The (Im)partial Church : Episode 14 | Conviction vs. Condemnation
February 13, 2023
It can be scary to admit responsibility for our sin. But conviction and condemnation aren't the same. In this episode, we look to one of Scripture's major characters to learn how to deal with the conviction we feel when we err. As we do, we find God's grace waiting for us and learn what to do next. If this conversation inspires further questions feel free to reach out to us at theimpartialchurch@lhm.org.
The (Im)partial Church
Episode 02-04-14
Rev. Dr. Gerard Bolling: All right. So we started this season talking about some ways in which the church sometimes gets it wrong. First, we may not all agree that there is a problem and, second, we may not all agree on what the problem is or how to solve it.
Professor Janine Bolling: Those are some pretty big red flags. I mean, but we also learned that 64 percent of Christians do believe that the church should be a part of the solution. So that's nice.
Gerard: Yeah. But there's an issue with that insight, too. So if most of the church agrees that the church should be a part of the solution, but almost the same percentage of the church doesn't feel motivated to bring about that solution, what chance do we have at making an impact for the kingdom of God? And why do you think that we've been so slow to act up to this point?
Janine: I mean, honestly, it's hard to be sure because it's kind of an issue of—I think that it really comes down to guilt and ignorance. So while parts of the church have been involved with taking strides towards equity, others have remained complicit with racial inequity in the church, and some remain basically ignorant to the plight of minority groups in this country.
Gerard: I feel you. I mean, but how can the church move forward if those two things stand in our way? What are some healthy ways to navigate our past, but then also current mistakes as well?
Janine: Well, that's exactly what I'm hoping to discuss in this episode of The (Im)partial Church.
Gerard: Hey, y'all. I'm Gerard.
Janine: And I'm Janine.
Gerard: I'm the big brother.
Janine: But I'm the older sister. And we're brother and sister in Christ.
Gerard: We grew up in Brooklyn, New York.
Janine: I'm still living in Brooklyn, but I serve in the Bronx.
Gerard: I'm a professor at Concordia University in Texas, and a pastor at a congregation in St. Louis.
Janine: It's been said Sunday morning is the most segregated time in America.
Gerard: Issues with race and culture still plague our communities and our churches.
Janine: But what can we do about it? Should we see color?
Gerard: Or be colorblind?
Janine: What's our responsibility in bringing about unity in our neighborhoods and in our church pews?
Gerard: It's a delicate topic, but one we must tackle with grace.
Janine: So pull up your chair to the table, as we bring Jesus to the center of this conversation of—
Gerard: The (Im)partial Church. Heavy open, sis, heavy open.
Janine: I know, but in order to deal with the core issues, we're going to have to confess.
Gerard: I know. That's right. Speaking of which—
Janine: What?
Gerard: I have to confess something to you.
Janine: That is ...?
Gerard: The confession that I have to say to you is when you think that your hair is looking on fire, when you're trying to do certain styles or whatever, or when you're having a washout day, it's really not working for you. And I just want you to know that as an educational administrator, you know what I mean?
Janine: Why are you telling me this now?
Gerard: It's a new year. New year, new me. I don't want you to feel any type of way. You know what I'm saying?
Janine: Wow. That seems really me focused and less you focused. Usually, when I go to confession, it's really more about things I've done that I have control over, where that seems like one of a me thing that you're confessing.
Gerard: Well, you know—
Janine: What I would confess for you is that your widow's peak remains unchanged.
Gerard: Wow.
Janine: Although hair care is available around the city and county of St. Louis.
Gerard: Wow. So some people are trying to take care of the way their hairline is growing because it's been connected to baldness, to cut the widow's peak. So some people are trying to be careful of that. What I would confess to you is the little ponytails and the little bobby things that have been in the hair from when we were three to four years old, they're just not in anymore—when we put those two numbers together and you're three and a four, you know what I mean? They're not in anymore.
Janine: Okay, got it. Got it.
Gerard: Okay.
Janine: Clearly, you felt bad. I appreciate your spirit of confession, be it unmoved, rather unimpactful. I do appreciate it. I'm not entirely sure if it was necessary, but you did open the door to something that I do want to talk about, which is guilt.
Gerard: Okay, go on.
