Mark Clark [00:00:04]:
Here's the issue with exclusivity. It's one of the maybe, maybe top two issues in a culture like ours in modern times, in Canada, where people look at Christianity. So maybe other than hell, exclusivity is the biggest issue, because what they say is it's completely wrong for Christianity to claim that Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation. Now it's clear that Christianity believes this. I remember when I first 1st started to come to the church, and people started telling me about Jesus in high school. I didn't grow up in the faith at all, and so I had to wrestle with it. And I came across passages like John 14 where Jesus looks, and he says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. And then he says this.
Mark Clark [00:00:48]:
And this scandalized me. No one comes to the father except through me. Now, that's the issue. That's the problem. That's the scandalous of Christianity. That the implication is the only way that humankind, disconnected from the God of the universe through sin, can connect back with that God is through Jesus, which means, by default, that every other religion is wrong. And so what we've got to do. When I started wrestling through this, I thought, my gosh, this is so offensive, this is so scandalous that what we're saying is that any other religion, any other worldview, any other path, because here's what Canada loves to say.
Mark Clark [00:01:32]:
We love to say that every path is the same. It just leads to God, but it's just a different way. And so you have truth, and your truth is your truth, and my truth is my truth. And there's not one way to God. There's lots of ways to God. There was a Maclean's article done that I've shared with you recently that talked about the fact that 30% of Canadians were most uncomfortable around evangelical christians. A similar percentage as other untouchables, as drug addicts and child abusers. And one of the reasons was, is because we were seen as narrow minded, bigoted, and exclusivistic.
Mark Clark [00:02:09]:
Of course, inclusive means we include you in your views, and your way is the right way, and exclusive means there's some ideas that are wrong, and we're gonna exclude some ideas as ways to get to God. And so Canadians push back against this, and they say, we want all ways to be just different paths to God. So what do we do with this? Well, the first thing we have to do with it in answer to it, is to recognize that it is a logical impossibility that all the different pathways lead to God in the study of logic, there's something called the law of non contradiction, which is two opposite ideas cannot both be true at the same time. And you and I know this. So here's the first thing we've got to understand. Similar to hell, the repulsion with exclusivity is very much the same as hell in the sense that it's not actually all that logical of a repulse. It's just that it puts a bad taste in our mouth. But what we've got to understand is, just because something has a bad taste in your mouth doesn't mean that it's wrong or logically implausible.
Mark Clark [00:03:17]:
In fact, this view of exclusivity is the most logical as we're going to find, because the law of non contradiction says two opposite things cannot be true, both true at the same time. And so if my wife looks at me and says, you know, okay, mark, you're wearing socks. And my daughter Sienna looks at me and says, no, daddy, I reject this notion. You are not wearing socks. One of them is right. They both can't both be right at the same time simply because we want to get through Thanksgiving dinner, which is where this entire idea of inclusivism comes from. We live in a very. I mean, I was getting on a plane from Dallas to home on Thursday.
Mark Clark [00:03:58]:
My wife and I were down there for a few days, and we're coming back from Dallas. We're getting on the plane, and my wife looked, and she had a number on her ticket, and a woman was sitting in her seat. Now, this is basic math. You're in 16 f. But I have 16 f. Now, the lady looked down, and she said, this is my seat. And my wife said, no, it's my seat. Now, at that point, when we enter the world of logic, one of those two people is right now.
Mark Clark [00:04:24]:
It's always going to be my wife anyway. But I'm just saying I don't know. That's what I've learned after 20 years of being together. So I guess, you know? And I'm sitting there watching them going, mm hmm. You don't know, girl, what's coming. All right? She's right, even if she ain't right. All right, so. But.
Mark Clark [00:04:39]:
And so she's like 16 f, and my wife's like 16 f. And so at this moment in the universe, one of these two people are right. Now, we can pretend that both of them are right, so that we have a nice flight and everyone's happy and everyone gets along. But we know in the realm of logic that that's impossible. And so the lady looked at her thing. Oh, my goodness, you're right. Because math is math. Math always is math.
