] Speaker A: You promoted me in case of six words there.
[00:01:04] Speaker B: She's a working woman of the world.
Just in time for the Barbie movie. Katie.
I'm on trend, a corporate role, working for the local school. So it was good to have you back, though, Katie, so we can do these episodes.
Don't forget, folks, if you're new here, please share and subscribe to the podcast. Share it with your friends. Make sure you hit subscribe, whatever platform you're listening on, and if your platform allows you to give us a rating, then please give us a rating. That all really helps the show. If you like it, you're getting something out of it. Give us some stars. Chuck in a comment, things like that. I should also say today you might hear the heat pump on in the background. It's it's wintery, and poor old Katie, but cool.
So you might hear the dulcet tones of the gentle wind of the Fujitsu in the background there. Don't forget, folks, that if you want to support the work that we are engaged in, you can do that. There's two ways to do that. One is to become a
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[email protected] NZ on the homepage. There's a donate button about how you can do that. And if you become a regular donor and we know your name and details, we can send you a tax receipt at the end of each year. So you can claim your tax. That's always a winner. You're doing a lot of tax. Yeah, the Guru sorry, that's the noise of the microphone there. Sounds like someone swinging off the monkey bars. When I was a kid, did you ever have a noisy bunk in your house? Yes, we were kids, boys. Boys and bunks. And we had these terrible bunks that they were only held together metal bunks, but not like the new ones, which are a bit more robust. And they were only held together the top and the bottom bunk by these four little tiny bits of metal that sat between the cylinders, if you like, and they had a rubber seal around them. And basically, if you jumped on the bunks, the seal would shift, they'd drop down to the bottom leg and then the top bunk could even fall off.
[00:03:25] Speaker A: Excitement.
[00:03:26] Speaker B: Yeah, it was I don't know where they got those bunks from, mum and dad, but they were a mum and death trap. Yeah. So if you want to support our work, you can do that that way. Patreon.com left footmedia or LifeNet orgnz. And a huge thank you to everyone who is supporting our work. We love you and your partnership really makes a huge difference in allowing us to reach more people. Don't forget, last but not least of the little notices before we jump at notice time. Everyone loves yeah, gosh. We all love notices. If you want to send us your questions, you can do that by going to either Lifenet.org NZ. And you'll see at the top of our homepage there, there's a little scrolling banner thing and you click on that and it opens up a form. And so you can send us your questions. Thank you to those who are using that form. We are getting your questions. They are arriving. And so, yeah, that's one way of doing it. You can do that totally anonymously. Don't have to fill in any name or any other details if you don't want to. It's just your question and the topic that you want us to talk about. Or you can go to thelittleflockpodcast.org that's the littleflockpodcast.org and that will take you to the homepage for our podcast. And there's a link at the top of that page with all the episodes on it where you can click on the link and fill in the form and let us know your feedback. Well, your questions, really, isn't it, that we're looking for that we're going to answer for you in these episodes. All righty, katie, are you all ripped and ready to go?
[00:04:56] Speaker A: Absolutely, yeah.
[00:04:57] Speaker B: Look at you, you're power woman. She's standing today, folks. Normally she sits today. She's standing, she's ready for action.
[00:05:04] Speaker A: She's ready to get into it.
[00:05:05] Speaker B: We're both standing, actually.
So let's start with a little bit of a conversation. Katie, as we like to do a little Tetar tay.
[00:05:12] Speaker A: Sometimes we talk to each other yeah.
[00:05:15] Speaker B: It'S funny, actually, I was thinking about that today, how often couples don't talk to each other. It's quite amazing. I've discovered that it's actually a lot more common, really, amongst marriages than you'd think, that people just passing each other in the hallways of their busy lives and not communicating life can become very perfunctory.
[00:05:31] Speaker A: Just who's doing what, going where. How many kids are they taking with them when they go?
[00:05:35] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. You can see why some marriages end up in trouble when the kids will get old and leave home, because it's all of a sudden they realize that they were only in a sort of what would you call it? Contractual parenting arrangement or a nannying and chauffeuring type business. And then once the clients have all gone, they look across the table and they go, who are you?
That's a pretty sad way of looking at the world, isn't it? So take care of your marriage, folks. That's what we're saying. Have conversations. Have regular conversations. There's that squeaky noise.
[00:06:06] Speaker A: Time for a small chat.
[00:06:07] Speaker B: A small chat. Yeah. That's a very important thing to do if you're married.
Yeah. Especially if you're a bloke and you want to know how to avoid getting into trouble. Make sure you're aware.
[00:06:16] Speaker A: You'll find out.
[00:06:17] Speaker B: You will be told.
[00:06:18] Speaker A: You have been warned.
[00:06:20] Speaker B: Okay, let's read this article called Four Ways to Recover Wonder for Renewed Faith by a guy called Billy Swan. Father billy Swan. He's a Catholic priest. And this is on the word on Fire website. They're a great outfit. Word on fire. Really awesome. Evangelistic Catholic Organization. Love them. We love them. And this article I thought was really great. I thought it was really important for families, and I thought it just struck me as being really essential and something that we could do, because I know, Katie, often when we're preparing for these episodes, you're like, oh, not another negative.
[00:06:51] Speaker A: Stopping the negative, baby.
[00:06:53] Speaker B: Yeah, give me some. Give me the good or the positive. You know, I'm a junkie for a bit of love.
[00:06:59] Speaker A: There's enough negative news in the world yeah. That's people getting shot and running away on lime scooters and I don't know, everything's depressing when you open the paper.
[00:07:08] Speaker B: Are those two things on a spectrum, being shot and running away?
[00:07:12] Speaker A: Well, the person who did the shooting ran away.
[00:07:14] Speaker B: That's right, yeah.
[00:07:15] Speaker A: I was going to say get away.
[00:07:16] Speaker B: Stealing lime scooters is probably at the low end of the offending of the worries in the world. What's your top worry about the state of the country right now? Lime scooters.
[00:07:24] Speaker A: They are a big problem.
[00:07:25] Speaker B: They're everywhere.
[00:07:26] Speaker A: We don't have lime ones. We have flamingo ones.
[00:07:27] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. The mental way. Okay, let's read this article. Research in recent decades by people like Charles Taylor, and he's a philosopher who a great book. Get your words right.
So people like Charles Taylor, with his book A Secular Age, has identified a clear link between the decline of religious belief in the Western world and a progressive disenchantment or loss of awe and wonder. And this is kind of cool because I think interestingly, we tend to think of religious faith as being sort of like a thing you do or learn, rather than this whole notion of tying it to a sense of awe and mystery. And it's like, whoa, there's something profound going on here. And just wondering and marveling in the face of it, because that's not something we do.
[00:08:12] Speaker A: No, that's right. Yeah.
[00:08:14] Speaker B: It's a thing we participate in that's outside of ourselves.
Disenchantment leads to a weakened sense of mystery that makes the conditions for faith in God more challenging. Like, if we think we know everything about everything, then why do we need an all powerful God if this loss of enchantment has a negative impact on faith? An important question for the church and really for the family is how we can cultivate a renewed sense of awe and wonder in our children, students, congregations and ourselves so that faith can be renewed. Here, I offer four ways we can cultivate a greater sense of awe and wonder that will lead to faith in God becoming a credible and attractive option in a skeptical world. And the first one, Katie, is be humbalay, be humble.
Just be humble. Don't interfere with words that you know nothing about.
[00:09:02] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:09:03] Speaker B: So this is really important. Sorry, stepped away from the mic there, folks. Turn off the heat pump.
And it says this. The first step to recover a sense of awe and wonder is for us to be humble. Humility is an attitude of the mind that compels us to acknowledge that God is God and that we are limited creatures that he has made. If we deny there is a God, sooner or later we begin to act as if we were divine and so begin to think and act as someone we are not. And so this is really important point, right, this whole notion of humility. And we live in a world that's sort of the information age. We think we know everything about everything. And I was thinking about our children, like, how important that is to sort of cultivate within them. A sense of almost like taking them places where it's big and awesome nature and stuff, that you're just like, whoa, I'm just a tiny little human being in the face of this massive waterfall or an ocean or whatever it is.
[00:09:59] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:10:01] Speaker B: He says this looking deeper into a mystery, into sorry. The mystery of human nature inspires awe and wonder. Consider the wonder of the psalmist who ponders what is humanity, that you are mindful of him, mortal humanity, that you should care for him, yet you made him little less than a God. With glory and honor you have crowned Him. Notice also the awe and wonder in Mary's humble soul who magnifies the Almighty, who has done great things for me. Holy is his name and that's from the Gospel of Luke, so yeah. So that's a really important one, I think, in families, like, humility in general is just an underrated virtue, right, absolutely.
[00:10:34] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:10:34] Speaker B: And in the modern age, and it's so essential to the life of a family.
[00:10:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
Because I think you get a lot of put yourself first self care RA, but actually it's more important that you serve and it's more important to be the little person, I think.
[00:10:50] Speaker B: Yeah. That's so beautiful. What do you think about self care? I reckon self care has got a bit out of hand.
[00:10:54] Speaker A: Yeah, there's definitely a place for it. We were just talking about a colleague, a friend of mine, who's having a hard time with her husband, who's in sort of advanced dementia. We're advancing dementia. And I said to her today, like, it's really important that you take half an hour and have a cup of coffee. That's actually an important thing for you. You can't look after him who don't look after you.
[00:11:15] Speaker B: Yeah. If you have no peace, you've got no peace to give. And he needs peace. Right.
