Anger & an Apology

0:02 Looking at our world from a theological perspective. This is the Theology Central podcast making Theology Central. Well, guys, I have to admit it. I have to confess my last broadcast, I got extremely angry. There was some extreme anger being screamed into this microphone. If you heard the last broadcast, if you haven't, go look, go listen to it about a cultural cultural revolution. You can go listen to it. By the time that's over, you will hear anger. You will hear me expressing. You can hear how angry I was.

0:48 I was yelling, I was screaming, I was pounding this table, I was knocking things off this table. I guess you could almost say I lost it. So we need to talk about my anger, and we need to talk about well why I was angry, and well what we can learn from it? All right, and we will do that right after I say good afternoon everyone. It is Thursday, February the twentieth, twenty twenty five. It is currently one fifty eight pm Central time, and I'm coming to you live from the Theology Central studio located right here in Albilene, Texas.

1:28 And at this very moment, I'm much calmer. I have calmed down, I did eat some lunch, watched an episode of Chicago PD, walked around for a few minutes, considering what should or shouldn't I do. Should I turn on the microphone, Should I talk about it? Should I offer an apology? Do I need to offer an apology? Just kind of went back and forth, and I decided. And not only that, even even before I call down, while I was still extremely angry, while it was still extremely upset, there was there was at least a moment there I thought about just deleting the episode. I mean, I mean it was over an hour long. There was a part of me that said, you know what, that did not go the way I intended. I'm just going to delete it and be done with it. But then there's a part of me that, like, you know, it came across as real, it came across. It demonstrates that you are a sinner. It demonstrates that you are human, and there's lessons to be learned in that. So let's just turn on the microphone and talk about what happened, and then see if you can use your failure, your sin, possibly as a lesson for everyone else. I think sometimes look my own personal opinion. And I know this may sound like an excuse. Sometimes I think you can learn more from people who who have sinned and acknowledged their sin than from people who always try to approach everything as

2:59 if they've got it all figured out. I think sometimes the more broken a person is, the more messed up they are, sometimes the more you can learn. I don't know. Maybe there's maybe that's there's truth in that. Who knows. Maybe that's just me trying to justify my own sin. We we could argue about that. But here's what happened. Now. First, let me just set this up. One of the positive things and one of the negative things. It's a double edged sword here, right, is the way I do sermon reviews. Right, I go into it blind. I don't know what's going to happen. I have no clue, I have no idea. So that makes it fun, That makes it organic. That doesn't mean it doesn't come across as oh, I heard this and this is ridiculous. Now let me tear it apart, even though I've already heard it and rehearsed what I'm going to say. But that seems like I have an agenda.

3:53 I went and found something that has what I disagree with, and now I'm going to play it to tell you how bad it is. Well, that's all rehearsed, that's all set up, that has an agenda, right, So I think there's a positive going into it blind then it's not rehearsed, there is no agenda. I'm listening with you and we're gonna find out what happens in real time. Right, So there's some positive, But the negative is I don't know what's going to happen. Right, I'm we may be listening to something, reviewing something, and I'm like, well, I don't really know what to say. I don't even know what this is talking about. This is a total train wreck. This is not even about the scripture they say it was going to be about. They didn't even mention the scripture. Okay, I don't know. We just wasted an hour of our time.

4:37 I mean that has happened multiple times. But there also are times where I'm listening to something and I hate to use this word. I hate to use this word because people will see it in a negative People will say, you know, I know, it's kind of borrowing the vernacular of the culture. But sometimes I will hear something, and I'm just gonna use the frame. It triggers me. I don't like the word, but you know what is the better way. It ticks me off. It frustrates me, It irritates me, It makes me angry, it makes me mad, and then I react in real time. Now, for those who don't know me, for those who don't know me and me, say, oh, he's overreacting. He's But if you know me, you know that that's the way I am.

