Peter Called Lot Righteous. Why Don’t We? - Glenn Martin

Sometimes I think of it like a jigsaw puzzle. If you're putting a puzzle together, if you get a piece wrong, you might, you know, continue to be putting your puzzle together until you realize that things simply do not work here. There's something wrong. And then what are we going to do? Are we going to keep forcing the pieces and say it needs to be this way? Or can we, you know, back up and reorganize things to have a better understanding? And if we don't do that, the picture is not going to be right in the end. Yeah.

It's an honor to have you on the podcast, Glenn Martin. So we've connected, you know, different times, but this is the first time I actually got to meet you in person, which is great. You help run the Strength of Strength YouTube channel, which we've had a lot of interaction with. We'll link them down below. You've done different ministry things over the years, and you recently published your first book. And I remember seeing the title when it came out and just kind of doing a double take. And I think maybe some other people did as well. The title of the book is Righteous Lot? Historical Retelling. And I was like, huh, I've not really thought about Lot a whole much in my life, you know?

And so, yeah, you got me a copy of it. I read it. I was very intrigued. And obviously, there's a whole book on this. We're not going to cover it all, but I think it'd be interesting to at least dive into some of the main points and maybe pull some lessons that you've learned through this whole process. So first question is, how did you get interested in Lot? And is not the story of Lot just pretty clear-cut in scripture? Like, why write an entire book about this? Yeah, well, thanks for having me, Reagan. Two questions there. The first was, why did I feel there was a need for a book about Lot? So ever since I was young, even in my teenage years, I had an interest in apologetics.

And anyone who follows the terrain of apologetics kind of knows the common objections to theism or to Christianity. And among those, and there's many different types of objections, but one category would be the reliability of scriptures, and another being the character of God. And in many cases, I think the Christian apologists have done a really good job in defending the reliability of scriptures.

I think it can be demonstrated that the text that we have from the original sources remains remarkably solid to this day. And I think that can be demonstrated and has been demonstrated very well in the apologetic community. But I think one place where perhaps the job has not been done so well is in defending the character of God as illustrating that God is good. So skeptics will call out things like maybe the Canaanite conquest. Okay? So there's a lot of problems or a lot of difficulties that need to be addressed there. And the skeptics will call it a genocide or things like that. There's books that have been written on this, and some have done a reasonable job.

I think we could do a better job. Sometimes skeptics will scoff, you know, about the God who sacrificed himself to himself to save us from himself. Yeah, those are atonement arguments. And I think there would be better ways to understand the atonement. And I think sometimes poor theology gets in the way of that. And then the skeptics will be quick to point that out. And I think that, you know, again, it reflects against the character of God if we are not producing good answers to those objections.

So then the topic at hand about Lot, there's some tough moments in Lot's story. So if Lot was a righteous man, then what do we say about what happened in Sodom? So Genesis gives a pretty graphic account. And we need to, you know, either determine, is this man a good man or a bad man? It would be easy to say he's bad, depending on what our presuppositions are when we come to the text. But it's difficult to say that he's bad because Peter gave his commentary, and he said he's righteous three times. Yeah, see, I think that's the part that made me do a bit of a double take. Because I'm like, well, we all know the story of Lot.

Oh, yeah, this was bad and all that. Oh, wait, Peter, like the apostle, says he's righteous in the New Testament multiple times. Oh, I don't know what to do with that, you know? Anyways, so yeah, but continue. Yeah. So I think that the skeptics have a fair question. So we have reliable scriptures. I think that's pretty solid. But then can we trust this God who has given us these scriptures when he calls Lot a godly person? Like, is God good? You know? So I think that there is, it deserves a good answer. It's kind of a conundrum that deserves a good answer. And in my opinion, the Christian apologists have given all the wrong answers when it comes to Lot.

Okay. So I detail these in my book, and you can easily look these up. My book is footnoted, and you can easily see that these are responses that the Christian community is giving. So some folks will say that Lot must have repented later in life. There's no record of that. Some will say that Peter forgot about Lot's time in Sodom. And these are given as serious answers. Whoa. Okay, but then if you're saying Peter is writing inspired by the Holy Spirit and this is inspired scripture. You've got a problem. That's dangerous territory right there. Wow. Okay. So another thing that's commonly said is that Lot was not held to specific moral expectations because it was prior to the Mosaic Law, which sounds reasonable.