[00:11:18] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. So I think there's definitely a place for proper self care, but that doesn't sort of mean squeezing everything else out so that your self care happens, I think.
[00:11:29] Speaker B: No, I think it's too it's like often self care becomes my self interest.
[00:11:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:34] Speaker B: I want to feel comfortable, I want to feel happy, I want to feel good, I want my what about me?
And I think that's the danger. Right. If an unhealthy self care is up, what about me? That's the wrong reference. Whereas centric yeah. How can I be better for others?
[00:11:50] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right.
[00:11:51] Speaker B: Different. The second thing he says, this is the second essential component of the four is ask and seek, where kids do a lot of that.
Can I have a snack, Rob? I'm just going to seek out a snack now in the pantry without even waiting for you to tell me whether I'm allowed to or not. That's a common thing, right.
When Jesus encourages us to ask and it shall be given to you seek and you shall find. In Matthew, chapter seven, we naturally interpret his words as permission to intercede for our needs. Of course this is true, but they can also be interpreted as words of encouragement to ask the questions that beg to be asked and to seek the truth that is to be found. In this sense, wonder begets wonder. When we contemplate the wonders of nature, like the sun, moon or stars, or the things that we have made, such as cars or machines, our minds naturally wonder, who made this? How did it get here? How does it work? This is good for our wondering leads to answers that lead to more questions that lead to more wonder. St Augustine encouraged all Christians to contemplate creation like this. And this is the quote question the beauty of the earth. Question the beauty of the sea. Question the beauty of the sky. Who made them if not the beautiful one? Who is not subject to change?
And it's so true and so beautiful.
This is why science is possible for Christianity. This is how Christianity really opened up the sciences, because there's a whole dynamism in the world and a sense of wonder about that and wanting to know more. That's actually seen within Christendom as like an act of reverence and love for God to find out more about his creation.
I guess in the age of sort of control and certainty, it's like, no, I don't want to wonder. I want to know everything.
[00:13:31] Speaker A: Isn't there some famous mathematician that became a Christian or was a Christian Blaise.
[00:13:35] Speaker B: Pascal, you might be thinking of?
[00:13:36] Speaker A: I'm not sure, but they sort of said, because of the way maths works, I basically have to believe that God exists.
[00:13:41] Speaker B: Yeah, there's been a couple of mathematicians actually have come that a but that has to begin with wonder, right?
And I think that this whole notion of ask and seek something really and.
[00:13:56] Speaker A: You look at somebody like DA Vinci with his sculptures and his pictures and his understanding of the human anatomy, and he was obviously someone who was seeking and wondering. And that led to the creation of beautiful things.
[00:14:09] Speaker B: Because I think that this is the thing I think in families, and particularly Christian families, we can get in this trap of thinking.
Nathaniel, our son, was sitting next to me the other day, and he was asking these really deep questions about dinosaurs and creation. And the temptation could be to say, oh, look, son, well, you know, don't worry about just or give them a really quick sort of it's all God.
God just knew what he was doing. He made it all. Don't worry. But in actual fact, I sat with Him and we talked about it, and the questions kept coming, and we kept sort of unpacking it.
[00:14:40] Speaker A: Let's just caveat this all by saying it was bedtime.
[00:14:43] Speaker B: Sure. But I think it was more than that, though, because he had some genuinely interesting questions. It wasn't simply like, oh, dad, can you tell me about the time you were five and tell me about all.
[00:14:53] Speaker A: The dinosaurs that have ever will that take?
[00:14:55] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it wasn't one of those kind of fuller questions.
The importance of encouraging that and also just asking questions in general, like when kids start to ask about some of the more as they move into adult topics. Now, they might not be ready for that yet, but they're ready for a part of a discussion about it. The temptation is to think, oh no, we shouldn't even maybe talk about certain things. Like someone starts to ask about bodies or sexuality or stuff. We think, oh no, we shouldn't talk about that. But in actual fact. We got to remember that the sin is the absence of the good and when it moves into areas that are not good. But the actual wonder is actually a healthy thing. It's part of who we're made to be. Our bodies are part of us. You know what I mean?
We should foster I think Christians should be really good at this, really. This sort of healthy sense of conversation about the world and who we are. So that's number two. Number three is spend less time looking at what we have made and more time looking up to what God has made. And I thought, that's good. I thought I was going to say, look up.
[00:15:55] Speaker A: Looking up, beautiful.
[00:15:56] Speaker B: Looking up what God has made. There Google. What does God mean?
Here's what he says. When was the last time you gazed at a full moon or a sky full of stars and said, wow, when was the last time you remember?
[00:16:07] Speaker A: Oh, recently. There was a nice moon the other night.
[00:16:10] Speaker B: Yeah, I was the same. I looked up, there's the moon. And then there was a couple of weeks before that. I remember I got home and I just stopped and stood in our driveway for about five, six minutes, just looking up at you can see all the stars. This is cloudless night. It was unbelievable. Just the awe of know. But yeah, that's important, eh, to do that. I often try and stop during the day and just sit and look at the sun. Not straight.
And now I'm coming to you. Take advice from Brennan guys speaking in utter blindness.
Moral of the story, don't look at the sun with binoculars. But yeah, no, just that sounded wrong. Looking at stopping and contemplating sort of the beauty of like a sunny day outside, even just outside my office window or something. Stopping to do that, I think, yes.
[00:16:52] Speaker A: Stopping is the key there. And it's a change in perspective that you look at something sort of from a different angle or see it through different eyes, almost.
[00:17:01] Speaker B: And you don't do it in passing, so actually stop and you don't tweet about it or post on social media. Just be in the moment. And it's not a thing to show to others. It's just for you. When was the last time you stopped in rapture at a beautiful sunset or rainbow? Do you know the magnificence and complexity of one cell of a living organism? Well, that's a good question. So for all the science buffs, it's like, look, go and look at the complexity of this thing then, and see God in that. It's not like all technical control and dominance. It's the beauty and wonder of it. Or when did you last take the time to gaze in awe at your sleeping child?
[00:17:37] Speaker A: Not just awe that they're asleep.
[00:17:38] Speaker B: Yeah, it's funny. It's probably for me, I'd say once a week, once a fortnight. That happens now when they were younger, it was a lot more common, but now it is for me. Once a week, once a fortnight, I will stop and I'll just I get.
[00:17:55] Speaker A: To look at Nathaniel's sleep every night because I've got to remove the cat from his bedroom.
[00:17:58] Speaker B: Yeah, it's funny, they're different multiple positions there.
[00:18:02] Speaker A: And Evie and Maddie still sleep in the same position. 14 year old and the baby twins.
[00:18:07] Speaker B: Man, have we become so familiar with these things or too busy that they no longer amaze us? It's a good question. Right. I'm too busy doing family life to do family life.
[00:18:18] Speaker A: I had a little realization about this the other day, actually, even before I read the article, so I was clearly.
[00:18:23] Speaker B: You were pre prepared.
[00:18:24] Speaker A: I was sort of a shift in perspective, because you have that as a mum, maybe as a dad. Depends on who cooks dinner. But usually it's me in our house, and often at the end of dinner, I sort of find myself breathing a sigh of relief, but then simultaneously starting to plan the next dinner and the next dinner, and it can feel quite exhausting that, how many dinner are these people going to want?
[00:18:45] Speaker B: You are these people ever going to.
[00:18:47] Speaker A: Stop eating different how many different dinners do these people want? I was driving to supermarket and I was sort of thinking, oh, I've got to think about how many meals we need this week and trying to plan it all.
[00:18:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:55] Speaker A: I actually had a little kind of shift and I thought, I've actually got to look at it like, how many more dinners will we have together?
We've had so many. Sure, there's loads to come and there will be new people joining us, hopefully as part of our family in the future. But at the same time, what we have now, we won't have forever. And even now, already we have kids that are missing that aren't at dinners because they're working or got other activities.
[00:19:19] Speaker B: Doing big kids stuff.
[00:19:20] Speaker A: Doing big kids stuff. That's right. And so we're already moving into that next phase in life where family dinner isn't a given anymore. So it was just a little shift in appreciating.
I cook the dinner. They don't always like it that we do sit down and we eat and we monitor complaints.
[00:19:40] Speaker B: A referee.
[00:19:41] Speaker A: Yeah. We have that time together and we have that chance to have a meal together and we won't have that forever.
[00:19:46] Speaker B: Yeah, you funny should say that. I was thinking something similar the other day myself, thinking, oh, this is a bit challenging. Then I was thinking, but hold on, you'll miss this challenge when it's gone. And also I was thinking, like, be grateful you have this.
[00:19:59] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:20:00] Speaker B: Because a lot of people don't that.
[00:20:01] Speaker A: A lot of people don't have it.
[00:20:02] Speaker B: They're sitting there going, Why do my kids not talk to me? Why do I? And I often feel, I don't know. I mean, I often feel the guilt of it. I feel like I'm a terrible father at times. I feel that, gosh, I wish I'd been more caring or more attentive. And you got to remind yourself, okay, just reset. Start again. Today's another day.
[00:20:17] Speaker A: Be in the moment now.
[00:20:18] Speaker B: But also not to focus on the gift you have been given, I think helps to deal with that.
[00:20:24] Speaker A: I popped into the library the other morning to get a book for Lucy for schoolwork, and they were just starting baby time. I was like, oh, wow. It just feels like yesterday I was taking kids to baby time, and you think, I would love to go back, but actually there were hard things about that, too, like getting them all there and everybody's grumpy and little and hungry and doesn't necessarily want to be in baby time. If you're nathaniel, no. What's this taken off?
