The Narrow Path

Steve Gregg: Good afternoon and welcome to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and I'm glad to be joining you for this hour live in most stations. Where it is live, it's possible for you to call in and be a part of the program.

The entire program is an open-line call-in question and answer program. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, or if you just want to challenge or disagree with something the host has said, you're welcome to question that too. You can give me a call, but not right now because our lines are full.

They will not be full continuously throughout the program, and so if you call randomly at various points in the next hour, you will sometimes find the lines have opened up, or at least one or two, and you can get through. The number to call in that case is going to be 844-484-5737. So it's 844-484-5737. All right, and so I don't suppose there's any reason to beat around the bush. We'll go to the phones right now and talk to Aaron in Paxton, Illinois. Hi Aaron, welcome to The Narrow Path.

Aaron: Hey Steve, I'm a big fan and I was calling in to hope to get some wisdom and insight on a situation. For the past year, my wife has left me. I apologize.

Steve Gregg: I've been there. I've been there. I understand. It's traumatic.

Aaron: There are kids involved and I haven't seen my kids in a few months because of this. My local church, where I was teaching and a deacon, I've stepped down throughout all this. I didn't want this. I've been defrocked from my teaching position. I just feel estranged from the local ecclesial community that I was a part of. It's a really lonely feeling because I really don't want any of this, and I'm just suffering. I just hope that you might have some wisdom or insight or scripture because I just feel like Saul and God's just taken his hand off of me or something.

Steve Gregg: Wait a minute. God has not taken his hand off of you. God is allowing you to go through the furnace. I've been through that. I've actually been through it twice. I was married when I was 19 and when I was 21, my wife ran off with somebody else, left me with a baby. I at least had the good fortune to have my child with me.

Many years later, like 30 years later, I had been married for 20 years to another wife and she left and left behind four children. Again, neither wife had any basis for leaving that they ever announced. There were no grounds. Although I didn't lose my children, of course, I did lose the opportunity to be with my children all the time. We had to split the custody and things like that.

I had legal custody, but I had to be away from my kids sometimes for weeks at a time, and that was difficult for me because when you get married and you're faithful, and you believe in marriage, and you're committed to your family, you want to be with your kids. You want to raise your kids. You don't want some person who's left the faith to have a strong influence on your children. You wouldn't have even bothered to have children with somebody if you knew they were going to leave the faith and try to steer your children the wrong way. It's just a total betrayal.

It's amazing how many people actually do that to their spouses, but it's not any sign that God is against you. By the way, in the second case, I was the primary teacher at the church I was attending. Even before she left, when she started just giving me the silent treatment and things weren't going well, I stepped down from teaching for the same reason apparently you did because I feel like your marriage should be in order if you're going to be in the ministry.

When there were things going on in my wife's life that I didn't understand, and I still don't understand looking back, I don't even know if she understood, the thing is that I wasn't able to cure them. Our family was out of order, so I stepped down from ministry. Then when my wife walked out, I not only stepped down from church ministry, I gave up my radio program. I had the radio program for four years before she left and I just went off the air that day and stayed off the air for a year.

I felt like you do. I felt like the ministry is over. It almost feels like life is over because so much of my life had been defined in terms of raising my children and having a godly family, which I'd had for 20 years. Then suddenly, boom, all of it was gone and the ministry too. That doesn't make it any easier for you, but I just say that because I know exactly what you're going through.

What I can say is this. It should drive you closer to God. These kinds of situations will do something to a Christian. Going through that kind of a betrayal, that kind of abandonment, that kind of trial in general will either make you angry at God and cause you to drift further from him, or it'll make you closer to God because he's all you've got.

Remember David said in Psalm 27:10, he said, "When my father and my mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up." Now this is not the case of your parents forsaking you, but it's just as painful as if your parents forsook you. David may have known that reality in his family and he said, "Well, the Lord's going to take me up." He wasn't saying it lightly. It wasn't a flippant remark. It was a statement of conviction that it's true.

Jesus said you'll be hated by all men for my name and all nations for my sake, but whoever endures to the end shall be saved. This betrayal by a spouse is a very, very painful part because, of course, you love your spouse uniquely. You've given yourself uniquely to that person for I don't know how many years you were married, but you forsook all others and intended to do so for the rest of your life. You've started a family, you've got children, you've started a project. The children are probably the most important project in your life.

Then the ministry in the church is taken from you. I was, when it happened to me, I just stepped out of ministry completely just to wait until God would fix things. The marriage never got fixed. I did have the children, which I know you'd probably be delighted if that was your case, but there were times I didn't have them. So I definitely am not just responding to you intellectually about this or academically. This is something I know you feel like someone took a great big spoon and scraped your guts out.

