Theological Ethics w/ Gary Deddo

Welcome to the GC Podcast. This year, we’re centering on Kingdom Culture and exploring how it transforms ministry and equips leaders for kingdom living. Through conversations with Grace Communion Seminary professors and a few other guests, we’ll explore how their teachings equip ministry leaders to embody kingdom values.

This is the GC Podcast, where we help you grow into the healthiest ministry leader you can be. Sharing practical insights and best practices from the context of Grace Communion International Churches. Here’s your host, Cara Garrity.

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Cara: Hello friends, and welcome to today’s episode of GC Podcast. This podcast is devoted to exploring best ministry practices in context of Grace Communion International churches.

I’m your host, Cara Garrity. And today we are blessed to have Dr. Gary Deddo as our guest. Dr. Deddo is a professor at Grace Communion Seminary and has been participating in GCI and GCS since 2012.

And today for our first episode of 2025, we are going to begin exploring our theme of kingdom living through exploring particularly the course of theological ethics that Dr. Deddo teaches at Grace Community Seminary. So, thank you so much for joining us today, Dr. Deddo.

[00:01:35] Gary: Thank you, Cara. It’s a privilege to be with you and to address your audience.

I’m very happy to talk about the seminary and in particular this class that we call Theological Ethics. But that is a very important topic and very complex as anytime you hear the word ethics everybody gets stiff and maybe a bit worried. And so, it’s a huge topic.

It is complex, complicated in a way, but that’s what you need a class for, right? You need a class to have time, to have resources, to think and to talk and interact with others and to work things through, to pray things through, to study scripture that’s relevant to the topic. So, it really does take a good amount of time and some discipline.

And usually, a class helps us be disciplined. You’d make out plans and say I want to read this book, or I want to look into this. And then, of course, you don’t. But a class helps because you’re working with others. And so certainly this topic, theological ethics, does call for that.

And so usually we have a great time. This is, I think, the fourth time we’ve had the class, and it’s always been very productive.

And part of it is, it does take time, and it does take effort. And there’s so many complications, and there’s also many pressures on us to try to discern what’s good, what’s true, what’s right, what I ought to do. And a lot of times, of course, we’re thinking about what others ought to do and that’s certainly part of it, but we have to start with ourselves.

Yeah, we have a class on it that lasts twelve weeks and people put in about, oh, twelve hours a week for each of those weeks to work things through. We have a couple of textbooks.

But the topic itself is important. We call it theological ethics. And the reason we qualify the word ethics with theological is because not all thinking about right and wrong, not all teaching about right and wrong, is theological. That is, it doesn’t connect with who God is or who a particular god is or who the Christian God is.

And in this class, we want to link together who God is — the God revealed in Jesus Christ according to Scripture — and then see what does that have to do with how we live our lives, how we discern what’s good and right, how we avoid being deceived or used, or use others or treat others poorly.

So, you want to connect together theology, which is our knowledge and faith in the living God, and how that then yields fruit in our lives: what we do, what we think, how we act, how we react. So, it’s a theological ethic.

Often without the connection between who God is and trusting in God, we just do what’s right because we just have a feeling, and then we think about it later. Or we’ve heard someone say something, and it sounded good to us, so we went with it. Or sometimes it’s out of guilt or fear or anxiety that we decide to act a certain way, react a certain way, and there’s not a lot of prayer; there’s not a lot of thought.

Or later on we realize, wow, I didn’t take into consideration that. Wow, if I would have realized that, I probably would have decided differently or reacted differently or decided differently.

We want to bring our theology, our faith, our worship, our prayer together with what we think and decide and how we react and reply, and yes, even sometimes how we vote, what that adds up to. So, it’s a theological ethic. In the biblical way to talk about this comes up, actually, in Romans chapter 1. And then Romans 16, the last chapter as well, Paul says his whole ministry is to do nothing other than to bring about the obedience of faith. That phrase, the obedience of faith, that’s another way to talk about what a theological ethic is about. It’s trying to discern and prepare ourselves to do what is good and right according to God’s will and way and God’s heart and mind, and to do that out of trust or faith in the living God, as if God is real, as if God is present, as if God is active, as if God knows better than we do, and what’s the best for us.