[00:20:48] Speaker B: I ain't here for baby book about trucks. Yeah, I'm here for truck time, not.
[00:20:51] Speaker A: Baby time, but just to be in those moments and to understand that they don't last forever. The hard bits and the good bits.
[00:21:00] Speaker B: Yeah, that's good, but gosh, that whole point of spend less time looking at what we've made and more time looking up to what God has made. And I think in a family, that's a recognition that we didn't make our family. We often think we are crafting, and I think that's one of the dangers, I think, of a lot of family be what would you call it? Self help type advice, is you sort of crafting the perfect family life, but it's actually not. It's this gift. You should receive it as a gift. You should be in wonder of it.
There's things we can do to make it worse, that's for sure. But it's not a project.
It's the work of God's hand that we are here, that you and I met each other, that we have this beautiful family that we've got with our and this gift of our children and all of that sort of stuff. And whatever time we have with them and with each other, that's a profound gift. Okay, number four, fourth and final was pray. And this is an important one, right? One of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is awe and wonder, also known as fear of the Lord. And that's an important point, that fear of the Lord is to look at upon that which is truly aweful, filled with awe and wondrous and be absolutely not just enamored, but in sort of almost whoa, this is crazy, because awe and wonder lead to the enchantment that leads to faith. Then if the whole church sorry. Unites in asking for this gift of the Spirit, a renewal of faith will surely follow. That's a great point, eh?
[00:22:23] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:22:24] Speaker B: Beautiful. Because I'd never really thought of that before. The importance of saying, okay, Lord, give us the gift of that gift of the Holy Spirit, of fear of the Lord.
You almost think of it as a byproduct of something else rather than a gift you should actually seek out and want. And you're like, well, that's actually quite a profound little revelation, I reckon. Maybe it's just me here, are we? There we go. This is the spirit we pray for to pierce the veils of drudgery and boredom. It's true. So even cleaning the toilet, boring. Bringing in the firewood, boring. Cooking a meal, another meal, boring. But in actual fact, there's this awe and wonder that I am here bringing in firewood for a group of human beings who love me and who have been given to me as gifts. And that's a profound thing, right? You're like, Whoa, this is something more now.
[00:23:19] Speaker A: It's not just nothing. What was it Mother Teresa said?
Little things, ordinary things with great love.
[00:23:25] Speaker B: Yeah. That's the key. Right. And what do you do? You go and find the nearest person to you and help you think about it.
[00:23:32] Speaker A: What? I mean, there were some miracles and all that, but a lot of time what he did was ordinary things with great love. Even being crucified at the time was a relatively ordinary thing.
[00:23:44] Speaker B: Horrible but ordinary.
[00:23:45] Speaker A: Punishment.
[00:23:45] Speaker B: Awful, but yeah, another criminal. Let's go and watch the crucifixion.
[00:23:51] Speaker A: It was the love that mattered. Yeah.
[00:23:53] Speaker B: And it transforms the mundane to something beautiful. This is the spirit that leads us to contemplate God's creation in itself without wishing to grasp or control it. And I think in a family, that's important because I think as parents, particularly as our kids get older, that's my challenge at the moment. My temptation is think, oh, I really want my kids to have the faith. I want them to be good, virtuous people. And the temptations to try and really, when they're younger, you have to have a bit more hands on. But as they get a bit older, you've got to learn to, when do I let go? And not try and force them into that pattern. You've got to get them to desire to live that pattern and to love and embrace it for themselves.
[00:24:25] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:24:26] Speaker B: And faith as well, to actually make a decision to move towards God, not because, as the old saying goes, God has no grandchildren. You can't just drag your children in with you that way.
May the Holy Spirit stir up in us the gift of awe and wonder that keeps our souls alive. To new epiphanies of God's beauty, so that we might come to believe in Him. That's so beautiful. The Irish poet Patrick Kavner once lamented that quote, we have tried and tested too much lover through a chink too wide. There comes in no wonder. That's a great little quote, eh? Love poetry. He then hoped that the season of Advent would, quote, unquote, charm back the luxury of a child's soul. And that's from his poem Advent. And that's it. And I think this. Is where the celebration of the liturgical calendar of the Christian church is important. It gives us a cycle of going into the aestheticism of Lent and the sort of that's quiet. It's a bit more solitude. There's the sort of penance and fasting and stuff. And then you come into the great wonder of Easter. If everything is, like, on a high, there's no wonder anymore either.
[00:25:32] Speaker A: That's right. Yeah.
[00:25:33] Speaker B: It's all a flat. Nothingness in a know. So there's great importance in that. He says this through these simple steps of being humble, asking, seeking, looking up more and praying for the Holy Spirit's gift of awe and wonder, we can again stand before life with new freshness. If Elizabeth Browning is right and quote unquote, earth is crammed with heaven, then I don't know why I think of jam whenever I hear the word crammed, really, that jar is or that scone is just crammed with delicious jam. I don't know why. I don't know why. Some random word association. What a weirdo.
If Elizabeth Browning is right and earth is crammed with heaven, then may we behold God's glory in our enchanted universe and respond anew with faith, adoration and praise.
[00:26:16] Speaker A: Beautiful.
[00:26:17] Speaker B: That's so true, eh? And so key for families. Right. We often think, well, how do we build faith in our kids? Well, how about we start actually giving them the first movement, which is that sense of war and wonder and the mystery? Because if we teach them to be analytical controllers and control freaks and dominators of everything yeah, you don't know. My kids will have resilience by being powerful and in charge of everything. Then we're teaching them basically. There is nothing to know. They can know it all. They don't need anything outside themselves.
[00:26:43] Speaker A: It makes me think of the whole climate change crisis and the way excuse.
[00:26:48] Speaker B: Me, the boiling earth crisis, I think, stay up to date. Have we renamed it earth is boiling?
[00:26:53] Speaker A: They're saying now, but not all of it. Some of it's like flooding.
[00:26:56] Speaker B: Well, our heat pump's on, so something's going wrong here.
[00:26:59] Speaker A: Maybe we'll boil in a few months. No, just in the sense that yes, as god's creatures and we were put in charge of creation and stewardship of creation, so, yes, we have a duty to the earth to look after the planet we've been given that's been created for us.
Definitely. I agree with that.
But there's sort of I see in this boiling Earth climate change medicism wanting to control it. Well, if we just do this, we can fix it. If we just do X, we can fix it. And there's no kind of real, true purpose behind it. Nobody actually really understands why we need to fix it. Apart from not wanting to boil, we're.
[00:27:37] Speaker B: Just doing a thing.
[00:27:39] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, yeah, doing something to do something, but without a true understanding or appreciation for what we're doing it for.
I think that to me, is somewhere where a sense of wonder has been lost. We wonder at the Earth, we wonder at its beauty. We say, oh, my goodness, we must look after this.
[00:27:57] Speaker B: Yeah, that's so true.
[00:27:59] Speaker A: And the fact of thinking we can fix it, lack of humility and thinking we can just fix this.
[00:28:05] Speaker B: Yeah, we'll solve it all.
[00:28:06] Speaker A: It's funny cows, or whatever it is we have to do.
[00:28:09] Speaker B: We need to get back to Stuart and his ship.
No, we all know. But, yeah, it's true. Because at the same time, there's an inherent contradiction, because at the same time, it's this global apocalypse and we're all going to die. And at the same time, it's also a thing that we can totally control and turn off the apocalypse. And I'm like, well, those two things don't actually go together. If it truly is apocalyptic, then it's beyond us. But if it's within our control, it's not apocalyptic. So it's funny that because if we.
[00:28:42] Speaker A: Could make more ice in Antarctica, we would just do that. Right. But we didn't make the ice in Antarctica to start with, and that will.
[00:28:50] Speaker B: Have a bearing, too, on how we respond and how we treat we actually I was going to say retreat. How we treat natural resources with awe and wonder or with dominance and control. What we've tended to do is dominance and control. Instead of saying, wow, let's have awe and wonder and let's not dominate these things.
[00:29:04] Speaker A: That's right. Also, I'm reading a book. It's a fiction book at the moment that I'm reading. It's always a fiction book because you're in charge of nonfiction.
It's called Once Upon a Wardrobe, and it's about C. S. Lewis, but a lot of it's taken from his biographies and autobiographies.
It's about where Narnia came from. So it's this girl who's a really good mathematician, is trying to find out from him for her little brother. How did you come up with Narnia? Where did it come from? And he's sort of answering the question, but not answering it. But I really thought about it when I read this because it's that sense of mystery. Where does imagination come from? Where does human creativity come from? It's all got to be inspired from somewhere.
Likely because we're made in the image of God. We have the ability to create, we have the ability to imagine beautiful things.
[00:29:53] Speaker B: Well, there's something about that, actually, those of who are patrons will remember the two months ago, so not last month, before the episode of Conservative Conversations. Our monthly interview podcast was with Robert Loretz, and he talked about music, and he talked about, at one point, this very point. And it's the whole thing of inspiration, and it's different from anything else.
You actually feel like you've discovered something very unique. It's like nothing else. It's not like an idea you came up with. It's not just like reading something. There's something about inspiration that is very, very profound.
Discovering a truth that existed prior to and outside of you is a very it's quite wondrous. Hey. Wow. Yeah. That's great. Where does the book land? Or is that spoiler?
[00:30:37] Speaker A: Haven't finished it yet. Yeah, mid book he's going to get.
[00:30:40] Speaker B: To, then he's going to say, well, I was just in the spare room, I found a woman. Yeah. There was a wardrobe in there. What do you mean? Where'd the wardrobe come from?
