Shake the Dust

Shake the Dust is a podcast of KTF Press. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Find transcripts of this show and subscribe to get our newsletter and bonus episodes at KTFPress.com. 

Follow Jonathan Walton on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.  

Our podcast art is by Jacqueline Tam – follow her and see her other work on Instagram.  

Production, editing, and transcript by Sy Hoekstra. 

Transcript

[Instrumental music from “Citizens” by Jon Guerra plays briefly and then fades out] 

Jonathan Walton: Hey everybody, this is Jonathan Walton. Just wanted to let you know that we will have some information about season two of Shake the Dust coming soon. But we also wanted you to know that we are going to start occasionally dropping some other types of audio into this feed. We’re not sure how often, but we do want to expand what we’re doing here a little bit, and make some audio versions of some of the writing we put on KTFPress.com. So this is a poem I wrote recently called “For Amir – I am a Man.” That’s Amir Locke. And the title references the signs that were held up by sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee in the 1960s, specifically 1968, when MLK was killed. 

For Amir — I am a Man 

I am not a machine. I am a man. 

I am not a tool. I am a man. 

I am not a beast, threat, or thug. I am a man. 

My value is not determined by my usefulness to you. I am a man. 

I am not a means of production, a product for your pleasure or enjoyment, some barbarian in need of civilizing, monkey in need of humanizing, or pre-criminal that needs policing and supervising. I am a man.  

I am not a reason for you to cross the street, pray for your kids when they leave or move your family when I move in. I am a man.  

I do not have a smaller brain nor am I predisposed, predetermined, or predestined for submission and service to you. I am a man.  

My highest purpose is not enslavement, assimilation, or performance and mastery of whatever language, culture, or way of being in the world you have determined to be the best. I am a man.  

I am not meant to be dispossessed, subdued, renamed, molded, and remade into the constantly changing image of acceptance. Nor should I be punished for lack of acquiescence to your ever adapting superior status quo. I am a man.  

I am not a reason for you to be afraid, but a reason for you to rejoice.  

I am not a n**ger — no more than any other man, woman, or person of color is an s, r, c, b, f or other word with which you’ve decided to label us. 

Like Baldwin said, I am not a n**ger but if you need me to be one, that says more about you than it does about me because I am a man.  

Or like Morrison said if you need me to kneel for you to be tall that’s a problem within you, not within me. I am a man.   

Perhaps, I should move, run, duck and hide to escape — you. 

Because you might be a threat, tool, beast or thug.  

Your brain might be smaller and you could be predisposed to greed, violence, and sexual assault — perhaps that’s the problem.  

perhaps you are enslaved because you fancy me to be.  

and you’re an expert servant because you look in the mirror and that’s what you perceive  

Maybe you look in still water and see someone destined to steal and take and hoard and you project that outwards everywhere you go.  

Maybe I should move away from you, keep my kids from marrying your folks, segregate our grocery stores and water fountains, legalize red lines around your neighborhoods, devalue your houses until your schools lose all their prowess, reroute revenue and divest so you have no access to social, political or economic power.  

Maybe we’ll take your kids and come up with names for them and labels for you.  

Maybe we’ll only hire you for certain things and only pay you when we feel like it. And we’ll highlight your good ones with scholarships and documentaries to keep you pursuing the American Dream. And then our families will be safe and you’ll know exactly how to excel and behave. Maybe that would teach you the value of hard work and perseverance and the real worth of the Dollar. 

Or perhaps it will teach you how to pray, wallow, and holler in the squalor of your life — until you find the rage within you that will one day help you identify with me.  

I won’t do that though, even though you tell yourself I will so you can keep your knee on my neck until I call for my momma and die.  

I won’t be like you. Because I am a man made in the image of God and my heart is light not dark and I was molded to flourish, work, rule and create in community like They who made me. Three in one, one in three.  

and if you saw you as fundamentally human, you could see me too. But you still see yourself as master, better, objectively good and supreme and so you will never see me outside of your need to be something other than what you actually are.   

And boy, you are no god.  

I know because in His image, They made me. I am a man. 

In this month’s bonus episode, the team talks about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. We get at the many ways our biases affect how politicians and the media are discussing the war and its refugees, the religious aspects of Putin’s desire to take over Ukraine, how the invasion fits with a growing international movement of religious conservatives from predominantly white countries, and a lot more. 

Articles mentioned: 

* “The Secretive Prisons that Keep Migrants out of Europe” by Ian Urbina 

* “Next Year in Kyiv?” by Diana Butler Bass 

* “Why Far-Right Nationalists Like Steve Bannon Have Embraced a Russian Ideologue” by Brandon W. Hawk 

Shake the Dust is a podcast of KTF Press. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Find transcripts of this show at KTFPress.com. 

Hosts  

Jonathan Walton – follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.  

Suzie Lahoud – follow her on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.  

Sy Hoekstra – follow him on Twitter.  

Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra – listen to the whole song on Spotify. 

Our podcast art is by Jacqueline Tam – follow her and see her other work on Instagram.  

Production and editing by Sy Hoekstra. 

Transcript by Joyce Ambale and Sy Hoekstra. 

Questions about anything you heard on the show? Write to [email protected] and we may answer your question on a future episode. 

Transcript

Suzie Lahoud: You know, I went to Russian school in the fifth grade and we were still reading books after the fall of the Soviet Union. It was late 90s and we were still reading books of “moya rodina,” and Mother Russia, the Motherland, all that stuff. And I'm like, “Oh my gosh, how can they be teaching this propaganda?” But this is the same battle that's going on in the United States today when you look at the 1619 Project versus the 1776 Project, or whatever they're calling it. It's the same thing. We fight over our national narrative because the way that you construct the story about yourself then feeds into your foreign policy, then feeds into domestic policy, then feeds into your narrative about whose lives matter and whose death and suffering is acceptable to you as a nation. 

[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/That it will roll in abundance/ And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.] 

Sy Hoekstra: Welcome to Shake the Dust: Leaving colonized faith for the Kingdom of God. A podcast of KTF Press. My name is Sy Hoekstra, I'm here with Jonathan Walton and Suzie Lahoud, as always. We are going to be talking today about Ukraine and the conflict there, and the refugees leaving the country, and the ways that we have been talking about this war. Kind of like I said in the Afghanistan episode that we did during season one, we're going to stay in our lane a little bit here, talk about how the church talks about and thinks about this conflict. We're not going to be talking about international politics and military strategy or anything like that.  

We're going to be talking about how we think about, conceptualize the refugees, the white supremacy involved, the American exceptionalism, the Christian supremacy involved. We're going to talk a little bit about the religious aspects of this war, which is something that the media is not covering in anywhere near as much detail as just the economic and the geopolitical aspects of it. But before we get to that, really quickly, please just remember to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at KTF Press. Leave a rating and review on whatever your podcast app is.  

Also Substack, which is the company that runs our website, or that we use to run our website, just introduced an app, an iOS app. So if you have an iPhone, you can now, you as a subscriber, thank you so much, this is a subscriber bonus episode. You, as a subscriber, can listen to this podcast and read our newsletter and any of the articles we put out all from within an app, if you don't want it to necessarily come to your inbox. I am definitely someone who prefers an app over an inbox. So if that's you, go find the Substack app in the App Store.  

Okay. So we're going to get started now. We just, we want to talk a little bit about the white supremacy that is involved in our thinking and talking about the refugees, and in talking about this conflict. Jonathan, let's start out with you. How are you seeing this play out in the things that you're reading and watching?  

Jonathan Walton: Yeah, you know. Jump right in the deep end.  

Sy Hoekstra: For sure 

Jonathan Walton: I think it was… and I think the deep end, because it was pretty stark from the beginning, because we have so many references for refugees from Syria, from Mexico… through Mexico, but from dozens of countries, we have images. Like we have names, we have consistent media around engaging with immigrants, especially in Europe, coming from the coast of, coming from Morocco to France, or Morocco to Italy. And just, so we have this backdrop of Black and brown people fleeing armed conflict, fleeing climate change, fleeing violence— sometimes inflicted by us, like the United States. Then we have the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, and there are millions of racially-assigned white, in our minds, Ukrainians.  

White meaning educated. White meaning like us. White meaning Christian. White meaning acceptable. White meaning can be integrated into our culture more easily. And these are quotes from Polish politicians, from Spanish politicians, from media members or like Prince William who can't believe this is happening in a country like this.  

Sy Hoekstra: In Europe. 

Jonathan Walton:  In Europe, yeah. So Trevor Noah has said great things, Mehdi Hasan has said great things from The Intercept. There's no shortage of media calling out the hypocrisy of the European reaction, and by default, the American and global reaction because whiteness is ubiquitous across the world, of like how the hypocrisy of how these refugees are treated.  

Yeah, I think the best example that I found was the speech by one, the leader of the far-right party in Spain speaking to parliament. The quote is, in English, I won't say it in Spanish. The English is, “These are real refugees. Women, children and elderly should be welcomed to Europe. Now, everyone should understand the difference between these refugees and the invasion of Muslim youth of military age who've crossed our borders trying to destabilize and colonize Europe.” Like that is a mess of assumptions. That's a mess of racism. That's a mess of internalized prejudice and ethnic hatred.  

So often, I think that we think white supremacy, religious nationalism, Christian nationalism will be defeated by knowledge and clarity, and that's not true. Just because we know more and can see more and understand more, does not mean things will be different. I think that's what this is unearthing for me and proving again, there needs to be transformation. There has to be resistance. There needs to be Jesus and the Holy Spirit. People need to meet God, need to meet… There has to be a fundamental, internal change that leads to the social transformation that we actually all want to aspire to. It's not just a photo or an image of someone being pushed off a train.  

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. Boy, I just had like 800 different thoughts.  

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. I'm sorry. I said a lot, sorry.  

[Laughter] 

Sy Hoekstra: No, no, no. I just mean there's so much to talk about. I think one thing that I want to point out in the difference of how we're talking about these refugees versus those from other conflicts, most notably the Syrian conflict six or seven years ago, is that we have already welcomed into Western Europe and other places, so many more refugees from Ukraine than we ever did from Syria. But that was an utter panic. Like that was, how are we ever going to afford these people? We need to be really concerned about their extremism, like you just said, like characterizing them as military-aged Muslim men trying to come across and destabilize Europe, right? 

Suzie Lahoud: Right. 

Sy Hoekstra: When obviously the reality of Muslims is not, of course there are extremists among Muslims the way there are extremists among anybody else. But we don't care when it's coming from Europe. So the thing that I was thinking about a lot this week, and I have to be a little bit careful here, so bear with me. But among people in Ukraine, there are extremists. Of course there are, like there are anywhere else. And Putin has been using the extremists within the national guard of Ukraine as an excuse to invade. He's been talking about the denazification of Ukraine, which is propaganda. Like I don't want to give, I don't want to validate reasons for Putin's invasion. 

But at the same time there are actual neo-Nazis in Ukraine. I mean, there are neo-Nazis anywhere in Western Europe. But we're not concerned about them as radicals the way that we are concerned about Muslim terrorists or Muslim extremists, because they're our radicals. They're our extremists. They're the ones that we have already. We have among the people that we see as the true inheritors of Western Europe or the United States. Like we have lots of neo-Nazis. We have the far-right. Those already are here, and like we, so we're just not concerned. We're not saying, “Oh, we need to surveil these people.” We need to do all the things that we've done, like all the obnoxious things that we've done to Muslims to counter extremism, because these are basically our terrorists.  

And of course, when you talk about domestic terrorism in the United States post 9/11, it has basically been, as we've talked about before, all white men. It has been all disgruntled, many far-right, white men committing the mass shootings and the acts of terrorism that we've seen, almost without exception. Yet when it is a bunch of white men or white people refugees, like all we're talking about in the US is how many can we take and how do we grant them Temporary Protected Status and that sort of thing. So I will stop there. Suzie, what do you think? 

Suzie Lahoud: Well, I think it's telling even if you look at how we're framing what's happening right now, versus, again making the comparison to the, what happened in Syria. So then the conversation was all about the Syrian refugee crisis. So the crisis is that we have all of these people fleeing conflict, what are we going to do about these people? They're going to destroy our economies. They're going to threaten our way of life. There are going to be, as you all said, extremists among them. Whereas now we see today it's framed as the invasion of Ukraine. So the emphasis is on the violence being done to the Ukrainian people, that is entirely unjust, that is unacceptable, that is horrific.  

There is an empathetic response. There's a sense of compassion. And then you see that these European nations— and I have to give due credit to Volodymyr Zelensky, for putting out this rallying cry— that they are now essentially willing to shred their own economies to help save the Ukrainian people. So the conversation is no longer, “they're going to destroy our economy,” it's “we're willing to stop buying Russian oil. We're willing to put a hold on building this pipeline so that we can allow for this conflict to end and to preserve Ukrainian life and preserve the nation of Ukraine.” So it's a very different response, that double standard.  

Then also if you look at the language around it, broadening the comparison from just what happened in Syria versus what's happening in Ukraine, it was interesting the conversation around the time of the conflict in Syria, around the time that it started. There started to be more conversations around the distinction between refugee versus migrant, because you also had all of these people fleeing from countries in Northern Africa, and then certainly we have the, what we've been calling a crisis on our own borders in the United States. Which again, the framing of that is so problematic. But that distinction, even though international law does provide for special protections for refugees as people who are fleeing violence and armed conflicts specifically, the way that that's wielded isn't consistent. 

That distinction of migrant versus refugee, it's not always that clear cut. On top of that, states were being incredibly hypocritical and problematic in the ways that they were upholding the [1951] Refugee Convention in choosing to accept or not accept folks coming from places like Syria. So, for example, in Lebanon, and I think it's clear that we're always making distinctions between the governments of countries and the people of countries, especially in countries where people tend to be victims of their government. So I'm not talking about the Lebanese people here, but if you look at the country of Lebanon, one of the main issues that we were seeing there while I was working there was a violation of non-refoulement, that you cannot return a refugee to the country that they are fleeing from. That's illegal. And yet there were cases reported of that, and the government had sort of this backhanded way of trying to make life incredibly difficult and uncomfortable, and almost unlivable for folks who had fled from Syria. And I know that Lebanon was not the only case of that.  

So it's just such a stark contrast to what we're seeing now in Poland. Moms leaving strollers at the train station for Ukrainian moms who are fleeing across the border. Those women get to be mothers. They get to be people. They have their humanity versus the language of them, it being an invasion. They're subhuman somehow.  They're almost like vermin who are coming and taking over and infesting the nation. And it's just, again, it just shows that we, not only have we become anesthetized to the suffering of Black and brown people, we enable it. We don't think that it's our responsibility. We don't see that we're actually a part of the problem. We don't see them as human beings bearing the imago Dei.  

So yeah, if you want to look at the church's response, it should be consistent with that theological truth. That you can't slap the label of refugee on them and think that that allows you to, that exonerates you from seeing them as an individual who is suffering. That it exonerates you from doing everything that you can to preserve their life and wellbeing, even to the point of sacrifice, which again, we're seeing in Europe. For everyone who said in the past that it's unrealistic to expect nations to sacrifice, to save life, we're seeing that happen today. So yeah, I think all of this is sort of broader political commentary, but I think it should be upheld first and foremost in the church if we call ourselves the people of God. 

Sy Hoekstra: Can I bring up really quickly the article that you brought up in a recent newsletter that was this long New Yorker article about the shadow immigration system in Libya? 

Suzie Lahoud: Yes! 

Sy Hoekstra: That the EU is basically funding immigration detention centers in Libya, for the Libyan government, for other people to grab people on their way to Europe and put them in detention, right? People coming specifically from Africa, because Libya geographically is on the Mediterranean and is a place where people leave on boats to try and reach Europe.  

The other thing, I'm only going to say this once, we don't need to go over it in a lot of detail. But the caveat we should probably say to this whole conversation is, we obviously don't want Ukrainian refugees to be treated badly, nor do we have any sort of… we just want everybody else to be treated the way that we're treating Ukrainians when they are suffering.  

We're not trying to sort of cast aspersions on anything that's going on here. We think all the efforts being made across Europe and in the United States for Ukrainians are great and should happen for everyone, and we applaud them, and we're denouncing a double standard. 

Jonathan Walton: We have to be able as people, in the same way that Jesus was fully God and fully man, there's like, we hold these things in tension of like, it's possible to call out white supremacy and racial prejudice and violence, and say, “isn't it amazing that the Ukrainian people are being accepted and received and loved?” 

Suzie Lahoud: Yeah. I think that, Jonathan, I think you just raised such an important point. And just to bring it back to the Bible, I feel like that's what prophetic ministry does. You can't say that as prophets the only job is to encourage folks and tell them where they're doing well. It's also to call people to attention in areas of individual and collective and communal sin. So I absolutely agree that those two need to be held in tension. That yes, absolutely, I think it's just sort of… what we're seeing today is the response that folks working on the front lines had hoped that we would see when everything was and continues to fall apart in Syria. 

Oh, and in fact, if we want to talk, to dig in a little bit to what exactly is playing out right now in Ukraine and part of why it is so horrific, I think if you want to see how far Putin is willing to go, you need to look at Syria. Because, as we know, Russia has been actively backing the Assad regime in Syria, providing the air power in that war. Essentially, Russia's the one that's enabled him to hold on, and what we're seeing on the ground right now is just this nihilism of Putin is now actively punishing the Ukrainian people for daring to stand up to him. For daring to act like they are not just sort of a vassal state of Russia.  

So if you want to see how bad this can get, you need to look at what has happened in Syria and the horrific loss of life. And all of the violence in so many different forms that’s happened, all of the brutality. We allowed that to thrive elsewhere, and now it's coming home to roost in places where people now feel connected to it. They should have felt connected to it before. It should have been enough that Syrian people were being terrorized and murdered by their own government, but we didn't care enough to stop it, and now it's wreaking havoc everywhere.  

Sy Hoekstra: So I think we should transition a little bit then to talking about kind of the ways that American exceptionalism creeps into how we're approaching this conflict as well. And then I think tied up in that is Christian nationalism and Christian supremacy. We all had a lot of thoughts about this, so I'll just open it up to anyone who wants to talk. 

Suzie Lahoud: So one thing that keeps coming up that analysts keep pointing to is this concept that Putin has of “Russkiy mir.” The Russian World, or actually, it could almost be translated as Pax Russica. “Mir” in Russian means both world and peace. It's this idea that the sort of ideal Mother Russia, it's a linguistic unit of Russian-speaking peoples. It's also, obviously, there's a cultural element there, but then thirdly, there's a religious element of, essentially it's white, Russian-speaking Christians under the Russian Orthodox Church. So I think that's something we pointed to in our newsletter recently with the Diana Butler Bass piece, where she talks about this: that another component of this war is a response to this sort of schism that occurred within the Orthodox Church of Ukraine trying to come out with its own sort of Orthodox Church based in Kiev, and Russia is saying, “No, you can't do that. Kiev is the center of the Russian Orthodox Church. It's the center of our Christendom. It's our Jerusalem.” In an attempt to sort of reclaim it from any sense of Ukrainian nationalism. So I think it's, we need to, especially as Christians, we need to understand the religious elements that are at play here. We need to understand how dangerous that is and how religion fuels violence like this. And we need to understand how we are actually, with what we're seeing in the United States today, somehow connected to that. 

Again, going back to the Diana Butler Bass piece, which I highly recommend. I think she does a good job of giving just kind of a broad overview of what's happening, but she refers to this sort of “authoritarian, neo-Christendom triumvirate.” Where you see folks like Trump in the United States, trying to build this concept of a white Christian America, and rallying conservatives around that. You're seeing the same thing happen in Russia today in attempts to sort of create links between these sort of Christian empires, essentially. Again, that's just so destructive, so dangerous, so scary, because when you marry religious ideology to violence, the potential for destruction is almost endless.  

Sy Hoekstra: And it's not just those two places, right? It's also conservatives, a lot of conservative Catholics in Western Europe and some Protestants as well. But it is an actual international movement based around leaders who have, they have written extensively on their vision for where kind of the white world should go. It's this united, like you said, white Christian kind of international empire that is against at once, like Western secular decadence, and then also Islam and also China. They have very specific enemies, they know who they want to unite with and it's like a real international political movement. 

Diana Butler Bass linked to this interesting article by a medieval expert named Brandon Hawk, who kind of writes about how Putin and Steve Bannon and all these other groups are sort of looking… and by the way, these groups also have connections to like David Duke and the Klan. How they look back to medieval kind of imagery and iconography for their inspiration, because they really do believe that they are kind of the next Holy Roman Empire, or the next Constantinople. That's the historical vision that they see themselves in. It's like, “We are going to be the people who are in charge of,” as Hawk put it, “the earthly and the heavenly destinies of European white people.”  

So that's, I don't know, that's a vision that Putin has, has written about extensively. Suzie, you've clued me into this a little bit. I don't know, it's an angle of the war that we are not talking about as much in our media, because it's kind of, I don't know. It's just something that a lot of the Western, non-religious media doesn't have as much information or familiarity with, but it's very real in the minds of a lot of people who think like Putin. 

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. I mean… oh man, I just have so many thoughts. So something that is, to me, that is important, but also missing, is like, I think we are so ignorant and so myopic, yet also assume the best. Okay, so we are ignorant of the pervasiveness of white supremacy. The pervasiveness of Christian internationalism, as Diana Butler Bass calls it. The pervasiveness of an internalized imperial mindset and posture towards anybody that is not quote-unquote “like us”.  

And I'm included in that. Me and Priscilla, my wife is Chinese and Korean. She's like, “Jonathan, that is so Western in how you're thinking, and I don't have another way to think about it.” So I actually have to be quiet and listen to consider that there's another way of doing it, because I automatically think I'm right. I automatically think I'm just, and I automatically think I'm capital “G” good in how I'm thinking. So like, there's an ignorance to that, and then, to the pervasive internalized sense of that.  

Then there's a… and I don't mean to be like alarmist, but it's like people are sold out to like Steve Bannon's podcast or Alex Jones' podcast, or like all these things. Like a dude doesn't just show up at a pizza place in Washington D.C. to kill people unless they're sold out. And there are millions of people who are imbibing this every day. This goes back to Chuck Armstrong who is like our first or second episode. Of him talking like we're listening over and over again. So when Tucker Carlson starts hearkening to Putin, and hearken — and having these narratives start to play, dropping in replacement theory, dropping the —  you know, the white supremacist notion that they are quote-unquote “going to be replaced” by brown people. Using words like “invasion” and “vermin,” and all these things.  

So we, as you were saying, Suzie, it’s like we're anesthetized to it. There's a desperate need to, and not to use the word, in the 90s it'd be, “conscious,” today it's called, “woke,” but like to be aware and engage with the narratives that are happening, because they're all connected. And the most dangerous thing is the divination of it. Like this is a divine thing. Because once somebody believes God is behind it, it's done. Like it's… Yeah, how can you argue? 

Suzie Lahoud: Yeah. I think to put this, kind of drawing on that a little bit and going back to Sy’s earlier point about some of the psychology behind this, because I think there are a lot of questions of how could Putin still be popular in Russia? Sy, you brought up a great point, that actually thousands of Russians are now fleeing Russia because of this war and…  

Sy Hoekstra: And protesting the war at great personal risk. 

Suzie Lahoud: Yes risking, literally risking their lives to stand up and protest. You have officials and leaders of government-sponsored groups like the symphony orchestra, who are taking a stand. So really courageous individuals. So it's not that the Russian people is necessarily fully behind this, but you do have a lot of folks who also buy into this narrative and you need to see that there's this whole picture behind it. And one way of framing the religious component, is this is as if our culture wars took on the form of aggression towards another state. But Sy’s point about Putin seeing himself as standing up against the decadence of corrupted Western values, that's their culture wars. 

You also have to understand culturally, so I grew up in the former Soviet Union. So many people in the former Soviet Union, the United States to them is synonymous with like MTV. That's American culture, and like the worst of what we have to offer in terms of Hollywood. And I constantly had to fight that sort of stereotype about who I was as an American girl. There's just, that's what we've, we’ve exported the worst of who we are to the rest of the world and that's how they see us. So there's that side of it. But then also the psychology that's kind of at work, and I say that because it's dangerous how the psychology of the culture wars is being weaponized in the United States in ways that are destructive to people's lives. People are dying because of this.  

So I want to tear off the veil of what's happening in Russia to let us see that the same thing is happening in the United States as well. And in terms of, we always point fingers at Soviet propaganda and indoctrination. And I went to Russian school in the fifth grade and we were still reading books after the fall of Soviet Union— this was after, it was late 90s and we were still reading books of “moya rodina,” and Mother Russia, the Motherland, all that stuff. And I'm like, “oh my gosh, how can they be teaching this propaganda?” But this is the same battle that's going on in the United States today when you look at the 1619 project versus the 1776 project, it's like, or whatever, they're calling it. It's the same thing. We fight over our national narrative because the way that you construct the story about yourself then feeds into your foreign policy, then feeds into your domestic policy, then feeds into your narrative about whose lives matter and whose death and suffering is acceptable to you as a nation. 

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. By the way, what natural allies with American conservatives, like you hate Hollywood and MTV and that's what churches in America have been talking about. We basically hate the same things about the West. We just have like a different kind of view of ourselves and who we essentially are, you know what I mean? We don't have the stereotypes of the MTV girl being all Americans, but we still are raging against those same things.  

Suzie Lahoud: We still decry it. 

Sy Hoekstra: So when factions of our society start linking up with the similar factions of Russian society, it shouldn't be a surprise to us. It should not be a surprise that Tucker Carlson kind of loves Vladimir Putin. Because I think a lot of people have been asking this question, I've seen this a lot in the media and on social media. When did it become cool for conservatives to start loving Russia? Because we're hearkening back to the Cold War era when conservatives were so very anti-Soviet Union, because they were ideologically opposed, they were communists.  

And I'm like, that doesn't, the idea behind hating Russia back then was not that those conservatives in America were anti-authoritarian, they were just anti-communist. They were not, if you want to talk about all the stuff that we did during the Cold War to try and suppress any sort of communist or leftist thought of any kind. It was extremely authoritarian. Like Joseph McCarthy was talking about what is unamerican and how do we blacklist it and ban it. I mean, we prosecuted people for advocating for communism. All those sorts of things. 

Suzie Lahoud: We toppled governments.  

Jonathan Walton: [simultaneously] Yeah, propped up authoritarian dict —  yeah toppled governments and propped up… [laughs]. 

Suzie Lahoud: In foreign countries.  

Sy Hoekstra: Right, right. We propped up dictators all around the world in favor of, like we are fundamentally the conservative movement in the United States is not anti-authoritarian. There may be people who believed that it was and have philosophies of being anti-authoritarian, but that has not been the reality of what has been going on in the US over the past several decades. 

Jonathan Walton: Right. Yeah. The reality of the support of an illiberal democracy, basically. Like it is authoritarianism, but it wants to give the face of a democracy. So Putin is voted into office. Bashar al- Assad is voted into office, but obviously there is corruption and the crushing of dissent. 

Sy Hoekstra: There's another angle about this that I want to talk about, which is our framing of Ukrainian refugees as Christians. This is something I've been hearing both from Christians and from just kind of the media in general, that makes them the good guys a little bit. We're talking about the Christianity of the refugees and of a lot of people in Ukraine. There is a tendency among, I think, a lot of American Christians to try and separate good guys. Good guys are Christians and bad guys are not real Christians. We try and make, and this plays into how we have so many guardrails around our orthodoxy and our beliefs, and the things that we say make you a real Christian or don't make you a real Christian. 

It also plays into the ways that we separate ourselves from anything bad that Christians have done in the past, and we cling to and identify with things that they've done that are good. So in the American context, it's like we love Christian abolitionists and then we talk about Christian slaveholders as not real Christians. But what I'm getting at here is, Vladimir Putin is a Christian. You can't just say he's not a Christian because I don't think that he understands God the same way I do, he has different theology, he has different politics. The man is a Christian, like the same way that the slaveholders were Christians in the United States. 

We can't just push ourselves away from that and sort of absolve ourselves of like any identification with those people that way. That is not how God's vision of the church works. So what I mean is, even if you're talking about like, okay, somewhere in the Bible, people might have said you should excommunicate or cast people out if they do X, Y, or Z. But in every instance, like if Paul was talking about, saying, you need to separate yourself from some person who's doing something terrible, who's like harming the community in some way, the whole point of saying that was in the hopes that they would see the error of their ways and then come back into the community. Specifically because they were your sibling in Christ, right? 

We don't get to pick and choose who we think are Christian. We can say they're wrong. I can say, I believe that Vladimir Putin is absolutely wrong about the way he approaches Christianity. I can't say he's not a Christian. I can say he's a Christian who's wrong. Like he still is out there going to services and talking about worshiping God. There's no meaningful way in which I get to separate myself from Christians who have done bad things like that, just because I want to preserve the appearance of the goodness of Christianity. Does that make sense? 

Jonathan Walton: Yeah, absolutely. Because what you hear a lot of the time, is like you don't want to quote-unquote “compromise your witness.” But we don't say that when it comes to issues of justice usually. We don't talk about compromising our witness around things that are resistant to dominant culture. We don’t. 

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. It's very strategically deployed and we do it in a way to like… I don't know, it ends up looking kind of inconsistent and sort of absurd when you think about the different ways that we deploy that idea of compromising our witness, but it's, we put it out… When there's an opportunity for us to say these Christians are good guys, and that person is a bad guy, we just take, I don't know, we take every opportunity to do that.  

Jonathan Walton: And right now, I do think that is in a, we talked about this in the Hierarchy of Sins episode. There's a big argument and conversation, at least in my algorithm online, about who the real Christians are versus those who are not. And it is a, I think it's a very real thing, and it's been debated and argued since the Ascension and Pentecost. It's like, who is the real person that has the real truth and is doing the real thing? And I don't get to decide, at the end of the day, who goes to heaven, who knows Jesus, who's in relationship with him, what qualifies it. I don't get to do that, even though I would really like to, you know what I mean? 

Sy Hoekstra: I've pointed this out before, I'll be brief here. The Bible talks about the disciples of Jesus being disciples before they know anything about what he was going to do. They don't know about the crucifixion, they don't know about the resurrection, they don't know about the ascension, they don't know about all the things. Like they could not have written most of the Apostles’ Creed, yet the Bible calls them disciples. Judas Iscariot, the Bible calls a disciple. So I just, our notions of who does and does not count as a follower of Jesus, as a Christian, are so, I don't know, bound up in our attempts to control our image and control how people think. And we need to just let go of that stuff if we want to think the way God thinks. 

Jonathan Walton: The reality that pre-Constantinople, the sermon that was preached, at least from the little bit that I read, was usually the Sermon on the Mount, which is full of being and doing in the world. Post-Nicene Creed and obviously looking back from that, the core question became, what do you believe? Which is a different way of embodying, it's not actually an embodiment at all, but it's a different way of practicing our faith, which actually requires little practice to then claim relationship with God. Christianity post its marriage to politics and nationalism that we're talking about stripped out the being and doing. And when it is fundamentally about belief, things change. You get to define then what the doing and the being is.  

Suzie Lahoud: I think too, just going to this element of certainty and kind of critiquing that a little bit. Kat Armas had a great post about this the other day, where she talked about, it struck her in the passage about the sheep and the goats that not only are the goats surprised that they're not the ones entering into heavenly rest, it's the sheep that are also like, “Whoa wait, we did it right?” And I think just, that's part of the point of why it's so important to be able to call these things out and to have prophetic critique in the church, because we need to beware of having the certainty of saying, “Yes, God should bless our armies.” And being able to say, as Sy said, “These are the good guys, these are the bad guys.”  

I think we constantly need to be checking our own hearts and questioning things and yeah, being wise as serpents and innocent is doves. Also kind of what we were talking about reminds me of a great quote, which I think is appropriate here by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either— but right through every human heart.” 

Sy Hoekstra: I like that quote, first of all. I've heard that many times before. I go back to it in my brain a lot. I think like, this is just another point that I wanted to make before we're done, is that it becomes extremely difficult for the United States, or any other Western power, to critique anything that's happening in Ukraine when we've been doing similar things all around the world for so long. And I don't just mean propping up the dictatorships and toppling governments that we did during the Cold War. I also mean the War on Terror. We have been invading and taking over countries on flimsy pretexts or for ideological reasons and for religious reasons for quite some time.  

Which is not to say that nobody in the US should call out anything bad that's happening, that Russia's doing. I'm just saying it's, on the international stage, the fact of the matter is we don't have any credibility to talk about this because of the things that we have done or allowed to happen, and the fact that we've never gone back and acknowledged all the harms that we've caused and tried to do anything to rectify those harms. So I just, I don't know, when we're talking about our judgment or when we are criticizing Putin, as we absolutely should be, I think keeping in mind that that line goes right down your heart, the middle of your heart, is important. Because we are genuinely no better than him. 

And I mean, that is hard, I think, for a lot of people to hear, but the three of us talk a lot about the piece that one of our previous guests, Wissam al-Saliby, wrote in our anthology, and how we like to pretend that there are false moral equivalencies to draw between the actions of the US and the actions of our enemies. And the reality just doesn't look that way for anyone who has experienced the, I don't know, just the suffering and the terror that the US has caused around the world for so many decades.  

Suzie Lahoud: Yeah. And I mean, probably Jonathan's the best person to make this point since you wrote a whole book about it. But let that be a critique of the misconception, the lie that America is judge because America is somehow synonymous with the will of God. America is not the judge of the world. God is the judge of the world. Let us be clear on that distinction. And I think too, because again, to Sy’s earlier point, and I hope this goes without saying, but all of these ideas and points that we're raising are not to say that we don't stand in solidarity with the battle that Ukraine is fighting, the existential battle that Ukraine is fighting. And not that we don't stand with the Ukrainian people.  

I can speak for myself, I absolutely do. And I think one of the powerful things that Volodymyr Zelensky has done, and I know I'm not the first person to say this, is he has demonstrated moral power and has wielded that. He's called these leaders to account and said, “You need to stand behind your values.” All of our critiques earlier still stand, that it's striking that that's the rallying cry that these nations have responded to. So we got into that earlier, but just that point of the power of moral leadership, and that yeah, you need to be willing to stand up and have that voice and call nations like the United States to account. Because in the past we've spoken the language of values, but really we've been acting in our interest. 

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. I think we are talking like very big picture, trying to make historical references like ground ourselves so that we can engage. But I think a worthy point also to make is like, if we love something, we can critique it. If, all of us are married, people who are listening, we are in deep relationships, if we love something, if we care about something, if we care about someone, we tell the truth. And I think we have to be willing in the church and outside the church, for the sake of the world and the gospel, to tell the truth. I don't know what that will cost me one day. I'm sitting in Queens, I'm fine. I have heat. I have electricity. I have clean water. I have hot water when I shower. I have all these things. 

