BBxtra: A Filter for Hard Topics

Ever found yourself scrolling through TikTok or YouTube only to encounter a confident voice making claims that leave you questioning your faith? You're not alone. In this enlightening Bible Breakdown Extra, Pastor Brandon tackles the growing challenge of information overload and provides a practical framework for navigating difficult topics with biblical integrity.

At the heart of this episode is a powerful seven-step filter designed to help Christians process controversial subjects thoughtfully. Beginning with the foundations of logical thinking, Pastor Brandon walks through establishing biblical authority, studying Scripture properly, considering opposing viewpoints, identifying personal biases, determining which "hills" are worth dying on, and developing a grace-filled strategy for engaging with others.

The framework offers much-needed clarity in distinguishing between core doctrines (hills to die on), important but secondary issues (hills to debate over), and matters of personal preference (hills not to care about). With refreshing honesty, Pastor Brandon shares examples from his own journey, including a profound crisis of faith where he had to follow truth wherever it led, even when it challenged his existing beliefs.

What makes this episode particularly valuable is its practical wisdom. Rather than simply telling listeners what to believe about hot-button issues, Pastor Brandon equips them with tools to think critically and biblically for themselves. The discussion draws inspiration from Rosaria Butterfield's powerful testimony of coming to faith through Christians who demonstrated "radical, ordinary hospitality" while maintaining biblical convictions.

Whether you're struggling with questions about theology, ethics, cultural issues, or scientific claims that seem to challenge Scripture, this episode provides a roadmap for approaching difficult topics with both intellectual integrity and spiritual faithfulness. Take ownership of your faith journey by learning how to filter through the noise and discover biblical truth for yourself.

Subscribe to Bible Breakdown, leave a review, and join our Facebook discussion group to continue the conversation about applying this framework to the challenging questions in your life.

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Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation (NLT).
Copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation.
Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Chapters

• 0:00 Bible Breakdown Extra Introduction
• 3:16 Information Overload Problem
• 5:36 Filter for Difficult Topics
• 9:13 First Principles of Philosophy
• 11:05 Seven-Step Framework Explained
• 21:22 Choosing Your Hills Wisely
• 24:33 Applying the Framework

