Hey, one more time. Welcome to Central. So glad that you're here. Thank you for inviting us into your home as you have for the past several months, and it's just a joy to be with you and I hope you had a fantastic Memorial Day weekend. It is really hard to believe that summer is here but summer is here. And, you know, it's interesting, this summer is going to be a little bit different. One of the joys of summer is, that usually we get to travel. We get to go somewhere around the country. We get to go somewhere around the world. We get to go experience places and obviously because of the Covid-19 virus, this is going to be a different summer. We don't get to go places. We don't get to go. Places aren't open and you can get there, and there's absolutely nothing to do when you're there. So, we thought this summer because of this, it's a one off summer. It's not like any other summer that we would do something a little bit different. And that, our theme this summer, we decided to play off this book. Okay. This is obviously a Dr. Seuss book called, Oh, The Places You'll Go. We decided to pick, our theme is, Oh, The Places We'll Go. And you know, normally for the past two or three summers, we've had this fantastic thing we've done called At The Movies, and we get to show some of our favorite movies and kind of extract some teachings out of the movies, popular movies. And because of copyright laws, we can't do that. And because so much of our experience right now is online. We thought, why don't we do something different? Why don't we, instead of talking about movies, let's talk about books. Now, I don't know what your reaction to that is, but hang on, okay, because books are incredible in the places that they can take you and and books. You get a chance to travel to all kinds of places around the world in words. You get to experience ideas and concepts, and you get to see so many things that you otherwise wouldn't get to see. And we thought it'd be really, really fun to do it this way. Now. let me just say this, what I've asked our staff to do is, to share some of their favorite books. Okay. And, and the way we're going to do this is. It's the idea, if I could get the church to read one book, what would be that one book I would want them to read? And so I'm going to lead off today and then different staff throughout the summer are going to share some of their favorite books, but I want to explain something to you that I think is really, really important about books. Okay? Now all of the books, will have a Christian theme to them. I want to start there. Okay. These are not, we're not going to talk about children's books. We're going to talk about substantial books that'll stretch your mind. But there's a couple of things I think are really, really important that, you need to understand. And the number one thing is that there are no Christian and non-Christian books. Books don't have faith. Books can express faith. Books can open up your mind to things you've never seen. They can inspire you, they can challenge you, but the author might or might not be a Christian, but the, you know, there's not a Christian book. The second thing that I think is really important we understand when it comes to reading books is that you can't assume that if I read a book, I've got to agree with everything in that book. And if I don't agree with everything in that book is a bad book, that is a horrible way to approach reading a book. You read a book to glean ideas, you read a book to extract things you've never thought about. Now I'm going to throw a concept out here that's really, really important that you understand, okay? And it's this, that you can't grow from ideas you already know. The only way you can grow is to wrestle with things you've never wrestled with to experiences you've never experienced. So we're going to kick this summer off right here. I'm in Northern Arizona. I'm in one of my favorite places in the world. I love coming up here. I love the mountains. And this to me is the place where I read books and folks, I read a lot of books. I love to read. I love the experience of reading. I love where it takes me and I can't wait to do this. Now the idea is. That we're going to try to get you to read the book that the staff person is putting before you. We're going to introduce you to book, we think is well worth your time. And I'm going to kick this whole thing off today with this book right here, and it's called Love Your Enemies. It's by Dr. Arthur C. Brooks. And I'll explain who he is in just a moment. But folks, I'm telling you, if you want to read a great book this summer, start with this one. All right? Now, let me, let me introduce to you who, Arthur C. Brooks is, this man, he is not a preacher. I'll tell you that first off, he's a professor. He's not a professor at just any school. He is a professor at Harvard. Okay? He is a Catholic. He is a God fearing man. He is a guy that has written 11 different books, two of which have been national bestsellers. He is an incredible man. I read this book, earlier this spring. And I just went, wow. So many ideas in this book are so incredibly challenging and so worth considering. And, as I read this, I got to know him a little bit through his reading, through his writing, my reading, his writing. He's, he's a social scientist. He is a brilliant, brilliant man. He's got a PhD, an incredible guy. And, and when I read this, I thought, my goodness, this would be so fascinating to have as a kind of our lead off. Now, a lot of people have become familiar with Arthur C. Brooks, Dr. Brooks, because of something that happened a couple months back. Let me explain to you what happened. Every year, my wife, Lisa, goes to what's called the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, DC and every about every other year I join her and other people from our church have gone. It's an incredible experience, not necessarily a Christian experience, cause people, it's primarily a Christian, but people from different faiths attend. But what they do, at the National Prayer Breakfast every year is they have a handful of speakers that you can count on being there. You're going to hear from the President of the United States. You're going to hear from the Speaker of the House, and you're going to hear from somebody that the Congress has chosen as the guest speaker to everybody at the National Prayer Breakfast. This year, just literally a couple months back, it was Arthur C. Brooks. And what made this so incredible? Now you got to follow this. Okay? And I need you to go back. I need you to take it back into your mind, into all that was going on, in January, February, early March. Okay?