Mark Clark [00:05:03]:
Two plus two is four. I don't care if I go to a culture and they say that feels offensive to me. I would like to redraw the math chart. I would like two plus two to equal five. No one goes, you know what? Okay. That's how you feel. Different paths to the same thing. Math is math.
Mark Clark [00:05:21]:
It's 16 f is either 16 f or it's not. There's no point in simply saying it's not real. Now, I was reading an article this morning that Nassau is saying that they think they found that Earth has another moon, like a mini moon. Yesterday I was reading a NASA article. I don't know why I read these things all the time. My kids think I'm crazy. It's like every time we walk in, I look at the moon. I'm like, look at that moon waxing.
Mark Clark [00:05:48]:
Do you know children? They're like, no, daddy, don't talk about space. But they found a couple planets behind Pluto. And so this is a couple days ago. They're like, oh, my goodness. We think there's more planets in our solar system. Now I'm looking at that stuff, and it's no use because I don't like it. It scares me because it means aliens exist. So that's where my mind goes now.
Mark Clark [00:06:10]:
It's no use me saying, no, they didn't find another moon. No, they didn't find planets behind Pluto because there's aliens. I just want it not to be true. There's no point in that. It's just true or it's not true. So the first fundamental issue we have to understand is that the law of non contradiction says that two opposite things cannot be true at the same time. So really, now, I'm not. That doesn't prove that Christianity is the right way.
Mark Clark [00:06:33]:
It simply says, either Hinduism is right or Christianity is right or Buddhism's right or atheism's right or agnosticism is right or Sikhism is right. But they can't all be true at the same time. And here's the fundamental mistake that we make. We live in a multicultural society, which is a beautiful thing. So what we do is we make this mistake. We mistake cultural pluralism with what's called metaphysical pluralism. And what I mean by that is, of course, we all live in a society, right? You go down to America and they call it, what, a melting potential. You come to Canada, they call it a mosaic.
Mark Clark [00:07:15]:
The reason being, you go to America, you have to become part of that culture very quickly. You melt in, and everybody becomes one. In Canada, we just let everybody keep the mosaic of their culture. All right? We're just like, hey, we're all here. It doesn't matter. We're all just a sweet mosaic of Canadians. I don't offend you. You don't offend me.
Mark Clark [00:07:33]:
Who cares? It doesn't matter. And that's what we do. And so the reality is, it's beautiful because we have all these cultures, and, of course, we have to live with these cultures, and we have to love people and walk side by side with people from different cultures and different religions and different ideologies, and that's beautiful. And Christianity, the first thing we've got to understand is there are times when you and I need to fight for those people. We always listen. Christians need to fight for the rights of other religions to believe what they believe. You know that. And sometimes those religions and ideologies are trying to accomplish the same thing that Christianity is trying to accomplish.
Mark Clark [00:08:09]:
And we need to work arm in arm with those people. Sometimes, as John Stackhouse, who's a philosopher, he puts it this way. He says, there are times, at least for this issue, and on this occasion, Muslims or Mormons or Marxists might share the same goals and support the same plan as Christians. And in those moments, Christians have to learn that sometimes when it comes to issues like abortion, sexual identity, these things that we're dealing with in life, there are times when the church actually needs to come together with other people to accomplish certain goals. The reality is, and of course, we have to fight for people to believe what they believe. I've told you this story that when I was in college, I was almost finished college, and I'd been a TA, and I'd done lectures at the school, and I loved scholarship, and I became this guy who wanted to do a PhD, and I loved footnotes and reading all these things. And my counselor came to me and said, you need to. You didn't finish your last credit in high school.
Mark Clark [00:09:07]:
We just tracked it down. You have to go back to high school and finish your last credit. And so I went back to high school with a backpack on for a summer course in English. And I'm already done college, so I'm brilliant, right? So I go back and I get to relive my high school days where I wasn't brilliant, all right? So I got to go in like Doogie Howser, and I'm like, bam. I'm going to throw this down. And I started writing essays. And these kids had never written an essay. I was like, chaucer, all right? I was like, the man.
