How History Frees and Forms Christians
In this episode, Dr. Darrell Bock and Pastor David Moore discuss his ministry and new book, “Stuck in the Present: How History Frees and Forms Christians”
Timecodes
- 01:29
- What is the nature of your ministry, “The Twin City Ministry” and how did it inspire your book?
- 06:01
- Tell us about the aim of your book and the background on the title of it, “Stuck in the Present: How History Frees and Forms Christians
- 10:58
- What do you mean by saying our history shows ignorance wedded arrogance?
- 23:06
- Who are some of your historical heroes and what do you think they teach us about the Bible and the world?
- 26:47
- Where can people go to start looking at the big picture of history to see how it helps them better understand the Bible?
- 34:19
- In your opinion, how has the present-day on-line church been a distraction in content and tone?
Resources
Stuck in the Present by David George Moore and Carl Trueman: https://amzn.to/3DDbLDH
Transcript
Speaker 1:
Welcome to the Table Podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture. Brought to you by Dallas Theological Seminary.
Darrell Bock:
Welcome to The Table. We discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Darrell Bock, executive director for cultural engagement at the Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary. My guest today is George Moore, who's written a very fascinating book called Stuck in the Present. I'm hoping we don't get stuck in the podcast, but anyway, How History Frees and Forms Christians.
Darrell Bock:
And so, we’re going to be talking about the ideas in this book. David is founder and president of Two Cities Ministry in Austin, Texas. I love this sub description. He's had many jobs from arresting shoplifters to pastoral ministry. The latter was the most dangerous. So you obviously survived because you're able to talk with us. So that's good, but we're looking forward to having this conversation with you, David. Thanks for being a part of The Table.
David Moore:
Oh, great to be with you.
Darrell Bock:
Before we talk about why you wrote the book and what it's about, how did a nice guy like you get into a gig like this? Talk about the nature of your ministry and the background that you brought to writing the book.
David Moore:
Well, the assumption you're using is nice, but I'll take that out and say, get into a gig like this. By the way, Two Cities is a ministry we started in '98 and it's not Minneapolis, St. Paul. It's not Dallas, Fort Worth. It's the city of God and city of man Augustine and kind of the inspiration for it. But, basically I was a staff worker for Campus Crusade for Christ. I've been thinking about adult education for many, many years, and went off to seminary a couple of times, both Dallas before doing Campus Ministry and Trinity afterwards, and pastoral ministry.
David Moore:
We had started a Bible institute. I really felt like there was a need for something more robust than the typical Sunday school class we had at our church, but something not quite maybe seminary level. And so, we started this bible institute. So that was another interesting pilgrimage.
David Moore:
The elders were skeptical, frankly. They didn't think there'd be much interest to it. I taught the first class, I taught Wednesday evening seven to nine. They even gave me a separate… they said it's a separate budget. It's on the church budget, it's your budget and 115 people showed up for this class. They unfortunately never really got that excited about it, even though we had hundreds of people take classes.
David Moore:
So I've been real interested in adult education. This book that we're about to discuss is the result of many, many decades, really, maybe by three decades of thinking about this issue. The ministry Darrell is really a ministry that I think of myself at a busy intersection. On one side of the boulevard, there are a bunch of scholars in cars racing by in one direction, let's say southward.
David Moore:
The other side of the boulevard are people that are suspicious of scholars racing by the other side. And, I gingerly step out in the street and it's pretty scary. I'm trying to get everyone to slow down and maybe park the cars and maybe have a conversation. Because typically the only time they talk is when they get an accident and then they're really mad at each other.
David Moore:
There are scholars, obviously like you, and I know a bunch of them. I got a bunch of scholar friends who are trying to do both really responsible scholarship and also appeal and address the needs of the church, which is great. I'd like to see more scholars doing that as I'm sure you would too. And, But yet not withstanding great examples.
David Moore:
There's obviously a number of "lay people" that I don't like that terminology so much who are very interested in robust education. But, I'd say generally the stereotype is suspicion on both sides. So the ministry Two Cities is seeking to bring the best of scholarship to the church and have more conversations where the "lay person" can hear from people that have real expertise and go, "Wow, this is super helpful and edifying."
