Wake Up, Look Up

Hello everyone, and thanks for listening to Wake Up, Look Up, a podcast where we connect events happening in real time to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Zach Weihrauch, and in today's episode, we're asking the question, are you too proud to grow? This has prompted but a really interesting opinion piece I read in the New York Times by David French. he was pointing his finger at what he calls ideological rigidity on college campuses. Basically, what he's saying is that you can put universities into one bucket or the other. They're either liberal and full of all kinds of power dynamics and empowerment thinking and pitting white people against black people, gay people against straight people, or they're conservative and they're similarly an ideological ideological bubble taking aim at everything and anything woke. And French's point is. Hey, hold on a second. Isn't a key idea of education interacting with ideas that challenge you even more than that, learning how to interact with them so that either you are able to defeat them in the public square through argument, or even sometimes that you are changed by them? I mean, what French is calling out is that more and more, as a society, we exist in ideological bubbles. We choose liberal colleges, conservative colleges. We listen to the podcasts that say what we want them to say. We go down to the YouTube algorithm that reinforces what we already believe. More and more, we as a society lack the ability to engage ideas that we disagree with and especially to be changed by them. But his point is this. one of the most important questions you can ask for personal growth is, what if I am wrong? Because if you never ask that, not only will you miss out on all kinds of truth, you'll never grow as a person, because being wrong is a necessary part of growing. Proverbs 11:2 says it this way. When pride comes, then comes disgrace. But with humility comes wisdom. And of course, humility is in essence saying, hey, I might not be right on this. Now, listen, I think French's point is so true sociologically, culturally, that as a culture, one of the things that's unraveling the fabric of our ability to relate with each other are the ideological bubbles we live in. But this is a spiritual problem, because learning to say, what if I'm wrong? Is an indispensable part of following Jesus. Because Jesus actually disagrees with us on a lot of things. He's going to disagree with each one of us in terms of how we think about forgiveness or how we think about generosity or hospitality. Jesus is going to regularly expose the fact that my prior thinking was not actually best. But if I don't have the ability to say, what if I'm wrong? Then I'm not going to have the ability to learn from Jesus. John says it this way in First John. If we say we have no sin, we make him out to be a liar. But if we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us. You see the rub there, right? If I'm never wrong, then I'm never sinful. And if I'm never sinful, I don't need a, savior. So while you might think going down the YouTube rabbit hole or curating your podcast list creating for yourself an ideological bubble has more to do with politics than. Than it does with discipleship, you're wrong because you're developing a muscle of pride. Or maybe a better way of saying it is you're atrophying your muscle of humility. When's the last time you opened yourself up to the idea that your opinion might not be right, that the other side might have a valid point? If it's been a while, can I ask an even tougher question? Is it not also true that you're in a season of spiritual stagnation? Listen, those things are related. No one outside of Jesus is right all the time. And if you feel stuck in your growth spiritually, it might just be because your ability to be wrong has weakened. Well, let's build it back up. Remember, pride leads to disgrace. Humility leads to wisdom. Are you wise enough to believe you might just be wrong? Hey, thanks for watching this episode of Wake Up, Look Up. If you enjoyed it, please help us get the word out by sharing it with someone you think might benefit from it. And while you're here, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to get further content or even download the CCC app, where you'll find even more resources to help you grow in your faith and relationship with Jesus Christ.

Have an article you’d like Pastor Zach to discuss? Email us at wakeup@ccchapel.com!