“If you’re left-handed, are you lost?”

Steve Brown:
If you’re left handed, are you lost? The answer to that and other questions, on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
This is Key Life, dedicated to the message that the only people who get any better are those who know that if they don’t get any better, God will still love them anyway. That teaching raises a lot of questions. So, here’s author and seminary professor Steve Brown, along with Pete Alwinson from ForgeBibleStudy.com with answers from the Bible that’ll make you free.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Hi Pete.

Pete Alwinson:
Let no one say we don’t deal with ultimate issues here.

Steve Brown:
That’s true. You know, I always say I’ve never, there is no question that I haven’t heard. When you’re as old as dirt, and I’m as old as dirt, you’ve heard them all. But we got a question coming up that is brand new to me. I’ve never been asked that before. And we’ve had a lot of laughter and a lot of discussion about it, and we’ll get to it in a minute. By the way, be sure and go to ForgeTruth.com is your book audio yet?

Pete Alwinson:
Yes it is.

Steve Brown:
Okay.

Pete Alwinson:
Like Father Like Son.

Steve Brown:
Can they get it here? At Amazon?

Pete Alwinson:
I don’t know. Key Life. Go to Key Life.

Steve Brown:
It’s Like Father Like Son if you haven’t read it and you’d like to listen to it, you’d be advised to do that. It’s a life changing book. By the way, we love getting your questions. You can ask any question, anytime by calling 1-800-KEY-LIFE and record your question and sometimes we put your voice on the air. Or you can send your questions to

Key Life Network
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if you live in Canada, it’s

Key Life Canada
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or you can send your question to [email protected] and if you can help us financially, those are touch places where you can do that. And we will appreciate it and be faithful with your gift. You can charge a gift on a credit card, include it in your envelope. And we are not for profit. So, you can take it off your income taxes. And we recognize that a lot of you can’t help us financially, and we get that. If you can’t, pray for this ministry. If you can, I promise we’ll be faithful with your gift. Pete, why don’t you lead us in prayer and we’ll get to these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
Alright. Lord, what a privilege it is to stop for just a minute and come into your presence and worship you and praise you and honor you. Lord Jesus, sitting at the right hand of the throne of God in heaven, we praise you. But we thank you that you’re not only transcendent, high and holy and lifted up, but you are near us and in us through your Holy Spirit. Lord, we honor you for bringing us to become your children and then being in us and leading us. And we just ask for a clear sense of your presence with us right now. It’s the end of the week and a lot has gone on and some of us are tired. Some of us are angry. Some of us are exhilarated for what’s gone on. Many of us have many things to thank you for. And so, we lift up your Holy Name and we ask that you would continue your work in our lives. Be with our leaders, Lord, we look forward to worship this week-end and be with all of our spiritual leaders who will stand in front of us and proclaim the glorious name and work of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Glorify yourself in and through them. And then Lord, we just commit this time of Q&A, ask that you would use it. Take us one step further in our walk with you through this time. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Amen. Pete, let’s go to our phone lines.

Caller 1:
My husband and I are both left handed, and we wanted to know why the right hand is mentioned a hundred times in the Bible in a positive way and left handed is only mentioned 25 times and it’s all negative. I’ve never heard you answer that question before and I’d like to see what your thoughts are. Thank you.

Steve Brown:
Of course, you’ve got too much time on your hands, if you’ve been going through the Scripture and counting the number of times, mentions right hand and left hand, you probably, you need to find something to do. You know that I’ve never heard that question.

Pete Alwinson:
We have never had that question.

Steve Brown:
All kidding aside, it really is a great question.

Pete Alwinson:
It really is.

Steve Brown:
You came up very quickly by saying that that’s not always true.

Pete Alwinson:
Not always true. You know, we’re studying the book of judges at Forge these days, and Ehud was one of the early judges and he was left-handed.

Steve Brown:
And they point it out.

Pete Alwinson:
And they point it out he’s left-handed. Now, there’s two things that are interesting about that. One is that he was from the tribe of Benjamin. And Benjamin’s name means son of my right hand, but he was a left handed guy from the tribe of Benjamin. Now, some scholars think that Ehud’s right hand may have been withered. And that’s why when he went in to kill Eglon, the bad king, he had strapped onto his right leg a sword under his garment. But his right hand was probably withered and so maybe the guards thought he’s harmless and they didn’t double check him. But other than that.

Steve Brown:
That’s interesting.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, that’s pretty fascinating.

Steve Brown:
But it’s positive. It’s not a negative.

Pete Alwinson:
No.

Steve Brown:
And it is positive when it says Jesus sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. You know, I don’t know if that has great significance. Do you think?