Janine: So guilt is a really interesting thing because it can push us to hide things. We're going to hide things really behind where we think that they're safe that no one can see them.
Gerard: Yeah. Sometimes it attempts to even convince us to ignore the fall of our actions and deflect blame to other people too, right?
Janine: Oh, absolutely. And this is true for all of us. We all have an image of the type of person we believe ourselves to be. When we do something wrong or when we do something unsavory, our brain is willing to jump through all types of hoops to protect our perceived self-image. But the truth is, even God's children hurt one another.
Gerard: Yeah. I mean, King David, for example, right, one of the greatest kings in all the Scriptures. We're all familiar with exactly who he is, how he slayed the giant. We've all had that Sunday school story stuck in our head, and he's a man after God's own heart, a warrior king, a best friend, the best guy you could ever ask for etcetera, so forth.
Janine: Oh, the best? Unless ...
Gerard: Unless. You're right. Unless your name is Uriah, right? If your name is Uriah, then you probably think about that differently. Then he's not David to you, he's probably just Dave: the friend that you trusted with your life, and then he literally stabbed you in the back and slept with your wife.
Janine: King David was out here on all kinds of nonsense.
Gerard: Out here, for sure. And I mean, the remarkable thing about David is this, that he is the second most discussed person in all of the Scriptures. It goes number one, Jesus; number two, David; number three, Moses; and then everybody else after that. The point is that David is a very important person in the story of the Bible.
Janine: No doubt, no doubt. But why mention David now?
Gerard: So we all tend to do this thing where we read the Scriptures and we put ourselves in the shoes of the protagonist. There are reasons why this isn't always the best practice. We may impose our own bias in our exegesis. The character comparison isn't necessarily one to one, but we do it, nonetheless.
Janine: Yeah, I mean, so you really want to set us in the center of the story of David and Bathsheba?
Gerard: Yeah. I want us to think a little bit differently than maybe we have about the story in the past. So you've got this story of David and Bathsheba. The way that we probably should be thinking about it is that David is watching a woman bathe on a roof, and he sees and he takes. He sees her bathing and he says to himself that he wants her. He goes over there and he forces himself upon a woman that knows that she's married to somebody else. And then what he tries to do is he tries to do the thing that's the sinful nature thing of "If I do something wrong, I don't try to write it or confess. I try to cover it up with more things that are wrong. Because if I could just get to the right level of wrong inside of what I'm doing, then I'll be okay."
So he says, "Well, maybe I can make her my wife. But in order to make her my wife, I have to go ahead and I have to make sure that Uriah dies. And if I make sure that Uriah dies, I've got to set up this elaborate scheme to make sure that he falls during war, during an army feature. And then if I can do that, then I marry her, then we have a baby together, then our life is perfect." But that's wrong. I mean, he marries her and they lose their baby. And we see this very difficult process for David of losing a child as he's mourning the fact that this child is gone. And we see David then and only then get to a point where he's wearing some sackcloth and ashes, and he's finally in a posture of confession where he notices all the wrong that he's done.
I mean, we got to think about a few things. We got to think about how David reacts to guilt. He tries to cover it up with more things at first. Then we have to think about how God reacts to unrighteousness, and then we have to think about how David reacts to conviction. Then we have to think about the consequences of David's actions: the positive consequences and the negative consequences as well. God could say, "Well, this was your fault and you deserve everything," and smash everything in David's face. But instead, God chooses to do something different. He chooses to change his mind a little bit, and God chooses to still work with David and still continue forward with David, even when he really shouldn't have in terms of the world, right?
Janine: Absolutely not. I mean, I look at the story obviously from the female perspective and what Bathsheba must be going through the entire time. David is just left and right doing wrong by her, and she must be wondering, "What is God doing in this situation? How does this relate? This man is supposed to be so great and he's treating me like this. What do I do? What do I come out of this with?" And when we think about God's disposition towards David, we also think about God's disposition when we hurt people who God also loves. So God loves David, God loves Bathsheba, and He's got to deal with these two things in front of Him at the same time of how you talk through, how you work through, how you show someone love who's hurt someone else that you love. And I think it's really important that we actually read through the story and think about what David's actions, what they lead to.
