This podcast episode delves into the profound imperative of engaging deeply with the Scriptures to prevent the degradation of one's moral compass, which can lead to monstrous behavior. I explore the troubling societal tendency to define truth through subjective lenses, often influenced by external authorities, rather than through the steadfast principles found in God's Word. Using the film "Zone of Interest" as a poignant illustration, I highlight the danger of complacency in the face of evil, urging listeners to reflect on their own responses to contemporary moral challenges. I assert that true understanding and discernment come from a thorough reading of the Bible, which serves as an essential guide in navigating the complexities of life. Ultimately, I encourage the audience to choose life through a committed engagement with Scripture, allowing it to shape their hearts and actions in a world rife with uncertainty and moral ambiguity.

The content here may seem an overly intense way to encourage you to read through the Bible in Chronological Order, which Bible805 (https://wp.me/pazrJD-OO) has a variety of ways for you to do, but we are living in a time when truth seems to have lost its connection with objective reality in the minds of many and a simple encouragement to read through your Bible in the coming year didn't seem like enough.

Times are tragic when now truth for many is defined by whatever social media we follow or whatever we tell ourselves is true.

Jesus succinctly summed up our situation when he said, "You are in error, because you don't know the Scriptures." Truth, goodness, and beauty, the truly good life, and salvation are all found in the Scriptures, in God's Word. Truth is not humanly generated and when we forget that, when we listen to an authority other than God's Word to guide our lives, life does not go well.

The following example that I'll be sharing, inspired by the movie, Zone of Interest, though extreme I pray will be instructive and motiving for you to consider.

For the links to all resources go here: https://wp.me/pazrJD-OO

Link to the video: https://youtu.be/4w_frPQrPco?si=RC9PK7hATX6i4mVS

Takeaways:

• The importance of adhering to God's Word cannot be overstated, as it serves as our ultimate guide in navigating the complexities of life.
• In a world rife with misinformation, it is essential to ground ourselves in the objective truths found in the Scriptures.
• Our values and beliefs, which are often formed unconsciously, dictate how we respond to moral challenges in our lives.
• The film 'Zone of Interest' compels us to examine our own moral compasses and the potential for indifference in the face of evil.
• It is vital to recognize that our choices shape our character, and we must actively seek spiritual nourishment through God's Word.
• Daily engagement with Scripture equips us to handle life's adversities and fosters a life marked by love, kindness, and mercy.

Links referenced in this episode:

• bible805.com
• https://wp.me/pazrJD-OO --link to the many resources, schedules, motivational videos and other materials that will enable you to read the Bible in Chronological order in the coming year.

Hi, I'm Yvon Prehn with Bible 805 and today I would like to talk to you about how to keep from becoming monstrous. This is an introduction to reading through your Bible in Chronological Order in the coming year, and it was inspired by the movie Zone of Interest.

Now, what follows might seem a bit of an overly intense way to encourage you to read through your Bible, and Bible 805 has lots of ways that you can do that.

But I felt that this was really important to do because we're living in a time when truth seems to have lost its connection with objective reality in the minds of so many people and a simple encouragement to just, "Oh, read through your Bible and here are the reasons why you ought to do it and all of that" didn't seem like enough this year.

Times are tragic when truth for many people is defined by whatever social media we follow or whatever we tell ourselves is true.

Jesus, I think very succinctly and correctly summed up what is wrong with us today when he says, "You are in error because you don't know the Scriptures."

Truth, goodness, beauty, the truly good, life, salvation, all of the things that are essential for us to know about are found in God's Word.

Truth is not humanly generated. And when we forget that, when we listen to an authority other than God's Word to guide our lives, life does not go well.

The following example, though it is extreme, I pray, will be instructive and motivating for all of us as we go into the coming year. Here are my challenges from the movie Zone of Interest.

It's a film about the luxurious life of the commander of the Auschwitz and concentration camp where over 1 million people were murdered in World War II.

The majority of the film takes place in the home of the commander and his wife, who live in a very substantial, beautiful home surrounded by lush gardens and a high wall. Just a short distance though from the wall is the camp. The horrors of the camp are heard in the background, though never shown in the film.

Instead, the focus is on the banal details of family life, with children's parties, picnics and bedtime stories.

And it's on the servants who quietly wash the blood off the father's shoes before he steps inside, and who bring the family items from the most recent arrivals at the camp. The commander's son plays with his collection of gold teeth. The wife puts on a mink coat and tries on the lipstick she finds in its pocket.

The movie is a picture of utterly self-focused individuals who of course know what is going on on the other side of the wall, but who choose to not allow it to disturb their carefully constructed, comfortable world. Slate summed up the movie in this way by saying, "Rudolph and Hedwig Hawes are just ordinary people."

