Episode 3 - Ancient Faith Chat: Are All Sins the Same?

STSA Church Podcast · Dec 27, 2023

Transcript

Good evening, everyone. Good evening and welcome to our third installment of Ancient Faith Chats, brought to you by STSA Ministries, where our mission is to help you bring an ancient faith to your modern world. My name is Father Anthony Mesa, thank you so much for joining us here. If you are joining, and you are joining for the first time, or maybe a repeat return visitor here, I would love it to know who it is that I'm speaking to, because it gets kind of boring just to speak to a picture of myself all day. So we have a chat box down there, and I would love if you were to put in your name and where it is that you are watching from, what city or what state or whatever it may be. And as you are doing that, I will tell you what these ancient faith chats are all about. STSA Ministries is our way of helping equip you and your local church with the tools and resources and support to be able to fulfill your mission. So once a month, on the third Wednesday of the month, we show up here and our goal is just to take one hard topic or one question or one I've always wondered why, or I've never had a good explanation for, and try to help explain what that is. And the reason why is because if our goal is to bring an ancient faith to a modern world, then the idea is that the more we understand our faith, the more we'll be able to spread our faith and share our faith and invite others to participate as well in what that faith is.

So that's why we do what we do. If you ever got a topic that you want us to talk about, feel free to email us at ministries at stsa.church. Love to hear from you. I also would love it if you could share this with a friend. If the topic that we're talking about here is of interest to you or you know someone that could benefit from it, always appreciate it when you would share that with a friend, share our website, stsaministries.org, okay? No one really wanted to put their name. I don't know if I allowed permission for everyone to see that, I see it, but I don't know if everyone else did. I see Susan from Fairfax, but that's the only person who's gonna put their name on it. Only person who's gonna put their name in, come on. Make me feel like I'm talking, oh chat is disabled. Ooh, okay, that's gonna be something on my end. Ooh, so that might take me a second here to figure out how to not disable that chat, but here we go. Then you can chat with everyone. All right, now see if you can put your name in that chat. Tell me if I did it right. I'm trying to figure this technology thing out right here. Put your name, where it is that you're from in the chat. All right, I got it right, look at me.

I used to be an IT consultant, but it takes a little while. Thank you, Julio from Arlington, Virginia. Who else is out there? Tell me what your name, Hosanna from Seattle. That's a name that I haven't, it's been a while since I heard from you, Hosanna, so it's good to see you again. Who else is out there? Veronia from North Carolina, nice to meet you. Karina from Toronto, okay, now we're flying here. Mark from Ashburn, Vera from Brazil, Marianne from downstairs, that's my wife. Oh, I lost it right here, let's go back. Siham from Montreal, Quebec, thank you. Siham, Membre from Arlington, love the Arlington. Sherry from Ashburn, Hanock from Alexandria. Mahi from, I think that's probably supposed to be Mehe from Seattle, but it could be Mahi. If it's Mahi, nice to meet you. Love the fish, okay, if that's who it is, but if it's Mehe, it's good to see you as well.

Engy from Silver Spring, Karen from Montreal, Eden and Salam from, and Tamar and Mencare from Toronto. Thank you so much all for joining. We're gonna get into our topic here for today. There's two ways that you can ask a question, it really doesn't matter to me whichever one you wanna choose. You can put something in the chat right there, and if you wanna enter questions in the chat, you're certainly welcome to. Also, there's a Q&A button at the bottom, at least on my screen, it's at the bottom, on the notice for you. You're certainly welcome to ask a question right there. Our topic for today is a question that I'm sure that you have asked yourself this question if you're honest, and that question is, are all sins really the same? Like, come on, are all sins really the same? Like, we say they're all the same, but really, some are worse than others, aren't they?

