Ep. 249: Shifting Culture

Isaac Dagneau:

Hey, welcome to indoubt. My name is Isaac, one of the hosts at indoubt, and I’m also pastor at North Valley Baptist Church in Mission, BC. This is sort of a kind of continue on from a previous conversation that we had with two guests. So with me is Care Baldwin. She is a radio personality, CHRI radio station in Ottawa, our capital of our country, if you did not know that. Especially if you are outside of Canada, you wouldn’t know that. But also with us is Daniel, and you guys all know Daniel. He’s another host of indoubt. He works at West Side Church in Vancouver. He’s associate minister, but we’re happy to be on again to talk about these important issues going on. So yeah, welcome, guys.

Care Baldwin:

Thanks for having me back.

Daniel Markin:

Thank you, Isaac. I’m looking forward to getting back into this conversation. We were getting really fired up last time.

Isaac Dagneau:

Yeah. So as we have this discussion here, this is a round table conversation with different views in terms of just various things that are going on in our world today. So one of the things that we want to hit on is just the reality of the world that we live in right now, and it’s the one thing kind of that bridges every continent, country, people together right now. That is the reality of this COVID-19, of this pandemic. There might be some different views, and that’s okay. So anyways, let’s just jump in here. Church, ecclesia, it’s literally assembly, gathering, and all of us agree that Christianity is not a solo reality. It’s just not. It can’t be done. To be a Christian, you are part of the church. You’re part of a body. We don’t just see fingers walking on the sidewalk or an appendix bouncing around. You see full bodies, because that’s what we are. We’re full bodies, and that’s what the churches are as well. So it’s like yeah, maybe trying to squeeze everyone in a tiny little building, with the reality of COVID, yeah, that wouldn’t make sense, but that does not mean that we don’t … We can still gather safely and each other’s homes and things like that, and that makes sense to me. That makes sense to me that we would do that or if a building. I know that Northview here in Abbotsford Mission, a bigger church here, I’ve talked to them, and they have indoor gatherings, all according to the regulations of the government, what the government is set up. So 50 or less, six feet apart from family units, and it’s absolutely safe. So there’s nothing wrong with that. So yeah.

Care Baldwin:

If listeners ever wonder or question their role in the body of Christ, just picture an appendix bouncing along the sidewalk.

Isaac Dagneau:

Yes. It won’t work. You need to be in a body. Yep.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah, that’s awesome. I feel like we need the church more than ever right now, because our world is so … I had a young adult talk to me yesterday as I was talking about starting this young adults’ ministry at West Side, and he was saying to me, “Do you know what I think our city needs?” He says, “I think we’re so tired from all of the COVID stuff and all the political stuff going on in our world right now.” He’s like, “We just need time of rest.” I thought, I’m like, “It’s true.” We need the church more than ever to help facilitate what it means to abide in Christ. So just quick story, my wife and I just moved into downtown Vancouver. We live on Seymour Street, which is a street over from Granville. Because of COVID, right now there’s just a ton of homeless people in our neighbourhood, which has been very unique and very eyeopening, moving from Abbotsford, which is in the suburbs, to now downtown Vancouver. We were walking onto the street, and strewn out everywhere, because they’ve been evicted from this park where they were living, right? So now they’re all on Granville street. So we’re walking past homeless people who are … Their stuff’s strewn out everywhere, and you see that brokenness. Then you see everyone’s wearing masks. Then on top of that right now, with all the forest fires, it’s smoky everywhere. So we’re walking around, and it was like we’re living in the land of death. It felt like, “Is this the end times?” Right? “Is this the end?” Because it was just crazy, the amount of brokenness we saw, and I was sharing this. It was a dark moment for Lisa and I. We both spiritually felt like that was a hard thing to walk through and see that level of brokenness on a societal level, but on a creation level, too. I was talking to one of the staff members, who’s been at West Side for a long time, 14 years or something, and he said, “It’s interesting.” He drives past East Hastings Street, which in Vancouver is enormously lots of homeless people. He said, “It’s so difficult, because,” he’s like, “you see that brokenness.” But he said, “They exemplify an outward brokenness, right, that so many people in Vancouver experience inwardly.” He’s like, “That’s an outward depiction of it.” But he said inward that you had these people, CEOs, doing very well, living in these glass towers on the top floor, who inside, their lives are just as broken. The verse that Lisa and I have thought through and kind of made our verse going forward is 29:11, but it’s actually Jeremiah 29:7, which comes moments before the famous Jeremiah 29:11, which says, “Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you, too, will prosper.” It’s just a reminder to me that in this time, whatever city we’re in, whatever town that we live in, that as the church, we ought to be seeking the prosperity of that place, because there’s such brokenness going on. As we do that, as we try and strive for renewal in these places, we will prosper through that, through the work that God’s doing there already.

