Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] So I try to look at everything in my life from a biblical perspective and live my life according to the Bible.
[00:00:10] You know, how to live my life. The book of Proverbs is a huge influence on my life as far as how to live.
[00:00:20] And I've done the whole like, church thing and Christianity like has become so public for some circles it's the thing to do.
[00:00:38] And like in some parts of the world you'll lose your life for believing in it.
[00:00:50] And I bring it, I'm bringing up this topic mostly because I don't go to church anymore.
[00:00:59] And I know that's a, in some, for some people, like that's, it's a bad thing, like, oh, you need to go to church, you have to be connected and whatever, whatever.
[00:01:10] But I, but I want to say the, the system of the church, like has let me down.
[00:01:23] Not the people, because I still seek fellowship with other Bible believers, Christians you can call them.
[00:01:38] It's just that whole church culture is, it can be very toxic.
[00:01:45] I have experienced it before.
[00:01:49] Yeah, I went to different churches. I was raised as a Catholic in South Texas, served the Catholic Church and part of the, the church service, you know, it's, I was raised that way.
[00:02:06] Late teens, maybe early 20s, I started going to a non denominational church with, with kind of like a Pentecostal background. Ish. Non denominational I would call it. But that's where I learned that you could actually have a relationship with God and not a relationship with the church or a church.
[00:02:35] Right. I felt like the Catholic Church introduced me to who Jesus was.
[00:02:41] Like Jesus, Jesus was crucified.
[00:02:44] You know, you go through Sundays learning Jesus was crucified, died for us. Rose on the third day because you say that, you say there's like certain creeds and sayings that you say throughout the Catholic Mass. Right. So that's how I learned about who Jesus was. When I started non denominational church, that's when they were starting to talk about like, oh, you can have a relationship with God, a relationship with Jesus and with the Catholic Church. I felt like it was more a relationship with the church related to Jesus and God and the saints and Mary and all this other stuff. Right. So non dominational. They taught me, I was taught and I learned like, you can actually have a relationship with God, Jesus, the way, the truth and the life and, and they, they would use scripture, they would use the Bible. I mean the Catholic Church would use the Bible and they would go through it in like circle, a cycle of like three years or something like that. I don't remember, they would use scripture, they would eat portions and the priest would talk about what he would talk about. Sometimes it was related to the gospel, reading, whatever. In the, that portion of Mass, the non denominational church, the pastor was the one giving the sermon, right? And he would have a passage of scripture that he would go over and talk about that scripture and have a story or whatever, whatever related to that scripture. So there's two different worlds, right? Catholic and then non denominational.
[00:04:14] And I just stuck with the having a relationship with God, you know, through Jesus Christ.
[00:04:23] And then eventually I got into like doctrine as far as the Catholics having the catechism and the non denominational having so many different doctrines. You got Baptists, you got, you know, it's, I think it comes from the Protestant Reformation where it's, it's Protestant and Catholic, right? There's two different ones. Now. Catholic has its own traditions, Bible, you know, all that stuff. Protestant is more kind of like, I want to say, based solely off of the Bible, right? And then you have these different circles. You got Luther and Calvin and all this stuff, right?
[00:05:11] So for me, I just wanted to, when I began my journey as a person that believes in God through Jesus Christ, a Christian, quote, unquote. I don't like to call myself, aside, I don't like to call myself a Christian because in the days of the Bible, like in the Book of Acts, people weren't calling themselves Christians. If they did, they would die. Like they, they would, they would find out, People would find out and, and they would, you know, they would become martyrs basically. So in the Bible days, they, they were called Christians. They weren't calling themselves Christians. And that's how I want to believe in it today is like, I don't want to call myself a Christian. I want for my lifestyle to speak that way to where they're like, oh, he's a Christian by my fruit, by, by how I live.
[00:06:05] So anyway, Protestant, Catholic. So when I decided to continue my journey, right, I wanted to do it based off of the Bible, based off of the biblical beliefs.
[00:06:22] And therefore I had to study the Bible, study the doctrines around from the Bible alone. So sola scriptura, I guess that's the main thing that I'm talking about here. And you hear this term in like Calvinist circles or systematic, the theology circles, the term sola scriptura, which means Bible alone, right? Based on the Bible alone. And you, you'll hear of people like John MacArthur who talks based solely on the Bible. His sermons are based on that. So anyway, I decided to, to, to continue my journey as a quote unquote Christian or Bible believer based solely on the Bible. What the Bible says, right? What God says about me through the Bible, you know, how to live my life. And as you know, based on the Bible, right? So sorry guys, I get sidetracked really easy. I got adhd.
[00:07:29] So living through the Bible, right? And one of the ways that helps me is obviously when I started reading the Bible I was reading a lot of the New Testament, a lot of letters.
[00:07:39] Paul, James, Galatians, Ephesians, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Romans, Hebrews, which, that one's. I, I think I like Hebrews. It, it baffles me a lot when I read it.
[00:07:53] So that's like I, I really want to go and do a deep dive study of the book of Hebrews. But anyways, I would read New Testament stuff and to be honest, I, I didn't really didn't read the Gospels a lot I think because I had been taught a lot about that through the Catholic teaching, like Jesus suffered, died, he was born of a virgin, all this stuff. And, and I, I would read like the book of John and there would be like a lot of miracles and then it isn't until recently and I've been into this Bible stuff for I don't know, ten plus years, maybe more.
[00:08:26] Just recently I started really going back to the Gospels and seeing what Jesus said and what the Gospels were about.
[00:08:32] But a lot of the go stuff I know about the Gospel is from like movies. To be like Jesus of Nazareth with was a. Jesus of Nazareth is the name of the, of the movie. And a lot of the stuff in there, if you go and read the Bible, some of it, you have to, you have to compare it with the Bible anyway.
