Father Mike Schmitz

One is this.

read like the Bible has something to teach you.

Here's what I mean.

So often there are people who will read the Bible with skepticism or criticism.

They read the Bible with not only with questions, because questions are great, but we read the Bible with these questions of like, I'm standing over the Bible rather than humbling myself in front of the Bible.

And so what Paul is saying is he's basically saying you're giving witness, you're bearing witness to Jesus or you're bearing witness to the ineffectiveness of the gospel if you're no different than the people around you.

And when I read the Bible, like it has something to teach me, that means I'm reading the Bible, the words of God in the words of men,

And so I would say that probably the...

The upshot of this particular letter of St.

Paul to Titus is that, yeah, we give witness to the power of the gospel or we give witness to the impotence of the gospel by our lives.

with trust and if there's a better a better way to like short circuit and your ability to understand scripture short circuit your ability to even get anything out of scripture it's to read the bible with a spirit of skepticism or spiritual criticism to read the bible as like someone who's trying to prove it wrong um there are so many things in the bible that we will not understand automatically

If we live like everyone else, then the gospel is powerless.

If we live differently, live lives that are changed, then we bear witness that the gospel has power, has power to change our lives and has power to change the people's lives among whom we live.

But I know what you're waiting for.

You're waiting for St.

Paul, not St.

Paul, St.

not just because we're limited or not just because God's ways are beyond our ways.

John's revelation, the apocalypse of John, because, oh gosh, all the imagery.

That's true.