Oh, I forgot to tell you, I'm gonna put a link in the chat right here to a handout with all the notes that I'm gonna be covering here for today, if you wanna pull that up, just some things that way you don't feel like you have to write anything down, it's all written for you right there, feel free to take that. Are all sins really the same? Or are some, aren't some really worse than others? Like, come on, you're trying to tell me like if I lied to my parents about where I go on a Friday night, that's the same as like lying to Congress or lying to a judge in court, or if I happened to maybe cheat at a game of Monopoly or taboo, I turn the timer over a little bit too fast, like that's the same as someone who's like stealing millions and millions of dollars or embezzling, or like if I break my fast, like a hamburger during Lent is the same as murdering someone, like really? Well, that's what I wanna talk about here tonight, okay? And in order to do so, we need to first take a step back before I can answer the question, are all sins really the same? And we need to take a step back by defining what sin is, okay? And again, if you have the handout, you'll see right there, we're gonna cover this kind of logically and systematically. First, what is sin at a macro level? Not is this a sin or is that a sin? We usually start with the minute. Is it a sin to do that or is not? Is that okay? Is not okay. At a macro level, what is sin? I think today we have a wrong view of what sin is. I call it like a Hollywood view, all right? A modern view of sin and salvation really comes to us from like, you know, kind of the world outside, society outside, which I think comes from movies and Hollywood and things like that. And let me tell you what sin is not. Sin is not a crime to be punished, but our orthodox view of sin is that it's a sickness to be healed. Let me say that again. Sin is not a crime to be punished. Sin is a sickness that needs to be healed. See, if you view sin as a crime, again, that's Hollywood. That's what you see out there on the TV in society. Then of course, we're gonna try to minimize it. And of course, we're gonna say, that's not that bad. And who said that's wrong? And why is that bad? And who said, where in the Bible does it say? But this is why we avoid admitting sin. This is why we avoid confession, because we think of it as like, if God catches us in sin, then like we come to God, like for sentencing, like a judge guilty. So that's why what we do is we make our case. And if God says, no, I wasn't guilty, and it was really her fault, and she pushed me to do this.

And who said that? And where in the Bible is this? And that's what we do. We treat coming to God with our sin, the same way, like remember when we were kids and you got a bad grade and you had to go to your parents, okay? So if you got like a horrible grade, like in my house a horrible grade was a C, okay? Maybe you grew up in the same household I did. So if you got a C and you had to go to your parents, well, if that's your view of sin, no wonder we avoid admitting guilt and we try to excuse it. Our orthodox view of sin is different. Think of it less as a crime to be punished and more as a sickness that needs to be healed. We don't shy away from admitting our sicknesses to the doctor, right? So if I got a sickness, you know, I actually, I'm the one who makes the appointment with the doctor and I'm the one who says, doc, like I need you to look at this because it's something sickness here that needs to be healed. And I want to be 100% healthy. So I don't come in and say, okay, you know what? My elbow is broken and my ACL is torn here and I'm bleeding out my lungs, but you know what? Don't really worry about those. Just focus and I just focus on this very, that's what we do with our sin.

Can we ignore the big ones? We focus on the small ones or whatever it may be. I want 100% healing. So if there's anything in my life that's broken, anything that's sick, I want it to be healed. Well, the same is, should be true spiritually. I don't just want my body to be healthy. I want my spirit healthy. So therefore, anytime there's any kind of sickness, okay, we come to God less as the judge and more as the physician. Okay, and that's actually why in our Coptic Orthodox tradition, there's a certain litany, it's called the litany of the sick, the prayer for the sick. We say it at every single service, every single service, even something as simple as like a house blessing. We always pray the prayer of the sick because we remind ourselves that sin, sin is not, it's bad and you need to be punished for your sin. We remind ourselves that all of us are sick. All of us have something in us, which may be a virus, may be a deficiency, maybe sickness can be defined as any deviation from the norm. If my elbow is supposed to do this and it can't do this, that's a sickness, okay? Or if blood is gushing out of here, it's not supposed to be, it's supposed to be inside there. That's a sickness that it needs healing. And the goal is that I want 100% health in my body, as well as in my spirit. I'm gonna give you a couple of verses, okay, that Jesus said, well, first one, Jesus said and the one from the Church Father, Jesus said in John chapter 12 verse 47, when they were talking to him about like, why you came into this world, he said, I came as a light. I didn't come as anything else. He said, John 12, 47, I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world. I did not come to judge the world. I didn't come to be its judge, I came to be its savior.