So I want to read from 2 Samuel 12. We're going to just go to verses 7-14. And so verse 7 begins with Nathan. "Nathan said to David, 'You are the man. This is what the Lord the God of Israel says. I anointed you king over Israel and delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave your master's house to you and your master's wives into your arms. I gave you all of Israel and Judah, and if this had been too little, then I would've given you even more.'" And so here we see all that David has been given. Nathan reminds him of what God has done in the past. "You basically had everything." Verse 9 continues, "Why did you despise the Word of the Lord by doing what is evil in His eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house because you despised Me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own."
And so here, God speaks through Nathan about the perspective of Bathsheba, which I always appreciate when we are drawn back to the perspectives, not only of the protagonist of the story, in this case, protagonist/antagonist, depending on how you view David, but also all those involved, right? God doesn't forget all of those who are involved. Then finally, the verses end with, "This is what the Lord says. Out of your own household, I'm going to bring calamity on you." By God's disposition, I'm going to bring calamity on you. You gone get this work, David, right?
Gerard: You gone get the smoke.
Janine: "Before your very eyes, I will take your wives and give them to one who is close to you, and he will sleep with your wives in broad daylight. You did it in secret, but I'll do this thing in broad daylight before all Israel, right?" So that little saying of what's done in the dark comes to the light. God said, "Not only is it going to come to the light, it's going to come in broad daylight, David. Get ready. I'm going to reflect on what you have done, who you have hurt in the process of what you have done, and then I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do."
But when we think about all these words that Nathan is sharing—so Nathan's being God's prophet in this sense—it helps us to understand what happens and what to do when we feel convicted. And so let's go back to the story of David and Bathsheba. Bathsheba says to David, "Hey, I'm pregnant," right? That's already a hard thing for a woman to tell a man who's not her husband who has been pretty ruthless in his actions so far. She doesn't even know how he's going to react. But Bathsheba chooses to inform David that she is pregnant, which is already a huge step, right? Informing him at all. Then he tries to buck the responsibility, unfortunately, and he invites Uriah to his home to take responsibility for David's actions. And then what happened?
Gerard: Then through Nathan, God convicts David of his sin. He reminds David of how faithful He's been to David, right? Then he asks David to think about his own actions. He asks David why he killed Uriah with the sword of the Ammonites. In doing so, he forces him to take responsibility for even his indirect actions. David didn't pull the trigger, so to speak, but by giving orders as a commander to put Uriah on the front line and then retreat, he sealed the fate. So he didn't pull the trigger, but he definitely handed somebody the gun.
Janine: Absolutely. The important thing to remember in all of this is that David's change of heart comes after the conviction. We see David, he's scrambling. He's stacking sin on top of sin, on top of sin, on top of sin, and it's just getting completely messy, completely out of control. Then he feels convicted, right? He doesn't respond—those verses that I read, when Nathan is speaking to him—he doesn't respond in anger to Nathan. What he does is then he owns responsibility for his actions. He repents, right?
Gerard: Yeah.
Janine: Sometimes when somebody tells us about ourselves, at first we don't like it. We say, "Yeah, but you don't know the situation. But you don't know what I was thinking. But you don't know, but you don't understand. But this person, but that person, but Uriah, but Bathsheba, but the roof, but over here." And then he listens. He listens and he's convicted. He finally takes responsibility for his action and then he repents. And his actions do have consequences. This is some spicy tea.
Gerard: This is some spicy tea.
Janine: David still has consequences. The baby that he conceives with Bathsheba dies. The baby dies. David's reign is full of violence, full of injury and full of sexual sin. One of his sons rapes his own half-sister. Another one of his sons kills that son and tries to perform a coup on his father only to end up dead himself. So yes, David repents. Yes, David realizes his actions are wrong, but God says, "I'm going to bring calamity on you," and calamity does come. And what does that do with the relationship that God and David have? What it does is help David to see that the Lord is faithful to David, even in spite of who he is, what he's done, and how he's affected other people who God loves.
There's evidence to support that David and Bathsheba actually do reconcile within Scripture. Scripture says that he comforts her, and they go on to have more children. But this indicates in Scripture that there's some type of reconciliation that happens. And more importantly, Solomon is born of the union between David and Bathsheba and God keeps His promise. When we speak of King David nowadays, we don't refer to him as David the murderer, David the adulterer, David the liar, David the taker, right? David the Predator. No, we call him David, a man after God's own heart. And why do we call him that?