Truth-telling does not cost me that much today. My prayer though, is that we would be people who are able to bear witness and tell the truth in word, in deed, in power, in the midst of even the gravest conflicts like what's happening in Ukraine, and pray that they're able to do so. Because I mean, I couldn't imagine, I know my ancestors had to do things like this. But I pray that one, I hope I never have to, but I pray that I would have the courage to respond in ways that are honoring to God and those I love and care about.  

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. I think that's a good place for us to end it. Thank you all so much for listening. We've talked about a number of articles today. We will have those in the show notes for this episode if you want to reference them. Again, thank you to all of our subscribers for listening to this bonus episode. Please do follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at KTF Press, and leave a rating and review for this podcast wherever you're listening.  

Okay, yeah, I think that is it then. So our theme song as always is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra. Our podcast art is by Jacqueline Tam, and we will see you all for our bonus episode next month. 

[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.] 

Sy Hoekstra: It's 10:34. Gosh. Do you guys have — when are your end times?  

Suzie Lahoud: Marvin is not here, so I'm on my own the whole day. So it's until Nora gets sick of CoComelon. 

Sy Hoekstra: Oh, Jonathan? 

Jonathan Walton: Ideally, 11:30?  

Sy Hoekstra: We can definitely do 11:30. So I guess Nora's capacity to watch CoComelon is our limiting factor here.   

Suzie Lahoud: And I would guess that her limit on CoComelon is endless. 

Sy Hoekstra: [laughs] Okay, cool. So we have till 11:30.

This month, we discuss tone policing — what it is, how it shows up in church, the discriminatory ways it’s deployed, the things it suppresses that are beneficial to Christian community, and a lot more. Also… Suzie’s back!!! 

Shake the Dust is a podcast of KTF Press. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Find transcripts of this show at KTFPress.com. 

Hosts  

Jonathan Walton – follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.  

Suzie Lahoud – follow her on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.  

Sy Hoekstra – follow him on Twitter.  

Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra – listen to the whole song on Spotify. 

Our podcast art is by Jacqueline Tam – follow her and see her other work on Instagram.  

Production and editing by Sy Hoekstra. 

Transcript by Joyce Ambale and Sy Hoekstra. 

Questions about anything you heard on the show? Write to [email protected] and we may answer your question on a future episode. 

Transcript

Suzie Lahoud: Your problem is not my anger. Your problem is that it triggers guilt in you. Why? Because of your — I’ll put it in Christian terms — because of your lack of repentance. It has to be repentance rooted in action, because ultimately she's saying I'm not even interested in your feelings, your guilt doesn't do me any good. I'm interested in change. I want this thing that is hurting me, that's hurting my kids, is hurting the people that I love, I want it to change, and that is why I'm angry. 

[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/That it will roll in abundance/ And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.] 

Sy Hoekstra: Welcome to Shake the Dust: Leaving colonized faith for the Kingdom of God. A podcast of KTF Press. My name is Sy Hoekstra. I'm here with Jonathan Walton AND! Say hi, Suzie.  

Suzie Lahoud: Hello everyone.  

Sy Hoekstra: Suzie's back!  

Jonathan Walton: Yes! 

Sy Hoekstra: And Jonathan sounds like Grover, for some reason. [laughter] We are so excited to have Suzie back. This is the first one since she left to take care of a tiny little baby for a few months. We are very happy that we get to have her back on the mic before we start season two, for all of you lovely subscribers. Thank you so much for subscribing, this is a subscriber only bonus episode. So I'm not going to go through the whole, what our subscription is to KTFPress.com and all that. But please do remember to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, at KTF Press if you don't. Leave a rating and review this show in your podcast player of choice, and just thank you for doing all that. It's very helpful, if you have a couple of minutes, we really, really appreciate it.  

Now we're going to get started with our topic today, which is Tone Policing. We're going to talk about several different aspects of how tone policing fits into a church in a broader social context. But first let's just begin with the simplest thing, the definition. For people who do not know, what is tone policing? 

Jonathan Walton: The definition of tone policing, it's when dominant culture responds to the critiques of marginalized folks by addressing the matter in a way that critiques the delivery, as opposed to the actual argument. So it's dismissed, it's ignored. It'd be me stating that I am frustrated, angry, upset about the verdicts today in the shooting of Daunte Wright. And because I say it in an angry way, someone will say, “Ugh, that would be received so much better if you weren't such an angry Black person.” And they address me, as opposed to addressing the actual substance, which is, people should get sentenced for things in the United States in the same way that other people are. 

So the ad hominem argument, as I just learned, is when someone addresses me, minimize, dismiss, attack the person, as opposed to dealing fairly with the thing that's actually brought up, the issue at hand.  

Suzie Lahoud: Yeah. So essentially, your argument, the point that you're making, is viewed as illegitimate and irrelevant, just because of the way that you delivered the argument. Because you showed emotion, people no longer have to listen to you and address what you're actually saying.  

Sy Hoekstra: Right. And I think, so tone policing is a form of an ad hominem argument, meaning, an ad hominem argument is like any attack on a person instead of the substance, and tone policing is specifically when you're arguing against the way that something was spoken, or the way that you were addressed when the person made the argument. So what does that actually look like, both in a broader social context and in church specifically, how do we see tone policing happening? 

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. So the way I think the classical senses we hear these arguments made, is around like infidelity and abuse in church. So someone, usually a woman, will bring up like, “Oh, someone was sexually assaulted or there was a violation of some kind.” And they'll be like, “Oh, why is she so upset? Why does she have to say it in front of everybody? Why this, why this, why that.” Has nothing to do with the actual reality that there's a person who's been victimized, and we are not going to deal with the person who victimized her or the situation or help. We're just going to attack the way that she brought it up, because it disturbs some dominant cultural reality that we want to keep as the status quo. 

So I think inside and outside the church, I think this is an exceptionally unhelpful tactic and technique for… yeah. Well, the result of it is exceptionally unhelpful, because inside and outside the church, we just end up with entire groups of people, usually victims of sexual violence or some sort of abuse, being wholly dismissed, online or in real time. 

Sy Hoekstra: Can I emphasize one of those things that you said, which was, why do you bring this up in front of everyone? The specific Bible passage that gets thrown around a lot there is Matthew 18. People saying, you should have come to the individual person first, and addressed them and expected them to repent, which does not… or ask them to repent. Then you follow this step-by-step thing, where you bring in a couple other people, and then maybe you bring in the church leadership and then you bring it in front of the public, which does not make any sense in the context of abuse, because the whole relationship has been so distorted at that point. And the power dynamics are so clear, and the abuser is not, like, has probably repeatedly justified what they're doing to you already.  

Like the whole, it indicates an incredible lack of understanding of what happens in abusive relationships. But that's in one specific context, the context of abuse. It could be criticism at anything. It could be criticism about how your institution runs. It could be criticism about just someone's leadership style. And a constant thing that you hear is about grace, and whether or not the person who is doing the criticizing is showing the proper amount of grace, is not being too accusatory, and isn't being too emotional about what they're saying.  

So the reason that that is hypocrisy, is because the person who’s being criticized is almost never required to show any grace when you're tone policing. You're not required to sit there and say, okay, even if this person is too angry, even if this person is not showing me the grace they deserve, you can get to the substance of what they're saying, even if they don't say it in the way that you think is correct. You should be able to show that grace to them, as somebody who is probably in pain or mourning somehow. But that level of grace is not expected of the person being criticized, it's only being expected of the person who is doing the criticizing. That's usually because of power dynamics.  

This usually comes up when somebody in power is being criticized. And I just think we often lose sight of that. This happened recently, there was a whole spat because this Anglican priest wrote in the New York Times about how we need to get rid of online worship services, because people need to get back to church, which is, aside from just being dangerous because the pandemic’s not over, is ridiculous for, as we've talked about before, like people with disabilities who can come to church, who suddenly during the pandemic had so much access to ministry and you're just going to cut that all off because she was afraid, being Anglican and being very concerned with embodied, embodied worship, embodied communion taking, that people were just going to stay home if you gave them the option to stay home. 

So people got really mad at her online, and then a lot of people wrote back like, “Gosh, this is just such vitriolic, ungracious...” So many people responded that way to her, and it just really bothered me that nobody was thinking like, why doesn't she have to show grace to people that she has angered, for quite legitimate reasons? Then think about the critiques and actually deal with those arguments and why the grace never goes the other way, is just frustrating to me.  

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. Also, another example would be, like Brett Kavanaugh when he was doing the confirmation hearings, and the way that he and Lindsey Graham were allowed to yell, to spit, to seethe in contempt and disgust for the reality that they were even being questioned about something. 

Sy Hoekstra: To shout, “I like beer,” at the top of his lungs [laughs]. 

Jonathan Walton: Right. To push back against the questioner and be like, “Are you addicted to alcohol?” The way that he spoke, if that was a woman, if that was any minority, it would have… I re-watched it recently and was just shocked at the level of indignation and freedom that is totally fine because of the position he holds in society as a wealthy, white, educated male. It's yeah. There is no tone police for that. 

Suzie Lahoud: Yeah, and that actually sort of transitions to some of my thoughts on this, which are… well, first of all, I'll say in the context of the church, I feel like the Christianese that gets thrown around this a lot, is “the fruit of the spirit is self-control,” but then it ends up being a very gendered critique. So the first piece of it is, Dr. Willie Jennings in his book, After Whiteness, talks about this concept of the self-sufficient white male, and that that's the mold that everyone else is expected to adhere to. Particularly in professional settings, which I would include the church as an institution when you're sitting in a church meeting. Even when you're sitting in a Bible study this comes out, that the appropriate way to express yourself is almost as if you were a white man.  

And to be honest, I feel like women feel this particularly. That if you show undue emotion, if you get too weepy, if, you know, your voice starts to quaver a little too much in the wrong way, not in the, “I'm filled with the Holy Spirit” kind of way [laughter], people are going to just write off what you're saying. Certainly in academic settings I've seen this happen, that you just lose the audience as soon as you step out of the armor of this ideal of a WASP-y way of expressing yourself. So that's the first piece of it. But the second piece of it that you were getting at Jonathan, is that it's really a double standard. Because white men do show emotion, and they show anger, but somehow it's not labeled as anger when they express it. It's labeled as strength. It's labeled as a show of authority.  

Sy Hoekstra: Passion. 

Suzie Lahoud: Yes, it’s showed as passion. It's showed as leadership, strong leadership. Because let's face it, white male rage provides the guard rails that patriarchy in a white supremacist society operates on. That's what keeps us in line, is the anger of white men, and we don't call it that. There's actually a great quote that's kind of been making its way around Twitter by this novelist and playwright and it's kind of tongue in cheek. But it's Claire Willett. She writes, “Honestly, the best marketing scheme in history is men…” and I would qualify this as white men, “successfully getting away with calling women, the ‘more emotional’ gender for like, EONS, because they've successfully rebranded anger as,” all caps, “Not An Emotion.”  

So again, when these men do it, as you were saying, Jonathan, when you look at that confirmation hearing, we don't say, “Oh my gosh, they got so angry. That disqualifies them.” No, it's appropriate somehow. We don't even see it. It's become invisible to us because that's the norm. That has been expressed as acceptable, that we've been socialized to accept as acceptable. But if a woman did that, if a minority did that, it would be a completely different response. They would be disqualified from holding a position of leadership and authority because of their expression of emotion. So again, it's this double standard, and it doesn't help men either. It makes me think of that great quote by CS Lewis, where he says, “I sat with my anger long enough until she told me her name was grief.”  

So we don't provide proper outlets for grief for men, for expressing that they feel overwhelmed. It can only be expressed as anger in those cases for these white men. So that's also a problem. It doesn’t… I guess what I'm trying to get at, is this double standard doesn't help anybody out. It's not healthy for anyone. It's not building a healthy society. It's not creating healthy homes and healthy institutions. That's part of why it needs to be called out.  

But I'll return to the point of this often being a gendered critique. And I want to acknowledge straight-up that I'm not the most qualified person to make this argument, but I think there is no debate that it is Black women who bear the brunt of tone policing. And it is because it is at the intersection of patriarchal power and racial oppression. So if a Black woman shows emotion, even about injustice that she has personally experienced, we say that she's angry. That seems to discredit her and disqualify her and make her appear dangerous, like she's a threat to society. And that is a huge problem, and it's been used and wielded to silence so many women. And really, I just feel like it’s a battle, not only for the ability to express certain things, but a battle for the ability to express things in a genuine, authentic way. That you shouldn't have to take on that armor of the self-sufficient white man to be able to speak your truth. You should be able to speak your truth in the way that you need to speak it, in the way that it comes out. So those are my initial thoughts. I'm going to get off my soap box [laughs]. You guys jump back in. 

Sy Hoekstra: Wait, sorry, those are your initial thoughts [laughs]? 

Suzie Lahoud: I know, I realized that I was going to go do the whole thing, and then I was like, “Let me step back. Sy has some good questions.” 

Jonathan Walton: No, listen. Suzie is back. Suzie is back, just so you know. In case you forgot. 

[Laughter] 

Sy Hoekstra: Exactly. And I think it's worth pointing out, that some of these points are similar to something we talked about last month, when we talked about how the hierarchy of sins just plays differently along lines of race and gender and whatever else. Because that's just how anything like this shakes out as being more negative for people who are less empowered. It's just a similar dynamic that we were talking about. 

Jonathan Walton: Right. Quick thing that I'll add is, at that intersection of race and gender, for at least, I think, from what I've observed and read, the critique against white women is not anger, but hysteria. Like why are you being so ridiculous? Like this isn't a problem. And for Chinese, Korean and Asian, it’s like, what do you mean this is a problem? They expect submission. They’re like, what do you mean this is an issue? I thought this would be fine, that they would just roll over and it'd be, and take whatever is coming. And I think for, and Sy, I think I've actually talked with you about this. For folks with disabilities, it's like the expectation is that y’all will be nice and grateful at all times for people who engage and talk with you and are willing so much to sacrifice our time to be in a relationship with someone like you. 

Sy Hoekstra: That's actually an interesting one because there's this great… she's a professor of something or other. I don't know, because I just read her Twitter, which is mostly about the fact that she's blind [laughs]. She's an English woman named Amy Kavanagh. Another Kavanagh, but one who's not as frustrating. And she… 

Suzie Lahoud: We don’t discriminate against Kavanaghs.  

Sy Hoekstra: No, no, absolutely not. She just had this whole thread recently, specifically about the fear that a lot of blind and other disabled women face for speaking up at all about what they want, because it so frequently can result in lots of unwanted attention from men. If you're angry, unwanted attention from men. If you speak up at this dynamic of like, I'm talking to you, and I just grab your arm or your hand to help you, guide you across. We've talked about this before too, Jonathan. How blind people in general, like you have to at least ask, and you should probably just let them ask, if you want someone to, if you want to offer help. 

And she's just like, if we at all say, “I don't need that help,” even if it's no tone at all, just the notion that you would say, “I don't need the help,” you're liable to face a ton of anger, and even groping or in some cases, sexual assault. This happens at much higher rates to disabled women. It's just like a terrifying situation to be in, where the slightest, the smallest tone, even no tone, just the suggestion that you don't need the help that someone's offering, makes you ungrateful. So that word in particular that you used, is I think very accurate, and I don't know, it can be met with like, it's like tone…  

Jonathan Walton: Tone punishment? No, but like it’s a punishment, right? Like we violated a social norm. So for, and for me, getting too angry about police brutality, it might be that I'm dismissed from my position because I'm too emotional. Like Jonathan's too close to the issue, so my thoughts and my feelings, my leadership is invalidated. And then maybe my leadership is invalid in other places. So then I won't be able to write on that blog anymore or speak at that place anymore.  

For this woman, and that, I had never thought about that before. That is tragic. For a woman who is willing to speak up and advocate for herself that is disabled, to be assaulted or berated in, it's almost like there's a… it's actually what Suzie already brought up. You run into the guard rails of white rage. There's like, that keeps you in your place. So she doesn't say anything because she fears running into that third rail. Guard rail, sorry to mix metaphors. 

Suzie Lahoud: Third rail is good too. Yeah. Well, and gosh, this reminds me of why I miss having these conversations with you guys. Because you're helping me nuance even my own thinking, because I'll be honest, I came into this conversation thinking that part of the problem is that it's expected that there's a single tone that we're all allowed to take, but really, I think maybe to nuance that idea more, it's that there are tones that are dictated to each of us within our boxes. But like you said, there are norms around how we are allowed to express ourselves based on who we are, and bringing it back to, we were already touching on this concept of intersectionality and overlapping layers of oppression that each of us experience based on our identities, and tone falls into that. That there's only a certain way you're allowed to express yourself.  

Jonathan Walton: Right. And one other thing, not Jenning’s book, After Whiteness, but the book before that, Christian Imagination. He talks about, I think it's page 34, because I wrote about it a lot. Is that he says, there's this image of maturity. 

Suzie Lahoud: Yes. 

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. Like that the paterfamilias is like the white male form, will bring all other things into maturity. 

Suzie Lahoud: Yes. And that gets expressed in the church. Sorry to cut you off, but yes.  

Jonathan Walton: So the idea of a mature woman, is this. The idea of a mature disabled person, is this. A mature Black person is this. Like mature creation. The thought that native people were not using the land in the way that it should be used, therefore Europeans can take it and bring it to maturity. Children being separated from their parents, whether it be native people or immigrants today. Like we quote, “we can raise that child to maturity better than this person.” Sy’s talked about that with children and the foster care system being taken. So anyway, there's lots of intersections. 

Suzie Lahoud: Jonathan actually touches too on something I was looking at again recently. In The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin talks about that, kind of the same concepts from Dr. Willie Jennings. That white people, particularly white men, think that everyone needs to become like them in order to better themselves and become mature and for society to progress. And the fact that they're not willing to let go of that idea and understand that no, the point is not for everyone to assimilate to your way of being. Again, this comes out in tone. It comes out in the way that you are allowed to express yourself. Because the problem is not that the person speaking to you is angry. The problem is the problem that upset them in the first place.  

And I have to, sorry, I just have to jump in on this too. But one of the things that, and I mean, obviously I have emotions about this. So one of the things that's so upsetting about this, is that you're essentially asking, a lot of times when tone policing happens, you're asking… And this came up with the examples you were giving about abuse in the church. You're asking the victim or the one who is oppressed to not show emotion about their oppression, and actually, it's the oppressor who's asking them to not show emotion about it. This is also one of the things I loved about, I recently recommended in our newsletter, that, the Trojan Horse Affair and it's all about Islamophobia, but one of the things that ended up being most… 

Sy Hoekstra: So good. I listened to the whole thing in like three days after you recommended it. It's amazing.  

Suzie Lahoud: It is definitely binge material. Yeah. So, so good. So well done. But what really ended up getting me the most, was the story of these two journalists who were working on this, and one of them is a British Muslim. He comes out of these meetings enraged oftentimes. And this white male journalist who's working with him from the New York Times, he's not having the same emotion. So they have these conversations about it on the side, and a lot of it ends up weaving around, how do you relate to your profession, what's your job as a journalist? Those kinds of questions.  

But what struck me, and what they kind of get out, but I wish they'd almost dug into more, is that the Muslim journalist is having a stronger response because this is his lived experience. He doesn't exist apart from this. So when they're making Islamophobic statements, when he's listening to British officials make bold Islamic claims, that's personal for him. Of course, he's going to get emotional about it, but somehow he's not allowed to do that. And not recognizing the importance of his positionality in the story, that's what we do. We shut people down. We don't allow them to be human and we don't allow ourselves to see the power structures that create these moments of injustice, these experiences of injustice that lead to the emotion. But to us, the problem is the emotion, not the structures. 

Sy Hoekstra: The other sort of ironic point about it I think, is that the person who's doing the tone policing, is telling someone to be quieter, less emotionally involved in things that have happened to them that are really painful. Is that in almost every case, those things have never happened to the person who's doing the tone policing. The person who’s doing the tone policing has no experiential basis with which to evaluate the reaction of the person who is getting quote unquote, “too emotional”. So there's all the other kind of hypocrisies wrapped up in it that we've talked about, but on top of that, it's also just, usually the person doing the tone policing is the least likely person to be able to accurately evaluate whether or not the tone of the person speaking is actually appropriate. 

Jonathan Walton: Right. And I think something that I hope people listening, we can separate is anyone is capable of doing tone policing.  

Sy Hoekstra: Oh yeah. 

Suzie Lahoud: That’s a good point, yeah. 

Jonathan Walton: And the willingness and ability to do it testifies, I think, to our unwillingness to engage with our own discomfort. Because when somebody else gets angry, for me to be able to validate their anger, I have to think anger is good in and of itself. And then I have to enter into my own feelings to be able to empathize with them. And if I have a problem being emotional, whatever the emotion is, sadness, joy or anything along the spectrum, I won't be able to do it. And that, all in the name of control is, just radically unhelpful and not Christ-like at all. 

Sy Hoekstra: Which is why I think of so much of that sort of control as just a trauma response to discomfort. Like the people that are tone policing, the trauma response being, instead of dealing with the thing that is making you uncomfortable or anxious or whatever, your solution is to try and just get rid of it. That's almost always a trauma response. Is like, just get rid of this problem instead of dealing with this problem. That is the, a kind of classic sign of somebody who is overwhelmed with anxiety or discomfort or something like that.  

Suzie Lahoud: Yeah. I feel like that's what Brené Brown is kind of getting at when she talks about how you are the least capable of being empathetic towards something that triggers your own shame. 

Sy Hoekstra: Oh yeah. 

Jonathan Walton: Yes.  

Sy Hoekstra: So we've talked a lot now about how this operates and all the kind of negative things that tone policing does, but Jonathan, I think you were starting to hint at the actually positive things that come from the emotional expression of the person being criticized. Like there are legitimately positive things that tone policing is shutting down. Aside from just naming somebody’s suffering, there are lots of other things that are being shut down that are actually good, that come from the emotion in particular. So can you talk a little bit more about that, Jonathan?  

Jonathan Walton: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, me and Priscilla have conversations about this a lot, where like, how do we raise Maia to trust her gut? That her feelings are good, that they actually signal what she values. They actually, they are things worth contemplating, because they say something about who she is as a person. They say something about what she believes about herself, about the world. So our feelings are signals. They may not necessarily be truth or things that identify us or that we wrap our identities in, but they are essential to who we are as people, because they communicate values, they communicate beliefs. They reflect something deep inside of us. So one of the ways that we have actively tried not to tone police, is actually doing what Jesus did.  

And something that Jesus did when people had strong feelings or strong beliefs that were different from his, that would normally make us quote unquote “uncomfortable” is the difference between teaching someone and judging someone. So Jesus taught, but he didn't judge. Which is a very, I think, subtle distinction, where someone can come to me and have strong feelings, and I can allow them to have those strong feelings and not condemn them for those said feelings, you know what I mean?  

Suzie Lahoud: I feel like one of the… Yeah, I mean, first of all, that's so wise. Thank you, Jonathan. And I think that's an important place for me to kind of make the clarification, that the point should be that we can all, all of us, understand and express our emotions in a healthy way. In the way that God intends. Because emotion is a part of our faith and obviously that's clear in the Bible. So again, just to clarify, the point is that this isn't healthy for anybody. Another thing that we were talking about earlier when we were prepping for this conversation, is just this idea that, I think, anger itself can be an important expression of injustice or of speaking out. An important way of speaking out against injustice and speaking out against something that is wrong. That is not as it should be. That is not in keeping with the Shalom that God desires. That is not representative of human flourishing in all of its fullness. So anger can actually be an important emotion to recognize, to understand how to deal with.  

Honestly, I feel like, so one of the people that has a lot of insight on this is, reading Audre Lorde. She talks about anger as a fuel for the work that she does, and she makes an important distinction between anger and hate. So we're not talking about hatred. And I appreciate that you guys touched on anger in your previous bonus episode, because I think it's important to recognize that we have to… gosh, there needs to be a lot of nuance there in how we talk about anger, how we deal with anger. Obviously, it holds a lot of power in, so it can be very destructive and that's how a lot of us have experienced it and continue to experience it.  

But she specifically talks about the power of anger to kind of fuel your engine to work towards change, because ultimately what she wants to see is change. There's this quote that I was reading recently from this powerful speech that she gives, called “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism.” She says, “Anger is an appropriate reaction to racist attitudes, as is fury when the actions arising from those attitudes do not change... I cannot hide my anger to spare your guilt, nor hurt feelings, nor answering anger; for to do so insults and trivializes all our efforts. Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one's own actions or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since it is then no longer guilt but the beginning of knowledge. Yet all too often, guilt is just another name for impotence, for defensiveness destructive of communication; it becomes a device to protect ignorance and the continuation of things the way they are, the ultimate protection for changelessness.”  

So essentially she's saying, anger is an appropriate response to racism. I mean, that's what she says straight-up. And your problem is not my anger. Your problem is that it triggers guilt in you. Why? Because of your, I’ll put it in Christian terms, like Christianese, because of your lack of repentance. But she's saying, I'm not even… It has to be repentance rooted in action, because ultimately, she's saying, I'm not even interested in your feelings, your guilt doesn't do me any good. I'm interested in change. I want this thing that is hurting me, is hurting my kids, is hurting the people that I love, I want it to change. That is why I'm angry. And the problem is not my anger, it is the thing that needs to change. Help me change it.  

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. And I think in addition to all that powerful stuff… just if you haven't read any of Lorde, go do that because a lot of it is like what Suzie just read. It's all very good. 

Suzie Lahoud: Yeah. It gets you right in the gut. It’s powerful stuff. 

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, for sure. Right. And I think part of, like another aspect of that whole quote, is just that if you're somebody who is in a position of power and somebody comes to you with a criticism and they're angry about it, that anger is actually a useful tool for you as a leader to understand what is important to somebody else. Like you can have emotions that are a tool of measurement about importance to someone who you're trying to lead. And you can look at it that way, instead of responding with defensiveness and impotence and guilt. If you're in a church leadership context, it also helps you see where people are passionate, where they might be gifted, where you could put them in positions of leadership. All those things, if you're getting past your own emotional reaction to their tone. 

So I think she was getting at a different angle of what Jonathan was saying before. That tone policing is sort of your own unprocessed emotional problems. Not usually the problems of the people who are speaking to you. I think one other point that you brought up Suzie, that I wanted to touch on. You brought up before we were having this conversation, was just, tone policing is also shutting down just diverse forms of communication. Some of these things are cultural, some of them are, they're not positive or negative. It's just somebody else's way of communicating, that again by the standards of white people is interpreted as something that is overly emotional for a million different reasons.  

Then when you said that, that made me think of, well, there's also, there's a lot of people who have different kinds of disabilities or neurodivergence or whatever, whose means of communication comes off as emotional as well just because it's different. Like you might have somebody who just the way they process thoughts or feelings or experiences, comes out of their mouth, comes out of their facial expression in a way that you're not used to, simply because their brain operates differently than yours does. Or you might have somebody who has a disability that leads to literally just a different way of speaking.  

A louder way of speaking, a way where their speech, they might have like a bit of a slur or a stutter and to get over their stutter, they have to do certain things with the way that they speak that to you, you can interpret in a million different ways. I just think there are, I don’t know, there's a lot of room to explore there. Just different modes of communication and how if you just let people have their mode of communication, then you're going to have a better church. You're going to have a better organization, a better community of people who are living, and kind of experiencing God and sharing in community together in a more effective way.  

Do we have any more thoughts before we wrap up?  

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. I just want to affirm, Suzie, your quote’s amazing. Our podcast is better with you on it.  

[laughter] 

Suzie Lahoud: When I read other people [laughs]. Thank you. 

Jonathan Walton: No, but I mean like, well, quotes by themselves are not powerful. Like your application of them in this conversation. 

Suzie Lahoud: Thank you. No, I appreciate that. Thank you. I guess my point was, I can't take credit for the quote, but I appreciate that, Jonathan. Thank you. 

Sy Hoekstra: [in a formal tone] Your strategic placement and integration of quotes into our podcast improves the overall content. 

Suzie Lahoud: [matching Sy’s formality] Oh, why thank you, Sybren. 

Jonathan Walton: The reason that I think that's important, is because I often don't point people to the places where I got the good water. 

Suzie Lahoud: That’s a good point. 

Jonathan Walton: So I think it's important to do that, and so I appreciate that you did that. It's just exceptionally helpful. I will say just one more thing about Jesus. Anger is just as a part of God's divinity as it is his humanity. Often, in the same way that anger gets framed as sin, I think we actually do need to reframe it as like, oh, anger is because of some of the product of emotion, and God's anger is because of his love. God's anger is because of his care. God's anger is because of the sense of injustice and indignity towards people made in his image. So that the anger, and then in Isaiah, the act of sanctification that comes like, be angry but sin not, for when you don't sin, you heap coals of fire upon the other person's head. It's like we can sanctify people through our anger when it's shared in ways that are transformative to help and we communicate just why that anger is happening.  

Suzie Lahoud: Yeah. Thank you for bringing it back to, yeah, this process of wanting to know God more and become like him. I mean, what we want to be at the heart of all of these conversations. Yeah, it's interesting that even as you say that, even as you talk about anger and how it relates to the divine being, to divinity, it’s so hard because we, I wonder if it's almost because we live in a dominant culture that doesn't know how to deal with anger in a healthy way, that allows it to be explosive when it shouldn't be, that shuts it down when it should be allowed to come out. We don't know how to talk about anger and God in ways that don't lead to abuse. So even as you make that argument, and I'm like, “Yes, amen.” And yet at the back of my mind, it's all the ways that anger has been used, taken from scripture, and then used in abusive, manipulative situations. 

Sy Hoekstra: As fire and brimstone. 

Suzie Lahoud: Yes, and it makes me so sad because we don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water. I'll be specific that this is an area that I need to understand more. I don't understand the anger of God. I don't understand it, and I have understood it in ways that have been unhealthy. I want to understand it in healthy ways. I've understood it in ways that are destructive, I want to understand it in holy ways. There's just so much work that needs to be done, and I think we're just at the beginning of diving into the mystery of that. Yeah, and that's an area that I want to grow in wisdom and understanding. 

Sy Hoekstra: So I think our final closing thought here is, stop tone policing God. 

[laughter] 

Jonathan Walton: Fair.  

Suzie Lahoud: And stop using God to tone police others.  

Sy Hoekstra: Yes, right. 

Jonathan Walton: That would definitely be a thing. 

Suzie Lahoud: Particularly Black women. Just don’t do that. 

Sy Hoekstra: The end. Thank you all so much for listening [laughs]. This is a great conversation. Suzie, we are so happy to have you back.   

Jonathan Walton: Yes. 

Suzie Lahoud: Thanks guys, it’s good to be back. 

Sy Hoekstra: Everybody, please remember to follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter @KTF Press. Leave us a rating and review on your podcast player of choice if it allows that. You know what? If your podcast player doesn't allow that, just open up Apple Podcasts or Spotify on your phone. Give us a rating there. You don't have to listen. Why do I keep saying you should do it on the app where you listen? Do it on every app. Open every podcast app you can find. Download new apps, just to rate and review us. 

[laughter] 

Suzie Lahoud: Be generous with your rates and reviews. 

Sy Hoekstra: Exactly. 

Suzie Lahoud: Spread them widely.  

Sy Hoekstra: Spread them widely. Our theme song as always, “Citizens” by Jon Guerra. Our podcast art is by Jacqueline Tam, and we will see you all in March. Thank you so much for listening. 

[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.] 

Jonathan Walton: No. Oh, wait, hold on. Everest is awake. Sorry, hold on. Hold on. I got to go get her. Sorry. 

[Laughter] 

Suzie Lahoud: On that note… 

[Loud crashing noises from Jonathan’s mic] 

Sy Hoekstra: Whoa! Whoa, what was that? 

Suzie Lahoud: Oh, Jonathan just ate it! Are you okay, Jonathan? 

[No response from Jonathan; just two more small sounds of things falling] 

Sy Hoekstra: Jonathan, did you fall?  

Jonathan Walton: [weakly] Yeah. Definitely did.  

Sy Hoekstra: Are you okay?  

Jonathan Walton: Yeah, I’m alright [laughs]. 

Sy Hoekstra: Okay. 

Jonathan Walton: I didn't realize my foot was wrapped in the cords.  

[laughter] 

Suzie Lahoud: Oh, no. Did you actually hurt yourself though?  

Jonathan Walton: Oh, no no no no no. I caught myself on the ground, but I'm okay. I’m alright. 

This episode is a conversation between Sy and Jonathan about how we create hierarchies of sin – implying in a million big and small ways that some sins are worse than others. They also talk about how that distortion of Christianity supports systems of control and oppression, how the hierarchy is applied more harshly to marginalized people, how we can find our way out of this flawed thinking, and a lot more! 

Shake the Dust is a podcast of KTF Press. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Find transcripts of this show and subscribe to get our newsletter and other paid content at KTFPress.com. 

Hosts  

Jonathan Walton – follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.  

Sy Hoekstra – follow him on Twitter.  

Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra – listen to the whole song on Spotify. 

Our podcast art is by Jacqueline Tam – follow her and see her other work on Instagram.  

Production and editing by Sy Hoekstra. 

Transcript by Joyce Ambale and Sy Hoekstra. 

Questions about anything you heard on the show? Write to [email protected] and we may answer your question on a future episode. 

Transcript

Jonathan: If you have a hierarchy of sins, then you also create a hierarchy of what's righteous. The idea that the end justifies the means is not in scripture at all. But we will say that, like, black Americans should be grateful that we were brought over as slaves because at least then we got the gospel. When in reality, the gospel was already in Africa. Well, once you have the hierarchy in place and you have systems and structures to enforce that hierarchy, then this entire ecosystem gets built around it. 

[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/That it will roll in abundance/ And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.] 

Sy: Welcome to Shake the Dust: Leaving colonized faith for the Kingdom of God, a podcast of KTF Press. My name is Sy Hoekstra. I'm here as always with Jonathan Walton, and we are going to have a conversation about the idea of creating a hierarchy out of sins today, and we're going to talk to you a little bit about how that interacts, that idea interacts with the things that we talk about on this podcast. It might sound a little bit abstract right now, but we promise we'll bring it down to earth real quick. But before we get started, I just wanted to remind everyone, thank you so much. This is a subscriber only bonus episode. We appreciate you very much being subscribers. We could not do what we do without you all. 

If you have a minute, we would really appreciate it if you would hit follow or subscribe on your podcast app. We would appreciate it if you rated and reviewed us on that app. Hey, guess what? Spotify just introduced podcast ratings. So if you want to go on there and rate and review us on Spotify, that would be a big help to us. That helps other people find the show. Also, please follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at KTF Press. Okay, I think that's everything. Let's get started now. Jonathan let's first of all define our terms a little bit. When we talk about a hierarchy of sins, what are we talking about?  

Jonathan: Yeah. So hierarchy of sins. I think the easiest way to say it, is that there is a level one sin and level two sin, a misdemeanor sin, a felony sin. Like these things that some things, and i.e. some people are worse than others, before God and therefore before us. And how we approach and engage and forgive or not forgive or withhold communion or ex communicate or, there's just levels to this. 