5:26 I mean, you can already hear how animated I typically talk. But I when I'm reading a book, right, I can be reading a book, and typically when I read, like a novel, I tend to pace, and I will I will like, I'll be talking out loud to the book. And sometimes I'll read something in a book and I'll get mad and angry and I'll be pacing around the house yelling and screaming about it. And because I just tend to be very my everything is worn on my sleep, good or bad. Right, That's why I have a difficult time if things are not going right here. I have a hard time turning on the microphone, go microphone, going good morning everyone, God bless you in today. A wonderful day. I have a tendency to say, hey, today is trash, today is garbage. Right, I have a tendency to you can kind of tell now there's good and bad in that, right, Because sometimes maybe you should kind of pull those emotions off the sleep, maybe put them in your pocket. There's a time and a place. But doing a podcast it's also kind of therapeutic. But to be able to express whatever you want, you get it out, you get out.

6:30 But when you when you're listening to a sermon and all of a sudden something happens, and it's just I mean, you don't have time to go let me process this. You've got to react in real time. And well, what the sermon we were reviewing. It's so frustrating because you know, the sermon is about, you know, trying to understand cultural revolution. Okay, that's that's fascinating. They mention Dietrich Bonhoeffer's you know, hypotheses, his thesis on stupidity. All right, that's brilliant. That's fascinating that they even brought it up. They even mentioned that they did forty five minutes of teaching on Bonhoeffer's thesis.

7:13 All right, that sounds fascinating. I want to go find that. So there was a lot of positives there, right, But immediately there was some things being said that I was a little confused by, like, wait a minute, so there's a cultural revolution happening. That's all bad. But at the same time it seemed to be implied that everything it implied, not explicitly stated that, I guess everything Trump is doing is good. And I was already like, okay, where is this going? And then it and then it was weird because it kind of turned into America it's basically a nation founded on Biblical principles, and trying to really kind of make America like, you know, it's this Christian thing. Even though it did avoid saying it's a Christian nation, it came really close trying to say it was built on Biblical principle and trying to make all these arguments about it. And then it kind of took a weird turn because I was basically saying all the Founding Fathers believed in God, all, you know, all the Founding Fathers said, and was trying to make these claims about the Founding Fathers.

8:11 Then all of a sudden, it turns to Thomas Paine. He was like, well, here was this really messed up guy who didn't like Christianity has said all of this bad stuff. However, when he died, and then they go through the typical deathbed supposed conversion experience of Thomas Pain on his deathbed, and as soon as he mentioned Thomas Pain. As soon as he mentioned Thomas Pain, I wanted to stop the dis sermon, turn on the microphone, and go, guys, it's getting ready to happen. He's gonna give us the mythological account of Thomas Pain supposedly realizing how wrong he had been on his deathbed. And I almost wanted to say that, but I didn't. I just I just I just let it play. And then it started happening, and I was like, this can't be occurring. So I got very upset. Now when it comes to anger, and I'll try to explain my anger here in a minute. One of the things I have to remember is Ephesians four twenty six, be ye angry, and sin not, let not the sun go down upon your wrath. So I need

9:41 to be there's a time to be angry, don't sin in that anger, And then there's a time then you don't let the sun go down on your wrath. You've got to work through it. So be angry, but don't sin in the anger yet, don't let the sun go down on your wrath. Kind of really three parts, if you want to break it down. I don't know if that's a great way to break it down, but it really about three parts. And we'll talk a little bit more about this verse in a minute, try to put it in some context. Maybe maybe we'll come back to it and do it as a devotional we'll see. So I know that there is a time and place to be angry. I know. I believe that to be true. I believe that to be right. I believe there are times that we can be mad and we can be angry, and the Bible even calls for that, but at the same time, we're not to sin in it. And there's a fine line there, right, because we can always try to justify that our anger is righteous, it's righteous indignation, and sometimes though that's just us covering up the fact that we handled ourselves in a sinful way. So did I have a right to be angry? Well? I believe that Christians utilizing someone's death and claiming that they said things on their deathbed that eyewitnesses who were actually there say never happened, did not occur. People who knew the individual, people who were there, people who knew the individual, people who were eyewitnesses say it did not happen. And yet Christians,