And that’s why we hear in His word, we’re given directions as to which way to go, which ways to decide. So, we obey by faith, out of trust. So, it’s a part of our worship relationship with the living God. Rather than just stoic, “I have to do it,” or there’s a rule about it, so I better, or someone’s going to be unhappy with me, or I’m going to be unhappy with myself.

Rather, the only obedience — a response to God’s will and way and heart and mind — is to trust Him. So that’s another way to talk about the obedience to God. The obedience of faith is another way to talk about a theological ethic.

So that’s what we’re looking into. And of course, you can’t figure everything out in a class. That’s not the purpose of it. And anybody would already immediately recognize, no, we’re probably not going to do that. And we don’t. The point really is to be better prepared. That’s the point. How can we get better prepared? And how can we find others who can help us get better prepared? And how we might be able to help others get better prepared to hear the Word of God, to trust God, so that we’re free, and we see the good and right of what God is calling us to do. We’re getting better prepared by coming together, praying together, studying Scripture together, and reading others who have worked through the matters of good faith and evil, right and wrong better and worse. So that’s what we do in the class. And that’s what theological ethics is.

So, we could talk about also what it has to do with, you asked about the practice or the nature of the kingdom of God. That’s another part of it too. Where do ethics really come from?

As we know, a kingdom is a group of people. Jesus talks about He has come, and the kingdom is present among you when He comes. So, it’s about relationships. And of course, ethics isn’t anything …

[00:09:35] Cara: Yes. And I thank you for sharing that. And I took this course a couple years ago and what you’ve shared, I think that as someone who’s taken the course that I want to highlight for our listeners is like you said, we can’t learn and cover everything.

We can’t learn and cover everything in just one course. But what I found really helpful and practical is that we really dove into the process, right? Like how do we approach it and go about. And as you said, that’s the theological approach to ethics. And so, as you said, the preparation for that.

And so, I think that is clear with how that really has to do with our theme for 2025 of kingdom living. it really informs how do we live and how do we move through this world, right? Like you said, how do we discern as we do that?

And so, I wonder because it seems like this course and my personal experience, and as you describe it, has a very practical impact on our lives as disciples of Jesus.

What if you had to name just one — and I know that can be difficult. What would be one major takeaway from this course that would develop a student’s practice of kingdom living if they’ve taken the course?

[00:11:17] Gary: Yes, a lot of it is just dealing with Scripture that really directs us in our lives as to what’s important.

Obviously, we start with the love of — the two commandments, love of God and love of neighbor. So just dealing with Scripture and all that it says. What does it say about yes, caring for the poor or loving your neighbor? All these kinds of things that are there. So, part of it is just a survey of Scripture that starts from the Old Testament and then runs to the New Testament.

But it does focus on sorting out the nature of love, and I think there’s lots of confusion about that. And that’s a problem. Everybody says you ought to be loving, and you ought to be kind. But the thing is, what do you mean and what does that look like in a particular situation?

And it turns out that in the New Testament, for instance love really requires knowledge. You have to know something in order to be loving. You have to know something about what’s true. You have to know something about what is good. So, we explore that so that your love is not an unloving love or a less than good kindness.

But there’s a lot of very simple understandings of love and kindness that float around. And everybody thinks you can instantly and immediately know what it is. So, we delve a lot into what it means to love a neighbor, and in various situations, what it might add up to.

And so, it’s more than just following rules and things. Even rules you can find in Scripture a lot of times is asking, if I want to love my neighbor in this situation, what do I do? What if they’re on a death bed? What if they were in a car accident? What if they’ve lied to me? What if I’ve lied to them? Things like that. So, a lot of it is sorting through what is loving and kind.

I suppose another word that we looked into is the notion of justice. There’s a lot of talk about justice and social justice, but what is it? What does it look like? How do I as an individual deal with it? Or how does a government deal with it? And those are two very different issues to be sorted through because what governments could and should do can be very different than what an individual or a local church should do.

So, we look through a lot of these very basic terms that, at first, seem easy: love, kindness, justice. And then try to see what it really adds up to and prepare for situations that might arise. So that’s a lot of kind of focusing on these key issues, key matters to sort through much more carefully and be better prepared.

[00:14:39] Cara: Excellent. Thank you for sharing that Dr. Deddo. And absolutely, I can see that very practical and tangible connection to this idea of kingdom living. And as we said in the opening, this podcast in particular is focused on best ministry practices for GCI leaders in our context of church ministry.