Sy: Right, and so let's put a little bit more meat on that idea which is, like for instance, I think we're probably a lot of us are familiar with the idea of a church that would say make a really, really, really big deal out of sexual sins and then say almost nothing about things like greed or anger or narcissism or things like that. Let's contrast this with the way Jesus talks about sin, what's the difference?  

Jonathan: Yeah. So something that I really like that Jesus does, is bringing sin, not just into the action, but into the posture of the heart and intentions. So we see him do this with adultery, we see him do this with anger. The reality that God is calling us, inviting us into something much more transformative than just change, a behavior change, but our posture towards one another is one that moves towards honoring and sacredness and dignity and respect, as opposed to, I'm just going to do this because I'm supposed to. I think that's just a beautiful, beautiful, thing. 

Sy: Yeah, thinking about sin in terms of do's and don'ts is kind of implicit in hierarchical thinking when it comes to sin, right? Like you're thinking here are things that you can do that are like, yeah, maybe bad, but sort of acceptable, versus the things that are really, really real bad [laughs]. 

Jonathan: Right, right, right.  

Sy: So, and then I think like what it really never takes into account, is the idea of sin as being kind of the corruption and fallen-ness of the world in general, because it's not just about individuals. You can actually talk about, you can talk about sin like as a trap, not just like as an indictment of you personally, because it's something you did, but actually something you're ensnared in, something you're born into. Something that has corrupted the world, that has made it, that has introduced darkness and evil into the world in general, not just into kind of individual things that we do. And then I think the big point for me, is that like in the gospel when Jesus is teaching, sins are actually things that you can commit without fear or shame.  

Which is like, if that makes you uncomfortable, this is kind of what I'm trying to highlight. So the thing that I thought about when we first started talking about this, Jonathan, I talked to you about this was, a small group meeting that I had when I was in college, where a group of us were talking about the place in Romans where Paul kind of tells the church not to use the grace of God as an excuse to sin. And one of the people in the small group asked, “Why would anyone do that? Why would somebody use the grace of God as an excuse? Why would Paul have to say this to anybody?” And we were all just kind of sitting there shaking our heads or scratching our heads.  

None of us really had an answer and it kind of took me a long time, it's funny to think about it now, but it took me like several years to go, “Oh, it's because Paul was free [laughs].” It's because the people who Paul was talking to actually believed themselves to be free of sin, and if you really honestly live into that freedom, you're not going to be thinking all the time about the things that you need to do and don't need to do, because you're free [laughs]. So he actually had to, he had to like reel them in. He had to be like, “Hey, come back, hang on. Just because we can do anything, doesn't mean we don't actually have to pay any attention to what we're doing,” right? 

And I just thought it was funny that a group, there were five or six of us. All except one had grown up in the church. All over the country, one person from not even the United States, and none of us could come up with that answer to, none of us could come up with the answer: because the gospel made Paul and these people he was talking to free [laughs]. 

Jonathan: Right. Absolutely. And I mean, that passage in Romans six is like, it's scandalous. Like you're talking, you live in a, these people would have lived, I believe like the highest values would have been like Epicureanism or hedonism where desires and wanting things and experiencing stuff is not bad. Whereas I would definitely say I grew up thinking that if I got what I wanted or my desire, I had to subdue them. The, what Paul is inviting them into, or the freedom that he's inviting them into in Christ, is different than the shackles that I am taking off. The contextualization and the culture that Paul is speaking with in contrast to ours is fascinating. 

Sy: Yeah. Okay. So let's get into this a little bit. How does having a hierarchy of sins, thinking of sins as do's and don'ts, thinking of some sins as worse than others benefit or support systems of control and oppression? 

Jonathan: All right, let’s go to the deep end real quick. We’re leaving colonized faith for the Kingdom of God, right? Like you saying, Oh, we were sitting at Columbia where you and I went to college, in this Bible study, and it's all over the world, like these people thinking this thing. And I'm like, colonization happened everywhere, right? Even the penguins I think know that something is not okay [laughs]. So when we create hierarchies of sin, we make it easier to maintain control and enforce norms. 

Sy: How? 

Jonathan: Yeah. So for example, and something has stood out to me. I'm from Southern Virginia and when I visited Jamestown as a kid, I saw a verse that was lifted out of context. “If you do not work, you cannot eat.” So they said like… 

Sy: At Jamestown [laughs]? 

Jonathan: Yes, at Jamestown in Virginia. 

Sy: Oh no, that’s awful and also makes perfect sense. 

Jonathan: Right, but if we think about it, it's like, oh, someone who doesn't work is not worthy of eating. And that's lifted from scripture and then applied to this place. So laziness becomes a sin that needs to be enforced more aggressively than let's say, rape or abuse or violence or sexual assault. So a man could “provide,” quote unquote, through his labor, and be abusive and be fed. But someone who was not able to work may not be given food. So there's this level that's created that is, it's like, oh, this community must value this more than that or these people more than that. And that's what I understood as a kid. 

I was like, oh, if I don't produce something, I'm not worthy of receiving basic stuff. Like seeing how things are set up, reinforced my already understood mentality — because I was already working in a field by the fourth grade — that if I did not work, then I may not have food. So laziness for me became one of the, like the worst possible things that you could be. And that's personal. That's not even, I wasn't even aware of the systemic, the vagrancy laws and laziness as a crime for black people and the, like I wasn't aware of that at the time. But it creates, the hierarchy of sin creates and enforces a norm for me to belong to a group of productive people. 

Sy: Yeah. I also think, so one of the ways that I was thinking about that the hierarchy reinforces oppression, is by making the people who are, the people who most openly commit the sins that are at the top of the list, that are the worst ones, you can make them others and dehumanize them. So feminists, gay people, single mothers, people who had children out of wedlock, anyone who's had an abortion, or anyone who advocates for abortion. Like those, you can politically demonize those people because they have committed the worst sins. Whereas if you are say a pastor or a political leader, or whoever who is very authoritarian, who is angry, who wants to dehumanize — the dehumanizing itself is a sin, but it's not one of the sins at the top — if you have anger and greed and you lust after power, those kinds of things, those are excusable because they're at the bottom of the list, so you can use them to obtain power. And that does not, that's not a ding against you as a leader. 

Jonathan: Yeah. And like, I mean, even to double down on that, the flip side is that it's not just that the people that are doing the quote unquote “worst sins” are marginalized. It's the people that are doing the least sin, the quote unquote “lowest level sins,” are empowered and in power. The person who owns slaves and is abusive and oppressive to women and creates systems that oppress and marginalize people who don't believe like them, i.e., Jonathan Edwards, always, they're centered and valuable and fine. Great. And the people that they deem unworthy are, stay unnamed and punished. So the other side of that coin is really harmful.  

Sy: Yeah. I also think that once you kind of start grading sins on a curve [laughter], that's kind of what it is. You can excuse the ones that are not as serious, in pursuit of goals that you think are important. So take for instance, I said before, you can do things like be greedy or angry or narcissistic in the pursuit of power. So if you idolize power, whatever your idol is, but let's just say you idolize power, because we're used to that one. You can then commit a bunch of the sins for the good of obtaining the power, because power can be used in good ways, power can be used to further the kingdom, power can be used to evangelize people, to whatever.  

The best example of this with which at least most Americans are familiar I think, would be church leaders who went from condemning Clinton in 1999 for sexual misconduct, to avidly supporting Trump despite sexual misconduct. Because Trump's going to get you what you want in terms of having power and putting the people on the Supreme Court and et cetera. So basically you can always, like the reason, whatever reason it is that you, that sneaks in there that allows you to commit one of the lesser sins, you can always ratchet the importance of that up more and more until it’s just basically acceptable to commit the sins that are at the bottom of the scale.  

So that's… then you add that to our political climate in which we are constantly talking about how electing this next leader or this next election is the most important thing that we will ever do in our entire lives, because society is on the brink, and if the other side wins, we're all going to die [laughs]. When that's your attitude, it becomes extremely easy to do the things that you have deemed less bad than the things that are at the top of the list.  

Jonathan: What's compelling to me about what you're saying, is that if you have a hierarchy of sins, then you also create a hierarchy of what's righteous. So the idea that the end justifies the means, is not in scripture at all. But we will say that, like the literal argument that Black Americans should be grateful that we were brought over as slaves, because at least then we got the gospel, when in reality, the gospel was already in Africa, pre-colonization. As we're talking about it, it's like, well, once you have the hierarchy in place and you have systems and structures to enforce that hierarchy, then this entire ecosystem gets built around it. Around how to construct, and how to perform righteousness and how to be religious in a society, and what does faithfulness look like? And what is faithfulness embodied look like? And then what testimonies get shared and what, who gets celebrated, who gets to become a saint. It's very, it's elaborate and intentional. 

Sy: Yeah. Also just think of how many testimonies have you ever heard of someone talking about how they were delivered from greed?  

Jonathan: Jesus.  

[laughter] 

Sy: You've heard drugs, you've heard sex, you've heard, you know what I mean, [laughs], but you've never heard greed.  

I think one more, I don’t know, devious way that the hierarchy creates power for people in church in particular, is that people who do commit the sins that are at the top, but are still Christians, so not the people who commit them openly, not the people who are out there advocating for the abortion, not the people who are out there trying to, being single mothers and not caring that they had sex when they weren’t married. Whatever, whoever the boogeymen are. The people who have committed these sins, or who continue to commit these sins that are the bad ones, but they're still in church. 

Jonathan: Yes.  

Sy: Having a hierarchy creates an enormous amount of power over those people,  

Jonathan: Right, right.  

Sy: Specifically because they have to keep coming back to you for absolution from the extra bad sins that they are committing. They have to constantly feel ashamed of themselves and they have to constantly seek righteousness and they have to constantly be afraid because they've done the really bad ones. So that fear keeps people coming back to church, keeps the pastor's authority over them solid because they need, they're just constantly looking for whatever little drips of forgiveness they can find as they continue to watch pornography or whatever.  

Jonathan: Yeah, and it is, and you know, this is where we could talk about the intersectionality of things. Because I remember in high school, one of — two teachers at my high school were sleeping with each other and they were married to other people. And the woman in the relationship was brought in front of the church, forced to confess in front of the church and all these things. This was early 2000s. And I just thought to myself, “Well, where's the guy in this situation?” I also thought to myself like, “which sins do we force people to publicly confess?” Which sins will force you to experience social exclusion and collective shame? And also the idea that literally Jesus came that sin would not separate you from God.  

But it seems as though we would say, no, it's not that sinfulness separates you from God, but the shame of the sin should separate you from God and community. So we're going to set that up. I don't know if I'm saying that correctly. 

Sy: No, no, no you are, but I think the other thing that you're getting at, is not, it's not just what you've done. You don't just get graded on a curve of which sin is worse, you also get graded on a curve of who you are. Which is, that's the woman being brought in front of the church and not the man. And that's, I want to talk about this too, because like I said before, anger is one of the lower ones on the scale, but if you're black or if you're a woman and you're deemed angry, that's a lot worse, right? That's something that we have a stereotype about. That's something that we know how to dismiss those people.  

We don't necessarily care that much when somebody, like when a white guy’s on stage in a pulpit, screaming about whatever, the Democrats, about abortions, about homosexuality, whatever. But if you are getting angry about racism, that's a completely different story. 

Jonathan: Right. And I will say this too. I was once at a church in Brooklyn with, in an event with a nonprofit. And there were politicians that were there and it was very interesting to me because someone turned to me and said, “ You know, if Cuomo was here, people will be falling all over themselves to talk with him.” And they said too, they said at the time, “And they know how he treats women.” But… 

Sy: Oh, when was this?  

Jonathan: This was probably 2007? 2007 or 8.  

Sy: Whoa, and they were saying, they know how he treats women in 2007?  

Jonathan: Yeah, yeah. This wasn't a new thing, you know what I mean [laughs]? So they said, “If there was a female leader who did the things that Andrew Cuomo did, they would never let her step into this pulpit. They would never let her like come in here and speak to us. But because it's Cuomo, it doesn't matter the reputation that they have of demeaning women.” Because these things are known. They come out later, but these things are known. So it's one of those things where it's like again, like the intersectionality of it, like you were just saying, it depends on who does it. And the reality is, if someone is wealthy and in power, they are absolved for quote unquote “what they can do for the community”, which is the exact case that Donald Trump made when he stood at that church in Iowa and began to say, “If I'm in power, you will have power.”  

Sy: Right. So, on top of who you are committing the sin, I think it also matters who you're sinning against. If you are… and this is like the most extreme example you can think of, but it was absolutely routine at one point in this country for slave owners who sexually assaulted black women to be members in good standing of churches, when it would not have been the case if they had gone after a white woman, right?  

Jonathan: Right.  

Sy: So, the curve on which the sins are graded is just so along identity lines and awful, or it can be in any given scenario that it's, I mean, I think what we're digging into here, is just like some really deep ways in which a thing that is not explicitly about power or oppression, becomes about one. Like when you distort the ways that, I don’t know, God wants society to operate, there's a whole lot of awful downstream consequences that are going to break along the lines of existing hierarchies and oppression.  

Okay. So we've talked about all the problems that the hierarchical thinking about sins causes. How do we get out of this kind of thinking, Jonathan?  

Jonathan: So I was having this conversation with Priscilla, and I was talking with her about this episode. This hierarchy of sins, what do we say when we're trying to basically defend the dignity and place of people who have quote unquote “messed up” at the table? Like they still belong there. Because if I belong there, then they belong there, because I'm not better than them. If there is no hierarchy of sin, then I can't say that I'm better than the person who is greedy or I'm better than the person who is addicted to pornography. Or better than the person who’s caught up in some addiction or abuses their spouse or murdered someone, or is sitting in prison right now. I can't say that if there's no hierarchy of sin. 

And I think that the actual, one of the answers to the hierarchy of sin, is just confession. Like the reality that I am a sinner, I’m saved by the grace of God. Now, all of us are. I'm not actually, I'm not going to do in Matthew 18 what the Pharisee does to the poor man. When he says, “Hey, at least I'm not like that guy.” That's just not the way, it's not the way of Jesus. 

Sy: Yeah. And you're not going to do it… I have to qualify this a little bit because I think we are extremely good at saying we're not doing that, but then doing that [laughs].  

Jonathan: Yes. Right, right, right,  

Sy: That's what we're talking about now. The ways that we have talked about the hierarchy of sin, is basically we're inferring through the fruit of people and their ministries, and the things that they do in church, that there is a hierarchy of sin behind, like in their minds, in their hearts. This can include people who talk all day long about grace. Who talk all day long about confession. Who confess openly in… there's so many ways that you can confess, that are designed… designed, and it could be intentionally designed or not, but that make you look good. That make you, you can confess in a way where, like the thing you did isn't really all that bad and you're up there confessing it, so look, you're humble. So we just need to be careful.  

Jonathan: Yes. Like a college student or a person confessing that they are addicted to pornography. I think that used to be something that was very taboo, and very shameful to admit. But now, I hear there are books, there are conversations, there are groups. That there are things, there's an infrastructure around it to basically say, like we, that happens and we can help you with that. The same thing still does not exist for men who are abusive, or emotionally detached and don't know how to connect, and say and do things that are radically unhelpful in their relationships. I wonder what a community would look like where we weren't just confessing the things that we’re… and Nathan talks about this, my brother, he's like, we weren't confessing the things that were transparent, because we can be transparent about some things. But it's like, what if we were actually able to be vulnerable, the transparency plus risk? And it would be, I think, well, I think sometimes the things that me and Priscilla talk about make people uncomfortable because they're not used to saying the quiet part out loud, you know? Like we try to talk openly about like how hard it is to figure out how to be faithful with money, owning a house.  It is, it's really hard not to think, “I need to keep up with everybody around me financially, and just accumulate more things and get that next thing.” And it's almost like this tidal wave for us of how do we step out of the road to just more accumulation? 

Because in scripture, no one who follows Jesus is hell-bent on accumulating as much as they possibly can for themselves and for those they love and care about.  

Sy: Yeah. That's the Luke 12 parable of the farmer who just stores up the grain until he dies.  

Jonathan: Exactly. So what it leads, what it actually leads me to, if I am no better than anyone who's committed all the sins at the top, the bottom or the middle of the list, and then I go to Jesus and it's like, God, I don't want to be faithful in the way that the hierarchy has set up. I want to be faithful in the way that you set things up. Then it's really hard for me to believe that I'm even doing the right thing. When I look at Luke chapter nine or Matthew chapter seven, where it's like, they casted out demons in his name. They led the small group, they went to the church and he still didn't know them. So it's one of those things where I'm like, there is this holy moment of like, God, forgive me.  

Then we flip over to Romans eight or Roman six, like your group is studying, and it's like, there is no shame or condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 

Sy: [whispering] That's Romans eight.  

Jonathan: I know, that’s Romans eight [laughs]. That's what… I was going to quote from Roman six after that. Then it's like, because grace abounds, which is what is in Roman six. So like, I think there is this radical interplay between humility before God and awareness of just like our brokenness and then just the abject amazing grace of God that swoops in and says, “But you’re mine anyway.”  

Sy: And this is… okay, this is the point that I want to emphasize, because I think there are so many people who are so trained subconscious, sometimes consciously, but subconsciously a lot of times too, to be so afraid of their own brokenness. To be so afraid of their own sin, that the reason that the hierarchy is, like the hierarchy of sin is attractive, is because it makes salvation feel attainable for you. Like you can do it. You just got to avoid the bad, the real bad ones. And I think there are a lot of people who talk about, talk so much about like the depravity of sin, that they really do convince themselves that they're like just barely hanging on to salvation. 

Or they're constantly talking about how, like they're constantly talking about everything before Jesus. Or they're talking about a world without Jesus. If Jesus hadn't saved me, I would be so damned. I would be so completely screwed, that I just, I need to be in like, I need to constantly remember that. As opposed to constantly remembering the reality in which we are supposed to live, which is that Jesus from the beginning of time had ordained that we would all be saved and live under his grace and in his righteousness. Like there was literally no point in human history where you were actually at risk of not being saved. Where we were at risk of Jesus not showing up. That was — in the beginning, the word was with God. Right? It's like, and taking that, I don't know, like I said, I think there is a lot of control. There's a lot of temptation on the part of a lot of pastors and denomination heads and whoever else, to emphasize how terrible you are, and so you need to keep coming back here to me and give money to my collection plate, to assure yourself of your salvation, as opposed to trusting Jesus. And  

Jonathan: Yeah 

Sy: Go ahead…  

Jonathan: Yeah. I had a conversation with a woman. Now, she’s from Columbia and she, I asked her, we got to talking one day about faith in the elevator. And I am that person who held the elevator for two minutes on the third floor, talking to this woman about Jesus, because she asked me a question in the elevator [laughter]. 

Sy: Everybody in the lobby was really mad at you. 

Jonathan: Yes. Yes. What she said was, the priest refused to give her communion because she divorced her husband. She said, “I just, I cannot serve a God like that. I just cannot.” And she has since married someone else, and she's converted to Islam and her life has gone in a different direction. And throughout my, as I'm talking with her, I just sat there thinking to myself like, I just could not imagine being the pastor or priest, like spiritual leader of a community, looking at someone and saying, “You can't come to this table,” and putting myself in that space. 

Sy: We should clarify. You're saying, not come to this table under any circumstances, right? 

Jonathan: Yeah. 

Sy: Because there are, I don't know how much… when you say you can't take communion because of X, Y, and Z, like you're starting to dig a little bit at a lot of like Catholic and Orthodox doctrine. 

Jonathan: It’s true, you’re right. 

Sy: Which is like, which is, we're Protestants, maybe that's what we're doing [laughter]. But also, the implication seems to be like, I don't even care if you have repented of anything or whatever. Or I have eliminated the possibility that your divorce was not a sin [laughs]. 

Jonathan: That’s true. Well, what… Okay. So question, is sinfulness a disqualification… 

Sy: To communion with God. 

Jonathan: To communion with God. 

Sy: Right, exactly.  

Jonathan: I don't think the answer is yes, but I guess the way that I'm trying to tie it back in to what we're talking about is like, I wouldn't want to have a conversation with Maya where she's looking to me to know whether or not God loves and approves of her. Or like I become the arbiter of whether or not she's in the family of Jesus, because there's a hierarchy of sin in my house where if she, you know what I mean? 

Sy: Yeah. 

Jonathan: Like that just, that feels, it feels oppressive. Like it feels like I'm not supposed to have that power over someone. I can share my thoughts, I can communicate what I believe. I can communicate my convictions, but I think I have to say them in humility, that I am before an under God, just like you. I'm not between you and him. 

Sy: Can I just add one? Well, this is not going exactly off of what you just said, but just one last thought that I had is, a lot of what tempts people into doing things like being angry or narcissistic or whatever else, the sins that are not that big a deal on the chart, is trauma. Is like things that have happened to you that have made your life hard, and anger or narcissism or whatever, that's the way that you're reacting to difficult things that have happened to you in your life, and so there's a temptation then, like we said, to make those sins less of a big deal instead of doing the harder but better thing, which is deal with your trauma. And that's not easy. I'm not, I don't mean to make light of dealing with your trauma.  

But we've talked about the importance of emotional health before, and this is another one of the million different ways that being an emotionally healthy person will stop you from being someone who participates in oppressive systems. So I just wanted to get that note in there before we finished.  

Jonathan: So I wonder, because one of the, if we're going to talk about like the sins we don't care about, nobody cares about the Sabbath and rest [laughs]. So like, oh, I wonder what fear, what trauma, what boogeyman sits at the other side, sits on the other side of the table when we sit down to confess. If I sat down and confessed that I'm a greedy, what is the fear, anxiety or trauma on the other side that prevents me from doing that? That prevents me from saying I'm an angry, wrathful person.  

Sy: I think that would be a very helpful exercise for a lot of people to go through.  

Jonathan: I need to do that myself [laughter]. So I think that naming that, and then it's a high possibility that those who inhabit the same, this dominant or subordinated identity as you may be carrying that same fear or trauma or anxiety. 

Sy: Yes, right. This is one, a couple episodes ago when I was talking about blindness, and like my need to be productive and amazing because I don't want to confirm people's low expectations of blind people. That’s what that is, right? that's why I don't want to rest. I can tell you specifically why I don't want a Sabbath. It’s because I try to justify myself in that way because people have made their expectations of me clear and it makes me feel sad. And dealing with the sadness would be a whole lot better than the, all the effort that I put in towards being more efficient and being more self-justifying. It would be a whole lot better than all that.  

Jonathan: Yeah, and I think I inadvertently made a connection in myself that if I don't work, I don't think I deserve to eat. So we'll just let that sit there. 

[laughter] 

Sy: Hey look, we came full circle to Jamestown. 

Jonathan: Right [laughs] 1619. 

Sy: We probably should have said that at some point. For people who don't know what Jamestown is, it was one of the original colonies of Britain in America.  

Thank you all so much for listening. If my calculations are correct, when we come back to you for our February episode, we should have our third co-host back. 

Jonathan: Suzie!  

Sy: I'm so excited [laughs], I told Jonathan I've been going back and listening to the shows that, like some of the stuff from season one, and I'm like, “Man, this show is better when Susie's on it.” 

Jonathan: It's a much better show when Suzie is on it.  

Sy: Listen, it’s still good. Still listen to us please, we want you to listen. 

Jonathan: Five stars, five stars. 

Sy: Five Stars [laughs]. So yeah, please rate and review us, speaking of five stars [laughter], wherever you can. And follow or subscribe on your podcast player, or follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at KTF Press. You know what, write in to [email protected] if you have anything that you want us to be covering, either in the next couple of bonus episodes or in season two of the regular show. Because we have started planning a little bit for some of that, and we are very excited about the ideas we have, but we would love to hear from you if you have anything that you want to hear. Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra. Our podcast art is by Jacqueline Tam, and we will see you all next month. 

[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.] 

Sy: All right, Jonathan today we are going to be talking about a concept that may not immediately be clear why it fits into what we’re talking about. So it will become clear. But we are talking about… 

[sound of a door opening] 

Child’s voice: Dolly, dolly, dolly! 

[laughter]. 

Child’s voice: Where is she? 

Jonathan: Maia, your dolls are on the edge, by the, by, on the right side. Thank you. 

[sound of a door closing] 

Jonathan: Lord have mercy. You got your blooper right there [laughs].  

Sy: I got my blooper. That, everyone, is the joy of kids being back at home doing virtual school. 

For this month’s bonus episode, Sy and Jonathan sat down to talk about how the incarnation relates to a lot of the themes we talk about at KTF Press. Christmas celebrates God coming close to the oppressed, enacting anti-imperial liberation, refusing to use worldly power as a foundation for his kingdom, and a lot more. Oh, and Jonathan does an Advent poem at the end, which is incredible as always. We hope you all are having a wonderful holiday season, and merry Christmas! 

Mentioned in the episode: 

* The poem by Kaitlin Schetler 

* Oscar Muriu’s talk at Urbana 2009 

* Hannah-Kate’s Twitter account 

Shake the Dust is a podcast of KTF Press. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Find transcripts for this show at KTFPress.com. 

Hosts  

Jonathan Walton – follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.  

Sy Hoekstra – follow him on Twitter.  

Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra – listen to the whole song on Spotify. 

Our podcast art is by Jacqueline Tam – follow her and see her other work on Instagram.  

Production and editing by Sy Hoekstra. 

Transcript by Joyce Ambale and Sy Hoekstra. 

Questions about anything you heard on the show? Write to [email protected] and we may answer your question on a future episode. 

Transcript

Sy Hoekstra: … she says right up top in the Magnificat, “Who am I? The Lord has blessed me, and people will remember me for forever.” She very much understands her status now and the change in her status, and what that means for who God is and what he is trying to accomplish. It's just, it's so, it's interesting that it's so different than the Christmas story or the salvation story that so many of us grew up. But it's also something that immediately upon learning that she's pregnant, a 14-year-old girl understands [laughs].  

Jonathan Walton: Yes. 

[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/That it will roll in abundance/ And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.] 

Sy: Welcome to Shake The Dust: Leaving colonized faith for the Kingdom of God, a podcast of KTF Press. I'm Sy Hoekstra, here with Jonathan Walton as always. We are here today to talk to you a little bit about Christmas and the incarnation, and what it has to do with the stuff that we talk about on this show. Before we get started really quick, thank you all so much for subscribing. This is a subscriber only episode. We appreciate so much your support. Welcome to the new people who are here off the sale that we did recently. So just please remember to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at KTF Press, and subscribe and follow this podcast, whatever button your app has on it, a subscribe button or a follow button, hit that one for us if you don't mind.  

If you can go on Apple podcast and leave us a rating and review, we would really appreciate it. That helps us out a ton. All right. So Jonathan, we’re talking about the incarnation today because it is Christmas time. Today, when this drops, it’s Christmas Eve. So let's just get started with a really simple question Jonathan. What to you right now is standing out to you, is compelling about the incarnation of Jesus and the advent season? 

Jonathan: Oh man, so many things, especially trying to explain Christmas to a little girl who is trying to also understand what Hanukkah is and also understand what Kwanzaa is, and also understand why we celebrate New Year's and other people don't. Like what's distinct about this thing called Christmas? 

Sy: Interesting.  

Jonathan: What is standing out to me is the humanity of Jesus, in contrast to how, the way that we talk about him, is like we stuff him into the divine, and don't bring him into the humanity. Or we stuff him into humanity and don't, kind of the divine, they don't hang out with each other.  

Sy: Oo, Elaborate.  

Jonathan: All right. So there's this poem making its way around Facebook again, and it says a real scandal of the birth of God. And it starts out, “Sometimes I wonder if Mary breastfed Jesus. If she cried out when he bit her, or if she sobbed when he would not latch. And having had a kid, two kids and watching that intimate, hard process happen, it's like, yeah, Jesus was a person, but he was also God.” And then you know, Mary Did You Know? seems to, that song completely seems to dismiss the fact that an angel showed up and told her lots of things, and she burst into worship this song we call The Magnificat. Which it seems like we don't know what to do with the tension of that.  

The humanity and the divinity and how those things interplay with each other. And there's another photo, or a piece of art that shows Joseph holding Mary's hand and she's in labor, pushing. So I just wonder, what if I was able to contemplate Christ as human and contemplate Christ as the son of God at the same time, and be able to hang out in that tension? Because in that tension is something I can't control. It's only something I can observe and appreciate as opposed to try to box it in a fixed value or put to my labelling. 

Sy: Has thinking about that more like taken you anywhere? 

Jonathan: What it's pushing me to, is to be okay with the wrestling and being okay with the wrestling. So Hannah-Kate @freedomsbride on Twitter, she posted, “I'm okay with wrestling in my understanding of the scriptures, because I’m confident in the one who gave them to us.” I'm okay with being confused by hard texts, because my security isn't in my competence, but in the one who is faithful. And I am more certain that God is real, he exists. He is present, he moves and all of that in the world by far. I am also more certain that I do not know everything about him or what he’s doing. And I think that this Christmas leads me to that. I am much smaller than I ever thought I was, much more insignificant and limited than I ever thought to be, or imagine myself, and that is okay. 

Sy: Yeah. Those thoughts from Hannah-Kate. For people who don't follow her on Twitter, you should. Those thoughts are very hard one for her. She's a very public survivor of sexual assault and advocate for people who have been assaulted inside the church. Following her on Twitter is like watching her go through her journey. She's very open about it, and it's worth doing, if you don't know who she is.  

Jonathan: Turn that question back to you, Sy. I would love to hear what's standing out to you this Christmas season.  

Sy: Yeah, totally. So something I've been thinking about a lot, is maybe not surprising to people who’ve been listening to this podcast, but I have been thinking about the fear of being human that we talked about with Dr. Hardwick, and how we are so quick to dismiss and avoid and try and push away the pain and the difficulties that come with living in a physical, limited body. Obviously he, when we were talking, when we were having that conversation with him, we were talking specifically about disabilities and how people fear them, and how our fear of disabilities, and that's a reflection of our fear of being human. So what's been standing out to me, I think, is just the complete absence of the fear of being human in God.  

Just the total vulnerability of becoming a baby and being subject to the everyday things of this world… I mean, natural disasters. Like tripping and falling could have killed Jesus like it could any of us, you know what I mean? And he was absolutely willing, he was able to become a human, which is sort of a remarkable thing in and of itself, but then was willing to do it. Wanted to do it in order to be closer to us, in order to save us, in order to bring his kingdom close to earth. And that, it's just, it's something that none of us could do, which is an obvious thing to say. Like, yeah, none of us as Christians are supposed to think that we could have saved the world the way Jesus could have. But it to me just emphasizes kind of his difference from us.  

But then I kept thinking about it a little bit more. And in his becoming human, like you just talked about, he also experiences the fears that we experience. He experiences the temptations and the insecurities. I’m just thinking of the Garden of Gethsemane, and Jesus trying and asking God to, “Take this cup away from me. I don't want to go to the cross. I don't want to be executed or go through …” We don't know exactly what it was that he was afraid of. But he did not want to go through something because it was just, it was going to be horrible. And I think it is comforting to me to have both a God who understands that fear of being human that I experienced myself, and also like a fear that I have kind of pushed on me by other people.  

He understands that and overcame it and understood what you get from overcoming it. And that what you get from overcoming it is the kingdom. Is eternal life is, is love and joy. Like for the joy set before him is why he endured the cross. All of that is wrapped up in the act of God becoming a baby, and I think that's just extremely powerful and something I've been thinking a lot about in the past couple of weeks. 

Jonathan: Yeah. I mean, you, I mean, the stuff you just named is like, those things that are significant, but it also made me think about like, he subjected himself to invent the potential for infanticide, right? Like Herod said, “we're going to kill these children,”  

Sy: right 

Jonathan: And then subjecting himself to being a refugee. To not having a home. There's a lot about the trials of life that are mounting and Jesus knows all of them.  

Sy: Right. So let's talk about this then Jonathan, what to you, hearkening back a little bit to our conversation with Dominique DuBois Gilliard, what is subversive about the incarnation of God? 

Jonathan: Everything [laughs]. Everything means nothing. So, specifically, it's just not what the Jewish people are looking for in any way, shape, or form. It's what they want. Right? 

Sy: What’s what they want? 

Jonathan: They want liberation. They want the Romans out. They want their homes back, their life back to not be taxed to death. They want to have autonomy. They don't want soldiers abusing and violating and crucifying people around them. They don't want those things. Yet Jesus says, “I'm going to liberate you from …  not that? From separation from me? from …” I mean, list out the things that Peter might've thought were going to happen before he picked up the sword and struck Malchus in the ear. But it's like, to think about what it would mean to be set free in Christ, but still be under Roman oppression. Looking at the person of Jesus in that day feels other worldly. If I'm Peter, I'm a lower, middle-class person, not educated, I'm a fishmonger, I hang out with dirty things, I smell the majority of the day, but I provide food for people, it's a good job.  

Doing my thing, my dad is my, our family business. All of a sudden there's this person who comes that says, “You know what, everything could be made new.” And my everything is like, I'm not going to be subject to these systems anymore. I'm not going to experience that. And I don't know all the things that Peter experienced or witnessed, but the thought of … I'm sure he had a list of things as he talked with Jesus, became more and more enamored by him, and took more risks with him and for him and through him. All of a sudden now, this liberator who he, I would imagine he thinks is going to just overthrow Caesar and rule the world with him by his side, because Peter's always trying to get up in there. It's like all of a sudden he's going to be taken away by at least 150 soldiers.  

And so it's like, yeah, he's just not here to, he's not, Jesus did not come to fulfill or perform my will and desire. He just didn’t. He came to do the will of the father. This is where I think some worship songs that we sing miss the point. You know, worship songs are great, but the songs that just completely revolve around us. Like, you were thinking of me on the cross and you were… I don't know if that's true. It might be. I mean, because God is able to think a lots of things at once. But in John 3:16, when he says, For God so loved the world, that word world is a Greek word, cosmos, which means God's ordered purposes, and that's why he died, because we were made to be in Shalom. I don't necessarily know or think, even though it's comforting to conjecture that like, oh, he was thinking of Jonathan Walton. But at the end of the day I'm like, it's actually more important that he was thinking of all of humanity. Because if he wanted to do what I wanted him to do, the world would not be saved. I would just be comfortable.  

Sy: So this is related to what I was going to say, which I was thinking back Jonathan to a talk that you and I were both present for about 12 years ago at Urbana 2009, from a guy named Oscar Muriu, who is a pastor in Kenya. He basically gave a talk, the first like, I don’t know, five minutes or so of the talk, were him explaining how all of the ways that God went about saving the earth, were terrible from his, Oscar Muriu’s perspective [laughs]. How slow it was, how Jesus was a baby, how he wasn't, like there wasn't some big triumphal procession when he came. He was like, “I could have saved the world in like half the time that Jesus saved the world.” 

