There are four things that I want you to hear me say right up front, for anything else.

One, whatever your interpretation of Scripture on tonight's topic, you are welcome here in

this community.

And I really mean that too.

I hope you will form the way you view all of life through the lens of Jesus, not form

Jesus to fit your particular lens.

Three, it is my prayer that you will be curious and self-reflective about the baggage that

you carry into tonight's topic.

Because we've all got baggage and the only destructive way to carry our baggage is ignorant

of the weight that we're dragging behind us.

None of us are starting tonight's conversation with an entirely clean slate.

And without acknowledging the baggage that we're carrying, it then becomes the lens that

colors the way that we perceive everything else that we see and think.

The world renowned social psychologist Dr. Jonathan Hate who specializes in moral theory,

in other words, the study of why we believe what we believe, observe, observes intuitions

come first, strategic reasoning second.

In other words, desire precedes belief.

We tend to believe things because we really want to believe them.

And then often we form rational arguments around our desires to confirm the beliefs that

we've already decided on.

But still, the beliefs themselves are driven by desire and not by rational thinking alone

or even first.

...