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Well, hello everybody. Welcome back to the Bible Breakdown Podcast with your host, Pastor Brandon. Today is one of those Bible breakdown extras. And if you don't know what this is, this is time when we take out once a month and we kind of work on it instead of necessarily in it. It gives us a chance to step back and say, okay, with all this Bible reading we're doing and soaping through God's Word and Bible studying and all that wonderful stuff, how can we apply it to our life? And we're going to get into all of that, plus a couple of announcements for the future of Bible breakdown. So if you are ready, before we get started, make sure you take just a moment, as we always say, like, share, and subscribe to the YouTube channel and the podcast. Make sure you leave us a five-star review on the podcast. It really does help. And make sure you're going to the Bible breakdown discussion on Facebook. There's an amazing group of people doing a wonderful job, and you can get all those details at the Bible Breakdown.com. Well, we are going to jump into something that really kind of happened recently. We were going to start chapter one of the book Tactics, and we are still going to do that next month. But we had something happen recently, and that is we finished our annual conference at Real Life Church. And if you don't live in the area, what we do is every year we have a discipleship conference. The vision statement of our church is we exist to make disciples by knowing God, growing in freedom, and sharing Christ with everyone. And that first part we get from Matthew 28, when Jesus said, All the power and authority has been given to me on heaven and on earth, therefore go and make disciples. And so we take time out to just go make disciples. And everyone in our church, how can we help you take a spiritual next step? How can we equip you to take a spiritual next step? And one of the things that has really been bothering me lately is there is just so much information out there in the world. And I cannot tell you how many times I will have a conversation with someone, and it will start with, well, Pastor, the other day I was on TikTok, or I was on YouTube, or I was reading social media, or, you know, just all of these things. And I don't know if you've noticed this, but if someone says something with enough conviction and enough emotion and enough confidence, you tend to give them the benefit of the doubt. Certainly they've studied this. Just like you know me or you, if we believe something strongly, we believe it, whether it's true or not. Same thing with them. Just because they believe it, just because they say it, doesn't mean it's true. And so we have to make sure we study it. Well, one of the things we have slowly begun to develop at RLC is if you have a question, come ask your pastor. Now it doesn't mean I've got the answers, but it means I can probably help you and I both get in the general direction of where that answer is, because I don't even always feel so confident telling people to go to Google because Google doesn't give you the right answer, it gives you the sponsored answer. You know what I mean? Because nowadays you can pay for the algorithms to show your content first. So it doesn't necessarily mean it's right. And if you're not careful, you can end up throwing your hands up and go, oh my goodness. And so between sponsored answers on Google and the influence of TikTok and stuff like that, one of the things that just gets me as a pastor is when people come to me and they will say, based on YouTube, based on TikTok, based on Google, uh, this is bothering me. What do I do? Well, what I did for a couple of my sessions is I walked through a filter for difficult topics. And it was so successful, excuse me, that I wanted to just take our monthly Bible breakdown extra and just give to you what I'm calling a filter for difficult topics, a process for dealing with difficult topics with integrity. That's the one right there, with integrity. Because here's the thing just because something is difficult doesn't mean that there's a gotcha statement. And I want to say this to you really quickly. I know we live in a kind of a season where there's so many conspiracies that are out there that getting, you know, you got the Epstein vials, you've got all the other stuff with celebrities that's coming out and all this kind of stuff. And it just seems like there's an expectation of uncovering something. That if if something looks too good to be true, it probably is. Uh, there's always an alternate truth out there, you know, all this kind of stuff. And the truth is, there is some of that. But just because something is hard doesn't mean it's fishy. That doesn't mean that there's an agenda that's there. You know, a paradox, something that you kind of don't understand and it kind of seems like it could go both ways, doesn't necessarily mean something's wrong. It just means it is outside of what we can always understand. But there's a lot of things we can understand. And so what I want to encourage you to do is when you have a conversation with about LGBTQ stuff or uh border policies or, you know, uh something to do with uh a hard thing to understand in the faith when it comes to you know Calvinism versus Armenianism or cessationism versus continuationism and all those big words, instead of just on one end going, I just don't understand, no one can understand, or just believing the most confident voice on YouTube, including my own, I want to give you a filter for difficult topics so that when you come across a difficult topic, you can actually go through it with integrity and apply it to everything. And that's the other thing to realize is we have to make sure that we are being intellectually honest. Because if we're honest, there are some topics that we want to just get down to the bone. We want to understand what it is and let God's word teach us and we'll move forward. There's others we don't really want to be true. I was talking to someone the other day and they were really honest and they said, Pastor, the reason why I don't study that topic is because I don't want it to be true. Because if it's true, it means I'm gonna have to change some things in my life. And I was like, wow, that is extremely, extremely self-aware of you. Let's study it anyway, because you may not have to change anything in your life. God's word is not out here to destroy you, it's out here to bring you freedom. And if you if you need freedom, then you need to go get some freedom. You know, you don't need to live in bondage just because you like it, because it may, there may be something better, right? So I want to share with you, I believe it's seven different steps. Yeah, seven different steps for filtering through things. And I want you to try it out and see what God's Word will say to you. So so here's the first thing, and