Jonathan: Absolutely. His marketing campaign would have been out of this world, right. 

Sy: Right. Exactly. Had no marketing or branding savvy. He basically concludes that all of the ways that we grab onto power to try and spread the gospel, and the kingdom and everything that we do in the church, all the ways that we seek after money and influence and all of that are, like run completely counter to the incarnation. To the idea of God coming as a baby, and how those … I don’t know. All those means, all those methods that we have tried to spread his word throughout the world, by the simple fact that God didn't do them, we can see kind of how disorganized, how disoriented, how confused we are. How easily we give into the ways that people try and spread their messages as part of the kingdom of earth. 

Jonathan: Exactly. No, I mean, there's an old hymn that we used to sing called, “Yield Not to Temptation.” The idea that we are so tempted to false liberation, from whatever the thing is. Like I could get some morsel of satisfaction from this and some, cobbled together some sort of freedom from the suffering of this world or the trappings of life, whatever the thing is. If someone will promise that. And we see that in political speeches all the times from Trump or Biden or Clinton or Obama. There seems to be this promise of liberation or freedom from this existential angst or threat that we are carrying. Well, and it's tempting to lean into that. And Jesus actually rejects that when he rejects Satan, when in the tempting at the desert, right? 

Sy: Yeah.  

Jonathan: Anyway, that could be a whole nother podcast, but yeah. 

Sy: It could. I agree with you, and this is actually, I talked about this in the episode that we did with Irene Chow. But this is actually pretty connected to the way that I personally became a Christian, and moving from having real objections to the idea of hell and punishment for something that we never would have done, that never would have existed if God hadn't created us in the first place, and he didn't need us. So I had all these objections to him kind of setting up this world where people could end up in hell. And the better question that I had, I never had to answer that question, but the better question I got that turned me away from that question was, basically based on this, based on the incarnation, based on the subversive, confusing way that Jesus goes about trying to save the world.  

Because he has to suffer through it, because it is difficult, because he becomes so vulnerable, it kind of forces you to ask, instead of why would God create the world, there's like, why would God create the world, knowing what he had to go through? And that knowing, the fact that he knew that, that he had to suffer, that he had to become vulnerable, that he had to descend and lose privilege and lose power and all of those things in order to effectuate what he wanted to accomplish with the kingdom of God. That is a question that doesn't lead you away from Jesus, it leads you toward him. I think, I don't know, that that to me is always a very personally grounding aspect of the incarnation.  

Jonathan: Absolutely. I mean, you, it sounds like you asking you the question, why would you do this to me? Then you're like, wait, why would you do this to yourself? 

Sy: Yes. 

[laughter] 

Jonathan: Which changes it, right?  

Sy: Yeah. I've also been thinking back a little bit to the conversation that we had with Rich, in our very first… no, our second episode, but the first interview that we did, you and I. His idea that the gospel is the announcement of the kingdom of God and the announcement of Jesus himself coming to earth. So not just salvation, he was like salvation is a part of it, but it's not the only thing. It is the announcement of the actual kingdom of God coming near. And what that means for us, and you pointed a little bit, or you alluded a little bit to this earlier. But Mary gets that immediately [laughs]. 

When the spirit, as the Bible says, enters Elizabeth, and she says to Mary, “Why am I so blessed that the mother of my Lord call on me?” I can't remember the exact words [laughs], but she then launches into The Magnificat, which has all of these lines about lifting up the humble and bringing down the proud from their thrones and filling the hungry with every good thing, and sending the rich away empty handed, and says nothing about the forgiveness of sins. 

Jonathan: Right. It's true.  

Sy: And it's like, she just understands what's happening to her on a level. On an immediate, intuitive level, kind of based on her position in society. She says right up top in The Magnificat, “Who am I? The Lord has blessed me and people will remember me for forever.” She very much understands her status now and the change in her status, and what that means for who God is and what he is trying to accomplish. And it's just, it's so… it's interesting that it's so different than the Christmas story or the salvation story that so much of us, so many of us grew up with. But it's also something that, immediately upon learning that she's pregnant, a 14-year-old girl understands [laughs].  

Jonathan: Yes. That's where I think the idea of liberation was not far away from this occupied people. The idea of Jesus or the promise of a Messiah was not far away from these people. They wanted, we're waiting for God to come back. They were listening for that, the 400 years of silence and all those different things. They were looking for a Messiah, the one that was to come. It wasn't like, oh yeah, maybe he'll show up sometime. But these were active thoughts for a population of people that knew what that meant. So it could have been let's say like the Pharisees and the Sadducees, who spending time thinking about these things, all the way down to an illiterate 14-year-old girl. That like know, “oh, I know what that is.”  

You know what I mean? And just as a tangent, that is very large. It's like one of the most subversive things about this incarnation, like is the, is our fathers use engagement with, love for, exaltation of women. It's not Joseph that gets the message, it's Mary. Zachariah did not believe it, Elizabeth did. Then you talk about the first evangelist was like the woman at the well. The first, the witnesses that testified to Jesus being resurrected, it's Mary. Like there's, the women are centered in these stories, in the scriptures, and they're named, and it is a, to go back to what you said before, it's how far we have strayed away from the subversiveness of the story to fit whatever narrative where, whatever narrative fits our needs for the day. When I say we, I use it very loosely because I ain't trying to do that. 

[laughter] 

Sy: Can I ask you, what have you told Maia about the incarnation? How have you explained Christmas to her?  

Jonathan: Oh man.  

Sy:  Maia's Jonathan's five-year-old, if you don’t know.  

Jonathan: We haven’t done the Luke 2 and all that stuff yet. The way that I've talked to her about Jesus is, in Christmas, is mostly through giving. So we give money every year as a family… 

Sy:  At Christmas?  

Jonathan: At the end of the year, at Christmas time, yeah. This is the first year that Maia's kind of cognizant of it. So one of the organizations we support is the IRC- International Rescue Committee and… 

Sy: Which settles refugees in the US. 

Jonathan: Settles refugees in the US, absolutely. So I had some pretty, I don't know how young kids are supposed to be faced with these conversations, but we're having a conversation about the black national anthem and about slavery, and it just struck her. She goes like, “Will that ever happen to me,” that's what she said. I was like, “No.” I said, “We work really hard so that things like that don't happen to you or to anybody else.” And she's starting to understand that the world is not fair. So she's like, “Well, why doesn't this young girl in Ethiopia have enough food? And why doesn't this young boy, why is he in a camp in Syria? And why …?” And I said, and I talked about Bashar al-Assad. I talked about the war in Ethiopia. And the thing that I told her about Trump, is I said, “Maya, the problem that Trump has, is what he calls good is bad and what he calls bad is good.” I said, “That's the problem.” God says, do not exchange the truth for a lie, and don't call what's dark light and what's light, dark, you know? So that's how I explain these leaders to her. I said, “Some people are choosing to do these things.” And I said, “They want something more than they want God.” I said, “When that happens, we have to work hard to make sure that things that God wants in the world continue to happen.” And she gets that. She's like, “Oh, I want this kid to be able to go to school like me.” So the way that ties into Christmas, is that Jesus came so that these things might be fulfilled in full. So I say, “Hey, you can be sad about all these things right now, but Jesus came so that these… and then that actually ties into heaven, because in heaven these things don't happen.  

It is all full and all good. Yeah. She's having a really hard time understanding right now that she is good, even though she makes mistakes. I can see it in her mind. She's like, she does something bad, we correct her and she cries. She goes, “I just think I'm a bad person.” And there's something beautiful about Jesus willing to come close to us and validate us. I think it's Sheldrake who said, if God was so ashamed of our bodies and humanity, he would have never wrapped himself in one. You know? Yeah, I'm really hoping she gets that. 

Sy: Me too, and I bet everybody is, because that's adorable and sad and beautiful all at the same time [laughs]. 

Jonathan: The tension, right? 

Sy:  Yeah, exactly. Thank you for sharing that. I appreciate it. I think it's … I've never had to do that before, explain incarnation to a five-year-old [laughs]. So I just think the ways that people go about that are really reflective of their own discipleship. And I think that's a really interesting and cool way that you're trying to explain this and make it relevant to her actual experiences, like what she's going through, which I think is kind of the only real way to do discipleship.  

Jonathan: Yeah. I'm bumbling along and all that, but I, trying to share with her just the beauty of it. 

Sy: Okay. So the way that we're going to end this episode for you, Jonathan, he's done this on a bonus episode before, but he's going to do a poem for us. An advent poem that he wrote a long time. When did you write this one Jonathan? 

Jonathan: I wrote this in 2007. Yeah It’s a long time ago.  

Sy: Yeah, okay [laughs]. A long time ago. So before Jonathan takes us out on the poem, I just want to remind you all, please do follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @KTFPress. Please hit the subscribe or the follow button on your podcast player, go to Apple podcasts, leave us a rating and review if you can. Those things are really helpful if you have a couple extra minutes, and a little bit of Christmas generosity in your heart. If you wouldn't mind helping us out that way, we would really appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening, and here is Jonathan.  

Jonathan: So In the morning, it's in the back of my mind ... by mid-day it's in the middle and by nighttime it's all I see with my eyes closed or open, because I don't want to miss it --- the moment when the east sky cracks and all that was taken is given back by He who made and gave it all away and gives and gives every good and perfect gift to us every single day -- to the faithful and the faith-less -- to hands held back and those  extended --- to the priests and to the paupers, to the mockers and the scoffers -- to all He did come and is coming again and I can't wait ... to the ones who have been bombed and to the ones who dropped them, to those hard and guarded and those whose hearts are soft and longing for His coming--- 

so I'm praying for grace and patience that we might praise Him in the rain... and not run to the clubs or comforts and addictions, to not color reality with uppers and downers or things that keep us from feeling -- but instead run to the rock of our salvation, cling to the hem of His garment and say give me strength til I can see the days of revelation when every tribe and every nation will praise you in the heavenly places -- oh lord my God give us strength in our waiting, so that you might reclaim the pieces of your kingdom that the enemy has taken.  

Messiah, you are coming but the time is not yet so give us faith to trust that our train has not left us behind and somehow we missed it -- 

because In the morning, it's in the back of my mind ... by mid-day it's in the middle and by nighttime it's all I see with my eyes closed or open, because I don't want to miss it -- the moment when the east sky cracks and all that was taken is given back by He who made and gave it all away and gives and gives every good gift to us every single day -- I don't want to miss it, and I just can't wait. 

[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.] 

Jonathan: Yup 

Sy: Alright 

Jonathan: Let’s do it [clears throat] 

Sy: You can’t hear that truck, okay. [inhales to begin speaking, and a loud truck horn blares] 

[laughter] 

Jonathan: On cue – [imitates truck horn] 

Sy: You hear that – Yeah exactly. [laughs] Oh, New York … 

On today’s episode, Jonathan and Sy discuss why we need to rethink the amount of attention we give to white people’s opinions, the danger of not knowing what white people think, recalibrating our thoughts around Jesus’ views, and a lot more. Thank you so much for subscribing! 

Articles mentioned during the episode: 

* Our response to the Kyle Rittenhouse case 

* Jonathan’s essay on suffering and what happened to his home during Hurricane Ida  

Shake the Dust is a podcast of KTF Press. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Find transcripts of this show at KTFPress.com. 

Hosts  

Jonathan Walton – follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.  

Sy Hoekstra – follow him on Twitter.  

Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra – listen to the whole song on Spotify. 

Our podcast art is by Jacqueline Tam – follow her and see her other work on Instagram.  

Production and editing by Sy Hoekstra. 

Transcript by Joyce Ambale and Sy Hoekstra. 

Questions about anything you heard on the show? Write to [email protected] and we may answer your question on a future episode. 

Transcript

Sy Hoekstra: Hi everybody, it’s Sy with a couple of quick programming notes before we get started with this bonus episode. You're about to hear a conversation that Jonathan and I recorded on Twitter Spaces. So this is a live conversation that we recorded. If you want to be notified when we're going to be recording anything else live and listen into that process, maybe answer a couple of questions or comment or whatever, you can follow us on Twitter. You can follow KTF Press or Jonathan @ForeverFocused, or me @SyHoekstra. Also just later in the episode, I am going to interrupt because while we were making this live recording, I told a story that had a factual error in it.  

I'm going to jump in and correct myself because even though I got a couple of the facts wrong, the point that I was making was one that we wanted to leave in the podcast. So I'm just going to explain the story with accurate facts when we get there. It’s when I start talking about Charlie Kirk, and you will hear those little piano sounds that you're used to when we're transitioning in between things on this show, and I will come in and explain what I got wrong just so we're giving you accurate facts because we want to do that. Finally we recorded this conversation before the acquittal in the Kyle Rittenhouse case, so we do mention the case without mentioning the outcome.  

If you want our thoughts on that case, we will link to the post that we put up the afternoon that that verdict came down, and you can read what we had to say about that. Also, Jonathan mentioned another article of his during the episode that I have also put in the show notes. So you can read about his thoughts on Hurricane Ida and suffering and the nature of suffering and kind of his different reactions to suffering and theology and theodicy, based on kind of where he grew up in the church tradition that he comes from. And now I will leave you with Jonathan doing the usual cold open to our episode. This is Jonathan talking about Jesus's invitation to us to love and suffer for our enemies. So the episode officially starts now.  

Jonathan Walton: It’s important who the invitation comes from. And for Jesus being someone who has scars in his hands and in his feet and in his side from the state, it changes the invitation. I think when someone makes an invitation and has been willing to incarnate themselves into that type of suffering, it's a transformative invitation. 

[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/That it will roll in abundance/ And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.] 

Sy Hoekstra: Welcome to this special subscriber only bonus episode of Shake the Dust, Leaving Colonized Faith for the Kingdom of God. It's been a little bit since we've talked to you. Hello, this is Sy Hoekstra as always, here with Jonathan Walton. We are here to talk to you a little bit today about an intentionally provocative question, do we have to care what white people think? So, but before we get started, really quickly, since you're all already subscribers, just please do remember to follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter at KTF Press, and to give us a rating and review on whatever podcast app you're listening on.  

Also please remember to follow or subscribe in your podcast app. All those things are really, actually, honestly, very helpful to us, and we really appreciate when you do them. Okay. Jonathan, let's get started with this question today. What… Let let's just first, like I said, a little bit of an intentionally provocative question. Why are we asking this question? Why is this question important?  

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. I think we're asking this question because we come back to it regularly in kind of indirect ways. So for example when we watched the news. If Steve Bannon says something, if John Piper, an evangelical pastors says something, if a criminal is doing something, race matters. Like who they are, what they represent is very important in the United States, because of our history and our context and also the impact that it has on people who are part of dominant culture. That means white is the assumed norm, and anything other than that is abnormal, even subjective, or is subject to that. 

So in the DEI space it would be called dominant culture versus subordinated culture. So I think it is always a question. So one of the things that people say is like, “Oh, is this about race?” That comes up a lot, and I think the answer is always, “yes,” and we just need to change that to the default. 

Sy Hoekstra: Or at least race is always a background of any question you’re talking about in the western context.  

Jonathan Walton: Yeah, exactly. Right. 

Sy Hoekstra: Or in most contexts actually. 

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. I mean, I think it’s, if we are crossing cultures, race becomes part of the context because of colonization and capitalism having reached every corner of the planet. 

Sy Hoekstra: And we're almost always crossing cultures at this point in how our society works. 

Jonathan Walton: Yes. Exactly. And I also think, for people who are listening on spaces or listening to this podcast for the first time, we want to be a space where we are speaking across difference. So you may not be able to hear, Black folks who listen to me, obviously know that I'm Black. But you may not know that, so I'm Black and I live in New York City and Sy is blind. So I try to understand his background and perspective, but I also understand I’m speaking across a dominant different. I'm an able-bodied person and the authority and reality that he speaks from, I actually need to submit and listen to and do the work to understand, so he doesn't have to do that work to constantly explain. So I think… yeah, go ahead Sy. 

Sy Hoekstra: I was going to say ditto for me and you when it comes to race. I have the same kind of perspective on the stuff that you say. And we have another cohost, when she isn't taking care of an extremely small baby, who is a woman. So we try and listen to her on those, on like gender issues as well. I think what you just said Jonathan, is actually, that point you just made is important. Because if you're white and you're sort of offended by the question that we're asking, then the reality, I think, that you need to grapple with, is that this is a question that most nonwhite people have to grapple with on a daily basis. 

You may not be aware of that. You might not believe me saying that, but it is something that is a very broad experience that we just need to realize is a question that other people are asking. And I think as far as whether someone's offended by this question or not, that's probably all we're going to say on this subject [laughs]. I think the other important point, is that racism and white supremacy in our culture exaggerates the importance of what white people say. In particular, not just exaggerates the importance of it, but allows a lot of white people who are not experts in a whole lot of subjects to speak on those subjects in an authoritative manner. 

And I think we just need to explicitly say and confront the fact that whiteness is kind of considered default objective neutral. Especially when you're talking about issues of race, but when you're talking about a lot of things really, and the people, anybody else is kind of seen as too emotionally invested or biased because of their position, but white people are not biased because of their position. So that's, I think that's kind of my answer to why we're asking this question, is we need to recalibrate how important we think white people's opinions are [laughter]. Because obviously look, I care about at minimum what one white person thinks, which is me [laughs].  

I like to think that Jonathan cares a little bit about what I think, so he also cares about at least one white person. You know what I mean? Like we're just trying to drastically decrease the level of authority that just comes with someone who looks and talks like I do. Let's talk about the question of how much do we have to care about what people think from the angle of it's actually dangerous not to care about what white people think. What do we mean by that?  

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. I think being Black in Southern Virginia growing up in a segregated space, the only time my mother talked about race was to warn me. That was the only context in which she brought up what whiteness was and who white people were. 

Sy Hoekstra: Can you give an example? 

Jonathan Walton: Absolutely. So When I, when my first book came out in high school, so I wrote my first book of poetry when I was 17 years old.  

Sy Hoekstra: Like One Does. 

Jonathan Walton: Yes, Like One Does. Another podcast. But shout out to all the Black mamas who sacrifice so much for their kids to do things. 

Sy Hoekstra: For real. 

Jonathan Walton: So we were in my elementary school, school office, and I had my book out. As I would normally do, I would just have a backpack full of them because people would see me around town and want to get one or buy one, and that, they just knew. This was 2001. So there… or 2003. So the reality was like there wasn't a bookstore within 50 miles in every direction of the house that I grew up in. So people just gave on this… so selling CDs out of the back of your car, I sold books out my backpack. So my mom asked me if a specific secretary had seen my book and I said, yes. And when my mom walked into that lady's office, she put the book on the table and acted like she wasn't looking at it.  

I said, “Mom, that was really weird.” She goes, “I'll tell you about it later.” And the reality is her husband is in the clan. So she's like, “Hey.” Like she does not want me to know that she, that some way it might get back around to him, that she was interested in what I was writing and reading and being, and engaged in it. 

Sy Hoekstra: Oh, but she was interested. 

Jonathan Walton: But she was. Oh, absolutely, because white people always are. They always are. The reality is Black folks don't buy hip hop. The majority of consumers of hip hop, pre streaming and things like that, like CDs were bought by 70 to 80 percent white suburban America. So it’s one of those things where like Black culture can be consumed, Black culture can be used and appropriated. 

Sy Hoekstra: But it’s taboo. 

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. But like actually appreciating using and all that stuff is definitely not, definitely a problem, you know? So another time we'd be like, whenever my mom would ask me about where I was going, I was a soccer player. Soccer is a white sport in the United States. So she would always ask, “What street are you going to?” There's a place in South Hill called Chaptico Road. There are very few, if any Black people, on Chaptico Road in the town that I lived in. So the, just the awareness of where I was, was, particularly around the people I was going to be around, was always about safety. So yeah, that's how it came up. 

Sy Hoekstra: So big picture for you, this question is not like a theoretical one. It is not something about principles or ideas or how society should work. It is about where Pauline Walton told you to go to play after school. 

Jonathan Walton: Yes. 

Sy Hoekstra: You know what I mean? It is a matter of like just the stuff that you have to know as a child to navigate your town. 

Jonathan Walton: Absolutely. And I'll tell you something else. That's hyper-relevant to me and you. Like before I came to New York City, I didn't know that Black people went to private schools. 

Sy Hoekstra: At all? 

Jonathan Walton: At all. Because in the south where I grew up, private schools were dangerous places.  

Sy Hoekstra: The University of Virginia is where you went. 

Jonathan Walton: Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Sorry, sorry. No, no private school being like… 

Sy Hoekstra: Oh, high schools? 

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. When I went to college, when I came to college and someone said to me, “Hey, I went to a private school,” and they were Black, or “I went to a private school,” and they were white, that told me that they were racist or dangerous. That's what it was. Because I was like, “Wait, how did you get to go there? Because every school that is private that I grew up around, was built for segregation. And Black people did not go to Keniston Forest or go to Brunswick Academy or go to any of the other segregation academies that was built up at the time. So again, the concept of race and the conversation particularly around whiteness, was always about where we were supposed to go or we were not supposed to go. Yeah. 

Sy Hoekstra: So I think then for me, I know this is true for you too obviously, but for me it is more on the bigger scale, social, political questions. To me, the thing that I think of when I ask why would it be dangerous not to know what white people are thinking is, I don’t know. Like a few, a couple of weeks ago, a video went around of a guy named Charlie Kirk, who some of you may or may not know, but he's an evangelical Christian, close ties to Jerry Falwell Jr. and Liberty University. He had a political action center named after him for a while until he went too far, kind of off the tracks for Liberty even, which is a little bit of a wild degree. But my point is he's like one degree of separation from very mainstream conservative evangelicals.  

And he was at an event for an organization called Turning Point USA, which if you're… some of you may know them, some of you may not. But he got up during the Q&A and asked the speaker, he said, “We are living in a medical fascist state and a real fascist,” like “the government has turned into fascism.” He said, “So I'm going to ask you like a bit of a strange question, so just get ready for this. Here's my question. When do we get to use the guns?” Was his question. And a bunch of people were kind of surprised. Some people were clearly delighted that he was asking the question in the audience, and some people were laughing at him. And he says, “No, no, no, I'm serious. This is not a joke.  

How many elections are we going to let them steal before we kill them?”  

[Instrumental music from “Citizens” by Jon Guerra plays briefly and then fades out] 

Okay, so here's where my mistake is. Charlie Kirk in this video is not the person who asked the question. Charlie Kirk was the speaker on stage. So the person asks all those questions, and then Charlie Kirk tells him that he's going to denounce what he's saying, and then he says, “But here's why,” and he explains. He doesn't say anything about the morality or the facts that the person has relayed. He doesn't dispute anything that he's said, except he does say that what they, and who ‘they’ is, is kind of unclear. But what they want you to do, is that they want you to be violent so that they can then violate your rights.  

So he says, you shouldn't be violent, because if you do, then this fascist state presumably is going to react harshly and take away your rights. To which the person who asked the question responds, “Well, they've already done that.” And then Kirk isn't really able to get through to him at all. Okay, so now I'm going to drop you back into the conversation. This is me again talking about, accurately, about Charlie Kirk.   

[Instrumental music from “Citizens” by Jon Guerra plays briefly and then fades out] 

And he is, like I said, very close to a mainstream conservative Christian. He has, I cannot even tell you how many followers. He has a daily radio show. He's got tons of people following him on social media. This is a guy that people take very seriously.  

And I think not knowing that that is where we are going, puts us… or not acknowledging that that is like where a whole lot of white people in this country are going, just leaves us vulnerable to a lot of danger. I think it left us vulnerable to not expecting or understanding how powerful Trump was going to be, and I think worse things are coming if you're not paying attention to that. So I know that's an incredibly depressing thing to say, but that's why I’m talking about danger here. 

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. I mean, I think because of the education that I have and because of the resources I now have access to, I can join that conversation because I have distance from it, right? Like my everyday reality is not as it was when I was a child. So now I can have that distance conversation and say, “Absolutely.” Like when Michael Flynn gets up and starts talking about one religion at John Hagee’s church in Texas, in San Antonio this past weekend. 

Sy Hoekstra: Another recent viral video. 

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. Right? Or even actually when Trump, the great book by Kristin Kobes Du Mez describing and dabbing into that statement that he made of a church in Iowa, like if you follow me you will be safe. Right? 

Sy Hoekstra: You will have power. 

Jonathan Walton: I'm sorry, yes, you will have power. And understanding that there is like a vast ecosystem that feeds. Like I would argue that 80 percent of the United States that voted for Donald Trump that considers themselves evangelical Christian, which really is about 30 percent of the United States population. Because the United States only votes in elections at about 54 percent. The vast majority of those people are white Americans. The vast majority of those people that are the most committed, are also the most religious, that religion being evangelical Christian. So it’s, those numbers work themselves out to a very large group of people that hold… 

Sy Hoekstra: Thirty percent I think is high. But it is a big, it's a solid chunk.  

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. So in the chapter five of my book Twelve Lies that Hold America Captive, we break down, or what I talk about is democracy as a myth. And getting at the actual populations of people who vote and who's engaged with election and who holds the amount of power on campaign finance and things like that. What's interesting about it, is we have to understand what these people, what ends up mostly being, is white conservative people that hold a vast amount of sway over media and elections and things like that. To be able to understand like you were saying, what's coming.  

And I don't think it's fear-mongering to say that it’s dangerous, not because a vast amount of people will act, but because a large amount of people will not resist or be upset about or push back against the violent actions that happen, i.e. Kyle Rittenhouse, right? Like there are people that are okay with what he did. 

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, absolutely. A large number of people. 

Jonathan Walton: They're not going to promote it. They're not going to say it's fine, but they're not going to be against it publicly because they are for it privately. And that I think is a dangerous, a dangerous thing. 

Sy Hoekstra: All right. So let's talk about Jonathan, to re-center us since this is, for the people on Spaces, a faith based podcast [laughter]. What are we talking about now? Like we have kind of some of the framework of why this is important. But let's get back to focusing a little bit on, where are the opinions that Jesus wants us to care about? What's the actual stuff that we are according to our faith, supposed to be paying attention to. Let’s  just try and calibrate ourselves that way a little bit. 

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. So something, why do we care about what people, what white people think, is well, it’s like, Jesus was as other from us as we could possibly get. He is divine, right? He is the son of God, prince of peace, king of Kings, ransom for sin, the one who brings Shalom. That's who Christ is, and he came to be with us, put on a body. And it is, it's an amazing thing to think that he would sit in a group of men, especially men like Peter and love them. 

Sy Hoekstra: Why especially men like Peter? 

Jonathan Walton: Men like Peter, so if we put the people around him, like Peter, well they're from the same space, like Galilee, right? But Peter is a rash, angry, irritable, impulsive person in scripture. 

Sy Hoekstra: Violent. 

Jonathan Walton: Violent. Yes, as well. And Jesus, the prince of peace, sits across from him and then says, I'm going to give you the thing that I'm building, and I'm going to come back for my bride, the church. I'm going to, it's going to be built on you. He sits across from Judas who wants to kill him. He comes into that knowledge of like, “Okay, I'm going to exchange this person for money.” He sits across from Simon the Zealot, who's angry for different reasons. But the reality is Jesus is sitting across from people who are carrying exceptional levels of difference from him and he loves them. So I think there is the fear side of what we're talking about, but the other side, there's a love portion of it.  

And I think the reality is we, like people who are marginalized, followers of Jesus, have to love those people who are going to abuse and violate an exploit and capitalize, because Jesus did it. That I think is transformative. Jesus at the garden of Gethsemane, wanted these broken, impulsive men to sit up with him and keep him company. That to me, that God would desire deep relationship with us, experience comfort in our presence because we're there, right? Like that is, that to me I think is an invitation that is miraculous. That is transformative.  

That I would be able to sit across from someone who’s racially assigned is white and the United States, express a need for their presence and for them to meet me across the differences that are set up for us to, that we're socialized into. I think that is the flip side of the divine reason why we care about what racially assigned white people think in America.  

Sy Hoekstra: And loving white people across the table like that does not equal agreeing with or supporting in any way, you know what I mean? Jesus had absolutely no problem with telling Peter when he was wrong. He made that real clear [laughs]. 

Jonathan Walton: Right. 

Sy Hoekstra: You know the same thing, obviously with Judas, right? That's not the quite, the question isn't do you support people? Do you let their violent or terrible instincts go? That's not a part of the interaction that you're talking about, right? You're talking about something very different, which I think is very cool.  

Jonathan Walton: And ML, sorry, MLK actually said this. You could put it anywhere in the podcast, but he said to our, this is from his book or essay, The American Dream. He said, “To our most bitter opponents we say, throw us in jail, and we will still love you. Bomb our houses and threaten our children, and we will still love you. Beat us and leave us half dead, and we will still love you. But be assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory. 

That right there is something, it feels other worldly to me in the culture that we live in. And it is not as bad from, in the seat that I sit in, as it was in 1963 when he wrote these things. 

Sy Hoekstra: I would also add one more, since we're on the subject of how much we care about what white people think, that idea that you just said from King, I hear not that quote, I’ve never heard that quote exactly, but ideas of nonviolence of just like, do things the right way like Dr. King did, and take your time with your little protests, and don't do it too quickly and blah, blah, blah. That coming from, that comes from white people, and it is very different for that idea to come from white people than it is for it to come from Martin Luther King. Who also said a whole lot of stuff to the white moderates that were trying to get him to slow down or stop or, you know what I mean? 

Jonathan Walton: Right. Right. Right.  

Sy Hoekstra: So I think I want to draw that distinction because I think that's what makes that quote so uncomfortable for so many people, is that King, or Jesus asking you to do something like that is a whole lot different than me for instance asking you to do something like that. Or somebody who is opposed to any sort of protest or change telling you that you need to behave in that way. That you have to do that. So it usually comes up in response to when there is a, like building burned during a protest or something, right? That's when that sort of idea comes up from King, and I just, I don't know, I wanted to make that point.  

While we're talking about what Jesus wants us to focus on, I also want to come back to a point that I made earlier, which was that a lot of times we see whiteness is the default and it's the objective. Like the people in power are the objective ones and the people who are not in power, the people who are oppressed or harmed, or just lower status in a society, as being the biased ones. And Jesus thinks, like never says anything like that, you know what I mean? There's no point where you're going to hear Jesus say, “Oh, this poor person does not understand how wealth operates. This poor person doesn't understand what economic oppression, how it works, because they're too biased because of their poverty.” 

He never says anything like that. “This person who's not a Roman citizen, doesn't understand Roman oppression.” Like you'll never hear anything like that. What you'll hear from him all the time, is how wealth and power and status makes you irrational. It makes you biased, corrupts your thinking, leads to more… leads to a higher likelihood that you're going to behave in an immoral way toward other people. So I just wanted to point that out, that a lot of the assumptions of the way that white people, white Christians think in America, is genuinely precisely the opposite of anything you're going to get from Jesus. 

Jonathan: Right. Like the love of money is a root of all evil, not the lack of money, right?  

Sy Hoekstra: Right, yes.  

Jonathan Walton: [laughs] Yeah. Jesus is amazing. Like it's, I feel like obviously that is, there are songs and books and all the things that talk about the Son of God, but there's, yeah. Things like that are other worldly. And they, and similarly to what you were saying before about who it comes from, like it's important who the invitation comes from. And for Jesus to say things like that, being someone who has scars in his hands and in his feet and in his side from the state, it changes the invitation. I think when someone makes an invitation and has been willing to incarnate themselves into that type of suffering, it's a transformative invitation, which makes the suffering worth it.  

Otherwise it wouldn’t, I don't think passages like, oh, we'll be perfected. Our faith will be perfected and suffering and things. Perseverance and all of that stuff, that makes no sense apart from a suffering savior.  

Sy Hoekstra: Yes. Also the caveat to that is, that doesn't mean that you need to come up with immediate reasons for why you suffer and have an explanation and tie your little story up in a bow. Like people can still grieve and lament and be; like I know you know all these things, but there are so many people that hear that and think, “Oh, that means anytime I suffer, what the Christian thing to do is come up with a reason for it, and say, this is the reason that God told me, and now I understand it, now I don't care about the suffering anymore, because it was all worth it. The end,” you know?  

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. Yeah. Fortunately I wrote about that with the essay about the hurricane: “I Don't Ask Why Bad Things Happen” [laughs]. And Sy, you, I think how suffering is viewed and how suffering is used in America, and in just like the colonized church kind of context is always something I think we have to ask: like “why this message now?” and “who is bringing it?” And that I wish we were free from doing, but it's just the context that we live in. 

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. All right. So our last little subject here, how much do we have to care about what white people think given mental health, given exhaustion and that sort of thing [laughs]?  

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. I was… can I jump in first? 

Sy Hoekstra: Of course. Yeah.  

Jonathan Walton: I was having a conversation about this with a friend, and they said, Jonathan, but like, why do you do it? I said, “I do it because God said I had to.” I think that for me, it was a very specific explicit call. Like Jesus said, I will be on the bridge between the haves and have-nots; The poor and the rich; And physical and spiritual resources for those who want to go back and forth. That's what he said. Then in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, it says we have been given the ministry of reconciliation. That “he who knew no sin became sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God. Therefore we are Christ ambassadors.” And that passage to me, Jesus just blew open. He's like, “You got to be on that bridge.” So I do think it's a, we have to ask ourselves. And as we listened to Jesus and investigate scripture and live in community, it gets easier to hear him so we're able to respond more quickly. But we can ask God like, “Hey, should I talk with this person? Should I engage with this person?” If he says, “yes,” he will give us the inner and external resources to actually do the work over the long-term and the short-term. That when I get exhausted, it's usually because I'm doing work that I, that God did not tell me to do. 

God did not tell me to go change every white person I have a conversation with, or fix every man that says something terrible towards women, or correct every person who says something bad about disabled people. Or jump up every time someone says something for mass incarceration or the school to prison pipeline or climate change. He didn't say that. He did say I am to be his witness, and I literally have to grow in intimacy with God so that I don't burn myself out. If I tried to react and respond to every point of injustice that I notice or engage with every day, then I do believe that I would end up with some severe injury.  

Like I would be, I would end up in therapy, as I am. I would be, I would experience more trauma than I have. And I believe that I would be being disobedient to Jesus. Like there is a call to Sabbath and I think Sabbath is also a part of our resistance, because we're saying Jesus is Messiah, not me. Like there's, I think there's something radical in the yeses to respond to injustice, particularly racism and responding to dominant culture in the United States, in this conversation about white people. And I think there's also a radical trusting when we say, “You know what God, I don't have the energy.” And that's okay.  

Sy Hoekstra: To add on top of that, when Kyle Howard was on our show, he said, not everybody in fact is called to do that. Like not all Black people are called to the ministry of reconciliation, right? 

Jonathan Walton: Yes. 

