Craving Answers, Craving God: Recent Episodes
St James Lutheran Church - Glen Carbon Illinois
Chuck Rathert and Aaron Mueller discuss issues and questions that are on the minds of people who are wrestling with the problems of existence and meaning, and explore how Christianity can answer these questions in a way that satisfies the longing of the human heart.
In a culture obsessed with individual rights and personal autonomy, parenting and raising kids remains - mostly - a relationship recognized as being valuable to the extent that it is self-sacrificial. What is it about our relationship with our own children that glorifies and valorizes the type of love that gives and expects nothing in return?
Chuck and Aaron talk about how the relationship between parents and kids points us to the relationship God the Father has with his adopted children, and how the self-sacrificial love at the heart of the universe can be displayed and practiced in families. They also tackle some practical issues in parenting.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep74.
Why is marriage so important? The Bible describes God not as one powerful being, but as three persons - the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit - who have always known and loved each other with complete commitment. And when they decided to create human beings in their image, they decided to create a married man and woman so the humans could experience in their lives together what the Trinity has always experienced in its life together. And this reality extends to all human relationships - whether marriage, family, friends, or Christian community - but marriage is the primal human relationship. The importance of marriage then lies in its unique ability to reflect the interpersonal love and commitment we were created for when God created us in his image.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep73.
It’s true that different people find different particular things beautiful, ugly, or plain. This seems to validate the notion that beauty is subjective, that there is no accounting for taste, as the saying goes. But everyone agrees that eating really delicious food can be an experience of beauty, as is falling in love or seeing a wonderful site of nature. Perhaps there are standards of beauty that can help us understand what is truly beautiful and what it means.
Chuck and Aaron talk about how the Creator God made the world to reflect the beauty of his own person, and because of that we can understand our experience of beauty as God pointing us to himself.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep72.
Jesus, quoting Moses, says that the greatest good for a human is to love God with all our being and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. This at least implies that self-love is good and healthy, but it places healthy self-love in the context of relationship.
We love ourselves truly when we find who we are in the context of our personal connection with God and others. Paul explains self-love the same way in Ephesians 5 - pointing out that for a husband to truly love himself he must give himself up for his wife like Jesus gave himself up for the church. In other words, good self-love happens when we love God and love our neighbor. The alternative is a self-love that values oneself over the other - a type of love which is destructive both of relationship and (counterintuitively perhaps) ourself as well.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep71.
In spite of our culture’s current skepticism about knowledge, people nevertheless are desperate to know what’s real and true. How is this possible? How can we find a model of knowing that doesn’t artificially divide “faith” and “knowledge”? How can we avoid the postmodern trap of confusing power for knowledge?
In order to know things, we have to give up the Enlightenment error of connecting knowledge to provability; in other words, there are many things we know not by proving them but by living in them. In the Bible, knowing is a relational act, not a math problem to be solved. And when we began to commit to knowledge as a give-and-take between us and those around us, we began to trust in the God of knowledge who reveals himself to us and gives us true, lived-in knowledge.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep70.
Anger is not inherently good or bad, but is right or wrong depending on its motive and its object. Righteous anger, in fact, is necessary for a healthy humanity - to be confronted by gross injustice and not be angry would be inappropriate and (perhaps even) evil. But nevertheless, it’s clear that anger can sometimes be incredibly damaging.
What is the difference between righteous anger and damaging anger? Righteous anger happens when the character of God has been challenged; unrighteous anger happens when our own glory and importance has been challenged. But whether it’s righteous or unrighteous anger, it should be temporary since anger is a sign that something is wrong. In other words, harboring anger - for any reason - is sinful and damaging. Ultimately, righteous anger is validated by God’s righteous anger against sinfulness, but God’s anger is temporary since he decisively acted - in the death and resurrection of Jesus - to rid the world of the injustice and evil that has caused his anger.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep69.
Hinduism, as an eastern religion, emphasizes the ultimate spiritual reality of humans and nature. Contemplating this truth can provide a welcome corrective to American Christians who tend - along with the rest of our culture - to value and emphasize the material world at the expense of the spiritual.
Hinduism, though, ultimately lacks a grounding in the physical world since it denies that the material has any kind of fundamental reality. Jesus of Nazareth, the God who became man, brings together in himself and equally values true spirituality and true physicality. The invisible God becomes visible man, the spiritual world of heaven invades the physical world of earth, and in the death and resurrection of this One, God gives credence to both our bodies and our souls.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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Depression, far from being a purely physical or purely psychological or spiritual problem, affects every part of the person who is experiencing it. Physical remedies - everything from eating right and becoming more active to perhaps taking doctor-prescribed medicine to break out of a damaging cycle - should be a part of anyone’s grappling with chronic emptiness or sadness. But since humans were created by God to be both bodies and souls, it should come as no surprise that depression can only be dealt with by also examining and addressing the spiritual problems at the root of that depression. And one of the best spiritual ways to cope with depression is to counterintuitively resist the urge to isolate which every depressed person feels. Living in community, being drawn outside of ourselves through relationship with others and with God is an essential part of growing out of the dark valley.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep67.
The modern west holds that “all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights,” and that this enlightenment principle of human liberty is “self-evident.” But this deistic idea of God-created principles of freedom which are available to humans without revelation from God (“self-evident”) is founded on the misguided belief that humans are equipped and desire to provide freedom for each other on their own. The failures of this system are evident all around us now in the proliferation of wilful addictions in our society - whether to overtly addictive things like drugs and alcohol, or to quieter addictions like those of career accomplishments, money, or entertainment. The biblical solution is the promise that Jesus offers us freedom in himself, and that by dying on the cross and rising from the dead all the cultural and political forces, and all the personal addictions we all struggle with, have been stripped of their power to enslave us and we are now free in him.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep53.