I can see why you're emotional about it. I was emotional about it too. I will say though, in my case, that's 25 years ago and I was definitely emotionally crippled or at least scarred for a few years. I didn't think I would get over it. I didn't drift from God. I looked to God. I drew near to God and that was helpful, but it's still painful.

But one thing I can say is as time goes by, emotions adjust to the new normal. There's a sense in which you don't want to adjust to the new normal because the new normal isn't normal and it's not what you want to say, "Okay, I'm good with that," because you're not and you shouldn't be good with it. But the time comes where you say, "Well, you know, this apparently is what God has dished out for me at this point."

I'm not saying God made your wife leave, but I'm saying that God has control over how things turn out in your life. The hairs of your head are numbered. There's nothing going on. Your wife can't do anything that would destroy God's plan for your life. She can destroy God's plan for her life, but she can't harm God's plan for your life. If you look to him, if you draw near to him when you're feeling alone, which is going to be quite a lot in the next few months, maybe years, this is going to test your spiritual manliness and it's not easy. It's not going to be easy at all.

But if you're faithful, you'll earn basically a reputation for being a strong, and it'll be a well-earned reputation, for being a strong spiritual man who can stay faithful in the midst of all kinds of trials. Like I said, I've been through it twice and on another occasion I was married and my wife died. So I've been through widowhood, I've been through abandonment, I've been through all that. I've had some pain myself in my life and so when you talk about it, I'm not aloof from it just speaking theoretically.

But I will say this, you stay close to God, it does get better. Now as far as your concern for your children, God knows your concern for your children. This is a great injustice that you've suffered. Jesus suffered great injustices too. His family rejected him. He had his life taken from him and this is basically what it says in 1 Peter chapter 4: "Don't think it a strange thing when fiery trials test you as if that's a strange thing." That's pretty much what life is about. Fortunately, this life is temporary. The next one isn't.

And so if you're faithful unto death, you'll receive a crown of life. Now how will things turn out for your children? I do not know the answer to that. Hopefully well, but I can say this, that God knows where your kids are and God can reach them when you can't. You're going to be heartbroken, you're going to be in pain. Again, your emotions will eventually adjust to the new normal, but there's a sense in which in the early stages you don't want to because you want it to get better. You want her to come back. Maybe that will happen. In the meantime, the temporary new normal is that you can't fix this. I'd like to ask you a couple questions. Is your wife willing to communicate with you at all?

Aaron: Everything is really just, it seems like there's no emotion behind it. She says she doesn't want to reconcile and it's just kind of her trying to keep track of things for court. She doesn't really respond to anything unless it's pertinent to her.

Steve Gregg: Does she claim to be a Christian?

Aaron: Yes.

Steve Gregg: Does she go to church anywhere?

Aaron: Yes.

Steve Gregg: Have you talked to the leaders of her church about this?

Aaron: I talked to the leaders of her mother's church that she was attending for a little bit. She's now at a different church, but her mother's who's housing her and I tried to speak with them about it and say that you guys are kind of getting in the way of reconciliation.

Steve Gregg: Well, even if they let her leave her husband and do not confront her or take her aside and say, "Listen, if you're going to be a Christian, you're going to have to follow Jesus because being a Christian doesn't just mean you wear a label that says I'm a Christian. If you are a Christian, then you belong in the church. If you're faking that you're a Christian, you don't belong in the church."

Now the Bible talks about church discipline, and the Bible indicates that the church should be addressing this very proactively, trying to address it and say, "Listen, you can't just rebel against God, destroy a marriage, destroy your children, and be a member in good standing of the church when you're not trying to rectify it." And so her church leaders really need to get involved in this, but often they won't. Often they won't because churches are dysfunctional. Go ahead.

Aaron: Ours did. We went through counseling and our pastor had told us, "I didn't want a divorce," and he said, "I can't give you God's blessing on this. This seems like something that needs to be worked out."

Steve Gregg: Well, I didn't ask you, but did you give her any grounds for divorce?

Aaron: She would say yes in that I was verbally abusive, would be what she would say.

Steve Gregg: Where did she get the impression that's grounds for divorce? She's not interested in what Jesus talks about at all?

Aaron: I talked to her mother and her father about Ephesians 5 and tried to point some things out and it seemed very offensive to them, the thought of forgiving me and then I'm supposed to die for her and I love my wife, I would, but...

Steve Gregg: Well, I don't know if you really have been verbally abusive or if she only feels that way about it. I've heard wives use that term "verbal abuse" or "emotional abuse" and they can apply it to almost anything they want to if they're trying to get sympathy from their friends, especially their girlfriends, about leaving their husbands.