Mark Clark [00:09:36]:
And all these kids are like, I don't know, madlibs, fill in an adverb. I don't know what that is. I'm like, play up. Boom, boom. So I'm getting 100% on everything, but I'm not telling anybody. I'm just pretending. I'm like a 17 year old kid who doesn't know anything. And then the teacher finally figured it out.
Mark Clark [00:09:53]:
But I remember that course he used to slam Christianity, slam religion. And one day I arrived late and this muslim girl in the class ran up to me crying. And she said, I said, what's wrong? I gave her a hug. I looked at her, I said, what's wrong? She said, he just spent the last 20 minutes slamming Islam, telling me I don't have any. I have no idea what the Quran says. I have no idea. And so I went in and took him aside. I said, listen, you can't slam this.
Mark Clark [00:10:19]:
You have to understand. You can go, you can make fun of me, I don't care, but don't go after her. And I had to defend a muslim. That's the role of the church in the world. But here's the problem. So we have a cultural pluralism that's beautiful. We need to do that. Here's the mistake we make.
Mark Clark [00:10:38]:
We jump from cultural pluralism into metaphysical pluralism where we then say, not only will I defend your right to believe something, I will start to believe that that thing is true. That's the flaw. We need to defend people who have different beliefs than us. But we don't need to jump into a world where we then say, hey, I believe what you believe is actually true. That's the flaw. And Christianity comes out of the game and says, actually, there's only one name. Peter says in acts, chapter four. There is one name under heaven by which men can be saved, and his name is Jesus.
Mark Clark [00:11:22]:
That sin separated humankind from God and that Jesus came and died on a cross, lived a perfect life, rose again from death. That's the only way we can get back to God. It's not by working for it. It's not by going and doing all these things for God. It's about what God has done for you. It's not because you're good. It's because God is good. It's not because of you.
Mark Clark [00:11:45]:
It's in spite of you. But that message pushes up against the entire cultural ethos of canadian mentality. Here's a couple of quotes that capture this. Rabbi Shmuleo Botaik says this. I'm absolutely against any religion that says one faith is superior to another. I don't see how that is anything different than spiritual racism. My position, Gandhi said, is that all great religions are fundamentally equal. Oprah Winfrey, theologian says one of the biggest, one of the biggest mistakes humans make is to believe there's only one way.
Mark Clark [00:12:27]:
Actually, there are many diverse paths leading to God. This is captured perfectly in that movie Ricky Bobby, where Ricky Bobby gets on fire in his car and he starts running around in his underwear. And what does he do? He doesn't just say. He starts calling out. He says, allah, help me, right? He's saying, jewish God, help me. Two of which don't like each other, by the way. Tom Cruise, use your witchcraft on me. Oprah Winfrey, help me.
Mark Clark [00:12:53]:
What's he doing? He's hedging his bets. He's saying, maybe if this God's true, then they'll cancel. But I'm going to just believe. I'm going to throw it all to all of them. Hopefully one of them can help me. This is the philosophy of our culture, and Christianity pushes back against it and says, it's not actually true, even though it helps you get through Thanksgiving dinner, even though it helps you just get along at the office with people, even though it sounds civil. What we can't do is jump into a world where we think civility then needs to create a reality of metaphysical, theological, philosophical beliefs. And so cooperation does not mean agreement.
Mark Clark [00:13:33]:
We have to understand that. When I first became a Christian, I became very good friends with a wiccan witch. Her name was Heather. We were an interesting crew, me and her, because I was sitting there smoking my cigarettes and she was dressed in all black, and I'd be sitting out in front of the school and she'd be reading her witch books and I'd be reading the New Testament. And we would talk about different ideas. And I would say, what is your view of the afterlife? And she would say, well, it's Summerland, and we go and do these things. And then she would say, on a Friday night, I'm going to go have orgies down by the lake, by the fire. Would you like to come with me? And I'm like, no.