At the same time, though, you got to say, well, what was happening in Sodom, you know, even the Sodomites were held to some moral expectations prior to the Mosaic Law. It really doesn't hold up. Yeah, because God ended up judging the cities, obviously, very dramatically. So, hmm, okay.

And then there's also arguments about imputed righteousness. So some will say that Lot was imputed righteous because of Abraham's faith. Or some will say that Lot was imputed righteous because of Christ's righteousness. And okay, interesting. I'm not sure if I've heard that one before. Okay. Yeah, it's actually a very common response. Interesting. Okay.

So I think these are all remarkably poor answers. I think we can do better. And that's what I attempt to do by giving a historical retelling of what really happened. So oftentimes people will cite what 1 Peter says about being ready always to give a defense of the hope that you have.

But the same verse says that we should sanctify the Lord God in our hearts. So let me just read this verse. This comes from 1 Peter 3:15. It says, "But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you for the reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear." So people focus on the part here about being ready to give a defense. But the verse begins by saying, "Sanctify the Lord God." And to sanctify somebody means to make them holy or better their reputation.

And so if we're doing a good job of defending the reliability of scripture, but we're not showing, demonstrating that God is good, giving him a good reputation, then we're showing that a reliable Bible is illustrating a bad God. And that's not what we want to do. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I'm starting to see that. Yeah. So then moving on to the second part of your question, isn't the story pretty clear-cut in the scripture? Yes and no. I think it is. But many others would read the same story and would also answer that yes, it is clear. And yet they have a completely different picture of what happened. So I think it's clear. You think it's clear.

I think a lot is good. You think a lot is bad. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And, you know, we don't come to the scriptures with a blank slate. We all have our prejudices. We have biases. We have presuppositions.

And I think it's remarkable that the folks who read Jewish or Christian literature 2,000 years ago have a totally different idea about Lot than modern Christians today. So interesting. Interesting. Walk me through that. So 2,000 years ago, you would be around the time of Peter, when Peter said that Lot is righteous. For at least 400 or 500 years before that, at least 400 or 500 years after that, we have lots of records that illustrate what people were thinking at that time. And it was all good. Everyone thought Lot was righteous. Really? Yeah. And of course, if people want references, you've got all that footnoted and stuff in the book. But now I think that's an important piece because, and I don't want to get into a bunny trail, but it feels like, like you said, we don't necessarily come to scripture with this perfect clean slate with no biases and all that.

You know, we tend to put our perspectives into the reading automatically. It's just part of, it's part of being a human. And it's extremely easy to forget that Christians or other people in the past have talked about this, written about this, and had perspectives and totally forget that those existed. And that was the one thing I noticed reading through the book is like, oh, I've never heard that. Oh, wow. There were people, you know, back then that had a completely different perspective and just have lost that entirely. So what you're trying to do with this is obviously you're going back to the text of scripture, but also saying historically what did the church or Jewish writers or other historical people say about it?

Is that a fair way of saying it? That's exactly right. Both Jewish and Christian writers have read extensively a lot of work that we don't spend a lot of time with today. But they show it's very easy to demonstrate how the change of perspective has happened. And I dedicate a chapter or the afterword in the book actually follows that through history. Oh, interesting. Where the perspective kind of shifts over time. Exactly. Oh, interesting. Okay. So essentially you're arguing that at least today we tend to misunderstand Lot. And it's important to recalibrate in a sense, I guess, and try to get our heads around, okay, the story that we have in Genesis, you know, the story of Lot, and then Peter later on saying, this man's righteous.

How do we make this? How does this work? How does this fit together? So I think you've already answered this, but like, why does that matter to us today? And then maybe start going through, start going through this, start explaining this and answering these objections. Sure. Yeah. So I already mentioned one thing, apologetics. I think it matters to have this right because of the unbelieving world. But I think there's also consequences even for ourselves.

Broadly speaking, you know, a few misperceptions here and there in our theology or our understanding of history probably won't hurt us. You know, I'm sure that none of us are right about everything. And maybe sometime in some eschatological future, God will show us, you know, everything we were wrong about. And we might be surprised how many things we were wrong about. But I think that the better we can understand things, the more closely we can come to the truth of the biblical storyline, it's only going to help us to have a better grasp on scripture and understand what God is doing in the world.