That doesn't mean they're not monsters, but that monstrosity is much closer to the norm than the exception. After thinking about these things on the movie and the comments, I wondered, would we be monsters in a similar situation?

The movie forces us to ask that question.

When discussing the movie recently with some people, one person in our group commented that she considered a similar question recently while she was reading Bonhoeffer, who was a Christian pastor who resisted the Nazis in World War II and was martyred for it. She wondered how Christians overall would act today under similar challenges.

I admit to being in the midst of a nagging bronchial infection, which I'd like to use as an excuse for my abruptness. But I blurted out that we don't need to wonder.

The answer is quite clear in that we, me, all of us, would act in the same way as we act to challenges today. Evil, lies, inequities and political turmoil fill our world. Demagogues pound podiums and promise destruction and retribution. We ignore bad behavior if it comes from a political party we favor.

People are starving, and we fast forward through relief appeals.

Though we may not be the head of a concentration camp or even have the opportunity to take obvious big physical actions, we are responding to current challenges by our current actions, by whatever we do. And we can't say we don't know it's going on. The 24/7 news cycle pounds into us the realities of our world.

I don't want to sidetrack into a discussion of specifics, either in what we should be outraged for or to guilt trip you into giving. These are going to be different for all of us in our home countries. And I know I have an audience that listens from many parts of the world.

Yet you know the ones confronting you. You know the ones that are most important. You know what resources you have that can alleviate them.

But regardless of the specifics, how are you protecting heart from becoming a monster?

If the sort of evil shown in these two ordinary people who on the surface simply wanted a good life for their children simmers just below the civil veneer of us all, what can we do to not allow the monstrosity in our hearts to bleed into our lives?

First, we need to recognize that we don't suddenly one day become evil or good.

Hedwig Hesse did not become the living horror she was when she put on the mink coat of a woman who died in agony only a few meters from her mirror, or when she demanded that she stay in the beautiful home when her husband was probably going to be transferred. Prior to these situations, she had obviously constructed a life view that said, I, I deserve this even more.

She had a reservoir of conviction that told her, I deserve this no matter what it costs others to give it to me.

Bit by bit our values are built and we are seldom aware of the process.

When extraordinary circumstances crash in, people do not, as the popular saying goes, rise to the occasion. Instead, we often react to the situation for the values and beliefs we've built.

When we had the leisure to choose what would fill our minds and hearts what did we do. If we fed ourselves a diet of "I want this, I need this, I deserve this" even in situations that at the time seem to matter very little, that will be our default reaction when it does matter.

The hard work though, of saying no to what we constantly want, of choosing to fill our mind with God's word, his thoughts, his desires, his truth that will not only build up spiritual strength in us, but more importantly it will shape our minds so we will recognize when things are not right, when we hear a lie presented as truth.

The reality that we forget in this whole process is that we don't make ourselves often forgotten because it hurts.

The pride inherent in us causes us to forget that we are not self-created, we are created beings. As such, we must look outside ourselves for a guide as to how to act.

Even strident affirmations today of trust your gut and advocating listening to our hearts and all the associated affirmations that clog our consciousness and lie about how wonderful we are, forget our hearts don't generate moral systems. What comes out of our guts, what we listen to in our hearts, is what we put into them.

Unfortunately, we don't start as a blank slate as the Bible affirms. We start with a propensity to evil. You don't need to agree with the Bible to agree with that reality.

Spending five minutes watching a temper tantrum of a two year old and observing the selfishness and self centeredness of tiny lives without parental guidance is proof enough of original sin.

We are born with self-centered hearts that are shaped by the choices, direction and input, first from our parents and our surroundings, and then are built up and reinforced by the choices we make regardless of our circumstances.

Rudolf Hesse's final analysis of his life testifies to the powerful influence of outside forces on the human soul and our power to choose what will shape us, what we choose to believe will result in what we do.

Beyond the movie at the end of his life, as attested to by letters and biographies, though, keep in mind, numerous critics have said that what he said at the end of his life were, we need to remember, were the words of a psychotic sociopath. But according to his letters and what he said and what others observed, he repented of his actions and he returned to the faith of his youth.

In his final letter to his wife and children, he writes, and these are his words to his wife, he said, "Based on my present knowledge, I can see clearly today severely and bitterly that for me, the entire ideology about the world in which I believed so firmly and unswervingly was based on completely wrong premises and had to absolutely collapse one day. And so my actions in the servants of this ideology were completely wrong, even though I believed the idea was correct.

Now it was very logical that strong doubts grew within me and whether my turning away from God was based on completely wrong premises. It was a hard struggle, but I have again found my faith in God."