[00:08:52] So the book of Proverbs, I landed on the Book of Proverbs and I read, I want to say I read Proverbs almost every day lately it's been psalms, but it's been Proverbs every day. Almost every day. Because it's how to live wise, how to live wise.
[00:09:07] There, there, there's two contrasts. You got the fool, you got the, you got the foolish person and you got basically the wise person. And in the Book of Proverbs, I'm telling you, everyday life, what do we do every day? Go to work, come home, spend time with the family, wake up, next day, go to work. It's a constant middle class lifestyle, work, family, church, whatever, whatever your thing is in there. In the Book of Proverbs it teaches you, how to, how to live among your co workers, how to not gossip, you know, how to avoid a quarrel. If you avoid a quarrel, it's good. Avoid different things, right?
[00:09:51] So living, been living my life, my life like that for years, has been maybe out of five to eight years of me not going to church at all. Because we got to the point where people in the church, I mean just the whole, I don't know, it's just, I don't like it.
[00:10:16] There's, I saw that there was worldly aspects in the church and there's the argument, of course, oh well, not everybody's, not everybody's healed and you have to accept them and they have to accept you and this and that. And then I started learning about narcissism, right? And I started noticing that there's narcissists in the church and they use the church for narc to get narcissistic supply from other, other believers.
[00:10:45] So if you got a new believer coming in, you got a narcissistic person that's been there for years, they, that new person that comes in, their belief is going to get misconstrued because they have this narcissistic person telling them, no, you got to live like this. For me, that they're not telling that directly, but that's how they're thinking.
[00:11:03] So it's, it's misleading to those people that, those new people that want to believe in Jesus, so on and so forth, that they're going to be led astray, right?
[00:11:12] And then of course you got pastors that are like that too and they take advantage of their congregation, you know. And I want to say there's no perfect church.
[00:11:24] There's no perfect church here on this earth.
[00:11:28] And I think the church is you and I coming together, fellowshipping about God, living our lives, you know, breaking bread together, you know, with the, the people that really actually believe in, in a Bible based lifestyle.
[00:11:50] That's what church is. It's not you go to this place, you tithe your money, you listen to the sermon, hour and a half, you're done.
[00:12:00] I mean that's, I don't think it can be church, but that, I don't think that we should say that's the main definition for people that believe in the Bible of church. Right?
[00:12:12] And I've tried different churches and it's, it's discouraging because it's, we put so much belief into these systems that when they fail us, it's like that was going to happen. You know, like I was reading that there Was a pastor in Dallas that was in the news lately, talking about how he's. He's going to jail before assault on a minor or something like that.
[00:12:45] And it's just like, oh, that stuff's gonna happen, right? It's gonna happen.
[00:12:50] And we're human and we use the. We, we. And we say, oh, well, he's human. Same thing with the Catholic Church. You got priests that are, you know, breaking the law and assaulting kids and all kinds of stuff. It could go on both, all, all religions. Like there's, there's, there's Pentecostal, whether it's Catholic, whatever. There's. There's always a flaw somewhere.
[00:13:14] So that's why I think church shouldn't be an institution. It shouldn't be a place.
[00:13:20] Church should be the fellowship mumble among Bible believers.
[00:13:25] That's church, right? And, and I guess they say that church is that because that's what you do when you go to church, right? You fellowship, you praise and worship and all this other stuff. So I don't know. I just chose. I just, I've. I've chosen to not go to church at all. I mean, I might go like, you know, church meeting, like an actual building, whatever. I might go to, I don't know, a funeral or a wedding or something. It might just go just to, I don't know, just maybe try to fellowship. You know, there's. There's people that I work with that, that I see every day, and they're believers as well, and I like to talk to them. You know, it doesn't have to be in church. I talk to them about God, about the Bible and stuff. But anyway, I'm rambling on. I'm just talking about, like, I, I don't think you have to go to a church to be considered a Christian or a person that believes in the Bible.
[00:14:24] Because you can be. You can be a person that believes in the Bible and people.
[00:14:31] And I think people will still see God and Christ through you, that. Through the fruit that you bear by living what the Bible says. The book of Proverbs, I'm telling you, is huge in order for people to see God through you because you're wise.
[00:14:49] And that's important. I think that's important rather than you saying, oh, I'm a. Because I used to be like that. I used to be like, I'm a Christian. Yeah, I'm a Christian. And, and when people first go to church, they become like that. They become very churchy, very Bible thumperish. And I'm guilty of being like that but as, as, as God has taught me through the Bible w wisdom the more I like, I don't like that any like cuz I see that in people and like dude, you're being, I want to say in a sense you're being deceived because you're, you're learning the churchy and not so much the biblical.
[00:15:37] You know what I'm saying? You say things, you know, the words are powerful, you know, and I want to say like, you know, how do, what do you think? How do you think people should learn? Live a lifestyle according to the Bible, if you're a believer in Jesus Christ, that he's the way, the truth and the life that you believe he's your Lord and Savior, you know, if you choose that just, you know, accept God, accept Jesus, accept Jesus and into your, your, your heart and just to be like God, I believe that you created a way through Jesus Christ, you know, he died for our sins and you know, we have, we get to have a relationship with you, God, you know, pray those prayers, you know, and don't, don't be so dependent on your church.
[00:16:38] You know, when people used to ask me, oh, which church you go to? I used to tell them outright, yeah, I go to this church, I'm proud of it. La la la.
[00:16:45] Now it's like they asked me what church I go to, I'll be like, look dude, I don't think church is important. I think God and Jesus, the Holy Spirit, that's the importance, not which church I go to.
[00:16:57] And your lifestyle will show, your lifestyle will show it.