Sometimes I think of it like a jigsaw puzzle. If you're putting a puzzle together, if you get a piece wrong, you might, you know, continue to be putting your puzzle together until you realize that things simply do not work here. There's something wrong. And then what are we going to do? Are we going to keep forcing the pieces and say it needs to be this way? Or can we, you know, back up and reorganize things to have a more better understanding? And if we don't do that, the picture is not going to be right in the end. So yeah, I think it, you know, takes a lot of grace and help from God to really get a real perspective of what God is doing and has done in the world.

What would you say is the point where we start like losing the thread of the story, essentially, because again, if he's called righteous in the New Testament, where are we misunderstanding this? Give us maybe some positive examples from Lot's life. Yeah, I mean, this is a big question. Obviously, you wrote a whole book about it, but at least hit some of that because I can sense, you know, probably the listeners who are hearing this are like, okay, you, you, you know, how are you going to explain this one? I know that was me, you know, when I first heard the topic, I was like, wow, how is that, how is that going to work? So yeah, start walking me, walking me through it.

Sure. So early in the story, we have Lot as the nephew of Abraham, Abram at that time. They're traveling together and they would go down to Egypt together. They come back from Egypt together. And shortly after they return from Egypt, within the first year is when they're going to separate. Okay. And so we have this little spat that goes on between the two of them, between Lot and Abraham. And it's like, how is this going to be resolved? Well, it gets resolved by Abraham proposing that we separate and go two different ways. You can go here and I'll go here or vice versa.

So until this time, I think there's a lot of discipleship that was happening. And I think a lot of mistakes that Lot made. And I think it could have been handled differently and better on the part of Lot in making that separation.

But oftentimes the claims that are put against Lot about this are not true. People say that he was selfish or he was, you know, a lot of different negative adjectives to describe that. However, that's really not the case.

Lot knew that they could not continue to dwell together because this land was promised to Abraham. Oh, that's an important piece that's often missed. So there was going to need to be a separation somehow. Right? A second thing that is a factor here, and I'm just looking here in my book, there's a lot of records that Lot was not necessarily looking for an evil place to go. Like people say he had his heart turned towards Sodom, like he wanted the wickedness of the city. The reality is that Sodom was not always evil.

And there's records of that from Josephus and from Philo. And even from the scriptures, it seems to indicate that in the book of Jude. Jude is a book that's talking about backsliding and so on. And it gives this example of Sodom as being a city that backslid. And I think a strong case can be made for that, especially if you give any consideration for other writers, extra-biblical writers. There's a lot of defense that can be made for that. So Lot was not necessarily wanting an excuse to go to Sodom or anything like that. So another claim that's made against Lot is that he was choosing the better land and leaving Abraham with the hills or something like that.

It's really not true at all. When you consider that Abraham was in the center of the promised land, the place that later is called the land flowing with milk and honey. So Lot, I believe, did choose a good land, but he didn't get the best land. Abraham already was in the best land to begin with. I've never thought, I've never heard that. It's always like, oh, selfish Lot took the best for himself. I wonder where that comes from. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Interesting. So there's a few things like that that I think we could derive from scripture if we would. But, you know, we have our preconceptions that kind of override that. And we fail to realize that Abraham was already in the promised land.

God said to him that, you know, look to your north and south and east and west, everywhere you look, this is where your land is. He was in the center of that land. So yeah, I think that's where it begins. And then where it goes from there, of course, is that Lot is in Sodom. And he's not there long until the land of Sodom and the surrounding cities are taken captive by the kings from the north. And then, of course, Abraham, in huge compassion, goes and rescues him.

I think that was a very pivotal time in Lot's life. And from there forward to the end, I don't think that there's anything negative to say about him. I think he learned to walk in the footsteps of Abraham. And I think there's a strong theme in the story of discipleship. And I think that was like the key point where Abraham returned good for some of the evil that had come from Lot. And going forward after that point, I think only good can be said of Lot. Okay. But where do the objections, like what do you start doing with people saying, oh, well, he was living in this wicked city and that's terrible. And, you know, he got too wrapped up in the world of Sodom and all kinds of things in the story that are brought out.

Do you want to hit any of those common objections that are leveled? Even Peter says that's not true because Peter says that it vexed his righteous soul every day. And so we know that he wasn't feeling at home there.