Then to his son he wrote, "Don't accept everything without criticism and believe that it's absolutely true.

"The biggest mistake of my life was that I believed everything faithfully which came from the top, and I didn't dare to have the least bit of doubt about the truth of that which was presented to me."

Only God can judge the reality of his repentance. Regardless, his clear evaluation of his mistake is instructive.

When he said, and I quote again, "The biggest mistake of my life was that I believed everything faithfully which came from the top, and I didn't dare to have the least bit of doubt about the truth of that which was presented to me," his actions were the predictable outcome of what he believed as a young man. After hearing a speech by Adolf Hitler, he turned away from the church.

He joined the Nazi party and a life of brutal devotion to it followed, a life he later admits was based on completely wrong premises and had to absolutely collapse one day. He didn't one day decide to become a mass murderer. His life was the logical outcome of a system of lies and beliefs he chose.

We always have a choice in how to build our lives. In one of the earliest books in the Bible, God said, "Today I've given you the choice between life and death, between blessing and curses.

Now I call on heaven and earth to witness the church you make. Oh, that you would choose life so that you and your descendants might live."

You can make this choice by loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and committing yourself firmly to Him. This is the key to your life.

What is interesting about the context of this challenge is that it follows what many consider rather boring books of rules. This challenge is in Deuteronomy. It follows Leviticus and Number.

Now, specifics aside, what these early books show us is that God cares about every detail of life and that worship of Him and adherence to His Word and His ways are the way to life.

Which of course brings us finally back to this discussion that if we want to live well to please God, to be certain of our salvation and eternal future, we need to know God's Word, the way to life. True, eternal life is not something that bubbles up from the inside of us in our true self. We want to worship ourselves.

We don't want to bow down to anyone. We need truth outside ourselves to move us from the living death of self absorption. That truth, that way to life, is found in God's Word.

He speaks at first quietly to our spirits and through the inspiration of nature.

But to truly know God, God in the flesh, Jesus our Savior, to know the really fine details of what it means to live a life that pleases him, and to mold our souls into the eternal person we were created to be, we need God's Word.

We also need more than the scattered bits and pieces of verses pulled out of context that in reality only satisfy our undying, selfish desires and the demands we make of God.

We need to know, in contrast, how God thinks, how he acts in the broad span of history in our world, and realistically, how he works with people who want to join him in the work of redeeming the earth.

When you get to know the entire Bible well, it may surprise you, as its message is often quite different than the distorted promises and false claims about it often repeated out of context. The best way to do that is to read your Bible in chronological historical order.

All this long rant has been to encourage you to do that, and I'm not leaving you without resources. Bible 805 and the links to it on however you're watching this on the podcast, the video, whatever.

I've got schedules, reading plans, journal pages, motivational videos, ebooks, all kinds of things to help you. And I'm working on some resources for later this year that will even give you a condensed way to go through the entire Bible. And they're all free.

There's no gotchas, no hidden agendas here. I simply want you to read God's Word, to let it change Your life. Please take advantage of these tools. Make them the fountainhead of your life.

The pure spring that the more you feed it by spending time in God's word, the more it will wash over you and guide you in all you do. Not only for you, but your world will benefit. As God's word doesn't just stay in us, it spills out into actions of love, kindness and mercy.

It will give you the resources to respond to challenging situations and moral dilemmas. It will enable you to be at peace no matter what the challenges of life and to be assured of eternity.

Of an eternity when all wrongs will be righted and all will be made new. You will now live in the dawn that will someday become full light.

Or you can tell yourself that you don't have the time or the interest to get in the Bible in any serious way. Surely not to read it daily and all of it for my goodness. That seems really legalistic.

You tell yourself you can rationalize that you go to church and listen to a sermon once a week and that's enough.

You can fill your free time with sports programs, social media, news channels, forgetting that a steady diet of those things alone will rot your soul and you'll have nothing to draw on when the challenges of life come. Now, I'm not saying that a little bit of TV or social media or movies or whatever is wrong. No, they're not.

But the danger is when it progresses to what we all can actually label media gluttony, when there's nothing to constrain it, the monstrosity inherent in us will break out in all sorts of ways. You will live in a dusk that will someday become utter darkness.

The choice is yours as to what you will build your life on, what will form your soul that will in turn create your words and actions that will build your life, determine your eternity. Choose to spend time daily in God's word. Choose life. That's all for now.

I'm Yvon Prehn, your fellow pilgrim, writer and teacher for Jesus, and I'd like to close this year and pray over you for the next year.

This benediction may you know the invitation of God to move from confusion to clarity, from wandering to rest, from loneliness to knowing you are loved, from wherever you are on your spiritual journey to a growing knowledge and deepening love and relationship with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.