When Exceptionalism Meets Judgment

Transcript

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[0:00] Thank you, Michael. And if you want to take out your bulletins, you probably already have, and take a look at our reading. Our sermon text is from Lamentations chapter 2, verses 6 through 9. And today, so there's four chapters in this section today, 4, 5, 6, and 7. And I'm only going to preach on chapter 6 because you just kind of have to pick one. And the rest, I hope, can be picked up in our discussion time, or you can read it yourself. And they're all kind of related to each other, and they all, in some ways, they reiterate a bit of what happened in chapters 1 through 3. So, you know, we're maybe not losing so much. I wanted to define lament. I don't have an official definition from a dictionary. But as I'm kind of processing this as I understand it, lament is like a complaint.

[0:53] You know that sign in the store that says, you know, if you have a suggestion... you know, go here, and if you have a complaint, go here, and over here is the exit. You know, like they don't really want to hear it. But a complaint is direct... a lament is a complaint directed at God, or even at nobody in particular. It's just a... you're speaking to the world, to the air, you know, to the universe, saying, this is not good. And the complaint is that I am suffering. Whether it's emotionally, mentally, spiritually, physically, or all of those at the same time. So...

[1:31] and it's a complaint that my current circumstances are terrible, and my future circumstances are not looking good. So lament might be looking towards the future a bit, too, saying, I don't see a good thing on the horizon, right? And... but, as we'll see, and we do see from time to time, a biblical lament carries with it a kernel of hope. When it's directed at God. Because if God is faithful to punish, and we believe our current circumstances are His judgment when we're lamenting, sometimes, then we also believe God is faithful to forgive and to restore, and so the future has some kind of hope in it. But we... our challenge in the Christian Church is to rush forward to that hope, and not sit in this long period in the brokenness, in the lament. And so, even at the end of the sermon, we're gonna visually or sort of abruptly end the sermon on a down note, and you're gonna have to live with it for a week, and so am I. And then next week, maybe we'll pick up on the hope, but we're just gonna end on the down note, okay? The down... the minor key, so to speak. And that's kind of just a reminder to us that it's okay, you know? We Americans love to fix things. We love things to be great, you know? But they aren't always so, and to live with a sour note for a week, it's not gonna...

[2:51] it's really not gonna kill you. You might feel that... it might actually feel that way, but it won't. It won't, okay? So... To get to hope, though, even... even to get to the hope, we have to go through the reality of admitting that we are suffering, and considering the possibility that we are being punished justly. So let's go to our reading. Go ahead and look at it on your bulletin. People at home, it'll be on your screen, but here it's fine that it's not, because we found that this is too distracting when we're preaching. So this is good. Lamentations chapter 2, verses 6 through 9. I'll start at verse 6. It reads like this.

[3:28] The Lord, that is. He has broken down his booth like a garden. He has destroyed the tabernacle. The Lord has abolished in Zion festival and Sabbath, and in his fierce indignation has spurned king and priest. The Lord has scorned his altar, disowned his sanctuary. He has delivered into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces. Okay. A clamor was raised in the house of the Lord as on a day of festival. The Lord determined to lay in ruins the wall of daughter Zion. He stretched the line. He did not withhold his hand from destroying. He caused rampart and wall to lament. They languish together.

[4:18] Her gates have sunk into the ground. He has ruined and broken her bars. Those aren't pubs. Those are the bars of the gates. Just in case. You're from Wisconsin. Her king and princes are among the nations. Guidance is no more. And her prophets obtain no vision from the Lord. Let's pray.

[4:41] Father, we receive this lament in anticipation that we might lament. And we thank you for it. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Well. We're going to talk about just chapter six of the book. And that chapter is about privilege and exceptionalism. So we're going to define both those words. And I think you know what privilege is. It's this ability to do something that people, other people can't do. Or a right that you have that other people don't have. And I think the easiest way to do this is to look at first class on the airplane. First class is a privilege. Coach is what the peasants get way in the back. And if you're like me, you're almost all the time you're a peasant. You know, even in the back. Now they've divided the back into better peasants and lesser peasants, which is economy plus plus. And then I think there's going to make a third one in the end. And they're going to call it steerage. And you're gonna have to kill your own rats back there or something like that. So I used to work for an airline. It was very fun when I was in seminary. I tried to make ends meet and I worked for Northwest airlines, which doesn't exist anymore. It got bought by Delta airlines. I worked in the refunds department and I got to see what tickets cost.