Yeah. So we're interested to see how it's fiction, is it?
[00:30:51] Speaker A: Yeah, she's written a couple about C s. Lewis now, and I enjoy both of them.
[00:30:57] Speaker B: Christian, is she?
[00:30:58] Speaker A: I think she might be reading between the lines or potentially recently converted.
[00:31:04] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you're writing about Lewis on a regular basis, she's written a.
[00:31:07] Speaker A: Whole lot of other stuff as well, beforehand, and none of that was necessarily particularly had any kind of religious sway. So it's interesting. I wonder if she's had a conversion.
[00:31:15] Speaker B: Or you have sometimes have authors who get frustrated that the audience is not getting the message. I've actually read truly modern authors said they weren't getting the message, so I wrote a really explicit book with Christian faith in it, that they get the message.
Speaking of literature, that's a good Segue.
[00:31:29] Speaker A: Yes. Thank you. You're welcome.
[00:31:30] Speaker B: Well done. Speaking of scooters and Segs, I was going to say, what are they? Lime scooters. What's the other one? The flamingo no, segway is a thing. You're right on it. Yeah, I was right like a hopperboard. I completely ruined the Segway that I was going to talk about Segways. So we went from lime scooters to another type of Segway to an actual Segway.
[00:31:54] Speaker A: You ruined my segue. Now.
[00:31:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I've totally ruined it.
Sorry about that, folks. I absolutely ruined that. That did not land. So we had this beautiful, perfect Segue. Katie set it up and husband comes crashing it.
[00:32:07] Speaker A: I'll fix this, I'll make a joke.
[00:32:09] Speaker B: It'll be great, guys, I'll make this way better. Get out of the way. And ruined it. Reminds me of an experience I had in primary school. True story. My mate Wuramu and we were good mates, and we had those old leather satchels that you had the strap over your shoulder and the satchel hung off the back, and you'd get your glow in the dark stickers and stick them on them. And it's the last day of school, big open plan classrooms, because the old modern learning is not actually what a disaster.
[00:32:35] Speaker A: The OG modern learning.
[00:32:38] Speaker B: I was OG experimented on.
[00:32:40] Speaker A: That's what happened to you.
[00:32:42] Speaker B: That's right.
The big fish bowl and last day of school. Final day for the year. Yeah. We're going home for Christmas. And then Bumblebee comes into the classroom, lands on the window, modern learning environment window.
And my mate Wuramu goes the girl's like, yeah. Bumblebee. Wuramu goes, Get out of the way. I'll get it. And he swings his satchel at the bumblebee and it was almost like slow motion smashes this whole massive, like, bay window.
Good old Wiramu out of the way. I'll get this.
I don't know why I told you.
[00:33:21] Speaker A: That was what clinched it, though, after you came back after the holidays and it was made into four classrooms, right?
[00:33:26] Speaker B: Solve none of that OG modern learning environment problems. Okay, but seriously, now that we've made a mess of that segue, let's move into you were talking about literature, and C. S. Lewis and I stumbled across sorry, this really great tweet by a guy called Nathan Alberson, and he actually has a podcast called The Booking, and he talks about a couple other guests. They talk about great books, and it's from a Christian perspective. They take God and literature seriously, they say, and they discuss them, I think, a different piece of literature each time in their podcast. But he published a Tweet list recently, and I thought it was worth us talking about because for parents, this could be handy. He says this your kids have already devoured sorry, narnia and Lord of the Rings. Well, here are some other fantasy novels to Edify, Terrify and Amuse without pumping their minds full of garbage. And that's our big challenge for us, hey. Trying to find books because our kids devour books, but it's like, what can we get them to read that's not just crap and full of ideological propaganda? Because I don't know about you, but it feels to me like a lot of propagandists or lousy authors hacks have gone, oh yeah, writing young adult fiction seems a pretty easy thing to do.
[00:34:36] Speaker A: And they're all in that space younger than that. Some of the graphic novels that come home that are just very subtle wokism dribling in that early I was going to say formation, but actually malformation.
[00:34:50] Speaker B: Malformation.
I have a feeling that if those authors tried to write adult fiction, a lot of them would not succeed because adults would go, this is garbage. But they can get away with it.
[00:35:00] Speaker A: It's just propaganda wrapped up kids. Yeah.
[00:35:03] Speaker B: And it's often, too they might not even realize they're doing it. It's like, oh, what's the popular thing of the day? Oh, yeah, I'll just do that and I'll tell a story about some kids in a goblin.
[00:35:11] Speaker A: Well, also, I think there's an element where you get somebody's written the first four books of a series and they're actually very good. Nathaniel read those ones about the dragons. I can't remember what they're called, but he really liked the first four.
[00:35:22] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, I remember those.
[00:35:23] Speaker A: And they were all right. And then the fifth one, suddenly there was a homosexual couple.
It just started to dribble in. Almost had the feeling that the publisher was like, well, we can't keep unless you stick some of this stuff in it.
[00:35:35] Speaker B: Yeah, we need some token stuff in.
[00:35:37] Speaker A: Here, publishing kind of thing.
[00:35:40] Speaker B: So here's the first of the books. Here's the recommendations that he's got here. First of one is called Five Children, and it five Children and it edith Nesbitt arguably invented modern children's fantasy through this book. This one is about yep, five children who find a puddle gumish sand Fairy. Man, that's a mouthful. He grants wishes that go very wrong, and the results make for a charming adventure. See also the rest of the series. Have you heard of that one before?
[00:36:08] Speaker A: I've heard of it, yeah.
[00:36:09] Speaker B: I've never read it. This one's a classic. The wonderful wizard of Oz.
[00:36:13] Speaker A: We've had a couple of kids read this.
[00:36:14] Speaker B: Al Frank Baum's fairy tale is not much like the movie, at least in tone. It's different. Eh, every page of this adventure fantasy brims with characters, settings, and ideas. Expect both whimsy and menace.
[00:36:27] Speaker A: Two of my favorite things.
[00:36:28] Speaker B: See also the Bajillion other Oz books, and there are a lot eh, it's quite funny how The Wizard of Oz was. Yeah, it set a tone and a perception that wasn't necessarily it was a great film, but not accurate to what the breadth and depth of the books were.
Half magic by Edward Eager. Have you read that before?
[00:36:51] Speaker A: No.
[00:36:52] Speaker B: Half Magic by Edward Eager follows in the footsteps of Edith Nesbitt with well written stories of children having magical misadventures. In this one, five siblings find a coin that grants wishes, but only halfway. Oh, that's a great concept. Shenanigans ensue.
I'm sure they do. See also all his other books, so that's a pretty this one you must have heard of Howl's moving Castle.
How's moving castle? Diana Wayne. Sorry. Wynn Jones. Apologies. Apologies. Anyone called Wayne? So Diana wyn. Jones wrote densely plotted fantasies for kids. In this one, a cursed Hat maker named Sophie. Oh, you got to wonder whether not Tolkien J. K. Rowling was in any way influenced by this.
[00:37:40] Speaker A: I'm sure she's read all of these.
[00:37:42] Speaker B: In this one, a cursed hat maker named Sophie and a pouting wizard named Hal try to outwood a witch. Expect comedy, action, and romance.
[00:37:50] Speaker A: Romance.
[00:37:51] Speaker B: Oh, romance. Oh, lovely. See also the rest of the series.
The one thing he doesn't say is what age, I guess.
[00:37:58] Speaker A: Yeah, I'd say, depending on how independent your readers are. Ten plus for most of these, unless you're doing read aloud, which they'd all be fine for.
[00:38:06] Speaker B: Okay, here's a classic. Here's an absolute classic we got on our shelf. Watershed down. Yeah.
[00:38:10] Speaker A: We can't get anybody to read it, though.
[00:38:11] Speaker B: By Richard Adams. I was thinking I might actually start reading it to them. Richard Adams wrote the greatest talking animal fantasy of all time. Oh, that's George orwell Animal Farm. Might have a few words.
[00:38:22] Speaker A: Different, though, isn't it? Because it's not. Well, yeah, but the same audience.
[00:38:26] Speaker B: The greatest talking animal fantasy of all time.
Narnia's. Up there. Red Wall. Yes.
[00:38:34] Speaker A: I'm surprised Red Bull didn't make it to this list.
[00:38:36] Speaker B: Yeah, someone added it to the list further down because our boy Nathaniel, he loves red Wall loves Red Wall, and it's a really good series, actually. So Richard Adams wrote the greatest talking animal fantasy of all time, a strange and beautiful book about rabbits on an epic quest to find a new home. Be warned, it's more violent than you might expect. Do you remember the movie?
[00:38:56] Speaker A: No, never watched it.
[00:38:57] Speaker B: Oh, man, I remember watching them. It was like used to be on once or twice a year on TV, and at the end you'd be in tears, bright eyes burning like fire, because that was the theme song for it.
[00:39:10] Speaker A: You guys don't need to watch it now.
[00:39:11] Speaker B: You just heard oh, man. It was yes.
[00:39:15] Speaker A: See. Lucy won't watch lucy. She's never liked any of those anything where animals movies with animals. She doesn't like animals getting hurt or funnier. She won't go near them getting lost.
[00:39:24] Speaker B: Animals that get lost and find animals.
See also Nada thumbs way down for his other books, so that's interesting. So the other books didn't make the cut. Oh, he's a classic. Winnie the pooh. AA. Milne's famous honey loving beer who lives in the Hundred Acre Woods, is still a classic. Witty, funny, and full of lively characters like Eeyore, Piglet, Rabbit and Owl. Don't bother with the movies and shows. Read this.
