Why "Going to Heaven" Isn't Our Ultimate Hope

Matt: Welcome back to the PS podcast. We are so glad that you're with us and we're looking forward to spending some time in the word again together today. Good morning West.

Wes McAdams: After a sermon is over, have you ever wanted to make a comment, ask a question, or listen to the preacher say more about a particular idea? If so, this podcast is for you. My name is Wes McAdams, and I'll be sitting down with one of my fellow McDermott Road ministers to discuss comments, questions, and thoughts that have come up after the sermon is over. Welcome to P.S., the Post-Sermon Podcast. Thanks so much for listening to P.S., the Post Sermon Podcast. To find out more about this podcast or about the Church of Christ on McDermott Road, you can visit our website at ccmcdermott.org slash P.S. If this has been an encouragement to you, we also hope you will rate and review the show wherever you're listening, as well as share it with a friend. Because we believe sermons are not just for Sunday, but for our whole week and our whole life. Good morning. How are you, Matt? Good.

Matt: Doing great, really excited about continuing this conversation. I want to say thank you for covering a set of topics that sometimes maybe gets neglected because it is difficult to articulate at times. But thank you for diving into this discussion about life and death and the impact that it has for our daily discipleship. But do you mind for our listeners providing a quick recap of your sermon from Sunday?

Wes McAdams: Yeah, so if the Sunday before this we talked about what happens when we die or where do we go when we die, this week we talked more about what happens when Jesus comes back. And so what happens with the dead when Jesus comes back, specifically about resurrection and how we will get our bodies back. Only our bodies will be transformed and changed and we'll go through a metamorphosis so that they are no longer perishable, no longer mortal. They'll be imperishable and they will be immortal. And so we talked about that concept of the body being raised from the dead and death being undone. So that was the emphasis this week.

Matt: Yeah, and when you list some of those things, imperishable, immortal, death being undone, ⁓ it also reinforces the fact that those are our current realities, that we have perishable bodies, we are mortal, we do have a need for a savior from death. How do you think that having a proper perspective on these things helps you frame? Because you were in ⁓ this core section about the gospel, like Why do you think Paul connects this so much to the central message of the gospel?

Wes McAdams: Yeah, I really, tried to start this week by framing the entire conversation around why death is such a tragedy. In fact, I was talking to a family member on my Sunday afternoon family FaceTime and someone that was listening to the sermon this week said it was a really depressing sermon all through the first half of the sermon. I was like, I didn't really mean for it to be depressing. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought, well, yeah, I guess that is the way that I framed it is that death prevents humans from fulfilling our purpose, that we are prevented from fulfilling our purpose by death because God intends for us to rule and reign on the earth as His image bearers to

Matt: Thank

Wes McAdams: co-rule and reign with him and image him on the earth. That is the storyline of the Bible. And so if we're going to properly understand the gospel, to your point, if we're going to understand the gospel, we have to understand that Jesus isn't just saving us so that we can float off to the sky someday. Jesus is saving us so that we can do what we are saved to do. We spent the whole year last year talking about that we're not just saved from something. We're saved for something. And Jesus is allowing us to get back to our God-given vocation of imaging God on the earth. And death is going to interrupt that. It's going to interrupt ⁓ our imaging God on the earth. But thankfully, because of Jesus, death will just be a temporary interruption. And so if we do not understand our God-given task of imaging God on the earth, of ruling and reigning with God, as his image bearers, then we don't understand why resurrection and why death are so pivotal to that conversation. And unfortunately, I think we've adopted what you might trace all the way back to Plato before Jesus even came to earth, that the idea that the created world, the material world is somehow bad and that we need to escape from the material world. That is not the gospel. The gospel is very much embodied. It is about our embodied existence and the embodied existence of God becoming human. And this is at the very heart of everything that we believe. And so this is why Paul makes the argument in 1 Corinthians 15 that if you deny the resurrection of the body, you can't really be a Christian. And so this really is pivotal. It's really at the heart of everything we believe.