Sy Hoekstra: And he was, he made what I think is a very good point, which is, he was just like, if you're not called to it, you don't need to do it. What you need to do is go have your freedom and your joy, because those are also things to which God calls people. And if you follow the things to which you weren't called, like Jonathan is just saying, you're going to burn out. Jonathan, I think that's all I had. Do you have anything else? 

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. I mean, the only thing I would add is like, Jesus is amazing. And I’m just like, if we… to sit and look at the life of Jesus, and there's lots of different ways to look at the life and ministry and death and resurrection of Jesus. One of the ways that feels like the most necessary at this moment for me, is I'm just wondering how he stayed in the room with these people, how he trusted these people, how he loved these people, these men, these women. Like, yeah, it is the, my, the awe and wonder of God that I have, it's just increasing as I think about Jesus inhabiting chaotic moments. Like it's just, yeah, that's all. I don't know if that really said anything, but I think… [laughs].  

Sy Hoekstra: I appreciate it. I know that it's a kick that you've been on in particular. Kick is flippant, but it's something you've been thinking about a lot in your own personal discipleship and everything, and I do think it's relevant and I appreciate it. Thank you so much everyone for listening today. We really appreciate it, we really appreciate your subscription. Please remember to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at KTF Press. Also subscribe and rate and review this podcast. Those things are really helpful to us. We appreciate it. Our theme song as always is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra. Our podcast art is by Jacqueline Tam, and we will see you for our next bonus episode in December. 

[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.] 

Today’s episode is Sy having a conversation with Jonathan about living as a blind Christian, how disabled people think about disability differently, the church’s interactions with disabled congregants, ableist theology and church practice, and a lot more.  

Resources mentioned during the show: 

Sy’s list of disabled people to follow on Twitter 

Disability and the Church by Lamar Hardwick 

The episode of Shake the Dust with Lamar Hardwick 

The Disabled God by Nancy Eiesland 

Shake the Dust is a podcast of KTF Press. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Find transcripts of this show at KTFPress.com. 

Hosts  

Jonathan Walton – follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.  

Sy Hoekstra – follow him on Twitter.  

Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra – listen to the whole song on Spotify. 

Our podcast art is by Jacqueline Tam – follow her and see her other work on Instagram.  

Production and editing by Sy Hoekstra. 

Transcript by Joyce Ambale and Sy Hoekstra. 

Questions about anything you heard on the show? Write to [email protected] and we may answer your question on a future episode. 

Transcript

Sy Hoekstra: Basically every disabled person has had the experience of Christians trying to heal them. And there are genuinely a ton of disabled people who are not Christians because of this, because they were objects for people, right? That you were objectified insofar as people wanted to see you healed. Like you are here to be cured, you're not here to be loved and supported. 

[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/That it will roll in abundance/ And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.] 

Jonathan Walton: Welcome to Shake the Dust, leaving colonized faith for the Kingdom of God. A podcast of KTF Press. My name is Jonathan Walton and I'm here with Sy Hoekstra. Welcome to the first of our monthly bonus episodes that we're doing for y’all, our wonderful subscribers, while we're in between seasons of the show. Thank you so much for your support. We literally could not do this without you. Now, just a quick reminder before we get started, make sure to follow us on Facebook if you don't already, also on Instagram and Twitter @KTFPress. Give us a rating or review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. And remember as a KTF subscriber, you do get a private podcast feed that has all the regular and bonus episodes of this show in one place.  

Just go to any of our bonus episodes at KTFPress.com. Click the listen in Podcasts app button on your screen and follow the short and easy instructions to add that private feed to your podcast player of choice. All right, let's get started. Sy, what are we talking about today and why are we having this conversation?  

Sy Hoekstra: So today I am going to be talking a little bit about what it's like living as a blind man and what that does to my relationship with others, my relationship with God and the church and myself. We are talking about this because we at KTF Press are trying really hard to center kind of marginalized stories that you don't hear a lot about, or that are kind of deemed less important. We just want to explain, give people I think more insight into the personal side and the importance of why it is that we at KTF Press spend so much time trying to make things accessible, avoid using ableist language and just sort of be more inclusive of disabled people in a way that the church unfortunately is not all the time. So that's the long and short of it. 

Jonathan Walton: As we're having this conversation, if thoughts come up for you, always remember you can send an email or ask a question or shoot us a voice message, because this is a learning curve for me as well. So I'm very excited about this conversation, and I'm grateful to Sy for actually modeling what we hope to do with this entire Shake the Dust podcast project. 

Sy Hoekstra: The email address is [email protected] if you have any questions for us, and we may answer some of those questions on future episodes. Also, by the way, feel free to tell us if you have any ideas for future topics of conversation on these monthly subscriber episodes. We would love to hear from you. 

Jonathan Walton: So let's get into it Sy. Can you give us a little bit of a background just on how you became blind and how you navigate the world today? 

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. So when I was 15 months old, I was diagnosed with retinoblastoma, which is a form of retinal cancer. It's a just random genetic mutation that happened to me. It's not caused by anything that, or not anything that we know of anyways. There were enough tumors in my right eye where they actually had to remove the eye entirely, and then in my left eye, they treated it with radiation, meaning they basically killed the tumor with a laser. That took most of the vision out of my left eye, but not all. So I do have some vision, but I identify as blind because most people kind of within the blindness community want more people to be able to like claim that label as something that's, they identify with and it's positive and it's not a negative thing. 

And also because the reality is that most people, even people who don't perceive light, like who literally cannot, you know, there's no information flowing from the light rays that enter their eye to their brain, they are what everybody else would think of as completely blind, like their visual cortex still goes, meaning it still is functioning, it still presents images to their mind. There — a lot of studies have now shown actually that like, well really confirmed what blind people already knew, which is that even people who don't see anything, visual images get placed in your head basically through your ears. Like the sounds that you hear around you can actually create activity in your visual cortex and fully blind people can see to a certain degree in that way.  

So anyways, yeah. Blindness is more complicated than what people think, is kind of what I'm trying to say. In my particular case, like I don't, there's literally no eye on my right side, and I guess just like the plasticity of my brain, kind of just rerouted all of my vision, all of my, all of the neurons to my left optic nerve or whatever. And my right eye, it's like it doesn't exist. Like people sometimes ask me, “Is it just like you see blackness out of the right side of your, you just see a bunch of darkness or whatever?” I'm like, “No, I see literally nothing.” It's like me asking you, how much do you see out of your shoulder?  

Jonathan Walton: [laughs]. 

Sy Hoekstra: Like there's no eye there, you don't see anything. That's how it is for me. I literally have half the visual field of other people or of people who have two eyes. Okay. So how do I navigate the world around me? So as a kid, I was kind of taught a lot of tricks for how to like map places in my head. I'm very good at mental mapping. A lot of blind people are. Like, you teach us a building or a neighborhood or whatever and we just are very good at keeping track of where we are in our heads, because we've been literally trained on how to do it. I use a white cane. I did not use a white cane my whole life, my vision was actually … not my prescription, but my like focus, actually used to be a lot better than it is now.  

So I did not use a white cane when I was younger, even though I maybe, it could have been helpful, but so now I use one. I have for 15 years or so. So I get around with that. I do all my work using a screen reader, which is basically, if you're not familiar, it's like a very complicated piece of software that again, you get trained on, you learn how to use it. Complicated is the wrong word, more like sophisticated. It basically just changes the way that you interact with the computer entirely to make it an audio experience. So it's like you don't use the mouse much, right? It's just like a ton of keyboard shortcuts and different keyboard commands, and then you have a computer voice just like jabbering away in your ear.  

That's true on my phone too. Like all iPhones and Android phones nowadays come with like a built-in screen reader. There are several different screen readers you can use on a Windows, on a kind of PC, which is what I use. So basically what that means is I'm able to use any website or any program that is built in an accessible way, just like anybody else, but you can also, if you're like … I'm not a web designer, I'm not a programmer, but people who make computer programs, people who build websites can build them in such a way that screen readers, the programs that blind people use don't have access to all of the information or the functions that are contained within the website or the program.  

So coders and programmers, software developers, everybody now who just makes anything on a computer have sort of become like really key to accessibility in a way that was maybe not predictable, or not, that's not true, blind people saw it coming a long way off, but to most people it was not predictable 30, 40 years ago. So yeah, basically a programmer can build a website in the same way that an architect can build a building without a ramp. A programmer can build a building without a digital ramp for a blind person to have access to it. That's kind of the metaphor or the simile a lot of people use because it's a familiar one for a lot of people.  

So then on top of all that, I just have a million different ways that I go about doing everyday things. Some of them I figured out on my own, some of them I learned from other blind people. Blind people actually have like, in the US there are a few different schools you can go to and like if you, either if you're young and you want to get trained on how to do everything, or if you become blind later in life, you can go and spend like six months or a year or whatever, just learning how to live as a blind person from other blind people. I never actually, I didn't do that, but it's quite advanced. People have figured stuff out, you know?  

And if you're somebody… this is kind of why people don't like these, put a blindfold on and walk around and try out being a blind person to like gain empathy, or like spend a day rolling around in a wheelchair and see how you, what you learn about the world. Because when you do that you're kind of, all you're learning is how disorienting it is when you like vary the, like the first day that you become blind and you have no idea how to actually do anything. That's like, that is not my experience at all. You're really, you're not learning much of anything about my life if that's what you're doing. Yeah. Because the ways that we cope with the world are thoughtful, like we've thought about them a lot, we've shared them with each other, we know how to do a whole lot of things that would just never occur…  

Like between me and my sighted wife, I do the vast majority of the cooking in our household. Most people would be like if you just put a blindfold on their face and say, “Go cook me dinner,” would be like, “No, I can't do that. I'm going to get on the phone and order pizza,” you know [laughs]? Anyways, that's a long-winded answer to that question that you asked [laughs].  

Jonathan Walton: Okay. Well, I have two or three things to say to that. One, as someone who has tried to build bridges like that, I literally have blind-folded 50 people. 

Sy Hoekstra: Yes. And we've talked about that.  

Jonathan Walton: And we’ve talked about that, right, and like how that's unhelpful, right? 

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. 

Jonathan Walton: Like, I think owning, just confessing that, and then having that conversation with you is something that’s helpful because, even for me as someone who's in a subordinated group, like I'm a Black person in America, right? I'm not fluent in all things, reconciliation, shalom, and justice, right? And so there's places to learn and grow. So along with that, like you, as you were talking you gave a lot of different, like vague modifiers, right? So you were like a lot of, or people do or whatever. So most of the information that I know about being blind prior to meeting you and getting to know you is through media, right? 

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. 

Jonathan Walton: So watching Ray Charles like fry chicken in Ray, or like … 

Sy Hoekstra: [laughs] Jamie Foxx. 

Jonathan Walton: Or yeah, Jamie Foxx fry chicken actually. It wasn't Ray Charles [laughs]. Or even Christine Ha who won the third season of MasterChef as a blind chef. Right? 

Sy Hoekstra: Oh, yeah. 

Jonathan Walton: Like when you say a million little things that you do in your household and little things that you you've learned, or even talking about a school for the blind, like can you explain a little bit about like what that dynamic every day is like? I know I speak for myself and it may speak to other people when the way that blind people are portrayed is always needing help. Like I'm standing on the street, it's courteous for me to say, “Hey, do you need help?” If I am in the store and there's someone looking for something or trying to find something, it's like, oh, I should ask this person for help. Are things like that helpful, or is it like you've actually navigated the world, and there are other ways that we can be helpful? So could you describe that everyday stuff? 

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. Interesting. So I guess the first thing I'll say is, actually blind people and most disabled people, the preference is that you do not ask to help. The preference is don't provide help unless asked. So for blind people, what blind people sometimes say is, if you don't think that I know that you're there, then maybe like cough or take a couple of steps or something just to let somebody who only has audio cues know that you're around in case they want to ask for help, but that's it, actually. Because, the problem is that the … you know what, let me tell a story. There was one time I was coming out of the subway and I was coming home. I had like gone to the doctor or something.  

I was coming home from work, but a different route than I normally came home. So I get home on a different subway stop than I'm normally used to. I walk out of the turnstiles and there was like half a second where I go, “Oh man, I don't know what's going on here,” because I had just forgotten that I was in a different subway station. I was on like commuter autopilot, just like everybody else. You know? So I stand there for like, maybe, probably like one second while I'm realizing, “Oh, okay. That's the direction that I have to go.” In that like one second, somebody comes up to me and asks basically if I'm lost and I need help getting somewhere.  

I politely say, “No, no, it's fine. I just forgot where I was going for a second. I know where I …” and they moved on. So what happened was I turned left, and at this particular station, you make a left when you come out of the turnstiles and then you have to turn a right again to go up the stairs. And I forgot that I had to turn right again. So what I did was I walked toward the wall with my white cane and then my white cane tapped the wall that was there. Then I go in my head, “Oh, right. I have to turn right and go up these stairs.” So then I turned right to go up the stairs. And this woman who's watching me then says to me, like in front of a lot of people and quite loudly, “You shouldn't have refused that man's help. You wouldn't have gotten lost.”  

Like she says effectively, you were too stubborn, you were unwilling to accept help, and that's why you're all confused and disoriented now. Now, the thing is, to my mind, what I have just done was a perfectly successful navigation of this subway stop. That's what the cane … the cane is for that purpose. The cane is for me to like collect information from my surroundings. And if it taps a wall and informs me of a fact that there's a wall in front of me that I forgot about because I have to turn to get to these stairs because I'm in a different subway station, then the cane has done its job and I have successfully navigated the subway station, right? 

Jonathan Walton: Right. 

Sy Hoekstra: This woman though looks at me and thinks that I am a stubborn, ungrateful, blundering failure. So just the chasm of difference between how I saw what happened and how she saw what happened is why we don't want people to ask us for help. It's because the fact of the matter is people have no idea when we need help and when we don't. So when I, but when I was commuting, it was rare that I would get to work and back in a day without somebody asking a question like, “Where are you going, sir?” Or like, “Do you need a seat on the subway, sir?” or whatever. Which I absolutely do not. I'm blind, my legs are fine. Right?  

[laughter] 

Asking some question like that, that reminds me that people have no idea what my life is like, they have no sense of when I need help and when I don't, and they're like, they mostly think that I am in great need of help to do the simplest tasks. Like when somebody asked me, “Sir, do you know where you're going?” when I'm walking down the street or like, “Can I help you?” or whatever, it's like, you have seen me in the morning, I was a lawyer, wearing a suit, carrying a briefcase, walking from the subway to the courthouses, just like eight million other lawyers in New York City that morning, and you looked at me with my cane and you think that I'm incapable of getting to work.  

That I need your help to … So it's just like the problem is it becomes so demeaning and such a reminder of how isolated you are and how much people just don't understand you. So it's not just that it's unhelpful, it's like actively degrading psychologically. 

Jonathan Walton: I can feel the emotional weight of what you're saying, but what I noticed was that, instead of saying I, you said you. 

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. Towards the end, I started saying. Yeah, yeah. 

Jonathan Walton: Towards the end. And I think for me, like when I talk about things are really difficult, to lessen the emotional weight of it or to distance myself from it a little bit, I will say, you.  

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, that's what I was doing. 

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. So I think saying, “I …” I think if you say I, we hear you, we get you, we feel you, and thank you for entering into that with us. 

Sy Hoekstra: No, that makes sense, and that's a good emotional health reminder. 

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. So like, as you were sharing that, something that struck me is that I assume that I know what's best for the people around me, and I don't. Again, thank you for sharing those stories. I think they just do an enormous amount of orientation for us, or for me as a sighted person to be able to enter in to your world, that is a real world, not a less world, but a different world that I need to be oriented to so that I can learn and grow and understand what your life is like. Now, can you explain a little bit of what the social model of disability is and why that's important? Because I think we've talked a lot about your individual life, but what are some social implications for, yeah, about what that looks like? 

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, totally. So the social model of disability is kind of the preferred way of looking at disability from a theoretical standpoint for the disability rights community. It's, I say theoretical standpoint, that sounds loftier than it is. It's just, it's kind of the way that disabled people think about themselves and their disabilities, as opposed to how … It's actually mostly contrasted with how doctors  think about disabilities. So it's usually the social model versus the medical model of disability. So the medical model is how a lot of people think of a disability, it's something to be cured or fixed or worked on, basically through therapy, through medicine, through whatever it is. Basically it's a deficit.  

The social model of disability mostly focuses on how the society around a disabled person creates their disability. So basically the question is if you see somebody in a wheelchair at the bottom of a set of stairs and there's no ramp, do you think the problem is the wheelchair user’s legs or the stairs, right? So the medical model says the problem is the person's legs and we need to try and fix them through physical therapy or whatever. The social model says the person who screwed up here is the architect. And that's true with like my, with what I was talking about earlier, with like coders and programmers and everything. 

I am perfectly capable of navigating a website as a blind person with my screen reader that I have, that I know how to use. The only reason I'm not able to do it is if you made your website inaccessible. 

Jonathan Walton: Right. This person did not build it for you. 

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, exactly. So it’s the… and there are a million different ways that you can think about that, right? Like so many disabled people have to, are literally forced by government policies to remain in poverty because there's only so much SSDI money that you can store up in your savings account before you have too much money and they disqualify you from getting the benefits anymore. Like there's all kinds of stuff like that where you, the disability is created by this society, not by your body. So that's not to deny that I can't see. Obviously I can't see. What it is, what you're trying to do is focus on what is caused by a lack of vision versus what is caused by a society that is not built for a blind person. 

Jonathan Walton: That's a super helpful distinction. Can you talk a little bit about, how can white disabled people make it too ideological or take things too far?  

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. So, okay, so this, Jonathan's not asking that question out of nowhere, this is in the outline we created. It's interesting though. So some people can actually do, I mean, especially like in the West, especially among white disability advocates, it can be taken kind of a little bit too far, made a little bit too abstract I think. Meaning, there's a lot of good, positive disability, community building and pride, and people who are like, “I love being disabled. I love being a part of this community. We have our own community, we have our own customs and traditions and art and media and whatever, and it's great, and I love it.  

And I would not, if somebody offered me a pill tomorrow to be completely cured, I would not take it.” On top of that, offering me the pill in the first place is like as offensive as saying, “Hey Jonathan, I have a cure for all the racism you face. Here's a pill to turn you white.” 

Jonathan Walton: Oh God [laughs]. 

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. Right [laughs]. So the reason that I think that it can be taken like that's kind of an extreme and kind of comes from a place of privilege, and I have to emphasize that this is my view. There are people who would vehemently disagree with me on everything I'm about to say. So what that means is like people will advocate for things that I think are important. Like there are a lot of organizations out there that are not trying to do like good advocacy work to help actual living disabled people. What they're trying to do is find cures for various disability. So you're just pumping money into finding cures and not to helping people who actually have the disability. 

And like it is, it is true. It is absolutely true that it is a very short road from there to eugenics. It is a very short road from thinking about disability from the medical model. Thinking about it from something to be cured or gotten rid of, to thinking like, how do we get rid of disabled people? Historically we've in the United States, in Nazi Germany, all over the place, we have done a ton of horrific things in the name of that way of thinking, in the name of the medical model slash eugenics. But my problem is that if you live in an affluent society, or you have a lot of privilege for one reason or another, saying that you are fine the way that you are and that you would never change can sort of become a way of flaunting privilege.  

Because the fact of the matter is that not everybody in your own society or not everybody in the developing world has access to the same assisted technology that you do. Or can avail themselves of the same disability rights protections under the law that you have, or something like that. So I, this is a complicated thing for me to talk about because I absolutely understand where all of those people are coming from, but I am here when I'm saying this, taking some cues especially from like disabled people of color who I've read, who have kind of like pushed back a little bit on how much, on how readily white, disabled people are kind of willing to abstract the idea of having disability pride or the social model of disability to the point where real life circumstances of people who have multiple marginalizations are not really taken into account as much. 

So that's I guess kind of the caveat that I will put on everything I said, right? But obviously, I'm a hundred percent for people saying, correcting the assumptions of many able-bodied people that like, disability equals brokenness and we just need to fix it, and we don't need to focus on how the world is not built for you and all that sort of thing. It can just be taken to I think a sort of extreme that I always kind of felt a little bit uncomfortable with, but I was, I've been able to articulate or think about it better, I think specifically from following the cues of disabled BIPOC. 

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. Now, it sounds like what you're saying in a lot of ways is that disabled people are not a monolith. We can't make broad generalizations about disabled people because we had a conversation or listened to a podcast with a blind person on it being interviewed by a zealous person of color. Like it doesn't, just because I listened to a podcast or watched a documentary, doesn't give us the entire perspective on disability. So that's really helpful for you to point out and remind, and particularly for me it’s really helpful because I tend to do that. I want to be right in an argument, I want to make the best points and have the best conversations and appear like the great guy who's empathizing and understanding all the time. 

And the reality is the more that I learn, the more I don't know, and the more questions I should have. So thanks for opening that up. Something else I'm wondering about is like, how have you experienced disability in the church? Particularly folks who want to pray for healing all the time. Let's be real. Now, we ain't got nothing against Pentecostals here. Sy you're married to a Pentecostal. [laughter] So can you like explain a little bit about what that is like, and how you've experienced that in the church?  

Sy Hoekstra: So basically if you spend any time in communities of disabled people, you will find very quickly Christians are not a very well-liked group in a lot, for a couple reasons. But actually the main one, is that basically every disabled person has had the experience of Christians trying to heal them. Whether it's somebody coming up to you on the street, this has happened to me many times. I've had a woman one time just walk up to me and tell her that God told me that I was going to be able to see within the next six months. That was like four years ago [laughs]. People say stuff like that all the time, ask me to pray for healing.  

And it leads to kind of suspicion too, like anytime anybody asks to pray for me, I'm kind of like, “Oh, here we go,” you know? Instead of it being like, “Oh great, someone wants to do the ministry of prayer in my life,” it's just sort of, it leads to apprehension. Anytime anybody asks to pray for me, especially if I don't know them, it is an anxiety-inducing experience. There are genuinely a ton of disabled people who are not Christians because of this. Like who have left the church, who were in the church who left it because they were objects for people, right? That you were objectified insofar as people wanted to see you healed.  

People wanted to see you healed for the sake of affirming their understanding of how God works. Those are not the people that I'm going to count on to be by my side when I'm advocating for like, to make the world a more accessible place. Those are the people who want to get rid of disability. It's almost like turning God into like this cosmic doctor. It's like theologizing the medical model of disability. Like you are here to be cured, you're not here to be loved and supported. 

Jonathan Walton: The idea that you exist as an object also feels like an externalization of how we see ourselves too. Right? Like we cannot accept ourselves, therefore we cannot accept you. 

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, and you can't accept yourselves based on standards of productivity or physical attractiveness or whatever. Like to all of those standards, disability is like one of the greatest offenses. 

Jonathan Walton: Right. Like your presence would be offensive to God. 

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.  

Jonathan Walton: Which is just monumentally false. 

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. And there are… if you're not, if you are someone who believes that God will heal disabilities if he is asked, then implicitly if you are a Christian and you're still a disabled person, there's something wrong with you. You don't have enough faith, you don't have enough devotion. You haven't spent enough time praying, you don't care enough about healing yourself. You're not devoted enough to God, you're sinning in some way, whatever. Which is effectively the question that the disciples asked Jesus in John chapter 9, “Who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?” And Jesus says, “No, neither this man or his parents sinned, rather this happens so that the work of God could be displayed in his life.”  

All that's going to happen here is that God's miraculous work is going to be displayed. In that particular instance, the man is healed. And the reason, by the way, the reason that I don't get mad at Jesus's healing ministry or his declarations that the kingdom coming is partially indicated by disabled people being healed, he says that to John the Baptist. The reason that I don't mind that so much, is because of what I said before, because he is alleviating people of difficulties they have in like extreme poverty and oppression for which I have absolutely no context, like no basis to understand. Like I'm not sitting there going, like, why isn’t this blind man proud enough of his blindness or whatever.  

That's just like, I have no basis to ask those kinds of questions. I don't think when people are under kind of that, in circumstances that are that different than mine. So anyways, the framework of like a disabled person in church needs to be healed through prayer is just problematic in a whole bunch of different ways. So I mentioned that because that's one of the main ways that ableism shows up in church, and it's one, it's probably the primary way that almost any disabled person, Christian or not, is familiar with. But other things that I've had just from going to church, like I hear pastors all the time talking about passages in the Bible that have lots of implications for disabled people or talking about disabilities in the Bible and having just no context, no idea what they're talking about.  

They don't know anything about the social model of disability. They don't know anything about the lives of people with disabilities. They don't know how we think or move or interact or anything. So it just, it becomes so drenched in ignorance that it's hard to listen to. Then there's just like a lot of everyday small things in the operation of the church that don't … Like, I cannot tell you how many times I've had to tell greeters at a church that I can't do anything with this printed bulletin that you're trying to hand to me [laughs]. Like, this is a piece of garbage you're trying to give me as far as I'm concerned. 

Jonathan Walton: Even as you have a cane? 

Sy Hoekstra: Oh, absolutely.  

Jonathan Walton: Oh Lord have mercy, Jesus. 

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. All the time. And it's just like what … you're trying to welcome people and make them feel like they belong in a church and the moment they walk in you, or the moment I walk in and you're doing something to me that is immediately alienating because it makes it very clear that you just have no idea how my life works. Or like there are very, very few churches that have like ASL translation. So there aren't any deaf people in most churches. There are very few churches that really know how to properly care for, I don't know, autistic children or kids with Down’s Syndrome. So you don't get a lot of those families coming to those churches because they don't feel like, they literally don't feel like their children are safe there, you know?  

So there are just so many things to think about in the way that the church operates, and that's, by the way, that was one of the reasons that we had Lamar Hardwick on the show. His book and his ministry and so much of the stuff that he does is helping churches to try and really do the kind of day-to-day functioning stuff that helps them be more welcoming places. 

Jonathan Walton: So something, as you were talking about that passage in John that stood out to me was, when Jesus says, “God will be glorified through this man's life,” he may not just be talking about his healing. Because I think that because our version of Christianity is so focused on transformation and production, that it's almost like my life before following Jesus must have been terrible, when no, I experienced good and beautiful things before I decided to follow Jesus too. It wasn't like a total waste. I wasn't like a blob of … but thinking about that creates a much fuller picture of humanity interacting with Jesus across time, as opposed to just interacting with a human as an encounter. I got to think about a little bit. 

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. Absolutely. Everest is agreeing with a lot of the things that we're saying, it sounds like in the background. [laughs] 

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. So, Sy, you've talked a lot about how your disability affects you, your life, your relationships. Can you talk a little bit about internalized ableism?  

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. So there are definitely some people who want to be able-bodied. I don't think that's how I personally ever took it in, but the way that I would take ableism in meaning the way that I would sort of emotionally react to it when I was younger, was to think that in order to overcome it, I have to be exceptional. Like there are a lot of disabled people who engage in effectively, respectability politics, like the equivalent of black respectability politics. Like I want to be a credit to my disability almost, you know? So I would just constantly think that I had to be exceptional in order to overcome everybody's expectations of me, which they always made abundantly clear. 

Jonathan Walton: Right. You are the representative for all blind people, therefore you need to be Daredevil.  

Sy Hoekstra: Well, actually, no, it wasn't so much that I … It was actually more selfish than that, honestly. 

Jonathan Walton: Oh, okay. 

Sy Hoekstra: It was like, they think little of me because of who I am, so I need to work extra hard to win their approval. It wasn't even anything about like me being a representative. It was just me getting the brunt of what they think about other blind people, which then what does that make you, what does that make me do? Trying to say “you” there again to separate myself from it. What does that make me do is, want to distance myself from other disabled people. I'm not like them. I'm one of the good ones, right? Like it's an entirely familiar dynamic to black people, right? 

Jonathan Walton: sounds familiar. Right. 

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, unfortunately. So that made me, yeah, it made me distance myself from other disabled people. It made me want to win everyone's approval by being incredible at various things. Like when I was in school, I just wanted to get really good grades and make sure that everybody knew how smart I was. I want to be like really, really good at my job in whatever job I'm in. I want to be impressive all the time because that's how I combat everyone expecting less of me. There's this constant dynamic where if I fail, I think what's going to happen is people are going to attribute my failure to my being blind, like I just don't have the capacity to accomplish whatever I was supposed to accomplish.  

So I want people to know, because it is better for people to think of you as capable of doing something, but you fail for some reason as opposed to them thinking of you as being utterly incapable of doing whatever it is. That's, I don’t know, for me, and I think for most people, but I think for me in particular, that's a like important distinction. So the way to do that is, you prove how capable you are all the time in everything you do. But the kind of more sinister way that that affects my relationship with God, there's a lot of pride bound up in that. You want to constantly be showing how good you are to separate yourself from other people who are like you, is pride.  

It may be like, I don't know, more understandable pride than some other people's pride or whatever, but it’s still pride. So what that did to me spiritually is, I was not all that much of a fan of the work of Jesus to be perfectly frank. My whole life people would say Jesus was incarnated as a person and died for your sins and was resurrected and is building this kingdom or whatever it is. I knew instinctively and I did not articulate this for, until like a couple of years ago. The thing that I liked about Jesus's work was that like he lifted up people who were, who society considered less than. Because I think I recognize to some degree that that's me, right? Jesus is lifting me up.  

He's saying that I don't count less than other people because of my disability. That I am valuable just like everybody else. But if everybody is valuable, then what, at least when it comes to like human value, no one's special. You know what I mean? Nobody is a stand out. Nobody can be a credit to their disability. Nobody can be exceptional. And I didn't like that. I still to this day have trouble resonating sometimes with the fact of forgiveness. The fact of Jesus's kingdom being for everyone regardless of anything, because I want to be exceptional, and he doesn't let me, which like I said, that would be healing.  

That would help me accept who I am, accept my limitations, understand that God is going to lift me up despite what other people might think are my limitations, when they’re not really, and it would heal my relationship with other disabled people. It would heal my relationship with God, like letting me accept his gift and everything. And I just, I resisted instinctively because I want to be exceptional. 

Jonathan Walton: Oh man. Sy, you’ve said a lot of things to me that are very helpful and also very practical. Like don't walk up on a blind person on the street and ask them if they need help. If they needed help they'd ask for it, right? 

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. 

Jonathan Walton: Like there are levels of intersectionality that allow marginalized communities to empathize with one another, but also I shouldn't assume that I know everything about what it's like to be disabled because I'm a Black person. There are different levels of, I still need to practice the humility and ask questions and not make the generalizations about blind folks or disabled people that I hate that people make about me. So if there was something that you want to reiterate or something that you want to bring up for the first time just like, this is what would be really helpful for sighted people to see for, to do for folks who are visually impaired or have some type of blindness. Like what's just the thing you want us to know? 

Sy Hoekstra: I think, you know what I'm going to do actually? I'm only on Twitter, I'm not on the other socials. What I'm going to do, is I'm going to make a list. There are lists of people on Twitter that you can follow, or maybe I'll find somebody else's. It'll be in the show notes, whatever it is. It'll just be a bunch of people who are good to follow and listen to and click on the links that they tweet and learn from them. Because what I think would be super helpful is if people spent more time listening to things like this. Just listening to people talking about their lives, talking about the political issues that they care about, talking about their relationships, about their faith, and just understanding more, right? 

Like there's just such an incredible lack of awareness of knowledge. So I will have a list of people to just follow. And now my instinct is to give you like a whole syllabus. Obviously we already told you about Disability and the Church, the book by Lamar Hardwick. I'll have a link to that in the show notes too. I'll probably give you a link to The Disabled God by Nancy Eiesland as well, which is really good. We talked a little bit about that in the podcast with Dr. Hardwick. We obviously have that podcast that you can go back and listen to for just more conversation around these subjects. I just want people to learn more, for the purpose of making it easier to love people, right? 

Like you cannot love people you don't understand, whose lives you're not familiar with. I don’t know, I think that would be huge and just make things a lot easier for a lot of people. I think it would be great if there were more people in churches speaking up about ways that the church is inaccessible, whether that's literally getting in the front door, getting into the sanctuary, having somewhere to sit. Whether that's people saying, “Everybody stand up for the reading of God's word,” just changing that to, “Stand, if you're able.” Whether that's considering getting an ASL translator and broadcasting it far and wide that you have one, because like I don’t know, there's just so many different things that you can do to make the body of Christ and the Word of God, more accessible to people on an everyday basis that we're just not doing. 

Yeah. I want people to be familiar with my life and our lives as disabled people and familiar with how to advocate for us. I also want you to do what I have made an attempt to do and what we have tried to do at KTF Press, which is listen to marginalized people as much as possible. So the list that I'll send out will be probably primarily disabled women of color, but there will be lots of perspectives represented obviously. I just, I think it's important to listen to people who have the most to tell you about the things with which you are least familiar, and those are going to be the most marginalized people. 

Jonathan Walton: So Sy, thank you so much for giving us just a window into the world of what your life is like. Thank you to our subscribers. Please make sure to rate and review. And I think this is an episode that you should share with a friend [Jonathan’s daughter Everest interrupts and says “bye”], get them to subscribe for the free month and then have a conversation about what it would look like to better serve the disabled community. [Everest makes noises in the background] Everest just blew you a kiss. [laughter] So special thanks to Jon Guerra who provided our amazing theme music, Jacqueline Tam for our wonderful podcast art and thanks to you and see you next month. 

Sy Hoekstra: That's right. See you then. Thanks. 

[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.] 

Jonathan Walton: She has these two beads and I didn't want to take them away from her because she would melt down, but I also don't want her to eat them. No, don't eat it. Give it to me. She's holding her hands out to me with both her fists clenched with a big smile on her face, because that's what I did to her earlier. I put it in one hand to see if she would like hit my fist and open it up, but she has two beads in both hands. She doesn't understand the game. 

[laughter] 

In this special off-season episode of Shake the Dust, our guest is Danté Stewart, here to talk to us about his new book that just came out this week — Shoutin’ in the Fire: An American Epistle. We talk to him about his journey finding life and identity in the Black church and Black literary tradition, expanding our definition of what theology is, finding God and faith in the ordinariness of life, and a whole lot more.

Shake the Dust is a podcast of KTF Press. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Find transcripts of this show and subscribe to get our newsletter and other paid content at KTFPress.com.

Hosts

Jonathan Walton – follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Suzie Lahoud – follow her on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Sy Hoekstra – follow him on Twitter.

Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra – listen to the whole song on Spotify.

Our podcast art is by Jacqueline Tam – follow her and see her other work on Instagram.

Production and editing by Sy Hoekstra.

Transcript by Joyce Ambale and Sy Hoekstra.

Questions about anything you heard on the show? Write to [email protected] and we may answer your question on a future episode.

Transcript

Danté Stewart: What can we gain? What type of knowledge can be produced that can be generative and constructive and liberative for us? By looking at the everyday ordinary lives of Black people, not just looking at Black folk who made it, but what can I gain about God from looking at the card table?

[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/That it will roll in abundance/ And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]

Sy Hoekstra: Welcome to this special off-season episode of Shake The Dust - Leaving Colonized Faith for the Kingdom of God. A podcast of KTF Press. I'm Sy Hoekstra here with Jonathan Walton.