It's true, there is a style in the way those books are written.
[00:39:54] Speaker A: A, I like how he describes EOR as lively, though.
Character.
[00:39:59] Speaker B: I think that's lively character. But, yeah, there's something true about the old classics.
I guess the movies could be a way a segue in for your kids, like a gateway drug to read the book.
[00:40:10] Speaker A: Although I see what he's saying.
[00:40:11] Speaker B: They're not particularly yeah, it's about the fantasy writing. The marvelous misadventures of Sebastian. I'd never heard of this one. Lloyd Alexander wrote this witty adventure about a young fiddler who finds himself involved with a circus troop, a runaway princess, an assassination plot, and an enchanted villain.
[00:40:31] Speaker A: See also the villain violin, whoops I.
[00:40:35] Speaker B: Was going to say, why would there be an enchanted villain?
What a dumb thing to write. How about a dumb thing to read, mate? It's an enchanted violin, pal. Okay, that makes more sense. See also the first two lives of Lucas Cashier.
Here we go. This is a classic.
Mrs. Frisbee and the rats of NIM. You've heard of this, eh? I remember reading this. Primary school and Robert O'Brien's. Newbury Award winner. A widowed field mouse named Mrs. Frisbee tries to cure her son. She'll need the help of some mysteriously intelligent rats. Dark, melancholy and gripping. See also the Silver crown. Yeah, the NIM series. Man, there's something about those books, man. I remember as a kid, the Wind in the Willows. Kenneth Graham's story is about the Genteel friends mole, Ratty and Badger, a ratty smell whose friend, Mr. Toad, is a reckless automobile connoisseur. It's beautifully written, funny, and very British. See also Toad of Toad Hall, a play based on the book. Do you remember Wind in the Willows? I do, yep. The wind in the willows It's a great book. And people had added others to the bottom of the tweet here, and, like, redwall was added by someone. Could you think of any others of your own?
[00:42:01] Speaker A: The tale of Desperaux, it was one that we down well with our girls. Kate what's her last name? Can't remember the author's last name. Sorry.
[00:42:07] Speaker B: The tale of Desperaux with an X on the end, isn't it?
[00:42:10] Speaker A: Yeah, it's spelt like the French. Desperaux.
[00:42:12] Speaker B: P A no, there's no at the very end. Desperaux.
Okay. Yeah.
I knew what I meant. Another one was what was it called? There's two names for it.
It's called I'm just googling it right now. It's called, um it's also known as the Satanic Mill.
Don't let that put you off it's by Otfred Presler. It was originally German, and it's translated into English. And the reason I knew about it was because I had a teacher in primary school who read it to us each day in class. And Nathaniel loved it, and so did Eleanor when she tuned in. It's really beautiful. It's actually the Christian story about a guy who gets caught in servitude in a satanic mill run by a sorcerer. Sorcerer, yeah. But he enslaved people. And what frees him, though, is this girl singing the Hallelujah that's right. Song. On Easter Sunday morning.
He falls in love with this girl singing the song. That's the thing that draws him out, and she has to save him. It's really quite beautiful, actually. Very, very beautiful. Christian allegory. It's not a tolkien would approve because it's not like lewis is very obvious.
[00:43:27] Speaker A: Yeah. Not as overt as Lewis.
[00:43:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:43:29] Speaker A: Although the more you read Narnia, the more subtle things you pick up as sure.
[00:43:34] Speaker B: I mean, that criticism between Lewis and Tolkien is often, I think, overhyped by some people. They're like, yeah, tolkien looked at Lewis's work and he's like, what a letter garbage man? No, that's not at all. They were good friends, and they consulted and talked, and he just had a different style. He wasn't as big a fan of that approach. He didn't say it was wrong.
[00:43:54] Speaker A: And he was quite honest. He was writing an.
[00:43:59] Speaker B: Even I think the one thing that he was a bit more critical of, though, in his personal conversations with him or notes or whatever it might have been, was about putting Santa Claus in the story.
[00:44:07] Speaker A: That's right. Eden wasn't keen.
[00:44:08] Speaker B: What's this fella doing here? Funny, that's Tolkien, the great literary professor, probably speaking. But yeah, the Satanic Mill is more it's not like Narnia, where it's this really but it is pretty.
It's all there, but it's beautiful. And it was just there's something about it, and I think particularly for young boys, nathaniel was really invested in this young male character who was caught in this sort of enslavement with these other young men and would he get out of it and what would it so there's some good books there, folks. If you're looking to read some good.
[00:44:42] Speaker A: Books, help you reinstate your sense of awe and wonder. Yeah, books can do that. It's really important to find books that speak truth to our children's lives, even if it's reading Narnia over and over again.
[00:44:58] Speaker B: I think, too, I bought this series, actually, hoping our older kids might read it when they get a bit older and their sort of tastes mature a bit, is I bought Frank Peretti's This Present Darkness. This present darkness. And piercing the darkness, prophet is another one as well. And they are great reads. I remember reading them, I was probably 16 or 17. And it really brought to life for me the notion of the spiritual world and the whole thing with angels and demons. Now, not every bit of theology necessarily is going to be on point there, but they are really well told stories as well. They have a sort of, I guess you'd say, thriller, supernatural thriller. They're not really horror, but supernatural thriller. He did write us a Christian horror called Oath. I think it was it's great. It's really good. But it's still really more of supernatural thriller. But yeah. So it's important. Are you right for developing awe and wonder in children? Yeah.
All righty. So that musical interlude means that it's time for our moment of goodness, truth or beauty. And also for our scripture reflection for the month. Katie, ladies before gentlemen, as usual, you know, kind hearted man that I am, tell me, what is your moment of goodness, truth or mean?
[00:46:25] Speaker A: There's been a lot in the last wee while, but just on the weekend we had our oldest had her first formal.
[00:46:32] Speaker B: Yeah, lovely. I was going to do that one. I'm glad you did it.
[00:46:35] Speaker A: Oh, have you stolen it? If I stole it?
[00:46:37] Speaker B: No. You haven't actually went somewhere because I thought, I bet you she's going to talk about that. Oh, no.
[00:46:40] Speaker A: I had a few could have chosen from, but actually, I mean, it was beautiful seeing her all dressed up and really enjoying herself. But actually the thing that I appreciate most, we ended up somehow mysteriously with awe and wonder. We ended up with, as you do with all of her friends staying the house and coming over beforehand to get ready.
[00:47:00] Speaker B: It was like a wedding, eh? It was like a wedding.
[00:47:02] Speaker A: I don't know how it happened.
[00:47:03] Speaker B: Suddenly I was like hairdressing and makeup.
[00:47:05] Speaker A: And the before party and driving people to android.
One of my friends from school, who's a lovely lady, came down with her massive makeup collection and helped put makeup on them and do hair and they just had a great time. It was just really nice to see these girls who are just happy to go together and not worried about going with boys or not going with boys. They just were hanging out as friends. And that was quite just going for a good, fun time.
[00:47:31] Speaker B: It was quite I was going to say cute. It was lovely.
There was a real genuine sense of joy.
[00:47:38] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:47:39] Speaker B: And it was no, there was each other's company.
[00:47:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:42] Speaker B: Because the tradition has been to associate these things with behaviors that are unhealthy.
Let's really hit the booze. Let's drink before and afterwards and then after parties. I remember even when I was in high school, it was all about the drinking. If it wasn't that, it was about who was hooking up with who, and there was just none of that. Right. It was this really beautiful, innocent joyful. Like, wow. They saw it as a milestone.
[00:48:06] Speaker A: Yeah, they did.
[00:48:08] Speaker B: And they really invested in it. There's something good about that. They had a mile and they just.
[00:48:11] Speaker A: Enjoyed each other's company, and they were all helping each other with eyeliner and hair and just getting stuck in.
[00:48:18] Speaker B: That's great.
[00:48:19] Speaker A: It was nice.
[00:48:20] Speaker B: I loved it.
[00:48:20] Speaker A: And Lucy came home with all these photos from the photo booth with all of her and her friends making that duck face in every single photo. I'm like, could you not do one.
[00:48:28] Speaker B: With a smile, Mum? We're cool.
[00:48:32] Speaker A: Too cold to smile.
[00:48:34] Speaker B: Well, that's lovely. I'm glad you mentioned that, because I thought I beat you. Katie's going to talk about that. I'm glad you did. So my moment of goodness, truth or beauty is actually a quote. I stumbled.
[00:48:44] Speaker A: I didn't know we could do quotes.
[00:48:45] Speaker B: Well, we can. We can do you can do whatever you want or a wonder and totally up to you.
[00:48:51] Speaker A: I'll be back next month with lots of quotes.
[00:48:54] Speaker B: It has to be it can't be some random quote from a Blumen mechanics manual. It has to be.
[00:48:59] Speaker A: That might be beautiful.
[00:49:02] Speaker B: Make sure not to change the oil on a six monthly basis. Okay. So Mike was actually a quote. That an important one, actually, to what we talk about on this podcast that I came across while reading another book.
And I'll talk about it once I've finished, actually. A very good book so far, but it's a quote from John Chrysostom. He is a saint if you're a Catholic or Orthodox, I think he's a saint as well. Some Anglicans, I think.
And he's like he's a church father, though. And this is what he said. This is from one of his Sunday sermons.
What, 14, 1516, 1700 years. 1800 years ago.