Mark Clark [00:14:11]:
Trying to follow Jesus. I'll pass on summer land and orgies for now. All right, so. But the reality is. But the reality you're like, orgies? These said that twice in church that's three times now. So the reality is, though, one of us, we can't. Heather and I would, she would talk about Summerland and I would talk about heaven and Jesus. And here's the thing.
Mark Clark [00:14:39]:
We loved each other. We got along. I would be there for her through anything. She would be there for me through anything. But here's what we never did. We never said that both of us were right at the same time, because that's dumb. That's just two people then just trying to get along and be civil with one another. But it's fundamentally flawed when it comes to the realm of logic.
Mark Clark [00:15:04]:
Timothy Keller gives a similar example. He's a pastor in New York City, obviously multicultural hub of the world. And he said as a pastor, he was invited to be on a council at a university with a jewish rabbi and a muslim imam. And they went and they went to talk about faith. And Tim Keller writes this. He says, we all agreed on the panel with the statement that if Christians are right about Jesus being God, then Muslims and Jews fail in a serious way to love God as God really is. But if Muslims and Jews are right that Jesus is not God, but rather a teacher or a prophet, then Christians fail in a serious way to love God as God really is. They can't all be right.
Mark Clark [00:15:51]:
And then Keller says this. Several of the students were quite disturbed by this because to insist that one faith has a better grasp on truth than others was seen as intolerant. But here's the mistake we make. Richard Mao, who's a philosopher, says this. Christian civility does not commit us to a relativistic perspective. Civility doesn't require us to approve of what other people believe and do. It's one thing to insist that other people have the right to express their basic convictions. It is another thing to say that they are right in doing so.
Mark Clark [00:16:26]:
This is what you and I have to understand. Not everybody's right about God. And I had a meeting with a guy yesterday. I was hanging out with a guy yesterday, sikh background. We're talking about faith. He asked me what I did for a living. So we're hanging out. I'm talking to him and raised as a Sikh, but has left all that behind, doesn't believe in God anymore, doesn't believe in the afterlife anymore.
Mark Clark [00:16:49]:
But then through the conversation, he starts talking about which level of hell he'll end up in if they. And he says, you know what? I'm a good guy. And so, yeah, I know I'm not going to heaven, but I'll probably end up in, like, level two of hell. So that's not actually. And he looked at me with such authority, he said, mark, hell's not actually that bad. You gotta understand this. And level two ain't that bad. And I'm sitting there going, where are you coming up with any of this? You're just constructing.
Mark Clark [00:17:12]:
This is what's terrifying. You're constructing a worldview based on nothing. No sacred writings, no historical moment, no authoritative metanarrative over your life. You're just coming up with stuff from whatever the pizza you ate last night is giving you feelings toward randomly just plucking ideas out of whatever you want and constructing them. And one of us, listen, here's the key point. Atheists say that all religions are wrong. Pluralism and inclusivism say that all religions are right. That's nuts, because either he was right or I was right, or both of us were wrong.
Mark Clark [00:17:56]:
But don't walk in the room and go, you're both right. Let's go out and have a meal so we all get along with each other. I don't know what this was. I was down in Dallas. It was like the double guns I just ran out of. We can't come to the conclusion that both of us were right. Both of us are either dead wrong or one of us is right. And this is the thing we've got to come to terms with as a culture that when we try.
Mark Clark [00:18:22]:
Here's the great irony of the inclusivist position. Here's what it does, because here's what you've got to understand. Every worldview is actually by default, exclusivistic. Right? Islam is very exclusivistic. You have one God, one prophet. You do these things and these five pillars, and that's Islam, and everybody else is wrong, right? Hinduism has its views on God and the afterlife. Buddhism has its views on God, Christianity, Judaism, they all, by default, differ from one another and thus exclude other ideas from being right. Every view is that.