that is if you want to filter through hard to understand things, the first step, and I know that I'm kind of covering over this just a little bit. Let me see if I can move my face a little bit. There you go. If you're watching a YouTube video, you'll get this. And also, if you're listening to this on podcast, I would encourage you to go to YouTube for this one because I've got it right here for you to see. But here's the first one is understand first principles of philosophy. That's thinking clearly. It's what we used to call common sense. And I say used to because nowadays it's just it's under different words and stuff like that, but it's still basically the same thing. And that is just common sense thinking. And that is this. A long time ago, a guy named Aristotle put together these ideas that he didn't dis he didn't invent, he discovered. This is the way things work. And there are other considered first principles, but the main three first principles that are considered common sense and logical building blocks that are always true, they're never not true. Here's the top three, with the number one being the most important, and that is called the law of non-contradiction. That is, a thing cannot be and not be at the same time and in the same respect. A quick way of saying that is A does not equal B. So in other words, an apple is not an orange. An apple cannot be an orange at the same time and in the same respect. And people go, well, what about this situation, that situation? Okay, great. But not at the same time and not in the same respect. You're going, well, yeah, yep, but no, no, with the age of relativism and stuff like that, you got to decide, is something what it is or is it not? The second one, once you get on, you know, the law of non non-contradiction, the second one is what's called the law of excluded middle. What that means is, as this statement is either true or false, there is no middle option. The equation for that would be either A is A or B, not A B. So in the laws of logic, there is nothing, there's no such thing as both at the same time. You can have an apple, you can have an orange, but you can't have an an orange. That was me trying to put apple and orange together. And an apparent, you know, whatever. That that doesn't exist. Now you can say, well, what if we do this? What if we do that? Okay, well then it becomes a different thing. It's not at the same time. So it's the the law of first principles, non-contradiction, the law of excluded middle, and then number three is the law of identity. Something is what it is. A equals A. Now, these are considered to be from all the way back to the time of Aristotle. This is not something he invented, it was something that he discovered was already true. And if you don't have these, then you can't do logical thinking because everything is just, everything's just squishy at that point. You know, and that's why that's why relativism ends up falling apart, is because there are objective truths out there that we bump up against that doesn't change. If you don't believe that, go jump off a building. Not now, a very short building. I don't want you to hurt yourself. But it doesn't really matter what you think is true. Gravity is there whether you like it or not. It is an objective, an observable truth that doesn't change. And so before we can actually get into hard topics, we have to decide what is our groundwork for how we're even going to think. And you have to decide, are you going to found your life over how you feel over what is true? Well, what is true? The law of first principles, which is non-contradiction, excluded middle, and the law of identity. Like try to find a fault with it and see how it works. Okay, so once we have that, then that's step one. Step two is then to establish the authority of God's word in the life of a Christian. Now, if you're a non-Christian and listen to this, first of all, what's up? I'm glad you're listening to this. This doesn't apply to you. As a non-Christian, you what is your moral standard? You have to figure out what that is. As a Christian, we establish the authority of God's word in our life. And I've got for you many different scriptures that prove and validate that the authority of God's word is as the inerrant word of life for a Christian. In other words, the Bible is God's revealed word to his people for all time. It is inspired by God. They didn't compile the books of the Bible what they thought. They found the ones that were inspired of the Holy Spirit. You can do a lot of study to find out how they found these, you know, that they excluded them to such things. They had to be written by someone who personally knew God or God was revealed to them. They had to have like go along with all of the teaching. They're just very, very stringent things, and they just knew this is God's divine word. There were books that were out during that time that were great, but they weren't inspired. And so that's what is so very important. So you have to decide where is God's word. If it's his divinely inspired word, then we follow it because it's God's word. If it's not, don't follow it. Okay, so number one, decide on how you're going to think. Laws of logic. Number two, decide on establishing the authority of God's word. Whatever God's word says, I'm going to follow it. Step three is study and discover the biblical position. Since God's word is the source of knowing God and His revealed will, this step is where we go to God's Word to find out what God's Word says about the topic. Interpret scripture through the grammatical historical method. In other words, what we do is we study God's Word to find out what it said in the context, in the history, in the literary form that it was in, and then we discover what God's Word has to say. You can go back and listen to previous Bible breakdown extras on what's called hermeneutics, which is the study of how to interpret God's word correctly. So let's review. Step one, think about how you're going to think about things. Step two, establish the authority of God's word over your life. Then step three, then study God's word on that particular biblical topic. Whether it comes to pro-life, pro you know, capital punishment, pro-LGBTQ, what does God's word say? And then this is another one that a lot of people don't want to do. Step four is carefully consider the opposing positions. Now, the reason why this is the case is you want to know what the opposition is saying to see if it's true or not. You know, one of the things that happened to me when I was studying something one time is I was very certain on where I stood on something, and I'd studied God's word on it and all this kind of stuff. And then I found out after looking at the opposing positions, I was completely misunderstanding what their position was. It turned out I actually agreed with him. I was on the wrong side of the fence and didn't know it