Episode 062 – The Justice of Jesus (With Joash P. Thomas)

Some Christians think Justice means that the guilty get their due. Other Christians think Justice is when everyone gets what they need. In a world that feels so unjust, why are we so divided on what Justice is? What would it mean for us to do justice Jesus’ way?

Show Notes

In this conversation, I get to chat with Joash Thomas about his new book, The Justice of Jesus: Reimagining Your Church’s Life Together To Pursue Liberation and Wholeness. When I saw that title, I knew I had to talk with him. We discuss the multifaceted nature of justice, particularly from the perspective of the Global South. Joash contrasts this with Western interpretations of justice, emphasizing the importance of understanding historical contexts, such as colonization, and the implications of privilege. We talk about the role of the church in advocating for justice, the need for community engagement, and the cost associated with pursuing true justice.

Takeaways

• Justice is defined by the good news it brings to the poor.
• The Global South offers a different perspective on justice than the West.
• Christian justice involves restoration and accountability for all.
• Colonization has deeply affected the understanding of justice in the church.
• Privilege must be acknowledged in discussions of justice.
• The church has a responsibility to engage with marginalized communities.
• Justice should not be a cheap pursuit; it requires sacrifice.
• The church’s budget should reflect a commitment to justice.
• We must recognize our interconnectedness in systems of oppression.
• The gospel message includes both spiritual and physical liberation.

Recommended Resources

• The Justice of Jesus: Reimagining Your Church’s Life Together to Pursue Liberation and Wholeness

• Scroll down for a full transcript of this episode.
• You can also watch and share the video version on YouTube.

More about My Conversation Partner

Fr. Joash P. Thomas

Joash Thomas was born and raised in India and has served as a U.S. political consultant and lobbyist before moving into global human rights advocacy. He holds multiple degrees and serves in local church ministry as an ordained Priest (a new development since the recording of this podcast) in the Diocese of St. Anthony in Toronto, Canada. Drawing from his St. Thomas Christian roots and a decolonized, justice-centered understanding of Scripture, he works to help Christian folks imagine a faith that unites rather than divides— and that stands firmly with neighbors on the margins.

Find Joash Here

• Website: https://www.joashpthomas.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joash.thomas
• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@joashpthomas

Today’s Sponsor

• The Apprenticeship Lap Patronship – Support Marc’s work! www.MarcOptIn.com

Transcription

Marc Schelske 0:00
Hey, friends. I’m Marc Alan Schelske, and this is The Apprenticeship Way, a podcast about spiritual growth following the way of Jesus. This is episode 62. “The Justice of Jesus.”

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INTRODUCING THE CONVERSATION

Not too long ago, the President of the United States declared Portland, my home city, “war ravaged.” Not long after that, in October, there was a massive protest march through downtown called the No Kings Rally. It was actually the second one in the city, massive, maybe 50 or 60,000 people. There have been ongoing protests in downtown across from the main ice facility for months now. There are signs all over the city protesting ICE’s presence. Churches have started joining with community organizations to host immigrant rights training events. The President was wrong to say that Portland is “war ravaged,” but it definitely is in a heightened state, and people are not happy on all sides.

In personal conversations and social media interactions that I’ve had, I’ve seen a lot of people reacting against these circumstances. I have heard people frustrated with how protests are slowing down traffic and impeding business. I’ve heard folks talk about how all of this behavior is disorderly, and it shouldn’t be tolerated. I even heard one person threaten violence against demonstrators, like, I saw this happen in real life. When the first No Kings March was scheduled, an influential politician called it the I hate America March, which, frankly, couldn’t be more wrong.

I know it’s wrong because I participated in both No Kings Marches, the one last June and then the one last October. At those events, I talked with people all day long, probably 100 or more each time. I read countless signs. What I learned was that every person there was concerned in one way or another with justice. For some, the injustice that they were protesting had to do with health care access. For others, for many, the injustice was the way that brown-skinned immigrants are being treated. For other people, it’s a matter of how the courts seem to only favor the rich and powerful. And there were certainly some who were there feeling that the issue was how our current political regime seems to just disregard any law it doesn’t like now. Some of the protesters at these marches had perspectives I disagree with. Some of them I thought were extreme. There was a lot of anger, but universally, everyone I talked to was concerned with justice, or at least how they envisioned a just society.

I’ve also been watching and listening to folks in my extended Christian community, both in person and online, respond to all of this. Increasingly, I see two diverging groups. Some Christians, quoting the apostle Paul, say that it is the right thing for the church to obey the government, that God is a God of order, and that law enforcement officers and immigration officers are just doing their jobs. It would be anti-Christian to get in the way. And those people, they think they’re on the side of justice.

Then there are other Christians quoting the Hebrew prophets about welcoming and caring for the foreigner and the immigrant, who see that law and order position as deeply unjust. They quote scriptures about immoral kings who exploit the poor. They want to see health care and mental health care access for everyone. They want the US government to stop funding violence worldwide. And those people think they’re on the side of justice. So how is it that in a time that feels so unjust, we are so conflicted when it comes to justice.

Several years ago, I ran into Joash P. Thomas online. Back then, he was talking about the ways the church was asking him to surrender his heritage, expecting him to prioritize white European theologians in his study. He’s Canadian, but he was born and raised in India. He talked about how he experienced church people reacting negatively to him when he was a guest speaker and wore non-Western clothes to preach. I was intrigued by this guy, and so I followed him. And over the years, I’ve learned a lot from his social media posts. And so my ears perked up when I heard him talking about his new book. The book is called The Justice of Jesus: Reimagining Your Church’s Life Together to Pursue Liberation and Wholeness. When I read it, right off the bat, Joash said this, “Justice is not the natural disposition of the contemporary western church.”

Wait, what? How can that be? I grew up in middle America in a conservative Christian community. My dad was a pastor. I went to church school. I could not imagine a group that talked more about how God is just and how we need to support the government’s role in maintaining justice. But then I read these words. “Instead of being shaped by the liberating Spirit of God that anointed Jesus to bring good news to the people in poverty and oppression (Luke 4:18) much of the Western Church was shaped by a theology that prioritizes the salvation of souls at the cost of the dignity and liberation of human bodies.” I had to admit, that was a summary of my church experience growing up, a concise explanation of the gospel I was taught, and as a young pastor, that I was taught to preach. My heart agreed with him, so I asked Joash to come talk about a broader vision of justice.

Joash P Thomas was born and raised in India, has served as a US political consultant and a lobbyist, before moving into global human rights advocacy. He holds multiple degrees and serves in local church ministry as a deacon in the Diocese of st Anthony in Toronto, Canada. Drawing from his St Thomas Christian roots and a decolonized justice-centered understanding of Scripture, he works to help Christian folk imagine a faith that unites rather than divides, and that stands firmly with neighbors on the margins.

So I started our conversation by asking Joash to take us right to the heart of the matter. What is wrong with our definitions of justice?

THE CONVERSATION

Joash Thomas 10:53
So the definition of justice that I was taught comes from the Global South Church, and the definition for justice there was really centered on Jesus’s definition of the gospel that we see in Luke chapter four, verse 18, where Jesus says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach good news to the poor, to set the captive free, to set the oppressed free.” From a very young age in the global south Evangelical Church, the Indian evangelical church, I was taught that if it’s not good news to our poor and oppressed neighbors, then it’s not the good news of Jesus Christ.

It was interesting for me then to come to the Western church and hear almost a different gospel being presented, a gospel that was more spiritual in nature. I’d seen this in the global south as well, but it was a bit more overt in the US church, specifically, where any Christian activity prioritizing justice was seen as in danger of being Marxist and not actually being historically Christian, the way it is.

We find this in studying church history. So, I think the definition of justice that I use throughout the book is an ancient Christian definition of justice. It’s Augustine’s definition of justice, which is that justice is giving to each person their due, where justice is giving to each person the good things that God intended for them. And so for someone who has survived violence, that’s healing and restoration. For someone who has perpetrated violence, that is accountability with the ultimate goal of restoration. So justice is for everyone who’s made in the image of God.

Marc Schelske 12:45
There are a couple of things that I’d like to have you define, and then this quote from Augustine feels like a really important mirror. The folks that I grew up around would hear you say Justice is giving to each person their due. They would nod their head and say, absolutely right. But the mental picture that goes along with that absolutely is a courtroom. A criminal has been brought–that’s a phrase we use–they’ve been brought to justice, and that’s what that means. When you talked about this ancient definition of justice, you’re not talking specifically about that. When folks react against the idea that the church would be involved in justice, and they say, “oh, that’s Marxist,” they’re not saying the judicial system is Marxist, right? They’re saying something else is.

So push further into that, and as you do, you used a phrase at the beginning that you learned about justice from the church in the Global South. I don’t know that everybody is going to understand immediately what you mean by the Global South and why that identification is important. So, can you talk about that just briefly for context, and then help us understand how this statement from Augustine is broader than “Law and Order justice”?

Joash Thomas 14:06
Yeah. So let me start by defining what I mean by the Global South. So the Global South is basically a part of the world where a majority of the world’s population lives. So typically, the world is split into two hemispheres, right? The northern and southern hemispheres. And if you look at wealth and equality across the world, you’ll see a large concentration of wealth in the Global North. That’s basically North America, the US, Canada, and the European countries. And you see a lot of wealth that has historically been extracted from the world South places like the country I grew up in, India, and also Latin America, Asia, and Africa. There are some exceptions, obviously, to that, like Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. But largely speaking, the church in the Global South is one that has existed in many parts of the world for longer than it has existed in the Global North.

So, for example, my family has been worshiping Jesus for 2000 years. It was the Apostle Thomas who brought the Gospel to my ancestors. Jesus, who was also in the Global South, by the way… Christianity came from the Global South to the Global North. And unfortunately, because of the way history then played out with the empires and the history of colonization, we have a church in the Global South that looks very different from a church in the Global North. So, for example, I am a part of global evangelical forums like Lausanne, which is a collection of churches from all over the world who identify as evangelicals, and I am very involved in their justice and freedom network. And there’s this tension that you can feel between churches in the Global South who are evangelical and churches in the US right now who have very different definitions of justice, like the one you pointed out. A big part of my ministry and book is trying to highlight why those differences exist.

To jump into a little bit of those different understandings of justice that have been shaped by history. You know, I would say to people who think of justice as only courtroom justice, that that is absolutely a valid form of justice. In fact, I’ve spent the last 10 years of my career working in the international human rights space, where I’ve worked with lawyers all over the world who have helped arrest people who have trafficked people, or participated in intimate partner violence or violence against women and children, or police who have abused their power and authority and who have brought these criminals to justice in a courtroom setting. But what I have also learned in doing that work is that that is just one part of justice. Justice is delivered then to the survivor of violence, and it’s delivered to the perpetrator in the form of accountability. But really, Christian justice is so much more than that.

Christian justice is the ultimate restoration and shalom of all things. An idea of Christian justice that’s shaped by the global church would say that that isn’t the end of the story, then for the perpetrator too. Now, of course, you prioritize the oppressed, because God stands with people who are poor and oppressed, so we stand with them as the church. You prioritize them and their well-being and safety, which is why you want to make sure that there’s perpetrator accountability. But we, at the same time, don’t want to discount the image of God and the perpetrator, too. We don’t want to seek to end their lives. We don’t want to take the chance away from them for their restoration, because, okay, right? The bad things that they’re doing, the trafficking that they’re doing, is not good for them either, and that’s not the life that God intended for them to live either. So the church has a role in standing in the gap between people who are oppressed and people who oppress them, and to take the side of the oppressed and, at the same time, work toward the restoration of all things.

Marc Schelske 18:34
All right, so when you say that ultimately, what’s just is working toward the restoration of all things, that feels exciting and easy to get on board with, but feels like there’s a little bit of a poison pill for some of us. Early in the book you wrote, “The work of decolonization will always be a threat to the beneficiaries of colonization, especially those who have not wrestled much with how they’ve benefited from colonization.” So this, to me, connects with what you just said, because if justice means not just maintaining law and order, if justice means accountability for perpetrators, then part of that accountability is thinking about historical violence and how historical violence has shaped the world today.

That’s where we get to this word that many people don’t understand or are uncomfortable with, decolonization. When you describe the Global South, one of the ways that you identified it was that many of these countries are countries that served as resource extraction points for various empires historically, and so some of the struggles that they face today, they face because they don’t have resources that they would naturally have, had they not been exploited through colonization.

So, the poison pill: I’m a nice Christian guy who lives in middle America. I’m white, I’m middle class. I got to go to a private school growing up. It’s easy for me to look at my life through this lens that I’ve worked hard and I’ve been a good guy who’s observed the law. What I have is probably the result of my hard work — You know, my merit. I have benefited from this stuff, right? What I’m hearing you say is I can’t really get on board with the broader vision of justice if I’m not willing to think about stuff like that. Does that feel true?

Joash Thomas 20:47
Yeah, yeah, I would say, as Christians, we’re called to wrestle with the uncomfortable so that we can create great beauty from it. This is what Jesus does for us. He stepped into our messy world. This is the Gospel story, right? He steps into our messy world, becomes incarnational, becomes one of us, takes on marginalized human flesh. Not just human flesh, but a poor, Middle Eastern, colonized, occupied, homeless teacher. He’s ultimately crucified because he was a threat to the Roman Empire, right? And so he was crucified by them, but was victorious against them, right? This is the gospel message: there’s beauty that comes from drawing closer to the discomfort and the mess that’s in the world. This is why, as a people of truth, I think it’s important for us to wrestle with history, both the good and the bad, but especially the bad.

One of the unfortunate things that is in the history of the Western Church is this thing called colonization. That is a historical event. Now I say throughout the book, and even in conversations like this, that colonization, for me, isn’t a political buzzword; it isn’t an academic theory only. It’s actually a lived experience for my family. My family comes from India, a country that was once 20% of the world’s GDP. After the Brits left in 1947, it was 1% of the world’s GDP. So clearly, something happened when colonial powers from the West came, supported by the Western Church. And it wasn’t just the Catholic Church supporting the Portuguese colonial powers. It was also the Church of England, the Anglicans. It was the Dutch Reformed Church, the Southern Baptist Church, and the Southern Presbyterian Church that supported the transatlantic slave trade. Colonization wasn’t just an extraction of material wealth and resources from the Global South; it was also an extraction of human resources. This is why we have the transatlantic slave trade, right?

It’s all kind of connected. What I say throughout my book, The Justice of Jesus, is that colonization wasn’t just bad for the Global South; it was also bad for the Western Church because we participated in this. I give examples of that throughout the book. Because of our participation in it, it shaped us to resist justice for all our marginalized neighbors, for all our neighbors in need of it. It narrowed our understanding of the gospel to take away the physical good news and just keep, in its place, a spiritual good news. This whole idea that Jesus cares more about the salvation of my soul than the freedom of my human body actually comes from colonization, because Christians who participated in it, Christians who participated in slavery, found it beneficial to tell people they enslaved and oppressed and colonized, “Hey, don’t worry about your physical suffering right now. Jesus cares more about the salvation of your soul than the freedom and well being of your human body. So just put your faith in Jesus. It’ll all be okay in the afterlife.” And many did, because there was still some semblance of good news in that, but it wasn’t proclaimed faithfully in the fullness of the good news of Jesus.

Marc Schelske 24:21
It does seem odd, right? If I’m a follower of Jesus, and I say to another person that is in that same social location that I am, “Don’t worry. This is terrible, but we can trust God’s faithfulness,” that has a different tone than a slave owner saying to an enslaved person, “Don’t worry about the way I’m oppressing your body. God will be faithful and reward you in eternity.” The message may be the same thing, but the social location changes what it means. It makes me think immediately of the Slave Bible. You know? “We’re going to do this really wonderful thing of printing and providing Bibles to our enslaved people, but we’re just going to excise the Exodus story so that they don’t have a vision that God wants their liberation, that at some point in history, God led enslaved people to freedom.” We don’t want them to have that part of Scripture. It feels so incredibly, obviously, self-contradictory. How could the Christian person providing those Bibles think, “I’m doing the Lord’s work?” They’re so blinded by their investment in the structure, the hierarchical structure that is benefiting them, that it justifies them to do what is a horrible thing!

Joash Thomas 25:47
Yeah. No doubt. And in many ways, we’re encouraged by the empires of this earth to distract ourselves with a spiritual version of the gospel that does not have any good news for people in poverty and oppression, because it benefits these powers and authorities to stay in place. But as Christians, we’re also told that the gospel can be bad news to powers and systems that oppress our neighbors. This is why you see Jesus engaging with rich people in his context, people with wealth, privilege, status in the Roman Empire. And what does he do? He loves them. He meets them where he is, but he invites them then to sell everything they have and to follow Him and to give to the poor, right? We don’t want to teach much about that. In the Western Church, we find all the ways to discount that.

But, the reality is that the invitation for people with wealth and power and privilege from Jesus is to reckon with what we have and draw connections: “Oh, my goodness, I’ve ripped others off (or someone else ripped someone else off and gave it to me, and this is what I’ve inherited), and now what am I going to do with it, now that my life has been transformed by this encounter with Jesus?

This is true for me too. I come from privilege myself. When I’m speaking at a church, sometimes I have people raise their hands just to show how privileged I am myself. So I tell people, “Hey, if you grew up with a maid, raise your hand. If you grew up with a cook, raise your hand. If you grew up with a driver, raise your hand. At the end. I say, “If you grew up with a maid, cook, and driver, altogether, raise your hand.” Very few people do actually. And I say, “Well, that was me. I grew up with a maid, cook, and driver in India.” I know what it’s like to have privilege status in the Empire, and at the same time, I also have this history in my family of being shaped by colonization. I say that I am both a survivor of colonization and a beneficiary of colonization.

At the same time, these things aren’t neat categories. I became a beneficiary of colonization the day I moved to America, and then to Canada after that, and I started living on stolen land with stolen wealth and stolen resources. You just read my bio at the top of the episode, and sure, I have three master’s degrees. I’ve had a very successful career in international human rights, working in leadership, and of course, I’m very hardworking. But I also have to recognize how my humanity and my privilege and resources are connected with the world around me, because we don’t exist in a vacuum. We need each other. We live in this ecosystem.

So when I see an unhoused person today as I leave church, the thought that comes into my mind now compared to before, which was different, the thought that comes into my mind now is that this person’s poverty is an indictment on my privilege. My savings account, in some ways, is an indictment of the circumstances that cause this person’s poverty, because they’re interconnected. I have resources that this person should also have, but they don’t, because of unjust systems in place. And of course, personal sin can come in too, but we see the personal sin without the context of the systemic and societal injustices and sin.

Marc Schelske 29:30
I think that’s a really interesting point. A lot of folks who maybe are new to this conversation would hear you say that you see that homeless person’s lack in some way as an indictment on you and the resources you have, and would react to that. right? Like, “I’m a good person, I’m a nice person, I tithe, I give to nonprofit organizations. That person’s homelessness has nothing to do with me.” But I think what you’re pointing out is the way that that indictment happens is because when you identify yourself as having some level of privilege, that is speaking to a hierarchy that exists. You used the language of “system,” and that can be hard language for people, because it seems abstract, but really, “the system” is that there is a hierarchy. Objectively, it’s probably not Joash’s bank account that’s causing that guy to be homeless, but Joash is at a certain place on that pyramid. And up the pyramid from Joash, there is a developer who owns 40% of all of the low-income properties in that town. And up the ladder from him are tech billionaires who are extracting value from the personal health data of entire groups of people. We don’t immediately look at those people at the top of the pyramid and think, “Oh my God, what a mental illness to hoard wealth like that!” We don’t think that, and the reason we don’t is that the pyramid itself provides the justification, and I’m on it somewhere.

Joash Thomas 31:10
Yeah.

Marc Schelske 31:11
So, if I begin to say that the guy who owns all of the low income properties, he’s the he’s the reason that there’s homeless people. Well, I’m a few notches down the ladder, and I also own one rental property. So, I’m part of the ladder. I’m part of the pyramid. If I look up the pyramid and say, “It’s all those people’s fault,” then I can disown any kind of responsibility that might fall to me, right? There is a system in place that invites people to climb a ladder where we give value to people who are higher up the ladder. The inverse of that is also true. People who are lower down the ladder are seen as less worthy. This is just in the air. It’s the way that we think. So, talk a little bit about how hierarchy fits into this whole discussion of justice and injustice and the church’s role.

Joash Thomas 32:18
To build on what you just said, “I am my brother’s keeper,” right? This is the opposite of what Cain tells God after murdering Abel. He says, “I’m not My Brother’s Keeper. I don’t know where he is.” I’m just trying to live my life here and all that. But the reality is, we are our brother’s keepers. We are our sisters and siblings’ keepers. Our humanity is interconnected with theirs, whether we realize it or not. If someone else is at the bottom of the hierarchy here, I am complicit by just participating in a structure that oppresses and marginalizes them. We need to recognize that we, ultimately, as human beings, even unknowingly, participate in systems and structures that oppress our marginalized neighbors.

One example of this right now is our taxpayer dollars. I live in Canada, but I’m a US citizen, so I pay taxes in two countries. My tax dollars, both in the US and Canada right now, actively go towards funding children being bombed and starved to death in Gaza. I am complicit in that system. Now I don’t agree with it, but what else am I going to do? I have to pay my taxes. I have to give to Caesar what’s Caesar’s.

In my book, The Justice of Jesus, I walk us through a few tenets of the colonizer’s gospel, one of those tenets–and this is literally what colonizers told their enslaved and colonized people–is that social hierarchies are good and that they’re ordained by God. Many of us in the church have probably heard this with the verse that’s often used to subjugate women in Ephesians. It’s twisted completely out of context, but essentially from that passage, you derive a picture: “It’s man at the top, then women, then children, and slaves.” That’s what the verses say, “Slaves obey your masters.” This is what the colonizers took and exported around the world. So, it was white men at the top, white women, children, then slaves. This is what we saw in the antebellum South in the US.

And we get all kinds of weird, heretical theology from this, too, like the eternal subordination of the Son. Historically, the churches believe that Jesus is coequal and coeternal with the Father. The Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit all live in triune community as equals with each other. But within evangelicalism, to defend these social hierarchies, we’ve also changed the order of the Trinity now to say that the Son is subordinate to the Father, and this is heresy. There’s a deep connection between how we understand God and how we understand neighbor. And if we want to understand neighbors in these dualistic ways of hierarchy and society, then we’re also going to project the same onto our understanding of God.

Sometimes I tell people who are so frustrated with conversations they’re having with family members right now who don’t seem to care about justice for our marginalized neighbors, I tell them that we just need to recognize that we’re worshiping two different Jesuses at the end of the day. We’re worshiping a Jesus who’s coequal and coeternal with the Father, who came to set us free from our sin, physically and spiritually. They’re worshiping a version of Jesus that they were taught by people who enslaved and colonized people, and that version of Jesus doesn’t care about our physical suffering in the world. That version of Jesus isn’t coequal to the Father at the creation of the world. That version of Jesus just came to get us a get-out-of-hell-free card. That’s the reality. We worship two different Jesuses in America right now.

Marc Schelske 36:27
Right. If that image of God — where what God is most concerned about is the soul — is accurate, then I am licensed to not care about anything in your life that’s not your soul. And if God is just (in not caring about anything but your soul), then it must be just for me to do that. That must be what justice is. You started talking about Jesus’ mission statement in Luke four. It seems like we either as a church have to say that is also our calling, or we have to say in some way that was uniquely Jesus work and not ours.

Joash Thomas 37:13
That is what a lot of Christians say. But that is not what the majority of Christians have said throughout church history around the world, even if that is what a lot of Christians in the West today say, but it’s such a disembodied theology. If we’re the body of Christ on earth, which we say we are, if we’re the hands and feet of Christ, then shouldn’t we also have the mind of Christ, as Paul reminds us in Colossians? Shouldn’t we also do what Jesus did on Earth himself, until his physical body returns? But we have a very disembodied theology, where we think Jesus is gone, and we only care about the spiritual. So we look past the physical bodies, the physical suffering bodies of our neighbors, to get to their souls. In doing so, we actually do more harm than good without acknowledging the physical suffering of their bodies.

Marc Schelske 38:11
Right! That leads us to things like the soup kitchen, where you get served soup after you sit through a 45-minute sermon. Or, when I was a youth pastor, 20 years ago, everybody wanted their churches to have youth mission trips. This was us taking a bunch of our kids, raising a bunch of our money to fly our kids somewhere to do a bad job building a cinderblock building, and do gospel puppet shows. Why did we celebrate that? Well, because our kids are learning to preach the gospel. They’re learning to tell the story, which is the story of souls getting saved.

Joash Thomas 38:48
100%. Instead of taking the posture of engaging with leaders in these communities, the church that’s already present there, being faithful, instead of asking them, “Hey, what do you really need?” We assume, of course, they want the salvation of souls, and of course, they need us, right? And so we then do all sorts of weird things, but there’s a better way, and this is what I call us to throughout the book.

We don’t have to settle for the world that is right now, because the spirit is always doing something new, if we can keep up with the Spirit, right? Times like this in history are challenging, for sure, but there are also opportunities for us to learn and grow and do better than what was handed to us, and bring healing, hope, and liberation in this world, something that the world so desperately needs. But we can’t bring that good news, that hope, and that healing to this world if we look past the physical suffering of the human bodies of our neighbors and creation.

Marc Schelske 39:58
I think that’s true. So, the subtitle of your book is “Reimagining your church’s life together to pursue liberation and wholeness.” That is a little bit pointed, because you’re not saying in the abstract that the capital C church should be different (which I think you believe), but your subtitle is essentially, “You think differently about your local congregation) So, let’s talk about that. I’m a pastor of a very small church here in Portland. So, let’s say everybody’s like, “Yes, Marc, this makes sense. We want to reimagine our community in alignment with this.” So what does that look like? Apart from learning a new mindset, which is so essential, what are the ways that we participate in this?

Joash Thomas 40:46
So I’ve got a chapter on prayer where I give tangible, specific recommendations to spark the imagination. There’s a chapter on advocacy and one on partnerships. I also draw us in a bit closer to three particular aspects of how we do local church, which are our budget, our pulpits, and our posture as a community–our theology. I talk a lot about church budgets–individual budgets, too, for sure–but church budgets as well. How are we spending our money? Of course, this is for every church to discern for its own context, but I want us not to neglect the physical suffering and oppression of our neighbors around us as we plan our church budgets. I don’t want our church budgets to be overly spiritual and look past the suffering of the human bodies of people in our neighborhoods and our communities.

One of the things that I mentioned in this book is that I did a survey of evangelical churches across Canada and saw that most Canadian evangelical churches spent the vast majority of their budget on themselves. Every church community has its needs. You have your operational needs. I also say don’t underpay your staff. That’s the form of modern slavery. It’s important for us to honor our staff and our volunteers and take care of that. But then, in addition to that, there’s about 10% margin that churches sometimes have for missions budget or whatnot, and most of that is actually spent towards spiritual ministry, and not any forms of physical ministry.

I had this conversation with a friend at one of Canada’s largest churches, who is a missions pastor. I leave the bad examples anonymous. I mentioned the good examples by name in the book. But, this friend of mine just got coffee with me, and he said,, “It blows my mind, because my lead pastor will tell you that justice is a big part of the gospel, and that the gospel is both physical and spiritual good news,” but then he told me about the situation twhere they had a surplus in their budget of about $30,000. That would be quite nice for you as a local church pastor, I’d imagine! Here’s a large church having a $30,000 surplus in its budget, and it had two options presented before it. We can either support our local and global anti-human trafficking partners, or we can support this one long-time missionary partner that air drops Christian radios into parts of Europe by parachuting those radios in. Lo and behold, they go with the latter, because if there’s a chance that we can even save some souls, we will take that over caring for the physical needs of children being trafficked.

That says a lot, because Jesus said, where your money is, there your heart will also be. I hold a mirror up, and I say, “Hey, don’t assume your church would make a different decision here.” We need to examine our postures, our theologies, and our budgets. The hope behind this book is to get us to reflect more, wrestle more, and discern with the Spirit in our context. It’ll look different for every local church, but I hope it presents enough ideas to at least spark the imagination on prayer, giving, and advocacy.

Marc Schelske 44:18
You said in the book that we should expect — No, that’s my word. You didn’t say that — you said, “The justice of Jesus is expensive.” What did you mean when you said that?

Joash Thomas 44:30
So, I ground that in the parable of the Good Samaritan. We see the Good Samaritan do something that cost him. It cost him two days’ wages. This is something that Christians, both in the conservative and the progressive, exvangelical side, are guilty of. We prefer what I call cheap justice. We prefer the kind of pursuit of justice that has no cost to us or very little cost to us. When, in reality, the justice of Jesus should cost us something, and it might even cost us everything. And this is why I think it’s helpful to have the examples of the saints in the church or the prophets, people who stood up for justice. People like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who was literally killed for standing up for justice. People like Bishop Oscar Romero who, in El Salvador, stood up to the American empire and was killed by the local military of his government for standing up for justice. People like Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was killed by the Nazi Empire for standing up for justice. You see Christians throughout history, leaders in the church even, stand up for justice and pay the cost for it. You see the Old Testament prophets do that. You see John the Baptist, Jesus, Paul, do that.

So why do we think, in the West, that Justice won’t have a cost to us? Are we ready to sacrifice everything for the sake of our marginalized neighbors, to give up our lives the way Jesus did for us, if called upon and if needed? I don’t think we think of justice in those ways, generally speaking. And I want to invite us to a posture where we hold everything loosely and we recognize that if we really believe that the earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it belongs to the Lord, and everything I have is also the Lord’s, and if there are people around me in need of me, standing in the gap, throwing my body in between them and their oppressors, if needed, I will do that, because that is what the justice of Jesus looks like in an unjust, cruel world today,

MARC’S REFLECTION

Marc Schelske 45:15
Christians are fond of saying, “Our God is a God of order,” but what kind of order do you mean? If you think that order is limited to decorum, to church services being well-planned, or to folks obeying the law, then you are missing something crucial about the way of Jesus. God is a God who orders the world and who is inviting us to participate in a righteous and just ordering of the world. God’s order is liberative. It is gracious. It is not an order that privileges the elite or the powerful or the wealthy. It is an order where the last shall be first, and the first shall be last. So yeah, God is a God of order. But is God’s order an order you want to be part of?

Joash’s vision of justice is another way to talk about God’s order. The Hebrew prophets called this order Shalom. That means peace, but not the kind of peace that is just no disruption, no war. Shalom means peace in the sense that everyone gets what they need, which was exactly St. Augustine’s definition of justice. This conversation with Joash has given me a lot to think about. I hope you will too pick up his book, The Justice of Jesus: Reimagining Your Church’s Life Together to Pursue Liberation and Wholeness, and start thinking about how you and your church could be more part of God’s order in this way.

I’ll end with Joash’s words. “Times like this in history are challenging, for sure, but there are also opportunities for us to learn and grow and do better than what was handed to us and bring healing, hope and liberation in this world, something the world so desperately needs, but we can’t bring that good news and the hope and healing that goes with it if we look past the physical suffering of our neighbors.”

May you have the courage to make the shift from a faith that is only about spiritual salvation to one that includes physical liberation. And may the Spirit inspire you to see how you can be part of God’s righteous and just ordering of the world.

Thanks for listening. Notes for today’s episode can be found at MarcAlanSchelske.com/TAW062. Did you like this? Well, there’s more. I gave you my whole pitch to subscribe at the beginning of the podcast today. So no need to say anything here. You can opt in at www.MarcOptIn.com, and if you want to choose one of those tiers to support, that’s where you’ll do it.

Until next time, remember: In this one present moment, you are loved, you are known, and you are not alone.

Episode 061 – Six Weeks to Grow? Yes, Please!

Journaling for Spiritual Growth, my book that teaches you a sustainable practice for spiritual and emotional growth, comes out this week. This is the 2nd edition, published with Whitaker House. Let’s browse through the book together!

Show Notes

In this episode, Marc discusses his new book, Journaling for Spiritual Growth (2nd ed.), exploring its themes, structure, and the transformative power of journaling. He pages through the book, pointing out key features, so you can sort out if this is the right book for you.

Takeaways

• Journaling is a transformative practice that can lead to personal and spiritual growth.
• The book is structured into six weeks, each focusing on different aspects of journaling.
• Perspective is crucial for a sustainable journaling practice.
• Templates can help guide your journaling and make it more effective.
• Grace is the only safe environment for spiritual growth.
• The appendices provide valuable resources and insights for journaling.
• Creating a habit of journaling requires understanding competing habits.
• Silence is an essential part of the journaling process.
• Inward and Godward reflections are key ingredients for effective journaling.
• Faithfulness in journaling means returning to the practice consistently.

Recommended Resources

• www.JournalingForSpiritualGrowth.com

• Scroll down for a full transcript of this episode.
• You can also watch and share the video version on YouTube.

More about My Conversation Partner

It’s me. Hi. I’m the problem, it’s me.

Marc Alan Schelske is a happily recovering fundamentalist praying for the restoration of all things. He writes and teaches about spiritual maturity, emotional growth, and the other-centered, co-suffering way of Jesus. His books, including Walking Otherward, Journaling for Spiritual Growth, and The Wisdom of Your Heart, can be found at www.MarcAlanSchelske.com. Marc serves as the teaching elder at Bridge City Community Church in Milwaukie, Oregon, a suburb of Portland, where we work to keep all things, even Christianity, a bit weird.

Find Marc Here

• Website: www.MarcAlanSchelske.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarcAlanSchelske
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marcalanscherlske/
• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@marcalanschelske

Today’s Sponsor

• Journaling for Spiritual Growth – Brand new 2nd edition. Available in all the book places.

Transcription

Marc Schelske 0:00
Hey, friends. I’m Marc Alan Schelske, and this is The Apprenticeship Way, a podcast about spiritual growth following the way of Jesus. This is episode 61: Six weeks to grow? Yes, please!

SPONSOR

Today’s podcast is brought to you by my brand-new hot-off-the-presses book, Journaling for Spiritual Growth. Second Edition. Launch day is always exciting for an author, and this is my sixth launch. I’m starting to feel like I’m actually an author, maybe. The rest of this podcast is going to have to do with this book in some way, what it’s about. So that’s all I’ll say for now.

Marc Schelske 0:32
I spent a lot of time in bookstores when I was a kid. It’s a special kind of joyful piece to sit on the carpeted floor of a bookstore aisle, slowly browsing through books you might want to read. Most of us buy our books online now, so we don’t get to do that much anymore. I thought I would take some time to do that with you today. I recorded this Page Flip video of my new book a week ago, and it’s posted on my website, but I wanted to share it here with you, dear podcast listener, for two reasons.

First, because if you follow this podcast, you’re interested in the kinds of things I’m up to when it comes to spiritual practice, and the other-centered, co-suffering way of Jesus. So there’s a pretty good chance this book might be up your alley, but unless you know what’s in it, how will you know if it’s a book for you?

Second, I want to share this video with you, because along the way in the video, you’ll learn some interesting tidbits, like the meaning that’s built into the cover art and why journaling is so important to me. I’ll share my favorite endorsement. I’ll also share what I think about AI. I’ll talk about why the book has two introductions and why the appendices might be the most important part. I’ll explain the biggest hurdle to any spiritual practice being effective. I’ll talk about why I use footnotes in a book that’s not academic. I’ll tell you about the only safe environment for spiritual growth and the four crucial elements for a sustainable and impactful drilling practice. I mean, honestly, this video that I made, which is about 20 minutes long, is packed with great stuff.

Now, if you want to see the video version, which you might because it’s full of screenshots and pictures of the pages and everything that I’m describing, you can find that in two places. You can look for this podcast episode on YouTube, on my YouTube channel, or you can go to the book page on my website, for just the video itself. I know this is different than the normal kind of podcast episode that I create, but it’s important stuff to me, and I think it might be interesting to you because you follow me, so that’s why I’m sharing this today.

PAGING THROUGH THE BOOK TOGETHER

Marc Schelske 2:42
Back in the olden times, we bought books in brick-and-mortar bookstores. I know some of you still do, but most people don’t. Most books today are bought online, and in those olden times, when we went to the bookstore, one of the best experiences was being able to pick up a book off the shelf and spend some time flipping through it, reading the cover, looking through the table of contents, browsing through the chapters, reading a paragraph here or there, so that you can get a real sense of what this book was about and if it was the right book for you. Well, that’s what we’re going to do right now together. So if you want to know a little bit more about this book and what’s in it, come along for the journey.

So we pick up the book off the bookshelf, and the first thing that we see, of course, is the cover. So this beautiful cover is actually a riff on the original cover of the first edition by my inspired cover illustrator, Tamara. Whitaker House kept that as the basis for their inspiration for their cover. I’m grateful they were willing to do that, and we ended up with this cover.

So we’ve got the tree of life growing out of the journals, so you get that sense that the journals are this seedbed for growth. We’ve got the iconography of the fish and the grain, which, for me, brings to mind growth and nurturing, and nutrients. We’ve got the iconography of the sun and the doves of the Spirit, so that we’re not alone in this. We are in this process with God becoming who we were meant to be.

And then, of course, on the back, you’ve got this quick marketing blurb, what the book is about. If you only have thirty seconds to figure out if this is the book for you, this is the place to start. And then we’ve got a few blurbs that I’m grateful for from people that I respect. So, the marketing blurb on the back: “Journaling will change you.” That is absolutely my experience. That is not an exaggeration. It’s absolutely true of me.

“Spiritual and personal growth is possible. Over the centuries, journaling has emerged as one of the most consistently transformative practices recommended by leaders across spiritual traditions, therapists, coaches and others. Why then, are so many people intimidated by journaling today while others try it, only to give it up?” Maybe you’re one of those people who’s tried to journal and you’ve bounced off of it? Well, we’re going to talk about that.

“Incorporating both ancient spiritual wisdom and current neurobiology. Journaling For Spiritual Growth teaches you how to be present to your life and hear what the Spirit is doing within you. Over six weeks, you’ll learn why diaries and goal tracking can’t transform us, what expectations undermine journalism effectiveness, what mindsets and questions are most helpful for lasting growth, how structure can be a gentle friend, how to create sustainable habits for your life and temperament.” Does that sound good? That’s what we’re up to.

And then some of the endorsements. You can read those yourself. When we open the book, the very first thing are those endorsements in full as well, and–this is the most important endorsement–a page of endorsements from actual readers who read the first edition, real people who got the book, who read the book, who were impacted by the book, and wrote about it.

So we hear Lani Kent say, “Marc reveals compassionate and beautifully nuanced layers to consider in developing a sustainable practice of journaling.” Thank you so much. Sam Elie: “Journaling for spiritual growth is an accessible guide for building a reliable and deepening self reflective practice.” That’s exactly what I was hoping for. Thank you, Sam. And then this one, which really hit me hard. “I wish this book had been around during a pivotal time in my life, when I was at the start of my deconstructing process, trying to form a new connection to my last shred of spiritual practice. I found this book clear, focused and transparent in all of its intentions.” Oh, this is what I want to give to people

I’ll let you read the endorsements by the well-known people. I will just share one, just because it cracks me up. This is from Wm. Paul Young, the guy who wrote The Shack and other things. I remember getting this endorsement in my email. I read it, and I just burst out laughing. This is what he wrote. “I kept waiting for this book to disappoint.” We’re off to a good start, aren’t we? “I kept waiting for this book to disappoint, for it to turn into something harsh rather than kind rigid, rather than flexible, even more harmful than helpful, it did not and for that, I am grateful.”

I love that so much because it captures this experience so many of us have had, where spiritual writing so often comes from this perspective of legalism or obligation or performance, where you’re being told to accomplish something. This is not what I’m up to. I’m just so thrilled to hear those words that he was expecting it to be rigid, when, in fact, it turned out not to be.

The next interesting thing is that we turn to this boring page that’s in all of your books. It’s the copyright page. It’s got all the legal information, but there’s something on it that I want you to see. This badge right here. If you look closely, it says, “Human Authored, the Authors Guild.” And then there’s a registration number. I’m a member of the Authors Guild. They’ve created a registry for books that are certified human-created. So you’re not allowed to use AI in your ideation. You’re not allowed to use AI in your writing. You can use limited AI and spell check, and grammar check, but that’s it, nowhere else. That’s really important to me. Creating is, I think, when we are the most like God. It’s when we are living out our identity, when we make things. Outsourcing that to an algorithm undermines our humanity. I’m just never going to do it. I’m never going to use AI to write, and I want you to know that. And so I’ve registered this book with the Human Authored Registry with the Authors Guild, and I think you’ll see that in all my books going forward.

The next thing that you’ll find is the table of contents. So you’re going to see the structure of the book. You’ll notice the book is divided into six weeks. Each week has five entries. So, that gives you some margin. If you’re trying to follow the book every day, you can miss a day or take weekends off. The main content of the book is those six weeks. And then you’ll notice there’s a whole selection of appendices. We’re going to talk about those because they’re really important, even though they’re often skipped. Don’t skip these. And if you’re looking at the ebook version, these are going to be linked, of course, so that you can jump right to the sections.

There are two introductions to this book. Crazy. That’s two too many, right? Most people don’t read all this stuff at the beginning of books. We’ve got a word for it in publishing. It’s called the front matter, as if it’s not even the book yet, and many people treat it that way. But here’s something I want you to know: Most writers spend as much time and focus on the introduction as they do on other parts of their book. It matters.

The introduction matters to me because it’s an act of hospitality. You’ve come to my house, you’re walking in the front door, and this is my opportunity to say, “Hey, here’s where you hang your coat. Here’s where the bathroom is, here’s what’s on the menu for dinner tonight. Do you want to stick around? Is there anything I can do to help you feel more comfortable?” That’s what the introduction is for. So that we can be on the same page, and so that you’re not wasting your time–I do not want you to spend your limited time reading this book if it’s not the right book for you. In the introduction, I provide everything you need to know to make that decision.

Why are there two? Well, because this is the second edition. So we’ve got the introduction to the second edition, which talks a little bit about lessons learned since the book was originally published. The second introduction was actually called “How to Use This Book.” Crazy, right? You’re a grown person. You’ve read books before. You don’t need instructions on the technology of book reading. See, that’s the point. This isn’t about reading a book straight through. This book is designed to guide you in establishing a practice. This introduction will guide you through using this book most effectively. It’s going to tell you who I am and where I’m coming from, which ought to be a really important question that you’re asking. If you come to a book that’s purporting to say something about God and the spiritual life, you really ought to wonder, “Who is writing this book? What’s their viewpoint?” Well, I’m going to give you that right up front, so you’re not guessing. You can decide right off the bat if you want to spend time with me. Am I the kind of person you want to learn from? Because if I’m not, I don’t want you to waste your time. So I’m going to give you that information right up front.

Then we shift into the weeks. Each week starts with a one or two-page introduction that sets the theme for that week. Every week has a particular theme. So Week One is “Choosing the Right Perspective.” In my life of journaling since I was a teenager, and in my teaching of journaling as a pastor, I’ve discovered that really the biggest hurdle to a sustainable journaling practice is unrealistic expectations. There are a lot of pictures people have of what journaling ought to be, what it ought to look like, what it ought to feel like, and most of those expectations are completely unhelpful. So we’re going to start talking about the perspectives that will allow your journaling to be long-term term sustainable, and effective.

After that introduction, we get to Day One of that week. Every day is going to have the same format. There’s going to be a short reflection that is going to basically give you one principle that I want you to understand, and then there’s going to be a section called “Practice” where you’re given something to do. You know, by the time we get a couple of weeks into the book, the To Do is journaling. You’ll be journaling, and I’ll guide you through what to journal about and how to do it. But every day will have something you do to help you engage with the idea of that day.

The reading is not going to take long. Most people will read the reflection in five maybe eight minutes. The practice can take as long as you want it to take. I think most people will be able to do most of these things in fifteen or twenty minutes. Obviously, you could go deeper, and it could take longer; that’s up to you. Then, you finish that and move on to the next day.

One thing you’ll also notice is that there are footnotes. Now this is not an academic book. The footnotes are not primarily to connect you to original sources, although I do some of that because there are topics that you might be interested in. I’ll say, “Hey, here’s a great book on that topic.” But I also use the footnotes to do two other things to expand on potential off-ramps. You come to some claim I’m making, and you’re like, “huh, I don’t think that’s true.” Through the course of my own writing, through the process with beta readers and others who helped me with the book, some of those off ramps have surfaced, and I’ve tried to address them in the footnotes where I’ll say something like, “Hey, if you’re concerned about this, or if your experience is different, here’s a way for you to think about that.” And I move those things to the footnotes because they don’t apply to everyone, and they get in the way of the flow of the reading. And so I want them there for you, but I also don’t want them to get in the way. So you can skip the footnotes if you want. You can read them if you want. Some of the footnotes are going to be interesting. Some of them may have snide remarks that don’t feel like they should be in the body text, but I still want to make the comment so that it’s in footnotes.

Each day includes a “Read and Reflect” section for reading and a “Practice” section to start your journaling process. Now. You can take these one day at a time, or if you find that one particular entry is challenging and you want to think about it more, you can take as long as you need before you proceed. That’s up to you and what feels best for you and your process. Don’t move on to the next reading just because it’s the next reading; move on when you’re ready. Move on when you’ve done the work that’s involved.

Week Two addresses your tools, like the physical tools that you use to do the practice. Are you a pen and paper journaler? Are you a keyboard and computer journaler? The pros and cons of both, the lessons I’ve learned that apply to both, and how to make them work for you. We’re also going to talk about things like when you choose to do your journaling during the day and how often you choose to do it. And I’m going to suggest that the most important tool of all for a sustainable long-term journaling practice is actually not a physical tool at all. It’s an attitude, the attitude of gracious flexibility. So here’s the thing: the only safe environment for spiritual growth is the environment of grace. If you feel driven to accomplish something, if you feel like you have to prove yourself or accomplish spirituality, your journal will just become a burden. You will miss days, because that’s how life works. And eventually, you’re going to feel like the journal is just not working for you, and you’re going to set it aside. So if you want this to be a long-term habit that helps you mature as a person, you have to hold the whole thing with this attitude of generous, gracious flexibility. So we’re going to talk about that, what that means, and how it works.

Week Three is about understanding the essential ingredients. There are lots of ways to journal, and I’ve done many of them. There are many books on journaling. There are many processes for journaling. There’s journaling in coaching, there’s journaling in therapy. There’s spiritual journaling, and there’s journaling that goes along with Bible study. There are emotional journals, all different kinds. What I have discovered along the way is that if your journal is going to help you grow, there are really four things that have to be a part of your journaling practice. And so I teach these four things. I call them “The Spine” because they’re what gives structure and stability to your journaling practice. There are lots of different elements you can include in your journaling, but if you don’t have these four elements, if you don’t have the Spine, then your journaling is going to slump, and eventually it’s going to feel less effective. And because of that, eventually you’re going to quit.

So I teach the Spine: these four essential ingredients that hold the whole thing together. First, there’s silence. We need to enter into this process in a state of reflection, rather than a state of being rushed, which is the way most of us live, and silence helps us do that. Second, there’s some kind of focused, inward reflection. Third, there’s Godward reflection. I’m going to talk about what both of those things mean and why we do them in that order. And then the last thing, the fourth thing, is prayer. This isn’t the typical grocery list style of prayers, where you say “God be with…” and name off everyone from your family all the way up to the President or whoever. This is the kind of prayer that is about connection, union, and the intention for your life. If you’re not a particularly religious person, I’ll show you how this can still be a tool for you. These four elements–silence, inward reflection, Godward reflection, prayer–form the structure that you can adjust, that you can add to, but that Spine has to be there for the process to stay ongoing, sustainable, and helping you grow as a person.

In Week Four, I present an idea that, in all the years that I’ve taught journaling, I have found many people resist at first. I suggest that if you want a long-term, sustainable journaling practice, you should stick with a template. By that, I mean that you need to have a predetermined order that defines what you’ll journal about. Now I know that that sounds limiting. Creative people always hate this idea. But here’s the thing: if you pick up your pen or keyboard and open your journal to a blank page, and you have no sense of direction, then what will happen is you will spend all of your reflective energy deciding what to write about. That can certainly be an interesting exercise, but it’s not a sustainable journaling practice for most people. In Week Four, I’ll provide several examples of templates and show you how to select one that works for you.

These templates are adjustable. You can add elements that work for your life, but you need that structure so that your mind is freed from the task of figuring out what to write about. The template provides a set of boundaries, allowing you to enter the process easily. So during Week Four, you’re going to practice four different templates that range from short to long and that have different elements in them, so that you can kind of see what a template is like from the inside. Because ultimately, you’re going to be developing your own template. But I want to give you a starting place so that you can get rolling and have a feeling for what this is like and how it’s helpful.

Then we come to Week Five. Now, by Week Five, you’re journaling, right? We’ve already had conversations about whether you’re going to journal analog, pen and paper, or on a computer. We’ve talked about when and where, and now you’ve started to use a template. You’re journaling at this point. And so in Week Five, I don’t add any new instruction for how to journal. So instead, Week Five focuses on empowering your habit, because that’s the goal. We want journaling to be a long-term, sustainable tool in your life that helps you grow as a person. Well, if it’s going to be long-term and sustainable, it has to become a habit. So how does that work?

We are going to address competing habits and how to notice them in your life. We’re going to talk about how to anchor a chain trigger. This is one of the most powerful tools that I’ve learned in habit building. So, I’m going to teach you how to anchor a chain trigger, which makes keeping a habit much easier. We’re going to talk about the reward process for habits. We’re going to talk about lessons that you can learn from your negative, unhealthy habits and how you can leverage those to keep this habit strong and sustainable.

So, we come to the last week, Week Six. You’re already journaling, so now we’re going to focus on the future. We’re going to talk about how you maintain a long-term practice, how you make adjustments to it as the seasons of your life change, so that it becomes flexible enough to grow with you as you grow. The last day, Week Six, Day Five, is called “Choosing Faithfulness.” Now I grew up in a fairly rigorous fundamentalist religious community. In that community, faithfulness meant really perfection. It meant always doing what you were supposed to do. What I’ve found is that’s a very unhelpful way to think about faithfulness. Faithfulness, in the context of a spiritual discipline, is always coming back. Recognizing that life is what life is–which means it’s unpredictable. It’s largely out of your control. You have obligations to other people that you have to fulfill. This all means any spiritual practice that’s going to last in your life has to be a spiritual practice that is flexible and can accommodate the realities of your life. And so, we end this journey talking about faithfulness, coming back, coming back again, and coming back again.

But, you’ll notice at this point the book’s not done. We’re on page 151 and there’s 60 more pages! So what is in those 60 pages? Ah, my friend, let me tell you the appendices. I know most people skip appendices. They never look at them. This isn’t an academic book, so it doesn’t have tables and charts at the end. Why on earth are there appendices? Well, because there’s other stuff that I want to give you that will be helpful to you. So what are those appendices?

The first appendix is an essay called “What is Spiritual Growth?” That phrase–spiritual growth–is so vague, and so many people use it. Because I’m talking about spiritual growth, I thought maybe you should know what I mean by spiritual growth. So that’s what that essay is. If you are trying to figure out if this is the right book for you, reading that appendix alone will give you a really good sense of whether you want to have this conversation with me.

Then there’s Appendix Two. This is a brand new essay that is in this edition only, and it’s called “Silence for the Children of Noise.” I teach the beginning of the journaling process as sitting in silence. The feedback I’ve received since this book came out two years ago is that it’s the single hardest part of this process. People really struggle with sitting in silence. They don’t know what it’s supposed to feel like. They don’t know how to do it. They’re not sure if they’re being successful when they do it. So, I’ve gotten lots of questions about sitting in silence. What is it like? How does it work? So I wrote an essay about that. What are some of the reasons why silence is so hard for us, and what might we do about it?

Then, Appendix Three. Now we’re getting to appendices that are tools to help you in your process as you journal. Appendix Three is all about building and evaluating your template. So when I teach about templates in week four, ultimately, I don’t want you to use my template. I want you to use a template that works best for you, for your temperament, and your life. So, I’m going to show you how to build that, what things to think about, and what questions to ask yourself. And then, when is it time to change your template, because your template should evolve with you as your life changes.

Appendix Four is recommended tools and tips for journaling. This is a lot of really practical stuff. If you journal analog, what are the best kinds of journals to use? What are the best kinds of pens to use? What are concerns that you might have about keeping your journal safe? If you journal digitally, what’s the best software to use? What are the best ways to structure a digital journal so that doesn’t get in the way? How do you deal with all of the notifications? It’s loads of practical stuff that’s come from years and years of experience.

Then, Appendix Five. This is a gold mine. Honestly, if nothing else in this book speaks to you, Appendix Five is probably worth the price of admission. It’s called “Ways to Practice.” In this appendix, I go through each of those four elements–silence, inward focus, Godward focus, and prayer–and I recommend practices and resources for each of those things. I think there are probably 50 or 60 links out to other books and resources that will help you in your journey.

Appendix Six, finally, is literature on habit building. There are some great books that I’ve read on habit building and some academic studies. I’ve shared with you as well if you’re interested in those things.

So that’s the whole book. That’s what you would find if you picked this up on a shelf in a bookstore and browsed through it to decide, “Is this the right book for me?” If it sounds interesting to you, if it sounds like it might be helpful to you, as a person, to begin building a practice where you are reflecting on the experience of being yourself, listening for the voice of the Spirit in the midst of that reflection, so that you can grow and deepen emotionally and spiritually as a person, then I’d like to share that journey with you.

So there you go. That’s the book. The last thing I want to do is waste your time. So this whole podcast is meant to help you decide if this book is the right book for you or perhaps someone that you love. Next month, we’ll come back to our regularly scheduled spiritual life content with a great conversation with somebody that I think is going to benefit you. We’ll see you then.

May you find the right path for your own growth and healing. Thanks for listening.

CLOSING

Notes for today’s episode and any links mentioned, you’ll find at www.MarcAlanSchelske.com/TAW061

Did you like this? Well, there’s more. Usually it’s better than this. Subscribe to Apprenticeship Notes. That’s my email newsletter. It’s monthly-ish, about eight to ten times a year. It will include an exclusive essay about the spiritual life that you won’t find anywhere else, insider commentary on my podcasts and blog posts, books that I recommend, and more. You’ll also get a free little book when you subscribe. It’s called “The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Practice for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World.” In it, I teach a spiritual practice that has been so helpful to me as I face the anxiety and uncertainty of our time. So, subscribe to the email newsletter. Get that free book. Find it all at www.MarcOptIn.com.

Until next time, remember: In this one present moment, you are loved, you are known, and you are not alone.

Episode 060 – Navigating Toward LGBTQ Affirmation (or How I became an Affirming Pastor)

My journey from the Traditionalist view to becoming a fully Affirming pastor, with a perspective on a Gospel path to full Inclusion. This is a recorded version of the same presentation I gave at the Open Table Conference School of Theology in Sunriver in June of 2025.

Show Notes

In this episode, Marc Alan Schelske explores the complex relationship between faith and LGBTQ affirmation. Through personal stories, theological reflection, and the teachings of Jesus, he explains his own journey from the Traditionalist position to a position of full welcome, inclusion, and affirmation.

Takeaways

• Marc, like many of us, had never really investigated the claims of the Traditionalist position that justified exclusion.
• The resources for in-depth study on this topic, including all the relevant scriptures, are provided in a downloadable resource for free.
• The Gospel, which is the narrative of Jesus’ life, acts, teaching, death, and resurrection, is meant to show us the true face of the Father so that we can set aside the false images we project onto God.
• Jesus’ life shows us over and over that God’s nature is to include those on the margins, rather than protect hard lines of exclusion.

Recommended Resources

• Blog Version of my School of Theology presentation on John 13, The Foot Washing.
• Downloadable 11-page PDF Resource: Navigating LGBTQ Inclusion
• The Open Table Conference
• Information and Registration for Fall Class: A Gospel Path to LGBTQ Affirmation
• Email Marc at Marc@MarcAlanSchelske.com to get on his invite list for the weekly writing sessions at Slow Pour or the twice-monthly virtual co-writing sessions.

• Scroll down for a full transcript of this episode.
• You can also watch and share the video version on YouTube.

More about My Conversation Partner

It’s me. Hi. I’m the problem, it’s me.

Marc Alan Schelske is a happily recovering fundamentalist praying for the restoration of all things. He writes and teaches about spiritual maturity, emotional growth, and the other-centered, co-suffering way of Jesus. His books, including Walking Otherward, Journaling for Spiritual Growth, and The Wisdom of Your Heart, can be found at www.MarcAlanSchelske.com. Marc serves as the teaching elder at Bridge City Community Church in Milwaukie, Oregon, a suburb of Portland, where we work to keep all things, even Christianity, a bit weird.

Find Marc Here

• Website: www.MarcAlanSchelske.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarcAlanSchelske
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marcalanscherlske/
• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@marcalanschelske

Today’s Sponsor

• The Writers Advance – A weekend to help writers write. November 13-16, 2025. For more information, see: www.TheWritersAdvance.com

Transcription

Marc Schelske 0:03
Hey, friends. I’m Marc Alan Schelske, and this is The Apprenticeship Way, a podcast about spiritual growth, following the way of Jesus. This is episode 60: Navigating Toward LGBTQ Affirmation (Or How I became an Affirming Pastor.)

SPONSOR

Today’s podcast is brought to you by The Writers Advance. I’m a writer (You probably know that) and I’m a big nerd about the writing process. That’s probably just a function of me being a big nerd about most everything I’m excited about. Part of that nerdery is that I’ve read all the best books about writing. I’ve taken a number of courses, and back in the day, I went to writers’ conferences regularly. In that time, I learned something that I’m going to offer you right now for free.

By far the best way to learn to write is just to write. All those great resources don’t make writing happen. Reading books about writing isn’t writing. Sitting in giant conference centers listening to experts talk about their process isn’t writing. The only thing that really moves the needle is writing a lot of words. That’s why I host three ways for writers to build their skills by spending time writing. Most every Saturday morning, I head down to Slow Pour, a great coffee shop in Sellwood, Oregon, and I write for three or four hours, and I invite anyone in the area to join me. Then, twice a month, I host a virtual co-writing group where other writers and I gather by Zoom. We check in briefly, then we turn off our mics and we write for two hours. If either of those sounds up your alley, let me know, and I can include you on the invite list.

However, the event that I host every year that makes the most difference is The Writers Advance. This is an annual four-day writers’ weekend that I have crafted to be exactly what writers need to push forward on their current project. It’s not about networking, or listening to experts speak, or desperately trying to get an agent or an editor to notice you. Nope. It’s about writing and reconnecting with why writing matters to you. I provide a creative and inspiring venue with great food and comfortable accommodations. We do readings. I bring coaches in who can help writers get over their current hurdles. I teach a couple of sessions about how to build a writing workflow that means you’ll keep writing for the long haul. But none of that is required. The only thing that’s required is that the folks who gather there write.

You get hours and hours of uninterrupted time for just that. I’ve got regular attendees who come to this event, and they will write more over this weekend than they do in two or three months of their normal life. There are presently eight spots left for this year’s writer’s advance. It takes place November 13 to 16th. If you’re a writer longing to give your words your full attention, or if you love a writer and want to give them the most incredible gift ever. Then head over to the website, www.TheWritersAdvance.com, for more details about this event and to reserve a spot.

INTRODUCTION

I had an incredible opportunity in early June. At the very last minute, I was invited to fill an open faculty position at the Open Table Conference Summer School of Theology in Sun River, Oregon. They had a last-minute cancellation, and one very kind and thorough recommendation got me the invite. So, I got to spend the whole week with incredible people, spending each morning hearing great thinkers talk about a more beautiful gospel, and then spending each afternoon in rich conversation while enjoying restful, beautiful central Oregon. It really was a high point for me. I loved it.

I taught two sessions. The first session was a dialogical group Bible study process through the foot washing scene in John 13. When Jesus stood to wash the disciples’ feet, he was doing something that the disciples and their whole culture considered shameful. He was acting beneath his station. That’s why Peter reacted so violently. He didn’t want to participate in Jesus’ shame. But Jesus didn’t consider it shameful. He considered it an example of who God is and how God relates to us. Now, I tell you that because that session is the foundation for what I’m about to share with you. I’m going to refer to that session at the beginning of what I share now, and if you want to dig into that conversation and understand a little bit more, I wrote that up and posted it on my blog. There’ll be a link on the screen, and there’ll be a link in the show notes. You can just go read that blog. Press pause now, go do that, and then come back. All right, so here we go.

THE PRESENTATION

I’d like you to hold in your mind our conversation about the foot washing scene in John 13, Jesus loving to the fullest by subverting the expectations of what it meant for him to be the Messiah, by serving and entering into the place of shame in order to do so, and then inviting us to follow his example. This is an understanding that has a wide, reaching application for our lives, in the way that we relate to the people around us, and now we’re going to talk about one particular application, how this perspective might apply to the church’s relationship to the LGBTQ community.

Now, as I say this, I want to acknowledge that there may be some limbic system noise that starts to clang and gong for some of us. This is a fraught conversation, and I want to acknowledge the possibility of anxiety. Maybe someone listening is part of the LGBTQ community. If that’s you, you surely bear scars caused by Christians, and you aren’t here to have your life talked about like a problem to solve. It would make sense for you to feel anxious about hearing one more Christian pastor talk about this.

Maybe someone else listening is fully resolved on the subject. Maybe you’re already fully affirming. It just seems obvious to you that Christ’s love is fully inclusive. And frankly, you get frustrated with Christians who just don’t agree with you. Certainly, someone else listening is fully committed to a traditional view of gender and sexuality. And it seems obvious to you that this is what Scripture says, and frankly, you get frustrated with Christians who just don’t get that. And so to both of you, so certain in your convictions, perhaps you’re feeling rising anxiety about whether this pastor is going to say the things you think need to be said.

Then, there’s a good chance that someone else listening is unresolved on the question. You want to love like Jesus, and you suspect that includes loving gay and trans people. You also want to honor God, and you don’t want to abandon scripture in order to do that. So you’re feeling caught,

if you’re feeling anxious for these reasons or any other reasons, I want to give you my commitment that I’m going to do my best in this presentation to use my words in a way that is at the very least respectful and hopefully, hopefully even life-giving. My commitment (for me) and my invitation (to you) is to hold this time and this conversation with respect, mutual care, and curiosity. Is that something we can commit to doing together?

Before I jump in, I want to pray.

God who knows us all intimately, Jesus, who walks with us in the complexity of our human nature, Spirit who convicts, comforts and transforms, we ask for the clear fire of your love to burn away in us everything that is the fruit of our self centered ego defending certainty so that we can more easily practice your way. Amen.

I’ll start with two experiences.

I was a 22-year-old theology major at a conservative Christian university when I met Brian. I was a guitarist. Brian was a singer–one of the best I’d ever met. He was one of the first call vocalists for worship on campus or any special event with music. He was in all kinds of ensembles. We did a lot of music together, and we became friends. Then, he came out, and I watched the campus that had embraced him turn on him. Lost opportunities. Articles in the school newspaper about him that were so cruel. Violent threats. Vandalized property. And all at a Christian university.

I didn’t know what to make of the situation. I grew up in Ohio in the 80s, in a world that was conservative and a religion that was fundamentalist. Being gay in that world was a dangerous social stigma. It was considered shameful in the highest degree, it was a terrible, unforgivable sin. I cannot explain to you how much emotional energy was spent by my male peers trying to constantly prove that we weren’t gay. That was my default state.

But I knew Brian’s heart. He loved Jesus so much. He was more faithful with his spiritual practices than almost anyone I knew–and I was a theology major, a God Squad guy. He was generous and gentle, compassionate. He was a servant-hearted minister. As I learned more about his experience, it was hard to get my head around. He’d known that he was gay since childhood. He’d been forced into conversion therapy. He’d been abused by people who were supposed to be helping him. He’d been praying since childhood for God to fix him or change him or kill him. Then he came out in this conservative Christian environment, because the only way that he could live–literally avoid killing himself–was just to choose to believe that God loved him as he was, and to start living as if that were true, regardless of what all the Christians around him thought.

Now, at that point in my life, I was pretty sure being gay was a sin, but I also remember thinking I had never met anyone so brave. The question that emerged as I processed this was if God considered Brian’s orientation a sin, and Brian had prayed in good faith for healing or deliverance for so long, and God hadn’t healed or delivered, and maybe God didn’t intend to heal or deliver. That was when I began to suspect that maybe God wasn’t as concerned about Brian’s orientation as my faith community was – which is honestly a dangerous thought for a theology major preparing to be a conservative pastor.

Fast forward about 20 years. I was the newly appointed senior pastor of a vibrant church in Portland. We were a church that prided ourselves on our openness and our welcome to anyone. We were a church that really understood the gospel of grace (not like those legalists). Dan and Julio had been attending most weeks for about three months. They were attentive during the sermon. They were engaged during worship. I noticed several times that Julio would cry during the singing.

Dan had asked to meet with me. So, we were sitting in my brand-new senior pastor’s office that had been nicely remodeled. I was sitting at my shiny new senior pastor’s desk. Dan told me, “We love this church. It feels like home. We want to get more involved.” (Great, I thought, the system’s working!) But there’s just one thing… and that’s when he came out to me. He and Julio were partners. They had been for years. He’d heard us say that anyone was welcome, and he wanted to know what that meant. Could they attend now that I knew that they were gay? Yes. Could they volunteer? Um, of course. Could they lead? I was getting uncomfortable. If gay marriage became legal, which was a conversation happening in Oregon at the time, could they get married in our sanctuary, if this was their home church? Would I officiate? Now, I was really uncomfortable.

During this conversation. I had what I can only think of as an out-of-body experience. I could see the whole scene like I was above it. I could hear the words we were saying to each other. I could see the tension in my body. There was this side of me that already cared for these guys, who wanted them to feel safe and at home, and who believed that regardless of what I thought about them being gay, God was big enough to welcome, to include, to forgive (if that was necessary), to heal (If that was necessary). I didn’t know.

But then there was the side of me that only had one script. This isn’t God’s will for you. You’re welcome and loved. Of course, we just trust that God, in God’s timing, is going to lead you to something that is more in alignment with God’s will, something that’s more life-giving. Well, yes, you can participate, of course. Yes, you can volunteer… just not with the kids. You can’t lead or speak, and I can’t marry you, but we love you, and we want you to feel at home. I could feel the incongruity in my words. I could see myself saying things that were half-truths, trying to bridge this tension. And before the conversation was over, I knew that we would never see Dan and Julio again. The question that emerged for me was this: If what I was saying was right and true and biblical, why did I feel in my gut that I had violated the work of the Spirit in the lives of these two men?

That prompted me to do some thinking. You see, when I preached or taught, I took great pride in having done all my own homework. I didn’t just preach the party line. I didn’t crib my notes from the approved commentaries. I studied for myself. I tried to read original sources wherever I could. I prayed. This was really important to me as a pastor, and I realized that I had never given this level of attention to this topic. I’d only repeated what I’d been told was right. Why? I wasn’t like that about any other topic.

That initiated a process of studying that ended up becoming far more wide-reaching than I intended. See, this is how it works. You start with the seven passages of Scripture that have any connection at all to this conversation. To responsibly make sense of those verses, you have to study the history of their interpretation, the hermeneutics surrounding them, and the historical context. As soon as you begin to contemplate alternative translations, you have to think about your understanding of inspiration and biblical authority. And once the door is open to the possibility of minority-view readings, you have to start asking questions about church tradition and the impact of cultural influences on the church, cultural influences like patriarchy and misogyny, and Western colonial empire.

Now, let me just relieve a little stress by saying that we are not going to cover all of that in this hour. It’s just too much. But you are in luck. I’m going to give you a resource that you can walk yourself through that talks about all of these things. This resource is an eleven-page PDF. It’s got the best books you can read that will help you on all of these subjects – books that have been chosen for accuracy and the way that they handle the topic with respect; videos and documentaries you can watch that will help you understand the experience of LGBTQ people in the church; as well as a few other key resources that I’ve discovered are very helpful in this conversation, like the history of the translation of the word “homosexual” in Scripture. And (this one is big), how the prohibition on male same-sex behavior in the first century is self-evidently rooted in the shame of being a woman. When you read first-century sources on this, it’s plain as day. This resource will also give you a list of questions for you to work through yourself so that you can locate yourself in the conversation. There’s lots of good stuff in here. It’s practically a whole college course on the subject for free for you. But that also means that I’m going to skip all of that and take you right to the point.

Not that those things don’t matter. They do. And some of you listening need that part of the conversation. Some of you are in relationships with people who will ask you those questions. Some of you are pastors, and your people are going to say, “Well, have you read this verse in First Corinthians? Have you read this verse in Leviticus?” You need to know how to respond to that intelligently. Those lines of thought matter, and that’s why I put this resource guide together. But as I did this work over the course of several years, I came to see that there was something much more fundamental. That’s what I want to sketch out for you in the rest of our time.

So take a deep breath, relax, just be, notice what you notice. The next part I’m going to share with you is going to sound like it has nothing to do with how Christians relate to LGBTQ people, but I assure you, it does. Keep your hands and arms inside the ride until the ride comes to a complete stop, okay?

The heart of my understanding of the incarnation is simple. Jesus came to show us the Father. That’s John 14:8-9, right? “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.” This revelation of the Father was necessary because the greatest human sin is idolatry. Now I know that may sound like a strange claim. How could worshiping a golden statue be worse than, say, the Holocaust? Well, we feel that way because we’ve trivialized what idolatry means. Idolatry is not worshiping a golden statue. Idolatry is projecting unworthy, unholy, ungodly ways onto our image of God. Baxter Kruger says that we tar the father’s face with the brush of our own angst and alienation.

You see, what we do–what idolatry is–is that we project onto God human things that are alien to God’s nature. These false ideas that we project onto God separate us from our source, they corrupt our worship, and they serve to justify every other sin. Idolatry gives divine sanction to our self-centered, ego-defending ways. So, back to that Holocaust question. How can idolatry be worse than the Holocaust? Well, because we project onto God the hatred of our enemies, we find (conveniently) that we have sacred justification for our prejudices and violence. You see, the Holocaust could only happen because it was compatible with the vision of God held by a whole lot of Christians around the world.

So, given that idolatry changes the way that we see God, it was necessary for God to reveal God’s character to us in a tangible way. Our image of God was so tarred with sin and alienation that we needed the love of God to infiltrate our spiritual imagination so that we could see the truth we were otherwise incapable of seeing. So, if that’s the case, then what specifically did Jesus reveal about the nature of God?

Well, this is the question of the gospel. Why is the gospel good news? Now, ask almost any modern Christian what the gospel is, and you are almost certain to be told one or another atonement theory. The gospel is this particular formula for how God deals with sin and how you can gain the benefit of that now and in eternity. How to get saved. But that is not what the earliest Christians meant when they used the word the gospel. That way of talking about the gospel–that the gospel is an atonement theory, a plan that demonstrates how God deals with sin and saves people–that way of talking about the gospel is a development that largely came into being during the medieval church period, particularly after Anselm.

So what did the early Christians mean? The early Christians, from the post-apostolic era into the patristic era. What did they mean when they used the word gospel? Well, when those Christians used that word, what they meant was the things Jesus did and taught. Literally, the stuff in the books that we call gospels. That’s the gospel. The stories of the witnesses that have been handed down. Jesus’ life, acts, teaching, death, and resurrection. That’s the gospel, and it’s good news, because it reveals the character of God.

So if that’s the gospel, what does the gospel show? If we look at the life, the acts, the teaching, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus. What do we see revealed about the nature of God? Well, what I’d really like to do is just read all four gospels to you in their entirety, but we don’t have time for that, so I’m just going to remind you of some key events in a whirlwind tour and ask you to consider what they mean, if these events are a revelation of the nature of God. Once again, all this may seem to you like it has nothing to do with how Christians relate to the LGBTQ community, but I assure you, it does.

Mark 5:25-34. Jesus heals and affirms the woman with the flow of blood. Treats her with dignity. He calls her daughter despite the social taboos that exclude her because of a medical condition. Matthew 8 and Luke 17. Jesus touches and heals lepers, violating the religious and cultural boundaries that kept them excluded from the community, keeping them untouchable because of fear around their disease. Matthew 8 (the Centurion) and John 4 (the Samaritan woman). Jesus affirms the dignity and the spiritual journey of folks who were on the outside. They were the wrong ethnicity, the wrong religion, the wrong kind of person. And yet Jesus engages them like they have a real relationship with God. Matthew 9 and Luke 5. Jesus offers table fellowship (with everything that meant in the ancient Near East) to tax collectors (enemies) and sinners (people judged unworthy and on the outside). And he did this even though it directly caused the people around him to question his judgment and reputation.

Jesus told stories that explicitly challenge the normal human tendency to draw hard lines on who is in and who is out, on who is acceptable to God. Luke 10. The Good Samaritan, where Jesus takes the enemy and turns the enemy into the faithful hero. Luke 14. The great banquet, where those who ultimately got to attend were all the excluded and the cast off. Luke 15. Lost coin, lost sheep, lost son–showing God’s intent to find and reconcile all outsiders. And then John 13, in the upper room, the conversation we had around washing feet. Jesus washed the feet of his disciples. He modeled humble boundary-breaking service, even when that service was considered shameful by the people around him.

There are so many other examples: the Syrophoenician woman, Zacchaeus, Matthew the tax collector, healing the man born blind, restoring the demoniac, welcoming the children, and protecting the woman who washed his feet with her hair. Listen, friends, listen! If Jesus intended to reveal to us that God’s nature is to police hard lines of inclusion and exclusion based on holiness, then Jesus went about his life and ministry entirely the wrong way.

How about this? Instead of us defining what we think the Incarnation reveals, let’s just ask Jesus. He tells us directly. It’s in the last line of his high priestly prayer in the upper room. John 17:25-26. “Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made Your name known to them, and I will make it known now…” (Remember, in Hebrew thinking someone’s name is an expression of their character, right? It’s not, “This is Paul,” but, “This is Paul who’s really good at being fully present with you, and the moment that you experience His presence, you’re going to feel seen and loved.” That’s the difference. That’s what revealing the name is. It’s not just saying, “Oh, here’s God’s name, and you need to believe it.” It’s saying, “This is who God is.” That’s what that phrase means in Semitic thinking. And then we get to the reason. This is what Jesus says that he’s been revealing. Are you ready? “…So I made Your name known to them, and I will make it known so that the love with which You have loved Me may be in them and I in them.”

See, Jesus is revealing the true nature of the Father, and that nature is imminent love. This is what Jesus came to make known, because this is the thing we did not know already. You see, human history shows that we can imagine a god with expectations of holiness. We can imagine a god who knows the heart and can discern righteousness and unrighteousness. We can imagine a god who has a holy law and imposes consequences on the people who break that law. Further, we can imagine a god who favors those people who obey and excludes those people who don’t. Jesus did not need to reveal any of that because that was how humanity already envisioned its gods. Jesus came to reveal what we could not see on our own: that God’s love is exceedingly greater than anything our human minds will tolerate.

In fact, that’s the very point of the often misquoted line in Isaiah 55 about God’s ways and thoughts being higher than our ways and thoughts. That verse is not saying that God is exceedingly smarter than humans. That’s obvious. That verse explicitly tells us what it is about God that is higher than our ways. Go read it. The verse right before tells you. It’s God’s mercy and pardon. God’s mercy and pardon are so generous that it goes beyond human comprehension. That is what is higher than our ways and thoughts. That’s what Jesus reveals in the Gospel through his acts, his teaching, his life, his death, and his resurrection.

This is what the Apostle Paul is summarizing in Philippians 2: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness and being found in appearance as a human. He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” Now, you probably know that this passage is where we get the word kenosis, the pouring out, the self-emptying, or in the words of Simone Weil, the voiding of self. But this is not a self-emptying for its own sake. No, no, no.

The whole point is that this is what God’s love is. This is what God’s love is like. This is the thing about God that is higher than your thoughts. In this hymn, Paul tells us that this is the pattern of the Incarnation: Releasing privilege, not grasping for glory, emptying the ego, entering fully into the plight of those in trouble, even though the cost is shame and death. Further, Paul’s language makes it clear that he’s not telling us this in order to define some abstract theological thing that happened in eternity somewhere. Paul is giving this picture explicitly as an ethical injunction. That’s the introduction of the hymn. “Do nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit, but in humility, regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests but to the interests of others. Let this same mind be in you…” and then we get the Christ hymn.

Okay, deep breath. So, how does this relate to gay people? When I was processing all that information about the seven texts against homosexuality and the biblical model of marriage and the history of the translation of the text – all that stuff – what I saw was that those questions are, at best, secondary to the Gospel itself.

Jesus came to reveal God’s nature. God’s nature is other-centered, co-suffering, love. So when Jesus explained his express purpose–”…so that the love with which You have loved Me may be in them and I in them.” – that also applies to gay and trans people. That means that when Jesus’ followers wonder how it is that they ought to relate to gay and trans people – when Jesus followers get all tangled up trying to sort out, “Why are people gay?” and is it a choice, or is it biological? And if it’s a choice, then there’s a moral aspect to it. If it’s biological, maybe there’s not, and can gay marriage really count as marriage, especially since they can’t make children and all the other brain-twisting shenanigans that we get up to when we get into those deep weeds–we forget that we have very clear guidance about how to relate to other people. “Let this mind be in you…” “Regard others as better than yourselves.” “Look not to your own interests but to the interests of others.” This is our ethical injunction.

So, how then are we to relate to the queer community? The same way we’re called to relate to everyone in the world, through other-centered, self-poured-out, co-suffering love. Wash their feet. Invite them to the table. Seek them out like lost coins and lost sheep. Run to them like the lost son. Let them worship like the woman washing Jesus’ feet with her hair. Let them use their gifts in the body, like Matthew, the tax collector, and every other sinner who’s part of the church. Bless them when they want to enter into loving covenant relationships, because that’s one way we experience and practice the love of God, even though every single marriage falls short of that.

See, we get so preoccupied trying to parse whether being gay or trans is a willful choice or a matter of DNA and what that might mean for salvation. I know! I’ve done that homework. What I found at the end of the project was Jesus standing on the temple steps, thundering these words to me, “Woe to you, you hypocrite, for you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men for you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who want to enter to go in.”

“Wait,” you say, “Marc, you’re saying that Jesus came to show us God’s love. (Yeah) but the Bible also tells us to avoid sin. (Yes, it does,) and it seems to explicitly call homosexuality a sin. So aren’t you compromising what real Godly love is? “Great question. Thanks for asking. My answer is no, here’s why.

Let’s assume, for the sake of the next sixty seconds, that being gay or trans is a violation of God’s will and a grievous sin. Now, if you work through the resources that I provide to you, I think you will see that there are solid, credible biblical arguments why being gay is not sinful. That’s my current position. But for right now, for the sake of the question you asked, for the next 60 seconds, let’s assume that being gay or trans is a sin in the eyes of God.

Okay, Jesus shows us exactly how to relate to sinners, because Jesus shows us exactly how God related to sinners. What do the Gospels show? Jesus touches sinners even when his own religion says they’re untouchable. Jesus invites sinners to his table, even when this makes religious people accuse him of being immoral. Jesus tells us that the shepherd leaves the ninety-nine to go and find the one. Oh, and also, Jesus dies on the cross for sinners, so that they can know about their union with the Father.

“But wait,” you say, “but wait, (because you’re good at interrupting) Are you saying that gay people can just go on being gay and God doesn’t care? Are you saying that everyone who is gay or trans is gay or trans by God’s design?” No, I’m saying that question is above my pay grade, and it’s also above yours. I’m not an expert on human sexuality. I am only a passionate and well-read amateur, but what I know is that the stew of human sexuality and gender is way more complicated than anyone wants to admit. The reasons that people experience same-sex attraction (or any attraction), the reasons that people experience gender dysphoria, are a complex weave of tangled threads that we may never be able to fully understand.

Maybe there are some people that God wants to heal, and in healing them, they will no longer experience those things. Maybe? I’m not ruling it out; I’ve just never seen it in real life. But I will tell you this: if that’s something God wants to do, God will do it in a way that is loving, which means it will not be coercive. It will not be manipulative. And, it will not be abusive. What I am saying is that my role, and I think the church’s role, is not to be the healer, if healing is even necessary, but to be the ones who hold open the seat at the table. We who follow Jesus are called to follow his example of other-centered, co-suffering love, to enfold people, to welcome them, to include them, to walk with them as they seek God, and to trust that the Spirit will do whatever the Spirit wants to do. As the Spirit works to help them align their way of being with the truth of their being, it is our job to love like Jesus and to join Jesus in his work, revealing the true face of the Father.

One final story from my journey. In January 2015, I was deeply in the middle of this course of study, this transition in my thinking. I was already sure that some of the views I had held were not only unbiblical, but they were actively counter to the way of Jesus. But I was still unresolved, and I was very conscious of the costs ahead of me as a pastor in a church that, while loving and kind, largely held the traditional view. Then I got an email from a pastor friend.

An organization called the Gay Christian Network was hosting a worship conference in Portland at the convention center, and word had gotten out that the Westboro Baptist Church was planning to come to that event and protest. Now, I don’t know if you remember Westboro, but for several years, they made it a point to show up at gay events and actively broadcast hate. They picketed the funerals of men who died from AIDS. They engineered social media campaigns against inclusive churches and pastors. They would show up at these events with signs and speakers and a crowd, and they would shout and sing the most horrific kinds of things at the people who were there. So this email that I received was organizing a counter-protest. They called it a “Love Wall.” This pastor was inviting Christians in the Portland area to come to the convention center and provide a barrier between the Westboro Baptist people and the folks entering the convention center who were just trying to gather to worship.

Well, as soon as I read this email, I knew that I needed to go. That morning, I was gearing up because it was a chilly, drizzly day, and my daughter asked where I was going. She was eight at the time. So, trying to explain things in a way that might make sense to her, I said that some folks were coming to Portland because they wanted to worship God with their friends (which she understood. That was something she did) and some other folks were coming to Portland to get in the way and keep them from worshiping God and to bully them. And I was going to go try to stop the bullies. Immediately, she asked if she could come along.

So, that’s how my daughter, Emerson, and I found ourselves standing as part of a crowd of about a hundred and fifty people lining the sidewalk between the light rail station and the convention center. The Westboro Baptist people showed up, and they started doing their thing. Shouting, singing songs that had familiar hymn tunes that you’d recognize at first, but when you actually keyed into the words, they were just filled with violent and threatening imagery. They were shouting condemnation. They were screaming Scriptures with rage. These people, the Westboro Baptist people, proudly Christian, were explicitly proclaiming not only eternal damnation on the conference goers in the next life, but every form of heinous pain and death in this one.

As the Westboro Baptist people rained down this condemnation, the folks in the Love Wall spoke their blessings. “Welcome to Portland. We’re glad you’re here. You’re loved. You’re not alone.” Then the Westboro Baptist people pushed toward the entry to try and get closer, and the Love Wall gently moved and blocked their way. Then the Westboro people turned up their speakers, and the Love Wall started singing to drown out the sounds of this sanctified hate.

Standing there in the rain, holding my daughter’s hand, singing worship songs so that hate could not be heard, I started crying. The words of Amazing Grace seemed to form a protective shield against the condemning invective that was raining down. In that moment, the tectonic plates of my past experience, my upbringing, my own homophobia, my study, and my desire to follow Jesus all ground together, and what was forced to the surface were the words of scripture that I had memorized as a child.

“What does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”

“Learn to do right, seek justice, defend the oppressed.”

“Truly, I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

By that point, I’d been part of… I don’t know, maybe 3000 church services in my life, and I had never experienced something that felt as sacred as that morning in the cold rain, standing between vile Christian hate and vulnerable people who just wanted to worship in a place they felt safe.

I know there are many layers to this conversation. There are questions about what a faithful queer Christian life would look like, questions about monogamy, questions about the impact of trauma and healing, questions about the shadow side. All of these things that become obstacles when the stark fact is this: If we believe that God loves all and that the work of the Spirit is reconciliation, and if we believe that God will ultimately be all in all, then all those other questions fade into secondary status, and only one thing remains. Jesus came to show us the true face of God, that this God, who is a mutuality of other-centered, co-suffering love, is our source, and that the closer we come to this God, the more our lives reflect this path. That’s why I finally accepted the full gospel that applies to everyone and became affirming, because it is not my job to condemn.

There’s one last challenge I often hear. “Marc, Marc, I hear you. Those are powerful experiences. But Mark, what if you’re wrong? What if you’re reading scripture wrong?” Well, I might be, but I’m challenged by the witness of two heroes of our faith, Moses and Paul, both of whom prayed what I think is the most completely kenotic prayer in all of Scripture. Moses, in Exodus 32, after the chaos of the golden calf incident, begs God in prayer, “But now, O Lord, please forgive their sin. But if not, then blot me out of the book you have written.” Paul echoes that prayer in Romans 9:3, when he says, “For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people.”

Both Paul and Moses were willing to give up their own eternal salvation as they understood it, if only that meant that the people they loved could be in the presence of God. I think those two prayers are perhaps the closest that people in Scripture have ever gotten to living out Philippians Two kenosis. Moses and Paul were doing what I think Jesus was doing. They were saying, “I will bear the shame, if that means they can be saved. I will bear the alienation, if that means they can be included.”

So maybe I am wrong. I’m certain that I’m wrong about a lot of my theology, but I have come to rest in my conviction that I’m willing to bear the shame of being wrong if that means my queer siblings can find sanctuary and know that they are fully loved, and perhaps in being loved will come to know the light of Christ, which will work its way in them in exactly the same way that I trust it to work in me.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Well, that’s the presentation I did at the School of Theology, and now you’ve got it. If you’d like to dig into this on your own, the reference guide that I mentioned is going to be available on my website. You can get it from that link on the screen or from the show notes.

Now, if you’d like to go through this material, not by yourself, with some guidance, I’m going to be teaching a 10-week course this fall that will offer a thoughtful, in-depth exploration of a Jesus-centered path to respectful and loving inclusion of LGBTQ people, as well as biblically-aligned support for full affirmation. We’ll tackle all the aspects of this: our own expectations and personal stories, and how to handle this conversation with empathy and respect. We’ll look at the key arguments for the traditionalist perspective, including an in-depth study of the Scriptures used to justify exclusion, including the historical, linguistic, and cultural context of those scriptures. And the course will conclude with a gospel-centered argument for full inclusion and affirmation.

I’m going to be teaching this class at my church in hybrid mode, so we’ll be in person here in Milwaukie, Oregon (South Portland) with Zoom access for people who want to be remote. The class is going to be on Thursdays from 7 – 8:30 pm. That’s Pacific time. It’s going to last ten weeks, starting September 4 and going through November 5. Now, to make sure that there’s space for discussion, space for this class is limited.

You can learn more, you can register at the link that’s on the screen, or that’s in the show notes. You can find more information there, but you don’t need me for any of this. All the books, all the resources that can help guide you through this process, are in the resource document that I mentioned earlier. The link will be on the screen, and in the show notes, you can download that for free. I’m just making that available to you so that you can go through this conversation on your own time when you’re ready to work through it.

Thanks for listening.

May you say no to the demands of ego. May you comfort those in mourning. May you stand with the meek. May you hunger more for right and just living. May you be merciful, even as your Father in heaven is merciful. May you grow in purity and have the courage to be a peacemaker. May you bear up under persecution and be willing to do what is right even when it costs you. May you be salt and light. Amen.

Notes for today’s episode, including that download and all other links that I mentioned, can be found at www.MarcAlanSchelske.com/TAW060.

Well, this is an episode that’s a little bit out of the ordinary, but it’s also my last episode for the summer. The next episode will be in August or September. But in the meantime, if you like this, there’s more stuff. Subscribe to Apprenticeship Notes, my email newsletter. It comes out monthly-ish (about 8 to 10 times a year). That newsletter includes an exclusive essay about the spiritual life that you won’t find anywhere else, insider commentary on my podcast and blog posts, books I recommend and more, and when you subscribe, you’ll get a free little book that I wrote called, The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Practice for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World. In that little book, I teach a spiritual practice that has been so helpful to me as I face the anxiety and uncertainty of our time, and I want to offer it to you. So subscribe to my email list; Get that book. You can get all that at www.MarcOptIn.com

Until next time, remember: in this one present moment, you are loved, you are known, and you are not alone.