We all know people who are good people, and we all know people who are bad people. But does the human race as a whole tend to be one or the other?
While the tendency, in our Instagram culture, is to see people as either good guys or bad guys, Christianity insists that humans are both beautiful and good because we’re made to look like God, but we’re also broken and evil as a result of our collective rebellion against the creator God who designed us.
The Bible says that while we all can do good things for each other - things that are genuinely good and helpful things, before God we can do nothing that would be good enough to win his satisfaction. But because of what God has done in Jesus Christ, those humans in Jesus are seen by God as completely good and acceptable.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep52.
If God is God then his human creatures shouldn’t be surprised that he isn’t completely comprehensible. So when the Bible says that he is sovereign and does whatever he wants but also that he genuinely engages his people in conversation in prayer and adjusts what he does based on their requests, the argument that this is necessarily a contradiction because we can’t understand how it works is illegitimate.
It seems strange to us that God could be completely in charge of everything that happens in human history - even, mysteriously, evil things, and at the same time react to the prayers of his people and make decisions based upon what we ask him. But the God of the Bible is big enough to do what we humans can’t comprehend. And in fact, this type of God is the God we all need and want: a God who is completely in control of all things and strong enough to fix everything, but also a God who relates to me where I’m at and takes my thoughts and feelings and desires seriously.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep51.
The Bible describes God as a God of love, but also frequently describes him angrily judging sins. For many people, Christians as well as non-Christians, these descriptions are very disturbing.
If God is a God of love we don’t like to think about him getting angry. But if we reflect on our own relational experiences we know this is not possible. God gets angry precisely because he is a God of love, and when something he loves is hurt he rightly gets angry.
In other words, God is not vindictive or petty or mean-spirited, but always acts out of his deep love for his world and his human creatures.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep50.
In the Bible Christians are told to not love the world, but we’re also told to bear God’s image, and God describes himself as loving the world. This makes sense if we understand what St. Augustine meant by not loving anything or anyone out of order; in other words, loving what we should love in the right order: God first, our fellow image-bearers next, and his good creation third. So Christians should love the world, but not more than they love God.
But we must also understand that the Bible uses the word “world” in different ways. First, it is God’s good creation, and so should be loved and served and enjoyed (though, again, not more than God himself); but second, the “world” sometimes refers in the Bible to the world’s system which is controlled by and feeds on lust, power, greed, and pride, and this world system. The former should be encouraged and nurtured by all humans, but the latter must be rejected by Christians, who are called to fight in Jesus’ name against all idolatry.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep49.
Christians agree that God created the whole universe, but what does this mean for how humans are to rule over or take care of his environment? The Bible says that God created humans to be his representative on earth, which means we are to take care of the world like he does, with care and love and stewardship, not manipulation and selfishness.
So Christians, of all people, should be leading the way in caring for and stewarding God’s creation. This servant-based leadership is counterintuitive in a world where power means manipulation, but Jesus empowers us to serve the environment by his self-sacrificial death on the cross.
But more than that, Jesus’ death and resurrection is the guarantee that the universe he created will also someday “rise from the dead” and be made new, and Christians have been called by God to be a part of this new creation project.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep48.
The God of the Bible commands his creatures to praise him - to talk and sing about how great he is, but the idea of a God like this who would demand praise and worship from his creatures is seen as incomprehensible and even offensive by many non-believers. Why would the greatest Being in the universe need to be told how great he is? Is he insecure? Is he needy? Why would he use dictatorial powers to command his lackeys to bow down to him?
But what God knows is that all humans praise, naturally. We praise all kinds of things we enjoy - good food, good movies, our hobbies, our children, etc., and our praise completes our enjoyment of those people and things. Whatever is good deserves to be praised. And God knows that we, as his creatures, will only be completely happy and fulfilled when we’re acknowledging him to be the highest good - praising him.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep47.
Humility is almost universally admired in the West, and people who are full of themselves are almost universally avoided. But although this value is common, humility is a uniquely Christian virtue.
Only if there is a God who created all things and people and transcends his human creatures is the refusal to think of other creatures as less than ourselves wrong. And according to Christianity, because we are sinners who have violated God’s law and broken ourselves and our world, we have no grounds for thinking we’re something we’re not, but because all humans are made in God’s image then there is immense value in treating our fellow humans with love and deference. The key to being humble like this is not to think less of ourselves, but to think of ourselves less and think of God and others more.
Chuck and Aaron talk about why humility is important, why it’s hard to live humbly, and the benefits of not thinking less of ourselves but thinking of ourselves less.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep46.
The Bible describes marriage as two people becoming “one flesh.” This incredible concept is more than just a helpful metaphor - in marriage (and through sex within marriage), God has created a new singular unit out of two separate people. In this way God has designed marriage to make concrete what He himself - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - has experienced from eternity past - absolutely perfect union within personal diversity. The best way to live in this reality is to live in mutual submission - wives submitting to their husbands and husbands giving up their lives for their wives like Christ gave up his own life for his church.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep45.
Marriage has always been both beautiful and difficult, and never more than it is now. Our cultural conviction that we as individuals are more important than our relationships butts heads with our desire to experience love and acceptance. But God has created marriage to be a way for couples to experience what it means to find themselves in a mutual, self-sacrificial commitment. And this experience points us to the deeper reality that God has given himself to us in self-sacrificial commitment. Our desire to be loved and accepted, with no questions asked, and no conditions demanded can only be met by this God who has always been in relationship - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit perfectly and eternally loving each other - and now invites us to experience this ultimate, unconditional acceptance in him. Marriage isn’t the only way, but it is a primary (though imperfect) way to experience what this love is like.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep44.
