Protect Your Noggin

The last in our 12-part series takes us to the question of whether we can heal the world. If we can help heal the world—even as we can’t control it or remake it according to our own clever designs—then how is this to be accomplished by a Taosurfer? Turns out part of the plan of action for the Tao Te Ching is a form of anarchism. We’ll explain a bit about what that misunderstood meant for the ancient Chinese context.

We sit down with filmmaker Joshua Salzberg and Rev. Matthew González of Lutherans for Racial Justice to talk about racism and the need for diversity and reconciliation in America in general and in the Lutheran world in particular. How ought Christians engage civic life, cultivate hospitality and work toward healing in our churches and the world at large. Salzberg is a Lutheran layperson who is film editor and screenwriter in LA and González is pastor of Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Bronx.

You can know the world 
without walking out your door. 
You can glimpse the celestial Tao 
without looking out your window.
The further you run from yourself
the less you will know.
So the Sage gains insight 
without needing to travel abroad, 
knows what’s up 
before the official story gets published,
and wins without playing games.

Peace, joy, happiness & whether we’ve been so focused on bad guys in religious circles that we might be only hostile to institutional religion. After a brief discussion of a student question, we focus (starting min 40) on a poignant email exchange with Tim, who was kind enough to let us reply to his emails verbally, so we could give it the attention it deserves. His main question: aren't we taking the heart out of folks by our incessant negativity about church abusiveness?

When nations surf the Tao
resources are used for human flourishing.
When nations lose touch with the Tao
resources are built up and set aside for war.
No vice is more vicious than covetousness.
No misery is worse than discontent.

Using Tao Te Ching chapters 19, 22, 35, and 57 we discuss wisdom for teaching the Tao, which it turns out is not done through dogmatism, polemics, coercion, virtue signaling, or legalism, but rather through example, embodiment, and romancing folks into a better flow.

The grand system seems defective.
But, it will never malfunction.
Grand abundance seems empty.
But, it is inexhaustible.
Grand justice seems crooked.
Grand virtuosity seems unskilled.
Grand eloquence seems unlearned.
Motion warms us when it’s cold.
Stillness cools us when it’s hot.
Clarity and stillness
bring the world into alignment.

We discuss the journey of Greg Eilers, which involves gender dysphoria growing up, successful work at a conservative Lutheran pastor, resignation from the pastoral office to pursue full transition, including a full range of surgeries and legal name change to Gina, and finally a detransition. This is not an exercise in trans denial. Rather it helps nuance the overall conversation by showing how individualized each experience is and why we should pay attention.

Many of us know people who have been infected by blatant falsehood. Guest Sean Nowlan, a student at Jeff’s university, helps break down what’s going on with foreign powers using online technology to sow disinformation and divide their rival nation. We discussing the connection between American evangelical belief and receptivity to disinformation. We conclude with the best ways to help friends and family find a way out of false ideologies concocted via disinformation.

Understanding and confronting sexual abuse in the church. Emily Joy was instrumental in starting the Twitter hashtag #CHURCHTOO & has written a book by that same name. We discuss her perspective on the various ways in which American evangelicalism’s way of thinking makes abusive relationships more likely, harder to address, and more painful for those who suffer from the abusive behaviors. Stacie starts out the show by sharing a moving testimony about her response to the book. Opening music by Landon Mills.

Content Warnings: sexual abuse/rape, spiritual abuse