Gerard: That's who he was. And he's forgiven.
Janine: David was forgiven. God is faithful, and the lens that he sees David through is a lens of grace and forgiveness. And that's something that can be so difficult to take, especially if you know someone in your life who reminds you of David. But what we have to remember is that God's love, God's power, God's insight, God's knowledge, God's hope for the future, God's promises are so much bigger than the sin that we mess it up with. And David learns this lesson the hard way. Bathsheba learns this lesson the hard way by being connected to somebody like David, not by choice, but one connection that continues on. And this is where we learn the lesson that God does have a lens where He can see each and every person through grace and forgiveness, even for those who mankind would not forgive.
Gerard: I can't help but to think of a similar story. At this point, most of us have seen the musical live or seen it on other platforms we've seen, or we're familiar with Hamilton. I mean, if you haven't seen it—
Janine: How did I know that you were going to bring up a musical? You got the theater thing, huh?
Gerard: Once a theater kid, always a theater kid. Period. But the musical Hamilton, I can't help but to think of that. And spoiler alert if you haven't seen it yet. I'm going to skip ahead a little bit.
Janine: Spoiler alert.
Gerard: Alexander Hamilton, he grows up humbly, and he rises to become George Washington's right-hand man. Also, by the way, this is just history. So not too much of a spoiler alert, more like read a book alert as well, right? Alexander Hamilton, he grows up, he's George Washington's right-hand man. David, remember, grew up as a shepherd and he becomes a trusted consultant to King Saul. Both men are battle tested. Both men struggle with infidelity. Both men lose sons to the same pride that's present inside of both of them, and they both wrestle with the fallout of their choices as a result of their lives. But in those stories, there are so many similarities, right, Janine?
Janine: Absolutely.
Gerard: I mean, we've seen Hamilton together and we've obviously read the Bible together. The common refrain in Hamilton is you have no control who lives, who dies, who tells your story.
Janine: (singing).
Gerard: Yeah. Go ahead and sing.
Janine: Yeah, I mean, it's one of those musicals that got to me later. But I do like that line. "Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?" So often we talk about history being written by the victor, but we see in the Bible that history is written from the One who writes all stories, the One who writes all things. And while for humans, it's true, "Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?" That's not true of God that we have no control over things. He's in full control. And the reason that we see David as a man after God's own heart is because God is in control. Because what He said of us is truth and that right there is good news. So we're going to learn a lesson of history from one of the Bible's leading men. When we face conviction, we should own our mistakes, repent of the behavior, work to repair the relationships, and most importantly, trust God to define our identity.
I want to explain or just really resonate with the fact that David is a hard person to love. David is a hard person to forgive. David is a difficult person to see in a positive light once you know all that he has done. And that's because of our humanity. That's because of the way that the world deals with things. But when we think about what God asked us to do, when we think about the leading men of the Bible and why they're those leading men, it's because of the repentance. It's because of the repair of the relationship, taking punishments in stride, even, taking consequence in stride. I won't say punishment. Consequence and punishment are two different things. And then finally, and most and highest overall is that God defines our identity.
So we don't have that single line of, "David, you are the one who did this thing in this story and that was a bad thing. And that's who you're going to go down as. You're canceled, David. We're over it. Unfollow, delete, block." That's not what happens with God. What happens with God is "Yes, you did that. Kind of knew you were going to do it anyway. Here's a plan for what's going to happen next. Here's a plan for how you're going to be reconciled. Here's a plan for how you're going to take accountability. Here's a plan for how I'm going to help you through taking that accountability. And on the other side of it is what I am growing you into." We have to understand that there's a delineation between conviction and condemnation.
Gerard: Conviction is necessary for growth. But if we look back to the story of David and Bathsheba, the moment of conviction is the moment that David actually takes ownership of his actions and repents. But the sentence that follows says this: it says, "The Lord also has put away your sin. You shall not die." I love that because it's so Gospel. In other words, you deserve a certain thing, but you're not going to get what you deserve. God is going to be gracious to you, right? Oh man!