But he isn't, okay. Okay. Okay. But I've heard people say, well, he, you know, he's sitting in the gate of the city. That shows like he's, you know, whatever, whatever, you know, that's extrapolated to say, okay, and you see he's part of the workings of this city, which is clearly evil. That's therefore he's bad or that wasn't right.

What about that? Yep. So there's a lot of records that Sodom became a very wicked city in that they would oppress strangers. And if outsiders came to their city, they would persecute them, even kill them and so on. And, you know, even in some of the prophets, there's a telling of what God had, you know, against Sodom and the reason for which it was destroyed. There's lack of compassion and fullness of bread and things like that. But do you know where is that? I have it documented. It's probably in the footnotes somewhere. That is fascinating because now that's a part of the story you don't hear. Is like Sodom getting judged for what would you call it, you know, lack of hospitality or not being willing to share with those in need, et cetera, et cetera.

You know, you list it. That's one I don't know if I had ever heard of until I read through your book. I was like, wait a minute, you know, I missed that completely. Sure. Yeah. And then I think what was actually happening is that Lot was in the city gates in the evening because he was watching for strangers who may be coming through because he wanted to rescue them from the people of the city. And so what he's doing is he sees some people coming. It turns out to be the angels, but he didn't know that. And he's there to take them to his house because he wants to protect them and save them. So he wasn't there as a judge of the city or anything like that.

He was there with the intent to evangelize the city. He was in the city gates to protect the people who come through from the people of the city. I wonder if some of this is just misconceptions about if someone is living in this really wicked environment, we make assumptions that therefore they are capitulating to that lifestyle. They are, you know, living ungodly because they're in a location that is obviously evil, right? Because Sodom is judged. But that seems like that's just an assumption. That doesn't mean that that was actually the case, right? That's exactly correct. Like, why is that assumption there though? Like, why do we be like, oh, well, because you were living in an area that was evil, therefore you're evil too?

Right. That's oversimplified, but yeah. It is, but nonetheless, it's a good point. So one thing you need to think about is Lot's daughters were there in the city as well. They grew up until they were, the older one was about 17 years old at the time that they left just prior to the city being destroyed. And in that time, they were not defiled by the people of the city. They were still virgins at 17 years old. And in Sodom, that's quite an accomplishment for the parent to raise them to that place. And then they left from there.

So of course, the daughters were already engaged to men of the city to be married. And so those daughters needed to decide, what am I going to do? You know, am I going to go and remain with this city or am I going to go with my father? And they chose to stick with their father, which I think shows character on their part.

But then what about people saying, oh, because Lot didn't leave right away, that's him saying, oh, I don't really want to leave. I want to stay here. You know, the angels say, no, it's going to be destroyed. And it's not until almost daybreak that they actually flee.

Again, I've heard people say, well, therefore that shows he didn't really want to leave, but it was finally like, okay, I guess, you know, I guess I have to. I have no choice. Is that just a misconstrued or is that putting our own bias into the text there? Right. Yeah. It is not the accurate picture of what happened. I think he did want to leave. I think he was willing to follow. But there were some things that happened that were pretty intense immediately prior to that. One being that when the house was surrounded and Lot is on the inside and he goes out to the people to implore them to not pursue these angels, you know, he says, my brothers don't do this wicked thing.

During that encounter, they virtually killed him according to other records, which would have been understood for, you know, through tradition and probably understood by Peter as well. So they were, he was not in a strong physical state. He was an old man. And yeah, so I think he wanted to leave. There was a lot of reasons that it was difficult to leave, but nonetheless, they did. They did leave. And we don't have any indication that he was unwilling to leave.

That makes sense. You're basically saying that's us putting our bias into the text when the text really doesn't actually say that. He was up all night and had almost been killed by the people of the city. And so it was, I think he was in a poor physical state. And it's kind of strange, you know, to assume that he should be immediately ready to go because of the word of some strangers that he didn't know. You know, that's kind of a good point. Yeah. Like he'd need to be persuaded that these are, you know, really messengers from God. And I wonder if there is also the element of quick trying to get other friends, other people to come with you, trying to save others to, you know, convince them to leave.

I don't know if there'd be any elements of that. Of course, you can't know what happened, you know, in those hours. But ultimately they did flee, you know, and I think that's the key piece there. Yeah. Are there other chunks of this story that you want to address, you know, specifically other objections or points that we might have missed here? Right. So once you have a certain perception of the story, then you begin to think that everything is substantiating that, you know, it's confirmation bias. Yeah. And so because of that, there's actually a lot of objections that are raised. And one of them, of course, is what happened in the house. The house was surrounded the night of the destruction.