Matt: I think that is so important. It kind of reminds me a little bit when we think about, you know, things that are close to being right, you know, this idea of, you know, we are rescued from something, you know, Plato may not have, you know, understood the gospel message, but even, you know, to him, a recognition of, hey, there's bound to be something different than what's going on, you know, right now. you know, I think speaks to this idea of why an escapist mentality is attractive. You know, it's like, hey, I don't know what's next, but it can't be this. I've got to, you know, I got to get out of this. How do you think having that next piece of the puzzle, you know, is so much healthier than just stopping it? There's bound to be something more than this.

Wes McAdams: Yeah, there's such a tension there, isn't there, that we have to be able, I think, to admit that this world as it is, is incredibly broken. And we have to, even though there's good in the world and we want to be sort of optimistic and we don't want, you know, the preacher to be depressing, we want to be able to say, you know, hey, there are good things. Yes, that's true. But I think that when we're hurting, It is it's vindicating. It's helpful for somebody to express what we're feeling that this stinks and it shouldn't be this way. And I hate that I I hurt and I hate that my loved ones hurt and I hate that we're going through this and I hate knowing that at the end of this journey is death and it's scary. And all of those things are true. And I think we have to be able to admit those things. And so to your point, it's really easy to contrast that with, well, maybe we'll just escape from this broken hurting world, and that's what most people throughout all time have believed, that there's a ⁓ better reality in the afterlife. Yet what the Bible teaches, what Christianity teaches, is a story that's very much rooted in the present world, but the redemption of the present world, that yes, you're right, there is something better that is after this, but it's not this disembodied, floating away, ghostly, spiritual in that sense, non-embodied existence, it is this world only made new and redeemed because this world is good. God spent the first few pages of the Bible saying that His creation is good and then when He created humans He said it's very good and that is the heart of our story that this material planet is good. yet when we look at it, we say, yeah, but why is there so much bad? In fact, that is the question that so many people wrestle with is quote unquote, the problem of evil. And how can there be a good God if there's so much evil and pain and suffering in the world? Well, the Bible answers that, the gospel answers that, that because of sin, death entered the world and this world is what it is because of both human and demonic.

Matt: Thank

Wes McAdams: rebellion against the rule and reign of God, but yet through Jesus, the rule and reign of God over all things is being reestablished so that the world can get back to being very good. And that's what we're longing for, not to escape from a broken world, but for our good God to put things back together and for things to get back to what they were always designed to be.

Matt: When you think about, you know, that focus on design and the focus on, you know, the image of flourishing that we have at the beginning of scripture and the image of flourishing we have there in Revelation, do you think that on some level that escapist mentality is reinforced by a fact that Christians have lost those images of flourishing or that we don't know how to talk about what it means to flourish anymore? I don't know. That just kind of popped into my mind of like, I feel like we sometimes think the world knows more about flourishing than we do when really we have a guide to flourishing. I don't know if that makes sense, but.

Wes McAdams: Yeah, no, I think you're exactly right. think we have. We've sort of gotten cynical about it. And there is sort of a ⁓ Christian nihilism that goes along with this escapist mentality that this world is so broken and it's so wrong and it's so corrupt that it might as well just burn. And I think that we've adopted some of the language that we find in the Bible, like in 2 Peter 3, that talks about how the world is stored up for fire. And we've assumed that that's just going to be God annihilating the material world from existence. I assumed that for a long time, but that's not actually what Peter says. He says that the coming judgment is like the judgment that already happened in the flood. The world that existed before this one, Peter says there's a world that existed before this one, and it is the pre-deluvian world, it is the pre-flood world, and that world was destroyed by water. Now, that doesn't mean it was annihilated from existence.

Matt: you.