[5:56] Now you can find out. What tickets cost all sorts of ways. But here's the interesting thing. Usually for the same trip, a first class seat costs five to 10 times as much as the horrible seats. You know, the bad seats, let's just call it coach coach. I, they don't call it, you know, how do they, they don't call it second class. They're smart here. Second. Oh no, no, this is coach. Oh, whatever that means. Okay. So now think about this, a trip from San Francisco to Boston. Just. You could. You could probably get a round trip ticket. If you shop ahead $300, maybe if you're lucky $400, that same tickets, $4,000. If you want to ride in first class, what have the airlines figured out? It turns out that the first class passengers are actually, they're paying a premium and they're actually allowing the people in the back to buy tickets for less than it actually costs the airline to operate the airplane. It's kind of like going on a cruise and not drinking, you know, that's you're being subsidized by all the people who drink on the, on the cruise.

[6:53] So, but what happens when you're in first class? You get to get on the plane first. You get to get off the plane first. You have a bigger seat. They put a little curtain there sometimes depending on the plane and you don't have to see those people, which is nice or smell them or listen to them or whatever it is that you don't like about them. There's more flight attendants per passenger. So there's more attentiveness and the food is better, still terrible, but it's better than whatever they're serving back there. So can you tell I used to work for an airline? Yeah. It's like, okay. So, but here's, what's interesting. I mean, the, and the airlines have figured it out. Is that, is that for three or five hours of my life? Is that worth $2,700?

[7:38] Not to me. And now it might be if you have health problems and you need a big seat, that's fine. That's a different issue. But for the vast majority of people, this is how humans are wired. It's some people who have the money. It's definitely worth $2,700 for five hours there and five hours back to sit there and not pay. And that's a lot of money to me. I mean, I can think of a lot of things to do with that. My kids college, you know, that's a big part of it, right? Or whatever. I could give it away. I could buy myself something new and nice. I don't know what it would be.

[8:10] So what have the airlines figured out is that privilege is actually a big deal to people. People will pay a lot of money for privilege and privileged people have money to pay for privilege to get it right.

[8:23] That's powerful. So that, you know, if you want to find out anything out about human nature, look at marketing because they figured it out. They actually figure out how people think and work. And so how airline tickets are priced tells us that we love our privilege and we're willing to sacrifice a huge amount of material wealth for privilege. And that's interesting. I think that's just fascinating. Okay. So it tells us something about the appeal of privilege. And I think maybe how hard it is. How hard it is then to give it up if we're willing to spend that much money for it. How hard, how that shows how valuable it is to us. How hard is it then to give up? That's very interesting question. Okay. Now the other concept is exceptionalism that our author talks about. Exceptionalism is the idea that a group, this idea they have that they are simply the best, right? They're the brightest. They're the most successful. They're the most creative. They're the most powerful. They're the most important people. They're exceptional. They're great. So you guys remember Lake Wobegon? Something called the Lake Wobegon effect actually is psychologically is that where people overestimate their value or their amazingness. And so every time Lake Wobegon ends, the host Garrison Keillor, who's been canceled and lost some privilege, but I think he kind of deserved it.

[9:41] You can quote me on that. But he's gone now. But and so the show I don't think is there anymore. But at the end of the show, they would say, now that's the news from Lake Wobegon. Where? All the women are strong. All the men are good looking. And all the children are? Above average. Above average. Exactly. Isn't that a great place? It's Lake Wobegon. All the men are strong. All the women are strong. All the men are good looking. And all the children are above average. It's the story we like to tell ourselves, right? You know, this is where I'm from.

