Kathrin Shaffer (00:01.39)
Hey friends, this is Catherine Schaefer from Unpolished by Cold. This is episode, I don't even know what number anymore. This is Friday, November 14th episode called Biblical Not Popular. I had to look it up because I forgot the name of it. My bad. So let's get into it. Sometimes I think truth has its own weather. You feel it roll in?

First a breeze of unease, then a chill, then the unmistakable brightness of something cutting through the fog. One honest sentence can change the whole temperature of a room. Laughter cools, eyes shift, you can almost hear the discomfort hum in the silence. And that's what truth does. It clears the air and exposes the haze we were calling comfort.

Most of us don't set out to be troublemakers. We just want to belong. We want to be kind, gracious, and decent. But somewhere between wanting peace and fearing rejection, we start sanding down the edges of conviction. We soften statements that used to stand strong. We say, I think, where scripture already said, God said.

It's not that we've lost faith, it's that we've gotten tired of explaining it. There's this ache in modern faith, that exhaustion that comes from wanting to please God and stay likeable. We keep trying to fit the cross into polite conversation as if holiness will be easier to swallow if we add enough sugar. But Jesus never

used sweetness as a disguise. He wasn't cruel, but he was clear. He didn't walk around looking for fights, but he also didn't back away when truth caused one. He could calm a storm with a word and still unsettle an entire city with a parable. He didn't need applause to prove he was right. He just was. And we somehow forgot that part.

Kathrin Shaffer (02:28.281)
We remember the miracles and the mercy, but we skip the moment. We skip those moments when he said hard things and the crowd walked away. He never chased them down to apologize, and he didn't post a clarification later. He let truth stand, unedited. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if we did the same. If we stopped apologizing for being biblical

in a world that wants the benefits of faith without the boundaries of it. And we live in an age that mistakes tolerance for love and correction for cruelty. You can say, believe in yourself and get a standing ovation. But you say, deny yourself and watch the room thin out.

We keep repacking sin as self-expression, rebellion as authenticity, and conviction as close-mindedness. But the truth doesn't flinch when mocked. It survived empires, ideologies, and every rebrand of rebellion history could throw at it. The gospel is older than culture and stronger than opinion. And yet,

We still feel the pressure, don't we? That subtle pulse of fear when someone asks what we believe. The quick mental edit before we answer. The voice that says, now now, keep it vague, keep it safe, because being biblical might cost us friends, opportunities, or even credibility in circles that preach inclusion, but actually they practice exclusion towards conviction.

And it's a strange thing to belong to a kingdom that never promised comfort here. But Jesus warned us. He said the world would hate those who follow him. Not because we're awful, but because light hurts eyes that have lived too long in darkness. Still, it hurts. The rejection, the ridicule.

Kathrin Shaffer (04:54.649)
the way people assume you're hateful because you have standards. We don't talk about that enough. We talk about standing firm, but not about the ache that follows. There's a loneliness in obedience sometimes. You watch others walk away from truth and find applause waiting for them while you stay behind holding words that feel heavier by the day.

You scroll through the noise, see a thousand opinions, and feel the tug to quiet your own because you're tired of being the unpopular one. But popularity is a fickle God and it always demands worship.

And that's what makes being Biblical so freeing. You stop bowing to the crowd. You realize obedience isn't performance. It's peace. It's not always easy, but it's clean. I've learned that the longer you walk with Jesus, the less room there is for pretending. He keeps clearing out the clutter, the fake smiles,

the diplomatic faith that changes shape to match the moment, the Holy Spirit has this way of putting his finger on the compromise you are hoping no one noticed. And once he does, silence isn't peace anymore, it's disobedience.

We've confused niceness with holiness, and the two are not the same. Niceness hides truth to avoid offence. Holiness tells the truth to avoid hell. The hardest part is learning to do it with gentleness, to speak with the same tenderness Jesus showed to the broken, the lost, the ones the world had already discarded.

Kathrin Shaffer (07:06.713)
He never yelled at the sinners. He saved his strongest words for those who twisted truth in God's name. That alone should humble us. Because sometimes we use biblical as a badge instead of a burden. We weaponize it. But being biblical isn't about having ammunition. It's about having alignment. It's not being right about God.

It's being right with him. And that kind of rightness comes from relationship, not debate. We learn this in the quiet moments, not the arguments. In the mornings when the word feels alive and the world feels loud. When conviction comes like a whisper instead of a shout. Reminding us that truth, just something,

isn't just something we defend. It's someone we follow.

And the older I get in faith, the more I realize that truth isn't fragile. It doesn't need me to protect it. It just needs me to reflect it, like moonlight. The moon doesn't generate light. It just stays turned towards the source. And that's all we're really called to do. Stay facing Him.