Let everything take second place to our care of our children, and I'll say that again, let everything take second place to our care of our children, our bringing them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. If from the beginning we teach them to love true wisdom, they will have great wealth and more glory than riches can provide. If a child learns a trade or is highly educated for a lucrative profession, all this is nothing compared to the art of detachment from riches. If you want to make your child rich, teach them this he is truly rich who does not desire great possessions or surround himself with wealth, but who requires nothing. Don't think that only monks need to learn the Bible. Children about to go out into the world stand in greater need of scriptural knowledge. So true way. That's such a beautiful and powerful quote. And hundreds and hundreds of years ago, one of the fathers of the church is saying he's telling parents, he's speaking to us today, too. Let everything take second place to the care of your children. How often do we get that wrong, though? I think I get that wrong a lot in family life the mortgage, the house, the lawns, the sports, whatever it is. But in actual fact, everything else takes second place to the care of our children and making sure that they're raised and trying to transmit and share the faith with them and that they know the Scriptures. We're trying to do that at the moment a with our kids. We've started this little challenge. Okay, you've got a month to learn all of the books of the New Testament, and you get a prize if you do it.
[00:51:18] Speaker A: The other night he was trying to remember them all and he couldn't.
[00:51:21] Speaker B: So there was Corinthians and then he went Galintians. Galintians. No, no, that's made up Nathaniel Galatians you're thinking of there. You don't mean galatians. No, they're not colossians either. So, yeah, it was funny, but trying to give them that sort of grounding in that sense of our tradition and who we are. And as parents, you can't do anything greater for your kids. Give them the tools they'll need as they leave home to actually navigate the darkness. Okay, your scripture reflection for the month, Katie.
[00:51:52] Speaker A: Psalm 121.
[00:51:53] Speaker B: Oh, that's good sense. A song of what that is a temple psalm going up to the hill of the Lord.
[00:52:00] Speaker A: That's right.
A prayer for the traveler as well. According to my clip notes, if you're.
[00:52:07] Speaker B: Traveling, make sure you go up to the hill of the Lord.
[00:52:11] Speaker A: It's the one that says, I lift my eyes up to the mountains. Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. It's beautiful, actually. The whole psalms are only 410, but it makes me think again of what we've been talking about this morning with the wonder. So often we get bogged down in life and like I was with all the cooking, the dinner, incessantly and just life and just busyness and focusing on all the things you have to do that we are downcast, even if you don't sort of realize it. And actually to change your perspective, it's important to lift your eyes and you have to deliberate. It has to be a real movement of the will sometimes to lift your eyes, see the Lord, and to see the way. Forward that's putting yourself in his trust and care. It goes on to say that the Lord will know he never sleeps. He who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. He's always watching over us, even when we're asleep.
[00:53:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
Mountains are very important, too, to our Christian tradition, and we inherit that, obviously, from the Jewish, our elder brothers in the faith.
Yeah, it's really important that the mountain of the Lord, the hill of the Lord.
[00:53:26] Speaker A: The commentary I read said that if they were traveling and they could see there was a wooded hill, they'd be saying, well, how can we get through this wooded hill? Hill? We know that we're going to be safe. And that's why they'd pray this psalm. I thought it's funny you think about it today, like the hills and the woods we have today are different, but they're still there.
[00:53:43] Speaker B: Yeah, that's true. And that whole notion of even some of the great spiritual writers in the history of the church talk about ascending the mountain of the Lord and coming closer to him and what that means, how we have to let go of ourselves. And the risk of that beautiful mine was Romans 116. For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. Now, the reason why that scripture really struck out, or stuck out, I suppose, whichever way you want to say to me, was because it's this very simple, it's one sentence, but it actually contains a wealth of wisdom. So first of all, there's that encouragement not to be ashamed of the Gospel. How often today are we looking for other solutions? And even in our family life, maybe what we might just need to do is just actually sit and way or sit and go back to the Scriptures to get a bit of wisdom about what to do. And we're often looking for technical fixes outside of that, when maybe we just need to go back to them. Don't be ashamed of it. Go back to it. It's part of who we are. It's not outdated. It's not a nice little poetic book. It is the very profound wisdom for the fullness of human flourishing because it is the power of God and it brings salvation. And so don't forget that that in times of crisis in a family, the Scriptures can be the thing that are the saving grace in those moments. So don't ever be afraid to go back to them. And then also where it talks about first to the Jew, then to the Gentile, this whole notion of God's revelation of himself that unfolds over time through those various covenants he makes, starting with Adam and then Adam and eve and then sort of working out from there until Christ opens up that relationship to the whole of the world, to Gentile as well. And that we are now no longer separated. There's no distinction. We're all one in Christ. It's quite a profound thing. There's so much about our faith and our tradition and who we are wrapped up in that. And of course the big thing though really is for our families. How often do we try and solve other problems when we should just maybe just stop, pray, read the scriptures, get a little bit of quiet clarity and wisdom and then go back to trying to fix a family crisis or something like that? Absolutely. Or a marriage crisis, as the case may be.
Alrighty, so that was our moment of goodness, truth or beauty. And our scriptural reflections for the month. Katie, let's look at our listener questions now. Shall we do that? Yeah, let's do that. You like the radio shows and we've got some good questions today. So the first one is this how should parents of children attending a Catholic school? And this would be probably any school really, but probably a Christian school in particular too. In our case, a primary school challenge and overturn the school's policy on its school documents regarding sexual and gender indoctrination that the current government and activists such as Inside Out, which is the organization, tell them to do. So. The school's conforming itself to things that are not good by the sounds of it. We have spoken to the school officials but sadly have hit a wall. And they say we have spoken to the school principal, the deputy principal, the assistant principal and even the board of trustees about our concerns, but to no avail. It is absolutely concerning and alarming. We know not all Catholic schools are like this. The view of the officials, I guess the leaders of the school, they told me they make a big difference. Could you point us to any resources or give us advice to present, to how to present, I guess to our school to stop supporting this indoctrination campaign and this evil? Yeah. Well, first thing is you got to acknowledge it is evil.
[00:57:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:57:23] Speaker B: True corruption of young minds in ways that are not good. Right? Yeah, but yeah. What are your thoughts when you hear this question?
[00:57:31] Speaker A: Well, it's a tough one.
[00:57:32] Speaker B: It is tough. Especially if you've tried what I would say speak to the board, speak to the principal and then you've tried that and you get a brick wall.
[00:57:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
I don't know if you'd get anywhere but there are programs out there you could present to them as alternatives.
I think it's very hard for schools as well, depending you may have a good principal but if the board's not supportive, you're going to run into issues there.
Likewise if you have deputy or assistant principal that are good.
We're very fortunate at our school that we have solid management, pretty solid board that do listen to concerns.
But it's only going to get harder, which is sad to say, as far as I can see, it's not going to get any easier for Catholic and Christian schools to try to avoid teaching the stuff that the government wants them to teach.
[00:58:21] Speaker B: Yeah. And really to be proactively teaching what is true and good.
[00:58:24] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right.
[00:58:25] Speaker B: And that's what they're countering more and more. It's not simply that they won't let them, I guess, not teach the nonsense. It's that they won't let them teach what is good. Yeah.
[00:58:35] Speaker A: I mean, at the end of the day, you can you do the right to remove your children from those programs, and I think you should exercise that if you're concerned about them.
[00:58:44] Speaker B: Here's what I'd say.
This person's tried some things. Here one thing, as I say, I'd say I'm not sure how you approach the board of trustees that can make a difference. So the way you approach makes a huge difference. If it's initially a very hostile engagement, that tends to shut down some of your avenues, often straight away.
But at the same time, I totally understand why parents would be extremely concerned. I always get concerned when I see this stuff because I know the potential to actually do harm to our children and a parent. I don't want my children harmed. Ideologues, go away, please.
I get that sense and the fervor we often have, but we've often got to sort of tame that a little bit to get a good outcome. One thing I think is when you approach a board, there was some really good advice. I know. Family first. I think the website is familyfirst.org. NZ so that's family first. New Zealand. They had a great interview with the mum a couple of months ago who actually approached her board about all this kind of stuff. And she had expertise in this area, professional expertise. And so she talked about, in a very matter of fact and really common sense, easy way to understand how to actually have a meeting with your board so that you can get better outcomes. And so she talked about the fact that a lot of board members don't realize that they are actually legally responsible for what happens in the school.
[01:00:01] Speaker A: That's right.
[01:00:01] Speaker B: And a lot of them don't. They're sitting on boards and they're like, I'm just on the board. I'm just like a parent help it. No, you are legally responsible for something.
[01:00:08] Speaker A: Management.
[01:00:08] Speaker B: Yeah. And the governance. And if something goes terribly wrong, you can be actually legally held liable. So she says, you've got to go in and remind them of their duties and their obligations. And that what that means, is, do you understand what's being taught to kids? And what if harm comes from this? You will be liable. And so it sort of really wakes them up.
We've actually got to take some action here if they're not prepared to. So I recommend seeking out that interview.
And there was some good advice there about how to have those conversations with the board I don't know this particular person, if that was how they did that. So maybe that might not be relevant. But for others, that's important. I think another thing that's essential is you've got to get a community around you.
[01:00:46] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:00:47] Speaker B: If you don't have that already, get a community of other people. It helps, I think, provide a bit of a guardrail. Well, a healthy community will a community that's a bit jaundiced can become a bit of an angry mob. You don't want that.