Isaac Dagneau:

Yeah, no, that’s so good. I think, too, as you bring that up, Daniel, it just makes me think that, as the church, I think sometimes it can be easy to sway to one side or other in terms of whatever city they’re in or rural place in Canada. Wherever they’re at, where God has placed them as a church, there maybe can be a temptation to lean on one side, where they’re just caring for physical needs, or there’s other churches that say, “No, it’s not about physical. It’s all about spiritual. Let’s only care about spiritual needs.” But I think there’s a fine balance that we need to take there. So as I hear you say that, in the seeking of helping the city prosper, I think the church needs to go forward in thinking carefully about how they can be benevolent in terms of the physical aspects of the city, but never without the spiritual side as well and just doing that together. I think the unity of those two things, going forward, can make a huge impact on the … You’re right, the death that we see, the outward and inward death that we see. So yeah. Let’s move on here. So we’ve kind of touched on that, and let’s just move on to the other reality that’s kind of going on in North America right now, in terms of sort of the different social issues, the problems that we are seeing that’s seemed like it’s just erupted, and I’m not sure. I think it was at the instigation of the murder of George Floyd. I think that was the one that kind of instigated it, and then it’s been years in the process, obviously. But that was really the spark that kind of lit the fires of what we’re seeing right now, literally, in many ways. It’s kind of based on race and things like that. So let’s just jump into this. As Christians, how are we to … Well, start here. As Christians, we believe wholeheartedly in the dignity and the value and the meaning of every person. I don’t know, Daniel. Maybe you can just share with us a little bit about what the Bible says about the fact that we’re made in God’s image. I don’t know if you want to just share the value and the meaning that every person has.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah. Well, I mean, this idea of human dignity and human value is directly one of the first things that we read in the Bible and one of the things that the Christian church has brought to the world, is this belief that no matter your race, no matter your ethnicity, no matter your financial status in the world, every human being has the same value. This is actually, I mean, written into the Constitution, I think, in the United States, that … What do they say? “We believe that all men are created equal.” Whether or not they have lived out to that, that’s written into their Constitution, and this comes from Genesis 1, where we see the humans are made in the image of God, that we are image bearers. Based on being an image bearer, we now have inherent, God-given value. So we can attribute value to each one of our friends, to each person that we see walk on the street, and try and figure out where we are on the social status in our social locations, but in God’s eyes, every human being is on the same level playing field of having inherent human dignity, which is challenging, because as I walk up Granville Street and I walk past some of these homeless people, who it seems like they’re tripping out on drugs, and it’s easy to bypass them and think, “Well, they’re less than human,” right? There might be a lot of people who think that. They’re like, “Oh, we’re looking essentially at zombies.” But the Christian Scriptures, if you call yourself a Christian, we, before God, need to and are called to and don’t have a choice in the matter of realizing that this person that I’ve seen is also in God’s eyes as equally valuable and loved and cared for as I am. So when we talk about human value, human dignity, that’s what we’re talking about there, is there are a level playing field, which is one of the most amazing pieces of Christianity and such an important cultural piece to be really explaining it and almost boasting in in our current time, saying, “No, as Christians, we do believe that all humans are equally valued.” However, how we go about that I think is where a lot of these issues has come about, because what I’m seeing right now is, again, you can have opinions or thoughts about Black Lives Matter. My, my thought is I think their heart is in the right place. In some regards, I think a lot of people who … I think as an organization, I’m not so sure if I’m supporting what they are attributing, which is they want to see the nuclear family destroyed and destroy capitalism. This is getting really political, but on an organizational level, I am not a fan. But people’s hearts behind supporting and being a part of social change I think is in the right place, where they want to see human value, everyone’s equally valued. I think that’s right. I think a lot of discussions, though, is how we’re going about it is difficult, and how we go about it, I think there’s a lot of disagreement there, because we’re not in agreement on and not unified on how this ought to be done, practically.

Care Baldwin:

Are we showing it as a church? I know that’s something that these types of things, like you’re saying, Daniel, if it’s rooted in our identity, then, really, it should be demonstrated in the church first. But I can say even our church, we try for diversity. But if you walked into our building, you would see mostly white people. One of the things that we’re trying to do to try just to draw in other cultures and other races, to let them know, “You are welcome here. We are not a white church,” is by actually putting some of our visible minorities on the platform, in terms of leading worship or whatever, and hope that when people step in, they’re looking at our leadership, they’re looking at what’s visible, and they’re seeing, “Okay, there is some diversity here.” But yeah, it’s got to start in the church, and that’s a harder thing to do than it is to say.