11:15 all of this time later making claims about how someone died and what they supposedly said. That makes me angry. Now you may not care. You may say, well, what's the big deal. The big deal is we are not to bear false witness. We are to put away lying. We are to speak the truth. And you're talking about a human being who died. We don't bring them into our little ideological point that we want to make and try to use them as propaganda. It's a human being, don't I don't care who you are. You may hate me and I may not like you, but guess what, I still don't want to be making up stories about what you said on your deathbed. Would you want someone making up stories about something your wife said on her deathbed, or your father, or your mother, or your child. And as someone is using it for an ideological purpose to make some point in a sermon, there's nothing Christian about that there's nothing godly about that that makes me angry.

12:16 And it had nothing to do with the sermon we were listening to. It has something to do with the broader Christian world because I've heard that idea a thousand times in churches. So it wasn't like, oh, I'm met at this person because he said it. No, I'm met at all of Christianity who has promoted the idea over and over and over without any nuance, without any going. Well, the story may not quite be that way. And there are clearly people who were there and we had weren't there who seems to call it into question. And the minute it's called into question, well then it lose its emotional impact, it loses it's sensationalism. Right, Well, we don't even know if it happened. Okay, Well, then what's the point of telling the story if we don't know. You're not You can't make a point on something that is greatly inflict or there's a great dispute over it. It's all of it is. There's great conflict over it. It's called into question, then you don't use it for your propaganda.

13:12 They say, well, it's not propaganda, it's a sermon. Sermons are a form of propaganda. Okay, give me a break. Okay, we can get into a whole discussion about that. So I I and you can hear it in my voice. Now, I'm still angry about it. I'm just gonna be honest with it. Still bothers me. But it's not about one church. It's it's Christianity at large. I get mad when I hear pastors say things about Satanism. Drives me nuts. Right here, I got right here next to me. And the reason I mention it, I have the Satanic Bible right here, I guess. So sick of pastor saying things about it, I'm like, what Satanism are you referring to? Are you referring to some Satanism you saw on a television show, a movie, something figment of your imagination. Are you talking about the Church of Satan started by Anton Love They because if you are, I got the Satanic Bible right here, and the things you're saying are absolutely lies. Or when people say things about the Book of Mormon, oh I've got it right here. When people say things about Catholicism, Oh, I got the Catholic Catechism laying right here behind me.

14:17 I don't care if it's a false religion. I don't care if it's someone who's my enemy. We have a responsibility to try to speak the truth, put away lying and be accurate. Are we gonna always do right? No, we're gonna mess up. We're gonna mess up. And now you know what we do. Oh, we can own it and correct it. That's all we can do. But it makes me mad because it misrepresents, it destroys credibility and this and my frustration with this has nothing to do with this sermon. It goes back to being a teenager in West Texas because back at the time when I was a teenager, the Evils of Rock and Roll back Masking. If you play the album backwards, it says worship Satan, Sweet Satan. It says smoke marijuana. And you know another one by the Dust by Queen, I think that had the marijuana Stairway to Heaven by Zeppelin. I think that had someting up something about Satan. And you're playing it backwards and demons will come out of your speakers and you're opening yourself to demon a possession and all of this stuff. Well, you know, Friday Night I'm a teenager.

15:23 I may not have any money. Oh, but I knew something I could go do for fun. I could go find one of the local churches where they were doing their little rallies on the evils of rock and roll, because on Saturdays they were gonna have a bonfire and burn records like they're in Nazi Germany. Okay, all right, So I would always go and not to I never went to the bonfires because I'd be too busy trying to break under. I would have been running into the bonfire, pulling the records out and then trying to take as many as I couldn't get them to my car. Right. But I would go to their little conferences and I would just sit there and mock Christians. I would laugh all day because they're quoting lyrics that they don't understand. They're telling complete lies about the band. And it's just and it's just like what you people, and I hate to say it. Using Dietrich Bonhoeffer's you know thesis on stupidity, you're stupid. You all claim to be Christians, you all claim to believe in God about truth and honesty, but you misrepresent this artist, and you misrepresent this song, and clearly you don't understand the lyric. So it used to bother me then, and it would bother me when it's always bothered me when from the pulpit. Look from the pulpit.