Episode 059 – How the Beatitudes Could Save the World and Us. (With Dr. Bradley Jersak)

An offhand comment by Dr. Jersak prompted this conversation. “We’re pushing back against the construction of a Christianity that’s the opposite of the Beatitudes. For those who don’t want to be susceptible to the lure of power-over Christianity, I recommend praying the Beatitudes every day . . . it is a furnace of discernment like none other.” Woah…

In a world where Christian leaders and many of their followers are increasingly espousing structures of power-over, saying empathy is a sin, and even co-opting the language of “Godly Hate,”² For instance, “Christians must recover the lost virtue of Hatred. If not, Christianity will survive, but the West will be finished.” – Pastor Joel Webbon, Twitter message, May 19, 2025. there is a real urgency to re-center our practice on Jesus’ teaching in the Beatitudes.

Show Notes

In this conversation, Dr. Bradley Jersak and I explore the urgent need for Christians to re-center themselves in the Beatitudes as a guide for spiritual growth, ethical living, and community engagement. The need for this has only increased with the rise of Power-over ideologies such as Christian Nationalism, and forms of Christianity that are denying the way of Jesus in their actions.

Takeaways

• Praying the Beatitudes can lead to personal transformation.
• Kenosis, or self-emptying, is a key aspect of living out the Beatitudes.
• Christian nationalism and all forms of power-over ideology contradict the teachings of Jesus, and this can be most clearly seen in the Beatitudes.
• The Beatitudes call for a radical rethinking of patriotism and can counteract misguided theology.
• A commitment to praying the Beatitudes regularly will serve as a “furnace of discernment” for wise discernment of what is truly “the word of the Lord” in our lives.

Recommended Resources

• The Ladder of the Beatitudes, by Jim Forest.
• Beatitudes: When Mountain Meets Valley, by Ron Dart.
• Are We Done Fighting: Building Understanding in a World of Hate and Division, by Matthew Legge.
• Downloadable “Furnace of Discernment” Beatitute Prayer PDF

• Scroll down for a full transcript of this episode.
• You can also watch and share the video version on YouTube.

More about My Conversation Partner

Dr. Bradley Jersak

Bradley is an author and teacher based in Abbotsford, BC. He currently serves as the Principal of St. Stephen’s University in New Brunswick, where he continues as the Dean and faculty member of SSU’s School of Theology & Culture. He also teaches peace studies courses with the Jim Forrest Institute. Through his books and seminars, Brad shares the good news that God is Love, perfectly revealed in Jesus Christ, and that God’s love heals wounded hearts and empowers us to heal this broken world.

Find Bradley Here

• Website: https://bradjersak.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bradley.jersak
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bradley.jersak/
• Threads: https://www.threads.net/@bradley.jersak

Today’s Sponsor

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Transcription

Marc Schelske 0:05
Hey, friends. I’m Marc Alan Schelske, and this is The Apprenticeship Way, a podcast about spiritual growth, following the way of Jesus. This is episode 59: “How the Beatitudes Could Save Us and The World.”

SPONSOR

Today’s podcast is made possible by, well, me. It’s me, hi. I’m the problem. It’s me. Most of the time, the sponsors of this podcast are just other things that I make and sell–my books, my writer’s retreat, events I’m doing, stuff like that. The reason why I list these as sponsors is because the truth is that making a podcast like this takes time and money, and the only reason I can do it is because people like you buy things that I make. Well, increasingly, there have been folks out there in my extended community who’ve asked me about how to support my writing when there isn’t a new book to buy. Frankly, I’ve avoided answering that question because of my own insecurities and fears. Who am I to ask for support for my work? But a few of you have leaned hard on me. So here we go.

The sponsor today is me, my writing, all of my work to help people have a healthy inner life and spiritual journey following the other-centered, co-suffering way of Jesus. For many of you, maybe most, the best way to support me is to hang around, right? To watch the podcast, to read the essays on my website, and to buy a book when one comes out. Don’t worry, a new one’s coming out in September. You’ll hear more about that soon. You’ll have a chance to get it. But if you’ve wanted to support my work outside of that, well, here’s your chance.

I am opening up an invitation to patron support. Now, you may have encountered this through the website Patreon, which lots of creative people use. Well, Patreon, that service, they take between 8-12% of what people give, plus merchant processing fees, which is about 3%, so that’s a lot. When someone is giving you $20 to support you, giving 15% of that to the service that provides the connection, that’s a lot, and it doesn’t feel like good stewardship. So I’ve built something similar to Patreon, but on a system that takes only the merchant fees, the 3%. So what does this mean, especially if you don’t know what Patreon is?

Well, simply put, you subscribe to support my work for a monthly or annual recurring fee. I get a donation from you that goes to basically buy time for me to do more of this work. And what do you get? Well, mostly, you get the satisfaction of knowing that your gift is allowing me more hours to write, where I don’t have to take side gigs to support my family. But also, there are some cool benefits. So here’s the tiers of my support system, then you can pick one that seems to make sense for you.

The first is the Listener Tier. This level is free–no cost. You get my monthly (monthly-ish) email newsletter, Apprenticeship Notes, and you give me permission to email you when I have new things for sale, like a book. This is perfect for anyone who wants to keep up with my writing but isn’t in a place to commit to a monthly subscription fee. If you’re here right now listening to this podcast and you like what you’re hearing, you’re finding it helpful–that means you should be a Listener level subscriber at least.

Now, if you want to support me financially, there are three options. The second tier is the Reader Tier. This level is $5 a month or $50 a year. You get my monthly-ish newsletter, just like the free tier, but you’ll also be invited to this new thing that I’m doing just for financial supporters.

I’m hosting a monthly-ish Spiritual Life Virtual Round Table. So, monthly-ish again, about nine times a year, because I scale back in the summer, I’ll host a virtual gathering where I will present, or I’ll lead a discussion on a topic related to healthy inner life, spiritual life, or theology. The topics for these conversations will be drawn from the interest shown by suggestions made by supporters like you. So people who back at this level will get to suggest topics they’d like to discuss, and then I will do the work to prepare, and I’ll also try my best to find subject matter experts to join the conversation that may include professors, theologians, and authors of books, who can be in this conversation with us, guide us, answer our questions. Now, this event is intended to be small. Only supporters are going to be invited. That means everyone’s going to have the opportunity to be seen, to be heard, to ask their questions. This isn’t going to be available to the general public. It’s not going to be recorded or streamed to the public. It’s going to be a private conversation, which means it will be a great place for asking questions, tackling difficult issues, and maybe even getting in the room with an author or someone else that I invite to be a subject matter expert.

So, the first one of these is coming up soon, June 20, and the topic will be Mammon. Mammon, that biblical word for the spiritual power of money. How can followers of Jesus deal with the spiritual power of money that seems to run our nation? The Reverend Matt Tebbe will be our special guest, walking us through that topic. He hosts the Gravity Commons podcast, along with some of his friends, and he is really interested in this topic. He’s working on a book on it. How can we deal with this spiritual Power and Principality of money and the desire for money that seems to run our lives? If you want to be in that conversation, then you need to be a paid subscriber at this tier or above.

The third tier is the Sponsor tier. This level is $12 a month, or $120 a year. You get the newsletter. You get an invite to those Spiritual Life Round Tables, and you also get a free book from me every single year that you remain a subscriber. It could be my newest book, It could be one of my older books. Or if you already have all my books, then I will have a conversation with you about what’s going on in your spiritual life, and I will pick out a recommended read just for you and send it to you–ebook or paperback, whichever you prefer.

Then the last tier–and this is just for the crazy people who believe in me more than I believe in myself– this is the Benefactor tier. It’s $40 a month, or $400 a year, or any higher amount that you want to commit. So you get all the previous benefits, the newsletter, the Virtual Roundtable, the annual free book, but you will also be part of my Shareholder Team. You’ll be a part of an annual Marc-Schelske-The-Writer shareholder meeting. At that meeting, I will update you on my writing year, my goals for the next year, and what my current projects are. I’ll ask for your input on new projects. I’ll share some of the most inspiring results of my writing journey. You will have truly insider access to my writing life and where that is headed. So that’s the scoop. Now you can always get my newsletter, listen to my podcast, read my online essays, that’s all free, that’s all available for anyone, but if you want to help me expand my capacity to write, then now you’ve got a way to do that. And if you do… man, blessings upon you.

INTRODUCTION

The last podcast episode, about two months ago, was a panel discussion that I hosted as part of launching my new book, Walking Otherward. I wanted to have a discussion about how Jesus’ way of Other-centered, Co-suffering love might serve us in the current climate of division, antagonism, and lust for power. And so I invited three friends that I respect to discuss this question with me, Pastor Brian Zahnd, Dr Bradley Jersak, and Susan Carson. I titled that discussion “Following Jesus in the Face of Political Panic, Christian Supremacy and Creeping Fascism.” Now, if you haven’t listened to it yet, I recommend it to you. It seems like the conversation becomes more urgent and more relevant every passing day.

But about halfway through that conversation, Bradley, my friend and conversation partner today, made this comment. He said, “It seems to me that the thing we’re pushing back against is the construction of a Christianity that’s the opposite of the Beatitudes. For those who don’t want to be susceptible to the lure of Power-over Christianity, a Christianity built out of the desire to have power over others, I recommend praying the Beatitudes every day. It is a furnace of discernment like none other. There is no power-over theology or prophecy that can get through those first three Beatitudes. They will be fried before you get there. It is such an amazing shield of faith.” Well, we just moved right on from that and went on to discuss other things, but Bradley’s words rang like a tuning fork in my spirit.

I committed right then in that conversation to start praying the Beatitudes regularly. I wrote a responsive prayer based on the Beatitudes that our little church prayed at the close of every gathering through this entire season of Lent. I’ve included the Beatitudes in my own daily prayer liturgy. In the confusion and uncertainty of the moment we find ourselves in, Bradley’s suggestion felt to me like a needed anchor, and so I asked if he would come back to the podcast and have a conversation with me about the Beatitudes as a practice to anchor us in this present moment.

Dr. Bradley Jersak is the principal of St Stephen’s University, Director of St Stephen’s University School of Theology and Culture, and professor of religious studies with the Jim Forest Institute. He lives in Abbotsford, British Columbia, with his wife, Eden, who co-pastors the Bridge Church. He’s written over 20 books, including academic works, theology, and philosophy, and his must-read More Christlike trilogy, which I highly recommend to you.

Bradley’s a smart guy, and some of the vocabulary terms that pop up in this conversation are $64 words. Just to make sure we’re all on the same page, here are some definitions to keep in mind. You’ll hear the idea of kenosis or kenotic theology mentioned. So these words come from a Greek word that Paul uses in Philippians 2 to describe Jesus’ Incarnation–kenao. That word means “to pour out” or “to empty.” So, kenosis is the kind of love that is pouring-out love, the self-sacrificial love. Kenotic theology is the theological framework that sees self-sacrificial love as the decisive quality of God. Just a side note. This is the big theological word that is used for the same thing I’m talking about when you hear me use the phrase, other-centered, co-suffering love. Bradley will also use the term kenarchy. This word derives from kenosis, and it refers to a form of government or a form of human organization that is governed by relationship and love. We’ll also talk about hegemony, but Bradley stops and defines it quite well, so I’ll just flag that and make sure you pay attention to the definition when it comes. All right. I started our conversation by asking Bradley how the Beatitudes have come to be so important to him.

THE CONVERSATION

Dr. Bradley Jersak 11:59
Well, thanks, Marc. I appreciate the question, How did these become so important to me? I do suppose that some of that was when I married into a Mennonite Church. They had a very gospel-centered theology, in a way that contrasted with the more Pauline emphasis when I was growing up. And I don’t mean that to say that they’re in competition. However, what I learned in the first twenty years about the Sermon on the Mount was that it was to lead us to almost despair, so that we would not actually obey it, but cast ourselves on Grace. Luther, or one of his disciples, had said that they were not really expected or invited to obey the Sermon on the Mount. In fact, to do so is sort of a denial of grace. This was Bonhoeffer’s critique as a Lutheran of a certain way of setting aside the practice of the Sermon on the Mount.

When I joined the Mennonites, and I was a pastor there for ten years, I saw how week after week after week, this was the ethical center of what they regarded following Jesus looks like. Within the Sermon on the Mount itself, we have what some would call the constitution of the kingdom of God. From Jesus’ own words: Who’s the wise person who builds their house on the rock? It’s the one who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice. That is not an invitation to cast myself onto grace because they’re impracticable. It is a call to follow Jesus, and that will look like these three chapters.

Now, I began to have that permeate my heart and life in a way that actually transformed me into, for example, someone who who had justified militarism and had my own kind of Just War Theory, into seeing that this was incompatible with what Jesus had called us to in the Sermon on the Mount. Then I began going on mountain hikes with Ron Dart. He’s a mentor of mine. He was the fellow who taught me mountain climbing. He also ended up supervising my PhD dissertation. A huge center of his teaching is the mountain and valleys of the Beatitudes that begin the Sermon on the Mount. He talked about going up hills and down hills and also used the analogy of respiration. There’s an inhale and an exhale to this. There’s a rhythm in these words of Jesus that, if we pay attention to them, will be transformed into blessed peacemakers who hunger and thirst for justice, who exude the mercy of God. And it just hooked my heart.

Then I discovered that in the Eastern Orthodox Church, it’s supposed to be a part of our daily prayer practice. So I’m like, well… then I’ll do that. I do think it’s the most important part of my prayer life. Actually, may I just cite them to you?

Marc Schelske 14:59
Yeah.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 14:59
I want to do it how I would do it when I pray, which is I introduce them from the perspective of the thief on the cross, who says to Jesus, when He has nothing to offer, “Jesus Christ, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And then, I begin to pray the Beatitudes, but the first one then is like Jesus’ answer to me. “Remember me when You come into Your come into your kingdom,” and he looks at me, that good thief, and he says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek. They will inherit the land or the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice or righteousness (same word in Greek), they will be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they will obtain mercy.” Not just get it back, but it will become part of their character. Blessed are the pure in heart. They will see God, and it’s only when you’ve had your heart cleansed then you can actually go into “Blessed are the peacemakers,” otherwise you’re a red-eyed, angry activist. The peacemakers will be called children of God. Not the Christians! Peacemakers will be called children of God.

And of course, once you do that, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness or justice. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” And then he kind of departs from the rhythm. But we’ll add it because it’s another blessed there. “Blessed are those–you–who are persecuted, maligned, those who speak lies about you and evil about you for my sake. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for so they treated the prophets who came before you.” Then he goes into, and I pray this part too, “You’re the salt of the world, and you’re the light of the world, and let your light so shine.” Well, what would that look like? Oh, he’s just told us, right? The Beatitudes. This is what salt looks like. This is what light looks like. This is what Jesus’ version of the Fruit of the Spirit looks like. I commend that for daily prayer. It’s not so hard to add it to your phone as a daily reminder, and to take the one minute of your day to fill your hearts with something that actually looks like Jesus.

Marc Schelske 17:08
It seems such a different place to root your prayer. I wasn’t in a liturgical tradition, if you don’t count childhood liturgy, you know, “Now I lay me down to sleep” sorts of things. I didn’t have any liturgical prayers in my repertoire. I think my dad preached a sermon on the ACTS model of prayer. So Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and then at the end, once you’ve done that, then you can have your grocery list of prayer requests. Or, if you’re more elevated than that, it’s all the different people you’re praying for. You know, families and the pastor and missionaries and the president. God be with all those folks. All of those prayers are really, with the exception of “Jesus, forgive me for my sins,” all those prayers are really about a desire for God to make a change in the world, to change circumstances for somebody that I love, or to change circumstances in my life, or to change circumstances in the world. There wasn’t very much in the way I was taught to pray that had to do with formation. The formation was that you should pray. Christians should pray. This is what you should do. But praying the Beatitudes is pretty explicitly a formational process. You’re asking for the change in you.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 18:23
Yeah, it’s strange because you’re using Jesus’ words, but the way you’re doing this, you’re taking his words and you’re praying them into the soil of your own heart. “Oh, he said this. Plant that there. He said this. Plant that there.” So it’s an interesting kind of praying. It’s not the only praying I do, but there’s this real sense that I’m installing something.

So we’ve talked about a furnace. I love your analogy of the tuning fork. That’s just brilliant to me. It’s like, “Ding!” What has the resonance of truth to it? What harmonizes with the life of Christ? One thing I’ll say about it is that when Ron took me up the mountain, he really wanted me to know that the first half of each Beatitude–Blessed are the, you know, poor in spirit, mourning, meek… He went further than people like Dallas Willard, who sort of treated the first half as “Blessed are the losers.” Dallas Willard was in touch with this idea that these Beatitudes are for the outcasts, are for the outsiders, are for those outside the threshold of the In Crowd. But what Ron wanted to say is that there’s something deeper going on here besides being marginalized.

We do get pushback. There will be people who say, “Well, these aren’t virtues or something. This is like your need.” Well, that’s one level of reading it. But as you climb the mountain of the Beatitudes, you realize these are aspects of the life of Christ. So Benedict XVI called it “A veiled Autobiography of the life of Christ.” He’s telling you in words, and then will fulfill it with his life every day, and then ultimately. In His death and resurrection, what the Blessed One looks like. The Blessed One dies and rises again. But it’s not just the day of my actual death or martyrdom. What Pope Benedict said was that the Beatitudes transpose the death and resurrection of Jesus into the daily life of a Christian disciple. So he would say the first half of each Beatitude, Jesus fulfilled this in his way of living, which was dying, and his way of dying, which is his passion. He fulfilled the first half of each of those as his death, and then the second half of each Beatitude is the resurrection life of Jesus.

So, yours is the kingdom of heaven, right? You lay down your life and you receive the Kingdom, but then Benedict is saying, “What would that look like for someone who’s dying daily?” What would someone look like who is living in the resurrection power of Christ daily? So it’s the daily deaths and resurrections. It’s all there in the first one. “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” those kenotic…

Marc Schelske 20:50
Right? Yeah!

Dr. Bradley Jersak 20:51
Emptying oneself–the way Ron Dart would put it is learning to say no to the demands of the ego, or even bankrupting the ego. So when Simone Weil talks about the first Beatitude, she compares it to Philippians 2. She says, in the first Beatitude, “Blessed are those (in French, she goes) who voided themselves—voided themselves! Then Philippians 2, she said, be like Jesus. Instead of grasping at privilege, he voided himself. So she makes a direct connection to that self-emptying.

Marc Schelske 21:51
Right, Okay.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 21:52
Self-will is just emptied in Jesus, and especially, you see it in the Garden of Gethsemane. And so she says, “This is what Jesus means by ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit,'” Bankrupted egos, saying no to the demands of my cravings.

Marc Schelske 22:07
That’s so good. So I have never, before this moment, thought of the Beatitudes applying to Jesus, which is sort of weird to me. I had a very, very significant theophany moment with First Corinthians 13, going, “Hey, what if this is describing how God loves?” And, even the Fruit of the Spirit. What if this is describing the nature that we see in Christ? The faith of my childhood implicitly said that there is a way of being that Jesus was, which is special and holy, and elevated. He’s the sinless one, and like your narration earlier on, we can’t even aspire to that. That’s not for us. Jesus did what we couldn’t do, and therefore our only avenue is resting in the grace that God offers us, and our access to that is through what happens with Penal Substitutionary Atonement, and aren’t you glad?

Dr. Bradley Jersak 23:01
Imputed righteousness, instead of walking in it.

Marc Schelske 23:04
Right, exactly. So the Beatitudes have always been this sort of annoying enigma. You read them and you’re like, “This is really hard. It doesn’t seem practical. The only people who could really do this have to be retired saintly grandmas and monks, because they live in an environment where other people deal with all the hard stuff.” Kind of dismissed, really. Obviously, they’re words of Jesus; We can’t dismiss them, but dismissed in the sense that there is any direct sort of application. And yet, my heritage also has a very strong move toward the Imitation of Christ. We want to grow up to be like Jesus. We take on Paul’s language of maturing in the image. That is something we should be attempting, aspiring to, in grace, through the power of the Spirit.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 23:53
In grace, through the power of the Spirit, yeah. There can be a sense in which these are just another set of new laws. I mean, they should be what we’re fighting to have in the schools as over against the Ten Commandments. But no one ever does that. Why is that?

But I also want to say it is fruit. You know, it’s the Jesus version of the Fruit of the Spirit. “If you walk with me, these things will wear off on you. My character is going to transform you. You just walk with me.” And so it’s not an imitation apart from transformation; it’s from an inside-out living with Jesus. These things are going to begin to emerge.

Marc Schelske 24:33
Right.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 24:33
And I also like to normalize them. They can be for the super-spiritual, hyper monk or something, but then you just start thinking about each one, right? The poor in spirit, the one who puts others ahead of their own interests, the mother who will rock the baby when she just wants to sleep. That’s saying no to ego, right? And then, you know, mourning, Anyone can do that, but maybe, we could sit and mourn with others. It’s not just mourning for my sins. How about sitting with those who are mourning and learn to co-suffer with them. That’s not rocket science. There’s a hospice down the road where you can go to practice this. Meekness, that’s just gentleness, right? How can I be gentle with people? Well, that is hard. It takes transformation, takes grace, but it’s ultra practical, and it’s super normalized in real life.

Marc Schelske 24:34
Well, to even think of Jesus’ life through this sequence, right? You can just go down and go, “yes, of course, of course.” These are things he did, of course. And even the meek one, people react. Certainly, Americans react badly to the idea, thinking of it as sort of being a sacred call to being a doormat. Yet, Jesus is a great example of someone that we would not consider weak, but who is meek in his interactions with folks.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 25:59
Yeah, in fact, there’s this miscalculation where modern Christians and scholars have sometimes treated Greek as a very abstracted philosophical language as over against Hebrew. And it’s just simply not true. The Greek words used in this, regardless of what language Jesus spoke initially, are very pictorial. So the idea of meekness goes back to this: You take a wild horse with all of its rippling power in those giant muscles. It’s ready for war, but you domesticate it so beautifully that a child can feed it a sugar cube without being bitten or trampled. That’s meekness. What does that look like in the real world?

Well, in the real world, it looked like this. At Fresh Wind Church, when we were leading it, there was an ex-con there who was probably a participant in murder. He was a violent man, including violence against women. He’d been through prison, and he’d come out, and was overcoming his addictions. Eventually, a meekness had come over him that was only explainable by grace. Women would bring their crying children for him to hold. Okay, this is not doormat stuff. This is a powerful, violent man being transformed by the love of Jesus Christ into someone who wouldn’t harm a baby. He might still harm another gang member, but you know, that’s a start, right?

Marc Schelske 27:26
You have this experience of having this prayer be a daily, ongoing part of your life. You use the idea of sort of planting seeds in your own soul for this kind of transformation. So let’s talk about how this might be a resource for Christians today. A lot of folks are finding themselves in this place that feels very unmoored. Expectations that we have been used to having about what it means to be Christian are being toppled. We’re seeing Christian leaders who are making a shift in their language in a direction that feels very much like a pursuit of a kind of Christian hegemony, a pursuit of Christian authority in the political or social environment. For many of us, this feels antithetical to the way of Jesus. It feels like somehow this way of seeing Christianity, or this blending of Christian language and Christian practice with national patriotism, blending those things in a way where there’s this motive for a certain kind of Christianity to become dominant and in power in the country. Certainly, we know that it has been a temptation across church history. This is not new to us, but some of us are waking up to the fact that it feels present right now in a way that we have not been used to experiencing. Okay, so given that context, how might the practice of praying the Beatitudes be an anchor in that moment?

Dr. Bradley Jersak 28:59
I think we should start with a word you used, because the answer is right inside the word, and it’s a word not everyone recognizes, perhaps. You use the word hegemony. For those who don’t know that word, I want to give a basic definition. A hegemony is a kind of empire that accumulates resources to its center to increase its power over those on the outside. So this is what would happen. The British Empire, they would travel the seven seas. They would colonize these other nations, and they would take their resources back to England. Those resources then made England even more powerful. So, it is pulling resources into yourself to increase your power over the other. That’s a hegemony. What Jesus is describing as God’s kingdom and the character of those who practice Beatitude living, is the very opposite of that. Self-giving, kenosis, is a self-emptying of resources into the world, sowing what we have out there. And who knew? The kingdom of God advances and grows in the power of love, not through power-over but through service and foot washing and kissing the leper.

So when you use hegemony, that’s exactly the problem, anywhere a church has reverted from the kenarchy of Jesus, his self-giving kingdom, other-centered love, and become a hegemony. You’re not understating it. It is antithetical to Christ and His way. It is in direct opposition to God’s kingdom. And at that stage, I don’t know what the red line is for lamps being removed from the lampstand…

Marc Schelske 30:45
Right, right! Yeah, exactly.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 30:47
But we used to think about it in terms of a hypothetical. Now I think we’re probably seeing it in real time. That’s really dangerous. And so I’m just going to back up. This has now permeated the land to the point where it’s harder and harder to identify with the Christian brand, because it’s antithetical to Christ in great ways. But where I first ran into it would have been in the prophetic movement. I really believe that God speaks today. I believe and practice hearing his voice, and I believe that’s a ministry that our churches can participate in. What happened, and I can locate it in time, especially through the renewal movement. There was a lot of good stuff happening, but it inherited a kind of prophetic ministry that was grandiose. And it would say encouraging things, but like grandiose things like this, “Marc, the Lord would say to you, go get your passport, because he’s going to make you an apostle to the nations. And he’s going to make you a history maker. And he’s going to make you great, blah, blah, blah.” It was all very much around flattering your ego.

Marc Schelske 32:06
Yeah, bigness, big things, big accomplishments.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 32:08
I see big things for you, very big things. Marc, so I learned a few things the hard way. After resentment, grandiosity is the number two cause of relapse among addicts, because grandiosity makes you think you’re above the rules, so you feel a sense of entitlement to use and abuse. Well, guess what the prophets did? They entitled us to use and abuse. They were just describing how to have a hegemony.

We were also really into fire. Lord, come with your fire, the fire of the spirit, the fire. They love that stuff. I love that stuff. But then I read in Proverbs, “The word of the Lord is pure, like silver refined in the fire seven times.” So I’m like, “What is the fire that will refine the word of the Lord?” And I thought, if I install the beatitudes in my heart as a furnace, and I pass every one of these charismatic or renewal-based prophetic words through the fire of the Beatitudes, almost nothing gets through. Poverty of spirit, Mourning, and Meekness? Grandiosity will be ashes by the time it gets there, and therefore, that is not the pure word of the Lord.

So, I would go into renewal churches, and I’d say, “Oh, we really want to engage the prophetic this weekend, and we want to be accurate prophets, and we don’t want tobe deceived. I don’t want to be deceived. Come back Sunday, and I’ll give you the Seventh Fire.” And then I would just teach them the beatitudes. Then I realized, as I’m doing this, it was not only necessary for a reformation of that one little stream of prophetic movement, but now in our world, this is a problem everywhere. It’s so broad that every Christian in the world should be praying the Beatitudes every day. This may be the antidote to Christian nationalism, because Christian Nationalism is a hegemony.

Marc Schelske 34:04
There are certainly folks who haven’t spent time with the academic language. You know, they hear “Christian nationalism,” and they’re like, “Oh, I’m not allowed to love my country. Is that what you’re saying?” No, no, no, that’s not it. But then, instead of being vague, the Beatitudes would actually say, “here’s a practical vision.” What would it look like to love your country as a person who is poor in spirit? What would it look like to love your country in a way that is peacemaking? In a way that hungers and thirsts for righteous and just behavior? Right? That, right there, reveals the problem of Christian nationalism. Christian nationalism does not ultimately care about right and just behavior. It only cares about behavior that elevates itself, right?

Dr. Bradley Jersak 34:41
Yep.

Marc Schelske 34:41
So, if the Beatitudes call me to be a person who hungers for right and just behavior, then my loving my country is going to begin to look different. Maybe I’m going to become the kind of person who wants to hold my country accountable when my country behaves in ways that are neither right nor just. Maybe I will become the kind of person who wants to see my country invest its resources more in peace-making rather than in war-making. I may identify that I have a deep love of my country. I might use the word patriot, but the tone of what that means is gonna be different having passed through, in your language, this furnace.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 35:18
Totally. Just to help people with some definitions here, then. A patriot is somebody who loves their country. Even if you consider yourself a citizen of heaven in exile, we’re still called to bless the country we’re in all the ways we can. This is Jeremiah. He says, “The Lord says, you’re in exile. Go ahead. Buy Houses, marry wives, have businesses, and just make sure that you are a blessing to the land that I planted you.” And that’s not a problem. You could say I’m a patriot of Canada, in that sense. I care about what happens here, and I want to speak into it, because I want it to thrive, right?

But Christian Nationalism is another thing. First of all, it’s an -ism. An -ism is an ideology, and it’s not just Nationalism, but let’s start there. Nationalism is about the dominance of a people group. So German Nationalism is not patriotism of Germany. It is that the Germanic peoples would dominate all of the countries where they’re planted. So that’s why Germany needed to take over Austria and Czechoslovakia, and Poland. And it was a hegemony because it needed the resources to feed the German nationals, so they’re pulling in these resources. So Nationalism is about people groups. Christian nationalism, then, is about the dominance of a Christian nation, usually white, but it’s about dominance. It’s about power-over. Like Christians should have power over America or Canada. They should have power over the government. They should be in charge, to the exclusion of others. That’s not exactly patriotism in any way. It’s dominance versus kenosis.

Marc Schelske 36:57
That connection to kenosis is such a good one because it contextualizes the invitation of the Beatitudes in a way that makes kenosis–the pouring out from Philippians 2–so much more tangible. What does it mean for me to be a person living out this kind of kenotic love? What does that really look like?

Dr. Bradley Jersak 37:18
Yeah,

Marc Schelske 37:19
I’m presently not being invited to be crucified. So, what does that look like for me? And then the Beatitudes say, well, it might look like not being driven by ego. It might look like intentionally looking for ways to make peace. It might look like desiring, craving, coveting right and just behavior in your community and being part of that. Those are much more tangible. And then I think of ways we can begin in our own circumstances, thinking about how I make a difference where I find myself? Well, these are some very practical ways. Your offhand comment earlier was sort of mind-breaking. What would it be like if every Christian were praying this prayer every day? Because it seems like a lot would have to change about the nature of our way of engaging the world,

Dr. Bradley Jersak 38:05
Yeah, and even just to pray it mindlessly, because you never know what’ll grow down there, right? I do have people ask, “Are you saying then that there’s no place for participation in government?” Oh, no, but it’s a participation of civil servanthood. So my father was a civil servant in the government for 40 years, helping farmers who were going bankrupt not to hang themselves, helping small businesses with some funding so they could hire summer students who couldn’t find jobs otherwise, and helping little communities apply for grants so they could have their museum or their library or their smallest bridge in town upgraded. I mean, that’s quite practical. It’s not non-engagement. It’s just service-focused rather than power-focused.

Marc Schelske 38:51
It seems like even just the one Beatitude, you know, hungering and thirsting for righteousness–if we understand that dikaiosynē encompasses both what we think of as holy living and just living, equitable living towards those around you. Wouldn’t that open up a pretty constructive path if someone were like, “I want to be on city council.” Okay, great. Go be on the city council as a person who hungers and thirsts for righteousness. Yeah. I would love my school board, my city council, the guy who runs the water district, I would love all those to be people who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Seems like that would be a benefit to all of us.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 39:27
Yeah. So, for example, the mayor of my city right now really cares about homeless people. He ran a service station, and he just saw two blocks away the homeless camps, and then he got on the city council. He said “I don’t know what to do, but let’s talk about, let’s have a conversation.” And now we elected a mayor, and he’s making tangible efforts to care for the most vulnerable people in our community right now, and I love it. He’s using his space in self-giving service, rather than power-over dominance.

Marc Schelske 40:02
This is so intriguing to me. I think that in the formation of the kind of Christianity I grew up in, we certainly cared about people’s behavior. I mean, sometimes way too much, in ways that seem unhealthy now. But that formation was really more about becoming skilled in certain Christian practices, right? Like becoming good at studying the Bible in a certain way, becoming good at retaining Bible verses in your memory, and becoming good at participating in certain kinds of church events. And even then, when you had gifts–you know, I’m a musician, so what’s one of the best things you can do as a Christian musician? Well, you use it to help the church service. So, you become part of the church service. Even to the point that, I think, folks whose gifts weren’t the kind of gifts that show up on stage very well could sometimes feel like there really wasn’t a place for them to be Christian, to enact their gifts for the body. The Beatitudes present a formation that’s really not about any of that. The point here is not to become more skilled at your Christian practices. The point is, I mean, is this crazy to say–to become more like Jesus?

Dr. Bradley Jersak 41:22
Yeah, II Corinthians 3, towards the end, it says, anyone who turns to the Lord, they’re going to behold Him. And as they behold Him, the end of beholding is that they’ll be transformed, transfigured into the image of Christ. So, I behold Him, and that’s what changes me. Well, anybody can either read or hear the Jesus of the gospel. That’s a way to behold Him. It is about saying, “I’m gonna follow Jesus. I’m gonna watch how he did it. I’m going to let that rub off on me. I’m going to let him–his words and his actions–change how I see people.” What’ll happen is that you won’t read very far into the Sermon on the Mount until you’re like, “Well, wait a minute. But what about this? And I don’t know about that?”

So, one of the great griefs I have about our culture right now is how I can spout the very words of Jesus without commentary in a conversation, and the percentage of Christians who who reject what he says is assaulting So, for example… oh, I always try to quote the fellow who who did this study because it’s good to give credit, but his name has slipped my mind. He’s a Church Health Consultant who goes to churches all over. Hundreds of churches, and they range from conservative to progressive, and he always likes to put those words in front of them. He’ll say, you know, how do you feel about these words? Your enemies, bless them, pray for them, forgive them. The percentages, after thousands of surveys in churches where the people doing them were active. These are the people who show up for a Church Health Conference, not the Sunday or even Christmas Christians. 74% of conservatives said that it is compromising with unrighteousness, and 72% of progressives said that it is complicity with injustice. So these are active Christians across the spectrum, at almost three-quarters, who don’t like these words. Well, neither do I, but just stay there then and undergo them, and let them press on you. Argue with Jesus about it. Ask your whatabouts. But then let these words talk. This is the amazing thing. If we sit with the things that discomfort us rather than evade them or interpret them away, it might help us to change.

Marc Schelske 43:23
That feels really wise and helpful in this moment. I think that most of us would say, if I’m going to pray a passage from scripture, it would be a lot more comforting to pray the 23rd Psalm. There are passages like that that soothe my limbic system and help me visualize a better future, and I want to pray those because they feel more comforting. But the Beatitudes are inviting us to be part of the process of bringing comfort to the world.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 44:33
Yeah.

Marc Schelske 44:35
There’s a lot about the way the world is that’s uncomfortable. It’s a uniquely modern problem of people who look a lot like me, socially, economically, and ethnically, that we’ve been able to build lives where not a lot challenges our sense of comfort. And so then we’ve built churches like that. Don’t challenge our sense of comfort. We get bugged when the pastor preaches something that is pointed.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 45:06
Let’s use that as a segue for a moment, moving from an individualistic reading of the Beatitudes into a corporate reading. So this is not just what the Christian could look like if they imitate Christ, but it is what Jesus’ alternative society will look like. When Gandhi was reading this daily and putting it into practice, he said that if people took the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount seriously and really put them into practice, it would not only solve the problems of Christianity or of India, but of the whole world. It is a prophecy par excellence, if practiced. And I think that’s the proof of it.

So often we’re like, “Yeah, but what about this?” And we make a hypothetical that we don’t have to obey. But Jesus says it’s, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” That’s the children of God. And he says, (This is from Chapter 7) “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will unto the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” That’s a challenging thing, but it also smears the boundaries really badly. And it tells you that someone who may name the name of Jesus may not be following Jesus at all. It could just be an incantation they use. And then there is someone who would not think to claim the name of Jesus, and is unlikely to darken the door of a church, and yet they’re living this way. It’s very possible that they might have entered that sort of Kingdom reality.

That makes me ask this: if you have Christians who aren’t following Jesus, and if you have people who have other faiths or no faith, who aren’t claiming the Christian brand, how do you know which ones are following Jesus? Oh, I know! The Beatitudes. Turning to Christ will probably look like this at some point. From the perspective of the thief on the cross who has nothing left to offer, they can pray this and see what Jesus does by way of death and resurrection in them.

CLOSING REFLECTION

Marc Schelske 47:16
Bradley quoted the words of Pope Benedict the 16th: “The Beatitudes transpose the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ into the daily life of a Christian disciple.” I don’t know about you, but this is what I need. I grew up in a church with a very strict list of behaviors that were acceptable for Christians, and I inherited the legalistic heart to go along with it, but what Bradley is suggesting with the Beatitudes is something completely different. Rather than a new list of rules to obey, this scripture becomes a furnace of discernment. I love that.

As I face the struggles of my life or the struggles in my church, as I think about how to participate in the conversation and politics of my country. I need guidance. When I take my concerns, my questions, and I run them through the Beatitudes, I submit myself to the Beatitudes, I can start discerning more clearly where self-centered, ego-defending ambition is poisoning my perspective.

Ever since that book launch live-stream, when Bradley made his off-handed comment, I’ve been praying the Beatitudes. I try to pray them every day, and already, in just that short time, I’ve seen myself become more aware of my ego in my transactions, my interactions with others, more aware of the marginalized around me, and even have begun feeling more courage to stand with those that our society weighs down with unnecessary burdens. There have been a handful of situations where I wasn’t sure what to do, and by actually taking my concern through the furnace, I had clarity about what was the right next step. So, following Bradley, I just want to recommend this practice to you. We’re facing enormous difficulties in our world right now, so much division, so much pain, and even deep disagreements about what is true. In a moment like that, we need an anchor that is deeper than our own thoughts, and I think the Beatitudes offer us exactly that.

May you say no to the demands of ego, may you comfort those in mourning, may you stand with the meek, may you hunger more for right and just living. May you be merciful, even as your Father in heaven is merciful. May you grow in purity and have the courage to be a peacemaker. May you bear up under persecution and be willing to do what is right even when it costs you. May you be salt and light.

Thanks for listening.

The notes for today’s episode, and any links mentioned, can be found at www.MarcAlanSchelske.com/TAW059. Also, I mentioned that I wrote a responsive prayer version of the Beatitudes that our little church prayed at the close of every service during Lent. Well, I put that together for you in a nice PDF that you can get from my website. That’ll be linked in the show notes too.

Did you like this? Did you find this conversation helpful? Well, there’s more where that came from. I already gave you my whole pitch to subscribe at the beginning of the podcast today, so I don’t need to say anything more about that now. You can opt in if you want, at www.MarcOptIn.com.

Until next time, remember in this one present moment, you are loved, you are known, and you are not alone.

Episode 058 – Following Jesus in the Face of Political Panic, Christian Supremacy, and Creeping Fascism. (With Susan Carson, Bradley Jersak, and Brian Zahnd.)

We stand in a dire historical moment, and one of the questions that is swirling for many of us is about what it means to be a Christian right now. There are folks wearing the label Christian, many in good faith, who are endorsing things that seem so plainly unlike Christ. The chaos is swirling and it is all coming at us so fast that we are being overwhelmed. Because this is so important, I invited some friends to talk about this crisis, and how Other-centered, Co-suffering love can lead us.

Show Notes

In this conversation, motivated by the launch of my new book, Walking Otherward: Forty Meditations on Following Jesus’ Path of Other-centered, Co-suffering Love, Susan Carson, Dr. Bradley Jersak, and Brian Zahnd discuss how this path might help us face the moment.

Takeaways

• Fear makes us susceptible to the temptation to use power-over as a way to try to get good things done.
• This temptation is the same that Jesus faced in the wilderness, and the church is facing it again today.
• Gathering in church communities committed to practicing the other-centered, co-suffering way is essential right now.
• Praying the Beatitudes, and becoming intimately familiar with the Sermon on the Mount will guard our hearts.
• Stay focused. Be Patience. Engage in one-on-one acts of care, service, and advocacy.

Recommended Resources

• Postcards from Babylon: The American Church in Exile, by Brian Zahnd.
• When Everything’s On Fire: Faith Forged From the Ashes, by Brian Zahnd.
• Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God: The Scandalous Truth of the Very Good News, by Brian Zahnd.
• A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel, by Dr. Bradley Jersak.
• A More Christlike Word: Reading Scripture the Emmaus Way, by Dr. Bradley Jersak.
• A More Christlike Way: A More Beautiful Faith, by Dr. Bradley Jersak.
• Rooted (In): Thriving in Connection with God, Yourself, and Others, by Susan Carson.

• The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire, by Alan Kreider.
• The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky
• “The Grand Inquisitor” Filmed performance on Youtube.
• The Ladder of the Beatitudes, by Jim Forest.
• Beatitudes: When Mountain Meets Valley, by Ron Dart.
• Are We Done Fighting: Building Understanding in a World of Hate and Division, by Matthew Legge.
• Direct support for Mercy Aiken, a peacemaker in Palestine.

• Scroll down for a full transcript of this episode.
• You can also watch and share the video version on Youtube.

More about My Conversation Partners

Susan Carson

Susan is an author, speaker, podcaster, pray-er, and lifelong unlearner. She’s the founder and director of Roots&Branches Network, a listening and healing prayer ministry in Cincinnati, Ohio. With her team, she helps people encounter God in ways that transform and restore.

Find Susan Here

• Website: https://www.susancarson.net/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/susanfcarson
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/susancarsonauthor/
• Threads: https://www.threads.net/@susancarsonauthor

Dr. Bradley Jersak

Bradley is an author and teacher based in Abbotsford, BC. He currently serves as the Principal of St. Stephen’s University in New Brunswick, where he continues as the Dean and faculty member of SSU’s School of Theology & Culture. He also teaches peace studies courses with JFI.SSU.ca and is a regular Open Table Conference crew lecturer. Through his books and seminars, Brad shares the good news that God is Love, perfectly revealed in Jesus Christ, and that God’s love heals wounded hearts and empowers us to heal this broken world.

Find Bradley Here

• Website: https://bradjersak.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bradley.jersak
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bradley.jersak/
• Threads: https://www.threads.net/@bradley.jersak

Brian Zahnd

Brian is the founder and lead pastor of Word of Life Church in St. Joseph, Missouri. He is also a pastor-theologian who has authored many books. Brian is enthusiastic about music, literature, mountains, and long-distance pilgrimages.

Find Brian Here

• Website: https://brianzahnd.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BrianZahnd
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brianzahnd/
• Threads: https://www.threads.net/@brianzahnd

Today’s Sponsor

• Walking Otherward – My new book! This is a 40-day devotional following the final weeks of Jesus’ life and inviting us to exchange our natural self-centered, ego-defending ambition for the other-centered, co-suffering way of Love.

Transcription

Marc Schelske 0:05
Hey, friends. I’m Marc Alan Schelske. This is The Apprenticeship Way, a podcast about spiritual growth, following the way of Jesus. This is episode 58: How Can Other-Centered, Co-suffering Love Provide a Way Forward in the Face of Political Panic, Christian Supremacy, and Creeping fascism. Okay, that is way too long of a title for a podcast episode. I’m gonna have to figure something else out. But anyway, that’s what we’re talking about.

SPONSOR

Today’s podcast is made possible by Walking Otherward. That is my new book, and it’s out. It’s in the wild. It can be ordered at bookstores. You can get it in all the book places, and it’s such a sigh of relief to finally see this thing out there living its own life. Today’s podcast is a conversation motivated by this book that was part of my online book launch party, so it seemed only right to name Walking Otherward as the sponsor for the podcast.

So, who’s this book for? It’s for folks who suspect that there’s more to the way of Jesus than what most current versions of Western Christianity are offering. It’s for folks who have had enough of control and manipulation and self-righteous pontification. Jeff Mears, a friend of mine, called it a devotional for the deconstructing. He’s right, even though I would never have put it in those terms. But the deconstruction here is away from forms of faith that are about using power-over or using the Bible to exclude others and justify exploitation.

Walking Otherward is a collection of forty-one short essays structured as a daily devotional that follows the gospel passages, narrating the final weeks of Jesus’ life as he heads toward the cross. With these scriptures, I’m asking the reader to reflect on our own attitude, how we see God, ourselves, and others. I’m inviting us to make a shift, to move away from self-centered, ego-defending ambition, toward Jesus’ way of other-centered, co-suffering love. I wrote this because I’ve seen a glimpse of a better way, and I want to invite you outside the gates managed by stingy religious gatekeepers, driven by fear. My friend, theologian Bradley Jerzak, calls this way a more beautiful gospel.

Intrigued? Well, now you can get Walking Otherward: Forty Meditations on Following Jesus’ Path of Other-Centered Co-suffering Love in all the normal book places. You can learn a bit more about it, see endorsements, reviews, and even read a sample chapter at this website: www.walkingotherword.com.

INTRODUCTION

Today’s podcast episode is out of the normal pattern in several ways. First, what I’m about to share with you is an edited excerpt of a live online event I did a couple of weeks ago. This event was the online launch party for my new book, Walking Otherward. Now, book launch parties are supposed to be celebrations of the book, but I’d felt for some time that sort of party wasn’t right for this book.

The world around us is a mess. Much of the church seems caught up in this fever dream of power, playing chaplain to a regime in my country that every day acts more and more autocratic. The most painful revelation has been the shocking number of my fellow Americans who seem excited about this shift. In this historic moment, the question of what it means to be Christian and how Christians can resist this shift is top of mind. So, instead of having a traditional rah-rah book launch, I invited some friends to have a conversation with me about this subject.

So first, let me introduce you to the friends you will hear in this recording. Susan Carson is a friend of mine who served as the Launch Manager for this book. She and I met in our graduate program at St. Stephen’s University and connected over our hopes for a more life-giving way of being Christian. Susan is also an author, she’s a spiritual director, she leads a prayer and healing ministry in Cincinnati, Ohio called the Roots&Branches Network.

The second friend you’ll hear is Pastor Brian Zahn. He’s been a long-time mentor of mine and is now a new friend. He’s the pastor of Word of Life Church in St Joseph, Missouri, and a public theologian. His writing has been deeply influential to me in the past few years and even formed the background to why I got started writing the book Walking Otherward. As luck or circumstances or God would have it, I had the opportunity to spend three weeks with him last spring on a study tour of Türkiye and Greece.

The third voice you’ll hear is my friend, Dr Bradley Jersak. He’s a theologian, a teacher, a Reader in the Orthodox Church. Bradley’s writing is another deep influence of mine, and I had the distinct pleasure of having him be the supervisor for my master’s thesis.

So, the question I asked my friends to discuss with me was this: How can other-centered, co-suffering love provide a way forward in the face of political panic, Christian supremacy, and creeping fascism?

Now, before I turn you over to the recording, I have to mention this event was done via Zoom, and apparently, I did not understand how Zoom recording works. The audio throughout is excellent, but Zoom itself made many weird and unexpected decisions about who to focus on during the event, so I’ve done my best to edit the video so that it’s watchable. Learned a lot. So sorry for the less-than-ideal video footage, but I hope that the wisdom found in this conversation is much greater than the irritation of Zoom’s annoying behavior. Here we go.

THE CONVERSATION

I am really excited to have a chat with this crew here tonight for a number of reasons, but I just want to take a moment to acknowledge the impact that Brian and Bradley have had on me, personally, and on the book that you all have. I think that it’s not an exaggeration to say that the book wouldn’t exist without them, and it’s definitely not an exaggeration to say that the thought behind it wouldn’t be what it is without their influence.

I’ve been following Brian since 2017, I think. I think maybe Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God was my first experience of Brian, and I was sort of taken aback to hear this guy who sounded like a charismatic preacher who was saying things that were so in line with intuitions I’d been having that I didn’t stereotypically place into the mouth of a pastor on the stage of a big church. And yet, following that path and since having read all of his books, I’ve just been challenged so deeply to keep the gospel picture of who Jesus is central, not just as my picture of Jesus, but as the way that I imagine God entirely.

Because of that, Brian’s been kind of a mentor at a distance–you know, one of those folks that you’ve got the books on the shelf and you’ve read them some multiple times, and you listen to what they say on the internet and consider them a mentor. And then last year, thanks to Bradley, I had the opportunity to do a study tour in Greece and Türkiye, which Brian was on. We talked about early church fathers, and we walked through ancient Greek cities that Paul was in. We talked about what it must have been like to be there and how the dots connect from those places to our own ministries today. I got to see Brian as a real human being, not just a voice on a stage somewhere. I really loved that experience and came to trust him at a deeper level. And so, when he was willing to write the foreword to this book, it was just an incredible joy and honor for me.

My connection to Brian is wrapped up in my connection to Bradley. I was thinking back. I honestly can’t remember when I first ran across Bradley. I suspect it might be through the Open Table circle. The Open Table conferences started here in Portland, so that might be where I originally ran into you, Bradley. I’m not really sure. Very much like Brian, some of Bradley’s books just really stunned and cracked open my brain. His Beautiful Gospel series put pieces together that I had been wrestling with from Scripture and the footnotes of other books I’d been reading and spiritual intuition that I’ve been having, and and gave me permission to name some things that I hadn’t been brave enough to name. And then COVID came along and Bradley suckered me into a master’s degree program… that’s not true. It’s not his fault. But I ended up in a master’s degree program, which has been one of the highlights of my adult life. There, I got to meet the human being, Bradley, and we became friends.

So, the thought process and theology behind this book are deeply shaped by both of these guys. I’m just so deeply indebted, and I’m thrilled and honored to be able to have even a short conversation tonight about what this way might mean for us as followers of Jesus. So, thanks, guys.

Brian Zahnd 9:04
You’re welcome.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 9:06
Thanks, happy to be here. The only correction I’d make is that we’re dear friends. Dear friends.

Marc Schelske 9:12
Oh, that’s lovely. Thank you. We’re dear friends. I feel that way. Alright, so here’s the big question. It’s way too big of a question for us to solve, but I think it will give us a space to talk about some things that are important. So we find ourselves, as Susan mentioned, in a dire historical moment. The political disagreement that’s always been present in society has metastasized into dogmatic polarization. Certain leaders, some of them Christian leaders, seem to be aggressively pushing toward a kind of supremacist regime where certain kinds of Christianity are the official religion of at least the country that I’m part of. (I know we have folks in the Zoom tonight from multiple countries.) and there’s a lot of anger. There’s a lot of perspective that the people who disagree with me are my enemy, and they want bad things for me, and so we must fight. There’s a lot of this in the air right now, and that is leaving a lot of us worried and wondering what to do.

I think Christians, in particular–as I’ve had many conversations in the last few weeks–are wondering what to do. What is the Christlike thing to do at this moment? And so I wanted to start by just asking your thoughts on why it seems like in so many places, the church–and I’m using that language to refer broadly to all of our siblings around the world–why does the church seem to fall so easily into the temptation to collude with this mess, or, on the other hand, seem to be standing so passively watching it all unfold. What do you think about that?

Brian Zahnd 10:53
I think it’s very easy right now to be overwhelmed, but I’m not despairing in any way. I think it’s important to understand that when the New Testament talks about our citizenship being in heaven, that’s to be taken actually quite seriously. Paul writes that as a Roman citizen. It’s valuable to him. It gets him out of a few scrapes here and there. Eventually, the Empire is going to cut his head off, but I mean, he’s able to use that citizenship to his advantage on multiple occasions.

But when Paul says our citizenship is of heaven, he really means that, and he really thinks that way. The empires of this world are always going to be, to some degree or another, Antichrist. That’s the nature of the beast. That’s kind of a double entendre, the idiom and then just the nature of the beast. I think we’re maybe surprised when we shouldn’t be. I’ll speak frankly here for a moment. I think that whereas maybe a lot of people who might be joining us tonight would be comfortable with speaking of America as an empire (I’ve been doing that for 20 years, and I think people get that) but I think maybe we thought it was like a maybe a little better than it really is.

Marc Schelske 12:23
Right..

Brian Zahnd 12:23
What concerns me most is to see my brothers and sisters sometimes, as you already alluded to, colluding with the powers that be. That’s been a mistake the church has made repeatedly for the past seventeen centuries. I wish we could get beyond that, but that’s where my real concern lies. I’m not a politician. I don’t belong to a party. I do live in America, and so I’m affected by various things, but when the day is done, I’m really a citizen of the kingdom of the heavens.

And so my response, as a pastor, has been to lean into the gospel of Jesus Christ. Let Jesus do the heavy lifting. Jesus shines through. And if we can just draw people’s attention to the living Christ, then we don’t have to do all the work and change all the minds. Let Jesus shine. That’s what I like about your book.

So, this is a book we’re launching at the beginning of Lent because it’s a book to be read during Lent. I’m old enough to remember when Lent was an exclusive Catholic thing. Maybe a high Anglican here and there would talk about Lent, but for the most part, outside of the Catholic world, nobody was talking about Lent. That has changed, and it’s been changed dramatically, increasingly, year by year. I think it indicates that we long for rhythm and roots. So, we’re drawn to the church calendar with its rhythms and its rootedness in the Gospel story of Jesus Christ. Just inviting people to really engage with Jesus by seriously considering the gospel texts–that’s super important pastoral work.

This coming Sunday is Transfiguration Sunday. I was reading some church fathers on this today. Origen says, Do you want to see the transfiguration? You can’t climb up on that mountain that they were on, but what you can do is go to the Gospels, pay attention, and you will see Jesus being transfigured before your eyes. And in his Transfiguration, we find our transfigurations.

Marc Schelske 14:51
I do want to hear from Brad and Susan, but I will just connect the dot, because as you talked about the value of Lent and focusing on Christ, one of the questions that we’re going to have next I think you answered, which is, what are our resources as we face this time of chaos and uncertainty? That’s a perfect example. We’ve got to go deeper into a real and nuanced and careful reflection on who Jesus is.

Brian Zahnd 15:17
I mean, you do this in your book, Marc. We’re engaging with Jesus. Each reading is about what Jesus is doing. What we’re doing is we’re actually on the road with Jesus, headed towards Jerusalem. You set it up perfectly. We’re to take up our cross and follow Jesus. There is a resistance to that because that sounds like loss and pain and death and suffering. Sometimes it does involve that, but we know that on the other side of that is resurrection. And so I don’t think we have to feel like we have to change everybody’s mind. And if you do feel that way, well, good luck, you know.

Marc Schelske 15:55
Right?

Brian Zahnd 15:55
That’ll drive you insane. Rather, our work is more modest. It’s to gently but persistently point people to Jesus and then trust that Jesus, because he actually is the living Christ, can be the one to bring about change that we can’t bring about.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 16:16
One thing that Brian didn’t address in your original question is what made the church so susceptible to this. Maybe we can just nod to it on our way to these other things that I think are more important because it’s speculative. You’ve mentioned chaos, you’ve mentioned confusion, and I think we’re in that period on a grand scale. So, there’s a temptation that comes when you feel like things are slipping, and the temptation is to power and specifically to power-over.

Marc Schelske 16:45
Yes, right?

Dr. Bradley Jersak 16:46
And when you can get a little whiff that maybe we could have that if we get in bed with partisan politics! Maybe we could have some certitude. Maybe it’s better just to be told what to do than to wonder what to do. Those are some of the temptations I think make people susceptible. But I think Brian’s exactly right that the solution, then, isn’t, “Well, it’s our job to go fix that.”

He mentioned despair. I’ve been having this thought that we are both tempted to despair and invited to despair. And so the temptation to despair is to see all this and just go quiet on it, right? It’s just all hopeless. I’m tempted to paralysis, despondency, and resentment because I’m despairing good things. But I think Jesus is inviting us to despair, too. To despair of fixing things the way the world fixes things. To try to push back at partisan politics with partisan politics, to choose our emperor instead of the other one. Despair of that! The subtitle of your book really matters to this. So can you read it?

Marc Schelske 17:58
Yeah. 40 Meditations on Following Jesus’ Path of Other-Centered, Co-Suffering Love.

Bradley Jersak 17:59
So, following Jesus. And it’s a path that I identify specifically with the Sermon on the Mount. That path is infused with a way of being that is other-centered and co-suffering. Those are words all of us have really embraced. While we preach the gospel, we also enter into a kind of allyship, which is absorbing the violence of others in order to put a stick in the spokes of the wheel of the cycle of violence. But (and I’m getting this from my colleague, Andrew Klegger), we can’t impose that calling on others, especially the victims of oppression.

Marc Schelske 18:46
Right.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 18:47
So, I don’t say to, let’s say, a Gazan, “You need to practice co-suffering love and radical blah, blah, blah.” No, no, that’s for me to do.

Brian Zahnd 18:54
Yeah.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 18:55
And the other thing that Andrew says is that we cannot change the world quickly. But we also know we’re dripping in privilege to say, “Take the slow route” when there are urgent needs. But it’s also true that the kind of exercises we do as we’re journaling, using your book, and deliberately, slowly following the path of Jesus–that’s required. I’m not out to fix the world. I am out to participate in an alternative society that looks like the way of Jesus.

Brian Zahnd 19:23
When you forsake patience and think, “I have to speed this up. I have to speed Jesus up,” That’s how you become Judas. We all know that Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss. Why? Why a kiss? Why does Judas come up and greet him? Why, if he’s just doing it for the money? Go on, take the money and run! He just stands in the shadows and points and says, “That guy right there. Yeah, alright, see ya. I’m out of here. I got my 30 pieces of silver.” I think that’s not what’s going on. Judas wants to be a disciple. He wants to force Jesus to fight, to back Jesus into a corner, and then Jesus will use the miraculous power that Judas knows that he has to launch this war against the occupying Romans. He’s tempting Jesus to do what the devil tempted Jesus to do in the third temptation in the wilderness.

I think we have to resist that. I’m thinking about Alan Kreider’s book, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church. The early church grew up under nothing but despotic, oppressive regimes, but they were just patient. They believed that Jesus was Lord and that the world would be saved, but they just didn’t see it necessarily as their job to force it to happen. What they were more interested in was creating alternative communities within the Roman Empire that lived by a completely different ethic, a completely different vision of how humans could share life together. And so their own communities were this alternative society that Jesus called the kingdom of heaven, or the kingdom of God.

I’m always struck by Origen’s debate with Celsus, the pagan philosopher and polemicist against Christianity. Oregin’s ultimate apologetic is, “You don’t believe that our communities are really different and that they actually do function through love, through actual altruistic love? Then come to our churches and see. Just check it out.” I wonder how many of us would dare to say, “Here’s my ultimate argument that the kingdom of Christ is real. You can see it lived out day by day in our local churches.” I think some would be nervous to do that, but I think that’s the hope, to actually become communities of Christlike co-suffering, other-oriented love that actually plays out. Not in perfection, but in an actual, real experience that people can see with their own two eyes,

Marc Schelske 22:02
Rght! It’s organic; it’s not mechanized. This is Bradley’s language–it’s rooted in consent and participation rather than hierarchical control. It’s vulnerable. Maybe this is the tying point back to when Bradley said that the struggle that causes the church to fall into this is that fear that comes up, that uncertainty, the struggle with the way of Jesus–this other-centered, co-suffering way–is that it is also a call to vulnerability. That’s not the thing I most want when I’m feeling at loose ends. I want a guarantee. I want to feel secure. I want to know that my investment is going to pay off. The call of the cross is the opposite. It’s vulnerability. It requires trust that God is actually at work in the larger picture. It isn’t up to me to make the outcome be the outcome. I’m participating in what God is doing. And that’s a very vulnerable position to take.

Brian Zahnd 23:00
That’s what your book’s about, Marc!

Marc Schelske 23:06
Susan, is there anything in your thoughts that this is sparking?

Susan Carson 23:09
Well, fear, I think, is at the heart of it. The thing that keeps coming to mind for me is a quote I heard, I think initially, from John Philip Newell, who’s a Celtic theologian. He said If you see turmoil and travail in the world, move towards it, because something is trying to be born. And so it seems to me that in this, there’s something revelatory. The things we sort of smelled and knew were there but didn’t think could really happen here are happening here. It’s really clear. It’s out in the open. And now we have the chance to decide who we’re going to be as people of Jesus.

The whole idea of co-suffering love, as Americans, maybe as Western Christians… we don’t really have a great place in our theology for suffering at all. So, to learn the way of co-suffering love, I think you learn it through suffering. And I don’t know what that means, and that’s not happy news. But it just seems to me that some things can be born and shaped in us through this that might not be born and shaped in any other way. It’s horribly uncomfortable, and the fear would drive us in not great directions, and yet, other-centered, moving towards the other, moving towards Jesus? In this moving towards one another, think something is being born.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 24:41
Yeah, that word “co-suffering,” I mean, it’s the literal meaning of compassion, empathy, sympathy. Weirdly, lately, public leaders and teachers and preachers have actually pronounced that empathy is a sin. And I’m like, what happened? And it seems to me that the thing we’re pushing back against is the construction of a Christianity that’s the opposite of the Beatitudes.

For those who don’t want to be susceptible to the lure of power-over Christianity, I recommend praying the Beatitudes every day. You just set an alarm on your clock or your phone and pray them every day. And I’m telling you, it is a furnace of discernment like none other. There is no power-over theology or prophecy that can get through the first three Beatitudes. They will be fried before you get there. It’s such an amazing shield of faith from the the three temptations of the Grand Inquisitor, who said the church needs to say yes to what Jesus said no to. And we say, “No, we won’t, because we have this shield that’s been given, this furnace of discernment in these words.”

Brian Zahnd 25:51
We get going on Dostoevsky, and we’re just going to go! So, in the Grand Inquisitor, Ivan is trying to destroy his brother Alyosha’s faith. And he comes up with this parable, “The Grand Inquisitor and Jesus.” And, of course, Jesus never says anything. At one point, Alyosha breaks in and says, “You’re praising Christ, you’re not reviling him,” and Ivan doesn’t disagree. Then you have that dramatic episode at the end where Christ simply kisses the Inquisitor, and the kiss burns in his heart. He’s still clinging to his old idea, but the kiss burns in his heart.

My point from that is we can just keep driving the conversation toward Jesus, quoting Jesus, quoting the Beatitudes, quoting the Sermon on the Mount, without necessarily trying to make people see the point, but just, let Jesus be Jesus. I would say the vast majority of non-Christian people who are witnessing what’s occurring in the present moment under the flag of Christian nationalism know that Jesus has nothing to do with that.

Marc Schelske 25:51
Yes.

Brian Zahnd 25:51
What it really does is it reviles the church. It gives the church a terrible reputation, but Jesus somehow stays above that. They’ll say things like, “I don’t I don’t know much about religion. I don’t know much about Christianity, but I know Jesus isn’t like that.” And how do they know? But they’re right. They do know, and they’re accurate. I just refuse to hand over Jesus to those who want to use him for an imperial theology. I just want to bring everything back to Marc’s book. You’ve got these forty meditations where Jesus gets to be Jesus, and then Marc helps us consider what the implications of that are. But the best part is that the light of Christ just shines.

Marc Schelske 27:47
I just want to back up a second on two things. One is that you kind of blitzed through the Grand Inquisitor scene. I want to give a very brief Wikipedia version because I don’t know everyone’s familiar. I feel like The Grand Inquisitor is maybe one of the most important pieces of prophetic literature in the modern age. It’s just one scene from the larger book, The Brothers Karamazov. There’s a version of it on YouTube. The story, very simply, is that Jesus shows up in a Spanish city. It’s the 15th century, or something like that, and he begins doing the things that Jesus does in the Gospels. As a result of that, he gets arrested. The entire scene takes place in the dungeon where he is being confronted by the Grand Inquisitor. Jesus is sitting in the room, and the Grand Inquisitor is talking to him. Jesus never says anything in the entire scene. In short, the Grand Inquisitor basically says, “The temptations that you faced in the wilderness–the three temptations–you made the wrong choice. What people actually need from you would have been for you to make the other choice, but you didn’t do that. You failed. Now, we are entrusted with the responsibility of doing what you couldn’t do. So, we will give the people certainty. We will give the people rules so that they don’t have to think for themselves. We will make sure that they know they are taken care of. That’s what they want; that’s what they need, and you didn’t give that to them. Does that feel like a fair summary?

Brian Zahnd 29:21
Exactly. He argues that Christ has too high an opinion of humanity. Christ tries to give them freedom, but people don’t want freedom. The Cardinal, representing more or less atheistic religious leaders who are just a religious arm of imperial power, or at least, in league with imperial power, have tried to undo what Jesus was trying to do.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 29:52
Hence, timely.

Marc Schelske 29:53
It’s a pragmatic picture, right? That we’re using faith, we’re using the way of Jesus, and we’re giving the people what they want, and that’s the right thing. What’s prophetic about this scene, and matters for the moment we find ourselves in, is that the temptation in the wilderness–the three temptations–are really, I think, what the church is facing now…

Brian Zahnd 30:14
Yes, exactly.

Marc Schelske 30:15
We are being asked what kind of people we will be in the world. Will we be people who use power? Will we be people who compel agreement through overwhelming people’s perspectives and experience? Will we be people who depend on spectacle to overwhelm people’s thoughts and compel them to do what we want? Or will we do something different? The gospels say that Jesus bested the devil in this temptation. And how did Jesus do it? By not going down that path.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 30:48
It is tempting, right? That’s the temptation of the hour. It is so easy to see the Them in our US/Them dynamic and then just mirror them.

Marc Schelske 30:57
Yeah, right.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 30:57
They’re using power-over, so now I will. They’re using attack and accusation and condemnation, so now I will. It’s very subtle, and it feels right and righteous, and it feels honest. There is a place for praying the Imprecatory Psalms, but you only do that in the presence of Jesus as a way to confess the malice in your heart and have it expunged so that you don’t do violence to the Other. Again, I don’t want to say that as a privileged person to others who are being oppressed, but it is for me to avoid becoming the thing I hate.

Marc Schelske 31:31
The other place I want us to back up to–and then I’m going to hand this back to you, Bradley–you said that maybe the best way to envision what this other-centered, co-suffering path looks like is the Beatitudes. So you offered that as a resource. I’d like us to talk a little bit about that more, and maybe the general question of the resources we have as followers of Jesus to stick to the other-centered, co-suffering path when the temptation to the ways of power and coercion are so dominant for us right now.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 32:00
Of course, the Beatitudes, or the first section of the Sermon on the Mount–I would say that as Jesus’ fundamental foundational sermon as he launches the kingdom in the Gospel of Matthew (chapters five to seven), it behooves us to know that sermon inside and out. And there are those who can help us do so. Unfortunately, there came a time in the church where people actually were teaching, probably since Luther, that we need to read the sermon on the mount as something we can’t obey and, in fact, shouldn’t obey. It’s meant only to cause us to despair, so we’ll cast ourselves on Grace. So you don’t live the Sermon on the Mount. You’re not even invited to. In fact, if you try to, you’re probably forsaking grace. But what is the sermon?

Brian Zahnd 32:46
That’s Bonhoeffer’s Cheap Grace. Bonhoeffer was attacking that. He knew that they’d gone there. What Bonhoeffer is saying was, the reason you can go to a Nazi rally on Saturday night and go to church on Sunday morning and feel no contradiction, is because of cheap grace. The gospel is no longer something you live. It’s just a means by which the grace of God exonerates whatever you do.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 33:10
Yep, and what does the sermon actually say, though? Well, “Many will say, Lord, Lord, and I’ll say, I’ve never knew him because you didn’t do the things I told you to do.” The wise man who builds his house on the rock at the end of that sermon is the one who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice. So I start with the Beatitudes because they set up an orientation of the soul of surrender to God, of lowliness of heart, of meekness, of renunciation of ego. Our friend, Ron Dart, actually translates the first Beatitude this way: “The divine life is for those who have learned to say no to the demands of the ego.” Poverty of spirit is a bankrupting of self-will. And so that’s the thing. Is it going to be self-giving love, or is it going to be power-over and domination? You can’t do both. So if we can just keep cleansing our own hearts with the Beatitudes, that’d be great.

And on that note, I would say some good resources: Jim Forest has a book called Ladder of the Beatitudes that’s magnificent. Ron Dart has a book called Beatitudes: Where Mountain Meets Valley. There’s a good book by a Quaker named Matthew Legge, called, Are We Done Fighting? It’s a pushback against the whole power-over thing in that temptation. So, I’m a Beatitudes guy. I’ve tried to pray it daily for now fifteen years. I feel like it’s a way to guard your heart, not only from the ways of the Empire, but also the ways of pushing back at the empire through self-will that just end up… you’re hooked anyway. That’s kenosis, right? Self-emptying. But self-emptying what? Well, that urge to grab the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil instead come to the Tree of Life.

Marc Schelske 35:08
As I was writing this, we had a text exchange fairly early in the manuscript process of this book, where I was trying to get my head around how to make the contrast clear. If the direction we’re going is the other-centered, co-suffering path of Jesus, what is the thing that we tend toward instead? The language that came out of that text interaction was “self-centered, ego-defending ambition. This is the natural human state. I make decisions based on how they serve me. I do all kinds of different things to defend my ego–my sense of self. I want to feel strong. I want to feel right. I want to feel secure. I want to feel loved. And so I do all of these things to defend my ego. Ambition is that I want everything to be getting better and growing. I want to make a big change. All of that stuff is very natural to us as humans. And so in the contrast to that… maybe, I don’t know if it’s too arrogant to say, maybe that’s a little bit of what Paul was getting at when he would use the word “the flesh.”

In contrast to that, the way of Jesus is other-centered. I will consider how my actions and words in the world impact others. I’m even going to consider that there are others, right? Other people exist; the world is not solely here for me. Then, I’m going to think about how my words and actions and the things I participate in impact them. Then there’s co-suffering–which doesn’t necessarily mean that every one of these decisions will be actual suffering. It means burden-bearing. I’m coming along beside you. If this decision or circumstance is putting a load on you, I will come alongside to help bear that burden with you. Maybe that’s a way of understanding what the church ought to be up to in this moment We ought to be a community of bearing one another’s burdens, not just our burdens in the community, but the burdens of those around us that are being hard pressed in the culture that we find ourselves in.

My friend, Tara, has jumped in with a question: “This is all great and feels right on a normal Tuesday, but that ain’t now. So what is our role on the other centered, co-suffering path for us when wrongs are being perpetrated. What do we do?”

There’s a way that we as Christians–particularly those of us who are majority culture Christians, middle class. We have our difficulties. We have our struggles. But we haven’t sat in the place of war. We haven’t sat in the place of persecution–There’s a way of holding Christianity that is still very self-centered. And I think the journey of other-centered, co-suffering love is always going to do what the title of this book says. That is why I picked this weird phrase as the title. It is always going to take us toward the Other. So, to Tara’s question, what do we do right now?

I think that some of the immediate pastoral things I can say are we don’t isolate. We don’t turn inward. We look for ways to move toward the Other. And it might be that there are people in your circle that are being directly injured. Someone that comes up, as I think about that, is that some of us have friends, family, folks in our circle that are queer or trans. Those folks, with the shift that has happened in terms of policy in our country in the last month, are honestly feeling existential fear. Regardless of what you think about the issue, they are feeling existential fear. So what would it look like to move toward those people in your life, to hear them, to be present to them, to walk with them? Maybe it’s in a practical way, like they’re saying, “I need to run an errand in this part of town, and I’m afraid to go there,” and you say, “Okay, let me go with you.” Or, maybe you create space for them to say what they need to say, where they can be heard. You could apply that same template to whoever must bear the burden that our society is generating right now. Don’t isolate. Don’t move inward to only safe spaces. Move toward the Other and invite Jesus to guide you in who those others are and how you would do that.

Tara’s follow-up question is, “But do we speak truth to power? Do we fight the wrongs being perpetrated? What do we do?” Alright, so which of you is ready to jump in on that?

Brian Zahnd 39:48
I don’t know what you do, necessarily. I do know that the practical expression of the kingdom of God is what the church is. Because of its practical nature, it’s imperfect, but it is also visible, tangible, and real. I think we get in trouble when we think it is our task to change the world. When the church tries to change the world, the church becomes the world. Because with that very language, we tend to reach for the political, coercive means of power. We can call it Caesar’s sword. We can call it the Ring of Power if you want to go all Lord of the Rings. Our task is more modest. Our task is not to change the world. Our task is to be that part of the world already transformed by Christ.

So what do we do? We work on creating that radical alternative society where love flourishes, where it’s “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed those who mourn for they shall be comforted. The meek shall inherit the earth, etc.” We focus on creating those communities. Jesus calls them the ecclesia, the church, the called-out ones, the ones called out of their own little private life into some public expression, but it’s the public expression called the church, and that is practical. If you want to go beyond that, that’s fine, but that’s beyond my scope as a pastor. I speak as a pastor-theologian, and I limit it to that because I don’t have much more to say. I’m not a political activist. I’m not saying there isn’t a place for that. I’m just saying I’m not the guy to talk to about that because that’s not what I do.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 41:25
It’s a great question: “Do we speak truth to power?” Well, what do we mean by that? First of all, I learned from Brian to ask, “Who is we?” But when I do, what do I think that is? Like writing Instagram memes? That’s not actually speaking truth to power. It’s performative usually, and it’s cathartic. That’s why I do it a little bit–a little bit. But it has such little impact. I’ve marched with one million people against the second war in Iraq, and it did nothing. I vote in elections, and I will keep doing that, but I’m aware that’s like buying a lottery ticket.

But the person in front of me today who’s suffering, the trans person that I know in my family who’s afraid, my black friend, who has to check every doorway he enters to see if it’s a safe place–I can say “I’m with you, no matter what.” That has a massive impact. That seems to be a more fruitful way to be Christian in the world. Yeah, sure, sign a petition. I will. But I also am aware of the relative power. For example, I wrote a letter to the passport office today for an ex-convict who needed an advocate. Okay, that could have a big impact on him, his wife, and his children. So I measure my time out in those kind of ways and my energy. Because when I see the fruit of that, I’m energized. When I see the fruitlessness of the other and my frustrations around it… But what about big things like Gaza? Well, give $20 to Mercy Aiken. She’ll get food to people. That’s actually going to do something. The cruciform way is a narrow way that takes one step at a time in co-suffering love with those you can actually walk with and accompany.

Marc Schelske 43:15
Let me take a stab at maybe weaving these two together. Brian encourages us to gather in the local expression of the community of followers of Jesus who are living this new kingdom life. Bradley says the practical hands-on service and care and advocacy that we do in a one-on-one way is where we can really make a difference. Okay, so maybe the way to weave these together is this: What if the church is a place where we come together to talk about this very thing, so that we each have courage and spiritual imagination for engaging in that one-on-one advocacy and care? What if church is a place where we come together and do a little bit of that Acts 2 pooling of our resources? Maybe those resources are our best ideas, the links to articles that we have, or some money?

In my own church situation recently, some people were able to come together and help a person who desperately needed a vehicle to get to work get a vehicle. That was Acts 2. Somebody else brings the little immigration Red Cards that say what exactly you should say to immigration official when they are acting beyond their constitutional authority and to say nothing else. Those little cards can be easily distributed to people. That’s sharing resources. The fact that that we could come together in community and share our questions and our fears, and someone else could say, “Yes. What about this? I can walk with you in that. Or have you tried this?” That’s Acts 2. Then maybe the gathering in the local community embodies Jesus’ desire for us to walk the other-centered, co-suffering path. Then we can do more of that individual, one-on-one care, love, and advocacy because we are empowered and encouraged, and our spiritual imagination has sparked because we are part of a community that’s committed to that.

Dr. Bradley Jersak 45:10
Josh had a contrarian question, which I don’t think is really contrarian. “How do you think about or act on this kind of love when when the Other we’re talking about is a fundamentalist or MAGA right winger?” A couple of thoughts on that. One is that we’re dealing with two different things when it’s people versus ideologies. And so, if we provide a gospel that is far more beautiful and embracing than the ideologies at work, I think there’s a market for that, and those who are hungry for it will come first.

Meanwhile, I’ve found it easier to deal with the left/right spectrum. I can kind of transcend that and build bridges. But when you’re moving between dealing with authoritarian things that appear to you like a cult or something, remember that this is a spectrum too. There are those who just honestly believed we needed a bit of a course correction, and there are others who would like to drive people of other color out of the nation. That’s a big, big spectrum.

So if we can ask questions that invite, that act like seeds–and I would pray about that. “Lord, would you give me questions that act like seeds?” I don’t know when the sprouts will poke through the hard ground. I don’t know, but I think we can waste a lot of time arguing with people when there’s already a market for those who are so sick of the conflict that they’re ready to talk about Jesus. If we can maintain a few friendships, and just say, “We see it so differently, I’m going to do my best not to alienate you, if you want that.” We’ll play this the patient route, but in the meantime, there are those who are who are really hungry for the Jesus way now, and that does transcend left and right.

Marc Schelske 47:00
That’s why this book! That’s why we’re having this conversation tonight. That’s why I wanted, quite frankly… It’s kind of weird to have a conversation like this for a book launch. A book launch party is supposed to be celebrating the book, making it lots of fun. And here, instead of that, I opened up this difficult conversation, which doesn’t feel very much like a party. But it this feels essential to me because of the moment that we’re in and because of the complexity and nuance of how to follow the other-centered, co-suffering way of Jesus, when the fact is that there are a lot of folks wearing the label Christian, many of whom are wearing it in good faith, who see these things differently, and that is creating some of this additional stress and pressure.

I want you to know that if you’re thinking these kinds of thoughts and you’re wanting to know how we as followers of Jesus can live in a path that is more generative in the world, you’re not alone in that. You may feel alone. You may be in a geographical region where you feel like everyone is thinking differently than you, but it’s not true. You are not alone. We can connect here. There are other people we can get connected to. Seek that out because as the intentional chaos that is designed to trigger our limbic systems and push us into fear unfolds, what we need is community. That is one of the things Jesus calls us into. So that’s my last word.

I want to thank Brian so much for being here tonight, especially with the time zone changes and all of the many, many busy things that you do. It means a lot that you’d be here. Bradley, my friend, thank you so much for being here. I hope that you have a big bottle of NyQuil at hand and you can immediately go knock yourself out. It’s a real gift that you would be here tonight, even when you feel so horrible. Everybody else: Thanks so much for being here, for being part of my extended community. Let’s maybe try this other-centered, co-suffering thing for a while and see if it makes a difference. All right?

Brian Zahnd 49:08
Amen.

CLOSING REFLECTION

Marc Schelske 49:12
As this conversation unfolded, I saw two distinct themes surface.

Brian Zahn, speaking as a pastor, suggested that the way forward at this moment was to double down on the life of this alternative community we call the church. He meant more, I think, than just to go to church every week. He invited us to make our churches more than clubs of like-minded folks, challenging us to have our churches actually be communities that pursue the other-centered, co-suffering way. Brian was suggesting that this alone–the witness of the presence of Jesus in functional, compassionate, loving communities–is our best response to a world absolutely enamored of power.

Bradley Jersak, speaking as a theologian who has some experience in communities of advocacy, suggested that our best investment is the kind of care and mutual support that can be offered to real people. In the context of real relationships, when we serve and give and advocate, when we stand with folks in the world around us–because of the gospel, not as an act of evangelism, but simply as our response to other-centered, co-suffering, love–this is when we will make the most difference in the world.

Now, neither Brian nor Bradley are suggesting we bury our heads in the sand. Neither is suggesting that we can entirely opt out of participating in the politics of our culture. Both remind us, though, that power is always gonna power. Capitalism is always going to seek maximum profits at the expense of people. Oligarchs are always going to seek to increase their control. Self-centered, ego-defending ambition will always be self-centered, ego-defending ambition until it’s transformed from the inside out. It always seeks whatever justifications it can find, even good Christian justifications. To assume different is to be naive about the nature of the human heart. However, Jesus’ life, teaching, death, and resurrection open up a new way of imagining the universe and break the chains of ego, death, and sin. So, even though we must live in the cultures we find ourselves in, we don’t have to accept the ways of the culture or buy into their promises.

The wisdom that I took from this conversation is that we need both sides of this coin. We need vibrant, healthy communities, communities not built on hierarchical power or self-protection or ego-driven, theological self-defensiveness. We need these communities of mutual care, the church, both to encourage us and to help us bear up under the pressure of the moment. We need a lab to practice other-centered, co-suffering love, which is what the church is when it’s at its best.

However, we also need the personal conviction that moves us into those one-on-one interactions of care and support. Empowered by the support of a healthy church, we can love and share, advocate, protest, and stand with those most burdened by the structure of society and those most at risk by the plans of the current regime. We need to follow Jesus toward each other. If that all seems a big ask, you’re right, but we live in a moment that I think is asking more of us than any I’ve seen in my lifetime.

This historical moment echoes that interaction between Frodo and Gandalf in Tolkien’s famous story. Frodo says, “I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened”. And Gandalf replies, “So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that has given us.” That’s where we are, friends. Who will we be? This moment is the time that’s been given to us. For me, the other-centered, co-suffering path is the only way through.

May you have the courage to walk the coming path of discomfort, trusting that the gentle way of love will accomplish the deep reconciliation our world needs.

Thanks for listening.

Notes for today’s episode and any links mentioned can be found at MarcAlanSchelske.com/TAW058.

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Until next time, remember:

In this one present moment, you are known. You are loved, and you are not alone.

Episode 057 – Empathy Isn’t a Sin; It’s Holy Dynamite (With Felicia Murrell)

Once again, influential Christian leaders are declaring empathy a sin. One influential Reformed theologian calls empathy “Counterfeit compassion” and names it “the greatest rhetorical tool of manipulation in the 21st century.” For people whose central ethic is to love the neighbor as we love ourselves, this seems an odd hill to die on. Why is this happening? Well, when you look behind the scenes, the answer is pretty obvious. Empathy has the power to blow up hierarchical power dynamics.

Show Notes

In this conversation, we explore empathy, its significance in spiritual growth, and why certain Christian leaders (from a very particular theological perspective) are warning Christians away from empathy.

Note: We had significant technical difficulties recording this, but the conversation was so good that I wanted to do my best to share it with you. The audio has been cleaned up as much as I can, and I have provided carefully edited captions on the video and a full transcription for you.

Takeaways

• Empathy is about staying present to pain without being overwhelmed and actively bearing witness to others’ emotional experiences.
• Empathy differs from sympathy in that it connects us as equals.
• Empathy is essential for healthy human relationships.
• The accusation of empathy as a sin comes from hierarchical systems because empathy naturally opens the door to seeing how systems of domination and control are exploitative.
• Personal healing is necessary for developing empathy so that we can face our selves truthfully, but empathy moves beyond personal feelings into tangible action that changes the work around us, including the systems we live within.
• Empathy is a key aspect of following the way of Jesus.

Mentioned Resources

• AND: The Restorative Power of Love in an Either/Or World (Felicia Murrell)
• Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience (Brené Brown)
• All About Love: New Visions (bell hooks)

• Scroll down for a full transcript of this episode.
• You can also watch and share the video version on Youtube.

More about My Conversation Partner

Felicia Murrell is a spiritual companion, speaker, certified master life coach, and former ordained pastor with over twenty years of church leadership experience. She’s an author and serves the publishing industry as a freelance copy editor. With a deep understanding of what it means to be human, Felicia is dedicated to empowering individuals to embrace who they already are and who Love is inviting them to be.

Find Felicia Here

• Website: https://feliciamurrell.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/felicia.murrell.9
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hellofelicia_murrell/
• Threads: https://www.threads.net/@hellofelicia_murrell

Today’s Sponsor

• Walking Otherward – My new book! Please pre-order it now. This is a 40-day devotional following the final weeks of Jesus’ life and inviting us to exchange our natural self-centered, ego-defending ambition for the other-centered, co-suffering way love Love.

Transcription

Marc Schelske 0:05
Hey friends, I’m Marc Alan Schelske, and this is The Apprenticeship Way, a podcast about spiritual growth following the way of Jesus. This is episode 57. Empathy is Not a Sin; It’s Holy Dynamite.

SPONSOR

Today’s podcast is made possible by Walking Otherward. This is my new book. It’s due out in a couple of weeks. It’s landing on February 18. That means I’m up to my ears in Book Launch season. Look, I’m gonna keep this short. I want you to pre-order my book right now. Is this the right book for you? Well, here’s my pitch.

You already know it’s possible to be a Christian and not be very much like Jesus. Whether through your own study or your spiritual intuition, you sense that following the way of Jesus ought to be transformational for you and for your world. The urgent drive of our time to always be moving upward and forward has taken its toll on you. You suspect an inward focus is necessary for personal healing and growth but wonder if that makes any real difference for others in the world around you. And you definitely don’t want to go backward, whether to past ways of thinking that were destructive or back to a world that is more hierarchical, violent, and exploitative. Perhaps you feel homeless spiritually and wonder which way you should go. The Gospel narrative of Jesus’ life suggests a path rather than the climb upward, or retreating backward, or withdrawing inward. Jesus’ path invites us to walk otherward.

Walking Otherward is a 40-day devotional that follows Jesus in the final weeks leading to his crucifixion. Each reflection invites you to take on Jesus’ attitude, exchanging self-centered ego-defending ambition for other-centered, co-suffering love. So that’s the pitch. If it sounds like a good fit for you, then please pre-order the book today. It’s available in ebook and paperback in all the book places. You can find all the links to those places at www.WalkingOtherward.com.

INTRODUCTION

if you’re on social media and you pay attention to the religious discourse there, in the past couple of months, you may have seen a surge in posts and memes arguing over an odd controversy. The controversy? The accusation that many Christians–apparently deceived by the radical left or someone– are falling into the sin of empathy. Now, if that sounds strange to you, that probably means you are consuming an appropriate and healthy amount of social media. But what’s even more strange than this accusation is that it’s not new. In 2019, it first gained momentum when Joe Rigney, a prominent reformed pastor and theologian, wrote an article on the Desiring God website called, “The Enticing Sin of Empathy: How Satan Corrupts Through Compassion.”

He was making the point that empathy is really the emotional fusion between your emotions and someone else’s emotions, which will keep you from living in accordance with the truth. Even worse, Rigney posed that empathy was a tool for emotional manipulation. He wrote, “Rightly used, empathy is a power tool in the hands of the weak and suffering. By it, we can so weaponize victims that they (or those who hide behind them) are indulged to every turn, without regard for whether such indulgence is wise or prudent or good for them.” The topic came up again in 2021 when a well-known fundamentalist pastor, James White, wrote a scathing blog about the problem of empathy for Christians. These are his words. “So what is the problem with empathy today? We are, in fact, told to weep with those who weep, but that assumes those who weep have a reason for weeping that is in line with God’s revelation.” So I guess we’re gatekeeping grief?!

The topic resurfaced this year as Christians, in response to the elections and government policy discussions, have been debating the best way to relate to immigrants and the poor and trans people. So Joe Rigney comes back onto the scene, adding fuel to the fire with a brand new book that came out this year called The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits, where he claims that empathy is the greatest rhetorical tool of manipulation in the 21st century, and suggests that empathy is a satanic counterfeit to holy, Godly love.

Okay, I’ll be upfront here. I think this claim is not only absurd, I think it’s dangerous for the church and for society at large. I wanted to talk with somebody about it, and it seemed to me that a good conversation partner would be Felicia Murrell. Felicia is a former pastor, current spiritual director, author, and speaker. I wanted to talk with Felicia specifically because I recently read her book, AND: The Restorative Power of Love in an Either/Or World. This book is stunningly good. It weaves comfortably between memoir, essay, poetry, and prophetic challenge. The principle at the heart of the book is that the only thing that can carry us through the chaos of the moment we find ourselves in is love. So I asked Felicia to chat with me about this controversy; I started by asking her to define empathy and then to reflect on why it seems that this word is becoming a scare word for some folks,

Felicia Murrell 5:34
Empathy is staying present to pain, that of my own and that of others, without being overwhelmed by it. Empathy is actively bearing witness to the emotional experience of other people without taking it on. It’s not delving into despair or pity or anguish. It literally is what I would call mirroring. A question that I ask myself often is, “Can I reach back into my own memory bank and connect to something in my lived experience?” If that answer is no, because maybe I don’t have a similar experience, empathy listens and it believes the experience of other people, even when our experiences don’t match.

An example would be, say, someone is talking to me and they’re expressing about being lonely. Can I remember a time in my own life when I experienced this? Only not to center myself in the conversation and take over and start talking about when I was lonely and I can relate, but just to have that feeling, to know inside, to remember what it felt like to be lonely, and to allow that feeling to be a place of connection and understanding. Renee Brown offers us this really powerful question to consider. She says, “How can I touch within myself something that helps me identify and connect with what this person might be feeling?”

Marc Schelske 7:27
I like how you pointed out that we’re reaching into that resource of our own experience, not to generate relating words, like that common thing where you have this motivation to tell a similar story, right? “I know exactly what you’re feeling. This is what happened to me,” and now you’re off and running on three or five minutes of your own story, but instead to reach into the resource of your own experience as a way to get closer to knowing within yourself what that other person is experiencing and articulating to you.