Condemnation says, "You get what you deserve: death." But what happens is when Jesus steps in, when the life of Christ steps in, or when God stands in the way, God says, "I'm going to take on what you deserve. I'm going to get ahead of it so that you can be behind Me. And the windfall doesn't come on you." Why is it so hard to fully understand this as humans? It's kind of like this: everybody wants to see the whooping. Remember that Janine? Well, you'd remember more than me because you were probably whooped more than I was. But everybody wants to see it.
Janine: Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Gerard: You probably were. You were. I was a good kid, and you were just rotten. You know what I mean? So it's one of those things.
Janine: Well, I feel like that's not really accurate. But in seeing the whooping, even if you were the kid who got more or less, it was always just so satisfying to see that good kid get in trouble. Anybody else resonate with that? And you're just like, "Ooh, what he did." We do want to see that. It's that evil within us, it's that—
Gerard: Well, it's because we all want to be the person to say, "They did something wrong. A-ha. They're getting punished for it." We want to see it out in the square that they get the payment for their punishment is right out there. That's our desire. Like Romans 6:23 tells us this, too. "The wages of sin is death." But you're not the one that gets to hold the knife. You're not the one that gets to do the whooping. That's not for us to do.
I mean it's one of those things where we're obsessed with seeing the whooping or trying to do the whooping ourselves. But it's God who deserves to hold the belt, right? But what Jesus does, what God does in His grace and in His mercy is says, "Even though you deserve this, I'm not going to give it to you." And I think it's so hard for us to grasp this because we're so concerned about what's fair. The life of Christ is completely unfair, right?
Janine: Absolutely. And when we see that, and what bothers us about that is God giving the whooping is that it's like, "Well, somebody's going to pay for what happened to me. Somebody's going to pay for this thing that I had to go through. Somebody's going to pay for this negative experience. It's not going to go by. I'm going to get my hit back. I'm going to get it back." And what we forget is that somebody did get that hit. Somebody did get that lick.
Gerard: Yeah.
Janine: That was Jesus, right? We weren't there, but that's what He got, and that God has already delivered it so that He can make that choice today not to condemn us. So He can make that choice in the past not to condemn us. He can make that choice across time based on what had been done on the cross. And that in convicting us, God gives us a chance at growth. He gives us a chance at improvement.
It says that even in Romans 8:1-4, life in the Spirit. "There is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the Law weakened by the flesh could not do. By sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, He condemned the sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit." So somebody has gotten got and that somebody is Jesus. And he got got not just for the sins of David, not just for the sins of those who wronged you, who you wanted to get back, but also for the sins of you.
Gerard: I mean it brings me back to those old school terms "Christus Vicar" and "Christus Victor," right? Christ is our Victor. He literally has declared the victory. I mean I quite literally think of Nike brand, that little check mark. You know Nike brand. You know it better than I do because you buy a lot more Nike shoes. Do you know Nike brand? That little check mark. Nike brand is only named Nike because of "nikeo," right? The Greek word for "victory." And that's what Christ has won for us. So He is literally the Victor at the same time as He's the Vicar. You maybe have had a vicar at your church or you've heard of living vicariously through somebody. It means that you're exchanging or there's an exchange that's made or there's someone who's temporarily put into place. He is put into place to be the One who takes on all of our sin for us.
And He's ahead of us in that. So that again, we can be behind Him. And we can conversely then think of conviction as being an opportunity to walk in the Spirit and live that way rather than living in the sense of the whooping or the condemnation that just leads to death. We already have the victory and we already have the Person that stands in our place. That's Jesus. We got to look even at the Augustinian approach too of this.
Janine: Absolutely.
Gerard: I mean, the fear of reproach is the fear itself, and it comes with a discorded love. The desire to belong and to be unified with one another is already there, too. But the desire to be safe and loved and liked is present, too. All of us want to be loved and we also want to be liked. We want people to feel favorably about us. Sometimes I feel like owning my own mistakes and confessing what I've done wrong makes me kind of unworthy of love and it makes me sort of sad and I don't want to do it. You know what I mean, Janine?
Janine: Absolutely. And I think that this is really what gets down to the fear of us kind of owning up to those misdeeds, owning up to those mistakes, owning up to those things that would lead to condemnation, but instead that Christ calls us to conviction in. Or the Spirit calls us to conviction in. And so we believe lies instead really, right? Instead of owning up to those sins that we've committed in the world, instead we say, "Well, we had to do it for the reason it was the best choice at the time. It was the culture of the day. It was what everybody else was doing," which we love to buck up against that and say, "I'm not a follower. I don't do what everybody else does." But observe yourself in a crowd where you know where the right way to go is, and everybody's going the wrong way. Don't you somehow get pushed into that wrong way a lot of times?