16:29 We can make mistakes from the pulpit. We can get things wrong from the pulpit. We can you know, say things incorrectly in our lives. We can sin because we're sinners. So we're all going to sin. I'm not talking for people to be perfect. I'm not talking about and I'm not saying that I'm perfect. I say it all the time. I'm a degenerate with a microphone. Okay, I'm a sinner. What I'm saying is when you prepare a sermon and you're going to make dogmatic assertions about a song about a musician. Remember all the nonsense we reviewed that Christian thing about Taylor Swift and all the nonsense. Remember back when Christians were running around Beyonce is a part of the Illuminati. Beyonce is a part of the Illuminati. And all these just radical claims, all the things that you know, Obama gonna we were all gonna be made Muslims and we're gonna shut down churches take away, our Bibles are gonna be put in FEMA camps. We're all gonna be microchips, just on and on. That's the stuff that I'm talking about.

17:32 Those are when I visited a church here in Texas. I've told the story a million times. They had a petition there in the altar in the front of the church, in the front of the pulpit, and wanted everyone after church to come sign this petition to send to the federal government because an atheist was trying to get Christian broadcasting removed from the air. The whole thing was a hoax started by atheists to make Christians look stupid. And I'm just sitting there, going, you've got to be what nobody takes. Christians don't take the time to check anything, to correct anything, to verify anything. We just made. That stuff makes me mad, it makes me angry. I'm not directing it towards any specific person. I'm not directing it towards any specific church. I'm saying in general, I have been witnessing this stuff since I was a teenager. I attended a church in Nebraska where they made all these claims about the Promise keepers and all of these ridiculous claims.

18:28 I knew from the minute there's something wrong. So what now? Back then, I couldn't just look anything up. I found the phone number, contacted the promise keeper's headquarters, found out that everything my pastor had said was a complete Why did my pastor want to apologize? He got mad at me for calling him into question, and how dare I question him? Well, I'm gonna question you, buddy, because you lied fifty times from the pulpit. Now see now I'm not time. I'm talking about my old pastor, So I am directing it towards someone at that point. But it was just it just ridiculous. I think he finally apologized a little bit, but he did it in the most sarcastic way. Someone here was upset because I said this, Well, we know the promise keepers have false doctrine. Anyway, Well they may preach about the false doctrine, don't make up lies.

19:20 So you hear my anger. My anger is not directed towards a person. It's directed that Why can't from the pulpit you get truth? We we yell and scream that the world is full of lies, and they follow follow the father of lies, But us we have truth. We're Christians, We're enlightened. We know everything. God opens our eyes. I'm so glad that I can see everything now while we lie lie lie, Lie, Lie, Lie, Lie lie Lie. That's when I get irritated. It's one thing to say Thomas Paine taught this, I disagree with this, and then for me to go, well, I kind of agree with Thomas pain on that point. Okay, Now we just have a disagreement on what you believe about a point. It's another thing to say Thomas Paine said something and did something on his deathbed. That's just not accurate. So I think there is a place to be, a time and place to be angry. I do believe that there is a time and place to be angry. The issue is sin not did I sin? Well? I think I sinned in the sense to how angry I God? I mean that it was. I mean I was furious. I mean you still can hear it in my voice. So for not handling my anger in a God glorifying, edifying way, I

20:55 do apologize, and I make no excuses. Right, I'm not going to point to, well, this was wrong, so I justifies my wrong. You don't point to bad behavior to justify bad behavior. So I was wrong, and I apologize. I am going to leave the message there because well, then it's a record of my sin publicly, and I do apologize. I felt like I did not handle it correctly. I allowed it to get too much, right because the text says be angry and sin not. Let not the sun go down upon your wrath. Well, that last part I'm trying to fix right now, before the day is over, before the afternoon is over. I'm addressing it. I'm acknowledging it.