Many secular people believe that science has made religion obsolete - that since we now have rational explanations for natural phenomena we no longer need God. This assumes that religion’s job is to explain natural phenomena, but while science’s job is to explain such phenomena, religion’s job is to tell us why such phenomena exists and how to live as relational and moral beings in our physical world.
Another problem with the belief that science makes religion obsolete is the false belief that science is based upon objective reason, whereas religion is based on subjective opinion. But there is no such thing as a value-free, completely objective view of reality.
Scientists make hypothesis, based upon faith commitments, and they interpret data to fit in with these hypothesis. So at the end of the day both religion and science work on the principal of faith seeking understanding. The main point of contention, of course, is not between science and religion but between philosophical materialism - the view that the physical is all that exists in the world, and Christianity - the belief that since God made a physical world for his creatures to live in religion and science are not incompatible enemies but are different ways of making contact with God’s universe.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep43.
The word “sin” is a largely forgotten word. People in our culture find it an oppressive and judgmental word, and so we typically use it ironically or pejoratively. But the idea of a “sin” is one that’s held by all people everywhere, because sin is simply the violation of a received moral code.
In our culture’s case, the idea of sin (if not the word) is reserved for violations of our culture’s moral code - the rights of the individuals, the importance of physical beauty, the value of money and material objects, etc. But in the Bible the word “sin” is used to denote violations of God’s character and will. Since God loves life, honesty, justice, family, community, and holiness, a sin against God is any violation of the revelation of his character in his Bible. But God has come up with a plan to forgive our sin by clothing us with his son, Jesus.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep42.
In our philosophically relativistic culture, telling someone that you believe in a universal truth is at best, weird, and at worst, offensive. How should Christians, who are commanded by Jesus to “go into all the world and preach the gospel” to everyone, live out and talk about their faith in a world that finds such conversations triggering.
Chuck and Aaron discuss the need for wisdom - to know where and in what situations it is appropriate to talk about deeply held ideological beliefs. They also talk about how relationships must be built so people don’t feel as if an explanation of Christianity given to them by a friend is an attempt to control them. In addition, Christians must believe in the gospel of Jesus enough to live lives that are attractive to non-Christians.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep41.
When you compare what the Bible says about jobs and vocations with what our contemporary, materialistic, Western culture believes, it’s clear that our work is both less important than we’ve thought, and also more important than we’ve thought. Less important, because work promises to be a portal to money and things; hence, a pathway to fulfillment and importance. However, it’s clear from the shattered dreams, dreary slavery, and broken relationships of a money-obsessed society that this promise has not paid out. But on the other hand, according to the Bible our work turns out to be more important than we thought, not primarily as a way to serve ourselves by making money or building prestige or satisfying the competitive urge to climb the socioeconomic ladder, but instead as a gift given by God to each of us to love and serve our neighbor, to glory in the pleasure God gets from enjoying us using the gifts he’s given us, and to advance the rule of his Son Jesus in our world.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep40.
When non-Christians hear Christians talk about repentance, they usually think it’s an attempt by the Christians to call them out for their sins, but the biblical idea of repentance is much bigger than individual sins; repentance is about changing your entire way of life from one outlook, worldview, motives, aims, etc., and substitute that for an entirely new way of being you.
Likewise, when Jesus calls us to “repent and believe in the gospel”, he is less interested in us giving up our vices and bad habits and more interested in us giving up our way of being human and trust him for his way of being human. In this light, repentance is less about sorrow (although sorrow is an important response to our own sin and brokenness, it doesn’t always lead to changed behavior and healing; instead, the Bible tells us that only godly sorrow can lead to repentance - in other words, sorrow for what our sins have cost God) and more about God changing our thoughts, words, and behavior. In fact, the Bible insists that repentance, like faith, is a gift that God gives us out of his deep love for us, changing our hearts to want to turn away from our own plans and sinful behaviors and turn to him for forgiveness, grace, and desire and strength for new obedience.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep39.
All Christians agree that Holy Communion was instituted by Jesus on the night before he was killed, but there the agreement frequently ends. Is the bread and wine we receive at communion an object lesson that helps us to remember and think about Jesus, or does Jesus actually come and give himself to us when we celebrate his supper? While the latter view is the historical view of the church, the former view has gained in popularity the past several hundred years thanks to the Platonic/Enlightenment notion that the physical world has no value in itself except as a sign to “spiritual” values. However, the Bible insists that God uses the physical world (especially the Incarnation!) to accomplish spiritual things.
Chuck and Aaron discuss how the Lord’s Supper is just such a physical sign with spiritual power, and also discuss how what we really crave and need is God to meet every part of us (our bodies, souls, and relationships) with every part of himself (Jesus’ body and soul), and it’s Holy Communion where this gift of Jesus is given to us.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep38.
If God saves humans in order to have a relationship with them, then prayer is less a spiritual discipline that must be exercised, or a ritual that must be performed, or a “spiritual” way to work on our psychological help. Instead, prayer is a vital part of our relationship with him.
Like any relationship, God wants to hear our voice, to know what we’re thinking about, to open ourselves up to him so he can know us. And he also wants us to hear his voice, know what he’s thinking about, and give himself to us in a mutual relationship of commitment and love.
It’s almost a truism that prayer is us talking to God, and the Bible is God talking to us, but the practical import of these twin realities should affect the way we interact with him. Praying without Bible study is going to feel empty; Bible study without prayer is also going to feel empty, simply because any one-sided conversation we have with any person (and God is not less than a Person) is going to stifle that relationship. Listening, responding, listening some more, responding some more – this is the key to any relationship, and our relationship with God is no different. Practically speaking, Aaron encourages us to read the Bible and pray simultaneously – reading and praying back and forth in conversation, listening to his voice, talking to him about what he talks to you about in his Word, reading some more, talking about what’s on your heart. This sort of back-and-forth is key to knowing God and him knowing you.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep37.