[10:15] So this is the exceptionalism. And we all tend to believe it. It's sort of, it's kind of an element of tribalism. If you're in a church, you're going to be a tribalist. But if you're in a tribe, the tribe has to say we're better than the other tribes. Tribes, that's how tribes work. Otherwise you wouldn't join it or you wouldn't stay in it. So a tribe has to even make up a myth that it's better. It just, that's just kind of how humans are wired, sadly. But here's the thing. And this is where our author, I think, is right about a lot of things. He says, once you have this belief that God designated you, not just that you're exceptional, but God made you exceptional, then you're going to be capable of doing a lot of terrible things. Then you're going to, you're going to make a lot of mistakes, right? And there's, the author says there is actually one group in history that was designated as exceptional. These are the people of God, the children of Israel, the children of Abraham and so on and so forth. And they do actually get a special designation as being exceptional, as being the people of God. Yet, even if you look at the Bible, it says they are supposed to share this blessing with all the nations. Even to Abraham, it's told that right from the basement, right from the ground floor,

[11:21] this is for the nations to have. This is for the nations to be blessed, right? But over and over again, we talk about the blessings. And pardon me. You can make the case from books like Lamentations or Ezekiel chapter 10, where God's presence departs from the temple, that God's special feeling for these people has kind of diminished. So yeah, they're special. Yeah, they're exceptional, but because of their history, because of their choices, they're not so special anymore. Because now God is judging them. Now he does also want to redeem them. He wants to bring them back from captivity.

[11:58] When you look at the New Testament, it seems then that it's Jesus who reorganizes who the people of Israel are, who the special people are. And he centers that on belief in himself. So now the chosen people really revolves around faith in Jesus Christ, not on your DNA, not on your descendant, being a descendant, not on blood or heredity or national. And so no nation, no nation today, no like, you know, there's a list of nations at the United Nations, not single one of them or any people group ethnically should claim an exceptional status in God's eyes. And I say this before I'll say it again. There's no American version of heaven and you know, like a Canadian version of heaven where it's colder or something like that. It's just heaven and it's full of all the people. All the nations are there. It says so in Revelations. Okay. So there's, we struggle with privilege and we struggle with exceptionalism and the American church both struggles with privilege and exceptionalism and exceptionalism again, is this story that we tell ourselves that we have some special mandate from God to go and do amazing things and to be really special and those sorts of mindsets don't allow us to process when bad things happen.

[13:21] We don't know what to do with them. Either we ignore or deny the reality that they're happening, happening, or we seek to fix them instantly so that we don't have to feel uncomfortable about them. Right? But the offer, the author is telling us that the best way through this is to tell the truth about who we actually are. And that leads to a proper lament. We don't like to lament because actually lamenting. Okay. And so if we undercut our identity as exceptional people, if we were actually to say, we're, we're in trouble and it's our fault, And God's judging us, that would chip away at this facade that we've built for ourselves that says we're exceptional. And so we're, we're not, there's all sorts of reasons why we won't do that. There's all sorts of reasons why we won't give up privilege. And there's all sorts of reasons why we won't, we are committed to this idea that we're exceptional people. Now, look at your Bulletin again. because I just want to point out several nouns, just nouns, in our passage today that are all nouns of exceptionalism, power, and privilege that the Israelites had in Jerusalem, okay? And these are all things that it says get destroyed one way or the other, you know, by enemies, by God, by

[14:40] God's judgment. So look at verse 6, and these are spiritual power, physical power, economic power, political power. They're all kind of different spheres of this idea of power and privilege. So you look at verse 6, the tabernacle is destroyed. It was a place of worship. The festivals and the Sabbaths, that was the thing that ordered the spiritual lives of the people. King and priest are the spiritual leaders. The king is a spiritual leader, but also a political leader of the land. Now look at verse 7, the altar, the sanctuary, which are parts of the temple where people worship, that's all destroyed. The walls of the palaces, this is all destroyed. The walls of the palaces, that's all destroyed. The walls of the palaces, this is the curtain in the airplane. This is the rich people on this side, poor people on this side, right? The rich and the royal think they're safe physically and which project their power and their privilege outwardly, but the walls of the palace comes down, right? Then we're talking about verse 8, the walls and the ramparts of the city, probably. That's physical protection from enemies and it's a testament to the craftsmanship and the work and the determination. And so if you come to

[15:44] a city and its walls are high and the walls are thick and they're made out of sand, they're made out of sturdy materials, then you're like, ah, this is, you know, I'm not going to invade this place. This is a fortress. This is something powerful. These people are industrious. They're hard workers. They built this stuff. They're good craftsmen. We're not going to mess with them, but Babylon does come along and destroy it, all right? Then finally, verse 9, the gates. The gate is like the crown jewel of the wall. You know, the gate's ornate. The gate's strong. It has to open and close. It has to be even stronger than the walls in some ways. Instead of being made out of stone, like the walls of the palaces, it's made out of stone. It's made out of stone. It's made out of stone. It's made out of stone. It's made out of stone. It's made out of stone. It's made out of some kind of metal, finely crafted, hammered into places and things on that, right? And the bars. And so you pass through the gates and you're like, wow, you know, that's destroyed. The bars of the gates are destroyed, right? Strong materials took time and effort. Then the kings and the princes, again, political power has been exiled to other nations. And finally, and this is the