The question is, what is verbal abuse? Now if you have been verbally unkind to her, that is if you've been unloving, if you've been harsh with her, well that's still not grounds for divorce, but you definitely need to be humble. You need to be humble and be apologetic about that and say, "I need to work on that."

Maybe you have already made that decision, I don't know, but you can't really expect her, I mean she should come back if she's a Christian. I'm not sure she is, I don't know, just because someone says they are doesn't mean they are. If she wants to follow Christ, she's going to want to fix this marriage. But if she doesn't want to fix the marriage, or even if she does, she probably won't want to without knowing that you've really seen the error of your ways and that you see where you've flubbed up and what you're going to change. And so it sounds like she'll communicate with you. You say there's not much emotion in it, well that's, but if she'll communicate, there are times when you can discuss the changes you desire to make to make the marriage better. How many children do you have?

Aaron: Two. Three and four months.

Steve Gregg: Oh my, brand new. Yeah, she doesn't realize that what she's doing is going to hurt the children more than fixing the marriage is going to. She may want to take the easy way out. A lot of people want to take the easy way out because frankly they think they're allowed to. They're not. They think the church will permit them to. Unfortunately, that may be true. The church should not. The church is disobedient to God and leaders of the church will answer to God for their disobedience if they let this kind of thing go on in the church without confronting it and disciplining it.

But a lot of times leaders of churches don't even take their jobs seriously. I mean, they don't hit, apparently it looks to me like many church leaders don't even take God seriously and that's going to be very hard on them on the day of judgment because they'll receive a stricter judgment than the average person would. Any church leader who doesn't fear God enough to address these kinds of things and do everything that's in their power to resolve them in the church is simply going to have a very rude awakening when they face God and give account for their ministry.

As for you, you'll give account for yours too, and so just make sure you keep your heart clean, that you keep trusting God, stay in prayer about the children, about your wife, and know that what you're going through, there are really many thousands of Christian men and women are going through analogous situations and it's not easy. It doesn't make it easy to know that others are going through it, but it does help to know that this isn't some bizarre thing that God doesn't know how to deal with this. God knows how to deal with it.

Brother, let me just pray for you right now and I'm going to have to take some other calls. My heart goes out to you, man. Father, I pray that you'll help Aaron to go through this time in a godly way, that he'll be able to address his wife honestly and kindly and he'll see what changes he needs to make and she'll hear and believe and that their children will be spared all the disasters associated with broken homes and single-parent families and things like that, Father. He's going through a great pain at this time, which many of my listeners are familiar with too. I pray that you'd give him grace in this time, but especially help him to find comfort by drawing near to you and trusting in you because that's all we can do in situations like this.

I do pray for his wife, that she'll be devoted to fixing what's wrong and repairing the marriage. And I pray for your protection on his children as they go through this time where somebody in their family is sinning and I pray, Father, that you'll protect them from the effects of those sins. I ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Aaron, I've got to take some more calls. I'm sorry to say, but that's what we do here and I appreciate your calling, brother.

Aaron: Well, thank you for your time. I appreciate you.

Steve Gregg: Okay, stay close to some Christian friends who are sympathetic and can help you, at least in the loneliness area. God bless you. All right, we're going to talk next to George from Scottsdale, Arizona. George, welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.

George: Thank you for taking my call and thank you for praying for Aaron. I certainly don't mind waiting because you did a great job, I believe, of counseling Aaron and I appreciate that. My question is first of all is not a "gotcha." It may sound like that, but it's not. Yesterday you spoke about Scripture and how it was the recorded messages of Moses and so forth and the Apostles and I appreciated that answer, but then I wondered about 2 Timothy 3:16. I looked at that and I noticed there's a variety of ways it gets translated: "inspired," "breathed out." Can you, and I'm sure you can, that's why I'm asking, can you reconcile the idea that it was human authors—my words, not yours—and inspired by God?

Steve Gregg: Sure I can. 2 Timothy 3:16, of course, is the famous verse: "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work."

Now, first of all, we need to understand what Paul is saying and what he's not saying. He's not saying that the book fell down from the sky and it's in that sense the Word of God. When he says given by inspiration of God, the actual word in the Greek is God-breathed. All Scripture is God-breathed. Now, by the way, the word "is" is not found in the Greek there. It belongs in the sentence somewhere. Some people think that the word "is" should be placed a little later in the sentence so they'd say that all Scripture given by inspiration of God is profitable. Which would mean would not be saying that everything that is called Scripture really is Scripture, but all Scripture that really is inspired is profitable.