David Moore:
Scholars also can learn maybe to form and fashion questions and their own scholarship moving forward. That's helping maybe triggered by the questions that others are asking. So it's a very rewarding yet challenging ministry. I'll put it that way.
Darrell Bock:
Your ministry experience has taken you to some interesting places. I think I've heard you mentioned that you worked at Stanford for a while. Was that in student ministry? What was that connection?
David Moore:
It was college ministry at Stanford. And so, that was right after Dallas Seminary. So '84 to '89, I was the director for the ministry there. And, then '89 to '90, I traveled throughout mainly Northern California, Berkeley, Humboldt, Chico, [inaudible 00:05:34] State, all those different schools and spoke and encouraged the staff on biblical and theological issues.
Darrell Bock:
So this has been something that's been percolating for you for a very long time, because of the nature of your past ministry experience in the way in which you saw people processing the relationship of the academy. If I can say it that way in the church, is that right?
David Moore:
Yes.
Darrell Bock:
Let's turn our attention to the book. I love the title Stuck in the Present and which I'm taking that the front part of the title is not a compliment, that we're stuck in the present. It's the perceptive person that I am. Talk a little bit about the title and what you're seeking to do with the book.
David Moore:
Well, the title is, I've been teaching on this for quite a while and it kept going through different iterations. InterVarsity was interested, it voiced interest in it, but ironically, they'd already inked a deal with one of the interviews that's in the back of the book, a terrific guy at Wheaton, Tracy McKenzie. But, I had been using the title for many years there, probably 15 years.
David Moore:
My main title was making connections and the subtitle back then was linking responsibility to the pants. You probably know this from writing a bunch of books, you get a catch like a kid to a title. You think, "Wow, this is really good, making connections. I like the linkage linking responsibility to the past." When the publisher took the book, he said, "I love the book, but I really think you need a punchier title."
David Moore:
So, I was upstairs grousing for a bed up in the library. I came downstairs after a two, three hour grouse session, came down to find my wife and I started thinking, "I think he's right." No pun intended, but I got stuck on the word stuck. That's all I had was stuck. I thought stuck is a nice, punchy word, and it gets people's attention. It's arresting, but I couldn't go any further with it.
David Moore:
So I came into the kitchen and I said, "Hey, Doreen," my wife. I said, "We got this title thing. I'm kind of stuck on stuck." She just flawlessly said, "How about stuck in the present?" I was like, "I will share the royalties with you."
David Moore:
The subtitle is How History Frees and Forms Christians. So you're Stuck in the Present. The title is given because most Americans and I'm talking to Americans in this book are trying to figure out the present moment, which is fraught with all kinds of controversial issues, mainly by just knowing about the present moment. So the large feed or streams of information that most people are getting to figure out the present moment or social media, which is usually their own tribe, their own ghetto, their own silo, and cable news.
David Moore:
Which if you watching Fox decidedly right. If you're watching MSNBC, left to center, CNN also left to center or center, depending on how you want to view it. So we need a longer view. We need more reference points. The more reference points the merrier, they stabilize us. Most people do not have it.
David Moore:
If I can offer this illustration Darrell, when we were at Stanford, you mentioned we're at Stanford, we went through that infamous earthquake, that 7.1 in the Bay Area that stopped the world series. Its epicenter was really Santa Cruz area, but in Palo Alto where we were, it hit really hard and earthquakes can be different.
David Moore:
This was an undulation earthquake, and it was rush hour it's five or four. I remember thinking, "Our car is going east to west against the tires," and everyone had stopped. I thought all my tires blew out, but I thought not everyone in Palo Alto was going to stop for my tires is all a couple of seconds. Then I left out to the left of me, there's a motel right at the end of our street, I was trying to get a reference point and the motel was moving.
David Moore:
We turned down our street, there was a young boy about eight walking back his mangled bike. His bike was mangled and in both his knees were bloodied. That's what most people are trying to do. They're trying to figure out how can I get a stable, sane sense of the path of what's going on in the present by just looking at stuff in the present? It's like you can't, and that's why we have the big problems we do today, I think in the church and outside the church.