[01:01:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:01:02] Speaker B: But a healthy community of people who will help you, they're guardrails because they help you keep perspective and avoid you sort of going into rage and mania and stuff like that. They sort of say, okay, we can do this, we can do this. They help you avoid despair. And I think also with a community, you probably have got a bit more of a chance, I think, of really possibly having your voice heard, sizing a bit of change. And I think that's essential. The other thing is really school yourself up. So you're in a Catholic school setting. There are some documents that I'd highly recommend. The Vatican issued a document about the question of gender and issues like that a few years ago. I think it's called male and female. He created them. I could be wrong. Just Google Vatican document on gender and read that. That's a really good document. And you can speak to the Catholic school and the board about this and say, look, this doesn't correspond with what our own faith teaches. This is important. And like you've said, Katie, recommending good resources in groups. Loving for Life new Zealand are a great group. Encourage the school to get them in.
I would also consider other things. I would go to the bishop. If you're getting no joy with the school, go above the head of the school and go to the bishop and say, look, this is not good. And if that's getting you nowhere, I would say try and get a group of parents together and actually even write to Rome, to the yeah, yeah. And say, look, this is not good. This is happening in our Catholic school in our country, and they don't seem to be taking our faith seriously. And it's really a threat to children. I would say, don't be afraid. Don't ever think, oh, we'll just give up and walk away, because that's what the ideologues require. And then they rely on, really, is bullying everyone into submission. They'll just go away eventually. We just scare them away.
You got to acknowledge you don't want to be a cremudgeonly, old angry person, but you've also got to acknowledge that a lot of these fights are quite lonely and they're often hard. They're not easy, they're not quick, they're not easy, and they take a lot of effort. So you've got to really commit to my I'm going to be that parent, but be that parent in a way that's charitable and wise, I would say.
Last but not least, I think Katie is to consider if all else fails and the school is teaching really, errant nonsense.
Don't leave your kids vulnerable. I'd take them out of the school, pull them out, take them somewhere else, homeschool them. Do what you need to. Remember what we heard from John Chrysostom. What did he say? Let everything take second place to the care of our children. And I really mean that. I mean, I've had moments where we're not there for ourselves, but I've had moments where I thought, oh, this is borderline. And if it had have gone any further, it would have been like, no, we've got to get our kids out of this. This is not good. And it's sending a statement. If all the good parents just leave their kids and your job and the job of your kids is not to evangelize a school full of evil ideology. No, they're not cut out for that, and that's not their calling. Your job as a parent is to safeguard. And so often people say, oh, but if all the good kids leave, it'll go downhill. No, that's not how that works. What you're saying then is, well, we're relying on all the good kids to do the job for us.
[01:04:08] Speaker A: That's right.
[01:04:08] Speaker B: No, it's not what they I think.
[01:04:10] Speaker A: They'Ll often come at teaching these things from angle of tolerance as well. That's what I found. We've got to learn about these things so we can tolerate everybody, so we can love everybody. We're not proper Christians if we don't love everybody.
But it's got to work both ways. How is it loving for your children to be exposed to it? How is it tolerant for your children to be exposed to it when it's not your family's choice?
So I think it's important that you highlight those discrepancies when you speak to them.
[01:04:37] Speaker B: Well, if a Christian school should be representing discipleship in Christ, and faithful discipleship means we're faithful to Christ and what he says. And if the school's not doing that, it's not being faithful to its core mission. And it's not whatever or whatever they're serving, it's not Christ.
I know that's hard to hear and hopefully no one's scandalized by that, but we're living in an age that's getting harder, as you said, and we need to actually have a bit of a nuggetiness about ourselves.
As Bob Dylan once said, let's not talk falsely now, for the hour is getting late and that song, All Along The Watchtower, it's true, the hour is getting late. It's enough of the sort of the false talk and the sort of platitudes. We need to actually be very clear and concise in charity, of course, but we need to be very courageous in calling out error. So, yeah, a tough position to be in, man. But I would encourage you, pray, get community. Look at that family first resource. And I would say, don't be afraid to go above the school. The squeaky wheel I know no one likes to be the squeaky wheel, but the squeaky wheel does get the oil. And sometimes it's a matter of waiting out some bad management until better management comes, or things like that.
[01:05:45] Speaker A: Bear in mind as well, boards are supposed to ask for community feedback. Perhaps you could suggest that's something they do if they haven't done it in a while, if they're shutting you down like this, it suggests they may not have been asking for feedback when they should have. Yeah.
[01:05:58] Speaker B: I think part of it is helping them to discover their courage, this whole notion of, oh, we can't the government's told us.
[01:06:03] Speaker A: Yeah, I know it's hard because their funding comes from the ministry. Right.
[01:06:06] Speaker B: But at the end of the day, we don't serve the government.
Supposedly as Christian schools. Our institutions should serve Christ first. And so they've got to be faithful to that. Otherwise they're really failing in the core mission. Okay, question number two. Should Christians involve themselves in politics? If so, how kind of relevant.
[01:06:24] Speaker A: Yes. By praying for our politicians.
[01:06:27] Speaker B: Okay, so that's one way. Praying for our politicians.
[01:06:30] Speaker A: Yeah. I don't have a problem with Christians being involved in politics.
[01:06:34] Speaker B: No, they should be.
[01:06:36] Speaker A: It's a very tight rope to walk. Tight, tightrope, yeah.
[01:06:41] Speaker B: Hard path to journey. Right?
[01:06:43] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[01:06:44] Speaker B: Yeah. I think Christians should involve themselves in politics. There's this funny dichotomy that some have got about the church versus politics. Politics versus the church. It's not it's always been both. And, like, if you're a faithful Christian, we know in the New Testament, we are told by Peter we have a priesthood as ordinary people. And what a priest do? They take unholy things, they consecrate them to God and make them holy. What's our priesthood, then, as ordinary people? As ordinary, everyday men and women in the pews? Our job is to go and take the world and to consecrate it to God. So our work, the world around us, the things we involve ourselves in, our sphere of influence should be a place where we're trying to bring that to God as much as possible, to try and make it more holy. And that includes politics. It's not exempt from that.
As the old Irish saying goes, the people get the leaders they deserve. So if we want to see change, we've actually got to work actively and be in that space. So I think that's definitely Christians should be involved. Voting is one thing. Election year, think about how you vote and why you're voting. Maybe we could talk about that if you want to ask questions, listeners about that, and we'll maybe cover that in a future episode. But I think also, primarily, people often forget it's more than that. Get involved with parties, volunteer, help be a Christian in those spaces to bring light.
And don't ever live the lies in those places. Don't ever support bad policy that's contrary to the gospel.
So Christians should?
The answer is yes, they should. If so, how? Get involved. Join parties. That way you can like well, not all parties, but some. In New Zealand, you can help to select candidates, be a volunteer, maybe. Even if you're suited to this and you've got the skills and the experience and a bit of wisdom and virtue, be a candidate for a party.
Your voting matters. And I think also inform yourself, and I don't just mean about current politics that's know, katie, what does the National Party think about this? Or what's the abortion policy of the party? No, no, I mean inform yourself about a philosophy of politics.
What is the Christian vision of what politics should be? That's a much more important question.
Try and go to the root of the problem, not the symptoms. Yeah. So, yes, get involved. Easy question. Thank you. Number three, why has the Christian church lost relevance to our teenagers? Wow. Big final question. Katie, what do you think?
[01:09:12] Speaker A: Should churches be relevant?
[01:09:15] Speaker B: I see where you're going with this now. Yeah, that's a great.
[01:09:20] Speaker A: Relevance. The most important thing.
[01:09:22] Speaker B: Well, that's a good question.
That is a great question.
[01:09:26] Speaker A: Thank you.
[01:09:27] Speaker B: I don't think they should be. Well, the church is always relevant in a sense, because the human need for salvation and for God does never ceases to be. It never changes. That is always there. So the church is always relevant in that way. But if the church is trying to be relevant to the culture of the day, that's when you can get in real trouble.
So if it doesn't understand that, it will always be relevant. If it's faithful and loving and outward focused and active, and it's trying to say, well, how do the cool people of today think? Let's think and act more like them, then that's when you get in trouble, right?
[01:10:03] Speaker A: That's right.
[01:10:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:10:04] Speaker A: Trying to be like the cool kids.
[01:10:05] Speaker B: Yeah. So, yeah, the church should be faithful. And if you're faithful to Christ, guess what comes on the back of that relevance, right? It does. Right.
If you have reverence, that brings relevance, I think, as well, because we're talking today, we started by talking about awe and wonder. How much awe and wonder is there in our churches and their worship and what they're doing? Or is it like dinky games and gimmicks and consumerism come along to our church and have an experience? Dry ice? Yeah. No. Or is there something here like, whoa, this is different. There's awe, there's wonder because what does it do? It's a sign to people who come that there is a real, tangible, powerful, all powerful God that these people believe in because their whole lives are shaped and their behaviors, their worship, everything reflects that's.
[01:10:49] Speaker A: Right.
[01:10:51] Speaker B: So the church, why is the church lost relevance to our teenagers? That's the key question, though I think.
[01:10:56] Speaker A: So many teenagers get bogged down in life, being teenagers.
[01:10:59] Speaker B: Hard work.
[01:11:00] Speaker A: It really is. There's all those emotions and hormones and everybody's saying, what are you going to.
[01:11:04] Speaker B: Do when you and the end of the world? And if you got to save us from the climate boiling apocalypse, boiling planet.
[01:11:10] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. It's all doom and gloom.
[01:11:15] Speaker B: It's all fun till someone loses an eye.
[01:11:17] Speaker A: As church, we should be encouraging our teenagers to lift their eyes up.
[01:11:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:11:21] Speaker A: Lift up your eyes to the hills.
[01:11:23] Speaker B: I see what you did there. You're segwaying back into making everything so relevant.
I'm all about the segue, not the ride on segue, the actual segue.
