The Further Up, Further In Podcast

In our final episode on our 4th main theme - root yourself in the body of Christ - and of the first phase of the podcast, we look at the reality that for all our desire to be independent and all our illusions of self-sufficiency, we need one another and it is for our own good to be part of a church, imperfect as they are.

As we move toward the conclusion of our 4th main theme - root yourself in the body of Christ - and of the first phase of the podcast, we take some time to discuss the important reality that we are a body and that the church needs the gifts that God has given to every believer within the church.

In episode 33 we continue to talk about the importance of rooting yourself in the body of Christ as we discuss the importance of valuing both our individual responsibility but also our place in the community of faith. We look at the problem of the one of the many, how the Trinity helps us to understand these things, and conclude with some reflections drawn from Bonhoeffer's Life Together.

As we continue to explore our 4th main theme - root yourself in the body of Christ, community life is non-negotiable - we examine the individualistic nature of American culture and three of the many individualistic strands that have infiltrated and impacted the American Church.

As we move into the discussion of our 4th main theme - root yourself in the body of Christ, community life is non-negotiable - we begin by exploring how the Bible presents a unified vision in the Old and New Testaments of embracing God and his salvation as embracing a place among the people of God.

Our 4th and final "Lesson from Exile" discusses two lessons on prayer, one taken from Nehemiah and the other from Jeremiah, as we wrap up this arc of episodes designed to illustrate the importance of applying the mind to study scripture that we might stand under its authority as we seek to live lives of fidelity. 

Our third "Lesson from Exile" takes a close look at Ezekiel 9 and lessons we can learn from it about the importance of grieving over sin, as we continue to model applying the life of the mind to the study of scripture in our ongoing pursuit of faithfulness. 

Our second "Lesson from Exile" looks primarily at the story of Esther as we continue to model applying the life of the mind to understand the scriptures and learn lessons of fidelity in what we believe concerning God and the duty God requires of man.

This episode examines the story of Nebuchadnezzar as told in Daniel 2-4 as the first of a episodes that seek to combine the three big themes we've discussed so far. As the four biblical texts we'll be examining in these episodes all come from the exilic and post-exilic period of the Old Testament, I call these reflections "Lessons from Exile."

In the previous episode we talked about worldviews generally, but in this episode we talk about Christianity as a worldview, and how it functions as a starting point, a system and a story, and then we conclude our discussion by talking again about the importance of our call to engage culture.