Wes McAdams: It means that it was remade through the flood so that after the flood there was a new world and it very much was that way. And that's what Peter says is coming is that the world will be exposed, it will be laid bare before the judgment of God and it will be remade. And so we have to recapture that imagination, that spiritual imagination of flourishing to say, what could the world be? if God rid the world of all of the evil and all of the corrupt and all of the broken and God remade things and what if that flourishing is beginning now? Like what if we are already stepping into that and we are already taking our place as the co-heirs with the Messiah in reigning over the world and recognizing that there's an already in that we're already these things and not yet. And that we're not going to create utopia through different policies and different politics and electing different leaders, but that we are already embracing the coming world that only comes through and in Jesus. We're embracing that now in anticipation of one day Jesus is going to make all things new and reunite heaven and earth.

Matt: That's really well said and you had a slide in your sermon that kind of followed that you know Somebody might say well is it already or is it not yet and the answer is yes And then you gave you know a set of you know Images from scripture that both fell into that yes category, and I know that's something you've been working towards You know helping us. You know grasp in scripture this you can hold these two things together and then both be true is that gratifying now that a lot of the congregation knows that you're setting them up to say yes. I mean, how does that feel? You've been working towards that for a while.

Wes McAdams: Yeah, I don't want to act like there's never ⁓ a true dichotomy, like two things that can't both be that, you know, one thing that's true and the other thing that's false. I sometimes there are things that are truly binary, like it's either this or it's that. It's not both. It's one or the other. But so often we buy into these false dichotomies where we think that it either has to be this or it has to be that. And we think, you know, well, what does the Bible say about this or, know, or

Matt: Sure.

Wes McAdams: what do you do with this passage? Sometimes people will disagree with me on various topics and they'll say, well, what do you do with this passage? Or don't you believe this as if, ⁓ yeah, I didn't even know that verse was in there. They'll just throw that out. We use these verses like they're bullets with one another. And it's like, well, hold on. Both of these things are true. If the Bible says this and it says that, then even if I don't really understand how could this be true and that be true, I have to accept that they are both true. Yes, there is a coming judgment. Yes, we will meet the Lord in the air, but also we will inherit the earth and the earth will be made new. All of those things is true and we are waiting for and looking forward to those things. And so, yes, it is gratifying that when I say, is it this or is it that, what's the answer? And the congregation says it's yes, it's both. And they understand that I'm trying to help to. dismantle some of those false dichotomies that we accept.

Matt: And those, you know, those images that, you know, you're helping us to, you know, get more biblical with and think through, you know, these visions of what's to come in a more healthy way. We think about how to do that, you know, as a church, you know, we want to create those images throughout our approach to teaching, you know, both adults and, and kids. One of the questions that came up in our life group yesterday was how, as parents of younger kids? You do we begin to develop a language, you know, with our younger kids that, you know, maybe by the time they, you know, get older, they're not having to work from maybe such a deficit image of some of these things? Like any thoughts and advice for parents trying to talk about these images with their kids?

Wes McAdams: Yeah, it's so it's so challenging. I struggle with this with my kids. My kids are now older teenagers, or the oldest one is and and so I struggle with how do I how do I help these images become what they hold on to and what they hope for when it's just become a part of our culture in the just common way of talking to talk about going to heaven and going to heaven when we die. And if I could get rid of that phrase, even though I do believe as we talked about last week, I believe that when we die, our spirit goes to be with the Lord and the Lord is in heaven. So I believe my spirit will go and be with the Lord in heaven. That is not my ultimate hope. And if we could get rid of that phrase, go to heaven, I would get rid of it in a heartbeat. Why? Because the Bible doesn't ever say that. Bible never talks about us quote-unquote going to heaven. Like that's just not our ultimate hope but that has become our shorthand and even if people you know have moved past that sort of I'll spin forever as a ghost you know they've moved past that maybe that's still our language and I think we have to be very careful with that. Our songs we have we sing tons of songs it just permeates our our songs and those phrases and ideas don't come from the Bible, they just come from popular theology, popular ways of thinking, and it really becomes our kids' imagination very early on, and so we have to, I think, work against that, and maybe one of the best ways, I'm just kind of thinking off the top of my head here, but maybe one of the best ways is to spend time thinking through what might the resurrection be like, and how wonderful might it be? and understanding that of course we don't know. I don't know what the new heavens and new earth are going to be like. I don't know what a redeemed creation looks like because every bit of creation that I've ever seen and experienced has been corrupted by sin and death. All of it is... as Paul says in Romans 8, it is enslaved to decay, like it is decaying. Every tree I've ever seen is decaying. Every blade of grass I've ever seen is decaying. Every human being I've ever seen is decaying. But it's fun and exciting to think through what might the world be like when it's no longer decaying? What might human beings be like and our experience be like? when we become like the resurrected Jesus is. Like when Jesus was raised from the dead, like there were times people recognized him and times people didn't recognize him. There were people in a locked room and suddenly he came into the room. He traveled to other locations seemingly instantaneously. Maybe just to think through with our families, what might this be like when we inherit a body like his resurrected body? That's what we're invited to think about.