[01:11:33] Speaker A: Yeah. I think we need to be giving them something to lift their eyes to.
[01:11:37] Speaker B: Yeah. That is awesome.
[01:11:38] Speaker A: And that doesn't mean the worship band on the stage or even, in our case, the priest on the altar. It means God. And we always should always be pointing.
[01:11:47] Speaker B: To God, to Christ the source and the summit everything should flow out of and lead back to that. Yeah. I don't think the church has actually lost relevance to our teenagers. It never had. Like I said, the church is what it is, effectively the mission of Christ on earth.
It is the hands and feet of Christ on earth and everyone needs that. So it hasn't lost relevance. But what it's often is, it's become timid or weak maybe. So it's not effective in its engagement or it's not as faithful. So it's just like, well, why do I need the church?
If your local church has become irrelevant, it's possibly because it's made itself irrelevant. And what I mean by that is it's just sort of to a teenager, if it looks like just another version of a golf club with a few hymns thrown in, well, why do I need to go to church? I can go to the golf club and have more fun instead.
[01:12:40] Speaker A: And I think teenagers of all kind of subsets of people, teenagers, need to be called on, even if they don't realize that themselves. They need to be called on to be better people, to believe in something that's bigger. And that's why so many of them have cottoned onto the climate crisis or the strikes or whatever, because they need a cause. It's sort of part of their being.
[01:13:02] Speaker B: Do you know what it is again? It's back to awe and wonder.
[01:13:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:13:05] Speaker B: There's awe and wonder in the face of this big transcendent thing bigger than me that I'm called to oh, it's the climate, it's saving the know.
Yeah, you're so right. That's such a good point. And I think, too, that basically this is why that where we started was so important and we didn't intend this, did not think about, this is not a plotted trajectory at all. But we're about to stick to landing, I think, in a big way. Thank you, Holy Spirit was that article started and one of the big things? Was that awe and wonder? And this is where you need it. Do the scriptures come alive to our teenagers? Does the history of our Christian faith come alive? Or is it like dry and boring because we don't even really have a wonder for it or we're not transmitting to them? Is it any wonder that this is crazy at the moment? Like Jordan Peterson is doing all the heavy lifting for us. He's got this roundtable discussion they're putting out like they're two hour long episodes going through chapter by chapter, reading through every verse of the Book of Exodus with this table of Christian and Jewish leaders unpacking the wonder and the awe of what's contained in this text. How many churches are doing that? Yeah, they're not, right? That's our book. That's our book and we're not even doing it. And we're like, no, we've got to have more drums and strobe lights and a big youth games hall. Now, these things are not necessarily unimportant. They have a place, right? But no, they're not or in wonder. You see drums, you see strobe lights, you see sports everywhere today. There's nothing unique about that. It's a bit nerdy when the church just is trying to imitate things in the world and then stick a Jesus sticker on the front of no, no, it's got to be deeper and more meaningful. And when you come to, I don't know, an encounter with the Scriptures that's like, wow, these people really believe this. And they know how to open and unpack it really deeply. It's like, whoa, there's something here.
People often say to me in my work, I've said this a few times lately, they say, man, you're so brave speaking about these issues to the culture. And I'm like, I'm not brave. These things are so good and so true. Why wouldn't I? Like, I love telling people about these things. There's no courage needed. I only need courage if I'm uncertain of my position. And so I think we should be like that where we just are so enraptured by our own traditions, our own faith, our own scriptures, that we live it, we bring it out and that will be relevant.
[01:15:24] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right.
[01:15:24] Speaker B: It'll be relevant.
[01:15:25] Speaker A: We don't need to worry about the church being relevant. We need to worry about ourselves being relevant. Teenagers in the sense that we're accessible. And I've seen so many times over and over again, young people, certainly not necessarily always teenagers a little bit older. The thing that brings them back to Christ and back to their faith and converts them in a way, so to speak, is conversation, is dialogue. And you have them there. I'm not an expert at this, but I know lots of good people that are that can engage with people, young people, where they're at.
And often you're not trying to convert them and they're not looking to be converted. They just want someone to answer their questions and to respect that they have them and to engage in that back and forth. And that's where the relevance comes in. That's where the nittygritty is in reconverting our teenagers to faith is by well.
[01:16:16] Speaker B: It'S like Christ, he just goes with people and has conversations.
[01:16:20] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm having dinner with you tonight. Know, come down from your tree. Hurry up, get on it.
[01:16:26] Speaker B: Yeah, that's so true. And I think the thing, too, is maybe we say, well, why has the Christian church lost relevance? Well, ask yourself, are you part of the Christian church? Well, you're saying you're making a judgment call about yourself. Are you irrelevant to teenagers? Why what we often think, well, you're the church. Why are you the church? When's the church going to start getting better? Or why are our church leaders not doing this? It's like you are the church as well. What are you doing? What are you doing? And I think that's a challenge for all of us. I'm very tempted to say, oh, the church is not doing this, the church is not doing that. And I have to remind myself, I am part of that church, so what am I doing and not doing?
[01:17:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:17:01] Speaker B: And I think in our families, actually, with the point you started with said is that whole thing of thinking maybe we need to boil it down to its more simple constituent parts. And what is the church made up of families. So what are we doing in our families to make the gospel, to make Christian tradition, to make our catechesis, our actual beliefs and our Christian theology relevant to them? How are we instilling in them that sense of war and wonder?
And there's lots of ways to do that. And even one simple way is to have some family movie nights where you get good, really well made Christian films that sort of give them a sense of something more. Yeah, I know they're out there. They do exist, but they're like they're really sort of captured by the beauty of the art. And then behind the art is there's not just a message, but the message is the presentation of, say, a moment in the history of Christendom or something that they're like, yeah, there was a Christian guy or girl who was really heroic or saintly, and they see the wonder of that, and it opens up the relevance again for them, I think.
Good question, though. I think you try too hard to be cool, you will become irrelevant.
[01:18:08] Speaker A: You'll fail. Don't be. They can smell that a mile away, people trying to be cool.
[01:18:13] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's inauthentic. Right. And the other thing, too, is look at the great or the big scandals that have happened of late involving churches that are really hip and cool. The consistent trend is they're really hip, relevant churches, and they're full of all of this sin and madness because they were so hip, cool and relevant. They actually. Stopped doing the fundamentals that they should have been doing. That call to holiness and being faithful to Christ has been lost because they're all wearing Huffer jackets and they're hanging out with Justin Bieber. Now, that's a bit pointed, that one, but do you know what I mean? It could be any celebrity, but that's not christ didn't hang out with celebrities. He hung out with those who are in need, who are sinners, and he was hanging out with them out of love for them, not because of who they were. So the opposite of sort know, well, I don't associate with sinners. It's where you're saying, I don't associate them because of who they are, is, I will associate with you because you're a celebrity, so I will hang out with you because of who you are. Same problem, different side of the same coin there.
[01:19:12] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[01:19:13] Speaker B: If you haven't got Awe and Wonder, you go and watch those Jordan Peterson conversations on the Book of Exodus and you'll be like, Whoa, this is amazing. How do I help my kids see this? How do I start this with my kids? All righty, folks, that was another great episode. Thank you so much for tuning in. Don't forget, if you've got questions, you can go to the littleflockpodcast.org and there's a link at the top of the page there and you can listen to all the previous episodes. You can leave your questions there or LifeNet. Lifenet.org NZ. And you can leave your questions there. The button at the top of the homepage, click on that and you can send us your questions. We get emailed them and we're able to answer them on future episodes. Don't forget as well that if you want to support our ministry work, you can do that one of two ways. One
[email protected] leftfootmedia, and if you become a $5 monthly patron or more, then you will get access to all of our exclusive patrons only content. And that is more sort of culture and current affairs from a sort of Christian conservative perspective. Every week there's a couple of different podcast episodes and other monthly stuff as well. So if you're into that, that could be a good option. Or if you just want to contribute to the ministry and you're not so worried about the patreon stuff and the content, go to Lifenet.org NZ. And there's a donate button on the top of our homepage there, and it'll give you the details, the bank account details and stuff about how you can make a contribution. So lifenet.org. NZ Katie, any last words?
[01:20:33] Speaker A: Never.
[01:20:34] Speaker B: Never?
[01:20:34] Speaker A: You like me to have last words?
[01:20:35] Speaker B: Is that your last words? Standing on the gallows or the scaffold? What's your last words? Never.
[01:20:40] Speaker A: Never.
[01:20:41] Speaker B: I have no last words. Last words be done.
[01:20:44] Speaker A: The pressure to have last words is too great.
[01:20:47] Speaker B: What would you say? I'd say I will not have the last word. The Lord will, or something like that. Something very poetic and courageous.
[01:20:54] Speaker A: If I got time for a pixie caramel.
[01:20:57] Speaker B: If you're old enough, you'll remember that reference, you'll know, that advert. And you'll be like, oh, that's funny.
[01:21:01] Speaker A: Good last words, Katie. You'll be like.
[01:21:05] Speaker B: Okay, folks, on that happy note, thank you so much for tuning in. Don't forget, live by goodness, truth and beauty, not by lies. And we will see you next month. We'll be back on the little flock. See you later.
[01:21:16] Speaker A: See you.
The little flock is a joint production of the LifeNet Charitable Trust and Left Foot Media.
[01:21:30] Speaker B: If you enjoyed this show, then please help us to ensure that more of this great content keeps getting made by becoming a patron of the
[email protected] forward slash Left Foot Media.
[01:21:42] Speaker A: Thanks for listening. See you next time on The Little Flock.