Darrell Bock:
It's a neat title. I do think that what you're really describing is a kind of myopathy, where you've put your blinders on. You're so focused on what's going on in the present. You don't see any flow from what's happening. You have no analogies to work with about things that have happened before, that kind of thing.
Darrell Bock:
So you actually are in the midst of trying to make an analysis, you're limiting your ability to make that analysis.
David Moore:
Correct.
Darrell Bock:
Go ahead.
David Moore:
Well, I was going to say, we've never had a time as acute where there is… and this is pretty much the polling data, all that that kind of stuff shows that where we've had this level of ignorance wedded with this level of arrogance. So it's like, "I don't know Darrell what the heck I'm talking about, but you better listen to me." By the way, I said this already, and I'll have to probably say it a couple more times so the listeners get it.
David Moore:
The problem is no less really severe in the church as it is out in the culture. I'm in a lot of different churches with a lot of dear people, but the level of ignorance going on social media, conspiracy theories is pretty thick in evangelical churches just like it is out in the culture general.
Darrell Bock:
No, I think that's fair. Of course, what history, now you're talking to someone who majored in European history in college. Okay, then of course I've done my work is related to the historical Jesus and I do historical work in relationship to the gospel. So I'm marinated in history. Okay, I'm a historian pork tenderloin. So it's a challenge, but what history does is it gives you parallels. It gives you analogies. It gives you avenues for thinking, etc.
Darrell Bock:
Which if you lack, you may think, "Oh, it's never been like this before. We've never been here like this, that kind of thing. Meanwhile, I read what's going on today and I go, "We're actually in a position that's not very different than the early church." Anyone who understands anything about Greco-Roman culture understands how radical it was and how unfettered it was, etc.
Darrell Bock:
The church managed to survive and thrive in the midst of that culture because of the way it went about doing its ministry. There are immense lessons for us in that timeframe and from that perspective, if we understand the history and the background, and we'll engage with the text. Not through a lens that's fraught with 21st century questions, but a lens that's fraught with understanding how a minority actually functioned well, because they represented their God well in the midst of a culture that was adrift.
David Moore:
That's a huge issue, during 2015 Hillary Clinton running against Trump, I would go to conservative churches that were bending in my ear on, if Hillary Clinton gets into office, the country's over with etc. As if they could see the future, a lot of problems with it from a historic and Biblical standpoint.
David Moore:
At the time I was preaching a fair bit on Jeremiah. I mentioned, "Well, three times in Jeremiah, God calls Nebuchadnezzar, my servant chapter 7, 11 and 14. Do you think Nebuchadnezzar is possibly a little worse than Hillary? If God is still in charge with Nebuchadnezzar, not that I would want Hillary Clinton to be elected." I mean, certainly a lot of policies I disagree with, but there was so much hand ringing and it really was a sense of almost practically like, "Oh yeah, I know God's Sovereign, but I'm freaking out Darrell. I am absolutely freaking out."
David Moore:
It's like, you don't know in the Biblical sense, it doesn't make us apathetic. We still need to do our due diligence and all that sort of thing. But, I'm amazed. Usually and I think I mentioned this in the book that when I see Christians like that, I can almost say they don't have any sense of history or very little, very spotty because history gives you that grounding of like, "Wow, there's been some desperate times." You mentioned the first century of the early church, it gives you those reference points for that kind of sanity that you need.
Darrell Bock:
Alongside of it next to your history, you got to put your theology and Jesus when he's talking about the confession that the disciples make at Caesarea of Philippi says, "I'm going to build my church off of what you're confessing here and the gates of hell will not prevail against it." So I tell people, there's no reason to fear what's going on. In fact, we shouldn't be surprised that what's going on is going on because Jesus spent the whole second half of his ministry saying, "If you follow me, the world will push back."