And so, I’m wondering how does a theological approach to ethics — because as you said, not all approaches to ethics are necessarily theological. So how does a theological approach to ethics impact or inform and shape our practice of ministry?

[00:15:34] Gary: The two do need to go together. So, one of the things is we often if we’re involved in ministry or serving others, sometimes that involves setting things up, organizing things, just making decisions, or sometimes encouraging people to do or participate in certain things. But on what basis do we motivate people to do something, to get involved, to invest themselves in an activity, in a relationship, in a program, really in anything?

And it’s very easy to go to Scripture and just pull out particular verses to do this and to do that. You can take a big, huge one, “work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” Wow. That’s a good thing. You can motivate people by just issuing kind of imperatives and ones that you find in the Bible. Love your neighbor. “If you have love for one another, then people will know you’re my disciple.”

So, love one another. So, you can just tell people things to do sometimes they’re ethical things, what are good and right to do and avoid wrong, bad, evil, harmful things. And other times they’re practical, but always we’re often in situations of kind of motivating people, but it makes a difference how you motivate people, just barking commands at people doesn’t really do it.

It creates a kind of stoic response. “Okay, I have to do this because someone is requiring it of me; God or the ministry leader is requiring this of me. And so, I better, if I want to stay in their favor.” So, we can just call these categories imperatives. Do this. It’s a command, an imperative, it’s imperative that you do this.

But that’s really not how all of Scripture works, any of Scripture works, because the word of God does not work that way. Jesus doesn’t work that way. Paul doesn’t work that way in his writings. So, to go back to the Philippians, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” You have to — the reason why, the motivational frame is because “God is at work in you, both to do and to will, according to His good pleasure.”

Oh, you mean I can count on that? I can count on God being at work in me and to give me the will and to do what’s good and right, and to be, do, be involved in what the things God is involved in? Wow. If I can count on that, I guess I can think about working out my salvation. How do I live out my life under the kingship of Christ, under his leadership?

And everything in Scripture is put together that way, even if you go back to the Old Testament. What we hear before we get the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20 is “I am the Lord your God who took you out of Egypt, so you shall have no other gods.” If you miss the first part, you just hear, you shall have no other gods. You’re left hanging in midair. It just becomes an act of pure will. I’ll get out [inaudible], but that’s not how it works. God says, you can count on me. I’m the kind of God this takes you and has taken you out of the wilderness, sets you free from Egypt. That’s the kind of God I am.

All right, so you’re not going to have any other gods. Which God would you like? The fly God? How about the frog God? What did they do for you, right? None of these gods, they’re not even going to be tempted to worship those gods. None of those gods delivered them. They all enslaved them.

Part of ministry practice is providing people the proper motivation, which is to trust in the living God.

James Torrance, for instance, who I studied with, called these the indicatives of grace. They indicate the God who is gracious, the character, the nature, the purpose, the mind, the heart of God that we see and hear in Jesus. God is like Jesus all the way down. So, when you see, okay, so that’s who I’m obeying.

That’s whose instructions I’m listening to. That’s the one I’m trusting in is God. I am going to attempt to do this, to react this way, to behave this way to make this decision rather than that. So again, it’s another way to get at the obedience of faith. So, in ministry, we want to put forward what builds faith.

It’s talking about who God is, the indicatives of grace. This is who God is, this is what He provides. He is over us as the Father, He’s with us as the Son, and He’s at work among us and even in us by the Holy Spirit. This God is giving us all this. We can trust Him for this. Okay, I guess I can forgive my enemy, because God is overseeing all this.

I’m not just doing a naked act of will stoically, but it’s the obedience of faith, or it’s obeying a command, an imperative, because I’m trusting in the indicative of grace that tells me and reminds me, again and again, which I need to be, of who this God is.

And I can tell the truth because I’m trusting God to oversee this. I can do what is good and right. Because it is good and right. Because I know God knows more than I do. And He wants the best for me. He’s not just making up rules and saying, do it just to prove yourself. He’s saying this is the way, walk in it. It’s the way that leads to life.

Oh, maybe God knows something about life. I don’t know. So, I think I’ll go in that direction. So, it’s really ministry as motivating people on the proper basis so that it frees them to obey, frees them to do, frees them to participate. It frees them to serve others in the way Jesus wants us to and enables us to, otherwise we’re hanging in midair.