Christian unity frequently seems to be a reality in theory only. There are so many different opinion groups within the Christian world, so many denominations, and so many subgroups even within those denominations.
The primary reason for disunity in general, including in the Christian church, is that we humans have been damaged by the fall and now value power over truth. The result is inevitable – disunity. But a lot of disunity doesn’t come from active fighting, but from the way different people groups and historical groups have grappled differently with how the gospel applies to their particular circumstances. So while this might appear to be disunity – and in some sense of course it is – the way these different groups believe in the heart of the gospel means that they are experiencing a profound degree of unity. But on another level, sometimes Christian groups (for instance, some American denominations supported slavery in the pre-Civil War South) who confess basic Christian doctrine but whose practice undermines those beliefs, must be rejected in that bad practice. Because of this, sinfulness in the Christian church also leads to an inevitable disunity. Someday, when Jesus returns, these sins will be eliminated and true unity amongst all God’s people will finally become a universal reality.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep36.
Evangelism is inherently uncomfortable in our postmodern culture – the notion that one person has a right to tell someone else what they should think is deeply troubling to many of us. Chuck and Aaron discuss how to do Christian evangelism in a way that respects this concern, and lives and speaks the gospel in a context of relationship-building.
When Christians allow the Holy Spirit to lead and guide relationships to the point where the gospel can be spoken into life situations, Christians will find that people are ready to listen to someone who loves them and wants to share their own experiences with them. Seen in this light, all of life for the Christian is evangelism, since every moment of our time is geared toward living and speaking the gospel into the lives of people with whom the Christian is deeply bound to.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep35.
Are we good or are we bad? This is a complex question. When we compare humans to each other it’s hard not to notice that some people are nicer, kinder, harder working, more honest, etc., than others. And in our relationships with other humans, trying to do good and help our neighbors is definitely a good thing! But the Bible insists that, however good or bad someone may be, before God they are not good. The reason is that God can see into our motives, and he knows what even we sometimes aren’t aware of – that all of the good things we do are colored by our own self-centeredness. Because of this, none of our goodness makes God happy with us. This means that while before humans we may or may not be good people, before God none of that counts for anything, and we need a different source of goodness. Thankfully, while we may be more or less good or bad before other humans, before God those who have been baptized into Jesus are completely good – because the goodness of Jesus goes on their account.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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Just about every human agrees that being a good person – doing kind things for others, being honest, working hard, etc. – is important. And this is true! But the problem is when we begin using these good things as a way to give ourselves value and try to locate our identity and meaning in these things, because when we examine ourselves closely and honestly we find that our words and actions can’t carry the weight of our own self-perception.
There is nothing we do, think, or say that is not to some degree turned in ourselves. So ultimately, we need an identity from someone else who is able to carry this weight, and the only person in the history of the world who has been able to do this is Jesus Christ.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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Worship, or the act of ascribing worth, is a universal human activity. Every human being has something that he or she counts as the highest value in their life. These values will inevitably manifest themselves in worship activities: rituals, meals, economic activity, etc. Christian worship is no different: ascribing the highest worth to the creator God who meets us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, Christians join together as a community to share a sacred meal, hear the sacred scriptures, and sing praises to the One they value highest. This value doesn’t make sense to most people, because a belief that Jesus is the highest object of worth in the entire universe can only happen when the Holy Spirit gives us this value. So while our human spirit can “worship” at the birth of a child, or the hearing of beautiful music, or the excitement of a dramatic sporting event; only by God’s Holy Spirit can our human spirit be convinced that the highest value is Jesus.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep32.
The Bible claims that God loves all the world. Every ethnic group, language group, and nationality; men and women alike; both rich and poor as well as young and old, are welcomed into the family of God. In other words, Christianity is the most inclusive group in the whole world.
But the Bible also says the only way to become a member of this family is by faith in Jesus Christ. In other words, Christianity is definitively exclusive. And while this exclusivity might be offensive to the current postmodern westerner, the fact is that every group and person is exclusive, using boundaries to define who is in the group and who is out. This is unavoidable. But only Christianity manages to maintain its extremely broad level of inclusivity with the same sort of exclusive boundary that all other worldviews have.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep31.
The Bible claims that the creator God is a God of order and purpose, but everyone agrees that life frequently seems to be out of control. But God’s sovereign rule doesn’t always mean that life will be comfortable, prosperous, and orderly. In fact, God’s order and control is so all-encompassing and powerful that it contains apparent chaos, and he is using what looks like chaos to us to produce goodness and justice.
But the other reason it’s difficult to believe that God is in charge is that we ourselves long to be in charge. But the Bible insists that human choice is at the heart of what’s wrong with the world, and learning to trust in the sovereignty of the creator God, in Jesus Christ, is the only way toward order and wholeness.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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The death of Jesus of Nazareth, by crucifixion, is an irrefutable historical fact. But what his death means, if anything, is the subject of much debate.
On one level, Jesus was the casualty of Imperial Rome’s claims to universal power – his claim to be in some sense a king came into conflict with Caesar’s claim; but on another level, Christians insist that Jesus’ death paid for the sins of the world and, along with his resurrection, have turned the course of history from unrighteousness and death to righteousness and life. In this telling, the main problem of the world is the deep, dark forces that stand behind the current evil world system – the forces of sin, Satan, and death. The profound and pervasive depravity of this evil necessitates a radical solution, and the death of God and his subsequent resurrection is the radical surgery necessary to get rid of the cancer of the Fall.