Lot went out to these men who wanted to have access to the angels. And then the claim is oftentimes made that Lot was offering his daughters in exchange for the angels. And that simply is not what was going on there. And I treat that in some detail in the book as well.

But yeah, there's a much better way to understand that. I think this is maybe a bit of a lesson here in, like you were saying, confirmation bias, or where you have a perspective of how you think the story goes. And then when you read the text, you can put that on the story.

And so it seems to me one of your things that you're trying to help us with is try to pull away those assumptions when we come to the text of scripture. And instead of reading it through our own lens and perceptions, it's like, what is the text actually saying? And try to get back to that as best we can while also knowing, hey, you know, we're living thousands of years after this happened. It's going to be very hard to remove all the biases and opinions. Is there more you'd like to say on that?

There would probably be a lot more that could be said, even, you know, about the flight and, you know, his request to go to Zoar instead of going to the mountains. And I think all those things have excellent answers. One thing that we're missing is history. You know, we don't have the broader tradition of how the story was understood by people for millennia. And so if we only look at the text and we're coming to the text of scripture with our bias, I think it's not too difficult to kind of have our bias confirmed there.

So we've went through some of the story of Lot, answered some of the objections. Of course, you can't go into all the full detail. You know, people can look up your book or something if they want to go deeper.

But let's look at it from a different angle. What are some positive lessons that we can pull from the example of Lot? Sure. Yeah. So a few things that come to mind immediately. One would be hospitality and generosity. And we have that certainly in the case of Abraham and also in the case of Lot. Then in the New Testament, it tells us that there were some who, because of their hospitality, entertained angels being unaware. And that would fit to both Abraham and Lot. That's a really good point. See, it's very easy to say, oh yeah, yeah, that was Abraham, but it was also Lot. Exactly. That's a great point. Yeah. So those are good lessons, hospitality and generosity.

But oftentimes we think those are good manners, right? This is just, you know, being nice or something, but it's actually something that God cares deeply about. And like even so much so that they were visited by the angels because of that. That's pretty, pretty major.

But you know, as you know, as you ask the question, what lessons can we learn? I'd like to give one little warning to that question. We live in a time where there's oftentimes a rush to application. So too often sermons are given with only a very little text. And even in this case, I came across a blog about Lot, and it had very little scripture. And I actually counted the words.

There were a few quick notes about a few verses. There was like no exegetical work done at all. And then 94% of this article was application. And I think that in this case, the person had a very wrong understanding of the storyline. So if you have a wrong understanding of the storyline, then the application also can be very wrong. There was a writer, Douglas Stewart, and he wrote a book called Old Testament Exegesis. And in that book, he says, speaking about his audience, he says, they need to be shown how the application is based on the proper comprehension of the passage's meaning. And they will probably not take the application to heart unless this is clear to them.

So we can preach application, but if people don't understand how that's rooted in proper exegesis, then it's probably not going to stick very well. And I think because of that, what can happen is that people can give heartfelt sermons of application, but then their listeners will go listen to the next preacher who's saying something different and can easily be swept into a different direction because it's not well rooted in the text.

So I would just give that little caution there. But in response to your question, besides hospitality and generosity, there's also a thread of discipleship that's woven through the story with, first of all, Abraham allowing Lot to come with him, and then he's discipling him. Jesus said that a disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is perfectly trained will be like his teacher. And I think that's exactly what happened in the case of Lot, where Lot became just like his teacher, like Abraham, through the discipleship. So yeah, I think there could be a whole sermon illustrating discipleship functions from this story.

And in both the case of Abraham and Lot, they were both evangelistic, very enthusiastic about evangelism. History, actual biblical history would show that Abraham placed his tent at a crossroads because he wanted to meet passerbys, because he wanted to be generous and hospitable. So that's, I think, very interesting.

I think from the same story, we could learn about intercession. We could learn about conflict resolution. We could learn about trusting God without questioning. And of course, in the case of Lot's wife, we could learn about not turning back in the end. So yeah, I think there's a lot of lessons that are here for us.