Jonathan Walton: Today we have an interview with Danté Stewart. Danté is a speaker and a writer who's worked in the areas of race, religion, and politics. He’s been featured on CNN and in the Washington Post, Christianity Today, Sojourners, The Witness, Comment, and a whole lot of other places. He received his BA in sociology from Clemson University and is currently studying at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. The two of us, and Suzie, got to talk to Danté a couple of weeks ago about his new book, Shoutin’ in the Fire: An American Epistle, which came out October 12th. You will hear us talk to Danté about the book, his journey finding life and identity in the Black church and literary tradition, expanding our definition of what theology is, finding God and faith in the ordinariness of life and a whole lot more.

Sy Hoekstra: Just as a reminder as always, listeners who want to support the show, the best way you can do that is going to KTFPress.com and subscribing. That gets you our weekly newsletter, where we bring you curated media recommendations to help you in discipleship and political engagement. You get writing from us and you get bonus episodes of this show, like the monthly episodes that we're doing for subscribers during the off season, the first of which will drop next week. Subscriptions also support the free version of this show, as well as other projects we're working on, like the book that we announced with Tamice Spencer. You can subscribe and get the first month free by going to KTFPress.com/freemonth. That's KTFPress.com/freemonth.

Also, please remember to hit the subscribe or follow button on your podcast player. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @ KTF Press and tell your friends about us. All right, without any further ado, here is our interview with Danté Stewart.

[Instrumental music from “Citizens” by Jon Guerra plays briefly and then fades out]

Sy Hoekstra: Danté Stewart, thank you so much for joining us on Shake the Dust. We're really happy to have you here today.

Danté Stewart: Yeah, what's up, man? What’s up, what’s up, what’s up?

Sy Hoekstra: So we're here to talk about this new book of yours that's coming out called Shoutin’ in the Fire. It's sort of a memoir of yours that takes us kind of on this journey of the last basically 10 years of your life, kind of starting around when you were a freshman at Clemson. Then it takes us through this journey of you having grown up in a Black Pentecostal church in rural South Carolina, then kind of entering into white evangelicalism and finding your way away from that tradition, and then your journey back into the faith and the culture kind of that you grew up with, with some caveats or extra thoughts, I guess, that we'll talk about I'm sure. But just to give, obviously if readers want the whole story, they're going to go look at the book. But just to give us a little bit of a sense of your story, can you tell us kind of what it was that drew you into white evangelicalism, and then what brought you back out of it?

Danté Stewart: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Well, first thank you all for having me on. Definitely deep honor. Deep, deep honor. So yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think for me, like so many young Black students and student athletes who are at majority white institutions, what many people will call predominantly white institutions or PWIs, oftentimes brought into greater proximity in what I would deem white social space. So spaces whose rhythms and institutional realities are dominated particularly by white people in very many ways, whether that be white social groups or white Christian groups, or the type of environments and things that people tell others that they should desire to be around and be plugged into. So as I came from the Black rural south, south of Columbia, South Carolina in a small town in between Swansea, South Carolina, St. Matthew, South Carolina, and Sandy Run, South Carolina, through school, and then church and family life and things like that.

When I arrived at Clemson, so much of the world that I came from, as you mentioned about me being Black Pentecostal, and just the kind of Black world that I was just immersed in, we trade it for white social space. So being a student athlete at Clemson, most times, more times than not, the people who have closest proximity to athletes are pretty much often, always white evangelicals or those who are Black and persons of color within those evangelical spaces. So you're talking about Athletes in Action or Fellowship of Christian Athletes, or other Cru or whatever. Those type of ministries and spaces are in closest proximity to the athletes. So one of the, really two things that tends to happen, is that, the message is that you should have access in those spaces.

So those spaces are going to bring you access to things that you didn't have before, and those spaces will bring you a claim. So you will be able to kind of ascend in certain ways, whether that be as a student leader. So we’re in college and there's nothing better in white evangelical spaces than the title of the student leader [laughs] or whatnot. And so yeah, yeah, yeah. So as I played football, you know, chapel services and things like that, it would pretty much be white men preaching or Black men who were in those spaces, or very much adjacent to those spaces, even though they might've been in Black churches. And so like, yeah, that journey really crystallized for me doing those moments in those college years. As I kind of recount in the book, I recount going to FCA and what that meant for me and the kind of feelings and things that it kind of brought out of me.

And the kind of promises that space made and makes for so many of us, either as a way to kind of reward us for distancing ourselves, or heal us for the ways that we felt like we were wounded. Or as many would say, “Hey, being raised Black Pentecostal,” as I said, “This is not the right way.” So we get, we started believing that proximity to whiteness means that we are closer to God and that following white people's ways means that we are closer to Jesus. So, many times, either in active forms and passive forms, that's the message that we receive and that's the message particularly that I believed. So yeah, that's what, that's really what happened. I went through some years there where I was immersed in that space preaching, teaching, leading, then ended up writing and things like that.

So the kind of catalyst for change for me happened when we met, my wife and I, who's in the Air Force, moved to Augusta, Georgia, and then in 2016, the shootings happened of Alton Sterling and then Philando Castile. Then going through a white reform, Southern Baptist church as a young Black Christian who's confused about my own identity, but also going deeper and deeper and deeper into white space and white religion and white theology as a way to affirm myself and bring me access and things like that, that kind of paradox was happening. So as those shootings and killings happened, it really brought out feelings that I had suppressed for so long. Then the really thing that changed it, was the response of white Christians as I tried to kind of make sense of what I was seeing in the world, but also make sense of what I was reading in my own time, as I was trying to develop language for the kind of lived experience I was having as a young, Black Christian within that space.

So yeah, that was kind of my entry point, and in a very real way though, James Baldwin was my exit point. I like to tell people there is no way, there is no way possible you can do a close reading, an honest reading of The Fire Next Time, and stay committed to white evangelicalism as, in its type of kind of faith, reality, practice and rituals and imagination that it holds out for us. So James Baldwin was that exit for me. I read that joint and yeah. My, as they say with Daniel, the writing was on the wall.

[laughter]

Danté Stewart: So yeah.

Sy Hoekstra: This is funny. When I was a freshman in college, I was assigned that book in a class that I was in, and I grew up white evangelical as you get. When I finished that book, I was like, I have no idea what I just read, but I think it might've changed my life [laughs]. You know what I mean? Like he was just coming from such a different perspective than me, but I was like, I don't know. It was one of those things where it just feels important, but even though you don't know why.

Danté Stewart: One hundred. One hundred. Yeah, and I think that's the thing about James Baldwin, as so much of the Black literary tradition and many of the traditions of Black writing or Black thinking or Black preaching. So one way, I guess on a big level, one, we call it the Black literary tradition. I mean, following the thoughts of someone like James Baldwin or Toni Morrison or Toni Cade Bambara, or even now in contemporary literature, Black literature regarding like Deesha Philyaw, Robert Jones, Ashley Ford, Kiese Laymon, Jason Reynolds. Who else? Who's doing that work? Sarah Broom, Maurice Ruffin. Jesmyn Ward and the likes and that Black literary tradition. But also, you’re talking about Black intellectual tradition. Talking about like Du Bois and traditions of Black study with like Fred Moten or Hortense Spillers and those, and the likes, like Stuart Hall or Kevin Quashie.

But then you’re also talking about the Black theological tradition. Thinking all the way back, you know during the times of enslavement and the ways in which Black folk dreamed of what my friend Ashon Crawley would say, “otherwise possibilities.” And so the hush, they were able to find God within the hush harbor. They were able to develop different experiences beyond the logics in the litmus of white Christian and social space, and the ways in which like it pressured them to try and diminish their humanity to feel like they must be accepted by God, as well as hold up a theology that destroyed their body and believed that the best things of life for Black folk were in heaven while the best things of life for white folk were here on earth.

So if we think about James Baldwin, James Baldwin is very much in that tradition of using theological or religious metaphor through the medium of the essay or through the medium of poetry or through the medium of an interview. Or through the medium of even writing a play and things like that. So I think like if we do a close reading of Baldwin, you're not just simply reading about Black life and the intricacies and the complexities and the beauty of Black life and Black worlds, but you’re also reading, you're doing theology. You're hearing Baldwin invite you into taking time to be still, and inviting you to sit and ponder with him about the sacred space, with him in the sacred space between his life and his body and the body of his nephew and his life.

And so in some sense, I say people have to read The Fire Next Time, the beginning of The Fire Next Time as a prayer and the second half of The Fire Next Time as a sermon. So if we do those type of close, critical, theological and literary readings of that text, we can see that when Baldwin says, “If the concept of God has any validity, it can only make us more bigger and larger and freer and more loving,” that in some sense is inviting us into a theological imagination and narration of our stories, that would deconstruct and dismantle theologies that make us narrow and just simply concerned about power and control. So for me to read Baldwin in that space, and for others I think to read Baldwin, I think for us, that represents in so many ways the possibilities of the type of faith lives that we can imagine for ourselves that right now, I think we need.

Many people would say that so many people are tired of religion and tired of Jesus and very much that is the case, and has very much validity as it relates to their experiences within our church spaces. And instead of but, but and also, there are people who are tired of the kind of exhausting ways of practicing their faith that just simply wants to imagine faith as an argument or a war to be won, rather than humanity and liberation to be embodied and expressed within the practices and imagination of what we believe to be what Jesus says, that I've come to have death come, that you might have life and have it more abundantly. And so instead of our faith has many experience being one of stealing and killing and destroying.

And if there is any type of experience of Christianity that we know to be true and widespread, it is the traditions of Christian faith that is about stealing and killing and destroying. And I think for me, especially as I expressed within my book, you will be able to be invited into that journey of life and particularly Black life and Black life being alive and abundant.

Sy Hoekstra: Well, that was a sermon.

[laughter]

Suzie Lahoud: Yeah, real talk.

Danté Stewart: And we’re just getting started.

Sy Hoekstra: I know. That was my next thought [laughs]. That was the warmup, I like. Okay, so I think then working off of what you just said, you write in your book that Baldwin and Toni Morrison and other writers in that tradition are theologians. And just because I think a lot of people's categories of what constitutes theology would not include those people, what do you mean by that?

Danté Stewart: Yeah. Yeah, great question. I think in some sense that might be the issue, is that what we deem to be theology or doing theological work it's so limiting. So much of our understandings of what does it mean to speak of faith, speak of our life and our embodiment too often, the litmus of that is, the litmus and the legitimacy of that, is oftentimes by standards of white people. So if we think about the time of enslavement and going back in the time of enslavement and thinking about the ways in which, what the plantation represented as it relates to whose life and whose story is legitimate. Who must always be the master and who must always be the enslaved and who must always be the one controlling bodies and imaginations and dreams, and the ways we talk about God in the spaces we live and move and have our being in.

And how can we develop alternative spaces where theology can be something more, something better, something more loving. So when I think about Baldwin and Morrison, I kind of started to, really my gateway into thinking about them through theology, has been and continues to be within the academy. I'm a student right now in modern religious thought and experience. I’m a master in theological studies, a student at Emory University at the Candler School of Theology at Emory. And most of my research right now is centering around texts, theory and theology. So looking at the ways in which Black texts intersect with critical theories and doing theological studies, particularly centered around Black and womanist theological frameworks.

So as I started to read Baldwin, as I started to read Morrison and I started to read Black, broadly in Black literature, I just started to realize that on a kind of personal level, when I read that literature, something spiritually happened to me, you know? So it's not just conceptually that what they were saying helped me think better or gave me different language. But what it did for me, especially as you’re talking about, if we're thinking about our theology and our religion and our Christian faith as coming to bring life, then I would say that whenever we are doing the type of work that embraces our humanity, that seeks to tell the story of our humanity and make it beautiful, and it holds out the possibility of a better way of being together, then that is doing the work of what Jesus calls life.

So I was, I wrote this essay not too long ago on Amanda Gorman. I was thinking about Amanda's work and thinking about like doing a close reading of her poem, “The Hill We Climb.” And I was, in that moment I was actually, I had read this beautiful, beautiful essay by theologian M. Shawn Copeland, on Toni Morrison's Beloved. She was talking about the sermon that Baby Suggs gives in the clearing, where she says, “Here…” Where Toni Morrison writes, “Here in this place, we flesh. Here in this place, we flesh. Flesh that weeps, flesh that dances in the grass.” And she goes on to say, “You got to love your flesh. Yonder, they don't love your flesh. In a moment, they will kill you. They will destroy your flesh, but you have to love it.” And then she crescendos on, “That is the prize.”

So as I thought about Toni Morrison and I thought about Amanda Gorman, I’ve been thinking about Baldwin and broadly in contemporary Black literature.  I would say that these writers and thinkers are theologians in the truest sense of the word. How? How are they theologians in the truest sense of the word? For me at least, as I'm trying to think about frameworks of doing theology, for me at least, they are making divine possibilities intelligible. They’re making divine possibilities intelligible. So when Jesus comes on the scenes and talk about liberation, when Jesus comes on the scene and started healing bodies and shaping stories and holding out better, than many of the religious and political leaders were holding out. He was holding out divine possibilities.

And so when Baldwin is doing his work in Just Above My Head, or when Morrison is doing her work in Paradise, or when Bambara is doing her work in the Salt Eaters, or when Deesha is doing her work in the Secret Lives of Church Ladies, or when Kiese is writing in Heavy, or when Jason is writing in Look Both Ways, or even when Robert is writing in The Prophets and others are just doing this incredible, incredible work. And even Sarah Broom is writing about the intimacy of the house and what the house says and feels like. Or when Jesmyn writes that last line, “home,” she says, “Home,” in Sing, Unburied, Sing. These type of writing are pressing us deeply into divine possibilities, and they are offering us, as theologians should be doing, offering us a world of love. An alternative world of love, freedom, hope and joy.

So for me theology, I don't think theology is simply just speaking or even wrestling. So proclamation from pulpits or proclamation within classrooms, or even wrestling with harder questions of theology and frameworks of theology in your own study. But it is also helping us dream a little bit about the possibility of the future that God can have for us. So as Toni Morrison writes in The Site of Memory, she says, “It's not just simply about pondering the actual, it is also about imagining the possible.” If that is not theology, I don't know what it is. I think theology, at the heart of theology, doing theology. Living righteous, meaningful, beautiful, and lovely and complex lives is about pondering the actual of life. What does it mean to ponder life in a pandemic?

What does it mean to ponder life in a moment when a cop sits on, kneels on the knee of George Floyd? What does it mean to ponder the actual of Breonna Taylor being murdered? And we hardly, in some sense, remember her name in the ways that we remember Black boys and Black men. What does it mean for LGBTQ and trans brothers and sisters in Image Bearers to be killed and devalued and oppressed? What does it mean to be an immigrant or a migrant running away from home trying to find a home again? What does it mean to be, what does it mean to ponder the actual of being a young kid who is in one of these rural towns where you don't really get to make the decisions about your life, but you have to figure out how to live with what you have, where your family is trying to make do with what they got.

That work is theology and pondering. Pondering the actual, but it is also imagining the possible. So I want to think about, as Williams writes, “How can I enlarge my world and explore my own story in a story of others?” For me, as I've done that in my book as people will read, in every chapter there's a metaphor. A working metaphor in every chapter. There's a type of narration of trying to do that work, that theological work of pondering and imagining. So for me, I think that that at its heart is a part of what we mean by doing theology.

Suzie Lahoud: Danté, first of all I feel like this is church right here. I agree with Sy that you've just given us a couple of sermons to sit and meditate on. So thank you for not just writing this book, but for bringing your words today. One other thing that we wanted to kind of dig into since we have the privilege of talking to you is, one thing you emphasize about the process of reclaiming your tradition, is realizing the ordinariness of faith, and the ways that you now find God in your everyday life. Actually you referenced womanist theology, and that insight makes me think of Yolanda Pierce's recent book that came out, In My Grandmother's House, and drawing on those rich traditions and experiences. So can you flesh that idea out for us more? What do you mean by that? Can you get into that, explain that, because I think it's so interesting and so important.

Danté Stewart: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. And Yolanda's book is absolutely amazing. It is a beautiful … Wow, Yolanda's book is an absolute, stunning, stunning work of story and theology, but just absolutely beautiful writing. I mean, she took, I think she took such deep care about the ways that she told the story of Black women, but also, you know, Black women in particular, but also broadly Black people in general. I think for me, that's kind of a part of that process of reclaiming my tradition and a particular ordinariness. I think for me on a kind of theological level, I don't know if we actually really take the time to think about this, but so many of the books of the Bible center divine life in the ordinariness of our lived experiences.

So when you talk, now, I'm kind of go … Okay, none of my, I was talking about texts theology, but now let me talk about theory a little bit. I'm going to get a little theoretical real quick. So when we're talking about epistemology and things about how we know, we have to be honest to say that the Bible takes seriously lived experiences as ways of knowing the divine and ways of imagining our faith lives as multitudes. So there is, as far as genre, there is erotica in the Bible, called Song of Songs. There's a genre of erotica. But then there's literature and history. And in there are books that centered around stories of ordinary people coming in contact with an extraordinary God. So when I think about the ordinariness of my faith and trying to reclaim those stories, I don't just want to close that story up in the Bible and say that that type of reality is over.

That God does not speak within our lived experiences. Because oftentimes that language of God being done, and that language of a certain closedness of God, is not necessarily because people think so highly of the Bible as much as they think so highly of themselves and so lowly of others.

Jonathan Walton: Say it again, preacher.

Danté Stewart: Yeah. I don't even know if I can repeat that, but you know [laughter], they think so highly of themselves and so lowly of others. So even back to the story about, even as back to the question about why Baldwin and Morrison being theologians. Too often times, theologians in our minds have been the white heterosexual men, or Black men, or white women. And then you can kind of go down the hierarchy then about whose story matters. And I'm willing to say I want to find ways to enlarge my world through everyday ordinary experiences of Black people. Everyday ordinary experiences like my momma, and my grandma and my granddaddy. Even that story that I told about going back to the river and things like that. Like that for me is like the ordinariness of faith. The willingness to listen to that still small voice. The willingness to say faith is not no triumphal story, and that even my losses that I take can contain knowledge.

Can contain the production of knowledge and things like that. So I'm reminded of Emilie Townes writing in her beautiful, beautiful work, Womanist Ethics, I think, and the Cultural Production of Evil. So womanist theology and the ways in which, for me, so much of my theological imagination right now, is kind of formulated and formed through womanist theology as well as Black feminist thought. So for me lately, I've been kind of sitting with Emilie Townes and M. Shawn Copeland on the womanist side, but also sitting with Patricia Hill Collins and sitting with, particularly with Terrion Williamson and her beautiful book, Scandalize My Name. And just trying to think deeply about the ways in which for them, how they saw Alice Walker and her way of thinking about womanish and taking that word that was meant to destroy them and devalue them, and take it and turn it into something that is to liberate them and make them feel seen and loved.

Or the ways in which somebody like Tamura Lomax in her book, Jezebel Unhinged, the way in which she takes feminist theory and Black religion and turns it into something beautiful and liberative. And so like for me, I tried just to take seriously the everyday ordinary lives of Black people, and trying to figure out what kind of, what can be gleaned, what can be gained, what can be broadened in my own type of faith life from doing a close reading and in embracing a sentence, or like Terrion Williamson say, “What does it mean to look at our Black lives and say that they are as much a serious starting point for our understanding about life as much as any other?” So I think when you start talking about knowledge and starting points and things like that, I want to say, I want to take seriously, what type of production of knowledge can be gleaned, can be gained from Black literature, from Black art, from Black protests?

From somebody like Jo’Artis Ratti dancing in the street? What can be gained from that? When we think about seeing, man, Hanif’s book. What's that joint? It’s Hanif’s book, A Little Devil in America: in Praise of Black Performance. And thinking about ways in which we can, what can we gain? What type of knowledge can be produced that can be generative and constructive and liberative for us? By looking at the everyday ordinary lives of Black people, not just looking at Black folk who made it, but what can I gain about God from looking at the card table? What can I gain by God from looking at a young brother going to school first day trying to wipe his J’s? What does that care … what does that teach me about the care and concern about bodies that should be had, you know? Or somebody's looking at how, like Kiese in his book, Long Division.

Like what does the brush for Black boys symbolize about the beauty of the humanity of Black life and the ways that which oftentimes, as I write about in one of my chapters, that oftentimes we Black boys learn distrust, and oftentimes that's aided by the church. And if that is aided by the church, how can we deconstruct and decolonize those theologies so that we can hold up something better? What type of metaphors can be had? So for me, just like the Bible, I think Black lives, and not just Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth, as many people would say, but I do think that it's a way we can think about it as Boundless interpretations or illustrations. Boundless Illustrations Becoming Lived Experiences. So if the divine life can be obtained and enlarge our own understanding of ourselves within the Bible, then I think the same thing can be had in everyday ordinary Black experiences.

Sy Hoekstra: You called everything that you just said theory, but then having read your book, like I can so clearly see how you did all of that in like just in the everyday experiences of your family.

Danté Stewart: Yeah, for sure.

Sy Hoekstra:  And so I would urge anybody listening to check it out just because that is not theory for you.

Danté Stewart: Oh yeah, no doubt. But then also on the other hand, it is theory. And I think it should be theory, because oftentimes even in like, so like in my classes on theory, then often times we're reading, I mean, I'm reading people, I'm reading theoreticians, you know, whatnot. So I'm reading something to these theoreticians and it's just like, what type of theory can be gained from looking at though it's everyday experiences and saying, okay, that is doing theory as well, you know?

Jonathan Walton: Right.

Sy Hoekstra: I think what I mean is, for you it's not just theory.

Danté Stewart: Oh yeah, no. No, no, no, no, no. I got what you meant. No, I got what you meant. I got what you meant. That is not just theory. It's every day. It's existential. But on the other hand I’m saying, that it should be contained in theory, and we should theorize about it. And we should write in ways that’s still radical so that we can say that our lives must be taken seriously no matter where they find themselves. Whether that be in the academy or in the street or in the churches and things like that. So one of the harder things though, that I felt like I'm so proud of that I was able to do, is that when you read my book, I'm doing theory, but it doesn't feel like theory. So I’m weaving like Alice Walker. I'm weaving Toni Morrison. I'm weaving Baldwin. I'm weaving Audre Lorde, and I'm doing that type of work, but I'm so proud that I was able to maybe think like a theorist, but write like an essayist.

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. I think in our broader culture, there's a fear of the deconstructionist. And I think the actual thing that you're doing that's dangerous, is reconstruction. Because deconstruction will leave you in a room like a kid with a bunch of Legos, but reconstruction will actually take you to a different place and you begin to build a new world. So the books that you, I mean, you listed off a library of people, right? You, there's a, Kyle Howard talks about he got a white education, and I think you just laid out like a Black syllabus. So what I would love for you to talk about, is how you, and who helped you, reconstruct a faith around Jesus. Because you did not throw away Jesus, you threw away white American folk religion, what I would say.

You threw away the race-based, class-based, gender-based hierarchy that actually interrupts the intimacies of life, and coats it with exploitation and violence. Where you were able to create something different in your book and paint a new picture of what a world might look like that is intimate, but it's also accessible if we're willing to do the same work. So can you talk about the process of reconstruction around a Jesus that liberates and not one that constrains like the whips and chains that first brought our folks here?

Danté Stewart: Wow. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. For sure. That's a good question. That's a great question. You know, one of the things that's just for me at least, that's weird about like the whole conversation regarding deconstruction is, the type of … number one, I'm not in that space. So like, I think that those who are deconstructing are in a particular space that they're carving out, you know? And that's just not my space nor my place speaking in that way, just because that's, I mean, that's just not, that's not what I'm doing. That's not… Like that's like when people ask about anti-racist texts. Oftentimes people, that's why you see like, when you go to Barnes & Noble, you see Robin DiAngelo in Black section. Like no, she not Black, nor is she doing like Black work. She doing good work, for some people.

Jonathan Walton: But she over there.

[laughter]

Danté Stewart: Yeah, but she ain’t talking to us, she ain't doing any work for us. So for me, like that's just not my space that I'm in. I mean, I am in a space, you know, that I'm a minister in pastoral ministry in a Black, progressive space. Black progressive denomination and church that have all types of Black folk. Whether you're talking about progressive or conservative. Whether you’re talking about LGBTQ or homophobic. You just got a mixed bag in this space. You got intergenerational. So, and I'm trying to carve out my space, doing work centered around Black lives and Black literature and things like that. So I don't want to kind of even set myself up as somebody who presents a reconstructed alternative, even as opposed to those who are doing deconstruction, because that's just not my space.

That's not what I'm doing. That's not like, like that's just not in, yeah, it's just not my space or whatnot. Do I think like, do I think that that work is necessary and needed? Yes. I think it is because oftentimes, even ways in which like we use the term orthodoxy, it's a complicated, complex term, especially as you’re talking about church history. I don't know who taught people church history class, but I mean, Christian history is just terrible. It's messed up. It's a bad, bad history. There are moments where it's beautiful, but there are many, many moments and many more moments where it's actually terrible. So in that regard, there are things that need to be deconstructed and unfolded and got rid of or what not, but then there are other people who will...

We're not trying to present alternatives to people with deconstruction, but also who’s saying, you know, for me, and this is where I'm at right now. Christian identity is not even my first identity at the end of the day. I don't, I'm not that person. I'm not someone who says Christian identity is my first identity. That's just not the case. When I wake up in the morning, I'm a husband, I'm a father, I'm Black. I'm just trying to do work. I'm a student. Of course my faith informs all of that. But Christian identity is just not my first identity. Being Black in some sense, it's my first identity, and Christian is a part of that. It's not like a hierarchy of identities as much as it more so is a way in which those identities are intersectional and interlocking and integrated.

So for me it's like, Christian identity for me is not an exhaustive identity or reality, but it is a meaningful one. It's a meaningful one. And so for me, I want to say I stand in the world first as a Black writer, but also I stand in the world of someone who finds deep meaning in the liberating and loving story of Jesus. So that informs the way that I write. But then for me like, even with my book, I didn't want to write a Christian book. Because on one level, I think so much of Christian writing as it relates to the genre, I think, I don't know if it's very creative. I just don't know if it's very creative writing. Like if people are really thinking about skill, when it comes to how do I write something that's creative and compelling? It's almost like sermonizing.

Like, okay, here's the text for the day, here is historical background, here is my three points of my sermon, close you out and give you something to take away home. And I think we need to do better writing as Christians and as it relates to the genre of Christian writing. My book is a Christian book. It is, but I'm not writing Christian literature, because I want to expand that. So as it relates to my faith, I'm a Christian and that's a meaningful identity, and that informs how I tell my story. That informs how I understand my story and interpret the world. But I'm also Black and I'm in a traditional Black writing and a traditional Black thinking and in a traditional Black world making. And that informs my writing. So like, especially in certain chapters, you're going to see where I talk about where things feel grounded in a certain type of theology, but then where you're going to also feel what things are grounded in a certain type of tradition.

So for me, as it relates to reconstructing and thinking about how do we reconstruct and put our faith stories and lives back together again, I think about the Toni Cade Bambara quote out of the Salt Eaters. So there's a story of Velma, I think if I'm not mistaken, being asked, “Hey, yo sweetheart, are you sure you want to be well? Just so you know, healing ain't no trifling matter. A lot await when you’re well.” And so like I think about that healing and wholeness is no trifling matter. So putting our faith lives back together again is no trifling matter. It's going to take a lot of weight. There are going to be some things that need to be taken off and deconstructed. There are also going to be some things that need to hold us down, and that gives us some weight.

And I'm not even thinking about people who say, “You got to make sure your foundation’s strong and things like that and make sure you’re …” No, I'm not thinking about that. I'm thinking about what type of stories ground and root your experience that helps you generate meaning in the complex, ugly, beautiful, and oftentimes confusing moments in our lived experiences. So what stories help us generate meaning? What metaphors help us generate meaning? And for me, that's the type of work I'm trying to lean into. I'm not trying to be, I'm not trying to be a correction to evangelicalism. I'm not trying to be a correction to deconstruction, to traditions of deconstruction and de-colonial theory and theology. Number one, I'm not smart enough, number one.

Number two, because in some sense, man, like it takes a while to kind of think about these concepts and theories and do good work around these things. But then on another level, I think the most pressing need from me, is to how can I lean into Black stories and try and write in such a way and think and talk and do work and move and maneuver in such a way that our Black lives are more than simply just performance and just simply plain pain. That our lives are embraced and cherished and loved and explored, and that our worlds are made beautiful. So like that was in some sense if we were out to speak about a certain type of reconstruction, or as Terrion Williamson writes, I love how Toni Morrison talks about this and Terrion Williamson. Terrion Williamson says it's like getting back to living again.

But then Toni Morrison says in the New York Times, I think it was in 1974, New York Times essay, where she was like, “It was like growing up Black again.” So for me, my journey was about getting back to living again and growing up Black again. And yes, in ways things need to be deconstructed and some things need to be held on to. But I wasn't trying to simply do that. I was trying to say, okay, I was trying to do, how can I press deeply into the ways in which I became terrible and the ways in which being Black and Christian and American oftentimes is terrible and confusing, complex, but also can be beautiful, generative and life-giving. So yeah, that's kind of how I've been thinking about it instead of as a correction to other folk.

I ain't, I just ain’t, I ain't trying to be that person. I don't want to be known as that person. I want to be known as somebody who love Black people, who love Black stories and tried to write them beautifully, and who did excellent. I mean, phenomenal, ground shaking, beautiful writing as a style, as a content, as a form. That I wrote in ways that a year, 10 years, two years from now, like people think, they're still thinking about Between the World and Me. People still thinking about Sing, Unburied, Sing, or people still thinking about Maya Angelou's work or Toni Morrison's work or Heavy or Secret Lives, or whatever. People still think about this writing, because not just because it's like great content, but that it’s absolutely beautiful writing.

That's the type of work I want to do. Is that 5, 10 years from now, when people think about their faith, their embodied experiences, their trauma, their pain, and trying to translate those wounds into worlds, I want them to be talking about Shoutin’ in the Fire: An American Epistle, as something that grounds them, that loves them, that sees them and inspires them.

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. And I mean, I think, you have done that. Just in case you, I hope you're not wondering that. And I think people who are listening need to know that that book is that. I think the, your stubborn biblical refusal to be categorized and classified in a bookstore is awesome. And I hope that that is a testament to the people who are listening, that the things of God will not be codified. Again, it’s a transcendent thing that you've done and what all of us are invited into. When we write and when we read and we engage within life with God and sincerely with other people, and the things that they have been gifted by God to do in the world. And so, so amen to all that.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. And I think people are going to try, I think people already do try and put you in categories like deconstruction or whatever. And so much of that is like you said, just from a desire to put people in their place, to categorize them as good or bad, to control them. It's also partially a result of continuing to just see absolutely everything through the lens of whatever is happening in the white church. And I appreciate you just saying, “Nope, I'm not a part of any of that.” Yeah, Danté, this has been an incredible conversation. We really, really appreciate you being here. Other than the book, is there anything you want to plug in? Where can people follow you on the internet?

Danté Stewart: Yeah, so people can connect with me @StewartDantéC. That's pretty, my handles are pretty much standard across the board. They can also connect with me on my website, Dantécstewart.com. I got a newsletter that you could sign up for, where I'm keeping everybody kind of up to date about the book, but also, you know, yeah. It's like I share, it's like a word from me, a word on the book, a word from James Baldwin. So I kind of, it's called The Amen Corner. A word from James Baldwin, and then I kind of keep people up to date on kind of things I'm doing in public. So you can connect with me there. I try my best, now things are getting a little bit more busier. It’s getting a little bit harder, but I try my best to respond to everybody. So yeah.

Sy Hoekstra: Again, thank you so much, Danté. I'm on that newsletter already. It's worth it, go sign up and follow Danté everywhere on social media. You're going to get a ton of good stuff. Thanks again for being here. We really appreciate it.

Danté Stewart: Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

[Instrumental music from “Citizens” by Jon Guerra plays briefly and then fades out]

Sy Hoekstra: Thank you so much for listening. Please remember to take a look @ KTFPress.com and consider subscribing, and get a free month of that subscription, at KTFPress.com/freemonth. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @KTFPress. Hit the subscribe or follow button on your podcast player for this show. And you know what, give us a rating or review in your podcast player if your podcast player allows that sort of thing. That's actually really helpful for other people finding the show.

Jonathan Walton: But only do that if it's five stars, otherwise, keep it to yourself.

Sy Hoekstra: He's, yeah, that's right. I agree with that. Give us a five star … Listen, if you think it's a four-star show, just give us five. Like just be nice, be generous. Our theme song is citizens by Jon Guerra. Our podcast art is by Jacqueline Tam, and we will see you when we come back for season two next year. Or if you want to subscribe, next week. Talk to you later.

[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]

Sy Hoekstra: That subscription gets you our weekly newsletter, curiating resources for discipleship and political engagement.

Jonathan Walton: Go back. You said curiating.

Sy Hoekstra: Curiating?

Jonathan Walton: Yeah.

Sy Hoekstra: What if that is what I'm doing? What are you doing, curating? Pffff. That's, you've got to keep up with me. I'm curiating. It's being curious and curating at the same time.

Jonathan Walton: I'm sure that's what it is. You go ahead.

[laughter]

Sy Hoekstra: So my point is I did everything right and you shut up.

[laughter]

This week is the season 1 finale of Shake the Dust! The team takes questions from listeners and discusses the difficulty of maintaining faith when the Church can be so awful, the role of empathy in leaving colonized faith, interracial family dynamics, why we don’t cover more current events on the show, how we did this season in reaching some of our goals, and a lot more. Thanks so much for listening, and see you next year! 

Shake the Dust is a podcast of KTF Press. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Find transcripts of this show and subscribe to get our newsletter and other paid content (like monthly bonus episodes during the off season) at KTFPress.com. 

Hosts:  

Jonathan Walton – follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.  

Suzie Lahoud – follow her on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.  

Sy Hoekstra – follow him on Twitter.  

Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra – listen to the whole song on Spotify. 

Our podcast art is by Jacqueline Tam – follow her and see her other work on Instagram.  

Production and editing by Sy Hoekstra. 

Transcript by Joyce Ambale and Suzie Lahoud. 

Questions about anything you heard on the show? Write to [email protected] and we may answer your question on a future episode. 

Transcript

Suzie Lahoud: The initial article that kind of sparked this empathy debate, kind of one of the arguments that was being made, is this idea that when you're empathetic to someone, when you enter into their suffering, there is this danger that you'll just be consumed by their suffering. You'll lose your objectivity. You'll lose your ability, as you alluded to Jonathan, to speak truth. I think there's a false dichotomy that's been created there, where either you enter into someone's suffering and you're consumed by it, or you have to maintain this distance. And I think that Christ offers us a way that is so much deeper and richer than that, that transcends that false dichotomy that's been laid out before us.