And so often I see preachers and things on podcasts and others just barking commands, but they don’t give them anything to go on. There’s no fuel in the tank. And that sets people up, either to just give up or just be stoic and hardened. And that’s not living under the lordship of Christ and all. So I think that would be, and in theological ethics we talk about that motivational framework for why we live the whole of the Christian life in a way that shows who Jesus is as Lord, as Savior, as Redeemer, as the one who loves us and the one who provides for us and gives us that great hope. So maybe some of that would be useful.

[00:24:10] Cara: Absolutely. Because as you say that, and you talk about the role of motivation in the practice of ministry, often that does come up, and how, when we have a theological basis and approach to ethics, how that really transforms or it’s foundational to how we approach how we exist in our ministries and community. And even as you’re talking about that motivation, I can’t help but think that completely transforms even our journey of discipleship, right?

[00:25:02] Gary: Yes, it does. Yeah. It gets down to the bottom. It’s foundational.

[00:25:06] Cara: Yes. Yes. Yeah, thank you for sharing that. I think that this theological approach is really key in our practices of ministry as leaders. And part of that for us and in GCI is that we have this vision of Healthy Church and healthy leaders that we’re wanting to grow continuously towards health ongoing, again and over towards the healthiest expressions that we can, as God enables us to.

And so, I’m wondering what practical implications or practices does this have for our living out of this vision for the development of healthy leadership and healthy church rhythms in our local congregations?

[00:26:12] Gary: One time I heard a pastor talk about the idea is there’s two elements to the Christian life. One is being a faithful and the other is being a healthy. You want faithful members and leaders who are also growing in health. In some ways, then growing as a disciple and taking time to sort through issues about the nature of the Christian life and therefore the nature of all our relationships, first with God and then with others, those that are near and those that are further away.

But it really depends upon — you can’t really get out ahead, help others get ahead of where you are. God can use us, of course, always uses us more than we think or know, thankfully because He is faithful and maybe that’s one of the places to start: a healthy leader knows that God is more faithful than we are.

He’s not dependent upon us. It’s always, to make it happen, He’s inviting us along to participate in what He’s doing, which is much greater than what we can do. So, we should never kind of collapse and think somehow — and again, sometimes how we get motivated, how we are being motivated, or sometimes we motivate others improperly is we make it sound as if God can’t be any more faithful than we are.

If that’s the case, it’s over. Forget it. We’re done. We’re cooked. We quit. Throw in the towel. No, God is always being more faithful. That’s why we even bothered to be involved in the Christian life, in the Christian community. And if we’re exercising leadership, it all comes out of our growing relationship with God and knowing the fullness of His word, not just little bits and pieces and not taking them out of context. And not laying them on others out of context, like the imperatives apart from the indicatives of grace. This is who God is, so this is why we do this and why we follow this.

Looking deeply into these things — someone God calls to be a little bit out ahead, perhaps just to be ahead just because they have the time to do it, and they have the motivation that God has given them, or they have the available resources. But if there’s going to be any kind of leading in a good and right direction or way, somebody has to have discerned, especially when there’s differences of opinion.

And so here, when we get to the ethical issues, what I find is there’s not enough space, times, and places for people to talk and think about these things, and for some people to get ahead just by thinking and praying and reading and finding the best resources, in this case, those who are also teaching, thinking theologically about how to live the Christian life, do what is good and right and true.

So, somebody has to be out ahead of that, being better prepared, not to boast, but of course to enable others to catch up. So, a healthy leader, first of all, has to be trying to be faithful, that is, trust in the living God and know His word and then sort through things, especially if there’s complications.

And of course, we see this in the election years and things like that. There’s the potential of difference and differences of opinion, and sometimes they can be strong, and sometimes there’s just confusion, or people are afraid to talk to one another.

Usually, God uses someone who’s better prepared, or hopefully better prepared, then to advise people or to route people to the best resources that are available on this topic or that topic because there’s just a lot of pressures, right? Individuals, when we’re talking about doing what is good and right, true, and yes, truly loving, truly it’s not easy to discern, and there’s lots of pressures.

So, we can help one another, but usually when it’s complicated and sometimes, especially it’s sometimes it can be very personal, right? These decisions that are being made can be very personal. And should I tell somebody, my employer, about another fellow employee who is being dishonest, who’s stealing or cheating somehow? These can be, and more personal than that, especially when we get to the sexual issues, super personal.