Mark Clark [00:19:01]:
So here's the great irony about the inclusivist position. It's the most offensive position of all of them, because it says that every worldview is actually wrong. And what it does, listen, in trying to include everybody, it excludes the exclusivists. And so in the moment of, there's a good heart behind it, which is we all should just get along and not war with one another and hurt one another and marginalize and oppress one another. And I get all that. But the moment you want to say that inclusivism is actually the right way, two things happen. You exclude the exclusivist, which is very intolerant and judgmental and narrow minded of you. But the other thing you do in the same vein is you say that your view on all religion and all truth is actually right and everybody else's is wrong.
Mark Clark [00:20:02]:
And you in that moment. I mean, there's, you know, the analogy. I remember when I became a christian, people would throw this at me, the analogy of the four blind guys and the elephant, right? Where four blind guys walk into an elephant, and they're touching the elephant, and one guy's got the tail, and one guy's got the ear, one guy's got the trunk, one guy's got the foot, and somebody says, what are you holding right now? And the guy says, I'm holding a whip over here, and he's holding the tail. Another guy's holding the ear. I got sandpaper. One guy's holding the trunk. He's like, I'm holding a tree. And people use that analogy and say, this is religion.
Mark Clark [00:20:35]:
This is just all the different religions trying to find their way to God. They're just blind. They're trying different things. They're doing different things. Here's the problem, though, as Leslie newbigen points out. He says this. The story is constantly told in order to neutralize the affirmation of the great religions, to suggest that they learn humility and recognize that none of them can have more than one aspect of the truth. But, of course, the real point of the story is the exact opposite.
Mark Clark [00:21:03]:
The story is told by someone who can see and is the immensely arrogant claim of one who sees the full truth. All the world religions are only groping after it embodies the claim to know the full reality, which it claims that religions can't. The story's told from the perspective of someone who can see, who's saying. So in that moment, when you say nobody is allowed to have a comprehensive view of reality, you are claiming to have what? A comprehensive view of reality to which you are allowing no one else to have. And if you hold a worldview that contradicts itself like that, you have to abandon it. It doesn't work in real life. And so you have to begin to say what is actually true then, not just what gets me through Thanksgiving dinner, what's actually historically true, what is actually right. People used to throw this idea at me, too.
Mark Clark [00:22:10]:
They used to say, yeah, mark, okay, okay, fine. But here's the reality. The only reason you're a Christian and these, my friends and family, throw this at me, the only reason you're a Christian is because you were born in Canada. If you were born in Saudi Arabia, you'd probably be a Muslim. Ergo, your Christianity is not legit. We all just need to chill with all the truth going after truth and just admit all of us just have different paths, and we're all grabbing at the elephant. Now, here's the problem with that. Alvin Plantigo, who's a philosopher, he points out the irony of this, and he says, well, first, that's just a sociological observation.
Mark Clark [00:22:45]:
It actually doesn't prove Christianity is wrong. It's just telling me where I'm born. So that's not actually a thing. Doesn't do much other than tell me where I'm born. But the second point Plantigan makes is he says this. Suppose we concede that if I had been born of muslim parents rather than christian parents, my beliefs would have been quite different. The same goes for the pluralists, though. If the pluralists had been born in Morocco, he probably wouldn't be a pluralist.
Mark Clark [00:23:13]:
Does it follow that his pluralist beliefs are produced in him by an unreliable process? You wouldn't even be an inclusivist if you weren't canadian. Does that mean inclusivism is wrong? And so what we've got to do is try to understand and be self aware of the things that we're coming at this question with and begin to understand that based on logical impossibility. Because all the religions, by the way, I mean, all the religions, when people say all religions are true, all of them are right. You know, John Lennon has this great quote, what he said, I believe all the religions are true. Jesus, Buddhism, Muhammad. What they taught was right. And it's like, do you under what once you get underneath, like, the surface level of the golden rule, all religions teach opposite things, contradictory things, things that counter one another at every level. And it's silly of us to look and go, no, they all kind of teach the same stuff.