21:39 I'm saying, hey, I didn't handle that very good. I don't want to give place to the devil. And then I look at verse twenty nine. Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying that it may minister Grayson to the hearers. Did I let corrupt communication? Well, we always think corrupt communication is just like, you know, explicit language, but corrupt communication can be you know, when you're not saying something that's building up or helping, you're just yelling and screaming. I went on a full blown rant. Okay, I mean, I mean I made Alex Jones look calm Okay, if you've ever heard Alex Jones, you know, go on one of his rants and then listen. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice. Be kind one to another, tenderhearted for giving one another, even as God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you. Now, I wasn't naming anybody.

22:35 I didn't even name the church. I didn't do anything along those lines. I did not. But the same same time and again, though, what people are going to misconstrue is that I was attacking that I was attacking the falsehoods in general, yelled from pulpits, and I just get sick of it. I get sick of it. In twenty twenty five, if you're going to stand behind a pulpit and make a claim, you can fact check your claim in five seconds. It took me five seconds to fact check the claim live in real time, utilizing numerous different sources.

23:22 Now I could I could I need to? I could I need it? I think there was a couple of things that I need to verify. I think I even read some quotes saying I need to verify the source. And what was so confusing at least in the message. Is his whole point was that basically all the Founding Fathers are like these godly men who believed in God. And then he goes to Thomas Pain didn't basically showing Thomas Pain, you know, had definitely did not like Christianity. And then but then I guess his point was well, then even he, I guess recanted at the end. So see, I didn't even don't really seem to make any point from just a logical structural point of view, right. What I wanted to get to is what his feelings are of the cultural revolution that's occurring now where he thinks it's headed. But I got frustrated and I got upset, and I lost my ever living mind. There's no way to get around it. When I got done, I mean my heart was like boom boom boom boom boom. My heart was pounding. I was still like I was almost like shaking because I was so frustrated. And I know, for you, like who cares, But for me it man, I don't want anybody. And I said this, and there's a little bit of truth to this. When I die, I don't want Christians anywhere around me, near me, You say, why not? Because who knows if they're gonna take something I say and use it for their own propaganda. Now

24:54 I know that's a little hyperbole, but man Alive and even AI will show you how deathbed conversions was used as propaganda, especially eighteenth and nineteenth century. Well, that that's messed up, and that can happen on atheist side Christian side. It happens because we're all sinners, right, So look, when pastors do this, I understand they do it because they're a sinner, like I do things that I do because I'm a sinner, right, So I'm not asking for anyone any something bad to happen to someone. I don't even want anyone to be censored. I want them to be able to put forth their perspective. And I understand why they do so because we're all sinners. But because we know we're all sinners, then I think we always have to check to go wait a minute, can I verify this?

25:45 Do it? I just need to double check it because I could be wrong. Am I so caught up in wanting to prove a point that I'm not ready to verify the information because the information I verify may actually disprove my point. Now there'll be trust me. It could be fifteen minutes from now, it could be twenty four hours from now that I'm going to say something in a podcast that's factually in error, factually wrong, and I'm going to have to apologize for it. I've done it in the past, I'll do it, I'll do it in the future. I try to verify, but sometimes I can be wrong. I think I gave one time a quote and attributed it to someone and come to find out that that quote is commonly attributed to that particular person, but it's not. Actually, there's no verifiable proof that it's true, So it's a called into question. So what I should have said is it is often said that this person has said it, but we don't have any way of proving it. So be angry. You know, it's hard for a sinner to be angry and not sin. It really is, it really is. And we could almost look at this as law. And you know, Jesus is uh, this is what I'm told to be angry and sin, not Jesus.