Isaac Dagneau:

Yeah. Sorry, I thought you were going to say something, Daniel. One thing that I struggle with with all this, too, is that we live in, obviously, a social media age and a media-saturated age, where we know what’s going on globally in a matter of seconds, right? Whereas 200 years ago, that just would not be the case. We wouldn’t know about a bombing in Beirut. We just wouldn’t know until it said in the papers, maybe a couple of weeks passed or whatever. So it’s totally different. We live in a completely different age. The hard part for me is that … I don’t know. I mean, I was thinking about this, the danger of global exposure, because we are exposed to everything going on globally, and then it kind of makes me feel like I have to have an opinion on everything and also be an expert on it. So I need to know who it was that detonated the bomb in Lebanon. I need to know what all Black Lives Matter is about and what they are doing, and I need to know all of this. But the reality is, I can’t. Like you, Care, I’m a father of, well, almost two kids coming up pretty soon here and pastoring a church. I just can’t know. But because of our global media exposure, I kind of have this sense where I need to, and people live online sometimes more than they live … Especially with COVID, they live online more than they’re living outside their door, which means they kind of have this expectation on themselves and others to have opinions. It’s kind of hard for me to … I don’t know if you guys have faced that as well.

Daniel Markin:

Isaac, it’s an interesting thing, too, because if you say, “Hey, listen, I’m not fully read on this, but I have some thoughts,” you probably will get shut down and say, “Well, don’t talk then.” We live in such an interesting time, where it’s not an open conversation. It’s “Agree with me or shut up. If you’re not agreeing with me, then don’t talk,” right? So you either shut up if you’re not well read on this. Then it’s time for you to listen. Now, the same response, too, that I see on Twitter is if you’re well-read, but you have a different opinion, you’re told to shut up or you’re told, “No, you’re not listening. Listen,” right? It’s this weird … You’re not allowed to have an opinion anymore. I don’t know, Care. Have you run into some of that with your work in radio? Is this just something that I see on Twitter, or is this what you’re experiencing in society and in Ontario, even?

Care Baldwin:

I mean, obviously, when you’re in radio, especially Christian radio, it’s like you have to be so careful what you say. I mean, I think it’s safe to say that the majority of our listeners are Judeo-Christian, slightly right of center. I think those are … We call them our P1s. Our closest listeners are probably that. However, we also know that we have homosexual, gay listeners. We have Muslim listeners who either are listening in secret or they just like that the music is positive and they think about their God when they’re hearing about God. There’s such a diverse view that it is hard to sometimes have an opinion. Now, I generally don’t shy away from having an opinion if it has to do with faith. I do speak about faith very clearly on the station, but I know even listening to other Christian radio people across Canada and the US, there’s a network of us, and a lot of times, they say, “Oh, no, it’s good radio when you have an opinion. It’s good radio when you pick a side.” Then I present that to our management, and they’re like, “Can you be careful with picking a side? Because you’re going to have someone disagree.” So I think you can’t be afraid to have someone disagree. You do need to have an opinion. Like Daniel said, I think we can’t just not have opinions. I think there’s going to be … My husband and I always kind of talk about how there’s probably going to be a generation maybe by the time my kid is a teenager where they’re going to just boycott social media. There’s going to be no social media. They’re going to be like, “My entire life was put on Facebook, and I can’t believe anything I find on the Internet. People hide behind their social feeds to have an opinion and to start stuff.” I think there’s going to be this complete turnaround in the next generation. They’re just going to want to stay away from everything.

Daniel Markin:

Totally, and they’ll see, “Oh, everything’s so fake. All the people I see online are not like they are in person.” Yeah, no, Care, I agree with that, because I think what we should as Christians is we should be able to go in with an opinion, but say, “Look, I might be wrong.” I think that’s an okay way to go into something and say, “Look, I might be wrong. I currently hold this position. But convince me, because I’ll let the better position win out.” I think that’s a healthy thing. What’s happening now, though, is we have changed … DA Carson, who’s a theologian, has wrote a book called … and it’s a great title, called The Intolerance of Tolerance. Basically, his whole premise is our world has redefined what tolerance means. Basically, he says before, tolerance meant that, “Hey, guess what? Care, you have a different opinion than me. I don’t agree with you, but I respect you as a person. So we can disagree, but I will still uphold your human value, human dignity, and we can talk through this.” So you don’t accept the position, but you accept the person. Now tolerance has been changed to, “You must accept every position, and if you don’t, then I will not accept you.” So it’s completely self-defeating, because that position isn’t accepting of any other positions. But so now it’s like, “Oh, you are intolerant, because you don’t hold my position. I will no longer tolerate you as a person,” which is completely backwards. It’s not doing anyone any favours.