Gerard: Yeah.
Janine: We tell ourselves the lie of "We had no other choice." We tell ourselves the lie of "This is something that I did for someone else. So I did this so someone else wouldn't feel uncomfortable." The lies that we believe and those excuses often come about when it comes to items that deal with racial justice, too. Right? "That wasn't me. I would never do that." But what is, right? We have to call a thing what it is. We have to look at the situations that are actually ahead of us. We have to reflect on our own life experiences. Have I made a snap judgment about someone based off of their name? As you know, we're educating and interviewing quite a few people, right? When I look at somebody's resume as it passes through, I see a GPA of 2.7. I make all kinds of assumptions about that person. Is that okay? It's not. And we tell ourselves lies as to why we believe these things.
And our sin, we tell ourselves these lies because our sin embarrasses us. Our sin makes us feel unworthy. Our sin makes us feel like an outcast. Our sin makes us feel like not the person that we're trying to put out to the world, but something else. And it helps us to remember that we do serve a God who's gracious and won't leave us. That sees us as we are, that sees us in those really low moments, that understands those weird thoughts that we think, that understands those things that we type out in the Notes app and don't send to anyone. God grace is unfair, but it's unfair in a good way.
It's unfair in a way that constantly tilts the tables toward our favor. Because of the death of His Son, which reconciled us to Him, Jesus took on that shame that we should have. And instead, He took that shame; He takes it off our back; He takes the weight off our shoulders; He makes our burden lighter and puts it on the cross. And through His resurrection, He defeated death, He defeated sin, He defeated the devil. And now we get to move forward from this place as a transformed people. A transformed people who are seen fully, lies and all, so that they become truth. You ever lie to somebody who knows exactly what the truth is and they're like, "Come on."
Gerard: Yeah.
Janine: "Come on, Shelly." Right?
Gerard: Come on.
Janine: When we tell the truth to somebody who's already knows the truth, it's a freeing experience. And God uses that to transform us—transform us through our words, transform us through our actions, and transform us really by the power of His Holy Spirit, which allows us to do that.
Gerard: Yeah. Just as He continues to use David even after he sins, and God is continuing to use David today, right? We said he's the second-most-talked-about guy, right, the Scriptures. That He also continues to use us and continues to use our brokenness. And He doesn't throw us away. God doesn't throw anyone away, but instead He forgives us. And through that conviction that we feel, we are invited to repent to Him and to turn back and to move differently as creatures of God and no longer as creatures of rat. And it's a beautiful thing.
The purpose of this episode is to highlight the difference between condemnation and conviction. Condemnation is what we fear will happen when we make our mistakes. And conviction is the tool that God uses to help us grow.
Janine: Yeah. And this applies to all of us. The temptation when we are confronted with our misdeeds is to sweep them under the rug.
Gerard: But this story shows us that we don't have to fear condemnation because our God is the only one who holds authority. No one else. If you've listened to the first season of The (Im)partial Church, you know that we talked about prejudice in the body of Christ. And this can get sticky sometimes, especially when we operate out of a place of fear.
Janine: But the goal of this podcast is to equip the church to have tough conversations graciously, because we truly believe that we are the place where this conversation should start. We start with a distinct advantage. We share a common faith in One who loves all equally. There is not one person for whom Jesus did not die.
Gerard: So if you're listening to this season and you feel like you have missed the mark in dignifying the lives of image bearers who may look different, lean into the conversation. Push back on fear, own your mistakes, confess your sins, and come to the One who has destroyed the dividing wall of hostility.
Next week, we're going to talk a little bit more about how it's hard to agree on the problem. It's hard to agree on what we're trying to put our fingers on here when we speak through these more sensitive issues. And so we're going to expand on this a little bit and use the Scriptures, of course, to do that as well. And so excited to bring to you what we have to bring to you next week. Until then, I'm going to enjoy the rest of my coffee and it was great to be with you guys here today on The (Im)partial Church. See you next time.