Darrell Bock:
I mean, the whole thing about bearing your cross daily has that as the core assumption, and that's a core element of discipleship. So once we put him… if we can make a marriage here and wed history to theology so that they're working together. Then there's a lot to say the there's another very important passage in 1 Peter 3, in which it talks about if you suffer for doing the right thing, don't be afraid of them.
Darrell Bock:
You're not to operate out of fear. That fear is not the best place to operate. You operate out of your solid identity in Christ and you recognize you don't fear the one who can harm you physically, you fear the one who's the Creator, God. So all those things build into the idea of, a believer should never be in the position where they're panicking and history teaches us that.
David Moore:
Absolutely. I mean, to riff on the thing with Jesus, the confession, you've probably heard that old Chesterton quote the seven times in church history, it seemed like the church had gone to the dogs only to find in each case the dog died. That's what I think history gives us. I think to your point about the first century, I think there are tons of parallels that are really helpful for how to interact in a space, which is new for Americans, where Christendom kind of the cultural cloud.
David Moore:
I know Tim Keller spoke on this at Dallas Seminary recently is gone away with, and you and I grew up spiritual in 70s, 80s and 90s, when we were still the beneficiaries of a lot of cultural cache that came with Christendom. Then, well that's over with, and it's probably the better that it is. Yet I think as I mentioned, the book, I think there's two dangers. One is that say that there's complete parallels to the past. There's a lot of parallels and to lose sight of the uniqueness's of the present moment, internet is unique, the speed modernity.
Darrell Bock:
Yeap, Yeap.
David Moore:
Most Christians, I would say, make the mistake, the fear riddled Christians make the mistake of talking about how utterly unique our moment is and that's problematic.
Darrell Bock:
Yea, I agree and I think that the challenge here is, is getting people to be comfortable where God has Duane Liftin, has a wonderful phrase, former president of at Wheaton, former DTS faculty member. In fact, when I came on the faculty, he was on faculty here, has a phrase he says, "We're no longer the home team." That's a great image. I mean, not only are we not the home team in one sense, we probably never were when it comes to the world.
Darrell Bock:
Which is why the Bible says we're exiles and aliens in a strange land. Our citizenship is a citizenship in heaven. It's not tied to the citizenship on the earth. So appreciating who it is we represent and how we represent that. In fact, I got to ask someone the other day asked me, "So how do we talk about the kingdom when the context is someone so wedded to the particular set of problems we have?
Darrell Bock:
I said, "You remind them what the kingdom is." The kingdom is multinational. The kingdom is made up and designed to bring diverse people together around a shared savior and a shared belief in God. You're inviting people out of the space that they're living in into this space. We sometimes get in trouble because we want to make the kingdom expand outward and we get territorial and becomes a discussion about power.
Darrell Bock:
But actually what we're talking about is God has produced an enclave on the earth that represents him. We invite people into that space. Then hopefully if enough people come into that space and actually live the way God says to live, then there's the place to feel confident, secure, etc even when the world is pushing back against you. Which the world will do until Christ fixes it.
Darrell Bock:
Not to say that we aren't to engage the world, but we need to understand how to win and lose well in that conversation and understand where the real victory is. The real victory is in our community and our relationship with God. So we're faced with the challenge of how to live in this space that has changed around us and to really, almost accept what's going on around us. Then approach everything from a slightly different angle that reflects the way in which God invites people into this sacred space, that is to be the church.
David Moore:
Absolutely. I think and you see this I'm sure a lot, I mean, I have seen basic Bible literacy just plummet among again, so-called evangelicals who have an official high view of Scripture. I've seen the ability Darrell, when I do more (audio distorted) inter-react with Bible studies and I largely speak to college educated many times people with graduate degrees. I'll ask them to look at the context and it's not that difficult.
David Moore:
Usually what I'm asking for them to look at the text and within the context, and it's usually an immediate sort of thing is that I find in the last 8, 10 years, for sure, a growing inability just to read carefully, to want to read. So we're at this place where a lot of Christians still feel within the church, the pressure to say, "Yeah, the Bible is really special and important to me."