I want you to think about the impeachment trial. I want you to think about all of the angst, and just all the vitriol that was going around our country. I want you to imagine what Washington DC would have been like right there, at that time, because why this book is so hugley significant is that Arthur Brooks, on the day after President Trump was acquitted of the charges, he appeared at the National Prayer Breakfast. So follow this. Nancy Pelosi is sitting on one side of Arthur Brooks and the President of the United States. And I want you to think of that. And he gets up between their, their addresses, and he puts the premise of this book on the table, which is we need to learn how to love our enemies. And I'm telling you, folks, you can't make this stuff up. It was incredible. The timing was absolutely crazy. Now before we go any further, I want to, I want to take you to scripture and I want to remind you of something that our Lord said. All right. And he didn't say it in a kind of half, you know, half hearted nature. It wasn't like a suggestion. Jesus Christ in the sermon on the Mount, laid out something that is truly provocative. And I just want to remind you of this. And if you're not, if you're not familiar with it. You need to understand that Jesus Christ set a standard for us as his followers, which is incredibly high. Let me read to you what he said. All right, and this comes from Matthew chapter five and I'm going to begin reading with verse 43. He said this, he said, you have heard that it was said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your father in heaven. He causes his son to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Now, if you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that, and if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not pagans even do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Let me break this down for you. It is easy to love those that you love. It is easy to love those that you like. It is easy to love people who are like you, like is easy to love. Alright? What Jesus is saying is that's not the standard. That's the world's standards. He said, I want you to be like my Father in heaven, and he used the word perfect, which is teleos. It's the idea of you have to rise above, you have to be more than, and then he quoted, literally, I referenced, excuse me, his Father, he said, look, my dad does this. He sends rain on the good and the bad, the good guys and bad guys get the beauty of a you know, a thunderstorm, a monsoon. Good guys and bad guys get the beauty of a sunset, of a beautiful sunrise, of beautiful mountains. Everybody, he's good to everyone. And that's the standard that Jesus laid out for us. We're to love people like he loved, like he loved us. And so we want to, you know, we want to say, well, people don't deserve this, and, and they're different than us and all that. And Jesus said, no, we're not going to do that. He has a very, very high standard. So as I was getting ready for this message, and again, was so moved by this book and, so resonated with so much of what he wrote in there. And again, not everything. But so much of it. That I thought, I wonder if there's any way I could just get a chance to talk to him. And so, we contacted him and said, Hey, is there any chance I would love for our people to put a face behind the writing of this book? Cause I really do, guys, I'm serious I want you to read this book. All right? But, you got to understand, you know, contacting a Harvard professor and going, hey, what are the chances, you know. Incredible response from this guy. He was so kind. He was so gracious, and he absolutely consented. And so what I did was I set up a Zoom call and I just asked him some questions and then, he answered the questions and I thought, wouldn't it be fun? Wouldn't it be a fantastic way to kick up our summer if we could actually just listen to him describe things in the book, and I'll comment on a couple of things, but I'm telling you, this man is so kind. He is so humble. He is so brilliant. He is so worth hanging out with. And so what I'm going to do is, I'm going to just, I'm just gonna fire off

the questions I asked him. And then I captured his responses, and then we're just going to put them in right after. So we're going to go from this setting to his office at Harvard in Massachusetts. Okay. Or at home, wherever he was. I don't know where it was. And then, I'm going to pop back in and I'll say a comment or two and we'll go back to him. But I'm telling you. The beauty of this message today is getting to hang out with Dr. Brooks because he is so incredibly brilliant. So the first question I asked him was this question, Dr. Brooks, what caused you to write this book? And he said, this. So for the last, 20 years or so as a social scientist, I've been looking for different ways to bring people together and lift them up. I'm not a, I'm not a clergyman. I'm a, I'm an undercover agent for the good, I think. And as somebody who has a PhD in social science, and I do work in this as an academic and at a think tank. I'm always looking for different angles, different ways to define the problems in society and turn them into opportunities to bring people together. And, I saw this opportunity and it kind of an alarming example some years ago. In about 2014, I was reading an article, which is what I do for my personal improvement as a professional. I was reading an article by, by two psychologists who were writing about a phenomenon called motive attribution asymmetry. That's a bunch of fancy words. That's what we academics do to get tenure. But it's a very simple concept. It's a, it's the case in which. People in a conflict, let's say the Palestinians and Israelis or in the Rwandan genocide or any bad international conflict where both sides believe that they're motivated by love, but the other side is motivated by hatred. When this happens, when both sides are saying I'm motivated by love, but you're