Remaking Jesus

[00:00:02] Most problems in the Church today can be reduced to a single cause. We've remade Jesus into our modern image of what Christ should be, instead of being faithful to the Jesus Christ of the Gospels. [00:00:14] Welcome to Crisis Point. [00:00:29] Foreign. [00:00:33] Welcome. Today is going to be a bit of a Bible study, I will admit. I have my handy Bible here, my Ignatius Study Bible, Old and New Testaments, personal size. Yes, I'm very proud of this. I just got this recently and I've been using it a lot already. [00:00:50] What I want to do today though, is I really want to dive in a bit about the image of Jesus that we have in the Church today. [00:01:00] And it's very prevalent and unfortunately, it's not the actual Jesus. I know we all like to think that we follow the Jesus of the Gospels, the real Jesus. [00:01:14] But if you look at how people actually talk about Jesus, how they talk about morality in relationship to Jesus, how they talk about how we do things in the liturgy or whatever the case may be, what you see is, what you find is that actually the Jesus they're talking about, the image of Jesus they have in their head is not the one found in the Gospels. And this is a challenge for everybody. [00:01:40] It's challenge for me and you and everybody because we have so many modern presuppositions that just kind of infect us, we project them onto Jesus. [00:01:52] I will say this, though, we can be clear according to God, you know, here's the Jesus I should say that most people have today. He's our friend. [00:02:00] He's tolerant, he's laid back, he's non judgmental, he's non threatening, he's not demanding. [00:02:08] Basically, he's the Jesus of moral therapeutic deism, which is, I don't know who coined the term. I know I picked it up from Rod Dreher. [00:02:17] It's this idea of a religion where it's all therapeutic. It's about feeling good. It's also deism, meaning that it does. It believes in a God who doesn't really act in this world, doesn't really care that much about this world. [00:02:31] And so it's all about our feelings, things like that. Well, we've made Jesus into the prophet, the Messiah of moral therapeutic deism. [00:02:40] And it infects the entire Church, in my opinion, from top to bottom. [00:02:46] And you hear it in homilies, you hear it in papal encyclicals, you hear it in how bishops talk, you hear it all over and over and over again. [00:02:57] But what we need to do is we really need to combat that. And we do that by Going back to the Gospels, I remember one time I heard an ordinary Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox Christian was talking to a Protestant. [00:03:09] And the Protestant didn't know anything about Orthodoxy. And the Orthodox person said, our faith is the parts of the Bible you didn't highlight, meaning Protestantism in particular. You know, they have the highlighting in their Bibles. I'm not against highlighting your Bibles, writing your Bibles, things like that, it can help you really understand it better. [00:03:32] But they highlight the parts that they're familiar with that make them feel good, that support what they believe. But there's lots of parts of the Bible that they don't really. [00:03:41] And so what happens is we tend to all do this though. [00:03:46] So when we read the Gospels, we will focus on those areas. Like for example, when Jesus says, judge not lest you be judged, or when he, the woman caught in adultery is taken to him and he basically condemns the people who are, who are condemning her. [00:04:04] We focus on these things and we skip over, even if we read them, we skip over sections of the Gospels of the life of Jesus. And so our image of Jesus gets warped. It really gets warped. So it's not the actual Jesus. And so that infects us completely. [00:04:22] So what I want to do first is I just want to go through some. [00:04:27] But Bible passages, some quotes. I'm taking some quotes from Bible passages. You can look them up for the full context to give you a different picture of Jesus. Now, to be clear, this is all a matter of emphasis. It's not saying that Jesus didn't say judge not lest you be judged. It doesn't mean that Jesus didn't treat the woman caught in adultery with great compassion. [00:04:55] It's not saying these things are not true. What it's saying is we focus on those and we don't have a complete picture. So we. Because we forget about other parts. [00:05:04] So, for example, here's a few passages. Matthew 5, 48. This is during the Sermon on the Mount. [00:05:11] Jesus says, Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect. [00:05:16] If you listen, though, to most Catholic priests and bishops and even popes, the idea of having perfection as our goal, as, as something that we should strive for is dismissed. It's called perfectionism. It's basically saying you have this ideal and people can't live up to the ideal. We need to be, you know, we need to be understanding of them instead. [00:05:42] And so we don't even call them to the ideal anymore. [00:05:45] This infected a Moris Letizia, which we're celebrating the 10th anniversary of that this year, that that disastrous encyclical this year, this idea that there's an