Felicia Murrell 8:00
If it’s an experience that, you know, that you’ve not experienced, “I can’t relate to that,” then what I do is I take on a listening posture of believing this person’s experience and connecting to it as part of the universal body of humanity. What I’m reaching into is that shared humanity. That’s empathy.

Marc Schelske 8:27
That feels really essential to all human relationships. If I’m going to have a constructive relationship with anybody, it requires my capacity to think about the state that you’re in and why you’re in that state and to hone my ability to listen and all of that. So that feels like, you know… for partner partnerships, marriage, good parenting, leadership in organizations, it feels really essential, right? So if that’s such an essential core human function of healthy relationships, how do we get into this mess where it sounds scary to people?

The Anglican Archbishop in DC had an opportunity to preach a sermon in front of the new president and in the course of that sermon, actually made a call for empathy. That call was reacted to by a lot of people online as being inappropriate, which is crazy to me, given that empathy is such an essential part of human connectedness. Why is it a scare word for some people? What do you think about that?

Felicia Murrell 9:31
One thing that I want to get into that is so key with empathy is that we’re relating to people as equals in the partnership of our humanity, right? It’s not a savior kind of thing, where I’m reaching down to help the less-than or those who are pitied, or those who are inferior, or something like that. This is about how I relate to our shared humanity on an equal basis. That equity is important to establish with empathy.

When we think about people using empathy as kind of a “scare word,” first, I’m going to go to one of my own heroes, which is Brene Brown, and her book, Atlas of the Heart, which really goes into language around emotions. She says that, for some people, being a contrarian is seductive, and much of what we know about American Christianity is formed on ideas of protest. Right? Protestants.

Marc Schelske 9:34
Sure, right.

Felicia Murrell 9:35
So I think there’s some of that, but also, I think perhaps this idea of empathy feels scary because of our own fear. Our own fear of pain that mirrors someone else’s suffering hits too close to home. It hits too close to the things that we numb, the things that we repress, and if we have not sat in our own darkness, we will never be able to have empathy for someone else in theirs. And so I think perhaps this constant unconscious participation in comparison and competition has reduced empathy to a “scare word.” What I mean by that is in a caste system of Haves and Have-nots, when someone is higher or lower, we have this whole system of capitalism that works because we’re conditioned–really, from school age–where we don’t need to be the one on the bottom. And so perhaps then there’s a story that I’m unconsciously participating in, where to express care or to express empathy would require something of me that would force me to abnegate my position or my wins. I say “unconsciously” because not many people would admit aloud, not even to themselves, that this is something that they’re weighing or measuring. But whatever is unconscious owns us, right?

Marc Schelske 11:40
Right.

Felicia Murrell 11:41
So I think moving from that idea of contrarianism being productive to this idea of us not sitting with our own feelings and really running away from that just to have our wins, this leads us to “Us Versus Them.” When we have “Us Versus Them,” it creates Others. And anytime we have Others, that creates disconnection, and whatever there’s disconnection, there’s an unraveling of our shared humanity. So back again to the idea that if we’re not equal, then what are we? I see you as an opposition, or I see you as someone to pity or someone I can dominate or control, but definitely not someone I relate to, right? And so I think some of these interior places where love is beckoning to heal are reasons that keep us, you know, from being able to relate to someone empathically.

Marc Schelske 13:36
That’s really helpful to me. What I’m hearing as you’re talking about this is the intersection between two domains. So there’s this interior personal domain, right? And maybe empathy is challenging me to face things that I haven’t faced, that I haven’t healed from–you know, my own trauma story, or places in my life where I was treated unjustly, or perhaps places in my life where I exploited people, but don’t want to think about that, don’t want to carry the burden of that feeling. So anything that calls me to that opening of heart towards somebody else, that’s fearful for me individually, as a person. And the way out of that is going to be some kind of inner healing, maybe a spiritual process, maybe a therapeutic process, some way of coming honestly to face myself, right? So that’s one domain.

But what you explained suggests this isn’t a go-into-your-quiet-room-and-solve-this-problem kind of problem. There’s this system out there that we all live within. And what you said… I don’t think it’s even ever occurred to me before… was that maybe one of the reasons why empathy is scary is because empathy automatically challenges hierarchy.

Felicia Murrell 15:01
Yes, right.

Marc Schelske 15:02
So whatever hierarchy I’m in–whether that is a patriarchal marriage where I’m the man and I’m in charge, or whether I’m in an organization that’s very, very controlling from the top down, and I see what the organization is doing, and it kind of feels unjust or unfair to me, and I want to speak up, or whether we’re talking about a larger system like the country, or even, as you mentioned, an economic system like capitalism–empathy, because it’s connecting to that other human at a peer level, is inviting me to see them in a way that is outside of whatever hierarchy I’m a part of. And that’s then where it becomes dangerous, right? This would suggest that it’s not coincidental that all the people saying that empathy is a sin are within extremely hierarchical systems.

Felicia Murrell 15:01
Absolutely.

Marc Schelske 15:02
When they say it’s dangerous for you to feel empathy, the subtext behind that is, “Empathy might lead You to question the power system we’re in, and I don’t want you to do that. I have good biblical reason or or good whatever reason to not want you to do that. So we’re just, we’re not going to think about that.” Am I on track with that?

Felicia Murrell 16:14
Yea. You’re on track. Yeah, absolutely. As a matter of fact, Heather Richardson, who is a historian. I heard her go on a podcast where she gave this analogy. She said imagine ten people in the room. Eight of them just want to get by, but two people want to control everybody else. The way that they get that power is to get six people to turn against the two at the bottom. And they do that through stories. She calls it the Two-Six-Two rule. We have two people that want power, six people in the middle, and the two people at the top that want power. They get the six in the middle to turn against the two at the bottom through the stories that they tell. She said that the reason why this is so significant is because the stories we tell about who we are and the communities we are are the ways we understand power.

Personally, when I think about this, I lived so much of my life as a Catfish Christian. Coming from the south, the catfish in the river just suck up everything, whatever is there. They are bottom feeders, and they eat it all. And that was me as a Christian for a long time. I swallowed everything that came from the pulpit, and then I regurgitated it. And I did that without any critical analysis, without any self-examination. I just simply trusted with abandon and cult-like fanaticism. And now, I feel like I’m more apt to pause and I’m more apt to look for the thread of love. If I don’t hear the resonance of love and the story you’re telling, I’m much more likely to swim away from that, no matter how bright and shiny it is.

But we’re also talking about the system, right? And so, within the context of class, empire, capitalism, patriarchy. Another one of my heroes, bell hooks, talks about this system of domination as imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy. That’s how she names the system of domination. And so I think as Christians, you have to really travel back in the biblical narrative to the Garden of Eden for this discussion and to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And thus, this whole idea about sin. Now, for me, where I am in life, when I hear “sin,” I immediately think “missing the mark.” I think behavior or action, not identity, right? But I also know that I haven’t always thought that way.

Marc Schelske 20:00
Yes.

Felicia Murrell 20:01
For a long time, sin was not an indication of misalignment. It was a stain. It was something to be ashamed of, something to hide, something to cover with fig leaves, like a dirty word. And so I’m thinking about sin in terms of purity culture as being everything that we don’t want to be. It becomes something that we have to root out of our lives, root out of our bodies, root out of our hearts and our cultures. In a sense, sin has to be annihilated, has to be conquered. And so anyone that’s position in this kind of cult-like thinking, when they hear the word “sin,” they immediately think–like from the tree of the knowledge–“oh, this is evil. This is bad.” And so now I have this label, “the sin of empathy.” And if your leader, who holds this external authority and power over your agency, when that leader, that pastor, said it’s bad, then you just fall in line. You disavow your support. You root out whatever this is. You annihilate it. And I think when you have leaders with that much power, have people doing the thinking for you, deciding for you what’s good, what’s bad, those people can name anything as sin. So, the conjecture, on my part, is that when we start with a system that says that to have faith is to never to doubt, to never to question, you see how easy it is for the two powerful people at the top to convince the six people in the middle to hand over their belief or worship and fall into fanaticism. So you can kind of see how someone in that position can throw this phrase out, and then it takes a life of its own.

Marc Schelske 21:53
That’s so clarifying. In that illustration of the 10 people, what tool exists to help the six in the middle see through the machinations of the two? Well, it’s your essential humanity. Those six in the middle look at the two that have been put in the under position and say, “Wait a minute. That seems odd. They’re not really that different from us. We need to make a change.” Then the empathy that connects human to human, that peer connection, is actually the dynamite that blows up that system. We can see that in any of those categories that you mentioned that you brought from bell hooks, right?

If we’re talking about patriarchy, anyone who feels empathy for the burden that a woman is forced to carry in society, that empathy is the open doorway to begin questioning patriarchy. What about White supremacy? Many folks who are of my complexion don’t consider themselves white supremacists because they’ve been programmed that that phrase means a certain kind of violent, hood-wearing, hatred-spitting person, and that’s not them. Authentically, it’s not them. But they haven’t been able to see how–or perhaps the fear around identity is so strong they’re not willing to see how–they have had certain advantages (even in the context of many disadvantages that they might have because of class or other things) they’ve had certain advantages that other people that aren’t white don’t have, and empathy is the key, right?

For instance, I’ve never had the experience of getting pulled over “While White,” right? Like every time I’ve been pulled over in my life, there’s been a good reason for it, and not only that, but I haven’t authentically felt fear for my life in those moments. And so that moment when I have a conversation with somebody who has had the experience of being pulled over for “Driving While Black,” and sat in the car with their hands on the steering wheel, terrified, wondering, “Is this going to go wrong?” I hear that story, and the empathy in me says traffic stops shouldn’t feel life-threatening. What the hell is going on?! And so now, that empathy is the key opening the doorway to questioning that white supremacist system, or the system of how we use policing or whatever. And there are people “in the room” that don’t want me questioning those things.

Felicia Murrell 24:22
Right. So my first question is, “Was there ever a time when I have been absolutely afraid for my life? Where I felt that energy surge through my body, and I was scared of going to lose my life if I moved wrong or I said something wrong? If there is I immediately have a sense of connection, right? And if I stand myself to remember, “Have I had this moment?” and I come up with the answer, “No,” I can touch my heart, express gratitude to myself that that’s not my experience, and at the same time express a deep sense of remorse and care that someone else did have to have that experience.

Marc Schelske 25:00
Yeah, right.

Felicia Murrell 25:01
Because part of our shared community is that we hold both triumphs and tragedies. We hold both joy and suffering. And I think the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil wants this to split the poles and divide them into binaries with a chasm in between. Empathy is the thread that we use together, right? We’re holding this together in wholeness, in the circle of life. Most people have done exactly what you were saying in the intro. They try to make empathy about walking in someone else’s shoes, taking on someone else’s feelings, feeling their pain. I just need to remember that we’re both human.

Marc Schelske 26:00
Yes, right, right.

Felicia Murrell 26:01
So, can I connect to a shared humanity? Can I remember what it was like not to have to be worried about, to experience betrayal, to lose a parent, or to have grief about something, and what does that feel like in my body? What was the visceral feeling of that thing? And then from there, I remember, and I can hold space. I don’t have to correct the feeling. I’m not trying to judge it. I’m not trying to analyze it. I’m not trying to fix it. I’m there to bear witness and to be with because, “ohhhh, there by the grace of God go I.”

Marc Schelske 26:43
Something just occurred to me while you were saying that. I want to see what you think about this. At the beginning of our conversation, when you were defining empathy, you talked about it being this mirror function where I’m relying on my own experience as a way to connect with this other person. All right, so if I’m in a system that is telling me that I can’t feel empathy for someone else who is being injured or treated unfairly, and it’s for “good reasons,” right? I shouldn’t feel empathy for them because we’re asking them to do the right, Godly thing, and they’re not doing it, and they should feel sad about that. So, you know, don’t feel empathy for them, right? If I’m in that kind of system and I’ve bought into that, because of this mirror function what also is happening is I’m being trained to ignore my own feelings of injustice perpetrated against me. Do you feel like that’s the right connection?

Felicia Murrell 27:36
Oh, absolutely. And any… particularly women inside of evangelical Christianity, have been trained to ignore. You’ve been trained to be a martyr. You serve your family. You serve your church. You deny what you’re doing to the to the death of you.

Marc Schelske 27:54
Okay, so the premise of this podcast is thinking about how we practice the way of Jesus. So, let’s bring the conversation of empathy into that domain. How does this picture of empathy you’ve talked about–this mirror connection between peers, depending on the resource of your own experience to understand the internal experience of another person, allowing that then to shape the way you relate to them–How do you see that fitting into the calling of what it means to follow Jesus and live that out in the world that we find ourselves in?

Felicia Murrell 28:27
So I think, for me, when I think about the way of Jesus, and I think about empathy, empathy is about emotional attunement. It’s about being moved, right? Understanding either what I’m feeling, what I’m experiencing, or what someone is experiencing, and I’m reflecting back that understanding. I’m not rescuing. I’m not fixing all those things.

And when I think about the way of Jesus, perhaps the most intentional thing that comes to mind is the story of the Good Samaritan. Think of this story from the perspective of what was most helpful to the person who was injured in a moment when they couldn’t necessarily articulate what they needed. So I want you to think about that. Also, think about who chose to pass this injured party by? Why did Jesus include those two examples of who was too busy to care, who was too busy to demonstrate love in action? So a good Samaritan stops… or a Samaritan. We don’t have to say, “good,” but a Samaritan stops. And this person is thinking, “What might I need in this moment?” I can take a beat. I can pause. If I were injured, I would need some rest. Okay, rest is important, so let me go pay the innkeeper the money so the injured party has somewhere to rest and recover. And, oh, they might need some food, and there might be some other things that I haven’t even processed or considered. So let me leave a little extra money with the innkeeper for whatever needs might arise that I haven’t considered. So what can I give in this moment to this injured party? I can give this person the means to recover and get well. By helping to provide a place for them to stay, I can give them aid to help them return to work. That is what empathy does, right?

Empathy is a skill. Compassion is the daily practice, but empathy is the skill. And I don’t think we get to empathy without holding that place within ourselves with Spirit, where we learn to develop the spaciousness to think about what I myself might need. What do I need in the moment when I get triggered, when I get anxious? What do I need for my own well-being? And when I can learn what I need for my own well-being, then I’m able to get out of that overflow, moving from how I tend to myself to someone else. So I think in that regard, this is the way of Jesus. This is mutuality. It’s reciprocity. It’s self-giving, Kenotic love–all these big words that really just explain relational understanding and action, right? How do I take action to demonstrate love and care toward myself? How do I demonstrate love and care toward my neighbor? How do I demonstrate love and care in the world around me? That’s the way of Jesus.

Marc Schelske 32:08
Yeah, yeah. I think that’s right. One of the lines that I underlined, I think, is appropriate right here. You wrote, “This is my Holy Sacrament: to fully and consciously participate with self-emptying love in this present moment.” And I think the connection there is that full participation is that the connection to empathy, right? If I’m engaging with a person who’s right in front of me, for me to fully be present in that moment, I’m reaching into that resource of my experiences to connect with them. If this is self-emptying love, I’m giving of myself. That might be the time to stop and listen. It might be the effort to be involved in a difficult, emotional conversation. It might be resources. It might be all kinds of things. The cost is that I didn’t have to be in this moment with this person. I’m opening myself up to be present to what is happening for that person and to what this moment is going to ask of me. That sounds an awful lot like, you know, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Felicia Murrell 33:12
Yeah. I wrote in AND, “Empathy transcends the imagining of a life we never have to live, making the connection that allows our hearts to break open to the painful, fearful, or even joyous experiences of others. Intimate, empathetic knowing allows for sympathetic resonance, a melding forged in the weaving of stories and lives together until there is only THE story, which is the restoration of all things, as all embrace Divine unity and the encounter of love. Love is infinite, and in the bounty of love, we are held, and we are known.”

And I think when we come to know that knowing ourselves, when we can hear the sound of the genuine within, we have that space to tend to ourselves. Then what happens is that becomes the practice of how we tend to the world. I don’t think the two are separate. I think that word AND is very important. But I also think, as you were saying, I think it’s intentional that all of this is squashed within systems so that you don’t have the space to hear yourself or even really know yourself, right? And I think as we accept love’s invitation to come closer, to tend to these wounds, to know ourselves, to have Spirit heal those wounded places within us, you turn around, and with clear eyes, you see this invitation to participate with love in the world. That goes back to bell hooks. She was very clear that the only thing that could heal the systems of domination was a love ethi. She firmly believed that. She championed love as the remedy to the world’s social problems, and I agree with her.

REFLECTION

Marc Schelske 35:29
This conversation with Felicia really was a moment of dot-connecting for me. Certain people want you to be suspicious of empathy because empathy is the key that opens the chains of hierarchical control. The moment you think about and relate to the lived experience of the person on the other end of oppression is the moment you start to question the rightness of that oppression.

I guess that’s why the accusation of empathy as a sin always seems so strange to me. Of course, God wants you to feel empathy. How did Jesus open up his ministry? Luke, chapter four: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed Me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Following a mission like that evokes empathy. It requires empathy. Empathy for the blind, the poor, the captive, empathy for everyone who isn’t experiencing a year of the Lord’s favor but instead is experiencing the weight of another year of confusion or marginalization or exploitation or suffering. Empathy calls us to act. And if God gave us empathy, then God designed empathy to move us to act in ways that bring about God’s purpose of restoration and reconciliation.

So, I guess empathy really is dangerous. If you’re trying to control people, if you’re hoping to manipulate them, if you want to exploit and control others, then empathy must be fought against because empathy is the God-given dynamite that can blow up your carefully crafted system of domination. So, no, I won’t be praying for freedom from the sin of empathy for me or anyone else. I will be praying for the Spirit of God to raise up empathy in the church so that we can be part of God’s good work of liberation now and salvation forever.

May you find the deep connection between your empathy and the Spirit of God’s call to stand with and for those God wants to lift up. Thanks for listening.

END COMMENTS

If this conversation has intrigued you, I recommend Felicia Murrell’s fantastic book, AND. The full title: AND: The Restorative Power of Love in an Either/Or World. I very rarely reread books, and I’ve already reread this one twice in one year. It’s just so good. You can find it in all the book places. You can also learn more about Felicia and what she’s up to at her website, www.FeliciaMurrell.com.

Notes for today’s episode, the full transcript, and any links that are relevant will be found at www.Marc AlanSchelske.com/TAW057.

Did You like this? Well, there’s more. Subscribe to Apprenticeship Notes, my email newsletter. It’s monthly, ish, honestly, eight to 10 times a year, depending on what I have to say and what else is going on in my life. It includes an exclusive essay you won’t find anywhere else, insider commentary on my podcast and blog posts, books I recommend, spiritual practices, and more. And when you subscribe, you get a free little book I wrote called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Practice for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World. In this little book, I teach a spiritual practice that has been so helpful to me as I face the anxiety and uncertainty of our time. So, subscribe. Get my email newsletter. Get that book. Sign up for at www.MarcOptIn.com.

Until next time, remember: In this one present moment, you are loved, you are known, and you are not alone.

Episode 056 – When the Marginalized Are Our Prophets (With Jenai Auman)

The person who truly understands “what’s going on” in any room is often not the one in charge. Instead, it’s usually those on the margins—individuals whose lives and survival depend on recognizing the hidden structures of power—who see things most clearly. In her new book, Jenai Auman shares her experiences as a Filipina-American woman in the Evangelical church in the American South and challenges us to adopt a more inclusive way of being.

Show Notes

• Othered: Finding Belonging with the God Who Pursues the Hurt, Harmed & Marginalized
• The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse, Johnson, et. al.
• Lisa Oakley, UK Spiritual Abuse Researcher

• Scroll down for a full transcript of this episode.
• You can also watch and share the video version on Youtube.

More about My Conversation Partner

Jenai Auman is a Filipina-American writer, artist, & storyteller living in Houston, TX with her husband and two boys. Drawing on her years of church ministry experience, education, and trauma-related training, she writes on healing, hope, and the way forward for those who have experienced spiritual abuse and religious trauma. Her work has been featured on Christianity Today’s Better Samaritan Blog, She Reads Truth, and The Fallow House. Her people are those who feel “othered” and unwelcome in traditional Christian spaces. As a trauma recovery-focused spiritual director/companion, she also serves as a story-holder & space-maker.

• Find Jenai at https://www.jenaiauman.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jenaiauman
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jenaiauman

Today’s Sponsor

• Not Just One More Thing: Spiritual Growth for Busy People – a ten-week on-demand course to help you move into a practical spirituality that fits into your busy life.

Transcription

Marc Schelske 0:00
Hey friends, I’m Marc Alan Schelske, and this is The Apprenticeship Way, a podcast about spiritual growth following the way of Jesus. This is episode 56: When the Marginalized Are Our Prophets.

THIS WEEK’S SPONSOR
Today’s podcast is made possible by Not Just One More Thing: Spiritual Growth for Busy People. Is it possible to grow spiritually in the midst of a busy life? You’re a follower of Jesus, but you’re starting to wonder if you’re really following? That’s not a question about belief; it’s a question about trajectory. Are you really going somewhere? And not just to heaven someday, maybe, whatever that means, but now.

You want to grow and mature spiritually, and that’s why you listen to this podcast. But your life is full, and it’s fast-paced. You want to slow down, but you’re not sure how. Life is busy and full of obligations and demands time and energy. And you can’t opt out of most of that stuff.

When you think about spiritual maturity, you think of maybe retired people who have hours to sit around reading their Bibles or volunteering at church and praying, or maybe monks who live in a quiet cloister where they can think big thoughts about God all day long, but that’s not your life. Do you wonder if it’s even possible to grow spiritually in the midst of the busy life you have? Well, it is.

Being spiritual when you’re on vacation or when you have a lot of free time on your hands is easy. That’s when you have all the time in the world for reading and reflecting and journaling, engaging in deep conversations, and worshiping. Anyone can do that. But keeping your spiritual head above water when life is busy is the real test.

Not Just One More Thing: Spiritual Growth for Busy People is an on-demand video course that I wrote after I saw that I kept answering the same kinds of questions when I was talking to folks as a pastor. So it’s a 10-week course that will help you take small practical steps to integrate your spiritual life into your regular life. Because the last thing you need is a bunch of homework.

So I wrote this course to fit into a busy life. It’s one short video each week, less than 10 minutes long, and then five simple, doable experiments that you can fit into your real life for that week. Some are activities to try, some are questions to journal on, some are links to other short readings that can help, and you can work through all of this in 10 to 20 minutes a day if you follow along for five days a week. And it’s just 10 bucks. I invite you to invest this time, a few minutes a day, five days a week, for 10 weeks. Stick with this. and you will have the tools that will help you experience a more intentional, connected sense of God’s presence, even in the middle of a very busy life. To see more about what’s included or register at www.Live210.com/busy.

INTRODUCTION

In any room, who’s the person most likely to understand what’s really going on? Who sees the hidden relational dynamics, the power issues, and the emotional triggers first? Is it the person in charge? The one who’s used to getting what they need? Or is it possible that it’s the person whose life depends on seeing these things?

You’ve probably heard me talk about the developing direction of my theology, which I summarize by calling it the way of other-centered co-suffering love. One aspect of this perspective is that it challenges me to listen carefully to the experiences of people who are not like me. Most of my mentors, teachers, pastors, and theologians I was encouraged to read look a lot like I do in one dimension or another. White, male, middle class, many of them American or at least English speaking.

And I’ve come to understand that my experience and what I’ve learned from these voices is not the only experience; it’s not the canonical experience. I’ve lived and I’ve worked inside organizations largely structured for people like me, assuming that our view was the right way. But this created an enormous blind spot where we disregarded people with different experiences, especially when they contradicted or challenged what was comfortable for us.

A book I read recently that helped me in thinking about all of this is called Othered: Finding Belonging with a God Who Pursues the Hurt, Harmed, and Marginalized. Janai Auman is a Filipina-American raised in the American South. She initially found welcome in the Evangelical Church. Her passion led her into leadership, but as she was drawn deeper into the ministry machine, she experienced how her value to the community was really based on conformity.

And so when she asked for respect as a biracial Filipino woman when she pointed out issues in the system that were a problem, not just for her, but for others, the response was harsh. She violated the expectation that she would be a quiet worker supporting the male leaders. She was asking folks to stretch in ways that were new and uncomfortable for them. She was challenging a controlling hierarchy that others in the community took for granted.

Ultimately, that system and those in charge had no room for her, and she was forced out. This painful experience and the long recovery work she went through, as a result, led her to focus on how the Church can be more welcoming and can avoid doing harm, partly by listening to those in the margins. There’s this dynamic in Jenai’s story that I’ve seen in many corners of the Church. Here’s a way to think about it.

When a person, especially a child, has to fight for their basic needs, they learn intuitively what they must in order to survive. They become experts in reading the culture of their family or their community. The same dynamic functions in larger groups, communities, churches, and even whole cultures.

Folks in the margins often see things about the majority culture that insiders cannot see as quickly or as easily. You see, for their own survival, folks in the margins have to become PhD students of the majority culture. In this book Othered, Jenai wrote, “When we ask our congregations to read their Bibles and the stories of our spiritual ancestors, it should come as no surprise that many students of scripture become well versed in distinguishing Christlikeness

from the corrupt forms of faith that are often labeled good and right today. And when these students see the schism between the character of Jesus and the character of the church, when they ask questions and speak to the disparity, they become prophets. They are those who have the boldness to say, this is not the way of Jesus.” So I asked Jenai to talk about the ways she sees people on the margins — those who’ve been hurt, women, people of color, LGBTQ people — speaking as prophets to the majority church.

THE INTERVIEW

Jenai Auman (06:51)
Hmm. Yeah. I think prophets are ultimately those who speak the truth of the Word of God and those who point to the corruption happening within God’s people. That’s what we see in the OT prophets and how they were reminding people of the goodness of God and why the things that are the way they are today don’t have to be that way. We’re actually called to something more. And I do think that people on the margins can have that kind of insight.

So, by that, I mean folks who are marginalized in our cultures for any reason. People can be marginalized not only for racial status or ethnicity or the language they speak. They can also be marginalized for not having the right amount of education, quote-unquote, the right amount. They can also be marginalized for having the wrong address, for growing up on the wrong side of the tracks, for being a low-income family, and for not wearing certain things. Think of middle school, you know, like the tables at middle school and how cliques and little things form.

Marc Schelske (07:36)
Mm. Right, right.

Jenai Auman (07:55)
Folks can be marginalized for any reason, and I think that there is wisdom for those who have lived in the margins for a long time, in that they can look from the outside in. They can actually see how a machine is made. So, for instance, I’m familiar with hurricanes in Houston. That’s kind of our MO. If you’ve ever seen a forecast for folks going through a hurricane, there’s the guy at the weather desk who’s giving you facts and information on the hurricane. He’s, you know, however many miles away from the hurricane and safety in a building telling you, “This is the wind speed. This is how fast it’s moving. This is where the eye is.” And then sometimes they throw it to the man or the woman in the field, and they’re, you know what I mean? They are in the middle of the storm, trying to…

Marc Schelske (08:40)
Right. Yeah, Right. Their situation looks a lot different than the dude with the data.

Jenai Auman (08:47)
Yeah, yeah, but the guy who is at a distance, kind of from the outside looking in, can actually name the machine or the mechanisms of the hurricane, the facts and figures. It’s an imperfect metaphor. In a similar way, when you are distant from the machine that’s wreaking havoc on a culture, and that havoc becomes normalized, those who are unable to conform to the machine, to the mold that the machine creates, are able to say, “this is actually what’s fracturing people.” And they say that from a place that says, “This is how it’s fractured me.” As they heal from those fractures, they can see, “It’s actually not only fracturing me, it requires the fracturing of every other person,” but that fracturing has become so normalized and people have been more easily assimilated, other than marginalized folks, people who are disabled, and who don’t fit those molds, have a hard time assimilating and conforming to the mold. And so these folks are better able to see the havoc of what quote-unquote normal behavior in a church does to a community.

Marc Schelske (09:57)
Right. it’s sort of the deal where I wear a certain pair of shoes, for instance, that I really love, and they’re really comfortable for me. And I declare their wonderfulness and recommend them to friends. And then you go buy a pair of those shoes. And because your feet are a different shape than mine, there’s a place in the shoes that rubs on your feet uncomfortably. And every time you walk in them, you’re feeling that pain. I don’t know that pain exists because the shoe fits my foot. And if I’ve been part of helping create the shape of the shoe, or creating the shape of the system that I’m part of, of course, it’s going to fit me because I’ve already done the work to get rid of the rough edges because that’s what we do as humans. We want life to not have discomfort. And so, whether it’s through power or over the course of time through generational practice, we’ve shaped the shoe that we live in in a certain way. And when somebody else is in that, they’re like, “It only ever gives me a blister on this one spot. Can you do something about that?” And then I say to you, “It does not, it doesn’t give a blister. It’s been perfectly designed to not give a blister for me.”

Jenai Auman (11:00)
Yeah, it’s kind of the distinguishing factor between relative truth or experience versus absolute truth being defined by a very, very specific relative experience. And that’s so damaging when other people don’t fit into that sort of narrative.

Marc Schelske (11:14)
Right. In another spot in Othered, you wrote this sentence that caught my attention, and I think it would be good for you to talk about it a little bit. You said, “Marginalization is a form of taking God’s name in vain.” All right, so open up that package for me.

Jenai Auman (11:41)
It’s kind of rooted in the idea of how we’re made in the image of God. So, some folks might see marginalization as part of the gospel because their view of being made in the image of God only includes those who ascribe to their sort of belief, who are quote-unquote saved into a specific denomination. Whereas I believe that at the dawn of creation, God made all of humanity in his image and that every person walking the earth is made in the image of God, in that they can also fulfill the cultural mandate to be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, and bring goodness to the earth. So If every person is made in the image of god regardless of what they are able to earn or achieve or ascribe to or intellectually ascend to, if every person is made in the image of God, and the systems of our society say some people are worth more than other people and therefore because these people are worth more, the other people have to go to the fringes, then you are actually devaluing the image of God in someone else who could actually bring goodness and cultivate goodness within your community. And you’re saying the nutrients that they bring to our soil are actually toxic, and it’s not actually inherited goodness.

And so I think marginalizing folks and then using God’s name to justify the marginalization, it’s almost like double jeopardy. This is really bad. Marginalization of any kind, ascribing some value to some people and then less value to other people, is just counter to what I see in the person and work of Jesus for sure. And not only that, even in the Old Testament, even in the Deuteronomic laws the instruction is to welcome the stranger, welcome the sojourner to your door. And so, even in the law itself, to welcome people who were on the margins, that was was the story from the beginning. So marginalizing other nations or other nationalities or other ethnicities has never been justifiable. I mean, people certainly found ways to justify it, but it was never, never God-sanctioned and Christ-ordained.

Marc Schelske (14:03)
Right, right. Of course. There’s a really awful betrayal going from “I don’t like you and don’t want you in my group” to “God has said you’re not worth being in my group.” That is such a power move. How are you getting to any kind of transformative understanding of the gospel or a loving picture of God with that starting point?

Jenai Auman (14:34)
It’s a power move and also a lack of ownership. I can’t tell you that I don’t like you, and I’m not ready to own the fact that I don’t like you, so I’m gonna draw on God’s name and scapegoat god…

Marc Schelske (14:44)
Right, right. I get to stay righteous. I get to stay a good person. I’m just doing what God wants.

Jenai Auman (14:47)
Yeah. I mean, it’s kind of like the thing I do when someone comes to the front door and is trying to solicit whatever they’re trying to sell. And I’m like, I need to talk to my husband about that. You know what I mean? But that’s the funny version. The very unfunny version is saying, “This is what God told me. And God told me that you’ve got to get the hell out of here.” You know, and it just scapegoats God and it enables the person who’s scapegoating to be absolved of personal responsibility. I don’t need to take ownership. I’m just saying this is what God told me to do, and I’m just following orders.

Marc Schelske (15:25)
Right, that opens up another topic in your book because if the person who’s doing what we just talked about, if that person is in leadership where they have stewardship of a community, where they’re part of the group, the committee or the pastors or whoever that get to decide things like, who do we hear from? Who do we see on stage? Who do we serve? Who do we welcome into community? If you’re part of that group, and you’re functioning in the way you’ve just described, where you’re gatekeeping access, that’s not just a rude preference. That’s where we begin to enter into the realm of what can be talked about in terms of spiritual abusiveness. So let’s talk about that.

You gave a definition of spiritual abuse that I thought was really helpful. Abuse is kind of vague and is used in a lot of ways in our culture. Anytime somebody feels like they didn’t get what they wanted or a situation felt uncomfortable, it’s easy to say that situation was abusive or toxic. And so you narrowed the beam, and you said, “My working definition of spiritual abuse is a misuse of power that leverages trust within a spiritual or faith-based context, thus dehumanizing and marginalizing those who bear the image of God.”

Jenai Auman (16:43)
I do draw on the definitions of the folks who wrote The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse and Lisa Oakley, a spiritual abuse researcher in the UK. And I thought how do I condense and distill this information to something that we can digest? I really wanted to empower people. I share bits and pieces of my story of working on a church staff. As many church staffers can attest to, once you start working behind the counter, you see how the sausage is made, and you realize there is a disparity between what we preach on Sunday and how we program what we preach on Sunday. And I hate, I hate that. I hate that programming is a whole thing for the church. It just sounds very mechanical and industrial, you know, and it takes something very garden-oriented. God uses a lot of garden-oriented language and metaphors, and we take the garden and make it a machine. I just feel icky.

Marc Schelske (17:26)
Yeah, sure.

Jenai Auman (17:38)
But seeing spiritual abuse within a staff context was–and I wouldn’t have called it spiritual abuse. because in spiritual abuse, so often you’re disempowered, and not only are you disempowered, but you’re conditioned not to ever have power. You’re constantly asking people for permission. Is this what happened? Is this what happened to me? I know how difficult it is to reach for those words and to say this is what defines my experience.

But on my church staff, I became a good soldier. Until I realized that the soldiering that they wanted me to do, the sort of workload they wanted me to keep up with, actually required my burnout. Our whole program and our whole church schematic was not restful. So no wonder we’re having these questions about how to rest when we don’t have it injected into the life and mission of our church. But the spiritual abuse that I experienced, I would say, had more to do with me being a female in that church. How to be a faithful woman in that church was to be a champion for my own subjugation.

Marc Schelske (18:26)
Yes.

Jenai Auman (18:48)
And women are pitted against one another. So there are some women who are more than happy to be a champion for their own subjugation. They are more than happy to do every single thing that the men in the church tell them to do. Because it’s really nice to have somebody tell you what to do, and you can execute it and you can kind of give yourself a pat on the back. And when I’m measured up against someone like that and I’m more vocal, I have more questions, I will ask you why I’m doing this. And also I did not have the privilege of making this decision. No woman in our church had the privilege of being a part of this decision-making. So please let me understand why you’re asking me to do this and also explain to me why you’re asking me to ask others to do this because if I’m trying to sell this to other people, I need you to tell me. I wanna believe in why this sort of volunteer workload is worth it. So those sorts of questions get you in trouble when you don’t fall in line and there are other people who are falling in line.

Marc Schelske (19:35)
Mm-hmm.

Jenai Auman (19:54)
Ultimately sticking up for myself over and over and over again, as you can imagine, they called me harsh and abrasive. I was harsh and abrasive for asking questions and for advocating for myself, and I wouldn’t quote-unquote learn my lesson, and it had me booted from the church And so I realized they had leveraged their trust and their relationship with me. And these folks that I knew for a very long time. You know that app on your phone that’s like on this day eight years ago, on this day 11 years ago, and you see like birthday photos and photos of folks holding your kids and stuff? Those are the people in my photos. We had a lot of life experiences and loving moments with one another before I went on staff. I was at the church for eleven years and it was only the last three years when I was on staff. So I had a lot of familial connection with them, a connection that I had chosen, I opted in. And so when they leveraged that trust, and they hoped for my silent complicity, I would not relent. And obviously, I wouldn’t give in because I wrote a whole book on it. So I would not go silently.

Marc Schelske (20:45)
Yeah. well, first off, it’s so frustrating to me that that happened, and it’s sad to me that it happened to you. It shouldn’t have happened that way. That’s not the way that I think a church following the way of Jesus would treat people.

You know, there’s this very bizarre mechanical process where those people who come in and experience love and belonging and transformation and demonstrate their passion. They become leaders, and the leadership demands are high, and it burns them out. They end up having to graduate from their church if they’re gonna be healthy because it’s not possible to do the kinds of things that maturing spiritual life requires in a world that’s all about fast-paced content production and community management. And it just sucks because that’s the model that is so popular right now.

Then on top of that, we have this abusive element that you’ve talked about, which what you described–if you were describing a corporate workplace, I think the same exact dynamic we would call toxic hierarchy or toxic patriarchy or even a particular toxic leadership community where a certain group of bros who all guard each other’s back and demand compliance. But then you put that in the church and now those people are doing the same thing, but they’re saying explicitly or implicitly, “This is God’s will,” right? Like it’s God’s will because we’re the ones who’ve been elevated to leadership. So God chose us, and it’s God’s will.

Jenai Auman (22:39)
Yeah.

Marc Schelske (22:46)
In complementarian theology, it’s God’s will and your design as a woman. And the accusation of being, you said, and abrasive, right? So if I were to say, okay, you’re accusing someone of being harsh and abrasive. What’s the thing you want them to be? Do you want them to be soft and compliant? Okay?!

Jenai Auman (22:56)
Yeah.

Marc Schelske (23:09)
What does that say about you and the system if that’s what you need people to be? I’m so sorry.

Jenai Auman (23:15)
Yeah, well, it was their way of making me the problem. In my advocacy of a better workplace, better systems, and even better work-life balance, I pointed out the problem. These are the problems within the system. This is the group dynamic that we’ve made normal. And I’m saying it shouldn’t be made normal because I wasn’t the first person in my position. They cycled through many people in my position, and they burned people out. And I kept thinking, “This is actually a doable job.” Like this is, I could see how, you know, boundaries and safeguards could be put in place so that this job becomes doable and you stop burning through people. Instead of looking at the problem and helping me address it, they made me the problem; they could pluck me out and then return to homeostasis. Unfortunately, that also wasn’t the case because I kept talking about it. And then I got on social media and started talking about it because they wouldn’t let me talk to members. So, members were following me on social media. So I kept talking about it. I never let them return to homeostasis. And I don’t feel guilty about that. I think Jesus came and he came to bring peace, and he came to be a compassionate presence in the world, and I think he also came to be a good troublemaker, and so I endeavor to be a good troublemaker when places of toxicity hurt people.

Marc Schelske (24:40)
When you talked about this situation, you identified the central marginalization as being a woman in this community that structurally and theologically saw women in a subservient role. They would say a complementarian role, you know, different gifts, but apparently, one of the gifts that they want to see manifested is being quiet and not upsetting our apple cart. I don’t know that that’s a spiritual gift. I don’t see that in there anywhere. Talk briefly about the dynamic for you as a woman in that environment. And maybe, how could women see more clearly what was going on in this community and what this community needed in ways that the leadership just couldn’t see?

Jenai Auman (25:21)
Yeah, well, some of the best foot soldiers for Toxic– it’s just patriarchy, all patriarchy. I believe is toxic and hierarchical and not good for any human being, but –The greatest foot soldier for patriarchy is the woman. So when you can get women on board, they will be the loudest cheerleaders for the whole movement. So, not all women could and were able to speak to it because they were too bought into the belonging that they had opted in for. And I think in this particular regard, not only was I a woman, I was the only person of color on our church staff. I was the only person who had an immigrant for a mother.

Marc Schelske (26:10)
That’s crazy in Texas.

Jenai Auman (26:08)
Yeah, so yeah, especially in Texas. I also grew up… are you familiar with Adverse Childhood Experiences? So, my ACEs score is eight. It’s a high ACEs score. So a lot of childhood trauma, domestic violence, all these sorts of things. And so I had a very particular view on what should be normal. And over time, I think my view of normal was just safety, you know? And I also had a very particular view on what is privileged.

Marc Schelske (26:37)
Sure, right.

Jenai Auman (26:41)
Entitlement gets conflated with privilege, and I saw a lot of entitlement in our church structure. People were entitled to x, y, and z, and I thought this was not okay. We had a retreat for some leaders, and they wanted a five-star retreat almost like luxurious accommodations, and the only thing we could afford was, you know, church camps in Texas, sort of not Five Star, not the Ritz-Carlton. And you realize then that when the number of arguments internally that are happening within these deacons and leaders and what’s expected of the leadership and the leadership is so worried that we’re not making these folks happy and how they kind of bend to the whims somehow. I realized this is a very, very expensive privilege that only a very affluent church can afford.

Marc Schelske (27:07)
Right.

Jenai Auman (27:32)
Not only were we focused on this, but we were also not focused on feeding or helping the unhoused, or we weren’t actively engaged in other actually merciful ministries. From my perspective, I thought this was a luxury. I never had a vacation as a kid. When I saw that the norms were something that my family could not conform to while growing up, I realized I have a very different perspective than a lot of these people. Now I know that a differing perspective is not bad. It’s actually holistic and good and helps build a more holistic church. At that time, I would just close my mouth and realize I was the outlier. And so I would keep quiet because there was no value to my perspective.

Marc Schelske (28:14)
Right, and at some point, it’s costly, and you have to decide if that cost is worth it. You talked about how there were women who either couldn’t see or wouldn’t speak out about the situation because of the cost to themselves, right? They have a certain amount of power, they have a certain amount of social respect in that community, and to speak out against it is gonna be “Harsh and abrasive,” right? That’s a struggle for any organization.

Even if we picture in our minds some ideal church that’s doing it right, you still have the dynamic that the folks planning are humans, and humans are discomfort averse. And we then tend to plan things that are comfortable for us, even well-intentioned people, right? Like I certainly have planned retreats and been one of the people who was like, “I’m old. I would really like a more comfortable bed. Can we make that happen?” You know? But then, having somebody else in the room who can say that will make the cost inaccessible to people. Is accessibility a value of what we want to accomplish here? And then if I’m in a good space, I’m like, “Of course. Sorry, I got distracted for a moment. You’re absolutely right. What can we do?” But in an environment with no voice to say, “Have you considered this implication of that thing that’s comfortable for you?” If I’ve just constructed a group of advisors who are all sort of in my lane, everyone will nod their head and say, “Yeah, of course, that’s what we all want.”

Jenai Auman (29:47)
Yes Men!

Marc Schelske (30:10)
And, when everyone in the room nods, it doesn’t feel like Yes Men affirming my decision. It feels like common sense, right? Well, common sense is that we all want this, and everybody would like it. And to have someone in that space, whether they’re speaking from sensory issues or gender issues or whatever, for them to say, you know, “I know you like smoke in the sanctuary because it makes the lights look pretty, but this is what it does to my autistic kid,” or “this is what it does to my, sensory overload issues. How might we accommodate that?” And then I’m like, it didn’t even ever occur to me that that would be a problem, you know?

Jenai Auman (30:13)
Yeah.

Marc Schelske (30:39)
So then the issue that lies at the heart isn’t the smoke or the comfortable bed. The issue is the power structure; we had a community of people making these decisions in a way that was closed to the input of the lived experience of people that aren’t like that group of leaders, So then that immediately suggests that we should have diverse groups of leaders on purpose so that we avoid that. Is that all tracking?

Jenai Auman (30:54)
Yes, I would say, like when it’s a hive mind, and everybody thinks the same thing is on board with the same thing, dissent is not allowed. The system itself hinges on marginalization. It does marginalize that you have no other dissenting voices.

Marc Schelske (31:14)
Right.

Jenai Auman (31:23)
My undergrad is in behavioral health, and I was writing and studying groupthink as a phenomenon in a group dynamics class. I was also encouraged to research different scenarios in the news that might have been groupthink. There were two scenarios that I studied. One was Enron, and Enron happened in Houston. And I also studied groupthink in terms of the abuse scandal at Penn State. And I realized, yeah, there were a lot of people who could have been dissenting voices to the system, but the system was organized such that dissension was punished. And so no one brought a dissenting opinion. No one was willing to call foul because it would cost them, too. Ultimately, it costs those institutions a lot and the victims so much. And so when you have a system that actively discourages dissent or differing opinions, it will inevitably hurt someone, if not immediately, then somewhere down the line, because the system hinges on marginalization. And marginalization is dehumanizing to someone. I remember studying that and thinking, my gosh, I am living the case study for what I should be writing on, you know, but I can’t write on my church staff for this class. It was so infuriating to be living it. It probably made me seem more harsh and abrasive because I was trying to say, “this is what I’m learning.”

Marc Schelske (32:46)
Right. Right. Right. And this is why women shouldn’t learn, Jenai! Don’t you see?

Jenai Auman (32:48)
I know. There’s that line in Pride and Prejudice that Lady Catherine de Bourgh says of Elizabeth Bennet if anyone’s familiar, “obstinate headstrong girl.” And I got a shirt that says “obstinate headstrong.” I should have worn it for the interview! It is like my favorite shirt to wear to places because I now see that in cases where harm and toxicity and marginalization and dehumanization are normal, I want to seem obstinate and headstrong in those spaces.

Marc Schelske (33:24)
Okay, so that’s funny, but also, it feels like a really important thing to sit on for a minute. I think an awful lot of us are, whether by temperament or perhaps coping mechanisms or residual untreated trauma–I think a lot of us are conflict-averse. And when you put a community together, there will always be differences of opinion. So then, if It feels like sharing my opinion will result in conflict. Then there’s a calculation that people often do intuitively without even thinking it through that expressing that will hurt too much. It’s going to be uncomfortable. It’s going to be awkward. That’s a word that gets used a lot these days. And awkward just means it’s the tip of the iceberg of discomfort that I don’t want to think about any deeper than that. “It was just awkward.”

Jenai Auman (34:05)
Mm-hmm.

Marc Schelske (34:15)
You’re wearing this T-shirt that says what it says, and the reality is that if you’re in a community where the culture is, “We don’t disagree. We’re nice people. We’re good people. We’re kind people,” right? Conflict isn’t a part of what a good church would be because we’re all filled with the fruits of the spirit, and we get along. Isn’t that wonderful? And then we all collude that we will behave that way because we, of course, prefer to be thought of as nice than obstinate, right?

The trouble for me is that people listen to my voice. Because I can walk into the room in any leadership conversation in my community and immediately have some level of respect, I then can say, “it’s important to be nice.”

Jenai Auman (34:56)
Yeah.

Marc Schelske (35:06)
But somebody else in my community who doesn’t have that positional or cultural ability, that power, that privilege, somebody else… let’s say the issue is an issue of gender, and a woman wants to say, “Hey, this is my experience,” if our culture is that we all get along and we’re all nice and there isn’t conflict, then the only way that woman is going to be able to be heard is to behave in a way that our community perceives as not nice. And so then we end up with tropes like The Angry Black Woman, where a person has a reasonable complaint to make, but then because we’re conflict-averse, we’re like, “I, yeah, that’s, ew, I don’t want to have this conversation.”

Jenai Auman (35:32)
Mm-hmm.

Marc Schelske (35:45)
Why did you make me feel discomfort just now? Stop being the kind of person who makes me feel discomfort, right?

Jenai Auman (35:52)
Yeah, yeah. I think delineating between discomfort and safety is very important, and I think many people don’t know how to distinguish between the two. You can be uncomfortable, but what you really are is unsafe. As a woman who runs on the streets and jogs, I have to take care of my safety, make sure that I’m walking a safe path, that there are other people, that there are ways that–you know, Apple Watch–somebody can track me. And then there is the act of running itself. I’m fairly healthy. It’s uncomfortable running, but it’s a good challenge. So running is uncomfortable. Sometimes, it is unsafe, but most of the time, I’m just doing good training work that helps me grow as a runner. I think there’s a difference between discomfort, which is a lack of safety, and discomfort, which is actually outgrowing the pot you’ve planted in. I don’t think people understand the difference between the two.

Marc Schelske (36:55)
Mmm. That’s a really great distinction. I think, especially speaking as and to folks with a level of privilege in their community, it’s easy for me to say, “This is an uncomfortable conversation,” but it’s not actually threatening my position or anything, right? Whereas someone coming to me in a community where dissent is not allowed, the very act of coming to me is dangerous because it might mean getting excluded or they don’t get the opportunity. So at that moment, there’s discomfort, but because I’m the person with the privileged voice, I’m defining it as just awkward discomfort. “Can’t we all get along? Can’t you be a team player?” That kind of stuff, where that person who is marginalized might actually be addressing something where there’s a real danger to them for their well-being. For me to define that as just an issue of communication, or as a temperament issue, you know, like when they said of you that you’re harsh and abrasive, that’s saying that the problem is entirely in how you are interfacing with a system.

Jenai Auman (37:54)
Yeah.

Marc Schelske (38:16)
And the system is fine. There’s nothing wrong with the system and the people in the system, which is me, right? The problem is framed as you being abrasive rather than that leader saying, “Weird. I had hoped that the way we did things wouldn’t be hurtful to people. Tell me more about how the way we’re doing things is hurting you because, gosh, that’s really not what I hope we do around here.”

Jenai Auman (38:30)
Yeah. The church should not only be a sanctuary but also a hospital for sick people. In a hospital, if you have surgery and it becomes infected, you have to open up the wound again to see if there’s something in there that should not be in there. Often, I was the one saying, “Hey, Something is in here that should not be in here. We need to cut this open and extricate the toxin so that we can heal.” We actually have to cause some discomfort to be able to heal the system that we’re in.

Marc Schelske (39:00)
Right. Especially the longer the problem is embedded in the body. If it was a brand new thing like we’re on a leadership team and we’re discussing some new endeavor we’re trying, you might be able to say, “This part seems off,” and there’s not a lot invested in that. But if it’s like, this is how we’ve done things for 20 years, or in the case of Complementarianism, this is how we’ve done things for 250 years. I mean, it’s practically like God gave these words at Mount Sinai!

Jenai Auman (39:17)
Mm-hmm.

Marc Schelske (39:40)
At that point, there’s a lot of pain in cutting that open, right? This, I think, is part of what underlies the complexity of the deconstruction conversation for both sides. Because folks who are deconstructing often have to dig deep into stuff that was embedded in their childhood experience of faith, where people that they loved and trusted told them lies about who they were or about who God was. They have to surgically open up to get down to that stuff, and then folks on the other side that are like, “You know, my kid read a book, and all of a sudden they’re asking these hard questions,” So for them, the same thing is happening. Something very deep has to be attended to, and that’s really painful. And we’d just rather it not happen.

Jenai Auman (40:27)
Yeah, and it’s become enmeshed with our identity and our worth. And I think whenever you’re taking a scalpel to a part of someone’s identity, of course, you’re the problem. Don’t cut who I am. So I remember in a meeting a year later, after our family had already left our church, I remember telling my former pastor, “I have a lot of empathy for you because I know your story; I know your childhood also. I know the pain you’ve had to endure and I know that to address that lack within yourself, You found it in quote-unquote Jesus, but you really didn’t find it in Jesus. You found it in the position that Jesus afforded you in the church. You found it in your identity as a pastor.”

Marc Schelske (41:09)
Ooof.

Jenai Auman (41:12)
“If someone comes at you, you immediately make it an us versus them situation. It’s a me-versus-you situation when a shepherd should be protecting the sheep. And you didn’t do that with me. I gave you so many opportunities to do that with me, but you didn’t. And I think it’s because you need to protect something within you. And I was a threat to that system. And so you say that your identity is in Jesus, but it’s really in the things that Jesus has afforded you in your privilege as a man.”

So I invited him into something more, and he didn’t want it. And so I realized I am no longer responsible for this. All I can control and am responsible for is what I do now, moving forward.

Marc Schelske (41:54)
Brutal. Brutal. I bet he thought that was harsh and abrasive.

Jenai Auman (42:02)
I’m sure he did! I’m sure he did.

Marc Schelske (42:04)
It makes me think back to conversations that I had with my therapist where, now 10 years past. Sitting with her, I look back, and I’m so grateful for what she said, but man, in the moment, I was like, “Why are you so mean to me? Why are you saying this hurtful stuff?”

Jenai Auman (42:20)
Yeah. Like, how dare you?!

Marc Schelske (42:26)
So you ended that bit there talking about coming to a place of decision in your heart about how you were going to posture yourself in relationship to both the specific experience you had as a person, but then also this whole question in terms of how we as the people of Jesus behave in these ways. At the end of Othered, you offered a vision that I find quite profound, and this goes way deeper than just being able to personally move on, or it’s even deeper than personal healing. This isn’t about stopping the bleeding. You wrote, “I choose not to collude with a culture that is okay with using Jesus to hurt others.” That is incredibly strong language. Collusion–that’s a legal term for when you participate in making a crime happen. “I choose not to collude with a culture that’s okay with using Jesus to hurt others. Rather, I will continue to turn away and not use God-loaded language to make other people small. Repentance means my gaze is set on Jesus and I walk free knowing that I do not have to seek retribution for my scars.” So let’s talk about that.

Jenai Auman (43:41)
I’ve really not heard a proper apology that took on ownership. It was always, You know, “I tried to do the right thing, and going back now, I wish I could do things differently.” It’s never been, “I treated you poorly. I did not treat you as a sister. And I did do the things that you say I did, and I’m sorry.” I never heard that. I don’t know if I ever will hear that. And I realized that my moving forward could not hinge on me, hoping to hear that one day. So, for my whole personhood, I needed to find healing in some other way. And if they weren’t going to help kind of excavate all of the harm that they had done, I thought I’m going to find another way to do it because again–petty but also stubborn. These men do not get to hold any sort of control of my faith. They don’t get to control my story. And if my life becomes all about what they did, then I start to turn into the decrepit, abrasive, harsh person that they believe me to be. And I thought I’m not doing it. I’m not playing into their game.

Marc Schelske (44:48)
Yeah. Right.

Jenai Auman (45:05)
The biblical idea of repentance, it’s not just an “I’m sorry.” It’s a total transformation into a new sort of human. I will no longer walk in the way of the world. I will walk in the way of Jesus. And so, after a time of significant mourning, that’s exactly what I turned to in the Bible. What is the way of Jesus? What did he actually do? Who did he go to?

I realized that repentance is just listening to people and caring for them. It doesn’t have to be creating a culture where it’s us-versus-them. I can avoid that. I can even avoid that in my own healing and my own pursuit of justice. I can avoid creating an us-versus-them culture. I realized I was not going to fight the machine with another machine. In every way that I can, I want to beat my swords into plowshares. I want to cultivate goodness. What I can do is cultivate goodness through the stories I tell, through the words that I write, and through the hope that I offer in those stories. And so I think practicing repentance is breathing life into the world just as life has been breathed into me by God, by the spirit of God, the breath of God that dwells within me. I want to breathe life into the world so I can heal my wound. My life doesn’t have to be all about my wounds, but in my resurrected life, I can bear the scars of my wounds and say I actually lived. Now, from this place of resurrection, I want to breathe life into others as well. That’s what I tried to do in Othered.

REFLECTION

Marc Schelske (46:44)
What happened for you when you heard Jenai’s words? I choose not to collude with a culture that uses Jesus to hurt others. Don’t let those words float by. Allow them to sink in and do their work in you. Have I colluded in harm the church has done? Maybe I just didn’t want to rock the boat. Maybe I needed the community for my own sense of security more than I needed the community to be equitable for other people. Maybe I was distracted. Maybe I was part of the sausage-making, and the truth is that in most modern American churches, the pressure to build a great program that’s never more than six days away is unstoppable. Even if I didn’t intend to harm, even if I think of myself as someone who follows Jesus and wants to care for those around me, even then, it’s possible I have colluded with the harm done.

So what now? Well, like Jenai, we have a choice. When and where we see harm being done, we can decide not to contribute to it. We can choose to raise our hand in the committee meeting and say that we’re rushing, and in our rus,h we might be overlooking or inadvertently hurting people. As a respected middle-aged white pastor, I can make sure that when women or people of color speak up in the circles, I’m part of, they’re heard rather than ignored or worse, having their ideas co-opted by other people.

We get to choose where to give our money, and we can choose to not give when it seems like the organizations we’ve been supporting are doing harm. We can speak up and say, doesn’t have to be like this. That’s what I hope I’m doing. I hope that’s what all of us in this odd extended community of Jesus followers who’ve stepped away from fundamentalist ways of holding faith are willing to do, even when it costs us. Toward the end of Othered, Jenai wrote, “Living resurrected means I not only fight for the flourishing of my own community, I seek the flourishing of the nations –of everyone. I turn away from and no longer live a life of control, coercion, colonization, or conquest.” That sounds to me very much like Jesus. And that’s the shape of faith I want to be formed in.

May you have the courage to consider the ways that you’ve participated in othering and to step away from those paths.

Thanks for listening.

If this conversation has intrigued you, I recommend you check out Jenai’s book, Othered: Finding Belonging with the God Who Pursues the Hurt, Harmed, and Marginalized. You can find it in all the book places. You can also learn more about her and what she’s up to at her website, www.JenaiAuman.com. Notes for today’s episode and any links that were mentioned can find at www.MarcAlanSchelske.com/TAW056.

Did like this? Well, there’s more. Subscribe to Apprenticeship Notes. That’s my email newsletter. It’s monthly-ish, really about 8 to 10 times a year. It includes an exclusive essay that you won’t find anywhere else, insider commentary on my podcast and blog posts, books I recommend, and more. You’ll get a free little book when you register. It’s called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Practice for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World. In this little book, I teach a spiritual practice that I’ve been using for several years in this time of anxiety and uncertainty that has really been meaningful to me, so subscribe, and get that little book at www.MarcOptIn.com.

Until next time, in this one present moment, you are loved, you are known, and you are not alone.

Episode 054 – A Better Place Than Here (With Jennifer Knapp)

What would you learn if you had the opportunity to go back and revisit your spiritual journey of twenty-five years ago? What if that experience happened in community, with folks who were there with you, when it happened? What would you learn? How are you different? What losses and what growth would you notice? The release of Kansas 25, a re-recording of her award-winning album, Kansas, gave singer songwriter, Jennifer Knapp, just that experience.

Show Notes

• Get Kansas 25
  • Digital, CD & Vinyl
  • Streaming on all major services.

• Scroll down for a full transcript of this episode.
• You can also watch and share the video version on Youtube.

More about My Conversation Partner

Jennifer Knapp is a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter, author, speaker, and advocate whose two-decade career has significantly impacted the music industry. With over one million albums sold from her first three releases—”Kansas” (1998), “Lay It Down” (2000), and “The Way I Am” (2001)—Knapp achieved Gold certification for “Kansas” and earned four Dove Awards along with two Grammy nominations. Originating from Kansas, she has performed globally alongside artists like Jars of Clay and participated in the Lilith Fair Tour in 1999 and 2010. Known for her poignant exploration of human experiences and spirituality, Knapp took a seven-year hiatus in 2002, returning with the album “Letting Go” in 2010, which debuted at No. 73 on the Billboard Hot 200 Chart. Beyond music, she is a pioneer in LGBTQ+ advocacy within Christian communities, being the first major artist to openly discuss her identity, which sparked national dialogue and led to appearances on platforms like Larry King Live and TEDx. In 2012, she founded Inside Out Faith, a non-profit organization advocating for LGBTQ+ rights in faith contexts. Recently, she completed a master’s degree in theological studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School, reinforcing her commitment to social justice through music and advocacy. Jennifer Knapp’s diverse talents and dedication to inclusivity continue to inspire audiences worldwide.

• Find Jenn at https://jenniferknapp.com
• Facebook: JenniferKnappMusic
• Instagram: @JenniferKnappMusic

Today’s Sponsor

• The Apprenticehip Notes Newsletter – Monthly-ish writing just for you on spiritual growth in the other-centered, co-suffering way of Jesus.

Transcription

Marc Schelske 0:00
Hey, friends, I’m Marc Alan Schelske, and this is The Apprenticeship Way, a podcast about spiritual growth, following the way of Jesus. This is episode 55: A Better Place Than Here.

THIS WEEK’S SPONSOR
Today’s podcast is made possible by The Writers Advance. I’m a writer. I love supporting writers. Five years ago, I created The Writer’s Advance. It’s exactly what I needed–A writing weekend that has been crafted to be precisely what writers need to push forward their current project. It’s not about networking or listening to experts speak or trying desperately to get an agent or editor to notice you. Nope. It’s about writing and reconnecting with why writing matters to you.

At the end of every writing weekend, I send all the participants an anonymous survey to get feedback so that I can improve the experience. You can read their words on the event website, but I wanted to just read a couple of their comments to you right now, because they really tell the story. This is an anonymous feedback from the retreat two years ago.

“This was an amazing weekend. The hosting was on target. The venue was peaceful and offered more than I expected. I loved the pacing. Marc is a great host and guide, and provides just the right amount of encouragement and accountability. So looking forward to the next one.”

Here’s another. This is a comment about last year’s event. “This weekend reenergized my commitment to my writing craft. It was an excellent blend of accountability, flexibility, creativity and guidance. I felt supported as a human and a writer the whole time I was there.”

One last one. This is from Tara Rolstad, a professional speaker who has attended The Writer’s Advance multiple times. Now, she won’t be there this November, because she is going to be busy launching her new book, a book that came to life at the writer’s advance! This is what she said. “I’ve come to see The Writer’s Advance as a gift I can’t afford not to give myself. I got more work done this weekend than I have in months, and to do it in a gorgeous, peaceful, comfortable location in the company and support of smart, quality people? Invaluable! I’m deeply grateful.”

Maybe that is the sort of thing you need, or maybe you love a writer and want to give them an incredible gift. Well, the next Writer’s Advance is just around the corner, November 7 – 10, and registration closes on October 5. So I would love to see you there and support you and your project. All your questions are answered on the website. What are the accommodations like? How much does it cost? What’s the food like, and can they handle special dietary needs? Yes, they absolutely can. All that at www.thewritersadvance.com for more details. I hope to see you there.

INTRODUCTION

In the late 90s, I was a fresh-faced youth pastor with a guitar, doing all the things that line of work requires. Youth group events, silly games and small group meetings at Denny’s, and leading energetic songs with hand motions, planning summer camps and passionately preaching the gospel, all with the hope that kids might have an encounter with Jesus. And I remember in 1998, an album came onto the Christian music scene that just captured my mind. It was called Kansas.

It was the debut album of a young singer songwriter named Jennifer Knapp. The tracks are fantastic, but what caught my attention most were the lyrics. Outside maybe two other musicians I had never heard Christian songs that felt this honest to me. There was a yearning I felt in the lyrics. In one song, Whole Again, she said, “If I give my life, if I lay it down / can you turn this life around, around / Can I be made clean by this offering / of my soul? Can I be made whole again?” There was this sense of being drawn by Jesus and at the same time feeling in exile. Another song, Refine Me, says “You’re my God and my father / I’ve accepted your son / but my soul feels so empty now / What have I become?” I’d felt that. I’d done all the things I was supposed to do, and yet many of the things my church promised me weren’t happening. What was going on? Knapp’s songs contained authentic declaration of real struggles. Sometimes those struggles were internal feelings of inadequacy, even sinfulness. Other times, those struggles were with the accepted preconceptions of Christian culture. In her song, In The Name, she wondered honestly, “To each his own / won’t lead you home / and probably never will.” That hit hard. The whole album carried this deep sense of standing on the edge of something bigger, and that something felt like the presence of God too me.

I followed Jennifer’s next few releases, and then in 2010 she just disappeared, at least from the perspective of my small Christian world. What happened? Well, Jennifer came out, and the Christian music industry that had celebrated her, and the Christian community that had commended her thought and bought her concert tickets just didn’t have room for a Christian musician who was openly gay. In the 14 years since, so much has happened. Jennifer found new community. She had to. She found new fans. She had to. She got on with her life. She found a partner. She wrestled with what it means to have faith and have had a real experience with Jesus, and then, at the same time to have been excluded from community by some of Jesus followers. And then a couple of years ago, the idea surfaced for her to re-record her seminal album, Kansas. The support that welled up for this project was, I think, beyond Jenn’s expectations. She did it, and that album is now available.

It’s called Kansas 25 and I’ve been listening to this album over and over since it came out, and it has been such an interesting experience for me. The lyrics of the song are the same, the arrangements are similar, but I’m listening as someone who has spent twenty-five years going deeper in my pursuit of Jesus in the way that some characterize as deconstruction. In the same way, the songs are also being sung by an artist with twenty-five years more life experience, and those years include pain and joy, exclusion, new community, letting go of old and unhelpful theology and embracing new things that are life giving. And so for me, as I was listening to this album, those songs, they just hit so differently with the weight of twenty-five years more lived experience and more theological exploration.

As I realized what was happening in me as a listener, I thought, “Man, I would love to talk with Jennifer about what happened for her as she did this.” What was it like to re-record these songs, what was it like to face who she was as a young singer, a young writer, and what did she learn about her own spiritual development? Well, I reached out and I asked her, and she said, Yes! Jen’s official bio says she’s a Grammy nominated singer songwriter, author, speaker and advocate known for her musical talents and commitment to social causes. With a rich history spanning over two decades, Knapp has left an indelible mark on the music industry. Her career includes the remarkable achievement of selling over a million albums with her first three releases, the Gold Certified Kansas (1998), Lay it Down (2000), and The Way I Am (2001). Alongside this commercial success, Knapp has been honored with four Dove Awards and garnered two Grammy nominations.

I started my conversation with Jen by asking her what it felt like when she discovered that there was this whole community who wanted to revisit the Kansas album with her.

THE INTERVIEW

Jennifer Knapp 7:35
Really, the journey back into Kansas, for me, is a story of coming back to music in 2010 and taking a big, long break away from Christian music. For sure, I knew I was never going back to that place, and I was also simultaneously coming out, and I have to be absolutely honest and say that I was completely ambivalent about, if not resistant to, in any way, engaging in faith conversations with people in public. For sure, private. It’s, you know, private’s another question. Also, in that my own discomfort of playing that older material for a variety of reasons. When I look back, you know, I was hurt by my religious experience. I was at a crossroads deciding how much of that I would engage in public or not, and also just getting new and back to music and really looking forward to doing the music that was ahead of me and not behind me.

All that to say is that show after show after show that I’m playing, even after I came out, were people talking so much, you know, “Please play this song.” And you know, one of the famous stories that I tell is a lesbian bar I was hanging out in Philadelphia. It’s probably the first six months of me getting back out on the road and touring. And I might have come out after that, I can’t remember, but it was inside the first year or so. And here I am on a Sunday night, and it’s packed out, and there had been a few drinks happening about an hour or so into the show. The the gals in the bar were like, “Play Martyrs and Thieves,” which is one of the epic songs off of Kansas. And I didn’t want to play it. I was afraid to play it. I didn’t know if I would perform it well. I didn’t know if I was just going to be mad by the end of it. It’s six minutes long, so it’s a little bit of a commitment to to like have to pretend you care if it turns out I didn’t, but the crowd was just really begging me to play this, to the point that I understood something about the fact that my resistance to it was starting to very much be inhospitable.

That was a very uncomfortable feeling for me. I just remember this moment. I ended up playing it and the whole bar starts singing. And there are these, you know, women holding each other. There are former Youth group group, kids that are now adults that are just standing on top of the bar singing at the top of their lungs. And I looked around this room going, “My gosh. If, if this obvious group of human beings can somehow not give up a song that means something to them, Why am I giving up something that came from me and out of me?” remember that moment kind of opening the door up to my previous catalog.

What was amazing to me, and this is kind of in the vein of what happens when you’re a singer-songwriter. I felt that from my body. I play with my guitar. AndI wrote these songs a long, long time ago in a room just by myself, and I could tell that these songs came for me. So even the parts of me that might have felt, you know, intellectually alienated from them, or spiritually alienated from them, I could tell when I put them on. They were my shoes, you know what I mean?

Marc Schelske 11:11
Interesting. Wow.

Jennifer Knapp 11:12
Yeah. And that, that story… I mean, that’s a story like about… that started about 15 years ago, but throughout the course of that time, like, it was… I feel like it was the people who had had owned and listened to this music. And as so many people have described it to me as this is the soundtrack of their experience, when somebody said that to me, it’s like, I didn’t want to be a person that took that away from them. I didn’t want that because at the heart of what I do as a musician, and the way I go out into a public space, it’s a gift. It’s sharing, it’s community, it’s positive, it’s affirming. So I don’t want my shit to go on everybody else’s table. I mean, that’s mine to work through…

Marc Schelske 11:55
Right!

Jennifer Knapp 11:55
You know? And if I’m going through something or whatever… I mean, I’ve worn my heart on my sleeve from the day that I walked out on stage. And so it’s not that I’ve ever kind of tried to veil that or hide that from my audience, but I don’t necessarily think that sharing something means assuming that the rest of the room will take on, you know, your level of frustration or anger, but to if I ever confess them out loud, it’s a sense of help me release this. And so in a way, like the story of Kansas kind of flips a little bit on its head for about 10 years, because it’s my audience now giving that record back to me.

I’ll fast forward 25 years ahead, by the time we get to this celebration, I realize that, you know, there are a couple of things that have happened in the lifetime of this record, and not the least of which is a narrative for LGBTQ community inside of faith circles, right where we come out and we have been forcibly exiled or marginalized, or even completely erased from narratives. And that is one of the things, not all the things, but one of the things that’s kind of tempted to have happen with this particular record, to act like it didn’t exist, or that it wasn’t a significant record in the history of contemporary Christian music. And it’s not that I felt like I needed to do that for myself, but it was literally over the last fifteen years hearing people talk about how critical these particular songs had been to them in their journey, and even when I wasn’t there. I didn’t have anything to do with it, but it’s a part of our spirituality, a part of our community, a part of the fabric of who we are, and we collectively share what now exists out there, and no one can take that away. I know that people know the songs. I don’t have any need to sell more copies of this record, but what I really wanted to do was give that gift to say, “Thank you. I heard you. I know that this song has journeyed with you, and I bet that we have all changed a little bit in that 25 years, you know, we’re the same people, but the experience has changed, the filter with which we see the world.”

And I thought, wouldn’t it be an interesting artistic experience to go back and record this record and see what that sounds like, to see if we can actually get… if this record has been doing what it’s been doing, will it do a new thing and reflect the journey of all of us that have kind of been through that space? It’s an acknowledgement, at the very least, that we’re all willing to understand our own evolution, our own journey, within our faith tradition, within our theology, within our community, and all the things good and bad that come with it. And yet somehow, you know, even when we’re frustrated with where maybe our particular faith community may or may not be, or whatever the church in air quote is or isn’t, we’re somehow persisting in some way. And, not, you know… for me, that’s kind of the strange thing. I didn’t really want to make another Christian record, but it’s also part of my story, and it’s a part of our story, and so no matter where we kind of end up with it, it’s still reflective. I think when you, when I meet the audience of people that I hang out with all the time, I mean, I’m struck by how genuinely affirming human beings they are, how amazingly integrated into their communities they are in terms of, you know, positive influences inside of their inside of their worlds. And not everyone is still persisting in practicing Christianity, but they’re all extraordinary human beings who have lived examined lives and challenge themselves to be still pursuing the hopefulness of their best selves. This happens to be where I started, and to be able to celebrate that a lot of us took a lot of positive things out of that was something that I thought was really important to not necessarily erase, but to actually celebrate.

Marc Schelske 16:01
That’s really interesting on so many fronts. One front is just, you know, most creative people that I know kind of have this drive to keep moving forward, and the idea of going back and revisiting creative work of yours from a previous era of your life–I would say most creative people I know are not really excited about that. They want to move forward to the next thing. They’re not the same person that they were when they made that previous thing. When I go back and look at a sermon that I wrote 25 years ago, I’m like, ugh.. I’m so sorry that I did this to people…

Jennifer Knapp 16:31
Yeah, we don’t really want to reread it or…

Marc Schelske 16:33
Right!?

Jennifer Knapp 16:34
It kind of falls short. I would say that that’s true. I mean, I think for… in coming up to the twenty-five year anniversary of the record, I’d had, a lot of close friends going, “We ought to do something. We ought to do something.” I’m like, I don’t know. it took me a while to kind of get enthusiastic about it. It wasn’t a given that I was going to re-record this record. I’ll put it that way. And it wasn’t until like, that narrative that I’ve just kind of come across had kind of illuminated itself and started to realize is like, I don’t need to do it. I have no personal stake in going back to it. But fueled with making a gift? That was a project I’d never really done before. Because if you think about an artist, most of the time, we’re creating new stuff all the time, right? And then you go into the studio and you go and record it, and you’re, you know, you’re going out, and it’s always a new thing. You make it and then you wait to see what life extends out from it. There’s very few opportunities that I get to know what you like…

Marc Schelske 17:42
Yeah, right.

Jennifer Knapp 17:43
…how it will touch your heart, how it has touched your heart. And that I can give you a gift that I know will hit you like, right in the center. I mean, I haven’t talked about any of these… like, before we released this project out to the masses, I hadn’t given a lot of lip service to what was happening with the re-recording. So it was just, “Hey, it’s twenty-five years. We’re going to re-record it. It’s going to be really great.” It wasn’t till after it released that everybody starts chatting, you’re listening to it, right, sharing your stories about listening to this record, that I was like, my gosh, it actually happened like, the gift of this, the reminiscing, the the ability that people had to see themselves and and even rescue some of their own soundtrack in ways that they’d never imagined, was such an honor to witness. To hope that a project can do that. I mean, I’ve never… that’s so weird. I mean, it’s a strange kind of ministry. It’s not really recording project. And in a weird way, I can’t use believe, I just used the “M word…”

But in a lot of ways, right? Like the first record, the first time I recorded this record, I’m a new kid. I’m a new kid on the block. I know nothing about contemporary Christian music. We’re sitting down. These are songs that you never heard. So in some way, every performance is trying to woo you into liking me, liking the song. You know, hoping that it just hits some deeply spiritual mark. And it’s all bullshit, because at the end of the day, all we can really do is live authentically and hope that it arrives at the spot. You know, that who we are or what we offer as a gift. You don’t know that the first time through. And I think that’s the same way with other projects now like this. Will this experience turned out to be a completely unique experience for me, because then it opened me up to like, I don’t have to woo somebody with this recording. I just had to sit down and live with it. I had to live with what I’d written. I had to write with the body that I had now. I had to build a new relationship with these songs. Like, people are going, “Oh, when are you going to rerecord, you know, “Taylor Swift” your other records?” And I’m like, I don’t I know that I’ll do that. This was a different mission. It wasn’t just re-recording a project.

Marc Schelske 19:58
Seems like there’s this completely unexpected thing that happened, right? So you had this moment in time where, because of coming out, that era of your music career, and the community and the audience that existed at that point in time was brought to a close. You didn’t do it, but it was kind of done. And then you go on in your own journey, and you do the things that you do as a musician, as an artist, you take time off. Now, you’re on that train. This album still exists separately from you, having interactions with people, and something that you planted in that album grew separately from you. You were not watering…

Jennifer Knapp 20:39
Absolutely.

Marc Schelske 20:40
…You were off doing other things,

Jennifer Knapp 20:42
I would have told you that I would have really loved it if it died. There were points in my experience where I was so frustrated by where conservative Christian culture was going, that if I could have taken my name out of it and taken any role that I had in… I would have loved to have had that happen. As you were kind of speaking, I was like, This is what happens when we accept the truth of our journey, when we acknowledge where we’ve been and what we’ve done. That’s what this project really is. And, you know, I can’t take away the fact that I’ve had a significant experience inside of my faith community. Yeah, now, where I go from here and what my future looks like is anybody’s guess. You know, I’m I’m still on a journey forward as much as I’ve ever been. But there’s a part of us, especially when we’ve been harmed or we’ve been frustrated, or we find a level of disagreement or a conflict… the idea that exorcism works, or excising something is the way that we will find healing and hope. I’m not saying like… you know, some things are bad. Take them out. You know, cancer is not a good thing to leave around. But at the same time, like throwing the baby out with the bathwater, as I say… you do that, you get a wet, critically injured baby.

Marc Schelske 22:05
Right, right! Yeah.

Jennifer Knapp 22:06
You throw a portion of yourself out. Is that really what you want to do? Whether one chooses to do that or not, my point has been, don’t just do that, but think first. Really examine it, be able to live in those things. And sometimes you will find that the some of the pain and suffering that we experience through those types of journeys, is about leaving things behind that are actually uniquely ours, a fabric that’s interwoven into who we are. When I talk about these songs, like when I talk about playing them, and I feel that I know they came from my body and my person. Every time I play them, I cannot deny it. When I play them again, I am reconnecting, in a weird way, with something that is of me, that is honest. And I think in that I realized in feeling that physical sensation and playing that music, I realized that faith for me was a really important thing that I didn’t want to have lost in the conflict, that I was actually willing to fight for that and through that.

Or maybe, not fight, but to be at peace. Like to “be still and know that I am God.” I use that so much to myself, going, Why am I fighting a battle that… you know… Am I worried about what everybody else thinks about my faith? Am I doing my faith the right way so I’ll be qualified to be called Christian or not Christian? Frankly, I don’t care what you call me anymore. I really, genuinely don’t. It doesn’t mean that I don’t have a discipline. The more secure that you get in an understanding of who you are and what you’re trying to accomplish, it’s amazing how quickly the external voices and critiques and judgment become disempowered to have influence. Like, to kind of knock you off your your mission and where you want to go, like, the confidence you have to choose your path.

Marc Schelske 24:08
Yeah.

Jennifer Knapp 24:09
Most of the time, like, when we’re uncertain, It’s really easy to knock us off when we’re not as certain as what we want to accomplish or where we want to head. So, yeah, it’s, one of those things that it just amazed me that by just being able to accept, like, yeah, that’s where I was at, these are the things that I did, and you know what? Darn it, that really changed my life in some really remarkable and profound ways that I don’t want to lose. I don’t want to lose my ability to reach back and touch that memory, to be connected to that memory, because I realize that no matter what I do, I’m really actually not going to be able to disentangle myself from it. It is a part of me. It is part of my journey.

Marc Schelske 24:52
Yeah, so this is the weird gift/torture, then, that your audience handed you, right? They like said…

Jennifer Knapp 24:58
It was a weird torture!

Marc Schelske 25:00
“Jennifer, we would like you to go back into a room with your younger self, half your age, and just hang out together and see what what happens. What do you learn? What threads remain important? What needs to be set aside? What happens when you go back into that room with your younger self and face who she was and what her hopes were?”

Jennifer Knapp 25:24
Well, I’ll tell you, one thing I didn’t do is I didn’t go back and listen to the original recording. That I put on to Steve Hindalong’s shoulders. Steve is the producer of this record. I put this on Steve to listen to the old the old stuff, because I didn’t want to have it in my head. I wanted my voice of today to be able to carry it. I neither wanted to copy it, nor did I want to be intimidated by it. I wanted the song as it sat with me today. I knew things had changed a lot. I’m a different guitar player now. I sing differently now. And, on a weird note, like there’s some like archeological differences… archeological? I don’t know. There are, like, some actual tangible material differences in the record. This record is six minutes longer than the original…

Marc Schelske 25:29
And you cut a song?

Jennifer Knapp 25:51
Well, on the on the vinyl, I had to drop one because vinyl is like a finite… right? It’s a finite space. So because of the length of recording, I had to drop Refine Me, so it’s only on the digital versions. But I also changed… and I was adamant to have the acapella piece, the song called Faithful To Me, I was adamant that I wanted it intact. So the way that I sing it live has always been a verse and a chorus and a verse and a chorus. It’s just those two sections and on there’s no recorded version of it in that form. So those were really the only things that I had. But yeah, between tempos and the way that we just played these songs, and even strangely, I cut some… I did some arrangement where I did cut, like, some bars from songs in an attempt to make them shorter, just because of form, just an artistic decision that I just had. But even with those cuts, it’s strange, yeah, we ended up having a materially longer record than we did. Sort of like age does? It kind of gets us all sagging…

Marc Schelske 27:26
Yeah, right!

Jennifer Knapp 27:27
It gets us longer, in a lot of ways. A little grayer. I need a little bit more time to do the record. Like, the idea of going a hundred and eighty beats a minute was not really on for me at this point. It was intriguing that, you know? It would have been fascinating to see. It was kind of a weird science experiment in that way. You know, we just play these songs, will they be the same as the other one? And clearly they weren’t. And it was fun to see that kind of show itself.

Marc Schelske 27:58
When you went, metaphorically, back into that room with your younger self, what are you noticing? Spiritually and personally? You talk about how these songs feel like they came from your body, and they feel deeply connected to you, but you’re also in many ways different. Or I should say, you’ve been through a lot since then that has shaped who you are. So when you’re in this dialog–who you are now, in the journey that you’ve had, in the spiritual journey that you’ve had, with your younger self, who’s right at the beginning of the career, who’s a fairly new Christian, who’s in this brand new, burgeoning industry, CCM, with all kinds of new pressures–when you’re in dialog with that person, what did you notice?

Jennifer Knapp 28:45
Well, it’s interesting that you say the younger self, because… Singing is such a physical thing, like singing and playing. And it was really in the performances of these that… I mean, it began in the physically aware spaces. Like when I’m holding my breath for a really long phrase, I’m like, “What was she doing?” I would literally be talking out loud, going, “That young whipper snapper.” Or, if I was frustrated with a turn of phrase or a chord or arrangement… I mean things that I wouldn’t do now, for better, for worse, right? It was amazing that physically performing the songs made a connection to realizing I am not in the same body that I was, you know, 25 years ago. And, to start talking about myself, I would like, literally, yeah… “that girl, young Jen, is so full of herself. What was she thinking?” But, that physical connection really gave me pause to think back, in connecting and seeing her in that way. This was going to sound weird and so dissociative. But being able to see and watch yourself, kind of in your imagination, be able to look back, look at her, see what she was doing, bewildered, enthusiastic, in no way deceitful. It was lovely to be able to look in on her and in a weird way, and go, “Wow, she was really just genuinely doing her thing.” And at times that I was critical, even in the process, in the present day, kind of going back and recording something, I would go, “You know what? You gotta hand it to that kid. Don’t take anything away from her.” I don’t think I had given myself a level of grace in this time of my life, not as an apology, but to not be embarrassed about my my sold-out-Kool-Aid-drinking-years of Christianity. I think that was a part of it.

Marc Schelske 30:52
It was earnest!

Jennifer Knapp 30:54
It was earnest. It really was. Now, I think that same spirit of that young person still lives in me today. I love being earnest about my work. I’ve never regretted being honest and authentic and wearing my heart on my sleeve. I’ve regretted when I knew I went against that. I’m more than happy to take responsibility for who and what I’ve been and what I’ve done throughout my life. I prefer that to denial or to trying to twist myself into something that’s not seeking what my heart really, truly longs for. Which is a weird thing to say in a Christian environment, and still a hard thing for me to say now, because I think oftentimes, particularly with Christianity, there’s a lot of conversation in and around the denial of self…

Marc Schelske 31:48
Yeah.

Jennifer Knapp 31:49
…and a mistrust of our inner voice. To seek something from our own hearts [is seen as] as genuinely corrupt, as opposed to replacing our inner heart and our inner voice with the voice of God, right?

Marc Schelske 32:03
Yeah, right.

Jennifer Knapp 32:04
I don’t know how we know the difference of that. To be honest, to me, I know when I’m lying to myself and I know when I’m not. I mean, I sometimes find out later. But, you know, I think it’s been a really easy thing for the church to take away our trust of our own self and an autonomy away from us, and which–I would put in a theological position as the temple of the Holy Spirit being in our hearts. If the sanctuary that is within us isn’t trustworthy, and we don’t trust that sanctuary, then where do we begin? Because that is the temple. If anyone’s concerned that that is some way of a denial or an opening to a dark space, I would say quite the opposite. I think it raises the ante for our responsibility to know that we have a discipline and a practice and a care and an awareness and a will to create in ourselves a holy sanctuary…

Marc Schelske 33:14
Yeah.

Jennifer Knapp 33:15
…to be responsible for the care of that. That’s not accidental. That’s not just simply trying to set everything on fire, but to actually build something mindfully, you know, with purpose. That, to me, has done exactly the opposite. It wasn’t setting the foxes loose at all. For me to be able to go, “No, this is my voice, and this is my heart.” And that included days where I was like, “Screw you God. This is where I’m at.” Seriously. Like, this is what everybody else says, or this is what my church says, or this is what you know, this is maybe where I feel like God might, may or may not want me to go. And I have said, “No, I’m not willing,” you know, and just being honest with myself about, like, whether I’m resistant. I’m more Jonah than anything. I have sat under a withering vine for more hours than I cared to confess.

Marc Schelske 34:07
Yeah!

Jennifer Knapp 34:08
But at the end of the day, none of us change, none of us do work, none of us go down a road at some point, unless we get the full enjoyment of that journey, unless we, at some point, have acknowledged our choice and our free will to go down that road. Yeah, so, it’s not that I want to be in contest with that, but the joy and the raised responsibility of saying I will be responsible for my heart and I will do the work to know what is the voice of my heart and to do the work, because what I want is to be an affirming human being. I want to live a life that when other people around me, they experience a sense of affirmation, that they know that I will love them, that they know that I’m a person who is interested in the liberation, that I’m interested in life over death.

Marc Schelske 34:58
Yes.

Jennifer Knapp 34:59
I’m less interested in religion. What I’ve found through music in this process of creativity is it being able to go, No, that is in me. It really is in me. I really do want to sing. I really do want to sing this song. I really am angry–whatever it is. That earnestness of that young girl, I think, is something that I’m so grateful to see still lives in me. Yes, even though sometimes she embarrasses me.

Marc Schelske 35:26
That’s so wonderful. There’s a line in in Visions that has stayed in my brain ever since hearing the first album, and it is this line that I think speaks to that continuity you just mentioned, which is” They say that I am much too demanding to want a better place than here.” There’s so much in that, because there’s the “they,” whoever they are…

Jennifer Knapp 35:55
Right.

Marc Schelske 35:56
There’s all these voices that are telling you, you know, “Don’t feel how you feel. Don’t want something different. What we tell you is right is what’s right. Just buy the line that we’re giving you.” So, you’ve got the whole “they” and and you’ve got this heart, this little heart that’s saying, “No, there’s gotta be more than this. Don’t you see how this is not enough? Don’t you see how this is leaving something important out. Don’t you see how we’re not loving in the way that Jesus taught us to love?” That heart is crying out, “There’s gotta be something better than this, isn’t there? Come on guys.” And that tension between the voice of the “they” who’s saying, “No, no, this is really all there is. How we are telling you it needs to be, you just need to get it. You’ve got to get on board.” right? That yearning heart, to me, that’s not demanding. That, I feel, is the Spirit of God at work in us, wanting to see the life, wanting to see the fulfillment of liberation, wanting to see grace really be grace, instead of just a branding on another set of standards for who gets to be in and out of a community, right? That’s there, and I feel like, as I hear you talk today, I hear that same continuity to that earnest kid on stage.

Jennifer Knapp 37:17
Yeah, I think for me, it definitely channels the direction of keeping hope. It’s more about the foolishness that I have in persistently hoping and persistently challenging myself to do better and to seek better, and to have an imagination. You know, I don’t want to get into the weeds or stress anybody out, but heaven, heaven for me, is a very hard thing for me to imagine in the ways that it’s typically been described to me.

Marc Schelske 37:49
Sure.

Jennifer Knapp 37:50
That’s the thing I’m working for, right? I’m going to be rewarded by choices that I make in this life, by living in some, to me, imaginary space in the future, that’s just grand up in the sky somewhere. That’s not what I mean by the better place.

Marc Schelske 38:10
Right!

Jennifer Knapp 38:11
I’m demanding of myself the imagination. I’m demanding of myself the courage to maintain hope. It’s not a pass or fail. But it’s completely saying, “don’t give up.” Every single day that I am going to drive to be heading in the direction. That isn’t trying to attain… You know, I’m not trying to attain or get or be rewarded. It’s a different type of thing that hope does. It is our aspiration to live into and unto the heights of what love and grace and liberation can be. And I don’t even fully know what all of those things are yet, but as I’ve continued to be demanding of that…I mean, at the time that I wrote that I was single, celibate, and had no hopes or prospects for love in the future. In fact, a lot of this record, I was just beginning the journey of figuring out how to love myself, because if we’re to love the Lord God with all your heart, mind, your soul and your neighbor as yourself? Well, I was like, I can’t love my neighbor because I don’t know anything about how to love myself.

Marc Schelske 39:20
Yeah.

Jennifer Knapp 39:21
That’s where I started, and if a lot of my early work seems narcissistic, it’s because I didn’t know how to love myself. I was trying to figure out and work out what God saw in me that was loving. As I started to piece that together–fast forward ten years into the future, until when I met my partner–I was starting to understand something about love enough to then now come in contact with my neighbor or somebody else, like somebody I wanted to love, and somebody whose love I wanted in return. That like another way out from my narcissistic center, going out and stretching further and further and further you, and to see how much–to be demanding of that.