[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/That it will roll in abundance/ And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]   

Sy Hoekstra: Welcome to the season finale of Shake the Dust, leaving colonized faith for the Kingdom of God, a podcast of KTF Press. My name is Sy Hoekstra here as always, with Jonathan Walton and Suzie Lahoud. We are going to take some questions from listeners today about things that people wrote in about, or things that we've heard just over the course of our doing this season and try and wrap this up and celebrate a little bit having done this thing over the course of the last five months or so, that we're all very excited that you're here with us to celebrate this and to do a little bit more processing like we've done before.

Before we get to all that, as always, a quick reminder, and this will have some information about what we're going to be doing going forward. So if you skip this, don't skip at this time. If you want to support not just this show, but everything that we do at KTF Press, the best way to do that is to go to KTFPress.com and become a subscriber, and you can get a free month of that by going to KTFPress.com/free month. You get a free 30 days of the subscription, and that gets you the bonus episodes of this show, which will continue to come in the off season. We're going to do at least one a month. It's possible, we do more than that. But, and then it also supports the free version of this show. It helps support the book projects that we're doing. It gets you our weekly newsletter, which we will talk a little bit more about later today when we’re answering one of the questions actually.

It also gets you writing from the three of us, which I… Well, it'll be the two of us, because Suzie is about to go on maternity leave, which is another thing that we all are going to celebrate. So we're going to be off for a few months. We will be coming back to you in 2022, which is a little bit of a wild thing to talk about. But in the meantime, you will, the subscribers will get some bonus episodes from us. And so we hope some of you consider doing that. You also get access to the archives of all the old writing that we've done and all the old bonus episodes and everything.

So we're going to get into our first question from a listener. I think this frames a lot of the questions that people have around trying to leave an expression of faith that they've known for a while and find something else. And this actually does come in the form of a voicemail and then a little bit of a clarifying question afterwards from an email. So this is from a listener named Julie.

Julie: Hey Jonathan, Sy and Suzie. I want to say thank you for doing this podcast and having these conversations. Your podcast has been a great source of encouragement to me because, for about a year or more, I've gone through a journey of convictions and disillusionment with the church and other thoughts around the social issues of our day and feeling more aware of those and feeling very discouraged by the church's response to… the majority of the church's response. So it's been hard to keep a hold on, I guess, what I believe, because it's so murky out there and I don't know where I'm going to end up, but I just want to say thank you for being a positive voice in all of that.

Sy Hoekstra: So thank you so much to Julie for asking that question and for being kind of open and vulnerable like that. All three of us, I am sure empathize deeply with those feelings. She wanted to know our advice for thinking through what you do when you are questioning, not just like the expression of the faith that you're in, but your actual faith, because of all of the injustices that you've seen around you and kind of what people, what our thoughts are around how to frame that. How to understand it when you genuinely do not know where you're going to end up as a result of the questioning that you’re doing. Which I think is important because it’s just something that comes up a lot whenever you're having discussions like this. So what do you guys think?

Suzie Lahoud: No, I think, I struggle to even jump in and attempt to answer this question. Or not even answer it, but just kind of address it, acknowledge it, because, as you said Sy, I do empathize with this struggle. And yeah, Julie, thank you for being so open and vulnerable in sharing this. And thank you as well for the encouragement. Honestly, it really means a lot to hear that folks are resonating with what we're putting out there and are being blessed by it and encouraged by it.

I think one thing I want to acknowledge, is that I feel like there is some fear-mongering around even having these conversations, that it's going to cause people to lose their faith and walk away from God. And I think that we need to be addressing these things. I think we need to be calling out ways that the church has failed to deal with issues like so many of the things that we've tried to touch on and grapple with in this podcast, that aren't easy issues. And again, we don't expect to have easy answers to these things, but I think that we need to engage the critiques. We need to be able to wade into deep waters.

As far as what you do when you're there, I mean, I think- and this is something the Bible actively teaches us, right- that I think community is so important. Finding brothers and sisters, even if it's just a small group that you feel like you can have these conversations with, you can seek with, and ask hard questions with, and wrestle with. I think that's so important. That's part of what we've appreciated, the three of us, in being able to engage with these things, is having each other as sounding boards and then bringing on these amazing theologians and activists and practitioners who are doing really incredible work around these things, so are really at the forefront of where the church should be.

So for me, it's yeah, that combination of having peers that I can talk to and be honest with about where I'm at, and then having folks that I can look to and say, you know what, maybe the majority of the church is in a really discouraging, disillusioning place right now, but I can point to these leaders. And even if it's only a handful of leaders, but I can point to these leaders who are passionately following Christ, who are reflecting him, who are building up the church, who are incarnating what it means to be a true follower of the Jesus of Nazareth and not white American Jesus. And for me, that's made a world of difference.

Jonathan Walton: Well, one of the things for me that comes up when I hear questions like this is I think it says more about us than it says about God. And I think I've mentioned this before, but my wife and I and my brother and his wife were having a conversation one day, and they said, “Jonathan and Nathan, y’all don't believe that things are supposed to work out.” And I said, “No, I don't believe they're going to work out. I don't expect things to be better or good. My expectations are like really low. Whether it be like racism, poverty, the context I grew up in, whatever. But like, I don't… when I think about God, when I think about what I expect of him and from him, the way that injustice or the issues of the day and the church's response to it, those things don't change God for me.”

I don't know why. I don't know why that is, but I wonder if it says more about us than it does about who God says he is, because God doesn't change. He is consistent. Scriptures is pretty constant. The emotionally healthy question now is, what does my reaction say about me, as opposed to what does my reaction say about God? I think there’s a discovery of what we really value after that, because we know ourselves better. And if we know ourselves better, we actually can know God better because he made us.

Sy Hoekstra: That was a clarification I was going to make, because I think part of what you're saying, Jonathan, is that Julie's kind of not off the right track.

Jonathan Walton: Right. Right. She's doing exactly what she should be doing.

Sy Hoekstra: Which is questioning things that are bad and sitting with them and letting, like trying to figure out where those new realities take her. Right.

Jonathan Walton: Yeah.

Suzie Lahoud: Yeah.

Sy Hoekstra: And I think part of the reason I want to emphasize that that’s not the wrong way to go, is that biblically, it actually is very clear that the worst thing to be in terms of your relationship to God, is the tepid water of Laodicea, right? I'm thinking of Revelation 3, and God telling the church, “You're not hot or cold, you're lukewarm, and so I'm going to spit you out of my mouth [laughs],” are the words that he says. And Jesus consistently goes after people who are lost, he consistently loves and communes with people who want to commune with him. The people for whom Jesus always has the harshest words are leaders who are oppressive toward people, people who are in kind of his house, who are in Christianity, who are in Judaism for their own self-promotion to gain riches or glory for themselves, to weigh people down with unnecessary rules. People who try and stop his ministry actively from happening, and then like his own disciples, like people who are actually following him, who he's going to base his church on.

So that's the worst place to be. The worst place to be, is unfortunately where so many Christians are, which is just sitting in church and going through the motions or not questioning why things are happening the way they are. Not questioning why you don't feel close to God, but just going through it because you want to be a good person or you want to follow the people who are telling you what being a good person is, or because you want power for yourself or whatever. So being in the wilderness, being lost, that is an active part of discipleship, it always has been. And that includes not knowing where you're going to end up.

Suzie Lahoud: Oh, that’s good, Sy. Yeah.

Sy Hoekstra: And I think, I would even go so far as to say like Church attendance, regular quiet times, regular prayer, some people just cannot do those things for a period, because they don't, they literally have no concept for how to do that in a way that isn't being tepid. In a way that isn't being completely formalistic and just doing it because you're supposed to. But like… this is probably not something you're going to hear from a lot of pastors [laughs], but there’s going to be a period where you don’t hear from God, where you don't talk to God a lot. Where you're not doing those things because you're having to try and figure out how to do them in a way that isn't actively harmful to you and God and other people.

And, I don't know, I just, Julie and anybody who's in that place, I feel really badly for you. I've been there. I'm not always out of there. Like I just, I feel it, and I want people to know that that's not wrong. It is not wrong to listen to yourself and say, “This doesn't feel good,” and I need to listen to that instinct and trust it.

Jonathan Walton: I think the question of like, what am I doing this for? What am I going to get out of it? What effect is this going to have? What fruit is this going to bear? are perhaps the wrong question in asking about the fundamental and foundational parts of our lives, and concerning destiny, morality, justice, and beauty, right. I think they’re the wrong questions, because I think those are production-based questions. They’re A-to-B-based questions. And if Jesus and God and the Holy Spirit are about relationship with us, I think we want to maybe change those questions to who do we get to do this with? Because if I'm not doing a quiet time with Jesus, I don't need to be doing a quiet time. If I'm doing, if I'm praying, but I'm not like in communion with God, I need to stop sitting there trying to make myself pray. Disciplines are organized to be with someone, not to do it, to be done and like have your personal righteousness list.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. So many people hear the word “discipline” and think, “I just need to try harder, do this more.” It's like making a schedule, you know what I mean? It's like, it's no different than a to-do list, and that is the total opposite of what we're aiming for.

Jonathan Walton: Right, there should not be like “Seven Healthy Habits of a Practicing Christian” [laughs]. That's not good. “Highly Effective Christian.” Like highly effective Christian is really an oxymoron.

[Laughter]

Suzie Lahoud: Yeah, I appreciate what you guys have shared. And one thing it made me think of was just past experiences, and I think this is true of really anyone who's worked within churches, who's worked closely with churches. There are always going to be moments of disillusionment. Seeing things come out in folks that you look to as leaders, and that being sort of a stumbling block. And I remember at one point going through an experience like that and just realizing the Bible doesn't teach us that people are going to be good and that the church is going to be good. It teaches us that God is good. And so if I'm going to lose my faith over someone else doing those things, then I think I haven't even really understood what my faith was in in the first place.

Sy Hoekstra: Also- this is something I heard Erna Kim Hackett say on Brandi Miller's most recent episode of Reclaiming My Theology- is like, don't let racists take Jesus away from you. Don't let the people who are distorting who God is keep you away from him, because then they’ve done what they set out to do, which is separate people from the actual God who gives life and fights oppression, and is hope for vulnerable and marginalized people.

Suzie Lahoud: And I also think, I do think we're in… so I'm not a sociologist, disclaimer obviously. But I do think we're in a unique sociological moment in the church in the United States where just because so much of this ugliness is coming to the fore. Not that it wasn't there before, it was, but because these things have come to the surface in a particular way, I think that more people are in this boat than we may realize. And I think also being able to recognize that this is like, yeah, a sociological phenomenon that's going on because of political currents, because of yeah, stuff that's happening in our country and in our world.

And so I think being able to recognize that as well, because then you're bearing the weight of not just individuals messing up, but like a collective messing up and a collective tainting the face of God and tainting the message of Christ. And so that's heavy. That's heavy stuff to be wading through. I think we need to acknowledge that, but just, again, recognizing that that's a real thing that's happening in the world right now, and in our country specifically.

So, and then also, I just wanted to plug Tamice’s book, even though it's not even written yet.

[Laughter]

Sy Hoekstra: Wait a minute… [laughs]

Suzie Lahoud: But I just appreciate, as we've been having conversations with her, and I think it's folks like Tamice who have been on this journey and chose, to Sy’s point, to not be complacent and to not settle for being lukewarm and just accepting the status quo, and I think that that's such a beautiful expression of just passion for Christ and ultimate love for Christ. That you're not willing to just say, “You know what, I'm just going to pretend that this isn't happening,” or, “I'm just going to walk away completely,” but rather, again, wading into the deep waters and then eventually coming out on the other side. I just think that's so valuable and I'm grateful that we have the honor and privilege of being a part of bringing one of those testimonies to a broader audience.

So our next question is from a listener named Mat asking if we could have a discussion around the direction the church is heading in terms of engagement with emotions. And is there a point where it has gone too far, and we are spending too much of our time focusing on all of the possible emotional reactions to our words and can't speak truth plainly. So, yeah, I'm going to open this up to you, Jonathan and Sy, first off.

Jonathan Walton: Man, let me go.

Suzie Lahoud: Go.

Sy Hoekstra: Go.

[Laughter]

Jonathan Walton: So, I have so many responses to this question, because I… So when I read this question from Mat, I got, I had a lot of emotions myself, because in the past when I've had conversations like this, what I think the person is looking for, is permission to say things that are ignorant, that may be hurtful to the person who's listening. Instead of saying, “Hey, how can I say this in a more loving way? How can I say this so that someone might hear me? I don't know what to say here- what's the right words?” It seems like a resistance to correction and a refusal to be kind in a way that someone has asked for. So what comes up for me, is like the resistance of our culture to entering into the pain of other people.

And I don't think that entering into the pain of other people is ever something that is costing the gospel. I actually think it's always something that is moving forward, because if I'm entering into someone's feelings, if I'm empathizing, or I'm sympathizing, if I'm trying to see where someone else is coming from, I'm actually moving towards incarnation. If I'm moving towards incarnation, I can't be moving further away from Jesus. So, if the invitation is to be sensitive to the suffering of other people, to empathize and sympathize and have compassion, and ultimately pursue incarnation with our neighbors who are suffering, because there’s someone who is angry or sad or depressed or traumatized, and we say, “Ugh, I just have to make more space for them.” I don't think that his love at all. And I think we actually need to like flex our emotional muscles to be able to be strong enough, to be able to enter in as opposed to giving up, because we don't feel necessarily like entering into that person's reality.

Sy Hoekstra: And can I add another layer to this Jonathan?

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. Yeah, of course.

Sy Hoekstra: There's a way to fail to enter into someone's reality and fail to think about or show compassion towards someone while still acting like you are [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: That’s true. That’s true.

Sy Hoekstra: Meaning like, there are plenty of… a lot of times, this is like a reaction to people being too politically correct or whatever. And there are, of course, people- I see them all the time, having spent a lot of my life in liberal white institutions- who are going to, they know all the politically correct language to use. They know all the right words, but they don't actually have any compassion for anybody. They're doing it because they want to be a good person. They're doing it because they want to be seen as polite and not discriminatory or whatever. That happens. So I think that's what a lot of people were reacting to, but people who might end up like using the same language or the same caveats before they say something or whatever, often have an intent that is good and Christ-like, whereas some people don't. And so it's a, you have to be a little bit more nuanced I think, than some people are.

Jonathan Walton: Loving your neighbor and being politically correct or not the same thing.

Suzie Lahoud: Yeah.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.

Jonathan Walton: Mourning with those who mourn and being nice and polite in American dominant culture are not the same thing. And I think there's a poor exchange, because the definition of what it means to be kind in America is not the same as the definition of what it means to be kind in scripture. Or the definition of kindness in your family is not the same, necessarily, as it is in scripture. And so I think there's an invitation to do much more, and it's most of the time differently than what culture is presenting. So, for Mat, my hope is that, I don't think we're spending too much time focusing on people's possible emotional reactions. And I think speaking God's truth plainly is loving and it can be done in a way that blesses someone and doesn't just disregard their emotional reality.

Sy Hoekstra: And I think part of what actually pushing into engaging with emotional health does, is kind of takes you a little bit outside of the category that we so often think in, which is like, is what I said offensive or not? If you're really working on being emotionally healthy, like a point that you're going to get to is when you realize that you have no control over whether or not someone else is offended by what you say.

Jonathan Walton: Exactly.

Sy Hoekstra: That is, you're never going to be able to control that. But what you can control is your reaction to their offense, and like whether or not you're willing to sit there and question your own emotions as you react to it and say, “Why am I getting defensive?” or “Why do I not like that they've acted offended?” and like really interrogate and think about what that says about you.

And you can also sit there and say, “Regardless of how I feel about their emotional reaction, like what truth can I glean from how they reacted? Like what in there is true, what in there is right, what in there can I use to shape myself going forward and the things that I say and do?” So yeah, I just think it doesn't stop you from caring about when someone is offended or caring about that person. But yeah, it just kind of blows up those categories, or those ways of thinking a little bit, I think.

Suzie, what do you think?

Suzie Lahoud: So, first of all, I love the way that you initially reframed this, Jonathan, to move from an approach that is self-oriented to an approach that is other-oriented. I think that's so important. Like if we're just asking this question because we want to cover our own butts, that's not a Christ-like response. I think a Christ-like response is oriented towards the other. And when I say “the other,” I think the other who is our fellow human being created in the image of God and the other who is God Almighty. Yeah, that's the perspective from which we need to be asking these kinds of questions.

I also loved, Jonathan, that you took this to the idea of incarnation. When I was thinking about this question, I thought about Hebrews 4:15, where it says, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses.” And all of the ways that scripture talks about Christ entering into our suffering in a way that I think is the most beautiful expression of empathy. I think the cross is the most remarkable, complete expression of empathy. I think it’s empathy taken to it's furthest conclusion.

Having said all that, this question also made me think about, and in general, this empathy debate that's been going on, also made me think about some work that I did in grad school that I've mentioned before on the theology of hospitality. And interestingly enough, in philosophical discussions around hospitality, one of the questions has been sort of what are the limits of hospitality? And basically what that's trying to get at, is what's the point at which the host becomes sort of annihilated in their attempt to care for their guest, and so they cease to exist as a being. They cease to have needs.

So yeah, there are all these debates around at what point is it too much? Or can you place limits on it- would it cease to be hospitality if you did? And empathy and hospitality are often linked together as being very much a part of this same conversation. And what my conclusion was, and some other theologians talk about this, is that the third way that scripture offers us, is a Trinitarian relational model, where you can be a separate being and entity, and yet still in full community that transcends what we as humans experience even as community. And so you can have this exchange of giving and receiving of love and care and emotional being that goes beyond, again, our full human comprehension of what that should look like. But then also, I think, is what we should seek to strive for as we seek to follow God and be conformed to the image of Christ.

And so I bring that up just because the initial article that kind of sparked this empathy debate, kind of one of the arguments that was being made, is this idea that when you're empathetic to someone, when you enter into their suffering, there is this danger that you'll just be consumed by their suffering. You'll lose your objectivity. You'll lose your ability- as you alluded to Jonathan, but in reverse- to speak truth. Whereas I love that you were arguing that no, speaking truth is not antithetical to expressing empathy. They can go together. So that's just a bad argument.

Jonathan Walton: Right [laughs].

Suzie Lahoud: But yeah, but that's why I bring this up just because I think. Yeah, I think there's a false dichotomy that's been created there, where either you enter into someone's suffering and you're consumed by it, or you have to maintain this distance. And I think that Christ offers us a way that is so much deeper and richer than that, that transcends that false dichotomy that's been laid out before us by our culture.

Jonathan Walton: So as we’re talking about communication, feelings, emotional health, we talked with Kyle Howard about ways that racism can be harmful in the area of how interracial, multicultural couples communicate and interact with each other. We got a question about how the families and family culture of interracial couples can also negatively affect marriages.

Sy Hoekstra: So, first of all, it’s super different dynamics when it's white and something else, versus two people that are not white.

Jonathan Walton: This is true.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. So not that there isn't like a ton of bigotry or difficulty between groups that are not white. It's just that like, at least in the American context, the one has not sought to dominate the other one for centuries, and there aren't the same power dynamics. There can be power dynamics, but they're not the same.

So I think, I actually want to connect this back to our conversation with Chuck Armstrong, because we talked about within white families, the degree to which you spend your time talking to your family members about kind of the racist stuff they say, or speaking up when they say things, when you are in the inside and you really have to balance the relationship that you have with those people, and how effective you're going to be, and all those things with the desire to obviously speak up and say what's right and correct people.

That pressure just gets ratcheted up when you're married to somebody who's not white, because now you're not just thinking about your own relationship with that individual, you are thinking about your relationship with your spouse. You are thinking about the ways in which they are actively being harmed by the stuff that your family members are saying and the need to stop your family members from saying those things. It becomes vastly more urgent.

So then if you are like, if you're the white family member, actually, this probably goes a little bit for anybody, but this is the context that I'm familiar with. If you're a family member and the… like basically what's on you is to learn, and to try and understand and to listen, to do some of the empathizing that we were just talking about so that you're not creating that pressure or increasing the pressure on your family member’s marriage. And it's also then kind of on you to speak up when other people are doing it, because it’s a huge relief off of the marriage again, if like the cousin is willing to talk to the uncle that said something, or the parent is willing to talk to the grandparent that said something or whatever. That is where you can really tangibly love people, I think.

What Couples might have to do, what interracial couples might have to do, is just start drawing more bright line, stricter boundaries around their interactions with certain family members. And that's like, obviously, not ideal for anybody. That's going to hurt everybody in one way or another, but it is something that you may have to do, especially around kids. Like I don't have kids yet, but you do not want your mixed race child to be hearing stuff from their own family that is creating insecurity about who they are or the culture that they come from. Because just like the world's going to do enough of that, and what you want home to be is somewhere where your kids are safe and secure and all that. And so that's an unfortunate thing that has to happen in a lot of places, in a lot of situations.

Suzie Lahoud: So when I think about this question, the main thing that comes to mind for me, is actually the ways that I need to hold myself accountable in relation to my family and their experience of my marriage. And what I mean by that is, Sy, you're absolutely correct. The power dynamics really are different when it's a white person married to a non-white person. And that's the case in my marriage, I'm a white woman married to a Lebanese man. So for me, it's recognizing the ways that when we hit up against something in our relationship. And honestly, oftentimes it is related to how we interact with his family and his home culture. We lived in Lebanon for seven and a half years. That was where we got married and lived as newlyweds and established ourselves as a married couple. And so when I would hit up against things that culturally were hard for me, I realized that it would be so easy for me to run to my white American family and find sympathy and an excuse to not grapple with why it was upsetting me and the ways that maybe I was wrong, and the ways that maybe I needed to grow and be challenged and maybe needed to change, be willing to change, or just have a different perspective that wasn't just judgmental or defensive or, yeah, thinking that my way of doing things was superior, or just wanting to have a pity party.

So I, yeah, I think that that's really important. And it wasn't just with my family. It was also, I was actually to be honest, kind of intentional about not even really seeking out the expat community while I was there, because again, I felt like I could have my white American friends, and we could all sit around and just complain about things…

Jonathan Walton: Which is what happens.

Suzie Lahoud: Yeah, and just find false fellowship in reinforcing our way of existing, because we all think we're right. And I didn't want to do that. And so, yeah, I think that's more a commentary on just how I need to engage. It's not a judgment on my family. I think they've been incredible. But just realizing that I need to be careful.

And also to Kyle Howard's point, he talked about how particularly Christian books on marriage will reinforce these white American tropes around what it means to have a quote unquote, “healthy Christian marriage.” And so I knew that I could also run to other supposedly good theological books on marriage and point those passages out to my husband and be like, “See, you're doing it wrong.” And I didn't want to do that either, because just because it's in a book, doesn't mean it's true, doesn't mean it's biblical, doesn't mean it reflects Christ. There are power dynamics with how books get published and what gets put out into the world. And so, yeah, I really loved when Kyle pointed that out, because that had certainly been my experience as well, that I just needed to be so careful and open to learning new things that I didn't know were true before. And being willing to question my own perspectives and allow this journey of marriage to unfold in a way that would change and reshape me without completely losing myself because that's not what it's about either. But just recognizing the ways that I've been socialized as a white American evangelical woman and that there are things there that, that aren't always right and true and God-honoring.

Jonathan Walton: As I'm listening to Suzie talk, I think I'm just reminded of how much work my wife Priscilla does to be an effective bridge between me and my family and my culture and her family, and I think that because she is Chinese and Korean, because she comes from a collectivist identity that I don't have access to. I think Black folks are selectively collective, and it's definitely not the default.

Sy Hoekstra: What do you mean by “selectively collective”?

Jonathan Walton: So Black folks will argue among one another about what Black Lives Matter means and what Black Lives Matter, the movement, should be and all those things. But if you add a white person into the mix, we will be one group. That's how I've experienced it, because we just need to make sure that this other person from us understands what's happening. Whereas like the, when we're having a kind of in-house conversation, there's much more debate and disagreement. With Priscilla, what I've noticed is that she works really, really hard for her, like for me to be understood by her family and wants to be, and is just a mediary for that. Whereas I want her to speak for herself and my family, which is very individualistic and it's totally out of the cultural norm for a Chinese and Korean person to have direct conversations with an older generation and another family. But I will just expect her to acquiesce to how I operate or how our family operates. Whereas she will basically orient me, invite me, set up ways for me to be able to have good interactions.

So I was reading this question about negatively affecting marriages, and I think the reality is, is just like, it's just difficult. I don't know if it's negative all the time. Certainly what Sy was talking about was like, there's people in my family I will never introduce Priscilla to. I'm just not going to do it because of the things that would come out of their mouths. So there is a level of protection that happens there. And it's like, I wonder about the consistent difficulties for me in like decolonizing my marriage. And what I mean by that is, I don't want to think about myself all the time and try to dominate her in our communication, and dominate like, and control the way that things happen, because you can't love someone and try to control them at the same time. You can't listen to someone and at the same time, you're trying to manipulate them to get them to do what you want. And so much of our society is about getting another person to do what you want them to do, and get them to behave how you want them to behave.

I think cross-culturally, because she is not Western, we clash, because there are things that I've been taught to value and actually like, because whiteness and efficiency and all these things are attractive. And so it's difficult for me to collaborate with her because it's cross-cultural collaboration. And like, so we end up like discussing an inordinate amount of things that I just would never discuss with a Black person.

Suzie Lahoud: So another question that we've gotten from multiple listeners is why we don't talk more about current events on the show, current affairs.

Sy Hoekstra: So yeah, we have, and specifically it's usually been like whether or not somebody, like whether or not we're going to discuss an individual thing that has happened. Which sometimes we do. We had Munther Isaac talking about Israel/Palestine close to when that was happening, right. We had, we talked about leaving Afghanistan pretty much right when that happened. But two things. One is, the ultimate goal for us, I think is trying to, as we always say, help people leave colonized faith for the Kingdom of God. And that, sometimes, means talking about the stuff that's in the news, but it also sometimes means we just have other priorities of things that we think are more important, right. Like our ultimate goal with what we're doing here, is education and discipleship. And the discipleship piece in particular, I think, necessitates having some more zoomed out, bigger conversations that are not about whatever's happening in the news that week.

The other part though is, we do actually talk about a lot of current events in our newsletter. So, there are a couple of those that are free and then in our writing as well on the blog, we have, like when the Supreme Court case in June came down about LGBTQ foster parents in Philadelphia, I wrote a piece about Christian reactions to that. So, that's a pretty quick answer, and Jonathan, I don't know if you have any thoughts on it, but yeah, those are my thoughts.

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. I mean, I agree. The newsletter, I think, is where that happens. And, I think, what Twitter says is important, isn't necessarily the most important thing. And what shows up on our various algorithmed feeds is not necessarily the most important stuff. So I think taking a step back to have longer conversations about deeper things and looking for trends and patterns, not just what gets clicks, is more important.

Sy Hoekstra: We also, by the way, we do have conversations about what we should react to as a company. And sometimes we do that on social media. Sometimes we do that in the newsletters, sometimes we do that on the podcast. So we are thinking about those things, we’re not ignoring them. It's just not the main thing that we do.

So last question, guys. Not guys. I need to stop saying that.

Suzie Lahoud: Y’all.

[Laughter]

Sy Hoekstra: So last question y’all, I guess, even though I never say that [laughs]. How do we think that we did in our goal of having vulnerable conversations across our lines of difference among the three of us? I want to hear some reflections from both of you.

Jonathan Walton: Yes, I'll go first. I’ve thought about this question a lot. And it's weird for me to say I was very vulnerable.

Sy Hoekstra: [laughs] I did great.

Jonathan Walton: I did great. But what it made me think about was, I wonder if we took in too much content and how much it will be worth more processing. When I go back and think about the past episodes we've done, I wonder how much of what has been shared with us have I processed and been able to chew on and then be able to apply. I think the vulnerability for me decreased towards the end of the season, because my trunk was full. Like I had enough or too much for the journey, but I'm looking forward to processing more and working with you all and hearing feedback from folks to really be able to apply and process and engage with the content so it's not just like Christian fast food. Not interested in that.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. Suzie?

Suzie Lahoud: So Jonathan, you commented on the vulnerability part of the conversation. I guess when I was thinking about this question, I was thinking more about the second part, talking across lines of difference and how we did at that. And I have been thinking, and do tend to think a lot about what it means to be a woman in different spaces. And it's a challenge for me because I think, on the one hand, there is responsibility that comes with that in terms of bringing quote unquote “a woman's perspective.” At the same time, I feel like part of bringing a woman's perspective is just being a fully embodied woman. Like bringing all that you have to the table and being who you are, who God made you to be, not just as a woman, in like all of your fullness. And so a lot of the times for me, I feel like showing up, not just on this podcast, but in any space, it just means that I need to give what I have to give from my background, from my experience, from the way that my mind works and whatever it is that I have to offer, to be able to put that on the table.

And I think for women, in general, in Christian spaces, in particularly predominantly white evangelical spaces, I think there is this sense that a lot of times we're sort of pigeon-holed into this space where we can only speak up when it has to do with other women's experiences and how our theology impacts us as wives and mothers. And so I think it's important to be able to hear women speak. And I'm not just talking about myself right now. I'm thinking of all of the amazing women that we've had on as guests. I think it's important to be able to hear their voices as practitioners, as theologians, as activists, as advocates. And I'm so grateful for all the women that have been on this podcast and were able to do that. To again, just come on and bring everything that they have to offer, speaking to the full body of Christ, because we're so used to hearing our theology contextualized through the lens of men and predominantly white, middle-class men. And there are things that are going to be missing in our theology if we're not willing to learn from perspectives outside of that.

And this is a reference to an extra sort of podcast episode that's going to be coming out post the season finale, so a little bit of a spoiler alert here, but we're going to be releasing a conversation with Danté Stewart about his forthcoming book. And one thing I loved about that conversation, was he talked about studying womanist theology and how that's impacted and shaped how he views God and his theological reflection and journey. And that just got me so excited, because him saying that shows that he's taking hold of the fact that womanist theology, isn't just about theology for women. It's actually not about that. It's about learning theological truths that all of us need, specifically learning them from women of color. And that that's truth that the entire body of Christ needs to hear and to take in. And so I think just hearing him speak that insight, I think that's so important.

Having said that, I'm also aware of my limitations as a white woman, that I can't say that I've represented quote unquote,“ a woman's perspective on this podcast.” I've come as myself with my background, again, as a white woman, and I know that there are things that I have failed to see and failed to say because of those limitations. And that's something that we've talked about as the three of us as well, and sometimes I'm tempted with that to go into this scarcity mentality that Sandra Maria Van Opstal brought up, that like, “Oh, that means that I shouldn't be speaking at all.” And I don't think that's always the answer, but I do think it means that oftentimes, my voice should take a back seat to the voices of women of color who can bring that. And so, again, I'm grateful for folks that we've had on the show. Just phenomenal women that we've had on that have been able to speak from their experiences, from their expertise, from their wisdom. And I know that that's something that the show really needs on an ongoing basis and would have been severely lacking without, and I look forward to seeing how we can bring more of those kinds of perspectives in future seasons.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. I totally hear that, Suzie, and I think we have tried to specifically talk about what we can talk about, right. I am not trying to tell you what a blind Black woman's life is like, right. And I, yeah, in that way, I think that was one thing, I think, we did fairly well, was talking across lines in that way. Like trying not to overstep what our experience can be. And I agree, we filled in a lot of those holes with the guests. There are more holes to fill in that we can do next season.

I think, I don't know. I have a really hard time assessing myself when it comes to like vulnerability. It's something that I was extremely bad at earlier in my life, and I've tried to get better at. I think I talk… you're about to tell me that I did an okay job and I appreciate that, Jonathan.

Jonathan Walton: No, I wasn't. I wasn't. I was going to try and help you out. So my brother, Nathan Walton, who's now the new senior pastor at East End Church in Richmond, Virginia. Congratulations, Nate!

Sy Hoekstra: Hey, congrats to him.

Suzie Lahoud: Woot, woot!

Jonathan Walton: East End Fellowship- is that he said, “Vulnerability is transparency plus risk.” And so I wonder like, have you taken any risks in sharing?

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, this is kind of where I was going, actually, I think, and that's a good way to put it. I think, I do have, I am pretty good at transparency, but I'm much better at it when it's not as risky, when I've already processed through it or what, which I think is true for everybody, but like, I think that's a little bit more something that I would like to focus on in the future. Transparency plus risk. I’m not saying that I never did that, but I don't think I did it as much as I would want to. I think a lot of the things that I was transparent about, while they might sound like they are emotionally difficult and they were, they are things that are not like personally hard for me to talk about at this point in my life.

But taking on some of that risk, a healthy amount of risk, obviously there's an unhealthy amount of risk, but I think that, yeah, doing that is something I could work on. Because I think that is a place where we find God. It's a thing that Jesus did all the time. It's a thing where we find better communion with each other, is when we're able to take risks.

Any other thoughts, or shall I wrap us up?

Jonathan Walton: I just want to say thanks to people who listened. And if there are things that you'd like for us to talk about, or things you'd love for us to think about, please do send an email, send a voicemail, stuff like that. And also like, I think all of us would love to do more with what we're doing. So your subscriptions will let us publish more books. Your subscriptions will let us pay more writers.

Sy Hoekstra: Do more writing ourselves.

Jonathan Walton: Do more writing ourselves, absolutely. So yeah, thank you for those of you who listen and, we appreciate your support and your subscriptions, and I hope you spread the word.

Sy Hoekstra: And thank you so much to you two. I really appreciated doing this with you guys, with you two, the last several months. This has been a lot of fun. Suzie did all of it while pregnant, which is rather impressive.

Jonathan Walton: Sy, you learned how to produce podcasts.

[Laughter]

Suzie Lahoud: I was going to say- shout-out to Sy! This literally would not have happened without Sy.

Sy Hoekstra: A year ago. I had no idea how to do this and now I do, and it's great. I'm very happy that I did that. And yeah, I agree. Thank you so much to the listeners. This has been, it's been a lot of fun, but it's also been challenging in a good way. And, I really hope that as many people got something out of this as they could.

Suzie Lahoud: Yeah. I agree. Thank you so much to our listeners and to our subscribers. As we said in the beginning of this episode, it's always such an encouragement to hear that folks are engaging with the content. That it’s been something that they can journey with and we're excited to bring more in upcoming seasons and episodes. And yeah, I appreciate you, Jonathan and Sy. It's been cool to have these kinds of conversations on air. I feel like we're always talking about wrestling with different, difficult topics together, and I've appreciated being able to share that with a broader audience because of who you both are and the insights that you bring and your willingness to be open and vulnerable. So thank you for that. And for listening to me ramble when I have pregnancy brain.

Sy Hoekstra: [laughs] Yeah, thanks for listening to Jonathan and I ramble without any excuse.