But the point is even the Scripture, if he's saying Scripture is inspired, which he is, he's not denying that it's written down by people. And so a very similar verse to this and one that is a good cross-reference for you is in 2 Peter chapter 1 where it says in verse 20 and 21: "knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of," meaning it did not arise from, "any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit."

Okay, so here's how, this is what it means to say that the Scriptures are inspired by God. Holy men of God, men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. So it's written by people. These people were moved by God to write or to speak and to speak the words of God. Now in what form did that moving take? I don't know. I've never written Scripture and I never will. I'm not a Scripture writer, I'm a Bible teacher. But I don't know what it's like subjectively to be moved by the Holy Spirit in that sense.

But we are told that the people who wrote it were holy men and they were men of God. Now in the Old Testament, the word "men of God," a man of God is usually a prophet. Ezekiel, Elijah and Elisha were called men of God and so forth. A man of God is usually a prophet. But it says holy men of God, they spoke as God moved them to by the Holy Spirit.

Now we have to understand that God's moving them means that they had God's message. They had God's, as the Old Testament puts it, God's burden was on them. God put his burden on them. And that's why Isaiah speaks of the burden of the Lord. Here's the burden of the Lord against Babylon, here's the burden of the Lord against Edom, here's the burden of the Lord against Moab. God would put his burden on their hearts and move them to speak his message to people, which he revealed to them.

Now we might think of them as speaking almost like robots or channels where suddenly the Spirit of God grips them and all of a sudden their words are not their own at all, but there's just kind of a transcription of whatever's in God's head is coming out of their mouth. Yeah, well that could be, but the Bible doesn't say that's what took place and it doesn't seem like it is. For example, when Ezekiel writes, he's a very different style of writing than Isaiah. And Isaiah is different than Jeremiah, the weeping prophet.

And frankly, Paul's writing is a lot different than John's. I mean, you can easily tell John's writings from Paul's simply by you don't have to be told who wrote them, you can just tell by their style and by their vocabulary. So it's clear that these inspired writers, they use their own literary abilities, their own vocabularies, their own command of the language, and they wrote in their own words what God moved them to write, or what God showed them was true and which he ordained them to communicate.

We have to assume that God selected men. I mean, there's only about 40 or so authors who wrote biblical books out of a world of millions and millions of people. It seems like God was capable of finding men who could accurately express what he put on their hearts, what he revealed to them, and using their own language. And when I say they use their own language, that doesn't mean that God wasn't moving in some sense through them as they wrote.

But whether he was or not, take Daniel for example. Much of Daniel is spoken in the past tense: "I Daniel was at the river Ulai and I saw this and I heard this and I had a dream on this occasion and here's what was in the dream." Now he's not writing it as it's occurring. He's writing it after the fact. He had this dream. It was after he woke up again that he wrote it down. Now the dream was an inspired revelation from God. Was he also experiencing some kind of supernatural ability to write when he wrote it down the next day or whenever he wrote it down? I don't know.

But it wouldn't matter. If he's capable of accurately writing down what the dream was, then his message is God's message inspired by that dream. In fact, the Bible indicates that lots of the prophets, God gave them dreams or visions and they wrote them down. Does this mean that suddenly when they took their pen to the paper suddenly something gripped them and they weren't in their own right mind anymore and something was being channeled through them? That's more of an occultic idea, that automatic writing kind of stuff. No, God revealed things to them and they wrote them down very competently and they were moved by the Spirit to do so and they had God's message and that's what the Bible says.

So to say Scripture is God-breathed or inspired, it doesn't mean that men were not actively involved or that their personalities were not engaged, things like that. So that's what I'm saying. And that cross-reference would be 2 Peter 1:19 and 20. I think that's helpful.

George: Thank you, sir. That helps. God bless you.

Steve Gregg: All right, George. Good talking to you, brother. We need to take a break, but we'll be back. We have another half hour. Our website's thenarrowpath.com. I'll be back in 30 seconds. Don't go away.

Welcome back to The Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we're live for another half hour taking your calls, doing our best to alleviate the curiosity you may express in your questions about the Bible or the Christian faith. Hopefully clear up some confusion. On the other hand, if in listening to the program you feel like the host is giving answers that contribute to confusion rather than clarity, feel free to call and disagree and we can talk about that too. The number to call is 844-484-5737. And just like I said a half hour ago, all the lines are full, so don't call right now. But since that time, a half hour ago, we've talked to a few callers and some of the calls opened up and other callers have replaced them. That'll happen this half hour too, so call randomly and you may find a line has opened up for you at this number: 844-484-5737. Our next caller is Daniel from New Rochelle, New York. Daniel, welcome.