In this episode of "Craving Answers, Craving God" Chuck and Aaron talk about what happened and why it happened. And why it had to happen.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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We see lots of angels portrayed in religious art, and there are even television shows and movies that revolve around the activity of fictional angels, but what does the Bible say about angels, who they are, what they look like, and what they do?
In this episode Chuck and Aaron talk about what the Bible says about angels. Angels look different at different times – sometimes they are clearly powerful and supernatural and inspire awe, but sometimes they look like ordinary humans. However, at all times their main job is to function as messengers and servants of God; and as servants of God they’re also servants of God’s people, guarding, serving, and working for His church. There are also evil angels – what the Bible calls demons or unclean spirits – who have rebelled against their creator and are now working to destroy God’s people and his world. But by and large, the Bible is curiously reticent to explain angels in detail. Almost certainly this is because angels, though important servants of God, are not the main actors in the drama of redemption; and God’s Word always seeks to make preeminent the main character in the history of God’s plan to save the world, His Son Jesus.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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The idea of the rapture, a time when Jesus will come and take his followers out of the world, has been popularized in the broader culture through books like Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth and Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind series. And while the Bible teaches that when Jesus returns he will raise his people from the dead and gather those who are still alive up to meet him in the air, the word that is used for “meet” there is a technical word for going out of a city to meet a visiting dignitary in order to welcome him back into the city; in other words, when Paul teaches in 1 Thessalonians 4 that believers will “meet the Lord in the air,” he’s talking about Christians meeting Jesus in the air in order to welcome him back to his creation so they can rule with him forever.
Chuck and Aaron briefly talk about the timing of different theories of the rapture, discussing how the Bible does not teach that the rapture does not take place before Jesus’ return to rule in person on the earth.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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In a world that, from the perspective of many people, is getting worse all the time, can we know if God is interested in this world?
One of the problems with this question is that American Christians tend to have a Deist view of God – a God who lives in the sky and is disengaged from our world. This view of God makes the belief in a apathetic God the default mode. And while this means that Christians and non-Christians tend to agree that the problems of this world are caused by humans, the question of God’s care or lack of care for this world is still a valid one. It’s easy to look at a broken political and economic system and ask whether God cares, but the mistake of this position is that the God of the Bible typically doesn’t work through the political and economic system; in other words, if there is a God who is concerned with this world he probably won’t engage these problems in the way we would expect: not through power and money, but through weakness and suffering.
The God of the Bible cares so much about the problems of the world that he joins himself up to the essence of these problems by becoming a human and giving up his life on the cross in order to absorb all these problems into himself, rise from the dead, and begin making all things new.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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In the midst of wars, violence, and global pandemics, it’s hard not to think about the end of the world. Especially since the end of modernism, with its bright optimism, almost everyone in the contemporary postmodern world are convinced the world is becoming a worse place and is headed for some sort of large-scale destruction. This fear has exposed our culture’s gods – science, medicine, money – for the fakes they are, and has left us hopeless and in despair, with a deep sense that the eventual end of the world is out of our control. Meanwhile, politicians use this fear to manipulate us into voting for them, thereby increasing this fear and despair.
The Bible also talks about the end of the world, and frames that event as an act of a sovereign, loving God, who longs to someday purify (not destroy!) his creation from the brokenness caused by and sinfulness flowing from human rebellion. And he encourages us to trust him that his plans for the future will be for the good of us and all creation.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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We all need something to trust in – something that we can rely on when the chips are down. We also need hope – the belief that things are going to work out – in order to stay sane and committed in our daily lives.
Chuck and Aaron talk about faith and hope, what they are and how they overlap in meaning but are slightly different angles on how humans engage the world. For Christians, faith is not based on evidence but on relationship. Within the relationship Christians have with God and the world, they lean on God and trust him to care for and do right by them. This faith is not based on understanding, but future understanding is based on this faith.
Christians are given this faith when they are immersed into the drama of the story of redemption in the Bible. Hope flows out of this faith, but is oriented toward the future; in other words, Christian hope trusts that God is going to make all things new on the last day. And because the basis of this hope is faith in the God who always does right, Christian hope is not uncertain but is anticipation of a guaranteed thing.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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Many non-Christians see Christians as hypocritical – people who do not live up to their own stated standards. But this isn’t a particularly Christian problem, it’s a human problem: no one lives up to the goals and ideals of their own ideology.
When non-Christians correctly point out the hypocrisy of the Christian church, Christians must be repentant. If hypocrisy is a human problem, then Christians must present an alternative to the normal human pattern of self-defense and denial by being quick to acknowledge when they have not lived up to the standards of righteousness.
Christians represent the holy and righteous God, and the best way to reflect him is to openly declare that he is holy and we are not. Chuck and Aaron talk about how the apostle Peter was guilty of hypocrisy, and in some way this provides encouragement to us to continue repenting of hypocrisy.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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The Christian New Testament teaches that Christians must be baptized. In this episode, Chuck and Aaron talk about the meaning of Christian baptism, the proper biblical mode of baptism, and the proper subject of baptism.
They also talk about the Bible’s teaching that baptism has the power to save: because baptism is the Word of God in liquid form it has the ability to do all the things holy scripture can do – create faith, sanctify, and bestow grace. Baptism has this power because it connects us to the death and resurrection of Jesus.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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Following up on the last episode about prayer, Chuck and Aaron talk about the value of the Psalms as a way to intimately connect with God.