because I had not studied the opposition. And really what it was is their position was a wordplay that actually they believed the opposite of what the title of it was. And so when I understood, oh, wait a minute, they actually believe the exact opposite of what they claim. Well, I'm on their side. You know, and so you have to understand what the opposition is to see if you even know what they're talking about, right? All right, once you've done that, logical how you're gonna think, establish God's word is supreme over your life, then study what God's word says, then carefully consider the opposing opposition. Step five is, and this is a huge one, identify personal biases. I was talking to somebody one time, and we were talking about how they had really flipped on what they believed about something. And when we were talking about it, they said the reason why is because one of their children had started believing in it and it and it changed the way they approached their world. And they said, you know, I don't agree with it, but I'm gonna support it because that's my baby. And so then the question was, well, what if they start studying God's word for themselves and and come to find out that you know they were wrong all the time? And they say, Well then I changed my opinion. Wow. So you you are basically letting them manipulate you, and you're kind of manipulating them because you don't really agree, but you're lying. That then let's just at least agree that you have a personal stake in this, right? And I can imagine how hard that is, but let's agree with that, right? So you're you're gonna have a hard time filtering down to the truth if you don't want it to be true. Like the idea is you gotta follow wherever the truth leads no matter what. When I went through a major crisis of faith back several years ago, I finally got to that place. I'd heard that phrase and I decided that was gonna be what I was going to do. And that is, I just kind of, you know, spiritually pushed all the chips to the middle of the table and said, God, I need to follow the truth. And I'm gonna follow the truth wherever it leads, and I really hope it leads to you. That was my personal bias. I hope it leads to you, but I gotta follow the truth wherever it leads. And so therefore, there came a point where I had to even put my own personal feelings aside and say, okay, what is true? I know I want it to lead to God, but what is true? And I had to at some point acknowledge that so I could actually find truth. Because what I needed is I needed to find a truth that was so solid that in that dark night of the soul, I could say, Well, I don't believe this because I want it to be true. I believe it because it is true. And thank goodness I want it to be true, but I needed to be able to get all the way to the rock bottom of it. Okay, so here we go. Number one, understand personal, or excuse me, understand the laws of logic. Laws of non-contradiction, identity, excluded middle. Number two, establish the authority of God's word. Number three was to then study God's word to find the biblical position. Number four, carefully consider opposing positions. Number five, identify personal bias. Number six, we're almost done. What hill does this live on? What I mean by that is, is that is this on gonna be, we're gonna have like three different hills. Okay, we got hill number one, which is a hill I'm willing to die on. Hill number two, a hill I'm willing to debate over. Hill number three, don't care. And so hill number one is the hill I'm willing to die for. Now, what that means is, is I believe this to my core. And listen, I ain't got nothing against you, but we're probably not gonna be able to be friends, or at least we're not gonna have a strong friendship if you and I don't agree on this. Like this is rock solid core to my being. I believe this. So something you're willing to die for. Number two would be when you're willing to debate about. That means I feel pretty strong about this. I got I got pretty strong opinions on this, but I'm open to being wrong. Now, I feel like I'm about 90% there on this, but I'll debate you over it. But here's the thing if you and I don't agree, we can still be friends. Like, I'm I'm not gonna, at least for my part, I'm not gonna stop being your friend over this one. And then number three, I don't care. Like, I get that I'm I might be wrong on this. I get that you might be right on this. I really don't care. I am not willing to give a significant portion of my life to this. So let me give you an example on this one because this is one people get really hung up on. Because honestly, there are a lot of people who are not friends today because they put the thing on the wrong hill. So let's let's first talk about hills, hills I'm willing to die for. Jesus is the Son of God. I'll die on that hill. God's word is the inspired word of God. I'll die on that hill. The only way to heaven is through Jesus Christ. There are not many roads to heaven. There's one road to heaven. I've given my life for that. I'll die on that hill. These are some hills I am willing to die on. And what that means is if you believe that there are many roads to heaven, and so you can be a Muslim, you can be whatever, I will love you as a person, but we will not get along on that. And if we get into a situation, I will argue the point. I won't say, you might be right. No. I'll say you're wrong, and I can prove it. And and it will turn into an argument every time with me. Okay, that's what I mean by die on that hill. Here's number two. Things I'm willing to debate about, but I'm not willing, and I'm pretty sure I know what what's up, but I'm I'm not willing to divide over you. Let me give you an example. One would be our miracles for today, cessationism versus continuationism. Do I believe that miracles still happen today? I'm going to say yes. I've seen them. That's why I believe them. I can prove them scripturally that they can still happen. But if you believe that all the miracles ended with Acts chapter 28 and we're done now, okay. Like we can debate that. And that might actually be kind of fun to debate that, but I'm I'm not gonna divide with you over that. Your eschatology, the what you believe about the end times. You and I may disagree about the rapture, about the second coming, about all that kind of good stuff. And we'll debate over it. Not gonna divide with you over it, but I will debate you over it because it's fun, right? Number three, don't care. Can I tell you? And I please, I I can tell you people right now, they're going, oh no, can I be his friend? I promise you can't be my friend. Because here's one of mine, and that is this. I don't care, I don't care what happened to the dinosaurs. I think it's very interesting. Don't care. Do I agree that it was seven literal 24 hour periods or seven periods of time in Genesis 1, 2, and 3? I don't care. I just know that God did it. I am