And one time, this clicked in my head. If you wanna understand orthodox view of salvation, anytime you hear the word salvation, insert the word healing instead, or save, insert, heal. So I didn't come to judge the world, I came to save the world, to heal the world of its sickness, which is sin, because sin leads to death and I don't want anyone to die, hospital, not courtroom. And actually, there's a quote from a Church Father, St. John Chrysalstom, one of our most prolific church, early church fathers who wrote so much and spoke so many sermons. He said, the church is a hospital, not a courtroom for souls. The church is a hospital, not a courtroom for souls. So that's the first thing we gotta understand, is that we don't view sin as a crime that needs to be punished, we view it as a sickness that needs to be healed. Now, the second question is, are all sins the same to God? Are all sins the same to God? The key in answering that question, okay, are all sins the same, is realizing that there is a difference between spiritual consequences to sin and earthly consequences to sin. There's both. When we sin, there's an earthly consequence and a spiritual consequence. Are all sins the same? In an earthly sense, no. Earthly consequences for sins differ. But in a spiritual sense, the spiritual consequence of all sin is the same.

Let's start with the earthly. In the world, not every sin is, the consequence is not the same, okay? It's just like a crime. So every sin is an individual act and every individual breaking of any rule comes with a different penalty or a different value, okay? So there's like a hierarchy, and I think we would all agree that speeding is bad, stealing is worse, murder is worse, okay? There's nowhere it says that, but we would agree the consequences for murder are greater than the consequences for stealing, which are greater than the consequences for speeding, okay? There's different consequences based on, in an earthly sense. If I push my brother, that's bad. If I push the president, the consequences are much worse, okay? If I steal from the 7-11 versus if I steal from the White House, like the consequences are not the same in an earthly sense. How about with God? Are the consequences the same? Well, James chapter two, verse 10 says, "'For whoever shall keep the whole law, "'yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all.'" Whoever shall keep the whole law, yet stumble in one point is guilty of all. How can it be? Earthly, there's different rules. Each one is by itself. If you commit murder, has nothing to do with stealing, stealing has nothing to do with lying, like they're each individual crimes. But God's law is singular. It's a seamless whole. God does not have many laws. It's one law, it's God's law. And according to what James says, if you break one, you break them all. Either you kept God's law or you broke God's law. But those are the only two options.

There are only two options. You say to yourself, how is that fair? Well, again, back to the whole idea of sickness versus crime. If you are any sickness in your body, there's healthy and then there's sick. And any sickness needs treatment, regardless of what it is. Now, some sicknesses will kill you faster than others, for sure, okay? But any sickness, any virus, which is foreign to the body, means that I have something which is outside the norm. So it doesn't matter if I talk bad about you behind your back or to your face, if you deserve it or you don't deserve it. It doesn't matter if I steal from my parents or I steal from a store. If I lie to you or I lie to this person, all sin in God's eyes leads to the same place. And that's Romans 6.23, for the wages of sin is death. All sin leads to the same place because all sin is introducing a virus into your body and that virus leads to death. Again, some lead faster than others, but all of them in a spiritual sense have the same consequence. Let me say it in slightly different way. Think of every sin as some form of cancer. There's some forms of cancer that are bigger than others, but every cancer is an illness and I don't want any. Like I don't say like, okay, well, it's a small little cancer so it's not that big a deal. In an earthly sense, that's what we do, small sin, big sin. But in a spiritual sense, even the smallest cancer, even the smallest cancer can kill you because the small cancer leads to a slightly bigger cancer and it grows and it grows and it grows. And in fact, if you ask my honest opinion, if I was you, I would be much more concerned about the small sins in your life, the hidden sins than about the big ones. The small ones are the ones that are gonna mess you up. It's not the big ones. Like my house, my fear with my house is not being, my house would be destroyed by an elephant. That's not my fear because if there's an elephant, I'll see it coming a mile away. Like that's not my fear. There's no elephants around here. You can see big things like that. My fear is the termite that can't be seen.