27:07 Of course, for whatever the command is, Jesus always performed the command right. So in Christ, I can be angry and sin not because Christ's obedience to this is imputed to my account. Because Christ walked into the temple, took a whip, threw everyone out there. Clearly was anger there, but he did not sin, and he did not let the sun go down upon his wrath. He's the only one who fulfills Ephesians four twenty six. If I said five twenty six, I apologize for twenty six. He obeyed it. I don't, and I failed. I got angry. I did not handle it perfectly. I believe my anger was justifiable, and I believe every I believe others of you should have been more bothered by it. Most people will be like, he got so mad? What were the most ridiculed thing?

28:01 Who really cares? If pastors give false information about it? Who really cares? Right? So, yeah, I think most people. I think that's how most people will take it. And my thing would be I think it should bother you a little bit more because I bet you, most of you if you've ever heard the story about Thomas Paine, you heard it in church, and you heard the Christian version of it without ever even knowing that's considered basically not true. A fraud. But if you hear that, you'll be like, oh, well, so what And look, if you can do that, it's probably better that you can be your way. I just don't understand how you can be so apathetic. I don't get it to me. I just want to scream. But maybe you maybe you're your apathy.

28:47 I need a little bit more of your apathy. Maybe you need a little bit more of my anger. I don't know. I just know I'm supposed to be angry, but I am not to sin in it. And man alive, did I get mad? Man alive? Did I get mad? So I was gonna break down Ephesians five twenty six. But just remember three parts be angry, sin not. Don't let the sun go down upon your wrath. You gotta get it. You gotta work through your anger and then move forward. You can't just say or you give place to the devil. And trust me, I don't need to get place to the devil. He's got a permanent residence right here inside of me, known as my sinful nature.

29:32 I don't need any more help or assistance with it, because I commit sin all the time and thought and word, indeed in desire. Okay, all over the place. I am a degenerate with a microphone, and sometimes as a degenerate I do degenerate things like losing my ever living mind live on the air. So I apologize if you would like to hear it. And some people say, well, if you know that you didn't handle it right, why won't you delete the episode? Well, because then if I just delete the episode, I'm deleting the very like you know what I'm saying, Like it needs to be there to show what I did and then you can draw your own conclusion, but to hopefully learn from it. Sometimes you learn more from someone's failure than you do their success. Right, David's failure is right there in the Bible. Peter's failures right there in the Bible. Abram's failures are right there.

30:26 Failure is sometimes the way we learned. So my failure is right there for everyone to hear. And when you hear it, you'll be like man alive, and there'll be people who are not will not be happy with how angry I got. So this, really, I haven't even looked on YouTube. Oh boy, do I look on YouTube? Hang on, I'm afraid to look. I bet you there's already a comment. Let me look here, Let me look here. I was going to break down all of Ephesians, but I'm not going to do so right now. Hang on, let me look, let me look, let me look look. Okay, good, there's nothing currently that's good. That's good. All right, we will see. I haven't checked my email inbox either, so we will see.

31:07 But the point is now, if anyone says anything, I've kind of gotten ahead of it. So and if if someone gets mad at me then I apologize, then it does. People will then question the sincerity of your apology. You only apologize because people got mad at you. So maybe here then people will understand it. I'm trying to be sincere here. I think my anger was justifiable, but I think my anger then probably crossed a line. I'm saying it did cross the line, and then it went to I was a little out of control, so therefore it was a sin. Now I'm not gonna let the sun go down upon it. I'm acknowledging it, confessing it. And all I can do is say tomorrow's a new day. Well, I know what you're saying. You should say you'll do better.

31:49 I can't promise you I'll do better. The same sinful nature that produced maybe handling handling my anger wrong in this situation will be just as present in me as it was today, So that would be a complete and total lie. All right, thanks for listening. I was gonna break down Ephesians. Maybe we'll do it at a later time, but I think you got the three parts right there. I keep saying five twenty six. It's Ephesians four twenty six. You may want to write that down. Be angry, send not, let not the sun go down upon your wrath. Have you been angry today? Maybe there's some things they should make you angry. Have you send in your anchor today, Well, you need to confess it and whatever you're angry about, let's get that worked through before you go to bed.

32:43 Thanks for listening. God bless