Suzie Lahoud: [laughs] It is a convenient excuse.

Sy Hoekstra: That's right. You can't use it next season.

Suzie Lahoud: No, then I can say mommy brain.

Sy Hoekstra: Oh, okay. That's fine.

Thanks again. As I said, bonus episodes for the subscribers will be coming. Like I said, at the beginning, please do consider going to KTFPress.com/free month and subscribing with a free month. Please follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Those will still be plenty active.

Our incredible theme song is by Jon Guerra, whose support we appreciate very much. Our incredible podcast art is by Jacqueline Tam, and we will see you all next year!

[“Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades back in. Lyrics: “Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” Song fades out.]  

Sy Hoekstra: And we will see you all next year.

Jonathan Walton: Thaaaaanks, bye! [Hums a random tune] Bada badada ba da!

[Laughter]

This week, we have a fascinating interview with Dominique DuBois Gilliard, the Director of Racial Righteousness and Reconciliation for the Evangelical Covenant Church, and author of Subversive Witness: Scripture’s Call to Leverage Privilege. We talk to him about that book; how the Bible discusses privilege; reading Scripture with ideas like privilege, power dynamics, and trauma in mind; how disciples of Jesus leverage privilege for God’s Kingdom; the church’s truncated conception of repentance; and a lot more.  

Other resources from Dominique mentioned during the episode: 

* The video series curriculum accompanying Subversive Witness

* Dominique’s last book, Rethinking Incarceration: Advocating for Justice that Restores

Shake the Dust is a podcast of KTF Press. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Find transcripts of this show and subscribe to get our newsletter and other paid content at KTFPress.com. 

Hosts: 

Jonathan Walton – follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.  

Suzie Lahoud – follow her on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.  

Sy Hoekstra – follow him on Twitter.  

Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra – listen to the whole song on Spotify. 

Our podcast art is by Jacqueline Tam – follow her and see her other work on Instagram.  

Production and editing by Sy Hoekstra. 

Transcript by Joyce Ambale and Suzie Lahoud. 

Questions about anything you heard on the show? Write to [email protected] and we may answer your question on a future episode. 

Transcript

Dominique Gilliard: Privilege unbridled is something that seduces us to abide by the patterns of this world. And so when you are a person who is not impacted by the oppression that's happening in the world, then you have the privilege of being able to say, “Oh, well that's not my issue. I don't really have to be concerned about it. And the fact that you're trying to shine a light on this in a way that makes me uncomfortable­­­- you're actually the source of the problem, not the oppression that's provoking your lament.”

[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/That it will roll in abundance/ And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]   

Sy Hoekstra: Welcome to Shake the Dust, leaving colonized faith for the Kingdom of God, a podcast of KTF Press. My name is Sy Hoekstra. I am here with Jonathan Walton and Suzie Lahoud.

Jonathan Walton: Today we have an interview with Dominique DuBois Gilliard, the Director of Racial Righteousness and Reconciliation for the Evangelical Covenant Church. Gilliard’s latest book, Subversive Witness: Scripture’s Call to Leverage Privilege was just published by Zondervan. He previously wrote the award-winning Rethinking Incarceration: Advocating for Justice That Restores. Gilliard also serves as an adjunct professor at North Park Theological Seminary and its School of Restorative Arts and serves on the board of directors for the Christian Community Development Association.

In this episode, we talk to him about his new book; how the Bible discusses privilege; reading scripture with ideas like privilege, power dynamics, and trauma in mind; how disciples of Jesus leverage privilege for God's Kingdom; the church’s truncated conception of repentance; and a whole lot more.

Suzie Lahoud: As a reminder, if you like this show, the best way you can support us is by going to KTFPress.com and subscribing. That gets you our weekly newsletter curating resources to help you in discipleship and political education as you seek to leave colonized faith for the Kingdom of God, bonus episodes of this show, and writing from us. By the way, subscribers will get bonus episodes from us during the off-season. And, as always, they get their own private podcast feed where all of our regular and bonus episodes show up that you can easily add to your podcast player.

The subscription also supports this show and other projects we're working on, like the new book deal we just announced with Tamice Spencer. You can go to the previous entry on your podcast feed for more info on that exciting news. You can also get a free month of the subscription by going to KTFPress.com/freemonth. Again, that's KTFPress.com/freemonth. Please remember to hit the subscribe or follow button on your podcast player. Follow us @KTFPress on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and tell your friends about us.

Finally, next week is our season finale episode. Thanks so much to those who have given us questions to talk about. If you have anything you want us to cover, send an email to [email protected]. You should probably get that in this weekend since we'll be recording early next week.

Sy Hoekstra: Without further ado, here's our interview with Dominique…

[“Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in briefly, then fades out.] 

Sy Hoekstra: Dominique Dubois Gilliard, thank you so much for joining us on Shake the Dust today. We really appreciate you being here.

Dominique Gilliard: Ecstatic to be with you and your community.

Sy Hoekstra: So let’s just jump right into it. You have this new book out, Subversive Witness. Can you give us kind of a brief summary of what it's about and what you were hoping to accomplish with it?

Dominique Gilliard: Yeah. So at the core, the book is really trying to help the Western church in particular, reconsider the ways in which we have conflated and confused confession and repentance. And it's trying to call us back to a more biblical understanding of repentance, particularly rooted in Matthew 3:8, where John the Baptist tells us that there should be fruit in keeping with repentance. So that's one of the thrusts of the book.

And the other thrust is really to kind of respond to something I've seen across the country as I go across the country doing my job. So one of the things for listeners is, my “nine to five” quote unquote, is that I serve as a pastor to pastors for our roughly 900 congregations throughout North America, helping them make connections between scripture, justice, and racial righteousness and reconciliation, and how those things interact with each other and should ultimately be things that inform our witness as the body of Christ. So as I kind of go across the country doing my work within my denomination and outside of it, I really realized that there… when it came to the conversation of privilege, which has become such a contested conversation, there really are predominantly three congregational responses to the conversation.

The first I had noticed was a flat-out denial that privilege is real, and that it’s a biblical concept. The second response would be where leadership kind of acknowledged that privilege was real, but honestly determines that it’s too tricky of a train to navigate and that they would lose too many people and too much financial support for their church if they pressed into it, so they kind of sidestep it. Then the third one would be where congregations and congregants would press into the conversation and really try to reckon with privilege. But at the end, a lot of folks in the congregation would feel immobilized by the weight of privilege, and really wouldn't know what to do with these new revelations that they've gleaned from pressing into the conversation.

And I just noticed that none of those three responses were going to help animate our faith and help embolden us to participate and demonstrate our faith in profound and transformative ways in the world. So that really took me back to scripture and really spending some intentional time in discernment with God and with community. And what came out of that, was this revelation that the gospel offers us a fourth way. And that fourth way is that scripture affirms that privilege is real, but it also acknowledges that we're constantly going to be tempted to exploit privilege for selfish gain, as opposed to what we would do with privilege if we really look to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

And particularly the Philippians 2 Christ hymn, where we see Jesus had the option of exploiting privilege for selfish gain, but instead chose to sacrificially leverage his privilege for the furtherance of the kingdom and to sacrificially love his neighbors. So I wanted to point out how that’s not just a model we see in Jesus, but that’s actually a consistent model that is offered to us throughout scripture. So I wanted to point to those, flesh that out and talk about how that actually becomes a blueprint for the body of Christ in such an unjust society to try to really bear fruit in keeping with repentance and to distinctively bear witness to who and whose we are through how we live in love in the world.

Suzie Lahoud: So, let's talk about one of the passages in scripture you read through the lens of leveraging privilege. You write in Subversive Witness about the ways that Esther was privileged while living as the queen and that privilege made it both easier for Xerxes to exploit her and harder for Mordecai's lament about the King's genocidal decree to really affect her. Can you explain how that worked and how privilege more broadly harms discipleship?

Dominique Gilliard: Yeah. So Esther’s story is a complex story and one of the things you'll see when you read the book is that, for your audience, is that I really try to press into some of the complexities of our human realities. Because I think one of the things that we have a bad tendency to do, is to disconnect some of the complexities of life today from the biblical revelation in scripture. So for example, trauma. Trauma is a thing that's real, that tangibly impacts our lives, our brains, our decisions, our life chances, all of these things, but generally we read scripture as if trauma wasn't a reality then, and it wasn't something that informed people's lives and their decisions and their ability to hear God's call upon their life and respond to it.

And I think that inability to make that connection between our present realities and that historic truth is something that really becomes a stumbling block for a lot of believers as they try to discern and respond to God's call today, because we don't really see ourselves as worthy because of some of the baggage we bring and some of those different things. So I really wanted to enter into some of that complexity and help make some connections there.

But one of the reasons why I offer that, is because when we talk about Esther’s story, we can't honestly talk about this story without talking about Esther’s trauma. Esther is someone who is an orphan, who then has to go live with her uncle Mordecai. And then she ultimately is somebody who gets swept up into this den of exploitation after king Xerxes expels Queen Vashti from the palace for standing up for her human rights and personal dignity, refusing to be sexually exploited in front of the king and his drunken friends. So that jettisoning creates this space, this vacancy within Xerxes’ reign or kingdom for a queen. And he creates this, what we generally talk about as a beauty pageant, which is really this kind of exploitative commissioning of young virgin women.

Sy Hoekstra: Mass trafficking of women, yeah.

Suzie Lahoud: Yeah.

Dominique Gilliard: Yeah. Yeah, of young virgin women who are trafficked and are ultimately pampered before they're sexually exploited by the king. Then he selects the woman who satisfies him the most to become queen. So Esther has to go through that sexual exploitation after losing her parents at a young age, and she's told by her uncle to conceal her true ethnic identity, to be able to pass as a Persian in the palace. So she has all of this trauma that she's trying to navigate. And one of the things that we know from trauma studies today, is that when traumatized people are in toxic situations where that trauma is pretty consistently triggered, they usually end up either going into fight, flight, or freeze mode.

Freeze mode really is a way in which you are immobilized in the midst of what you're trying to navigate, because that trauma takes over your body and your brain because we carry it in our body and our brain. And it kind of leads us into this, essentially a sedated state of engagement where you can't fully function as yourself and respond in the ways that you would in your healthy centered self. And I see that's really a lot of what's going on with Esther in regards to Xerxes’ ability to exploit her and to keep her kind of in this sedated state, where she ultimately starts to engage in the luxuries and the privileges and the prestige of the palace, to the extent that she really loses her ability to be connected to the pain and the experience of her people on the outside.

So much so that she is completely unaware that as someone who is a Jew, that there is a commission, a decree going out that all the Jews will be exterminated throughout the land. And Mordecai- she only comes into a revelation of this decree that comes from the King's new number two, Haman, and the king signs off on- when her uncle comes to the palace gates in sackcloth and ashes and he's weeping and wailing and lamenting because of the pending fate of his people, and Esther has no clue what's going on, because privilege, privilege and her own trauma, because I think it's complex, so we have to hold the two together.

So Mordecai comes and actually becomes this prophetic voice that's trying to remind her of who and whose she is, and the fact that her privilege actually has a missional purpose, and it's not just to actually isolate her from the suffering of the outside world and to make her life nice and comfortable and pristine. So when she first encounters Mordecai's lament, she responds in an imperial way, which is to silence suffering. She sends him clothes, tells him to get dressed because sackcloth and ashes is inappropriate, it’s going to bring attention. It's going to be an indictment on Xerxes and his leadership in the palace she has found a home within. And Mordecai refuses to be silenced in his lament, and he persists.

And it's only after that persisting, only after her initial, his refusal of her initial kind of way of trying to meet him, and I want to, and again, nuance is important. I actually think that Esther is very well-intentioned in trying to send Mordecai clothes, because as her uncle, she's concerned about his safety, she's concerned about the retribution and the way worldly empires actually make public spectacles out of people who try to shine a light on the oppression that their flourishing is built upon. And that's really what Mordecai’s lament is doing, is shining a light on what's actually happening inside the confines of the palace.

So she's trying to silence it, but well-intentioned, and I think this is important because I think one of the things that can trip Christians up is, we have been conditioned to prioritize intentions over impact. And in doing so, we make ourselves complicit with the silencing of suffering. Oftentimes when we do that, we become people who try to proclaim, “Peace, peace!” where there is no peace. And we end up becoming affirmers and supporters of the status quo, which really in reality is antithetical to the Kingdom of God and what we're commissioned to represent in the world.

And so, but ultimately Mordecai is able to penetrate the, what I talk about as like the imperial numbness or satiation, and he's able to help Esther realize the missional purpose of her privilege, and that is to subversively use it to get access to the king, because she has unique access even though restricted access, because of the patriarchal society she's in. She does have unique access to help inform and persuade the king to actually reconsider the genocide and actually denounce it and actually create a way for the people of God to actually be able to be restored and liberated from the genocide that's pending for them.

Sy Hoekstra: Can we talk about that issue of lament for a second, because I thought this part was particularly important for a lot of dynamics in the church today. You use the point briefly where Esther sends Mordecai clothes as kind of a starting point to discuss the idea of repackaging; people telling people who are lamenting to repackage their lament, to make it more appropriate, to make it more palatable. Can you talk a little bit about how that plays out, and how you are seeing that play out in the church today?

Dominique Gilliard: Yeah. I mean, one of the things that privilege tempts us into doing, really privilege unbridled, is something that seduces us to abide by the patterns of this world, and really in a Romans 12: 1-2 kind of a way. And when we do that, one of the lies, the imperial lies that exists, is that we only have to be concerned about oppression or injustice when it directly impacts us, or people we see ourselves as related to. So when you are a person who is not impacted by the oppression that's happening in the world, then you have the quote unquote “privilege” of being able to say, “Oh well, that's not my issue. I don't really have to be concerned about it, and the fact that you're trying to shine a light on this in a way that inconveniences my life or makes me uncomfortable, you're actually the source of the problem, not the oppression that's actually provoking your lament. And I can have some sympathy and empathy for your cause, but that sympathy or empathy will not allow my life to be interrupted. So if you’re part, if your oppression, the oppression you're experiencing is causing me to have to interrupt my life, I can only quote unquote, ‘stand in solidarity with you’ or show empathy or compassion towards you, as long as you can reframe your lament in a way that doesn't make me uncomfortable or doesn't interrupt my life.”

And that's a very anti-gospel way of thinking. And we, I mean, we see this from conversations about Me Too, or Church Too, to Black Lives Matters, to advocacy around separation of family at the southern border. This is a constant thing that we see where I think a lot of Christians are like, “I'm not necessarily against you shining a light on that, but your light can't inconvenience my life. And if you could only repackage that in a way that feels more palatable to me, then I could be more supportive of the cause.” And I think we have to really reckon with how privilege really tempts us to first seek to repackage protest, as opposed to first seeking to figure out what injustice is evoking such a visceral response, such a prophetic lament that folk feel like they have no other option, but to, right now amid a global pandemic, go out and mobilize in the streets.

Or in Mordecai's case, to go and strip his clothes in protest in front of the palace gates in sackcloth and ashes. Our first response should be to seek to understand what kind of sinful reality has caused our sisters and brothers, our neighbors who suffer, to prophetically lament in such a public way. But generally, because of privilege, our first response is to try to repackage it and then we seek to understand after we have become more comfortable with the way that it's being presented to us.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. And I think trauma comes into this too, like you were talking about before. Suzie has spoken before on this show about how a lot of times we want to hear people's stories of basically how Jesus helped them overcome their trauma, but we don't actually want to hear anything about, we don't want to deal with the ways in which trauma affects people that make us uncomfortable. And sometimes, not always certainly, but sometimes the ways that people react to things that are tragic and painful, are traumatic responses. And they don't, they're not clean and they're not simple, and they're not necessarily like a good bullet-pointed argument to convince everyone about whatever the injustice is. And I just, I appreciate you bringing those points and that aspect of trauma into your reading of scripture, which I agree is something we see very rarely.

Jonathan Walton: All right, so you used Paul and Silas in Acts 16, as examples of how we can leverage privilege in a Christ-like way. What did that look like, and what does someone who's been discipled well, in the area of leveraging privilege do? So how did Paul and Silas do it and then how can we apply that to our daily lives as we leverage our privilege for the Kingdom of God?

Dominique Gilliard: Yeah. So Paul and Silas were Roman citizens who saw an injustice happen in their community. They saw a woman who was being exploited for the demon that was possessing her body, and there were powerful men who were becoming rich off of her exploitation. But it wasn't just the men because they were connected to an entire inter-web of exploitation, because the text tells us that the city was thrown into uproar because of their liberation of this woman. So they go, the men try to make them pay once they liberate the demon, and they take them to the city square, which doubles as the judiciary. And scripture was trying to give us a hint here that the marketplace and the judiciary are in cahoots.

And they go before the magistrates and they are taken and the men who are pressing charges against them, don't only press charges against them for liberating the woman, they also ethnically identify them as Jews. And this is a strategic choice because they know that in Rome, there has been fear-mongering that has been deployed that has created a very anti-Semitic atmosphere. So the attachment of Jewish identity to Paul and Silas, even though they are Roman citizens, the attachment of them being Jews really unleashes the crowd’s repressed xenophobia.

And the text tells us that the crowd joins in on their persecution and they are stripped naked, beaten with rods, before they are denied access to a trial by the judiciary, and then falsely incarcerated. Paul and Silas though, are Roman citizens. So they're from Rome. They know the temperature of Rome in regards to anti-Semitism and they know that all they have to do the entire time that the trials are going on, is actually prove their citizenship, and then the way that their case is being handled will be fundamentally shifted. But instead of doing that, they endure the persecution of the other, of the outsider, of the immigrant, of the non-Roman citizen. And they are falsely incarcerated.

Well, the next morning or early at the crack of dawn, the magistrates come into awareness that they actually had persecuted and profiled and were unjust to fellow Roman citizens. And at that point they become concerned, and they say, “Actually, we have to reckon with this and we actually have to free these people.” So what they want to do, is they actually send orders to release Paul and Silas at the crack of dawn, when there's no accountability and there's no transparency about what has happened. And Paul resists and he says, “They beat us publicly, they humiliated us publicly, and now they want to release us quietly. No, make them come and release us themselves.”

And he's basically using his Roman citizenship as a way to resist the ways in which the judiciary has been unjust to anyone who is non-Roman citizen, and the way in which they do their dirty work under the veil of darkness. And he's saying, this sin has to come to light and we have to reckon with the fact that it is not okay for us as the people of God, to live in a land where the legal system is only just for Roman citizens. But we know that our non-Roman neighbors who live amongst us are going to be exploited and there's going to be a prioritization of profit over justice for them. But the system might work for us, and it's not okay for us to be complicit and complacent within a system where we know that it's only just for some and not just for all.

So they ultimately leverage their Roman citizenship as a way to shine a light on a systemic sin, and to advocate for judicial accountability and systemic change. And when we understand our privilege properly, then we understand that when we have access and influence within a broken system or structure, that access and that standing within that system is not for us to just exploit it in a way where we take the perks of it, but we're supposed to become advocates who, advocates and allies, who bear witness to who and whose we are through how we exist and navigate those systems. And prayerfully, we are supposed to be people who create kingdom pressure points within these structures of exploitation, where we can work with our other members of the interconnected body of Christ, and we ultimately start to topple these unjust systems and structures and reconstruct them in God-honoring ways.

And so I think that that takes an understanding of solidarity that is just much deeper than the way that a lot of our congregations talk about it. You know, Paul and Silas suffer in solidarity with the oppressed to expose systemic sin the Roman judicial system is mired in. They embody, again, going back to the Christ hymn, by understanding that true solidarity requires suffering with- enduring, entering in when privileged tempts us to believe that we don't have to and that we can opt out of suffering. So that's a real discipleship of how do we leverage privilege, helps us to see that we're always going to be tempted to be able to opt out of suffering or to see ourselves as not being called to share in the sufferings of Christ like scripture commissions us to. But if we truly understand that we are blessed to be a blessing, and that ultimately my flourishing and my… my flourishing is tied up in my neighbor’s flourishing. And if I'm okay in a society where things work for me, but I know that what works for me is rooted in the detriment of my neighbor, then we're not faithfully following Jesus.

And we just have to be really, we have to be more explicit about that, because I think that we have taught passages like the Good Samaritan and taught passages that imply it, but we're not really explicit about it. And I think one of the things I tried to really bring forth that I think is one of the core questions at the heart of scripture that I think is asked over and over again, but we don't explicitly name it within our preaching and teaching and discipleship oftentimes, is the question, “Is the gospel still good news when it costs you something?” I think that's the question that’s laid before Paul and Silas in this passage, and they knew that standing in solidarity with their non-Roman citizens meant that they were going to have to endure being beat, persecuted, stripped naked, falsely incarcerated. And they were willing to do it all, and they didn't mumble a word about their citizenship until it was the right opportunity to hold the system accountable and to expose the systemic sin and advocate for structural change.

Sy Hoekstra: You used the phrase in the book, “cruciform solidarity,” and I was like, “Underline. Highlight. Write that down.” [Laughs] That's so good.  

Jonathan Walton: You just gave a quick personal, relational, systemic exegesis of Acts 16. Gave context, gave content, something I'm wondering is, what do you say to pastors and leaders that do the exact same thing, but for, I would argue like unbiblical purposes? So they would look at the same passage and say, “Look at how Esther submitted to authority. She did not try to oppose the system. She beared witness in the midst of it and struggled and helped her family.” And then did something different with it. That's something that wasn't subversive, but use the Bible to justify that. Because I think there's going to be people who listen to this and say, they're going to go to their pastor with this Acts 16 or Esther passage, and believe wholeheartedly they've done their research, and then they're going to be resisted theologically. So how do we engage in a way that pulls people into subversive witness and not just posturing arguments?

Dominique Gilliard: Yeah, let me double down on Acts 16 real quick, and then I'll expand. So one of the things, one of the ways in which we hear kind of the subversive witness suppressed within the church, is for Christians who say things like, “I wasn't a part of building an unjust system, so therefore, I'm not responsible for trying to deconstruct it.” Or the way that that might translate in North America is, “I wasn't a part of indigenous land theft. I never owned a slave. I didn't support or vote for Chinese exclusion or Japanese interment. Those things are horrible, but I didn't do it, so I have no responsibility. And even if there are some structural distortions that still existed as remnants of those things, again, I didn't do it, so I'm not responsible.”

So in this passage, Paul and Silas didn't construct the unjust legal system of Rome. They weren't lawyers in that way. They weren't magistrates. They weren't prison guards. They weren't complicit in the construction of the system at all. But they recognized that they were still benefiting from the system and that their lives were going to be fundamentally different as Roman citizens in Rome, because of the way that the judiciary was set up to affirm, dignify, and humanize Roman citizens’ lives, in a way that it wasn't willing to do for non-Roman citizens.

To live with that awareness and to apathetically respond to that systemic sin would have been something that was antithetical to the gospel of Jesus Christ. It was not good news to people who were non-Roman citizens. So their faith in Christ, their new life in Christ compelled them to respond to the brokenness that existed because of their foreparents’ decisions and sin, to be a part of being what Isaiah 58 tells us, is to be a repairer of the breach. And this is what I think we really miss out on within our preaching, our teaching, and our discipleship. Scripture is explicit. There are breaches that exist in our world, and it's not just a breach between us and Jesus because of sin. There are actual structural breaches, systemic breaches, and legislative breaches that continue to exacerbate the sins of our foreparents. And we are called to be co-laborers with Christ, who are in the midst of reconciling all things, not just broken people. It says all things, which includes broken systems and structures, to Christ. I mean, to God through Christ. So as we do this work as ambassadors of reconciliation, part of what that entails, is cultivating hearts to respond to the breaches that exist in our world. And to understand that our missional purpose as the people of God is to make God’s name known, and love shown throughout the world.

And when we do that, scripture is clear that we know what love is because Christ first laid down his life for us, so that we could go and essentially do likewise. And so in doing that, when we see oppression, injustice, systemic sin in the world that doesn't directly impact us, we get the chance to really take on the Christ-like mindset. And again, let me be clear: we are not saviors, we don't go salvifically and do this, but we get a chance to follow the example of our Lord and Savior who chose to leave the shalom of heaven to enter into the brokenness of our world, compelled by love, to bear witness to the fact that we have an opportunity to be liberated from the powers and the principalities that are vying to claim our allegiance or cause us to give our allegiance to anything other than the kingdom.

And the passage that’s really important for me in this is John 13:34- 35, where Jesus is, Jesus gives us a new commandment. He says, by how we love one another, the world will know that we are Jesus's disciples. So I think right now, we confuse how the world will know. A lot of people believe the world will know that we are Jesus's disciples through our culture wars. A lot of people think that the world will know that we are Jesus's disciples for what we stand against. A lot of people think that the world will know that we are Jesus's disciples by all these different things, but scripture is very clear. Jesus himself says that the world will know that you are my disciples by how you choose to sacrificially love one another. So when there is oppression and injustice going on that doesn't directly impact us, but we choose to enter in, to share in the suffering of Christ, to stand in true solidarity with our neighbors, the world sees that and they recognize that there's something distinctive about who we are. And when they want to know, and they start to inquire, why do we choose to live and love in the way we do, then that's when we get a chance to bear witness to the fact that it's not us, but it's actually a power at work in and through us that's stronger than us, that compels us to love beyond our human limitations. And we get to bear witness to the fact that it is truly not us, because we have died, but it's Christ who is risen and now lives in and through us.

And that's a way, I think, we really get to pair evangelism and justice together in a way that is really at the foundation of the disconnection that you're talking about, Jonathan. Most of our congregations are congregations that prioritize evangelism at the detriment of justice. And then we have some congregations that are all about justice and don't really care too much about evangelism. But the gospel of Jesus Christ calls us to the both/and. And I think we get ability to bear witness to the both/and when we live and love in that way.

And then lastly, one of the other passages I really flesh out in the text that kind of explicitly speaks to this, is Acts 6:1-7. It's another example of when we are mature enough in our faith, and this is one of the other impulses or calls of the book is really for the body of Christ to move from milk to solid food. We got to mature in our faith so we can have some of these difficult conversations. But when we are mature enough to recognize injustice in our midst and to respond to it appropriately, not to just try to throw a bandage over it or explain it away, but to truly reckon with it and to systemically address it, then the world recognizes that as good news.

And because of that, the gospel flourishes in our communities, and sometimes because of the wisdom and the humility that we demonstrate, the gospel will also flourish in another place down the line that we may never know or see, but is still alive and active, because the world responds to the fact that there are people who are mature enough and centered enough in their faith to understand that we're going to make mistakes. And when we do, will we have the humility and the integrity to acknowledge those things in public and to acknowledge them in a way that's not just a cover up, that will just mean that the problem will reemerge in three months or four months or a year later, but we're really trying to faithfully do the hard work of actually being folks who are fostering flourishing and seeking shalom. Even if that means that we have to concede power, that we have to publicly confess our sins, and that we are going to create new systems and structures of accountability so that the same sins don't continue to re-emerge and kill, steal, and destroy our witness. And I think that's really important, because we talk a lot about the mission of God, but we don't talk about the mission of Satan. And scripture is explicit. Satan has a missional purpose in the world, and that is to kill, steal, and destroy our witness. And when we're silent in the face of our neighbors’ dehumanization and exploitation; Satan steals, kills, and destroys our witness to the world, because the world won't know that we're Jesus's disciples when we pass by on the other side, as our wounded neighbor suffers and bleeds to death.

Jonathan Walton: That was great. Very helpful. And I hope that people can break that down for their pastors when they have these conversations.

[Laughter]

Sy Hoekstra: Just say that. That's all you gotta say.

Jonathan Walton: Just hit play at minute 40 and watch the Holy Spirit come into your pastoral meeting.

[Laughter]

Suzie Lahoud: So you mentioned this at the beginning of our conversation as one of the major thrusts of the book, and certainly it's already been a cross-cutting theme of this conversation. But you draw on a distinction between understanding repentance as just oral confession and actually bearing fruit in keeping with repentance. Could you take some time to double down on that, to explain the difference, to unpack that some more for us?

Dominique Gilliard: Yeah. There's a real difference between acknowledging that we did something wrong and turning away from sin and returning back to God. And I think in a lot of our congregations, we have become content with confessing that we did something wrong. But scripture calls us to turn away from sin and to turn back to God, and says that there should be some evidence of that turning back to God in our lives. There should be something distinctive about our witness in the world, our relationships, our posture, because of our restoration of right relationship with God and neighbor.

And I think, and part of the reason why I think this conversation scares some folks, is the fact that I think when we start to talk about fruit, then some people start to think that we're talking about works righteousness. And scripture is clear that because of who and whose we are in the world, there should be kingdom fruit that's produced in the way that we live in love. And that measurement of like, is there actually life that comes from our connectivity to the source of life? Does that ooze out in the way that we relate to our neighbors and creation itself? Do we think about stewardship versus ownership and possession? Do we realize that we're blessed to be a blessing? Do we realize that what God has entrusted us with, should flow through us and not just be contained within our nuclear families? Like there should be tangible evidence of the fact that it is no longer us again who live, but it's Christ who lives in and through us. And that's what I'm really trying to get after with the fruit and repentance, not this kind of works righteousness. Because we know scripture is clear that we're saved by grace, and our faith in Christ, and it's not us and our ability to become these great people in and of ourselves, but it's really us being humble in our intentionality of submitting our lives to the spirit and allowing the spirit to navigate our steps, that really start to produce this kind of kingdom fruit.

So I think what happens is that when we are content with confession, then we realize that confession is not enough to actually help us to realize that we are being formed and shaped by powers and principalities, but also customs and the culture of worldly empires to live in a way that leads us to be more prone to pledge our allegiance to flag over the cross. And we have to understand the ways in which we are being seduced away from a gospel vision of flourishing that says that my flourishing is connected to my incarcerated neighbor’s flourishing, or my neighbor who doesn’t have housing or inadequate food, or my neighbor who is being trafficked. All of these different things.

Again, Paul and Silas recognized this. They recognized that their flourishing was connected to this woman who was being exploited by this demon. And they chose to enter into her reality, liberate her, and pay the cost that worldly empires enact on people who understand that they shouldn't just be interested in their own individual flourishing. But the kingdom economy says that our flourishing is found when we seek the peace and the prosperity of our neighbors, particularly our most marginalized neighbors. So it’s a different worldview that calls us to live distinctively for Christ in a way that makes us find discontentment in the status quo, because we know that there's something deeper, richer, more robust that's possible. And we know that the Spirit is willing that into existence. And we know that the good news of the gospel is that God wants broken vessels like you and me to participate in that inbreaking Kingdom, which will, which has already been inaugurated, but not fully manifested. And we get a chance to bear witness, again, to who and whose we are through how we choose to live and love. And that is rooted in our ability to understand that we have to turn away from these patterns, these logics, these systems and structures, and these powers and principalities that are trying to persuade us to find contentment in the status quo, particularly when the status quo works for us.

Suzie Lahoud: Yeah. Thank you for that. And I love how you really flesh that out. Like really put flesh on that in the book through historical examples of what that should look like, through contemporary examples, folks that you know that you feel like are living that out faithfully. And in a way that I feel like really shows also the communal aspect of repentance that, this movement from a self-orientation to an other-orientation, that if your repentance, it’s less about you just feeling good about yourself and more about bringing about, as you said, the full manifestation of the Kingdom of God. So yeah, thank you for that and for the way that you demonstrate that through the pages of this book.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. I would like to emphasize that everything, listener, you've heard today is a small fraction of what is packed into this book in terms of the theological and practical wisdom. There is a lot in the nine chapters that make up this book [laughs]. So this is a small taste, so we definitely encourage everyone to go out and get the book. And it's already out. It's not pre-ordering. Just go get it. We'll have a link in the show notes.

Dominique, before you go, is there anywhere that people can follow you or is there anything that you want to plug other than the book?

Dominique Gilliard: Yeah. One of the things, I guess, that's been really encouraging about some of the response to the book is that for people who didn't know me, they've been inspired to read me as an author backwards.

Sy Hoekstra: Oh yes.

Dominique Gilliard: So a number of people who didn't know about my first book, Rethinking Incarceration: Advocating for Justice that Restores. It won a 2018 InterVarsity Reader's Choice Award, and it won the 2019 Outreach Magazine Social Issues Book of the Year Award. So I would encourage folks who are trying to understand, like you're a little enticed by what I talk about in Acts 16, and what advocating for systemic change could look like, I really press into what it looks like for the Body of Christ, specifically around this conversation of incarceration.

Folks can find and follow me on Facebook, on my author page at Dominique DuBois Gilliard. On Instagram, I’m Dominique D- “D” as in DuBois- Gilliard. So DominiqueDGilliard, and then on Twitter I'm DDGilliard. So those are places that you can follow me.

And there is also an accompanying video-based small group curriculum that goes with Subversive Witness, and so we'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. But I really wanted to make this very tangible for people to process in community, because this is communal work. While it has individual elements to it, there are also communal elements, and I think we have to be more intentional about the both/and as opposed to the either/or.

Sy Hoekstra: There are also reflection questions at the end of every chapter in the book. So it's a good thing to go through with a small group or something like that.

Suzie Lahoud: And those questions do not let you off the hook.

[Laughter]

Sy Hoekstra: No.

Suzie Lahoud: I was going over those with my husband and I was like, “Wow, you do not pull any punches with this one.”

Dominique Gilliard: Oh, and can I just give a real quick shout-out, because I know there might be some InterVarsity folk on here. This book would not be what it was without the wisdom of my sister, Jazzy Johnson. So folks who know her, you'll be able to see some of her wisdom soak through the pages as you engage, and so I'm so thankful for her and her witness in the world.

Sy Hoekstra: That’s awesome. Dominique Dubois Gilliard, thank you so much. This has been incredible. We really appreciated having you today.

Dominique Gilliard: Yeah. It was a blessing to be on with you all, and chop it up, and talk about the subversive nature of the Kingdom.

Sy Hoekstra: Amen.

[“Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in briefly, then fades out.] 

Sy Hoekstra: Thanks so much for listening. Just a quick reminder, you can get a free month of the subscription to our website at ktfpress.com/freemonth. That's ktfpress.com/freemonth. Please remember to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @KTFPress. Hit the subscribe or follow button on your podcast player. And write in to [email protected] with any questions you have that you want us to talk about in our episode next week, and remember to do that as soon as you can.

Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra. Our podcast art is by Jacqueline Tam, and we will see you all next week.

[“Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades back in. Lyrics: “Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” Song fades out.]  

Sy Hoekstra: Jonathan, do you wanna go back to your first question?

Jonathan Walton: Yeah, I'm trying to think of a bridge…

Sy Hoekstra: Or do you have eight other questions that just arose in your brain? Whatever.

[Laughter]

Jonathan Walton: I do. I really do. I was trying to not ramble, but now I'm rambling.

[Laughter]

Sy Hoekstra: You can ramble for a second. We got, we have enough time for you to ramble a bit.

Jonathan Walton: Here's my, here's my question…