Mark Clark [00:24:14]:
That's what people say. Oh, all religions, they all teach the same thing. Until you begin to realize, no, actually, there was a poem by a guy named Steve Turner. He's a satirist, and he talks about the idea. He says, he's talking about kind of the postmodern mindset. He says, we believe that all religions are basically the same, at least the ones that we read were. They all believe in love and goodness. They only differ on matters of creation, sin, heaven, hell, God and salvation.
Mark Clark [00:24:45]:
And then he ends the poem by saying, we believe that each man must find the truth that is right for him. Reality will adapt accordingly. The universe will readjust. History will alter. We believe that there is no absolute truth except the truth that there is no absolute truth. We got to understand the contradiction of our own worldview and begin to try to think outside of it and go, let's not be naive and start to say silly things like, all religions are the same, or all religions go to the same. Listen, nothing is going to. I know you do that because you don't want to be offensive, but sit down with a Muslim and tell them, don't worry, all Jews are going to be in heaven with you.
Mark Clark [00:25:27]:
Sit down with a Palestinian. Sit down. It's the ultimate effect. These people have lost their lives. Their parents, their grandparents have fought and died and been martyred for causes. And then we come in and go, oh, don't worry. We have a comprehensive vision of reality. We've got a new idea, and it's, everybody's the same.
Mark Clark [00:25:49]:
We're all going to be in heaven together, Kumbaya, holding hands together. Nothing is more offensive to 99.9% of the world. But I know you sitting in a Starbucks drinking a latte, in your educated, western democratic mind, think you've just liberated humanity, and in that moment, you've enslaved it. So we begin to go, okay, all religions aren't the same. You know, there are better ideas than other ideas. See, when we say something silly, like all religions are the same, what do we mean? Do we mean the amorite religion back in the time of the Old Testament that used to take children and rip their arms off and beat a drum and throw them into the fire so that the parents couldn't hear the screaming of the live child in order to sacrifice to the gods? Do you mean Jim Jones, where he convinced 900 people after they gave him his kids so he could have sex with all of them? 900 people drank and drank and all killed themselves under his ministry in Guyana? You mean those religions? Are those religions? Okay. No. Okay, so which ones, then? The middle class, domesticated white ones, the ones that don't make us uncomfortable.
Mark Clark [00:27:20]:
Which ones are you going to let in and say, those ones? Everyone's right. Because remember, this position isn't that they're all wrong. That's atheism. That's a different week. This position is all of them are right. We're all together, and we got to understand some ideas are better than other ideas. We have to admit that. I think Christianity has a better origin story than atheism.
Mark Clark [00:27:45]:
Go back to week one or two. I don't think that the origin story of atheism gets us to a place where we have morality or we understand first causes. I think the christian story has better answers. I think the christian story has better answers than karmic theology when it comes to evil and suffering. Karmic theology or pantheism or pan antheism that believes that we are all part of God, that we are all God and God is everything. That kind of philosophy can't answer the question of evil and suffering properly. Why? Because that means that evil and suffering is part of God. Nt Wright puts it this way.
Mark Clark [00:28:21]:
He says, you really have to try hard to believe that there's divinity in everything, including wasps, mosquitoes, cancer cells, tsunamis and hurricanes. It can't cope with evil. When everything, including yourself, shares in or lives within divinity, there is no higher court of appeal. When something bad happens, nobody can come and rescue you. If everything is God, then you have no one to save you from the disaster that is your life of the world around you. The tragedies, the crumbling, the story's not going anywhere. It's not getting better. It's unraveling more.
Mark Clark [00:29:01]:
But don't worry, the cancer cells are all part of divinity. It's not a good explanation for evil and suffering. But Christianity, I think, has the best origin story, has the best answer to evil and suffering. Where God didn't stay aloof, he entered into the pain and the tragedy of the world, and he let it do his worst to him. We have to start comparing ideas, not just live. It's so, see, here's the thing, and I'll end with this because I just want us to pray and think about the tragedy. That is a worldview that refuses to face the tough questions and hides so quickly behind. Well, let's not do the tough one.