[16:43] saddest perhaps, the prophets. The last thing it says is, the prophets are cut off. So there's no more guidance from God, right? The spiritual privilege of having a direct line to God through one of the prophets. Somebody snipped that line now. So we have a description in relief of all the exceptionalism of God's people in Jerusalem. We had power. We had gates. We had walls. We had prophets. We had kings. We had the tabernacle. We had the temple. We had the altar. We had all this stuff that told us how great God was. We had all this stuff that told us how great and super and special we were. And now we just saw it all get destroyed.

[17:23] And so is it possible that who we are really doesn't depend on all that? Or it shouldn't. It should depend on something else, right? So you would put all this together and you'd have a description of most of the things that Israel would point to that say, this is what makes us feel safe. This is what makes us feel spiritually connected to God. And this is what makes us feel powerful around our neighbors. Okay. And it's all gone. It's all gone. Just here we go. So there's the exceptionalism. And our author's really good. I think this is a really good point. That's why I just picked chapter six here to talk about because otherwise it'd be kind of like too much of a flyover. Chapter six, I think is kind of getting to the kernel of it, is that we tell ourselves a story about how great we are. Israel told itself a story about how great it was. It had all these nouns that told it how great it was. And God took all that away because of their disobedience. And the suffering that resulted... The suffering that resulted from that was massive because it was not just the loss of those things, but the loss of the understanding of who they were that got torn away too. You see how that's even more dangerous, right? More, more, more. So exceptionalism, again, is the sense that

[18:35] we're special and superior. We're able to solve all sorts of problems or that we're divinely appointed to be the chosen people. And American exceptionalism and both American exceptionalism and American Christian exceptionalism are topics that our author takes up. But for example, I think of American exceptionalism as the idea that we're somehow divinely appointed to settle the west of the country, move from east to west, even if it meant killing and displacing all sorts of people. And we have this divine mandate to be the most powerful nation on earth and this beacon of democracy and freedom. And again, I would say this is like, let's not do too much of a binary because there are some... examples of where people have looked at American democracy and said, this is good. And this is a good model for other countries to take on if it's possible to kind of borrow it. So it's not all, it's not all bad. All right, let's be careful with that. This is like, this binary is kind of a dangerous thing. Because it's another lie that we can tell ourselves actually. But this idea that America could be a beacon of democracy and freedom and project power all around the world, and a spiritual guide to the rest of the world. And so sending missionaries, and that's, you know, it's,

[19:47] it's mixed, because sending missionaries is a good thing. But if they come with an exceptional attitude, then we've got a problem. But if they come in humility, and they say, we have this gift that we want you also to have, and it may look different in your culture than it looks in ours, then we're, then we're getting somewhere better, right? So I can definitely, I mean, I grew up in, I was born in 1969. I went to public school in the 70s and the 80s. I can definitely point back in my education, in grade school, middle school, high school, where American exceptionalism, it wasn't exactly taught, but it was in there. It was in the history books. It was kind of woven in, like, yeah, we're pretty special. We're kind of special people, you know, where all the men, all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and you guys are all above average. It was in there. I don't know if it is anymore. I have to look at my kids' textbooks. Probably, it's probably beginning to fade away a little bit. And we could lament that, or we might go, oh, that's kind of good. You know, and maybe more realistic, more truth-telling is good. Now, I want to contrast, and there's a change, change gears real quickly here, but I want to contrast that exceptionalism

[20:58] that we swim in every day. So this is all around us. This is in our culture. You know, you're, you're, you walk out the door, and even here, you're in this exceptionalistic sort of culture that we swim in, and you're expected to reflect it, and you're expected to believe it and act it out.