The Psalms not only contain a wide variety of types of prayer, but all the Psalms work together to tell the story of God’s plan of salvation: they work through the reign of David, the loss of that reign in exile, the heartbreak of separation from God and his temple, the return of the David kingdom, and the subsequent renewal of all creation and the universal praise and worship which spring from that reality. Within this grand narrative, every key event and doctrine of God’s great story find a place in the deeply theological and emotional worship life of God’s people.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the Christian God is his desire to have a relationship with his human creatures. He wants to talk to us and wants us to talk to him, and we call this prayer.
God saves his human creatures because he wants children. This means prayer is, fundamentally, our relational connection with him. And this communication is in many ways more powerful than our communication with each other, because while communication between two humans is by its nature colored with distortion and misunderstanding, God understands us completely because by his Holy Spirit he is in our mind and heart. And the point of this intimate communication is not primarily to learn new things, but so God can spend time with us.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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Serious Christians spend a lot of time thinking about God, but in today’s episode Chuck and Aaron talk about what God thinks about his creatures.
Some people tend to think of God as a judge, and this of course is the way the Bible frequently talks about him as well. But the message of the gospel is that when God judges those who believe in Jesus he judges them “not guilty.” In other words, God’s attitude toward his people, even when he judges them, is acceptance and love: he thinks of them as his children and feels all the love that he feels for his own son, Jesus. And the Bible calls us as humans to begin thinking God’s thoughts after him, to begin loving others and facing outwards for the sake of others, like he does.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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In a prior episode, the question of what Christians believe about the final destination of the Christian believer was raised. For many years, the Christian church has lived in the legacy of the medieval Catholic church’s teaching that the goal of Christianity is to get the believer to heaven after they die. But the Bible never uses the word “heaven” to refer to the place where Christians’ souls reside postmortem.
Instead, heaven is the seat of the power of the Creator God in Jesus Christ, a power that is taking over the creation now through the death and resurrection of the Messiah. This doesn’t mean that the Bible ignores what happens to believers after they die, but this intermediate state is not the main theme.
Instead, the main theme of the Bible is the belief that Jesus is going to return to raise our bodies from the dead and establish his eternal reign on earth.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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The title of our podcast is Craving Answers, Craving God, but what do we mean by the word craving? And, outside of food, what do people crave? And specifically, do people crave answers? Do they crave God?
Chuck and Aaron talk about how everyone wants answers to questions, but how our postmodern culture’s belief that there are no real answers to any of these questions means existential conflict, leading to anxiety and depression. And while the Bible insists that no one, on their own, is looking for God, the deepest human cravings for success, or relationship, or fulfillment are desires that – because they can only be fulfilled by a relationship with the creator God – can serve as signposts to knowing Him.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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Christians believe that God has called the Church to be his agent for change in the world.
Chuck and Aaron talk about how to define the word “world”, and how God loves his creation – both people and nature, but that sometimes the Bible uses the word “world” negatively: as the broken and rebellious system determined to oppose God and his Messiah.
God’s whole goal in creating his Church is to work out his determination to win back his rebellious world to himself. He does this by using his Church to transform the culture into bearers of his image in Jesus Christ: justice in the political system, beauty in the entertainment industry, selflessness in the economic system. This happens when the Church successfully calls the world around it to begin worshipping, loving, and serving the one true God in Jesus.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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Christians and non-Christians alike are uncomfortable with what Jesus teaches about hell. But the difference between the two groups is that Christians don’t usually like to talk about hell, whereas non-Christians are very interested in talking about how Christians can believe something as horrible as the doctrine of eternal separation from God.
It’s important to understand that the Bible’s teaching on hell is the negative side of the Bible’s much more positive offer of new creation and restoration, and the imagery of torment is a highly powerful vehicle for communicating the horror of the infinite pain of eternal separation from God. In addition, it’s important to note that hell is, in the words of C.S. Lewis, “locked from the inside.” People reject God in this life, and hell is a place where he allows them to continue rejecting him for eternity. In this sense, hell is exactly what people who reject God choose.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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Unbelievers find the Christian doctrine of the Trinity confusing and contradictory, and believers sometimes are confused about what the point of the Trinity is. But the Bible insists the only way to really know God is to know him in the story of the Bible – a story that describes him, even as early as Genesis 1, as existing in multiple persons and then, later, as One.
This notion of God as always existing in a relationship of three people is key to knowing who God is. He is not primarily a God of power, and even not primarily a God of holiness, but a God who primarily is love.
In this sense, the heart of a belief in God is a belief in the eternal, perfect, infinite love which God has for us as our Father, united to our brother Jesus, and connected to this relationship by the Holy Spirit.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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In the last episode Chuck and Aaron talked about fearing God. In this episode they talk about facing our fear of things that God doesn’t want us to be afraid of.
While some types of fear can be helpful – the brief momentary fears that give us bursts of focus and energy are a gift of God to help keep us safe. But the deep, chronic fears that paralyze us are symptoms of idolatry: we fear loss, and the prospect of losing things we love and trust necessarily create fear. But God wants us to trust and love him in such a way that are fears are alleviated by the belief that he is all we need and that we will never lose him.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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Is fear a good or bad thing? The Bible tells us not to be afraid, but it also tells us to fear God.
The fear of God begins with his holiness. Chuck and Aaron talk about the possibility that the reason why we humans struggle with the notion of fearing God is that we aren’t enough in his presence. And this is the foundation of the healthy, biblical fear of God: recognizing that the things we’re afraid of and the things we’re afraid of losing have a god-like power over us which should only belong to the One whose loss would be truly devastating. In this sense, fearing God is a way of trusting and loving him above all things.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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Chuck and Aaron continue their discussion about forgiveness by thinking through the notion of the forgiveness of sins. In one sense some people need more forgiveness because some sins are more bad, more damaging. But in another sense, because all sins are equally wrong, everyone needs the same amount of forgiveness. God gives this forgiveness once for all time, to all who believe in Jesus; but in the life of the Christian, although the guilt is gone, the culpability for sins still has ramifications and so must be constantly repented of.