Marc Schelske 40:02
Yeah.

Jennifer Knapp 40:03
I don’t need to prove anything, not in that sense. But to be open and aware and and continually willing to learn something about and a new area of which I may find to love that I didn’t before, to let go of something or to discover something, just constantly kind of looking for an opportunity to grow. I see it in there. I’m like, “Oh, that kid. She probably didn’t know what the hell she was talking about!”

Marc Schelske 40:29
Of course! Of course, yeah.

Jennifer Knapp 40:30
But it’s still in me. That is the root, and that’s when I look at her and go back to the baby in the bathwater, or even the grace, going if I just shut her down, then that theology wouldn’t have grown from a seed of what that was to what it is today. I can think of twenty more examples of where that is a root of something that I can see connected to its growth in me today, and I’m so grateful for her enthusiasm and her earnestness, like I said, even though sometimes she embarrasses me.

Marc Schelske 41:02
That’s so rich, I feel like maybe that’s part of the thread in this conversation of deconstruction. For some people, deconstruction is about tearing down, or needing to tear down structures that have been unhelpful. But my experience has been that there’s been a continuous unfolding that has taken me deeper in ways that the community that raised me didn’t expect or prepare me for, and that yearning that you talk about–that maybe the young Jennifer with that yearning, maybe she’s naive, maybe she’s a little bit narcissistic. I mean, we all are at 25, right? Maybe her vision is limited–but that yearning for what I believe is the fullness of life that we were made for, that yearning is the thread that has taken me into the places that I’ve gone that look externally to some folks like deconstruction. When I listened to Kansas 25 the first time, I felt that same thing. Some part of this, obviously, is my own projection. I have no idea what’s going on inside of you, your life and experience…

Jennifer Knapp 42:14
You can have it. You have your own life and experience. I want to take it away from you.

Marc Schelske 42:17
Thank you so much. But I hear you [singing Kansas 25] and it just felt like a richer, deeper experience that had spaciousness for the painful, the uncertain. It seems like the longing is for something that’s bigger than that, a life that has space for all of that, even when it doesn’t fit on a stage or inside someone’s preconceived expectation of what you need to be.

Jennifer Knapp 42:47
It’s interesting, because when I go back to that time, one of the one of the details of my experience at the time that I was writing that was very much attached to my coming into Christianity and having an experiencing a profound culture shock with the church community. So unlike a lot of a lot of my peers and my friends who had essentially evangelistically witnessed to me and I converte. I accepted Jesus Christ, and I… That’s so weird every time I say that, because it’s not, you know… I remember… I can’t believe I did that, even to this day. I can’t believe that I actually did that. At the same time, it profoundly changed my life! So, how do I make sense of that?

Marc Schelske 42:58
Right?

Jennifer Knapp 42:58
I was so earnest, like I genuinely wanted to be a new creation. I didn’t even know what that meant, but I wanted, and I understood something needed to do an about face in my world. I wasn’t wooed necessarily by religion. I was even rolling my eyes at the time, going, “What am I doing here in this space with these folks?” But, there was something there that had sparked in my heart, a hope that I hadn’t yet seen in a possibility of loving and caring for and being connected to something greater than myself. That’s the best way I know how to describe it. And so here I am, like basically, a hot mess, not having any tradition or experience inside of the faith community at all. I was walking into church on a Sunday morning, smoking, putting my cigarette butts out right on the church steps, walking into church, dropping a few F bombs, coming right back out and lighting back up. And was pretty rough for the Baptist contingency around me, and they were so excited that I was there. But, you know, a few months into it, they’re like, “Okay, we need to talk about your becoming that new creation. Now, you need to start putting things away.” It was conversations about not cussing anymore, conversations about not having sex, conversations about not smoking. What was I going to do on the outside to start looking like what God wanted my heart to be on the inside?

In some ways, I think that that landed with me okay. I was starting… I was definitely reading my Bible. Like, I read that sucker. I mean, I was diving into it. I was taking my discipleship seriously. I was going to Bible study groups and learning, mostly in a Baptist feel but I’d had other groups as well. =I was definitely trying to become a Christian, because, again, in earnestness, I made this decision, and I meant my decision. So when everyone around me is saying, “This is what a good Christian looks like,” then this is a good heart of mine that wants to make good on the discovery of this profound joy and free new grace that I’m experiencing my life. I wanted that to be evident. So of course, that was helpful in some ways, to have my community go “This is the way. If you look and act and conform in this way, you will be celebrated.”

But the side of that–and even though I was going into discipleship and Bible studies, one of the critiques I have in this is part of that thing is this idea that we’re not necessarily… where the rubber hits the road sometimes is what we are imagining is that we’re shaping ourselves into a conformity to look like something that looks like Christianity. And a lot of the deconstruction space where we’re calling upon what many people are telling us in good ways and bad. There’s some positive to that. I mean, there are people who’ve been living this journey long before I have or long before we find it and we get into it. So we always begin to a certain degree–and this is where I say we can be a little bit graceful–we are relying on the stories that are told to us.

Marc Schelske 46:56
Yeah.

Jennifer Knapp 46:56
…and the flame that we as moths were drawn to. But the difference in this, at some point, is our level of autonomy and engagement, our development of our own–and I would again, go back to that kind of sacred temple in ourselves–of the part where we begin to be part of living out that faith, to be able to have a… You know, quiet times were a thing. I don’t know if that’s still around. It was like, “Oh, you have to have a quiet time every day,”

Marc Schelske 47:25
Right.

Jennifer Knapp 47:26
And so what that was… I’ll say it was told to me as a discipline that it was my obligation as a good Christian to spend an hour a day reading my Bible, praying, and I would journal. So I did those things “religiously.” I was glad I did that discipline. I enjoy that time. I enjoy reflection. But I also hated that somebody would ask me, “Did you do your quiet time?”

Marc Schelske 47:57
Right?! Yeah, for sure.

Jennifer Knapp 47:58
it’s this box or this thing that we’re doing, rather than… So on one hand, I had a discipline that gave me an opportunity to practice and began to engage in the care and the awareness and my own practice of of developing my spiritual life. But weirdly, no one actually taught me how to develop my spiritual life. They told me to have a quiet time and if I didn’t check off with my accountability partner, and said that I’d only had three quiet times in seven days. And you know, there was a judgment about whether or not that was fruitful. That wasn’t helpful,

Marc Schelske 48:33
Right.

Jennifer Knapp 48:34
But, what was more helpful is that I actually didn’t have time for quiet time because I had three other hours of completely obsessing about this other issue that I’ve been thinking about. I didn’t want a quiet time that was an hour. I wanted a life that was contemplative. The whole life.

Marc Schelske 48:49
Right? Yeah, yes!

Jennifer Knapp 48:53
I didn’t want to do what Christianity told me; I wanted to live my faith.

Marc Schelske 48:59
Yeah.

Jennifer Knapp 49:00
I don’t want to knock the community, because we do need that, and we do need the witnesses, and we do need to be connected to one another to help and share and tell these stories. But it’s a difference between sharing a story and witnessing that information and then telling somebody that this is what you should conform to. You should look like us, instead of having collaborators that are seen with you as you live your life. And so for me, discipleship taught me what conformity looked like in a lot of ways. You know, these are the things that Christians do, say and act, and if you come out the other side, you will be a good Christian. But, nobody actually told me that if I have a contemplative life I engage, I will ask at least this one question, “What does it mean to live in the Spirit of Christ?” That is a question that I’ve been working on for thirty-five years.

Marc Schelske 49:53
Right, yes.

Jennifer Knapp 49:54
What is the Spirit of Christ? If I say, what’s the spirit of Marc? What’s the spirit of Jenn? I have to spend time, you know… you have to spend time with somebody else. You have to look at what they’ve done and what they do and stop talking and start watching. You know, live with and be around. It’s not just spirit as in fantasy. I think we know what we mean. You can write a song in the spirit of Jenn Knapp. There’s people out there who do it. My spirit isn’t doing it. So far as I know, I don’t have my own unique Holy Spirit that’s going out and doing that. But I wanted to understand that question. And as I read the whole text, as I looked around my community, as I looked around the world in what this meant, I began to say, “These are the things I want to be propelling me to the future.”

So, the idea of being told what to do so quickly felt like I was supposed to be conforming to something, and that’s not what drew me in there. It was a spirit and longing to know what the Spirit of Jesus was. I’m like, “Well, okay, great. I said the F bomb three times today in church. I’m sorry. Here’s a dollar for the the jar.” But I wasn’t cruel to anyone today, and I genuinely become a lot more hospitable to myself and to other people. I’m becoming more compassionate as a human being in my life in ways that I never even thought was possible. I don’t care what I get credit for or don’t, but my life has changed because of that, and the people around me’s life has changed. And that’s the true test of it. So that kind of “undoing,” I was already starting there and I think that’s that’s held up in kind of trying to go, I know, I mean, told these things, but there’s also a Spirit of to this that seems more, it seems wider. It seems not conforming. It seems rebellious in its nature.

Marc Schelske 51:49
Yes.

Jennifer Knapp 51:50
People will be confused. People will say that you’re going out on a limb. People will say, people will say, they will say. And you still have to go out there and live it. The thing that you hear in your heart, whether it’s contemplative or prayer or God–I don’t know how we say that–but if whatever that still small voice is, it’s a voice that you want to follow for whatever reason, and you go to follow it. Then test it. The next step is to take it out of that place where you discovered it, hopefully in a contemplative place, and to go out and test it and to see if it is something that is actually honest. Will this bring life? Will this discovery or this longing that I have to be compassionate mean that I talk more or talk less when I leave my home? You have to go out, and sometimes I’ve been wrong. Sometimes, I did not get that right. I have to go back. I didn’t understand that. It’s not working because I I’m not getting it. I’m not hearing it yet. So more work for me, but that that kind of going back to those spaces. [Kansas], it was written by a girl who didn’t want a less life, didn’t want a constricted life. I read the Scripture, “You shall have life, and you should have it abundantly,” and I read that in a way that I wanted that…

Marc Schelske 53:22
Yeah…

Jennifer Knapp 53:23
…and I want that now to this day. And every time that I took that out, I would have somebody else come over the top of me saying, “Be careful about that abundant life, because you can have too much Liberty in your life.” I’m not asking to sample every drug out on the street. I’ve done that. I know that kills my body and that’s not good and I make poor choices. I know I want abundant life. I want my hand to be open. I want to be non-threatening to other human beings. I want to not be jealous of you. I want to be invested in your life, and want you grow and flourish, and I want you to not be an enemy, and I want you to be a partner with me. Let’s start there. That’s what abundant life is. All I can do is try and take care of my my space around me.

When I started looking at things like that, I would find myself in contest and being pushed back inside of some of my faith communities, like, “No, it’s doing it the way this looks.” I know that I can do the thing that looks that way. And right now I’m angry because I’m doing the thing, and I’m getting credit for doing the thing, but I’m an asshole on the inside. I don’t want to be doing this. I don’t agree with this. And you know, that went on to be a breaking point with me for some things, at the point where I kind of… there’s part of… some of the spaces, some of the reason why I didn’t work inside of Christian music anymore. There are those things that they do feel like we’re deconstructing and we’re having to undo those voices, you know.

At the same time, give the community a little grace. We do have to share our experience by telling and allowing people to witness our stories. But the I think, if there’s a difference at all, I would probably say there’s the spot of authority inside of that. Looking at people we know and reliably trust more on a lateral plane, rather than an up and down plane, rather than a plane of people telling us what we can do–kind of up and down and where you succeed and you rise, or you know, kind of how you the membership is counted–but rather, who are the people who are willing to collaborate with you, the people who are willing to witness as you experience and test and build your faith and and exercise the will, the free will that we have to be able to actually be participants in–and joyfully so–the journeys that we are taking.

Marc Schelske 55:51
That was good, and I feel like it really captures a practical picture of what the better place is that we’re longing for. That that kind of life is the better place that we’re demanding. And you were doing it then, and you’re doing it now, and you’re living in that, and it’s really encouraging. I mean, I was floored by how deeply Kansas 25 impacted me and spent time…

Jennifer Knapp 56:20
You and a lot of other folks! It’s nuts.

Marc Schelske 56:22
Yeah, and I had to spend some time trying to understand. What has happened here for me in this? And it was deeply– is still deeply meaningful. And so I just am so grateful that you chose to enter into the difficult space to give that gift to all of us, and hopefully, in some way to yourself, because it’s been quite impactful, and I’m just so thankful to have that as part of my journey.

Jennifer Knapp 56:49
Well, thank you. I would say, thank you for that. I mean, that is its gift. There are moments, and I’m sure as you’ve had years of the ministry, the times you look back on on your influence or your participation inside of faith communion, and probably go, “Why am I here? And have I done anything? Or what’s it mean?” And the older I get, legacy is not quite the word I’m comfortable with, but I me an, I think we all kind of hope that the trail behind us isn’t a path of devastation.

Marc Schelske 57:22
Right! At least.

Jennifer Knapp 57:24
So, that’s all to say that I genuinely have felt so honored to be able to witness folks take a moment… and just give them, like you were saying, like to sense… like the the response that a lot of people have had to Kansas going, “Wow, I really had to take more than a few moments, like a day or two,” and some people are still a little bit longer, depending on where they are on their journey. But that kind of pause–I think, particularly in our current climate where we’re so pressured by the tyranny of the urgent, with social media and phones and alerts are going off all the time and demanding our attention–to take a minute to be able to check in with your own self and your own journey in your life, to have offered a gift that allowed someone to do that? For me is, it’s just out… I can’t even get my head around it. Like, I wish I could have said, Yeah, that’s what I meant to do. Like, that’s a total lie. Like, I can’t claim that, but it’s beautiful to witness that. And to know that when I look back on on my experience in the last twenty-five years, in the weird way I kind of connect back to the earnestness of that young gal and go, “Wow, she really did demand that, and she hasn’t stopped.”

To be able to to know that… I like playing and I like making records. It’s fun. But I also… when I came back to career 2.0, as I’ll call it, I really wondered, “Is this going to be meaningful to me in any way?” Because I don’t really care about money, and I like playing and performing, but believe it or not, as self centered as I may sound and contemplative I may be, I’m actually not interested in all the praise. I don’t really want to be a rock star. Why am I doing this? Why am I coming back and playing? Like, if I’m just going to go to bars and play music for money and just do all the miles on the road, is this going to be a meaningful life to me? I had no idea that… because I was like, I’m not, …There’ll be no ministry in front of me. There’ll be no reconnecting. There’ll be no public dialog in and around faith, because the last thing I want people to do is put a “Christian” in the headline with my name.

Well, I can’t get around that anymore. People still do it, even no matter how much I cuss and no matter how far I’ve gone out. And I’m not writing specifically about Christianity, and this blows my mind. All I ever wanted to do in my work was to just leave a good path, like to offer… to open the door up to something that… I don’t know, but something I have. I didn’t write the rules of love. I just know that when you love people and you hope for people, and you go into a room and you want to offer a gift to people, and you offer it, and you don’t expect… Career 1.0, it’s more like propaganda. You constantly have to be a representative of Christianity all the time. And now I’m not trying to represent Christianity. I’m trying to offer a gift. It’s strange. Like, doesn’t it blow your mind?

Marc Schelske 1:00:42
Right! No, what you just described is what it ought to be. Like that ought to be Christianity, not the image management, just the offering the hospitable gift.

Jennifer Knapp 1:00:51
Who are you? Who are you, Mark, and what is the gift that you have?

Marc Schelske 1:00:55
Yeah…

Jennifer Knapp 1:00:56
What is the holy gift of you that you offer and present to the world. What do you work on? What do you uncover? How do you spend your time? How do you raise the bar to be the fullest you, the best you. And I’m not talking best, like the best abs, the best beard and goatee. That’s not what I’m talking about. How do you really make a mark, to let the people you know love them and literally change their lives forever?

Marc Schelske 1:01:26
Yes, Yeah!

Jennifer Knapp 1:01:28
If there is a Spirit, a Holy Spirit, a love of God, that’s permeating through and in all things, how–and in this space that I have found myself in this moment–how do I know how to recognize that? How do I get in rhythm with that? How do I be the unique me in this space that adds to that space? It is the thing that I will say, regardless of where I have found it to anyone I speak to., You know, I’ll be talking to a cabbie or talking to somebody who goes, “Oh, I heard this about you, that you’re a Christian.” I’m like, okay, that’s fine. That’s where I learned that, and that’s where I practice that. That’s fine. But here’s the thing, I’m here for you right now. Like, I’m not trying to sell you something. I don’t want anything from you. I just want to be with you and witness you. How can I help you today? Like, what do you need? How do I be a friend with you? To me, that was… and then, this goes back to an early beef I had with evangelicalism. Like, man, don’t just try and sell! Guys on a street corner, standing on soap boxes yelling, “turn or burn,” telling you that you’re going to go to hell and you’re going to be punished unless you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. Today, I’m like, that’s not a witness. It’s not a witness. What changes people is that you actually connect to them.

You know, I was, in some ways, critiquing my own experience into Christianity. What got me here was more about the spirit of the people that I was with than any of the talk of the Spirit that those people did. Does that make sense?

Marc Schelske 1:03:02
Yeah. Yea, yeah.

Jennifer Knapp 1:03:02
Like the coercion, like the kind of coercive nature. It was the relationships that I built, the participation and community, the understanding and being able to step back and be able to see and witness something good and something holy. I am amazed that I get to do that to this day. Every day I go, even if I’m bored and I go to a show, and I’m like, “Oh, I’m tired now. All my gear weighs really heavy. I can’t believe I have to drive six hours today. I get up, and I think, “I wonder who I will meet today?” I wonder what they will teach me today. I wonder what they will show me, and I wonder what I will show them. And just waiting for that to just happen, I wonder what fragrance the room will have when we get there. Oftentimes it’s beer and body odor. Every day is unique, because human beings are extraordinary. And if you tell another human being that you see their extraordinariness, it’s amazing to see how their faces light up and how extraordinary they really do become.

And that’s what I think about my audience, which is just weird. I say… people around me all the time know this about me, that I really hate saying “fan base” or “audience,” or any of that, because it’…s I just, I feel like I’m going out and connecting, and it’s been probably, more strangely, more of service and more of a gift than I would have ever have imagined in my previous days in Career 1.0. Not to say that it wasn’t earnest then, but it’s just a whole other level. It’s good because the money’s crap and the venues sometimes are crap too, but, but Yeah, the people are here, even though we’re not necessarily doing like I was told originally when I quit contemporary Christian music. “Well, you’ll never have a platform again because you aren’t doing the work for the Lord.” And I’ll be like, well, you should maybe come out and hang out with some people, because you just threw off a whole lot of people who are kind of having church. We didn’t preach, we didn’t treat… we were just gathered. We were two or more there, gathered in the Spirit. And, I shudder to thank anybody who doesn’t understand that thinks that I’m speaking religiously. I’m not. People are amazing human beings, and I am so grateful that those amazing human beings have continued to keep me standing up and have never mocked me for my earnestness.

Marc Schelske 1:05:29
So good. Jennifer, thank you so much for this conversation. Thank you for spending this time with me. Thank you for this album and the long, long road of work that you’ve done getting to it. It’s an honor to spend this time with you and to be one of the recipients of how you’ve shared your journey.

Jennifer Knapp 1:05:51
It was a privilege, Marc. I appreciate it, and thank you very much for asking me.

REFLECTION

Marc Schelske 1:05:55
At first glance, this conversation is an interesting window into the life of a creative person who had the unique opportunity to go back and reflect on who they were twenty-five years ago. But that’s not all this is. There’s something important here, I think, for all of us, even if we don’t have a body of work to look back on.

Jenn’s story is a story of growth. Now, that doesn’t mean every part was fun. Growth means change. Change always means loss, and loss means there’s going to be grief in the story. But that process of changing, growing, losing, and grieving allows us to let go of what came before that was limiting or unhealthy or just plain wrong, so that we can embrace the good, the new, that perhaps God is setting before us. In my own story, there have been times when my life of faith was really all about security. It was a kind of faith that longed for certainty, that demanded certainty from teachers, from scripture, from sermons, from precise step-by-step methods for prayer or evangelism or church growth. Well, that kind of Christianity is about making us feel okay, making us feel that the uncertainty of life can be managed by a God who turns out to be more like a wish-granting Genie.

But then life happened. There was change, loss and grief and growth. And instead of yearning for security, I now long for transformation. Like Jen–you heard her say this–I don’t want to do devotional times; I want to have a contemplative life. I don’t want to do church authorized service projects. I want to be the kind of person who is generous to those around me and and steps in where necessary, to bear the burden of others who are suffering. I yearn for a life that reflects a place that is better than this.

Young Jenn’s yearning and her earnest heart inspired me twenty-give years ago, and the journey that Jenn has been on since challenges me today in a different way. Can I persist in faith even when the calling of Jesus doesn’t look like what I was taught? Can I grow in my pursuit of God, even if it takes me beyond the safe borders that I was trained as a child in, or that I learned as a young pastor? Can I continue, step-by-step, to follow the Spirit of Jesus wherever that guidance leads, even if other followers of Jesus don’t understand?

There was a moment in the interview where Jenn spoke right to me by name, and I wanted to pass her challenge on to you, because I think this might be an invitation from the Spirit. Who are you? What is the holy gift you offer and present to the world? And as we reflect on that, I wonder if we, as followers of Jesus, can let go of those motives that lead to exclusion in the pursuit of certainty and security and rather embrace the other-centered, co-suffering way so that we can participate in God’s work to love the world toward healing.

May you sense the holy yearning for a better place than here and trust the better way of Jesus to lead us toward others and toward God.

Thanks for listening. You can check out what Jenn is up to on her website, which includes tour dates and much more about her music. Www.jennifernapp.com. And of course, she’s got a bunch of great albums on all the streaming services.

Notes for today’s episode and any of the links that have been mentioned you’ll find at www.MarcAlanSchelske.com/TAW055.

Now, if you found today’s conversation helpful, interesting, compelling, then subscribe to Apprenticeship Notes. My email newsletter. It’s monthly-ish. Really, I send it out about eight to ten times a year. I’ll never spam you. I’ll never sell your information. This newsletter includes an exclusive essay that you won’t find anywhere else, insider commentary on my latest podcast episode, on my blog posts, books that I recommend, spiritual practices I’d like you to try and more. If you subscribe, you’re going to get a free little book, an ebook called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Practice for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World. In it, I teach a spiritual practice–a prayer, a short breath prayer that I wrote that I’ve been praying for the last five years, and it has been so helpful to me as I face the anxiety and uncertainty of our time, and I want to share it with you. So subscribe to my newsletter. Get that book at www.MarcOptIn.com.

Until next time, remember: In this one present moment, you are loved, you are known and you are not alone.

Episode 054 – Knowing the Past to Make a Better Future (With Sarah Sanderson)

Do you know the hidden history of the place where you live? If we want to be part of God’s work of bringing restoration and liberation, we can’t ignore what’s happened in the past. Telling this truth is the only way to get to healing.

Show Notes

• Get Sarah’s book:
  • The Place We Make: Breaking the Legacy of Legalized Hate

• Other Books Mentioned:
  • Reparations: A Christian Call for Repentance and Repair by Duke Kwon & Greg Thompson
  • The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism by Jemar Tisby
  • Dear White Peacemakers: Dismantling Racism with Grit and Grace by Osheta Moore

• Scroll down for a full transcript of this episode.
• You can also watch and share the video version on Youtube.

More about My Conversation Partner

Sarah L. Sanderson is a writer, speaker, and teacher. Her writing has appeared in PBS Newshour, Blackpast, Christianity Today, and various other journals. She’s a thoughtful human, a justice-minded Christian, and a skilled writer.

• Find Sarah at www.SarahLSanderson.com
• Threads: @sarahlsandersonwriter
• Facebook: sarah.sanderson
• Instagram: @sarahlsandersonwriter

Today’s Sponsor

• The Apprenticehip Notes Newsletter – Monthly-ish writing just for you on spiritual growth in the other-centered, co-suffering way of Jesus.

Transcription

Marc Schelske 0:00
Do you know the hidden history of the place where you live? If we want to be part of God’s work to bring restoration and liberation, we can’t ignore what’s happened in the past, as much as we’d like to. Telling this truth is the only way to get to healing. Hey, friends, I’m Marc Alan Schelske, and this is The Apprenticeship Way, a podcast about spiritual growth following the way of Jesus. This is episode 54. Knowing the past to make a better future.

THIS WEEK’S SPONSOR

Before we start, I’d like to tell you about Apprenticeship Notes. Apprenticeship Notes is my new email newsletter. What is this? Why should you subscribe? Why on earth would you want one more newsletter in your inbox? I’m glad you asked. Social media has just stopped working well for many people. Our social media feeds used to be spaces where we had some control. We could choose to follow people who are interesting to us. We could connect with friends, we could learn from the experience and wisdom of other people. For well more than 10 years, my social media feeds, particularly Twitter, were a significant benefit to me, especially as a writer.

But nowadays, in most cases our social media feeds are filled with ads, sponsored posts that are ads but don’t look like ads, and influencers trying to sell us on their latest master course. And even when we find and follow the people we want to hear more from, the black-box algorithms determine whether or not we get to see what they have to say. And usually what the algorithm shows us is just stuff that gets us ramped up. That means more anger, more division. It’s a mess.

I’ve been slowly transitioning away from using social media as the main avenue for communicating about my writing. It’s really scary. I can’t even express to you how big of a change this is. At one point I had 35,000 followers on Twitter, I could reliably post a new blog and around a thousand people would see it. But that’s not true any longer and it hasn’t been for a while. And so I decided to begin building a different kind of space where I could write, encourage people, and serve folks who want to grow spiritually and value the writing that I do. The first step of this new plan is my newsletter.

It’s called Apprenticeship Notes because the spiritual life, following the way of Jesus, is something you learn by doing. This newsletter comes out monthly. OK, honestly, monthly-ish, probably about nine to 10 times a year. So what will you find if you subscribe? Well, each edition starts with Today’s Note, a short reflection on some aspect of the spiritual life and the other-centered, co-suffering way of Jesus. And this piece will be written just for folks who subscribe, I won’t publish it anywhere else. The only way to read it is going to be to subscribe and read it in your email inbox. But subscribing is free, and it’s easy.

And then in addition to Today’s Note, the newsletter will include a link to my latest blog with additional commentary, thoughts that didn’t make it into the blog, a link to my latest podcast with insider information, further reflections that I didn’t include in the public episode, and some recommended practice for your spiritual vitality. This might be a book to read or a journaling prompt to respond to or some activity that you can try. I spend time crafting this newsletter so that every part of it is intentional, thoughtful, and most importantly, worth your time. If that interests you, you could subscribe on my website, or you can go to www.MarcOptIn.com.

And there’s a couple other benefits for you if you subscribe. First, I’m assuming that subscribers are people that are interested in my writing. So I will turn to those people to subscribers first, for writing feedback, beta readers, and early access opportunities when I have something new. I have a new devotional that I’m writing that’s slated for release in the spring and it’s almost ready for beta readers. And so that invitation is going to go to my subscribers. So if you want to participate in my writing in that way, you’ve got to subscribe. Second, I’m giving away a short little ebook that you get for free as a subscriber. It’s called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World. It’s short–70 pages–but I think you’ll find it encouraging and helpful. You’ll get that as a free PDF ebook when you subscribe.

So that’s my invitation. subscribe to my newsletter. Get fresh, encouraging writing to support your spiritual vitality. Get content that comes from the perspective of an inclusive, hospitable, and generous Christian theology. And support a writer, all in a space where there’s no algorithm determining whether or not you get to see this and no internet trolls. Seems like a good idea, right? Subscribe at my website www.MarcAlanSchelske.com or at www.MarcOptIn.com.

About eight minutes down the street from my house is the historic main street of Oregon City. Oregon City is the town at the end of the Oregon Trail. For certain Americans in the mid 1800s, Oregon City was a symbol of hope. It meant a new start, the possibility of land and work, a place to build your family and a future. That vision was so compelling that somewhere between 300,000 and half-a-million people traveled the Oregon Trail in about a five year period. And that vision lies at the heart of how Americans and Oregonians see themselves. Hearty, creative people willing to work hard to succeed. People who will pack up all their earthly belongings and head west across a continent, just to give their families a better chance. This is part of what many of us think it means to be American.

But Oregon City, that city of hope, is also the town where, in 1851, a black innkeeper named Jacob Vanderpool was tried and convicted explicitly for the crime of being a black man. Yep, Oregon. The lovely state where I live was founded as a whites-only state. The Oregon Territory had a law banning black people from remaining in the territory, and later the constitution of Oregon expanded on this with an exclusion clause that did two things. It banned slavery in the territory, but it also prohibited black people from living there. That clause remained in the Constitution until 1926.

When I look around at the state that I live in, I first see the beautiful trees, and the overwhelming beauty of the Columbia Gorge, and the rich, vibrant farmland of the Willamette Valley. That’s all easy to see. But for some of us–people who look like me–it can be easy to overlook that there are hardly any black people here. Officially, the 2020 Census reported that only 2% of the population of Oregon identified as Black or African American, and almost all of those live in a single county in one city. This is not an accident, the stark reality of that matters.

There are folks here–I count myself among them–who believe that the way of Jesus requires an open invitation without discrimination, and that Jesus’ other-centered way leads us to participate in restoration and liberation in our world. But to do that, we need to understand why our world is the way that it is. So, all that’s why I found Sarah Sandersons new book, The Place We Make, so compelling and helpful. Sarah is a neighbor of mine; she lives a few minutes from me. In her beautifully written book, she researches the story of Jacob Vanderpool, that innkeeper who was exiled from Oregon because he was black (and also so that a white man, another innkeeper could eliminate his business competition). During Sarah’s research, she discovered more about how this happened, how similar things happened to the native people who lived on the very land where Oregon City now stands, and even how her own family was involved.

Many of us (most of us, maybe?) have long since acknowledged the harrowing and unjust history that lies behind the mythology of our country. Many of us genuinely want to be part of building a more just community. But those big ideas can quickly become abstract, and as long as they stay abstract, it’s tough to imagine concrete steps we can take to move things forward. Sarah’s book grounds this history in real people and real places. Most of the names I recognize. I’ve stood in many of the places. And as I read, I found the abstractions of this enormous problem dissolving in the local details. I suspect that every community across America could use a book like this. Sara’s goal in this book is not to instill shame, it’s to uncover the truth. Shame is a terrible motivation for change. But as Jesus told us, the truth will set us free. Being able to look at the truth behind the places we find ourselves in is a crucial step to being able to be part of making those places more welcoming and more just.

So, I’m thrilled to introduce you to Sarah and her book. I recommend her book wholeheartedly. Sarah is a writer, a speaker, and a teacher. Her writing has appeared in PBS News Hour, Black Past, Christianity Today, and various other journals. She’s a thoughtful human, a justice-minded Christian, and a skilled writer. In The Place We Make, Sarah quotes Mark Charles, a pastor who is also a Native American and a Native American activist. He said, “The heart of our nation’s problem with race is that we do not have a common memory.” This seems to be the driving motivation for her book, and so I asked Sarah to talk about what that means for her.

THE INTERVIEW

Sarah Sanderson 10:15
Yeah, that quote was really powerful for me. The way that we, as white people, think about our past and talk about our past is different from the way people of color think and talk about their past. And it feels a lot of time like we’re just talking past each other, especially with recent laws that have gone in–I touch on in the book, and they’ve only gotten worse since the book was published. These states that are removing African American courses from their curriculum, they’re removing standards…,

Marc Schelske 10:50
Right.

Sarah Sanderson 10:51
And I don’t know if you saw this little clip of an animated video that they’ve created–Prager University has created to show in Florida?

Marc Schelske 11:04
Yes, right!?

Sarah Sanderson 11:04
And the little Christopher Columbus saying, “Before you judge, just remember that in those days, slavery was no big deal.”

Marc Schelske 11:11
Right? Right. Exactly!

Sarah Sanderson 11:12
It’s like, that is the epitome of this lack of common memory. Who are we talking about, when we say slavery was no big deal? Clearly, we’re not talking about the people who were enslaved, because it was kind of a big deal to them. So can we, as white people, move closer toward understanding what is it about a person of colors holding of their history, rather than moving farther apart? So that the divide keeps getting bigger and we keep talking past each other? Can we move closer toward understanding? “Oh, yeah, it was a big deal, and I need to look at that, honestly.”

Marc Schelske 11:56
Man, that’s, I think, a really helpful frame. I know, in my own personal experience–this is not to make any of my suffering analogous to slavery–but the emotional experience of having something bad happen, explaining that to somebody else, or responding, and having them tell you, “It wasn’t a big deal.” That emotional experience is rough. It’s not fun. And it’s not fun even when the issue at hand is not really a giant situation. My emotional response to being told I’m overreacting is never, “Oh, you’re right. Thanks for illuminating me.”

For me to imagine that the specific trauma that we’re talking about is not only slavery, where individuals and families were forced to work without pay, were treated brutally, their lives were treated as not valuable, they weren’t given care that they needed, often killed. You know, it’s not only that, but then that is embedded in a larger system, at that time, that narrated to the world, “OK, not only is it okay, this is what has to exist, this is the only way that we can have an effective economy.” Think about all of the pressure during the final phase of the COVID locked down. How there was so much pressure that we have to get back, because if we don’t, the economy will collapse. And then, multiply that across the billions and billions and billions of dollars involved in the slave trade, and listen to the voices of white people–not all white people owned slaves, but all white people participated in the economy that slavery allowed–and so then, for those people to say, “Well, the economy requires this.” Right? And then generations later, to be told when an African American person speaks up and says, “There are still traumatic consequences of this in the world and in our lives,” when they speak up and say that, to be told, “It’s not that big of a deal. It didn’t actually happen to you. Why are you reacting this way?” How do we end up in that place? How can a children’s curriculum like the Prager U curriculum that you mentioned, say, without being ironic, it just wasn’t that big of a deal?

Sarah Sanderson 14:14
Yeah, you’re touching on another thing that I really wanted to get at with my book, which was that history has shaped now and it’s still with us now.

Marc Schelske 14:26
Yeah!

Sarah Sanderson 14:27
And so you know, you can’t just say like, “Well, these things happened a long time ago. Why are we still complaining about them?” Because the things that they did are still here, you know? The processes and the systems and the, you know… as you mentioned, like who lives in Oregon today was shaped by what happened over a hundred and fifty years ago. And so for us to really look at, how is our history still with us? And for me, it was a lot about examining my own heart as a white person, and things that I didn’t realize were still with me. And to look at, “Okay, where is white supremacy culture showing up in my own heart?”

Marc Schelske 15:16
Yeah, the question that you just asked, I think, really is the heart of this whole conversation. It’s the heart of both what needs to be said and the heart of what I think a lot of people reject and react to. “What is the place of white supremacy in my heart?” Because I have not had personal relationships with a white person who identifies as a white supremacist. In our minds, when we hear that phrase, we imagine a sort of very visible, stark figure whose life is oriented around violent racial behavior. So we think of the KKK. We think of cross burnings. You know, maybe it’s dressed up a little bit, and we think of like David Duke, and how he was running for president some years ago–and that seemed crazy to some people. And so all of that is so very easy to push away across a line, that it belongs to other people, that belongs to bad people, that belongs to hateful people. And I mean, honestly, I don’t think most any of us identify ourselves as hateful.

Sarah Sanderson 16:18
Right.

Marc Schelske 16:18
And certainly, very few would say, “Yep, I am a white supremacist.” That is a label that’s attached to things that we don’t necessarily think of for ourselves, most of us. So when you ask the question, “how do I see white supremacy working in my own heart?” I don’t think what you mean by that is, “In what way am I a participant in the KKK or desiring to do racial violence?” I don’t think that’s what you mean. So what what does that mean?

Sarah Sanderson 16:46
It’s a good question. I got so familiar with the language in my own head, and my mom read the book, and she was like, “Are you sure you want to tell people you’re a white supremacist?” Like, well, that’s not what I’m trying to say. No, I don’t belong to the KKK. But it was a literal hierarchy of white people at the top, and then this, and then this, and then black people at the bottom. What are the ways that this thinking has seeped into my mental framework, without me even being aware of it?

I was very much a person who thought that I loved everyone and wanted to serve everyone. When I was 20, I went off to Malawi, and… you know, I wanted to help little African babies. I mean, my whole narrative of myself was “I’m a person who’s doing the right thing for the right reasons.”

Marc Schelske 17:40
Sure.

Sarah Sanderson 17:41
And then, when I got to Malawi, the first morning I was there, I looked out the window and the first thought that flashed into my head was, “This is a dangerous place.” And then I realized, I only think that because these people are black. And I did not know that lived in me. I had no idea that I was equating black skin with danger. But as I thought about it, of course, that’s the lie that had been fed to me my whole life.

Marc Schelske 18:15
Yea.

Sarah Sanderson 18:15
And you see that lie everywhere! And so, to be willing to say, “OK, yes. This lie exists, and, it has affected me.” That’s not the same thing as saying, “I’ve signed up for the KKK,” but it’s saying, “How can I deconstruct the lies that are swimming around in my head without me even knowing that they’re there?”

Marc Schelske 18:36
That’s the insidious part. Because, I think, if the idea that white supremacy exists in the neighborhood of people who want to do racial violence, I can discount it as nothing to do with me. And I can even think that what is necessary to fix that is that the people who have those feelings need to have their feelings changed. They need a heart change, right? It’s a sin problem. They need to have Jesus change their heart so that they love everyone.

That pushes the whole conversation into a very individualistic space, where the solution is for individual people to decide in their heart to be loving and kind. Well, certainly, I am all in favor of individual people deciding in their heart to be loving and kind. The trouble is that when it comes to things like mortgages, we don’t get to have a mortgage by deciding in our heart to be someone who is a responsible mortgage holder. There are gatekeepers who evaluate us on certain standards, some of those standards we know and some of them we don’t. And they decide whether we can get a mortgage, or more realistically, they decide whether we can get a mortgage that is in an affordable range for us, which is the same as deciding if we can get one or not. But it never involves them telling us no, right. They just say, “Oh sure, you can get a mortgage with a 21% interest rate.” And you’re like, “Well, I guess that’s not going to happen,” and you move on. And so that isn’t an individual thing. There’s a system in place.

So then when we back up from that system, and we learn about redlining in Oregon, where there’s neighborhoods that explicitly would not allow people of color to get a mortgage. I have church members who live in those neighborhoods now, people who own mortgages in neighborhoods where black people didn’t get the mortgages, right. And so while that individual may not have been racist in their explicit thoughts, it’s conceivable to say that there was a benefit that occurred to them that goes all the way back.

You know, you’ve got this beautiful painting… picture, wood cut, or painting of Oregon City at a certain date on the cover of your book. I can see those places. I’ve walked on those streets, and to realize that that city exists there at the expense of an indigenous community that was removed. Yeah, that’s not something you see when you’re walking down Main Street, Oregon City, stopping at the coffee shop, reading a book in the bookstore? You don’t have to think about that.

Sarah Sanderson 21:00
Right? Yeah. And I think that a lot of times the knee-jerk response of people who don’t want to deal with this issue is to say, “Well, it’s too big. We can’t give Oregon City back. So why would we even bother?” Right? But like figuring out, first of all, what happened? And then second of all, how was what happened–like you say–showing up today? And then, what piece of it can we take responsibility for? And you’re right, it’s got to be both big and small. Major laws have to be changed. And whole systems have to be turned upside down. But also, there are small things in each of our local locations that can be talked about. When we look at the local things, it starts to suggest what a path might be to respond.

Marc Schelske 22:02
I’m interested in hearing about that path of personal response. Let’s move in that direction. But first, before we do, you were involved in this project for quite some time. You have your head in these books and this research project, you’re getting familiar with these characters, coming face to face with, not only the events that happen historically, but even how your own family is entangled in that, Talk about what that was like for you. What personal insights came to you while working through this project?

Sarah Sanderson 22:33
When I began, I just simply was curious about… My brother had just told me, “Hey, Oregon was founded on anti-black exclusion laws,” and I had no idea. I was shocked. I wanted to know more. I came across Jake Vanderpool ‘s name on a website and something just kind of pulled me in. I wanted to know more about this one person, I think because it was one story. It felt like it was maybe possible to wrap my hands around this one person who lived really close to where I live today. Then when I got into it, I realized that my own family members had been part of the story, which I didn’t know when I began. My family members lived there at the time that Jacob Vanderpool was there, and so then it became personal for me. My family members were witnesses to this. And then I found out that I’m related to Theophilus McGruder, the guy who pressed charges against Jacob Vanderpool. Not only did they witness it, but they made it happen!

The concept that kept coming to me was when Nehemiah stands…Nehemiah and Ezra, in Nehemiah, chapter nine, they bring all the people of Israel, they’re coming back from exile. And it says they stood in their places and confessed their sins and the sins of their ancestors. And I think that’s something we don’t really know how to do today. We don’t want to confess the sins of our ancestors; we don’t really even want to confess our own sin.

Marc Schelske 24:12
Sure. Sure. Well, the issue then is that we have such a an individualized view of identity, and that has tracked into the way that Christians talk about the gospel. And so of course, sinners need to confess their sins, particularly if they get caught, right? So that’s very focused. An individual did a bad thing. Part of the process of restoration, reconciliation, and ultimately, forgiveness and salvation is that they own it, confess it. I think most people nod their head at that. But then because our cultural worldview is so individualized, the idea that I would be held responsible in some way for something that somebody else did is just alien to us. In the culture that you mentioned, the ancient Hebrew culture, the ancient Near East, and that time, the Bronze Age era, they did not have… they did not share with us that individualized worldview, they had a collective worldview. They believed that the family, the tribe, the nation were bound together in in very explicit ways. And so for them, confessing the sins of their ancestors made sense, because they had a mechanism to explain how the trauma of the present moment could be connected to things that I didn’t personally do but that happened in the past. That is something that just simply doesn’t exist in the current culture that we live in, except for voices that are beginning to say, “Hey, look, this isn’t about you pressing the button…

Sarah Sanderson 25:50
Yeah.

Marc Schelske 25:50
…This is about you being the fruit of a tree. And that tree has significance for what’s going on around you.” As I read the book… you know, I drive down McLaughlin Avenue probably every day. I go by buildings that have his name on them. The structure of the town of Oregon City, these people had a hand in what buildings went where and where the streets lie, and ultimately, who got to own those properties. Johnson Creek is right up the street for me and it sort of defines the map. And it’s named after this guy Johnson, who did some really horrible things to the native women who lived in the area. Johnson Creek! I see that… you know, all of this stuff. it’s so present. And so the way that I want to separate myself from it by saying, “Well, I’m not individually responsible for those things,” that wall gets gets thinner, more fragile, because I’m beginning to see “No, no, no, there are ramifications for things that happen that are playing out in my life currently.” And the issue is not that I need to confess my culpability for what happened 250 years ago. The issue is am I willing to acknowledge that some of the benefit that has come to me today that I benefit from is the result of those people’s choices? And not only that, some of the benefit that has come to me, would have gone to other people, maybe Native people, maybe black Americans, if those people up the family tree had made different decisions.

Sarah Sanderson 27:33
Yeah, there’s a book called, Reparations by Duke Kwon and Greg Thompson. They give as analogy of if your dad stole a car, and then died, and left you the car, it would still belong to the person that it was stolen from, right. Like, the police could still come to you and say, “No, this is theirs. You have to give it back.”

Marc Schelske 27:56
Yeah.

Sarah Sanderson 27:56
And so, even when it’s been stolen, many generations before, there’s still a sense in which there’s something that rightly belongs to someone else. And so how do we as a community decide to… not that we are responsible, right, like, I didn’t actually do the things 150 years ago, but can I take responsibility? Can we as a community take responsibility for this stuff that happened all these years ago? And say, “No, we don’t want to keep holding the bag of the stuff that was passed down to us, we want to set this right.”

Marc Schelske 28:36
And so then that raises the very difficult and complicated feeling question of “OK, then what does it look like to set it right?” Because, as you said earlier, whether or not giving Oregon City back to the native people who lived there at the falls, whether or not that’s the right thing–which people will argue–the system that we have, and the way land is owned with mortgages, and all of this, all the stuff that’s tied up over a hundred and fifty years, is not going to allow that as a simple solution.

Sarah Sanderson 29:09
Right.

Marc Schelske 29:10
OK. So then it it’d be easy to just take a deep breath and say, “Well, we there’s nothing we can do about it.”

Sarah Sanderson 29:18
Right.

Marc Schelske 29:18
So, the situation with Jacob Vanderpool maybe feels slightly more manageable. Because you could say, “All right, Jacob Vanderpool is a Dude. We can track down his family tree. And we can do some calculations and figure out what his grant-great-great grandchildren ought to have had, if his Inn was allowed to prosper. And we’ll do a fundraiser or GoFundMe or a government program, and we’ll help them with that advancement. So even though a lot of people would argue that and say, for various reasons why that’s not good or just or fair, at least as a solution, it feels slightly more conceivable then “Let’s return all of Oregon City to the native people who lived at the top of the falls,” and yet it still feels enormous. And so once again, I’m left in a place where even good-hearted people that want to say I see how restoration requires ownership and acknowledgement and confession and repentance, and… you know, the scary word you said in the title of Kwon’s book, reparations, which is just rooted in the word repair…

Sarah Sanderson 30:27
Right.

Marc Schelske 30:28
…that we have to do something to repair the damage done, I can see that. But I’m just at a loss for how to do that in a way that is is doable and just.

Sarah Sanderson 30:39
It is a huge question. It’s not like you and I are gonna sit here and figure out the answer, right? This is this is bigger than all of us. Honestly, here’s what I’m praying for, Marc. So I think a lot about Nehemiah and the people who confessed their sins and the sins of their ancestors. I also think a lot about the Egyptians when the Exodus happened. They’re on their way out the door, they’ve just had the very first Passover, the pharaoh has said, “Go, get out of here.” They’re going to the promised land. And it says that God moved the hearts of the Egyptians to give them gold, just shower them with gold. And I don’t know that every white person is called to just like empty their bank account for every person of color, but can God move our hearts to desire justice? I don’t know what it’s going to look like. But I’m praying that there will be a softening of hearts.

Marc Schelske 31:37
Yeah. How did that look for you?

Sarah Sanderson 31:40
Yeah, one simple thing is that I just knew that I wasn’t… I couldn’t take the money from this book. It’s not like I’m sitting on tons of money and I’m just giving away… but it just felt like I can’t take the money for this. There’s also the sacrifice of of my time. But these are like, small personal thing.

Marc Schelske 32:00
Right.

Sarah Sanderson 32:01
So, I don’t know what it’s gonna look like for every person to do small personal things like that. Like shopping at a black-owned business, or whatever it is. But I also think that collectively, as a nation, we need to have a conversation about our history. There does need to be some… I mean… I don’t want to say reallocation of funds or you know… people are gonna say communist or whatever, I should probably not even… we should probably go back and erase all of this. But we have to be willing to look at our history, to have these messy conversations: What has happened? How has it shaken out? And how can we enact laws and systems that begin to repair?

There’s one thing I did not talk about in the book. I live in Gladstone, which I didn’t say in the book, because there’s Proud Boys in Gladstone, too. I don’t want them to show up at my front door. But in Gladstone, just down the street from me, there’s a piece of property that once was used in 1922 as an initiation for the Ku Klux Klan. A hundred and ten people were initiated into the KKK at a spot that’s just six blocks down the street from where I’m sitting right now. In the newspaper, this 1922 newspaper, it says that two thousand people came out to witness this. And so you could say like, “Well, that happened a long time ago. What are we supposed to do about it now?”

But then, I found out that in 1980 twenty kids came to Gladstone High School, which is where my kids go, dressed in KKK hoods and gowns for costume day. They weren’t sent home to change. Their picture was taken and put in the yearbook. We had this thing in 1922. A hundred and ten people were initiated into the KKK. But then in 1980, people were showing up to high school dressed in KKK hoods and gowns. That still… like okay, that’s in my lifetime, but it’s not in a lot of people’s lifetime yet, right. But then, like my, my son’s best friend, he’s biracial. He was sitting in Gladstone High School just a couple of years ago watching a basketball game. And all the kids around him started pulling his hair and calling him the N word.

It’s about both. It’s about the legal and economic systems, and it’s about how are we going to reach the hearts and minds of the seventh graders who are sitting in the bleachers at Gladstone High School, and they don’t even know the history that they’re stepping into. They don’t know that the KKK was initiated down the street and their parents or grandparents came to school in hoods in 1980. But somehow it’s filtered down in the water to them. I don’t know what the answer is for the economic whatever, but in order to have the collective will to do something economically, we’ve got to get honest about how those things that happened a long time ago are still here in our hearts.

Marc Schelske 35:08
Right, exactly. Right. And the property that you mentioned is still a gathering place. It’s property that’s owned by the Seventh-day Adventist Church. It’s used for large Annual Convocation gatherings. People go there for special religious events. And so what does that mean? What opportunity is opened if that organization were to understand this history? Would they be able to say, “We are the stewards of this place now, and maybe we weren’t a part of that event, but is there a way for us to, as you say, take responsibility in a way that leads toward healing and hope and restoration?” What could that look like?

Sarah Sanderson 35:53
Right!

Marc Schelske 35:54
Could an event happen? Could there be some way that that could be commemorated? Could there be some way where that could be named, so that people, like those seventh graders…

Sarah Sanderson 36:05
Yes!

Marc Schelske 36:06
…are able to hear the story and be told, “This is not who we want to be?” Because saying to a seventh grader today, “this is not who we want to be” is actually running direct resistance to McLaughlin and McGruder, and all those guys who literally said explicitly on paper, signed by witnesses, “this is who we want to be. We want to be the kind of people that exclude African Americans, we don’t want them here.” That is our heritage. I can’t undo what those guys did. But I can be a part of saying, as a community, “that’s not who we want to be.”

Sarah Sanderson 36:46
Exactly, yes. So I’m meeting with them in a few weeks. I’ll let you know how it goes. I have a vision for some kind of a gathering. What if we could get more people to come out for a reversal of that thing that happened in 1922, then came out for the initial thing? And you’re right! We have to say it explicitly because we haven’t yet. Explicitly, in history, it was said, “White people are better. And we’re going to not listen to these people. And you can own these people.” Yes, we’ve, we’ve overturned some of those laws, but we haven’t had a moment where we’ve said, as a nation. “This happened and we don’t want to be that anymore.”

Marc Schelske 37:31
Yeah. All right. So there’s another group of folks who are resistant to this conversation that you and I are both part of, and that’s the church. There are folks in the Christian church who will say that these kinds of conversations may be necessary to have, but they aren’t Christian conversations. Some folks will be even more extreme than that. They’ll say this kind of conversation is a distraction, or this kind of conversation is “woke,” where they’ve taken an African American term and turned it into a pejorative, and said, this is you getting drawn into some kind of secular liberal agenda, this is not what Christians should be about. So you’re a follower of Jesus. You may have even had people express these sentiments to you. So in your journey with this book, and now that you’re talking about it, how does this whole thing fit for you within the gospel work of Christian people?

Sarah Sanderson 38:22
Yes, I have had some people come to me with concerns like that. And for me, that’s why it’s important to get back down to where is this in my own heart. That’s pretty hard to argue with. Is there racism out in the world? We can debate that…

Marc Schelske 38:42
We can; certain people will not.

Sarah Sanderson 38:44
Right.

Marc Schelske 38:44
Our African-American friends will not debate it with us. They’ll be like, “The only reason you’re debating it is because you don’t want to acknowledge or take ownership.” Right? It’s not debatable.

Sarah Sanderson 38:53
But I mean, those people who have like… those people who say, “That’s woke, we shouldn’t be talking about that,” like they can debate that.

Marc Schelske 39:00
Yeah.

Sarah Sanderson 39:01
But for me to say, “No, I was afraid of black men because they were black. Because I grew up in a society that taught me that black men were dangerous.” How can you argue with that? I’m telling you; that’s how I feel, have felt, and I’m working to overturn. So there’s… that’s one aspect of it, getting down to the real confession of what’s really in my heart.

And then, you asked about the gospel piece. I think, what enables me to disclose that is that I know that I’m loved and forgiven by Jesus, because I had so much fear and so much shame. It was really hard to sit down and write this book, especially that chapter where I uncover my own personal things that I’ve discovered in myself that I didn’t even know were there. So much shame and fear. And the only way I was able to do it, was because I knew that Jesus loves me and forgives me, and I had nothing else to lose. So Paul says we have to boast in our weaknesses. And we’re free to do that because we’re loved. There’s no other way that you can boast about your weakness and your shame and your failure, and not boast, as in, I’m proud or happy that this is here, but boast in the sense of like, “I’m going to be honest about this, even though our culture does not want to admit that these things are still here.”

Marc Schelske 40:41
Christians ought to be able to be at the forefront of of owning this, of saying these things are true about me and our community and, and taking steps to name that. And we can do that because of grace and forgiveness. But that still leaves it in the location of the individual heart. So what would you say about the place of this larger conversation about racial justice and the systems of racial discrimination? How do you see that connecting with the work of the church?

Sarah Sanderson 41:16
Well, I mean, when we when we’re talking about repenting, naming our own sins, naming our collective sins, the white church has a lot to repent of. In Jamar Tisby’s book, The color of Compromise, he does a great job of laying out in all these different denominations, and all these different churches throughout American history, the church has engineered and been complicit with white supremacy for hundreds of years. I think every town can do the work of finding out what its history is, and beginning to ask, “How can we repair this?”

Every family can do the work. Every church can do the work of asking both denominationally and locally, “Who are the people that founded our church? And what did they believe? And what did they do?” Is it easy to pull skeletons out of closets? No. But it’s important. I mean, I don’t know that I’m convincing your person, your mythical… not mythical… but your your person that you’ve invited into the room with us.

Marc Schelske 42:28
I don’t know that they’re going to be convinced, but I do think that it’s something that we need to talk about. Because when you think about younger Sarah, or similarly, younger Marc, being members of the Christian community, maybe even in roles of influence or leadership, being people who, as you said earlier, really thought we were saying and doing and believing the right things, really desiring, longing, to be of benefit to folks in the world, right? And even, like your trip to Malawi, even taking steps to do what, at the time, felt like constructive ways of making a difference. Those people also exist now. And in the same way that you said it was scary for you to think of naming these things as functioning in your own life, many folks in our peer community in the church are in that place right now. We have to invite those people to courage, right?

The people that are standing opposed to this are not going to be convinced by this. They’re not going to read your book, unless the Spirit does some amazing thing and transform the situation. That’s not who we’re talking about.

Sarah Sanderson 43:48
Right.

Marc Schelske 43:48
Right? We’re talking to the folks in the average church, down the street from where I live, who think of themselves as good people who want to do the right thing, who want to be part of God’s work in the world, but who are afraid to push into this space because of the social risk.

Sarah Sanderson 44:09
Yeah, I mean, that is a real fear. And I’m hoping to offer in my own self, someone who doesn’t have all the answers, but who’s willing to step into the conversation anyway. I don’t think we need to feel like we have to have all the answers before we step into the conversation. Because the conversation is both speaking and it’s also listening. And so maybe the first step for people in that position who are feeling afraid, not knowing what to say, the first step is to do more listening.

Marc Schelske 44:43
To help us with that gift, as we close, why don’t you name some of the specific books and resources that people who might be listening to this podcast can go to if they are people who have that interior sense that they want to be in this conversation… it feels like the right thing to be in this conversation, but maybe they’re afraid to ask or don’t know where to begin. What are the authors, the books, the resources, the people that they can pay attention to on social media that you might recommend as a starting point?

Sarah Sanderson 45:16
These are my top two books for Christians who… books for white American Christians, who want to get involved in this conversation, and they’re not sure how to start. So this one is Jamar Tisby, The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism. So this is more of a history, and it’s pretty short. It’s not a comprehensive history, but it’s a history of where the American… the white American church has gotten it wrong. This book, Dear White Peacemakers, by Osheta Moore, is a lovely… there’s memoir, there’s some self-reflection, but there’s also a lot of speaking specifically to white Christians, and saying, “I know you’re afraid I know you’re scared. I know you don’t know how to speak into this. There’s grace for you.”

REFLECTION

Marc Schelske 46:14
I’m a white, middle class American Christian man. As I close this episode, I want to talk for a moment, to those of you who are like me, just a white Christian, talking to other white Christians for a bit.

Like Sarah, I grew up in the church with an authentic desire to do the right thing, to love like Jesus loves, like Sarah talked about, I would never have considered myself to be racist, precisely because I was told that racists were hateful, violent, wicked people. And because I didn’t think I was hateful or violent or wicked, I couldn’t see how my life was deeply formed by attitudes and assumptions about the superiority of white people like me.

It’s taken a long time, a lot of listening, a lot of paying attention to the lived experience of black people in America, and a lot of setting aside my own self-defensiveness, for me to see what I had not been able to see. Whether I like it or not, there are significant differences between the way I experienced this country, and the way that black Americans experience it. It took paying attention to hundreds of little puzzle pieces: how I felt when I got pulled over for speeding, the tone with which I felt comfortable addressing the officer, the ease with which I move in so many spaces, just acting like I belong there, just going wherever I want, the way that I’ve been able to easily get a mortgage to live where I want to live, the way my financial creditors have been willing to work with me when I had hard times, and so many more little details.

And then there was noticing the justifications I had adopted. You know: my life was easier because I was educated, I followed the plan, I was a good Christian, or because I followed the law, or because I had the good fortune of having two parents in the home. Now certainly all those things made a difference in my life. But I wasn’t able to see that there were many black and brown people with the very same qualifications I had, who didn’t get the same opportunities I got. It took a long time to understand that I’m the beneficiary of a system that was built, brick by brick, over 400 years expressly to benefit people like me. And that system has been in place for so long that it had become invisible to me. And because the system was invisible, I was able to believe that all of what I have, I have on the basis of merit and hard work alone.

The truth is I have worked hard, but so have many black and brown people. I’ve put in the time, but so have many black and brown people. I’ve kept the law and played by the rules, but so have many black and brown people. Look, I know how difficult it is to admit that there might be such a thing as a system of white supremacy that has structured this nation since its founding, since before its founding! I know how painful it can be to acknowledge that I’ve been the beneficiary of that system. I know how much anxiety there can be around this conversation. I know it’s controversial. I know it feels enormous. I know it feels too big to handle. But use your compassionate imagination for a moment. If the issue of racial disparity and injustice feels too big to handle for a white middle-class American Christian like me, like many of you, than how much more painful does it feel for the people that aren’t the beneficiaries of generations of benefit of the doubt?

The ethic that shapes the way I see the world is the other-centered co-suffering way of Jesus. The apostle Paul summarize this by saying that when we bear one another’s burdens, we fulfill the law of Christ. Well, my white brothers and sisters, there is a burden being carried in this nation by black and brown and indigenous people. And that burden is heavy. It is costly. It is unjust and it is not their problem to deal with alone. It seems clear to me, that for us to fulfill the law of Christ in this time and place, we have to join in bearing this burden until we find ways to relieve it.

It was white people, like me, who stood up in Oregon and said, “We want to be the kind of people who exclude others for our own advantage.” They said it outloud. They said it with white hoods in a public gathering space about 10 minutes from my house. They also said it in writing in the Oregon constitution. Like I said to Sarah, I can’t undo what was done in the past, but I can step up and say, “I want our community to be different.” Does that align with your heart? Then begin thinking about how you can be part of bearing this burden and repairing it. In our conversation, Sarah said, “I don’t think we need to feel like we have all the answers before we step into the conversation. Because the conversation is also listening.” She’s right. If your heart is moved, if you feel that something must be done, but if you’re not sure where to start, then make a commitment to start listening and see how the Spirit leads you. Will you step into this conversation?

May you find the courage to enter into this hard work, and may the Spirit guide your imagination to see how you can be part of repairing what was done, so that others can experience the fullness of life.

Thanks for listening. Notes for today’s episode, and any links mentioned can be found at MarcAlanSchelske.com/TAW054.

If you found this conversation helpful, then subscribe to my newsletter, The Apprenticeship Notes. Get my writing about once a month, subscribe and you’ll also get the free little book I’m offering, The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Practice for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World. This spiritual practice that has been so helpful to me as I face the anxiety and uncertainty of our time. I used it this morning as I was thinking about the war that’s happening right now in Israel. Maybe you would find a place for a spiritual practice of centering like this. Subscribe at www.MarcOptIn.com.

Until next time, remember: in this one present moment, you are loved, you are known, and you are not alone.

Episode 053 – What if the Bible isn’t perfect? (With Zach Hunt)

There are many debates and disagreements within Christianity. Behind most of these, you’ll find one very significant issue. How we read the Bible. The way we read the Bible and what we believe about how the Bible came to be directly gets at what we believe about God. Can Christianity work if the Bible isn’t perfect?

Show Notes

• Get Zach’s books:
  • Godbreathed: What it Really Means for the Bible to Be Divinely Inspired
  • Unraptured: How End Times Theology Gets It Wrong

• Scroll down for a full transcript of this episode.
• You can also watch and share the video version on Youtube.

More about My Conversation Partner

Zack Hunt has spent the last decade writing about the interplay of faith and politics in the public sphere on his eponymous blog, Substack, and Patheos as well as contributing articles to multiple publications. He’s also made appearances in Rolling Stone, The Boston Globe, Huffington Post, and various other media outlets.

• Find Zack at www.TheWayIsTheWay.org
• Threads: @zaackhunt
• Facebook: @zlhunt
• Instagram: @zaackhunt

Today’s Sponsor

• Journaling for Spiritual Growth – Six weeks to build a habit that fosters spiritual and emotional maturity. This little book is a generous and hospitable guide to establishing a sustainable spiritual practice. Try it now.

More from Marc

• Get The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World – This little book is free for you by opting into my email list.
• Discovering your Authentic Core Values: A Step-by-step Guide
• Subscribe to my Email List. You’ll get a free copy of a little book called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer & Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World.

Transcription

Marc Schelske 0:00
Hey friends, I’m Marc Alan Schelske, and this is The Apprenticeship Way, a podcast about spiritual growth following the way of Jesus. This is episode 53. What if the Bible isn’t perfect?

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Today’s podcast is made possible by Journaling for Spiritual Growth. This is my new book. It launched in November of 2022, so it’s just a few months old, but it’s already finding its people. And that is so exciting to me, especially since this is a book with a pretty small target audience. I heard from one woman who grew up in the church, and her comment after reading Journaling For Spiritual Growth was how relieved she felt. For her, this little book helped her to untangle her picture of God and find a healthy way to pursue spiritual growth. I teared up, listening to her.

Here’s an Amazon review that just moved me. “I wish this book had been around when I was at the start of my deconstructing process and trying to form a new connection to my last shred of spiritual practice with the Bible. After reading this book, I can tell you it is something special. I found this book clear, focused, and transparent in its intentions. It became my friend in a way as I explored the prompts. It makes room for one’s personal story and experience. Give it a try. I hope it gracefully surprises you as it did me.” As an author, I could not ask for higher praise than that.

This little book is a six-week process to gently guide you through building a lasting and sustainable journaling practice, where you’ll experience spiritual and emotional growth. My intention was to write something helpful and healing. And if that sounds intriguing, you can get it in all the book places where you can get a signed copy directly from me at my website. Learn more about the book and the places that you can get it at www.JournalingForSpiritualGrowth.com.

INTRODUCTION

Marc Schelske 1:50

There is significant division and disagreement in the greater Christian community. This includes long historical arguments about theology, like exactly what it means that Jesus saves us and exactly how that comes about, and arguments about what it looks like to be a follower of Jesus, even arguments about practical things like the role and rights of women, or the nature of the family, or the role of the church and its relationship to government. Important stuff.

In the moment we find ourselves in, we’re witnessing a resurgence of a kind of authoritarian Christianity that seems to believe that everything would be better if their sort of Christian was in charge of everything, in charge of libraries and schools and elections. Of course, there are many Christians, myself included, who see this tendency as opposed to everything Jesus stood for. And even that is another argument between Christians!

And behind these arguments, you’ll find one very significant issue. Rarely in life can you reduce so many complex problems to one issue, but in this case, I think we can. What’s the issue that has such a wide-reaching impact? How we read the Bible. How a Christian reads the Bible says something about what they think the Bible is about, how they think God relates to humanity, and what exactly they think about how God’s power works. All of these big ideas are wrapped up in this one very practical thing.

Christians come to the Bible with a point of view about what the Bible is. Theologians refer to this question as the matter of inspiration, and this is the heart of so many of our different ways of being Christian. So many of our arguments about the issue is more complex than a simple binary. We can, for our purposes today, suggest that there are two main schools of thought on inspiration.

On the one hand, we have folks who believe that inspiration means that the Bible, as we have it now, is exactly what God intended it to be. And because God’s not a liar, that means the Bible cannot contain any discrepancies or errors. This also means that the words in the Bible stand as an exact, clear revelation of God’s precise will. These folks see the Bible as primarily a divine document. For some of these people, the Bible becomes almost interchangeable with God.

On the other hand, you have folks who believe that inspiration means that, however, the Bible was formed, God was involved and is able to use the Bible as we have it now for spiritual purposes. Now, this group tends to think that the Bible is, in one way or another, primarily a human document.

Now both of these camps that I’ve explained in this simplified way have variations, and an honest accounting of these views would include a lot more nuance than what I just said. But the core question about inspiration remains the same. In what way is the Bible a divine document? And in what way, if any, is the Bible the human document?

Zach Hunt has been thinking about this for a while. He’s worked in church life and ministry in a variety of ways for more than twenty years. He spent a lot of time and effort thinking about how the church got into this position, both through his own formal education with a graduate degree in theology and another from Yale Divinity School in Christian history and then through his own work in the trenches of pastoral ministry where these ideas have to take on practical skin.

Recently, Zack released a book on the subject called Godbreathed: What It Really Means For the Bible To Be Divinely Inspired. And right away, in the introduction, he gets to the heart of this problem. These are his words: “When we treat the Bible and God as interchangeable, something else happens, often without us even realizing it. Because the Bible doesn’t exist on its own, because it was written by people in a culture and time far removed from our own, it requires interpretation. So when we make God and the Bible interchangeable, what we are also doing is making ourselves or rather our interpretation of the Bible, interchangeable with God.” And so I asked him to talk with me about this problem and how it underlies much of the tumult in Christianity today.

CONVERSATION

Zach Hunt 5:43
What I’m really trying to have a conversation about in Godbreathed is this baseline foundation of where we’re all coming from. Because the reality is none of us come to the Bible as a blank slate, you know. You hear a lot of folks talk about, you know, a plain sense of scripture or plain reading, or they’re just, you know, reciting the Bible, or, “if you have problems, take it up with God, or Jesus”, or whoever it is, and really is like, none of that is true. We come to it with a whole host of assumptions, and ideas, and beliefs before we ever open its pages. And that’s okay. It’s inevitable.

The problem is when we don’t acknowledge that. You know, the problem comes in when we act as if we are free from any sort of bias, or, you know, preconceived notions, that we come to the Bible as a fresh slate and that we’re just repeating the words, unfiltered, ideas unfiltered. And that’s almost never the case, even when we repeat Bible verses that we use as proof texts to prove our theology. Oftentimes, the words that we’re repeating are not the words that we’re saying in our beliefs. There’s translation. There’s interpretation that happens from the page to the profession that a lot of times we miss because we’ve been conditioned to think that, well, we’re just, you know, repeating the Bible. And so what I’m trying to really get to in this book really is twofold.

One is this idea that it’s okay to ask questions, you know. Because growing up in my evangelical background, in my immediate context at my church, you know, that was okay, but in the broader world, asking questions about the Bible, or doubting or pushing back a little and criticizing, you know, was blasphemy because the Bible was akin to God. And so, if you’re questioning or criticizing scripture, you’re spitting on the face of God. And so I want to give people permission to ask questions, to be free to wrestle with Scripture in the same way that the people of God have since before there was a Bible. I mean, you go back to the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible story of Jacob, and he’s literally wrestling with God. So the idea that we can’t do that with the words of people written about God is crazy. But that’s an unspoken–sometimes spoken in certain contexts–constraint that most of us face.

But the other was, is trying to approach scripture in a way that is honest and that maintains intellectual integrity. Because, you know, to hold up things like biblical perfection or inerrancy requires more mental gymnastics than I am physically capable of. It’s dishonest on the most basic level, but to get to that, the people who affirm it, don’t start there. They’re starting before that with a confession of faith. It’s already been decided before the folks who believe in inerrancy pick up the Bible that the Bible is perfect. And so they spend all their time from that point on trying to reconcile and do all this work that’s completely unnecessary because the Bible doesn’t need to be perfect to communicate truth because that’s not how truth functions.

You know, your parents teach you truth all the time growing up. Your teachers teach your truth. Your pastor teaches you truth. None of those people are perfect. And that’s what makes the Bible challenging is that it has both. We have to do the hard work of understanding those cultural contexts and facts. But we also have to do the work of understanding the role of storytelling, and how that worked in the ancient world, in the ancient Near East, and for the people of Israel, and why there is still truth to be gleaned from stories whether or not they took place historically,

Marc Schelske 9:21
We had a really interesting example of how this plays out practically last night in our discussion at church. The lectionary passage that we had last night was Matthew’s version of the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet. So we read this passage out, and we go through our discussion process, “What about this passage is meaningful to you” and something began to happen. People were talking about the story. They began unconsciously–not noticing they were doing it–to synthesize details from the different gospels, and those details were not in our text.

We stopped, and we said, “Wait, why do you why do you think that about this person?” “Well, the Bible tells us that this was a sinful woman,” and I’m like, “Wait, look at our text. Does our text in Matthew say this was a sinful woman?” We looked? No. Well, why do I think that? Oh, we flipped over, and we’re like, that’s in Luke’s gospel. Why do Matthew and Mark not name this person? Luke calls this person a sinful woman, and then John identifies it as Mary of Bethany. And Mary of Bethany was known to Jesus and the disciples. They were friends. So why wouldn’t the disciples and Matthew and Mark have recognized that it was Mary of Bethany? That doesn’t make sense. The minute I started asking this question of them, “Where are you getting that detail?” And we looked at the text, we’re like, “Oh, something is happening here.”

Why do we have this intuition to synthesize the stories? And I think it’s what you’re talking about. It’s that because we have this preconception that the Bible is journalistic reportage, that every detail is portable into all the versions. So like, for example, the metaphor that came up was that we think of the Gospels as four different security cameras aimed at the same intersection. And because they’re on different corners, they catch different details, but they’re all talking about the same event. But when we looked at the text the way we did, we’re like, that can’t actually be the case. Right? Just this one detail. The disciples knew Mary of Bethany. Why would they not have recognized her and left her unnamed in Matthew and Mark? Why would that be? That doesn’t make sense.

So what does that mean? Does that mean these are different events, and Jesus got anointed by multiple women? Does that mean that the human author of the Gospels had a point they were trying to make? Matthew’s version very clearly is making the point that this unnamed woman, who’s not a disciple, who’s an outsider, who wasn’t invited to the party, is the only one in the room who’s conscious that Jesus is about to die. That’s very clearly Matthew’s point. But Luke’s point isn’t that at all; Luke’s point is about forgiveness of sins. So these two narratives are talking about something different, and we can’t see that if we have to synthesize them into one story.

Zach Hunt 12:00
Exactly. And that gets to a big point that I try to hammer home, particularly in the second half of Godbreathed., The phrase or the idea that “the Bible says” is incoherent. It’s meaningless. Because the Bible doesn’t say anything. Because the Bible is not a book. It’s a collection of books. Some people have used the metaphor of a library, like a collection of books. I love that image. In the book, I talked about the Bible as an anthology. If there’s cohesion in the Bible, it’s this big story that’s being told. I mean, ultimately, that’s what the Bible is; it’s the story of the people of God, but it’s the story told by the people of God and how we understood God’s relationship with us and vice versa across time.

And if you understand in that sort of context and the sense of like a literary workshop that is continually being worked on, then the Bible becomes a sort of dynamic and living, breathing story today, not just this old book that sits on the shelf. Because you and I are part of the storytelling. You know, we may not write a gospel or an epistle or anything like that that gets canonized in the Holy Scripture, but if the Bible is the story of the people of God, that story did not end in the fourth century, or whenever you want to choose to say the Bible was, you know, closed. That story continues to be told.

Now that opens up a whole new can of worms about what inspiration looks like, you know, about the movement of the Holy Spirit, about how we interact with scripture. Those are huge questions that I only touch on in the book because, again, what I’m trying to get to here is we need to get back to the very, very basics. We have to start all of these conversations at the very, very, very beginning of what is the Bible before we get into this stuff about inspiration and healthier ways of reading the Bible.

I tried to tackle its history because I don’t think most people really are familiar with biblical history, not biblical history of, like, you know, when Joshua entered the promised land, but like, when was the Bible actually written? Who actually wrote it? How did it develop? Because I’m coming at this with several degrees and even, I was still surprised to learn new things. Mark is usually regarded as the oldest gospel that was written or the first gospels written. Mark was not written in the sense that we write a book today, like if you or I sit down, we write a book, it gets published in one single volume, but that Mark, maybe even other gospels as well–especially if you know the Synoptics are borrowing from each other (meaning Matthew, Mark, and Luke) this really, you know, makes a lot of sense.

Mark really started as a collection of what were essentially sermon notes, you know, of parables, of stories that were passed around by the disciples by other teachers, so that people had these notes to essentially preach from, to keep the story going and to continue to tell the story. And so those get coalesced into one single volume by an editor, by multiple editors, and then you have… You see this editing going on with Luke and Matthew off of Mark, and John’s over here doing his own, you know, wild and crazy things. If that is how the Gospels came about, if the Gospels come about over a longer process than most of us imagined, then there’s no original document to appeal to, to say, “Oh, the Bible is perfect in its original documents,” because those things don’t exist. I mean, in one sense, they literally don’t exist. I mean, we don’t have them.

Marc Schelske 15:13
Let me pause real quickly on this because I want to highlight something you just said that I think might be helpful to understand. So you just pointed to a phrase, critiquing that phrase, of “the Bible is accurate in the original documents.” And that phrase is important because that phrase is one of the stands that is taken by folks that hold to inerrancy.

Zach Hunt 15:36
Correct.

Marc Schelske 15:36
So sort of a simplistic inerrancy is the Bible that I have in front of me is perfect. But that can’t stand very long because when you read the Bible, as you have it in front of you, there are places that disagree. Something as simple as my example that in Matthew’s Gospel, the host of this meal was Simon, the man with skin disease. In Luke’s Gospel, the host was an unnamed Pharisee. That’s a difference. Maybe it’s the same person. But it’s clearly a difference, right? And so you begin to have to reconcile those things.

Well, a more nuanced version of inspiration is, “Well, the Bible is not perfect exactly as we have it today, because there’s been translation and scribal errors and transmission concerns, but the original document, what we refer to as the autograph that that parchment that Mark was writing on, that’s the document that the Holy Spirit inspired, and that document was perfect.” So that’s what you’re referring to, and it’s often held up as, “Well, yeah, we have these particular issues today in the text, but we can kind of wind our way past those.” But our confidence in Scripture is based on the idea that, in the original autograph, it was perfectly inspired without error. And you’re saying, well, in many cases, there’s no original document to lean on. The gospel that we have now is a curated document that’s built from a collection, and that collection existed because it was important to the people in the communities of the early church.

Zach Hunt 17:08
I think that’s a great point to hit on, you know, in the other direction. Because we’re critiquing conservative theology, but if you go to the other extreme, you get the “Dan Brown theology” (or theology is maybe too strong the word) conspiracies, you know, that the Bible was put together by a bunch… a secret cabal in Nicea in the fourth century, and they picked and chose blah, blah, blah. And that’s not true, either. I think exactly what you said is how I put it in the book as well. I mean, these are a collection of documents that came together because they were important to the people who read them. They were seen as true by the people who read them, even if those people did not experience those stories firsthand, even if those people had no way to prove historically that any of those stories were true, they were true to them because they had experienced that truth in their lives.

So, going back to the Hebrew Bible, that’s the reason that those stories were eventually written down, because they weren’t written down originally, either. They were stories told by campfires and out in fields and to your kids before they went to bed. The people of Israel wrote those stories down about Exodus and the promised land and things like that, and God being faithful because they experienced God’s faithfulness in their lives. There have been many times in church history, including today, where there are cabals of old men who make decisions and manipulate the church, but the coming together of scripture was not one of them.

But because it’s not that, it also speaks to the beauty of Scripture because it’s written by so many people. Like you said, we’ve got four different gospels, and you know, in the context of other faiths, that’s kind of weird. You know, why don’t we have one gospel? Why don’t we have one authoritative story? But that’s also very Christian, in the sense that we’ve got all kinds of churches and denominations and traditions and theologies because, at the end of the day, the stuff that we’re talking about is weird, and confusing, and huge. I mean, you’re talking about God becoming man and Resurrection, walking on water. Of course, there’s going to be different perspectives. And so when we try to flatten scripture into this one narrative, this one story, this one perspective, then we fundamentally don’t understand the Bible, we don’t understand the people, the story of the people of God, and I would argue, we don’t understand how the Holy Spirit works in terms of inspiration.

We look at 2nd Timothy 3:16, where we get the phrase theopneustos, which is the Greek word for “Godbreathed.” We think of that as sort of a one-off kind of moment, I think (again, not consciously), but you know, God breathed the scriptures, and we have them, and now we move on. But God breathing into, God breathing life, is an ongoing process. You know, we see that the beginning of Genesis when God takes dirt off the ground and breathes into it life, and gives humanity our start. We see it in Exodus when God breathes into the Red Sea, and it divides, and the people find new life on the other side. We see it–and this is how I conclude the book–we see it in the valley of dry bones with dead bones coming back to life, with flesh and sinews and eyeballs and ears and everything else. We see it in the tomb on Easter Sunday, where God breathes new life. And we see it every single day when you and I take a breath.

If we’re going to make the sort of claims that we do in the Christian faith, that God is the author of all existence, that God is the Creator, that God has all these big lofty things, then we owe our life to God, then therefore, that very breath that we breathe is God-breathed. And so that inspiration is an ongoing process, not a once-in-two-thousand-years one-off moment. If we understand inspiration in that way, that the Holy Spirit continues to breathe new life into us so that we can be inspired or in-filled with the Spirit, then our charge as a Christian is to continue to share that inspiration, that life, that God-breathed life, with others.

And if that’s the case, then scripture can only be used, or should only be used, in a way that generates new life, that is life-giving. So if we’re gonna talk about the Bible being God-breathed, then the Bible has to be life-giving or how we use the Bible has to be life-giving, otherwise we’re not using it in the way that it was intended to be used, either by its authors or by God. And I would go so far as to say that if we’re going to give a definition to blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, that ambiguous sin that’s mentioned in the New Testament, this would seem like it. If we’re going to take this text that we claim is breathed out by the very divine breath of God and is intended to bring life and hope and love to the world, and we use that and contort it and twist it into a weapon of death to wield against our enemies. I can’t think of a better definition for blasphemy of the Holy Spirit than that.

Marc Schelske 21:36
I had not actually made the connection before, I don’t know why, of the Genesis creation story of God breathing into the earth-formed body, God breathing in the breath of life, that that being the same act that Timothy’s passage is referring to–that’s really a great connection. And that passage when you brought it up, I think, is actually a really great illustration of the problem you’ve been talking about since the beginning. Right? Because that passage in Timothy that’s our proof text for inspiration, right? All Scripture is inspired for the purpose of teaching. Well, in order to understand that, I’m coming to the text with a pre-existing belief about what inspired means. Right?

So when I cite that verse to somebody in an argument, I’m like, well, “All Scripture is inspired, you know, this passage in Timothy says so,” I’m saying my particular view of inspiration–if I’m speaking from the view of plenary inspiration, verbal inspiration, it’s perfect without error, right? I’m bringing that meaning. That meaning is not in the text. The text just says all scripture is this Greek word that you cited, theopneustos, is God-breathed and useful for instruction. And then somebody has to look at that passage and go, “Well, what the heck does it mean for a passage of scripture to be God breathed? What is that about?” And if I bring my prepackaged belief that oh–you know, this is going to be a caricature, but this is what I was raised with. The caricature I was raised with was that Paul, or Mark, or John is sitting in a little, a little writing nook in their shed at a little wooden desk, with their papyrus, and there’s of like this Holy-Spirit-light beaming down on their forehead, and the words that are coming out, are precisely what God intends. Well, today, if I describe that process to you outside the context of Christianity, there’s a word for that. It’s called automatic writing. And it’s considered to be occultic.

Zach Hunt 23:34
Right. That’s the one I grew up with. And I talked about it. That was kind of my assumption as well. Yeah. I mean, we have to really step back and just ask basic questions. I don’t think that we do, because like you said, we show up and we’re like, oh, this verse means X, Y, or Z and we never stopped to think, “Well, why do you think that that means that?” I think that that’s a failure, not just on us as individuals, but on like, the church and discipleship. We’ve been conditioned for at least five hundred years to believe that salvation happens by faith alone. And so we’ve reduced “faith alone” to mean right answers. And so, we’ve streamlined the entire salvation process into essentially an assembly line of salvation, where you show up, you say the prayer, you believe the right things, we package you off, you go home, and you get to go to heaven. And that’s just not the biblical story. You know, if we’re gonna talk about a biblical story, that’s just… that ain’t it.

Marc Schelske 24:25
So let’s talk about one of the problems of what you just laid out. If part of what makes salvation possible is that we believe the right thing, if that’s one of the criteria, then it’s really important that you have a source of the right beliefs.

Zach Hunt 24:41
Absolutely.

Marc Schelske 24:42
That becomes fundamentally necessary. And so, depending on your tradition, you have a source. So in traditional Catholicism, the source is the Magisterium. You have the church saying, “This is the true doctrine about this idea, and if you agree with it, you’re in line with the church. You check that box. Post-Reformation, protestants don’t have a Magisterium that they call a Magisterium. They don’t have an official committee that says this is the thing. What we say is, “Oh, the Bible is our Magisterium; the Bible is our standard of faith and practice.” But in practice, the Bible has to be interpreted. That’s where you began, right? You began with the question that we all live in a culture. We all see the world around us in that cultural viewpoint. If I’m going to say about the Bible, “Oh, the Bible clearly says,” I’m reading my own cultural assumptions and predispositions to be able to say that, and now I have a source, which is my community’s Magisterium.

Zach Hunt 25:41
Right.

Marc Schelske 25:42
Whether that’s an official Magisterium, like the Catholic Church, or just my collection of John Piper books, whatever it is, I have a source. That source is what allows me to check the box of salvation that says I believe the right things about Jesus, God, eternity, and reality.

Zach Hunt 25:59
Exactly. Another phrase you’ll hear a lot, you know: “The Bible is my highest source of authority.” BS is what I would say. Because, one, that’s just intrinsically impossible. In making the Bible your source of authority, you are still the authority, choosing to make that your authority. You’re also making an authoritative decision on what those Bible verses mean, and which ones you’re going to follow, and which ones you’re not going to follow, and which ones you’re going to reconcile as weird and not applicable anymore. How I’m interpreting God’s authority in my life is still coming down to me, and whether or not I believe that that voice in my head is the Holy Spirit telling me to do something, whether I believe I’m being pushed or called, or however you want to phrase it. As Christians, we can die to self and do all these things we are called to do, but if we’re not honest about our role in that, that’s where problems become prevalent and where people end up getting hurt, abused, oppressed, marginalized, and even killed when we pretend as if “No, this isn’t me doing this. This isn’t my decision to X, Y, or Z, I’m under the authority of Scripture, I’m under the authority of God.

Marc Schelske 27:05
So somebody says, “Well, this is my view, (let’s say) on the role of women,” and someone argues back, and they’re like, “Well, you’re not arguing with me. You’re arguing with God.” And when they say you’re arguing with God, what they are actually doing is they’re pointing to a particular verse of scripture, and they’re saying that verse of scripture is God’s ultimate, all-time, perfect will for all cultures and all moments, and my understanding of that scripture is accurate. It’s a power move.

Zach Hunt 27:31
Oh, absolutely. It’s absolutely about power and manipulation. And it’s also deeply ironic because we’re appealing to the voice of God. You’re appealing to the scripture that we say is inspired to silence people. And yet one of the very first miracles of the Holy Spirit that we see in the book of Acts is the Holy Spirit enabling people to talk more, giving voice to the apostles to speak, and also for people to be able to hear in their own language.

I look at passages like that and say God wants these conversations. God wants us to be able to talk, to wrestle, to debate with one another. To me, that’s, again, why we need to look at the Bible in a different way than just this one volume, but all of these different voices. Because that’s what we see reflected in the Bible. It’s really the story of our own lives. Look at these stories as a reflection of ourselves. And when we do that, it makes more sense. Because we’re not perfect, we don’t have complete, total knowledge of everything. We’re gonna make mistakes. We’re gonna put our foot in our mouths, we’re gonna say dumb things, we’re gonna do terrible things. And we’re gonna do some terrible things in the name of God. And that’s exactly what you see in the Bible. All throughout the Bible is the story of the people of God, but it’s also our story. Because it’s people doing terrible things in the name of God. It’s people getting things wrong. It’s people doing great and beautiful and wonderful things as well.

And it goes back to these fundamental conversations about who we are as the people of God, what our story is, and where we come from. And so I hope people feel the same permission and freedom after reading this book that folks felt two thousand years ago when these stories that we’re reading in the Bible were written because you don’t have to affirm inerrancy to be a Christian. It’s a relatively new invention. You don’t have to believe the Bible is perfect. Contrary to what I was told, you can doubt or even disbelieve one part of the Bible, and that doesn’t mean everything else comes down like a house of cards because that’s not how the Bible works. You can believe that the creation story is a poem or a myth or whatever, that it’s not historically accurate–because science tells us that it’s not historically accurate, and Jewish rabbis will tell you that’s not really the point of Genesis one and two–but you can believe that and still believe other portions of the Bible are historically accurate because again, it’s not one book. Genesis functions differently than Psalms, which functions differently than gospels, which functions differently from the Pauline epistles, and Revelation, and so on. It’s about stepping back and just being honest about what the Bible is and who we are.

Marc Schelske 30:00
There feels to me to be a deep insecurity around scripture, around perhaps our basis for authority as a community. Maybe that’s part of what develops when Darwin comes out with evolution, and all of a sudden, we’re questioning. They’ve got the scientific method; what have we got? And so now we’ve got to start making biblical interpretation more scientific so that we can play in the same field. And so there’s this deep insecurity that we’re desperate to have one true meaning of the text, which requires a kind of understanding of inerrancy to even make sense. But in my own study, when I’ve begun to read the writings of ancient Christians, they just don’t have that insecurity about the Scripture. The Patristic writers, they were very clear. They’re like, “oh, yeah, scripture has multiple layers of meaning. And, and in fact, if you’re stuck on the literal meaning, that’s the most basic basic one. You got to get past that. You’ve got to get beyond the literal meaning to the spiritual meaning before you’re even experiencing what the Holy Spirit is doing.” They were not at all insecure about the idea that passages could be weird and that they could have disagreements, all that stuff. That was just like part of the deal for them. It seems like in evangelical Christianity, we’ve lost that capacity to play with scripture in that way.

Zach Hunt 31:19
Oh, absolutely. This is not liberal progressive Zach making up ideas. What you described is directly from Origen, who is one of the earliest theologians in the church, and who has had more influence on the development of Christianity than anyone outside of Paul and Augustine. He says there are two different senses of Scripture. You know, one is the literal sense, which are the words that are literally on the page. But then, like you said, there’s this deeper spiritual truth. And what he says–that to me was as liberating as it was provocative–is that he even goes further and says that there are certain… stumbling blocks is the phrase that he uses or how its translated–certain stumbling blocks or just wrong things in Scripture that can’t be true, that can’t be the way that we should do things. Things like “slaves obey your masters for this is right in the Lord.”

He goes even further than that and says that those stumbling blocks, those errors, were allowed to be there by the Holy Spirit to draw us beyond the literal words on the page and down into the spiritual texts or spiritual truth in the text. Which is, which is crazy! Because, on one side, it’s liberating and allows us to be open and honest and say, when Paul says, “slaves should obey your masters,” that’s just wrong. But what’s crazy is he’s essentially saying that the Bible is not perfect and God made it that way.

Marc Schelske 32:30
Right?