ideal, a Catholic moral ideal of marriage and like. But a lot of people don't reach the ideal, so we need to accommodate them. [00:06:04] Yet Jesus himself is saying, be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect. [00:06:11] And so he's calling us to a very high ideal, a very high bar. Now, he forgives us when we don't reach that bar, when we stumble, when we fall. But that's very different from the idea that there isn't a high bar that we should strive for. We absolutely should. The life of holiness, the life of growing in sanctity, is striving for that perfection, actual perfection. You can call it perfectionism if you want and kind of dismiss it, but Jesus himself called us to it. [00:06:45] Another quote from Jesus, this is from Mark 1:14. This is right at the beginning of Christ's ministry. [00:06:53] He says, repent and believe the Gospel. [00:06:57] And so Jesus literally begins his ministry, his public ministry, with the word repent and believe the Gospel. Repent, meaning turn away from your sinfulness, turn away from your way of life that you had lived before, and follow me. [00:07:15] In other words, don't stay in your sins. How often do you actually hear a homily that talks about repentance? [00:07:24] How often do you hear bishops calling people to repentance? Yeah, they might talk about that we need to repent of our immigration policy or something like that. [00:07:33] But how often do they really say, you know something, you're sinners, you people are sinners, and you need to repent? [00:07:41] And of course, how often the bishops themselves say, I'm a sinner, I need to repent. [00:07:48] We just don't hear from them. [00:07:50] The fact is, Christ wants us to change. [00:07:55] He does not accept us as we are, as is often said. [00:08:00] He sees us as we are. [00:08:02] He reaches down to us where we are, and then he wants to lift us up, but we're too busy smacking his hand away, saying, no, you have to accept me how I am. [00:08:13] That's not Jesus. He's saying, repent, Repent and believe the Gospel. [00:08:19] Another passage that's very similar is actually the passage that's used often to construct a vision of a fully compassionate Jesus who doesn't care about sin. And that is the woman caught in adultery. John 8. [00:08:32] In John 8:11, which is at the end, what's the last thing he says to the woman caught in adultery? [00:08:38] He says, go and sin no more. [00:08:41] Go and sin no more. We forget about that part. We very much like him condemning the people who wanted to Stone her. Because we don't want to be stoned for our sins. [00:08:50] But we conveniently forget that Jesus says, go and sin no more. In other words, he's telling the woman, I'm not agreeing with what you did. I'm not saying it's okay that you were committing adultery. I'm actually telling you, don't do that anymore. [00:09:05] Don't do that anymore. So again, we see a Jesus who calls us to repentance, calls us to leave a life of sin. He does not water down the impact of our sin. He does not water down his teachings to make us feel more comfortable. [00:09:22] Okay, another passage, just Matthew 25, 23. I'm sorry, Matthew 23. [00:09:27] This is when he basically just goes crazy against. [00:09:33] Probably shouldn't say it like that, but he goes. He gets very angry and condemns the religious leaders of his time. He's saying things. He calls them hypocrites, blind guides, whitewashed tombs. [00:09:43] Woe to you, hypocrites. [00:09:46] Woe to you, blind guides. Woe to you, whitewashed tombs, dung to the Pharisees, the scribes, the religious leaders. [00:09:54] This is a Jesus that we don't see in our Catholic Church very much, where you see people really condemning religious leaders. I mean, one of the biggest criticisms we get here at Christ is the fact that we criticize our religious leaders. [00:10:09] Yet that's exactly what Jesus did. [00:10:11] That's exactly what Jesus did. And he was extremely harsh. The harshest language you will find in the Gospels from Jesus is against religious leaders. [00:10:22] Yet we often think that's just something that we're not allowed to do. Now, we should be careful. We need to have a certain respect for religious leaders. You know, Jesus himself said, do, you know, basically do what they say, but don't do what they do. [00:10:37] You know, they sit on the chair of authority, so you should listen to them, for that matter. But it doesn't mean that we can't criticize them. And he did this, very harsh. But just the fact that he publicly calls them out. Let's take the religious leader aspect of it for a moment. [00:10:52] Just the fact that he calls them out and embarrasses them is willing to condemn them. How often do religious leaders do that? How often do we do that where you call out somebody explicitly because they are living in sin, because they are living in such a way that turns people away from Jesus? We just don't hear that, but we heard it from Jesus. [00:11:11] Another passage, Matthew 19:4, 21, Matthew 19:21. [00:11:16] This is the story of the rich young man who comes up to Jesus, he tells him, follow the. You know, follow the commandments. He said, I've done this since my youth. What else do I need to