Chuck and Aaron also discuss the problem some people have with believing that God can forgive them, as well as the notion of atonement as God’s way of allowing his people into his presence.
The conversation wraps up with a quick look at the unforgivable sin described in Mark 3, and conclude that the verse describes someone who persists in rejection of Jesus, not someone who rejected Jesus in the past.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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Forgiveness is at the heart of the Christian faith, but it’s such a difficult concept to understand in our culture. Currently, everything is either permitted or unforgivable.
Part of this unwillingness to grapple with the notion is the understandable concern that forgiveness means saying that damaging and painful things that have been done are somehow “okay”. But real biblical forgiveness means recognizing that painful things that have been done to us by someone else are genuinely broken and wrong but choosing to carry that pain on oneself and not turn it back on them. One alternative way to deal with this sort of pain is to avoid the party who has caused pain, but biblical forgiveness means embracing the pain that’s been caused for the purpose of alleviating it from the person who’s caused it.
Chuck and Aaron talk about the problem of forgiving someone who is not willing to ask for forgiveness, and discuss the possibility of fostering a heart that is prepared to forgive when forgiveness is asked for but not feel the pressure to forgive someone who doesn’t want forgiveness. For Christians, all talk about forgiveness must always come from and always circle back to the God who takes the pain of his rebellious creatures on himself, on the cross, in order to forgive us and take that pain away from us.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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Who is Jesus, and why does he matter? Christians claim that Jesus stands in a special relationship with the creator God, but many others claim that he was merely a wise teacher or a powerful prophet. Chuck and Aaron talk about how Jesus fits into the Jewish story of the Bible as God’s special and unique agent to bring about his own kingdom of righteousness, justice, and peace.
Jesus has long been a contentious figure in cultural history – he is so important to so many people, both Christians and non-Christians, that the question of who he was and what he did has become a cultural battleground. To truly understand who Jesus (or anybody, for that matter) is requires examining him in his context: that means reading the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament), the story of which Jesus was claiming to somehow be the climax. In this context, Jesus cannot be seen simply as a wise teacher, but as a prophet who stood in a special relationship with the Creator God (as his eternal son!) tasked with ridding the world of sin and establishing God’s reign of righteousness. Jesus never claimed explicitly to be God, but he forgave sins and accepted worship and divine titles – things that a Jewish man would never do; things which imply Jesus’ belief that he was God’s own son.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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Chuck and Aaron talk about the difference between a Christian and non-Christian definition of evil. Almost all people believe in evil – that there are things that violate ultimate value. Both groups, in this sense, use the word evil in this same way. The difference is that the values by which both groups judge an event to be evil or not is drastically different. For Christians, the character of God is the most deeply held value, while for our culture pleasure, or materialism, or individual sovereignty are examples of popular ultimate values. In fact, while Christians and non-Christians will frequently agree that certain things are evil (racism, for instance), they will have quite different reasons for believing in why that is evil. For non-Christians, racism is frequently seen as wrong because it violates individual freedom, but Christians hold that racism is wrong because it violates the image of God. Another example is the question of abortion: typically both pro-choice and pro-life arguments work from the basis of human rights, or individual sovereignty. But a Christian argument for life begins with God’s love for his own image. So in fact, individual sovereignty – far from being a legitimate criteria for evil – is itself the primal sin of the garden of Eden. Evil is not, then, a concept; it is instead something experienced by fallen human beings for asserting their individual sovereignty and rebelling against their creator. But evil can be conquered, Christians insist, because the ultimate good – the character of God embodied in Jesus, has died and risen from the dead, becoming the Lord of the universe, and is conquering evil.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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What is evil? And how could a good and all-powerful God allow it to exist? Chuck and Aaron discuss the relationship between moral evil and creational evil; the philosophically unanswerable question of how, if God exists, he could allow suffering; and the Bible's practical, two-part answer to this question.
From a Christian perspective, evil is broader than just moral violations, it also encompasses all the many things that don't work according to God's design. These two are related: Christianity insists that the brokenness of this world has been caused by moral evil. The philosophical problem for Christians and non-Christians alike, is the question, "How could God, if he's good, allow evil in his world?"
There is no real answer in philosophy to this question. The Bible also doesn't answer this question in a philosophically satisfactory way. Instead, the Bible gives us tools to grapple with the problem in our lives. Where atheism posits a closed universe, in which suffering and evil are normative and meaningless, Christianity – while not giving a philosophical answer to the problem of evil – asserts that God is determined to bring evil to an end.
The book of Job in the Hebrew Bible tells the story of Job, who undergoes intense amounts of human suffering and explicitly asks the question of where God exists in this evil. At the end of the book of Job God speaks, and he doesn't tell Job the reasons for his sufferings, but he silences Job by announcing his own eternal sovereignty: God is God and Job isn't. He has reasons that he does not tell Job, but he does love Job. But the other biblical answer to the problem of evil is that the Christian God is a God who doesn't stand aloof from his creation, but made himself a human for the express purpose that he could suffer along with us. This, too, doesn't answer the problem of why evil exists, but it does tell us that God takes it seriously and experiences it right along with us. The problem of evil finds its only real solution at the cross of Jesus.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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Is Christianity a religion? What is religion? Chuck and Aaron discuss the similarities and differences between the religions and worldviews of the world and the religion of Christianity.
Christianity is seen by many as one of the world’s great religions, but is there a distinction between Christianity and the other world religions? What does it mean to be spiritual? Is it possible to be spiritual but not religious?