Zach Hunt 32:30
So what I love is it’s not just like him saying, yeah, the Bible is not perfect, and so you can have this squabble with Inerrency folks like John Piper. He’s just saying, you know, “the Bible is not perfect and it’s not just people’s fault. It’s God’s fault. Because God wanted it to be this way.” And I love it because what it speaks to is this authentic relationship, this authentic trust that God places in people to tell our story, to tell God’s story, to tell our story together. And that it’s okay if these things come in, if–and this is obviously a big if–if we can be open and honest about that. If we can say, this is just not wrong. This is a stumbling block; there must be something deeper there.

And I think that we can get to that deeper spiritual truth without having to have a Ph.D. in biblical languages and all this other scholarly work because there’s the other guy I mentioned before, Augustine, who jumps in and says exactly what Jesus says in the greatest commandment: if your interpretation of Scripture, no matter how great you think it is, no matter how much grammatical work you’ve done, language studies, exegesis, if your interpretation does not lead you to love God and neighbor more than you’re wrong. I can, in the 21st century, look at a passage like Paul saying, “slaves obey your masters,” and say, “Well, that’s just wrong because that doesn’t lead me to love my neighbor. Why is that? Why would that be in there?”

Well, then it takes me to that deeper spiritual sense and reminds me that I see in a mirror dimly, right that I see in Paul the same failings that are in me that are in people a hundred and fifty years ago, that we’re still enslaving people by using this very passage. But I see a flawed human being, I see someone who’s not perfect, I see a person who makes mistakes, I see a person who’s who’s just like me, still being used by God. And that’s a really beautiful, hopeful thing. And if we can begin to see scripture in that way, then I can be used by God, too. There’s a lot of hope and life, I think, to be found there. But again, it goes back to like fundamentally rethinking, you know, our relationship with the Bible, our understanding of the Bible, and our calling, you know, as the people of God,

Marc Schelske 34:27
There’s a way of talking about the flaws of inspiration that leads to ultimately no belief in scripture or no belief in God. And I think, quite honestly, that that’s an evangelical or fundamentalist response to the question. Usually, that’s a person who was raised in a community that said to them the Bible is perfect and every in every way, it doesn’t have any discrepancies or failures. And that’s because God doesn’t lie. And if one thing isn’t true, the whole house of cards falls down. And they’ve looked at it for themselves, and they’re like, “Well, okay, it doesn’t hang too. Gather so the Bible must not be true. And probably the idea of God I was given as a child isn’t true either. I’m out.” And so they have left, but they haven’t left… they’ve left in a way that is still fundamentalist…

Zach Hunt 35:12
Yeah, right.

Marc Schelske 35:14
…that’s still rooted in the idea that the Bible has to be perfect, and since it’s not perfect, I’m out. That’s not what you’re talking about. You’re talking about something else. And so I’d love for you to walk us in that direction. Because I’m sensitive to the fact that folks who were raised with this idea of inspiration, one of the benefits of this view of inspiration is a kind of security and a kind of certainty. I can trust who God is because I can trust what Scripture says. If I take that away, am I taking away certainty? Am I taking away a sense of security? But that’s not what you’re trying to do. So what is better on the other side of this conversation?

Zach Hunt 35:54
Freedom and love. I think those two things are foundational to the Gospel. It’s one thing to just talk about whether or not the Bible is inerrant or perfect, or historically accurate, or scientific, or whatever. You know, that’s one conversation. The other half of the conversation–this is where the book ends up–is what’s the point of the Bible? You know, what does it even exist for? What does Christianity exist for? Like, why would we follow Jesus? For me, it’s not stay or go; it’s not just those kinds of options. We can also rethink what it means to be a Christian and what salvation is about, and begin to rethink that maybe this isn’t just about me going off to heaven, but about me beginning to help bring heaven to earth as it isn’t heaven. Just like Jesus prayed!

We have other options for dealing with scripture, other healthier options, options that allow us to take it seriously, even if we’re not always taking it literally. Because sometimes, taking it literally prevents us from taking it seriously. What I’m trying to do is offer people the freedom to ask questions, to push back, to doubt, to acknowledge that, yeah, the Bible is wrong about some things. Some things are minor. Sometimes they’re scientifically inaccurate because these are people who lived 3000 years ago. But sometimes they’re big deals like “Slaves obey your masters,” or “women be silent in the church”, or, you know, “if your child has been unruly, take them outside of the camp and stone them to death.” If we as a people can’t say that is objectively immoral, then we have completely lost the plot of the gospel.

Marc Schelske 37:21
That moment, when we look at those passages and decide what to do with them, is actually telling on our view of God.

Zach Hunt 37:28
Exactly, yeah.

Marc Schelske 37:29
Because if I can look at that passage, “take your unruly kids outside the camp and stone them,” and I have to say, “Nope, God said that. That is God’s design,” then I’m just admitting that when I say something is good, I just mean it’s something that comports with the will of God, and God is how God is. Period. In this case, God is an authoritarian who doesn’t abide disobedience.

Zach Hunt 37:55
For me, when I talk about Augustine, Origen, and this hermeneutic of love, I’m not looking at love just as a lens through which to read the Bible but as the beginning and end point of everything. God is love. When we say that, the description of that loving relationship that we use in the Christian tradition is Trinity. You know, because God is in this loving community, right? God is in this loving communion of Father, Son, Spirit. And when we say that, it’s not a descriptor of God; it’s who God is. There’s nothing behind that. It’s not like I say, “Hey, Zack is bald and has a beard,” but there’s more to me than that. When I say God is love, that is the core of who God is. And so that’s the beginning, and if that’s true, that has to orient how we think about the Bible.

If the Bible is inspired, then it’s inspired by love, and so that has to guide our reading. And that’s what Jesus says when he says, “This is the greatest commandment: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself.” It’s what Augustine is saying when he says you can’t interpret Scripture correctly if it’s not leading you to love. And it’s what I’m saying in Godbreathed. Love is not just this warm, fuzzy feeling but this call to justice, this call to a better, more hopeful, life-giving way of being in and for the world. That’s not just how we read the Bible, but it’s how we live life.

And so, ultimately, what I’m trying to do with Godbreathed is to get us to fundamentally rethink how we live. Because if we’re going to make the claim that the Bible is our foundation, and the Bible is our authority, things like that, then we have to describe how that is and how that plays out in life. And so when I, when Augustine, whoever, that I quote in the book, talks about love, it’s not just this warm, fuzzy lens through which we read the Bible, but it’s the beginning and end point of our lives as individuals and reality as itself. I think that’s what the gospel is telling us. The gospel is Jesus trying to restore this loving relationship between creation and its creator. It’s love that we read in Genesis when God takes that dust from the ground and breathed the breath of love, of God’s love, into it to create humanity. And it’s love that we see in the book of Revelation when God makes all things new and brings people together, and there’s no more sorrow or tears or dying because death is no more. I mean, that’s, that’s love, you know, brought to its completion.

CLOSING REFLECTION

Marc Schelske 40:03
As I said in the beginning, so many of the tensions and disagreements we have in the Christian world come down to how we read the Bible. And there’s an unspoken question behind that question. How do we see God?

If our picture of God is of a strict authoritarian who brooks no disobedience, who demands unwavering loyalty, who has no time or patience for the struggles and uncertainties of being human, then it makes sense that scripture would be a reflection of that kind of God. If that God is real, then scripture, of course, would be an unquestionable, incontrovertible manual for pleasing this God.

But if our picture of God is something different, if we see God as Jesus portrayed: as a father who runs to the lost son, as a stranger who picks up the wounded alongside the road, as a shepherd who seeks out that one lost sheep, if those pictures are trustworthy descriptions of God, then Scripture must also be something different.

Zack invites us to consider that possibility. He said in our conversation, “We have other options for dealing with scripture, other healthier options, options that allow us to take it seriously, even if we’re not always taking it literally. Because sometimes taking it literally prevents us from taking it seriously.” If this is new ground for you, that I invite you to ask those questions. And maybe Zack’s book is a good place for you to start.

May you find your way to a spiritual place that is full of freedom and joy. Rather than laboring under the harsh eye of a God who is constantly measuring you, may you see that you have always belonged, have always been loved, and are always invited to be part of God’s work of loving the world. Thanks for listening.

Notes for today’s episode and any links mentioned can be found at MarcAlanSchelske.com/TAW053. If you found today’s conversation helpful, then subscribe to my newsletter, Apprenticeship Notes. This newsletter goes right into your email inbox about once a month. It includes a reflection written just for my subscribers that won’t be found anywhere else, insider information about my blog posts and podcast episodes like this one, books and spiritual practices that I recommend, and an update on my latest writing project. Subscribe now, and you’ll also get a free little book when you do. It’s called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Practice for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World. In this little book, I teach a spiritual practice that has been so helpful to me as I face the anxiety and uncertainty of our time, and I like to just share it with you. Subscribe and get that book at www.MarcOptIn.com.

Until next time, remember: In this one present moment, You are known, you are loved, and you are not alone.

Episode 052 – Childlike Faith vs. Childish Faith (With Pastor Mandy Smith)

Often the church seems in a panic to avoid the influence of culture, but what if the church is already fully bought into the assumptions of culture? Western culture assumes that strength, leadership, and being right are the way of success. Does the way of Jesus calls us to something different?.

Show Notes

• Get Mandy’s books:
  • The Vulnerable Pastor: How Human Limitations Empower our Ministry
  • Unfettered: Imagining a Childlike Faith beyond the Baggage of Western Culture
• Mandy’s Website: www.TheWayIsTheWay.org

• Scroll down for a full transcript of this episode.
• You can also watch and share the video version on Youtube.

More about My Conversation Partners

Mandy Smith is a pastor, author, and speaker. She pastors St. Lucia Uniting Church, in St. Lucia, in Queensland, Australia. She’s a regular contributor to Christianity Today and Missio Alliance.

• Find Mandy at www.TheWayIsTheWay.org
• Twitter: @MandySmithHopes
• Facebook: Mandy Smith

Today’s Sponsor

• The Untangled Heart Course – We don’t need to live with fear that our emotions will overwhelm us. We can learn to experience them in a way that allows us access to the wisdom they carry!

More from Marc

• Get The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World – This little book is free for you by opting into my email list.
• Discovering your Authentic Core Values: A Step-by-step Guide
• Subscribe to my Email List. You’ll get a free copy of a little book called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer & Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World.

Transcription

Marc Schelske 0:00
Hey friends, I’m Marc Alan Schelske, and this is The Apprenticeship Way, a podcast about spiritual growth following the way of Jesus. This is episode 52. Childlike faith is better than childish faith.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Marc Schelske 0:18
Today’s podcast is made possible by the Untangled Workshop. Some of us don’t do too well with emotions, ours, other peoples’. It doesn’t matter. For some of us, they’re confusing. For some of us, they’re overwhelming. For some of us, it feels like we live at the whim of emotions that are explosively beyond our control. Others of us can’t seem to feel anything at all, even when it seems like we should.

For most of my life, emotions were a deep struggle for me. I had no idea how much my early childhood trauma had shaped the way I experienced my emotions. I just knew that my emotions, other people’s emotions, anyone’s emotions made me uncomfortable. Things are much better for me now, but I remember what that ache was like. And that’s why I teamed up with a skilled trauma therapist, Byron Kehler, to create The Untangled Workshop, a roadmap for understanding and navigating our emotions.

We filmed this training live, and then created an on-demand video course that you can watch on your own time and review as needed. In this workshop, you’ll learn why we often disconnect from our emotions, how our emotions serve a vital role in living a fulfilled life, and what’s happening in our brain and body when we feel an emotion. In addition, we’ll teach you a simple to understand roadmap for how to experience, to sit with your emotions and understand what your emotions might be telling you, and then give you some tools you can immediately use to improve your own emotional life and your emotional connection with others.

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INTRODUCTION

In the church I grew up in, we were regularly warned about the danger of culture. The gospel was going to be watered down by culture. Our witness was going to be undermined if we got too involved in culture. We were supposed to be countercultural, but not not like the hippies! We stood for truth and truth had to be protected from the infiltration of culture.

Now, there’s something reasonable about this fear. Culture is a powerful force. We all grow up within a culture, it’s unavoidable. The culture that we were raised in shapes our thinking and our view of ourselves and others. In this sense, culture is the sum total of the norms, expectations, commitments, and presuppositions that most everyone around us implicitly assumes. There are certain visible expressions of culture like music and movies. But behind all of this are these shared common assumptions. So this concern the church has about the danger of the influence of culture makes some sense. We can and often do find ourselves living in a culture that operates from very different values than what we want to live by, or from what we believe God’s calling us to live by. In the normal process of getting along in life, it’s very easy to accommodate and normalize attitudes and values that we disagree with. When the values of Jesus conflict with the values of the world that we find ourselves in, we ought to pause and consider our participation. That all makes sense.

But the particular concerns we had, at least in the church tradition that formed me, were quite narrow. We were concerned with things like movies and music and entertainment. We were quite worried about particular folks that we thought would lead us away from our supposedly Biblical worldview, like feminists and liberals! And yet, as a child of the church who has been observing and thinking about this stuff for a long time, I’ve long suspected that maybe we’ve been focused on some of the wrong things. And perhaps by being so distracted by our particular list of moral concerns and cultural enemies, we failed to notice other much more significant ways that our culture has shaped the church.

This past year, I was introduced to pastor Mandy Smith. She has been thinking about how we follow Jesus for a long time. Her first book, The Vulnerable Pastor: How Human Limitations Empower Our Ministry, suggested that maybe some of our foundational ideas about leadershi– being in charge, being strong, being the person up on the stage–are actually getting in the way of following Jesus well. But her next book… man, the subtitle of this book really intrigued me. The book is called, Unfettered: Imagining a Childlike Faith Beyond the Baggage of Western Culture. In this book, she spoke directly to this concern I’ve been feeling. Is there something in the culture that formed me, something deeper than the concerns I grew up with in my church community, that was twisting the way I was living and experiencing the way of Jesus, that was even twisting the way the church shapes itself in the world.

In the introduction to Unfettered, Mandy talks about two postures that are deeply embedded in us, at least those of us formed by the pervasive influence of Western post-enlightenment culture, I think, therefore, I am. And I do therefore I am. She suggested that these two postures are an inheritance from Western culture, actually some of the foundational drivers of why our culture is the way that it is. And then she suggests that when we are led by these motivations, we live in ways that don’t seem very much like the good news of Jesus at all. So I asked her to unpack that with me.

INTERVIEW

Mandy Smith 6:14
I’ve also had experience in a church that was very worried about being pure in a in a culture that was going to taint our faith. And in a way, those kinds of concerns about movies or music or whatever are easier concerns, because you can see them, you can see…

Marc Schelske 6:35
Right.

Mandy Smith 6:35
…oh, that movie has this scene in it, s o therefore I will not watch that movie. The kinds of things I’m talking about are just in the water, harder for us to really name. And sometimes even the way that we do the kind of critique of culture that we were just talking about, is more telling of the way that we’re shaped by culture. The way we do things is a part of our theology as well. And so if we bring in all of the polarization from culture, for example, into the way that we’re dealing with the more obvious elements of culture than it just shows how we’ve been shaped in our culture. We’ve been shaped in our own character, in the very foundations of our faith in ways that, sadly, are more challenging. We’ve been discipled, really, by our education, by the media, by culture. It’s just what we swim in.

So the trickier thing is to stop and be aware of these habits that we have, which makes sense when we live in a culture that that is secular, that in many ways doesn’t even claim to be founded on submission to God. So we shouldn’t be surprised. It’s not being dishonest about it. But if the culture that we live in is shaped by an assumption that ultimately human agency and human intellect is our hope, then of course that will become how we are shaped even as Christian people. And so, I’ve noticed in myself, even, you know, daily things, that I am doing very Christian things… you know, as a pastor, even the way that I prepare to preach, which would feel like one of the most Christian things you could do perhaps…

Marc Schelske 8:27
Yeah…

Mandy Smith 8:27
…It’s so easy to do in a secular way. It’s so easy to do in the way that the world would do it, which begins with the assumption that it’s all up to me.

Marc Schelske 8:37
Okay.

Mandy Smith 8:37
And while I would claim… if you asked me consciously, “Is God helping you write your sermons?” I would say, “Yes, of course.” My theology, my conscious theology, is one way, but theology is also expressed in our habits, and our instincts and how we actually make choices in the moment. So in the moment when I’m anxious about whether my sermon is going to be very good, and every single week, I have a fear that this is the week I have nothing to say, every single moment, you know, every time when I’m like, Okay, it’s time to get work on that sermon, and the anxiety is there, and everything in my culture has taught told me, when you feel that anxiety, that’s a sign you’ve got to really work hard.

Marc Schelske 9:19
Mmm, Okay.

Mandy Smith 9:20
And so the first thing I want to do is get in front of my laptop and just bang away feel, like I accomplished something. But if I really believe what I claim to believe, that God is the author of every sermon, that God is writing the sermon in me, that God is already working in my congregation, and knows how this passage of Scripture is going to mean something to each single one of them, then wouldn’t I actually begin in a different way? Wouldn’t I stop to say, maybe there’s already a power at work that I just need to somehow join. I need to set aside my own power long enough to figure out a way to join this thing that’s already surging in and around me. But it’s really deeply ingrained to do the other thing.

Marc Schelske 10:06
Yeah, I mean, that idea that the whole goal of life is about attaining, holding on to, and expressing power–that is the world that we are just soaked in. Competence is one form of that. Hustle culture is a form of that. And we’re not even talking about expressly Christian things. And yet, as you say, these are ways that we engage our life in our faith, our relationships, even inside the community of folks who’ve said, “Yep, I follow Jesus, Jesus way is What matters to me.” Your statement, “theology is expressed in habits,” really grabs my attention. I’d love to hear you talk a little bit more about that.

Mandy Smith 10:54
One way that really is telling is when suddenly there’s a crisis. You know, you’re in an elders meeting, and you’ve just discovered that the offering is tanking, and you got to fix this now. Or I’m often in spaces where it’s a denominational, kind of level, and there’s a problem. All the churches are shrinking, and we got to fix this thing. And it is interesting, because the more evangelical or conservative spaces often go to a place of strategizin. You know, get the consultant in, get some guy in to come and tell us how to fix it, or read a book, we’ll do a thing. Sometimes when I’m in the more progressive spaces, it becomes this kind of… let’s just have a think tank, you know, we’ll have a collaborative conversation, and we’ll get to the bottom of this thing. We’ll lament, and… you know. I’ve been in both of those kinds of rooms, and I don’t want to make fun of other people, because I do the same thing.

When I’m chairing the meeting, it still goes the same way, but it’s more… maybe it’s easier when someone else is chairing the meeting to notice it. That it just spirals. It spirals into anxious… a kind of despair, a kind of desperation. It’s that feeling that often makes me think, hang on a second. This is this is a sure sign God is not in this, because even when things aren’t great, and we haven’t got the answers yet, when God is involved in the conversation, there’s a lightness about it. You know, there’s a… when you see all the psalms of lament, Yes, something’s wrong, but the Psalmist just pours that out to God, and there’s a space where you feel seen and held in that, even even before any resolution comes or any change is possible. You see in those psalms, almost all of them turn to praise and thanksgiving.

Marc Schelske 12:52
Yeah, and the thing’s not even fixed yet. If we think about the narrative sequence of the Psalm, whatever was causing the lament is still probably going on!

Mandy Smith 13:03
Yeah. So this is not to say that we shouldn’t have conversations, and have think tanks, and that we shouldn’t have a strategy. My question is what’s the order of this? So the way I often put it is that our western culture has taught us that it’s all up to you. This is why we’re all burned out and exhausted and doubting. It’s because there’s this fundamental kind of assumption underneath it all that It’s all up to you.

Marc Schelske 13:31
Yes!

Mandy Smith 13:32
Which is not a hopeful space to be in. No wonder we’re all depressed and anxious. And so in that moment, the knee jerk response… you know, there’s a crisis. It’s just hit the fan in our personal life, or in our church, or in our denomination or whatever, and we have been shaped by a culture that says, respond, respond, respond, respond, fix it, answer it, solve it, go, now. And we just do not have everything at our disposal to be able to do that. It’s always going to be a desperate endeavor. So, I see us as Christian people, who would claim to trust that God ultimately is carrying everything… we kind of ping pong back and forth from “It’s all up to God” to “It’s all up to me,” and back to, “It’s all up to God.” Because it feels really spiritual to say, “Well, it’s all up to God.” But we still have to do things. We still have to get up and preach that sermon or plan that thing.

Marc Schelske 14:31
Right!

Mandy Smith 14:33
And so then once we’re engaged, then it’s back to being all up to us again. And neither of those actually requires any partnership with God because either he’s doing it all or we’re doing it all.

Marc Schelske 14:44
Right. It’s almost like we don’t know, we don’t have a model, maybe, of what that partnership looks like. Because the response of saying, “Well, it’s all up to God,” I think for many of us feels like we’re saying, “Well, I should be passive. I should not take action. When I should not push… on the progressive end of things I could sense myself saying, “Well, I don’t want to impose power into this situation. I want to step back and not drive it. And even that is a kind of passivity which we, sort of from life experience, we’re like, “well, that’s not going to get anything done.” And it’s going to leave a vacuum for somebody else to step in, and they’re just going to do the thing that I’m not doing. They’re going to take charge.

Mandy Smith 15:25
Right.

Marc Schelske 15:25
So we have all this going on in our head. So what does it look like? Maybe this is a conversation worth digging into, then. What does it look like to try doing those things in a different way? What does that different way even mean?

Mandy Smith 15:41
Yeah. So we still do have a call to respond. Passivity is not… I don’t know why we think passivity is this inherently Christian thing? Jesus emptied, yeah… but he got up and he did stuff all day long, you know. He said, “Yes” to the Father. So, what I propose, and it starts… It’s Alliterative, so it must be true–is that we do have a response, but it’s not the first thing. So I say Rest is our first response. And from that Rest, we always Receive something. When we’ve set aside our own agenda and our own power, we always Receive something and then we know how to Respond. And that rest may be, you know, go on a sabbatical.

Oftentimes, it just means take a breath, stop. I’ve been in so many rooms, where there has been some kind of crisis that’s just hit the fan and somebody is good enough to think, hang on a second, let’s pray. Let’s sing a worship song, or let’s read a passage of scripture. And I’ve never seen that happen without it bringing some kind of… it’s like someone just open a window and the air is just different. And it doesn’t mean that it’s been resolved necessarily. We may not know the answer yet. But in every situation I’ve seen it happen, it’s brought just a different peace. It’s reminded us, okay, we don’t have to fix this this second. Or it’s reminded us of something from from our past. It’s given us a new imagination of the future. It’s maybe made us remember, oh, there’s a person we need to bring into this conversation. It’s just brought a different something into the room that’s reminding us we’re not alone in this.

And this, for me, comes from Jesus saying, “Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest, and take my yoke upon you.” It’s kind of an oxymoron, but this is the kind of rest that He invites us into, that is not rest and do nothing. Like, “You chill, I’ll take care of the world for you.” And it’s not, “You’re out there doing everything in your own strengths. And I’m chilling back in the throne room, because I’ve sent you out to do my mission on on my behalf.” I don’t know where I pick it up, maybe youth group camp or something, this sense of like… maybe it comes from like pilgrimage days, or crusades, or something of like, the king has called me into the throne room, and he’s given me a mission, and he sent me out. And in that metaphor, he’s still back there in the throne room, and he’s sent me to do hard stuff. And so when it gets really hard, I resent him. And that doesn’t feel very hopeful.

But what about this possibility that God is already on mission in the world. And for some reason, he wants us to deal with him, like we bring something to it. Maybe the joy of watching it unfold, and the the way that we’ll need to depend on him when it gets really hard. I don’t really know exactly why he doesn’t want to do it by himself. But I love to imagine instead, that we have the kind of father who just wakes us up in the morning really early, and it’s like, “There’s something going on today. I want you to be a part of it. Grab a few things. We’re going. Like, there’s an adventure in store. And it is going to be hard, but I’ll be there with you when it gets hard. And so then the partnership is possible, and then when it’s difficult, it just it requires us to dig even deeper into our reliance on him.

So I summed it up with this, with this invitation to begin with rest, which is the opposite of what our culture tells us. But if it’s not all up to us, we have that beat. You know we have that moment to say, “Yes, Jesus invites us to rest in Him.” And whatever yoke we take up is a yoke we share with him. You know, we have this image of this double yoke that that the older ox would carry most of the weight and be the one guiding the younger ox sharing this yoke together. And that feels more like partnership. That feels more like relationship.

Marc Schelske 20:00
Yeah.

Mandy Smith 20:01
And that feels more hopeful.

Marc Schelske 20:03
There’s a great deal of trust that is shifted there, right? Because the model that you ascribe to our western cultural heritage, the trust is really in me. If I’m trusting in myself, rest is about rejuvenating my resources. So the rest I do so that I can recharge whatever resource I have, so I can again, trust in my ability to get this job done. What I hear you saying is that the rest is actually because we’re trusting God’s presence, and we’re trusting God at work, and we’re trusting that somehow we’re caught up in what God is doing. And so the rest is about embodying that. I don’t have to rush into a solution, if I actually trust God is involved in this conversation already.

Mandy Smith 20:51
Oh, absolutely. Yes, it’s fundamental. And the things that we are longing to see, you know… we’re longing to see lives transformed, our own and others, we’re longing to see communities renewed, we’re longing to see the church actually remember her mission and be flourishing and fruitful again. We’re longing for the whole world to be restored. And maybe that happens on the other side of our control.

Marc Schelske 21:18
Maybe! Pretty sure…

Mandy Smith 21:21
Yeah. So the places where I have just been wrapped up, caught up in something that that was so transformative and beautiful, it’s been a space where I’ve had to step out of my comfort and, and say Yes to things that make me feel really stupid, or where I’m worried about being embarrassed, or I’m worried about being disappointed. And it makes sense, really, because of the really transformative moments are moments where nobody planned it. You know, where it just kind of happened. And it comes from this space of saying yes to things that we didn’t make happen. So even, you know, having a time of opening up the floor to somebody else in the middle of a church service, somebody who we don’t know what they’re going to say, and that very sense of not being in control and not understanding what’s about to happen is a transcendent moment. But it’s scary if we want to be making sure every minute is programmed and everything is controlled, you know.

Marc Schelske 22:20
In Unfettered, you play with this idea of trust, trusting rest, and the activity that grows out of that, if that’s a fair way to put it. You play with that idea using the language of childlike faith versus childish faith, I think. Can you talk a little bit about what those distinctions meant for you, how that was helpful for you and thinking through these things?

Mandy Smith 22:46
You know, this does not begin as a theological endeavor, or a primarily intellectual endeavor. It was a personal experience, that then I had to read and talk to people and figure out what on earth is happening to me. I was really surprised when I started looking into the childlikeness stuff, because Jesus specifically says, “Unless you become like a child, you can’t enter the kingdom.” And we’re all busily thinking, like, “How do we get into the kingdom?” And I don’t hear anybody saying, “Oh, he told us already. It’s really simple.” You know…”

Marc Schelske 23:16
Right. Be childlike.

Mandy Smith 23:18
And if we ever do see anything about that, it’s usually whimsy and wonder, which is lovely, but you can’t live in that space. That’s nice for when you’re on going for a walk or on vacation or something. And so then we don’t know how to actually live daily life like a child. And I think it has a lot… in the way that Jesus is talking about it, it seems to have a lot to do with not expecting to be in control, not being surprised that you’re small, not being ashamed that you’re limited. And so much of our western culture really does shame human limitation.

Marc Schelske 23:54
Right, yes!

Mandy Smith 23:55
There’s this there’s this kind of assumption that like, you know… most of our ads are like, something’s wrong with you, because you haven’t figured out how to keep your hair from falling out yet, or how to make your children eat their vegetables or whatever, so just buy this product, and you’ll be like everybody else who somehow doesn’t have to struggle with that human limitation. All of that reminds me so much of Jesus’ temptation in the in the wilderness. I feel like there was an ad campaign happening there, too, you know. He refused to be ashamed of his humanity or his humanness. I love him for it, because he was not ashamed our humaneness. The strange experience of being a human being is the experience that I think we were more comfortable with as children. So the whole point for me about the childlikeness is to remember we have done this before, and we can do this again. As human beings, we are limited, we get tired, we run out of ideas, we get old, we get sick, all of those things are true.

And as human beings, we also have this remarkable quality about us that has this capacity to create, and to love, and to make a difference in the world. God gave us… You know, in creation, God gave us this partnership with him to steward this beautiful creation that he’s made. You know, even if we didn’t have ideal childhoods, there still was a way when we were children that we were more comfortable being humans, that we weren’t surprised if we couldn’t solve all the problems. That would just remind us, we should ask for help. We weren’t ashamed if we couldn’t do everything ourselves, but we also knew… I’m gonna… I’m walking into this room, and I have something to say.

Marc Schelske 25:36
Yes.

Mandy Smith 25:37
And there’s something really beautiful about finding the balance of those two things. So for me, the childlikeness is being unafraid to be powerless. And I also talk about adultlikeness, which is being unafraid to be powerful, because we often don’t talk about the negative side of being an adult either. So, if you ever say, “We should be childlike,” somebody will always say, “But don’t be childish!” you know. And for me, “childish” is this kind of passivity of like, “Oh, I’ve got nothing to say, I’ve got nothing to bring,” which feels really humble, and feels kind of Christlike, but it actually can be disobedience if God is calling us to use our agency. Underuse of power is also power abuse.

Marc Schelske 26:22
Yeah.

Mandy Smith 26:23
The other kind of power abuse is the one that we talk about more often, which is adultishness, which is being afraid of powerlessness. So wanting to always be in control. And so the beauty, the balance is found in knowing we’re not everything, but knowing we still have something to bring, and stewarding that faithfully.

And I will just say this one thing, that I think it’s really important at this moment where we are thankfully, having really good conversations about abuse of power. I never know how to say this well, without sounding kind of bitter about this. But the reality is, most of the power abuse that we see in politics and in the church has been masculine power abuse, because women haven’t had a chance to. We don’t even know how women abuse power! I hope we get a chance to find that out. So this is not to say that men are the only ones who do it, they’ve just been the ones who’ve had the most opportunity. And so it would be really helpful, in my mind, if while we’re having these conversations, we talk about the ego, all that kind of stuff are the traditionally masculine ways that power is abused. And there may be some women who have used power in that way too. In my experience, and in the experience of many women that I talked to, power abuse looks more like avoiding power altogether.

At this moment, when we are saying, “Don’t seek the limelight, don’t reach for the microphone, don’t pursue positions of influence,” I see how that’s an overreaction to the abuses of power in the ego sense of things. But it has really done a number on me and people like me, that speaks directly to my temptation to avoid power, and to avoid the agency God has given me, I just think we need to be really careful because there’s there’s also a kind of power abuse in under-use of our agency, because God has called us to speak and proclaim something into the world, to make a difference in the world and to act on his behalf. Which is terrifying, because you can make a lot of mistakes! Yeah, it’s easier to do nothing. So that’s a long answer to your question. But that’s what comes to mind for me with childlikeness and childishness.

Marc Schelske 28:32
So maybe you could share some thoughts of how that shows up in practical ways, maybe in your own life experience or ministry experience.

Mandy Smith 28:41
Yeah, I remember being in an elders meeting a few years back, and we were making a big decision on behalf of the whole congregation. We’d gone through a whole process over about six months. We brought somebody in to help us think about it. We prayed about it. The elders had all made themselves available to the congregation. We’d had meetings and conversations. It was time to just make the decision. And we all felt like, “Yea, we should move ahead into this.” And in this elders meeting, somebody said, “Oh, but you know, we should just put it in the bulletin one more time and say, we’re thinking we’re going to go in this direction, unless somebody has a problem with that.”

And that sounds really humble. And I do think that that’s the kind of thing that we do when we are worried about power abuse. And I think this person had good motives, that they know, it has happened in churches many times before that the leaders just walk all over everybody. I get it, but I was surprisingly disturbed, because there was this roadblock in this ability to just say it’s time to make a decision and move forward. And that is a really risky moment. You know, that’s really scary. And this is What leadership is, is saying someone’s got to make a decision and risk failing and looking stupid.

And so, I actually preached a little sermon, and I think I was preaching it to myself at the same time, because I was just processing some of these things myself. I said, You know, Jesus had authority. Jesus astounded people with his authority. And we just think authority is a negative thing because it has been abused, but Jesus’ Authority came from his submission to the Father. He wasn’t just stomping all over everybody, he had emptied Himself, and so whatever he received from the Father, he has the right to bring… in the same way that a parent has authority over the child, not because the parent is just the boss, but because the parent has given so much for that child. You know, you’ve lost sleep, and you’ve prayed, and you’ve read books, and you’ve tried to figure out how to help this kid grow up. That doesn’t mean that a parent is 100% correct all the time, but it means the parent has a right to speak into that child’s life.

And so I kind of preached this little sermon to the elders and said, each one of you has had dozens of conversations with people in this congregation, we’ve prayed, we’ve given our time and our energy to this thing. We have authority because we have submitted to the needs of this congregation. We’ve listened and we’ve prayed. And now we have the right to act and make a decision. I think it’s really good for us to acknowledge that it is really scary to use that agency and to step into that authority, but the kind of authority that isn’t abusive is the kind that comes from our submission, our emptying. It’s not just “I get to stomp around and boss people around,” you know? It’s coming from how we’ve emptied.

Marc Schelske 31:30
That’s really good and helpful, I think. I tend to be on that side… because I’m so concerned about the way power has been abused in the church, I tend to be on that side of almost thinking of power in itself as a bad word. And to think of the emptying, the kenosis, that we get out of Philippians 2 in Jesus life… I mean, it’s clear looking at Jesus’s life, whether the kenosis refers to the incarnation, or whether it refers to his humble demeanor, or whether it refers to the cross, all of those things are acts of agency. Maybe agency is a word that I can use more safely than power. They’re all acts of agency, where he’s moving in a particular direction with a particular agenda. He is doing that, right? So then what would the emptying out be? Well, the emptying out is that it is entirely other-oriented, it is taking into account the real and authentic needs and experience of the people that he’s serving. It is not about self-building. It is not about self-protection. It is not about trying to appear strong or competent or brave or in charge, right? So if we strip out those things, which are the things we’re so used to being the definition of what it means to be a competent person, then maybe there is a model for agency that is self-giving and other-centered.

Mandy Smith 32:53
Yeah, yeah. Because for me, so the way this actually unfolded, I was on a sabbatical, and I was like, “What am I supposed to do with myself, Lord?” And I felt this permission to just be like a child for eight weeks. Just eat when I feel like eating, and go where I feel like going, and cry if I need to cry, and nap if I need to nap, which is great. Man, that sounds good, doesn’t it? I could use that right now. And what it ended up becoming was just remembering those little urges that you had as a child of like, “I just feel like lying in the grass and I’m gonna line the grass.” But it took a little while to get back… to kind of clear away that junk that’s in the way of those little moments of like, “Huh, I wonder if that moss is really soft, it looks really soft. I’m going to touch it.” And I promised myself I’m just going to say Yes to every single one of those things. As long as it’s not illegal or dangerous or whatever, I’m just going to say Yes. And it was so surprising how many adultish kinds of Western kinds of habits were keeping me from that joy and that childlikness. That it was like, “You know you’re gonna look stupid. You’re gonna be disappointed.”

Marc Schelske 34:04
Yeah.

Mandy Smith 34:04
Why would you bother? That’s a waste of time. You’re an important person. Important people don’t lie on the grass.

Marc Schelske 34:10
Right, right! Yeah, exactly.

Mandy Smith 34:12
And that started making me think, like what is it that so precious about these things that seem like nothing… Lying on in the grass seems like nothing, and yet there’s this almost like spiritual warfare happening when I’m wanting to do it. And it made me even more determined, like, dang it. I’m gonna lie in the grass, if it kills me.

Marc Schelske 34:32
Yeah, those formational voices are so loud and weirdly also, while being loud, easy to not notice.

Mandy Smith 34:42
Yes, it was just this kind of instinct that came along, there was this joyful instinct that just wanted to explore the world, wanted to partner with creation. And then there was this other instinct that was like, “Just protect yourself. Worry about what everybody else thinks,” which is this adultish kind of something in us, which just made me so sad. And so for eight weeks, I was like, I’m not listening to you. I don’t care. But it was real. I don’t want to minimize it. It was real. I remember one day, at the very beginning, I felt this instinct to drag a stick along a long fence in a park. And I was halfway along the fence, and I was like, “Oh, I’ve got to go back to the beginning of the fence now and find a stick.” And I couldn’t find a stick. It became this real project now. And so I was like, “Oh, I’m gonna drag this stick along this fence, if it kills me.” And I was really self conscious, because other grownups are walking past and I was like, “What are they gonna think of me, I’m supposed to be a lead pastor, I’m supposed to be, you know, sensible person.”

Anyway, all of this is just to say that when I was wrapping up my sabbatical, I had awoken something in me… I’d had eight weeks now, and I’d awoken something in me, and I could no longer tell the difference between my childlike instinct and the Spirit of God in me. I was just so awake, so open to the world. And when I went back to work, it took on a much more serious turn. This is where I had to learn about agency, because it wasn’t just like, “oh, doesn’t matter if I lined the grass or not.” Now it was the very first week I went back to work, we read the passage from James that says, “If anyone among you is sick, then call the elders and pray and they will be healed.” And when I heard that being read, I saw the picture in my mind of a woman from our congregation, who, if you would ask me, the person who was hardest to imagine being healed, it was this woman. And I just felt this childlike thing in me that was like, “Pray for her to be healed.” And I had to make a promise again, I’m going to say Yes, because all that junk came at me again. “You’re gonna look…” even more so! “You’re gonna look foolish, you’re gonna disappoint people, you’re going to be disappointed.”

I was not a part of a tradition that does healing prayer. I didn’t know how to do healing prayer. And I know that it can be abusive sometimes, too. That the person being prayed for can be wrung through the wringer. I know that’s traumatic for people sometimes. So I was like, I don’t want to do it, but I’ve promised God that I will say Yes to these prompts. And that took our whole congregation on this journey of learning how to pray well for people. And it started… At first, I didn’t do it, and I mentioned it in passing to someone else, and they said, “I had the same image in my head when we heard that passage.” So then I was like, Oh, dang it. Now we have to do something. And so I thought, well, the passage says to call the elders and pray for that person, so I just called the elders to pray. And the more people who heard about it, the more people said, “I’ve been wanting to ask the healing prayer for me as well.” So instead of us as elders praying for this one lady, twelve people came to ask for healing prayer.

I read the passage from the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus says, “Father, all things are possible with you. Take this cup from me, and not my will, but yours be done,” which I think is the most perfect prayer. That’s not a model prayer that we think of in the way as the Lord’s Prayer, usually, but it’s such a beautiful prayer when you just really want something, but you also just want to give it over to God, whatever the outcome is. So we pray that prayer. We said, “God, you can do everything, heal this person, but not our will, but yours be done.” Which we summed up by saying, we don’t know What God will do, but we know What he can do. To live in that beautiful space where we’re gonna assume God is working, but we also can’t ever know exactly how he’s going to work.

So all of that is a very long way of saying, what began with just a childlike instinct of lying in the grass–and nobody saw me, and it doesn’t matter if I did it or not–became a very public… I mean, it became the way that I lead now.

Marc Schelske 38:52
Hmm, wow.

Mandy Smith 38:54
Leading, doing important things, of sensing a prompt from the Lord and saying Yes to it. And it’s terrifying, because I have no idea what’s going to become of it. And it also is the space where anything transformative, anything powerful and miraculous comes. I have to keep doing it. But, and I was actually just lying in bed this morning, praying for this podcast and remembering this, that sometimes the childlike Yes, sometimes that obedience takes you into really hard things.

Marc Schelske 39:26
Yeah.

Mandy Smith 39:28
So, this is where that adultlikeness comes in, of the perseverance, and the tenacity and the patience. So it’s not like, you know, that was wonderful because it became a wonderful prayer experience for our whole congregation, but that person wasn’t healed in the way we expected. In fact, they passed away. And right now my ministry, you know, I’m in a space of doing regeneration work in a congregation that has almost closed its doors, and there’s some really hard stuff. There’s something cruciform about that, that God… Jesus’ childlike obedience to the Father took him to the cross.

Marc Schelske 40:12
Yeah. Yeah, right.

Mandy Smith 40:14
So it doesn’t always become something fun. But also his childlike obedience to the Father is what got him up every morning to go out and proclaim good news in a world that needed it. And that got him rejected, that got him in so much trouble. But it brought the kingdom.

Marc Schelske 40:33
It sounds like when you tell that story, that in the initial experiences on your sabbatical–the grass and the fence–that there was almost a diagnostic function happening, where those silly activities were sort of surfacing these voices that were impeding you from hearing and responding to the Spirit. And that maybe to even get to the, like you said, sort of bigger, more important moments of listening to the spirit, that somehow these voices that are enculturated into us had to be had to be brought out. Like, I’m afraid, I’m afraid, I’m afraid of something, I’m afraid of looking like something… what’s going on?

Mandy Smith 41:17
Absolutely. It’s all the false selves in us, right? And this is what I’m realizing through experience, that we aren’t going to be transformed until we’re obedient. Because it’s in the discomfort of the obedience that all those false selves come up. So, if we are called to proclaim something, and we don’t understand it, or we’re worried about how we’re going to look, or if people are gonna like us, and we proclaim it anyway, we’re gonna be transformed by that. And when we get rejected… you know, probably some of the most transformative moments in my life have been the moments where I did what I thought I was being called to do, and it didn’t bring me to a place of success. In fact, it’s brought me to a place of rejection, which is… I’m a peacemaker, so that’s the worst thing for me. Then there’s a moment to come back to the Lord and say, “Who are you again? Who am I again? Why are we doing this?” You know, to hide in Him, and to find our identity in him, and every single time those false selves in us are healed, or we’re released from them as we come to know more and more who we actually are.

Marc Schelske 42:37
This is another place, I think, where the culture that has shaped us surfaces, right? Because the culture that shaped me certainly is an Up-and-to-the-right culture. History is improving. Technology is improving. If we just work hard things will get better. Everyone has the same 24 hours. What are you doing with yours? You know, and if we support someone with mental illness in the right way, and they get the right counseling, and the right drugs, their mental illness will go away, and they’ll become a normal contributing member of society. That’s the narrative of our culture, and I think you’re saying that maybe that’s part of the problem.

Mandy Smith 43:17
I guess the question is, what is improving? It may not look like the world’s idea of success, but if we are being made new, then that is a different kind of improvement. So our values are changed. Our goals are changed in all of this. I’m starting to see, you know, I used to talk a lot about how small the kingdom is, and Jesus talks about that all the time. This kingdom is like yeast. I think it’s just that we have to think about it in those terms, because that’s how it seems to us, but actually, it’s the most powerful thing. It has outlived the Roman Empire. The things that we think are really big and important, they can all be measured. You know, the Roman Empire could be. You could count all of its treasures, you could count all of its soldiers and chariots and fortresses. And that made it feel real, because it was physical and solid, and it had power, and, Yes, it did a lot of stuff. That was real. It did accomplish things in the world. But in some ways, because it’s so material, it can be overcome. Another army can come and take it apart.

Marc Schelske 44:32
Right.

Mandy Smith 44:32
The people can die, you know, but when we’re talking about the kingdom, that is a thing stirring in the human heart, You can’t see that, so it feels like nothing.

Marc Schelske 44:45
Yeah, right. Right.

Mandy Smith 44:47
But that’s the eternal thing, that’s the real thing that’s really happening here. And when that can be passed from one human heart to another human heart, then even in oppression, even in persecution, that’s happening underneath the surface. And so, I often like to remember that, you know, yeast seems small and insignificant, but once you knead just a tiny bit of yeast into a whole big lump of dough, you’re not getting that out. Like, if you really hoped to make sure that bread didn’t rise, you’re just out of luck, because it’s through the whole thing now. And so I’m trying… I can see my imagination slowly changing to realize, like… I actually feel sorry now for the things that are passing away, for the things that look so big and important, but which will not last, because the thing that Jesus has given us is forever, unfading, living in a place that nothing can touch it.

I’m reminded of Thomas Merton talking about this diamond. He says there’s a point of light in each of us. It’s like a diamond. That is God’s name written in us, and it’s the center of everything. It’s the center of our true selves. And I think maybe the more we become like Jesus, the more our whole self becomes that. It’s not just a little point in us anymore. It becomes… you know, prepared for an eternal glory. You know, I’m reminded of C.S. Lewis’s description of heaven in the great divorce, that heaven is the most real, and maybe we just need our imaginations restored to be able to embrace that.

Marc Schelske 46:42
As I said earlier, the church of my childhood was obsessed with avoiding the influence of the culture. As I survey the landscape of Western Christianity over these past two or three hundred years, I wonder if we ended up falling into the very ditch we were desperate to avoid. In our conversation, Mandy spoke with such gentle pastoral wisdom. Is your sacred imagination sparked? Mine is. Her distinction between childish faith and childlike faith really intrigues me. So much of human behavior is essentially childish: selfish, desperate for security, willing to take from others if it makes us feel better, excited to be the top dog on the playground, liable to argue that our dad’s bigger than your dad. Does that sound at all like the way the church is behaving? Does it sound at all like the way of Jesus?

What if the way of Jesus starts by not being ashamed of our limitations? What if all our attempts to be strong and right and in charge are actually part of what Paul was talking about, when he warned us of the influence of “the Flesh?” What if the posture of the warrior isn’t reflective of the way of Jesus? Honestly, I have a hard time imagining the western church without these fears.

I suspect the Spirit of God is inviting us to imagine something different. Something that looks more like a table gathering, and less like a conference or concert. Something that looks more like mutual aid and community service, rather than something that looks like a corporation or an empire. Something that is uncomfortably inclusive, and that has the courage to respond to the difficult prompts of the spirit, something that in Mandy’s language looks more childlike. If Mandy’s insight intrigues you, I recommend both of her books. You can find her and her writing at www.TheWayIsTheWay.org.

May you find the courage to let go of childish ways so that you can embrace a vibrant, childlike faith. Thanks for listening.

Notes for today’s episode and any other links that have been mentioned you can find at www.MarcAlanSchelske.com/TAW052.

Was this conversation helpful? Do you want more stuff like this? Then subscribe to my email list. I currently send it once a month. The email includes links to my newest writing, the next podcast episode, books that I recommend and more. I’ll never spam you. I’ll never give your email address to other people. You’ll get a free little book when you do. It’s called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Practice for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World. In this short book, I teach a spiritual practice that has been so helpful to me as I face the anxiety and uncertainty of our time. Subscribe. Get that book, all at www.MarcOptIn.com.

Until next time, remember, in this one present moment, you are loved. You are known, and you are not alone.

Episode 051 – Faith when you don’t Feel Faithful (With Ben Stenke & Matt Tebbe)

The life of a follower of Jesus is not about assent to an idea, or rigorous attention to a life of religious activity. Matt Tebbe says, “There aren’t two things: faith and action. There’s just one thing: Faithful Action.” We discuss.

Show Notes

• Get the book: Having the Mind of Christ
• Gravity Leadership’s Excellent Podcast: The Gravity Leadership Podcast
• Gravity Cohorts: https://gravityleadership.com/academy/

• Scroll down for a full transcript of this episode.
• You can also watch and share the video version on Youtube.

More about My Conversation Partners

Ben Sternke is an Anglican priest, author, and leadership trainer. He’s one of the co-founders of Gravity Leadership and pastors at The Table Indy, in Indianapolis, Indiana.

• Find Jonathan at www.GravityLeadership.com
• Twitter: @bensternke
• Facebook: Ben Sternke

Matt Tebbe is also an Anglican priest, author, and leadership trainer. He’s the other co-founder of Gravity Leadership and pastors at The Table Indy, in Indianapolis, Indiana.

• Find Matt at www.GravityLeadership.com
• Twitter: Matt Tebbe
• Facebook: Matt Tebbe

Today’s Sponsor

• Journaling for Spiritual Growth – Yes! My new book is out and in pre-order mode. Head over and check it out and maybe order a copy or three.

More from Marc

• Get The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World – This little book is free for you by opting into my email list.
• Untangled Heart Course Online.
• Discovering your Authentic Core Values: A Step-by-step Guide
• Subscribe to my Email List. You’ll get a free copy of a little book called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer & Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World.

Transcription

Marc Schelske 0:00
Hey friends, I’m Marc Alan Schelske, and this is The Apprenticeship Way, a podcast about spiritual growth following the way of Jesus. This is episode 51: “Faith when you don’t feel faithful.”

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Today’s podcast is made possible by Journaling for Spiritual Growth. This is my new book. It launched in November of 2022. So it’s just a few months old, but it’s already finding its people. And that is really exciting to me, especially since I knew going into it that this book had a pretty small target audience.

A few weeks ago, I was talking to a woman who read the book and had grown up in the church, and her comment after reading Journaling for Spiritual Growth was how relieved she felt. For her, this little book helped her untangle her picture of God, and find a healthier way to pursue spiritual growth. I teared up, listening to her.

Here’s an Amazon review I want to share with you this really moved me: “I wish this book had been around when I was at the start of my deconstruction process, trying to form a new connection to my last shred of spiritual practice with the Bible. After reading this book, I can tell you it is something special. I found the book clear, focused, and transparent in all its intentions. It became my friend in a way as I explored the prompts. It makes room for one’s personal story and experience. Give it a try. I hope it gracefully surprises you as it did me.”

As the author who wrote this book, I could not ask for higher praise than that. This little book is a six-week process to gently guide you in building a lasting and sustainable journaling practice where you’ll experience spiritual and emotional growth. I intended to write something helpful and healing. And if that sounds intriguing to you, you can get it on all the online bookstores, or you can buy a signed copy directly from me at my website. Learn more about the book and what’s in it at www.JournalingForSpiritualGrowth.com.

WHERE HAVE I BEEN?

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? My last podcast episode was almost six months ago. Well, I’ve been up to my ears in research for my master’s thesis, reading a bunch of patristic theologians, and liberation theologians from the last few generations, thinking about how our picture of God allows us to accept abuse of hierarchy in the church in the world. That’s not right. It’s not okay. It doesn’t align with the way in the teaching of Jesus. And so I hope–if my research goes well–to be able to offer something that is a healthier, more life-giving view. But that’s all for later. I’m still in the research phase. And on top of that, I’m a pastor and a parent of teenagers, and I have a couple of other side gigs that I do to help pay the bills. And so, the podcast has had to take a backseat. I’ve got three new interviews recorded that I’m excited to share with you. My plan is to publish them once a month or so when that all depends because I’m the editor and I’m the producer. That all depends on how the thesis process goes. So with that catch-up about where I’ve been, let’s dive into today’s topic.

INTRODUCTION

The great philosopher and theologian Dallas Willard said, “You can live opposite of what you profess, but you cannot live opposite of what you believe.” Let that sit for a moment. Willard was poking around in the heart of an issue many Christians struggle with. Is Christianity about belief? Is it about action? Which one’s more important? How are they related?

Many folks in Christianity grew up in very legalistic church communities. That’s my story. And regardless of what was taught, the practical experience was the only thing that matters was right action. When those people discover the gospel of grace, they’re so relieved. They’re so free, and they never want to get trapped on the treadmill of performance again. So they often think that belief, specifically belief in Jesus’ forgiveness and grace, is the most important thing.

Now increasingly, though, there are Christians who look at that model and are asking critical questions. What good is a belief in God’s grace and mercy, if the Christian who holds that belief is neither gracious and merciful? How can the church hold to the self-image it has of being a community of love and healing and care when we continue to hear stories of abusive leaders shutting down dissent or hurting people, or taking advantage of those who are weaker than they are? What about incidents of outright abuse? What about historical abuses like slavery or the Indian boarding schools? Folks like these, and I’m among them, wonder if believing in Jesus’ grace and mercy is worth much if the church fails to enact grace and mercy towards real people. So what do we do with this thorny tangle?

Last year, Ben Sternke and Matt Tebbe released a fantastic book called Having the Mind of Christ: Eight Axioms to Cultivate a Robust Faith. In this book, they share the fruit of years of pastoral ministry, and their work at gravity leadership, laying out principles for a Jesus-centered faith that is both transformational for the individual and makes a difference in our world where inequity and exploitation are all too common. But that’s not what we’re going to talk about today.

Today, Matt and Ben are with me to discuss an idea that surfaces in the last chapter of their book. They tackle the question of belief and action by saying that there aren’t two things, faith, and action. There is just one thing: faithful action. That caught my attention. And I asked them to chat with me about what this means. In their book, they wrote that the life of a follower of Jesus requires not merely cognitive assent to an idea, but something more. So I started our conversation by asking them to tell me what that means.

INTERVIEW

Ben Sternke 6:02
Being a follower of Jesus is not merely cognitive assent to an idea. I mean, this is something that we picked up from Willard, as well. He does talk about–and this was transformative for me–he talks about how what we think about beliefs is, is basically like, its assent to an idea. It’s, “I agree with this idea.” But when the scriptures talk about faith, they’re talking about so much more than that.

There are a couple of different ideas here here, I think, that are worth exploring. One is, Where is your trust? Like, what do you trust to be true? And so I think Willard uses this example, actually, where he talks about getting on an airplane. And there’s a lot of trust involved in getting on an airplane, right? It’s unnatural for us humans to be flying 30,000 feet above. So there’s a lot of trust in the pilot to do their job and a lot of trust in the mechanics and the whole process. There’s all this trust that goes into believing that it’s going to be safe for me. If I get on this plane here in Indianapolis, I’m going to end up where I want to go. I’m trusting those people.

Somehow in the areas of religion and spirituality, we’ve adopted more of that latter idea about what faith is to be like, “Do I have the right ideas about how Jesus’ atonement saves us?” Rather than more of the practical aspect of faith, which is “Do I believe that if I trust what Jesus says that my life will be okay?” And that’s more the realm that I think we need to get into when we think about belief. Because, yeah, believing in Jesus has to be more than just saying that, you know, I think Jesus existed. And I think Jesus was the Son of God. I mean, all those things are fine. But we have to say, like, do I trust Jesus to save me, actually?

Marc Schelske 7:49
Part of the trouble is that we have these statements in Scripture that say things that feel really frank and clear, like, “believe and be saved…”

Ben Sternke 7:56
Right? Yeah.

Marc Schelske 7:57
But then we have to say, Well, wait a minute, what do we mean by belief? And were the people sitting in the room hearing that statement in the first century, were they hearing intellectual assent to what I just told you? Accept this idea? Or were they hearing something different?

Matt Tebbe 8:16
Yeah, Mark, I think one of the metaphors that Scripture uses to describe the relationship between Christ and the church is marriage, right? And if my wife looked at me, and said, “Do you believe in our marriage?” What she’s asking is, “What is my level of commitment and participation the marriage?”

Marc Schelske 8:37
Mmm, that’s great. Commitment and participation, right?

Matt Tebbe 8:39
Yeah. And so she’s not asking if assent to the marriage’s existence. We all know that’s not what she’s asking for…

Marc Schelske 8:47
Right, exactly!

Matt Tebbe 8:48
Okay. What it means then to confess with my mouth or believe, is to be committed to participating in the reality of Jesus’s lordship, and that’s all-encompassing.

Marc Schelske 9:01
Yeah, right. Right. Yeah. Back to the airplane analogy. I can imagine that there’s an engineering school somewhere where a bunch of engineers or pilot-in-training could sit in a room with a whiteboard, and talk about the physical principles that allow flight to exist. But then, if somebody in that room still fundamentally in their heart is like, “I just really don’t feel like it’s safe to be on an airplane.” And so then they don’t fly. They’ve got this theoretical knowledge. They may even say, “This is true. The physics of this process is true. I assent to it being true.” But for some reason, they’re not going to fly?

Ben Sternke 9:39
That actually reveals then our true and deepest beliefs. I think it’s a better way of talking about belief, rather than what ideas do I agree with. What are my actions show me about what I most deeply believe about who God is? I might trust Jesus to save me after I die, but like, do I trust Jesus to enough to pray for daily bread, for example., Do I trust Jesus to, you know, make the kind of decisions I would make throughout my day to, like, parenting my kids in a new way? Or do I trust Jesus enough to listen to what he says? But if all Jesus was good for is like getting us into heaven after we die, then the New Testament doesn’t need to be that long. He doesn’t need to do any teaching. All he was doing, you know… like the New Testament, would be three sentences. It just be like, “Hey, Jesus died, and if you agree with that, then you get to go to heaven. Congratulations.” But there’s tons of teaching, right? And you know, the apostle Paul, in the New Testament letters, they all bear this out. This is a life that we are invited into that we learn, we have to learn, have to learn how to participate in the life that God shares with us.

Marc Schelske 10:48
That brings to my mind, the echo of Jesus in the parable of the Ten Virgins and the whole narrative of facing God and facing judgment that kind of follows along there, and the language of Jesus saying to someone, “You said, Lord, Lord, but I don’t really know you.” All of those elements of Jesus’ teaching get at what you’re talking about, I think, which is that there’s something beneath, or behind your ability to say, “Yes, Jesus is my Lord.” And that means this certain set of doctrinal things. You know, there’s something behind that includes Matt’s phrase–which I thought was really helpful–was commitment, like, “Yes, I’m on board with this,” and participation, like that those are sort of… maybe there’s a better word that is both those things, right? Because I have things in my life I believe I’m committed to, but I’m really not participating in them that much. You know…

Ben Sternke 11:47
Yeah.

Marc Schelske 11:47
And I’ve had some things I’ve had to participate in that I don’t really believe in all that much. I’ve had that experience too. So this other thing that my behavior, my action towards others, now we’re talking about moral behavior, now we’re talking about justice behavior, now we’re talking about the way we show up in the world and make choices with money and all that stuff. That actually has to do with the reality of my belief.

Ben Sternke 12:10
You know, I use the phrase a lot, you know, that we participate in the life that God shares with us. And I think that’s a metaphor that really helps me understand what’s happening in salvation. It’s not like, God is saying, “Hey, you get a free ticket to heaven.” That’s salvation–it’s not quite it, it’s not enough. Nor is it saying, “You have to jump through these hoops, and then God will…

Matt Tebbe 12:30
Yeah.

Ben Sternke 12:30
And so there’s this relationship of… it’s just an exchange of goods and services. It’s just like, “If you jumped through the hoops, you know, God will save you.” And so yeah, it’s much better news to say, you don’t have to jump through the hoops, and God will save you. But what is that salvation? Well, it’s a life. It’s a life, and God actually shares it with us. This is the incarnation, right? So Jesus didn’t come necessarily just to sort of pay a price or to, like, you know, create a salvation mechanism. Jesus coming to us was God coming in the flesh. And there’s this new thing, the God-man, right, this person who is both fully God and fully human, that draws us then as humans into the life of God. That’s the work that I hope the word “participation” can do for us. So even as I do my… as I think ethically and morally about how my life is supposed to go, I want the people that I pastor, the people that I disciple, I want them to have a sense that they’re not doing that as a performance for God. They’re doing it as a participation in God.

Marc Schelske 13:43
Yes, yeah. And that really requires us to think a little bit differently, some of us, about the role, or motivational place of heaven, eternity, afterlife, right? Because if we grew up in a faith tradition, where the whole point… there’s two dates that matter. There’s the date you got saved, and there’s the date you go to be with Jesus in eternity, and everything else… the only value of the whole rest of the timeline is that you can screw those two dates up. Right? So you gotta live through this whole journey trying not to do the things that will blow, you know… or you have a theological system that says you can’t blow it, you know, you got saved, and you’re going to be fine. And so just sort of put up with the life story. Oh, maybe now you have the task of sharing this with other people. That’s what you should be doing. You should be witnessing. But really, all that matters is sort of the sweet by-and-by, right? And this language that you’re putting forward is that that vision isn’t where our attention is focused. Our attention is focused on right now. Like this moment matters. This is actually where I’m going to choose to be enacting the way of Heaven. Not doing something so that I will get to heaven, but enacting the way of Heaven right now or not?

Ben Sternke 15:05
Yeah. And that’s continuous, then that is a continuity between what we do and Heaven or, you know, the age to come.

Matt Tebbe 15:12
I think a lot of people would agree with what we’re saying. The issue, I think, for most of us is, we ironically, we agree with what we’re saying, but we don’t know how to do it. Right? So we vacillate between making faith just sort of this ideological philosophy, we have to check all the boxes, or this moral performance, where we are simply trying harder to behave better, or trying more to do more, right? And so there’s this reality we’re describing of this embodied participation, of this committed allegiance, that feels like an undiscovered country. We can’t even describe it. How do we do it? That’s where I hear most people getting frustrated or wanting more. And I think that’s one of the reasons why we wrote this book, is because this is our experience of how to get into that life, how to actually do it,

Marc Schelske 16:07
Right. And the principles, then, become essential, at least for folks whose spiritual geography is a lot like mine, sort of coming from a legalistic or fundamentalist place to a place that’s not that or perhaps even more progressive folks like that, like me. I have a deep allergy, a visceral allergy, to anything that smells like legalism.

Matt Tebbe 16:29
Yeah, yes.

Marc Schelske 16:30
And so what’s been weird for me, as I’ve begun to enter into sort of more progressive Christian spaces, is hearing progressive Christian principles talked about in ways that smell exactly like the fundamentalism of my childhood.

Matt Tebbe 16:47
Oh, interesting.

Marc Schelske 16:48
Right. It’s a completely different philosophical matrix. It’s a different set of biblical commitments. But there’s still, like, there’s a set of things you’ve got to do exactly the right way. There’s a set of vocabulary you have to use properly. If you don’t use those things, the way we’re going to manage you is we’re going to shun you, which was the religious tool of my childhood. Like all that stuff, and I’m like, whoa, whoa, wait, all of these new commitments I have, they come to me from my following of Jesus. I got here because of my deep desire to find a way to live a life and pastor a church that feels like it’s in alignment with the way of Jesus that I see in the New Testament…

Matt Tebbe 17:28
Yeah.

Marc Schelske 17:28
…but all of a sudden, I’m hearing and feeling this sort of very familiar ghost of “You got to do certain things in the right way to be accepted and to be acceptable.” And I’m like, Whoa, no, no, no, no, no, no. Right. And so then when I hear you say, “Yeah, it’s not just faith, it’s also action,” there’s a little bell in the back of my mind, that’s like, wait a minute, wait a minute. What does this mean? Really?

Matt Tebbe 17:52
It’s a trap, right? There’s the trap of moralism, or the trap of certitude, or the trap of being locked in the mind or being all externally focused. And so part of the work then we’ve been exploring is how do we not get locked in these traps? The life of the mind is crucial. We’re using words. I’m talking about concepts right now, appealing to the mind, right? Yes. So it’s not that this is anti-thought or anti-idea or concept. And obviously, what we’re doing, we’re treating each other with kindness and respect. So it matters how we behave, and it matters what we believe. But we’ve truncated those things because we’ve sequestered them into places like you’re describing that create some sort of legalism or some sort of certitude testing. And I think that we lack an integrative approach that deals with the whole human person, which is why this committed participation thing is important to us.

Ben Sternke 18:44
It is difficult to break out of that paradigm. It’s complicated, as you said, Marc, by our histories, our pasts, you know, the things that smell familiar–I think that’s a great metaphor, you know–for the ways that we get… I mean, that’s one of the other metaphors is triggered, right?

Marc Schelske 18:57
Yeah, right.

Ben Sternke 18:58
Something happens in our body that reminds us of something else. Then it’s hard not to associate this new thing with the old thing.

Marc Schelske 19:07
It makes me think of, like, you know, the old theologians talking about the via positiva and the via negativa when we talk about God, right? There’s some things we can only talk about by saying, “We’re really clear it’s not this. We’re really clear it’s not this. We’re really clear it’s not this. That leaves this sort of space in the middle that is hard to define, but we know it’s not, we know it’s not exploitative. We know it’s not manipulative. We know it’s not by force. We know it’s not… you know, we know all that. So then, how do we do it? And that, I think, is where the eight principles in your book are so helpful because they really are just explicitly saying, “Here are eight of the ways that we can say, ‘yes, it is this.'”

Ben Sternke 19:47
Yes. Yep. Yeah, I love that way of putting it, Marc. I think the axioms did come through that kind of work, right? That both Matt and I, as we encountered those kinds of confusions and those kinds of… “Hey, we’re missing each other here. What’s happening?” The axioms we’ve kind of settled on through that work of saying, “Oh, here’s an assumption that is worth stating explicitly,” even if it feels theologically naive, or, well, everybody agrees with that. But, actually, when you begin to explore it and say, “Well, how, do I live like this is just true? Or are there little eruptions, you know, of the real–to put it that way–in my life that demonstrate to me that “Oh, actually, there, there are certain kinds of situations that I approach as if God is not always present and at work,” (which is one of the axioms.) That’s interesting. And how do we just be curious about that, and playful and gentle, but curious and say, like, “I wonder what’s going on there for me?”

Marc Schelske 20:46
Yeah. And medicinal, maybe, right? Like, if I’m not living as if God is real in that domain of my life, what is that diagnostic of? In my legalistic background, the question would be, “Oh, that reveals that I’m not fully committed, or I’m not fully sanctified, or I haven’t really turned that over to God, or I’ve got persistent sin in my life.” There’d be all these answers to why that’s happening that have to do with my fundamental acceptance.

Ben Sternke 21:15
Yes!

Marc Schelske 21:16
Right? Whereas, if we’re looking at it diagnostically, it’s, “No, no, no, no, we’re not even having the conversation whether you’re accepted, you’re accepted.”

Ben Sternke 21:25
Right.

Marc Schelske 21:25
But what does this say? Why does your knee hurt? That means something. There’s something going on. We should look at that.

Ben Sternke 21:31
Yeah, that’s one of the biggest paradigm shifts for me in my in my faith has been going from assuming that, like noticing something wrong in my life is… like condemnation being right on the heels of that, to noticing something wrong and thinking, like, “how am I sick? What healing do I need?”

Matt Tebbe 21:51
Yeah,

Ben Sternke 21:52
…and trusting that God’s right there? “I’m glad you noticed this, because I’ve been ready.” But God invites our participation in that. He doesn’t just sort of do it automatically, so to speak.

Matt Tebbe 22:02
Yeah.

Marc Schelske 22:03
So, you have this great framework that I want us to talk about toward the end of that chapter. But as you set up the framework, you use a phrase that was a little bit one of those hang-up phrases for me, right? You begin talking about people who’ve committed to the way of Jesus acting as if it’s true. And that phrase brings up some connotations for me that I don’t think are what you mean, right? So sometimes you hear that phrase, and kind of a manifesting tone, like in hustle culture, like “dress for the job you want not the job you have…”

Ben Sternke 22:41
Fake it till you make it.

Marc Schelske 22:42
That’s exactly it. Yeah. Or then also in kind of the tone of hypocrisy, right? That you’re doing something that isn’t authentic, right? And authenticity is the preeminent value of our culture. And so if you are doing something that’s not authentic to you, well, you’re just lying, you’re a hypocrite. You’re saying, well, there’s, there’s a marriage, there’s a connection between what we do and what we believe. And so press into the doing. Okay, so let’s talk about how we press into the doing without it being either of these other negative things.

Matt Tebbe 23:18
So, it’s the difference between someone pointing at you and threatening you to do something, or inviting you to do something you don’t think you can do, and reaching out their hand towards you. “What if you trusted me? Maybe you could take my hand. And together, we could do this?” To make it more “spiritual,” Marc: Maybe you don’t have to pray for the faith in order to do this. But maybe faith is taking one step and doing it. Maybe you already have a mustard seed. And even though your feelings aren’t all aligned, or there isn’t 100% clarity, you don’t know how it’s going to go. You can’t manage or secure the outcome ahead of time. Maybe it’s enough to take one step. Maybe there’s a reason scripture talks about salvation and the process of being saved as something we’re to work out with fear and trembling. Sometimes fear and trembling feels like fear and trembling.

Marc Schelske 24:17
Right! Why would it not?!

Matt Tebbe 24:21
So, I want to I want to affirm everything you’re saying about this fake-it-till-you-make-it, punch-myself-in-the-soul, pull-myself-up-by-the-bootstraps, white-knuckle-this-thing, you know what I mean? Put on a happy face out. There’s a faking that’s different than a faithing. And one is consent and surrender. Faithing is consent and surrender, and the other is straining and posing.

Marc Schelske 24:50
I think that it’s really helpful to remind us about the fear and trembling piece, right because part of that longing our culture has, both in the church and out, for certainty It leads us to want faith to feel like courage. That if I believe in something well, then I clearly like I know everything about how it works, like those engineers studying how airplanes can fly. I know all that. And I am I feel my feelings are aligned. Right, I moved into this thing because it was authentic. My emotional experience was moving me there and I feel strongly about this as a kind of certainty. Yeah, right. And so to say that I could move forward that faith could actually feel like fear and trembling. Yeah. deconstructs that certainty, right? Faith actually will not feel like courage. Probably faith will feel like I don’t know if I know what I’m talking about here.

Matt Tebbe 25:45
Yeah. So even the way we use language, we talk about faith as something that’s static. So do you notice I said faithing? Because faithing is a dynamic, participatory action. You can’t have courage without fear. There is no courage unless you have fear.

Marc Schelske 26:02
Right, right.

Ben Sternke 26:04
In the original language, in Greek, obviously, the word that we’ve been using for “faith” is the noun form of the word that we’ve said is “belief,” right? So that. those are, pisteuo and pistis. And so. So that is… I like the using the word faithing because it sort of gets us out of our normal categories of what we think of faith as. Because I think that’s one of the main traps that we’re trying to help people get out of when we talk about “believing is acting as if it’s true,” is the trap of thinking that faith is certainty. And so we encounter this all the time with people we disciple, people who go through our cohorts. This knee-jerk assumption for most of us, if we’ve grown up in any kind of Christian tradition, is, “oh, yeah, I gotta, I gotta, like, believe harder that that’s true.”

Marc Schelske 26:46
Right! What does that even mean?

Ben Sternke 26:48
I know, you can’t even do it. And so, like, “I know that God loves me, but man, I just, I just, I guess I just gotta believe that more.” It’s like, well, like, that’s actually impossible, right? You can’t do it. You can’t actually do it. But what you can do is, again, take a small step. This is why for our cohorts especially, we always come back to concrete moments in people’s lives. Because, again, we can’t learn how to trust that God loves me. We can’t learn how to trust that abstractly or generically.

We can only do that in the moments where we discover that that is actually okay, “What I’m really believing in this situation, the reason I act this way with my kids, the reason I treat my employees this way, is it has has to do with this.” Okay, there’s a false belief here. And just making a small adjustment is what we’re talking about. It’s gentle. It’s consent. It’s, it’s almost like there’s a, there’s a playful curiosity about it. “Well, what if you tried something like this instead of that and let’s see what happens.” There’s also that sort of experimental… “You know, let’s talk about it later. What happened?” Just change one little thing.

Marc Schelske 27:59
Yeah, the “try” word there really pushes us over into the realm of practical action.

Matt Tebbe 28:07
Yeah,

Marc Schelske 28:07
Like, “try” means, “Oh, you’re gonna do a thing.” You’re gonna have a conversation, you’re gonna take an act, you’re going to do some things, right? And that’s… So many of us have this mindset that faith is an abstract thing, either an abstract intellectual thing or, in some traditions, an abstract emotional thing, which is where you can have language of belief harder, right? Most of my early most of my early ministry experience was in youth ministry. And we talked about that kind of stuff all the time, we were so focused on the intensity. I look back, and I’m like,” What does that even… What does it mean? Like, “Pressing in?” Like I’m praying? uuurgh Like, there’s, you know… That is… it’s incoherent. Looking back at it. It’s incoherent to me, you know? What was I asking a kid to do?

Matt Tebbe 28:56
Yeah, we use the word experiment. Experiment takes the pressure off of nailing it and getting it right. Because you do an experiment because you don’t know what you’re going to find. Or you think you know, but you don’t. There’s some open-endedness and room for discovery in an experiment. And I think part of why that legalism you talked about earlier, Marc, or just an easy-believe-ism, which is sort of like this idea of getting my ideas in order. They are so appealing because they give us the illusion of control.

Marc Schelske 29:27
Right.

Matt Tebbe 29:29
It’s something we can control, and faithing, consenting to the God of love, who holds everything together, is… love is anti-control. It’s uncontrolled. You can’t love someone or something and control it.

Marc Schelske 29:47
Right?

Matt Tebbe 29:48
Right. And so, for me, then I think of an experiment as how I do two things that seem like a paradox. Use my agency here unto a goal and end and lay down control.

Marc Schelske 30:05
Right, right. Yeah, exactly.

Matt Tebbe 30:06
Those seem like a paradox to do both those things at the same time.

Ben Sternke 30:10
I think we oftentimes those are some of the moments where we reveal that we were seeking control through our agency. when something that we were hoping… we didn’t realize it maybe at the time, but something we hoped would happen didn’t happen. Well, then we’ve got, oh, well, did it work? It’s like, well, that, you know, that’s, again, that’s treating this whole relationship, this whole faith, this whole life with God, as a mechanism that works or doesn’t. That’s not what it is. It’s a life.

In one of my cohorts that I’m leading right now, through Gravity, there’s a woman there who has reported that one of the things that has been on her mind lately is that she… she’s noticed that she and her husband are spending a lot more time on screens during their free time. And it sort of agitates her, bothers her. And she sort of has this feeling of like,” I don’t want us to be spending so much time on screens.” And so her initial response is just to sort of set boundaries around that. So let’s just put our phones away after dinner, and then we’ll just, you know, we’ll have a conversation or lets you know that. So she’s trying to fix a problem, right?

But as we dug into that a little bit with some compassion and with some curiosity and say, like, well, what gives you the idea that you’re spending too much time on screens? What’s going on for you? It came up that, like, she’s been through a lot of loss lately. She was like, “I think what’s happening is that I’m sensing that we need to be tending to this. But being on screens feels easier.” And uncovering essentially that what she was truly believing in her bones, is that “I can’t face the grief of these losses, because it will overwhelm me.”

Marc Schelske 31:45
Yeah.

Ben Sternke 31:46
And so the good news for her that the truth that, you know, we sensed as a group that God was speaking to her, that we checked with her, was just that “What if God’s waiting for you in that grief? What if God is there, and God will make sure that you are not overwhelmed, that God will sustain you in that? What is the path to your healing? And she, she affirmed that. She said, Yeah, that’s true.

So then the next step is like, what do you do, then? How do you trust that good news that God is waiting for you in your grief? And so, for her, it was a really simple step. It was one little thing. It was, “I’m going to have one conversation with my husband where I just tell him what I’ve discovered about myself. And the reason that I am sort of agitated about screens. And I’m going to say that this is something that I’m sensing that I need to do. And I wonder if you might need to do it, too. And I wonder if you’d be open to us having these kinds of conversations together, where we talk about the past, where we maybe cry together about what we’ve lost? Would you be open to that.” And that was it. Her husband might not be open to it. He might think that’s a stupid idea. But her opening up, having the conversation, sharing where God was speaking to her, that was her faith.

Marc Schelske 33:06
Yeah.

Ben Sternke 33:06
And the following week, we got on the call, and we rejoiced with her that she acted in faith. She acted as if it was true that God was waiting for her in her grief by taking this small step of opening up. “Maybe I could talk with my husband about this grief.”

Marc Schelske 33:20
At the close of this last chapter, you talk… you have this process, this cycle, that you encourage people and you talk about. There’s this sort of sequence of compassionate awareness, creating alignment, and cooperative action. And you portray this as a circle that kind of feeds in on itself. And you wrote, “Cooperative action is the embodiment of your faith, no matter how you feel.” So in the story, you just told, if I’m understanding that correctly, that woman is doing cooperative action…

Ben Sternke 33:57
Yes.

Marc Schelske 33:57
…by following through on that conversation, right? And that discerning with you in community that maybe this is where God’s showing up, or maybe this is what God is asking. And so she’s going to consent and participate with that idea, in actually enacting that conversation. So let’s talk about that cycle and what cooperative action is, because that feels so much more compelling to me, then, then kind of that fake-it-till-you-make-it sort of tone that we were talking about earlier.

Ben Sternke 34:28
Her faith in that moment, that was her cooperative action. And that’s something that she can do, whether she feels amazing and joyful about it, or she’s terrified. She can have the conversation, no matter how. And we discerned that together. It didn’t feel overwhelming. It didn’t feel like too much. It felt like something that she could she could say, “Yes, I can do this.” And that would be, you know, faithful action that opens up probably more faithful action. It’s not like that fixes her problem. Right? It’s not like she doesn’t need to grieve now. I mean, there’s still grief that needs… lament, right? But this opens the door into some of those things that she she needs to continue to walk in, you know, she’s gonna be faithful to this.

Matt Tebbe 35:08
The circle in this book, and the way that Ben just described this, it’s not a prescription. So then she’s not coming to like the spiritual doctor, who says, “Here, here’s your script, have one conversation with your husband, and that’ll take care of this problem.” But it’s much more of like, if God’s present and at work here, and if he cares about it more than you do, and if it’s all about love, what could any of this have to do with that? These are things that God has said. This is the way Jesus operated. They seem to be like grounding assumptions Jesus makes about reality, and people, his Father. So let’s just say, let’s just dare to bring that lens to the situation. What does it reveal? What wasn’t seen before? And then let’s discern together what it looks like if you have the faith to do it, to move towards God and other people in love, trusting that, you know, God is present and at work.

Marc Schelske 36:07
Right.

Matt Tebbe 36:08
So then it’s an empowering conversation, where this person, or whomever, myself, or you, Marc, we, we have a choice. Either I’m alone on this rock, spinning at 1000 miles an hour, hurtling through space at 11,000 miles an hour, and the best I can do with my pain is to distract myself from it. Or the God that Jesus reveals moves towards people in pain, weeps at tombs, holds people who are suffering, touches them, and he wants to hold me and touch me, too. That’s not something I have to necessarily just think about more, but I can open my life up, embodied, open my life up to some experiment, and then see what happens.

Marc Schelske 36:54
Right? That’s the “as if” part.

Matt Tebbe 36:55
Yes!

Marc Schelske 36:55
I don’t know how this is gonna go. We don’t know if the husband is going to respond. And even if the husband doesn’t respond, even if the husband says that’s a terrible idea, that’s not the end for her. She’s still… then the next thing for her is going to be, “Okay. Well, how are you going to process your grief in a way that you can do without your husband participating?” Right?

Ben Sternke 37:16
Yeah. How do I how do I find a space to continue to walk in faith? And this is different for every single conversation. Like even leading these kinds of conversations, I like have no idea where we’re going. I have no clue at the outset what’s happening here.

Matt Tebbe 37:31
Yeah.

Ben Sternke 37:31
And, you know, and I’ve been doing this a long time. There’s no control there, either. And so we just opened ourselves up to even having the kind of conversation where we could discern cooperative action, what that would look like. Is this opening up to, well, “How is God at work here?” I don’t know. And what is your… because… that was her faithing. But there was also enough faith for her to faith. Right? There was enough faith that that made sense, that’s kind of the edge of her faith right there.

Marc Schelske 38:01
Right, right. Yeah.

Ben Sternke 38:02
And so wherever we’re hitting the edge of our faith, it’s always fear and trembling. It’s always like… those are the liminal moments. Those are the parts where like, “Oh, God, I’m so scared. I don’t know what, you know… I’m not sure what’s gonna happen here.” There’s other parts of our faith that feel a little bit more secure. Right. But whenever we’re talking about those edges of our faith, that always feels that way. It’s always it’s always tender. And it can’t be predicted at the outset. What would be a good step of faith? And so a lot of times those questions are helpful just to say, like, do you have enough faith to just have this conversation? Is that out of the question? That’s fine. And that oftentimes happens. People are, “I could never do that.” Alright. That’s fine. Well, what can we do?

Marc Schelske 38:42
The thing that feels hopeful to me in this is that it sounds like you’re saying there’s a way for me to have faith when I don’t feel very faithful.

Matt Tebbe 38:51
Yes! Yes.

Ben Sternke 38:53
Yes, that’s a good way to put it.

Matt Tebbe 38:55
Yes. This is another part of this process. Marc. You know, if you’re around a sinner long enough… Ask Ben about this. He’s been around me a long time. You got a list of things that you want to change about that person.

Marc Schelske 39:08
Sure.

Matt Tebbe 39:08
Right. And as pastors, it’s hard for us not to notice things that are wrong with ourselves, with the people, with our church. And I think that this process disciplines me when I’m with somebody not to say, “Okay, I’m glad you finally want to listen to God. Here’s a list.” But rather, it’s like, “Okay, where do you have an awareness and faith that God’s present and at work? We start with where you are, versus where I wish you were, or where maybe guilty or toxic conscience tells you you should be.

Marc Schelske 39:39
Right.

Matt Tebbe 39:39
So, for instance, this woman is so frustrated that we’re on our screens. That’s the pain point. But being curious there, bringing some compassion to that reveals that that’s not really the problem. That’s just sort of getting my attention. And so we find that, like, you know, if somebody’s being on their screen bothers me, and I tell them, Hey, would you stop me on your screen when you’re around me? And what’s really going on is that they’re doing the best they can, with this huge cancer of pain in their life, that I’ve, I’ve managed my own irritation and their behavior and missed a golden opportunity to actually love somebody.

Marc Schelske 40:16
Boy, that feels so good, right? Because I think that there’s so many of us that have kind of the background where instruction or mentoring that we receive kind of amounts to “just have more faith.” In a way, you’re saying, have more faith, but what you’re saying is, “We’ll just sort of step into the things that seem like the kinds of places God shows up.

Ben Sternke 40:41
Mmm, yeah.

Marc Schelske 40:42
Like you don’t know for sure, right? We don’t know for sure if God put that issue on her heart about grief. But does that sound like the kind of thing God might do? I mean, if you were just… just based on what you know about Jesus, do you imagine you might find him in the tomb of your grief? Can you just imagine how that’s possible? Okay, well, try it out.

Matt Tebbe 41:01
Yeees.

Marc Schelske 41:01
That’s so good. I feel like this really opens the conversation of faith up to be accessible to a lot more people, because I think there’s a lot more people who don’t feel very faithful. And to say to them, you know, there’s, there’s a way for you to have faith, even if you don’t align with these particular stories about what faith looks like. Just walk into it.

Ben Sternke 41:23
That too, I’d want to add an encouraging word. I think the feeling of not feeling faithful is rooted in faith. Your desire to be faithful s your faith. And it’s precious to Jesus.

Marc Schelske 41:38
I want us to take a moment here at the end to have you give us a couple sentences about the Gravity cohorts. You’ve told the story about this woman. You’ve mentioned the cohorts in passing, I don’t know that everyone who follows my podcast would even know what that is. So what are these cohorts? Who are they for? How do they work? How does that help people have this kind of faith we’re talking about?

Matt Tebbe 42:02
It’s a group of seven people or so that we take through our curriculum, including this book that helps people gain this operating system, to use a metaphor, this way of being with God and other people, where we are increasingly coming to trust the God of love, and that God’s making a coherent sense out of our life as a participation with him. And so the cohort is very much a place of formation and discipleship, but it’s also a place where you learn a process and a language to use with other people in your life, to help people discern the kingdom of God, to learn how to proclaim good news to yourself and other people. And then craft these experiments of trust. So I can, I can embody and participate in faith, you don’t need to run across the Sea of Galilee, just take a step. And then our life becomes a series of experimenting with steps. Right? It’s a game, it’s a holy game of increasingly turning our life over to Jesus with our very life. Instead of like “Every head bowed, every eye closed, playing the Chris Tomlin song on repeat.” My actual life is my spiritual life.

Marc Schelske 43:14
Right?

Matt Tebbe 43:14
Yes, let’s treat dinner tonight as an altar call. So that’s what the cohorts do.

Ben Sternke 43:22
Yeah. And just on a practical note, too, just to give people a better picture of, like, how they work: They’re online groups. So we meet on Zoom. They meet every week or so, it’s a weekly group, that meets for about 75 minutes for a year, so for 12 months, and so there’s weeks take off, obviously, for travel and vacations and things like that. But it’s a year-long commitment to be part of an online group of seven or so people that agree to learn together, you know, how to discern what God’s doing, and how to say yes to it, and how to grow our faith and learn to live in love.

Marc Schelske 43:59
If somebody thought that was intriguing and might be helpful for them, where would they go to find out more about that?

Ben Sternke 44:05
You can go to www.GravityLeadership.com/academy. If you’re intrigued about it, go ahead and visit the website. But also, if you just email. Email Matt@GravityLeadership.com or me, Ben@GravityLeadership.com. And we’d be happy to chat with you about how it works and all that kind of thing.

Marc Schelske 44:22
Fantastic. Thank you so much. Gentlemen, I really appreciate you taking the time to get me over my hurdles with your book. Not every author is willing to do that. Like, “Hey, I loved your book, except this part. Let’s talk about that!”

Ben Sternke 44:35
Yeah. Yeah. I love that, Marc. I see it as more opportunities for me to learn how to better communicate what I’m trying to say. I found this conversation very generative. Thank you.

Marc Schelske 44:45
Me too. Great. Thank you guys.

REFLECTION 

At one point in this conversation, Matt said, “My actual life is my spiritual life.” Yeah, yes. That’s the thing. So many of us were taught that the spiritual life is some elevated condition that we have to attain by effort, by feeling a certain way, or by spending a certain number of hours in deep spiritual disciplines– whichever variety your church liked best. We were given this picture that only certain special people could really attain such a life. That can’t be what Jesus meant, right?

If Jesus is good news for everyone, then Jesus has to be good news for the tired and the hopeless, and those without any extra time because they’re busy making ends meet. If Jesus is good news for everyone, then Jesus has to be good news for folks who don’t look very Christian, and for folks who have been run out of the church. Jesus has to be good news for those who don’t have a good memory that enables them to memorize Bible verses, for those with PTSD, and for those who are so hurt they never want to step foot in a church again. If Jesus is good news for everyone, then the spiritual life must be our actual lives, and a life of faith has to be something other than some outstanding shiny spiritual accomplishment. Faith isn’t some weird attempt to believe harder. It’s certainly not a metric of how many Bible verses you have memorized, or how many hours you volunteer.

As followers of Jesus, we’re not committing to a life of obligatory religious behavior, nor are we committing to a life of plastic certainty. And we’re certainly not committing to a life where we have all the answers, and we need to take control so that we can force other people to live in the way that we think they should. No! Instead, committing to the way of Jesus means trusting that in this life, the very life we live today, we are fully in God’s presence, we are not alone. And in that space, we can explore and experiment with spiritual growth, and trust that God’s Spirit will meet us there.

May you release the chains of certainty and obligation, so that you can relax into the present moment where Jesus is waiting for you, knowing that your very desire to be faithful is faith.

Thanks for listening.

Notes for today’s episode and any links mentioned can be found at www.MarcAlanSchelske.com/TAW051.

Did you enjoy that conversation? Did you find it helpful for your journey? Then subscribe to my email list at www.MarcOptIn.com. You’ll get, at most, one monthly update that will feature my latest online writing, a link to a new podcast episode if I published one, book recommendations, and other things that I think might be helpful to your journey. And as a bonus, you’ll receive a free copy of a little book I wrote called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Practice for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World. This little prayer offers a spiritual practice that has helped me face the anxiety and uncertainty of the last few years. It’s been deeply helpful to me. I want to offer it to you. I look forward to staying connected with you.

Until next time, remember in this one present moment, you are loved, you are known, and you are not alone.

Episode 050 – Letting God Change Our Minds —or, A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Devotional (With Jonathan Puddle)

What do you do with an opportunity that comes your way that isn’t right for you? That happened for Jonathan Puddle, and he turned into something beautiful.

Show Notes

• Jonathan’s new devotional: Mornings With God: Daily Bible Devotional for Men
• Jonathan’s first devotional: You are Enough: Learning to Love Yourself the Way God Loves You

• Scroll down for a full transcript of this episode.
• You can also watch and share the video version on Youtube.

More about My Conversation Partner

Kevin Makins is a writer, speaker, and maker of things, who is also just a regular pastor, serving at Eucharist Church, in downtown Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

• Find Jonathan at www.jonathanpuddle.com
• Twitter: @jonathanpuddle
• Instagram: @jonathanpuddle
• Facebook: Jonathan Puddle

Today’s Sponsor

• Journaling for Spiritual Growth – Yes! My new book is out and in pre-order mode. Head over and check it out and maybe order a copy or three.

More from Marc

• Get The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World – This little book is free for you by opting in to my email list.
• Untangled Heart Course Online.
• Discovering your Authentic Core Values: A Step-by-step Guide
• Subscribe to my Email List. You’ll get a free copy of a little book called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer & Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World.