David Moore:
Yet the dirty secret, which isn't such a secret is most people aren't reading it very well or very much. So thinking about the kingdom as you described is very much truncated and limited on if I don't have an understanding of the full sweep of Scripture, like, "Wow, this is really contrary to even the way a lot of us Christians are thinking about the kingdom." I need to be reviewed and corrected and changed my posture about how fearful I am as we were talking about earlier and really have my grounding in what God is wanting to do. Not what I think he's doing.
Darrell Bock:
That's right. Puts a huge challenge on the church actually to be the church that God has called us to be. We're so busy trying to fix everybody else that sometimes we've slipped in our ability to be who we're supposed to be as a result. The power of our testimony is going to come from being the church God made us to be, not from being something that claims to be one thing and is something else.
David Moore:
Exactly, absolutely.
Darrell Bock:
Let's talk about, maybe we've got time maybe for one other discussion here. What are some of the lessons of history? Who are some of your historical heroes and what do they teach us? Maybe that's the best way to ask the question. May sound like a strange question, but I think it's an important one.
David Moore:
No, that's fine. I, have different ones for different purposes. As you know from the book on the non-Christian side, I really believe that Christians once you are really grounded in the Christian faith, ought to have maybe one or two conversation partners outside the faith that poke and prod them and push them to have more integrity. Maybe you're raising questions that we either feel too threatened to raise or we're too blinded to raise.
David Moore:
So a 19th century American thinker, probably the most consequential person that really broke with the institutional church and became a well known thinker whose influence is very much with us today. Ralph Waldo Emerson on the non-Christian side has been an ongoing interlocutor. I plan on writing a book where we're putting him in conversation with Jonathan Edwards and I can immediately pivot to Edwards and the Puritans from there going back.
David Moore:
Emerson was born by the way in 1803, Edwards and 1703. So they're separated by a century. Edwards has had a big effect on us, both my wife and I, her book is on Edwards, her thesis was. The Puritans for both of us has been significant. I think there's different times in the church. I think the second century, the apologists, I think I'm thinking of people like Tertullian, Justin Martyr, some of the others have been really significant for how robust and yet how distinctly Christian they were in their engagement.
David Moore:
Augustine has had a huge impact on me, basically his posture, again, similar to Pella and Justin martyr when like in City of God as you know he really understood the alternative view that he was critiquing better than almost every adherent of that view. So he could go in and talk in more depth about the view that he was opposing than those who were holding the view and then show them incrementally that the incarnation is really the fulfillment of their desires.
David Moore:
So Augustine has had a huge impact, John Bunyan and I'll just throw one more in there. I take men regularly in my discipleship Darrell through two books. If I could wave a wand, every Christian [inaudible 00:26:01] America has got to read two books outside the Bible Confessions by Augustine and Pilgrim's Progress. Bunyan I think has the most realistic, comprehensive view of sanctification that does not straight jacket any person into some kind of formulaic, one size fits all.
David Moore:
He understands different personalities, different temptations, different virtues, every true pilgrim is going to the city of God, but the things that weigh, lay them on the way. Some may get waylaid by doubting castle, some by the valley of humiliation, some by vanity fair. It's a powerful, powerful book. So there's just a smattering of some of the folks.
Darrell Bock:
You actually anticipated my next question to a certain degree, but I'll go ahead and ask it anyway, because you've already begun to answer the question. That is, if you were starting from scratch, someone says, "Okay, I get what you're after. I'd like to get a little more historically grounded." Where would you suggest people go to get started?
David Moore:
I think in the book I talk about that I really believe whether you're learning about a radiator on a car, you're learning how to play the guitar or you're learning Greek or whatever it is that it's really helpful to get the 50,000 foot view first and really get a good big picture and then start to drill down the specifics.
David Moore:
A good example of the problem with this is that a lot of people and I've asked in great Bible teaching churches will hear a pastor they've been there, maybe 30 years hearing great teaching and they'll hear a pastor say really quickly, "Well, of course, Jeremiah is a pre-exilic prophet and he's a major prophet." Then let's say the pastor doesn't explain either what pre-exilic or major prophet means. He just goes on to make his point. That person's there 30 years gone, "I should know by now probably what a pre-exilic. Is that something with the Syria? There's a Babylonian thing too."