Care Baldwin:

Or you must not tolerate me because you don’t tolerate my position. I remember, because I’m so involved in the local theater community, and I remember when I was younger, as a pretty new Christian, I knew a gay man who came up to me and just said … It was like we had been friends for a while, or at least I thought so. Then one day he just said, “Well, it’s because you don’t like me because I’m gay.” I’m like, “Whoa. First of all, can we back up a second? Because I thought we were friends.” But it hurt me, because I thought all of a sudden now someone is putting me into this box that I apparently don’t tolerate them as a person, because I’m maybe not super gung ho about their way of living or whatever. I mean, obviously, I’ve grown a lot in my education and understanding and all that stuff now. But at the time, as a new Christian, I thought, “You can’t just assume that that’s even my position on things. You don’t know anything about me and my faith and my beliefs.” Yeah. So I really felt like it kind of went that way, too, and people just kind of assume if you don’t tolerate something, then you don’t tolerate them.

Daniel Markin:

It’s really unfair. It’s really unfair to people.

Care Baldwin:

Yeah. Yeah. But like you said, Daniel, I think the approach is can we all be better at sharing our opinion, but saying, “This is just my opinion. I may not be right”? But I think the problem is people don’t go into it with that attitude. They go into it believing that it’s their way. You can’t have a conversation with them, except for yelling, because people just always assume that they’re right.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah, and let’s call it what it is. It’s bullying. “You don’t agree with me. I’ll shut you down, bull you into my position.” The crazy thing about it is the bullies are rewarded in this time, in our culture. If you bully someone to caving in on their position, you are now rewarded. So Isaac, we grew up with tons of anti-bullying stuff as Millennials, right? Now it’s literally Millennials bullying one another into holding and conceding opinions that you are allowed to hold. So forgive me if I get really passionate about this, but it’s just a really unique piece. I feel the weight of that. I just wish that people would value one another, but still be like, “I think your opinion’s so wrong. Yet you are a human being, and we can be friends.” That is how it ought to be.

Care Baldwin:

Sorry, I was going to say, I just was listening to a podcast, and the guest was Lee Hartley Carter. Her book was called Persuasion: Convincing Others When Facts Don’t Seem to Matter. Now, I’ve not read the book, but based on the conversation, I thought it was really fascinating. She was talking about how when you have different people in the room that have completely different opinions and how when you’re at that point where there’s two very conflicting thoughts and opinions on one topic, the facts don’t matter, but what ends up happening is we end up shouting the facts of our side to the other side. Realistically, if we just kind of stripped it back and thought about the heart of the issue, what you care about, what’s behind your side of it, your opinion, your position on it, and what you care and the other side and what their position is and what’s behind that, then usually you can come to a compromise and an agreement, because fundamentally, we’re not really that different. We want the same things. We want kids to get an education. We want local businesses to thrive, kind of thing. But what do you start yelling out the facts, you can’t change anybody’s opinion, because facts can’t be adjusted, can’t be changed. Facts are facts, but it’s not about the facts. It’s about the issue, but we get so caught up on what we know, right?

Isaac Dagneau:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. When I think about this, I can’t help but think that … and I’m saying this totally hypothetically, because I don’t think it’s going to work out this way, but let’s say you get to the heaven’s gates, and I don’t think God’s going to be like, “So where did you stand on Black Lives Matter?” I don’t think that’s the way it’s going to be. He’s going to say, “Did you trust My Son, Jesus? Did you do everything you could to be a disciple and make disciples?” I think that’s kind of what it’s going to be about. It’s not going to be like, “What was your opinions on this and this and this and this and this?” I just don’t think so. Daniel, this is kind of like what you’re saying, too. We have to be able to hold opinions, but also with absolute love for the person. We need to hold that absolutely. But even our opinions on things that maybe are not necessarily opinions that have drastic implications for someone’s soul in eternity, we have to hold that just loosely. I hold my opinion on what ice cream flavor is best loosely, because you know what? Maybe one day I’ll like something else. But anyways, I just think we have to hold those loosely, and I think that will be sort of a loud statement in the midst of our Millennial culture for Millennials to have this profound love for the other person and then holding our opinions kind of loosely on things and being willing to change and then focusing. My biggest thing is focusing on what really matters, and that is the eternal destiny of souls. That’s so, so essential. We have to be ready and willing to be mocked for that. I just think about Paul in Athens. He’s learning about the culture, and it’s pretty basic. He’s not spending weeks and weeks and weeks reading. He’s walking around. He’s looking at it. He starts to engage with these people. At the end, some people mocked him. It’s like we have to be ready for that. We have to be ready to be called drunkards, just like Jesus was, and yet some still followed. So when it comes to our pursuit, in the midst of all this craziness, we have to be okay to be misrepresented. It’s just the reality of being a Christian. I think so, anyways.