Transcription

Marc Schelske  0:00  

So are we willing to let God change our minds? Hey, friends, I’m Marc Alan Schelske, And this is The Apprenticeship Way, a podcast about spiritual growth following the way of Jesus. This is episode 50. When God changes our minds, or maybe a better title: A weird thing happened on the way to the devotional book. You’ll see what I mean.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Today’s podcast is made possible by Journaling For Spiritual Growth. Yes, finally! My new book has at long last made it through all of the hurdles of writing and editorial and revision and design and all that stuff. Pre-orders are live right now. And on November 15, it will be available to you. I’m so excited about this.

Now, if you follow me online, or you’re a regular podcast listener, you already know I’m a big advocate for practical, doable, intentional practices that contribute to personal and spiritual growth. And that’s what this is about. Journaling has been a part of my spiritual practice for about 30 years now. And working with lots of people as a pastor, and in other capacities, for more than two decades, I’ve seen that for many people, journaling is the most consistently transformative practice. But I’ve also seen a lot of people try journaling and then give up. A lot more are intimidated about starting. It feels like a really big deal.

So, I wanted to offer an easy-to-follow process that can help a person start a flexible, gracious, sustainable journaling practice that can serve over the long haul. That’s what this little book is about. It’s a day-by-day guide that will, over the course of six weeks, help you set your expectations, lay the groundwork, and begin building a habit of journaling that is specifically focused on personal and spiritual growth–and that will work in your actual life. If that sounds intriguing, you can learn more about the book at www.JournalingForSpiritual growth.com.

And as I said, the book is presently in preorder. That’s really important. Why? Because when people preorder a book that does two things. First, it tells the all-seeing algorithms over at Amazon and on social media what’s interesting to people. When that happens, the algorithm start sharing it with people that we don’t even know. But the second thing is that all those pre-orders get counted as sales on the first day the book goes live. That boost helps the book become visible through all the noise of all of the other books. So, the more pre-orders there are, the more visible the book becomes, the more it can be found by other people. I would like to invite you to head over to one of the vendors listed on the book page on my website and preorder a copy.

If you preorder a copy just for yourself, I’ll invite you to a special online book launch party happening on November 22. If you preorder three or more copies–you know, to give to your friends–I’ll invite you to that online book launch party, and I’ll send you a free signed copy along with a starter journal that you can keep or give to one of those friends. And if you preorder five or more copies–like for your book group, or your church group or more friends–I’ll invite you to the launch party, I’ll send you that signed copy with the starter journal, and I’ll give you an hour of my time that you can use in a variety of ways.

Those are all listed along with information about these other giveaways over at the website for the book, exactly the same place where you’ll find the links for preordering. So head over to www.JournalingFor SpiritualGrowth.com.

INTRODUCTION

A couple years back, my friend Jonathan puddle wrote a beautiful trauma-informed 30-Day devotional called You Are Enough: Learning to Love Yourself the Way God Loves You. But that book is not the topic of today’s conversation with Jonathan. Today, Jonathan and I are going to chat about a weird, unexpected project that came as a result of him writing that first devotional. An unexpected opportunity came his way. A publisher approached Jonathan and asked him to write a year long, daily Bible Devotional for men. Well, that’s not really Jonathan’s audience. It’s not the kind of book he’d really use. The specifications for the project were really odd. They were algorithmically determined, which is just weird. But this whole thing turned into something beautiful.

Jonathan is an award winning writer, podcast host, children’s pastor and publishing consultant. This whole project just came out of left field and I was really intrigued to learn how the project turned out for him. And more importantly, how it led him to think about some big ideas like healthy masculinity, how we see the Bible, why some of us have set the Bible down and maybe how we come back to it, where we see God’s love and whether we are open to letting the spirit change the way we see the world ourselves and God. So I started by asking Jonathan to explain how this strange book came about.

INTERVIEW

Marc Schelske 5:05
You successfully wrote and published and got out into the world a beautiful, reflective devotional book that helps people–anybody–go deep into their own heart to understand how God sees them. After that book is out there, you get invited to write another devotional that was not on your radar, that was not the kind of devotional that you would ever have had on your to-do list. The publisher approaches you and says, “Can you do this?” So what was that invitation? And what is this book that we’re talking about?

Jonathan Puddle 5:40
I love that because my friend Anthony said, “Jonathan, your first book changed my life and changed the way I relate to God. And when I heard you had another devotional coming out, I was thrilled. And then I heard it was a Bible devotional for men. And I figured you had sold out.” Yeah, that’s exactly what he said to me. He’s like, man’s trying to get paid.

Yeah, honestly, it’s a funny thing. I had no interest in writing anything like this, as you said. I used to run a Christian bookstore and devotionals were the bread and butter of Christian bookstores–devotionals and journals. But the ones for men are always atrocious. This project came up, and initially, the publisher asked me to write a different devotional, just another 30-day devotional. And I thought, yeah, I can do that. But they actually didn’t take my sample. And a few months later, they came back and said, “Hey, we’ve got another project, a 365-day Bible Devotional for men. Would you be interested? And I was pretty much like, “Hard pass, you guys, hard pass.” But what initially drew me to it was the intensely strict content limit. I was only going to be given around 120 words per day, including the Scripture content. And I had to try and write something on that. And so honestly, man, I took the job because I thought it would stretch my writing talent. And then, actually, you and I started talking about it. And you said to me, “Jonathan, I know you’d never read a book like this. I know, I’d never read a book like this. But you could bring something unique to this space.” And that got the wheels turning for me. So I have to thank you. I tell people this all the time.

Marc Schelske 7:24
Thank you. What’s interesting is now that it’s out, and I’ve had the opportunity to interact with it, I quite love it. You did something really unique that I’ve not experienced in this type of daily devotional. You know, it’s the daily devotional format, right? You get a scripture. You get a block of text to think about. And you know, you use that as your little spiritual nugget for the day, right? That’s not my spiritual practice. That’s not how I normally do things. But you did something quite interesting that I think you spent a lot of time and heart on. And that is in… in taking, both in curating the selection of texts over the course of a year, and then in thinking through what you could say that would be meaningful in just a handful of sentences, you’ve created a narrative arc that walks through a theology of God who loves humanity so deeply, that that God would focus entirely on everything it takes, through the the path of sacrifice, to bring that love to life in humanity, and the individual person. It’s just, it’s very moving to me.

Jonathan Puddle 8:39
That means a lot. And that is… honestly my heart is really warmed to hear that because that is exactly what I did. I essentially was like, okay, if I’m going to do this, this is what it has to be. The limit of text is so short, in order to do any kind of justice to Scripture, I’m going to have to tell a long story or maybe a sequence of long stories. And so in my Excel sheet, there is something like six or seven different narratives that I’m telling. And in my head, there’s one big overarching story that I’m telling. And so there’s a number of stories and meta stories that I’m working through.

As I got more and more into it, a number of things happened in me that I wasn’t necessarily expecting. One, I actually really started to care for men. I have a tenuous relationship with men, especially men I don’t know. I have I have great, long lasting friendships with men. But when I walk into a party or a new space, I gravitate to women. I find it easier to connect with women quickly and deeply in a way that I often find men take a few times going around the mountain before we can actually have what doesn’t feel to me like a superfluous fluffy conversation. Let alone the kind of machismo and competition that can accompany so many male of spaces.

But I feel like, honestly, I guess God softened my heart. And I think it also pushed me to reflect on my own journey as a man because it’s weird. Like, it’s a weird time to be a man, I think. In a moment where we are… Okay, the way I put it in the introduction is that when I was a child, my heroes were guys like Sly Stallone. But today, the picture of manhood that’s held up as sexy and good is Paul Rudd. And so, how do you pivot from Sly Stallone to Paul Rudd in 20 or 30 years, with no guide, no process? And that impacts your view of God, your understanding of the story that scripture has been telling. I didn’t know Scripture was telling a good big story until four or five, maybe maximum 10 years ago. 15 years ago, I put the Bible down in a rage. I was just like, “I know God is loving. I know God is actually love itself. I’ve experienced it. I’ve encountered it, it’s changed me. And I can’t find it in this book!” So basically, it was like, “God, if this is if this book has any significance, it’s on you to teach me how to read it.” And I put it down probably for five years. And I had a heart reconfiguration in that time with God. And when I did eventually pick the Bible back up, it was a totally different book.

I get right what why people would put the Bible down. I get why people walk away from church. I get why men honestly have the worst reputation, and Christian men, and church men. We’re looking at the fallout from purity culture, and celebrity Christian culture, and Christian nationalism, and all these different things. And woven through each part of it is patriarchal religion. And like, there’s 101 reasons why I wouldn’t want anything to do with that. And yet my heart breaks when every single school shooting is perpetrated by a male, and that for whatever reason, God incarnated Himself in a male body. And Jesus shows us this completely different kind of strength, and kindness and compassion, and safety.

Marc Schelske 12:23
It’s such a marked contrast, right? So many Christian voices and Christian communities right now seem to be highly invested in the vision that Christianity that is on track is strong, and in control, and setting the pace for culture. And all of that also then aligns with a kind of a cultural sense of what the job of a good man is. So there’s this tension between our desire… I think, you know, any group, any people has that sort of survival desire. We want to be in charge. We want to control the uncertain. And this model that we have, both in the life and story of Jesus, and in many places in the Christian story historically, where the model is different. It’s “give yourself away,” the model is other-centered, and co-suffering, and willing to bear the burdens of other people. And that’s really who we’re called to be.

Jonathan Puddle 13:23
Absolutely.

Marc Schelske 13:24
So now, what happens for you in in these questions on the other side of that project? What did this project do for you?

Jonathan Puddle 13:33
Yeah, that’s a great question. You know, it showed me a lot of different things. And I love the Bible, and I love and care for men. And I’m not sure I would have told you either of those things. They might have been true, but they certainly wouldn’t have been things that shuffled to the top of the stack. One that was really great as a writer and pastor is to come to peace to this, this thing that not all scripture gets treated equally.

Marc Schelske 13:59
Yeah.

Jonathan Puddle 14:00
Jesus doesn’t quote randomly or equally from the Hebrew Scriptures. He is precise. And there’s entire books we have no record of him quoting. There’s books that he hammers over and over and over again. Growing up in a very Bible culture, there has been a pressure to–you know–balance all the seeming contradictions in scripture, right? And I lost the need to do that. And I’ve had one or two reviews of people who didn’t like what I did with certain scriptures, or they say, you know, he’s only picked the nice ones or he’s only picked the ones that make God seem loving. I’m like, Uh huh. Yeah, like Jesus Christ, who did the same thing. So it’s on him. But I’ve come to a great sense of peace with pulling verses out that I believe reflect the overarching narrative of God’s relationship with humanity. I didn’t have that piece before. But I have that piece now. And part of that pieces come from spending more and more time in scripture and actually finding those blueprints and those fingerprints and those whispers everywhere, all through Scripture.

Just on Sunday at our church, one of our team was preaching about grace. And she ends up reading from the book of Isaiah. I forget which chapter, I wasn’t taking notes. But it’s this long rant from God about how he is furious with the Israelites. And he hates their festivals. He despises their offerings. And I’m kind of I’m sitting there getting a little nervous, because I’m thinking, oh, man, I hope this ends up nice. I don’t know how she’s gonna land the plane on this, because right now, this is just rage God, which I just think needs a lot of context and exposition to be treated gently. But she let the text speak. And what happens at the end of that chapter? Why is God so mad? Because you have forgotten to care for the widow, and the alien living among you, and the orphan. And all of your religious performance is worthless to me until you care for the people I care for. And so all of a sudden, this scary, angry, God gets recapitulated into the literally the world’s biggest advocate for the poor and suffering.

Marc Schelske 16:28
Right, right. Exactly right. Yeah,

Jonathan Puddle 16:30
I think the spirit will do that for each one of us. In our pictures of God, if we’ll let the Spirit. Our fathers, our parents, all the authority figures that we grew up with, everybody shaped our view of God, of the Divine, of our self worth, all those kinds of things, right? It’s a process of having some of those things dismantled, sometimes destroyed, in order to get a fresh vision of what God has actually always been like. And I think Scripture is also going through that exact same journey, right? The Israelites are like, “Well, we know the gods are like this. And maybe our God is a 15% improvement upon the local gods.” You know, it’s like, don’t kill everybody, just kill these people. But we gradually get to this point, right, where Jesus is not only saying do good to everybody, including your enemies, especially your enemies, then he then he goes and dies to rescue and redeem the very people killing him. And honestly, I think we’re invited as men, as humans, but contextually as men, to look at that and go, “Okay, well, that’s a kind of masculinity. That’s a kind of strength. That’s a kind of passion. That’s a kind of peace.”

Marc Schelske 17:43
Right.

Jonathan Puddle 17:44
And I don’t see Jesus as strong and in control. I mean, the man is sobbing, and begging the father to take this cup from him. But he’s also trusting the father and saying, “If this is what needs to happen, I’ll do it.”

Marc Schelske 17:57
Yeah…

Jonathan Puddle 17:58
I mean, that alone, that moment in Gethsemene alone, surely shatters all of our preconceived notions of what masculinity is and isn’t allowed to be.

Marc Schelske 18:07
Right! There’s a kind of strength that is not about control. Right? We just can’t imagine that. For us, if you’re not… it’s a binary, you’re in control or you’re out of control. And yet, for God’s infinite heart, to release control to humanity, and still be God and still be ultimate love, and still be capable of bringing all things together for the good? It rattles the brain!

Jonathan Puddle 18:33
Absolutely.

Marc Schelske 18:34
We don’t have a model for that. And then if that’s a call for us, as humans… if I sacrifice to the point of death, I’m going to be dead, right? I don’t get to come back three days later to saying to everybody, “Hey, see, I was right all along.” You know, that’s not probably going to happen for me and yet, what would it be like to be formed and shaped by that vision of love, rather than this sort of power-centered kind of love, where I can be generous to others once I’ve secured myself?

Jonathan Puddle 19:09
So it’s a scarcity mentality, among many other different issues there, right? One of them is simply the fact that we view significance, safety, life as scarce.

Marc Schelske 19:19
Yeah.

Jonathan Puddle 19:20
And so there’s only so much going around. There’s only so much strength, there’s only so much courage. I’ve got to look out for number one, and I’ve been told that that’s righteous, and now I’ve got family and children, so I need to look out for them and to protect them from perceived threats. I understand that for some men… being told to sit down and shut up and listen to women–We’re being told that white men have had long enough with a microphone and it’s time for people of color to have their say–I understand that some men feel very threatened by that and feel very scared and I have compassion for anybody who feels afraid. It’s not comforting to have your worldview yanked out from under you. It’s not a pleasant experience to have your assumptions about the way the world works, and about the way you occupy space in the world, called into question.

I preached a couple of weeks ago to church in my city. I just made this throwaway comment that Jesus was a brown skinned Jewish man. He was not a Christian, a white Christian, like me standing here on the stage preaching to you today about the church. And there was some some nods and smiles and laughter around the room. Someone came up to me afterwards and said, “What where’s that written? That was just interesting to me. Where is that written that Jesus has brown skin?”

Marc Schelske 20:31
Where is it written?

Jonathan Puddle 20:32
Yeah. She had never had cause to consider this ever. And I said to her, “Oh, I don’t know if it’s written. But I mean, everyone from that part of the world has dark skin.” And she’s like, “oh, yeah, I guess that’s true.” And then I said, “You know, f we believe that God made Adam out of dust and dirt, what color is that?” And she’s like, “Brown, blackish, even.”

Marc Schelske 20:57
Very, very, very white. Wery, very white dirt, Jonathan.

Jonathan Puddle 21:02
God specifically went and ground up marble into a powder and used that to create Adam Smith.

Marc Schelske 21:11
That’s right, yeah, exactly!

Jonathan Puddle 21:14
Right. That’s exactly right. She wasn’t snarky at all. She was sincere. And she was like, “Oh, I’ve never I’ve never thought about that.” I guess that there are many people, and men especially, who I think if they’re honest, could say “I’ve never had cause to think about this, never had cause to really acknowledge that. I’ve been fed a sack of lies about what it means to be a man, and what power means, and what control means, and what strength means. And that maybe I have been, at best naive, maybe ignorant. And maybe for some parts of my life willfully ignorant.” Yes. Because it’s a fear. So be a man and deal with the things that scare you.

Marc Schelske 21:58
Yes, yes. That’s, that’s part of mature humanhood. That’s right, facing those difficult things. Learning to accept the truth for what it is. Yes. All right. I’d like to hear a little bit about on the other side of this project, maybe what’s been surprising to you.

Jonathan Puddle 22:17
The very first piece that makes me smile and surprised is the number of reviewers I’m seeing on Amazon and elsewhere who are saying, “Oh, yeah, this is so helpful. It’s a perfect length. Thanks, man.” Like I don’t… clearly, the publisher knew what they were talking about with busy men needing something quick and simple. Like you said, I’m not that kind of guy. I like to sit for half an hour or an hour in contemplative silence and explore the mysteries within. Turns out, we’re perhaps not typical, Marc.

Marc Schelske 22:48
We’re the weirdos! What?

Jonathan Puddle 22:50
That’s been really amusing. I think the thing that really blesses me is a number of men and women, some of whom are in full-time ministry roles, or who have been in full-time ministry roles have written to me and said, “This feels like a way that I could get back into the Bible. This feels like I could feel safe in the pages of Scripture again.” And I think “safe” is a loaded word. Before I kind of began to learn about trauma… You know, we always laughed and bragged about how God isn’t safe. You know, like, there’s a line in Narnia, I think in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, where he’s like, he’s not a tame lion, or he’s not a safe line, but he’s a good lion. So Safe is a loaded word, in the sense that God is certainly not safe for the long-term survival of our false identities.

Marc Schelske 23:46
Mmm, yes.

Jonathan Puddle 23:47
God will gleefully provoke our false self into dissolution. But in terms of whether God is safe, I can come to God and I’m not going to be shamed. I’m not going to be yelled at. I’m not going to be abused. I can comes in with all of my garbage and offer it up before him. And like the father in the prodigal son, before I can even finish my tale of unworthiness and woe, God says, “Sorry, I’m just gonna pause you there, because we’re going to have a party because this is where you belong.” So in that sense, God is profoundly safe. And, and what some people are saying to me is that they feel safe coming back to Scripture, because of the way I’ve offered some of it. So that’s really special. That’s a real honor.

Marc Schelske 24:39
A conversation you and I had back when this was just a concept that you were knocking around, was, wouldn’t it be interesting if the weird algorithmic formula that led to this invitation to write this book was in some way a tool in the hands of the Holy Spirit to get life and truth and light and freedom to people that might not find it otherwise.

Jonathan Puddle 25:12
Totally! I mean, I start with the presupposition that God is real. I follow that with the presupposition that God is good, and that God is present in all things. And if those three are true, then we can trust God to just draw us to God’s self through anything and everything. I was raised being taught those three things, in word, but in deed and culture, the space that I grew up in communicated a fragility to God’s tolerance of us.

Marc Schelske 25:53
Yes.

Jonathan Puddle 25:54
And because of his everywhereness that kind of was terrifying. You couldn’t really escape him. And he was sort of at any given time about to be unhappy with you. But the more that I dig into Scripture, we find the terrible burning wrath of the Lord is against injustice, real injustice…

Marc Schelske 26:16
Right, and offering an invitation to extend that reality to others.

Jonathan Puddle 26:21
Yes!

Marc Schelske 26:22
…to be less of a participant in the injustices of the world. And to be more a participant in the liberation of the world.

Jonathan Puddle 26:30
Yeah, like that’s… everything I think we’ve just said is already bonkers in terms of generosity and risk, that God would offer us this, all of this! And then, to go a step further, and say, “Yeah, and you get to give it away, too. You get to be just like me.” We get to expand the community of love on this earth. We get to expand the pool of kindness, and healing, and redemption. And this story of these crazy Israelites–you know, who God chooses to bless the nations so that the nations would know what God is like–is this wild, messy adventure, and eventually Jesus turns up and says, “Okay, well, I am God. And this is how we do it. And now you’re all free from your bondages. And go and do likewise.”

REFLECTION

Marc Schelske 27:31

Go and do likewise. That’s what I want to be able to do. To go and engage life like Jesus, in the way of Jesus. That’s what I think you want, too. I mean, why else would you be listening to or watching this podcast? But that invitation implies that we have a clear vision of who God is. That’s why what Jonathan did with this strange opportunity, this 365 day daily Bible Devotional for men, it moves me.

In this opportunity, Jonathan wrestled with how to see the never-failing, never-giving-up always-and-forever love of God in the pages of Scripture, and how to present that–what is the biggest idea in human metaphysics and religion–in simple terms that anyone could follow. When we see the nature of God’s other-centered, co-suffering love, it has to change the way we see the world. It’s got to change how we think of gender roles and power dynamics. It’s got to change how we think about privilege and wealth and seeking security. It’s got to change what we imagine the church ought to be up to, and how we are going to interact with people who are not like us, even people we disagree with. When we see that God is good, that God is with us, and that God is inviting us to be part of this ongoing project of freeing people from bondage, it’s got to change the way we imagine the life of faith.

Now, a 365-day daily Bible Devotional for men may not be your thing. That’s not the point. What inspires me about Jonathan’s journey with this book, and what I hope will inspire you, is that he took an opportunity that was placed before him, and chose to use that opportunity to pursue and share the other-centered co-suffering way of Jesus. I think that’s the calling for each of us. What will it look like for you and I to think about our lives in this way, to think of every opportunity that we’re given as a way to demonstrate and share the most generous love in the universe?

There are so many voices today that want to paint God as narrow, exclusionary, demanding, belonging only to people like us. And so the church becomes a reflection of that, guarding the narrow path, judging and excluding, and believing that honors God. But you don’t believe that. I don’t believe that. That’s why we’re here. You wouldn’t be watching or listening to this podcast otherwise. Those voices of judgment, condemnation, exclusion and fear are so loud. Let that volume be an invitation. It is vital for people like you and me and Jonathan to do what we can to share more beautiful vision. May you have the courage and faith to see each opportunity before you as a way to embody and share the beauty of God’s other-centered co-suffering love.

Thanks for listening.

Notes for today’s episode and any links mentioned can be found at www.MarcAlanSchelske.com/TAW050. That’s right 50 episodes! I’d like to invite you to join my email list. I’m emailing about once a month these days, I’ll never share or sell your info. You’ll get links to my writing, next podcast episode, books that I recommend and more. And if you opt in now you’ll get a free little book that I wrote called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Practice for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World. In this little book, I teach a spiritual practice that has continued to be powerfully helpful to me, as I face the anxiety and uncertainty of the world we find ourselves in. So subscribe, get that book: www.MarcOptIn.com.

And until next time, remember: in this one present moment, you are loved, you are known, and you are not alone.

Episode 049 – Church, Stop Acting Like a Hot Topic—or, Building a Church People Actually Want To Go To (With Kevin Makins)

Why would anyone bother to go to church? I don’t mean why would Christians bother. I mean, if someone outside of the church was thinking about getting involved, why would they? What might it look like to build a church that people attend because it’s meaningful to them, not out of obligation or habit? What would a church look like that was truly loved by its neighborhood?

Show Notes

• The Nones: Where they came from, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going, by Ryan Borge
• Article: OK, Millennial. Don’t Blame Boomers for the Decline of Religion in America, by Ryan Borge
• Kevin’s Book: Why Would Anyone Go to Church?

• Scroll down for a full transcript of this episode.
• You can also watch and share the video version on Youtube.

More about My Conversation Partner

Kevin Makins is a writer, speaker, and maker of things, who is also just a regular pastor, serving at Eucharist Church, in downtown Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

• Find Kevin at www.KevinMakins.com
• Learn more about his church: https://eucharistchurch.ca/
• See Kevin’s short films about being human and his 60-min one-man show, “Holy Shift.”
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/kevinmakins
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kevinmakins/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kevinmakinsstuff

Today’s Sponsor

• My Summer Inflation Sale – I am trying to raise some funds this summer to make up for a shortfall in income. If you’ve been thinking about buying anything I make, now is a great time! These sale prices will be active through August 1st.

More from Marc

• Get The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World – This little book is free for you by opting in to my email list.
• Untangled Heart Course Online.
• Discovering your Authentic Core Values: A Step-by-step Guide
• Subscribe to my Email List. You’ll get a free copy of a little book called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer & Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World.

Transcription

Marc Schelske  0:00  

Hey friends, I’m Marc Alan Schelske and this is The Apprenticeship Way, A podcast about spiritual growth following the way of Jesus. This is episode 49. Church stop acting like a hot topic! Or maybe a better title is “Building a church people actually want to go to.”

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Today’s podcast is made possible by My Summer Inflation Sale. You heard me! Life has gotten expensive, hasn’t it? Gas, groceries, it’s all a bit much. Now, Christina, my wife, is a teacher. And so the normal gig is that our family is without a second paycheck for a couple of months every summer. In past years, we’ve budgeted to cover that. But this year, the dramatic increase in prices of essential things has just outpaced our budget. So I’m looking for some extra income. So if you’ve ever thought about buying something I make, now is an excellent time. So what could you get? Any and all of my books, my online courses, and of course for some people, there’s the work that I do to support writers. See it all with special summer inflation sale prices at www.MarcAlanSchelske.com/ Summer-Inflation-Sale. Those prices will be available until August 1. So act fast, I’ve got some bills to pay.

INTRODUCTION

I grew up in Ohio, the American Midwest, in the 1980s. And in that place and time, everyone went to church, everyone I knew. The only question was how into it were you, but everyone went to church. Fast forward through two recessions (maybe three now), the 9-11 attacks, a pointless 20 Year War, a housing bubble (or two), and a global pandemic that shut down in-person gatherings for, in some cases, a year or more, and the world has changed. The assumption that everyone goes to church is just no longer true, especially where I live here in the Pacific Northwest.

Ryan Burge wrote a book called “The Nones” about that category of people who identify themselves as spiritual but not religious. In an article he wrote, looking at the most recent data from the General Social Survey, he pointed out that in a 30-year time period, the share of Baby Boomers who believe in God dropped 3%. In that same time period, but just the last 20 years, the share of Millennials who believe in God dropped 10%. And in that same period of time, just the last five years, the share of Gen Z who believe in God has dropped by 18%. 18%! In that same time period, every single cohort has shown a significant increase in people who don’t attend church and don’t consider themselves affiliated with any religion at all. In concluding his analysis, Burge wrote, “I think it’s entirely fair to say that Generation X (my generation!) represents the last generation raised with traditional American religion.”

He’s saying that everyone younger than me is experiencing a different culture and expectation when it comes to church than what was considered normal by people my age and older. The question of churches is one a lot of people are wrestling with right now. Especially after the pandemic sort of broke the habit of church attendance for a lot of people. People are wondering if church even matters to them? Does church contribute anything worthwhile to the world? You might jump in and say yes, but then that probably means you’re one of the deep insiders. Consider the question from the outside. Apart from religious obligation, why would anyone make the commitment to be part of this kind of community?

Today, we’re gonna dig into those questions. I’ll be chatting with Kevin Makins. He wrote a book called “Why Would Anyone Go To Church.” More importantly, he’s wrestled with this in a real community with real people. He’s a founding pastor of Eucharist Church in downtown Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. This is a guy who has spent a lot of time thinking about this very question. And so I started by asking Kevin why he thinks so many people right now just aren’t interested in church at all.

INTERVIEW

Kevin Makins 4:07
It’s probably in part because church just isn’t that interesting anymore. Sorry, church! Not that it’s not, it is. If you believe unto the Lord Jesus Christ, it’s quite an amazing place. However, if you haven’t had a lived encounter with the sort of transcendence that church is pointing to, if you haven’t walked the way, the good road of Christ, long enough to see how it works and what it produces, in and of its own way, then church just to you looks like the strangest social club for people that have nothing better to do or are just struggling with guilt over their dead grandma who prayed for them every day.

You know, there was a time when I imagine church was good. Like in air quotes, “good.” You know, there was a time when there just wasn’t that much entertainment. You know, it’s like 1750 and you’re a cobbler, and you cobble shoes and your father cobbled shoes. Maybe there’s one wedding a year where people get together and celebrate, but what do you have going on? One person in town has a lute and occasionally they play a song? There’s not much going on. But on Sunday, on Sabbath, the whole town shuts down. Everyone gets together at the four or five buildings nearby, there’s music, there’s singing, there are hymns, there’s a sense of transcendence, belonging, and connection. Your whole life is wrapped up in a singular moment where everyone you know looks to something beyond them, beyond the economy, beyond what they’re doing that week, their stresses, their worries. Very intelligent, well read, people are bringing these intellectual philosophical questions. Very simple people are bringing their daily concerns and their daily needs. And everyone gets together and looks at something beyond them. It’s not only the height of the collective psyche of that town. It’s also the only thing that’s going on. Church–It’s amazing. 300 years ago.

Marc Schelske 6:10
Right? Right. So it seems like there are two things in that description that are going on that we have to contend with. One is that for a long time, and it’s not just 300 years, it’s the last probably 1300 or 1400 years, the church was the cultural center of the community. That is no longer true. And then the second thing is that, in some way, the church is associated with a transcendent experience, and that doesn’t feel true now for many people.

Kevin Makins 6:39
Yes, absolutely. And you know, I’d see it fitting in with broader themes of the secularization of the West. It’s not just that people don’t believe in the Christian God, but we don’t even know if we believe in a God. And if we do believe in a god, he’s not a transcendent God, or they’re not a transcendent God, it’s a kind of hobbyist God. I do yoga, but if I fall out of yoga, the god of yoga is not going to come and wake me up in the night with a haunting message of transcendence.

Marc Schelske 7:07
Right, right. Yeah, there’s no, there’s no attached judgment.

Kevin Makins 7:10
No. Which I understand because also at the same time as what we’re talking about, the church got a little too powerful for her own bridges, and started to make a lot of strong declarations about what God was saying, and who God was that weren’t necessarily about God at all. They were about Christendom, the power of Christianity, the church, the institution, the pastor, the voice. So you know, I understand why people balk and push away at that idea of a transcendent God. You know, I totally understand that because, well, the church is often said that transcendent God is a mouthpiece and He sounds just like me, your white middle age Baptist pastor. And so I understand why people push against that. Makes perfect sense.

But we haven’t yet known what to put in its place. And so we have these little buffet-style religions where we’ll pick up things that we find interesting, transcendent, and meaningful, but they don’t give shape to our life. They’re something that we pick up and put down as we desire. And that’s very different from a transcendent force–God–who picks you up when you are down. And so that direction of things! If you’re in AA, you’ve probably encountered the transcendent God, or this transcendent reality–whatever language people put to it–but if you haven’t experienced that transcendence, you haven’t experienced that sense that there is something beyond you greater than you. If you haven’t put that to the test to some degree or relied on it, If you have the privilege to buffer yourself from the suffering of life, the privilege to have insurance, to have food on the table, to have a Netflix subscription on your phone whenever you want it, if you have all that, you may have never needed to encounter that transcendent God.

This rise of secularism has also come with a rise in wealth. Not that we’re rich. Right now we have a lot of wealth inequality, but our basic needs are provided for. Our lives are sort of safe; the air in our houses is usually conditioned. So we’ve been guarded from some of what might have naturally led other generations towards spirituality. So there’s what church means to me as an individual who perhaps has encountered a sense of transcendence. But then there’s also the question of what does church mean to us at a cultural or sociological collective psyche level? For us, Church used to be this–Not in all places, not all times, of course. There’s a lot of colonization and other factors, so don’t take this too far–but I think we could probably say that in many settings, if not most settings, the church was also a place of collective unity, where we set aside our little tribal identities, whether we were rich or poor, people had different intellectual beliefs–but we’d all go to church and we’d all surrendered to one thing. And so what used to function as a gathering point for diverse people has also become, in our culture and our cultural understanding, a tribal space for a particular group of religious people who are de facto in opposition to other people.

And so I think those two realities are intertwined: the lack of personal transcendence, and the fact that it has become now not a collective place of unity, but a tribal place of disunity, or of loyalty to your religious cause. I think those two things make church very unappealing for someone looking in from the outside who’s trying to figure out how to be a human in 2021.

Marc Schelske 10:45
Well, that last part there, that question that they’re asking feels really helpful to me. If this outside person is looking at the church and saying, “How does this group or belief system or community help me be a human?” and they’re not getting clear answers. They’re seeing the church as a group that actually (some of them) spends a lot of time denying what it means to be human. They’re not going to talk about emotions. They’re not trauma aware. They’re not going to talk about struggles with mental health. So that’s not helpful. Some of these groups are centering a particular very narrow kind of humanity. And you can tell, whether it’s on the billboard or not, that this church is only for this kind of person, this group of people, this political persuasion. And (they say to themselves) I don’t want to be a part of that. They’re also saying, “Hey, I have this intuitive sense of compassion toward people around me. There are people that are hurting and this group of people is contributing to that hurt or excluding people.” And so that person that’s saying, “How do you help me be human?” is looking at the church and not seeing a helpful answer.

Kevin Makins 11:54
No. And I mean, I don’t even know where we begin on that one. Because the truth is that a lot of what we’re describing is not necessarily a reflection of the historic Christian church or the historic Christian faith. But we have this sort of elephant in the room, or maybe a donkey in the room—I don’t even know all your metaphors. But…

Marc Schelske 12:12
…both of those, the elephants and the donkeys…

Kevin Makins 12:15
I think it’s a bit both… America (I say this as a Canadian—you know, love you all) but you make a lot of noise. We all watch your shows. You’ve exported your media around the world. So there’s a sort of hijacking of the collective imagination at a larger scale, both in America and even beyond, around the stories we tell ourselves about church and religion. And those stories are in part reflecting a truthful reality. As you said, there is loyalty, tribalism, nationalism, and white supremacy that has snuck into, in particular the evangelical church in America. The problem is then that people who don’t know that much about church think the Evangelical Church in America, that must be every Christian…

Marc Schelske 12:54
Right?

Kevin Makins 12:55
…That must be what Christianity teaches, right? And it actually just might be a 200-year heresy. And, if not heresy, it might be a 200-year misstep. Looking at church history, we find a lot of couple-hundred-year missteps. That’s part of the evolution of the spiritual life of the church. When we’re in it, and we are so ill-equipped to know our own story–for those of us who are part of the church–and when those who aren’t a part of the church haven’t been given a place to hear the story, and we’re used to quick sound bites… Well, what are we going to get fed? We’re gonna get fed the worst stories about the church.

Now, I think that the church is in a moment of reckoning, a well-overdue moment of reckoning, because so much of our theology and our structures, come with this colonialist mindset, especially in North America–Turtle Island. We started our experiment here using religious language and violence and oppression against indigenous people. So this is a necessary reckoning for us. We shouldn’t be crying that we’re oppressed.

But also, it’s not the whole story. We need to look at the global church, we need to look at the story of the Christian faith in the Orthodox tradition, in the healthy expressions within the Catholic tradition, and the healthy examples of Protestant churches. In every city where there’s a billboard by some very ignorant, big brother church of ours that’s going, “Come to our church, Get this, Vote for this person” –For every one of those, I bet there are ten people faithfully loving their neighbors or 10 congregations in an inner city faithfully serving. I think part of what we have to do as we tell the story, is to try to see the story clearly enough that we who are followers of the way don’t get spun by the spin of anger and bitterness…

Marc Schelske 14:39
Right.

Kevin Makins 14:39
…but also at the same time, we need to read the times and say this is the church’s judgment for her sin of white supremacy, nationalism and getting into bed with the powers. Both those things can be true at the same time. And I think the rebirthing of the church that we’re experiencing, as sort of all the fields starts to die off here in Canada… the field is fallow. We’re gathering the seeds from what had been grown here… You know, we’re losing… more than a third of our church buildings will be closed in the next five or seven years! If we can gather the seeds and say, “What was the Spirit of God doing in this mess?” That, I think, gives us a good opportunity to plant the future of the church that is going to hopefully reflect much more clearly and beautifully the gospel, the good news, the good road that we’re trying to witness to.

Marc Schelske 15:29
It seems like when I look at the church landscape, there are sort of two umbrella responses that churches are making. Some churches are seeing everything you’ve described and their response is, “These changes in the culture we have to stand against, we have to resist these things, we have to use our influence and our resources to hold on to the culture that is slipping away from us.” And then there’s another group that is saying, “Look, culture is what it is, the cultural changes have happened, we have to figure out how to be the church in new ways in the culture we find ourselves in. Holding on to some of our culturally determined responses from the past are going to get in the way of our mission of being the people of God.” Two kinds of responses: Can we, on the one hand, bring back, hold on to, and conserve the culture that feels like it’s slipping out of our grasp? Or is that change out of our control and we need to adapt, adopt and improve?

Kevin Makins 16:38
I think those are two of the responses that we’re seeing, the two predominant responses, I might even say of that second response, there is a group that says we need to stop this change from happening (as you said, that first group) by using force, and there’s a second group of us, who are more likely to say, “We need to improve, pivot, do things with our force to make things better.” And I think that both of those are ways of being the church that have blind spots. The blind spot is that they both include us doing things. I’m really starting to wonder if perhaps our goal isn’t to do a bit less. To say, “What is happening in the culture around us? And how do I not fight that with all my might, as if this is a culture war?” But also, “How do I not try to make that culture happy and run really hard and work really hard to look like I’m the church that’s keeping up with the times?”

Because, you know, I look around at the times we’re in, it’s not like people are particularly happy, Marc. They’re not having a great time. The times we’re in are making people miserable, too. And so, yes… I’m all for queer belonging in the church. 100%. I’m all for talking about critical race theory and reckoning with the sins of the past. So, if people are calling those cultural changes, I would say those are cultural changes that seem to be in many ways fruitful. But if I run out and start trying to do a bunch of things, I’m actually just as likely to get things wrong from the opposite side as I used to get things wrong from. So, there’s a certain amount of attentiveness, I think, that is called for. Life on the vine, you know? An abiding in Christ that says, “How do we pay attention to what the Spirit’s doing” and come alongside what the Spirit is naturally doing, without trying to then pick up our power, and then saying, “Good, thanks for leading us here, God. We’ve got it from here.”

Marc Schelske 18:28
Yeah, yeah. Right.

Kevin Makins 18:28
Because I think that is such a temptation for all of us. I’m preaching to myself here. I love doing stuff, you know, but this, just doesn’t seem to be fruitful.

Marc Schelske 18:37
When you surface the word power as a troubling word in either a kind of response we might have, it leads me to think back to where we started in the conversation about why people are not finding church helpful or meaningful. I’m wondering if one of the significant reasons is the many, many poor ways the church has handled power. When you think about all the different modes of power, whether its influence in society, whether it’s that we own a lot of property and take up space in the community and asked not to be taxed on top of that, or whether its influence through the media, whether it’s religious figures getting connected to political figures and lobbying for political solutions to things–those are all misuses of power. So then I look at that questioning person who’s observing the church from the outside. Is part of the reason why they’re saying “I don’t want to be a part of this group” because the power dynamic feels unsafe?

Kevin Makins 19:40
I absolutely am sure that part of why people don’t want to be a part of the church is the history of how this institution uses power. I get that and I’ll also say at the same time, I also don’t know an institution that hasn’t gotten into bed a bit with power. I expect better from the church because we know the story. We know the Christ story; we have no excuse. At the same time, I expect corruption in the church, because there are sinners in the church. Just like there are sinners in the banks and there are sinners in local politics and national politics. So, I don’t want to be so naive as to say I can only participate in something that’s pure. That’s something I’m noticing among my generation and in myself. I want to say, “Well, I’m a Christian, but I’m not that kind of Christian.” Because I want to be pure!

When I went to youth group it was sexual purity. That’s how you got status in that setting. You followed the rules perfectly. Thankfully, we’re coming to a bit of a reckoning on the ways that we’ve used that kind of language. But we have not yet dealt with our desire to be pure ethically, that we want to be associated with no one who’s less than us. If you’re pro-vaccination, you don’t want to be associated with anyone who’s an anti-vaxxer. If you are a liberal in America, you certainly would not want to even be associated with a conservative, never mind at church or in your own family. And I really get why people feel this way. I just can’t shake the feeling that one of the best things about church is that you’re stuck with losers. And you’re one of them!

Marc Schelske 21:23
Right. You’re doing if we’re doing it, right, yes.

Kevin Makins 21:26
Yeah. Like maybe this is the only place where you’re gonna run into these people that you wouldn’t choose. And I feel that that is inversely sort of this jujitsu move–using this impulse for purity against itself–is the gospel saying, “Yeah, of course, you don’t want to be associated with all these annoying people, and you want to be the good kind of Christian. But look, what a beautiful thing: that the entrance into the way of life that Christ talks about is that you have to be associated with people you don’t like, and they don’t like you. If we’re going to try to love everyone… People are telling me, “I love everyone?” BS! No, you don’t. I don’t like everyone; I certainly don’t love everyone! But if I can learn to do it with a hundred and fifty people to begin, that’s a pretty good training ground. And then if I can be associated with a religion that’s going to be full of people I don’t like, and I don’t get to remove myself from my own purity or my own appearance on social media or in the eyes of my friends? That’s a pretty good place to begin loving your enemy.

Marc Schelske 22:26
That’s really compelling. Kevin. I don’t think I’ve ever thought about it from that perspective. If we start by saying, “Hey, God is love, and being a part of the church is about learning how to live that kind of other-centered, co-suffering love, if that’s what this is really about.” And a lot of people will say, “Yeah, that’s great…”

Kevin Makins 22:43
We cheer! Yay! I want that. Who doesn’t want the whole world to come together? Let’s sing, “Imagine!”

Marc Schelske 22:51
Yeah, that’s good, but the only way you really know that you’re loving someone is when you’re interacting with someone that you wouldn’t choose to be benevolent toward…

Kevin Makins 23:03
Preach!

Marc Schelske 23:04
That’s how you know that you really love. Jesus said something similar, right? Even the tax collectors will do good things for each other. How do you know you really love someone? Well, it’s your enemy that will tell you. Your enemy is the one who knows if you’re loving or not.

Kevin Makins 23:20
Also, loving your enemy doesn’t mean that you need to be in close proximity to your enemy. You don’t need to be close to abusers. If you’re a person of color, you do not need to be in a church with people who are acting racistly. Let’s just be clear that this doesn’t mean you have to be associated with all these other people all the time.

But maybe there’s something worthwhile, even if in stepping into a broader faith tradition that includes those you would disagree with very strongly or even those you would find quite despicable. They may even be false Christians, but some people who hold those views may be real followers of the Way. So, there’s some nuance here. I hope people are intelligent enough to tease out on their own with their own community and context.

Marc Schelske 23:59
Well, that nuance is part of it, right? Because the thing about purity culture is there’s no need for nuance. I’ve got a line. You’re on one side of it or the other. I can apply that methodology to any belief system or any particular stream in Christian heritage. Nuance isn’t just saying the whole world is gray. Nuance is saying that love requires me to have empathy for people anywhere in relationship to the line I’ve drawn. Maybe even to the question of if that line is necessary. That empathy is where the nuance comes from. So yes, a church that’s built on love doesn’t mean it’s a church where abusers get a free pass. In fact, that is not loving, right? It’s the nuance to have empathy for everyone in the conversation and to think carefully through what it looks like to bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ in those many particulars. Bearing the burden of an abuser is going to look one way. And that’s going to be different than bearing the burden of the person who has been abused.

Kevin Makins 25:15
And each local community is going to have to discern how that is faithfully lived out. Which cares, which people are going to… even if you say we want to lean towards victims, great, but you can have also different groups of victims that overlap. For example, where somebody who’s a refugee from another culture and someone who’s a sexual minority may not see things eye to eye, even though they have both suffered. This is the wisdom of Christ that we need. Every community has to discern this in its own local context.

Even if these congregations are doing a good and faithful job… if I look at a church in the Deep South, I’m gonna think they’re crazy, no matter what they believe. The world they inherit is so different from mine. The powers and principalities that have shaped them are so different than mine, and we each are going to have blind spots. And so you know, we need to allow ourselves to relax a bit and say, “I’m just such shaped by my culture as anyone else is.” How are we going to get through this, if we’re all shaped by our own cultures? The only way is, as you said, the rule of love. These are schools of love, where we learn to love those who are just different from us so that we can be in contact with them. And in that relationship, bridge the gap.

Marc Schelske 26:25
That is so interesting to me if I think about the fact that real love requires me to pay attention to particularities. I parent my two children differently, because they’re different human beings, and they have different needs. If I expand that principle, which we intuitively agree with, all of a sudden, I can see that the sort of franchising of Christian culture across the globe–this sort of declaration that the way church looks, the way we articulate theology, the way we do Christianity is what needs to happen everywhere. That a church in Nashville needs to look like a church in Portland. That assumption, which has implications for church practice, ecclesiology, applications of theology, and even the metaphors that we use to articulate theology—that assumption is, maybe on the face of it, a denial of the nature of love.

Kevin Makins 27:24
Yeah, man! Or at least the nature of incarnation.

You know, how does the spiritual church manifest physically? I talked about this in my book in a much less wordy way. In one of the chapters about trying to plant a church in the city that I was born and raised in and love, and how it had to grow up like an organic seed from the soil, and we needed to give it space. We didn’t church plant with a big budget, not because we didn’t have the money (although we didn’t have the money). But we also church planted the way that we did simply because we didn’t know what it was yet. We bought a building a couple of years ago and I thought I knew what to do with it, and my congregation graciously said, “We don’t think we should do anything for at least a year. We don’t even know what it is.”

And as you were talking about earlier, about force and the church saying we either need to stop this cultural thing or we need to rush it ahead. No, no, no! Just see what it wants to be and look for the spirit. Yeah, the spiritual church is going to be universal, loving your enemies, down is the way up, a life that is lived in secret, letting things come to you–all these beautiful truths that are in the Gospel–these are all going to be a part of the spiritual landscape of every congregation everywhere. The Creeds are probably a good spiritual starting place for a confession, as that tries to manifest, but almost everything else is going to be as unique as the place that it is and that maybe that’s a gift.

Maybe that’s actually necessary. And maybe the thing that scares me most about what we’ve done with the church is this photocopying reproducing a particular manifestation of church. And we all know what happens if you photocopy a photocopy. Or if you photocopy a photocopy of a photocopy. Maybe part of our quest to master church, make it look the same way, maybe that’s actually what’s backfiring on us right now, as you were talking about Mark. That we actually photocopied one vision of the church so many times that it became unappealing. It was no longer able to be seen for what it was. Maybe there was a particular kind of church that worked in a particular kind of context, but now that church is being sent everywhere. And when that’s all over the news, all over social media, and all the bad fruit of that’s being revealed, and there are no other kinds of visions of church, then maybe it’s no surprise that that bad photocopy is going to start falling apart.

Marc Schelske 29:46
I think about how in our world, globalization and constant access through social media homogenizes things in a way that at first is really exciting, but then at some point starts to feel hollow. We’ve got a local pan-Asian fast food chain called Panda Express. That’s not…

Kevin Makins 30:12
I’ve had Panda Express!

Marc Schelske 30:13
Okay, so it’s fine.

Kevin Makins 30:16
Yea, it’s like a nice photocopy of a photocopy.

Marc Schelske 30:18
People love it, but it’s not anything in particular. It’s not a particular Asian culture’s cuisine. It’s sort of Asian themes that have sort of been filtered through this corporate lens. You get it and it’s fine. It’s not great. It’s not expensive. It’s available. But what’s happened is that the particularity of Thai cuisine and Japanese cuisine and Indian cuisine, the particularities have been filtered out and it’s been made very, very sort of what they would probably call accessible, as a good thing, but the uniqueness of the location has been stripped away. And I think that’s a part of the struggle the church is facing.

Here in Portland, one of our current biggest things that people are so excited about and proud of is food carts. What makes a food cart exciting in comparison to a chain restaurant is its particularity. It’s a couple of people making one thing they’re really good at making. They love making it and they make it the best that can be, and they just made it thirty seconds before you got it and you eat it. And it’s so much better than going to the chain restaurant where everything came out of a freezer pack.

Kevin Makins 31:36
It’s completely true. You know, in Hamilton, a lot of my friends run small businesses, small food stuff. And you know, if half the city doesn’t like what they’re making, they don’t care, right? Because they’re not making it to keep people happy. They’re making it because they think it’s really good. And those that love it, it, love it. It’s the highlight of their week if they get to go out and eat there. And so you can see how particularity… you can’t recreate it in any other place. You have to go to it. It’s a unique manifestation of something true. And that’s gorgeous.

The only problem is everyone I know that runs a local restaurant is nearly broke and tired all the time and that raises questions about business culture. The culture we’re in does not want them to do that. You know, it doesn’t it doesn’t work. We’re too dehumanizing of a culture. And I’d say the same thing is true with church.

Why, why are all of these churches singing the same songs? What the hell are you doing? They’re not even good ones! If you’re gonna sing all the same songs, make them old! Or pick up one or two classics, don’t pick whatever’s new this week, like you’re a hot topic!

Marc Schelske 32:46
Right.

Kevin Makins 32:48
I don’t mean to poo-poo on churches. Everyone’s just trying their best. But…

Marc Schelske 32:55
Let me interrupt, though. I think we’re on to an important question here. Because the issue is this. It’s easy in a system where the engine of the system is that we got another service this week. We’ve got to go, we have to keep moving forward. We have a certain amount of income we need to make to pay our bills and pay our staff. Let’s keep cruising. In that system, it’s easy to take the top 25 songs from CCLI and just drop them into the Planning Center. Your musicians get the charts, and boom, you go. Sitting down with your local musicians and saying, “Let’s write a song that speaks to the moment we’re in, that talks about what God is doing in this community among these faces” That takes way more time and effort and pain than pulling number four off the CCLI list and having your musicians do a great cover of it.

Kevin Makins 33:44
But it’s not just the songs. It’s the whole model. If you’re in that large church model, if you’re in that kind of setting, just sit for 20 minutes and ask God, “Is this okay?” Ask your soul, “Is this okay by me?” and just see what you think. If you’re finding that that system is fruitful and that system is actually serving and honoring God and creating a church that is more and more, over time, becoming a unique manifestation of the kingdom, then keep going. And if you know there are things you could do to slightly shift the culture in a different direction, away from becoming more homogenized and towards becoming a unique manifestation, then just take the next step. You don’t need to do everything; just take the next step. After that happens, take a look and see what you got.

For people then who are maybe in smaller congregations or looking to church plant, I would say just then do as little as possible, Force-wise. Make as few big decisions as possible right away. Let things grow slowly and organically. It probably means that your three-year plan with the budget dropping 33% every year from the grant, that’s done. Just get rid of it. Don’t take money from anyone for the church plant. Don’t take any money. If you’re going to church plant and you need a salary raise some money like a missionary. Get people to give to you because they believe in you. But don’t let the church take a dime. Let the church grow into what it’s meant to be. That might be 15 people in a living room. That might be a thousand people on a Sunday. I don’t know. That’s God’s business in your place. Just don’t decide what it is in advance. I really think we’ve just got to shift from trying to pay for churches to start to just paying our missionaries to be missionaries, and letting churches become the churches that they’re meant to be so that we don’t have to try to make them something they’re not.

Marc Schelske 35:29
Yes. Right. So I want to tie some threads together. This plea that you’ve made, which is just so intriguing, countercultural, and intuitively feels right to me–I want to tie that back to our starting conversation about the person who’s saying, “Why should I go to church?” One of the threads that surfaces for me is this idea of a church being able to be particular to its location, to where people are at, to what’s going on in that neighborhood. If the church was more responsive to that, more open to that, would more people say, “I’m intrigued, I’m interested?”

Let’s push into that space. How might that model of church begin to speak more meaningfully to the folk who are asking the question, “Should I go to church or not?”

Kevin Makins 36:22
So, let me give you another metaphor here that I think will speak to your Portland heart: Coffee shops. We’ve always had Tim Hortons in our neighborhoods, which is a very affordable, cheap coffee shop chain. The people that love it, love it, then there was Starbucks. They come into town and people go, “Ooh, Starbucks!” It’s exciting. There’s a lot of energy and hype around Starbucks. People were lining up in the early days, but then you just start realizing is Starbucks isn’t actually unique at all. Every one of their sites looks the same. All their Christmas decor looks like it’s been a photocopy of a photocopy. It feels produced, too produced.

And then you’ve got the neighborhood coffee shop. In Hamilton is a spot called The Canon. I mentioned it in my book a bunch because it was started by a woman from our church. We were starting the church around the same time. This coffee shop paralleled our church so beautifully. We were both broke and scrappy. When they opened, they had a pew from the church building that they had painted. The floors were beat up. Not everyone went, but everyone appreciated that it was there, because it was a genuine reflection of that neighborhood.

I suspect if the church is going to see itself through that metaphoric lens, we should be asking, “What kind of coffee shop are we called to become?” And are we able to be clear about that? If we’re gonna make a church that is going to be able to speak in a secular post-Christian culture, it’s going to need to be one where the people don’t just go to church, but they are the church. It’s about more than just the coffee. And then those who don’t go to that church are really glad it’s in the neighborhood because it makes the neighborhood better for everybody.

REFLECTION

Marc Schelske 38:01

I recorded this interview with Kevin almost nine months ago, and the troubles that he and I talked about have only gotten worse. Political polarization, and the way that Christian Nationalism has become an explicit part of many Christian conversations and even churches, has pushed even more people out of desiring to be part of the church. There’s a real tension right now about whether Christianity in America will double down on power and control at any cost, or whether we will set that temptation down in favor of the humble, other-centered co-suffering path of Jesus. The outcome, at least for the next few years, is by no means certain. So the question of why church matters and what it looks like, is even more crucial.

As I listened back to our conversation, I gathered together some of our ideas and insights into a picture of what a future church might look like that is winsome, engages people where they are and aligns with Jesus’ other-centered co-suffering way. What could church look like in the culture we find ourselves in today? What would it take for church to matter to people who aren’t deep on the inside? Now, these ideas are not about doctrine, at least not on the surface. They’re about practice. But make no mistake, our practice, our church structures, and the way we do things, all grow out of our beliefs and principles. So see if some of these ideas resonate with you.

The Church of the future needs to let go of operating by force and power, and instead, choose a way that is marked by love and consent.

This church would do less. It would be less driven to produce programs and instead spend more time listening–listening to God, listening to its members and participants, and listening to the world around it.

This church would be willing to be honest about the past, willing to admit when it’s done harm or contributed to harm. Most importantly, this church would rush toward making things right rather than rushing to circle the wagons to protect an image or an institution or a leader.

This church would feel less like it’s trying to build a new “cool kids table,” instead opting for radical and generous inclusivity.

This church would focus less on building big crowds where many people listen to the voices of a few and opt for nurturing smaller community spaces where everyone’s voice can be heard. The expectation would be that God speaks through the community, not just through a couple of elevated leaders.

This church would double down on loving service, letting go of programs and outreach that come with strings attached or some expectation of conversion or contribution.

This church would set aside rigid purity culture, where people’s value and even their ability to participate are measured on some scale of proper behavior or even uniform belief, choosing instead a path of generous welcome where nuance is expected and people don’t have to hide who they are.

This church would let go of its addiction to looking like the latest, biggest, famous, franchised expression of Christianity and instead prefer local in particular, following the Spirit into authentic manifestations of community. More food cart, less chain restaurant.

This church would set aside the model of religious content programming and move toward being a practical school of love.

At the end of our conversation, Kevin talked about an incredible possibility. A church like this would make such a positive difference in the community that even the people who don’t go there would be glad it’s in the neighborhood because it makes the neighborhood better for everybody.

That’s a vision that moves me. Does it move you? If it does, understand that this vision comes with a homework assignment. That assignment? If you and I wish that church was more like what I just described, then you and I have to consider what we might do to bring that about. How will we serve? What kind of leaders will we support? Are we willing to be less comfortable as the church becomes less about us and our preferences? Will we invest time and heart and even cash In churches that look like this? The way God seems to have chosen to do things in our world means that God’s work in the world happens only as people respond to the nudge of the Holy Spirit. And that means you and me getting involved.

May you see your role in bringing this kind of vibrant church community to life and may all of us have the courage to follow Jesus into this kind of other-centered co-suffering community. Thanks for listening.

Notes for today’s episode and any links mentioned can be found at www.MarcAlanSchelske.com/TAW049. There you’ll find Kevin’s website, a link to his book, “Why Would Anyone Go To Church,” and links to some of his other creative work: some short films on being human, and a 60-minute one-man show called Holy Shift.

If you found today’s conversation helpful, then subscribe to my email list. I usually email about once a month. This amazing email includes links to my writing, the next podcast episode, books I recommend for your spiritual journey, and a little bit of a catch-up with what’s going on in my life. Opt in and you’ll get a free little book called “The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Practice for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World.” That sounds useful, doesn’t it? This short read will teach you a spiritual practice that has been so helpful to me as I have faced the anxiety and uncertainty of our time. Subscribe and get that book at www.MarcOptIn.com.

Until next time, remember: In this one present moment, you are loved, you are known, and you are not alone.

Episode 048 – Empathy Is Not a Sin (With Becky Castle Miller)

Recently a number of Christian leaders and teachers have been making waves saying that empathy is a sin–or at least something that good Christians need to be very careful with. Why would they say this? What do they get out of it? And why should you be concerned if you hear this line of thinking?

Show Notes

• Following King Jesus by Scot McKnight and Becky Castle Miller
• Check out Seminary Now, where Becky works.
• One source on Calvin’s letter justifying the murder of Servetus: https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/hcc8.iv.xvi.xxii.html

• Download a full transcript here or scroll to the bottom of the page for a full transcript of this episode.
• You can also watch and share the video version on Youtube.

More about My Conversation Partner

Becky Castle Miller writes and speaks on emotional, mental, and spiritual health in the church. She recently graduated from Northern Seminary with a master’s in New Testament Context, studying with Dr. Scot McKnight. Her discipleship workbook with Dr. McKnight is called Following King Jesus. She is working on a new book about Jesus’s emotions. She, her husband, their five kids, and cat returned to the US after living in the Netherlands for eight years, where she worked at an international church. She is presently the Program Manager for Seminary Now.

• Becky writes on Medium: https://medium.com/wholehearted
• Twitter: @bcastlemiller
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beckycastlemillerblog/

Today’s Sponsor

• The Wisdom of Your Heart – This book debunks several myths about emotions that are often taught in church, presents a healthier theology of emotions, and our best current understanding of what emotions mean when we have them, and how we can learn to hear wisdom in them.

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• Get The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World – This little book is free for you by opting in to my email list.
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Transcription

Marc Schelske  0:00  

Hey friends, I’m Marc Alen Schelske and this is The Apprenticeship Way, a podcast about spiritual growth following the way of Jesus. This is episode 48. Empathy is not a sin–and anyone who tells you so is trying to control you.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Today’s podcast is made possible by The Wisdom of Your Heart. We’re talking about empathy today and that means we’re going to touch on the world of our emotions. This is a subject close to my heart. I spent a lot of my life deeply disconnected from my emotions and it costs me gravely. You can hear the story of my recovery in my book, The Wisdom of Your Heart: Discovering the God-given Power and Purpose of Your Emotions. In this book, I also debunk several myths about emotions that are often taught in church, I present a theology of emotions, and I talk about our best current understanding of what emotions mean when we have them and how we can learn to hear wisdom in them. So, if today’s conversation is helpful, or if you’re unpacking difficult emotions from your past, or bad emotional teaching from the church, I invite you to check out The Wisdom of Your Heart. It’s available in all the book places. Learn more at www.TheWisdomOfYourHeart.com.

INTRODUCTION

In the past couple of years, the strangest controversy has emerged and it’s only getting worse. It turns out that a number of pastors and theologians have been teaching that empathy is a sin. Empathy, you know, the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person, that? Yeah, empathy is a sin. Now, the idea that empathy is a sin strikes me as patently absurd and dismissible. This whole podcast could boil down to me saying, “No, guys. No, it’s not.”

But as I’ve reflected more on this and talked with people and watched the discourse on social media, I think this idea is not just wrong, I think it’s dangerous. And some big name people, pastors, theologians, church leaders are pushing this idea. So today, I’m going to talk about empathy with Becky Castle Miller. What is it? Why is it necessary for human flourishing? What role does it play in our faith? And why on earth would somebody say having it is sinful?

Becky Castle Miller writes and speaks on emotional, mental and spiritual health in the church. She recently graduated from Northern seminary with a Masters in New Testament studying with Dr. Scott McKnight. Her discipleship workbook with Dr. McKnight is called Following King Jesus. She’s working on a new book about Jesus’ emotions, she, her husband, their five kids, and their cat recently returned to living in the U.S. after living in the Netherlands for eight years, where she worked at an international church. She’s presently the program manager for Seminary Now. She thinks about this stuff a lot, and so I asked Becky to start by laying out exactly what empathy is, and the role that it plays in human emotions.

INTERVIEW

Becky Castle Miller 2:59
So, empathy is primarily understood as feeling with someone, entering into their feelings, and trying to understand where they’re coming from what their experience has been like. And to feel that with them, or alongside them, involves a deep knowing of the other person and a willingness to know them, a willingness to get uncomfortable with them. There are two types of empathy, cognitive empathy and affective empathy. Affective empathy is emotion-based where we’re really trying to enter into their feelings, and cognitive empathy is trying to understand the situation that led to what they’re feeling with our thoughts, trying to understand what they’re feeling.

I think both of those are important. A cold, hard, cognitive empathy that’s missing the affective component isn’t actually going to feel very comforting to someone, and yet just entering into their feelings but not questioning what led to it might also feel flat for someone. So I think we need both of those types of empathy. They’re important in our relationships, because empathy, I think, is a key component to validating people’s emotions. And emotional validation is one of the most healing aspects of therapeutic relationships and of healing relationships in general. So I don’t think that we can have safe trusting healing relationships without the aspect of empathy.

Marc Schelske 4:23
It’s really the thing that we’re probably talking about when we talk about the need to listen well, right? That if I’m really hearing you, what that means when I say, “Are you hearing me?” is “Do you get me? Do you feel me?” The tool we have that’s a part of our brain and limbic system is what we we identify as empathy. Does that seem right?

Becky Castle Miller 4:45
Yes.

Marc Schelske 4:45
Okay. So just to draw this in then, you said… the two kinds, this affective and cognitive empathy… so is affective empathy that thing that happens to me when I am at my kids music recital? I’m sitting in the audience and they’re up on stage by themselves about to do their thing, and I just… am feeling every moment of it and when a note goes wrong… no one’s looking at me, but I feel something deep in me about the anxiety of that moment. Is that what affective empathy is?

Becky Castle Miller 5:22
Yes. You know your child, you know your child closely and you know your own experience as a human. So it’s a combining of our emotion concepts from our own experiences, and, in a sense, perceiving the other person’s emotions, and feeling that along with them. I know what it feels like when I’m nervous, or I might flub a performance. Our child who has learned to mirror our emotion concepts is probably feeling very similar. And so we have this shared emotional experience where we understand, to the best of our individual limits, what they’re feeling, but we’re remembering our emotional experiences, and we’re perceiving their emotions. We are really participating in that moment with them with our whole body.

Marc Schelske 6:09
And then the cognitive part is that sequence that you’ve talked coming to mind. I’m understanding it, I’m thinking about, “Oh, they didn’t really practice this piece as much as they should have.” And I understand there’s some cost because there’s people watching them. And so I’m interpreting the way that I’m feeling and the way that I think they’re feeling and that’s then the cognitive story about it.

Becky Castle Miller 6:34
Right. And emotions are cognitive. So I don’t like to separate affect from cognition, because they’re all part of the same process. But cognitive empathy is what else you know about the situation or learning about the situation. You know that the person sitting next to them in the orchestra has just been bullying them all year, and they were afraid that person was going to poke them with their violin bow, and you’re seeing it happen. You know the backstory of what’s going on there and so you’re indignant on their behalf Why isn’t the teacher stepping in? Yeah, sometimes we need to know the story so that we can cognitively understand what’s going on as well.

Marc Schelske 7:11
So this thing that we’re talking about, I mean, this is essential for human relationships. It’s essential for any kind of collaborative human endeavor, whether community, church, business. We can’t do relationships effectively without this, am I right?

Becky Castle Miller 7:28
I think that that’s true. If it were, it would be a very sterile, non-intimate relationship, if there was no sharing of emotion going on. So, it would be possible, but I don’t think that’s what most of us want. I think we want emotional relationships. There are people who have emotional injuries that haven’t been tended to might might not want that kind of close relationship, sure. But generally, when we’re healthy, we long for intimate, emotional relationships.

Marc Schelske 8:01
Empathy, then is part of our capacity to connect emotionally with other people. And that’s what we’re longing for. That’s what we want. I think you and I are both saying that healthy relationships, healthy families, healthy communities have some measure of that. Why would that be a sin? Why would that be bad? Or maybe before we even go into the conversation of why would somebody claim that it’s a sin, maybe we should talk about… is there, just objectively speaking, outside the realm of spirituality, Is there trouble that empathy can get us into?

Becky Castle Miller 8:37
I can’t think of any. When someone is experiencing uncomfortable emotions–usually white western culture is not okay with that. Generally speaking, white Americans–that’s the culture I come from, so that’s the culture I can speak to–don’t like to see people experiencing uncomfortable emotions. So we don’t like to see people grieving. We don’t like to see people upset and hurting and suffering. So we either try to stay away from them or avoid them, or we try to shut them down. We don’t mean it to be hurtful. We just subconsciously don’t like it. And so we either avoid it or we try to make them feel better, fast. “There, there… it’s going to be okay. You don’t need to cry.” We bypass people’s grief because it’s so uncomfortable for us to see it, because we really haven’t learned how to grieve as a culture.

The point I’m working around to is this: If you are not okay with people’s uncomfortable emotions because they make you feel uncomfortable emotions, empathy seems problematic because empathy invites you to step into discomfort instead of avoiding it or bypassing it or shutting it down. So, I think that people who don’t have healthy emotions, and don’t understand how to handle those in themselves or in other people, think of empathy as a bad thing because it makes them uncomfortable. They don’t know what to do about that. So I think that there can be a perception that empathy is bad, because discomfort is bad. And empathy can be uncomfortable.

Marc Schelske 10:22
Okay, that makes total sense. We don’t like feeling negative emotions. We have lots of structures in our society to make it so that we don’t have to feel them. If something is going to cause that kind of reaction, a lot of times we want to avoid it. So that totally makes sense. Empathy could lead me into a place of feeling uncomfortable emotions that I don’t want to feel.

Okay, so maybe here’s another possible angle. In my own work on emotion, one of the things that seemed significant to me was that emotions function in the human person as a way to get us to move, to take action, to get us to respond to something in our environment that needs to be attended to or to be different, right.

Becky Castle Miller 11:09
Yes.

Marc Schelske 11:09
So if I’m feeling an emotion that I don’t like, that’s uncomfortable for me, that I might want to avoid, or if the emotions I’m connecting with through empath, are trying to stir up something in me to act in a certain way–Now, we have the question on the table of whether I am being moved to act in a way that is something I don’t like or something I disagree with, or something that my community has said I shouldn’t do. And now empathy–which we were talking about is just a conduit of understanding between human beings–that empathy is actually serving to stir within me a motivation to act. Now I’ve got to think about whether or not I’m okay with that,

Becky Castle Miller 11:57
I think that empathy can move us toward the more specific emotion of compassion, and compassion motivates us to take action on behalf of someone that we feel sorry for, pity for, compassion for. When we feel that–being deeply moved in our bowels, like the Greek sense of Jesus’s kind of compassion, we want to take action–that emotion is a motivating force. So I think there’s a progression of empathy toward compassion toward taking action.

Marc Schelske 12:34
If this conduit of empathy is raising compassion in me, and I’m being stirred to act, what then is coming into view is whether or not I’m coming from a place where I think I have to evaluate the reason why the other person is feeling what they’re feeling. So, why are they feeling what they’re feeling because they did a bad thing?

Becky Castle Miller 12:57
Yes.

Marc Schelske 12:57
Are they feeling what they’re feeling because this is a consequence of some sinful behavior and now they’re feeling that way. And if I enter into that feeling with them, if I acknowledge it, or even like you’d said earlier, if I affirm that feeling in them, does that mean I’m affirming the bad thing that I think they did?

Becky Castle Miller 13:19
Yes. So, it’s very much a viewpoint that I have the right to judge the reasons that someone is hurting.

Marc Schelske 13:27
Okay.

Becky Castle Miller 13:28
And if I think their reasons for hurting are deficient, then why would I be empathetic? It’s only going to encourage them to continue in sin and pull me down with them.

Marc Schelske 13:38
Okay. All right. So, then now this conversation about empathy then opens up into a broader conversation that’s really about how I see other people, and issues of judgment and control.

Becky Castle Miller 13:53
Yes.

Marc Schelske 13:54
All right. So when this sort of blew up, and I began to see it happening online, one of the things that I observed is that the folks who seem to be loudly talking about empathy being a sin–or a softer version of that would be the idea that empathy is a risk you’ve got to be really careful with–those folks have a couple things in common, as far as I can tell. They are spiritual leaders, pastors, theologians, that are all sort of within the Venn diagram of patriarchalist (maybe softer language–male headship, or maybe strong complementarian.) They’re all folks who are coming from a place where their theological viewpoint is hierarchical.

Becky Castle Miller 14:43
Yeah.

Marc Schelske 14:43
I think also… all or most are coming from a theological stream that’s either Reformed, for sure, or Reformed-adjacent.…

Becky Castle Miller 14:58
Yeah, it’s the overlapping circles of Reformed theology, and Patriarchal, and also high-control religious environments. I think it’s those three. It’s the center of those three if you’re making a Venn diagram,

Marc Schelske 15:12
Okay, so if those are the folks who are saying that empathy is a sin or empathy is at least a risk to be very careful about, if those are the folks that are saying it, what’s the payoff for them?

Becky Castle Miller 15:24
I think it’s gatekeeping. It’s keeping that high control of doctrine and practice, and keeping people in line. And I think there’s a real fear that people will sin. There’s a lot of fear about sin in those overlapping circles. This anti-empathy strain is simply the most recent head of the hydra. Right? That is, the bigger picture of emotion control and anti-emotionalism that has been part of the church for centuries… I’ve seen in my research that in this anti-emotionalism there’s so much fear about sin. Don’t follow your emotions, because they’ll lead you to sin. don’t follow your desires, because they’ll lead you to sin. So this current iteration of it is simply, “Don’t empathize with people who are hurting because they might sin or you might sin.” There’s so much fear about sin.

Marc Schelske 16:23
Yes, right.

Becky Castle Miller 16:24
And I think that there can be two different streams that end up at the same point, but they come from different places. And one of those may be truly a sincere, pastoral desire to care for people. Having been a pastor, I know that I care for people and I don’t want them to hurt and I don’t want them to cause damage in their relationships with God and other people. And so there can be that sincere pastoral desire that I think is misguided in these cases, because it pushes people against their own God-given emotions. But there might be true desire to protect the people that you’re tasked with caring for and shepherd, and I can understand and honor that motivation, even though I think this outworking of it is not healthy.

But, I think on the other hand, there are those who truly are seeking power and control. They’re using anti-emotionalism, and specifically anti-empathy, to maintain their control over what people believe and do and even to maintain control over what people feel.

Marc Schelske 17:20
Right! Because in that system, in that… what was the word that you used? The high control religious environment?

Becky Castle Miller 17:26
High control religious system.

Marc Schelske 17:27
Yeah, in that system, we, we want–either out of love, as you’ve acknowledged, or perhaps out of control–we want people to not fall off the rails, we want them to not enter into sin. And so we’re trying to provide guidance for that. And if everyone was just obeying with their brains, everything will be fine. But there’s this insidious culprit inside of us, our emotions, and empathy allows the emotions of somebody else, that’s even outside of us to, sort of evoke that emotion in us, and that thing is outside the bounds of the control.

Becky Castle Miller 18:02
Mhm.

Marc Schelske 18:02
Okay, so when, when this all came up, and I started reading and listening to folks talking about this, I was also at the same time doing a lot of reading in church history. I came upon a letter that John Calvin wrote in 1554. He was writing it to justify his position that people, in this case a particular somebody that he disagreed with theologically–so a heretic, but I want to put a very strong emphasis on “a person he disagreed with” because “heretic” sounds so crazy and other and weird and really all we’re talking about is someone who had a different view of a couple points of theology–So Calvin ends up being on the side that this guy needs to be executed and that indeed happens, and John Calvin writes this letter to justify his position.

I read this in the middle of this conversation about empathy being a sin, and just like… the lights went on for me. SoI’m going to read this and tell me what you think when you hear this. This is John Calvin speaking: “Whoever shall now contend that it is unjust to put heretics and blasphemers to death, will knowingly and willingly incur their very guilt. This is not laid down on human authority. It is God who speaks and prescribes a perpetual rule for His church.”

That’s pretty serious. Now, here’s why. “It is not in vain that God banishes all those human affections which soften our hearts, that he commands paternal love and all the benevolent feelings between brothers, relations, and friends to cease. In a word, he almost deprives men of their nature in order that nothing may hinder their holy zeal. Why is it so implacable a severity exacted, but that we may know that God is defrauded of his honor unless the piety that is due Him be preferred to all Human duties, and that which his glory is to be asserted, humanity itself must almost be obliterated from our memories.”²One source for the text of this letter: https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/hcc8.iv.xvi.xxii.html

Becky Castle Miller 18:57
Wow.

Marc Schelske 18:58
Yeah. So “it is not in vain that God banishes human affections which soften our hearts.” So, I’m hearing John Calvin say that, in fact, sometimes for us to do the right thing–and in this case, right thing is execute a heretic…

Becky Castle Miller 20:26
Executing people.

Marc Schelske 20:28
Right?!

Becky Castle Miller 20:28
Outright Murder!

Marc Schelske 20:30
Right? That the thing that would stop us from doing that, like… here’s the thing we gotta do, we’ve got to execute the heretics. And the thing that would stop us from executing them would, in fact, be benevolent feelings. human affection.

Unknown Speaker 20:45
Human. Human affection. Yeah.

Marc Schelske 20:47
Right? And so then he says, “Well, God wants us to be holy so much that God is going to actually cause us to have to step away from that. Okay. So, thinking back to that Venn diagram that we talked through, this is John Calvin talking, how does this fit into the conversation?

Becky Castle Miller 21:05
The scripture says that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, but I think right here we see John Calvin hardening his own heart. God didn’t have to do it, he hardened his own… he seared his own conscience to justify murder, by telling himself that God is okay with it. He’s searing his own conscience, he’s hardening his own heart, and shutting off the humanity and conscience that God gave him. I think that we see, to a lesser degree because we’re not talking about murdering heretics right now in the current climate, but I think we’re seeing a similar hardening of the heart so that we do not have to hear what God is saying, on behalf of the weak and hurting.

I think we see similar wording or similar reasoning in more modern language from people like Joe Rigney of Bethlehem Baptist, who said, “Rightly used, empathy is a power tool in the hands of the weak and suffering. By it we can so weaponized victims, that they are indulged at every turn, without regard for whether such indulgences wise or prudent or good for them.” So, this stance is explicitly an anti-victim stance, because then the moment someone says, “Hey, I’ve been a victim of XYZ abuse,” people who’ve been taught this about this anti-empathy teaching, their radar goes off, and they say, “Oh, you’re gonna try to weaponize that victimhood to make me feel sorry for you. And I’m not supposed to feel sorry for you, because you’re just using…, you want me to be empathetic. And that’s a power tool, you’re trying to retake power by making me be empathetic. But you don’t deserve to be indulged.”

Marc Schelske 22:44
So the person that is objectively in power is saying to the person who’s been injured at the hands of the power system, “You, sir, are manipulating me.”

Becky Castle Miller 22:56
“And you’re trying to take power,” because they see power, they live for power, and they can’t help but to see someone else as trying to take what they want, which is more power. So they are projecting, they’re viewing people through their own lens, and assuming that person’s motivation must be power, because that’s the thing that’s motivating themselves.

Marc Schelske 23:16
Right? So any claim by anybody, any marginalized person who stands up and says, “I’ve been injured by you, in particular, or by the system that you’re a part of,” is immediately able to be discounted and ignored, because the very fact that they’re saying, “I was hurt” and demonstrating that is a power play on their part.

Becky Castle Miller 23:36
Yes, it preemptively prevents victims from being able to come forward out of abusive systems. You know that you have generated a ton of abuse, and you have many victims within your system, in your organization, and you want to make sure that when they come forward, no one will believe them. So, you preemptively teach people not to believe them or care about them, so that when they come forward, everyone who could help them has been conditioned not to. That is a classic abuse tactic.

Marc Schelske 24:03
That conditioning is actually trying to override–you know, what you are saying from the very beginning–what is a natural God-built part of who we are. When somebody speaks up, when a victim speaks up and says “I have been injured,” they are asking for validation that they’ve been hurt, but they’re also making a bid that you will feel their hurt with them. They’re saying “Do you notice this? Does this seem right to you? Will you come alongside me in redressing this?” And I would argue that empathy is a crucial part in our capacity to, in fact, do that. As Paul instructs us, “Bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.” If you speak up and say, “I’ve been hurt,” part of me bearing the burden is entering into that with you to understand it, and then determine if there a way that I can be a part of reconciliation or restoration or reparation?

Becky Castle Miller 24:59
Right. And in the pastoral care work I’ve done with abuse survivors, one of the most healing steps for them is to be believed and validated and empathized with. It’s so important that the first response to someone’s abuse disclosure be, “I believe you, I hear you, I’m with you. And that should never have been done to you. What that person did was objectively wrong. Yes, I validate your perception that was abusive, it shouldn’t have happened. Now I’m going to work with you to get justice.” That’s what people need to heal. If people don’t receive that it’s very, very, very hard for them to heal.

Marc Schelske 25:39
Right.

Becky Castle Miller 25:40
So this whole setup of anti-empathy is creating a world that abuses people and then doesn’t give them a path for healing.

Marc Schelske 25:42
This is why it’s dangerous, not just wrong.

Becky Castle Miller 25:43
Yes

Marc Schelske 25:43
Right? That the teaching that empathy is a sin is actually trying to remove the circuit that God put in place in our emotional and relational systems that empowers healing. It’s what empowers real community. It’s what empowers intimacy. It’s what enables us to actually do the things we’ve been invited to do as followers of Jesus.

Becky Castle Miller 26:13
Mhm. And I think that black liberation theologians, like James Cone, deeply understand and explain to us what it means for Jesus to empathize with us, what it means for Jesus to have participated fully in the life of the marginalized and the poor. Jesus not only became human, but he became poor, and he became part of an oppressed people, so that from the inside, he could transform of oppression into liberation. Those who say that Christians shouldn’t empathize are denying one of the most powerful aspects of Jesus’ life and existence, which is to be in the pain and hurt and experience and alongside us.

Marc Schelske 26:42
Yeah… In a social system, whether it’s a church or a community, there are people who are hurting. And the way that we make a difference in that is to enter into that with them to understand–which is a part of entering in, understanding–but then being with them in it. And if empathy is a sin, then you can’t do that. And so then what else is happening is if the people that are hurting happened to be people that are on the bottom of a particular social structure, if you take away empathy, you take away any possibility of changing the social structure,

Becky Castle Miller 27:36
Yes. Because you take away any channel people have to try to explain and seek redress for the abuses perpetuated on them.

Marc Schelske 27:45
So then that’s where you said this is a control issue, right? If I can convince you that empathy is to be avoided as a Christian, I’ve just made it so that we don’t have to deal with changing the system. If there’s marginalization that’s happening, and women are being injured, or people of color are being injured, or our LGBT kids are being injured with, higher rate of suicide and homelessness, I don’t even have to think about those things. The system, as it is, is safe because the thing that would enable me to question those injuries is empathy.

Becky Castle Miller 28:20
Yes. And it puts the one holding the power also into the judgment seat of what is deserving of empathy. So for example, James White says this explicitly, he said, “We are told to weep with those who weep, but that assumes that those who weep have a reason for weeping that is in line with God’s revelation…”

Marc Schelske 28:44
Oh yea, that’s the next verse.

Becky Castle Miller 28:45
Right?! “We’re not to weep with the drug dealer who accidentally drops his stash down the storm drain in New York City. We are to exercise control even in our sympathy, we are not to sympathize with sin, or rebellion, or evil.” So his whole thing is that we can’t empathize with someone because what if the reason that they’re hurting is because of their own mistake or sin so they don’t deserve to be empathized with. They don’t deserve to be hurting in the first place.

So that’s problematic in itself, but also he uses these extreme absurdist examples so that we agree with him like, “Oh, yes, of course, I shouldn’t empathize with a drug dealer.” This is very very specific and extreme, he drops his stash down a storm drain in New York City. It’s just it’s just as really extreme specific example. But we say “Yes, oh, of course, he’s sad because he lost drugs. I shouldn’t feel sorry for him.” But what that does is that get me to agree with him so that when I meet someone who was sexually abused in a Southern Baptist Church, and is seeking to bring her abuser to justice, I will say, “Well, what did she do wrong? There’s probably a reason that she’s hurting and I shouldn’t empathize with her because it probably was her sin.”

Marc Schelske 30:00
Right. And until I know, until I have enough of the situation sorted out for me to be able to judge whether or not the sadness that she has is valuable holy sadness, then I get to withhold my empathy.

Becky Castle Miller 30:14
Because I don’t want to support someone in their sin.

Marc Schelske 30:15
Right. That means that I have to, in order to have this human connection with anybody, I have to pre-qualify them as worthy. And that means my relationship to them is always a hierarchical relationship. I’m the one that’s judging whether or not their sadness and loss is worth grieving.

Becky Castle Miller 30:33
And generally, it’s going to say, “No, it’s not.”

Marc Schelske 30:36
That example itself kind of shows part of this thinking. Let’s just imagine that there is a drug dealer in New York City who dropped his stash down the storm drain. Is it possible to ask questions about that guy? Is it possible to ask questions about why that guy is selling drugs? Does he feel like he needs to sell drugs? Is selling drugs what is supporting his family? You know?

Becky Castle Miller 31:01
Right. What is it about systemic poverty in our country that needs to be addressed? Was he not able to get health care, and he has a million dollars in medical bills, and he’s trying to put food on the table for his kids, because we have no social safety net in the U.S.? But if we just say, “Well, he did something wrong,” then we don’t need to empathize and we don’t have to hear the hurt that led to this place. We don’t have to fix the systemic issues, because he’s just wrong. So we don’t have to feel sad.

Marc Schelske 31:31
Right. He did it. He committed a crime, he made the choice, it’s his fault. These are his consequences. And he should just buck up and take them and it’s not our problem. So then when when we remove empathy from the equation, basically, what we’re saying is whatever is happening to other people is not our problem.

Becky Castle Miller 31:51
Yes. And it’s so explicitly rooted in undermining the whole anti-abuse advocacy movement that’s happening in the church world. They see it coming for them. These men who are speaking out against empathy are having abuse cases brought to light in their own organizations, and even against themselves. And so in order to protect themselves and their institutions, they’re trying to preemptively keep the public from listening to those who bring their stories of spiritual trauma.

James White is explicit. He went on to say, “When I see a brother or sister who’s experiencing what they call trauma, and I first inquire as to the source of the trauma, and I discover it’s rooted in rebellion, or sin or ignorance of God’s truth, they don’t need me to validate their emotional responses.” So he’s poisoned people against listening to those who say, “I have spiritual trauma,” right. And shame doesn’t change anyone. Shame is not the way that we help people and support their growth and change. If you shame someone, they’re only more likely to withdraw from relationship and to withdraw into themselves. And that’s not how we call people to growth and to change. Jesus never shamed anyone, he invited them and let them choose to follow. He didn’t browbeat them.

Marc Schelske 33:17
Okay. So then let’s turn this corner, then. If empathy is not only a normal, natural part of a healthy, functioning human person and human relationships, if it’s not only that, but then also a constructive and needful part of our faith life, what does that look like? How do you see empathy playing a constructive role in the life of a faithful Christian?

Becky Castle Miller 33:45
Jesus’s empathy needs to be the model for our empathy. The way that Jesus entered into human existence and knows what we feel like… to know that we have a great high priest who’s experienced everything we have and prays for us out of that intimate knowledge of suffering and the human experience. Jesus is our model of empathy. We should enter into the experience of the poor and the marginalized and the hurting, and be with them as Jesus is with us.

Marc Schelske 34:23
Yeah. I mean, you think of some of the key guiding principles or passages ion our Christian faith. How do you do these things without empathy? How do you bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ without empathy? You don’t even know what their burdens are, if you can’t empathize. How do you love your neighbor as yourself? The the underlying software behind that injunction is that you know about what you need, you know about your internal landscape, you know about the things that make you hurt. So love your neighbor in keeping with what you know about what it mean for you to be loved. Love your neighbor as yourself. How do you do that without empathy? How can we be Christians after the way of Jesus without empathy?

Becky Castle Miller 35:09
I don’t think we can be. And I’d like to try to take on some empathy for the men who are saying these things against empathy. You know, to love them as I would want to be loved. Maybe they don’t know have to love themselves. Maybe they have unhealed wounds that no one has empathized with. And the way of self-protection is to say, “Well, who needs empathy anyway?”

Marc Schelske 35:34
Augh… I didn’t want to end feeling sorry for those guys, Becky. That wasn’t where I wanted to end the conversation.

Becky Castle Miller 35:41
Sorry for making you feel empathy!

Marc Schelske 35:47
Okay, all right. So on the one hand, I can stand up and boldly say that gaslighting around empathy is a method of control. But on the other hand, that I have to think about whether I am participating in that? And why would somebody be in that position? What would make you feel so desperate, (John Calvin!) as to say that you don’t want anybody thinking about the choices you’ve made according to their emotional sense of empathy? You don’t want them using that standard to judge you. Okay, love your neighbor as yourself. That’s gotta take empathy.

REFLECTION

Marc Schelske 36:46

Are you kidding me? Did you see what Becky did there at the end? She asked me to have empathy for these preachers who are using emotional manipulation to control other people. Was she wrong to do that? Is this some weird both sides perspective? No. Becky was simply asking me to live up to the calling of Jesus. She’s asking me not to abandon empathy as I relate to people, even people I disagree with. If I buy into the message that empathy is a sin, then I get to write people like this off. I get to dehumanize them, I get to stand in judgment over them without any nuance or concern. But if I engage my God-given empathy, then I have to wonder about their story and why empathy is so frightening to them, and what it is about their worldview that leaves them in so much fear.

If I happen to have a relationship with someone like this, that gives me a basis for interacting with them in a compassionate way, perhaps even an angle from which I can invite them to something better. And if I don’t have a relationship with someone like this, thinking empathically about them enables me to be better prepared to love the people in my own life and ministry. It shows me why it’s important to listen first, why it’s important to believe victims when they share their hurt. It shows me why it’s important that we think not only about individual sin and struggle, but also about the sin embedded in our systems and in our organizations.

I don’t think it’s possible for us to follow Jesus well without empathy. If someone tells you different, pay close attention. They may be trying to distract or control how you feel. And that may be an effort to keep you from hearing the voice of Spirit, calling you to greater love, more inclusive hospitality as you follow the way of Jesus. May you see the world through Spirit-inspired empathy, so that you can love more and more like Jesus. Thanks for listening.

Notes for today’s episode, and any links mentioned you’ll find at www.MarcAlanSchelske.com/TAW048. If you found today’s conversation helpful, then subscribe to my email list. Usually just one email a month that includes links to my writing, the next podcast episode, books I recommend and more. You’ll get a free ebook PDF when you do. It’s called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Practice for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World. In that I teach a spiritual practice that has been so helpful to me as I face the anxiety and uncertainty of the time we find ourselves in. So subscribe, get my email and get this little book at www.MarcOptIn.com.

Until next time, remember: In this one present moment, you are loved, you are known, and you are not alone.

Episode 047 – Don’t Choose Shallow Formation (With Rich Vellodas)

Does our faith enable us to be “a good gift” to our neighbors, even the neighbors we disagree with? Many Christians, it seems, are living in ways that contradict the core ethic of our faith loving our neighbors as ourselves. What is going on? It seems like we are witnessing a mass failure of discipleship. Why is this happening and what can be done about it?

Show Notes

• The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformational Values to Root us in the Way of Jesus by Rich Vellodas
• Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Pete Scazerro
• Rich Vellodas preaches about Racism as it is manifested in human structures and institutions. Worth your time.

• Download a full transcript here or scroll to the bottom of the page for a full transcript of this episode.
• You can also watch and share the video version on Youtube.