motivated by hatred, there's no incentive for either side to compromise, and that's when conflict becomes intractable. Now, the reason this caught my attention was because this, these authors, they noticed that for the very first time since we've been keeping records that in the United States, Democrats and Republicans had the same level of motive attribution asymmetry as the Palestinians and Israelis. And I thought to myself, that's really bad. That's really dangerous. And if that's the future, I got to do something about that. That was a month after that, that I had this experience that really put me on this path to trying to, you know, what actually culminated in this book Love Your Enemies. I was giving a speech, in front of a very conservative activists group there were 600 or 700 conservative activists, and I speak to every kind of group. I speak to liberals and conservatives and everybody in between because it's a privilege, and I think this is what God wants me to do. And as I was giving the speech, I said this, you know, I said, look, I know you're conservative activists and I agree with a lot of what you have to say. But I want you to remember that the people who disagree with you, political liberals, they're not stupid and they're not evil. They're just Americans who disagree with you on public policy. And if you want to persuade them, which should be your goal. There's only one way you can do it. And that's with love. And this lady yells out, I think they're stupid and evil. And it was a joke. I mean, she wasn't trying to hurt my feelings, but you know, Cal, what I thought of. Was at that moment, and this was the big epiphany I thought of my family, cause my family in Seattle, Washington. I mean, I grew up in Seattle, my father was a college professor and my mother was an artist. What do you think their politics were? The most liberal city in America. And when that lady said that in New Hampshire, that's where I was that day. She was talking about my mom and I took it personally. I can tell ya, I mean, there's a lot of things that my parents, they were not stupid and they were not evil. They were great parents who, who they, they, they brought me up with Christian values and, and to value education and to love my neighbor and to love my enemy. And, you know, when that lady said that, she was insulting the people I love the most, and I thought to myself. That's the solution. That's the solution to motive attribution asymmetry because when we recognize that when somebody on our side is insulting people on the other side, they're insulting somebody that we love, to personalize it in that way is the opportunity for us to understand both sides simultaneously. This is the way to live out the lesson of Matthew 5:44, to love our enemies. Is to personalize it in this particular way and that that's why I wrote Love Your Enemies and it's really changed my life. Okay, well obviously that was really good stuff. You know, it's interesting. In our country we are, we are becoming haters and we're okay with it. And you know, it's interesting, you expect, you know, political violence, from countries like Russia or maybe North Korea. You don't imagine it being so much in America, but really, if we don't check some of our attitudes, we're headed down a path and this path is going to lead us to a destination. And the destination certainly isn't going to be pretty. It's very much, becoming very toxic. So one of the key themes of this book, one of the most brilliant things he does in this book is he talks about our culture of contempt and how we're so okay with with contempt. And so I asked him, would you just explain from your perspective what contempt is and what it's doing to us? And this is what he said. People often, when they're looking at our, our kind of our terrible political landscape today. I mean, like one party dislike another party. Nobody actually thinks this is great. We hope we have this kind of polarization forever. 94% of Americans hate how divided we become as a country. Very few people, I bet you know, most of us. You know, the folks in the church watching this today dislike it no matter what their political views. And a lot of people say that the problem is that we're too angry. You know, you turn on cable television, you know, God forbid you should look at the internet. I mean, it's just people yelling at each other and it's so much anger. It turns out anger is not the problem. Anger is a primary negative emotion. It's produced into the part of the brain called the amygdala. It's an involuntary reaction that stimulus and anger, while it's, it's a tricky thing and it's uncomfortable and it's unpleasant. It's actually not very dangerous for relationships. There are good studies that show that that anger and divorce are uncorrelated, which just incredible, isn't it? I mean, I'm, you know, I'm married to a Spaniard. I've been married to a Spanish woman for the past 30 years. The love of my life. And let me tell you the secret to my 30 years of successful marriage are the lack of correlation between anger and divorce, because you know, Spanish people there, let's just put it this way, they're, they're highly in touch with their amygdalas, right? And so the problem isn't anger in our politics and our relationships. The problem is something else. There's another primary negative emotion called disgust, which is, it's a reaction to a pathogen. And when we bring disgust and mix it with anger, we get what, what philosophers and psychologists call contempt. Contempt according to Arthur Schopenhauer, the 19th century philosopher is, is the conviction of the utter worthlessness of another. Think about this to have contempt for somebody is not just to be angry. It's to say that you're a pathogen. I want you out because you're worthless. No, you're dangerous. There's no role for you. That's an expression of hatred. What destroys marriages? I mean, there's a friend that I have named doctor Dr. John Gottman. He