Matt: Thank

Wes McAdams: We may not know all the details and we may get some of them wrong, but here's the thing. We are not going to out-guess God's generosity. Whatever it is we guess and say, ⁓ I hope that in the resurrection it's like this. I hope I can fly. I hope I can walk on water. I hope I can whatever. Whatever it is you can imagine, it's going to be better than that. Whatever it is, you are not going to out-guess God's generosity. He is going to be more generous.

Matt: Thank you.

Wes McAdams: and our inheritance is going to be even greater than we can possibly imagine. But I think what we want to avoid, especially with our kids, is to just present the idea to them that we're going to be in an eternal worship service in the clouds. Because for me, you know, that was never very motivating. It sounded better than the alternative, but it never was very motivating. If we are telling them that you have an inheritance from God and your inheritance is everything. God wants you to inherit everything that belongs to King Jesus. He wants you to inherit the world. And you have to be very mindful about how you live your life, son or daughter, because you can throw away that inheritance. You can disinherit yourself. And it would be a shame to walk away from your inheritance because you prefer some fleeting pleasure of sin. There are so many things that we could be like Esau.

Matt: Thank

Wes McAdams: who threw away his inheritance for one bowl of stew. And we do that. The Hebrew writer says we do that with sexual immorality. Like when we give in to sexual temptation, we are throwing away the world, the inheritance of the world to come. We are throwing that away for a moment of pleasure. And I think that's why it's practical. And that's how we talk to our kids about it is that there is this great inheritance that we have. Let's think about it. Let's imagine it. Let's just speculate about what that might be like. But then let's also talk about the practicalities of not throwing away that inheritance for the sinfulness of the moment.

Matt: I think that's really, really helpful. And I think it goes back to the point that you also made of we have to have a restored vision of what it means for humanity to be those that image God and how that is bigger than any fleeting, know, momentary pursuit as well that we have a better our theological anthropology, if you will, you know. helps us to maybe resist some of those temptations. I don't know if you want to speak to our role as image bearers a little bit.

Wes McAdams: Yeah, because that gives us purpose. And again, to your language of escapism. It's such an embodied purpose that we get to step into now. It's not just something like, I don't want to mess up so I don't get to go to heaven when I die. It's not that. It is you have been saved to work and serve and glorify God right now through the way you love your neighbor, through the way you serve God, through the way you talk and the way you act. You get to be a part of that purpose now that is so much bigger than not just bigger than this momentary temptation that I'm facing, but also bigger than me. It's so much bigger than me. I'm a part of an epic story. I mean, we watch movies as families and as kids and as adults. We watch these epic stories and we sort of long to be part of something that's bigger than ourselves. And that's the thing. We are, we're part of something so much bigger than ourselves. Don't trade that story for the story of just escaping to the cloud someday. Like that's not the story we're a part of. We're a part of a story right now about God reclaiming his territory from the forces and the powers of evil and darkness. God is reclaiming his territory and in the end, 1 Corinthians 15, God will be all in all. He will reign supreme over all things with all of his enemies either destroyed or put under his feet. God wins and we get to be a part of that victory. right now and forever. That's the vision that we have to embrace and it does. It changes how we live our lives. It changes how we say no to temptation to say why would I throw away all of this for that? For that that's gonna last a moment and I'm gonna feel guilty, I'm gonna feel shame, I'm gonna lose relationships. Not to mention the fact that I'm called to something so much bigger and so much better than that.