Mark Clark [00:29:47]:
Let's just go. Everybody's right in that moment. That is the pinnacle of not only naivety, but laziness. And I fear what's behind it is we don't want to be stirred up. We don't want to be confronted and changed in our life and have to change the direction. And I've told you this story before about my grandfather who, when he was, he was, he was, this couple had taken him and put him kind of in this, in this house and kind of were taking his money. And my brother and I came in and we told him the truth because we believed the truth was going to set him free. These people don't actually like you, grandfather.
Mark Clark [00:30:26]:
They just want to take your money. And he said, I know, but I don't care. And the reason I don't care is because I get three meals a day. I have company. I have a nice house. And in that moment, I realized that truth can set you free. It can. Jesus said that.
Mark Clark [00:30:39]:
But sometimes we hear truth and we choose comfort over truth because it's going to get harder. Your sex life is going to be reorganized. What you do with your money is going to get reorganized. How you raise your family, how you do your job, how you run your company. Everything is going to start to be confronted and changed and reworked. And that scares us. So instead of actually saying I might be wrong about an idea, let me trace down history and figure out if Christianity is the most true of the marketplace of ideas. Instead of doing that, we go, I know that that might be out there, but I get three square meals a day here.
Mark Clark [00:31:28]:
I'm good. I don't want this disruption. I don't want my heart and my life to be scandalized. And so I remember, people look at me and they go, yeah, but you don't understand. See, Christianity, the reason you believe in it is because it's a crutch, because it's easy, because it's simple. People say that stuff all the time, right? The reason you believe in Christianity, because it's a crutch. You're so weak. You're such a coward that you.
Mark Clark [00:31:54]:
I'd say the opposite is true. Talk to the millions of christians throughout history who got burned at the stake, eaten by lions. Talk to a high school kid today and ask him if Christianity is easier or harder than rejecting it. To actually have to try to be a disciple of Jesus in high school today. Ask him whether it be easier to just not have to deal with that. Easier or harder? And I would go, here's the easy position. Here's the cowardice position, the position that says, let's abandon the hunt for truth and hide behind everybody's right, because then we don't have to have the tough conversations. Man and life and civility in the mosaic can continue on, and the waters won't be disrupted.
Mark Clark [00:32:50]:
There'll be no waves and no scandal in your life at all. And we can do that. But to be honest with you, that's the biggest tragedy of all of them. So, father, I pray for our hearts and minds to actually be open to, not what is easy. Jesus, when you came, you gave this crazy high bar, and you talked about the cost of discipleship, and you said that the cost of discipleship is everything. It's carrying a cross. It's a whole life getting reorganized around the things that you're calling us to organize them around rather than just what we want to in our comfort. And so I just pray that you, in your power, I know you can, Holy Spirit, I just pray that you, in your power, across the different campuses, people watching this, listening to this, you can burn through the reasons that they continue to doubt, the reasons they won't believe in you, the reasons that they hold inclusivism, metaphysical pluralism and inclusivism to be true in their life, that you would burn through it and cause them to doubt their own doubts, to be self aware and maybe be brought to a place where they really believe the words that you are the truth, you are the life, and that no one gets to the father except through you.
Mark Clark [00:34:27]:
And they would understand that salvation is found in no one but you, and that they would actually give their life to you, cry out to you, understand that on the cross, you took their sin, and there is no other way. There's no amount of good they can do that. You paid for it in full. You took the wrath of God on yourself in order to give us life. And that that would burn in us and change us, and we would leave changed. Men and women who understand that these ideas, these set of ideas are not only better, they're true. And they're not only true, but they work to change life and create freedom from guilt and shame and our past and the things we're going through right now because you take it. Do that work among us.
Mark Clark [00:35:10]:
Lord, we pray and ask, in Jesus good name, we pray. Amen.