teaches at the University of Washington and he's the world's leading expert in marital reconciliation. This guy's a hero because we all know, everybody watching us today knows that the secret to a good society is a stable family and the secret to a stable family is mom and dad in love. This guy has brought thousands of couples together that were about to get a divorce, and how does he do it? He does it by addressing contempt. He says that if he sees contempt in relationship. Specifically, if he sees people rolling their eyes or treating each other with sarcasm or derision or dismissal, that there's a 96% chance that there'll be divorced within three years. I don't know if those data are right all the time and for every population, I'm sure they're not right for the people who were watching us, but suffice it to say it's bad. Never show contempt, and it's the same thing in our society. If we want to be the ones who bring people together, if we want to be responsible for bringing people together in bonds of love, which our Savior told us we get to do, it's our a great privilege in being alive. The way to do it is by declaring war on contempt because contempt is what destroys us and the first thing to do in that battle is to declare war on contempt in ourselves to never let anyone see us displaying contempt. So, obviously that is a lot to chew on, a lot to think about. And then finally I asked him this question. I said, Dr. Brooks, if you were to sum up why you wrote this book, what would your answer be? And he said this. Right now, we're being told by political leaders and by the media and by a lot of people in positions of leadership and authority that we need to show our commitment to our beliefs by hating the people who don't share them. That's a mistake. That's making our country less effective and it's making us less happy as people. How do I know that? I have the data, it's what I do for a living. When nearly 19 out of 20 Americans say they hate how divided we become. We have a big problem. What's the solution? The answer to that is that stand up to the outrage industrial complex and then to do something else. We'll look as Christians where do we look when we don't know what to do? We look to the words of the master. We look to the Bible. Matthew 5:44, Jesus says, love your enemies. Do good to those who persecute you. That was the most subversive thing anybody had ever heard. That rocked the world 2000 years ago, and that rocks the world still today. Do you want to be the person who heals at least some relationship or at least has the fighting chance of healing your relationship? You will not do it by insulting somebody. Nobody has ever been insulted into agreement in history. You will only persuade and you will only heal with love. It is the only way. Our Lord told us to do that because it's the right thing to do because it is the Christian way, but also it's intensely practical. That's the point of my book. Do what your heart tells you to do, which will also make also make you more effective. Well, hey, I hope you enjoyed hearing from him as much as I have, man, and I'm telling you he's just a wonderful, wonderful man with a wonderful spirit, with a whole lot to say. He said, actually so much more that just in this medium of doing this this weekend, I can't get it all in. And so what I decided to do is for my Wednesday broadcast this Wednesday at noon, I'm going to take some of the things that I couldn't fit into this message and share them with you. I actually asked him, what was it like on the National Day of Prayer. Fascinating. And I'm just telling you, you don't want to miss that, so you get more of him if you, if you want to tune in, that'd be great. But I want to, I want to share just a couple more thoughts about this issue of contempt. Contempt is when you show utter you know, just disgust towards somebody. It's when you remove all respect out of the equation, and as he has put it, you, you're never gonna win anybody over by treating them poorly. You're never going to win anyone to your point of view by showing contempt toward them. And contempt comes from the Latin word contemptuous, which means scorn. It's just utter disdain. And you know what I find fascinating? Back to where Jesus said, love your enemies. You know what he said just before that? He said, don't ever do that to anybody. In fact, let me read to you another part of the sermon on the mount. This is Matthew 5:21 and 22 just to remind you. You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, you shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment. But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother or sister Raca is answerable to the court. And anyone who says you fool will be in danger of the fire of hell. Let me explain what he's saying. If you treat people with contempt, you have so lowered the standard of the kingdom of heaven and Jesus is saying, don't go there. But the problem is, folks, it's so much a part of our culture. We're so comfortable living with contempt. We're so comfortable expressing contempt. Another question that you'll hear him, address in the Wednesday thing. You know, we've become so isolated in our views. We believe what we believe, and we only want to hear from those people who affirm what we already believe. We have confirmation bias is problem. And so our news is curated. Our, you know, social media is curate. Everything's like hand chose, chosen what we're going to deal with and folks that takes us places. I don't think our King ever wanted us to go. I want to share a couple of numbers, as we start to wind this down. January, 2017, Reuters Ipsos poll found that one in six Americans had stopped talking to somebody, a close friend or a family member as a result of the 2016 election. And if we're honest, that's probably somebody in your family, and somebody among your friends. We've become so full of contempt. In 1960, only 5% of Americans said they would be displeased if their