Matt: I think that is a good place to enter into some of our questions that we received. Got a couple questions this week and we'll just kind of go through them together. But I think that victory mindset, that ⁓ vision of life that you've laid out will be helpful in some of these questions. But the first question is, Jesus was raised, he still had wounds in his hands. So this indicates the physical body is transformed. and not a separate immortal body, how will this work with people who are cremated? That's kind of a heavy question, an important question, but a heavy question nonetheless.

Wes McAdams: Yeah, I love this question. And every time I preach on resurrection, I never address it directly. I maybe should anticipating the question, but it's sort of a good indicator that people are listening and paying attention to say, okay, well, then what about cremation? And this is actually a question that Christians have struggled with even before Christians, the Jewish people struggled with, not just struggled with, but they dismissed. They actually know Christians are Jews for the most part. practice cremation until pretty recently because of our shared belief in the resurrection. That was something pagans did because pagans didn't believe in resurrection and so they didn't have any problem burning dead bodies. And even sometimes our enemies would use burning of our bodies against us to say that if we burn you then there's no way your God can resurrect you. Now of course from a practical standpoint that's silly if If my enemies burn my body or my enemies throw me in the ocean and sharks eat my body, my God is bigger than that. My God can raise from the dead even the dust because after all, we're all gonna turn to dust anyway. We're gonna turn back to the dirt from which we were taken. That is the fate of all of our bodies. And so in a very real sense, if a person is cremated, That doesn't stop God's ability and power to raise someone from the dead, to reconstitute and then transform their physical material body. And so it shouldn't, from a practical standpoint, worry us that if our loved one is cremated, can they still be resurrected? Because God could put back together whatever God wants to put back together. I will say the only caution that I give people is that if we are cremated or our loved ones are cremated, That doesn't stop God from being able to put us back together, to resurrect and transform us. But it might say something about our opinion of the body. I used to want to be cremated because it was cheap, it was easy, and I thought, I'm done with the body anyway. I don't need this body anymore. There's no sense in me being buried in the ground. So what difference does it make? That was the wrong attitude. Not that cremation is the wrong answer, but the attitude that my body doesn't matter, that's the wrong attitude. And so Christians have historically been buried because burial is a testimony to our belief in the coming resurrection. That's not to say that if we're not buried or if we're cremated, God can't resurrect us. But burial can be a great testimony to our belief that we're not done with this body. This body is coming back to life. It's going to turn to dust. It's going to turn to dirt. Whether now or in the, you know, in the next few years, it's going to decay, but God will restore me, resurrect me, transform me, and my body will be made new. And so I think it's okay if a person wants to be cremated. That's my opinion. If a person wants to be cremated, that's okay. As long as they maintain... their understanding and their hope of the bodily resurrection. If somebody is cremated because they don't believe in the bodily resurrection, that's a real issue. According to 1 Corinthians 15, that's a real issue. But if somebody is cremated, understanding that my body's gonna turn to dust anyway, and I'm just kind of speeding up the process, and that my God is going to raise my body from the dust, that's something entirely different. So I think, again, there's... the practical, then there's just the attitude about it. And we just need to not accept the attitude that the body, whether alive or dead, doesn't matter. Human bodies always matter to God because humans are the pinnacle of God's creation.