That may be underneath you, that may be working right now that I don't even realize. Again, St. John Chrysostom, early church father, said no one quickly and at once rushes out into vice. The devil gently and little by little leads him onto it until he comes to the very pit of destruction and casts himself in. All sins kill, big sins, little sins. Okay, think of it another way, drowning in the ocean. Whether you drown in 20 feet of water or 30 feet or 300 feet, it doesn't really matter. The big sin, the little sin. Sin is sin, sin leads to death regardless of whether it's big or little sin in our eyes. And that's why we always talk about sin less as a like absolute, like this is bad and this is good. Like these things are okay. This is the line. We don't look at it that way. Again, that's Hollywood.

That's not us. Our Orthodox view of sin has always been a slippery slope where regardless of where you are on the mountain, regardless of where you are here, here, here, doesn't matter where, our view of sin is that any step in the wrong direction could take us down the mountain real quick and we call that a sin. And that gets us to our next question, which is how do I know what is a sin? If you're telling me, Father Anthony, that it's not absolute, like how do I know? Like is there a list? How do I know what's a sin and not a sin? Well, the key is understanding the word sin. Literally the word sin in Greek means to miss the mark. So what is a sin? Sin is anytime I miss the mark. Think of it like a dartboard, okay, or a bullseye. Bullseye is better, okay? A bullseye, there's only one bullseye.

Actually think of it better than that. Think of like X marks the spot. Okay, like a treasure hunt, you know, like X marks the spot. That's where the treasure is. Anywhere outside of that spot is wrong. So if you're a foot away, you're not gonna find the treasure. But if you're 100 feet away or 200 feet away or 300 or anything in between, it doesn't matter. Either you're on the mark or you're outside the mark. Well, sin is the same way. There's a mark and anything on the mark, that's good. Anything outside of that mark, it doesn't matter if you're a foot or 100 feet away is sin. Well, what's the mark? What's the target? Romans 8.29, for whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son. You and I were created in the image of God and that image got distorted because of sin and all the bad stuff. The goal of life is to get to that image. The goal of life is to be Christ. The goal of life is to deal with my friends as Christ dealt with his friends, my enemies as Christ did, to pray as Christ did, to treat my parents as Christ did, to think as Christ did, to trust as Christ did, to go through suffering as Christ did.

That's the mark. Anything aside from that, again, a foot away or 100 feet away, we would say that's sin. Anything that's away from where Christ is is sin. And again, if you see now, if you missed the beginning of this and you just heard this and I'm telling you anything that's not Christ is sin, you'd say, oh my goodness, I'm gonna get punished for everything that I do that's away from Christ? That go back and listen to the beginning because in the beginning we agreed sin is not a crime to be punished. It's not like there's a standard, you better get there. No, what sin is, I'm sorry, what the goal is, is Christ and anything from there is a sickness and we come to Christ to heal us, to lift us up, to fix whatever is broken. You see how it works? Get rid of the idea that there's a line, good on the right, bad on the left. It's okay to do this, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay. Once you get here, that's a sin. No, no, no, no, no, no. Because we're all coming from different places. We're all, think of the mountain analogy, okay? We're all trying to climb up to the top of the mountain and that's where Christ is, top of the mountain.

Doesn't matter where you are. If you're at 10 feet, 20 feet, 30 feet, 40, anywhere from zero to where Christ is, doesn't matter where. Sin is anytime you step in the wrong direction, a step away from Christ. And good is anytime you step towards Christ, okay? We would call that like, that's the whole point of life. That's like our sanctification process or transformation of becoming like Christ, to be one with Christ. Any step towards Christ, good. Any step away from Christ, bad sickness that needs to be healed. So the question for us is not, is this wrong? Why is this wrong? Who said this is wrong? Give me a Bible verse that says this is wrong.