Daniel: Hey Steve, how are you doing? Yesterday was my 37th birthday.

Steve Gregg: 37th? Well, happy birthday.

Daniel: Thank you, thank you. Yes Steve, so today I want to ask you, as a Christian, should I make every effort to go to church because especially with the churches of today, they're teaching a lot of rubbish? They're not teaching you how to come to the knowledge and truth of the Lord. And so should I still go to church or is it okay if I don't go to church and just read my Bible and be a believer?

Steve Gregg: Well, I don't think you should be avoiding church and just staying home reading your Bible instead of going to church. I think you should at home read your Bible in addition to going to church. Now, I agree with you, there are some churches that it would almost be better if they weren't there because they draw people into them away from churches that would be better for people to be in than them.

A lot of churches are mainly concerned with entertaining people and drawing big crowds. That usually is good for their bottom line to have the more people in the seats, the more money in the bag, and the bigger salary the pastor can get and all that. So there are obviously churches that aren't really spiritually minded or spiritually led at all. Their pastors are more entertainers than anything else. And those are maybe some of the bigger churches in some cases. It may be even true of some pastors of small churches who just want to be big churches and they're just not making it.

But obviously you don't want to spend much time in a church like that, but you do want to find fellowship with other Christians. Now, I believe, now you're in New Rochelle, New York, I believe that in your area there must be a hundred churches. Now you might say, "I don't have time to visit a hundred churches." Well, you've got 52 weeks a year. And you might actually, I'm not saying you should visit all of them, I would say that you shouldn't have to visit all of them before you find one that's good enough.

When I say good enough, let me just say this. I've got a lot of differences about my philosophy of what the church is. I think that much of what the modern churches do, virtually all of them, has deviated from what the early church did and taught. But it is what it is, it is what it is, and you've got to find Christians that you can minister to and they can minister to you. The purpose of the body of Christ is that every person in it has some gift that God has given them which is intended to benefit the whole body and to minister to others.

You can't do that if you're not with others. You see, if you just stay home and read your Bible or listen to sermons online or on YouTube or whatever, you'll learn stuff, but you won't do stuff. You won't be doing whatever it is God has for you to do. The purpose of being a Christian is not just to enrich your spiritual life. In fact, it's not even for you to get yourself into heaven, though those things happen when you follow Christ. Your spiritual life will be enriched and you will end up in heaven, but that's not the purpose of being a Christian.

The purpose of a Christian is to fulfill the will of God in serving the body of Christ and the world in the gifts that God has ordained for you to use in that project. And you'll never have opportunity to do that if you're not regularly with other Christians. Now I agree that there are times when, if you haven't found a good church, you're going to have to be on independent life support. And you can do that. You can walk with God when there's no one else to fellowship with.

But you live in America, man. There's lots of Christians and there's a lot of Christians in New York State and there's a lot of Christians where you live. Not everyone who calls themselves one is one, I realize that, that makes it difficult. And a lot of churches are very sold out to carnal or worldly philosophies and goals and things like that. I don't recommend that you join one of those. But I do think you can find, and many times it'll be in a rather small church. It may not be, you might find a larger church that this applies to, but many times in a smaller church you'll find a godly, humble pastor.

Chances are an older pastor is better than a younger one. I'm not saying there aren't good young pastors, but in the Bible it was older men that were teaching the church. They called them elders, which in the Greek it was the word for an older man. And they were led by older Christians who had lived the Christian life, raised their families well, could exemplify what Christianity is in the way they live.

Look for a church where whoever is leading the church, if they have leaders, is a great example of what a Christian's supposed to be. Because actually Christian leadership according to Peter and Paul has a lot more to do with being the example to the younger believers a lot more than being anything like a organizational leader. But being a godly example, being able to teach others how to walk with God. There are pastors like that.

I don't say that the majority of them are going to fit that description, but some will. And so I definitely would urge you to go to church on Sunday. If you find there that that's not what you're looking for and they're not really God is not glorified there, the Holy Spirit does not bear witness to you that this is a people that's going to be your family in Christ here, move along. Move along. And I dare say ask God, pray that God will guide you to the right people and in time you will find the right people.

So don't try to be a Christian on your own. I'm not saying you can't. I'm not saying a person can't survive spiritually on their own. They simply can't fulfill God's will on their own because God's will is not that you survive spiritually merely, but that you plug in and serve the body of Christ. We're very individualistic in America. Sometimes people look for a church where they feel good, they like the worship, they're getting fed.