[21:13] There's a contrast to it. I want to tell you about, a community that meets about 20 times a week, right on the other side of this door. Okay, do you know who I'm talking about? I'm talking about the AA group that rents space from our church, and I'm really glad that they're here, and I see them every day, and I'm just glad that they're here. So AA, if you don't know, here's what happens when you go to a meeting. I'm just going to tell you quickly about what happens at a meeting. For one thing, it starts on time, which is best in my view. I'm kidding. So that's, again, you see how it's coming out? Oh yeah, all the good cultures start things on time. Well, no, there's some cultures that don't start on time. They start on time because they know more people will come on time, but they care about sobriety. So if you start on time, and it's reliable people who have to work, they'll know that they start at noon, they end at one, but they start on time. That's the least of it. They read their foundational principles, and I'm going to get to that in a second, the 12 steps, and then there's just the 12 traditions, and then when it's, there's a chance to speak. There's a chance to say something. Somebody gets up and gives a speech.

[22:17] Other people get to share, but before you speak for the first time in that room, do you know what you say? You say, when it's my, so I'll act like I'm, I'll act like I'm in the meeting, and just so you're not wondering the whole time, what is Hans-Erik addicted to? I am addicted to a great number of things. Praise, not praise God, but praise God, one of them is not alcohol. It just, in my case, it isn't, but I'm definitely addicted to all sorts of other substances. Okay, but not alcohol. So I'm going to say, I'm going to act like I'm in that. meeting, okay, but I really should probably be in five other meetings, but not that one, okay, but if I were to start speaking for the first time, I would say, my name is Hans-Erik, and I'm an alcoholic. That's how you start. That's their liturgy. That's how you start. So you, what do they start with? They start with truth-telling, and you could even say they start with lament. They say, I've got a disease. I'm here. I'm not going to lie about this. I'm not going to, I'm, we don't normally talk about this. I'm not going to lie about this. I'm not going to, I'm, we don't normally talk about this. I'm not going to, I'm, we don't normally do that. You don't kind of lead with that, but that's how that place is structured. So I don't

[23:22] normally, you know, I would not go in there and say, my name's Hans-Erik, and I have this pretty much under control, or it's not a real bad problem. In fact, the more you say that sort of thing, the more it seems like you actually do have a problem, but, or I don't say, just with a little more willpower, and I'll have this conquered. You don't go in there, and you say that. You just say, I'm an alcoholic, and everybody says, hello, Hans-Erik. So there's this communal acceptance that you're in the right place, that you, you said the right thing, which is that you're there because you have a problem with alcohol. Okay, so it starts off with honest, and you, honesty, and with lament, and it's sustaining the reality that I'm dependent on a substance, and that's, that's a real reality, right? That's a real human physiological, psychological, chemical process where there's this substance, this is tea, but if it was something else, you would say, where my body has to have that for all host of reasons, right? Both physical and emotional and psychological, and it has, it has quite a draw, and we're not going to get into that, right?

[24:24] So it's, I think it's hard to find any other group like that that's premised on absolute honesty. Do you have a club that you go to where, where like the goal is just everybody to be honest with each other? I hope you do, and I hope it's not, I mean, I hope it's not AA, but if it is AA, I'm glad you're going, but is there any other group that you go to where the premise is absolute honesty in everything we say? Not even the church can claim that, although it should. Not even the church can claim that. We should try. I think we could if we, if we decided to. Okay, so there's more. Here's what's said out loud at the beginning of every meeting, and there's the, they talk about the 12 steps, and the first two steps are this. The first step is this, is we admitted, there's the truth telling, that we were powerless over alcohol, and that our lives had become unmanageable. Does any of that remotely sound like exceptionalism? No, it sounds like the opposite, right? And step two is we came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Now, I'm not going to talk about AA way much. I mean, this is a good introduction, right? But right away, there's this admission that two things are more powerful

[25:35] than me. Alcohol is more powerful than me. I'm not powerful enough to stop drinking on my own, and the only thing that can help me stop drinking is God, right? A power greater than myself, they call it the higher power, or God, right?