That's not the question. The question we ask, is this Christ-like? Am I getting closer to the image of Christ or am I getting further? That's the right way to approach it. Any step towards him is good. Any step away is missing the mark and that's sin. And that gets us to our final question, which is why should I care about small sins? Why should I care about small sins? And the answer, given everything that I said, is because small deviations, small steps over a long period of time can have a major impact on your life. Small steps, even very small, in the wrong direction over a long period of time can have a major impact. So think about it. You got a problem with your temper, okay? Your temper is not Christ-like, but it's manageable. But you know what? If your temper, if you just take one step in the wrong direction every year, every year your temper gets a little bit worse, a little bit worse, or your patience gets a little bit less, a little bit less, or your resent gets a little bit stronger, a little bit thicker. If every year you get a little bit worse, small deviation over a long period, extrapolate that bad boy out and you're gonna find yourself in a very bad position. Again, think of it like physically. Someone who is maybe in good shape today, but every year gets a little bit in worse shape, gets a little bit higher cholesterol, blood pressure goes in the wrong direction just a little bit every year, artery gets a little bit more clogged. This is how people have major problems. It's not because it happened overnight, but it's little things that added up. So small sins are a big deal because over time they can have a major impact. But the good news is, is not only can small sins have a major impact, but small positive steps can have a major impact too. St. Paul said in 2 Corinthians chapter three, said that we all with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory just as by the spirit of the Lord. Meaning that every single day, what we need to do is we need to open our Bibles. We need to stand in prayer and we need to look in the mirror. And we need to look in the mirror, the spiritual mirror and examine our souls. The mirror is Christ. I need to look and see between me and Christ, where is there a discrepancy? Of course, for me, for you, we look at Christ and we see there's a million discrepancies.

I get it. How can I take one step closer to where Christ is? Like I said, maybe that's prayer. My prayer life can get one step closer. Fasting, self-control, resisting temptation, the way I treat my mother, the way I treat my father, the way I attend church, okay? How can I take one step closer? How can I take one step closer and step by step get closer to where Christ is and is calling me to be? So recap, sin is not a crime to be punished. It's a sickness to be healed. Yes, there in an earthly sense, there are big and small, but in a spiritual sense, they're all the same.

They all lead to death. Anytime we miss the mark, we slide down the mountain, any small step away from Christ is a step towards death, okay? And that ultimately is gonna lead to a bad place, but also on the flip side, any positive step will bring me closer to him. So hopefully we keep moving in the right direction, okay? Now I wanna open it up for questions. And I see that we have several questions right here. And I saw someone did raise their hand. If someone would like to raise their hand again, I would be more than happy to let you ask your question verbally if you would like, but just go ahead and raise hand while you do that. I will check the questions, okay? And the first question, what are some of the small sins? Yeah, so I would say again, a small, I don't wanna speak in an absolute sense, okay? In an absolute sense, I can't say small sins, not small sins. But what I would say is that the small sins that I'm talking about are the hidden ones, the ones that aren't apparent, okay?

So the ones that may not appear on the surface, the ones that you may have to dig around for. And that's why one of the things that strongly encourage you to do is the sacrament of confession and practicing confession. This is one of the true mysteries and blessings of our Orthodox Church is it tells us that we need to practice confession regularly because you know what happens? As I'm going through life right now, I don't feel like I got any sins. I don't got any major sins, no big sins, everything is fine. But then the church says, no, you should go to confession. And then I say, okay, I gotta go to confession. So I gotta say something to the priest when I go. So let me examine myself, let me look in that mirror. You say, oh, man, I didn't realize it.