Yeah. So a lot of lessons, but also not be hasty into application. That's a really good point. Yeah. Which actually segues quite nicely into the other question I had here. So zooming out a bit, you know, what are some points that you're making that can help us study and understand scripture better? Just kind of on the whole, what are some principles? And then also, how can this help us identify biases and assumptions too? And we've already touched on some of this, but maybe if you want to dig into that a bit more.

Sure. So I think history is hugely underrated. History, history, history. So there is a quote that if it's new, it's not true. And if it's true, it's not new. Oh, I've not heard that before. That's pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. Like Solomon said, there's nothing new under the sun. You know, like everything that's been, we're not coming up with new good ideas that haven't already been elaborated on in the past.

And I think it takes maybe a little bit of audacity to disregard the people who have come before us. In the case of Lot, we have 3,000 years of tradition. And yet today, there's almost no commentary. There's no commentary that I'm aware of that's favorable to him except mine.

Wow. That's really interesting. So it might be considered fringe, you know, for me to write a book that I don't have any competing works today. But I think that I'm on the side of thousands of years of history. And I think that's pretty compelling and solid footing.

Yeah. People have said that we shouldn't read only our own generation. We should read outside of our generation. I think, amen. Like if we have resources today, like we never had before from history, just at a click of a button, so much that we have available to us, we should be making the best use of that.

That's a really good point. We've had David Brissot on this podcast a few times. And I'm not sure what the release schedule will be, but we were doing one with him. We just filmed it two days ago on Romans. And specifically Romans 9 and predestination and some of these interpretations with the text. And he's like, well, yeah, but if, you know, let's start reading like how different people looked at this throughout history. And you just start realizing, oh, okay, there's actually lots of different ways to look at this. You know, where right now, especially, you know, I come from like the South, where it's like the Southern Baptist style of, you know, it's this way, you know.

And it's like, well, okay, but historically, you could look at it this way. And like, well, but this church father said this. And it's like, oh, we should really be aware of that. So we ended up just doing a whole episode on, well, what are those things that people have been saying historically for a really long time? And we just forgot, you know. And it's like, it's right there. You can go look it up. You can go read these guys and learn from what they said. It doesn't mean they're inspired and perfect and got it all right. But I'm just, I think you're really on something there with history, especially. Though people find history kind of boring.

So I'm not really sure how we can overcome that. It's amazing how quickly we forget history. You know, if we're only reading what's been in the last 50 years, we're going to totally be oblivious to everything before that. And I think it can cause some pride because we're the ones who got this right, not realizing that there's millennia ahead of us. Yeah. It just reminds me of something C.S. Lewis wrote. I wish I could remember the quote, but his friends would make almost like a joke with him, how he had just no clue what was happening in the modern day because he just wouldn't read the newspapers, you know. And he's like, why would I do that when I could be reading, you know, thousands of years of ideas in history and understand all this stuff?

And he was way more interested in doing that. And of course, he made a strong case. Well, that's why we should be reading, you know, the early church and things. Absolutely. And that always kind of stuck with me. I was like, oh, that's a good point, you know. Yeah.

I'm hearing what one of the things you're outlining is it is worth our effort to try to understand more of the historical context around various scriptures. And obviously, we're using Lot as a case study, but you could do this for a lot of other things as well. Exactly. Yes.

Well, as we bring this episode to a close, are there other pieces you want to add to this story? Anything we might have missed as we were going through it here? Yeah. The only thing I would mention is, would you already mentioned, this is really a case study, I think, of how to look at history through the eyes of those who went before us and the historical perspective. So yeah, I think many, many more books should be written, rediscovering what has happened before.

Well, so do you have another book coming that might give us another case study? Oh, well, time will tell. Time will tell. Yeah. All right. Well, hey, thanks for coming on and telling us about this. And definitely the work you put in here, I do feel like we're ending this on a solid note of, here's some principles that we should be keeping in mind as we study scripture. And remember that we're not necessarily coming with the perfect clean slate. We have biases and, you know, confirmation bias. That was one of the phrases you used. I think that's a really important piece for people to remember. So anyways, I appreciate it. Thanks for coming on the podcast.

Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode with Glenn Martin. If you found this interesting, you'll want to check out the interview we did with Stephen Russell on the Old Testament saints and non-resistance. And you can find that linked in the description down below. We also have a monthly email newsletter. You can sign up on our website and find all our content as well at anabaptistperspectives.org. Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you in the next episode.