[25:53] That's not how we talk normally. So alcohol is more powerful than the person, and this is true for somebody in addiction. There's more. This is what they say about alcohol. They say in the meeting, they say, remember that we deal with alcohol, cunning, baffling, powerful. It sounds personified, doesn't it? Doesn't it sound like a villain out there trying to get you, trying to trap you? And they keep going. They say, without help, it is too much for us. It's more powerful than this. But there is one who has all power. That one is God. May you find him now. They say this every, they say this 20 times a day, 20 times a week on the other side of that door. Praise God. You know, they say these things. So we see that alcohol's almost personified, right? It's powerful enough to defeat us. And our attempts to stop drinking, and only one's powerful enough. And as you progress in the 12 steps, you're asked not only to say these two things, but to start examining yourself. They call it taking your own inventory, which is really telling the truth about yourself and to yourself first. Because actually, the first lie that you always tell is the lie you tell yourself. And then you lie to other people. But alcoholism involves a lot of lying.

[27:16] First to yourself, and then to other people about how bad it is, how, you know, what the money is I'm borrowing from you is for, all sorts of things like that. So you ask yourselves, how did this start?

[27:28] How did I start drinking? What's the deficit in my life that I'm medicating away with alcohol? So I knew somebody who once said, I didn't really even like alcohol, but I was anxious all the time. And I didn't know why. And one day I took a drink, and I didn't feel anything.

[27:52] And so, within those weeks, within those weeks, within those weeks, within those weeks, within those weeks, within those weeks, within those weeks, within those And as you go further back, you say, why was I anxious? And then you can kind of, you know, you can say, either I have to live with my anxiety or I have to find something else besides alcohol to medicate my anxiety that's not addictive. You see what I'm saying is you keep backing up until you get to the root of the problem. So there's this truth-telling that happens about yourself. Then you go and you find other people that you've hurt. And you find, actually, first, before you do that, you find one other person and you tell them the entire extent of all your wrongdoing. How's that for fun? Do you have five hours? Do you have five hours where I can sit down and tell you every wrong thing I've heard? But this is good. This is confession. This is actually a Christian tradition. And then you make a list of all the people you've hurt, and if it's appropriate, you confess to them that you hurt them and you seek to make amends. And so this is really like, do you see how the whole thing is working out? It's very biblical. Once somebody came to me to make amends because he had taken advantage of our friendship

[29:09] while he was drinking. And this was years later, and I had almost forgotten it, but then I realized it was true. And I forgave him, but it was like amazing that he, that gave him peace. That was part of his work was to kind of find the people that he had taken advantage of or hurt when he was drinking.

[29:27] So I'm done with that now. But the common thread in all this is truth telling. The way out of exceptionalism is actually to tell the truth about ourselves. We're not that great, you know. We're not that amazing. We are great. We are amazing. Your kids are great. I mean, you really, your kids are really awesome. And they're, you know, they're not that great. There is a place for good self-esteem that's based in reality. Like you're good at playing chess. Well, that's good. That's, let's keep practicing that. But this over, this sort of overblown sense of superiority in all things and this God, this sense that God has appointed us to be over all things, that's different. That's that sort of exceptionalism that our author is worrying about. So, and I'm going to tell you something. I don't actually know how to lament.

[30:12] I think I'm going to learn. But I know how to tell the truth. And I think that's the start. You start by telling the truth about yourself. There's a famous movie director who once said that 90% of life is just about showing up. If you can do that, you got, you got most of it, right? I think 90% or more of lament is just telling the truth about who you are, about how the world is, you know. So, I know how to tell the truth, not perfectly, not consistently, not thoroughly.

[30:45] I think I can get better at it with practice. I think I can get better at telling the truth. But if I tell the truth about myself, it goes a bit like this. And so, this is Hans-Erik telling the truth. And this is where, this is where it's going to end for a week. Remember I said, told you, so don't, you know, don't be surprised if this sermon ends abruptly because it will. So, my name is Hans-Erik and I'm a rotten sinner. Hello, Hans-Erik. I'll try again. My name is Hans-Erik and I'm a rotten sinner.

[31:14] All right. I want to believe I am powerful and exceptional and amazing. I think I'm like the kids in Lake Wobegon. I'm a bit above average. But in reality, there's a host of things in this world more powerful than me. My sin, which is cunning and baffling and powerful, it never takes a vacation. It's always there to make me fall. And God, God is more powerful than me by far. I can't. I can't pull myself up by my bootstraps. I don't know how to do that. The vast foundation of what I think is my success is actually built on top of the work of other people. I can't claim credit for it. The world is dangerous and I can't make it safe.

[32:00] I can't. And I deserve God's judgment for my sin. And before we go to the solution that Jesus saves me, I just want to leave it there for a week.