I found this, I found out that, you know what? There is a lot of resentment in there that I really haven't forgiven that person. Or that, you know what? I am not really trusting God. So I would encourage you to not be content with the surface level. Okay, this is why like when you go to the doctor, nothing may appear wrong on the outside, but you know that it's the inside, like bleeding from my hand is bad, but you see that. So you know, you cover it up. But like internal bleeding, that's much worse. All right, and if you especially look in the New Testament, you would see that Jesus spoke with many people who had outside sins. They think like the Samaritan woman, or think like Zacchaeus, or, and he was fine with them. Like outside sins are easy to solve. It's the people who had the inside sins, the Pharisees, the scribes, those guys, those are the ones that were in trouble. Okay, so no big and small in God's eyes, but I would say hidden and manifest. That's one of the things we say in our prayer, watch out for the hidden ones. Next question is, do you, do small sins lead to habitual sin? How do we handle habitual sin? Any sin, big or little, okay, if by using that terminology would lead to habitual sin, absolutely, if not treated. Again, think of it like any sickness, any sickness. Like if I have a cold, it's not, is it a big deal that you have a cold? No, it's not a big deal. But if you've had a cold for like six months, that's like kind of a big deal. So you should really get that taken care of because now it's not just like something that was here and left.

If you've been sneezing for six months straight, you got a more serious issue that needs to be treated. And same thing when it comes to sin. I fell into this sin, okay, you know what I mean? But when I see it becoming a pattern, okay, that's when I'm much more concerned, obviously, okay. And how do we handle habitual sin? The starting point is, the starting point honestly is awareness, is awareness and then repentance and confession and then go from there. But truthfully, if you're aware and you repent and then you confess, you're at least halfway home. Again, I wanna say you're probably 80% of the way home because even if you continue to struggle with the sin, the goal is to get forgiveness for it, okay. Next question. What about the sins we commit unknowingly? Okay, so thank you Lydia for that question. What about the sins we commit unknowingly? There's two kinds of sins we commit unknowingly. There's unknowingly and truly unknowingly.

Okay, let's start with that. And then unknowingly slash unlookingly, meaning like we don't want to know, meaning we don't examine ourselves, meaning we just, we never opened that drawer. So I don't know what's in there. The sins that we truly don't know about, of course, all of us are committing sin. Menaspear from blemish, even though it was life on earth is a single day, all of sin that falls short of the glory of God. All of us are committing sins that we are not aware of. That's one category, but that's different than I'm not examining myself regularly. I'm not looking, I'm turning a blind eye, okay. Those are the ones that, again, if you're gonna go back to the New Testament, the Pharisees would say, we didn't know, we didn't know. Well, it's because you weren't listening when Jesus told you. And he kept saying it over and over and over and over and over, you just weren't listening. So let's do our part and examine ourselves. And of course, God's grace covers those things that we truly did not know about, okay. Anyone else have any questions? Let me see, no more questions in the Q&A.

And I see no questions in the chat. Oh, there's more questions, sorry. This one is, what is the earthly consequence of sin? And is God going to help us when we face those consequences? So the earthly consequences of sin, there's many of them. Okay, it depends on what the sin is. So if I steal, I'm gonna go to jail. You know, that's the earthly consequence. If I cheat on my exam, I'm gonna get kicked out of college. Is God gonna help us when we face those consequences? I mean, maybe. Well, first of all, he's always gonna help us. God is always helping us, but that doesn't mean he's gonna remove the consequence. I think that's a true question. God's gonna help us, yes. But is God gonna remove the consequence?

No. I mean, he might, like you might miraculously get off the hook. You know, it was always the, you know, I was speeding and you know, I had to go to the police officer and I whatever, and I prayed and God, okay. That's not how God usually works. Okay, I know with my kids, the worst thing I can do with my kids, like what would you tell me as a parent? Okay, if I told my kid, if you do this, there's a consequence. My kid keeps on doing it and I just let him off the hook. You're gonna say you're spoiling your kid. You're gonna say you're raising a brat. You're gonna say for the good of the child. So truth of the matter is, is that consequences come and there are consequences to our actions. There's no denying that. And that's not God being mean. That's actually God being respectful and loving. That's God saying you're an adult. So you're free to make your own decisions. But the way we treat adult is, you're free to make your own decision, but there's accountability for those decisions. There's always consequences in an earthly sense. What God does is he forgives the spiritual consequences of the sin, okay? And someone put up here, are all sins forgiven, like the serial killer or like, and they named some, and it said other sins. Yes, absolutely. Because you know who was a serial killer? Sort of, St. Paul.