child, married somebody of a different political party. By 2010, it had risen to 40%, and folks has gone up from there. And, 60% of Americans say that the entire political climate is at the lowest point in US history. In fact, it's been said that we are more divided than we have been since the Civil War. Now, so is this a political message? No, it's not at all a political message. This is a message on how to treat people and how to respond to people and how to respect people. We're a culture that's addicted to outrage. And there's a lot of money that's being made, keeping us at odds with one another, and we've become addicted to the anger, we've become addicted to the contempt. We be addicted. That usually via the anonymity of social media, of just venting ourselves and what I want for us as a church for us to just come to understand this is not the standard we're called to live by. What is the anecdote to contempt? Folks, it's really easy. It's love. It's choosing to do something differently. It's not the easiest thing to do. It's not the first thing that we're inclined to want to do. It's a decision you have to make in your mind that you're not going to lower yourself. And you're not going to bring the King and the kingdom down to the level of this world. It's not squishy. It's not fuzzy. It's not sentimental. It's not just about warm feelings. It's a determination in your mind that you're going to treat people differently, that you're going to be willing to listen to people who have different points of view that you're going to be willing to not just listen to. You're actually going to try to hear. That we're not going to caricature somebody who's of a different point of view. And by the way, you'll know if you've actually been fair to somebody, is if you were describing, so here's, here's a another person, and I'm describing this person to some other person. I know that I've not treated them with contempt if I can express what they would say in the way they would say it. In other words, I'm not trying to slant it. I'm not trying to get this person to not like this, but this is the kind of standard that I believe that we're called to, to be able to speak to one another that way. In this book, he challenges us with some simple practical things. You know, are you friends with anyone of a different political party, a different political persuasion? Do you have friends who see the world differently than you see it? And again, why is this so relevant right now? Folks 2016, 2020. The election in the fall of 2016 shocked all of us. That, that we could be this nasty. Get ready because if we don't prepare ourselves and make our mind up right now, I'm not going down that road. We're going to fall into the same thing, and it might actually be more rancorous this time than it was last time. So politics. How about people of different faiths? Can you say you have friends who are of a different faith and, and go, they're friends of mine. I respect them. I value them. I cherish them. Can you say you have friends who have different values than you have? Because see what happens is we, we've learned how to only, and I've said it this way, our world just gets smaller and smaller and smaller because we only let in the people who agree with us and see everything the way that we see it. And this is not much like Jesus. So can we go back to respecting people and agreeing to disagree agreeably. That I don't see it that way, but you have a right to see it that way. And the reality is the only one who can, can stop contempt in me is me. And the only one who can stop contempt in you is you. So here's, here's the deal church. I'm going to close on this. We're called to love beyond. And I want you to lock that phrase in your mind. Love beyond. Love beyond the similarities, loving in the similarities, easy everybody does that love beyond the similarities. What does that mean? You love beyond, color of somebody's skin. You love beyond the border. You love beyond the faith of somebody else. You love beyond the values of something, you love beyond. That you have such a deep understanding that that person, whoever that person is, was made in the image of God and they matter to God. And that person is a child of God and whatever happens to them, whether you could say, I couldn't care less. Your Father in heaven cares more than you could possibly know. And that's why he's called us to such a high standard. So last verse comes from Psalm 133:1. How good and pleasant it is when God's people live together in unity. You know, it's interesting. Unity is such a big deal right now. And, it's such a, it is such a buzzword if you're paying attention. Unity means that in Christ we're going to commit, that we're going to be united. And guys, right now, again, just on a side note, the church is even being pulled apart. It's being pulled apart over the Coronavirus and our response to it and every church has faced it. Guys, none of it is as important as our walk with God and that we respect one another. We allow people to have differences. And we don't make enemies because we love people. We don't hate them. And that is what we're called to. I'm going to close right now. I'm going to ask you to join me in prayer and we'll wrap this one up. So, God, even though our service isn't over this segment of our service, comes to an end now, and God, I pray that we would take the time to read this book or listen to it on audible just to take in the contents of it. That we're not gonna agree with everything in there, and that's not necessary. What's important is that we stretch our minds and we grow and we deal with stuff we've never dealt with and we become more than we were before we went to the place that this book took us. God, I pray for our summer. I pray for our different teachers are going to teach this Summer. God, I pray that we would just expand our faith. Challenge us, inspire us, move us to greater heights Father. We pray for this to happen in Jesus name.