And if they can't find one like that, they'll just feed themselves at home as if it's all about them. But really being a Christian is not all about you, it's all about the body of Christ. It's all about serving Christ in whatever venue and by whatever gifts God has given you. So yeah, definitely go to church, but I'm not saying that just every church is going to be better than none.

Paul said to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 11, he said, "When you get together, it's for the worse rather than for the better." That's an interesting statement, saying you'd be better off if you didn't come to church here. Now, of course, the Corinthian church, there was only one church in the town. It's an awful thing if the only church in your town is one where it's worse to go there than not to go there.

But fortunately, and there are churches like that, there's churches in your town they're like that, it's worse to go there than to not. But that wouldn't be true of all the churches. You've got, I dare say, you've got probably hundreds of thousands of Christians in your own town. You're going to find some of them somewhere and a true Christian loves the brethren. That's one of the marks of being a Christian. And when you love people, you want to find them, you want to be with them, you want to serve them.

You want to receive encouragement from them and give encouragement to them. That's simply a mark of being a Christian. It's not a legalistic requirement to go to church, it's that if you're really born of God, you're going to crave to find people who are like you because frankly the world around you isn't and you're going to be pretty lonely until you find some Christians who really love God like you do. So go and look for them and find them and don't stop looking until you do find them. Thanks for your call. Buskman in Dayton, Ohio. Welcome to The Narrow Path.

Buskman: Hi, thank you so much Steve. It's always a pleasure. I'm so grateful for your ministry. You're a true beam of light of true biblical truth. I'm not setting you up. I mean, brother, I've talked to you on your Zoom calls, you're awesome. I remember you, yeah. I've got a question, sir. This is going to sound strange, but I have been really convicted about paying my taxes because of what I know by being a political researcher and journalist. I have found some really bad things that my tax money will fund, Steve. So is there a biblical format to either avoid that money going to those coffers, or should I just not pay, kind of like what the patriots did when King George III said, "You know what guys, you're going to do this or else," and I kind of feel just constrained by my conscience, by my holy conscience, and where my money is going because it's funding horrific things, sir. So I would love your counsel on that. And thank you for praying for Aaron. I'm one of those men as well, Steve, and I was so grateful to hear you pray for Aaron. God bless you Aaron, may you stay strong. Thank you Steve, I can take the answer on the air if that's okay, but I'll be quiet. Thank you, sir.

Steve Gregg: All right. Well, yeah, I remember back in the 70s I knew a couple that felt very strongly they were pacifists and they didn't feel like they wanted for their money to support military efforts and things like that. So they wrote to the government and said, "The portion of the budget of the nation, the percentage that goes to military, we're leaving that out of our taxes and we're going to take that money and give it to a nonprofit organization that promotes peace. We will pay the rest of our taxes, however, but..." And so they thought they'd get away with that. I haven't seen them since. I don't know if they've gotten out of jail yet or not, but it sounded very virtuous of them to stand by their convictions like that.

But here's what I would say. When Jesus was asked whether tribute should be paid to Caesar and he said, "Listen, give Caesar whatever is his and give to God whatever is his." We have to realize that the money that Jesus didn't say, "Give this percentage to Caesar of what he's asking and withhold the other part because you know Caesar can do some bad stuff with the money. Caesar's a pagan. Caesar's probably going to pay for boy prostitutes for himself. He's probably going to be killing Christians in the arenas. He's certainly going to be going out making war and conquering innocent people in other lands. I don't think you should support that."

Well, you know the way I see it, it's a little bit like saying, "Should I give to a poor man who's begging?" Should I give money to him? What if he's going to take the money and do bad things with it? Maybe he's going to buy alcohol or drugs. Maybe he's going to set up some kind of a scam and cheat people out of money. Who knows what he's going to do with the money I give him. Well, obviously, I do have some control over that more than over the taxes I pay.

The only control I have over the taxes I pay is that I could seek to elect people who won't support Planned Parenthood or whatever it is I'm objecting to. I may not succeed. But the question then is, if I give money to a poor man in good faith, believing he's going to buy food, and then he goes out and does something wrong with it, that's on him. You know, that's on him.

Now, if I know he's going to abuse it, I won't give to him. But when it comes to the government, we don't have a choice. The government is owed something. That's what Paul says in Romans 13. He says that the government officials are ordained by God to punish evildoers and to encourage good behavior and protect the innocent. That's what needs to be done. And that's what God has put governments there for. He hasn't given them authority to do anything else but that, but they are God's servants to do those things.