David Moore:
Now they're distracted trying to get the big picture. A major prophet does that mean like more important or longer? So I really think the big picture is crucial. I think for church history, some of the best big picture books, John Hannah's got a two volume that came out recently. That looks great. I've not read it, but knowing him, it's probably terrific.
David Moore:
The one that a lot of times I recommend is Bruce Shelley's, Church History in Plain Language, that's been through maybe five different reprints. It's very helpful. Jeff Bingham, who used to teach there at Dallas Seminary wrote a pocket guide to church history about 165 pages with InterVarsity. I've read that it's actually a very good. It covers all the waterfront. That's very helpful, 165 pages.
David Moore:
You get those handholds of how's the renaissance differently, enlightenment how's the enlightenment, usher and modernity. Those things are really, really helpful to have those big picture hooks that go, "If I'm interested in a period, I can start reading more specifically."
Darrell Bock:
When I became a Christian, this is an older book. I don't even know if it's still in print, but very early on, I wrote a book called Christianity Through the Centuries by Earle Cairns. He used to teach church history, I think at Moody and for that very reason. I mean, I knew because of my undergraduate background, a male history through the history of Europe, really, I covered up to the enlightenment in some detail.
Darrell Bock:
But what I didn't know was the church side of that story, if I can say it that way. Which is what I needed to put the whole package together. So that certainly is a helpful way in, and of course, what it gives you is perspective and analogy. But here's one way in which our modern world is different at least from most of our church history that people have to remember. I'd like to get your comment on this to be the last thing we can cover.
Darrell Bock:
That is, for example, if I think about a Wilberforce, this mammoth figure who helped turn the corner on slavery, or even some of the other people that you mentioned, Jonathan Edwards, or Bunyan, wherever you're going here. The backdrop was a Christian worldview and world for much of our history, which they could rely on. There was what I call the Judeo-Christian net caught people, whether they were in the church or not, that net existed and caught them. What's gone is that net. That net doesn't exist anymore.
Darrell Bock:
There's no shared cultural Judeo-Christian backdrop that people inherited to help them negotiate the space. Now we have just a massive alternatives. So I tell people that, and this gets to the information thing you alluded to earlier. So people are a little more dislocated. There's stuff coming at them from every direction. There all kinds of alternatives that are out there. There all kinds of mixes that are possible as a result.
Darrell Bock:
People not only know about different civilizations and different nationalities, their neighbors come from there. This is the difference between the younger generation and our generation in some ways. We grew up theoretically engaging with some of this, but they've grown up with names and faces they can put on these various positions. Because the white people have moved around, etc. I think that's a real challenge for the church.
David Moore:
Huge. One thing that I took away and I've been thinking about it a lot, there's a terrific book by Yuval Levin, he's a political scientist. He has written a number of really seminal works. But the one maybe that he's best known for is The Great Debate. It's the debate between the left and right politically and where it merges. It's kind of a dual biography of Edmund Burke, the "Conservative" and Thomas Paine, the radical liberal, who believes [inaudible 00:32:26] start the world afresh, which obviously he was big for the American revolution.
David Moore:
Well, Levin says, which I think is really powerful Darrell. It's kind of a hang curve ball. To use another analogy, it's constantly nagging me is Levin says, in order for Edmund Burk the conservative who believes you should preserve institutions, convince them not only of the truthfulness, but the beauty of the truth.
David Moore:
I would say if I was asked, "How well do I think American evangelicals have done in representing the truthfulness of scripture?" I'd say A, A minus, maybe even A plus in a lot of places. Then if you said, "Well, how well do you think we've done?" Because I'm not outside of that, how well we done in representing the beauty, the compelling nature of the truth. I'd say, "Man, that's like a C minus, D plus. Not very good."
Darrell Bock:
You're saying… Go ahead. Sorry.
David Moore:
Monogamy, let's say man and woman in marriage is a beautiful thing from a scriptural standpoint. But in the culture, a large is viewed as like, "Oh, those Christians there are really nasty about this whole monogamous thing." Man and woman, that's the only legitimate marriage. It just seems nasty. So what you're saying it's beautiful. God and scripture.