Matt: Thank I think that's very helpful. I mean, I think the discussion of the wounds is an interesting discussion. in many ways, it seems like a gift that God was giving us and still maintaining those wounds to help the early Christians be able to, as Thomas requests, to be able to experience that. Lesson in that reality in such a powerful way. I know that I kind of struggled with this question when approached about organ donation and you know, I believe in you know, the same kind of you know line of thinking but ultimately you know, I think if those wounds were in line with You know loving others and advancing, you know God's love towards other people then you know, even if you kept those wounds, it would be a form of witness. So I mean, it's definitely a good question and something for us to think about for sure.

Wes McAdams: Yeah, absolutely.

Matt: Second question says, when Jesus returns and the dead are raised, does that really mean when your spirit will enter your immortal body? Does this really have anything to do with the physical body at all? So it kind of, I of probably should have done this one first and the second one, but must have printed them in the wrong order on my page. So when Jesus returns and the dead are raised, does that really mean when your spirit will enter? your mortal body does this really have anything to do with the physical body at all?

Wes McAdams: Yeah, it might be helpful to talk about like, what do we mean when we talk about our spirit? Like spirit is in a very, you know, very real sense, it's breath. Like our breath, that's the same word in Greek and in Hebrew, the idea of spirit is breath. But really the idea is what does it do? Like what does the spirit do? And when we talk about spirit, we're talking about like wind is another great metaphor, like breath and wind. We're talking about things that are animated, that are moving with a power that is unseen. Like a dead body has no animation. It is lifeless. It doesn't breathe, it doesn't move, it isn't animated. But a living being is a being that is moving, that is breathing, that has motion, that has animation. And the way that the Hebrew people, the Jewish people, and the early Christians talked about life is that it has spirit in it. And so when our body no longer is animated, when it's no longer breathing and moving, when it no longer has action, then that's because the spirit has left our bodies. in the resurrection, we will again be animated. Our bodies will once again be animated. Again, our bodies will be transformed. They'll go through a metamorphosis. They will be changed. They'll be immortal. But these resurrected, now made immortal bodies will not be motionless. They will be animated and they will be animated by our spirit. Now, modern people, we tend to talk about consciousness and that kind of thing. that's not really part of the biblical storyline. So we can imagine or think about whether or not the Spirit contains our consciousness. I don't know. I can't speak to that. But what I can speak to is that our personal presence will animate this new body, this old body that has been made new, this renewed body. Our personal presence, our Spirit, will animate and bring to life just as the Spirit of God will bring to life this resurrected body.

Matt: And this last question is along the lines of spirit as well. says, all spirits leave your body when you die, believers and non-believers, do all spirits, believers and non-believers reside in spirit with Jesus without immortal bodies until Jesus returns?

Wes McAdams: That's a great question. I can't really speak to that. There's really not a whole lot. Again, I sort of put the story of the rich man and Lazarus in a separate category and we could talk about that later. But that doesn't really, to me, have explanation power for where the condemned go and where their spirit is when they die. All we really know is that the spirit of believers goes to be with the Lord. And I think that's another way of saying, a better way of saying, a post-cross way of saying, a post-resurrection way of saying that we are gathered to our family and our family is Jesus. We are gathered to our older brother, to our fathers, which is in Christ. And so that's another way of saying that. In the Old Testament, they talked about the realm of the dead. the way they talked about Sheol or in Greek it's Hades or the realm of the dead really seems to imply that we don't do anything or we don't know anything in the realm of the dead. And so maybe the departed that are not in Christ, those that are condemned, those who are lost, those who are unbelievers, maybe they are in the realm of the dead. Now, again, the Bible just doesn't say a whole lot about that and so I can't really speculate beyond saying I'm confident that if a person is in Christ that when they die their spirit goes to be with the Lord. I have no no assurances or hopes or encouragement about where those who are outside of Christ, where they go, where their spirit is when they die. The Bible as far as I know just doesn't really speak to that very much. And so I think anything that I would say about that might be speculative.