Care Baldwin:

I think if we’re on the other side of it, too, we’re the ones that are maybe being misunderstood, then I think that’s when we need to show more grace. We’re going back to the grace thing, but basically by saying, “You know what? Actually, this is where I’m coming from, and this is why I feel that you’re just not understanding me. So do you mind if I explain my point of view?”, because some people may not think about asking questions, because they don’t understand that you’re offended or they don’t know that you’ve gone through something differently or whatever. So I think the receiving side of it, and then there’s the giving side of it, or however you want to look at it.

Isaac Dagneau:

Yeah, yeah, and I think about Peter, too, when everyone accused him and the disciples for being drunk at Pentecost. He just … a simple statement. “We are not drunk.” Then he goes on to explain the reality of what happened, right? I just think that’s cool, the balance there as well. The balance was not like, “I’m going to spend all this time defending my point of view,” all this kind of stuff. It was just like, “Nope, this is not the case, but here is the case,” said well. So I think that’s kind of interesting as well. So any last thoughts, guys? We’re kind of approaching our end time here, but any last thoughts? Anything that maybe popped in your head about our previous kind of conversation about this pandemic and church ministry? Anything about the social issues going on? Is there any last … I’m thankful, Daniel, that you brought some practical thing there. If maybe there’s something, anything else practical that we can just kind of leave listeners and ourselves with as we finish up. Maybe we could just say let’s continue to read God’s Word as the basis for everything, because as we do, I mean, all the law and the prophets are summed up in the reality to love one another, and that is huge. We need to keep that strong relationship with Jesus Christ, and the spiritual disciplines are so, so key, with the two most important, I would say, as being listening to God and His Word and speaking to God. He gave us His ear for a reason, and we can go to Him with these things, rather than just going on the Internet. So that would be my two cents of practical.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah. I was going to highlight what Care said about just grace, having grace for one another, having grace for ourselves, knowing that in this time with lots of different tensions going on, we might not react or act in the way that is in the line of Christ. We might get frustrated, lose our temper, or whatever. So having the humility to say, “I’m sorry about that, and I ask that you forgive me,” and having grace when people do that to you, because you never know what they’ve gone through that day. You don’t know what they’re going through, what anxiety they have in their life. So a real practical way is remembering that we have been forgiven so much by Christ on the cross, how could we not also forgive others? So I’m going to highlight forgiveness. Hey, quick plug, we had another episode on forgiveness with Erin Ford recently.

Daniel Markin:

There you go.

Isaac Dagneau:

So go and listen to that one.

Daniel Markin:

That’s awesome.

Care Baldwin:

Yeah, and I’ll circle back to, I mean, Isaac, you at some point were talking about when we reach heaven’s gates, are we going to be asked if we support Black Lives Matter or whatever? But I think you’re saying the question, really, that we’re going to be asked is, “Did you trust My Son, Jesus?” I think going back to the whole “If I die, I die” or the fear versus foolishness, I think ultimately let’s just trust Jesus. So that’s what I’m going to circle back to you as a takeaway for me, is just trust Jesus.

Isaac Dagneau:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. All right. Well that wraps up this kind of second part of our conversation. Care, it was great to have you with us all the way from Ottawa. So yeah, just thank you so much for being with us.

Care Baldwin:

Thank you. Really appreciated the time.

Isaac Dagneau:

Yeah, and Daniel as well. Like we said last time, it’s just so good to be able to chat and to discuss these important matters together.

Daniel Markin:

Isaac, it’s always a pleasure.

Isaac Dagneau:

Hey, thanks for joining us today, and a special thanks to Care Baldwin for joining Daniel and I on the show. Care, as mentioned earlier, is a radio personality for CHRI, which is a Christian radio station in Ottawa. You can listen to their station and check out their other resources by going to chri.ca. Remember, if you want to know more about indoubt or any of our podcasts or other resources, just go to indoubt.ca.