Welcome to 10 minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life.

In the time it takes to get to work.

I'm Patrick Miller. It feels like there's a new podcast or TV show every

year that tries to show the dark side of Christianity, the underbelly of the

Christian subculture in America.

And for better or worse, these shows and podcasts tend to be immensely popular,

not only for people outside of Christianity, but honestly, especially for those who

are inside of Christianity,

whether it's the rise and fall of Mars Hill

or the Hill song documentary or shiny happy people.

That's the docuaries about the Duggers,

a family that had something like 19 kids because the Bible told them so.

Like, anyways, on one level, I appreciate all of these things because they help keep Christians sober.

Just because someone says they're following the Bible doesn't mean they are,

nor doesn't mean they're doing it perfectly. I mean in our darkest moments, Christians sometimes

use the Bible as a weapon to manipulate and control and amass massive amounts of power.

Whenever this happens, we shouldn't cover it up. We should mourn. We should remember

that apart from God's grace, we are no better than those people. We should

pray that God protects us from doing likewise and take a serious look at our own

families and churches to make sure we haven't created structures that replicate

those same practices.

But I also think there's a converse temptation, self-righteousness.

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