St. Paul was a serial killer. Now, when I say are sins forgiven, of course the prerequisite is repentance, true repentance. But any sin, no matter what it is, can be forgiven by God. Like that's the whole point of salvation. And that's actually, I realize this person wasn't going there, but that's actually the whole point of what I'm trying to say, is that all sin in God's eyes is sin. All sin in God's eyes is sin. And like as in verse James chapter two, verse 10, anyone who's committed one. So all sin can be forgiven by God. There's no sin that cannot be forgiven. Earthly consequences, the serial killer will go to jail and should go to jail. And he should pay the price for his sin. He absolutely should, because I'm not God. So all I can do if I'm a human judge, if I'm a police officer, all I can do is deal in an earthly sense and there's consequences to actions.

But in a greater sense, if God forgives us, it's obviously the more important of the two and when all is said and done. Nancy says, I heard there's a confession guide. It has the name of the sins, but I couldn't find it on Line with You. It would help me find out. I actually think that Susan may have put it. Yes, Susan put in the, actually no, I don't know. Oh no. So yes, there is a confession, there's a motion to me. If you go to stsaministries.org, stsaministries.org, go to stsaministries.org and click under the spiritual growth tab, you will find a confession guide. You'll also find some other fun stuff there as well.

So stsaministries.org, go to the spiritual growth tab. Okay. We will go one more question right here. This one says, what does it mean to sin against the Holy Spirit? That is a big question. So I'm not really gonna answer that one, but I will say maybe we can talk about that another time. What you're referring to is that Jesus at one point says that there's an unforgivable sin, which is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. I believe it's in Matthew chapter 12. Yeah, it's not what we think it means. We'll talk about that another time, okay? I'll go one more question right here. Bronda says, does the severity still vary by individual as Moses' sister Miriam was punished more severely because she was more knowledgeable? It's a great question, Bronda. What I will say is this, is that God, so the answer to your question, does the severity, I'm gonna change the word severity. The consequence changed by individual? Absolutely, absolutely. And it would be again, like a father with his children, that with some of my children, I only have two, but let's pretend I had so many, is that some of my children, I know need this consequence to learn their lesson.

Some I know need this, and some have been given this, and some may be sick. A sick child wouldn't be treated the same way as a healthy child, okay, depending on, excuse me. And what it is that we're talking about. So God, okay, here's an important sentence, which is simple, but so profound. God is just, God is just, meaning that nobody is going to get to the end of this road. No one's gonna get up there and say, God, you did me wrong. No one's gonna say that, because God is just. No one's gonna say, God, you were unfair to me. You gave me the short end of the stick. No one is gonna be able to say that. Now we say that because we don't see the full picture. Our eyes are kind of blinded. We just kind of see like very small, we're like, God, you're not giving me like the way you treat others better than me.

But when our eyes are fully opened, and we see all that God has done and is doing, and continues to do for us, no one will say that I got the short end of any stick, okay? We will stop right there with the questions. So thank you so much to everyone for joining us, and make sure you check out our website, stsaministries.org. That's stsaministries.org. As I mentioned earlier, you can find a confession guide right there. You can find all kinds of other helpful resources for you personally, as well as hopefully for your church. And be sure to register for our next Ancient Faith Chat, which will be on the third Wednesday of August, which I believe is, I'm gonna say the 17th. I'm gonna go with the 17th of August. Yes, August 17th. And our topic there is going to be, why does God allow suffering? All right, and the real question we wanna say is not just why does he allow suffering, but why does he allow suffering to good people like me? It's really what we're trying to answer that question. So sign up, register to join. You'll get a little reminder in your inbox. Please feel free to pass the word, spread the word, and pass this website and the message along to anyone who you know would benefit from it. And I will see you all in August, on August 17th. Have a great rest of the month, and God bless you all.