do? [00:11:25] Jesus says, sell what you possess and give to the poor. [00:11:29] Then come follow me. [00:11:32] This is an extremely demanding call by our Lord. [00:11:36] He didn't say, well, it's okay. Just keep living the way you're living. [00:11:40] Just be, you know, continue to follow the commandments and you're going to be good. No, he demanded that. Demanded that the rich young man give everything up, sell it all to the poor and to follow him. [00:11:54] So again we see this high bar, this demanding Jesus, this frankly judgmental Jesus, because he's judging like he judges the religious leaders. He's kind of judging this rich young man that he can't be a full disciple unless he gives it up and sells it to the poor. [00:12:11] Another passage, this is John 4. This is the Samaritan woman at the well. [00:12:16] He's talking to her about the living water, the water that can give life forever. And she says, where can I get this water? And then he tells her, he says, go call your husband. [00:12:27] And if you understand the context here, this is a slap in the face of this woman. [00:12:33] Jesus knows this woman has had five husbands, I think it is, and the man she's living with is not her husband. [00:12:42] And so when he says to her, go call your husband, what's he doing? [00:12:46] He's calling out her sin. He's not being polite, that's for darn sure. Because he knows the situation of this woman. And the woman has to admit he directly calls out her sin right to her face. But why does he do it? [00:13:02] He does it because he wants to draw her to himself more deeply. And she can't do that as long as she lives in her sin. Compare that to what you hear so much from church officials that basically people who are married and, you know, divorced and remarried, they can come to communion because Jesus wouldn't condemn them. [00:13:25] Jesus wouldn't call them out. He understands where they are. No, this is Jesus understanding where you are and saying, you got to get out of it. [00:13:32] The reason he said, go call your husband to her is because he want her to escape from her sinful lifestyle. That's the only way she could truly follow him. [00:13:43] Here's another passage. Mark 7:27, is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs. This is where the non Jewish woman, I think, oh, I'm Phoenicia. I can't remember what she was now. [00:13:58] Anyway, she's like asking for. She's going. In fact, I want to look that one up because I want to. I can't remember now off the top of my head. Mark 7. [00:14:09] This is Mark, chapter 7, verse 27 is where he says this. [00:14:16] Oh yeah, the Syrophoenician woman. [00:14:19] And so he's in the region of Tyre and Sidon, which is outside of, of the, the. The. The Jewish people. The woman was a Greek and she begged him to cast a demon out of her daughter. And he said to her, let the children first be fed, for it's not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs. [00:14:37] I mean, how. [00:14:39] First of all, note culturally, dogs were considered. They weren't like fluffy little pets. Like, they weren't like, oh, our best friend or any of that for the Jewish people at that time. [00:14:50] They were like the scavengers in the, in the dumps. And they were considered not, not kind of the lowest form of the animal kingdom at that time. [00:15:02] And he's basically calling this woman a dog. [00:15:06] He's calling her a dog. [00:15:08] I mean, that does not really fit the laid back, tolerant hippie Jesus who's always nice to everybody, does it? [00:15:18] And this is a challenging passage because it's not 100% clear what he's doing here. I don't think you can say for sure. I should have looked up what the church father said about this one. But I would say that basically he's challenging her faith, seeing is she really committed, does she really believe in me and what I can do? [00:15:35] Because it goes on to say, she responds, I mean, what a beautiful woman. Let the children. He says, yes, Lord. Yet even the dogs on the table eat the children's crumbs. She didn't get offended by being called a dog, because why? Because all she cares about is her daughter. All she cares about is her daughter. She doesn't care about herself. She didn't put her own needs and wants ahead of her daughters. And the Lord says to her, for this saying, you may go your way. The demon has left your daughter. [00:16:02] And so he healed her. In other words, he was challenging her faith. How often do we hear that in among. I mean, first of all, I doubt we're going to ever hear a Catholic priest or bishop calls dogs. Maybe they should at times. [00:16:14] But how often do they really challenge us to see if we're really committed to the faith, if we're really committed to following Jesus and giving up things and not being offended by any everything that goes on? [00:16:26] Another passage, actually, I Didn't put this one down. But another passage just made me. I just saw this John 6, where the people leave him after he teaches about the Eucharist. A lot of his disciples leave him and he doesn't call them back. He doesn't beg them to come back. This is similar to this. He's challenging their faith. Do you really believe? That's