It's not hard to find: anguish in the hearts and minds of twenty-first century church goers. Why? Why the existential shreddedness? Folks are torn. Torn between a deep sense of compassion and clear biblical values. Torn between Christianity that is Liberal/Progressive and Christianity that is Conservative/Confessing. And recent matters have torn folks, too. When a neighborhood teenage girl undergoes a radical mastectomy because she is confused, believers are conflicted. When ICE arrests criminals and immigrants, believers are torn. When people get shot in Minnesota more people are torn in half. What to do? I offer a kind of UU sorting hat, a series of biblical values (not doctrines) that I am using now when I myself am conflicted and torn. Come think with me about existential shreddedness and what to do. (This pod concludes the series on Christians in the Matrix.)

The Bible teaches that we were created to do good works, but when notions of good get co-opted by the World then things quickly go off track. In this episode Mark and I talk about the different definitions of goodness and show how those can derail the Church, her identity, and her mission. For instance, there is a widespread idea today that if Christians would just shut up and do more good—build more soup kitchens, feed more people, start more orphanages—then the World will finally like us (and perhaps even want to join us). But that is not always a one-for one. Along the way we note some pertinent Bible verses that go into goodness, but also show that the Lord told us that if we were faithful we would be hated. The aroma of Christ that God can smell through our efforts can smell like a putrid stench in the nostrils of the World. Come and muse and laugh and think with myself and Mark about this sweepingly important topic, good.

Gallup and Rasumussen polling groups are repeatedly showing that America's trust in the mainstream media is at an alltime low. Why is that? Moreover, America's Founders said they'd rather have a Press without a Government than a Government without a Press. Why? Why frame it like that? Why is a free (and truthful) press so critical for a nation? Then Mark and I move on to discuss the ways that Christians get programmed and played by the Media: emotion over logic, incrementalism, over-simplification, fomenting tribalism, mis-reporting, and more. But we don't just analyze the knotty situation, we also offer means and sources of discernment. Along the way Ed shares what a policeman friend of his said about the shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. Come laugh and think with us!

Gallup tells us that somewhere between 60%-70% of Americans identify as Christians; that's pretty great. The Barna Group recently produced poll results that showed Idaho was #7 in the nation for the percentage of its citizens who embrace a Christian worldview, 7%. Alabama came in first with 12.6% of their citizens holding a Christian worldview; those are fairly paltry. And those two studies together clarify that while there are tens of millions of American Christians, a much much smaller percentage of them actually embrace a biblical worldview. Why? Well, as this series has asserted, because a massive slab of Christians live programmed by the Matrix. How does that happen? Significantly by Scripture twisting. In this conversational episode Mark and I discuss various kinds of Scripture twisting, some big-picture hermeneutical issues that cause the Bible to be erroneously interpreted, and the distinction between those who intentionally bend the Bible to their aims versus those who just misread it. Come laugh and think with us!

We might be stunned to realize it, but the characteristic of nice never shows up anywhere in the Bible. God is never called nice. Christian virtue, the fruit of the Spirit, never includes nice. Jesus was never described as nice. There aren't even any biblical stories about someone being nice. So why then is it so prevalent in Christian sub-culture today? Or worse, how does being nice make us susceptible to being manipulated and programmed? How does the quality of nice—and neither Mark nor I are against nice people!—lead to resentment? How is nice compared to kindness? Also in this 'sode Mark and I reflect on the invasion and disruption of a Southern Baptist church in St. Paul, MN, by godless agitators. What does that mean? What does it represent? What should the Church begin doing as a response? Come and think with us about how NICE is a marvelous way for Christians to get sucked into the Matrix.Come and think with us about how NICE is a marvelous way for Christians to get sucked into the Matrix.

Life can be so hard! And so, human nature being wired as it is, we tend to unplug, tend to deal with life by being apathetic. In this episode on how Christians get caught and re-programmed in the Matrix, Mark and I think aloud together about how complacency devours both believers' faith and the Church's saltiness. God designed us all with muscles: physical muscles, mental, emotional, and spiritual muscles. Complacency makes all kinds of muscles get soft, weak, incapable. It's sort of like a tiny physical cell—a cell's walls can get so weak that external forces can penetrate and poisen the cell. Obviously, we don't want that to happen to believers, to anyone! So come think and laugh with us about job complacency, cultural complacency, and the complacency that so subtley drains our lives.

How many Christians do not have the mind of Christ because they've been primed and played by propaganda? Mark and I fear to know the percentage of such believers would be frightening, and our hearts break to witness how many are openly turning against the Gospel because of propaganda. The show's outline runs thus: *A discussion of the American military's capture of Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro. *The kinds of propaganda used during COVID. *Defining propaganda. *How sheeple play into propaganda. *Church street-smarts? *Different methods of propaganda including: firehosing, selective presentation, emphasizing one lens, info blizzards, A.I. deep-fakes, dishonest framing, bandwagoning and its opposite of gaslighting, fearmongering, and normalization. For each of those kinds of propaganda we talk through examples and their power. Come think and laugh with us!

In a hillside sermon King Jesus said, "It's easier for a camel to pass through a needle's eye than for a rich man to enter God's kingdom." What did he mean? Was he saying all money is evil? When 1 Timothy 6:10 says, "the love of money is the root of all evil," is God ruling out that we provide for our families? Is the ambition to work and produce and earn and contribute. . . is that ambition evil? In this conversation Mark and I process different angles about money, money and serving the Lord Jesus. Ed recounts how out-of-place he felt when he attended his wife's opulent work parties in Newport Beach. Mark talks about having earned a degree in insects but needing to go and provide for his family. When Jesus lived an austere lifestyle—"the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head"—was he demanding we all live in such austerity? Come think and laugh with us about this important topic, important in a Christian worldview.