Matt: Well, thank you for for diving into those three questions again, all very good questions. And I think these type of questions will fall into a larger subset of questions that may be at the forefront of the discussion for the next coming period around what it means to be human, what it means to be alive, what it means to die. I I think that the conversation around artificial intelligence and ⁓ artificial general intelligence and those type of things will cause Christians hopefully to really lean back into anthropology and to think through what it means to be human. you have any thoughts about that conversation? Sorry, that was not one that we talked about, but it got me thinking.

Wes McAdams: No, that's okay. That's a great question. Two things. First, before I get too far from the previous question, it occurs to me, I didn't say anything about the idea that the condemned will also be raised from the dead. And I think that has to be said, that those who are lost will be raised from the dead to be told, depart from me, I never knew you, and will die again. They will experience what Revelation calls a second death. And so, We do need to say everyone will be raised from the dead, but those who are given immortality are those who receive that as a gift from God. That that's important to say. Secondly, to the question of being human. In fact, it's interesting you bring this up and that we're talking about this. There's a new book that I haven't read yet is just released on my podcast on the Radically Christian podcast this week. I'm I'm releasing a conversation that I had with Marty Solomon. who's a podcast host and author who just finished writing the book, The Gospel of Being Human. And I think it's really important. And I think that, again, I haven't read the whole book yet. I've read bits and pieces of it, but I had a great conversation with him. And I would encourage people to check that book out because I think you're exactly right that we need to think about for an academic idea, for an emotional idea, for a practical idea. We need to think about what it means to be a human being, what it means to be made in God's image, to image God on the earth. We need to think about that, especially in regards to sort of the way we think about AI and the way we think about technology and sort of just being a... a brain in a body. Like that's not what we are created to be and to do or to think about ourselves. It really is an amazing thing being human and that changes the way we think about ourselves, the way we think about our life and our pursuits, but also the way we think about other images of God.

Matt: you

Wes McAdams: the people all around us, the people who look like us and the people who don't look like us, the people who are our age or much older or much younger. It's how we think about the person on their deathbed and the way we think about the infant in the womb. What does it mean to be a human being and why is that so important and why is that so valuable and why is that at the very heart of the biblical storyline and why? Can we not outsource our humanity to technology? That's so important. I mean, it comes down to, and this is a silly example that I use all the time. It comes down to things like, you know, not necessarily relying on your phone and calling an Uber, even though your Uber driver is also human, but relying on human relationships to say, hey, Matt, I need a ride to the airport. Could you give me a ride to the airport? In fact, just today, you, humbled me in our staff meeting when you said, because I was talking about how I'm traveling to Florida, I'm probably going to sleep in my van. And you said you probably have Facebook friends that are between here and Florida that you could say, hey, could I stay on your couch? It never even occurred to me. But we we sometimes because we have so much technology that we can rely on, we outsource our relationships, we outsource our humanity to technology. And instead of relying on and building and cultivating relationships with other images of God, we take shortcuts and we use technology to take the place of what we used to rely on relationships for.

Matt: I think that's very true and that relational frame I think does fit into all of this and hopefully fits into how we think about when others do pass and the way that we think about the way that that's just not something I feel like so many ways we just move on from that and don't really think through the implications of relationship and the role that it has on this discussion as well. What's coming up this next week?

Wes McAdams: Yeah, this next week is totally different. Nothing like this past week. So we are, having senior Sunday and ⁓ our high school ⁓ minister, Zach Ronberry, is going to be presenting the seniors with their Bibles and is going to be saying an encouraging word to each of them. But then he and I are going to share some time in the pulpit to kind of encourage the congregation and encourage the graduating seniors. And then I'll be bringing a message that hopefully will be an encouragement to everyone. But yeah, we're talking more about fearlessness and faithfulness, but especially in light of the graduation and everything that we're going through with that.

Matt: That'll be great and look forward to celebrating those students and hearing that message. If you're in the North Dallas area, we'd love for you to join us at McDermott Road. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. We hope to see you next week.