what. And that's what the. He says to the disciples. Are you going to lead me to. I mean, the apostles? Are you going to lead me too? [00:16:54] One more passage I want to bring up is Luke 4:24. [00:16:57] And this is where he's in Nazareth, teaching at the synagogue. And they reject him. And he says, no prophet is acceptable in his own country. [00:17:04] And then he basically compares them to all the people who reject all the Jews in the past who rejected the prophets. [00:17:11] This is a high insult. I mean, the Jews at that time, the first century, they knew the prophets had been rejected by the Jewish people, but they didn't think they were the ones doing it. It's very easy to criticize our ancestors. It's much harder to look at ourselves and see how we fail, how we reject the prophets. And so he's basically telling them, you are rejecting the Messiah because I am the Messiah. I'm right here. You're going to reject me. And it enrages them. [00:17:39] I mean, here's the interesting thing about the whole image of Jesus we have today. [00:17:44] He would have never been crucified. [00:17:47] If Jesus was like we picture him today, like the common perception of him is they exist in. Among Catholics, especially outside of Catholicism, but even inside the church, he would have never been crucified. Why? Because he would have never done offended anybody, ever been happy with him. Like, oh, that seems like a nice guy. Look at Jesus. Maybe he'll, you know, one day get married, have a nice little family. [00:18:11] That's what they would have thought of him. They wouldn't have been enraged. I mean, if you read this passage from Luke 4, verses 24 is, is the, is the passage. Let me look at the. The real quick. [00:18:24] Luke 4, verses 16 through 16 through 30. And this is when he's innocent again. They were enraged by him. They rose up. [00:18:38] It says when they heard this, all the. In the synagogue were filled with wrath. [00:18:43] All the synagogue were filled with wrath. Jesus got people ticked off. [00:18:48] And these are Jewish people who are practicing the faith. They're in the synagogue. [00:18:52] So he got these respectable Jews to hate him, to be enraged, to want to kill him. They were so angry at him. [00:19:05] Again, Jesus did Not mince words. He did not try to be polite. He was not like an English gentleman who always. In a Jane Austen movie who always or book who always says things the proper way and never wants to offend anybody or lets people down very easily, things like that. No, he's enraging. He's literally enraging people. [00:19:28] Also, I kind of mentioned these passages of things he said that we kind of skip over and don't recognize really what he's doing here. But also, what does Jesus not do? [00:19:38] He very, very rarely flatters or praises anybody. [00:19:43] He does not kiss up to people. He does not try to ingratiate himself to people. When he walks up to Matthew and says, come follow me, he tells Peter and James and John and Andrew, drop your nets and come follow me. You'll be fishers of men. [00:20:01] If you read the Gospels, he comes across. Jesus comes across. If you really read them and really try. And by the way, the book I recommend more than any other to help you with this is To Know Christ Jesus by Frank Sheed. I'm rereading it this Lent. I recommend my. My podcast episode where I talked about my top ten most influential books. This one really helped me to understand Jesus. Jesus Better to Know Christ Jesus by Frank Sheen. It was written in, I think, the 50s or 60s, something like that. Anyway, what you see, though, in Jesus when you really read the Gospels and understand what's going on, he's very direct. [00:20:37] He's very plain spoken and he's very demanding. [00:20:42] He's very direct. He's very plain spoken. He's very demanding. [00:20:45] He does not flatter people. He does not go around trying to get people to like him. I mean, again, think about John 6, when people were upset and they walked away. His own disciples, he didn't try to get them back. Also, what do we also not see about Jesus? We don't see him joking around. [00:21:03] Now, I am not saying Catholics should not joke. [00:21:07] I mean, I do it all the time. I admit I'm probably too sarcastic. [00:21:12] But we don't see Jesus. The gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John did not think it was important for us to see Jesus ever joking around. [00:21:20] And so I think this is important too, that often you just hear homilies and talks by like bishops and priests and other Catholic leaders where the whole focus on, oh, let's just, let's make sure everybody knows how joyful we are. [00:21:38] And really what they're saying is we want everybody to think we're nice, that we're happy. [00:21:44] Jesus did not do that. You cannot read the Gospels and come across that he was going around trying to make sure everybody knew he was joyful, that he was happy, that he was a jokester, that he was, you know, your buddy, your pal. [00:21:58] No, like I said, he was direct, he was plain spoken, he was demanding. He did not flatter people, but he did insult them. [00:22:07] This is the actual Jesus of the Gospels. [00:22:09] And I think if