And he says, "Therefore, we pay our taxes because they need to pay their salaries." They are serving God and by paying our taxes, we are making sure that God's servants who are doing those jobs that God wants them to do are paid. Now how much of that tax goes into their hands and they do bad things with it? I don't know, but they'll have to answer to God for that. I won't.

Now I can say this, if you feel strongly that you can't pay taxes they're going to fund certain projects that you know are evil projects. If you withhold taxes, that's fine if you feel like it's okay you don't mind going to jail for that because that's probably what'll happen. Christians do go to jail sometimes for following their conscience. And in my opinion, it's not wrong to follow your conscience even if it puts you in jail.

But it's also possible that God would rather just have you comply and stay out of jail and let the government take responsibility before God for how badly they use the money. So I mean, I would take it as a matter of conscience. I myself, I do not do deep research into what percentage of the government's budget goes toward projects I approve of and what percentage goes to projects I don't. I know the government funds things that I don't approve of and funds things that God never ordained them to do.

But it would take me away from doing God's work for me to do extensive research and say, "Okay, here's the percentage I can't approve of and here's the percentage I..." You know, when I receive a bill, I know that some of that tax money is going to be used for things that God has ordained the government to do. How much of it is? Maybe somebody knows or could figure it out, but that's going to take a lot more research than I have time to do. I'll let God sort it out and I'll just give it in good faith partly to just avoid unnecessary trouble with the government.

If you want to pick a fight with the IRS and be heroic about it, you might be a hero. But it also might take you out of circulation when you could be serving God in other ways. So I don't think God holds us accountable if we in good faith, if we give to the poor, or let's say we support aged parents. The Bible does say we have an obligation to support aged parents. But what if our parents aren't doing good stuff with their money? Well, I think that's on them. If we give them assistance that will help them stay alive and they foolishly take that money and do bad things with it, that's on them, not on us.

We have certain obligations to help the poor, to support some governmental activity which is usually defined in terms of the tax bill they send us, to help our aged parents and other things like that. When we do those things, we just say, "Okay, God, I wouldn't want to waste this money, but I believe you are telling me to do this and I'll just, I'm giving this as a duty to you. And if these people abuse what I give them, that's between them and you and it might not go well for them, but that's not on me."

Now, if of course I give money to a poor person who I know is not going to use it well, then that would be on me if he goes out and does something awful with it because, I mean, if I know, then I'm enabling bad behavior. And you might say the same thing if you pay taxes to the government about that. Like I said, some people could spend their whole time studying that out and deciding what they owe and what they don't owe. I do think that'd be taking God's time away from things that I believe I should be doing with that time.

And so I just pay my taxes. It's probably they're charging more than they should. I know some of it's probably being used for stuff I wouldn't approve of. That's their problem, not mine. I just want to make sure that I also, if I'm paying taxes, I want to know that I'm paying at least as much or more out to the needs of real concerns of the kingdom of God, supporting missionaries and stuff like that. I give a lot more to those kind of causes than I give to the government.

And some people may act differently in their conscience toward the tax thing, but I just hold my nose and write the check, basically, and let God be the judge of what happens to that after that. But then I do kind of the same thing when I give to charities, honestly. I mean, sometimes I know that I give to a charity sometimes a bigger portion than should be is taken out by the CEO of that organization that's supposed to be helping the hungry people in Haiti, and some guy in America who runs the organization is getting a salary of $400,000 a year and I think, "You know, I'd rather not pay his salary. I'd want to help the hungry in Haiti."

But I don't know any way to get the money to the people in Haiti except through that organization. So I just give to charities not always knowing whether I approve of every dollar they spend, but simply because I don't know any other way to get the money to the poor. So you just do what you can do and you avoid doing something you know is evil. But on the other hand, you have to weigh the options sometimes. So you do what you think God wants you to do, but in my case, I would just say I'll just pay the taxes rather than resist them.

But I would also take every deduction that I can. Not because I'm greedy for money, but because whatever I don't end up giving to the government is available to give to charity or to the kingdom of God. So you can definitely make sure that the more you give to charity, the less you'll be given to a government. And the amount you don't give to the government then might be the part that would have gone to fund things you don't approve of. I'm going to have to leave that to the wisdom of every individual and the conscience of every individual, but those are my thoughts on it. I appreciate, brother, your concern about that and calling. God bless you. Let's talk to Karen in Atlanta, Georgia. Karen, welcome.

Karen: I'm glad you picked me. Hey, I think I might have a pretty quick question and it's similar, it's about money, but I have an extra paycheck. It's not a ton of money, but and I'd normally put it towards debt because I sure do have some, but I started thinking I wanted to somehow give that money so that it served God, a small amount of money like $1,000.

