Show notes
199. Why Limits Are Good For Us with Kelly Kapic “Since his days are determined, The number of his months is with You; You have appointed his limits, so that he cannot pass.” (Job 14:5 (NKJV) **Transcription Below** Questions and Topics We Discuss: What are some of the best reasons to praise God for our limits? How can limits humbly teach us the value of being interdependent upon one another? What is your favorite take-away you learned from the process of researching God's good design of our limits and how has it personally changed your life? Kelly M. Kapic is professor of theological studies at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, where he has taught since 2001. Kelly and his wife Tabitha have two children, Jonathan and Margot. He has written and edited numerous books, including Embodied Hope: A Theological Meditation on Pain and Suffering (IVP Academic, 2017), which won the Book of the Year Award from Christianity Today in the category of Theology and Ethics. Kelly Kapic's Website Other Savvy Sauce Episodes on Sabbath 99 Sabbath Rest with Sandy Feit 175 Practicing Sabbath with Shireen Eldridge Thank You to Our Sponsors: Solid Rock Christian Academy and Chick-fil-A East Peoria Connect with The Savvy Sauce on Facebook or Instagram or Our Website Please help us out by sharing this episode with a friend, leaving a 5-star rating and review, and subscribing to this podcast! Gospel Scripture: (all NIV) Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” Romans 3:24 “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” Romans 3:25 (a) “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.” Hebrews 9:22 (b) “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:11 “Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.” John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Romans 10:9 “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Luke 15:10 says “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” Ephesians 1:13–14 “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession- to the praise of his glory.” Ephesians 1:15–23 “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.” Ephesians 2:8–10 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God‘s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.“ Ephesians 2:13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.“ Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” **Transcription** [00:00:00] <music> Laura Dugger: Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, where we have practical chats for intentional living. I'm your host Laura Dugger, and I'm so glad you're here. [00:00:18] <music> Laura Dugger: Our sponsors for today's episode are Solid Rock Christian Academy and Chick-fil-A East Peoria. Check out SolidRockChristianAcademy.org for their alternative schooling option with a solid biblical view. And visit CFAEastPeoria.com for available employment opportunities or to place your catering order. My guest for today is author, professor, and theologian, Kelly Kapic. Kelly recently authored a book titled, You're Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God's Design and Why That's Good News. His insights are so well thought out. His recommended changes to the way we approach efficiency have the potential to positively impact your life. Here's our chat. Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, Kelly. [00:01:18] Kelly Kapic: It's so good to be with you. Thanks for having me, Laura. Laura Dugger: It is truly my pleasure. You had mentioned in your book this interest in limits has intrigued you for more than two decades. So I'd love to know, where did your curiosity originate? Kelly Kapic: Yeah, thanks for asking. There's both personal and theological reasons for that. Maybe the personal would be the right place to start or even focus for this conversation. And some of it's just... some of your listeners will be able to relate to this. Whether it's at the end of the day, you know, you finally get a minute and you sit on the couch or you put your head on the pillow at night or maybe first thing in the morning when you wake up, in those situations, I so often had found myself kind of being surprised by levels of guilt and shame coming over me. As I kind of would explore that, I was surprised at what I found. Because it's one thing... you know, I'm a theologian. I believe in the reality of sin. [00:02:21] We need to be honest about it. And if a sense of guilt or shame comes because I've been cruel to a coworker, I've said unkind things, I've undermined school or whatever it is, then I need to repent and just really enjoy the beauty and grace of Christ. But actually, often that sense of guilt or shame was related to some version of this. Kelly, why didn't you get more done today? Why didn't you do more? And so feeling like, you know, is that how we're supposed to feel, I really became very interested in exploring, is that right? A different way of saying it is, what does God actually expect of me in a day, in a month, in a year, in a lifetime? And I really have found this pretty common among Christians and non-Christians of this endless sense of not getting enough done and guilt and shame about that. So I really wanted to explore, how should we think about those things? Laura Dugger: I'm curious to hear your findings then as well. Could you even just share one takeaway of what God shared with you through this process? What is an answer to that question? [00:03:25] Kelly Kapic: Yeah. The short answer is God said, Kelly, you're human and you're not God. So chill out. And we all know the right answer to that, right? If I say, hey, do you think you're God, Laura? You're like, of course not, right? But so many of us in our lives and even what we push on to our children, it's these endless expectations to do more, to be more, to know more. So what does it actually look like to be faithful? And really by slowing down and starting to think through, how does God view me? What does God value? How should we think about this life? With so many external pressures on us, and the church has baptized many of these, we've kind of said, you know what, what really is valuable to God and to life is productivity and efficiency. Do as much as you can and be as efficient as possible. And I'm really questioning some of that. I love efficiency. I love productivity. But when you take a good thing and you make it the most important thing, it actually can become quite a bad and destructive thing. [00:04:29] So those are some of the ways I would start to think through it. Laura Dugger: Well, and I'd love for you to now speak to the person who feels far from this message or perhaps they're skeptical of this topic. Kelly, what are some of the best reasons to praise God for our limits? Kelly Kapic: Well, because, again, He's God and we're not. Part of what happens here is until we start to come to terms with what it means to be human and the goodness of being a human as God originally made us, it distorts everything else until we get back to that. And this is partly why there is, especially in our contemporary culture, kind of a gut reaction against this. And it's this. So if I said, Laura, I was talking to one of your friends and they were really describing you and they said, you know, she's a really dependent person. You know, when we hear the word dependent, you now instantly think, Oh, that person wasn't speaking nicely of me. Right. It's like a negative. [00:05:33] Part of what I'm interested in exploring is actually biblically what it means to be human is to be dependent. We were made — this is part of the goodness of how God designed us — we were made to be dependent on God, to be dependent on our neighbor, and to be dependent on the earth. And so the very fact that in our culture, the idea of dependence has such an almost exclusively negative connotation attached to it really makes authentic Christian spirituality very difficult. Now, it is true there are problems like codependency, but that's not what I'm talking about. But we are made to depend on God, others, and the earth. So we are skeptical of these things because we framed not just the American dream, but Christian spirituality in overly individualistic, rugged terms. That undermines our humanity, undermines our community. But when you can change this and start to see how God intended us as humans to be limited and once you recognize limits, then you recognize the beauty of I need you, I need God, I need the earth. [00:06:42] It starts to open up brand new things. I mean, we could talk about humility if you want it as an example. But this actually is not just God saying, it's okay you're limited. I know it kind of sucks, but it's okay. Like, no, no, no. This is part of the beauty and goodness of his design. It's not part of being a sinner or something. Laura Dugger: Let's elaborate there, then. How can limits humbly teach us the value of being interdependent then upon one another? Kelly Kapic: Yeah, that's great. So we all know Christians, even non-Christians know, you know, we should be humble. That seems like a good thing. But if you ask most Christians just kind of offhand, you say, why should we be humble, very often our gut reaction is, well, because we're sinners. And it is true we are sinners and that can contribute rightly to the fact that we should be humble. But if you try and build the idea of humility on the foundation of sin, the fact that we're sinners, it actually distorts the whole thing. If you think the reason we should be humble is because we're sinners, then often in both explicit and implicit ways, what Christians are often told is, you want to become more humble? Focus on what a bad sinner you are. [00:07:54] Well, I do think we need to be honest about our sin and our weaknesses. But if you do that, then the path forward is actually by focusing on just how terrible you are, which ironically tends to foster self-absorption just in a negative way and often forms of self-hatred and stuff. But if you build the idea of humility, not on the foundation of sin, but on the foundation of the goodness of God's creation, recognizing even if there were no sin, even if there were no fall, humans were meant to be humble. Right? That's the question. Adam and Eve before the fall, should they have been humble? The answer is yes. Why? Because even before sin, they were meant to be dependent on God, dependent on others, dependent on the earth. So that humility doesn't just say, I'm sorry, and can you forgive me? Although it does do that. But humility also says, I don't know. Can you help me? Right? Those are creature words. So part of what I'm trying to explore is this idea that God made us as creatures. [00:08:55] So we use this word finitude, which is a fancy term. We don't use it a lot. Finitude just means limits. Limits in space, time, knowledge, power. And the Christian version of the word finitude or limits is creature. To be a creature, a good creature, a good human creature, is to recognize our need and dependence on God, others, and the earth, so that humility can be fostered then in a healthy way by learning to delight in other people, to celebrate them, to not view them as threats. So Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the early 20th century says sin isn't what makes us dependent. Sin is what twists the dependencies. It twists the limits so that now I view the other, my neighbor, as a threat that I either need to dominate or ignore. But Christian humility says, no, I can celebrate them. I can receive what they have to give. I can give to them. We're in this together. There's something bigger. So anyway, that's kind of a lot. But they give you a taste of how this is meant to be liberating, not suffocating. [00:09:59] Laura Dugger: I like that. And I love it. I think it was just one of my favorite parts of the book. It's on page 178, where you are talking about this idea of being dependent upon one another. I am just going to read one of your quotes because it was brand new to me. You wrote, "Today I am caring for prisoners in jail. I'm evangelizing the disenfranchised in Nepal. I am praying over the sick child in the hospital. I'm serving the recovering victims of sex trafficking. I am standing against racial injustice and I am caring for the widows. And I am doing so much more. How? I am doing all of this because I am part of the living body of Christ. God's Spirit has united me to Christ and because of that union, to my sisters and brothers of the faith. We are one. I am part of the church, both local and global." So will you elaborate on that? [00:10:59] Kelly Kapic: Yeah. Thank you. That's great. One of the examples of how this works out is as Christians, we see all the important work that needs to be done in the world. For example, in Matthew 25, it's red letters. So it's got to be really important, right? But Jesus talks about this in Matthew 25, and he tells that very sobering story about the sheep and the goats. And the thing that separates the sheep and the goats in judgment is, did you care for the naked? Did you clothe the naked? Did you feed the hungry? Did you visit the prisoners? This kind of movement towards the marginalized. What do we do with that? I remember I had a former student of mine. He's now in ministry in California, and he called me, and he's very thoughtful. And the single guy pours himself out in university ministry, and he said, "I'm just thinking about this text, and it haunts me." He's like, "I do ministry, but I'm single. I…
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