David Moore:
So as a jest, our culture spalled purely because of their sin, which obviously is a huge factor or is there any complicity on our part? I'm not doing a great job in promulgating the beauty of the truthfulness. I don't think we've done a great job there.
Darrell Bock:
You're saying in a different way something I also think about and say regularly, which is in any dispute, there's the content of what you're dealing with. Then there's the relational element of how you interact around that content. Conservatives tend to be so focused on their content and getting their content right. They don't pay attention quite so much to how they're relating to the person while they're working with that content.
Darrell Bock:
To just layer what you're saying on what I'm saying, and there's a beauty to the way you relate, especially important when you're not agreeing. When you lose that, when you lose that relational element, that relational sensitivity and you misappropriate the tone relationally, you can be right in your content, you're wrong relationally, and you're still wrong.
David Moore:
If you're watching, I won't leave because it will make it to present moment, but there's even some major debates going on, even as we speak on the blogosphere and others, where various evangelical leaders are turned against each other on a whole raft of issues. I'm looking at like you just described both the content of what they're trying to say, but also the tonal quality.
David Moore:
It really is distracting when you feel like… and by the way, I have had some, I just want to admit it for anyone that sees me and goes, "I remember having a conversation with him one time. It wasn't great." So I'm chief among centers here. I don't want to say, "I've just totally perfected this." I work hard and I pray. It's still part of my sanctification. I think think we all know this, that when the person we're in disagreement with, they're really already is kind of a personality difficulty there.
David Moore:
Maybe unstated, but for whatever reason it's there. I've certainly had my ups and downs on that. But yes, I think we need to show the beauty and be gracious. I mean, Paul says the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart, good conscience, sincere faith. The goal of our instruction is love. It's like, "Wow." I mean, that has stuck with me ever since I've meditated and memorized that verse as a pastor.
David Moore:
Again, I don't always apply it, but there's Paul making it really clear what we need to be about.
Darrell Bock:
Well, David, I want to thank you for taking the time with us to talk about this and to get us unstuck. We can't move out of the present. So that part, we're stuck in the present, but we don't have to be stuck in the present in terms of our knowledge of how to look at the present. So I really do appreciate you giving us your time to talk about this.
David Moore:
Great being with you. Can I, because I know you have the listeners don't know this, you just have the galley copy, can I hold up my book as a copy for anyone that's interested in Stuck in the Present.
Darrell Bock:
Sure. Go ahead.
David Moore:
Anyway, thanks.
Darrell Bock:
You have to stick it up there long enough so we can see it. Okay? It's okay to be stuck when you're showing your book. There you go. Thanks. I appreciate that. Thanks, David. I want to, Go ahead.
David Moore:
I usually have their books on their bookshelf. I don't do that, but I'll hold them up.
Darrell Bock:
There you go. That sounds great. Well, I want to thank you all for visiting us on The Table today. Please do subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast. Leave an honest review of this. Really does help more people to discover these conversations and we hope you'll join us next time on The Table, where we discuss issues of God and culture.
Speaker 1:
Thanks for listening to The Table Podcast, Dallas Theological Seminary, Teach Truth, Love Well.
About the Contributors
Darrell L. Bock
Dr. Bock has earned recognition as a Humboldt Scholar (Tübingen University in Germany), is the author of over 40 books, including well-regarded commentaries on Luke and Acts and studies of the historical Jesus, and work in cultural engagement as host of the seminary’s Table Podcasts. He was president of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) from 2000–2001, served as a consulting editor for Christianity Today, and serves on the boards of Wheaton College and Chosen People Ministries. His articles appear in leading publications. He is often an expert for the media on NT issues. Dr. Bock has been a New York Times best-selling author in nonfiction and is elder emeritus at Trinity Fellowship Church in Dallas. When traveling overseas, he will tune into the current game involving his favorite teams from Houston—live—even in the wee hours of the morning. Married for over 40 years to Sally, he is a proud father of two daughters and a son and is also a grandfather.