More about Rich Vellodas

Rich Villodas is the Brooklyn-born lead pastor of New Life Fellowship, a large multiracial church with more than seventy-five countries represented in Elmhurst, Queens. Rich holds a Master of Divinity from Alliance Theological Seminary. He enjoys reading widely, preaching, and writing on contemplative spirituality, justice-related matters, and the art of preaching. He’s been married to Rosie since 2006 and they have two beautiful children, Karis and Nathan.

• His Website: www.RichVillodas.com
• Twitter: @richvillodas
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rvillodas

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More from Marc

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Transcription

Marc Schelske  0:00  

Does our faith enable us to be a good gift to our neighbors? Even the neighbors we disagree with? Hey friends, I’m Marc Alan Schelske, and this is the Apprenticeship Way, a podcast about spiritual growth following the way of Jesus. This is episode 47. Don’t choose shallow formation.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Today’s podcast is made possible by The Writers Advance. I’m a writer, and I love supporting writers. Three years ago, I created the writer’s advance. It’s a writer’s weekend. And it’s been crafted to be exactly what writers need to push forward their current project. It’s not about networking or listening to experts speak or trying desperately to get an agent or an editor to notice you. It is about writing and reconnecting with why writing matters to you.

Now, at every event I send all the participants an anonymous survey. You can read their words on the event website, but I want to read a few of their comments right now because they tell the story. They’re writers who have come to this event. And this is what they have to say.

This is from the anonymous survey from the most recent event in November of 2021. “This was an amazing weekend. The hosting was on target, the venue was peaceful, and offered more than I expected. I love the pacing. Often retreats such as these are nice getaways with lots of listening to people speak. And I really appreciated the time to write and to wind down with points of contact along the way. Mark is a great host and a guide and provides just the right amount of encouragement and accountability. I’m so looking forward to the next one.”

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“This event was a gift to myself. I needed the focus time and also found direction from the coaching. I came away with a renewed passion for the stories I am writing for my family and some concrete ways to move forward.” That’s from Carol H.

One last one. This is from Tara Rolstad, a professional speaker who has attended the Writers Advanced twice. Her words: “I’ve come to see the writers advanced as a gift I can’t afford not to give myself. I got more work done this weekend than I have in months. And to do it in a gorgeous peaceful, comfortable location in the company and support of smart, quality people like Marc attracts? Invaluable! I’m deeply grateful.”

Well, maybe you are one of the smart quality people that I attract! Or maybe you love a writer and you would love to give them an incredible gift to help them move their project forward. There are presently eight spots left out of a total of 14 for the spring Writers Advance weekend coming up April 1-3, 2022. For more info, head over to www.TheWritersAdvance.com. You can learn all about it, you can sign up there, the link will be on the screen, in the show notes, and underneath the YouTube video.

INTRODUCTION

Recently, I was chatting with a small group of local pastors. They were from churches that were really different–small, very large, urban, rural, different denominations. It was the first time I had seen any other pastors in person since the start of the COVID pandemic. And we were talking about everything that we’ve been through as a result. Basically, we were telling war stories.

Even though our churches were so different, our stories were very similar. Church members were angry because of the way their church was handling COVID. Angry if the church was online, angry if the church was in person, angry if they weren’t enforcing masks, angry if they were. And then there was tension over the pastor’s perceived political position. Even the most general call for compassion and care for vulnerable people would get you labeled as too liberal for the denomination or one guy even got called a socialist. I know these pastors, all of them, all of them desire to protect vulnerable people, you know–like Jesus did. And almost all of them had church members who took offense at that. I’ve heard the same kinds of reports from pastors across the country.

It seems like there’s something happening in the wider Christian church right now that is not good–by not good. I mean, not like Jesus at all. Now, I know, I know there are good Christians and good churches and good pastors. Maybe you have one of those great churches or you are one of those great pastors. That’s all true. And yet, can’t you see that there is a sickness bubbling to the surface in the modern Christian church? Among Christians, we’re seeing increasing science denial, COVID denial, dogmatic refusal to take the vaccine or wear masks or do anything to protect vulnerable people in our communities. We’re seeing wide support for intentionally cruel immigration policies, and an almost rabid pursuit of getting anti-abortion laws on the books regardless of the cost or who gets hurt, with a very little parallel concern for sustaining the life of already born people. There’s also a weird, deep resistance to talking about the historical reality of racial oppression and exploitation in our countries. Even an unwillingness to take seriously the issue of sexual abuse of women and children in church communities and by church leaders.

Come on, Christians are ostensibly people who’ve been taught to love their neighbors as themselves. These are people who’ve heard Paul’s words in church that to bear one another’s burdens is to fulfill the law of Christ. These are people who’ve been taught about God’s grace and forgiveness, people who read Jesus’ words, “Whatsoever you do for the least of these, you’ve done for me.” So what is going on? Now, of course, I’ll grant that there are great churches and great pastors, and great Christians out there doing good gospel things. But even so, I think we’re witnessing across the nation, and even the world, a massive failure of discipleship. Discipleship is that old word we use in church to talk about the process of learning to follow Jesus. And this process is not meant just to teach us churchy skills like how to study the Bible or pray more. It’s supposed to change our essential values. But it seems in too many cases, that is just not happening.

Early in the pandemic, my church and I read a book that offered an intervention on this front, The Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformational Values to Root us in the Way of Jesus. This book isn’t written by some ivory-tower theorist. It’s written by a pastor, Rich Vellodas.

He’s the pastor of New Life Fellowship in Queens, New York, New Life is a multiracial, multi-class, multi-generational urban immigrant church that has had to walk through some of these very difficult issues. In The Deeply Formed Life, Vellodas offers five values that he suggests we are missing in the church right now, five values that the church needs in this particular moment. The book was really helpful to me and to my church.

And so I asked Rich to sit down with me and chat about this crisis of discipleship. And I started out by asking him, “Why is this happening?”

INTERVIEW

Rich Vellodas 7:11

We’re living in a CPR world. That’s how I’ve tried to explain what’s going on in our day, Marc. In a world that is marked by COVID, Political Hostility, Racial Injustice, and the convergence of those things, CPR is leading us to have ailing hearts and difficulty breathing. And I think the past year and a half has revealed to us the complexity, the stress, the anxiety, the particular moment that we’re in is so fragmented. And the call to discipleship in this particular moment requires a vision that’s large enough, and deep enough to encompass the particular moment that we find ourselves in. Yes, we need the classic practices of discipleship, of prayer, and reading the Bible, and bearing witness to Christ, and church and all the rest, but discipleship–for it to truly impact people in ways that goes beyond the surface–It’s one that resists the pull of formational compartmentalization that we find ourselves in. And we require a new really paradigm or a fresh paradigm, at least.

Marc Schelske 8:36

In the book, you talk about how we’ve experienced a shallow formation. Can you talk about, a little bit of what that means? And maybe how that shallow formation is what we are seeing fall down right now?

Rich Vellodas 8:48

Yeah, by shallow formation, I’m talking about a way of life that leaves very little space for interiority, a formation that often doesn’t go beyond behavior modification, doctrinal affirmations, political associations. It’s a very thin approach. And so to go beneath the surface, you know, when I think about the various traditions, that I’ve been shaped by, traditions that I love, traditions that have helped me, what I often find is that there tends to have a particular accent. So for example, in the evangelical tradition–I use that in the theological sense of the word, not in the political sense of that word–And the theology in the evangelical tradition is often about right thinking. That as long as you have the right thinking, and you believe certain things about the divinity of Jesus, and about the way of salvation and about something related to the Bible, then you’re good to go. I mean, you got the right thinking, or it’s right–in the Pentecostal tradition, where I have spent many years as well, It’s the right experiences. Do you have the right experience? Whether it’s mainline traditions or progressive traditions or traditions that are oriented by justice? Is there a right action? Are we giving ourselves to the right action in the world? And so it’s often right thinking, right experiences, right action. There’s often in light of that very little interiority, where we’re not examining some of the larger issues from a deeper center.

Marc Schelske 10:23

It sounds like you’re talking about the, I mean, kind of the iceberg metaphor that, you know, I first saw in the Emotionally Healthy Spirituality material, talking about how we have so much of our interior life beneath the surface. That metaphor was talking about our emotional reality. And it sounds like you’re taking the same metaphor and expanding it to the rest of our inner life, political identity, racial identity, culture, all that stuff.

Rich Vellodas 10:52

That’s absolutely right. I mean, we…there are no icebergs in Queens, but we made that image the logo of our church. And it is, in many respects, the primary image that we come back to talk about–whether it’s our emotional life, whether it’s our political identification–the ways that we navigate and so absolutely right.

Marc Schelske 11:13

Right, because we want, we want life transformation and that’s not going to be the surface things you’ve talked about. It’s not just, “Do you understand and articulate your doctrine in the right way? Do you have you added the right set of behaviors to your life?” Those are fruit, that’s Jesus metaphor, right? Fruit on the tree. So something about the tree, something about the roots is what needs to be changed. That’s where we’re headed. And right now in this world, it feels like the roots are missing.

Rich Vellodas 11:37

In the world that we live in, the pace is just nonstop. And this is not just that I’m from New York, I’m in the city that never sleeps. And so we’re accustomed to this. But this is not just a New York phenomenon. There’s just a chaotic, frenzied, hurried pace that we live. And because of this chaotic pace, there’s very little time to actually take inventory of our own souls, let alone some of the deeper ways that we are to be thinking about some of the more challenging and important issues of our day.

Marc Schelske 12:10

In the book, you pick out five particular themes that you’re suggesting are kind of the intervention to this to this problem that we’re facing.

Rich Vellodas 12:21

That’s the first time I’ve heard it that way and I like it, Marc. That’s the first time I’ve heard it that way.

Marc Schelske 12:26

We want to get down into the roots or down into the iceberg. Talk us through what these values are and what they’re intervening about.

Rich Vellodas 12:35

Yeah, so the five values that I write about, and those values are Contemplative Rhythms, Racial Reconciliation, Interior Examination, Sexual Wholeness, and Missional presence.

For contemplative rhythms, the intervention is we are living often at a pace that is exhausting and leaves no room for us to catch up to God. And so in order to catch up to God, we need to slow down our lives. That’s the paradox of the way of Jesus.

The intervention for that Racial Reconciliation chapter is that we live in a world that’s so increasingly fragmented around racial, ethnic lines, and we often don’t have the formational language to help us navigate this. You know, to talk about race. We have to talk about it on so many levels theologically, historically, sociologically, ecclesiologically, politically. I thought I need to…the intervention is we need is to talk formationally.

Interior Examination, the intervention is that we are living often on the surface of our own lives. And we’re not taking inventory on what’s happening. And so the intervention is that Jesus wants to transform all of our lives, especially our interior lives.

Sexual Wholeness is we live in a culture–this is within the church and outside the church–that splits souls from bodies, as opposed to seeing the dynamic interplay between the two. And we are to hold these things together.

And that Missional Presence value, really the intervention is we are called to make something of the world. We’re not just called to be consumers of the world, we’re called to participate with God in the creation of something that has yet to be seen in its fullness. That’s how I tried to in essence articulate what I think we need individually and collectively.

Marc Schelske 14:28

I think the book came out in 2020. That means that you were writing it, working on it, for two or three years prior to that. So now, here we are a year and a half, more than a year and a half, into this weird CPR world that you’ve talked about. It seems like these five values are maybe even more urgent than they were when you were working on the book.

Rich Vellodas 14:53

I knew there were problems! That’s why I wrote I wrote it, but it does seem like a deepening and an acceleration of the problems in the past year and a half.

Marc Schelske 15:03

You know, we’re so wired up to avoid discomfort. And, and when it comes to church, honestly, what people want from church is to go to church and feel encouraged and hopeful and leave church carrying that encouragement into the world that they’re in.

Rich Vellodas 15:23

Right.

Marc Schelske 15:23

Right. That’s the thing that they–that may not be what they need, but it’s the thing they want.

Rich Vellodas 15:29

Yeah.

Marc Schelske 15:29

And so this acceleration that you speak of, I think part of what has happened is it has accelerated or made more plain, the discomfort! All of us, all of us that are pastors in the last year and a half have had to rethink how we even do church like, like the church…

Rich Vellodas 15:44

Or if I wanna do it!

Marc Schelske 15:48

Exactly, you know, and the expectations that church members have of what church is like that has changed. How we expect the election to go, that is changed, and how we expect our politicians to talk to each other, that is changed, you know, our expectations of the racial conversation, that is changed. And so all of a sudden it’s like there’s this rawness, this open discomfort, and that emotional immaturity, or emotional unhealth– we just run into all kinds of places to avoid facing that interior discomfort,

Rich Vellodas 16:22

What the pandemic has revealed, in many ways, as you mentioned, beyond just the crisis of discipleship, but particularly related to the crisis of discipleship, is the ways that we have not navigated our own interior life in such a way that leads us to be a good gift to our neighbors, even our neighbors that we profoundly disagree with. And so, the church, instead of the church being a place that demonstrates what is possible when Jesus gets a hold of a community, and the kind of compassion and justice and love and humility, what we’ve seen in the church and our discipleship is in many ways, a sad reflection of the world.

Marc Schelske 17:11

Right, right.

Rich Vellodas 17:11

And so what this has most certainly revealed is, yes, that immaturity, as my predecessor would say, that spiritual maturity and emotional maturity are inseparable.

Marc Schelske 17:23

One of the things that you say in this book is that the deeply formed life is not possible without an intentional reordering of our lives. So, what I take you to mean by that is that this is not just a change of perspective. This is not like a new list of five values that I should adopt for my church. There’s something more tangible, that has to happen if this is going to be real.

Rich Vellodas 17:50

Yeah, what I’m trying to get at is the shifts that need to take place in our lives are not just rational shifts, doctrinal shifts, theological shifts. I mean, we can make all the different shifts in our lives mentally, theologically, and not bear any difference in our lives. Yes, we need theological frameworks to think through and rethink how we understand the world. But if we just have frameworks without formation, we are still in the same place. What does it mean to reorder our lives around contemplative rhythms of slowing down to be with God? What does it mean to reorder our lives around taking inventory of the ways that I’ve been shaped racially, and the invitation to live a more just, reconciled, life? The invitation to take inventory of what’s happening within my emotional life? There, it’s a reordering. And so it’s not just here, check this box. Have you read this book? Have you read this article? It’s no… can we begin to talk about the foundational changes that need to be made.

This is why–Marc, you know, I love what you said–most people come to church to hear good news, to be encouraged. I mean, I try to preach encouragement every Sunday. At the same time, I tell our congregation that we should have a sign in the front of our church that says, “Enter at your own risk.” Because we are going to invite you to go places and to consider a reordering of our lives. That might not feel good. But when has following Jesus been about feeling good? I mean, he said, if you’re gonna follow me, take up, take up your cross. That doesn’t feel good. And I think what I’m trying to do in this reordering is, again, trying to contextualize in some ways, what it means to take up our cross and follow Jesus.

Marc Schelske 19:48

Okay, so let’s, let’s take one of these values, just as an example. So the last one you talked about racial reconciliation. Let’s just go with that one because that one is troubling for many of us. So when you say that we need to reorder our lives, and that’s not just, you know, reading a book or hearing a podcast nodding your head and saying, “Yep, things were bad.” Like, you’re talking about something practical. So unpack that. What does a reordering actually look like in regard to that value?

Rich Vellodas 20:17

It means a number of things. One of the ways, that what it means is for us to actually take a conscious, intentional prayerful inventory of the ways that we have been formed. And so for example, there’s a tool that I’ve developed called Race and Racism In Our Families. In that, my attempt was to help the congregation begin to identify–and not just identify, that’s the first step–begin to now resist the messages, the scripts that we have inherited, related to people who don’t look like us. And so for example, how did your family consciously or unconsciously talk about black people? What were the messages that you received? About black people, about white people, about East Asian people, South Asian people, Middle Eastern people, Hispanic people, Native American people? What are those messages? Who were you taught to fear? Who were you taught were beneath you? Who were you taught was competent and who was incompetent? Who’s dangerous, who’s safe?

Unless we are doing that hard work and naming the ways that we’ve been formed, we’re going to have a really hard time imagining something different. And so part of our own formation is taking radical inventory: How have I been shaped in ways that are not in step with the kingdom of God, not instead with the gospel of Jesus Christ, not in step with the way of love? You’re not going to get that by just reading a book. It’s going to take community and intentionality. And, Marc, here’s what I’ve discovered. I’ve led many people in our congregation and outside of it with that simple tool. And to name the messages that we’ve received is such a difficult, often shameful–it feels shameful, because if people really admit how their family gave them messages about black people, or Asian people, Hispanic people, across the board, it’s embarrassing, and so no one wants to do it! And yet, this is the way of the cross. We are actually facing, we’re living in truth. And we’re asking the hard questions. And so that’s one of the ways, Marc, that I think reordering our lives pertains to something like racial justice and reconciliation.

Marc Schelske 22:38

So then, I’m, I’m going to think… in this example, I’m going to think about my family, people that I care about. I have an example of that. I spent a summer when I was 12, I spent a summer living with my grandmother who lived in northern Arkansas. My pictures, my memories, my associations of my grandma, are wonderful Christmases, you know, the way that she, you know, the specific things that she made, the special dishes that she made, you know, going into… going to her house for holidays, feeling really warm and loved and cared for. I have all those associations.

So then I spent the summer with her and in the course of that summer, what I learned was that she–in a very, sort of non-spiteful way–just authentically thought Black people weren’t as smart as she was. She didn’t curse because she was a good church lady. She didn’t use foul language, because she was a teacher at the local Christian school. But just in a way that was very matter of fact, like how I would talk about the sky being blue, she just believed black people weren’t that smart. And so now I have this tension in my gut over this person that I love, that I have all these wonderful associations with, that I think was a good Godly person, AND also was racist. And now I have to look at both sides of that picture. That process is painful, it is painful, right? I want my people to be good people.

Rich Vellodas 24:06

Right? And that’s part A. Then Part B becomes “How am I perpetuating that in ways that I might not be totally aware of, in subtle ways…”

Marc Schelske 24:20

Right.

Rich Vellodas 24:20

So now it becomes grandma, my grandma or you know, aunt So-and-so in Arkansas. Now the question is, “That’s really sad, now, how are the ways that I’m now participating in that? That’s the hard work and then what are the counter-instinctual acts that I need to now begin to grow into to begin to re-narrate and reorder my life in light of how I’ve been shaped racially by my family.

Marc Schelske 24:49

So now I’m moving past thinking about this and reflecting on it. Now you’re saying, Okay, Marc, you also have to do something with it.” What is the… what’s the reordering practices? What is the thing I’m going to do differently if I’m really engaging in this conversation?

Rich Vellodas 25:04

Yeah, in your, in your example, let’s go with that example. First of all, I think it requires some level of confession. There is something about externalizing our sins. I mean, this is good Christian tradition stuff here, you know. Confession is good for our soul and confession roots us in love. And if we’re able to name certain things that have been strongholds in our lives, we begin to free those things from the power it’s had over us. You know, whatever we cannot name, we’re a slave to. And so I think it begins with confession.

This is what I have been living with, carrying. And then in that case there, you know, I do think part of it now–in this case, we’re just taking a very individualistic approach to address something. And so I think to talk about racism needs to be talked about in individual, interpersonal, and institutional ways, but let’s just stick with the individual lens for a second…

How much do I need to pay attention to the various faulty messages that arise on a given day? Marc, you’re at the doctor’s office and someone walks in. And you see it’s a black woman who walks into the doctor’s office, and your first thought (or the hospital, wherever you’re at) your first thought is, “This can’t be the doctor.” Because, you know, black people, black women can’t be doctors… whatever faulty message we have, or Black people can’t be a good director. So this can’t be the doctor. And now you’re asking yourself, you’re taking inventory? What is that about? Your confessing that. You’re praying. You’re asking the Lord to forgive, and then by God’s grace, you’re opening yourself up and moving towards someone that in the past, you might have regarded as some intellectually inferior or whatever it might be?

Marc Schelske 26:57

Right.

Rich Vellodas 26:57

I think that’s one of the ways that we if we play out a scenario like that, but this is a lifelong journey, requiring us to take note on notes on ourselves, and subsequently identifying what are the counter-instinctual habits, actions, that are required of me and it differs from scenario to scenario.

Marc Schelske 27:17

You mentioned, you know, that we were talking about an individualized example and that this also needs to be sort of a larger conversation about communities and systems. Okay. Your book is about values that I think you’re not just proposing for individual Christians. They’re coming out of your church community. And I think you’re proposing that this needs to be a community conversation. So what does that look like in a church community?

Rich Vellodas 27:42
Number one, understanding the power dynamics. We want to be more than just what we call “a sanctified subway car,” in which we get a group of anonymous, diverse people in close proximity to each other. And, you know, as someone said, plantations were diverse as well, you know? So we’re not trying to be just the sanctified subway car. Part of that is who’s making decisions? Who shaping the community, whose fears are we paying attention to? Which values are we highlighting? And I don’t know if that happens unless there are diverse people in the room at various levels of power and influence and authority.

And so in our church, for example, you know, every level, it’s–now granted, it’s a very diverse church–at the same time, we have worked hard and intentionally to ensure that at every level of our community, there is diversity and shared power. And who stories are we listening to? What are the fears that we’re paying attention to? What are the values that we’re prioritizing? And so that’s really related to identity, you know? Who we are, what we look like, but then on another level, it’s a mission, what are we giving ourselves to? As a congregation, we have worked hard over 30 years, to pay attention to the racialized world that we live in. And to try to be a witness that in the name of Jesus, a new possibility, a new racial possibility, is before us.

And so what does this look like? Our engagement with our local community. Right? And you know, what, we were not just involved in evangelism, we’re not just trying to preach the gospel and get people to make an individual decision. We’re asking ourselves, what are, where are their points of inequity? Where are the points of disproportionate resources? So for example, right now, you know, our church is involved with a group of other communities within our neighborhood, addressing affordable housing in a community in which gentrification is taking over. For us, this is an issue of justice, of racial justice. This is part of our discipleship. This is part… you know, does God care about our souls or our bodies? The answer is yes. We’re saying this is a holistic gospel that we’re trying to live out. And so whether it’s individually, interpersonally, institutionally as a congregation, we have tried to work through all this. And it’s hard because these are massive issues before us. And we realize we’re not going to solve most of these problems, but by God’s grace, maybe we can touch a few. And as we work together, try to see something of the kingdom of God become more of a reality, within our local spaces.

Marc Schelske 30:35

In the book, you have a chapter for each of these values. And that chapter is followed by a chapter that is practices. That structure by itself says something because it says it’s not enough to think these thoughts. It’s not enough to agree with a perspective. It’s not enough for Mark to just acknowledge that his grandmother was racist, right? There’s a deeper thing that needs to happen. That thing involves personal reflection, community reflection, but also has to show up in tangible actions.

Rich Vellodas 31:12

I just didn’t want to give theological frameworks for people to say, “Well, I believe that,” or “That’s insightful, and I read the book, and you know what, maybe I’ll read it again if I have to teach on it.” For me, it was, How can this be a resource to guide people into a new way of being in the world? And it was very intentional to offer–I love theology, it’s not that I’m anti-theology. I love theology. I want theology to have flesh on it. I want it to be livable. I want you know… Jesus prays, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done” that there is… I just don’t want to think about it. I want to be about it. And so the practices are really trying to orient our hearts, our minds, our bodies, our relationships into a new way of being.

Marc Schelske 32:04

Yeah, ’cause it’s very often that in doing things, our minds become conscious of and aware of the implications. We very often live our way into theology.

Rich Vellodas 32:18

Yes!

Marc Schelske 32:19

Even though we like to think we thought our way into it! It’s the practices that actually shaped us. And maybe that’s part of the crisis of this moment, that we’re seeing the church engaged in practices, that when you look at these practices pastorally, you’re like, “That practice isn’t taking you closer to Jesus! That is headed off a cliff, that practice has to shift.

Rich Vellodas 32:40

And you’re right. I mean, it comes to a point where I think, the more… the more I give myself to contemplative prayer, the more now my body starts…. And so it’s not… my body starts craving it…

Marc Schelske 32:52

Yes. Oh, man. Yeah, that’s such a big deal. I–a couple of times a year–go down to a Benedictine Abbey that’s about an hour from where I live. And I just did this last week, actually, for two days, to go down and just disconnect from all the obligations, spend some time in silence, you know. Follow the hours, be in a place where the focus is interiority. And what I noticed as I drive onto the campus is I can feel in my body a shift, I can feel… I’ve done it enough times now, that just driving onto the campus, I feel the tone of my muscles and the presence of my mind shift, like some of that pressure, some of those obligations, some of the performance that I constantly live in, and all the other areas of my life, doesn’t belong here. And I feel it, I feel it in me in a way that’s not intellectual at all. It’s in my body.

Rich Vellodas 33:48

Now, this is music to my ears, Marc, because I mean, I go to a Benedictine monastery in the Boston area, usually every year. And that’s exactly my experience. I’m there, as I’m driving up, first of all, it feels like a pilgrimage every time I’m going there like I’m going to meet God. I’m not just going on a little trip here, a little vacation, I am going to meet the living God, and something in my body adjusts to it.

The question that I wrestle with, and this is why I’ve needed rhythms of this, is how do I carry this with me, when I’m back into the day-to-day operations of the world. And taking the kids to school and getting dinner and grocery shopping, I have to, by God’s grace, I need time to go up the mountain. And for me going up the mountain is the monastery, is silence, is retreats, and then I come back down and then realize soon enough, I better go back up again. Because it is so easy to be dragged down by the pace and the priorities and the values of this world

Marc Schelske 34:53

Well, it’s almost like that what happens on the mountain is that you get to practice something that your normal life structure would mediate against. And the more you practice it, the more you can bring it into your normal life structure.

Rich Vellodas 35:05

Yes!

Marc Schelske 35:06

I think what you’re saying is, you know, contemplative rhythm shouldn’t be a special event, they should be a normal way of living. Racial reconciliation shouldn’t be an annual conference, it should be your attitude toward people around you. Interior examination shouldn’t be something that you’re doing just–you know–at your therapist’s office, it should be a daily practice, it should be your response to watching yourself live. Sexual wholeness, that’s not, you know, something that just happens in certain places. You should be thinking about the body that God made you in and the bodies that God made everyone else in and the dignity that those bodies have and how to relate to everybody’s bodies in that way, you know. Missional presence isn’t an evangelistic event. It’s a way of engaging the world. And so now we’re moving from values, which could easily be interpreted as sort of ideals that we put up on the plaque…

Rich Vellodas 35:58

Right.

Marc Schelske 35:58

…Now we’re bringing that down to the actual woven fabric of the minutes of my life.

Rich Vellodas 36:06

Mm hmm. Yeah. Marc, that’s beautiful. You should take that clip right there, And–I don’t know–put that everywhere. You distilled it beautifully. And the question, I think, when I read the Bible–I think this is Eugene Peterson’s–He believed that what the Bible said was livable, and that’s what concerned him. Is this livable? Is not just is this thinkable? But is this liveable? And for me, that’s the hope, not just that we’re just thinking about new ways of being Christian, but that we’re living into new ways of what it means to follow Jesus.

REFLECTION

Marc Schelske 36:46

The call to discipleship requires a vision that is large enough to encompass the moment we find ourselves in. Did you hear Rich say that? Whether you agree with the five values that Rich’s proposing, and the way that he articulated them, it seems like he’s really onto something. The discipleship of many Christians over the last generation is so thin, so brittle, and often exclusionary. It seems not to be able to handle much discomfort and that’s a problem. Because the gospel is just the opposite of that!

One reason I resonate with Rich’s five values is that they help us, in his words, “resist the pull of formational compartmentalization.” That’s a great phrase, right? That’s when our Christianity only impacts certain narrow compartments of our lives. These values give us practical ways to have our faith shape every part of our lives: How we see our bodies and the bodies of other people, how we relate to our community and the politics necessary to govern ourselves in a pluralistic world, how we think about race, how we think about our own identity. We’re not Christians because we believe certain abstract ideas about God and the world. We’re Christians because we follow the way of Jesus. The way, how we live, how we relate, how we engage others, all of that matters. This is the goal for spiritual maturity, that we would push beyond inflexible intellectual definitions and into a gracious love, an other-centered co-suffering love.

One more quote from Rich, “The deeply formed life is not possible without an intentional reordering of our lives.” Think about that. Do you have space for interiority? Is your faith deeper than behavioral modification, doctrinal affirmation, and political affiliation? Does the pace of your life allow for this kind of deep reflective faith? Or does the rush keep you skating on the surface? Does your faith enable you to be a good gift to your neighbors? Even the neighbors you disagree with? May you push deeper than a surface religion into the depths of interior faith that can overflow into every aspect of your life, making you more gracious, more loving, and more and more like Jesus. Thanks for listening.

Notes for today’s episode and any links that have been mentioned, you can find at www.MarcAlanSchelske.com/taw047.

Was that helpful? Did you enjoy that? Did it make you think? Then subscribe to my email list. Two emails a month at most. Frankly, you usually only get one. That email will contain links to my writing, the next podcast episode, books that I’m reading and would like to recommend to you.

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Until next time, remember, in this one present moment, you are loved. You are known and you are not alone.

Episode 046 – A More Beautiful Deconstruction (With Dr. Bradley Jersak)

Deconstruction is everywhere. People are doing it. Some leaders are fighting it. Some people are excited by it. Some people are terrified of it. Is it just a trendy new word for leaving the church? No. It’s a process that’s necessary for spiritual maturity–and how we think about it matters.

Show Notes

• A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel
• A More Christlike Way: A More Beautiful Faith
• A More Christlike Word: Reading Scripture the Emmaus Way

• Download a full transcript here or scroll to the bottom of the page for a full transcript of this episode.
• You can also watch and share the video version on Youtube.

More about Dr. Bradley Jersak

Dr. Bradley Jersak is an author of multiple books. He’s a professor of theology and the Dean of theology and culture at St. Stephen’s University, New Brunswick. He serves as a reader and monastery preacher at an orthodox monastery, and he lives in Abbotsford, British Columbia with Eden his wife. Let’s talk deconstruction.

• His Website: www.BradJersak.com
• Clarion: Journal for Religion, Peace & Justice: www.clarion-journal.com/
• Twitter: @bradjersak
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/bradley.jersak

Today’s Sponsor

• The Wisdom Of Your Heart – A unique twice-a-year writers weekend that’s focused on writing. No break-out sessions. No listening to experts talk about what worked for them. No networking. No social media. Just a small group of writers encouraging each other to write. One-on-one coaching and group feedback available.

More from Marc

• Get The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World – This little book is free for you by opting in to my email list.
• The Wisdom of Your Heart: Discovering the God-given Purpose and Power of Your Emotions.
• Untangled Heart Course Online.
• Discovering your Authentic Core Values: A Step-by-step Guide
• Subscribe to my Email List. You’ll get a free copy of a little book called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer & Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World.

Transcription

Marc Schelske  0:00  

Is deconstruction just a trendy word for backsliding or leaving Christianity? No. deconstruction is a necessary part of faith and how we think about it matters. Hey friends, I’m Marc Alan Schelske and this is the apprenticeship way, a podcast about spiritual growth following the way of Jesus. This is Episode 46. A more beautiful deconstruction.

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Today’s podcast is sponsored by The Wisdom Of Your Heart. Imagine having two legs, two strong, healthy, functional legs, but then your parents and your teachers, maybe a pastor of the church who grew up in told you that in order to be a good person, a strong person, someone that really does what God wants, you need to only ever use one of those legs. Now you’re a kid, you believe what trusted people tell you. And so you do it. You try living life on just one leg, you hop around, you end up sometimes losing your balance, you get pretty bruised up, but you know that you’re doing what God wants. So you’re being strong and good, even though sometimes you get hurt pretty badly or hurt other people around you. 

This isn’t a made up story. A lot of people who grew up Christian are living like this. Maybe it’s you! Were you told that emotions are untrustworthy or immature are only capable of deception? Were you taught that good decision making, clear thinking, and even godly doctrine can never be influenced by emotion, by our feelings? Did some pastor tell you that empathy is a sin? Or maybe you experienced profound trauma that shut down your emotions or made your emotion swing wildly. Living like that is like trying to live with only one leg when you have two functional healthy legs. You’re not using the tools God gave you. You’re only going to end up hurting yourself and others. 

If you’ve been trying to live like this–avoiding painful emotions, ignoring how you feel worried that your emotions are just temptations, or that if you really let yourself feel it will hurt just too much–then you might be greatly helped by my book, The Wisdom Of Your Heart: Discovering the God-given Purpose and Power of your Emotions. Your emotions are an essential part of who you are. Your emotions aren’t bad or sinful. They’re a vital source of information you need to live well. They are a God-given source of wisdom. The Wisdom Of Your Heart is available at all the online bookstores, and you can learn more about it or check it out at my website, www.TheWisdomOfYourHeart.com.

INTRODUCTION

If you’ve been following this podcast, you already know that we’ve been talking about a sea change that is occurring in the wider Christian conversation or at least the wider Western Christian conversation. People are evaluating their faith, their theology, what they’ve been taught. Many people across all different traditions and denominations are taking their faith apart in a process that’s come to be called deconstruction. These people are asking critical questions. What is it about my faith story that’s dependable? What does it mean to say that scripture is true or trustworthy? Why does the behavior of so many Christian leaders and institutions contradict the teachings of Jesus? What do I do with the abuse or hurt that I have experienced or seen in the church and then the cover-ups? Are the lines of exclusion that I was raised with necessary? Some leaders, some pastors, think this trend is dangerous, leading people away from Christ. They see these questions as attacks on faith. Other leaders think that much of the work of deconstruction is just peeling away toxic and unhelpful interpretations and experiences. They see deconstruction is a kind of reformation. 

A lot of us are in this place, trying to imagine what to do next. Some folks use the label Exvangelical. Some consider themselves post-denominationa. Some say they’re “spiritual-but-not-religious.” Some of us have given up using the label Christian because it’s taken on certain political and cultural associations that aren’t true about who we are. And yet for many of us, Jesus still compels. His other centered co-suffering way seems good and true and beautiful and like God. 

Recently, I was reading a book called A More Christlike Way by Dr. Bradley Jersak. It lays out a vision of a Christianity where everything in our faith and practice is rooted in the co-suffering, radically forgiving, compassionate love of Jesus–not just our actions, but also our beliefs, and even how we hold those beliefs. Now, Dr. Jersak is not afraid to take on sacred cows. In a previous book, A More Christlike God, he challenged some familiar ideas about the atonement, the idea that God kills Jesus in order to save us– that’s called penal substitutionary atonement. His most recent book, A More Christlike Word, takes apart the literalistic way we often read Scripture. In these books, Dr. Jersak is contributing to this evaluation of Christian faith that’s happening.  In that way, he’s a part of the deconstruction discourse. In A More Christlike Way, Dr. Jersak talks directly about deconstruction, and suggested something that caught my eye and gave me a different way of thinking about all of this. So I asked if he would be willing to have a conversation with me about deconstruction. 

Dr. Bradley Jersak is an author of multiple books. He’s a professor of theology and the Dean of theology and culture at St. Stephen’s University, New Brunswick. He serves as a reader and monastery preacher at an orthodox monastery, and he lives in Abbotsford, British Columbia with Eden his wife. Let’s talk deconstruction. 

INTERVIEW

Marc Schelske  5:30  

So very early, in A More Christlike Way, you tackle the matter of deconstruction directly talk about it and you said something that caught my eye. I underlined it. I put a star by it, and then I came back to it months later: You said the impulse for deconstruction is necessary for spiritual survival, but the metaphor itself is fraught with violent undertones. So that’s been rattling around my noggin. Something about deconstruction is good and necessary. And something about deconstruction, or at least this language that we’re currently using, is violent and destructive. Do I have that right? 

Dr. Bradley Jersak  6:28  

Yeah, I’m not sure I have it right, though, you know, because in some ways, my heart in that book was to say, alternative metaphors actually affect how you approach your faith shift. So if you’re going to use a word like deconstruction, that brings to mind like, burn it all down, blow it all up, that affects how you do this. And our hearts deserve to be treated more tenderly than that. They often need healing, not a sledgehammer. Having said that, it’s also not violent enough. In the in the language of Jesus, he doubles down, it is not burn it all down, it is die and rise again.  If you think you’re going to come in and just reform this old wine skin, you’ve not gone far enough. And I would say that’s also true of deconstruction these days, in some ways, it’s gone too far in shattering people’s faith and lives and meaning. In other ways, it’s sort of half-assed. Yeah, we need something that completely consumes what was and so I am of two minds on it in that sense, because I see both and going on.

Marc Schelske  7:44  

This word may be new for some of us in Christian conversation. Where does this idea of deconstruction come from? What did it mean, then? How has the meaning changed?

Dr. Bradley Jersak  7:54  

Oh, very good question. And so I you know, I don’t want to be too prescriptive. I think language is descriptive. So I want to describe how it was used by Jacques Derrida, the philosopher when he coined it. And I want to be honest that it is used in a different way today but it is used, so it’s part of our language. So first of all, Jacques Derrida came along and his idea of deconstruction was this: we need to slow down and be more mindful of how power dynamics insert themselves into our language. So for him, deconstruction was observing how we talk, how we talk to each other, and how in that talking, there’s there’s these power things at play, and we need to notice them. So that’s what he was doing. 

Now it’s used in a completely different way. Today that’s actually more modernistic. It’s not even postmodern. It was more like Rene Descartes, it’s radical doubt. And I’m just going to start dismantling my belief system, dismantling my faith. It’s hard to stop then because you also end up disassembling you whole purpose of being alive. I get direct messages almost every day about that. “I started by deconstructing my toxic religious belief systems. But then I kind of found myself leaving Jesus. And now I don’t even have meaning. I’ve deconstructed myself.” Well, that’s not what they’re talking about, but it is a common occurrence these days. It’s a popular use of the word. So what I want to do is say, using Derrida’s sense, let’s slow down and think about what we mean by deconstruction, and how it doesn’t just describe what we’re doing. The metaphors we use form how we do it. They form how careful or how sloppy that we are, they form who we listen to, and why, and so I think we want to spend the next time together deconstructing deconstruction in that sense and seeing its necessity, its perils and its possibilities.

Marc Schelske  9:57  

Okay. So if we take a stance that we need to deconstruct how we use the word deconstruction, what does that mean? What are we implying, even maybe not realizing we’re implying it, when we use the word the way it’s commonly used now?

Dr. Bradley Jersak  10:13  

So deconstruction, as it’s commonly used today, tends to bring with it a kind of demolition vision, you know. For me, I see dynamite being placed at the bottom of the building and the whole thing crashing down. I see sledge hammers, smashing down walls, and so on. Now, there can be a place for that when you renovate a home, you might want to break walls down to open up space. You actually might need to remove an old building, in order to construct something that is healthier and not been condemned for habitation, right? So I don’t want to be overly harsh about the demolition side of deconstruction. In In fact, I think it’s necessary in some ways, and in some cases, but here’s where we’re too sloppy. 

So we might say, Okay, we’ve got to demolish something, well, what? Are we saying we’re demolishing the institution called church, okay. If you think we need to do that, tell me how you’re doing it. You’re probably not doing it. You’re not doing that at all. We’re just being skeptical about what the church was, and now we’re going to leave it. On the other hand, maybe we’re talking about burning down faith? Is that really what you want to do? You want to take an arsonist’s torch to your faith? That seems like a harsh thing to do to your own heart. So I’m wanting to slow down and say, okay, demolish what? If we’re going to demolish creepy belief systems and replace them with something, then let’s have some suggestions. 

So I would say Penal Substitutionary Atonement is a paganized version of atonement that actually needs demolition, it needs replacement. My suggestion is that we don’t just make up our own, that we look at the historic Christian faith and say, all right, if we’re going to deconstruct that, what shall we replace it with? I think I have a track record of being a deconstructionist In this sense, too, right? If we’re going to say, you know, actually, Eternal Conscious Torment was a toxic doctrine based in literalizing certain images from scripture that has been totally unhelpful, and in fact, harmful, let’s deconstruct i. Then I am talking about dismantling or razing something. But again, let’s say what it does mean. How do we see this idea? And so I want to be careful in that sense.

Marc Schelske  12:43  

What you just described makes me think of my experience this summer. My son and I resurfaced our deck. It was quite old. For many years, we kind of gotten it through by putting a thick coat of paint on top of it, you know, to hold everything together, but it was just starting to fall apart. And too many boards were dangerous. And so we went through the process to buy new decking, but then we had to take the old decking off. And in the process of taking the old decking off, we had to evaluate the structure underneath the decking that had been holding it up. There were structural members that were rotted out. There was a place where the deck was attached to the side of my house, where water was actually getting into the side of my house. And so we had to take it apart and evaluate what was going on under there and we discovered that some of what was in there wasn’t good. It sounds like that’s what you’re talking about. 

Dr. Bradley Jersak  13:36  

Yeah, I think that’s a magnificent example. Because I would, call that example, rather than deconstruction, maybe we would call it renovation. But here’s the thing, what you noticed was sometimes when we’re renovating our faith, as you’re renovating your deck, be careful that you don’t go too far and destroy structural members of your house that are required, but also make sure you go far enough, like don’t just take the deck off and leave the rotten footing in place. And so I think this, again, it just calls for mindfulness.

Marc Schelske  14:15  

Using a metaphor of renovation brings brings into the conversation the idea that we still have a positive destination in mind. We understand that something needs to change. We know that sometimes the changes may be surface, they may be small, we put new decking on that’s visible, but there are also changes that are more central. 

Dr. Bradley Jersak  14:43  

And costly!

Marc Schelske  14:44  

Right, exactly. We had to replace a structural member. We had to do some reconstructive surgery on the side of my house where water had been getting in for several years and that was unexpected. We didn’t know we would find that. And when I found it, I kind of wanted to just cover it up and not think about it.

Dr. Bradley Jersak  14:59  

I noticed in that, too, that what you did was to preserve your house. Right? 

Marc Schelske  15:05  

Exactly right. 

Dr. Bradley Jersak  15:06  

So let’s say with Penal Substitution or Eternal Conscious Torment, I’m wanting to say I’m addressing these things directly, in order to preserve the precious structure beneath it, which was Christian faith.

Marc Schelske  15:18  

Yeah, the house of the Christian faith means something. And behind that, I think the character of God, as we perceive it, is really the thing we’re talking about. 

Dr. Bradley Jersak  15:28  

And the person of Jesus! Is he going to be buried in the rubble? Or did we not meet him? And so if you think about your house metaphor, and your wife inside the house. This deck is rotten, so I’m going to blow up the house with my wife in it! And that’s exactly what I’m seeing people do.

Marc Schelske  15:47  

That’s a problem. All right. So talk about some of these other metaphors. And if you’re proposing alternative metaphors, I’m assuming that means you’re proposing them because they bring something to the table that you feel like is more constructive and more, more leading towards flourishing faith. So take us through some of those and talk about what that looks like.

Dr. Bradley Jersak  16:04  

Yeah, sure. And I suppose that in many ways, it was a grand, grand effort to avoid using the don’t-throw-the-baby-out-with-the bathwater. That’s so old and boring. There’s other ways to see this. And people are so complex, that we need different metaphors and where the shoe fits, wear it and where it doesn’t don’t. But even in my case, there is a difference between my theological deconstruction, which was quite joyful and liberating and my personal deconstruction, in terms of a meltdown that actually had faith repercussions. Like, in the midst of trauma, do I even trust God is good? So that’s still a theological question. But, but it’s different than my other journey. So one was a dramatic meltdown, and the other was this kind of cool awakening, right. So I’m, again, I’m already rushing into metaphors. But let me go from renovation, which is restoring and revamping existing structures to a completely different ones. 

In the world of addictions, we have detox, which may be one or two weeks long. Then we have rehabilitation, which could be months to years long. And then we have recovery, and that is the restoration of health, as we break free of our attachments, harmful habits, addictive behaviors, and then look at the pain beneath them, and bring healing to the things that drove the addictions in the first place. So if I think in terms of faith, then I understand when people need to leave church for a while, for example, or stop reading their Bible for a while, or even not pray for a while, I think of that as detox.  I had to do this with my prayer life, where I had concluded that my prayers had been reduced to me trying to control circumstances and other people’s joy, sorrow and choices by telling God what to do. And when he didn’t do it, I was angry at him for disobeying me. Right? It was really bad. 

Marc Schelske  18:13  

Yeah, that’s upside down place for sure. 

Dr. Bradley Jersak  18:15  

Oh, my goodness. So I saw that, thankfully, with a spiritual director who cared for me, and what we did was I detoxed from prayer, because I was so attached to that form. And then we reintroduced it slowly as the Jesus prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.” And after about six months of that, then I reintroduced the Lord’s Prayer, because at least Jesus gave it to us. And it felt very bold and scary, but it’s like, “but You told me when you pray, pray this.” So I went into that. And so over time, my prayer life was rehabilitated after that period of detox. And now I believe I live in recovery, where my prayer life itself is not toxic to me or to others. 

I like that metaphor, because it’s personal to one’s body. And I think, then you can apply it both to your own soul as you do your body, but also to the body of your faith communities. Isn’t it a terrible thing when we feel the need to flee from a faith community, because it’s so toxic that it’s killing us? And I don’t want them to just feel guilted into rushing into another one. I get it, right. Yeah, take a break. But I hope you don’t live in the detox unit for the rest of your life. That’s not it’s healthy either.

Marc Schelske  19:32  

So that metaphor right now, what is intriguing to me is that by talking about those sort of phases that come from substance abuse recovery, you’re actually identifying that there’s a different medicine for different needs at the time, right? That detox is “let’s stop the damage.” But then the next steps are now talking about learning a new way of living and getting to a place where you have a flourishing life that’s not constantly fighting against what was toxic before. Those are different kind of phases of the process. Where the deconstruction metaphor is taking apart, and so you’ve done that. Now what? To what end? You know, recovery is a metaphor saying, “No, we’re going toward a sustainable, flourishing healthy life.”

Dr. Bradley Jersak  20:25  

Yeah, there are those who think, “Okay, I’ve left, I’ve left the faith now, and that’s forever. And that’s probably the healthiest thing for me.” And then they talk about, you know, “when I deconstructed,” and I’m like, you have no idea how evangelical you still sound, right? Deconstruction is just a new word you use for conversion, and then they have a testimony of their conversion. And then they treat others as less than for not having their conversion. I see this all the time. And my goodness, you’re still an evangelist. You haven’t actually changed that much. This is just conversion, a second conversion, and Okay, so be it. Maybe you need that. I think I needed it. But just be a little bit aware then, again, how the the power dynamics of our old evangelicalism that we thought was so toxic, that we may bring that in now, with a kind of toxic positivity about our great deconstruction experience. “And isn’t it for you?” And there are others who are going, Hang on, my experience was deeply traumatic, and your positivity about this does not recognize my trauma, and, and then they feel silenced and belittled. And like they feel like, “I didn’t have a good enough testimony.”

Marc Schelske  21:45  

Right, right. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Right. Well, the trap, right, I grew up in a very head oriented fundamentalist faith community. And the main thing, the most important thing was to be right. Having the right doctrine, that was what allowed you to enter the church. That was what you were measured on for baptism. People that were backslidden were people who had backslidden from the truth, right? It wasn’t even backslidden from Jesus, it was backslidden from the truth, you know. So knowing the right thing was the gold standard. Well, folks from that kind of community who deconstruct oftentimes, I think, end up in a place where it’s still about knowing the right thing. The thing that matters, that establishes your identity as being okay, is that you’re right. It’s just that you’ve changed the standard and matrix of knowledge.

Dr. Bradley Jersak  22:33  

Sure. So let’s be honest, many who talked deconstruction have simply gone from conservative to progressive, but they’re still fundamentalist, right? Like they change sides, but not spirits. And yeah, I’m not saying everyone does that. I’m just saying, slow down and check. Is fundamentalism, still part of your structure? Because if it is, then you didn’t go far enough. Using the addict metaphor, we have what’s called dry drunks. A dry drunk is someone who is abstaining now from alcohol, but they’re still active in terms of the addiction itself. So I can stop going to church. That doesn’t mean I’ve dealt with the character defects of like, let’s say, being judgmental, and condemning and condescending. I see that all the time from ex-church people. Their very condemning of evangelicals. And and I’m judgmental of people who do, you know, I’m being it right now! So it’s very infectious. And you’re like, “Oh, I see. We’ve not gone far enough.”

Marc Schelske  23:35  

Yeah, I get that. I had a conversation. My oldest child is a teenager, and a friend of hers  invited her to go into larger youth group. And so we were having a conversation about that. And I found myself saying some things about the evangelical youth pastor of this church and the kinds of things she might expect in terms of how this person would relate to her. And that evening, I realized, Oh, you know, I’ve literally been that guy. The things that he did, I have done those very things. I probably need to have that conversation with my daughter.

Dr. Bradley Jersak  24:07  

Yeah, projecting your own judgment of yourself of your past self onto this guy, even as a prejudgment. Here’s what he’ll probably do, right? Yeah, exactly. I did it and I’m ashamed. When we deal with the shame of who we were, then we’re less likely to be judgy.

Marc Schelske  24:25  

So if I recall, one of the metaphors that was in this write up was talking about art restoration. 

Dr. Bradley Jersak  24:33  

Yeah. That’s a really good one. So art restoration. I got that metaphor from Brian Zahnd. So what I mean by this is when you take a masterpiece, over the centuries, where you accumulate grime or people have tried to do touch ups, or they’ve tried to preserve it with varnish, you can you can see how very valuable masterpieces can become almost unrecognizable. So what do you do? Well, art restoration experts carefully strip away those layers of varnish and centuries of touch ups. And, and as they carefully do that with the right tools, you unveil or reveal the original masterpiece. 

So I’m assuming that the historic Christian faith, that faith Jesus gave us is actually a masterpiece. The funny illustration of this does actually involve two art images of Jesus. So in the first illustration, you have this one image of Jesus called, Ecce Homo, which means, “Behold the man.” It’s what Pilate said. And it was an icon in this Spanish monastery. But the painted cracked, there was chips out of it, and so on. And an amateur art restorationist came along, and she gave it a go, and she’s so botched it it became famous. It was unrecognizable as Jesus. And in fact, the nickname of the painting is is now Ecce Mano, which is something like, “Behold the Ape.” This is what happens when you have a deconstructionist come along who doesn’t know what they’re doing, and they start messing with this historic Christian faith.  What was damaged to begin with is now completely unrecognizable. 

Now contrast that to another masterpiece. Someone found a picture of Jesus, a painting of Jesus, and it was called Salvador Mundi, Savior of the world. This thing had passed hand to hand to hand and someone picked it up for 40 UK pounds, so let’s say 80 bucks. Over time, people became suspicious that underneath this painting might be something of value. So they sent it to an expert art restorationist who spent three years very carefully unveiling. At one point, something about the corner of Jesus mouth became completely recognizable as a DaVinci. And by the time they were done, they’re like, “this is!” And it went up for auction and I think it’s sold for something like $400 million, this thing of incredible historic value, a true masterpiece. What do you do with that? You don’t bring scissors to your deconstruction, you bring a care to it.

Now here my illustration. What if the Christian faith is not something to be trashed, or cut up or thrown out? What if the gospel of Jesus Christ is something precious and beautiful? So in that sense, I’m talking about the restoration of the content of our faith as this living person who is the Savior of the world. And with great care, we might peel back all the crap that we’ve added to it through the centuries through theological misdeeds and pastoral abuse and so on. But I also want to say, the gospel is not only a masterpiece, what if your heart is? How have we vandalized human hearts in this rush to tear up decades of growth in somebody? And so yes, my good news testimony about that is I grew up in a home that was Baptist, it was conservative, it preached hell, it preached Armageddon, it preached all this stuff. And as I’ve carefully peeled that back, what I’ve discovered is, it’s in that context that I first heard the name of Jesus and fell in love with him. It’s in that context that I fell in love with the scriptures. And now I read them in a way that’s life giving. It was in that context that I learned to share good news. And now I’m sharing it to Christians, so they’ll become Christian. It was in that context that I felt a real living connection with the person of Christ in my prayer life, and all of that has been preserved. 

I’ve deconstructed the BS. And now I have a deep appreciation for my Baptist heritage. Because it’s not just my Baptist heritage, It’s the faith of my father that was passed down to me. And then I start exploring that and I realized, oh my goodness, for all the weirdness of how our faith was distorted the amount there was a masterpiece under their worth my great uncle Wilhelm being tortured for in Czechoslovakia, my wife’s grandfather being exiled and murdered in Siberia. It’s like, What? Why would you give your life for this? Well, because it’s priceless. It’s the pearl of great price. So what am I saying? Slow down. With care invest in this because it’s either the great faith of Jesus Himself, or it’s your own precious heart that deserves to be treated kindly.

Marc Schelske  30:13  

That makes me think that in in a lot of the conversations about deconstruction, a lot of things are sort of being conflated. A lot of things are being put into a one package, when really, you’re identifying that there’s several things happening that we can evaluate. There’s my experience in a Christian community and how that worked and didn’t work. There’s my experience of how to read the Bible, and how I was taught to read the Bible that was helpful and how I was taught to read the Bible that wasn’t helpful. There’s my picture of the character of God, and parts of that imagery that were destructive or hurtful or traumatizing, and parts of that imagery that that were life giving. We can kind of just go down the list. And that that’s the thing that we’ve got to do, to carefully look at the layers like this art restorationist is doing with the varnish and all the layers, the attempts to patch it up to cover over the things we didn’t want to talk about. That requires a lot more nuance than maybe the word deconstruction leave space for.

Dr. Bradley Jersak  31:11  

Again, I believe in deconstruction, I do it in the real sense and in the popular sense, but, I want to say that there’s been this headlong glee about it. I want to be empathetic with people who’ve had a two-fold trauma. So the first trauma could be the terrible things they learned about God growing up, right, or that first trauma could be abuse by a spiritual leader, or whatever the thing they’re leaving is, had a traumatic impact on them. But there’s also the trauma of the deconstruction itself. Let’s say someone needs to leave a toxic church, but they’re also leaving the only community they’ve ever known. So the leaving itself and the loneliness and isolation and the criticism they get from those people, the sense of betrayal, and then internally, even the loss of meaning, and like panic attacks on Sunday morning, because you don’t know what to do with yourself. So there’s that secondary trauma, or even how the deconstructionists are impacting us, and so on. 

The illustration I would use for that, that’s going to be in my forthcoming book, is somebody who has to go through a mastectomy for breast cancer. So the cancer was there, right? And you have to go under the knife to save your life. Sometimes, you have to go through chemo or whatever treatments they’re using for that. And the treatment itself becomes another trauma. And so you wake up from surgery, and your breasts are gone. And you didn’t get to choose how much you lost. So it is with those who experience the deconstruction itself as trauma. They’re like, “I thought I knew there was cancer that had to go, but I didn’t realize how much of me I was going to lose. And I’m absolutely traumatized.” So then they go on Instagram, and they see all the positivity around deconstruction. And it feels like this, that the deconstruction is like a cheerleader who’s spotting for them doing a bench press. “You can do it, you can do it, you’re great, you’re great, this is exactly waht you need”. And they’re like, “I’m not doing a bench press! I’m under a bulldozer! “I really, really care about those people. That’s where I’m coming from on this. It’s like, you treat that person, they need to be treated so tenderly, so carefully. And to say, it was necessary but there are perils to this. And yet, maybe there’s possibilities too. But I don’t want to say that like Job’s counselors. I want to say it as a friend who’s walking along with them and like, “Okay, this is this is disorienting. Yes, I’ll walk with you.”

Marc Schelske  34:00  

I feel like that is a missing piece of a lot of this conversation, that there’s a there’s a pastoral element of this. And even for folks that are maybe stepping out of the church and the word “pastor” was part of the problem, there’s a coach-of-the-soul element of this, that’s necessary. Because like we said at the beginning, religion however you come to it, is ultimately a meaning-making machinery. And you have to have one of those. 

Dr. Bradley Jersak  34:29  

Yeah, if not that, you are vulnerable to any ideology that comes along, to recruit you.

Marc Schelske  34:36  

All of your books in this series, have a subtitle about…  I guess Christlike Word doesn’t, but it’s still infused, the idea of a more beautiful version. So A More Christlike God is a more beautiful gospel. A More Christlike Way is a more beautiful faith. And I would say, even though your subtitle on A More Christlike Word is “Reading scripture the Emmaus Way” that the challenge throughout is how do we read scripture in a more beautiful experience? 

Dr. Bradley Jersak  35:04  

Yes. It’s a more beautiful hermeneutic. 

Marc Schelske  35:07  

Yeah, exactly. 

Dr. Bradley Jersak  35:08  

It’s points to Jesus.

Marc Schelske  35:08  

Yeah. And that and that’s rooted in this idea that everything for us, if we’re followers of Jesus, the meaning-making machinery is the other-centered, co-suffering, radically forgiving self-giving life of Jesus. That is the lens! And so when you think about deconstruction, how do you bring this lens of a more beautiful way to deconstruction? What would a more Christlike orr a more beautiful deconstruction look like?

Dr. Bradley Jersak  35:39  

Yeah, so if we think in terms of restoration, what are we restoring here? We’re restoring the beautiful image of Christ and His Bride somehow. And so one of the metaphors I use comes from the experience of my daughter-in-law who, when she was shopping for wedding dressed. She’s really into vintage–and she had found this website where they had vintage wedding dresses, and she spotted one that was exactly her size. It was a champagne, lace wedding dress sewn in the 1920s. Wow, it was gorgeous and she was able to get it for like a hundred and sixty bucks or something crazy like that. And then she put it on. And she’s like, “I couldn’t even gain one and a half pounds or lose one and a half pounds. It was so exactly made for me.” But it had wrinkles and water stains. 

So the scriptures use this metaphor about Christ, presenting his bride without spot or wrinkle. He’s talking about the wedding dress. And so we took it down to this, this incredible, stereotypical Chinese dry cleaner. And we’re like, “please don’t destroy this,” right. And so we left it with him. And we, when we came back, it was hanging in his window and it was just radiant. And everybody who would come into the shop was commenting on it. The spots were gone, the wrinkles were gone. His focus was actually not on removing spots and wrinkles. That wasn’t his primary goal. His primary goal was preserving the fabric. And so that made him more careful about how he used an iron, more careful about what chemicals he used on the spots. His obsession with retaining the beauty enabled him to get rid of the spots and wrinkles without destroying anything. It was unbelievable. And then she wore it to her wedding and we’re just like, “you look so beautiful.” And she said, “I feel like a princess, you know, a daughter of the king.” 

I would call that a more beautiful deconstruction, right? It’s this idea of preserving the precious and unveiling the beauty. I do regard beauty as a criteria for truth. Now, in the ancient world, let’s say Plato, he’s like, God is good. God, if there is a God, that God is the good capital G. And that good subsists of beauty, truth and justice. And so the truth people, the head people, they’re like, we need a faith that’s really true, you know, and so they’ll do a literalistic, mechanical reading of Scripture to make sure they’ve got the truth. That’s the conservatives. Then the progressives are like, okay, we need the Justice side. And, and maybe they deify justice even so it doesn’t actually matter if we love all the time, as long as we’ve justice, right? But we have this third thing that sort of adjudicates the truth and the justice and that is beauty. And if it’s not–I got this from Zahnd too–if it’s not beautiful, it’s probably not true. And so whatever gospel, whatever hermeneutic, whatever way that we come to our faith, if it’s truly Christ then we’re going to see beauty as such, with a capital B. That’s what I’m doing here. That’s why I think we have a more beautiful image of God, and a more beautiful faith in the church in the way of being, and now beautiful way of approaching the scriptures, that is almost certainly more true. That’s that’s the outcome I’m looking for in my deconstruction. Not just that I’m doing it beautifully, but that I’m, but I’m drawing out the beauty of the thing that’s there and behind the grime and behind the years.

REFLECTION

Marc Schelske  39:33  

Did you catch this important idea? deconstruction isn’t just one thing. That right there is worth the price of admission. When we think about deconstruction, whether our own or someone we know or in the general culture, we’ve got to keep in mind that there may be several different things going on under that umbrella. This tangled experience might include someone having to detox from a community or a leader or a belief that has been dangerous to them. It might include facing that we were lied to by people we trusted. It might include recovering from religious addiction and perfectionism. It might include healing from trauma. It will certainly include letting go of ideas and communities that used to be a central part of our identity. And always, there’s the releasing of closely held beliefs in the process of adapting and adopting new ones. That is a complicated life experience to go through and it’s often painful. 

It serves us to keep these different elements in mind so that we can use the right tools and even the right metaphors as we untangle all of this. Because even the words we use shaped the way we act and think about ourselves and others. So when is it right and helpful to deconstruct, to really knock down some walls? When should we be renovating instead, carefully disassembling parts of our faith so that we can evaluate what is good and noble, trustworthy and true? And when do we need to detox in order to just stop the damage? And then at what point can we move on to rehabilitation? When are we ready to do the slow, gentle work of art restoration?

Learning, growing, maturing–whether spiritually or just as a human being–these all require seasons of stripping away, redefining, deconstructing what you once thought was certainly. The process is necessary, but as Dr. Jersak pointed out, it also has perils and possibilities. If we can be gentle, compassionate with ourselves and other people, if we can remember the person–the heart–in the middle of the deconstruction, the process can be healing, whether for ourselves or others. The way of Jesus is the other- centered co-suffering path of radical reconciliation. That means that even when the path you are walking is deconstruction, you’re not alone. Jesus is walking it with you. And there are others, others who’ve chosen to take the other-centered co-suffering path, who will walk along as well. 

May you have the wisdom to know when to deconstruct, when to renovate, when to detox, and when to join the Spirit in the gentle work of art restoration, so that a beautiful faith can emerge. 

Thanks for listening. Notes for today’s episode, which includes any links mentioned and a full transcript, something new that I’m doing, can be found at www.MarcAlanSchelske.com/TAW046.

if you found today’s conversation helpful, then subscribe to my email list. You get two emails a month at most more, likely you’re only going to ever get one, and that email will include links to my writing, the next podcast episode, books that I’m reading and recommend to you. You’ll even get a free little book when you subscribe. It’s called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Practice for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World. In this little book I teach a spiritual practice that has been so helpful to me as I faced the anxiety and uncertainty of our time. So subscribe, get that monthly email, and the free book, The Anchor Prayer at www.MarcOptIn.com.

Until next time, remember: In this one present moment, you are loved, you are known, and you are not alone.

Episode 045 – Let’s Normalize Being Wrong (With Matt Tebbe)

I grew up in a faith tradition where being right was essential. It’s what kept us in community. It’s what we thought honored God. For many other reasons–temperament, trauma, and even privilege–being right became an identity issue for me. Then I heard Matt Tebbe suggest that we need to normalize being wrong. For some of us this is the medicine we need.

Show Notes

• “Let’s normalize being wrong. Make Repentance Great Again” – Matt Tebbe
• John 10:18
• Philippians 2

• Download a full transcript here or scroll to the bottom of the page for a full transcript of this episode.
• You can also watch and share the video version on Youtube.

More about Matt Tebbe

Rev. Matt Tebbe (MDiv, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) has been a coach, communicator and consultant with churches in North America since 2011. He has experience as a youth pastor, a bi-vocational church planter, and working on a team at a large church to transition it from a Sunday-centric worship service to a discipleship and mission paradigm. He has written for Leadership Journal, Shattered Magazine, and contributed to the book “What Pastors Wish Their Congregations Knew” by Kurt Fredrickson and Cameron Lee. He’s also been a featured writer at Missio Alliance and The V3 Movement. He co-founded Gravity Leadership, and is planting a church (The Table) in the northeast suburbs of Indianapolis, where he and his wife Sharon live with their children Deacon and Celeste.

• His Church: www.thetableindy.org
• Gravity Leadership: www.gravityleadership.com
• Twitter: @matttebbe
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/matttebbe

Today’s Sponsor

• The Writers Advance Weekend – A unique twice-a-year writers weekend that’s focused on writing. No break-out sessions. No listening to experts talk about what worked for them. No networking. No social media. Just a small group of writers encouraging each other to write. One-on-one coaching and group feedback available.

More from Marc

• Get The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World – This little book is free for you by opting in to my email list.
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• Subscribe to my Email List. You’ll get a free copy of a little book called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer & Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World.

Transcription

Marc Schelske  0:00  

Did you know you don’t have to correct other people? Did you know you can be wrong, and the world won’t end? Hey, friends, I’m Marc Alen Schelske. This is the apprenticeship way, a podcast about spiritual growth following the way of Jesus. This is Episode 45. Let’s normalize being wrong. 

TODAY’S SPONSOR

Now, before we jump into that conversation, I’d like to tell you that today’s podcast is made possible by The Writers Advance. I’m a writer, I write this podcast. I write blog posts. I write sermons, I’ve written three books. I’ve got two manuscripts in the oven right now. I think I’ve written something close to a million words at this point. And all of that writing, I have learned that there really is only one significant obstacle to writing just one. Life. Life and all its business, obligations, responsibilities, chores, people who need you to do stuff right now. And all that stuff, it takes time. And even when you sit down to write and try to focus at all intrudes into the space into your emotions. 

So, one of the disciplines that I have learned over the years of writing is that periodically, I need to get out of my life in order to focus. Not an out-of-body experience, I just need to get off the grid, I need to be out of the reach of my schedule and phone, I need to retreat so that I can advance my writing. That’s why I created the writer’s advance. 

This is a very unique event for writers. It’s a small group hosted in a fantastic inspiring, quiet venue. No chores, you don’t have to make the bed or dinner or run anyone to the store. You get a weekend just to focus on writing. You’ll get gentle motivation to move forward, you’ll get encouragement from others who know this work. And if you want it, you can get one-on-one coaching or even group feedback. But most importantly, you will get undistracted time to write. I lead this event twice a year. The sixth Writers Advance is coming up soon, November 12 to 14. That one has just a couple of spots left, and then there’s one in the spring in April. Both of these are open and available for registration. I would love to help you kick that writing project into high gear. You’ll come away energized, creatively refreshed. And best of all, you will have a whole bunch of words you didn’t have before. Check out all the details, see if this is a good match for you. register at www.MarcAlanSchelske.com/writersadvance. 

INTRODUCTION

A while back I read an intriguing post on Facebook. First, you need to understand who was writing this. The author of the post was an Anglican priest named Matt Tebbe. He’s a co-rector of a church in Indianapolis, Indiana called The Table. He’s got all the normal theology degrees you’d expect from someone in that position. He’s written for various leadership and theological journals. He’s co-founded a leadership development organization. Oh, he’s also–this will be relevant for the conversation–He’s also a middle-aged white man. 

Matt posted something on Facebook that was intentionally provocative. He was stirring the pot, he wanted to get people to react. Now the body of his posts really isn’t important. It was about something that was happening at the time. But what struck me was how we ended the post. He wrote, “Normalize being wrong. Make repentance great again.” Those words have been bouncing around in my head for months. Normalize being wrong. Now I think I’m similar to Matt in many ways. I’m a pastor, I’ve been trained in how to read and interpret scripture. I’ve got decades of pastoral and leadership experience under my belt. I am also a middle-aged white man. And being wrong is not something I like. I mean, none of us do. But in my case, it’s something I’ve been expressly trained to avoid. I’ve even had some identity issues tied up with being right being the person in the room who’s right.  

I suspect that a lot of us struggle with this, particularly people like Matt and I. I mean, being right is sort of the target on the wall for pastors and quite honestly, middle-aged white men. So Matt’s words felt jarring, uncomfortable, but at the same time, they felt like truth. So after thinking about this for a while, I asked Matt to sit down with me and talk about being wrong. 

One technology note–partway into our conversation, which was recorded by remote video, the main HD video recording failed, and we didn’t know that had happened. So when we went to edit the video, we had to use rescue video footage that is of much lower quality. The audio is fine all the way through. You shouldn’t even notice a difference in the audio, but my apologies if you’re watching this on YouTube because the second half of the video is not ideal. Thank you very much for sticking around. Let’s talk about being wrong.

Marc Schelske  5:00  

You’re a priest, actually. you lead a church, you train ministry leaders, you study and teach the Bible, I assume that you think there is such a thing as right theology. And that right theology is not only true but has good outcomes. And if that’s true, then I would not expect someone in your position to say that we need to normalize being wrong. But that’s, that’s what you said. Those are your words. Okay. what in the heck do you mean by that?

Matt Tebbe  5:29  

Well, Marc, I am a 45-year-old white man who has started two things that I lead, I’m relatively affluent, I am able-bodied. I am cis-gendered. And so every single heap that I could be on top of in America, I’m on top of it. I want to normalize being wrong for people like me. This phrase…

Marc Schelske  5:57  

We’re not telling other people, “hey, you’re wrong. And I’d like to normalize your wrongness.”

Matt Tebbe  6:03  

…Exactly. Right. They just weaponize it as a mechanism of control. No, I’m trying to cast vision for why I want to normalize being wrong. And you know, if Marc is listening, and Marc goes, “Dang, there’s something in that for me,” then great, rather than telling other people that they should be wrong. Right. Which is, which is actually a really perverted power play. Somewhere along the line, Marc,  as a, as a Christian, I lost vision of how good of news repentance was, okay. Repentance became shameful or embarrassing. And I, you know, as I went back to the Gospels… (I still read the Bible. I know. I know, that might be out of date. I still read the Bible) …And I kept seeing all of the breakthrough and transformation and blessing came to people when they change their mind. Yeah, when they went from something they were thinking, to something God was thinking, and I thought, you know, repentance is actually the best thing that could happen to me today.

Marc Schelske  7:03  

I was gonna ask you the question, “how did you come to this belief,” but as I was thinking about that, it occurred to me that I wanted to talk about first how we came to the opposite belief. Because when you talk about those different piles that you’re on top of, and the idea that you have some privilege, what occurred to me was that well, in the piles that I have, being right is part of the privilege. The way my family raised me in middle-class America, there were certain things that you do, certain assumptions about how you live, and those are the right way to live. And when we saw other people whose lives weren’t turning out like ours were, our assumption was they had made wrong wrong decisions along the way. They’d done unwise things. And then in my academic training, that’s all about learning the handed-down knowledge, the right way of thinking. My theological training was largely about equipping me to articulate and defend correct doctrine. So the whole goal of that is being right. And then even in pastoral ministry, growing up in kind of evangelical and evangelical adjacent churches, we talked about repentance, but repentance was a one-time thing. Repentance was you crossing the line to follow Jesus, repenting from your sinful ways, and accepting Jesus’ way. That’s repentance. But once you’ve crossed the line, once I agree with that, now I’m right, I’m on the right side. And so from now on, being wrong is actually bad. 

Matt Tebbe  8:31  

Yes. So how do we get here, I want to maybe like throw a caveat in here. To normalize being wrong isn’t to valorize or make a virtue of being wrong, okay. But normalizing being wrong is the only way that I know to personally on a moment-by-moment basis, become the kind of person who is capable of learning. From a New Testament perspective, and I think modern neuroscience backs us up, it always is about you becoming more than you. Okay? There’s some kind of joining, some kind of connecting, some kind of moving towards another in a way that transforms who you are. 

So Paul contrasts knowledge with love and wisdom. And I think he’s trying to get at this in First Corinthians eight, where he talks about how love, or knowledge actually, tends to tear down community. I’ve been formed, shaped, catechized, by… I don’t know, I mean, there’s so many ways to describe it, colonial white supremacy, which is the dominant orienting norming force in the United States in the West. I happen to be a white man, you could throw patriarchy in there too, a lot of my adult life is waking up to how almost everything is normed to my preference,

Marc Schelske  9:52  

To my preference, being that person at the center of all of that?

Matt Tebbe  9:56  

Yeah, normed to a white guy’s preference. Normed to my… to what I Is, what occurs to me is good, right, and true. Usually, my socio-political-cultural landscape is ordered by that. And you’ll see, you know, just parenthetically, you’ll see that that’s usually the case. Because when that stops being the case, when let’s say, lots of non-white people get registered as voters somewhere, people lose their biscuit,

Marc Schelske  10:23  

I start to feel uncomfortable. Because the thing that feels normal to me is actually just the experience of my position and privilege.

Matt Tebbe  10:31  

Exactly. If this is going to unravel, and be deconstructed, you will feel like you don’t know what you’re doing. Your assumptions won’t be right. The way you want things, you won’t get them. Sometimes you’ll think something is self-evident when really it’s just your perspective. And you’ll feel like there’s a fear, right, Marc? Or anger when lots of questions that never need to be answered, because they’re just sort of functioning in the back of our brains as already answered. When those come from the background to the foreground. It creates anxiety, right?

Marc Schelske  11:07  

Okay, so this feels key to me, right? Because when you say “normalize being wrong,” I think you’re not just saying, “Hey, guys, it’s okay to not be right sometimes.” I think you’re also saying, “it’s okay to feel the interior discomfort that any of us feel when we’re wrong.” 

My whole journey of being the guy whose identity comes from being the person in the room who’s right, is that that is a, a locus of certainty. I have a great deal of certainty because I know how society is supposed to work. I have a great deal of certainty because I know what a good healthy church looks like, because my theology is orthodox because my explanation of the atonement is the right one that has come to us purely and perfectly from the apostles. And so I have all of these ways of being right. My ideas about gender roles, my ideas about America’s place in the world, whatever, insert whatever thing. I have an idea in my head about what is right about that. And that idea gives me certainty. And internally that certainty makes me feel okay. It makes me feel good in the middle of a difficult complicated, oftentimes painful world. And so maybe what I’m hearing you say is that the thing we ought to normalize is the interior discomfort that comes up when you don’t know because if I’m operating from a posture that I need to be right, I’m a pastor–I have to be right. I’m a man–I have to be right. If I’m operating from that posture, the second I feel the discomfort of being wrong. I’m going to power up to try and restore the certainty that I feel.

Matt Tebbe  12:47  

Yeah. And can I just take it another layer deep? That reveals, Marc, I think that what we have done is we’ve made an idol of our certitude. I no longer hold the truth. But my certitude holds me. And so I become brittle, I become rigid, I become argumentative. It leads me to not listen, not learn, not love, not be open to reason, leads me to insist on having my own way. Right? And being impatient. All the things that we hear are the opposite of love. 

And so like you, I was… I mastered divinity. Right? At 27! But you know, God is this infinite mystery. What I’m also trying to do is I’m also trying to lean into the knowing that is unknowing, this apophatic tradition, that saints that I hope to be like when I grew up, embrace and talk about. This unknowing or this apophatic way of knowing that is okay with not having all the answers, or having the answer and not being heard from, or someone else saying the thing that you could have said, half as good as you and getting the praise for it.

Marc Schelske  14:07  

You said almost in passing that one of the options is having the answer but not being able to say it. It’s such a, it’s such a profound and painful thing for some of us, 

I’m a musician. And back in the day when I had less children and more marginal income, I would spend time in music stores, playing guitars and looking at equipment and sometimes buying equipment. I had this experience regularly where I would be in the aisle looking at stuff, and overhearing a conversation down the aisle from the store salesman trying to sell something to another customer. And I knew way more about the thing than the salesman did. And I had almost like an eruption inside me, like this moral ought, this deep, profound sense that it was my responsibility and right to enter into that conversation and tell the person what they needed and tell the salesperson off because they were wrong.

Matt Tebbe  15:07  

This is just I think the way that we, Marc, as white men in America habituated to center ourselves to assert mastery, dominance, expertise. So when I say “normalise being wrong,” it’s really just me telling my soul–you know how the psalmist speaks to their heart or to their soul? Telling my soul, “It’ll be okay. You’re safe. You don’t need to assert your intelligence. Maybe you don’t have to set them straight”. It’s just this permission to be without having to center or norm my perspective at every moment I possibly could.

Marc Schelske  15:11  

Right? Well, it’s almost like there’s this almost this like ontological fear for some of us that if we aren’t right, in any given moment, like we just stop existing, or our identity is lost. I mean, I grew up in a fairly fundamentalist Christian community. And we were pretty rigorously trained to read the Bible in a certain way in order to articulate and defend our particular theological high horses. And part of that upbringing was that there was a proactive moral obligation to correct people in conversation who were wrong. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever had that experience, but it is a heavy weight.

Matt Tebbe  16:33  

Yes, it is. And I’ve been that person. I’ve taken on that responsibility. And, you know, I’m never at a loss for words. It’s not that I don’t have anything to say if I’m, if I ever stopped talking–It’s because I choose to shut up. So as a young man, I was just spouting off all the time. And I don’t know, even when I was right, I don’t think I was righteous. That is so much more important. We are well-intentioned, well, meaning people trying to help others. But Jesus says you have to be willing to be helped. Yeah, submit to that humiliation, that humbleness in order for you to be of any help.

Marc Schelske  17:12  

So let’s push this a little bit towards the scary edge here. Okay. If it’s okay to be wrong, or in the various ways you’ve put it, you know, to not have to assert our opinion, to not have to fight for that certainty, What does that imply for theological models that are built on the idea that what matters most to God is that we agree on the correct formulation of a certain doctrinal idea?

Matt Tebbe  17:42  

I hope that it actually unravel some of that. We have set up litmus tests and hoops, and we’ve, we’ve made ourselves gatekeepers into a kingdom. That was never, we were never, that’s never been our role. And so I think in some ways, it will, and hopefully does threaten it. And actually, by the responses I get from people who I say this to who live in those theological systems, I can report back it does threaten it. They get really angry.

Don’t hear it what I’m not saying though. I’m not saying that what we believe or what we think is not important, I want to, one, change our relationship to our beliefs so that they’re not ideological idols, we’re not in bondage to them, so that we can be supple, agile, have our minds changed, but still live with this humble conviction or confidence. And then if we bump up against something that we literally don’t believe, can’t see, disagree with, we own that, so that we aren’t now in a battle of ideas. That’s like an arms race, a rational arms race in my mind whenever I get into those things, and I just wanted to just own like:, “I value your perspective as yours. But I don’t have an imagination for how that coheres or how that can be true for me.” There’s an implicit ask for help there or at least a permission for you to be where you’re at. And then I’m saying, “but I’m not where you’re at.” 

Yeah. Another aspect of this is I have decided if I’m going to be wrong, I’m going to be wrong with and for marginalized people. If that makes sense. 

Marc Schelske  19:29  

I totally hear you. I have had points of conversation with people where we’ve been in disagreement, and the picture in my mind is sort of the classical picture of judgment and you’re standing before God, and I’ve had moments where I’ve had to say, Okay, I’m going to stand before God. God’s gonna know my heart and my circumstances and everything that happened. So when I stand before God, which failure am I more comfortable with? Am I gonna stand before God having failed in the direction of excluding this person from community because of this issue? Or am I going to fail in the direction of including this person, which might fudge the edge a little bit? Which of those failures am I going to take with me before God? And I think that’s what I hear you saying, right? Like, I’m probably gonna get it wrong. Which way is in alignment with love?

Matt Tebbe  20:19  

Of course, of course, I’m gonna get it wrong. It’s not a question of will I, but I’d much rather in, in the final judgment, have God’s love, burn away my commitment to post-millennial infralapsarianism. Okay, then actively working against teaching the history of racial injustice in America. The dogma that we fight over is not unimportant. But you referenced judgment, like when Jesus talks about judgment It is “have you acted righteously, or with justice, towards people who suffer under the prevailing Kingdom that’s not God’s.” Under the rebellious Kingdom outside of God’s good providential Shalom, there are definite losers, and those people suffer greatly. And Jesus tends to prefer being with them. And what did you do to those people, James and Jesus, even Paul, in some places, and in the pastoral epistles explicitly tell us exactly what’s going to go down there. 

It’s really hard for reformation Christians to appropriate that and fit that in, I think, because we want to, we want to flip it around and put words before it? Well, of course, you have to, you have to have the right ideas about God, and then that’ll create the right heart in you, and then that right heart will naturally normally be with the poor and feed people and take care of the sick. But I don’t think humans work like that. I think we’re actually much more complicated. So I think we also live our way into new ways of thinking all the time, all the time. And it’s not unidirectional. And so there’s a sense if I’m going to be wrong, Marc, like what you said, like you use the word include inclusion, I’m going to be wrong–the religious person is going to be yelling at me, because I have the wrong person at the party. I want to be wrong like that, rather than the person who’s keeping people from the party. That’s the kind of wrongness I’m willing to be. 

So for instance, white supremacy, I’ve never been a white man trying to dismantle white supremacy before. How the hell would I know how to do that? Right? You know, I don’t know, everything’s an experiment. And I’m learning all the time. And in order to learn, I have to recognize that I don’t know at all, yes, and be willing to pivot. Or say, “Sorry.” As a person in my position, regularly saying, but then also demonstrating through habits and practices that I’m willing to be wrong, is one of the only ways I know one of the ways I know not only one of the ways I know, to put my stake in the ground that we are going to develop a culture that’s immune to abuse, or we’re going to repent trying.

Marc Schelske  23:06  

So if the hope is a culture that’s immune to the abuse of power, if that’s the hope, the idea that is not just that we will be wrong, because that’s a human reality, but that we can be wrong in community, that is being wrong doesn’t exclude us from the table, being wrong doesn’t mean that we’re out on our ear. That being wrong and feeling the discomfort that comes with that is normal. 

We’re having to undo, like, deeply, deeply ingrained expectations. I mean, like in the structure of our world, kids to adults, there’s one line, kids are very often wrong. And they’re surrounded by people who are right and who tell them that they’re wrong, and you get older and older and older. And the expectation in our culture is that at some point as an adult, you’re less wrong. And maybe if you’re an important enough adult, you’re never wrong. And then that same, that same expectation happens in the church, we’ve got newbies that are coming into the church, they don’t know anything. They don’t know biblical Greek, they’ve never read the Bible. Of course, they’re wrong. They’re surrounded by people who can correct them. All of these spectrums move up a ladder of being more and more, right, being the person that that doesn’t have to say, “I’m wrong. I was sorry. I’m sorry about that.”  And so if you’re saying our goal in the church is ideally to have a community that’s immune to power abuse, we’re having to unpack a lot of what everybody feels like is normal. I mean, that “everybody” should probably have an asterisk after it because not everyone on those scales feels that way.

Matt Tebbe  24:41  

Right? But there’s an assumption, right, an assumption about what is power and what’s it for. Okay. And then the thing I’m waking up to the last five years is how to see and negotiate power as you answer those two questions. It’s a much different answer for me as a cis-gendered white man than it would be for a queer black woman. In the same scenario.

Marc Schelske  25:02  

it’s sort of the same problem with wealth, right? Most people don’t feel like they have a lot of money. No matter where they are on the spectrum. I had a conversation with a friend of mine I went to school with. He’s a dentist, he makes, you know, multiple increments of my income every year and was explaining to me how his family is always on the edge financially and how they’re having to sacrifice. I was feeling frustrated, because I was like, “Dude, you  make in a month what I’m making half a year! How on earth can you be telling me that you’re poor?” But that dynamic happens, right? Because I also make considerably more than other people! Anywhere you are on the scale, people sort of feel like the amount of wealth they have isn’t… They’ll say, “I’m not a rich person.”

I think you’re talking about that principle with power, like whatever amount of self-governing autonomy, and power over others I have, doesn’t really feel like power to me. But somebody above me who has more power, they’re the people who have power. When the Bible talks about wealthy people being led astray by their wealth. It’s not talking about me, 

Matt Tebbe  26:10  

It’s never you and me, Marc.

Marc Schelske  26:15  

I’ve never once thought of building a spaceship. Never. That’s not me at all, right? You know, same thing with power, right? The kinds of people who abuse power are not people like me. They’re the kinds of people who have lots and lots and lots of power. And so I can never see myself in it. 

Matt Tebbe  26:32  

I used to ride bikes. In college I was a cyclist. And when, when the wind was at your back, and your pace lining, meaning you, you had riders in front of you, and you were in a paceline, it felt like you could go all day, it was so easy. And then you turn around and head into the wind. And if you’re in a paceline, you’d be at the front and you were pedaling into the wind. And you were like, I want to die. This is so hard.  And I think I think having power is like having wind at your back. You can’t tell there’s wind, because you’re already moving in a direction and the winds aiding you. But not having power in any kind of identity or any kind of intersectionality we’d have is like riding a bike into a headwind, you’re constantly fighting it. 

And so like for me, then the way we organize our church, the way that we train, the way that we learned discipleship is all about telling the truth on ourselves and creating spaces where the more you’re known, the more love you receive, not less, so that there’s no spiritual or institutional benefit to hiding. Where we have rhythms and liturgies of owning what we call bad news, and hearing good news, and surrendering, consenting, to it together. Like we do that regularly. So that if I were to try to pull some crap… 

We did this during the pandemic, dude! I came back from vacation, and we hadn’t been meeting in person for a long time. And our leadership team did not decide to loosen some of our restrictions on meeting. And I came back and I was impatient. I sort of benevolently insisted on my own way. And I did that with my co-rectors. And then we tried to asynchronously get feedback on this plan that wasn’t presented at the meeting I wasn’t at but was presented afterward on our asynchronous work organizer. Two women on our leadership team sent us two emails about three days later and said, “Hey, there was some kind of violation in our community here.” 

Marc, I had so many rationalizations for why it was okay for me to do what I did. But like, I was so overcome with gratitude and, and, blessedness that a non- (so I’m in an Anglican tradition) a non-ordained woman who’s on our leadership team could confront three priests and say, “Hey, the church you say you want us to be, I don’t feel like we did that here.” None of us felt like we lost leadership capital with her by saying, “you’re right.” All of that felt like an artifact to me of, maybe we’re doing something right. Like maybe, maybe the thing that you do right is to create a culture where badness is cared for by the community. I haven’t been a part of a church like that before. So we’re building something we actually don’t even know what to build either or how to build it. 

So then we talk about our church, it’s not top-down leadership, but center-out leadership. And what we notice about Jesus is He’s inviting as many people into the center who can possibly stand it. Even in that passage we like to quote, Matthew 28, the Great Commission, the part that I think is, is mind-blowing, “they worshipped him, but some doubted.” And to the worshipping and the doubting, Jesus gives his authority. 

I want to be clear that there is some badness and wrongness that I as a leader cannot have. So this person, if she sends me an email and says, “Hey, you kind of lead in a way that violated our community,” and I begin gaslighting her, I embarrass her publicly, and I sent her a scathing email, and I call her and I shout at her–that’s not the kind of wrongness I’m talking about. 

Marc Schelske  26:30  

Right, now you’re talking about the abuse of power that we’re trying to avoid. And the reason you’re going into abuse of power is because you have to defend that internal certainty that you have to get, you have to get out from under the discomfort of being called out as wrong. And so in order to do that, you’re going to turn all that energy on her and make her the bad guy. That’s the abuse of power.

Matt Tebbe  30:40  

Exactly. Yeah. Because I can’t be wrong. Because I’ve built I have built my faith upon the rock of my ego, so I can’t justify myself and be justified by Christ at the same time. Either Christ justifies you, or you’re the advocate, you’re justifying yourself. Either Christ is interceding at the right hand of the Father, or you’re busy explaining, justifying, defending, protecting. I’ve done it, Marc. Your circle gets smaller and smaller, you become angrier and angrier, more, there’s more and more fear and rigidity and judgmentalism at people who don’t get it. And I could not find the fruit of the Spirit in that way of living. 

Marc Schelske  31:26  

Yes, right. That rigidity is the essential quality of every fundamentalism. That rigidity is built on that sense that if I’m wrong, something dire happens, whether that’s death of ego or getting kicked out of the community, losing my position or not being saved anymore. Whatever it is, something dire happens. You’re talking about a completely different way of the community relating to it give me an image of what the church looks like, if we normalize being wrong.

Matt Tebbe  32:01  

I think that we have misunderstood what sin is. Without relegating Paul’s legal metaphors into some apocryphal dustbin, I think that a more prominent metaphor in Scripture is not a legal judicial way to understand sin. But it’s an illness, sickness way of understanding sin. I think the picture I want to just hold out before us is if we really believe that God was a good doctor, whose love wanted to rid our lives of the cancer of sin, rather than a judge, I think we would run to the good doctor. We would see sin as a cancer, and not just personal sin, but systemic sin and interpersonal sin and inequality, injustice, we would see it as a cancer that God is wanting to heal rather than a crime that God wants to punish. Criminals hide. Cancer patients run to the hospital.

Marc Schelske  33:06  

Yeah, right. Right. They run to where there’s life,

Matt Tebbe  33:10  

…to where there’s hope for healing.  But you don’t typically hear if you have breast cancer. “Now, how did you get this breast cancer? What did you do to deserve this?” The doctor doesn’t shame us. The doctor, the doctor becomes immediately our advocate against the cancer, because the cancer is robbing life, breeding destruction and leads to death.