So that takes a lot of preparation and sometimes it actually takes research. You have to know what’s what. You can’t just hear something somewhere saying, oh, that’s the truth. Yeah. The media, and of course, especially if you go to social media, you can hear a million different things. Who’s going to help us sort it through?

This is what healthy leaders can participate in by putting aside time and effort to get prepared to help others. But it has to start with, not out of panic, certainly not out of pride or arrogance, but a desire of trusting God to be faithful and saying maybe because God is faithful, I can be prepared myself and then enable others to sort through some of these difficult things and maybe to help people not just react to each other, but sort it out.

That would be something that might be relevant here.

[00:33:18] Cara: And that gives us, I think, a lot to think about for our listeners. It gives me a lot to think about, even coming back to reflect on the course materials right after the fact, for myself. And I do encourage our listeners to consider enrolling in this course at the appropriate time next week that it’s offered. Speak with your teams, your church leaders, your ecclesiastical supervisor and consider and explore if this is something that is, in terms of the course at GCS, that is appropriate for you. And if not I would still encourage you, as Dr. Deddo has been suggesting to us, to work alongside your fellow leaders to put aside that time to work together in that preparedness, because I think what we can take away from even just the short time in this episode is that theological ethics matter.

They matter for our day-to-day living as disciples. They matter for our health as leaders, and they matter for our health as a local church and our continued growth in that. And so I encourage you all to continue to press into this, to continue to explore and sort out, alongside one another in community with those who, maybe as Dr. Deddo said, have spent a little bit more time sorting out so that we can come alongside one another in this journey of a theological ethic.

I would ask, as we typically do with GC Podcasts, that we would end in prayer. I want to thank you for taking the time to join us today, Dr. Deddo. This was a very rich conversation. Like I said, you’ve left me, and I’m sure our listeners, with a lot to think about. And so, I would ask, would you be willing to pray for our churches and our pastors and ministry leaders in GCI as they pursue this exploration and embodiment of a theological ethic?

[00:36:05] Gary: Sure. Thanks, Cara. It’s been a pleasure and privilege to be with you all. So, let’s join in prayer for a minute here.

Gracious God, we are so grateful that we know You. We have seen, especially in Jesus Christ, Your goodness, Your truth, Your light. The fact that You are a god of life and that You have come to give us life, and life abundantly, and to not only show us a way to live, but You are the way, as we trust in You. You are the way, the truth, and the life. Lord, where would we be if You hadn’t made Yourself known to us and come to us personally and addressed us as Your children, as son and daughter. Lord, where would we be?

We’re so grateful. We’re so thankful that we have Your word preserved for us. We’re not lost. We’re not just pushed and shoved around by every wind of doctrine, or wind of ethic, or wind of a social political agenda. Lord, we come unto You, and we put our trust in You now, even as we offer ourselves to You — not dead sacrifices, but sacrifices full of the life that You have given us that we might live under Your word, live in the light of Your love and trust in Your goodness and the goodness of Your ways.

I thank You that You’ve provided us with each other throughout GCI and GCS and beyond as resources. Lord, it’s those whose lives You’re working in and among, and Lord, we trust You for being the good shepherd. We’re the dumb sheep. We need Your light. We need Your word. We need to hear Your word through others who know You well and You have prepared.

And yeah, we trust You as our good shepherd that You know how to get through to us, Your dumb sheep. You can correct us, You can guide us, You can lead us, You can protect us. And so, we look to You; we trust You in all these ways. And for all those who are listening to this podcast, we pray for Your presence to be with them, for You to speak through Your word to them and to provide the support and encouragement and to protect them from deceit from being, manipulated by guilt or fear or anxiety.

That Your word would break through, Your presence would be with each one especially if they’re facing challenges right here, right now today, even as they listen. That we may praise You and glorify You and celebrate Your faithfulness that even yields faithfulness. Amen.

[00:39:52] Cara: That’s all we have for today. So, until next time, keep on living and sharing the gospel.

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Thanks for listening to the GC Podcast. We hope this episode inspired and equipped you to lead with health and purpose. We would love to hear from you. If you have a suggestion on a topic or if there’s someone who you think we should interview, please email us at info@gci.org.