Chuck and Aaron discuss these questions, and talk about whether or not there are any differences between the spirituality and practice of Christianity and all the other religions.
There are many things that religions have in common with each other. All religions have an ethical system, systems which by and large are very similar in content, but the heart of every religion and worldview is the story they tell to make sense of the world. And Christianity’s distinctiveness – in contrast to all other religions – is that the God of Christianity serves his people; as opposed to all other worldviews and religions in which the adherents must act to serve the god or guiding principle.
In other words, religions insist that ethical demands demonstrate one’s faithfulness to the god or worldview followed, but in Christianity it is the creator God, in Jesus, who is faithful to his own ethical demands so that his followers can live with him.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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Many people struggle with chronic loneliness, a sickness not always alleviated by the presence of other people. Why do we, in spite of all the people around us, feel so disconnected? Chuck and Aaron talk about how our culture became so bored, how this boredom cannot be alleviated by joining special interest clubs, and how having a relationship with Jesus in the Christian Church not only alleviates our chronic boredom but connects us to the heart of God.
Loneliness is a massive problem in our culture. This is not just an issue for people who are “alone,” but it’s now also affecting us when we are with other people: at our jobs, in our marriages, with our kids, in our churches. In fact, there is some evidence that being around other people can exacerbate these feelings of disconnection. And the reasons for this chronic loneliness are cultural: since we in the West have removed God from the middle of the room (and, in the 20th century, have also removed Science from the middle of the room), we have now placed ourselves in the role of ultimate sovereign over our own existence.
While this power is sweet and addictive it means that we are, by necessity, alone. To have the relationships needed to alleviate this loneliness would mean giving up this authority to other people. The only solution is to find our True North in the nature of God himself. And since God is, from eternity, in relationship – and this is what Christians mean by the Trinity: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, have eternally been in relationship with each other – the only real solution to our disenfranchisement is being connected with this God.
The Christian Church is the place where this experience happens. And unlike special interest groups which can only be made up of people who think, act, and talk alike, the Christian church is defined by its unity in diversity: a place where we are not identified by our gender, our ethnicity, or our socioeconomic status, but by our connection to the triune God. This relationship in Jesus, reflecting the inner life of the Trinity, is ultimately the only true relief from chronic loneliness.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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Many people in our culture identify as “spiritual” but find the idea of belonging to a church or other religious group hard to swallow. But even though we reject the thought of community, we find ourselves – in our increasing loneliness as a culture – craving community at the same time. Is it possible that this craving comes from our being made in God’s image, and thus made for the very community we reject?
The Bible tells the story of God’s plan to create a new humanity for himself, a new people. We as postmoderns in the contemporary West tend to see all of reality through the lens of individualism, but if God is creating this new family for himself then we as individuals have a more fundamental identity – an identity as a part of this new family. Of course our culture offers us, as individual consumers, opportunities for certain types of community, but these invariably center on shared and common interests. But the Christian community, because it centers on the person of Jesus, can be truly diverse – made up of all different age groups, gender groups, interest groups, socio-economic backgrounds – and centered on the radical claims of Jesus of Nazareth. And because we were created by God to look like him, and since God is Three – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – which means he is eternally in relationship, we are never closer to the heart of God than when we’re living in this Christ-embodied, image-of-God bearing community.
Corrections:
- In this episode Aaron mistakenly referred to the Apostle Simon as the Apostle Peter (10:49).
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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With all the competing stories in our culture, how can we know that the story of the Bible is the right one? Chuck and Aaron talk about how the story of the Bible takes into account all the different aspects of life in God’s creation in ways that all the alternate stories can’t.
The story of the Bible claims to be the one true story of all reality, and its reliability can be experienced when we allow its story to subsume our own stories, giving them meaning and purpose. Unfortunately, the competing stories that our culture tells bump into and attempt to color and shape the Bible’s story.
Most people long to have an overarching story (like the story of the Bible) to give their life meaning, but it’s easy for us to self-medicate — to turn to distractions in order to forget that our lives outside of the story of the Bible lack ultimate direction. But all other stories fail to connect accurately with reality because they elevate one element of God’s story (whether money, or sex, or power, or pleasure, etc.) over the rest of that reality. Christianity, though, is the one worldview that gives place to all of these elements of existence, physical or spiritual, but does not elevate any over the rest.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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If the Bible exercises its authority as a Story, what are the alternative stories that challenge the Bible for this authority? Chuck and Aaron talk about competing stories that contemporary culture tells itself that all claim to have authority.
The story of the Bible tells the story of Creation (Where did we come from? What are we meant for?), Fall (What went wrong? Why are we in the trouble we’re in?), Redemption (What’s the solution? How are things getting fixed?), and Restoration (How will the Story end with a happy ending?).
Chuck and Aaron discuss competing stories like the Story of the American Dream, the Story of the Sexual Revolution, the Story of Individualism, etc., and how these stories compete with Christianity with alternative versions of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
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To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep2.
Christians claim that the Bible is authoritative, but how can an ancient document written in a specific historical time and geographic place be authoritative over people living here and now?
Chuck and Aaron discuss the problem of authority claims in an anti-authoritarian culture, and how and why our culture got to the point where it views authority claims as oppressive. They discuss how science and rationalism replaced God as the ultimate authority in our culture for several hundred years, but how postmodernism has now also abandoned science as an ultimate authority. This means that the contemporary human now considers herself or himself to be the sole ultimate authority.
Chuck and Aaron then discuss how Christians can talk about the authority of God in an anti-authoritarian culture by focusing on the Bible as Story.
Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert
Subscribe to the show at http://cacg.saintjamesglencarbon.org.
To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep1.