Marc Schelske  33:31  

Yeah, so what an incredible vision it would be to have communities centered on that idea, right, that we are going to we are going to be each other’s advocate, we are going to draw each other to the advocate, so that this cancer in our lives can be healed. Man. that’s a totally different picture.

Matt Tebbe  33:52  

This woman, her name is Ellie, who six months ago now called me on my stuff, she did it like a good doctor, like believing the best about me. Right? And, and fighting for my good in the midst of my wrong. There’s a sense in which, it this only this doesn’t work through a sermon series. Like you have to actually build these relationships. 

I have serious doubts that If I was at a different social location, meaning if I didn’t have power, if I was a different gender, if I was a sexual minority, if I was a person of color, if this would be helpful for me at all. In fact, one of the reasons why I‘m committed to this is because I think “I’m right” has been weaponized against powerless people.  And I sit in the class of people who’ve used “I’m right” to silence, enslave, steal, exploit, abuse people. I just want to reiterate that this commitment comes out of trying to unwind and undo abuses of power. abuses of affluence, abuses of masculinity, and of race that I’ve seen in my socio-economic kin, that I, I’m not…  I’m not advocating or prescribing it for, for instance, that should be the mantra of, you know, Latina woman. Sure. It may be if it’s helpful for you, go for it. But I just want to say like, I think I think that this is particular to my location,

Marc Schelske  35:26  

Right. The medicine, the medicine needs to be the medicine for the illness. And the illness we’re talking about comes from being right as a form of power. And if that’s the illness that you have, which it’s certainly one of the illnesses I have, then the medicine is to practice being wrong, learn to be okay with the discomfort that comes from not being right. But that may not be the medicine that everyone needs to take.

Matt Tebbe  35:51  

No. Right.  Who around you has chronic self-doubt? self-loathing, thinks have nothing to offer, never trusts their perspective, tells themselves all the time that they’re stupid and wrong. I mean, that’s not me, right. But there are people in our church that are like that. And so they need a much different medicine. You’re so right, Marc.

Marc Schelske  36:17  

Thank you so much for spending this time with me talking about a very exciting and uplifting conversation.

Matt Tebbe  36:26  

Yes, and I just to bracket this conversation, I may be wrong about everything I’ve just said.

REFLECTION

Marc Schelske  36:37  

So, maybe you’re not like me, and Matt, maybe you don’t have this nagging need to be right. But chances are, that if your experience intersects with ours in a few places, then this might be something you also struggle with. I want to say this: Not having to be wrong is a Marcer of privilege. Now, I know a lot of us don’t like that word. But if you’re used to being the one who does the correcting, if you’re used to being the one in the room that people defer to, if you’re used to being the one who asked to see the manager and you end up getting your way, there’s a good chance that you’ve got some privilege happening. 

Here’s why that matters. I’m a follower of Jesus, I’m committed to following Jesus’ teaching and his example, and I think that’s why you’re here as well. So here’s the thing. Jesus’ teaching and example are expressly about setting down our privilege to help and serve other people. in John’s gospel, chapter 10, verse 18, Jesus said this of himself, he said, “No one takes my life for me, I lay it down of my own accord.” And then the Apostle Paul, not wanting us to think that was just Jesus talking about himself and his own life, explain this to us further, in Philippians2. Read the whole chapter. I’m going to share just this part with you. 

“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interest, but to the interest of each other. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, (pretty high version of privilege), did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied Himself taking on the form of a slave, being born in human likeness, being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 

See, this is what Jesus did. This is what Jesus taught his disciples. This is the example we’re told to follow: to lay aside the normal human desire to build up and protect ourselves at the expense of others, and instead to use our resources and our capacity to serve others. Learning to sit in the discomfort of being wrong is one tiny piece of that puzzle, especially for those of us who are used to being right. 

See, for us, I think the spiritual practice is listening. Maybe not sharing our opinion, when we’re not asked to do it, maybe not stepping in to correct someone else who’s speaking up. I know, I know that that is hard for some of us. Some of us have learned that our sense of purpose and place and value depends on being right. But this is one of the ways we can step into living the other-centered co-suffering way of Jesus. So let’s do it. Let’s normalize being wrong. Let’s be willing to not have to be seen as the one who’s strong and right and in charge. Let’s be willing to listen. Let’s lay that stuff aside. 

May you discover the gracious piece that can be had when we rest in Jesus, instead of in our own certainty. Thanks for listening. 

Notes for today’s episode and the links mentioned are available for you at www.MarcAlanSchelske/TAW045. 

Episode 044 – Your Suffering is Sacred (With K.J. Ramsey)

Are you allergic to happy clappy Christianity? There’s a good reason for thats. Churches that ignore suffering are ignoring Jesus. Many churches are not good at holding suffering. People who find themselves in extended suffering — maybe living with depression or anxiety, other mental health issues, or even invisible chronic illness — sometimes find there’s not a place for them in the church. In this episode, I talk with KJ Ramsey who has particular experience with this, and we talk about the gospel according to suffering.

Show Notes

• “There needs to be more room in the Body of Christ to stand in the ground of our sorrow and see our suffering Savior.” – KJR
• “We prefer to keep death out of sight and any reminders of the decay in our bodies or being less than dazzling, we want to hide and pretend it doesn’t exist but the good news is that’s not the way of Jesus.” -KJR
• “If you’re in a church where they say ‘This table is for all,’ but you’re not actually included, leave. You don’t need to stay in a community that crushes you…You are not faithless if you need to walk away.” – KJR
• “To deconstruct the 2x4s of a house that was never actually God’s house is a gift that you give to your future self.” -KJR

Follow KJ Ramsey & Get her Book

K.J. Ramsey (BA, Covenant College, MA, Denver Seminary) is a licensed professional counselor, writer, and recovering idealist who believes sorrow and joy coexist. She is the author of This Too Shall Last: Finding Grace When Suffering Lingers, and her writing has been published in Christianity Today, RELEVANT, The Huffington Post, Fathom Magazine, Health Central, and more on the integration of theology, psychology, and spiritual formation. She and her husband live in Denver, Colorado.

• At her website: http://www.kjramsey.com
• Instagram: @kjramseywrites
• Twitter: @kjramseywrites
• Facebook: @kjramseywrites
• Get her book, This Too Shall Last: Finding Grace When Suffering Lingers

OTHER LINKS

You can also watch and share the video version on Youtube.

Today’s Sponsor

• Untangle Workbook: A guided journaling process for untangling emotions and finding wisdom – If you’re like me, you might not have really been equipped to face difficult feelings. Distraction and denial were my favorite emotional tools. Projects. Video Games. TV. Social Media. More Work. Anything to not feel the discomfort. Learning how to sit with my feelings and understand what they really meant has been life changing. I wanted to share that with people I work with, so I wrote this little journal. The first 30 pages teach you the basics of how emotions work in our bodies and our brains, and how make meaning out of all of that. Then you learn a step-by-step template that guides you through processing an emotional reaction.

Find My Stuff

• Get The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World – This little book is free for you by opting in to my email list.
• The Wisdom of Your Heart: Discovering the God-given Purpose and Power of Your Emotions.
• Untangled Heart Course Online.
• Discovering your Authentic Core Values: A Step-by-step Guide

• Subscribe to my Email List. You’ll get a free copy of a little book called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer & Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World.
• Subscribe to The Apprenticeship Way on iTunes and all other podcasting apps.
• Find a video version on my Youtube Channel.

Episode 043 – Your Purity & Piety Will Get You Nowhere

You want to grow as a person. You want a sense of intimate connection with the Divine. You believe or suspect that the way of Jesus has something to say about this. That’s why you’re here. That’s why I write.

But in order to grow in the way of Jesus, we have to unpack some ideas we have about the spiritual life, so we can clear away some of the garbage that’s getting in our way. One obstacle to growing spiritually is the picture we have in our minds about what a really spiritual person looks like. Yea. Our expectation of spirituality can be an obstacle to encountering Jesus.

Show Notes

• Do you have either of these ideas internalized?
  • “If we want to know and experience God, we must deal with sin in our lives. Intimacy with God and spiritual growth is tied to our purity.”
  • “If we want to know and experience God, we have to really, really want it and demonstrate commitment through an investment of time and effort. Intimacy with God and spiritual growth is tied to our piety.”
  • If you’re not sure, try this quick test. What is your immediate gut response to the question, “How are you doing spiritually?” If your answer is tied to dealing with sin or spending more time in spiritual practice, then one of these ideas has taken root in your heart.
  • We often compare ourselves to an imaginary ideal holy person in our minds. Whatever this holy person looks like will shape how we feel about ourselves and what we think we need to do to have an encounter with God.

• Consider a different narrative about encounter with God:
  • Reflect on the story of Jacob. (Read it for yourself in Genesis 32)
  • Jacob encounters God while wrestling in the dark. He doesn’t recognize God. He didn’t go into the dark to be spiritual. He was at the end of his rope. Do we feel like God isn’t present in our lives because we are expecting God’s presence to be something we recognize?
  • Jacob has to tell the truth about himself. The stranger asked for Jacob’s name. In his culture a person’s name represented their character. Jacob’s name was “Heal Grabber,” a conniver, a cheater, a betrayer. God gave him a new name and a new story, but before that he had to admit the truth of who he was. Do we miss God’s presence because we are clinging to justifications and lies about who we are?
  • Jacob wouldn’t let go. Even though he had lost the fight, he would not let go until he received a blessing. Do we sometimes feel like God isn’t present because after we have prayed a little while, we don’t feel like we’ve gotten an answer or a sense of God’s presence, and we give up?

You can also watch and share the video version on Youtube.

RESOURCES & OTHER LINKS

Today’s Sponsor

• My Youtube Channel – I’m working this year to build my Youtube channel. Why? Isn’t this a podcast? Aren’t podcasts audio? It’s really simple. Youtube is one of the largest search engine when you count the number of searches. When people want to learn how to do something, Youtube is the first place they go. My whole purpose with this podcast is to help people develop a healthy, inner life following the way of Jesus. A bunch of those people are never going to search “Christian Podcasts” in a podcast app. But they do come to Youtube and search for practical spiritual insight. I want to meet them there, and you can help. Head over to my channel and subscribe. Every time you like, comment and share a Youtube video, the algorithm assumes that people like you would like that video. That’s how the algorithm knows who to recommend videos to.

Find My Stuff

• Get The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World – This little book is free for you by opting in to my email list.
• The Wisdom of Your Heart: Discovering the God-given Purpose and Power of Your Emotions.
• Untangle Workbook: A guided journaling process for untangling emotions and finding wisdom.
• Untangled Heart Course Online.
• Discovering your Authentic Core Values: A Step-by-step Guide

• Subscribe to my Email List. You’ll get a free copy of a little book called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer & Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World.
• Subscribe to The Apprenticeship Way on iTunes and all other podcasting apps.
• Find a video version on my Youtube Channel.

Episode 042 – Can You Imagine Jesus Demanding Sex? – Interview with Sheila Wray Gregoire.

Christian teachers notoriously have lots of opinions about sex. Sometimes they even claim those opinions are God’s will. But what if some of those teachings are hurting people and wrecking marriages?

In this interview with Sheila Wray Gregoire we talk about the stunning findings from her survey of 20,000 Christian women about their sex lives, beliefs, and what they were taught in church about sex. This is a crucial conversation if the church is going to be healthy, life-giving community.

Show Notes

CONTENT ADVISORY: We’re going talk frankly about sex, body parts, sex acts, and porn. Sexual abuse, rape, and marital rape will be mentioned.

• Meet Sheila: Sheila Wray Gregoire is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex! A popular speaker, marriage blogger, and award-winning author of nine books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, she wants to challenge Christians to go beyond pat answers on marriage to reach real intimacy. Sheila believes in authenticity, and gives real solutions to the very real and messy problems women, and couples, can face. She and her husband Keith spend a lot of their time touring North America in an RV, speaking at marriage conferences, hiking, and birdwatching. The parents to two adult daughters, you can usually find her in Belleville, Ontario, where she’s either knitting, blogging, or taking her grandson out for a walk.

• Gregoire’s study evaluated the impact of the following beliefs taught many in Fundamentalist or Evangelical churches:
  • “Boys will want to push girl’s sexual boundaries.”
  • “All men struggle with lust. It is every man’s battle.”
  • “If you have sex before you are married, that means you have less of yourself to give your future spouse because a part of you will always belong to someone else.”
  • “The only Biblical reason for divorce is an affair.”
  • “It is a man’s God-given role to provide for his family and a woman’s God-given role to stay home raising her children.”
  • “Women should have frequent sex with their husbands to keep them from cheating or watching porn.”
  • “A wife is obligated to give her husband sex when he wants it.”

• Interesting Comments
  • In regard to the belief about lust being every man’s battle: “We are conflating sexual attraction with sin.” Sexual attraction is normal and healthy. Lust is objectification that turns people into objects for our pleasure.
  • In regard to the belief that wives are obligated to provide sex to their husbands on demand. One of the consequences of this belief is physical pain. “Evangelical women have twice the rate of sexual pain as the general population.” This is on par with the rates for women who experienced childhood abuse. This belief is abusive.
  • “Consent is the conversation that is missing in our resources.” Almost all of the Christian books on marriage and sex reviewed in this study did not mention consent at all!

• Gregoire’s Rubric for evaluating Christian Sex & Marriage Books
  • See the questions used to evaluate the sex & marriage books mentioned.

• Finding more from Sheila Wray Gregoire:
  • Website: tolovehonorandvacuum.com
  • Instagram
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

• Get the Book:
  • Amazon
  • All other vendors

You can also watch and share the video version on Youtube.

RESOURCES & OTHER LINKS

Today’s Sponsor

• The Untangled Heart Online Course – An online workshop to help you learn to sit with your emotions, identify them, and discern wisdom in what you learn from them.

Find My Stuff

• Get The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World – This little book is free for you by opting in to my email list.
• Discovering your Authentic Core Values: A Step-by-step Guide
• Untangle Workbook: A guided journaling process for untangling emotions and finding wisdom.

• Subscribe to my Email List. You’ll get a free copy of a little book called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer & Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World.
• Subscribe to The Apprenticeship Way on iTunes and all other podcasting apps.
• Find a video version on my Youtube Channel.

Episode 041 – Trust Your Instinct About the Church – Interview with Fr. Kenneth Tanner.

After everything that’s happened in the past year, are you wondering about whether there’s a place for you in the church? Are you asking questions like “Where do I fit? What I’m seeing around me doesn’t look like Jesus. What do I do? I love Jesus. I want to follow Jesus, but if these other Christians are any indication, I don’t even know if I’m Christian anymore.”

Have you had those thoughts? Well, I can tell you from my own experience, and stacks of emails in my inbox, that you are not alone. In this interview with Father Kenneth Tanner, we’ll talk about steps you can take.

Show Notes

• What should we say to people asking these questions?
  • “Yes. This doesn’t look good.”
  • “You are not alone.”
  • “If you’re alarmed by what you see in the church in America, you have good spiritual intuition.”

• How do we fix this problem of feeling alienated?
  • Admit we have a problem. Our Christian movements and leaders have to admit there is a problem if we want to fix it.
  • Face our amnesia. Most of us have no attachment to the history of Christianity, and some of us have forgotten the testimony of folks who encountered Jesus throughout history. (Not just Biblical history) The historical church in Africa, Asia Minor, and Ireland for instance have much to teach us. If we forget our history, we won’t really know our identity.
  • Listen to the words of our Lord in Matthew 25. Instead of looking to the institution, go to the margins. Jesus says that He will meet us there among the poor, the sick, the hungry, and those who are oppressed. By talking with, being in relationship with, we will be changed and encounter Jesus. Historically, Christians were the most impactful when they went to the margins and served people. This is where we’re off track, trying to amass influence and power for our team.
  • We need the grand reorientation of our minds and hearts to begin to see the world and other human beings the way the Human God does.

And then Fr. Tanner just started preaching the gospel. Here’s some quotes:

“God loves the world. God made the world in love. It’s because God loves the world that he doesn’t seek to escape the world. He enters the world. He decided to become human, forever identifying himself with every human person.” – Fr. Kenneth Tanner.

“Christians must fundamentally begin with the revelation of God that we have in the person of Jesus Christ. He is the one who reveals the Father.” – Fr. Kenneth Tanner.

“Jesus always only brings life. He never brings death. He only always brings healing and not disease. He only always brings liberty and not oppression.” – Fr. Kenneth Tanner.

“We only come to the point where realize we’re ready to embrace the judgement of God when we understand his character. Perfect love casts out all fear.”  – Fr. Kenneth Tanner.

• Where can we find hope? 
  • By looking to the broader tradition of Christian history. Listen to faithful Christians from every tradition. In order to see the full picture of Jesus, we must listen to the broad range of traditions—particularly the Christian East of the first 800 years of Christianity.

And much more including thoughts on God’s wrath & Judgement, cancel culture, spiritual intuition, the controversies around how to respond to COVID-19

You can also watch and share the video version on Youtube.

RESOURCES & OTHER LINKS

Today’s Sponsor

• Discovering Your Authentic Core Values – Life presents us with way too many options. We’re surrounded by potential opportunities, obligations, and distractions. On top of that, our time is limited. We can’t do everything. A meaningful life that is not stretched thin comes from learning when to say no and when to say yes. In Discovering Your Authentic Core Values, I walk you thought a simple, step-by-step process that will help you clearly identify a compass for your life that is unique to you. More than a thousand people have have used this process and many of them have found it deeply helpful. Maybe you will too.

Find My Stuff

• Get The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World – This little book is free for you by opting in to my email list.
• Discovering your Authentic Core Values: A Step-by-step Guide
• Untangle Workbook: A guided journaling process for untangling emotions and finding wisdom.
• Untangled Heart Course Online.

• Subscribe to my Email List. You’ll get a free copy of a little book called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer & Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World.
• Subscribe to The Apprenticeship Way on iTunes and all other podcasting apps.
• Find a video version on my Youtube Channel.

Episode 040 – This IS Us. We Need To Own It.

“This isn’t us. This isn’t America. We are better than this.” Have you heard—or said—those words recently? Well, you may not want to hear this, but the only way forward is to let those words go.

Show Notes

• On January 6th, 2021 there was a historic and unprecedented event where people who had gathered in Washington D.C. to protest the certifying of the results of the presidential election turned into a violent mob that stormed the capital building. While details about exactly who was involved and what happened are still coming out at this time, one thing is clear. The majority of the participants were white, and many of them were Christian.
• Saying “This isn’t us. This isn’t how real Americans behave” or “No real Christian would do this,” is a form of denial, meant to shield us from facing difficult truth.
• Spiritual maturity requires naming the lies we’ve accepted and choosing to repent of them and change our ways.
• Name the lie. Renounce the lie. Repent of your participation in the lie. Then, only then, can there be healing, and growth.
• If we want a more free and equal country, we need to stop denying our difficult past and the ways that past still shapes our life together.
• If we want more Christlike and impactful churches, we need to stop denying the ways we use power to get what we want, and follow the way of Jesus which means laying down our power and privilege to serve others.
• For another viewpoint on the issue of saying “This isn’t us,” read this article by Soraya Nadia McDonald. Let her viewpoint challenge you.
• Verifying ownership for Vurbl: https://vurbl.com/station/3lwZx96NSx1/

You can also watch and share the video version on Youtube.

RESOURCES & OTHER LINKS

Today’s Sponsor

• The Writers Advance – A Weekend for Writers to Write – This is the perfect weekend for writers who are serious about getting their project moved forward. This is not a weekend to learn from experts or do networking. This is a weekend where you will write in an inspiring venue, where you’ll have great food, lots of space, and just enough structure and encouragement to get those words out. The next Writers Advance is in April of 2021.

Find My Stuff

• Get The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World – This little book is free for you by opting in to my email list.
• Discovering your Authentic Core Values: A Step-by-step Guide
• Untangle Workbook: A guided journaling process for untangling emotions and finding wisdom.
• Untangled Heart Course Online.

• Subscribe to my Email List. You’ll get a free copy of a little book called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer & Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World.
• Subscribe to The Apprenticeship Way on iTunes and all other podcasting apps.
• Find a video version on my Youtube Channel.

Episode 039 – You Need an Architecture of Grief (Interview with James Prescott)

Twenty Twenty seems to be the car wreck that just keeps going, and the result is that many of us are experiencing more and more pain and grief. How are we to deal with this? Writer James Prescott and I discuss the ways we structure our lives for either avoiding or entering into and processing our grief. You’ve got to do it!

Show Notes

• We all have an “architecture” to our lives. This is the structure of our lives that makes living our lives the way that we do easiest for us. Much of this structure is inherited and unconscious.
• Most of us live with an unconscious architecture that protects us from experiencing our grief. We hide from pain, and try to live our lives in such a way that the pain isn’t visible.
• For a healthy life, where we grow personally and spiritually, we need an architecture of grief, structures in our life that enable us to experience and process our grief without being controlled by it.

You can also watch and share the video version on Youtube.

RESOURCES & OTHER LINKS

Today’s Sponsor

• The Writers Advance – A Weekend for Writers to Write – This is the perfect weekend for writers who are serious about getting their project moved forward. This is not a weekend to learn from experts or do networking. This is a weekend where you will write in an inspiring venue, where you’ll have great food, lots of space, and just enough structure and encouragement to get those words out. The next Writers Advance is in April of 2021.

Find My Stuff

• Get The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World – This little book is free for you by opting in to my email list.
• Discovering your Authentic Core Values: A Step-by-step Guide
• Untangle Workbook: A guided journaling process for untangling emotions and finding wisdom.
• Untangled Heart Course Online.

• Subscribe to my Email List. You’ll get a free copy of a little book called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer & Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World.
• Subscribe to The Apprenticeship Way on iTunes and all other podcasting apps.
• Find a video version on my Youtube Channel.

Episode 038 – Would Jesus call you (or your church) Satan?

“Get behind me, Satan!” Those are the words Jesus said to Peter. Yikes! But as I survey the current landscape of Christianity, I wonder if Jesus is saying this to us, or to our churches. In this episode, I reflect on what Jesus meant when he said these words to his friend, and what they might mean for us.

Show Notes

• Read the scripture passages for yourself.
  • The story: Matthew 16:21-28
  • The background of Peter’s declaration. Matthew 16:13-20
  • Paul’s eloquent description of the Christian attitude toward power: Phil 2:3-11
• The Hebrew root and meaning for the word Satan.

May you Have the courage to let go of power, to use what you’ve been given to serve others, to use your privilege to bring more people to the table, to use your vote to speak for those who our society considers least. May you follow the peaceful path of Jesus into other-centered co-suffering love.

You can also watch and share the video version on Youtube.

RESOURCES & OTHER LINKS

Today’s Sponsor

• The Wisdom of Your Heart: Discovering the God-Given Purpose and Power of Your Emotions. You can’t grow spiritually if you’re not growing emotionally. Explore the vital importance of emotional wellness and growth in your discipleship. The Wisdom of Your Heart tackles some of the myths Christians have learned about emotions, looks at emotions in scripture, what we understand about emotions in the body and the brain, and offers a process for sitting with and understanding our emotions. Available in Paperback, ebook, and Audible audiobook.

Find My Stuff

• Get The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World – This little book is free for you by opting in to my email list.
• Discovering your Authentic Core Values: A Step-by-step Guide
• Untangle Workbook: A guided journaling process for untangling emotions and finding wisdom.
• Untangled Heart Course Online.

• Subscribe to my Email List. You’ll get a free copy of a little book called The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer & Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World.
• Subscribe to The Apprenticeship Way on iTunes and all other podcasting apps.
• Find a video version on my Youtube Channel.

Episode 037 – Looking for God in All the Wrong Places – Interview with Paul J. Pastor

Do you sometimes feel like your spiritual life is supposed to be in color, but you can only see it in black & white? Do you worry that we might be numb to God’s presence? Are you looking for a goose-bump moment and overlooking God in the process?

In this episode, I ask Paul J. Pastor about this. Paul’s the author of The Face of The Deep: Experiencing the Beautiful Mystery of Life with the Holy Spirit, a book that tackles the mysterious sacredness of God’s presence.

Show Notes

• More from our guest:
  • Check out Paul’s website: www.PaulJPastor.com
  • Pick up The Face of the Deep. It’s available in paper, ebook, and an amazing audiobook with an original score.
  • Paul also has written two of the very best daily devotionals I’ve ever read, The Listening Day, Volume 1 and Volume 2.
  • Note: Those links are Amazon Affiliate links. If you buy a book through those links I will receive an infintesimal kickback that I promise to spend on good books and frivolous electronics. More info here

You can also watch and share the video version on Youtube.

Other Links Mentioned

• Get The Anchor Prayer: A Prayer and Process for Remaining Grounded in a Chaotic World – This little book is free for you by opting in to my email list.

Find My Stuff

• The Wisdom of Your Heart: Discovering the God-Given Purpose and Power of Your Emotions.
• Discovering your Authentic Core Values: A Step-by-step Guide
• Untangle Workbook: A guided journaling process for untangling emotions and finding wisdom.
• Untangled Heart Course Online.

• Subscribe to my Email List.
• Subscribe to The Apprenticeship Way on iTunes and all other podcasting apps.
• Find a video version on my Youtube Channel.

Episode 036 – Don’t Avoid Starting Over

I like knowing stuff. I like being seen as a good person. I love being an expert. Weird that I became a pastor, right? But here’s the thing. As much as I like this stuff, I’ve discovered it’s not very good for me. Turns out that being an expert doesn’t help you grow spiritually.

Consider this: What you think you know about God might be getting in the way of really knowing God.

Show Notes

• Scriptures referenced:
  • The story of Abraham’s calling. Genesis 11:27 – 12:4
  • The story of Nicodemus. John 3:1-12

• Two of the most famous stories in the Bible, one from the Hebrew scripture and one from the Christian gospels, tell the same exact story in different contexts.
  • The Divine Voice invited Abram to leave behind everything he knew and head out into the unknown.
  • The Divine Voice through Jesus invited Nicodemus to set aside what he thought he knew in order to start again spiritually.
• Being an expert or being comfortable can be an obstacle to spiritual growth and a deeper connection to God.
• Consider if God is saying, “What you think you know about Me is getting in the way of really knowing me.”

If you prefer, watch and share the video version on Youtube.

Other Links Mentioned

• Do You Need a Speaker? – Our all-online world of Zoom gatherings has made it really easy to bring in guest speakers. I’d be happy to come speak for your church, retreat, organization, or event. We can talk about spiritual growth, inner life health, emotional health, core values, navigating a polarized world as a follower of Jesus, or any number of things. Click the link and let’s talk.

Find My Stuff

• The Wisdom of Your Heart: Discovering the God-Given Purpose and Power of Your Emotions.
• Discovering your Authentic Core Values: A Step-by-step Guide
• Untangle Workbook: A guided journaling process for untangling emotions and finding wisdom.
• Untangled Heart Course Online.

• Subscribe to my Email List.
• Subscribe to The Apprenticeship Way on iTunes and all other podcasting apps.
• Find a video version on my Youtube Channel.

Episode 035 – Your Values are Showing!

Pain is a terrible thing to waste. At least, that’s what my Trauma Therapist friend says. So, how are we using the pain of this difficult time of pandemic and protests so that we can be better people?

This is part 3 of my 3 part conversation with Byron Kehler, a trauma therapist with nearly 40 years of experience. In this last conversation we’ll talk about who the pandemic is revealing us to be, and how we can come out the other side better people.

Show Notes

• Byron Kehler is a trauma therapist with nearly 40 years of professional experience. Learn more about him at www.ByronKehler.com.

• Production Note: My apologies for the less than ideal audio and a bit of video lag. I’m learning the ropes with remote interviews, and this one didn’t turn out as well as I would like. It’s been edited so that it is as enjoyable as possible.
• We are experiencing a Real-time Values Clarification Exercise:
  • Therapists and psychologists often use hypothetical situations to help people think through their priorities and values. What we are experiencing right now with the pandemic, protests, and political division is working this same way.
  • “The way we are reacting right now to the circumstances we find ourselves in is revealing our true values.” – Byron Kehler.
• Values are our priorities and deeply held beliefs including our internal motivations. They serve as a compass for our actions and reactions and often go unevaluated.
• Aspirational Values are values that we wish we held or even that we say we hold, but that our behavior doesn’t align with.
• A question we must consider: what does it mean to “love our neighbor as ourselves” in the midst of a pandemic?
• Here’s a great summary article to Lawrence Kolberg’s Stages of Moral Development that Byron referred to.

If you prefer, watch and share the video version on Youtube.

Resources Mentioned

• The Untangle Workbook – Sort out your complicated feelings with this guided journal. The first 30 pages teach you the basics of what emotions are, what is happening in your body and brain when you feel them, and what they mean. The rest of the workbook is a template you can use to walk through an emotional experience so that you can understand it and respond with wisdom. Learn more at the link above.

• The Untangled Heart Workshop Online – Learn what’s happening in your body and brain when you feel those big emotions, how they are connected to your story, and how to navigate them with wisdom. This is the online version of the live workshop. 5 hours of video teaching, guided journaling exercises, 23-page downloadable notes packet and more. Learn more at the link above.

Find My Stuff

• The Wisdom of Your Heart: Discovering the God-Given Purpose and Power of Your Emotions.
• Discovering your Authentic Core Values: A Step-by-step Guide
• Untangle Workbook: A guided journaling process for untangling emotions and finding wisdom.

• Subscribe to my Email List.
• Subscribe to The Apprenticeship Way on iTunes and all other podcasting apps.
• Find a video version on my Youtube Channel.

Episode 034 – The 5 Stages of Pandemic Grief

We are going through deep weeds right now — pandemic, protests, unemployment, so many losses — and it doesn’t look like it’s going to get better any time soon. But there’s one important factor that will determine how well we deal with all of it. We are all feeling an important emotion we might not even realize we’re feeling: Grief.

What’s going on? Why is this happening? What can we do about it? This is part 2 of my conversation with Byron Kehler, a trauma therapist with nearly 40 years of experience. He’s got some really helpful things to say about what we’re all feeling and how we can face it well.

Show Notes

• Byron Kehler is a trauma therapist with nearly 40 years of professional experience. Learn more about him at www.ByronKehler.com.

• One emotion almost all of us are feeling right now is grief.
  • Grief is the natural emotional processing of loss. Nearly everyone has lost something during the pandemic. That means we are holding grief.
  • We are really bad at expressing and processing grief because we want to avoid it.
  • Failing to name and process our grief will lead us to much more emotional discomfort and undermine our emotional and spiritual health.

If you prefer, watch and share the video version on Youtube.

Resources Mentioned

• Tear Soup – a great book about the process of healing from grief. Also appropriate for children.

• Sacred Sorrows – a great book about the process of healing from grief.

• The Untangle Workbook – Sort out your complicated feelings with this guided journal. The first 30 pages teach you the basics of what emotions are, what is happening in your body and brain when you feel them, and what they mean. The rest of the workbook is a template you can use to walk through an emotional experience so that you can understand it and respond with wisdom. Learn more at the link above.

• The Untangled Heart Workshop Online – Learn what’s happening in your body and brain when you feel those big emotions, how they are connected to your story, and how to navigate them with wisdom. This is the online version of the live workshop. 5 hours of video teaching, guided journaling exercises, 23-page downloadable notes packet and more. Learn more at the link above.

Find My Stuff

• The Wisdom of Your Heart: Discovering the God-Given Purpose and Power of Your Emotions.
• Discovering your Authentic Core Values: A Step-by-step Guide
• Untangle Workbook: A guided journaling process for untangling emotions and finding wisdom.

• Subscribe to my Email List.
• Subscribe to The Apprenticeship Way on iTunes and all other podcasting apps.
• Find a video version on my Youtube Channel.

Episode 033 – Why are we feeling so crazy, and what can we do about it – Trauma response in the time of pandemic & protests

Covid-19, Masks, Quarantine, and now protests against racial injustice and police brutality? If you’re feeling overwhelmed, or depressed, or angry, or confused, you are not alone. Why are we feeling this way and what can we do about it?

Show Notes

• Byron Kehler is a trauma therapist with nearly 40 years of professional experience. Learn more about him at www.ByronKehler.com.

• The next wave of the COVID-19 pandemic is trauma. You may already be experiencing it.
  • How you are responding to the pandemic, as well as the protests, is shaped by your story because of the impact of State-Dependent Memory.
  • State-Dependent Memory is the psychological phenomenon where certain kinds of memories are easier to recall (sometimes involuntarily) when you are in the same or similar physiological state.
  • The pandemic and protests are bringing up unresolved pain and even trauma from the past. This is manifesting in feelings of powerlessness, increased anxiety, fear of uncertainty, anger in response to feeling violated, and binary responses and polarization.

• What can we do to limit the impact of these factors in our lives?
  • 1) Be aware of the impact of your own story. Ask yourself, “Where else in my life did I feel like this growing up?” Consider how your current reactions might connect to your story.
  • Note that the more out of proportion your emotional response, the more likely it is involving your story.
  • 2) If your routine has been disturbed by the new COVID & Social-Distancing reality, built a new routine. Routine is a “container” for our mental health.
  • 3) Keep up with your basic self-care. Eat. Sleep. Rest. Limit news and social media.
  • 4) Spend time outside and in nature, when possible.
  • 5) Stay connected to your family, friends, or supportive community through whatever means you are able to.
  • 6) Reduce media consumption.

If you prefer, watch and share the video version on Youtube.

Resources Mentioned

• The Untangled Heart Workshop Online

Learn what’s happening in your body and brain when you feel those big emotions, how they are connected to your story, and how to navigate them with wisdom. This is the online version of the live workshop. 5 hours of video teaching, guided journaling exercises, 23-page downloadable notes packet and more. Learn more at the link above.

• The Untangle Workbook

Sort out your complicated feelings with this guided journal. The first 30 pages teaches you the basics of what emotions are, what is happening in your body and brain when you feel them, and what they mean. The rest of the workbook is a template you can use to walk through an emotional experience so that you can understand it and respond with wisdom. Learn more at the link above.

Find My Stuff

• The Wisdom of Your Heart: Discovering the God-Given Purpose and Power of Your Emotions.
• Discovering your Authentic Core Values: A Step-by-step Guide
• Untangle Workbook: A guided journaling process for untangling emotions and finding wisdom.

• Subscribe to my Email List.
• Subscribe to The Apprenticeship Way on iTunes and all other podcasting apps.
• Find a video version on my Youtube Channel.

Episode 032 – Pentecost, Breathing & George Floyd

This is the air I breathe!

My heart broke open this week as I watched the events unfold around the murder of George Floyd, and the protests and riots that followed. At the same time, I was studying the lectionary passages for Pentecost. This is an edited version of the sermon I preached at Bridge City Community Church.

Let me be clear: In this sermon I am a white preacher speaking to white Christians about a topic that white people have to own and take action on. It might be heavy and uncomfortable… but it’s a lot less uncomfortable than 400 years of oppression. So, keep your arms and hands inside until the ride has come to a complete stop. And I promise — I’ll give you practical steps you can take.

Show Notes

• The song I referred to: This is the Air I Breathe.
• In scripture, both in Hebrew and in Greek, the word for the Holy Spirit and the word for breath is the same. Ruach in Hebrew and Pneuma in Greek.
• The well-known Pentecost passage is Acts 2.
• The lesser-known Pentecost passage is John 20:21-22.
• Jesus’ mission statement is found in Luke 4:18-19
• Steps white Christians must take to obey the Spirit’s call to anti-racism:
  • 1. Listen & Learn. An excellent reading list can be found at the end of this post.
  • 2. Interrogate Your Feelings. (I’ve got lots of posts and resources on how to work through difficult emotions. Let me know if you want support in that area.)
  • 3. Use your privilege to support and protect people of color, including your finances, your influence, your bodily safety, and your vote.
• Drew Brown, the musician, who wrote the prayer I closed with, can be found here: http://www.drewbrownmusic.com/

If you prefer, watch and share the video version on Youtube.

Episode 031 – COVID, Suffering & Jesus

How are you doing with this COVID-19 thing? Are you afraid? Are you angry? Are you confused by all the different information about what to do? Are you just ready for it to be over? I get it. I’ve been all those things, and my feelings change from day today. Part of that is because this is a big deal, but part of it is because you and I—we’re just not that good at dealing with suffering.

Show Notes

• COVID-19 should not have been a surprise. It’s a direct result of the way we have structured our lives and our world.
• The real surprise is how taking reasonable safety measures has become controversial, especially for churches.
• The absurd levels of reactivity speak directly to this: We don’t handle suffering well.
• When we face suffering, our knee-jerk reaction is to deny it, try to explain it away or try to figure out who to blame. These are all ways to avoid facing suffering.
• Christians practice the same kind of denial, but with religious and spiritual tools.
• Perspectives that can help us in suffering:
  • #1 – Suffering is Normal. (1st Peter 4:12). This is in contrast with our embedded American view that progress and prosperity is the norm.
  • #2 – Suffering is an opportunity to experience Jesus (1st Peter 4:13) This is in contrast with our Modern American Christian view that prosperity and comfort is a sign of God’s blessings.
• Many in the early church believed that our suffering was done in fellowship with Jesus, a sharing (koinoneo) in Jesus’ experience.
  • If suffering is normal, then it doesn’t reflect on our faith or on God’s presence.
  • If our suffering is sharing in Jesus’ suffering, then we can find God in the middle of our suffering.

Scriptures & References in this episode

• 1st Peter 4:12
• 1st Peter 4:13
• If you were intrigued by the idea that the Bible itself can contain multiple theological perspectives about the same issue, check out How the Bible Actually Works, by Pete Enns. (Amazon Affiliate Link)

New Stuff

• The Untangled Heart Workshop Online

About 8 months ago, the Untangled Heart Workshop came into existence. I collaborated with a good friend, Byron Kehler, who is a trauma therapist, and together we created a one-day training focused on helping people understand and navigate their emotions. We did the event live and it was a fantastic experience. 

We planned to start doing it live regularly, but circumstances have changed, haven’t they? So, instead, we’ve taken all the teaching and created an online course.

So, if you’re feeling a lot of big emotions, or are surprised at how our Stay-At-Home circumstances have brought up grief or anger for you, or if you’ve been thinking that you’d like to improve your ability to be present to the people you love, The Untangled Heart Worshipshop Online, may be perfect for you.

You can learn more of what’s included in the course and see the lesson topics for your self over at the link above.

• Bring Me to speak to your group digitally.

In this new Zoom world, it’s so easy to bring in a guest speaker. Would your group benefit from learning about emotions, how we process emotions, and how emotions are a vital part of faith? Are you a pastor who could really use a week off? Hit the link above and let’s talk.

Find My Stuff

• The Wisdom of Your Heart: Discovering the God-Given Purpose and Power of Your Emotions.
• Discovering your Authentic Core Values: A Step-by-step Guide
• Untangle Workbook: A guided journaling process for untangling emotions and finding wisdom.

• Subscribe to my Email List.
• Subscribe to The Apprenticeship Way on iTunes and all other podcasting apps.
• Find a video version on my Youtube Channel.

Episode 030 – Faith Isn’t Certainty

Faith is at the very heart of Christianity. It’s crucial. Without Faith, scripture says, it’s impossible to please God. But more than any other part of the spiritual life, faith is misunderstood. When we get this wrong, we set ourselves up for an ugly, painful crash.

(And if faith isn’t certainty, then what is it?)

Show Notes

• A commitment to certainty is a real threat to our life of faith.
• Doubt and evaluating our beliefs is a necessary part of growth.
• That means Deconstruction can be a healthy part of faith development.
• It is much healthier to think of faith as relational trust.
• “Faith is an orientation of the soul toward God in the form of deep trust.” – Brian Zahnd

Scriptures & References in this episode

• Hebrews 11:1
• Hebrews 11:6
• Hebrews 12:1-2
• The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desired More Than Our Correct Belief, by Pete Enns.

New Stuff

• The Untangled Heart Workshop Online

About 8 months ago, the Untangled Heart Workshop came into existence. I collaborated with a good friend, Byron Kehler, who is a trauma therapist, and together we created a one-day training focused on helping people understand and navigate their emotions. We did the event live and it was a fantastic experience. 

We planned to start doing it live regularly, but circumstances have changed, haven’t they? So, instead, we’ve taken all the teaching and created an online course.

So, if you’re feeling a lot of big emotions, or are surprised at how our Stay-At-Home circumstances have brought up grief or anger for you, or if you’ve been thinking that you’d like to improve your ability to be present to the people you love, The Untangled Heart Worshipshop Online, may be perfect for you.

You can learn more of what’s included in the course and see the lesson topics for your self over at the link above.

• Bring Me to speak to your group digitally.

In this new Zoom world, it’s so easy to bring in a guest speaker. Would your group benefit from learning about emotions, how we process emotions, and how emotions are a vital part of faith? Are you a pastor who could really use a week off? Hit the link above and let’s talk.

Find My Stuff

• The Wisdom of Your Heart: Discovering the God-Given Purpose and Power of Your Emotions.
• Discovering your Authentic Core Values: A Step-by-step Guide
• Untangle Workbook: A guided journaling process for untangling emotions and finding wisdom.

• Subscribe to my Email List.
• Subscribe to The Apprenticeship Way on iTunes and all other podcasting apps.
• Find a video version on my Youtube Channel.

Episode 029 – The Trip is the Point

What are you gonna be when you grow up? What college do you want to go to? What are you gonna do when you graduate? Where are you going on your vacation? How soon do you think you can retire? You’ve been asked those questions, or questions like them, right? What do they all have in common? A destination. Our culture is absolutely infatuated with the destination.

And that kind of thinking will wreck your spiritual life. It’s also why I’ve stopped asking people if they are saved!

Show Notes

“Destination Thinking” in a life of faith looks like:

• Focusing entirely on getting to heaven.
• Focusing on getting your theology right above all else.
• Buying into the prosperity gospel.
• A spiritual entitlement that if we’ve done the right things God owes us.

All of these ways of thinking about faith undermine our spiritual growth, and lead to performance spirituality, legalism, purity and doctrine policing, celebrity Christianity and so many other soul-crushing ways of thinking about God.

Scriptures & References in this episode

• Luke 11:1-4

The Lord’s Prayer is not a model prayer in the sense that it’s meant to be a template of words to repeat. It’s not the “right kind of prayer,” that we who know better can pray. It is better thought of as a model for how to organize our lives as we go through the process of life.

Find My Stuff

• The Wisdom of Your Heart: Discovering the God-Given Purpose and Power of Your Emotions.
• Discovering your Authentic Core Values: A Step-by-step Guide
• Untangle Workbook: A guided journaling process for untangling emotions and finding wisdom.

• Subscribe to my Email List.
• Subscribe to The Apprenticeship Way on iTunes and all other podcasting apps.
• Find a video version on my Youtube Channel.

Episode 028 – Low-Stress Knowing God’s Will

I grew up in a church community where finding out God’s will was a big deal. Imagine the horror of living your whole life and then discovering you had missed God’s will? So, we spent a lot of time and energy trying to get clear on God’s will for us.

I don’t think our urgency was warranted. Today I want to share with you my stress-free guide for finding God’s will.

Show Notes

Six principles for knowing God’s will without feeling stress about it:

1. Don’t sweat the obvious stuff. If something is repeatedly covered in scripture and in alignment with Jesus’ way—like not Lying or Murdering—best assume that’s God’s will. 
2. Get counsel from people you trust spiritually. More heads are better than one, especially if those people are spiritually mature and have practiced listening for the Spirit’s lead. Consider trajectory rather than circumstances.
3. Consider trajectory rather than circumstances. Pay attention to how you got where you are, and what God seems to have been doing in your life lately.
4. Look for settledness rather than certainty. Certainty is often a trap, especially if we need it to find peace.
5. Be suspicious of your desire to run away. Stop and consider why you feel this. If you’re trying to avoid a hard decision, or difficult relationship, or something that will stretch you, your desire to run may not be from God.
6. Focus on character and relationships. Consider that what you’re praying about might not be a high priority to God.

Scriptures & References in this episode

• Matthew 5:44
• Matthew 7:12
• Ephesians 4:11-13

New Links

• Pick up Try Softer by Aundi Kolber. — This is an amazing book and I cannot recommend it highly enough. It is the best, most helpful, most accessible treatment of mental health from a faith perspective. If you have been wondering about starting therapy, struggling with undermining thoughts, dealing with depression, or love someone who is–get this book.

Find My Stuff

• The Wisdom of Your Heart: Discovering the God-Given Purpose and Power of Your Emotions.
• Discovering your Authentic Core Values: A Step-by-step Guide
• Untangle Workbook: A guided journaling process for untangling emotions and finding wisdom.

• Subscribe to my Email List.
• Subscribe to The Apprenticeship Way on iTunes and all other podcasting apps.
• Find a video version on my Youtube Channel.

Episode 027 – In You I Remain

So what’s the main goal of Christianity? What is it that we’re all about? Is it about becoming better and better people? Is it about becoming more and more theologically correct? Is it to get us and everyone we love to heaven?

If you said yes to any of those, I’m going to disagree. But before you bail, or dismiss me as a heretic, let me tell you what I mean.

Show Notes

Show notes will not be a transcript. At least not now. You’ll find a few key bullet points, any scriptures references, as well as any other books or resources referenced.

Get caught up on the Anchor Prayer series

• Part 1 – How Abiding is possible.
• Part 2 – Is memorized prayer the missing key?
• Part 3 – What is the Anchor Prayer?
• Part 4 – I Rest in Faith
• Part 5 – I Walk by Faith
• Part 6 – I Hear in Faith

The Anchor Prayer

Here’s the full text of the Anchor Prayer:

I rest in faith trusting Father.

I walk by faith following Jesus.

I hear in faith obeying Spirit.

In You I remain.

Scriptures & References in this episode

• John 15:4
• Romans 8:1
• Philippians 3:8-9
• John 1:4
• Ephesians 3:12
• 1st Corinthians 2:16
• Philippians 4:13

New Links

• How to grow spiritually in the middle of a busy, stressful life. — I’m doing another round of these online teachings. 40 minutes of your time. 1 important perspective change and 2 simple practices. Details and registration here: http://live210.com/busy-growth-event

• Writers — Join me for a weekend designed to help you get your project moving. The Writers Advance, coming up soon March 27-29, in Mt. Angel, Oregon. Only 2 spaces remain! Get the details about this amazing weekend here: http://thewritersadvance.com/

Find My Stuff

• The Wisdom of Your Heart: Discovering the God-Given Purpose and Power of Your Emotions.
• Discovering your Authentic Core Values: A Step-by-step Guide
• Untangle Workbook: A guided journaling process for untangling emotions and finding wisdom.

• Subscribe to my Email List.
• Subscribe to The Apprenticeship Way on iTunes and all other podcasting apps.
• Find a video version on my Youtube Channel.

Episode 026 – I Hear in Faith

I’ve been to some very busy places. Giant concerts surrounded by the press of people. City Wide Festivals. Time Square, Grand Central Station. Places where there is so much noise, so much going on, just overwhelming sensory input.

But even having been in those kinds of places, I think the busiest place in the world is inside: The human mind. All that busyness, all that noise in our hearts, makes it hard to really hear the spirit of God. Let’s talk about how to cut through the noise.

Show Notes

Show notes will not be a transcript. At least not now. You’ll find a few key bullet points, any scriptures references, as well as any other books or resources referenced.

Get caught up on the Anchor Prayer series

• Part 1 – How Abiding is possible.
• Part 2 – Is memorized prayer the missing key?
• Part 3 – What is the Anchor Prayer?
• Part 4 – I Rest in Faith
• Part 5 – I walk by Faith

Scriptures & References in this episode

• John 16:13
• John 16:12
• Psalms 139:7-10
• Galatians 5:25

New Links

• Do you have a writing project that you need to jump-start? Do you want to move your work in progress forward? Join me for a weekend designed to help you do just that. The Writers Advance, coming up soon March 27-29, in Mt. Angel, Oregon. Only a few spaces remain! Get the details about this amazing weekend here: http://thewritersadvance.com/

• Have me out to speak about inner life growth, following Jesus, or emotional discipleship. Also scheduling the Untangled Heart workshop. Booking events through 2020. Let’s make something happen!

Find My Stuff

• The Wisdom of Your Heart: Discovering the God-Given Purpose and Power of Your Emotions.
• Discovering your Authentic Core Values: A Step-by-step Guide
• Untangle Workbook: A guided journaling process for untangling emotions and finding wisdom.

• Subscribe to my Email List.
• Subscribe to The Apprenticeship Way on iTunes and all other podcasting apps.
• Find a video version on my Youtube Channel.

Episode 024 – I Rest in Faith

I have been addicted to an illusion, a false belief. It made me feel better, and so I keep running back to it. But it’s not real. My illusion? I am in control. Part of growing up, part of maturing spiritually, has been learning this obnoxious, even painful truth. I am not the final say. I’m not in charge of the universe, or the weather, or other people. I am not without limits. Remembering this is key to spiritual growth.

Show Notes

Show notes will not be a transcript. At least not now. You’ll find a few key bullet points, any scriptures references, as well as any other books or resources referenced.

Get caught up on the Anchor Prayer series

• Part 1 – How Abiding is possible.
• Part 2 – Is memorized prayer the missing key?
• Part 3 – What is the Anchor Prayer?

Scriptures & References in this episode

• Matthew 11:28
• Matthew 3:13-17
• Matthew 17:1-13
• Isaiah 43:1
• Proverbs 3:5-6

New Links

• Reserve your spot my next live teaching, How to Grow Spiritually in the Middle of a Very Busy & Stressful Life. This will be a tight 35-minute teaching that is very practical, plus you’ll get a free PDF of a great Gratitude practice, one of my best book recommendations and more. Info & Sign up Here: http://live210.com/busy-growth-event

• Have me out to speak about inner life growth, following Jesus, or emotional discipleship. Also scheduling the Untangled Heart workshop. Booking events through 2020. Let’s make something happen!

Find My Stuff

• The Wisdom of Your Heart: Discovering the God Given Purpose and Power of Your Emotions.
• Discovering your Authentic Core Values: A Step-by-step Guide
• Untangle Workbook: A guided journaling process for untangling emotions and finding wisdom.

• Subscribe to my Email List.
• Subscribe to The Apprenticeship Way on iTunes and all other podcasting apps.
• Find a video version on my Youtube Channel.

Episode 023 – It’s Time to Listen to the Survivors of Sexual Abuse

One of the easiest ways to fail to love well is to assume that YOUR experience is canonical and that others have had the same experience you’ve had. We often do this with survivors of trauma. In this episode Mary DeMuth, author and advocate for sexual abuse victims, speaks to the issue of how Christians and Church Leaders often fail the survivors of trauma and how we can do better.

Show Notes

Show notes will not be a transcript. At least not now. You’ll find a few key bullet points, any scriptures references, as well as any other books or resources referenced.

• More from Mary DeMuth
  • Her website https://www.marydemuth.com
  • Her book We Too’s site: https://www.wetoo.org/
  • Her book on Amazon

New Links

• Get caught up on the Anchor Prayer episodes before I continue the series.
  • How abiding is possible (Anchor Prayer 1)
  • Is memorized prayer the thing you’ve been missing? (Anchor Prayer 2)
  • What is the anchor prayer? (Anchor Prayer 3)

• Reserve your spot my next live teaching, How to Grow Spiritually in the Middle of a Very Busy & Stressful Life. This will be a tight 35-minute teaching that is very practical, plus you’ll get a free PDF of a great Gratitude practice, one of my best book recommendations and more. Info & Sign up Here: http://live210.com/busy-growth-event

Find My Stuff

• The Wisdom of Your Heart: Discovering the God Given Purpose and Power of Your Emotions.
• Discovering your Authentic Core Values: A Step-by-step Guide
• Untangle Workbook: A guided journaling process for untangling emotions and finding wisdom.

• Subscribe to my Email List.
• Subscribe to The Apprenticeship Way on iTunes and all other podcasting apps.
• Find a video version on my Youtube Channel.

Episode 022 – We’ve Gotten God’s Glory Upside Down

I grew up learning a Christian story that the most important thing was God’s glory. We gave God glory by what we believed, how we behaved, and how we talked about God to other people. Good Christians and Good churches would focus on giving God glory above all else. To kick off season 2 of the podcast, I’m going to share with you how I’m learning we may have misunderstood God’s glory.

Show Notes

Show notes will not be a transcript. At least not now. You’ll find a few key bullet points, any scriptures references, as well as any other books or resources referenced.

• Scriptures Cited
  • 1 John 4:8 – The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
  • John 10:30 – The Father and I are one.
  • John 1:14 – The Word became flesh and took up residence among us. We observed His glory, the glory as the One and Only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
  • Colossians 2:9 – For the entire fullness of God’s nature dwells bodily in Christ.
  • Hebrews 1:1-2 – Long ago God spoke to the fathers by the prophets at different times and in different ways. In these last days, He has spoken to us by His Son. God has appointed Him heir of all things and made the universe through Him.
  • John 17:3 – This is eternal life: that they may know You, the only true God, and the One You have sent—Jesus Christ.
  • 1 John 4:20 – If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For the person who does not love his brother he has seen cannot love the God he has not seen.
  • Matthew 22:37 – He said to him, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.
  • John 13:34 – I give you a new command: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you must also love one another.
  • Matt 5:46 – For if you love those who love you, what reward will you have? Don’t even the tax collectors do the same?
  • Luke 10:25-37 – The parable of the Good Samaritan.
  • 1 John 3:16 – This is how we have come to know love: He laid down His life for us. We should also lay down our lives for our brothers.
  • 1 John 4:16 – And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him.
  • Jude 1:25 – To the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord,[a] be glory, majesty, power, and authority before all time,[b] now and forever. Amen.

New Links

• Get caught up on the Anchor Prayer episodes before I continue the series.
  • How abiding is possible (Anchor Prayer 1)
  • Is memorized prayer the thing you’ve been missing? (Anchor Prayer 2)
  • What is the anchor prayer? (Anchor Prayer 3)

• Reserve your spot for the upcoming live teaching, How to Grow Spiritually in the Middle of a Very Busy & Stressful Life. This will be a tight 35-minute teaching that is very practical, plus you’ll get a free PDF of a great Gratitude practice, one of my best book recommendations and more. Coming up on 10/8 and 10.10.

Find My Stuff

• The Wisdom of Your Heart: Discovering the God Given Purpose and Power of Your Emotions.
• Discovering your Authentic Core Values: A Step-by-step Guide
• Untangle Workbook: A guided journaling process for untangling emotions and finding wisdom.

• Subscribe to my Email List.
• Subscribe to The Apprenticeship Way on iTunes and all other podcasting apps.
• Find a video version on my Youtube Channel.

Episode 021 – What is the Anchor Prayer?

Our church building roof has rock climbing anchors installed on it. It’s a very steep and high roof. Doing maintenance and repair work up there is risky. Those anchor points allow people working on the roof to anchor themselves so they can go about their work and not fall off.

In this series, I’m sharing with you a prayer that has become a similar kind of anchor to me in my life. Along the way, we’re touching on how our brains work, how “abiding in Christ” is a habit we can build, and how memorized prayer helps shape our thinking. Plus I’ll introduce you to the words of this prayer that means so much to me.

Show Notes

Show notes will not be a transcript. At least not now. You’ll find a few key bullet points, any scriptures references, as well as any other books or resources referenced.

• Recap from the series so far:
  • On Abiding:
    • Jesus taught us that our primary task of faith is to abide or remain. See John 15.
    • Abiding or remaining are not theological abstractions, but a lived experience we can practice.
    • Abiding is about where our minds come to rest.
    • For example, worry is a kind of “abiding.” When we get preoccupied with worry or “future-tripping” we are letting our minds abide in that place. This is a kind of prayer or meditation on imagined worst-case scenarios.
  • On renewing our minds:
    • Paul, in Romans 12:2, tells us that we are to cooperate with God in the process of having our minds (and thus, thoughts) renewed.
    • This is, at least partly, about our mental habits. We have life-long mental habits that don’t lead toward abiding in Christ. But we can also develop new habits!
  • On Prayer:
    • Extemporaneous (or spontaneous and informal) prayer is great at taking our concerns to God, but it doesn’t do much to form us or shape our thoughts.
    • Liturgical Prayer, often drawn from scripture, or from truth found in scripture, can help shape our thoughts. Memorized liturgical prayer is ideal for this.
• The Anchor Prayer:
  • I rest in faith, trusting Father.
    I walk by faith, following Jesus.
    I hear in faith, obeying Spirit.
    In You, I remain.
  • A tip-of-the-iceberg prayer, that brings to mind important truth about our identity before God.
    • “It reminds me of the Father’s sovereignty and grace for me, and that my posture toward the world is to be rest. I’m not in charge. I’m not God.
      It reminds me of my identity as a follower of Christ, that my life is to be made up of steps, actions, choices, that follow after Jesus and his way—and that I do this by faith, not because I’m certain.
      It reminds me that I am not alone, that God is with me through the indwelling Spirit, and that if I pay attention that Guidance is available to me.
      It reminds me that God is ultimately relationship, Father, Son & Spirit, honoring and loving one another in a never-ending dance of creation and that I am invited into that relationship.
      It reminds me that my primary work is not to strive, but to remain.”

My Links

• Get the The Wisdom Of Your Heart Audiobook now!
  • On Audible.com.
  • On Amazon.com.
  • On iTunes.
• If you’ve never had an Audible.com account, you can get The Wisdom of Your Heart for FREE, by following this special link and creating a new paid account. If you love audiobooks this is the very best way to get them.

• Subscribe to my Email List. Get a couple of emails each month with links to my latest blogs and podcast episode, along with other things that will be helpful to your journey. Also, this is the best way to get a notification when the audiobook goes live!
• Subscribe to The Apprenticeship Way on iTunes and all other podcasting apps.
• Find it here on my website–this page that you’re on right now!
• Find a video version on my Youtube Channel.
• Want to bring me to speak to your community about this topic, practical spiritual growth, or emotional discipleship? Check out my speaking page and let’s talk about possibilities.
• Check out the Apprenticeship Lab Member Community. It’s $8/month. You get to participate in a small, private, positive community of people committed to spiritual growth as well as getting access to a growing library of resources for spiritual growth including 30 short videos for daily inspiration to kick off your year, and access to several online courses. This is also just a great way to help support the work I do. I don’t have a Patreon or other means for donations, so signing up for a membership is a great way to support my work in an ongoing way.

Episode 020 – Is Memorized Prayer the key you’ve been missing?

Today I’m going to make a recommendation that is honestly surprising to me. My spiritual life has been deeply impacted by a practice that I looked down on for most of my life.

I’m learning I’m not as smart as I thought I was! Hopefully, my learning can be a benefit to you.

Oh, and in case the title doesn’t grab you, this is about mental habits, how we can really experience abiding in Christ, and a prayer that has changed my spiritual life.

Show Notes

Show notes will not be a transcript. At least not now. You’ll find a few key bullet points, any scriptures references, as well as any other books or resources referenced.

• This is part 2 of the Anchor Prayer Series.
• Jesus taught us that our primary task of faith is to abide or remain. See John 15.
  • “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”
  • This is often called The Abiding Life, Abiding in Christ, or just “life in Christ.”
  • How do we really do this? Not as a theological abstraction, but as a lived and experienced reality?
• We already abide. Whatever thoughts we allow to occupy our mind is where we’re abiding.
• Many of our thoughts (most?) are actually the result of mental habits that we’ve built over the course of our life. The more practice certain kinds of thoughts, the easier and more natural those thoughts become.
• Abiding in Christ isn’t difficult because he is far away. He’s not far. He is in all ways near:
  • Psalms 34:18. God is close to the brokenhearted.
  • Ephesians 2:13. We have been “brought near” through Christ.
  • John 14:18. Jesus promised not to leave us as orphans.
  • Matthew 28:20. Jesus promised to be with us always.
  • John 14:20. Jesus told us that He was with us intimately. “In that day you will know that I am in My Father, you are in Me, and I am in you.”
• Abiding in Christ is difficult because the habits of our mind lead us to focus on other things. But that means we can learn new habits!
• Prayer can be a part of this process.
  • Extemporaneous Prayer — The way many of us have been taught to pray. Spontaneous, focused on our needs, authentic to what we are feeling, hoping, needing. Very good at helping us express ourselves to God. See Philippians 4:6
  • Prayer has another purpose, and extemporaneous prayer is not very good at this one. Prayer is meant to form us, to shape our thoughts.
  • Memorized, or Liturgical prayer, is best for this 2nd purpose. By repeating words of truth, often based on scripture, we plant those words in our minds, and they form the basis of new ways of thinking.
  • This is part of how we participate in the Spirit’s work of “renewing of our minds.” (Romans 12)

My Links

• You are invited to my first live event! June 1st, in Vancouver WA. The Untangled Heart Workshop. I’m doing this in collaboration with a close friend who is a trauma therapist with more than 30 years of experience. This 1-day event will give you practical tools so that by the end of the day you’ll be better able to navigate your own emotions and the emotions of other people.
  • More info or to register: Go here!
• Get the The Wisdom Of Your Heart Audiobook now!
  • On Audible.com.
  • On Amazon.com.
  • On iTunes.
• If you’ve never had an Audible.com account, you can get The Wisdom of Your Heart for FREE, by following this special link and creating a new paid account. If you love audiobooks this is the very best way to get them.

• Subscribe to my Email List. Get a couple of emails each month with links to my latest blogs and podcast episode, along with other things that will be helpful to your journey. Also, this is the best way to get a notification when the audiobook goes live!
• Subscribe to The Apprenticeship Way on iTunes and all other podcasting apps.
• Find it here on my website–this page that you’re on right now!
• Find a video version on my Youtube Channel.
• Want to bring me to speak to your community about this topic, practical spiritual growth, or emotional discipleship? Check out my speaking page and let’s talk about possibilities.
• Check out the Apprenticeship Lab Member Community. It’s $8/month. You get to participate in a small, private, positive community of people committed to spiritual growth as well as getting access to a growing library of resources for spiritual growth including 30 short videos for daily inspiration to kick off your year, and access to several online courses. This is also just a great way to help support the work I do. I don’t have a Patreon or other means for donations, so signing up for a membership is a great way to support my work in an ongoing way.

Episode 019 – How Abiding is Possible

Jesus told us to live connected to the vine. We often refer to that as the Abiding Life. If you grew up in the churh you probably heard about that a lot.

Well, I wonder… Do you have an ongoing sense of Jesus’ presence in your life? Do you even believe that’s possible? Would you think I’m crazy if I suggest that we really can have a persistent sense of the Divine in our lives?

And what if I suggested this had to do with your mental habits?

Show Notes

Show notes will not be a transcript. At least not now. You’ll find a few key bullet points, any scriptures references, as well as any other books or resources referenced.

• This is Episode 1 of the Anchor Prayer series.
• The anchor we need to hold us steady in a chaotic world is abiding in Christ. But what does that even mean?
  • Jesus taught this principle in the Upper Room in John 15.
  • Theology (intellectual ideas) is not enough to provide us with a solid anchor in a chaotic life.
  • Trying to force ourselves to think about God a lot is also not a good enough anchor to keep us steady.
• The key to abiding has to do with our mental habits. Mental habits are patterns of thought and emotion that we have practices over and over. As a result, they become easier, more natural, even second nature.
• We often practice a kind of mental liturgy when we worry. Repeating our worries over and over, we focus our minds on those worrying concerns, and they grow larger in our mental experience. This is almost like a prayer, only the focus is our worries rather than God.
• The more often we engage in this “liturgy” the easier it becomes for us.
• If we are going to really experience abiding in Christ, we are going to need different mental habits.

My Links

• You are invited to my first live event! June 1st, in Vancouver WA. The Untangled Heart Workshop. I’m doing this in collaboration with a close friend who is a trauma therapist with more than 30 years of experience. This 1-day event will give you practical tools so that by the end of the day you’ll be better able to navigate your own emotions and the emotions of other people. It’s gonna cost $90 and will be well worth it, but if you register quick you can get the early-bird registration rate of $65.00!
  • More info or to register: Go here!
• Get the The Wisdom Of Your Heart Audiobook now!
  • On Audible.com.
  • On Amazon.com.
  • On iTunes.
• If you’ve never had an Audible.com account, you can get The Wisdom of Your Heart for FREE, by following this special link and creating a new paid account. If you love audiobooks this is the very best way to get them.

• Subscribe to my Email List. Get a couple of emails each month with links to my latest blogs and podcast episode, along with other things that will be helpful to your journey. Also, this is the best way to get a notification when the audiobook goes live!
• Subscribe to The Apprenticeship Way on iTunes and all other podcasting apps.
• Find it here on my website–this page that you’re on right now!
• Find a video version on my Youtube Channel.
• Want to bring me to speak to your community about this topic, practical spiritual growth, or emotional discipleship? Check out my speaking page and let’s talk about possibilities.
• Check out the Apprenticeship Lab Member Community. It’s $8/month. You get to participate in a small, private, positive community of people committed to spiritual growth as well as getting access to a growing library of resources for spiritual growth including 30 short videos for daily inspiration to kick off your year, and access to several online courses. This is also just a great way to help support the work I do. I don’t have a Patreon or other means for donations, so signing up for a membership is a great way to support my work in an ongoing way.

Episode 018 – 4 Clues You Need Emotional Growth

I went through a major crash that was the result of emotional immaturity and brokenness. But it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. There were clues that I ignored.

Maybe some of these clues are in your life as well?

Show Notes

Show notes will not be a transcript. At least not now. You’ll find a few key bullet points, any scriptures references, as well as any other books or resources referenced.

• Looking back on my life I can now see that there were clues that my inner life was a wreck. Emotional immaturity and untended wounds were doing damage, and I didn’t see it.
• Do you see any of these clues present in your life?
  • #1 – You are known for outbursts. You frequently over-react, blowing $1000 of emotional energy on a $5 problem.
  • #2 – You are easily offended. Irritation is your constant companion, and even small things offend you. Some people walk on eggshells around you.
  • #3 – You are always fine. Things that excite others do nothing for you. Sad or painful things don’t deeply impact you. You are rarely vulnerable.
  • #4 – You hide behind solo activities. You often choose solo activities to avoid discomfort that comes up in the emotional connections of relationship.
• If any of these show up frequently in your life, it may indicate that there are untended wounds that need healing, or emotional immaturity.
• The more disconnected we are from our own emotions, the harder it will be is to connect emotionally with other people, and even with God.
• You inner life is the wellspring from which every other part of your life flows.

My Links

• You are invited to my first live event! June 1st, in Vancouver WA. The Untangled Heart Workshop. I’m doing this in collaboration with a close friend who is a trauma therapist with more than 30 years of experience. This 1-day event will give you practical tools so that by the end of the day you’ll be better able to navigate your own emotions and the emotions of other people. It’s gonna cost $90 and will be well worth it, but if you register quick you can get the early-bird registration rate of $65.00!
  • More info or to register: Go here!
• Get the The Wisdom Of Your Heart Audiobook now!
  • On Audible.com.
  • On Amazon.com.
  • On iTunes.
• If you’ve never had an Audible.com account, you can get The Wisdom of Your Heart for FREE, by following this special link and creating a new paid account. If you love audiobooks this is the very best way to get them.

• Subscribe to my Email List. Get a couple of emails each month with links to my latest blogs and podcast episode, along with other things that will be helpful to your journey. Also, this is the best way to get a notification when the audiobook goes live!
• Subscribe to The Apprenticeship Way on iTunes and all other podcasting apps.
• Find it here on my website–this page that you’re on right now!
• Find a video version on my Youtube Channel.
• Want to bring me to speak to your community about this topic, practical spiritual growth, or emotional discipleship? Check out my speaking page and let’s talk about possibilities.
• Check out the Apprenticeship Lab Member Community. It’s $8/month. You get to participate in a small, private, positive community of people committed to spiritual growth as well as getting access to a growing library of resources for spiritual growth including 30 short videos for daily inspiration to kick off your year, and access to several online courses. This is also just a great way to help support the work I do. I don’t have a Patreon or other means for donations, so signing up for a membership is a great way to support my work in an ongoing way.

Episode 017 – Emotional Growth is Not a Niche! – (And Audiobook Launch!)

Today is the day! 

Today is the day when you can pick up the Audio Book for The Wisdom of Your Heart! I am so excited about this, and to celebrate we’re having a short bonus podcast episode.

I’ve got a quick story to tell you. 

Show Notes

Show notes will not be a transcript. At least not now. You’ll find a few key bullet points, any scriptures references, as well as any other books or resources referenced.

• Growing in our emotional maturity is crucial for becoming the best we can be, and experiencing the life God has for us.
• Today is the launch of the Audiobook for The Wisdom Of Your Heart.
• Whether you read the book or not, make sure you are taking intentional steps to invest in your own inner life. That’s where God is waiting to meet you.

My Links

• Get the Audiobook now!
  • On Audible.com.
  • On Amazon.com.
  • On iTunes.
• If you’ve never had an Audible.com account, you can get The Wisdom of Your Heart for FREE, by following this special link and creating a new paid account. If you love audiobooks this is the very best way to get them.

• Subscribe to my Email List. Get a couple of emails each month with links to my latest blogs and podcast episode, along with other things that will be helpful to your journey. Also, this is the best way to get a notification when the audiobook goes live!
• Subscribe to The Apprenticeship Way on iTunes and all other podcasting apps.

• Find it here on my website–this page that you’re on right now!
• Find a video version on my Youtube Channel.
• Want to bring me to speak to your community about this topic, practical spiritual growth, or emotional discipleship? Check out my speaking page and let’s talk about possibilities.
• Check out the Apprenticeship Lab Member Community. It’s $8/month. You get to participate in a small, private, positive community of people committed to spiritual growth as well as getting access to a growing library of resources for spiritual growth including 30 short videos for daily inspiration to kick off your year, and access to several online courses. This is also just a great way to help support the work I do.
• I don’t have a Patreon or other means for donations, so signing up for a membership is a great way to support my work in an ongoing way.

Episode 016 – The Inner Work Imperative

I wrecked my church. I’m not proud of it, and it’s still painful to talk about. But I want to tell you the story because maybe I can change the course of your life. You need to know about the inner work imperative.

Show Notes

Show notes will not be a transcript. At least not now. You’ll find a few key bullet points, any scriptures references, as well as any other books or resources referenced.

• We are made in God’s image. One thing that means is that we are also makers, and like God, we also make things in our image.
• In spite of our conscious intentions, the state of our inner life will shape what we make in the world.
• The Inner Work Imperative:
  • 1. What you make will be made in your image.
  • 2. The most important thing to focus on is learning how to nurture a healthy inner life.
  • 3. The most effective way to impact the quality of what you’re making is to invest in your inner life.
  • 4. If you ignore your inner life, your inner life will still shape what you make.
• The Inner Life: The authentic you deep within that contains your story, your sense of identity, your connection to God, and is expressed in your deepest thoughts, your emotional responses, and your intuition.

My Links

• Subscribe to my Email List. Get a couple of emails each month with links to my latest blogs and podcast episode, along with other things that will be helpful to your journey. Also, this is the best way to get a notification when the audiobook goes live!
• Subscribe to The Apprenticeship Way on iTunes and all other podcasting apps.

• Find it here on my website–this page that you’re on right now!
• Find a video version on my Youtube Channel.
• Want to bring me to speak to your community about this topic, practical spiritual growth, or emotional discipleship? Check out my speaking page and let’s talk about possibilities.
• Check out the Apprenticeship Lab Member Community. It’s $8/month. You get to participate in a small, private, positive community of people committed to spiritual growth as well as getting access to a growing library of resources for spiritual growth including 30 short videos for daily inspiration to kick off your year, and access to several online courses. This is also just a great way to help support the work I do.
• I don’t have a Patreon or other means for donations, so signing up for a membership is a great way to support my work in an ongoing way.

Episode 015 – Are you doing the hidden inner work?

I like trophies. Credits. Accomplishments. Stuff that I can point to, Stuff that shows my hard work is paying off. Maybe you like that stuff too?
But today I want to tell you about something that matters far more. And its something you’ll never get an award for. I hate that… but it’s true.

Whatever experience other people have of us will not be rooted in our accomplishments but in the hidden inner work. So, are you doing it?

Show Notes

Show notes will not be a transcript. At least not now. You’ll find a few key bullet points, any scriptures references, as well as any other books or resources referenced.

• We put most of our effort into outwardly visible aspects of our life: our accomplishments, our image, our career. But the thing that will most impact how others experience us will be something nobody else can see: the hidden inner work.
• The hidden inner work is the work we do to nurture and cultivate our inner life. It includes:
  • Our spiritual life.
  • Work we do toward healing and emotional maturity.
  • Facing our grief and loss.
  • Understanding the source of our anger.
  • Learning how to be present in the moment.

• Read the book that impacted me so deeply:
  • Emotional Healthy Spirituality, by Pete Scazerro

My Links

• Subscribe to my Email List. Get a couple of emails each month with links to my latest blogs and podcast episode, along with other things that will be helpful to your journey. Also, this is the best way to get a notification when the audiobook goes live!
• Subscribe to The Apprenticeship Way on iTunes and all other podcasting apps.

• Find it here on my website–this page that you’re on right now!
• Find a video version on my Youtube Channel.Want to bring me to speak to your community about this topic, practrical spiritual growth, or emotional discipleship?Check out my speaking page and let’s talk about possibilities.
• Check out the Apprenticeship Lab Member Community. It’s $8/month. You get to participate in a small, private, positive community of people committed to spiritual growth as well as getting access to a growing library of resources for spiritual growth including 30 short videos for daily inspiration to kick off your year, and access to several online courses. This is also just a great way to help support the work I do. I don’t have a Patreon or other means for donations, so signing up for a membership is a great way to support my work in an ongoing way.

Episode 014 – God Wants You Emotional

There is a crucial element of our lives that many of us are ignoring. The wreckage of our denial is visible all around us.

Our inner life, and particularly our emotional life, is a crucial part of our spiritual growth. Time we started paying attention!

Show Notes

Show notes will not be a transcript. At least not now. You’ll find a few key bullet points, any scriptures references, as well as any other books or resources referenced.

• Many people are content with a life (and spiritual journey) that is “mostly working,” unaware that their failure to pay attention to their inner life is causing major damage.
• When asked what matters most, Jesus told us that we love God with all we are and all we have. We love God through our relationships, with our mind, with our ability and with our heart, our inner life. That includes our emotions. (Matthew 22:34-40)
• Many churches and Christian teachers avoid talking about emotions or only talk about them in negative terms. This is a failure of discipleship.
  • Our emotions are a part of how God created us.
  • They are created in God’s image.
  • They have an important role in our lives.
• Scripture shows God having emotional experiences. Just a few examples of hundreds available:
  • Psalms 78:40. Grief.
  • Deuteronomy 1:34. Anger.
  • Exodus 34:14. Jealousy.
  • 1st Kings 3:10. Pleasure.
  • Zephaniah 3:17. Rejoicing and delight.
  • Isaiah 54:7. Compassion.
• Scripture also shows Jesus living with the full range of human emotion. A few examples:
  • John 11:35. Weeping in grief for Lazarus’ death.
  • Luke 19:41. Weeping with compassion over Jerusalem.
  • Luke 10:17-21. Celebration and joy at God working in the disciples’ lives and ministry.
  • Mark 10:14. Indignant with the disciples.
  • Matthew 26. Sorrow, distress, loneliness, perhaps even fear in the Garden of Gethsemane.
• Scripture tells us that Jesus is the “image of the invisible God,” (Col. 1:15) and that anyone who has seen Jesus “has seen the Father.” (John 14:9) That means what we see in Jesus’ emotions, tells us something important about God.
• If we believe that spiritual maturity means becoming “more like God,” then what we believe about God’s emotions matters enormously.
• Our emotions are not a flaw in the design, a weakness, or a sin. Emotions are a God-given gift, meant to move us and give us important information about what is happening in our inner world and outer circumstances.

• Will you join my Audiobook Launch Team?
  • I am so excited to announce that the audiobook for The Wisdom of Your Heart is finally done. The plan is to launch at the end of March. If you live online–Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram–I would LOVE to have your help getting the word out. The commitment is short — just 6 weeks through March and the first two weeks of April. I’ll provide lots of content — memes, images, videos, text — that you can share. I can’t do this alone! If The Wisdom of Your Heart has been meaningful to you, and you’re comfy online, would you be willing to help? Email me at marc@marcalanschelske.com and you’re in.

My Links

• Subscribe to The Apprenticeship Way on iTunes and all other podcasting apps. When you do please leave a review. Those magically help other listeners find there way here.
• Want to bring me to speak to your community about this topic, practrical spiritual growth, or emotional discipleship?Check out my speaking page and let’s talk about possibilities.
• Find it here on my website–this page that you’re on right now!
• Find a video version on my Youtube Channel.
• Subscribe to my Email List.
• Check out the Apprenticeship Lab Member Community. It’s $8/month. You get to participate in a small, private, positive community of people committed to spiritual growth as well as getting access to a growing library of resources for spiritual growth including 30 short videos for daily inspiration to kick off your year, and access to several online courses. This is also just a great way to help support the work I do. I don’t have a Patreon or other means for donations, so signing up for a membership is a great way to support my work in an ongoing way.

Episode 013 – The Spiritual Discipline of Minding Your Own Damn Business

There’s an important spiritual practice you might be overlooking. Lots of people are. But this one little thing can bring you a lot of peace. And I know you and me both could use more inner peace. That practice?

Minding your own damn business. This is a key that opens the door of spiritual growth.

Show Notes

Show notes will not be a transcript. At least not now. You’ll find a few key bullet points, any scriptures references, as well as any other books or resources referenced.

• One of the most destructive things we do for our spiritual growth is to compare ourselves to other people.
• Comparison feels like an accomplishment, since it allows us to highlight how we’re doing well in comparison to other people, but it distracts us from our own inner life and spiritual journey.
• So much of our frustration and unhappiness comes from our tendency to compare.
  • Jesus restores Peter on the beach and forgives him, then he tells Peter something about his future. Peter’s first response is to point at someone else and ask, “Well, what about him?”In John 21:17-22 we see Peter and Jesus interacting, and Peter’s first instinct is to compare himself to someone else’s spiritual journey.
  • Jesus’ response: “What is that to you? As for you, follow me.”
  • This is the key to opening the door to spiritual growth.
• The Spiritual Practice of Minding Your Own Business
  • When I’m focused on the journey of other people, I don’t have to do anything toward my own growth.
  • Comparing my choices with other people feels like an accomplishment, but it keeps you from growing.
  • You are responsible for your own journey and that is where your energy and attention should be focused
• Matthew Henry, an 18th century preacher commented:
  • “If we will closely attend to the duty of following Christ, we shall find neither heart nor time to meddle with that which does not belong to us.” – Commentary on John 21:22

• Will you join my Audiobook Launch Team?
  • I am so excited to announce that the audiobook for The Wisdom of Your Heart is finally done. The plan is to launch at the end of March. If you live online–Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram–I would LOVE to have your help getting the word out. The commitment is short — just 6 weeks through March and the first two weeks of April. I’ll provide lots of content — memes, images, videos, text — that you can share. I can’t do this alone! If The Wisdom of Your Heart has been meaningful to you, and you’re comfy online, would you be willing to help? Email me at marc@marcalanschelske.com and you’re in.

My Links

• Subscribe to The Apprenticeship Way on iTunes and all other podcasting apps. When you do please leave a review. Those magically help other listeners find there way here.
• Want to bring me to speak to your community about this topic, practrical spiritual growth, or emotional discipleship?Check out my speaking page and let’s talk about possibilities.
• Find it here on my website–this page that you’re on right now!
• Find a video version on my Youtube Channel.
• Subscribe to my Email List.
• Check out the Apprenticeship Lab Member Community. It’s $8/month. You get to participate in a small, private, positive community of people committed to spiritual growth as well as getting access to a growing library of resources for spiritual growth including 30 short videos for daily inspiration to kick off your year, and access to several online courses. This is also just a great way to help support the work I do. I don’t have a Patreon or other means for donations, so signing up for a membership is a great way to support my work in an ongoing way.

Episode 012 – Don’t Run Aimlessly. (Prepare for Where You Want to Go)

The new year is underway. 2019 is going to happen to us. Will our experience be good? Will it be bad? It’s hard to say because, honestly, most of this new year is going to be outside of your control.

But I can tell you one thing with certainty. Whatever your life will look like a year from now, it will look that way because of the time you’ve invested in preparation.

Show Notes

Show notes will not be a transcript. At least not now. You’ll find a few key bullet points, any scriptures references, as well as any other books or resources referenced.

• The new year is upon us. Whatever your life is going to look like a year from now, it will largely be that shape because of preparation you put in.
• Every great experience you had over the holidays, all those moments you loved best, relied on preparation from you or someone.
• Preparation is a spiritual practice. Not only are we setting up for what is to come, but we ourselves are changed in the process.
• Isaiah 40, the famous passage often taken as a messianic prophecy is really an instruction to prepare (Isaiah 40:1-5).
  • Valleys need to be lifted up. That’s filling in the low places.
  • Mountains and hills need to be leveled. That’s getting obstacles out of the way.
  • This prepares the way for the “glory of the Lord” to be revealed.
  • In your life, what valleys need to be lifted up? What hills need to be leveled? What obstacles are keeping you from experiencing God’s presence and glory in your life?
• John the Baptist preached to prepare people to experience Jesus. His message came with three ways people could prepare:
  • Repent – Simply put, this means take responsibility for your choices and actions. Admit when you’ve blown it. Acknowledge the dark stuff in your heart.
  • Be Baptized – Baptism, both in the Jewish and Christian tradition, is a marker of inclusion in the community. In the Jewish tradition, it was about turning away from those things that make you impure and would keep you out of the community. In the Christian tradition, it was about dying to the old life, and being raised to the new life which takes place in a new community. Life change happens best in a community committed to growth.
  • Bear Fruit in Keeping with Repentance – Our lives bear fruit automatically. Fruit is the natural result of our intention, motivation and choices. Warning: the life you have now is the fruit of your intentions, motivations and choices from the past. Good new: your life in the future is the fruit of the choices you are making now.
• You can prepare for growth by applying these three instructions to your own life:
  • Take responsibility for your choices and actions. Don’t blame others. Don’t play the victim card.
  • Become a committed member of a positive community that is focused on life change.
  • Practice making choices in keeping with the new life you are moving towards. This will bear fruit.
• Don’t Run Aimlessly.
  • Paul compares our spiritual life to running a race. (Ist Cor. 9)
  • His best advice for us: “I do not run like one who runs aimlessly.”
  • Know where you want to head, and then begin practicing life in that direction.

• A Contest? A Give-Away?
  • To celebrate our first 3500 downloads of the podcast, I’m giving away books to the first ten people who share this podcast on Social Media. Here’s how it works:
  • Share on FACEBOOK or TWITTER.
  • Share a link to any episode (Like this one), or to the main Podcast page index.
  • In your post, briefly explain WHY you think this podcast is worth listening to.
  • Tag me so I can see your post. On Twitter, I’m @Schelske. On Facebook, you can find me as MarcAlanSchelske or Schelske.
  • The first 10 shares that I see, I’ll reach out to. I’ll need your physical address and I’ll send you sighed copies of my two books, Discovering Your Authentic Core Values, and The Wisdom of Your Heart.
  • If you’re international and postage would make it silly to send you physical books, I’ll work something else out with you!

• My Links
  • Subscribe to The Apprenticeship Way on iTunes and all other podcasting apps. When you do please leave a review. Those magically help other listeners find there way here.
  • Find it here on my website–this page that you’re on right now!
  • Find a video version on my Youtube Channel.
  • Subscribe to my Email List.
  • Check out the Apprenticeship Lab Member Community. It’s $8/month. You get to participate in a small, private, positive community of people committed to spiritual growth as well as getting access to a growing library of resources for spiritual growth including 30 short videos for daily inspiration to kick off your year, and access to several online courses. This is also just a great way to help support the work I do. I don’t have a Patreon or other means for donations, so signing up for a membership is a great way to support my work in an ongoing way.

Episode 011 – Gratitude Can Save Your Life!

A new year has just begun, and that means we’re all thinking about goals and hopes and resolutions. Honestly, most of that is useless. Most resolutions fail. But if you really wanted to change your life for the better this year, there is one thing you could do that would have a massive impact. A simple little practice called gratitude. And I’m not joking when I say it can save your life.

Show Notes

Show notes will not be a transcript. At least not now. You’ll find a few key bullet points, any scriptures references, as well as any other books or resources referenced.

• The new year is the time when we think about making life changes. Well, most resolutions don’t work. Try this instead. Don’t leave gratitude behind with the holidays.
• Gratitude is increasingly being found to have a tangible impact on our lives by clinicians. Some examples:
  • “The Grateful Disposition: A Conceptual and Empirical Topography,” 2002, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
  • “The Role of Gratitude in Spiritual Well-Being in Asymptomatic Heart Failure,” 2015, American Psychological Association
  • “Do Gratitude and Spirituality Predict Psychological Distress?” Department of Psychology, Bowling Green University.
  • A brief introduction to Robert Emmon’s work on Gratitude.
• Gratitude can impact your life in amazing ways:
  • “We found that compared to their less grateful counterparts, grateful people are higher in positive emotions and life satisfaction, and lower in negative emotions…They appear to be more socially oriented, more empathetic, forgiving, helpful and supportive than their less grateful counterparts. They appear to be more socially oriented, more empathetic, forgiving, helpful and supportive than their less grateful counterparts.” – The Grateful Disposition, Linked Above.
  • People who regularly practice gratitude exercises are less likely to develop anxiety and depression.
  • “Gratitude and spiritual well-being are key positive factors to consider in this population. We documented that…gratitude is related to better mood and sleep, less fatigue, more self-efficacy [in treatment] and a lower cellular inflammatory index.” – The Role of Gratitude in Spiritual Well-Being in Asymptomatic Heart Failure, Linked Above
• Gratitude is a major theme in scripture.
  • Appears in hundreds of verses.
  • “Be thankful” appears 37 times total, which is 1 more than the instruction to “Be holy.”
• Gratitude is counter-cultural
  • Our culture aspires to be a meritocracy, but this is directly opposed to gratitude. If we earned or are worthy of everything we have, then we have nothing to be grateful for.
  • In a meritocracy, we begin to lose touch with the reality that everything in our life is a gift. All of life, ultimately, is grace.
  • This is why gratitude and the practice of gratitude is a fundamental marker of spiritual maturity.

• A Contest? A Give-Away?
  • To celebrate our first 3500 downloads of the podcast, I’m giving away books to the first ten people who share this podcast on Social Media. Here’s how it works:\
  • Share on FACEBOOK or TWITTER.
  • Share a link to any episode (Like this one), or to the main Podcast page index.
  • In your post, briefly explain WHY you think this podcast is worth listening to.
  • Tag me so I can see your post. On Twitter, I’m @Schelske. On Facebook, you can find me as MarcAlanSchelske or Schelske.
  • The first 10 shares that I see, I’ll reach out to. I’ll need your physical address and I’ll send you sighed copies of my two books, Discovering Your Authentic Core Values, and The Wisdom of Your Heart.
  • If you’re international and postage would make it silly to send you physical books, I’ll work something else out with you!

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Episode 010 – Don’t Mistake the Trellis for the Grape

Spiritual practices are crucial for intentional spiritual growth. They are so important that it’s easy to start thinking that they really are what matters most. But that would be a dreadful mistake. N0 matter how helpful our various spiritual practices are, we can never confuse them with what matters most.  Essentially, we have to be careful not to mistake the trellis for the grape.

Show Notes

Show notes will not be a transcript. At least not now. You’ll find a few key bullet points, any scriptures references, as well as any other books or resources referenced.

• We find the most important thing in a strange story in Acts.  Acts 2. This portrays the quintessential “church growth” event that every church dreams of. But what caused the growth?
  • You can have people in a room, but that doesn’t make a church.
  • You can have people who like the message of Jesus and want to talk about it, but that doesn’t make a church.
  • You can sing Christian songs and preach Christian messages, but that doesn’t make the church, either.
    The thing that makes the church is the Holy Spirit. This is also the source of all of our spiritual growth.
• Consider the trellis and it’s role in growing grapes.
  • Grape vines cannot hold themselves up when they are young. They require a trellis to help them grow in a healthy and most productive way.
  • Different farmers use different styles of trellises, depending on their goals.
  • The trellis isn’t the point of growing grapes. The point is the grape and the wine it produces.
  • Grape farmers need trellises, but they don’t get confused about what matters most.
•  All spiritual practices are trellises.
  • They have specific purposes to help us grow in healthy and productive ways.
  • BUT they are not the point of our spiritual lives.
  • Fighting about them is silly.
  • Focusing on them is useless.
  • They only matter if they are leading to healthy and productive growth.