we don't understand that, we're not going to understand our faith properly. [00:22:16] I want to skip from the Gospels to another encounter of Jesus which we don't think about too much because you don't see it too much in the, it's not in the Gospels. We kind of the only time we ever see Jesus is in the Gospels. But there's another book in the New Testament where we directly hear about Jesus in his act and that's the book of Revelation. [00:22:36] So in chapter one, when John is on and he sees of Christ and he hears and it's but it in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man. Obviously we're talking about Jesus clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash across his chest. His head and his hair were white as white wool, white as snow. His eyes were like flames of fire. [00:23:12] His feet were like burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace. And his voice was like the sound of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars and from his mouth issued a sharp two edged sword. And his face was like the sun shining in full strength. [00:23:29] Think about, that's literally the only description, the only physical description we have of Jesus Christ in the Bible. That's the only one right there. [00:23:38] And I guarantee you none of the photos, not photos, none of the paintings or drawings you see of Jesus today look like that. And for good reason. [00:23:47] The point is John sees him in all his glory. And it's impossible to fully describe in human language. That's why his metaphorical symbolic language, I don't think a, you know, a two edged sword was not actually coming from his mouth. That's talking about the word of God which Hebrews calls a two edged sword. [00:24:04] And, and so it's that language of the word of God coming out of his mouth. He is the word of God. Of course also this language is very clearly taken from Old Testament, especially Daniel and I think Zechariah and some other places where he's clearly divine. It's emphasizing his divinity. [00:24:22] My point is Jesus does not appear to the disciple whom he loved. Remember this is he's appearing to John the Apostle the disciple he was best friends with. [00:24:33] He doesn't appear to him as oh, and come walk up to him and say, hey, put his arm around. Hey buddy, how's it going, pal? It's been a while, let's chat. Let's have a nice, let's have a beer together. No. He appears as this glorious divine figure. [00:24:48] And what does John do in response? Again? John the beloved disciple, his best friend on earth. What does John do when I. This is verse 17 of chapter 1 of Revelation. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. [00:25:06] He was so overwhelmed by what he saw that he fell down. Is that what we think? I mean, think about. We encounter Jesus Christ directly every time we go to mass in Holy Communion. [00:25:19] Do we go up like, oh, I deserve this. [00:25:23] Or go up like, oh, this is just a perfunctory ritual. [00:25:27] Or do we really recognize what it is we're receiving, that we're receiving? The one who is like a son of man with a long robe and golden sash across his chest. His head and hair were white as white wool. His eyes were. His feet were like burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace. His voice like the sound of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars. From his mouth issued a sharp two edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in full strength. That's what we're receiving in Holy Communion. That's the Lord that we follow. [00:25:54] Not a 1960s hippie, tolerant, moral therapeutic, deist prophet or something like that. [00:26:03] It's the Lord of Glory. [00:26:06] And one other thing I want to note about Jesus again, Revelation is the other place where we hear the words of Jesus himself. [00:26:13] In chapter two, verse six, he's talking to the church in Ephesus. He has these letters to seven letters to seven churches in Asia Minor and the first one's to Ephesus. [00:26:25] And he says to them, yet you have this. You hate the works of the Nicolaidians. Nicolaitans. I'm not sure how to pronounce that, which I also hate. I bring that up because the Nicolaitans were heretics. It's not exactly known for sure how their hair, what their heresy was, but it's I, it's, it's. A lot of people think it was like a sexual license, it was like just kind of immorality. But they were heretics. [00:26:51] Jesus commends the church of Ephesus for hating their works. And he says, which I also hate. [00:27:00] How often do we hear talk about what Jesus hates? We talk about Jesus loves everybody. God so loved the Word he gave his only begotten Son. Whoever believes in him shall have everlasting life. [00:27:11] And Jesus does love with an everlasting love. [00:27:15] But that love also includes a flip side, which is he hates things that turn people away from his Father. [00:27:22] He hates the works of heretics. [00:27:24] I think we can say that very clearly from this passage. Again, that's Revelation 2. 