endlessly fascinated with how he did it, but I don't care. Like I don't believe in macro evolution. I don't think that God, you know, I don't think evolution happened. I think the Bible says God spoke and everything was created, but was it 24 hour days or 20 or seven periods of time? Don't care. And and I just know that he did it, right? And I'm very interested in that. Was it a local flood or a global flood? I think it was a global flood. Do you think it's a local flood? Don't care. You know what I mean? And and here's here's the big trick to it. And that is this there are three hills. You got to decide where things are gonna line up. And I would encourage you, not everything can be a hill to die on. If everything's a hill to die on, you will have no friends. Because there's gonna be at least one of those that you're gonna be wrong about. But you're gonna be standing there on your island all by yourself. So the least amount of things should be the things you're willing to die on, but they should be the things you obviously believe the strongest. The second one, things you're willing to debate over. This is one where I think you should have a lot of things because that's where you're working things out, iron sharpening iron, and you're discovering constantly, but with a sense of humility, that you could be wrong. But then, number three, I think your biggest category should be the things that you just don't care about. Like I'm fascinated, but I'm I'm okay if you don't, if you we don't agree. And that should be the one you're willing to change your mind on the most, obviously. So I want to encourage you with this one, make sure it's a hill to die on. So let's just say you went through these six steps. You've got, let's say it was dinosaurs. Okay, well, you decide first of all, with dinosaurs, you are going to have a logical framework. So you got that one. Then number two, you establish that God's word is true. Good. Well, then you go to God's word and discover that there actually are dinosaurs in the Bible. You can look in the book of Job, where he starts talking about different things that most scholars believe is all about dinosaurs. I'll let you study that. It was very interesting. Number four, you go with the opposition who say, no, no, no, no, no. That is not about dinosaurs. The Leviathan is about a big old snake. That's what that is. Okay, so you you look at the opposition, you go, okay, I'm not convinced, but that's interesting. Then you go personal biases. I really want, I really want dinosaurs to be in the Bible. I really want them to be a thing. So you do that. You understand that. Well, then you get to this hill right here. If that hill becomes, I'm willing to die on the fact that dinosaurs were on the ark and all this kind of stuff, what has that got to do with salvation? And so you really need to think hard on which one of these. And so it can be endlessly fascinating, but you got to be careful. Okay, so which hills it's gonna be on. And once you get through with all that study, that's when you really can decide where this is. Is it a salvation issue? If it's not a salvation issue, I think it should go in number two or number three. All right, last one, and that is this consider the context of your view and how it will be applied to a strategy moving forward. Now, what I love about this, and I've got this right here, and I would encourage you heavily to go read Rosaria Butterfield's book on a gospel comes with a house key. Rosaria Butterfield was an adamant, strong lesbian and completely believed that Christians hated her and wanted to kill her and destroy her. And so she started going to a Christian, basically Bible study, just to tear Christianity apart. And through her period of time where she watched how they loved her, but unapologetically didn't agree with her, let her into their life and all this kind of stuff, it was amazing how God used it to change her life. And she talks about six different ways that you can reach out to someone you disagree with. Now, this doesn't have to be over a sexuality issue, it could be over anything, but she says, live out radical, ordinary hospitality, build long-term relationships that are not surrounded with debate, be bold with the Bible, but gentle in tone, be a model of repentance and honesty, let the church be a family, not just a meeting, and be prepared for a long journey. And she said that is one of the great ways to actually reach out to people. And so let's cover this one more time because the goal of this is that you are going to encounter difficult topics. This week, if you're a TikToker, you're gonna go on TikTok and you're going to see that someone's going to say something that you don't agree with. And you're going to be like, I don't know what to do. I need to set up a meeting with a pastor. Well, I would love for you to meet with me about this, but I am going to teach you this because I want you to learn how to own your Christianity, your faith for yourself. And so I'm going to say, have you applied your filter yet? And if they, if you say no, then I'm going to say, go back and listen to that long, overly complicated podcast that I did, and now you're going to have it. So here it is. I'm going to say, have you applied this? Number one, understand first principles of philosophy and logic. And that is the law of non-contradiction, the law of excluded middle, and the law of identity. Number two, establish the authority of God's word in the life of a Christian. Number three, study and discover the biblical position on the topic. Number four, carefully consider opposing oppositions and make sure that they really are opposing. Number five, identify personal bias. Number six, what hill does this live on? And then number seven, consider the context your view will be applied to and a strategy for moving forward. Based on what you have learned, if it's a hill to die on, then how are you going to talk to the people around you so that they can experience life and salvation? If it's something you're going to debate on, get your debate points ready. And then when the opportunity comes up, have fun. And then if it's one that you don't care about, then you've settled what you think about it, and then move forward and realize don't really matter. So I hope you enjoy this. I want to hear in the comments down below if you processed through this, what was something that you were concerned about. And then on the other side, what decision did you come to because of applying this? I also want to tell you, this takes time. Don't think that you're going to be able to put this in and have it all figured out. Rather, it's going to take time, but if you'll take the time, you can have a confidence that you know what you believe, why you believe it, you can defend it, and you'll be better for it. Okay? All right. I love you. I'll see you tomorrow for the next part of the Bible Breakdown Podcast.