Chuck Bryant

What if we study it ourselves instead?

And that brings up the second part you mentioned, which is the dignity of the individual human.

Up to this point, individuality was not prized.

You were not supposed to look inside yourself.

You were supposed to look outside at the glory of God.

You yourself, if you paid too much attention to yourself, that was a quick one-way trip to hell for you when you died.

The humanists were like, no, let's look inside ourselves.

Like, we're important.

You, the individual, is important.

Yeah, and you're not learning just so you can give more money to the church or something like that, too.

And if this sounds a little bit like Protestant thought about the connection between the individual and God, that's exactly right.

These thinkers eventually led to the Protestant Reformation, which basically pushed the face of the church off to the side and said, you and me, God, we're connected.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Those people that you see out and about at like 10 a.m.

on a Sunday, give that little knowing head nod too.

Yeah, yeah.

So something I think is worth pointing out real quick though too, Chuck, is everything we're talking about involves God.

Even though the church has been pushed out of the way, God has not.