Pete Alwinson:
I would just say it in this way that in ancient times and in Hebrew thinking the right hand was the seat of power next to the throne. It could have been the left hand, but God chose to say it that way. And so, it just became maybe culturally acceptable that way. But left handed people, I mean, we need them, but it is interesting that is a more minority position or ability.

Steve Brown:
You know, used to be. And our producer, Jeremy is left handed. He’s a musician and he plays his instruments with his right hand.

Pete Alwinson:
I know.

Steve Brown:
But he said when his mother tried to fix that when he was young, but you know, teachers used to bind up and try to get students to not use their left hand when you go and that’s just an interesting. Well, we haven’t shed much light on your question, but it was an interesting question.

Pete Alwinson:
And as far as we know, and we’ve read a lot of theology, we’ve read the Bible, we don’t think there’s any negative connotation to being left handed.

Steve Brown:
No, if you’re left handed, you probably can still be saved. We better get on. This is an e-mail. We as Christians understand that Jesus as the Son of God died as the sacrifice for our sins to bring about our salvation. But why was a blood sacrifice necessary? Wouldn’t there have been a better way?

Pete Alwinson:
You address this quite often. How would you go after it?

Steve Brown:
Well, I would say it’s because, well, first, the implications are incredible. You know, blood is not a little thing. And most cultures have always seen that life is in the blood. And every culture on the face of the earth that we know about, primitive or modern, has had a view that without the shedding of blood, there can be no remission of sins. And that’s not just Christian or just Jewish, it’s been true in every religious culture on the face of the earth. And so, evidently it’s built into us.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s just built into the DNA of our humanity by God, and the Bible does say life is in the blood, there’s no doubt about that. It had to be something of an extreme nature to cover our sins and to pay for our sin.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, and that’s as big as it gets.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right, that’s right.

Steve Brown:
Could God have done it another way? Of course he could have, but it’s really interesting to see the intricate way that he planned it. You know, when you begin to look at the thought forms of Israel, about the lamb who took away the sin, about the concept of atonement, Yom Kippur, when you begin to look at what God was planning for hundreds of years. He was planning for his big act, which would be the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And everybody in the entire world could say, I get it. I get it. And so, it’s an amazing thing that it was built in, but he could have done it a different way.

Pete Alwinson:
And it is built in from ancient cultures on, not only in a religious sense, but also in a life and death sense. In other words, to eat animals, there had to be the shedding of blood. And so, mankind saw that as a prelude to the work of Christ.

Steve Brown:
That’s so good. You know, as we talk about it, I’m just amazed again at God and what he’s done and how he’s done it. It’s just incredible.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. That’s right.

Steve Brown:
What is reformed theology?

Pete Alwinson:
Well,

Steve Brown:
It’s a label you give to people who are right. No, it’s not. What is reform theology?

Pete Alwinson:
Well, you know, there was that time in the history of the church where, and there have been many reformed movements. But this particularly refers to the time in the 16th century where Luther, Calvin, and others really sought to bring a doctrinal purity back to the church, to reform the church to Biblical teaching. And so there’s some of those things that came out at that time of salvation by faith through grace in Jesus Christ alone, the Sola Scriptura, Scripture alone, Jesus alone, and the sovereignty of God in all of the acts.

Steve Brown:
So, there’s a sense in which all Protestants are reformed.

Pete Alwinson:
Absolutely.

Steve Brown:
But if you get to splitting theological hairs, there’s a difference between Wesleyan and Reformed theology, and that’s mainly on the ideas of God’s absolute sovereignty.

Pete Alwinson:
Right. And in relation to our salvation, you know, how bad is sin? There’s a difference on that. How much did sin actually affect us? How much can we actually contribute to our salvation so that, those, that divide, that Arminian, Calvin, Wesleyan divide is

Steve Brown:
And if we had time, we would talk about the remonstrance, about the battles that have been fought.

Pete Alwinson:
Oh man.

Steve Brown:
Still, we’re right.

Pete Alwinson:
Right. That’s right. That’s right. That’s the view of those who have it right. I’m going to quote you on that.

Steve Brown:
You know, Calvinism and Reformed theology can be an arrogant kind of intellectual pride. And so, if you have been offended by somebody who was reformed, who told you that you were a twit, and you didn’t know what you were talking about, Pete and I would like to apologize for our family. Boy, and I’ve been there, and I’ve done it too. So, those are not areas that ought to divide Christians. As Christians, we can disagree about a number of things, but not about Jesus.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
And everybody who belongs to Jesus belongs to everybody who belongs to Jesus.

Pete Alwinson:
who belongs to Jesus

Steve Brown:
Even if you don’t like them, it’s still true.

Pete Alwinson:
And I still like you.

Steve Brown:
I still like you too.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s a good thing.

Steve Brown:
But reformed people are certainly right. It’s a joke. Don’t send me letters. Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.