6. [00:27:30] He hates the works of heretics. [00:27:35] And we should, too. [00:27:36] But we don't talk like that. We don't even talk about heresy anymore. [00:27:40] We definitely don't talk. In fact, when we encounter heresy or we encounter people who are embracing heresy, we never talk about, oh, we need to hate their works. We should hate the works of Martin Luther. We should hate the works of John Calvin. We should hate the works of any heretic. [00:27:56] Notice he didn't say hate them. He does love them because he wants them to come to repentance, repent and believe the Gospel. Remember, he said that he wants them to come repentance and believe, but he hates their works. And we should too. [00:28:09] So why does all this matter? Why am I doing a Bible study basically, in this podcast episode? Because I do think it's the root cause of our problems in the church today. [00:28:19] I think what's happened is we have changed our image of Jesus Christ. That was fundamentally the difference that we did in back in the 50s, 60s, wherever, 70s. We changed our image of Jesus in order to conform to the world because we knew if we kept the Jesus of the Gospels, we'd have to constantly be in battle with the world. And I think, honestly, the church just got tired of that. When I say the church, I mean church leaders and many Catholics, we just got tired of constantly battling against the world and standing up to it. We just didn't feel like we wanted to do that anymore. And so we reshaped Jesus into an image that the world will find palatable. [00:29:02] I mean, think about it. [00:29:03] Most people today in America, they have a positive impression of Christ, but really they shouldn't, based upon the way they're living. [00:29:14] They either have to accept Jesus as he is and change their lives, and then they'll have a positive impression of him. [00:29:21] Or if they're being honest and they want to continue living in sin, embracing heresy, doing all these terrible things, then really they shouldn't like Jesus because Jesus doesn't like the way they're living and he's demanding that they change the way they they live. They honestly should be angry with Jesus. They should be like the people in Nazareth who are enraged. But what they do what? The problem is they don't understand who Jesus is. So they just remake a new Jesus and that Jesus is happy for them, that Jesus accepts them where they are. [00:29:52] We lower our moral standards because we don't think that Jesus would demand the ideal. But he does. He clearly does. Like I said, it's a whole assumption of, like Pope Francis, his document Amoris Laetitia, you know, which he talked about this ideal of family life and marriage that we can't. That somehow we have to understand people can't reach. [00:30:17] And we're watering down our teachings also in desperation. In desperation to attract people. But all it does is it just allows them to continue living their sins, something Jesus never allowed. Jesus never was a numbers guy. And we saw that in John 6. We see that constantly in the Gospels. He's not a numbers guy. Like, okay, how can we get the most people to follow me? [00:30:35] Let's have a brainstorming session, Apostles and let's whiteboard how we can get the most people to follow me. He didn't do that. In fact, I would guess that Peter at least once said to him, in fact, he kind of. We know he says this, you know, when he tells Jesus he's not going to have to suffer. I'm willing to bet Jesus, I mean, I'm sorry, Peter at some point pulled Jesus aside and said, listen, Jesus, I get that you're, like, doing what you're doing, but you're really turning people off. I think we'd attract more people if you kind of tone that part down. I bet you Peter did something like that. [00:31:09] And we know what Jesus would have said. He said, get behind me, Satan. I didn't bring up that passage. He literally called the first pope Satan. [00:31:17] So in comparison to that, my criticisms of the popes in the past are pretty mild. [00:31:23] And so we have to get back to the basics as Catholics. And that means going back to the Gospels. I recommend all the time, read the Gospels. Read the Gospels. Read the Gospels, Yes. Read the entire sacred Scriptures. [00:31:39] Read all parts of it. You don't want to just read the Gospels. Like, I'm reading the Gospel. I'm sorry, I'm reading the Book of Revelation right now. That's why I saw these images of Jesus in there. I was like, whoa, that doesn't really comport with the way we picture him. [00:31:51] But read the whole Bible, but really always continually being. Reading the Gospels. You should read the Gospels every day, potentially. I mean, carry them with you. [00:31:59] You know, there's a lot of little Bibles. I think I'M gonna do a podcast episode on different Bibles, like sizes and translations, things like that at some point. But we need to read the Gospel so we have an accurate and full understanding of who Jesus is. Then we won't fall into these problems of accepting sin, of watering down the teachings of Jesus because we think he's our buddy and our friend, when really he is the Lord of Glory, and we should fall down in adoration and fear of Him. [00:32:30] That would be a more complete image of the Jesus that's found in the sacred Scriptures. Okay, I'll leave it there for now. Until next time, everybody. God love you. And remember the poor.