And so I originally was just going to give the whole thing to my church who's trying to build on a little bit and then I started thinking, well, I'd also like to give some to a children's hospital. Even though it's not a lot of money, I normally don't have a whole $1,000 to give. And now I have a friend whose car is broken and so I guess my question is can I give to all of those things no matter how much money I have and they're all serving God, or do I need to give the whole thing to my church? I'm just not sure if giving money to someone whose car is broken if that counts.

Steve Gregg: Giving to your church can be a good thing, but it's not always the best stewardship. I mean, depends on the church. If your church is spending a lot of the money they get on things other than frankly church, like I'm just say they're building a gymnasium that they in no sense need. They just want. Or they're boosting the salaries of several people who don't need it boosting their salary. Well then I would probably look for greater needs to give to.

The Bible doesn't say anywhere that you have to give something to your local church. What the Bible does say is that if you're receiving teaching and a feeding spiritually at the church, you should make sure that the persons that are feeding you do not go hungry physically. That's the point. If they've ministered to you in spiritual things, Paul said they should receive material things.

But that doesn't mean all that really means is that you make sure that they don't go without. You don't benefit from them and then watch them starve or watch them not be able to pay their bills. So you help that out if you can. But money doesn't have to be given through the church or through an organization. Actually, giving to a friend who needs a car, I've done it that way before instead of giving to a Christian organization. I've helped somebody buy a car before and I think that, I mean that helping the church, the church is people.

The church is not an organization, it's not a 501(c)(3), it's not a building, it's not a corporation. The church is people. And so if you've got some friend whose car is broken down, they can't get to work, they can't drive get their kids to where they need to go and so forth, then helping a Christian with something that's a genuine need, that's legitimate giving. That's helping the church. That's helping the body of Christ. Okay, thank you. Sure.

And the same thing with the children's hospital or whatever. The great thing is the Bible doesn't tell us where we have to give any amount of our money. Some people say you have to give 10% to the local church. The Bible doesn't say anything remotely like that. That's an Old Testament teaching and it wasn't to any local church, it was to the Temple. And the local church is not the same as the Temple. So the tithe was given to the Temple to help support the Temple staff, which were the Levites.

There's no suggestion in the New Testament that that obligation exists in the New Covenant at all. But we are stewards of God's stuff and therefore we have to pray and use wisdom and follow our conscience about how his stuff that he puts in our hands should be distributed to help the needs of the body of Christ. And so all the things you mentioned are decent uses, but you get to make the decision.

Karen: Okay, thank you.

Steve Gregg: Okay, Karen. God bless you. Eskil from Paxton, Massachusetts. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Only got a couple minutes.

Eskil: Hi. I'm a junior in high school and I was looking through my world history textbook and it was talking about the rise of Christianity. It said that the apostle Paul and some of the other apostles borrowed a lot of their teachings from the Greek scholars and Greek poets and I just want to know how true is that? Is there any truth to that or is it not?

Steve Gregg: Well, Paul was definitely educated and there were times that he quoted Greek poets. When he's writing to the Corinthians, when he wrote to Titus, when he preached on Mars Hill in Acts 17, in all those places he quoted Greek poets. But that's just because he was literate and he was well-educated. He knew the Greek poets. He didn't get his teachings from them.

The teachings he quoted Greek poets to establish the things that he already was teaching, which were what Jesus taught. I mean, a preacher who's dependent entirely on the Bible for their theology can often sprinkle into their sermons agreeable quotes from secular sources. In fact, good preaching often does that. Paul did that too. But some people say Paul was influenced by the Stoics and things like that. You've got a secular history book there that's not going to believe that Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to Saul of Tarsus and revealed to him the faith that he was to preach to the Gentiles.

No secular book is going to believe that. So they're going to put their own spin on it. They say, "Well, I wonder where he did get these ideas. I guess we see some similarities here between what Paul said here on this point and what the Stoics said." Well, you're going to find lots of philosophies have statements they make that overlap on something the Bible says too. That doesn't mean the biblical writers got it from there.

Some things are simply true. They're true scripturally true and they're also philosophers who don't know the Bible have sometimes discovered those truths. But the teachings of Paul, his doctrines, he said very emphatically in Galatians 1 that the gospel he preached was revealed to him directly by Jesus Christ. And we know that the Bible actually describes that happening with him on his road to Damascus and he had other appearances of Christ to him. So yeah, don't trust a secular book to teach that about what Paul did. They would remove the supernatural element altogether, and that is something Christians don't do. I'm out of time, I'm sorry to say. Our website's thenarrowpath.com. Thanks for joining us. Have a good weekend.

Eskil: Thank you, Steve.